By banning journalists from the area, the U.S. Navy was able to perpetrate this with virtually no press coverage, says David Vine, an assistant professor of anthropology at American University and author of “Island of Shame: the Secret History of the U.S. Military on Diego Garcia(Princeton University Press).”

Purchase: Island of Shame: The Secret History of the U.S. Military Base on Diego Garcia

“The Chagossians were put on a boat and taken to Mauritius and the Seychelles, 1,200 miles away, where they were left on the docks, with no money and no housing, to fend for themselves,” Vine said on the interview show “Books Of Our Time,” sponsored by the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover.

“They were promised jobs that never materialized. They had been living on an island with schools, hospitals, and full employment, sort of like a French coastal village, and they were consigned to a life of abject poverty in exile, unemployment, health problems, and were the poorest of the poor,” Vine told interview host Lawrence Velvel, dean of the law school.

Their pet dogs were rounded up and gassed, and their bodies burned, before the very eyes of their traumatized owners, Vine said.

“They were moved because they were few in number and not white,” Vine added. The U.S. government circulated the fiction the Chagossians were transient contract workers that had taken up residence only recently but, in fact, they had been living on Diego Garcia since about the time of the American Revolution. Merchants had imported them to work on the coconut and copra plantations. Vine said the U.S. government induced The Washington Post not to break a story spelling out events on the island.

“Through Diego Garcia,” Vine pointed out, “the U.S. can project its power throughout the Middle East, and from East Africa to India, Australia and Indonesia. With Guam, the island is the most important American base outside the U.S.” He said U.S. bases now number around 1,000, including 287 in Germany, 130 in Japan and Okinawa, and 57 in Italy.

“Bases have been essential tools of U.S. military and economic power since not long after independence,” Vine pointed out. “We had bases all the way to the Pacific. After the Civil War, the U.S. began to acquire coaling bases in the Pacific.”

Although the Chagossians were forcibly removed in 1971, they still hope to return, Vine says, and refer to their period of exile as one of “profound sorrow.” Vine says they would be happy to live on the unused eastern portion of the island and work at the base but the U.S. instead “imports contract labor from other areas so they can send them home when the job is done.” The island’s exiled survivors and their descendants today number about 5,000.

Long off limits to reporters, the Red Cross, and all other international observers and far more secretive than Guantánamo Bay, many long suspected the island was a clandestine CIA “black site” for high-profile detainees, Vine wrote in a related article. Journalist Stephen Grey’s 2006 book “Ghost Plane” documented the presence on the island of a CIA-chartered plane used for rendition flights. On two occasions former U.S. Army General Barry McCaffrey publicly named Diego Garcia as a detention facility. And a Council of Europe report named the atoll, along with those in Poland and Romania, as a secret prison.

The island became “a major launch pad” for the U.S. attacks on Afghanistan and Iraq, Vine said. In addition to its capacious harbor, the island readily supports some of the largest U.S. warplanes, including Air Force B-52s, B-1Bs and B-2s. Two years ago, the Pentagon awarded a $32 million contract to add a submarine base to the island’s arsenal.

Diego Garcia had been a British possession until 1966, when London allowed the U.S. to use it as a military base in exchange for cancelling a $14-million British debt for a military hardware purchase. Some idea of the size of the base may be conveyed by the fact it is said by the Pentagon to contain 654 buildings.

In a related article about Diego Garcia, Vine has written: “With support for the Chagossians’ struggle growing in both the United States and Britain at the same time that revelations about a secret CIA prison are spreading, the United States must finally act to remedy the damage done by another Guantánamo damaging too many lives and undermining its international legitimacy. The United States must allow the Chagossians to return and assist Britain in paying them proper compensation; the United States must close the detention facilities and open Diego Garcia to international investigators; the United States must end the painful irony that is a base the military calls the ‘Footprint of Freedom.’” #

(Sherwood Ross is a media consultant to the Massachusetts School of Law at Andover. Reach him at sherwoodross10@gmail.com )

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Source: Bloomberg

KBR Inc. wasted billions of dollars through inefficiencies, lax oversight and poor management of its contract to support U.S. troops in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to an independent, bipartisan panel.

The contract — to provide housing, food, laundry, mail delivery and fuel for U.S. troops — was ultimately worth $31.7 billion, with most of the work being done in Iraq and Kuwait.

