Many Still Question Megrahi Conviction in Bombing of Pan Am 103
By Andrew I. Killgore | Washington Report | July 2011
Libyan intelligence officer Abdel Basil Ali al-Megrahi was convicted on Jan. 31, 2001 of destroying Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland on Dec. 21, 1988, killing the plane’s 259 passengers, including 179 Americans, and 11 people on the ground. Megrahi was tried under Scottish law by Scottish judges in a special court sitting at Camp Zeist, a former American military base in The Netherlands.
As readers of the Washington Report are aware, the American media coverage of the Lockerbie trial was very thin, despite the heavy loss of American lives. There seems to be a determined silence about even the existence of an organization called “Justice for Megrahi,” whose members include (full disclosure) this writer and several distinguished Britons, including Dr. Jim Swire, who lost his daughter Flora in the crash, and Dr. Robert Black, former professor of criminal law at Edinburgh University and creator of the idea of trying Megrahi and his co-defendant, Lamen Fhimah, in The Netherlands under Scottish law.
The revolution in Libya, and particularly the defection to Britain of former Foreign Minister Moussa Koussa, has stirred some peripheral interest in Lockerbie. Before he became foreign minister, Koussa was head of Libyan intelligence, and close to Muammar al-Qaddafi. He would know what was in Qaddafi’s mind when he agreed to turn over Megrahi and Fhimah for trial. Was it because the Libyan leader thought the two men were guilty, or because he knew he was obliged to do so to gain sufficient Western approval for the development of his country, including increased oil production?
The April 9 Washington Post ran an article saying that Scottish officials had “met” with Koussa, who they think may have crucial information about Lockerbie. According to the article, “Prosecutors said that they would offer no additional details of their conversations with Koussa.” Just what did Koussa tell them, and why is no more information about the meeting forthcoming?
So far as this writer has seen, no American newspaper has mentioned that the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission ruled that Megrahi may have suffered a miscarriage of justice—a finding that presumably remains valid despite Megrahi’s release from prison on compassionate grounds. Yet, the Washington Post article writes that “the case remains open despite Megreahi’s conviction.”
The heavy lethargy of the American media on Lockerbie includes no word that many outstanding Britons who lost relatives or friends in the Lockerbie crash do not believe that Megrahi is guilty. If members of “Justice for Megrahi,” who obviously think he is not guilty, could possibly arrange a discussion with Moussa, it could clear up a lot of questions. Depending on Koussa’s answers, it could reopen the question of who really bombed Pan Am 103.
Andrew I. Killgore is publisher of the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs.
Syrian Activists Say…
Perception of Syrian conflict defined by baseless “activist” statements
Tony Cartalucci | Activist Post | July 10, 2011
Bangkok, Thailand July 10, 2011 – According to Fortune 500/Soros-funded Human Rights Watch whose sponsors represent a corportocracy that has been attempting to breakdown and despoil Syria for decades, anonymous Syrian soldiers who defected and are now living abroad have “claimed” that they were ordered to “shoot to kill.” According to the Qatari propagandists at state-owned Al Jazeera, one of the “interviewees” told HRW that their “superiors had told them that they were fighting infiltrators, salafists, and terrorists, but were surprised to encounter unarmed protesters instead.”
Of course, not a shred of evidence exists to back any of these claims – just Human Rights Watch’s “good” corporate-funded word, and the slick graphics of Al Jazeera along with the $500 suits worn by their correspondents in their multi-million dollar studios. Al Jazeera, it should be remembered, is state-owned by the government of Qatar – the same government shipping weapons to Libya’s Benghazi rebels in support of NATO’s military campaign, in direct violation of their own contrived UNSC r.1973. It is quite clear that their insistence on reporting unverifiable, slanted news, in favor of yet another Western-backed destabilization constitutes their current modus operandi.
For months now, Syria has been destabilized by admittedly US funded “activists” and groups of militants responsible for the death of hundreds of Syrian security forces. An April AFP report titled, “US trains activists to evade security forces,” admits that indeed the US is funding, equipping, and training armies of activists to effectively rise up and topple their governments. Michael Posner, the assistant US secretary of state for human rights and labor, said that $50 million had been spent on training up to 5,000 activists, and one particular gathering that included activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria, and Lebanon who would then go back and create a “ripple effect.” The “ripple effect” of course is the foreign-funded sedition unfolding across Syria today. … Full article
CHOMSKY ATTACKS CHAVEZ FOR NEOCON CARR CENTRE?
The Naked Facts | July 3, 2011
Chomsky reveals he has lobbied Venezuela’s government behind the scenes since late last year after being approached by the Carr centre for human rights policy at Harvard University. – http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/jul/03/noam-chomsky-hugo-chavez-democracy
WHO IS CARR CENTRE?
