By Glenn Greenwald

Attorney General Eric Holder testifies Wednesday on Capitol Hill before the Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on Justice Department oversight. November 20, 2009 (updated below – Update II) “What I’m absolutely clear about is that I have complete confidence in the American people and our legal traditions and the prosecutors, the tough prosecutors from New York who specialize in terrorism” — Barack Obama, yesterday. “Holder said five other Guantanamo detainees would be tried by military tribunals. The five include Abd al-Rahim al Nashiri, who is accused of masterminding the 2000 attack on the USS Cole warship in Yemen; and Canadian Omar Khadr, accused of killing a U.S. soldier in Afghanistan” — NPR, yesterday. “‘Administration officials say they expect that as many as 40 of the 215 detainees at Guantanamo will be tried in federal court or military commissions . . . . and about 75 more have been deemed too dangerous to release but cannot be prosecuted because of evidentiary issues and limits on the use of classified material’ . . . If true, that means that there are 75 so-called ‘Fifth Category’ detainees who might be subject to indefinite detention without trial” – The Atlantic’s Marc Ambinder, yesterday, quoting The Washington Post. * * * * * Can anyone reconcile Obama’s homage to “our legal traditions” and his professed faith in jury trials in the New York federal courts with the reality of what his administration is doing:  i.e., denying trials to a large number of detainees, either by putting them before military commissions or simply indefinitely imprisoning them without any process at all? During his appearance before the Senate Judiciary Committee yesterday, Eric Holder struggled all day to justify his decision to put Khalid Sheikh Mohammed on trial because he has no coherent principle to invoke.  He can’t possibly defend the sanctity of jury trials in our political system — the most potent argument justifying what he did — since he’s the same person who is simultaneously denying trials to Guantanamo detainees by sending them to military commissions and even explicitly promising that some of them will be held without charges of any kind. Once you endorse the notion that the Government has the right to imprison people not captured on any battlefield without giving them trials — as the Obama administration is doing explicitly and implicitly — what convincing rationale can anyone offer to justify giving Mohammed and other 9/11 defendants a real trial in New York?  If you’re taking the position that military commissions and even indefinite detention are perfectly legitimate tools to imprison people — as Holder has done — then what is the answer to the Right’s objections that Mohammed himself belongs in a military commission?  If the administration believes Omar Khadr belongs in a military commission, and if they believe others can be held indefinitely without any charges, why isn’t that true of Khalid Sheikh Mohammed?  By denying jury trials to a large number of detainees, Obama officials have completely gutted their own case for why they did the right thing in giving Mohammed a trial in New York. Even worse, Holder was reduced to admitting — even boasting — that this concocted multi-tiered justice system (trials for some, commissions for others, indefinite detention for the rest) enables the Government to pick and choose what level of due process someone gets based on the Government’s assessment as to where and how they’re most likely to get a conviction: Courts and commissions are both essential tools in our fight against terrorism . . . On the same day I sent these five defendants to federal court, I referred five others to be tried in military commissions.  I am a prosecutor, and as a prosecutor, my top priority was simply to select the venue where the government will have the greatest opportunity to present the strongest case with the best law. . . . At the end of the day, it was clear to me that the venue in which we are most likely to obtain justice for the American people is a federal court. Does that remotely sound like a “justice system”?  If you’re accused of being a Terrorist, there’s not one set procedure used to determine your guilt; instead, the Government has a roving bazaar of various processes which it, in its sole discretion, picks for you based on ensuring that it will win.  Even worse, Holder repeatedly assured Senators that the administration would continue to imprison 9/11 defendants even in the very unlikely case that they were acquitted, citing what they previously suggested was their Orwellian authority of so-called “post-acquittal detention powers.”  Is there any better definition of a “show trial” than one in which the defendant has no chance of ever being released even if acquitted, because the Government will simply thereafter assert the power to hold him indefinitely without charges? I understand that sending even a limited number of Terrorism suspects to federal court is politically difficult and controversial, as the last couple of days have demonstrated.  But by refusing to embrace and defend the core principle of justice at stake here — that a distinguishing feature of our political system is that we don’t imprison or kill people without charging them with a crime and proving their guilt in a real court, and that military commissions and indefinite detention are un-American (which Democrats argued under Bush) — the Obama administration has made it far more difficult for it to defend what it is doing, as well as for those who want to defend their decision to give trials to 9/11 defendants. To see how that works, here is part of the exchange I had on MSNBC this week with George Pataki, while debating trials for 9/11 defendants: MR. GREENWALD:  If you look at how the British treated the people who did the London subway bombings, the Spanish who treated the people who did the Madrid subway bombings — even India just put on trial the sole surviving terrorist who perpetrated the Mumbai massacre last year. Even Indonesia gave trials in their real cities to the people who blew up the nightclubs in Bali. It’s only the American conservatives who are feeding the terrorist agenda by saying that we’re too scared to hold trials – MR. RATIGAN: Hold on, Glenn. MR. PATAKI: Can I respond to that, Dylan? Only the — only the — only the American conservatives? Then tell me why Obama and Holder are using military tribunals against those who blow up Americans in acts of war overseas? They’re just picking these particular terrorists for trial in New York because they blew up civilians in New York. So what their logic is, “Kill thousands of civilians and you can get a civilian trial; kill one or two overseas, and we’re going to use military tribunals.” That makes no sense. For those wanting to defend the administration, what’s the answer to that?  The same thing happened when Rep. Nadler, as part of the same segment, tried to defend the Obama administration’s decision to try the 9/11 defendants in New York: REP. NADLER:  I think that our tradition is that people accused of heinous crimes get trials, and they get trials in the area in which the crime is committed, which is right here. And I think it’s exactly the right thing to do. . . .That’s the way it ought to be, and we ought to show the world that we adhere to our traditions of justice and that these terrorists are not going to cause us to abandon the law. MR. PATAKI: … We are going to use military tribunals. They’re saying they’re perfectly fine for some terrorists, but these terrorists they’re going to try here. What’s the justification for that, Jerry? REP. NADLER: Well, I — well, I don’t think there is any justification. MR. PATAKI: I don’t either. The administration should have the courage of its convictions and defend jury trials as a linchpin of American justice, which would entail giving them to all Terrorism suspects not captured on any battlefield.  But by refusing to do so — by exhibiting the very cowardice of which Holder accused Republicans, i.e. denying Terrorism suspects a trial — the administration has no cogent argument to make in its own defense.  It’s just another case of the administration wanting to bask in the rhetorical glory of “the rule of law” while simultaneously trampling on it for petty political convenience. UPDATE: The blogger Patterico — who, notably, is a prosectuor himself and thus inclined to be empathetic with prosecutorial goals — nonetheless compiles additional evidence to criticize Holder’s decision as follows: You can see that what we have is an administration that is choosing where to try the detainees, not based on some principle or neutral protocol (as they claim), but based on where they can win. They’re rigging the game. And if they lose, they won’t let him go anyway. This is just further evidence that the KSM trial will be a show trial. It’s worth reading the arguments from a prosecutor about why the administration’s conduct is such a breach of basic justice, even as they cynically wrap themselves in the rhetoric of the sanctity of jury trials and the rule of law. UPDATE II:  For a crystal clear refutation of the claim that it’s normal to use military commissions for the crimes at issue here, see this comment from the always-enlightening Pow Wow, which is based on this equally enlightening interview by Marcy Wheeler of Lt. Col (and now-Law Professor) David Frakt, highlighting the numerous myths on which the case for military commissions is predicated.

