Category: 07 Other Atrocities

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Journal: CIA Links to NYC Mosque Controversy

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, Civil Society, Collective Intelligence, Corruption, Government, Military, Officers Call

Untangling the Bizarre CIA Links to the Ground Zero Mosque

By Mark Ames

September 10, 2010 | 2:36 p.m

EXTRACT 1: Leslie Deak's resume also notes his role as “business consultant” for Patriot Defense Group, LLC, a private defense contractor with offices in Winter Park, Florida, and in Tucson. The only names listed on the firm's website are those of its three “strategic advisers.” These include retired four-star General Bryan “Doug” Brown, commander of the U.S. Special Operations Command until 2007, where he headed “all special operations forces, both active duty and reserve, leading the Global War On Terrorism,” and James Pavitt, former deputy director for operations at the Central Intelligence Agency, where he “managed the CIA's globally deployed personnel and nearly half of its multi-billion dollar budget” and “served as head of America's Clandestine Service, the CIA's operational response to the attacks of September 11, 2001.”

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 2:  So, to recap: From 2006 to 2008, R. Leslie Deak worked as a “business consultant” to this super-secretive security contractor with ties to the CIA and counterterrorism forces, and in those same three years he also donated nearly $100,000 in seed money to the foundation now advocating the construction of the so-called Ground Zero Mosque.

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 3:  Goldline is to Glenn Beck what General Electric was to Ronald Reagan: The company sponsors Beck's TV and radio shows as well as his touring act, and Beck is its public face. The Los Angeles County District Attorney's office, along with the Santa Monica City Attorney's office, are currently investigating Goldline for defrauding customers by railroading gullible customers into buying their most debased products.

Speaking of Glenn Beck, it has been reported that Saudi Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal, the second-largest shareholder in News Corp., the parent company Fox News, which airs Beck's program, is also a major funder of Imam Rauf's projects, as Jon Stewart viewers heard all about last week.

. . . . . . .

EXTRACT 4: But add to this array of unexpected connections the work of Imam Rauf on behalf of the U.S. government—which includes serving as an FBI “consultant” and being recruited as a spokesperson by longtime George W. Bush confidante Karen Hughes, who headed up the administration's propaganda efforts in the Muslim world—and a compelling picture begins to emerge. Bush's favorite Imam, with backing from a funder with connections to the CIA, the Pentagon and the currency trading company that now sponsors rightwing firebrand Glenn Beck, proposes to build a mosque around the corner from the site of the most devastating terrorist attack ever visited on America. In the name of “[cultivating] understanding among all religions and cultures,” he puts forth a project that offends a majority of Americans and deals a significant setback to the broader acceptance of Muslim-Americans. It's a little like Billy “White Shoes” Johnson claiming the only reason he moonwalks after scoring a touchdown is to lower tensions on the football field and raise the other team's spirits.

Prison Planet Alternate View of Entire Piece

Tip of the Hat to Niels Groeneveld at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: It would appear that as the public is becoming more informed and more outraged, the military-intelligence complex on behalf of its global banking sponsors is becoming more brazen.  As it has with the Martin Luther King and JFK assassinations, the Tonkin Gulf and Iraq lies, and most recently with the 9-11 cover-up, the truth cannot be held back.  It has a way of reconnecting that is profoundly moving.

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Journal: Who, Exactly, is Behind Burning Koran?

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Justice, 11 Society, Corruption, Cultural Intelligence, Government, IO Secrets, Media
TIME? or CIA?

Viewpoint

Christianophobia: The Lesson of Terry Jones

by Tim Padgett,  Friday, September 10, 2011

Christian Dupe

Pastor Terry Jones, right, of the Dove World Outreach Center speaks to the media in Gainesville, Fla., as Imam Muhammad Musri of the Islamic Society of Central Florida looks on. Phil Sandlin / AP

Even ogres can serve a purpose. The “Reverend” Terry Jones has at least shown us the ugly consequences of the Islamophobia that was this summer's political fad — by turning the tables. How does it feel to be caricatured as a nation of Koran-burning radicals? Americans were appalled to find that a solitary religious bigot and his tiny congregation of 50 pseudo Christians had hijacked our global image. We squirmed as a warped little corner of America's Judeo-Christian culture colored the entire country in the eyes of the world — the way Americans let a warped little corner of Islamic culture color all Muslims, even Muslim Americans.

