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Israeli cabinet approves loyalty oath to Jewish state

Ma’an – 10/10/2010

JERUSALEM — Israel’s government on Sunday approved a proposal to require every non-Jew wishing to become a citizen to swear loyalty to Israel as a Jewish state.

Twenty-two ministers voted in favor of the proposal, the Israeli daily Haaretz reported. Eight ministers were opposed.

Speaking ahead of the weekly Cabinet meeting, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu said the amendment to the citizenship law would require that “anyone seeking to become a naturalized Israeli citizen will declare [that] he or she will be a loyal citizen of the state of Israel as a Jewish and democratic state.”

“No one can preach democracy or enlightenment to us,” Netanyahu said, adding that “There is no other democracy in the Middle East.”

Critics of the proposal question the democracy of forcing non-Jews to swear allegiance to a Jewish state. The bill will primarily affect Israel’s Palestinian minority as Jewish immigrants to Israel usually enter on the state’s Jewish Law of Return. Around 20 percent of Israel’s population are non-Jewish Arabs.

Palestinian National Initiative leader Mustafa Barghouthi said the move was “the last straw in the consolidation of a racist, apartheid system in Israel,” describing the law as “an official declaration of apartheid.”

Haaretz columnist Gideon Levy panned the move in a piece published shortly after the vote. “Remember this day,” he wrote. “From now on, we will be living in a new, officially approved, ethnocratic, theocratic, nationalistic and racist country. Anyone who thinks it doesn’t affect him is mistaken.”

During peace talks in Washington last month, President Mahmoud Abbas refused Israel’s request to recognize Israel as a “Jewish state,” saying that it would forfeit the right of return of Palestinian refugees, a final status issue in negotiations. Further, he said it would threaten the civil rights of Palestinians living inside Israel.

Negotiations have reached a deadlock over Netanyahu’s refusal to stop building settlements on Palestinian land. At an Arab League summit in Libya on Saturday, Abbas said the international community realized the “absurdity” of continuing to negotiate with Israel while it expanded settlements and unilaterally imposed borders.

October 10, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Mounting evidence that BushCo knew well in advance that the 9/11 attack was being planned

Richard Clark | Op-Ed News | October 9, 2010

Former intelligence officer Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer’s new book reveals that BushCo knew that plans were being made for the 9/11 attack, but chose to do nothing to stop it and a few things to make sure it succeeded.

This is why the Defense Intelligence Agency recently demanded, after buying up the first 10,000 copies of the book, that all references to a meeting between Lt. Col. Tony Shaffer, the book’s author, and the executive director of the 9/11 Commission, Philip Zelikow, be removed from the book. In that meeting, which took place in Afghanistan, Col. Shaffer alleges that the head of the 9/11 Commission was told about the identification of Mohammed Atta prior to the attacks. So why wasn’t any mention of this made in the final 9/11 report?

Shaffer, who was undercover at the time he spoke with Zelikow in Afghanistan, said there was “stunned silence” at the meeting when he told the executive director of the commission and others that Atta had been identified as a terrorist as early as 2000 by Shaffer’s “Able Danger” research team. And if this is true, why wasn’t Atta on some kind of terrorist watch list at every airport on 9/11?

According to Shaffer’s account of their meeting, “Dr. Philip Zelikow approached me in the corner of the room and said, ‘What you said today is very important. I need you to get in touch with me as soon as you return from your deployment here in Afghanistan’.”

Once back in the U.S., Col. Shaffer says he contacted the 9/11 Commission as requested. Without explanation, however, the commission was no longer interested in any evidence that Atta had been identified as a terrorist a year before 9/11. An inspector general report by the Department of Defense then concluded there was “no evidence” to support the claims of Shaffer and others. But Fox News has obtained an un-redacted copy of the IG report containing the names of witnesses, who backed up Shaffer’s story when contacted for comment.

What role did our Department of Defense play in preparation for the events of 9/11?

A growing number of credible scientists and engineers have proven beyond any doubt that the destruction of the World Trade Center was caused by controlled demolition. The “hard science” and “hard evidence” is there for anyone to examine. Telltale thermate residue was found in almost all the dust and ash from the demolition of the twin towers, and there are no longer any doubts about this in the minds of anyone willing to examine the evidence with an open mind.

Moreover, every aspect of the official investigation into the events of 9/11 has been shown to have been compromised and/or openly interfered with, and all this has been carefully documented, yet not widely reported in the United States.

Here’s what is being discovered:

1. An Arab terrorist group began planning the 9/11 attacks during the late 1990s and was infiltrated by the Mossad and/or agents working for the CIA

2. The original terrorist planning was supplemented, paralleled, augmented and perhaps eventually replaced by a vast and highly complex domestic “false flag” attack, the ultimate purpose of which was to realign some of the world’s political and economic realities.

3. Israel, with its considerable influence over American mainstream media, and its ability to operate openly and with impunity inside the United States, took the lead in making sure the attacks would take place without fail. Arabs would quickly be blamed and a carefully scripted press account would “seal the deal,” while a rigged investigation was already “in the can.”

In an attempt to maintain the supposed “integrity’ of the falsified investigation, the Pentagon recently paid $47,000 for 9,500 copies of Operation Dark Heart, the memoir of former intelligence officer Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer. We were told the book contained classified information on Afghanistan — information that would aid the enemy. But this was a lie. What the book contained was a chapter on Operation Able Danger, a Pentagon effort involving Shaffer and other officers using the Internet and “open source” information to track terrorist organizations. By this means, Shaffer and his group, Captain Scott Phillpott, James D. Smith, and Major Eric Kleinschmidt, identified, as early as 1999, the group accused of planning and executing the 9/11 attack! Further, Shaffer’s group had created a chart showing the structure of the terrorist organization. Mohammed Atta, reputed leader of the 9/11 operation, was prominently featured, his photograph placed in the “number one” position among the terrorists who were being tracked or should be tracked.

When attempts were made to inform the FBI about this discovery, the Department of Defense ordered that all information on the future hijackers be destroyed, and that the group’s efforts to warn appropriate counter-terrorist organizations be stopped.

In 2005, 9/11 Commission Chairman Thomas Kean said he was aware of the Able Danger report but that no evidence had been provided that backed up the claims of any foreknowledge of 9/11. However, on June 14, 2004, an unnamed high ranking Navy officer informed the 9/11 Commission that he had reviewed the charts and other materials we now know to have been destroyed on orders of the DIA. The Commission chose to ignore this officer’s report and omitted any record of it from their findings.

So here we have evidence that, not only did the government have full knowledge of the accused hijackers 2 years in advance of the attack, but that they destroyed the evidence and thereby prevented the terrorists from being arrested prior to their planned date for the attack!

And now the members of the 9/11 Commission are unable to give any credible reason why they failed to investigate these allegations of Lt. Col. Shaffer and his team of researchers.

October 10, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

The politicization of Judaism

By Brandon Davis | The Daily Princetonian | October 6, 2010

If you’ve been listening to Newt Gingrich recently, you might be fearful of Muslims turning the United States of America into the Islamic Republic of America. You might be under the impression that Islamic religion is nothing more than a political front. You might be under the impression that Christianity is also fast becoming a political tool. But in all of the recent ranting about religion and politics, the third Abrahamic faith is flying under the radar. Few people think of Judaism as a political movement the way they might consider Islam or Christianity. When I think of Judaism, I think of latkes, challah, Woody Allen and Passover seders. I think of my mother yelling “oy vey” when I did badly on a quiz or when she burned the Rosh Hashanah brisket. If you’re an American of any religion, this is probably the image you have of Jewish people as well.

But there’s a whole other section of the world that has a very different perception of Jewish people. To them, Judaism is nothing but a political movement. They think of Jewish people — Israelis — who rode in on military jeeps and evicted them from their homes. They think of Jewish people who have blocked them off from the rest of the world, by physical wall or economic blockade. They think of Jewish people who have stolen their land and denied their history.