Carr Center for Human Rights Policy http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Carr_Center_for_Human_Rights_Policy
Sarah Sewall is the Director of the Carr Center – http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Sarah_Sewall
SHE IS ALSO ON ADVISORY BOARD OF?… Center for a New American Security – http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Center_for_a_New_American_Security
WHO ELSE IS ON THAT BOARD WITH HER? … Susan Rice and James Steinberg, The Honorable Dr. William J. Perry, Hoover Institution/ Dr. Madeleine K. Albright, Principal, The Albright Group LLC/Richard L. Armitage, President, Armitage International/ Norman R. Augustine, Lockheed Martin Corporation/Admiral Dennis C. Blair, USN (Ret.), Former Commander-in-Chief, U.S. Pacific Command Dr. Richard J. Danzig, Sam Nunn Prize Fellow, Center for Strategic and International Studies/William J. Lynn, Senior Vice President, Government Operations & Strategy, Raytheon Company/Lt Gen Gregory S. Newbold, USMC (Ret.), Managing Director, Torch Hill Capital/John D. Podesta, President and CEO, Center for American Progress (THATS THE CARR CENTRE DIRECTORS COHORTS)
NOW WHO ARE THE MAJOR SUPPORTERS OF CARR CENTRE FOR WICH CHOMSKY IS INTERVENING IN VENEZUELAS INTERNAL AFFAIRS?
BRACE YOURSELVES …
The Schooner Foundation, Carnegie Foundation, Ford Foundation, McCormick Tribune Foundation, Sydney and June Barrows Foundation, Alchemy Foundation, Kathy and Gary Anderson, Greg Carr, John L. Eastman, Gail Furman, Tsutomu Kanase, Tristin and Martin Mannion, Robert McKeon, Sheila and James Mossman, Cynthia Ryan, and Vincent Ryan are listed in their 2003 / 2004 annual report. 2003/04
According to their http://www.hks.harvard.edu/cchrp/aboutus/annualreports/20022003_AnnualReport.pdf 2002/03 Annual Report, supporters included Fabbio Cappon, Carnegie Corporation of New York, Gregory C. Carr, Center for Public Leadership, Ford Foundation, Gail Furman, Norman and Rosita Winston Foundation, and Reebok Foundation.
NOW HOW AN ESTIMEED … (TO OTHERS NOT ME) SCHOLAR CAN INTERVENE ON THESE GROUPS BEHALF, SPEAKS VOLUMES …. AND CHOMSKY IS NOT JUST ACTIVE IN SUCH MATTERS AGAINST CHAVEZ, BUT ALSO WORKING TO ADVANCE WESTERN INTERESTS AND POLICIES IN NICARAGUA …
SEE …
At Work for John Negroponte? http://fanonite.org/2008/06/19/at-work-for-john-negroponte/
Noam Chomsky, Brian Wilson and Tom Hayden and their fellow signatories have helped the Bush regime recoup lost ground for unjust US and European militarist corporate domination in Latin America which they will bequeath to whichever US plutocrat dauphin is anointed in November.
CHOMSKY IS ALSO A CLOSE FRIEND OF HAMID DABASHI SPOKESPERSON AND A MOST VOCAL PROPONENT OF THE GREEN MOVEMENT OF IRAN
DABASHI IS A FRAUD, SEE … http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/06/bswatch-war-in-context-exposed-arab.html
ITS NO SECRET CHOMSKY BACKS THE GREEN PARTY WHAT HE LEAVES OUT IS THEIR PRO MONARCHY, PRO SHAH, PRO NEOLIBERALISM, PRO WESTERN IMPERIALISM POSITIONS, THEIR VIOLENT ACTS, THEIR DISHONESTY IN COOKING UP VIDEOS OF BEING BRUTALIZED BY USING BOTTLES OF FAKE BLOOD AND MANY MORE CASES, LIKE WESTERN FUNDING BY THE US STATE DEPARTMENT AND CIA … AND EVEN ITS LEADERS WHO ARE BILLIONAIRES UNDER THE GUISE OF ”REFORMERS”!!!
More on the green movement of Iran, scroll down after it opens… http://thenakedfacts.blogspot.com/2011/06/more-lies-by-western-backed-green-party.html (see supplementation)
~
For more on the Venezuela – Chomsky issue see:
Chomsky is dishonest and deceptive in denying assault on Chavez
By Stephen Gowans on July 6, 2011
And:
Widely ignored facts on Chomsky’s criminal “victims of authoritarianism”
A Few Facts about the Case of Judge Afiuni
By Fernando Vegas Torrealba | Correo del Orinoco International | July 8th 2011
Regime-Change in a Box
Soft-Powering Cuba
By ROBERT SANDELS | CounterPunch | July 6, 2011
In March, Sen. John Kerry (D-MA), chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, placed a hold on a $20 million appropriation for the US Agency for International Development (USAID). The money is for democracy promotion schemes in Cuba. Kerry’s purpose was to hold the funds hostage until the State Department responded to a series of questions he had about waste, mismanagement and the general ineffectiveness of the program to actually bring about democracy in Cuba.
USAID grantees in Cuba are soft-power agents engaged in covert subversion. Soft power, as described by its leading academic proponent Joseph E. Nye, Jr., is “getting others to want what you want.” His ideas, however, fell short of assisted regime change.
