Future News Today

Blackwater and JSOC in Pakistan going viral - then squashed

2009-11-28T21:43:00.004-05:00

Mickey Mouse's brooms go viral in The Sorcerer's Apprentice

[Dear Redditors - see update at the bottom of the page.]

[On Thursday, my previous article "All the news..." - except Blackwater became the number one article on Reddit. The word was spreading like wildfire throughout the internet. The article got over 7,000 hits that day. It got picked up by aggregator sites and was being twittered and emailed around the web. Then the article was suddenly banned by Reddit. The next day the hits went down to a little over 1,000. And today, just two days later, the hits on the article were down around 100.]

Wehe! Wehe!
Beide Teile
steh'n in Eile
schon als Knechte

(Woe is me! Both pieces
come to life anew,
now, to do my bidding
I have servants two!)
[...]
Die ich rief, die Geister,
werd' ich nun nicht los.

(From the spirits that I called
Sir, deliver me!)

Excerpts from "Der Zauberlehrling"
written by Goethe in 1797 ("The Sorcerer's Apprentice")

Going viral

With the emergence of the internet came a new phenomenon - going viral. We all remember the video of the Star Wars Kid with the 'lightsaber'. Then there was the "Yes We Can" video of 'will i. am' that helped launch Obama's campaign into the stratosphere.

By this time, we all recognize the power of the internet to shape public opinion. There is even a nouveau name for this - an internet meme. Social media websites attempt to capitalize on this phenomenon by giving users a platform through which to popularize articles or videos which would otherwise go undiscovered. We're all familiar with some of the popular forms of social media.

YouTube
Facebook
Blogs
Digg
Reddit
and most recently - Twitter

Social media can be viewed as an alternative to mainstream media (MSM) that is inherently democratic and populist. In theory it is a bottom up movement - as opposed to the top down structure of the MSM. It is interactive and vibrant. And it is wildly popular.

So how does an article or video go viral? It has to start out somewhere. I've had articles go viral in the past, so I can speak from my own experience.

A drop in the internet ocean

There is an enormous amount of material being posted on the web on a daily basis these days. So how is it that some articles achieve viral status, while the vast majority sink into obscurity.

There is a certain randomness to this process for sure. If the initial response from a few viewers is negative, then the story will never even get started. But once that first bunch of viewers anoints a story as newsworthy, then the fun really begins. If timing and the synergies are just right, then the story can move into the top spot on a particular social media site.

There is a sort of snowballing/avalanche effect that helps this along. Once an article is popular, then more people will see it and the more likely it is to get more popular.

From there a new process kicks in. Having reached the pinnacle of a particular site, the story then begins to appear on aggregator sites. These are sites that post the top stories on social media websites, and there are lots of them. Many more than you are probably aware of. In addition, some MSM-lite sites like Huffington Post and Wired post links to the top stories as well.

Simultaneously, people that have read the story begin to re-post it on discussion forums (like Democratic Underground), and on their Facebook pages or on their blogs and on twitter.

All of this activity causes web search engines like Google to take notice. The article rises in priority on web searches which causes more traffic to the article and results in yet another positive feedback loop.

This exponentially expanding process is what we mean when we say a story has "gone viral".

Closing the floodgates

Now how would you stop this process. Simple. You just don't let it get started in the first place; you "nip it in the bud"; you squash it at an early stage. This way you cut off the feedback loop that sustains a story as it goes viral - much like a hurricane feeds off warm ocean waters. If you cool the water then you can stop the hurricane dead in its tracks.

Now, cooling off the ocean is a tall task. After all the ocean is vast and is not under the direct control of man. But in the case of the internet, the idea that no one is control is a bit of an illusion. There are centralized pockets of control. And those in control can decide the fate of a story, by shutting it off quickly before it can sprout offspring.

And even if the story isn't caught at its earliest stages of development, it can still be dampened by pulling the plug on it within the powerful social media sites that are the incubators of these viral media storms.

Case in point - my article on Blackwater and JSOC black ops in Pakistan titled "All the news... - except Blackwater". This particular article had attained the number one status on Reddit in the worldnews section which is one of the most popular 'subreddits' on the site. It was starting to show up on aggregators such as OurSignal, JimmyR and Trendalicious.

With a phenomenal Reddit score of 1200, it was riding high and was at the number 1 spot on in Reddit worldnews (and I assume on Reddit overall). And then suddenly, the plug was pulled on this article. It was banned and totally disappeared from the site rankings - even though you can still find the article on the site if you know the direct link.

(The reason given for banning it from the worldnews subreddit was that it was more of a US story than a "world news" story despite the main issue being US involvement in Pakistan. By that criteria it would seem that any story about US involvement in Iraq or Afghanistan should not be considered a "world news" story either.)

Normally a highly popular article like this would remain on the front page for about a day or two before gradually slipping down the rankings and being replace by newer articles. But in this case it was made to disappear in an instance - as if it had been taken out in a strategic hit by a smart guidance missile. And once it disappeared from Reddit, it also disappeared from all the real-time aggregators - so with one surgical strike, the article was 'disappeared' from multiple internet outlets in a sort of virtual "extraordinary rendition".

(Also keep in mind that Reddit is the property of Condé Nast[y] - a media empire that includes such well known brands as Vogue, Glamour, GQ, Vanity Fair, Wired and The New Yorker. Curiously enough, nowhere on the Condé Nast[y] website does it ever mention Reddit. The question in this case is: Was some high up muckity-muck in Condé Nast[y] involved in the decision to shut down this article? We'll probably never know.)

Score one for the CIA/JSOC/Blackwater bad guys. But before the bad guys had a chance to act, the story was prominently displayed on the internet for a few hours. And hundreds of links were established and twitter messages were sent and resent.

America, the beautiful?

And most importantly Jeremy Scahill's article, "Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan", is still available online. And the resistance continues. Black ops are the most evil part of the American War Empire. It is the part of the American Empire that most Americans are least aware of, but that everywhere else across the globe is well recognized. Torture, kidnapping and assassinations are being routinely used to squash political dissent around the world in our name.

Why do they hate us? They hate us for our stupidity - our willing blindness to the facts. The Truth is out there, and it is the duty of every American citizen to uncover that Truth. We cannot endlessly blame the MSM for lying to us and deceiving us, when we are the ones who are unwilling to face the ugly facts head-on. It's time to look in the mirror America!

"Mirror, mirror on the wall. Who's the fairest of them all?" You have been told all your life that it is you, America. You have been painted a glorious self-portrait of beauty beyond compare. You have been told a lie. Look at yourself as much of the world sees you - a hideous ogre that feeds on the blood of innocent children.

Related Posts

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[UPDATE - NOV 29 11:20 AM]

This article has sparked a lively debate on Reddit. Go here to see the comments and participate in the discussion.

There is a Reddit administrator named jedberg that has joined in on the discussion. Here is a snapshot of all of his comments. (My apologies if I missed any.)

jedberg [A] -13 points(+15/-27) 6 hours ago[-]
Why is it funny? It was banned by a moderator of worldnews for being off-topic.

jedberg [A] (+39/-29)13 points 6 hours ago[-]
We did not remove the link. One of the moderators of the worldnews community removed it for being off-topic.

jedberg [A] -3 points(+22/-24) 6 hours ago[-]
We don't censor. It was removed by one of the worldnews moderators for being off-topic.

jedberg [A] -6 points(+25/-30) 6 hours ago[-]
If we were "censoring" as all of you seem to believe, wouldn't we remove this article?
The post was removed from worldnews for being off-topic.

And here are some of the many supportive comments from redditors.

anonymous-coward (+38/-10)31 points 9 hours ago[-]
Hmm.
Go here to the article: http://www.reddit.com/r/worldnews/comments/a8ept/jeremy_scahill_says_pentagon_attempted_to/
It is in worldnews.
Now search for "Jeremy Scahill" - the article does not show up in /r/worldnews. Now search for "Jeremy Scahill Pentagon" and a repost shows up in /r/politics, with fewer points.
So it is apparently correct that it was wiped from worldnews. Seems a little funny.

Atman00 20 points(+26/-8) 6 hours ago[-]
Because it's clearly not off topic. This is about a war between two countries that are thousands of miles apart. Just because an article also deals with the US doesn't mean it's not considered world news.

ClittyClittyGangBang 6 points(+9/-3) 5 hours ago* [-]
One would think that after amassing 1000+ points in the subreddit the mod(s) would accept the article was on-topic and relevant for their readers.
Not to the worldnews mods - so much as use the letters "U" and "S" and it's deleted.
Worldnews seems to be a little dictatorship where the mods get to exercise their own anti-U.S. inferiority complex.

cheap_black_hat (+47/-27)24 points 12 hours ago[-]
Conde Nast is part of the dreaded mainstream media. redditors seem to forget that reddit is someone's property, not a bastion of free speech.

shopcat (+27/-3)24 points 5 hours ago[-]
It seems that decision by a single mod hasn't reflected favorably on the reddit community as a whole. We aren't able to edit headlines for fear that we will manipulate them once they get to the front page and yet a single mod can wipe out a story with a score of over a thousand and hundreds of comments.

ItsAConspiracy (+7/-1)7 points 1 hour ago[-]
Might be a good idea to remove that power from moderators, once the community in that section judges a story that favorably.

minor9sharp11 (+17/-5)14 points 6 hours ago[-]
Yeah I saw it in the worldnews feed and thought how that would be better placed in politics. I don't think it was not worldnews though since it deals with Pakistani and US relations.
Ohh well.

outhere (+6/-1)6 points 1 hour ago[-]
Hmmm... all this time I thought regular redditors were supposed to downvote off-topic posts. Didn't know mods were editors/censors. My whole opinion of reddit has changed.

Tangurena 15 points(+27/-11) 9 hours ago[-]
People keep asking why newspapers in this country are dying. This story is why they're dying - they keep covering up for the corruption in our government, the newspapers keep covering up for the evil done in our name. They kept news about the illegal wiretaps covered up for more than a year - if they had reported it when it was still news then there would have been no 2nd term for bush. When the last newspaper dies in the US, I will rejoice.

therabbit 5 points(+15/-11) 10 hours ago* [-]
Of course reddit will never admit it and fain disgust when asked if they censor, when we all know they can shadow ban and they do on a daily basis.

ClittyClittyGangBang 9 points(+12/-3) 5 hours ago[-]
And they're effectively different...how?
In particular, the article in question had received ~2000+ upvotes. So the opinion of relevance of thousands of redditors is less important than one moderator/censor?
The pernicious thing about censorship is that the censors themselves rarely see it as such. It's almost always seen as "moderation," or some similarly right-thinking synonym.
If it's effectively censorship - it's censorship.

sinn0304 (+9/-1)10 points 4 hours ago[-]
I'm not sure the "censorship" is whats making people upset. It's the fact that 1 mod just overruled thousands of upvotes. You just told us, no matter how much we like a story, and how many upvotes we throw at it, you still reserve the right to remove it and squash the discussion. Nice job telling your users they're no longer important in the decision making process for what's relevant, and what's not.

jules_siegel (+12/-2)11 points 4 hours ago[-]
Please. I'm a journalist. I've been accustomed to hearing the "we just" excuse year after year. You didn't censor it. Of course not. You just buried it through a technical maneuver. And it wasn't you. It was just some moderator. Well, maybe you should have a little talk with that moderator and find out why he/she/it essentially killed a very popular story that just happened to expose official censorship by the powers that be. These incidents are always explained away as honest mistakes or differences of opinion. In my experience (vast, believe me), they rarely are.

sinn0304 10 points(+12/-2) 4 hours ago[-]
This needs to be said over and over again. Thousands of people deem it on-topic enough to upvote it, yet because 1 mod says its not, we all lose. Nice modding policy, jedberg.

I love Reddit. I really do.

"All the news..." - except Blackwater

2009-11-25T23:44:00.009-05:00

Blackwater goons in New Orleans after Hurricane Katrina

[This article is a followup to the one I published yesterday - "Blackwater (aka Xe) exposed by Scahill... again!"]

A threat

Here's the latest interview of Jeremy Scahill that I could find discussing his article in the Nation titled "Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan".

In this interview (at ~8:00), Jeremy Scahill comes out and explicitly says that he felt that a call he received from the office of Admiral Mike Mullen, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, was "an act of intimidation" to keep him from publishing his story in the Nation. Here's how Wikipedia describes the position of the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

The Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (CJCS) is by law the highest ranking military officer in the United States armed forces, and the principal military adviser to the President of the United States, the National Security Council, and the Secretary of Defense.

Any questions? Good. Let's continue.

No news is not good news

The US ambassador in Pakistan, Anne W. Patterson, has called reports of a secret Blackwater operation in Pakistan "false and baseless". I know this because it appeared in a newspaper. Not an American newspaper mind you, but a Pakistani newspaper. Somehow the New York Times and the Washington Post don't think this is worth reporting.

Here's the official press release on the State Department website.

Correction For The Record

November 25, 2009

Islamabad - The U.S. Embassy in Islamabad rejects as completely false the assertions made recently by a U.S. magazine alleging secret Blackwater operations in Pakistan.

There is no secret operating base in Karachi or anywhere else in Pakistan being run, occupied, or otherwise operated by U.S. military personnel of any command or organization. The article's assertions about U.S. government collusion with Blackwater or any other contracting firm are equally baseless and false.

"U.S. government programs for Pakistan are open and transparent and function in partnership with the Government of Pakistan," said Ambassador Anne W. Patterson. "U.S. personnel and programs in Pakistan have only one purpose - to assist the government and people of Pakistan as they face the complex challenges confronting their nation."

This is a flat denial of the Scahill article. Notice they never mention the article explicitly, but allude to "a U.S. magazine" making "false assertions". If not for a search I did of Google news for 'Blackwater' I would have never been aware of this press release which went unreported in the US media. Clearly this official press release from the US embassy in Islamabad was for local Pakistani consumption only, and was not meant to be repeated by the US mainstream press. Why hasn't this been reported in the US press?

I'll tell you what I think. And you can take it or leave it because it's just my opinion. I don't have any facts to back this up. But I think there has been an edict handed down by the powers in the State Department and the Pentagon saying that Blackwater (aka Xe) is not a subject to be discussed openly in the news media.

Just yesterday, at the State Department's daily briefing the first question was about Jeremy Scahill's article.

MR. KELLY: Okay. Well, let me give you a quick rundown on the Secretary’s events. You know she attended...
[blah, blah, blah... blah, blah]
...how the United States and India can work together to meet global challenges like terrorism and climate change and other matters of regional and bilateral interest. And with that, I’ll take your questions.

QUESTION: Do you have any response to the report in The Nation regarding what it says was a joint operation between the Joint Special Operations Command in Pakistan and Xe Services, nee Blackwater?

MR. KELLY: I do not. I have not seen this article.

QUESTION: So you have no response to that?

MR. KELLY: Well, I don’t know. I’m sorry, you’ve – I just am not aware of this article. We’ll look at it and we’ll see if we can get a response for you.

Yeah, Andy.

So I checked today's briefing to see if State Department spokesperson, Ian Kelly, would give "a response" to Jeremy's article. You can find it here. And a quick search determines that the word 'Blackwater' never comes up. In fact there's no discussion of Pakistan at all. Is this a case of "don't ask, don't tell"?

To me the message is clear. "Blackwater is not something we're going to talk about. We're not going to confirm it or deny it. In fact we're not even 'aware' of it. And if you want to continue to be invited to these briefings, you won't be aware of it either."

Isn't it odd that with literally thousands of newspapers and radio and TV stations in the US, and the existence of a "free press" that not one has come out with any significant follow up to Jeremy Scahill's scathing exposé. Not one.

Yes Jeremy was invited today on to MSNBC's Morning Joe show, but the topic was quickly shifted in what was obviously a pre-arranged script. Sort of as if to say, "See... we do have a free press in the US. See... we gave Jeremy 2 or 3 minutes to talk about Blackwater. It's just that the American public isn't interested. They'd rather hear about how Sarah Palin is going to run for President in 2012."

So as I said, I don't have any facts to back up my allegations of a coordinated coverup. But that's not exactly true because I can give you some statistical evidence courtesy of Google.

In fact here's an experiment you can do yourself. Click on the link below to run a search of articles in the US that mention Scahill's Blackwater article.

Google news search

When I tried this today, I got 15 results. And none of those could be considered mainstream media.

When I do a similar search for blog articles in the past 3 days since the article first appeared with the words 'blackwater scahill' I get 290 hits. (My FNT article from yesterday shows up on the first page.)

And when I do a similar search for articles on the web in general in the past 3 days since the article first appeared with the words 'blackwater scahill' I get thousands of hits.

Conclusion - a news blackout

My conclusion is that the State Department and the Pentagon don't want to talk about this because they know that they will be caught up by their own denials. I also conclude that the word has been sent out to the main stream media not to bring up this subject.

And yet this is a crucial issue which should be discussed as President Obama prepares to send a request next week to Congress for 34,000 more troops in Afghanistan. We can only hope that some of our representatives in Congress will have the courage to bring this up in public hearings when General McChrystal goes before committees to justify this troop build up.

Jeremy Scahill has done his job in uncovering the basic information. Now it is up to the Congress to fulfill its obligation to investigate this further. And it would be a great assistance if the media would do its job of publicizing this issue. But if they won't, then "we the people" must take direct action and insist that Congress not shirk its Constitutional responsibilities. Please call your Congresspeople and urge them to bring up this issue of vital importance to the attention of the State Department and the Pentagon.

It's bad enough that Blackwater is bribing Iraqi officials "to silence their criticism and buy their support". Don't let something similar happen here in the US.

[UPDATE 1 - NOV 26]

It seems the cat's out of the bag in Pakistan. The mainstream Pakistani press is featuring Scahill's article in today's papers.

The Nation (a Pakistani newspaper - not the US magazine that originally published the story) has reproduced the entire article. It also has a short article titled "Will Mr. Malik resign now?".

ISLAMABAD – The Nation [Pakistani newspaper] has been exposing the Blackwater (now renamed Xe Worldwide) and DynaCorp presence in Pakistan for some time now with evidence, but the Interior Minister has continued to deny this presence - although he has finally conceded the presence of Dynacorp.

To begin with, Rehman Malik was hiding behind the fact that Blackwater had altered its name; but equally important Blackwater has also become a generic term for US military/security contractors, especially in the minds of most Pakistanis.

But now an American journalist, Jeremy Scahill, who has authored the definitive book on Blackwater has revealed the presence of this group in Pakistan as well as all its activities here. Since Mr. Malik had publicly claimed he would resign if the Blackwater presence was proven in Pakistan, we wonder whether he will do so now that his bluff has been called.

The Pakistan Daily Times also has an article on this subject titled "Blackwater launching missions from Karachi", which gives a good summary of the Scahill article.

Coincidentally, yesterday US Ambassador to Pakistan Anne W. Patterson announced "the Obama Administration was going to release direct budgetary support of $175 million hard cash to Pakistan". Is this hush money which will be used to grease the palms of Pakistani officials to keep them from criticizing the role of Blackwater and the JSOC in Pakistan?

Will the US mainstream press continue to ignore the Scahill article now that it has been widely publicized in Pakistan? I'll bet the State Department longs for the days before the internet. Personally, I'm hoping that Jeremy's revelations about Blackwater go totally viral on the web to the point where the MSM can ignore them no longer. And then the Pentagon and the State Department will be forced to come up with some answers, and the Blackwater goons will be forced out of the murky shadows in which they like to operate and into the glaring public spotlight.

[UPDATE 2 - NOV 26]

Russia Today has picked up the story of Blackwater's secret operation in Pakistan as reported by Jeremy Scahill. There's no new revelations in this report which features investigative reporter Wayne Madsen, but it shows that the news is spreading. But what about pseudo-left MSM outlets like Rachel Maddow. Why hasn't she reported this story? Oh right, the military censors. I almost forgot.

Blackwater (aka Xe) exposed by Scahill... again!

2009-11-24T02:39:00.010-05:00

Jeremy Scahill has a new article in the Nation about Blackwater. He's the journalist that first exposed Blackwater and has written the book on the subject, "Blackwater: The Rise of the World's Most Powerful Mercenary Army".