Tip of the Hat to Rob Sentse at LinkedIn.

Phi Beta Iota: There are no coincidences within totalitarian corporate-controlled governments.  The combination of the Christian dupe calling for the burning of the Qu'an and the manufactured theater of the Muslim mosque with CIA funding at Ground Zero are all too reminiscent of the FBI-sponsored car bombing of the World Trade Center in the 1990's, and totally consistent with what Buckminster Fuller called “White House Theater” and Noam Chomsky calls “manufacturing consent.”  In light of this shallow and manipulative TIME story, the five “filters” that Chomsky and his co-author identified bear reiteration:

From Wikipedia “Propaganda Model:”

First presented in their 1988 book Manufacturing Consent: The Political Economy of the Mass Media, the “Propaganda model” views the private media as businesses interested in the sale of a product — readers and audiences — to other businesses (advertisers) rather than that of quality news to the public. Describing the media's “societal purpose”, Chomsky writes, “… the study of institutions and how they function must be scrupulously ignored, apart from fringe elements or a relatively obscure scholarly literature”.[1] The theory postulates five general classes of “filters” that determine the type of news that is presented in news media. These five classes are:

  1. Ownership of the medium
  2. Medium's funding sources
  3. Sourcing
  4. Flak
  5. Anti-communist ideology

Today anti-communism (which was nurtured in part by the CIA's importation of 100+ senior Nazis each year after the end of WWII) has been replaced by the Global War on Terrorism (GWOT) and its occasional theatrics such as the “Underpants Bomber.”  The tragedy is that 80% of the US public has been so dumbed down and anesthitized as to take this garbage seriously, while the 20% that “get it” are marginalized, which is of course the point of it all.

See Also:

Review: Empire of Illusion: The End of Literacy and the Triumph of Spectacle

Review: Grand Illusion–The Myth of Voter Choice in a Two-Party Tyranny

2008 ELECTION 2008: Lipstick on the Pig

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Disinformation, Other Information Pathologies, & Repression

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Empire as Cancer Including Betrayal & Deceit

Worth a Look: Impeachable Offenses, Modern & Historic

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Institutionalized Ineptitude

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Journal: The Self-Inflicted Wounds of 9/11

07 Other Atrocities

Full Story Online

The Self-Inflicted Wounds of 9/11

Saturday 11 September 2010

by: Melvin A. Goodman, t r u t h o u t | News Analysis

EXTRACT 1: The defense budget is, in fact, out of control, increasing funding for both near-term and long-term programs and activities.

EXTRACT 2:  In addition to unprecedented military spending, the Pentagon has gained increased leverage over the $75 billion intelligence community as well as increased influence over the national security and foreign policies of the United States.

EXTRACT 3: Spending on intelligence has tripled since 9/11, marking the rise of a national security state that finds all branches of government, even the judiciary, bowing to the demands of the military and intelligence communities. Like the Bush administration, the Obama administration used the state secrets privilege to block a lawsuit by former CIA prisoners who were tortured in overseas prisons. We have had four directors of national intelligence in the past five years, and they have failed to correct the decline in strategic intelligence or strengthen the overall intelligence apparatus.

Melvin A. Goodman

EXTRACT 4:  Since 9/11, the national security process has been in a state of decline with a dearth of statesmen and an abundance of shadows on issues dealing with Iraq, Afghanistan, terrorism, insurgency and, now, cyber-war that are swaying the actions of American policymakers.

MULTIPLE NO QUARTER PIECES BY MEL GOODMAN

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Journal: America’s Army–Tough, Isolated, Happy

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 11 Society, Cultural Intelligence, Military, Officers Call, Power Behind-the-Scenes/Special Interests
Marcus Aurelius Recommends

Ladies and Gentlemen:

I suggest to you that this article is a keeper, that David Woods gets it.  While it focuses on the Army, I think it's applicable in significant part to the other

David Wood Biography

DoD military Services, particularly to the Marine Corps, and to one or two non-DoD Federal agencies have been close partners in the national security effort.

V/R,

REDACTED

In the 10th Year of War, a Harder Army, a More Distant America

The U.S. Army now begins its 10th continuous year in combat, the first time in its history the United States has excused the vast majority of its citizens from service and engaged in a major, decade-long conflict instead with an Army manned entirely by professional warriors.

