Deception « Aletho News

The Orinoco Belt has a strong and, indeed, enviable competitive position

VHeadline | August 1, 2010

Former Petroleos de Venezuela (PDVSA) Finance Coordinator Oliver L Campbell writes: I have just read a story by Daniel Wallis of Reuters entitled “Venezuela revels in oil reserves — challenges remain.” Reading between the lines, I sense a veiled criticism much of which I believe is not merited. I have tried to give another, more realistic, and certainly more upbeat, assessment in the following comments.

Venezuela indeed intends to increase its oil reserves, but to say it “hopes to catapult past Saudi Arabia” as the world leader is colorful reporting that omits to mention the historical context.

It has been known since the 1920s, when the first exploration took place, that large amounts of heavy oil existed in the Orinoco Oil Belt. Some wells were drilled there in the 1930s, but work stopped since no commercial use could be found for the heavy oil until the beginning of the 1980s when Orimulsion was developed as a fuel for power plants. However, it was not till the end of the 1990s, when the four “strategic associations” were formed, that oil production started on a large scale.

Though it was known that huge deposits existed, no one saw a pressing need or hurry to quantify them. The present government decided to do so, primarily as a matter of national pride and the international prestige that comes from having the world’s largest oil reserves. A secondary factor is that OPEC quotas take into account both proven reserves and production capacity and, by increasing the former to Saudi Arabia’s level, Venezuela hopes in future to be allowed to increase its present production. The fact that international oil companies were prepared to bid for the Carabobo and Junin blocks before certification of the increase in the reserves shows they gave it little importance. The geologists knew huge reserves were there and certification was very much a paper exercise.

Mr Wallis refers to 513 billion barrels of recoverable oil “if costs were not an issue.” But they are not since costs are certainly much lower than those for deepwater, offshore drilling or those in the Athabasca Tar Sands. It is unfortunate the Orinoco Belt crudes and Athabasca crudes are often mentioned together as being tar sands. This is wrong since the oil in Orinoco Belt is accumulated in reservoirs in the subsurface, whereas the bitumen in the Athabasca Tar Sands is found near the surface mixed with sand, clay and minerals.

Neither is there anything unconventional about the production process in the Orinoco Belt. Wells are drilled in a cluster of up to 24 from one location using what is known as horizontal drilling — drilling is diagonal till the oil sands are reached when it switches to horizontal. With a temperature of 50ºC, oil flows easily and large electric pumps pump it to the surface without difficulty. On reaching the surface, the oil cools and becomes viscous like a thick tar. It is then blended with a light crude of 32ºAPI to produce a 16ºAPI crude of commercial quality. Alternatively, it is mixed with a diluent and pumped to the upgrader on the coast to be upgraded to either 16ºAPI or 32ºAPI depending on the plant. The diluent is recovered and pumped back to the production area.

So the only unconventional aspect of the 8º to 9ºAPI oil being currently produced is that it needs to blended or upgraded to make it commercially viable. I labour this point so the reader will understand that oil from the Oil Belt is produced like any heavy crude. Contrast this with the Athabasca crude which is obtained by surface mining that involves making huge holes in the ground and then separating the oil from the sands. Exploitation there has been called “a looming ecological disaster” and many Canadians are opposed to it. The separation process consumes a huge quantity of natural gas to heat large amounts of water. The toxic waste is stored in tailing ponds which are so huge that they cover 80 square miles and can be seen from space. The Orinoco Belt has none of these problems, and I have heard of no pressure group objecting to its development.

Mr Wallis states “The technology needed to pump the Orinoco’s ultra-heavy crude is much more complicated and expensive” than it is for light oil.

Though true, the complicated production aspect was solved a long time ago by the four strategic associations. The expensive part applies to the upgrading since blending with a lighter crude is not a costly operation. PDVSA do not publish individual crude production costs, but the average for all crudes, excluding depreciation, in 2008 was $7 a barrel. Add, say, another $3 for the Orinoco Belt extra-heavy crudes and then $5 for upgrading, plus another $5 to cover depreciation and you get a total cost of $20 a barrel at the outside. Compare this with $30 a barrel or more for Athabasca and $40 or more for deep sea production and you see Venezuela is in a privileged position. Saudi Arabia, Iran, Iraq and other Middle East countries have lower costs, but only Saudi Arabia has comparable oil reserves.

My geologist colleagues question why a 20% recovery factor has been assumed when the current rate is only 9%, and I must admit I am surprised Ryder Scott agreed to it. But, taking a practical approach, does it really matter if the recoverable reserves are stated as 500 billion or 250 billion barrels? The latter would provide a production of 5,000,000 b/d for 137 years by which time who knows if oil will be used as fuel.

I disagree with Mr Wallis that planned projects “in isolated rural areas that lack even basic infrastructure” will create serious problems. Oil is produced in much more inhospitable places than the Orinoco Belt. I accompanied General Alfonzo Ravard, the president of PDVSA, on a visit to the area in 1980 and access was not that difficult. It must have improved since then. Anyway, oil companies are used to operating in difficult terrains and far from the towns. There is no comparison with working in Alaska or Canada under freezing conditions and the permafrost of the tundra, nor with being stationed on a platform 200 miles from land which is truly isolated. Once again, Venezuela is in the privileged position of having oil on land which vehicles can easily reach.

The consultant who asked “to what extent will PDVSA let their partners participate?” should have known the answer. PDVSA owns at least 60% of the shares in each of the mixed companies. Though people refer to them as joint ventures, legally they are not since joint ventures require joint decision taking. PDVSA considers them to be subsidiaries and consolidates them as such in the accounts. But they let the minority shareholders “participate,” or play an active role, by placing their employees either on the Board or in senior executive positions. They realise many of them have key skills which PDVSA lack.

I agree the companies are a disparate bunch — some have ample experience of extra heavy oil production and others have none at all. Venezuela favours other state companies and the trouble with some of these is not just a lack of experience but also a lack of financial resource. State companies often have to compete with other sectors of the economy — hospitals, schools, housing, roads, power plants — for funds. Mr Wallis is right in expressing “doubts about when touted projects to tap the area” will come on stream. The history so far has been largely of procrastination and missed targets.

The quote that “Oil in the ground has zero value” sounds sagacious but is fatuous — companies sell or farm out acreage frequently for large sums. They paid large bonuses upfront for the oil in the ground before any production in the Orinoco Belt started. In Venezuela’s case, the OPEC quota means present oil production is restricted so, guess what? PDVSA have closed in the oil that produces least return per barrel because of its higher cost — oil from the Orinoco Belt. There is thus no immediate hurry to increase production capacity, though clearly that is what PDVSA aims for within the next couple of years.

Mr Wallis points out the risk of investing in Venezuela. But I think that risk in the Oil Belt has receded since royalty was increased to 33%, income tax set at 50% and the mixed companies were formed. These conditions are so tough that the country can hardly squeeze any more from the foreign companies. PDVSA is also strapped for cash and has trouble meeting its 60% capital investment commitment so it would make no sense to undertake further expropriations.

A risk that does exist is not being able to repatriate dividends in a timely fashion since, to conserve cash, PDVSA has delayed the payment of dividends in other mixed companies.

However, state companies in the Orinoco Belt have political clout and can also exert diplomatic pressure to ensure prompt payment–the private companies can get a free ride on their coat-tails.

I trust I have made my case that the Orinoco Belt has a strong and, indeed, enviable competitive position, certainly better than Athabasca which also holds huge reserves. In addition, the easy accessibility on land means its production costs are half those offshore in deep water.

August 4, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, Economics | Leave a comment

Shock wave and bubble: the untruth about the Cheonan

‘Proof’ that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea has been thoroughly discredited

By Hilary Keenan | Global Research | August 1, 2010

Only a small coterie in the USA and South Korea know for sure what really happened to the South Korean warship. But, unreported in the Western media, the ‘proof’ that the Cheonan was sunk by North Korea has been thoroughly discredited.

As is often the case following a negotiated outcome, both sides claimed victory. After the final text on the sinking of the South Korean corvette was agreed by the five permanent members of the United Nations Security Council on 9th July, the White House issued a statement which asserted:

Today’s UN Security Council Presidential statement condemns the attack by North Korea on the Cheonan and warns North Korea that the international community will not tolerate such aggressive behavior against the Republic of Korea. The unanimous statement, reflecting the shared view of the 5 members of the Six-Party Talks, constitutes an endorsement of the findings of the Joint Investigative Group that established North Korea’s responsibility for the attack.

But the UNSC Presidential statement did no such thing. It did not condemn ‘the attack by North Korea’ or ‘warn North Korea’, because it did not name the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea) as the culprit. And it did not endorse the findings of the Joint Investigative Group which was appointed by the government of the Republic of Korea (South Korea). The wording of the statement on this matter was much more cautious:

In view of the findings of the Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group led by the ROK with the participation of five nations, which concluded that the DPRK was responsible for sinking the Cheonan, the Security Council expresses its deep concern.

Following which, the UNSC statement added:

The Security Council takes note of the responses from other relevant parties, including from the DPRK, which has stated that it had nothing to do with the incident…The Security Council welcomes the restraint shown by the ROK and stresses the importance of maintaining peace and stability on the Korean Peninsula and in northeast Asia as a whole.

In contrast to the US government’s claims, the editors of the New York Times made no attempt to portray the position reached at the UNSC as any kind of success for United States diplomacy. Rather, the NYT‘s editorial on 9th July, entitled ‘Security Council Blinks’, ranted with frustration:

‘Lowest common denominator’ is too often the standard at the United Nations. Even then, the Security Council’s new statement on the sinking of the South Korean warship Cheonan is absurdly, dangerously lame…Forty-six South Korean sailors died last March when the warship sank in disputed waters. Seoul quickly accused North Korea of torpedoing the ship but showed admirable restraint, inviting in an international team to investigate. The team did its work and agreed that a North Korean ship was responsible. South Korea produced a torpedo propeller with North Korean markings.

Contrary to the assertion by the New York Times editorial writers, it is not the case that, following the sinking, the ROK ‘quickly accused North Korea of torpedoing the ship’. Although South Korea’s current right wing government is pro-US and very hostile to the DPRK, the initial ROK official position was that it was unlikely that North Korea was involved – the reason being that no evidence could be obtained to implicate the DPRK, and the information that was available was in contradiction to the theory that North Korean forces had sunk the warship. As the South Korean newspaper The Hankyoreh reported on 1st April:

In the immediate wake of the incident, the Cheong Wa Dae (the presidential office in South Korea or Blue House) and the military detailed the chance of North Korean involvement as slight. Following a security-related ministerial meeting presided over by President Lee Myung-bak just after the accident took place on Friday night, Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Kim Eun-hye was circumspect, saying, “At present, we are not clear about the question of a North Korean connection.” In a National Assembly briefing Saturday, Lee Ki-sik, head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff intelligence operations office, said, “No North Korean warships have been detected, and there is no possibility of their approaching the waters where the accident took place.” Additionally, the military has stressed on multiple occasions that it has picked up no “unusual trends” in North Korean military movements while monitoring… As recently as Tuesday, Cheong Wa Dae spokesman Park Sun-kyu said, “As of now, nothing has emerged indicating that North Korea was involved.”

Even by April 20th, as the British Daily Mail newspaper acknowleged:

Seoul has not openly blamed Pyongyang for the sinking of the Cheonan, one of South Korea’s worst naval disasters.

Investigation or cover up?

As for the action of the ROK authorities in, as claimed by the New York Times and other Western media outlets, “inviting in an international team to investigate”, this assertion is highly misleading. In fact the Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group (JIG) was appointed by the South Korean government, and apart from a very small number of foreign participants was drawn overwhelmingly from the South Korean military and defence establishment. As a footnote to an article in the Asia-Pacific Journal records:

Despite its name – the Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group – the absolute majority of its members, 65 out of 74, work for the [South Korean] Ministry of National Defense or MND-related think tanks and institutes. One of its two heads, Pak Chǒng-I, was a three star general at the time of the investigation, and was subsequently promoted to a four star status after the release of the report.

The foreign participants in the JIG were selected from Western countries- the USA, Britain, Canada, and Australia, with the partial inclusion of Sweden. Although its description as an ‘international team’ conveys the implication of objectivity and impartiality, it included no Russians or Chinese, nor even any French or Germans.

On May 6th, Reuters reported the claim of a senior South Korean government official that the investigators had decided that the Cheonan had been sunk by a torpedo- the evidence for this was the discovery of traces of materials consistent with a German-made torpedo in the wreckage of the ship:

North Korea has denied involvement and accused South Korean President Lee Myung-bak’s government of trying to use the incident for political gains ahead of local elections in June.

How the North Koreans could have obtained a German torpedo, or manufactured one which would leave traces consistent with those of a German torpedo, was apparently not remarked on by the ROK official. [It would be interesting to know whether Israel’s German built Dolphin submarines are equipped with German torpedoes. This possibility, of course, is not considered even though Israel has been stridently promoting hostilities with North Korea.]

At a press conference on May 20th, it was announced that the Joint Civilian-Military Investigation Group had completed its interim investigation. The group’s report, which has been variously described as being 250 or 400 pages long, was not made available to the public – for security reasons, of course – and only a five page summary was presented.

Smoking gun, rusting torpedo

The JIG report’s conclusion was that the Cheonan was sunk by “a shock wave and bubble effect generated by an underwater explosion… caused by a torpedo made in North Korea”, and parts of the rear section of a torpedo which had supposedly been dredged up from the sea bed on May 15th, in the vicinity of the disaster, were exhibited at a press conference as the definitive ‘smoking gun’.

For proof that it was of DPRK origin, the South Korean officials pointed firstly to the symbol ‘number 1′ in Korean, written clearly in marker pen on one of the components, in ink which had survived both the huge explosion which had blown the warship in half and the heavy corrosion which had degraded the remains of the torpedo; and secondly to a diagram of a torpedo which they claimed was from a North Korean weapons catalog that had come into their possession. The dredged up torpedo parts, according to the JIG report summary, “perfectly match the schematics of the CHT-02D torpedo included in introductory brochures provided to foreign countries by North Korea for export purposes.”

There was no mention at the press conference or in the JIG report summary of any Germanic characteristics, either in the samples taken from the wreck of the Cheonan, or in the rusting torpedo components which were put on display.

In an article in a local Canadian newspaper, the Vancouver Sun on June 18th, Jonathan Manthorpe remarked on the JIG summary:

This assessment included experts from South Korea, the U.S., the United Kingdom, Australia and Sweden.

It is this section that concludes that the Cheonan was broken in half and sunk as the result of a torpedo exploding under its hull. Analysis of some fragments found on the seabed a few days before publication of the report indicates, says the report, that it was a North Korean-manufactured torpedo.

For some reason which is not explained, the Swedish representative on this team refused to sign the statement. Indeed, it has been hard to follow up on the report because most of the international experts involved remain anonymous.

So what role the Swedish action played in the forming, late in the day, of another international team on May 4 is hard to judge. This team is called the Multinational Combined Intelligence Task Force and includes most of the countries fighting under the United Nations flag against North Korea in the 1950-53 war on the peninsula. That is: the U.S., Australia, Canada and Britain.

It is the one-page summary of this team’s assessment that concludes there is no other credible explanation for the sinking than a torpedo fired by a North Korean submarine.

Following the publication of the JIG report’s summary and the press conference at which the remains of the torpedo with ”North Korean markings” were exhibited alongside a life-size reproduction, several meters long, of the torpedo diagram from the North Korean export brochure, the US and the South Korean authorities felt that they were now in a position to achieve a significant advance in their objective of increasingly isolating the DPRK. For the USA, there was also another problem which the ‘proven’ allegation against North Korea would help to resolve – the threat by the Japanese government to remove the US base on the island of Okinawa, the biggest United States military emplacement in the Eastern hemisphere.