I agree that it would be wrong to draw conclusions about Israelis or Jews in general because of some Israeli policies and military actions — just as it would be wrong to judge any community by the actions of its worst representatives. But how do we deal with Judaism when almost all American Jewish organizations unconditionally support Israeli policies?

In the secular, post-religion age in which many of us live, Judaism has been preserved by another faith: nationalism. Allegiance to Israel is integral to the American Jewish experience, perhaps even more so than the religious and cultural tradition born out of the Diaspora. And organized Judaism’s political leanings are nearly monolithic.

Questioning this allegiance is the worst taboo within the organized Jewish community. Academics like Noam Chomsky and Norman Finkelstein GS ’88 who criticize Israel are dubbed “self-hating Jews” by the American Jewish mainstream. Jewish pro-Palestinian groups like Jews Say No or Jewish Voices for Peace are on the ultimate fringe. There are a few semi-mainstream Jewish groups that do criticize Israel, but there are none that will even entertain the idea of a non-Jewish Israeli-Palestinian state.

The result is a near-total politicization of Judaism, analogous to Islamism in the Middle East or Sarah Palin’s brand of political Christianity here. While, unlike these ideologies, American Jews do not advocate for our government to be founded on Jewish values, we do advocate specific policies in the Middle East. Like the Sabbath prayers and the stories of the Torah, the history of modern Israel — often stripped of its unsavory bits — is an integral part of Jewish education. The Israeli independence fighters are heroes for American Jews, just like George Washington or Paul Revere. Millions of dollars are spent to teach young Jews to love Israel and to defend Israel from its critics. The proof is overwhelming and undeniable: Maintaining a Jewish nation-state in Palestine has become one of organized Judaism’s core goals.

And just as it is fair to criticize Israeli policies, it is fair to criticize its apologists — groups that claim to represent the entire American Jewish community. American Jews have traditionally been at the forefront of progressive movements. But in recent years, American Jewish institutions have trended toward the ugly side of Zionism, defending — or at least apologizing for — the Israeli hard right in its continuation of the occupation of the West Bank and repression of Palestinian identity. The undeniable injustices of the Israeli government and military warrant criticism; silence in the face of these injustices warrants criticism as well.

It is time for American Jews to stand up against oppression, violence and religious fundamentalism. The tribalism that has persuaded the Jewish people to categorically stand up for Israel for so many years is foolish and outdated. The occupation of the West Bank is wrong. The blockade of Gaza is wrong. The displacement of Palestinian villages is wrong. The continued construction of settlements is wrong. And American Jews have enabled all of it. It’s about time a Jew stood up and said so.

Brandon Davis is a sophomore from Westport, Conn. He can be reached at bsdavis@princeton.edu. – Republished with permission from The Daily Princetonian

October 9, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Debtors’ prisons rise again in the South

By Sue Sturgis | Institute for Southern Studies Online Magazine | October 6, 2010
Forced Labor Camp, Georgia, 1930s

The Brennan Center for Justice and the American Civil Liberties Union released reports this week documenting the growing problem of criminal justice debt and the considerable costs it’s imposing on communities, taxpayers and indigent people convicted of crimes. The following figures come from those reports, titled respectively “Criminal Justice Debt: A Barrier to Reentry” and “In for a Penny: The Rise of America’s New Debtor Prisons.” Click on the figure to go the specific source.

Of the 15 states with the highest prison populations examined in a recent report on “user fees” imposed on people with criminal convictions, number in the South: 7

Number of those 15 states that utilize “poverty penalties” against convicts such as late fees, payment plan fees and interest: 14

Number that charge poor people public defender fees for exercising their constitutional right to counsel: 13

Number that suspend driving privileges for missed debt payments, hurting people’s job opportunities: 8

Number that require individuals to pay off criminal justice fees before reinstating their eligibility to vote: 7

Number that have attempted to measure the impact of criminal justice debt on offenders, their families or communities: 0

Collection fee charged by Alabama for court-related costs: 30 percent

Surcharge Florida allows private debt collectors to tack on to a convicted person’s debt: 40 percent

Amount North Carolina charges for failure to pay a fine or court cost on time: $25

Amount it charges to set up an installment payment plan: $20

Amount it charges for a failure to appear: $200

Amount it charges defendants for crime lab fees: $600

Amount it can assess a person convicted of a DUI for the use of a continuous alcohol monitoring system: up to $1,000

Number of people jailed in North Carolina’s Mecklenburg County in 2009 for failing to pay court-related debt: 246

Amount of money the county made from those jailings: $0

Amount that people released to parole in Texas typically owe in offense-related debt: $500 to $2,000

Amount that defendants in Virginia may be charged per count for certain felonies: $1,235

Percent of felony cases before the New Orleans courts that relate to debt collection issues: over 6

Value of food that Gregory White, a homeless resident of New Orleans, was convicted of stealing: $39

Amount White was assessed in fines and fees for his crime: $339

Number of days White spent in jail because he was unable to pay his debt and couldn’t afford the bus fare to complete community service: 198

Cost of his incarceration for the city: over $3,500

Year in which the Orleans Parish, La. municipal court system settled a lawsuit by agreeing to put a stop to “fines or time” sentencing: 2007

Number of such sentences handed down by that same court in March 2010 alone: at least 32

Estimated percent of people charged with criminal offenses in the U.S. who qualify for indigent defense: 80 to 90 percent

Percentage by which African-American defendants are more likely than white defendants to rely on indigent defense counsel: almost 500

Decade through which many Southern states were still using criminal justice debt collection to effectively re-enslave African-Americans by allowing landowners and companies to “lease” black convicts unable to pay on their own: 1930s

Year in which the U.S. Supreme Court held that imprisoning someone merely because of his inability to pay a fine or restitution was fundamentally unfair: 1983

October 8, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Legal Defeat for Global Warming in Kiwigate Scandal

In the climate controversy dubbed Kiwigate New Zealand skeptics inflict shock courtroom defeat on climatologists implicated in temperature data fraud

By John O’Sullivan | October 6, 2010

New Zealand’s government via its National Institute of Water and Atmospheric Research (NIWA) has announced it has nothing to do with the country’s “official” climate record in what commentators are calling a capitulation from the tainted climate reconstruction. The story is also covered on web news aggregator site, icecap.com.

NIWA’s statement claims they were never responsible for the national temperature record (NZTR).The climb down is seen as a dramatic legal triumph for skeptics of the New Zealand Climate Science Coalition (NZCSC) who had initiated their challenge last August when petitioning the high court of New Zealand to invalidate the weather service’s reconstruction of antipodean temperatures.

According to the August official statement of the claim from NZCSC climate scientists cooked the books by using the same alleged ‘trick’ employed by British and American doomsaying scientists. This involves subtly imposing a warming bias during what is known as the ‘homogenisation’ process that occurs when climate data needs to be adjusted.

(View graph of temperature record before and after ‘adjustment’)

The specific charge brought against the Kiwi government was that it’s climate scientists had taken the raw temperature records of the country and then adjusted them artificially with the result that a steeper warming trend was created than would otherwise exist by examination of the raw data alone.

Indeed, the original Kiwi records shows no warming during the 20th century, but after government sponsored climatologists had manipulated the data a warming trend of 1C appeared.

New Zealand Government Abandons ‘Official’ Climate Record

The NZCSC story reports that the NZ authorities, “formally stated that, in their opinion, they are not required to use the best available information nor to apply the best scientific practices and techniques available at any given time. They don’t think that forms any part of their statutory obligation to pursue “excellence.”

NIWA now denies there was any such thing as an “official” NZ Temperature Record, although there was an official acronym for it (NZTR). However, the position now taken by the NZ government is that all such records are now to be deemed as unofficial and strictly for internal research purposes.

The article urges that if the government will not affirm that their temperature reconstruction is official then, “Nobody else should rely on it.”

