Alex Constantine's Anti-Fascist Research Bin

Chilcot Inquiry - Iraq: The War was Illegal

2009-11-29T02:21:00.000-08:00

Then Attorney General Goldsmith was 'pinned to the wall and bullied into keeping quiet' while the Prime Minister kept the Cabinet in the dark

By Brian Brady
Independent | 29 November 2009

The former PM is said to be furious that his reputation could be 'shredded' during the inquiry

Tony Blair will be quizzed over a devastating official memo warning him that war on Iraq would be illegal eight months before he sent troops into Baghdad, it was claimed last night.

The Chilcot inquiry into the Iraq war will consider a letter from Lord Goldsmith, then Mr Blair's top law officer, advising him that deposing Saddam would be in breach of international law, according to a report in The Mail on Sunday.

But Mr Blair refused to accept Lord Goldsmith's advice and instead issued instructions for his long-term friend to be "gagged" and barred from cabinet meetings, the newspaper claimed. Lord Goldsmith apparently lost three stone, and complained he was "more or less pinned to the wall" in a No 10 showdown with two of Mr Blair's most loyal aides, Lord Falconer and Baroness Morgan. Mr Blair also allegedly failed to inform the Cabinet of the warning, fearing an "anti-war revolt".

Lord Goldsmith allegedly threatened to resign over the issue, but was "bullied" into backing down. He eventually issued carefully drafted qualified backing for the invasion.

But according to The Mail on Sunday, his advice was radically different in July 2002, when ministers were allegedly told the US and UK planned "regime change" in Iraq. Then Lord Goldsmith reportedly wrote a letter to Mr Blair on 29 July, flagging up the legal difficulties of the plan of campaign he had apparently thrashed out with President George Bush. The letter pointed out: (1) Although UN rules permitted "military intervention on the basis of self-defence, they did not apply in this case as Britain was not under threat from Iraq; (2) While the UN allowed "humanitarian intervention" in certain cases, that too was not relevant to Iraq; (3) It would be very hard to rely on earlier UN resolutions in the Nineties approving the use of force against Saddam.

Lord Goldsmith ended by saying "the situation might change" – although, in legal terms, it never did. The advice, and the decision to commit it to an official record, reportedly caused great friction between the two men, as it was feared publication of the details could undermine the case for war and damage Mr Blair's credibility.

The revelations follow testimony from a series of by figures at the Chilcot inquiry who have questioned Mr Blair's judgement and honesty, and the legality of the war. ...

Mr Blair has been appalled by the high-profile evidence given by mandarins who have appeared before the Chilcot inquiry since the first round of public hearings began last Tuesday, close friends have revealed. His image has taken a battering over the past six days, as a series of current and former public servants have given evidence that conflicts with the Government's account of the intelligence assessment of Iraq's weapons capability before the invasion in March 2003.

Among the devastating details presented to the inquiry was the revelation that British spies reported 10 days before the invasion that Iraq had "disassembled" what chemical weapons it had – but Mr Blair went ahead and sent troops into battle. Britain's former ambassador to Washington, Sir Christopher Meyer, claimed Mr Blair and Mr Bush had signed a secret deal "in blood" to remove Saddam almost a year before the invasion. He said the agreement in effect left officials scrabbling to find "a smoking gun" to justify going to war.

Mr Blair's friends claimed last night that he has found some of the evidence given so far "distasteful", and potentially damaging to his reputation. "It is clear that the headlines so far have not been helpful to him," a former minister said. "But more troubling is the sense that some of the people involved are so keen to stick the knife in. It is quite distasteful."

Another Blair ally said the former leader had made clear his concern that "his reputation could be shredded by the Chilcot process". "He is furious that mandarins are seeking revenge and discovering their principles after the event," one friend added.

Sir Christopher Meyer has attracted much criticism from Blairites following a flamboyant appearance during which he claimed Mr Blair's view on "regime change" in Iraq hardened after a private meeting with Mr Bush in 2002. He also compared Mr Blair unflatteringly to Margaret Thatcher. The former diplomat told the inquiry on Thursday: "She would have insisted on a clear, coherent political/diplomatic strategy and I think she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck happened if and when we removed Saddam."

Sir Jeremy Greenstock, who worked beside Mr Blair in his attempts to gain UN blessing for the invasion, said the war was of "questionable legitimacy" even though it is unlikely to be proved illegal. The former UK ambassador to the UN said the invasion did not have the backing of most UN members or the British public.

Mr Blair assured MPs in the run-up to the invasion that "extensive, detailed and authoritative" intelligence showed "beyond doubt" that Saddam had continued to produce chemical and biological weapons; tried to develop nuclear weapons; and that he had already produced chemical weapons – and used them on his own people. His government produced two dossiers on Saddam's weapons capability, to back up the case for war.

It has since been shown that much of the intelligence received by the Government in the run-up to the war was confused and inaccurate. Sir William Ehrman, the Foreign Office director general for defence and intelligence at the time, told the inquiry that a report suggested Saddam may not have been able to use chemical weapons. A separate report suggested Iraq might also "lack" warheads capable of spreading chemical agents.

Tim Dowse, the director of counter-proliferation at the Foreign Office between 2001-2003, said most evidence suggested Iraq's chemical and biological programme was largely "destroyed" in 1991. He said intelligence in late 2002 suggested Iraq was rebuilding its capability, although its actual position was unclear after weapons inspectors were expelled in 1998.

And now it appears the inquiry could become more uncomfortable for Mr Blair. It is understood the Chilcot panel has already been given Lord Goldsmith's letter. The two are both likely to be interrogated about it when they give evidence in the new year.

Critical evidence from key figures to Chilcot inquiry

Sir Peter Ricketts "We quite clearly distanced ourselves from talk of regime change... that was not something we thought there would be any legal base for."

Sir William Patey "We were aware of those drumbeats from Washington [about regime change]. Our policy was to stay away from that end of the spectrum."

Sir Michael Wood "[Establishing no-fly zones over Iraq] was very controversial ... The US government was very careful to avoid taking any real position on the law."

Sir William Ehrman "We did, on 10 March, get a report that chemical weapons might have remained disassembled and Saddam hadn't yet ordered their assembly."

Sir Christopher Meyer "Suddenly, because of the unforgiving nature of the military timetable, we found ourselves scrabbling for the smoking gun."

Sir Jeremy Greenstock "I regarded our participation in the military action against Iraq in March 2003 as legal, but of questionable legitimacy."

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/politics/iraq-the-uwaru-was-illegal-1830508.html

Black Panthers: Assassinated by the State - The Federally Sanctioned Murder of Fred Hampton

2009-11-28T16:55:00.000-08:00

" ... a much-needed corrective to a badly distorted mainstream narrative of a key event in the history of the left and African-American politics of the late ’60s ... It is now clear that Hampton and Clark were victims of a plot hatched by the FBI and executed by the Cook County State’s Attorney and Chicago police officers. Nonetheless, conventional wisdom portrays the Panthers as the villains. ... This book should alter the conventional wisdom that the Panthers were a dangerous threat that the police had to eliminate at all costs ... "

By Salim Muwakkil
In These Times | November 25, 2009

Street door to the Black Panthers’ headquarters after the October 1969 police raid

It’s clear that Hoover’s designation of the Panthers as ‘the greatest threat to the internal security of the country’ provided law enforcement with a virtual license to kill. Jeffrey Haas tells a story that many of us have long waited to read. His book, The Assassination of Fred Hampton: How the FBI and the Chicago Police Murdered a Black Panther (Lawrence Hill Books, November), is a much-needed corrective to a badly distorted mainstream narrative of a key event in the history of the left and African-American politics of the late ’60s. Haas reveals just how deeply the Nixon Justice Department was involved in the Chicago police raid on December 4, 1969, that killed Black Panther Party leaders Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. Hampton headed the Panthers’ Chicago branch and Clark the Peoria, Ill., branch.

It is now clear that Hampton and Clark were victims of a plot hatched by the FBI and executed by the Cook County State’s Attorney and Chicago police officers. Nonetheless, conventional wisdom portrays the Panthers as the villains. In 2006, Chicago’s City Council, under pressure from the Fraternal Order of Police, voted down a routine city ordinance to name the block on which Hampton’s murder took place in his honor.

The accumulation of facts presented in Haas’ book portrays Chicago police as all too willing to violate the constitutional rights of Panther members and supporters. He reveals the cynical treachery of State Attorney Edward Hanrahan, whose office planned the raid under the direction of J. Edgar Hoover’s Counterintelligence Program (COINTELPRO). Haas also provides a damning portrayal of one obstinate judge’s continued attempts to thwart the legal process.

