The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
The Enigma of Israel (CounterPunch)
Fukushima Roulette (CounterPunch)
Will Corporations Prevent the Singularity? (IEET)
The Death of Investigative Journalism (CounterPunch)
Corps, Army to restart ‘forcible entry’ drills (Army Times)
The NSA Is Building the Country’s Biggest Spy Center (WIRED)
Guantanamo Prison's True Secret: Jason Leopold in Conversation With Andy Worthington (OpEd News)
US and Iranian Strategic Competition: The Proxy Cold War in the Levant, Egypt and Jordon (CSIS)
To Avoid Being Locked Up in Canada Cheney Stays Locked Up At Home
Dick Cheney Opts for House Arrest Rather Than Face the Ire of Canada’s Citizen Jurists Who Insist That Domestic and International Laws Prohibiting Torture, Genocide, Aggressive Warfare, and 9/11 Fraud Must be Enforced on One of the World’s Most Notorious Criminals
Earlier this week former US Vice-President Dick Cheney, the dominant, hands-on operative in the two-term presidency of George W. Bush, cancelled a speaking engagement in Toronto on April 24. Through a spokesperson Cheney indicated he was frightened to return to Canada after his experience last September 26 at the Vancouver Club. After promoting his book to a small local audience Cheney spent several hours hiding out in the posh venue trying to outwait several hundred citizen jurists, some of whom were planning to attempt a citizens’ arrest of the credibly-accused war criminal right on the spot.
I am proud to have played an active role in the fascinating teach-in last September of those of us who deputized ourselves at the Vancouver Club. Our goal in assembling outside one of British Columbia’s oldest and most notorious sites of political cronyism was to attempt to defend Canadian sovereignty and the rule of law in Canada against the criminal contempt of government officials for the Canadian Crimes Against Humanity and War Crimes Act (2000). This sneering contempt for a law passed in the name of preventing Canada from becoming a haven for war criminals finds its most ardent embodiment in Prime Minister Stephen Harper and the thoroughly politicized Royal Canadian Mounted Police. The RCMP’s leadership backed the Conservative Party in a previous successful election campaign.
Huh? We do not make this stuff up. CIA's Covert Action Staff is evidently having a ball, and David Ignatius has no problem playing the bimbo. Note the built-in pre-excuse on poor syntax. Note the pretense that incoherence was connected to long periods of time between sending, receiving, and responding. The hit on Fox is some kid [or geriatric annuitant]'s idiot idea of being clever — when Bin Laden was alive, he knew full well there is no substantive difference between CNN, NBC, ABC, CBS, and Fox [or the two political parties in the US that exclude everyone else from access to the public treasure].
All of this is beyond belief for anyone with BOTH intelligence and integrity. When all of the documents are released (after the November elections, of course), they will be torn apart.
The bin Laden plot to kill President Obama
David Ignatius
The Washington Post, 16 March 2012
Before his death, Osama bin Ladenboldly commanded his network to organize special cells in Afghanistan and Pakistan to attack the aircraft of President Obama and Gen. David H. Petraeus.
“The reason for concentrating on them,” the al-Qaeda leader explained to his top lieutenant, “is that Obama is the head of infidelity and killing him automatically will make [Vice President] Biden take over the presidency. . . . Biden is totally unprepared for that post, which will lead the U.S. into a crisis. As for Petraeus, he is the man of the hour . . . and killing him would alter the war’s path” in Afghanistan.
Investigations Around Libya
NATO’S Craven Coverup of Its Libyan Bombing
by VIJAY PRASHAD, Counterpunch, March 15, 2012
Ten days into the uprising in Benghazi, Libya, the United Nations’ Human Rights Council established the International Commission of Inquiry on Libya. The purpose of the Commission was to “investigate all alleged violations of international human rights law in Libya.” The broad agenda was to establish the facts of the violations and crimes and to take such actions as to hold the identified perpetrators accountable. On June 15, the Commission presented its first report to the Council. This report was provisional, since the conflict was still ongoing and access to the country was minimal. The June report was no more conclusive than the work of the human rights non-governmental organizations (such as Amnesty International and Human Rights Watch). In some instances, the work of investigators for these NGOs (such as Donatella Rovera of Amnesty) was of higher quality than that of the Commission.
