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Pentagon Sees a Threat From Online Muckrakers

By STEPHANIE STROM | New York Times | March 17, 2010

To the list of the enemies threatening the security of the United States, the Pentagon has added WikiLeaks.org, a tiny online source of information and documents that governments and corporations around the world would prefer to keep secret.

The Pentagon assessed the danger WikiLeaks.org posed to the Army in a report marked “unauthorized disclosure subject to criminal sanctions.” It concluded that “WikiLeaks.org represents a potential force protection, counterintelligence, OPSEC and INFOSEC threat to the U.S. Army” — or, in plain English, a threat to Army operations and information.

WikiLeaks, true to its mission to publish materials that expose secrets of all kinds, published the 2008 Pentagon report about itself on Monday.

Lt. Col. Lee Packnett, an Army spokesman, confirmed that the report was real. Julian Assange, the editor of WikiLeaks, said the concerns the report raised were hypothetical.

“It did not point to anything that has actually happened as a result of the release,” Mr. Assange said. “It contains the analyst’s best guesses as to how the information could be used to harm the Army but no concrete examples of any real harm being done.”

WikiLeaks, a nonprofit organization, has rankled governments and companies around the world with its publication of materials intended to be kept secret. For instance, the Army’s report says that in 2008, access to the Web site in the United States was cut off by court order after Bank Julius Baer, a Swiss financial institution, sued it for publishing documents implicating Baer in money laundering, grand larceny and tax evasion. Access was restored after two weeks, when the bank dropped its case.

Governments, including those of North Korea and Thailand, also have tried to prevent access to the site and complained about its release of materials critical of their governments and policies.

The Army’s interest in WikiLeaks appears to have been spurred by, among other things, its publication and analysis of classified and unclassified Army documents containing information about military equipment, units, operations and “nearly the entire order of battle” for American forces in Iraq and Afghanistan in April 2007.

WikiLeaks also published an outdated, unclassified copy of the “standard operating procedures” at the military prison in Guantánamo Bay, Cuba. WikiLeaks said the document revealed methods by which the military prevented prisoners from meeting with the International Red Cross and the use of “extreme psychological stress” as a means of torture.

The Army’s report on WikiLeaks does not say whether WikiLeaks’ analysis of that document was accurate. It does charge that some of WikiLeaks’s other interpretation of information is flawed but does not say specifically in what way.

The report also airs the Pentagon’s concern over some 2,000 pages of documents WikiLeaks released on equipment used by coalition forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The Pentagon concluded that such information could be used by foreign intelligence services, terrorist groups and others to identify vulnerabilities, plan attacks and build new devices.

WikiLeaks, which won Amnesty International’s new media award in 2009, almost closed this year because it was broke and still operates at less than its full capacity. It relies on donations from humans rights groups, journalists, technology buffs and individuals, and Mr. Assange said it had raised just two-thirds of the $600,000 needed for its budget this year and thus was not publishing everything it had.

Perhaps the most amusing aspect of the Army’s report, to Mr. Assange, was its speculation that WikiLeaks is supported by the Central Intelligence Agency. “I only wish they would step forward with a check if that’s the case,” he said.

March 18, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

American naifs bringing ruin to other lands

By Paul Craig Roberts | Online Journal | March 18, 2010

According to news reports, the U.S. military is shipping “bunker-buster” bombs to the U.S. Air Force base at Diego Garcia in the Indian Ocean. The Herald Scotland reports that experts say the bombs are being assembled for an attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

The newspaper quotes Dan Piesch, director of the Centre for International Studies and Diplomacy at the University of London: “They are gearing up totally for the destruction of Iran.”

The next step will be a staged “terrorist attack,” a “false flag” operation as per Operation Northwoods, for which Iran will be blamed. As Iran and its leadership have already been demonized, the “false flag” attack will suffice to obtain US and European public support for bombing Iran. The bombing will include more than the nuclear facilities and will continue until the Iranians agree to regime change and the installation of a puppet government. The corrupt American media will present the new puppet as “freedom and democracy.”

