Alex Constantine's Anti-Fascist Research Bin

Moving On - Introducing The AC Anti-Fascist Encyclopedia

2010-01-25T11:10:00.001-08:00

Oliver Stone says Adolf Hitler was 'Enabled by Western Bankers'

2010-01-25T09:46:00.000-08:00

By Michael Casey (CP)
Google News | 1-25-10

BANGKOK, Thailand — Adolf Hitler was a psychopath and a monster but rose to power thanks to big business leaders and other supporters who appreciated his vow to destroy communism and control workers, Hollywood filmmaker Oliver Stone said Monday.

Stone, who is working on a 10-part documentary on the 20th century titled "The Secret History of the United States," said the German dictator was "enabled by Western bankers" and managed to "seduce" Germany's military industrial complex.

"Hitler is a monster. There is no question. I have no empathy for Hitler at all. He was a crazy psychopath," Stone told reporters in the Thai capital. "But like Frankenstein was a monster, there was a Dr. Frankenstein. He is product of his era."

Stone was in Bangkok to give a lecture to high school students on the role of film in peace-building as part of a visit organized by the Vienna-based International Peace Foundation.

He said the aim of his documentary, which two historians are helping him with, was to offer a fuller understanding of the 20th century and how some of those lessons may be relevant to President Barack Obama in 2010.

"What has America become? How can we in America not learn from Germany in the 1930s," the Oscar-winning director asked.

Earlier in the day, Stone told about 300 students that his 1991 movie "JFK," was his most controversial to date and that the United States remains in denial over the possibility that someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald could have assassinated John F. Kennedy.

Stone said exploring alternative theories over the JFK assassination remains too sensitive for those in the media or academia who "would be endangering their careers and their position."

"To this day, many key Americans in power are in total denial about this story," Stone said. "They don't even want to know about the possibility that he was killed by someone other than Lee Harvey Oswald. It is a national fairy tale."

"JFK" ridicules the Warren Commission's conclusion that Oswald acted alone and suggests a massive conspiracy.

Stone's film centred on a theory by New Orleans District Attorney Jim Garrison that a CIA-led mutiny killed the president and the plotters walked away unscathed. Garrison's theories went to court in 1967, but Clay Shaw, the alleged "evil genius" behind the assassination, was acquitted.

Stone said Monday he thought it was "a good thing" to revisit the JFK assassination. But he came under fire from the historians and film reviewers who contended Stone had fudged facts, invented characters and elevated speculation to truth to support his burning belief that the killing was a high-level government conspiracy.

"It's an amazing story and I did it," Stone said. "I thought I would be respected for it, and I was lambasted in the establishment press. I was called a myth-maker, a propagandist. I didn't see it coming. I thought the Kennedy murder was safe."

Stone is famous for several other movies, including the Vietnam War films "Born on the Fourth of July" and "Platoon," which won four Oscars, including best picture and best director.

http://www.google.com/hostednews/canadianpress/article/ALeqM5jaefUfWXwMYP_e7BOeoYwU-aV9rg

Did Yeats Accept a Prize of Nazi Gold?

2010-01-24T21:05:00.000-08:00

Excerpt: WB Yeats and the Glittering Prizes
Irish Times | January 25, 2010

ON JANUARY 1ST this year, Yeats finally went out of copyright, 144 years after his birth. It was a long, carefully managed career, before and after death. A notable high point was the poet winning the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1923, generally taken as an acknowledgement of Irish independence, writes WJ MCCORMACK

As early as 1909, Yeats thought he was in with a chance, but the winner turned out to be the Swedish novelist, Selma Lagerlöf. Scandinavians featured prominently among the prize’s early recipients, starting with the Norwegian poet, Bjørnstjerne Bjørnson, in 1903, and including his compatriot, Knut Hamsun, in 1920.

In addition to the fame the prize brought with it, Yeats also appreciated the Nobel money. According to legend, he interrupted the telephone call notifying him of the honour with the blunt question: “How much?”

If it remained the greatest prize he garnered, the Nobel was not the last. On February 16th 1934, after Hitler had already come to power in Germany, The Irish Times announced that Yeats had been awarded the Goethe-Plakette by the city of Frankfurt-am-Main, together with Hermann Stehr, a “blood-and-soil” novelist. Later in the year, the Nazi-supporting Knut Hamsun was awarded a Goethe-Preis, both prizes originating in liberal civic initiatives in 1927 (the Preis) and 1932 (the Plakette).

Preis winners included poet Stefan George (1927) and theologian Albert Schweitzer (1928), who was thereby enabled to build a house in his Alsatian home village. Another beneficiary was Sigmund Freud (1930), whose papers establish the honorarium at 10,000 marks (George also received 10,000 marks, though he failed to turn up for the ceremony).

While several “regime changes”, national and local, occurred between 1927 and 1934, it is worth noting that, pleased to be honoured in August 1934, Hamsun refused the cash, believing that the new Nazi regime deserved it more than he did. He is said by Mark Deavin to have refused precisely the same sum Freud and George had been given, suggesting a constant amount down the years with regard to the Goethe-Preis.

The Plakette was a lesser thing, instituted mainly to reward administrators and supporters of events commemorating the centenary of Goethe’s death. I have not located any record of payments made to Plakette or Preis recipients. On the one hand, the Nazis were tight with money; on the other, Yeats was scarcely in the same league as Dr Paquet, secretary of the Preis committee. Is it improper to ask on what verifiable documentation we might conclude that Yeats was not a beneficiary of commensurate Nazi (“souls for”) gold, in keeping with the theme of The Countess Cathleen , staged in February 1934 by SS Untersturmbahnführer Bethge? The question bears upon Yeats’s second manoeuvre on the dangerous intersection between flattery and brutality.

The critic and pacifist, Carl von Ossietzky (who championed James Joyce’s work), had been thrown into a concentration camp, where he was most barbarously treated. A rescue campaign was supported by Karl Barth, Augustus John, Thomas Mann, Virginia Woolf and others. One proposal was to have the prisoner awarded a Nobel Prize, thus obliging the regime to release him for the award ceremonies. Peace prizes were in Norway’s gift, not Sweden’s. Hamsun denounced Ossietzky in the press on November 22nd 1935, and no award was announced at that time, despite a campaign that had been active since January 1934.

Yeats became embroiled in the Ossietzky affair early in 1936, when English novelist Ethel Mannin and German dramatist Ernst Toller approached him in London. Their efforts were clumsy, and the official campaign did not consider Yeats worth approaching, despite its reliance on glittering laureates. Yeats told Mannin in April: “If the Nobel Society did what you want, it would seem to the majority of the German people that the society hated their government for its politics, not because it was inhuman . . .”

Advancing this specious argument for inactivity, he cannot have forgotten the praise heaped on him by the German press in June 1935 for his 70th birthday, nor what he called his “Frankfurt honour”. The Nobel committee finally overcame its misgivings and, in 1936, gave the prisoner his peace prize, retrospectively. He was not allowed to travel, and died two years later, aged 50.

Apart from an insinuating passivity, what or who got Yeats into these distasteful relations with the Third Reich? His biographer and sometime political secretary, Joseph Hone, was strongly drawn towards fascism. Active in Dublin for much of the 1930s, the wily German agent, Helmut Clissmann, befriended associates of Yeats’s, including the MacBrides (Maud and Sean) and the Stuarts (Iseult and Francis). Clissmann claimed to have studied for a doctorate in Irish Studies at Frankfurt University but seems to have spent more time arranging holiday trips to the Reich for pupils at the Dublin High School, Omagh Academy, and no doubt other Irish schools. The German minister in Dublin, Eduard Hempel, received Yeats on several occasions, presenting him with suitable propaganda.

In August 1938, Yeats publicly approved the Nuremberg Laws. So much is undeniable fact, though the motive is less clear (a childish love of giving offence?). Or had he taken the Führer’s shilling four years earlier?
--------------------------------------------------------------------------------
WB Yeats and the Glittering Prizes, by WJ McCormack, will be published by UCD Press in March

http://www.irishtimes.com/newspaper/features/2010/0125/1224263035335.html

Oracle Software and the CIA

2010-01-22T11:36:00.000-08:00

Oracle's Connection to the CIA

Most Oracle professionals are surprised to learn that the name "Oracle" originates from the name of a CIA project. This article in Forbes Magazine notes that Oracle billionaire Larry Ellison worked on a CIA project with the code-name "Oracle":

"He [Larry Ellison] dropped out of the University of Chicago in the 1960s, headed to Berkeley, Calif. and by the mid-1970s began working on a database project. Code name: Oracle. Client: the Central Intelligence Agency.

In 1977, Ellison founded the company with Robert Miner and Edward Oates, naming it after the CIA job."

http://www.dba-oracle.com/oracle_news/news_oracle_origin.htm

HOW TO TELL ORACLE CORP. FOUNDER LARRY ELLISON FROM GOD

Oracle's coziness with government goes back to its founding / Firm's growth sustained as niche established with federal state agencies
SFGATE.com | May 20, 2002

... Company co-founders Larry Ellison Robert Miner and Ed Oates worked on Project Oracle at a consulting firm before striking out on their own.

A quarter century later close to a quarter of the company's revenue -- $2. 5 billion a year -- still comes from selling software to federal state and local agencies.

"Oracle wouldn't exist if it weren't for government contracts," said Mike Wilson, author of the book The Difference Between God and Larry Ellison.

Oracle has 1000 sales and consulting workers focused exclusively on government work. And in the wake of Sept. 11 Oracle is counting on the heightened interest in staving off terrorism to boost its government ties even more.

Oracle has been actively pitching software to local governments to create detailed digital maps that could be used to respond to attacks. In March the company formed a partnership to focus on airport security. Ellison even offered to give the federal government software to help create a national ID to thwart terrorists.

In a background paper Oracle boasts that it is "very active in homeland security."

Banc of America Securities analyst Bob Austrian believes the entire high-tech industry could profit from the increased security spending. But he suspects Oracle could do better than most because it already has an unusually large share of government contracts and is in a particularly relevant niche.

"The majority of interest surrounds tracking individuals and information which by its nature is a database-intensive application" he said.

So perhaps it's fitting that Oracle is making headlines because of concerns over the recent $95 million government contract.

Among the allegations are that Oracle persuaded California officials to buy more software than needed misrepresent the costs savings and rush through a no-bid award without considering alternatives. It didn't help that Oracle handed a $25000 check to Gov. Gray Davis' technology adviser just two weeks after the deal was signed.

http://articles.sfgate.com/2002-05-20/news/17546036_1_larry-ellison-robert-miner-homeland-security-government-contracts

ORACLE NEWS ARCHIVE

An excellent database of news stories about Oracle, hosted by Newsrunner, is here.

Secrets of Josef Mengele For Sale

2010-01-20T12:24:00.000-08:00

By Paul Bedard
US News | January 19, 2010

Few names make one cringe in horror like that of Josef Mengele, the Nazi concentration camp "doctor" who performed gruesome human experiments—especially on twin children—before dodging Allied troops and fleeing to South America in 1945. Yet despite some people's obsession with the medical monster and all that's been written about him, little of Mengele's own work has ever been seen. "Mengele," says Bill Panagopulos, president of Alexander Autographs, an auctioneer of historical goods, "is very, very rare."

Until now. Panagopulos is featuring two Mengele writings in his next auction. The sale on January 20 and 21 is expected to bring Nazi collectors out of the woodwork to cough up $100,000 for the never-before-seen artifacts.

One is a letter he wrote from Auschwitz to his estranged wife proclaiming his love and plans for "our imaginary reunion." The other is a 180-page "diary" devoted to Mengele's theories on eugenics and population control and his rambling views on women, politics, and the church. Consider: "The real problem," writes Mengele, "is to define when human life is worth living and when it has to be eradicated." The diary is written within the covers of a composition book titled Illustrated Zoology.

Who'd buy these? Surprisingly, Panagopulos says that it's very often Jewish collectors, who use the items to teach history or donate them to museums. The Connecticut auctioneer wouldn't identify the owner of the artifacts, which were seized in Brazil years after Mengele died in 1979.

Perhaps more intriguing is why anybody would sell the secrets of Dr. Death. Says Panagopulos: "As horrendous as he was, Mengele is a historic figure, as are Mao, Hitler, Stalin, and Pol Pot. Anything uncovered that can offer us an insight into their thinking helps complete the historical record and perhaps helps prevent similar crimes in the future."

http://www.usnews.com/news/blogs/washington-whispers/2010/01/19/secrets-of-nazis-josef-mengele-for-sale.html

Motives of Convicted Ex-CIA Agent still a Mystery

2010-01-18T12:58:00.000-08:00

The Jakarta Post | 01/18/2010

While police are preparing to deport former Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) agent Bob Marshall, who was arrested in January 2008 in Bogor, his motives for entering Indonesia remain a mystery.

The Indonesian police said last week that Marshall, 61, was wanted by the US spy organization for a number of violations and being a renegade agent for a number of years.

However, observers here have alleged that Marshall’s arrest has highlighted intensive CIA operations in Indonesia.

“It’s no secret that many CIA agents operate here. Of course, they have their own mission as Indonesia is an important country for the US,” intelligence expert from the Indonesian Institute of Science, Ikrar Nusa Bhakti said here Sunday.

The police have refused to reveal why the US citizen entered the country, saying only that it had received a request to arrest Marshall from the US government for his alleged involvement in illegal arms trade in several countries, including in his home country.

National Police chief of detectives Comr. Gen. Ito Sumardi said Friday the deportation of Bob Marshall was being processed by the National Central Bureau Interpol Indonesia upon request from the US.

Bogor immigration officials arrested Marshall in January 2008 as he was applying for a passport.

Marshall told the officials that he was an Indonesian citizen, but as he could not speak Indonesian, the officials were suspicious, and subsequently found his document to be fake.

He was charged for illegal entry and staying in the country without proper documentation.

The US national was charged under the 1992 Immigration Law for staying in the country illegally and not holding a valid passport, which carries a combined punishment of six years in jail.

Ito said that Marshall had entered Indonesia through Batam in December 2007, along with seven illegal migrants by boat from Johor in Malaysia, and held 40 passports.

The Bogor District Court subsequently gave him a two-year jail term.

Marshall has reportedly been a US fugitive since 1974.

Until 2004, US officials said that he had committed various crimes, including fraud, theft and illegal use of weapons.

In 1978 he managed to flee a prison in the US after being arrested a year earlier.

In 1984, the London police were searching for him over the illegal use of guns and ammunition. He returned to the US in 1992, but was again wanted for faking passports and checks.

From then on, Marshall traveled to a number of countries to avoid arrests using different passports before entering Indonesia in December 2007.

The Bogor Immigration Office said that he arrived in Batam in Riau Islands from Johor, Malaysia together with seven others illegal immigrants after evading the Indonesian police’s patrol.

The CIA’s presence in Indonesia’s politics has long been speculated about, stirred recently by the publication of Tim Weiner’s book The Legacy of Ashes: The History of the CIA, which claims Indonesia’s former vice president Adam Malik was a US spy.

The Pulitzer-winning book also alleged that Adam received US$10,000 from the CIA to overthrow former president Sukarno.

Weiner, a New York Times journalist, quoted former CIA agent Clyde McAvoy in his book as saying, “Adam Malik was a CIA agent in 1964”.

The book, recently published in Indonesian, said Adam used the money to spearhead a movement aimed at cleansing communists following their abortive coup attempt on Sept. 30, 1965.

Many people here immediately blasted the book as a foreign conspiracy to destabilize Indonesia. The Attorney General’s Office is looking at having the book banned.

http://www.thejakartapost.com/news/2010/01/18/motives-convicted-excia-agent-still-a-mystery.html

A Stolen Painting, the Murder of Martin Luther King, the FBI .... and Steven Spielberg

2010-01-17T18:24:00.000-08:00

" ... IT’S SOMEWHAT IRONIC that a Rockwell has been caught up in such a maelstrom of controversy and conspiracy. The American illustrator is best known for his nostalgic scenes of simpler times ... "

" ... after two suspects connected to the art theft ring were murdered 1978 and another refused to testify, prosecutors dropped the case ... "

By Richard Salit
www.projo.com

Norman Rockwell’s stolen 1967 painting, Russian Schoolroom, now valued at $700,000, is the subject of a legal dispute in U.S. District Court in Nevada.

NEWPORT — It has all the makings of a Hollywood film: a powerful movie mogul and his society art dealer inadvertently get tangled up in an art heist, an FBI investigation, a political assassination and a courtroom drama.

Unfortunately for Judy Goffman Cutler, it’s a true story. The FBI recently discovered that in 1989 the Newport art dealer profited from the sale of a Norman Rockwell painting that had been stolen from a gallery in Missouri 16 years earlier. The buyer? Steven Spielberg. Yes, that one.

So why has it taken so long for the FBI to crack the case and how come no one was ever arrested for the theft?

One explanation given is that the suspected art thief enjoyed federal protection because he had vital information about a major U.S. assassination — the slaying of Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.

Instead of appearing on the big screen, this drama is being played out on location — in U.S. District Court in Nevada. Jack Solomon, whose gallery lost Rockwell’s Russian Schoolroom to thieves nearly 35 years ago when it was worth $25,000, is suing Spielberg for the return of the painting, now valued at $700,000. Russian Schoolroom is in Los Angeles, where the Academy Award-winning director and producer lives.

Goffman Cutler, meanwhile, is also fighting for the painting. She says that after the FBI announced it was stolen, she offered to extricate Spielberg from the controversy by giving him another Rockwell in exchange for Russian Schoolroom. She is also suing Solomon for $25 million for sullying her reputation and jeopardizing her business relationship with Spielberg. Solomon told the media she should have known the painting was stolen when she sold it to Spielberg.

“The clear implication of the statement made to the press was that Goffman Cutler was trafficking in stolen art and should have known she was doing so,” her lawsuit reads.

ON A RECENT DAY, the gates to a white, chateau-style mansion in Newport slowly swing open. Behind the wrought-iron fencing is Vernon Court, a Beaux Arts adaptation of a French estate, which occupies a full block of Bellevue Avenue, Newport’s famed Gilded Age promenade. The sprawling grounds feature a pool, manicured tiered gardens, and a park created by landscape architect Frederick Law Olmsted, the designer of New York City’s Central Park.

This is the home of the National Museum of American Illustration, which Goffman Cutler and her husband, Laurence, founded in 2000 to honor what they call the “Golden Age of Illustration,” art specifically created for reproduction.

The swiveling gates open onto a short gravel driveway, which leads to the museum entrance, framed by tall white columns and a second-story veranda. Through the doorway is the Great Marble Hall, where Laurence Cutler greets a visitor and guides him past one of Rockwell’s most famous World War II works, Miss Liberty, portraying a star-spangled American woman wielding an array of tools in service of her country.

In the library, Cutler takes a seat and reflects on the worldwide publicity the case has generated — from newspapers and magazines that cover Clayton, Mo., where the painting was stolen in 1973, across the Atlantic to England, where both Spielberg and Rockwell are well known. Over the last several months, as a result of the tantalizing details surrounding Russian Schoolroom, it’s been all too common for the Cutlers to receive interview requests from the media. Fielding reporters’ questions comes naturally for the talkative Cutler, the museum’s chairman, and it’s a role that falls to him in between his frequent business trips across the U.S. and abroad.

“Friends have asked about it, art dealers have asked about it, and people in the art world have asked about it. We got lots of e-mail about it from all over the world,” he says. “It got a tremendous amount of attention because you have Spielberg, who is the most famous guy in movies, and you have Norman Rockwell, whose name is synonymous with apple pie and ice cream and baseball. And you have the word ‘theft.’ ”

IT’S SOMEWHAT IRONIC that a Rockwell has been caught up in such a maelstrom of controversy and conspiracy. The American illustrator is best known for his nostalgic scenes of simpler times, hundreds of which appeared on the folksy covers of the Saturday Evening Post.

Russian Schoolroom, painted in 1967, just six years before its theft, was inspired by Rockwell’s visit to the Soviet Union in the 1960s. It depicts students seated at their desks, looking in the direction of a bust of Lenin, except for one student gazing out a window.

Judy Goffman Cutler had an eye for Rockwell and the works of other accomplished American illustrators, such as N.C. Wyeth and Maxfield Parrish. After graduating from the University of Pennsylvania with a degree in fine arts, she began collecting the works of American illustrators, which weren’t greatly valued at the time. Soon she had so many works that friends would say her home looked like a museum, her husband says. In 1966, she opened the American Illustrators Gallery in New York City.

“She turned around one day and realized she made that end of the market,” Laurence Cutler says. “She became the art dealer to the stars and celebrities.… She built collections for Malcolm Forbes, George Lucas and Ross Perot and many museums.”

The Newport museum she would later establish with her husband lists Lucas, comedian/actress Whoopi Goldberg, TV celebrity Matt Lauer and editorial cartoonist Paul Szep among its board of directors, as well as the developer of the Carnegie Abbey Club in Portsmouth, Peter de Savary, and the man who has taken over and expanded the development of the town’s western shore, Brian O’Neill.

Spielberg began avidly collecting Rockwells as his movies, including E.T., Back to the Future and the Indiana Jones series, became box office blockbusters, making him a rich man. He also contributed to a new home for the Norman Rockwell Museum in Stockbridge, Mass.

Spielberg met the Cutlers through his passion for Rockwell. They enjoyed not only a business relationship, but a friendship, too, Laurence Cutler says. He recalls traveling to California in the early 1990s to see Spielberg and Whoopi Goldberg, the director’s Pacific Palisades neighbor and another collector of American illustration. Cutler and Goffman, whose first marriages had ended, were continuing on to Las Vegas, and Cutler told Spielberg he was considering marrying Goffman there. Spielberg didn’t think it romantic enough.

“I had wanted to do a quick wedding and he talked me out of it,” says Laurence Cutler.

Years later, after marrying, the Cutlers moved to Newport and opened their nonprofit illustration museum. Then, 18 years after selling Spielberg Russian Schoolroom, an agency not known for its artistic appreciation contacted Goffman Cutler: It was the FBI.

EARLY ON THE morning of June 25, 1973, a man broke through the glass front door of Arts International Gallery, in Clayton, Mo., part of the greater St. Louis area, according to a police report. A witness saw the thief emerge with a painting seconds later and jump into a car.

When gallery staff arrived, they quickly realized what was missing: Rockwell’s Russian Schoolroom, an original, 16-by-37-inch oil-on-canvas. With the crime unsolved, Solomon, the gallery’s owner, collected $25,000 in insurance, according to court records.

In 1988, the painting surfaced at an auction in New Orleans. But there was no mention of its checkered past. Goffman bid $70,400 and took Russian Schoolroom back to her American Illustrators Gallery, in New York City. A year later, after advertising the painting for sale for $200,000, she sold it to Spielberg.

It wasn’t until 2004 that agents with the FBI’s Art Crime Team (ACT) learned from a tipster about the 1988 auction and the sale of the painting a year later. The agency posted a description and photograph of the painting on its Web site. Spielberg’s staff saw it and alerted him that the FBI considered his painting stolen and missing.

“Mr. Spielberg’s staff immediately used art market channels to bring the painting’s current location to the FBI’s attention,” the FBI announced in a news release earlier this year that would spark the international media coverage. “Mr. Spielberg purchased the painting in 1989 from a legitimate dealer and did not become aware it was stolen until last week.”

WHAT HAPPENED 34 years ago, however, was apparently a great deal more complicated than a simple smash-and-grab.

The break-in at Arts International joined a rash of similar crimes. A thief or thieves were targeting art owners in the St. Louis area. The thieves snatched silver statues of Charles Lindbergh from the St. Louis Museum of History and returned to strike Arts International again, stealing seven Rockwell lithographs.

The case led the police to focus on “a known police character … who had a reputation for stealing and fencing valuable art and antiques,” according to the FBI. A search warrant executed in 1976 at the St. Louis home of suspect Russell Byers recovered hundreds of thousands of dollars in art and other valuables, including the seven Rockwell lithographs, according to police reports. But missing from the loot was Russian Schoolroom.

The police brought charges against Byers. But after two suspects connected to the art theft ring were murdered 1978 and another refused to testify, prosecutors dropped the case, according to the St. Louis Riverfront Times. And curiously, around the same time, Byers had become remarkably useful to powerful federal officials, the alternative newsweekly reported.

The reason? He had been offered $50,000 to kill King, the civil-rights leader.

Byers’ tale intrigued officials in Washington, even 10 years after King’s assassination in 1968. But Byers wouldn’t talk for fear of incriminating himself. So in 1978, the House Select Committee on Assassinations granted him immunity. In exchange, Byers testified about a meeting he attended that was arranged by a hotel owner who stashed stolen goods for Byers.

Byers’ accomplice introduced him to a lawyer and business associate, John Sutherland, who belonged to the American Independent Party of segregationist Alabama Governor George Wallace and who was a leader of the White Citizens Council of St. Louis.

“The three men met in a study that Byers described as decorated with Confederate flags and Civil War memorabilia… ,” reads a report of the House committee, according to the Riverfront Times. “Sutherland was wearing what appeared to Byers to be a Confederate colonel’s hat. After some social conversation, Byers asked Sutherland what he would have to do for the $50,000. Sutherland said he would have to kill, or arrange to have killed, Dr. Martin Luther King. Sutherland told him he belonged to a secret southern organization that had plenty of money.

Byers testified that he declined the offer from the two men. But, according to a New York Times article from 1978, the committee found enough circumstantial evidence to believe that the same bounty offered to Byers in St. Louis could possibly have motivated James Earl Ray, who was a prisoner in a nearby Missouri penitentiary (and whose brother, John Ray, led local efforts to elect Wallace president).

Ray escaped from the prison a year before King’s death and confessed to killing the minister. Despite recanting later, Ray was convicted at trial.

Ten years later, in 1988, a tip about the stolen Rockwell surfaced as the painting was being auctioned off in New Orleans. But an FBI investigation into the matter was stymied when agents were told that the original theft report was missing, according to the Riverfront Times. It wasn’t until last year that the FBI, treating the theft as a cold case, was able to get a copy of the report from the Clayton, Mo., police. Soon the investigation would lead federal agents to Hollywood.

JACK SOLOMON, who owned the now-defunct Arts International gallery and was Rockwell’s dealer until the artist’s death in 1978, wants Russian Schoolroom back. He is suing Spielberg in U.S. District Court in Nevada for the return of the painting and unspecified damages. The FBI, which was initially named in the lawsuit, has been dropped from the case.

Solomon is none too pleased with Goffman Cutler. He doesn’t believe she adequately researched whether Russian Schoolroom might have been stolen, especially since the FBI had reported it to the for-profit Art Loss Register, which maintains a database of purloined artwork.

“She should have known better,” he told the Riverfront Times. “She could have checked that — there’s been a record of this ever since the day it was stolen.”

He also told the newsweekly about his desire to reacquire the painting.

“I’m sure in two calls I could turn it over for X million dollars before the sun goes down,” he said.

Goffman Cutler, who has sold more than 300 Rockwells, defends her handling of the painting. Before acquiring it, according to her lawsuit, she contacted the Norman Rockwell museum, which had just completed a definitive catalog of the artist’s work. The catalog identified Russian Schoolroom’s location as “whereabouts unknown,” unlike other works listed as “stolen.”

She also sold the painting in a highly public manner, according to court papers. She put it in a traveling exhibition, showed it in New York City and featured it in a magazine advertisement. She even sent a notice to a parent gallery of Arts International, in New York, announcing that Russian Schoolroom was for sale.

Her lawsuit cites Solomon’s published remarks, noting that “the clear implication of the statement made to the press was that Goffman was trafficking in stolen art.”

“We are really angry about Solomon, who was sitting on his thumbs for 33 odd years,” says Laurence Cutler.

Goffman Cutler is also suing the Art Loss Register. The business, her lawyer contends, illegally sought to coerce her into settling with Solomon, by threatening to tarnish her reputation and have her investigated by the FBI. Goffman Cutler is seeking damages of $5 million in profits from business she says she stood to do with Spielberg in the future, $10 million for damage to her reputation and $10 million for defamation.

Goffman Cutler wants the court to affirm that her New York City business, The American Illustrators Gallery, has legally acquired the painting from Spielberg.

“We have exchanged one of our paintings, not from our museum collection, a painting of comparable or higher value, approximately the same size, painted in the same year, and both were published in Look magazine. He is very happy with that. And we are very happy to take him out of this circus,” says Laurence Cutler. Since the FBI “doesn’t want [Russian Schoolroom] to cross state lines, Steven is holding it.”

If Goffman Cutler’s private gallery succeeds in acquiring Russian Schoolroom, it will probably be loaned to the National Museum of American Illustration, in Newport, says Laurence Cutler. The painting would travel to China for a temporary exposition at the Shanghai Art Museum, he says, and then it would probably find a home at the Bellevue Avenue museum.

“There is now interest in seeing this painting ‘in the flesh’ so to speak, the world over,” he says.

rsalit@projo.com

http://www.projo.com/news/content/STOLEN_ROCKWELL_09-23-07_BR6G7AB.2afd52a.html

Auschwitz Sign Theft Suspect Named

2010-01-16T12:26:00.000-08:00

KRAKOW, Poland, Jan. 15 (UPI) -- Polish authorities say they have issued an arrest warrant for a man they describe as a Swedish neo-Nazi on charges he stole the sign above the Auschwitz gate.

"We have already issued the arrest warrant for the Swedish suspect to be brought to police headquarters in Krakow," Boguslawa Marcinkowska of the Prosecutor's Office in Krakow said Friday.

Five Poles arrested Dec. 21 -- three days after they allegedly stole the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign from the World War II German Nazi death camp -- said they were paid to steal the sign by a former neo-Nazi in Sweden, Poland Radio reported.

He intended to sell it "for millions" to a collector, allegedly living in Great Britain, Poland Radio said.

Swedish press reports identified the suspect named in the warrant as alleged former neo-Nazi Anders Hogstrom.

"My role was to go get the sign in Poland," he told a Swedish daily newspaper Expressen. "I was the middleman and was supposed to take care of the sale."

Hogstrom, described as a former leader of a 160-member strong neo-Nazi group based in southeast Sweden, told the newspaper the money from the theft would be used to launch a campaign against parliament and Swedish politicians.

The sign was found in northern Poland, cut into three pieces.

http://www.upi.com/Top_News/International/2010/01/15/Auschwitz-sign-theft-suspect-named/UPI-87991263604491/

ACLU Wants to Know the Legal Basis for CIA Drone Strikes/Was There Actually an Airstrike in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province?

2010-01-15T10:39:00.000-08:00

By Spencer Ackerman
Washington Independent | 1/13/10

It’s a question that rarely gets asked: from where does the Obama administration locate the legal authority to launch missiles from the CIA’s unmanned drones into Pakistani (and, this week, Afghan) territory? The ACLU wants to know.

The civil liberties group today filed a Freedom of Information Act request with the CIA and the Departments of State, Justice and Defense for documentation establishing the legal basis for the drone strikes. Drone strikes in Pakistan have risen substantially during the first year of the Obama administration.

Additionally, the civil liberties group wants to see the government’s estimates for how many civilians the drone program is responsible for killing. A recent New America Foundation report arguing that most drone critics overstate overstate civilian casualties still found that one in every three Pakistanis killed by the drones is a civilian, not a combatant.

From a just-released ACLU statement:

“The American public has a right to know whether the drone program is consistent with international law, and that all efforts are made to minimize the loss of innocent lives,” said Jonathan Manes, a legal fellow with the ACLU National Security Project. “The Obama administration has reportedly expanded the drone program, but it has not explained publicly what the legal basis for the program is, what limitations it recognizes on the use of drones outside active theaters of war and what the civilian casualty toll has been thus far. We’re hopeful that the request we’ve filed today will encourage the Obama administration to disclose information about the basis, scope and implementation of the program.”

http://washingtonindependent.com/73876/aclu-wants-to-know-the-legal-basis-for-cia-drone-strikes

Was There Actually an Airstrike in Afghanistan’s Kunar Province?
By Spencer Ackerman
Washington Independent | 12/29/09

That’s the subject of an increasingly heated charge from the Afghan government after a Dec. 27 raid in the eastern province of Kunar left nine men dead. The International Security Assistance Force, NATO’s command in Afghanistan, said the men were part of an insurgent network planting improvised explosive devices.

Representatives of the Afghan government say they were civilians. And the governor of the province says they were killed in an airstrike. Only one thing: there may not have been any airstrike.

There’s an investigation open into the Kunar incident ordered by Afghan President Hamid Karzai. But an ISAF official who would only speak on background while the investigation proceeds said unequivocally that there was “no airstrike.” ...

CONTINUED

Fox News: Let’s Put on a Show

2010-01-14T04:13:00.000-08:00

By: cocktailhag seminal.firedoglake.com | January 13, 2010

Not long after Nixon’s “last press conference” upon losing the California governorship in 1962, that memorably disturbing rant which prompted an amused President Kennedy to prematurely say that if he hadn’t done anything else for America, at least he’d “saved it from Richard Nixon,” Nixon fortuitously met up with one Roger Ailes. The rest, as they say, is history. Ailes saw divisions growing in America, over race, culture, and youthful rebellion, that could potentially be exploited to make even a viscerally unlikeable phony like Nixon electable, if played right. He knew intuitively that a lot of Americans were dumb, hateful, and racist, especially in the South, and the time was right to sell them a bill of goods that could make even the elitists of the Republican party look desirable, if that inchoate resentment could be harnessed in the proper way.

Nixon was understandably mistrustful of television after the catastrophic 1960 debates with Kennedy, but the former “Mike Douglas Show” producer was able to convince him that TV could be his friend, especially if the reality was drained out of it. Thus, 30 years before Bush’s fake town hall participants were handed their fake questions, with Ailes’ help Nixon was able to artificially manufacture the warmth and spontaneity he congenitally lacked through staged “discussions” with carefully chosen “citizens,” which began his improbable path to victory in 1968. And we all know how that turned out.

Although it’s impossible to determine what Ailes’ real ideology is (besides making money) he decided, somewhat audaciously at the time, that news didn’t have to be, well, news, but merely had to play it on TV, and he honed his skills at this dubious endeavor for Republicans ever after, culminating in his creation of a whole news network dedicated to deception through newscasts when he joined Rupert Murdoch to conjure up FOX News.

Like Nixon, Murdoch was a shabby opportunist who was widely disliked in his field, for good reason, and like Nixon, he was convinced that the problem was with everyone else, not him. Unlike Nixon, he was also insanely wealthy, and whatever he lacked in ethics and decency he was prepared to paper over with loads of cash from the empire he’d built on his inheritance. Sleazy politicians come and go, but sleazy global media empires are forever, and Murdoch was more than willing to spend big to re-educate the world to his way of thinking for the long term. Thus, the architect of Nixon’s Southern Strategy was handed a golden opportunity to take his deceitful and misanthropic show on the road.

Of course, Murdoch had no intention of aping the despised liberal media by doing any enterprise reporting, setting up expensive bureaus, or hiring actual journalists; that would potentially have let inconvenient reality seep in and worse, waste money. As Ailes knew from his long experience wooing the stupid and resentful, all that was required was the trappings of a newsroom populated by convincing-looking talking heads to fool this bunch. Better yet, such grave inadequacies could actually be a selling point to a target audience that was as fond of objective reality as the Wicked Witch of the West was fond of a bucket of water. ”Fair and Balanced” would become code for “don’t confuse me with the facts,” and pure hype and nonsense dreamed up for political effect would actually be preferable to the dreary old facts produced by the hard work of journalism.

After a few hundred million dollars was expended handing out content for free and attempting to bring down the hated Democratic President, FOX finally got everything it wanted in its dream candidate, George W. Bush, and that’s when things started going down hill, even as ratings and profits soared. The audience demanded more, even after Bush’s insane policies had trashed the economy and brought about a string of crushing and deserved defeats for the Republicans… and Murdoch and Ailes were determined to keep feeding the beast, which had grown like the plant in “Little Shop of Horrors,” with similar appetites. The hideous reality that FOX had helped to create kept rearing its ugly head, and keeping the audience distracted was getting more and more difficult. First the reliably flaccid but obviously correct Colmes had to be tossed off Hannity’s show; then the demented and disturbing Glenn Beck was brought in from CNN, which was busily washing its hands of the Bush era, to, among other things, boil (fake, natch…) frogs on the air and draw misspelled but seemingly heartfelt graffiti on his chalk board about Hitler, Stalin, and whatever else came to mind.

Finally, the carefully crafted artifice of even being a “news” organization had to be dropped altogether; fake videos, blatant political organizing, and hilarious staging of news footage was routinely caught on tape, and the crowds, rather than leaving the theater in disgust, wanted more. Enter Sarah Palin.

Now, the monkey cage that FOX has become is on display for all the world to see, and just like the party it relentlessly fetishizes, looks more and more cuckoo to the outside world as it flings its poo and unashamedly touches itself in unseemly places. Members of the Murdoch family have been moved even to risk their fat dividend checks from the notoriously vindictive Rupert by publicly declaring their embarrassment, and then Ailes rocks the boat by giving a rather impertinently self-aggrandizing interview to the hated New York Times about his genius.

Murdoch, having created this monster, has reached the unhappy moment that ABC once did with “Happy Days” after Fonzie famously jumped the shark. What next?

http://seminal.firedoglake.com/diary/23853

Eugene, Oregon's Pacifica Forum/Nazi Bund

2010-01-13T18:40:00.000-08:00

University to Address Pacifica Controversy
Students plan demonstration to coincide
with Forum meeting at 3 p.m. today in the EMU

By CJ Ciaramella
January 8, 2010 | Oregon Daily Emerald

University administrators are rethinking the school’s policy on providing meeting space after another controversial event at the Pacifica Forum, a local discussion group that some have criticized for being racist and bigoted.

At the Pacifica Forum’s Dec. 11 meeting on campus, speaker Jimmy Marr gave a presentation, titled “The National Socialist Movement: An Inside View of America’s Far-Right.” According to several accounts, Marr and other audience members in the room gave Nazi salutes.

Another Pacifica Forum meeting, titled “Everything You Wanted to Know about Pacifica Forum but were Afraid to Ask,” is scheduled today at 3 p.m. in the EMU Walnut Room. Some students are planning a counter-demonstration to protest the group’s alleged anti-Semitism.