But Haas also offers captivating details that add color and context to those turbulent times. He evokes the infectious spirit of change and activism that infused so many idealistic young Americans during the hallowed ’60s. His accounts of growing up Jewish and middle-class in Atlanta, Ga., help locate the source of his unconventional political leanings. Haas’ grandfather, for example, was an attorney for Leo Frank, a Jewish factory owner who was lynched in Georgia after being wrongly accused of murdering a teenage girl. His father was deeply involved in the civil rights movement in the South. Rep. John Lewis (D-Ga.), an icon of that movement, wrote the eulogy for his father’s funeral.

Haas’ forebears held radical positions for Southern whites, and it seems Haas was simply following ancestral footsteps when he aligned himself with the emergent black radical movement of the 1960s. Although many thought it unusual for an attorney with University of Chicago credentials to eschew wealth and status to associate with black radicals, it was a natural move for Haas.

His accounts of the life at the U of C law school, where he met a “persuasive” Bernardine Dohrn, who would become the leader of the Weathermen faction of Students for a Democratic Society, evoke a period infused with political passions. At that time, Dohrn chaired a group that sent law students to the South for summer jobs with civil rights lawyers. Haas was sent to his home, Atlanta.

“I had to go to Chicago to take my first steps to confront segregation where I grew up,” he writes. Though easily parodied, the earnest idealism of those days provoked real change. Haas’ volume reminds us how important naïve and optimistic students were to toppling barriers of segregation in the South.

Back in Chicago, after passing the bar and while defending suspects arrested during the violence that erupted following the 1968 assassination of Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., Haas met a like-minded attorney named Dennis Cunningham. They formed a friendship and partnership, and in 1969 they joined with two other lawyers to open the People’s Law Office, which has since gained an international reputation for conscientiously defending victims of overzealous law enforcement.

Haas also provides some historical context for the rise of the Black Panther Party, a group started in 1966 by college students Huey P. Newton and Bobby Seale to address issues of police brutality in their hometown of Oakland, Calif. Seale and Newton decided to form an organization of armed volunteers to confront abusive police officers directly. At the time, it was still legal to brandish unconcealed weapons in California.

The idea that African-Americans could physically resist police mistreatment was very attractive to urban black youth of that era. I was one of them. And, like me, many had grown weary of watching nonviolent protesters for civil rights endure humiliating beatings at the hands of police.

The Black Panther Party’s disciplined audacity offered black youth an alternative that resonated with the militant tenor of the times. Although the group embraced a quasi-Marxist ideology and provocatively challenged police authority, it spread like wildfire—mostly in the urban north. Their urgent sense of commitment to social justice permanently altered the street-gang culture of urban America.

The first Panther office opened in Chicago in November 1968. Fred Hampton, a charismatic 20-year-old who formerly led the Maywood, Ill., NAACP youth chapter, was given the leadership role by Bobby Rush, now an Illinois congressman, but then the Defense Minister of the Illinois Black Panthers. Haas gives us one of the few accounts of Hampton’s life outside of his connection to the Panthers. Hampton grew up in Chicago’s southern suburbs, the third child of Louisiana immigrants Francis and Iberia Hampton.

The true strength of this book is Haas’ meticulous reconstruction of the particulars that led to the partial victory (the plaintiffs received a $1.85 million settlement, although the government admitted no wrongdoing) and legal vindication of the People’s Law Office. He details how the FBI, the Cook County State’s Attorney’s office and the Chicago police conspired to assassinate Fred Hampton and Mark Clark. He clearly reveals, for example, how COINTELPRO, which sought to “neutralize” black leaders, provided motivation for the Hampton murder. The book’s exhaustive account of this incident is one of the few investigations to explore the Hampton assassination. This is odd because many strands of U.S. history converge at this point. The FBI’s COINTELPRO program, uncovered in 1973 by the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence, chaired by Idaho Senator Frank Church, sought to “prevent the rise of a messiah who could unify and electrify the militant Black Nationalist movement.” That FBI directive helps us understand just how deeply the federal government feared the Black Panthers and someone like Fred Hampton. A popular leader with great potential, Hampton embodied the electrifying appeal of the Black Panther Party among a certain segment of black youth.

In retrospect, it’s clear that Hoover’s designation of the Panthers as “the greatest threat to the internal security of the country” provided law enforcement with a virtual license to kill. What’s more, the reckless bravado of the Panthers often provided police a convenient pretext.

Haas’ important book clarifies how the racial paranoia of an out-of-touch federal government produced a deceitful policy that trashed constitutional rights even as it ignored legitimate grievances.

This book should alter the conventional wisdom that the Panthers were a dangerous threat that the police had to eliminate at all costs. Haas reveals that the cost was much too high.

http://inthesetimes.com/article/5203/assassinated_by_the_state

The US’s Systematic Elimination of Iraqi Intellectuals/Professionals to Create a Gutted “Outpost for Empire” for Itself and Israel

2009-11-28T11:55:00.000-08:00

By James Petras

" ... The cultural desert that remains (a Biblical ‘howling wilderness’ soaked in the blood of Iraq’s precious scholars) is controlled by mega-swindlers, mercenary thugs posing as ‘Iraqi officers’, tribal and ethnic cultural illiterates and medieval religious figures. They operate under the guidance and direction of West Point graduates holding ‘blue-prints for empire’, formulated by graduates of Princeton, Harvard, Johns Hopkins, Yale and Chicago, eager to serve the interests of American and European multi-national corporations. ... The Iraqi military and allied death squads carried out most of the killing of academics in the cities under US or ‘allied’ control. The systematic murder of academics was a nation-wide, cross-disciplinary drive to destroy the cultural and educational foundations of a modern Arab civilization. The death squads carrying out most of these assassinations were primitive, pre-modern, ethno-religious groups ‘set loose’ or instrumentalized by US military strategists to wipe out any politically conscious intellectuals and nationalist scientists who might pursue an agenda for re-building a modern, secular society and independent, unified republic. ... "

STORY

Black Panthers: Omaha Two were Targets of a Secret Police Task Force Codenamed "Domino"

2009-11-28T09:56:00.000-08:00

Michael Richardson
Progressive Examiner | November 24, 2009

The Omaha Two, Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa (formerly David Rice), were leaders of the Black Panther Party chapter in Omaha, Nebraska. Today both men are serving life sentences for the 1970 bombing murder of an Omaha police officer, Larry Minard, and deny any involvement in his death.

Secret government documents, only uncovered after the trial that convicted the two Panther leaders, establish the Federal Bureau of Investigation National Crime Laboratory withheld a report on the identity of the anonymous caller that lured Minard to his death on Omaha's newly installed 911 system with a false report of a woman screaming.

The secret files disclose that the Omaha FBI office Special-Agent-in-Charge, Paul Young, had been under orders from FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover to be "imaginative" in developing illegal tactics against the Panthers and that several plans were concocted and implemented under Operation COINTELPRO in the months before the bombing.

Hoover's hidden war on political activists he didn't like was national in scope but kept secret from outsiders, including the Attorney General and members of Congress. The secretive COINTELPRO directives forbid working with other federal agencies and fostered a bitter rivalry with agents of the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms Division of the Internal Revenue Service.

In the months before the flawed murder investigation, both Panther leaders were targeted by the Omaha Police Department, Hoover's COINTELPRO operatives, the U.S. Attorney and ATF agents. Both men were constantly harassed by local police with frequent traffic stops and verbal abuse. Mondo was fired from his job with the Greater Omaha Community Action Agency and hauled before a grand jury. Ed was the victim of bogus letters to Omaha newspapers and an anonymous phone campaign.

The police campaign against the two Panthers was coordinated by a secret task force codenamed Domino, according to retired ATF Special Agent James Moore. Moore worked in the Kansas City ATF office and busted Black Panther Pete O'Neal on a firearms charge. Moore had worked closely with his counterparts in the Omaha office and followed the efforts to get the two Panther leaders.

Moore discloses the bitter rivalry between the FBI and ATF and breaks the code of silence about the secret Domino task force in his book Very Special Agents. Endnotes in the book explain Moore got his information primarily from ATF agent Thomas Sledge and the supervisor of the Omaha ATF office, Dwight Thomas. Moore learned details from Sledge and Thomas contemporaneously and in later conversations and interviews.

"Most law enforcement officers wanted to believe that the FBI lived up to its motto: 'Fidelity, Bravery and Integrity.' For some, disillusionment solidified in Omaha."

Moore describes how Sledge worked a 12 year-old girl as his informant to obtain a federal search warrant of Panther headquarters in Omaha looking for Russian machine guns and dynamite only to have the Justice Department cancel the search because of the unreliability of the witness.