“The services could have been delivered for billions of dollars less,” the commission stated in a report released today at a hearing of the House Oversight and Government Reform’s national security panel. “Substantial evidence supports the view” that KBR’s services “cost too much.”

The Wartime Contracting Commission, in its first report since Congress established it last year, gives the most critical assessment to date of the contract that Houston-based KBR, then a unit of Halliburton Co., won in December 2001, shortly after the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

KBR’s record may be hurting its chances to win work under a new program for awarding contracts to support U.S. troops. That competition, begun in April 2008, pits KBR against Falls Church, Virginia-based DynCorp International Inc. and Irving, Texas- based Fluor Corp. KBR hasn’t won any of the five orders awarded so far, according to the U.S. Army Sustainment Command.

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Secretary of State Says US or “Some Other Enemy” May Launch First Strike Against Iran

Citing the disastrous 2003 US invasion of Iraq as an example, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton today warned that by continuing to refuse to abandon its civilian nuclear program, Iran was risking the possibility of an invasion by the US or “some other enemy that would do that to them.”

The comments came during an interview on ABC’s “This Week” program, and when asked by interviewer and former Clinton-era official George Stephanopoulus, Secretary Clinton reiterated “that’s right, as a first strike.”

The bulk of the interview emphasized US opposition to the Iranian program, along with unquestioned claims that the nation was pursuing nuclear weapons. Secretary Clinton also extended the American nuclear umbrella over Israel in the event that Iran attacked them.

Considering it was no more than 72 hours ago that President Obama made his historic call for a “new beginning” to US relations with the Muslim world, it seems incredible that his administration is already raising the prospect of an Iraq-style invasion of Iran.

Already six years in, the Iraq occupation has killed thousands of US soldiers, sucked trillions from the American economy, and is stretching the military to its limits. It is unfathomable that with this war still far from over, the Obama Administration is considering an Iraq redux in its larger neighbor to the east.

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National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09)

National Level Exercise 2009 (NLE 09) is scheduled for July 27 through July 31, 2009. NLE 09 will be the first major exercise conducted by the United States government that will focus exclusively on terrorism prevention and protection, as opposed to incident response and recovery.

NLE 09 is designated as a Tier I National Level Exercise. Tier I exercises (formerly known as the Top Officials exercise series or TOPOFF) are conducted annually in accordance with the National Exercise Program (NEP), which serves as the nation’s overarching exercise program for planning, organizing, conducting and evaluating national level exercises. The NEP was established to provide the U.S. government, at all levels, exercise opportunities to prepare for catastrophic crises ranging from terrorism to natural disasters.

NLE 09 is a White House directed, Congressionally- mandated exercise that includes the participation of all appropriate federal department and agency senior officials, their deputies, staff and key operational elements.  In addition, broad regional participation of state, tribal, local, and private sector is anticipated.  This year the United States welcomes the participation of Australia, Canada, Mexico and the United Kingdom in NLE 09.

EXERCISE FOCUS

NLE 09 will focus on intelligence and information sharing among intelligence and law enforcement communities, and between international, federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector participants.

The NLE 09 scenario will begin in the aftermath of a notional terrorist event outside of the United States, and exercise play will center on preventing subsequent efforts by the terrorists to enter the United States and carry out additional attacks. This scenario enables participating senior officials to focus on issues related to preventing terrorist events domestically and protecting U.S. critical infrastructure.

NLE 09 will allow terrorism prevention efforts to proceed to a logical end (successful or not), with no requirement for response or recovery activities.

NLE 09 will be an operations-based exercise to include: activities taking place at command posts, emergency operation centers, intelligence centers and potential field locations to include federal headquarters facilities in the Washington D.C. area, and in federal, regional, state, tribal, local and private sector facilities in FEMA Region VI, which includes the states of Arkansas, Louisiana, New Mexico, Oklahoma and Texas.

EXERCISE OBJECTIVES

Through a comprehensive evaluation process, the exercise will assess prevention and protection capabilities both nationally and regionally. Although NLE 09 is still in the planning stages, the exercise is currently designed to validate the following capabilities:

• Intelligence/Information Sharing and Dissemination
• Counter-Terrorism Investigation and Law Enforcement
• Air, Border and Maritime Security
• Critical Infrastructure Protection
• Public and Private Sector Alert/Notification and Security Advisories
• International Coordination

VALIDATING THE HOMELAND SECURITY SYSTEM

Exercises such as NLE 09 are an important component of national preparedness, helping to build an integrated federal, state, tribal, local and private sector capability to prevent terrorist attacks, and rapidly and effectively respond to, and recover from, any terrorist attack or major disaster that occurs.