Researcher from Climategate University Implicated in Data Fraud

As reported in a Suite101 article by the same writer of April 2010 ‘Kiwigate is a Carbon Copy of Climategate’ it was shown that the scientist who made the controversial “bold adjustments” is none other than Jim Salinger who is also a lead author for the Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change (IPCC). Because very few temperature records exist for the Pacific Ocean, the NIWA record is given extra weight by the UN’s IPCC for determining multi-decadal trends in global average temperatures.

Salinger was dismissed by NIWA earlier this year for speaking without authorization to the media. The discredited researcher originally worked at Britain’s Climatic Research Unit (CRU), the institution at the center of the Climategate scandal.

Salinger was also among the inner circle of climate scientists whose leaked emails precipitated the original climate controversy in November 2009. In an email (August 4, 2003) to fellow disgraced American climate professor, Michael Mann, Salinger stated he was “extremely concerned about academic standards” among climate skeptics.

Bogus Data Destroyed before it could be independently verified

In circumstances strangely similar to those witnessed in the Climategate controversy Kiwigate appears to match Climategate in three key three facets. First, climate scientists declined to submit their data for independent analysis. Second, when backed into a corner the scientists claimed their adjustments had been ‘lost’. Third, the raw data itself proves no warming trend.

References:

Dunleavy MBE, T.,’High Court asked to invalidate NIWA’s official NZ temperature record,’ (August 13,2010); http://www.climatescience.org.nz, (accessed online: October 6, 2010)

Costa, A.C. and A. Soares, ‘Homogenization of Climate Data: Review and New Perspectives Using Geostatistics,’ Mathematical Geoscience, Volume 41, Number 3 / April, 2009.

New Zealand Climate Science Coalition, ‘NIWA Challenged to Show Why and How Temperature Records Were Adjusted’ (February 7, 2010), accessed online April 26, 2010.

NZCSC & Climate Science Conversation Group; Press Statement of December 18, 2009; accessed online ( April 26, 2010).

Salinger, J. Climategate email Filename: 1060002347.txt. (August 4, 2003).

October 7, 2010 Posted by | Deception, Science and Pseudo-Science, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Why Obama caved (Israeli ambassador Michael Oren is his Democratic fundraising tool)

By Philip Weiss on October 6, 2010

The Israel lobby is deeply enmeshed in the Democratic Party, as we frequently note here, for financial reasons. Consider Mark Gilbert of Boca Raton, FL, the deputy national finance chair of the Democratic Party. He loves Israel, his wife Nancy runs tours to Israel. Barack Obama has praised Mark and Nancy Gilbert as “dear friends.” Gilbert raised $500,000 for Obama last time around and has privileged access to White House policy makers.

Lately Alex Cockburn picked up the following fundraising letter written by the Gilberts that reflects the usual complete confusion about national identity that Zionists have– they seem to regard Michael Oren as a political prophet. And note that they are raising money for Obama by quoting a foreign ambassador, Michael Oren, and praising a rightwing leader, Netanyahu. Notice that there is not a word about illegal colonies or Palestinian national aspirations (Jewish prejudice at work), and contempt for the suffering people of Gaza. Emphasis mine:

‘Dear Friends,

“Under the radar” is not what we’re used to in the Jewish community.

We demand it big and bold and we need it loud and clear.  (and- that is A. O. K.! )

But- when work is done quietly and not with SCREAMING headlines, we sometimes miss it.

Silly us!  WAKE UP EVERYONE…. It’s a new (Jewish) year ! And our President and his team (and YES, our CONGRESS) have done, are doing and WILL continue to do extraordinary work in connection with America’s best friend: the State of Israel.

At the Israeli Ambassador’s residence on Monday, the annual Rosh Ha Shanah (Jewish New Year for our non-Jewish friends on this email) reception guest list included national and international Jewish organization leaders; elegantly dressed Foreign Ambassadors and members of the diplomatic corps, a host of Rabbis from across the religious spectrum ; famous authors, renown professors and magnificently decorated military personnel from several countries including at least one  U.S. 3-star General (Dayton).  We were invited because my husband Mark is the National Deputy Finance Chairman of the Democratic party, I’m the owner of an Israel tour company and have been heavily involved in tourism to Israel for 15 years and probably- and most importantly- because our daughter was Ambassador Oren’s student at Yale.

Thank You, President Obama!

Ambassador Oren and his wonderful wife Sally warmly received each guest -then stood before the assembled crowd in what was the best stump speech for President Obama that I have heard from any world leader (and yes, Ambassador Oren speaks FOR Prime Minister Netanyahu of Israel!). Without a note, Ambassador Oren outlined the brilliant accomplishments and strong support of Israel demonstrated by the Obama Administration in LESS THAN 2 YEARS!  Oren invoked our President’s name, time and time again: (please memorize these bullet points and tell everyone you know!)

  • President Obama has led the global effort to prevent Iran from obtaining a nuclear weapon.
  • President Obama’s leadership (and coaxing) has produced an international coalition that INCLUDES China and Russia who have implemented unprecedented sanctions against Iran, which, according to conversations at the Monday reception, appear to have caught Iran off-guard
  • President Obama and his team are spending more time on this issue than almost any other issue facing our country today
  • President Obama and our Congress have provided Israel with every cent (and then some) of foreign assistance requested by Israel
  • President Obama has restored Israel’s QME (qualitative military edge) which had been neglected for the last 8 years
  • President Obama is the FIRST American leader to say – in an Arab country (Egypt)  that the Arab world must recognize Israel as a JEWISH state and in a support of Israel’s legitimacy to affirm the –quote- “unshakeable “ bond between the USA & Israel
  • President Obama & team played a critical role in leading a UNANIMOUS vote to include Israel in the OECD (Organization of Economic Cooperation & Development). The vote was  31-0 admitting Israel to this prestigious organization
  • President Obama has dispatched leaders of the Joint Chiefs to Israel not once, but four times already in his less-than-2-years in office ( before that the Joint chiefs had not been in Israel for YEARS (not once during the ‘last’ administration)
  • The Obama administration has integrated US missile technology into Israel’s expanding missile shield. NO OTHER AMERICAN PRESIDENT HAS DONE THIS.
  • The Obama administration continues to fund development of ARROW-3,  Israel’s advanced long-rage, high-altitude system for countering Iranian ballistic missiles
  • President Obama asked Congress for $205 million dollars for Israel’s IRON DOME rocket defense system (which will reduce incoming rocket threats from Hizbullah in the north and Hamas in the south…) – this request is IN ADDITION TO the $3 BILLION budgetary request for Israel’s security assistance!
  • And my personal under-the-radar item; the Obama team’s clever input to re-wording the Gaza blockade language which not only garnered international support for Israel (and a promise not to condemn Israel if Gd forbid there is another flotilla incident) BUT effectively thwarted several pending flotillas in Mediterranean and Persian Gulf ports… that simply became the boats-to-nowhere!
  • And last, but surely not least, (and listed in this basic order by Ambass. Oren) the Israeli-Palestinian conflict negotiators are sitting as we speak at a table together – talking.  Who knows what the result will be….but talking is the only way to get anywhere. And it is a giant step in a positive direction.

This email is too long already and I hope you have gotten this far, but you must realize that the list of bullet points above is extraordinary.

Unprecedented.

And all accomplished by the Obama team and the current congress- in less than two years in office.

Looking ahead to 5771, may you and your families be blessed with a beautiful year, filled with good health, good times and ….peace.

With warm regards from our house to yours,

Sincerely,

Nancy & Mark Gilbert.’

October 6, 2010 Posted by | Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | Leave a comment

Guatemala: A Test Tube of Repression

By Robert Parry | Consortium News | October 3, 2010

Last week’s grotesque revelation about American public health doctors infecting nearly 700 Guatemalans with venereal disease to test penicillin from 1946-48 marked just the start of the U.S. government’s post-World War II abuse of that Central American country.

Indeed, as troubling as the VD experiments were, U.S. administrations from Dwight Eisenhower to Ronald Reagan would do much worse, treating Guatemala as a test tube for Cold War counterinsurgency experiments that led to the slaughter of some 200,000 people, including genocide against Mayan Indian tribes.

