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Centrist Central: How Stewart and Colbert are Selling the Neocon Agenda to the Left

By Scott Creighton | American Everyman | September 25, 2010

I just have to ask, is there anything, anything, that billionaire Sumner Redstone’s progressive propaganda tag-team of Jon Stewart & Steven Colbert won’t do to help turn the supposed left 180 degrees from positions they held during the previous administration?

I have written several times about Jon Stewart and Steven Colbert turning into blatant propagandists since the Chosen One took office.

For example: there’s the time Jon Stewart played the MEMRI TV video demonizing Palestinians, Steven Colbert’s recent revolting sucking-up to globalist Joe Biden, there was Stewart’s story about the South Park episode psyop involving Revolution Muslim which turns out to be run by a “converted” jewish ex-settler from the West Bank, Steven’s sycophantic groveling and rebranding the Afghan occupation just after Obama took office, and then of course Stewart’s ambushing of Rod Blagojevich which I thought was a pretty funny position for a “progressive” to take after he practically gave back rubs and “happy endings” to each and every neocon that has come on his set to pimp their new books or try to re-brand themselves as anything but the war criminals they are. That list includes but is not limited to Bill Kristol, Ari Fleischer, John Bolton, Douglas Feith, Thomas Friedman, Tom Ridge, and John Yoo. Each and every one of the previously named neocons and or war criminals, Jon Stewart treated with more respect than he did Rod Blagojevich who’s only crime was to threaten Bank of America if they didn’t live up to the conditions of the banker bailout bill.

Recently these two progressive shills have each taken on a new directive which certainly lives up to their pathetic performances in the past.

Jon Stewart is now involved in what he calls the “Million Moderates March” and the premise of this is that everyone who is anyone in America these days is a “centrist” or a “moderate” and that only the “fringe” are getting any attention.

Centrism i,s of course, just another name for the Washington Consensus, which is neoliberal/DLC “New Dem” corporatist fiscal ideology.

I seriously doubt that Stewart is correct in that assumption considering so many people are suffering under this economy, but since he recently had to grovel at the ultimate neoliberal’s feet (Bill Clinton), its not surprising that he would come out with this “move to the center” propaganda. Also interesting to note that he announced this new propaganda effort the same day he had Clinton on his show.

What is surprising is that Stewart chastised the radical left for holding such beliefs as “George Bush is a war criminal” and called to “restore sanity” on Oct. 30th 2010.

He later labeled it a “Million Moderate March.” The purpose, he said, is to counter what he called a minority of 15 percent or 20 percent of the country that has dominated the national political discussion with extreme rhetoric. He tarred both parties with that charge, mentioning both the attacks on the right against President Obama for being everything from a socialist to un-American and on the left against former President Bush for being a war criminal. Glenn Greenwald

Greenwald also noted Stewart’s history of aiding neocons with their image rebranding and book sales, though he doesn’t draw any conclusions about it like I do. Very polite of him if you ask me.

… but far more important than tone, in my view, is content.  For instance, Bill Kristol, a repeated guest on The Daily Show, is invariably polite on television, yet uses his soft-spoken demeanor to propagate repellent, destructive ideas.  The same is true for war criminal John Yoo, who also appeared, with great politeness, on The Daily Show. Moreover, some acts are so destructive and wrong that they merit extreme condemnation (such as Bush’s war crimes).  Glenn Greenwald

Personally, I have to agree with Mr. Greenwald in that certain actions merit extreme condemnation (like impeachment and imprisonment) and to that list I would like to toss out 1. lying 935 times to justify an illegal war which has killed over a million Iraqi people and dislocated about 4 million others, 2. creating false documents (Niger Yellow Cake) like the neocons at the Office of Special Plans did to justify an illegal war, 3. torture, 4. rendition, 5. secret prisons, 6. CIA backed mercenary death squads 7. depleted uranium spread across Iraq …  I mean, if these actions don’t merit calling George W. Bush (and several of Jon Stewart’s recent guests) a war criminal, what does?

Is turning a blind eye to such atrocities and war crimes really “sanity” or is it something else?