Intransigence

The New York Times editorial of July 9th continued:

Afterward [ie, after the JIG’s summary was issued], Seoul and Washington both condemned Pyongyang’s actions and vowed to obtain a similarly tough Security Council statement. But all in all, South Korea continues to exercise restraint. China, which has veto power on the Council, insisted on watering down the statement. The Obama administration could not change its mind…The statement “underscored the importance of preventing further such attacks or hostilities against” South Korea or in the region. But given the weasel wording about blame, it is hard to imagine that Pyongyang will listen.

The reaction of DPRK officials to the Security Council Presidential Statement was jubilant. According to RFE/RL, which headlined its report ‘UN Condemns South Korea Ship Sinking, Avoids Blaming North Korea’:

Sin Son-ho, North Korea’s permanent representative to the UN, called the council’s action a success for his country.“It is our great diplomatic victory,” he said. “From the beginning of the incident we have made our position very clear that this incident has nothing to do with us.”

The major victor in this diplomatic battle, however, was the People’s Republic of China; which has succeeded – despite repeated predictions that it would succumb to US pressure and concede that North Korea was responsible for the explosion which sunk the Cheonan – not only in maintaining the independence of its own foreign policy from that of the USA, but in ensuring that the text which was eventually adopted by the Security Council on this issue was closer to the Chinese position than that of the US. Furthermore, as the RFE/RL article noted:

In a bow to North Korea’s ally China, which is a permanent member of the [Security] council and thus has a veto power, the group adopted a presidential statement instead of the resolution that was requested by South Korea and Japan.The presidential statement is a weaker form of censure than a resolution.

The second key victor at the UNSC was Russia. In tune with their country’s current effort to achieve a rapprochement with the Russian authorities, the New York Times and RFE/RL (which is a US government-owned international broadcasting service) named only China, not Russia, as the impediment to the USA’s attempt to get the Security Council to find North Korea ‘guilty’ of sinking the Cheonan. But the Russians, while taking a low profile on the issue – most likely order to avoid embarrassment to the Obama administration- have been quietly insistent that they would not sign up to a resolution which blamed the DPRK for the incident.

Why have China and Russia been so intransigent in refusing to blame North Korea for the sinking of the South Korean warship? The Russians have no particular pro-North Korean agenda, and the Chinese, though frequently described as the DPRK’s ally, do not always give diplomatic support to the actions of the North Korean leadership. In May 2009 after the DPRK exploded a nuclear device, China immediately issued a strong statement of opposition to the North Korean nuclear test; both China and Russia subsequently voted for a UNSC resolution which unequivocally condemned the DPRK action and agreed limited sanctions against North Korea.

This is in marked contrast to the role of China and Russia in the wake of the Cheonan disaster.

Related to this, why, despite all its public statements and those of other Western and pro-Western governments, did the USA eventually ‘bow to China’ at the UN Security Council; and why, despite the sinking of one of its military vessels and the killing of 46 of its sailors, supposedly in a deliberate act by an unfriendly neighbor, has South Korea behaved with such ‘restraint’ over the matter, as acknowledged by almost all and sundry?

The most straightforward explanation is that the Chinese and Russian leaderships genuinely and very strongly suspect that North Korea did not sink the Cheonan, and that those ‘in the know’ within the US and South Korean administrations know for a fact that North Korea did not sink the Cheonan.

The Russian conclusion

After May 20th, the North Korean government demanded to have access to the full JIG report and to send a team of investigators to the Republic of Korea to examine the physical evidence, and of course the ROK authorities refused to allow this. However, when the Russians made a similar request, the South Koreans felt they had no alternative but to agree. While the conclusion of the Russian team, which was comprised of submarine and torpedo experts, has not been reported by the Western media, it did surface in the South Korean press. The Hankyoreh reported on 10th July under the headline ‘Government protests Russia’s Conflicting Cheonan findings’:

Foreign affairs sources reported that Shin used forceful and diplomatically irregular language to denounce Russia’s behavior, calling it “unfriendly conduct that violates trust,” “bewildering,” and “disappointing.” It was also reported to Shin proposed additional discussions with Russia during the meeting, and that the South Korean government subsequently provided additional information to the Russian government.

“Was it not the South Korean government that provided assistance to the Russian investigation, saying that they would be objective?” asked a former senior official in foreign affairs and national security, adding that the Russian investigation results “raise fundamental doubts about the [South Korean] government’s announcement of its Cheonan investigation findings.”

It was reported that while the Russian investigation team did conclude that the Cheonan was not sunk by a North Korean bubble jet torpedo, it did not present any definitive conclusions about the direct cause, suggesting several possible scenarios such as a secondary mine explosion following a problem with the Cheonan during its maneuvers. Analysts are interpreting this as being due to the fact that the Russian team, made up of submersible and torpedo experts, focused its examination on the question of whether the sinking resulted from a strike by the “No. 1 torpedo.”

For the Cheonan to have been broken in two by a torpedo in the way described by the South Korean JIG group, by “a shock wave and bubble effect”, only a bubble jet torpedo could have been used in the ‘attack’. The Hankyoreh article continued:

“The Russian investigation team’s primary interest was in whether North Korea, which had been unable to produce its own torpedoes until 1995, suddenly was able to attack the Cheonan with a state-of-the-art bubble jet torpedo,” said a South Korean diplomatic source.Indeed, the technology for bubble jet torpedoes, which are capable of splitting a vessel in two through the expansion and contraction of a bubble resulting from a powerful explosion, is possessed only by the U.S. and a small number of other countries, and has only been successful to date in experiments on stationary ships rather than actual fighting. The joint civilian-military investigation team also acknowledged in its June 29 briefing to media groups that North Korea was the first to have succeeded in using a bubble jet torpedo in the field.

So, the Russian investigators determined that the Cheonan was not sunk by a North Korean bubble jet torpedo; and instead of making a public show of this conclusion, Putin and Medvedev had decided that they would quietly release the findings to the US and Chinese authorities – a decision taken in all probability because Russia is trying to avoid taking actions which would embarrass the present US administration and endanger the chances of improved diplomatic relations with the United States. Despite its angry bluster, the South Korean government got off very lightly as a result of this decision by the Russian leadership.

Catalog of deceit

But what about the diagram from the North Korean weapons catalog, the ‘perfect match’ which was produced at the press conference? This piece of ‘evidence’ fell apart in two stages. Firstly, several journalists, bloggers and other observers who compared the diagram to the remains of the ‘number 1 torpedo’ pointed out that the size, shape and position of the components in the diagram did not correspond to the corroded pieces which had been dredged up from the ocean floor.

When the ROK authorities eventually admitted this, they made the excuse that they had, by mistake, brought along the wrong diagram to the press conference. It also transpired that the catalog itself had no physical existence – what the South Korean officials later claimed to possess was information recorded on a CD. The Chosun Ibo reported on June 30th:

Investigators said they obtained information on the torpedo “from North Korean publications and CDs,” adding they secured the materials through “separate routes.” The diagram was on a CD.

In South Korea, people who disagree with the official account of the Cheonan disaster are being prosecuted by the ROK government and armed forces for expressing their dissident views, and the USA, although it is usually keen to be seen as an exponent of human rights, has made no protests or expressions of concern at this infringement of freedom of expression. Nevertheless, a large section of opinion in South Korea remains unconvinced; the skeptics include representatives of the Democratic Party (the main opposition party in South Korea), NGOs, bloggers, journalists and a considerable number of the general public.

Thus, unlike in the Western countries where the impression has been successfully created that the case against North Korea has been proven beyond doubt, the question of what happened to the Cheonan is a matter of great controversy; and the daily paper The Hankyoreh (the fourth largest newspaper in the ROK) has published a series of articles which expose many serious flaws and contradictions in the official version of events. Of these, several have been published on the English section of The Hankyoreh‘s website, including ‘Questions linger 100 days after the Cheonan sinking‘, ‘Marines testified Cheonan water column was lightning‘ and ‘Scientific debate around Cheonan findings heats up‘.

Scientific destruction

As remarked in the latter report, scientists have attacked the JIG team’s conclusions as incompatible with the physical evidence; two North American-based academics, Seunghun Lee (Department of Physics, University of Virginia) and J.J. Suh (SAIS, Johns Hopkins University) wrote an article for the Asia-Pacific Journal summarizing some of the inconsistencies. The authors accused the JIG of fabricating data and lying about the conduct of the investigation. Some excerpts from the article:

Equally important, if a bubble jet effect was produced by an outside explosion of 250kg of explosives, as the JIG argues, that explosion should have produced an immediate pre-bubble shock wave whose strength would have been at least 5000 psi (pounds per square inch) when it hit the bottom of the Cheonan. The bottom and ruptured surface of the ship betray no sign of such a large shock… the internal instruments and parts remain intact in their original place; and none of the crew members suffered the kind of injuries expected of such a shock. Given that an underwater explosion produces both a bubble effect and a shock wave and the latter is usually about 6 to 10 times as destructive as the former, the ship’s and the crew’s condition is not consistent with the damage expected of an outside explosion.

The JIG’s so-called first finding, therefore, is a mere allegation that is groundless and contradicted by the JIG’s own evidence and at least one analysis of underwater explosions in the military literature.

[The JIG’s] claim that the “recovered” torpedo exploded outside the Cheonan has no scientific basis. It has presented two pieces of evidence to support its claim: that white compounds – “adsorbed materials” in the JIG’s report (we analyzed the Korean-language JIG report) – found on the torpedo match those found on the surfaces of the Cheonan ship; and that the compounds resulted from an explosion. We concur with the JIG on the first, but believe that the second has no basis.

Following a rather complex technical explanation, the academics continued:

…when the media reported our experimental results and the inconsistencies between the AM-3 and the other two samples, the ROK ministry of defense responded that the crystalline Al signal found in the AM-3 sample was due to an experimental mistake, which we believe is a plain lie.

In respect of the Korean inscription ‘number 1′ in marker pen ink on a component of the dredged-up torpedo, Seunghun Lee and J.J. Suh observed:

Third, although the JIG presented the torpedo parts recovered from the area of presumed explosion as “critical evidence” that tied the explosion to North Korea, the “critical evidence” has a serious inconsistency that casts doubt on the integrity of the evidence. The outer surface of the torpedo propulsion unit that was found was greatly corroded, presumably because the coat of paint that would have protected the metal had been burnt off during the explosion. The paint burn-off and resulting metal corrosion are consistent with a high heat explosion commonly found in bombs and torpedoes. And yet the blue ink marking of Hangul – “1bǒn” in Korean – remains intact despite the fact that ink has a lower boiling point, typically around 150 degrees in Celsius, than paint does – typically 350 degrees Celsius – and thus the ink marking should have burnt away just like the outer paint. Our simple estimates suggest that the torpedo would have been subjected to heat of at least 350 degrees Celsius and quite likely over 1000 degrees, high enough to burn the paint and thus the ink as well. This inconsistency – the high heat tolerant paint was burnt but the low heat tolerant ink was not – cannot be explained and casts serious doubt on the integrity of the torpedo as “critical evidence.”

These findings were picked up by the international science journal Nature, which covered them on 8th July (the article was updated on 14th July). Although the scientific case against the JIG’s conclusion was damning, the writer of the Nature article strove to achieve some balance, by quoting another US expert:

James Schoff, an expert in Asian regional security mechanisms who heads Asia-Pacific studies at the Institute for Foreign Policy Analysis in Washington DC, says, “Aside from the science, it is consistent with North Korea’s behavior in the past. It fits the goal of the conservatives [within the (North Korean) government], which is to try to raise awareness of a security threat.”This doesn’t, however, rule out the possibility that North Korea did sink the ship but that South Korea nonetheless fabricated data to make a stronger case to the United Nations, admits Schoff. It’s possible, for example, that they added the ink, he says. “It wouldn’t surprise me if they added it to make it more convincing. But I have no doubts personally that the conclusion [of the JIG report] is correct.”

So, the science should be disregarded because sinking a South Korean ship is the kind of thing that it is assumed the DPRK would get up to; and even if the South Korean authorities fabricated the evidence, one should have no doubts that the North Koreans are guilty.

Regime change in Japan

But at least Nature covered the story. Despite the famed ‘freedom of the press’ of the Western world, the scientific refutation of the JIG conclusion has not, so far, been reported in any major English language news publication – and neither have the rest of the facts which debunk the case against North Korea.

It is for this reason that, despite its failure at the UN Security Council, the United States has achieved something of a success in terms of public opinion – reinforcing the view of the DPRK as a country with an irrational, dangerous leadership – hence bolstering support for the USA’s military presence in the region. In Japan particularly, the untruth about the Cheonan has had a very useful result in terms of US power and influence. Not only has the United States been enabled to keep its huge military base on the island of Okinawa, it has also got rid of the Japanese leader who dared to defy the USA on this key strategic issue. As ABC news reported on 2nd June:

Last week, shortly following South Korea’s claim that North Korea torpedoed one of their ships in neighboring water, Tokyo agreed to allow the base to remain on Okinawa.

The about face by the prime minister sent his approval ratings plummeting in Japan…

The last few months of the prime minister’s term have been mired in controversy as he fought for Futenma to be moved off the island of Okinawa.

But what did happen to the South Korean warship? Only a small coterie in South Korea and the US know with any certainty. After the Cold War ended, some hitherto secret information was released by US officials, allowing those who were interested among the public to realize that they had been lied to by the US authorities on certain key strategic matters. The justification for the previous deceit was that fooling the public was necessary in order to win the Cold War.

One day, maybe far in the future when the present strategic rivalry in the Eastern Hemisphere is a matter of merely historical interest, some key documents will possibly be de-classified, and a future generation will discover the truth about the Cheonan.

August 3, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Leave a comment

No, The Combat Troops Are Not All Leaving Iraq

Fire Dog Lake | August 2, 2010

Obama: Combat Effort in Iraq Ending on Schedule

President Says War is Nearing its Endpoint, Though Non-Combat Troops to Remain Through End of Next Year…

…U.S. combat troops, he said, will be out of the country by the end of August, leaving about 50,000 “non-combat” troops who will leave by the end of 2011.

The small, minor glitch with the CBS story above—and many more like it published today—is that Obama did not say that all the combat troops were leaving this month. He certainly didn’t say this today in Atlanta, and to my knowledge he has never said it.

The reason Obama avoided saying this today likely stems from the fact that the units deployed in Iraq after August 31st 2010 will all be fully functional combat units. The only difference is that we will now call them by a different name, in which the word “combat” no longer appears. They are now termed “advise and assist brigades” by the administration, and the press dutifully reported this new term in their stories.

No wonder the press missed it. They can’t be expected to take dictation and fact-check it too.

Normally, misleading text and headlines are so commonplace they just don’t bother one like they used to. But this is Iraq. And I’m worried that the American public may be misled into thinking that all we’ll have over there a month from now are a few clerks and supply officers. The public might wrongly perceive from a false-fact like “all combat troops gone” that the light they’re seeing at the end of this horrific tunnel is fairly strong, when maybe it’s not that strong and it’s pretty far away.

What the administration has done (and the press would know this if they’d simply do their collective job) is rebrand the Iraqi mission with an new tag-line (“New Dawn”), and re-label six fully-combat-capable brigades with new, kinder and gentler titles. That’s basically the story. Here’s the February memo from Gates to CENTCOM giving the go-ahead to roll-out the kinder/gentler new mission tag-line that we’ll all going to hear so much about.

The New Dawn mission tagline and associated public relations effort doesn’t fit well with the word “combat”–and actually the American people have had their fill of the term too. So no accident that the administration has simply renamed six (or so) brigade combat teams as “advise and assist” brigades. The units may have received minor personnel changes, but otherwise are in no way different from existing combat brigades in Iraq. Indeed, some or maybe all of them are already deployed and functional under our current “Operation Iraqi Freedom” mission. The only thing that has changed is the name.