Here is an example of how USAID money can help Cuba:
Step 1. Give USAID money to grantees like Freedom House to help Cubans document human rights abuses.
Step 2. Send reports of abuses to international human rights organizations.
Step 3. The US Interests Section in Havana reports the discovery of abuses, cites human rights organization, sends information to the State Department.
Step 4. Alarmed, the State Department cites Interests Section, issues scathing report on human rights violations in Cuba.
Step 5. Congress and the Republic of Miami, in righteous indignation, demand more sanctions against Cuba.
Result: USAID money pays handsomely on its initial investment. Now, why would Sen. Kerry not think these programs are cost effective?
Regime-change in a box
In 2009, Alan Gross went to Cuba on USAID money with equipment to set up Broadband Global Area Networks (BGANs), briefcase-size satellite systems for Internet and cellphone communication networks outside of Cuban government control. The cover story was that he was delivering the equipment to the Cuban Jewish community. They never heard of him even though this was his sixth trip.
The New York Times reported that the United States has deployed this “shadow” communications system in Middle Eastern countries to help dissidents plan anti-government movements.
Kerry said that the Cuban programs in general and the BGAN program in particular only irk Cuban authorities and put taxpayers’ money into the hands of Cuban intelligence, which routinely penetrates the “civil society” organizations and dissident groups the money is supposed to support.
Recent covert attempts to flip Cuban officials, hand out communications gear and satellite antennas disguised as surfboards have been failures amply catalogued in a series of exposés broadcast on Cuban television.
Even as the US government and media gamely maintain that Gross, currently serving a 15-year prison sentence in Cuba, was running an innocent phones-for-Jews program, the State Department doesn’t want to identify USAID contractors for fear they might be arrested like Gross was.
However, there is little likelihood of being arrested for taking cell phones or other real gifts to Cuba. And Miami Cubans can easily purchase cell phone minutes for users in Cuba from the state telephone company Empresa de Telecomunicaciones de Cuba S.A. (ETECSA). This can be done via the Internet from anywhere in the world using various foreign commercial service.
If the Obama administration was so keen on having Cubans communicate by cell phone, USAID could have used these services openly, cheaply and legally.
Trouble with the cover story
Anti-Castro fanatics accuse Kerry of aiding Cuban communism, revealing a touching belief that these programs actually work. To Kerry’s assertion that internet-in-a-box exploits landed Gross in prison, Sen. Robert Menendez (D-NJ) responded that Kerry was giving his approval to the Cuban government’s “iron-fisted tactics” against “defenders of democracy.”
Wait a minute Sen. Menendez. You’re forgetting the cover story about phones for Jews. Are you saying the Jewish community is a dissident organization?
Rep. Ileana Ros-Lehtinen (R-FL) turned on Kerry with particular fury, but if she had listened more carefully she might have seen that the two are not far apart. Kerry is not opposed to overthrowing the Cuban government. He is not against subversion. He has always reassured Miami’s Cuban voters that he supports the blockade against Cuba.
Besides, Kerry threw away highfalutin principles by offering to release all but $5 million of the funds.
The argument over the funding is valid only if we accept at face value the stated USAID goals of bringing democracy, freedom and justice to the Cuban people. Evidently, Kerry and Ros-Lehtinen think or pretend that these are the actual goals.
If we go along with the pretense, we have to conclude that the hapless Gross failed to realize that he could have gone to the Internet and loaded up Jewish cell phones with massive quantities of USAID money from the comfort of his home, avoiding prison and the much greater pretend failure of actually depriving them of telephone contact with Jews around the world; so, no more USAID money for him.
Soft power succeeds by failing
Setting aside the pretense, with Gross in prison his pretend failure is transformed into success because Obama and the lesser fanatics can say he was imprisoned for helping Jews exercise their freedom of speech.
Even better, Miami and Washington can argue that Cuba used Gross as an excuse to reject Obama’s generous peace gestures. Far from failing, Gross forces Cuba to take the blame for US aggression. Liz Harper of the US Institute of Peace summed it up nicely writing that the Gross affair “…at best delayed advancements initially sought by the Obama administration.”
And of course, had Gross set up clandestine communication networks all over Havana and had the dissidents used them to plan demonstrations, pass around diatribes against the Cuban government and so on, there would likely be another victory for USAID when Cuban intelligence eventually shuts them down (“clamping down on free speech”) and arrests are made (“iron-fisted tactics” against “defenders of democracy”).
Even after it was widely reported that Gross delivered nothing to the Cuban Jewish community and that his luggage contained equipment to undermine the Cuban government, The Miami Herald stuck to the script. Gross was imprisoned, wrote the Herald, “for delivering communications equipment paid for by the U.S. government to Jewish groups on the island.”
If the Cubans were to sabotage every US gesture of friendship, that means they welcome US aggression and subversion. “The Cuban regime increasingly needs an external threat to blame for the country’s problems,” said an unnamed Pentagon official.
Moral: If a lemon gets arrested, make lemonade out of him.
No democracy promotion money for U.S.