“After years of disclosures by government investigations, media accounts and reports from human rights organizations, there is no longer any doubt as to whether the current administration has committed war crimes,” Taguba wrote. “The only question that remains to be answered is whether those who ordered the use of torture will be held to account.” Glenn Greenwald

It’s clear that Stewart is doing his part to help the globalist regime in charge whitewash the past 10 years. He’s actually helping to rewrite our collective history on these matters and turn “moderate” progressives, those with their heads buried in the sand, against those “fringe” elements who tried to demand justice and accountability from the previous administration. If anything proves Jon Stewart’s complicity in the globalist criminal actions, this is certainly it.

Colbert is certainly not being left out in the cold either. He just recently “testified” before a congressional sub-committee in congress speaking out in favor of the precursor to the Comprehensive Immigration Reform bill being pushed by the Obama/Clinton regime but it was actually a holdover from the George Bush administration, that little tidbit they don’t like to mention too much these days. They also don’t like to hear the word “amnesty” tossed out in these congressional hearings, judging from a Democrat’s behavior.

Colbert’s presence at the hearing was insulting to say the least.

His presence was insulting to the congress members who were there and insulting to any intellectually honest American who would be offended that a paid comedian who has been shilling for his globalist boss would actually be asked to join in on any part of a serious discussion of the matter.

John Conyers, to his credit, asked Colbert to submit his “testimony” for the record and excuse himself before the hearing took place. He politely reminded Steven he had nothing of value to add to the discussion, but Colbert couldn’t resist the spotlight and all the play he could get out of the stunt, so he remained but he was clearly shaken that someone there reminded him in public that his presence was nothing more than a PR stunt. He felt foolish and it showed.  It was an embarrassing thing to watch, and if you absolutely have to, here it is.

Colbert’s qualifications for being at the hearing was apparently centered around the fact that his film crew and he went out to an upstate New York farm where they filmed him acting like a completely spoiled, lazy American who couldn’t do the work a 65-year-old man sitting on his ass and picking beans in the field could do. Of course, the 65 year old man is here illegally so somehow that makes him capable of doing something a 30-year-old unemployed American can’t do. That’s pretty much the sum total of Stephen Colbert contribution to the discussion.

unemployed Americans can’t do the work this 65-year-old Mexican can do while sitting on his ass in a field

The Ag Jobs Bill this committee is discussing is an effort supported  by big US agriculture and other major corporations and in essence it would create an official 2nd class citizen status in America for these seasonal migrant workers and give them credit for the years they have worked in the agricultural industry toward a “path toward citizenship” (in short – coming to America illegally to work for slave-wages for 3 years would put them ahead of Mexicans who apply for citizenship legally and have to wait for 6 to 8 years for a green card) . It would also help create an increase in surplus labor which would certainly only serve to drive wages in the agricultural sector to near record lows. But it’s not only the agriculture industry that would be effected as Dr. Carol Swain pointed out during the committee hearing since many of the illegals once here, migrate out of the fields and into other, low skilled jobs, which only serves again to create a labor surplus in those fields and thus even more reductions in pay. The bill will give these slave-citizens the right to organize, a right they actually already have, but since the head of the UFW is clearly in bed with big agriculture here in America, that is like giving autoworkers the “right” to be represented by the UAW… and we all know what that has been good for recently.

Colbert’s testimony has been widely panned and with good reason.

Colbert’s “testimony” was painful to watch and adding insult to injury were his two staff members sitting behind him who clearly understood their little stunt wasn’t going as well as they had imagined it would. Life’s a little harder when you don’t have a studio audience being prompted by electric signs to laugh and applaud when they are told to. It’s also harder when your boss is sitting in front of you pretending like he had something to add to the hearing when he didn’t.

“Maybe this Ag Jobs bill would help. I don’t know. Like most members of congress, I haven’t read it. But maybe we could offer more visas to the immigrants, who, let’s face it, will probably be doing these jobs anyway. And this improved legal status might allow immigrants recourse if they’re abused. And it just stands to reason to me that if your co-worker can’t be exploited then you are less likely to be exploited and that itself might improve pay and working conditions on these farms and eventually Americans may consider taking these jobs again.”  Stephen Colbert

In the history of convoluted logic, this stands in a seminal position in our recent congressional record, right up there with the healthcare bill being called the best thing for Americans since the New Deal, I suppose.

