Obama praises the execution of Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour as an “important milestone” to peace, but his successor promises to become far more brutal.
“The terrorists are fighting freedom with all their cunning and cruelty
because freedom is their greatest fear – and they should be afraid,
because freedom is on the march.” – George W. Bush
Endless hopes were pinned on Barack Obama when he entered the Oval Office in 2009. Hardly anyone back then had seriously considered it possible that Obama would trump the belligerence even of George W. Bush, who was seemingly hated by the world over (and by whom the opening quotation was uttered) and would bomb nearly twice as many Muslim countries as his unspeakable predecessor.
Killing for Peace and Prosperity
On May 23, President Obama announced the killing of Taliban leader Akhtar Mansour through a drone strike in the Afghan-Pakistani border region. “Today marks an important milestone in our longstanding effort to bring peace and prosperity to Afghanistan,” Obama said bizarrely praising the extrajudicial execution of Mansour.
“This is a violation of Pakistan’s sovereignty,” Pakistan’s Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif said condemning Obama’s “important milestone” in the strongest terms. The attack took place on Pakistani soil, and Islamabad was neither involved in the planning nor informed about it in advance—which is why the U.S. drone attack, in fact, must be considered illegal.
In an Orwellian manner, Obama further mocked the Afghan people: “After so many years of conflict, today gives the people of Afghanistan and the region a chance at a different, better future.” As if out of the blue the Taliban would lay down their arms now.
Although Mansour’s execution was the first time in history that a head of the Taliban could be taken out, its positive impacts must be heavily contested. Even a U.S. official told Voice of America that “there will be little battlefield impact” as a result of Mansour’s death.
‘Fasten Your Seat Belts, We Will Take Our Revenge!’
Just two days after Obama’s “milestone” statement, the Taliban announced their new leader: the cleric Haibatullah Akhundzada, who belongs to the old guard with his two decades of service and represents the utmost extremist wing of the Taliban (although such a distinction may sound grotesque to Western ears).
While his murdered predecessor Mansour has been described as “reclusive,” “softly-spoken,” “smart and composed,” a “man of quiet words” and as a “strong proponent of peace talks,” the rather unknown Akhundzada is deemed “extremely hardline,” a former Taliban official reports—”even by their standards.”
Akhundzada is a disciple of the radically puristic Islamic school of Wahhabism, which the Royal House of Saud and the Islamic State also adhere to. “That is where the danger is,” the former Taliban official continues, “that he can take the movement closer to the ideology of Islamic State militant group.”
Akhundzada was Chief Justice of the Shariah Courts during the Taliban rule between 1995-2001, issuing countless fatāwā, he gave his blessings to almost as many atrocities. Likewise, he is deemed the secret mastermind of the blowing up of the 1,500 year-old Buddha statues by the Taliban in 2001, which were condemned as “idolatrous images.” Thus, Akhundzada is certainly an extreme radical who will most likely dwarf his predecessor in terms of brutality.
For a demonstration of power and Akhundzada’s own profiling, analysts expect a massive wave of violence in his initial period of leadership. Likewise, an anonymous Taliban source told Al-Jazeera that under the new leader the terrorist group has pledged to take bloody revenge for Mansour’s killing. The foreign forces and Afghan government “should now fasten their seat belts as the attacks will continue (and) we come out stronger than before.”
The appointment of their new boss, in fact, was accompanied by an attack in Kabul, for which the Taliban immediately claimed responsibility. A suicide bomber blew a bus with court employees to pieces and claimed the lives of ten people.
Without the senseless—and first and foremost illegal—drone murder of Mansour, a comparatively halfway-moderate and not an ultra-radical “Stone Age mullah” would still be at the head of the Taliban today, and 10 court employees and random civilians in Kabul would still be alive.
Given the outlined developments only of the three days following Mansour’s execution, Obama’s ramblings of an “important milestone” are nothing but pure mockery and a slap in the face to the Afghan population, which he had promised “a different, better future” only a few days earlier.
A Dead Leader at the Head
The original Taliban leader—and close ally of the recently killed Mansour—Mullah Mohammed Omar was on the U.S.’s Most Wanted list for 15 long years. In 2013, he finally died—whether he was killed by a U.S. drone strike or passed away due to tuberculosis has not yet been determined with certainty.
The remarkable trait with regard to Mullah Omar’s case, however, is that it took two full years before his death came to light. Not only were the U.S. intelligence community and the world public at large kept in the dark until 2015, with the exception of a handful of individual leaders, but not even any single fighter among the Taliban foot soldiers had any ideas about the death of their longtime chief.
Despite a dead leader at their head, the renowned Brookings Institution noted that “the 2015 fighting season between the Taliban and Afghan security forces is turning out to be the bloodiest on record since 2001.”
Apparently, the only real consequence of decades-long leader Mullah Omar’s death is that the U.S. government can strike off his name from its Most Wanted list and luckily save the US$10 million of bounty on Omar’s head.
If Mullah Omar—the legendary one-eyed founder of the Taliban, the ruler of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan and the “Commander of the Faithful“—can be dead for two whole years unnoticed by the international community and even by his fellow brethren, it is quite a strong clue for the second possible scenario that can occur when a terrorist leader is executed: it makes, quite simply, no practical odds whether a terrorist leader is dead or alive.
A Naïve Wishful Thinking
Something similar applies to the former public enemy No. 1. The supposed death of Osama bin Laden in 2011 (who was, by the way, never officially accused of the September 11 attacks by the U.S. government, due to the absence of evidence) is shrouded in countless myths.
Only a few hours after the assassination of bin Laden by Navy SEALs special forces in north Pakistani Abbottabad—which was no less shrouded in myths—in social sciences the debate on the question commenced regarding whether the death of the terrorist godfather bin Laden will have any appreciable impact on the al-Qaida network at all. Massive doubts about the U.S. government’s quasi-religious dogma of ‘leadership decapitation weakens the whole group’ dominated the debate from its outset.
Bin Laden’s death “won’t cause those who espouse extremism to suddenly change their minds,” even a high US Colonel concedes the strategical nonsense of this kind of operations on the day of the execution. “Those who were committed to violence yesterday remain committed to violence today,” Col. Maraia concludes.
The much hoped-for weakening of global terrorism by bin Laden’s death remained only little more than a naïve, wishful thinking. The subsequent massive strengthening of regional al-Qaida offshoots – Jabhat al-Nusrah in Syria, Al-Shabaab in Somalia and especially AQAP in Yemen – decentralized and decreased the power of Al-Qaida headquarters in the heartland of Afghanistan-Pakistan, however, this represented by no means an overall weakening of the network. It was rather a fatal terrorist export to the entire Middle East.
The Execution of Terrorist Leaders: ‘Highly Counterproductive’
The question remains whether the senselessness of executing terrorist leaders—as previously outlined with three cases—is merely an accumulation of individual examples, or whether they might yet follow a general pattern?
The endless list of executed leaders of Al-Qaida, Taliban & Co.—whose executions certainly every time were a “milestone”—however, casts doubt on whether the strategy of the U.S. government proved to be successful and if global terrorism declined as a consequence of “leadership decapitation”.
In addition to a variety of indicators—that all know only one direction—it is mainly the bare number of people killed by terrorism that mercilessly crushes this assumption: between 2002 and 2014, the annual number rose by an unspeakable 4500 percent. Thus, in the glorious years of the “War on Terror” a 45-fold increase of terror fatalities occurred, despite killing countless terrorist leaders one after another.
In a remarkable study of the University of Chicago from 2009, the PhD student Jenna Jordon explored the same issues. Jordan studied 298 cases since 1945, and examined the impact on the structure and the overall future of terrorist organizations after their leaders were executed.
Jordan’s research suggests that small and young terrorist groups, indeed, seem to be negatively affected by and are more likely to collapse after the liquidation of their leaders. But for decades-old groups counting thousands of members such as the Taliban the exact opposite case is true. Extrajudicial executions as the recent one of Mansour are “highly counterproductive,” Jordan concludes.
As an explanation the by now graduated scientist states that “going after the leader may strengthen a group’s resolve, result in retaliatory attacks, increase public sympathy for the organization, or produce more lethal attacks.” In other words: the execution of their leaders strengthens the terrorist group at all different levels.
Jordan closes in an unambiguously clear manner: “Overall, this study shows that we need to rethink current counterterrorism policies.”
In Foreign Policy, the renowned law professor Rosa Brooks addresses the question of why the U.S. government adheres so relentlessly to the policy of executing terrorist leaders that is so obviously doomed to failure. She’s seeking answers in the anthropological school of thought.