:: Article nr. 60288 sent on 21-nov-2009 02:40 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=60288

Link: www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2009/11/19/obama/index.html

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

The Israel lobby and the Jewish kings

by Philip Weiss on November 14, 2009 · 13 comments

When people ask why Obama has capitulated to the prime minister of a tiny state– Bibi Netanyahu– various theories are offered about Health care first, or the economy, or Afghanistan, or oil. Few say directly: Netanyahu feels invulnerable because of the Israel lobby in the U.S. As readers of this site know, I am a bull on this issue: I think the lobby has a tremendous amount of power. And all efforts to poohpooh its influence strike me as foolish until such time as the media address it openly and vigorously, as they do, say, the gun lobby. Once there’s information and sunshine, we can argue about its magnitude.

The difficulty is that you cannot be plain about this matter without addressing the idea of Jewish influence. Israelis are often more plain about this. Anshel Pfeffer wrote in Haaretz the other day, “the most significant joint endeavor of America’s Jews [is] six decades of unswerving support for the Israeli government of the day.” I.e., a hammerlock on U.S. policy. And last year at the NYPL, former Knesset speaker Avraham Burg described “two structures” built by Jews, one being Israel, the other “the semi-autonomous American Jewry, which was not here 150 years ago– powerful influence, access to the corridors of power, impact on the culture, and civilization… plus the infrastructure of the community of solidarity and fraternity and support system and education etc.”

Obama’s crumple cannot be explained without talking about that influence, and Obama’s/Rahm Emanuel’s fears for a second term. Some of this power is media/Establishment presence, to which I was long a personal witness. (And yes I wonder why Nina Totenberg referred to Emanuel as “Rahm” three times in a report last night on NPR.) Some of it is financial. As former AIPAC boss Tom Dine told Helena Cobban lately of a political epiphany he had on the Kennedy campaign in 1980: “[Jews] were the kings in every city!”

The Jews were kings because of money. As I insist on stating, more than half of the money in Democratic politics comes from Jews, the richest group by religion in the U.S. The two baronial families that lifted Barack Obama in Chicago, the Crowns and the Pritzkers, are both Jewish (and one, the Crowns, includes fire-and-brimstone Israel supporters; I am not sure about the Pritzkers).

Money is famously the mother’s milk of politics, and the money that the lobby directs is playing a huge role in limiting debate of Israel/Palestine in the U.S. What follows are several items. The first three are from the recent J Street conference, which prompted this post. The later items are recycled:

–If you look at Video 5 here from J Street, at Minute 48 or so, Congressman Bob Filner speaks openly about the financial threat to a politician in going against the Israel lobby. “Campaign contributions,” he explains, are the reason “why you get 400 votes for these measures” in support of Israel. “An economic weapon?” moderator Bob Franken ventures. “Of course,” Filner says, with feeling. “On the issue of Israel, people are taking positions that could lead to war on the basis of…’Am I going to get a campaign contribution?’… The dangerous thing here is that people are making decisions– you could have nuclear war in this whole world, and they’re making it on narrow political, parochial grounds.” [emphasis Weiss's]

What are those contributions worth? Filner says (at minute 25 or so) said that 10 years ago he voted against a resolution to condemn Khalid Muhammad, an associate of Louis Farrakhan who was making anti-Semitic speeches. Filner didn’t like what Muhammad was saying, but he felt that it wasn’t Congress’s place to condemn speech. “What about the First Amendment?” But only 10 people voted against it, Filner says. “You know you’re going to pay for that,” he was told by fellow congressmen. “Then I started getting all these calls. I’m not sure which organization was behind it.I will tell you… on that vote I lost about $250,000 an election cycle in contributions. That’s intimidating to most of my colleagues. That kind of money… is an intimidating factor. Not many people would stand up to it.”

–Also at J Street, Elissa Barrett, the executive director of the Progressive Jewish Alliance, in rationalizing her organization’s pitiful silence on Israel’s human rights record, said “we can’t be blase about our funders and how they stand with us.” She said that “PJA has lost funders around this.” Sad. Presumably she was referring to this type of lame statement in the midst of the Gaza war. This demonstrates that even in the leftleaning Jewish community, people are scared of the neoconservative shadow.

–Jonathan Chait of the New Republic warned J Street that because it was providing a forum for (mild) criticisms of Israel, a leading Democratic consultant had told him recently that he would have to advise political candidates to return contributions from the group.

