Some Americans angry about Muslims who died at Ground Zero

From Facts not Fairies:

Fresh from her comments condemning the building of a mosque so close to the site of the World Trade Center towers that were destroyed on September 11, 2001, the former Alaska governor has chosen a new target in her bid to prevent sacrilege against the so-called "Ground Zero" site: Muslims who were killed in the terror attacks of 9/11. More
In Memorium: Muslims who Died Inside the WTC on 9/11
There is a list here, preceded by three stories of Muslims who died that day. The list is attributed to the Islamic Circle of North America, and I have sent a message via their website asking that they confirm or deny this. The reason I say this is because it occured to me to start cross-checking the list against well-known 9/11 victim lists like this one or this one.

In Memorium: Jews who Died Inside the WTC on 9/11:
Sorry to disappoint you but NO list exists. We were told initially that 4000 Jews perished (Jerusalem Post) but later were found to have taken the day off work. To date only 1 Jew who was not informed by his tribe had perished. We must consider ourselves lucky only 1 Jew died or else we'll be bombarded by another (Fourth?) Holocau$t!

'Israel has been spying on the US for 60 years'

From PressTV, Sat, 28 Aug 2010 00:09:41 GMT

International lawyer Franklin Lamb says Israel has been spying on the United States for six decades.

He made the remarks in an interview with Press TV.

Political analyst and author of the  Hidden History of Zionism Ralph Schoenman and journalist and commentator Richard Millet also participated in the interview, in wich they discussed former CIA Agent Philip Giraldi's accusations that Israel has been spying on the US with impunity.

Following is the transcript of the interview: Press TV: Mr. Lamb, does Israel spy on the United States? Lamb: I think it is pretty clear it has been going on for six decades. I agree with [CIA Agent Philip] Giraldi's report… and I think that Giraldi is right. I think a problem is that the CIA, according to the Senate Intelligence Committee and the so-called intelligence… the 16 agencies that make up the Intelligence Community (IC) are themselves split, and we have to ask the question of 'Where is the line between the CIA and the Mossad?'

According to a congressional source, there is tension inside the agencies, some feeling that Israel is a primary threat, [but] with the case of the nuclear ambitions or whatever they be in Iran… part of the agency sees the primary threat. And a challenge for the American government is to get their hand on the trigger finger of Israel's nuclear arsenal, and others in the intelligence committee feel that that the Mossad serves the CIA.

So, I think that makes it a very difficult problem and these kinds of reports coming out may be just the tip of the iceberg. So, I think it is a major problem and the American public has got to challenge this and challenge the media to report it, challenge Congress to not protect and give cover, and I think that is what lies ahead of this debate. Press TV: Mr. Millet, what interests would Israel have in spying on America? Millet: Well, I mean there is quite a lot of cooperation between Israel and America in all the sectors that these accusations are made. So, there is little need for Israel to spy on America, and for this ridiculous little blog to say that spying for Israel is consequence free, well tell that about Jonathan Pollard, who has been serving life in prison and he has spent 25 odd years there so far in terrible conditions. His wife also served some time as well.

So, that just undermines all credibility in this blog that is basically put together on hearsay and has absolutely no evidence whatsoever and we have heard it time and time again, these accusations of the powerful Israel lobby, it is absolutely impossible to be honest with you.

I mean we have heard it, we have seen the books by [Stephen] Walt and [John] Mearsheimer, put together on substantiated accusations basically based on newspaper articles, no primary interviews, no primary resources whatsoever. It is a farce. Press TV: Mr. Schoenman, when Philip Giraldi says that Israel is spying on “the United States intensively, particularly in pursuit of military and dual-use civilian technology.” The point Mr. Millet is making is that there is extensive cooperation between the US and Israel when it comes to specifically these issues.

So, why would Israel need to spy on America to gain information we assume they already have access to? Schoenman: There is a total integration between the Central Intelligence Agency and the intelligence agencies of the United States and the Mossad, and together they prey upon the American people and upon the peoples of the world. We have to keep in mind that the current prime minster of Israel, Benjamin Netanyahu, as documented by Neve Gordon and in the Israeli publication Ha'ir had four social security cards, as he worked for the Central Intelligence Agency, under Benjamin Netanyahu, Benjamin Nitai, John Jay Sullivan, and John Jay Sullivan Jr.