[UPDATE - NOV 24: Jeremy Scahill appeared this morning on Democracy Now for his first interview on the subject. (I've added the video below.) As of this morning no MSM news source is reporting on this story - not even to deny it. They are just quietly ignoring it. Meanwhile, the blogosphere has exploded with this news. Of course the MSM has always tried to pretend that Blackwater doesn't exist, so at least they are consistent. As President Obama gets ready to announce ~34,000 new troops to Afghanistan on December 1 following the corrupt "elections" there, the MSM doesn't want to spoil the party. Will General McChrystal be questioned about Scahill's Blackwater allegations in upcoming congressional hearings about the new troop request?]

[UPDATE - NOV 25: The chattering idiots on MSNBC's Morning Joe show have Jeremy Scahill on to discuss his article. How did they manage to spin this into a story on anti-Latino Lou Dobbs running for President? Pathetic! What a bunch of morons.]

In his latest article Scahill reports that Blackwater is running a secret operation for the US military in Pakistan. You should read the whole story in the Nation titled "Blackwater's Secret War in Pakistan". Here's an excerpt to whet your appetite.

At a covert forward operating base run by the US Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) in the Pakistani port city of Karachi, members of an elite division of Blackwater are at the center of a secret program in which they plan targeted assassinations of suspected Taliban and Al Qaeda operatives, "snatch and grabs" of high-value targets and other sensitive action inside and outside Pakistan, an investigation by The Nation has found. The Blackwater operatives also assist in gathering intelligence and help run a secret US military drone bombing campaign that runs parallel to the well-documented CIA predator strikes, according to a well-placed source within the US military intelligence apparatus.
[...]
"This is a parallel operation to the CIA," said the source. "They are two separate beasts." The program puts Blackwater at the epicenter of a US military operation within the borders of a nation against which the United States has not declared war--knowledge that could further strain the already tense relations between the United States and Pakistan.

One thing you should know about this article - it's full of anonymous sources. If it was anyone other than Jeremy Scahill reporting this stuff, I would be quite leary. But given Scahill's track record, I am accepting as truth everything he says until someone proves it to be false.

And you should also know that Scahill reports that the US Defense Dept. and Blackwater are denying everything he is saying. He includes quotes to this effect in the article.

A defense official, on background, specifically denied that Blackwater performs work on drone strikes or intelligence for JSOC in Pakistan. "We don't have any contracts to do that work for us. We don't contract that kind of work out, period," the official said. "There has not been, and is not now, contracts between JSOC and that organization for these types of services."
[...]
Blackwater, which recently changed its name to Xe Services and US Training Center, denies the company is operating in Pakistan. "Xe Services has only one employee in Pakistan performing construction oversight for the U.S. Government," Blackwater spokesperson Mark Corallo said in a statement to The Nation, adding that the company has "no other operations of any kind in Pakistan."

So someone is not giving us the true story. As I said before, my money is on Scahill. Which means that Blackwater (aka Xe) and the US Defense Department have got a lot of 'splaining to do.

Scahill strongly suggests that the Blackwater operation is being run in such a way to deliberately mislead Congress and public opinion in both the US and Pakistan. He even suggests that the whole operation has been hidden from the Obama administration. The whole structure of the operation seems to be designed for maximum deniability.

The source said that the program is so "compartmentalized" that senior figures within the Obama administration and the US military chain of command may not be aware of its existence.
[...]
While JSOC technically runs the operations in Karachi, he said, it is largely staffed by former US special operations soldiers working for a division of Blackwater, once known as Blackwater SELECT, and intelligence analysts working for a Blackwater affiliate, Total Intelligence Solutions (TIS), which is owned by Blackwater's founder, Erik Prince. The military source said that the name Blackwater SELECT may have been changed recently. Total Intelligence, which is run out of an office on the ninth floor of a building in the Ballston area of Arlington, Virginia, is staffed by former analysts and operatives from the CIA, DIA, FBI and other agencies. It is modeled after the CIA's counterterrorism center. In Karachi, TIS runs a "media-scouring/open-source network," according to the source. Until recently, Total Intelligence was run by two former top CIA officials, Cofer Black and Robert Richer, both of whom have left the company. In Pakistan, Blackwater is not using either its original name or its new moniker, Xe Services, according to the former Blackwater executive. "They are running most of their work through TIS because the other two [names] have such a stain on them," he said.

Another thing you need to know in order to fully appreciate this story is just what exactly the JSOC is. Scahill does get into it in the article, but its a bit buried and he doesn't get into great detail. So here's some supplementary information from the ever reliable Wikipedia. (You should give them a donation if you haven't already.)

The Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) also commands and controls the Special Mission Units (SMU) of United States Special Operations Command (USSOCOM). These units perform highly classified activities. So far, only three SMUs have been publicly disclosed: The Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment - Delta (Delta Force), the Navy's SEAL Team 6 or Naval Special Warfare Development Group (DEVGRU), and the Air Force's 24th Special Tactics Squadron. Intelligence Support Activity (ISA) which often operates under various cover names such as Royal Cape, Granite Rock and Powder Keg were some, Centra Spike and Torn Victor. However, its most recent known cover name was Gray Fox. The army once maintained the Activity, but after September 11 attacks the Pentagon shifted direct control to Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) at Fort Bragg, NC. If needed, Army Rangers and Night Stalkers can be transferred under the JSOC command. JSOC’s primary mission is believed to be identifying and destroying terrorists and terror cells worldwide.

USSOCOM/JSOC cannot conduct covert action operations, as the CIA is the only organization that has the authority to conduct these actions. However, USSOCOM has an excellent relationship with the CIA's elite Special Activities Division and the two forces often operate together with exceptional results. The CIA's Special Activities Division's Special Operations Group often selects their recruits from JSOC.

The way I interpret this information is that the JSOC is in charge of all Special Forces within the military. These are elite units that are trained to do clandestine operations among other things. The relationship with the CIA is a little fuzzy - probably intentionally so. What does it mean that the JSOC cannot perform "covert action operations"? It seems to me like a large part of their mission is based on doing covert operations.

As I said, I think there is an intent to keep secret from the public the full extent of JSOC operations. As for example, the information that Jeremy Scahill reveals in his article. For me, this was the first I'd ever heard of the JSOC and I suspect this will be true for most of the American public.

Another thing you should know about the JSOC. General Stanley A. McChrystal, the current commander of US forces in Afghanistan, was the man in charge of JSOC from 2003 to 2008. (Yes that's the same General McChrystal that has been so adamant about the need to increase the number of US troops in Afghanistan by up to 80,000.)

You can read more about McChrystal's term as commander of JSOC here. If your in favor of torture and death squads, then you will be a huge fan of the JSOC. The whole Abu Ghraib thing keeps coming up.

McChrystal's Zarqawi unit, Task Force 6-26, became well-known for its interrogation methods, particularly at Camp Nama, where it was accused of abusing detainees. After the Abu Ghraib torture and prisoner abuse scandal became public in April 2004, 34 members of the task force were disciplined.

But apparently the disciplining never went up as far as Gen. McChrystal. In fact he got promoted on May 1, 2004 from a one star general to a two star general. And not long after that, on February 16, 2006, he got promoted to a three star general. So the whole Abu Ghraib "scandal" didn't seem to have any bad effects on McChrystal's career - in fact it seems to have earned him his promotions.

His final promotion (this one under the Obama administration) was to a full four star general which occurred on June 15, 2009 as a result of his assignment to take command of US forces in Afghanistan.

McChrystal also appears to be tightly connected through JSOC to the policy of drone attacks in Pakistan. Scahill talks about the connection between JSOC and the drone attacks in his article.

The military intelligence source also confirmed that Blackwater continues to work for the CIA on its drone bombing program in Pakistan, as previously reported in the New York Times, but added that Blackwater is working on JSOC's drone bombings as well. "It's Blackwater running the program for both CIA and JSOC," said the source. When civilians are killed, "people go, 'Oh, it's the CIA doing crazy shit again unchecked.' Well, at least 50 percent of the time, that's JSOC [hitting] somebody they've identified through HUMINT [human intelligence] or they've culled the intelligence themselves or it's been shared with them and they take that person out and that's how it works."

Scahill is saying that there are two separate (but no doubt related) targeted assassination drone programs - one run by the CIA and the other by the JSOC - and that one of the common links is Blackwater. But again, I can't do justice to all the information in Jeremy's article. I just wanted to provide some useful background.

I do want to highlight what appears to be a similarity between the logo of JSOC and that of Xe/Blackwater which is the X pattern. Notice the X pattern in the JSOC logo formed by the crossed swords. I'm guessing that these swords are intended to represent a gladius - a type of relatively short sword used by the Roman Legions. Isn't it appropriate that the American Empire uses symbols from the Roman Empire? The bad news is that the Romans never conquered Afghanistan, and even Alexander the Great was unable to win a decisive victory there. On the other hand Alexander did fall in love with a local beauty - Roxane.

It shouldn't be that surprising that there would be similarities in the logos of the two organizations given that Blackwater was founded by a Navy SEAL - Erik Prince. Remember that the Navy SEALs are one component of the JSOC. And one of the sources of recruitment for Blackwater is former Special Forces operative.

Finally I would like to point out that Scahill's revelations about Blackwater in Pakistan may have significant repercussions on the local politics there. For one thing the Taliban have been claiming that some of the bombings that have been going on in Pakistan are the work of Blackwater.

Attacks that have continued across Pakistani towns and cities are being blamed on Tehreek e-Taliban, Pakistan's Taliban.

However, the group has issued its first video statement denying involvement in targeting civilians and has blamed external forces for at least two recent blasts.

Azam Tariq, a spokesman of the Tehreek e-Taliban, posted the video statement on YouTube on Monday.

The message refers to a bombing at the Islamic University in Islamabad, which the spokesman said was orchestrated to prepare the ground for a military operation in South Waziristan, a stronghold for Pakistan's Taliban fighters.

He also said his group had no role in the bomb blast in a Peshawar market that killed at least 100 people as well as an attack in Charsada, a town located in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

Tariq said Taliban attacks never aimed to target civilians, but that the explosions were linked to Blackwater activities in the country.

If Scahill is correct in his assertion that Blackwater and the JSOC are waging a secret war in Pakistan, then these claims by the Taliban need to be fully investigated.

The other story related to this is the promise of a Pakistani Minister to resign if it is found that Blackwater has been operating in Pakistan.

Federal Interior Minister Rehman Malik has made it clear he will resign from his slot if US security company Blackwater is found in Pakistan, saying there is no Blackwater in Pakistan and we will not hide anything from the public.

Talking to the media on Saturday, he said the DynCorp is working in Pakistan for assistance and transit to Afghanistan-based allied forces since 2003 but it is not working for Blackwater.

So there is a lot riding on the Scahill story of a Blackwater presence in Pakistan. This is not a story that can be ignored, and you can be sure that Jeremy Scahill will be out publicizing this story in the days to come. It will be interesting to see the response not only from the US Defense Department and Blackwater, but from the Pakistani government and the Taliban as well.

Another bioweapon unleashed on an unsuspecting public?

2009-11-19T20:05:00.002-05:00

Got the flu? You might want to use some Vicks Sinex nasal spray to relieve your symptoms. Or maybe not.

It seems that some 120,000 bottles of the popular nasal spray are being recalled for contamination with a bacteria (Burkholderia cepacia) that causes pneumonia. This type of pneumonia is associated with people with Cystic Fibrosis and has a 35% mortality rate.

The manufacturer, Proctor and Gamble, says that: "The bacteria poses little medical risk to healthy individuals but that clearly is not acceptable." Of course if your healthy, then why would you use a nasal spray like this?

Maybe the pharmaceutical companies didn't feel like they were getting a high enough death count from the swine (H1N1) flu to cause sufficient panic to get governments to keep wasting billions of dollars in public funds on vaccines and anti-viral medicines. So they decided to up the death count by spreading pneumonia causing bacteria in nasal sprays.

You've got to admit that would be a really clever plan. What better way to target flu victims than with a nasal spray intended to alleviate their symptoms. And what better delivery system than a spray that the unknowing victim would breathe deeply into his already infected nasal cavities. From there the bacteria would have an easy time entering into the lungs where it could finish off its victim.

And especially since most flu victims don't die from the flu itself, but from bacterial infections which result in pneumonia. And this particular bacteria is resistant to most common antibiotics, so by the time the results came back from tests the victim might already be dead.

But our government and/or pharmaceutical companies would never conspire to do something like that - would they?

Rest assured because P&G has taken complete responsibility and is offering "replacement coupons". See, they really do care about you. And of course they quickly updated their product web page to reflect the recall.

No? Uh, yeah, well I'm sure their working on that. Of course any good consumer would know to go down to the bottom of the page where there is a link in really tiny font to the recall page.

See that! "You're taken care of." Isn't that nice. And from there your only a few clicks away from the companies recall announcement.

CINCINNATI, Nov. 19, 2009 - The Procter & Gamble Company (NYSE:PG) announced today it is voluntarily recalling three lots of its Vicks Sinex nasal spray in three countries: the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.

The company said it is taking this precautionary step after finding the bacteria B. cepacia in a small amount of product made at its plant in Gross Gerau, Germany. There have been no reports of illness. However, the bacteria could cause serious infections for individuals with a compromised immune system, or those with chronic lung conditions, such as cystic fibrosis. B. cepacia poses little medical risk to healthy individuals.

P&G detected this problem during routine quality control at the plant and promptly took action. The company's analysis to date shows this problem is limited to a single batch of raw material mixture involving three lots of product. These three lots were sold only in the United States, Germany and the United Kingdom.

So I guess its "routine" to not check a product for bacterial contamination until after its shipped and on the shelves of pharmacies worldwide. Uh-huh. That makes sense.

And the announcement fails to mention anything about the risk to people infected with the swine flu. That does seem a bit deliberate given the current "pandemic" and swine flu "emergency" declared by President Obama. I guess it just never occurred to P&G management that someone that is sick from swine flu might seek relief with its Vicks Sinex product. But I'm sure the ever vigilant mainstream media will be quick to bring this question up - or not.

If you ask me this looks like an exercise in damage control. I wonder how many meetings they went through where managers insisted that the product not be recalled to avoid a panic, while low level technicians kept insisting that there was a real danger to the public. The press release continues.

This lot number is listed on both the outer carton and the bottle. Consumers should simply discard the affected product as they would any OTC medicine.

P&G is removing the product in question from store shelves and has informed regulatory authorities in the affected countries. P&G said it found the bacteria B. cepacia in a small amount of product from U.S. lot 9239028831 and is conducting testing on the U.K. and German lots that have been produced from the same batch of raw material mixture.

Anyone who has these specific lots of this product can call P&G for a replacement coupon or refund at the following numbers...

Yes Mr. and Ms. Consumer you would really be helping us out here in destroying the evidence by just dumping it in the trash. We wouldn't want to have an actual investigation of the facts to turn up that the "small" amount of contaminated product actually turned out to be much more. How do they know it's just a "small" amount of product? And since when is 120,000 of anything considered "small"?

But remember at P&G "You're taken care of." That's really all you need to know.

Time's up for Tim Geithner

2009-11-19T14:11:00.002-05:00

The way I see it at this point Timothy Geithner has two choices - either he can resign or be fired. Congress is gunning for him and eventually Obama will be forced to offer him up as a sacrifice. Of course his friends over at Goldman Sachs will do everything in their power to weather this storm. Bernanke, too, must be sweating knowing that he's next to be brought up before the congressional firing line. And Larry Summers has been hiding out of sight - maybe in one of Cheney's old bunkers.

Today Tim Geithner was asked point blank to resign by Representative Kevin Brady of (R-Texas).

Yesterday Representative Peter DeFazio (D-Oregon) called for Obama to axe Geithner. DeFazio is one of the good guys in Congress. He's clearly lost his patience with Geithner's machinations in favor of Wall Street and to the detriment of Main Street.

The chorus of boos for Geithner is growing. This comes in the aftermath of new revelations from SIGTARP Neil Barofsky regarding Tim's handling of the AIG bailout as President of the New York Federal Reserve Bank.

My advise to Tim, watch your back. That knife in the dorsal area may come from someone that you least suspect. Think you've got friends watching out for you? Think again. They'll throw you to the lions to save their hides in a New York Wall Street minute.

Maybe this episode will blow over like previous criticisms of Geithner. Maybe Obama will "stand by his [Gold]man" like he has in the past. But Geithner is increasingly being maneuvered into a corner. And there are growing calls for him to be sacrificed to the populist lions.

Want some more advice Tim? Better to go quietly. If you attempt to take down some of your former friends with you, it could end up very badly for you. Yeah, watch your back and go quietly. That's always good advice to someone who is involved up to his neck in a criminal conspiracy that is about to be publicly exposed.

Related posts

[UPDATE - NOV 19 2:30 PM]

I was reviewing my previous posts on Tim Geithner. The list above is just a smattering. You can get a full list by using Google to search my blog for Geithner. I just want to highlight one post because it emphasizes the extent to which Geithner is involved in what I believe is a conspiracy to destroy the United States economically and to transfer power to China. This should be especially apparent now in the wake of President Obama's trip to China to ritually pass the baton of world leadership over to the Chinese government. I understand this sort of conspiratorial thinking is not everybody's cup of tea. But I think it is worth considering in light of the catastrophic events of the past year. I wrote this back in March 2009 as part of an article titled "The US Civil War in reverse - fight the new slavery!".

I highlighted that group [G30 members] because the Governor of the People's Bank of China, Zhou Xiaochuan, had become a member in 2005. It's very interesting that out of that group of 28 people, three have become key members of Obama's economic team.
Timothy Geitner is the new Treasury Secretary.
Lawrence Summers is the chairman of the National Economic Council.
Paul Volcker is the chair of the newly formed Economic Recovery Advisory Board.
Again, the test of a theory is in its ability to make accurate predictions. It's clear to me that the actions of Zhou Xiaochuan are coordinated with those of Tim Geithner. While they may pretend to be at odds, as in when Geithner seemed to threaten China with the label of "currency manipulator", they are actually engaging in a coordinated action. They had 3 years together as members of the G30 to come up with their plans. And don't try to look for any notes from the meetings because the G30 is a highly secretive organization which does not provide the public with insight into its private discussions.

The reason that the International Bankers appointed Geithner to be Obama's Treasury Secretary was not because of his great public speaking abilities - he has none. Or his ability to sell the new economic plan to the American public - he's a lousy salesman. The reason he was appointed is because he is an insider. He is someone who has proved he can be trusted to follow orders and not go off on his own. But just in case Geithner gets any wild ideas the International Bankers have insisted on placing in the position of Geithner's chief of staff another one of their own to keep an eye on him. I'm referring here to the controversial appointment of the Goldman Sachs ex-lobbyist Mark Patterson.

It's left to Obama himself to be the chief salesman and head cheerleader for the economic plan. Even Bernanke has been drafted to help in the cheerleading as seen in his 60 minutes performance. That's how bad Geithner is at handling the public spotlight. Again, he wasn't chosen for his sales ability. He was chosen for his proven allegiance to the International Bankers. He has been working for their cause as President of the New York Fed for years. He never challenged them or spilled the beans on their dubious investment schemes. He participated in planning the Paulson bailout, particularly with regards to the shady dealings involving AIG. He's part of the clan. His hands are dirty. If they go down, he knows that he'll go down with them. In a word, Geithner has been "initiated".

The Battle for East Jerusalem

2009-11-17T23:24:00.004-05:00

As today's news confirms, there is a battle going on for Arab East Jerusalem. Today Israel has declared that it will build 900 new housing units in East Jerusalem despite the protests of the United States.

"We are dismayed at the Jerusalem Planning Committee's decision to move forward on the approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem," [White House Press Secretary Robert] Gibbs said in the statement.

"The U.S. also objects to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes," he said.

In June of this year Al Jazeera did a series on the crisis in East Jerusalem. Without international support the Palestinians will be forced out of Jerusalem.

Holy Land Grab - Part 1

Holy Land Grab - Part 2

UPDATE - Nov 17 11:30 PM

I found a State Department press briefing from today that goes extensively into the issue of the latest housing units authorized by Israel in Arab East Jerusalem.

Daily Press Briefing by Department Spokesman Ian Kelly
Nov. 17, 2009
Discussion of developments in East Jerusalem 7:30 - 17:10

Section of transcript dealing with East Jerusalem and related topics.

QUESTION: On the peace process, Israel has approved today the construction of 900 new housing units in East Jerusalem. How do you view this approval at this specific time?