For a few million in US taxpayer dollars, Cuba gets programs for “community improvement activities, identifying and addressing community needs,” expanded access “to uncensored information to help Cubans communicate amongst themselves and with the outside world.”
In the empathy-grant category, the State Department is currently seeking proposals to help the disabled, orphans and homosexuals achieve a better life in Cuba.
But while the United States delivers BGANs to Cubans, there is no government program to free its own people from government surveillance; there is no shadow network. Indeed, social media and internet systems in the United States are thoroughly penetrated by intelligence agencies. The FBI now has the capability to plant permanent spyware on personal computers. It can find out who you are with a Computer and Internet Protocol Address Verifier. It can access communications devices directly through internet service providers and cell towers, which is described as a “comprehensive wiretap system.”
If you worry that electoral democracy in the United States is slipping away, go to Cuba where USAID contractors are dedicated to “finding the legal impediments to democratic elections and suggesting the actions that would be necessary to remove these impediments.”
Concerned about the decline of education in the United States? The State Department has a program in Cuba to train “hundreds of students and young adults in critical thinking,” to help them become self-sufficient and to act “independent of government.”
Lockheed Martin: We fix roofs, audit your taxes
Lest it seem from all this spending for other peoples’ needs that US citizens are not getting a fair share of their own tax money, consider the benefits of soft power at home.
For several years, hard-power weapons makers have won Pentagon contracts to deliver soft-power abroad. The Wall Street Journal reported that Robert Stevens, Lockheed Martin’s CEO, wants the company “to become a central player in the U.S. campaign to use economic and political means to align countries with American strategic interests.”
Lockheed-Martin, the Pentagon’s largest weapons contractor, has diversified its portfolio buying companies involved in public relations, surveillance, auditing, and information systems. Many of these contracts have been in support of ongoing military actions in the Middle East and Africa. At the other end of the scale, one of its subsidiaries trained Liberian lawyers and repaired Monrovia’s court house roof.
Some of the same weapons manufacturers have lately been taking market positions in broad swaths of American life. Sandra I. Erwin, writing in the National Defense Magazine, explained that defense contractors were concerned about possible budget cuts and began looking to State Department and other non-defense budgets to diversify their portfolios.
Lockheed Martin has a $33 million contract with the Internal Revenue Service (IRS) for Webpage and e-services design, auditing and various taxpayer services. It also has a $1.2 billion contract with the Transportation Security Administration (TSA) for such services as “screener training and checkpoint reconfiguration.
William D. Hartung of the New America Foundation writes that Lockheed Martin has contracts to watch you, audit you, troll for information on you, scan your iris and pat you down at airports; all in a day’s work at the IRS, FBI, CIA, the Post Office, National Security Administration (NSA), the Census Bureau and the TSA.
“As a result, Lockheed Martin is now involved in nearly every interaction you have with the government,” said Hartung. “Paying your taxes? Lockheed Martin is all over it. The company is even creating a system that provides comprehensive data on every contact taxpayers have with the IRS from phone calls to face-to-face meetings.”
The State Department maintains that it underwrites social programs in Cuba to make Cubans independent of oppressive government.
Meanwhile, other government departments are farming out some of their duties to weapons producers who are dependent on government contracts but independent of voter oversight.
This is enough to make a reasonable person conclude that in Cuba, the people need to be made independent of their government while in the United States the government needs to be made independent of its people.
Robert Sandels writes on Cuba for Cuba-L Direct and CounterPunch.
Conspiracies
By Paul Craig Roberts | Intrepid Report | July 6, 2011
In a June column, I concluded that “conspiracy theory” is a term applied to any fact, analysis, or truth that is politically, ideologically, or emotionally unacceptable. This column is about how common real conspiracies are. Every happening cannot be explained by a conspiracy, but conspiracies are common everyday events. Therefore, it is paradoxical that “conspiracy theory” has become a synonym for “unbelievable.”
Conspiracies are commonly used in order to advance agendas. In the July issue of American Rifleman, a National Rifle Association publication, the organization’s executive vice president, Wayne Lapierre reports on a congressional investigation led by Senator Charles Grassley and Representative Darrell Issa of a Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives and Department of Justice conspiracy to further gun control measures by smuggling guns across the border to Mexican criminals and blaming it on American firearm sellers.
Lapierre writes:
“Thanks to federal agents coming forth with evidence on the gun smuggling operation, this government sanctioned criminal conspiracy has been exposed.
“Leading an administration-wide cover up—marked by an arrogant dismissal of Congress’ constitutional role—is Attorney General Eric Holder, who has blocked all efforts to get to the truth. His minions have directed federal employees with knowledge of the gun-running scam to refuse to cooperate with congressional investigators.” [We Need To Extinguish The Firewall Of Lies]
Many Americans will find the uncovered conspiracy hard to believe. The US federal agency, BATFE, with the DOJ’s participation, has been providing firearms to Mexico’s drug cartels in order to create “evidence” to support the charge that US gun dealers are the source of weapons for Mexican drug gangs. The purpose of the government’s conspiracy is to advance the gun control agenda.