The U.S. Attorney, Richard Dier, had no comment on the matter at the time and speculation centered on the U.S. Marshal's office as the probable source of the Justice Department intervention. However, Moore fills in the details with a different version, presumably telling the story from Sledge's account.

"Sledge gathered enough corroboration to obtain a search warrant. Assistant U.S. Attorney J. William Gallup, United States Attorney Richard Dier and a federal judge agreed. Sledge summoned ATF agents, Omaha police, and U.S. marshals to plan a raid."

While Sledge briefed the strike force, Dier called the FBI for information on any fortification of the Panther headquarters. Hours later Dier got a call from the Justice Department in Washington cancelling the raid. When Dier asked the reason the warrant was quashed he was told, "The FBI informs us it's based on questionable evidence."

"While the task force cooled its heels in the federal building, FBI agents went door-to-door in the Panthers' neighborhood asking everyone whether there were weapons or explosives inside the headquarters."

The Domino task force convened in a special meeting after the killing of Larry Minard, unaware that Assistant Chief of Police Glen W. Gates had already agreed with the FBI to let the unknown caller go in order to make a case against the two Panther leaders.

"Overcast skies reflected the morning mood of deputy sheriffs, police detectives, state troopers and federal investigators assembled for a special meeting of Domino--an informal Omaha venture hosting regular monthly meetings of lawmen to discuss problems and foster interagency cooperation. This meeting had one mission: to catch the cop killers."

As the Domino team zeroed in on the Black Panthers as the targets of investigation, the FBI made a sudden announcement.

"The FBI representative stood up. 'We have excellent informer coverage of the Panthers,' he said, 'and our key source advises us that two white males were observed running from the scene shortly before the blast.'"

The killer of Larry Minard who made the 911 call was never identified nor were the "two white males" cited by the FBI to the Domino group.

Ed Poindexter and Mondo we Langa are serving life sentences at the maximum-security Nebraska State Penitentiary in Lincoln. Both men, targets of COINTELPRO and Domino, have continuously denied any involvement in the crime.

http://www.examiner.com/x-1969-Boston-Progressive-Examiner~y2009m11d24-Omaha-Two-were-targets-of-a-secret-police-task-force-codenamed-Domino

The CIA Asked to Destroy Torture Tapes on Same Day They Claimed They Didn’t Torture

2009-11-28T09:40:00.000-08:00

By: emptywheel | November 24, 2009

" ... the CIA requested to destroy the torture tapes in email on November 8, 2005. They confirmed the destruction on November 9. Not surprisingly, after Leonie Brinkema had asked about videotapes. .... "

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/11/24/the-cia-asked-to-destroy-torture-tapes-on-same-day-they-claimed-they-didnt-torture/

Rupert Murdoch is a 'Skinhead in a Brooks Brothers Suit'

2009-11-28T04:42:00.000-08:00

Letter to the Editor
StandardNet | Nov 25 2009

Rupert Murdoch of Australia, owner of Fox News Network and ever increasing media sources, is in my opinion, far more dangerous than all of the leaders of all the radical Islamic groups put together.

Most Americans are aware enough of these sects to know their agenda. However, there is an alarming number of uneducated, easily led Americans that actually believe the hate mongering propaganda flooding the airwaves such as the likes of Hannity, O'Reilly, Beck and rest of the Fox flock.

These unbalanced commentators and thier listeners either knowingly or unknowingly, if left unchecked, are turning the clock back to the days of the KKK. Only this time, the violence will be unleashed against Latinos and Muslims, as well as all people of color and sexual orientation. I'm old enough to remember the days of Adolph Hitler and his reign of terror, and I'm fearful that the "skinhead in Brooks Brothers suit," Rupert Murdoch has the same agenda. ...

Gene Arden Thompson
Portage

http://www.standard.net/topics/opinion/2009/11/25/murdoch-skinhead-brooks-brothers-suit

Press Magnates: Media Concentration In Chile

2009-11-27T22:03:00.000-08:00

By Steve Anderson
Santiago Times | 22 November 2009

Maria Olivia Monckeberg

Editorial by publisher Steve Anderson about business leader Alfredo Ovalle and Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman, inspired by Maria Olivia Monckeberg’s new book on Chile’s corporate media magnate elites

Why does a country as diverse as Chile have such a uniformly somber and ultra-conservative media establishment? That’s the question that National Journalism Prize winner (2009) Maria Olivia Monckeberg tackles with her latest book, “The Press Magnates.”

Monckeberg says it is partly about the cozy reciprocal relationship the Edwards clan (owners of the El Mercurio media group) and the Copesa business holding (owners of La Tercera) had with the military regime of Gen. Augusto Pinochet: the media kept mum about the disappearances and torture that characterized the dictatorship, and the general kept competitors at bay.

The self-censorship by these two media was rewarded, too, with multi-million dollar government bailouts during the economically trying 1980s: state credits and very easy terms were given to both El Mercurio and La Tercera. After surviving those tough years with a generous helping hand from the dictatorship, the El Mercurio and La Tercera duopoly now receive an astounding 82.7% of all print media advertising sold in Chile.

But Monckeberg’s story is also about the good-old-boy network that prevails in corporate media groups all around the world: important stories go ignored or under-reported because serious investigation would be embarrassing for the business oligarchs and economic groups that provide newspapers their much needed advertising dollar.

Last week in Chile, for example, the nation’s top mining executive, Alfredo Ovalle, resigned from his position at Sonami for “personal reasons.” But when alternative media website CIPER reported that Ovalle’s resignation was most likely based on their investigation into Ovalle’s shady past as a financier for the foreign operations of the Pinochet-era DINA secret police …. Well, the story goes unreported in La Tercera or completely buried in El Mercurio.

Another good example of corporate control of Chile’s media are the declarations Friday by Energy Minister Marcelo Tokman to the effect that unless Chile proceeds to build the US$3.2 billion HidroAysen dam complex in southern Chile and moves forward with nuclear energy, the country’s CO2 emissions will necessarily continue to grow because of the nation’s reliance on coal and diesel burning generators.

Tokman’s statement is true – but in a very twisted kind of way - because it doesn’t tell the whole truth. Because unless there is a public planning process that reviews electricity demand projections (which must equally consider energy efficiency, renewable energy and cogeneration resources), it is premature to make any decision about any future central generation needs.

One would suppose that would be exactly what an energy minister is supposed to do. But Tokman obviously has not engaged in such a planning process – no doubt preparing himself for the end of the Bachelet government and the proverbial “rotating door” that will take him to a very fat job with the HidroAysen or nuclear lobby groups – all belonging to the nation’s oligarchs.

And, of course, not a single reporter from either El Mercurio or La Tercera would dare ask an embarrassing question of Mr. Tokman: it would put the journalist’s job at risk.

So Chile will continue with its head in the sand, media and policy-wise, while the whole world begins pulling out all the plugs – post Copenhagen - to radically shift to non-traditional renewable energy sources. Chile is among the world’s best endowed countries in terms of renewable energy potential - it’s got the entire Atacama desert and should be a world leader in concentrated solar power. But Chile’s non-existent energy policy will allow the nation’s already enormously rich oligarchs yet another opportunity to plunder the nation’s resources and rape consumers with sky-high, monopoly-inspired energy bills.

To fully understand Chile’s oligarchs, it is best to direct the reader to Monckeberg’s other three books about the nation’s shameful concentration of economic power and environmental abuse: “How Chile’s Economic Groups Sacked The State of Chile,” “The Opus Dei Empire in Chile,” “The Privatization Of Chile’s Universities,” and “The University Business in Chile.”

But I would not be surprised if ST readers have not heard of these previous books; just like Monckeberg’s “Press Magnates,” they have all been studiously ignored by El Mercurio and La Tercera – Chile’s press duopoly.

SOURCE: THE CLINIC

By Steve Anderson ( editor@santiagotimes.cl This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it )

http://www.santiagotimes.cl/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=17671:press-magnates-media-concentration-in-chile&catid=31:editorial-and-opinions&Itemid=143

"Educational" Foundation Flourishes through Ties to Glenn Beck

2009-11-27T19:00:00.000-08:00

By Damon Hunzeker
Twin-Falls Times News | November 15, 2009

The National Center for Constitutional Studies is housed in this sprawling farmhouse located about halfway between Sweetzer Summit near Malta and Snowville, Utah. Publications from the center have recently grown in demand thanks to the approval of political talk-show personality Glenn Beck. (MEAGAN THOMPSON/Times-News).

Malta may have found its Oprah - and his name is Glenn Beck.

While some residents of southern Idaho aren't even aware of the Cassia County town, people all over the world, including Chinese university students, are receiving books on American history and copies of the U.S. Constitution shipped from a remote farmhouse in Malta.

