Blackwater suspected of being in Pakistan

The mercenary private security contractor once known as Blackwater and now called Xe Services LLC is being reported in the Pakistani press as being seen with "other suspicious foreigners" in Peshawar and other parts of Pakistan. A report today in Pakistan's "The News," states that foreigners have been seen in the area around University Town in Peshawar and have been renting residences in the area. One local resident stated; "What we have been hearing about the presence of Blackwater or other suspicious foreigners in Peshawar and Pakistan is alarming."

The report of Blackwater in Pakistan follows reports by Spiegel and WMR about the firm's presence in the Philippines at the former U.S. naval base at Subic Bay. A report in today's Philippines Inquirer states that the issue of Blackwater/Xe has now become a major political headache for the Philippines government. The report states: "Party list lawmakers want an investigation into reports US military contractor Blackwater (now Xe Services LLC) is training mercenaries at the Subic Bay free port in Olongapo City. In filing House Resolution 1380, Bayan Muna party list Representatives Satur Ocampo, Teodoro Casiño and Neri Colmenares asked the committee on national defense and security to lead the inquiry."

Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has extended Xe's (Blackwater's) aviation services contract, through its Presidential Airways subsidiary, in Iraq. After lurid tales of a "man camp" and women and child prostitution in Iraq were revealed by two ex-Blackwater employees in a federal court deposition in the United States, another private security firm, Armor Group North America, owned by Wackenhut, has been tainted by allegations of bizarre sexual practices among its security force assigned to guard the U.S. embassy in Kabul, Afghanistan. The practices, according to the Project on Government Oversight (POGO) in a story broken by Gawker.com, included U.S. private mercenaries urinating on one another, drinking shots of vodka poured down the ass cheeks of other men, eating potato chips from the ass cracks of other men, and engaging in simulated anal sex. The use of prostitutes was also reported at the Armor Group residential compound in Kabul. WMR previously reported that private security companies in Kabul were regularly using prostitutes from China.

On June 12, 2009, WMR reported that one security firm was involved in hiring Chinese prostitutes who doubled as unwilling Chinese intelligence agents: "The Chinese prostitute agents are only given food, a small room, clothes, and cosmetics. Women who decide to leave the employment of the restaurants often simply "disappear" with a cover story in Kabul that they returned to China. There are suspicions among those who have tried to help the women that they are killed by the local Kabul mafia, which is made up of Afghan police and foreign civilian contractors. One young Chinese woman who worked at the Shanghai restaurant in Kabul turned up missing after she took a job at the British army base at Camp Sutra on Jalalabad Road in Kabul. The British embassy refused to get involved in tracking down the woman on behalf of her distraught family in Shanghai."

One of the attractions that has possibly lured Blackwater/Xe into the Philippines and, particularly Olongapo City, the site of the old Subic Bay naval base, is the long history that the town has in "servicing" American military personnel with prostitutes. Previous attempts to lure Taiwanese, Russians, South Koreans, and others to the port complex were met with disdain by the local population, because they were considered "too cheap" when compared to the heyday of the American military presence.

A “indústria da paz” no Oriente Médio

Lejeune Mirhan *

Antes de mais nada, quero dizer que esse título acima não me pertence. É de autoria de um jovem estudante palestino chamado Faris Giacaman, que mora na Cisjordânia, mas estuda em universidade nos Estados Unidos. Trata da questão da paz sob outro aspecto. Queria compartilhar com meus leitores, alguns aspectos da questão que ele levanta.

É possível a “coexistência” pacífica?

Faris inicia relatando que, ao se apresentar para seus colegas americanos e outras nacionalidades como palestino, as pessoas vão logo dizendo que sempre participam de atividades que promovem o “diálogo” e a “coexistência” entre “os dois lados do conflito”. Sobre isso, que a seguir publicar alguns trechos que destaquei como mais importantes em seu artigo:

• O autor defende como única solução para que o governo de Israel, qualquer que seja ele, mude sua postura para com os palestinos e aceitem as propostas de uma paz justa, que se realizem campanhas de boicote, desinvestimentos e sanções, cuja sigla mundialmente é conhecida como BDS;


(Foto: Norman Finkelstein, um dos mais
combativos escritores judeus a
favor dos palestinos)

• Para o jovem estudante, é uma grande perda de tempo, uma falácia, essas organizações que promovem encontros entre as “partes no conflito” Israel e Palestina, como se as coisas ocorressem em pé de igualdade e que os contendores desse conflito fossem da mesma capacidade bélica e organizativa (um dos exemplos que ele menciona é um campo onde crianças e adolescentes participam de atividades em favor da paz, um “diálogo” construtivo; podem ser assistidos no endereço http://www.seedsofpeace.org/about);

• A maioria das pessoas tem a ilusão que o “diálogo” e a “coexistência” têm maior efeito para produzir, segundo o autor, uma solução de paz do que os boicotes, desinvestimentos e sanções;

• Ela usa o termo “uma indústria da paz”, que vem ampliando sua atuação desde os acordos de Oslo de 1993, assinados pela OLP, de Arafat, e pelo governo de Rabin, em Israel; pura ilusão;

• Fala-se em “construir pontes” e “ultrapassar barreiras”, mencionando sempre “os dois lados do conflito”, como se ambos os lados fossem duas partes em mesmas condições de combater, sem falar na completa desigualdade existente na correlação de forçar, em especial no campo militar;

• A maior ilusão apontada pelo autor, quando se fala em “duas partes”, “dois lados” parte-se do princípio ou da ideia de ambos os lados cometeram mais ou menos o mesmo número de crimes, são mais ou menos iguais na sua conduta, que não há muita diferença entre o que eles fazem. De fato, no Brasil, por exemplo, canais de TV quando o assunto é a anistia parcial de 1979, falam que “os dois lados cometeram crimes”. Como é possível comparar e taxar de criminoso quem se levantou para defender a liberdade, a democracia e a constituição e o governo constitucional de 1964 de João Goulart? Ora, criminosos foram os que rasgaram a constituição, derrubaram o governo, prenderam, torturaram, mataram, exilaram e cassaram lideranças políticas e sindicais. Colocar em igualdade essas duas “partes” é erros grave e tem objetivo político claro quem os comete; não é só ingenuidade;

• Assumem que também “nenhum dos lados esta completamente certa e completamente errado”. Sobre isso, circulou pela Net uma apresentação bem feita que mostra os tais “dois lados”, mas em uma versão completamente pró-Israel. Iludiu muita gente em janeiro quando Israel bombardeava a Faixa de Gaza;