Attorney General Eric Holder’s stonewalling of the congressional investigation has resulted in Rep. Issa’s warning to Holder: “We’re not looking at the straw buyers, Mr. Attorney General. We’re looking at you.”
The most likely outcome will be that Grassley and Issa will have accidents or be framed on sex charges.
Conspiracies are also a huge part of economic life. For example, the Wall Street firm, Goldman Sachs, is known to have shorted financial instruments that it was simultaneously selling as sound investments to its customers. The current bailouts of EU countries’ sovereign debt is a conspiracy to privatize public domain.
Economic conspiracies are endless, and most succeed. NAFTA is a conspiracy against American labor, as are H-1B and L-1 work visas. Globalism is a conspiracy against First World jobs.
The sex charge against Dominique Strauss-Kahn could turn out to have been a conspiracy. According to the New York Times, the hotel maid has bank accounts in four states, and someone has been putting thousands of dollars into them.
Sometimes governments are willing to kill large numbers of their own citizens in order to advance an agenda. For example, Operation Northwoods was a plan for false flag terrorist events drafted by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff and signed by General Lyman Lemnitzer. It called for the CIA and other “black op” elements to shoot down Americans in the streets of Miami and Washington, D.C., to hijack or shoot down airliners, to attack and sink boats carrying Cuban refugees to the US, and to fabricate evidence that implicated Castro. The agenda of the Joint Chiefs and the CIA was to stir up American fear and hatred of Castro in order to support regime change in Cuba.
Before the reader cries “conspiracy theory,” be apprised that the secret Operation Northwoods was made public on November 18, 1997, by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board. When the plan was presented to President Kennedy in 1962, he rejected it and removed Lemnitzer as chairman of the Joint Chiefs.
Wikipedia quotes extensively from the plan’s menu of proposed false flag terrorist acts. Those who distrust Wikipedia can obtain a copy of the plan from the National Archives.
When I tell even highly educated people about Operation Northwoods, they react with disbelief—which goes to show that even US government-acknowledged conspiracies remain protected by disbelief a half century after they were hatched and 14 years after being revealed by the government.
An example of a conspiracy that is proven, but not officially acknowledged, is Israel’s attack on the USS Liberty in 1967. Captain Ward Boston, one of the two US Navy legal officers ordered to cover up the attack, not investigate it, revealed the Johnson Administration’s conspiracy, and that of every subsequent administration, to blame mistaken identity for what was an intentional attack. The unofficial Moorer Commission, led by Admiral Tom Moorer, former chief of Naval Operations and chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, proved conclusively that the Israeli attack, which inflicted massive casualties on US servicemen, was an intentional attack. Yet, the US government will not acknowledge it, and few Americans even know about it.
Even the event Americans celebrate on July 4 was a conspiracy and was regarded as such by the British government and American colonials who remained loyal to King George. If we don’t believe in conspiracies, why do we celebrate one on July 4?
~
Paul Craig Roberts was Assistant Secretary U.S. Treasury, Associate Editor Wall Street Journal, Columnist for Business Week, Senior Research Fellow Hoover Institution Stanford University, and William E. Simon Chair of Political Economy in the Center for Strategic and International Studies, Washington, D.C. His latest book, HOW THE ECONOMY WAS LOST, has just been published by CounterPunch/AK Press. He can be reached at PaulCraigRoberts@yahoo.com.
Acts of Entrapment Ruled OK in The War on Terror
Activist Post | July 1, 2011
In a chilling sign of what is sure to become more widespread, three of the Newburgh 4 — a group of Muslim ex-convicts and American citizens — were sentenced to 25 years in prison even after it was exposed that the government manufactured the threat, and entrapped the men into their participation in a false terror plot.
Welcome to counterterrorism operations inside the United States.
The case against the Newburgh 4 actually began to fall apart back in the middle of 2010 after White Plains, NY federal judge Colleen McMahon excoriated prosecutors for covering up evidence that the plot to bomb a Bronx synagogue and a Jewish community center, as well as to shoot down military planes at Stewart International airport was a “plot” by an FBI agent to entrap the four men. She asked a rhetorical question:
Did the government locate some disaffected individuals, manufacture a phony terrorist plot that the individuals would (and could) never have dreamed up or carried out on their own, and then wrongfully induce them to participate in it? (Source)
No matter, in a supreme act of cowardice, she gave the most “lenient” sentence available to her without having the case overturned. The ruling is a clear indication that the failure of any one of these patsy-driven cases threatens to bring down the new system of using entrapment to further counterterrorism efforts in the United States.
This certainly wasn’t the first time government agents have used patsies in order to assure a terrified public that disaster was averted yet again.
The very same agent involved in the Newburgh 4 incident, Robert Fuller, was also present in that of the Fort Dix 5 case, which was an egregious example of using paid informants, a de facto citizen spy, and the Patriot Act to issue trumped-up charges and finally gain a life + 30 years conviction for the five men.