Michael Williams, a member of Eugene’s Anti-Hate Task Force who has monitored the forum since 2003, said Marr “expressed serious concern that white DNA is not being safeguarded from pollution by other groups.”

The Pacifica Forum was founded in 1994 by Orval Etter, a retired University professor. Under a policy that gives former professors access to University space, the Forum enjoys free meeting space on campus.

The Forum was originally formed to discuss issues of pacifism and non-violence, but over the years several critics have come to think of the group as home to a few self-proclaimed white separatists who have held sway over much of its programming. It is now listed as a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center.

In recent years, the Forum has hosted several prominent Holocaust deniers, such as David Irving and Mark Weber, which sparked rounds of protest from community and campus Jewish groups.

Members of the Forum have neither confirmed nor denied that they are anti-Semites, but in April 2007, Etter told the Emerald that he had not bothered to confirm nor refute the accusations because criticism “gets us attention” and gives meetings “livelier spirit.”

In 2008, at the urging of Oregon Hillel, then-University President Dave Frohnmayer addressed the issue in a letter, calling forum members’ actions “gutter bigotry.” He went on to write:

“Groups such as this that use University facilities from time to time do not speak for the University of Oregon. Nor does the appearance of any invited speaker or the use of our facilities imply the institution’s endorsement, support, or even its moral indifference to the content of a message.”

University Vice President of Institutional Equity and Diversity Charles Martinez echoed Frohnmayer’s sentiments in a letter to the Eugene Weekly shortly after the Dec. 11 meeting.

“We are addressing our policies about how best to proceed with our mission and values while safeguarding the campus community and the values of free speech,” Martinez wrote. “While I strongly believe that the UO must defend the free exchange of ideas and promote intellectual inquiry, we have a greater responsibility to turn ideas into the discovery of knowledge in a manner that is inclusive and welcoming to all our students and the
communities we serve.”

In a phone interview, Martinez said that University President Richard Lariviere will be meeting later this month with members of the Anti-Hate Task Force to talk about the Forum’s content.

Martinez said the University values free speech and has no litmus test for groups seeking University space, but he questioned the Forum’s motives.

“Higher education really should be a place where there is this broad exchange of ideas,” he said. “On the other hand, is this what the Pacifica Forum does, and is this what happens at the meetings? My concern is that there is hate-mongering disguised as academic inquiry. If there is, we do as an institution and community have a responsibility to respond to it.”’

However, Pacifica Forum regular Billy Rojas, who spoke at the Forum’s Dec. 4 meeting about “Coal Strip Mining: America’s Worst Environmental Problem,” sharply disagreed with critics’ charges against the group.

“Today’s PF is not the same Forum as 2007 or 2006 or 2005 or any previous years, no matter what Michael Williams may say,” Rojas wrote in an e-mail. “Yet Williams persistently cites incidents from the pre-2008 past, which are mostly irrelevant for 2008-09, as if they have major importance. Actually, at the recommendation of the group’s founder, University emeritus professor Orval Etter, Pacifica set out on a new course starting on Aug. 1 of 2008, with focus on free speech and education.”

Williams, however, said hateful content at the meetings is rarely, if ever, countered and has in fact grown more frequent over the last few years.

“The Pacifica Forum’s topics have broadened to include bigotry against Latinos, blacks, Muslims, homosexuals,” Williams said. “You name a group that is a typical target of far right-wing hate, and the forum has had a program on it. And while there may be dissidents among some of the regulars, the programs continue.”

cciaramella@dailyemerald.com

http://www.dailyemerald.com/university-to-address-pacifica-controversy-1.1007224

Attack on Hampshire College Highlights NY Times Book Review’s Rightward Shift

2010-01-12T22:13:00.000-08:00

by Randy Shaw
www.beyondchron.org | Jan. 07‚ 2010

As newspaper book review sections shrink or disappear, editors must make tough choices. In the case of the Sunday New York Times Book Review, this has meant promoting books with conservative messages while largely ignoring those with progressive political themes. A particularly egregious example occurred on January 3, when the Times ran a laudatory review of an over-the-top attack on Hampshire College. Hampshire is an “alternative” liberal arts school whose notable alumni includes filmmaker Ken Burns, National Yiddish Book Center founder Aaron Lansky, and Stoneyfield Farm Yogurt founder and CEO Gary Hirshberg.

Although the reviewer described the book’s author as a member of a “despised fringe group” at Hampshire — which should have raised flags about his credibility — the review highlighted the book’s depiction of Hampshire as “a laboratory of self-mythologizing.” The reviewer also condescendingly refers to Hampshire students as among the “East Coast hippie majority” — despite the book’s setting in the late 80’s and early 90’s. The only reason to review such an obscure memoir is to denigrate a liberal institution, which has become all too typical in the New York Times Book Review section.

Anyone paying close attention to the Sunday New York Times would notice a trend away from reviews of contemporary political books, particularly those that offer progressive perspectives on current politics and/or social movements. The Times has developed a particular attraction to celebrity bios, while offering lengthy front-page reviews of books about such conservative icons as Ayn Rand and William F. Buckley. ...

The Truth About Hampshire College

Why would the Times use its scarce Book Review space to promote a memoir about an author’s random small college experience in the late 80’s and early 90’s? Because Times’ editors clearly see Hampshire College as one of those 60’s era institutions that refuses to change with the times, and must be prodded to do so by the Times’ promoting books that mock such throwbacks. ...

Randy Shaw is the author of Beyond the Fields: Cesar Chavez, the UFW and the Struggle for Justice in the 21st Century.

FULL STORY

http://www.beyondchron.org/articles/Attack_on_Hampshire_College_Highlights_i_NY_Times_Book_Review_s_i_Rightward_Shift_7683.html

The Fate of Blacks in Nazi Germany

2010-01-11T13:05:00.000-08:00

During the Third Reich, Germany had a small black community, yet relatively little is known about their life in the Nazi era. Deutsche Welle takes a look at survival strategies under Hitler's oppressive regime.

Deutsche Welle | 10.01.2010

Between 20,000 - 25,000 blacks lived in Nazi Germany under Hitler's rule. When asked about blacks in the Third Reich, Germans are most likely to talk about the Afrika Schau. In his book, "Hitler's Black Victims," American University researcher, Dr. Clarence Lusane writes that the Africa Schau was a traveling show that began in 1936. The show's owners were Juliette Tipner, whose mother was from Liberia and her white husband, Adolph Hillerkus. The aim of their spectacle was to showcase African culture in Germany.

In 1940, the Afrika Schau was taken over by the SS and Joseph Goebbels who "were hoping that it would become useful not only for propaganda and ideological purposes but also as a way to gather all the blacks in the country under one tent," writes Lusane. For blacks who joined the Afrika Schau, it became a means of survival in Nazi Germany.

Duke University historian, Dr. Tina Campt, whose research deals with the African Diaspora in Germany said that "it was possible that blacks who were involved in it used it for purposes that were not the intention of those who organized it. So if the Afrika Schau dehumanized people, there were ways that blacks involved in it could use it as an opportunity to make money, as a site to connect to other black people," she told Deutsche Welle.

However, the show was unsuccessful and was shut down in 1941. Also, it could not gather all the blacks in the country under one tent possibly because it only accepted dark-skinned blacks who appealed to the stereotype of what was considered African.

The fate of the "Rhineland Bastards"

Most of the light-skinned blacks living in Germany during the Third Reich were of mixed blood, and a good number of them were the children of French-African occupation soldiers and German women in the Rhineland. The existence of these children is and remains common knowledge because they were mentioned in Hitler's book "Mein Kampf" ("My Struggle"). In Nazi Germany, the derogatory term, Rheinlandbastard (Rhineland Bastard), was used to describe them.

Deutsche Welle spoke to leading German historian Prof. Reiner Pommerin to find out what happened to these children. "I published a book in the 70s, which told the reader about the sterilization of mixed blood children. These were children who had been fathered by occupation forces - mostly French occupation forces," he said. His book, "Sterilisierung der Rheinlandbastarde. Das Schicksal einer farbigen deutschen Minderheit 1918 - 1937" ("Sterilization of the Rhineland Bastards: the fate of a colored German minority 1918 - 1937") publicized the sterilization of the Black minority in Nazi Germany.

Prior to the publication of the book in 1979, this information was unknown to the public. The sterilization of biracial children was carried out secretly because it went against 1938 Nazi laws and procedures. The exact numbers remain unknown, but it is estimated that 400 children of mixed blood were sterilized - most without their knowledge, Pommerin said.

Today, the fate of the "Rhineland Bastards" still remains largely unknown. The lack of public knowledge regarding their fate may have to do with the "lack of public interest in minorities," said Pommerin. Campt attributes it to the secrecy behind the sterilization program and the nature of the Afrika Schau. "It has to do with the status of the Afrika Schau as a spectacle. So that was set up as a visual spectacle that was supposed to get people to notice something as a display. In that way, it was really publicized in order to get people to think about," she said.

Recognition of the black experience in Nazi Germany

According to Campt, the major difference between the experience of blacks and that of other groups in the Third Reich is the lack of a systematic Nazi extermination plan. Moreover, because of the small number of blacks living in Germany, few people are ready to recognize that there was even a population whose experience can be discussed.

Furthermore, there is little or no support in Germany for researchers working in this area. Unlike in the United States where research on minorities is well-funded due to the legacy of the Civil Rights Movement, "black German scholars who have been doing this work for years don't necessarily get the recognition on the basis of qualifications, on the basis of whether or not they are working within a certain kind of academic scholarly structure for the study of minority cultures," Campt said.

All the same, it should be noted that even though the publication of Pommerin's book on the sterilization of the "Rhineland Bastards" did not generate much public interest at the time, it received some attention from a German politician. The member of the Social Democratic Party asked if he could obtain the names of the victims, so that they could be compensated.

Pommerin told Deutsche Welle that "(the politician) wanted to hand over 3,000 German marks ($2,190). I knew where they were living, but I didn't want to bother these people because I could tell that this was more a political interest. And I could see the TV cameras standing in front of the house in the village and money is handed over. And all of a sudden the sensation is great in the village - here is someone who had been sterilized."

Author: Chiponda Chimbelu
Editor: Rob Mudge

http://www.dw-world.de/dw/article/0,,5065360,00.html

Also see: "Black Assimilation Nazi Style"

Oliver Stone Suggests Hitler is 'Easy Scapegoat'

2010-01-10T10:52:00.000-08:00

" ... The director ... said his intention was to broaden minds, delving into the funding of the Nazi party and how American corporations were involved in it. ... "

Oliver Stone, the controversial film director, is facing another backlash after suggesting that Hitler was made an "easy scapegoat" by history.

By Nick Allen in Los Angeles
Telegraph | 10 Jan 2010

Stone ... has made a new documentary series which he says will place historical figures including Hitler and Stalin "in context".

The director claimed many people in America did not understand the connection between the First World War and the Second World War and said his intention was to broaden minds, delving into the funding of the Nazi party and how American corporations were involved in it.

Stone said he did not want to make an "easy" history programme and talked about trying to understand people he despises. His series will aim to uncover little reported facts that shaped the modern United States.

Professor Peter Kuznick, the lead writer on the series, said the programme would not portray Hitler in a more positive light, but would describe him as a historical phenomenon rather than "somebody who appeared out of nowhere".

Stone has courted controversy before, most notably in his film JFK which suggested a high level conspiracy to assassinate President Kennedy. He has also polarised opinion with controversial films about President George W Bush, and Fidel Castro, the former Cuban leader.

Stone said his latest series would show history from an internationalist, rather than an American, point of view. That included a "complete other story" about how Stalin had fought against the German war machine more than anyone.

The director said he fully expected to face a backlash from conservative pundits.

He said: "Obviously, Rush Limbaugh is not going to like this history and, as usual, we're going to get those kind of ignorant attacks." Stone, 63, who won Oscars for directing Platoon and Born on the Fourth of July, also won a Purple Heart for his own military service in Vietnam.

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/celebritynews/6962475/Oliver-Stone-suggests-Hitler-is-easy-scapegoat.html

Reformatted Mirror of AC's Blacklist (In Progress) for Researchers

2010-01-01T09:35:00.000-08:00

The mirror of AC's Blacklist is organized by topic for researchers and writers, and it has a more efficient search engine, among other developments in the blender. Every post from the Blacklist is mirrored at the new one and categorized - ALEX CONSTANTINE'S BLACKLIST (MIRROR): http://www.theworldismycountry.org/

Mufti Usmani Holds Blackwater Responsible for Ashura Bomb Blast

2009-12-31T16:37:00.000-08:00

Also see: "American Sponsorship of Global Terrorism," and "USAID Officer Arrested with Terrorists in Islamabad," also "DynCorp Sub-Contractor Inter-Risk was Behind the Oct. 10th Suicide Bombing of Pakistan's Army HQ," and "Extraditing Headley will Expose CIA," among many others I've posted on American engagement in terrorism. Also related: "UST’s (United States of Terror) Sinister Motives Against Pakistan" - AC

By Shamim Bano
The International News | December 31, 2009

"Karachi - Contrary to the claim and media reports about Tehreek-i-Taliban Pakistan taking responsibility [for] the Ashura bomb blast, Mufti Mohammed Rafi Usmani held US agency Blackwater responsible for the gory incident that claimed more than 40 lives."

The Mufti's observation about the source of the blast is borne out by other stories in the world press. Compare the "Taliban claim of responsibility," as reported worldwide, with this from today's Islami Davet: "Hakimullah Mehsud, head of the Tehrik-e-Taliban, said Blackwater and some Pakistani agencies were involved in the bomb explosion at a crowded market in Peshawar." The International News story continues:

Addressing a news conference along with Muhammed Taqi, Mufti Muhammed Naeem, Maulana Tanver-ul-Haq and others on Wednesday, Mufti Usmani said that Blackwater was involved in the killing of innocent people in the Muharram procession.

He said that soon after the blast, shops in the city’s economic hub were set ablaze which proved that the attack was “pre-planned and organized”.

Mufti Usmani said that the incident was a conspiracy against Islam and the government totally failed to control the situation, as it was the responsibility of the government to provide security to the citizens and to protect the property. He said that the terrorism act was not committed by any Muslim and instead it was the act of Blackwater that had hired locals to unleash terror in the city.

He alleged that Blackwater was hiring youths in Peshawar to carry out attacks and suicide bombings.

Mufti Usmai said that no person could carry weapons or other destructive items with him on occasions of religious processions and the incident was an attack on the country’s sovereignty.

“By the grace of God we achieved the country, but we do not take care of it. It is not only weaknesses of successive governments but also of the people who are the least bothered about taking care of their country,” he said.

The government, he said, must stop taking dictation from the US and form its own policies. Mufti Usmani demanded that immediate measures should be taken to compensate the affected traders of Boulton Market, Light House and other affected areas.

He also demanded conducting an independent inquiry into the incident and exposing those involved in the heinous crime.

Meanwhile, the Sunni Ittehad Council condemned the attack on the Ashura procession.

Addressing a press conference, Sahibzada Fazal Karim said that the attack on the procession was a conspiracy to destabilise the country.

He demanded of the government to constitute a commission headed by the Chief Justice of the Sindh High Court to probe the matter and to ascertain the losses incurred by the traders within 15 days. He also demanded of the government to announce compensation for the affected traders so that they could restart their businesses again.

He also supported the strike call given by the Sunni Rahber Council for Friday.

Meanwhile, the Sunni Tehreek (ST) in a separate press conference also endorsed the Friday strike call and announced to hold a protest rally in the city on Saturday. ST leader Shakil Qadri said that protest rallies would also be held in other parts of the country.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=216088

- Alex Constantine

-------------UPDATE-------------
Mystery Surrounds Contractors' Role at CIA Base
Paresi and Wise, Killed by CIA Suicide Bomber, Worked For Company Once Known as Blackwater
By MATTHEW COLE, NICK SCHIFRIN and RHONDA SCHWARTZ
ABC News | Jan. 6, 2010

Two of the seven CIA personnel killed in last week's suicide bombing in Afghanistan worked as contractors for the company formerly known as Blackwater, but what role Dane Paresi and Jeremy Wise played at the CIA's forward base in Khost remains unknown. The base collected intelligence used in the CIA's drone attacks across the border in Pakistan, but CIA director Leon Panetta has said that the former Blackwater, now known as Xe Services, is no longer involved in the drone program.

Spokesman for both the CIA and Xe/Blackwater declined to comment whether Paresi and Wise were employed through Xe, but two private intelligence sources and one current government official familiar with CIA operations at the Afghanistan base confirmed to ABCNEws.com that the two were there as Xe employees. A source familiar with Xe's contracts said that their role was not to provide security for the base, but provided no further details.

Paresi and Wise were both former elite military commandos, and were killed when a Jordanian double agent detonated a suicide bomb at a meeting inside the CIA base near the Pakistan border. Wise was a 35-year-old former Navy SEAL from Virginia Beach, Va. A statement from the family of the 46-year-old Dane Paresi described him as having recently retired from 27 years in the Army, many in Special Operations. He was from Portland, Ore.

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/mystery-surrounds-contractors-role-cia-base/story?id=9486136

ADL: Pius XII did not Save Jews in WWII

2009-12-31T12:29:00.000-08:00

" ... the ADL concluded that the claim amounted to an 'apparent campaign of misinformation' and urged Pope Benedict XVI to reject its conclusions. ... "

By JERUSALEM POST STAFF | Dec 31, 2009

The Anti-Defamation League took the Catholic Church to task this week, disputing "historical evidence" cited by Church officials as proof that WWII-era Pope Pius XII had worked to save Jews from the Holocaust.

Pope Pius XII, wearing the ring of St. Peter, raises his right hand in a papal blessing at the Vatican, 1945.

The evidence in question was presented at a conference in Rome in September 2009 and apparently cleared Pius XII of accusations that he was silent in the face of the atrocities taking place in wartime Europe. The conference was held by the Pave the Way Foundation, a group that works to bridge religious divisions.

On December 19, Pope Benedict declared Pius "Venerable," a stage on the road to full canonization and sainthood. The move was met with criticism from Jewish groups that believe Pius deserves censure for his "neutrality policy" and acquiescence during the war, even while European states passed anti-Jewish laws and began mass deportations of Jews to concentration camps in the east.

The Vatican has claimed that Pius worked to save Jews throughout the war but was forced to do so behind the scenes because he was surrounded by Fascist Italy and Nazi Germany.

According to the ADL, the evidence, which included wartime documents from an Italian internment camp for Jews in Campagna, did not demonstrate "Pope Pius XII's efforts to help Jews in the face of Nazism," as claimed by Pave the Way founder Gary Krupp.

After examining the evidence with a handful of expert historians, the ADL concluded that the claim amounted to an "apparent campaign of misinformation" and urged Pope Benedict XVI to reject its conclusions.

"To use the Campagna files to suggest that Pope Pius XII was active in attempting to rescue Jews is to demand something that [the] historical record cannot sustain," according to historian Paul O'Shea, author of A Cross Too Heavy: Eugenio Pacelli, Politics and the Jews of Europe 1917-1943, who participated in the study.

"Our examination serves as a salutary reminder of the distinction between alleged claim and verifiable fact," said Debórah Dwork, a Holocaust scholar at Clark University in Massachusetts.

ADL national director Abraham Foxman said the "historical evidence" presented to Pope Benedict [by the Pave the Way conference] makes it all the more crucial for the Vatican to open its Holocaust-era archives to independent scholars and historians now.

"We reject the claim that the world and aging Holocaust survivors must wait another six years until all 16 million documents from Pope Pius' papacy are catalogued by the Vatican.

"We note that Pope John Paul II opened a cache of Holocaust records from Pope Pius XI before the records of his entire papacy were catalogued. We request that Pope Benedict take the same courageous decision and order the relevant Holocaust-era materials be opened now."

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1261364552728&pagename=JPost%2FJPArticle%2FShowFull

Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists PART 6: INTERLUDE - LEGAL PLUNDERERS & PARIAHS

2009-12-30T22:28:00.000-08:00

By Alex Constantine

"The first prisoner [at Guantinimo] formally charged with committing war
crimes was 34 year-old Yemeni Salim Ahmed Hamdan, Osama bin Laden's
driver.... His military-appointed attorney Navy Lieutenant Commander Charlie
Swift questioned the suitability of four members of the panel judging him,
contending they had PERSONAL CONNECTIONS WITH THE 9/11 ATTACKS and the
subsequent war on terror' and as such, would be prone to partiality...."
- News wires, August 29, 2004

"Any terrorist offence is the result of an intelligence failure..."
- Indian Intelligence Official

Two months after the horror show in Manhattan, a federal grand jury issued subpoenas for the records of the Holy Land Foundation. The same day, federal agents froze the assets of InfoCom Corp., an Internet provider in Richardson, Texas. Both companies relocated to Richardson and opened on opposite sides of the street at the same time. InfoCom had been raided five days before the WTC meltdown.

When a platoon of 80 federal officers pulled the plug, 500 websites crashed.1

Agents of the FBI, Secret Service, INS, IRS and multiple branches of law enforcement pored over the company's files and copied every hard disk on the premises for four days.

The charity and the Net provider were symbiotic. Ghassan Elashi, marketing vice president of InfoCom, was chairman of the Holy Land Foundation, a faith-based terrorist front, the government charged, represented by the law firm of Akin, Gump, Strauss, Hauer & Feld. After the raid on the foundation, the Boston Herald hit on the fact that the charity was represented by "a powerful Washington, D.C. law firm" appended to the Bush White House, one that had "earned hefty fees representing controversial Saudi billionaires as well as a Texas-based Islamic charity fingered last week as a terrorist front." Akin, Gump has handled the knotty legal affairs of three wealthy Saudi businessmen (Khalid bin Mahfouz, Salah Idris and Mohammed Hussein Al-Amoudi) who are key suspects in the financing of Al Qaeda's war.

Partners at Akin, Gump include James C. Langdon, a close friend of G.W. Bush, and George R. Salem, chairman of the Republican party's Arab outreach program in the 2000 campaign; also Barnett A. "Sandy" Kress, a former Dallas School Board president, appointed by Bush to a post as an unpaid consultant on education policy to the White House.

This firm, the Herald reported, keeps "an office in Riyadh and is a registered foreign agent of the Saudis. It was paid $77,328 in lobbying fees by the Saudis during the first six months of 2000, public records show."1

In 1999, Saudi authorites placed bin Mahfouz under house arrest after the discovery that his bank, National Commercial, "funneled millions to charities believed to be serving as bin Laden fronts. One of his business partners, Al-Amoudi, was represented by Akin Gump." After the press reported in 1999 that the Feds were also investigating Al-Amoudi's Capitol Trust Bank, Akin Gump quickly issued a press release on behalf of their client denying any connections to terrorism. The denial crumbled, though, when it was reported that a year before, Akin Gump had co-sponsored "an investment conference in Ethiopia with Al-Amoudi."2

Attorneys are paper mercenaries in the ditches in a strategy-of-tensions war engineered for profit and the advancement of "conservative" geopolitical aims.

When the victims and survivors of 911 filed a trillion-dollar lawsuit against the Saudi ruling family, the kingdom assembled an immense legal team to deflect the accusations.

Newsweek's web site reports: "Their opening defense salvo in what promises to be a bruising legal battle was fired last week when a trio of lawyers from Baker Botts, a pricey and prestigious Houston-based legal firm, filed a motion on behalf of Prince Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, the Saudi defense minister."

The defense fell back on a claim of diplomatic immunity and motioned to dismiss. But in documenting their motion, the Baker-Botts team "presented highly detailed new evidence of the Saudi government's role in funneling millions of dollars to a web of Islamic charities that are widely suspected by U.S. officials of covertly financing the operations of Al Qaeda and other international terrorist groups."

The Sultan's right honorable and learned legal defense attorneys were paid millions of dollars in retainers. They brought along piles of affidavits and cancelled checks, admitting in a brief that His Highness had contributed over $2 million to the International Islamic Relief Organization, a Saudi charity raided by federal agents, and disbursed a total of $52,000 in grants to the World Assembly of Muslim Youth, yet another organization on the FBI's charitable-front blacklist.3

Former Secretary of State James Baker is a senior partner at the Sultan's legal firm. Robert Jordan, one of President Bush's personal attorneys, is U.S. ambassador to Saudi Arabia.

Some legal firms retained by the Saudis in the 911 families' suit:

• Wilmer, Cutler & Pickering/Prince Mohammed al Faisal
• Kellog, Huber, Hansen, Todd & Evans/Prince Turki al Faisal
• Jones, Day/the Binladin Group
• Ropes & Grey/Khaled bin Mahfouz
• White & Case/the Al-Rajhi Banking Group
• King & Spalding/the Arab Bank and Youssef Nada
• Fulbright & Jaworski/Nimir Petroleum.4

Meanwhile, in Guantanamo, the Defense Department's prosecutorial kangaroos oversaw a tribunal that has drawn fire from human rights activists since the word "detainee" was first breathed by Donald Rumsfeld. On June 12, 2004, New York Times Magazine ran a feature on Naval Lt. Commander Charles Swift, a defense attorney appointed by the Defense Department to represent the accused at the Cuban tribunal.

Swift and his legal team submitted a provocative friend-of-the-court brief to the Supreme Court, the Times' Jonathan Mahler reported, "in which, among other things, they compared their commander in chief, President Bush, to the villain of the American Revolution, King George III."

In April, Swift took it the next step - he filed a suit against Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and President Bush in a Seattle federal courtroom, arguing that the tribunal for his client - still not charged or given a trial date - violates the Constitution, the Geneva Conventions, federal law and the Uniform Code of Military Justice.4

"An optimist by nature," Mahler noted, "Swift was inclined to believe that the post-9/11 military-tribunal process would be fair. But over the course of the spring last year, as the Defense Department continued to define the workings of the military tribunals, his hopefulness began to fade." Swift was told that hearsay was permissable in court. He could only file appeals to the four-member review panel selected by Rumsfeld.

"What is more, the Defense Department (in effect, the prosecution) was not only defining the crimes worthy of trial by military tribunal but also doing so only after hundreds of suspects were already in custody and had been repeatedly interrogated.

"It was like a Monty Python movie," Swift said. "The government had this wonderful suit of armor, a lance and a sword. And I had been given a sharp stick..."5
-----------------
NOTES

1) Maggie Mulvihill, "White House Connection - "Saudi Agents Close to Bush," Boston Herald, December 12, 2001. On September 7, 2004, UK's Register reported that the FBI "suspected that the Holy Land Foundation was being used to filter money through to Middle East terrorists and so shut it down." The proprietors were arrested "on 18 December 2002 on charges of dealing illegally with Mousa abu Marzook and illegally exporting computer equipment and technology to Libya and Syria."
http://www.theregister.co.uk/2004/07/09/iraq_domain_owner_convicted/

2) See, The Guardian, Sept. 10, 2001.

3) Anon., "A Legal Counterattack," http://msnbc.msn.com/id/3067906/

4) Ibid.

5) The Guantanimobile Project, Newswatch web page, "Military Lawyer Files Suit Against Tribunal System," August 29, 2004
http://guantanamobile.org/blog/archives/cat_guantanamo_in_the_courts.html

CBS News: Was the Afghan Bomb Attack on the CIA an Inside Job?

2009-12-30T16:26:00.000-08:00

Possibility Arises that Someone Working with U.S. Forces was on the Side of the Terrorists

By David Martin
CBS News | Dec. 30, 2009

Eight [Seven CIA] U.S. Civilians Killed in Afghan Bombing

(CBS) It all happened at a well-fortified combat outpost in Eastern Afghanistan. Somehow a suicide bomber was able to bring his explosives on the base, walk up to a group of American civilians and blow himself up. It will take an investigation to determine how he did it.

But the outpost is located in the middle of a notorious stronghold for Afghan insurgents near the border with Pakistan, reports CBS News correspondent David Martin.

Afghan soldiers and civilians are present at almost every American outpost since one of the chief principals of the U.S. strategy is to partner with the Afghans. According to Christine Fair of Georgetown University, some of them may actually be working for the Taliban.

"They have really become a vehicle of infiltration for the Taliban," Fair said. "This is most certainly a vulnerability in our strategy going forward in trying to hand over security to the Afghans if we don't really have a way of figuring out who we can trust."

Combat outposts located deep in enemy controlled territory come under frequent attack - although usually from the outside, not the inside.

Last October , eight U.S. soldiers were killed when insurgents very nearly overran an outpost, and CBS News has been told four officers received warning letters for not having done a better job preparing their defenses.

A year ago last July, nine soldiers were killed when their outpost was almost overrun. That battle is still under investigation. In both cases, the bases were saved by the arrival of the Apache helicopters with drove the attackers back.

Eight American dead makes for a very grim end to what has been the worst year ever for the United States in Afghanistan.

http://www.cbsnews.com/stories/2009/12/30/eveningnews/main6039349.shtml

---------EXPLANATION----------

CIA bomber was a 'Jordanian informant', US media say
BBC | Jan. 4, 2001

The suicide bomber who killed seven CIA agents in Afghanistan was a Jordanian informant, US media reports say.

He is said to have been a doctor recruited by Jordan's intelligence service to infiltrate al-Qaeda. He is believed to have been working undercover in eastern Afghanistan for weeks before detonating a bomb at Forward Operating Base Chapman.

The attack was the worst against US intelligence officials since the US embassy in Beirut was bombed in 1983.

Changing sides

The Washington Post quotes two former US government officials as saying that the alleged bomber lured the CIA officers into a meeting with a promise of new information on al-Qaeda's top leadership.

The reports have named him as Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, a 36-year-old al-Qaeda sympathiser from Zarqa, Jordan, arrested by Jordanian intelligence over a year ago. Jordanian intelligence believed they had brought him over to their side and sent him to Afghanistan to infiltrate al-Qaeda, US network NBC says. His specific mission was thought to be tracking down al-Qaeda's number two, Ayman al-Zawahiri.

According to Western intelligence officials quoted in the reports, Humam al-Balawi called his handlers last week to arrange a meeting at Forward Operating Base Chapman in Khost, where he said he would relay urgent information about Zawahiri. Once inside the base, the reports say, he blew himself up killing seven CIA employees and his handler, whom Jordanian media have named as Ali bin Zeid.

Questions were raised after the bomb was detonated in the base's gym last week about how the attacker could have managed to pass through security. The Washington Post says he was picked up in a car outside the base and driven in without being thoroughly searched.

'Double agent'

A US official, who is a former CIA employee, said such people were often not required to go through full security checks, in order to help gain their trust.

"When you're trying to build a rapport and literally ask them to risk [their lives] for you, you've got a lot to do to build their trust," he told the Associated Press news agency.

A Taliban spokesman quoted on al-Jazeera's website said Humam al-Balawi was a double agent who had misled Jordanian and US intelligence services for a year.
Forward Operating Base Chapman, a former Soviet military base, is used not only by the CIA but also by provincial reconstruction teams, which include both soldiers and civilians.

The airfield is reportedly used for US drone attacks on suspected militants in neighbouring Pakistan.

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/8440535.stm

Good German Tea-Party Turns Sour

2009-12-30T13:39:00.001-08:00

Rupert Murdoch's progammed "patriots" live in a world that doesn't exist. No wonder they're so thin-skinned - liberals keep burning down their most precious fascistic programmed delusions ...

UnderpantsGate: Big Oil, the CIA and the Attempted Bombing of Flight 253 as Justification for Military Operations in Yemen & Nigeria (w/Updates)

2009-12-29T15:07:00.000-08:00

Also see: "American Sponsorship of Global Terrorism," and "USAID Officer Arrested with Terrorists in Islamabad," also "DynCorp Sub-Contractor Inter-Risk was Behind the Oct. 10th Suicide Bombing of Pakistan's Army HQ," and "Extraditing Headley will Expose CIA"

By Alex Constantine

It's All, Once Again, About Big Oil ...

Mutallab's exploding unmentionables

"Why Was Umar AbdulMutallab in Houston in August 2008? Whom Did He Visit There? What Did He Plan?"

The press reports that he was attending a seminar, but it has also been established that he and his family were in contact with a Houston publisher (of a newspaper that gave us a curiously "Kenyan-Born" Barack Obama, an error in reporting that did wonders for the Birther movement):

Flight 253 Terrorist Suspect on Magazine's Radar

HOUSTON - A Houston-area magazine publisher has met and been following members of a suspected terrorist's family for years.

Chido Nwangwu publishes USAfricaOnline.com, one of the most widely-visited internet publications devoted to Nigerian-American relations.

Nwangwu has been following Forouk Abdul Mutalab's family for years before the 23-year-old man left Nigeria for college in the United Kingdom. The suspected terrorist's father, Alhaji Umuru Mutallab, is considered one of the most powerful men in Nigeria ...

http://www.myfoxhouston.com/dpp/news/international/091228-umar-farouk-abdulmutallab-houston

Dr. Gary Maxey

Publisher Chido Nwangwu hails from the West Africa Theological Seminary, founded and chiefly directed by Dr. Gary Maxey, an American evangelical missionary who has dual homes in Atlanta, GA and Lagos, Nigeria.

BIG OIL AND FRIENDS OF THE WEST AFRICA THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY: Robert Dyer, ExxonMobil; James Bates, Vice President, ChevronTexaco Canada; Dr. Edward Beaver, Preacher, Realtor, Businessman; Dr. Bill Brown, Businessman, WATS Adjunct Faculty, Salisbury, North Carolina ...
http://www.watsonline.org/friend.html

Recall that Dutchman Jasper Schuringa, who apprehended the bomber, the star of the Flight 253 "action movie" - all of it reportedly on tape - is the son of a Shell Oil executive. Shell, Chevron and Nigerian terrorists are warring: "Nigeria, whose population of about 140 million people makes it Africa’s most populous country, is almost evenly split between the mainly Muslim north and a largely Christian south. The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, said Dec. 19 it attacked a pipeline in the southern oil region used by Royal Dutch Shell Plc and Chevron Corp." - Bloomberg, Dec. 26, 2009

ABOUT THAT VIDEO TAPE

Passenger films Northwest Flight 253 bomb attempt
January 5, 2010, Las Vegas Democrat Examiner, David Phillips

Patricia "Scotty" Keepman tells 620WTMJ's "Wisconsin's Morning News." that she and her family were seated about 20 rows behind Abdulmutallab in a center aisle, and that she saw a man who videotaped the entire flight. Patricia Keepman went on to say "He sat up and videotaped the entire thing, very calmly. We do know that the FBI is looking for him intensely. Since then, we've heard nothing about it."

There has only been one picture released to the media taken on flight 253 - it’s an exclusive on CNN showing uniformed officers removing the Christmas Day bomber from the plane. ...

[T]he American public won’t be seeing that video anytime soon, if at all, and it seems that the Federal government doesn‘t want to mention it. But what is also even more interesting, is that CNN and other main stream media outlets have yet to follow up with any questions about the man standing with a camcorder filming the bomber on flight 253. ...
http://www.examiner.com/x-21777-Las-Vegas-Democrat-Examiner~y2010m1d5-Passenger-films-Northwest-Flight-253-bomb-attempt

"'The War of Terror' is about Protecting the Free Flow of Oil"

"Some, like author and researcher F. William Engdahl, insist that the ‘war on terror' is, and always has been, more about protecting the free flow of oil than stemming the tide of terrorism. "The evidence suggests that the Pentagon and US intelligence are moving to militarize a strategic chokepoint for the world's oil flows ... [using] claims of a new Al Qaeda threat arising from Yemen," writes Engdahl. "In addition, undeveloped petroleum reserves in the territory between Yemen and Saudi Arabia are reportedly among the world's largest."

"Impending US military actions in Yemen - strategically located on an important trading route linking the Red Sea to the Gulf of Aden and the Arabian Sea - are directly linked to US oil interests in Nigeria," wrote Ken Boyte in January at AllVoices.com. He goes on to cite a feasibility study produced by the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee in 1975 that identified Yemen as "a target for invasion."

http://towardfreedom.com/home/content/view/1829/1/

Africom's Priorities & a Nigerian War Game to "Secure the Oil"

In addition to U.S. military officers and intelligence officers,
"Unified Quest 2008" brought together participants from the State Department and other U.S. government agencies, academics, journalists, and foreign military officers (including military representatives from several NATO countries, Australia, and Israel), along with the private military contractors who helped run the war games: the Rand Corporation and Booz-Allen. ...

One participant, U.S. Marine Corps Lieutenant Colonel Mark Stanovich, drew up a plan that called for the deployment of thousands of U.S. troops within 60 days....

Among scenarios examined during the game were the possibility of direct American military intervention involving some 20,000 U.S. troops in order to "secure the oil," ...

[W]hen General Ward appeared before the House Armed Services Committee on March 13, 2008, he cited America's growing dependence on African oil as a priority issue for Africom and went on to proclaim that combating terrorism would be "Africom's number one theater-wide goal." He barely mentioned development, humanitarian aid, peacekeeping or conflict resolution. ...

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=14783

The Nigerian Bomber & AFRICOM

" ... the serious furore created by Abdulmulltallab’s action will further justify the Obama administration’s commitment to AFRICOM’s escalation of the military role of the command in fighting the alleged global war on terrorism (GWOT). ... "

http://www.anarkismo.net/article/15430

---
PROVOCATIONS

DECEMBER 19, 2009 BBC REPORT: "Nigeria rebels attack oil pipeline"

And that wasn't the end of it: "Nigeria rebels vow more attacks after 'warning strike' on oil pipeline"

We've all been hit by shock waves from the attacks, but Big Oil most of all:

Nigerian Rebels Drive Up Oil Prices
Shell Facility Hit, Crimping Output
Washington Post | June 30, 2009

WHAT DO WE KNOW OF THESE REBELS? - BBC: "Little is known about the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta but it has shown that it is capable of destablising Nigeria's oil industry."

On Big Oil in Yemen, see: "The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint"

" ... In addition to its geopolitical position as a major global oil transit chokepoint, Yemen is reported to hold some of the world’s greatest untapped oil reserves. ... "

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16786

BRUTAL "PARTNERS" IN YEMEN

from: Scapegoats and scaremongers
Alan Maass unravels the deceptions and hidden motives in the government and media response to the plot to set off a bomb on a plane bound for Detroit.