If the past is a guide, Americans will fall for the deception. In the February issue of the American Behavioral Scientist, a scholarly journal, Professor Lance DeHaven-Smith writes that state crimes against democracy (SCAD) involve government officials, often in combination with private interests, that engage in covert activities in order to implement an agenda. Examples include McCarthyism or the fabrication of evidence of communist infiltration, the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution based on false claims of President Johnson and Pentagon chief McNamara that North Vietnam attacked a U.S. naval vessel, the burglary of the office of Daniel Ellsberg’s psychiatrist in order to discredit Ellsberg (the Pentagon Papers) as “disturbed,” and the falsified “intelligence” that Iraq possessed weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the U.S. invasion of Iraq.

There are many other examples. I have always regarded the 1995 bombing of the Murrah Federal Office Building in Oklahoma City as a SCAD. Allegedly, a disturbed Tim McVeigh used a fertilizer bomb in a truck parked outside the building. More likely, McVeigh was a patsy, whose fertilizer bomb was a cover for explosives planted inside the building.

A number of experts dismissed the possibility of McVeigh’s bomb producing such structural damage. For example, General Benton K. Partin, who was in charge of U.S. Air Force munitions design and testing, produced a thick report on the Murrah building bombing which concluded that the building blew up from the inside out. Gen. Partin concluded that “the pattern of damage would have been technically impossible without supplementary demolition charges at some of the reinforced concrete bases inside the building, a standard demolition technique. For a simplistic blast truck bomb, of the size and composition reported, to be able to reach out on the order of 60 feet and collapse a reinforced column base the size of column A7 is beyond credulity.”

Gen. Partin dismissed the official report as “a massive cover-up of immense proportions.”

Of course, the general’s unquestionable expertise had no bearing on the outcome. One reason is that his and other expert voices were drowned out by media pumping the official story. Another reason is that public beliefs in a democracy run counter to suspicion of government as a terrorist agent. Professor Laurie Manwell of the University of Guelph says that “false flag” operations have the advantage over truth: “research shows that people are far less willing to examine information that disputes, rather than confirms, their beliefs.” Professor Steven Hoffman agrees: “Our data shows substantial support for a cognitive theory known as ‘motivated reasoning,’ which suggests that rather than search rationally for information that either confirms or dis-confirms a particular belief, people actually seek out information that confirms what they already believe. In fact, for the most part people completely ignore contrary information.” Even when hard evidence turns up, it can be discredited as a “conspiracy theory.”

All that is necessary for success of “false flag” or “black ops” events is for the government to have its story ready and to have a reliable and compliant media. Once an official story is in place, thought and investigation are precluded. Any formal inquiry that is convened serves to buttress the already provided explanation.

An explanation ready-at-hand is almost a give-away that an incident is a “black ops” event. Notice how quickly the U.S. government, allegedly so totally deceived by al Qaida, provided the explanation for 9/11. When President Kennedy was assassinated, the government produced the culprit immediately. The alleged culprit was conveniently shot inside a jail by a civilian before he could be questioned [in an open courtroom]. But the official story was ready, and it held.

Professors Manwell and Hoffman’s research resonates with me. I remember reading in my graduate studies that the Czarist secret police set off bombs in order to create excuses to arrest their targets. My inclination was to dismiss the accounts as anti-Czarist propaganda by pro-communist historians. It was only later when Robert Conquest confirmed to me that this was indeed the practice of the Czarist secret police that the scales fell from my eyes.

Former CIA official Philip Giraldi in his article, “The Rogue Nation,” makes it clear that the U.S. government has a hegemonic agenda that it is pursuing without congressional or public awareness. The agenda unfolds piecemeal as a response to “terrorism,” and the big picture is not understood by the public or by most in Congress. Giraldi protests that the agenda is illegal under both U.S. and international law, but that the illegality of the agenda does not serve as a barrier. Only a naif could believe that such a government would not employ “false flag” operations that advance the agenda.

The U.S. population, it seems, is comprised of naifs whose lack of comprehension is bringing ruin to other lands.

Dr. Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C.