The farm, which houses and ships thousands of books stacked on pallets in machine shops, is actually the National Center for Constitutional Studies (NCCS) - which began in 1972 as the Freemen Institute.

The popularity of Glenn Beck - radio talk-show personality, author, Fox News Channel host - and his enthusiasm for books written by the foundation's founder, W. Cleon Skousen, has propelled NCCS into, if not the national spotlight, at least national demand.

Foundation books and pocket copies of the Constitution are printed outside of Malta, but NCCS is the publisher. And nearly all of them - sometimes as many as 20,000 books per month - are shipped from the farmhouse.

Some of them go to individual customers. Others are donated to schools. Many are sold in bulk to groups such as "Tea Party" organizers. Tea parties, based on the 1773 Boston Tea Party, are organized protests against big government and socialism. The largest events so far took place on April 15 and July 4.

But NCCS is a nonprofit educational foundation. It doesn't appear that anyone is getting rich from book sales. According to 2008 tax forms, the organization's total revenue was $197,205. The foundation's headquarters can be found in a nondescript, albeit large, farmhouse about halfway between Sweetzer Summit and Snowville, Utah, near the border of Cassia and Oneida counties.

CEO Zeldon Nelson, along with his wife and another employee who maintains the Web site, run the day-to-day operations. But recently, especially during preparations for the tea party wave last spring, they brought in volunteers from various towns in Utah and Idaho.

"We had orders from all over the nation, and we were overwhelmed. They came from all over to help us. We had people from age 3 to 93 helping out," Nelson said, estimating that the organization has published 3 million copies of the Constitution.

"We're trying to articulate the principles of the Constitution, but we're not trying to take some current point of view. We're trying to present the principles from the Founders' point of view," Nelson said.

Last year, he said, NCCS spent $250,000 to $300,000 to distribute copies of a DVD documentary, "A More Perfect Union."

"We're just trying to be a resource for anybody who wants to learn about our form of government," Nelson said.

Nelson said books and Constitution copies are regularly sent to Afghanistan, Iraq, Germany, China, Russia, Romania and Japan, and public schools across the U.S. Most income, he said, goes back into publishing expenses and donating materials to educational entities. It also funds lectures and seminars conducted by NCCS President Earl Taylor Jr., a teacher in Mesa, Ariz.

"Do you know that our Founding Fathers had answers to nearly every problem that exists in America today?" Taylor has said. "That's a big statement. This is the mission of NCCS - to reacquaint Americans with the Founders' message. It is a positive message. When you hear it, it will put fire in your bones," he said.

The Skousen foundation

Skousen, who died in 2006 at 92, used to conduct similar seminars in Idaho and Utah. He was a prolific writer (including his 1956 national bestseller "The Naked Communist"), speaker and Brigham Young University professor. His public service comprised stints as an FBI agent and Salt Lake City police chief - though some of his published works aroused controversy.

A devout Mormon, Skousen wrote end-of-the-world prophecies, LDS-inspired books on scripture, a treatise on how to raise boys, and various anti-communism analyses.

A recent Salon.com article recounts a 1980s issue that erupted when California legislators approved the official use of Skousen's history book "The Making of America" in which he refers to black children as "pickaninnies" and characterized most slaves en route from Africa as "a cheerful lot."

According to his biography on Skousen2000.com, he worked closely with J. Edgar Hoover during his 16 years with the FBI. But the Salon article claims his work was merely "clerical." He was fired as Salt Lake police chief in 1960 after raiding one of the mayor's poker games.

Skousen was a strong supporter of the John Birch Society, a right-wing organization that was prominent in the 1960s. One of the group's biggest defenders was former Secretary of Agriculture and Idaho native Ezra T. Benson, who later became LDS church president. In the early '60s, the society even alleged President Eisenhower had colluded with communists.

Southern Idaho following

Burley resident John Walsh, a former organized crime and undercover narcotics agent with the Idaho Attorney General's Office, recalls seminars conducted by Skousen and the Freemen Institute at the Albion Normal School around 1972.

"They were all Birchers, John Birch Society members," Walsh said. "At one time, the state had me and another agent go to Albion and wander around just to check things out. There were rumors of a subversive group. We never found anything like that. ... It seemed to be a pretty good combination of religion and politics."

Walsh called Skousen's work "a distortion of history," adding that members were mostly interested in the Constitution and stopping what they saw as the country's drift toward communism. The group was frequently associated with former Idaho Congressman George Hansen.

"I thought all of that stuff had gone out of style, but apparently, it hasn't," Walsh said. "Maybe the Glenn-Beckers are caught up in a lot of socialist paranoia because the Democrats are in power."

Adrian Arp, of Twin Falls, attended Freemen Institute seminars at Robert Stuart Junior High School in the 1970s. He recalled some of Skousen's lessons, including discussions of "baptism by fire," referring to the ratification of the Constitution, and a study guide called "Miracle of America."

"The way he taught, you filled in the blanks," Arp said. "He was a teacher, and his method was very good."

Arp has been a member of the John Birch Society since 1968 and defended the organization against its detractors.

"We just want the Constitution restored to the principles of the Founding Fathers," he said. "I think the John Birch Society is middle-of-the-road - we believe in limited, constitutional government."

Beck as Skousen disciple

Beck, a former alcoholic and drug addict, converted to Mormonism in 1999, and in the years since has praised the writings of Skousen.

Often seen scrawling political theories on a chalkboard, Beck can be conspiratorial-minded and openly emotional - occasionally shedding tears while criticizing President Obama's administration. One of Beck's most noted emotional displays happened this year when he announced the 9/12 Project - a vague but passionate attempt to revive the patriotism most Americans experienced the day after the Islamic terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.

During and after the tear-riddled announcement, Beck routinely implored his followers to buy copies of Skousen's book "The 5,000 Year Leap" - pushing the book into Amazon.com's bestseller lists this year.

Beck has often said the book made him realize that America's founders were divinely guided.

Curiously, the NCCS-published edition of the book does not include the author's name on the cover, though it can be found in small print on the spine.

"The 5,000 Year Leap," aside from some anachronisms and heavy reliance on divinity, is generally academic. It does include some non-conventional phrases - such as, when referring to unalienable rights not mentioned in the Declaration of Independence, "the right to beget one's kind."

Beck's current comments about the book on his Web site are far less effusive than his devotional praise in other venues. The description on Glennbeck.com reads: "All about the philosophies of the founders of our government and why this country needs to be a virtuous country."

Beck writes: "Amen to that. One of those books that you pick up and read a chapter here and there."

Gem State success

A recent New York Times article calls him "the new Oprah," referring to Beck's promotion of thriller novels. The article quotes author Brad Thor as saying, "He's our Oprah ... God love him."

That influence on the publishing industry extends well into Idaho, where Beck has frequently visited and performed. He's also mentioned a desire to move to the Gem State.

"He has a big following around here. I talk to people quite a lot and his name always comes up," Walsh said. "Anything he says, it's like scripture to them."

Nelson said he's had several conversations with Beck recently but wouldn't discuss any future plans for the foundation. He did, however, emphasize that Beck doesn't receive any money from the Skousen books that he promotes.

"He's truly interested in helping America," Nelson said. "Most of our sales right now are coming from study groups around the country, though."

Nelson carefully avoided politics and said NCCS is motivated by the desire to educate people about the founding of America and the original intent of the Constitution, rather than case-law interpretations of the document.

"The fact that this is all happening right here in our own area and is helping the nation is significant. We feel honored," Nelson said. "The address on those Constitutions is Malta. People ought to be asking themselves, ‘What is it about Malta, Idaho?'"

http://www.magicvalley.com/news/local/article_16557a32-d1a4-11de-b36c-001cc4c002e0.html

UK: Blair 'Deliberately Combined Threats after 9/11'

2009-11-27T14:44:00.000-08:00

breakingnews.iol.ie/news | 26/11/2009

Tony Blair deliberately combined the threats from Saddam Hussein and al-Qaida following the 9/11 attacks, the official inquiry into the Iraq War was told today.

British Foreign Office officials have repeatedly told the inquiry, sitting in central London, that British intelligence had no evidence of any connection between the Iraqi regime and al-Qaida. But giving evidence on day three of the inquiry, the former British ambassador to Washington, Christopher Meyer, said Mr Blair had directly linked the two following a private meeting with President George Bush at his Texas ranch.

The next day the then Prime Minister had spoken publicly for first time about the case for “regime change” in Iraq. Meyer said it appeared that agreement on a new approach towards Iraq had been “signed in blood” between Mr Blair and Mr Bush. He also contrasted Mr Blair’s handling of the Iraq conflict unfavourably with the way that he believed Margaret Thatcher would have dealt with it if she had been prime minister.