MR. KELLY: Well, I think, Michel, you’ve heard us say many times that we believe that neither party should engage in any kind of actions that could unilaterally preempt or appear to preempt negotiations. And I think that we find the Jerusalem Planning Committee’s decision to move forward on the approval of the – approval process for the expansion of Gilo in Jerusalem as dismaying.

This is at a time when we’re working to re-launch negotiations, and we believe that these actions make it more difficult for our efforts to succeed. So we object to this, and we object to other Israeli practices in Jerusalem related to housing, including the continuing pattern of evictions and demolitions of Palestinian homes.

And – just to repeat what we’ve said all along, our position on Jerusalem is clear. We believe that the – that Jerusalem is a permanent status issue that must be resolved through negotiations between the two parties.

QUESTION: Can you tell us, did this come up in Ambassador Mitchell’s meetings in London yesterday? Apparently, we were told that he met an advisor to Netanyahu, asked them to not permit these new buildings, and then that request was flatly turned down.

MR. KELLY: Yeah. Andy, I just don’t want to get into the substance of these negotiations. They’re sensitive. I think you’ve seen the Israeli – some Israeli press reports that did report that this was raised in the meetings. This is – I mean, these kinds of unilateral actions are exactly the kind of actions that we think that both sides should refrain from at a time when we’re trying to start the negotiations again. But I don’t want to get into the substance of the discussions yesterday in London.

QUESTION: Would you steer us away from not believing the Israeli press reports?

MR. KELLY: I just don’t want to get into the substance. I’m not going to steer you one way or the other on it.

QUESTION: Where’s Senator Mitchell today?

QUESTION: How long is the U.S. going to continue to tolerate Israel’s violation of international law? I mean, soon it’s not even going to be possible – there’s not going to be any land left for the Palestinians to establish an independent state.

MR. KELLY: Well, again, this is a – we understand the Israeli point of view about Jerusalem. But we think that all sides right now, at this time when we’re expending such intense efforts to try and get the two sides to sit down, that we should refrain from these actions, like this decision to move forward on an approval process for more housing units in East Jerusalem.

QUESTION: But should U.S. inaction, or in response to Israel’s actions, then be interpreted as some sort of about-face in policy – the President turning his back on the promises he’s made to the Palestinians?

MR. KELLY: You’re – okay, you’re using language that I wouldn’t use. I mean, again, our focus is to get these negotiations started. We’re calling on both parties to refrain from actions, from – and from rhetoric that would impede this process. It’s a challenging time, and we just need to focus on what’s important here, and that’s --

QUESTION: Well, what actions (inaudible) the Palestinians taken recently that would impede progress?

MR. KELLY: Well, as I say, we would discourage all unilateral actions, and I think --

QUESTION: Fair enough. But the Palestinians --

MR. KELLY: We talked yesterday --

QUESTION: -- don’t appear to be taking any unilateral actions. It seems to be (inaudible).

MR. KELLY: Well, we did talk yesterday about the – and I want to make sure I get my language right here – about the – discouraging any kind of unilateral appeal for United Nations Security Council recognition of a Palestinian state in the West Bank and Gaza Strip. That would fall in that category of unilateral actions.

QUESTION: Okay. So the Palestinian call for this, which was rejected by both the EU and yourself yesterday, you’re putting that on the same level as them building – as the Israelis building --

MR. KELLY: No, I’m not saying that. You just said that, Matt. I’m not saying that. I’m just saying that --

QUESTION: Well, you’re saying you’re calling on both sides to stop doing these things.

MR. KELLY: We are.

QUESTION: Yeah. But the rhetoric from the --

MR. KELLY: I’m not saying they’re equivalent.

QUESTION: -- Palestinians is not actually constructed in a --

MR. KELLY: I’m not saying they’re equivalent. I’m just saying that we – they – we have to treat these things as sensitive issues.

QUESTION: You said a little bit earlier that we understand the Israeli point of view on Jerusalem. Can you explain what you mean by that?

MR. KELLY: Well, you have to ask – I’m not going to stand up here and characterize the Israeli point of view on --

QUESTION: No. I’m just asking you, if you understand the Israeli point of view on Jerusalem, why are you saying that this is not a good thing?

MR. KELLY: I’m not saying we support the Israeli point of view. We understand it.

QUESTION: Right. And then, last one on this, you characterized this decision by the planning commission as dismaying.

MR. KELLY: Yes.

QUESTION: You can’t come up with anything stronger than “dismaying”? I mean, this flies in the face of everything you’ve been talking about for months and months and months.

MR. KELLY: It’s dismaying.

QUESTION: Yeah, you can’t offer a condemnation of it or anything like that? (Laughter.) I mean, who is in charge of the language here.

MR. KELLY: I have said what I have said, Mr. Lee.

Yeah.

QUESTION: Would you say, though, that your own envoy has – does he have any leverage at this point, given the fact that the Israelis not only refuse, but blatantly have ignored his wishes on this?

MR. KELLY: Well, let’s take a step back and let’s also recognize that both sides agree on the goal, and that goal is a comprehensive peace. That goal is two states living side by side in peace and security and cooperation. So that is why we continue to be committed to this. That is why Special Envoy Mitchell meets with both sides at every opportunity, and why we are continuing to expend such efforts on this. So let’s remember that, that we do share a common goal.

QUESTION: Well, where’s Senator Mitchell today?

MR. KELLY: I believe Senator Mitchell is on his way back today.

QUESTION: Could you give us just a brief synopsis of the progress that Senator Mitchell has made in his months on the job?

MR. KELLY: Well, I think we have – we’ve gotten --

QUESTION: Yeah, maybe if the --

MR. KELLY: -- both sides to agree on this goal. We have gotten both sides --

QUESTION: Ian, they agreed on the goal years ago. I mean, that’s not --

MR. KELLY: Well, I think that we – this government --

QUESTION: You mean you got the Israel Government to say, yes, we’re willing to accept a Palestinian state? You got Netanyahu to say that, and that’s his big accomplishment?

MR. KELLY: That is an accomplishment.

QUESTION: But previous Israeli administration – previous Israeli governments had agreed to that already.

MR. KELLY: Okay, all right.

QUESTION: So in other words, the bottom line is that, in the list of accomplishments that Mitchell has come up with or established since he started, is zero.

MR. KELLY: I wouldn’t say zero.

QUESTION: Well, then what would you say it is?

MR. KELLY: Well, I would say that we’ve gotten both sides to commit to this goal. They have – we have – we’ve had a intensive round or rounds of negotiations, the President brought the two leaders together in New York. Look --

QUESTION: But wait, hold on. You haven’t had any intense --

MR. KELLY: Obviously --

QUESTION: There haven’t been any negotiations.

MR. KELLY: Obviously, we’re not even in the red zone yet, okay.

QUESTION: Thank you.

MR. KELLY: I mean, we’re not – but it’s – we are less than a year into this Administration, and I think we’ve accomplished more over the last year than the previous administration did in eight years.

QUESTION: Well, I – really, because the previous administration actually had them sitting down talking to each other. You guys can’t even get that far.

MR. KELLY: All right.

QUESTION: I’ll drop it.

MR. KELLY: Give us a chance. Thank you, Matt.

Yeah, in the back.

QUESTION: It seems Senator Mitchell is focusing in his meetings on the Israeli side. Is he – does he have any plans to talk with the Palestinians, or there is no need now for that?

MR. KELLY: Well, he, as I say, he had meetings yesterday with the Israelis. He’s coming back to the U.S. now. He always stands ready to talk to both sides. There are no plans at this moment to meet with the Palestinian side.

Abbas outed by his Israeli 'friends'

2009-11-17T14:08:00.002-05:00

"With friends like these who needs enemies?" That is what Palestinian Authority President Mahmoud Abbas must be thinking. But if the truth be told, Abbas is well deserving of the criticism he is receiving from his Israeli allies.

As Abbas tries to squirm and wriggle his way out of his current crisis, it becomes ever more apparent that the P.A. President has been caught up in his own web of deceit. In his obsession to destroy his rivals Hamas he teamed up with the Palestinian people's enemies.

This became glaringly obvious when Abbas attempted to squash the Goldstone Report at the United Nations. As Abbas' credibility plummeted, his backers in the US and Israel attempted to prop him back up. But as this only caused him to be the target of more contempt among his own people, he attempted to revive his image by striking out on his own.

He then engaged in a series of moves designed to portray him as being independent from his Zionist handlers. Israel however was not amused by this show of independence by its puppet. The always outspoken Israeli Foreign Minister Avidgor Lieberman took the lead in attacking Abbas.

"During Operation Cast Lead the PA pressed us to crush Hamas, and then, a month later, they filed complaints against us at the International Criminal Court at The Hague,"

In one fell swoop Lieberman exposed the complicity between Abbas' and the Israeli government, and denounced him as a hypocrite. In so doing he confirmed the rumors that Abbas had encouraged the Israeli attacks on Gaza and that the plan was for the P.A. to "ride into Gaza on the backs of Israeli tanks."

(Of course Israel and the US are not alone in backing the Vichy government of the Palestinian Authority. The EU and Egypt have also joined in on this betrayal of the Palestinian people.)

As world opinion turns against the Israeli occupiers following the blatant massacre of innocent civilians in Gaza, the Zionist's attacks on their detractors becomes ever more shrill. The latest to receive a public lashing by the International Jewish Lobby is Human Rights Watch.

And of course Judge Richard Goldstone has not been spared, even though he is a fellow Jew and a self-proclaimed Zionist. But he has broken the unwritten law that no Jew is allowed to publicly criticize another Jew. And as such he is being treated as a pariah by the worldwide Jewish community.

Surely he could not have expected anything less. Yet somehow he seems genuinely surprised by the personal nature of the attacks that have been hurled against him.

In fairness, not all Jews or Jewish organizations have joined in this attack. And some brave Jewish voices have even been raised in public support of Judge Richard Goldstone. But the unwritten code of solidarity is well known and understood, and certainly he is not receiving much sympathy for his perceived betrayal of his own people.

But let us never forget the true victims, who are the Palestinian people. Whose lives have been sacrificed for no reason. Who have been living in a perpetual punishment ever since the creation of the state of Israel. And if they dare to defend themselves, they are labeled "terrorists".

But who strikes with overwhelming force and who responds with whatever meager weapons are at their disposal in their defense? Who are the terrorists and who are the victims? How many more Palestinian lives must be sacrificed before Justice is carried out?

Pakistan is Israel's booby prize

2009-11-16T14:34:00.001-05:00

Introduction

I was listening to Scott Horton's interview of Eric Margolis on Anti-War Radio and I was so struck by a quote from Margolis that I felt compelled to write this post. Here is the quote which appears at 14:20 in the interview.

"Most Pakistanis believe that Washington is trying to destroy Pakistan and tear it apart as a way of getting at its nuclear weapons. And of undermining an important Muslim state. And that this is being done primarily at the behest of Israel."

While Margolis goes on to say that he does not share this view. I for one think this is a highly plausible explanation for what is going on in Pakistan.

War on Islam

Attack Iran, Bomb Iran, Invade Iran.

This has been Israel's mantra for years. At the most recent AIPAC convention Iran was the number one topic on the agenda. What Israel and AIPAC have been given instead is a sort of Islamic booby prize - Pakistan.

Iran is Islamic and it is developing nukes; Pakistan is Islamic and it has nukes. Iran borders Afghanistan and Iraq; Pakistan borders Afghanistan and Iran.

While no American or Israeli bombs are exploding over Iranian territory, bombs aplenty are raining down on Pakistan. Muslims are dying and even fighting each other, and this is the ultimate goal of the neocon monsters embedded in the US government to do Israel's bidding - to divide and conquer Islam. It is the Balkanization of any Muslim country that is seen as a threat to Israel.

Hillary Clinton promised Israel a war with Iran. When she couldn't deliver, she opted for a war with Pakistan instead. Pakistan is Israel's consolation prize.

With the CIA already controlling a large part of the Pakistani military it was relatively easy to get Pakistan to launch an invasion on it's own people - plunging Pakistan into a bloody civil war. The perfectly predictable radicalization of conservative Muslim elements in Pakistan has resulted in a wave of bomb attacks against government targets. The total destabilization of the country of Pakistan has begun.

Happy Israel?

And the US is poised to seize control of Pakistan's nukes if it deems that they are at risk of falling into the hands of Israel's enemies.

Of course India is in on this as well. And China, which is sitting on the sidelines, will probably end up being one of the biggest beneficiary of this instability in Pakistan. And the biggest loser? The Pakistani people of course, but next in line are the American people.

The invisible war

"Now I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds."

It is not just through nuclear weapons that America destroys worlds. The destruction can happen just as effectively through the spiritual world as through the physical world. An invisible spiritual nuclear war is being waged on the native civilizations of the planet.

Islam is the one part of the world that has not fallen under the direct control of the International Bankers. They have steadfastly refused to modernize and to become totally dependent on the financial infrastructure of the "civilized" world. They have refused to allow free access to the filthy rotten propaganda that streams continuously from Hollywood and the rest of the western media.

What is to be done? They are not seduced by the western Jezebel. The alternative is to unleash the military might of the west upon them. To physically destroy what could not be destroyed through propaganda. To crush their culture so that they will become enslaved and totally dependent on the outside western world.

Then like so many other denigrated cultures throughout the world, they will follow the predictable descent down the path of violence and drugs - the inevitable result of a culture crushed and cast aside by the imperial Juggernaut.

Chief Sitting Bull and the Ghost Dancers

2009-11-13T18:45:00.002-05:00

I was thinking about LastStandistan - I mean Afghanistan. That's 'last stand' as in Custer's Last Stand at the Little Big Horn. I wonder what Chief Sitting Bull of the Lakota Indians would think of the US imperial invasion of Afghanistan. Yesterday's renegade Indians are todays Muslim terrorists. Why do they hate us?

Will the US Empire keep expanding until it covers the whole globe? And then what? The Moon? Mars?

Words of wisdom attributed to Chief Sitting Bull.

Is it wrong for me to love my own? Is it wicked for me because my skin is red? Because I am Sioux? Because I was born where my father lived? Because I would die for my people and my country?

The love of possessions is a disease in them.

They claim this mother of ours, the Earth, for their own use, and fence their neighbors away from her, and deface her with their buildings and their refuse.

They want us to give up another chunk of our tribal land. This is not the first time or the last time.

When I was a boy, the Sioux owned the world. The sun rose and set on their land; they sent ten thousand men to battle. Where are the warriors today? Who slew them? Where are our lands? Who owns them?

You think I am a fool, but you are a greater fool than I am.

We did not give you our land; You stole it from us.

Many years ago now, I saw a movie called Koyaanisqatsi. I'll never forget that . The title of the film is from a Hopi word meaning "life of moral corruption and turmoil" or "life out of balance." Somehow this movie without words or dialogue reached me. It touched an inner place in my spirit. It raised my consciousness.

I wish I could say that it has changed my life. Perhaps in subtle ways, it has affected the decisions I have made in my life. But fundamentally, I still lead the same life of frivolous consumption that I would have otherwise. What choices do we have? What alternatives does our society offer?

To go hungry and beg in the streets? Not even that. While in some societies beggars are at least tolerated, here in the heart of the empire they are hustled off to prison. It's considered unseemly to have beggars on the streets of the richest and most powerful nation on the planet. Better to hide them away in 'homeless shelters' and prisons. Where they can be out of sight and out of mind. So that we can continue to delude ourselves into thinking that we live in the most just and compassionate society in the history of mankind.

Don't we give to charity? Isn't that enough? A sort of 'dollar diplomacy' for the average American household; a way to soothe the guilty soul of America.

Why just yesterday there was a statement from the UN rapporteur for right to adequate housing, Raquel Rolnik, condemning the US for its lack of compassion towards its poor. And today there are more poor people than ever in the United States; more homeless as a result of evictions from people who have had to foreclose on homes that they could no longer afford after losing their jobs in the worst economic depression since the Great Depression of the 1930's.

A United Nations special investigator who was blocked from visiting the US by the Bush administration has accused the American government of pouring billions of dollars into rescuing banks and big business while treating as "invisible" a deepening homeless crisis.

Raquel Rolnik, the UN special rapporteur for the right to adequate housing, who has just completed a seven-city tour of America, said it was shameful that a country as wealthy as the US was not spending more money on lifting its citizens out of homelessness and substandard, overcrowded housing.

"The housing crisis is invisible for many in the US," she said. "I learned through this visit that real affordable housing and poverty is something that hasn't been dealt with as an issue. Even if we talk about the financial crisis and government stepping in in order to promote economic recovery, there is no such help for the homeless."

She added: "I think those who are suffering the most in this whole situation are the very poor, the low-income population. The burden is disproportionately on them and it's of course disproportionately on African-Americans, on Latinos and immigrant communities, and on Native Americans."

Rolnik toured Chicago, New York, Washington, Los Angeles and Wilkes-Barre, a Pennsylvania town where this year the first four sheriff sales – public auctions of seized property – in the county included 598 foreclosed properties. She also visited a Native American reservation.
[...]
Rolnik said that while she saw difficult conditions in all the places she visited, the worst was on the Native American reservation of Pine Ridge in South Dakota.

"You see total hopelessness, despair, very bad conditions. Nothing I have seen in other cities compared to the physical condition of the housing at Pine Ridge. Nothing compared to the overcrowding. They're not visible, they're isolated, they're far away. They're just lost," she said.

Can it be that America the Beautiful, the "home of the free and the brave", is being reduced to a nation of poverty and hopelessness -- except for those fortunate few Elite who frolic in their stolen riches.

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation in South Dakota - which Raquel Rolnik speaks about - is the site of Wounded Knee. To see the connection to Sitting Bull we need to traverse various pages on Wikipedia.

Lakota People

The Lakota signed a treaty in 1877 ceding the Black Hills to the United States, but a low-intensity war continued, culminating, fourteen years later, in the killing of Sitting Bull (December 15, 1890) at Standing Rock and the Massacre of Wounded Knee (December 29, 1890) at Pine Ridge.

Sitting Bull - Death and Burial

Sitting Bull returned to the Standing Rock Agency in South Dakota after 4 months in Buffalo Bill's Wild West Show. In 1890 James McLaughlin, the U.S. Indian Agent at Fort Yates on Standing Rock Agency, feared that the Lakota leader was about to flee the reservation with the Ghost Dancers, so he ordered the police to arrest Sitting Bull. On 14 December 1890, McLaughlin drafted a letter to Lt. Bullhead that included instructions and an outlined plan to capture the chief. The plan called for the attack to happen during dawn on December 15, and also advised the use of a light spring wagon to facilitate the chief's removal before his followers could rally. Lt. Bullhead decided, however, not to use the wagon. Instead, the police officers would force Sitting Bull to mount a horse as soon as the arrest was made.

At around 5:30 a.m. on December 15, 1890, a freezing drizzle fell as 39 police officers and 4 volunteers moved towards Sitting Bull's house. They surrounded the house, knocked and entered. Lt. Bullhead told Sitting Bull that he was under arrest and led him outside. At this time the camp was awake and they converged at the house of their chief. As Lt. Bullhead ordered Sitting Bull to mount the horse, he explained that the Indian affairs agent needed to see him and then he could come back to his house. However, Sitting Bull refused and the police used force on him. The Sioux in the village were enraged. A Sioux man known as Catch-the-Bear shouldered his rifle and shot Lt. Bullhead who, in return, fired his revolver into the chest of Sitting Bull. Another police officer, Red Tomahawk, shot Sitting Bull in the head and the chief dropped to the ground. A terrible close-quarters fight erupted and within minutes it was over. Six policemen were killed immediately and two more died shortly after the fight. Sitting Bull and seven of his supporters lay dead along with two horses. As the guns went off, a circus horse presented to Sitting Bull at the conclusion of his tour with Buffalo Bill Cody's Wild West Tour responded to its cue, sitting down on its haunches and offering a hoof to "shake hands."

Pine Ridge Indian Reservation

Pine Ridge Reservation was originally part of the Great Sioux Reservation established in the Fort Laramie Treaty of 1868 and originally encompassed approximately 60 million acres (240,000 km²) of parts of South Dakota, Nebraska and Wyoming. In 1876, the U.S. government violated the treaty of 1868 by opening up 7.7 million acres (31,000 km²) of the Black Hills to homesteaders and private interests. In 1889 the remaining area of Great Sioux Reservation was divided into seven separate reservations: Cheyenne River Agency, Crow Creek Agency, Lower Brule Agency, Rosebud Agency, Sisseton Agency, Yankton Agency and Pine Ridge Agency.