And as for… Dov Zakhaeim, the controller of the Pentagon, a similar relationship with the Mossad, even as he was a facilitator of the central events concerning 9/11. Much of this has been well documented in books … Press TV There is another accusation made by Gilardi. He talks about the airline and telecommunications security sectors that are being spied on. That just reminded me of the spy rings accused in Lebanon and the telecom sector. Is there any information that Israel could get from America's telecommunications that is above and beyond what it already has access to, in terms of its cooperation with the United States? Lamb: Well, I think so, and you are quite right in raising the question of Lebanon. Now there are more that 75 Israeli spies who have been arrested, and according to Hezbollah intelligence and the government and the army… Israel had and continues to have major control of the telecommunications, both the mobile communications and the landlines, anytime they want and it happened two days ago. Israel will send messages to tens and scores of thousands of Lebanese through the mobile phone, they have this capacity, they have cracked it, and to my knowledge they still have that capacity.

With respect to the United States, again it is a very disturbing report. There have been other reports to this effect. Their specialization is their communications and they can monitor virtually all outgoing calls in America. But in that respect, I disagree with your guest, Mr. Millet, when he speaks about Jonathan Pollard.

According to government officials at the time, the damage that Pollard did to America is incalculable and he has had a lobby who has tried for all these years to squeeze the White House and others to get that man free. But what he did and others are doing is, they sold out the country to a foreign government, and that is a serious offence. And contrary to his [Millet's] discussion that there is no good documentation, all of these books recently by Mearsheimer and Walt and the others are very well documented.

I think we are at the dawn of an era of disclosure and documentation of the Israeli reach within the American society and I think it is a major challenge and that the American public and Congress have got to address this. So, I think it is of utmost seriousness and I think it is wrong to dismiss it as some sort of anti-Israeli feeling. Press TV: Mr. Schoenman, Israel is very clear on its stance, when it comes to the US and spying on the US, as Israeli spokesman Mark Regev has said, "Israel does not spy on the United States of America.” Is there really any factual foundation for these accusations? Ralph Schoenman: There us massive documentation of this. The Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency's role in running the affairs of the United States on behalf of that one percent of the population that owns more than 95 percent of the rest of us combined. The ruling class and capitalist America preys upon the American people no less than it does the peoples of the world.

The Israeli state has been an attack-dog of US imperialism from its inception and the role of the Mossad is carrying out intelligence operations, including those of 9/11. After all, the Odego Company in the World Trade Center notified its employees in advance of the attack of the World Trade Center. The so-called dancing Israelis of the Urban Moving Company, which has Israeli Mossad operatives involved in the coordination of events with respect to 9/11, documented on  FOXNews, massively massively documented material.

As to the role of Benjamin Netanyahu, the current prime minister of Israel, he functioned for the CIA and the Mossad with four identities, four US social security cards, in the names of Benjamin Nitai, Benjamin Netanyahu, John Jay Sullivan, and John Jay Sullivan, Jr. It was documented in the Israel publication  Ha'ir and by the Israeli journalist Neve Gordon, massive and continuous documentation, control over telecommunications. Of course, it is Israeli companies that have the opportunity and responsibility of monitoring and coordinating all telecommunications, including government telecommunications in the United States, as well as controlling security at principle airports.

But these are integrated operations of the Mossad and the Central Intelligence Agency, spying on the American people, spying on the essential vital interests of the people of this country, but on behalf of a tiny ruling class. Mossad and the Israeli state are attack-dogs created by imperialism and sustained by imperialism… Press TV: Mr. Millet, what is being discussed is, as you said, these accusations are being made in a blog, but in essence, they are not wholly without foundation. We are talking about telecommunications spying in America. Well, in Lebanon we have had people charged for doing that for Israel. When it comes to the reports of these so-called false flag operations, where Mossad officers pose as US intelligence inside the country, Phillip Giraldi makes those accusations as well.

