This ain't my first rodeo

The Prison Industrial Complex; Who Profits?

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Thu, 24 May 2012 21:55:00 +0000

I worked 10-years for The GEO Group, formerly Wackenhut, as a chemical dependency counselor. GEO is one of the major lobbyists for this insanity -- skyrocketing incarceration rates -- as well as for longer sentences. "Bed days," the number of prison beds they keep occupied, is their bottom line. The more the scarier.

I personally know of at least 8 contracts they lost for abuse of prisoners, particularly juveniles, including one juvenile facility in Louisiana, one in north Texas and three in Mississippi.

One family detention unit outside Austin involved neglect of foreign nationals and their children being held for deportation. But there are many more.

I also remember when GEO's Willacy Unit in the Texas Rio Grande Valley, experienced a "mysterious illness" that caused the deaths of at least two foreign nationals. Their bodies were sent to South America before they could be autopsied, an illegal act that was condoned by Texas Department of Criminal Justice. (In the 80s, TDCJ changed their name from Texas Department of Corrections to Texas Department of Criminal Justice -- what does that tell you?)

At the north Texas facility, youth were not let out of their cells for days at a time. The kids ended up having to defecate on the floor in their own cells. Some were subjected to physical abuse. Nutrition was sacrificed for food on the cheap, as with all their other facilities. Inspectors for the Texas Youth Commission were apparently paid-off to look the other way. They had approved the GEO unit routinely, even during the very week a special investigating team showed up unannounced to inspect the facility for themselves. The scandal led to the reorganization of the Texas Youth Commission itself.

GEO has also been involved in a number of kick-back scandals as well, including the unit where I last worked, involving county officials, dummy companies and "ghost accounts."

In Louisiana, one GEO unit was shut down in 2003 for physical and sexual abuse of juveniles. This month (May, 2012), The GEO Group lost three contracts in Mississippi for physical and sexual abuse of juveniles. Both contract losses were caused by abusive corrections officers and lax supervision.

GEO is generally run chronically understaffed and underpaid, while the prisoners are underfed and are denied standard medical treatment and quality of services. I know of one detainee who was denied medical attention, despite his complaints, until he was eventually hospitalized, where he was diagnosed with late-stage terminal cancer. He died while in the hospital. The practice and cover-up of abuse is routine for these people. Even staff members are subjected routinely to "employee abuse":

Workplace bullying, like childhood bullying, is the tendency of individuals or groups to use persistent aggressive or unreasonable behavior against a co-worker or subordinate. Workplace bullying can include such tactics as verbal, nonverbal, psychological, physical abuse and humiliation. This type of aggression is particularly difficult because, unlike the typical forms of school bullying, workplace bullies often operate within the established rules and policies of their organization and their society. Bullying in the workplace is in the majority of cases reported as having been perpetrated by management and takes a wide variety of forms. Bullying can be covert or overt. --Wikipedia

Examples of Employee Abuse

This type of verbal and emotional abuse includes put-downs, bullying, intimidation, harassment, shame, coercion, exerting values of power, being overworked to extreme, lying, condescension, creating feelings of powerlessness, being made to feel insignificant or inferior, excessive demands of perfection, inconsistent application of practices, not providing employees sufficient information to perform, depriving of rights/benefits, inappropriate nonverbal behaviors, ignoring, belittling, talking down to another, making judgments, setting up situations for failure, and double binds. Employee abuse occurs among employees, managers, and customers. --American Counseling Association

Fortune Magazine once listed The GEO Group in the top 5 for employers you wouldn't want to work for because of low pay, poor benefits, employee abuse and generally lousy working conditions. The corrections officers they hire are often thugs, and authoritarian personality runs amok among them, their wardens and other supervisors.

Private prisons keep foreign national detainees for the full extent of the contract before shipping them to release facilities, squeezing every last dollar they can from government coffers. In many cases the crimes they were convicted of were only being "illegal aliens".

Private prison case managers even sometimes deny foreign nationals the right to obtain consular services.

Female foreign nationals are sometimes raped, their children not fed properly (Pearsal, Tex unit). Their unit outside of Portland, Oregon was investigated by health department officials because of an outbreak of food poisoning.

Immigration Detainees at the Willacy County Unit were also physically and sexually abused by corrections officers. [cf. "Problems at Willacy" midway into the article.]

When George Bush was running for office, GEO company officials set up bank accounts for all employees, requesting that they donate $1 to the account, then the company would supply the other $1999 for the maximum amount allowed by election laws at the time. (That was before Citizens United v Federal Elections Commission, which blew open the doors for unlimited campaign contributions.) Then the employee "donations" were "bundled" and sent to the Bush campaign.

Of course, this "donation" method was used to skirt the election laws in place at the time. Nearly every employee felt intimidated to provide the $1 and keep their mouths shut -- except me, of course, and a mere handful of others. I was eventually branded as a "trouble maker" due to simply being assertive about my rights and during a time of salary negotiation when GEO had used a definition of "counselor" that paid a lower scale than the one for which I was actually qualified. (I lost.)

Our warden told us that voting for, and donating to, George Bush and Richard Cheney was in our best interests as employees, since Bush and Cheney were going to expand the private prison sector. Of course, Dick Cheney invested heavily in the private prison industry at the time. But hey, what's a little conflict of interest going to hurt among friends? The American people didn't care. In fact, in general, the American public and our authoritarian social and political leaders don't give a shit about anything that doesn't upset the public's "Christian" sensibilities, least of all ethical issues. They're like the infamously insensitive Honey Badger. Not surprisingly, the case against Cheney was dropped, much in the manner of the Halliburton-Nigerian bribery scandal of previous years. It's nice to have money and power if you're going to live above the law. "Fool me once, ummm... fool me twice..... er, ummmm.... I won't get fooled again."

The largest of the privates, Corrections Corporation of America, is just as dirty, just as abusive, just as negligent and just as money hungry at the expense of human rights.

The boom in incarceration rates began during the Reagan years of "law and order" politics aimed at minorities and drug/alcohol offenders (those anti-war communist-pinko-fag-hippies). America now has the most outrageous per capita rate on incarceration of any first world nation. The rate is 600% more than in the 80s after Reagan took office and is due mostly to the criminalization of addiction. At the same time, insurance companies made it more difficult to obtain treatment. The last GEO unit at which I worked before leaving the industry for good, I had been brought in to develop the substance abuse department, but they quickly shuffled me into the education department, even though Substance Abuse was given a budget for contract purposes. But no funds did I ever see -- Zip. Nada. Not one penny. When I complained to the warden he told me, "I don't care if you give them a Big Book and send them all back to their cells." Showing up for work quickly became a mere formality.

At the same time, our medical department fell under intense federal review. We had a couple of inmates die because of neglect. At my previous unit in Kyle, Texas, we had at least one death due to neglect. In fact, one guy had a heart attack and staff made him wait seated in line where he turned blue and died while staff ignored inmates' pleas to help him. The medical unit at Pecos was involved in a scandal whereby its director was caught in an audit for a having forged medical license (RN).

I could write forever. Some things, perhaps, are better privatized. However, the prison system, where human rights are at issue, is certainly not one of them. Chuck Parcell (Facebook) writes the following.

"The two largest private prison companies, Corrections Corporation of America (CCA) and GEO Group, combined had over $2.9 billion in revenue in 2010.
While private prison companies may try to present themselves as just meeting
existing 'demand' for prison beds and responding to current 'market'
conditions, in fact they have worked hard over the past decade to create
markets for their product. As revenues of private prison companies havegrown over the past decade, the companies have had more resources with whichto build political power, and they have used this power to promote policiesthat lead to higher rates of incarceration." http://www.justicepolicy.org/uploads/justicepolicy/documents/gaming_the_system.pdf

"Corporations [ esp. Correctiions Corporation of Ammerica and GEO Group(formerly Wackenhut) ] are running many American prisons, but will they putprofits before prisoners? A grim new statistic: One in every hundredAmericans is now locked behind bars. As the prison population grows fasterthan the government can build prisons, private companies see an opportunityfor profit. This week, NOW on PBS investigates the government's trend tooutsource prisons and prisoners to the private sector. Critics accuseprivate prisons of standing in the way of sentencing reform and sacrificingpublic safety to maximize profits."--PBS http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=gHVu4ZD9XQE

"NOW looks at how the private corrections industry is profiting whenimmigrants -- including children --- are held in detention centers awaitingdeportation. Loretta Perry-Wilborne, a former employee of the AuroraDetention Center in Colorado, gives us an insider's view of a detainees'life behind bars. 'It's freezing in the winter time ... and we have a lotof detainees that get sick,' she tells NOW"--PBS http://www.pbs.org/now/shows/419/video-prisons.html

Prison Slavery:

http://books.google.com/books?id=zbTU7QxA7qoC&pg=PP6&lpg=PP6&dq=prison+slavery+book&source=bl&ots=uICyD1W1JU&sig=WP7My6kIZxtS3DOk8D35fhAZjs0&hl=en&ei=rsXJTuPQKtGrsAK12exi&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=5&ved=0CEYQ6AEwBA&fb_source=message#v=onepage&q=prison%20slavery%20book&f=false

~*~*~*~

An Important Campaign Announcement from Herman Cain (Mike Tyson)

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Thu, 10 Nov 2011 21:37:00 +0000

Herman Cainâs Campaign Promises with Mike Tyson from Mike Tyson

China, the Policy of Containment and the Counter-Productivity of Islamophobia

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Thu, 04 Aug 2011 10:10:00 +0000

As the United States continues the struggle to maintain its superpower status, it faces the reality of an overwhelming anti-American backlash due to its introduction and exploitation of Islamophobia, an extension of the Straussian "noble lie" used to justify "never ending war" to the American people.

Thus, the Machiavellian manipulation of a people already stirred since the Reagan years to a right-wing religious-political activism that featured intolerance as the hallmark of it's pretensions to righteousness and exceptionalism, has resulted in a triumphalist cultural momentum that is now meeting a wall of international resistance at a time when the American national security state is working to win the allegiance of the world's most populous Muslim state, Indonesia.

The U.S. Containment Strategy from Japan to Indonesia

The Importance of Indonesia

The new importance of Indonesia to American trade interests cannot be overstated. Trade agreements with the world's largest Muslim nation will help to pare down trade with China, whose wages are on a steady rise along with her developing high-tech industry and military; whereas, Indonesia's labor force works for far less in wages than the Chinese and it's industry is not in a position to threaten America's dominance of high-tech industry and services.

The strategic thinking is, why support China's rise to superpower status by continuing to participate in the current trade imbalance that lopsidedly favors China's growing economy, an economy that is demanding exponentially increasing amounts of oil and which threatens to drive up world energy prices while competing against America's own energy needs?

Indeed, it appears that we are already engaged in a cold war with China. Witness the increasing level of media and diplomatic rhetoric boiling out of the U.S. State Department and the corporate-controlled media. Today it was announced loudly and indignantly that China has been hacking into American industrial and diplomatic and military communications systems -- as if the U.S. doesn't do the same to all it's allies and trading partners.

Recently, as well, Obama met with the Dalia Lama, an event that outraged the Chinese. Last year, Obama accompanied the U.S. naval fleet to Indonesia, sending a brazenly pointed message to the Chinese as he arrived to negotiate trade agreements.

At a more covert, military level, the U.S. has been attempting to utilize the ring of islands from Japan to Taiwan to Indonesia, east of the Chinese mainland, in order to maintain geographically strategic choke points in the event the American national security state chooses to control the vital shipping lanes and oil fields in the South China Sea, along with the fishing grounds and trade routes in the East China Sea surrounding Japan's northern coast.

Last year's provocations against the North Koreans are said by many analysts to have been primarily directed at Japan's government in order to demonstrate the strategic necessity of keeping the U.S. bases at Okinawa open. In fact, the crisis forced the Japanese prime minister to resign. He had been elected on the promise to close the bases; thus, his platform was worthless once it was decided that Japan would continue it's military cooperation with the U.S. in the execution of American foreign policy.

The military and economic strategy again being applied to China is known as the "Policy of Containment". It originated during the Truman years as a means to "contain" the spread of communism.

The "containment" of China not only involves the East and South China Seas from Japan to Indonesia, but also Central Asia, where the U.S. supports Uyghur independence groups in China's far western province of Xinjiang, on their border with Tajikistan. China plans to build oil and gas pipelines through the Tajikistan mountain passes that connect them with vitally needed Central Asian energy resources. The U.S. is working to keep them checked, or at least establish itself as the agent in control of the region's resources, which is what the war in Afghanistan is all about.

Ethnic populations of Pakistan. Jundallah is a Baluchi terrorist group.

The Covert War Against Pakistan

Since Pakistan has recently signed a security agreement with China, the U.S. is now covertly at war with Pakistan with the intention of breaking Pakistan up into its five original provinces. Pakistan also began building a major highway and pipeline route through it's mountain pass connection with southwestern China.

In addition to this, the U.S., Israel and NATO have been providing operational and financial support to the Baluchistani independence movement in southwest Pakistan, particularly the terrorist group Jundallah who conducts terrorists operations inside eastern Iran. Containment of Iran is the strategy there as well. The West especially wants to make sure that the planned Iran-Pakistan-China oil and gas pipeline never becomes operational and has enlisted the cooperation of India in it's Central Asian containment strategy.

Pakistan, India, Nepal, Bhutan, and Burma on China's southern border

China's Southern Border and the South China Sea

Burma, Nepal and Bhutan, along China's southern border, have also seen an increase of Western intelligence operations (see map at left). The CIA is said to have also infiltrated Christian missionary groups and is using them to gather intelligence as well as enlist the support of locals.

Meanwhile, the U.S. is also working furiously to develop strategic ties to Vietnam, whose offshore oilfields have been under hegemonic threat by the Chinese for several years now, which brings us back to Indonesia, another country involved in territorial disputes with the Chinese over rights to offshore oil. Conversely, Indonesia is also a country being groomed by China as a trading partner for advanced Chinese industrial and technical goods and services.

Indonesia has the largest Muslim population in the world. Combine that with the cooling of NATO/Turkey relations over Turkey's outreach to Muslim Iran and Syria, as well as Israel's agitation and subversion of the democratically elected government of Turkey, and the effects could jeopardize vital pipeline routes through Turkey to Caspian oil and gas, as well as access to the Black Sea through the Bosporus where the U.S. and NATO are moving forward on pipeline deals that would bypass Turkey altogether.


Proposed pipeline network through the Balkans will avoid Turkey but presents a security challenge to NATO in the Black Sea.

The Counter-Productivity of Islamophobia

In the post-Afghanistan-Iraq invasion years, the U.S. is now faced with a major PR problem ignorantly unforeseen by the neocon Cheney/Bush Administration -- Muslim backlash. While they were busy reinforcing and exploiting Christianist Islamophobia in the wake of 911, an event asserted by some to have been a staged false-flag operation with the operational support of Israel's notorious Mossad intelligence agency, the neocons in the Pentagon's Office of Special Plans failed to look beyond their immediate goals.

The Bush Administration exploited 911 with the intention of stirring-up support for America's imperialist energy and resource wars in the Middle East and Central Asia, as well as to placate Israel's security concerns about Iran's and Iraq's support for Palestinian sovereignty (the role of Saudi Arabia was downplayed in the media for obvious reasons, not the least of which was oil).

Policy wonks in the Pentagon had estimated that the U.S. had a window of only 5 years to fill the vacuum left in Central Asia and the the region south of the Caucasus after the fall of the Soviet Union before the Russian Federation could recover enough economic and military strength to begin an imperialist resurgence. According to retired General Wesley Clark, the neocon's original plan, designed long before 911 furnished the casus belli, was to take out Iraq, Lebanon, Syria, Iran and Libya. Other immediate goals involved support for the "flower revolutions" in Ukraine and Georgia.

But Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld failed to anticipate the widespread anger and resistance among Muslim nations in response to the Bush Administration's Zionist-centric exploitation of 911 and the scapegoating of the Muslim religion. In fact, al-Qaeda was a CIA creation entirely. It was set up to channel weapons and funds to the anti-Soviet Mujaheddin forces in Afghanistan, then later used to stir-up Muslim support in the Balkans to break apart the former Soviet satellite nation of Yugoslavia. Recently, a horrendous report surfaced, highlighting the testimony of former British General Michael Rose, which implicated the Clinton Administration in facilitating the massacre of Muslims at Srebrenica in 1995 in order to justify U.S. and NATO military intervention. This story is still developing and has not yet been fully corroborated.