Guatemala’s special place as Washington’s experimental lab for repression began in 1954 when President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to try out new psychological warfare strategies in destabilizing and removing Guatemala’s democratically elected President Jacobo Arbenz.

Arbenz had offended U.S. business and government leaders by implementing a land reform project that threatened the massive holdings of United Fruit and by letting leftists compete within the political process.

The CIA ousted Arbenz with a combination of clever propaganda and armed insurrection, leading to a series of repressive military dictatorships that further radicalized Guatemala’s indigenous poor and urban intellectuals.

Washington grew more alarmed after Fidel Castro’s Cuban revolution in 1959, his alliance with the Soviet Union and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962.  As the Cold War heated up with the U.S. intervention in Vietnam, Lyndon Johnson’s administration looked for new strategies to thwart the spread of leftist revolution elsewhere, especially in Latin America.

By the mid-1960s, the United States was assisting the Guatemalan military in developing more refined methods of repression. Guatemala’s first “death squads” took shape under anti-terrorist training provided by a U.S. public safety adviser named John Longon, according to U.S. government documents released in the late 1990s.

In January 1966, Longon reported to his superiors about both overt and covert components of his anti-terrorist strategies. On the covert side, Longon pressed for “a safe house [to] be immediately set up” for coordination of security intelligence.

“A room was immediately prepared in the [Presidential] Palace for this purpose and … Guatemalans were immediately designated to put this operation into effect,” according to Longon’s report.

Longon’s operation within the presidential compound became the starting point for the infamous “Archivos” intelligence unit that evolved into a clearinghouse for Guatemala’s most notorious political assassinations.

Just two months after Longon’s report, a secret CIA cable noted the clandestine execution of several Guatemalan “communists and terrorists” on the night of March 6, 1966.

By the end of the year, the Guatemalan government was bold enough to request U.S. help in establishing special kidnapping squads, according to a cable from the U.S. Southern Command that was forwarded to Washington on Dec. 3, 1966.

By 1967, the Guatemalan counterinsurgency terror had gained a fierce momentum. On Oct. 23, 1967, the State Department’s Bureau of Intelligence and Research noted the “accumulating evidence that the [Guatemalan] counterinsurgency machine is out of control.” The report noted that Guatemalan “counter-terror” units were carrying out abductions, bombings, torture and summary executions “of real and alleged communists.”

A Diplomat’s Complaint

The mounting death toll in Guatemala disturbed some American officials assigned to the country. The embassy’s deputy chief of mission, Viron Vaky, expressed his concerns in a remarkably candid report that he submitted on March 29, 1968, after returning to Washington. Vaky framed his arguments in pragmatic terms, but his moral anguish broke through.

“The official squads are guilty of atrocities. Interrogations are brutal, torture is used and bodies are mutilated,” Vaky wrote.

“In the minds of many in Latin America, and, tragically, especially in the sensitive, articulate youth, we are believed to have condoned these tactics, if not actually encouraged them. Therefore our image is being tarnished and the credibility of our claims to want a better and more just world are increasingly placed in doubt.”

Vaky also noted the deceptions within the U.S. government that resulted from its complicity in state-sponsored terror.

“This leads to an aspect I personally find the most disturbing of all — that we have not been honest with ourselves,” Vaky said. “We have condoned counter-terror; we may even in effect have encouraged or blessed it. We have been so obsessed with the fear of insurgency that we have rationalized away our qualms and uneasiness.

“This is not only because we have concluded we cannot do anything about it, for we never really tried. Rather we suspected that maybe it is a good tactic, and that as long as Communists are being killed it is alright.

“Murder, torture and mutilation are alright if our side is doing it and the victims are Communists. After all hasn’t man been a savage from the beginning of time so let us not be too queasy about terror. I have literally heard these arguments from our people.”

Though kept secret from the American public for three decades, the Vaky memo obliterated any claim that Washington simply didn’t know the reality in Guatemala. Still, with Vaky’s memo squirreled away in State Department files, the killing went on. The repression was noted almost routinely in field reports.

On Jan. 12, 1971, the Defense Intelligence Agency reported that Guatemalan forces had “quietly eliminated” hundreds of “terrorists and bandits” in the countryside. On Feb. 4, 1974, a State Department cable reported resumption of “death squad” activities.

On Dec. 17, 1974, a DIA biography of one U.S.-trained Guatemalan officer gave an insight into how U.S. counterinsurgency doctrine had imbued the Guatemalan strategies.

According to the biography, Lt. Col. Elias Osmundo Ramirez Cervantes, chief of security section for Guatemala’s president, had trained at the U.S. Army School of Intelligence at Fort Holabird in Maryland. Back in Guatemala, Ramirez Cervantes was put in charge of plotting raids on suspected subversives as well as their interrogations.

The Reagan-Era Slaughter

As brutal as the Guatemalan security forces were in the 1960s and 1970s, the worst was yet to come. For several years the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter took steps to shut down U.S. complicity in Guatemala’s state-sponsored butchery. Besides condemnations from his new human rights office at the State Department, Carter had imposed an embargo on U.S. military aid.

However, that brief period of American disapproval ended with Ronald Reagan’s election in November 1980. Celebrations swept well-to-do communities across Central America as the region’s anti-communist hard-liners were thrilled that they had someone in the White House who understood their problems.

The oligarchs and the generals viewed Reagan as a longtime defender of right-wing regimes that had engaged in bloody counterinsurgency against leftist enemies.

For instance, in the late 1970s, when Carter’s human rights coordinator, Patricia Derian, criticized the Argentine military for its “dirty war” — tens of thousands of “disappearances,” tortures and murders — then-political commentator Reagan joshed that she should “walk a mile in the moccasins” of the Argentine generals before criticizing them. [For details, see Martin Edwin Andersen’s Dossier Secreto.]

After his inauguration in 1981, Reagan gave enthusiastic support to right-wing governments in El Salvador and Honduras, while ordering the CIA to organize a counter-revolutionary movement of Nicaraguan exiles to harass and overthrow Nicaragua’s leftist Sandinista regime. Reagan also began whittling away at Carter’s arms embargo on Guatemala.

Yet, even as Reagan was looking for ways to support the Guatemalan military, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies were confirming more slaughters by the army of indigenous Guatemalans in the countryside.

In April 1981, a secret CIA cable described a massacre at Cocob, near Nebaj in the Ixil Indian territory. On April 17, 1981, government troops attacked the area believed to support leftist guerrillas, the cable said.

According to a CIA source, “the social population appeared to fully support the guerrillas” and “the soldiers were forced to fire at anything that moved.” The CIA cable added that “the Guatemalan authorities admitted that ‘many civilians’ were killed in Cocob, many of whom undoubtedly were non-combatants.”

Despite the CIA account and other similar reports, Reagan permitted Guatemala’s army to buy $3.2 million in military trucks and jeeps in June 1981. To permit the sale, Reagan removed the vehicles from a list of military equipment that was covered by the human rights embargo.

No Apologies

Apparently confident of Reagan’s sympathies, the Guatemalan government continued its political repression without apology.

According to a State Department cable on Oct. 5, 1981, Guatemalan leaders met with Reagan’s roving ambassador, retired Gen. Vernon Walters, and left no doubt about their plans. Guatemala’s military leader, Gen. Fernando Romeo Lucas Garcia, “made clear that his government will continue as before — that the repression will continue.”

Human rights groups saw the same picture. The Inter-American Human Rights Commission released a report on Oct. 15, 1981, blaming the Guatemalan government for “thousands of illegal executions.” [Washington Post, Oct. 16, 1981]

But the Reagan administration was set on whitewashing the ugly scene. A State Department “white paper,” released in December 1981, blamed the violence on leftist “extremist groups” and their “terrorist methods,” inspired and supported by Cuba’s Fidel Castro.