–Back when Harvard professor Steve Walt co-authored his bombshell paper on the Israel lobby, Bernard Steinberg, director of Harvard’s Hillel center, brought up the money issue unprompted when I was interviewing him for the Nation: “I talked to someone in Harvard development and asked what the fallout had been, and he said, ‘It’s been seismic.’” Subsequently the New York Sun tried to maumau the Jewish benefactor of Walt’s chair at the school, Robert Belfer, and described “snowballing outrage from Harvard donors.

–When Lawrence Summers was forced out as Harvard’s president, Martin Peretz said it was out of “anti-Israel and even anti-Jewish animus” and threatened financial repercussions: “…[M]y own impression of wealthy alumni who were once my students is that Summers made them more generous… I know of at least three gifts in the $100 million range that were very likely to materialize and now are dicey.”

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

The chemicals and toxic fumes from New York’s Twin Towers on September 11 2001 may have a long-term effect on rescue workers.

A spate of recent deaths of New York police and fire officers who took part in the emergency operation at Ground Zero after the 9/11 attacks has heightened fears that it could be the start of a delayed epidemic of cancer-related illness.

Five firefighters and police officers, all of whom were involved in the rescue and clear-up at the site of the collapsed Twin Towers, have died of cancer in the past three months, the oldest being 44. Three died last month within a four-day period.

Those three were Robert Grossman, a Harlem-based police officer who spent several weeks at the emergency site and died of a brain tumour aged 41; fellow police officer Cory Diaz, 37; and firefighter Richard Mannetta, 44.

In addition, John McNamara, a 44-year-old firefighter, died in September; and Renee Dunbar, a police officer in her late 30s, died in August.

The cluster of cancer deaths comes as Congress is under pressure to pass legislation that would provide federal help to emergency workers who have contracted illnesses since 9/11. Campaigners hope that a bill will be put to the House of Representatives by the end of the year that would set up a $10bn (£6bn) national fund for hundreds of people who now have cancer, respiratory illnesses and other diseases that may be linked to their work at the World Trade Centre site.

Up to 70,000 people took part in the massive operation at Ground Zero, including police, firefighters and construction workers who came to New York voluntarily from all over the US. Many worked for months amid a toxic soup of dust and chemicals.

Amid the pollutants within the giant pile of 1.8m tons of debris and the surrounding air were 90,000 litres of jet fuel from the two stricken planes, about 1,000 tons of asbestos that was used in the construction of the Twin Towers, pulverised lead from computers, mercury and highly carcinogenic by-products from the burning of plastics and chlorinated chemicals.

No official tally is available for the number of those who have died as a result of the 9/11 clear-up. The New York state health department has recorded 817 deaths of emergency workers but it cannot confirm categorically how many of those were directly linked to the site.

Federal funds for ill emergency workers ran out in 2003 and, since then, the onus has fallen on cash-strapped New York city, which is facing up to 10,000 claims for compensation through the courts. Families of those who have died say that the burden should be shouldered by the nation as a whole.

Robert Grossman’s father, Stephen, drew a parallel with the $3bn the federal government spent this year on buying up old cars under the “cash-for-clunkers” scheme. “They spent that, but they don’t have a dime for people who volunteered after 9/11 and ended up giving their lives for their country.”

The 911 Police Aid Foundation, a group run by and for sick police officers, says it is helping more than 100 officers who worked at Ground Zero and who now have cancer. The group is receiving new cases at a rate of about one a week, many of which are extremely rare at such young ages.

Michael Valentin, who volunteers for the group, spent about four months working around the pile of debris from the towers. He now has lymphatic tumours in his chest, as well as asbestos poisoning.

“We all have terminal illnesses, we are all going to die. We just want to help others by showing them that they are not alone,” he said.

The bill currently before Congress, which is named after James Zadroga, a police officer who died in 2006, would provide for the health monitoring and treatment of an additional 15,000 emergency workers. Paradoxically, it would not cover cancer, which was not perceived as a priority at the time the legislation was drafted though numbers have escalated since then.

Claire Calladine, a campaigner who runs the organisation 9/11 Health Now, said the fear was that the recent rise in cancer cases was just the start.

“We have only seen the tip of the iceberg. How bad will it get – that is the big question.”

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

The UK is currently being run by a Masonic group who consider themselves untouchable. These people are often high end criminals who use their Freemasonry links to hide their illegal activities.

These untouchables include drug dealers, pimps, murderers, and gangsters. They have Masonic links to UK police and security services. For example, if a dirty job is required,the criminal gangs will happily carry it out allowing it to be completely deniable to security service and the police. In the event that the criminal gangs require a blind eye or even assistance, security services and the police are very happy to become involved.

In fact, I have specific evidence of the activities of these people and the line between untouchable criminals, MI5 and the police is often blurred: Police and MI5 acting as criminals for the criminals, criminals doing “Favours” for the police.
This level of corruption runs through the justice system, lawyers, politicians and much of local government.

The links these untouchables have enabled them to commit murder, drug trafficking, and any other heinous crime you can think of with the collusion of masonic police officers, judges, politicians and lawyers.

Ever so often in the UK a “special” police unit is set up to tackle police corruption. These units are allowed to continue as long as they do not uncover the truth. If they ever do, then they are shut down very quickly.
Once such unit based in London was set up to expose pedophile rings trafficking children. Senior people within this covert operation were very close to exposing a network that served important people and was operated by untouchables. The specialist police unit was immediately disbanded.

Some of these “Untouchables” operate with complete impunity. They have access to some of the most advanced technology and resources including equipment which is normally only available to secret service and special forces.

The willingness or obligation from officials at all levels to assist these people comes from two directions. The Freemasonry oath to help “Brothers” before anything else; and the fact that once you cross the line and help these people, you then become their property. These “Untouchables” with the right connections can call on assistance from the very top. When orders come through, those carrying out the dirty work will often believe they are just doing their job. This means these untouchable criminals can do anything and will tell you if you happen to become their target.
This network of senior freemasons is unknown to the lower ranks who willingly comply to orders.