The full-scale exercise offers agencies and jurisdictions a way to test their plans and skills in a real-time, realistic environment and to gain the in-depth knowledge that only experience can provide. Participants will exercise prevention and information sharing functions that are critical to preventing terrorist attacks. Lessons learned from the exercise will provide valuable insights to guide future planning for securing the nation against terrorist attacks, disasters, and other emergencies.

For more information about NLE 09, contact the FEMA News Desk: 202-646-4600.

FEMA leads and supports the nation in a risk-based, comprehensive emergency management system of preparedness, protection, response, recovery, and mitigation, to reduce the loss of life and property and protect the nation from all hazards including natural disasters, acts of terrorism and other man-made disasters.

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Military-Backed Public Schools on the Rise in U.S.
By The Associated Press | Google News

The U.S. Marine Corps is wooing public school districts across the country, expanding a network of military academies that has grown steadily despite criticism that it’s a recruiting ploy.

The Marines are talking with at least six districts — including in suburban Atlanta, New Orleans and Las Vegas — about opening schools where every student wears a uniform, participates in Junior ROTC and takes military classes, said Bill McHenry, who runs the Junior ROTC program for the Marines.

Those schools would be on top of more than a dozen public military academies that have already opened nationwide, a trend that’s picking up speed as the U.S. Department of Defense looks for ways to increase the number of units in Junior ROTC, which stands for Reserve Officers Training Corps.

“Many kids in our country don’t get a fair shake. Many kids live in war zones. Many kids who are bright and have so much potential and so much to offer, all they need to be given is a chance,” McHenry said. “If you look at stats, what we’re doing now isn’t working.”

Last year, Congress passed a defense policy bill that included a call for increasing the number of Junior ROTC units across the country from 3,400 to 3,700 in the next 11 years, an effort that will cost about $170 million, Defense Department spokeswoman Eileen M. Lainez said. The process will go faster by opening military academies, which count as four or more units, McHenry said.

Other military branches also are aiming to increase their presence in school hallways, but the Marines are leading the charge. Read more.

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by Henry Makow Ph.D.

Blogs by people claiming to be former  MI-5 and MI-6 agents paint a sordid picture of state terrorism, rape, torture, mind control, murder and pedophilia in the service of the Illuminati.

The main blog is called “Richard Tomlinson and the Russians” but there are a dozen more listed. Taken together with Comments by insiders, they tell a hair-raising tale of mayhem perpetrated by these deranged Illuminati agencies.

Here are some highlights:

+The world’s Intelligence agencies are infiltrated and controlled by “Royal Arch” Freemasons who owe their loyalty not to the State but to Illuminati (Masonic) bankers, posing as the “Crown” or “Monarchy.” Most agents are tortured, i.e. trauma brainwashed and mind controlled using trigger words from texts like “Alice in Wonderland.”

MI-5 Chief Manningham-Buller told recruits they serve “the ‘real’ communism, …the ‘Guardianship’ by those who were ‘born to rule’. They were the self-elected custodians of British society who could decide what was in their people’s best interests.”

“This tarantula-like Masonic organization …has been strangling the world since the last days of the British Empire. Those within British Intelligence who were not Royal Arch Freemasons, had no real idea of what was going on at all. If they did manage to catch a ‘Russian spy’ within their midst, it was because the Royal Arch Freemasons had deemed this person expendable and had then fed him or her to the fishes. Think Burgess, Maclean etc and you will get the picture. [Anthony] Blunt escaped such censorship and hounding. He was a ‘master’ of Royal Arch Freemasonry.”

+”Vladimir Putin has a long history as a Royal Arch Freemason. He is “a puppet – always has been. You only have to look into his vacuous eyes to see that. – how much ECT does it take to run a Puppet-President? Quite a bit, I would imagine.” He also was a cross dresser & boy toy to current MI-6 Director John Scarlett.”