Due to the uncompleted war and then the unsettled security state in the country in its aftermath, the Commission did not return to the field till October 2011, and did not begin any real investigation before December 2011. On March 2, 2012, the Commission finally produced a two hundred-page document that was presented to the Human Rights Council in Geneva. Little fanfare greeted this report’s publication, and the HRC’s deliberation on it was equally restrained.
Nonetheless, the report is fairly revelatory, making two important points:
Continue reading “Chuck Spinney: Investigating NATO's War Crimes Against Libya”
Tax Day Protests and Events 2012
The numbers are staggering: Over $1 trillion spent so far on the invasions and occupations of Iraq and Afghanistan since October 2001. The government says the Iraq War is over, but the Pentagon is paying thousands of contractors to continue the occupation. Nearly half of each tax dollar is going to the Pentagon and military contractors.
Get out on (or before) tax day — Tuesday, April 17 is the final day to file this year — to protest the obscene military budget while millions in the world go hungry. See the action list below, but if there’s not an action in your area, order some flyers (list at the bottom) and head out to a busy corner to leaflet for an hour.
April 17 is also the Global Day of Action on Military Spending. See other listings and resources on their website.
Huh?
My friends and colleagues,
Forgive the interruption. I reach out to you on a matter of some urgency, about my dear friend, a former CIA officer, dedicated, stoic, talented … and now in deep and terrifying trouble. What's happening to him is so stunningly crappy, and so unjustifiable, that his defense and support has become a personal priority. Though triggered — I believe — by a personal and political agenda, I see his cause as strikingly apolitical: this is about a man falsely persecuted, and the survival of his family.
Please, please take a minute to look at the below. Any questions, reach out to me, and/or check out the sites at the bottom of this email.
Thanks so much,
Peter Landesman
Dear Friends and Colleagues:
We write to ask you to join us in supporting, protecting and materially helping our friend and colleague, John Kiriakou, a long-time former C.I.A. official and case officer. Incredibly, John has been accused by the Department of Justice of crimes under the 1917 Espionage Act, a charge historically reserved for persons who betrayed their country to foreign governments for money.
Why? The prosecutors have not claimed that John talked to any foreign government, passed any government documents or accepted funds from anyone hostile to the United States. Instead, according to the facts asserted in the indictment, he committed the “crime” of responding honestly to a query from the New York Times related to the agency's interrogation program under the Bush Administration, which included waterboarding.
Continue reading “Mini-Me: US Government Witch Hunting Continues…”
For those of you with experience or interest in such things, State's Bureau of Diplomatic Security (DS, long ago SY), has developed for itself a very negative reputation in personnel security arena.
Through AFSA, American Foreign Service Association (I am not a member having never been a FSO), I have read numerous accounts of horror show DS cases.
Overall, DS comes across as an internal State Dept Gestapo, much different from the RSOs I dealt with in embassies in LATAM and Africa.
State Dept. moves to fire Peter Van Buren, author of book critical of Iraq reconstruction effort
Lisa Rein
Washington Post, 14 March 2012
Peter Van Buren, a foreign service officer who wrote anunflattering bookabout his year leading two reconstruction teams in Iraq, was stripped of his security clearance, banned from State Department headquarters for a time and transferred to a telework job that consists of copying Internet addresses into a file.
Phi Beta Iota: Most Departmental “security” services turn into little Gestapos, but they do so on command from the top. Peter van Buren's book was APPROVED by the proper Department of State publication review process, which has integrity. Evidently now someone at the top, probably not the Secretary of State but one of the top six mandarins, is abusing their authority and perhaps giving Peter van Buren a $10 million lawsuit on a platter. When governments stop telling the truth they lose legitimacy. When they begin persecuting people who tell the truth they lose authority. We're there.