“I think she would have insisted on a coherent diplomatic strategy and I think she would have demanded the greatest clarity about what the heck would happen if and when we remove Saddam Hussein,” he said.

Meyer said that initially, when the Bush administration came to power in January 2001, there had been little talk in Washington of regime change in Iraq, even though it had been official US policy dating back to 1998.

“It was like a grumbling appendix,” he said.

However, after the 9/11 attacks on the Twin Towers “everything changed”. By the time Mr Blair met Mr Bush seven months later, in April 2002, at the president’s ranch in Crawford, Meyer said there would have been no point in “banging on” about “regime change” only to say Britain would not support it.

He said that it was still unclear exactly what the two leaders discussed in private, but afterwards there was an apparent shift in the British position.

“I took no part in any of the discussions and there was a large chunk of that time when no adviser was there,” he said. “To this day I am not entirely clear what degree of convergence was, if you like, signed in blood at the Crawford ranch.”

The following day, however, Mr Blair made a speech in which he spoke publicly for the first time about regime change in Baghdad.

“What he was trying to do was to draw the lessons of 9/11 and apply them to the situation in Iraq which led – I think not inadvertently but deliberately - to a conflation of the threat posed by Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein,” he said. “When I heard that speech, I thought that this represents a tightening of the UK/US alliance and a degree of convergence on the danger Saddam Hussein presented.”

Meyer said Mr Blair had always been a “true believer about the wickedness of Saddam Hussein” having made a speech on the subject as far back as 1998.

However the British Foreign Office had ruled there was no legal basis for seeking to oust the Iraqi dictator and, prior to the Crawford meeting, Mr Blair had generally been “discreet” about his views.

Unlike the British, however, key US figures such as the influential deputy defence secretary Paul Wolfowitz were convinced there was a “strong connection” between Saddam and al-Qaida. Meyer said they had been “spooked” by the appearance in the US shortly after 9/11 of a number “anthrax-tainted” letters.

“The last person who had ever used anthrax was Saddam Hussein,” he said.

By this stage, Meyer said the British priority was to get the administration to agree to seek a new United Nations Security Council resolution to provide the basis for military action and overcome the objections of the Foreign Office lawyers.

However, he had a hard time persuading hardline “neo cons” like Mr Wolfowitz, who were “viscerally hostile” to the UN, that this was not a “limp-wristed, pitiful, European lack of will, pathetic type thing”.

“The way I put it was if we didn’t make a serious effort to go down the UN route, the first instance of regime change will take place in London,” he said.

Although they had won support of a new Security Council resolution in November 2002, the strategy was ultimately a failure because Hans Blix and the UN weapons inspectors had not been given enough time to complete their work.

Meyer said the “real problem” was that the US military was planning for an invasion in March 2003 which left the British and Americans “scrambling” to find proof that Saddam had banned weapons of mass destruction in time.

“It was impossible to see how Blix could bring the inspection process to a conclusion, for better or worse, by March,” he said. “Because you cannot synchronise the programmes, you had to short-circuit the process by finding the notorious ’smoking gun’.

“We have got to try to prove that he is guilty and we – the British and Americans – have never recovered from that because, of course, there was no smoking gun.”

Meyer suggested that if the weapons inspectors had been given more time, it was possible war could have been avoided.

“If we had planned for military action in the cool autumnal season of 2003 rather than the cool spring season of 2003, a lot of things might have been able to have been unwound,” he said. “The key problem was to let the military strategy wag the political and diplomatic strategy. It should have been the other way round.”

http://breakingnews.iol.ie/news/world/blair-deliberately-combined-threats-after-911-435926.html

Torture Tapes and CIA Retirements

2009-11-27T11:03:00.000-08:00

By: emptywheel
emptywheel.firedoglake.com | November 24, 2009

The NYT originally broke the news of the torture tape destruction on December 6, 2007. And on October 25, 2007, the government informed Leonie Brinkema that they had found three unrelated tapes of interrogations that should have been disclosed during the Moussaoui trial. Those two events were the first we had confirmation of the scandal surrounding the CIA’s taping–and subsequent destruction–of torture tapes.

Those events followed–distantly–the retirement of Jose Rodriguez, who we know was in charge of CTC when the torture tapes were made and was later in charge of Clandestine Services when the torture tapes were destroyed. Rodriguez’s replacement was reported publicly on September 14 and he left on September 30.

The torture tape revelations also followed–distantly–the September 25 withdrawal of the nomination of John Rizzo to be CIA General Counsel, a function had he filled on an interim basis for some years. We know Rizzo was involved in the authorization of torture, though he claimed to be mysteriously out of the loop of 2005 discussions about whether or not to destroy the torture tapes.

Given the lapse of time between the Rodriguez retirement and the Rizzo withdrawal, it was unclear whether there was a connection.

And while it’s still unclear whether there’s a connection, it turns out the timing of CIA internal discussions about the torture tape destruction and Rodriguez’ retirement and Rizzo’s withdrawal is much closer than we knew.

The torture tapes FOIA reveals that the CIA was discussing the torture tape destruction on September 25 and October 5, 2007. It describes a Top Secret September 25, 2007 email “discussing the review and disposition of the tapes” and must have attached these earlier discussions (that’s why they were included in this Vaughn Index). And it describes a Secret October 5, 2007 email which appears to link to the earlier email approving of the destruction of the tapes. John Durham has claimed a law enforcement exemption over the latter of these two emails, suggesting that release of that email would interfere with whatever investigation of the torture tape destruction he is doing.

Again, not that there’s a connection, but CIA was linking to discussions that Rodriquez was involved in and Rizzo may have been involved in at precisely the time they effectively ended their CIA careers.

http://emptywheel.firedoglake.com/2009/11/24/torture-tapes-and-cia-retirements/

America's War Criminals

2009-11-26T20:42:00.000-08:00

By JONATHAN POWER
www.gulf-daily-news.com
November 24, 2009

Someone, somewhere, has to say it and thus confirm what the Pentagon always feared would happen if an international war crimes court were established: that the US harbours war criminals of its own and they have served not that long ago at the apex of power in the American government.

No one is going to act like the recently deceased Robert McNamara who served as Secretary of Defence under presidents John F Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson. In one speech, he described himself as a war criminal - for being party to the nuclear bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and for his role in the Vietnam war.

The Obama administration has to move faster. After a furious public debate, it has agreed to look into whether senior members of the administration of former president George W Bush should be prosecuted for war crimes including torture. But the process is achingly slow. One wonders if it will end up hitting a brick wall, as did the talk that has gone on for decades about prosecuting the former National Security Adviser and Secretary of State to president Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger.

I can be no judge of the charges made on Kissinger's role in Cambodia, Cyprus and East Timor, but I can speak on Chile which I researched in detail for my book Like Water on Stone (Penguin 2001).

Chile was unique in Latin America with an almost unbroken continuous democracy since independence in 1818. But in the presidential election of 1970, a Marxist socialist, Salvador Allende, surprised Washington by winning 36.2 per cent of the vote in the first round. The CIA in an intelligence memorandum observed that the US "has no vital interests with Chile - an Allende victory would not pose any likely threat to the peace of the region".

But Nixon and Kissinger hit the roof. Kissinger was minuted as saying: "I don't see why we need to stand by and watch a country go Communist due to the irresponsibility of its own people."

A couple of weeks later Nixon, with Kissinger's ardent approval, gave Richard Helms, the CIA boss, the widest possible authority ("a marshal's baton, Helms later called it) to prevent Allende's presidency by any means available.

Although the US ambassador to Chile came to Washington and strongly argued to Kissinger and Nixon that a military coup would not be in the best interests of Chile, and although Kissinger later claimed he called off the CIA operation, Chile's chief of staff, General Rene Schneider, who was known to be strongly opposed to a coup, was duly murdered. The assassins were the very conspirators the CIA had funded earlier. Washington followed this with a severe economic squeeze that gave General Augusto Pinochet his opening.

After Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998, the ruling by Britain's highest court, the House of Lords, crystallised half a century's debate on the legal and political problems of accountability for crimes against humanity.

Now, since the vote in Rome in the summer of 1998 approving the statute creating the International Criminal Court, the means are available to try people who are accused of all crimes against humanity, not just torture. Fortunately for Kissinger, it cannot deal retroactively and it is doubtful if the Convention Against Torture can be used as a basis for prosecuting a person once removed.

Society should have other means of punishing this man and one way would be to take him off the pedestal on which he now stands.