Since the dawn of human societies, their members performed certain rituals—so-called apotropaic magic—by which the gods should be appeased and misfortune averted: ritual offerings, the noise magic of New Year’s Eve, the use of holy water during baptism, exorcisms, rain dances, grotesque faces carved into pumpkins at Halloween.
Due to lack of rational explanations Brooks is now putting the U.S. policy of “terrorist leadership decapitation” in this very line of ritual pacification of the societal psyche:
“We modern Americans don’t believe in demons, rain dances, or the efficacy of sacrificing children or goats. We’ve developed our very own 21st-century magic rituals—and we call them ‘counterterrorism programs.’”
America’s Fatal Fallacy
When the head of Yemen’s al-Qaida offshoot al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, AQAP, was killed by a U.S. drone in summer 2015, Obama’s spokesman praised the murder with the words, Wuhayshi’s death “brings us closer to degrading and ultimately defeating these groups.”
The question arises whether the Obama administration actually believes this baloney when even a first-class hawk like Juan Zarate—top counterterrorism advisor to former President George W. Bush—concedes that the murder of AQAP chief Wuhayshi has “little relevance”, and on the contrary, would rather strengthen the terrorist groups in Yemen.
The “War on Terror” is an endless fatal fallacy, a logical circularity. It feeds on itself.
Due to its medial omnipresence, we probably might be no longer aware of the fact that the term “War on Terror” itself is an oxymoron: violence ludicrously should be erased by more violence.
The way is the goal, and the actual goal of defeating the terror, however, has become so abstract. It continues to play a fundamentally important role for the moral legitimacy of the whole adventure, but a practical relevance has long been gone.
The United States as the self-proclaimed terrorist hunter No. 1 went astray a long time ago, far away from any reason.
The question may appear extremely naïve, but: Why does the U.S. carry on and on, and kill one alleged terrorist leader after another, although this approach evidentially is either not effective at all, or has time and again extremely adverse, bloody effects?
Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Can we say that the United States is a sovereign State when we see the historical weight of the Zionist lobby on its policy decision?
Alison Weir: Adherents of political Zionism have influenced U.S. policies for decades and have often played a central role in elections. Despite this, Americans will be able to forge independent policies when enough people become aware of the facts and demand different policies.
You cite the staggering US aid to Israel, either $ 10 million per day or 7,000 times more per capita than other countries. What justifies such help to Israel from the United States?
I personally don’t feel it is rational or justified. It is the result of political lobbying by well-funded organizations and obfuscation by the American media. Most Americans have no idea that our government gives such an enormous amount of money to Israel. For this reason, our organization is placing billboards around the U.S. informing people of this fact.
You are threatened with death, you undergo pressures, because of your commitment to the Palestinian cause. Where are the Western values such as “democracy” and “freedom of speech” in all this?
Zionists have little attachment to principles such as democracy or freedom of speech. However, I believe that the majority of Americans believe in these and are disturbed when they are violated. Again, however, most are unaware of how deeply these principles are being damaged by Israel partisans.
As an intellectual committed to the Palestinian cause, how can you explain that when people like you are disparaged, defamed and threatened, some leaders of the Arab-Muslim world collaborate actively with Israel, including some Palestinians themselves? Is not the Palestinian cause the cause of all the humanity?
A group in Malaysia has a wonderful name: “the Movement for a Just World.” I feel that the Palestinian cause is part of that. All people should work for justice for all people, without exceptions.
You were supported in 2015 by 2000 activists and world-famous personalities, among them the Professor Richard Falk, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on the situation of human rights in the Palestinian territories occupied, Hedy Epstein, Ann Wright, Arun Gandhi, Ray McGovern, Cindy Sheehan, and James Abourezk former Senator and founder of the American-Arab Anti-Discrimination Committee. Can you tell us about this open letter they signed?
Some individuals who say they are “pro-Palestinian” seem to wish to control the discourse on this issue and keep aspects of it, such as the power of the Israel lobby, hidden. A group called “Jewish voice for peace” that was formed about the same time that I began “If Americans Knew” has always contained Zionists among its members and, while its stances have evolved as more people have become involved in the Palestine solidarity movement, it has a history of taking weak stands on some fundamental aspects of this issue and failing to support full justice for Palestinians; it refuses to consider Zionism racist. This group has become quite powerful and currently has a budget of over $2 million. While the organization has done much valuable work and worked to build relationships with many groups and individuals, it has also used its power to try to control the movement and marginalize committed activists who support full justice for Palestinians. When JVP’s actions against me became public, many people opposed them and called for such attacks to end. Some created an Open Letter supporting me and opposing the divisive attacks, and over 2,000 people signed it, including many members of JVP. It appears that the majority of activists support me and If Americans Knew. Some, however, taken in by JVP’s accusations, or who themselves wish to dominate the movement, support what JVP is doing.
Why do the Zionist lobbies persecute Mrs. Alison Weir? Are they afraid of a Righteous bringer of light?
I think that Zionists of all stripes fear exposure of the full facts on this issue. While open Zionists, soft Zionists (people who only oppose the Israeli occupation of Gaza and the West Bank but support Israel’s core, discriminatory identity), and many people who say they are no longer Zionists but who still seem to have an emotional attachment to Israel have long opposed If Americans Knew, my book seems to have particularly triggered escalated attacks on me. This book, which is thoroughly cited, exposes the fact that Zionists have worked to manipulate the U.S. since the late 1800s and contains facts that Israel partisans clearly wish to keep hidden. Fortunately, despite their attempts to bury the book and to prevent my speaking engagements, the book is enjoying considerable popularity and we have now sold over 25,000 copies. It is now listed on Amazon as a bestseller in several categories. I expect its success will lead to even more attacks on me of all sorts ; some of the most insidious, sadly, will quite likely continue to be from those who claim to be part of the Palestine solidarity movement.
How is it that we saw Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu’s visit to terrorist Al Nusra treated in Israeli field hospitals? Do Daesh and Al-Qaeda come from the same terrorist matrix as the State of Israel?
From its earliest beginnings, the Israeli strategy has been one of “divide and conquer.” Israeli leaders feel that any and all actions that cause strife within and among its neighbors benefits Israel, and Israel has often played a role in creating and/or nurturing such strife. This tactic has been discussed in a number of Israeli strategy papers.
You lived with Palestinians in the occupied territories, what is your testimony about their daily life under Israeli occupation?
In some areas they are shelled and invaded frequently, people killed and injured routinely. Even in the areas that are usually free of this outright violence, Palestinians are living in prisons in which Israel controls their lives and prevents their ability to protect their children – Israel decides where and whether they can travel and takes any action against Palestinians it wishes, strip searching women and children; abducting men, women, and children at will; imprisoning them without trial; perpetrating physical and psychological torture against them with impunity; preventing them from free contact with the rest of the world.
Does not Israel constitute a threat for peace in the world notably with its nuclear power?
Israel has long been a major threat to peace. It has caused numerous wars and encouraged still more. Its possession of nuclear weapons threatens the region and beyond and its actions could trigger a global conflagration.
More and more voices in the world are protesting against Israeli domination, as we saw it during the last open-air massacre in Gaza. How do you explain this change in favor of the Palestinian cause?
With the Internet, more and more people are learning the facts. People are increasingly seeing Israeli violence that used to be hidden from the world.
How do you explain that the Zionist state of Israel is called the Jewish state by referring to the Hebrew religion; and why are those who are against the Israeli criminal policy or the Zionist lobbies qualified anti-Semitic?
Israel does not define “Jewish” as a religious designation, it defines it as an ethnic identity. Israel claims that anyone who exposes or opposes its human rights violations is “anti-Semitic” as a tactic to prevent such opposition and to marginalize those whose facts they wish to hide. As a former Israeli Knesset member said a while ago, “It’s a trick; we always use it.”
Is not the Christian fundamentalism the real creator of the Zionist State of Israel, as it is found in some ancient texts either in Britain or the United States?
No, this isn’t what led to the creation of Israel. While there are some passages within Hebrew and Christian texts that some individuals have long interpreted as meaning that all Jews are meant to go to Israel (these interpretations are contested by most respected theologians, including fundamentalist theologians), such groups never brought this about. It was the political Zionist movement largely begun by Theodor Herzl in the late 1800s that Israel and others accurately consider the movement that founded Israel. This movement worked to propagandize every sector of the United States, including both Christians and Jews. There is quite a bit of information about this in my book. Today, while many Christian fundamentalists support Israel because of the manipulation that occurred and still occurs in the U.S., more and more of these individuals are changing their views when they learn the facts. There are now many Christian fundamentalists (and Jews) who are working fervently for justice for Palestinians.