+”Putin was chosen as a DNA sperm donor within this Royal ‘zygote’ project and had then been ordered by the Masonic body to copulate with various British female agents, whilst in Berlin. The zygotes were then ‘collected’ and the young woman involved, was subsequently murdered. Stephen Daldry [the film Director] had organized various victims to be sent to Berlin for exactly this purpose. He has also boasted of listening to them (bugged rooms) being murdered, during this period. Cameras were also placed in the TV sets for the Royal Arch Freemasons to view afterward – in essence, ’snuff movies’. By 1993, the Royal Arch Freemasons had no further use for Mr Putin in terms of information or DNA and therefore, he was expendable – Royal Arch Freemason or not.”

+”Putin’s mother was Jewish but converted to Russian Orthodoxy. In Poland, he decided to go back to his roots and because his mother was Jewish he didn’t have to go through a full conversion.

There is some difference among the posters about whether Putin broke from the Illuminati and deprogrammed himself when he was betrayed by MI-6.

+MI-6 implantated a nuclear bomb (ESSO were employed to do the drilling) between the tectonic plates under the seabed – just off Aceh, Indonesia. MI5 were to send a military ship into the area after the explosion had occurred, in order to check radiation levels. They had miscalculated. The radiation levels are now affecting all of the surrounding islands, including the Arabian peninsular. The explosion occurred on the 26th December 2004.

“Indonesian Intelligence were duly warned and took action by taking out large insurance claims with British companies just before the event (mainly on the same day beforehand, in order to get the claims through without creating suspicion and UK firms backing out of the deal), in relation to the areas and buildings that the tsunami would hit.”

+ On July 10, 2007 “Anonymous” posted the following: “The new date set for Royal Illuminati terrorist attacks is the 14th July 2007. They have planned a whole series of bombings all over the world. Too numerous to mention. One hopes this advance warning will put them off once again but as ever this is only an intermediary measure. British Intelligence have to sort themselves out, once and for all… The Crown has a stranglehold on BI [British Intelligence]and its not going to let go without a battle. The Royal Military will see to that.” (No bombs went off on that date.)

+ “Little Madelaine’s [McCann's] parents were part of the Illuminati ring – mind control slaves themselves. They know what happened to her – their subconscious minds know exactly what happened but they were powerless to stop it. J K Rowling is also an Illuminati Monarch slave – she is an actress who has hardly put pen to paper regarding the Harry Potter books. The original author of the first four books – hasn’t seen a penny from it – stolen goods. Rowling was present at the rite in which Madeleine died – hence her offer of a reward in public, was all the more sickening.

“Rowling was chosen to front this series of books because she was so malleable. She wanted fame and fortune without cost. Her Ashkenazim parents had bought her out of British Illuminati slavery and had also bought her what is known in the trade as a ‘Pen and Ink Stand’: A ghost-writer who works as an unpaid slave – one of British Intelligence’s operatives.”

+ “Richard Tomlinson,  an agent who publicly accused MI-6 of involvement in the murder of Princess Diana possibly took part in the crime. “Tomlinson had chipped Henri Paul in the kitchens beforehand. He had been on one of the large, black motorbikes hounding Diana’s car and watched as she cried out for help after the accident without doing a thing – he was too busy securing his photographs of the ambulance as a blackmailing threat to MI6…”

Tomlinson supposedly broke with MI-6 but the posters says he is still working for them, running a pedophile ring in the south of France. For a “defector,” his book “The Big Breach” was singularly unrevealing.

+ Stella Rimington, a director of MI-5 in the 1990’s is a former secretary who did sexually entrapment for MI-5 before becoming a S/M lesbian. She
had her agents steal the MI-6 mind control codes and used them to break out of her own mind control and “attack the system from outside.” When she started assassinating MI-6 agents who annoyed her, she was ungracefully retired. “She has been involved in child trafficking and prostitution ever since.”

CONCLUSION

There is a list of the related blogs at the end of this article. Generally speaking, this incredible material is credible. It is consistent with what we already know about the Illuminati.

It provides an unique glimpse at the seedy underside of government in England where the Illuminati is headquartered.

This pattern of criminality and depravity is allowed to thrive in order to undermine democratic institutions and introduce Illuminati banker dictatorship. The people must cry out for world government!

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May 21, 2009

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Anyway, did you know that 60 Minutes aired a human interest story on Pvt. Jessica Lynch and her family a month or so PRIOR to her shipping out for duty in Iraq? I know, because my wife and I happened to see the original CBS telecast.