In retrospect, the Bush Administration's efforts to create and fan the flames of Islamophobia, as channeled for them by the apocalyptic false-prophets of fanaticism and hate to an American right-wing religious culture -- a culture that featured the political prominence of authoritarian-styled Evangelicalism, Christian Zionism and Dominionism -- can be perceived as nothing less than evil.

So now, under a new administration faced with geopolitical realities that transcend the security concerns of Israel, U.S. foreign policy has taken a neoliberal turn. The Obama Administration's goals in Central Asia, under the advisement of Zbigniew Brzezinski, continue to reflect the desire to contain a revanchist Russian military and political establishment, as did the neocon administration before them. But now they have larger goals in mind -- goals that involve the containment of China in Central Asia, the South and East China Seas, Latin America and Africa. One of the first events of NATO's Libyan conflagration featured the evacuation of Chinese workers in the oil and gas industry. China's Libyan contracts are now "up in the air" as they say.

The U.S. cannot expedite it's containment strategies alone. It needs to enlist the support of Indonesia and other Muslim nations. The challenge now is to reverse the devastating effects on world opinion -- and particularly Muslim world opinion -- wrought by Zionist bigots in support of myopic goals.

Destruction in Oslo

Given recent events in Norway, which according to historian Webster Tarpley could very well have been a NATO false-flag operation used to kick-start a crack-down on the extremist right as well as to create suspicion of anti-Muslim Zionists in Israel and elsewhere, the questions are begged:

(1) Is it possible that we are about to see a major move by the Obama Administration to dis-empower the Zionist neocon cabal entrenched within the Pentagon and the National Security Agency?

(2) Is the fall of the Zionist propaganda machine, New Corp/Fox News a calculated neoliberal operation to take apart the neoconservative media that has whored itself to Israel's right-wing government and to it's powerful lobbyists in the United States?

(3) If Obama is reelected in 2012, will we see the globalist "neoliberal" agenda of Zbigniew Brzezinski in full bloom?

(4) If so, are they risking open warfare -- WW-III?

Crusading Knights Templar

Even if the Oslo bombing and mass murder of Norwegian youth was the work of an extremist cell with connections to other extremist groups throughout Europe, as Rahm Emanuel is quoted to have said, "[The American National Security State] should never let a good crisis go to waste," meaning, of course, that it should be exploited. And exploit they will.

There has been an ongoing turf-war between the neocons of the Pentagon/NSA and the traditionalists within CIA since the first days of the Bush Administration, and it is thought that Obama has been working to restore the CIA to it's traditional status within the national security state while he attempts to undo the enormous damage done to America's image abroad.

The Challenge

Unless and until the U.S. and NATO vigorously attack American and European Islamophobia, the commercial and security interests of the West will be threatened in the Middle East, Central Asia, Africa and Indonesia. Even though at this point it may appear disingenuous, given America's continued pursuit of empire, the intelligent way to dissipate resistance to American interests among Muslim nations is to resolve the cultural conflict created by an overzealous and paranoid Zionist propaganda machine which finds it's context within the decades-log attitude of arrogant disregard America has displayed for Muslim culture in general, and Arab nations in particular, in it's brazenly amoral pursuit of commercial enterprise.

The task of rapprochement with the Muslim world will not be easy. The suddenly incipient strategy may necessitate the eventual abandonment of Israel, or at the very least, bringing Israel to heel, just as former President George H. W. Bush suggested before coning under the reactionary Israeli threat of blackmail vis-a-vis Mossad's inside knowledge of the October Surprise, the Iran/Contra Affair, the Arms for Hostages scandal, the arming of both sides in the Iran-Iraq war, the secret wars in Latin America, the Bush family role in the CIA's assassination and coup d'etat against John F. Kennedy and Poppy Bush's pederastic proclivities and involvement in the Franklin Credit Union--Boys Town, Nebraska scandal and cover-up of the early 80s. Sexual and political blackmail, bribery, media propaganda and election campaign funding are the modus operandi of Mossad and the Israel Lobby in manipulating American politicians of every stripe. His position as the titular head of CIA did not protect Bush from betrayal from within when it came to Israeli security interests.

Demonstrations in Israel this week: "Mubarak, Assad, Bibi Netanyahu!"

Is it possible that the CIA and NATO are stirring up and exploiting the demonstrations in Israel this week in order to depose Prime Minister Benyamin Netanyahu and Avigdor Lieberman? The right-wing coalition they formed to take the last election has resulted in a fascist-leaning, stridently Zionist government that is responsible for a dramatic increase in Islamophobia.

Pro-Zionist neocons and Israeli dual citizens who occupied seats of power in the Bush/Cheney regime, supported by right-wing talking heads in the corporatist controlled mainstream media, particularly Fox News and CNN, are responsible more than anyone past or present for the spread of anti-Muslim bigotry in the United States.

Now, at the peak of a career framed around tough "anti-terrorist" rhetoric while riding the tide of three generations of expansionist and systematic anti-Palestinian ethnic cleansing known as "Plan Dalet", and while threatening to oppose the reelection of President Obama at every turn in order to back him off from his demand that Netanyahu stop the illegal settlements in the West Bank, it seems the shoe is on the other foot for Netanyahu. Netanyahu now enjoys only 40% support in the Israeli polls and demonstrators in the streets last weekend were demanding that he step down. It seems that now Obama can turn the screws. Netanyahu's reelection is no longer a forgone conclusion. Even his top American contributor, Las Vegas "Casino King" Sheldon Adleson, is under investigation.

In the meantime, pro-Zionist Rupert Murdoch is on the run, struggling to save News Corp and it's American affiliate, Fox News, from an investigation that threatens to expose a culture of corporatist corruption involving kick-backs for insider information, phone and computer hacking, and cooperation in disseminating government disinformation with a special helping hand offered in dissembling Israeli PR.

In Israel, as the middle class continues to suffer under the weight of elitist-centric international corporatism, the demonstrations promise to continue.

Christian Zionist Pastor John Hagee

If indeed we are witnessing a more intense neoliberal foreign policy under Barack Obama, look for agents within the Obama regime to begin concerted efforts to covertly discredit and isolate the Christian Zionist movement in the United States (Rev. John Hagee, for example) as well as to dis-empower the intolerant, theocratic Dominionist and Evangelical social and political elements who have exerted overwhelming influence across the previous three decades and who have contributed to the demise of the American republic as well as it's replacement by a creeping and pernicious form of authoritarian corporatocracy.

These are not the only subcultural centers of Islamophobia. Right-wing extremist groups such as the various wings of the Christian Nationalist Movement and their paramilitaries can expect increasing scrutiny by an increasingly despotic federal government led by its national security state, given legitimacy by the Patriot Act. When violence erupts, we can expect exploitation of the events toward the goal of demonstrating America's "good faith" in working against religious intolerance. It's an uphill struggle and, although it is surely an entirely disingenuous display of religious tolerance and the protection of minority rights promoted as part of the new PR campaign aimed at the world's Muslim population, it will at least provide some respite from the evils of exploitation until they can paint the monster with a new color.

The Downside

Alex Jones

Prescient conservative American commentators, such as Constitutionalist Alex Jones, are alarmed at the coming crackdown, which they say has already been announced by Homeland Security administrators as a general warning against "white al-Qaeda" terrorist cells in the United States, a propaganda campaign that is now being modified to focus on domestic right-wing extremists in general, sans the anti-Muslim tag lines that were originally imposed. Their concerns include the abuses of the Patriot Act, attacks from the left against the 2nd Amendment right to bare arms, domestic surveillance of the civilian population and of peace activists, invasive TSA searches in violation of the 4th Amendment, the increasing incidence of police brutality, as well as continuing public apathy in disregard of America's devolution into a police state.

The really agonizing thing about rooting for one side against the other in these persistent American "culture wars" is knowing that it all works to the advantage of the international bankers and war mongers whose livelihood depends on the fomenting of international and domestic conflicts by their apparatchiks in government.

A Word to Christian Zionists

Just remember this: The Kingdom of God is Within You. If anyone comes to you saying, "Look, it is here," or "Look, there it is over there," or "Look, the Jews have returned to Israel, the 'Promised Land'," do not be fooled or misled. Such fantasies are based upon the illusions of materialist-based religion. They overtly promote racism and the false belief in American, or Jewish or European exceptionalism. Peace will not come until we look within and find the Spirit that unites us.

Obama's Revenge

On several occasions, President Obama has insisted publicly that Israel should stop the settlements in the West Bank and return to the 1967 borders established by the United Nations. Each time in response, Netanyahu met with Obama behind closed doors at the While House to remind him of the power of the Israel Lobby to influence national elections. Ironically, now it seems the shoe is on the other foot. Payback is hell, eh, Bibi?

"Mubarak, Assad, BiBi Netanyahu!"

The rhythmic background voices in the video are coming from last weekend's anti-Netanyahu demonstrators who are chanting, "Mubarak, Assad, BiBi Netanyahu" (implying the order in which they fall from power).

~Peace to all.

The New American Century; The Documentary

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Tue, 12 Jul 2011 22:42:00 +0000

This film goes into detail through the untold history of The Project for the New American Century with tons of archival footage and connects it right into the present.

This film exposes how every major war in US history was based on a complete fraud with video of insiders themselves admitting it.

This film shows how the first film theaters in the US were used over a hundred years ago to broadcast propaganda to rile the American people into the Spanish-American War.

This film shows the white papers of the oil company Unocal which called for the creation of a pipeline through Afghanistan and how their exact needs were fulfilled through the US invasion of Afghanistan.

This film shows how Halliburton under their "cost plus" exclusive contract with the US Government went on a mad dash spending spree akin to something out of the movie Brewster's Millions, yet instead of blowing $30 million they blew through BILLIONS by literally burning millions of dollars worth of hundred thousand dollar cars and trucks if they had so much as a flat tire.

"A stunning film. It should be seen as widely as possible, in cinemas, bars, clubs, at meetings and, of course, through the internet. I'm sure the film will continue to be a source of debate and political education for many years. Maybe until the war criminals have been brought to trial." - Ken Loach

While Massimo Mazzucco’s first political documentary, GLOBAL DECEIT (2006), focused on the long list of inconsistencies in the official version of the 9/11 attacks, THE NEW AMERICAN CENTURY explores the historical, philosophical and economic background that suggests a matrix for such events that is much closer to home than the so-called "Islamic terrorism".

The film provides solid evidence for the true reasons behind the Afghanistan and Iraq wars, whose unfolding is described in chilling detail in a document called "Project for the New American Century", published in the year 2,000, that seems to have served as the actual blueprint for such dramatic events --The "New American Century" Documentary

West Texas Rock House Fire -- The Air Attack

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Wed, 27 Apr 2011 23:39:00 +0000

Click here to view individual photos and commentary.

West Texas Wildfire -- Balmorhea, Fort Davis, Alpine

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Thu, 14 Apr 2011 12:49:00 +0000

Click here for individual photos and commentary that accompanies this series.

Population Decline in West Texas Felt Locally

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Tue, 12 Apr 2011 21:52:00 +0000

Despite the state's growth, many counties are continuing to decline
By JEANNIE KEVER
HOUSTON CHRONICLE
April 12, 2011, 7:29AM

Scene outside Balmorhea in Reeves County, Texas

KERMIT, TX — Jacob Harrison did what he thought kids from rural West Texas are supposed to do. He went away to college and didn't look back. But after working in Central Texas for a while, he called home with a confession.

"There are too many trees," he said. "You can't see the sky."

Harrison, now 26, is back in Winkler County, drawn by a job in the aptly named community of Notrees.

But he is in the minority. The 2010 Census confirmed what anyone passing through the scrublands of West Texas already knew: People are leaving, and no one is taking their place, even with oil at more than $100 a barrel. The people who remain often drive an hour or more to visit a doctor, buy a pair of jeans or see a movie.

So you might wonder why anyone is still there, in this place where natural beauty is defined by dry creek beds and scraggly mesquite, where public transit is a school bus and Starbucks is a punch line.

"The greatest sunsets. The stars are just right there. You hear the coyotes howling," says Billy Burt Hopper, sheriff of Loving County, home to 82 people and the least-populated county in the United States.

"It's the last frontier."

Texas recorded the largest population growth in the nation over the past decade, adding 4.5 million people for a total of 25.1 million. But 79 of its 254 counties lost people, all but a handful of them west of Interstate 35. Even more would have lost population if not for the decade's phenomenal Latino growth; the number of Anglos declined in 162 Texas counties, including much of West Texas and the Panhandle.

The shift to the state's cities and suburbs has been happening since at least the 1960s, as people died or moved away from the vast emptiness of the west and the endless stretches of the Panhandle.

"Young people want to be where there are more amenities and hustle and bustle," says Bonnie Leck, Winkler County judge for the past 17 years, long enough to see both the economy and the population fluctuate with the fortunes of the surrounding oil and gas fields.

For every Marfa, which capitalized on the legacy of artist Donald Judd to reinvent itself as an arts and tourist town, there are a dozen Kermits, Van Horns and Tahokas, barely hanging on as people choose modern life over wide open spaces.

"You'd be amazed how many men would live out here, but you're not going to get their wives five miles from Walmart," Hopper says.

More at Houston Chronical

Outspoken Investigative Journalist Wayne Madsen Informed of Threat Originating in the White House

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Tue, 05 Apr 2011 06:30:00 +0000

Investigative Journalist Wayne Madsen

April 4, 2011 -- White House Threats Must Be Taken Seriously, by Wayne Madsen

'In yet another indication that America's democratic experiment is a thing of the past, this editor has received word from a source in a foreign intelligence agency allied with the United States that there has been talk by some within the Obama White House that this editor is under threat. What particular stories have inflamed the White House are not known but the warning conveyed by the source, who has connections within the White House, was stark in its directness: "They want to kill you."

'It was perfectly clear that the phrase was not being used as a figure of speech.

'That this development is being reported on April 4 is even more ironic. On April 4, 1968, Dr. Martin Luther King, Kr. was assassinated in Memphis during his mission to support striking sanitation workers in the city. Now, we have our first African-American president and a threat to kill a journalist who is most definitely not one of their favorites has been seriously discussed.

Columnist Jack Anderson

'Of course, muckraking journalists have been under threat before in America. In 1972, columnist and investigative journalist Jack Anderson had ended up very high on President Richard Nixon's infamous "enemies list." Anderson had long been a burr under the political saddle of Nixon and the president blamed Anderson for exposing a number of Nixon's corrupt activities, including the exposure in 1956 by Anderson and his boss, Drew Pearson, of a loan from Howard Hughes to Nixon's brother Donald.

Columnist Drew Pearson

'In the years before the Watergate scandal broke but at a time when other various scandals in the Nixon administration began to receive the bulldog-like attention of Anderson, who succeeded Pearson as editor of the "Washington Merry-Go-Round column in 1969, there were serious discussions among Nixon aides Charles Colson and G. Gordon Liddy, as well as the CIA's Dr. Edward Gunn, an expert on poisons, about assassinating the troublesome Anderson.

'Scenarios included the use of LSD or poison but Anderson's Mormon religion and the fact that he did not drink ruled out the use of poisons or LSD in his drink. Staging an automobile accident in which Anderson would be incinerated was also an option. Another scenario considered was one which would have appeared to be a random Washington, DC street mugging in which Anderson would be stabbed or have his throat slit. The plot to assassinate Anderson came to an abrupt halt as Liddy, Colson, and E. Howard Hunt, who had also been involved in the action against Anderson, were exposed in the May 1972 break-in at the Watergate headquarters of the Democratic National Committee.

'Although I have attempted to pattern WMR after Anderson's and Pearson's "Merry-Go-Round" column, I do not have the luxury of newspaper syndicates or a Pulitzer Prize, all of which Anderson could rely on as firewalls between him and those in the White House who wanted to kill him.

