u2r2h blog

War letters... and Merry Christmas

2011-01-13T01:00:00.000Z

A book about War letters... may need to be re-written,
and the unsaid, the unmentionable, the censored brought out
into the daylight.

I can imagine the shell-shocked war-slaves wish that someone would publish
the heroic deeds of non-killer-murderers instead.
War *is* murder. And the returning soldiers are best off, if they can forget and
laugh about the "good" and "bad" phantasies of the not-shell-shocked.
Most soldiers, however, became wrecks who lost all beliefs.

But, yes, the children naturally idolize. They have not seen the unimaginable
terror and injustice (reality vs fiction).

Another child with memories of a US airstrike perhaps?

And.... the "good fight". As if the USA/UK were the "good guys"
who "rescued us" and as if the fire-bombing of cities was .. well,
what shall we call it to not offend the white man's sensibilities?

Necessary business, cold hearted, calculated? R&D for corporates?

There are massacres ("wars") going on right now. But where is the protest?

Guess what? It is about territory.

Like ww2! Don't kid yourself. If Germany would have murdered jews,
communists, gays, disabled and gypsies in their own territory,
the US and UK would have taken it as in incentive to start the
planning on how to do it! (Do you know how many disabled people
were castrated?)

Iraq? War crimes? -- The US Dollar speaks!

Hello! Afghanistan?
'We fight here because the enemy is here. The enemy fights here because we are here.'
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article27195.htm

Dare to listen to these talks in your cold winter nights:
http://mdrtalk.org/
There is MUCH reality (very condensed) that need to be in every book.

I listened to the pinkerton talk this morning. The opium war was a revelation
about the feeling of china towards the west.

GLADIO ERGENEKON Turkey deep state clean-up

2011-01-09T11:46:00.001Z

Maras massacre
Horrible events broke out in Turkey's southern province of
Kahramanmaras, formerly Maras, 30 years ago. The violent
incidents started on Dec. 19, 1978 and could only be stopped by
Dec. 26.

In these incidents, which came to be referred to as the Maras
massacre -- forming a major milestone in the run-up to the
military coup of Sept. 12, 1980, 111 Alevis died and thousands
were wounded, according to official figures. Given the extent of
the incidents, one can suggest that the real figures must be much
higher.

The Maras massacre has a very special place in Turkish history,
which is rife with provocations. In fact, the Maras massacre
shares similar characteristics with many previous provocations.
The incidents were sparked by the bombing of a movie theater
frequented by nationalists. As was the case with the Sept. 6-7,
1955 incidents, it was later found that the bomber was actually a
nationalist who had ties to the deep state. Again, as seen in the
incidents of Sept. 6-7, the houses of Alevis were marked ahead of
the massacre. Two Alevi teachers were killed. The incidents
started during the funeral ceremony of these teachers. The
funeral was attacked by a large crowd of nationalists who were
provoked by rumors that Alevis had burned down mosques and killed
Sunnis. The ensuing massacre that occurred in Alevi neighborhoods
was so horrible that it can leave humans at a loss for words.

Just as it has not confronted or challenged any other massacre,
Turkey did not confront or challenge the Maras massacre. It was
not even possible to commemorate the Maras massacre until the
recent commemoration ceremony held a few days ago in Maras during
which very thought-provoking incidents happened. I will discuss
this ceremony in my article on Friday.

There is not the slightest of doubt about the involvement of the
Turkish deep state, or the Turkish Gladio, which was the
precursor to today's Ergenekon, in the Maras incidents of 1978.
But if we tend to treat such incidents only with respect to their
political repercussions and put all the blame on the deep state,
without trying to understand the psychological moods of the
people who played a role in such massacres, does this take us
anywhere? Why are people in Turkey so easily manipulated in such
provocations? Why do we so readily forget these incidents? As I
will try to explain in the sequel to this article, nothing is
forgotten, but our failure to confront and discuss such massacres
only allows the pro-massacre spirit to continue to live in
Turkey.

The details of the massacre in Maras cannot be squeezed into this
article. It would certainly be better if several documentaries be
shot or novels or textbooks be written about this tragic incident
so that we never forget about them and that history never repeats
itself. Novelist Inci Aral has treated the Maras incidents in her
storybook "Kiran Resimleri" (Pictures of Destruction). Her
descriptions of how she was able to write those stories amply
indicate the horrifying effect of the incidents themselves. Let
us read how Aral decided to write her storybook on the Maras
massacre (see Orhan Tu:leylioglu, "Maras Katliami"):
"For three days, the city was truly a battlefield and was on
fire. ... According to official figures, 111 people were killed
by shooting, cutting or burning. Shops, houses and people's
residential sanctuaries were attacked; women were raped; abdomens
of pregnant women were cut and fetuses were nailed to trees. The
breasts of young girls were mutilated and placed on sticks and
put on display. ... Images published by papers and broadcast on
TV were unbearable for anyone with a human conscience. ... For
months I could not get rid of those memories and the horror of
the incidents. ... I had considered going to Kahramanmaras and
making on-the-spot observations about the incidents, and the
following words of a friend of mine from Maras reaffirmed my
intention: `Maras is still a bleeding wound. ... Why don't you
consider writing about those incidents?'

"One night, I got on the bus and went to Maras. ... Those who
survived the incidents had returned to their villages after the
incidents. The next day, they started to take me from one village
to another, sometimes with a motorcycle and sometimes on a horse
carriage -- and sometimes on extremely packed minibuses, for 10
days. They treated me as their guest in their poor houses. ...
They incessantly talked about the massacre and violence that
befell them. Never before had I seen such entrenched poverty,
helplessness and sincerity. Finding myself in a different world
and among the people whom I only knew to exist by hearsay was
touching. There I learned the beauty of the human heart and
warmth of my people.

"When I returned to Ankara, I could not speak for a month. I then
obtained the minutes of hearings [Author's note: She is referring
to a lawsuit brought in connection with the massacre and which
proved unproductive] from the joint attorneys and read the
witness testimonies, which were stuffed into 40 dossiers. As I
read through the minutes in tears, I came to believe what the
villagers had told me about the massacre. On that day my migraine
started.

"For one year I thought about how to narrate this violence. ... I
was not a journalist but a writer. I might tell an intense or
harsh story, but it must fall within the limits of literature and
be permanent. In the early 1980s I started to work on `Kiran
Resimleri' with the first story, `Elif.' I was only able to write
one story per month because I could not get over it any quicker.
... I completed the book a year later. ...
"`Kiran Resimleri' is a bold initiative for me and a watershed of
my 35 years of authorship. This small book speaks from the
perspective of a writer how people who had been living together
for centuries and who had been neighbors and who had intermarried
could in only a couple of days be turned into enemies who would
kill each other."

Now read what Aral wrote, and in particular her last paragraph,
from the perspective of the 1915 Armenian massacre, the 1934
Jewish pogroms, the Sept. 6-7, 1955 incidents and many other
bloody events in Turkey's past. You will see that Turkish history
repeats itself. And this will continue if we don't confront the
past.

Indian Activist ... do we care?

2011-01-08T09:00:00.001Z

The life sentence handed to Indian activist, Binayak Sen, for committing treason has been condemned by the Indian public as well as intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and Amartya Sen. The judgment of the Indian court is being described as brazen injustice.

"The process is the punishment. His life has already been destroyed," said Arundhati Roy, a prominent Indian author who won the 1997 Booker Prize and could face sedition charges herself for saying that "Kashmir has never been an integral part of India."

"The judgment is meant to be a signal... a warning to people who go against the grain," she added.

Sen was sentenced to life imprisonment in December for allegedly conspiring with the Maoist Communist rebels to fight against the country. Since then, support for him has been growing among activists, students, academics and the media.

India's economic rise has been accompanied by an intensification of the insurgency by the Maoists. The rebels -- called Naxalites -- attack government institutions and kill police personnel to overthrow the state.

Sen is accused of couriering letters between Naxal leaders.

Many people, however, have a hard time believing that Sen -- a 61-year-old paediatrician who has spent his life working to help improve the health of the "poorest of the poor" in Naxal areas -- was colluding against the state.

The decision, handed down by a trial court in state of Chhattisgarh, has also been slammed for being based on dodgy evidence.

Even India's former attorney-general, Soli Sorabjee, described the judgment as "shocking" and based on "flimsy evidence." "The judge has misapplied the section. And in any case the sentence is atrocious, savage," he said.

The life-sentence will be appealed in higher courts, which could be a long-drawn out episode. But Sen's supporters expressed their determination to get him released.

"There will be a coordinated movement that will snowball into something big. We will not rest until this judgment has been overturned," said Manisha Sethi from the Jamia Teachers Solidarity Association.

After enduring a year infested with multi-billion dollar corruption scandals involving politicians and powerful corporations, the public is even more critical of the decision against Sen.

"All the corrupt bureaucrats and politicians are roaming free. It is a disgusting situation in the country," said Inder Salim, a freelance artist in Delhi, who was attending a rally calling for the judgment to be reversed.

People have said that it is corrupt Indian politicians and bureaucrats who should be charged for treason.

Swami Agnivesh, a prominent scholar, pointed out that the country's leaders had allowed Warren Anderson, the CEO of the Union Carbide, to leave the country even though his company was responsible for the death of thousands of people of Bhopal city in the 1984 chemical disaster.

Anderson, who now lives in the U.S., was reportedly flown out the Bhopal in a state plane and he was never extradited to India to face trial.

Noting that all those responsible for Anderson's escape including the then prime minister, Rajiv Gandhi, were responsible for treason against Indians, Agnivesh said, "People who sell the country are ruling and human right defenders are put in jail."

Sen's conviction, in the backdrop of the lack of accountability for corruption scandals, has also given rise to broader grievances against that the current leadership of the Congress party--especially Prime Minister Manmohan Singh's plan to secure a place for India on the economic world stage.

Describing Sen as the, "thorn in the flesh of the corporatized state," one of India's leading activist, Vandana Shiva said, "Sadly the prime minister has said that growth is more important than the civil liberties of the people."

SWEDEN is - again - worst best top last

2010-11-27T19:19:00.000Z

The world is deeply divided on the question of whether religion is a force for good, a survey by Ipsos Reid suggests.

Is religion a force for good?
Country	% who agree
Saudi Arabia	92
Indonesia	91
India	69
United States	65
Russia	59
Italy	50
Turkey	43
Canada	36
Australia	32
Great Britain	29
Japan	29
France	24
Belgium	21
Sweden	19
Source: Ipsos Reid

The pollster found that 48 per cent of the more than 18,000 people it reached online in 23 countries agreed that "religion provides the common values and ethical foundations that diverse societies need to thrive in the 21st century."

A bare majority — 52 per cent — thought otherwise. They agreed with the sentiment that "religious beliefs promote intolerance, exacerbate ethnic divisions and impede social progress."

There was wide regional variation in the results. Respondents in Saudi Arabia and Indonesia, where there are large Muslim populations, overwhelmingly said they believed religion was a force for good, while respondents in European countries tended to disagree with that.

About two-thirds of Americans polled thought religion was a force for good, but only 36 per cent of Canadians thought the same.

Listen to Fidel

2010-11-27T10:34:00.001Z

Reflections of Fidel
Hugo Chávez' speech

(Taken from CubaDebate)

AN unprecedented meeting had taken place in the United States Capitol building between a group of legislators from the fascist right of that country and leaders of the Latin American right and pro-coup oligarchy. In that meeting there was talk of the defeat of the governments of Venezuela, Bolivia, Ecuador and Nicaragua.

The event took place a few days prior to the meeting of the hemisphere's defense ministers in Santa Cruz, Bolivia, where President Evo Morales made his energetic condemnation on November 22.

But that meeting was not about a slanderous media campaign – a regular feature in imperialist politics – but conspiratorial activity that, without any doubt, would lead to inevitable bloodshed in Venezuela.

Given my experience over many years, I do not harbor the slightest doubt as to what would happen in Venezuela if Chávez were to be assassinated. It would not have to be part of a prior plot against the president; a mentally deranged person, a drug addict, or the violence unleashed by drug trafficking in the countries of Latin America would suffice to generate an extremely grave problem in Venezuela. Analyzing such an act from the political point of view, the activities and habits of the reactionary oligarchy that owns powerful media corporations and is encouraged and financed by the United States, it would inevitably lead to bloody clashes in the streets of Venezuela, which are the clear intentions of the Venezuelan opposition, infused with hatred and acts of violence in full view.

Guillermo Zuloaga – the owner of a television channel opposed to the Bolivarian Revolution and a fugitive from Venezuelan justice – is one of the conspirators who took part in the meeting of Congress members called by Connie Mack and Ileana Ros-Lehtinen – the latter of Cuban origin and a Batista affiliate – known to our people as the loba feroz (the big bad wolf) due to her repugnant conduct during the kidnapping of [Cuban] Elián González and her refusal to hand the child over to his father. The Republican Congresswoman is a symbol of hatred of and resentment against Cuba, Venezuela, Bolivia and the other member countries of ALBA; it is virtually certain that the U.S. Congress will appoint her chair of the House Foreign Relations Committee; she was a defender of the Honduran coup government, repudiated by the majority of the countries of America.

The Bolivarian government of Venezuela was faced with a grave and provocative challenge. It was a really delicate issue. I asked myself what Chávez' reaction would be. The first energetic response came from Evo Morales in his brilliant and sincere speech made available to our people today. Two days ago, Tuesday the 13th, it was announced that Chávez would address the issue in the National Assembly.

The meeting was called for 5:00pm and it began almost exactly on time. The speeches made there were energetic and to the point. All of the activities lasted barely two hours and a few minutes. The Venezuelans had taken the problem very seriously.

Chávez began by mentioning the names of the many people present and, after joking with the new Kata world champion and about the game between two professional baseball teams, began to develop his subject:

"…I am really, really, really going to be brief. It has been said, tell me, that document read by Deputy Roy, thank you Roy, Roy Daza, for that reading, that document, not only in defense of Venezuela, as has already been said here –Eva [Golinger] said it. No, we are coming out in defense of the human homeland; one could even say, in defense of human possibility.

"I brought some books [...] This was the same copy, it's already a bit worn, that I lifted up there in the United Nations: Chomsky: Hegemony or Survival: the Imperialist Strategy of the United States – I am still recommending this book, Noam Chomsky. Eva mentioned it and reminded us of this great man of political thought, of creative thought, of philosophy, of the struggle for humanity.

"I have here the continuation of it, Failed States: the Abuse of Power and the Assault on Democracy. Here, right here, Chomsky poses the thesis that the first failed state in this world is the U.S. state, a failed state, a real threat to the entire planet, to the entire world, to the human species."

"Here, there is one part of the interview, of the conversations, where Chomsky is reflecting on Latin America and on Venezuela, in a very valiant, very objective and generous manner, defending our revolutionary process, defending our people, defending the right that we have and are exercising to make our own way, as all the peoples of the world have, and the yankee empire has not recognized that right and is attempting to disregard it.

"In the very same Federal Capitol – I believe that's what it's called – in the very same Washington, a summit of terrorists met, installed itself; a summit, a mob – as the Argentines would say, and we Venezuelans also talk of mobs – a real mob of criminals, swindlers, terrorists, thieves, scroungers, met there and, moreover, they were backed by 'prestigious' establishment figures, from the establishment, not only the Republican extreme right currents, but also from the Democratic Party and – as has been said here, Eva said it, Roy said it in the marvelous document he read, a state document, a national document – they openly launched a threat against Venezuela, against the countries and the peoples of the Bolivarian Alliance.

"Our greetings from here to Evo Morales, a valiant compañero, comrade, and to the people of Bolivia.

"Our greetings from here to Rafael Correa, a valiant compañero, comrade, and to the Ecuadorian people.

"Our greetings from here to Daniel Ortega, that comandante president, valiant compañero, comrade, and to the people of Nicaragua.

"Our greetings from here to Fidel Castro, to Raúl Castro and to that valiant Cuban people.

"Our greetings from here to all the peoples of the Caribbean, to Roosevelt Skerrit and to the people of Dominica, valiant leaders; Saint Vincent & the Grenadines; Ralph Goncalves, Spencer, to the peoples of the ALBA, of the Bolivarian Alliance, to their governments, to our governments and, of course, from here, to the indomitable people of Venezuela, our commitment and our call to unity and to continue battling for the future of the homeland, for independence, whose original constitution – as our president, Cilia said – here it is, the original constitution of 200 years ago.

"We are already entering 2011, let us prepare ourselves from all points of view: the spiritual, political, moral, to commemorate the 200 years of that first Congress, of that first constitution, the first in Latin America, of that birth of the First Republic, the birth of the Venezuelan homeland; much more than just July 5, it is going to be all of 2011 and the beginning of the revolutionary war of independence first commanded by Miranda, then Bolívar and the great men and women who gave us the homeland.

"The document read by Roy Daza begins by quoting a phrase of Bolívar's in a letter to the agent Irving, a U.S. agent who came here to reclaim those ships that Bolívar and his troops seized on the Orinoco because the United States was sending in weapons and supplies.

"It's nothing new, Eva, everything that you are exposing here about sending millions of dollars, logistical support, it's nothing new. No. Already back then the U.S. government was sending weapons and military supplies to the Spanish imperialist troops. And that is famous. That fact has been compiled, in part, by that fine Cuban writer Francisco Pividal, in another book that I constantly recommend: Bolívar, pensamiento precursor del antimperialismo. It can be read in one go. And there is a combination of extraordinary quotes here. You already pointed to one.

"But in parts of these letters from Bolívar to Irving – I think it was the last one that he sent to him – when Irving was already beginning to threaten him with the use of force, Bolívar says: I am not going to fall into provocation, not even in language. I merely wish to say to you, Mr. Irving' – it's written here, I'm going to paraphrase it, because it is the idea, it is the dignity of our father, Bolívar, that is being imposed, what is of importance in this hall full of magic, full of symbols, full of homeland, full of dreams, full of hope, full of dignity – Bolívar says to him: 'You should know, Mr. Irving, that more than half or half' – it was 1819, almost one decade of war to the death had passed – 'or almost half of Venezuelan men and Venezuelan women have died in the struggle against the Spanish empire, and the other half of us left here are anxious to follow that same road even if Venezuela should have to confront the entire world for its independence, for its dignity.'

"That was, that is Bolívar, and here we are, his sons, his daughters, María, disposed to the very same thing. The world should know that, we are disposed to the very same thing. If the yankee empire, with all its power, which we're not taking lightly, no, we have to take it seriously – as Eva well recommended to us – decides to attack, continue attacking and openly attacking Venezuela in order to try and halt this revolution, here we are prepared, understand that, mister empire and its personifications, that here we are disposed to the very same thing: for everyone to die for this homeland and its dignity!

"It should be asked, that summit of terrorists which met in Washington, some Venezuelans, Bolivians, genocidal people – as one good journalists asked in an interview yesterday – it would be good to know what passport these criminals are using, where they entered, if some of then are on INTERPOL's code red. They arrived sweet and easy and they arrived and were walking about the streets of Washington, being wined and dined. For that reason, Noam Chomsky is right. I repeat with Noam Chomsky: the U.S. state is a failed state that is acting beyond international laws, that respects absolutely nothing and, moreover, feels that it has the right to do so, that it doesn't have to respond to anybody. It is a threat not only to Venezuela and to the peoples of the world, but to its own people, a people that are under constant attack from that anti-democratic state.

"Look, here is just a summary. Wikileaks, you know it, right?

"What is this lady representative, fascist, going to say, the one who calls us, Evo, Correa and me, bandits? She's the bandit, she is a bandit and a Venezuelan court could well apply for the extradition of that bandit for committing crimes and conspiring, and many other charges, against the sovereignty of our country. She is a bandit. All that remains is to point the finger at her before the world, and the other bandits.

"What would those bandits say about this, for example?

"I read:

"'What will the U.S. Parliament have to say about these reports, about these documents that were secret and which have now been published on this Wikileaks page? What does Wikileaks mean? like Chávez Candanga.

"'On March 15, 2010, Wiki Candanga made public a Department of Defense report dealing with various leaks made by this website in relation to U.S. interests and proposed a number of ways to minimize it: a video of the murder of journalists.' I have here some of the documents, they are public. It remains to be seen if some authority in the United States takes an initiative in the face of these crimes, or these alleged crimes, right? I'm no judge to determine that, alleged serious crimes committed by citizens of its country, civilian, military, by its government.

"I read: 'On April 5, 2010, Wikileaks published a video in which U.S. soldiers can be seen murdering the Reuters reporter, Namir Noor-Eldeen, his assistant and nine other people. It can clearly be seen that none of those present were showing any signs of attacking the Apache helicopter from which they were being fired on. Although the Reuters agency has asked for the video on numerous occasions, that was denied to them until Wikileaks obtained this unpublished video which put the military apparatus of the United States in checkmate.'

"Well, put in checkmate is a saying, right? At least morally.

"Once again, what would the United Nations say? What would happen if that should take place in some of the ALBA countries? What would happen? What would the OAS say, what would the United Nations Security Council, the Human Rights Council? What would the infamous International Court of Human Rights say? So that we can see the double standard by which human rights are measured here, respect for life, terrorism and all those phenomena.

"Daily logs of the war in Afghanistan, July 25, 2010, were also published. Documentation of the war in Iraq. Listen to this sentence: On October 22, 2010 – just a few days ago – Wikileaks published on its web page a compendium entitled Iraq War Logs, containing 391,831 documents leaked from the Pentagon, about the war in Iraq and its occupation from January of 2004 to December 31, 2009, which reveals, among other issues, the systematic use of torture; the figure of 109,032 dead in Iraq, 61,081 of which were civilian, 63%; 23,984 'enemy' labeled as insurgents, 15,196 'host country' Iraqi government forces. What a way to visit a country! And 3,771 'friends' dead, coalition forces. The documents reveal that, over the course of six years, on average, 31 civilians died everyday.

"Who is investigating this? Who is accountable for this? No, it's the empire, the failed U.S. state. I read this phrase: 'These documents which are organized chronologically and by categories describe lethal military actions involving the United States military. They include the number of persons internally stated to be killed, wounded, or detained during each action, together with the precise geographical location of each event, and the military units involved and major weapon systems used.' Enough details for an investigation.

"What will the U.S. Congress say about this? There's our ambassador to Washington. Are you still the ambassador there? Yes, you are the ambassador. As far as we know, they've said nothing, right?

"It says here, 'most entries have been written by soldiers and intelligence officers listening to reports radioed in from front line deployments.

"'Civilian victims of the coalition forces. At the same time – it says here – 'large numbers of attacks and deaths have come to light caused by troops firing on unarmed drivers, based on the fear that they might be suicide bombers.

"'A detailed report of how a child was murdered and another wounded when troops fired on the car in which they were traveling. As compensation for the attack, the family was paid 100,000 afganis, for a dead child, 1,600 euros.' Capitalism pays, 20,000 afganis, 335 euros for the wounded child, 10,000 afganis, 167 euros for the vehicle. And, in the reports, all of these are called 'small tragedies,' 'small tragedies.' This is the great threat, the greatest threat facing the planet today.

"The yankee empire, no doubt, has entered a period of political and economic decline, and above all ethical decline, but who can deny its great military power, which, combined with other factors, turns this, the most powerful empire in the world's history into a much greater threat to our peoples. What can we do? It has been said as well: unity, unity and more unity.

"As of January, is the U.S. Congress going to be extremely right wing? Well, the Venezuelan Parliament, as of January 5, will have to be extremely left wing.

"And I call upon the deputies elected by the people, by the popular movements, the social movements, the revolutionary parties; you have a big commitment, as of January 5.

"It is truly unheard of, and Eva will remind us. How is it that we continue to allow this? Having this Constitution, which cost so much, how many years of struggle, how much sweat, how much blood, how much effort, here it is clearly established - it was there in the first Constitution as well – we are a sovereign nation – at the risk of them once again calling us the foolish nation or the foolish revolution – or if we want to use more popular language, la revolución pendeja? How are going to allow political parties, NGO's, counterrevolutionary individuals to go on being financed with millions and millions of dollars by the yankee empire? And they're walking around over there, completely free to abuse and violate our Constitution and attempt to destabilize the country. I am imploring you to create a very severe law to prevent this. That has to be the way in which we must respond to the empire's aggression, the empire's threats, radicalizing our positions, not weakening absolutely anything, adjusting positions, establishing our point of view, consolidating revolutionary unity. Not just a parliament, much more to the left, much more radically to the left, we need a much more radically left government, an armed force – General Rangel, Chief General, we are promoting him on Saturday, November 27, Air Force Day – much more radically revolutionary, with the people.

"There is no place in our civilian ranks, in our military ranks, for vacillation. No, one line, radicalize the revolution! And this crude, treacherous bourgeoisie needs to feel it. This Venezuelan bourgeoisie, with no shame, no homeland, needs to feel it, needs to know that it is not acceptable for one of their most well-known representatives to go to the very Congress of the empire to attack Venezuela and continue to operate a television station here. Imagine something like that, something like that! The Venezuelan bourgeoisie needs to know that this aggression against the people is going to cost it dearly and not be parading around up there.

"I remember – José Vicente Rangel, and Maduro, and compañero are here, thank you for joining us – when, during the Betancourt government, deputies of left parties were arrested, without trial, no charges filed, with no proof whatsoever, they were taken to prison, denied parliamentary immunity.

"Within a few weeks, a group of deputies from the extreme right will enter this hall. Well, they will only need to be reminded that there is a Constitution. Just as the Communist Party, and many others, were banned here, in his time and they disregarded the parliamentary immunity of many deputies, with no proof, others left for the mountains, like the great Fabricio Ojeda, who renounced his seat and went to the mountains to shed his blood for the revolution and for the people. I cannot imagine that this dignified Parliament would allow, with the popular forces having the majority representation, the extreme right wing to come in here and try to subvert constitutional order. I assume, I am sure, that the state will activate all necessary mechanisms in defense of the Constitution and of the law, in the face of the acts of aggression which are to be expected.

"Finally, the threat… What did they call it in the terrorist' event? 'Threat in the Andes?' Right, Nicolas? Danger in the Andes, sounds like the title of a movie. Danger in the Andes; there should be a warning of danger in the world, an alert rather, the danger is worldwide.

"Right now, there is a situation, at this very moment, there on the Korean peninsula. When I left to come here, the news was still confusing, how confusing, the sinking of that South Korean ship, the Cheonan; but later evidence emerged that the ship was sunk by the United States. Now, on that small island, on that peninsula divided by the yankee empire, invaded, ravaged for years, there is a tense situation, some bombs, some dead, some wounded.

"Fidel Castro has been warning for some months of the grave dangers of a nuclear war. Just a while back, I was there, once again, and he explained to me, developing his thoughts – we know it very well already, of course – there's nothing better than dialogue – and he said to me: 'Chávez, any stray shot there in that region, full of weapons of mass destruction, atomic weapons, could escalate into a war, which would be at first, conventional…;' but he's convinced that it would escalate straight away into a nuclear war, which could mean the end of the human species. So, it's not the danger in the Andes, Washington's lackeys, the danger is worldwide.

"Here in Venezuela, as Eva said, a light was lit, and in Latin America, another was lit and one more and others were lit. We can say today – not Venezuela, no – Latin America is the continent of hope and the yankee empire cannot shut the doors of hope.

"To us, Venezuelan men and women, it has always fallen to us, for some reason, or reasons of different kinds, to be the vanguard in these struggles, over centuries.

"I see over there Miranda's portrait, Bolivar's and over there Martín Tovar y Tovar, Carabobo, and Roy has read all of that and stated passionately: 'It runs here, in our genes, in our blood.' He was paraphrasing Mao, the great helmsman.

"That empire, that failed state which is the United States, despite its immense power, despite its threats, is going to end up a giant paper tiger and we are obliged to become real steel tigers, little steel tigers, invincible, indomitable.

"Madam President, I promised to be brief and I said it at the beginning and I repeat: I believe that everything that needed to be said here was said by Eva Golinger, brave woman and this brave gentleman deputy Roy Daza, and compiled in this document which I understand is to be circulated throughout the four corners of Venezuela and beyond, throughout Latin America.

"I thank you for your invitation to this event, I appreciate the gesture and, just as one more, I join this gigantic battalion, to put it that way, in the defense of Venezuela, in defense of our Venezuela homeland.

"Looking at the picture, the monumental work by Tovar y Tovar is more than a picture; one sees the infantry there, the cavalry there. Let us be inspired: Infantry, ready the bayonets, at the double! Calvary, charge! in defense of the Bolivarian homeland, of the Bolivarian Alliance of our Peoples!

"Down with the yankee empire!" he exclaimed finally, with vivas for ALBA, the homeland and the Revolution.

There is not the slightest doubt that Chávez, a military professional but much more inclined to persuasion than force, will not vacillate in preventing the pro-imperialist and anti-patriotic right from provoking deceived Venezuelans against the public forces in order to make blood flow in the streets of Venezuela.

In Bolivia and in Venezuela, the imperialist mafia has received a clear and energetic response, one that possibly, it was not expecting.

Fidel Castro Ruz

November 25, 2010

6:34 p.m.

Translated by Granma International

REMOTE robot murder - shameless blood profits

2010-11-23T20:31:00.000Z

Read this UGLY AMERICAN:

Hey! Who's Flying This Thing?

By Rich Smith | motley fool blog
November 22, 2010

"There are those that see JSF as the last manned fighter. I'm one that's
inclined to believe that."
-- Adm. Michael Mullen, chairman of the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff

The last manned fighter, huh? So that's it -- Lockheed Martin wins,
everybody else loses, end of story? Well, not quite. It's been several
months since we last checked in on the UAV world, and as it turns out, quite
a lot has been happening in the field. Seems to me, it's high time for an
update on the fascinating story of flying robots ... that kill.

Where is the world is Osama bin Laden?
We begin today's column above the mountains of Northwestern Pakistan, where
just a few short weeks ago, America's flying robot army helped prevent a
massive "Mumbai-style" commando assault upon Europe's capital cities.

In September, CIA information on an impending al-Qaeda attack in Europe sent
more than a score of unmanned aerial vehicles winging their way to Pakistan,
where the ringleaders of the plot were hatching their nefarious plans. Not
everyone's pleased with the result, of course. Howls of protest over
violations of sovereignty abound. Yet if news reports are to believed, the
UAV strikes prevented a reprise of the 2008 assault on Mumbai, India, which
claimed the lives of 166 innocents in that city -- and this summer's planned
attacks would have been carried out against multiple targets in London,
Paris, and possibly Berlin.

France says: "Oui" want Predators, too

So ... whose UAVs were these, exactly, making the world "safe for
Democracy?" Odds are they were Predator drones manufactured by General
Dynamics (NYSE: GD) spinoff General Atomics -- and they're the most popular
Christmas gift item since sliced croissants. Speaking of which, we recently
learned that France wants to buy a few UAVs for its own use.

Spurred by the need for defense budget cuts, France and the U.K. said to be
collaborating to develop a new UAV jointly -- but it won't be ready before
2030 at the earliest. The U.K. is building another UAV (the BAE "Mantis")
in-house, but even that won't be ready for seven more years. Likewise, the
EADS Talarion isn't expected to arrive before 2013 at the earliest. So to
fill the gap, France wants to buy something "off the shelf" right now.

NATO recently opted to purchase eight Global Hawk UAVs from America's
Northrop Grumman (NYSE: NOC). And the ongoing dispute between EADS and
Boeing (NYSE: BA) over the KC-X Tanker project notwithstanding, France seems
to be leaning toward GA's Predator for its own air force. (Winners if this
deal goes through would include publicly traded United Technologies (NYSE:
UTX) and Honeywell (NYSE: HON), both of which manufacture engines for the
Predator.)

Unarmed UAVs? How quaint.

Why would the notoriously prickly over-defense-contracts French favor an
American arms manufacturer with their largesse? One word: Necessity.
Alternative systems are largely unproven, undeveloped, or out of its price
range. In contrast, the Predator is a proven weapons platform (saving the
Eiffel Tower from a possible terrorist attack this summer couldn't've hurt.)
It's also cheaper than the EADS Talarion or Israeli Heron. Best of all --
it's got guns. Most unmanned aerial vehicles, don't you know. They're
robotic spyplanes for the most part, only capable of shooting snapshots --
and yes, you know where I'm going with this.

Let's be honest here, Fools: One of the primary reasons we invest in defense
stocks is because they're fun. They go "bang!" Blow stuff up. As P.J.
O'Rourke once put it, describing the launch of a Tomahawk missile
aboard-ship in the Persian Gulf: "The flip lid whips open, and for a moment
you see ... something emerging in light and smoke ... a tower of blast and
dazzle blanketing one bright, rising, white, fiery column ... This is the
way to waste government money."

So un-armed spy planes? They're cool and all, I guess, but where's the
"bang" for our investing bucks? Where's the "blast and dazzle?"

Guns 'r' U.S.
Hint: Ask Raytheon (NYSE: RTN). Recognizing that the biggest factor in
keeping UAVs pacifistic is their small size, Raytheon's working up a series
of small-ordnance solutions to the problem of arming tiny UAVs. Its new
Griffin "precision-guided projectile," for example, masses just one-third
the weight of the better known Hellfire missile that Predators commonly
carry, but is still capable of getting the job done. Importantly, the
Griffin rocket will be small enough to load onto a Textron (NYSE: TXT)
Shadow UAV or Boeing ScanEagle.

With Griffin and its small-ordnance peers, Raytheon's in position to arm
small UAV fleets the world over and widen the arms race in the UAV space.
Today, only a very few nations boast UAVs capable of taking offensive action
on their own. But already, ScanEagles and Shadows span the globe, landing
sales competitions in Australia and Italy, Poland and Sweden, and even
Pakistan itself.

Like it or not, this business is only going to get bigger. Because unlike
the manned fighter jet, UAVs are here to stay.

You fools actually believe that murdering people in Pakistan by remote control prevented terror in Germany or France?

google

u2r2h cressida basra

and look up GLADIO

The terror is synthetic, the weapons for hegemony, the paymasters are the 40 million US americans on food-stamps.

Europe: 6 weeks paid vacation BY LAW,
3 years paid parental leave, bullet trains, quiet cars, cheap bio-food, best beer 24/7. FREEDOM.

everything you hear about THE EURO... is perception management. Europeans are happy if yous think that the europeans have bad times... why make you envious?

Europe is booming, public owned infrastructure is lovely and humane, leasure times are long and fear is zilch, unlike in your police-state, homeless, christian-fear psychotic purgatory of Anglo America... deeeeeep in debt and can't even trade your way back to health and properity.

Only the vulgar-capitalist bastards that even the president is powerless to reign in, they are laughing all the way to their swiss bank account.

check

u2r2h.blogspot.com

for more insights that you are not afforded by your military 911-killer rulers. (can't be, huh?)

and congratulations, fools, for the awesome weapons. Spent all you energies on the best in killing machines, you will live by fear.

PS. shameless are those speculating in weapons' profits

privateer military .. war to make profit...

welcome to the 19th century.

depravity

unbecoming.

instead work and party fearless, join hands and celebrate in peace and great consciousness.