The Ag Jobs bill is easy to find so there is no excuse for Stephen Colbert not to have read it, since it is the subject of his “testimony” before congress. The man had zero qualifications for being there and the least he could have done is read the bill.  But he didn’t.

Basically, the bill itself is a holdover from the Bush administration that was tweaked and then submitted in May of 2009 just after the new neoliberal regime took office. It establishes a legal 2nd class citizen role by handing out what they call “blue cards” to certain migrant agricultural workers which locks them into a subservient role similar to the old feudal state. They basically have to take what they are given and STFU because if they get tossed out of the program, fired from the job, they get deported back to Mexico with nothing.

And it’s not just them. The bill creates a “derivative” legal status for the “blue card” worker’s wife and children which essentially means they can’t be deported even if they are here illegally, just so long as the worker behaves himself. Imagine the threat of having yourself and your entire family deported simply because you speak up for better working conditions or more pay. Quite a threat to be leveled at the worker, quite an incentive to take what he is given and shut up… and this is what the “progressive” left and Stephen Colbert are fighting for?

That’s neoliberalism folks.

This country has struggled for 200 years to earn the rights of each and every human being; to end the idea that there is a second class citizen status in America. People have marched, protested, fought and died for that principle. And here we have the “progressive” champion Stephen Colbert arguing for the creation of a second class citizenship of slave workers in America.

If you really want to understand what this is all about, you should have a listen to the testimony of Dr. Carol Swain from Vanderbilt University, a labor rights expert and activist of over 20 years. She used to be considered a hero on the left when she was railing against the injustices of the Bush administration but now that the Obama/Clinton neoliberal regime has taken office, she is vilified on the right AND left for fighting the same good fight.

Unlike Colbert, Dr. Swain has earned her right to testify before congress on this subject and her words prove it.

“I contend that America does not have a shortage of agricultural workers, instead we have a manufactured crisis by some who would like to ensure a steady supply of cheap labor and in some cases labor that bi-passes the H2A and H2B visa programs. … these unemployment numbers indicate there are native agricultural workers actively seeking employment in the sector… America cannot continue to bring in low skilled workers to compete with the most disadvantaged Americans…. nor can it continue to turn a blind eye to illegal immigration.  Often surplus labor that starts in the fields migrates into other industries. Without surplus labor, employers would be forced to pay higher wages and many would be forced to improve substandard working conditions… the UFW ‘Take Our Jobs” initiative has not, in my opinion, made a serious effort to recruit American workers, this is a publicity stunt…. the rapid influx of cheap labor from foreign countries creates an over-supply of labor that works against the interests of native workers, it depresses their wages, it reduces their opportunities, and it deters employers from investing in native human capital…. this is a disgrace. Congress needs to reform immigration and they need to protect the most disadvantaged Americans.” Dr. Carol Swain

Once this bill is passed, and it will be, it’s impact on the already suffering disadvantaged in America will be staggering. There is also nothing that states that other industries won’t push for a similar bill regarding the H2B workers. The bill calls for the agricultural workers to put in 150 days per year and that of course frees them up to work in other industries the remaining 200+. The spouses of these workers will also be free to work in the country under their “derivative” status, which of course will only help to further undermine native workers wage structure even more.

There is nothing humanitarian or “progressive” about this bill, yet that won’t stop the “moderates” on the left from getting behind it simply because Stephen Colbert showed up at congress and made a fool out of himself. And that of course was the whole point.

As the neocon/neoliberal agenda moves on, shills like Stewart and Colbert are doing their part to re-brand the cruelty and inhumanity of their corporatist agenda to make it palatable to their audience; the left. These two recent propaganda efforts only prove how tightly the threads of “centrism” are woven in our dominating culture.