On December 29, 1890 at Wounded Knee, over 300 men, women and children were killed by the United States 7th Cavalry. The Native Americans were being transported to the Sioux reservation at Pine Ridge (see: Wounded Knee massacre).

Starting on February 27, 1973, the reservation was the site of the Wounded Knee Incident, a 71-day stand-off between entrenched American Indian Movement (AIM) activists and FBI agents and the National Guard. The AIM activists were led by Dennis Banks and Russell Means. During the firefight, two FBI agents were killed and a U.S. Marshal was paralyzed and two Oglala Lakotas were killed.

But who were these "Ghost Dancers" that originally prompted the Indian Agent to arrest Sitting Bull and which led to his cold blooded murder? I will let Ohiyesa (Dr. Charles Alexander Eastman) a Eastern Dakota (or Santee Sioux) who knew Sitting Bull tell the story.

At this crisis a strange thing happened. A half-breed Indian in Nevada promulgated the news that the Messiah had appeared to him upon a peak in the Rockies, dressed in rabbit skins, and bringing a message to the red race. The message was to the effect that since his first coming had been in vain, since the white people had doubted and reviled him, had nailed him to the cross, and trampled upon his doctrines, he had come again in pity to save the Indian. He declared that he would cause the earth to shake and to overthrow the cities of the whites and destroy them, that the buffalo would return, and the land belong to the red race forever! These events were to come to pass within two years; and meanwhile they were to prepare for his coming by the ceremonies and dances which he commanded.

This curious story spread like wildfire and met with eager acceptance among the suffering and discontented people. The teachings of Christian missionaries had prepared them to believe in a Messiah, and the prescribed ceremonial was much more in accord with their traditions than the conventional worship of the churches. Chiefs of many tribes sent delegations to the Indian prophet; Short Bull, Kicking Bear, and others went from among the Sioux, and on their return all inaugurated the dances at once. There was an attempt at first to keep the matter secret, but it soon became generally known and seriously disconcerted the Indian agents and others, who were quick to suspect a hostile conspiracy under all this religious enthusiasm. As a matter of fact, there was no thought of an uprising; the dancing was innocent enough, and pathetic enough their despairing hope in a pitiful Saviour who should overwhelm their oppressors and bring back their golden age.

America, America
God shed his grace on thee
And crown thy good with brotherhood
From sea to shining sea.

Remember that? Whatever happened to brotherhood? Is there a stock symbol for that? How much did it gain or lose on Wall Street today? Are their credit default swaps hedging against a rise in brotherhood in America? How much has Goldman Sachs invested in that in the black markets that hide the truth from the eyes of the unsuspecting American public?

But now listen to Ray Charles' rendition of "America".

Maybe Ray Charles is correct in emphasizing one of the lesser known stanzas of the classic song America.

America, America
May God thy gold refine
Till all success be nobleness,
And every gain divine.

Maybe life is all about the gold; whether its yellow gold or black gold. Or gold as in money; or gold as in land. It sure is in the America of today. Maybe it always was.

Watch and listen to Koyaanisqatsi. Maybe it will change your life; even if it didn't change mine.

A closing thought from American philosopher and naturalist Henry David Thoreau from his book Walden Pond.

"I went to the woods because I wished to live deliberately, to front only the essential facts of life, and see if I could not learn what it had to teach, and not, when I came to die, discover that I had not lived."

China's ghost economy

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China's empty 'ghost' city

Ordos is a hyper modern city, full of brand new glass walled residential and commercial buildings, yet devoid of inhabitants. In its attempt to present a "growing" economy, and to "invest" its $585 billion stimulus into anything and everything, courtesy of comparable idiocy on the other side of the Pacific, China's communist party is now ruling over ghost towns. One wonders just how many such "efficient" projects sustain China's magical 8% growth.

The World’s Largest Shopping Mall - another 'ghost'

Unfortunately this video cannot be embedded - watch it here.
http://www.pbs.org/pov/utopia/

The largest mall in the world turns out not to be the famous Mall of America in Bloomington, Minn. It’s the South China Mall outside of Guangzhou, China. Outdoing the techniques of American consumerism, South China Mall is Disneyland, Las Vegas and Mall of America rolled into one. There are carnival rides, mini-parks, canals and lakes amid classic Western-style buildings with space for hundreds of shops.

But along with the glitz and glory of middle-class shopping, the mall’s Chinese developers seem to have imported something else — a cautionary tale of capitalist hubris. Alex Hu, a local Guangzhou boy who made it big in international business, wanted South China Mall to be a hometown monument to his success — even though Guangzhou has no major airports or highways nearby. And four years after its construction, the mall sits virtually empty of both shops and shoppers.

At the root of all of this 'ghost' real estate development is corruption.

Communist mantra leads to corruption in high places

"To get rich is glorious" has been the mantra in communist China for 30 years,

An example is Wen Qiang, a former head of the judiciary and ex deputy police chief in Chongqing, who amassed assets valued at over 100 million yuan (14.7 million dollars), but now stands accused of protecting crime bosses in exchange for 'gifts' and kickbacks.

The 54-year-old is one of dozens of top judicial officials, including the former deputy head of China's top court, ensnared in high-stakes graft scandals, despite repeated Communist Party pledges and campaigns to stamp out corruption.

"When people like the deputy head of the Supreme Court accept bribes and engage in corruption, you can draw your own conclusions as to how serious the corruption in China's judiciary is," Beijing lawyer Mo Shaoping told AFP.

Wen, who became Chongqing's top judicial official last year after 16 years on the police force, stands accused of protecting an intricate web of businessmen, officials and mobsters in the city of over 30 million people. According to state media, his misdeeds extend to shielding businesses in numerous sectors such as real estate, transportation, gambling and prostitution, as well as an illegal loan racket worth 30 billion yuan last year.

Of the approximately 2,000 suspects who have been placed under investigation in the case, at least two dozen top city officials have been caught up in the crackdown, including Chongqing's high court deputy president, Zhang Tao.

The China Youth Daily commented that: "What is more shocking than Wen Qiang's ties with businessmen and the mafia, is the role which government officials at all levels played." "If a string of government officials from top to bottom had not been linked together to form bridges, then Wen Qiang would not have had the power nor the ability to establish such a protectionism umbrella."

But “that is how the country and it’s judiciary has been running since it was setup.” commented Mrs Ma, a former accountant at a state run company in China.

"The big issue for China is corruption -- corruption is related to the fact there is no checks and balances mechanism on political power," Joseph Cheng, a political scientist at City University of Hong Kong, told AFP. "This is related to the Party wanting to maintain a monopoly on political power and not being ready to adopt restraints on power. So it is a vicious cycle that lets them not effectively fight corruption."

Cheng said disclosure would be helpful, but suggested that greater freedom of the press - to report on official corruption - and more oversight from the nation's rubber-stamp parliament would make anti-graft efforts more effective.

Mo, a high-profile Beijing rights lawyer whose firm often handles compensation cases tied to land acquisition, said corruption was rife in both civil and criminal courts, though bribery in civil cases was more common.

Top court officials in Beijing as well as Guangdong, Hubei and Liaoning provinces have recently been convicted for taking money from attorneys in exchange for favourable rulings. The former deputy head of Beijing's Western District court, 58-year-old Guo Shengqui, was sentenced to death with a two-year reprieve for taking bribes and kickbacks from real estate developers and lawyers.

"You can know the law and you can have a clear-cut case, but if the court is really corrupt, then the law does not matter," said Mo.

A Chinese political analyst, Jiang Weiping offered a different insight: The arrests of Wen Qiang and Li Qiang (another corrupt officer in Chongqing), were mearly part of a political battle between Bo Xilai, He Guoqiang and Wang Yang". Bo, He and Wang are all top leaders in the communist central committee.

China's economy is a bubble just waiting to burst. The real estate development is being fueled by cheap government money and corruption. How many empty housing developments, office buildings and malls can China build before the real estate market there collapses?

It would not be the first time. Back in the 1990's a similar boom in real estate in Hainan collapsed and resulted in lawsuits. Caught up in one of those lawsuits was Zhou Xiaochuan, the head of China's central bank. He and his partners were bailed out by Goldman's Sachs back when Hank Paulson was the CEO. Another person involved in this swindle was Wang Qishan, who is now Vice Premier of the People's Republic of China.

Just take a look at this graphic from the New York Times.

click on image to expand

The image comes from this New York Times article from March 4, 2005 - Horse Trading for a Venture in China.

What was so unusual about the Goldman deal is that a blueblood American firm was willing to pay $67 million to help the government dissolve an entirely unrelated state-owned enterprise, Hainan Securities, whose officials have been accused in lawsuits of embezzling millions of dollars from investor accounts.

Why the Chinese government chose Hainan Securities remains unclear. But Mr. Fang and another power broker at the dinner table that evening, Wang Qishan, the mayor of Beijing, had ties in Hainan Province - Mr. Wang had been Hainan's party secretary from 2002 to 2003. And Mr. Fang had overseen a real estate investment with Hainan Securities in the mid-90's.

Goldman officials declined to comment on any aspect of the Hainan Securities money or the joint-venture loan, including what kind of collateral Mr. Fang pledged to back the loan.

But there is no evidence that Mr. Fang or Mr. Wang was involved in fraud at Hainan Securities, or that Goldman's donation money will benefit them in any way.

No fraud? Right. The NYT's lawyers want to make it clear that they are not accusing anyone at Goldman or in China's government of fraud. It's called CYA. "Don't sue us. We never said anything about fraud. We're just reporting the facts." Then why bother even reporting this story if there is nothing fraudulent going on? Astute readers are expected to read between the lines.

The corruption doesn't stop at China's borders. The corruption is in the US government, in the US Treasury Department and the Federal Reserve, in Wall Street - and especially in Goldman Sachs.

Related posts

The International Banker's China Syndrome

US Military use of torture and terror: 1900 - Present

2009-11-12T11:59:00.013-05:00

[I apologize to my readers for the inclusion of such gruesome photos. But I am afraid that without this type of photographic evidence, the point is lost. Notice that the US government has kept hidden from the public any photos of waterboarding in the current "war on terror". And have no doubt that they do exist in the files of the CIA and the US military.]

Contents

Photographs of waterboarding
"Enhanced interrogation techniques"
ABC News: CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described
OLC Memos Define Official Waterboarding Procedure
The Water Cure: Debating torture and counterinsurgency—a century ago
The Philippine War of Independence
Mark Twain, New York Herald, Oct. 15, 1900
Conclusion
Related posts

Photographs of waterboarding

Water cure in Phillipines 1901

Waterboarding in Vietnam 1968

Demonstration of Waterboarding in "War on Terror" [1] [2]

"Enhanced interrogation techniques"

Enhanced interrogation techniques or alternative set of procedures were euphemisms adopted by the George W. Bush administration in the United States to describe torture and other interrogation methods used by US military intelligence and the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to extract information from individuals captured in the "War on Terror" soon after the events of September 11, 2001.

Many of these techniques were regarded by critics, both internationally and within the United States of America, to constitute torture or cruel and unusual punishment. In December, 2005, the United States eliminated use of these techniques by passing the Detainee Treatment Act, and limiting interrogation methods to those explicitly authorized by the United States Army Field Manual.

ABC News: CIA's Harsh Interrogation Techniques Described
By BRIAN ROSS and RICHARD ESPOSITO
November 18 2005

The CIA sources described a list of six "Enhanced Interrogation Techniques" instituted in mid-March 2002 and used, they said, on a dozen top al Qaeda targets incarcerated in isolation at secret locations on military bases in regions from Asia to Eastern Europe. According to the sources, only a handful of CIA interrogators are trained and authorized to use the techniques:

1. The Attention Grab: The interrogator forcefully grabs the shirt front of the prisoner and shakes him.

2. Attention Slap: An open-handed slap aimed at causing pain and triggering fear.

3. The Belly Slap: A hard open-handed slap to the stomach. The aim is to cause pain, but not internal injury. Doctors consulted advised against using a punch, which could cause lasting internal damage.

4. Long Time Standing: This technique is described as among the most effective. Prisoners are forced to stand, handcuffed and with their feet shackled to an eye bolt in the floor for more than 40 hours. Exhaustion and sleep deprivation are effective in yielding confessions.

5. The Cold Cell: The prisoner is left to stand naked in a cell kept near 50 degrees. Throughout the time in the cell the prisoner is doused with cold water.

6. Water Boarding: The prisoner is bound to an inclined board, feet raised and head slightly below the feet. Cellophane is wrapped over the prisoner's face and water is poured over him. Unavoidably, the gag reflex kicks in and a terrifying fear of drowning leads to almost instant pleas to bring the treatment to a halt.

According to the sources, CIA officers who subjected themselves to the water boarding technique lasted an average of 14 seconds before caving in. They said al Qaeda's toughest prisoner, Khalid Sheik Mohammed, won the admiration of interrogators when he was able to last between two and two-and-a-half minutes before begging to confess.

"The person believes they are being killed, and as such, it really amounts to a mock execution, which is illegal under international law," said John Sifton of Human Rights Watch.

OLC Memos Define Official Waterboarding Procedure
OLC (Office of Legal Counsel) - By delegation from the Attorney General, the Assistant Attorney General in charge of the Office of Legal Counsel provides authoritative legal advice to the President and all the Executive Branch agencies. The Office drafts legal opinions of the Attorney General and also provides its own written opinions and oral advice in response to requests from the Counsel to the President, the various agencies of the Executive Branch, and offices within the Department. Such requests typically deal with legal issues of particular complexity and importance or about which two or more agencies are in disagreement. The Office also is responsible for providing legal advice to the Executive Branch on all constitutional questions and reviewing pending legislation for constitutionality.

A recently declassified four memos has shed light on the recently banned practice of waterboarding. For the first time, the memos publicly describe the officially sanctioned waterboarding interrogation procedure:
[...]
Steven G Bradbury, May 10 2005, p.13:

13. The "waterboard". In this technique, the detainee is lying on a gurney that is inclined at an angle of 10 to 15 degrees to the horizontal, with the detainee on his back and his head toward the lower end of the gurney. A cloth is placed over the detainee's face and cold water is poured on the cloth from a height of approximately 6 to 8 inches. The wet cloth creates a barrier through which it is difficult - or in some cases not possible - to breathe. A single "application" of water may not last for more than 40 seconds, with the duration of an "application" measured from the moment when water - of whatever quantity - is first poured onto the cloth until the moment the cloth is removed from the subject's face. See August 19 Letter at 1. When the time limit is reached, the pouring of water is immediately discontinued and the cloth is removed. We understand that if the detainee makes an effort to defeat the technique (e.g. by twisting his head to the side and breathing out of the corner of his mouth), the interrogator may cup his hands around the detainee's nose and mouth to dam the runoff, in which case it would not be possible for a detainee to breathe during the application of the water. In addition, you have informed us that the technique may be applied in a manner to defeat efforts by the detainee to hold his breath by, for example, beginning an application of water as the detainee is exhaling. Either in the normal application, or where countermeasures are used, we understand that water may enter - and may accumulate in - the detainee's mouth and nasal cavity, preventing him from breathing. Either in the normal application, or where countermeasures are used, we understand that water may enter — and may accumulate in — the detainee’s mouth and nasal cavity, preventing him from breathing. In addition, you have indicated that the detainee as a countermeasure may swallow water, possibly in significant quantities. For that reason; based on advice of medical personnel, the C.I.A. requires that saline solution be used instead of plain water to reduce the possibility of hyponatremia (i.e., reduced concentration of sodium in the blood) if the detainee drinks the water.

NOTE: The use of torture by the US military is nothing new. Torture and terror were routinely used during the American imperialistic war against the Philippines in the early 1900's.

The Water Cure: Debating torture and counterinsurgency—a century ago.
by Paul Kramer
February 25, 2008

A letter by A. F. Miller, of the 32nd Volunteer Infantry Regiment [stationed in the Philippines], published in the Omaha World-Herald in May, 1900, told of how Miller’s unit uncovered hidden weapons by subjecting a prisoner to what he and others called the “water cure.” “Now, this is the way we give them the water cure,” he explained. “Lay them on their backs, a man standing on each hand and each foot, then put a round stick in the mouth and pour a pail of water in the mouth and nose, and if they don’t give up pour in another pail. They swell up like toads. I’ll tell you it is a terrible torture.”
[...]
A letter from Riley had been published in the Northampton Daily Herald in March of the previous year, describing the water-cure torture of Tobeniano Ealdama, the presidente of the town of Igbaras, where Riley, then a sergeant in the 26th Volunteer Infantry, had been stationed. Herbert Welsh had learned of Riley, and enlisted him, among other soldiers, to testify before the committee. Amid the bullying questions of pro-war senators, Riley’s account of the events of November 27, 1900, unfolded, and it was startlingly at odds with most official accounts. Upon entering the town’s convent, which had been seized as a headquarters, Riley had witnessed Ealdama being bound and forced full of water, while supervised by a contract surgeon and Captain Edwin Glenn, a judge advocate. Ealdama’s throat had been “held so he could not prevent swallowing the water, so that he had to allow the water to run into his stomach”; the water was then “forced out of him by pressing a foot on his stomach or else with [the soldiers’] hands.” The ostensible goal of the water cure was to obtain intelligence: after a second round of torture, carried out in front of the convent by a “water detail” of five or six men, Ealdama confessed to serving as a captain in the insurgency. He then led U.S. forces into the bush in search of insurgents. After their return to Igbaras, that night, Glenn had ordered that the town, consisting of between four and five hundred houses, be burned to the ground, as Riley explained, “on account of the condition of affairs exposed by the treatment.”
[...]
The trial [of Glenn] lasted a week. When Ealdama testified about his experience—“My stomach and throat pained me, and also the nose where they passed the salt water through”—Glenn interrupted, trying to minimize the man’s suffering by claiming (incorrectly) that Ealdama had stated that he had experienced pain only “as [the water] passed through.” Glenn defended his innocence by defending the water cure itself. He maintained that the torture of Ealdama was “a legitimate exercise of force under the laws of war,” being “justified by military necessity.” In making this case, Glenn shifted the focus to the enemy’s tactics. He emphasized the treachery of Ealdama, who had been tried and convicted by a military commission a year earlier as a “war traitor,” for aiding the insurgency. Testimony was presented by U.S. military officers and Filipinos concerning the insurgency’s guerrilla tactics, which violated the norms of “civilized war.” Found guilty, Glenn was sentenced to a one-month suspension and a fifty-dollar fine. “The court is thus lenient,” the sentence read, “on account of the circumstances as shown in evidence.” (Glenn retired from the Army, in 1919, as a brigadier general.) Meanwhile, Ealdama, twice tortured by Glenn’s forces, was serving a sentence of ten years’ hard labor; he had been temporarily released to enable him to testify against his torturer.
[...]
Davis [one of the Judge advocates in the Glenn trial] conceded that, in a “rare or isolated case,” force might legitimately be used in “obtaining the unwilling service” of a guide, if justified as a “measure of emergency.” But a careful examination of the events preceding the tortures at Igbaras revealed that “no such case existed.” Furthermore, Glenn had described the water cure as “the habitual method of obtaining information from individual insurgents”—in other words, as “a method of conducting operations.” But the operational use of torture, Davis stressed, was strictly forbidden. Regarding a subsequent water-cure court-martial, he wrote, “No modern state, which is a party to international law, can sanction, either expressly or by a silence which imports consent, a resort to torture with a view to obtain confessions, as an incident to its military operations.” Otherwise, he inquired, “where is the line to be drawn?”
[...]
When, during the committee hearings, Senator Joseph Rawlins had asked General Robert Hughes whether the burning of Filipino homes by advancing U.S. troops was “within the ordinary rules of civilized warfare,” Hughes had replied succinctly, “These people are not civilized.” More generally, some people, while conceding that American soldiers had engaged in “cruelties,” insisted that the behavior reflected the barbaric sensibilities of the Filipinos. “I think I know why these things have happened,” Lodge [Senator Henry Cabot Lodge - Mass] offered in a Senate speech in May. They had “grown out of the conditions of warfare, of the war that was waged by the Filipinos themselves, a semicivilized people, with all the tendencies and characteristics of Asiatics, with the Asiatic indifference to life, with the Asiatic treachery and the Asiatic cruelty, all tinctured and increased by three hundred years of subjection to Spain.”
[...]
[President Theodore] Roosevelt was convinced that “nobody was seriously damaged,” whereas “the Filipinos had inflicted incredible tortures upon our own people.” Still, he wrote, “torture is not a thing that we can tolerate.”
[...]
There was, of course, an easier way than argument to end the debate. On July 4, 1902 (as if on cue from John Philip Sousa), Roosevelt declared victory in the Philippines. Remaining insurgents would be politically downgraded to “brigands.”
[...]
As early as April 16, 1902, the New York World described the “American Public” sitting down to eat its breakfast with a newspaper full of Philippine atrocities:

It sips its coffee and reads of its soldiers administering the “water cure” to rebels; of how water with handfuls of salt thrown in to make it more efficacious, is forced down the throats of the patients until their bodies become distended to the point of bursting; of how our soldiers then jump on the distended bodies to force the water out quickly so that the “treatment” can begin all over again. The American Public takes another sip of its coffee and remarks, “How very unpleasant!”