Thanksgiving!! USA traditional -- The stench was horrible ....

2010-11-21T10:38:00.000Z

In late November of 1637 a force of Massachusetts Bay Colonists trapped an entire tribe of seven hundred Pequot Indians celebrating their corn harvest in their long house near the mouth of the Mystic River.
"To see them frying in the fire, and the streams of their blood quenching the same, and the stench was horrible, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice to the great delight of the Pilgrims, and they gave praise thereof to God"
-Captain John Mason (Frances Farmers Revenge) .
Upon the colonists' safe return from the massacre, Governor Winthrop proclaimed "This day forth shall be a day of celebration and thanksgiving for subduing the Pequots"

Thanksgiving Massacre

When news spread in England about the New World paradise, more Puritans and others immigrated. They considered the land as public domain because there were no fences. Colonists seized land, captured AmerIndians for slaves and killed the rest. The Pequot Nation hadn't agreed to the peace treaty Squanto negotiated and fought back in what's called "The Pequot War."

The 1637 massacre happened because colonists wanted revenge for a murder of an English trader who kidnapped children. They suspected Pequots killed him. William Bradford, in his History of the Plymouth Plantation, celebrated the travesty s a victory and Pilgrims thanked God for giving them swift triumph over their enemy.

Over 700 Pequot men, women and children gathered for their Green Corn Festival. In the predawn morning, they were surrounded by Dutch and English mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who obeyed were shot or clubbed to death while women and children huddled inside the longhouse and were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared this travesty "A Day of Thanksgiving" because helpless people were murdered.

Future "Thanksgiving" Massacres Led to the Holiday's Recognition

Colonists and their AmerIndian allies attacked more villages. Women and children over the age of fourteen were sold into slavery; the rest, murdered. Ships full of slaves left New England. Bounties were paid for AmerIndian scalps. Churches, in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, declared a second day of "thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over "heathen savages." Colonists kicked decapitated Pequots' heads through the streets while they feasted. Wampanoagans weren't immune from persecution. Their chief's decapitated head, impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts, was on display. "Thanksgiving" celebrations were held after all massacres.

George Washington suggested that one day of "thanksgiving" each year was to be commemorated, instead of celebrating every massacre. Later, Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Minnesota Sioux.
Thanksgiving Illusions about Pilgrims

These Pilgrims, Puritans, weren't merely religious conservatives persecuted by the English King for their beliefs. They were revolutionaries who intended to overthrow the government. The English considered the Puritans as religious bigots who wanted to found a new nation, independent from England. The New England Puritans used any tactics, including treachery, torture and genocide to achieve their goals.

Pilgrims viewed AmerIndians as heathens, instruments of the Devil. Squanto, the only baptized Christian, was regarded as an instrument of God to provide for their survival as his chosen people. Increase Mather, in a 1623 "thanksgiving" sermon, gave prayers of gratitude to God for the smallpox plague which wiped out many Wampanoagans.

The Wampanoagans didn't totally trust the colonists. Squanto loved Weymouth who had been his mentor and, most likely, thought the Pilgrims were like him. One of his tribe's religious traditions was to give charity to the vulnerable and hospitality to anyone who came to them with needs.

The Wampanoagans, who supplied most of the feasts' food, were invited to the first Thanksgiving celebration to negotiate a treaty that would secure Plymouth Plantation's land, former Patuxet site, for the Pilgrims
Pequot Tribe's 1637 Thanksgiving Massacre: A Tragedy

The Pequots weren't the only AmerIndians who were persecuted. Cherokees and other Eastern tribes endured the Trail of Tears,Nunna daul Tsuny, "The Trail Where They Cried," when they were ousted from their land and traveled a thousand miles to "Indian Territory" in the West. Approximately 4,000 AmerIndians died during the journey. An estimated 150 to300 Lakota Sioux men, women and children were killed and 51 wounded in the Wounded Knee massacre. The list goes on….

Thanksgiving should be a time for showing gratitude for food and fellowship, but, to the AmerIndians who suffered from the "thanksgiving" massacres, it wasn't.

THE REAL STORY OF THANKSGIVING
by Susan Bates

Most of us associate the holiday with happy Pilgrims and Indians sitting down to a big feast. And that did happen - once.

The story began in 1614 when a band of English explorers sailed home to England with a ship full of Patuxet Indians bound for slavery. They left behind smallpox which virtually wiped out those who had escaped. By the time the Pilgrims arrived in Massachusetts Bay they found only one living Patuxet Indian, a man named Squanto who had survived slavery in England and knew their language. He taught them to grow corn and to fish, and negotiated a peace treaty between the Pilgrims and the Wampanoag Nation. At the end of their first year, the Pilgrims held a great feast honoring Squanto and the Wampanoags.

But as word spread in England about the paradise to be found in the new world, religious zealots called Puritans began arriving by the boat load. Finding no fences around the land, they considered it to be in the public domain. Joined by other British settlers, they seized land, capturing strong young Natives for slaves and killing the rest. But the Pequot Nation had not agreed to the peace treaty Squanto had negotiated and they fought back. The Pequot War was one of the bloodiest Indian wars ever fought.

In 1637 near present day Groton, Connecticut, over 700 men, women and children of the Pequot Tribe had gathered for their annual Green Corn Festival which is our Thanksgiving celebration. In the predawn hours the sleeping Indians were surrounded by English and Dutch mercenaries who ordered them to come outside. Those who came out were shot or clubbed to death while the terrified women and children who huddled inside the longhouse were burned alive. The next day the governor of the Massachusetts Bay Colony declared "A Day Of Thanksgiving" because 700 unarmed men, women and children had been murdered.

Cheered by their "victory", the brave colonists and their Indian allies attacked village after village. Women and children over 14 were sold into slavery while the rest were murdered. Boats loaded with a many as 500 slaves regularly left the ports of New England. Bounties were paid for Indian scalps to encourage as many deaths as possible.

Following an especially successful raid against the Pequot in what is now Stamford, Connecticut, the churches announced a second day of "thanksgiving" to celebrate victory over the heathen savages. During the feasting, the hacked off heads of Natives were kicked through the streets like soccer balls. Even the friendly Wampanoag did not escape the madness. Their chief was beheaded, and his head impaled on a pole in Plymouth, Massachusetts -- where it remained on display for 24 years.

The killings became more and more frenzied, with days of thanksgiving feasts being held after each successful massacre. George Washington finally suggested that only one day of Thanksgiving per year be set aside instead of celebrating each and every massacre. Later Abraham Lincoln decreed Thanksgiving Day to be a legal national holiday during the Civil War -- on the same day he ordered troops to march against the starving Sioux in Minnesota.

This story doesn't have quite the same fuzzy feelings associated with it as the one where the Indians and Pilgrims are all sitting down together at the big feast. But we need to learn our true history so it won't ever be repeated. Next Thanksgiving, when you gather with your loved ones to Thank God for all your blessings, think about those people who only wanted to live their lives and raise their families. They, also took time out to say "thank you" to Creator for all their blessings.

Our Thanks to Hill & Holler Column by Susan Bates susanbates@webtv.net

More About Thanksgiving...

INTRODUCTION FOR TEACHERS
By Chuck Larsen

This is a particularly difficult introduction to write. I have been a public schools teacher for twelve years, and I am also a historian and have written several books on American and Native American history. I also just happen to be Quebeque French, Metis, Ojibwa, and Iroquois. Because my Indian ancestors were on both sides of the struggle between the Puritans and the New England Indians and I am well versed in my cultural heritage and history both as an Anishnabeg (Algokin) and Hodenosione (Iroquois), it was felt that I could bring a unique insight to the project.

For an Indian, who is also a school teacher, Thanksgiving was never an easy holiday for me to deal with in class. I sometimes have felt like I learned too much about "the Pilgrims and the Indians." Every year I have been faced with the professional and moral dilemma of just how to be honest and informative with my children at Thanksgiving without passing on historical distortions, and racial and cultural stereotypes.

The problem is that part of what you and I learned in our own childhood about the "Pilgrims" and "Squanto" and the "First Thanksgiving" is a mixture of both history and myth. But the THEME of Thanksgiving has truth and integrity far above and beyond what we and our forebearers have made of it. Thanksgiving is a bigger concept than just the story of the founding of the Plymouth Plantation.

So what do we teach to our children? We usually pass on unquestioned what we all received in our own childhood classrooms. I have come to know both the truths and the myths about our "First Thanksgiving," and I feel we need to try to reach beyond the myths to some degree of historic truth. This text is an attempt to do this.

At this point you are probably asking, "What is the big deal about Thanksgiving and the Pilgrims?" "What does this guy mean by a mixture of truths and myth?" That is just what this introduction is all about. I propose that there may be a good deal that many of us do not know about our Thanksgiving holiday and also about the "First Thanksgiving" story. I also propose that what most of us have learned about the Pilgrims and the Indians who were at the first Thanksgiving at Plymouth Plantation is only part of the truth. When you build a lesson on only half of the information, then you are not teaching the whole truth. That is why I used the word myth. So where do you start to find out more about the holiday and our modern stories about how it began?

A good place to start is with a very important book, "The Invasion of America," by Francis Jennings. It is a very authoritative text on the settlement of New England and the evolution of Indian/White relations in the New England colonies. I also recommend looking up any good text on British history. Check out the British Civil War of 1621-1642, Oliver Cromwell, and the Puritan uprising of 1653 which ended parliamentary government in England until 1660. The history of the Puritan experience in New England really should not be separated from the history of the Puritan experience in England. You should also realize that the "Pilgrims" were a sub sect, or splinter group, of the Puritan movement. They came to America to achieve on this continent what their Puritan bretheran continued to strive for in England; and when the Puritans were forced from England, they came to New England and soon absorbed the original "Pilgrims."

As the editor, I have read all the texts listed in our bibliography, and many more, in preparing this material for you. I want you to read some of these books. So let me use my editorial license to deliberately provoke you a little. When comparing the events stirred on by the Puritans in England with accounts of Puritan/Pilgrim activities in New England in the same era, several provocative things suggest themselves:

1. The Puritans were not just simple religious conservatives persecuted by the King and the Church of England for their unorthodox beliefs. They were political revolutionaries who not only intended to overthrow the government of England, but who actually did so in 1649.

2. The Puritan "Pilgrims" who came to New England were not simply refugees who decided to "put their fate in God's hands" in the "empty wilderness" of North America, as a generation of Hollywood movies taught us. In any culture at any time, settlers on a frontier are most often outcasts and fugitives who, in some way or other, do not fit into the mainstream of their society. This is not to imply that people who settle on frontiers have no redeeming qualities such as bravery, etc., but that the images of nobility that we associate with the Puritans are at least in part the good "P.R." efforts of later writers who have romanticized them.(1) It is also very plausible that this unnaturally noble image of the Puritans is all wrapped up with the mythology of "Noble Civilization" vs. "Savagery."(2) At any rate, mainstream Englishmen considered the Pilgrims to be deliberate religious dropouts who intended to found a new nation completely independent from non-Puritan England. In 1643 the Puritan/Pilgrims declared themselves an independent confederacy, one hundred and forty-three years before the American Revolution. They believed in the imminent occurrence of Armegeddon in Europe and hoped to establish here in the new world the "Kingdom of God" foretold in the book of Revelation. They diverged from their Puritan brethren who remained in England only in that they held little real hope of ever being able to successfully overthrow the King and Parliament and, thereby, impose their "Rule of Saints" (strict Puritan orthodoxy) on the rest of the British people. So they came to America not just in one ship (the Mayflower) but in a hundred others as well, with every intention of taking the land away from its native people to build their prophesied "Holy Kingdom."(3)

3. The Pilgrims were not just innocent refugees from religious persecution. They were victims of bigotry in England, but some of them were themselves religious bigots by our modern standards. The Puritans and the Pilgrims saw themselves as the "Chosen Elect" mentioned in the book of Revelation. They strove to "purify" first themselves and then everyone else of everything they did not accept in their own interpretation of scripture. Later New England Puritans used any means, including deceptions, treachery, torture, war, and genocide to achieve that end.(4) They saw themselves as fighting a holy war against Satan, and everyone who disagreed with them was the enemy. This rigid fundamentalism was transmitted to America by the Plymouth colonists, and it sheds a very different light on the "Pilgrim" image we have of them. This is best illustrated in the written text of the Thanksgiving sermon delivered at Plymouth in 1623 by "Mather the Elder." In it, Mather the Elder gave special thanks to God for the devastating plague of smallpox which wiped out the majority of the Wampanoag Indians who had been their benefactors. He praised God for destroying "chiefly young men and children, the very seeds of increase, thus clearing the forests to make way for a better growth", i.e., the Pilgrims.(5) In as much as these Indians were the Pilgrim's benefactors, and Squanto, in particular, was the instrument of their salvation that first year, how are we to interpret this apparent callousness towards their misfortune?

4. The Wampanoag Indians were not the "friendly savages" some of us were told about when we were in the primary grades. Nor were they invited out of the goodness of the Pilgrims' hearts to share the fruits of the Pilgrims' harvest in a demonstration of Christian charity and interracial brotherhood. The Wampanoag were members of a widespread confederacy of Algonkian-speaking peoples known as the League of the Delaware. For six hundred years they had been defending themselves from my other ancestors, the Iroquois, and for the last hundred years they had also had encounters with European fishermen and explorers but especially with European slavers, who had been raiding their coastal villages.(6) They knew something of the power of the white people, and they did not fully trust them. But their religion taught that they were to give charity to the helpless and hospitality to anyone who came to them with empty hands.(7) Also, Squanto, the Indian hero of the Thanksgiving story, had a very real love for a British explorer named John Weymouth, who had become a second father to him several years before the Pilgrims arrived at Plymouth. Clearly, Squanto saw these Pilgrims as Weymouth's people.(8) To the Pilgrims the Indians were heathens and, therefore, the natural instruments of the Devil. Squanto, as the only educated and baptized Christian among the Wampanoag, was seen as merely an instrument of God, set in the wilderness to provide for the survival of His chosen people, the Pilgrims. The Indians were comparatively powerful and, therefore, dangerous; and they were to be courted until the next ships arrived with more Pilgrim colonists and the balance of power shifted. The Wampanoag were actually invited to that Thanksgiving feast for the purpose of negotiating a treaty that would secure the lands of the Plymouth Plantation for the Pilgrims. It should also be noted that the INDIANS, possibly out of a sense of charity toward their hosts, ended up bringing the majority of the food for the feast.(9)

5. A generation later, after the balance of power had indeed shifted, the Indian and White children of that Thanksgiving were striving to kill each other in the genocidal conflict known as King Philip's War. At the end of that conflict most of the New England Indians were either exterminated or refugees among the French in Canada, or they were sold into slavery in the Carolinas by the Puritans. So successful was this early trade in Indian slaves that several Puritan ship owners in Boston began the practice of raiding the Ivory Coast of Africa for black slaves to sell to the proprietary colonies of the South, thus founding the American-based slave trade.(10)

Obviously there is a lot more to the story of Indian/Puritan relations in New England than in the thanksgiving stories we heard as children. Our contemporary mix of myth and history about the "First" Thanksgiving at Plymouth developed in the 1890s and early 1900s. Our country was desperately trying to pull together its many diverse peoples into a common national identity. To many writers and educators at the end of the last century and the beginning of this one, this also meant having a common national history. This was the era of the "melting pot" theory of social progress, and public education was a major tool for social unity. It was with this in mind that the federal government declared the last Thursday in November as the legal holiday of Thanksgiving in 1898.

In consequence, what started as an inspirational bit of New England folklore, soon grew into the full-fledged American Thanksgiving we now know. It emerged complete with stereotyped Indians and stereotyped Whites, incomplete history, and a mythical significance as our "First Thanksgiving." But was it really our FIRST American Thanksgiving?

Now that I have deliberately provoked you with some new information and different opinions, please take the time to read some of the texts in our bibliography. I want to encourage you to read further and form your own opinions. There really is a TRUE Thanksgiving story of Plymouth Plantation. But I strongly suggest that there always has been a Thanksgiving story of some kind or other for as long as there have been human beings. There was also a "First" Thanksgiving in America, but it was celebrated thirty thousand years ago.(11) At some time during the New Stone Age (beginning about ten thousand years ago) Thanksgiving became associated with giving thanks to God for the harvests of the land. Thanksgiving has always been a time of people coming together, so thanks has also been offered for that gift of fellowship between us all. Every last Thursday in November we now partake in one of the OLDEST and most UNIVERSAL of human celebrations, and THERE ARE MANY THANKSGIVING STORIES TO TELL.

As for Thanksgiving week at Plymouth Plantation in 1621, the friendship was guarded and not always sincere, and the peace was very soon abused. But for three days in New England's history, peace and friendship were there.

So here is a story for your children. It is as kind and gentle a balance of historic truth and positive inspiration as its writers and this editor can make it out to be. I hope it will adequately serve its purpose both for you and your students, and I also hope this work will encourage you to look both deeper and farther, for Thanksgiving is Thanksgiving all around the world.

Chuck Larsen Tacoma Public Schools September, 1986

FOOTNOTES FOR TEACHER INTRODUCTION
(1) See Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's Indian," references to Puritans, pp. 27, 80-85, 90, 104, & 130.

(2) See Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's Indian," references to frontier concepts of savagery in index. Also see Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America," the myth of savagery, pp. 6-12, 15-16, & 109-110.

(3) See Blitzer, Charles, "Age of Kings," Great Ages of Man series, references to Puritanism, pp. 141, 144 & 145-46. Also see Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America," references to Puritan human motives, pp. 4-6, 43- 44 and 53.

(4) See "Chronicles of American Indian Protest," pp. 6-10. Also see Armstrong, Virginia I., "I Have Spoken," reference to Cannonchet and his village, p. 6. Also see Jennings, Francis, "The Invasion of America," Chapter 9 "Savage War," Chapter 13 "We must Burn Them," and Chapter 17 "Outrage Bloody and Barbarous."

(5) See "Chronicles of American Indian Protest," pp. 6-9. Also see Berkhofer, Jr., R.F., "The White Man's Indian," the comments of Cotton Mather, pp. 37 & 82-83.

(6) See Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving," pp. 3-4. Also see Graff, Steward and Polly Ann, "Squanto, Indian Adventurer." Also see "Handbook of North American Indians," Vol. 15, the reference to Squanto on p. 82.

(7) See Benton-Banai, Edward, "The Mishomis Book," as a reference on general "Anishinabe" (the Algonkin speaking peoples) religious beliefs and practices. Also see Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving," reference to religious life on p. 1.

(8) See Graff, Stewart and Polly Ann, "Squanto, Indian Adventurer." Also see Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving." Also see Bradford, Sir William, "Of Plymouth Plantation," and "Mourt's Relation."

(9) See Larsen, Charles M., "The Real Thanksgiving," the letter of Edward Winslow dated 1622, pp. 5-6.

(10) See "Handbook of North American Indians," Vol. 15, pp. 177-78. Also see "Chronicles of American Indian Protest," p. 9, the reference to the enslavement of King Philip's family. Also see Larsen, Charles, M., "The Real Thanksgiving," pp. 8-11, "Destruction of the Massachusetts Indians."

(11) Best current estimate of the first entry of people into the Americas confirmed by archaeological evidence that is datable.

THE PLYMOUTH THANKSGIVING STORY

By Chuck Larsen

When the Pilgrims crossed the Atlantic Ocean in 1620, they landed on the rocky shores of a territory that was inhabited by the Wampanoag (Wam pa NO ag) Indians. The Wampanoags were part of the Algonkian-speaking peoples, a large group that was part of the Woodland Culture area. These Indians lived in villages along the coast of what is now Massachusetts and Rhode Island. They lived in round- roofed houses called wigwams. These were made of poles covered with flat sheets of elm or birch bark. Wigwams differ in construction from tipis that were used by Indians of the Great Plains.

The Wampanoags moved several times during each year in order to get food. In the spring they would fish in the rivers for salmon and herring. In the planting season they moved to the forest to hunt deer and other animals. After the end of the hunting season people moved inland where there was greater protection from the weather. From December to April they lived on food that they stored during the earlier months.

The basic dress for men was the breech clout, a length of deerskin looped over a belt in back and in front. Women wore deerskin wrap-around skirts. Deerskin leggings and fur capes made from deer, beaver, otter, and bear skins gave protection during the colder seasons, and deerskin moccasins were worn on the feet. Both men and women usually braided their hair and a single feather was often worn in the back of the hair by men. They did not have the large feathered headdresses worn by people in the Plains Culture area.

There were two language groups of Indians in New England at this time. The Iroquois were neighbors to the Algonkian-speaking people. Leaders of the Algonquin and Iroquois people were called "sachems" (SAY chems). Each village had its own sachem and tribal council. Political power flowed upward from the people. Any individual, man or woman, could participate, but among the Algonquins more political power was held by men. Among the Iroquois, however, women held the deciding vote in the final selection of who would represent the group. Both men and women enforced the laws of the village and helped solve problems. The details of their democratic system were so impressive that about 150 years later Benjamin Franklin invited the Iroquois to Albany, New York, to explain their system to a delegation who then developed the "Albany Plan of Union." This document later served as a model for the Articles of Confederation and the Constitution of the United States.

These Indians of the Eastern Woodlands called the turtle, the deer and the fish their brothers. They respected the forest and everything in it as equals. Whenever a hunter made a kill, he was careful to leave behind some bones or meat as a spiritual offering, to help other animals survive. Not to do so would be considered greedy. The Wampanoags also treated each other with respect. Any visitor to a Wampanoag home was provided with a share of whatever food the family had, even if the supply was low. This same courtesy was extended to the Pilgrims when they met.

We can only guess what the Wampanoags must have thought when they first saw the strange ships of the Pilgrims arriving on their shores. But their custom was to help visitors, and they treated the newcomers with courtesy. It was mainly because of their kindness that the Pilgrims survived at all. The wheat the Pilgrims had brought with them to plant would not grow in the rocky soil. They needed to learn new ways for a new world, and the man who came to help them was called "Tisquantum" (Tis SKWAN tum) or "Squanto" (SKWAN toe).

Squanto was originally from the village of Patuxet (Pa TUK et) and a member of the Pokanokit Wampanoag nation. Patuxet once stood on the exact site where the Pilgrims built Plymouth. In 1605, fifteen years before the Pilgrims came, Squanto went to England with a friendly English explorer named John Weymouth. He had many adventures and learned to speak English. Squanto came back to New England with Captain Weymouth. Later Squanto was captured by a British slaver who raided the village and sold Squanto to the Spanish in the Caribbean Islands. A Spanish Franciscan priest befriended Squanto and helped him to get to Spain and later on a ship to England. Squanto then found Captain Weymouth, who paid his way back to his homeland. In England Squanto met Samoset of the Wabanake (Wab NAH key) Tribe, who had also left his native home with an English explorer. They both returned together to Patuxet in 1620. When they arrived, the village was deserted and there were skeletons everywhere. Everyone in the village had died from an illness the English slavers had left behind. Squanto and Samoset went to stay with a neighboring village of Wampanoags.

One year later, in the spring, Squanto and Samoset were hunting along the beach near Patuxet. They were startled to see people from England in their deserted village. For several days, they stayed nearby observing the newcomers. Finally they decided to approach them. Samoset walked into the village and said "welcome," Squanto soon joined him. The Pilgrims were very surprised to meet two Indians who spoke English.

The Pilgrims were not in good condition. They were living in dirt-covered shelters, there was a shortage of food, and nearly half of them had died during the winter. They obviously needed help and the two men were a welcome sight. Squanto, who probably knew more English than any other Indian in North America at that time, decided to stay with the Pilgrims for the next few months and teach them how to survive in this new place. He brought them deer meat and beaver skins. He taught them how to cultivate corn and other new vegetables and how to build Indian-style houses. He pointed out poisonous plants and showed how other plants could be used as medicine. He explained how to dig and cook clams, how to get sap from the maple trees, use fish for fertilizer, and dozens of other skills needed for their survival.

By the time fall arrived things were going much better for the Pilgrims, thanks to the help they had received. The corn they planted had grown well. There was enough food to last the winter. They were living comfortably in their Indian-style wigwams and had also managed to build one European-style building out of squared logs. This was their church. They were now in better health, and they knew more about surviving in this new land. The Pilgrims decided to have a thanksgiving feast to celebrate their good fortune. They had observed thanksgiving feasts in November as religious obligations in England for many years before coming to the New World.

The Algonkian tribes held six thanksgiving festivals during the year. The beginning of the Algonkian year was marked by the Maple Dance which gave thanks to the Creator for the maple tree and its syrup. This ceremony occurred when the weather was warm enough for the sap to run in the maple trees, sometimes as early as February. Second was the planting feast, where the seeds were blessed. The strawberry festival was next, celebrating the first fruits of the season. Summer brought the green corn festival to give thanks for the ripening corn. In late fall, the harvest festival gave thanks for the food they had grown. Mid-winter was the last ceremony of the old year. When the Indians sat down to the "first Thanksgiving" with the Pilgrims, it was really the fifth thanksgiving of the year for them!

Captain Miles Standish, the leader of the Pilgrims, invited Squanto, Samoset, Massasoit (the leader of the Wampanoags), and their immediate families to join them for a celebration, but they had no idea how big Indian families could be. As the Thanksgiving feast began, the Pilgrims were overwhelmed at the large turnout of ninety relatives that Squanto and Samoset brought with them. The Pilgrims were not prepared to feed a gathering of people that large for three days. Seeing this, Massasoit gave orders to his men within the first hour of his arrival to go home and get more food. Thus it happened that the Indians supplied the majority of the food: Five deer, many wild turkeys, fish, beans, squash, corn soup, corn bread, and berries. Captain Standish sat at one end of a long table and the Clan Chief Massasoit sat at the other end. For the first time the Wampanoag people were sitting at a table to eat instead of on mats or furs spread on the ground. The Indian women sat together with the Indian men to eat. The Pilgrim women, however, stood quietly behind the table and waited until after their men had eaten, since that was their custom.

For three days the Wampanoags feasted with the Pilgrims. It was a special time of friendship between two very different groups of people. A peace and friendship agreement was made between Massasoit and Miles Standish giving the Pilgrims the clearing in the forest where the old Patuxet village once stood to build their new town of Plymouth.

It would be very good to say that this friendship lasted a long time; but, unfortunately, that was not to be. More English people came to America, and they were not in need of help from the Indians as were the original Pilgrims. Many of the newcomers forgot the help the Indians had given them. Mistrust started to grow and the friendship weakened. The Pilgrims started telling their Indian neighbors that their Indian religion and Indian customs were wrong. The Pilgrims displayed an intolerance toward the Indian religion similar to the intolerance displayed toward the less popular religions in Europe. The relationship deteriorated and within a few years the children of the people who ate together at the first Thanksgiving were killing one another in what came to be called King Phillip's War.

It is sad to think that this happened, but it is important to understand all of the story and not just the happy part. Today the town of Plymouth Rock has a Thanksgiving ceremony each year in remembrance of the first Thanksgiving. There are still Wampanoag people living in Massachusetts. In 1970, they asked one of them to speak at the ceremony to mark the 350th anniversary of the Pilgrim's arrival. Here is part of what was said:

"Today is a time of celebrating for you -- a time of looking back to the first days of white people in America. But it is not a time of celebrating for me. It is with a heavy heart that I look back upon what happened to my People. When the Pilgrims arrived, we, the Wampanoags, welcomed them with open arms, little knowing that it was the beginning of the end. That before 50 years were to pass, the Wampanoag would no longer be a tribe. That we and other Indians living near the settlers would be killed by their guns or dead from diseases that we caught from them. Let us always remember, the Indian is and was just as human as the white people.

Although our way of life is almost gone, we, the Wampanoags, still walk the lands of Massachusetts. What has happened cannot be changed. But today we work toward a better America, a more Indian America where people and nature once again are important."

The Puritan colonists of Massachusetts embraced a line from Psalms 2:8.

"Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."

* * * * * *

It is a deep thing that people still celebrate the survival of the early colonists at Plymouth — by giving thanks to the Christian God who supposedly protected and championed the European invasion. The real meaning of all that, then and now, needs to be continually excavated. The myths and lies that surround the past are constantly draped over the horrors and tortures of our present.

Every schoolchild in the U.S. has been taught that the Pilgrims of the Plymouth Colony invited the local Indians to a major harvest feast after surviving their first bitter year in New England. But the real history of Thanksgiving is a story of the murder of indigenous people and the theft of their land by European colonialists–and of the ruthless ways of capitalism.

This piece is intended to be shared at this holiday time. Pass it on. Serve a little truth with the usual stuffing.

* * * * *

In mid-winter 1620 the English ship Mayflower landed on the North American coast, delivering 102 exiles. The original Native people of this stretch of shoreline had already been killed off. In 1614 a British expedition had landed there. When they left they took 24 Indians as slaves and left smallpox behind. Three years of plague wiped out between 90 and 96 percent of the inhabitants of the coast, destroying most villages completely.

After the first colonies were establshed — the Pequod war

The Europeans landed and built their colony called "the Plymouth Plantation" near the deserted ruins of the Indian village of Pawtuxet. They ate from abandoned cornfields grown wild. Only one Pawtuxet named Squanto had survived–he had spent the last years as a slave to the English and Spanish in Europe. Squanto spoke the colonists' language and taught them how to plant corn and how to catch fish until the first harvest. Squanto also helped the colonists negotiate a peace treaty with the nearby Wampanoag tribe, led by the chief Massasoit.

These were very lucky breaks for the colonists. The first Virginia settlement had been wiped out before they could establish themselves. Thanks to the good will of the Wampanoag, the settlers not only survived their first year but had an alliance with the Wampanoags that would give them almost two decades of peace.

John Winthrop, a founder of the Massahusetts Bay colony considered this wave of illness and death to be a divine miracle. He wrote to a friend in England, "But for the natives in these parts, God hath so pursued them, as for 300 miles space the greatest part of them are swept away by smallpox which still continues among them. So as God hath thereby cleared our title to this place, those who remain in these parts, being in all not 50, have put themselves under our protection."

The deadly impact of European diseases and the good will of the Wampanoag allowed the settlers to survive their first year.

In celebration of their good fortune, the colony's governor, William Bradford, declared a three-day feast of thanksgiving after that first harvest of 1621.

How the Puritans Stole the Land

Original inhabitants — before the European invasion

But the peace that produced the Thanksgiving Feast of 1621 meant that the Puritans would have 15 years to establish a firm foothold on the coast. Until 1629 there were no more than 300 settlers in New England, scattered in small and isolated settlements. But their survival inspired a wave of Puritan invasion that soon established growing Massachusetts towns north of Plymouth: Boston and Salem. For 10 years, boatloads of new settlers came.

And as the number of Europeans increased, they proved not nearly so generous as the Wampanoags.

On arrival, the Puritans and other religious sects discussed "who legally owns all this land." They had to decide this, not just because of Anglo-Saxon traditions, but because their particular way of farming was based on individual–not communal or tribal–ownership. This debate over land ownership reveals that bourgeois "rule of law" does not mean "protect the rights of the masses of people."

Some settlers argued that the land belonged to the Indians. These forces were excommunicated and expelled. Massachusetts Governor Winthrop declared the Indians had not "subdued" the land, and therefore all uncultivated lands should, according to English Common Law, be considered "public domain." This meant they belonged to the king. In short, the colonists decided they did not need to consult the Indians when they seized new lands, they only had to consult the representative of the crown (meaning the local governor).

Training of the Massachusetts militia, 1637. The means of genocide and theft.

The colonists embraced a line from Psalms 2:8.

"Ask of me, and I shall give thee, the heathen for thine inheritance, and the uttermost parts of the earth for thy possession."

Since then, European settler states have similarly declared god their real estate agent: from the Boers seizing South Africa to the Zionists seizing Palestine.

The European immigrants took land and enslaved Indians to help them farm it. By 1637 there were about 2,000 British settlers. They pushed out from the coast and decided to remove the inhabitants.

The Shining City on the Hill

Where did the Plymouth and Massachusetts colonies of Puritan and "separatist" pilgrims come from and what were they really all about?

A self-serving historical lie — The myth of coexistance and love promoted by Thanksgiving

Governor Winthrop, a founder of the Massachusetts colony, said, "We shall be as a City upon a Hill, the eyes of all people are upon us." The Mayflower Puritans had been driven out of England as subversives. The Puritans saw this religious colony as a model of a social and political order that they believed all of Europe should adopt.

The Puritan movement was part of a sweeping revolt within English society against the ruling feudal order of wealthy lords. Only a few decades after the establishment of Plymouth, the Puritan Revolution came to power in England. They killed the king, won a civil war, set up a short-lived republic, and brutally conquered the neighboring people of Ireland to create a larger national market.

The famous Puritan intolerance was part of a determined attempt to challenge the decadence and wastefulness of the rich aristocratic landlords of England. The Puritans wanted to use the power of state punishment to uproot old and still dominant ways of thinking and behaving.

The new ideas of the Puritans served the needs of merchant capitalist accumulation. The extreme discipline, thrift and modesty the Puritans demanded of each other corresponded to a new and emerging form of ownership and production. Their so-called "Protestant Ethic" was an early form of the capitalist ethic. From the beginning, the Puritan colonies intended to grow through capitalist trade–trading fish and fur with England while they traded pots, knives, axes, alcohol and other English goods with the Indians.

The New England were ruled by a government in which only the male heads of families had a voice. Women, Indians, slaves, servants, youth were neither heard nor represented. In the Puritan schoolbooks, the old law "honor thy father and thy mother" was interpreted to mean honoring "All our Superiors, whether in Family, School, Church, and Commonwealth." And, the real truth was that the colonies were fundamentally controlled by the most powerful merchants.

The Puritan fathers believed they were the Chosen People of an infinite god and that this justified anything they did. They were Calvinists who believed that the vast majority of humanity was predestined to damnation. This meant that while they were firm in fighting for their own capitalist right to accumulate and prosper, they were quick to oppress the masses of people in Ireland, Scotland and North America, once they seized the power to set up their new bourgeois order. Those who rejected the narrow religious rules of the colonies were often simply expelled "out into the wilderness."

The Massachusetts colony (north of Plymouth) was founded when Puritan stockholders had gotten control of an English trading company. The king had given this company the right to govern its own internal affairs, and in 1629 the stockholders simply voted to transfer the company to North American shores–making this colony literally a self-governing company of stockholders!

In U.S. schools, students are taught that the Mayflower compact of Plymouth contained the seeds of "modern democracy" and "rule of law." But by looking at the actual history of the Puritans, we can see that this so-called "modern democracy" was (and still is) a capitalist democracy based on all kinds of oppression and serving the class interests of the ruling capitalists.

The reality of colonial massacre and enslavement

In short, the Puritan movement developed as an early revolutionary challenge to the old feudal order in England. They were the soul of primitive capitalist accumulation. And transferred to the shores of North America, they immediately revealed how heartless and oppressive that capitalist soul is.