'I ran the information about the warning from the foreign intelligence source by some African-Americans in Washington who have worked with Obama White House officials. Their response was less than encouraging. The bottom line is that the White House engages in the type of "gangster politics" for which their home base of Chicago has become infamous.

'Although I have taken precautions in covering post-genocide Rwanda, child trafficking in Thailand and Cambodia, the "loss" of nuclear weapons at Minot Air Force Base in North Dakota, the gunning down by police of CIA asset Tony Carnaby in Houston, the story of "Washington Madam" Deborah Jeane Palfrey, BP's activities on the Gulf Coast in the wake of the Deepwater Horizon disaster, and President Obama's and incoming Chicago Mayor Rahm Emanuel's past activities in Chicago, those measures were temporary and lasted for as long as I was in the field.

'However, I have absolutely no desire to constantly be in fear of the type of a White House-directed or tolerated hit like that discussed by Nixon aides on Anderson who had the benefit of a degree of support from his syndicate and the newspapers who carried his column, which included The Washington Post.

'Preliminary plans are being made to continue the investigative journalism of this website (WMR) from a safer vantage point abroad and in an environment that provides basic protection for press freedom. Unfortunately, the United States is no longer a safe place for independent journalists. Today, President Obama kicked off his 2012 presidential campaign in a web video message. Without a Democratic primary challenger, it can be safely assumed that the White House will pull out every arrow in its quiver to suppress negative information about Obama. The mere fact that the announcement of Obama's re-election came on the anniversary of the assassination of Dr. King shows that Obama will shamelessly attach himself to the legacy of the much-revered African-American leader with whom he shares no cultural legacy of historical African-Americans with their family histories of slavery in the South and sharecropping. Nor would King, if alive today, approve of any of Obama's pro-war and pro-corporate policies.

'With a second Obama term a likelihood, it only makes sense, therefore, that the reporting on the "new America" be conducted from a more secure location.

'There is an interesting postscript to this story. Not once, during the eight years of the Bush administration, did I ever receive such a credible and direct threat. In fact, after WMR's stories about marital friction between Bush and First Lady Laura Bush received national media attention, there was a communication from a close friend of Mrs. Bush that if I laid off her marital situation, I would be given a major scoop. Knowing that no one should ever cut a deal with the Bush family or their friends, I kindly declined the offer. But whereas the Bush White House was prepared to offer a carrot, the Obama administration appears to favor the stick or another lethal weapon of choice.'

--Wayne Madsen, editor of the Wayne Madsen Report
Reprinted with permission of Wayne Madsen

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20110403

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Influential Books on the Conservative Personality

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Mon, 28 Mar 2011 02:36:00 +0000

One of the books that influenced me greatly and led me to a better psychological understanding of the Conservative Movement in it's most recent incarnation was "Conservatives Without Conscience," by former White House counsel to Richard Nixon, John Dean.

In addition to differentiating neoconservatism (more properly "Straussianism", after the late Leo Strauss of the University of Chicago) from traditional Goldwater conservativism, Dean cited the work of Robert Altemeyer, a social psychologist at the University of Manitoba who is doing ongoing research in the area of the authoritarian personality. Naturally, that led me to investigate the work of Robert Altemeyer.

Altemeyer's scientific research, published in "The Authoritarian Specter," uncovered a cluster of personality traits typical of conservatives who make up the grass roots of the conservative movement. He found that 51% of the North American population is what he labeled "right-wing authoritarian followers".

In general, the personality of the "RWA" includes:

A lower IQ than liberals/progressives,

An anti-intellectual attitude,

Average to lower education levels,

Lack of social skills,

A tendency toward prejudice and discrimination (racism, sexism, homophobia, etc.),

A tendency toward violence (assault, domestic abuse),

Higher levels of child abuse in all categories,

A greater tendency to abuse alcohol, higher divorce rates,

Diminished skills in abstract thinking, coupled with the more restrictive cognitive tendency toward concrete thinking (including literalism),

A lowered capacity to deal with ambiguity,

An avoidance of the cognitive dissonance necessary to deal with changing beliefs,

An unrealistic need for control,

Higher levels of anxiety concerning changing social conditions,

And a tendency to belong to conservative social groups and religious denominations.

As I said, these are general characteristics that are spread in varying degrees and frequency across the authoritarian spectrum; but there are three characteristics that are near universal among right-wing authoritarian followers:

(1) Right-wing authoritarian followers commit themselves to the received social conventions (traditional family values, etc.) carried over from the previous era.

(2) They look to authoritarian leaders (particularly "authoritarian personalities"), depending on them to interpret and reinforce the conventional, as well as to validate them and provide them with a sense of belonging.

(3) Right-wing authoritarian followers are committed to enforce received social conventions upon others, usually through peer pressure in varying degrees of aggressiveness, including the use of violence, in the name of their authoritarian leaders.

The book that best helped me to understand neoconservatism (Straussianism), it's classic aristocratic Platonism, its classism, it's preference for secrecy and expediency over democracy, its use of Machiavellian manipulation and the "noble lie", it's economic and social dependence on war, its unabashed Zionism -- in short, its utter nihilistic authoritarianism -- was "Leo Strauss and the American Right", by Shadia B. Drury.

Another work that impressed me, more in the category of journalism, was Max Blumenthal's book on the history of the religious-right, "Republican Gomorrah", in which he cited the psychologist Erik Erikson in his discussion of the right-wing conservative religious personality.

Following his opening remarks on Erikson, Blumenthal discusses, among others, the seminal influences of Francis Schaeffer, his son Frank Schaeffer, John Rushdoony, Jerry Falwell, Pat Robertson, James Dobson, Tony Perkins, Ralph Reed, Christian Reconstructionism, Dominionism, a brothel-full of "family values" Republicans such as Newt Gingrich, Dick Armey and Tom DeLay, and even the influence upon Christian conservatives of the noise makers Rush Limbaugh, Bill O'Reilly and Glenn Beck. Karl Rove, George W. Bush and Richard B. Cheney get their fair share of print as well.

I emailed Blumenthal and asked him why he didn't use the more recent work of Altemeyer. He wrote back and said that, given his audience, he wanted to avoid the empirical research and statistical analysis that characterized Altemeyer's work, so he went with Erikson, who is much more theoretical and classically psychological. Erikson is of the Freudian Psychoanalytic School and is noted for his theory of social development.

Note: The Grit TV interviews of Blumenthal predate the Tea Party Movement.

Please, if you have any recommendations for further reading, post them in the comments section below. Thanks in advance.

~*~

Was Julian Assange Turned by U.S. Intelligence?

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Tue, 08 Feb 2011 18:43:00 +0000

February 7-8, 2011 -- Wikileaks founder worked on U.S. intelligence computer espionage system in 1990s

By Wayne Madsen of The Wayne Madsen Report

Wikileaks founder Julian Assange was not always considered a pariah by the U.S. intelligence community. In fact, according to a knowledgeable source who once worked on sophisticated computer security programs for the U.S. intelligence community at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, Assange helped develop, at the time, a state-of-the-art computer surveillance tool for use by the U.S. intelligence community, one that ended up being used by the National Security Agency and CIA.

Assange, according to our source, performed his technical work at Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico, where the Defense Information Systems Agency (DISA) conducted computer surveillance work in a relatively unclassified setting as compared to the NSA.

Assange's "deal" with the U.S. government at Sandia reportedly occurred in the early 1990s after his arrest by Australian police for breaking into U.S. Defense Department computers.

Hackers as spies

Assange first came to the attention of western intelligence agencies in 1990, when, during Operation Desert Shield, the forerunner to war with Iraq over its invasion of Kuwait, the Hamburg-based Chaos Computer Club, along with computer hackers in the Netherlands and Australia, were caught hacking into U.S. Defense Department computer systems via MILNET links to the ubiquitous ARPANET, a network that linked government research and development agencies to various universities around the world.

In 1987, Assange, at the age of 16, began his hacking career in Australia. He and two colleagues established an underground hacking group called "International Subversives" Assange used the hacker handle of "Mendax," which is Latin for "untruthful." The late 1980s represented a time period when intelligence agencies and law enforcement were playing a catch-up game with hackers -- young people who, in most cases, knew more than even the NSA about how to crack into computer systems. Eventually, in 1991, the Australian Federal Police nabbed Assange as part of "Operation Weather," a law enforcement operation being carried out against hackers. One of Assange's targeted computers was one operated by the U.S. Air Force in the Pentagon. And the hacking took place during Desert Shield/Storm at a time when the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) and the CIA began to take the issue of computer hacking more seriously.

It was in 1989 that some computer hackers were suspected of working with foreign intelligence agencies, including the Soviet KGB, to break into western defense computers. Through a link provided by the Chaos Computer Club, a group of German hackers -- Karl Koch, aka "Hagbard;" Markus Hess, aka "Urmel;" Hans Heinrich Hubner, aka "Pengo;" and Dirk-Otto Brezinski, aka "DOB" -- teamed up with hackers at Utrecht University in the Netherlands and in Melbourne, Australia to penetrate U.S. military computers. It was Lawrence Berkeley Laboratory system administrator Clifford Stoll who first discovered the hackers portal into military computers -- at the University of Bremen via the German DATEX-P network into Lawrence Berkeley via Tymnet and out into some 400 military computers from the Ramstein Airbase in Germany to Fort Buckner, Okinawa and the OPTIMIS database at the Pentagon. Koch, or "Hagbard," was found burned to death with gasoline in a forest near Celle, West Germany in 1989. Police ruled the death a suicide.

In October 1998, another Chaos hacker, Boris Floriciz, aka "Tron," was found hanging in a Berlin park. After treating the death as a suicide, police began to treat the death as a homicide after Stern magazine reported that Floriciz had been working for unsavory elements. Floriciz's father reported that his son had been approached by intelligence agents who wanted the hacker to work for them.

In August 2001, Herwart Holland-Moritz, aka "Wau Holland," one of the founders of Chaos, died at age 49 in Hamburg. Holland died after suffering a stroke. In 1987, Holland claimed that Chaos had obtained sensitive data on U.S. weapons systems from NASA VAX 11/785 computers linked to the Space Physics Analysis Network or SPAN.

In 1995, Jean-Bernard Condat, founder of the Chaos Computer Club of France, was discovered to be working for the French domestic intelligence agency, the Direction de la Surveillance du Territoire(DST). According to French investigative journalist Jean Guisnel, Condat began working for DST in 1989. Condat's DST handler went by the cover name "Jean-Luc Delacour."

In his book, "Guerres dans le Cyberespace, Internet et les Services Secrets," Guisnel revealed: "Internet is controlled to the bone by such measures as turning around hackers, systematically bugging computer networks and manipulating newsgroups."

In 2000, Internet Corporation for Assigned Names and Numbers (ICANN), the international organization that assigns Internet domain names, elected Chaos's Andy Mueller-Maguhn as a European regional director.

In 1998, Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu praised an 18 year-old Israeli hacker named Ehud Tenebaum, aka "The Analyzer," who had hacked into Pentagon and NASA computer systems from Tel Aviv via a university modem in Sde Boker in southern Israel. Netanyahu said Tenebaum was "damn good." The leader of the ViRii group, Tenebaum was detained by Israeli police along with two other Israeli hackers and an American, Calidan Levi Coffman of Carson, Washington. The FBI raided the homes of two teen ViRii members in Cloverdale, California but the Justice Department only sought probation in their criminal cases. Federal prosecutors went easy on the Israeli hacker ring even after Attorney General Janet Reno said the United States wouldl treat computer intrusions as "serious crimes".

Deputy Defense Secretary John Hamre said the ViRii attacks on the Pentagon were "the most organized and systematic attack" to date. Targeted by the Israelis were Pentagon personnel and payroll files. As with Assange's deal with Australian intelligence, it was later reported that Tenebaum's plea deal with Israeli authorities involved having him go to work for Israeli intelligence. Israel's apologists in the corporate press likened ViRii's hacking to tossing "electronic spitballs." The hacking attack on the Pentagon as Secretary of State Madeleine Albright was demanding a freeze on Israeli settlements on the West Bank and east Jerusalem and as U.S. forces were preparing for military action against Iraq. The recent Wikileaks disclosures of State Department cables, which includes the selective release of cables on Israeli-Palestinian negotiations, comes amid similar U.S. demands on a freeze on Israeli settlements.

In an indication that Tenebaum's continued his hacking for Israeli intelligence, in 2003, a New Zealand known as "VeNoMouS" was accused of maintaining links with Tenebaum and breaking into the India's Bhabha Atomic Research Center in Mumbai. The hacking attack purged data and stole emails. There were reports that VeNoMouS and hackers linked to him were involved in hacking of Pakistan's nuclear program computer systems. The Pentagon's cyber-security program, as previously reported by WMR, has been thoroughly penetrated at high-levels by Israeli agents-of-influence. John P. Wheeler III, who, as assistant to the Secretary of the Air Force in the Bush administration and later at MITRE Corporation, was involved heavily in the Pentagon's cyber-warfare program, was found dead in a Wilmington, Delaware landfill on December 30 last year.

The Enigmatic Assange

Some in the corporate media similarly praised Assange and Wikileaks for the release of the State Department cables but New York Times managing editor Bill Keller recently expressed regret over his paper's dealings with Assange. Keller said that when relations between the Times and Assange grew frosty, three Times staffers experienced hacking into their email accounts. Keller is obviously unaware of Assange's past work for the U.S. intelligence community and journalistic due diligence by him and his paper would have uncovered what WMR has discovered about Assange and his hacker colleagues before entering into a relationship with Wikileaks and its founder, described by Keller as dressed like a bag-lady and needing a bath.

About the only thing law enforcement and intelligence could do faced with such a new and technologically-advanced hacking threat was to cut deals with hackers who were arrested. The choice for the Australian police was simple: either face prison and a huge fine or come work for law enforcement and intelligence in new computer security divisions and branches. For Assange, the choice was also simple. Sometime between his arrest in 1991 and his being charged in 1994 with 31 criminal charges, six of which were dropped, Assange, according to our source, reported for duty to the Sandia National Laboratory in New Mexico, where under DISA unclassified cover, Assange worked on a system that would permit U.S. intelligence to hack into computer systems through a security hole in fax modems. The program DISA developed for the intelligence community allowed intelligence operators to covertly switch from fax mode to data mode modems connected to computers, permitting computer files to be surreptitiously downloaded. It was via modems that Assange, from Australia, had been able to penetrate Defense Department computers and it was via the fax modem security hole -- the use of fax modems that were on-line and waiting to receive faxes -- that certain U.S. intelligence agencies wanted to be able to accomplish the same task against their intelligence targets.

Upon completion of his task and his return to Australia for his trial, Assange was fined a mere A$2100 and released on bond with the following statement from the judge: "there is just no evidence that there was anything other than sort of intelligent inquisitiveness and the pleasure of being able to—what's the expression—surf --through these various computers."

The judge also mentioned Assange's tough childhood, one in which he was raised in a religious cult, the Santiniketan Park Association, also known as "The Family" and "The Great White Brotherhood" and led by yoga guru Anne-Hamilton Byrne. The Family, in addition to meting out corporal punishment and sleep and food deprivation, subjected the children of cult members to psychotropic drugs, including psychiatric drugs Anatensol, Diazepam, Haloperidol, Largactil, Mogadon, Serepax, Stelazine, Tegretol or Tofranil. Children were also subjected to LSD. WMR has learned that the cult had links to mind control operations run jointly by the CIA and its partner, the Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO). In 1978, the Victoria Police shut down the cult. Thus, Assange's apparent first, albeit involuntary, interaction with an intelligence agency came when he was a child being abused by the Santiniketan cult. The Family of Australia bears striking similarities to another child abuse cult in the United States linked to the CIA: "The Finders."

In October 1990, as more and more U.S. government departments became cognizant of the threat posed by the Chaos hackers and their associates, a meeting of computer security officials from various agencies dealing with classified computer systems was held in a secure room at CIA headquarters in Langley, Virginia. This editor took part in the meeting, representing the State Department's Information System Security Division within the Bureau of Diplomatic Security. Present were representatives from the CIA, FBI, Commerce Department, Defense Department, DIA, and NSA.