The six units are thought to be:

• 4th Infantry Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division
• 2nd Brigade Combat Team, 25th Infantry Division
• 3rd Armored Cavalry Regiment
• 4th Brigade Combat Team, 1st Cavalry Division
• 1st Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division
• 4th Brigade, 1st Armored Div

I’m going to be just a bit repetitive and say this as clearly as possible—just in case any journalist comes slumming through FDL and actually reads this. Here goes:

Each of these units will be in Iraq after 8/31/10, and each will be as fully combat-capable as any brigade combat team or armored cavalry regiment currently in Iraq. They have all the guns, bombs, rockets, tanks and artillery required to pound the living crap out of anything or anybody they choose.

For any jounalists who haven’t left to write about how some people think Amanpour is probably a taliban sympathizer, here is the DOD press release from October of last year announcing four of the above units for deployment. They’re described by DOD very clearly as “combat brigade teams”—because that’s what they are—but also listing them as “advise and assist brigades”.

It’s hard to conceive how the DOD could make this story any plainer for our American press.

August 3, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception | Leave a comment

Wikileaks, causes for concern

By Maximillian Forte | August 2, 2010

Not much new support for the anti-war movement

When it comes to uncovering the brutality of American military and covert operations in Afghanistan and Pakistan, there is in fact not much that is new in these records, and not much that will compete with the revelations made in the established media that have had a very high profile. Wikileaks seems to be depending now on individuals to privately sift through thousands of records, and then to presumably publish their findings outside of newspapers, months from now, about events that happened perhaps years ago. This is great for historians, and not so great for anti-war activists who deal in the immediate, in the present. There is little here to compete with revelations of American mass killings of civilians, and disregard for human rights, as revealed by the very regime of Hamid Karzai, or by intrepid reporters such as Jerome Starkey and Michael Hastings. Whatever is found will often not have as much impact as the Rolling Stone article about General Stanley McChrystal, and his own admissions about the failures of the Marjah offensive, and of the dark side of the war that would turn off most Americans if they knew more. They can know more, but with considerable labour, and on their own, and that seems to be expecting a lot of citizens…

New support for fighting the Taleban

Julian Assange assumed his intentions were good enough that they could control the narrative that would be constructed around these records. He may learn differently. Assange told Der Spiegel that he enjoys “crushing bastards,” and he later told CNN’s Larry King that by “bastards” he meant U.S. forces in Afghanistan. The problem is that the news media have already made the question of who is a “bastard” more complicated and ambiguous, for showing the atrocities which the reports allege have been committed by the Taleban. The Guardian was first, speaking of the Taleban’s use of “improvised explosive devices” (IEDs): “the IED…not only strikes foreign troops on ground patrols and in road convoys, it is also an indiscriminate terror weapon killing and injuring thousands of civilians…. Taliban fighters appear to have been prepared to blow up large numbers of people in order to assassinate a single target, such as a high-ranking government official or police chief,” and the article says the reports show that the Taleban are responsible for the majority of civilians killed in Afghanistan. We might suspect that some elements of American public opinion will use this kind of information to renew the call for crushing the Taleban, the only group that patriotic Americans would ever call “bastards,” as if fighting the Taleban was an end in itself, one worthy of so much American blood and treasure.

Support for expanding the war to Pakistan and Iran

Is there a straight, logical line from these records to greater popular support for the anti-war movement? Clearly, there is not. Indeed, some of the first newspaper reports dedicated themselves to showing that Pakistan’s intelligence services and military cannot be counted upon as a good partner for the U.S. For some, that will mean pushing to have more American covert forces in Pakistan, thus further widening and Americanizing the war, the same way as happened in Vietnam and the region around it. Personally, the big shock for me was this article in The Guardian: “Afghanistan war logs: Iran’s covert operations in Afghanistan.” According to the article, “Iran is engaged in an extensive covert campaign to arm, finance, train and equip Taliban insurgents, Afghan warlords allied to al-Qaida and suicide bombers fighting to eject British and western forces from Afghanistan.” A connection between Iran and Al Qaeda? Was it not the suggestion of a link between Saddam Hussein and Al Qaeda that was used by the Bush administration to successfully capture American public support for the Iraq invasion? And now that the U.S. and the European Union have escalated sanctions against Iran to a point beyond which the next steps can only lead to war, do these records not serve to provide a service to pro-war propagandists? As I write this, the very pro-war Fox News has fixed its attention on this very aspect of the Wikileaks records.

The incomplete and fragmentary nature of the records

In my own research with these records, involving the use of American social scientists in units known as Human Terrain Teams, I have come to some important realizations. These records are only some of the records that we might have had. They are incomplete and fragmentary. Can anyone believe that the records Wikileaks obtained, almost 110,000 of them, are all the records produced by the U.S. military in a period covering six years of war? If not, then what was left out? Why were these records released, and not others? How can we make any credible claim based on these records, without knowing what has been kept from our view? What if what we do not have would somehow modify or reshape what we now claim to know?

The records are not the same as “the truth”

These are records written by combatants on one side in a war. They are written by elements of the American military, with a military audience in mind, and to suit the purposes of that military. That many of the records are based on hearsay, rumours, and unsubstantiated allegations that would not survive review at higher levels of military intelligence, is also the case. The records lack context and often lack depth: short, terse bursts of information. Information is not the same thing as meaning, nor is it understanding. It is just data, and data is dead until an analyst gives it life by adding value. The worst thing that could happen would be to have great masses of people insisting that something is true because it was reported in these records. To add depth and context, one has to cross check these records, examine other records, interview the key participants, understand the larger aims and narratives. The people writing these reports are neither infallible nor objective. If few people understand this, we could end up with arguments that seem to be factually muscular, and yet are intellectually malnourished.

The lack of ethical concern, and an inadequate review process

Julian Assange of Wikileaks has now repeatedly asserted what he told Der Spiegel in an interview: that the source of the leaked records went through his “own harm-minimization process” (we do not know what that process was, nor the identity of the source). Assange added: “We understand the importance of protecting confidential sources, and we understand why it is important to protect certain US and ISAF sources.” Suddenly, the person who declared he enjoyed crushing the bastards, is very concerned about their protection, but he says little about protecting the identities of the many Afghan sources who are named and whose locations are revealed in the records. Assange says, “we identified cases where there may be a reasonable chance of harm occurring to the innocent. Those records were identified and edited accordingly.” However, I have seen absolutely no evidence to support his claim. First of all, when someone edits an original document, you must indicate in that document something like this: “name deleted,” or “section deleted” or simply black out the text to show that portions are being kept from view. I have seen none of that. Second, the names of Afghan informants have been retained and are in full public view. This subjects them to the possibility of being executed by the Taleban, and it will be thanks to Wikileaks.

Assange has told TIME that, “Our groups—the New York Times, Der Spiegel, the Guardian and WikiLeaks — covered about 2,000 reports in detail.” That is only 2,000 of the total of almost 92,000 that were released. By his own admission, only a small fraction of the records were reviewed in detail. And who is involved in that review process? Does it include military and intelligence specialists? Does it include any of the people who were actually there, in the situations described in the records? Does it include the Afghans who were named? Does it include any Afghans at all? Assange, who has never been to Afghanistan, nor served in the military, would not have the experience and sensitivity to understand what constitutes harmful information, outside of the local context. What if the same is true of those who were responsible for the small scale review that occurred? I understand the need to protect the identity of one’s sources—indeed, that is my argument here—but not the need to protect the identities of those who supposedly assisted Wikileaks in its review process. Name them, tell us their qualifications, let us hear from them.

Why are the news media not even asking these questions?

Dependence on the mainstream news media

There has also been a lack of credibility from Assange on the issue of why Wikileaks chose to suddenly depend on the mainstream news media for the release of the records—or at least he has failed to explain the obvious in a clear manner. When Wikileaks released the now famous video footage from the viewpoint of an Apache helicopter, firing on and killing civilians in Iraq, “Collateral Murder,” it was done independent of the established media. On YouTube alone, that video has been seen in excess of 7 million times. It does not seem that Wikileaks failed to gain notice and interest, and the news media still reported on its release. So why is it that the mainstream news media, so faulted by Assange for failing to do their job in covering the reality of the Afghan war, are now the primary intermediaries for this release?

The answer would seem simple: these written records are numerous and written in a specialized language, requiring journalistic expertise to make stories out of them. A video can be viewed by anyone and immediately apprehended. Or so one would think. There is nothing straightforward about visual imagery, and it can be hotly contested.

Crowd sourcing: an ideal with little substance?

Having first chosen mainstream news media for the release of the first stories based on the records, Wikileaks now turns to the wider public, sourcing opinion and analysis from the “crowd.” If Wikileaks had real faith in that process, it could have better appreciated and understood the wide range of expertise in the worldwide community of bloggers, and understood that the power to gain traction from a story can come just as much from below, as from above. Presumably Wikileaks understood this, and even cherishes this principle, which is what makes its choice of dependence on the news media strange. The crowd is not homogeneous. The crowd, just like with mainstream news media, contains sensitive specialists, and miserable propagandists. There is no escaping this. When one goes crowd sourcing, one must expect a lot of opinion that is based on poor understanding, inadequate training, selective reading, wishful thinking, and a deliberate desire to distort what the records say in order to suit certain political ends. The results will certainly be mixed, and these records will settle very little in our continuing public debates. But we should always expect surprises…including nasty ones.

Full article

Maximilian C. Forte is a professor in anthropology at Concordia University in Montreal, Canada. He writes at Zero Anthropology. He can be reached at max.forte@openanthropology.org

August 2, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

The Sinking of the Cheonan and Its Political Uses

By GREGORY ELICH | July 28, 2010

Much has been written about the sinking of the South Korean corvette Cheonan, and the evidence is widely regarded as clearly pointing to North Korean culpability. In the Western press, the case has generally been presented as solid and the evidence irrefutable. The tragedy is seen as one more example of North Korean perfidy. Yet, doubts persist.

Following the sinking of the corvette Cheonan on March 26, the government of South Korea established the Joint Military-Civilian Investigation Group (JIG) to investigate and determine the cause of the sinking. Two months later, on May 20, the group completed its report and issued a press release outlining its conclusions. In its press release, the JIG firmly announced, “The evidence points overwhelmingly to the conclusion that the torpedo was fired by a North Korean submarine. There is no other plausible explanation.”

The JIG concluded that the Cheonan was sunk by a “shockwave and bubble effect” from an explosion set off by a homing torpedo, which caused “significant upward bending” of the center keel. A bubble jet effect is created when an explosion takes place underwater and creates a dramatic change in pressure, resulting in the formation of a strong column of water that strikes its target with great power. In addition to the upward bending of the stern and bow sections at the point of severance, the JIG found “water pressure and bubble effects” on the bottom of the hull, and the ship’s wires had been cut with no sign of heat.

Furthermore, survivors reported “that they heard a near-simultaneous explosion once or twice,” water splashed on the face of a sailor at the port-side, and a sentry stationed on the shore observed a “pillar of white flash” rising about 100 meters for two to three seconds. No fragmentation or burn injuries were found on the bodies of the sailors who were killed, and seismic waves were detected at eleven stations. (1)

All of this evidence is consistent with the JIG’s conclusion that a shockwave and bubble jet effect from a exploding torpedo was the cause of Cheonan’s sinking. (2) As further damning evidence, components of a torpedo were brought up by a two fishing trawlers in the proximity of the site of the sinking. The components appeared to match that of a diagram the South Korean military had in its possession of the North Korean CHT-02D torpedo. Inside the propulsion system of the torpedo were written with blue magic marker ink the Hangul characters for “1 beon” (number 1 ). This was similar to a North Korean training torpedo that the South Korean Navy had obtained seven years before, in which there was written “4 ho” (unit 4). According to one expert on North Korea, “North Korea does not frequently use the term beon.” (3) However, it cannot be said that infrequent usage rules out the possibility.

The evidence appeared inarguable, yet from the first it was apparent that there was a troubling lack of transparency in the JIG’s approach, typified by the secrecy surrounding the investigation. The report itself remains concealed, and the public is expected to accept on faith that the JIG’s conclusions and brief explanations are backed by the evidence.

Various alternative causes of the sinking were briefly addressed by the South Korean Ministry of Defense. (4) The possibility of a floating contact mine was rightly dismissed due to the lack of signs of a contact explosion. However, most modern non-contact mines rely on creating a shockwave and bubble jet effect to sink ships. In general, the Ministry of Defense considers the possibility of a sea mine having caused the explosion as “unlikely,” given the maritime conditions and fast currents in the shallow waters around Baengnyeong Island where the Cheonan sank. Moored mines are rarely used in deeper waters, where currents and swells are stronger than they are closer to shore. According to Retired Rear Admiral Chris Bennet of the South African Navy, “Their major use is therefore limited almost exclusively to coastal or territorial waters.” (5) In other words, it is in areas such as around Baengnyeong Island where moored mines are best suited. But the South Korean Navy’s “detailed search” of the seabed failed to locate the anchor that a moored mine would have needed. No details were given to indicate the extent of the search beyond that one phrase.

Bottom mines rest on the seabed and are ideally suited for deployment in shallow waters, but the JIG dismissed the possibility of such a mine striking the Cheonan because it “cannot split a ship when detonated at a depth of 47 meters.” That was the depth of water at the location where the torpedo components were retrieved. However, when it sank, the Cheonan had been sailing in waters that were no deeper than 30 to 40 meters. (6) According to the Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law, “bottom mines tend to work in relatively shallow water (less than 164 feet).” That translates into just under 50 meters, well within the range necessary to have struck the Cheonan. (7) However, the JIG calculates the distance of the explosion as just three meters from the Cheonan’s gas turbine engine. (8) If the JIG’s calculation of the explosion distance is correct, then that would preclude the possibility of a bottom mine.

There is another type of mine, one which the JIG did not address in its summary of findings. That is the rising mine, which is similar to a bottom mine in that it sits on the seabed. Where it differs is that it contains an acoustic sensor, and when a ship approaches, the mine is programmed to float upwards and explode at a set distance beneath the hull. In essence, the result would be the same as a non-contact torpedo, creating a bubble jet effect. In shallow water, such mines tend not to be moored, hence there would be no anchor. (9) There is also the torpedo mine, which when detecting an approaching ship, opens up and fires a torpedo at its target. (10) This possibility, too, was not mentioned in the JIG’s summary.

The centerpiece of the case against North Korea is without doubt the torpedo fragments retrieved by trawlers. At the JIG press conference announcing the results of its investigation, a diagram said to be that of the CHT-02D was displayed. It was not until over one month later, after critics had pointed to discrepancies between the diagram and the torpedo fragments, that the JIG admitted that it had shown a diagram of the wrong torpedo, the PT-97W. This was said to have been caused by a “mix-up by a staff member while preparing for the presentation.” (11) That such a mistake could be made is indicative of a careless attitude concerning evidence.

This was not the only point of confusion. One day before the JIG’s final results were announced, a Korean government official was quoted as saying that investigators had determined that North Korea sank the Cheonan with a Chinese-made torpedo, as Chinese characters were written on the torpedo fragments collected from the site. It was said that the torpedo was thought to be a YU-3G, the type North Korea had imported from China more than twenty years ago. (12) One day later, nothing more was said of the matter, and now it was claimed that the torpedo fragments originated from a CHT-02D, with a Korean word written in blue ink. It is true that at one time Hanja (Chinese) characters were incorporated into general usage in Korea, but that practice has long since passed, and not since 1949 have they been used in North Korea. (13) Because the JIG’s report remains shrouded in secrecy, it is impossible to know whether or not Chinese characters were truly found on torpedo fragments. If so, that would be at variance with a report that U.S. intelligence had traced the propulsion system on the found torpedo to its manufacture two years ago at a North Korean factory. (14)

It should also be mentioned that the information South Korea had on the CHT-02D was obtained from an export catalogue, as the weapon is among those that North Korea sells abroad. In other words, the torpedo apparently has buyers, and therefore the source of manufacture does not automatically correspond to ownership. So, was the torpedo a Chinese-made YU-3G or a North Korean-made CHT-02D? Or perhaps something else altogether? It is a CHT-02D, the JIG now asserts, without addressing the discrepancy in its claims.