• Usa-se muito a palavra “conflito”. Até essa palavra é profundamente enganosa, pois implica em uma análise onde a disputa seria travada entre duas partes iguais, simétricas. Mas, não é isso que ocorre. De um lado o quarto maior e mais poderoso exército da terra em poder bélico e de outro, pequenos fuzis kalishnikov, foguetes e morteiros da época da guerra fria, como os Katyuchas soviéticos (quase que uma bomba caseira capaz de produzir apenas sustos nos israelenses) e pedras e fundas, disparadas por crianças e jovens, na sua campanha chamada Intifada “Levante”, em árabe);

• O autor afirma o que temos afirmado neste espaço há anos: a realidade na Palestina é de um projeto de colonização, colonialismo, de discriminação étnica profunda como se vivêssemos um tipo de Apartheid; uma situação típica onde de um lado existe um opressor e de outro os oprimidos;

• Em todos os casos da história onde são registrados casos de colonialismo e discriminação do tipo Apartheid, a mesma história registra que os donos do poder, os opressores, os que colonizam e discriminam, nunca abandoam o poder sem luta e sem resistência popular ou mesmo pressão internacional direta; resistirão ao máximo, até o fim as concessões, o recuo;

• Há uma comparação muito bem feita com a tática de Mahatma Ghandi na Índia para enfrentar os colonizadores britânicos. Ghandi defendeu a satyagraha”, que quer dizer “ater-se firmemente à verdade”. Essa foi a sua arma para se fazer respeitado, para o seu movimento pela resistência não violenta. Se tivesse seguido o caminho do “diálogo” com os colonialistas britânicos se desmoralizaria;

• Claro, é verdade que tanto na África do Sul como na Índia, alguns brancos e britânicos ficaram ao lado dos negros e dos indianos, colocando-se contra os opressores. Mas, a diferença é que eles se posicionaram de forma explícita contra a opressão, contra a colonização, contra todas as injustiças perpetradas pelos opressores;

• Aqui cito uma frase literal de Faris que reflete, em meu modo de ver, a síntese de seu pensamento: “Qualquer reunião conjunta de ambas as partes, portanto, só pode ser moralmente são quando os cidadãos do estado opressor posicionam-se em solidariedade aos membros do grupo oprimido, não sob a bandeira do ‘diálogo’ com o objetivo de ‘entender o outro lado da história’”;

• Permita-me dar alguns exemplos de cidadãos israelenses que, ao que sei, tem esse posicionamento. Entre eles estão Ury Avnery (escritor), Ilan Pappé (historiador), Gideon Levy (jornalista), Norman Finkelstein (historiador). Sou leitor assíduo de tudo que esses israelenses escrevem. Eles somam suas vozes com as do povo palestino;

• O autor demonstra, com números, quanto que foi investido por fundações e ONGs americanas, “preocupadas” com a paz entre palestinos e israelenses desde 1993. Milhões e milhões de dólares. Tudo a fundo perdido e sem sentido algum. Buscam a coexistência pacífica. Em todos os grupos de “diálogo” não esta presente, em nenhum momento, o reconhecimento do caráter agressivo e opressor do Estado judeu e, mais importante, seu caráter racista e discriminador; isso passa ao largo dos tais “diálogos”;

• O autor conclui que mesma a campanha de boicote acadêmico e cultural deve ser observada. Deve-se aceitar apenas e tão somente atividades conjuntas, de cinema, por exemplo, quando o objetivo final for explícito de protestar contra a exploração e opressão dos palestinos;

• Qualquer israelense que procure interagir com palestinos para lhes prestar solidariedade total, condenar os métodos brutais de Israel e sua opressão, que ajude a acabar de vez com a opressão e a exploração, será sempre bem vindo e ajudará a luta dos palestinos;

• Qualquer apelo a um “diálogo” vago, dito “equilibrado”, onde o lema é “há sempre dois lados em toda a história” é intelectual e moralmente desonesto, enganoso e acaba por fazer o jogo dos opressores.

Conclusões

O artigo de Faris pode parecer sectário, avesso ao diálogo. Mas não é. Ele tem profunda razão. Negociar é uma coisa e isso deve ser feito pelos líderes de ambos os lados, acompanhados por entidades e organismos internacionais. Mas o tal “diálogo” direto entre palestinos e judeus, para que se mostre sempre “as duas partes do conflito de forma equilibrada”, é apoiar uma versão falsa da realidade e da história.

Somos a favor do diálogo franco. Mas, somos a favor da luta em solidariedade ao povo palestino, sofrido e oprimido, vilipendiado em seus direitos históricos, roubados em suas terras. De um lado, um povo sofrido, oprimido, discriminado, onde se ganham salários para mesmas funções até menos da metade que os judeus recebem. Nunca, em são consciência, sem correr o risco de fazer o jogo do inimigo, devemos pensar em “equilíbrio”, em “igualdade de condições”, em “partes simétricas no conflito”.

Não há duas partes iguais nessa luta. Os palestinos, apesar da opressão, apesar da diferença de força militar, acabarão vencendo, pois a história está com eles e a solidariedade dos povos que lutam em todo o mundo também estão ao seu lado.

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* Presidente do Sindicato dos Sociólogos do Estado de São Paulo, escritor, arabista e professor. Membro da Academia de Altos Estudos Ibero-Árabe de Lisboa e da International Sociological Association.

* Opiniões aqui expressas não refletem necessáriamente as opiniões do site.

The Anti-Empire Report- #73

September 2nd, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

"And on the most exalted throne in the world sits nothing but a man's arse." Montaigne

If there's anyone out there who is not already thoroughly cynical about those on the board of directors of the planet, the latest chapter in the saga of the bombing of PanAm 103 over Lockerbie, Scotland might just be enough to push them over the edge.

Abdel Basset Ali al-Megrahi, the only person ever convicted for the December 21, 1988 bombing, was released from his Scottish imprisonment August 21 supposedly because of his terminal cancer and sent home to Libya, where he received a hero's welcome. President Obama said that the jubilant welcome Megrahi received was "highly objectionable". His White House spokesman Robert Gibbs added that the welcoming scenes in Libya were "outrageous and disgusting". British Prime Minister Gordon Brown said he was "angry and repulsed", while his foreign secretary, David Miliband, termed the celebratory images "deeply upsetting." Miliband warned: "How the Libyan government handles itself in the next few days will be very significant in the way the world views Libya's reentry into the civilized community of nations." ¹

Ah yes, "the civilized community of nations", that place we so often hear about but so seldom get to actually see. American officials, British officials, and Scottish officials know that Megrahi is innocent. They know that Iran financed the PFLP-GC, a Palestinian group, to carry out the bombing with the cooperation of Syria, in retaliation for the American naval ship, the Vincennes, shooting down an Iranian passenger plane in July of the same year, which took the lives of more people than did the 103 bombing. And it should be pointed out that the Vincennes captain, plus the officer in command of air warfare, and the crew were all awarded medals or ribbons afterward. ² No one in the US government or media found this objectionable or outrageous, or disgusting or repulsive. The United States has always insisted that the shooting down of the Iranian plane was an "accident". Why then give awards to those responsible?