The CIA was concerned about the KGB angle to the German Chaos gang and their hacker friends in the Netherlands and Australia. However, after about an hour back-and-forth, the lead FBI representative stood up, his brass belt buckle very prominent along with his gaudy double-knit suit, and assured all attendees that as a lead agent with the FBI's Soviet counter-intelligence branch, he had "everything under control." The name of the FBI agent was Robert Hanssen, arrested on February 18, 2001, for spying for 22 years for the Soviets and Russians.

The media had been reporting on the Chaos-linked hackers since 1987. From ABC News World News Tonight on September 15, 1987, Peter Jennings reported: "There's been another case of computer hackers electronically prying their way into some very secret files. Two West Germans apparently got into a worldwide computer network used by NASA to link space research centers in Europe and Asia. NASA confirms the system was entered, denies the hackersgot any classified information." But on April 25, 1991, the story of thr hacking into military systems during Desert Shield was reported in full by ABC:

"PETER JENNINGS: Once again electronic thieves have managed to break into some of the giant computer systems at American military installations and universities. An ABC News investigation has found that for at least a year now, computer hackers, electronic intruders based in the Netherlands have been cracking the security of American computer systems where they can read sensitive information about military plans and operations. Here's ABC's John Martin.

JOHN MARTIN: [CU DOCUMENTS/GRAPHICS] Documents obtained by ABC News show the hackers got so much information on the Patriot missile, they had to break into several computers just to find a place to store the data. [SOLDIERS] At one point the intruders shut down computers in Wisconsin and Virginia which were later used to mobilize troops for Operation Desert Storm. [BLDG EXT] The CIA considered the theft so serious it convened a special meeting.

FORMER GOVERNMENT OFFICIAL: [SILHOUETTE] There was information gathered from systems, on the Patriot rocket launching system, the Navy's Tomahawk cruise missile, the call up of the military reserves. [TROOPS BOARDING JET] The words they were particularly interested in were 'military', 'nuclear', 'missile'; and 'Desert Storm' or 'Desert Shield'.

JOHN MARTIN: Sources say many of the computer penetrations originated in Geldrop, Holland. [BLDG EXT] Investigators believe the thieves were freelance spies looking for information to sell KGB or Iraqi intelligence. [HACKER ON COMPUTER] One Dutch hacker demonstrated how easy it was. [MAP/GRAPHICS] Using local telephones, the hackerselectronically entered a nearby university computer, then crossed the Atlantic through campus lines to American universities. [VARIOUS BLDGS] From computers here at Bowling Green in Ohio and other campuses, they broke into at least 22 networks: [VARIOUS INSTALLATIONS] The Naval Sea Systems Command, the Army's readiness system at Fort Belvoir, Virginia, the missile research lab at Aberdeen, Maryland. None of the information they got was classified, but the government is worried.

GERALD BURKE: Some of the great achievements in modern espionage that resulted from the collation of seemingly innocuous, unclassified data.

JOHN MARTIN: The government alerted its computer emergency response team.

LARRY DRUFFEL PhD / RESPONSE TEAM LEADER: Anytime that someone is penetrating a system used for military purposes, then you have to assume that they're trying to get information they shouldn't and that's espionage.

JOHN MARTIN: One reason hackers were able to penetrate the computers, poor passwords.

WAYNE MADSEN: All these computer crackers out there know what those passwords are and they know how to basically use them to break into systems.

JOHN MARTIN: [SU] The FBI is on the case, but has run into difficulties. Dutch law does not permit the prosecution of computer hackers unless the information they steal is classified. John Martin, ABC News, Crystal City, Virginia.

PETER JENNINGS: Actually some Dutch think there's nothing wrong with this kind of computer hacking. The Director of Economics at Utrecht University says most Dutch schools actually encourage students to break into other computer systems as part of their training. He says security is the responsibility of the systems' owners."

But what ABC News and no one else knew was that some intelligence agencies, including ASIO in Australia and NSA had decided to co-opt the services of some hackers in order to penetrate their groups and determine the technology they were using to hack into systems. The project with Cornell student Robert Morris, Jr., who was able to launch a disruptive Internet computer worm program in 1988 that brought down a number of computer systems, was one example. Morris's father happened to be Robert Morris, Sr., NSA's chief scientist at the time. The young Morris's "punishment" included working on cracking cryptographic codes used by drug dealers and other hackers. Morris's punishment was similar to the sweetheart deal worked out with Assange in return for his services at Sandia.

Assange continues to play his part in being a "limited hangout" operative for the U.S.intelligence community. The selective leak of over-classified State Department cables from the maximum Secret SIPRNET, cables that report on gossip and open source information gathered from U.S. diplomats and their contacts abroad, have been used to influence events around the world. It is a classic "cognitive infiltration" operation as advocated by White House Office of Information Regulatory Affairs chief Dr.Cass Sunstein, a promoter of Wikipedia and Wikileaks, both used by the intelligence agencies for information and psychological warfare operations.

Perhaps it was no coincidence that in December 2010, the international Pirate Party, which has its beginnings in Sweden, where Assange is wanted on sex charges, and its Austrian branch, offered to host Wikileaks's cache of over 250,000 State Department cables. The Pirate Party, with branches also in Germany, Switzerland, and Luxembourg, has close contacts with the Chaos Computer Club.

Thieves of the Revolution; Why the U.S. Wants to Elevate Omar Suleiman, Former Head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Fri, 04 Feb 2011 05:02:00 +0000

There is no provision in the Egyptian constitution for the vice president to replace a president who is stepping down. That doesn't bother the United States national security state, the deep state-within-the-state that controls American foreign policy. They only require the appearance of legitimacy even if they have to create the office itself by imposing an American model that doesn't fully exist in Egypt.

President Obama himself seems convinced as well that a rapid clean-up of old business is necessary before the usual shell game is put into play to transfer presidential power to yet another puppet, a shell game involving American machinations designed to placate the people of Egypt (if that's even possible), yet untrack any real Egyptian revolution, while it reinforces the pro-Zionist status quo in the immediate aura of Israel.

For that task, American President Barack Obama is reaching out to some strange bedfellows. One might even call them thieves.

February 3, 2011 -- SPECIAL REPORT.

Obama's gambit: Holding Egypt for Holder

By Wayne Madsen of The Wayne Madsen Report

WMR has learned from a well-informed political insider that President Obama and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton have waffled on support for Egypt's pro-democracy revolution in order to safeguard a covert U.S.-Egyptian rendition and torture program that dates back to the Clinton administration. In fact, Clinton's Deputy Attorney General, Eric Holder, now Obama's Attorney General, was the first Department of Justice official to write a legal brief authorizing the rendition of alleged terrorists from third countries by the CIA to Egypt for purposes of interrogation and torture.

Holder, who served as Deputy Attorney General under Janet Reno from 1997 to 2001, authorized the first CIA rendition to a third country. In 1995, Talaat Fuad Qassim, a member of al-Gamaa Islamiya, an Islamist group linked to "Al Qaeda's" number two, Egyptian Ayman al Zawahiri, was kidnapped by CIA agents in Croatia and flown to the United States. In 1997, after Holder became Deputy Attorney General, Justice Department prosecutors realized they had no legal right to hold Qassim. Holder, according to our source, went to see President Clinton and told him about the problem with holding Qassim in the United States, stressing that the United States was legally bound to release Qassim. Clinton told Holder to send Qassim to someone else. Holder arranged to have Qassim flown to Egypt where he was put into a small crate, tortured, and eventually executed by Egyptian authorities.

Holder has long been a coddler of torturous regimes. In 2004, while a partner with Covington and Burling, Holder worked out a plea agreement for his client, Chiquita Brands International, in which the firm agreed to pay a fine of $25 million for making cash payments to the Colombian right-wing death squad paramilitary force, the United Self-Defense Forces of Colombia. The AUC carried out systamatic assassinations of trade union activists, peasants, politicians, and leftist guerrillas in Colombia.

In July 1998, Holder signed off on the transport of two members of the Egyptian Jihad, captured by Albanian security forces in Albania, to Cairo by the CIA on a chartered extraordinary rendition aircraft. The Egyptians were tortured and executed.

Egyptian torture methods included hanging prisoners by all four limbs and placing electric nodules on their genitals, nipples, and feet. The CIA paid Egypt handsomely to carry out the torture program.

Holder and White House chief of staff Leon Panetta had signed off on the CIA's pre-9/11 rendition program with Egypt. During his confirmation hearings for Attorney General in May 2009, Holder was asked by Senators Lamar Alexander (R-TN) and Richard Shelby (R-AL)about his role in renditions as Deputy Attorney General for Clinton. Holder admitted that extraordinary renditions occurred during the Clinton administration. However, neither Alexander nor Shelby asked Holder how many individuals were renditioned during his time as Deputy Attorney General. Holder was also not asked what torture countries received the kidnapped prisoners from the United States.

WMR has learned that George W. Bush's chief policy adviser, Karl Rove, restrained Republican senators from delving into too many details with Holder at his confirmation hearing. Rove was aware that the Bush administration also used Egypt as a renditioned prisoner recipient country. But Rove was also concerned about secrets being revealed about his own deals with Sweden to turn terrorist suspects over to the CIA for subsequent torture in Egypt. In December 2001, Sweden arrested Ahmed Agiza and Muhammad al-Zery, two Egyptian asylum seekers who lived in Sweden.

Delivered to CIA agents at Bromma airport outside of Stockholm, the two Egyptians were handcuffed and chained after having suppositories containing drugs inserted into their anuses. The two Egyptians were then flown to Cairo where they were imprisoned and tortured. The rendition plane used was a Gulfstream V, owned by Premier Executive Transport Services, a CIA front company located in Dedham, Massachusetts. The tail number is N379P. The Swedish parliament and the UN later determined that Sweden violatedSwedish and international law, respectively, by transferring the two Egyptians to the CIA and, ultimately to Egypt. Al Zery received $500,000 in compensation from the Swedish government.

Rove has known Holder since President Reagan appointed him as a judge on the Superior Court of the District of Columbia in 1988. All of Reagan's judicial appointments were subject to vetting by Rove and his friends in the right-wing Federalist Society.

CIA's rendition program: started under President Clinton and with Eric Holder's approval.

Rove, who has had a long relationship with Sweden, reportedly phoned then-Swedish Prime Minister Goran Persson and told him that Sweden must hand Agiza and al-Zehy over to the United States. WMR has learned from our source that Swedish Foreign Minister Anna Lindh also received a personal phone call and e-mail from Rove in which it was demanded that the two Egyptians be turned over to the Americans. Lindh was apparently opposed to the request but was overruled by Persson, who was a friend of Bill Clinton and a champion of Clinton's and British Prime Minister Tony Blair's "Third Way' globalist movement. Lindh was stabbed by an assailant in Stockholm on September 10, 2003 and she died from her wounds on September 11. A Serbian-Swede was found guilty of the murder but his conviction was later overturned after he was pronounced mentally ill. There are suspicions that Lindh, an outspoken critic of America's invasion of Iraq and Israel's treatment of the Palestinians, was assassinated by CIA or Egyptian agents who were worried about her knowledge of the CIA's Egyptian and other rendition programs.

The man who ran Egypt's torture program on behalf of the CIA was Omar Suleiman, the feared head of the Egyptian General Intelligence Directorate (EGID), who was named by President Hosni Mubarak as Vice President after the popular rebellion against Mubarak's regime swept Egypt. Suleiman was a recipient of large cash payments from the CIA for EGID's torture of prisoners delivered to Egypt by the CIA under both the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations. Suleiman also maintained close contacts with Mossad on issues dealing with Palestine and Syria. Suleiman also served as a member of a CIA-sponsored group of Arab intelligence service chiefs working against Iran. The group included Suleiman, CIA director Michael Hayden, Jordanian chief Mohamed Dahabi, Saudi intelligence head Prince Moqrin bin Abdulaziz, and United Arab Emirates national security council head Sheikh Hazaa bin Zayed al Nahyan. In 2001, Suleiman personally witnessed the torture of Mamdouh Habib, an Australian citizen renditioned by the CIA from Pakistan to Egypt. Habib was given repeated electric shocks, beaten, and waterboarded as Suleiman looked on. Habib was eventually renditioned again by the CIA from Egypt to Guantanamo, his "confession," obtained under Suleiman's torture techniques, used against him by the United States.

In December 2009, Suleiman traveled to Israel to meet with Netanyahu, Israeli President Shimon Peres, Mossad chief Meir Dagan, Defense Minister Ehud Barak, and Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman. Israel had extended an open door to Suleiman and he made several trips to Israel during his tenure as Egypt's to spy. It was Suleiman who tightended Egypt's border controls on Gaza, furthering the misery of the people of the world's largest engineered ghetto.

In 1993, Suleiman ordered his intelligence service to conduct a "census" of all "Arab-Afghans" living in Peshawar, Pakistan, and surrounding areas. They were all veterans of the CIA mujaheddin war against the Soviets in Afghanistan -- Egyptians, Libyans, Yemenis, Jordanians, Palestinians, Algerians, Sudanese, Bahrainis, Tunisians. The census database soon contained thousands of names and Suleiman and his colleague, Saudi intelligence chief Prince Turki bin Faisal, added additional names of Pakistani and Afghan supporters of such Islamist groups as Harkatul Ansar and Ahl al -Hadith, all of whom came under the operational control of CIA and British MI-6 Afghanistan field operative, Osama Bin Laden. British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook wrote about the census database in The Guardianon July 8, 2005, "Al-Qaida, literally 'the database,' was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians." In fact, by conducting the census of the "Arab-Afghans" in Pakistan, the actual founder of "Al Qaeda" is the new Vice President of Egypt, Israel's closest Egyptian friend, Omar Suleiman. No wonder, Mubarak had to cover his tracks by revealing in June 2002, that Suleiman warned his CIA counterparts a week before 9/11 that Bin Laden was in the final stages of launching a major attack on the United States but that no one realized that the plan included the use of passenger planes to attack buildings. Mubarak's and Suleiman's "plausible deniability" protected themselves and the Israelis, especially important since "lead hijacker" Mohammad Atta, was supposedly an Egyptian.

≈≈≈≈

Regardless of the statements from President Obama that Mubarak must leave office "now," it is clear that the waffling by the Obama administration is intended to buy time for the CIA to appropriate the Egyptian government's torture and rendition files that date back to Holder's original authorization of the program. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's major goal is to limit the damage to her husband from any disclosure of documents by a new Egyptian reform government about her husband's role in the CIA's use of Egypt to detain and torture prisoners. CIA director Leon Panetta is also trying to avoid the torture rap from his time as President Clinton's chief of staff.

The CIA has embarked on a policy of suppressing the Egyptian revolution until all potentially embarrassing documents and computer files held by Suleiman's EGID and other Egyptian government agencies can be successfully removed from Egypt to the United States.

The CIA recalls how partially shredded and un-shredded classified CIA documents at the U.S. embassy in Tehran were obtained by students who took over the embassy and, unlike the suspiciously-redacted Wikileaks cables, were soon published for the world to see, CIA agents names and all. In fact, the long-cut shredders used to destroy the documents were a blessing for the Iranians who handed the spaghetti-like shreds to Iran's best carpet weavers to reconstruct them in practically their original form. The EGID and other Egyptian intelligence and security agencies have likely amassed tons of files on CIA activities over the past several decades and the potential for the release of documents concerning all the CIA operations that involved Egypt -- the 1980 October Surprise, Iran-contra, CIA arms smuggler Edwin Wilson's operations in Libya, repeated covert efforts against Saddam Hussein in Iraq, arms smuggling by the CIA to other African nations through the warehouse at Cairo West airport, and the CIA's nurturing of "Al Qaeda" for the mujaheddin war in Afghanistan and 9/11 -- has Langley shaking over the possibility that a reform government will reveal the dirty little secrets of the CIA and successive American presidents going back to Ronald Reagan.