Traces of RDX, a high explosive chemical commonly used in torpedoes and mines, were found on the Choenan’s smokestack, stern, and in sand taken from the seabed. South Korean Defense Minister Kim Tae-young dismissed speculation that the RDX was residue from naval drills that had been conducted in the past in the area. Although one South Korean government source claimed that RDX is not used in mines, this was contradicted by the Defense Minister (15). Indeed, RDX has been used in naval mines since the Second World War. (16)

While the presence of RDX would be consistent with a torpedo attack, it cannot on its own be considered as proof of that. Consider that when Canadian authorities intercepted the Princess Easwary as it was transporting illegal immigrants, swabs taken from the ship showed traces of RDX. No torpedo or mine had struck the Princess Easwary. Its past history of gun-running meant that the mere presence of explosives had been enough to leave a residue. (17) The Cheonan, as a military vessel, routinely carried explosives and engaged in naval exercises. Among the Cheonan’s armaments were six Mark 46 torpedoes, two Otobreda 76 mm guns, two 40 mm Bofors guns, and twelve Mark 9 depth charges. (18) Both torpedoes and depth charges utilize RDX, and the bursting charge of projectiles fired by Bofors contain RDX. (19) Certainly, explosions from test-fired depth charges would have spread RDX around rather liberally.

It is a striking anomaly that none of the 58 surviving sailors of the Cheonan witnessed a rising pillar of water, without which it is difficult to imagine that a bubble jet effect explosion could have taken place. (20) Perhaps all of those on deck perished during the incident. That might account for this oddity, although it does seem unlikely, given that most of the casualties were said to be of those who were below deck. There is, of course, the shore-based witness, but one would feel more comfortable with his veracity were it backed by other witnesses. Indeed, the Korean organization People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy reports that survivors who spoke at the JIG press conference said they saw no pillar of water. They included port-side lookouts, who would have been hard-pressed to miss such a significant sight. (21)

The recovery of torpedo fragments in the vicinity of Cheonan’s sinking appears persuasive. It is a strong point in support of the South Korean government’s argument. Yet, it is not such an unusual event for torpedoes and components of torpedoes to be found underwater. All sorts of things get dumped at sea, including, it seems, dangerous weaponry. A live torpedo was inadvertently pulled up in a fishing net more than two years ago off the British coast, as was one off the coast of Rhode Island in 1985. (22) In a survey covering the period of March 2002 through February 2003, the British Royal Navy reported that “at least 15 items of explosives ordinance or their components had been recovered in the nets of fishing vessels operating in coastal waters around the British Isles.” Among the ordinance recovered were “torpedo components.” It was also noted that some items had been “dispersed from their original dumping or loss positions by water movements.” Oceanographic factors “can lead to quite substantial movements of large munitions.” In the 15-year period ending in 2000, German fisherman reported to officials in Lower Saxony having found a total of more than 11 tons of munitions, while Dutch fisherman net an average of ten explosives per year. (23) The torpedo recovered by South Korea may have been associated with the sinking of Cheonan, but it could also have been dumped at sea, or test fired during military exercises at some point in the past.

It should also be noted that the Cheonan was sunk in disputed waters. After the Korean War, the U.S. unilaterally drew the Yellow Sea border between the two Koreas with a line that curved sharply northward to North Korea’s disadvantage, rather than in a straight line, as existed with the East Sea border and which would have been common practice. (24) The area has been the site of periodic naval clashes between the two Koreas, and it is not unusual for North Korean vessels to cross over this line that it does not recognize.

The JIG did conduct a simulation to demonstrate how a bubble jet effect would have impacted a ship’s hull. It is an indication of the predetermined approach the JIG adopted that the simulation was not completed until after its report was finished and results were announced. Although a bubble jet effect is capable of severing a ship in two, the JIG’s simulation failed to do more than deform and cause a small break in the hull. (25)

Two Korean-American physicists, Seung-Hun Lee and J.J. Suh, are of the opinion that a bubble jet would have resulted in the hull being deformed in a concave shape at the point of severance, rather than the sharply angular shape seen in the Cheonan. This suggested to them that the pattern is “more consistent with a collision with a hard object.” (26)

What tied the recovered torpedo fragments to the sinking of the Cheonan was not only its proximity to the site of the sinking, but also a chemical analysis of adhered substances on both the torpedo and the Cheonan’s hull that were shown to be identical. (27) The physicists managed to obtain a copy of one section of the JIG’s secret report, in which it was stated that the compounds were a result of an explosion. These compounds were indeed the same on both the torpedo and the ship, the physicists concluded, but the data were not consistent with the conclusion that they had formed during an explosion. The samples, they asserted, “have nothing to do with any explosion, but are most likely aluminum that has rusted after exposure to moisture or water for a long time.” Korean-Canadian geologist Panseok Yang determined that the spectroscopic analysis of the compounds reported by the JIG closely matched that of gibbsite, a mineral formed under intense weathering conditions, and often found in clay deposits. (28)

When a South Korean congresswoman asked the JIG to release its samples, only two out of the three were made available. The JIG claimed that they had used up all of the third sample, yet the spectroscopic and X-ray analyses done are non-destructive. Seung-Hun Lee and Panseok Yang observed that either the JIG had completely mishandled the samples or they were intentionally hiding them. (29)

The South Korean Ministry of Defense rejected their conclusions, pointing out that the physicists’ laboratory tests did not fully replicate conditions during an explosion, and were thus invalid. (30) The physicists argued that their results were “consistent with previous scientific studies.” In their experiments they had scaled down both the weight of the explosive and the weight of the water in a metal container to retain the proportion equivalent to that of a torpedo. Full access to the JIG’s data and objective analysis would do much to bring us closer to the truth, whichever direction it leads, but Seung-Hun Lee finds that the JIG’s report contains “several serious self-contradicting aspects and their interpretations have serious flaws, to say the least.” (31)

The propulsion unit of the torpedo was severely corroded, an apparent result of the coat of paint having been burnt away by the heat of the explosion. It seems odd that the “number 1” written in Korean by a blue magic marker would survive intact. The boiling point for ink is less than half that of paint, so it would be more vulnerable to loss. (32) One cannot be sure that the handwriting was not added later by South Korean military officials for enhanced dramatic effect when presenting their evidence.

In the opinion of Seung-Hun Lee, “The government is lying when they said this was found underwater. I think this is something that was pulled out of a warehouse of old materials to show to the press.” (33)

It seems that the JIG’s investigation was something of a rush job, intended to be completed in time to give a boost to the South Korean ruling party in local elections. Among the members of the JIG were a small number of representatives from the opposition Democratic Party, one of whom, Shin Sang-cheol, felt disappointed that members of the team were not given briefing materials or basic information such as the navigation course record and other data. What struck Shin was that the investigation began with the premise that there had been a torpedo attack, and during his time on the team no effort was made to examine other possibilities. (34)

With the South Korean military’s mind made up before it began, little effort needed to be wasted on analysis. According to one anonymous South Korean military source, “If you leave out the time spent moving the torpedo, removing water and dust, and writing a report, the whole examination [of the torpedo components] only lasted about three days. The government has invited distrust by being excessively greedy.” In that span of time, the JIG was not able to even determine how long the torpedo had been corroding underwater. (35)

Shin Sang-cheol was quickly booted out of the JIG for not singing the same tune as the military authorities. With years of experience as a ship navigator and as a shipbuilding inspector at various Korean shipyards, he was not entirely without expertise. He sent a letter to U.S. Secretary of State Hilary Clinton, in which he included maritime maps of the waters around Baengnyeong Island. These, he pointed out, are marked by shallow waters and rock fields. It was his contention that the Cheonan had run aground, backed out, and then collided with some object. Among the indications Shin cited as evidence were deep scratches on the hull and propeller blades bent forward; that is, toward the direction of the point where the ship split in two, rather than away from it. Perhaps not surprisingly, Shin is being sued for libel by the South Korean military. (36)

Shin’s theory, however, does not seem particularly more convincing than that of the South Korean military. The JIG ruled out the possibility of running aground as the ship’s sonar remained undamaged. Shin counters, correctly, that a hull can run aground at one point while another is unaffected. But it could be that the ship’s propellers were damaged when the stern hit bottom after the Cheonan split in two. Or indeed, the damage to them may have resulted from some previous incident. It is far from certain that Shin’s theory accounts for what actually happened to the Cheonan. The JIG’s summary points out that there are no signs of collision on the Cheonan, and the hull damage does appear more consistent with that of an external explosion than of a collision. But the possibility of a collision did merit consideration. Actually, what is perplexing is that none of the various explanations that have been put forward quite seem to fit the totality of evidence.

One’s already low level of confidence in the South Korean military’s sincerity was undermined when it was revealed that it had deliberately fudged initial reports on the sinking of the Cheonan. The Naval Operations Command reported that the sinking occurred at 9:15 PM (which was later corrected to 9:22 PM) and that there was the sound of an explosion. The Joint Chiefs, however, altered the time to 9:45 PM and omitted mention of an explosion in order to cover up their slow responsiveness. Then the Ministry of Defense botched the release of thermal observation device recordings by using those from thirteen minutes after the sinking, while ignoring recordings taken from just three minutes afterward. Furthermore, when a South Korean vessel in the vicinity of the Cheonan reported that it had fired at an unidentified object, it was instructed by the Fleet to report the object as “a flock of birds.” It was also eventually revealed that the on-duty Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was drunk that night, and only arrived at command control headquarters at 10:42 PM, where he managed to stay awake at a meeting for ten minutes before falling asleep. (37)

That high-ranking military officers would so causally lie and distort facts during a moment of crisis does not encourage confidence in their reliability to objectively analyze data and come to a considered conclusion in the investigation into the sinking of the Cheonan. Certainly not when political pressure to reach a predetermined conclusion would have been so intense. Interestingly, the investigators who probed into the military’s mishandling of its initial response to the sinking of the Cheonan revealed only a portion of the problems they had found. Information which they considered militarily sensitive was excluded. (38) That would seem to imply that additional distortions or misrepresentations had taken place.

The South Korean military believes that it was a North Korean Yono (Salmon) class midget submarine that fired a torpedo at Cheonan. Of limited range, midget submarines must be ferried and launched by larger submarines. They can operate in shallow waters, unlike their larger counterparts. Even so, the waters around the sinking were too shallow even for a midget submarine, so it is thought that it had to have been operating from much farther away, in deeper waters. South Korea did track the departure of a Yono-class submarine and its mother ship from a North Korean port days before the sinking of Cheonan, as well as their return to base days after the incident. For the JIG, that constituted direct evidence of North Korean responsibility, although logically speaking, this is not in fact direct causal proof any more than a man would be proven guilty of murder simply because he was away from his home at the moment the murder took place. The most that could be said of the submarine tracking is that it is suggestive of a possible connection.

Oddly, the Cheonan’s sonar failed to detect anything unusual, but a South Korean military source pointed out that the ship’s sonar “is an old model with a limited range, so there’s a strong possibility that it failed to detect the torpedo which was launched from far away.” (39) That may be true, but one must add that sooner or later a torpedo fired from long-range distance would approach closely enough to be detected. Kim Jong-dae, editor-in-chief of D&D, a defense journal, observes, “A submarine is supposed to be difficult to detect militarily, but most torpedoes can be detected. It is doubtful they would have been completely unable to detect the launch.” (40)

No one would call the JIG’s investigation a model of transparency. It was led by South Korea, who chose the nations that would participate: the U.S., Great Britain, Australia and Sweden. On the Multinational Combined Intelligence Task Force, Canada replaced Sweden. Aside from Sweden, what all of these nations share is a uniformly hostile attitude towards North Korea. Sweden, according to CBS News, was “a reluctant partner in blaming the North Koreans.” (41)

Unquestionably, the South Korean government is sincere in its belief that a North Korean submarine fired a torpedo at the Cheonan. But in one sense that is the problem. So convinced was the JIG, that the team had a set of blinders on during the investigation, so that only one outcome was possible. And nothing would seem amiss if, whether knowingly or blindly, evidence was fudged or ignored to strengthen that case, as that would not change the overall facts as the team perceived it.

The report itself remains secret, and all requests for it to be made public have been rejected. A copy did go to U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, who pronounced the evidence against North Korea “overwhelming.” If the evidence is truly so convincing, it would only help South Korea’s case for it to be made publicly known. Or could it be the case that the evidence falls short of Clinton’s assessment? South Korean legislators have not seen the report, nor have they been given access to even partial information of relevance. Assemblyman Choi Moon-soon of the opposition Democratic Party comments, “We asked for very basic information – interviews with surviving sailors, communication records, the reason the ship was out there.” But no information was forthcoming from the government. (42)

North Korea vehemently denies the accusations being made against it. As the accused, North Korea is an interested party. It feels it has the right to see the evidence supporting the charges. North Korea asked on two occasions to send its own inspection team to operate under the joint control of both South and North Korea in order to conduct an investigation, but their requests were turned down by the South Korean government. North Korea sent a similar suggestion to the United Nations, only to be rebuffed by the United States, who indicated that the case against North Korea was already proven. Instead, the U.S. pushed hard for the strongest language in a UN Security Council statement, and attempted to browbeat China into going along. China, though, held firm in the interests of peace, ensuring that a more moderate UN statement resulted. With the U.S. and South Korea committed to taking a hard line, even North Korea’s proposal to reopen talks on denuclearization was snubbed.

China, which has received a modicum of information from South Korea, remains unconvinced. “I have to say the majority of Chinese policymakers and academics feel that the Cheonan report does not hold water,” remarks international studies scholar Zhu Feng. (43)

In order to bolster its case, South Korea agreed to allow a team of Russian naval military experts to visit and analyze the evidence. For the first time, there would be an objective assessment of evidence. There was good cooperation during the visit, and then the Russians returned home where they spent several weeks in analyzing the data. Russia, however, was in a delicate position when it came to publicizing its determinations. Openly backing Seoul would only encourage attempts by the U.S. to ratchet up tensions in the region, whereas dissenting from the JIG’s conclusion could strain relations with South Korea, an important trading partner. So it was not surprising when it was announced that Russia would not publicize its own report.

There have been, however, various leaks and comments made to the media which give a fair indication of the Russian team’s evaluation of the evidence, clearly regarded as inconclusive. Russia did supply its report to the U.S. and China, but not to the South Koreans, apparently in a bid to avoid antagonizing them. But it did not take long for South Korea to be apprised of the results, no doubt by the U.S. Whereupon the Russian ambassador was called to the South Korean Ministry of Foreign Affairs, where he received a heated reception.

According to a South Korean diplomatic source, “The Russian investigation team’s primary interest was in whether North Korea, which had been unable to produce its own torpedoes until 1995, suddenly was able to attack the Cheonan with a state-of-the-art bubble jet torpedo.” It has been pointed out that this technology is possessed only by a small number of countries, and the weapon has been successfully used only in test firings on stationary targets. The Russian team came to the conclusion that the recovered torpedo did not sink the Cheonan, nor indeed had any bubble jet torpedo done so. As that was the primary focus of their investigation, they did not offer a concrete cause, other than to suggest various proposed scenarios, such as a mine explosion after maneuvering problems. (44)

If a North Korean source speaking on condition of anonymity in Hanoi is to be believed, Russia informed North Korean officials that it did not trust the results of the JIG investigation. “The Russian delegation said if the truth is revealed, then South Korea and the United States could be caught in an awkward position,” an apparent reference to the manipulation of evidence. (45)

Yet there was still much that the Russian team was unable to determine. It sent requests for further information, but so far South Korea has failed to respond. “We still have some questions regarding the results of this work to which we have not received clear answers,” Naval Commander Vladimir Vysotsky said. Whether or not answers would be supplied, he added, “doesn’t depend on us.” (46)

It is interesting to compare the U.S. response to Cheonan’s sinking with its reaction to the Israeli attack on a ship bringing aid to the Gaza Strip, in which unarmed civilians were shot dead by soldiers storming the boat. Whereas in the case of the Cheonan, culpability remains uncertain and evidence is contradictory, there was no ambiguity about the Israeli action. It was an unprovoked attack on a ship operating in international waters. There was no question as to who attacked the ship. In response to that incident, U.S. officials worked behind the scenes to prevent the UN Security Council from giving the go-ahead for an investigation into the attack. U.S. officials argued that instead Israel should investigate its own action. U.S. Ambassador Alejandro Wolff saved his harsh criticism for those who had been delivering aid, calling their effort “neither appropriate nor responsible.” (47) Punishment for Israel is swift in coming. The proposed U.S. 2011 budget calls for $3 billion in aid to be provided to Israel. (48)

Contrast that with U.S. plans for North Korea. That nation may be right when it claims that it had nothing to do with the Cheonan’s fate. But who needs an ironclad case when there are geopolitical goals to be achieved? The U.S. and South Korea launched large-scale joint military exercises in the East Sea, including the aircraft carrier USS George Washington, and for the first time U.S. F-22 stealth fighters flew in Korean airspace. The war games were clearly intended to be intimidating.