... The government of Yemen is notoriously corrupt and brutal. It is one of the few countries in the world with a record of executions to rival the U.S., and one where the CIA rendition program sent detainees to be tortured by an allied regime. Yemeni military forces have been happy to collaborate with U.S. "war on terror" operations, especially when this furthers the government's ongoing campaigns against opposition groups in the north and secessionists in the south.

But Obama says he's "made it a priority to strengthen our partnership with the Yemeni government, training and equipping their security forces, sharing intelligence and working with them." ...
http://socialistworker.org/2010/01/05/scapegoats-and-scaremongers

THE PATH TO DETROIT

But how on earth were Big Oil and its Saudi partners going to convince the war-weary American public to finance yet another foreign invasion? Pipeline security doesn't wring a driblet of sympathy from the recessionary taxpayer. The answer was too obvious - a covert operation ...

CIA/Saudi Foreshadowings

George W. Bush Let Terrorists Behind Christmas Bombing Out Of Gitmo

Air America: "Brian Ross of ABC News reports that two of the four men behind the plot to blow up a U.S. airliner on Christmas Day were actually prisoners of the United States and that, under the leadership of President George W. Bush, were released into a Saudi art rehabilitation program. ..."
http://airamerica.com/politics/12-28-2009/bush-let-christmas-bombing-planners-out-gitmo/

Saudi King, CIA chief meet amid Yemen fighting
www.presstv | 16 Nov 2009

Saudi Arabia's King Abdallah receives the director of the US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), as both countries become more involved in the deadly war in Yemen.

The meeting between King Abdallah Bin Abd Al-Aziz Al Saud and CIA Director Leon E. Panetta took place in Riyadh on Sunday, the Saudi Press Agency reported. Apparently, King Abdallah also held another meeting on the same day with the Head of Russian Federal Commission of Military and Technical Cooperation Michael Dimitriv.

The report, however, did not include any specific details about the topics that were discussed during the two meetings, simply announcing that there was an exchange of greetings between the king and US President Barack Obama through the CIA director.

The meeting between the Saudi leader and the CIA chief came just days after both the US and Saudi Arabia decided to get more involved in the bloody conflict in northern Yemen ...

http://www.presstv.ir/detail.aspx?id=111411§ionid=351020205

So Panetta travelled all the way to Riyadh for "an exchange of greetings between the king and US President Barack Obama?" King Abdallah couldn't dial a telephone? Perhaps, for the sake of argument, they talked about something else, something very sensitive ... like how to persuade the American people to support further covert and overt military adventures in Yemen. We had already established a CIA presence there ...

CIA present in Yemen since 2008: Report

INTELLIGENCE "FAILURES"

The CIA Deliberately Misspells Terrorists' Names and Bypasses TSA to Let Terrorists Fly

" ... Veteran investigative reporters Susan and Joseph Trento, who first obtained and exposed the flaws in the no-fly list in 2006, have completed a new investigation of the CIA’s role in airline security. It reveals that the CIA is bypassing other government agencies and following terrorists on airplanes without telling TSA or the airlines involved. It shows how terrorists and nuclear proliferators have been allowed to fly because the CIA has refused to add their correct names or aliases to the no-fly list. ... "
http://alexconstantine.blogspot.com/2010/01/cia-deliberately-terrorists-names-and.html

" ... the CIA failed to circulate a report it had about bombing suspect ... "
http://www.examiner.com/x-22397-Providence-Business-News-Examiner~y2009m12d29-Breaking-Flight-253-Terror-Plot-CIA-failed-to-circulate-report-about-bombing-suspect

" ... Yesterday it was claimed MI5 knew three years ago of his "multiple communications" with extremists in Britain while at University College London. ...
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/top-stories/2010/01/04/jet-bomber-s-visa-con-115875-21940595/

" ... Abdulmutallib was also on a terror watch list, although that fact, and the fact that he had been known to anti-terror officials for several years, did not prevent him from boarding Flight 253 ... "
http://frontpagemag.com/2009/12/28/flight-253-and-counterterror%E2%80%99s-epic-fail-by-robert-spencer/

" ... The CIA said it worked with embassy officials to make sure that Abdulmutallab's name made it into the government's database of suspected terrorists and noted his potential extremist connections in Yemen. The CIA also said it forwarded that information to the National Counterterrorism Center. ... it is unlikely Abdulmutallab would have been flagged because the Customs and Border Patrol officers do not routinely screen all passengers against the names of individuals on the Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment database, known as TIDE, which was the only place that Abdulmutallab was listed. ... "
http://www.sphere.com/nation

"Israeli Intelligence" Ties to AQ Extremists in Yemen?

The BBC reports that Al Qaeda terrorists in Yemen -led by the commandos released by Bush - are really Israeli agents though they have organized attacks against US targets:

Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh has said the security forces have arrested a group of alleged Islamist militants linked to Israeli intelligence. Mr Saleh did not say what evidence had been found to show the group's links with Israel, a regional enemy of Yemen. The arrests were connected with an attack on the US embassy in Sanaa last month which killed at least 18 people, official sources were quoted saying.

"A terrorist cell was arrested and will be referred to the judicial authorities for its links with the Israeli intelligence services," Mr Saleh told a gathering at al-Mukalla University in Hadramawt province. "Details of the trial will be announced later. You will hear about what goes on in the proceedings," he added.

The 17 September attack was the second to target the US embassy since April. Militants detonated car bombs before firing rockets at the heavily fortified building.

Mr Saleh did not identify the suspects, but official sources were quoted saying it was same cell - led by a militant called Abu al-Ghaith al-Yamani - whose arrest was announced a week after the attack.
http://www.veteranstoday.com/modules.php?name=News&file=article&sid=9951

VIDEO UPDATE, 1-5-10: OFFICIAL STATEMENTS REVERSED:

The Political Rebirth of Attorney Kurt Haskell: "Today is the second worst day of my life after 12-25-09. Today is the day that I realized that my own country is lying to me and all of my fellow Americans."
http://www.mlive.com/news/detroit/index.ssf/2009/12/flight_253_passenger_kurt_hask.html

Passenger's account of Flight 253 suspect disputed
Flier says man who tried to get on flight may be from Sudan
Paul Egan | The Detroit News
January 05. 2010

" .... A passenger on the Christmas Day flight that was targeted in a terrorist attack says the man a fellow passenger saw attempting to board the flight without a passport may have been a Sudanese refugee, not the accused bomber. BEAU TAYLOR of Jackson, an international development consultant who was aboard the flight from Amsterdam, said he saw a young man being accompanied on the airplane by a flight attendant. ... "

Beau Taylor & USAID, an agency on intimate terms with the CIA ... and, some say, Hizb-ut-Tahrir terrorists: "International Development, USAID contracting, Managerial and Strategy Consulting, Negotiations, Hiring, Recruiting, Management, Russian Language, International Relationship Development, Cross-Cultural Management, Marketing, Finance, USAID." Mr. Taylor is "currently charged with operational oversight of a $20,000,000 project to stabilize communities in Baquba, Iraq. This is part of the larger CSP project, a $300,000,000 development project to support USAID efforts in Iraq."
http://www.linkedin.com/pub/beau-taylor/1/3b4/799\

REWARDING IRAQI INSURGENTS - ACCORDING TO A USAID STATEMENT, RE CSP (Community Stabilization Program), the program that employed Beau Taylor, has in fact been discontinued: "... a 2008 audit [found] evidence of fraud, phantom workers, and money being diverted to insurgents through trash collection contracts. ... " - USAID funding Iraqi insurgents?

THE SECOND MAN - AN OFFICIAL RETRACTION

"Federal officials for several days denied accounts by Haskell and his wife, Lori, also an attorney, that they had seen a second man from their flight led away in handcuffs at Detroit Metro after a dog reacted to something inside the man's bag.

"But late Friday, Ron Smith, the chief U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer for Detroit, confirmed that the incident did happen and apologized for not correcting the information earlier. He said the man from Flight 253, who was handcuffed, later was released without charges. ... "
http://www.detnews.com/article/20100105/METRO/1050370/1409/METRO/Passenger-s-account-of-Flight-253-suspect-disputed

CAUGHT IN THE ACT: WHY THE OFFICIAL DENIAL WAS RETRACTED

" ... Government officials initially denied that anyone other than Mutallab was detained; but, after other witnesses came forward to corroborate the Haskells, they had to admit that someone else was detained. ... "
http://www.theendrun.com/2010/another-buried-christmas-day-arrest-uncovered/

JOE LIEBERMAN'S SOLUTION
TO THE EXPLOSIVE UNDERPANTS PROBLEM

"On Sunday, the neocon Joe Lieberman said the U.S. needs to bomb Yemen and pronto. A script on Yemen and al-Qaeda is now being uniformly followed by the corporate media ... "
http://www.infowars.com/man-videotaped-underwear-bomber-on-flight-253/

The Flaming Diarhhea Psyop

Abdulmutallab had been given erroneous directions for detonating the bomb, and it's fairly certain that the intention was to scare, not kill - after all, there were "actors" planted on the plane. AP reports: " ... The Dutch government said the plan to blow up the Detroit-bound aircraft was professional but called its execution 'amateurish.' ... [Interior Minister Guusje] Ter Horst said Abdulmutallab apparently assembled the explosive device, including 80 grams of PETN, in the aircraft toilet, then planned to detonate it with a syringe of chemicals. She said the explosives appeared to have been professionally prepared and had been given to Abdulmutallab, but did not elaborate.

"If you want to detonate it, you have to do that another way than he did. That is why we talk about amateurism," she said."

Everything was "professional" about the PETN bomb ... but the bomber had no idea how to ignite it. This only adds up if he was a psyop patsy.

THE THIRD TERRORIST SUSPECT ARREST WAS A NIGERIAN PETROLEUM ENGINEER:

"Authorities said the passenger was a 36-year old Nigerian petroleum engineer who became unhappy when he was ordered to his seat one hour before landing, as required under new in-flight rules following the attempted Christmas day bombing of the same flight by another Nigerian citizen. The passenger supervises 90 employees at the multinational petroleum company he works for in Yemen. ... "

http://abcnews.go.com/Blotter/food-poisoning-blamed-northwest-flight-253-bomb-scare/story?id=9430057

The Hero & Shell Oil Co.

" ... Jasper was born in Curacao, a former Dutch colony in the Caribbean though his family often moved, globetrotting for his father’s job with the Shell Oil firm. ... "

Dutch Hero Becomes National Pride
By Peter Valk and Jasper Fakkert
Epoch Times Staff | Dec 27, 2009

Netherlands—Dutchman Jasper Schuringa who reportedly prevented the terror suspect from blowing up the Northwest Airline jet with 289 passengers on board, is being cheered in the Netherlands as a new national hero. The 32-year-old film director’s act of bravery has made the down-to-earth Dutch proud as peacocks.

“We are extremely proud of him but also really shocked because in one second it could have ended up very differently,” Jasper’s parents were reported as saying by Dutch media.

Headlines in the Netherlands largest newspaper 'De Telegraaf', read "Dutch Jasper Overmasters Terrorist” and “Decoration for Hero Jasper Schuringa.” Other news articles in the Netherlands also focus on how “Dutch Jasper” is praised in American media.

Dutch Minister Wouter Bos spoke with Jasper over the phone and expressed his appreciation on behalf of the Dutch government.

Jasper himself seems rather sober about his part: “I just jumped. I didn’t think. I went over there and tried to save the plane,” he said in an interview with CNN.

Jasper was born in Curacao, a former Dutch colony in the Caribbean though his family often moved, globetrotting for his father’s job with the Shell Oil firm. ...

Besides Curacao, Jasper and his family lived in Oman, the Netherlands and Gabon, where they had to flee with help of the French foreign legion when the civil war broke out there. After secondary school he graduated from a film academy in Miami. Currently, he runs a video company called “Go With The Flow Productions." ...

http://www.theepochtimes.com/n2/content/view/27065/

Abdulmutallab SPECIFICALLY REQUESTED his Seat

" ... Jasper, a video director and producer was sitting across the aisle from the bomber and when he heard a pop as did all the other passengers; he went into action seeing the smoke and fire. ... [R]eports are now suggesting that Abdulmutallab had requested his particular seat, there needs to be an evaluation of such request. ... "

http://www.examiner.com/x-7462-Atlanta-Faith--Family-Examiner~y2009m12d28-Hero-of-Flight-253-to-Detroit-Flying-Dutchman-Jasper-Schuringa-subdues-terrorist

Jasper Schuringa & the National Counter-Terrorism Center

" ... The Curacao-born Jasper Schuringa attended film school in Miami and he also lived in Oman. After accusations in the media that he was publicizing himself over the Muttalab incident, Schuringa largely receded from public view. Schuringa was en route to Costa Rica via Detroit to visit his sister. The National Counter-terrorism office in The Hague is being mum about any connections it had with Schuringa, according to the Dutch paper Parool.

http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_5424.shtml

Payday

The Shady Mainstream Media Payday of Flight 253 Hero Jasper Schuringa
Gawker.com

Jasper Schuringa probably didn't think twice before dismantling Northwest Airlines Flight 253's would-be bomber. But before telling his story, he wanted money, and he got it. ... Yesterday Mediaite and TV Newser reported on Schurnga's two wares he's got for sale: the first, a blurry picture of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. The second is himself, for interviews. CNN got to him first. They also got an interview. ...

All the media organizations found Schuringa's company website, which had his cell phone number on it. By the time he finally got to Miami, his final destination, CNN and The New York Post had gotten to him.

Once the Post and CNN got through to Jasper, he handed over all negotiations to his friend who lives in Miami who he came to the U.S. to visit. His name is Shai Ben-Ami. He's an Israeli guy who's in the restaurant business, as a Google search would turn up. ...

Schurnga sold the "TV Rights" of the first of his two photos to CNN for $10K.

The "print rights" went to the Post for $5K.

Later, Schuringa was paid upwards of $3K by ABC News for a second photo, which Schuringa tried to sell to other local news outlets for $5K, unsuccessfully. ...

"He was quite upfront about it," we're told. "He made it clear that Jasper was only talking to news organizations that paid."

http://gawker.com/5434950/the-shady-mainstream-media-payday-of-flight-253-hero-jasper-schuringa'

Abdulmutallab’s Lawyer is Public Defender Who Forged Documents in Detroit Terror Cell Trial - December 28, 2009 - Re Umar Abdulmutallab’s lawyer, Miriam Siefer, by conservative reporter Debbie Schlussel, the source of these allegations:

During the Detroit terror cell case, she represented Karim Koubriti, an Islamic terrorist in a cell, which plotted to blow up the U.S. Air Force Base in Turkey, where U.S. AWACS and Israeli F-16s are based and from where they took off. They also plotted to blow up hotels and casinos in Las Vegas and planned to detonate in Disneyland.

During the course of her “representation” of terrorist Koubriti, Siefer and her fellow public defender, Richard Helfrick a/k/a Rick Helfrick (who will probably also assist her in representing Abdulmutallab), stole the stationery of the then-Chief Judge of the Federal Court for the Eastern District of Michigan, Lawrence Zatkoff, forged Zatkoff’s name, and sent it to another attorney in the case, accusing him of faking invoices (which wasn’t true). That makes at least several federal crimes that I can think of–theft, forgery, impersonating a federal official, mail fraud, etc. but they got away with it. ...
http://www.debbieschlussel.com/14360/abdulmutallabs-public-defender-is-dirty-trickster-who-forged-documents/

Mutallab's Blue-Chip Father

The Nigerian Bomber's Father & Big Oil: SaharaReporters - " ... Dr. Muttallab, who is currently the chairman of First Islamic bank, JBI, in Nigeria, sits on the board of that bank with Dr. Rilwan Lukman, the Minister of Petroleum resources. ... "

----------
The terror suspect who tried to blow up a Detroit-bound plane is the son of a Nigerian banker who alerted U.S. authorities to his "extreme religious views" months ago, it was reported Saturday.

The father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, a former minister and chairman of First Bank in Nigeria, is shocked that his son was even was allowed to fly to the U.S., family members told the Nigerian newspaper This Day.

The dad was meeting with security officials to discuss his son, identified as Umar Farouk Abdul Mutallab, 23. The younger Mutallab was not on any no-fly list when he flew from Nigeria to Detroit through Amsterdam, Rep. Pete King (R-L.I.) told the Daily News. ...

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/national/2009/12/26/2009-12-26_father_of_umar_farouk_abdul_mutallab_nigerian_terror_suspect_in_flight_253_attac.html#ixzz0b8LDuSQV

Nigerian Terror Suspect: This Apple Fell Too Far From the Tree
USAfricaonline, Commentary, Chido Nwangwu, Posted: Dec 28, 2009

... The older Mutallab, a conservative Muslim, was born in 1939 in the north central state of Katsina (home of the current, ailing President Umaru Ya'Adua). A USAfricaonline.com count found that Umaru Mutallab was chairman of more than 36 blue chip companies inside Nigeria and overseas. ...

A highly respected conservative man whose friends cut across states, religion and gender, Mutallab is soft spoken and very intelligent and industrious.

Having reported and followed key aspects of Umaru Mutallab and Nigeria's military and civilian elite, I know that the older Mutallab benefited from his deft positioning across an immense network of family, geo-ethnic and professional layers of interests.

Consequently, the man has had a near permanent presence on Nigeria's economic landscape as a government official, banking investor, facilitator or shareholder - working the levers of power- all through civilian and military governments in Nigeria for more than 35 years.

Alhaji Mutallab is one of Nigeria's most respected technocrats and administrators, having also served as a Federal Minister of Economic Development & Reconstruction. He is a Fellow of the Association of Chartered and Certified Accountants (FCCA), Institute of the International Bankers Association (FIBA, USA), the Institute of Bankers and the Institute of Chartered Accountants of Nigeria (FCA).

Mutallab was appointed director of First Bank on March 8, 1996 and became chairman of the Board on March 18, 1999. In mid December, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab - after his massively rewarding decade at the helm of the First Bank Plc - fully retired as Chairman. He was succeeded by Oba Otudeko, a billionaire chairman of the Honeywell Group of Companies and immediate past President of the Nigerian Stock Exchange (NSE).

Mutallab has been in strategic board positions of the banking sector for decades as CEO and/or Chairman of various financial institutions including United Bank for Africa (UBA).

“The man is amiable and always at the forefront of any economic revival committees and boards of government, the alleged link of his son to the alleged terrorism plot left many of his friends and associates devastated,” notes Obinwa Nnaji, USAfricaonline.com bureau chief in Lagos. “Other Nigerians still argue at their homes, various places and across USAfrica multimedia blogs that they still do not believe it to be a stock in trade of Nigerians to be found planting bombs in aircraft.” ...

[O]ne of the areas where the older Mutallab's skills and services did not yield much if any significant value for Nigerians was his tenure as chairman of the troubled and woeful former National Electric Power Authority (NEPA).

http://news.newamericamedia.org/news/view_article.html?article_id=eb6dc82396fc6c958fae289fe7cbc3d3

Goldman Sachs, the Bomber's Father and VISION 2O20

‘Aggressive implementation of Vision 2020 commences January 2010’
Daily Trust | 29 November 2009

By January 2010, about four weeks from now, Nigerians will start feeling the impacts of the Vision 20:2020, the Chairman of the Business Support Group of the Vision, Alhaji Umuru Mutallab, CON, said in this interview.

Vision 20:2020 sought to accelerate the pace of the country’s growth & development and make it among the world’s twentieth economies by the year 2020. Mutallab said for the Vision to succeed, the civil service must be carried along. He spoke on many other issues.

It started during the tenure of former President Olusegun Obasanjo following the projections of Goldman Sachs which realises that countries like Brazil, Rusia, India and China have achieved phenomenal growth and said further that there are other sets of countries which if they put their acts together by the year 2025 would be among the top 20 economy of the world. Nigeria was among these countries ...

http://www.news.dailytrust.com/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=10311:aggressive-implementation-of-vision-202020-commences-january-2010&catid=26:business&Itemid=153
---
Mind Control?

Underwear Bomber Dazed, Stared "Into Nothing"
Tom Leonard
The Daily Telegraph | December 28, 2009

Mr Schuringa said he said he frisked the suspect and discovered his trousers were open and that he had a flaming object resembling a small, white shampoo bottle strapped to his left leg near his crotch.

"I pulled the object from him and tried to extinguish the fire with my hands and threw it away," he told CNN. ...

All the while, Mr Abdulmatallab seemed dazed, he said. "He was staring into nothing." When he got him into first class, Mr Schuringa pulled off his remaining clothes to check for further explosives and helped a crew member to handcuff him.

http://au.messages.yahoo.com/news/conspiracy_theory/11121/
--------UPDATES-------

Britain sends counter-terrorist forces to Yemen
Telegraph.co.uk - ‎Jan 2, 2010‎
Britain has dispatched a special counter-terrorist unit to Yemen as the mountainous Arab state emerges as the new frontline in the war against al-Qaeda, ...

Crack SAS team to hunt the terrorists
Mirror.co.uk - Rupert Hamer - ‎Jan 2, 2010‎
A crack squad of SAS troopers has been flown to the Yemen to wipe out new al-Qaeda terror camps. The move follows revelations that ...
---
Operation Underpants: A "Planned Event"

" ... The story seemed almost plausible, but the sequence of US government responses and controlled news releases about the alleged bomber over the 24-48 hours that followed proved otherwise. Just like in the cases of 9/11 and 2005 London bombings, the campaign of disinformation shows that ‘Terror in Detroit’ is another ‘planned event.’ ... " - From: "Christmas Terror in Detroit! Deception continues," by Ajit Randeniya

http://www.lankaweb.com/news/items/2009/12/30/christmas-terror-in-detroit-deception-continues/

"Covert Sponsorship of Al-Qaeda Networks Continues"

>" ... As we have seen with Mohamed Atta, Richard Reid and Mohammad Sidique Khan, Abdulmutallab's "journey" was one undertaken by many before, often with a wink-and-a-nod by British and American security officials when it served the geostrategic ambitions of their political masters. As security researcher and analyst Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed wrote in New Internationalist in October: 'Islamist terrorism cannot be understood without acknowledging the extent to which its networks are being used by Western military intelligence services, both to control strategic energy resources and to counter their geopolitical rivals. Even now, nearly a decade after 9/11, covert sponsorship of al-Qaeda networks continues.' ... " - From: "Weird Underpants, Strange Backstory: The Untold Tale of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab's Christmas Flight," by Tom Burghardt

http://pacificfreepress.com/news/1/5313-weird-underpants-strange-backstory-the-untold-tale-of-umar-farouk-abdulmutallabs-christmas-flight.html

The Northwest Flight 253 intelligence failure: Negligence or conspiracy?
World Socialist Web Site | 31 December 2009

... Both then and now, the government and the media expect the public to accept that all that was involved was mistakes. But why should anyone assume that the failure to act on the extensive intelligence leading to Abdulmutallab involved merely “innocent” mistakes—and not something far more sinister?

If this episode is to be examined seriously, the question must be asked: What would have happened had Northwest Flight 253 been destroyed?

There is no question but that such a catastrophe would have had immense repercussions both internationally and within the United States. It would have seriously destabilized the Obama administration, politically strengthened the most extreme right-wing sections of the ruling class, and cleared the way for an even more massive expansion of military-intelligence operations overseas and a drastic curtailing of democratic rights at home. ...
http://www.wsws.org/articles/2009/dec2009/pers-d31.shtml

Northwest Flight 253: Mounting Evidence of U.S. Complicity in Terrorism
by Gordon Duff

When nothing adds up, its time we start looking at what we kow. Our recent terrorist, now dubbed "the crotch bomber" is another dupe. He could have been working for anyone, drugged, brainwashed or simply influenced, maybe by crazy Arabs, maybe by the Mossad, maybe by the CIA. We only know the game is falling apart.

We do know a couple of things. Dad, back in Nigeria, ran the national arms industry (DICON) in partnership with Israel, in particular, the Mossad. He was in daily contact with them. They run everything in Nigeria, from arms production to counter-terrorism. Though Islamic, Muttalab was a close associate of Israel. He has been misrepresented. His "banking" is a cover. Next, what do we know about the two alleged Al Qaeda leaders Bush had released, the ones who allegedly planned this?

According to ABC news, the Al Qaeda leaders running the insurgency in Yemen were released from Guantanamo, although two of the alleged highest ranking known terrorist there, without trial.

Guantanamo prisoner #333, Muhamad Attik al-Harbi, and prisoner #372, Said Ali Shari, were sent to Saudi Arabia on Nov. 9, 2007, according to the Defense Department log of detainees who were released from American custody.
Both of the former Guantanamo detainees are described as military commanders and appear on a January, 2009 video along with the man described as the top leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Basir Naser al-Wahishi, formerly Osama bin Laden's personal secretary.

Both of the former Guantanamo detainees are described as military commanders and appear on a January, 2009 video along with the man described as the top leader of al Qaeda in Yemen, Abu Basir Naser al-Wahishi, formerly Osama bin Laden's personal secretary.

New MSNBC theory: Maybe U.S. intel deliberately withheld info on Flight 253 from each other
posted at 9:10 pm on January 5, 2010 by Allahpundit

"John Gibson and Ace read this as Olby’s way of hinting that dark elements within U.S. intelligence tried to hurt Obama politically by intentionally letting an attack happen. ... Either way, do note that the strong-form conspiracy theory about shadowy forces using Flight 253 to ruin Obama is indeed being circulated ... "

http://www.glocktalk.com/forums/showthread.php?t=1166984

Searching fot the "Hidden Agenda"

" ' ... It seems that the president is leaning very much towards thinking this was a systemic failure by individuals who maybe had an alternative agenda.' (emphasis added)

'I will accept that intelligence by its nature is imperfect" the President said, "but it is increasingly clear that intelligence was not fully analyzed or fully leveraged.'

The question is why? And more pertinently from a parapolitical perspective, what 'alternative agenda' is playing out here that would put the lives of nearly 300 air passengers at risk? ... "

http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig10/burghardt3.1.1.html

Detroit attack: US border guards knew alleged terrorist was on flight
Telegraph | 07 Jan 2010

" ... 'The people in Detroit were prepared to look at him in secondary inspection,' said a an official quoted by the Times.' ... [The]database had picked up the State Department concern about this guy, that this guy may have been involved with extremist elements in Yemen ... They could have made a decision on whether to stop him from getting on the plane,' he said. ... "

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/northamerica/usa/6944598/Detroit-attack-US-border-guards-knew-alleged-terrorist-was-on-flight.html

CBS NEWS LEARNS CIA HAD ADVANCE INFORMATION ON DETROIT TERRORIST

CBS News has learned that as early as August of 2009 the Central Intelligence Agency was picking up information on a person of interest dubbed "The Nigerian," suspected of meeting with "terrorist elements" in Yemen.
Sources tell CBS News "The Nigerian" has now turned out to be Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. But that connection was not made when Abudulmutallab's father went to the U.S. Embassy in Nigeria three months later, on November 19, 2009. It was then he expressed deep concerns to a CIA officer about his son's ties to extremists in Yemen, a hotbed of al Qaeda activity. ...
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=16769

Delta black op bomb gave neocon Christmas gifts of nudity and fear
www.examiner.com | January 4

" ... Delta 253 passenger Jasper Schuringa, the young filmmaker that wrestled Mutallab to the ground and prevented his terrorist mission, "was driven to Schiphol on Christmas morning by his friend Chris Van Amersfoort. whose Facebook page lists him as a 'fan of' Dubai World’s owner 'His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al-Maktoum,' the Emir of Dubai. ... "
http://www.examiner.com/x-10438-Human-Rights-Examiner~y2010m1d4-Obamas-orders-for-security-ignored-FOX-refuses-to-release-segment-copy

---
Wayne Madsen Reports that Mutallab's Passport was Italian?

Intelligence sources: Plane incident a false flag involving trinity of CIA, Mossad, and RAW
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer | Jan 4, 2010

" ... The facts emerging are that Mutallab was not traveling on a Nigerian passport but on an Italian passport. Mutallab’s father, Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, happens to hold the Italian Order of Merit. In addition, Mutallab’s ticket was purchased in Accra, Ghana, with $2,831 in cash and was later re-issued, on December 16, with a different itinerary at the KLM office in Lagos. ... Previously, WMR reported that the security company that cleared Mutallab in Schiphol is ICTS, a firm that is headquartered in Israel and Amstelveen, Netherlands. The firm also cleared attempted shoe bomber Richard Reid for a Miami-bound American Airlines flight from Paris in December 2001. ... "

---
ORWELL FLEW IN ON FLIGHT 253

OMNESCIENCE NOW!

... In 2002, retired Adm. John Poindexter, an expert on information technology, devised a plan for the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency called the Total Information Awareness program.

PART OF THAT program was designed to foil "asymmetrical warfare" — airline suicide bombers, for example — with vast data-mining computers that could link widely disparate pieces of information in scattered databases. Unfortunately, Poindexter was probably not the best salesman for the program with congressional Democrats.
From: "Join dots and stop the terror" | Scripps Howard News Service, 1-5-10
http://www.thereporteronline.com/articles/2010/01/05/opinion/srv0000007247531.txt

TORTURE AS A "MORAL OBLIGATION"

Time For Enhanced Interrogation
Investors.Com | 12/30/2009

War On Terror: The U.S. now holds a prisoner of war who has knowledge that could foil future terrorist operations. The Obama administration has a moral obligation to extract it from Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. ...

http://www.investors.com/NewsAndAnalysis/Article.aspx?id=516683

THE LYING LIARS OF THE GOP

Obama's Use Of 'Terror': Reporters Still Struggling To Use Internet To Verify Claims
By Jason Linkins
Huffpost | 01-4-10

One of the last things I did in 2009 was to lament the awesome stupidity of a press corps that seemed unable to do even basic fact-checking, such as using available resources to test contentions like: "Did President Barack Obama stop using the word 'terror' or 'terrorism'?" Peter King told this lie, successfully, to CNN because apparently no one at CNN has access to a computer or a television or even has a teensy bit of electrical current running through the wet membranes found in their cranial cavity.

I was able to use this thing called Google to demonstrate that King was not telling the truth when he said, "Even when the president gave his speech at West Point about the troops going to Afghanistan, he didn't use the word 'terrorism'." It's no big deal. I didn't think I deserved a medal for journalistic excellence, at the time. But I'm starting to revise that belief now that it's 2010 and Greg Sargent has a piece up at the Plum Line documenting how Jim DeMint played all sorts of journalists for fools in a similar fashion over the weekend:

CNN let Senator Jim DeMint come on the network yesterday and claim, without any fact-checking, that Obama doesn't use the word "terror," which DeMint cited as proof of the President's lackluster approach to keeping us safe:

DEMINT: There's no question that the president has down-played the risk of terror since he took office. He is investigating the CIA, rather than build them up.

GLORIA BORGER: How has he -- Senator DeMint, how -- how has he down-played the risk of terror?

DEMINT: Well, it begins with not even being willing to use the word.

BORGER: Well, aside from the semantics, aside from that.

Again, in about15 seconds, you can go to the White House's website, click "Briefing Room", click "Speeches and Remarks", select the first entry, which is titled, "Statement by the President on Preliminary Information from his Ongoing Consultation about the Detroit Incident" and then see the very first paragraph, which reads:

Good morning. Yesterday I updated the American people on the immediate steps we took -- the increased screening and security of air travel -- to keep our country safe in the wake of the attempted terrorist attack on Christmas Day. And I announced two reviews -- a review of our terrorist watch list system and a review of our air travel screening, so we can find out what went wrong, fix it and prevent future attacks. ...

You can also see that Obama used some form of the word "terrorism" three additional times.

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2010/01/04/obamas-use-of-terror-repo_n_410653.html
---
THE COVER-UP

NOW we'll get to the bottom of this ...

Ex-CIA official to lead inquiry into plane incident
By Joby Warrick
Washington Post | January 9, 2010

The Obama administration's top intelligence official has appointed a retired CIA analyst to head an internal investigation of the failures that led to the Dec. 25 attempted bombing of a Detroit-bound airliner.

John E. McLaughlin, a former deputy CIA director, will lead a review of missteps by U.S. intelligence agencies and assess proposals for correcting weaknesses in a system that did not respond to warnings about terrorism suspect Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, said Director of National Intelligence Dennis C. Blair.

Blair said the review will also examine the events leading to the Nov. 5 shootings at Fort Hood, Tex. The assessments will produce "candid, constructive guidance to improve our future performance," he said.

McLaughlin, 67, was named deputy CIA director under George J. Tenet in 2000. McLaughlin briefly served as acting director of the spy agency after Tenet stepped down in 2004. McLaughlin retired later that year.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/01/08/AR2010010803754.html

And WHO is John McLaughlin?

" ... With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. ... "

President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up
11 December 2010

by: Melvin A. Goodman

The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.

With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA's most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency's chief apologist.

So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the "smartest man he had ever met."

Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.

Washington insiders remember that it was CIA director Tenet who told President George W. Bush, "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," in response to the president's demand for stronger intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide to the American people. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the "slam-dunk" briefing to the president in January 2003.

McLaughlin was the "villain" behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.

When Kay returned to CIA headquarters from Baghdad, Tenet and McLaughlin made sure that Kay was given a tiny, windowless office at the end of a distant, deserted corridor undergoing construction. It had no secure phone or classified computer. Kay called it Siberia.

McLaughlin was also the villain behind the CIA's preparation of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that used phony intelligence to convince an international audience of the need for war. According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell's chief of staff, Tenet and McLaughlin lied to the secretary of state about the sourcing of serious allegations dealing with Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain strategic weapons.

The most serious allegation came from an Iraqi con man known as "Curveball," who maintained that Iraq had mobile biological laboratories, a key charge in the phony intelligence to justify the Iraq war. German intelligence debriefed Curveball, and German intelligence officials warned the CIA that Curveball was unstable and that there was no validation for his claims. Tyler Drumheller, the chief of CIA's European Division, knew that Curveball was mentally unstable and a liar, and he urged McLaughlin to drop all references to the mobile biological labs from Powell's speech. McLaughlin ignored him, too.

Five weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Powell and McLaughlin shared a table at the White House correspondents' dinner, where McLaughlin, an amateur magician, agreed to perform a few magic tricks during a break in the action. The CIA deputy director conjured coins out of thin air and transformed a single dollar into a $100 bill; everyone at the table laughed except for Powell, who seemed tense and out of sorts.

According to Bob Drogin, who wrote an authoritative book on Curveball, Powell stared at McLaughlin and requested another trick. "Let's see you find the WMD in Iraq," an unsmiling Powell demanded. McLaughlin looked surprised and his broad grin faded. "We will," he replied, "they're there and we'll find them."

In addition to being one of the ideological drivers for the CIA's policies of torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary renditions, McLaughlin demonstrated early in his career that he was a company man willing to do what was necessary to advance his career. In the 1980s, when CIA Director William Casey and his Deputy Robert Gates were "cooking the books" on intelligence dealing with the Soviet Union, Central America and Southwest Asia, McLaughlin offered no dissent.

When the CIA did an internal investigation of one of the worst examples of politicization of intelligence, the case for Soviet complicity in the attempt on the life of Pope John Paul II in 1981, McLaughlin made sure there were no references to politicization in the final report and made every effort to hide Gates' role in preparing the Papal plot intelligence assessment. When Gates' nomination as CIA director was in trouble during the confirmation process in 1991, it was McLaughlin who stepped forward to defend his former boss from charges of politicization. ...

http://www.truthout.org/article/president-obama-cia-and-master-cover-up

Lee Hamilton is a leading light of the Senate Commerce, Science and Transportation Committee "investigation" of Flight 253.

Hamilton is another veteran cover-up operative, who honed his skills in the Iran contra investigation, as I reported in 2004:

Full exposure of Iran-contra was hindered by a cover-up culture in Congress. George H.W. Bush was snared in the investigative net, so he enlisted the aid of a trusted ally in the House, Rep. Dick Cheney of Wyoming. Cheney was the ranking Republican in the Iran-contra probe. Robert Parry reports that Cheney "smartly exploited his relationship with Rep. Lee Hamilton," who "gave Bush a pass." The narrow, penlight focus of the investigation was the work of Cheney and Hamilton, who steered it away from "sensitive areas, such as contra-drug trafficking and the public diplomacy operation." (Iran-contra's Otto Reich was tarred by the Orwellian "public diplomacy" scandal under Reagan. A Cuban exile with a sordid history of romancing repressive Latin American regimes, he followed Armitage to the State Department, was appointed to the office of Assistant Secretary of State for Western Hemisphere Affairs in January 2002, under Powell.)

"Despite surrendering to Cheney's demands time and again, Hamilton failed, in the end, to get a single House Republican to sign the final report. Only three moderate Republicans on the Senate side - Warren Rudman, William Cohen and Paul Trible - agreed to sign the report, after extracting more concessions." Cheney and a few fellow Republicans filed "a minority report with the Committee that denied any significant wrongdoing had occurred."

http://aconstantineblacklist.blogspot.com/2008/05/path-to-911-parts-1-7.html

Witness Tom Kean is well-known for his mishandling of the 9/11 investigation, among other cover-ups: " ... Hamilton and Thomas H. Kean, the former chairman of the commission, were witnesses before the committee during its second hearing in a week on the events of Flight 253. ... " (Detroit News)

Re Thomas Kean, 911 Commission Chairman, and Terrorism, Big Oil:

In 1994, I posted an article on Iran contra connections to 9/11 that detailed some little-known facts about Kean:

Not mentioned on Kean's official Commission biography was his role as director of Amerada Hess Corporation, which in 1998 formed joint venture Delta-Hess, with Delta Oil, in part owned by accused terrorist financier Khalid bin Mahfouz. Mahfouz inherited a controlling interest in the National Commercial Bank of Saudi Arabia, the country's largest bank, and was a director with 20% interest in BCCI, the now defunct financial conglomerate involved in money laundering, bribery, support of terrorism, arms trafficking and other crimes. Mahfouz paid $225 million to escape prosecution for his role in the BCCI scandal. Mahfouz also inherited the assets of the Saudi bin Laden group when Salem bin Laden died in a 1988 plane crash. These included an interest in Arbusto Energy, a Houston, Texas oil company founded by George W. Bush. Bin Mahfouz's interests were managed in part by James R. Bath, a close friend of Bush, who served in the Texas ANG with him. Bath's name was inexplicably redacted in Bush's Air National Guard military medical reports.
http://www.worldhistory.com/wiki/K/Khalid-bin-Mahfuz.htm

A previously unreported intelligence "lapse" surfaced in a hearing conducted by the US Senate Homeland Security Committee on January 20:

US Senate begins whitewash hearings on Northwest Flight 253 bomb plot
By Tom Eley } 21 January 2010

... In another bizarre lapse, the US State Department only declared Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), the organization that allegedly sent Abdulmutallab onto Flight 253, to be a terrorist group on Tuesday. This is despite the fact that AQAP has operated for over a year, and was held responsible for terrorist attacks on South Korean tourists in Yemen in March 2009, high-ranking Saudi Prince Muhammad bin Nayif in August, and Flight 253 last month. One might also expect that the name of the organization itself would raise suspicions among anti-terrorism officials.