The CIA has been behind the scenes in Egypt advising the security forces and army on suppressing the popular uprising in order to delay the clock for Mubarak and his regime. The International Network for Rights and Development reported that three Israeli cargo planes arrived at Cairo's Mina International Airport on January 28 carrying large amounts of gas used for dispersing large crowds. There were also reports of U.S. and Israeli counter-insurgency personnel being dispatched to Egypt to assist the regime in suppressing the rebellion. Other reports emanating from Egypt claimed that Israeli professional provocateurs were among the pro-Mubarak "demonstrators" who attacked peaceful demonstrators in Tahrir Square, resulting in an outbreak of deadly violence on February 3. Israel has a long history of such activities in Egypt, including the infamous 1954 Lavon affair that, if successful, would have seen "false flag" Israeli terrorist attacks on U.S. targets in Cairo that would later be blamed on Egypt, eliciting a military response by the United States on Egypt.

The CIA has a special procurement program that is used to buy sensitive items from foreign governments. "Sterility codes" are used by the CIA to designate the "degree of traceability" that is used for the procurement of off-shore purchases of foreign items, such as crowd control gas from Israel for use by Egypt. The records of the purchases are likely to be found in "Local Procurement" records maintained by the CIA stations in Cairo and Tel Aviv.

The CIA's last-ditch support for the Mubarak regime is strikingly similar to its support for the Shah of Iran in his final days in power. As with the revolt against Mubarak in Egypt, the uprising against Shah Mohammed Reza Pahlavi in 1978 came as a shock to the CIA. On December 2, 1978, two million people filled Tehran's Shahyad (now Azadi) Square demanding that the Shah step down. Almost two million people similarly filled Cairo's Tahrir Square demanding that Mubarak step down. In the months preceding the mass demonstration in Tehran, Iranian security forces massacred thousands of people. Iranian opposition forces claimed that Israel's Mossad provided assistance for the massacres to Iran's feared SAVAK security agency.

The CIA, to the very end, also provided assistance to the Shah's government. Some 75 CIA agents were dispatched to Iran along with more than a hundred private contractor operatives, all retired U.S. military and intelligence operatives. These agents worked closely with members of the Iranian military and SAVAK, many of whom had received training in the United States. Similarly, a number of Egyptian officers and non-commissioned officers, as well as EGID agents, received training in the United States. Just as President Obama dispatched Frank G. Wisner, Jr., former U.S. ambassador to Egypt and reputed CIA agent-of-influence, to talk to Mubarak, a close friend of Wisner, President Jimmy Carter, in November 1978, asked former U.S. ambassador to Iran and former CIA director Richard Helms, a personal friend of the Shah, to conduct liaison between the White House and the Shah. During his time as CIA director, Helms authorized the training of SAVAK officials in torture techniques. The CIA and Mossad coordinated their pro-Shah efforts in Iran.

As the Shah's position weakened, the Pentagon sent crowd control vehicles to Iran that were equipped with water cannons. Contingency plans were drawn up by the Pentagon and the National Security Council for the U.S. to dispatch troops to Iran to put down the popular rebellion and save the Shah and his Peacock Throne. SAVAK agents were also trained by the CIA to infiltrate anti-Shah groups and report on their plans. Other CIA provocateurs were believed to have infiltrated Iranian student groups that later took over the U.S. embassy in Tehran. There is a belief by many intelligence agents at the time that the most egregious incidents carried out by the students after they took over the embassy and held U.S. personnel hostage were committed by CIA and Mossad infiltrators bent on bringing about a swift U.S. military move against Iran and prevent Ayatollah Khomeini from taking power.

In the world of the CIA, the playbook never seems to change.

Along with the calls for Mubarak to step down now, there should be similar calls across the United States for Eric Holder to pack his bags and leave town.

Egypt: the Course and Fortunes of Revolution

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Tue, 01 Feb 2011 04:33:00 +0000

This week, Western journalists like ABC's Christiane Amanpour have been making very naïve, perhaps even intentionally misleading statements concerning what is being labeled a revolution in Egypt. They have proffered that because the military announced it's allegiance to the people with a promise to refrain from violence and that because embattled President Hosni Mubarak has announced a new government, all will be well.

"Up until today I've been struggling with whether this is going to go the way of the revolution in Iran in 1979, when millions of people came out on the street and overthrew the Shah -- or protests we all saw in Iran in 2009 when the so called "green revolution" was quickly put down.

"But today something happened that I think was very significant.

"The Egyptian army went on state television and read a statement in which they said they accepted people's right to peacefully express themselves and that the army would never use force against the Egyptian people.

"So the one question that everyone has been asking since the beginning, "what will happen if the army is given the order to fire?" was answered. They will not fire on the people."

Yet in reality, all is not so rosy. Armanpour is considered by many to be representative of the cadre of journalists contracted by the national security state to present the American government's "official" take on world events, a program that has its origins in the CIA's disinformation program code-named Operation Mockingbird of the late 50s and early 60s under Cord Meyer. Versions of the program persist, and Amanpour serves as a possible example of what is likely going on in the national corporate-media.

"Amanpour is married to James Rubin, former Assistant Secretary of State and spokesman for the US State Department during the Clinton regime - a hardcore Zionist. [James Ruben] has ties to [Rupert] Murdoch, [Gen. Wesley] Clark, [Senator John] Kerry, [the late Senator Tom] Lantos [and] had ties to Golda Meir, Yitzhak Rabin, Menachem Begin AND the Rothschilds. He is Rahm Emanuel on Zionist steroids.

"She is brainy and compelling - and a snake in the grass. I followed her [Balkan] reports for years [...] and was often in the same area she was reporting from - she did more work than anyone on the Yugoslavia war and knew [its context and history] well. [Her] lies and distortions were appalling. She knew better. She understood the situation. She chose to lie for the elites. She is interesting to look at but completely false." --Silvija Sea, independent journalist and blogger

In fact, in a quick review today of Israel's online newspaper Haaretz, one can easily discern that officials in the Netanyahu regime are strongly supportive of Mubarak, especially given his role in providing a balancing influence in the Middle East against other, more stridently Islamist regimes of which Israel is wary, such as that of their arch-nemesis, Iran. Israel has depended upon the Egyptian dictator to enforce the blockade of Gaza from the Sinai, as well as provide security for the Suez Canal, with special rights of access provided to Israel and the nations of NATO. If Egypt undergoes a successful revolution, her role in relation to Israel may change drastically; and Israel seems committed to preventing any lapse or cancellation of their security treaty with Egypt. As a stop-gap measure, Netanyahu is encouraging Western nations and their decidedly pro-Zionist media to mitigate any criticism of Mubarak that might have the potential to encourage international opposition to his regime. Hence, the formidable Israeli propaganda machine will be up and running with a full head of steam.

Earlier this week, in a cynical attempt at appeasement, President Mubarak announced the appointment of a new vice president, former intelligence chief Omar Suleiman. Suleiman is known to members of the American national security state as the official who organized the structure and facilities in Egypt for the CIA's controversial torture and extraordinary rendition program.

Today, Mubarak fired his interior minister, head of security forces, General Habib Ibrahim El Adly, scapegoating him for the violence used by the military to oppress the demonstrations. He then appointed retired police general, Mahmoud Wagdi as El Adly's replacement. Immediately, Wagdi announced the military's familial ties to the Egyptian people on state TV.

Maj. Gen. David H. Petraeus

But this is only a change in strategy. It represents the philosophy of Gen. David Petraeus' tactics in counterinsurgency warfare, the first objective of which is to win the hearts and minds of the people. Although civilian-friendly in design, given Mubarak's involvement in it's deployment, the counterinsurgency strategy has the potential to become nefariously Machiavellian in the hands of defenders of the status quo.

Concurrent with the new counterinsurgency role of the military as "protector of the people," the tactic now is to identify the "enemy". More than likely that will be the Muslim Brotherhood. But if Egypt's 2005 Nobel laureate Mohamed Mustafa ElBaradei's popularity continues to grow, Mubarak may have a real problem; that is, unless they can reel him in, a fait accompli that is unlikely.

Assuming that Mubarak is determined to suppress the revolution at all costs, the life of ElBaradei is in danger. Undoubtedly, the prosecution of such a scheme will come in the form of a false-flag, blaming the Muslim Brotherhood or some other group that is currently challenging the regime. But the risks of such a covert operation to the Mubarak regime are obvious. Its repercussions could include a level of anti-government violence that strains the imagination. "Anger in Egypt" could turn into rage and mayhem.

If the Egyptian people continue to protest through a general strike and demonstrations in the nation's major cities; and if in the event the people do not accept the scapegoats they offer if/when ElBaradei is assassinated -- even if the "conspirators" are delivered over to the mob for immediate execution -- it is a safe bet that we will see the military revert to violence.

Violence is written into the foundations of all government, no matter what form they take. After all, the Egyptian military is controlled by Mubarak.

Count Lyev Nikolayevich Tolstoy

If we can trust the insight of Leo Tolstoy, elucidated in his spiritual-ethical classic, The Kingdom of God is Within You, We can generally assume that the problem with revolutions is that they inevitably resort to violence and oppression, often at levels that exceed that of the regimes they replace. For the first goal of any revolutionary government is to secure its newly acquired power and status against all challengers, including the people themselves. The foremost of examples of this phenomenon is the French Revolution of the late 18th century and the Russian Bolshevik Revolution of 1917. Indeed, Tolstoy prophesied the totalitarian Russian state even before the turn of the century.

Following Tolstoy's thinking, we can further assume that the "revolutionary government" will be under extreme pressure to produce the expected benefits to the people as quickly as possible, including the availability of affordable food, gas, housing, energy, jobs; i.e., prosperity.

In short, the success of the new government in rising from the ashes of revolution will ironically depend on its ability to establish a viable normalcy and national standard of living that is beyond its ability to deliver without succumbing to the temptations of international oligarchs and their banks, all of whom can be trusted to run with what they know: corporatocracy. We can also expect that an incipient form of Islamism will emerge as a competing force.

Nevertheless, we should not expect Egypt, more modern in many respects than other Mid-Eastern nations, to be the exception to Tolstoy's rule, given the many factions that will be vying for power if and when Mubarak abdicates.

If the Egyptian people come to enjoy a renewed social power and status free from oppression, the more violent extremes of competing forms of government can be mitigated by a temperance unmatched by the history of Western European revolutions of which Tolstoy wrote. As many outside observers have recently opined, Middle Eastern culture is not Western European culture.

But the danger of revolution remains:

~+~

British Intelligence Report: Mossad Ran 9/11 Arab "Hijacker" Terrorist Operation

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Tue, 25 Jan 2011 08:06:00 +0000

Wayne Madsen Report; January 24, 2011
SPECIAL REPORT

British intelligence report: Mossad ran 9/11 Arab "hijacker" terrorist operation

British intelligence reported in February 2002 that the Israeli Mossad ran the Arab hijacker cells that were later blamed by the U.S. government's 9/11 Commission for carrying out the aerial attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon. WMR has received details of the British intelligence report, which, was suppressed by the government of then-Prime Minister Tony Blair.

A Mossad unit consisting of six Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jews infiltrated "Al Qaeda" cells in Hamburg (the Atta-Mamoun Darkanzali cell), south Florida, and Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates in the months before 9/11. The Mossad not only infiltrated cells but began to run them and give them specific orders that would eventually culminate in their being on board four regularly-scheduled flights originating in Boston, Washington Dulles, and Newark, New Jersey on 9/11.

The Mossad infiltration team comprised six Israelis, comprising two cells of three agents, who all received special training at a Mossad base in the Negev Desert in their future control and handling of the "Al Qaeda" cells. One Mossad cell traveled to Amsterdam whereb they submitted to the operational control of the Mossad's Europe Station, which operates from the El Al complex at Schiphol International Airport. The three-man Mossad unit then traveled to Hamburg where it made contact with Mohammed Atta, who believed they were sent by Osama Bin Laden. In fact, they were sent by Ephraim Halevy, the chief of Mossad.

The second three-man Mossad team flew to New York and then to southern Florida where they began to direct the "Al Qaeda" cells operating from Hollywood, Miami, Vero Beach, Delray Beach, and West Palm Beach. Israeli "art students," already under investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration for casing the offices and homes of federal law enforcement officers, had been living among and conducting surveillance of the activities, including flight school training, of the future Arab "hijacker" cells, particularly in Hollywood and Vero Beach.

In August 2001, the first Mossad team flew with Atta and other Hamburg "Al Qaeda" members to Boston.

Logan International Airport's security was contracted to Huntleigh USA, a firm owned by an Israeli airport security firm closely connected to Mossad -- International Consultants on Targeted Security - ICTS. ICTS's owners were politically connected to the Likud Party, particularly the Netanyahu faction and then-Jerusalem mayor and future Prime Minister Ehud Olmert. It was Olmert who personally interceded with New York Mayor Rudolph Giuliani to have released from prison five Urban Moving Systems employees, identified by the CIA and FBI agents as Mossad agents. The Israelis were the only suspects arrested anywhere in the United States on 9/11 who were thought to have been involved in the 9/11 attacks.

The two Mossad teams sent regular coded reports on the progress of the 9/11 operation to Tel Aviv via the Israeli embassy in Washington, DC. WMR has learned from a Pentagon source that leading Americans tied to the media effort to pin 9/11 on Arab hijackers, Osama Bin Laden, and the Taliban were present in the Israeli embassy on September 10, 2001, to coordinate their media blitz for the subsequent days and weeks following the attacks. It is more than likely that FBI counter-intelligence agents who conduct surveillance of the Israeli embassy have proof on the presence of the Americans present at the embassy on September 10. Some of the Americans are well-known to U.S. cable news television audiences.

In mid-August, the Mossad team running the Hamburg cell in Boston reported to Tel Aviv that the final plans for 9/11 were set. The Florida-based Mossad cell reported that the documented "presence" of the Arab cell members at Florida flight schools had been established.

The two Mossad cells studiously avoided any mention of the World Trade Center or targets in Washington, DC in their coded messages to Tel Aviv. Halevy covered his tracks by reporting to the CIA of a "general threat" by an attack by Arab terrorists on a nuclear plant somewhere on the East Coast of the United States. CIA director George Tenet dismissed the Halevy warning as "too non-specific." The FBI, under soon-to-be-departed director Louis Freeh, received the "non-specific" warning about an attack on a nuclear power plant and sent out the information in its routine bulletins to field agents but no high alert was ordered.

The lack of a paper trail pointing to "Al Qaeda" as the masterminds on 9/11, which could then be linked to Al Qaeda's Mossad handlers, threw off the FBI. On April 19, 2002, FBI director Robert Mueller, in a speech to San Francisco's Commonwealth Club, stated: "In our investigation, we have not uncovered a single piece of paper -- either here in the United States, or in the treasure trove of information that has turned up in Afghanistan and elsewhere -- that mentioned any aspect of the September 11 plot."

The two Mossad "Al Qaeda" infiltration and control teams had also helped set up safe houses for the quick exfiltration of Mossad agents from the United States. Last March, WMR reported: "WMR has learned from two El Al sources who worked for the Israeli airline at New York’s John F. Kennedy airport that on 9/11, hours after the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) grounded all civilian domestic and international incoming and outgoing flights to and from the United States, a full El Al Boeing 747 took off from JFK bound for Tel Aviv’s Ben Gurion International Airport. The two El Al employee sources are not Israeli nationals but legal immigrants from Ecuador who were working in the United States for the airline. The flight departed JFK at 4:11 pm and its departure was, according to the El Al sources, authorized by the direct intervention of the U.S. Department of Defense. U.S. military officials were on the scene at JFK and were personally involved with the airport and air traffic control authorities to clear the flight for take-off. According to the 9/11 Commission report, Transportation Secretary Norman Mineta ordered all civilian flights to be grounded at 9:45 am on September 11." WMR has learned from British intelligence sources that the six-man Mossad team was listed on the El Al flight manifest as El Al employees.

WMR previously reported that the Mossad cell operating in the Jersey City-Weehawken area of New Jersey through Urban Moving Systems was suspected by some in the FBI and CIA of being involved in moving explosives into the World Trade Center as well as staging "false flag" demonstrations at at least two locations in north Jersey: Liberty State Park and an apartment complex in Jersey City as the first plane hit the World Trade Center's North Tower. One team of Urban Moving Systems Mossad agents was arrested later on September 11 and jailed for five months at the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn. Some of their names turned up in a joint CIA-FBI database as known Mossad agents, along with the owner of Urban Moving Systems, Dominik Suter, whose name also appeared on a "Law Enforcement Sensitive" FBI 9/11 suspects list, along with the names of key "hijackers," including Mohammed Atta and Hani Hanjour, as well as the so-called "20th hijacker," Zacarias Moussaoui.