Today's oh-so-civilized officials have known of Megrahi's innocence since 1989. The Scottish judges who found Megrahi guilty know he's innocent. They admit as much in their written final opinion. The Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, which investigated Megrahi's trial, knows it. They stated in 2007 that they had uncovered six separate grounds for believing the conviction may have been a miscarriage of justice, clearing the way for him to file a new appeal of his case. ³ The evidence for all this is considerable. And most importantly, there is no evidence that Megrahi was involved in the act of terror.

The first step of the alleged crime, sine qua non — loading the bomb into a suitcase at the Malta airport — for this there was no witness, no video, no document, no fingerprints, nothing to tie Megrahi to the particular brown Samsonite suitcase, no past history of terrorism, no forensic evidence of any kind linking him to such an act.

And the court admitted it: "The absence of any explanation of the method by which the primary suitcase might have been placed on board KM180 [Air Malta to Frankfurt] is a major difficulty for the Crown case." ⁴

The scenario implicating Iran, Syria, and the PFLP-GC was the Original Official Version, endorsed by the US, UK, Scotland, even West Germany — guaranteed, sworn to, scout's honor, case closed — until the buildup to the Gulf War came along in 1990 and the support of Iran and Syria was needed for the broad Middle East coalition the United States was readying for the ouster of Iraq's troops from Kuwait. Washington was also anxious to achieve the release of American hostages held in Lebanon by groups close to Iran. Thus it was that the scurrying sound of backtracking could be heard in the corridors of the White House. Suddenly, in October 1990, there was a New Official Version: it was Libya — the Arab state least supportive of the US build-up to the Gulf War and the sanctions imposed against Iraq — that was behind the bombing after all, declared Washington.

The two Libyans were formally indicted in the US and Scotland on Nov. 14, 1991. Within the next 20 days, the remaining four American hostages were released in Lebanon along with the most prominent British hostage, Terry Waite. ⁵

In order to be returned to Libya, Megrahi had to cancel his appeal. It was the appeal, not his health, that concerned the Brits and the Americans. Dr. Jim Swire of Britain, whose daughter died over Lockerbie, is a member of UK Families Flight 103, which wants a public inquiry into the crash. "If he goes back to Libya," Swire says, "it will be a bitter pill to swallow, as an appeal would reveal the fallacies in the prosecution case. ... I've lost faith in the Scottish criminal justice system, but if the appeal is heard, there is not a snowball's chance in hell that the prosecution case will survive." ⁶

And a reversal of the verdict would mean that the civilized and venerable governments of the United States and the United Kingdom would stand exposed as having lived a monumental lie for almost 20 years and imprisoned a man they knew to be innocent for eight years.

The Sunday Times (London) recently reported: "American intelligence documents [of 1989, from the Pentagon's Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA)] blaming Iran for the Lockerbie bombing would have been produced in court if the Libyan convicted of Britain's worst terrorist attack had not dropped his appeal." Added the Times: "The DIA briefing discounted Libya's involvement in the bombing on the basis that there was 'no current credible intelligence' implicating her." ⁷

If the three governments involved really believed that Megrahi was guilty of murdering 270 of their people, it's highly unlikely that they would have released their grip on him. Or is even that too much civilized behavior to expect.

One final note: Many people are under the impression that Libyan Leader Moammar Qaddafi has admitted on more than one occasion to Libya's guilt in the PanAm 103 bombing. This is not so. Instead, he has stated that Libya would take "responsibility" for the crime. He has said this purely to get the heavy international sanctions against his country lifted. At various times, both he and his son have explicitly denied any Libyan role in the bombing.

Humankind shall never fly

All those angry people. Yelling at the president and members of Congress about how the proposed government health plan, and Obama himself, are "socialist". (See the poster of Obama as the Joker character from Batman with "Socialism" in large letters, as the only word.⁸) These good folks wanna get their health care through good ol' capitalism; better no health care at all than godless-atheist commie health care; better to see your child die than have her saved by a Marxist-Stalinist-collective doctor who works for the government. But these screaming, heckling Americans — like most of their countrymen — might be rather surprised to discover that they don't really believe what they think they believe. I wrote an essay several years ago, which is still perfectly applicable today, entitled "The United States invades, bombs, and kills for it, but do Americans really believe in free enterprise?"

A common refrain, explicit or implicit, amongst the recent health-care hecklers is that the government can't do anything better or cheaper than private corporations. Studies, however, have clearly indicated otherwise. In 2003, US federal agencies examined 17,595 federal jobs and found civil servants to be superior to contractors 89 percent of the time. The following year, a study to determine whether 12,573 federal jobs could be done more efficiently by private contractors found in-house workers winning 91 percent of the time, according to an Office of Management and Budget report. And in 2005, a study of tens of thousands of government positions concluded that federal workers had won the job competitions more than 80 percent of the time. All these studies, it should be kept in mind, took place under the administration of George W. Bush, who, upon taking office in 2001, declared it his top management priority that federal workers should compete with contractors for as many as 850,000 government jobs. ⁹ Thus, any pressure to influence the outcome of these studies would have been in the opposite direction — putting the outside contractors in the best light.

Since the dissolution of the Soviet Union in 1991, the Boys of Capital have been chortling in their martinis about the death of socialism. The word has been banned from polite conversation. And they hope that no one will notice that every socialist experiment of any significance in the twentieth century — without exception — was either overthrown, invaded, corrupted, perverted, subverted, destabilized, or otherwise had life made impossible for it, by the United States and its allies. Not one socialist government or movement — from the Russian Revolution to the Sandinistas in Nicaragua, from Communist China to the FMLN in El Salvador — not one was permitted to rise or fall solely on its own merits; not one was left secure enough to drop its guard against the all-powerful enemy abroad and freely and fully relax control at home.

It's as if the Wright brothers' first experiments with flying machines all failed because the automobile interests sabotaged each test flight. And then the good and god-fearing folk of the world looked upon these catastrophes, nodded their heads wisely, and intoned solemnly: Humankind shall never fly.