But there need be no reticence about prosecuting senior members of the Bush administration. And if there is, the International Criminal Court should step in and demand their arrest and trial, just as it has with lesser war criminals in Africa.

http://www.gulf-daily-news.com/NewsDetails.aspx?storyid=265222

Mass.: Local Author Takes on the DEA

2009-11-26T18:32:00.000-08:00

"The War on Drugs is unwinnable and the biggest problem is that the CIA protects the most powerful drug dealers in the world. ... "

By CHRISTINE WHITE
The Republican | November 22, 2009

LONGMEADOW - Author Douglas Valentine began his writing career planning to write poetry. But life, as it often does, took him in a completely different direction.

With the recent publication of his fifth book, The Strength of the Pack, about the politics and intrigues surrounding the Drug Enforcement Administration, Valentine completes his work on the history of federal drug law enforcement in this country.

Along the way, he logged thousands of miles and interviewed hundreds of former narcotics agents, politicians and bureaucrats. He has won distinction and awards for his work, while at the same time encountering opposition in his pursuit of the truth.

"This is heavy-lifting writing," explained Valentine, who lives in Longmeadow with his wife, Alice. "I was dealing with a LOT of facts and I had to keep them in order and coherent. I had to write on so many levels - for people with no understanding of the subject, for those on a journeyman's level, those on a Ph.D. level, and those on an intuitive level. I was constantly writing at all these levels and it had to be seamless."

He added, "The DEA and CIA were also watching every move I made. And I had confidential sources, whose egos are gigantic, so I couldn't get anything wrong. I was writing for that audience, as well."

Roger Morris, author of best selling books about Richard Nixon, Henry Kissinger and the Clintons, said of The Strength of the Pack: "Valentine belongs to that precious remnant of journalists and historians with the wisdom to see our time, the integrity and courage to write about it, and the literary grace to bring it all chillingly alive. This indispensable book may quite well be the best yet in the author's already singular body of work."

Valentine began his research 20 years ago. His previous book, The Strength of the Wolf published in 2004, chronicles the history of the precursor to the Drug Enforcement Administration, called the Federal Bureau of Narcotics. The book covers the period from the bureau's inception in 1930 to its termination in 1968. It was considered a groundbreaking work of investigative reporting and received the American Library Association's Choice Academic Excellence Award.

The Strength of the Pack picks up the story in 1968 (where Strength of the Wolf left off) and describes the creation of the DEA, its unsuccessful war on drugs and its connection with the CIA.

All through the process, Valentine felt a big responsibility. He found branches of government that, he believes, are antithetical to what America stands for. "I wanted to help America be a better country by explaining the story in human terms," he said. "You can't cut corners when it comes to ethics. It undermines our culture. If we need to wage war or overthrow a government, we should do it in the light of day." ...

He went on to say, "The War on Drugs is unwinnable and the biggest problem is that the CIA protects the most powerful drug dealers in the world."

"The media may say that I am anti-American. But actually, the opposite is true. As a country, we can protect ourselves in the light of day as easily as protecting drug warlords. I have been fighting the establishment. You can't do this without setting the highest standard of achievement for yourself. It's exhausting. I'm relieved to be done," he said.

During the research and writing of these two huge works, Valentine has fought another battle, as well - a physical battle. He has neuropathy, a neurological disorder that causes nerve damage and resulting pain, especially in his hands. He also suffers profound progressive hearing loss, which continues to worsen.

"Getting old doesn't help, either," he joked. Often mistaken for someone in his early 40s, Valentine turns 60 this year.

He published his first book, The Hotel Tacloban, in 1984. It is the story of his father's experiences in a Japanese prisoner of war camp. "I found," he said, "that writing non-fiction could touch readers as deeply as fiction and poetry, and say what it is to be an American."

It was the beginning of his writing career, which includes many articles as well as five books. In all of his work, he has striven to shed light on three major issues of his time - the Vietnam War, the war on drugs, and race in America.

With his second book, The Phoenix Program published in 1990, Valentine made a name for himself. Publisher's Weekly said of it, "No book to date conveys the hideousness of the Vietnam War as thoroughly as this one." The book is widely read on college campuses and is used as a resource by other writers.

"I'm quoted all the time by other writers," Valentine said. "I'm an original source that people can go to and trust."

The original research material for The Phoenix Program, including handwritten interview notes and government documents, is housed at the National Security Archive in Washington, D.C. in the Douglas Valentine Vietnam Collection.

His new book, The Strength of the Pack, is available through the publisher, TrineDay Publishing, as well as at Amazon.com and Barnes and Noble.

For more information about the author and all of his books, visit his Web site at www.douglasvalentine. com

"I've made my contribution," Valentine concluded. "I feel like I've succeeded in what I set out to do and now I can relax and write fiction. Some of the stories I came across in my research, I left out of the books - maybe some of the best stories. Now they can be turned into fiction."

http://www.masslive.com/entertainment/republican/index.ssf?/base/entertainment-0/125870707727210.xml&coll=1

G.H.W. Bush, Cocaine, Looting Banks, and the CIA

2009-11-26T10:21:00.000-08:00

Diary Entry by Steven G. Erickson
www.opednews.com | November 26, 2009

Author, newspaperman, and journalism teacher in Texas, Pete Brewton, wrote a book detailing how George H.W. Bush saw to it he and his friends looted banks, worked as Drug Lords smuggling cocaine into the US, and did what they wanted with the shipping of arms and covert operations. The bankrupting of America with these shadow government policies only continue to this day. When are we the people going to do something?

Brewton was interviewed about his book in late November, 1992, videos are found here.

Why don't we make each State's Attorney General aware of Brewton's book and the videos, ask for an investigation, and prosecution of all perpetrators from then to the current day? Should George H. W. Bush, George W. Bush, and others all face trials and possible prison?

In order for this to go on, the courts from the US Supreme Court on down have to have been rigged, and law enforcement and investigations have to have been rigged from the top down. Every single US citizen is a victim of these criminals. ...

http://www.opednews.com/populum/diarypage.php?did=15099

Moscow "Pagans": The Fight Against Fascists

2009-11-26T10:15:00.001-08:00

Excerpt By Boris Kagarlitsky
Moscow Times | 26 November 2009

Leftist, anti-fascist activist Ivan Khutorskoi, 26, was gunned down outside his apartment building on Nov. 16. A few days later, ultraconservative Russian Orthodox priest Daniil Sysoyev was shot and killed in his church. The killing of Khutorskoi was almost certainly organized by one of the underground fascist groups. It remains unclear who wanted to kill Sysoyev, although suspicion is directed at fundamentalist Muslims or perhaps even an enigmatic group of “pagans.”

These two killings share more in common than the fact that they occurred only days apart, involved firearms and were obviously planned in advance. Regardless of the views of the victims, ideological arguments in our society are increasingly being settled through violent means.

We have long ceased to consider the murders of foreign workers and students or of anti-fascists as sensational news, but some time ago the ultraright switched from spontaneous attacks to carrying out well-planned, premeditated strikes.

It would seem that with the January murders of human rights lawyer Stanislav Markelov, Russia crossed a tragic line. Markelov was shot in the center of Moscow, immediately following a press conference and in front of numerous passers-by. Murder has become an open political provocation. That is why, unlike many other crimes, law enforcement agencies were more active in investigating the murder of Markelov, announcing on Nov. 5 that two suspects had been arrested — Nikita Tikhonov and Yevgenia Khasis. The Khutorskoi killing may have been meant to be a signal from the ultraright: Despite the arrests, the terror will continue.

The threshold for political violence has clearly been lowered. It could be that the attack against Sysoyev was to avenge the priest’s inflammatory comments about pagans, Muslims or Darwin’s theory of evolution, but it also could have been intended to destabilize the political environment by provoking a new wave of religious and politically motivated violence.

Although anti-fascists have had scattered street fights with neo-Nazis for several years, no fascist leader or member has ever been killed. But the situation is heating up. On Nov. 17, after hearing of the murder of Khutorskoi, about 70 young, masked anti-fascists attacked the Moscow headquarters of the Young Russia youth group, which they suspect of having ties to ultranationalists. According to one of the attackers, Young Russia serves as a cover for Russian Image, a radical nationalist organization. Russian Image was granted official permission to stage a concert by the group Kolovrat on the National Unity Day holiday on Nov. 4 in the center of Moscow. The lyrics of their songs speak for themselves: pagan images combined with hatred for Jews and admiration for Slavs who “also served in the legions of the SS.” Perhaps it was the same pagans who organized the murder of the priest? ...