The implication of this announcement, however, was that until January 19, 2010, US officials were not legally required to “implement an asset freeze, travel ban, and arms embargo” against AQAP. This only raises more questions as to what connections US agencies might have had with the attackers.

The senators avoided dealing with these issues in Wednesday’s hearings, devoting much of their time instead to demanding further restrictions on democratic rights. ...

http://www.wsws.org/articles/2010/jan2010/bomb-j21.shtml

A Question Everybody Forgot to Ask

Experts: Why was plane parked at Detroit terminal?
AP via Chicago Tribune | January 29, 2010

ROMULUS, Mich. - The pilots of Northwest Airlines Flight 253 took the aircraft to a gate at Detroit Metropolitan Airport without knowing about possible risks after an explosive was extinguished inside the cabin on Christmas, a newspaper reported Friday.

Passengers were allowed to get off the plane and luggage was unloaded before the aircraft was moved to an isolated spot and searched, the Detroit Free Press said, citing records from airport police and fire agencies. ... The plane remained at a terminal gate for about two hours before it was moved to search for a bag that belonged to Abdulmutallab, the Free Press reported.

Taking the plane to the terminal was a "violation of common sense," said Richard Bloom, director of terrorism, intelligence and security at Embry-Riddle Aeronautical University in Prescott, Ariz. "It's a violation of common standard operating procedure. It's a violation of common security rules, regulations and directives," Bloom told the newspaper.

Asked about the decision to park at the terminal, Delta spokeswoman Susan Elliott said the airline, which acquired Northwest, relies on the "professional assessment" of law enforcers to "determine the appropriate course of action." ...

Glen Winn, former head of security at United Airlines, said there is no national standard for handling a suspected bomb on a plane.

"The normal procedure historically is you just don't take it to a terminal," he said.

FULL STORY

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-ap-mi-airlineattack,0,317514.story

Rupert Murdoch's Times Published Forged Iran Nuke Document

2009-12-29T11:49:00.000-08:00

Two words, "Michael Ledeen" - an Italian fascist mole in the American intelligence bund who pretends to be Jewish - probably explain it ... - AC

U.S. Intelligence found Iran nuke document was forged

By Gareth Porter
IPS | December 30, 2009

WASHINGTON (IPS) - U.S. intelligence has concluded that the document published recently by the Times of London, which purportedly describes an Iranian plan to do experiments on what the newspaper described as a “neutron initiator” for an atomic weapon, is a fabrication, according to a former Central Intelligence Agency official. ... The story of the purported Iranian document prompted a new round of expressions of U.S. and European support for tougher sanctions against Iran. U.S. news media reporting has left the impression that U.S. intelligence analysts have not made up their mind about the document’s authenticity, although it has been widely reported that they have now had a full year to assess the issue. ...

CONTINUED

Ex Gitmo Inmates Linked to Bomb

2009-12-29T11:37:00.000-08:00

(Newser) – Two former Guantanamo Bay inmates are believed to be behind the plot to blow up the Northwest flight to Detroit, according to officials and Defense Department documents. ...

Story

Anti-Semitic, Homophobic, Nazi Sympathizing GOP Candidate has History of Defamatory Attack Ads

2009-12-29T11:01:00.001-08:00

" ... [Andy] Martin called one federal judge a "crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race." He also expressed sympathy to the perpetrators of the Holocaust. ... Martin was featured on a Fox News broadcast about Obama in which Martin said Obama's work as a community organizer was 'training for a radical overthrow of the government.' ... "

Rep. Mark Kirk's sexual orientation questioned in GOP opponent's ad
By Rick Pearson
Chicago Tribune | December 29, 2009

A perennial candidate with a history of anti-Semitic rhetoric and legal disputes in federal court launched a radio ad for his Republican U.S. Senate campaign Monday that questioned the sexual orientation of the front-runner in the race.

Andy Martin, who has been sanctioned in federal court for filing hundreds of lawsuits and was found unfit to practice law by the Illinois Supreme Court, has previously used the airwaves to attack political opponents including presidential candidates George W. Bush and Barack Obama.

This time, Martin is going after North Shore U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk, a much better-known candidate seeking the Feb. 2 Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Obama.

U.S. Rep. Mark Kirk meets with the Tribune editorial board to discuss his political positions. Kirk is seeking the Feb. 2 Republican nomination for the U.S. Senate seat once held by Barack Obama. (Tribune photo by Nancy Stone/December 14, 2009)

A Tribune poll in early December showed Kirk far ahead of the rest of his five rivals for the Feb. 2 Senate nomination, with 41 percent support. Martin had 2 percent backing while the combined support for Kirk's opponents was 13 percent. A total of 46 percent of GOP primary voters were undecided.

In the radio ad, which aired Monday on WGN-AM and WBBM-AM, Martin attributes a "solid rumor that Kirk is a homosexual" to conservative Republican businessman Jack Roeser. Martin's ad also claims that Raymond True, the chairman of the conservative Republican Assembly of Lake County organization, says Kirk has surrounded himself with homosexuals. The ad says Kirk should address the rumors.

Eric Elk, the campaign manager for Kirk, said in a statement that "the ad is not true and is degrading to the political process. The people of Illinois deserve better."

Pat Brady, chairman of the Illinois Republican Party, issued a statement disavowing Martin's ad.

"His statements today are consistent with his history of bizarre behavior and often times hate-filled speech which has no place in the Illinois Republican Party," Brady said. "Mr. Martin will no longer be recognized as a legitimate Republican candidate by the Illinois Republican Party."

True said Monday that he "never made that statement" attributed to him by Martin. True said he appeared recently on a show hosted by Roeser on WIND-AM and "I made a comment not about him (Kirk) at all, but that there were some people on his (Kirk's) staff that had a special orientation."

"I never said Mark was a homosexual and there's no evidence to that fact," True said in a telephone interview.

On the WIND broadcast, Roeser criticized several Republicans for their support of gay rights and said of Kirk "a solid rumor is that he himself is homosexual," according to a podcast on Roeser's Web site.

Roeser was not available for comment. The longtime conservative activist, who has chafed at the leadership of the state Republican Party, has backed several failed GOP candidates in bids for statewide office.

Neither Roeser nor True has backed Martin in the GOP Senate primary.

For decades, Martin, previously known as Anthony R. Martin-Trigona, has sought a variety of public offices as a Democrat and as a Republican.

In Illinois, he received 34 percent of the vote in 2008 in losing a two-man race for the GOP U.S. Senate nomination to the little-known Steve Sauerberg. In 2006, he got less than 1 percent of the vote in a multi-candidate race for the Republican nomination for governor.

In federal court filings from the 1980s related to bankruptcy proceedings against him, Martin called one federal judge a "crooked, slimy Jew, who has a history of lying and thieving common to members of his race." He also expressed sympathy to the perpetrators of the Holocaust.

In 1999 when Martin ran for president, he aired a TV ad in New Hampshire that said GOP contender George W. Bush "had a cocaine problem" and suffered from "alcohol abuse."

Martin gained some attention during last year's presidential contest by contending President Barack Obama was a Muslim and contesting whether Obama was born in Hawaii. Martin was featured on a Fox News broadcast about Obama in which Martin said Obama's work as a community organizer was "training for a radical overthrow of the government." The Washington Post reported that a Fox News official later called Martin's appearance a "mistake" and said the guest had not been vetted properly.

Martin graduated from the University of Illinois law school, but the state Supreme Court in 1973 denied him admission to the bar and noted that his Selective Service record showed he had a "moderately severe character defect manifested by well-documented ideation with a paranoid flavor and a grandiose character."

The federal courts have repeatedly sanctioned him for what a U.S. district judge termed Martin's filing of "a substantial number of lawsuits of a vexatious, frivolous and scandalous nature."

In e-mail commentaries, Martin refers to himself as an "insurgent Internet powerhouse" and a "legendary Chicago muckraker, author, Internet columnist, radio talk show host, broadcaster and media critic." He has filed unsuccessful lawsuits against the Tribune, questioned the integrity of its reporters and said he would not cooperate with the newspaper regarding his Senate candidacy.

Martin indicated he would go after rumors about Kirk in e-mails he disseminated during the summer. Those e-mails corresponded with the announcement that Kirk and his wife of eight years, Kimberly Ann Vertolli, had agreed to a divorce. Kirk's former wife attended and endorsed Kirk at his Senate candidacy announcement in July.

Kevin Metheny, program director at WGN-AM, said the station had no choice but to air the commercial under federal communications law and Federal Communications Commission rules for political advertising.

Metheny said the station "is not allowed to edit or censor a candidate's political advertising, to limit it to a particular time of day, or to reject it as inappropriate." WGN-AM and the Tribune are both owned by Tribune Co.

WBBM-AM said on its Web site that the station is required by the FCC to provide all legally qualified federal candidates with "reasonable access" and to "air political advertisements without censoring them."

David Oxenford, an attorney specializing in broadcast law with the Washington-based firm of Davis Wright Tremaine, said stations are very limited in their ability to refuse political advertising based on content from a legally qualified federal candidate.

"Unless an ad is legally obscene or violates a felony (statute), a station can't censor it," said Oxenford, who has represented broadcasters for more than 25 years. Oxenford said the federal requirement makes stations immune from civil lawsuits, though candidates have faced lawsuits over making allegations that are false and known to be false in their advertising.

http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-kirk-martin-29-dec29,0,440249.story

John Birch Society, a Fascist Front, Back in GOP Fold

2009-12-28T12:56:00.001-08:00

by psburton
Blogger News Network | December 24th, 2009

In a display of political rehabilitation surpassing even Richard Nixon’s return to power, the John Birch society has been invited back into the big tent of the Grand old party. For those unfamiliar with the John Birch society, it was a post war conservative tea party movement on steroids.

Birchers were so rabidly conservative, even republican President Dwight David Eisenhower was considered a willing pawn of the vast communist conspiracy, the league of women voters were commie inspired shrews and fluoridation of water, a secret plot by the Stalinist’s to bring about socialized medicine and render American men impotent.

Civil rights according to Brother John was no less than a dastardly plan to establish a Negro soviet state in the good old US of A, which tied in logically with the fluoridation of water. The Birch society could demonstrate with pie charts and graphs way back when, that poisoning of water with fluoridation would first occur in white dominated urban areas, resulting in sex starved white women seeking comfort in the arms of colored men, who as any wise Caucasian of the age knew, were naturally over endowed, leaving white men who hadn’t been rendered limp by fluoridation feeling physically inferior.

Brother John warned that if the Negro obtained civil rights, vast swaths of the American heartland would within a couple generations, become havens of miscegenation and Negro domination. Most historians credit the late William F. Buckley with exposing the Birch society for what they were and putting an end to their political aspirations and influence, they never went away of course, but like the K.K.K the leaders of the movement suffered a complete collapse of credibility, political fortune and intellectual influence. Because the Birchers went out of fashion prior to the advent of modern video and sound bite technology, I speculate the current Grand Poobah assumed he could simply claim the liberal media was engaged in a slander and smear campaign when the facts were reported.

MSNBC’s Rachel Maddow reported some of the facts I have passed along in this post, the society quickly threatened action, demanded a formal retraction from the network and denied it had ever been a collection of loons who were convinced Fluoridation of drinking water was a commie plot or that civil rights was a secret plan to establish a negro soviet state. Rachel happily allowed them a couple days of the news cycle to posture before she cited sources and documentation which I speculate she already had on tap when she first called them out hoping they would take the bait.

The Birchers of this generation may have erased or shredded any damming historical files and pamphlets the society posses, but it seems some folks kept boxes of old John Birch memorabilia. The current leaders of the GOP and conservative movement could care less the society is collection of rabid racists and intellectual half wits. Republicans smell blood in the water and they need warm bodies and cold cash as polls proclaim the President and his Party seem to quickly be losing favor with a majority of the electorate that will actually take time to vote in the midterms.

I would like to say it is not so, but the disconcerting augury remains, if we held the election tomorrow, the democrats would lose between fifteen and twenty seats and should the trend continue into the spring, summer and fall, cultivating enough seats to win back control of both the house and Senate is not an unrealistic goal to pursue. Well that’s my view yours may be different.

http://www.bloggernews.net/123347

Headley Tipped off CIA on 26/11?

2009-12-28T08:05:00.000-08:00

Also see: "Extraditing Headley will Expose CIA"

Manan Kumar
ExpressBuzz.Com | 16 Dec 2009

NEW DELHI: Not only did David Headley work as a double agent, but also it was perhaps he who told the CIA about Lashkar’s plans to target Mumbai, ostensibly not to lose the agency’s confidence in him.

Increasingly becoming sure of Headley’s intriguing role, the Indian security establishment now strongly suspect that the CIA had come to know about the double crossing done by Headley and his role in 26/11 attacks when he visited India in March this year but deliberately kept their Indian counterparts in the dark.

Express had first reported about Headley’s possible role as a double agent for both the CIA and LeT.

The reason for the CIA keeping mum could either be the lurking fear of embarrassment for being double crossed by their own man or else they believed that Headley’s trade off as an undercover agent was benefiting them to ward off threat to the US, the sources said.

They said though Headley gave them the correct coordinates of al Hussaini, the covert ISI ship on which the 10 terrorists, including Kasab reached the high seas near Mumbai, which was duly conveyed to the RAW twice in September and October 2008, the dates given of its sailing were not on the DoT. On both the occasions, perhaps on Headley’s advice, LeT aborted its missions at the last minute.

The suspicion, if correct, would make it difficult for the Indian agencies to secure Headley’s extradition or even interrogate him not because the rules do not permit, but because the interrogation can also blow the lid off CIA’s dubious role, the sources said, adding that they never expected the CIA to withhold such an important information especially when the two countries have a joint anti-terror mechanism.

The sources said these apprehensions were duly conveyed by highly miffed Indian agencies to the FBI team which visited India last week.

Dumped by their American counterparts, the Indian agencies are now trying to verify about who footed Headley’s huge bills running into several lakhs rupees which he spent on credit cards during his India visits. Headley had spent money running into several lakhs of rupees through credit cards issued by American banks and in fake Indian currency, believed to have been brought from Pakistan. They are also looking into Headley’s accomplice Tahawwur Hussain Rana’s money trails, who shopped for a large number of garments during his Mumbai visits, but left behind everything.

CPM CONCERNED

Expressing serious concern over Indian investigating agencies not being allowed to interrogate LeT operative David Coleman Headley, the CPM on Tuesday sought to know what steps are being taken by the Indian Government in the matter. Raising the issue during the zero hour in the Rajya Sabha, CPM leader Brinda Karat wanted to know whether the FBI was sharing real time intelligence with Indian intelligence agencies.

Brindha pointed out that the FBI was evidently aware of Headley’s antecedents and had put him under surveillance well before the Mumbai terror attacks. But why were the Indian intelligence agencies unaware of his visits to India?

http://www.expressbuzz.com/edition/story.aspx?Title=Rana+denied+bail+by+US+court&artid=zj2Hsacu%7CcY=&SectionID=b7ziAYMenjw=&MainSectionID=b7ziAYMenjw=&SEO=David+Headley&SectionName=pWehHe7IsSU=

"Extraditing Headley will Expose CIA"

2009-12-27T21:49:00.000-08:00

" ... The US knows that Headley's CIA links will be exposed if he is handed over to India. This will damage its anti-terror image. ... "

Also see: "American Sponsorship of Global Terrorism"

By Bipin Kumar Singh
www.mid-day.com/news | 2009-12-28

Security experts say USA fears LeT operative's links with their intelligence may be exposed if he is handed over to India

Indian security experts say the US Federal Bureau of Investigation's (FBI) refusal to extradite LeT operative David Coleman Headley confirms their long-held suspicion that the suspected 26/11 plotter is a former CIA agent.

The experts add that the Indian government's failure to provide the US sufficient proof of the alleged 26/11 handler's involvement in the attacks is also coming in the way of putting up strong case for Headley's extradition.

Prakash Singh, former BSF chief, said, "It is well-known that Headley was a CIA agent who later started working for the ISI and some militant outfits in Pakistan.

The US knows that Headley's CIA links will be exposed if he is handed over to India. This will damage its anti-terror image.

We have allowed the FBI to interrogate people in India and they should allow us to do the same on their soil. But who will tell politicians, who have made it a habit to cry out to the US for help?"

M K Dhar, a former joint director of the Intelligence Bureau, said, "We have failed to give the FBI sufficient proof about Headley's involvement in 26/11.

We have merely pointed out that he visited different places in India. However, we have not indicated how his visits were criminally motivated."

A former state DGP said he agreed that the Americans were not extraditing Headley as they feared being exposed.

"The US supports terror-promoting nations to further their selfish ends and then these nations go against them. This is what happened in Afghanistan as well."

http://www.mid-day.com/news/2009/dec/281209-David-Headley-LeT-FBI-CIA-agent.htm

The Nobel Judge who Hobnobbed with Nazis

2009-12-27T19:57:00.000-08:00

By BOB BROCKIE
The Dominion Post | 28/12/2009

Sven Hedin was one of Sweden's most famous scientists. Back in the early 1900s he explored Central Asia and Mongolia, and became an international cartographer, hydrographer, photographer and author of popular travel books such as A Conquest of Tibet and Across the Gobi Desert.

Among the 150-odd books he wrote were multi-volume atlases of Central Asia.

In 1905 Hedin was appointed one of 18 judges on the Nobel Prize Committee. He continued voting on nominees until 1949.

In the 1930s, he came to admire Adolf Hitler and often visited him.

"Whenever I wanted to see Hitler I would call Prince Wissen of the German embassy here in Stockholm, a fine fellow, on Monday.

"He would call Berlin the same day, phone me back several hours later, and say Hitler would lunch with me on Friday. I would leave Thursday so as not to be late, and then see Hitler.

"He was a hypnotic talker, a fascinating man. I also made friends with Goebbels, Himmler, Goering and Doenitz."

Now one would think that Nobel prize judges would be the most upright, august, wise, fair-minded and incorruptible people on Earth but, in an interview in 1946, Hedin told American writer William Irving that committee members were as prejudiced, irrational and vain as the rest of us.

Hedin explained that the anti-Semitism of one judge kept the prize from Albert Einstein when Einstein was expected to win it. The judge said that the theory of relativity was not actually a discovery, had never been proved, and was valueless. So they withheld the prize from Einstein for seven years, by which time the dissenting judge's influence had waned, and Einstein won the prize in 1921.

Another judge so hated Russians that he prevented Tolstoy, Chekhov Andreyev and Gorky from winning prizes. H G Wells? "Too minor and journalistic." Somerset Maugham? "Too popular and undistinguished." James Joyce? Hedin was puzzled. "Who is he?"

Most committee members were prejudiced against American novelists because wives tried to nominate their husbands officially. French and Italian writers Gide and D'Annunzio were denied the prize because they behaved immorally.

Hitler bestowed many honours on Hedin in the 1930s and asked him to make a pro-Nazi address at the Olympic Games in 1936. For his 75th birthday, they bestowed the Order of the German Eagle on him.

During World War II, Hedin was one of few prominent Swedes who urged Sweden to abandon its neutrality and support Nazi Germany. Even when Germany lost the war, Hedin pressed for America to join forces with a resurrected Germany in a third world war against Russia.

After the war, Hedin became an aged embarrassment to the Nobel Committee but he never regretted his pro-Nazi stand. He claimed that his direct line to Hitler and Himmler enabled him to free many Jewish intellectuals and their families from the Nazi concentration camp at Sachsenhausen.

But his science lives on. The Chinese Government still uses his 80-year-old maps to construct railways and canals, and to pinpoint mineral deposits.

http://www.stuff.co.nz/blogs/opinion/3196728/The-Nobel-judge-who-hobnobbed-with-Nazis

The Religious Right And World Vision's "Charitable" Evangelism

2009-12-27T15:39:00.000-08:00

by Michael Barker
Swans Commentary
swans.com | December 28, 2009

(Swans - December 28, 2009) Government organized foreign aid has long served as a vital means by which elite policymakers have cynically maintained a disparity of wealth between nations while simultaneously professing to do the opposite. In the United States, the major distributor of such "aid" is the US Agency for International Development (USAID), which presently has an annual budget in excess of $20 billion. Andrew Natsios, the former World Vision vice president, who has also served as the head of USAID (2001-05), demonstrated the manipulative nature of such large sums of money when he publicly acknowledged that he considers US-based organizations supported by this Agency to be "an arm of the U.S. government." It is however more normal for officials distributing such geostrategic funding to emphasize the apolitical nature of such monies. The mainstream media does little to challenge this myth and regularly plays up the altruistic intentions of the government. Unfortunately, this means that in recent years a large proportion of the US public has believed that foreign aid was one of the two largest items in the federal budget, even though "less than 0.5 percent of the budget went for anything remotely resembling foreign aid."

Despite their overestimation of their own government's altruism, the private philanthropy of many US citizens -- like those from many other wealthy countries -- is high. For example, according to the Giving USA Foundation, in 2005 "Americans gave away more than $260 billion to thousands of charities, philanthropies, churches, disaster relief funds, and myriad other do-good projects." This suggests that that if a sizable proportion of this money could be diverted to groups that addressed some of the root causes of injustice, the public alone could make a significant dent (independent of their government's own actions) in counteracting the influence of ruling elites. At present though, this is not the case, and most public donations are distributed (in good faith) to support charitable organizations that already obtain strong support from the US government. In part such public funding of elitist groups owes much to the fact that such organizations maintain favourable profiles in the mainstream media, and are also able to engage in expensive and sophisticated publicity campaigns to garner public support. World Vision is just one such group, and this article examines their historical ties to US foreign policy elites and New Right religious activists to demonstrate why buying a World Vision present for a loved one is not quite all it is cracked up to be.

World Vision's Cold Warriors

Reverend Bob Pierce

According to their Web Site, "World Vision began with the vision of one man -- the Reverend Bob Pierce" who, when on a trip to China in 1947, felt compelled to sponsor the upbringing of a "battered and abandoned" child named White Jade. Reverend Pierce then "began building an organisation dedicated to helping the world's children, and in 1950 World Vision was born." World Vision now works with children from all over the world, but their "first child sponsorship programme" was launched in 1953 "in response to the needs of hundreds of thousands of orphans at the end of the Korean War." The initial focus of World Vision's activities is particularly noteworthy because of the integral role that the Korean War fulfilled in the history of US militarism. (2)

Although not mentioned on World Vision's official "History" page, since 1947 Reverend Pierce had been a full-time travelling evangelist for the Youth for Christ movement -- an organization born in the mid-1940s -- which shortly took Pierce "to Asia to evangelize American servicemen." So it is intriguing that David Stoll observes that World Vision "was a product of the Cold War"; noting that one of Reverend Pierce's first overseas campaigns was in China, "where Youth for Christ hoped that evangelical Christianity would stiffen the resistance to communist advance." (3) Conceived as a bulwark against communism, World Vision's work in Vietnam and Cambodia was "heavily subsidized by USAID, [which] rais[ed] understandable fears about its objectives." (4)

In her book Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (South End Press, 1989), Sara Diamond writes of the "disastrous implications" of the "unchecked intervention in the culture and political economy of Third World communities" as manifested in the "escalation of Christian Right missionary relief and development work, [which is] increasingly organized in such a way as to attract both more participants and more grant money from the U.S. Agency for International Development (AID)." (5) Greg Grandin concurs with this analysis, observing how during the 1980s: "In order to bypass public and Congressional opposition, the White House outsourced the 'hearts and minds' component of its Central American wars to evangelicals." This war on people's minds is clearly a massive growth industry and the U.S. evangelical missionary project now "has an annual income of two billion dollars, equivalent to one fifth of aid transferred by [nongovernmental organizations] worldwide." (6) Given such well-funded trends, it is not surprising that in Ecuador (as reported in 1981) the Catholic human rights organization Pax Christi denounced World Vision as a "Trojan Horse" for US foreign policy. (7) Thus as Stoll writes:

One of the first things Ecuadorians noticed about World Vision was the discrepancy between what it said and what it did. Although the group described itself as Christian, not evangelical, it was channeling its help exclusively through evangelicals. Instead of working through the cabildo -- the elected council in Quichua villages -- it was bypassing them and turning its funds over to evangelical leaders. The ensuing quarrels were breaking up mingas, the communal workdays in Quichua culture.

Ecuadorians were still debating a similar discrepancy in the work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics. Despite claims to be a non-sectarian scientific organization, it had turned out to be an evangelical mission. Now that SIL had lost its government contract, Ecuadorian opponents suspected that World Vision had inherited the same objectives. It was as if the whole operation was calculated to sharpen conflicts between Catholics and Protestants, divide communities, and make it harder for peasants to fight for their rights. (p.289)

Billy Graham's Evangelical World Vision

To gain a little insight into the controversial nature of World Vision's humanitarian forays it is important to examine the influence of Youth for Christ's first full-time employee, the Reverend Billy Graham. Graham is an integral character in the global evangelical project, and the former president of World Vision International, W. Stanley Mooneyham (1969-82), had prior to taking up this appointment served as Graham's personal assistant, and then as vice president of international relations for the Billy Graham Evangelistic Association. Indeed, World Vision provides an excellent example of the philosophy of new evangelicalism in practice, and their work responds to the National Association of Evangelicals' call "for the application of Christianity to every aspect of life including the social." (8) Here of course it is vital to note that Graham played an important role in "leading the way" at the National Association of Evangelicals, ensuring that new evangelicalism was rapidly "transformed from a small group of denominational leaders into a national movement." (9) Furthermore, Graham's ties to World Vision continue through his son, Franklin Graham, as when Pierce was forced to resign from his position as World Vision's president in 1967, he founded a new organization, Samaritan's Purse, and Franklin "became Pierce's protégé"; then when Pierce died in 1978, the young Graham became Samaritan Purse's new president (a position he maintains to this day).

While Billy Graham is largely heralded by the mainstream media as an apolitical crusader for justice, this myth has been utterly dispelled by investigative journalist Cecil Bothwell. Indeed, Bothwell concludes his book-length review of Graham's life by surmising: "In every way, Graham was the spiritual father of today's right-wing religious leaders who inject themselves into the realm of politics." Bothwell adds: "More than any other public figure in our history, Graham undermined the Founders' sceptical deism and sought to rebrand the United States as a Christian nation, its armies the rightful instruments of Christian crusade and empire." (10) So while in the past Graham's evangelical career has been associated with moderate evangelism, in actual fact his pragmatic approach quickly brought him into close alliances with more conservative forces. Bearing this in mind it is appropriate that the well-known funder of the Religious Right, the Arthur S. DeMoss Foundation, has been a major supporter of Graham's son's group, Samaritan Purse, as well as funding the work of other conservative groups like Campus Crusade for Christ (whose founders included Billy Graham; see later) and Servant Group International.

One reason so few people are aware of Graham's conservative pedigree is not least the support he has gained from the mass media. From his early days as an evangelist with Youth for Christ he had the backing of the strongly anti-communist Hearst media empire. Moreover, Graham's ability to harness the arts of "Madison Avenue" in the service of evangelism also helped ensure that he received the backing of "the hierarchy of New York's mainline Protestant denominations." As Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett recount in their book, Thy Will Be Done, the Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (HarperCollins, 1995), in the 1950s:

A vision of global missions persuaded [John D. Rockefeller] junior to OK a $50,000 donation. It was done quietly, without press releases or fanfare, a secret affirmation that helped make the New York Crusade "a turning point in Graham's American ministry." It also was a turning point for Fundamentalism, ending its isolation on the fringe of American religious life and giving the movement the second wind it needed to make its postwar revival a durable mass phenomenon.

[...]

Billy Graham's enormous success with Manhattan's business elite in 1957 signified that the U.S. Christian Fundamentalist movement, like the United States herself, was at the edge of a major transition. Graham's organization gave the movement a new corporate cohesiveness; his moderate evangelizing of modernist Protestants set the tone for the movement's future success. This success, in turn, fed upon a United States that was in cultural discontinuity with the old order. In the 1950s, the era of small-business ethics finally gave way in mainstream America to the march of the modern corporation and its big-business ethic of efficiency and conformity within a mass culture. (p.294) (11)

In addition to these excellent elite connections, Graham created his own evangelical media empire to further consolidate his views in the popular consciousness of US citizens, and one small but significant publication in this regard was Christianity Today. Founded in 1956 with the financial support of J. Howard Pew (of Pew Charitable Trusts fame), Christianity Today's founding executive director was Graham's father-in-law, L. Nelson Bell, who served in this position until his death in 1973. Here it is important to recognize that when Graham began dating L. Nelson Bell's daughter (and his future wife) Ruth McCue Bell in the 1940s her father was considered to be "one of the most powerful men in the Christian missionary world." Later in the 1960s, L. Nelson Bell even served as the head of the Asheville chapter of the radical anti-communist witch-hunters, the John Birch Society. (12)

Bible Translators, and the Vision (for a New Right) World

Long-time John Birch Society supporter Nelson Bunker Hunt (a man "not known for his scruples... own[ing] oil and gas leases all over the world") (13) can at this point be indirectly connected to Graham through the controversial Wycliffe Bible Translators -- an organization that works closely with the aforementioned Summer Institute of Linguistics. (14) This is because Graham served on Wycliffe's board of directors "from about 1958 until 1961," while some time later Hunt acted as a trustee of the Wycliffe Bible Translators' "largest undertaking to date, the International Linguistic Center." (15) Although Graham left Wycliffe's board because of a "dispute over the founder's fundraising tactics," his Billy Graham Evangelistic Association "continued to provide funds to Wycliffe well into the 21st Century." (16) Given these links it is fitting that just prior to his death in 1982, Wycliffe Bible Translators' founder, Cameron Townsend, was...

... listed as one of several dozen Christian leaders in the Religious Roundtable, a New Right vehicle "to fight in the political arena for pro-God, pro-family, pro-American causes." The Roundtable was organized in 1979 by a former Wycliffe Associates board member, E.E. McAteer, who had just introduced a flag and Bible entrepreneur named Jerry Falwell to his associates in Washington, thereby helping to launch the Moral Majority. (17)

Here it is important to pause to examine the organizations that eventually evolved into the Religious Roundtable, as the...

... first major effort to build a national movement of conservative evangelicals came in 1974. Arizona Congressman John Conlan and Bill Bright, president and founder of Campus Crusade for Christ, devised a plan to politicize and educate people in every Congressional district who would become part of a national grassroots effort to elect evangelical Christians sharing a conservative political agenda. At the center of their plan was Third Century Publishers, organized in 1974 to publish books and other materials promoting a conservative political and economic philosophy based on scriptural principles. Its chief publication was One Nation Under God by Rus Walton, intended for use in the study of "Christian economics." In addition to his post as editor-in-chief of Third Century, Walton was a director of the National Association of Manufacturers and the American Conservative Union. (18)

In the same year John Conlan and Bill Bright created the soon to be defunct Christian Embassy, an organization whose board included "religious leaders such as Billy Graham, W. A. Criswell, Norman Vincent Peale, and Harold Lindsell of Christianity Today." (19) Graham was a "long-time friend" of Bright, and upon his death in 2003, he commented: "He is a man whose sincerity and integrity and devotion to our Lord have been an inspiration and a blessing to me ever since the early days of my ministry."

Bright is best known for founding the Campus Crusade for Christ in 1951 with the help of Billy Graham amongst others -- an organization Bright had led until 2000 when he passed the reigns of the Crusade over to Steve Douglass (who presently leads the organization along with the associated Campus Crusade for Christ International). Not surprisingly, given the conservative nature of this organization, the right-wing philanthropist Nelson Bunker Hunt rears his head again, as he served as the past chairman of the executive committee of Campus Crusade for Christ International's Here's Life Campaign, and funded the production of Bright's world-famous Jesus film (1979). In 1994 Bright went on to co-found the right-wing Alliance Defense Fund with Larry Burkett (amongst others), (20) an individual who just over a decade earlier had founded the National Christian Foundation with Terry Parker (an individual who went on to serve as a board member of the neoconservative Family Research Council), and Ron Blue (who is presently a board member of Campus Crusade for Christ International). (21)

Returning to the conservative Wycliffe Bible Translators, to this day Wycliffe's work remains connected to World Vision luminaries. For example, Wycliffe board member Atul Tandon is the senior vice president of donor engagement for World Vision U.S. Furthermore, Wycliffe board member, and author of The U.S. Military/NGO Relationship in Humanitarian Interventions (US Army Peacekeeping Institute, 1996) Chris Seiple is the son of the former long-serving president of World Vision U.S., Robert Seiple (1987-98). (22) Like his father, Chris is intimately enmeshed within powerful elite networks and he is a senior fellow at the neoconservative Foreign Policy Research Institute, (23) a member of the International Institute for Strategic Studies (London), (24) and serves as the president of the Institute for Global Engagement (which was co-founded by his father). (25)

Brady Anderson

The current chair of the Wycliffe Bible Translators' fourteen-person-strong board of directors is former World Vision International board member Brady Anderson. Prior to becoming the US Ambassador to Tanzania (1994-7), Anderson had spent six years working with Summer Institute of Linguistics (in Kenya, Ethiopia and Tanzania), and after vacating his post as the US Ambassador to Tanzania, he served for two years as the USAID administrator (1999-2001). (26) In 2001 Anderson was succeeded at USAID by Andrew Natsios, an individual who had previously served as a vice president of World Vision (from 1993 until 1998). As if this evidence of the intimate relations maintained between World Vision and the US government were not enough, in an interview conducted in 2004 Anderson observed how World Vision had been "the largest handler of food in the world, and almost all the food was donated by the U.S. government." (pdf) An important point given that the US government does not donate food out of generosity; rather their food distribution networks are considered to be an integral weapon through which to promote their geostrategic interests. (27)

The affiliations of another Wycliffe board member, Tom Lin, further serve to expand our understanding of the type of work being undertaken by World Vision, as he is presently the regional director (central US) of the InterVarsity Christian Fellowship -- an "evangelical campus mission" that was formed in 1941. Again the Fellowship is directly connected to right-wing elites, as their Internet editor and media coordinator, Gordon Govier, is the secretary of the arch-conservative organization Gegrapha. (28) Incidentally, World Vision's former events and communications director T. Diane Bryhn was appointed (in 2003) to be Gegrapha's first executive director. (29) World Vision also maintains direct connections to the Fellowship as the latter's board of trustees includes Dolphus Weary, who is a former board member of World Vision U.S., and the former president of the Fellowship, Stephen Hayner, is a board member of both World Vision International and the International Justice Mission. (30)

Finally, considering the longstanding allegations that global evangelism has served the foreign policy interests of the US government and their allied mining corporations, it is fitting that Kevin Jenkins, the new head of World Vision International, is a board member of the Canadian-based global energy company Nexen, a corporation that is involved in the highly destructive mining of Canada's tar sands on the land of Canada's First Nations people.

Concluding Notes

If you believe in the goals of Christian evangelism, or alternatively are a strong supporter of the US government's brutal foreign policy, then World Vision is the charity for you. If, however, you identify with neither of the above, then spending your hard earned wages on financing Christian imperialism is not sensible. (31) Contrary to the popular imagery presented in their celebrity-backed promotional materials, World Vision is not helping to make the world a better, more just place. To be fair though, few, if any, of the huge nongovernmental organizations vying for our attention (or money) administer more than Band-Aids to help cover-up the ongoing exploitation and destruction of life. That said, million dollar Band-Aids do provide an effective means of letting otherwise concerned citizens sleep well at night under the misapprehension that they have compensated for their government's unjust foreign policies. Yet meaningful solutions require more than Band-Aids; indeed, equitable solutions demand an active citizenry that engages in the politics of life and death, and the rejection of the anti-democratic initiatives promoted by elite powerbrokers, be they Christian or otherwise.

The old saying goes: "Give a man a fish; you have fed him for today. Teach a man to fish; and you have fed him for a lifetime." However, if there are no fish to harvest because they have been stolen to support the "teachers'" conspicuous overconsumption, what then? Spending money on, or buying "presents" for, those who are oppressed by capitalism's endless quest for profit does not sustain democracy or address the root causes of exploitation. By all means we should maintain solidarity with the oppressed, but before we send "aid," we must ensure that we have done everything in our power to end the manner by which we benefit from their hardship. There is no doubt that the downtrodden will find it much easy to rise up from poverty when they are not being crushed by imperialism.

First and foremost we need to understand how our political system thrives off global inequality. In 1948, for example, the reasons for this enduring exploitation were put on the (then secret, now declassified) record by the head of the US State Department Policy Planning Staff, George Kennan. He observed:

[W]e have about 50% of the world's wealth but only 6.3% of its population. [...] In this situation, we cannot fail to be the object of envy and resentment. Our real task in the coming period is to devise a pattern of relationships which will permit us to maintain this position of disparity without positive detriment to our national security. To do so, we will have to dispense with all sentimentality and day-dreaming; and our attention will have to be concentrated everywhere on our immediate national objectives. We need not deceive ourselves that we can afford today the luxury of altruism and world-benefaction.

Lending your support to massive nongovernmental organizations, like World Vision, will not address the problems caused by such antidemocratic governmental objectives. Instead we must challenge such unjust applications of power at all levels. The solution is simple: join or create a locally-based group run on equitable principles, invite your friends to join you, and be sure to address the root causes, not the symptoms, of our world's problems.