I can’t give you the exact date, but there’s absolutely no question that 60 Minutes went on location to her picturesque home town in West Virginia in order to interview the comely trooper and her doting mom, dad and brother. They all sat around the quintessentially american Lynch family kitchen table (it even had a checkered table cloth) and shared their thoughts and feelings about how Jessica’s unit was being activated for overseas duty, and that the blonde lass would shortly be stationed in the sands of the Middle East bravely serving in what would probably soon turn into a war zone. At the time, [my wife] and I regarded it an especially saccharine bit of journalism. Little did we know just how sinister an artificial sweetener it was actually laced with.

I’ve looked around quite extensively and nobody ever mentions this absurdly impossible coincidence.

The implication here is that, well before hostilities began, the instigators of the Iraq war conjured up a heart-tugging story a la Wag the Dog. We know that the toppling of the Saddam statue was just such a pre-engineered melodrama: The “liberated Iraqis” who helped to bring the satue down were actually imported goons provided by Achmed Chelabi; real Iraqis were kept away from the area.

While one can find numerous references to “60 Minutes” segments on Lynch after her “rescue,” I cannot confirm the claim that the show did a piece on her before the war began. Can you?

That said, there was something odd about this tale from the very beginning. Most people now know that Lynch did not go down fighting like Rambo — in fact, she never fired her rifle, which jammed. So far, so believable. But every rifle in that unit jammed during the Battle of Nasirirah (or so says Wikipedia, citing Lynch’s testimony before Congress). Is that possible? I’ve never been in the military, so I honestly do not know. I’d like to hear from a veteran on this score.

We now know that — contrary to original Pentagon reports — Lynch was not beaten and tortured during her Iraqi captivity. Those reports originated with a young Iraqi “lawyer” named Mohammed Odeh al-Rehaief, whose bio sure looks fun-kay.

After witnessing the alleged abuse, al-Rehaief walked six miles to tell his story to the Americans, then went back to do recon work at the hospital, which he videotaped with a concealed camera. Ronald Kessler says that this recon operation was performed by a CIA “agent,” although he does not admit that the videographer was al-Rehaief himself, a fact which we know from other sources. Putting two and two together, one may thus fairly conclude that the man was, in fact, a CIA agent. Question: When was he recruited? Before the invasion, or after?

After al-Rehaief relocated to the U.S., he got the standard book deal payoff (a $300,000 advance from a Murdoch imprint for a propaganda volume) followed by a well-paid sinecure at the Livingston Group, the high-powered lobbying organization which now represents the Republic of Turkey. (Now entering Sibel Edmonds territory!) Livingston counts among its partners one Lauri Fitz-Pegado, who seems to be the primary promoter (I would never be so bold as to suggest ghost writer) of that book. Previously, Fitz-Pegado created the “incubator babies” story which we all recall from the first Gulf War.

You may recall that, during the run-up to Dubya’s invasion, media propagandists dusted off the incubator fib and tried to sell it to the public again, even though it had been thoroughly exposed. Despite the fervor of the public mood in 2003, quite a few writers called bullshit on that resurrected yarn. The controversy ended in a small spate of stories telling us: “Accounts differ; we may never know the truth.” It is more comforting to think that “accounts differ” than to admit that newspapers print planted stories. When the “Saving Jessica” tale unraveled, we heard similar excuses: The “differing accounts” of her rescue testify not to official mendacity but to the ultimate unknowability of anything and everything, or so we were told. Better to have the public mumbling about Rashomon than to admit that Fitz-Pegado is a particularly cocky wag-the-dogger.

The question is: Did this particular wag-the-dog scheme begin before the war (as my correspondent suggests), or was it an ad hoc affair, born of opportunity as events unfolded? Even if the latter scenario is true, the propagandists overstepped when they falsely claimed that a (nonexistent) “medical report” proved that Lynch had been anally raped while wounded and unconscious. What on earth made the dog-waggers think that they could get away with that?

By the way: While researching this post — which turned out to be, in more ways than one, a trip down memory lane — I came across this hate site from yesteryear. The author became so emotionally wedded to the original “Saving Jessica” scenario that he decided to dismiss the emergent reality as the evil concotion of a Great Liberal Conspiracy. Rhetoric of that sort reminds us of the sick spirit of the times. In 2002 and 2003, ultra-conservatism became a form of rabies, and nearly everyone you met had specks of foam dribbling from his or her mouth. The next outbreak should hit in 2010 or 2011, and I expect the “foam factor” to be even worse.