Boris Kagarlitsky is the director of the Institute of Globalization Studies.

http://www.themoscowtimes.com/opinion/article/the-fight-against-fascists/390352.html

National Anti-War March on Washington, March 20, 2010

2009-11-25T13:08:00.000-08:00

My Sweet Neo-Con

2009-11-25T07:10:00.000-08:00

"How come you're so wrong
My sweet neo con.... "

Young neo-con Benyamin Solomon, keeper of the whiny "Anti-Constantine" blog, has been struggling with the word "fascism" lately. It's simple, Ben. Fascism is a synonym for the far-right. You are on the far-right. Now you know who is a fascist, and who isn't. - Helpful AC

Blackwater OK'd $1M Bribe Fund After '07 Iraq Shooting

2009-11-25T06:51:00.000-08:00

Money was destined for officials critical after 17 killed
http://www.newser.com/

(Newser - Nov 10) – Security firm Blackwater set aside $1 million for secret payments to critical Iraqi officials after the 2007 Baghdad shootout that left 17 civilians dead. With Blackwater fearing it could lose its lucrative operating license in the country, former executives tell the New York Times, then-president Gary Jackson authorized the bribe money’s transfer to Jordan. The execs say they didn’t know if the money got to Iraq, or for whom it was intended.

Blackwater Waging 'Secret War' in Pakistan

2009-11-24T13:20:00.000-08:00

Mercenaries doing CIA dirty work, plotting killings - Newser.Com

How World War II Wasn’t Won

2009-11-24T02:34:00.000-08:00

The Battle of the Bulge was protracted deliberately by the American military-corporate leadership to allow German military-corporate officials time to flee the Reich, via "ratlines," with their plundered wealth. The pointless delays attributed to General Eisenhower below were not due to inexplicable lapses in judgment that happened to extend the war - they were intentional. - AC

By DAVID P. COLLEY
NY Times | November 22, 2009

SIXTY-FIVE years ago, in November 1944, the war in Europe was at a stalemate. A resurgent Wehrmacht had halted the Allied armies along Germany’s borders after its headlong retreat across northern France following D-Day. From Holland to France, the front was static — yet thousands of Allied soldiers continued to die in futile battles to reach the Rhine River.

One Allied army, however, was still on the move. The Sixth Army Group reached the Rhine at Strasbourg, France, on Nov. 24, and its commander, Lt. Gen. Jacob L. Devers, looked across its muddy waters into Germany. His force, made up of the United States Seventh and French First Armies, 350,000 men, had landed Aug. 15 near Marseille — an invasion largely overlooked by history but regarded at the time as “the second D-Day” — and advanced through southern France to Strasbourg. No other Allied army had yet reached the Rhine, not even hard-charging George Patton’s.

Devers dispatched scouts over the river. “There’s nobody in those pillboxes over there,” a soldier reported. Defenses on the German side of the upper Rhine were unmanned and the enemy was unprepared for a cross-river attack, which could unhinge the Germans’ southern front and possibly lead to the collapse of the entire line from Holland to Switzerland.

The Sixth Army Group had assembled bridging equipment, amphibious trucks and assault boats. Seven crossing sites along the upper Rhine were evaluated and intelligence gathered. The Seventh Army could cross north of Strasbourg at Rastatt, Germany, advance north along the Rhine Valley to Karlsruhe, and swing west to come in behind the German First Army, which was blocking Patton’s Third Army in Lorraine. The enemy would face annihilation, and the Third and Seventh Armies could break loose and drive into Germany. The war might end quickly.

Devers never crossed. Gen. Dwight D. Eisenhower, the supreme commander, visited Devers’s headquarters that day and ordered him instead to stay on the Rhine’s west bank and attack enemy positions in northern Alsace. Devers was stunned. “We had a clean breakthrough,” he wrote in his diary. “By driving hard, I feel that we could have accomplished our mission.” Instead the war of attrition continued, giving the Germans a chance to counterattack three weeks later in what became known as the Battle of the Bulge, which cost 80,000 American dead and wounded.

Garrison Davidson, then Devers’s engineering officer and later a superintendent of West Point, believed Devers’s attack would have succeeded and pre-empted the Bulge, writing, “I have often wondered what might have happened had Ike had the audacity to take a calculated risk, as General Patton would have.” Patton wrote in his diary that he also believed Eisenhower had missed a great opportunity; the Seventh Army’s commander, Lt. Gen. Alexander Patch, felt the same way.

Why did Eisenhower refuse to allow Devers to cross? Eisenhower disliked Devers — a prim teetotaler who rubbed many gruff Army commanders the wrong way — and refused to include him among the generals fighting in northern France. Devers was appointed to lead the southern invasion by the Army chief of staff, George Marshall. Eisenhower would likely have fired Devers once the Sixth Army Group fell under his command in September 1944, but Devers had powerful patrons in Marshall and President Franklin D. Roosevelt.

Eisenhower was also a cautious, some would say indecisive, commander who favored a “broad front” strategy with all Allied armies moving in tandem on a solid front. His military objective was Germany’s main industrial area to the north, the Ruhr. Devers was operating too far south to help that effort.

True, the Germans knew the Ruhr was vital to them and fiercely defended it. But, as we know from several of their generals’ postwar memoirs, what they really feared was an incursion across the Rhine, which would have been a military catastrophe and a devastating symbolic blow to the German people.

The Rhine wasn’t crossed until March 1945. Had Eisenhower let Devers make his attack, we might now be celebrating the 65th anniversary of a cross-Rhine attack that quickly ended the war in Europe. Instead, we will soon mark the anniversary of the costliest battle in American history, the Battle of the Bulge.

David P. Colley is the author of “Decision at Strasbourg: Ike’s Strategic Mistake to Halt the Sixth Army Group at the Rhine in 1944.”

http://www.nytimes.com/2009/11/23/opinion/23colley.html

Far-Right Eagle Forum Leader Rises to Top of the Texas GOP

2009-11-24T02:21:00.000-08:00

Texas GOP chief plans to stop being so critical
Jay Root, The Associated Press
November 23, 2009

AUSTIN – Republican activist Cathie Adams has almost made a career out of stirring things up. She has criticized senior members of her own party, bucked business leaders by opposing their lawsuit reform efforts, called global warming a "hoax" and used the specter of Adolf Hitler to warn of perceived Obama administration excesses.

Then she got elected chairman of the Texas Republican Party.

Adams, who was chosen to lead the party in a special election last month, won't be blasting fellow Republicans anytime soon. She'll be trying to get more of them elected, even if they don't hold her conservative views on abortion, stem cell research or other social issues she has been involved with over the years.

While she hasn't changed her beliefs, Adams, 59, says the new gig requires her to stay neutral in contested races while projecting party unity.

"I am going to be supportive of our Republican team and I'm excited about every one of our candidates," Adams said. "As party chairman I'm definitely in a different role."

Adams, who led the Texas Eagle Forum for 16 years, has been harsh on fellow Republicans who flirt with political moderation. She helped lead a silent protest of a speech by openly gay U.S. Rep. Jim Kolbe at the 2000 GOP convention, a slap at then-GOP presidential nominee George W. Bush's move at inclusiveness.

More recently, she complained that 2008 Republican presidential nominee John McCain's policies were "awful." And as state Rep. Joe Straus lined up the votes to become Texas House speaker in January, she called the San Antonio Republican a "radical" who was out of step with the conservative GOP.

She also has been a consistent thorn in the side of the state's senior U.S. senator, Kay Bailey Hutchison, who has riled Adams by supporting abortion rights and embryonic stem cell research.

As recently as a few weeks ago, Adams warned that Hutchison would "not be there" for social conservatives if she's elected governor. It wasn't particularly surprising, since Adams already had endorsed Gov. Rick Perry, calling him the best pick for true conservatives in the GOP primary race.

Now, she has vowed unquestioned loyalty to both the speaker and the senator. She said Straus and Hutchison "know that I'm going to be their best friend."

Some critics are skeptical that Adams will be able to contain her bomb-throwing nature.

"I think we're going to see the same Cathie Adams we've seen for two decades," said Dan Quinn, spokesman for the liberal Texas Freedom Network. "That's somebody who uses extreme and divisive rhetoric to promote a political agenda, and if you get in her way, whether you're Republican or not, she'll go after you."

Adams, a native of Peoria, Ill., who lives in Dallas, said she's keeping her focus on party building and winning elections, not internal squabbles. Last week, the state GOP snagged Rep. Chuck Hopson of Jacksonville, whose defection could help the Republicans maintain their narrow House majority.

In the meantime, Adams isn't shying away from attacks on Democrats.

She said she still believes Democrats are using flawed science to promote a global warming panic and she didn't back down from her complaint that President Barack Obama's speech to schoolchildren in September represented a frightening politicization of the public education system, sounding "eerily like Hitler's youth movement."

http://www.dallasnews.com/sharedcontent/dws/news/texassouthwest/stories/DN-gopchief_23tex.ART.State.Edition1.4b4d17a.html

Coke and Confiscation

2009-11-23T03:57:00.000-08:00

Jerusalem Post - Edwin Black - ‎Nov 22, 2009‎

... the Coca-Cola Company was publicly accused of being criminally enriched following the Nasser regime's Nazi-style expropriation of Jewish property. ...