NOTE: What the CIA has done through waterboarding is to make this method more "efficient". Because in the old method too many prisoners died and could therefore not be further tortured. The salt was originally added because it was an irritant, but now the salt is added to keep the victim from dying from water poisoning. It is not more humane, in fact it is more sadistic.

The Philippine War of Independence

The shift to guerrilla warfare [by the Philippine army], however, only angered the Americans into acting more ruthlessly than before. They began taking no prisoners, burning whole villages, and routinely shooting surrendering Filipino soldiers. Civilians were forced into concentration camps, after being suspected of being guerrilla sympathizers. Thousands of civilians died in these camps. The camps and slaughter of civilians was excused by the fact that the media told the American population that the savages were little children needing America's help and cleansing. The guerilla warfare helped this case by giving a moral right to what the American's were doing since the "savages" were cowardly uncivilized enemies.
[...]
In November 1901, the Manila correspondent of the Philadelphia Ledger reported:"The present war is no bloodless, opera bouffe engagement; our men have been relentless, have killed to exterminate men, women, children, prisoners and captives, active insurgents and suspected people from lads of ten up, the idea prevailing that the Filipino as such was little better than a dog...."
[...]
Private Charles Brenner of the Kansas regiment resisted such pressure. He insisted that Colonel Funston had ordered that all prisoners be shot and that Major Metcalf and Captain Bishop enforced these orders. Otis was obliged to order the Northern Luzon sector commander, General MacArthur, to look into the charge. Brenner confronted MacArthur’s aide with a corroborating witness, Private Putman, who confessed to shooting two prisoners after Bishop or Metcalf ordered, “Kill them! Damn it, Kill them!” MacArthur sent his aide’s report on to Otis with no comment. Otis ordered Brenner court-martialed “for writing and conniving at the publication of an article which... contains willful falsehoods concerning himself and a false charge against Captain Bishop.” The judge advocate in Manila convinced Otis that such a trial could open a Pandora’s box because “facts would develop implicating many others.”

General Otis sent the Brenner case to Washington writing: “After mature deliberation, I doubt the wisdom of court-martial in this case, as it would give the insurgent authorities a knowledge of what was taking place and they would assert positively that our troops had practiced inhumanities, whether the charge should be proven or not, as they would use it as an excuse to defend their own barbarities; and it is not thought that his charge is very grievous under the circumstances then existing, as it was very early in the war, and the patience of our men was under great strain.”
[...]
The most conclusive evidence that the enemy wounded were being killed, came from the official reports of Otis and his successor, General Arthur MacArthur, Jr., which claimed fifteen Filipinos killed for every one wounded. In the American Civil War, the ratio had been five wounded for every soldier killed, which is close to historical norm. Otis attempted to explain this anomaly by the superior marksmanship of rural southerners and westerners in the U.S. military, who had hunted all their lives. MacArthur added a racial twist, asserting that Anglo-Saxons do not succumb to wounds as easily as do men of “inferior races.”

Mark Twain, New York Herald, Oct. 15, 1900

I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

Conclusion

The parallels between the conduct of the US military in the Philippines War in 1900 and the current "war on terror" should be obvious. The lesson that has been learned by the military is not to declare an official war in the first place. This way the enemy need not be treated as an army and therefore the rules of conduct for war do not apply. This is what the US military did in the Philippines in 1902 by declaring victory and from thereon treating the Philippine army as "brigands" - the equivalent of today's "enemy combatants".

Related posts

Reflections on Mark Twain on Armistice Day

2009-11-11T15:53:00.012-05:00

I am a great admirer of Mark Twain. His real name was Samuel Clemens. I, in some sense, based my internet nom de plume, Frank Hope, on his familiar pseudonym. They both consist of two simple names of one syllable each. Both names are also words in their own right, and together they form a sort of poetic phrase.

Twain lived from 1835 to 1910. And although he passed away nearly a century ago, his voice sounds fresh and modern to our ears. In fact, I think it is Twain that taught Americans how to write in a modern way. His terse simplicity and the conversational tone of his writing are elements that we take for granted today, but must have seemed like a revelation to his contemporary audience.

Today is Armistice Day. A day in which we should remember all the soldiers who fought on all the battlefields of the world. Whether in a winning cause or a losing cause, or more likely in a lost cause. Since all wars are by their nature lost causes. The ends can never justify the means, and nowhere is this more true than in the ultimate form of brutality practiced by humankind - which is war.

I will let Kurt Vonnegut explain the true meaning of Armistice Day.

I will come to a time in my backwards trip when November eleventh, accidentally my birthday, was a sacred day called Armistice Day. When I was a boy, and when Dwayne Hoover was a boy, all the people of all the nations which had fought in the First World War were silent during the eleventh minute of the eleventh hour of Armistice Day, which was the eleventh day of the eleventh month.

It was during that minute in nineteen hundred and eighteen, that millions upon millions of human beings stopped butchering one another. I have talked to old men who were on battlefields during that minute. They have told me in one way or another that the sudden silence was the Voice of God. So we still have among us some men who can remember when God spoke clearly to mankind.

Armistice Day has become Veterans' Day. Armistice Day was sacred. Veterans' Day is not.

So I will throw Veterans' Day over my shoulder. Armistice Day I will keep. I don't want to throw away any sacred things.

What else is sacred? Oh, Romeo and Juliet, for instance.

And all music is.

Please pause and reflect upon these words.

Kurt Vonnegut was one of those writers who, like Mark Twain, opened my eyes. I read quite a few of his novels as a young man. I don't remember them in any detail now. Sadly I lost the pleasure of reading novels. But I think it was in "Slaughterhouse-Five" when Vonnegut described the bombing of Dresden that I first truly realized the horror of war. And not just that. But the fact that this true horror was being hidden from us. So that we could continue feeling good about ourselves and proud in our achievements of winning the war and slaughtering millions.

I have been blessed and never had to face the horror of war. I never had to don the uniform of a national army nor endure the humiliation of "basic training". I have tried to avoid in my life any involvement in the mass-murder economy that nourishes the belly of the beast. And yet I have reaped the benefits of those mass slaughters by my very citizenship as an American.

It took many years, but I finally came to realize that my opposition to the wars that America is addicted to fighting is a form of patriotism. And not only that, but it is a much truer form of patriotism than that practiced by those whose refrain is "Love it or leave it". America is much more than this global empire which dominates the world militarily and economically.

America at its best, as Martin Luther King said, is a dream. It is a concept that "all men are created equal". It is a shining light among nations as symbolized by the Statue of Liberty. There is the America that lives in our hearts, like a heavenly vision in the clouds; and there is the America that rains death and destruction on innocent Iraqis and Afghans half way around the world.

If liberty is just a cloak to hide the murderous monster that lurks beneath, then it loses all its virtue.

Mark Twain wrote a story titled "The War Prayer" in response to the Philippine war launched by the United States to crush the Philippine independence movement in 1899. Twain's response reminds me of Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience", which was his reply to the US invasion of Mexico a half century earlier in 1849. Both of these great Americans remind us of the deep longing for freedom and justice that is the essence of the American Dream.

Twain did more than just write a story to protest the American invasion of the Philippines, he was also one of the founders of the American Anti-Imperialist League. It is high time to revive the Anti-Imperialist League and turn it into a powerful political movement that encompasses people from the right and the left who truly understand the American Dream. And who understand how that dream is corrupted by the imperial lusting for new lands to conquer and rape.

Mark Twain wrote in 1900

I have read carefully the treaty of Paris, and I have seen that we do not intend to free, but to subjugate the people of the Philippines. We have gone there to conquer, not to redeem. It should, it seems to me, be our pleasure and duty to make those people free, and let them deal with their own domestic questions in their own way. And so I am an anti-imperialist. I am opposed to having the eagle put its talons on any other land.

I have no doubt that if Mark Twain were alive today, he would be just as vehemently opposed to the US wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; and for exactly the same reasons.

Here in its entirety is

The War Prayer
by Mark Twain

It was a time of great and exalting excitement. The country was up in arms, the war was on, in every breast burned the holy fire of patriotism; the drums were beating, the bands playing, the toy pistols popping, the bunched firecrackers hissing and spluttering; on every hand and far down the receding and fading spread of roofs and balconies a fluttering wilderness of flags flashed in the sun; daily the young volunteers marched down the wide avenue gay and fine in their new uniforms, the proud fathers and mothers and sisters and sweethearts cheering them with voices choked with happy emotion as they swung by; nightly the packed mass meetings listened, panting, to patriot oratory which stirred the deepest deeps of their hearts, and which they interrupted at briefest intervals with cyclones of applause, the tears running down their cheeks the while; in the churches the pastors preached devotion to flag and country, and invoked the God of Battles beseeching His aid in our good cause in outpourings of fervid eloquence which moved every listener. It was indeed a glad and gracious time, and the half dozen rash spirits that ventured to disapprove of the war and cast a doubt upon its righteousness straightway got such a stern and angry warning that for their personal safety's sake they quickly shrank out of sight and offended no more in that way.

Sunday morning came – next day the battalions would leave for the front; the church was filled; the volunteers were there, their young faces alight with martial dreams – visions of the stern advance, the gathering momentum, the rushing charge, the flashing sabers, the flight of the foe, the tumult, the enveloping smoke, the fierce pursuit, the surrender! Then home from the war, bronzed heroes, welcomed, adored, submerged in golden seas of glory! With the volunteers sat their dear ones, proud, happy, and envied by the neighbors and friends who had no sons and brothers to send forth to the field of honor, there to win for the flag, or, failing, die the noblest of noble deaths. The service proceeded; a war chapter from the Old Testament was read; the first prayer was said; it was followed by an organ burst that shook the building, and with one impulse the house rose, with glowing eyes and beating hearts, and poured out that tremendous invocation

God the all-terrible! Thou who ordainest! Thunder thy clarion and lightning thy sword!

Then came the "long" prayer. None could remember the like of it for passionate pleading and moving and beautiful language. The burden of its supplication was, that an ever-merciful and benignant Father of us all would watch over our noble young soldiers, and aid, comfort, and encourage them in their patriotic work; bless them, shield them in the day of battle and the hour of peril, bear them in His mighty hand, make them strong and confident, invincible in the bloody onset; help them to crush the foe, grant to them and to their flag and country imperishable honor and glory –

An aged stranger entered and moved with slow and noiseless step up the main aisle, his eyes fixed upon the minister, his long body clothed in a robe that reached to his feet, his head bare, his white hair descending in a frothy cataract to his shoulders, his seamy face unnaturally pale, pale even to ghastliness. With all eyes following him and wondering, he made his silent way; without pausing, he ascended to the preacher's side and stood there waiting. With shut lids the preacher, unconscious of his presence, continued with his moving prayer, and at last finished it with the words, uttered in fervent appeal, "Bless our arms, grant us the victory, O Lord our God, Father and Protector of our land and flag!"

The stranger touched his arm, motioned him to step aside – which the startled minister did – and took his place. During some moments he surveyed the spellbound audience with solemn eyes, in which burned an uncanny light; then in a deep voice he said:

"I come from the Throne – bearing a message from Almighty God!" The words smote the house with a shock; if the stranger perceived it he gave no attention. "He has heard the prayer of His servant your shepherd, and will grant it if such shall be your desire after I, His messenger, shall have explained to you its import – that is to say, its full import. For it is like unto many of the prayers of men, in that it asks for more than he who utters it is aware of – except he pause and think.

"God's servant and yours has prayed his prayer. Has he paused and taken thought? Is it one prayer? No, it is two – one uttered, the other not. Both have reached the ear of Him Who heareth all supplications, the spoken and the unspoken. Ponder this – keep it in mind. If you would beseech a blessing upon yourself, beware! lest without intent you invoke a curse upon a neighbor at the same time. If you pray for the blessing of rain upon your crop which needs it, by that act you are possibly praying for a curse upon some neighbor's crop which may not need rain and can be injured by it.

"You have heard your servant's prayer – the uttered part of it. I am commissioned of God to put into words the other part of it – that part which the pastor – and also you in your hearts – fervently prayed silently. And ignorantly and unthinkingly? God grant that it was so! You heard these words: 'Grant us the victory, O Lord our God!' That is sufficient. the whole of the uttered prayer is compact into those pregnant words. Elaborations were not necessary. When you have prayed for victory you have prayed for many unmentioned results which follow victory – must follow it, cannot help but follow it. Upon the listening spirit of God fell also the unspoken part of the prayer. He commandeth me to put it into words. Listen!

"O Lord our Father, our young patriots, idols of our hearts, go forth to battle – be Thou near them! With them – in spirit – we also go forth from the sweet peace of our beloved firesides to smite the foe. O Lord our God, help us to tear their soldiers to bloody shreds with our shells; help us to cover their smiling fields with the pale forms of their patriot dead; help us to drown the thunder of the guns with the shrieks of their wounded, writhing in pain; help us to lay waste their humble homes with a hurricane of fire; help us to wring the hearts of their unoffending widows with unavailing grief; help us to turn them out roofless with little children to wander unfriended the wastes of their desolated land in rags and hunger and thirst, sports of the sun flames of summer and the icy winds of winter, broken in spirit, worn with travail, imploring Thee for the refuge of the grave and denied it – for our sakes who adore Thee, Lord, blast their hopes, blight their lives, protract their bitter pilgrimage, make heavy their steps, water their way with their tears, stain the white snow with the blood of their wounded feet! We ask it, in the spirit of love, of Him Who is the Source of Love, and Who is the ever-faithful refuge and friend of all that are sore beset and seek His aid with humble and contrite hearts. Amen.

(After a pause.) "Ye have prayed it; if ye still desire it, speak! The messenger of the Most High waits!"

It was believed afterward that the man was a lunatic, because there was no sense in what he said.

Related links

The Spirit of the Palestinians - Reflections on the Palestinians and Henry David Thoreau's "Civil Disobedience".

TAPI? No thanks, I just had lunch.

2009-11-08T11:30:00.005-05:00

click on map to enlarge

Get ready to hear about Balochistan aka Baluchistan. What you won't hear about - but you should - is the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline.

Balochistan? Nope, never heard of it.

Until recently no one in the US had heard of South Waziristan either. We were told that South Waziristan in Pakistan is where the Taliban is operating from, which is why we have been bombing it with drone attacks; and we have coerced the Pakistan Army into launching an offensive in the area. In the process thousands of people have been forced to flee their homes, creating a new refugee problem.

In a major new piece of propaganda from the BBC, the US-UK axis of evil has announced its intention of expanding the AfPak war into Balochistan. Here is the insidious article from the BBC titled "Pakistan's Taliban dilemma".

The article starts out innocently enough.

Despite their fierce reputation, Afghans are mostly gentle, thoughtful people - deeply courteous, with warm humanity that radiates from luminous eyes.

"How refreshing," you might think. But this is just a ploy - a trick in the handbag of the propagandist - to lower your defenses.

The real article doesn't begin until a few paragraphs later. Despite the proclamation of how "gentle" the Afghan people are, the article quickly becomes another hate piece against the Taliban. That's curious because the Taliban are also Afghans - just not the "gentle, thoughtful" kind. Of course it is necessary to demonize the enemy in war. How else can we justify the murder of our fellow human beings?

The real article begins here.

The Afghan Taliban leadership and sources of supply are not even in Afghanistan, they are in Pakistan - in Quetta, a city just across the mountains from Kandahar where so many British and American troops have died.

You would be justified in assuming that Quetta is in South Waziristan since this is where the public has been told previously that the Taliban is operating from; you would be wrong. Quetta is the capital of the Pakistani province of Balochistan - a fact the article fails to mention. But Balochistan has a dual meaning - it is also the name of the region inhabited by the Balochi people. In this sense it is a region encompassing areas of Pakistan, Afghanistan and Iraq. Just take a look at the map at the top of this article.

So now we're being told that the Taliban is in Quetta. So naturally the US-UK axis of evil must launch military attacks against the enemy. And of course all of this is being done to protect the "gentle, thoughtful" people of Afghanistan. Yes, of course. It's simply a coincidence that the proposed TAPI pipeline runs straight through Quetta. Yes, of course.

Welcome to Pipeline-istan

click on map to enlarge

The green pipeline on the map above is the TAPI (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) pipeline. It will link the gas fields in Turkmenistan to the outside world - principally India. The red pipeline is the IPI (Iran-Pakistan-India) pipeline which is considered untenable by the US-UK axis of evil. The reason is plain from the map. It originates in Iran, which has been declared a pariah state by the US-UK.

In order to secure the path of the TAPI pipeline, Balochistan must be under the control of the US-UK axis. This control will also ensure that the competing IPI pipeline from Iran will never be built.

But as I stated previously, Balochistan is more than just a province of Pakistan - it is a whole region where the Balochis live that spills over into Afghanistan and Iran. So widening the war into Quetta will result in bringing the Balochis into the AfPak war.

And the Balochis already have a resistance movement which is active in Pakistan and Iran. So this could horribly complicate things. I honestly cannot fathom how it can be worth the lives of so many Afghan and Pakistani people to bring gas from Turkmenistan to the world markets. And why is it mostly US troops that must fight this war when the gas will end up going to India. There must be huge sums of money and stake, but is that a reason to subjugate whole nations?

And India must be gleeful to see Pakistan dissolving into a bloody civil war. Poor Pakistan has got the worst of it. For a while the ISI, the intelligence service of Pakistan, seemed to handle Afghanistan pretty well - even after 9/11. But it has literally blown up in their faces since the Obama administration took office.

I'm sorry. I don't mean to be insensitive to the Pakistanis by saying it has "blown up". But how can one avoid the conclusion that the violence that has spread all over Pakistan has been caused by the Obama administration's decision to widen the war in Afghanistan into Pakistan?

Oddly enough, in order for the US-UK strategy of controlling Balochistan to succeed, they will need the cooperation of Tehran. Otherwise the Iranians could easily arm the Balochis to fight the NATO forces. But Tehran's cooperation will probably not be that difficult to obtain. Tehran has been fighting a Balochi insurrection for years and will most likely be more than happy to cooperate in this area.

Of course the Iranians will want something in return. Perhaps this is why there has been a cooling of rhetoric against the Iranians from Washington lately. Who knows what deals are being worked out in the corridors of power. And so the Great Game continues, and people in Central Asia continue to be cast aside like easily dispensable pawns.

This article is just my humble attempt to summarize this information. To more fully understand the situation in Central Asia I highly recommend reading Pepe Escobar's series of article about what he calls 'Pipeline-istan'.

Start with this article, "Balochistan is the ultimate prize".
Then I suggest reading this "The shadow war in Balochistan".
Then continue reading the rest of Pepe's articles at Asia Times Online.

It's as real as it gets, baby

And just in case you still don't think the TAPI pipeline is real or you think this is just some kooky conspiracy theory, here is an article that affirms its existence. Not surprisingly, this article is not from the mainstream media.

From Turkmenistan.ru - Gas pipeline project Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India approved
November 2006

The participants of the regional conference held in New Delhi supported the project for constructing a gas pipeline between Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India (TAPI), ITAR TASS reported.

During the final press-conference, Afghanistan's Foreign Minister Rangin Dadfar urged Islamabad to give his country a transport transit through the territory of Pakistan to India. "We hope that Pakistan will open its territory for an international pipeline to India as soon as possible, so that we can strengthen cooperation in the region and implement recommendations of the conference," he said.