Other high-profile cases of the FBI thwarting its own bombs include the Portland Patsy, Mohamed Osman Mahmoud, who was arrested in 2005 after trying to detonate an inert bomb supplied to him by the FBI, on the corner of Southwest Yamhill Street and Sixth Avenue in front of a Christmas tree lighting ceremony in Portland — engineered for full effect to show the divide between peaceful Christians and war-like Muslims, no doubt.
Then there was the drugged-out patsy without a passport, Farouk Abdulmutallab, who was led onto a plane by a U.S. government agent for the Christmas 2009 underwear bomb attempt. It has since been proven beyond the shadow of a doubt that this was a staged event which, again, just happened to include the Christmas subplot for maximum terror and conditioning. Now we have TSA tyranny and body scanners.
However, the whitewash here is that this is some type of war on Muslims. This is merely the window dressing that has been presented to America in order to set a “reasonable” precedent amid the global war on terror currently centered on the Middle East and Africa.
When Obama advisor, John Brennan, recently announced that the shadowy world of overseas black ops, psych warfare, and renewed domestic COINTELPRO tactics would be landing on America’s doorstep, he was basically announcing a no-holds-barred policy that is permitted to work outside of the rule of law. The real mission is to use the threat of terror as a strategy to empower the police state apparatus.
There are countless examples of government-manufactured terror having been used to sway the public into believing that real terror exists, so that even more freedom-smashing measures will be permitted . . . all to protect freedom. For every justified case of entrapment, we find ourselves similarly entrapped into signing on to a war with only one end: the means by which the strongest document ever written to protect a nation from tyrants can be burned beyond recognition.
BRITAIN JOINS U.S. AND ISREALI HYPE OVER IRAN
By Damian Lataan | June 30, 2011
In a speech to the UK parliament yesterday British Foreign Secretary William Hague joined the US and Israel in rhetoric designed specifically to induce fear over Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’.
Hague told parliament that the Iranians had tested missiles during their recent military exercises that are capable of carrying nuclear warheads. He also told parliament that Iran was enriching uranium beyond that which was required for electricity generation. Hague reportedly told parliament that Iran “has announced that it intends to triple its capacity to produce 20% enriched uranium. And that “these are enrichment levels far greater than is needed for peaceful nuclear energy”.William Hague is deliberately practicing deceit with these statements. He has ignored telling the parliament that having medium range missiles does not mean that nuclear warheads are available for them. All medium range missiles are capable of being adapted to carrying a nuclear warhead. Modern nuclear weapons are now so small that they can be fitted to most missiles. The US has even tested nuclear weapons in artillery shells.
Hague also attempts to deceive with his statement about Iran’s desire to enrich uranium to 20%. The fact is, Iran has been quite open about its enrichment of uranium to 20%; they’re not doing it covertly as Hague has tried to infer. Uranium enriched to 20% is required in order to manufacture medical isotopes for the treatment of cancer. Iran announced their intention to do this a long time ago yet Hague tells the British people about as though it has just been announced. Iran announced ages ago that it had an urgent need for isotopes and that it would be expediting enrichment to 20%.
Hague has joined with the US and Israel in their fear mongering just as both are upping the propaganda and rhetoric over Iran’s so-called ‘nuclear weapons program’.
Why?
Endemic pro-Israel bias in UK TV coverage, new book finds
Asa Winstanley – The Electronic Intifada – 25 June 2011
Glasgow University Media Group’s ambitious new study of British TV’s coverage of Israel and the Palestinians, More Bad News from Israel, is the second edition of 2004’s Bad News From Israel. Led by academics Greg Philo and Mike Berry, this work is precise, fair-minded and detailed. It constitutes irrefutable evidence of endemic pro-Israel bias.
Those of us regularly subjected to BBC and ITV news won’t exactly find this conclusion surprising but the importance of detailed documentary evidence like this book provides cannot be overstated.
The team had originally analyzed approximately 200 bulletins and questioned more than 800 persons. This new edition examines coverage from the past few years (369). Samples of coverage were taken from the main news bulletins on BBC and ITV (the most popular TV news programs in the UK). The authors identify key themes, such as coverage of casualties on “either side,” justifications for violence and “peace conferences” and international diplomacy. Audiences from a variety of socio-economic backgrounds were asked to complete a series of questionnaires and take part in focus groups. The vast majority reported that TV news was their primary source of information on Israel and the Palestinians.
The samples, taken from key moments in recent history, are well chosen. The focus of the initial study was coverage of the second Palestinian intifada’s outbreak in 2000 (in the first two weeks of which, Israel, by its own soldiers’ accounts, fired a million bullets at unarmed protesters). The next samples are taken from one year later (by which time Palestinian groups had started retaliatory bombings within Israel), and from coverage of the March and April 2002 Israeli re-invasions of the occupied West Bank.
The new chapters look at coverage of Israel’s 2008-09 winter assault on Gaza and the Israeli attack on the Gaza Freedom Flotilla a year ago (which was breaking news at the time the book was due to go to print).