It brings to mind the Israeli spies taking on foreign identities, when Israeli spies used foreign passports and identities to assassinate Hamas military commander Mahmoud Al-Mabouh. There was some diplomatic fallout from that, but it doesn't seem like the media really picks up on these issues. Why do you think that is? Millet: You are joking aren't you? You just talked about the assassination in Dubai, and you are telling me the media didn't pick up on that? It was absolutely international. But there is no connection between that, which was a valid assassination of a self-confessed terrorist, who has murdered Israelis in the past and wished to carry out more murders of innocent Israelis, and an operation where he was assassinated and no one else was harmed, no civilians were killed, and so there is no connection between that and spying on America. Press TV: Well, what about Stewart Nozette or Ben-Ami Kadish. There was hardly any media coverage and I have looked and I follow it, it is my job. There has been rarely any coverage of that, especially in American media, especially when it comes down to for example Stewart Nozette. And I have hardly found anything about Ben-Ami Kadish. Millet: It is because it is not that interesting, it is a small case. And are you telling me that the American media is censored into writing what it wants? That just isn't true and the American press is completely and utterly free to write what it likes… Lamb: What about Helen Thomas? Millet: Well, I believe she said what she liked. I mean, she got her message across, but she lost her job on the basis of what she said. She can still say what she likes to say now. Press TV: There have been some documents of declassified information from the 1960s, so we are talking about 50 years ago. They allow a peep into Israel's public relations campaign in America's media then.

Mr. Lamb, what has changed from then until now? Lamb: Well, I think that just sets the parameters of when we first discovered this, and that item points out this fact that in 1938 Congress passed the Foreign Agents Registration Act (FARA), and it is for that reason, to avoid that law, that a pact was formed and to this day they are in gross violation of the probations of that act, but Congress will not enforce that law, and the media won't either. I think there is no question about the intimidation of the media.

Being here in Lebanon, we witness events first hand, and we have a very clear idea of what happened because we can investigate them ourselves. And then we see how  The New York Times and FOX News and CNN will not report certain facts, and the only reason they will not, and the reporters here will tell you, they do not want the flak from their editors, who are pressured by the Israeli lobby. I think the American media is losing public confidence because they realize that it doesn't present the facts as they should be and that is why the Internet is providing a good service because people can speak more frankly.

I cannot allow Mr. Millet's suggestion that the assassination was legitimate. My gosh, it was a wholesale violation of laws, not only of the countries that Mossad stole the passports from but [also] the sovereignty of the Emirates, and, of course, the man was not a self-confessed terrorist, so, that is a misapplication of the facts. So that was a huge crime and Israel should be held to account for that crime. Schoenman: The documentation is massive, including in such things as the International Herald Tribune, for example, the role of Guzie [or Josie] Hadas, the Mossad operative, in conjunction with the Federal Bureau of Investigation in organizing and implementing the bombing of the World Trade Center in 1993. I wrote an article at the time, "Who bombed the world trade center?"

Evidence points to FBI and Mossad. This documentation is massive. Guzie Hadas, the long established Mossad operative, had the safe house in her name and the writer who rented that in her name, facilitated it, Emad Ali Salem, the Egyptian intelligence and FBI operative, the preparing of the explosives, this is documented in the International Herald Tribune and The New York Times. I have to tell you that it is not picked up and generalized in the media. It reflects corporate intelligence control of media, but the role of the Mossad and the CIA, together and in rivalry, over favor and fallout over the spoils is a continuum of capitalist rule in the United States. After all, Rahm Emanual has a history with Israeli intelligence and US intelligence so does… Benjamin Netanyahu, documented inHa'aretz, documented in Ha'ir, documented in the American press as well.

The constant here is that the reports get out, but the consequence is nothing until the US population has a political instrument of it own to displace the two parties of capital, what we call the one big property party with two names. Israel is the attack-dog of US imperialism. The fallout over the spoils is not all due to the fact that the CIA, the US Central Intelligence Agency, and Mossad conspired together against the interests of the people of the United States and the peoples of the world, assassination included, as plots such as 9/11 foremost amongst them are amply documented, massively documented in books and articles across the world. Press TV: Mr. Millet, what is your response to some of the comments that have been made? Millet: You can't seriously take those last comments from Mr. Schoenman as objective. He has obviously got his own agenda and I have never heard someone quote massive documentation so much. I am sorry but this is complete and utter conspiracy theory, talking about 9/11 and all the other bombings. Press TV: The subpoenaed documents reveal Israel's clandestine programs for "cultivation of editors," - it sounds very much like buying editors out. I mean that in essence is what it is describing. These are facts, there are documents based on facts of what happened in 1960 and 1961. Millet: I have to be honest and say I haven't seen these documents. I would very much like to see these documents, as you have just said, they are 50 years old and it is nothing to be condoned. If it did happen, I can't really comment, but if journalists have been bought out like this, I can't be surprised, but I find it as an incredible allegation, and until I see the documents, it is extremely hard to comment. Press TV: They are available online for you if you do want to see them Mr. Millet.