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1258705159232&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Former UK ambassador: CIA sent people to be ‘raped with broken bottles’

2009-11-23T02:32:00.000-08:00

By Daniel Tencer
Raw Story
November 4th, 2009

The CIA relied on intelligence based on torture in prisons in Uzbekistan, a place where widespread torture practices include raping suspects with broken bottles and boiling them alive, says a former British ambassador to the central Asian country.

Craig Murray, the rector of the University of Dundee in Scotland and until 2004 the UK's ambassador to Uzbekistan, said the CIA not only relied on confessions gleaned through extreme torture, it sent terror war suspects to Uzbekistan as part of its extraordinary rendition program.

"I'm talking of people being raped with broken bottles," he said at a lecture late last month that was re-broadcast by the Real News Network. "I'm talking of people having their children tortured in front of them until they sign a confession. I'm talking of people being boiled alive. And the intelligence from these torture sessions was being received by the CIA, and was being passed on."

Human rights groups have long been raising the alarm about the legal system in Uzbekistan. In 2007, Human Rights Watch declared that torture is "endemic" to the country's justice system.

Murray said he only realized after his stint as ambassador that the CIA was sending people to be tortured in Uzbekistan, country he describes as a "totalitarian" state that has never moved on from its communist era, when it was a part of the Soviet Union.

Suspects in Uzbekistan's gulags "were being told to confess to membership in Al Qaeda. They were told to confess they'd been in training camps in Afghanistan. They were told to confess they had met Osama bin Laden in person. And the CIA intelligence constantly echoed these themes."

"I was absolutely stunned -- it changed my whole world view in an instant -- to be told that London knew [the intelligence] coming from torture, that it was not illegal because our legal advisers had decided that under the United Nations convention against torture, it is not illegal to obtain or use intelligence gained from torture as long as we didn't do the torture ourselves," Murray said. ...

CONTINUED

http://rawstory.com/2009/11/ambassador-cia-people-tortured/

After the JFK Assassination

2009-11-22T08:12:00.000-08:00

" ... the FBI and other federal agencies sought to hide their tracks with a cover-up. ... Shredding machines at the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Department were used overtime to dispose of documents that detailed the government's knowledge about Oswald. ... "

By Bill Hendricks
Express-News | 09/18/2009

The Secret Service failed to adequately protect President John F. Kennedy 30 years ago -- leaving Kennedy to ride in an open limousine into an ambush on a downtown Dallas street, congressional investigations showed.

After Kennedy was assassinated Nov. 22, 1963, and nightclub operator Jack Ruby murdered suspect Lee Harvey Oswald two days later, the FBI and other federal agencies sought to hide their tracks with a cover-up, investigations found.

When Ruby shot Oswald while in Dallas police custody, he silenced forever the one person who could have revealed whether Oswald acted alone or was part of a conspiracy.

Shredding machines at the FBI, Central Intelligence Agency and Defense Department were used overtime to dispose of documents that detailed the government's knowledge about Oswald.

When coupled together, Oswald's murder and the cover-up probably ensured that the many mysteries surrounding Kennedy's assassination never will be fully resolved. Kennedy assassination studies have attracted thousands of avid researchers, hobbyists and theorists of every stripe -- from serious history students to crackpots.

The 30th anniversary of Kennedy's death turned Dallas into a mecca for assassination buffs and for writers and collectors who have transformed the Kennedy murder followup into a variety of profit-making ventures that include books, T-shirts and Kennedy memorabilia.

If nothing else, American free enterprise may rule out a resolution to the question of who killed JFK and why.

This much was revealed by the U.S. House of Representatives "Select Committee on Assassinations" in a report to Congress on March 29, 1979:

-- Prior to Kennedy's fateful visit to Dallas, the FBI, CIA, Army Intelligence and the Office of Naval Intelligence all had files on Oswald because of his defection to the Soviet Union in late 1959 and his return to the United States in 1962.

His association with the pro-Fidel Castro "Fair Play for Cuba Committee" was reported in newspapers after his arrest in New Orleans on Aug. 9, 1963.

-- Oswald wrote a note to an FBI agent and delivered it to FBI headquarters in Dallas two or three weeks before Kennedy's slaying. Agent James P. Hosty told congressional investigators he didn't know it was Oswald who wrote the note until the day Kennedy was assassinated and Oswald arrested.

Dallas FBI Agent-In-Charge J. Gordon Shanklin ordered the note destroyed, Hosty said.

-- The CIA opened a file on Oswald on Dec. 9, 1960. An agency memorandum indicated the file was opened with the receipt of documents from the FBI, the State Department and the Navy.

-- The 112th Military Intelligence Group at Fort Sam Houston opened a file on Oswald because of pro-Castro activity in New Orleans the summer prior to Kennedy's assassination. Up to a dozen military intelligence agents were in Dallas the day the president was shot.

The intelligence file never was seen by the Warren Commission in 1964 and was "routinely" destroyed before the congressional committee began its work in 1976.

-- Beginning in March 1963, about eight months before Kennedy began the Texas trip, the Secret Service learned about "three significant threats to the president." The first two concerned planned presidential trips to Chicago in March and November. The third was in connection with a trip to Miami Nov. 18.

In the case of Miami, a police informant recorded a conversation with a "right-wing extremist" who said there was a plot to shoot Kennedy with a high-powered rifle from a tall building.

The congressional investigation report asserted: "The fact was, however, that two threats to assassinate President Kennedy with high-powered rifles, both of which occurred in early November 1963, were not relayed to the Dallas region."

No check of the Texas School Book Depository building was made prior to Kennedy's motorcade past the seven-story structure, where Oswald had worked since mid-October. The committee cited what it said was a failure by the Secret Service to protect the president and failures by the FBI, CIA and other government agencies to reveal important facts to either the Warren Commission, appointed by President Lyndon Johnson to investigate the assassination, or the public.

The congressional committee quoted Warren Commission members and staff as saying the most important information withheld from them was information surrounding a joint effort by the CIA and the Mafia to murder Cuban ruler Fidel Castro.

"They (Warren Commission members and staff) repeatedly noted that they had been significantly more disposed toward trusting the CIA and FBI in 1963 and 1964 than they would have been in 1978," the House committee report stated.

http://www.mysanantonio.com/news/special_reports/59766187.html

Secret Intelligence on Hitler Discovered in French Archives After Decades

2009-11-21T16:33:00.000-08:00

Jerusalem Post
Nov 21, 2009

Secret documents describing Adolf Hitler's beginnings in the Nazi Party were discovered in the French National Archives after being secreted away for decades in an iron safe, Le Monde reported on Friday.

The documents depicted Hitler's political agenda, describing him as a "German Mussolini … a very skillful demagogue" and alluding to the "failed" Munich Beer Hall Putsch he led in 1923. "He is not an idiot," stressed one of the reports, while another outlined an attempt by France to gain information about the Nazis via infiltration.

The files erroneously named Hitler "Adolf Jacob," also misrepresenting his date and place of birth.

The iron safe in which they were found was said to generally be used to house France's most important historical documents.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1258705151249&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Benito Mussolini Regarded Adolf Hitler as a 'Sentimentalist'

2009-11-20T10:38:00.001-08:00

Benito Mussolini regarded Adolf Hitler as a teary-eyed "sentimentalist" but was jealous of the Nazi dictator's power and fame, diaries written by the Italian leader's mistress reveal.

By Nick Squires in Rome
The Telegraph | 16 Nov 2009

REUTERS Claretta Petacci's journals, which will be published this week, describe a meeting he had with the German leader in 1938 after British prime minister Neville Chamberlain agreed to Germany's annexation of the Sudetenland.

"The Fuhrer was very kind. At heart, Hitler is an old sentimentalist. When he saw me he had tears in his eyes," Mussolini told his lover.

The diaries also show Mussolini was irritated by being regarded as a junior partner to Hitler, maintaining that his fascism and anti-Semitism dated back to the 1920s, before Hitler rose to prominence.

"I've been racist since 1921," he proudly told his mistress on a boating trip on August 4, 1938, two years before Italy declared war on Britain. ...

In another diary entry, Mussolini rails against Italians in Italy's African colonies having relationships with locals.

"Every time I get a report from Africa, it makes me upset. Just today, another five arrested for living with blacks. Ah! These dirty Italians, they are destroying in less than seven years an empire. They have no consciousness of race." ...

FULL STORY

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/italy/6583584/Benito-Mussolini-regarded-Adolf-Hitler-as-a-sentimentalist.html