Oh — and need I remind you that the televised insta-movie on the Lynch “rescue” (broadcast in November of 2003, even though the tale had been exposed months earlier) was shown on MSNBC?

Hm. What other exercise in political theater has MSNBC staged recently?

You know, next time I decide to fight a traffic ticket, I may tell the judge: “Accounts differ. We may never know the truth. Ever see Rashomon, your honor?”

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WASHINGTON: In a new revelation, Pakistan President Asif Ali Zardari has said that the CIA of the United States and his country’s ISI together created the Taliban.

“I think it was part of your past and our past, and the ISI and CIA created them together,” Zardari told the NBC news channel in an interview.

Blog: Opposing the Taliban

In the interview, which was given to the NBC on May 7, Zardari also accused the US of supporting the military rule of Pervez Musharraf who was alleged to be taking sides of the Taliban.

He disagreed with the popular belief in the US that the Pakistan military and intelligent services still have sympathies for the Taliban.

“I think General Musharraf may have had a mindset to run head and hand with the hound but certainly not on our watch. We don’t have a tough process at all,” Zardari said.

Asked about the influential role of the Pakistan army, Zardari said he is in control of everything in the country, including the military.

“The Parliament has final say. It’s the Parliament form of government, and I am a product of the Parliament,” he said.

Earlier, Zardari in an another interview had said that India was not a “threat” to his country and that Pakistan had moved some of its forces from its Indian border to western frontier to eliminate Taliban in its tribal belt.

Should USA be tried and convicted in international court for creating the Taliban?

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By Halimah Abdullah | McClatchy Newspapers

WASHINGTON — The Pentagon plans on ramping up by more than three years the destruction of chemical weapons at Blue Grass Army Depot, a move that includes an additional $1.2 billion in construction at two new disposal plants in Kentucky and Colorado, according to the Department of Defense.

Though the new Pentagon proposal includes a spending increase through 2015 to build the plants at the Blue Grass Army Depot and a similar facility in Colorado, the Pentagon doesn’t anticipate disposing of all of its chemical weapons until 2021 — nearly a decade beyond the 2012 deadline set by the international Chemical Weapons Convention.

Kentucky lawmakers hailed the Pentagon’s proposal as a step in the right direction.

“I am pleased that DOD has agreed with me about the importance of increasing funding for chemical weapons demilitarization,” said Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell, R-Ky. “The additional funding will help hasten the safe disposal of weapons at the Blue Grass Army Depot, and once the acceleration options are implemented, I expect even more time can be cut from the schedule to bring it into compliance with the 2017 congressional deadline.”

The disposal of Cold War-era weapons stockpiled at the Blue Grass facility is an ongoing saga, one that has included battles over federal funding, a 2007 leak of sarin — a toxic, odorless and tasteless liquid nerve agent with a consistency similar to water — and continued grassroots efforts to better regulate and remove the waste.

“It got so bad in 2005 that the Kentucky and Colorado projects were put on ‘caretaker status,’ meaning no funds were available to move forward towards disposal,” said Craig Williams, director of the Chemical Weapons Working Group, an organization that has pushed for improved disposal.

In 2007, Congress approved a McConnell-backed measure that set a 2017 deadline on disposing of all chemical weapons stockpiles across the country.

The Pentagon’s plans for the Kentucky and Colorado sites were always far behind that timetable.

Most projections for those facilities didn’t suggest starting disposal operations until 2017.

In November, officials announced that the destruction of 157 gallons of nerve agent stored at the Blue Grass Army Depot would finally begin after more than a year of preparation and delays. However, just a few weeks after that announcement an Army official overseeing the disposal of chemical weapons at Blue Grass said efforts were years off schedule, because of building redesign issues, and might not even start until 2021.

“This new funding announcement illustrates that the safety and well-being of the people of central Kentucky is a priority in the Obama administration,” said Rep. Ben Chandler, D-Versailles. “Let’s also hope that with this funding we can move up the timeline, bringing about a faster resolution to the destruction of this chemical weapons stockpile. This is a win for both Craig Williams and Sen. Mitch McConnell and a big win for the people of Madison County and the surrounding communities.”

McClatchy Newspapers 2009

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Harold Pinter to Obama. The US has supported every right wing military dictatorship in the World since World War II by Mike Whitney

Global Research, April 27, 2009

Come and see the blood in the streets.
Come and see
the blood in the streets.
Come and see the blood
in the streets!