You founded If America Knew and you are President of the Council for the National Interest, can you explain to us what is the role of these two organizations?
I founded If Americans Knew to give Americans the full facts on Palestine and on the role of the United States in this conflict. Most Americans have no idea that the U.S. government gives massive amounts of money to Israel and shields it from deserved international condemnation. Similarly, most Americans have no idea of the history of this issue, and of the ongoing oppression of Palestinians. Finally, most Americans have no idea of the size, history, and significance of the Zionist lobby in the U.S. and the degree to which it influences policies that are immoral, irrational, and that cause great harm to people throughout the world, including Americans.
The Council for the National Interest was founded in 1989 to counter the Israel lobby. Its goal was to work for policies that would be in the interests of all Americans, an extremely diverse population, rather than for one tiny interest group. Its two main founders, former Congressmen Paul Findley and Pete McCloskey were both pushed out of office by Israel partisans when these men began to advocate for justice for Palestinians. Both are deeply principled individuals who had also opposed the Vietnam War and racism.
What can a world scale activist as you are say to all resistants worldwide against Zionism and the fascist State of Israel?
I’m very surprised, but honored, to see you refer to me as a “world scale activist.” I’m just one of a multitude of people who are joining together to work for justice for Palestinians and to oppose violence, racism, and oppression. I have no doubt that we will eventually succeed. The main point is to continue our work, to refuse to be divided from one another, and not to give up. We are an extremely diverse movement and I believe that is part of our strength, along with the worthiness of our cause and the nobility and courage of those who came before us. We are of all different faiths and backgrounds, of all ages and races, and we won’t be stopped.
Who is Alison Weir?
Alison Weir is an American writer and an activist for the Palestinian cause. She is the founder and director of the non-profit organization If Americans Knew and president of the Council for the National Interest. In 2001, Alison Weir left her job as editor of a weekly newspaper and traveled alone to the Palestinian territories during the Second Intifada. She visited the West Bank and Gaza and witnessed the scenes of violence, seeing the truth of the conflict on the ground, and from where she wrote about her encounters with Palestinian suffering and with the “incredible arrogance, cruelty, selfishness” of Israelis. She was amazed by what she learned: That the truth of the conflict, on the ground, bore almost no resemblance to the stories told in US media. She returned to the US determined to change that. She began to speak and write on the topic and founded If Americans Knew, a nonprofit dedicated to accurately informing Americans. More recently, she also accepted a position as president of the Council for the National Interest.
Alison Weir was a civil rights activist and Peace Corps volunteer. Alison Weir has spoken all over the United States, including two briefings on Capitol Hill, presentations at the National Press Club in Washington DC (broadcast nationally on C-Span), Center for Policy Analysis on Palestine (one also broadcast on C-Span), at World Affairs Councils, and at numerous universities including Harvard Law School, Columbia, Stanford, Berkeley, Yale, Georgetown, the Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy, Vassar, the Naval Postgraduate Institute, Purdue, Northwestern, and the University of Virginia.She has given papers at various international conferences, lectured in Ramallah and at the University of Qatar, presented at the Asia Media Summits in Kuala Lumpur and Beijing, and given speaking tours in England, Wales, Iran and Qatar.
Alison Weir has also written widely on Israel-Palestine, the US connection, and media coverage. Her first book, Against Our Better Judgment: The Hidden History of How the U.S. Was Used to Create Israel, was published in February 2014 and has received high praise. Her essays and articles have appeared in a number of books and magazines, among them The New Intifada (Verso), Censored 2005 (Seven Stories Press), Encyclopedia of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict (Rienner), The Washington Report on Middle East Affairs, San Francisco Bay View newspaper, CounterPunch, and The Link.
Alison Weir has received various awards and in 2004 was inducted into honorary membership of Phi Alpha Literary Society, founded in 1845 at Illinois College. The award cited her as a “Courageous journalist-lecturer on behalf of human rights, the first woman to receive an honorary membership in Phi Alpha history.”
Ridd was punished by James Cook University for “not displaying responsibility in respecting the reputations of other colleagues.” The university even warned that if he does this again, he’ll be tried for serious misconduct.
The latest perversion in research ethics comes to us from James Cook University in Australia. The Australian has the scoop, but it is behind paywall. Michael Bastasch of the Daily Caller has an article on this University Censures Science Prof For Fact-Checking Global Warming Claim. Excerpts:
An Australian university recently censured marine scientist Paul Ridd for “failing to act in a collegial way and in the academic spirit of the institution,” because he questioned popular claims among environmentalists about coral reefs and global warming.
What was Ridd’s crime? He found out two of the world’s leading organizations studying coral reefs were using misleading photographs to make the case that global warming was causing a mass reef die-off. Ridd wasn’t rewarded for checking the facts and blowing the whistle on misleading science. Instead, James Cook University censured Ridd and threatened to fire him for questioning global warming orthodoxy.
Ridd’s not alone in criticizing some institutions and environmental groups for over-hyping the impacts global warming will have on coral reefs.
In fact, the Great Barrier Reef Marine Park Authority’s own chairman had to come out and dispel notions the reef was almost completely gone.
“We’ve seen headlines stating that 93 percent of the reef is practically dead,” Reichelt said. “We’ve also seen reports that 35 percent, or even 50 percent, of the entire reef is now gone.”
“However, based on our combined results so far, the overall mortality rate is 22 percent — and about 85 percent of that die-off has occurred in the far north between the tip of Cape York and just north of Lizard Island, 250 kilometers north of Cairns,” he said. “Seventy-five per cent of the reef will come out in a few months time as recovered.”
The group’s former chairman Ian McPhail even accused environmentalists of “exaggerating the impact of coral bleaching for political and financial gain.”
Despite the campaign to tamp down on reef alarmism, Ridd was punished by James Cook University for “not displaying responsibility in respecting the reputations of other colleagues.” The university even warned that if he does this again, he’ll be tried for serious misconduct.
JC reflections
I just love this statement: “not displaying responsibility in respecting the reputations of other colleagues.” Folks, we have a new definition of serious academic misconduct. Watch out, Michael Mann.
If this seems like a joke, it isn’t. I was ostracized from the ‘community’ for criticizing my colleagues overconfidence and failure to adequately account for uncertainty (see the infamous article Climate Heretic Judith Curry Turns on Her Colleagues). I thought that, in the midst of all the important issues at play in the climate debate, ‘turning on my colleagues’ was the least of them.
In my previous post Scientists and Motivated Reasoning, I identified a major ethical conflict for scientists between the microethics of your conscience in adhering to the norms of science, versus the macroethics of your perceived duty to the public, which may be colored by your politics and values.
Also included in the discussion of microethics versus macro ethics is responsibility to your colleagues. In my previous post, I wrote:
I am particularly concerned about microethical conflicts involving colleagues and scientific institutions that apparently justify self-serving irresponsible professional behavior, both by individuals and institutions. This seems much worse to me than politically motivated reasoning by members of the public. Personally, I have felt the need to break loose of the shackles of loyalty to colleagues and institutions if it comes at the expense of integrity in science and professional conduct.
Why even bother with loyalty/responsibility to colleagues – beyond giving them credit for their research? Do I really have any responsibility to any and all scientists just because they are members of the same professional society? I would say no, but upon further reflection I can see a tiny point here – it isn’t just a joke.
The importance of ‘collegiality’ among elite academic researchers seems to be perceived as more important than I have credited. In Michael Polanyi’s Republic of Science, the self-coordination of scientists is of paramount importance.
Going back to my previous discussion on microethics versus macroethics, I wrote:
As a researcher, what kinds of responsibilities do you have to
your conscience (micro)
your colleagues (micro)
institutions (micro/macro)
the public (macro)
the environment (macro)
My previous post illustrated numerous ethical conflicts that can arise for researchers. But when it comes to conflicts between your conscience and your colleagues, or the public and your colleagues, any perceived responsibility to your colleagues has to take a back seat.
But it seems that in academic science, responsibility to your colleagues and their opinions, their declarations of consensus, their reputations, is apparently regarded by many researchers as the paramount consideration, viz. the circling of the wagons that occurred in Climategate.
This concern about ‘responsibility’ to your colleagues seems only to extend to colleagues who happen to agree with you.
In Science on the Verge, and in postnormal science more generally, the importance of extended peer review is emphasized, which is very much needed to break down the clubby, exclusionary academic collegiality that is used as a club to marginalize dissenting voices.
The sickness of the clubby academic collegiality is absurdly highlighted by this latest episode from James Cook University.
The Isaias brothers are the among the most wanted criminals, convicted for the financial meltdown in Ecuador 16 years ago.