The level of corruption has now reached a stage that they are willing to expose themselves to the public in the belief that they are completely untouchable. The Freemasonry untouchable criminals, corrupt police officers (not all of them) and security services are in for a suprise. The truth is coming out.

Maureen Spalek who’s video is at the bottom of the page was once married to an individual who told her openly that he was an untouchable high level Freemason. After a major disagreement and subsequent divorce her children were illegally taken after a visit to hospital for one of her children who was knocked over by a motor cycle in suspicious circumstances. The nurse involved wrote a report saying that Maureen was unstable and an unfit mother. The children were immediately taken in to care and very soon after adopted. Maureen has had independant reports stating that she is perfectly fit.

She decided to contact the nurse who made the report. However, the nurse was murdered before she could speak to her. An individual was convicted of the murder and sentenced. Maureen attempted to get a visiting pass to the prison in an attempt to find out if this person did murder the nurse and why. Before she could make the visit the prisoner was killed in prison. Maureen is recieving daily harrasment from Cheshire and Mersyside police organised through the untouchable masonic connections, she has also been the victim of corrupt judges and medical staff.

UK Security services, UK police and untouchable criminals attempted an illegal operation on Saturday 31st October 2009 in central London. The security services were used for surveillance and tracking of the victim, the untouchables planned to carry out a heinous crime and the police colluded by standing by once these people had done their work to take the victim of this high level organised masonic crime.

UK security services protect untouchables who organise and run a high level child trafficking ring for elite masonic groups who call themselves illuminati. Theses people will be called upon by security services to set a target up as a pedophile inorder to drive the target to suicide. This is probably the most hainus tactic of MI5 and clearly a target not wanting to allow these thugs to bring discrace on family and friends would have no option.

Police tracking techniques and the masonic stooges will be used to follow the target until he reaches a location then the team will swing in to action orchestrating a crime scene inorder to set up the target. Bribes will be paid to as many people as required inorder for them to carry out their crimes at any given location and they will often tell members of the public anything to get their agreement including labeling the target as a dangerous attacker when in fact the rouge elemenets of the security services and police combined with Freemason untouchables are the most dangerous people in society. There have been unsubstanciated claims that these groups participate in satanic ritual sacrifices, from what I have witnessed I can certanly not dismiss these claims.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

9/11 Commission member Bob Kerrey did not seem pleased with this pin, worn by engineer John Shanahan
911ShareTheTruth.com

Bob Kerrey, former U.S. Senator and member of the 9/11 Commission, spoke Friday at the the University of Redlands Town & Gown Cultural Series.

Kerry was questioned by several audience members regarding the 9/11 commission report, which is the government’s official version of events regarding the attacks on September 11th 2001.

John Shanahan P.E., licensed member of Architects and Engineers for 9/11 Truth, attended the event. “I had no idea what the subject of his discussion would be”, Shanahan explained, “but I went there with some preparation for asking a hostile question about his involvement on the 9-11 commission and why did he NOT resign instead of going along with the program. I was not selected to ask a question.”
Shanahan, in addition to owning an engineering firm, is a Constitutionalist who has successfuly beaten seat belt tickets and stop sign tickets in court.

“The auditorium was fairly large”, Shanahan continued, “with graduated level floor seating and balcony seating–capacity of possiblly 350, and was at least 80% full. Kerrey started at about 5p.m. and could not have been speaking for more than about a half hour. I thought that we would have the balance of the time for questions. Even though they cut the questioning off at slightly before 6PM, every time there was an opportunity, at least 6-8 people raised their hands”.

“Pretty much Kerrey revealed how he supports big government and its involvement in health care. He’s grateful to big health care for the prosthetic that he received after his wound in Vietnam–he said nothing about the lies told by big government to get our military involvement in the first place). He says that we must address climate change or it will be our undoing, and advocated much more money to be spent on education and affirmative action.”

Shanahan, who regularly wears a lapel pin debunking the government version of events, got a chance to meet Kerrey afterwards. “My head was reeling with all of the hostile questions that I was developing even though I never got a chance to pose a public query. When I met him for the cookies and coffee outside the auditorium, he started reading word by word the pin that I had on my shirt ‘The–official–911–story–is–a–big–lie’. You should have seen the sour expression that came over his face. He did not appear to appreciate my questions and statements on global warming, either.”
“I shook hands with him after the meeting, introduced myself to him and challenged him on his views
on global warming. He knew nothing about www.oism.org and Dr. Art Robinson’s 1998 petition against the Kyoto Protocol; he changed the subject and one of his handlers rescued him from me.”

Bruno Bruhwiler, founding member of We Are Change L.A.,  took the opportunity to confront Kerrey. “How do you sleep at night, knowing you participated in a whitewash of what happened on 9/11?”, he asked, to which Kerrey responded with bathroom humor, joking  “I don’t think I do sleep well at night, I get up to take leaks.” Bruno said he intended to admonish Kerrey that now is not the time for levity, but Kerrey went on to admit that the commission did not answer all the relevant questions, that he came onto the commission late, and lacked both the proper time and funding.

We Are Change has confronted many politicians and insiders regarding the events of 9/11. “You try to get in touch with their humanness”, Bruhwiler explained. Kerrey’s son was born on 9/10/01, and during their exchange, Bruhwiler addressed how the world has changed a lot since that time. “Torture is happening to innocents across the world, as well as tyranny here at home, and it all goes back to the place and time of 9/11″.
“You pull the audience in”, he explained. “Whoever’s listening, they get educated and snap out of whatever false reality they’re in.” In the hopes that the general public will learn about the issues surrounding 9/11 and government corruption, Bruhwiler suggested that the audience “Look up building 7. Start there”. WE ARE CHANGE LA took several videos of the exchange and will release them in the coming weeks.