This is an Army that, under the pressure of combat, has turned inward, leaving civilian America behind, reduced to the role of a well-wishing but impatient spectator. A decade of fighting has hardened soldiers in ways that civilians can't share. America respects its warriors, but from a distance.

EXTRAORDINARY BRILLIANT STUFF “MUST READ”

“A lot of us are here because society has no further use for us,” he said. “The Army has become home for a lot of restless souls who can never really go back.

See Also:

Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Corruption
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Dereliction of Duty (Defense)
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on Poverty
Worth a Look: Book Reviews on War Complex—War as a Racket

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Journal: Court Excuses CIA & KR Rendition & Torture

07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, Corruption, Government, Intelligence (government), Officers Call, Peace Intelligence

Full Story Online

CIA rendition: US court throws out torture case, citing state secrets

Appeals court judges sound apologetic tone in ruling; plaintiffs say they were tortured overseas in ‘extraordinary rendition' program.

Under the state secrets doctrine, courts have generally granted deference to executive branch claims that certain litigation may involve highly sensitive US government information which, if disclosed, would cause significant damage to national security.

. . . . . .

In a dissent joined by four other judges, Judge Michael Hawkins said the court was wrong to dismiss the entire lawsuit at such an early stage. He said the case should be remanded to a federal judge to determine to what extent actual evidence in the case might raise a threat of disclosing state secrets.

Hawkins acknowledged that the state secrets doctrine is an established precedent. But he said the privilege need not be so broadly enforced.

“The doctrine is so dangerous as a means of hiding governmental misbehavior under the guise of national security, and so violative of common rights of due process, that courts should confine its application to the narrowest circumstances that still protect the government’s essential secrets,” he wrote.

The majority concluded its opinion with a quasi apology to the plaintiffs. “Our holding today is not intended to foreclose – or to prejudge – possible nonjudicial relief, should it be warranted for any of the plaintiffs,” Judge Fisher said.

Continue reading “Journal: Court Excuses CIA & KR Rendition & Torture”

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Blog del Narco: Uncensored Web Journalism versus Violence of the Mexican Narcosphere

07 Other Atrocities, 09 Terrorism, 10 Transnational Crime, Counter-Oppression/Counter-Dictatorship Practices, Journalism/Free-Press/Censorship

Blog del Narco

With Journalists Silenced, Mysterious Blogger Reports on Mexico’s Drug Violence

By Nate Freeman, August 16, 2010

President Felipe Calderone’s crackdown on drug cartels in Mexico has claimed 28,000 lives since 2006, but the best coverage of the non-stop mob hits and government stings isn't coming from the nation’s major media outlets.

Instead, it comes from a student with a six-month-old blog. Blog del Narco began as a hobby for the highly secretive blogger, but in time he found that his facelessness allowed him get away with stories that would endanger known journalists — many of whom have been kidnapped or killed for divulging such information. Now, his site has become indispensable for its no-holds-barred coverage of the endless carnage caused by the drug trade. The AP reports that for the first time, a blog on the conflict can count its most dangerous participants among its most obsessive readers, as the kingpins and cops rely on the information just as much as the public does.

Continue reading “Blog del Narco: Uncensored Web Journalism versus Violence of the Mexican Narcosphere”

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Reference: Strategic Survey 2010 includes Afghanistan

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Terrorism, Analysis, Monographs, Strategy, United Nations & NGOs
Berto Jongman Recommends...
Overview & Ordering Online

This year's survey places strong emphasis on the global nature of economic and financial vulernability, and on Afghanistan.  Below is a quote in two sections  from the official press statement releasing the survey to the public.

Strategic Survey 2010 does not seek to lay out a new comprehensive strategy for Afghanistan. It does however argue that for Western states to be pinned down militarily and psychologically in Afghanistan will not be in the service of their wider political and security interests. The challenge of Afghanistan must be viewed and addressed in proportion to the other threats to international security and the other requirements for foreign-policy investment. With economic, financial and diplomatic activity moving at such a pace and with such varied outcomes internationally, military operations in general have to be all the more carefully considered. Precision and adaptability will be essential watchwords. For heavy, large, military deployment, the longue durée will be seen as an attitude for other times, other centuries.

The Afghan campaign has involved not just mission creep but mission multiplication; narrowing the political-military engagement to core goals as described will allow for proper attention to be paid to other areas posing international terrorist risks, and indeed to other matters affecting international security.

See Also:

Search: Strategic Analytic Model