Ecuador is seeking the extradition of banking brothers Roberto and William Isaias from the United States on charges that they embezzled funds and are largely responsible for the country’s financial crisis in 1999—but the United States has spent the last 13 years ignoring the request.
The Isaias brothers have both been found guilty of fraud and the Ecuadorean government says they need to pay back millions of dollars they stole from the savings of average Ecuadorans. So why are they being protected?
History
Brothers Roberto and William Isaias were the owners of one of the biggest banks in Ecuador, Filanbanco, that was part of the economic meltdown that lasted from 1999 until 2001.
This crisis led to the end of the Ecuadorean currency, the Sucre, and its replacement by the U.S. dollar, which eliminated currency autonomy in the Andean country.
The Isaias brothers were charged with embezzlement but fled the country before their trial with over US$100 million in government bailout funds that were given to Filanbanco during the country’s banking crisis.
The brothers were found guilty in absentia for a fraud worth US$600 million, and sentenced to eight years in prison in 2012 by the Ecuadorean National Court, which determined that the brothers had falsified Filanbanco’s financial statements.
Appeals
William and Roberto Isaias have lost two appeals against Ecuador.
In 2014, a U.S. court ruled against the fugitives, and allowed Ecuadorean authorities to seize properties belonging to the brothers in Florida to recover a portion of the US$200 million the government of Ecuador says they owe.
For the seizure of their assets, the brothers sought to sue Ecuador for US$1 billion claiming it was illegitimate and a political prosecution, but a New York court ruled they did not have enough evidence to substantiate their claims.
The U.N. Human Rights Committee also rejected the allegations of the Isaias brothers that their conviction in Ecuador for the crime of bank embezzlement amounted to political persecution.
Ecuador’s Foreign Ministry says it is currently working with the U.S. to reach an agreement that would have a number of fugitives, including the bankers, return to face justice.
Connections
A 2005 leaked diplomatic cable from the U.S. Ambassador to Ecuador, made public by Wikileaks, said the brothers “used their ill-gotten wealth to buy safe passage from Ecuador and later pressured prosecutors to reduce criminal charges against them.”
According to The New York Times, the Isaias brothers donated US$90,000 for the re-election campaign of current U.S. President Barack Obama, and have invested at least US$320,000 in other politicians.
The Times explained that the brothers appeared to receive preferential treatment due to their connections to Democratic U.S. Senator Robert Menendez. The senator from New Jersey attempted to influence immigration officials in exchange for donations from the fugitive brothers to prevent their deportation, according to the Times. Menendez has himself been under investigation for corruption.
In a related case, Menendez lobbied to lift a ban against Estefania Isaias, daughter of Roberto Isaias, from entering the U.S. She was charged with fraudulent actions to obtain visas for her domestic employees, but after Menendez’s help high-ranking officials in the U.S. State Department lifted the ban.
Linda Jewell, former U.S. ambassador to Ecuador, said that “such close and detailed involvement by a congressional office in an individual visa case would be quite unusual, especially for an applicant who is not a constituent of the member of Congress.”
Menendez, who was chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, stepped down from his post after being the subject of a corruption investigation. He faces 14 charges ranging from fraud to bribery for having allegedly offered political favors in exchange for expensive gifts and donations to his political campaigns.
Media Control
The convicted Isaias brothers also used their money and political influence in international media against a leading supporter of their extradition: current leftist President Rafael Correa.
Alberto Padilla, CNN’s former news host, said the bankers have been financing an active opposition campaign against the Correa government since they arrived in the U.S.
The brothers have set up interviews with Ecuadorean opposition lawmakers and journalists, financing their trips to the U.S. to visit with several leading news outlets, such as the Miami Herald and CNN, according to El Ciudadano,
The Isaias Group is also one of the investors in CNN Latino and have funded books, magazines, articles and even other media outlets to criticize Correa’s administration.
The Ukrainian intelligence service that has been guiding the investigation of the Malaysia Airlines Flight 17 shoot-down of July 2014 recently blocked a United Nations inquiry into alleged torture sites under Ukrainian government control.
The U.N. inspectors called off their torture investigation late last month because Ukraine’s domestic intelligence service, the SBU, denied the team access to detention facilities where human rights groups have found evidence of torture.
“The United Nations Subcommittee on Prevention of Torture (SPT) has suspended its visit to Ukraine after being denied access to places in several parts of the country where it suspects people are being deprived of their liberty by the Security Service of Ukraine, the SBU,” a U.N. statement said, with Sir Malcolm Evans, head of the four-member delegation, adding:
“This denial of access is in breach of Ukraine’s obligations as a State party to the Optional Protocol to the Convention against Torture. It has meant that we have not been able to visit some places where we have heard numerous and serious allegations that people have been detained and where torture or ill-treatment may have occurred.”
Ukraine’s deputy justice minister Natalya Sevostyanova said the U.N. team was denied access to SBU centers in Mariupol and Kramatorsk, frontline towns in the simmering civil war between the U.S.-backed Ukrainian government and Russian-supported eastern Ukrainian rebels.
SBU director Vasyl Hrytsak said the reason for barring the U.N. team was to protect Ukrainian government secrets, adding: “If you arrive, for example, in the United States and ask to come to the C.I.A. or the F.B.I., to visit a basement or an office, do you think they will ever let you do it?”
But the relevance of this SBU secrecy to the MH-17 case, in which the airliner carrying 298 people was shot down over eastern Ukraine on July 17, 2014, is that the SBU is an integral part of the Dutch-led multinational Joint Investigation Team that is trying to determine who was responsible for the attack.
The obstruction of the torture inquiry suggests that the SBU also would steer the JIT away from any evidence that might implicate a unit of the Ukrainian military in the shoot-down, a situation that would be regarded as a state secret which could severely undermine international support for the U.S.-backed regime in Kiev. Among the SBU’s official duties is the protection of Ukrainian government secrets.
A Breezy Report
Earlier this month, the JIT investigators published a breezy, notebook-style report on their progress, revealing how dependent they have become on information provided by the SBU and how they have grown to trust the Ukrainian intelligence service.
According to the report, the SBU helped shape the MH-17 investigation by supplying a selection of phone intercepts and other material. But the JIT seemed oblivious to the potentially grave conflict of interest, saying:
“Since the first week of September 2014, investigating officers from The Netherlands and Australia have worked here [in Kiev]. They work in close cooperation here with the Security and Investigation Service of the Ukraine (SBU). Immediately after the crash, the SBU provided access to large numbers of tapped telephone conversations and other data. …
“At first rather formal, cooperation with the SBU became more and more flexible. ‘In particular because of the data analysis, we were able to prove our added value’, says [Dutch police official Gert] Van Doorn. ‘Since then, we notice in all kinds of ways that they deal with us in an open way. They share their questions with us and think along as much as they can.’”
The JIT report continued: “With the tapped telephone conversations from SBU, there are millions of printed lines with metadata, for example, about the cell tower used, the duration of the call and the corresponding telephone numbers. The investigating officers sort out this data and connect it to validate the reliability of the material.
“When, for example, person A calls person B, it must be possible to also find this conversation on the line from person B to person A. When somebody mentions a location, that should also correlate with the cell tower location that picked up the signal. If these cross-checks do not tally, then further research is necessary.
“By now, the investigators are certain about the reliability of the material. ‘After intensive investigation, the material seems to be very sound’, says Van Doorn, ‘that also contributed to the mutual trust.’”
But would SBU turn over data that might reveal the role of a Ukrainian military unit in the shoot-down? Under the security agency’s secrecy mandate, could it even do so?
Further, the collegial dependence on the SBU has not led to a quick resolution of the MH-17 mystery, with the JIT’s investigative report now not expected until after the summer, i.e., more than two years after the shoot-down, and even then the report is to be kept secret.
In this month’s update, the JIT would not even endorse last fall’s finding by the Dutch Safety Board that MH-17 was likely brought down by a Buk anti-aircraft missile system fired somewhere in a 320-square-kilometer area in eastern Ukraine, territory that was then partly controlled by the rebels and partly by the government.
Nor does the JIT update address last October’s findings of Dutch (i.e., NATO) intelligence that the only operational anti-aircraft missile batteries capable of bringing down a plane at 33,000 feet on July 17, 2014, were in the possession of the Ukrainian military.
“For the investigation into the weapon system that was used, the well known seven questions need to be answered are: who, what, where, when, which, how and why,” the update said. “In this investigation only the question of ‘when’ has been established irrefutably: flight MH17 crashed on 17 July 2014. The remaining questions require intensive investigation, according to Gerrit Thiry (team leader) and Susanne Huiberts (operational specialist) of the National Criminal Investigation Service.”