There are plans afoot for the possible deployment of an advanced airborne communications network on the Korean Peninsula, which would enable U.S. troops to overcome the limitations of communication in the mountainous terrain prevalent in North Korea. (49) Also on the U.S. drawing board is an expansion of psychological warfare against North Korea, including the use of internet technology, leaflets and radio broadcasts. (50)

More importantly, as political commentator Stephen Gowans puts it in a nice turn of phrase, “The United States has announced that it is adding a new tranche to the Himalaya of sanctions it has built up since 1950 against North Korea.” (51) The U.S. State Department and Department of Treasury plan to expand the list of businesses and organizations subject to sanctions, and to freeze bank accounts, work with various foreign governments to stop North Korean trading companies from doing business on the allegation that they are involved in illegal operations, impose travel restrictions, and implement a host of other measures. (52) Approximately 100 bank accounts linked to North Korea are to be frozen. “The U.S. has continued to consult the banks and will likely induce them to quietly close the accounts,” a diplomatic source revealed. (53)

The assertion that the accounts are linked to illegal operations is reminiscent of similar efforts by the George W. Bush Administration, when North Korean accounts engaged in legitimate business were closed and banks throughout the world were threatened with harsh financial consequences if they continued to allow North Korea to conduct normal international financial operations. All that was done under the unproven (and in some cases clearly dis-proven) contention that the accounts were connected with illegal activities. The intent was to dry up North Korea’s access to foreign currency, and thus its ability to import essential items such as food, spare parts and machinery.

Indeed, even before June the U.S already began freezing North Korean accounts held in foreign banks around the world. According to an unnamed diplomatic source, “The moves should be interpreted as a part of new sanctions on the North to hold it responsible for the sinking of the Cheonan.” U.S. diplomat Robert Einhorn plans to visit a number of countries in an attempt to pressure them to enforce sanctions against North Korea. (54) It is not difficult to imagine the effect on the people of North Korea. Already existing sanctions have caused a shortage of raw materials, says Korean economic analyst Cho Boo Hyung, which has led to reduced output. And a decrease in food production will trigger negative economic growth. Cho feels that sanctions could produce another famine in North Korea, comparable to that of the 1990s. (55)

President Lee Myung-bak of South Korea has also seized the opportunity presented by Cheonan’s sinking to further his goals. As a long-time opponent of the Sunshine Policy of his two predecessors, Lee never hid his ambition to dismantle all of the progress that had been made in recent years with relations between the two Koreas. No sooner had Lee taken office than he announced that he had no intention of observing the agreement signed by former President Roh Moo-hyun that set up a joint fishing area in the disputed waters at the Northern Limit Line, and which included measures to discourage military clashes there. Several economic agreements that had been reached were put on hold.

Once the JIG had announced the results of its investigation, Lee outlined a new policy with his northern neighbor. “From this moment,” he said, “no North Korean ship will be allowed to make passage through any of the shipping lanes in the waters under our control, which has been allowed by the Inter-Korean Agreement on Maritime Transportation.” In addition, “Trade and exchanges between the Republic of Korea and North Korea will also be suspended.” Relations between the two Koreas have deteriorated to their lowest point since the period of military dictatorships in South Korea, and U.S. sanctions will only exacerbate tensions.

Did a North Korean submarine fire a torpedo at the Cheonan? I do not know. It would have been foolhardy for the North Korean government to order such a strike. It had nothing to gain, and absolutely everything to lose by such an act. It may be that a rogue commander ordered the attack as revenge for an incident near Daecheong Island the previous November, when South Korean ships chased a North Korean patrol boat, firing on it and sending it up in flames, thereby causing the deaths of several sailors. That attack, incidentally, failed to elicit any concern whatsoever from the same U.S. officials who so sternly pontificate on the unacceptability of allowing the sinking of Cheonan to go unpunished.

It appears to me that the most likely cause of Cheonan’s sad fate was having had the ill fortune to inadvertently sail into the path of a rising sea mine. Given the fast-moving currents in those waters, it may be that over time a rising mine had gradually migrated from where it had been initially deposited, so that its position was unexpected. That is just speculation, of course, and other possibilities exist. A broad-based international investigation needs to take place, and its results made fully public. The 46 sailors who lost their lives when the Cheonan sank deserve the truth, whatever it may be. As do the peoples of both Koreas, whose future is intertwined in so many ways. But geopolitical considerations guarantee that no such international probe will take place. Tensions are likely to remain high as long as President Lee remains in office. No conceivable change in U.S. administrations will bring about an improvement in the security environment on the Korean Peninsula, but the 2012 election in South Korea might. That is something to hope for.

Gregory Elich is on the Board of Directors of the Jasenovac Research Institute and on the Advisory Board of the Korea Truth Commission. He is the author of the book Strange Liberators: Militarism, Mayhem, and the Pursuit of Profit.

NOTES

(1) “Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS ‘Cheonan’,” Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, May 20, 2010.

(2) The video at this site illustrates the impact of a bubble jet effect explosion on ships:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_oUNt47G-08

(3) “Questions Raised Following Cheonan Announcement,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), May 21, 2010.

(4) “Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS ‘Cheonan’,” Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, May 20, 2010. Much later, a video, photographs, diagrams and further details were appended to the May 20 press release.

(5) Chris Bennet, “Mine Warfare at Sea,” African Security Review, Vol. 7, No. 5, 1998.

(6) “How Did N. Korea Sink the Cheonan?”, Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), May 22, 2010.

(7) “Strait of Hormuz: Assessing Threats to Energy Security in the Persian Gulf,” The Robert S. Strauss Center for International Security and Law.

(8) “Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS ‘Cheonan’,” Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, May 20, 2010.

(9) http://www.navweaps.com/index_tech/tech-068.htm

(10) http://www.freepatentsonline.com/3811379.html

(11) “Cheonan Investigators Presented Wrong Torpedo Diagram,” Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), June 30, 2010. Kim Deok-hyun, “Investigators Admit Using Wrong Blueprint to Show N. Korean Torpedo That Attacked Cheonan,” Yonhap (Seoul), June 29, 2010.

(12) “N. Korea Used Chinese-Made Torpedo in Attack on S. Korean Ship: Source,” Yonhap (Seoul), May 19, 2010.

(13) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hanja

(14) “U.S. Pinpoints Where Torpedo that Sank the Cheonan was Made,” Chosun Ilbo, July 23, 2010. “NK Torpedo Produced in Gaecheon 2 Years Ago: Sankei,” Korea Times, July 22, 2010.

(15) Chang Jae-soon, “Defense Chief Confirms Explosive Chemical Found in Sunken Ship,” Yonhap (Seoul), May 10, 2010. “Torpedo Explosive Detected in Sunken Ship: Official,” Yonhap, May 7, 2010.

(16) http://www.answers.com/topic/explosive-material Jung Sung-ki, “Defense Chief Confirms Explosive Residue Found on Sunken Ship,” Korea Times, May 10, 2010.

(17) Walter Jayawardhana, “Canadian Authorities Tell Immigration and Refugee Board that LTTE Ship Contained Traces of High Explosives Like RDX,” LankaWeb, November 25, 2009.
“Canadian Officials Find Three More Traces of Explosives on Tamil Ship,” Colombo Times, November 24, 2009.

(18) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/ROKS_Cheonan_(PCC-772)

(19) http://www.answers.com/topic/explosive-material http://www.wwiiequipment.com/

http://www.janes.com/articles/Janes-Ammunition-Handbook/

(20) Jung Sung-ki, “Investigators Point to Air Bubble,” Korea Times, April 25, 2010.

(21) Junghye Kwak, Huisun Kim, Taeho Lee, “The PSPD’s Stance on the Naval Vessel Cheonan Sinking,” People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy Issue Report IR-20100601, Seoul.

(22) “Navy Detonates Torpedo Caught in Fishing Nets,” Defence News, January 29, 2008.
“Navy Detonates Torpedo Caught in Fishing Nets,” UPI, December 18, 1985.

(23) J. Beddington and A.J. Freng, “Munitions Dumped at Sea: A Literature Review,” Imperial College London, June 2005.

(24) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Northern_Limit_Line

(25) Seunghun Lee, J.J. Suh, “Rush to Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea’s Cheonan Report,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2010.

(26) Seunghun Lee, J.J. Suh, “Rush to Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea’s Cheonan Report,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2010.

(27) “Investigation Result on the Sinking of ROKS ‘Cheonan‘,” Ministry of National Defense, Republic of Korea, May 20, 2010. Specifically mentioned in the detailed section appended to the May 20 press release.

(287) Seunghun Lee, J.J. Suh, “Rush to Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea’s Cheonan Report,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2010.

Seung-Hun Lee, “Comments on the Section ‘Adsorbed Material Analysis’ of the Cheonan Report Made by the South Korean Civil and Military Joint Investigative Group (CIV-MIL JIG),”
http://arxiv.org/vc/arxiv/papers/1006/1006.0680v2.pdf

Seung-Hun Lee, Panseok Yang, “Were the ‘Critical Evidence’ Presented in the South Korean Official Cheonan Report Fabricated?”

(29) Seung-Hun Lee, Panseok Yang, “Were the ‘Critical Evidence’ Presented in the South Korean Official Cheonan Report Fabricated?“,

(30) Shin Joo Hyun, “Ministry of Defense Responds to Cheonan Claims,” Daily NK, June 23, 2010.

(31) Seung-Hun Lee, “Comments on the Section ‘Adsorbed Material Analysis’ of the Cheonan Report Made by the South Korean Civil and Military Joint Investigative Group (CIV-MIL JIG),”

(32) Seunghun Lee, J.J. Suh, “Rush to Judgment: Inconsistencies in South Korea’s Cheonan Report,” The Asia-Pacific Journal: Japan Focus, July 12, 2010.

(33) Barbara Demick, “Doubts Surface on North Korea’s Role in Ship Sinking,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2010

(34) Junghye Kwak, Huisun Kim, Taeho Lee, “The PSPD’s Stance on the Naval Vessel Cheonan Sinking,” People’s Solidarity for Participatory Democracy Issue Report IR-20100601, Seoul.

(35) Lee Yong-inn, “Questions Linger 100 Days after the Cheonan Sinking,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), July 3, 2010.

(36) S.C. Shin, “Letter to Hillary Clinton, U.S. Secretary of State for PCC-722 Cheonan,” May 26, 2010.For a clear view of the Cheonan’s propellers.

(37) “Cheonan Probe Says Military Made Grave Errors,” Dong-A Ilbo (Seoul), June 11, 2010.
“Uncovering the Truth About the Cheonan,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), June 11, 2010. “Wide-Ranging Incompetence and Cover-ups Took Place Night of Cheonan Sinking, Audit Reveals,”
Hankyoreh (Seoul), June 11, 2010.

(38) Ser Myo-ja, “Military Found Inept, Lying in Responding to Cheonan,” JoongAng Ilbo (Seoul), June 11, 2010.

(39) “How Did N. Korea Sink the Cheonan?”, Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), May 22, 2010.

(40) “Questions Raised Following Cheonan Announcement,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), May 11, 2010.

(41) “South Korea to Unveil Evidence of North Sinking Navy Ship,” CBS News, May 19, 2010.

(42) Barbara Demick, “Doubts Surface on North Korea’s Role in Ship Sinking,” Los Angeles Times, July 23, 2010.

(43) Sunny Lee, “China Has Different View on Cheonan,” Korea Times (Seoul), July 18, 2010.

(44) Lee Yeong-in, “Government Protests Russia’s Conflicting Cheonan Finding,” Hankyoreh (Seoul), July 10, 2010.

(45) Yoo Jee-ho, “N. Korea Warns ‘Physical Response’ Against South – U.S. Military Drills,” Yonhap (Seoul), July 23, 2010.

(46) “Russian Specialists Have Questions on S. Korean Corvette’s Sinking – Navy Commander,” Interfax (Moscow), July 24, 2010.

“Russian Experts Unable to Give Answers on Cheonan Sinking – Navy Commander,” RIA Novosti (Moscow), July 24, 2010.

(47) Colum Lynch and Debbi Wilgoren, “U.N. Calls for Impartial Probe of Israeli Raid,” Washington Post, June 1, 2010.

(48) Danielle Kurtzleben, “Despite Rift, Israel Gets More U.S. Aid Than Iraq,” U.S. and World News Report, July 6, 2010.

(49) Jung Sung-ki, “US to Deploy Airborne Network in South Korea,” Korea Times (Seoul), July 2, 2010.

(50) Michael Sheridan, “Clinton to Wage Digital War on Kim for Sinking Ship,” Sunday Times (London), May 23, 2010.

(51) Stephen Gowans, “The Real Story on North Korea and its Healthcare,” What’s Left, July 21, 2010.

(52) “U.S. to Impose Sanctions on N. Korea in 2 Weeks,” Chosun Ilbo (Seoul), July 23, 2010.

(53) “US to Freeze 100 N. Korean Bank Accounts,” Dong-A Ilbo (Seoul), July 23, 2010.

(54) Kang Chan-ho and Ser Myo-ja, “U.S. Froze North Korean Bank Accounts Since June,” JoongAng Ilbo (Seoul), July 23, 2010.

(55) Steve Herman, “Sanctions Expected to Harm North Korean Economy,” Voice of America, July 23, 2010.

July 28, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Timeless or most popular | Baengnyeong Island, Cheonan, North Korea, Republic of Korea Navy, ROKS Cheonan, ROKS Cheonan sinking, South Korea | Leave a comment

War against Iran more likely — thanks to Wikileaks

By Paul Woodward on July 28, 2010

If the release of the Pentagon Papers epitomized the value of government leaks as a means of speaking truth to power, Wikileaks at this point can claim no such distinction.

As if to underline the extent to which the Afghan war logs are making the fog of war more, not less, dense, Katrina vanden Heuvel says: “more than a few commentators — including Daniel Ellsberg himself — have called [the war logs] a 21st-century Pentagon Papers.”

She may understandably have been misled by a headline in The Guardian that read: “Daniel Ellsberg describes Afghan war logs as on a par with ‘Pentagon Papers’.” However, “These documents are not the Pentagon Papers — we still await their equivalent for Afghanistan,” is what Ellsberg unambiguously told the Financial Times.

While Wikileak’s founder, Julian Assange, is no doubt sincere in his hope that these intelligence revelations will expose the futility of war, the fact is, because intelligence is not intelligent it can very easily be used to serve a host of diverging political agendas.

If opponents of the war in Afghanistan now feel better armed, so do proponents of an expanding war in Pakistan. Likewise, those pushing for military action against Iran will welcome a new supply of ammunition served by Wikileaks.

Yesterday, the Wall Street Journal reported:

Cooperation among Iran, al Qaeda and other Sunni extremist groups is more extensive than previously known to the public, according to details buried in the tens of thousands of military intelligence documents released by an independent group Sunday.

U.S. officials and Middle East analysts said some of the most explosive information contained in the WikiLeaks documents detail Iran’s alleged ties to the Taliban and al Qaeda, and the facilitating role Tehran may have played in providing arms from sources as varied as North Korea and Algeria.