But they also show something else. That it only takes a few minutes, a little research and effort, to expose the fraudulent nature of their work. The emptiness that fills their words. While Stewart argues for the whitewashing of the Bush regime’s history and Colbert clowns for the creation of an indentured servant class of slave labor, each and every remaining liberal gets a little closer to seeing them for what they are; a clearer picture of the puppets and their masters.

We won’t be fooled again.

September 25, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Full Spectrum Dominance, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | 4 Comments

FBI Launching Mass Raids of Antiwar Activists’ Homes

Obama replaces covert spying of the Bush era with overt intimidation

By Jason Ditz | Anti-war.com | September 24, 2010

The FBI is confirming that this morning they began a number of “raids” against the homes of antiwar activists, claiming that they are “seeking evidence relating to activities concerning the material support of terrorism.”

So far there do not appear to have been any arrests related to the raids nor, according to FBI spokesman Steve Warfield, are there any expected. He also insisted that there was “no imminent threat” related to the antiwar organization targeted. Some of the activists say they were ordered to appear before a grand jury, however.

The warrant against antiwar activist Mick Kelly’s home cited efforts to look into his ability to “pay for his own travel” to Palestine and Colombia and appeared to have been little more than a fishing expedition looking for possible links to “foreign terrorist organizations including but not limited to FARC, PFLP, and Hezbollah.” Kelly insists that the raids were about harassing antiwar organizers.

Officials said they were related to a Joint Terrorism Task Force investigation. The JTTF in Minneapolis has a long history of heavy-handed investigations against protest groups, including an attempt in 2008 to infiltrate a vegan potluck.

Most of the raids were conducted in Minneapolis and were related to antiwar leaders in that city. Other raids were also reported in Chicago, Michigan, and North Carolina. Many of the homes targeted in Minneapolis were related to the Marxist-Leninist group “Freedom Road Socialist Organization” (FRSO) but this was not the only group targeted.

According to Reuters, Chicago antiwar activist (and longtime gay rights activist) Andy Thayer was also targeted, which he attributed to “solidarity work, for speaking out on the issues of the day.”

CNN also listed the Palestine Solidarity Group, the Twin Cities Antiwar Committee, and Students for a Democratic Society as groups whose members were targeted. The Twin Cities Antiwar Committee’s office was also raided according to the group’s attorneys.

September 25, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Progressive Hypocrite, Solidarity and Activism | Comments Off on FBI Launching Mass Raids of Antiwar Activists’ Homes

Our Next Wars: Yemen and Somalia

By Philip Giraldi – The American Conservative – October, 2010 Issue

There appear to be some good business opportunities in Yemen, but they may not be what they seem. Yemen is the poorest Arab nation, and one of the poorest countries in the world, with an estimated annual per capita income of $1,061. It is running out of water, and production from its few oil fields is declining. Apart from that, it produces nothing and is increasingly becoming a center for drug trafficking. It is also corrupt, ranking 164th on Transparency International’s 2009 list, just ahead of Cambodia and the Central African Republic. It is a country that is remarkably devoid of resources or of a developed middle class of consumers, and it is best known for its ongoing multidimensional civil war, pitting the central government against various tribal groups. In spite of all that, there has been a surge in investment in the country by a number of small American companies — all the more remarkable as the U.S. economy itself has been in recession. A similar pattern is observable in Kenya, with an annual income of $912 and ranked just ahead of Yemen at 146th for corruption, and in Ethiopia, with an income of $390 per capita and coming in at 120 for corruption.

So what do these countries have in common? They are frontline states in the burgeoning but still secret phase three of the Global War on Terror being planned by the Pentagon and spy agencies with the concurrence of the Barack Obama White House. Those who thought there might be some kind of peace dividend with the Democrats holding the presidency can bid those thoughts goodbye. The administration is clearly thinking beyond Afghanistan (and even Iran), anticipating the next battlefronts in Yemen and Somalia. It is assiduously gathering resources to enter the fray, including setting up business fronts that can be used by covert operatives.