Punishing Russia
The MH-17 case also has relevance to the decision later this month by the European Union on whether to extend sanctions against Russia for another six months as the U.S. government wants. The E.U. imposed the sanctions amid a frenzied rush-to-judgment in late July 2014 blaming the Russians and the rebels for the deaths of the 298 people on MH-17 flying from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur.
Immediately after the shoot-down, the U.S. government sought to pin the blame on ethnic Russian rebels in eastern Ukraine and their Russian government backers. However, after CIA analysts had time to evaluate U.S. satellite, electronic and other intelligence data, the U.S. government went curiously silent about what it had discovered, including the possible identity of the people who were responsible. The U.S. reticence, after the initial haste to blame Russia, suggested that the more detailed findings undercut the original claims.
A source who was briefed by U.S. intelligence analysts told me that the CIA’s conclusion pointed toward a rogue Ukrainian operation involving a hard-line oligarch with the possible motive of shooting down Russian President Vladimir Putin’s official plane returning from South America that day, with similar markings as MH-17. The source said a Ukrainian warplane ascertained that the plane was not Putin’s but the attack went ahead anyway, with the assumption that the tragedy would be blamed on the pro-Russian rebels or on Russia directly.
Officially, however, the U.S. government has not revised its initial claims that were made within five days of the shoot-down, fingering the rebels and the Russians. I have been unable to determine if the assessment of Ukrainian responsibility represented a dissident or consensus view inside the U.S. intelligence community.
Although Ukraine would have been an obvious suspect in the attack, the Ukrainian SBU was invited to play a key role in the investigation along with investigators from Australia and the Netherlands. Under the JIT agreement, participating governments, which also include Belgium and Malaysia, have the right to block the release of information to the public.
The recent JIT report hails the comradeship between the Australian and Dutch investigators and their Ukrainian hosts, despite some early difficulties.
“An incredible amount of research material; differing legal systems and initial unfamiliarity with each other. Despite this, both Australian and Dutch members working in the Field Office in Kiev have managed to build good relations with each other and with the Ukraine to effectively conduct the investigation into the MH17 crash,” the report said.
“They are professionals who recognize each other’s love for the police work. They understand each other’s circumstances. And they are, regardless of their country of origin, motivated to do their utmost to uncover the truth. …
“‘The thing is to see how you can keep it workable”, says Van Doorn, ‘we like practical solutions. That means ‘poldering’ [the Dutch practice of policy-making by consensus].’”
Yet, the idea of “poldering” – or reaching consensus – with Ukraine’s SBU, an agency that has just thwarted a United Nations investigation into allegations that the SBU engages in the torture of ethnic Russian rebels, raises further questions about the objectivity and reliability of the MH-17 probe.
Investigative reporter Robert Parry broke many of the Iran-Contra stories for The Associated Press and Newsweek in the 1980s. You can buy his latest book, America’s Stolen Narrative, either in print here or as an e-book (from Amazon and barnesandnoble.com).
The subtitle of this post might be the same as the subtitle of the film, Dr. Strangelove: “How I learned to stop worrying and love the bomb.” Dimona’s bombs, that is.
In the past year, the Israeli Atomic Energy Agency launched a website dedicated to extolling the virtues of its Dimona. Not the place itself, which is a bit of a backwater company town devoted to the community’s main (perhaps only) industry. But to Israel’s plutonium reactor around which the town coalesced. That’s the reactor that churned out its first nuclear weapon around 1970 just in time for Moshe Dayan to suggest it should be used as a warning shot during the 1973 War when the fighting was going badly for Israel in the initial stages. It’s the same reactor which churned out another 200 or so nuclear weapons since then, making Israel the most dangerous–and so far, the only–nuclear power in the region.
This report on the world nuclear arsenal indicates Israel has only 80 nuclear weapons. But it adds that Israel is testing a new generation of ballistic missile, which is a substantial escalation of the regional nuclear arms race.
Dimona is also the same reactor which has poisoned hundreds or even thousands of workers who’ve died of various cancers. The same one which has poisoned the water in the plant’s vicinity. None of which may be reported openly by the Israeli press.
But if you examine the website you wouldn’t know any of this. From the “History” page, you wouldn’t know Dimona produced nuclear weapons at all; which is the main, indeed only reason it exists. You’d see bright shiny faces; the pretty blond locks of a female white-coated scientist presumably seeking a cure for cancer. Or the delicate toes of a baby held in the firm, supporting hands of an adult under the caption: “a secure, responsible place of work.” You’d see flowers. You’d see copy that reads like a Hallmark greeting card. Copy which extols Dimona’s mission as a “matter of national social responsibility.” That is, the authors of this tripe would have you believe that the production of nuclear weapons in Dimona is done in a manner that is environmentally responsible. This is real Alice in Wonderland stuff. Where words mean what the liar speaking them wants them to mean, “nothing more, nothing less.” It’s something like extolling Alamagordo or Auschwitz as environmental sanctuaries.
The website’s About page is titled: “Vision and Values, a Social Responsibility.” It continues: “In recent years the values of the Negev Center for Nuclear Have Been Articulated Anew.” Those values include the reactor staff volunteering in various projects to make their communities better places. Not a single word about the mass destruction Dimona’s products are capable or raining down on the world.
The launch of the website is in itself interesting. It indicates that some bureaucrats running the nuclear program felt it was important to join the modern age and feature a website to promote Dimona. That’s a break from six decades of total opacity regarding the nuclear program. Six decades of lies and denial regarding the purpose of the reactor. Avner Cohen notes in his recent Haaretz op-ed that Israel’s nuclear program isn’t even ratified under law. Rather, it exists in a netherworld called “residual powers.” This means the government may engage in any activity which the law doesn’t preclude it from doing.
Though on the surface, the new website does mark a break from the past, in reality the change is little more than cosmetic. Little has changed. Israel and the website still live in a state of denial. Israel can’t even admit in its website what the real purpose of this place is. … Full article
Last Wednesday at noon at Arlington National Cemetery I attended the annual commemorative gathering of the survivors and friends of the U.S.S. Liberty. The moving service included the ringing of a ship’s bell for each one of the thirty-four American sailors, Marines and civilians that were killed in the deliberate Israeli attack that sought to sink the intelligence gathering ship and kill all its crew. Present were a number of surviving crewmembers as well as veterans like myself and other Americans who are committed to ensuring that the story of the Liberty will not die in hopes that someday the United States government will have the courage to acknowledge what actually happened on that fateful day.
It was the forty-ninth anniversary of the attack. In truth the attack on the U.S.S. Liberty by Israeli warplanes and torpedo boats on June 8, 1967, has almost faded from memory, with a younger generation completely unaware that a United States naval vessel was once deliberately attacked and nearly sunk by America’s “greatest friend and ally” Israel. The attack was followed by a cover-up that demonstrated clearly that at least one president of the United States even back nearly fifty years ago valued his relationship with the state of Israel above his loyalty to his own country.
It was in truth the worst attack ever carried out on a U.S. Naval vessel in peace time. In addition to the death toll, 171 more of the crew were wounded in the two-hour assault, which was clearly intended to destroy the intelligence gathering vessel operating in international waters collecting information on the ongoing Six Day War between Israel and its Arab neighbors. The Israelis, whose planes had their Star of David markings covered up so Egypt could be blamed, attacked the ship repeatedly from the air and with gunboats from the sea.
The incredible courage and determination of the surviving crew was the only thing that kept the Liberty from sinking. The ship’s commanding officer Captain William McGonagle was awarded a Congressional Medal of Honor for his heroic role in keeping the ship afloat, though President Lyndon Baines Johnson broke with tradition and refused to hold the medal ceremony in the White House, also declining to award it personally, delegating that task to the Secretary of the Navy in a closed to the public presentation made at the Washington Navy Yard. The additional medals given to other crew members in the aftermath of the attack made the U.S.S. Liberty the most decorated ship based on a single engagement with hostile forces in the history of the United States Navy.
The cover-up of the attack began immediately. The Liberty crew was sworn to secrecy over the incident, as were the Naval dockyard workers in Malta and even the men of the U.S.S. Davis, which had assisted the badly damaged Liberty to port. A hastily convened and conducted court of inquiry headed by Admiral John McCain acted under orders from Washington to declare the attack a case of mistaken identity. The inquiry’s senior legal counsel Captain Ward Boston, who subsequently declared the attack to be a “deliberate effort to sink an American ship and murder its entire crew,” also described how “President Lyndon Johnson and Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara ordered him to conclude that the attack was a case of ‘mistaken identity’ despite overwhelming evidence to the contrary.” The court’s findings were rewritten and sections relating to Israeli war crimes, to include the machine gunning of life rafts, were excised. Following in his father’s footsteps, Senator John McCain of Arizona has used his position on the Senate Armed Services Committee to effectively block any reconvening of a board of inquiry to reexamine the evidence. Most of the documents relating to the Liberty incident have never been released to the public in spite of the 49 years that have passed since the attack took place.