Yet, even as these rationalizations were pitched to the American people, U.S. intelligence agencies in Guatemala continued to learn of government-sponsored massacres. One CIA report in February 1982 described an army sweep through the so-called Ixil Triangle in central El Quiche province.

“The commanding officers of the units involved have been instructed to destroy all towns and villages which are cooperating with the Guerrilla Army of the Poor [known as the EGP] and eliminate all sources of resistance,” the report stated. “Since the operation began, several villages have been burned to the ground, and a large number of guerrillas and collaborators have been killed.”

The CIA report explained the army’s modus operandi: “When an army patrol meets resistance and takes fire from a town or village, it is assumed that the entire town is hostile and it is subsequently destroyed.”

When the army encountered an empty village, it was “assumed to have been supporting the EGP, and it is destroyed. There are hundreds, possibly thousands of refugees in the hills with no homes to return to. … The well-documented belief by the army that the entire Ixil Indian population is pro-EGP has created a situation in which the army can be expected to give no quarter to combatants and non-combatants alike.”

The Rise of Rios Montt

Yet, as grim as the violence was in 1981, it was only going to get worse.

In March 1982, Gen. Efrain Rios Montt, an avowed fundamentalist Christian, seized power in a coup d’etat and immediately impressed official Washington, where Reagan hailed Rios Montt as “a man of great personal integrity.”

By July 1982, however, Rios Montt had begun a new scorched-earth campaign called his “rifles and beans” policy. The slogan meant that pacified Indians would get “beans,” while all others could expect to be the target of army “rifles.” In October, he secretly gave carte blanche to the feared “Archivos” intelligence unit to expand “death squad” operations.

The U.S. embassy was soon hearing more accounts of the army massacring Indians, even as the Reagan administration sought to minimize the bloodshed.

On Oct, 21, 1982, one cable described how three embassy officers tried to check out some of the massacre reports but ran into bad weather and canceled the inspection. Despite the thwarted field trip, the embassy fired off an analysis that the Guatemalan government was the victim of a communist-inspired “disinformation campaign.”

Reagan embraced that claim when he met with Rios Montt in December 1982 and insisted that the Guatemalan government was getting a “bum rap” on human rights.

On Jan. 7, 1983, Reagan formally lifted the military embargo on Guatemala, authorizing the sale of $6 million in military hardware, including spare parts for UH-1H helicopters and A-37 aircraft used in counterinsurgency operations. State Department spokesman John Hughes said political violence in the cities had “declined dramatically” and that rural conditions had improved too.

In February 1983, however, a secret CIA cable noted a rise in “suspect right-wing violence” with kidnappings of students and teachers. Bodies of victims were appearing in ditches and gullies. CIA sources traced these political murders to Rios Montt’s order to the “Archivos” in October to “apprehend, hold, interrogate and dispose of suspected guerrillas as they saw fit.”

These grisly facts on the ground didn’t stop the annual State Department human rights survey from praising the supposedly improved human rights situation in Guatemala. “The overall conduct of the armed forces had improved by late in the year” 1982, the report stated.

A different picture — far closer to the secret information held by the U.S. government — was coming from independent human rights investigators. On March 17, 1983, Americas Watch representatives condemned the Guatemalan army for human rights atrocities against the Indian population.

New York attorney Stephen L. Kass said these findings included proof that the government carried out “virtually indiscriminate murder of men, women and children of any farm regarded by the army as possibly supportive of guerrilla insurgents.”

Rural women suspected of guerrilla sympathies were raped before execution, Kass said. Children were “thrown into burning homes. They are thrown in the air and speared with bayonets. We heard many, many stories of children being picked up by the ankles and swung against poles so their heads are destroyed.” [AP, March 17, 1983]

A Happy Face

Publicly, however, senior Reagan officials continued to put on a happy face.

On June 12, 1983, special envoy Richard B. Stone praised “positive changes” in Rios Montt’s government. But Rios Montt’s vengeful Christian fundamentalism was hurtling out of control, even by Guatemalan standards.

In August 1983, Gen. Oscar Mejia Victores seized power in another coup. Despite the power shift, Guatemalan security forces continued to show little restraint in killing anyone who got in the way, even local U.S. government employees.

When three Guatemalans working for the U.S. Agency for International Development were slain in November 1983, U.S. Ambassador Frederic Chapin suspected that “Archivos” hit squads were sending a message to the United States to back off even mild pressure on human rights.

In late November 1983, in a brief show of displeasure, the U.S. administration postponed the sale of $2 million in helicopter spare parts. The next month, however, Reagan sent the spare parts anyway. In 1984, Reagan succeeded, too, in pressuring Congress to approve $300,000 in military training for the Guatemalan army.

By mid-1984, Chapin, who had grown bitter about the army’s stubborn brutality, was gone, replaced by a far-right political appointee named Alberto Piedra, who was all for increased military assistance to Guatemala.

In January 1985, Americas Watch issued a report observing that Reagan’s State Department “is apparently more concerned with improving Guatemala’s image than in improving its human rights.”

Other examples of Guatemala’s “death squad” strategy came to light later. For example, a U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency cable in 1994 reported that the Guatemalan military had used an air base in Retalhuleu during the mid-1980s as a center for coordinating the counterinsurgency campaign in southwest Guatemala – and for torturing and burying prisoners.

At the base, pits were filled with water to hold captured suspects. “Reportedly there were cages over the pits and the water level was such that the individuals held within them were forced to hold on to the bars in order to keep their heads above water and avoid drowning,” the DIA report stated.

The Guatemalan military used the Pacific Ocean as another dumping spot for political victims, according to the DIA report. Bodies of insurgents tortured to death and live prisoners marked for “disappearance” were loaded onto planes that flew out over the ocean where the soldiers would shove the victims into the water to drown, a tactic that had been a favorite disposal technique of the Argentine military in the 1970s.

The history of the Retalhuleu death camp was uncovered by accident in the early 1990s when a Guatemalan officer wanted to let soldiers cultivate their own vegetables on a corner of the base. But the officer was taken aside and told to drop the request “because the locations he had wanted to cultivate were burial sites that had been used by the D-2 [military intelligence] during the mid-eighties,” the DIA report said.

Perception Management

Guatemala, of course, was not the only Central American country where Reagan and his administration supported brutal counterinsurgency operations and then sought to cover up the bloody facts. Nor where these experiments in counterinsurgency strategies strictly limited to the hapless countries where the actual killings occurred.

The Reagan administration also tested out new concepts for deceiving and manipulating the American public, a secret strategy called “perception management” which was viewed as essential to enable the brutal policies in Central America to go forward, by confusing and diffusing any domesitic U.S. opposition. Part of the propaganda strategy involved discrediting journalists and human rights investigators who dug up the grim truth.

For instance, Reagan personally lashed out at a human rights investigator named Reed Brody, a New York lawyer who had collected affidavits from more than 100 witnesses to atrocities carried out by the U.S.-supported contras in Nicaragua. Angered by the revelations about his contra “freedom-fighters,” Reagan denounced Brody in a speech on April 15, 1985, calling him “one of dictator [Daniel] Ortega’s supporters, a sympathizer who has openly embraced Sandinismo.”

Privately, Reagan had a far more accurate understanding of the true nature of the contras. At one point in the contra war, Reagan turned to CIA official Duane Clarridge and demanded that the contras be used to destroy some Soviet-supplied helicopters that had arrived in Nicaragua.

In his memoir, A Spy for All Seasons, Clarridge recalled that “President Reagan pulled me aside and asked, ‘Dewey, can’t you get those vandals of yours to do this job.'”

So, to manage U.S. perceptions of the wars in Central America, Reagan authorized a systematic program of distorting the facts and intimidating American journalists. The project was run by a CIA propaganda veteran, Walter Raymond Jr., who was assigned to the National Security Council staff.

The project’s key operatives developed propaganda “themes,” selected “hot buttons” to excite the American people, cultivated pliable journalists who would cooperate, and bullied reporters who wouldn’t go along.