Copyright © 1998-2007 Online Journal

March 18, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism, War Crimes | Leave a comment

AP photojournalist injured in Hebron

Ma’an – 18/03/2010

Hebron – An photojournalist sustained injuries to his back after being struck by a tear-gas canister on Wednesday during clashes between Palestinians and Israeli forces.

Nasser Shiyoukhi, a photographer for The Associated Press, was critically injured, witnesses said. A Palestine Red Crescent ambulance reportedly transferred the journalist to a nearby hospital, although it was not immediately clear which one.

Shiyoukhi was among several photojournalists covering ongoing confrontations around the Tarek Bin Ziab street in southern Hebron when he was struck by the projectile.

An Israeli military spokesman told Ma’an that a photojournalist was lightly injured during a riot. Palestinians in the area hurled rocks at Israeli forces, who responded with riot dispersal means, the spokesman said. He added that, in the Israeli army’s view, all journalists and others covering violent events do so at their own risk.

Shiyoukhi was arrested near the Ibrahimi Mosque in late February over allegations he assaulted a settler in Hebron two months earlier, a move that drew the ire of local media advocates.

The Palestinian Center for Development and Media Freedoms (MADA) strongly condemned what it termed Israeli attacks against a group of journalists in the West Bank and Jerusalem in recent days.

March 18, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance | Leave a comment

Obama slams Palestinian protests, rejects Israeli row

Press TV – March 18, 2010

US President Barack Obama condemns Palestinian protests in Jerusalem al-Quds over Israeli provocations near al-Aqsa Mosque as ‘destructive to peace’ while downplaying the reported row with the Israeli regime over Tel Aviv’s continued settlement expansions, denying reports that US-Israeli ties are in a state of crisis.

In a quick turn of face, under reportedly intense pressure from the wealthy Israel lobby in the US, Obama, whose top administration officials described Israeli settlement expansion plans as ‘insulting and destructive to peace efforts,’ rejected tensions with Tel Aviv as ‘friendly disagreements’ and, instead, denounced the Palestinians for reacting against intimidating Israeli moves to Judaize al-Quds.

“Friends are going to disagree sometimes,” said Obama Wednesday in his first official reference to Tel Aviv’s plans to erect 1,600 new settlement units near East al-Quds, in violation of the regime’s past commitments to freeze settlement expansion.

“Israel’s one of our closest allies, and we and the Israeli people have a special bond that’s not going to go away,” Obama reiterated in a rare interview with ultra-conservative Fox News Channel, a prime critic of the Obama Administration.

Last week, Israeli Interior Minister Yishai announced Tel Aviv’s green light for the settlement expansion plan while US Vice President Joe Biden toured Israel to supposedly facilitate indirect “proximity talks” between Palestinians and the Tel Aviv regime.

“The actions that were taken by the interior minister in Israel weren’t helpful to that process,” said Obama.

“There is a disagreement in terms of how we can move this peace process forward, and obviously, when I sent Vice President Biden there it was at a moment where we were trying to restart talks between the Palestinians and the Israelis.”

The Israeli decision led to a series of criticisms from US officials who described the move by the Tel Aviv regime as offensive, cautioning that the expansions could derail the peace process.

However, critics took the row with some skepticism arguing that it was intended to avert international attention from Israeli “Judiazation” of East al-Quds which hosts a number of major Islamic sanctities, including the al-Aqsa Mosque.

Some 50 Palestinians were wounded on Tuesday, dubbed by Hamas as Palestine’s day of rage, as thousands of protesters poured into streets across al-Quds to condemn Tel Aviv’s falsification of history and efforts to take away the city’s Palestinian and Islamic identity.

Meanwhile on Tuesday, top US commander Gen. David Petraeus described the Arab-Israeli conflict as one of the “root causes of instability” and “obstacle to security” in the Middle East, warning that it would further the anti-American sentiments in the region and limit America’s strategic partnerships with Arab governments.

“Arab anger over the Palestinian question limits the strength and depth of US partnerships with governments and peoples in the [Middle East] and weakens the legitimacy of moderate regimes in the Arab world,” he said in a written testimony.

March 18, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite | 1 Comment

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