Poem by Pablo Neruda

About a month before Barack Obama announced his candidacy for the presidency of the United States, former National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski appeared on PBS’s Charlie Rose Show and was asked whether he thought Obama would be a good choice for president. Brzezinski paused for a minute, peered at Rose out of the corner of his eye, and answered, “Just think of the symbolism.”  As soon as he said that, Brzezinski and Rose broke out into laughter as though they were sharing a private joke.

Brzezinski was right, of course. Obama was the perfect choice for president. Not because of his experience. He had none. He was a two year senator with a resume’ small enough to fit on the back of a matchbox.  Still Obama had what Brzezinski and Co. were looking for, symbolism; the kind of symbolism that connected him to people around the world and made them feel like one of their own had finally clawed their way to the top. Even better, Obama was a charismatic populist who could fill stadiums with adoring fans and put a benign face on America’s interventions in Afghanistan and Iraq. What more could Brzezinski hope for? After 8 years of dragging “Brand America” through the mud, the country would finally get the emergency facelift it needed and begin to restore its battered image as the world’s indispensable nation.

For leftists, Obama has been a total bust. He’s escalated the war in Afghanistan, increased the cross-border bombings of Pakistan, hemmed and hawed about prosecuting war crimes, refused to actively lobby House members to make it easier for workers to organize (EFCA), and surrounded himself with bank industry reps who’ve committed $12.8 trillion to sinking financial institutions with no assurance that the money would be repaid. Apart from a trifling bill on stem cells, Obama has done absolutely zero to confirm his bone fides as a liberal. The truth is, Obama is neither liberal nor conservative; he’s simply an inspiring orator and a skillful politician who has no strong convictions about anything. If he achieves greatness, it will be because he was thrust into a crisis he couldn’t avoid and reluctantly acted in the best interests of the American people. That possibility still exists, although it seems more unlikely by the day.

Foreign leaders are clearly relieved to see the last of George W. Bush, and they appear to be willing to give Obama every opportunity to mend fences and break with the past. But Obama has made little effort to reciprocate or show that he’s serious about real change. The emphasis seems to be more on public relations than policy; more on glitzy photo ops, grandiose speeches and gadding about from one capital to another, than ending the chronic US meddling and militarism. Where’s the beef or is it all just empty posturing?

No one’s ready to write-off Obama just yet, but he needs to show he’s the real-deal by taking steps to ratchet-down the war machine and reign in the corporate elites and bank vermin. But is it really possible for one man–however well-meaning–to change the course of a nation by standing up the gaggle of racketeers who pull the strings from behind the curtain? Keep in mind, America’s history of violent interventions, unprovoked wars,  color-coded revolutions and coup d’ etats has a long pedigree that stretches from Bunker Hill to Baghdad. That river of blood did not begin with George Bush and it won’t end with Barack Obama. Every generation has produced its own litany of crimes, from Wounded Knee to Nagasaki to My Lai to Falluja. In Harold Pinter’s Nobel acceptance speech, the playwright invokes one such incident which epitomizes the pattern of hostility which has been repeated over and over again wherever the Washington mandarins detect opposition to their iron-fisted rule.

Harold Pinter, Nobel Acceptance Speech:

“The United States supported the brutal Somoza dictatorship in Nicaragua for over 40 years. The Nicaraguan people, led by the Sandinistas, overthrew this regime in 1979, a breathtaking popular revolution.

Hundreds of thousands of deaths took place throughout these countries. Did they take place? And are they in all cases attributable to US foreign policy? The answer is yes they did take place and they are attributable to American foreign policy. But you wouldn’t know it.”

Analysis

Pinter’s speech is a somber indictment of US foreign policy; a policy which is now cloaked behind the rock-star facade of Barack Obama. Nothing has changed and, perhaps, nothing will change. The same barbarous campaign that thrived under Bush has been passed along to Obama intact. Wherever there is resistance to US ambitions; there lies the enemy. Whether its Marxists in Bogota,  nationalists in Kosovo,  Bolivarians in Caracas, Shia militias in Beirut, Islamic moderates in Mogadishu or Quakers in Toledo. They’re all enemies, every one of them, and they need to be dealt with.