According to the minister, it would allow Afghanistan to realize its potential as an "energy bridge between Central and Southeast Asia". The two-day forum in the Indian capital was attended by officials from 18 countries, including Russia and about 10 international organizations. The delegation of Afghanistan was headed by Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

As Turkmenistan.ru already reported, in 2005, Asian Development Bank submitted to the ministers of oil and gas industry and mineral resources of Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India the final version of feasibility study of the Trans-Afghan gas pipeline designed by British company Penspen. The pipes will be 1,420 mm in diameter and will transport gas at a working pressure of 100 atmospheres. It will have a capacity of 33 billion cu m of natural gas per year. The 1,680 km pipeline will cost an estimated US $3.3 bln (2.5 bln euro). TAPI will run from the Dovetabat gas deposit in Turkmenistan to the Indian town of Fazilka, near the border between Pakistan and India. 6 compressor stations are to be constructed along the pipeline.

So now you know. It's not a secret anymore. Karzai and a select group of his friends will get fabulously wealthy from the transit fees, while the rest of the Afghans will not benefit at all. That's the way it works in an oligarchy.

Paid for by your tax dollars

Yes, energy is power. And India will need lots of energy to continue its growth. And it is the US military that will be the ones that guarantee that this happens. And of course this will also mean big profits for the transnational oil and gas companies owned by the Elite. So our young men and women will continue to sacrifice their lives so that the rich can get richer. Will the American people come to realize this before it is too late?

-------------

UPDATE: Nov 9

By popular demand I'm adding the video of the Country Joe McDonald "Feel Like I'm Fixing To Die" rag performance from Woodstock back in the summer of '69 at the height of the Vietnam War.

Come on all of you big strong men
Uncle Sam needs your help again
he's got himself in a terrible jam
way down yonder in Viet Nam so
put down your books and pick up a gun we're
gonna have a whole lotta fun

And it's one, two, three, what are we fighting for
don't ask me I don't give a damn, next stop is Viet Nam
And it's five, six, seven, open up the pearly gates
ain't no time to wonder why, whoopee we're all gonna die

Come on wall street don't be slow
why man this war is a go-go
there's plenty good money to be made by
supplying the army with the tools of its trade
let's hope and pray that if they drop the bomb,
they drop it on the Viet Cong

Come on generals, let's move fast
your big chance has come at last
now you can go out and get those reds
cos the only good commie is the one that's dead and
you know that peace can only be won when we've
blown 'em all to kingdom come

Come on mothers throughout the land
pack your boys off to Viet Nam
come on fathers don't hesitate
send your sons off before it's too late
and you can be the first ones on your block
to have your boy come home in a box

The Pirates of the Mediterranean aka Israel's Navy

2009-11-07T15:49:00.005-05:00

UPDATE: In a statement today (Nov 7) UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon condemned recent Israel-Hezbollah violations. What's strange about this statement is that the Sec-Gen does not mention anything about the Francop. Likewise the American government has not made any statements about this supposed arms shipment - no statements from President Obama or Secretary of State Clinton. All of this adds to my suspicion that this Israeli false flag operation has no credibility. Equally strange is that the prior alleged arms shipment to Syria aboard the Hansa India is not being mentioned in the context of the Francop. Why is the Hansa India shipment being quietly swept under the rug? Maybe there was some CIA connection with that shipment. Don't forget the Iran-Contra affair.

This is not a formal post, but a collection of my notes from investigating the Israeli pirates capture of the Francop in international waters. It started as a comment in response to Nolocontendere's excellent post on the blog Piglipstick titled "Fish Grow Larger Too With Each Retelling". It got so long that it exceeded the 4,096 character limit, so I'm posting it here.

------ start of long comment -------

To: Nolocontendere of Piglipstick blog

Since you have been so good at pointing out some of the glaring flaws and inconsistencies in this story, I want to give you some more information to see if you can decipher it.

The MSM is saying that the Francop is a Cyprus based ship. But I found articles that say the Francop is operated by a German company.

Spiegel [translated from German] - Stopped weapons freighter belongs to German shipping company

Also I'm very suspicious that the crew knew nothing about this shipment. They are now saying it was 36 containers out of 400, and that it weighed 600 tons. That's a lot! And I'm guessing that containers full of arms - which contain lead - would be significantly heavier than normal containers.

So what I'm suggesting is that the crew knew about the arms, and that this was a false flag operation run by Mossad, with perhaps CIA involvement.

Also it's supicious that the ship was allowed to leave Israel so quickly. Again this points to a false flag operation. The ship was intercepted on its way from Israel through Lebanese waters on Friday.

Lebanon probes Israeli-intercepted arms ship

"The Francop ship entered Lebanese territorial waters at noon today and, upon its arrival off Beirut port, the navy in cooperation with UN naval forces searched the vessel," an army statement said.

"Military intelligence began interrogating the crew on the motives for the seizure of the vessel while the concerned authorities... will take all the necessary measures to ensure it does not carry banned goods," it said.

The wording of the article implies that the ship's operators should bear responsibility for allowing arms to be carried on its ship. But Israel was happy with their excuse that they knew nothing about it. No questions asked. Do you see what I'm getting at?

Also the UN was involved in the interrogations of the crew. This ship regularly visits Beirut and the captain should have been fully aware of the restrictions on arms shipments to Lebanon.

Finally, here is a site which appears to be neutral, but which contains a lot of detailed information on this incident.

Flags of Convenience

Oddly, there are two pictures of the stern of the ship on this site. One has painted on the back of the ship "St. Johns" and the other "London" indicating the registration of the ship.

The more I dig into this the deeper it gets. Did you know there was another ship detained by the US military with Iranian arms in October - the Hansa India? Notice that this was also a German ship.

US troops find Syria-bound weapons in Suez

US soldiers discovered several containers of ammunition aboard a German ship bound for Syria and possibly Hizbullah earlier this month, German news magazine Der Spiegel reported on Monday. US troops stationed in the Gulf of Suez boarded the freighter Hansa India at the beginning of October and found eight containers of ammunition “apparently being shipped from Iran to Syria,” it claimed. Two US warships stopped the ship after receiving a tip-off from intelligence services.

BTW, Israel's IDF has posted YouTube videos and slide shows related to the Francop. I'm wondering if it's normal for Iranian companies to label all their products in English. And also, the containers were clearly marked IRISL, which is the Iranian shipping company. Nothing like hiding in plain sight.

Slide Show of Weaponry Found on The 'Francop' 5 Nov 2009
Israel Navy Intercepts Iranian Weapons en route to Hezbollah, 4 Nov 2009

Notice IDF Navy Commander getting off the Francop in the slideshow. Maybe it was Celine and Jacqueline's day off.

Israeli navy chief apologizes for strip club visit

The Germans were asked if they were going to prosecute this case and their answer was no because the ship is registered in Antigua. How convenient.

Germany: No case against ship's owners

And from the same article it looks like this is the start of an Israeli campaign to boycott all shipping from Iran.

On Wednesday, in the aftermath of the Francop's capture, Israel's Foreign Ministry sent a memo to its ambassadors abroad urging them to speak to their governments about stepping up pressure against Iran.

They were instructed to also ask the governments to be more vigilant with respect to commercial shipping and in particular to follow the example of the United Kingdom, which earlier this month banned companies from dealing with the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines.

It just gets deeper and deeper...

Enjoy! Sorry for the long comment. It started off really short and just kept growing. Kind of like Pinochio's nose.

-------- end of long comment ---------

As a bonus, here's a previous comment I made on the article "Pot, Kettle" - also from the Piglipstick blog...

Another great article on the Israeli Pirates of the Mediterranean. I don't know how you do it. You really crank out the articles. Great stuff on the swine flu scam as well. I too wrote on this subject in little article I titled Swine flu emergency or a bunch of baloney?.

But anyway, enough shameless promotion. I found a few links on the Israeli piracy case that you be interested in. I don't know what exactly what to make of them. So I'm hoping you can decipher them.

First up a couple of articles from DEBKAfile. They pretend to go into detail about the supposed drug running operation, but I think they get slightly hysterical. Anyway, if your not bored with this whole farce yet take a look at these links.

Captured Iranian arms ship tip of the iceberg of vast weapons sealift to Hizballah
Israel Navy commander: Hizballah arms ship carried hundreds of tons of hardware

They go into a whole drama about how the arms passed through the Suez and were shadowed by the US and Israeli Navy in the Mediterranean. Very Tom Clancy.

I decided to check up on some of their info and found this. On a site called MarineTraffic.com they have information on ships and they include the Iranian ship "Visea". There are links to maps of the exact location. So Iran is doing a great job of keeping this hidden. You don't need a satellite to track this ship - just a PC.

MarineTraffic info on Visea

And on another site called United Feeder Services I found information on the Francop. The ship apparently runs a regular schedule which includes Beirut, Lebanon.

Francop schedule

My own theory is that when the Francop was at the Egyptian port of Damietta, the arms were smuggled on board. Egypt has been working alongside Israel to crush Hamas. This is well known. So it wouldn't surprise me to find out they were working with Mossad on this operation as well.

I hope this helps.

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UPDATE 2: Nov 7

More, More, More - How do you like it?

Yes there's more. (Sorry, I couldn't resist.)

Where's the love? That's what Israeli newspapers want to know. The Jerusalem Post just can't understand why the world isn't going ga-ga over the weapons seized by the Israeli Navy.

In January 2002, the IDF commandeered the Iranian Karine A weapons ship en route to Gaza. The Karine A was carrying a 10th of the weapons that the Francop was carrying. But the impact the Israeli commando mission then had on Israel's political position was more than 10 times greater than the political impact of this week's successful operation.

The exposure then of Iran's support for Palestinian Authority-backed terror forces caused the Bush administration to abandon its previous acceptance of Yasser Arafat as a legitimate political leader. That in turn paved the way for Israel's launch of Operation Defensive Shield three months later. In that operation Israel wrested military control over Judea and Samaria away from Palestinian militias and terror cells.

Wednesday's raid has had no discernible impact on American policy. The US did not denounce either Syria or Iran for breaching the UN Security Council resolution barring Iranian arms shipments as well as the Security Council resolution prohibiting nations from arming Hizbullah. The US did not state that in response to what Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu called a "smoking gun," it will reconsider its decision to send an ambassador to Damascus or its commitment to appeasing Iran through its nuclear talks in Geneva. The only thing a State Department official could bring himself to say was that the US is concerned about "Hizbullah's efforts to rearm in direct violation of various UN Security Council resolutions," and remark that the groups remains, "a significant threat to peace and security in Lebanon and the region."

Despite the government's energetic efforts to use the Francop interception as a means to convince the nations of the world to unite against Iranian-backed terror, no one seems willing to acknowledge the clear strategic implications of Iran's exports of terror weaponry. Today no one is any more willing to treat Iran as the enemy of the international system it has been for 30 years than they were before Israel exposed the Francop cargo of terror for all the world to see.

I couldn't agree more, more, more. Nobody is buying this false flag operation. Don't you think Madame Secretary "nuke Iran" Clinton would be heralding this if there was anything to it. She's never been shy about denouncing Iran or doing the bidding of her AIPAC handlers. As I said before, this just raises my suspicions even more that this was all a setup designed to divert attention from the Goldstone Report.

And for those true blue conspiracy theorists, I'll give you one more possibility. It could be that the arms were destined to supply some CIA led operation. Maybe they were arms being sent through Turkey to supply CIA supported operations in Iran. Who knows? Somebody at the US State Department obviously knows something, and they're not telling.

US Congress declares war on the Palestinian people

2009-11-04T13:50:00.001-05:00

In an act of war, the US Congress condemned the Goldstone report that investigated the claims that Israel had committed war crimes in its offensive against Gaza. Without ever challenging the facts of the Goldstone report, the resolution alleged that the report was one sided and biased against Israel.

This is the height of Imperialism. It is the signing of a new Balfour declaration - assigning all the Palestinian territories over to the Jewish state. Just like the Balfour agreement, this resolution is nonbonding and does not have the force of law. And yet it will be used to justify and offer cover for a Zionist agenda whose ultimate goal is the to dispossess Palestinians of all their land; and to expand the Jewish state to the Jordan river and to the Sinai peninsula.

The US Congress through this resolution has given its approval for this Zionist project of ethnic cleansing. It has approved whatever means necessary for the Jewish state to accomplish this task including bombing of vital civilian infrastructure, blockades, and the killing of innocent women and children.

When the history of this conflict is written, it will be impossible to deny the complicity of the US government in the war crimes, and crimes against Humanity committed against the Palestinian people. Never has a people been so maligned while struggling for their basic Human Rights. Shame on you Israel! And shame on the United States government for providing the cover in international organizations, like the United Nations, which allow these crimes to go unpunished.

¡Qué Viva Palestina Libre!
Long live Free Palestine!

Statement by Rep. Dennis Kucinich on the floor of the US Congress

Kucinich Addresses UN Goldstone Gaza Resolution

"Today we journey from Operation Cast Lead to Operation Cast Doubt. Almost as serious as committing war crimes is covering up war crimes, pretending that war crimes were never committed and did not exist."

"Because behind every such deception is the nullification of humanity, the destruction of human dignity, the annihilation of the human spirit, the triumph of Orwellian thinking, the eternal prison of the dark heart of the totalitarian."

"The resolution before us today, which would reject all attempts of the Goldstone Report to fix responsibility of all parties to war crimes, including both Hamas and Israel, may as well be called the "Down is Up, Night is Day, Wrong is Right: resolution."

"Because if this Congress votes to condemn a report it has not read, concerning events it has totally ignored, about violations of law of which it is unaware, it will have brought shame to this great institution."

"How can we ever expect there to be peace in the Middle East if we tacitly approve of violations of international law and international human rights, if we look the other way, or if we close our eyes to the heartbreak of people on both sides by white-washing a legitimate investigation?"

"How can we protect the people of Israel from existential threats if we hold no concern for the protection of the Palestinians, for their physical security, their right to land, their right to their own homes, their right to water, their right to sustenance, their right to freedom of movement, their right to human security of jobs, education and health care?"

"We will have peace only when the plight of both Palestinians and Israelis is brought before this House and given equal consideration in recognition of that principle that all people on this planet have a right to survive and thrive, and it is our responsibility, our duty to see that no individual, no group, no people are barred from this humble human claim."

Timothy Geithner: The Goldman Sachs fink in the White House

2009-10-30T20:33:00.003-04:00

Click on image for a larger view

If there's one guy in the Obama administration that I really can't stomach, it has to be Timothy Geithner. What qualifies him to be Secretary of Treasury anyway? Is it because he has spent his life coddling up to the most powerful men on Wall Street?

Today he showed his true stripes again. In what was apparently a private meeting with the Chicago Tribune's editorial board he let his guard down.

Geithner says bailout money well spent by Gail MarksJarvis

As U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner looks back at the efforts made by government to treat the financial crisis, he says "the money spent was very limited."

The comment might seem startling given his emphasis repeatedly on the need to pull back the nation's deficit once the economy is less "fragile" than it now is. But as Geithner spoke with the Chicago Tribune's editorial board today, he said "I am deeply at peace with the necessity of what has been done" -- including the government's intervention in GM, investment banks, AIG and Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. He emphasized that the money is getting repaid.
[...]
Still, Geithner notes that while there are "encouraging" signs in recent economic statistics, "unemployment probably will rise further." Although some analysts worry that the nation could be going through a "jobless recovery," Geithner says the recovery so far seems to be following a typical path.

SAY WHAT???

Did he really say "unemployment probably will rise further" and then go on to nonchalantly add that the recovery was "following a typical path"? I wish I had a videotape of that to see his tone and demeanor when he said that. And to capture his exact words.

That's quite a bit different from what he told Congress in recent hearings.

“Unemployment remains unacceptably high,” said secretary to the Treasury Tim Geithner. “For every person out of work, for every family facing foreclosure, for every small business facing a credit crunch, the recession remains alive and acute.”

So when Geithner addresses Congress he strikes a populist tone and says "unemployment remains unacceptably high" and goes on to lament the plight of the working family. But when speaking in private he strikes a more elitist tone and says that "unemployment probably will rise further" and that the recovery is "following a typical path."

Marie Antoinette couldn't have said it better.

I'll bet Geithner never thought that Gail MarksJarvis was going to quote him directly in her column in the Chicago Tribune. I'm also betting he asked the members of the Chicago Tribune's editorial board to turn off all recording devices before he began talking. Now we just have Gail's notes to go by, and I'm sure that Geithner would claim that he was misquoted if confronted with his statements.

And I'm also sure that this is nothing compared to the kind of things he says when he is speaking privately with his friends back on Wall Street. Do I even need to remind you of his incessant phone chats with his Wall Street pals?

Mr. Geithner, Wall Street Is On Line 1 (again)

Even during his most frenzied days, when Congress is demanding answers or the president himself is calling, Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner makes time to talk to a select group of powerful Wall Street bankers.

They are a small cadre of businessmen who have known and worked with Geithner for years, whose multibillion-dollar companies all survived the economic crisis with help from U.S. taxpayers.

When they call, Geithner answers. He has spoken with them immediately after hanging up with President Barack Obama and before heading up to Capitol Hill, between phone calls with senators and after talking with the Federal Reserve chairman, according to a review by The Associated Press of seven months of his appointment calendars.

Someone should make a FOI request for Geithner's Facebook records. I can just guess who appears on his "friends list".

C'mon Obama! Dump this guy! If you don't he is going to drag you down with him. It's your choice. You're the President. You can't blame Geithner for your own economic policy.

Like Marcy Kaptur said on a recent interview on Bill Moyers Journal...

MARCY KAPTUR: When Lincoln ran into trouble, during the Civil War, he got new generals. He brought in Grant. I hope that President Obama will bring in some new generals on the financial front.

Marcy knows what she's talking about. Her constituents are on the front lines of the war back home in her district in Ohio.

We need a General Grant at the head of Treasury - not a Benedict Arnold! You can't expect to win a war if your generals are fighting for the other side.

Geithner is Goldman Sach's inside man

Geithner is a plant in the Obama administration from Goldman Sachs. He was a protégé of ex-Goldman CEO Robert Rubin, who gave Geithner a job in the Clinton Treasury Department. You can see here in this picture a young Timothy Geithner humbling himself before his Goldman master.

As New York Fed President, Geithner worked closely with ex-Goldman CEO "Hank" Paulson and Fed Chief Bernanke on the bailout of AIG which benefitted mostly Goldman. Currently, Geithner's Chief of Staff at Treasury is Mark Patterson - a former lobbyist for Goldman Sachs.

It's very simple Mr. President. In order to save your own neck, you must FIRE GEITHNER!

And then appoint someone like Elizabeth Warren or Sheila Bair in his place. Someone who is on the side of the American People, not on the side of Wall Street.

Mr. President, you promised us "change we can believe in" and "hope". The American People had high expectations when we elected you to be the leader of this great country. Please don't let us down. There is enough cynicism in this world already. Turning our "hope" into "despair" only heightens that.

And if you cannot come to grips with the situation and replace your "generals", then let me warn you right now. The American People are a fair and patient people. But when our patience runs out, there will be a political price to pay. And our patience is running very thin.

Related posts

Some more recommended reading

I would also like to highly recommend the following article, which does one of the best jobs I've seen of detailing Geithner's connections to the various men and women of power who run the Obama White House. The writer even found a connection between Timothy Geithner's father and Barack Obama's mother which I was completely unaware of. I don't want to spoil the surprise, so you'll have to read the article to find out.

How Geithner Became Secretary of the Treasury

I believe that Tim Geithner was placed into the treasury position because he is the only person directly associated with everyone listed in the points above. He is very clearly connected to the Clinton's, Two former Treasury Secretary's, Barack Obama, The Ford Foundation, and through his policy choices, he currently controls the fate of our banking system.

After doing my research I am of the opinion that Geithner is in his office as I write this not because of his qualifications but rather as a result of tremendous lobbying power. He is there, because forces greater than him are influencing and calling the shots for Barack Obama; at least in the treasury area perhaps not broadly. This information has ultimately reminded me that our political system is just as incestuous as it's ever been. All in all if my thoughts are true, there is no doubt in my mind that our financial system as it exists today will not be fixed, our banks will not be nationalized, and it will take a revolution to occur for real change to happen within our banks.