The faux court of inquiry and the medals awarded in secret were only the first steps in the cover-up, which has persisted to this day, orchestrated by politicians and a media that seem to place Israel’s interests ahead of those of the United States. Liberty survivors have been finding it difficult even to make their case in public. In early April a billboard that read “Help the USS Liberty Survivors – Attacked by Israel” was taken down in New Bedford Massachusetts. The billboard had been placed by the Honor Liberty Vets Organization and, as is normal practice, was paid for through a contractual arrangement that would require the billboard company to post the image for a fixed length of time. It was one of a number of billboards placed in different states. Inevitably, Israel’s well connected friends began to complain. One Jewish businessman threatened to take his business elsewhere, so the advertising company obligingly removed the billboard two weeks early.
After forty-nine years, the dwindling number of survivors of the Liberty are not looking for punishment or revenge. When asked, they will tell you that they only ask for accountability, that an impartial inquiry into the attack be convened and that the true story of what took place finally be revealed to the public.
That Congress is deaf to the pleas of the Liberty crew should surprise no one as the nation’s legislative body has been for years, as Pat Buchanan once put it, “Israeli occupied territory.” The Lobby’s ability to force Congress and even the presidency to submit to its will has been spelled out in some detail by critics, first by Paul Findley in They Dare to Speak Out, later by John Mearsheimer and Stephen Walt in The Israel Lobby, in Alison Weir’s Against Our Better Judgment, and most recently in Kirk Beattie’s excellent Congress and the Shaping of the Middle East.
Congressional willingness to protect Israel even when it is killing Americans is remarkable, but it is symptom of the legislative body’s willingness to go to bat for Israel reflexively, even when it is damaging to U.S. interests and to the rights that American citizens are supposed to enjoy. I note particularly legislation currently working its way through Congress that will make it illegal for any federal funding to go to any entity that supports the Boycott, Divest and Sanction movement, better known as BDS. BDS is a way to put pressure on the Israeli government over its human rights abuses that is both non-violent and potentially effective. As the federal government has its hooks all over the economy and at various levels in education as well as state and local government its threat to force the delegitimization of BDS is far from an empty one.
Existing laws in more than twenty states with more on the way, including most recently New York, punishing entities that support the peaceful BDS movement by labeling BDS as anti-Semitic and making it illegal or sanctionable to support it are direct attacks on free speech. New York Governor Andrew Cuomo stated “We want Israel to know we are on its side.” And it doesn’t stop with BDS. Recently signed trade agreements with Europe were drafted to be conditional on European acceptance of Israel’s occupation of the Palestinian West Bank while Israel is also pushing to censor the internet to make material that constitutes “incitement” banned. Incitement would, of course, include anything critical of Israel or its government on the grounds that it is anti-Semitic.
Democratic candidate presumptive Hillary Clinton has explicitly promised to do all in her power to oppose BDS, telling an adoring American Israel Public Affairs Committee audience in March that “Many of the young people here today are on the front lines of the battle to oppose the alarming boycott, divestment and sanctions movement known as BDS. Particularly at a time when anti-Semitism is on the rise across the world, especially in Europe, we must repudiate all efforts to malign, isolate and undermine Israel and the Jewish people. I’ve been sounding the alarm for a while now. As I wrote last year in a letter to the heads of major American Jewish organizations, we have to be united in fighting back against BDS.”
So the treatment of the U.S.S. Liberty should surprise no one in a country whose governing class has been for decades doing the bidding of the powerful lobby of a tiny client state that has been nothing but trouble and expense for the United States of America. Will it ever end? As the Israel Lobby currently controls the relevant parts of the federal government and much of the media change is not likely to happen overnight, but there are some positive signs. If the Democratic Party platform committee under the influence of Bernie Sanders is successful in toning down the usual extravagant praise of Israel – against the wishes of Hillary, one might add – that would be a sign that change is difficult but not necessarily impossible. If Donald Trump wins and holds to his promise to be neutral between Israel and Palestine in negotiations that too would be a marked shift in perception of the conflict. And if the American people finally wake up and realize that they are tired of the entire farce and decide to wash their hands of the Middle East that would change everything. Just imagine picking up the morning newspaper and not reading a front page story about the warnings and threats coming from that great world leader Benjamin Netanyahu. That would be quite remarkable.
Investigative journalist William Boardman’s findings on US vaporization of Marshall Islands and human experimentation on Marshall Islands native “savages”, as they were classed by US media:
“Nuclear Savage” is a recent documentary film that explores American nuclear weapons testing in the Marshall Islands, 1946-1958, and particularly the secret Project 4.1: an American experiment in exposing Pacific Islanders to overdoses of radiation – deliberate human radiation poisoning – just to get better data on this method of maiming and killing people. The public broadcasting establishment has spent more than two years keeping this story off the air.
The preview reel of “Nuclear Savage” includes a clip with a stentorian newsreel announcer reporting on the American treatment of Marshall Islanders in April 1957, and explaining to his predominantly American audience:
“The Marshallese caught by fallout got 175 roentgens of radiation. These are fishing people, savages by our standards, so a cross-section was brought to Chicago for testing. The first was John, the mayor of Rongelap Atoll…. John, as we said, is a savage, but a happy, amenable savage.”
…
“Some use the term ‘savage’ to refer to people from primitive cultures, but nuclear experimentation pushed savagery to new levels. In the 1950s, the U.S. conducted 67 atomic and hydrogen bomb tests in the Marshall Islands, vaporizing islands and exposing entire populations to fallout. The islanders on Rongelap received near fatal doses of radiation from one test, and were then moved onto a highly contaminated island to serve as human guinea pigs for 30 years.”
Horowitz, the director of Nuclear Savage, notes that the US “bl[e]w up all these islands … purposely contaminated all these people as human experiments.”
Boardman continues:
In 1998, staff from the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) made a comparison study to compare the amount of radioactive Iodine-131 at four different radiation-polluted sites, measured in curies (1,000 curies of Cesium-137, as found in a radiation therapy machine, could produce serious health effects in a direct exposure of just a few minutes). The CDC team reported its finding that the atmospheric release of curies of Iodine-137 at the Hanford nuclear processing plant was 739,000 curies; at Chernobyl the release was 40 million curies; at the Nevada bomb test site, 150 million curies; and in the Marshall Islands, 6.3 billion curies (more that 30 times as much radiation as the other three sites combined).
Even recently, the US has tried “to re-re-settle some populations back to their home islands that were still dangerously radioactive.” However, the film helped rally the islanders and reduced the US re-re-settlement effort to nothing more than “a bunch of empty houses.”
One year ago, nearly to the day, the Marshall Islands bravely brought a lawsuit to the International Court of Justice and U.S. Federal District Court “against the U.S. and the eight other Nuclear Weapons States (NWS)”, which are refusing “to meet their treaty obligations to disarm.”
Obama, in direct contravention of US word and legal requirement, is devoting 1 to 1.5 trillion dollars to US nuclear weapons development, even as the US, also illegally, cuts off water to some of its own, poor residents.
From 1946-1958, the US conducted 67 nuclear weapons experiments on the Marshall Islands, the equivalent of “one-and-a-half Hiroshima bombs” every day.
On a related note, Obama continues to refuse to give the country of Diego Garcia back to its indigenous inhabitants. The pristine island nation was seized and cleansed of its nationals by the US and Britain, then turned into a US toxic waste dump-site and base for Washington’s global execution and torture racket.
Seven minute trailer for Nuclear Savage:
Reporter focuses on global force dynamics and writes professionally for the film industry. On twitter @_DirtyTruths with UK-based colleague, Dean Robinson.
Mohamedou Ould Slahi has been locked up in Gitmo without charge for 14 years, but the US government “has no evidence” against him, his attorney told RT. Tortured and beaten, both ordeals exposed in his memoir from behind bars, Slahi is now hoping for release.
On June 2, Slahi appeared in a 17-minute hearing before the prison’s Periodic Review Board (PRB) that essentially holds his fate in its hands. It is the PRB that examines the risk of releasing a detainee and is set to decide whether to clear Slahi. He is the 22nd detainee to go before the board this year.
“There is no reason for him not to be cleared. He has never committed any hostile act to the United States. There is no evidence against him,” Slahi’s attorney, Nancy Hollander, told RT in its GTMO 2016 special report.