Why go through the subterfuge? First there is the American side of the story. Given the shrinking public support for Afghanistan, the White House does not want to telegraph that it is planning escalation into yet another war or even two wars, depending on how you count them. And then there are the concerns of the always shaky Yemeni government. Yemen, as part of the Arabian Peninsula regarded as sacred soil to Muslims, is extremely sensitive to the presence of foreign soldiers in uniform, an issue that has been exploited by al-Qaeda and other militant groups in neighboring Saudi Arabia. So the solution is to create an infrastructure of ostensibly private-sector enterprises that can serve as mechanisms for having American special ops soldiers and intelligence officers inside the country to gather information and assist the local government without appearing to do so. For the intelligence officers involved, this is called, not surprisingly, business cover. It is the sort of cover Valerie Plame used against possible nuclear-proliferation targets. Business cover is expensive to set up and maintain and the officers who work under it know that they will not have the protection of diplomatic immunity if they are caught in flagrante, though it is to be assumed that there is an understanding with the local governments that intelligence and other special-status personnel operating as civilians will be protected insofar as possible. What makes it all exceedingly tricky is the fact that the American intelligence agencies normally do not reveal all of their assets to the locals, even in those cases where the government supports the effort. The potential for an embarrassing incident is very high.

In Kenya and Ethiopia, the U.S. is similarly disinclined to have too heavy a footprint, as African Union willingness to persevere in Somalia is decidedly limited and could vanish altogether if it were seen as an American operation. The U.S. military’s African command, or AFRICOM, is actually located in Stuttgart, Germany, but its principal operational component is located at the large French military base Camp Lemonnier in Djibouti. The CIA runs its drone operations targeting Somalia and Yemen out of that same location and has been using its assets on the ground in those countries to help direct predator strikes against suspected terrorist targets. CIA and special ops soldiers have been busy placing sensors and electronic surveillance devices throughout the Horn of Africa and in Yemen to permit greatly expanded operations. Both CIA and Army units in Djibouti have recently been beefed up in expectation that fighting will intensify in 2011.

And what is the nature of the threat justifying major military and intelligence operations in two new countries? Well, according to the State Department’s own recently issued report on global terrorism, the only terrorist incident originating in Yemen that directly threatened U.S. interests was the unsuccessful Nigerian underwear bomber in December, an attack that was carried out in retaliation for a deadly CIA drone strike shortly before. And there have been allegations that U.S.-born cleric Anwar al-Aulaqi might have influenced Major Malik Nadal Hasan’s shooting rampage at Fort Hood last November. Apart from that, terrorism in Yemen is internally directed with some spillover against neighbor Saudi Arabia. In Somalia, al-Shabaab, which the State Department describes as “a disparate group of armed militias, many of whom do not adhere to the ideology of the group’s leaders,” is the target of Washington’s ire. Foggy Bottom concedes that the group is linked to al-Qaeda only by “mutually supportive rhetoric.” It has not targeted the United States at all, though some government officials have expressed concerns that Somali-Americans who travel back to their country of birth to join al-Shabaab might return to the U.S. to commit terrorist acts.

So we are again talking of secret wars conducted in places where we do not understand the local issues or players very well, all part of a massive overreaction directed against low-level troublemakers who do not actually pose any serious threat against the United States. Where it will all lead is anyone’s guess, but it should be noted that the pattern of new terrorism emerging as the response to misdirected and heavy-handed American intervention has been repeated over and over again during the past ten years.

Philip Giraldi, a former CIA Officer, is the Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

September 25, 2010 Posted by | Militarism | Comments Off on Our Next Wars: Yemen and Somalia

Lockerbie, Hariri Case and the Perversion of the International Justice

Yusuf Fernandez – Al-Manar – September 24, 2010

The case against the Libyan citizen Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi has served to remind the world that it should not have illusions about the workings of the international justice system. Megrahi was condemned by a tribunal but that does not mean he was guilty of the attack which destroyed the Pan Am Flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland, on 21 December 1988. His compassionate release -he suffers from terminal prostate cancer- conveniently spared the potential embarrassment of all those involved in his unjust conviction.