Shanahan remarked on Kerrey’s bathroom humor as well. “He’s obviously a complelety soulless individual. But when all is said and done, he’s a CFR member.  What else needs to be said?”

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Ian Henshall has said I can post his email with regards to the meeting in the House of Commons. I am creating a new entry so nobody misses this.

The message is as follows:

Reinvestigate 911 has gained more momentum following Monday’s meeting in the House of Commons. The meeting was attended by one Peer, one senior MP and several aides to various MPs, some senior. About eight more MPs from all parties had asked to attend but due to last minute events and diary clashes were not present. (This is normal, the system keeps MPs overburdened with meetings and short of help.)

MPs and aides contacted after the meeting have said they found the presentation impressive. Several one-on-one follow-up meetings are being arranged.

There were presentations from UK 9/11 victim Scott Forbes, nanotechnology expert Niels Harrit and 911 The New Evidence author Ian Henshall.

We now have a small base of solid support within the Palace of Westminster. Plans for a further meeting in the next few months are being developed. Other action points under discussion include asking the Iraq Inquiry to scrutinise the official 9/11 story, pressing publicly and through informal contacts for fair treatment in the media, and setting up a Parliamentary Group which could eventually hold hearings.

Since the Parliamentary campaign launched in July, Reinvestigate 911 has been contacted for information or requests to come to meetings by people who have in the past held posts of Foreign Secretary, Defence Minister, and select committee chair. Several more have been members of cabinets and shadow cabinets. Clearly these people are unimpressed by the assumption of the US/UK corporate media that the official 9/11 story is the whole truth.

A business sponsor, Coffee Plant, paid for the ad in the hope of triggering a response that will fund the next wave of activity. This seems to be working. So far about a third of the costs of the ad have come back in donations and book sales.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

CIA director Leon Panetta got into hot water with Congress, after he revealed an agency program to hunt down and kill terrorists. A recent report from the U.S. military’s Joint Special Operations University argues that the CIA didn’t go far enough (.pdf). Instead, it suggests the American government should set up something like a “National Manhunting Agency” to go after jihadists, drug dealers, pirates and other enemies of the state.

America’s military, intelligence and law-enforcement agencies already devote thousands of people and billions of dollars to tracking down top terrorists and insurgents. But even the most successful of these efforts — like going after Iraqi militant leader Abu Musab al-Zarqawi — have been “ad hoc” efforts, with units cobbled together from different corners of the government. Report author and retired Lt. Col. George Crawford instead would like to see a permanent group with clear authority, training, doctrine and technology to go after these dangerous individuals. These “manhunting teams would be standing formations, trained to pursue their designated quarry relentlessly for as long as required to accomplish the mission,” he writes.

Sometimes, that will mean operating “in uncooperative countries.” In those cases, the teams must be prepared “to act unilaterally, with no support or coordination with local authorities, in a manner similar to that employed by Israel’s Avner team in response to the Munich Olympics massacre.” (That was the controversial unit, fictionalized in Steven Spielberg’s movie, that allegedly roamed the world, assassinating Palestinian militants in response to the 1972 Olympic attack.)

The hit squads would only be one part of the manhunting agency, according to the Joint Special Operations University monograph, uncovered by Inside Defense. “Dedicated teams must be assembled, able to respond ‘on-call’ in the event of a raid on a suspect site or to conduct independent ‘break-in and search’ operations without leaving evidence of their intrusion,” Crawford notes.

Manhunting will also “require personnel who are experts at conducting surveillance of particular facilities, personnel, or activities without arousing suspicion or being detected,” he adds. “Picture in your mind a typical city street scene, with a little old lady walking her dog, the phone repair crew descending into a manhole, two little old men playing an innocent game of checkers, or the homeless person sleeping on the park bench, and you are on the right track.”

Such a group wouldn’t just go after terrorists. “Human networks are behind narcotics trafficking, arms proliferation, piracy, hiding war criminals from authorities, human trafficking, or other smuggling activities,” Crawford writes. “Human networks also lie at the core of national governments, offering an increased potential to nonlethally influence state actors with precision. A robust manhunting capability would allow the United States to interdict these human networks.”

Crawford, who says he served as the “lead strategist” for developing U.S. Special Operations Command’s “advanced intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance capabilities for counterterrorism operations,” compares manhunting to “curling, the Winter Olympics sport. As a skater releases the heavy stone onto the ice, a few strokes from a broom can alter the speed and trajectory of the stone. Likewise, a small amount of precise influence or force employed at an early point in a developing situation might divert the trajectory of an event away from crisis or full-scale conflict.”