Together they have been fighting for Slahi’s freedom since 2005, when Hollander first met him in Guantanamo. She says she spends “probably third of a year” in Guantanamo to be with her client.
A native Mauritanian, Slahi’s story is an unusual one. He did not arrive at Guantanamo the way the majority of detainees did.
The primary reason for his illegal detention is not related to 9/11, but has its roots in the 1990s, when Slahi pledged allegiance to the group that would eventually become known as Al-Qaeda. He stopped his engineering studies in Germany to go fight along with the mujahideen against the communist government in Afghanistan.
At the time, the Islamist group and its leader Osama bin Laden enjoyed the support of the US in its fight against the Soviets.
Slahi claims he had “broken ties” with Al-Qaeda in 1992 to return to his studies in Germany. Nearly ten years after, when Al-Qaeda became Washington’s top enemy, Slahi turned himself in for questioning to Mauritanian authorities.
On November 1, 2001, he was interrogated in relation to the so-called 2000 millennium attack plots, a series of foiled attacks, including the one at a Los Angeles airport planned for late December 1999.
It appeared that when Slahi lived in Canada in 1999, he crossed paths with Ahmed Ressam, a convicted perpetrator of the thwarted attacks. The two prayed in the same mosque in Montreal.
After Ressam’s arrest, Slahi was questioned several times, including by the FBI and each time cleared for release.
That was not the case at his last meeting with Mauritanian authorities. Slahi was detained and then handed over to Jordan, where he spent eight months. After subsequent chain of custody transfers, he was put in Guantanamo.
Now, 14 years later, Slahi is one of the most prominent prisoners among 80 remaining Guantanamo detainees.
“He is a very funny person, a very empathic, very curious and of course as everyone has seen now a very gifted writer,” Nancy Hollander said of Slahi, describing their work together as “a very warm relationship.”
Shali has gone through torture, beatings, death threats and sexual humiliation, all of which he exposed in details in his bestselling book, ‘Guantanamo Diary,’ written in his single cell.
“There is no doubt that he was tortured during early years, 2003-2004,” Hollander told RT. “Finally, they realized that they were not going to learn anything from him they did not already know because he had nothing else to tell him. They began then to rehabilitate him.”
At one point, his captors tried to trick him by showing him a forged letter from his mother, but the ploy failed for two reasons. One is that the forgery misspelled Slahi’s name and, second, because unbeknownst to his jailers, his mother was illiterate.
He eventually became friends with his guards. In April 2016, one of the guards submitted a letter to the PRB, speaking of his very pleasant impression of Slahi.
“Based on my interactions with Mr. Slahi while in Guantanamo, I would be pleased to welcome him into my home,” the guard wrote.
In 2010, federal judge James Robertson reviewed Slahi’s profile, the same one the government submitted to the PRB, and granted him his habeas corpus petition, ordering him released.
However, the decision was appealed to the US Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia Circuit. Now, Slahi has his hopes high for the PRB to rule on his release.
“I believe, I hope that Mohamedou will be cleared, there is no reason for him not to be and then for the State Department to start working with Mauritania. The country of Mauritania has said they would welcome him home. That’s where his family is,” Hollander told RT.
On Tuesday [June 7, 2016], the US Senate Committee on Foreign Relations scheduled a two-hour anti-Russian hate-fest. Lies, misinformation and jaw-dropping stupidity were on full display. The star witness of course, was Tricky Vicky Nuland.
These congressional committee meetings crack me up. In theory, they’re supposed to be interviewing witnesses to collect information. In reality it’s a platform for congressmen to make speeches satisfying the special interests who own them and then they read questions from prepared notes provided to them by “experts” or lobbyists (or maybe the witnesses themselves). Then they get the answers they want to hear from the witnesses. It is 100% theater.
Nuland’s opening statement was full of scare mongering about the supposed threat to peaceful civilization from Moscow. She did provide some telling facts. She said the US had already spent $600 million on “security assistance” to Ukraine – so on top of other billions in handouts from the IMF, most of which was stolen by oligarchs, that’s money going directly to killing kids in Donbass. (Warning, the foregoing link is very graphic. And there are many even worse images of Kiev’s terror victims I will not link to.)
Poroshenko was very clear how Kiev intends to win the war. They intend to win it by blockade and terror shelling of Donetsk. Just like Hitler planned to beat Leningrad. So they imagine.
Nuland also said the US had trained 17,000 Ukrainian troops. That’s training going directly to kill kids in Donbass. She said the US had “provided counter-artillery and counter mortar radars” and “over 3,000 secure radios” and “other equipment, to help Ukrainian troops successfully resist further advances.”
As if the “Ukrainian army” (if that’s what they call neo-Nazi private legions) and the assistance provided to them would be enough to stop the Russian army from actually taking over Ukraine, were Moscow so inclined.
No, Vicky, that’s equipment going directly to kill kids in Donbass. How’s that for “Russian propaganda?” How am I doing?
Are my fellow Americans satisfied with how their tax money is being spent?
But the United States is not stopping at simply supporting war and economic destruction in Ukraine. They want to spread the same kind of “freedom” to Russia.
Here’s where Lil’ Marco Rubio comes in. He’s a tough guy. He’d probably nuke the world just to prove he’s a man. (Well, Hillary will probably do it to prove she’s a man as well.)
Lil’ Marco asked Tricky Vicky if the sanctions had changed Putin’s “aggressive behavior.” She said yes, they stopped him from continuing his “invasion” of Ukraine beyond Crimea and Donbass. Then Rubio says he knows they’d hoped Crimea would bankrupt Russia, any sign that’s happening? Vicky says not yet, but Crimea’s really hurting them. Tough Lil’ Marco said good we ought to double up the sanctions. Vicky says they will if they need to, plus even if they lift the Russia sanctions, sanctions on Crimea will never be lifted until Crimea returns to Ukraine.Well Crimea is never returning to Ukraine. So in other words, Crimean sanctions will stay until hell freezes over.
So they were hoping fixing up Crimea would bankrupt Russia, but they expect us to believe Putin wanted all Ukraine? Yeah I’m sure he wanted that trillion dollar black hole.
Next comes in one Sen. Shaheen, who sounds like somebody’s clueless grandmother. She probably cannot find Russia on a map. She keeps glancing at her notes just to get through her opening statement. She has probably never even seen RT, though she condemns it on cue.
It was here that Vicky let us know the extent of US efforts to turn Russia into a smoldering wasteland wrecked by civil war and terror just like they did to Ukraine starting with Maidan. (But I’m sure all Vicky did was hand out pastries.)Nuland claims the US is spending $100 million a year producing Russian-language propaganda in the Baltic states and Ukraine, as well as Russia. They also operate secret training programs for Russian journalists. She also said they provide funding to organizations and programs inside Russia but wouldn’t give details.
Actually, they have access to far more than that, with the total budget of the Broadcasting Board of Governors, which runs all official US propaganda directed abroad, being over $700 million. (US government agencies and departments routinely underestimate the amount they spend on programs, in an effort to win more funding.) Meanwhile, Nuland told a bald faced lie that the budget of Russia’s RT was $400 million. It is closer to $300 million. But it would be difficult to count all of Vicky’s and her companion witness’ lies in just this 2 hour time span.
Of all the times the term “Russian” or “Kremlin propaganda” is uttered by the Western apologists, they consistently fail to give any examples. I suppose what they really mean by “Kremlin propaganda” is facts given by people who dare to confront their own politically correct Owellian distortion machine. In the past decades, the United States and its allies have done plenty to propagandize against themselves, doing no good for any country and more often than not leaving conflict and destruction in every country they touch, both economic and physical.
Does Russia in the last 25 years have anything like a comparable record of international violence and expansionism? The plain facts speak for themselves, which does the job of “Kremlin propaganda” on its own without much effort.
There are many who will not like this recent paper published in Nature Communications on principle as it talks of the hiatus in global temperatures for the past 20 years or so, that the Little Ice Age was global in extent, and that climate models cannot account for the observations we already have let alone make adequate predictions about what will happen in the future. It also makes what has happened in the past 50 years seem a little less unusual. This is however an interesting paper that deserves wide consideration, but as it doesn’t tow what some regard as a “party-line” it will probably get few mentions in the media.
Researchers working at the Australian National University Research School of Earth Sciences have discovered century-scale patterns in Pacific rainfall and temperature, and linked them with global climate changes in the past 2000 years. These past El Niño (ENSO) oscillations in the Pacific Ocean may have amplified global climate fluctuations for hundreds of years at a time. Member of the team Alena Kimbrough says, “We’ve shown ENSO is an important part of the climate system that has influenced global temperatures and rainfall over the past millennium…Our findings, together with climate model simulations, highlight the likelihood that century-scale variations in tropical Pacific climate modes can significantly modulate radiatively forced shifts in global temperature.”