The Birth of "The American Way of War"

In the Connecticut Valley, the powerful Pequot tribe had not entered an alliance with the British (as had the Narragansett, the Wampanoag, and the Massachusetts peoples). At first they were far from the centers of colonization. Then, in 1633, the British stole the land where the city of Hartford now sits–land which the Pequot had recently conquered from another tribe. That same year two British slave raiders were killed. The colonists demanded that the Indians who killed the slavers be turned over. The Pequot refused.

The Puritan preachers said, from Romans 13:2, "Whosoever therefore resisteth the power, resisteth the ordinance of God: and they that resist shall receive to themselves damnation." The colonial governments gathered an armed force of 240 under the command of John Mason. They were joined by a thousand Narragansett warriors. The historian Francis Jennings writes: "Mason proposed to avoid attacking Pequot warriors which would have overtaxed his unseasoned, unreliable troops. Battle, as such, was not his purpose. Battle is only one of the ways to destroy an enemy's will to fight. Massacre can accomplish the same end with less risk, and Mason had determined that massacre would be his objective."

The colonist army surrounded a fortified Pequot village on the Mystic River. At sunrise, as the inhabitants slept, the Puritan soldiers set the village on fire.

William Bradford, Governor of Plymouth, wrote: "Those that escaped the fire were slain with the sword; some hewed to pieces, others run through with their rapiers, so that they were quickly dispatched and very few escaped. It was conceived they thus destroyed about 400 at this time. It was a fearful sight to see them thus frying in the fire…horrible was the stink and scent thereof, but the victory seemed a sweet sacrifice, and they gave the prayers thereof to God, who had wrought so wonderfully for them."

Mason himself wrote: "It may be demanded…Should not Christians have more mercy and compassion? But…sometimes the Scripture declareth women and children must perish with their parents…. We had sufficient light from the word of God for our proceedings."

Three hundred and fifty years later the Puritan phrase "a shining city on the hill" became a favorite quote of conservative speechwriters.

Discovering the Profits of Slavery

This so-called "Pequot war" was a one-sided murder and slaving expedition. Over 180 captives were taken. After consulting the bible again, in Leviticus 24:44, the colonial authorities found justification to kill most of the Pequot men and enslave the captured women and their children. Only 500 Pequot remained alive and free. In 1975 the official number of Pequot living in Connecticut was 21.

Some of the war captives were given to the Narragansett and Massachusetts allies of the British. Even before the arrival of Europeans, Native peoples of North America had widely practiced taking war captives from other tribes as hostages and slaves.

The remaining captives were sold to British plantation colonies in the West Indies to be worked to death in a new form of slavery that served the emerging capitalist world market. And with that, the merchants of Boston made a historic discovery: the profits they made from the sale of human beings virtually paid for the cost of seizing them.

One account says that enslaving Indians quickly became a "mania with speculators." These early merchant capitalists of Massachusetts started to make genocide pay for itself. The slave trade, first in captured Indians and soon in kidnapped Africans, quickly became a backbone of New England merchant capitalism.

Thanksgiving in the Manhattan Colony

In 1641 the Dutch governor Kieft of Manhattan offered the first "scalp bounty"–his government paid money for the scalp of each Indian brought to them. A couple years later, Kieft ordered the massacre of the Wappingers, a friendly tribe. Eighty were killed and their severed heads were kicked like soccer balls down the streets of Manhattan. One captive was castrated, skinned alive and forced to eat his own flesh while the Dutch governor watched and laughed. Then Kieft hired the notorious Underhill who had commanded in the Pequot war to carry out a similar massacre near Stamford, Connecticut. The village was set fire, and 500 Indian residents were put to the sword.

A day of thanksgiving was proclaimed in the churches of Manhattan. As we will see, the European colonists declared Thanksgiving Days to celebrate mass murder more often than they did for harvest and friendship.

The Conquest of New England

By the 1670s there were about 30,000 to 40,000 white inhabitants in the United New England Colonies–6,000 to 8,000 able to bear arms. With the Pequot destroyed, the Massachusetts and Plymouth colonists turned on the Wampanoag, the tribe that had saved them in 1620 and probably joined them for the original Thanksgiving Day.

In 1675 a Christian Wampanoag was killed while spying for the Puritans. The Plymouth authorities arrested and executed three Wampanoag without consulting the tribal chief, King Philip.

As Mao Tsetung says: "Where there is oppression there is resistance." The Wampanoag went to war.

The Indians applied some military lessons they had learned: they waged a guerrilla war which overran isolated European settlements and were often able to inflict casualties on the Puritan soldiers. The colonists again attacked and massacred the main Indian populations.

When this war ended, 600 European men, one-eleventh of the adult men of the New England Colonies, had been killed in battle. Hundreds of homes and 13 settlements had been wiped out. But the colonists won.

In their victory, the settlers launched an all-out genocide against the remaining Native people. The Massachusetts government offered 20 shillings bounty for every Indian scalp, and 40 shillings for every prisoner who could be sold into slavery. Soldiers were allowed to enslave any Indian woman or child under 14 they could capture. The "Praying Indians" who had converted to Christianity and fought on the side of the European troops were accused of shooting into the treetops during battles with "hostiles." They were enslaved or killed. Other "peaceful" Indians of Dartmouth and Dover were invited to negotiate or seek refuge at trading posts–and were sold onto slave ships.

It is not known how many Indians were sold into slavery, but in this campaign, 500 enslaved Indians were shipped from Plymouth alone. Of the 12,000 Indians in the surrounding tribes, probably about half died from battle, massacre and starvation.

After King Philip's War, there were almost no Indians left free in the northern British colonies. A colonist wrote from Manhattan's New York colony: "There is now but few Indians upon the island and those few no ways hurtful. It is to be admired how strangely they have decreased by the hand of God, since the English first settled in these parts."

In Massachusetts, the colonists declared a "day of public thanksgiving" in 1676, saying, "there now scarce remains a name or family of them [the Indians] but are either slain, captivated or fled."

Fifty-five years after the original Thanksgiving Day, the Puritans had destroyed the generous Wampanoag and all other neighboring tribes. The Wampanoag chief King Philip was beheaded. His head was stuck on a pole in Plymouth, where the skull still hung on display 24 years later.

The descendants of these Native peoples are found wherever the Puritan merchant capitalists found markets for slaves: the West Indies, the Azures, Algiers, Spain and England. The grandson of Massasoit, the Pilgrim's original protector, was sold into slavery in Bermuda.
Runaways and Rebels

But even the destruction of Indian tribal life and the enslavement of survivors brought no peace. Indians continued to resist in every available way. Their oppressors lived in terror of a revolt. And they searched for ways to end the resistance. The historian MacLeod writes: "The first `reservations' were designed for the `wild' Irish of Ulster in 1609. And the first Indian reservation agent in America, Gookin of Massachusetts, like many other American immigrants had seen service in Ireland under Cromwell."

The reality of Thanksgiving — and the founding of the United States in slavery and genocide

The enslaved Indians refused to work and ran away. The Massachusetts government tried to control runaways by marking enslaved Indians: brands were burnt into their skin, and symbols were tattooed into their foreheads and cheeks.

A Massachusetts law of 1695 gave colonists permission to kill Indians at will, declaring it was "lawful for any person, whether English or Indian, that shall find any Indians traveling or skulking in any of the towns or roads (within specified limits), to command them under their guard and examination, or to kill them as they may or can."

The northern colonists enacted more and more laws for controlling the people. A law in Albany forbade any African or Indian slave from driving a cart within the city. Curfews were set up; Africans and Indians were forbidden to have evening get-togethers. On Block Island, Indians were given 10 lashes for being out after nine o'clock. In 1692 Massachusetts made it a serious crime for any white person to marry an African, an Indian or a mulatto. In 1706 they tried to stop the importation of Indian slaves from other colonies, fearing a slave revolt.

Celebrate?

Looking at this history raises a question: Why should anyone celebrate the survival of the earliest Puritans with a Thanksgiving Day? Certainly the Native peoples of those times had no reason to celebrate.

The ruling powers of the United States organized people to celebrate Thanksgiving Day because it is in their interest. That's why they created it. The first national celebration of Thanksgiving was called for by George Washington. And the celebration was made a regular legal holiday later by Abraham Lincoln during the civil war (right as he sent troops to suppress the Sioux of Minnesota).

Washington and Lincoln were two presidents deeply involved in trying to forge a unified bourgeois nation-state out of the European settlers in the United States. And the Thanksgiving story was a useful myth in their efforts at U.S. nation-building. It celebrates the "bounty of the American way of life," while covering up the brutal nature of this society.

USA weapons in Israel

2010-11-13T09:52:00.001Z

JERUSALEM: The United States is to significantly increase the amount of military equipment held in Israel as part of a move to upgrade security ties between the two allies, press reports said on Thursday.

The move, which will see an extra 400-million-dollars worth of smart bombs and other precision weaponry and equipment moved to Israel over the next two years, was approved last week by the US Congress, the Israeli correspondent of Defence News reported.

The upgrade will see the value of US military equipment stockpiled in Israel rise to one billion dollars in 2011, with another 200 million to be added in 2012, the paper said. In 2007, the stockpile was valued at 800 million dollars. Such equipment can be used by US forces throughout the world but also by the host country, under the terms of the US foreign aid law governing reserve stockpiles for allies.

Israel made use of the stockpile during the 2006 war with the Lebanese Hezbollah militiaâ"a conflict which killed 1,200 people in Lebanon, most of them civilians, and around 160 Israelis, most of them soldiers, the Haaretz daily reported.

==========

In 2007, when Israel began its full siege on Gaza, Dov Weisglass, adviser to then Prime-Minister Ehud Olmert, stated clearly, âœThe idea is to put the Palestinians on a diet, but not to make them die of hunger.â The documents now released contain equations used by the Israeli government to calculate the exact amounts of food, fuel and other necessities needed to do exactly that.

The documents are even more disturbing, say human rights activists, when one considers the fact that close to half of the people of Gaza are children under the age of eighteen. This means that Israel has deliberately forced the undernourishment of hundreds of thousands of children in direct violation of international law and the Fourth Geneva Convention.

This release of documents also severely undermines Israel's oft-made claim that the siege is "for security reasons", as it documents a deliberate and systematic policy of collective punishment of the entire population of Gaza.

Gisha's director said, in relation to the release of documents, "Israel banned glucose for biscuits and the fuel needed for regular supply of electricity â" paralyzing normal life in Gaza and impairing the moral character of the State of Israel. I am sorry to say that major elements of this policy are still in place."

In its statement accompanying the release of the documents, Gisha wrote:

The documents reveal that the state approved "a policy of deliberate reduction" for basic goods in the Gaza Strip (section h.4, page 5*). Thus, for example, Israel restricted the supply of fuel needed for the power plant, disrupting the supply of electricity and water. The state set a "lower warning line" (section g.2, page 5) to give advance warning of expected shortages in a particular item, but at the same time approved ignoring that warning, if the good in question was subject to a policy of "deliberate reduction". Moreover, the state set an "upper red line" above which even basic humanitarian items could be blocked, even if they were in demand (section g.1, page 5). The state claimed in a cover letter to Gisha that in practice, it had not authorized reduction of "basic goods" below the "lower warning line", but it did not define what these "basic goods" were.

Commentator Richard Silverstein wrote: "In reviewing the list of permitted items for import, you come to realize that these are the only items allowed. In other words, if an item is not on the list, itâ™s prohibited. So, for example, here is the list of permitted spices: Black pepper, soup powder, hyssop, sesame. cinnamon, anise, babuna (chamomile), sage. Sorry, cumin, basil, bay leaf, allspice, carraway, cardamon, chiles, chives, cilantro, cloves, garlic, sesame, tamarind, thyme, oregano, cayenne. Not on the list. You're not a spice Palestinians need according to some IDF dunderhead. And tomatoes, potatoes, cucumbers, lettuce, toys, glassware, paint, and shoes? You can forget about them too. Luxuries all, or else security threats."

Despite the disturbing nature of the documents, which show a calculated policy of deliberate undernourishment of an entire population, no major media organizations have reported the story.

The full text of the released documents, and the original Freedom of Information Act request filed by Gisha, can be found on Gisha's website.

http://www.gisha.org/index.php?intLanguage=2&intItemId=1904&intSiteSN=113

10 trillion HOT MONEY

2010-11-13T09:40:00.001Z

"Around the world we have $10 trillion of hot money flowing around, more than the $9 trillion in hot money at the beginning of the global financial crisis," [Chinese Vice Finance Minister Zhu Guangyao] said

WE COULD SPEND THIS MONEY ON
- afghanistan and iraq reconstruction and extremists-pacification
- wind power
- food for starving people

In the Philippines, the influx of short-term "hot money" in the first nine months of the year jumped 300% from a year earlier to $1.8 billion, according to the central bank. [2]

The US recovery is faltering, thanks to an inadequate stimulus. After the midterms, an adequate stimulus is off the table.

The Republican majority in the House of Representatives has taken a position against further stimulus spending as a matter of ideology, electoral politics, and, one would suspect, a cynical willingness to see the US economy go down in flames, as long as President Barack Obama's hopes for a second term go with it.

taibbi WALL STREET CRIMES insane outgrowth of jungle capitalism

2010-11-07T17:54:00.001Z

This article originally appeared in RS 1106 from June 10, 2010.

It's early May in Washington, and something very weird is in the air. As Chris Dodd, Harry Reid and the rest of the compulsive dealmakers in the Senate barrel toward the finish line of the Restoring American Financial Stability Act – the massive, year-in-the-making effort to clean up the Wall Street crime swamp – word starts to spread on Capitol Hill that somebody forgot to kill the important reforms in the bill. As of the first week in May, the legislation still contains aggressive measures that could cost once-
indomitable behemoths like Goldman Sachs and JP Morgan Chase tens of billions of dollars. Somehow, the bill has escaped the usual Senate-whorehouse orgy of mutual back-scratching, fine-print compromises and freeway-wide loopholes that screw any chance of meaningful change.

The real shocker is a thing known among Senate insiders as "716." This section of an amendment would force America's banking giants to either forgo their access to the public teat they receive through the Federal Reserve's discount window, or give up the insanely risky, casino-style bets they've been making on derivatives. That means no more pawning off predatory interest-rate swaps on suckers in Greece, no more gathering balls of subprime shit into incomprehensible debt deals, no more getting idiot bookies like AIG to wrap the crappy mortgages in phony insurance. In short, 716 would take a chain saw to one of Wall Street's most lucrative profit centers: Five of America's biggest banks (Goldman, JP Morgan, Bank of America, Morgan Stanley and Citigroup) raked in some $30 billion in over-the-counter derivatives last year. By some estimates, more than half of JP Morgan's trading revenue between 2006 and 2008 came from such derivatives. If 716 goes through, it would be a veritable Hiroshima to the era of greed.

matt taibbi

When I first heard about 716, I thought, 'This is never gonna fly,'" says Adam White, a derivatives expert who has been among the most vocal advocates for reform. When I speak to him early in May, he sounds slightly befuddled, like he can't believe his good fortune. "It's funny," he says. "We keep waiting for the watering-down to take place – but we keep getting to the next hurdle, and it's still staying strong."

In the weeks leading up to the vote on the reform bill, I hear one variation or another on this same theme from Senate insiders: that the usual process of chipping away at key legislation is not taking place with its customary dispatch, despite a full-court press by Wall Street. The financial-services industry has reportedly flooded the Capitol with more than 2,000 paid lobbyists; even veteran members are stunned by the intensity of the blitz. "They're trying everything," says Sen. Sherrod Brown, a Democrat from Ohio. Wall Street's army is especially imposing given that the main (really, the only) progressive coalition working the other side of the aisle, Americans for Financial Reform, has been in existence less than a year – and has just 60 unpaid "volunteer" lobbyists working the Senate halls.

The companies with the most at stake are particularly well-connected. The lobbying campaign for Goldman Sachs, for instance, is being headed up by a former top staffer for Rep. Barney Frank, Michael Paese, who is coordinating some 14 different lobbying firms to fight on Goldman's behalf. The bank is also represented by Capitol Hill heavyweights like former House majority leader Dick Gephardt and former Reagan chief of staff Ken Duberstein. All told, there are at least 40 ex-staffers of the Senate Banking Committee – and even one former senator, Trent Lott – lobbying on behalf of Wall Street. Until the final weeks of the reform debate, however, it seemed that all these insiders were facing the prospect of a rare defeat – and they weren't pleased. One lobbyist even complained to The Washington Post that the bill was being debated out in the open, on the Senate floor, instead of in a smoky backroom. "They've got to get this thing off the floor and into a reasonable, behind-the-scenes" discussion, he groused. "Let's have a few wise fathers sit around the table in some quiet room" to work it out.

As it neared the finish line, the Restoring American Financial Stability Act was almost unprecedentedly broad in scope, in some ways surpassing even the health care bill in size and societal impact. It would rein in $600 trillion in derivatives, create a giant new federal agency to protect financial consumers, open up the books of the Federal Reserve for the first time in history and perhaps even break up the so-called "Too Big to Fail" giants on Wall Street. The recent history of the U.S. Congress suggests that it was almost a given that they would fuck up this one real shot at slaying the dragon of corruption that has been slowly devouring not just our economy but our whole way of life over the past 20 years. Yet with just weeks left in the nearly year-long process at hammering out this huge new law, the bad guys were still on the run. Even the senators themselves seemed surprised at what assholes they weren't being. This new baby of theirs, finance reform, was going to be that one rare kid who made it out of the filth and the crime of the hood for everybody to be proud of.

Then reality set in.

Picture the Restoring American Financial Stability Act as a vast conflict being fought on multiple fronts, with the tiny but enormously influential Wall Street lobby on one side and pretty much everyone else on the planet on the other. To be precise, think World War II – with some battles won by long marches and brutal campaigns of attrition, others by blitzkrieg attacks, still more decided by espionage and clandestine movements. Time after time, at the last moment, the Wall Street axis has turned seemingly lost positions into surprise victories or, at worst, bitterly fought stalemates. The only way to accurately convey the scale of Wall Street's ingenious comeback is to sketch out all the crazy, last-minute shifts on each of the war's four major fronts.

FRONT #1
AUDITING THE FED

The most successful of the reform gambits was probably the audit-the-Fed movement led by Sen. Bernie Sanders, the independent from Vermont. For nearly a century, the Federal Reserve has been, within our borders, a nation unto itself – with vast powers to shape the economy and no real limits to its authority beyond the president's ability to appoint its chairman. In the bubble era it has been transformed into a kind of automatic bailout mechanism, helping Wall Street drink itself sober by flooding big banks with cheap money after the collapse of each speculative boom. But suddenly, with both the Huffington Post crowd and the Tea Party raising their pitchforks in outrage, Sanders managed to pass – by a vote of 96-0 – an amendment to force the Fed to open its books to congressional scrutiny.

If Alan Greenspan and Ben Bernanke don't take that 96-0 vote as a kick-to-the-groin testament to the staggering unpopularity of the Fed, they should. When 96 senators agree on something, they're usually affirming their devotion to the flag or commemorating the death of Mother Teresa. But as it turns out, the more than $2 trillion in loans that the Fed handed out in secret after the 2008 meltdown is something that both the left and the right have no problem banding together to piss on. One of the most bizarre alliances of the bailout era took place when Sanders, a democratic socialist, and Sen. Jim DeMint, a hardcore conservative from South Carolina, went on the CNBC show hosted by crazy supply-sider Larry Kudlow – and all three found themselves in complete agreement on the need to force Fed loans into the open. "People who come from very different places agree that it ought not to be done in secret, that the Fed isn't Skull and Bones," says Michael Briggs, an aide to Sanders.

The Sanders amendment, if it survives in conference, will lead to some delicious disclosures. Almost exactly a year ago, Sanders questioned Bernanke at a Senate-budget hearing, asking him to name the banks that had been bailed out by the Fed. "Will you tell the American people to whom you lent 2.2 trillion of their dollars?" Sanders demanded.

After a little hemming and hawing, a bored-looking Bernanke – Time magazine's 2009 Person of the Year, by the way – bluntly said, "No." It would be "counterproductive," he explained, if clients and investors learned that these poor banks were broke enough to need a public handout.

Bernanke's performance that day so rankled Sanders that he wrote up his amendment specifically to bring the Fed's goblin-in-chief to heel. The new law will force Bernanke to post the identity of loan recipients on the Fed's website for all to see. It also mandates that the Government Accountability Office investigate potential conflicts of interest that took place during the bailout, such as the presence of Goldman CEO Lloyd Blankfein in the room during the negotiations of the AIG bailout, which led to Goldman's receiving $13 billion of public money via the rescue.

The Sanders amendment was perhaps the headline victory to date in the ongoing War for Finance Reform, but even this battle entailed some heavy casualties. Sanders had originally filed an amendment that was much closer to a House version pressed by libertarian hero Ron Paul, one that would have permanently opened the Fed's books to Congress. But as the Senate crawled closer to a vote, the Sanders camp began to hear that the Obama administration opposed the bill, fearing it would give Congress too much day-to-day involvement in Fed policy. "The White House was saying how wonderful transparency is, but they still had 'concerns,' "Briggs says. "Within a couple hours, those concerns were being worked out."

The end result was a deal that restricted the audit to a one-time shot: Congress could only examine Fed loans made after December 2007. Once the audit was complete, the Fed's books would once again be sealed forever from public scrutiny. Sen. David Vitter, a Democrat from Louisiana, countered with an amendment to permanently open up the Fed's books, but it was shot down by a vote of 62-37. In one of the most absurd and indefensible retreats of the war, a decisive majority of senators voted to deny themselves the power to audit the Federal Reserve on behalf of the American people. When it comes to protecting the world's wealthiest banks from public scrutiny, it turns out, Democrats and Republicans have no trouble achieving bipartisanship.

FRONT #2
PROTECTING CONSUMERS

The biggest no-brainer of finance reform was supposed to be the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. The idea was simple: create a federal agency whose sole mission would be to make sure that financial lenders don't rape their customers with defective products, unjust fees and other fine-print nightmares familiar to any American with a credit card. In theory, the CFPB would rein in predatory lending by barring lenders from making loans they know that borrowers won't be able to pay back, either because of hidden fees or ballooning payments.

Wall Street knew it would be impossible to lobby Congress on this issue by taking the angle of "We're a rapacious megabank that would like to keep skull-fucking to death our customers using incomprehensible and predatory loans." So it came up with another strategy – one that deployed some of the most inspired nonsense ever seen on the Hill. The all-powerful lobbying arm of the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, which has been fierce in its representation of Wall Street's interests throughout the War for Finance Reform, cued up a $3 million ad campaign implying that the CFPB, instead of targeting asshole bankers in flashy suits and hair gel, would – and this isn't a joke – target your local butcher, making it hard for him to lend you the money to buy meat. That's right: The ads featured shots of a squat butcher with his arms folded, standing in front of a big pile of meat. "The economy has made it tough on this local butcher's customers," the ad reads. "So he lets some of them run a tab and pay the bill over time to make ends meet. But now Washington wants to make it tougher on everyone." After insisting – falsely – that this kindly butcher would be subject to the new consumer protection bureau, the ad warns that the CFPB "would also have the ability to collect information about his customers' financial accounts and take away many of their financial choices."

Sitting in the Senate chamber one afternoon not long before the vote, I even heard Sen. Mike Enzi, an impressively shameless Republican from Wyoming, insist that the CFPB would mean that "anyone who has ever paid for dental care in installments could be facing the prospect of paying for dental care upfront." Other anti-reform ads claimed that everyone from cabinetmakers to electricians would be hounded by the new agency – even though the CFPB's mandate explicitly excludes merchants who are "not engaged significantly in offering or providing consumer financial products or services."

The CFPB was always a pretty good bet to pass in some form. Just as pushing through anything that could plausibly be called "health care reform" was a political priority for the Obama administration, creating a new agency with the words "consumer protection" in the title was destined from the start to be the signature effort of the finance bill, which is otherwise mostly a mishmash of highly technical new regulations. But that didn't stop leading Democrats from doing what they could to chisel away at the thing. Throughout the process, Chris Dodd, the influential chairman of the Senate Banking Committee, has set new standards for reptilian disingenuousness – playing the role of stern banker-buster while taking millions in Wall Street contributions. Dodd worked overtime trying to craft a "bipartisan" bill with the Republican minority – in particular with Sen. Richard Shelby, the ranking Republican on the committee. With his dyed hair, porcine trunk and fleshy, powdery-white face, Shelby recalls an elderly sumo wrestler in drag. I happened to be in the Senate on the day that Shelby proposed a substitute amendment that would have stuffed the CFPB into the FDIC, effectively scaling back its power and independence. Throughout the debate, I was struck by the way that Dodd and his huge black caterpillar eyebrows kept crossing the aisle to whisper in Shelby's ear. During these huddles, Dodd would gently pat Shelby's back or hold his arm; it was like watching a love scene in a Japanese monster movie.

Shelby's amendment was ultimately defeated by a vote of 61-37 – but he and Dodd still reached a number of important compromises that significantly watered down the CFPB. The idea was to rack up as many exemptions as possible for favored industries, all of which had contributed generously to their favorite senators. By mid-May, Republicans and Democrats had quietly agreed to full or partial "carve-outs" for banks with less than $10 billion in deposits, as well as for check-cashers and other sleazy payday lenders. As the bill headed toward a vote, there was also a furious fight to exempt auto dealers from anti-
predatory regulations – a loophole already approved by the House – even though car loans are the second-largest source of borrowing for Americans, after home mortgages. The purview of the CFPB, in essence, was being limited to megabanks and mortgage lenders. That's a major victory in the war against Wall Street, but it will be hard to be too impressed if Congress can't even find a way to vote for consumer protection against used-car salesmen.

FRONT #3
ENDING "TOO BIG TO FAIL"

Perhaps the fiercest fight of all over finance reform involved a part of the bill called "resolution authority" – also known as, "The next time an AIG or a Lehman Brothers goes belly up, do we bail the fuckers out? And if so, with whose money?" In its original form, the bill answered these crucial questions by requiring that banks contribute to a $50 billion fund that could be used to aid failing financial institutions. The fund was hardly a cure-all – $50 billion "wouldn't even be enough to bail out Citigroup's prop-trading desk," as one industry analyst observed – but it at least established a precedent that banks should pay for their own bailouts, instead of simply snatching money from taxpayers.

The fund had been established after a fierce battle last fall, when Democrats in the House beat back a seemingly insane proposal backed by the Obama administration that would have paid for bailouts by borrowing from taxpayers and recouping the money from Wall Street later on, by means of a mysterious, convoluted process. That heroic stand in the House, which was marked by long nights of ferocious negotiations, was wiped out in one fell swoop on May 5th, after Dodd and Shelby huddled up in another of their monster-love sessions and hammered out a deal to strip the bailout fund from the bill. The surprise rollback was introduced by the Senate leadership late on a Wednesday and voted on three hours later. Just like that, taxpayers were back to fronting the nation's biggest banks the money when they find themselves in financial trouble.

One day after the Shelby-Dodd wipeout, another key reform got massacred. This was the "Too Big to Fail" amendment put forward by two reform-minded freshmen, Sens. Ted Kaufman of Delaware and Sherrod Brown of Ohio. The measure would have mandated the automatic breakup of any bank that held more than 10 percent of all insured deposits, or had at risk more than two percent of America's GDP. The amendment was just the kind of common-sense, loophole-proof, no-bullshit legislation that, sadly, almost never passes in the modern Senate.

Brown is an interesting character. Whenever I talk to him, I often forget he's a U.S. senator; he feels more like a dude you met on an Amtrak train and struck up a conversation with. He remains the only member of Congress I've ever met who took off his shoes and socks in the middle of an interview. But when I catch up with him in an anteroom outside the Senate chamber on the day his and Kaufman's amendment ends up being voted on, he seems harried and tense, like a man waiting for bad news in a hospital lobby. In recent weeks, he confides, he has found himself facing both barrels of the banking lobby.

"There are 1,500 bank lobbyists in this town, and they're coming by all the time," he says. "And it's not just the lobbyists. When the bank lobbyist from Columbus comes by, he brings 28 bankers with him."

At the moment, though, Brown has a more pressing problem. He and Kaufman are both making themselves conspicuous in the Senate chamber, and the reason why is illustrative of the looniness of Senate procedure. Unlike in the House, where a rules committee decides in advance which amendments will be brought to a vote, senators have no orderly, dependable way of knowing if or when their proposals will get voted on. Instead, they're at the mercy of a strange and nebulous process that requires them to badger the leadership, who have the sole discretion of deciding which amendments go to a vote. So Brown is reduced to hanging around the Senate floor and trying to get a committee chair like Chris Dodd to put Too Big to Fail to a vote before other amendments use up all the time allotted for debate. It's not unlike fighting a crowd of pissed-off airport passengers for a single seat on an overbooked flight – you're completely at the mercy of the snippy airline rep behind the desk.

Near the end of the day, to Brown's surprise, Dodd actually allows his amendment to go to a vote. In the end, however, the proposal to break up the nation's riskiest banks gets walloped 61-33, with an astonishing 27 Democrats – including key banking committee heavyweights like Dodd and Chuck Schumer of New York – joining forces to defeat it. After the debate, Kaufman, a gregarious and aggressive advocate of finance reform, seems oddly unfazed that his fellow Democrats blew the best chance in a generation to corral the great banking monsters of Wall Street. "For some of them, it was just a bridge too far," he says. "There's an old saying: Never invest in anything you don't understand." Given the bizarre standards of the Senate bureaucracy, Kaufman considers it a victory just to have gotten his amendment into the woodshed for an ass-whipping.

I encounter that same "just glad to be here" vibe from Sen. Jeff Merkley, a Democrat from Oregon who co-authored one of the handful of genuinely balls-out reforms in the entire bill. The Merkley-Levin amendment couldn't have been more important; it called for restoring part of the Glass-Steagall Act, the Depression-era law that prevented commercial banks, investment houses and insurance companies from merging. The repeal of Glass-Steagall in 1999 paved the way for the creation of the Too-Big-to-Fail monsters like Citigroup, who drove the global economy into a ditch over the past 10 years.

Merkley-Levin was the Senate version of the "Volcker Rule," a proposal put forward by former Fed chief and Obama adviser Paul Volcker, that would prevent commercial banks from engaging in the kind of speculative, proprietary trading that helped trigger the financial crisis. When I meet with Merkley, he is in the same position as Brown and Kaufman, waiting anxiously for a chance to get his amendment voted on, with no idea of when or if that might happen. A vote – even if it means defeat – is all he's hoping for. When I ask if he's excited about the prospect of restoring a historic piece of legislation like Glass-Steagall, he smiles faintly. "I'm not saying I'm real optimistic," he says.

In the end, Merkley is forced to resort to the senatorial equivalent of gate-crashing: He attaches his amendment to the sordid proposal to exempt auto dealers from the CFPB, which has already been approved for a vote. That Merkley has to invoke an arcane procedural stunt just to get such a vital reform a vote is a testament to how convoluted American democracy looks by the time it reaches the Senate floor.

As with the whittled-down victories over the Fed audit and the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau – and the brutal defeat of Too Big to Fail – the stalling over the Volcker Rule underscores the basic dynamic of the Senate. With deals cut via backroom consensus, and leaders like Reid and Dodd tightly controlling which amendments go to a vote, the system allows a few powerful members whose doors are permanently open to lobbyists to pilot the entire process from beginning to end. One Democratic aide grumbles to me that he had no access to the negotiations for months, while a Wall Street lobbyist he knows could arrange an audience with the leadership. The whole show is carefully orchestrated from start to finish; no genuinely tough amendment with a shot at being approved receives an honest up-or-down vote. "It's all kind of a fake debate," the aide says.

FRONT #4
REINING IN DERIVATIVES

When all the backroom obfuscation doesn't work, of course, there is always one last route in Congress to killing reform: the fine print. And never has an amendment been fine-printed to death as skillfully as the proposal to reform derivatives.

Imagine a world where there's no New York Stock Exchange, no NASDAQ or Nikkei: no open exchanges at all, and all stocks traded in the dark. Nobody has a clue how much a share of IBM costs or how many of them are being traded. In that world, the giant broker-dealer who trades thousands of IBM shares a day, and who knows which of its big clients are selling what and when, will have a hell of a lot more information than the day-trader schmuck sitting at home in his underwear, guessing at the prices of stocks via the Internet.

That world exists. It's called the over-the-counter derivatives market. Five of the country's biggest banks, the Goldmans and JP Morgans and Morgan Stanleys, account for more than 90 percent of the market, where swaps of all shapes and sizes are traded more or less completely in the dark. If you want to know how Greece finds itself bankrupted by swaps, or some town in Alabama overpaid by $93 million for deals to fund a sewer system, this is the explanation: Nobody outside a handful of big swap dealers really has a clue about how much any of this shit costs, which means they can rip off their customers at will.

This insane outgrowth of jungle capitalism has spun completely out of control since 2000, when Congress deregulated the derivatives market. That market is now roughly 100 times bigger than the federal budget and 20 times larger than both the stock market and the GDP. Unregulated derivative deals sank AIG, Lehman Brothers and Greece, and helped blow up the global economy in 2008. Reining in derivatives is the key battle in the War for Finance Reform. Without regulation of this critical market, Wall Street could explode another mushroom cloud of nuclear leverage and risk over the planet at any time.

The basic pillar of derivatives reform is simple: From now on, instead of trading in the dark, most derivatives would have to be traded on open exchanges and "cleared" through a third party. Last fall, Wall Street lobbyists succeeded at watering down the clearing requirement by pushing through a series of exemptions for "end-users" – that is, anyone who uses derivatives to hedge a legitimate business risk, like an airline buying swaps as a hedge against fluctuations in jet-fuel prices. But the House then took it even further, expanding the exemption to include anyone who wants to hedge against balance-sheet risk. Since every company has a balance sheet, including giant insurers like AIG and hedge funds that gamble in derivatives, the giant loophole now covered pretty much everyone except a few megabanks. This was regulation with a finger crossed behind its back.

When it came time for the Senate to do its version, however, the lobbyists were in for a surprise. Sen. Blanche Lincoln of Arkansas – best known as one of the few Democrats to vote for Bush's tax cuts – suddenly got religion and closed the loophole. Facing a tough primary battle against an opponent who was vowing to crack down on Wall Street, Lincoln tweaked the language so derivatives reform would apply to any greedy financial company that makes billions trading risky swaps in the dark.

Republicans went apeshit, pulling the same tactics they tried to gut the Consumer Finance Protection Bureau. Sen. Enzi, back at the lectern after his failed attempt to claim that the CFPB was a government plot to control the orthodontics industry, barked to the Senate gallery that Lincoln's proposal would harm not millionaire swap dealers at JP Morgan and Goldman Sachs, but "a wheat-grower in Wyoming." Unmoved by such goofy rhetoric, the Senate shot down an asinine Republican amendment that would have overturned Lincoln's reform by a vote of 59-39.

Then reform advocates started reading the fine print of the Lincoln deal, and realized that all those Wall Street lobbyists had really been earning their money.