The continual selling of the Afghanistan war

"But we must never forget," said President Obama recently, "this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting. This is fundamental to the defense of our people." ¹⁰

Obama was speaking to the Veterans of Foreign Wars, the ultra-nationalist group whose members would not question such sentiments. Neither would most Americans, including many of those who express opposition to the war when polled. It's simple — We're fighting terrorism in Afghanistan. We're fighting the same people who attacked New York and Washington. Never mind that out of the tens of thousands the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001. Never mind that the "plot to kill Americans" in 2001 was hatched in Germany and the United States at least as much as in Afghanistan. What is needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does "an even larger safe haven" mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

As to "plotting to do so again" ... there's no reason to assume that the United States has any concrete information of this, anymore than did Bush or Cheney who tried to scare us in the same way for more than seven years to enable them to carry out their agenda.

There are many people in Afghanistan who deeply resent the US presence there and the drones that fly overhead and drop bombs on houses, wedding parties, and funerals. One doesn't have to be a member of al Qaeda to feel this way. There doesn't even have to be such a thing as a "member of al Qaeda". It tells us nothing that some of them can be called "al Qaeda". Almost every individual or group in that part of the world not in love with US foreign policy, which Washington wishes to stigmatize, is charged with being associated with, or being a member of, al Qaeda, as if there's a precise and meaningful distinction between people retaliating against American aggression while being a member of al Qaeda and people retaliating against American aggression while NOT being a member of al Qaeda; as if al Qaeda gives out membership cards to fit in your wallet, as if there are chapters of al Qaeda that put out a weekly newsletter and hold a potluck on the first Monday of each month.

In any event, as in Iraq, the American "war on terrorism" in Afghanistan regularly and routinely creates new anti-American terrorists. This is scarcely in dispute even at the Pentagon.

The only "necessity" that draws the United States to Afghanistan is the need for oil and gas pipelines from the Caspian Sea area, the establishment of military bases in this country that is surrounded by the oil-rich Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf regions, and making it easier to watch and pressure next-door Iran. What more could any respectable imperialist nation desire?

But the war against the Taliban can't be won. Except by killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States should negotiate the pipelines with the Taliban, as the Clinton administration unsuccessfully tried to do, and then get out.

The revolution was televised

You will not be able to stay home, brother.
You will not be able to plug in, turn on, and cop out.
You will not be able to lose yourself on skag [heroin] and skip out for beer during commercials.
Because the revolution will not be televised. ...

There will be no highlights on the eleven o'clock news
The revolution will not be right back after a message
The revolution will not go better with Coke
The revolution will not fight the germs that may cause bad breath
The revolution will not be televised, will not be televised

These are some of the lines of Gil Scott-Heron's song that told people in the 1970s (which, I maintain, were just as '60ish as the fabled 1960s) that a revolution was coming, that they would no longer be able to live their normal daily life, that they should no longer want to live their normal daily life, that they would have to learn to be more serious about this thing they were always prattling about, this thing they called "revolution".

Fast Forward to 2009 ... Gil Scott-Heron, now a ripe old 60, was recently interviewed by the Washington Post:

WP: In the early 1970s, you came out with "The Revolution Will Not Be Televised," about the erosion of democracy in America. You all but predicted that there would be a revolution in which a brainwashed nation would come to its senses. What do you think now? Did we have a revolution?

GS-H: Yes, the election of President Obama was the revolution. ¹¹

Oh? So that's it? That's what we took clubs over our heads for? Tear gas, jail cells, and permanent police and FBI files? Published a million issues of the underground press? To get a president who doesn't have a revolutionary bone in his body? Not a muscle or nerve or tissue or organ that seriously questions cherished establishment beliefs concerning terrorism, permanent war, Israel, torture, marijuana, health care, and the primacy of profit over the environment and all else? Karl Marx is surely turning over in his London grave. If the modern counter-revolutionary United States had existed at the time of the American revolution, it would have crushed that revolution. And a colonial (white) Barack Obama would have worked diligently to achieve some sort of bi-partisan compromise with the King of England, telling him we need to look forward, not backward.

Yugoslavia

During 1998-1999, the United States used the Kosovo conflict to reaffirm its hegemonic role in Europe. US officials deliberately undercut a potential diplomatic solution to the Kosovo war; instead of using diplomacy to resolve the conflict, the United States sought a military solution in which NATO power could once again be demonstrated. The resulting air war, in 1999, succeeded in fully establishing the continued relevance of NATO, thus affirming US hegemony in Europe and undercutting European proclivities for foreign policy independence.
– David Gibbs, "First Do No Harm: Humanitarian Intervention and the Destruction of Yugoslavia"

There's no issue of the recent past that has caused more friction internationally amongst those on the left than the question of what really took place in the former Yugoslavia during the 1990s. Gibbs' new book explores many of the myths surrounding this very complicated and controversial slice of history, particularly those dealing with the supposed humanitarian motivation behind the Western powers intervention and the many alleged Serbian atrocities.

Notes

1. Washington Post, August 22 and August 26, 2009 ^↩
2. Newsweek magazine, July 13, 1992 ^↩
3. Sunday Herald (Scotland), August 17, 2009 ^↩
4. "Opinion of the Court", Par. 39, issued following the trial in the Hague in 2001 ^↩
5. Read many further details about the case at http://killinghope.org/bblum6/panam.htm ^↩
6. The Independent (London daily), April 26, 2009 ^↩
7. Sunday Times (London), August 16, 2009 ^↩
8. Washington Post, August 6, 2009, p.C2 ^↩
9. Washington Post, June 8, 2005 and March 23, 2006 for this citation plus the three studies mentioned ^↩
10. Talk given at VFW convention in Phoenix, Arizona, August 17, 2009 ^↩
11. Washington Post, August 26, 2009 ^↩

–

William Blum is the author of:

• Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2
• Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower
• West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir
• Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire

Portions of the books can be read, and signed copies purchased, at www.killinghope.org

Clarification. Kosher Nostra article

WMR ran the article titled: "North Jersey: epicenter of "Kosher Nostra" and Mossad activity" on July 27, 2009. The following paragraph represents a correction [bold segment] to the original report about the disposition of the criminal case brought against Ted Maher, a former US Green Beret, in the 1999 death of banker Edmond Safra in Monaco:

"Another prominent Syrian Jew was Edmond Safra who founded Banco Safra in Brazil in 1955. The Beirut-based Safra family had long served as important bankers for the Ottoman Empire. Safra eventually became a billionaire banking and investment tycoon. Safra founded the Republic National Bank in New York in 1966. In 1999, Safra was killed in an arson attack on his Monte Carlo home. Safra's U.S.-born nurse, Ted Maher, a former U.S. Army Green Beret, was arrested and charged with starting the fire, convicted and released after serving a prison sentence. Safra's killer or killers still remain at large. Safra's security chief, Shmuile Cohen, had recruited a number of Israeli military special forces personnel to guard Safra, but Shmule and the guards were given the night off by Safra's wife. Before his death, Safra was negotiating the sale of Republic Bank to HSBC. Safra was also cooperating with the FBI in its probe of the use of U.S. banks by the Russian-Israeli mafia to launder billions of dollars. There is speculation that Safra was murdered by the Russian-Israeli mob to keep him from divulging more details of their operations to the FBI."