Mr. Schoenman, is what you say a conspiracy theory? Schoenman: You know, the most frequently invoked category in every jurisdiction in the United States, city, county, state, and federal is that of conspiracy, conspiracy to defraud, conspiracy to do this, conspiracy to do that. The only so-called conspiracy that the media and apologists for the US ruling class like Mr. Millet are not interested in is that of high authority. After all, conspiracy means two people consorting to act in common, nothing more and nothing less.

The crimes of the state are massively documented. If you look at the book,  The Other Side of Deception: A Rogue Agent Exposes the Mossad's Secret Agenda by Victor Ostrovsky, a massive bestseller, you will find ample documentation, case by case and year by year. So is his book By Way of Deception. So is the book Profits of War: Inside the Secret US-Israeli Arms Network by Ari Ben-Menashe.

There is a huge legacy of documentation in books by former operatives, by prominent journalists, Harrison Salisbury, the distinguished journalist for  The New York Times, [wrote an article called] "Gentlemen Killers of the CIA" which he published in Penthouse in 1975, documenting the CIA and the Mossad and their operations across the United States and the world. Gentleman killers indeed.

You have to be guilty of what the Jesuits call invincible ignorance to be unaware of the huge dossier of documentation which has been published and distributed on a worldwide basis, including in the United States.

RBK/SAR/HGL

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• 'Mossad spying in US with impunity'
• ________________

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The U.S.-Made Mess in Somalia

By Gwynne Dyer
Syndicated Columnist
August 26, 2010 "Salt Lake Tribune" -- The U.S. decision in 2006 to send Ethiopian troops into Somalia was one of the stupidest moves in a very stupid decade. This week, some of the chickens spawned by that decision came home to roost.

On Monday, the al-Shabaab militia launched a “massive war” against the 6,000 African Union peacekeepers, most of them Ugandan, who are protecting the so-called government of Somalia. In reality, however, all it actually governs is a few dozen blocks in Mogadishu, and its members are just a group of Somali warlords and clan leaders who proclaimed themselves to be the “Transitional Federal Government” in 2004.

Six TFG “members of parliament” were among the 40 people killed when an al-Shabaab suicide squad stormed the al-Muna hotel in Mogadishu on Tuesday, but there will be no by-elections to replace them. They were never elected in the first place. The TFG made no progress in reuniting the country, and now its surviving members sit surrounded by al-Shabaab fighters who control most of the sprawling capital.

Southern Somalia has been trapped in an unending civil war since the last real government collapsed in 1991, but the current round of killing was triggered when the United States invited Ethiopia to invade the country in 2006. This was a bit high-handed, especially since Ethiopia was Somalia’s traditional enemy, but Washington’s aim was to destroy the “Islamic Courts ” in Somalia.

The TFG failed utterly to impose its authority and restore order in Somalia, but the Islamic Courts Union took a different approach. Its roots were in the merchant class in Mogadishu, who simply wanted a safer environment to do business in, and they understood that Islam was the only common ground on which all of the country’s fissiparous clans and militias might be brought together again.

The Islamic courts, applying Shariah law, were the instrument by which the society would gradually be brought back under the rule of law — and for about six months, it worked amazingly well. The zones of peace and order spread throughout southern Somalia, the epicenter of the fighting, and trade and employment revived. A made-in-Somalia solution had spontaneously emerged from the chaos.

Inevitably, some of the younger supporters of the Islamic Courts movement enjoyed ranting in public about the virtues of al-Qaida, the wickedness of Americans, and other matters of which they knew little. Almost every popular movement has a radical youth wing that specializes in saying stupid and provocative things. It is the job of the adults, inside and outside the organization, to contain their excesses and not to panic.