Megrahi, the former head of security for Libyan Arab Airlines (LAA), and another Libyan citizen, Lamin Khalifa Fhima, the station manager for LAA  at the Malta airport, were prosecuted at Camp Zeist in the Netherlands but before Scottish judges, and under Scottish law. The two Libyans had been formally indicted in the United States and the United Kingdom in 1991. London and Washington then blamed Libya, saying that its leader, Colonel Muammar Gaddafi, wanted revenge for the US bombing of Tripoli in 1986. “This was a Libyan government operation from start to finish,” declared a State Department spokesman. Both accused persons chose not to give evidence in court. On 31 January 2001, Megrahi was convicted of murder by a panel of three Scottish judges and sentenced to 27 years in prison. Fhimah was acquitted.

The sentence was not a surprise for many experts, who denounced the injustice of this verdict. Robert Black, a law professor of the University of Edinburgh, said that “no reasonable tribunal could have convicted Megrahi on the evidence led,” and called his conviction “an absolute and utter outrage.” Hans Köchler, a UN-appointed observer at the trial, stated that “there is not one single piece of material evidence linking the two accused to the crime,” and condemned the court’s verdict as a “spectacular miscarriage of justice.” In fact, the verdict was issued although there was no evidence to support the accusation that Megrahi had put a suitcase with the lethal bomb in an Air Malta plane in Malta, so it would eventually be transferred to Flight 103 in London.

A piece of evidence presented by US and British Investigators was the MST-13 timer used in the bomb. Discovery of a fragment of the timer helped in the construction of a circumstantial chain that implicated him. This was the basis for Megrahi’s conviction. It was supposed to have been discovered months after the crash, in a shirt found many miles from the wreckage.

According to the investigation, 20 of these timers were sold to Libya by the Swiss electronics company MeBo. MeBo owner Edmund Bollier has consistently claimed that the MST-13 fragment could not have been part of the batch he sold to Libya on account of its coloring and the type of soldering employed. Evidence that emerged at the trial indicated that the CIA itself had a version of the MST-13 before 1988. More importantly, before the trial commenced, Bollier said that from their own research, they had concluded the bomb had not been located in the luggage container in a Samsonite suitcase, as the prosecution team claimed, but was jammed against the aircraft wall.

THE “MAGIC SUITCASE”

According to the investigators, the suitcase was somehow put aboard Air Malta flight KM180 to Frankfurt without an accompanying passenger and then the suitcase would been transferred in Frankfurt to the Pan Am 103A flight to London without an accompanying passenger and then transferred in London to the Pan Am 103 flight bound for New York without an accompanying passenger. However, according to the newspaper The Guardian, Air Malta itself made an exhaustive study of this matter and categorically denied that there was any unaccompanied baggage on KM180 or that any of the passengers transferred in Frankfurt to London flight. And a report sent by the FBI from Germany to Washington in October 1989 and quoted by Time also revealed profound doubts about this thesis. The report concluded: “There remains the possibility that no luggage was transferred from Air Malta 180 to Pan Am 103.”

In January 1995, more than three years after the indictment of the two Libyans, the FBI was still of the same mind. A confidential Bureau report stated: “There is no concrete indication that any piece of luggage was unloaded from Air Malta 180, sent through the luggage routing system at Frankfurt airport, and then loaded on board Pan Am 103.” The report added that the baggage records are “misleading” (The Independent). Moreover, “according to the international airline rules, baggage unaccompanied by passengers should not be allowed onto aircraft without being searched or x-rayed. Actual practice is, of course, more lax, but how could serious professional terrorists count on this laxness occurring three times in a row for the same suitcase?,” said William Blum, author of “Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II”.

FALSE WITNESSES

Some tests indicated that the suitcase in question contained several items of clothing manufactured in Malta. According to Blum, the US and British version of events led the world to believe that Megrahi had been identified by the shopkeeper of a particular shop on the island, Tony Gauci, as the purchaser of the clothing. However, Megrahi was never presented to Gauci in person and the latter had previously made several erroneous “positive” identifications, including one of a CIA asset. Furthermore, after the world was assured that these items of clothing were sold only on Malta, it was learned that at least one of the items was actually “sold at dozens of outlets throughout Europe, and it was impossible to trace the purchaser,” indicated the Sunday Times.