That same day the GOP amendment failed, the derivatives expert Adam White was at his home in Georgia, poring over a "redline" version of the Lincoln amendment, in which changes to the bill are tracked in bold. When he came to a key passage on page 570, he saw that it had a single line through it, meaning it had been removed. The line read, "Except as provided in paragraph (3), it shall be unlawful to enter into a swap that is required to be cleared unless such swap shall be submitted for clearing."

Translation: It was no longer illegal to trade many uncleared swaps. Wall Street would be free to go on trading these monstrosities by the gazillions, largely in the dark. "Regulators can't say any longer if you don't clear it, it's illegal," says White.

Once he noticed that giant loophole, White went back and found a host of other curlicues in the text that collectively cut the balls out of the Lincoln amendment. On page 574, a new section was added denying the Commodity Futures Trading Commission the power to force clearinghouses to accept swaps for clearing. On page 706, two lines were added making it impossible for buyers who get sold an uncleared swap to void the deal. Taken altogether, the changes amount to what White describes as a "Trojan Horse" amendment: hundreds of pages of rigid rules about clearing swaps, with a few cleverly concealed clauses that make blowing off those rules no big deal. Michael Greenberger, a former official with the Commodity Futures Trading Commission who has been fighting for derivatives reform, describes the textual trickery as a "circle of doom. Despite the pages and pages of regulations, violating them is risk-free."

On May 18th, as the clock ran out on the deadline to file amendments, reform-minded Democrats staged a concerted push to close the loopholes. But when Sen. Maria Cantwell of Washington offered a proposal to eliminate the "Trojan Horse" sham, Reid tried to slam the door on her and everyone else working to strengthen reform. The majority leader called for a vote to end debate – a move that would squelch any remaining amendments. This extraordinary decision to cut off discussion of our one, best shot at revamping the rules of modern American finance was made, at least in part, to enable senators to get home for Memorial Day weekend.

But then something truly unexpected took place. Cantwell revolted, joined by Sen. Russ Feingold of Wisconsin. That left Reid in the perverse position of having to convince three Republicans to come over to his side to silence a member of his own party. On May 20th, Reid got the votes he needed to kill the debate. A few hours later, the Senate passed the bill, loopholes and all, by a vote of 59-39.

In a heartwarming demonstration of the Senate's truly bipartisan support for Wall Street, Sen. Sam Brownback – a Republican from Kansas – stepped in to help Democrats kill one of the bill's most vital reforms. At the last minute, Brownback mysteriously withdrew his amendment to exempt auto dealers from regulation by the CFPB – a maneuver that prevented the Merkley-Levin ban on speculative trading, which was attached to Brownback's amendment, from even being voted on. That was good news for car buyers, but bad news for the global economy. Senators may enjoy scolding Goldman Sachs in public hearings, but when it comes time to vote, they'll pick Wall Street over Detroit every time.

The rushed vote also meant that the Democratic leadership wasn't able to gut 716, the amazingly aggressive section of Lincoln's amendment that would cut off taxpayer money to big banks that gamble on risky derivatives. Not that they didn't try. With just three minutes to go before the deadline, Dodd had filed a hilarious amendment that would have delayed the ban on derivatives for two years – and empowered a new nine-member panel to unilaterally kill it. Sitting on the panel would be Bernanke, Treasury Secretary Tim Geithner and FDIC chief Sheila Bair, all of whom violently opposed 716.

Dodd was forced to withdraw his amendment after Wall Street complained that even this stall-and-kill tactic would create too much "uncertainty" in the market. That left 716 still alive for the moment – but even its staunchest supporters expected the leadership to find some way to gut it in conference, especially since President Obama personally opposes the measure. "Treasury and the White House are in full-court mode, assuring everybody that this will be fixed," says Greenberger. "And when they say fixed, that means killed."

Whatever the final outcome, the War for Finance Reform serves as a sweeping demonstration of how power in the Senate can be easily concentrated in the hands of just a few people. Senators in the majority party – Brown, Kaufman, Merkley, even a committee chairman like Lincoln – took a back seat to Reid and Dodd, who tinkered with amendments on all four fronts of the war just enough to keep many of them from having real teeth. "They're working to come up with a bill that Wall Street can live with, which by definition makes it a bad bill," one Democratic aide explained in the final, frantic days of negotiation.

On the plus side, the bill will rein in some forms of predatory lending, and contains a historic decision to audit the Fed. But the larger, more important stuff – breaking up banks that grow Too Big to Fail, requiring financial giants to pay upfront for their own bailouts, forcing the derivatives market into the light of day – probably won't happen in any meaningful way. The Senate is designed to function as a kind of ongoing negotiation between public sentiment and large financial interests, an endless tug of war in which senators maneuver to strike a delicate mathematical balance between votes and access to campaign cash. The problem is that sometimes, when things get really broken, the very concept of a middle ground between real people and corrupt special interests becomes a grotesque fallacy. In times like this, we need our politicians not to bridge a gap but to choose sides and fight. In this historic battle over finance reform, when we had a once-in-a-generation chance to halt the worst abuses on Wall Street, many senators made the right choice. In the end, however, the ones who mattered most picked wrong – and a war that once looked winnable will continue to drag on for years, creating more havoc and destroying more lives before it is over.

The PRESSTITUTES - exposed

2010-11-05T01:42:00.000Z

THE SMEAR

âœJournalists don't like WikiLeaksâ, Hugo Rifkind notes in The Times, but âœthe people who comment online under articles do... Maybe you've noticed, and been wondering why. I certainly have.â (Hugo Rifkind Notebook, â˜Remind me. It's the red one I mustn't press, right?,â™ The Times, October 26, 2010)

Rifkind is right. The internet has revealed a chasm separating the corporate media from readers and viewers. Previously, the divide was hidden by the simple fact that Rifkindâ™s journalists - described accurately by Peter Wilby as the âœunskilled middle classâ (http://www.guardian.co.uk/media/2007/dec/10/comment.pressandpublishing) - monopolised the means of mass communication. Dissent was restricted to a few lonely lines on the letterâ™s page, if that. Readers were free to vote with their notes and coins, of course. But in reality, when it comes to the mainstream media, the public has always been free to choose any colour it likes, so long as itâ™s corporate â˜blackâ™. The internet is beginning to offer some brighter colours.

If Rifkind is confused, answers can be found between the lines of his own analysis:

âœWith WikiLeaks, with the internet at large, power is democratised, but responsibility remains the preserve of professionals.â

This echoes Lord Castlereaghâ™s insistence that "persons exercising the power of the press" should be "men of some respectability and property". (Quoted, James Curran and Jean Seaton, Power Without Responsibility - The Press And Broadcasting in Britain, Routledge, 1991, p.13)

And it is with exactly this version of âœresponsibilityâ that non-corporate commentators are utterly fed up. We are, for example, tired of the way even the most courageous individuals challenging even the most appalling crimes of state are smeared as âœirresponsibleâ.

Thus, Rifkind describes WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange as âœa frighteningly amoral figureâ. In truth, journalists find Assange a frighteningly +moral+ figure. Someone willing to make an enemy of the worldâ™s leading rogue state in order to expose the truth about the horrors it has inflicted on Afghanistan and Iraq is frightening to the compromised, semi-autonomous employees of corporate power. Assangeâ™s courage is the antidote to their poison.

A separate Times editorial comments:

âœNowhere in WikiLeaks's self-serving self publicity is there a judgment of what the organisation is achieving for the Iraqi nation, and what it hopes to achieve... Its personnel are partisans intervening in the security affairs of Western democracies and their allies, with a culpable heedlessness of human life.â (Leader, â˜Exercise in Sanctimony; The release of military files by WikiLeaks is partisan and irresponsible,â™ The Times, October 25, 2010)

Again, the truth is reversed - it is The Times, together with virtually the entire mass media, that is notable for its âœheedlessness of human lifeâ, for its endorsement of the Westâ™s perennial policy: attack, bomb, invade, torture, kill based on any crass pretext that can be got past the public. As WikiLeaks spokesperson Kristinn Hrafnsson politely told the WSWS website this week:

âœThe media is getting much too close to the military industry. They are not following the changing moods of the general public who are increasingly opposed to the wars.â (http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/nov2010/wiki-n02.shtml)

In the Daily Mail, Edward Heathcoat-Amoryâ™s article raised the important question:

âœParanoid, anarchic. Is WikiLeaks boss a force for good or chaos?â

After all, âœThe Wikileaks supremo lives a bizarre peripatetic life, with no house and few belongings...â He also has âœdisciplesâ whom âœhe ruthlessly manipulatesâ. (http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1297917/Is-Wikileaks-boss-Julian-Assange-force-good-chaos.html)

As for Assangeâ™s motivation: âœHis critics says he's motivated by a desire for personal publicity.â

Like Rifkind, Heathcoat-Amory is appalled by Assangeâ™s lack of âœethical judgmentsâ, his âœcult of secrecy, with no accountability to anyoneâ. Lack of accountability can indeed be a problem. Heathcoat-Amory, it should be mentioned, is of the Heathcoat-Amory Baronetcy, whose humble "family seat" was at Knightshayes Court in Tiverton, Devon: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Knightshayes_Court

In The Times, passionately pro-Iraq war commentator David Aaronovitch recalls the main theme of his questions to Assange: âœfrom where did WikiLeaks derive its authority and to whom was it accountableâ. And from where exactly does The Times derive its authority? To whom is +it+ responsible? Its advertisers? Rupert Murdoch? Aaronovitch continued:

âœAnd this is where something strange happened. Questioners wanted to know from Assange just how he and his team decided which documents to publish, which to redact, which to leave unpublished... Not only would Assange not answer these questions, it was almost as though he regarded them as illegitimate... I could tell that the overwhelming reaction was surprise at Assange's refusal to engage in any discussion about himself as anything other than an uncaped crusader.â (Aaronovitch, â˜Enigmatic WikiLeaks chief keeps his guard up,â™ The Times, October 2, 2010)

Strange indeed, because in fact Assange has addressed these questions numerous times (See here for a recent example: http://www.democracynow.org/2010/10/26/wikileaks_founder_julian_assange_on_iraq). Aaronovitch focused on Assangeâ™s jacket, his shirt, his shoes - âœincredibly long and pointy black winkle pickersâ. The very fact of the focus suggested something was not quite right. The unsubtle implication: Assange was unsavoury, strange, sinister.

A Daily Mail reporter described Assange as âœsomewhat bizarre-lookingâ.
(http://www.dailymail.co.uk/debate/article-1323433/Murder-rape-final-proof-Britain-fought-shaming-war.html)

An Independent news report referred to the âœsometimes erratic behaviour of Wikileaks' founderâ. (http://www.independent.co.uk/news/media/online/secret-war-at-the-heart-of-wikileaks-2115637.html)

In an interview with ABC News (Australia), the Independentâ™s Robert Fisk derided Assange as âœsome strange code-breaker from Australiaâ. (http://is.gd/gzdKc)

Dan Jones wrote in the Evening Standard: âœAssange is slippery. He is a master of the moral non sequitur... Do we really want the definition of what constitutes the public interest resting in the hands of a highly politicised neo-anarchist like Assange?â (Jones, â™There are limits to the freedom of the internet,â™ Evening Standard, August 2, 2010)

Again, the level of self-awareness hovered around zero.

The Daily Telegraph observed: âœthe publication of classified documents risks endangering the lives of both soldiers and those who collaborate with them.â (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/middleeast/iraq/8084891/Wikileaks-A-very-leaky-argument.html)

+Failure+ to publish the documents risks the lives of the inevitable next target of the US-UK killing machine in Iran, or Yemen, or Syria, or Venezuela. At this point, the only people capable of stopping the âœcoalitionâ is the public they are supposed to represent.

The New York Timesâ™ Hit Piece

In the United States, the same and worse has been pouring out of the media. Assange âœmoves like a hunted manâ around âœLondonâ™s rundown Paddington districtâ, John Burns writes feverishly in the New York Times, having apparently not tried to rent or buy in Paddington recently. He notes of Assange:

âœHe demands that his dwindling number of loyalists use expensive encrypted cellphones...â. He has made âœa remarkable journey to notorietyâ and has recently made âœhis most brazen disclosure yetâ. âœNow it is not just governments that denounce him: some of his own comrades are abandoning him for what they see as erratic and imperious behavior, and a nearly delusional grandeur unmatched by an awareness that the digital secrets he reveals can have a price in flesh and blood.â Assange has âœcome a long way from an unsettled childhood in Australia as a self-acknowledged social misfitâ. He now âœpursues his fugitiveâ™s life, his leadership is enforced over the Internet. Even remotely, his style is imperious...â (John F. Burns and Ravi Somaiya, â˜WikiLeaks Chief on Run, Trailed by His Notoriety,â™ New York Times, October 23, 2010; http://www.nytimes.com/2010/10/24/world/24assange.html?_r=1&hp)

The New York Times afforded the same treatment to Bradley Manning, the 22-year-old army private suspected of supplying the classified documents to WikiLeaks. The newspaper described how âœclassmates made fun of him for being a geekâ. Later, âœclassmates made fun of him for being gayâ. Manningâ™s partner was âœa self-described drag queenâ. People who knew Manning offered insights into his early life and âœhow he came to be so troubledâ. At school, Manning âœwas clearly different from most of his peersâ - former students remembered him âœbeing teased for all sort of reasonsâ. In case readers had lost focus wading through this appalling smear, the Times told them again that Manningâ™s partner had described himself as a âœdraq queenâ. (http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/09/us/09manning.html?pagewanted=1&_r=1)

What could Manningâ™s motivation possibly have been for leaking evidence of thousands of unreported civilian deaths and many hundreds of examples of torture? Some of Manningâ™s friends âœsay they wonder whether his desperation for acceptance â" or delusions of grandeur â" may have led him to disclose the largest trove of government secrets since the Pentagon Papersâ.

This reads like a parody of Soviet-era propaganda in the days when dissidents were carted off to mental hospitals. As Assange has said, the article âœremoved all higher-level political motivations from him and psychoanalyzed him down to problems in his childhood and a demand for attentionâ. (http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101026/cm_yblog_upshot/ny-times-reporter-defends-profile-of-wikileaks-assange)

Writing for the Salon website, media analyst Glenn Greenwald describes Burnsâ™ piece on Assange as âœone of the sleaziest, most vicious hit pieces seen in The New York Times in quite some time.â
(http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/27/burns/index.html)

Greenwald adds a crucial point:

âœThis kind of character smear (â˜he's not in his right mind,â™ pronounced a 25-year-old who sort of knows him) is reserved for people who don't matter in the world of establishment journalists - i.e., people without power or standing in Washington and, especially, those whom American Government authorities scorn. In official Washington, Assange is a contemptible loser - the Pentagon hates him and wants him destroyed, and therefore the â˜reportersâ™ who rely on, admire and identify with Pentagon officials immediately adopt that perspective - and that's why he was the target of this type of attack.â

Burns has defended his article on Assange as âœan absolutely standard journalistic endeavor that we would use with any story of similar importance in the United States...â (http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101026/cm_yblog_upshot/ny-times-reporter-defends-profile-of-wikileaks-assange) Not quite, says Greenwald:

âœIf anyone doubts that, please show me any article that paper has published which trashed the mental health, psyche and personality of a high-ranking American political or military official - a Senator or a General or a President or a cabinet secretary or even a prominent lobbyist - based on quotes from disgruntled associates of theirs. That is not done, and it never would be.â

Greenwald quoted from Burnsâ™s earlier coverage of the departure of Nato Afghan war leader General Stanley McChrystal, describing the "grave misfortune it is, considering what is lost to America in a commander as smart, resolute and as fit for purpose as General McChrystal..." With his heart on his sleeve, Burns added:

âœReporters, of course, do best when they keep their views to themselves, to retain their impartiality. But it's safe to say that many of the men and women who have covered General McChrystal as commander if [sic] Afghanistan, or in his previous role as the top United States special forces commander, admired him, and felt at least some unease about the elements in the Rolling Stone article that ended his career.â (http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/john-burns-and-dexter-filkins-answer-questions-on-mcchrystals-dismissal/)

Media analyst Norman Solomon has noted:

"I was in Baghdad before the invasion and spoke with Burns, and he was seriously eager to have this invasion take place. And throughout the war, he constantly denounced the behavior of Iraqi insurgents without ever applying the same human rights standards to the American forces in Iraq." (http://www.salon.com/news/opinion/glenn_greenwald/2010/10/27/burns/index.html)

How to explain the mediaâ™s propaganda performance? Greenwald comments with rare insight and honesty:

âœThey receive most of their benefits - their access, their scoops, their sense of belonging, their money, their esteem - from dutifully serving that role... â˜neutralityâ™ means: â˜serving the interests of American political and military leaders and amplifying their perspectiveâ™.â

Readers - the same irresponsible commoners derided by Rifkind - reacted furiously to the smearing of Assange. Burns says that in his 35 years at the New York Times he cannot âœrecall ever having been the subject of such absolutely, relentless vituperationâ. His email inbox and the comments section under his article have been flooded with criticism from readers, including a number of academics at Harvard, Yale and MIT. Some, he said, used âœlanguage that I don't think they would use at their own dinner tableâ.
(http://news.yahoo.com/s/yblog_upshot/20101026/cm_yblog_upshot/ny-times-reporter-defends-profile-of-wikileaks-assange)

Ironically, last June, Burns wrote about reader reaction to his reporting of McChrystal's resignation:

âœNot for the first time, Iâ™m struck, reading the comments and questions, by the comprehensive grasp so many of our readers... have of the issues... In an otherwise deeply dispiriting moment, that is something to celebrate: With all else that has gone wrong for America in recent years, in the wars and the economy at home, it has the enormous advantage, indispensable to the republicâ™s health, of a well-informed and active citizenry.â (http://atwar.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/06/24/john-burns-and-dexter-filkins-answer-questions-on-mcchrystals-dismissal/)

Indeed so - well said!

The rising level of dissent really is wonderful news. It is a sign that a public empowered by the internet is beginning to seriously challenge the propaganda, lies and smears of the âœresponsibleâ media that make mass killing possible. Life will never be the same again - the Burnses, Baronets and Rifkinds +are+ going to be challenged, tested and thwarted at every turn by ordinary readers who do not accept that truth and human life should be subordinated to privilege and power.

Part 2 will follow shortly...

ISTANBUL suicide bomb GLADIO ERGENEKON

2010-11-01T08:42:00.001Z

http://www.google.com/search?q=istanbul+ergenekon

"Some forces do not want Turkey to be in peace," Kaya said. "Maybe they wanted to frighten the government. It may be related to the Ergenekon trials or may be just because they wanted to terrorize people and generate fear. They might think that the government should come to harm."

Talha Kaya, 21, who sells food near the square, said he heard the bomb go off and went with some friends to help the injured

google GLADIO

http://u2r2h.blogspot.com/2008/02/turkey-gladio-nato-staybehind-false.html

http://u2r2h.blogspot.com/2008/03/gladio-carnage-in-bologna-by-cia.html

http://u2r2h-documents.blogspot.com/2007/07/uk-carnage-attempt-in-basra.html

Special Forces Soldiers Planting Bombs in Basra! Caught Red-Handed!

google BOLOGNA GLADIO

google STRATEGY OF TENSION

google DEEP STATE TURKEY

then you can be as perceptive as Kaya, the food seller.

757 Pentagon - nice recap

2010-10-29T04:32:00.001Z

Victor Thorn Interviews Former CNN Reporter Who Was First on Scene at Pentagon on 9-11

By Victor Thorn

There's an old saying: Don't spit on my leg and tell me it's raining. Likewise, don't show me a photo taken only minutes after the 9-11 Pentagon "event" and insist that a Boeing 757—which is 155 feet long with a 124 foot wingspan and weighs 100 tons—crashed into America's military nerve-center.

During an Oct. 19 interview, this writer questioned former CNN correspondent Jamie McIntyre about the 200,000 pounds of missing wreckage. McIntyre was one of the first establishment reporters on the scene soon after the Pentagon event and has been cited repeatedly by researchers exploring alternative views about what happened on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001.

McIntyre tried to explain, "What was left of the plane broke into thousands of tiny pieces. Most of it was destroyed."

However, McIntyre's own words delivered during a live CNN broadcast on the morning of Sept. 11, 2001 betray this sentiment. "From my close-up inspection, there's no evidence of a plane having crashed anywhere near the Pentagon."

That tragic morning, he continued, "There are no large tail sections, wing sections, fuselage, nothing like that anywhere around which would indicate that the entire plane crashed into the side of the Pentagon."

Later, as possible "damage control," McIntyre objected that his comments were taken out of context. But were they? Pentagon officials initially excused the lack of physical wreckage by saying the plane, including its black boxes and flight data recorders, "vaporized."

Yet, deceased employees and passengers were identified by DNA, fingerprints and drivers licenses. How could aluminum and high-grade steel completely disintegrate, while flesh and plastic documents remained intact?

McIntyre responded, "It's inexplicable how some stuff survives. It's a fluky situation what makes it through and what doesn't. It's not inconsistent for some fragile things to survive while other strong things don't."

In other words, we're supposed to believe this preposterous spin instead of our own eyes. Also, why is only one 18-foot hole visible on the Pentagon's exterior ring? Government spokesmen said it was created by Flight 77's fuselage, yet a Boeing's nose is described by aviation experts as a weak eggshell, a sausage skin, or an empty beer can. Airplane mechanics cast serious doubt on whether a fuselage could penetrate three immensely strong reinforced concrete walls.

McIntyre admitted to AFP that never once did he interview any structural engineers to determine why the plane's five-ton engines didn't create any holes. In fact, McIntyre never interviewed a single pilot to determine if Hani Hanjour—who could barely drive an automobile and was refused permission to rent a Cessna prop plane months before 9-11—could have commandeered the large, sophisticated, unwieldy aircraft said to have hit the Pentagon. He called the matter "immaterial."

Moreover, McIntyre failed to interview any air traffic controllers to ascertain whether a Boeing 757 could execute a 7,000-foot drop in 2.5 minutes while pulling a sharp 270-degree turn. Nor did he interview a single airline technician to verify if this aircraft could perform such top-gun maneuvers. Neither did he contact a single physician in regard to whether Hanjour would have lost consciousness in flight, due to the G-forces.

McIntyre also neglected to interview any photographic experts or search-and-rescue workers in regard to why no wreckage appeared in the initial photos. Additionally, prof. A.K. Dewdney of Western Ontario University conducted numerous experiments which determined that cell phone calls could not have been made by passengers that morning. Such technology only became available in 2004. Pilot Russ Wittenberg confirmed to AFP that these devices couldn't lock onto cell phone towers from the heights or speeds claimed by the government.

Inexplicably, McIntyre didn't contact a single electronics expert to verify the authenticity of these calls. When asked if he viewed any of the 84 confiscated videotapes that the Pentagon has refused to release under FOIA requests to this day, McIntyre responded in the negative. AFP followed-up, "Has there ever been any conclusive video footage where Flight 77 is unmistakably seen striking the Pentagon?"

McIntyre replied, "As far as we know, there is no video footage comparable to WTC 2 being struck in New York."

Despite the Pentagon's enormous surveillance systems, the government can't produce even one identifiable photograph of Flight 77 crashing into this highly secure facility. Moreover, McIntyre didn't witness the crash, and only arrived on the scene 45 minutes later. Worse, he confessed to not doing any research into alternate explanations, while adding, "I'm not aware of anyone at CNN exploring these subjects in any detail."

By his own admission, McIntyre couldn't provide evidence of interviewing a single individual whose perspective differed from the government's official version of 9-11.

He justified this lack of intellectual and journalistic curiosity with the following mantras: (a) All evidence points in only one direction, (b) There are no plausible alternatives, (c) These aren't relevant lines of questioning, and (d) All this might make sense if we didn't know whether American Airlines Flight 77 hit the Pentagon. But we do know that for a fact, so all this other debate and analysis is irrelevant.

Unfortunately, McIntyre still does not realize that this type of lazy elitist arrogance is why a growing number of Americans don't trust the corporate media.

He did acknowledge, "It's good to keep an open and skeptical mind because the government doesn't always tell the truth."

But by neglecting to investigate a single aspect of this story that contradicts the government's version, CNN, McIntyre, and his mainstream media colleagues, epitomize lapdog journalism at its shoddiest.

(there is a great youtube video)

The 4th Age - it ain't Hobbiton

2010-10-27T11:20:00.001Z

As you know we don't live in Hobbiton - where the the state,
corporations and us -- are one happy community, and
we all try to help each other.

We live in 2010 and in the last 5 years alone -- while we
people have been fast asleep -- state and private power has expanded into full-time
surveillance. Records are never deleted and shared widely among the powers.

*in* 5 years you will see autonomous electronic agents setting traps for us,
based on data that is collected now.... controlled by the "powers".

Conclusion: The best we can do is to fill the databanks with erroneous data,
and make laws that restrict sovereign information DRASTICALLY -- and put it
under guard.

We live in the beginning of the THIRD REVOLUTION, where democracy
is suffering under the onslaught of the digital madness.

Today "WE" have to work on OUR autonomy!

While energy autonomy is around the corner,
in a network of information there is no autonomy, hence the precautions.

The First Technical Revolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Agricultural_revolution
The Second Technical Revolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution
The Third Technical Revolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Timeline_of_computing_1950%E2%80%931979
The Fourth Technical Revolution: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Die_4._Revolution_%E2%80%93_Energy_Autonomy

A joke for the end of this depressing blog entry

Not to be confused with the 4th Age where Sauron has been defeated.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fourth_Age Sauron lives!!

more necessary reading:

novel weapons FALLUJAH - Cancer, Infant Mortality and Birth Sex-Ratio in Fallujah, Iraq 2005–2009

2010-10-20T09:14:00.000Z

Dr. Chris Busby, a world famous UK based physicist, was at the UN last week with the results of his health survey comparing the health of the city of Fallujah, Iraq with 38 Hiroshimas.

The results were truly astonishing, even to the jaded eyes of UN representatives, old retired war fighters and politically connected bureaucrats. No armed force had accomplished this level of death and disease in a civilian population before.

There it was in black and white, on paper, from an internationally respected physicist – the utterly unbelievable, but certified results: Fallujah's leukemia rate was 38 times higher than Hiroshima after the US Atomic Bombing in 1945. The questions were fast and furious.

Questions include:

How did the US do that? and,
What weapons did the US deploy on the civilian population to cause so much cancer? and,
Did the US nuke weapons labs develop a Cancer Bomb?

Many diplomatic representatives were probably wondering how their government could get some of those weapons.

The Livermore Nuclear Weapons Lab in California and the Lethality Center at Picatinney Aresenal in New Jersey were most certainly involved

"A documentary on Italian television on Tuesday accuses American forces of using white phosphorus shells in the assault on Fallujah last year not just for nighttime illumination, their usual purpose, but to burn to death Iraqi insurgents and civilians. The mainstream American news media, whose reporters had witnessed the fighting and apparently seen no evidence of this, largely ignored the claim."

"They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud," Abu Sabah, another Fallujah refugee from the Julan area told IPS. "Then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of smoke behind them."

Dr. Chris Busby

Abstract: There have been anecdotal reports of increases in birth defects and cancer in Fallujah, Iraq blamed on the use of novel weapons (possibly including depleted uranium) in heavy fighting which occurred in that town between US led forces and local elements in 2004. In Jan/Feb 2010 the authors organised a team of researchers who visited 711 houses in Fallujah, Iraq and obtained responses to a questionnaire in Arabic on cancer, birth defects and infant mortality. The total population in the resulting sample was 4,843 persons with and overall response rate was better than 60%. Relative Risks for cancer were age-standardised and compared to rates in the Middle East Cancer Registry (MECC, Garbiah Egypt) for 1999 and rates in Jordan 1996–2001. Between Jan 2005 and the survey end date there were 62 cases of cancer malignancy reported (RR = 4.22; CI: 2.8, 6.6; p < 0.00000001) including 16 cases of childhood cancer 0-14 (RR = 12.6; CI: 4.9, 32; p < 0.00000001). Highest risks were found in all-leukaemia in the age groups 0-34 (20 cases RR = 38.5; CI: 19.2, 77; p < 0.00000001), all lymphoma 0–34 (8 cases, RR = 9.24;CI: 4.12, 20.8; p < 0.00000001), female breast cancer 0–44 (12 cases RR = 9.7;CI: 3.6, 25.6; p < 0.00000001) and brain tumours all ages (4 cases, RR = 7.4;CI: 2.4, 23.1; P < 0.004). Infant mortality was based on the mean birth rate over the 4 year period 2006–2009 with 1/6th added for cases reported in January and February 2010. There were 34 deaths in the age group 0–1 in this period giving a rate of 80 deaths per 1,000 births. This may be compared with a rate of 19.8 in Egypt (RR = 4.2 p < 0.00001) 17 in Jordan in 2008 and 9.7 in Kuwait in 2008. The mean birth sex-ratio in the recent 5-year cohort was anomalous.

Normally the sex ratio in human populations is a constant with 1,050 boys born to 1,000 girls. This is disturbed if there is a genetic damage stress. The ratio of boys to 1,000 girls in the 0–4, 5–9, 10–14 and 15–19 age cohorts in the Fallujah sample were 860, 1,182, 1,108 and 1,010 respectively suggesting genetic damage to the 0–4 group (p < 0.01). Whilst the results seem to qualitatively support the existence of serious mutation-related health effects in Fallujah, owing to the structural problems associated with surveys of this kind, care should be exercised in interpreting the findings quantitatively.

Zionist Settlers burn Palestinian Olives

2010-10-16T14:25:00.000Z

Israel settlers start fires amid West Bank harvest

By Philippe Agret (AFP) – 7 hours ago

FARATA'A, Palestinian Territories — Thick black smoke billows from the
olive grove under the gaze of Israeli soldiers as Palestinian farmers
use branches to try to beat out the fires lit by Jewish settlers.

It's olive harvest time in the occupied West Bank.

The firebombers swooped down from Havat Gilad, a wildcat Jewish
settlement unauthorised even by the Israeli government.

Encircled by barbed wire, the makeshift dwellings glower down on the
surrounding Palestinian olive plantations from a hilltop in the
northern West Bank.

"We were gathering the olives when the settlers arrived. One of them
started a fire," says olive grower Shaher Tawil.

He points to a bearded man wearing a T-shirt and a Jewish kippa or
skullcap, now safely behind an Israeli military barrier.

"When we saw the flames, we called the fire service but the soldiers
wouldn't let them come any closer to prevent clashes with the
settlers," the old man says.

The young Israeli conscripts, visibly embarrassed and restricted by
their uniforms in the oppressive midday heat, finally let the
fire-truck through after about an hour, by which time the flames have
already been well-fanned by the wind.

At last the fires are put out, as again the soldiers look on.

Tawil says that last week settlers from Havat Gilad harvested the
fruit of 800 trees belonging to his family.

"Every year they steal our olives and burn our trees," he says.

The Havat Gilad settlers are among the most hardline in the West Bank
and believe they have a God-given right to land they know by its
Biblical name of Samaria.

For them, the villagers in whose midst they have set up home are not
"Palestinians" with a right to a state alongside Israel but "Arabs"
who are interlopers on Biblical Jewish land.

The settlers are wont to quote a saying by one of their spiritual and
ideological gurus, the late rabbi Mordechai Elyahu.

"This land is the birthright of the people of Israel. If a gentile
plants a tree on my land, the tree and its fruit are mine."

A few hours earlier, in the village of Azmut near the northern West
Bank city of Nablus, a group of youths from the settlement of Elon
Moreh, four kilometres (two and a half miles) away, dispersed
Palestinian olive harvesters with shots in the air, witnesses said.

The settlers said they had come under attack first.

"We began the harvest at 7 am. At 9 am while we were having breakfast,
they turned up with these automatic weapons," said Pauline Marechal, a
57-year-old Frenchwoman.

"They began firing in the air. The children were screaming and crying.
The settlers were chanting: 'Out. Out'," said Marechal, an activist
with the Palestinian solidarity group, Darna, which helps villagers
with the olive harvest each October.

"Every year, it's the same thing," she said. "They come with their
ladders and their tea urns and they steal the olives."

A report released by aid organisation Oxfam on Friday said attacks and
other acts of harassment by Jewish settlers against Palestinian olive
farmers "are common and often increase during the time of the
harvest."

The group said that the olive sector, "which contributes up to 100
million dollars (71.4 million euros) in yearly income for some of the
poorest Palestinian communities, could bring a brighter future for the
Palestinian economy, provided its full potential is realised."

It said that about 45 percent of farmland in the West Bank and Gaza is
given over to olive cultivation, with approximately 10 million trees.

The Israeli army says it does all it can to protect Palestinian olive
growers. So far this year there have been no casualties at least. But
neither have the police made any arrests.

USA Hillary Clinton apologizes for ONE atrocity in Central America

2010-10-14T08:06:00.000Z

Oct 01, 2010

U.S. apologizes for 1940s medical experiments on Guatemalans injected with STDs

but does not apologize to the victims of mass murders slaughtered by right-wing death squads sponsored by an illegitimate US-installed and sponsored Guatemalan regime!

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and HHS Secretary Kathleen Sebelius today apologized for "abhorrent" and "clearly unethical" medical experiments in the 1940s in which U.S. Public Health Service doctors injected Guatemalan patients with syphilis and gonorrhea without their knowledge to study the effect of venereal disease

Doctors from the U.S. Public Health Service injected hundreds of Guatemalans with syphilis and gonorrhea in the 1940s without their knowledge or consent in a study of the effects of venereal disease, NBC news reports.

Information on the experiment was discovered by Susan Reverby, a professor of women's studies at Wellesley College, and can be seen today on her website.

Reverby says the "syphilis inoculation project" was co-sponsored by the PHS, the National Institutes of Health, the Pan American Health Sanitary Bureau and the Guatemalan government.

She says one of the doctors was also involved in the infamous "Tuskegee" syphilis study in which hundreds of already infected African-American men in Alabama were left untreated for 40 years while doctors observed the effects of the disease.

The Guatemala project involved 696 people, including prisoners and mental health patients.

Reverby writes:

The doctors used prostitutes with the disease to pass it on to the prisoners ... and then did direct inoculations made from syphilis bacteria poured into the men's penises or on forearms and faces that were slightly abraded when the 'normal exposure' produced little disease or in a few cases through spinal punctures.

She notes that unlike in the Tuskegee experiments in Alabama, the subjects in Guatemala were given penicillin after they contracted the illness, although she says it is unclear whether everyone was cured or received adequate treatment.

NBC News reporter Robert Bazell says mental patients and prostitutes were unwittingly injected in the experiments from 1946 to 1948.

It's a bit rich.

And it begs the question. Will the US come clean, and wholeheartedly apologize, and give reparations, for the tens of thousands of innocent civilians slaughtered by right-wing death squads sponsored by an illegitimate US-installed and sponsored Guatemalan regime?