Alas, the United States panicked, or at least its intelligence agencies did. The mere word “Islamic” set off alarm bells in the Bush administration, which had the lamentable habit of shooting first and thinking later.

Washington therefore concluded that the Islamic Courts Union, Somalia’s best hope of escaping from perpetual civil war, was an enemy that must be removed. Since the TFG was clearly not up to that task, Washington asked Ethiopia, Somalia’s old enemy, to provide the necessary troops.

A prostrate and divided Somalia was clearly in Ethiopia’s long-term strategic interest, so why not? Especially since the U.S. financed the whole operation.

The Ethiopian troops invaded in late 2006 and the Islamic Courts Union was destroyed, leaving the field clear for the movement’s radical youth wing, al-Shabaab (The Youth). Attacks on both the TFG and the Ethiopians multiplied, and civil war and chaos returned to Mogadishu. After two years the Ethiopians, having thoroughly wrecked any prospect of peace in Somalia, pulled their troops out and went home.

Since late 2008, only the 8,000 African Union troops in the country have kept alive the fiction of a Somali government friendly to the United States, but al-Shabaab has now gone on the offensive. The two suicide bombs that killed 74 people in Kampala last month were a warning to Ugandans to bring their troops home from Somalia, and al-Shabaab is now trying to overrun the last small patch of Somali territory still held by the TFG.

The northern half of former Somalia, ruled by the breakaway states of Puntland and Somaliland, is already at peace and will remain so. Southern Somalia will probably have to endure more years of violence and despair because Washington never understood that the Islamic Courts Union could be its tacit ally in stabilizing Somalia. But nothing particularly bad will happen to anybody except Somalis, so that’s all right.

Copyright 2010 The Salt Lake Tribune. 

LAUGH, OBAMA, LAUGH! As You Distract & Pimp the Peoples’ Pain Keeping It Real

By Larry Pinkney

BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board

“The wolf and the fox are both enemies of humanity, both are canine, both humiliate and mutilate their victims. Both have the same objectives, but differ only in methods.”
---Malcolm X (el-Hajj Malik el-Shabazz)


“The most potent weapon in the hands of the oppressor is the mind of the oppressed.”
---Steven Biko


Through a steady barrage of unceasing distractions and lies, the waters of informed public discourse in this nation are being deliberately poisoned and manipulated. Barack Obama, the Democrat and Republican parties, and the corporate-stream media engage in these tactics as a means of controlling and manipulating the pain of everyday people.


An example of this poisoning and distraction is the recent public foray by Barack Obama, regarding the possible building of a Muslim mosque near “ground zero” in New York City. Obama claimed that he was merely manifesting his respect for the U.S. Constitution by reminding the U.S. public of the constitutional right to build said mosque. This of course was nothing more than a cynical distraction on Obama’s part. Where is Barack Obama’s constitutional respect as he callously shreds the U.S. Constitution by supporting and extending the unconstitutional police-state ‘Patriot Act’ and the program of U.S. government  kidnapping and torture known as ‘Extraordinary Rendition’?!  No! Barack Obama, the Democratic Party foxes, the Republican Party wolves, and the ever subservient lap dog corporate-stream media utilized the mosque matter in New York City, as a cynical distraction away from the horrors of massive unemployment, home foreclosures, a rapidly deteriorating U.S. infrastructure, a burgeoning U.S. prison gulag population, corporate/Wall Street hegemony, the de facto continued U.S. occupation of Iraq, and the bloody U.S. wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan. So laugh Obama, laugh! As you distract and pimp the pain of the people! In the paraphrased words of the great Harold Melvin and the Blue Notes: “Wake Up Everybody!…. (Listen closely to the words) Politicians stop lying!!!”


It is the year 2010, in the 21st century, and once again it is time to wake up and organize on behalf of ourselves: just plain everyday Black, White, Brown, Red and Yellow peoples!
As Barack Obama spends billions of dollars on overt wars abroad, he and his ilk are also spending billions more dollars conducting bloody, illegal, and secret wars of terrorism allegedly against those who are themselves arbitrarily defined as “terrorists,” all in the name of the ‘American’ people. This of course serves to enhance the bloody cycle of “terrorism,” not stop it. It also simultaneously financially enriches the bulging and bottomless coffers of the U.S. corporate / military elite at the expense of jobs, housing, schools, libraries, education, and the over-all infrastructure of this nation. (See New York Times, August 14, 2010).