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

2009 10 25

From: deputy-dog.com

Since 2006, kazakhstan’s new capital city of Astana, itself an enormous hub of construction since it inherited the title in 1997, has been home to one of the world’s most impressive and visually futuristic pyramids, known as the palace of peace and reconciliation. It was designed by british super-architects foster + partners, cost 8.74 billion kazakh tenge (i don’t need to tell you bright young humans that this equates to approx. £35m) and was built to accommodate the triennial ‘congress of world and traditional religions’. If there was ever a positive to be found for the existence of the idiocy we know and love as religion, this building could be it, as after an impressively rapid 2 years of design and construction, the end product is a masterpiece. Above: the visible 5-storey pyramid section of the palace is as high as its base is wide (203ft) and is to be the centrepiece of the country’s ‘presidential park’. Above: a plan of the pyramid. the interior is just as impressive as the outer skin. this place is like a tardis and below the above-ground pyramid itself sits, amongst other things, an enormous 1′500 seat opera house – see final photo below. Above: the pyramid’s 2 storey tip is home to the congress chamber, a space which has been surrounded by 10′100 sq feet of stained glass designed by renowned british artist brian clarke. Above: inside the congress chamber, possibly one of the smartest meeting rooms on earth. Above: the dove-covered stained glass of the congress chamber. Above: the view as you look through the middle of the congress chamber’s circular table. walking down to the next level takes you through nearly a whole storey of greenery, below which is the amazing atrium seen in the next photo. Above: the atrium, and another incredible conference table. Above: looking up from the atrium towards the upper section. this enormous space is surrounded by walls of rooms, 5 floors high, to be used both for meetings and accommodation. Above: the opera house beneath the atrium. the domed ceiling sits below the enormous circular table belonging to the room above. More: Palace of Peace and Reconciliation Religious leaders met for discussions at the Palace of Peace and Accord For more detailed info about the pyramid i’d suggest reading this article by ellis woodman. photos found here, here and here. Astana Astana is the capital and second largest city (after Almaty) of Kazakhstan, with an officially estimated population of 750,700 as of November 2008. It is located in the north-central portion of Kazakhstan, within Akmola Province, though politically separate from the rest of the province. Bayterek “Tall Poplar Tree” or the “Tree of Life” Bayterek is a monument and observation tower in Astana, the capital of Kazakhstan. A tourist attaction popular with foreign visitors and native Kazakhstanis alike, it is a common symbol of the city and itself in turn symbolizes Astana’s new status as the capital of Kazakhstan. The monument is meant to embody a folktale about a mythical tree of life and a magic bird of happiness: the bird, named Samruk, had laid its egg in the crevice between two branches of a poplar tree. The 105m structure consists of a narrow cyllindrical shaft emeshed in flaring white branch-like girders, widening toward the top (the “tree”), where a gold-mirrored 22m-diameter sphere (the “egg”) containing the obsevation deck is supported. The altitude of the deck is 97m, symbolizing the year of the capital-transfer to Astana (1997). From its height it is possible to see much of the newly built city. The viewing platform features a gilded hand print (Alakan) of the right hand of Nursultan Nazarbayev, the first President of the independent Republic of Kazakhstan. An accompanying plaque suggests that visitors place their own hand in the imprint and make a wish; when one does so the Kazakh national anthem plays. In addition to the observation platform, the tower contains a large aquarium and an art gallery. Read more: Bayterek Ministry of Transport and Communication in Astana Ak Orda Presidential Palace More: Astana

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

A lot of negative things have been written in the blogosphere about pollster Mark Penn, Hillary Clinton’s increasingly-powerful advisor. Penn’s critics have focused on his firm’s union-busting work. They’ve also attacked his insistence on promoting a strategy of so-called “centrism,” even as supposedly “centrist” policy positions – especially regarding Iraq – become increasingly unpopular. And now we learn that the PR firm he runs, Burson-Marsteller, has been hired to repair Blackwater’s reputation.

Which raises a question: If they’re so good at PR, how did Burson-Marsteller manage to make themselves such a potential public relations disaster for their most famous client? After all, the firm helps “drive strong corporate and brand reputations for its clients,” according to its corporate webpage. What will this link with out-of-control mercenaries do for Sen. Clinton’s “brand reputation?”

While I haven’t hesitated to criticize the Clinton campaign or its advisors, I’ve deliberately refrained from commenting on Mark Penn for a couple of reasons. For one thing, I work in the corporate world too. We’re a capitalist society, and if a person chooses to function in that world the lines aren’t quite as black-and-white as they may seem from the outside. (Although union-busting is, or should be, beyond the pale – especially for someone with a leadership role in a campaign that seeks union support.)

For another, I’m not prepared to heap the kind of scorn on Penn that others do (although Kos’ impaling of him yesterday is pretty much the definitive blog commentary on Penn’s shortcomings). I haven’t read “Microtrends,” Penn’s new book. But Ezra Klein has, and his piece on it and Penn may be the definitive print takedown of the pollster.

Yet another reason I’ve stayed away from commenting on Penn is that Sen. Clinton seems committed to working with him – and, despite all evidence to the contrary, I suppose I keep clinging to the tattered hope that she develop into a candidate worth supporting in 2008. Some of us haven’t completely given up on her yet … but time is growing short.

Now we have the news that Burson-Marsteller, under Penn’s leadership, has taken on Blackwater as a client. Blackwater has become a symbol for everything that’s wrong with the incumbent Administration, from the greedy and irresponsible outsourcing of governmental functions to Pentagon-sanctioned atrocities like the shooting of an Iraqi politician’s bodyguard by a drunken mercenary operating beyond the law.

Ezra Klein quotes Penn’s partner and others as saying that he’s driven by “the numbers,” and only by the numbers. Yet numbers can only be understood in context - and political contexts include the social, the perceptual … and the ethical. Taking on Blackwater shows a blindness toward context.

Mel Brooks said this about Hitler in a 1966 Playboy interview:

“There was a whole nice side of Hitler. He was a good dancer – no one knows that. He loved a parakeet named Bob – no one knows that either.”

Here’s some professional advice for Burson-Marsteller. The best you can do for your new client is to try an approach like that for your client (although Brooks, of course, was joking).

This latest revelation about Penn and his firm doesn’t seem to have hit the mainstream media, at least so far. But it doesn’t have to get wide press in order to do lasting damage to her campaign, especially during the primaries. That’s something we’re about to address in our next post – one that will presumably meet with Mr. Penn’s approval, since it will be driven by “the numbers.”

We’re being told that Sen. Clinton and her staff combine “experience” and management savvy with the ability and desire to create “change.” This example of poor judgment casts doubts on both claims. It’s not smart management, and it certainly doesn’t make her look like the candidate of “change.”

As for Burson-Marsteller, the best thing it can do for its new client is to buy it a parakeet named “Bob.”

Read more at: http://www.huffingtonpost.com/rj-eskow/hillarys-blackwater-conne_b_67412.html

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Using the codename “Donna,” the younger sister of Fidel and Raul Castro worked undercover for the CIA in Cuba in the early 1960s, helping opponents of their communist rule escape execution and imprisonment, she said in memoirs published in exile on Monday.

Revealing what the publishers called a closely guarded secret kept hidden for four decades, Juanita Castro described in the book how she was recruited by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency in Havana two years after the 1959 Revolution led by her brothers, which she initially supported.