Suter was allowed to escape the United States after the FBI made initial contact with him at the Urban Moving Systems warehouse in Weehawken, New Jersey, following the 9/11 attacks. Suter was later permitted to return to the United States where he was involved in the aircraft parts supply business in southern Florida, according to an informe3d source who contacted WMR. Suter later filed for bankruptcy in Florida for Urban Moving Systems and other businesses he operated: Suburban Moving & Storage Inc.; Max Movers, Inc.; Invsupport; Woodflooring Warehouse Corp.; One Stop Cleaning LLC; and City Carpet Upholstery, Inc. At the time of the bankruptcy filing in Florida, Suter listed his address as 1867 Fox Court, Wellington, FL 33414, with a phone number of 561 204-2359.

From the list of creditors it can be determined that Suter had been operating in the United States since 1993, the year of the first attack on the World Trade Center. In 1993, Suter began racking up American Express credit card charges totaling $21,913.97. Suter also maintained credit card accounts with HSBC Bank and Orchard Bank c/o HSBC Card Services of Salinas, California, among other banks. Suter also did business with the Jewish Community Center of Greater Palm Beach in Florida and Ryder Trucks in Miami. Miami and southern Florida were major operating areas for cells of Israeli Mossad agents masquerading as "art students," who were living and working near some of the identified future Arab "hijackers" in the months preceding 9/11.

ABC's 20/20 correspondent John Miller ensured that the Israeli connection to "Al Qaeda's" Arab hijackers was buried in an "investigation" of the movers' activities on 9/11. Anchor Barbara Walters helped Miller in putting a lid on the story about the movers and Suter aired on June 21, 2002. Miller then went on to become the FBI public affairs spokesman to ensure that Mueller and other FBI officials kept to the "Al Qaeda" script as determined by the Bush administration and the future 9/11 Commission. But former CIA chief of counter-terrorism Vince Cannistraro let slip to ABC an important clue to the operations of the Mossad movers in New Jersey when he stated that the Mossad agents "set up or exploited for the purpose of launching an intelligence operation against radical Islamists in the area, particularly in the New Jersey-New York area." The "intelligence operation" turned out to have been the actual 9/11 attacks. And it was no coincidence that it was ABC's John Miller who conducted a May 1998 rare interview of Osama Bin Laden at his camp in Afghanistan. Bin Laden played his part well for future scenes in the fictional "made-for-TV" drama known as 9/11.

WMR has also learned from Italian intelligence sources that Mossad's running of "Al Qaeda" operatives did not end with running the "hijacking" teams in the United States and Hamburg. Other Arab "Al Qaeda" operatives, run by Mossad, were infiltrated into Syria but arrested by Syrian intelligence. Syria was unsuccessful in turning them to participate in intelligence operations in Lebanon. Detailed information on Bin Laden's support team was offered to the Bush administration, up to days prior to 9/11, by Gutbi al-Mahdi, the head of the Sudanese Mukhabarat intelligence service. The intelligence was rejected by the Biush White House. It was later reported that Sudanese members of "Al Qaeda's" support network were double agents for Mossad who had also established close contacts with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh and operated in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, and Eritrea, as well as Sudan. The Mossad connection to Al Qaeda in Sudan was likely known by the Sudanese Mukhabarat, a reason for the rejection of its intelligence on "Al Qaeda" by the thoroughly-Mossad penetrated Bush White House. Yemen had also identified "Al Qaeda" members who were also Mossad agents. A former chief of Mossad revealed to this editor in 2002 that Yemeni-born Mossad "deep insertion" commandos spotted Bin Laden in the Hadhramaut region of eastern Yemen after his escape from Tora Bora in Afghanistan, following the U.S. invasion.

French intelligence determined that other Egyptian- and Yemeni-born Jewish Mossad agents were infiltrated into Sharjah in the United Arab Emirates as radical members of the Muslim Brotherhood. However, the "Muslim Brotherhood" agents actually were involved in providing covert Israeli funding for "Al Qaeda" activities. On February 21, 2006, WMR reported on the U.S. Treasury Secretary's firing by President Bush over information discovered on the shady "Al Qaeda" accounts in the United Arab Emirates: "Banking insiders in Dubai report that in March 2002, U.S. Secretary of Treasury Paul O’Neill visited Dubai and asked for documents on a $109,500 money transfer from Dubai to a joint account held by hijackers Mohammed Atta and Marwan al Shehhi at Sun Trust Bank in Florida. O’Neill also asked UAE authorities to close down accounts used by Al Qaeda . . . . The UAE complained about O’Neill’s demands to the Bush administration. O’Neill’s pressure on the UAE and Saudis contributed to Bush firing him as Treasury Secretary in December 2002 " O'Neill may have also stumbled on the "Muslim Brotherhood" Mossad operatives operating in the emirates who were directing funds to "Al Qaeda."

After the collapse of the Soviet Union and the rise to power of the Taliban in Afghanistan, Sharjah's ruler, Sultan bin Mohammed al-Qasimi, who survived a palace coup attempt in 1987, opened his potentate to Russian businessmen like Viktor Bout, as well as to financiers of radical Muslim groups, including the Taliban and "Al Qaeda."

Moreover, this Israeli support for "Al Qaeda" was fully known to Saudi intelligence, which approved of it in order to avoid compromising Riyadh. The joint Israeli-Saudi support for "Al Qaeda" was well-known to the Sharjah and Ras al Khaimah-based aviation network of the now-imprisoned Russian, Viktor Bout, jailed in New York on terrorism charges. The presence of Bout in New York, a hotbed of Israeli intelligence control of U.S. federal prosecutors, judges, as well as the news media, is no accident: Bout knows enough about the Mossad activities in Sharjah in support of the Taliban and Al Qaeda in Afghanistan, where Bout also had aviation and logistics contracts, to expose Mossad as the actual mastermind behind 9/11. Bout's aviation empire also extended to Miami and Dallas, two areas that were nexuses for the Mossad control operations for the "Al Qaeda" flight training operations of the Arab cell members in the months prior to 9/11.

Bout's path also crossed with "Al Qaeda's" support network at the same bank in Sharjah, HSBC. Mossad's phony Muslim Brotherhood members from Egypt and Yemen controlled financing for "Al Qaeda" through the HSBC accounts in Sharjah. Mossad's Dominik Suter also dealt with HSBC in the United States. The FBI's chief counter-terrorism agent investigating Al Qaeda, John O'Neill, became aware of the "unique" funding mechanisms for Al Qaeda. It was no mistake that O'Neill was given the job as director of security for the World Trade Center on the eve of the attack. O'Neill perished in the collapse of the complex.

Mossad uses a number of Jews born in Arab countries to masquerade as Arabs. They often carry forged or stolen passports from Arab countries or nations in Europe that have large Arab immigrant populations, particularly Germany, France, Britain, Denmark, Sweden, and the Netherlands.

For Mossad, the successful 9/11 terrorist "false flag" operation was a success beyond expectations. The Bush administration, backed by the Blair government, attacked and occupied Iraq, deposing Saddam Hussein, and turned up pressure on Israel's other adversaries, including Iran, Syria, Pakistan, Hamas, and Lebanese Hezbollah. The Israelis also saw the U.S., Britain, and the UN begin to crack down on the Lebanese Shi'a diamond business in Democratic Republic of Congo and West Africa, and with it, the logistics support provided by Bout's aviation companies, which resulted in a free hand for Tel Aviv to move in on Lebanese diamond deals in central and west Africa.

Then-Israeli Finance Minister Binyamin Netanyahu commented on the 9/11 attacks on U.S. television shortly after they occurred. Netanyahu said: "It is very good!" It now appears that Netanyahu, in his zeal, blew Mossad's cover as the masterminds of 9/11.

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UPDATE: Wayne Madsen Report

January 25, 2011 -- Was Atta an agent for the Israelis? Reliable sources believe he was.

Following yesterday's WMR special report on the 9/11 "hijacking" cells being run by the Israeli Mossad intelligence agency, we have been contacted by reliable sources who have evidence that "lead hijacker" Mohamed Atta and his cohort, Ziad Jarreh, may have been Mossad agents or double agents. There is also no actual proof that any of the "hijacking" teams ever made it aboard any of the four flights on 9/11. Autopsies of bodies discovered at the Pentagon yielded no Arab identities and there were no Arab names on any of the flight manifests.

In September 2009, WMR reported: "Last year, two Lebanese brothers — Ali Jarreh and Youssef Jarreh — were arrested by Lebanese authorities who linked the pair to an espionage cell responsible for the car bombing assassination of Hezbollah military commander Imad Mughniyeh in Damascus in February 2008. The Jarrah’s were found by the Lebanese Army in possession of 'communication devices and other sophisticated equipment.' The Jarrahs arrested by the Lebanese had been recruited by the Mossad in the 1980s when Israel occupied a large section of Lebanon. And for a Paul Harvey-like “rest of the story,” they are related to Ziad Jarreh, the man who was said to have been a close associate and fellow hijacking planner of Mohamed Atta and whose American visa was found with photo and visa number largely intact in a field in Pennsylvania on 9/11."

WMR has also been informed by a Joint Terrorism Task Force source stationed in New York in 2001 that Atta lived in Fort Lee, New Jersey in August 2001 and was protected by Israeli "art students" who lived close to Atta in Fort Lee. The art students, identified as Mossad agents by the FBI and CIA, lived in Fort Lee from June to September 2001.

Atta maintained high-level contacts in Saudi intelligence and Pakistan's Inter Service Intelligence (ISI), giving the Mossad plausible deniability of any relationship with Atta. FBI teams were denied access to the passenger manifest of the El Al plane that exfiltrated scores of Mossad agents from New York's JFK airport to Tel Aviv in the afternoon of 9/11. There is reason by some FBI agents to believe that "Mohamed Atta" was among the passengers on the El Al escape flight.

Were President Barack Obama and Chief-of-Staff Rahm Emanuel Members of a Chicago Gay Bathhouse?

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Sat, 19 Jun 2010 22:26:00 +0000

Rod Blagojevick

The opposition is just getting warmed up:

Remember how I told you guys that the story of Obama's and Rahm Emanuel's secret lives of acting-out is getting leaked to journalists in Chicago where former Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevick is on trial for corruption?

Well, it seems that The Blag wants all 500 hours of those notoriously incriminating phone conversations he had with Rahm Emanuel, only parts of which were used as evidence to bring charges against him, to be presented to the jury. The word is that, in addition to their negotiations over Obama's former Senate seat, Emanuel mentioned several times in these "private conversations" that.... well, you know.

Apparently, members of the inner circles of Chicago politics were all familiar with each other's private lives. Still, the Blag is playing with fire. The judge assigned to the case, U.S. District Court judge James Zagel, is resisting the use of all the recorded materials, as requested by Blagojevich's defense attorney last week. Subsequently, accusations of corruption seem to be multiplying with fingers pointing in every direction -- judge, prosecutor, defendant, Chicago political machine, et.all.. In Chicago, where corruption is the game and politic's the name, pointing an accusatory finger in any direction will score.

There are rumors as well that three gay men who were prominent in Chicago's gay social salons were murdered and that there may be a connection through a dating service that was used by Obama and Emanuel. All were members of "Man's Country Chicago," an exclusive club and bathhouse that caters to gay men, the same private club to which Emanuel and Obama secretly belonged. One of the victims, Donald Young, is said to have been Obama's former Chicago playmate on "the down low."

Already, people are jumping the gun to connect the dots. So far, there is no evidence whatsoever that Obama and Emanuel, or any of their sponsors or associates, put out a contract on these people. It just looks suspicious to people who survived the Bush/Cheney/Rove years only to be confronted with a "change" they can't fucking believe.

According to investigative journalist Wayne Madsen, Obama's church helped to facilitate his life on the down low:

WMR spoke to several well-placed sources in Chicago who reported that Jeremiah Wright, the pastor of Obama’s former church of 20 years, Trinity United Church of Christ (TUCC) on Chicago’s south side, ran what was essentially a matchmaking service for gay married black professional members of the church, including lawyers and businessmen, particularly those with children. The matchmaking club was called the “Down Low Club” but references to it over the phone and email simply referred to the group with the code phrase “DLC.” The ruse, according to our sources, was to make anyone who was eavesdropping on the communications believe that the references were to the Democratic Leadership Council, also known as the DLC.

The gay DLC’s services were intended to keep ensure TUCC’s gay members avoided posting solicitations on web services like Craig’s List and refrain from cruising gay bars. The strategy was to protect them from getting busted and being “outed.”

Among the members of the gay “DLC” were Obama and TUCC’s choir director, Donald Young, an openly gay man who reportedly had a sexual relationship with Obama. Two other gay members of the church were Larry Bland and Nate Spencer. Young and Bland were brutally murdered, execution style, in late 2007. Bland was murdered on November 17, 2007 and Young on December 24, 2007. The latter was killed by multiple gunshot wounds. Spencer reportedly died on December 26, 2007, official cause of death: “septicemia, pneumonia, and HIV.”

“DLC” members often went on camping trips arranged by TUCC. Wright reportedly was the head of the “DLC” matchmaking services and ensured that its members protected each other.

The “DLC’s” clientele included Obama and other gay members of TUCC, including, reportedly Young, Bland, and Spencer. Fox 32 Chicago reported that Bland’s mother, Josephine Bland, was so upset at her son inviting men into their home as a result of contacting them through gay web sites like “Adam4Adam,” she moved out.

The gay community in Chicago knows to keep away from the TUCC and “DLC” stories because of the “creepiness” of the operation and the suspicious deaths of the three TUCC gay black men.

Although Obama protected his alternate life style through the secretiveness of the “DLC,” he was not so careful when he proclaimed he was a state senator while frolicking at Man’s Country in uptown Chicago.

Rahm Emanuel

You'll never make me believe that Obama would have someone murdered just because they knew he liked to get blow-jobs, but I wouldn't put it past Rahm Emanuel. Surely Emanuel's proclivities for the "sugar daddy" role, if true, sometimes placed him in compromising positions (forgive the pun), particularly if his partners were under the legal age of consent.

Poppy Bush, if you recall, was dogged by the same rumors coming out of the Franklin Scandal.

All this talk of murder is pure speculation associated with leaks springing from the Blagojevich trial. If The Blag is the actual source, despite that once the story broke members of the Chicago gay community started to pile on, it appears that it may be an attempt to blackmail Emanuel into pulling federal prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald off his back. (Okay, so that one was a really bad one.)

Emanuel's relationship with Blagojevich is one that involves personal enmity, and because of Obama's central role in their relationship it threatens to pull Obama into the mud with them. Already, the Blag's lawyers have talked about subpoenaing him to testify. Recall as well that it was Emanuel who fingered The Blag. (Sorry, just couldn't help that one.) But there's more.

Last week, the U.S. media reported that a B.P. adviser allowed Rahm Emanuel gratis use of one of her Washington D.C. condominium apartments. But the mainstream media left out the hottest part of the story: Sugar Daddy Emanuel has been using it for gay trysts. Or so Congressional staffers are saying.

It's all still hush hush. After all, no one but a Republican snake-in-the-grass would make political use out of such homophobic-charged accusations.... unless someone is concerned that Obama is getting blackmailed and manipulated by the Israeli government through its Mossad intelligence agency.

Jan Schakowsky

Indeed, "honey tra ps" are a Mossad specialty and they've been known to provide such apartments through the agency of their "friends." Oh, and surprise, surprise, the apartments come rigged with hidden video cameras. Just ask Illinois Representative Jan Schakowsky, who, thanks to the Mossad, we now know is bisexual (zzzzzzzz). They've got it all on tape and attempted to use it to win her vote on key issues involving Israel and their (then) partner in Central Asian black operations, Turkey [cf. Sibel Edmonds' story]. Even though Schakowsky has admitted to being bisexual, she continues to deny the blackmail allegations. Edmonds has challenged her to come out with it. The story was published by the American Conservative Magazine.