How is it that Barack Obama could so cleverly, callously and cynically be leading this nation backwards to economic and social ruin, while in a perpetual state of wars abroad? The answer is not difficult. Consider that there is strong reason to believe that Barack Obama himself was fastidiously groomed by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA)/corporate complex in preparation for his role as the head of the U.S. corporate / military Empire. Moreover, his family, including his mother, father, step father, and grand father all had very close ties with the CIA and were most probably CIA operatives themselves. (Reference: The Story of Obama: All in The Company Part1 and Part 2).


Barack Obama did not rise from relative national obscurity on his own to become President of the United States. He was aided and abetted by the CIA/corporate complex with the eager and able assistance of the corporate-stream media. The CIA successfully subverted and manipulated so-called democracy in this nation with the blindly euphoric installment of Barack Obama as the first “black” president of this country. This however, is by no means the first time that the clandestine CIA, with its enormous and largely hidden budget, has subverted democracy in this nation and abroad, nor is it likely to be the last. [Remember how the CIA, orchestrated and funded the overthrow of the democratically elected governments of Iran in 1953, and Chile in 1973. Notwithstanding a shredded U.S. Constitution, it is ridiculous to assume that the ‘American’ people would somehow be immune to CIA subterfuge inside the United States itself.]


The U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, in addition to other so-called “intelligence” agencies have also unscrupulously infiltrated and subverted vast portions of the U.S. “news” media and public institutions in this nation. Thus, it is absolutely no coincidence that some who seek to expose Barack Obama and/or U.S. government lies, often find themselves as the targets of “dirty trick” activities of vicious discreditation, or imprisoned, or mysteriously disappeared, or yes, even murdered.  The Obama / Dunham / Soetoro CIA connections stretch from the United States, to Kenya, to Indonesia, to Lebanon and beyond. No one should be surprised that the articulate, double-talking Barack Obama has escalated (for example) the U.S. wars Afghanistan and Pakistan, while enacting repressive legislation such as the “Patriot Act’ that in effect shreds the U. S. Constitution.


It should come as no surprise that the infamous COINTELPRO activities by the U.S. government have now been in essence codified into law within the ‘Patriot Act’ itself. The next time you hear Barack Obama speak or witness his sickly smile---remember well---who and what he really is and whose interests he actually serves. What you don’t know can not only hurt you—it can kill you. WAKE UP EVERYBODY—Wake UP!


Everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation are in terrible pain and are hurting like never before. Yet, Barack Obama, his congressional colleagues, and the corporate-stream media dare to pontificate about a so-called “economic recovery,” which is in fact nonexistent for the masses of everyday people. The lying rhetoric and smoke & mirror economics of Barack Obama, the Democratic Party foxes, and the Republican Party wolves have served the greedy corporate elite of Wall Street—not the everyday people.(Reference: Deceptive Economic Statistics: While the economists lied the US economy died). 


Corporate greed must be addressed and stood up to everywhere. Moreover, the corporate government and its hand maiden corporate-stream media must be organized against just as the people did this past August 10, 2010, in the ongoing struggle against Whirlpool corporation’s greed and corruption in Benton Harbor Michigan. These kinds of people’s struggles are increasingly being organized throughout the United States. Everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people must assert their / our human rights to decent jobs, justice, and a life with dignity.


Educate, agitate, and organize! In the words of Joe Hill, “Don’t Mourn. Organize!!!” Link our issues and concerns together! Even while Barack Obama and his ilk cynically manipulate and laugh at the pain of the everyday people, we must organize!
There remains much work to be done. The time for slumber has long passed. Onward my sisters and brothers! Onward!


BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil/political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS NewsHour, formerly known as TheMacNeil/LehrerNewsHour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book). Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.
_____________


More: The Peace Laureate’s Prayer: War Without End, Amen

Veterans’ group: CIA blocking lawsuit over experiments on troops

By Daniel Tencer
Rawstory, August 27th, 2010


An advocacy group working on behalf of Vietnam veterans has asked a federal judge in California to sanction the CIA, saying the spy agency has been blocking efforts to uncover its role in alleged experiments on US soldiers from the 1950s to 1970s.