Systematic preference for Israeli points of view
By fastidiously counting lines of transcript text, the authors identify a systematic preference for Israeli points of view. Israeli speakers were given twice as much space as Palestinians during the first few weeks of the intifada (215). Israeli casualties were disproportionately reported, accounting for approximately a third of the coverage, despite the actual ratio of 13 Palestinian deaths to one Israeli at that stage (223). After the Palestinian retaliatory bombing campaign began, this phenomenon worsened: “from October to December 2001 we found that there was significantly more coverage of Israeli casualties than Palestinian” even though the reality was actually still the opposite (259-60).
The study’s most telling findings concern the dominant explanatory framework and the lack of background or historical context in coverage. Even when individual journalists manage to make implicit criticisms of Israeli actions, such as on the killing of civilians, Israeli rationales were always reported — or even adopted by journalists themselves. “The journalists do not always sound happy about the Israeli rationales” but they were still included and “there is no comparable inclusion or discussion of the reasons for Palestinian action” (254).
The authors give many examples of this, including an ITV report from March 2002 that described Israeli collective punishment destroying civilian infrastructure around Bethlehem as “the ongoing fight against terror.” But there are “no commentaries such as ‘the Israeli attacks have reinforced the determination of Palestinian fighters to defend their land against Israeli terror’ [and] … we do not hear of Palestinian attacks as sending ‘a tough message to Israelis to end military rule’” (265). Such statements are unimaginable on British TV.
“All bang bang stuff”
One BBC journalist was told by his editor he wasn’t interested in “explainers” since “it’s all bang bang stuff” (180-1). But the audience studies here reveal “a strong feeling in the [focus] groups that the news should explain origins and causes” (315). This is unsurprising, considering that audiences questioned here often did not even know what nationality “settlers” were, or that there was a military occupation of the West Bank (400-1).
The two key historical events missing from the narrative of TV news are the Nakba (Arabic for “catastrophe”), what Palestinians call the ethnic cleansing and dispossession of their homeland in 1947-48, and the military occupation that started in 1967 (333). One student in a focus group said: “I didn’t realize they [Palestinians] had actually been driven out” (292). As the authors put it: “these absences in public knowledge very closely parallel the absence of such information on the TV news” (294).
The new audience studies for this second edition looked at whether anything has changed since 2004. The answer for the most part seems to be no. Coverage of Palestinian casualties seems to have increased, but Israeli casualties are still over-represented proportionate to the level of Palestinian deaths (363). Overall, the “most striking feature” of the new samples was “the dominance of the Israeli perspective” (340).
Has the tide turned on perceptions of Palestine?
Many of us who follow Western perceptions of Palestine have gained optimism by detecting a slow but positive shift in public opinion in support of Palestinians over the last couple of years. Perhaps that is still true, but the new findings here give pause for thought. The framework of assumptions is still overwhelmingly influenced by the Israeli version of events. In other words, Palestinian actions are always assumed to lead to Israeli “responses.”
The original study revealed that the “Israeli response to Palestinian violence” formula was so all-pervasive that the infamous Israeli killing of Gaza schoolboy Muhammad al-Dura in the first days of the intifada was understood by many as as “response” to a killing of two Israeli soldiers in Ramallah — even though the latter event actually took place afterwards (305). The updated audience studies here suggest that this malign phenomenon has not changed.
Palestinian rockets from Gaza were still seen by many as the main reason for Palestinian civilian deaths: “Palestinians are seen as initiating the violence … [so] it follows that Israel is ‘retaliating’” (378). On the BBC during the sample period 27 December 2008 to 17 January 2009, Israel’s November 2008 violation of the ceasefire with Hamas was mentioned in only 4.25 lines of transcript, compared with 249 lines of text that emphasized the firing of Palestinian rockets into southern Israel (419).
Obama follows ‘Wag the Dog’ script, even down to the rape scene
By Wayne Madsen | Intrepid Report | June 24, 2011
In the 1999 flick “Wag the Dog,” White House aides try to build up anger against Albania by showing a phony Albanian young woman, played by Kirsten Dunst, trying to escaping rape at the hands of Albanian troops. The “rape” was faked and filmed in a studio, complete with a blue screen. The intent of the phony rape was to divert the public’s attention away from a presidential sex scandal and build up support for military action against Albania.
Fast forward to today and we see such “made in Hollywood” tactics being played out in Libya. On March 26th Eman al-Obeidy, said to be a Libyan law student and an aspirant journalist originally from Tobruk in rebel-held eastern Libya, entered the Rixos Hotel, the headquarters for the international media and claimed she was gang raped and kidnapped by Colonel Muammar Qaddafi’s military forces at a security checkpoint in Tripoli.
Al-Obeidy was bruised and scratched and said she entered the hotel by passing herself off as a member of the hotel staff. She claimed that the Libyan security forces recognized her accent from eastern Libya and then proceeded to rape her. Al-Obeidy, like the Kirsten Dunst character in “Wag the Dog,” became an instant media celebrity. For the anti-Qaddafi journalists nested at the Rixos, including those from The New York Times, Washington Post, Los Angeles Times, CNN, Reuters, and the Associated Press, Al-Obeidy immediately became a cause celebre with her tale of rape and being held in subhuman conditions by her assailants, who had the help of black African “mercenaries.” The black “mercenary tale would soon be debunked and Al-Obeidy’s rape story also began to lose credibility.