In our initial report, we indicated that Maher's conviction was later overturned. The Safra Foundation publicist correctly stated the following in an email (as far as only the Maher matter is concerned):

"The information about Mr. Safra’s nurse, Ted Maher, is misleading. In fact, Mr. Maher was arrested under suspicion of starting the fire in which Mr. Safra died and was convicted of the crime in 2002 by the Monaco court. Ted Maher’s conviction was not 'overturned'. The court found him guilty and sentenced him to a prison term, which was served. There has been no further court inquiry into this case, let alone an 'overturning” of it.'"

Our clarification and correction has been sent to the publicist for the Edmond J. Safra
Foundation in France.

However, WMR currently stands by the remainder of the information contained in the relevant paragraph and the following was sent to the Safra Foundation's publicist:

"However, there are enough media reports since the time of Mr. Safra's death to strongly indicate there is much more to the story than Maher's confession. For example, the following from the NY Daily News, Dec 4 02: 'The lawsuit, filed Monday in Manhattan Supreme Court by Torrente's children, Jason, 30, and Genevieve, 23, charges that Safra, 67, 'restrained' [Viviane] Torrente [their mother and Safra's nurse] and 'prevented her escape' from the bathroom where they suffocated.'

As for Maher being a sole perpetrator, that is not what the Monaco police reported to Mr. Safra's own security chief. From AFP on November 26, 2002: 'The security chief of billionaire banker Edmond Safra was handcuffed by police as he tried to get into the penthouse apartment where his boss was suffocating to death, a court trying Safra's American nurse on arson charges was told Tuesday. Samuel Cohen told the court in the exclusive Mediterranean principality of Monaco that he was called to Safra's building at 5.00 a.m. on December 3 1999, but when he demanded to be allowed to up the burning apartment to find a way in -- arguing that he alone knew the security arrangements -- he was stopped by police. 'They told me that there were assailants there. I kept insisting, and it went on for 30 minutes,' Cohensaid, before describing how when he finally made it to the fifth floor he was overpowered and handcuffed.' It is noteworthy that Cohen said the police said there 'were assailants [plural]' in Safra's Monaco apartment. That would indicate that if Maher was guilty as charged, he may have had at least one accomplice.

And AFP ran this on Dec, 4 1999: 'Safra normally surrounded himself with bodyguards in his heavily protected Monaco penthouse, but this was not the case on the night of the attack.' That conflicts with your statement: 'There were never any security guards of any kind guarding the apartment in Monaco - neither that night nor any other night.' Has AFP retracted?

It is well documented that Mr Safra was cooperating with the FBI in an investigation of Russian Jewish mafia involvement with his competitor, the Bank of New York (BONY). Feb 7 2000 Times of London: 'In the days after his death rumours abounded that his killers were the Russian mafia, incensed by Safra's co-operation with the FBI,which was investigating mafia money-laundering through Safra's New York-based Republic National Bank. . . Safra's fear was well-founded. He had, in effect, signed his own death warrant five years ago, when Republic National Bank first alerted the FBI to a Pounds 6 billion money-laundering racket: the Russian mafia was thought to have been transferring cash from offshore bank accounts into dollar accounts at Safra's bank. And when, last October, Safra froze the bank accounts of most of his Russian clients in preparation for selling his bank to HSBC, scores of Russians lost everything. One Russian businessman suspected of mafia links has told friends that Safra's actions cost him $ 30 million.'

Based on the other available information, I see no need to change any other part of the paragraph in question unless there is some further documentation that shows the Monaco police were incorrect in their initial assessment of the situation and that the FBI was not investigating Russian Jewish money laundering through Republic National Bank and related activity at BONY. You'll note that no where in the article is it stated that Mr Safra had 'dealings' with the Mafia and to the contrary it specifically states: 'Safra was also cooperating with the FBI in its probe of the use of U.S. banks by the Russian-Israeli mafia to launder billions of dollars.' The statement does not assert that Mr. Safra was any subject himself of an FBI investigation but was cooperating in an investigation of the use of banks by the Russian-Israeli mob for money laundering."

Arab governments forced to rely on AIPAC and AIPAC-linked lobbyists and influence peddlers

WMR has learned from two knowledgeable individuals that various Arab governments have been forced to use lobbyists affiliated with the American-Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) because Arabs have no chance of advancing their interests in Washington without the approval of lobbyists connected to Israeli interests.

Although the close ties between AIPAC and the American Turkish Council (ATC) are well-documented, especially after the disclosures of former FBI Turkish translator Sibel Edmonds, the links between AIPAC and lobbyists charging Arab governments exorbitant fees to advance their causes, is not as well known. A former State Department official told WMR that although most of the Israeli-connected lobbyists are close to the Israeli government, some, who are Jewish, are more independent of Israel. However, all are cashing in on opening doors for Arabs, including Palestinians, in Washington.

WMR was told by one Arab media source that CNN's Wolf Blitzer, a former official of AIPAC and a correspondent for the Jerusalem Post, has vetted a number of Palestinian officials and Palestinian-Americans for relatively favorable exposure on CNN who are "pre-approved" by the Israeli government. The practice seriously calls into question CNN's journalistic integrity in its coverage of Middle East issues.

The former State Department official pointed to Morocco as one country that has entered into a strategic partnership with the Israeli Lobby in Washington to advance Moroccan interests. The post of U.S. ambassador to Morocco has been held two American Jews with close ties to AIPAC since the Clinton administration. Clinton's ambassador to Rabat was Marc Ginsberg. He was followed Edward Gabriel who served until the end of the Clinton administration. President Obama's ambassador to Morocco is Samuel Kaplan, a Minneapolis lawyer and Democratic Party activist and fundraiser.