Notes

1. Graham Hancock, Lords of Poverty: The Power, Prestige, and Corruption of the International Aid Business (Atlantic Monthly Press, 1991), p.9. (back)

2. David Horowitz, From Yalta to Vietnam; American Foreign Policy and the Cold War (Penguin, 1967); Jon Halliday, "What Happened in Korea? Rethinking Korean History 1945-1953," Bulletin of Concerned Asian Scholars, 5, (1973); Bruce Cumings, North Korea: Another Country (The New Press, 2004). (back)

3. David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant?: The Politics of Evangelical Growth (University of California Press, 1990), p.284, p.282. "After the Kuomintang regime fell, Pierce led campaigns in South Korea just before war broke out in 1950. As the red tide surged forward, he came home with movie footage showing the plight of refugees and began raising money to help them." (p.282) (back)

4. Ellsworth Culver served as the executive vice president of World Vision International from 1958 until 1961, "and led the organization's expansion throughout Asia and Latin America." Later during the "Cambodian refugee crisis" he became executive vice president (1978-81) of Food for the Hungry, a group that was founded in 1971 and which "embraces an intensely personal and biblical response to God's call to end physical and spiritual hungers worldwide." Food for the Hungry's current president, Benjamin Homan, recently and simultaneously acted as the chair of USAID's Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid. In addition, before joining Food for the Hungry as vice president of mobilization in 2003, Marc Kyle and his wife Beth served seven years in the Philippines with Wycliffe Bible Translators. One particularly interesting sponsor of Food for the Hungry's work is the right-wing religious activist, Howard Ahmanson, who is also a member of the secretive Council for National Policy (see footnote #21). In 1982, Culver co-founded the Christian nongovernmental organization Mercy Corps, and went on to serve as their president from 1984 until 1993 (for further details see "Alternative Dispute Resolution or Revolution"). World Vision International continues to maintain close connections to US foreign policy priorities in Asia as evidenced by their current board member Kleo-Thong Hetrakul, who from 1998 until 2000 was the executive director at the International Monetary Fund, "looking after 12 countries in South-East Asia and the Pacific."

According to World Vision U.S.'s 2007 Annual Report their total revenue for 2007 was $957 million, $427 from private cash contributions, $220 from government grants (23%), $301 million from gifts-in-kind, and $9 million from other income. In terms of expenses 86% went on programs, 9% on fundraising, and 5% on management and general. $185 million was utilized for child sponsorship, and $166 million for the gifts in kind (52% of which were classified as pharmaceuticals and medical supplies). (back)

5. Sara Diamond, Spiritual Warfare: The Politics of the Christian Right (South End Press, 1989), p.vi. "'Humanitarian aid' and 'psychological operations' are two areas of 'total war' where the Christian Right serves U.S. foreign policy objectives best. Acting either as 'private' benefactors or as agents of the U.S. government, Christian Right 'humanitarian' suppliers and promoters of anticommunist ideology use religion to mask the aggressive, cynical nature of 'humanitarian' projects. Cloaked as missionary evangelism, the 'spiritual warfare' component of counterinsurgency escapes serious attention by anti-intervention activists who are justifiably preoccupied with stopping more massive, direct forms of U.S. militarism." (p.162) "The U.S. AID is an arm of the U.S. State Department, and its relief and development projects are designed to increase Third World political and economic dependence on the United States. Because World Vision's evangelism and humanitarian programs are woven together in a seamless web, AID directly finances World Vision's proselytization of Third World aid recipients." (p.220) Diamond provides an overview of World Vision's dubious record of collaborating with US foreign policy elites (pp.220-2). (back)

6. Julie Hearn, "The 'invisible' NGO: US evangelical missions in Kenya," Journal of Religion in Africa, 32 (1), 2002, p.40. "Although primarily perceived as an aid agency, evangelism lies at the heart of World Vision's work. It has spent years working on how to bring conversion with development and in 1997 launched a two-year research project into their relationship. Its newsletter explains, 'often it takes a deep look into the culture of a particular people to discover those issues that will ultimately determine whether a given development effort will bring spiritual transformation'." (p.54) (back)

7. David Stoll, Is Latin America Turning Protestant?, p.268. See, Frank Viviano, Pacific News Service, "CIA Church Group in Honduras," Guardian (New York), August 26, 1981, p.13. (back)

8. Erica Bornstein, The Spirit of Development: Protestant NGOs, Morality, and Economics in Zimbabwe (Stanford University Press, 2003), p.19, p.20. "The theology of World Vision and that of the new evangelicals grew both out of and in reaction to Fundamentalism. The Fundamentalists of the 1920s were reacting to secularizing tendencies in the United States, and in the process, they developed an anti-modernist doctrine called 'dispensationalism.' Dispensationalism was a version of pre-millennialism: the doctrine that Christ will return personally to found a kingdom in Jerusalem where he will reign for one thousand years. ... Fundamentalism's anti-modernist interpretation of the Bible insisted on the inerrancy of biblical scripture. Every word was the perfect word of God. Fundamentalists interpreted cataclysmic biblical prophecies literally." (p.19)

"Ties between Fuller's mission school and World Vision, the mission organization, ran deep. In 1954, one of World Vision's board members was Carlton Booth, Professor of Evangelism at Fuller Seminary. In 1966, the Missions Advance Research and Communications Center (MARC) began at World Vision in association with Fuller, as the research and publishing arm of World Vision. Fuller's School of World Mission trained World Vision staff, and World Vision staff taught, and continue to teach today, at Fuller Seminary. There was such cross-fertilization between Fuller and World Vision that a World Vision employee said in a 1994 interview, 'The idea of World Vision was started in conversations in the basement of Fuller Theological Seminary." (p.20) (back)

9. David Farber and Jeffe Roche, The Conservative Sixties (Peter Lang Publishing, 2003), p.129. (back)

10. Cecil Bothwell, The Prince of War: Billy Graham's Crusade for a Wholly Christian Empire (Brave Ulysses Books, 2007), p.196, p.197. (back)

11. "Key support for Graham came from Robert J. McCracken, Rev Harry Fosdick's successor at Riverside Church; Union Theological Seminary president Henry Pitney Van Dusen, a trustee of the Rockefeller Foundation; and mining scion Cleveland E. Dodge." (p.293) "Billy Graham's New Testament of a living, forgiving God, now projected on television screens in millions of homes, offered solace to the lonely, the alienated, the guilt stricken, and the powerless. His predecessor, Dwight Moody, had attacked satanly labor unrest and sinful cities and stoked millenarian hopes among hard-pressed smallholders for the Second Coming and an end of the world that was ruining them; in so doing, he had married his career to the solid citizens of the industrial trusts who were bringing this corporate world into being -- families like the Rockefellers. His own son-in-law, Rev. Arthur Packard, even ended up working for Nelson's father in Room 5600. Five decades after Moody's first triumphant 'campaign' in New York, it was left to Billy Graham to usher into the corporate culture the last vestiges of the rural population that had migrated to the new corporate suburbias." (p.294) However, such Rockefeller-backed evangelism took an undesirable turn in the 1960s, when fundamentalist preachers obtained "corporate angels like the Pews of Philadelphia and the Hunts of Texas, men whose wealth offered Fundamentalism unprecedented financial means to enter politics on a more sophisticated level. Through the modern corporation and the armed forces, Fundamentalism had experienced men and women who had seen the world and learned modern organizational, fund-raising, communication, and transportation skills. So armed, all the furies of the Religious Right focused their hatred on the one man standing in the way of the Republican nomination of ultraconservative Barry Goldwater: the quintessential liberal of the Eastern Establishment, Nelson Rockefeller." (p.408) Indeed, as Steve Bruce writes in The Rise and Fall of the New Christian Right: Conservative Protestant Politics in America, 1978-1988 (Oxford University Press, 1988), in the 1950s "John D. Rockefeller gave a large gift to the newly formed World Council of Churches -- the fundamentalists' 'great Satan'." (p.53)

"Most of the well-known names of American revival religion -- Oral Roberts and Billy Graham since the 1940s and 1950s, and Pat Robertson, Jimmy Swaggart, and Jim Bakker among contemporaries -- are Pentecostals. Only a few are fundamentalists, such as Jerry Falwell and Tim LaHaye. There used to be considerable differences in doctrine and organizational style between fundamentalists and Pentecostals, to the point of bitter animosity. These differences narrowed gradually in the context of the American postwar consensus and in particular since they came together in a then-political alliance with the New Right in the mid-1970s; even so, the differences remain significant enough to bear in mind." Jan Nederveen Pieterse (ed), Christianity and Hegemony: Religion and Politics on the Frontiers of Social Change (Berg Publishers, 1992), p.8. (back)

12. Cecil Bothwell, The Prince of War, p.20. (back)

13. During the 1960s the billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt was a financial and vocal supporter of the John Birch Society, and in the late 1970s he became a council member of the Society. More recently Bunker has rejoined the John Birch Society as a council member. Bunker has been a major funder of the Right and has been closely associated with the secretive Council for National Policy, a former haunt of the infamous televangelist Reverend Pat Robertson. Furthermore, Bunker was an important financial funder of Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network, and he even played a significant role (in the mid-1980s) in supporting a campaign to help Pat Robertson become the president of the United States. (back)

14. Wycliffe Bible Translators was established in 1942 by a former missionary named William Cameron Townsend, who had "resolved that every man, woman and child should be able to read God's Word in their own language." Named after John Wycliffe, the man who first translated the Bible into English, Townsend who was based in Guatemala, had initially founded "Camp Wycliffe" in 1934 (as a linguistics training school), but by 1942, this camp "had grown into two affiliate organizations, Wycliffe Bible Translators and the Summer Institute of Linguistics (SIL)." David Stoll writes in his book Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? The Wycliffe Bible Translators in Latin America (Zed Books, 1983), that "although SIL denies that it evangelizes ... [c]onveniently enough, Bible translation is an intensive form of Bible study." (p.6) Indeed, Stoll points out how SIL's "aura of scientific legitimacy evaporated after 1973, when a shoe-string anti-imperialist research body partially supported by WCC sources, the North American Congress on Latin America (NACLA), published Laurie Hart's `The Wycliffe Translators: Pacifying the Last Frontiers'. Based on Barbados positions and Wycliffe's own literature, Hart demonstrated that SIL and WBT were one disturbing organization. Highlights included: 1) its enthusiasm for the Vietnam War; 2) its view of indigenous religion as 'Satan's stronghold'; 3) the Ecuadorian branch's use of airplanes, wing-mounted loudspeakers and converts to push hostile Auca Indians out of the way of U.S. oil companies and into a reserve; 4) the Colombian branch's alleged complicity in police and army repression of Guahibo Indians in 1970; and 5) its immunity from protest due to friends high in government." Although Stoll does not agree with political implications undergirding this anti-imperialist report -- in fact, he regularly refers to such authors as conspiracy theorists -- he writes that: "With the important exception of the Guahibo charge, the factual basis [of the report] was beyond dispute." (p.142) With regards conspiracies, Stoll adds: "Dismissing SIL's explanations, conspiracy theorists interpreted its activities as a mode of North American infiltration designed to control strategic areas, facilitate internal repression, and establish a popular base for a repeat of history: eventual U.S. military intervention." (p.227)

Stoll notes how: "Even if one does not care to accept SIL members' claims to innocence, they may be sincere. 'We don't even know what the CIA is,' a member despaired as her branch was driven from Mexico with a CIA reputation. The danger her organization poses is not primarily that of a 'front' for something else. While the Summer Institute was organized as an intrigue, it is clearly an evangelical intrigue with its own jealously guarded objectives. The deeper problem is the group's naivete, its capacity for looking the other way and serving dictatorships, if that will serve the Great Commission, its susceptibility to contractual extortion and right-wing propaganda, such that members can easily come to believe that the trap into which they have stepped is the Lord's plan. Of this there is no better illustration than Bible translation in Vietnam." (pp.85-6)

Enrique Mayer in his review of Soren Hvalkof and Peter Aaby's edited book Is God an American? An Anthropological Perspective on the Missionary Work of the Summer Institute of Linguistics (Survival International, 1981) surmised that: "The SIL claims that it does not force anyone to become a Christian, yet the local situations that they consciously manipulate create enormous pressure for the natives, so that the choice given to them to convert or not to convert is, in reality, no choice at all. People who refuse to convert are ostracized and marginalized; communities are split into warring factions and the real defenders of native traditions become outcasts in their own societies." American Ethnologist, 10 (3), (1983), p.618. (back)

15. David Stoll, Fishers of Men or Founders of Empire? The Wycliffe Bible Translators in Latin America (Zed Books, 1983), p.261. He adds, the International Linguistic Center "is modest, even humble compared to another of Bunker's charities, the Campus Crusade for Christ of Wycliffe supporter Bill Bright. By 1982, Hunt and Bright plan to raise $1 billion for world evangelism." (p.262) (back)

16. Cecil Bothwell, The Prince of War, p.65. (back)

17. Gerard Colby and Charlotte Dennett, Thy Will Be Done, the Conquest of the Amazon: Nelson Rockefeller and Evangelism in the Age of Oil (HarperCollins, 1995), p.262. Edward McAteer "was more than a friend of Cam Townsend; he was a major figure on the board of Wycliffe Associates." Colby and Dennett continue: "The sheer human energy amassed by Wycliffe Associates was impressive, but the financial core was fueled by reliable wealthy SIL backers like North Carolina's James A. Jones, one of the largest contractors for military bases in Vietnam, and oilman Nelson Bunker Hunt of Texas. 'Bunker Hunt had helped me considerably,' McAteer freely offered." (p.805) "Cam was one of those who followed McAteer into the founding meeting of the Religious Roundtable. If he had any reservations about where this would lead SIL and how it would play in Latin America (where Reagan's name was anathema because of his condemnation of Carter's Panama Canal treaty), Cam's base of support in the homeland and his top financial backers left him little choice. He was, at the end of his career, trapped by the Far Right Fundamentalist base on which he had built Wycliffe's success at home." (p.805) (back)

18. Robert Wuthnow and Robert Liebman, The New Christian Right: Mobilization and Legitimation (Aldine Transaction, 1983), p.50. (back)

19. Robert Wuthnow and Robert Liebman, The New Christian Right, p.51. (back)

20. For criticism of the Alliance Defense Fund, see Bill Berkowitz, "Crusade for a Christian nation," Zmag, June 2005. (back)

21. The "strategic partner" of the National Christian Foundation is the longstanding Christian youth group, Young Life (an organization that was formed in 1941). Notably E. Peb Jackson formerly served as a senior vice president of public affairs for Young Life, before later becoming a founding board member of the right-wing pressure group Focus on the Family, and a board member of the Council for National Policy (1998-99 and 2001-03) -- a "secretive group of the foremost right-wing activists and funders in the United States" whose early supporters included Nelson Bunker Hunt. Jackson is presently the vice president of global initiatives at Rick Warren's Saddleback Church/Purpose Driven Ministries "where he oversees the Ministry's... work in Africa, especially Rwanda." (Incidentally, Pastor Rick Warren has stated that one of his "most important role models" is Billy Graham.)

The Council for National Policy (CNP) "was founded in 1981 when Tim LaHaye, a leader of Moral Majority, proposed the idea to wealthy Texan T. Cullen Davis. Davis contacted billionaire Nelson Bunker Hunt, and from that point on they began recruiting members. By 1984, the Council had four hundred members." Tom Ellis succeeded LaHaye in 1982 as president of the CNP, and "[a]fter Ellis' one-year term as president of CNP in 1982-83, he was succeeded by Nelson Bunker Hunt, Pat Robertson, and Richard DeVos of the Amway Corporation." Not surprisingly, the John Birch Society's (JBS) "influence on the political goals of the CNP is significant. ... By 1984, John Birch Society Chairman A. Clifford Barker and Executive Council Member William Cies were CNP members." Russ Bellant, The Coors Connection: How Coors Family Philanthopy Undermines Democratic Pluralism (South End Press, 1991), pp.36-7, p.38. Also see, Deborah Huntington and Ruth Kaplan, "Whose Gold is behind the Altar? Corporate Ties to Evangelicals," in: Marlene Dixon, Susanne Jonas and Tony Platt (eds), World Capitalist Crisis and the Rise of the Right (Synthesis Publications, 1982).

Formed as an offshoot of Young Life, in 1961 the Young Life Foundation was established "for the sole purpose of financially encouraging the strategic ministry work of Young Life," and their current board of trustees includes conservative notables like Newton Crenshaw, who is the vice president of the pharmaceutical giant Eli Lilly and Company, L. Brooks Entwistle, who is the managing director and CEO of Goldman Sachs India, and Bruce Hosford who serves on the chairmans' council of the neoliberal "environmental" group Conservation International.

The current executive vice president and chief operating officer of the International Justice Mission is Scott Lewis, who prior to joining the Mission in 2006 had spent 21 years working with Young Life. Another person who like Lewis has devoted a large chunk of his life to working with Young Life is Jay Grimstead, who similarly worked for them for 20 years. Grimstead is the founder and director of the theocratic Coalition on Revival. Set up in 1984 the Coalition is a Reconstructionist/Dominionist group, and another notable person who has signed up to the Coalition on Revival's Manifesto is Ted Engstrom, who is a former president of World Vision International. (Not surprisingly given this background Grimstead considers Francis Schaeffer to be "his mentor" and close personal friend.) According to Martin Durham, Reconstructionism was "[c]reated initially by the Presbyterian thinker (and John Birch Society activist) R. J. Rushdoony at the end of the 1950s"; see Martin Durham, The Christian Right: The Far Right and the Boundaries of American Conservativism (Manchester University Press, 2000), p.109. (back)

22. From 1987 until 1998, Robert Seiple was president of World Vision U.S., and just prior to this he had spent five years as president of Eastern College and Eastern Baptist Theological Seminary. After leaving World Vision in 1998 he joined the Clinton administration spending two years as the first U.S. ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom. Then in 2000, Seiple along with the aid of his wife co-founded the Institute for Global Engagement, a faith-based NGO that at present "sponsors two educational divisions," the Council on Faith and International Affairs, and the Global Engagement Network. Notable members of the Institute's six-person-strong board of directors are Nicole Bibbins Sedaca (who is the senior director in the U.S. Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labor), John Jenkins (who is a board member of the National Association of Evangelicals), and the Institute's president Chris Seiple (the son of Robert Seiple).

The nexus between neoconservatives and evangelical "humanitarianism" was highlighted by Conn Hallihan in his article "The Right's stuff in Africa: Necons, evangelicals and Sudan" (Counterpunch, March 15, 2007). Hallihan demonstrated how when the infamous neoconservative Elliot Abrams was appointed chair of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom (in 1999), he "began levering U.S. foreign policy away from a concern for poverty toward a focus on 'religious persecution' in the Sudan, Russia and China." Fellow Commission member Robert Seiple was specifically mentioned along with former USAID administrator Andrew Natsios as one of the "key actors for the Bush Administration in Sudan." For a detailed analysis of the problems associated with calls for a humanitarian intervention in Sudan, especially from the religious Right, see "The Project for a New American Humanitarianism: Olympian ambitions from Darfur to Tibet and Beijing." (back)

23. Harvey Sicherman, the President and Director of the Foreign Policy Research Institute, formerly served as Special Assistant to Secretary of State Alexander M. Haig, Jr. (1981-82) and was a member of the Policy Planning Staff of Secretary of State James A. Baker III (1991-92). At present Sicherman is an adjunct scholar at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, a think tank that is affiliated with the American Israel Public Affairs Committee. (back)

24. The British-based International Institute for Strategic Studies (whose US-branch counts Peter Ackerman among its board of directors). For criticism of Ackerman see http://michaeljamesbarker.wordpress.com/icnc/ (back)

25. Chris Seiple's presidency of the Institute for Global Engagement is particularly interesting as the Institute sponsors the Council on Faith and International Affairs, which publishes a journal called the Review of Faith and International Affairs. Here on the journal's multi-faith advisory board one finds individuals like Larry Jones (who is the director for field programs for the Wycliffe affiliate, The Seed Company), Bryant Myers (who is vice president for development and food resources at World Vision International), and Jean Bethke Elshtain, the secretary of the notorious National Endowment for Democracy (an organization that undertakes overtly the type of democracy-manipulating work that used to be undertaken covertly by the CIA). Additionally, two other notable advisory board members of the Review of Faith and International Affairs are Dudley Woodberry, who formerly acted as the coordinator and acting senior associate of the Muslim track of Billy Graham's Lausanne Committee for World Evangelization, and Gary Haugen, who is the president and CEO of the International Justice Mission (see footnote #30). (back)

26. Brady Anderson has also served as the former chair of the Overseas Private Investment Corporation. Earlier still he had served as Special Assistant to Governor Bill Clinton (from 1979-81). (back)

27. Susan George, How the Other Half Dies: The Real Reasons for World Hunger (Penguin, 1976), see Chapter 8, "Food Aid?... Or Weapon?" As George writes: "Herbert Hoover was the first modern politician to look upon food as a frequently more effective means of getting one's own way than gunboat diplomacy or military intervention, and as a means of supporting US farmers in the bargain." (p.193) (back)

28. According to their Web site, "Gegrapha began as a small prayer group in the mid-1980s when a group of Christians working for several media outlets in Washington began gathering to pray for the life of Terry Anderson, the one-time bureau chief for Associated Press who was abducted in 1985 by Muslim extremists. By the time Terry was released in 1991, the group had become close-knit and its participants wanted to continue meeting."

Gegrapha was loosely brought together in the mid-1980s by David Aikman, a senior correspondent for Time magazine, however, their website notes that: "Beginning in late 1998, the Fieldstead Foundation gave two generous grants that enabled the prayer group to consolidate itself as an international fellowship for Christians in the secular media under the umbrella of the Ethics and Public Policy Center in Washington." These connections are significant as the Fieldstead Foundation was set up by the arch-conservative religious philanthropist, Howard F. Ahmanson, Jr., while the Ethics and Public Policy Center (EPPC) which was formed in 1976 has been described by Tom Barry as "the first neocon institute to break ground in the frontal attack on the secular humanists." He continues that since founding the Center it "has functioned as the cutting edge of the neoconservative-driven culture war against progressive theology and secularism, and the associated effort to ensure right-wing control of the Republican Party. It explicitly sought to unify the Christian right with the neoconservative religious right, which was mostly made up of agnostics back then." Barry writes:

"Elliott Abrams, when serving as EPPC president, said that human rights should be a 'policy tool' of the U.S. government. Working closely with Newt Gingrich and the Republican Congress, EPPC together with the Christian Coalition and Family Research Council lobbied for the creation of a new permanent commission that focused on religious persecution. The main countries of concern listed in the congressional deliberations were China, Sudan, North Korea, Cuba, Laos, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia, as well as general condemnation of Muslim nations. Abrams became a founding member of the U.S. Commission on International Religious Freedom and served as its chairman until mid-2001, when he joined the Bush administration." (back)

29. She presently serves as a communications advisor at AGR Petroleum Services, and as the executive producer at Winged Victory Films. (back)

30. Founded in 1997, the International Justice Mission describes itself as a "human rights agency that secures justice for victims of slavery, sexual exploitation and other forms of violent oppression." Gary Haugen's International Justice Mission is a member of a controversial antislavery umbrella group known as the Coalition to Abolish Slavery and Trafficking (see "Combating [Some] Slavery"). Haugen himself was a Ford Foundation scholar in international law (at University of Chicago), and in 1994 he "served as the Officer in Charge of the U.N.'s genocide investigation in Rwanda." He worked for controversial group Human Rights First during the 1980s, and is the author of Just Courage: God's Great Expedition for the Restless Christian (IVP Books, 2008).

Current board members include Renee Stearns, who is the wife of World Vision U.S. president Richard Stearns, 1998 to present (who as recently as 2006 served on USAID's Advisory Committee on Voluntary Foreign Aid), and Jacquelline Cobb Fuller, who is head of advocacy and communications for Google Foundation, and had previously served as deputy director of global health at the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation. Fuller ghost-wrote the award winning autobiography of the well-known conservative Kay Coles James, Never Forget, Transforming America: From the Inside Out (Zondervan, 1995). James is a trustee of the Heritage Foundation, and was the former Dean of the School of Government at Pat Robertson's Regent University -- Robertson is of course an infamous neoconservative Christian Zionist.

Jan Nederveen Pieterse writes how: "In the United States, the major popularizer of Christian Zionism as a political prophecy was William E. Blackstone, author of the bestseller Jesus is Coming (1881). Blackstone organized the first American lobby for the creation of a Jewish state in Palestine and initiated an intensive campaign which had the support of U.S. senators, the Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, and business figures such as John D. Rockefeller, J.P. Morgan, and Charles B. Scribner." Later, Pieterse writes how in 1981 Rabbi Marc Tannenbaum of the American Jewish Committee noted that: "The evangelical community is the largest and fastest growing block of pro-Israeli, pro-Jewish sentiment in this country. Since the 1967 War, the Jewish community has felt abandoned by Protestants, by groups clustered around the National Council of Churches, which, because of sympathy with third world causes, gave an impression of support for the PLO. There was a vacuum of public support to Israel that began to be filled by the fundamentalist and evangelical Christians." Jan Nederveen Pieterse, "The history of a metaphor: Christian Zionism and the politics of apocalypse," in Jan Nederveen Pieterse (ed), Christianity and Hegemony: Religion and Politics on the Frontiers of Social Change (Berg Publishers, 1992), pp.215-6, p.219. (back)

31. James Petras criticises the manner by which millionaire nongovernmental organizations like World Vision "collaborate with Euro-American imperialism," noting that they are so well supported by Western governments precisely because their work "undermine[s] social movements via class collaborationist 'community' and 'family development'" schemes. James Petras, The New Development Politics: The Age of Empire Building and New Social Movements (Ashgate, 2003), p.149. (back)

http://www.swans.com/library/art15/barker39.html

Video: Delusional Good Germans Explain their Support for Sarah Palin

2009-12-27T15:29:00.000-08:00

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mKKKgua7wQkQ3r

Judge Decrees ACORN Funding Cut-off Unconstitutional, Conservatives Outraged

2009-12-27T14:24:00.000-08:00

Blackwater uses Iraqi civilians for target practice and engages in illicit CIA assassinations, and last I checked the company was still receiving gererous federal funding. Disgraced CEO Erik Prince, even in notoriety, is still described by too many reporters as a "patriot." Where are the screams of outrage from Fox News? But a few Acorn staffers give advice to a prostitute, and the little Hitlers of the GOP echo chamber scream bloody murder. Support Acorn. The campaign to destroy the organization is a manipulative, far-right vote-suppression scam, and the outrage is faux. - AC

by Personal Liberty News Desk
Personal Liberty Digest | December 18, 2009

A federal judge has ruled that the U.S. government’s decision to cut off funding to the Association of Community Organizations for Reform Now (ACORN) was unconstitutional.

U.S. District Judge Nina Gershon issued a preliminary injunction against the government, saying that it is in the public’s best interest to continue to fund the controversial and embattled anti-poverty group, according to the Associated Press (AP).

In its lawsuit, ACORN claimed that Congress’ decision to cut off its funding was unconstitutional because it targeted an individual organization without due process.

Gershon agreed, stating in her ruling that ACORN raised a "fundamental issue of separation of powers."

"They have been singled out by Congress for punishment that directly and immediately affects their ability to continue to obtain federal funding, in the absence of any judicial, or even administrative, process adjudicating guilt," said Gershon.

Meanwhile, two congressmen have called on the Justice Department to appeal the decision, calling it "nothing short of preposterous," according to Fox News.

Representatives Lamar Smith (R-Texas) and Darrell Issa (R-Calif.) wrote a letter to Attorney General Eric Holder explaining how the ruling would set a dangerous precedent.

"The district court’s decision is troubling in many respects, but most significantly, if allowed to stand, it would effectively excise from the Constitution Congress’ express Spending Clause power to refuse to appropriate federal funds to an organization that has shown itself likely to misuse those funds in the future," the letter states.

http://www.personalliberty.com/news/judge-decrees-acorn-funding-cut-off-unconstitutional-conservatives-outraged-19513962/

Blackwater Clone Triple Canopy

2009-12-27T07:44:00.000-08:00

Edited by Alex Constantine

About Triple Canopy

"Our company was founded in Chicago in 2003 by U.S. Army Special Forces veterans. We established operations in Iraq in 2004 following the first of multiple contract awards in the region. In 2005, our corporate headquarters relocated to Herndon, Va., just outside Washington, D.C. ..."
http://www.triplecanopy.com/triplecanopy/en/about/

Barrett Moore, Formerly of Triple Canopy, Moved on to GW Bush financier Richard Rainwater's Sovereign Deed - For Rainwater's CIA cocaine and terrorist connections, see here.

From: Sovereign Deed Founder Acknowledges Lying about Military Record
By Staff Report
3/7/08

"Barrett Moore, founder of a private disaster response firm seeking tax breaks to establish operations in northern Michigan, has acknowledged for the first time that he lied about his military service and was once convicted of criminal fraud in Australia. ... "

http://michiganmessenger.com/tag/sovereign-deed

" ... Moore, as founding chief executive officer of the private military contractor, Triple Canopy, has lied so brazenly about his own military service and business success? Or the fact that neither our government nor his financial backers and business associates along the way had done the research that would have uncovered those lies? Why wasn’t he caught before, either by the State Department doing due diligence in investigating those to whom they award contracts or by the state of Michigan as it sought to bless his business with tax breaks? These failures speak volumes about the lack of accountability in a political system that distributes vast amounts of our tax dollars every year. ... "

http://michiganmessenger.com/728/hypocrisy-and-ambition-what-the-barrett-moore-story-says-about-america
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From "Moloch's sandbox"
Michael Bagen
Pittsburgh Nonpartisan Examiner | December 1, 6:02

Two former employees of an American private military contracting firm have claimed in a Virginia court that they saw their supervisor deliberately shoot at Iraqi vehicles and civilians this summer, and that the firm fired them for reporting the incidents.--source

No, that's not Blackwater. That's a November 2006 article about Triple Canopy. This comes after CNN's April announcement that the Triple Canopy would be taking over the Blackwater/Xe contracts, due to Iraq refusing to renew their operating license due to a September 2007 shooting incident involving five of their then-employees.

Yet another example of the Obama "Change" platform brought to its realization. ...

http://www.examiner.com/x-20026-Pittsburgh-Nonpartisan-Examiner~y2009m12d1-Molochs-sandbox
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The "Friendly" Electrocution of a Military Contractor

From "From Yes, KBR, Congress is Talking About You"
By David Isenberg
Author, Shadow Force: Private Security Contractors in Iraq

" ... For those who have forgotten, it was KBR which has done the majority of the electrical work at U.S. facilities in Iraq. That work resulted in faulty wiring in far too many facilities, resulting in the low-level electrocutions of 16 U.S soldiers and 2 contractors and hundreds more incurred shock-related injuries in Iraq over a span of four years.. The most recent was 25-year-old Adam Hermanson, a US Air Force veteran-turned private security contractor who died in a shower at the compound of his employer, Triple Canopy, in Baghdad's Green Zone on September 1, 2009. That a contractor's apparently shoddy work ended up killing a contractor can only be viewed as ironic. ... "

http://www.huffingtonpost.com/david-isenberg/yes-were-talking-about-yo_b_403996.html
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Triple Canopy CEO Ignacio "Iggy" Balderas

"Iggy has over two decades of experience in Special Forces units, including service with the U.S. Army's 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force). As Command Sergeant Major for Delta Force, Iggy was responsible to the National Command Authority for leadership, training, mentorship and implementation of policies and procedures for the U.S. military's most elite unit. He served as the subject matter expert on operational matters and command representative on military policy boards. He was responsible for hiring and firing every enlisted member in the unit. He conducted briefings for the U.S. President, Secretary of Defense and other four-star flag officers. ... "

http://www.triplecanopy.com/triplecanopy/en/about/bio.ignacio.balderas.php

Triple Canopy Chief Operating Officer Kelvin Kai

A U.S. Army veteran with over 20 years of service, Kelvin spent his entire career within the Special Operations Community assigned to the US Army Rangers, US Army Special Forces and 11 years assigned to the 1st Special Forces Operational Detachment-Delta (Delta Force), where he acquired an exceptional level of expertise across the entire spectrum of special operation missions. Kelvin was awarded a Legion of Merit for his service.

Following his retirement, Kelvin served as the regional security manager in the Balkans for KBR and was a security advisor for Freeport McMoRan Copper and Gold in Indonesia

http://www.triplecanopy.com/triplecanopy/en/about/bio.kelvin.kai.php

Strategic Advisory Board

Dan Bannister (former Chairman and CEO of DynCorp)
David Binney (former Deputy Director of the FBI and former Director of Security for IBM)
BGEN Stephen A. Cheney, USMC (Ret.) (currently the Chief Operating Officer for Business Executives for National Security (BENS))
Catherine Lotrionte Yoran (former Assistant General Counsel with the Central Intelligence Agency and an Adjunct Professor and Senior Fellow at Georgetown University School of Foreign Service and Law Center)

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Triple_Canopy_Inc.
-----
From "OBAMA'S BLACKWATER": TRIPLE CANOPY AWARDED MILLIONS IN MERCENARY CONTRACTS

... Triple Canopy Inc. Wins New Security Contract from State Department of US ; Expands Global Presence by Opening Offices in Abu Dhabi and Nigeria

04/1/2009 The State Department announced it has awarded a contract to Triple Canopy Inc. to protect US diplomats on the ground in Baghdad after dropping the controversial Blackwater Worldwide, renamed Xe. The department awarded the contract to Triple Canopy, which will start the transition immediately even if Xe will fill gaps until its contract ends in May. Triple Canopy said it has expanded its global presence by opening offices in Abu Dhabi and Nigeria.

Triple Canopy Inc. Wins $3,795,682.99 Federal Contract from the U.S. Army's Joint Contracting Command 01/10/2009 Triple Canopy Inc. announced that, it has won a $3,795,682.99 federal contract from the U.S. Army's Joint Contracting Command, Baghdad, Iraq, for personal security detail services.

Triple Canopy Inc. Wins $6.8 Million Contract 09/10/2007 Triple Canopy Inc. has won another contract to provide security services in Iraq. The new contract is for $6.8 million over the next year. ...

http://www.godlikeproductions.com/forum1/message859706/pg1
-----
Sport shooting

Triple Canopy is currently the defendent in a lawsuit filed by three former employees who worked for Triple Canopy under a contract for KBR. Former Army Ranger Shane Schmidt and former Marine Charles L. Sheppard III claim in the lawsuit that on July 8, 2004, while en route to the Baghdad airport, their shift leader declared he was "going to kill someone today" and shortly afterwards stepped out of the vehicle and fired rounds of his M4 rifle through the windshield of a stopped truck.

The suit goes on to claim the shift leader said, "This didn't happen, understand?" Soon after, the shift leader stated he had "never shot anyone with my handgun before" and then fired his handgun through the windshield of a parked taxi, killing the driver.

When Schmidt and Sheppard reported the incident, they were fired by Triple Canopy. The shift leader was sent back to the United States. Triple Canopy has not denied the incident occurred, rather they argue that no violation of Virginia law occurred and that Schmidt and Sheppard were "at-will" employees and could be fired for any reason. [5]

Recruitment

Recently, Triple Canopy has stopped recruiting from the Philippines and started in war-experienced rich El Salvador. Company spokesman, Joe Mayo, says, "They've got the right background for the type of work we are doing." After training in Jordan, the troops will head to Iraq for site security. --(inactive link)

Triple Canopy has been engaged in recruiting counter-insurgency military around Latin America, mostly from Peru, Chile, Colombia, El Salvador. --October 31, 2005.

It has been reported that Triple Canopy has contracted with the Peruvian Army to set up training exercises at the base in Huachipa. The Peruvian newspaper El Comercio reported in October, 2005 that the Peruvian Army has trained a total of 678 soldiers for Triple Canopy already.

Triply Canopy has also been linked to training exercises in Honduras at facilities set up in the 1980s by the CIA. The Honduran government expelled 105 Chilean soldiers who had been recruited by a Triple Canopy subsidiary, Your Solutions. The Honduran newspaper, La Tribuna, reported that Your Solutions has shipped over a couple hundred soldiers from Honduras to Iraq. [6]

Growth

On June 15th, 2007, Triple Canopy announced their acquisition of Clayton Consultants, Inc., a crisis management security consultancy offering incident response services and security consulting for threats like kidnappings, ransoms and extortion against their clients. The addition of Clayton under the Triple Canopy umbrella will expand their range of available services.

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?title=Triple_Canopy_Inc.

American Cancer Society: This Carcinogenic World According to Elmer Bobst

2009-12-26T20:14:00.001-08:00

Elmer Bobst's Early Years in the American Cancer Society

According to his autobiography (Bobst: autobiography of a pharmaceutical pioneer, 1973), Bobst was doing war bond work in 1945 "when Governor Walte Edge, of New Jersey, and Eric Johnson, the czar of the motion picture industry, came to see me on behalf of the American Cancer society.... It had been run like a small mom and pop business, content to putter along with limited results.... My first step was to enlist the support of the strong team that had volunteered to help with the bond sales, because I knew them and I knew their capabilities. [Besides, with the war ending, he could hijack them to serve his purposes - cast] Without letting them know the reason, I invited all of my county bond chairmen and some other people of importance -- about thirty in all -- to join me for cocktails and dinner at a club. We enjoyed a convivial evening and a good dinner before I got up to reveal the purpose of the meeting. I explained, then, that I was about to undertake a mission -- a spiritual crusade to save human lives, and I wanted them to go on the crusade with me. Then I introduced a distinguished guest, Dr. Clarence Cook Little, a top biologist and geneticist [actually, CC Little was far from the top and was primarily a mouse-breeder - cast] and director of the Jackson Memorial Laboratory in Detroit, had been scientific director and the leading force in the Cancer Society since 1929.... At the end of the evening, all but two of my bond volunteers, including nineteen of the county chairmen, agreed to join the crusade."

His fund-raising attracted the attention of Albert and Mary Lasker: "Within a few weeks -- I think it was in June, 1945, while I was still running the New Jersey fund-raising effort -- I was elected chairman of the executive committee, succeeding Emerson Foote, another great advertising leader, in the top administrative policy position.... The society was being run by the scientists and physicians with a kind of polite sufferance of its lay leaders.... I decided that the first priority was to move aside the scientists and physicians who were in administrative control of the organization. They were good men, but they were not experienced leaders, and they were not getting results. I wanted majority control to be in the hands of qualified lay leaders.

The physician members could form a scientific committee to make recommendations about scientific matters and advise the executive committee." [In short, science would be secondary to manipulation of the masses, a priority which the ACS retains to this day - cast.]