There was no immediate reaction to her revelation from the U.S. authorities or the Cuban government, which routinely dismisses critics as “mercenaries” in the pay of Washington.

Juanita Castro, 76, broke publicly with the Cuban government led by her brother Fidel Castro in 1964 after leaving Cuba for Mexico. She went into exile in Miami and has remained a strong critic of communist rule in Cuba.

In the memoirs entitled “Fidel and Raul, My Brothers, the Secret History,” told to Mexican journalist Maria Antonieta Collins, she says she quickly became disenchanted with Fidel Castro’s rule over the Caribbean’s largest island because he increasingly persecuted opponents and turned to communism.

She says Fidel Castro “betrayed” her and other Cubans by abandoning the nationalist democratic revolution he had promised and imposing a one-party Marxist state on Cuba.

Juanita Castro wrote she was recruited to be a clandestine CIA operative by her friend Virginia Leitao da Cunha, the wife of the Brazilian ambassador to Cuba, who in 1958 sheltered her and other revolutionary followers of Castro during the armed struggle to topple dictator Fulgencio Batista.

She said that at a meeting with an American CIA officer “Enrique” in a Mexico City hotel in 1961, she was given the codename “Donna” and codebooks to use in Cuba with a short-wave radio to receive instructions from her CIA handlers.

Former leader Fidel Castro, 83, who last year handed over the presidency of Cuba to his younger brother Raul, 78, for health reasons, has long considered the CIA his arch-enemy. He says the U.S. spy agency was behind most of the 600 or so assassination plots against on his life.

In her memoirs, Juanita Castro wrote she agreed to work for the CIA under the noses of her brothers on the condition that she was not asked to participate in any violent acts against them or any other member of their government.

“Did I feel remorse about betraying Fidel by agreeing to meet with his enemies?. No, for one simple reason: I didn’t betray him. He betrayed me,” she writes in the 432-page book published in Spanish by Grupo Santillana.

“NEED FOR POWER”

“He betrayed the thousands of us who suffered and fought for the revolution that he had offered, one that was generous and just and would bring peace and democracy to Cuba, and which, as he himself had promised, would be as ‘Cuban as palm trees,’” she said.

She described in the book how, following CIA instructions often secretly picked up at isolated roadside drop points in Cuba, she helped people persecuted by Fidel Castro’s secret police to escape capture, imprisonment and possible execution.

Some were sheltered at the house where she lived with her mother, Lina Ruz Gonzalez, who was also the mother of Fidel and Raul Castro. Lina Ruz, who also helped some friends escape persecution, died in 1963, Juanita Castro said.

She recalled her own shock when Fidel Castro, who had denied publicly that he was a communist, declared on Dec. 2, 1961, that he was a Marxist-Leninist and that he would remain one for the rest of his life.

“Fidel’s radical change to communism was not out of political conviction, but simply out of the need to hold power, which is what has always been important to him,” she wrote.

“I have no other explanation: he turned to the Soviet Union to perpetuate himself in power.”

The collapse in 1991 of the Soviet Union, Cuba’s main ally and economic benefactor for years, plunged the island into economic crisis. But despite the economic problems, both Fidel and Raul Castro have ruled out any shift to capitalism.

In response to a call for a “new beginning” in U.S.-Cuban ties made by U.S. President Barack Obama, the Cuban leadership has started talks with Washington on issues like migration and postal service ties, but it demands that Obama completely end the 47-year-old U.S. trade embargo against Cuba.

Obama says he wants to see Havana free jailed dissidents and improve human rights.

Juanita Castro first revealed her secret role with the CIA in Cuba in a broadcast late on Sunday by the Spanish-language TV network Univision-Noticias 23. She says she has not spoken to Fidel or Raul Castro since she left Cuba in 1964.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

The CIA is fighting to prevent the release of hundreds of documents involving its funding of an anti-Castro group in New Orleans that engaged in well-publicized clashes with Lee Harvey Oswald in the summer of 1963.

The New York Times reported on Friday that the files “involve the curious career of George E. Joannides, the case officer who oversaw the dissident Cubans in 1963. In 1978, the agency made Mr. Joannides the liaison to the House Select Committee on Assassinations — but never told the committee of his earlier role.”

Joannides was the deputy director for psychological warfare at the CIA’s Miami station, JM/WAVE, which was the center of anti-Castro activities in the early 60’s and served as a spawning ground for figures who would later be involved in covert operations in Vietnam and in Iran-Contra. In 1963, Joannides worked closely with leaders of the the Directorio Revolucionario Estudantil and exercised a significant degree of control over the group’s leaders.

Former Washington Post reporter Jefferson Morley has been engaged since 2001 in a battle to learn move about the dual role placed by Joannides, which has raised suspicions that he was part of a coverup. “I know there’s a story here,” Morley told the Times. “The confirmation is that the C.I.A. treats these documents as extremely sensitive.”

In December 2007, a Court of Appeals panel ordered the CIA to reveal its files on Joannides, and some documents were released last year confirming Joannides’ role in New Orleans. However, the CIA is still withholding or even refusing to confirm the existence of hundreds more.

This past July, Morley wrote, “Last week, I did my part to hold the CIA accountable. I filed my sixth (!) declaration in connection with Morley v. CIA, my ongoing lawsuit against the agency seeking records related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy. … The Joannides file, say a diverse group of JFK authors, are part of the assassination story and should be made public. For six years, the CIA has refused, alleging their release would harm ‘national security.’”

Morley’s quest has gained prominent supporters, including even anti-conspiracy assassination scholar Gerald Posner, who believes that the CIA’s secretiveness is feeding into conspiracy theories.

G. Robert Blakey, who served as staff director to the House Select Committee on Assassinations, told the Times, “If I’d known his role in 1963, I would have put Joannides under oath — he would have been a witness, not a facilitator. … How do we know what he didn’t give us?”