The best-known attacks were directed against New York Times correspondent Raymond Bonner for disclosing Salvadoran army massacres of civilians, including the slaughter of some 800 men, women and children in El Mozote in December 1981.

But Bonner was not alone. Reagan’s operatives pressured scores of reporters and their editors in an ultimately successful campaign to minimize exposure of human rights crimes committed by U.S. clients. [For details, see Robert Parry’s Lost History or Secrecy & Privilege.]

The tamed U.S. reporters gave the administration a far freer hand to pursue counterinsurgency operations in Central America.

No Accountability

Despite the tens of thousands of civilian deaths and now-corroborated accounts of massacres and genocide, not a single senior military officer in Central America was given any significant punishment for the bloodshed, nor did any U.S. officials pay even a political price.

The U.S. officials who sponsored and encouraged these war crimes not only escaped legal judgment, but many remained respected figures in Washington, with some, like former U.S. Ambassador to Honduras John Negroponte, returning to senior government posts under President George W. Bush.

Reagan has been honored as few recent presidents have with major public facilities named after him, including National Airport in Washington. A major celebration of his 100th birthday is planned for 2011.

The concept of perception management also emerged from the Reagan years as a tested method for manipulating the American people through propaganda and fear. The same tactics were used in 2002-03 to herd the public behind George W. Bush’s invasion of Iraq.

The broader success of perception management and its impact on an intimidated U.S. press corps was revealed, too, in the general disinterest shown by most of the major news media when the historical record about Guatemala’s atrocities was released in the late 1990s.

On Feb. 25, 1999, relying heavily on documents made available by the Clinton administration, a Guatemalan truth commission issued a report on the staggering human rights crimes that U.S. governments from Eisenhower through Reagan had aided, abetted and concealed.

The Historical Clarification Commission, an independent human rights body, estimated that the Guatemalan conflict claimed the lives of some 200,000 people with the most savage bloodletting occurring in the 1980s.

Based on a review of about 20 percent of the dead, the panel blamed the army for 93 percent of the killings and leftist guerrillas for three percent. Four percent were listed as unresolved.

The report documented that in the 1980s, the army committed 626 massacres against Mayan villages. “The massacres that eliminated entire Mayan villages … are neither perfidious allegations nor figments of the imagination, but an authentic chapter in Guatemala’s history,” the commission concluded.

A Genocide

The army “completely exterminated Mayan communities, destroyed their livestock and crops,” the report said. In the northern highlands, the report termed the slaughter a “genocide.”

Besides carrying out murder and “disappearances,” the army routinely engaged in torture and rape. “The rape of women, during torture or before being murdered, was a common practice” by the military and paramilitary forces, the report found.

The report added that the “government of the United States, through various agencies including the CIA, provided direct and indirect support for some [of these] state operations.” The report concluded that the U.S. government also gave money and training to a Guatemalan military that committed “acts of genocide” against the Mayans.

“Believing that the ends justified everything, the military and the state security forces blindly pursued the anticommunist struggle, without respect for any legal principles or the most elemental ethical and religious values, and in this way, completely lost any semblance of human morals,” said the commission chairman, Christian Tomuschat, a German jurist.

“Within the framework of the counterinsurgency operations carried out between 1981 and 1983, in certain regions of the country agents of the Guatemalan state committed acts of genocide against groups of the Mayan people,” Tomuschat said.

In 1999, the U.S. national press corps, which had obsessed for months over allegations regarding President Bill Clinton’s sex life, treated the Guatemalan disclosures, including the Reagan administration’s complicity in genocide, as a one-day story that got almost no attention on the 24-hour cable TV networks.

During a visit to Central America, on March 10, 1999, President Clinton apologized for the past U.S. support of right-wing regimes in Guatemala.

“For the United States, it is important that I state clearly that support for military forces and intelligence units which engaged in violence and widespread repression was wrong, and the United States must not repeat that mistake,” Clinton said.

Last week, the Obama administration issued a similar apology for the medical experiments in the 1940s, but there is no indication that either the U.S. government nor the American news media has learned any lasting lessons or will act any differently in the future.

If the United States were really sorry for all the harm it has inflicted on Guatemala — and other developing nations in Latin America and around the world — it might at least dial back next year’s celebrations of Ronald Reagan’s 100th birthday. But there is no sign even of that.

[Many of the declassified U.S. government documents regarding Guatemala are posted on the Internet by the National Security Archive.]

Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories in the 1980s for the Associated Press and Newsweek.

October 4, 2010 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Progressive Hypocrite, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Obama’s Hard Line Neo-Con Agenda

By Stephen Lendman | October 3, 2010

Straightaway, Obama’s promised “change” and “yes we can” became hard line foreign and domestic extremism, betraying his loyal constituency and any hope for kinder, gentler policies. His populist hypocrisy now exposed, voters are losing faith, but most remain mindless about the harm he commits daily, much of it touching them directly.

Several recent articles explain, accessed through the following links:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/10/failed-washington-sponsored-ecuadorean.html

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/10/new-internet-censorship-bill-introduced_02.html

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/one-of-historys-greatest-crimes_7099.html

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2010/09/americas-war-on-islam.html

Many others add exclamation points about a rogue administration rampaging at home and globally, most recently involved in a failed Ecuadorean coup, and for sending FBI goon squads against Chicago and Minneapolis anti-war/pro-Palestinian activists. No arrests were made, but their homes were ransacked, agents seizing computers, cell phones, books, photos, papers, correspondence, and other possessions. They were also ordered before grand juries from October 5 – 12, potentially facing serious criminal charges for providing material support to terrorism.

The Grand Jury System

The American Bar Association (ABA) explains that grand juries review evidence to determine “whether there is probable cause to return an indictment.” Critics, however, say they’re rubber stamps for aggressive prosecutors.

In the federal system, they have “extraordinary investigative powers,” developed since the 1950s. “This wide, sweeping, almost unrestricted power is the cause of much of the criticism,” because prosecutors exploit it advantageously, manipulating proceedings for the outcomes they want, leaving targets unfairly vulnerable to indictments. The Constitution’s Fifth Amendment “requires a grand jury indictment for federal criminal charges.”

Though nominally independent, they only hear cases prosecutors choose. They also select witnesses, grant discretionary immunity, and do nearly all the questioning. Grand jury members may ask their own [questions] after witness testimonies, but their job is to judge what prosecutors present, then decide if enough evidence warrants indictment.

Conducted in secret, no one may disclose what goes on unless ordered to do so judicially. Anyone may be subpoenaed, and must answer questions unless a specific privilege is claimed, such as lawyer/client or self-incrimination. In the federal system, lawyers can’t represent their clients while testifying.

In addition, double jeopardy doesn’t apply to grand juries, but without indictments, prosecutors need Criminal Division Attorney General permission to try again. Though seldom asked, in a climate of fear, targets remain vulnerable if prosecutors intend to get them, perhaps on new grounds.

The ABA asks, “What protection does a target have against witnesses lying to the grand jury (perhaps for leniency on existing or threatened charges), or against the use of unconstitutionally obtained evidence? None,” except to challenge the evidence at trial.

Especially post-9/11, prosecutors want grant jury indictments, manipulate proceedings to get them, leaving targets vulnerable on their own. At fault is the system. It’s rigged against them, so many are hung out to dry unfairly. That’s what Chicago and Minneapolis anti-war/pro-Palestinian supporters now face, a tough road ahead if Justice Department officials are determined to convict.

Police State Thuggery

Post-9/11, an earlier article explained the path America chose, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2007/12/police-state-america-look-back-and.html

Though well along earlier, the pace accelerated in the last decade. Obama has been as hard line as Bush, showing he’s no different from America’s worst ever leaders. He may, in fact, be the most dangerous, given the support he so far retains. None of it, of course, is deserved.