"Naturally I had informed Dr. Little of my intention to call for a total change in the structure and leadership of the society. His first order of business at the meeting therefore was to defend the record of his administration and throw cold water on my plans for the future." Bobst took offense at Little's remark, "We must remember, gentlemen, that the chairman of the executive committee is just a pharmacist, and that the extent of his medical experience and knowledge is limited." Bobst blustered in return that "I'll match my knowledge in materia medica and therapeutics with any one in this room who is willing to meet me. I've read a great deal. I have a library of 300 medical books. I've been writing on medical subjects for twenty-four years, and I've gone through most of the disciplines of medicine. To be perfectly frank, I think I know nearly as much about cancer as any of you here." [But there is no evidence that he cared anything about medical ideas, except if they could be used as an angle to peddle his products - cast.]

Bobst attributes his victory to having made his case privately to each committee member before the meeting, which Little hadn't done. And, laughably in the light of Helicobacter pylori, including evidence that a bacterial cause had been suspected in ulcers as far back as 1946, he whines: "My legacy, which perhaps I could blame more one my four-year battle with Barrell than on the fight for control of the Cancer Society, was a duodenal ulcer which I had to begin nursing back to health after the executive committee meeting struggle. The conflict had been even harder on Albert Lasker, who was so exhausted from the squabbling of the society's doctors that he had to bow out of active participation in order to conserve strength for his other volunteer activities." [Lasker died seven years later in 1952 from stomach cancer. So much for the medical science of ad agency types -cast.]

"My first step was to get Jim Adams of Standard Brands on the executive committee. Jim was a cool leader, a diplomat, and, as former executive of the Benton and Bowles Advertising Agency, a promotion expert. He also understood medical research not only from his involvement with pharmaceuticals at Standard Brands, but as a leader in President Roosevelt's Warm Springs polio foundation, as a member of the Tom Spies nutrition committee, and as committee member of the War Production Board team that spurred the development of atabrine as a substitute for quinine. I also drew other top people for the committee, among them General William J. (Wild Bill) Donovan, head of the wartime O.S.S., General John Reed Kilpatrick, the president of the Madison Square Garden corporation, Henry Von Elm, chairman of Manufacturers Trust, Howard Pew, the Philadelphia oil man, and Ralph Reed, president of American Express."

"We moved rapidly to tighten and improve our paid staff organization and enhanced their career opportunities with a generous pension and insurance plan. We disbanded the cumbersome and expensive 'Women's Army' and trained our best people in more sophisticated fund-raising techniques: special gift solicitations among wealthy potential donors; high-intensity community-wide fund campaigns; letter and card campaigns; arresting public service advertisements; fund-raising contests; special appeals to civic organizations, and so forth." To remedy the "ignorance" of the public on the subject of cancer, the ACS commenced its "education" campaign with the "Seven Danger Signals," originating from Bobst's scribbled notes on the back of a restaurant menu.

"...My involvement with the Cancer Society brought me into contact with a small group of active people -- someone called them 'benevolent plotters -- who set out during and after World War II to revolutionize American medical education, research and health care." [Sic -- they usurped the taxpayers' money to push their health fascist agenda, a mess of pseudo-moralistic 19th century tripe owing more to John Harvey Kellogg than anyone else, and paint it with a veneer of science - cast] "They included Albert and Mary Lasker, Dr. Alton Ochsner, Dr. Michael DeBakey, Emerson Foote, Dr. Frank Adair, Anna Rosenberg, my old friend Jim Adams, and a number of other well-known and not-so-well-known people who were willing to devote time and energy [he forgot MONEY -cast] to this noble cause. All of them did not agree all of the time, but all of them were united in one purpose: to stimulate federal support of medical research and education [FOR THEIR OWN PURPOSES - cast]. To accomplish this required the ear of Congress, and to gain that ear required enormous voluntary expenditures of time and energy [and MONEY - cast], cultivating senators and congressmen, educating them and creating forceful advocates for medical progress. Each of us willingly testified before congressional committees whenever the chance arose, or called on members of Congress, to proselytize for greatly expanded appropriations and responsibilities for the National Institutes of Health." [The better to stack them with Syndicate cronies, who in turn handed out funding to other syndicate cronies - cast.]

Elmer Bobst credits himself with bringing the 1950 study by Wynder and Graham to the attention of the American Cancer Society, and instigating its first epidemiologic study. He bombastically portrays himself as a noble truth-seeker overcoming self-interested naysayers: "I want to tell you and everyone here that I have been traveling up and down the country and collecting money for one purpose: To find out through research the causative factors and possible cures of cancer in any form. The disease has been increasing just as much here as in England. There may or may not be a relationship between cigarette smoking and lung cancer, but there certainly are grounds for investigation. As chairman of this meeting, I intend to take action and appoint a committee that will develop ways and means of finding out. The American public has been generous to this society and has the right to know the truth."

Actually, by his own admission of ACS fund-raising techniques, it was not "the American public" which was so generous to them, as it was a certain little clique of health fascist ideologues. And the American people would not get the truth from the American Cancer Society's studies, because as far as Bobst was concerned, statistical correlation did equal causation, with equal validity for heart disease or emphysema or any other disease smoking was accused of causing. Thoughts such as confounding by infection, or initiation versus promotion of carcinogenesis, never crossed Elmer Bobst's simple mind, and were not welcome in his determination to silence dissenters.

"We released the first results of our study in June, 1954. Although the reactions of the tobacco industry, much of the public, and even many medical people ranged from outraged disbelief to quiet skepticism, we stuck by our guns and continued the study. As more reports came in and were evaluated, we refined the results to show that a person smoking one pack a day ran at least fourteen times more risk of lung cancer than the nonsmoker, and that as the number of cigarettes consumed increased, so did the risk. Within a few years, we noted a statistical correlation between smoking and heart disease, and a positive cause and effect relationship between smoking and emphysema. The denials and skepticism that our reports first raised have long been conclusively put to rest by further studies, all based on that first statistical research project that Dr. Cameron and I insisted the Cancer Society undertake in 1950."

Actually, the "denials and skepticism" were put to rest by the sheer intellectual lameness of C.C. Little, the Society's own former scientific director, in his ill-fitting role as a supposed defender of the tobacco industry, thanks to the disbelief he shared that infections cause cancer. As if acting in collaboration with the ACS, he helped condition the media to a totalitarian mentality of ridiculing skepticism and suppressing dissent. They conspired to literally make a thought-crime out of considering the possibility of alternative explanations: It is one of the formal accusations of the state tobacco lawsuits. To this day, despite the mounting evidence that infections are the real cause of a very substantial proportion of supposed smoking-related diseases, neither the ACS nor its puppet, the National Cancer Institute, have made a good-faith effort to investigate this possibility in regard to lung cancer. They refuse to consider any mechanism other than chemical carcinogenesis, although they have failed to identify such a mechanism despite fifty years of dedicating vast resources, mostly those of the taxpayers, to this effort.

The Elmer Holmes Bobst Collection / New York University

"As head of the U.S. arm of the international Hoffman-La Roche drug company during the 1930s, Bobst also 'worked to make the nation vitamin conscious.' In 1938, Bobst scored a 'coup' by suggesting that thiamine (vitamin B1), manufactured by his company, be added to refined flour... 'With Charles "Boss" Kettering of General Motors and other business and professional people,' Bobst set up the Tom Spies Committee for Clinical Research, with an unprecedented annual budget of $150,000, to study vitamins.' 'Soon,' wrote Bobst, there was no doubt about the need for the mass consumption of vitamins.' General Mills Chairman Donald Davis was an ally in lobbying for state laws requiring fortification. (From The Cancer Charity Ripoff, by Peter Barry Chowka. East West Journal, July 1978.)

Chowka, East West Journal 1978 / tobacco documents
Elmer H. Bobst was a trustee of the National Fund for Medical Education in 1954. Fellow trustees included B. Brewster Jennings, Devereux C. Josephs, Winthrop Rockefeller, Anna M. Rosenberg, and Thomas J. Ross (Letter, Howard Corning Jr. to Dr. C.C. Little, Aug. 16, 1954). Thomas J. Ross was later a trustee of Ernst Wynder's American Health Foundation.

Corning to Little, Aug. 16, 1954 / tobacco document

The American Cancer Society, 1946: Dr. Frank E. Adair, President; Elmer H. Bobst, president of William R. Warner & Co., was chairman of the executive committee; Eric A. Johnston, chairman; Dr. Cornelius P. Rhoads, director of Memorial Hospital, was chairman of the Committee on Growth. Dr. Clarence C. Little told of the society's educational program, at the ACS's annual dinner for the National Association of Sciences Writers at the Biltmore Hotel. (War Data Sought in Cancer Studies. New York Times, Jan. 9, 1946.)

The American Cancer Society

The American Cancer Society's puppet, the International Union for the Control of Cancer (UICC), grew out of a trip to Europe that Bobst made in 1954.

The UICC: ACS's Foreign Puppet

Honorary Life Members of the American Cancer Society include Gen. William J. Donovan, Eric A. Johnston, Mrs. Anna M. Rosenberg, and Alfred P. Sloan Jr.; directors include James S. Adams, Lane W. Adams, Elmer H. Bobst, William U. Gardner, Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, and Alton Ochsner.

Letter, July 27, 1956 / tobacco document
Letter, April 3, 1958 / tobacco document

In 1956-57, Bobst was a director-at-large of the American Cancer Society. He was a member of the ACS Executive Committee in 1945, and Vice Chairman from 1946-50; ACS National Campaign Chairman 1947-48 and its chairman from 1949-56; and Honorary Board Chairman of the ACS from 1951-55. He was Chairman of the Board of Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Co., a member of the National Advisory Cancer Council of the National Cancer Institute; Director of the Spies Committee for Clinical Research; the University of Pennsylvania Medical Research Council; a Trustee of Rutgers College of Pharmacy, and of Franklin and Marshall College; and President of the Gustavus and Louise Pfeiffer Foundation. He was also a founding member of the World Medical Association and National Fund for Medical Education.

Know Your Board of Directors, ACS 1957 / tobacco document

Elmer Bobst was an Honorary Life Member of the American Cancer Society in 1963, along with James S. Adams (Lazard Freres), Eric Johnston, Alton Ochsner, Mrs. Anna M. Rosenberg, and Alfred P. Sloan Jr. Mrs. Albert D. Lasker was honorary Chairman of the Board and a director; Lane Adams was executive vice president; and former Wisconsin Governor (1951-57) Walter J. Kohler Jr., who was chairman of the board in 1958, was also a director.

Ravdin to Riggleman, 1963 (p. 5)/tobacco document

National Officers of the American Cancer Society, 1974- Mrs. Albert D. Lasker, Honorary Chairman of the Board of Directors; R. Lee Clark of MD Anderson. Honorary Life Members - Elmer H. Bobst; Emerson Foote; Mrs. Anna Rosenberg Hoffman; Alton Ochsner; Ann Landers. Council for Research and Clinical Investigation Awards - Joseph L. Melnick (longtime supporter of ASH who helped conceal the role of CMV in heart disease); Henry C. Pitot (who redeemed himself with his paper stating that HPV was "sufficient" to cause cancer). Council for Analysis and Projection - Frank J. Rauscher Jr. of the NCI. Advisory Committee on Institutional Research Grants: Roswell K. Boutwell of the CTR. Advisory Committee on Personnel for Research - Lasker Foundation Director Purnell W. Choppin and CTR member Wolfgang Joklik. Advisory Committee on Virology and Cell Biology - CTR member Peter K. Vogt. Advisory Committee on Nucleic Acids - Washington Advisory Group principal C. Thomas Caskey.

American Cancer Society audit report, 1974/tobacco document (pdf, 9 pp)

Did Nazi Money Help Fund the American Cancer Society?

According to Mae Brussell, "This is a story of how key Nazis, even as the Wehrmacht was still on the offensive, anticipated military disaster and laid plans to transplant nazism, intact but disguised, in havens in the West." Brussell implicates OSS chief William Donovan, along with the Vatican, in the "safe diaspora" of key Nazis, including their intelligence operations, the Gehlen Organization. Gehlen's agent-in-place in the US is said to have been Otto Albrecht von Bolschwing, "who had been a captain in Heinrich Himmler's dreaded SS and Adolph Eichmann's superior in Europe and Palestine.... When he entered the U.S. in 1954, he cleverly concealed his Nazi past.... He became closely associated with the late Elmer Bobst of Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical, a godfather of Richard Nixon's political career, which brought him inside Nixon's 1960 campaign for the presidency." ("The Nazi connection to the John F. Kennedy Assassination," by Mae Brussell. The Rebel, 1983 Nov 22.)

Mae Brussell / Prouty
Elmer Bobst in Nixon's "Kitchen Cabinet"

"Arrayed around the President is a small, exclusive fraternity of friends outside the government who are privy to Mr. Nixon's personal life and who exercise an indirect, though vital influence on his official life.... Prominent in that elite coterie are Elmer H. Bobst, honorary chairman of the Warner-Lambert Pharmaceutical Co.; Donald M. Kendall, chairman and chief executive officer of PepsiCo Inc.; Hobart D. Lewis, editor-in-chief of Reader's Digest; W. Clement Stone, Chicago insurance magnate; Robert H. Abplanalp, inventor of the aerosol valve; evangelist Billy Graham; Jack Drown, Los Angeles newspaper and magazine distributor; and C.G. (Bebe) Rebozo, Florida realtor and banker." (White House Report/ President's inner circle of friends serves as influential 'kitchen cabinet.' By Dom Bonafede. National Journal 1972 Jan. 22.) Naturally, they are big campaign contributors and ideologically compatible. In 1970, Bobst lobbied the President on behalf of Mary Lasker and Benno C. Schmidt, managing director of JH Witney & Co., who had been named chairman of the National Panel of Consultants on the Conquest of Cancer to create a special cancer authority that would not be under the control of the National Institutes of Health.

The selection of Vice President Agnew

The Communist Party USA implicates Elmer Bobst in Richard Nixon's selection of Maryland Governor Spiro Agnew as his vice-presidential running mate: "The CEO of the New Jersey pharmaceutical giant Warner Chilcott was Elmer Bobst, a heavyweight contributor to the Republican Party and the Richard Nixon comeback campaign in 1968. As the Nixon-Humphrey battle was running tight, Bobst propositioned Nixon with an offer he couldn't refuse. For an extra handout to the GOP coffer, Bobst could name Nixon's vice-presidential running mate. The two shook hands in secret. Bobst then approached an obscure governor of Maryland with the second half of the deal - veto the pending legislation and the Veep slot was his. The rest is history. Spiro Agnew did indeed exercise his veto, the narrow passage margin did not allow for an override, and generics were delayed in the country for several years. The cost of the Bobst contribution was overwhelmed by the profits reaped in the 'arrangement.'"

"Uncle Elmer"

To the Nixon family, Elmer Bobst was much more than just a wealthy campaign contributor. At the dedication of The Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom (housed in the Elmer and Mamdouha Bobst Building), March 1, 1995 -- at which President william Jefferson Clinton was the featured speaker -- Tricia Nixon Cox described Bobst as "An extraordinary person whose life personified the idea of being dedicated to worthy causes was Elmer Holmes Bobst. He was a self-made man whose intelligence, character, loyalty, patriotism, courage and generosity in many areas, including education and cancer research, made him an embodiment of the American dream. A mentor and father-figure to my father in all seasons since 1953, Elmer Bobst, or Uncle Elmer as Julie and I called him, was also a singular friend, who with his wife Mamdouha shared my father's vision of a more just and peaceful world...."

And Nixon's old foreign policy advisor Henry Kissinger said: "Mr. President, ladies and gentlemen, in the last year of his life no relationship meant more to President Nixon than the relationship he established with President Clinton. It was unexpected. It would not have been thought possible 20 years earlier when they were on opposite sides of a deep American division."

Bobst/"The Nixon Center for Peace and Freedom"

(Nixon and Jews, by Garry Wills. UExpress Online, 1997). In a letter to Nixon in 1972, Bobst wrote: "Not any of these people (anti-war protesters) have a true love for our country, and unfortunately, most of them are Jews, and Jews have troubled the world from the very beginning. If this beloved country of ours ever falls apart, the blame rightly should be attributed to the malicious action of Jews in complete control of our communications." Never mind that this same media adored the American Cancer Society, and slavishly parroted its propaganda. Also, it was a Jew in the media, Ann Landers, who played a key role in mobilizing public support for Mary Lasker's National Cancer Act of 1971.

White House NCAB Appointments, March 7, 1972 / tobacco document
National Cancer Advisory Board, 1974 / tobacco document
Warner-Lambert and the Nicotine Patch

Front group FORCES blames "Big Pharma" for the anti-smoking movement and ignores the controlling role of the Lasker lobby. The patent for nicotine chewing gum was held by Warner-Lambert, Elmer Bobst's pharmaceutical company. Its first use in commerce was June 22, 1973. Jed Rose, a co-inventor of the nicotine patch with Dr. Murray Jarvik, said that when they tried to find a company willing to market their product, none were interested, until the Swiss firm Ciba-Geigy AG (which merged with Sandoz AG to form Novartis AG in 1996) began marketing it in 1991. This was 40 years after the anti-smoking persecution began, and only after much whining by anti-smoking activists about the lack of collaboration with their goals by the pharmaceutical companies.

Inventors/About.com

At the Third World Conference on Smoking and Health, held at the Waldorf-Astoria Hotel in New York City in 1975, Jane Francis Emele, PhD, Director of Biological Research, American Chicle Division of Warner Lambert Co., was the only representative of "Big Pharma." She participated in the Workshop on Pharmacologic Intervention. However, there were representatives of Kimberly-Clark Corp., Celanese Fibers Corp., AMF Inc., and Cummins Engine Company present. Theodore Cooper was there, too, and gave the opening address.

Participants, 3rd World Conference on Smoking & Health, 1975 / tobacco document

Blaming "Big Drugs" to Protect the Lasker Syndicate

In 1996, Pfizer Pharmaceuticals and Warner-Lambert entered into a co-marketing agreement with Pfizer on Lipitor, the cholesterol-lowering statin, and in 2000, Pfizer acquired Warner-Lambert. Pfizer introduced Chantix, a quit-smoking drug that blocks dopamine receptors.

National Cancer Advisory Board Appointments, 1972

The appointees include Laurance S. Rockefeller; Elmer Bobst; Donald E. Johnson, an Upjohn heir who is an honorary life member of the American Cancer Society; and Mary Lasker. Continuing members included James E. Gilmore Jr. of Gilmore Broadcasting Corporation, and entertainer Danny Thomas.

NCAB Members, 1972 / tobacco document
The Citizens' Committee for the Conquest of Cancer, 1978

The Citizens' Committee for the Conquest of Cancer was co-founded by Mary Lasker's crony, Sidney Farber, and co-chaired by Emerson Foote of the American Cancer Society, and Solomon Garb, a correspondent of Mary Lasker between 1969 and 1981. Garb sent a bullying letter to Curtis H. Judge, President of Lorillard Inc., claiming that three unnamed "friends who know a great deal about the tobacco industry warned me of an ongoing plan by some PR representatives of the industry... to attack the National Cancer Institute, the American Cancer Society and the entire concept of a national effort to fight cancer," and demanding that "the tobacco industry" lobby for "higher total appropriations to NCI" and that "the Tobacco Research Institute [sic] should allocate substantial sums to finding anticancer drugs in plants." (Garb to Judge, Sep. 20, 1978.)

Sponsoring members of this slimy group included William McC. Blair Jr., Mrs. William McC. Blair Jr., now vice president of the Lasker Foundation; Elmer H. Bobst; R. Lee Clark; Mrs. Alice Fordyce, Mary's sister; James W. Fordyce, Mary's nephew; Mary's old friend, Leonard Goldenson of ABC-TV; Mrs. Paul G. Hoffman, aka Anna Rosenberg; Robert W. Holley of the Salk Institute; Mathilde Krim; Hollywood producer Norman Lear; William Regelson, founder of FIBER, on whose board Mary later served; and Bernard J. Reis, Treasurer of the Lasker Foundation.

Citizens' Committee for the Conquest of Cancer, 1978/tobacco document
Mamdouha Bobst

Mamdouha Bobst Bio/American University of Beirut

Mrs. Elmer H. Bobst was a Trustee of New York University. Fellow trustees include John L. Vogelstein of E.M. Warburg Pincus & Co., and Laurence Tisch, a Trustee since 1966 and Chairman from 1978 to 1998. Directors of Tisch's Loews Corp. who were also trustees of NYU include John Brademas, president emeritus of NYU and a director of Loews since 1982; Paul J. Fribourg, Laurence A. Tisch and his brother, Preston Robert Tisch.

Board of Trustees/New York University

Mamdouha Bobst was a Trustee of the New York University School of Medicine Foundation. Other Trustees included Alice M. Tisch and Thomas J. Tisch; David Baltimore, and Edgar Bronfman Jr. Thomas S. Murphy, former Chairman and CEO of Capital Cities/ABC, is a Life Trustee.

NYU School of Medicine Foundation/New York University (pdf, 168pp)

Mrs. Bobst was an Honorary Life Member of the ACS in 2001, along with Mary Lasker's nephew James W. Fordyce, AHF Trustee LaSalle D. Leffall, and Charles A. LeMaistre. Former Rep. Paul G. Rogers was on the Board of Directors.

2001 ACS Form 990 / American Cancer Society (pdf, 114pp)

Mrs. Elmer Holmes Bobst was still on the Board of Overseers of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center in 2002, along with Mrs. Joseph A. Califano Jr., Ann Dibble Jordan, Richard Gelb, and Sanford I. Weill. Laurance S. Rockefeller and James D. Robinson III were honorary co-chairmen. Louis V. Gerstner Jr. was Vice Chairman of Boards, and Chairman of the Board of Managers of the Sloan-Kettering Institute. Former National Institutes of Health Director Harold Varmus, in whose administration some research on the role of infection in chronic diseases proceeded at last, was President and Chief Executive Officer. Mrs. Charles A. Dana Jr., Mrs. Thomas L. Kempner, Mrs. Milton Petrie, and Linda Gosden Robinson were on the 10-woman Advisory Council of The Society of Memorial Sloan-Kettering Cancer Center. (MSKCC 2002 Annual Report).

cast 01-19-08

http://www.smokershistory.com/Bobst.htm
•••••••
LOOK WHO'S BASHING BILL CLINTON, AND THIS IS SUPPOSED TO BE A LIBERAL WEBSITE:

Stephen C. Rose
OpEdNews.com
http://www.opednews.com

" ... OK, if Bill Clinton was not such an operator, he could just raise money for Kiva.org which is honest and reputable and makes no deals -- just micro-credit facilitated by online smarts and a network of loan-hungry entrepreneurs worldwide. Bill has talked up Kiva but I am sure it is nothing to his other charitable ventures. Nothing about the Clintons is without high politics and rampant complexity. Compared to the Clintons, I think Richard Nixon was probably an amateur, a mere babe in the woods. ... " (Disclosure: I knew Nixon. My late dad took Nixon into his law firm at the behest of the late Elmer Bobst ... )

http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_stephen__080408_mining_the_clinton_g.htm

Blackwater's Erik Prince, the Knights of Malta and a "Near-Death" Experience

2009-12-26T14:21:00.001-08:00

From: The Blackwater chronicles
By Irfan Husain
Dawn.Com | 16 Dec, 2009

A KoM ashtray

... Among other allegations about Prince, perhaps the most bizarre relate to his connection to the Knights of Malta, an extreme-right Roman Catholic organisation that traces its roots back to the Crusades. Some ex-employees have accused Prince of being a Christian supremacist sanctioning the killings of Muslims because he believes he has been charged by God to ‘rid the world of Muslims and Islam.’

Others point to the fact that he supports an orphanage in Afghanistan. Whatever the truth, Prince does seem to think he has been chosen for a mission to defend America. He cites a recent near-death experience in his interview with Ciralsky in the Vanity Fair article. Apparently, he was in Islamabad when he received word that his son had nearly drowned in the family swimming pool in the United States. Changing his itinerary, he caught the next flight back, checking out of the Marriott hours before it was nearly flattened in a huge suicide blast a couple of years ago. ...

http://www.dawn.com/wps/wcm/connect/dawn-content-library/dawn/the-newspaper/columnists/irfan-husain-the-blackwater-chronicles-629

Blackwater and the Knights of Malta

.... The European Parliament published a report by Giovanni Claudio Fava, a Socialist Group legislator, claiming that there are connections between Blackwater and Malta. Malta is where the Knights of Malta, another right-wing element of the Catholic Church similar to the Knights Templar, once lived and still maintain control of Fort St. Angelo.

The Nation’s Jeremy Scahill has also written about connections between Prince, Malta and Pres. Bush’s rendition program in which terrorist suspects were sent to other countries for the purpose of torture. The program, according to Scahill was run by Cofer Black, who is allegedly a Knight of Malta himself and used Malta in the rendition program.

Black is the current vice chairman for Blackwater. At the time of the Sept. 11, 2001 terrorist attacks in New York and Washington, DC, Black was director of the CIA’s Counterterrorist Center. ...

http://seeker401.wordpress.com/2009/08/14/knights-of-templarknights-of-maltablackwater-erik-prince/

Peter Drucker & the Nazi Heritage of Privatization

2009-12-26T11:24:00.000-08:00

September 11, 2006

Applied Economics
Evening Bachelors program at University of San Francisco
cps.usfca.edu

German Resistance?

"Conservative" economist Peter Drucker popularized privatization, a key Nazi economic policy

Privatization is very popular among laissez-faire types today. The recent issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives offers a different tale in which the term privatization is falsely credited to Peter Drucker. In fact, Nazis coined the term. Their intent was to skew the distribution of income toward the rich, with the objective of reducing consumption. After all, the rich have a lower marginal propensity to consume.

The term seems to have been first introduced into academic social science by Maxine Yaple Sweezy, wife of the distinguished Marxist economist, Paul Sweezy.
Bel, Germa`. 2006. "The Coining of 'Privatization' and Germany’s National Socialist Party." Journal of Economic Perspectives, 20: 3 (Summer): pp. 187-94.

187-8: “The standard story on the coining of “privatization” reports that in 1969 Peter Drucker used the term “reprivatization” in the sense that economists understand it today. In The Age of Discontinuity (1969, p. 229), Drucker makes a negative appraisal on the managerial capabilities of the public sector: “Government is a poor manager …. It has no choice but to be `bureaucratic.’” Drucker’s (p. 233) analysis of how government works leads him to what he takes as “the main lesson of the last fifty years: the government is not a doer.” Thus, Drucker (p. 234) proposed adopting a “systematic policy of using the other, the nongovernmental institutions of the society of organizations, for the actual `doing,’ i.e., for performance, operations, execution. Such a policy might be called `reprivatization.’” Drucker referred to “reprivatization” because he proposed giving back to the private sector executive responsibilities that had been private before the public sector took them over through nationalization and municipalization starting in the last decades of the nineteenth century.”

189-90: “In the late 1930s and the early 1940s, a number of works were devoted to the analysis of economic policy in Germany under the rule of the National Socialist Party. One major work was Maxine Yaple Sweezy’s (1941) The Structure of the Nazi Economy. Sweezy stated that industrialists supported Hitler’s accession to power and his economic policies: “In return for business assistance, the Nazis hastened to give evidence of their good will by restoring to private capitalism a number of monopolies held or controlled by the state” (p. 27). This policy implied a large-scale program by which “the government transferred ownership to private hands” (p. 28). One of the main objectives for this policy was to stimulate the propensity to save, since a war economy required low levels of private consumption. High levels of savings were thought to depend on inequality of income, which would be increased by inequality of wealth. This, according to Sweezy (p. 28), “was thus secured by `reprivatization’ …. The practical significance of the transference of government enterprises into private hands was thus that the capitalist class continued to serve as a vessel for the accumulation of income. Profit-making and the return of property to private hands, moreover, have assisted the consolidation of Nazi party power.” Sweezy (p. 30) again uses the concept when giving concrete examples of transference of government ownership to private hands: “The United Steel Trust is an outstanding example of `reprivatization.’” This may be the first use of the term “reprivatization” in the academic literature in English, at least within the domain of the social sciences.”

192-3: “The primary modern argument against privatization is that it only enriches and entrenches business and political elites, without benefiting consumers or taxpayers. The discussion here suggests a rich historical irony: these modern arguments against privatization are strikingly similar to the arguments made in favor of privatization in Germany in the 1930s. As Sweezy (1941) and Merlin (1943) explicitly point out, German privatization of the 1930s was intended to benefit the wealthiest sectors and enhance the economic position and political support of the elite. Of course, this historical connection does not prove that privatization is always a sound or an unsound policy, only that the effects of privatization may depend considerably on the political, social and economic contexts. German privatization in the 1930s differed from the privatization of Volkswagen in the 1950s, and both of these situations differ from, say, the British privatizations of the 1980s, the Russian privatizations of the 1990s, or the privatizations across Latin America over the last two decades.”

http://michaelperelman.wordpress.com/2006/09/11/the-nazi-heritage-of-privatization/

Swedish Neo-Nazis Stole Auschwitz Sign to Fund Terror Plot, Informant tells Newspaper

2009-12-26T10:37:00.000-08:00

As opposed to reports earlier this week: "Neo-Nazis 'not behind Auschwitz sign theft'"

By William Sherman
NY Daily News | December 25th 2009

Praszkiewicz/AP - Police question one of the suspects in the Dec. 18 theft of the Nazi death camp sign.

A Swedish neo-Nazi group planned to sell the infamous "Arbeit Macht Frei" sign stolen from the Auschwitz death camp to fund an attack on the prime minister, The London Times reported.

"We are aware of the information about the alleged attack plans," Patrik Peter, a spokesman for the Swedish security police told The Times.

The sign, which means "Work Makes You Free," was stolen Dec. 18 by five men and was later found in three pieces several hundred miles from the camp in Oswiecim, Poland. The thieves, all Polish nationals, were arrested and are being interrogated, Polish police said.

A Swedish newspaper reported that a former leader of a Nazi group said a buyer "was ready to pay millions for the sign."

The unidentified source told Aftonbladet that the money would pay for an attack on the home of Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt and on the Swedish Foreign Ministry.

http://www.nydailynews.com/news/world/2009/12/25/2009-12-25_swedish_neonazis_stole_auschwitz_death_camp_sign_to_fund_terror_plot_report.html#ixzz0aozHIbUE

Civil Conspiracy Lawsuits Filed Against Climate Change Deniers

2009-12-26T03:00:00.000-08:00

By Linda McClure
SolveClimate | Dec 6th, 2009

The need for climate legislation is based upon a wide body of scientific evidence that shows global warming is happening now and warns of climactic changes as that warming continues.

Skeptics and some in the fossil fuels industries have joined forces to claim that the climate science is invalid, hoping to decrease public and Congressional support by tainting the foundation for legislation.

In many ways, their disinformation campaign carries similarities to the tactics of the tobacco industry that "misled the public about the scientific evidence linking smoking to lung cancer and heart disease," the Union of Concerned Scientists notes in its report Smoke, Mirrors and Hot air: How ExxonMobil Uses Big Tobacco's Tactics to Manufacture Uncertainty on Climate Science."

James Hoggan's book Climate Cover-Up: The Crusade to Deny Global Warming further investigates how disinformation campaigns by several groups may be linked to decreasing support by the public according to opinion polls.

British government advisor Robert Watson, an expert in atmospheric science for nearly 30 years, recently described how those disinformation campaigns "clearly put the world at risk of far more adverse effects of climate change."

"Those that have opposed a deal on climate, which would include elements of the fossil fuel industry, have clearly made making a 2C target [limiting the temperature rise to no more than 2 degrees Celsius above pre-industrial times] much, much harder, if not impossible," Watson told the Guardian.

Should there be legal accountability when people intentionally mislead the public given the gravity of the harms to people and environment caused by global warming?

Some have answered yes by filing lawsuits seeking to hold deniers legally responsible for a civil conspiracy. The legal theory is that the defendants intentionally presented disinformation on the existence of climate change and its impacts in order to mislead the public and the government to prevent any regulation of greenhouse gases. This deceit prevented or delayed remedies to address global warming impacts occurring today, and those impacts harmed the plaintiffs.

In two recent cases, landowners and residents filed lawsuits that included a claim of climate change civil conspiracy.

The Fifth Circuit Court of Appeals, in Comer v. Murphy Oil, upheld the right of residents and landowners of the Mississippi Gulf coast to proceed with a putative class action against 30 oil and gas companies seeking compensatory and punitive damages based on nuisance, trespass, and negligence.

The plaintiffs alleged that defendants emitted greenhouse gasses that contributed to global warming that caused rising sea levels and increased the intensity of Hurricane Katrina, resulting in the destruction of public and private property.

The complaint also alleged that certain defendants knew for many years about the dangers of greenhouse gases, yet disseminated misinformation to paint global warming as theory rather than fact in order to decrease public awareness and divert public policy from the need to restrict emissions.

The conspiracy "delayed and otherwise interfered with individual and government action to address global warming, and consequently contributed to plaintiffs' injuries ...," the complaint states.

While the court upheld the right to seek damages, however, it rejected the civil conspiracy claim due to prudential standing that bars "adjudication of generalized grievances" that are common to all citizens and therefore more "appropriately addressed in the representative branches."

Civil conspiracy was also alleged by a community of about 400 Alaskan villagers who are being forced from homes by climate-related changes in the Arctic Ocean.

Similar to the Comer case, the inhabitants of Kivalina sued oil and energy companies for damages based on a nuisance claim for defendants' excessive greenhouse gas emissions that caused climate change impacts harmful to the village.

Global warming has now diminished the Arctic sea ice that functioned as a barrier, exposing Kivalina to coastal storm waves and surges that have eroded the village into an uninhabitable state requiring relocation at a cost between $95 million and $400 million, government studies estimate.

The gravamen of the complaint in Native Village of Kivalina v. ExxonMobil is supported by a Government Accountability Office report that cited studies indicating that rising temperatures are partially responsible for flooding and erosion impacting coastal villages. Rising temperatures have also "affected the thickness, extent and duration of sea ice" that protected coastal villages from waves, storm surges and erosion, the report states.

The Kivalina complaint alleges that oil and energy companies used front groups to mislead the public about climate change science. It discusses how the energy companies "formed and used front groups, fake citizens organizations, and bogus scientific bodies" to publish disinformation on global warming, "prop up discredited studies" to deny the scientific consensus and downplay the severity of global climate change.

The federal district court dismissed the Kivalina case based on the defendants' argument that it involved a political question properly dealt with by the legislative or executive branches. The case has been appealed to the Ninth Circuit.

Even if the climate change conspiracy actions do not survive the legal system, there may be benefits from climate change litigation.

Legal theories used in the U.S. can be catalysts for activists around the world to use similar legal theories to hold corporations responsible for climate change impacts. Damage claims and settlements can be more costly than changing the nature of the industry.

http://solveclimate.com/blog/20091206/civil-conspiracy-lawsuits-filed-against-climate-change-deniers

U.S. High Court Rejects Appeal Alleging Torture at Guantanamo

2009-12-25T22:44:00.001-08:00

By Greg Stohr

Dec. 14 (Bloomberg) -- The U.S. Supreme Court refused to revive a lawsuit against former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and other military leaders by four British men who said they were tortured while imprisoned at Guantanamo Bay.

The justices today rejected an appeal by the former inmates, leaving intact a lower court ruling that shielded the government officials from suit.

Shafiq Rasul, Asif Iqbal, Rhuhel Ahmed and Jamal al-Harith said they were beaten, stripped, threatened by dogs, subjected to extreme temperatures and deprived of adequate food, water and sleep. Each was captured in Afghanistan or Pakistan, held for more than two years at Guantanamo, then flown home to England and released in 2004.

“The torture and religious humiliation of Muslim detainees at Guantanamo stands as a uniquely shameful episode in our history,” the four men said in their appeal.

The men sought to press claims under the U.S. Constitution, the Geneva Conventions and several federal statutes, including one that protects religious freedom. The U.S. Court of Appeals for the District of Columbia twice threw out the suits.

After the first ruling, the Supreme Court ordered reconsideration in light of a just-issued high court decision that said Guantanamo prisoners had the right to file so-called habeas corpus petitions seeking relief.

No Damages

The lower court then said in April that the officials couldn’t be sued for damages because the alleged torture took place before the Supreme Court had declared that the Constitution covered inmates at Guantanamo, which is on Cuban sovereign territory.

At that time, “it was not clearly established that the Fifth and Eighth Amendments protected aliens detained abroad by the military,” U.S. Solicitor General Elena Kagan argued.

Rasul, Iqbal and Ahmed said in court papers that they were in Afghanistan to help provide humanitarian relief after the 2001 war against the Taliban. According to the lawsuit, they were captured by a warlord who turned them over to the U.S. military in exchange for a bounty.

Al-Harith said he was in Pakistan for a religious retreat when he was kidnapped and turned over to the Taliban in Afghanistan. When the Taliban fled, U.S. forces arrived at the prison and took him into custody, according to the suit.

They alleged that they were unable to fulfill their daily obligation as Muslims to pray. They said they were subjected to loud rock music, shackled in ways that prevented them from assuming the required posture and forced to be naked while praying, violating the Muslim tenet of modesty.

Some of the men also said they saw a copy of the Koran being thrown into a toilet bucket. Rumsfeld has denied that allegation, which sparked deadly rioting in Pakistan, Afghanistan and other countries in 2005.