The officials have for years received reports of Iran smuggling arms to the Taliban. The WikiLeaks documents, however, appear to give new evidence of direct contacts between Iranian officials and the Taliban’s and al Qaeda’s senior leadership. It also outlines Iran’s alleged role in brokering arms deals between North Korea and Pakistan-based militants, particularly militant leader Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and al Qaeda.

Here we see one of the most bizarre twists in the story: US government sources now using the leaked documents to buttress the current anti-Iran narrative and in the process acting as though the intelligence reports are providing information that hadn’t been accessible inside government until they were leaked!

At the very same time, the State Department’s leading expert on Iran, John Limbert — a genuine source of intelligence and “the most qualified person on the Iran team at State in the three decades I have lived in the United States,” according to Haleh Esfandiari, head of the Middle East program at the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars — is about to resign.

At Foreign Policy, Barbara Slavin writes:

[I]t’s hard not to view Limbert’s departure as a turning point and yet another missed opportunity in U.S.-Iran relations. A number of players with more skeptical views about the prospect of rapprochement with Tehran — such as White House aide Dennis Ross and nonproliferation experts like Robert Einhorn and Gary Samore — appear to be driving U.S. policy now, and the president himself blames the Iranian government for failing to respond to his outreach.

What could please the attack-Iran lobby more than to see the departure of the most skilled American proponent of engagement and at the same time to be served a prize piece of propaganda by an outfit aligned with the anti-war movement?!

July 28, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Wikileaks’ estranged co-founder becomes a critic

By Declan McCullagh | CNET | July 20, 2010

NEW YORK — John Young was one of Wikileaks’ early founders. Now he’s one of the organization’s more prominent critics.

Young, a 74-year-old architect who lives in Manhattan, publishes a document-leaking Web site called Cryptome.org that predates Wikileaks by over a decade. He’s drawn fire from Microsoft after posting leaked internal documents about police requests, irked the U.K. government for disclosing the names of possible spies, and annoyed Homeland Security by disclosing a review of Democratic National Convention security measures.

Cryptome’s history of publicizing leaks–while not yielding to pressure to remove them–is what led Young to be invited to join Wikileaks before its launch over three years ago. He also agreed to be the public face of the organization by listing his name on the domain name registration.

Operating a Web site to post leaked documents isn’t very expensive (Young estimates he spends a little over $100 a month for Cryptome’s server space). So when other Wikileaks founders started to talk about the need to raise $5 million and complained that an initial round of publicity had affected “our delicate negotiations with the Open Society Institute and other funding bodies,” Young says, he resigned from the effort.

In the last few weeks, after the arrest of Army intelligence analyst Bradley Manning cast a brighter spotlight on Wikileaks, Young has been trying to trace Wikileaks’ money flows. On July 17, Wikileaks asked supporters for $200,000 to pay for Mannings’ attorneys, even though co-founder Julian Assange said a few days earlier that the organization had already raised $1 million.

CNET caught up with Young at the Next HOPE hacker conference here last weekend, where he was attending the Wikileaks keynote speech. Following is a transcript made from a recorded interview with Young, lightly edited for space.

Q: How many hours a day or days a week do you spend on Cryptome?
Young: Well, it varies. When I’m doing professional practice work, it’s very little. I just answer e-mail and when something hot comes in, I’ll put it up. Most of my time is spent on my architectural practice. So I do Cryptome between when I have time to get to it. It’s by no means a full-time activity.

What you’re doing sounds a lot like what Wikileaks is doing, no?
Young: Only superficially, Declan, because, and we can talk more about this, I initially thought that was what they were going to be doing when I first agreed to participate. But it became clear right away that they were going to set up an operation with multiple people involved. So the first difference is that I don’t run an operation. I don’t have any people working on this. This is strictly–and I like the term myself, but other people hate it–it’s strictly an amateur version.

It’s not like Wikileaks and their grand goals. I’ve never had any desire to overturn governments or do any of these noble things that they want to do. Or jack up journalism. This was just a way to get certain kinds of documents out to the public.

And so when they explained the amount of money they were going to try to raise, that was the basis for parting company with them. I thought it was going to be more like Cryptome, which is a collective of people contributing their time to it and not a centralized operation raising lots of money. Cryptome is not into that kind of thing. We parted company at that point. We’re still not like Wikileaks in that we don’t do any promotional work for our activities.

Who were the other Wikileaks founders?
Young: I’m not going to talk about those. I’ll say Julian (Assange) was clearly there. I elected to conceal those names when I published these messages. And I think it’s basically a violation of Cryptome’s policy–to publish the names of people who do not want to be identified.

You had a falling-out with the other Wikileaks founders?
Young: Yes. But it was over this: someone said that the initial goal was $5 million. That caught my attention. One, because I think the type of stuff I was going to publish, you should never do it for money. Only because that contaminates the credibility and it turns it into a business opportunity where there’s great treachery and lying going on.

And it will contaminate Wikileaks. It always does. In fact, that’s the principal means by which noble endeavors are contaminated, the money trail. That’s pretty obvious. I happen to think that amateur stuff is better than paid stuff.

How long were you involved before you resigned?
Young: Not long. A few weeks. It wasn’t long. However, one of the things that happened is that somehow I got subscribed to that list under another nym and the messages kept coming in. I got to keep reading what they were saying about me after they booted me off. The messages kept coming in. So I published those too.

Did they criticize you for, well, leaking about Wikileaks?
Young: They certainly did. They accused me of being an old fart and jealous. And all these things that come up, that typically happen when someone doesn’t like you. That’s okay. I know you would never do that and journalists never do that, but ordinary people do this all the time.

Because journalism is a noble profession in all its guises?
Young: That’s right. And there’s no back-biting there.

Over the years you’ve been running Cryptome, you’ve had some encounters with federal agencies. What visits did you have and what were the agents concerned about?
Young: They were most concerned that we published lists. The names of spies. That was the first issue that brought us to their attention. There was a request, so we were told, from one of the British intelligence people to have that list removed.

And did you remove it?
Young: No. And not only that, but the FBI was always very polite. They said you’ve done nothing illegal, we’re not pursuing a criminal investigation. These are just courtesies we’re offering other governments. We had one with the Brits and one with the Japanese that brought them to our door.

You had no other interaction with, say, Homeland Security?
Young: The other was when we started our eyeball series of publishing photos. That brought one visit and one phone call. But again, they were polite and said there’s nothing illegal about this. They never used a negative term. They just said the issue has been raised with us.

And by the way, I did a FOIA trying to get records of these visits, but I could never find anything. I did get business cards, though, and I asked for ID. They were very polite and gave me business cards and I published all that. They asked me not to publish their names. But what the hell, Declan, what else do I have to go with?

So if you’ve been publishing sensitive government information for so long, why have you not had the same encounters that Wikileaks has had? [Ed. Note: Wikileaks has claimed its representatives have been harassed by U.S. government agents.]

I don’t think they’ve had any encounters. That’s bogus. But that’s okay. I know a lot of people who talk about how the government’s after them. It’s a fairly well-worn path. You know it from your own field. It remains to be seen whether any of this stuff holds up or not.

One of the tests is: unless you go to jail, it’s all bogus. When I go to jail, you’ll say he actually did it, finally. He came up with something that offended someone. So far that hasn’t happened, no indictments or anything. These polite visits are the closest I’ve come.

Professionals are going to have nothing to do with Wikileaks, as you probably know if you check around. People who know security will not have anything to do with Wikileaks. But the public will.

Wikileaks pledges to maintain the confidentiality of sources and stressed that in the presentation over the weekend. Do you offer your contributors the same guarantee?
Young: No. That’s just a pitch. You cannot provide any security over the Internet, much less any other form of communication. We actually post periodically warnings not to trust our site. Don’t believe us. We offer no protection. You’re strictly on your own.

We also say don’t trust anyone who offers you protection, whether it’s the U.S. government or anybody else. That’s a story they put out. It’s repeated to people who are a little nervous. They think they can always find someone to protect them. No, you can’t. You’ve got to protect yourself. You know where I learned that? From the cypherpunks.

So Wikileaks cannot protect people. It’s so leaky. It’s unbelievable how leaky it is as far as security goes. But they do have a lot of smoke blowing on their site. Page after page after page about how they’re going to protect you.

And I say, oh-oh. That’s over-promising. The very over-promising is an indication that it doesn’t work. And we know that from watching the field of intelligence and how governments operate. When they over-promise, you know they’re hiding something. People who are really trustworthy do not go around broadcasting how trustworthy I am.

It sounds like you’ve become more critical of Wikileaks over time.
Young: It’s not just them. It’s also that they’re behaving like untrustworthy organizations. So yes, if the shoe fits, fine.

I don’t want to limit this to Wikileaks, but yes, they’re acting like a cult. They’re acting like a religion. They’re acting like a government. They’re acting like a bunch of spies. They’re hiding their identity. They don’t account for the money. They promise all sorts of good things. They seldom let you know what they’re really up to. They have rituals and all sorts of wonderful stuff. So I admire them for their showmanship and their entertainment value. But I certainly would not trust them with information if it had any value, or if it put me at risk or anyone that I cared about at risk.

Nevertheless, it’s a fascinating development that’s come along, to monetize this kind of thing. That’s what they’re up to. You start with free samples.

You’ve been trying to follow some of Wikileaks’ money flows. You contacted the German charity and posted their response. They said they’re going to have some information to you perhaps in early August. Does that make you feel any better about the money trail?
Young: No. To clarify, they’re going to publish it on their Web site. They said, “you could mirror it or point to it.” So it’s not just for me.

But it’s only a tiny sliver of what Wikileaks claims it’s raised. whether Wikileaks has raised a million dollars as they’ve claimed, or whether they’re trying to prime the pump, I don’t know. (German charity) Wal Holland has only handled a very tiny amount of this, and they’ve said that, “We know nothing about the rest.”

I notice that Wikileaks is touting the revelation that’s going to come. But it doesn’t fit the claims that Wikileaks is making about how much it’s raised. There’s nothing wrong with that. People exaggerate all the time for effect. So back to why I admire Wikileaks: they’ve got chutzpah.

What do you think of Wikileaks’ spat with Adrian Lamo? You’ve been publishing some of the correspondence.
Young: None of the stuff that Lamo has made available has been verified. Early on, I said chat logs can be forged, you can make this stuff up. So far there’s nothing of substance here. It’s a story that’s being played. I’m not seeing any credible information that this story has any substance at all other than as a story.

It’s being treated almost as if there’s something of substance here because the chat logs have come out. But I’ve not seen any verification. And chat logs are notoriously (easy to) forge by authorities and other people, as with other digital stuff. So I don’t know whether there’s anything to this or not. But I’m following it because it’s kind of a test of how gullible people can be with a good story. And all frauds work that way.

And I think Wikileaks is wary too. I think they’re not sure that anything’s actually happened here or if they’re not being sucked into a trap.

The kind of sacred character of these chat logs is weird. I don’t know why anyone believes these have any genuine quality at all, just because Lamo allegedly handed them over.

I saw the two e-mail messages that you sent to Adrian Lamo. Have you received a response to your questions? [Ed. Note: Lamo, an ex-hacker, says he tipped off authorities that Manning was leaking classified information.]
Young: Not yet, no. I don’t know if I will. But those are questions I would have liked to have asked at (Sunday afternoon’s) panel. Except there was no time.

There’s lots of interesting things going on if this is a genuine investigation. And since Lamo said (he would be) transparent so everyone would know what was happening, well, I happen to believe the whole legal thing should be transparent too. That was the basis of my questions.

If you want to get transparent, really get transparent. And don’t let the feds tell you what you can and cannot do. There are some interesting issues here because the feds don’t want this stuff to become public and yet they haven’t kept him from talking. So let’s see how far he goes. We’d all like to know more about how this is actually working.

There was suspicion from day one that this was entrapment run by someone unknown to suck a number of people into a trap. So we actually don’t know. But it’s certainly a standard counterintelligence technique. And they’re usually pretty elaborate and pretty carefully run. They’ll even prosecute people as part of the cover story. That actually was talked about at (Sunday’s) panel. They’ll try to conceal who was informing and betraying others by pretending to prosecute them.

How do you expect this affair to resolve itself? Do you expect Manning to be sentenced to a significant prison term?
Young: I don’t think so. Based on what I have seen so far, and these so-called State Department cables, as someone said on (Sunday’s) panel, does anyone know if they actually exist? The answer is no. Nobody knows if these exist or not. The videos are not terribly incriminating. The cables seem to be what’s being plumped as a crucial thing, but we don’t know if they exist or not.

Declan McCullagh has covered the intersection of politics and technology for over a decade. E-mail Declan.

July 28, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception | Leave a comment

WIKILEAKS/WIKIPEDIA: TRUTH serving LIES (with CIA/MOSSAD oversight)

By Kev Boyle | 27 July 2010

So Wikileaks has exposed the truth about the Afghan/Pakistan war? 91,000 leaked documents expose the fact that war is a nasty, two-faced, dishonorable business with even (shock horror) covert operations set up to assassinate leaders of the enemy.

What is getting most attention, however, is the allegation that the ISI (the Pakistani Secret Service) is secretly backing the Taliban and other documents demanding that the Pakistani government turn decisively against the militants, creating a justification for US operations inside Pakistan and a possible pretext for full-on invasion of the country.

A few months ago we were reading that the US were funding the Taliban. There are many other stories of this kind from people like Webster Tarpley and Wayne Madsen.

WHISTLEBLOWING?

All this ‘whistleblowing’ does little other than serve the interests of the US possibly expanding their war. No establishment figure is seriously compromised by these ‘leaks’, nor is policy undermined in any new way. The war is wicked? The people who care already know that and this ‘new’ information makes little difference to that perception one way or the other.

Why do the ‘leaks’ contain no embarrassing whistleblowing? Why is there no exposition of the betrayal felt by many soldiers and their officers who know the war(s) have got nothing to do with protecting America or the UK? (I have spoken to one British army officer who is acutely aware of the betrayal of his troops and of wider British interests and is waiting for [and working towards] the same revolution as myself. Meeting this man was the most encouraging moment of the last six months for me.)

Wikileaks made its name with this footage.

Again, innocent people get murdered by coalition troops. Evil… embarrassing… but tell us something we didn’t know.

We know that the powers-that-be are determined to control both sides of every argument. They lead the opposition against themselves. That’s why “Stop The War” will not even MENTION 9/11 Truth and exclude from the ranks of their leadership anyone who wants to raise reasonable questions about the events of 9/11.

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is ‘annoyed’ by 9/11 truth. That there IN ITSELF makes him, to any sensible person, a placeman of the security services.

This, like the StopTheWar position, is called a ‘limited hangout’. There is no end of this kind of maneuvering out there as in, for example, Chomsky’s indefatigable support of Israel (“America” is the problem, not the international bankers who own it nor the Jewish Lobby who control it…. criticism most definitely never goes THERE. These are simply NOT issues).

LIMITED HANGOUT

‘Limited hangout’ is making a pretense at protest in order to disable genuine protest.

IT IS USING TRUTH TO SERVE LIES.

It is the Hegelian dialectic in action.

Many good people are led down futile paths when they trust and follow these people.

Even the name for the operation, ‘Wikileaks’, tells a story.

Here we see one CIA/Mossad operation supporting another. We are supposed to see ‘Wiki’ and think ‘truth’ as in that honourable internet encyclopedia ‘Wikipedia'(……whose ‘Mossad’ entry, by the way, does NOT include their famous motto, “By way of deception thou shalt make war”). There is a lifetime of work for somebody exposing the spinning and obfuscation in support of establishment narratives on this lousy site.

For a more detailed look at the ‘Wikileaks’ operation see here.

LATE NEWS

Uh-O. Lookee here… Wikileaks ‘reveal’ that Bin Laden was being tracked through Pakistan:

“In August 2006, a US intelligence report placed Bin Laden at a meeting in Quetta, over the border in Pakistan.
It said he and others – including the Taliban leader, Mullah Omar – were organising suicide attacks in Afghanistan.”