P.S.

I just re-watched this video of Maxine Waters grilling a hapless Timothy Geithner. Take a look.

Now I know why Maxine Waters is being targeted in an ethics probe and her name was leaked to the press. It's payback time! You just can't talk to Goldman Sach's man in the White House that way without being singled out for retribution.

You would think that the ethics committee would go after the big fish in Congress that take lobbying money and effectively sell their votes to the corporations that fund their campaigns. But no-o-o-o. Or you'd think that they would go after people like Timothy Geithner or "Hank" Paulson that sold out the American People to Wall Street to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars. But no-o-o-o.

Instead they go after little Maxine Waters. Maybe she did put her hand in the cookie jar. But who in Congress hasn't? She just stepped on the wrong toes. And now she is being hung out to dry. Not unlike what happened to Cynthia McKinney. She's being made an example of. If you want to keep your job in Congress, you'd better keep your mouth shut.

And guess who else is on that leaked list of House members under investigation. Marcy Kaptur. See what I mean about keeping your mouth shut? And no matter what anyone says, they cannot convince me that this leak was an accident.

Goldman Sachs - liar, liar pants on fire!

2009-10-29T09:41:00.001-04:00

With great power comes great lies

Not only are Goldman Sachs a bunch of criminals as I've stated before, but they're also a bunch of liars!

Oh sure. You're not surprised and think that this is a trivial point. But in my book, the worst sort of person is a liar. Why? Because you can't trust them. Even criminals can be truthful. But there's one sort of criminal that you can never trust to tell the truth - the psychopath. That's the sort of people were dealing with at Goldman Sachs.

So meet the head psychopath over at Goldman Sachs. His name is David Viniar and he is the CFO (Chief Financial Officer) and the chief spokesperson for the lying bunch of scum over at 85 Broad Street in Lower Manhattan. Here's a map in case you want to pay them a visit like Michael Moore did in his film "Capitalism: A Love Story".

View Larger Map

While your there, could you make a citizen's arrest of the Board of Directors of Goldman Sachs like Moore unsuccessfully attempted to do in his movie? Thanks. You'd be doing us all a big favor.

Janet Tavakoli calls 'em like she sees 'em

I'm a big fan of Janet Tavakoli - the author of "Dear Mr. Buffet". In a commentary which she released on her website on October 27, she pulls no punches. And she goes for a knockout when she calls David A. Viniar, Goldman’s CFO, a liar.

In my opinion, David Viniar’s (CFO of Goldman Sachs) comments in the fall of 2008 were a lie (see endnote), and for that matter, Lloyd Blankfein’s (CEO of Goldman Sachs) later comments to the Wall Street Journal were disingenuous. In the context of what was happening near the time of AIG’s implosion, the key question was “What is going on between Goldman and AIG?” Their rhetoric surrounding this issue is a deft dodge. They may claim they didn’t “technically” lie, but Goldman’s business exposure to AIG posed both credit risk and reputation risk. They seem to overlook elements of the former and put insufficient value on the latter.
[...]
JT Note: It is a strong statement to say that a CFO lied to the public, and in my opinion, David Viniar, Goldman’s CFO, lied about Goldman’s exposure to AIG while the AIG bailout was in progress in September 2008. Viniar spoke about risk management, but that is a separate issue from whether or not Goldman Sachs would have money at risk due to its direct business with AIG. Goldman Sachs would have been out billions of dollars in collateral had a bankruptcy‐like settlement been negotiated with AIG, and that is material (see also the commentary above).

This is what David Viniar said during his Sept 16, 2008 earnings call:

David Viniar ‐ The Goldman Sachs Group, Inc. ‐ EVP, CFO Sure. Without giving exact numbers, let me just tell you how we think about this. AIG and Lehman, big important financial institution counterparties to Goldman Sachs. We did and we do a lot of business with both of them, as we do with all other major financial institutions. The way we do business with financial institutions is by having appropriate daily margin terms. That is how we are able to do the volume of business with each other that we do. And that goes for AIG, Lehman, and also Morgan Stanley, and JPMorgan, and Citi, and UBS, and Credit Suisse. That is how we manage our risk. In addition to the margin terms, we augment our risk management with appropriate hedging strategies. You heard at the beginning of my remarks that we believe one of the biggest challenges we have is to avoid large concentrated exposures; and we took that very much into account in managing our credit exposures to Lehman and to AIG, as well as we do with any other financial institution. Given that, what I would tell you is given the outcome at Lehman and whatever the outcome at AIG, I would expect the direct impact of our credit exposure to both of them to be immaterial to our results. [This last emphasis was added by Ms. Tavakoli.]

She's not the first to notice CFO Viniar's flirtations with the truth.

Gretchen Morgenson of the New York Times, who deserves a 2nd Pulitzer Prize, pointed out the same misstatement by Viniar in her iconic piece on AIG's demise written on September 27, 2008. That's right - 2008. That groundbreaking article titled "Behind Insurer’s Crisis, Blind Eye to a Web of Risk" revealed the GS-AIG symbiotic relationship in amazing detail given that the bailout was just taking shape at the time.

Here's a quote from her article which you'll find familiar.

"Few knew of Goldman’s exposure to A.I.G. When the insurer’s flameout became public, David A. Viniar, Goldman’s chief financial officer, assured analysts on Sept. 16 that his firm’s exposure was “immaterial,” a view that the company reiterated in an interview."

She's referring here to the same Sept 16 earnings call that Tavakoli refers to. And Morgenson also highlights the use of the term "immaterial".

It so happens that I wrote an article in my blog in March 2009 titled "Welcome to the Wall St. jungle" where I analyzed Morgenson's article in light of the revelations that had come out at that time about the Fed bailout of AIG. I highlighted the passage from Morgenson above and added a comment of my own.

"Is the NYT calling GS's CFO a liar?"

It's nice to see someone with the credibility of Janet Tavakoli backing up my sentiments. My guess is that Viniar is so used to lying and getting away with it that it is just second nature to him. After all he has powerful people like Robert Rubin and Hank "the Hammer" Paulson ready to defend him.

Hank the Hammer

No not this Hank the Hammer!

He's a character in the way popular video game, World of Warcraft (WOW). But he's got nothing on the real life Hank the Hammer who was described as "the most powerful man in America" in his heyday at the height of the economic "crisis".

The most powerful man in America today is not President Bush. Nor is it the two men fighting to replace him, Barack Obama and John McCain. It is Hank 'the Hammer' Paulson.

For make no mistake, it is the U.S. Treasury Secretary who is calling all the shots on the credit crunch crisis. At the word of this former banker, the American taxpayer has committed hundreds of billions of dollars to save some firms (such as insurance giant AIG) and let others (such as Lehman's) go to the wall.

So who is Hank Paulson, and what gives him the right to play God with the world's banking system? Paulson, 62, was brought up in suburban Illinois, where he won a reputation as a tough, sporting child.

He was an American Football hero at high school and university, and it was on the football field that this 6ft 2in bear of a man won the Hammer nickname. He still works out every day and one former colleague says: 'Hank comes across as a big, tough, redneck.'

What I really think that former colleague meant to say is that Paulson comes across as a hired thug or a Mafia enforcer.

Lock 'em up and throw away the key

I hope that this story gets some follow up. It's truly frustrating to see all these revelations come to light and then nothing is done to go after the "too big to jail" criminals like Paulson and Geithner.

You might also enjoy another article I wrote about Goldman Sachs back in September 2008 titled "Goldman Sachs: Wall St. Gangstas". It's become popular enough that if you do a Google search for "goldman sachs criminals", it is one of the top results. :)

Related posts

Reality comes home to roost in markets

2009-10-28T22:50:00.003-04:00

Just about two weeks ago when the Dow went roaring above 10,000 I made the bold prediction that the market had peaked in my article "Prediction: Stock market has peaked". This elicited from some the reaction that I was desperately in need of a brain transplant.

I'd just like to say this. "I told you so!" I know it's a very immature reaction. It reveals a personality that is at once smug and insecure. Guilty as charged!

And what did I say would be the reason for this sudden turnaround? "A return to reality." And what did the fickle financial pundits give as a reason for today's 2% slam dunk of the market.

Stocks slammed

A surprise drop in new home sales sends market lower, with the Nasdaq sliding for the fourth straight session, as investors question strength of the economic recovery.
[...]
The Dow Jones industrial average (INDU) lost 119 points, or 1.2%, to close at 9,762.69. The S&P 500 (SPX) index dropped 21 points, or 2%, to close at 1,042.63. The Nasdaq composite (COMP) tumbled 56 points, or 2.7%, to close at 2,059.61.

The Dow and S&P have fallen for three of the last four sessions, and the Nasdaq for all three, as investors have turned cautious following a seven-month stock rally.

Since bottoming at a 12-year low in March, the S&P 500 gained 63% through its peak on Oct. 19. But since then, it's lost 5%, as of Wednesday's close.

Enthusiasm about the largely better-than-expected quarterly earnings reports has been tempered recently by concerns about the still-burgeoning economic recovery.

Surprise? Why should anyone be surprised at a drop in new home sales when unemployment remains at record levels. Unless your living in a bubble, this should come as no surprise.

Unemployment is Higher Almost Everywhere

Unemployment rates were higher in September than a year earlier in 371 of the 372 United States metropolitan areas, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics.
[...]
The greatest increase in unemployment over the last year was in Detroit-Warren-Livonia, Mich., where joblessness grew 8.4 percentage points to a total rate of 17.3 percent in September 2009. The second-greatest year-over-year increase was in Muskegon-Norton Shores, Mich., where the rate rose 6.8 percentage points to 16 percent.

In September 2009, the overall highest metropolitan rates of unemployment (again, not seasonally adjusted) were in El Centro, Calif., and Yuma, Ariz., where rates touched 30.1 and 24.2 percent, respectively. These two areas, which both border Mexico, are highly agricultural.

Well let's see here - 371 out of 372. Well we all know the old saying about "damn lies and statistics". But yeah, I'd say that's 'statistically significant'. I think we can all agree that this meets the criteria of "almost everywhere". But still the financially clueless pundits at CNN Money are "surprised" when bad economic news comes out.

Previous peak predictions

Just one last jab at my critics. I don't often go online and make financial predictions. I don't have any financial qualifications to do that. I only make public statements when it appears to me that the markets are so out of whack with reality through gross manipulation, that eventually they have to come back down to earth.

As I was reviewing my previous posts, I came across this one from September 20, 2008 - "Sell High - NOW!". So was I right?

See that cliff on the left? That was September 20, 2008 when the S&P was at 1255. From there it fell to 899 on October 10, 2008. So what do you think? Was I too sensational with my headline of "Sell High - NOW!"? Should I have not used all caps on the word NOW? Was I being overly dramatic by adding an exclamation point at the end? Because, you know, I want to improve my blog writing style.

My Google surprise!

I probably would have waited a while longer to write this post to see what happens with the markets, except I happened to notice a very strange thing. A Google search of 'market has peaked' returns as the top result my previous article. Isn't that weird? I mean, as much as I might wish otherwise, my blog is not on the top of everyone's reading list that is interested in the stock market. The article in which I predicted that the market had peaked was not even a particularly popular one on my blog. In fact, you can pretty much say it flopped. Maybe someone at Google just likes me. I'm at as much at a loss for an explanation as you are.

You ain't seen nothing yet

Alright, I'll go further out on a limb. I'm going to repeat my prediction that the Dow has further to drop. In fact I don't usually look at the Dow, I usually look at the S&P 500. And what I said in my previous article was that the S&P would continue to drop from a high of about 1100 to at least 1000. Right now it's at 1042 which is about half of the way down or a drop of about 5%.

So should you buy in now? No. I would say "keep your powder dry". Unless that is you enjoy giving away 5% of your retirement savings to the stock market manipulators at Goldman Sachs.

Hold on until it hits 990, then dive in. Hey, if it keeps going down after that at least you'll have the good feeling that you didn't lose that initial 10% from the peak. And if it goes up, then you'll be that much richer.

From there, when to get off the roller coaster on the way up is completely up to you. I have no way of knowing in advance what top the market manipulators at GS have set. I just assume that it will oscillate around 1000 for a while.

What about Gold?

I asked this same rhetorical question in my last article. Yes, it's true that gold is also down from its peak. Am I worried? No, because the Plunge Protection Team led by the traders at Goldman Sachs can only keep prices out of whack for so long before they revert back to their natural state. Recently we have seen the dollar rise which has caused the price of gold to go down. But in just a matter of days I fully expect that there will be a resurgence in gold.

So hold on to your gold - whether it's an ETF or a the real thing. Don't panic and you'll be quite pleased with the results. I promise. And if not you can leave me a nasty comment. That should make you feel much better. Just don't get too nasty or a might be tempted to delete it.

BTW, as long as I'm saying "I told you so", I would like to remind long time readers of FNT of an entry from almost exactly a year ago. I wrote an article titled "Buy Gold NOW!" At the time an ounce of gold was worth $733. Since then gold has steadily gone up. It's nearly 40% higher than it was a year ago.

And the S&P 500? Well let's just say "it's been interesting". If roller coasters are your thing, then the S&P was definitely the place to be. I just hope you didn't get out at the wrong time, or likewise buy in at the wrong time, because that could be lethal.

It's your choice you can either hang in there with the S&P for the ride of your life, or switch your investments over to gold for a little peace of mind and security. In fact now would be a great time to do just that. Just remember a year from now. "I told you so."

Russia - the last frontier

If you're really feeling lucky, then when the S&P slips below 1000 you should buy into the Russian stock market with the RSX ETF. It pretty much follows the S&P but is much more volatile.

I happen to think that the future for Russia is brighter than most people currently realize. My one big concern - and its a huge one - is regarding corruption.

But if you think about the big trends - energy, water, farmland, even population. Russia has every reason to be optimistic. Of course that assumes that the government doesn't screw it up, which is a big assumption when you consider the history. Is Putin the next Stalin, or the next Jefferson? I certainly don't know the answer to that one.

Regarding the Russian population, I want to point out one thing that is totally lost in all these discussions about man's impact on climate. When you get to the bottom of these arguments, it all comes down to population increases. What's interesting about Russia is that it has actually lost population in recent years. It's so bad that some experts have warned that Russia's economy could be severely impacted.

UN report says Russia could face labor shortages, slowing economic growth as population falls

Russia's population has fallen by 6.6 million since 1993, despite the influx of millions of immigrants, a United Nations report said Monday, and by 2025 the country could lose a further 11 million people.

The result could be labor shortages, an aging population and slower economic growth, the U.N. said.
[...]
Population levels in many developed countries have stagnated and are expected to fall by 2025, but Russia's population, currently around 142 million, has been in retreat since 1992. Russia's mortality rate is among the highest in the developed world, with average life expectancy for males at barely 60 years.

For reasons that are not fully understood, Russians suffer very high levels of cardiovascular disease. But most experts blame the country's overall high death rate on one factor, alcohol. It has been linked to everything from liver disease to Russia's high number of murders, suicides and fatal accidents.

According to a 2007 U.N. report, in 1950 what is now the Russian Federation had the world's fourth-largest population. By 2007, the report said, Russia ranked ninth globally, behind Bangladesh and Nigeria. By 2050, the U.N. estimates, Russia will rank 15th, with a population smaller than that of Vietnam.

Personally, I think this whole idea is ridiculous. On the one hand the alarmists warn us of a coming crisis if the population continues to increase, and on the other hand they warn of a crisis if the population should remain steady or even decline. So which is it?

Halting Russia's population collapse

Demographic experts say Russia's steep population decline could have serious consequences for the economy.

"The numbers are frightening," says Sergei Zakharov, from the Institute of Demography at Moscow's Higher School of Economics.

By 2050, Russia's population could shrink from the current figure of 142 million people to 100 million, according to a United Nations sponsored study published last year.

Mr Jaeger adds that in demographic terms, Russia is in the worst position of any of the BRIC countries.

He explains that India's population has been growing fast, while in China the workforce will continue to expand until 2015, when the population will start to age, but it should not decline.

Brazil, he estimates, will benefit from an 20% increase in workforce by 2025.

Mr Jaeger believes that Russia could face a population collapse.

And keep in mind that Russia is the largest country in the world even after its transformation from the USSR. Will Russia become a deserted wilderness inhabited only by reindeer and bears? I don't think so, although that's hardly the worst thing that could happen.

Related articles

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NOTE 1: I should have probably saved this last segment about Russia for another blog entry. I tried to write one earlier, but found the subject too large to address. So I just stuck it in here, mostly just to get it off my chest. Maybe one day I'll write a proper article on this subject. If so, you have just received a free preview. Oh yeah, that's right I'm thinking about charging for subscriptions to my blog now that I'm a top result in Google.

Just kidding :)

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NOTE 2: Other interesting top Google results for my blog.

"Goldman Sachs criminals" -> hits on Goldman Sachs: Wall St. Gangstas
"Geithner dollar" -> hits on Geithner's dollar gaffe
"Patrick Parkinson" -> hits on Fed crony Patrick Parkinson named to be top bank regulator

Click on the links above to see the Google search results. Cool huh?

FNT used to be one of the top hits for a search of SIGTARP which hit on my article "SIGTARP is the new sheriff in town" until the MSM got a clue and figured out the importance of this position. You gotta hand it to the ol' MSM - they're big, dumb and slow, but eventually they catch on.

Gaza Freedom March - Bust the Blockade on 1/1/2010!

2009-10-25T15:48:00.001-04:00

I just became aware of the Gaza Freedom March campaign to end the criminal Israeli siege of Gaza. It will begin in Egypt on December 29 at the Rafah crossing, and will continue into Gaza. On January 1, 2010 the marchers will break the illegal siege by marching directly from Gaza into Israel.

I urge everyone to support this historic action by getting the word out and making donations. But ultimately, the greatest way to support this action is to actually participate. You can sign up here.

This video in support of the march is as poignant a one as any I've seen. Readers of FNT will recognize many of the images.

For more information go to the official Gaza Freedom March webpage.
www.gazafreedommarch.org

Related posts

There are too many related posts to mention. Try running a search for Gaza within FNT in the search box at the upper right hand corner, or click on this link for the same results.

Swine flu emergency or a bunch of baloney?

2009-10-24T18:34:00.002-04:00

Obama declares "pre-emptive" national swine flu emergency giving HHS "extraordinary powers" after only 1,000 deaths nationwide.

What was the big rush? Shouldn't he have consulted with Congress? According to the official statements, this was done "pre-emptively". A pre-emptive emergency? What the hell is that!

Last week was the propaganda piece on H1N1 on "60 Minutes". This week its a "national emergency". And the sneaky bastards snuck it in on a Saturday when no one was paying attention to the news.

According to this "60 minute" propaganda report, the CDC says "the way this virus is spreading is unprecedented". Wo-o-o-o scary! Grab the kids and run Martha!

Before we all panic about the case of Luke Duvall described in this segment, I just want to highlight a brief passage from the transcript.

In Little Rock, the flu tests came back on Luke Duvall: it is 2009 H1N1, but also something else - staph pneumonia on top of the flu virus.

Staphylococcal bacteria came in behind the virus, in that common co-infection seen in the sickest patients.

Asked what that means, Dr. Michele Moss told Pelley, "Well, it means that some of the injury in his lung is due to the virus and due to the flu, but on top of it he's got just a good old fashioned bacterial pneumonia with the toxins from the bacteria causing his blood pressure to be unstable."

So Luke is infected with H1N1, but he also has a staphylococcal bacterial infection. That bacterial infection is in turn causing the pneumonia. And it is the pneumonia that is putting him in mortal danger. You'll see why this important in a minute. Just keep this in mind as you continue reading.

What is a normal number of flu deaths?

Let's take a look at how many deaths are caused by influenza in a normal year in the US to determine if this is indeed an "emergency" situation.

First stop the CDC (Center for Disease Control). Let's see what they consider to be a normal number of deaths for a flu season in the United States. Fair enough question - right? Not according to the CDC website.

How many people died from flu during the 2007-08 season?