Bush made America a police state. Obama hardened it – among other ways through:

— greater intrusive surveillance;

— unjustifiable preventive detentions;

— targeting American citizens for assassination, solely by presidential edict;

— invoking the “state secrets” doctrine to block litigation against rendition, torture, and warrantless wiretapping;

— opposing Net Neutrality;

— threatening free expression and the right to dissent, including online;

— prosecuting whistleblowers as well as journalists and others who protect their anonymity or publish their revelations; and

— making anyone against US extremism vulnerable to lawless political persecutions, especially anti-war and Muslim American activists as well as lawyers who defend them too vigorously.

The USA Patriot Act eroded at least four Bill of Rights freedoms:

— due process under the Fifth and Fourteenth Amendments;

— First Amendment free expression; and

— Fourth Amendment right to be free from unreasonable searches, seizures, and as a consequence privacy.

Former Supreme Court Justice Louis Brandeis called it “the most comprehensive of rights, and the right most valued by a free people.” Patriot Act legislation and today’s sophisticated technology make unconstitutional intrusions easier than ever. Obama officials have taken full advantage, besides targeting other freedoms for destruction.

Chicago and Minneapolis State Terror

September 24 raids in both cities are the latest examples – police state terror against (supposedly) constitutionally protected speech, political activism, and right of free association. No matter, innocent people may be slapped with unsubstantiated charges, then criminally prosecuted for providing material support to terrorism.

According to an FBI spokesman, raids were aimed at people “providing, attempting and conspiring to provide material support” to terrorist organizations, meaning, among others, Colombia’s FARC-EP, Lebanon’s Hezbollah, and Palestine’s Hamas and the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine (PFLP) – no matter their legitimacy, and except for FARC, are part of their countries’ governments.

Opposition to War and Occupation (OWO) is a Twin Cities-based education and solidarity group against America’s imperial wars. On September 27, it issued the following statement:

OWO “wholeheartedly condemns the recent FBI house raids of social justice activists in Minneapolis and Chicago on Friday, September 24, 2010. These raids are part of the long history of coordinated government repression against those who fight against imperialism and exploitation and those working in solidarity with them.”

Victims guilty only of supporting right over wrong are “systematically harassed, targeted, and even murdered in an attempt to undermine struggles for justice.” As a result, front line activists must confront state terror “with steadfast resistance to war and occupation, and all forms of state violence,” abroad and at home.

The Committee to Stop FBI Repression named October 4 as a national call-in day to Obama and Attorney General Holder, demanding an end to state repression. The Committee also called for solidarity actions outside FBI and federal buildings throughout America on October 5, the first grand jury date.

Supreme Court Endorses State Terrorism

More than ever now, US policy aims to crush dissent, destroy political opposition, and subvert democratic freedoms. On June 21, 2010, the Supreme Court’s Holder v. Humanitarian Law Project ruling advanced that disquieting agenda. In a 6 – 3 decision, the Roberts court upheld the “material support” statute’s constitutionality (18 USC, 2339B), making it a crime to support any State Department-designated Foreign Terrorist Organization (FTO), no matter how unwarranted.

At the time, the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) argued that:

“the challenged provisions violate the First Amendment insofar as they criminalize the provision of forms of support such as the distribution of literature, engaging in political advocacy, participating in peace conferences, training in human rights advocacy, and donating cash and humanitarian assistance, even when such support is intended solely to promote the lawful and non-violent activities of a designated organization.”

Holder’s Justice Department disagreed, claiming the statute imposes guilt by association, harming innocent people for the illegal acts of groups they supported. Further, it doesn’t require showing intent to support terrorism or other illegal activity.

CCR countered saying, “the statute was unconstitutionally vague, and that the Secretary of State’s power to designate groups was too broad, giving the executive too much discretionary power to label groups ‘terrorist’ (with or without proof) and turn their supporters into outlaws.”

With High Court approval, Holder, like his predecessors under Bush, has run rough shot over constitutionally protected freedoms, making anyone for right over wrong vulnerable to criminal prosecution and imprisonment. It’s why now, more than ever, America is a police state, a disquieting judgment, putting even activist writers and media hosts at risk, as well as anyone against state extremism.

A Final Comment

After September 24, rallies and protests took place in dozens of US cities against the thuggish FBI raids. On September 27, hundreds mobilized outside its Chicago and Minneapolis offices. On September 28, the Chicago Sun Times headlined, “Protesters target FBI raids,” saying:

“Hundreds of protesters gathered outside FBI offices in Chicago and Minneapolis on Monday, bearing signs and shouting chants condemning recent searches of homes and offices of anti-war activists in both cities.”

The Minneapolis Star Tribune published a similar report, using an AP story, not its own, that quoted one of the targets, Minnesotan Mick Kelly, saying:

“We have provided no material support. I can’t stress that long enough or loud enough, and honestly I don’t believe that’s why we’re facing this scrutiny.”

It’s for the above-cited reasons – to crush opposition to state-sponsored roguishness abroad and at home, as well as discourage potential new resisters.

An earlier article quoted Merriam-Webster’s police state definition, saying it’s “characterized by repressive government control….(the) arbitrary exercise of power by police and especially secret police,” and in America, the FBI, CIA, and other oppressive agencies, targeting innocent people instead of protecting them.

Post-9/11 especially, George Bush took that route. In less than two years, Obama outdid him, adopting the worst of his policies, establishing more of his own, and accelerating America faster on the road to despotism. Chicago and Minneapolis raids signal worse to come unless mass outrage erupts to stops them. Otherwise, midnight or pre-dawn raids will be the norm on whatever grounds authorities charge against which there’s no defense, a possibility too nightmarish to allow.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com

October 3, 2010 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Full Spectrum Dominance, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | Leave a comment

Reaping terror’s reward: get in there first – that’s the secret

By Stuart Littlewood |  September 28, 2010

If it wasn’t for the “war on terror” America and Israel wouldn’t be enjoying such military fun and games and reaping such fat rewards. Whole new industries are flourishing thanks to the considerable effort they’ve devoted to sowing the seeds of terror.

The Institute of Terrorism Research and Response (ITRR), for example, is an American-Israeli corporation “created to help organizations succeed and prosper in a world threatened by terrorism”.

Its partners include The Israel Export and International Cooperation Institute – “your gateway to business in Israel”. Their global intelligence division even maintains a presence in London where, they claim, “our intelligence-gathering and analysis, research, training and consulting services reduce your vulnerability to global and regional forms of terrorist threats and mass-casualty events”. It’s just a coincidence, of course, that Britain’s most important security bodies – the Intelligence and Security Committee, the Foreign Affairs Committee and the Defence Committee – are all headed by senior Israel flag-wavers with access to highly classified material.

ITRR recently staged a Mass Casualty and Terrorism Workshop in Jerusalem attended by students from Philadelphia University. Topics included mass casualty management, security and counter-terrorism, forensic medicine as it relates to terrorism and visits to suicide bomber sites. “These site visits include actual video footage of the events… One student was amazed with the resiliency of the Israeli people and how quickly they are able to return a site ‘back to normal’.”

Just across the border in Gaza is the mother of all mass-casualty sites far more serious than anything Israel has had to cope with, although it caused it. A visit there would have opened students’ eyes to how the Palestinians are never given the chance to return to ‘normal’ after Israel’s endless terror onslaughts, robbed as they are of medical essentials and reconstruction materials.

I bet ITRR’s workshop didn’t cover that.

“First used by Zionists”

The other day I was sent a list of Zionist “firsts” pulled together in a handy aide-memoire. Let’s call them claims for the time being. I’ve seen evidence for some, but others are new to me. A friend who watches things closely says the listing has been posted in forums repeatedly, with requests for any corrections.

Let’s ask again. Can anyone refute these claims on delphiforums?