Obama is no fool; he knows he’s being used. He knows he wasn’t chosen for his enlightened views on health care and stem cells. He was picked because the men in charge needed a new posterboy to hide behind while they carry out their illicit activities. Obama is not so much of a Commander in chief as he is master illusionist, diverting attention from the stealth war that goes on relentlessly with or without his consent. Here’s Pinter again:

“The crimes of the United States have been systematic, constant, vicious, remorseless, but very few people have actually talked about them. You have to hand it to America. It has exercised a quite clinical manipulation of power worldwide while masquerading as a force for universal good. It’s a brilliant, even witty, highly successful act of hypnosis…It’s a scintillating stratagem.”

Consider how the news was shaped to make it look like the invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan were carried out for altruistic reasons.  Thus, the war in Afghanistan became “Operation Enduring Freedom”, stressing the selfless generosity of bombing a country into oblivion and reinstating the thuggish warlords to power. The same strategy was used for the invasion of Iraq which was celebrated as “liberation from a brutal dictator.” Liberation which cost the lives of over 1 million Iraqis and the displacement of 4 million more. Still, no one in the UN or so called international community has pressed for removing the US from the Security Council or prosecuting its leaders for war crimes. It’s a testimony to the success of the US media in upholding the “tapestry of lies” of which Pinter speaks.  Under Obama, the charade has only gotten worse. The coverage of the war has stopped entirely. War? What war? What matters now is Obama’s cheery banter with Jay Leno, or Michelle’s well-proportioned arms or Malia’s adorable Portuguese Waterdog. America is whole again. Let the killing resume.

Pinter: “What has happened to our moral sensibility? Did we ever have any? What do these words mean? Do they refer to a term very rarely employed these days – conscience? A conscience to do not only with our own acts but to do with our shared responsibility in the acts of others? Is all this dead? Look at Guantanamo Bay. Hundreds of people detained without charge for over three years, with no legal representation or due process, technically detained forever. This totally illegitimate structure is maintained in defiance of the Geneva Convention. It is not only tolerated but hardly thought about by what’s called the ‘international community’. This criminal outrage is being committed by a country, which declares itself to be ‘the leader of the free world’. Do we think about the inhabitants of Guantanamo Bay? What does the media say about them? They pop up occasionally – a small item on page six. They have been consigned to a no man’s land from which indeed they may never return. At present many are on hunger strike, being force-fed, including British residents. No niceties in these force-feeding procedures. No sedative or anesthetic. Just a tube stuck up your nose and into your throat. You vomit blood. This is torture. What has the British Foreign Secretary said about this? Nothing. What has the British Prime Minister said about this? Nothing. Why not? Because the United States has said: to criticize our conduct in Guantanamo Bay constitutes an unfriendly act. You’re either with us or against us.”

Obama doesn’t need to solve the world’s problems. He doesn’t have to reverse global warming or slow peak oil, cure AIDS or end world hunger. All he needs to do is meet the minimal requirement of his job as president, which is to deliver justice to his people. That’s why the prosecution of Bush for war crimes is more important than any other issue on the docket. Justice precedes everything; it’s the thread that keeps the social fabric stitched together.  Justice for the victims who were killed in their homes with their families while they were sleeping or eating dinner. Justice for the people who were bombed in wedding parties or going to work or at the mosque praying to God. That’s what people want from Obama. Justice, nothing more. The Reverend Martin Luther King said, “The arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends towards justice.” It’s up to Obama follow that arc and take at least one step on the path of legitimacy, accountability and justice.

Pinter: “How many people do you have to kill before you qualify to be described as a mass murderer and a war criminal? One hundred thousand? More than enough, I would have thought. Therefore it is just that Bush and Blair be arraigned before the International Criminal Court of Justice.”

It’s highly unlikely that a black man with a background in community organizing really believes that expanding the war in Afghanistan is the right thing to do. Nor is it likely that he supports wiretapping, the crackdown on immigrants, penalizing sellers of medical marijuana, trillion dollar bank bailouts or “enhanced” interrogation. He is merely reading from the script that he has been given. But as the economic crisis deepens and the country becomes more radicalized and politically unstable, that script will have to be tossed aside. Obama will have plenty of opportunities to shrug off his handlers and show what he’s really made of. Perhaps he is great man after all.

Pinter: “When we look into a mirror, we think the image that confronts us is accurate. But move a millimeter and the image changes. We are actually looking at a never-ending range of reflections. But sometimes a writer has to smash the mirror – for it is on the other side of that mirror that the truth stares at us.”

Go ahead, Barack. Smash the mirror.

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