So there it is. That evil fiend, Bin Laden, is not dead (as most people who follow the information believe). He is alive and well and organising Al Qaeda, or is it the Taliban, to carry out suicide bombings against our boys in Afghanistan.

Well, now we know.

Don’t we?

July 28, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange is ‘annoyed’ by 9/11 truth

9/11 Blogger | July 22, 2010

In this interview, Belfast Telegraph reporter Matthew Bell asks Wikileaks founder Julian Assange about “conspiracy theories”. Assange subsequently explains his position.

Belfast Telegraph, July 19, 2010

His obsession with secrecy, both in others and maintaining his own, lends him the air of a conspiracy theorist. Is he one? “I believe in facts about conspiracies,” he says, choosing his words slowly. “Any time people with power plan in secret, they are conducting a conspiracy. So there are conspiracies everywhere. There are also crazed conspiracy theories. It’s important not to confuse these two. Generally, when there’s enough facts about a conspiracy we simply call this news.” What about 9/11? “I’m constantly annoyed that people are distracted by false conspiracies such as 9/11, when all around we provide evidence of real conspiracies, for war or mass financial fraud.” What about the Bilderberg conference? “That is vaguely conspiratorial, in a networking sense. We have published their meeting notes.”

Mr. Assange seems to have conveniently forgotten that 9/11 may be, in a very concrete sense, a ‘conspiracy for war’, leading directly to the wars in Afghanistan, Iraq and the permanent “War on Terror”.

In November 2009, Wikileaks released “half a million US national text pager intercepts” covering a “24 hour period surrounding the September 11, 2001 attacks in New York and Washington.”^[1] This is all commendable. However, given Mr. Assange’s rather curious disposition towards 9/11 truth, how much effort can we really expect from Wikileaks in the future?

Perhaps it should be pointed out to Mr. Assange that former senator Bob Graham, who chaired the United States Senate Select Committee on Intelligence when it performed its Joint Inquiry^[2] into 9/11, gave an interview to the BBC in which Graham said the following:^[3]

Bob Graham: “I can just state that within 9/11 there are too many secrets, that is information that has not been made available to the public for which there are specific tangible credible answers and that that withholding of those secrets has eroded public confidence in their government as it relates to their own security.”

Narrator: “Senator Graham found that the cover-up led to the heart of the administration.”

Bob Graham: “I called the White House and talked with Ms. Rice and said: “Look, we’ve been told we’re gonna get cooperation in this inquiry and she said she’d look into it and nothing happened.”

Interviewer: “Was there any sort of sense of embarrassment or apology or…?”

Bob Graham: “No. Embarrassment, apology, regret, those are not characteristics associated with the current White House.”

Narrator: “So it was a conspiracy to cover-up the fact that blunders had been made in the lead up to 9/11?”

Bob Graham: “If by conspiracy you mean, more than one person involved, yes, there was more than one person and there was some … collaboration of efforts among agencies and the administration to keep information out of the public’s hands.“

The BBC then concludes their documentary with a reassuring, paternalistic commentary explaining why this isn’t something we should all be furious about. Furthermore, in 2009, 9/11 commissioner Bob Kerrey said, in a candid dialogue with We Are Change LA:^[4]

Bob Kerrey: “It’s a problem… it’s a 30-year-old conspiracy”

Jeremy Rothe-Kushel: “No.. I’m talking about 9/11”

Bob Kerrey: “That’s what I’m talking about”

Many interpretations could be given as to what sort of conspiracy these two former senators are referring to. The BBC documentary “Conspiracy Files: 9-11” was an obvious hit piece against 9/11 truth, in which the BBC went out of their way to handwave all abnormalities as ‘blunders’, ‘failures’, ‘mistakes’ and ‘cock ups’. This angle is not new, in fact, it’s part of a long BBC tradition of ‘limited hangouts’. Nor is it any less outrageous if it were true that these ‘blunders’ and ‘gaffes’ were deliberately covered up, as the BBC and Bob Graham allege. A criminal cover-up alone warrants criminal prosecution of the conspirators involved, and most 9/11 researchers know this is merely the tip of the iceberg. Bob Kerrey’s remark could be taken to mean the covert funding and training of the Mujahideen, initiated in 1979.^[5]

Nobody is asking Mr. Assange to depart from his objective role, but now that he has spoken out, he deserves a reply. In both cases, clearly the terminology used is “conspiracy” or “cover-up”. Bob Graham doesn’t hold back and mentions “withholding of (..) secrets”, chastising the Bush administration for being unapologetic, self-serving and obstructive. So it seems that Julian Assange, as the founder and director of an organization supposedly dedicated to supporting whistleblowers who expose government wrongdoing, has his work cut out for him, unless he is determined to be part of the problem. The perception management and misguided credibility building Mr. Assange seems so concerned with conflict with the stated mission of Wikleaks:^[6]

“WikiLeaks is a multi-jurisdictional public service designed to protect whistleblowers, journalists and activists who have sensitive materials to communicate to the public.”

I bet whistleblowers Sibel Edmonds^[7] and certainly Daniel Ellsberg^[8], who is mentioned several times in the mission statement, approve. Surely, a 9/11 cover-up that “led to the heart of the administration” is worthy of Wikileaks’ attention. Or is it?

[1] “9/11 tragedy pager intercepts” — http://911.wikileaks.org/

[2] 9/11 Joint Inquiry — http://www.gpoaccess.gov/serialset/creports/911.html

[3] Relevant excerpt from the 2007 BBC documentary “Conspiracy Files: 9-11” — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i6QLnvvyIzg/

[4] We Are Change LA: “9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey finally confesses 9-11 Commission could not do it’s job”
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gtJWBcWAeAw#t=6m45

[5] Operation Cyclone — http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Operation_Cyclone

[6] http://wikileaks.org/wiki/WikiLeaks:About

[7] Documentary “Sibel Edmonds: Kill The Messenger” — http://video.google.com/videoplay?docid=6063340745569143497

[8] Sibel Edmonds, Daniel Ellsberg together — http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-aSbmRHqKL4

July 27, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Leave a comment

Pakistan spy agency denies backing Afghan Taliban

The Inter-Services Intelligence agency is accused repeatedly in the leaked Afghan war logs of supporting the insurgency

Saeed Shah | The Guardian | 26 July 2010

Pakistan’s spy agency today dismissed as “unsubstantiated raw intelligence” claims in the leaked war logs that it was supporting the Taliban insurgency in Afghanistan.

The Inter-Services Intelligence agency (ISI) is accused repeatedly in the logs by coalition commanders of directing insurgent attacks or planning operations, though there is little evidence to substantiate many of the most sensational allegations.

An ISI official said:

“In the intelligence world, preliminary and final reports are two different things. Only once something is collaborated from multiple sources does it become a credible piece of information.

“The majority of these [documents] are preliminary reports, and they are mostly from Afghan intelligence, so you can imagine their credibility.”

Hamid Gul, a former ISI chief who is extensively cited in the documents as meeting and aiding the Taliban, reacted furiously, calling the material “a pack of lies, a fairly tale”.

He denied having any contact with the Taliban, though he was happy to voice his moral support for them. “They are targeting Pakistan. I’m just the whipping boy,” said Gul, who led the agency from 1987 to 1989.

“If a 74-year-old sitting in a small house in Rawalpindi is instrumental in defeating the world’s biggest power, I don’t mind if they say that. But it will put to shame American posterity.”

Gul, who lives close to the military headquarters at Rawalpindi, offered to fly to the UK to answer the allegations, as long as it was done in public (“no Guantanamo”). But he added that he had been banned from the UK since November 2000. Though Gul retired from the military back in 1991, he is frequently accused of remaining active, along with other former intelligence officers, in a “shadow ISI”.

“This is akin to Saddam Hussein having the bomb in the closet and Colin Powell telling the world about it,” Gul added, referring to the case for weapons of mass destruction in Iraq put by the former US secretary of state.

Pakistan’s foreign ministry in Islamabad called the leaks “far-fetched and skewed”. Spokesman Abdul Basitsaid: “Pakistan’s constructive and positive role in Afghanistan cannot be blighted by such self-serving and baseless reports.”

Full article

July 27, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Leave a comment

The Special Tribunal of Lebanon and the Anti-Lebanese Plot. Part 1: “Syria is Guilty!”

By Yusuf Fernandez | Al Manar | July 25, 2010

Most international experts consider that it is the national jurisdiction of Lebanon, and not the Special Tribunal of Lebanon (STL), that should have investigated and prosecuted the assassination of former Lebanese Prime Minister Rafiq Hariri in 2005. They argue that according to the UN Resolution 1664, the bomb attacks are not counted as crimes that needed to be tried by an international tribunal. In fact, the UN had only previously taken such a measure – to set up a new international tribunal – to prosecute the most serious international crimes, as genocide and ethnic cleansing in former Yugoslavia and the genocide of the Tutsis in Rwanda. Significantly, the Israeli genocide against Palestinian and Lebanese peoples has never led to the creation of a similar international court.

For example, the July 2006 war caused heavy loss of human life, population displacement and massive destruction in critical infrastructure and properties in Lebanon. Most of them were the result of serious violations of the 1949 Geneva Conventions and the 1977 Protocol on the protection of the victims of international armed conflicts. These violations were war crimes and crimes against humanity. However, there was no UN resolution which recognized them as such, or even condemned them. The UN Security Council did not create an international commission, let alone a court, to investigate the violations of the international law committed during the war.

This is in strong contrast with the case of Hariri’s assassination. It suggests that the Western powers think that some deaths are more important than others from a political view. This hypocritical stance has damaged the credibility of international law and has persuaded many people that international justice is driven by political considerations.

Therefore, the Special Tribunal for Lebanon was the first international court set up exclusively to prosecute less serious crimes that are only international because the UN Security Council decided they should be so. This demonstrates that there was a clear political purpose behind the creation of the tribunal.

There is no doubt either that the enemies of Lebanon, Syria and Arabism – first of all Israel and the Bush Administration- saw the tribunal as a tool to accomplish their goals – those that they failed to achieve in the battlefield against the Resistance or by killing thousands of Lebanese in Beirut, Qana or many other places of the country.

In this context of manifest international injustice and double standards, who can trust an international tribunal which has been set up by those who express day by day their anti-Lebanese views? Someone has only to read UN reports about the implementation of the Resolution 1701 to see that Lebanon is always the guilty party. Israel’s daily provocations and threats, including violations of the Lebanese air space, are mostly ignored or played down.

FALSE ALLEGATIONS AGAINST SYRIA

Shortly after the assassination of Rafiq Hariri on February 14, 2005, the pro-West and anti-Syrian forces in Lebanon launched a campaign to blame Syria for the crime despite the lack of any evidence of Syrian involvement. These forces forgot Syrian efforts to protect Lebanon from the Israeli aggression because they were actually against Arabism and some of them had supported the signature of a “peace treaty” with Israel in 1983, which was only an imposed surrender to the Zionist entity and was later annulled due to the pressure of the Lebanese population.

Amid massive protests from a large number of Lebanese who had been pushed to believe that Syria was undoubtedly guilty of the crime, Damascus put an end to its 29-year military and intelligence presence in Lebanon. Soon after, the United Nations called for an investigation into al-Hariri’s assassination.

Damascus claimed that Washington wanted to use the UN investigation to put an end to Syrian influence in the region. The Bush Administration considered Syria to be one of its main enemies in the Middle East and it explains that the first investigations of the Tribunal were aimed at finding any kind of evidence implicating Syria in the murder. More recently, US neocons believed that the UN probe would undermine the attempts by the Obama administration to engage Syria diplomatically just as it would prevent Damascus from successfully making a case for the Israeli withdrawal from the Syrian Golan Heights, which Israel took over in 1967 and is obliged by the UNSC Resolution 242 to return to Syria in exchange for peace.

In Lebanon, politicians aligned with the March 14 coalition (made up by anti-Syrian and pro-West political parties) insisted once again that Syria was to blame for the former PM´s death. They also extended their criticism to the Resistance, which supported strong links with Syria and opposed to Western and Israeli influence on the country.

Some experts already then warned that the STL was politicized. Joshua Landis, co-director of the Centre for Middle East Studies at the University of Oklahoma, claimed that “a lot of people have their hopes pinned on this, particularly the people from the Bush administration.”

Some senior US diplomats claimed that Syria was being uncooperative and, as a consequence of it, the Security Council might impose sanctions on Syrian officials: the president, the prime minister, the defense minister, the foreign minister and members of Parliament. Under these proposed sanctions, UN member states would have been prohibited from hosting these officials and their assets in those countries would have been frozen.

The first reports from the UN International Independent Investigation Committee (IIIC) appeared to support claims by the US and Lebanon´s 14 March camp that Syria was implicated in the murder. Detlev Mehlis, the first IIIC Commissioner released in October 2005 an interim report which claimed that there was “converging evidence pointing at both Lebanese and Syrian involvement” in the assassination.

Mehlis was actually a favorite of the pro-Israeli neocons who served in the Reagan Administration. His investigation of the 1982 La Belle Discotheque bombing attack in West Berlin was used as pretext by the US government to launch a 1986 air attack on Libya. Mehlis concluded that Libya was behind the Berlin attack conveniently at the same time that neocons in the US administration, including Richard Perle, Michael Ledeen, Paul Wolfowitz, Jeane Kirkpatrick, Scooter Libby, and others were calling for an attack on Muammar Qaddafi. The fact that he was appointed as the IIIC Commissioner is a clear evidence of strong Israeli influence on the tribunal.

Key to Mehlis´s assertions were the testimonies of two witnesses, Hussam Hussam and Mohammed Zuhair al-Siddiq, who said that Syrian and Lebanese officials had ordered the attack on al-Hariri´s convoy. Siddiq claimed that Damascus and former Lebanese President Emile Lahoud had given the order to kill Hariri. He added that four pro-Syrian Lebanese generals and a number of Lebanese and Syrian politicians were also involved.

In October 2005, Mehlis published a report, whose electronic version mentioned the names of some Syrian officials who were allegedly involved in the assassination. Some Western media then claimed that the conclusion of the investigation would show that Syria had played a decisive role in the crime.

However, some weeks after the release of the October 2005 interim report, Hussam and Siddiq’s testimonies were found to be unreliable. Hussam started trying to sell his story to several Lebanese media outlets. When his name and role as a witness were leaked by New TV later that year in November, he abruptly left the country for Syria. Days later, he reappeared on Syrian state television and fully changed his testimony, claiming that he fabricated the tale after being tortured, drugged, and offered money by March 14 leaders.

For his part, former Syrian secret intelligence agent Mohammad al-Siddiq also proved to be a false witness. He left France after obtaining a fake Czech passport and fled to the United Arab Emirates, where he was arrested. He told reporters that he had received his passport from the French General Directorate for External Security (DGSE) in order to escape Lebanese justice. While being in France under the protection of DGSE, the French Police eavesdropped on his telephone calls and found out that Siddiq had lied to the tribunal.

Therefore, the report´s conclusions were proved to be false as well as its anti-Syrian claims. All these scandals undermined the credibility of the tribunal and led to Mehlis´s resignation.

In an apparent acknowledgement that the Bush administration had originally sought to use the al-Hariri case to pressure Damascus, an anonymous US official then told the International Crisis Group that the March 14 coalition could no longer assume that the tribunal will automatically deliver a damning indictment of Syrian complicity in the murder. This new situation sparked outrage among pro-March 14 Lebanese and some Western commentators. Shibli Mallat, a prominent Lebanese law professor, accused Brammertz from the pages of TIME magazine of a “total dereliction of duty” and said that he “single-handedly destroyed” the investigation. Michael Young warned in the Lebanese newspaper Daily Star of “grave damage being done to the UN’s credibility.” March 14 leaders implored the UN to give some kind of public indication that Damascus was still involved in the murder, but to no avail.