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

An experiment that fires powerful radio waves into the sky has created a patch of ‘artificial ionosphere’, mimicking the uppermost portion of Earth’s atmosphere.

According to a report in Nature News, the experiment is called the ‘High Frequency Active Auroral Research Program’ (HAARP), near Gakona, Alaska.

It has spent nearly two decades using radio waves to probe Earth’s magnetic field and ionosphere.

One of the most obvious results of the experiments is that they can create lights in the sky that are similar to auroras, the glowing curtains of light that naturally appear in the polar skies when electrons and other charged particles pour down from Earth’s protective magnetosphere into the upper atmosphere.

There, at an altitude of about 250 kilometres, the charged particles collide with molecules of oxygen and nitrogen and make them emit light, similar to the process inside a fluorescent light bulb.

HAARP’s high-frequency radio waves can accelerate electrons in the atmosphere, increasing the energy of their collisions and creating a glow.

The technique has previously triggered speckles of light while running at a power of almost 1 megawatt1.

But since the facility ramped up to 3.6 megawatts – roughly three times more than a typical broadcast radio transmitter – it has created full-scale artificial auroras that are visible to the naked eye.

But in February last year, HAARP managed to induce a strange bullseye pattern in the night sky.

Instead of the expected fuzzy, doughnut-shaped blob, surprising irregular luminescent bands radiated out from the centre of the bullseye, according to Todd Pedersen, a research physicist at the US Air Force Research Laboratory in Massachusetts, who leads the team that ran the experiment at HAARP.

The team modelled how the energy sent skywards from the HAARP antenna array would trigger these odd shapes.

They determined that the areas of the bullseye with strange light patterns were in regions of denser, partially ionized gas in the atmosphere, as measured by ground-based high-frequency radar used to track the ionosphere.

The scientists believe that these dense patches of plasma could be gas that was ionized by the HAARP emissions.

“This is the really exciting part – we’ve made a little artificial piece of ionosphere,” Pedersen said.

“The novelty is not seeing the aurora – it’s the fact that we can actually create enough high-energy electrons to form plasma,” said Mike Kosch, chair of Experimental Space Science at Lancaster University, UK.

“It shows something completely different and new that we hadn’t expected. We didn’t know we could do that from a radio array on the ground,” he added.

Related Posts:

• No Related Posts

Can President Obama be serious when he says he accepts the Nobel Peace Prize as “an affirmation of American leadership on behalf of aspirations held by people of all nations”?

Among “all nations” does he include the people of Iraq? Polls show folks there overwhelmingly want the U.S. to get out. Apparently, they didn’t care for their dose of “American leadership.” Does Obama’s “all nations” include Okinawa, which the U.S. has occupied for 64 years and refuses to leave?

Does “all nations” include Diego Garcia, whose inhabitants the U.S. forced from their island homes in the Indian Ocean, (as Time magazine has reported,) and whose dogs we gassed for good measure? (President Bush later used that base to attack Afghanistan, the better to dominate the oil-rich Middle East.)

Since he’s been in office only a short time, when Obama speaks of “an affirmation of American leadership” is he referring to the eight years of warmongering by his predecessor George W. Bush, who tore up every international treaty he could lay his hands on? In fact, global public opinion polls identified Bush as one of the most feared public figures on the planet. What kind of “leadership” is it when one UN member invades another based on lies and kills a million of its people, steals it blind, and shatters its economy? Calling that “leadership” is a bit wide of the mark.

Perhaps Obama is referring to the “leadership” of his friend Bill Clinton, who let half a million Iraqi children starve to death during his White House watch and who inaugurated the rendition kidnappings of men off the streets of foreign countries—men who were subsequently tortured and denied legal rights and representation?

“Leaders,” of course, are supposed to have followers. But a CNN poll September 15th found that 58 percent of Americans oppose the war in Afghanistan. That war is as illegal as the war in Iraq, yet President Obama is deliberating about whether to escalate it, not whether to end it.

Obama’s statement accepting the Nobel is as misleading as his remarks to the CIA last April 16th when he praised the Agency and hailed the U.S. as “a nation of laws” when today  it is, in fact, the world’s principal law-breaker. The fact is, the charismatic new president appears to see the world through the dark glasses of the CIA and has aligned himself with the Agency’s imperialist agenda. Given Obama’s past employment, this is not that odd.

According to Wikipedia, upon graduating from Columbia University, Obama for a year “held a position as a research associate” in Business International Corp., a CIA front organization. The company is alleged to have kindly paid off Obama’s college loans for him. Obama worked in BIC’s financial services division, where he edited “Financing Foreign Operations,” a global reference service, and wrote for “Business International Money Report,” a weekly financial newsletter.  According to an article in the October issue of Rock Creek Free Press, of Washington, D.C., reporter Wayne Madsen writes, “Through its contacts with leading liberals around the world, BIC sought to recruit those on the left as CIA agents and assets.” At any rate, the New York Times reported in 1977 that a BIC company official admitted providing “cover” for CIA employees.

The CIA, of course, has long been tied in with advancing the interests of the oil industry. Its Middle East station chief Kermit Roosevelt in 1953 stage-managed the overthrow of the democratic government of Iran after it nationalized its oil industry, as it had every right to do, especially when they were being cheated like mad.

As the CIA works largely under cover, many of its activities such as the torture in Iraq and Afghanistan prisons are concealed from public view. So Obama, as a former CIA asset, protects the Agency by not calling their alleged torturers to account, by withholding photographs of their nauseating handiwork, and by praising the bandits in public. One way to tell who really runs a country is to look to see which, if any, of its citizens are above the law. In America, those people are headquartered in Langley, Virginia.            #

(Sherwood Ross formerly reported for the Chicago Daily News, wire services, and national magazines. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com)

Related Posts:

• The Lying Game: Drum-beating for War against Iran
• Report Card on Obama From a New Frontiersman
• Afghanistan – The Proxy War
• Disinformation about the Iranian “Threat”
• Obama Makes Up IAEA Rules for Iran