The former State Department official said that when a former Algerian ambassador to Washington discovered that he had to deal with AIPAC-affiliated lobbyists to advance Algeria's interests in Congress and the White House, he was appalled. The State Department official told him to take a page from the Moroccans on lobbying as an Arab envoy in Washington.

One person cited as a key in the Israeli Lobby shakedown of Arab governments is said to be Representative Jane Harman (D-CA), who was the subject of a brief FBI investigation for engaging in questionable activities with Israeli embassy officials and a major AIPAC funder over interceding with the Justice Department to stop an investigation of AIPAC espionage in Washington on behalf of Israeli intelligence.

Another country that plays the AIPAC lobbyist card is Egypt, which receives billions of dollars in U.S. military assistance, all vetted beforehand by Israeli lobbyist interests in Washington. Daniel Kurtzer served as George W. Bush's ambassador to Israel from 2001 to 2005. Prior to that posting, Kurtzer, the former dean of Yeshiva University, served as Bill Clinton's ambassador to Egypt. Kurtzer is now the commissioner of the Israel Baseball League.

US's 'arc of instability' just gets bigger

THE ROVING EYE
US's 'arc of instability' just gets bigger
By Pepe Escobar

The New Great Game is not only focused on the face-off between the United States and strategic competitors Russia and China - with Pipelineistan as a defining element.

The full spectrum dominance doctrine requires the control of the Pentagon-coined "arc of instability" from the Horn of Africa to western China. The cover story is the former "global war on terror", now "overseas contingency operations" under the management of President Barack Obama's administration.

Most of all, the underlying logic remains divide and rule. As for the divide, Beijing would call it, without a trace of irony, "splittist". Split up Iraq - blocking China's access to Iraqi oil. Split up Pakistan - with an independent Balochistan preventing China from accessing the strategic port of Gwadar there. Split up Afghanistan - with an independent Pashtunistan allowing the building of the Trans-Afghanistan Pipeline bypassing Russia. Split up Iran - by financing subversion in Khuzestan and Sistan-Balochistan. And why not split up Bolivia (as was attempted last year) to the benefit of US energy giants. Call it the (splitting) Kosovo model.

Kosovo, incidentally, is known as the Colombia of the Balkans. What Washington calls the "Western hemisphere" is a sub-section of the New Great Game. The linkage between the recent military coup in Honduras, the return of the living dead - that is, the resurrection of the US Navy's Fourth Fleet in July 2008 - and now the turbo-charging of seven US military bases in Colombia is not to be blamed merely on continuity from president George W Bush to Obama. Not really. This is all about the internal logic of Full Spectrum Dominance.

Touching bases
Twelve South American nations, under the Union of South American Nations umbrella, got together in Bariloche, Argentina, last week and after a heated seven-hour discussion only managed to stress, somewhat meekly, that "foreign troops cannot be a threat to the region" - in reference to the US military presence in Colombia. At least President Lula da Silva of Brazil will be asking Obama to get together with South American presidents and reveal what this new military pact with Colombia is really all about.

Spin, of course, prevailed. Influential Brazilian conservative newspaper O Globo, which for all practical purposes looks like it's been redacted in Washington, practically blamed Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez for everything.

It's instructive to examine how some of the sharpest South American minds view it. Uruguayan writer Eduardo Galeano (whose book, Open Veins of Latin America was offered to Obama by Chavez at the recent Organization of American States summit) in an interview to an Ecuadorian paper, stressed how the US had spent a century fabricating military dictatorships in Latin America, so when there's a military coup, such as in Honduras, Washington is at a loss for words.

As for the military bases in Colombia, Galeano said they "offend not only Latin America's collective dignity but one's intelligence".

The US has already set up three military bases in Colombia, plus a dozen radar stations. Now this will be upgraded by the Colombian government to seven bases, one of them - Palanquero - with air access to the whole hemisphere. Seven bases in Colombia is a natural Pentagon response to the US losing the Manta base in Ecuador, and losing its grip on now leftist Paraguay. Washington already trains the Colombian armed forces, special forces and the national police.

The infamous Fort Benning-based School of the Americas, the flagship US training ground for ultra-repressive military dictatorships, that is, the "School of Assassins", re-baptized in 2001 the Western Hemisphere Institute of Security Cooperation, trained not only over 10,000 Colombians, but the coup leaders in Honduras as well.

Argentine political scientist Atilio Boron goes for the jugular; for him, "To think that those troops and weapons systems are based in Latin America for some reason other than to insure the territorial and political control of a region that experts consider the richest one on the planet in terms of its natural resources - water, energy, biodiversity, minerals agriculture, etc - would be unforgivably stupid."

American political activist and author, Noam Chomsky, in an interview to Venezuelan-American lawyer Eva Golinger during his recent visit to Venezuela, explained how the "rose wave" of South American leftism is scaring Washington so much that it's forcing it to collaborate with every government that would have been summarily deposed a few decades ago. Chomsky refers to the Joao Goulart government in Brazil, which was toppled in 1964, giving way, under US supervision, to "the first national security state neo-Nazi-style". Lula's policies today are not that different from Goulart's.

North Atlantic Treaty Organization all over
Colombia has received over US$5 billion from the Pentagon since Plan Colombia was launched by president Bill Clinton way back in ... the year 2000. Colombian President Alvaro Uribe rules over a captivating land infested with paramilitaries and extra-judicial killings - scores of peasants and trade unionists killed in cold blood. But he's praised in Washington as a human-rights hero.

Isn't that swell? In a 1991 unclassified Pentagon intelligence report, then-senator Alvaro Uribe Velez is described as "dedicated to collaboration with the Medellin cartel at high government levels". The report stresses Uribe "has worked for the Medellin cartel and is a close personal friend of Pablo Escobar Gaviria", the archetypal, now dead, Colombian drug lord. No wonder Uribe has always fiercely fought any possible form of extradition treaty.

Boron describes Uribe as "the empire's Trojan Horse". It's this Trojan Horse that allows what is in fact a counter-insurgency operation to be packaged as a "war on drugs". Needless to say, Colombia remains the number one supplier of cocaine to the US - Plan Colombia or not.

The counter-insurgency is also in large part directed against, who else, Venezuela's Chavez, who, in his innumerable casual moments, makes no secret that he "knows Uribe, and his psychology, very well". Golinger, author of a must-read book on Washington's overall strategy, Bush vs Chavez: Washington's war on Venezuela, told Russia Today that "Plan Colombia really does not have the objective of addressing directly the war on drugs"; it's more about the "control of natural resources and strategic resources".