The Vietnam Veterans of America filed a lawsuit on behalf of six Vietnam War veterans in January, 2009, claiming that the CIA had used an estimated 7,800 US service members as "guinea pigs" in experiments involving "at least 250, but as many as 400 chemical and biological agents," according to Courthouse News.


Among the chemicals the lawsuit alleges were used on the soldiers were LSD, sarin and phosgene nerve gases, cyanide, PCP and even THC, the active ingredient in marijuana.
The lawsuit described it as a "vast program of human experimentation" that was "shrouded in secrecy" and carried out without the informed consent of the experiment subjects.
"In 1970, [the CIA] provided Congress with an alphabetical list showing that they had tested 145 drugs during Projects Bluebird, Artichoke, MKULTRA and MKDELTA," the lawsuit stated, as quoted at Courthouse News.



As the defendant in the suit, the CIA is obliged, by judge's orders, to hand over data relevant to the lawsuit. But the VVA has asked a judge to sanction the CIA, saying the agency has ignored or blocked its requests for information, and has released only a small portion of the relevant documents.
The VVA's first attempts to obtain CIA data on the experiments "have been pending for over a year, during which time [the CIA] have attempted to sidestep their discovery obligations at every turn, withholding (or even refusing to search for) large volumes of relevant, responsive documents [and] refusing to provide ... witnesses to testify about their document searches and certain substantive topics," the motion (PDF), filed in a California federal court this week, states.


The VVA says the CIA had refused to use "a routine protective order" that would restrict any sensitive CIA data to within the courtroom, and instead blacked out large parts of relevant documents. The plaintiffs say the CIA refused to provide the names of the test subjects involved, allowing only the names of the six defendants who filed the lawsuit.


"Even more unbelievably, it appears that defendants have yet to search even the most obvious location for documents — Edgewood Arsenal itself," the motion states, referring to the location northeast of Baltimore where the experiments are said to have been carried out.
The motion states the CIA "served no responses or objections whatsoever" to the VVA's second and third requests for information.


The motion asks that the judge, in addition to sanctioning the CIA, also order the CIA to pay the VVA's costs associated with its attempts to obtain CIA information.
Judge James Larson of the US District Court in northern California will begin hearing arguments in the case on Sept. 29.


The VVA describes itself as "the only national Vietnam veterans organization congressionally chartered and exclusively dedicated to Vietnam-era veterans and their families."


A 2003 report (PDF) from the Department of Veterans Affairs states that "between 1950 and 1975, about 6,720 soldiers took part in experiments involving exposures to 254 different chemicals, conducted at US Army Laboratories at Edgewood Arsenal, MD. Congressional hearings into these experiments in 1974 and 1975 resulted in disclosures, notification of subjects as to the nature of their chemical exposures, and ultimately to compensation for a few families of subjects who had died during the experiments."

WW3 preppings: Russia is rushing

(Consider that this sort of dummies worked very effectively when deployed by Yugoslavia against NATO bombings. Russians took notice)

The Russian Defence Ministry has ordered elaborate inflatable copies of its most ubiquitous planes, tanks and missiles at a cost of almost £2,000 per model to fool its enemies in future conflicts.

By Andrew Osborn in Moscow 

Telegraph, 24 Aug 2010

1 Comment

Photo: EAST NEWS / REX FEATURES

The purchase has drawn sharp criticism from military analysts, who say the Kremlin should be spending its oil wealth on buying real military hardware rather than rubber copies.

"Inflatable military hardware is most effective in conflict situations when there is a need to confuse the enemy," the daily Komsomolskaya Pravda newspaper argued on Tuesday.

"But at a time of peace, duping foreign intelligence networks with such expensive toys is a questionable luxury."

Alexander Talanov, the director of the scientific research centre that makes the rubber models, told state TV that the defence ministry was particularly keen on acquiring more copies of the truck-mounted Soviet-era S-300 surface-to-air missile system.
He said such models were designed to fool satellite and air reconnaissance and that the United States and China had invested heavily in replicas of their own hardware.