I just can't see Obama and Emanuel (and reportedly Trent Lott and Bill Frist) following Schakowsky's lead by simply admitting their walk on the wild side. Besides, if Michelle finds out that her husband is getting blown by his personal trainer Reggie Love -- as the Chicago leaks proclaim -- he will not only have the First Lady to deal with; but also, he will have to suffer the outrage of Progressives when they suddenly realize that the President is a "tea bagger". I mean a real tea bagger, not just some jerk carrying his picture defaced in the image of The Joker (forgive the humor; couldn't pass on it). And this, to say nothing of the "family values party," who would like nothing better than to revenge the loss of a third of their party to scandal. (Those silly Republicans seem more worried about presidents getting blow jobs than the 1.3 million civilians who died in Iraq so the Neocons could get their war on.) And when the DINOs find out he's been playing on the down low, it will be "turn out the lights, the party's over."

All the while, the lights keep getting dimmer:

The Chicago leaks are now being picked up by the foreign press (the American media is always last to report because they're suck-ups to the corporatist power structure in D.C. and don't want to offend TPTB). The reporting outlet, The Globe, is England's National Inquirer. Still, even they get it right sometimes, just as the National Inquirer got it right when they broke the story of John Edwards' infidelity.

If SNL's Church Lady were still in the pulpit feigning indignant righteousness at the questionable morals of public officials, I'm sure she'd pick up on this story. I can just imagine her confronting Rahm Emanuel about that apartment, "Well now, isn't that conveeeenient?"

Y'all brace yourselves for a thrilling election year in 2012. First Obama's a foreigner, then he's a Muslim, then he's a socialist and now, even as we wait breathlessly for the 2012 presidential elections, he's a ..... no! Don't even speak its name....

It goes without saying, the shit is about to hit the fan; that is of course, unless AIPAC "has its way with Obama." If this is all true, I pray that Obama has the nerve to tell them all where to go -- to Wichita where they can join the Westboro Baptist Church.

~*~

The Unbelivable Duplicity of "Grass Roots" Anti-Health Care Reform "Movement"

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Wed, 12 Aug 2009 23:40:00 +0000

Visit msnbc.com for Breaking News, World News, and News about the Economy

August 10, 2009 -- SPECIAL REPORT. "The Congresswoman and the Turkish Lobby sexual blackmail ring" - Wayne Madsen

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Sun, 09 Aug 2009 23:25:00 +0000

The following is an updated special report by Wayne Madsen, published here with his permission, on the deposition given by Sibel Edmonds in Washington D.C. yesterday (August 8, 2009). His original story follows this update.

[WMR is publishing its 10 August issue a day earlier because of the breaking nature over the weekend of the story involving the American Turkish Council blackmail of Rep. Jan Schakowsky, a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence].

WMR previously reported that Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a close ally of President Barack Obama and his chief of staff, former Representative Rahm Emanuel, who, like Schakowsky, represented a Chicago district, was sexually blackmailed by a lesbian prostitute who worked for the American Turkish Council (ATC).

The ATC and its affiliated Turkish government lobbying organizations were cited by former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds in her deposition in an Ohio Election Commission complaint filed by Representative Jean Schmidt (R-OH) against her 2008 opponent, David Krikorian, over statements by Krikorian that Schmidt received financial support from the Turkish lobby in the United States. Edmonds was subpoenaed for a deposition in the case in support of Krikorian's allegations that the Turkish Lobby has wielded tremendous influence over U.S. policymakers like Schmidt in Congress. After raising objections to Edmonds's testimony, pursuant to a state secret gag order imposed by then-Attorney General John Ashcroft, neither the Justice Department nor the FBI moved to block Edmonds's statements at her deposition on August 8 in Washington, DC.

WMR has received additional confirmation from a high-level Congressional source that Schakowsky regularly engaged in a lesbian sexual tryst at a Washington DC townhouse with a female employee of the ATC. WMR previously reported that law enforcement sources told us that the tryst location was bugged by a Turkish surveillance team that recorded the encounters. The recordings were later used to blackmail Schakowsky into backing away from supporting Armenian genocide resolution initiatives in the House. The surveillance operation was so complex, a second surveillance team monitored the primary team to ensure the bugging devices were properly installed before what the FBI called the "hooking process" commenced.

WMR has obtained from a law enforcement source the first name of the ATC employee but we are withholding it from release to protect the privacy of someone who may have been forced into the prostitution situation by Turkish intelligence officers.

WMR has been informed that another Democratic member of the House was contacted in 2006 by a controversial web journalist who ostensibly represents the "progressive" community and who is a competitor of WMR. The journalist inquired as to whether the member had heard anything about Schakowsky having a lesbian affair with a possible foreign intelligence operative. The member replied no but would ask Schakowsky in private about it during their next meeting. The member met with Schakowsky in the Chicago Democrat's House office and stated: "Jan, you know sometimes that in our position we are often put into the position of doing things that we normally would not do."

Upon hearing that, Schakowsky appeared to understand what was being intimated and she threw her head back and became very upset. Schakowsky then replied that she did not care about the situation because she was "getting in good with the leadership." At the time, Dennis Hastert, who was also alleged to have received bribes from the Turkish Lobby, was Speaker of the House.

The latest information received by WMR appears to indicate that Hastert was well aware of the sexual blackmail by Turkish intelligence agents being used against Schakowsky and that he approved of it.

The House member who was contacted by the journalist later told the journalist that Schakowsky had been contacted and that "she seemed to understand the issue and was quite upset about it," adding she "tried to get in with the leadership." The journalist, who is supportive of Israeli policies, never revealed Schakowsky's name but appeared to be involved in a fishing expedition to see what other members of the House knew about Schakowsky's situation at the time.

The member was appalled at Schakowsky's explanation because the member considered her to be a "soul mate" on issues ranging from opposition to the Iraq war -- Schakowsky had opposed the Iraq War Resolution -- to private military contractors and U.S. Israeli policy. Schakowsky was a founding member of the Out-of-Iraq Caucus.

The member stated that after the encounter over the "lesbian" issue, Schakowsky
"went quiet" on all her signature issues, including her vocal opposition to the role of private military contractors, adding that she became very hawkish in support of Israel.

The member felt that Schakowsky was "set up" by the Turkish Lobby, working in concert with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), to "control her." The member also said that Schakowsky noticeably "backed off" many issues, including the role of private military companies.

In January 2007, after the Democrats captured the House, Speaker Nancy Pelosi appointed Schakowsky to be a member of the House Select Committee on Intelligence. Currently, Schakowsky is chair of the House Select Committee on Intelligence's Subcommittee on Oversight and Investigations -- which puts her in a conflict-of-interest in investigating Turkish and related Israeli intelligence penetration of the FBI and State Department, as stated under oath by Edmonds, and the paying of bribes by Turkish government interests to current and former members of Congress.

WMR has also learned from congressional sources that Illinois Governor Rod Blagojevich was aware of Schakowsky's "problems" and that he resisted pressure from Obama and Emanuel to appoint Schakowsky to Obama's vacant Senate seat. When Blagojevich signaled he was going to appoint someone other than Schakowsky to the seat, the joint Israeli and Turkish lobbies, in addition to Emanuel, arranged for U.S. Attorney for Northern Illinois Patrick Fitzgerald to receive a green light to arrest Blagojevich even before any federal corruption indictments were handed down by a grand jury. Blagojevich was later impeached by the Illinois House and removed from office by the state senate. An indictment on multiple counts was later handed down by a federal grand jury.

WMR has previously reported that Fitzgerald dragged his feet on the investigation of the leak by the Bush White House of the covert identities of CIA officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates cover firm. Fitzgerald, WMR is told, was trying to limit damaging exposure to the nuclear smuggling operation that involved the Turkish and Israeli Lobbies and Turkish MIT and Israeli Mossad intelligence operations. Mrs. Wilson and her team were apparently narrowing in on the Turks and Israelis in nuclear smuggling around the world. The key U.S. government players in outing Brewster Jennings were named by Edmonds in her deposition.

August 10, 2009 -- SPECIAL REPORT. The Congresswoman and the Turkish Lobby sexual blackmail ring - Wayne Madsen Report (9 August 2009)

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20090809

http://snipurl.com/pjaiv

Original Story Published on WMR on 08/09/09:

August 8-9, 2009 -- BREAKING NEWS. SPECIAL REPORT. Turkish government blackmailed sitting member of House of Representatives

Ohio Election Commission officials and lawyers representing Ohio Democratic House of Representatives candidate David Krikorian and incumbent Ohio Republican Representative Jean Schmidt heard testimony Saturday morning and afternoon from former FBI Turkish and Farsi translator Sibel Edmonds in a case brought against Krikorian by incumbent Republican Representative Jean Schmidt. Schmidt alleges in her complaint to the commission that Krikorian made "false statements" in his 2008 independent race against Schmidt. The commission subpoenaed Edmonds in the case, Schmidt v. Krikorian and the deposition was held at the offices of the National Whistleblowers Legal Defense and Education Fund in Georgetown, Washington, DC.

According to sources attending the deposition, Edmonds testified that while she was working as a translator for the FBI she was aware of bribes being made by the Turkish government to elected and former members of Congress, as well as senior officials of the executive branch, including the Department of State.

The Eric Holder Justice Department attempted to block Edmonds's testimony and said it considered the subpoenaed testimony by the Ohio Election Commission to be void since it was conducted in the District of Columbia and not Ohio. However, no Justice Department or FBI representatives attended the deposition by Edmonds as had been previously expected. Edmonds has been blocked from revealing the nature of the Turkish espionage and bribery ring by a State Secret gag order that was imposed by Attorney General John Ashcroft. There is uncertainty as to whether the Holder Justice Department will block release of Edmonds's testimony transcript and video.

After Edmonds was fired from her FBI job after she complained to her superiors about Turkish intelligence infiltration of the translation branch of the bureau, she was exonerated in a report by the FBI's Inspector General. Her allegations were also supported by senior members of the U.S. Senate.

Edmonds's testimony under oath revealed that the American Turkish Council (ATC), which has been cited by a number of informed observers as a sister organization of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC), paid bribes to a number of members of the House of Representatives in return for opposing the Armenian genocide resolution as well as providing other legislative assistance to Turkish special interests. Other Turkish organization in the United States named in the bribery scandal is the Assembly of Turkish American Assoiactions (ATAA).

WMR has learned that attorneys for Schmidt objected to most of Edmonds's statements.

Named as recipients of Turkish government bribes are, in addition to Schmidt, former House Speakers Dennis Hastert (R-IL), Dick Gephardt (D-MO), and brief House Speaker Robert Livingston (R-LA), as well as Representative Dan Burton (R-IN) and former Representative Stephen Solarz (D-NY). Also named are Brent Scowcroft, former National Security Adviser under George H. W. Bush and Gerald Ford and former George W. Bush State Department Political Undersecretary Marc Grossman.

Edmonds's testimony also dealt with the involvement of the Rand Corporation with the Turkish espionage and bribery operations in the United States. Edmonds's testimony also dealt with Turkish and Israeli joint operations to engage in smuggling nuclear technology from the United States. In particular, the Turkish espionage and influence-peddling ring was heavily involved in the Bush White House "outing" the covert identities of CIA counterproliferation officer Valerie Plame Wilson and her Brewster Jennings & Associates non-official CIA cover firm. WMR has learned from another informed source that the nuclear smuggling operations also involved Israel PhD students at American universities and research firms.

The Turkish operations also involved the U.S. corporate media, which was pressured by the Turkish organizations not to cover the Armenian genocide issue.

Krikorian, in a statement during a break in the deposition, said that based on what he heard, such criminality "should not be tolerated in the land of the free and home of the brave," adding that what he heard constitutes "high crimes against the U.S. government."

Perhaps the most explosive part of the deposition involved the Turkish government being engaged in a sexual blackmail operation against a sitting member of the House of Representative. In what the FBI termed a "hooking process," an ATC female operative enticed a female member of the House into a lesbian sexual encounter at a Washington, DC townhouse. A Turkish intelligence surveillance team had placed surveillance bugs throughout the townhouse, including the bedroom and captured the lesbian tryst on tape, according to Edmonds's testimony. To ensure the surveillance team successfully completed its technical surveillance operation, another Turkish operational team was present outside the townhouse to make sure the surveillance team carried out its task.

After the surveillance recordings were made known to the House member, she changed her support for the Armenian genocide resolution and announced her opposition to it.

The identity of the House member in question was not revealed during the deposition by Edmonds. However, WMR has learned from another informed source that it is Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), a strong supporter of AIPAC and Israel and a close political ally of President Obama and his chief of staff Rahm Emanuel.

The first sexual encounter between Schakowsky and the Turkish lesbian prostitute reportedly occurred at a vulnerable time for Schakowsky, just after her mother's death. The first sexual encounter was followed by numerous others, according to U.S. law enforcement sources.

To her credit, Schakowsky has been a vocal opponent of private military contractors and the lack of government oversight of their activities, especially in Latin American and Iraq.

Informed Ohio political sources report that Schmidt's complaint against Krikorian has resulted in unforeseen "blow-back" with the Edmonds testimony and that Schmidt is under significant pressure to drop her complaint against Krikorian lest more damaging information is revealed about members of both the Republican and Democratic parties.

Schakowsky is a Chief Democratic Deputy Whip in the House and a member of the House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. She is married with grown children and was mentioned as a possible replacement to fill Obama's Illinois Senate seat. She has also been mentioned as a possible Senate candidate in 2010 to replace tainted Senator Roland Burris.

The revelations about Schakowsky will not come as good news to Democrats in Illinois, already buffeted by scandals involving indicted and impeached Governor Rod Blagojevich and ethics issues involving Burris, Obama's replacement in the Senate. However, the Turkish bribery scandal is bipartisan with Hastert also implicated in bribe taking.
August 8-9, 2009 -- BREAKING NEWS. SPECIAL REPORT. Turkish government blackmailed sitting member of House of Representatives - Wayne Madsen Report (9 August 2009)

http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/articles/20090808_1

http://snipurl.com/pgeev

Dennis Kucinich: During 2006 Stanford Investigation, SEC Told to "Stand Down" by "Unnamed Federal Agency"

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Sat, 21 Feb 2009 18:51:00 +0000

"As Chairman of the Domestic Policy Subcommitee, I have sent a letter to the SEC asking for documents that relate to [the NY Times] report that they were told to 'stand down' rather than enforce the law against the Stanford Group going back to 2006. If this is true - and this is an official that is quoted - then we have the beginnings here of a massive scandal and we've got to get to the bottom of it," says Congressman Dennis Kucinich on Fox Business.

In fact, all indications are that Allen Stanford [pictured left] has been investing drug cartel money with CIA involvement. The CIA/DEA may have been taxing the Latin American "plazas," investing the "revenues" and using the dividends to fund covert operations. They even may have been raiding the fund, but this is conjecture based upon the CIA's notorious sense of entitlement and longstanding maverick attitude.

As mentioned in the interview, this is all reminiscent of the Iran-Contra Affair and the drug trafficking allowed by then Vice President George H. W. Bush during the Reagan years, a scheme concocted by the Contras themselves in order to fund their right-wing counterrevolution in Nicaragua [cf. Dark Alliance, by Gary Webb].

This same organizational structure has been indicated in the Afghanistan to Turkey opium/heroin pipeline revealed by Sibel Edmonds and Valery Plame, a fact that was suppressed with the cooperation of the mainstream media during the Bush Administration but reported by the Times OnLine in the U.K. Agencies now under the Homeland Security umbrella continue to "tax" the flow of drugs through the "plazas" (choke points like Michoacán, Antigua & Barbuda, the West African narco-state of Guinea-Bissau and other African nations).

From West Africa, drugs are then transported by the Russian-Israeli Mafia -- now partners in the Latin American drug trade -- into Europe, the Middle East and to Maldives before entering Mumbai, India, controlled by former CIA asset, now gangster and drug lord, Dawood Ibrahim.

The transfer point between the Latin American cartels and the Russian-Israeli Mafia is Antigua & Barbuda and other Caribbean Islands where Allen Stanford operates offshore banking activities. He has been accused by the FBI of operating money laundering activities for the drug underworld, but it is now becoming apparent, as Dennis Kucinich is insinuating, that Stanford may have a deeper involvement than that of investment banker, one that involves "deep cover" and perhaps a "taxman" status for which the DEA and CIA have become notorious since the days of Iran-Contra.