The 1940s experiments in Guatemala were part of a wider, now well-documented, pattern of US imperial interference that escalated in the context of the 1994 democratic revolution that brought the Arbenz government to power. US official attitudes to the democratization of Guatemala were candidly described in a variety of now declassified internal documents I discuss in this paper.

In 1952, US intelligence noted the rise of "militant advocacy of social reforms and nationalistic policies identified with the Guatemalan revolution of 1944", resulting in 10 years of democracy - before the US intervened directly to secure strategic interests. "The radical and nationalistic policies" included "the persecution of foreign economic interests, especially the United Fruit Company", and had won "the support or acquiescence of almost all Guatemalans." The government had generated "mass support for the present regime", proceeding "to mobilize the hitherto politically inert peasantry" via agrarian reform and labour organization, undermining the hegemony of large foreign landowners. But democracy was not to be lauded - it was a serious problem: "Guatemalan official propaganda, with its emphasis on conflict between democracy and dictatorship and between national independence and 'economic imperialism', is a disturbing factor in the Caribbean area", the US concluded.

In other documents, the US noted that the democratic revolution of 1944 had contributed to "a strong national movement to free Guatemala from the military dictatorship, social backwardness, and 'economic colonialism', which had been the pattern of the past". The "social and economic programs of the elected government met the aspirations" of the impoverished, and "inspired the loyalty and conformed to the self-interest of most political conscious Guatemalans." Hence, "neither the landholders nor the [United] Fruit Company can expect any sympathy in Guatemalan public opinion." Worse still, the government's "agrarian reform is a powerful propaganda weapon; its broad social program of aiding the workers and peasants in a victorious struggle against the upper classes and large foreign enterprises has a strong appeal to the populations of Central American neighbours where similar conditions prevail."

Cold War 'Domino theory' was not seriously concerned by the threat of 'international communism' per se. It was more worried about the danger that a whole region might be inspired by a successful model of nationalist economic independence. So something had to be done. In the words of a 1949 CIA assessment, this programme was "distinctly unfriendly to US business interests". Similarly, the US State Department acknowledged that such policies constituted a threat to Guatemala as "a place for capital investment". (See Mark Curtis' Ambiguities of Power, Zed, 1995 p. 152)

So in 1954, the US and British teamed up to violently overthrow Arbenz's reformist democratic administration, and installed Col. Castillo Armas. To keep the new, illegitimate, counter-democratic dictatorship in power required extensive 'force projection', in particular the creation and support of a lethal network of government-backed right-wing death squads whose sole task was to slaughter peasants into submission.

Amnesty International (AI) reported at the time that "tortures and murders... are part of a deliberate and long-standing program of the Guatemalan Government" and that the "selection of targets for detention and murder, and the deployment of official forces for extra-legal operations can be pin-pointed to secret offices in an annex of Guatemala's National Palace, under the direct control of the President of the Republic." Upwards of 60,000 people were killed by the 1980s. Further tens of thousands were killed after, and untold hundreds of thousands throughout this process were displaced in a conflict that spanned decades.

One report from Stephen Kinzer in the Boston Global in 1980 says it all. Kinzer cites a report from the National Council of the Jesuit Order in Guatemala as follows: "... it is only necessary to open one's eyes to realize that here we are ruled by a system of anti-Christian power which destroys life and persecutes those who fight for life... This anguishing situation is being maintained with a repression among the most severe in Guatemala's recent history. A regime of unjust force is trying to prevent the working people from reclaiming their just rights." The Council reported over three thousand killings in the first ten months of 1979 alone, by government-backed death squads acting "with total impunity. It is axiomatic that in Guatemala there are no political prisoners, only the dead and disappeared."

This kind of analysis could go on ad nauseum. The history is well-documented.

So the question remains. Will the US say "sorry" for the destruction of democracy in Guatemala, for the hundreds of thousands lives lost, for the millions repressed?

sheer idiocy - Afghanistan - Halliburton (michael moore)

2010-10-11T10:42:00.001Z

A Senseless War Begins Its 10th Year
... an address to the nation from President Barack Obama (as reported by Michael Moore)

Thursday, October 7th, 2010

My Fellow Americans:

Nine years ago today we invaded the nation of Afghanistan. I'd just turned 40. I had a Discman and an Oldsmobile and had gotten really into LiveJournal. That was a long time ago. It was so long ago, does anybody remember why we're even there? I think everyone wanted to capture Osama bin Laden and bring him to justice. But he got away sometime in the first month or so. He left. We stayed. Looking back now, that makes no sense.

Needing to find a new reason for the mission, we decided to overthrow the religious extremists who were running Afghanistan. Which we did. Sorta. Unlike Osama, they never left. Why not? Well, they were Afghans, it was their country. And, strangely enough, a lot of other Afghans supported them. To this day, the Taliban only have 25,000 armed fighters. Do you really think an army that tiny could control and suppress a nation of 28 million against their will? What's wrong with this picture? WTF is really going on here?

The truth is, I can't get an answer. My generals can't quite tell me what our mission is. If we went in there to rout out al-Qaeda, well, they're gone too. The CIA tells me there are under 100 of them left in the whole country!

My generals have also admitted the following to me:

1. There is no way we can defeat the Taliban. They enjoy too much popular support in the rural areas, the majority of the country.

2. Even though we've been there nine years, the truth is the Taliban, not us, not the Afghan government, control the country. After nine years, we've only completely run the Taliban out of 3% of Afghanistan.
3%!! (Just for reference, it took us only ELEVEN MONTHS after D-Day to entirely defeat the Nazis across all of Europe.)

3. Our troops and their commanders are still trying to learn the language, the culture, the customs of Afghanistan. The fact is, our troops are simply not trusted by the average people (especially after they've killed numerous civilians, either through recklessness or for sport).

4. The Afghan government we installed is corrupt beyond belief. The public does not trust them. President Karzai is on anti-depressants and our advisors tell us he is erratic and loopy on many days. His brother has a friendly relationship with the Taliban and is believed to be a major poppy (heroin) dealer. Heroin poppies are the #1 contributor to the Afghan economy.

The war in Afghanistan is a mess. The insurgency grows -- and why wouldn't it: foreign troops have invaded and occupied their country! The people responsible for 9/11 are no longer there. So why are we? Why are we offering up the lives of our sons and daughters every single day -- for no reason anyone can define.

In fact, the only reason I can see is that this war is putting billions of profits into the pockets of defense contractors. Is that a reason to stay, so Halliburton can post a larger profit this quarter?

It is time for me to bring our troops home -- right now. Not one more American needs to die. Their deaths do not make us safer and they do not bring democracy to Afghanistan.

It is not our mission to defeat the Taliban. That is the job of the Afghan people -- if that is what they choose to do. There are many groups and leaders of countries in this world who are despicable. We are not going to invade 30 countries and remove their regimes. That is not our job.

I am not going to stay in Afghanistan just because we're already there and we haven't "won" yet. There is nothing to win. No one from Genghis Khan to Leonid Brezhnev has been able to win there. So the troops are coming home.

I refuse to participate in scaring the American people with a phony "War on Terror." Are there terrorists? Yes. Will they strike again? Sadly, yes. But these terrorist acts are few and far between and should not dictate how we live our daily lives or make us ignore our constitutional rights. They should never distract us from what our real priorities are in making our country safe and secure: Everyone with a good job, families able to own a home and send their kids to college, universal health care that's coordinated by your elected representative government -- not by greedy, profit-hungry insurance companies. THAT would be true homeland security.

And what about Osama bin Laden? Nine years and we can't find a 6'5" Arab man who apparently is on dialysis? Even after offering $25 million to anyone who will tell us where he is? You don't think someone would have taken us up on that by now?

Here's what I know: Osama bin Laden is a multi-millionaire -- and if there's one thing I've learned about the rich is that they don't live in caves for 9 years. Bin Laden is either dead or hiding out in a place where his money protects him. Or maybe he just went home.

Just like we should do.

Now.

My condolences to the families of all who died in this war. Most of them signed up after 9/11 and wanted to do their duty because we were attacked. But we were not attacked by a country. We were attacked by a few religious extremists. And you don't defeat a few thugs by shipping halfway around the world thousands of armored vehicles and hundreds of thousands of soldiers. That is just sheer idiocy.

And it ends tonight.

God be with you.
I'm not a Muslim.
(End of speech, as transcribed by Michael Moore)

Dear Michael.

We ARE in Afghanistan because
OIL
Minerals
pipelines
halliburton and private profits (blackwater)
military jobs
weapons testing
elite forces getting "wet" (get hardened by killing)
myth-stabilizing (needed, because we were NOT attacked on 911, it was an inside job)
continue crime coverups
torture continuation
next war preparation
blackmailing the allies
CIA black budget

This, Michael, is America. Now, you don't want America to change, or do you?
We are the good guys. Imagine if our fellow mericans would understand that we
are the bad guys. That would mean they'd be of the same opinion as Hamas and
Ahmadenijad. What would it mean to the doctrines? Nobody would believe anything
that was said in USA media any more. Which is different from "Most people
believe many things in US media are untrue"

Hugh Shelton - 9/11 False Flag agent provocateur hypocrite

2010-10-10T08:34:00.000Z

Warning. This man is responsible for 911.
He should face a firing squad if the
USA was a country with any self-respect.

Gen. Shelton: Cabinet member suggested killing U.S. airman
Chairman of joint chiefs of staff during 9/11 recalls request before Iraq war

General Hugh Shelton, who was the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff during 9/11, chronicles his journey to the highest level of the American military in his book, "Without Hesitation." In this excerpt, he writes about a request from an official that left him seething.

Prologue
Early on in my days as Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, we had small, weekly White House breakfasts in National Security Advisor Sandy Berger's office that included me, Sandy, Bill Cohen (Secretary of Defense), Madeleine Albright (Secretary of State), George Tenet (head of the CIA), Leon Firth (VP chief of staff for security), Bill Richardson (ambassador to the U.N.), and a few other senior administration officials. These were informal sessions where we would gather around Berger's table and talk about concerns over coffee and breakfast served by the White House dining facility. It was a comfortable setting that encouraged brainstorming of potential options on a variety of issues of the day.

During that time we had U-2 aircraft on reconnaissance sorties over Iraq. These planes were designed to fly at extremely high speeds and altitudes (over seventy thousand feet) both for pilot safety and to avoid detection.

At one of my very first breakfasts, while Berger and Cohen were engaged in a sidebar discussion down at one end of the table and Tenet and Richardson were preoccupied in another, one of the Cabinet members present leaned over to me and said, "Hugh, I know I shouldn't even be asking you this, but what we really need in order to go in and take out Saddam is a precipitous event—something that would make us look good in the eyes of the world. Could you have one of our U-2s fly low enough — and slow enough—so as to guarantee that Saddam could shoot it down?"

(I am sure this happened .. just google GLADIO to understand how USrael does much much worse things)

The hair on the back of my neck bristled, my teeth clenched, and my fists tightened. I was so mad I was about to explode.

Poor old Hughie-boy. I am sure he has authorized the killing of many innocent human beings. What a chadband.

I looked across the table, thinking about the pilot in the U-2 and responded, "Of course we can . . ." which prompted a big smile on the official's face.

"You can?" was the excited reply.

"Why, of course we can," I countered. "Just as soon as we get your ass qualified to fly it, I will have it flown just as low and slow as you want to go."

The official reeled back and immediately the smile disappeared. "I knew I should not have asked that. . . ."

"No, you should not have," I strongly agreed, still shocked at the disrespect and sheer audacity of the question. "Remember, there is one of our great Americans flying that U-2, and you are asking me to intentionally send him or her to their death for an opportunity to kick Saddam. The last time I checked, we don't operate like that here in America."

No, we operate much much bloodier and much more perfidious.

I left the room that day but I never forgot it. I went back and I shared it with the Joint Chiefs—not revealing who the official was—but nonetheless getting into how it had played out. "You may not think those types of things still happen in Washington, but trust me—they do, and I've just been exposed to it. Keep your antennas up and do not ever fall into it."

911 happened on H Shelton's watch.

Looking back on the thirty-four years of my career that led up to my appointment as Chairman, I felt comfortable with the man I saw in the mirror. I had earned a solid reputation as an honest, straightforward role model for integrity, ethics, and selflessness—a leader whose moral character was beyond reproach. Now, as I proudly stepped into my position as highest-ranking military officer in all of the United States Armed Forces—the principal military adviser to the President and the National Security Council—I was excited to serve as a living example to the three million-plus men and women of our armed forces that it really is possible to rise to the top of one's profession through character-based leadership and without its being at the expense of others.

But what was I stepping into behind the heavily fortified walls of the Pentagon's inner circle? Would subsequent White House gatherings attempt to drag me into more revolting conspiracies? I'd had bosses who asked me to steal for them, others to access and falsify their records. I'd seen my share of cowards and relieved them of duty. But never in those thirty-four years had I seen—or even imagined—anything that came close to a senior Cabinet member suggesting I be party to killing one of our great airmen in hopes of starting a war. Was this typical of what really went on at the highest levels of the United States government, the country I had passionately devoted my life to serve?

THREE buildings were disolved .. wtc 1 wtc2 and wtc7 at 5 int he afternoon.

If my first few weeks as Chairman were any indication of the challenges the next four years would bring, I would have countless opportunities to call upon those principles deeply ingrained within me as a young boy in a small North Carolina town called Speed.

From "Without Hesitation" by General (Ret.) Hugh Shelton, 14th Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, with Ronald Levinson and Malcolm McConnell. Copyright © 2010 by the authors and reprinted by permission of St. Martin's Press, LLC.

Could this chapter be a hint at 9/11? Hugh Shelton was in a plane to London on 9/11, no doubt to give instruction to the UK government.

you really believe the official story? just check the facts for 10 minutes.

During the events of September 11, 2001, Shelton was on a plane to London, England. Then-Vice Chairman Air Force General Richard Myers took charge and on October 1, 2001 became his successor.

He is a Knight Commander of the British Empire (KBE), he was knighted by Queen Elizabeth (for rescueing the western capitalist system with an endless war and oil booty

According to the publisher, General Shelton goes on the record to reveal, for the first time, the following:

High-ranking Cabinet member proposes intentionally allowing an American pilot to be killed by the Iraqis to have an excuse to retaliate and go to war.
Details of a contentious Camp David meeting among President George W. Bush and his National Security Council immediately after 9/11, where internal battle lines were drawn---and Shelton (along with Colin Powell) convinced President Bush to do the right thing.
How Rumsfeld persuaded General Tommy Franks to bypass the Joint Chiefs, leading to a badly flawed Iraq war plan that failed to anticipate the devastating after-effects of the insurgency and civil war.
Attempts to kill Usama bin Laden that were shot down by our State Department.
CIA botched high-profile terrorist snatches, leaving Shelton's Special Operations teams to clean up their mess.
How Shelton "persuaded" Haiti's dictator to flee the country.
And much more.

Yet, according to the publisher, it's Shelton's amazing personal story that puts his military career in perspective. It began with a fall from a ladder in his backyard, resulting in total paralysis from the neck down---and a risky experimental procedure, so dangerous that if it didn't cure him, chances are it would kill him.

clinton lewinsky

cigar monica lewinski

bill clinton lewinski deception distraction

titilation for distracting the public of the important things

harmless fun ... unlike the killings and the fraudulent US military

Turgut Özal - Gladio news

2010-10-01T08:13:00.001Z

Ozal did the things that the vulgar-capitalist west (usa/cia) wanted... PRIVATIZATION
But was he not pro-USA enough and was killed by the CIA like rohwedder palme lumumba herrhausen ....?

from voltairenet

Did NATO attempt to assassinate Turkish President Turgut Özal?

Ahmet Özal, son of former Turkish president Turgut Özal (1927-1993), registered a complaint against General Sabri Yirmibeşoğlu, former secretary-general of the National Security Council and Commander of the Special War Department.

M. Özal has accused General Yirmibeşoğlu of having conducted an assassination attempt, on 18 June 1988, on the life of his father who was Prime Minister at the time.

For many years, the rumor has circulated that President Özal did not die of a heart attack on 17 April 1993, but was assassinated by Gladio; that is to say, Turkish agents operating under NATO's orders.

General Yirmibeşoğlu denied the accusation. However, in responding to the press, he acknowledged that his services had taken part in covert operations, including some grievous manipulations. He inadvertently confessed to having ordered the burning of a mosque in Cyprus, in 1974, to manipulate the Turkish Cypriots (mainly Muslim) and pit them against their Greek orthodox compatriots.

The retired general had already admitted that his services were implicated in the 6-7 September 1955 riots in Istanbul. His agents, acting under the authority of Gladio, perpetrated an attack against the museum dedicated to Mustafa Kemal in Thessalonica, Greece. The attack, perceived as a sacrilege, inflamed Turkish extremists who took it out on the Greek communities in Istanbul and Izmir. The progroms claimed 16 lives and left 32 people seriously injured; some 200 women were sexually assaulted.

President Turgut Özal advocated a eurasist foreign policy that foreshadowed the neo-ottoman policy currently in place. For fifty years the United Kingdom and the United States have used Gladio to systematically orchestrate false-flag attacks to set up their Greek and Turkish allies against each other in order to weaken them.

Halil Turgut Özal October 13, 1927 + April 17, 1993
was a Turkish electrical engineer, a high level civil servant and politician,
who was Prime Minister of Turkey from 1983 to 1989 and President of Turkey
from 1989 to 1993. As Prime Minister, he transformed the economy of Turkey by paving the way for the privatization of many state enterprises. This improved relations with the western world, especially the United States. Özal described his dream as transforming Turkey into a "little America"

On June 18, 1988 he survived an assassination attempt during the party congress. One bullet wounded his finger while another bullet missed his head. The assassin, Kartal Demirag(, was captured and sentenced to life in prison but pardoned by Özal in 1992.

Demirag was allegedly a Counter-Guerrilla, contracted by its hawkish leader, General Sabri Yirmibesoglu.
Two months later, Yirmibesoglu became the secretary general of the National Security Council.
During Yirmibesoglu's tenure as secretary general,
Özal heard about the allegations of Yirmibesoglu's role in the affair and forced him into retirement.

In late 2008, Demirag was retried by the Ankara 11th Heavy Penal Court and sentenced to twenty years in prison.

On 17 April 1993, Özal died of a suspicious heart attack in office, leading some to suspect an assassination. His wife Semra Ozal claimed he was poisoned by lemonade and she questioned the lack of an autopsy; allegedly a requirement in such circumstances. The blood samples taken to determine his cause of death were lost or disposed of. Özal sought to create a Turkic union, and had obtained the commitment of several presidents. His wife Semra alleged that the perpetrator might have wanted to foil the plan.

Mark Twain and the JEWS - USA=DUMB CHRISTiANs

2010-09-30T08:22:00.001Z

Mark Twain, Harper's Magazine, March, 1898

Concerning The Jews

Some months ago I published a magazine article[1]
descriptive of a remarkable scene in the Imperial
Parliament in Vienna. Since then I have received from
Jews in America several letters of inquiry. They were
difficult letters to answer, for they were not very
definite. But at last I have received a definite one.
It is from a lawyer, and he really asks the questions
which the other writers probably believed they were
asking. By help of this text I will do the best I can
to publicly answer this correspondent, and also the
others--at the same time apologising for having failed
to reply privately. The lawyer's letter reads as
follows:

'I have read "Stirring Times in Austria." One point in
particular is of vital import to not a few thousand
people, including myself, being a point about which I
have often wanted to address a question to some
disinterested person. The show of military force in
the Austrian Parliament, which precipitated the riots,
was not introduced by any Jew. No Jew was a member of
that body. No Jewish question was involved in the
Ausgleich or in the language proposition. No Jew was
insulting anybody. In short, no Jew was doing any
mischief toward anybody whatsoever. In fact, the Jews
were the only ones of the nineteen different races in
Austria which did not have a party--they are absolute
non-participants. Yet in your article you say that in
the rioting which followed, all classes of people were
unanimous only on one thing, viz., in being against the
Jews. Now, will you kindly tell me why, in your
judgment, the Jews have thus ever been, and are even
now, in these days of supposed intelligence, the butt
of baseless, vicious animosities? I dare say that for
centuries there has been no more quiet, undisturbing,
and well-behaving citizen, as a class, than that same
Jew. It seems to me that ignorance and fanaticism
cannot alone account for these horrible and unjust
persecutions.

'Tell me, therefore, from your vantage point of cold
view, what in your mind is the cause. Can American Jews
do anything to correct it either in America or abroad?
Will it ever come to an end? Will a Jew be permitted to
live honestly, decently, and peaceably like the rest of
mankind? What has become of the Golden Rule?'

I will begin by saying that if I thought myself
prejudiced against the Jew, I should hold it fairest to
leave this subject to a person not crippled in that
way. But I think I have no such prejudice. A few years
ago a Jew observed to me that there was no uncourteous
reference to his people in my books, and asked how it
happened. It happened because the disposition was
lacking. I am quite sure that (bar one) I have no race
prejudices, and I think I have no colour prejudices
nor caste prejudices nor creed prejudices. Indeed, I
know it. I can stand any society. All that I care to
know is that a man is a human being--that is enough
for me; he can't be any worse. I have no special regard
for Satan; but I can at least claim that I have no
prejudice against him. It may even be that I lean a
little his way, on account of his not having a fair
show. All religions issue Bibles against him, and say
the most injurious things about him, but we never hear
his side. We have none but the evidence for the
prosecution, and yet we have rendered the verdict. To
my mind, this is irregular. It is un-English; it is
un-American; it is French. Without this precedent
Dreyfus could not have been condemned. Of course Satan
has some kind of a case, it goes without saying. It
may be a poor one, but that is nothing; that can be
said about any of us. As soon as I can get at the facts
I will undertake his rehabilitation myself, if I can
find an unpolitic publisher. It is a thing which we
ought to be willing to do for any one who is under a
cloud. We may not pay Satan reverence, for that would
be indiscreet, but we can at least respect his
talents. A person who has during all time maintained
the imposing position of spiritual head of four-fifths
of the human race, and political head of the whole of
it, must be granted the possession of executive
abilities of the loftiest order. In his large presence
the other popes and politicians shrink to midges for
the microscope. I would like to see him. I would rather
see him and shake him by the tail than any other member
of the European Concert. In the present paper I shall
allow myself to use the word Jew as if it stood for
both religion and race. It is handy; and, besides, that
is what the term means to the general world.

In the above letter one notes these points:

1. The Jew is a well-behaved citizen.

2. Can ignorance and fanaticism alone account for his
unjust treatment?

3. Can Jews do anything to improve the situation?

4. The Jews have no party; they are non-participants.

5. Will the persecution ever come to an end?

6. What has become of the Golden Rule?

Point No. 1.--We must grant proposition No. 1, for
several sufficient reasons. The Jew is not a disturber
of the peace of any country. Even his enemies will
concede that. He is not a loafer, he is not a sot, he
is not noisy, he is not a brawler nor a rioter, he is
not quarrelsome. In the statistics of crime his
presence is conspicuously rare--in all countries. With
murder and other crimes of violence he has but little
to do: he is a stranger to the hangman. In the police
court's daily long roll of 'assaults' and 'drunk and
disorderlies' his name seldom appears. That the Jewish
home is a home in the truest sense is a fact which no
one will dispute. The family is knitted together by the
strongest affections; its members show each other every
due respect; and reverence for the elders is an
inviolate law of the house. The Jew is not a burden on
the charities of the state nor of the city; these
could cease from their functions without affecting him.
When he is well enough, he works; when he is
incapacitated, his own people take care of him. And
not in a poor and stingy way, but with a fine and large
benevolence. His race is entitled to be called the most
benevolent of all the races of men. A Jewish beggar is
not impossible, perhaps; such a thing may exist, but
there are few men that can say they have seen that
spectacle. The Jew has been staged in many
uncomplimentary forms, but, so far as I know, no
dramatist has done him the injustice to stage him as a
beggar. Whenever a Jew has real need to beg, his people
save him from the necessity of doing it. The charitable
institutions of the Jews are supported by Jewish money,
and amply. The Jews make no noise about it; it is done
quietly; they do not nag and pester and harass us for
contributions; they give us peace, and set us an
example--an example which he have not found ourselves
able to follow; for by nature we are not free givers,
and have to be patiently and persistently hunted down
in the interest of the unfortunate.

These facts are all on the credit side of the
proposition that the Jew is a good and orderly citizen.
Summed up, they certify that he is quiet, peaceable,
industrious, unaddicted to high crimes and brutal
dispositions; that his family life is commendable;
that he is not a burden upon public charities; that he
is not a beggar; that in benevolence he is above the
reach of competition. These are the very
quintessentials of good citizenship. If you can add
that he is as honest as the average of his
neighbours--But I think that question is affirmatively
answered by the fact that he is a successful business
man. The basis of successful business is honesty; a
business cannot thrive where the parties to it cannot
trust each other. In the matter of numbers the Jew
counts for little in the overwhelming population of
New York; but that his honest counts for much is
guaranteed by the fact that the immense wholesale
business of Broadway, from the Battery to Union Square,
is substantially in his hands.

I suppose that the most picturesque example in history
of a trader's trust in his fellow-trader was one where
it was not Christian trusting Christian, but Christian
trusting Jew. That Hessian Duke who used to sell his
subjects to George III. to fight George Washington
with got rich at it; and by-and-by, when the wars
engendered by the French Revolution made his throne too
warm for him, he was obliged to fly the country. He was
in a hurry, and had to leave his earnings
behind--$9,000,000. He had to risk the money with some
one without security. He did not select a Christian,
but a Jew--a Jew of only modest means, but of high
character; a character so high that it left him
lonesome--Rothschild of Frankfort. Thirty years later,
when Europe had become quiet and safe again, the Duke
came back from overseas, and the Jew returned the
loan, with interest added.[2]

The Jew has his other side. He has some discreditable
ways, though he has not a monopoly of them, because he
cannot get entirely rid of vexatious Christian
competition. We have seen that he seldom transgresses
the laws against crimes of violence. Indeed, his
dealings with courts are almost restricted to matters
connected with commerce. He has a reputation for
various small forms of cheating, and for practising
oppressive usury, and for burning himself out to get
the insurance, and for arranging cunning contracts
which leave him an exit but lock the other man in, and
for smart evasions which find him safe and comfortable
just within the strict letter of the law, when court
and jury know very well that he has violated the spirit
of it. He is a frequent and faithful and capable
officer in the civil service, but he is charged with an
unpatriotic disinclination to stand by the flag as a
soldier--like the Christian Quaker.

Now if you offset these discreditable features by the
creditable ones summarised in a preceding paragraph
beginning with the words, 'These facts are all on the
credit side,' and strike a balance, what must the
verdict be? This, I think: that, the merits and
demerits being fairly weighed and measured on both
sides, the Christian can claim no superiority over the
Jew in the matter of good citizenship.

Yet in all countries, from the dawn of history, the
Jew has been persistently and implacably hated, and
with frequency persecuted.

Point No. 2.--'Can fanaticism alone account for this?'

Years ago I used to think that it was responsible for
nearly all of it, but latterly I have come to think
that this was an error. Indeed, it is now my conviction
that it is responsible for hardly any of it.

In this connection I call to mind Genesis, chapter
xlvii.

We have all thoughtfully--or unthoughtfully--read the
pathetic story of the years of plenty and the years of
famine in Egypt, and how Joseph, with that opportunity,
made a corner in broken hearts, and the crusts of the
poor, and human liberty--a corner whereby he took a
nation's money all away, to the last penny; took a
nation's live stock all away, to the last hoof; took a
nation's land away, to the last acre; then took the
nation itself, buying it for bread, man by man, woman
by woman, child by child, till all were slaves; a
corner which took everything, left nothing; a corner so
stupendous that, by comparison with it, the most
gigantic corners in subsequent history are but baby
things, for it dealt in hundreds of millions of
bushels, and its profits were reckonable by hundreds of
millions of dollars, and it was a disaster so crushing
that its effects have not wholly disappeared from Egypt
to-day, more than three thousand years after the event.

Is it presumably that the eye of Egypt was upon Joseph
the foreign Jew all this time? I think it likely. Was
it friendly? We must doubt it. Was Joseph establishing
a character for his race which would survive long in
Egypt? and in time would his name come to be
familiarly used to express that character--like
Shylock's? It is hardly to be doubted. Let us remember
that this was centuries before the Crucifixion?

I wish to come down eighteen hundred years later and
refer to a remark made by one of the Latin historians.
I read it in a translation many years ago, and it comes
back to me now with force. It was alluding to a time
when people were still living who could have seen the
Saviour in the flesh. Christianity was so new that the
people of Rome had hardly heard of it, and had but
confused notions of what it was. The substance of the
remark was this: Some Christians were persecuted in
Rome through error, they being 'mistaken for Jews.'

The meaning seems plain. These pagans had nothing
against Christians, but they were quite ready to
persecute Jews. For some reason or other they hated a
Jew before they even knew what a Christian was. May I
not assume, then, that the persecution of Jews is a
thing which antedates Christianity and was not born of
Christianity? I think so. What was the origin of the
feeling?

When I was a boy, in the back settlements of the
Mississippi Valley, where a gracious and beautiful
Sunday school simplicity and practicality prevailed,
the 'Yankee' (citizen of the New England States) was
hated with a splendid energy. But religion had nothing
to do with it. In a trade, the Yankee was held to be
about five times the match of the Westerner. His
shrewdness, his insight, his judgment, his knowledge,
his enterprise, and his formidable cleverness in
applying these forces were frankly confessed, and most
competently cursed.

In the cotton States, after the war, the simple and
ignorant Negroes made the crops for the white planter
on shares. The Jew came down in force, set up shop on
the plantation, supplied all the negro's wants on
credit, and at the end of the season was proprietor of
the negro's share of the present crop and of part of
his share of the next one. Before long, the whites
detested the Jew, and it is doubtful if the negro
loved him.

The Jew is begin legislated out of Russia. The reason
is not concealed. The movement was instituted because
the Christian peasant and villager stood no chance
against his commercial abilities. He was always ready
to lend money on a crop, and sell vodka and other
necessities of life on credit while the crop was
growing. When settlement day came he owned the crop;
and next year or year after he owned the farm, like
Joseph.

In the dull and ignorant English of John's time
everybody got into debt to the Jew. He gathered all
lucrative enterprises into his hands; he was the king
of commerce; he was ready to be helpful in all
profitable ways; he even financed crusades for the
rescue of the Sepulchre. To wipe out his account with
the nation and restore business to its natural and
incompetent channels he had to be banished the realm.

For the like reasons Spain had to banish him four
hundred years ago, and Austria about a couple of
centuries later.

In all the ages Christian Europe has been oblige to
curtail his activities. If he entered upon a mechanical
trade, the Christian had to retire from it. If he set
up as a doctor, he was the best one, and he took the
business. If he exploited agriculture, the other
farmers had to get at something else. Since there was
no way to successfully compete with him in any
vocation, the law had to step in and save the
Christian from the poor-house. Trade after trade was
taken away from the Jew by statute till practically
none was left. He was forbidden to engage in
agriculture; he was forbidden to practise law; he was
forbidden to practise medicine, except among Jews; he
was forbidden the handicrafts. Even the seats of
learning and the schools of science had to be closed
against this tremendous antagonist. Still, almost
bereft of employments, he found ways to make money,
even ways to get rich. Also ways to invest his takings
well, for usury was not denied him. In the hard
conditions suggested, the Jew without brains could not
survive, and the Jew with brains had to keep them in
good training and well sharpened up, or starve. Ages of
restriction to the one tool which the law was not able
to take from him--his brain--have made that tool
singularly competent; ages of compulsory disuse of his
hands have atrophied them, and he never uses them now.
This history has a very, very commercial look, a most
sordid and practical commercial look, the business
aspect of a Chinese cheap-labour crusade. Religious
prejudices may account for one part of it, but not for
the other nine.

Protestants have persecuted Catholics, but they did
not take their livelihoods away from them. The
Catholics have persecuted the Protestants with bloody
and awful bitterness, but they never closed agriculture
and the handicrafts against them. Why was that? That
has the candid look of genuine religious persecution,
not a trade-union boycott in a religious dispute.

The Jews are harried and obstructed in Austria and
Germany, and lately in France; but England and America
give them an open field and yet survive. Scotland
offers them an unembarrassed field too, but there are
not many takers. There are a few Jews in Glasgow, and
one in Aberdeen; but that is because they can't earn
enough to get away. The Scotch pay themselves that
compliment, but it is authentic.

I feel convinced that the Crucifixion has not much to
do with the world's attitude toward the Jew; that the
reasons for it are older than that event, as suggested
by Egypt's experience and by Rome's regret for having
persecuted an unknown quantity called a Christian,
under the mistaken impression that she was merely
persecuting a Jew. Merely a Jew--a skinned eel who was
used to it, presumably. I am persuaded that in Russia,
Austria, and Germany nine-tenths of the hostility to
the Jew comes from the average Christian's inability to
compete successfully with the average Jew in
business--in either straight business or the
questionable sort.

In Berlin, a few years ago, I read a speech which
frankly urged the expulsion of the Jews from Germany;
and the agitator's reason was as frank as his
proposition. It was this: that eighty-five percent of
the successful lawyers of Berlin were Jews, and that
about the same percentage of the great and lucrative
businesses of all sorts in Germany were in the hands of
the Jewish race! Isn't it an amazing confession? It was
but another way of saying that in a population of
48,000,000, of whom only 500,000 were registered as
Jews, eighty-five per cent of the brains and honesty of
the whole was lodged in the Jews. I must insist upon
the honesty--it is an essential of successful
business, taken by and large. Of course it does not
rule out rascals entirely, even among Christians, but
it is a good working rule, nevertheless. The speaker's
figures may have been inexact, but the motive of
persecution stands out as clear as day.

The man claimed that in Berlin the banks, the
newspapers, the theatres, the great mercantile,
shipping, mining, and manufacturing interests, the big
army and city contracts, the tramways, and pretty much
all other properties of high value, and also the small
businesses, were in the hands of the Jews. He said the
Jew was pushing the Christian to the wall all along the
line; that it was all a Christian could do to scrape
together a living; and that the Jew must be banished,
and soon--there was no other way of saving the
Christian. Here in Vienna, last autumn, an agitator
said that all these disastrous details were true of
Austria-Hungary also; and in fierce language he
demanded the expulsion of the Jews. When politicians
come out without a blush and read the baby act in this
frank way, unrebuked, it is a very good indication
that they have a market back of them, and know where to
fish for votes.

You note the crucial point of the mentioned agitation;
the argument is that the Christian cannot compete with
the Jew, and that hence his very bread is in peril. To
human beings this is a much more hate-inspiring thing
than is any detail connected with religion. With most
people, of a necessity, bread and meat take first rank,
religion second. I am convinced that the persecution of
the Jew is not due in any large degree to religious
prejudice.