July 26, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Disarmament for Some

Countdown to Zero: Co-opting the Anti-Nuclear Movement

By DARWIN BOND-GRAHAM | July 22, 2010

No medium of propaganda is as powerful and effective as film. Think of the classics, the most notorious efforts to to sway the public with the electrifying and collective passion of cinema: racial apartheid was justified in the US with Birth of a Nation. The Soviets glorified their revolution with the Battleship Potemkin. Then there was Triumph of the Will.

A typical propaganda film tugs at emotions and invokes fears. It invokes dark threats to “the people,” and it offers up solutions extolling state and corporate power. Unlike a political documentary it will not criticize the state or corporation. Instead it will celebrate great men as our leaders and saviors. Distinct from a run-of-the-mill political documentary, a propaganda film butchers the complexity and contradictions that permeate politics and real life, presenting things in simplistic moral terms. Functionally, propaganda is mobilized to secure popular support for a primary, often hidden agenda that is not apparent in the film’s narrative. Propaganda is a tool used by elites to secure the consent of the masses, and channel their anxieties.

Now hitting theaters is one of the most dangerous propaganda films produced in decades. Countdown to Zero “traces the history of the atomic bomb from its origins to the present state of global affairs.” A promotional blurb on the film’s web site claims that it “makes a compelling case for worldwide nuclear disarmament, an issue more topical than ever with the Obama administration working to revive this goal today.”

Before I go any further in explaining Countdown as a propaganda film I should note that all propaganda need not be the product of a secretive and manipulative council of elites behind some curtain. Instead, the many contributors to Countdown and its promotional efforts have different motivations and intentions. What makes this film a coherent piece of propaganda is its medium, style, and likely effects on the US political climate. There are powerful actors who will use it for nefarious ends.

On its surface Countdown to Zero is about nuclear disarmament, but deeper down the film is making a very specific case that isn’t about disarmament at all. Its political function will prove to be quite different. Countdown is joining a suite of political campaigns and other propagandistic efforts, the point of which is to build support for increased US spending on nuclear weapons, as well as a more belligerent foreign policy, based around islamophobic depictions of “terrorists” and “rogue states.” Countdown is likely to be used by hawks to drum up support for military action against Iran, North Korea, and other states that would dare to transgress the current near-monopoly that a handful of states have on the bomb.

To understand how this is possible, one has to break through the simplistic and moralizing presentation of issues in the film and its promotional materials, and explore the complex political situation into which it is being launched.

The first and most important thing to understand is that the Obama administration does not have a disarmament agenda. Because the entire moral thrust of the film rests on this notion, it’s important to dispel it right off the bat. Obama and his military advisers have made their nuclear ambitions abundantly clear on multiple occasions.

The administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) in no significant way changed the nuclear force structure or use doctrines. The NPR makes it abundantly clear that US national security is founded on the nuclear “deterrent,” and that no one in government will seek to reduce the role of nukes in the foreseeable future.

The recently negotiated New START treaty does not significantly cut the US and Russian arsenals. In fact the treaty language secures an allowance for US “missile defense” programs as well as the “prompt global strike” weapons system while consolidating the US stockpile and reaffirming existing strategic agreements with Russia that are about balance. As noted by Defense Secretary Robert Gates, the irony here is that the Senate’s possible ratification of New START is premised on the Obama administration’s pledge to fund US nuclear weapons programs upwards of $180 billion over the next ten years, something even George W. Bush could not accomplish. The down payment for the next fiscal year includes a $624 million surge in nuke spending, for a total of $7.01 billion. The administration foresees spending more than $1 billion each year to refurbish and upgrade existing warheads and bombs. To support New START requires accepting these huge infrastructural and programmatic investments in nuclear weapons, far into the future.

To put it more simply, the debate in Washington revolves around two camps fighting over how large an increase in nuclear weapons spending there will be. At this point in time all agree on expending billions more. All agree upon building a new plutonium pit factory, a new uranium processing facility, a new components factory, and five other major capital projects in the nuclear weapons complex to extend the US nuclear enterprise half a decade or more into the future. Most agree on procuring a new class of nuclear equipped submarines. Most agree on new ballistic missiles. Everyone seems to be fine with upgrading warheads and bombs.

Some conservatives are uncomfortable with the cosmetic cuts to the stockpile that will be made under the auspices of New START. Senate Republicans have circled their wagons to demand greater funding increases in consideration of ratification, and given all of the agreements they have with the Democrats and the Obama administration over expanding the weapons complex, they are actually correct. In order to carry out this bi-partisan nuclear arms buildup, quite a bit more than a $1 billion per year boost (at its peak) will be needed for the NNSA’s budget, especially as inflation eats into the real value of future year budgets.

Determining the future of the US nuclear weapons complex is a tricky balancing act for the foreign policy elite because it is embedded in a larger set of much more important goals. The over-riding goal of foreign policy for the United States, with respect to nuclear weapons, is to maintain control of nuclear weapons and materials. Forget lofty ideas like disarmament. Lofty moral oughts only matter with respect to the realpolitik of geo-strategy (and this is where Countdown comes in, as we shall see)…

Nuclear weapons are problematic today because they remain a necessary means of overpowering other nations and intimidating foes, but they have also become a liability as other states threaten to go nuclear in order to restore balance to a unipolar world. American hypocrisy is seen as a major weakness for the maintenance of American power by liberal imperialists like Obama, even if disarmament is an idealistic and counterproductive pipe dream. Conservatives like Senator Jon Kyl would rather just avoid soft power altogether and stick to a hard-nosed defense policy.

This is why US policy with respect to Iran seems so disjointed and paralyzed: Iran’s influence and power is growing, it possesses immense energy resources, and straddles a region of geo-strategic importance. For US elites, Iran must be controlled at all cost. A nuclear Iran would make this much, much more difficult. Regime change is the goal, just like in Iraq. Nonproliferation as an end in itself seems to offer the most justifiable reason for using force and “rebuilding” nations (remember that it was the reason given for the 2004 invasion and ongoing occupation of Iraq). But with its Bush-era reputation of seeking new nukes, liberals fear that United States can hardly coerce or attack Iran in the name of nonproliferation. As the world’s preeminent nuclear power with no interest in disarming it would be bald hypocrisy. But then again the US will not disarm, for this would be anathema to the needs and goals of the foreign policy elite. What to do?

Into this mix arrives Countdown to Zero and similarly crafted propaganda pieces. Countdown’s major achievement is repackaging the strategy of anti-nuclear nuclearism into a sexy and thrilling propaganda film full of special effects and heart pulsing music. It will invoke fear of nuclear weapons to justify aggression, war, and the extension of US control over much of the rest of the world.

While the film’s title and a lot of the fanfare surrounding it emphasizes the “zero” message of disarmament, Countdown is actually an alarmist portrayal of dark skinned men, muslims, “terrorists” and other racial or ethnic boogeymen who we are told, over the span of 90 minutes, are seeking nuclear weapons to use against the American people. A related theme in the film is the demonization of Iran and North Korea which are portrayed as dangerous rogue states with ties to terrorist organizations, and who must be controlled, against whom military action may be warranted – or else. Or else what?

One of the main “experts” in Countdown to Zero, Joseph Cirincione frames the take home message at the outset by invoking a very post-9-11 Bush administration theme:

“That day changed our sense of security and how we view the world. We learned how vulnerable we are to the destructive acts of a determined few. Just think how worse it would have been if the terrorist had nuclear weapons.”

Cirincione is not just any expert. He is the doyen of the Democratic Party’s NGO apparatus that shapes nuclear weapons policy through foundation funding of grassroots groups and elite policy shops. Cirincione is president of the Ploughshares Fund.

In spite of its name, Ploughshares’ mission these days actually involves beating ploughs into swords.

Throughout the 1990s, but especially during the George W. Bush years, Ploughshares and circle of foundations called the Peace and Security Funders Group increasingly narrowed the range of acceptable anti-nuclear activism, while simultaneously ghettoizing the field so that the work of various NGOs became less and less applicable to social justice and economic development issues, and increasingly focused on abstract global problems and hypotheticals, such as the existence and possible use of nuclear weapons. In the process discussions of the injustices of the global political economy and how nuclear weapons fit into it were silenced. Anti-nuclear activism became increasingly specialized, boring, and disconnected from issues that affect people’s everyday lives. Arms control eclipsed abolition as the rallying cry. Those NGOs that obeyed the consolidation period survived with funding and access to media, so long as they kissed the ring.

Ploughshares was at the center of it all. Today the Fund’s priorities are shaped by its board of directors made up of Democratic Party donors, other foundation executives, and liberal academics. The Fund’s advisers include men like George Shultz, the former Bechtel president who served as Reagan’s Secretary of State, and former Defense Secretaries William Cohen and William Perry. The latter is actually a board member of the for-profit corporations that manage the nation’s two nuclear weapons labs, Los Alamos and Livermore. You figure it out.

Ploughshares’ adviser and propagandist Jeff Skoll is president of Participant Media, one of the production companies behind Countdown to Zero. The film’s Co-producer, the World Security Institute (a major recipient of Ploughshares Fund dollars), tapped its Global Zero project membership to narrate the film through dozens of interviews with the likes of elder statesmen, and NGO executives like Cirincione who are very friendly to the Obama administration’s nuclear buildup.

Participant Media is a full service propaganda shop for liberal campaigns, producing both documentaries and dramas. In addition to the benchmark documentary, An Inconvenient Truth, Participant is responsible for some very excellent and thoughtful films like Syriana, Food, Inc., and The Cove. And this is where complexity comes in. Some of the producers and voices featured in Countdown to Zero have wonderful intentions, and all of them are probably genuinely concerned with, and fear, the possible day that nuclear weapons might be used, whether by a state or by a criminal group. Herein also is the propagandistic danger of Countdown to Zero.

Albert Camus once wrote that “the evil that is in the world almost always comes of ignorance, and good intentions may do as much harm as malevolence if they lack understanding.” Backed with a lot of foundation money, the producers of Countdown to Zero have paid organizers across the US to do considerable outreach for the film, whipping up interest on Facebook and other social media and generally co-opting the energies and intentions of many anti-nuclear activists. Countdown premiers July 23 and will be shown in theaters across the US. Many screenings are being organized by activists whose intentions are unimpeachable, if naive.

What audiences are going to learn from Countdown to Zero is that nuclear weapons are a threat today because the bad guys might get a hold of them. They’ll learn that al-Qaeda is seeking nuclear weapons, that it is their sworn duty; That highly enriched uranium is easy to smuggle; That “we are on the verge of a nuclear 9-11”; That tens of thousands of pounds of uranium are stored under virtually no security around the globe. In other words they’ll learn that dark scary men, muslims, “terrorists” and anarchists are trying to kill them with nuclear weapons, and that nations like Iran and North Korea will gladly assist them. Their feelings of revulsion for nuclear weapons will be stimulated and channeled against these dark enemies of civilization.

What they’ll learn about US nuclear weapons and policy, if it is discussed in any real and honest depth at all, is that better control and management is needed, a slightly smaller arsenal is desirable. But mostly they’ll learn to just trust our leaders, and that everything will turn out alright so long as the proper authorities are in power. Joseph Cirincione will eagerly explain to audiences that George Shultz, Henry Kissinger, William Perry and Sam Nunn are hard at work to “secure” our nuclear weapons. It all sounds great, but the “four horsemen,” as they have come to be known, are actually among the biggest lobbyists for the surge in nuclear weapons spending and the construction of a new US nuclear weapons complex.

In a promotional video attached to the START ratification effort Cirincione urges viewers to “join this patriotic consensus” toward zero. In a recent op-ed he has urged Senate ratification of New START writing, “The statesmanship demonstrated by the Consensus members today could help break the partisan blockade in the Senate and restore America’s leadership on this urgent security challenge.” The capital C Consensus he’s referring to is a newly formed NGO, created to translate the groundswell of public response they expect from propaganda efforts like Countdown to Zero, into sharp policy programs for government, including aggressive military action against would-be nuclear states, much of it in the name of nonproliferation. The Consensus for American Security is one manifestation of the platform that many foreign policy elites hope will solve the contradiction in current US nuclear policy. The mission statement of the Consensus includes, “strengthening and modernizing America’s nuclear security,” because it “is a vital element of protecting the United States and its allies.”

Ploughshares put up the money for The Consensus for American Security… an organization dedicated to strengthening and modernizing America’s nuclear security. Modernizing is not an arbitrary word. In the current policy debate over the future of the US nuclear weapons complex and stockpile, modernization means a very specific thing. It means approving the Obama administration’s program to build a pit factory, uranium processing facility, components plant and other billion dollar capital projects for the weapons complex. It also means modernizing warheads and bombs by rebuilding them and designing new features. And it means acquiring new, very expensive platforms like subs, bombers, and missiles.

Members of the Ploughshares Consensus include a predictable list of centrist retired military brass and statesmen, most of whom occupy revolving door positions on other foundation and NGO boards like Ploughshares, and more than a few of whom have links to the military industrial complex: George Shulz, Samuel Berger, Vice Admiral Lee Gunn, and physicist Sidney Drell, all of them strong supporters of US nuclear weapons programs, and American empire.

The Consensus’ second mission appears to involve stoking Islamophobia. A special project of the Consensus, the American Security Project (ASP), is a well-funded think tank churning out reports about “al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula,” and “Are We Winning? Measuring Progress in the Struggle Against al Qaeda and Associate Movements.” ASP’s homepage features a photograph of “terrorists” in black masks hauling an American nuclear warhead (a W-76 or W-88 it appears) on a bamboo rickshaw over a wooden bridge toward a waiting van in some distant jungle.

Countdown to Zero is one component of a larger and coherent foundation campaign to stoke up public fears about nuclear weapons for the purpose of extending a near-monopoly on nuclear weapons, and legitimating a more aggressive foreign policy aimed at regime change in Iran and elsewhere. The consensus behind those who funded and produced the film has little to do with disarmament, and a lot to do with stabilizing the American empire [consolidating the dominance of the elite elements of the Western establishment].

Darwin Bond-Graham is a sociologist who splits his time between New Orleans, Albuquerque, and Navarro, CA. He can be reached at: darwin@riseup.net

July 26, 2010 Posted by aletho | Deception, Islamophobia, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism | Leave a comment

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TV Drama Review

Japanese drama projects Japan’s wartime atrocities onto Chinese characters

Global Times | October 25, 2026

By portraying Chinese characters as perpetrators of ruthless violence while casting Japanese Self-Defense Forces (SDF) intelligence operatives as defenders, the season 2 of the Japanese drama Vivant has recently drawn criticism from Chinese netizens, who argue that its depiction turns historical reality on its head while ignoring Japan’s wartime atrocities.

The TBS drama series – a spy suspense story in which an alleged unofficial intelligence unit of the SDF operates across the globe — has attracted a passionate fanbase. Its currently airing season 2 opened with a household rating of 18.8 percent, the highest for a TV drama this year, according toa commentary article by Japanese media Toyo Keizai.

What draws attention is the portrayal of the enemies in the series, the article noted. Scenes in which the Chinese organization subjects kidnapped members of the SDF unit to brutal torture are repeated with unrelenting intensity.

It is rare for Japanese TV dramas to explicitly portray a real-life country as the enemy, the article noted.

Japanese Prime Minister Sanae Takaichi also made a reference to the drama, saying that she has been recording Vivant and hopes to binge-watch it over the year-end and New Year holidays, according to Japanese media outlets.

China’s CCTV News report on Sunday revealed that the drama features scenes in which Chinese personnel cut off the fingers of and stab Japanese intelligence operatives in the abdomen. Such acts bear striking similarities to the torture inflicted on Chinese nationals by invading Japanese troops during the World War II.

The drama distorts the truth by attributing these atrocities to modern Chinese characters. Beneath the surface, it subtly glorifies Japan’s cross-border overseas operations, blurs the functional boundaries of the SDF and implicitly promotes an expansionist narrative, per CCTV News. … continue

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