That CIA is using their underworld "tax revenues" to invest in stocks and money market funds in order to fund covert operations with the dividends is not outside the realm of the possible. And this may explain why "an unnamed agency" of the federal government stepped in to squelch the investigation of Stanford by the SEC in 2006.

There is much more to this story than has been revealed. Mexican President Felipe Calderón [pictured right] become suspect because of his efforts to eliminate the Gulf Cartel and the Sinaloa Cartel, allowing Michoacán room to breath and to consolidate control of the flow of cocaine from Colombia, Bolivia, Ecuador, Peru and Chili. From Michoacán's Pacific coast, the cocaine is then shipped north to the Sinaloa plaza before transport into the U.S. West Coast region, or it is transported across the narrow isthmus of Mexico for shipment to Antigua and Barbuda for redistribution into the American South, Southeast and Eastern Seaboard. Oil platforms in the Gulf of Mexico, some of which were established by the Bush family owned Zapata offshore oil interests, are used as drop-off points for smaller packages and then delivered by fast boats to points along the American Gulf Coast.

Both northern state cartels, the Tamaulipas (Gulf) and Sinaloa, have been involved in a war for control of the state of Michoacán, Calderón's base of power and home state. In 2006, Calderón received help from Karl Rove in engineering a close election, in which accusations of election fraud still persist.

We commend Representative Dennis Kucinich for his continuing efforts to address corruption in government, a task for which he is getting little support from his peers. Few in Congress have his courage. For that matter, few in Congress enjoy his level of independence from the "power lobbies" that run Washington -- I'll leave it at that.

~*~

Ron Paul's "What If" Speech

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Sat, 14 Feb 2009 20:37:00 +0000

I don't agree with him on domestic policy. I'm a Progressive. But Ron Paul's questions regarding American foreign policy are profoundly insightful.

~*~

ACLU Action Alert; Investigate Reeves County Detention Center in West Texas

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Fri, 13 Feb 2009 19:20:00 +0000

ACTION ALERT: Investigate RCDC

TAKE ACTION: Contact the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice

The first two paragraphs below are supplied by the ACLU to be used in your plea if you choose. The paragraphs that follow [edited] were added by a former employee of The GEO Group, a private prison contractor who has become notorious for abuse and neglect at dozens of its facilities worldwide.

Please help these inmates. They are being exploited, neglected and abused by a corporatist system whose bottom line in profit. Moneys that should be applied to food and medical services, as well as rehabilitative educational programs, are being redirected to the company and county coffers. In the meantime, the human rights of these people (in this case non-violent foreign nationals being held in minimum security until their time is served after which they are deported) are being ignored. --editor

To the Inspector General, U.S. Department of Justice:

As you are aware, RCDC, a federal Bureau of Prisons-contracted facility, has been the site of two multi-day riots since mid-December. Reports of inadequate medical care and other substandard conditions have been cited as a possible cause for both incidents.

One riot at any facility is troubling and rare, and because RCDC has been the site of two such incidents in as many months there is legitimate concern that serious problems within the facility may exist.

I used to work there, I know. But as a counselor I was seen as a "bleeding heart liberal." ALL of the money budgeted for substance abuse was diverted. I had zero funds to work with. I was even asked to provide fraudulent figures on the curriculum-based classes that were recommended by the federal contract, yet The GEO Group refused to purchase the specified curriculum with the excuse that our "local contract" permitted such leeway -- and even more basically, because the incarcerated population consisted of foreign nationals, not U.S. Citizens. Why then did they want me to commit fraud regarding the documentation of these classes?

Inmates used to complain to me that the night shift of corrections officers refused to come to their cells when inmates were pleading for emergency medical assistance. There were many medical emergencies exacerbated by this negligence -- as well as two deaths that I am aware of -- between 2004 and 2008, the time I worked there. The company made promises to address the inmates' issues, including food and recreation, yet nothing ever changed. Their unenlightened excuse was that these are foreign nationals and the taxpayers did not want to invest in rehabilitating foreigners. They were often accused of malingering but nothing could excuse the company's failure to investigate a crisis.

In a local television interview this morning, Sheriff Andy Gomez stated that these detainees receive better medical services than the general population of the town -- that "The GEO Group is doing a good job." Ironically, this is reminiscent of George W. Bush's remark in the wake of the Katrina debacle, "Good job, Brownie!" Incredulously, the sheriff even stated that the dental services were superior despite the fact that a dentist only comes in once a week and has time to see only 3-4 patients from a long waiting list. His disingenuous attempt at damage control comes after two weeks of stonewalling. Sheriff Gomez was simply repeating the sound bites given to him. Gomez, as well as the county commission on whose behalf he was speaking, is part of the problem -- Reeves County must share the cost for all these services -- they have been complicit in this gross medical neglect.

I urge you to investigate not only by interviewing current and former staff members; but also, by interviewing the inmates themselves. For obvious reasons, please do it in a way that protects their confidentiality. The privatization of prison services has led to abuse and neglect and the attitude of "warehousing" a population of human beings whose well being is sacrificed for the "bottom line."

TAKE ACTION:
Contact the Office of the Inspector General at the U.S. Department of Justice

~*~

Foreign Nationals Riot Again at Reeves County Detention Center: Claim Ongoing Medical Neligence

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Tue, 03 Feb 2009 01:42:00 +0000

Prison under control after 10-hour riot
(Not what I'm hearing)
Stephanie Sanchez / El Paso Times Staff
Posted: 02/02/2009 12:00:00 AM MST

EL PASO -- A riot at the Reeves County Detention Center in Pecos [Texas] was under control 10 hours after it started and no injuries were reported, a Reeves County Sheriff's Office dispatcher said Sunday.

At about 2 p.m. Sunday, dispatch personnel said the situation was under control but it was still unknown what prompted the riot. During the riot, inmates set fires to the booking room, kitchen, infirmary and other areas of the detention center that houses as many as 2,080 inmates.

About 700 inmates were transported to a Sierra Blanca detention center for housing because sleep quarters were destroyed. Dispatch personnel said no injuries were reported, but several news accounts state three inmates were hospitalized.

The detention center, which is about 260 miles east of El Paso, is a low security level facility. This is the second violent outbreak in two months.

The GEO Group is lying to the press about this riot. They know very well what caused it. It is not the first or the second or the third time inmates have rioted over medical negligence. This is ongoing. I used to work there. They have failed medical audit after federal audit. The detainees are begging for medical services and are not getting them. They are sometimes ignored outright by lazy, under-staffed, overworked, over-tired, stressed out corrections officers who sometimes refuse to go to their cell-doors to even hear their complaints. Or, when they put in a written request, they are put on a long waiting list for services while they continue to suffer. The medical department is under funded and under-staffed. Dental services are nearly non-existent. The dentist only comes once a week and only sees from 3-5 patients. If an inmate has an abscess he is likely to suffer for days or weeks. The last riot (in December) occurred when an inmate died under conditions of neglect despite pleas for help in the night. He was ignored.

The bottom line for The GEO Group is the Almighty Dollar.

There are two major factors that lead to recidivism: poor education (including job skills) and a history of substance abuse. When I worked there as a CD Counselor my budget was ZERO. The Education budget had been slashed as well. They had no vocational training whatsoever. Medical services bordered on "crimes against humanity."

All of this is due to the "redirection" of funds by The GEO Group and by Reeves County officials at the local level, funds that have been allocated by the Feds for these vital rehabilitative services but never make it to target services that only operate as shells. Indeed, the federal government is funding a multimillion dollar shell game perpetrated by the private prison industry not just in Pecos but all over the country. To say there is poor oversight by federal contract monitors falls short of the reality. GEO is extremely well connected in Washington. I'd bet dollars to bananas that the local maintenance kick-backs that began in Pecos ten-years ago are still going on. And the food stinks.

This is Billy Sol Estes country. Some things never change.

Local administrators rationalize the abuse and neglect of those they warehouse by pointing out that the detainees are "foreign nationals" and don't deserve the amenities afforded to incarcerated U.S. citizens -- that "the taxpayers don't want to feed, house, treat and pay for 'illegal aliens' to get an education they'll just take back to their foreign countries." But the truth is that their "redneck reasoning" is used to justify or enable corporatist profiteering.

Administrators of private prisons do not care about rehabilitation; they WANT recidivism. Dick Cheney is a major share holder in private prisons and every other government service he could privatize. The GEO Group has been involved in scandal after "riotous" scandal yet they keep getting contracts. "Follow the money."

Obama says he wants to bring change yet he hasn't said a word about the privatization of government services that went on under Bush and Cheney [READ: Corporatism & Cronyism].

View Larger Map
Reeves County Detention Center, Pecos, Texas
Run by The GEO Group

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For Gaza and for Israel: "From a Distance"

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Sun, 25 Jan 2009 06:40:00 +0000

From a distance the world looks blue and green,
and the snow-capped mountains white.
From a distance the ocean meets the stream,
and the eagle takes to flight.

From a distance, there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
It's the voice of hope, it's the voice of peace,
it's the voice of every man.

From a distance we all have enough,
and no one is in need.
And there are no guns, no bombs, and no disease,
no hungry mouths to feed.

From a distance we are instruments
marching in a common band.
Playing songs of hope, playing songs of peace.
They're the songs of every man.
God is watching us. God is watching us.
God is watching us from a distance.

From a distance you look like my friend,
even though we are at war.
From a distance I just cannot comprehend
what all this fighting is for.

From a distance there is harmony,
and it echoes through the land.
And it's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves,
it's the heart of every man.

It's the hope of hopes, it's the love of loves.
This is the song of every man.
And God is watching us, God is watching us,
God is watching us from a distance.
Oh, God is watching us, God is watching.
God is watching us from a distance.

The Truth About Isareli War Crimes

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Sun, 11 Jan 2009 21:30:00 +0000

Israel is thwarting the efforts of the International Red Cross and the UN relief mission in the Gaza:

I. Alex Thompson Interview:

II. Alex Thompson Interview:

Proof of Infanticide:

Inside AIPAC's Pocket; Obama's Hypocrisy:

George Galloway 1309 Truth About Israel:

Cynthia McKinney Speaks at Washington D.C. Rally 01-10-09:

No Bravery

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Tue, 06 Jan 2009 03:16:00 +0000

Counter Insurgency Warfare: Mistakes in The Gaza

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Sat, 03 Jan 2009 22:57:00 +0000

I just wrote an editorial/book review for Amazon.com on the military manual, Counterinsurgency Warfare; Theory and Practice, by David Galula, with a forward by General David Petraeus [pictured at left]. Lacking other more significant resources, the book review/editorial is my heartfelt attempt to help support the suffering Palestinian civilians of the Gaza. I've also posted it to my FaceBook site. The review follows:

If Israel would employ this strategy [detailed in the book] in dealing with Hamas, Hezbollah and Fatah, I am convinced they would be able to achieve a lasting peace with the Palestinians. The ultimate goal of an effective counterinsurgency is to win the hearts and minds of the people themselves -- to establish yourself as the protector of the people in turning the tide against terrorism and the urban guerrillas who exploit the civilian population and endanger their lives and well being by hiding among them.

General David Petraeus has already offered his expertise to the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) and has toured the Middle East, visiting Turkey, Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia and the Palestinians themselves. Indeed, Petraeus is the world's foremost expert actively working in the field of counterinsurgency technology [which includes law enforcement technology] and wrote the forward to the latest edition of this classic. He now uses it to train the American military and its principles became the foundation of the 2007 "Surge" in Iraq, which has miraculously begun to achieve stability there despite initial doubts expressed by Petraeus himself that it was already too late to win in Iraq after Rumsfeld's brutal policies radicalized the entire region and turned the civilian population against "The Great American Satan."

Currently, the IDF is conducting a high-muscled conventional military strategy in The Gaza that hopes to produce short-term gains against the Hamas insurgents; but despite their aspirations, this strategy will only further entrench the Israelis in the continued long-term struggle that has been the hallmark of their violent relationship with the Palestinians.

Rumsfeld's strategy in destroying Fallujah twice over with air strikes and heavy artillery is the classic example of this self-defeating brutality based on the principles of conventional Post-Nepolianic modern European warfare. Israel's debacle in South Lebanon in 2006 is another. They laid cluster bombs in carpeted attacks attempting to clear out the population of South Lebanon and thus create a safe zone wherein there would be no civilian population among whom Hezbollah could hide. The strategy was a humanitarian and political disaster. Mossad-trained Georgian troops recently unsuccessfully employed such brutality in South Ossetia, attempting to roll-up the civilian population and send them northward into exile in Russia and then following-up with bulldozers to destroy South Ossetian habitations in order to discourage their return -- just as Isreal did in South Lebanon and in the West Bank. The Russian military intervened in South Ossetia and was much more humane in their treatment of Georgia, leaving egg on the faces of the CIA and the Bush Administration who sponsored the debacle in an overreaching attempt to secure the oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian at Baku to the Mediterranean coast of Turkey.

The fact that Israel refuses to deploy the more functional and civilian-friendly counterinsurgency promoted by Galula, Petraeus and other counterinsurgency experts can only indicate one tragic conclusion -- that Israel intends to hang onto a quixotic and archaic strategy of expansionism perpetrated against the native Palestinians, one institutionalized in the 50s by the government of David Ben-Gurion and maintained to this day. The strategy is grounded in early 20th century Zionism with a grandiose but painfully understandable goal, given the tragic history of the Jews throughout European history, of recreating the ancient Davidic Kingdom of a "Greater Israel" beyond the current piecemeal boundaries they've achieved in establishing a Jewish homeland by elbowing and walling the Palestinians out. Despite their feined idealism, the continued stubborn use of this strategy by Israel has led to polarization and radicalization of the native populations in the Middle East, resulting in the stridently Jihadist Islamism we see today taking over the region.

The United States alone has the influence and responsibility to insist this effective counterinsurgency strategy upon Israel in the interest of a lasting peace in the region. Again, its hallmark is its overall goal of winning the hearts and minds of the people themselves, winning friends and influencing enemies. Yet, American politicians continue to speak of "surges" in conventional military terms without having a clue as to their function and operational execution. The American people, who overwhelmingly support Israel's right of statehood, are even more disinformed by a strident Israel Lobby that leans hard on the American media.

This book should be read by every member of Congress, by Obama's new Chief-of-Staff and dual citizen Rham Emmanuel, by Obama's National Security Adviser General James L. Jones, by Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, by Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, by Barack Obama and Joseph Biden themselves and by every member of the Israel Lobby who are so obsessed with the security of Israel that they don't see the solution right here under their noses.

NOTE: For a concise understanding of the situaltion in the Gaza, I strongly recommend the recent article by Richard Falk, "Understainding the Gaza Catastrophy," posted to The Huffington Post. Falk is the United Nations Special Rapporteur on Human Rights in the Palestinian Territories and writes a very objective analyses.

AFTERWORD: Although I firmly believe in Satyagraha as means, I wrote the above review of "Counterinsurgency Warfare," because it encourages a more humane military perspective than that currently utilized by the IDF in the Gaza. This is a strategy designed to win the hearts and minds of the people as it works against insurgents such as Hamas who would exploit civilians and put the lives of innocents at risk.

This is a strategy that Israel resists but one that is required for peaceful coexistence. The fact that the IDF refuses to employ this more humane approach -- now the accepted standard in counterinsurgency warfare -- reveals Israel's ulterior, violently expansionist strategy of imposed Zionism.

EVERYONE, particularly activists, journalists, members of Congress and the Obama Administration, should read this brief manual on the humanitarian treatment of civilian populations caught-up in this conflict. It is imperative that we get the word out that the IDF has been offered a humane alternative they are rejecting.

~ ~ ~
This book review has been cross-posted to:
Southern Perspectives, my blog at Open Salon, a member feature of Salon.com
and also to: TPM Cafe at Talking Points Memo
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Goodnight Mumbai

noreply@blogger.com (Bailey Wu Xiang) — Mon, 01 Dec 2008 06:34:00 +0000

And goodnight to George Harrison where ever you are.