No, the Jew is a money-getter; and in getting his
money he is a very serious obstruction to less capable
neighbours who are on the same quest. I think that that
is the trouble. In estimating worldly values the Jew is
not shallow, but deep. With precocious wisdom he found
out in the morning of time that some men worship rank,
some worship heroes, some worship power, some worship
God, and that over these ideals they dispute and cannot
unite--but that they all worship money; so he made it
the end and aim of his life to get it. He was at it in
Egypt thirty-six centuries ago; he was at it in Rome
when that Christian got persecuted by mistake for him;
he has been at it ever since. The cost to him has been
heavy; his success has made the whole human race his
enemy--but it has paid, for it has brought him envy,
and that is the only thing which men will sell both
soul and body to get. He long ago observed that a
millionaire commands respect, a two-millionaire
homage, a multi-millionaire the deepest deeps of
adoration. We all know that feeling; we have seen it
express itself. We have noticed that when the average
man mentions the name of a multi-millionaire he does
it with that mixture in his voice of awe and reverence
and lust which burns in a Frenchman's eye when it falls
on another man's centime.

Point No. 4--'The Jews have no party; they are
non-participants.'

Perhaps you have let the secret out and given yourself
away. It seems hardly a credit to the race that it is
able to say that; or to you, sir, that you can say it
without remorse; more, that you should offer it as a
plea against maltreatment, injustice, and oppression.
Who gives the Jew the right, who gives any race the
right, to sit still in a free country, and let somebody
else look after its safety? The oppressed Jew was
entitled to all pity in the former times under brutal
autocracies, for he was weak and friendless, and had no
way to help his case. But he has ways now, and he has
had them for a century, but I do not see that he has
tried to make serious use of then. When the Revolution
set him free in France it was an act of grace--the
grace of other people; he does not appear in it as a
helper. I do not know that he helped when England set
him free. Among the Twelve Sane Men of France who have
stepped forward with great Zola at their head to fight
(and win, I hope and believe[3]) the battle for the
most infamously misused Jew of modern times, do you
find a great or rich or illustrious Jew helping? In
the United States he was created free in the
beginning--he did not need to help, of course. In
Austria and Germany and France he has a vote, but of
what considerable use is it to him? He doesn't seem to
know how to apply it to the best effect. With all his
splendid capacities and all his fat wealth he is to-day
not politically important in any country. In America,
as early as 1854, the ignorant Irish hod-carrier, who
had a spirit of his own and a way of exposing it to the
weather, made it apparent to all that he must be
politically reckoned with; yet fifteen years before
that we hardly knew what an Irishman looked like. As an
intelligent force and numerically, he has always been
away down, but he has governed the country just the
same. It was because he was organised. It made his vote
valuable--in fact, essential.

You will say the Jew is everywhere numerically feeble.
That is nothing to the point--with the Irishman's
history for an object-lesson. But I am coming to your
numerical feebleness presently. In all parliamentary
countries you could no doubt elect Jews to the
legislatures--and even one member in such a body is
sometimes a force which counts. How deeply have you
concerned yourselves about this in Austria, France,
and Germany? Or even in America, for that matter? You
remark that the Jews were not to blame for the riots in
this Reichsrath here, and you add with satisfaction
that there wasn't one in that body. That is not
strictly correct; if it were, would it not be in order
for you to explain it and apologise for it, not try to
make a merit of it? But I think that the Jew was by no
means in as large force there as he ought to have
been, with his chances. Austria opens the suffrage to
him on fairly liberal terms, and it must surely be his
own fault that he is so much in the background
politically.

As to your numerical weakness. I mentioned some
figures awhile ago --500,00--as the Jewish population
of Germany. I will add some more --6,000,000 in Russia,
5,000,000 in Austria, 250,000 in the United States. I
take them from memory; I read them in the
'Encyclopaedia Brittannica' ten or twelve years ago.
Still, I am entirely sure of them. If those statistics
are correct, my argument is not as strong as it ought
to be as concerns America, but it still has strength.
It is plenty strong enough as concerns Austria, for ten
years ago 5,000,000 was nine per cent of the empire's
population. The Irish would govern the Kingdom of
Heaven if they had a strength there like that.

I have some suspicions; I got them at second-hand, but
they have remained with me these ten or twelve years.
When I read in the 'E.B.' that the Jewish population of
the United States was 250,000 I wrote the editor, and
explained to him that I was personally acquainted with
more Jews than that in my country, and that his figures
were without a doubt a misprint for 25,000,000. I also
added that I was personally acquainted with that many
there; but that was only to raise his confidence in
me, for it was not true. His answer miscarried, and I
never got it; but I went around talking about the
matter, and people told me they had reason to suspect
that for business reasons many Jews whose dealings
were mainly with the Christians did not report
themselves as Jews in the census. It looked plausible;
it looks plausible yet. Look at the city of New York;
and look at Boston, and Philadelphia, and New Orleans,
and Chicago, and Cincinnati, and San Francisco--how
your race swarms in those places!--and everywhere else
in America, down to the least little village. Read the
signs on the marts of commerce and on the shops;
Goldstein (gold stone), Edelstein (precious stone),
Blumenthal (flower-vale), Rosenthal (rose-vale),
Veilchenduft (violent odour), Singvogel (song-bird),
Rosenzweig (rose branch), and all the amazing list of
beautiful and enviable names which Prussia and Austria
glorified you with so long ago. It is another instance
of Europe's coarse and cruel persecution of your race;
not that it was coarse and cruel to outfit it with
pretty and poetical names like those, but it was coarse
and cruel to make it pay for them or else take such
hideous and often indecent names that to-day their
owners never use them; or, if they do, only on
official papers. And it was the many, not the few, who
got the odious names, they being too poor to bribe the
officials to grant them better ones.

Now why was the race renamed? I have been told that in
Prussia it was given to using fictitious names, and
often changing them, so as to beat the tax-gatherer,
escape military service, and so on; and that finally
the idea was hit upon of furnishing all the inmates of
a house with one and the same surname, and then holding
the house responsible right along for those inmates,
and accountable for any disappearances that might
occur; it made the Jews keep track of each other, for
self-interest's sake, and saved the Government the
trouble[4].

If that explanation of how the Jews of Prussia came to
be renamed is correct, if it is true that they
fictitiously registered themselves to gain certain
advantages, it may possible be true that in America
they refrain from registered themselves as Jews to fend
off the damaging prejudices of the Christian customer.
I have no way of knowing whether this notion is well
founded or not. There may be other and better ways of
explaining why only that poor little 250,000 of our
Jews got into the 'Encyclopaedia'. I may, of course, be
mistaken, but I am strongly of the opinion that we have
an immense Jewish population in America.

Point No. 3--'Can Jews do anything to improve the
situation?'

I think so. If I may make a suggestion without seeming
to be trying to teach my grandmother to suck eggs, I
will offer it. In our days we have learned the value of
combination. We apply it everywhere--in railway
systems, in trusts, in trade unions, in Salvation
Armies, in minor politics, in major politics, in
European Concerts. Whatever our strength may be, big or
little, we organise it. We have found out that that is
the only way to get the most out of it that is in it.
We know the weakness of individual sticks, and the
strength of the concentrated faggot. Suppose you try a
scheme like this, for instance. In England and America
put every Jew on the census-book as a Jew (in case you
have not been doing that). Get up volunteer regiments
composed of Jews solely, and when the drum beats, fall
in and go to the front, so as to remove the reproach
that you have few Massenas among you, and that you feed
on a country but don't like to fight for it. Next, in
politics, organise your strength, band together, and
deliver the casting-vote where you can, and, where you
can't, compel as good terms as possible. You huddle to
yourselves already in all countries, but you huddle to
no sufficient purpose, politically speaking. You do not
seem to be organised, except for your charities. There
you are omnipotent; there you compel your due of
recognition--you do not have to beg for it. It shows
what you can do when you band together for a definite
purpose.

And then from America and England you can encourage
your race in Austria, France, and Germany, and
materially help it. It was a pathetic tale that was
told by a poor Jew a fortnight ago during the riots,
after he had been raided by the Christian peasantry and
despoiled of everything he had. He said his vote was of
no value to him, and he wished he could be excused from
casting it, for indeed, casting it was a sure damage
to him, since, no matter which party he voted for, the
other party would come straight and take its revenge
out of him. Nine per cent of the population, these
Jews, and apparently they cannot put a plank into any
candidate's platform! If you will send our Irish lads
over here I think they will organise your race and
change the aspect of the Reichsrath.

You seem to think that the Jews take no hand in
politics here, that they are 'absolutely
non-participants.' I am assured by men competent to
speak that this is a very large error, that the Jews
are exceedingly active in politics all over the empire,
but that they scatter their work and their votes among
the numerous parties, and thus lose the advantages to
be had by concentration. I think that in America they
scatter too, but you know more about that than I do.

Speaking of concentration, Dr. Herzl has a clear
insight into the value of that. Have you heard of his
plan? He wishes to gather the Jews of the world
together in Palestine, with a government of their
own--under the suzerainty of the Sultan, I suppose. At
the Convention of Berne, last year, there were
delegates from everywhere, and the proposal was
received with decided favour. I am not the Sultan, and
I am not objecting; but if that concentration of the
cunningest brains in the world were going to be made in
a free country (bar Scotland), I think it would be
politic to stop it. It will not be well to let that
race find out its strength. If the horses knew theirs,
we should not ride any more.

Point No. 5.--'Will the persecution of the Jews ever
come to an end?'

On the score of religion, I think it has already come
to an end. On the score of race prejudice and trade, I
have the idea that it will continue. That is, here and
there in spots about the world, where a barbarous
ignorance and a sort of mere animal civilisation
prevail; but I do not think that elsewhere the Jew need
now stand in any fear of being robbed and raided. Among
the high civilisations he seems to be very comfortably
situated indeed, and to have more than his
proportionate share of the prosperities going. It has
that look in Vienna. I suppose the race prejudice
cannot be removed; but he can stand that; it is no
particular matter. By his make and ways he is
substantially a foreigner wherever he may be, and even
the angels dislike a foreigner. I am using this world
foreigner in the German sense--stranger. Nearly all of
us have an antipathy to a stranger, even of our own
nationality. We pile grip-sacks in a vacant seat to
keep him from getting it; and a dog goes further, and
does as a savage would--challenges him on the spot.
The German dictionary seems to make no distinction
between a stranger and a foreigner; in its view a
stranger is a foreigner--a sound position, I think. You
will always be by ways and habits and predilections
substantially strangers--foreigners--wherever you are,
and that will probably keep the race prejudice against
you alive.

But you were the favourites of Heaven originally, and
your manifold and unfair prosperities convince me that
you have crowded back into that snug place again. Here
is an incident that is significant. Last week in Vienna
a hailstorm struck the prodigious Central Cemetery and
made wasteful destruction there. In the Christian part
of it, according to the official figures, 621
window-panes were broken; more than 900 singing-birds
were killed; five great trees and many small ones were
torn to shreds and the shreds scattered far and wide by
the wind; the ornamental plants and other decorations
of the graces were ruined, and more than a hundred
tomb-lanterns shattered; and it took the cemetery's
whole force of 300 labourers more than three days to
clear away the storm's wreckage. In the report occurs
this remark--and in its italics you can hear it grit
its Christian teeth: '...lediglich die israelitische
Abtheilung des Friedhofes vom Hagelwetter ganzlich
verschont worden war.' Not a hailstone hit the Jewish
reservation! Such nepotism makes me tired.

Point No. 6.--'What has become of the Golden Rule?'

It exists, it continues to sparkle, and is well taken
care of. It is Exhibit A in the Church's assets, and we
pull it out every Sunday and give it an airing. But you
are not permitted to try to smuggle it into this
discussion, where it is irrelevant and would not feel
at home. It is strictly religious furniture, like an
acolyte, or a contribution-plate, or any of those
things. It has never intruded into business; and Jewish
persecution is not a religious passion, it is a
business passion.

To conclude.--If the statistics are right, the Jews
constitute but one per cent of the human race. It
suggests a nebulous dim puff of star-dust lost in the
blaze of the Milky Way. Properly the Jew ought hardly
to be heard of; but he is heard of, has always been
heard of. He is as prominent on the planet as any other
people, and his commercial importance is extravagantly
out of proportion to the smallness of his bulk. His
contributions to the world's list of great names in
literature, science, art, music, finance, medicine,
and abstruse learning are also away out of proportion
to the weakness of his numbers. He has made a
marvellous fight in this world, in all the ages; and
has done it with his hands tied behind him. He could be
vain of himself, and be excused for it. The Egyptian,
the Babylonian, and the Persian rose, filled the planet
with sound and splendour, then faded to dream-stuff
and passed away; the Greek and the Roman followed, and
made a vast noise, and they are gone; other peoples
have sprung up and held their torch high for a time,
but it burned out, and they sit in twilight now, or
have vanished. The Jew saw them all, beat them all, and
is now what he always was, exhibiting no decadence, no
infirmities of age, no weakening of his parts, no
slowing of his energies, no dulling of his alert and
aggressive mind. All things are mortal to the Jew; all
other forces pass, but he remains. What is the secret
of his immortality?

Postscript--THE JEW AS SOLDIER

When I published the above article in 'Harper's
Monthly,' I was ignorant --like the rest of the
Christian world--of the fact that the Jew had a record
as a soldier. I have since seen the official
statistics, and I find that he furnished soldiers and
high officers to the Revolution, the War of 1812, and
the Mexican War. In the Civil War he was represented
in the armies and navies of both the North and the
South by 10 per cent of his numerical strength--the
same percentage that was furnished by the Christian
populations of the two sections. This large fact means
more than it seems to mean; for it means that the Jew's
patriotism was not merely level with the Christian's,
but overpassed it. When the Christian volunteer arrived
in camp he got a welcome and applause, but as a rule
the Jew got a snub. His company was not desired, and
he was made to feel it. That he nevertheless conquered
his wounded pride and sacrificed both that and his
blood for his flag raises the average and quality of
his patriotism above the Christian's. His record for
capacity, for fidelity, and for gallant soldiership in
the field is as good as any one's. This is true of the
Jewish private soldiers and of the Jewish generals
alike. Major-General O. O. Howard speaks of one of his
Jewish staff officers as being 'of the bravest and
best;' of another--killed at Chancellorsville --as
being 'a true friend and a brave officer;' he highly
praises two of his Jewish brigadier-generals; finally,
he uses these strong words: 'Intrinsically there are no
more patriotic men to be found in the country than
those who claim to be of Hebrew descent, and who
served with me in parallel commands or more directly
under my instructions.'

Fourteen Jewish Confederate and Union families
contributed, between them, fifty-one soldiers to the
war. Among these, a father and three sons; and another,
a father and four sons.

In the above article I was neither able to endorse nor
repel the common approach that the Jew is willing to
feed upon a country but not to fight for it, because I
did not know whether it was true or false. I supposed
it to be true, but it is not allowable to endorse
wandering maxims upon supposition--except when one is
trying to make out a case. That slur upon the Jew
cannot hold up its head in presence of the figures of
the War Department. It has done its work, and done it
long and faithfully, and with high approval: it ought
to be pensioned off now, and retired from active
service.

[1] See 'Stirring Times in Austria,' in this volume.

[2] Here is another piece of picturesque history; and
it reminds us that shabbiness and dishonesty are not
the monopoly of any race or creed, but are merely
human:

'Congress has passed a bill to pay $379.56 to Moses
Pendergrass, of Libertyville, Missouri. The story of
the reason of this liberality is pathetically
interesting, and shows the sort of pickle that an
honest man may get into who undertakes to do an honest
job of work for Uncle Sam. In 1886 Moses Pendergrass
put in a bid for the contract to carry the mail on the
route from Knob Lick to Libertyville and Coffman,
thirty miles a day, from July 1, 1887, for one years.
He got the postmaster at Knob Lick to write the letter
for him, and while Moses intended that his bid should
be $400, his scribe carelessly made it $4. Moses got
the contract, and did not find out about the mistake
until the end of the first quarter, when he got his
first pay. When he found at what rate he was working he
was sorely cast down, and opened communication with
the Post Office Department. The department informed his
that he must either carry out his contract or throw it
up, and that if he threw it up his bondsman would have
the pay the Government $1,459.85 damages. So Moses
carried out his contract, walked thirty miles every
week-day for a year, and carried the mail, and received
for his labour $4, or, to be accurate, $6.84; for, the
route being extended after his bid was accepted, his
pay was proportionately increased. Now, after ten
years, a bill was finally passed to pay to Moses the
difference between what he earned in that unlucky year
and what he received.'

The 'Sun,' which tells the above story, says that
bills were introduced in three or four Congresses for
Moses' relief, and that committees repeatedly
investigated his claim.

It took six Congresses, containing in their persons
the compressed virtues of 70,000,000 of people, and
cautiously and carefully giving expression to those
virtues in the fear of God and the next election,
eleven years to find out some way to cheat a fellow
Christian out of about $13 on his honestly executed
contract, and out of nearly $300 due him on its
enlarged terms. And they succeeded. During the same
time they paid out $1,000,000,000 in pensions--a third
of it unearned and undeserved. This indicates a
splendid all-round competency in theft, for it starts
with farthings, and works its industries all the way
up to ship-loads. It may be possible that the Jews can
beat this, but the man that bets on it is taking
chances.

[3] The article was written in the summer of 1898.

[4] In Austria the renaming was merely done because
the Jews in some newly-acquired regions had no
surnames, but were mostly named Abraham and Moses, and
therefore the tax-gatherer could tell t'other from
which, and was likely to lose his reason over the
matter. The renaming was put into the hands of the War
Department, and a charming mess the graceless young
lieutenants made of it. To them a Jew was of no sort
of consequence, and they labelled the race in a way to
make the angels weep. As an example, take these two:
Abraham Bellyache and Schmul Godbedamned--Culled from
'Namens Studien,' by Karl Emil Fransos.

Devil worship bush 43

A bunch of Know-Nothings

America has failed its religion quiz.

The Pew Forum asked 3400 Americans 32 mostly basic religious questions, such as whether "do unto others as you would have others do unto you" is in the Ten Commandments -- it's not -- and the overall score was a pathetic 50%.

And the headline?

"Groups that did best overall were athiests and agnostics, Jews and Mormons."

Yes -- "Atheists Score highest on Religion Test." But why should THAT surprise anybody? The questionnaire covered a range of religions - and Atheists tend to study a range of religions. They're searching.

Whereas religious people figure they've found the answer so they only need to know their own religion. Although that doesn't explain why 45% of Catholics didn't know that the bread and wine, once consecrated, are the actual body and blood of Jesus. Or that more than half the Protestants couldn't identify Martin Luther. Or that 40% of Jews didn't know that Maimonides was Jewsih.

But ultimately, surveying people about religion tells you nothing useful.

If religion was about knowing facts, it would be called "God science," and we would know for sure whose side God was on in wars and football games.

Religion is something we want to define for ourselves.

Some people may think it's important to know what communion is, or who Maimonides or Luther was. For others, as long as the Virgin Mary can appear on a piece of toast, and as long as the Ten Commandments include the right to keep and bear arms, we're cool.

How do you score?

Pew Forum Religious Knowledge Questions

What is the first book of the Bible? (Open-ended) What are the names of the first four books of the New Testament, that is, the four Gospels? (Open-ended) Where, according to the Bible, was Jesus born? Bethlehem, Jerusalem, Nazareth or Jericho?

Which of these is NOT in the Ten Commandments? Do unto others…, no adultery, no stealing, keep Sabbath?

Which figure is associated with remaining obedient to God despite suffering? Job, Elijah, Moses or Abraham?

Which figure is associated with leading the exodus from Egypt? Moses, Job, Elijah or Abraham?

Which figure is associated with willingness to sacrifice his son for God? Abraham, Job, Moses or Elijah?

What is Catholic teaching about bread and wine in Communion? They become body and blood, or are symbols?

Which group traditionally teaches that salvation is through faith alone? Protestants, Catholics, both or neither?

Was Mother Teresa Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist, Hindu or Mormon?

What is the name of the person whose writings and actions inspired the Reformation? Luther, Aquinas or Wesley?

Who was a preacher during the First Great Awakening? Jonathan Edwards, Charles Finney or Billy Graham?

When does the Jewish Sabbath begin? Friday, Saturday or Sunday?

Was Maimonides Jewish, Catholic, Buddhist, Hindu or Mormon?

When was the Mormon religion founded? After 1800, between 1200 and 1800, or before 1200 A.D.?

The Book of Mormon tells of Jesus appearing to people in what area? The Americas, Middle East or Asia?

Was Joseph Smith Mormon, Catholic, Jewish, Buddhist or Hindu?

Is Ramadan the Islamic holy month, the Hindu festival of lights or a Jewish day of atonement?

Do you happen to know the name of the holy book of Islam? (Open-ended) Which religion aims at nirvana, the state of being free from suffering? Buddhism, Hinduism or Islam?

Is the Dalai Lama Buddhist, Hindu, Jewish, Catholic or Mormon?
In which religion are Vishnu and Shiva central figures? Hinduism, Islam or Taoism?

What is the religion of most people in India? Hindu, Buddhist, Muslim or Christian?

What is the religion of most people in Pakistan? Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or Christian?

What is the religion of most people in Indonesia? Muslim, Hindu, Buddhist or Christian?

Who is the king of Gods in Greek mythology? Zeus, Mars or Apollo?

Is an atheist someone who does NOT believe in God, believes in God, or is unsure whether God exists?

Is an agnostic someone who is unsure whether God exists, does NOT believe in God, or believes in God?

What does Constitution say about religion? Separation of church and state, emphasize Christianity, or nothing?

According to the Supreme Court, can a public school teacher lead a class in prayer?

According to the Supreme Court, can a public school teacher read from the Bible as an example of literature?

According to the Supreme Court, can a public school teacher offer a class comparing the world's religions?

Germany's BND ordered Fake Terror !!

2010-09-27T22:06:00.001Z

In a little sentence in a recent article in DER SPIEGEL it is revealed that the Terror-group GLADIO -- responsible for secret murders and bombings in the name of left-wingers -- was controlled by the West German Secret Service.

The one-round functions of the DES generate the alternating group

Ralph Wernsdorf SIT Gesellschaft für Systeme der Informationstechnik mbH, Grünheide, Germany
In each of the 16 DES rounds we have a permutation of 64-bitblocks. According to the corresponding key-block there are 2⁴⁸ possible permutations per round. In this paper we will prove that these permutations generate the alternating group. The main parts of the paper are the proof that the generated group is 3-transitive, and the application of a result from p. J. Cameron based on the classification of finite simple groups. A corollary concerning n-round functions generalizes the result.

1 Cameron, P. J.: "Finite Permutation Groups and Finite Simple Croups" Bull. London Math. Soc., 13, 1981, 1-22.
2 P. J. Cameron , J. Cannon, Fast recognition of doubly transitive groups, Journal of Symbolic Computation, v.12 n.4-5, p.459-474, Oct./Nov. 1991 [doi>10.1016/S0747-7171(08)80098-3]
3 David Chaum , Jan-Hendrik Evertse, Cryptanalysis of DES with a reduced number of rounds, Lecture notes in computer sciences; 218 on Advances in cryptology---CRYPTO 85, p.192-211, June 1986, Santa Barbara, California, United States
4 Coppersmith, D.; Grossman, E.: "Generators for certain alternating groups with applications to cryptography" Journal of Applied Mathematics, 29, Nr. 4, 1975, 624-627.
5 Davio, M.; Desmedt, Y.; Fosseprez, M. et al.: "Analytical Characteristics of the DES" Proc. CRYPTO '83, Plenum Press, New York and London, 1984, 171-202.
6 Even, S.; Goldreich, O.: "DES-like functions can generate the alternating group" IEEE Transactions on Information Theory, IT-29, Nr. 6, 1983, 863-865.
7 B. S. Kaliski , R. L. Rivest , A. T. Sherman, Is the data encryption standard a group? (Results of cycling experiments on DES), Journal of Cryptology, v.1 n.1, p.3-36, 1988
8 National Bureau of Standards: "Data Encryption Standard" FIPS PUB 46, Washington, 1977.
9 Josef Pieprzyk , Xian Mo Zhang, Permutation generators of alternating groups, Proceedings of the international conference on cryptology on Advances in cryptology, p.237-244, September 1990, Sydney, Australia
10 J A Reeds , J L Manferdelli, DES has no per round linear factors, Proceedings of CRYPTO 84 on Advances in cryptology, p.377-392, August 1985, Santa Barbara, California, United States
11 Robinson, D. J. S.: "A Course in the Theory of Groups" Springer, New York, Heidelberg, Berlin, 1982.
12 Judy H. Moore , Gustavus J. Simmons, Cycle Structure of the DES for Keys Having Palindromic (or Antipalindromic) Sequences of Round Keys, IEEE Transactions on Software Engineering, v.13 n.2, p.262-273, February 1987 [doi>10.1109/TSE.1987.233150]
13 Wielandt, H.: "Finite Permutation Groups" Academic Press, New York, London. 1964.

Ralph Wernsdorf was born in 1953 and recieved his Dr. rer. nat. degree in Berlin in operations research. Now he is employed at SIT GmbH, a firm that works in the field of information security. He found the primes using a pentium notebook with computer algebra software.
Ralph.Wernsdorf at rohde-schwarz.com +49 30 65884-222, www.sit.rohde-schwarz.com

09/27/2010 Recruited by West Germany

Former Stasi Cryptographers Now Develop Technology for NATO

By Marcel Rosenbach and Holger Stark

After the fall of the Berlin Wall, the West Germans were desperate to prevent the Stasi's top codebreakers from falling into the wrong hands and set up a company to hire the East German cryptographers. Now the former Stasi scientists develop technology used by Angela Merkel and NATO.

Every morning, while going to his office in Berlin's Adlershof district, Ralph W. passes a reminder of his own past, a small museum that occupies a room on the ground floor of the building. The museum could easily double as a command center run by the class enemy in an old James Bond film. A display of coding devices from various decades includes the

T-310, a green metal machine roughly the size of a huge refrigerator, which East German officials used to encode their telex messages.

The device was the pride of the Stasi, the feared East German secret police, which was W.'s former employer. Today he works as a cryptologist with Rohde & Schwarz SIT GmbH (SIT), a subsidiary of Rohde & Schwarz, a Munich-based company specializing in testing equipment, broadcasting and secure communications. W. and his colleagues encode sensitive information to ensure that it can only be read or heard by authorized individuals. Their most important customers are NATO and the German government.

Rohde & Schwarz is something of an unofficial supplier of choice to the German government. Among other things, the company develops bugproof mobile phones for official use. Since 2004, its Berlin-based subsidiary SIT, which specializes in encryption solutions, has been classified as a "security partner" to the German Interior Ministry, which recently ordered a few thousand encoding devices for mobile phones, at about €1,250 ($1,675) apiece. Even German Chancellor Angela Merkel has used phones equipped with SIT's encryption technology. In other words, the Stasi's former cryptographers are now Merkel's cryptographers.

Secret Operation

The transfer of Ralph W. and other cryptologists from the East German Ministry for State Security, as the Stasi was officially known, to West Germany was handled both seamlessly and discreetly. West German officials were determined to make sure that no one would find out about the integration of East Germany's top cryptologists into the west. The operation was so secret, in fact, that it has remained unknown to this day.

Only a handful of officials were involved in the operation, which was planned at the West German Interior Ministry in Bonn. In January 1991, Rohde & Schwarz SIT GmbH was founded. The company was established primarily to provide employment for particularly talented Stasi cryptologists that the Bonn government wanted to keep in key positions.

Ralph W. is one of those specialists. W., who holds a doctorate in mathematics, signed a declaration of commitment to the Stasi on Sept. 1, 1982. By the end of his time with the Stasi, he was making 22,550 East German marks a year -- an excellent salary by East German standards. And when he was promoted to the rank of captain in June 1987, his superior characterized W. as one of the "most capable comrades in the collective." While with the Stasi, W. worked in Department XI, which also boasted the name "Central Cryptology Agency" (ZCO).

Looking for the Top Performers

The story begins during the heady days of the East German revolution in 1990. Officially, the East German government, under its last communist premier, Hans Modrow, had established a government committee to dissolve the Ministry for State Security which reported to the new East German interior minister, Peter-Michael Diestel. In reality, the West German government was already playing a key role in particularly sensitive matters. Then-West German Interior Minister Wolfgang Schäuble (who is the current German finance minister) had instructed two senior Interior Ministry officials, Hans Neusel and Eckart Werthebach, to take care of the most politically sensitive remnants of the 40-year intelligence war between the two Germanys.

The government of then-Chancellor Helmut Kohl was interested in more than just the politically explosive material contained in some of the Stasi's files. It also had its eye on the top performers in the former East German spy agency. The cryptologists were of particular interest to the Kohl government, which recognized that experts capable of developing good codes would also be adept at breaking them. The Stasi cryptologists were proven experts in both fields.

Documents from the Stasi records department indicate that the one of the Stasi cryptologists' achievements was to break Vericrypt and Cryptophon standards that had been used until the 1980s. This meant that they were capable of decoding encrypted radio transmissions by the two main West German intelligence agencies -- the Office for the Protection of the Constitution and the Federal Intelligence Service (BND) -- and the West German border police. The East Germans even managed to decode the BND's orders to members of the clandestine "Gladio" group, which was intended to continue anti-communist operations in the event of a Warsaw Pact invasion of Western Europe.

The West German government was determined to prevent these highly trained East German experts from entering the free market. The idea that specialists who had spent decades working with West German encryption methods and had successfully cracked West German intelligence's codes could defect to Middle Eastern countries like Syria was a nightmare. Until then, the BND had had no difficulties listening in on intelligence communications in the Middle East, an ability the potential defection of Stasi experts would likely have compromised. Bonn also hoped to use their skills to break into regions where its own agents were making no headway. All of this meant that the Stasi experts had to be brought on board in the West -- even if it involved unconventional methods.

Part 2: Cherrypicking the Stasi's Top Brains

The government officials in Bonn turned to an expert for advice: Otto Leiberich, a cryptologist and mathematician who had headed the Central Office for Cryptology, the equivalent of the Stasi's ZCO at the West German BND, until the mid-1970s. Leiberich's task, after he was brought in as a member of the secret operation, was to evaluate the professional abilities of the Stasi experts.

Leiberich still has vivid memories of his first official trip to the town of Hoppegarten, next to Berlin. One of the East German cryptologists at the meeting greeted the members of the West German delegation as "comrades," Leiberich recalls. He was impressed by the East Germans' expertise, says Leiberich. "They were excellent mathematicians who were not personally guilty of any misconduct."

Leiberich says he would have liked to hire them, particularly the Stasi's then "chief decoder," the ZCO department head, Horst M. A gaunt chain-smoker who wore horn-rimmed glasses, M. was born in 1937 and had earned a degree in mathematics at East Berlin's Humboldt University. But the West was also interested in younger people, in the expectation that they would be of greater value in the nascent computer age.

A Free-Market Solution

Once we begin distinguishing the many forms capitalism
can take, analytic utility is lost by retaining
talismanic terms like 'free market.' There is no
national economy in the world today that is not a mixed
economy, which also means that there is no market that
is free, or even 'mostly' free. Rather, markets are
structures that are culturally bounded, always
regulated, and genetically dependent on government
intervention for their reproduction. Never are they
simply 'permitted.' Jonathan Stein

Leiberich could have used the extra manpower, especially after 1990, when the West German Central Office for Cryptology was spun off from the BND and a law was enacted to form the new Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). Leiberich, who was named the BSI's first president, headed a team consisting mainly of former intelligence colleagues.

But Neusel, the senior official from the West German Interior Ministry, dismissed the idea as too precarious. Firstly, the government had decided not to integrate former Stasi officials, because of their past activities, into the bureaucracy of a unified Germany. Additionally, as one person involved in the operation recalls, concerns about potential traitors gave rise to a "sacred principle," namely that "no one from the Stasi was to be transferred to the West German intelligence agencies."

It also didn't help that the Stasi's Central Cryptology Agency had been hastily spun off into the East German Interior Ministry, because the West German cabinet had decided not to allow any members of the East German Interior Ministry to work in federal agencies.

But the free market was not restricted by any government resolutions. A creative solution was needed, and no one was better suited for coming up with the necessary fix than Hermann Schwarz, one of the two founders of Rohde & Schwarz.

A Soft Spot for the East

Founded in 1933, the company, a provider of radio, measuring and security technology, was dependent on government contracts and was a reliable supplier to the West German intelligence agencies. Besides, Schwarz had a soft spot for the East. He had earned his doctorate in 1931 in the eastern city of Jena, where he had also met his eventual business partner, Lothar Rohde.

But to Schwarz, who was already elderly at the time and has since died, allowing his company's name to be used as a cover for a Stasi connection seemed too risky. According to someone familiar with the operation, the West Germans must have applied a bit of soft pressure on Schwarz, who was "extremely worried that it would be made public one day."

But the officials eventually did manage to convince Schwarz to play along. His change of heart was probably due in part to the prospect of additional research and federal contracts, which were in fact showered on his company.

In the end, BSI head Leiberich and a senior Interior Ministry official decided which former Stasi experts were to be transferred to the front company. Former Stasi department head Horst M. was seamlessly integrated into the market economy at SIT, where his wife also began working as a secretary. Ralph W., who was in his 30s at the time and had been with the Stasi for eight years, also fitted the desired profile, as did his colleagues Wolfgang K. and Volker S. In total, about a dozen former Stasi employees, most of them mathematicians, were given the chance to embark on a second cryptology career in post-reunification Germany.

The federal government provided whatever assistance it could, but only with the utmost discretion. SIT was initially headquartered in the town of Grünheide in the eastern state of Brandenburg, in a former Stasi children's home.

'Cosmic Top Secret' <<< the spiegel uses this term like GLADIO to refer to EVIL BLACK OPERATIONS, see below for turkish efforts to uncover.

An episode from the 1990s shows how conspiratorially the operation was handled, even within the West German intelligence community. When the BND needed a "D-channel filter" -- a precursor to today's firewalls -- to protect communications networks, it contacted the Federal Office for Information Security (BSI). But BND officials pricked up their ears when they discovered that the work was being done by SIT. A private company protecting the computers of Germany's foreign intelligence agency? Nevertheless, the BND officials were told that it was "totally OK," and that the BSI would take responsibility for SIT.

For the parent company Rohde & Schwarz, the former problem child in Brandenburg soon became a success story. SIT took over the cryptology division of German engineering giant Siemens, and the company now employs about 150 mathematicians, engineers and computer scientists at its three locations. SIT, which proudly refers to itself as the "preferred supplier of high-security cryptography" for NATO, even includes in its product line devices classified as "Cosmic Top Secret," NATO's highest secrecy level. SIT's Elcrodat solution, standard equipment on NATO submarines, frigates and military helicopters, has provided the company with orders worth millions for years.

When approached by SPIEGEL, Rohde & Schwarz declined to comment on this previously unknown part of its company history.

To show its gratitude for the company's efforts, the federal government did more than just provide it with lucrative contracts. Eckart Werthebach, the Interior Ministry official, awarded the former managing director of SIT, a senior Rohde & Schwarz executive originally from West Germany, the Order of Merit of the Federal Republic of Germany for his services. The executive received the decoration in a formal ceremony at Villa Hammerschmidt in Bonn, the former official residence of the German president.