The team measured trace elements and stable isotopes in stalagmites from the Indonesian island of Flores and used them to reconstruct ancient rainfall, comparing them to records from East Asia and the central-eastern equatorial Pacific. They found that northern hemisphere warming and droughts between the years 950 and 1250 corresponded to an El Niño-like state in the Pacific, which switched to a La Niña-like pattern during a cold period between 1350 and 1900. They found periods of predominantly El Niño-like patterns for several hundred years that alternate with La Niña patterns, impacting on global climate over the last 2000 years. Climate models cannot reproduce this.
“Our results highlight significant discrepancies between the proxy records and model simulations for the past millennium. Critically, these discrepancies coincide with century-scale anomalies in the strength of the Pacific Walker Circulation. We cannot rule out the possibility that some of the low-frequency Pacific variability was a forced response to variable solar intensity and changing teleconnections to higher latitudes that are not simulated by the models, or that non-climatic processes have influenced the proxies… the paleodata-model mismatch supports the possibility that unforced, low-frequency internal climate variability (that is difficult for models to simulate) was responsible for at least some of the global temperature change of the past millennium.”
The researchers say that the La Nina-like pattern is thought to be a factor contributing to the recent so-called ‘warming hiatus’ and earlier twentieth century cool and warm decades. “Therefore, our analysis of multicentury hydroclimate variability suggests that projections of tropical rainfall patterns, and global temperature extremes, will remain uncertain until paleoclimate records and models consistently capture the lower-frequency variability, and associated feedbacks, in the tropical Pacific.” Lead author Dr Michael Griffiths from William Paterson University, in the United States, added, “Until we can model this lower-frequency behaviour in the tropical Pacific, one can only speculate on how the warming will play out over the next few decades.”
Thus we have another natural climatic change mechanism that is relevant to how we asses the climatic changes that have occurred in the past century and in recent decades.
One of the essential functions of the corporate media is to marginalise or silence acknowledgement of the history – and continuation – of Western imperial aggression. The coverage of the recent sentencing in Senegal of Hissène Habré, the former dictator of Chad, for crimes against humanity, provides a useful case study.
The verdict could well have presented the opportunity for the media to examine in detail the complicity of the US, UK, France and their major allies in the Middle East and North Africa in the appalling genocide Habré inflicted on Chad during his rule – from 1982 to 1990. After all, Habré had seized power via a CIA-backed coup. As William Blum commented in Rogue State (2002: 152):
With US support, Habré went on to rule for eight years during which his secret police reportedly killed tens of thousands, tortured as many of 200,000 and disappeared an undetermined number.
Indeed, while coverage of Chad has been largely missing from the British corporate media, so too was the massive, secret war waged over these eight years by the United States, France and Britain from bases in Chad against Libyan leader Colonel Mu’ammar Gaddafi. (See Targeting Gaddafi: Secret Warfare and the Media, by Richard Lance Keeble, in Mirage in the Desert? Reporting the ‘Arab Spring’, edited by John Mair and Richard Lance Keeble, Abramis, Bury St Edmunds, 2011, pp 281-296.)
By 1990, with the crisis in the Persian Gulf developing, the French government had tired of Habré’s genocidal policies while George Bush senior’s administration decided not to frustrate France in exchange for co-operation in its attack on Iraq. And so Habré was secretly toppled and in his place Idriss Déby was installed as the new President of Chad.
Yet the secret Chad coups can only be understood as part of the United States’ global imperial strategy. For since 1945, the US has intervened in more than 70 countries – in Africa, Eastern Europe, the Middle East, South America and Asia. Britain, too, has engaged militarily across the globe in virtually every year since 1914. Most of these conflicts are conducted far away from the gaze of the corporate media.
Reporting of the Habré sentencing has been predictably consistent across all the leading newspapers in the UK and US. Thus the focus has been on the jubilant reactions of a few of the victims of Habré’s torture and rape, on the comments from some of the human rights organisations involved for many years in the campaign to bring the Chad dictator to justice – and on the fact that it was the first time an African country had prosecuted the former head of another African country for massive human rights abuses. Only a tiny part of the reporting has mentioned the West’s role in the genocide. None of the reporting has placed the Chad events in the broader context of US/Western imperial aggression.
The story in the Guardian, by Ruth Maclean, was typical. Some 21 paragraphs were devoted to the report. But only in the last one (appearing almost as an after-thought) was there any mention of US complicity:
The US State department and the CIA propped up Habré, sending him weapons and money in return for fighting their enemy, Muammar Gaddafi.
In a follow-up editorial on 1 June 2016, the Guardian again left mentioning the West’s role until the last paragraph:
Many questions still remain unanswered, including several concerning the responsibility or complicity of Western countries, such as France and the US, which actively supported Habré during the cold war years, turning a blind eye to his methods.
The Telegraphadopted a similar approach. Aislinn Laing, based in Johannesburg, reported briefly:
Mr Habré, 73, is a former rebel leader who took power by force in Chad in 1982 and was then supported by the US and France to remain at the helm as a bulwark to Muammar Gaddafi in Libya.
Adam Lusher, in the Independent, devoted just eight words to contextualising the trial:
Hissène Habré was once backed by America’s Cold War-era CIA.
In the New York Times, buried in paragraph 24 of a 27-paragraph report by Dionne Searcey are these words:
Mr. Habré took power during a coup that was covertly aided by the United States, and he received weapons and assistance from France, Israel and the United States to keep Libya, to the north of Chad, and Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi, then the Libyan leader, at bay.
Similarly, in Paul Schemm’s 23-paragraph report in the Washington Post, his paragraph 15 reads:
Supported by the United States and France in his wars against Libyan leader Moammar Gaddafi, Habré was accused of killing up to 40,000 people and torturing hundreds of thousands.
Intriguingly, the final paragraph in the Guardian‘s report also included a statement by John Kerry, the US secretary of state, which ‘acknowledged his country’s complicity’:
As a country committed to the respect for human rights and the pursuit of justice, this is also an opportunity for the United States to reflect on, and learn from, our own connections with past events in Chad.
But how hypocritical is this rhetoric given the fact that the US today is still supporting human rights offenders across the globe – including the current dictator of Chad, Idriss Déby. Moreover, the Western powers, the US and France in particular, are using Chad as a major base for their covert military operations in Africa.
A number of newspapers have commented on how the case set an important precedent for holding high-profile human rights abusers to account in Africa. Yet there has been little mention of the extraordinary background. For in June 2003, the US actually warned Belgium that it could lose its status as host to Nato’s headquarters if the Habré case went ahead on the basis of a 1993 law, which allowed victims to file complaints in Belgium for atrocities committed abroad. Campaigners determined to bring Habré to justice only then shifted their attention to Africa.
William Blum comments in the introduction to Killing Hope (p. 13) on the US’s secret wars:
With a few exceptions, the interventions never made the headlines or the evening TV news. With some, bits and pieces of the stories have popped up here and there, but rarely brought together to form a cohesive and enlightening whole; the fragments usually appear long after the fact, quietly buried within other stories, just as quietly forgotten…
How perfectly this both predicts and explains the corporate media’s coverage of the Chad dictator, Hissène Habré!
• Richard Lance Keeble, Professor of Journalism at the University of Lincoln since 2003, has written and edited 36 books. In 2014, he was given a Lifetime Achievement Award by the Association for Journalism Education.
Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
“Screening Tests Are Useless”, on tests that find diseases that would never have hurt you. “The FDA Protects the Big Drug Companies”, on an agency funded by the companies it regulates. “The Journals’ Sins Are the Editors’ Sins”, on ghostwritten studies and captured peer review. “Opioids and ‘Pain Management’”, on how a generation was prescribed its way into addiction. “Prozac and Relatives” and “Antipsychotics Are Disastrous”, on what psychiatry does to adults and children. “Surgery: Money Before Patients”. “Failed Cancer Treatments”. “Futile CPR and Overprescribing”. “Billing Scams & Specialty Warfare”. “Hospitals Are Sharks”. Each with a Patient Tips section at the end on how to survive it.
If you have ever walked out of a doctor’s office with a prescription you didn’t ask for, or watched a parent put through a treatment that made them worse, this is the book you want on your shelf before the next appointment. … Full review
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Butchered by “Healthcare” is Robert Yoho’s plain-spoken account of how American medicine stopped being a profession and became an industry. 341 pages. Over a thousand references. Thirty-eight chapters.
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