The case is Rasul v. Myers, 09-227.

http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601103&sid=aVP6DDL2URAc

Profile of Financial "Guru" John Mauldin: The GOP's "Sage of Dallas" is a Knight of Malta

2009-12-25T15:11:00.000-08:00

By Alex Constantine

For background on some of the parapolitical connections of the Texas Republican Party, see: FBI-Stung Terrorist Targeted Dallas Office Tower where CIA Agent/County Republican Party Chairman Works, CIA Cocaine and 9/11 Ties

The "Sage" is a "Below Average" Economic Forecaster

John Mauldin is an economist widely respected by the media - he is constantly introduced as a "Guru" (this is how he bills himself - he publishes a "Guru Blog" - and the media mindlessly parrot the lucrative hype), yet he is statistically a "below average" forecaster, and an "equivocator," to boot ... : "Based on subsequent stock market performance and our judgments about the accuracy of John Mauldin's forecasts, his bottom-line advice about market direction was correct 42% of the time, below average. ... It is relatively difficult to assess the accuracy of Mr. Mauldin's market projections because of equivocation ... " For more, see: http://www.cxoadvisory.com/gurus/Mauldin/

A SERIOUS CONFLICT-OF-INTEREST: "Another thing that some investors have found common throughout John's writings is a tendency to favor Hedge Funds without always revealing all of the risks involved. This also may seem like a conflict of interest due to John Mauldin's role as a Hedge Fund broker."
http://www.reviewopedia.com/john-mauldin.htm

RADICAL-RIGHT PROPAGANDA

Gary North

FOR FIVE YEARS, MAULDIN WAS CEO OF THE AMERICAN BUREAU OF ECONOMIC RESEARCH, INC., PUBLISHER OF RADICAL-RIGHT CONSPIRACY THEORIST AND CHRISTIAN RECONSTRUCTIONIST GARY NORTH
Source: http://cd.textfiles.com/phoenixrising/patriot/readlist

John Mauldin is the author of How to Profit from the Y2K Recession by Converting the Year 2000 Crisis into an Opportunity for Your Investments and Business (St. Martin’s Press, 1999, ISBN: 0-312-20706-9)
http://bitterlybooks.blogspot.com/2009/04/bug-years-in-making.html

John Mauldin Tackles Deleveraging in Guru Blog
John Maudlin’s Guru blog
EQUITIES Magazine
Beverly Hills 12/21/2009

In his latest entry in the Guru blog, financial expert John Maudlin talks about deleveraging and gives his forecasts for the upcoming year.

“This is the season when pundits feel compelled to make annual forecasts. I will make mine, as I traditionally do, in the first letter of January. But already we have seen a wide range of forecasted outcomes. Are we going to grow at 5-6% or at 1-2% or dip back into recession? Why such disparity? I think part of the reason is a basic disagreement on the nature of the just-lapsed recession. Today we explore that issue. Then I point you to a way to help those who are desperately in need and only wish they had our problems…”

To continue reading this post and to read more of John Maudlin’s Guru Blog, click here.

About John Maudlin [sic]:

John was Chief Executive Officer of the American Bureau of Economic Research, Inc., a publisher of newsletters and books on various investment topics, from 1982 to 1987. He was one of the founders of Adopting Children Together Inc., the largest adoption support group in Texas. He currently serves on the board of directors of The International Reconciliation Coalition and the International Children’s Relief Fund. He is also a member of the Knights of Malta, and has served on the Executive Committee of the Republican Party of Texas.

He is a frequent contributor to numerous publications, and guest on TV and radio shows as well as quoted widely in the press.

John is the President of Millennium Wave Advisors, LLC (MWA) which is an investment advisory firm registered in multiple states. John Mauldin is President of Millennium Wave Securities, LLC a FINRA registered broker-dealer. MWS is also a Commodity Pool Operator (CPO) and a Commodity Trading Advisor (CTA) registered with the CFTC, as well as an Introducing Broker (IB).

http://www.transworldnews.com/NewsStory.aspx?id=150582&cat=1

John F. Mauldin
President
Millennium Wave Investments

" ... John is a prolific author, writer and editor of the free popular Thoughts from the Frontline e-letter which goes to well over 1,000,000 readers weekly, and is posted on numerous independent websites. ... He is also a frequent contributor to other financial publications, including the Financial Times, The Daily Reckoning and a frequent guest on CNBC and Bloomberg TV. His recent book, "Bull's Eye Investing" rose to the New York times best seller list and was a New York times suggested summer reading (for more information, see www.absolutereturns.net.) His latest book, Just One Thing, is due out in late October. ... He graduated from Rice University in 1972, with a Bachelor of Arts degree and from Southwestern Baptist Theological Seminary with a Master of Divinity in 1974. "

http://www.accreditedinvestor.ws/about_mauldin.html

CAMPAIGN CONTRIBUTIONS

John F Mauldin from zip code 76011

Political contributions disclosed by campaign committees to the Federal Election Commission, sorted by name, zip code and employer. The data, from the FEC, covers the years 1979 through 2008.

Candidates

John F Mauldin, Business Marketing Group - $500 to Joe Barton, Congressman Joe Barton Committee, The from October 20, 1993 to October 6, 1995

Committees

John F Mauldin - $300 to Dick Armey Campaign Committee on November 15, 1993

John F Mauldin, Business Marketing Group; $2,500 to Friends Of Ed Harrison from September 23, 1994 to March 31, 1996; $500 to Congressman Joe Barton Committee, The from October 20, 1993 to October 6, 1995; $250 to Texans For Joe Barton on January 18, 1994
'
John F Mauldin, Business Marketing Grp - $1,000 to Friends Of Phil Gramm Pac on June 4, 1996

John F Mauldin, Business Mkting Group

$2,500 to Tarrant County Republican Victory Fund on October 11, 1994

John F Mauldin, Marketing - $1,000 to Phil Gramm For President, Inc. on February 23, 1995

John F Mauldin, Marketing Consultant - $1,000 to Republican Party Of Texas on June 18, 1996

http://watchdog.net/contrib/76011/john_f_mauldin

Lou Dobbs' Fascist Fantasia

2009-12-25T13:12:00.000-08:00

Also see: Lou Dobbs' Spokesman, Knight of Malta Robert Dilenschneider

Is CNBC prepared to Invest in Dobbs and His Record of Conspiracy Theories and Inflammatory Rhetoric?
Media Matters | December 01, 2009

A December 1 New York Times blog post reported that Lou Dobbs "has held talks with the business news network CNBC in recent weeks" and that he "could conceivably host a prime time program for CNBC" or "become a commentator for the business news network." Given Dobbs' record of promoting baseless conspiracy theories and engaging in inflammatory rhetoric, Media Matters for America questions why CNBC would want to tarnish its brand -- as CNN did -- by hiring him.

From the December 1 New York Times blog post:

Lou Dobbs, who is likely to make a decision about his post-CNN career this month, has held talks with the business news network CNBC in recent weeks, two people with knowledge of the discussions say.

Mr. Dobbs, a free agent whose exit from CNN last month prompted speculation about plans for a political bid, could conceivably host a prime time program for CNBC. He could also become a commentator for the business news network.

The people who spoke about the talks requested anonymity because they were not authorized by their employers to speak about it. [The New York Times' Media Decoder, 12/1/09]

Is this the kind of brand CNBC wants to be associated with?

Dobbs repeatedly advanced false conspiracy theories about Obama's birth certificate.

As Media Matters extensively documented, Dobbs suggested on his July 15 CNN show that the birth certificate President Obama provided to FactCheck.org was not "the real document" and suggested on his radio show that day that it was not "the real deal." After asking if Obama should be "more forthcoming" about his birth certificate, Dobbs added: "One of our callers, by the way, pointed out that he didn't release -- he didn't release his medical records, either. Now isn't that interesting? And hasn't produced some other documents. What's the deal? What is the deal here? I'm starting to think we have a -- we have a document issue. Do you suppose he's un -- no, I won't even use the word undocumented. It wouldn't be right." On his July 21 radio show, Dobbs faulted "certain quarters of the national liberal media" for "absolutely trying to knock down the issue of President Obama's birth certificate." On his July 23 radio show, Dobbs addressed media reports on his conspiracy theories by declaring, "I do believe in a national left-wing media conspiracy in which they work in concert and attack like hell."

Dobbs used CNN to elevate wild conspiracy theories and legitimize hate groups. The notion that Obama was born outside the United States wasn't the first outrageous theory that Dobbs promoted on CNN. As Media Matters documented, Dobbs has repeatedly accused the U.S. government of secretly plotting with the governments of Mexico and Canada to merge the three countries into a "North American Union" -- a charge his own CNN colleagues labeled a "conspiracy theor[y]." Dobbs has promoted the smear that Mexican immigrants are conspiring to reclaim the Southwest for Mexico and at one point illustrated this theory by using a graphic sourced to the Council of Conservative Citizens, a hate group that "oppose[s] all efforts to mix the races of mankind." Dobbs famously aired a false report about a purported spike in leprosy cases linked to illegal immigration and repeatedly defended his show's reporting even after it had been proven wrong.

Dobbs had close ties to "hate group" FAIR. In September, Dobbs helped lead the annual "Hold Their Feet to the Fire" radio host rally organized by the Federation for American Immigration Reform (FAIR) -- an organization the Southern Poverty Law Center has designated a "hate group." On August 28, Media Matters president Eric Burns wrote an open letter to CNN president Jonathan Klein urging him to prohibit Dobbs from participating in the FAIR event. Media Matters also documented that Dobbs used his CNN show to report on the FAIR rally without disclosing during those reports that he was helping lead it. A year earlier, Dobbs had broadcast his CNN show from the FAIR rally. In addition, the group has given Dobbs an award for "his continued efforts in leading the immigration reform movement through both his talk radio show and his television show." In the past year, Dobbs has cited FAIR as a credible source on immigration issues at least six times and has routinely failed to disclose his close association with the group.

Dobbs smeared U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce as sympathetic to "Mexico's export of drugs and illegal aliens." On March 10, Dobbs criticized Obama for delivering a speech on education to the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce. Dobbs accused Obama of "pandering to the pro-amnesty open-borders lobby" and aired a clip of a FAIR spokesman saying, "We don't want the president to make it appear as if he's favoring one particular group in the disposition of public benefits." Dobbs also said, "Making a decision to talk about a national initiative on education from the U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, which is effectively an organization that is interested in the export of American capital and production to Mexico, and Mexico's export of drugs and illegal aliens to the United States. This is crazy stuff." On March 17, Dobbs said he "made a mistake," explaining, "I, of course, do not believe that the chamber supports or condones either drug or human trafficking. My apologies to the ... U.S. Hispanic Chamber of Commerce, and I hope that they will forgive me for that misspeaking."

Dobbs declared, "Mexico has become our enemy." As Media Matters documented, Dobbs complained on his March 3 radio show that there are people "trying to control our political agendas" and "social agendas with political correctness, trying to control thought, and, of course, speech through political correctness." He added that while it may be "politically incorrect," it is "absolutely factually correct" that "Mexico has become our enemy."

— J.H.

http://mediamatters.org/research/200912010022

NixonTapes.Org: Who Was Fritz Kraemer? And Why We Should Care

2009-12-25T06:13:00.001-08:00

Ideology of Fritz Kraemer at the Heart of Wartime Policy from Vietnam to the Present

Who was Fritz Kraemer?
http://www.nixontapes.org/kraemer.htm

GOP Auschwitz Heir/Horse Breeder Will Farish Supported Ky. Democrat in Special Election who Backed Racetrack Slot Machines

2009-12-24T17:46:00.000-08:00

See: The Farish Family's Auschwitz Profits and Connections

Republican money is going to Ky. Democrat
Excerpt by Janet Patton
Lexington Herald-Leader | Dec. 02, 2009

Major Republican donors with ties to horse racing are crossing party lines to support a Democrat running for the state Senate who promises he'll back casino-style gambling at racetracks.

If that trend continues beyond the Dec. 8 special election, it could have long-term implications for control of the state Senate, which Republicans now hold by a 19-17-1 margin.

"That is a real danger for the Republicans ... to the extent that this is at the forefront in 2010," said Joe Gersh tenson, political science professor at Eastern Kentucky University. "It presents a very interesting dynamic. To some extent, it's better for Democrats for it not to be resolved before 2010."

Jimmy Higdon was chosen by Republicans to run for Dan Kelly's seat.

Racehorse owner Virginia "Gigi" Lazenby of Nashville is among the donors who have crossed party lines in the race. She traditionally has supported Republicans, including Kentucky Sen. Mitch McConnell, and was a "bundler" who raised more than $100,000 for Sen. John McCain's presidential campaign last year.

But Lazenby has given $1,000 to Democrat Jodie Haydon's state Senate campaign in Central Kentucky's 14th District.

"I strongly believe Kentucky needs to have alternative gaming in order to support racing," Lazenby said. "I'm very concerned that my Republican friends in Kentucky don't understand this. ..."

Lazenby also has an interest in Kentucky Downs in Franklin, near the Tennessee line. She said she has owned less than 1 percent of the track for three or four years, an investment eclipsed by the money she has in racehorses.

Williams, the Republican Senate president from Burkesville, said donors like Lazenby and the family of horseman Will Farish, who have given $3,000 to Haydon's campaign, are "trying to buy a legislator who will give them a special monopoly."

The Farishes, who own Lane's End Farm in Versailles, have been staunch Republican donors but are vocal in their determination to unseat Williams as Senate president because they say he blocked legislation that would have allowed racetracks to add video slot machines.

Williams on Tuesday countered that big money from racing interests and from highway contractors is bankrolling Haydon upfront and behind the scenes through a separate issues committee known as Keep Our Jobs in Kentucky.

The issues group won't have to report until next year how much money it has raised or from whom.

Of the $243,455 donated directly to Haydon by individuals and political action committees, about a fourth of the money — $58,575 — has ties to the horse industry, with $14,000 donated by Churchill Downs directors and executives and $9,000 donated by owners of other Kentucky racetracks.

"If they take control of the Senate by putting in thousands, and even millions, of dollars in return for a monopoly, what will happen the next time someone tells them no?" Williams said. ...

http://www.kentucky.com/news/state/story/1042365.html

OUTCOME OF THE ELECTION
By Janet Patton and Beth Musgrave
lexington Herald-Leader | Dec. 10, 2009

... Kentucky's horse industry, which bet heavily on a Democratic win in Tuesday's special state Senate election, wasn't prepared for defeat and doesn't have a short-term plan to advance legislation that would allow slots at racetracks, industry leaders say.

"We didn't plan on losing, so we don't have a strategy other than we want to attempt to continue to have our voices heard," said Ric Waldman, a bloodstock consultant who is one of the directors of the issues group Keep Our Jobs in Kentucky Inc.

The horse industry group spent hundreds of thousand of dollars on advertising that opposed Republican Jimmy Higdon and supported Democrat Jodie Haydon. Haydon's election had been seen as critical to the horse industry's efforts to get casino-style gambling, but he lost by a wide margin. ...

http://www.kentucky.com/302/story/1053967.html

NBC Continues to Highlight DynCorp's Gen. Barry McCaffrey

2009-12-24T12:42:00.001-08:00

AllGov.com | December 14, 2009

WASHINGTON - NOVEMBER 14: General Barry McCaffrey (R), U.S. Army, speaks during a news conference at the U.S. Capitol November 14, 2007 in Washington, DC. The panel discussed issues relating to the over streching, and retention rates of U.S. forces in Iraq and Afghanistan. The also discussed the costs associated with the resetting of military assets.

Since NBC doesn’t bother to point out the conflicts of interest held by oft-used military analyst Barry McCaffrey, Huffington Post and others have. McCaffrey has appeared on the network’s cable subsidiary, MSNBC, no less than 10 times in the past month to talk about the importance of staying in Afghanistan and training local security forces. With each appearance, McCaffrey was identified only as a retired general—and not someone who sits on the board of DynCorp International, a security company currently getting paid by the U.S. government to develop Afghanistan’s police force, build barracks and do the laundry of U.S. troops. According to Forbes, the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan account for 53% of DynCorp’s $3.1 billion in annual revenue.

MSNBC also hasn’t bothered to point out his relationship with Army General David Petraeus, the head of U.S. Central Command, for whom McCaffrey recently completed a report about the war. McCaffrey has been seen praising Petraeus on TV, while criticizing President Barack Obama’s proposed troop-withdrawal deadline.

-Noel Brnkerhoff

http://www.allgov.com/ViewNews/NBC_Continues_to_Highlight_DynCorp_Gen_Barry_McCaffrey_91214

Big Oil gets the Biggest U.S. Energy Subsidies of All

2009-12-23T20:44:00.000-08:00

" ... Today, the oil industry receives north of $100 billion per year in subsidies and collateral support. This is the equivalent of one AIG bailout per year, every year. ... "

By Blaine Townsend
Special to the SJ Mercury News
12/23/2009

Ever since New England Whalers ran the oil business, we've been a country of "barrel half-full" types. There will always be more oil! All it takes is a prone leviathan, a deposit in an unstable, war-torn country or a new find in the middle of some environmentally sensitive area.

Unfortunately, we need to find the equivalent of a new Saudi Arabia every four years just to keep up with demand around the world. And that isn't getting any easier. Pumping seawater under the Arabian Desert and squeezing oil from tar sands near Glacier National Park is a lot more expensive than boiling blubber or watching oil gush on the West Texas plains. And we all foot the bill.

Today, the oil industry receives north of $100 billion per year in subsidies and collateral support. This is the equivalent of one AIG bailout per year, every year. The web of direct subsidies includes billions in government sponsored low-cost construction loans and tax breaks like the Foreign Tax Credit. "Last in, first out" accounting practices, special write-downs for core operations and royalty "relief" for leases in the Gulf of Mexico have robbed the federal coffers of billions more.

This past September, the Environmental Law Institute released a study on direct subsidies to Big Oil from 2002-2008. The conservative tally was $72 billion, compared to $13 billion for nonethanol alternatives. And unlike support for alternative energy or other industries, many of these direct subsidies are written permanently into the tax code, not phased in and out of various legislations.

By contrast, funding for alternative fuels waxes and wanes with political will. For example, funding for alternatives took a precipitous drop in 2006 and 2007 before rebounding last year.

These oil subsidies began nearly a century ago to support the nascent domestic oil industry, just as whaling was dying out. After joining forces with other special interests, the industry then helped cement its growth by influencing public policy toward highways over public transportation and fuel inefficiency over conservation and innovation.

With ExxonMobil earning more in 2008 than the US government spent on wind and solar energy during this entire decade, it's safe to say the wind, solar and biofuel industries could use more help going forward.

Despite the causal relationship between energy consumption and gross domestic product growth, the indirect costs of Big Oil may eventually wipe out the economic benefits. After all, GDP is just an accounting convention. It does not account for externalities. In fact, the cleanup of an oil spill might actually add to GDP. It's a shell game (pun intended).

Neither the environmental mitigation nor health costs associated with pollution or climate change nor the legal liabilities of international exploration are burdens oil companies have to bear in the "free market." Nor are the direct and considerable costs of protecting oil supply lines from the Persian Gulf — by many estimates more than $50 billion a year. If you are in the camp that draws a correlation between our energy policy and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, this collateral number is much, much larger.

With a trillion dollar deficit and a mountain of liabilities to come, subsidizing alternative energy at the expense of Big Oil seems like an obvious choice. If we don't, our "black gold" policies may become our "white whale." And it might be wise to heed Herman Melville's warning on that subject: "It was that accursed white whale," he wrote in Moby-Dick, "that "... made a poor pegging lubber of me for ever and a day!"

BLAINE TOWNSEND is a senior portfolio manager at Nelson Capital Management LLC, a Palo Alto-based investment firm specializing in sustainable investment strategies. He wrote this article for the Mercury News

http://www.mercurynews.com/opinion/ci_14059017?nclick_check=1

Op-Ed Letter (Plain Dealer): The Radical Right is Hijacking the GOP and the Media

2009-12-23T17:24:00.000-08:00

December 02, 2009

I really had to write in reference to Kevin O'Brien's ironic column of Nov. 26, in which he commented on the importance of truth in journalism, and the few letters to the editor of Nov. 27 and 28, calling him "spot on" and decrying the "government" and "liberals" who are trying to squelch him.

Fear not, O'Brien is the deputy editorial page editor; he's not going anywhere.

I would like to suggest to moderate Republicans that the GOP is being hijacked -- swift-boated, if you will -- by people who are neither journalists nor truthful. We are in far more danger of losing our freedoms because of the machinations of the Republican Party and its silent condoning of the takeover of our media by the conservative right: Between Clear Channel Stations on radio (heck, you can't even hear sports-talk radio without a diatribe about Democrats from the host) across the country -- with deregulation, just how many channels is this? (Three companies own half the radio stations); TV (as in Fox News Cable); and newspapers (Murdock-owned -- as well as the radio stations he owns), I would say that there is an awful lot of media slanted to the right. All-conservative, all-the-time. No dissenting voices for a well-balanced dialogue. Haven't you noticed?

They work people into a lather about misinformation. WMDs are just a tip of the iceberg. Think "birthers" and "death panels." Now the Republicans have a list of do's and don'ts for their candidates to follow in order to be backed for their runs for office.

Republicans may think they look as if they are presenting a united front, but to me they look like they are lock-stepped and can only do something for the "good of the party." How very communistic!

And if the only purpose of their party is to block Democratic initiatives, then they don't have the good of the citizens in mind. Can't Republicans think for themselves? Very dangerous!

Fellow readers, we need to fact-check everything.

Rita Rose, Mentor

http://blog.cleveland.com/letters/2009/12/republican_party_has_been_hija.html

Related: Change Blindness: Research and History Show Americans are as Blind to US Fascism as Nazi-Era Germans

USAID Officer Arrested with Terrorists in Islamabad

2009-12-23T09:34:00.001-08:00

The name of the arrested USAID officer is Abid Mehmood (see second story below). - AC

Also see: American Sponsorship of Global Terrorism, and "Islamabad: Americans Dressed as Afghans Caught With Illegal Weapons and Explosives"
-----
Islamabad police arrests 35 highly educated activists of banned outfit
Retweetby ANI on October 18, 2009

Islamabad, Oct.18 (ANI): The Islamabad police on Sunday arrested 35 people belonging to a banned terror organization Hizb-ut-Tahrir, including their key leaders.

The activists of the banned organization, which included highly qualified persons such as computer engineers, telecom engineers, environment scientists, civil engineers, businessman and an officer of US-Aid project, have been booked under Anti-Terrorism Act (ATA).

Hate literature and other objectionable materials were also recovered during the raid, The News reports.

“The government had banned the outfit and barred its activities but the organization was working secretly and creating unrest among the public through the SMS and statements. The arrested activists have been charged under the Anti-Terrorism Act,” Islamabad Inspector General of Police (IGP) Syed Kaleem Imam said.

All the arrested activists would be presented before a local court later for further proceedings. (ANI)

http://trak.in/news/islamabad-police-arrests-35-highly-educated-activists-of-banned-outfit/15134/

------ Second-Report Substantiation ------

Nuclear scientist among held Hizbut Tahrir activists
Daily Times Monitor
October 20, 2009

LAHORE: The recently arrested Hizbut Tahrir activists from Islamabad include a nuclear scientist, a private TV channel reported on Monday.

According to the channel, the arrested men include the scientist, a USAID official and an environmental scientist. The activists who are being interrogated by the Islamabad police include: Rizwan Aleem, a nuclear scientist and currently a PhD student at the Ghulam Ishaq Khan Institute of Engineering Sciences and Technology; Abid Mehmood, an officer of a United States Agency for International Development; and Aman Hamza, an environmental scientist.

Sources say the Hizbut Tahrir activists were likely to be handed over to intelligence agencies for further interrogation. Nearly all the 32 arrested activists belonged to educated families, the channel reported.

http://www.dailytimes.com.pk/default.asp?page=2009%5C10%5C20%5Cstory_20-10-2009_pg7_12

UK: MPs Sue CIA to Shatter Secrecy on Britain's Role in Rendition

2009-12-23T08:29:00.000-08:00

Camp Delta at the US naval station in Guantánamo, Cuba. A joint US/UK military force is reputed to have detained hundreds of Iraqi and Afghan prisoners at the detention centre. Photograph: Chip Somodevilla/Getty Images

• Parliamentary group turns to Washington court for disclosure on detainee programme

• Transfer of prisoners to US hands and use of UK airports feature on 'freedom of information' request

Ian Cobain
guardian.co.uk | 15 December 2009

A group of MPs is suing the CIA in the American courts in an attempt to force the agency to hand over information about Britain's secret involvement in its extraordinary rendition programme.

In a case thought to set a legal precedent, the group, led by Conservative MP Andrew Tyrie, is to file a complaint in a district court in Washington tomorrow seeking a judicial review of the agency's failure to disclose the information.

The MPs from the all-party parliamentary group on extraordinary rendition have made requests to the CIA, FBI and the department of homeland security over the last 12 months, under US freedom of information legislation, seeking more information about Britain's role in rendition.

Hundreds of pages of documents have been disclosed but Tyrie said the specific information he requested had not been revealed. "The current drip-drip of information on rendition is hugely damaging. To achieve closure on rendition we need disclosure. It is in everyone's interests that the truth on the US rendition programme comes to light. Bringing this litigation against the CIA, department of defence, department of justice, and other US government agencies, represents a globalisation of accountability for two of the world's leading democracies. I hope that this groundbreaking litigation will lead to comprehensive disclosure in the US. Only then can we give the public confidence that we have got to the bottom of rendition and British involvement in it."

The MPs want to learn more about the use of British airports and airspace, about agreements between the US and the UK on rendition, the use of Diego Garcia, a British territory in the Indian Ocean, and about the transfer of detainees from British to American hands. They have also demanded information about specific detainees, including two rendered through Diego Garcia, and others whom British special forces in Iraq handed over to US forces, and who were then flown to Afghanistan.

The MPs have submitted Freedom of Information Act requests to UK government departments. Most are now with the Information Commissioner's office, pending appeals against the government's refusal to disclose the information.

Similar requests are to be made of Australian government departments in an attempt to discover more about prisoner-exchange agreements known to have been made by the UK, US and Australian governments.

Tyrie has made a series of allegations about Britain's involvement in the programme since he established the all-party group four years ago: he claims that the UK has facilitated rendition; that Diego Garcia was used for rendition; and that British troops have been involved in the process. "Each allegation was categorically denied," he said. "Each has subsequently been admitted."

In September 2005 the Guardian reported that aircraft involved in the CIA's rendition programme had flown into the UK at least 210 times since the al-Qaida attacks in the US four years earlier.

Three months after that report, the then foreign secretary, Jack Straw, told the Commons foreign affairs committee: "Unless we all start to believe in conspiracy theories and that the officials are lying, that I am lying, that behind this there is some kind of secret state which is in league with some dark forces in the US and also let me say, we believe that secretary [Condoleezza] Rice is lying, there simply is no truth in the claims that the United Kingdom has been involved in rendition, full stop – because we have not been, and so what on earth a judicial inquiry would start to do I have no idea."

Straw and Tony Blair also denied that any rendition flights landed on Diego Garcia. In February last year David Miliband, the foreign secretary, said they had.

After the government repeatedly denied that British forces in Iraq had been involved in rendition, John Hutton, who was defence secretary, admitted this year that they had; he also disclosed that two cases were detailed in documents sent to Straw and Charles Clarke.

While the government has now admitted to involvement in a small number of rendition cases, there is evidence that British troops in Iraq and Afghanistan have been involved in many more.

Last year Ben Griffin, a former SAS member who served in Iraq, said a joint US/UK task force detained "hundreds if not thousands" of people who were then kept at Guantánamo, Bagram and Abu Ghraib. Griffin said a senior officer expressed concern that the SAS squadron "were becoming the secret police of Baghdad". He said that the task force had broken international law, contravened Geneva conventions and disregarded the UN convention against torture, and that ministers must have known that British soldiers The defence ministry responded by obtaining an injunction to silence Griffin.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2009/dec/15/mps-sue-cia-secrecy-rendition

Inside the Military Media Industrial Complex: Impacts on Movements for Peace and Social Justice

2009-12-22T12:36:00.000-08:00

by Peter Phillips and Mickey Huff
Dissident Voice | December 22, 2009

Among the most important corporate media censored news stories of the past decade, one must be that over one million people have died because of the United States military invasion and occupation of Iraq. This, of course, does not include the number of deaths from the first Gulf War nor the ensuing sanctions placed upon the country of Iraq that, combined, caused close to an additional one million Iraqi deaths. In the Iraq War, which began in March of 2003, over a million people have died violently primarily from US bombings and neighborhood patrols. These were deaths in excess of the normal civilian death rate under the prior government. Among US military leaders and policy elites, the issue of counting the dead was dismissed before the Iraqi invasion even began. In an interview with reporters in late March of 2002 US General Tommy Franks stated, “You know we don’t do body counts.”1 Fortunately, for those concerned about humanitarian costs of war and empire, others do.

In a January 2008 report, the British polling group Opinion Research Business (ORB) reported that, “survey work confirms our earlier estimate that over 1,000,000 Iraqi citizens have died as a result of the conflict which started in 2003. We now estimate that the death toll between March 2003 and August 2007 is likely to have been of the order of 1,033,000. If one takes into account the margin of error associated with survey data of this nature then the estimated range is between 946,000 and 1,120,000.”2

The ORB report came on the heels of two earlier studies conducted by Dr. Les Roberts and colleagues at Johns Hopkins University and published in the Lancet medical journal. The first study done from January 1, 2002 to March 18, 2003 confirmed civilian deaths at that time at over 100,000. The second study published in October 2006 documented over 650,000 civilian deaths in Iraq since the start of the US invasion and confirmed that US aerial bombing in civilian neighborhoods caused over a third of these deaths. Over half the deaths were directly attributable to US forces. The now estimated 1.2 million dead six years into the war/occupation, included children, parents, grandparents, cab drivers, clerics and schoolteachers. All manner of ordinary Iraqis have died because the United States decided to invade their country under false pretenses of undiscovered weapons of mass destruction and in violation of international law. An additional four to five million Iraqi refugees have fled their homes. The magnitude of these million-plus deaths and creation of such a vast refugee crisis is undeniable. The continuing occupation by US forces has guaranteed a monthly mass death rate of thousands of people a carnage that ranks among the most heinous mass killings in world history. More tons of bombs have been dropped in Iraq than in all of World War II.2 Six years later the casualties continue but the story, barely reported from the start, has vanished.

The American people face a serious moral dilemma. Murder and war crimes have been conducted in their name. Yet most Americans have no idea of the magnitude of deaths and tend to believe that they number in the thousands and are primarily Iraqis killing Iraqis. Corporate mainstream media are in large part to blame. The question then becomes how can this mass ignorance and corporate media deception exist in the United States and what impact does this have on peace and social justice movements in the country?3

Truth Emergency and Media Reform

In the United States today, the rift between reality and reporting has peaked. There is no longer a mere credibility gap, but rather a literal. Truth Emergency in which the most important information affecting people is concealed from view. Many Americans, relying on the mainstream corporate media, have serious difficulty accessing the truth while still believing that the information they receive is the reality. A Truth Emergency reflects cumulative failures of the fourth estate to act as a truly free press. This truth emergency is seen in inadequate coverage of fraudulent elections, pseudo 9/11 investigations, illegal preemptive wars, torture camps, doctored intelligence, and domestic surveillance. Reliable information on these issues is systematically missing in corporate media outlets, where the vast majority of the American people continue to turn for news and information.

Consider these items of noteworthy conditions. US workers have been faced with a thirty-five year decline in real wages while the top few percent enjoy unparalleled wealth with strikingly low tax burdens. US schools, particularly in the west, are more segregated now than half a century ago. The US has the highest infant mortality rate among industrialized nations, is falling behind in scientific research and education, leads the world as a debtor nation, and is seriously lacking in healthcare quality and coverage, which results in the deaths of 18,000 people a year. America has entered another Gilded Age. Someone should alert the media.[v]

The Free Press or Media Reform Movement is a national effort to address mainstream media failures and the government policies that sanction them. During the 2008 National Conference for Media Reform (NCMR) in Minneapolis, Project Censored interns and faculty conducted a survey, completed by 376 randomly selected NCMR attendees out of the 3,500 people registered for the conference. This survey was designed to gauge participants’ views on the state of the corporate news media and the effectiveness of the media reform movement. The survey also sought to determine the level of belief in a truth emergency, a systematic hiding of critical information in the US. Not surprisingly, for a sample of independent media reform activists, majorities in the 90% plus range agreed on most criticisms of mainstream media, that corporate media failed to keep the American people informed on important issues facing the nation and that a truth emergency does indeed exist in the US. Regarding the reasons, 87% of the participants believed that a military-industrial-media complex exists in the US for the promotion of the US military domination of the world and most agreed with research conclusions by Project Censored, and others, that a continuing powerful global dominance group inside the US government, the US media, and the national policy structure is responsible. What was clear from our survey is that media democracy activists strongly support not only aggressive reform efforts and policy changes but also the continuing development of independent, grassroots media as part of an overall media democracy movement.

While most progressive media activists do not believe in some omnipotent conspiracy, an overwhelming portion of NCMR participants do believe the leadership class in the US is dominated by a neo-conservative group of some several hundred people who share a goal of asserting US military power worldwide. This Global Dominance Group (GDM) continues under both Republican and Democratic rule. In cooperation with major military contractors, the corporate media, and conservative foundations, the GDM has become a powerful long-term force in military unilateralism and US political processes.

The Global Dominance Group and Information Control

A long thread of sociological research documents the existence of a dominant ruling class in the US, which sets policy and determines national political priorities. C. Wright Mills, in his 1956 book The Power Elite, documented how World War II solidified a trinity of power in the US that comprised corporate, military and government elites in a centralized power structure working in unison through “higher circles” of contact and agreement.4 This power has grown through the Cold War and, after 9/11, the Global War on Terror.

At present, the global dominance agenda includes penetration into the boardrooms of the corporate media in the US. Only 118 people comprise the membership on the boards of director of the ten big media giants. These 118 individuals in turn sit on the corporate boards of 288 national and international corporations. Four of the top 10 media corporations share board director positions with the major defense contractors including:

William Kennard: New York Times, Carlyle Group
Douglas Warner III, GE (NBC), Bechtel
John Bryson: Disney (ABC), Boeing
Alwyn Lewis: Disney (ABC), Halliburton
Douglas McCorkindale: Gannett, Lockheed-Martin.

Given an interlocked media network of connections with defense and other economic sectors, big media in the United States effectively represent the interests of corporate America. ...

The media elite, a key component of the Higher Circle Policy Elite in the US, are the watchdogs of acceptable ideological messages, the controllers of news and information content, and the decision makers regarding media resources. Their goal is to create symbiotic global news distribution in a deliberate attempt to control the news and information available to society. The two most prominent methods used to accomplish this task are censorship and propaganda.

Sometimes the sensationalist and narrow media coverage of news is blamed upon the need to meet a low level of public taste and thereby capture the eyes of a sufficient market to lure advertisers and to make a profit. But another goal of cornering the marketplace on what news and views will be aired is also prominent. Billionaire Rupert Murdoch loses $50 million a year on the NY Post, billionaire Richard Mellon Scaife loses $2 to $3 million a year on the Pittsburgh Tribune-Review, billionaire Philip Anschutz loses around $5 million a year on The Weekly Standard, and billionaire Sun Myung Moon has lost $2 to $3 billion on The Washington Times. The losses in supporting conservative media are part of a strategy of ideological control. They also buy bulk quantities of ultra-conservative books bringing them to the top of the NY Times bestseller list and then give away copies to “subscribers” to their websites and publications. They fund conservative “think tanks” like Heritage and Cato with hundreds of millions of dollars a year. All this buys them respectability and a megaphone. Even though William Kristol’s publication, the Standard, is a money-loser, his association with it has often gotten him on TV talk shows and a column with the New York Times. Sponsorships of groups like Grover Norquist’s anti-tax “Americans for Tax Reform” regularly get people like him front-and-center in any debate on taxation in the United States. This has contributed to extensive tax cuts for the wealthy and the most unfair tax laws of any industrialized country – all found acceptable by a public relying upon sound-bites about the dangers of ‘big government.’ Hence media corporation officials and others in the health care, energy and weapons industries remain wealthier than ordinary people can imagine. Their expenditures for molding opinion are better understood as investments in a conservative public ideology.6

Modern Media Censorship and Propaganda

A broader definition of contemporary censorship needs to include any interference, deliberate or not, with the free flow of vital news information to the public. Modern censorship can be seen as the subtle yet constant and sophisticated manipulation of reality in our mass media outlets. On a daily basis, censorship refers to the intentional non-inclusion of a news story – or piece of a news story – based on anything other than a desire to tell the truth. Such manipulation can take the form of political pressure (from government officials and powerful individuals), economic pressure (from advertisers and funders), and legal pressure (the threat of lawsuits from deep-pocket individuals, corporations, and institutions). or threats to reduce future access to governmental and corporate sources of news. Following are a few examples of censorship and propaganda.

1. Omitted or Undercovered Stories- The failure of the corporate media to cover human consequences, like one million , mostly civilian deaths of Iraqis, reduces public response to the wars being conducted by the US. Even when activists do mobilize, the media coverage of anti-war demonstrations has been negligible and denigrating from the start. When journalists of the so-called free press ignore the anti-war movement, they serve the interests of their masters in the military media industrial complex.7

Further, the corporate mainstream press continues to ignore the human cost of the US war in Iraq with America’s own veterans. Veteran care, wounded rates, mental disabilities, VA claims, first hand accounts of soldier experiences, and pictures of dead or limbless soldiers are rare. One of the most important stories missed by the corporate press concerned the Winter Soldier Congressional hearings in Washington, D.C. The hearings, with eyewitness testimony of US soldiers relating their experiences on the battlefield and beyond, were only covered by a scant number of major media, and then only in passing. In contrast to the virtual corporate media blackout concerning American soldiers’ views of the war, the independent, listener sponsored, community Pacifica Radio network covered the hearings at length.8

A common theme among the most censored stories over the past few years has been the systemic erosion of human rights and civil liberties in both the US and the world at large. The corporate media has ignored the fact that habeas corpus can now be suspended for anyone by order of the President. With the approval of Congress, the Military Commissions Act (MCA) of 2006, signed by Bush on October 17, 2006, allows for the suspension of habeas corpus for US citizens and non-citizens alike. While media, including a lead editorial in the New York Times October 19, 2006, have offered false comfort that American citizens will not be the victims, the Act is quite clear that ‘any person’ can be targeted.9

Additionally, under the code-name Operation FALCON (Federal and Local Cops Organized Nationally), federally coordinated mass arrests have been occurring since April 2005 and netted over 54,000 arrests, a majority of whom were not violent criminals as was initially suggested. This unprecedented move of arresting tens of thousands of “fugitives” is the largest dragnet style operation in the nation’s history. The raids, coordinated by the Justice Department and Homeland Security, directly involved over 960 agencies (state, local and federal) and mark the first time in US history that all domestic police agencies have been put under the direct control of the federal government.10

All these events are significant in a democratic society that claims to cherish individual rights and due process of law. To have them occur is a tragedy. To have a “free” press not report them or pretend these issues do not matter to the populace is the foundation of censorship today.