Translated from the German by Christopher Sultan

Published on January 08, 2010

JUDGE'S ORDER TO SEIZE COSMIC DOCUMENTS SENDS TURKEY'S "DEEP STATE" INTO CRISIS

Turkey's "Deep State" of military, intelligence, and law enforcement officers, linked to the CIA and Israel's Mossad through the Ergenekon network of spies and "false flag" operatives, has been shaken over the decision of Ankara Judge Kadir Kayan to order NATO COSMIC Top Secret rooms at the Turkish Special Forces Command's Tactical Mobilization Group in Ankara to be searched by civilian prosecutors and police, Wayne Madsen Report (WMC) says. According to WMC, "COSMIC" is a NATO classification and the investigation of the shadowy Ergenekon network has turned up evidence that COSMIC documents may contain proof that Turkey's Special Operations forces were planning to assassinate top Turkish political leaders, including Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc. Some of the seized NATO COSMIC Top Secret documents involve the operations of Gendarmarie Intelligence and Counter-Terrorism Organization (JITEM), which was composed of Turkish special operations forces and police who carried out assassinations of academics, Kurdish politicians, and even fellow military personnel in terrorist attacks that were blamed on the Kurdish Workers' Party (PKK), deemed a "terrorist" organization by Turkey and the United States. The documents seized by prosecutors and police may also show that the CIA's "Gladio" networks, so-called "stay behind networks" established in NATO and neutral countries during the Cold War to coordinate sabotage in the event of a Soviet invasion and occupation, may have continued in Turkey and serves as the core component of Ergenekon. WMR has also learned that some of the COSMIC Top Secret documents seized in Turkey point to an American "Deep State" Pentagon counterpart to the Turkish Ergenekon network. Former FBI Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds spoke of this network being uncovered by wiretaps of U.S. political leaders and Turkish lobbyists in the United States. Ergenekon is clandestine, Kemalist ultra-nationalist organization in Turkey with ties to members of the country's military and security forces. The group is accused of terrorism in Turkey. It is named after Ergenekon, a mythical place located in the inaccessible valleys of the Altay Mountains. Some experts believe there are links between Ergenekon and numerous militant organizations, such as the Kurdistan Workers' Party (PKK), the extreme-left Revolutionary People's Liberation Party/Front (DHKP/C), the Islamist organization Hizbullah, the ultranationalist Turkish Revenge Brigades (TİT), the Turkish Workers' and Peasants' Liberation Army (TİKKO), the Marxist-Leninist Communist Party(MLKP) and the Hizb ut-Tahrir (Party of Liberation), an extreme group wishing to reinstate the Islamic Caliphate. Alleged members have been indicted on charges of plotting to foment unrest by assassinating intellectuals, politicians, judges, military staff, and religious leaders, with the ultimate goal of toppling the pro-Western incumbent government. They are also believed to have plotted the assassination of Hrant Dink, Editor-in-Chief of Agos Turkish Armenian newspaper.

Wikipedia censors Conspiracies AMALGAM VIRGO

2010-09-26T14:19:00.001Z

PLEASE challenge wikipedia resistance to "conspiracies"

== Wikipedia supports born yesterdayism ==

As if by chance, surprise, surprise, a short time later the USA suffered the [[September 11 attacks]]. But such connections cannot be elaborated on in wikipedia. Any hints are deleted immediately, instead of being furnished with easy to find references. Just like TV news, we are supposed to be born yesterday. ~~~~

== Entomopter usage ==

The [[entomopter]] is referenced on pages 26 and 29 of the Amalgam Virgo presentation. Prof. [[Robert C. Michelson]] holding an initial version of the [[Reciprocating Chemical Muscle]], and the [[International Aerial Robotics Competition]] web site lead picture from 2000 are featured on page 29. <span style="font-size: smaller;" class="autosigned">—Preceding [[Wikipedia:Signatures|unsigned]] comment added by [[Special:Contributions/74.176.0.89|74.176.0.89]] ([[User talk:74.176.0.89|talk]]) 05:01, 22 June 2010 (UTC)</span> 

The Entomopter is a multimode (flying/crawling) insect-like robot developed by Prof. Robert C. Michelson and his design team from the Georgia Tech Research Institute (GTRI), University of Cambridge (England), ETS Labs and others. The name 'Entomopter' is derived from entomo (meaning insect: as in entomology) + pteron (meaning wing). Michelson's Entomopter is a type of "ornithopter", which is the broader term for any device intended to fly by flapping wings.

The Entomopter is propelled by a pair of flapping wings driven by a Reciprocating Chemical Muscle (RCM) which is capable of generating autonomic wing beating from a chemical energy source without an ignition source, combustion, or atmospheric oxygen. Through direct conversion, the RCM also provides small amounts of electricity for onboard systems and further provides differential lift enhancement on the wings through circulation control (Coanda effect) to achieve pitch, roll, yaw, and heave to effect steered flight.

The Entomopter performs obstacle avoidance and altimetry through the use of a frequency modulated continuous wave (FMCW) acoustic transmission created from the waste gas product from fuel decomposition within the RCM. This waste gas is also used for gas bearings (dry lubrication) of all moving parts as well as the circulation controlled "blowing" of the wings for stability control and navigation.

Planehuggers is a recent political neologism that has been used on the World Wide Web frequently in newsgroups [1] and blogs.The term refers to those people in the 9/11 Truth Movement, also known as truthlings, who believe that real, full size commercial passenger jets or planes were used in the 9/11 event. There have been many serious researchers questioning the official account of 9/11 in the Truth Movement such as Morgan Reynolds, who feel they have proven that a real, commercial jet was not used at the Pentagon explosions, nor were real passenger jets used at the Twin Towers of the World Trade Center. They make what they believe to be a credible case of inserted animation video (Computer-generated imagery)[2][..] and therefore refer to those in the 9/11 Truth Movement who cling to the original 'official story' as huggers of planes or planehuggers since they embrace the aspect of the original story as delivered by the mass media of commercial jets being used to create the damage to the Pentagon and the Twin Towers and refuse to alter their thinking regardless of new analysis of evidence which proves that the original story was intentional disinformation![3]. The term is used somewhat derisively and sometimes linked to the concept of these 'planehuggers' being disinformation agents. While some like to refer to these research people as espousers of 9/11 conspiracy theories, these researchers are merely presenting alternative hypotheses [4] to the official government story[5]which is in itself by definition a conspiracy theory .

Nico Haupt is an intelligent thinker who should leave the USA and think straighter again
u2r2h-documents...
Unmanned Microweaponry
During the research for this article, the author found out, that his take on what kind of particular microweaponry or microweaponry combination might have been used for 9/11, was too quickly.
As a matter of fact, by now the combinations and possibilities appear to be endless.
The entomopter scenario might be one plausible scenario, but looking back into all other military advancements, the combinations of many other micro weaponry systems, also combined with visual cloaked distractions are too complex than to come to any clear conclusion of what might have hit the towers.

In an early draft and some distributed statements on "entomopters", the author stated, that "...inspired by Rosalee Grable on many different combinations of these 'blobs', one recent speculation includes also an entomopter formation, a 2000 DARPA-funded, militarized micro-mechanical flying insect.

It is also called multi modal electromechanical insect and can mimic the fight of an insect by flapping its wings (Reciprocating Chemical Muscles) to generate lift.

Once a formation of entomopters is multiple, it could imposter or cloak an obscure incoming object such as a conventional missile, which could not be recognized that quickly..."

However this is just one of many possible scenarios of unmanned microweaponry combinations.

Amalgam Virgo

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

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Amalgam Virgo 01 (June 1-2 / 2001) Click PDF

Operation Amalgam Virgo is a CINCNORAD joint task counter-terrorist and field training exercise (FTX) carried out in Tyndall Air Force Base, Florida on early June 2001. NORAD sponsored the multi-agency planning exercise involving the hypothetical scenario of a cruise missile or UAV launched by a terrorist group ^[1]. Osama Bin Laden was pictured on the cover of the proposal for the exercise. Key military players involved in the exercise also included personnel from the 1st Air Force battalion, the U.S. National Guard, the U.S. Reserve forces, and the U.S. Navy.

Several naval ships including the USS Yorktown and the Navy Aegis cruiser were dispatched to the Gulf of Mexico as part of the multi-service anti-cruise missile operation. Military land personnel from the 1st Air Force also engaged in gathering radar information on low-level targets by using the Joint-Based Expeditionary Connectivity Center (JBECC), a mobile shelter capable of being deployed to high-risk regions while providing early warning signals on cruise missile attacks.

^ Quote: TERRORIST GROUP ACQUIRES CM'S/UAV'S (page 17, pdf file)

External links

http://www.globalsecurity.org/military/ops/amalgam-virgo.htm - Overview | Operation Amalgam Virgo
http://www.ratical.org/ratville/CAH/linkscopy/AmalgumVirgo.pdf - SEADS concept proposal for Amalgam Virgo, June 2001 | PDF

Afghan Drone Massacre USA UNLAWFUL COMBATTANTS

2010-09-25T14:56:00.001Z

According to Army investigators at Joint Base Lewis-McChord in Washington State, soldiers in the 3rd Platoon, Bravo Company, 2nd Battalion, 1st Infantry Regiment of what's now the 2nd Stryker Brigade hunted and killed Afghan civilians for sport. If this gruesome tale turns out to be true, then it means American soldiers in Afghanistan became something we associate with the worst of all war crimes, something that we'd like to believe simply doesn't exist among our troops: a death squad.

In 2004, soldiers stationed in Balad, Iraq, demanded that two young Iraqis who had angered them jump off a dam into the Tigris River. Their battalion commander helped them cover up the offense. In 2006, soldiers from the 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 101st Airborne operated in a brutal manner in Iraq, following a tone established by its commander,

Colonel Michael Steele.

The CIA Death Squads can be heard by the loud bombs blowing up schools and seen in the streets of Karachi where the black tarmac turns red when a CIA hit is successful. The feeble and unbelievable denial by the obsequious leaders doesn't quite cut it. The world knows what is going on. Someone will pay the price of this bloody game either at the voting booth or at the gallows.

Why is the Pakistani media silent about this. Why are the political parties distracted by the sideshow of Aafia Siddiqui. Don't get me wrong, Aafia Siddiqui is a travesty of justice and huge personal tragedy–however the CIA Death Squads are an ongoing nightmare which continues to create more Aafia Siddiquis.

Stories about the presence of the 3000 strong CIA Death Squads in Pakistan keep cropping up–in news reports published on AhmedQuraishi.com, on WikiLeaks and now finally in book form by Bob Woodward. When the reports first appeared on AQ, our liberal friends brushed them off as the ravings of a lunatic. AQ had actually shown video clips of camps and pictures of the strange behavior of Blackwater/Xe in Pakistan. Rupee News reported on this extensively and clearly stated our position that the TTP was foreign backed.

The CIA Death Squads are active in many parts of the world. Nil Nikandrov describes what is going on in Hunduras.

"President of Honduras Manuel Zelaya was displaced slightly over a year ago in a coup staged by the local oligarchy and the US intelligence community. The coup came as a punishment for Zelaya's alignment with H. Chavez and other populist Latin American leaders. Since the time, the news flow from Honduras abounds with stories of political assassinations, the victims being activists of trade unions, peasant and student organizations, and the National Popular Resistance Front opposing the pro-US regime of Porfirio Lobo. Ten journalists who expressed support for the ousted Honduran president have been killed this year alone.

The most recent case of the type was the murder of Israel Zelaya, 56, who was kidnapped by an armed group which easily crossed by car numerous police checkpoints set up as a part of the security-tightening campaign. The journalist was taken to a secluded location, tortured, and shot two times in the head and once – in the chest.

Dozens of similar incidents show that a program of "political cleansing" is underway in Honduras".

The Afghan war and the mayhem that it has caused gives fuel to the so called Liberals who want to take the agenda of the Rawalpindi Conspiracy and impose it on the people of Pakistan. There are many newspaper "columnists" who continue to propagate their agenda to disparage Pakistan, as it if it is an anomaly and as if Islam is the root cause of all evil.

Jim Lobe of Inter Press Service recently defined the salient points of a major biennial survey, "Constrained Internationalism: Adapting to New Realities," by the Chicago Council on Global Affairs (CCGA). Here's how Lobe describes it:

"The survey's main message, however, was that the U.S. public is looking increasingly toward reducing Washington's role in world affairs, especially in conflicts that do not directly concern it. While two-thirds of citizens believe Washington should take an 'active part in world affairs,' 49% — by far the highest percentage since the CCGA first started asking the question in the mid-1970s — agreed with the proposition that the U.S. should 'mind its own business internationally and let other countries get along the best they can on their own.'

"Moreover, 91% of respondents agreed that it was 'more important at this time for the [U.S.] to fix problems at home' than to address challenges to the (U.S.) abroad — up from 82% who responded to that question in CCGA's last survey in 2008."

CIA Army or no army, the truth is evident to the US Generals too. It time to pack up and leave Afghanistan.

Defense Secretary Robert Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff had called for a substantial buildup of forces, to be followed by a withdrawal beginning next July. Gates recently defended his actions and supported the plan withdraw troops. The top military brass see no changes in American policy–which means that the US will begin withdrawing their forces in 2011, giving enough time to the Republicans to coronate General Pettaeus as their nominee for President. The Wikileaks and Bob Woodward's "Obama's War" are an inconvenient truth for those who have been doubting Pakistani policy in Afghanistan. Rupee News has always called the TTP the "CIA Army". Thanks to Bob Woodward, the 3000 strong "CIA Army" is exposed and today stands naked in Pakistan.

Obviously it takes a "Gora shaib's" testimony to make it believable for the likes of Omar Ali, and Mohammad Taqi who will not believe anything unless it is published in the New York Times or the "Gora Press". in fact they will believe everything that is published in the US press, no matter how outrageous. Taqi of course will rummage through the pages of history to find quotes from Hindu Fascists and other unknowns as long as they belong to the "elite caste" and as long as they label thmselves as "liberal". It is astonishing that Bharati Liberals remain staunchly patriotic and beholden to the Tri-Colors. Thus the Brahmans of the Indian national Congress are totally committed to the Indian state–t is the so called Pakistanis who wish to wear the label of Liberal who subscribe to anti-sate activities.

It is amazing that it is only the Pakistanis who write for rags like The Daily Times that support the Akhan Bharat concept. Case in point. Bangaldesh was formed on the basis of secular Bengali nationalism. Bengalis who lived in Kolkota were told that Bengalisism was prime and they would get full support from the Hindu Bengalis. They did–as long as they could absorb Muslim Bengal into predominantly Hindu India. It is astonishing that the very same Hindus establishment which agitated against the partition of Bengal in 1906–would not join a country of the Bengalis called Bangladesh.

Thus Bangladeshi secularism went into comma on December 16th, 1971 and eventually was assassinated on August 14th, 1975 when the dictator for life Mr. Mujibur Rehman was killed by Bangladeshi patriots and his body thrown into the streets of Dhaka as a warning to those who opposed the Two Nation Theory (TNT). The Bangladeshi National Party resurrected the TNT as the basis of Bangladesh's separatism from predominantly Hindu Bharat.

Today the same so called "Secular Establishment" tries to create Pakistan in their own image–seeking refuge from a religion they dislike and a people they abhor.

The CIA is operating in Pakistan with the connivance of the enemy. Blackwater is operating in Pakistan with impunity. Bob Woodward did not reveal anything new. Pakistanis have known this for a decade. Hence the Anti-Americanism in the streets.

A Senator asked some poignant questions about Aid to Pakistan. The newly appointed Ambassador Designate to Pakistan was unable to explain to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee that Pakistanis don't hate America, the abhor the American foreign policy that sends death squads to Pakistan. It is obvious that the CIA Army is not in Pakistan for picnics and BBQs. Their mission it to soften up the population, terrorize the civilians and demoralize the people so that they agree to US diktats.

Tom Engelhardt in an article provocatively titled "One and a Half Cheers for American Decline" says it rether bluntly.

"Now, I'm not a betting man, but I'd head for Vegas tomorrow and put my money down against the general and on Americans generally when it comes to assessing the future. I'd put money on the fact that the United States is indeed "in a state of decline" and I'd make a wager at odds that U.S. troops won't be in Afghanistan."

This is not music to the ears of those who have been banking or a permanent US presence in Afghanistan.

Pepe Escobar writes brilliantly when he is off his high horse of Pakistunistan. In a recent article published in the Asia Times he says.

"And so as that self-appointed court stenographer Bob Woodward reveals in his latest court opus Obama's Wars – conveniently leaked to the Washington Post and the New York Times – the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) is shelling out the moolah for its own, 3,000-assassin-plus Murder Inc to roam in AfPak. These paramilitary – brigade-size – outfits, "elite and well trained", have been branded Counter-terrorist Pursuit Teams (CPT).

Much is being made in US corporate media that this shady CPT posse is able to "cross-over" to the tribal areas in Pakistani territory and, like in that famous Heineken ad campaign, reach the parts US intelligence are not able to reach. Aware Latin Americans – with a shrug – will see this as Bad Joke redux: the "Salvador option" is back. As much as these Afghan assassins have been flown to the US for training, the infamous School of the Americas in the 1970s and 1980s trained death squads of natives to kill their compatriots from Chile to El Salvador. The CIA not exactly excels on thinking outside the box."

Escobar is right. He alone has the guts to say it. The obsequious mainstream Pakistani press is complaint because they gets ads from "Voice of America" or silent because they are remunerated under the table by the "CIA Army". The Death Squads of El Salvador and Nicaragua are in action in Pakistan.

Escobar's warning is poignant and pertinent. The CIA created the "Goyem" of the Pakhtuns, and it then turned against its benefactor.

"Old Afghan hands will also be thrilled; this is a small-scale remix of the Afghan mujahideen fighting the anti-Soviet 1980s jihad. Everyone knows what happened afterwards to those bad asses Ronald Reagan called "freedom fighters"; they turned against the US. Maybe some enterprising CIA analysts should share a kebab with their old pal on a payroll, former Afghan prime minister Gulbuddin "bomb, bomb Kabul" Hekmatyar, an eternal mujahid today on Washington's most wanted list."

The old news about the American Murder Army in Pakistan is not rally new news–Bob Woodward simply consecrates what is already known by the people. One Faisel, a Rupee News reader eloquently described it as such "the level of IQ and information available in the typical Pakistani barber shop shadown the monographs and thesis written by the $80 billion think tank industry". The reason–the barber shops simply display the facts, and the Think Tanks have an agenda with a wish list.

Escobar portrays the truth very eloquently. "Calling Jack Bauer. Every grain of sand in the Hindu Kush has known since 2001 that the Americans, be they Pentagon, CIA – some Pakistanis say even the Federal Bureau of Investigation – employ a "secret army" in AfPak. The Pentagon's Murder Inc was unveiled by Wikileaks only three months ago. Now it's Woodward unveiling the CIA's. What next? A Jack Bauer unit, serialized on cable?"

The revelations in print should answer the question often asked by the people of Pakistan "Who is blowing up the schools, and placing bombs in the Imam-Baras, Ahmedi Temples, Mosques, and Hospital, who is setting fires to Pakistan factories, and who is dong the targeted killings in Pakistani cities". The CIA Army, 3000 strong will do whatever is necessary to get information, create chaos and mold the opinions of the Pakistanis against those who fight the US and NATO. Thus it will include the targeted assassination of intellectuals and professionals–usually done along ethnic lines so that the peace can be spoiled. It also gives the so called Liberals leverage to speak up against anything Islamic or Muslim. The ANP and other so called "Secularists" for example morning, propagates the falsehood that Pakistan should not have supported the Mujahiden against the USSR. The ANP at the time was allied with the Soviets and did not want the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan.

"Civilian "collateral damage" by the Pentagon's Murder Inc has been splashed on the news virtually every week. As for the CIA's, still there are no numbers. The Hindu Kush grains of sand are also aware that the concept of Pakistani "sovereignty" is a myth. Everyone should expect from now on another rainfall of denials from Islamabad – notwithstanding the fact of Pentagon and CIA killer drones raising hell over large swathes of Pakistani territory (more than 70 strikes in 2010 alone).

If this is a war against al-Qaeda, as the George W Bush/Barack Obama continuum insists, Langley, we got a problem; there's fewer than 50 Arab al-Qaeda jihadis in Afghanistan, as every US intelligence agency proclaims. And there are fewer than 100 jihadis in the Waziristans. If Washington really wants to know where the leadership is, the easiest way is to bribe mid-level Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence operatives in Rawalpindi/Islamabad. The ISI-al Qaeda-Taliban connection is and will remain unbreakable – part of Islamabad's obsession with "strategic depth". This is the connection that killed Northern Alliance commander Ahmad Shah Massoud, the Lion of the Panjshir, on September 9, 2001, two days before 9/11 – thus precluding a true Afghan nationalist from reaching power instead of that Zalmay "Bush's Afghan' Khalilzad asset, Hamid Karzai."

Escobar usually goes a long way when he gets started on the Durand Line. His current article in the Asia Times remains guarded and within the means of acceptable journalism. He is 100% right. The world's friendlies border is not between Canada and the US, it is between Pakistan and Afghanistan, and the cute acronym Af-Pak describes the nature of the inseparable conjoined twins. Millions of Afghan live in Pakistan. Balochistan is in danger of losing its Baloch majority because so many Pakhtuns, Tajiks, Uzbeks, and Hazaras have decided not to return to Afghanistan. Bogus propaganda describes it as "The Quetta Shura". the fact remains that the tent cities around Quetta have now been transformed into bustling markets and business centers where Afghans set up businesses to increase trade between Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Across what is in effect Pashtunistan, the "border" does not exist – after all the Durand Line was a British invention to split the Pashtuns; everyone has interwoven webs of Pashtun "cousins", everyone is "family". Some family members may rat on others for financial gain, but nothing extremely substantive will come out of it."

The CIA with all its power and force cannot comprehend the unbreakable ties of ethnicity and religion. Of course the "Secularists" choose to play dumb–sending American boys to their deaths in the Hindu Kush.

"I was in Tora Bora in late 2001 when US Special Forces were bribing and advising local commanders on how to attack al-Qaeda. The commanders gleefully took US money, made a pose of throwing a few shells with their outdated Soviet tanks, and helped al-Qaeda – Osama bin Laden included – to escape the other way, to Parachinar, towards the Pakistani tribal areas. They even "advised" the American B52s to bomb the wrong mountains…"All this brings us to the current situation where CIA Assassins are roaming the streets of Karachi causing mayhem, and scaring the civilian population by blowing up building in Peshawar. What is egregious is that the same people then turn around and lecture Pakistan on "stability' and "terror".

"Washington is now deploying its full metal jacket – from the Pentagon and CIA secret armies to killer drones to special forces commando raids to Blackwater-conducted "snatch and grab" commandos. All these special effects for what? To kill a few tribal Pakistani Taliban commanders – replaced the same week by a blood relative – and a few jihadis, replaced the same week by a steady stream from the Gulf.

Rupee News has been reporting on the presidential ambitions of General Petraeus. Escobar mimics those sentiments.

"Never lose sight of the spectrum. This whole scheme is essentially what passes for General David "I'm always positioning myself to 2012″ Petraeus' grandiose COIN strategy; co-opted locals ranged in death squads and paid with Samsonites full of cash (plus a drone war as "back up"). It worked for Petraeus in Iraq – leading him to boast to a gullible corporate media he had "won" the war. Petraeus believes he can pull a remix in AfPak. The Pentagon seems to be at least a bit wary of warlords – as warlord-hostage Hamid Karzai cannot rule even over his throne in Kabul. But the CIA doesn't care about warlords – it goes for broke."

"Nothing will change on the ground in terms of the ISI-Taliban nexus. But the game gets much more interesting when one factors what enlightened Pakistani public opinion – in the major urban centers – already fed up with Islamabad's subservience to Washington, will make of Woodward's disclosure.

The key – one may say tragic – point of Woodward's book is that Obama not only cannot end the Afghan war; he cannot even downscale it to target only the fewer than 100 jihadis and the Pakistani Taliban sheltered in the tribal areas without incurring blowback. Woodward says that Obama is seriously betting on his exit strategy – he wants by all means a progressive withdrawal from Afghanistan starting next summer. But "his" general, Petraeus – the Pentagon in fact – wants infinite war."

The American people have begun to question the "Obama Wars". Woodward reports that President Obama wants to leave Afghanistan despite Bharati objections. The PNAC gurus recast as Foreign Policy Analysts are bucking for perpetual mimetic warfare. Obama says he cannot afford to throw away another Trillion. Who will win?

Escobar tries to answer that question. "What Woodward's book – and the corporate media orchestrated narrative – will never tell is "why" infinite war. Because of the New Great Game in Eurasia. Because of the need of military bases to spy on strategic competitors Russia and China. Because of the US's obsession with Pipelineistan in Central Asia bypassing both Russia and Iran. Because of the Pentagon's full spectrum dominance doctrine – which justifies infinitely ballooning military budgets."

Domestic politics may force the administration to change course and leave Afghanistan. A retired General espousing an end to the war may be more credible than a Liberal whose middle name is Hussein.

"If Obama has really admitted, "I can't lose the whole Democratic Party", he knows he is really in a jam; Obama thought he had 2011 and 2012 to wrap-up some kind of AfPak "victory" before US public opinion turned against him. Well, public opinion is already against him (Bill Clinton is encouraging the president to "embrace people's anger" …) As for wily Petraeus, he has now unleashed a media blitz revolving around one single theme – he won't be rushed, and the war could go on until 2020. In the book, Obama is quoted as saying, "I'm not doing 10 years … I'm not doing long-term nation-building. I am not spending a trillion dollars".

So what should Obama do? He could call his backers in Hollywood – which after all won the Vietnam war on film. Hollywood also won the Iraq War – via The Hurt Locker. The president could even win an Oscar – much cooler than a Nobel.

Now seriously. In real life, history eschews Hollywood. AfPak may swallow this president, the next president, the CIA and row after row of full spectrum dominance-decorated generals faster than one can say "Faster CIA! Kill! Kill!" Goodbye Kabul? More like Good morning, Vietnam."

The CIA has had a history of failures. It tried to sotp the Maosit revolution and prop of Chiang Ka Shek. It tried to halt the march of Iranian Revolution. The El-Salvador death squads came and went. The assassination of Che Guevara was able to kill the man but not the myth. Those who embargo Cuba were unable to stop the Bolivar Revolution in Venezuela.

In a few years the "CIA Army" for Pakistan will be abandoned. As Escobar says, those it trained may turn against their benefactors and join other armies which may not be amicable to the US. The CIA never learns.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009). THE ROVING EYE. It's Obama vs infinite war By Pepe Escobar.

threats of military action against Iran = violation of the UN Charter

2010-09-25T09:49:00.001Z

The Iranian Threat

By Noam Chomsky

Monday, June 28, 2010

The dire threat of Iran is widely recognized to be the most serious foreign policy crisis facing the Obama administration. Congress has just strengthened the sanctions against Iran, with even more severe penalties against foreign companies. The Obama administration has been rapidly expanding its offensive capacity in the African island of Diego Garcia, claimed by Britain, which had expelled the population so that the US could build the massive base it uses for attacking the Middle East and Central Asia. The Navy reports sending a submarine tender to the island to service nuclear-powered guided-missile submarines with Tomahawk missiles, which can carry nuclear warheads. Each submarine is reported to have the striking power of a typical carrier battle group. According to a US Navy cargo manifest obtained by the Sunday Herald (Glasgow), the substantial military equipment Obama has dispatched includes 387 "bunker busters" used for blasting hardened underground structures. Planning for these "massive ordnance penetrators," the most powerful bombs in the arsenal short of nuclear weapons, was initiated in the Bush administration, but languished. On taking office, Obama immediately accelerated the plans, and they are to be deployed several years ahead of schedule, aiming specifically at Iran

"They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran," according to Dan Plesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London. "US bombers and long range missiles are ready today to destroy 10,000 targets in Iran in a few hours," he said. "The firepower of US forces has quadrupled since 2003," accelerating under Obama.

The Arab press reports that an American fleet (with an Israeli vessel) passed through the Suez Canal on the way to the Persian Gulf, where its task is "to implement the sanctions against Iran and supervise the ships going to and from Iran." British and Israeli media report that Saudi Arabia is providing a corridor for Israeli bombing of Iran (denied by Saudi Arabia). On his return from Afghanistan to reassure NATO allies that the US will stay the course after the replacement of General McChrystal by his superior, General Petraeus, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Admiral Michael Mullen visited Israel to meet Israel Defense Forces Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and senior Israeli military staff along with intelligence and planning units, continuing the annual strategic dialogue between Israel and the U.S. in Tel Aviv. The meeting focused "on the preparation by both Israel and the U.S. for the possibility of a nuclear capable Iran," according to Haaretz, which reports further that Mullen emphasized that "I always try to see challenges from Israeli perspective." Mullen and Ashkenazi are in regular contact on a secure line.

The increasing threats of military action against Iran are of course in violation of the UN Charter, and in specific violation of Security Council resolution 1887 of September 2009 which reaffirmed the call to all states to resolve disputes related to nuclear issues peacefully, in accordance with the Charter, which bans the use or threat of force.

Some respected analysts describe the Iranian threat in apocalyptic terms. Amitai Etzioni warns that "The U.S. will have to confront Iran or give up the Middle East," no less. If Iran's nuclear program proceeds, he asserts, Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and other states will "move toward" the new Iranian "superpower"; in less fevered rhetoric, a regional alliance might take shape independent of the US. In the US army journal Military Review, Etzioni urges a US attack that targets not only Iran's nuclear facilities but also its non-nuclear military assets, including infrastructure – meaning, the civilian society. "This kind of military action is akin to sanctions - causing 'pain' in order to change behaviour, albeit by much more powerful means."

Such harrowing pronouncements aside, what exactly is the Iranian threat? An authoritative answer is provided in the April 2010 study of the International Institute of Strategic Studies, Military Balance 2010. The brutal clerical regime is doubtless a threat to its own people, though it does not rank particularly high in that respect in comparison to US allies in the region. But that is not what concerns the Institute. Rather, it is concerned with the threat Iran poses to the region and the world.

The study makes it clear that the Iranian threat is not military. Iran's military spending is "relatively low compared to the rest of the region," and less than 2% that of the US. Iranian military doctrine is strictly "defensive,… designed to slow an invasion and force a diplomatic solution to hostilities." Iran has only "a limited capability to project force beyond its borders." With regard to the nuclear option, "Iran's nuclear program and its willingness to keep open the possibility of developing nuclear weapons is a central part of its deterrent strategy."

Though the Iranian threat is not military, that does not mean that it might be tolerable to Washington. Iranian deterrent capacity is an illegitimate exercise of sovereignty that interferes with US global designs. Specifically, it threatens US control of Middle East energy resources, a high priority of planners since World War II, which yields "substantial control of the world," one influential figure advised (A. A. Berle).

But Iran's threat goes beyond deterrence. It is also seeking to expand its influence. As the Institute study formulates the threat, Iran is "destabilizing" the region. US invasion and military occupation of Iran's neighbors is "stabilization." Iran's efforts to extend its influence in neighboring countries is "destabilization," hence plainly illegitimate. It should be noted that such revealing usage is routine. Thus the prominent foreign policy analyst James Chace, former editor the main establishment journal Foreign Affairs, was properly using the term "stability" in its technical sense when he explained that in order to achieve "stability" in Chile it was necessary to "destabilize" the country (by overthrowing the elected Allende government and installing the Pinochet dictatorship).

Beyond these crimes, Iran is also supporting terrorism, the study continues: by backing Hezbollah and Hamas, the major political forces in Lebanon and in Palestine – if elections matter. The Hezbollah-based coalition handily won the popular vote in Lebanon's latest (2009) election. Hamas won the 2006 Palestinian election, compelling the US and Israel to institute the harsh and brutal siege of Gaza to punish the miscreants for voting the wrong way in a free election. These have been the only relatively free elections in the Arab world. It is normal for elite opinion to fear the threat of democracy and to act to deter it, but this is a rather striking case, particularly alongside of strong US support for the regional dictatorships, particularly striking with Obama's strong praise for the brutal Egyptian dictator Mubarak on the way to his famous address to the Muslim world in Cairo.

The terrorist acts attributed to Hamas and Hezbollah pale in comparison to US-Israeli terrorism in the same region, but they are worth a look nevertheless.

On May 25 Lebanon celebrated its national holiday, Liberation Day, commemorating Israel's withdrawal from southern Lebanon after 22 years, as a result of Hezbollah resistance – described by Israeli authorities as "Iranian aggression" against Israel in Israeli-occupied Lebanon (Ephraim Sneh). That too is normal imperial usage. Thus President John F. Kennedy condemned the "the assault from the inside, and which is manipulated from the North." The assault by the South Vietnamese resistance against Kennedy's bombers, chemical warfare, driving peasants to virtual concentration camps, and other such benign measures was denounced as "internal aggression" by Kennedy's UN Ambassador, liberal hero Adlai Stevenson. North Vietnamese support for their countrymen in the US-occupied South is aggression, intolerable interference with Washington's righteous mission. Kennedy advisors Arthur Schlesinger and Theodore Sorenson, considered doves, also praised Washington's intervention to reverse "aggression" in South Vietnam – by the indigenous resistance, as they knew, at least if they read US intelligence reports. In 1955 the US Joint Chiefs of Staff defined several types of "aggression," including "Aggression other than armed, i.e., political warfare, or subversion." For example, an internal uprising against a US-imposed police state, or elections that come out the wrong way. The usage is also common in scholarship and political commentary, and makes sense on the prevailing assumption that We Own the World.

Hamas resists Israel's military occupation and its illegal and violent actions in the occupied territories. It is accused of refusing to recognize Israel (political parties do not recognize states). In contrast, the US and Israel not only do not recognize Palestine, but have been acting for decades to ensure that it can never come into existence in any meaningful form; the governing party in Israel, in its 1999 campaign platform, bars the existence of any Palestinian state.

Hamas is charged with rocketing Israeli settlements on the border, criminal acts no doubt, though a fraction of Israel's violence in Gaza, let alone elsewhere. It is important to bear in mind, in this connection, that the US and Israel know exactly how to terminate the terror that they deplore with such passion. Israel officially concedes that there were no Hamas rockets as long as Israel partially observed a truce with Hamas in 2008. Israel rejected Hamas's offer to renew the truce, preferring to launch the murderous and destructive Operation Cast Lead against Gaza in December 2008, with full US backing, an exploit of murderous aggression without the slightest credible pretext on either legal or moral grounds.

The model for democracy in the Muslim world, despite serious flaws, is Turkey, which has relatively free elections, and has also been subject to harsh criticism in the US. The most extreme case was when the government followed the position of 95% of the population and refused to join in the invasion of Iraq, eliciting harsh condemnation from Washington for its failure to comprehend how a democratic government should behave: under our concept of democracy, the voice of the Master determines policy, not the near-unanimous voice of the population.