Exact numbers of how many people died from flu this season cannot be determined. Flu-associated deaths (which have laboratory confirmed influenza), are only a nationally notifiable condition among children; however not all pediatric influenza deaths may be detected and reported and there is no requirement to report adult deaths from influenza. In addition, many people who die from flu complications are not tested, or they seek medical care later in their illness when flu can no longer be detected from respiratory samples. However, CDC tracks pneumonia and influenza (P&I) deaths through the 122 Cities Mortality Reporting System. This system collects information each week on the total number of death certificates filed in each of the 122 participating cities and the number of death certificates with pneumonia or influenza listed as a cause of death. The 122 Cities Mortality Reporting system helps gauge the severity of a flu season compared with other years. However, only a proportion of all P&I deaths are influenza-related and, as noted, most flu deaths are not lab confirmed. Thus, this system does not allow for an estimation of the number of deaths, only the relative severity among different influenza seasons. For the 2007-08 season, the proportion of deaths due to pneumonia and influenza was higher than the previous two years, but was similar to the 2004-05 season.

So here's the problem as I see it. Influenza often times does not directly lead to death. In many cases the influenza makes a person sick and then that person later contracts another viral or bacterial disease, which may then lead to death. So the whole idea of attributing a certain amount of deaths to influenza is rife with statistical errors.

I did manage to find online a list of the number of deaths for 2006 for various causes provided by the CDC. That should be good enough for this purpose. And here are the results for flu and pneumonia for 2006.

Influenza and pneumonia (J10-J18)
For all ages: 56,326
Under 1: 263
1-4: 125
5-14: 68
15-24: 184
25-34: 335
35-44: 841
45-54: 2,007
55-64: 3,154
65-74: 6,061
75-84: 16,668
85 and above: 26,617
Not stated: 3

They then break this down for influenza and pneumonia this way.

Influenza for all ages: 849
Pneumonia for all ages: 55,477
(They also break it down by age if your interested.)

So most deaths are attributed to pneumonia, although the initial pneumonia may have been caused by flu. But the important thing is that there is no way of knowing what initially caused the pneumonia from these statistics.

For instance during the much discussed 1918 flu pandemic which killed between 20 and 100 million people worldwide, guess what the main cause of death was?

The majority of deaths were from bacterial pneumonia, a secondary infection caused by influenza, but the virus also killed people directly, causing massive hemorrhages and edema in the lung.

If that's the case, then wouldn't it also be true that there could never be a repeat of such a flu pandemic with such high mortalities given the current availability of antibiotics to treat bacterial infections? It can also be assumed that public hygiene has greatly improved since 1918 which would again mean that such an outbreak could not occur in the modern United States. Such things that we take for granted as clean drinking water, indoor plumbing and improved nutrition would have an enormous effect on infection rates. And generally were just healthier to start out with, so there is less susceptibility to illness.

Here is an article from 2008 that backs up my case titled, "Bacteria played role in 1918 viral flu deaths, scientists say".

Most deaths in the 1918 influenza pandemic were due not to the virus alone but to common bacterial infections that took advantage of victims' weakened immune systems, according to two new studies that could change the nation's strategy against the next pandemic.

"We have to realize that it isn't just antivirals that we need," said Dr. Anthony S. Fauci, director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases and co-author of one study.

"We need to make sure that we're prepared to treat people with antibiotics," said Fauci, who study will be released online this month by the Journal of Infectious Diseases.

In both studies, scientists analyzed a trove of historical documents from around the world, examining first-hand accounts, medical records and autopsy reports.

Writing about the 1918 influenza outbreak in the August issue of the journal Emerging Infectious Diseases, researchers reported that few deaths were swift, which is what scientists believed characterized a viral pandemic.

Instead, they found that most deaths occurred a week to two weeks later -- indicating that the deaths were the result of opportunistic bacterial infections.

This article suggests that the most important defense against a large number of fatalities due to a flu outbreak is the use of antibiotics. Antibiotics like penicillin have been around for a long time. In fact penicillin was discovered in 1928. That's just 10 years after the famous 1918 flu pandemic. So you have to ask yourself, "if they had penicillin back in 1918, how many lives could have been saved?"

Follow the money

So now it's time to "follow the money". Who would profit from a policy that downplayed the importance of antibiotics in fighting "flu deaths"? (Which are really deaths from bacterial infections.) Hmmm. Let's see. Well, what about the pharmaceutical companies that make anti-viral medicines? And what about the pharmaceutical companies that make flu vaccines?

A little hysteria goes a long way - when it comes to pharmaceutical profits. And a "national flu emergency"? Ka-ching!

"Oh sure, we can have those millions of vaccines ready ASAP, but it'll cost ya extra."

"Anti-viral medicines? Sure, we got that. I can hook you up with a recommended treatment pack of 10 Tamiflu pills at just $120 per pack. At the first sign of symptoms take 1 pill twice a day for 5 days. And you're all set. So now you're gonna need about 50 million packs at $120 per pack... that'll be $6 billion please. You can deposit that directly in my offshore account in the Bahamas - thank you very much."

What about antibiotics like penicillin - how much do they cost? A 30 day supply of penicillin will cost just a few dollars. I'm guessing that penicillin and many other antibiotics are out of patent because they've been around so long. So there isn't going to be the same kind of profit margins as there is for making vaccines or anti-viral medications.

[UPDATE: 10PM]
I came across this related article from a few days ago.
Roche Raises Outlook as Pandemic Boosts Tamiflu Sales

Oct. 15 (Bloomberg) -- Roche Holding AG, the world’s biggest maker of cancer drugs, reported a 9.7 percent rise in third-quarter revenue and raised its 2009 sales forecast as more people buy Tamiflu, used to treat pandemic influenza.

Need I say more?

Where have I heard this joke before?

In summary, we have 1,000 nationwide fatalities which may or may not be caused primarily by flu which works out to about 20 deaths per state and Obama is declaring a "national emergency". And of course the national media is just rolling over and playing dead.

Didn't we learn anything from the fake financial "crisis" that resulted in the looting of trillions of dollars from the American people in order to prop up the corrupt Wall Street Banks? Are we just going to repeat this exercise all over again, instead this time the benficiaries will be the giant pharmaceuticals?

And why are they calling it "swine flu" again? Wasn't H1N1 scary enough? Or are they just trying to confuse the heck out of us?

Montreal crowd tells Bush, "give Peace a chance"

2009-10-24T13:44:00.002-04:00

[Get ready to overdose on irony. Don't say I didn't warn you.]

In a moment of irony which was not lost upon Canadians, George W. Bush spoke on Thursday at the same Montreal hotel where John Lennon and Yoko Ono recorded the antiwar anthem "Give Peace a Chance" in 1969.

Queen Elizabeth Hotel, Montreal - The hotel reached worldwide fame when John Lennon and Yoko Ono, who had been refused entry into the United States, conducted their Bed-In and recorded the song Give Peace a Chance in Room 1742 at the hotel, between May 26 and June 2, 1969.

While Bush was cracking jokes inside, he was being burned in effigy by protestors outside.

Chants of "George Bush terrorist" echoed in the street as some of the 300 protesters lashed out at the Board of Trade of Metropolitan Montreal for rolling out the red carpet for him.

Many protesters said he should be arrested and charged with war crimes.

Inside the hotel, nearly 1,000 spectators paid as much as $400 to hear Bush speak during the latest stop on his Canadian tour.

He got a standing ovation when he first took the podium to address the eager audience.

"I believe in free speech -- except not today," he quipped, drawing laughs and a huge applause.

In a doubly ironic statement, Bush said "I believe in free speech -- except not today." On the one hand it is ironic in the way he intended, because he was being paid somewhere around $100,000 to speak that day. And on the other hand, it was ironic because of the assault on free speech during his two terms as President.

The statement was reminiscent of another Bush quote: "If this were a dictatorship, it'd be a heck of a lot easier, just so long as I'm the dictator."

Humor can sometimes give insight to a person's true character. In this case his extemporaneous jokes about free speech and dictatorships reveal the heart of a fascist who has no respect for the fundamental principles upon which this nation was founded.

More irony

Haven't had enough irony? How about this. Apart from Bush's speech in Montreal he is touring the country giving motivational speeches. That's right - "motivational speeches".

Former Republican President George W. Bush - last seen inspiring millions to vote Democratic - has landed a new gig as a high-priced motivational speaker.

The 43rd President and his wife, Laura, have signed on to the popular "Get Motivated" seminar program. Bush will headline his first event this Monday in Forth Worth, Tex., then follow it up with an appearance in San Antonio in December.

And the title of the seminar that Bush will highlight. Get ready for this. You're going to love it.

Tomorrow the former president will be the main attraction at a Get Motivated program, speaking at a seminar about ''How to Master the Art of Effective Leadership''.
[...]
The disclosure of Mr Bush's post-presidential role has already inspired jokes at his expense. Larry Sabato, a professor of political science at the University of Virginia, said: "Maybe it will be 'I'm the model of what you shouldn't be.'"

Ah, the irony. I warned you.

Goldstone to critics - "Read the report!"

2009-10-22T12:34:00.006-04:00

Here is a video interview that everyone that cares about the loathsome Israeli attack on Gaza should watch. Richard Goldstone, apparently tired of baseless criticism in the world press, has granted an interview to Al Jazeera to defend the UN sponsored report that bears his name.

And here is the companion article from Al Jazeera, which I have quoted in full.

Goldstone dares US on Gaza report

Richard Goldstone, the jurist who authored a UN report accusing Israel of war crimes and crimes against humanity during its war on Gaza, has challenged the US to justify its claims that his findings are flawed and biased.

Goldstone told Al Jazeera on Thursday that he had not heard from the administration of Barack Obama, the US president, about the flaws Washington claims to have identified in the report.

"I have yet to hear from the Obama administration what the flaws in the report that they have identified are. I would be happy to respond to them, if and when I know what they are," Goldstone said.

"The Obama administration joined our recommendation calling for full and good-faith investigations, both in Israel and in Gaza [by Hamas], but said that the report was flawed."

'Personal attack'

Goldstone said the attacks on him had become personal and that he believed most critics had not even read the report.

"I've no doubt, many of the critics - the overwhelmingly majority of critics - have not read the report," he said.

"And, you know, what proves that, I think, is that the level of criticism does not go to the substance of the report.

"There still have not been responses to the really serious allegations that are made. People generally don't like to be accused of criminal activity.

"So it didn't surprise me that there was criticism, even strong criticism, and it has come from both sides."

Goldstone said he regretted the "extremes from which some of the criticism has come and the fact that it has been so personal".

The remarks follow US criticism of the report, which it says is one-sided.

The US was among countries which voted against a UN human rights council resolution on the report passed in Geneva by 25 votes to six with 11 countries abstaining.

The Goldstone report also accuses Hamas, the Palestinian faction in control of Gaza, of war crime violations, but it reserved most of its criticism for Israel.

Israel's three-week offensive on Gaza between last December and January killed about 1,400 Palestinians, a majority of them women and children, and 13 Israelis.

Israel said it attacked the coastal territory to stop Hamas fighters firing rockets into southern Israel.

Goldstone says at the end of the interview that if Israel does not respond with a credible investigation of allegations of war crimes, then the issue should be further investigated by some international body. He does not come right out and say it, but clearly the implication is that the Israeli government and its leaders would be brought before the International Criminal Court.

In Goldstone's own words, "I think that's where it's going. If they don't have a good faith internal investigation, this thing's not going to lie down and die. It's going to continue."

Here is a description of the International Criminal Court from its own website.

The International Criminal Court (ICC) is an independent, permanent court that tries persons accused of the most serious crimes of international concern, namely genocide, crimes against humanity and war crimes. The ICC is based on a treaty, joined by 110 countries.

The ICC is a court of last resort. It will not act if a case is investigated or prosecuted by a national judicial system unless the national proceedings are not genuine, for example if formal proceedings were undertaken solely to shield a person from criminal responsibility. In addition, the ICC only tries those accused of the gravest crimes.

In all of its activities, the ICC observes the highest standards of fairness and due process. The jurisdiction and functioning of the ICC are governed by the Rome Statute.

From this description it becomes even more clear just what is at stake for the government of Israel and its leaders. Now you can understand why Israel is pushing back so hard on the Goldstone report. Israel has a choice. It can either do its own investigation which must lead to the prosecution of the responsible parties, or the case will be brought to trial at the ICC. There are no other alternatives under international law.

Which is why Israel has now gone to the irrational extreme of demanding a change in international law ex post facto. Desperate times call for desperate measures.

Gideon Levy weighs in from Israel

I highly suggest reading the new article by the famed Israeli journalist Gideon Levy. Here are a few excerpts from his article in Haaretez titled "Israel's attacks will lead to its isolation".

Dividing the world up between absolute good and evil - our side and our enemies, with no middle ground - is a sign of despair and a complete loss of direction. It's not just our ambassador in Washington, who knows nothing at all about democracy and pluralism and only wants to please his masters. Such behavior - kicking and barking crazily in every direction - is destroying Israel.

Without giving us a chance to voice our opinion, Israel is falling to the status of an international pariah, the abomination of the nations. And whom can we thank for that? Operation Cast Lead, for example. Only the United States remains our automatic and blind ally for all our mistakes. Another democracy that saw its status deteriorating so much would ask itself first and foremost what mistakes it had made.
[...]
Any legitimate criticism is immediately labeled here as anti-Semitism, including Richard Goldstone, the Jewish Zionist. We are pushing everyone into a corner roughly and hope they will change their opinions and suddenly be filled with a deep understanding for the killing of children in Gaza. Now America too, even its Jews, are no longer immune to this aggressive Israel mad with grandeur.

The killers of the children of Gaza must be punished. Justice demands it. And so do the spirits of those innocent children.

Related posts

Fed crony Patrick Parkinson named to be top bank regulator

2009-10-20T21:03:00.003-04:00

OK. So this is nothing short of outrageous!

I just saw the news that Patrick M. Parkinson was named to be the new "top bank regulator" - in the words of New York Times. So I'm scanning the article half expecting the guy to be a former Goldman Sachs director. I get to the end of the article and breathe a sigh of relief that he's not a Goldman Sachs crony. But then I take another look at the last paragraph and here's what it says.

Mr. Parkinson previously served as deputy director of the Fed’s division of research and statistics, where he worked on issues related to financial regulation. Mr. Parkinson was also an adviser to Mr. Bernanke and his predecessor, Alan Greenspan, on issues considered by the President’s Working Group on Financial Markets from 1993 to 2008.

So right away I'm pissed again that this guy is so close to Bernanke and Greenspan. And not only that but he was part of the infamous President’s Working Group on Financial Markets, aka the Plunge Protection Team. This is the group that is widely rumored to spearhead federal government intervention in the markets. So this guy is an insider's insider.

Alright, so I do a Google search to see what information is available on the web about him. (It's a good idea to do this now before the links get cluttered with the information from this new appointment.) Right away I find - as one of the top links - some testimony before Congress back in 2000. I get ready for a real snoozer full of Fed-speak.

Instead I find more incriminating evidence. In fact I would call this the smoking gun!

I am pleased to be here to present the Federal Reserve Board's views on the Commodity Futures Modernization Act of 2000 (H.R. 4541). Much of my testimony today will repeat testimony that Chairman Greenspan and I have presented during the last few weeks to other committees in the Senate and the House.

The Board continues to believe that such legislation modernizing the Commodity Exchange Act (CEA) is essential.
[...]
In its November 1999 report, Over-the-Counter Derivatives and the Commodity Exchange Act, the President's Working Group on Financial Markets (PWG) concluded that OTC derivatives transactions should be subject to the CEA only if necessary to achieve the public policy objectives of the act--deterring market manipulation and protecting investors against fraud and other unfair practices. In the case of financial derivatives transactions involving professional counterparties, the PWG concluded that regulation was unnecessary for these purposes because financial derivatives generally are not readily susceptible to manipulation and because professional counterparties can protect themselves against fraud and unfair practices. Consequently, the PWG recommended that financial OTC derivatives transactions between professional counterparties be excluded from coverage of the CEA. Furthermore, it recommended that these transactions between professional counterparties be excluded even if they are executed through electronic trading systems. Finally, the PWG recommended that transactions that were otherwise excluded from the CEA should not fall within the ambit of the act simply because they are cleared. The PWG concluded that clearing should be subject to government oversight but that such oversight need not be provided by the CFTC. Instead, for many types of derivatives, oversight could be provided by the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC), the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency, the Federal Reserve, or a foreign financial regulator that the appropriate U.S. regulator determines to have satisfied its standards.

Unbelievable right!? This guy was part of the little putsch that allowed derivatives to be unregulated. He was one of the co-conspirators along with Robert Rubin, Alan Greenspan, Larry Summers and Phil Gramm that rammed through the Commodity Futures Modernization Act on an unsuspecting US public. This directly led to the blow up of AIG which ended up causing the Federal Government (that's you Mr. and Ms. Taxpayer) billions and billions of dollars.

And now this bankster is put in charge to be the "top bank regulator"!? What kind of testosterone excreting glands does it take to nominate someone with those kind of credentials to be a "top bank regulator" while the memory of the Great Bailout of 2008 is still fresh in the minds of the American People!?

Is this really the best you can do President Obama? Do we need anymore proof of who really runs the government? Does anybody care anymore?

P.S. It's now 9 PM and the Frontline program featuring an interview with Brooksley Born who tried to stop this silent coup is just about to start. Don't miss it.

P.P.S. OK. It's 10 PM now. You can go back to watching "Dancing with the Stars" on your DVR now. Forgot to set it? Sorry about that.

Related posts

Matt Taibbi's "naked short selling article" available online

2009-10-16T21:03:00.004-04:00

Just a quick note to let people know that "Wall Street's Naked Swindle", Matt Taibbi's hard hitting article in Rolling Stone on "naked short selling", is now available online. Here's the link.

http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/story/30481512/wall_streets_naked_swindle

Enjoy reading it and let me know what you think by leaving comments.

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Obama agrees - "Israel has the Reich to defend itself"

2009-10-16T16:35:00.001-04:00

When Gaza was under a brutal attack by US made warplanes used by the Israeli government to commit collective punishment on the civilian population, Obama refused to comment. He said "we only have one President at a time". At the time he was the President-elect.

Now that he has become commander-in-chief of the most powerful empire the world has ever seen, he has spoken out through his representative on the UN Human Rights Council.

Israel and the U.S. called the Goldstone report "flawed" because it ignored Israel's right to defend its people from Palestinian rocket fire. They warned that the vote could jeopardize Middle East peace prospects.

Yes the same tired argument that the blood thirsty Zionists used to justify their campaign of terror is now repeated by Obama's representative in the United Nations. The emperor has spoken. It is thumbs down for the people of Gaza.

So when it came time to vote for or against the Goldstone report, the Obama administration chose to go against the overwhelming international opinion in favor of the report.

The resolution passed 25-6, with mostly developing countries in favor and the United States and five European countries — Hungary, Italy, Netherlands, Slovakia and Ukraine — opposing.

Eleven mostly European and African countries abstained, while Britain, France and three other members of the 47-nation body declined to vote. Russia and China, two permanent members of the U.N. Security Council, were among those voting yes.

And in a rare move, Britain and France (and three others) declined to vote. They could have abstained, but instead they did not vote at all. This was most certainly a concession to the pressure from Israel. This is the height of ridiculousness in terms of UN "diplomacy".

Here's an excellent Al-Jazeera report on the vote.

Unbelievably Douglas Griffiths, the US representative, complains that Israel was disadvantaged by "the asymmetric nature of the conflict". In this case he is using the codeword "asymmetric" to imply that the Palestinians are "terrorists". When the real "terrorists" in this situation are undeniably the Israeli armed forces using US supplied armaments against a defenseless people. Yes, this is a "asymmetric" conflict. It is stones against guided missiles.

Griffiths talks about "the difficulties [Israel] faced in fighting this kind of enemy in this environment". Again he is speaking in code and when he says "this kind of enemy" he clearly implies that the Palestinians are "terrorists". This is then used to justify the war crimes committed by Israel, because according to the doctrine of "the global war on terror" even the most barbaric behavior is justifiable. And of course Israel can quickly point out that the US could just as easily be accused of war crimes in Iraq and Afghanistan, if the logic of the Goldstone report is accepted.

And at the same time that the US and Israel are, not so subtly, branding all Palestinians terrorists, they are talking about repercussions to the "peace process" from the vote supporting the Goldstone report. As if Israel and the US had any intention of coming to a "peace agreement" with an enemy which they have declared to be "terrorists".

Finally, here is a video to remind you of the situation at the time when Israel was assaulting Gaza and President-elect Obama was refusing to comment.

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