Libyan government officials opened a criminal case against Al-Obeidy’s accused attackers and Saadi Qaddafi, the son of the Libyan leader, met with her after she was released from detention in Tripoli. Al-Obeidy was permitted to conduct interviews with the CNN’s celebrity in-breed Anderson Cooper and National Public Radio, among others. Al-Obeidy was permitted to air her grievances against the Libyan government and parrot Libyan rebel propaganda talking points from Tripoli. Eventually, Al-Obeidy ended up in Tunisia, after she said she was spirited out of Tripoli disguised as a Berber with the help of a defecting Libyan army officer. Somehow, Al-Obeidy managed to evade detection by over 50 security checkpoints on the coastal highway from Tripoli to the Tunisian border and enter Tunisia without any difficulties. This reporter, even with a Libyan visa and a Libyan diplomatic escort, was held up for at least one hour while crossing back into Tunisia from Libya. The delays were prompted by the border bureaucracies of both Libyan and Tunisian immigration and customs officials.
On May 5th Al-Obeidy was whisked into Tunis, courtesy of French diplomats who met her at the border, and by May 11th she was in Doha, Qatar, courtesy of the Libyan rebel Transitional National Council. It was apparent that Al-Obeidy’s propaganda value for the rebels and the West still had some currency because she was in the same city where Al-Jazeera has its broadcast headquarters. However, something went wrong in Qatar, an ally of the Libyan rebel movement and the NATO military offensive against Libya. Al-Obeidy was suddenly deported by Qatar. Al-Obeidy resorted to the same histrionics she employed against Qaddafi’s government: she claimed she was beaten by Qatari authorities, although she withheld rape charges in Qatar’s case. The Qatar press denied Al-Obeidy’s charges that she was beaten in Doha. The Libyan authorities claimed that Al-Obeidy had a history of mental illness and the events in Qatar lend credence to Tripoli’s contention about Al-Obeidy’s truthfulness.
WMR learned in Tripoli that Qatari officials were not satisfied with Al-Obeidy’s story or that proffered by her rebel movement handlers. The Qataris deported Al-Obeidy back to Benghazi, however, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton intervened and sent a U.S. government aircraft to Europe to fly her to political asylum in the United States. The United States arranged for Al-Obeidy to travel to Malta and on to Vienna where she was picked up by State Department officials. CNN, which through its MI-6 intelligence-linked reporter Nic Robertson, followed Al-Obeidy’s case with a priority zeal, reporting that after being deported from Qatar she ended up, via Italy, in a refugee camp in Timisoara, Romania.
Just a few weeks after the Al-Obeidy debacle, the puff piece-entranced Western media found a new heroine in the Middle East. Amina Abdullah Araf al-Omari said she was a Syrian-American lesbian woman blogging from Syria. It was later reported that Amina had been kidnapped by Syrian security forces and was being held incommunicado. It was later revealed that “Amina” was, in reality, Tom MacMaster, a 40-year old PhD student at Edinburgh University in Scotland. “Amina” had posted “her” anti-Syrian government diatribes on the lesbian website LezGetReal run by executive Paula Brooks. “Amina’s” photograph was lifted from the Facebook page of a young Croatian woman living in London. Less than 24-hours after “Amina” was exposed as MacMaster, Brooks, who billed herself as a lesbian woman with three children living in the Washington DC area, was, in fact, Bill Graber, a 58-year old man from Ohio.
Cass Sunstein, President Obama’s “information czar,” is on the record favoring the use of Wikileaks and websites to spread disinformation and propaganda. In the case of Libya and Syria, Sunstein’s policies appear to be fully underway. It is also noteworthy to point out that General Keith Alexander, the director of the National Security Agency, who is also the commander of the U.S. Cyber-Command, which is tasked with carrying out offensive information warfare operations on the Internet, was an attendee at the recent Bilderberg meeting in St. Moritz, Switzerland. High on the agenda of the secretive and elite group was how to salvage what is becoming a quagmire in Libya. It is certain that Alexander offered up some enticing high-tech tricks to the gathering of the cabal that actually runs the world.
Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.
Copyright © 2011 WayneMadenReport.com
Wayne Madsen is a Washington, DC-based investigative journalist and nationally-distributed columnist. He is the editor and publisher of the Wayne Madsen Report (subscription required).
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How Ukraine Tortured and Slaughtered Donbass
By Kit Klarenberg | Al Mayadeen | July 11, 2024
Almost immediately after the proxy war erupted, ISIS-tier footage of the torture and murder of Russians in Ukrainian custody emerged.
On July 6th, the New York Times published an astonishing investigation: In Ukraine, Killings of Surrendering Russians Divide an American-Led Unit. The article documents in grim detail how Chosen Company, an international volunteer battalion for Kiev, routinely executes Russian prisoners of war. It is the very first mainstream admission that this practice – a brazen breach of the Geneva Conventions, and a grave war crime – is widespread among Ukraine’s fighters, both foreign and homegrown. … continue
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