The Obama administration was once again incensed when Turkey joined with Brazil in arranging a deal with Iran to restrict its enrichment of uranium. Obama had praised the initiative in a letter to Brazil's president Lula da Silva, apparently on the assumption that it would fail and provide a propaganda weapon against Iran. When it succeeded, the US was furious, and quickly undermined it by ramming through a Security Council resolution with new sanctions against Iran that were so meaningless that China cheerfully joined at once – recognizing that at most the sanctions would impede Western interests in competing with China for Iran's resources. Once again, Washington acted forthrightly to ensure that others would not interfere with US control of the region.

Not surprisingly, Turkey (along with Brazil) voted against the US sanctions motion in the Security Council. The other regional member, Lebanon, abstained. These actions aroused further consternation in Washington. Philip Gordon, the Obama administration's top diplomat on European affairs, warned Turkey that its actions are not understood in the US and that it must "demonstrate its commitment to partnership with the West," AP reported, "a rare admonishment of a crucial NATO ally."

The political class understands as well. Steven A. Cook, a scholar with the Council on Foreign Relations, observed that the critical question now is "How do we keep the Turks in their lane?" – following orders like good democrats. A New York Times headline captured the general mood: "Iran Deal Seen as Spot on Brazilian Leader's Legacy." In brief, do what we say, or else.

There is no indication that other countries in the region favor US sanctions any more than Turkey does. On Iran's opposite border, for example, Pakistan and Iran, meeting in Turkey, recently signed an agreement for a new pipeline. Even more worrisome for the US is that the pipeline might extend to India. The 2008 US treaty with India supporting its nuclear programs – and indirectly its nuclear weapons programs -- was intended to stop India from joining the pipeline, according to Moeed Yusuf, a South Asia adviser to the United States Institute of Peace, expressing a common interpretation. India and Pakistan are two of the three nuclear powers that have refused to sign the Non-proliferation Treaty (NPT), the third being Israel. All have developed nuclear weapons with US support, and still do.

No sane person wants Iran to develop nuclear weapons; or anyone. One obvious way to mitigate or eliminate this threat is to establish a NFWZ in the Middle East. The issue arose (again) at the NPT conference at United Nations headquarters in early May 2010. Egypt, as chair of the 118 nations of the Non-Aligned Movement, proposed that the conference back a plan calling for the start of negotiations in 2011 on a Middle East NWFZ, as had been agreed by the West, including the US, at the 1995 review conference on the NPT.

Washington still formally agrees, but insists that Israel be exempted – and has given no hint of allowing such provisions to apply to itself. The time is not yet ripe for creating the zone, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton stated at the NPT conference, while Washington insisted that no proposal can be accepted that calls for Israel's nuclear program to be placed under the auspices of the IAEA or that calls on signers of the NPT, specifically Washington, to release information about "Israeli nuclear facilities and activities, including information pertaining to previous nuclear transfers to Israel." Obama's technique of evasion is to adopt Israel's position that any such proposal must be conditional on a comprehensive peace settlement, which the US can delay indefinitely, as it has been doing for 35 years, with rare and temporary exceptions.

At the same time, Yukiya Amano, head of the International Atomic Energy Agency, asked foreign ministers of its 151 member states to share views on how to implement a resolution demanding that Israel "accede to" the NPT and throw its nuclear facilities open to IAEA oversight, AP reported.

It is rarely noted that the US and UK have a special responsibility to work to establish a Middle East NWFZ. In attempting to provide a thin legal cover for their invasion of the Iraq in 2003, they appealed to Security Council Resolution 687 (1991), which called on Iraq to terminate its development of weapons of mass destruction. The US and UK claimed that they had not done so. We need not tarry on the excuse, but that Resolution commits its signers to move to establish a NWFZ in the Middle East.

Parenthetically, we may add that US insistence on maintaining nuclear facilities in Diego Garcia undermines the nuclear-free weapons zone (NFWZ) established by the African Union, just as Washington continues to block a Pacific NFWZ by excluding its Pacific dependencies.

Obama's rhetorical commitment to non-proliferation has received much praise, even a Nobel peace prize. One practical step in this direction is establishment of NFWZs. Another is withdrawing support for the nuclear programs of the three non-signers of the NPT. As often, rhetoric and actions are hardly aligned, in fact are in direct contradiction in this case, facts that pass with little attention.

Instead of taking practical steps towards reducing the truly dire threat of nuclear weapons proliferation, the US must take major steps towards reinforcing US control of the vital Middle East oil-producing regions, by violence if other means do not succeed. That is understandable and even reasonable, under prevailing imperial doctrine.

Come November Come Repeal of the Obama health care law

2010-09-23T09:15:00.001Z

Party like it's 1994: GOP to offer plan to reverse Obama

By DAVID LIGHTMAN

McClatchy Newspapers MIAMI HERALD Wednesday, 09.22.10

WASHINGTON -- Republicans in the House of Representatives Thursday plan to offer a blueprint for how they would dramatically change what they term an "arrogant and out of touch government of self-appointed elites" by pledging to repeal the Obama health care law, continue all Bush-era tax cuts and significantly cut spending.

The agenda, scheduled to be unveiled by GOP leaders at a Virginia lumber and hardware store on Thursday, tries to give voters a clear, pointed choice in November. McClatchy obtained a copy Wednesday evening.

The "new governing agenda" quickly draws a stark contrast with the Democrats who now control Congress and the White House, and tries to incorporate much of the conservative anger of the national tea party movement in its sharp, cutting rhetoric and in some of its ideas.

"An unchecked executive, a compliant legislature and an overreaching judiciary have combined to thwart the will of the people and overturn their votes and their values," the Republican document says, "striking down long-standing laws and institutions and scoring the deepest beliefs of the American people.

"An arrogant and out-of-touch government of self-appointed elites makes decisions, issues mandates, and enacts laws without accepting or requesting the input of the many," it adds.

The Republican plan is an effort to gain the same kind of momentum the GOP generated for its House candidates in 1994, when it unveiled the "Contract With America" six weeks before the November election. That contract was credited with helping the GOP regain control of the House for the first time in 40 years.

The agenda also comes at a time when tea party candidates have unseated Republican establishment candidates in several states. Mainstream GOP leaders feel threatened and worry they could lose the general elections to the Democrats because their candidates might seem too extreme.

Democrats quickly scoffed at the plan.

House Majority Leader Steny Hoyer, D-Md., issued a statement that says the plan pledges allegiance to a wide array of special interests, including: "Insurance companies, who we want to put back in charge of health care . . . the wealthiest of the wealthy, who we will protect before the middle class . . . the oil companies, whom we apologized to . . . big corporations, and the jobs they outsource . . . with a recession and huge deficits for all."

The GOP document is similar to its 1994 contract in that it tries to distinguish the two parties sharply. It's being released about six weeks before an election in which Republicans need a net gain of 39 House seats to win control for the first time since the 2006 elections, a goal some independent analysts give the GOP a decent chance of reaching.

The "new governing agenda" is largely a collection of ideas that Republicans have been pushing for the last two years, with virtually no success.

Although it deals mostly with economic and national security issues, its introduction notes that "we pledge to honor families, traditional marriage, life, and the private and faith-based organizations that form the core of our American values." The language was seen as important to conservatives who oppose gay marriage and abortion.

Most of the document deals with the issues that polls say voters care most about, notably the economy.

Foremost is the plan to continue the Bush-era tax cuts. Unless Congress acts by Dec. 31, income tax rates will return to pre-Bush levels; Democrats want to maintain the current rates for everyone except individuals who earn more than $200,000 and joint filers who make more than $250,000.

Democratic leaders have been scrambling to come up with a plan because many party moderates want to keep all the lower rates, at least for awhile. So do the Republicans.

"We will help the economy by permanently stopping all tax increases currently scheduled to take effect Jan. 1, 2011," the blueprint says. The GOP also would allow small business owners to take a tax deduction equal to 20 percent of their business income.

Also on the agenda: Repealing the new law that requires small businesses to report to the Internal Revenue Service any purchase of more than $600. Republicans call the provision "a job-killing small business mandate."

The document also promises big spending cuts, though it offers few specific reductions. "It isn't just we need to stop spending so much," Republicans say. "We need to stop spending so irrationally."

They want to roll back spending to pre-2009 stimulus, pre-2008 bailout levels, which they say will save at least $100 billion in the first year, "with common sense exceptions for seniors, veterans and our troops." The bailout helped rescue ailing financial institutions and was initiated by Obama's Republican predecessor, George W. Bush.

Health care gets its own section, no surprise because Republicans in Congress have been nearly unanimous in their opposition to the Obama overhaul. "Because the new health care law kills jobs, raises taxes and increases the cost of health care, we will immediately take action to repeal this law," the document vows.

Instead, the GOP offers a package that includes many provisions already enacted into law, such as making it illegal to deny anyone coverage on the basis of pre-existing conditions, barring insurers from dropping coverage for anyone who gets sick, and eliminating annual and lifetime spending caps.

On national security, the blueprint pledges an easier path to approving defense spending. This week, defense legislation stalled over provisions to allow gays to serve openly in the military and expand educational opportunities for the children of illegal immigrants. The bill, which sets policy for the military, is unlikely to be considered again until after the election.

"When asked to provide our troops with the resources they need, we will do so without delay," Republicans said.

It also promised to "prevent the government from importing terrorists onto American soil," and insisting "foreign terrorists do not have the same rights as American citizens, nor do they have more rights than U.S. military personnel." Foreign terrorists will be tried in military, not civilian courts, the GOP said.

The Supreme Court granted Guantanamo inmates the right to challenge their detentions. Since then, the Obama administration has decided to try Khalid Sheik Mohammed, the highest-ranking al-Qaida figure captured thus far, in federal district court in Manhattan.

After a political outcry, the administration put the plan on hold. The government still plans to try some terrorism suspects in federal court, and others before military commissions. Defendants in federal court have greater constitutional rights than those tried in military tribunals, such as the right to remain free from unreasonable search and seizure.

Obama Appoints Warren to Set Up Consumer Protection Bureau

President Obama announced the appointment of Elizabeth Warren as Assistant to the President and Special Advisor to the Secretary of the Treasury on the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau on Friday.

The President signed the Wall Street Reform and Consumer Protection Act, which creates an independent Consumer Financial Protection Bureau. Warren will play the lead role in setting up the Bureau and ensuring it is as effective as possible.

"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will crack down on the abusive practices of unscrupulous mortgage lenders, reinforce the new credit card law we passed banning unfair rate hikes, and ensure that folks aren't unwittingly caught by overdraft fees when they sign up for a checking account," said President Obama.

"The Consumer Financial Protection Bureau will be a watchdog for the American consumer, charged with enforcing the toughest financial protections in history. I am very grateful that Elizabeth has agreed to serve in this important role of getting the Consumer Financial Bureau up and running and making it as effective as possible."

Secretary Geithner said, "Professor Warren has been a pioneer on the issues before the Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, and she will now help lead the effort to stand up the agency. We are grateful for her willingness to serve and know she will be a tremendous asset to us all as we take on the task at hand."

"I am very pleased that the President agreed with those of us who pushed hard for Elizabeth Warren to be appointed. I look forward to working with her in her new position and to making sure that American consumers get the full benefit of the law we recently passed."

House Financial Services Committee Chairman Barney Frank, one of the architects of the bill that created the Bureau said, "I am very pleased that the President agreed with those of us who pushed hard for Elizabeth Warren to be appointed. I look forward to working with her in her new position and to making sure that American consumers get the full benefit of the law we recently passed."

The bureau is required to conduct a study on reverse mortgages to determine any deceptive practices and figure out whether suitability standards are necessary. It will also determine whether additional safeguards are needed to protect consumers from being sold reverse mortgages to fund inappropriate annuities, investments, and other financial products.

CIA-funded and equipped GOOGLE GLADIO!!!!

2010-09-20T18:00:00.001Z

NATO's Secret Armies

September 15th, 2010

by Stephen Lendman

In his book, "NATO's Secret Armies: Operation GLADIO and Terrorism in Western Europe," Daniele Ganser described their clandestine Cold War operations, run by European secret services, collaborating with NATO, the CIA and Britain's MI6 and Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) against a possible Soviet invasion, internal communist takeovers, or others on the political left gaining power.

The network included France, Germany, Belgium, Norway, Denmark, Netherlands, Italy, Spain, Portugal, Turkey, Greece, Luxemburg, as well as politically neutral European countries - Austria, Finland, Sweden and Switzerland.

Named "Gladio" (Latin for double-edged sword), NATO's armies remained secret until August 1990, when then Prime Minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed Italy's participation in testimony before a Senate subcommittee investigating terrorism, General Vito Miceli, former Italian military secret service director, saying in protest:

"I have gone to prison because I did not want to reveal the existence of this super secret organization. And now Andreotti....tells....parliament!"

According to a 1959 Italian military secret service document, "these armies had a two-fold strategic purpose: firstly, to operate as a so-called 'stay-behind' group in the case of a Soviet invasion and to carry out a guerrilla war in occupied territories; secondly, to carry out domestic operations in case of 'emergency situations.' "

In Italy, against both communist and socialist parties, it was claimed they wanted to weaken NATO "from within," Italian judge, Felice Casson, learning that right-wing terrorists carried out bombings against civilians, blamed them on the left, neo-fascist Vincenzo Vinciguerra explaining the scheme as follows:

"The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened."

In 2000, the Italian Senate was more explicit, saying:

"Those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organized or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as had been discovered more recently, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence," meaning CIA mainly.

Former director William Colby admitted in his memoirs that covert western armies were a major CIA initiative, begun post-WW II, and restricted "to the smallest possible coterie of the most reliable people, in Washington (and) NATO" to keep the initiative secret.

Yet once its existence was confirmed, the EU parliament drafted a sharply critical resolution saying:

"These organisations (sic) operated and continue to operate completely outside the law since they are not subject to any parliamentary control....call(ing) for a full investigation into the nature, structure, aims and all other aspects of these clandestine organisations."

Only Italy, Belgium and Switzerland did them, the GHW Bush administration not commenting when it was preparing for war against Iraq, fearing it might harm its alliance.

Gladio, however, was real, designed like Winston Churchill's British Special Operations Executive (SOE) - to help anti-Nazi resistance forces carry out insurgencies in occupied territories. After NATO's 1949 creation, the so-called Clandestine Committee of the Western Union (CCWU) was secretly integrated into its operations, by 1951 called the Clandestine Planning Committee (CPC).

Then in 1957, a second secret army called Allied Clandestine Committee (ACC) was established by NATO's Supreme Allied Commander in Europe (SACEUR), giving America overall command and control. It relyied heavily on dedicated anti-communists, largely from the political right, including former Nazis and like-minded terrorists, operatives to weaken the political left and neutralize and defeat Soviet Russia, ostensibly in case of invasion, the chance for which was practically nil.

Italy's Secret Army

In researching right-wing terrorism, Judge Felice Casson discovered them, their link to the political right, and examples of their lawlessness. One instance was in 1972 when a car bomb killed three Carabinieri, Italy's parliamentary police, wrongly blamed on the Red Brigades like for other attacks carried out by extremist anti-communist groups, blamed on the left.

Right wing terrorist Vincenzo Vinciguerra was later charged with the Carabinieri killings, explaining at his 1984 trial that Italy's security apparatus supported his crimes, saying:

"There exists in Italy a secret force parallel to the armed forces, composed of civilians and military men, in an anti-Soviet capacity; that is, to organize a resistance on Italian soil against a Russian army."

In fact, he revealed Gladio and its link to terrorism without naming it, calling it "a secret organization, a super-organization with a network of communications, arms, and explosives, and men trained to use them."

A 2000 parliamentary investigation concluded that operatives "linked to the structures of United States intelligence" were involved in bombings, massacres, and other terrorist attacks as part of a campaign against the political left. In 2001, General Giandelio Maletti, former Italian counterintelligence head, confirmed CIA's involvement to "do anything to stop Italy from sliding to the left."

Turkey's Secret Armies

During the Cold War, Turkey guarded a third of NATO's borders with Warsaw Pact countries. Its "Counter-Guerrilla" secret army carried out some of the most sensitive missions, under the command of Turkish special forces to "organize resistance in case of a communist occupation."

According to then Turkish army commander, General Semih Sancar, America financed it, committing terror attacks against the political left, one of many occurring in 1977 in Taskim Square, Istanbul. During a mass May 1 (May Day) trade union rally, snipers on surrounding buildings killed 38 attendees, injuring hundreds more during a 20 minute rampage. Several thousand police on hand did nothing to intervene.

"Counter-Guerrilla" also engaged in torture, survivors later explaining their ordeal. Some became outspoken critics, but never got authorities to investigate their ordeal or expose other crimes.

Spain's Secret Armies

From his Spanish Civil War victory until his 1975 death, Francisco Franco's fascist dictatorship ruled Spain, his government the embodiment of Gladio, according to early 1980s prime minister Calvo Sotelo.

In his book titled,

"Gladio," its 1971 - 74 Italian commander, Gerardo Serravalle, explained that Franco tried to establish contacts with NATO's secret army long before Spain became an official NATO member in 1982. However, its secret service wasn't interested in a stay-behind function, but wanted a tool for internal control to neutralizes leftist elements.

Portugal's Secret Armies

Gladio was active in Portugal, the nation's press telling a national audience in 1990 about "a secret network, erected at the bosom of NATO....financed by the CIA" in the 1960s and 1970s. It was called 'Aginter Press,' " involved in assassinations and other terrorist acts, internally and in Portugal's African colonies.

A later Italian Senate inquiry learned that Yves Guerin-Serac, a French secret warfare specialist, directed Aginter Press. In November 1990, Portuguese defense minister Fernando Nogueira insisted he knew nothing about it, saying no "information whatsoever (existed) concerning (any form of) Gladio structure in Portugal."

Italians had to confirm it, including Judge Guido Salvini saying it conducted secret military operations during the Cold War to defend "the Western world against a probable and imminent invasion of Europe by the troops of the Soviet Union and the other communist countries."

In fact, like other Gladio operations, it waged global war against the political left, killing thousands to defend privilege against beneficial social change, what remains ongoing today, America its leading exponent.

Greece's Secret Armies

In late 1944, Winston Churchill ordered a secret Greek army created to prevent leftists from gaining power, called by various names, including the Greek Mountain Brigade, the Hellenic Raiding Force, or Lochos Oreinon Katadromon (LOK). Field Marshall Alexander Papagos excluded "almost all men with views ranging from moderately conservative to left wing," assuring its members would be exclusively hard right anti-communists.

In 1952, Greece joined NATO and was fully integrated into its stay-behind network, the CIA and LOK reconfirming their mutual cooperation in a secret March 25, 1955 document, British journalist, Peter Murtagh, later learning that:

"The Raiding Force doubled as the Greek arm of the clandestine pan-European guerrilla network set up in the 1950s by NATO and the CIA which was controlled (in) Brussels by the Allied Coordination Committee." It was a stay-behind force against a possible "Soviet invasion of Europe. It would co-ordinate guerrilla activities between Soviet occupied countries and liaise with governments in exile."

According to former CIA agent Philip Agee, it also served as "a nucleus for rallying a citizen army against the threat of a leftist coup," each of several groups "capable of mobilizing and carrying on guerrilla warfare with minimal or no outside direction."

Agree also explained that "Paramilitary groups, directed by CIA officers, operated in the sixties throughout Europe," stressing that "perhaps no activity of the CIA could be as clearly linked to the possibility of internal subversion."

Evidence points to LOK's involvement in the Greek April 20, 1967 coup, one month before national elections likely to have overwhelmingly elected the left-leaning George and Andreas Papandreou's Center Union. Under NATO's Prometheus plan, LOK took over the Defense Ministry. Tanks rolled through Athens, and rightist forces took control of communications centers, parliament, and the royal palace, arresting over 10,000. Many were later tortured and killed.

In 1990, the socialist opposition wanted a parliamentary investigation, denied by public order minister Yannis Vassiliadis, saying there was no need to examine such "fantasies," meaning what happened was justified.

France's Secret Armies

Fearing a communist takeover, it was established post-WW II, socialist interior minister Edouard Depreux explained in June 1947 that:

"Toward the end of 1946, we got to know of the existence of a black resistance network (a secret army), made up of resistance fighters of the extreme right, Vichy collaborators and monarchists. They had a secret attack plan called 'Plan Bleu,' which should have come into action either towards the end of July or on August 6, (1947)."

Though public outrage closed it down, the military secret service (Service de Documentation Exterieure et de Contre-Espionnage - SDECE) under Henri Alexis Ribiere set up another, again fearing a Soviet invasion, more likely to prevent leftists from gaining power.

In the early 1960s, it saw the de Gaulle government as a threat like the communists, inciting some in the stay-behind network to initiate "terrorist actions" against his Algerian peace plan, later confirmed in 1990 by then French military secret service Admiral Pierre Lacoste. Even so, he felt the stay-behind network was justified, no matter its hard right militancy.

During his presidency (from 1981 - 1995), President Francois Mitterrand distanced himself from the initiative, saying in 1990:

"When I arrived, I didn't have much left to dissolve. There only remained a few remnants, of which I learned the existence with some surprise because everyone had forgotten about them."

Italian Prime Minister Giulo Andreotti, however, wasn't pleased by how Mitterrand dismissed France's involvement, saying that far from being shut down, France's secret army participated in a secret October 24, 1990 ACC meeting in Brussels. Mitterrand refused to comment.

Germany's Secret Armies

In 1990, when learning about Germany's secret army, socialist parliamentarian Hermann Scheer called for an investigation at the highest levels saying:

"....the existence of an armed military secret organization outside all governmental or parliamentary control is incompatible with the constitutional legality, and therefore must be prosecuted (under) criminal law."

Later he stepped back after learning that socialists knew and suppressed it. At the same time, press reports claimed right-wing extremists, including former Nazis, were part of a secret army called Organisation Gehlen (ORG, later changed to BND), named for WW II General Reinhard Gehlen, head of Eastern Front intelligence. He was later recruited by America to establish an anti-Soviet spy ring, and by West Germany to head its intelligence.

According to a former NATO intelligence official, "Gehlen was the spiritual father of Stay Behind in Germany....his role known to the West German leader Konrad Adenauer from the outset."

On September 9, 1952, former SS officer Hans Otto told Frankfort police that he "belong(ed) to a political resistance group, the task of which was to carry out sabotage activities and blow up bridges in case of a Soviet invasion," adding that while "neo-fascist tendencies were not required, most members" had them. In addition, financing was "provided by an American citizen (named) Sterling Garwood."

Otto said the initiative was code-named Technischer Dienst des Bundes Deutscher Jugend (TD BDJ), commanded by Erhard Peters, and financed by the CIA. It had a blacklist of leftists to be assassinated in case of an emergency, perhaps manufactured ones to do it anyway.

Though officials like August Zinn, Hessen state Prime Minister, were outraged and wanted members investigated, the highest Karlsruhe court, Bundesgerichshof (BGH), ordered all TD BDJ members released, Zinn believing "The only legal (reason was that) they acted (in response to) America('s) direction."

Austria's Secret Armies

In 1947, Austria's first secret army became known when a right-wing stay-behind network was discovered. The so-called Soucek-Rossner conspiracy resulted in a number of arrests, Soucek and Rossner testifying that they had recruited and trained right-wing partisans to prepare for a Soviet invasion, insisting Washington and Britain had full knowledge and approved. Nonetheless, both men were convicted and sentenced to death in 1949, yet were mysteriously pardoned by Chancellor Theodor Korner, perhaps following CIA orders.

Thereafter, senior Austrian officials approved of a stay-behind army and began cooperating with the CIA and MI6. Franz Olah set one up, code-named Osterreichischer Wander-Sport-und Geselligkeitsverein (OWSGV), later saying "special units were trained in the use of weapons and plastic explosives." His prime motive was to prevent a leftist takeover, explaining:

"It wasn't our intention to fight communism in the Soviet Union but to fight against" internal leftist elements. "We took weapons. We also had modern plastic explosives that were easy to handle. I had a small arsenal of weapons in my office. There must have been a couple of thousand people working for us....Only very, very highly positioned politicians and some members of the union knew about it."

In 1996, the Boston Globe revealed the existence of secret CIA arms caches in Austria, President Thomas Klestil and Chancellor Franz Vranistzky insisting they knew nothing about it or the existence of a secret army.

Clinton's State Department spokesman, Nicholas Burns, called their aim "noble," admitting that similar networks operated in other European countries. In August 2001, GW Bush appointed Burns US Permanent Representative to NATO, where he headed the combined State-Defense Department US Mission and coordinated NATO's response to the 9/11 attacks.

Switzerland's Secret Armies

Despite its neutrality, a 1990 parliamentary investigation revealed a secret stay-behind army, code-named Special Service, then P26, operating within the Swiss military secret service Untergruppe Nachrichtendienst und Abwehr (UNA), during most of the Cold War.

Yet Switzerland experienced no terrorist attacks or coup threats throughout the period, so why the need for extremism. Parliamentary commission Senator Carlo Schmid said he "was shocked that something like this" went on, calling it "conspiratorial....like a black shadow."

A judicial investigation, headed by Judge Pierre Cornu, was charged to learn if Swiss neutrality was violated. Evidence confirmed that P26 cooperated closely with Britain's MI6 and other UK intelligence, concluding, however, that no Swiss laws were broken, whether or not true.

Belgium's Secret Armies

On November 7, 1990, socialist defense minister Guy Coeme told a national TV audience that a NATO-linked secret army operated covertly throughout the Cold War, adding:

"I want to know whether there exists a link between the activities of this secret network, and the wave of crime and terror which our country suffered from during the past years."

A parliamentary investigation followed, Belgium's Senate confirming that its secret army consisted of two branches, called SDRA8 and STC/Mob, the former a military unit within Belgium's military secret Service General du Renseignement (SGR) under the Defense Ministry. Its members were trained in unorthodox warfare, combat, sabotage, parachute jumping, and maritime operations.

STC/Mob was part of the civilian secret service - Surete de L'Etat (Surete), under the ministry of justice. Its members were technicians, trained in radio operations and intelligence gathering under enemy occupation conditions.

While senators obtained good information on the stay-behind armies' structure, they learned little about their involvement in terrorist operations, including so-called Brabant massacres from 1983 - 85, killing 28 and injuring many more. Despite exerting enormous pressure, they never got names of key operatives or who carried out the Brabant terror.

Netherlands' Secret Armies

Like Belgium, it had two branches, one called Operations (O for short), directed by Louis Einthoven, a staunch anti-communist, to carry out sabotage, guerrilla operations, and building a local resistance. The other was called Intelligence (or I), established post-WW II by JM Somer, but led by JJL Baron van Lynden, responsible for intelligence gathering and dissemination to those with a need to know.

Dutch parliamentarians weren't happy about keeping them out of the loop, but never ordered investigations into what clearly was an abuse of power.

Luxemburg's Secret Armies

On November 14, 1990, Luxemburg's Prime Minister Jacaques Santer told his parliament:

"all NATO countries in central Europe have taken part in these preparations, and Luxemburg could not have escaped this international solidarity," explaining that the Service de Renseignements (its secret service) ran the network in peacetime, but wasn't linked to terrorism or other abuses of power.

Denmark's Secret Armies

Code-named Absalon, EJ Harder led it, an unnamed network member explaining:

"There were twelve districts, structured according to the cell principle, but not as tightly organized as during the War."

Also, there were no alleged terrorist links, yet another member said its mission was to act in case of a Soviet invasion as well as prevent leftists from gaining power, both called "a clear and present danger."

As in other countries, operations were secret. Its members were "ninety-five per cent....military, conservative, and staunchly anti-communist.

Norway's Secret Armies

After European secret armies became known in 1990, journalists asked Norway's Defense Ministry for an explanation, its spokesman, Erik Senstad, saying only that they were essential to the country's security.

Code-named Rocambole (ROC), it was run by Norway's secret service (NIS), its "philosophy....based on the lessons learned during the German occupation," to prepare for a potential future one, and like elsewhere to prevent leftists from gaining power. "Cooperation with the CIA, MI6, and NATO was intense," but not without controversy, one example being NATO ordering intelligence conducted on anti-NATO Norwegians with strong pacifist convictions.

Clearly, Norway's sovereignty was breached, enough to get Brigadier Simon, chief of NATO's Special Projects Branch, to apologize and promise to end to these type operations.

Sweden's Secret Armies

Sweden's Sakerhetspolis (SAPO), its security police, helped recruit it, working with Britain's MI6 "to learn how to use dead letter box techniques to receive and send secret messages," as well as intelligence gathering and ways to deal with emergency situations.

Swedish officials never provided details, denied any link to NATO or CIA, but the Agency's operative, Paul Garbler, explained that Sweden was a "direct participant" in the network, adding: "I'm not able to talk about it without causing the Swedes a good deal of heartburn," clearly suggesting disturbing abuses of power, possibly including the 1986 assassination of Prime Minister Olof Palme, a staunch anti-nuclear proponent, wanting Scandinavia freed from nuclear weapons.

Finland's Secret Armies

As the only Western European country invaded by the Soviet Union during the so-called Winter War (November 30, 1939 - March 13, 1940), Finland lost 20% of its forces and 16,000 square miles of territory. It's why Finns sided with the Nazis, to regain its land and prevent this happening again.

During the Cold War, Finland's border with Soviet Russia was guarded by fences, land mines, and regular patrols. Also, a secret Western-linked resistance organization existed, made up largely of retired Finnish army officers - armed, trained, CIA-funded and equipped, and ready to respond in case history repeated. "Secrecy was extremely tight," no one talking about what they did or why. Even Finland's government was kept out of the loop.

A Final Comment

Until made public in 1990, Western Europe's secret armies remained a closely held secret - to defend capitalism against communism and the political left, individual countries having discretion on their operations, some mainly or entirely stay-behind, others involved with terrorism.

The former group included Denmark, Finland, Norway, Luxemburg, Switzerland, Austria, and the Netherlands. In contrast, Italy, Turkey, Germany, France, Spain, Portugal, Belgium, and Sweden actively engaged in terrorism, including against their own citizens to hype fear.

America, to this day, is the world's leading state-sponsored terrorism exponent, at home and abroad. CIA, FBI, and Homeland Security operatives are in the lead, putting a myth to their abiding by the rule of law or a nation espousing democratic freedoms, human rights, civil liberties, and equal justice, what only an aroused public can stop if awakened to the danger and acts.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Anti-Masturbation Candidate

2010-09-17T17:08:00.001Z

Anti-Masturbation Candidate Christine O'Donnell Wins Republican Senate Primary in Delaware

The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust.

My name is Christine O'Donnell. I am the President and Founder of The S.A.L.T. The S.A.L.T. stands for "The Savior's Alliance For Lifting The Truth." We choose sexual purity in our lives. We have God-given sexual desires and we need to understand them and preserve them to be used in God's appropriate context. Our members are committed to be role models, committed to be the salt of the earth … We need to address sexuality with young people and masturbation is part of sexuality but it is important to discuss this from a moral point of view …

Hot-button political issue: Solo sex

Suddenly, it's an intriguing time to disapprove of masturbation.

In one of the stranger twists of the political season, comments made more than a decade ago by Christine O'Donnell, the Tea Party candidate who shook the political world earlier this week by winning the Republican nomination for U.S. Senate in Delaware, have turned masturbation into a campaign issue bound to divide voters, enthrall the immature and offend the prudish.

In a 1996 interview on MTV, O'Donnell, then head of an abstinence group called the Savior's Alliance for Lifting the Truth, said: "The Bible says that lust in your heart is committing adultery. So you can't masturbate without lust."

Whether O'Donnell still holds that view today is unclear. The candidate said Thursday that she made her comments when she was "in my 20s and very excited and passionate about my newfound faith."

sarah palin

She also said her "personal beliefs" would not affect her policy decisions as a senator.

O'Donnell's youthful comments swiftly earned her the title of "the anti-masturbation candidate," and a good bit of mockery.

Stephen Colbert, on "The Colbert Report," suggested that masturbation enthusiasts should marry their hands, while film critic Roger Ebert sent the following tweet: "If Christine O'Donnell is correct and masturbation equals adultery, who is the plaintiff?"

Dennis Martin, a theology professor at Loyola University, said widespread ridicule of O'Donnell's stance shows how dramatically the country's views on sexuality have changed.

"She is articulating a position that is a characteristic of Christianity, that was characteristic of practically everyone until a few decades ago," Martin said. "The fact that most people think it's a laughable position, that's a relatively new view."

Furthermore, Martin said, it's unfair to characterize O'Donnell's viewpoint as extreme.

"From a Catholic perspective, masturbation is a violation of the spousal love," he said. "It really makes sense that marriage is for two people and sex is something that is part of a deep intimate bond between two people, and it's also procreative. And masturbation goes against both those things."

O'Donnell, in an interview with David Weigel of Slate before the primary election, pointed out the risk her opponent, Mike Castle, faced in bringing up her pro-abstinence message: "That's a good way of insulting his Christian base, don't you think?"

Indeed, in 1975, Pope Paul VI wrote of masturbation: "Even if it cannot be proved that Scripture condemns this sin by name, the tradition of the Church has rightly understood it to be condemned in the New Testament when the latter speaks of 'impurity,' 'unchasteness' and other vices contrary to chastity and continence."

In the secular world, however, this solo sex act is met with considerably less derision.

Richard Carroll, director of the Sex and Marital Therapy Program at the Northwestern Medical Faculty Foundation, said, presumably to the delight of many, "Masturbation is normal."

"It's a perfectly normal human sexual behavior," he said. "Surveys show that two-thirds of men regularly masturbate, and about 60 percent of women regularly masturbate as well. Plenty of people use masturbation as an entirely appropriate sexual outlet."

He said he frequently counsels people who have been made to feel ashamed of their sexual impulses.

"Anyone who's trying to turn normal, healthy sexual behavior into a pathology or a sin, that doesn't serve society very well," Carroll said. "It might further their political aims, but it certainly doesn't help individuals."

Still, it's a dicey topic. In 1994, Surgeon General Joycelyn Elders suggested that masturbation be taught as a means of preventing riskier sexual activity. She was forced to resign later that year.

Craig Gross, pastor of XXXchurch, an online ministry that deals with pornography and sexual addiction, was talking masturbation earlier this week with legendary porn star Ron Jeremy at a debate at Sonoma State University in California.

"It's just so foreign to people to hear, 'Hey, don't masturbate,'" Gross said. "But if you have lust in your eyes, you've committed adultery in your heart."

To encourage people to talk about "the 'M' word," Gross started "Operation: Save the Kittens," encouraging his followers to spread the word that, "Every time you masturbate ? God kills a kitten!"

The XXXchurch Web site poses the question, "Does God really kill kittens?" The answer: "You would have to talk to Bible scholars about that, but we don't think he does. It's just a great way to think about this issue in a non-threatening way."

Non-threatening unless, of course, you're a kitten. Or a person who masturbates.

rhuppke@tribune.com