2. Repetition of Slogans and Sound Bites- The corporate media in the US present themselves as unbiased and accurate. The New York Times motto of “all the news that’s fit to print” is a clear example, as is CNN’s authoritative “most trusted name in news” and Fox’s mantra of “fair and balanced.” The slogans are examples of what linguist George Lakoff has referred to as framing. Through constant repetition, the metaphors and symbols that pervade our media turn into unquestioned beliefs. Terms like “liberal media,” “welfare cheaters,” “war on terror,” illegal aliens,” “tax burden,” “support our troops,” are all distorted images serving to conceal a transfer of wealth from people needing a safety net to corporations seeking profitable markets and military expansion.

3. Embedded Journalism- The media are increasingly dependent on governmental and corporate sources of news. Maintenance of continuous news shows requires a constant feed and an ever-entertaining supply of stimulating events and breaking news bites. The 24-hour news shows on MSNBC, Fox and CNN maintain constant contact with the White House, Pentagon, and public relations companies representing both government and private corporations.

By the time of the Gulf War in 1991, retired colonels, generals and admirals had become mainstays in network TV studios during wartime. Language such as “collateral damage” and “smart bombs” flowed effortlessly between journalists and military men, who shared perspectives on the occasionally mentioned but more rarely seen civilians killed by U.S. firepower. This clearly foreshadowed the structure of “embedded” reporting in the second Iraq War, where mainstream corporate journalists literally lived with the troops and had to submit all reports for military review.10 A related militarization of news studies by Diane Farsetta at the Center for Media Democracy documented a related introduction of bias. These investigations showed Pentagon propaganda penetration on mainstream corporate news in the guise of retired Generals as “experts” or pundits who turned out to be nothing more than paid shills for government war policy.11

The problem then becomes more complex. What happens to a society that begins to believe such lies as truth? The run up to the 2003 war in Iraq concerning weapons of mass destruction (WMDs) is a case in point. It illustrates the power of propaganda in creating not only public support for an ill-begotten war, but also reduces the possibility of a peace movement, even when fueled by the truth, to stop a war based on falsehoods. The current war in Iraq was the most globally protested war in recorded history. This did nothing to stop it and has done little to end it even under a Democratic president who promised such on the campaign trail. The candidate of “hope and change,” with peace groups in tow, has proven to be dependent upon the same interests in foreign policy that got the US into war in the first place.12

The Progressive Press

Where the left progressive press may have covered some of the Winter Soldier issues, most did not cover the major story of Iraqi deaths. ... Filters limit what will become news in society and set parameters on acceptable coverage of daily events.13

The danger of these filters is that they make subtle and indirect censorship more difficult to combat. Owners and managers share class identity with the powerful and are motivated economically to please advertisers and viewers. Social backgrounds influence their conceptions of what is “newsworthy,” and their views and values seem only “common sense.” Journalists and editors are not immune to the influence of owners and managers. Reporters want to see their stories approved for print or broadcast, and editors come to know the limits of their freedom to diverge from the “common sense” worldview of owners and managers. The self-discipline that this structure induces in journalists and editors comes to seem only “common sense” to them as well. Self-discipline becomes self-censorship—independence is restricted, the filtering process hidden, denied, or rationalized away.

Project Censored’s analysis on the top ten progressive left publications and websites coverage of key post-9/11 issues found considerable limitations on reporting of specific stories. The evidence supports the Chomsky and Herman understanding that the media barrage may in fact contribute to the news story selection process inside the left liberal media as well.14 Even the left progressive media showed limited coverage of the human costs of the 9/11 wars.

The figure reported in summer, 2007 documenting a million dead did appear in progressive websites and radio including After Downing Street, Huffington Post, CounterPunch, Alternet, Democracy Now! and the Nation, but several took months to get to it. This lack of timely reporting on such a critical story on the humanitarian crisis of the US occupation by the alternative press in America does not bode well for a strong, public, peace movement. The US is in dire need of a media democracy movement to address truth emergency concerns.

In response, the Truth Emergency Movement, held its first national strategy summit in Santa Cruz, California Jan. 25-27, 2008. Organizers gathered key media constituencies to devise coherent decentralized models for distribution of suppressed news, synergistic truth-telling, and collaborative strategies to disclose, legitimize and popularize deeper historical narratives on power and inequality in the US. In sum, this truth movement is seeking to discover in this moment of Constitutional crisis, ecological peril, and widening war, ways in which top investigative journalists, whistleblowers, and independent media activists can transform how Americans perceive and defend their world. We learn from grassroots actions in the US but also from experiences of other countries. This requires us to transcend the stereotypes of other countries hammered by the corporate media. It is not by chance that two Latin American nations, both targets of US efforts to remove their popular leaders by force, have been vilified by mainstream media. Both Cuba and Venezuela, however, have been experiments in local democratic participation in which voices of communities weigh heavily upon social policy.

International Models of Media Democracy in Action: Venezuela

Democracy from the bottom is evolving as a ten-year social revolution in Venezuela. Led by President Hugo Chavez, the United Socialist Party of Venezuela (PSUV) gained over 1½ million voters in the November, 2008 elections. “It was a wonderful victory,” said Professor Carmen Carrero with the communications studies department of the Bolivarian University in Caracas. “We won 81 percent of the city mayor positions and seventeen of twenty-three of the state governors,” Carrero reported.

The Bolivarian University is housed in the former oil ministry building and now serves 8,000 students throughout Venezuela. The University (Universidad Bolivariana de Venezuela) is symbolic of the democratic socialist changes occurring throughout the country. Before the election of Hugo Chavez as president in 1998, college attendance was primarily for the rich in Venezuela. Today over one million, eight hundred thousand students attend college, three times the rate ten years ago. “Our university was established to resist domination and imperialism,” reported Principal (president) Marlene Yadira Cordova in an interview November 10, 2008, “We are a university where we have a vision of life that the oppressed people have a place on this planet.” The enthusiasm for learning and serious-thoughtful questions asked by students was certainly representative of a belief in the potential of positive social change for human betterment. The University offers a fully staffed free healthcare clinic, zero tuition, and basic no-cost food for students in the cafeteria, all paid for by the oil revenues now being democratically shared by the people.

Bottom up democracy in Venezuela starts with the 25,000 community councils elected in every neighborhood in the country. “We establish the priority needs of our area,” reported community council spokesperson Carmon Aponte, with the neighborhood council in the barrio Bombilla area of western Caracas. Aponte works with Patare Community TV and radio station and is one of thirty-four locally controlled community television stations and four hundred radio stations now in the barrios throughout Venezuela. Community radio, TV and newspapers are the voice of the people, where they describe the viewers/listeners as the “users” of media instead of the passive audiences.15

Democratic socialism has meant healthcare, jobs, food, and security, in neighborhoods where in many cases nothing but poverty existed ten years ago. With unemployment down to a US level, sharing the wealth has taken real meaning in Venezuela. Despite a 50 percent increase in the price of food last year, local Mercals offer government subsidized cooking oil, corn meal, meat, and powdered milk at 30-50 percent off market price. Additionally, there are now 3,500 local communal banks with a $1.6 billion dollar budget offering neighborhood-based micro-financing loans for home improvements, small businesses, and personal emergencies.

“We have moved from a time of disdain [pre-revolution—when the upper classes saw working people as less than human] to a time of adjustment,” proclaimed Ecuador’s minister of Culture, Gallo Mora Witt at the opening ceremonies of the Fourth International Book Fair in Caracas, November, 2007. Venezuela’s Minister of Culture, Hector Soto added, “We try not to leave anyone out… before the revolution the elites published only 60-80 books a year, we will publish 1,200 Venezuelan authors this year…the book will never stop being the important tool for cultural feelings.” In fact, some twenty-five million books—classics by Victor Hugo and Miguel de Cervantes along with Cindy Sheehan’s Letter to George Bush—were published in 2008 and are being distributed to the community councils nationwide. The theme of the International Book Fair was books as cultural support to the construction of the Bolivarian revolution and building socialism for the 21st century.

In Venezuela the corporate media are still owned by the elites. The five major TV networks, and nine of ten of the major newspapers maintain a continuing media effort to undermine Chavez and the socialist revolution. But despite the corporate media and $20 million annual support to the anti-Chavez opposition institutions from USAID and National Endowment for Democracy, two-thirds of the people in Venezuela continue to support President Hugo Chavez and the United Socialist Party of Venezuela. The democracies of South America are realizing that the neo-liberal formulas for capitalism are not working and that new forms of resource allocation are necessary for human betterment. It is a learning process for all involved and certainly a democratic effort from the bottom up.

International Models of Media Democracy in Action: Cuba

“You cannot kill truth by murdering journalists,” said Tubal Páez, president of the Journalist Union of Cuba. In May of 2008, One hundred and fifty Cuban and South American journalists, ambassadors, politicians, and foreign guests gathered at the Jose Marti International Journalist Institute to honor the 50th anniversary of the death of Carlos Bastidas Arguello —the last journalist killed in Cuba. Carlos Bastidas was 23 years old when he was assassinated by Fulgencia Batista’s secret police after having visited Fidel Castro’s forces in the Sierra Maestra Mountains. Edmundo Bastidas, Carlos’ brother, told about how a river of change flowed from the Maestra (teacher) mountains, symbolized by his brother’s efforts to help secure a new future for Cuba.

The celebration in Havana was held in honor of World Press Freedom Day, which is observed every year in May. The UN first declared this day in 1993 to honor journalists who lost their lives reporting the news and to defend media freedom worldwide.

Cuban journalists share a common sense of a continuing counter-revolutionary threat by US financed Cuban-Americans living in Miami. This is not an entirely unwarranted feeling in that many hundreds of terrorist actions against Cuba have occurred with US backing over the past fifty years. In addition to the 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion, these attacks include the blowing up of a Cuban airlines plane in 1976 killing seventy-three people, the starting in 1981 of an epidemic of dengue fever that killed 158 people, and several hotel bombings in the 1990s, one of which resulted in the death of an Italian tourist.

In the context of this external threat, Cuban journalists quietly acknowledge that some self-censorship will undoubtedly occur regarding news stories that could be used by the “enemy” against the Cuban people. Nonetheless, Cuban journalists strongly value freedom of the press and there was no evidence of overt government control. Ricardo Alarcon, President of the National Assembly Cuba allows CNN, AP and Chicago Tribune to maintain offices in Cuba, noted that the US refuses to allow Cuban journalists to work in the United States.16

Cuban journalists complain that the US corporate media is biased and refuses to cover the positive aspects of socialism in Cuba. Unknown to most Americans are the facts that Cuba is the number one country in percentage of organic foods produced in the world, has an impressive health care system with a lower infant mortality rate than the US, trains doctor from all over the world, and has enjoyed a 43% increase in GDP between 2005 and 2008.

Neither Cuba nor Venezuela are utopian societies. Developing countries subject to continuing pressure by the US may be cautious and suspicious of provocateurs that would incite violence or provoke US military intervention. But in these countries, the ability of local media expressing voices of local communities is something from which media reformers can learn.

Grassroots Antidotes to Corporate Media Propaganda

Tens of thousands of Americans engaged in various social justice issues constantly witness how corporate media marginalize, denigrate, or simply ignore their concerns. Activist groups working on issues like 9/11 Truth, election fraud, impeachment in the Bush era, war propaganda, civil liberties abridgements, torture, the Wall Street meltdown, and corporate-caused environmental crises have been systematically excluded from mainstream news and the national conversation leading to a genuine Truth Emergency in the country as a whole.

Now, however, a growing number of activists are finally saying “enough!” and joining forces to address this truth emergency by developing new journalistic systems and practices of their own. They are working to reveal the common corporate denominators behind the diverse crises we face and to develop networks of trustworthy news sources that tell people what is really going on. These activists know we need a journalism that moves beyond inquiries into particular crimes and atrocities, and exposes wider patterns of corruption, propaganda and illicit political control by a military and corporate elite. Recent efforts at national media reform through micro-power community radio– similar to the 400 people’s radio stations in Venezuela– and campaign finance changes, that would mandate access for all candidates on national media, have been strongly resisted by the National Association of Broadcasters (NAB). NAB, considered one of the most powerful corporate lobby groups in Washington, works hard to protect over $200 billion dollars of annual advertising and the several hundred million dollars political candidates spend in each election cycle.

The Truth Emergency movement now recognizes that corporate media’s political power and failure to meet its First Amendment obligation to keep the public informed leaves a huge task. Citizens must mobilize resources to redevelop news and information systems from the bottom up. Citizen journalists can expand distribution of news via small independent newspapers, local magazines, independent radio, and cable access TV. Using the internet, the public can interconnect with like-minded grassroots news organizations to share important stories. These changes are already in progress.

Becoming the Media: Media Freedom International and Project Censored

In response to Truth Emergency conference, the Media Freedom Foundation and Project Censored launched an effort to both become a repository of independent news and information as well as a producer of content in what are called Validated Independent News stories vetted by college and university professors and students around the world. As corporate media continue their entertainment agenda and the PR industry—working for governments and corporations—increasingly dominates news content, there exists a socio-cultural opening to transform how the public receives and actually participates in the validation and creation of their own news.

Corporate media are increasingly irrelevant to working people and to democracy. People need to tell their own news stories from real experiences and perspectives, as an alternative to the hierarchically imposed and “official” top-down narrative. What better project in support of media democracy than for universities and colleges worldwide to support truth telling and validate news stories and independent news sources.

Only 5% of college students under 30 read a daily newspaper. Most get their news from corporate television and increasingly on the internet. One of the biggest problems with independent media sources on the internet is a perception of inconsistent reliability. The public is often suspicious of the truthfulness and accuracy of news postings from non-corporate media sources. Over the past ten years, in hundreds of presentations all over the US, Project Censored staff has frequently been asked, “what are the best sources for news and whom can we trust?”

The goal of this effort is to encourage young people to use independent media as their primary sources of news and information and to learn about trustworthy news sources through the Media Freedom International News Research Affiliate Program. By the end of 2008, there were over thirty affiliate colleges and universities with plans to expand that participation several fold this next year. Through these institutions, validated independent news stories can be researched by students and scholars, then written, produced and disseminated via the web. In addition, on any given day at the Media Freedom Foundation website, one can view enough independent news stories from RSS feeds to fill nearly fifty written pages, more than even the largest US newspapers. An informed electorate cannot remain passive consumers of corporate news. As aforementioned activist David Mathison suggested in his how-to manual, Be the Media, where he argues and instructs not only about how to build community media but how to build community through media.17

Part of building community is in developing awareness about the type of world we want to participate in creating, and developing strategies for achieving change. New forms of media that promote widespread responsibility for both creating and disseminating information do not remove the need for people to protest, to demonstrate, to march, to boycott and to demand entry into corporate board rooms. Rather it assures that voices can be heard and, as shown in Howard Rheingold’s Smartmobbing Democracy,18 the power of new Internet communication technologies can be harnessed to mobilize more effectively. Contrasted with previous more limited technologies, Rheingold points out that now, “[m]obile and deskbound media such as blogs, listserves and social networking sites allow for many-to-many communication.” Technology has helped level the playing field by creating a virtual sphere where people can exchange ideas and instigate activism. Grassroots, bottom-up, peer-to-peer efforts have increased in influence and effectiveness due to the speed and breadth of new communication technologies. We are currently experiencing a potential for collective activism on a scale never before seen.

The continued expansion of independent internet news sources allows for the mass political awareness of key issues and truth emergencies in the world. The involvement of university and college professors and their students in validating news stories will be an important component of reliability verification of these sources. As we learn who we can trust in the independent news world, we will be in a stronger position for the continued development and expansion of democratic social movement/anti-war efforts in the future.

It is up to the people to unite and oppose the common oppressors manifested in a militarist and unresponsive government along with their corporate media courtiers and PR propagandists. Only then, when the public forms and controls its own information resources, will it be armed with the power that knowledge gives to move beyond the media induced mindsets that limit change to modest reform. Grassroots media providing voice to those who would challenge elite domination are our best hope to create a truly vibrant democratic society that promises as well as delivers liberty, peace, and economic justice to all.

* The co-authors would like to express sincere appreciation for editing assistance provided by Rebecca Norlander and Ellen Gaddy.

1.US General Tommy Franks, quoted in the San Francisco Chronicle, March 23, 2002. [↩]

2.Peter Phillips and Andrew Roth, Censored 2009, (New York: Seven Stories, Press, 2008), 19-25. This story is the number one censored story of the year at Project Censored for this year. [↩] [↩]

3.Various theories exist on the problem of the subject, from historian Rick Shenkman’s Just How Stupid Are We to historian and cultural critic Thomas Frank’s What’s the Matter with Kansas, but few examine its affects on the peace community. For more on the issue of American historical amnesia, see Gore Vidal on Democracy Now!, also, In These Times and for a broader academic look at the issue of how Americans have become arguably the least informed, most entertained people in the modern world, see the now classic work from the late New York University media scholar Neil Postman, Amusing Ourselves to Death: Public Discourse in the Age of Show Business, (New York: Viking Adult, 1985). This article hopes to shine more light on the impact of all of the aforementioned on the peace movement in general and what can be done about it. For another view of this written earlier, at the outset of the US invasion of Iraq in 2003, see Felix Kolb and Alicia Swords, “Do Peace Movements Matter?” Commondreams.org, May 12, 2003. [↩]

4.C. Wright Mills. The Power Elite, (New York: Oxford University Press, 2000, reissue). Also, continuing with this theme in terms of democratic communications theory/policy and the ideas of an open society, see the work of Jurgen Habermas, The Structural Transformation of the Public Sphere: An Inquiry into a category of Bourgeois Society, published in1962, and The Theory of Communicative Action, from 1981, as well as Karl Popper’s The Open Society and Its Enemies, first published in 1945. [↩]

5.Norman Soloman, “The Military-Industrial-Media Complex: Why war is covered from the warriors’ perspective,” Extra! July/August 2005, published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR). [↩]

6.Cenk Uygur, “Conservative Media vs Progressive Media” Posted on The Daily Kos blog, July 1, 2009. [↩]

7.Linda Milazzo, “Corporate Media Turned Out for Jena, but Not for Anti-War. Here’s Why.” Atlantic Free Press, September 23, 2007. [↩]

8.For more on the Winter Soldiers, see Censored 2009, chapter 1, story 9, p. 58-62 and online and chapter 12, pp.297-319. See the KPFA radio and Corp Watch website for the coverage. [↩]

9.Peter Phillips, Censored 2008, (New York: Seven Stories Press, 2007), 35-44. [↩]

10.See Censored 2008, chapter 1, story 6, 55-59. [↩] [↩]

11.Diane Farsetta, Center for Media Democracy, studies on Pentagon propaganda online. Norman Soloman, “The Military-Industrial-Media Complex: Why war is covered from the warriors’ perspective,” Extra! July/August 2005, published by Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting (FAIR), on the FAIR website. [↩]

12.For several excellent studies of US Iraq War propaganda, see PR Watch’s John Stauber and Sheldon Rampton, Weapons of Mass Deception: The Uses of Propaganda in Bush’s War on Iraq, (New York: Tarcher Penguin, 2003), and their follow up Best War Ever: Lies, Damned Lies, and the Mess in Iraq, (New York: Penguin, 2006), and the exhaustive work by Anthony R. DiMaggio, Mass Media, Mass Propaganda: Examining American News in the “War on Terror,” (UK: Lexington Books, 2008). Additionally, forthcoming in fall 2009, just reviewed by the authors, is Robert P. Abele, The Anatomy of a Deception: A Reconstruction and Analysis of the Decision to Invade Iraq, (Baltimore: University Press of America, 2009).

For reports on the continuation of war policy under President Barack Obama, see Center for Media Democracy’s John Stauber, “How Obama Took Over the Peace Movement,” and Peter Phillips, “Barack Obama Administration Continues US Military Dominance.” [↩]

13.Edward Herman and Noam Chomsky, Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, (New York: Pantheon Books, 1988, 2002). For an introduction of the Propaganda Model, see chapter 1, or see a retrospective by Edward Herman online. [↩]

14.Peter Phillips, Censored 2008, see chapter 7, “Left Progressive Media Inside the Propaganda Model,” 233-251. [↩]

15.Co-author Peter Phillips interviewed Carmon Aponte while visiting the Patare Community TV and radio station in a trip to Venezuela for a book fair in 2008. The station was one of thirty-four locally controlled community television stations and four hundred radio stations now in the barrios throughout Venezuela. [↩]

16.Co-author Peter Phillips attended the major journalism conference in Cuba in 2008. About his experiences there, Phillips remarked, “During my five days in Havana, I met with dozens of journalists, communication studies faculty and students, union representatives and politicians. The underlying theme of my visit was to determine the state of media freedom in Cuba and to build a better understanding between media democracy activists in the US and those in Cuba.”

Phillips continued, “I toured the two main radio stations in Havana, Radio Rebelde and Radio Havana. Both have Internet access to multiple global news sources including CNN, Reuters, Associated Press and BBC with several newscasters pulling stories for public broadcast. Over 90 municipalities in Cuba have their own locally run radio stations, and journalists report local news from every province.”

“During the course of several hours in each station I (Phillips) was interviewed on the air about media consolidation and censorship in the US and was able to ask journalists about censorship in Cuba as well. Of the dozens I interviewed all said that they have complete freedom to write or broadcast any stories they choose. This was a far cry from the Stalinist media system so often depicted by US interests.” [↩]

17.For more details see the Project Censored website , for independent media feeds see Media Freedom Foundation, and for more on the Project Censored International Affiliates Program. For more on how to become the media, see David Mathison’s work online. For more on Smart Mobs, see Howard Rheingold’s work online. [↩]
18.Howard Rheingold, “Smartmobbing Democracy,” in Rebooting America: Ideas for Redesigning American Democracy for the Internet Age, ed. Allison Fine, Micah L. Sifry, Andrew Rasiej and Josh Levy. Retrieved from The Personal Democracy Press Website. [↩]

Peter Phillips is a professor of Sociology at Sonoma State University and President of Media Freedom Foundation: peter.phillips@sonoma.edu. Mickey Huff is a associate professor of History at Diablo Valley College, and serves on the executive committee of Media Freedom Foundation: mickeyhuff@mac.com. Read other articles by Peter Phillips.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2009/12/inside-the-military-media-industrial-complex-impacts-on-movements-for-peace-and-social-justice/

NixonTapes.Org: Who Was Fritz Kraemer? And Why We Should Care

2009-12-21T13:04:00.000-08:00

Ideology of Fritz Kraemer at the Heart of Wartime Policy from Vietnam to the Present

Who was Fritz Kraemer?
http://www.nixontapes.org/kraemer.htm

Jon Stewart: "Psycho" Laura Ingraham Reprises Holocaust Homily

2009-12-21T06:51:00.000-08:00

The Daily Show With Jon Stewart

Mon - Thurs 11p / 10c

Highway to Health - Last Tea Party Protest of the Year

www.thedailyshow.com

Daily Show
Full Episodes

Political Humor

Health Care Crisis

CPAC Now Co-Sponsored by John Birch Society

2009-12-21T06:17:00.000-08:00

By Kyle Munzenrieder
Miami New Times | Dec. 17 2009

The John Birch Society is co-sponsering this years Conservative Political Action Conference. Don't remember them? They're the conspiracy-happy, paranoid anti-communist group that emerged in the late '50s, and then preceded to circulate a letter calling Republican President Dwight Eisenhower, of all people, "a dedicated agent of the Communist Conspiracy," had a president that once maybe said, "militant Jews have influenced the Freemasons, who are 'Satan's agents,' 'the enemies of Christ Church," and opposed the civil rights movement

William F. Buckley finally called them out for being maybe a bit too crazy, and they've been on the fringe of the right-wing for the past few decades. But with Buckley six feet under, and the right-wing moving closer to that fringe they're welcome back in the fray.

And our own [US Senate candidate] Marco Rubio is still scheduled to deliver the key note address. This probably won't hurt him in with his Miami base, as rampant anti-communist paranoia is alive and well in certain corners of this city.

http://blogs.miaminewtimes.com/riptide/2009/12/marco_rubio_key-noted_cpac_now.php

CIA Requests its Own Documents from Author

2009-12-19T19:15:00.000-08:00

"The first top-secret CIA document details a meeting between an official of the Sandoz Chemical Company and an undercover CIA operator. The document reveals a close relationship between the firm and the agency, and provides stunning details about a mysterious 1951 outbreak of 'insanity' in a small French town, Pont St. Esprit. The second document requested reveals intelligence links between one of the criminals who murdered Frank Olson and the assassination of JFK ... "

PRWeb
Earth Times | 15 Dec 2009

Walterville (Vocus) December 15, 2009 - In a bizarre about-face, the secretive Central Intelligence Agency has requested documents from an investigative journalist, even though the writer had earlier obtained them from the CIA itself under the Freedom of Information Act.

The strange request was made last week to author H.P. Albarelli Jr., whose recently published book A Terrible Mistake: The Murder of Frank Olson and the CIA’s Secret Cold War Experiments, details a myriad of CIA drug experiments and exposes a large number of previously anonymous physicians and business officials who contracted with the agency. The experiments resulted in the deaths of a number of people and sent hundreds more seeking medical help. “The caller, an agency official, who identified himself by a name I was quite familiar with from past requests,” explained Albarelli, “asked if I would be so kind as to send by fax two documents my book referenced in its narrative and footnotes. I suppose I should have been bowled over by the request, but I wasn’t. It happened once before.” “The crazy thing,” added Albarelli, “is that all of the requested documents came from my FOI requests to the agency in the early 1990s.” The documents requested from Albarelli centered on two subjects. The first top-secret CIA document details a meeting between an official of the Sandoz Chemical Company and an undercover CIA operator. The document reveals a close relationship between the firm and the agency, and provides stunning details about a mysterious 1951 outbreak of “insanity” in a small French town, Pont St. Esprit. In a covert experiment, the village was surreptitiously administered the powerful hallucinogen LSD in an attempt to see if there was a viable method of waging war without killing people or destroying property. A related document appears to reveal that famed LSD inventor, Albert Hoffmann, maintained a close relationship with the CIA.

The second document requested reveals intelligence links between one of the criminals who murdered Frank Olson and the assassination of JFK, including a possible working relationship with suspected assassin Lee Harvey Oswald. About seven years ago, after an Internet article by Albarelli, an agency official requested that Albarelli send the CIA a copy of a top-secret report from the CIA’s Robert Lashbrook to Dr. Sidney Gottlieb, director of its Chemical Division. The document concerned a Pentagon and CIA cover-up of the 1953 death of a patient at the New York Psychiatric Institute. That patient, Harold Blauer, was killed by an injection of drugs administered under a covert CIA contract.

A Terrible Mistake is published by TrineDay, an Oregon-based company that specializes in books that are shunned by mainstream publishers due to their controversial nature. H.P. Albarelli Jr. has written a number of groundbreaking newspaper, magazine and Internet articles, including several on the Olson case, as well as topics such as anthrax, Cuba, child abuse and intelligence matters. His novel The Heap was published in 2005. More information on A Terrible Mistake can be found at: www.aterriblemistake.com.

http://www.earthtimes.org/articles/show/cia-requests-its-own-documents-from-author,1090729.shtml

"I AM A MACHINE!"

2009-12-19T15:30:00.000-08:00

Ignoble Prize

2009-12-19T14:54:00.000-08:00

Also see: Corruption Behind the 2009 Nobel Peace Prize

"In 1973, Dr Henry Kissinger was chosen for the honour for plotting 9/11 in Chile. If Osama bin Laden has not been considered worthy enough to pay Oslo a visit on Dec 10, it is because his 9/11 did not prove as deadly. ... "

By Farooq Sulehria
The International News | December 17, 2009

It was the Stalinist absurdities in totalitarian Soviet Russia that drove George Orwell to shout in disgust: ''War is peace. Freedom is slavery. Ignorance is strength.'' The entire west, it seems, has become Orwellian Oceania where the corporate media keep their audiences ignorant, the trade unions ensure obedience, if not slavery, while every ten years the Oslo-based Nobel Committee honours some butcher of humanity to signify the Orwellian character of the age we are living in.

Hence, one finds it irritating to see conscientious editors agitating at the bellicosity in Obama's speech to accept his Nobel for Peace on Dec 10. These scrupulous editorialists certainly have long careers but definitely very short memories. Only seven years ago, Jimmy Carter had been invited to Oslo for the ceremony held every Dec 10. On the eve of his Norwegian trip, Obama dispatched 30,000 troops to the Hindukush, to eliminate the bearded monster. That very Frankenstein was fathered by Jimmy Carter. Also, it was Carter's administration that, among others, armed Pol Pot, the Indonesian junta, the Nicaraguan Contras, besides pampering Christian fanatics in his own country and a confessional zealot at the helm of Pakistan.

Shimon Peres and Yitzhak Rabin were, in 1994, invited to Oslo with their hands stained with Arab blood. The 1994 event definitely was an attempt to dispel the impression that the Norwegian elite held South African Apartheid in great esteem, since only the previous year F W de Klerk had won laurels at Oslo.

La Moneda, Chile's presidential palace, under fire during the 1973 coup that toppled the Marxist government of Salvador Allende. The military junta that succeeded Allende, headed by Augusto Pinochet, established a record for human rights abuses that continues to haunt Chilean society.

In 1973, Dr Henry Kissinger was chosen for the honour for plotting 9/11 in Chile. If Osama ben Laden has not been considered worthy enough to pay Oslo a visit on Dec 10, it is because his 9/11 did not prove as deadly. Not merely did Henry Kissinger plot the murder of 5,000 Chileans and plunge the country into brutal dictatorship for two decades, Chile's elected president Salvador Allende was also gunned down. Henry Kissinger's complicity in tilting US policy in favour of Yahya Khan's troops busy massacring Bengali nationalists is as well documented as his role in perpetuating the Vietnam War. For fear of arrest on charges of war crimes, he hardly travels outside of the US.

It is not that the Noble Peace Prize turned into a joke only gradually, as prestigious institutions often tend to degenerate when ideological or bureaucratic corruption creeps in. The Oslo-based committee men have been attracted to bloodthirsty politicians. As early as 1906, US war president Theodore Roosevelt was granted the Nobel Prize for Peace in recognition of his gory role in Spanish-American wars. In 1920, Teddy Roosevelt and Woodrow Wilson shared the prize for their authorship of the notorious Treaty of Versailles.

The rise of Hitler was greatly helped by this unfair treaty. But until the Second World War, Soviet communism was a bigger threat. Hitler, in fact, was a vital ally for Stalin's containment. It therefore was pretty natural for Swedish MP E G C Brandt to nominate Hitler for the Nobel Peace Prize for 1939. Hitler was in a hurry and initiated WWII. Brandt had to withdraw his suggestion.

Ironically, a similar suggestion was presented in 2002 by a Norwegian MP, who suggested to the Nobel Committee two of Hitler's clones, Tony Blair and George Bush, for consideration of the peace prize. A massive signature campaign against this suggestion made the committee change its mind. Obama, in fact, is not merely a consolation for 2002. The Nobel Committee granted him the prize hoping that he will soon turn his attention to Iran.

http://www.thenews.com.pk/print1.asp?id=213736

Profiting from the Holocaust - The Loot from Aktion Reinhard

2009-12-19T09:50:00.000-08:00

Also see: "The Farish Family's Auschwitz Profits and Connections"

SS-Brigadefuhrer August Frank, one of the heads of the Economic and Administrative Main Office (WVHA) issued an order on the 26 September 1942 to the Aktion Reinhard headquarters in Lublin and to the commandant in Auschwitz, regarding the correct procedure for the treatment and distribution of Jewish possessions and valuables within the extermination camps.

Within the three death camps, Belzec, Sobibor and Treblinka the Germans established working commandos to sort and pack the possessions of the murdered Jews to the Reich, in accordance with August Frank’s orders.

Heinrich Unverhau who supervised the storage depot in the locomotive sheds at Belzec testified at his trial:

“SS Sturmbannfuhrer Hering accused me of being a saboteur because of the fact that during the sorting of the clothes that were sent for utilisation in Germany, a yellow Jewish star was found. Some money was also found there. These clothes belonged to Jews who were killed in Belzec.”
-----------------------
"The Frank Memorandum"

Top Secret
6 copies--4th copy
Chief A/Pr./B.
Journ. No. 050/42 secr.
VS 96/42

26 September 1942

To the Chief of the SS Garrison Administration Lublin
To the Chief of Administration Concentration Camp Auschwitz

Subject: Utilization of property on the occasion of settlement and evacuation of Jews.

Without taking into account the over all regulations which are expected to be issued during October, pertaining to the utilization of mobile and immobile property of the evacuated Jews, the following procedure has to be followed with regard to the property carried by them — property, which will in all orders in the future be called goods originating from thefts, receiving of stolen goods, and hoarded goods:

All money in bills of the Reichsbank will be deposited in Account No. 158/1488 of the WVHA in the Reichsbank.

Foreign currency, diamonds, precious stones, pearls, gold teeth and pieces of gold will be transferred to the WVHA for deposit in the Reichsbank.

Watches, fountain pens, lead pencils, shaving utensils, pen-knives, scissors, pocket flashlights, and purses will be transferred to the workshops of the WVHA for cleaning and repair and from there will be transferred to the troops (SS) for sale.

Men’s clothing and underwear, including shoes will be sorted and checked. Whatever cannot be used by the prisoners in the concentration camps and items of special value will be kept for the troops: the rest will be transferred to VoMi.

Women’s underwear and clothing will be sold to the VoMi, except for pure silk underwear (men or women’s), which will be sent directly to the Economic Ministry.

Feather –bedding, blankets, umbrellas, baby carriages, handbags, leather belts, baskets, pipes, sunglasses, mirrors, briefcases, and material will be transferred to VoMi. Payment will be arranged later.

Bedding, like sheets and pillowcases, as well as towels and tablecloths will be sold to VoMi.

All types of eyeglasses will be forwarded for the use of the Medical Authority. Glasses with gold frames will be transferred without the lenses, along with the precious metals.

All types of expensive furs, styled or not, will be transferred to the SS-WVHA. Furs of lesser quality will be transferred to the Waffen-SS clothing workshops in Ravensbruck bei Furstenberg in accordance with Order BII of the SS- WVHA.

All articles mentioned in paragraphs 4, 5,6 or little or no value will be transferred by the SS-WVHA for the use of the Economic Ministry. With regard to articles not specified in the aforementioned paragraphs, the Chief of the SS-WVHA should be consulted as to the use to be made of them.

The prices for the various articles are set by the WVHA. Therefore the price of a pair of used pants will be 3 marks, a woollen blanket – 6 marks. Check that all Jewish stars have been removed from all clothing before transfer. Carefully check whether all hidden and sewn-in valuables have been removed from all the articles to be transferred.

-August Frank
SS Brigadefuehrer and Brigadier General of the Waffen SS
--------
Oskar Deigelmann a Reichsbahn official recalled a visit to Belzec:

“As a controller I was responsible for ensuring the track was in good condition and in particular that the train ran smoothly. During a visit to the station at Belzec the supervisor, a Secretary or Senior Secretary from Thuringen, informed me that he was having a lot of problems with the SS, who were stationed near the wood.

Some time later I myself saw and had a word with a number of SS people in the waiting –room at Belzec. When I inquired, they told me that they were not members of the SS but they had merely been given these uniforms. As they described it, most of them came from lunatic asylums or nursing homes in the Reich, where they had been involved in the killing of the mentally ill.

I would like to say that one day the full significance of Belzec camp became clear to me when I saw mountains of clothes of all types behind our locomotive shed. There was also a large number of shoes there, as well as jewellery and other valuables.

http://www.sys-con.com/node/1210687

Swiftboating Jesus

2009-12-18T17:49:00.000-08:00

By Alex Constantine

"Pre-existing conditions? No. I don't think so ... "

Most conservatives have two favorite pastimes: Jesus Christ and Swiftboating. To please them, I've prepared a political advert that combines both in a speculative Senatorial run against Joe Lieberman ...

Paid Political Message (FOX NEWS): It has been learned that the child Jesus was conceived outside marriage, an apparent infidelity, one that has been rumored for some time. Seems the mother of Jesus had something in common with Tiger Woods (wink; show retouched photo of Woods with hooker).

As an infant, baby Jesus reportedly slept in a barn with pigs and goats.

The sepia Nazarene, a non-English speaker, accomplished little of note as a young proto-Marxist apart from community organizing and some crude carpentry. There is no evidence that he finished high school.

He never showered and was a Socialist (Newt Gingrich clip: "eye of a needle, indeed"), like Hitler (retouched photo of Hitler).

Jesus disappeared for a long period without explanation - some say to evade the law, the Bill Ayers of his time - reportedly wandering around in bohemian sandals, listening to "devil voices," as do Mark David Chapman and Son of Sam (show retouched photos), in the desert, entertaining a variety of temptations. What was he on? Perhaps taking after his adulterous mother, Jesus frequented at least one prostitute, and even stepped forward to defend her - centuries before the founding of ACORN - when she was tried in an informal court of her peers. It's said that his legal argument relied on "guilt-tripping" fellow Jewish people, an opportunist who exploited a genetic Achille's Heel.

He was also a far-left political elitist who often smarted off to authorities, and this landed him in a world of trouble. He even engaged in a violent act of terrorism when he physically assaulted licensed money changers operating legally at the Temple.

JOSEPH LIEBERMAN is a healer, too (of dwindling corporate balance sheets) - and he's never been cultified like his holier-than-thou opponent. Christ may walk on water, but can he STOP runaway Medicare tampering? Say NO! to Socialism. JOSEPH LIEBERNAM doesn't malinger in caves, like Jesus or bin Laden. JOSEPH LIEBERMAN doesn't necromance potable drinking water into the blood of Satan's vine. (show retouched photo of Satan) Vote for JOE LIEBERMAN, Independent Republican! God Bless.

Election Results

Jesus Christ: 10,238,493 votes cast
Joe Lieberman: 56,348,395 votes cast

"Joe Lieberman raises a tiny fist after vanquishing Jesus Christ (D-Jerusalem), who had Vatican support but was crucified by Southern evangelicals in the polls, in a landslide victory ... "