Alex Duval Smith, a journalist for The Observer pointed out in 2007 one of the witnesses, whose testimony was crucial to condemn Al Megrahi, Swiss engineer Ulrich Lumpert, had apparently confessed that he lied about the origins of the above-mentioned timer.  Moreover, CIA spy Abdul Majid Giacka, the so-called “star witness” at Luqa airport in Malta, also saw how his testimony collapsed in court.

On October 30, 1990, NBC News reported that “Pan Am flights from Frankfurt, including 103, had been used a number of times by the DEA as part of its undercover operation to fly informants and suitcases of heroin into Detroit as part of a sting operation to catch dealers in Detroit.” The TV network reported that the DEA was looking into the possibility that a young man who lived in Michigan and regularly visited the Middle East may have unwittingly carried the bomb aboard Flight 103. His name was Khalid Jaafar. “Unidentified law enforcement sources” were cited as saying that Jaafar had been a DEA informant and was involved in a drug-sting operation based out of Cyprus.

Filmmaker Allan Francovich made a documentary film about the Lockerbie case, The Maltese Double Cross, which presents Jaafar as an unwitting bomb carrier with ties to the DEA and the CIA. He claims that the bombing was a consequence of a CIA controlled drug running operation utilized to spy on Palestinian, Lebanese and Syrian armed political groupings and factions. Francovich told The Guardian in 1994 he had learned that five CIA operatives had been sent to London and Cyprus to discredit the film while it was being made, his office phones were tapped and staff cars sabotaged.

According to Steve James, who has written several articles published in the World Socialist Web Site (wsws.org) about this issue, “journalists John Ashton and Ian Ferguson suggest in their book “Cover-Up of Convenience” that responsibility for Lockerbie may lie primarily with the intelligence services of several Western governments, particularly the United States. They point out that Charles McKee, a US Army Special Forces Major, and Matthew Gannon, the CIA’s Beirut deputy station chief, were amongst US officials who allegedly changed their plans to fly on PA103 at the last minute. One suggestion by some media is that these individuals were the target of a successful assassination attempt in which intelligence agencies themselves played a role.”

The authors suggest that “from as little as two hours after the crash, US intelligence officers were at the southern Scottish site. They were not looking for explanations as to the cause of the crash. They did not cooperate with local rescue services. Instead, they were searching for particular pieces of debris, luggage and particular corpses. Ashton and Ferguson quote finds of large quantities of cash, cannabis and heroin on the flight, as well as intelligence papers owned by McKee, whose luggage was removed and replaced. There were reports of helicopter-borne armed groups guarding and then removing a large box, and an unidentified body.”

Furthermore, a retired Scottish police officer claimed that the CIA planted evidence on the crash site that led to the conviction of Megrahi. On 28 August 2005, the daily Scotland on Sunday revealed that a member of the Association of Chief Police Officers Scotland (ACPO) had told the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission that a fragment of an MST-13 timer circuit board central to al Megrahi’s conviction was “planted by CIA agents in order to implicate Libya for the atrocity.

James claims that those who have made allegations of possible CIA involvement include an ex-Mossad spy, Juval Aviv, hired by Pan Am to investigate the destruction of its aircraft, an erratic ex-US spy Lester Coleman, who at one point sought political asylum in Sweden, William Chasey, a Washington DC lobbyist, and Time journalist Roy Rowan.

LIBYA… AND NOW LEBANON

All these revelations suggest that the case against Libya was fabricated for political reasons bound up with US policy in the Middle East. Despite all the evidence, Megrahi was condemned. These same facts are now repeating themselves in Lebanon. Of all the possible scenarios, the international probe of the murder of former Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri has proved to be misguided by political considerations and has ignored sound evidence linking Israel with that crime. As it happened with the Lockerbie court, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon will probably choose to accuse some Hezbollah members on the basis of false witnesses and evidences in order to get a verdict that provides Israel and the US with the necessary propaganda tool to weaken the Lebanese Resistance, stir up sedition in Lebanon, exert maximum pressure on the country to accede to its demands, and thereby strengthen Israel and the US´s grip on the entire Middle East region.

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September 25, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , | 13 Comments