The precise number of rubber models ordered by Russia's defence ministry is a military secret, but the inflatable missiles are expected to be ready by the end of next year.

Russian designers boast that the tanks can be inflated in just four minutes, while replicas of missile systems take only five minutes to set up.
The models are allegedly indistinguishable from the real thing from as little as 350 feet away. The controversial shopping spree comes as Russia rushes to upgrade 75 per cent of its real military hardware by 2020. 

Three Flashpoints to $220 Oil

By Byron King

The Daily Reckoning, 08/27/10 Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania – With oil sitting comfortably at $73 a barrel this morning, we cast a nervous eye toward the Middle East…where three little-noted developments are setting the stage for a return to triple-digit prices. Maybe very soon.

1) On the surface, this looks like a pretty routine Iraq story: An ambush there yesterday killed six members of a Sunni militia known as the “Awakening Councils.”

But the background the media didn’t supply makes this much more interesting – and ominous. See, the Awakening Councils are Sunni Muslims the US government paid off in 2007 so they’d stop shooting at US troops.

This was part of Gen. David Petraeus’ “surge” strategy: He promised the militiamen that in return, they’d get a seat at the table in Iraq’s new government, dominated by Shia Muslims. Problem is, Petraeus never got the Shia to buy into this.

What’s more, Iraq’s new Shia leaders have close ties to Shia-dominated Iran; in fact, several of them lived there in exile during Saddam Hussein’s rule. Our eyes perked up a bit at the location of the attack yesterday – within spitting distance of the border.

We don’t want to jump to conclusions about who’s to blame for this attack. Still, we take note because Iraq is the first of three flashpoints Byron King has identified in what he sees as a “New War” shaping up between Sunnis and Shia in the Middle East.

We might be willing to chalk this up to coincidence, except that…

2) It’s looking more and more as if the United States and Iran are waging a proxy war in Yemen. Again, this is something the mainstream media ignores: The news we get from Yemen is all about al-Qaida sympathizers like the guy who tried to blow up the jet flying into Detroit last Christmas.

But Yemen’s Sunni-led government is also waging war against Shia rebels in the north, who say they’re victims of discrimination. The fighting has displaced 350,000 people in the last six years.

There’s word this morning of a truce, but truces have broken down before. That may be because, according to hawks in both Israel and the United States, Iran gives aid to its fellow Shia in Yemen. Iran “controls bodies that function as a state within a state, in Lebanon, Yemen, the Palestinian Authority, and other places,” according to Israel’s deputy foreign minister Danny Ayalon.

Get the picture? The United States is backing the Sunni government in Yemen, and Iran may be backing the Shia rebels. That’s why it looks like a proxy war. And it just so happens Yemen is the second of those three flash points Byron King is alerting us to. Should it blow up, he sees this Sunni-Shia war sending oil well past the record $147 set in July 2008.

3) We’re a bit late on this news, but we see President Obama has just sweetened an arms deal his predecessor cut with Saudi Arabia…throwing in 130 attack helicopters, to bring the total value of the package to $60 billion over 10 years. That’s the biggest US arms sale overseas ever.

The Pentagon makes it pretty plain: Part of the rationale for this deal is to “deter Iran.” Why? Because Sunni-ruled Saudi Arabia is home to restive Shia who happen to live on top of the country’s most productive oil fields.

Thus, the White house seeks “to beef up the militaries of Arab allies as a counterweight to Iran,” explains The Wall Street Journal. “Saudi Arabia, home to the birthplace of Islam, claims leadership of the Sunni world, making it a rival of Iran, which is predominantly Shia.”

And Saudi Arabia is the third and final flash point Byron identifies in the “New War” between Sunnis and Shia. Or rather, a new phase to a very old war that’s been raging for 1,300 years.

In this context, Iran’s nuclear program is something of a sideshow. “Even if the go-ahead to build a nuke never comes from Iran’s top cleric” says Byron, “the more immediate danger is a wildfire of Shia-Sunni unrest…starting in Iran’s new hotbeds of Shia support…and spreading across the rest of the Sunni-run oil states…with the richest oil fields in the world’s richest oil nation as the final battleground.”

Byron’s worst-case scenario: Oil at $220 a barrel, and gasoline close to $8 a gallon.

Dave Gonigam
for The Daily Reckoning