Here’s the roll-call on who introduced terrorism (along with biological, chemical and nuclear weapons) to the Middle East:

  • Bombs in cafés: first used by Zionists in Palestine on 17 March 1937 in Jaffa. (actually grenades).
  • Bombs on buses: first used by Zionists in Palestine on 20 August-26 September1937
  • Drive-by shootings with automatic weapons: IZL and LHI in 1937-38 and 1947-48 (Morris, Righteous Victims, p681.)
  • Bombs in market places: first used by Zionists on 6 July 1938 in Haifa. (delayed-action, electrically detonated)
  • Bombing of a passenger ship: first used by the Zionists in Haifa on 25 November 1940, killing over 200 of their own fellows.
  • Bombing of hotels: first used by Zionists on 22 July 1946 in Jerusalem (Menachem Begin went on to become prime minister of Israel).
  • Suitcase bombing: first used by Zionists on 1 October 1946 against British embassy in Rome.
  • Mining of ambulances: first used by Zionists on 31 October 1946 in Petah Tikvah
  • Car-bomb: first used by Zionists against the British near Jaffa on 5 December 1946.
  • Letter bombs: first used by Zionists in June 1947 against members of the British government, 20 of them.
  • Parcel bomb: first used by Zionists against the British in London on 3 September 1947.
  • Reprisal murder of hostages: first used by Zionists against the British in Netanya area on 29 July 1947.
  • Truck-bombs: first used by Zionists on January 1948 in the centre of Jaffa, killing 26.
  • Aircraft hijacking: world-first by Israeli jets December 1954 on a Syrian civilian airliner (random seizure of hostages to recover five spies) – 14 years before any Palestinian hijacking.

The only form of violent terrorism not introduced into Palestine by the Zionists was suicide bombing, a tactic used almost entirely by people fighting occupation of their “homeland” – think 1000s of Japanese in 1945, 100s of Tamils and 38 Lebanese in the 1980s – most of the latter being motivated by socialism/communism, not Islam – see http://amconmag.com/article/2005/jul/18/00017.

  • Biological warfare – pathogens used by Zionists in 1948, prior to the seizure of Acre, putting typhus into the water supply.
  • Chemical warfare – nerve gas very likely used by Zionists in February/March 2001 in at least eight attacks in Khan Younis and Gharbi refugee camps (Gaza) and the town of Al-Bireh (West Bank).
  • Nuclear threats – made by Zionists e.g. 2003: “We have the capability to take the world down with us. And I can assure you that that will happen, before Israel goes under.” – Remarks of Martin Van Creveld, a professor of military history at Israel’s Hebrew University, 1 February 2003.

And, if you think only Muslims need worry, then see http://www.masada2000.org/sharepain.html – “Israel has nuclear weapons and MUST use them and all those arming the Arabs must share the pain!”. Comes with cute music.

To these we could add “sofa slaughter” with armed drones. The Israelis use this armchair technique extensively in Gaza, unleashing death and destruction on civilians by remote control at no personal risk to themselves. There are interesting variations too. For example, during the 40-day siege of the Church of the Nativity in Bethlehem in 2002 the Israeli occupation force set up cranes on which were mounted robotic machine guns under video control. According to eye-witnesses, eight defenders, including the bell-ringer, were murdered, some by armchair button-pushers and some by regular snipers.

Right now we’re witnessing a cyber-terror attack against Iran with an ultra-sophisticated virus that disables thousands of industrial computers, including those controlling Iran’s nuclear programme. This is an extremely sinister development with frightening global implications. The presumption is that it’s Zionist inspired and implemented by Israeli stooges and sympathizers since no-one else hates and fears the Iranians this much, but the truth may never be known.

Banned horror weapons spread terror

There’s also the use, suspected or real, of prohibited weapons. In July 2006 doctors in Lebanon and Gaza were saying: “We never saw before wounds and corpses like those that arrive in the ward…” The majority of victims were women, children and elders caught in Israeli attacks in the street, in the market place and at home.

What they saw led doctors to believe that a new generation of weapons was being used. Common to all victims was the lack of visible wounds, but they had serious internal edema and hemorrhage with loss of blood from all orifices. All the bodies had a covering of dark powder, making them look black, but they were not burnt. Clothes and hair were not damaged or burnt.

Electron microscope scans showed the presence of phosphorous, iron and magnesium at below normally detectable levels. Elements that are used as additives to boost the blast of thermobaric (fuel-air energy) bombs and grenades were found on skin samples, but none of these could be seen by instruments normally used in hospitals and emergency wards.

Thermobaric weapons leave no fragments on or in the victims’ bodies, making it all the more difficult to provide proper care for the injured. “This fact already puts them outside established conventions of war, regardless of whether they are used against military or civilians,” say the doctors.

The effect of a thermobaric shell or grenade, according to the GlobalSecurity website, is devastating. “Those near the ignition point are obliterated. Those at the fringe are likely to suffer many internal, and thus invisible injuries, including burst eardrums and crushed inner ear organs, severe concussions, ruptured lungs and internal organs, and possibly blindness. The destruction, death and injury are caused by the blast wave.”

Another report, published by Defense Technology, says: “Each tissue type … is compressed, stretched, sheared or disintegrated by overload according to its material properties. Internal organs that contain air (sinuses, ears, lungs and intestines) are particularly vulnerable to blast.”

The United States uses 40mm thermobaric grenades developed for the war against “terror” in Afghanistan. These little beauties produce a thermobaric overpressure blast and “all enemy personnel within the effective radius will suffer lethal effects as opposed to the conventional fragmentation round.”

The grenades are fired from a specially developed weapon. “You can put six rounds on target in under three seconds,” one Marine Corps corporal said. “I thought this thing was sick.”

America is reported to have lost nuclear bombs, so it shouldn’t be too difficult for them to mislay shipments of thermobaric grenades, which in the wrong hands would wreak havoc in the metro or London’s Underground.

Hoist by their own petard

A perfectly good form of words is used to brand, outlaw and crush any organization, individual or country the US doesn’t like.

Under Executive Order 13224 (“Blocking Property and prohibiting Transactions with Persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support Terrorism”), Section 3, the term “terrorism” means an activity that:

(i) involves a violent act or an act dangerous to human life, property, or infrastructure; and (ii) appears to be intended
(a) to intimidate or coerce a civilian population;
(b) to influence the policy of a government by intimidation or coercion; or
(c) to affect the conduct of a government by mass destruction, assassination, kidnapping or hostage-taking.”

The order was signed 23 September 2001 by George W. Bush, the irony being that his definition of terrorism fits the United States and its bosom-buddy Israel like a glove.

Since then, of course, we’ve seen the Zionists commit the foulest act of state terrorism in recent times. During their Cast Lead onslaught they butchered at least 350 more children, and Gaza has been under daily attack ever since. So the “most moral army in the world” must have blown to bits, shredded, incinerated or smashed with snipers’ bullets at least 1,400 Palestinian youngsters in the last 10 years. The numbers left maimed or crippled don’t bear thinking about.

And let’s not forget the assassinations and extra-judicial executions. In the US there’s a presidential prohibition on assassination except in war situations, but if they can conjure up an intelligence “finding” that enables them to label the target a “terrorist”, and claim the murder was an act of self-defence in a war situation, they’re in the clear.

Assassination became official Israeli policy in 1999. Their preferred method is the air-strike, which is lazy and often messy, as demonstrated in 2002 when Israeli F-16 warplanes bombed the house of Sheikh Salah Shehadeh, the military commander of Hamas, in Gaza City killing not just him but at least 11 other Palestinians, including seven children, and wounding 120 others.

According to the Israeli human rights organisation B’Tselem, 408 Palestinians have been killed in the course of targeted assassinations since the second Intifada (uprising) began in 2000. This systematic extermination is regarded as legal and legitimate by Israel’s attorney-general.

In a sane world you’d expect the American and Israeli administrations to be hoist by their own petard, branded as “persons who commit, threaten to commit, or support terrorism”, and punished in the same way they seek to punish others.

Stuart Littlewood is author of the book Radio Free Palestine, which tells the plight of the Palestinians under occupation.

September 27, 2010 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

The Truth About Terrorism – James Corbett

Corbett Report

September 24, 2010 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video | Leave a comment

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