Way beyond Venezuela, this is all about the militarization of the Andes and beyond. Colombia is, yes, the Trojan Horse in charge of policing virtually all of South America, not to mention Central America, now that US political, economic and military hegemony is shrinking by the hour.

The beauty of Plan Colombia is its one-size-fits-all status - from AfPak to Mexico. Few people know that in April 2007, the former US ambassador to Colombia, William Wood, was sent to Afghanistan to implement ... a Plan Colombia, that is, counter-insurgency disguised as a war on drugs. Colombia is a mirror of Afghanistan - and vice-versa. It goes without saying that counter-insurgency-heavy Afghanistan - now under the supreme boot of former death-squad operator to General Davis Petraeus in Iraq, General Stanley McChrystal - still produces over 90% of the world's opium.

And inevitably that's where NATO comes in. The only part of the world where NATO is still not active is ... South America. Few people also know that a few months ago, the head of the Pentagon's Southern Command, Admiral James Stavridis, became NATO supreme commander. Three of the past five NATO top military commanders - Stavridis, Bantz Craddock and Wesley Clark - moved to NATO glory from ... the Southern Command, certainly adding another meaning to the gloomy expression "School of the Americas".

No wonder Bolivian President Evo Morales said in Cuba in mid-July, "I have first-hand information that the empire, through the US Southern Command, made the coup d'etat in Honduras." And all this while not only Mexico and Argentina - but also Brazil and Ecuador - are on their way to decriminalizing drugs.

War on drugs? So much for the cover story. More like the Pentagon stuck in the business, to quote Galeano, of insulting Latin America's intelligence for a long time to come.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.

Philippines serves as major U.S. mercenary (read: Blackwater/Xe) base

The Philippines has emerged as a major base for the operations of U.S. private military companies, including Xe (formerly Blackwater). Recent revelations by Blackwater insiders point to a little-known subsidiary of Erik Prince's McLean, Virginia-based Prince Group, Satelles Solutions, operating a recruitment and training center in the Philippines that can simultaneously train up to 1000 paramilitary personnel.

The Xe base is located in the former U.S. Navy base at Subic Bay and operates pursuant to a 2006 three-year lease agreement inked between Blackwater and the Subic May Metropolitan Authority that permits Xe/Blackwater to use five acres of land and facilities to train Blackwater private security personnel from the Philippines, India, Nepal, and Fiji. When the agreement was signed, some Philippines senators objected, claiming the agreement violated the constitutional prohibition against the stationing of foreign troops on Philippines soil. Since Blackwater/Xe is not an actual uniformed military service, it appears that the firm made an end-run around the spirit of the Philippines Constitution.

There have been sketchy reports on a similar training center linked to Blackwater that operates in Guatemala and trains mercenaries from Guatemala, Honduras, El Salvador, Chile, and Colombia. There ais some informed speculation in Central America that some of these mercenaries, many of whom have served in Iraq, took part in the recent right-wing Honduran miltary coup against President Manuel Zelaya. It is noteworthy that one of five Blackwater Worldwide's five security personnel charged in the 2007 shooting deaths of Iraqi civilians in Baghdad, Evan Liberty, served with the Marine Security Detachment at the U.S. Embassy in Guatemala City prior to joining Blackwater Worldwide.

Blackwater's international marketing arm, Greystone, Ltd. of Barbados, has been charged by ex-Blackwater employees with money laundering and tax evasion. Other observers believe Greystone was set up to give Blackwater plausible deniability from involvement in foreign operations designed to prop up U.S. clients and target opponents of U.S.-supported regimes for elimination.

Blackwater/Xe's training operations abroad have also been linked to its aviation operations, including the renditioning and detention of individuals captured around the world. Two of Prince's aviation companies, Presidential Airways, Inc., and Aviation Worldwide Service, Co., have received lucrative contracts from the United States Transportation Command at Scott Air Force Base in Illinois, some of which were laundered through the Air Force to cover contracts with the CIA. Presidential Airways has been active in renditions in Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, and Kyrgyzstan. Some of the aviation firms' contracts extend through 2013. Blackwater has also been linked to the CIA's targeted assassination programs in Afghanistan, Iraq, and other countries. Other Prince aviation companies are EP Aviation LLC, Air Quest, Inc., and STI Aviation Inc.

Blackwater/Xe is also active on the borders of the United States. The firm trains U.S. Immigrations and Customs Enforcement agents at facilities at Glynco, Georgia; Artesia, New Mexico; Cheltenham, Maryland; and Charleston, South Carolina.

Blackwater's links to the Philippines is noteworthy in light of a major espionage scandal involving a group of Philippines agents that was centered in Vice President Dick Cheney's office. On December 14, 2005, WMR reported:

Vice President Dick Cheney's old company, Halliburton, has some interesting partners in its work in occupied Iraq. On Dec. 11, WMR reported on links between Halliburton/Kellogg, Brown & Root and a Viktor Bout-owned airline based in Moldova, Aerocom/Air Mero. Bout's airlines have also reportedly been involved in flying low wage earners from East Asia to Dubai and on to Iraq where they work for paltry salaries in sub-standard living conditions. Halliburton/KBR has sub-contracted to a shadowy Dubai-based firm, Prime Projects International Trading LLC (PPI), which "trades" mainly in workers from Thailand, the Philippines, Nepal, India, Pakistan, and other poor Asian nations. In 2004, after a Filipino PPI worker was killed in a mortar attack on Camp Anaconda in Iraq, the Philippines government of Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo ordered PPI, which is based at P.O. Box 42252, Dubai, UAE, to send overseas Filipino workers OFWs) home from Iraq and Kuwait and banned it from further recruiting in the Philippines. Some of PPI's recruiting included running ads on the Internet. In addition to the other south Asian employees, the Philippine workers were employed by PPI under a Pentagon sweetheart umbrella contract let to KBR under the LOGCAP (Logistics Civil Augmentation Program) III program. Although little is known about PPI, it reportedly has been linked to Halliburton/KBR for a number of years and has been associated with Halliburton contracts in the Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, and the Balkans during the time when Dick Cheney headed the firm. PPI has also been involved in operations at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, where Filipino workers were involved in building the prison housing suspected "Al Qaeda" prisoners. Inside sources report that PPI has some high level financial partners, including the al Nahayan royal family of the United Arab Emirates and Vice President Cheney. And there are connections to President Macapagal-Arroyo's ordering the repatriation of hundreds of Filipino workers home from Iraq and Kuwaitand the discovery that U.S. Marine Corps and FBI spy Leandro Aragoncillo, a Filipino-American who worked as a Marine security aide inside Cheney's office until early 2002 and who was arrested by the FBI this past October, had stolen dossiers from Cheney's office that were considered damaging to Mrs. Macapagal-Arroyo. Macapagal-Arroyo was sworn in as President on January 20, 2001 (the same day George W. Bush and Dick Cheney were sworn in) after a popular revolution ousted Joseph Estrada. Macapagal-Arroyo, the daughter of past Philippine President Diosdado Macapagal. Aragoncillo passed Cheney's reports on Macapagal-Arroyo, some of which were obtained from National Security Agency intercepts, to Estrada, a political opponent of Macapagal-Arroyo and an ally of former Philippine First Lady Imelda Marcos. Estrada was planning a coup against Macapagal-Arroyo with U.S. support. Aragoncillo was linked to another U.S.-based Filipino spy -- former Philippine National Police officer Michael Ray Aquino -- who was also involved in passing Cheney's classified documents to Estrada. Aquino, who is wanted in the Philippines for involvement in murder, kidnapping, and drug trafficking, was also arrested by the FBI. More importantly, Aquino's close friend, Estrada, is also a business associate of indicted GOP lobbyist/reputed gangster Jack Abramoff. Another high-level Filipino-American in the White House, Karl Rove's Assistant and Assistant to the President, Susan Bonzon Ralston, also served as Abramoff's personal assistant at the law firms Preston Gates & Ellis and Greenberg Traurig. Ralston has been called to testify before the grand jury and special prosecutor Patrick Fitzgerald, who is investigating Karl Rove's involvement in leaking the name of CIA covert agent Valerie Plame Wilson to the media. Aragoncillo allegedly passed over 100 documents from a classified FBI computer system at Fort Monmouth, New Jersey while working there as an intelligence analyst for the FBI after he left the Marine Corps. It is significant that Aragoncillo admitted to spying while only working as an aide to Cheney and not when he worked for Vice President Al Gore during 1999 and 2000. It now seems apparent that Aragoncillo and Aquino were part of an illegal Cheney covert operation to topple Macapagal-Arroyo in retaliation for her stopping PPI's recruiting efforts in the Philippines. That decision by Manila dealt a severe financial blow to the Halliburton/KBR LOGCAP profits in Iraq. It is also of note that Aragoncillo worked with National Security Adviser Condoleezza Rice.

On June 9, 2009, WMR reported on another link between U.S. private military firms and the Philippines related to the May 22, 2009, murder in Baghdad of U.S. contractor James Kitterman. It is noteworthy that two former Blackwater employees stated in an affidavit filed in the Alexandria, Virginia federal court that Blackwater has murdered and planned to murder anyone who threatened to expose the firm's wrongdoing. The June 9 report follows:

James Kitterman, the President of Janus Construction Corporation, which had contracts for the scandal-plagued new U.S. embassy in Baghdad's Green Zone and who was found stabbed to death on May 22, spent a number of years working for Kellogg, Brown & Root/Halliburton, the company once headed by former Vice President Dick Cheney. Kitterman's was found blindfolded and bound with his throat slit and with multiple stab wounds in an SUV parked inside the Green Zone. Kitterman, a former U.S. Navy chief petty officer, lived in Houston and was due to return to the United States a week after his murder. Four American employees of Corporate Training Unlimited (CTU) of Fayetteville, North Carolina, including its president, were arrested by Iraqi law enforcement authorities under a new U.S.-Iraqi security agreement that strips U.S. contractors of immunity under Iraqi law. A fifth American, who works for another firm was also arrested by the Iraqis in connections with Kitterman's death. According to CTU's website, "In 2003, CTU provide PSD 'Personal Security Detail' service to Kellogg Brown & Root (KBR MER Baghdad) top executives." According to the Fayetteville Observer, the same day that Kitterman's body was found another CTU contractor, Larry Young, was found dead in the Green Zone from what was "suspected" to have been a rocket attack. CTU's president is Donald Feeney, Jr., and former Delta Force, was, according to the Fayetteville Observer, arrested along with his son, Donald Feeney III, and two other CTU employees, Micah Milligan and Mark Bridges. The fifth man, Jason Jones, is reported to have worked for "another firm." Feeney's other son, John Feeney, told the Fayetteville paper that his father was in the Philippines when Kitterman was killed, adding the two were friends but never business partners. The son also stated that two of the CTU employees arrested with his father were at the U.S. embassy at the time of Kitterman's murder. CTU has had contracts to train the Fayetteville police department in hostage rescue tactics and other emergency responses. CTU also was contracted to provide security for the U.S. Strategic Petroleum Reserves in Louisiana and Texas, as well as providing specialized training to the security forces of Peru and Ecuador. Kitterman's brother, Cliff, told the New York Daily News after his brother's murder, "I know some things, but it's speculation right now." The elder Feeney has been in the news before as a professional "kidnapper." His CTU firm, composed of ex-Army commandos, was paid $200,000 by a Texas woman to snatch her daughter from her Jordanian ex-husband from a school bus in an Amman suburb in January 1988. The kidnapping caused a diplomatic incident between the United States and Jordan and a U.S. diplomat at the embassy in Amman, believed to have assisted in the kidnapping, was recalled to Washington to answer questions. The Reagan administration was forced to apologize to Jordan over the kidnapping incident. CTU was back in the news again in 1993 when CTU mercenaries, claiming to work for Sylvester Stallone's Carcolo film production company, lured a five year-old girl and her older step-sister away from their Icelandic mother as part of an elaborate hoax and were set to spirit them out of Iceland along with the five-year old's American father who had contracted with Feeney's CTU to conduct the kidnapping. The older girl was to be returned to her American father who was previously married to the same Icelandic mother. Both American fathers were ex-U.S. servicemen. The five-year old's parents had been divorced in 1991 and the older daughter's father had been divorced from her mother in 1986. Arrested by Icelandic police at Keflavik International Airport were the elder Feeney, who was masquerading as Stallone's film director, and his American client James Grayson. The little girl was returned to her mother, who had been promised a role in the production of a Stallone movie and was slipped a knockout pill by Jacqueline Davis, who claimed to be Stallone's location manager and who was in cahoots with Judy, Feeney's wife. Davis and Judy Feeney were arrested by Luxembourg police after leaving Iceland. The Feeneys also used Swiss and German soil to perpetrate their kidnapping endeavor, an indication of what little regard the ex-Delta Force commando holds the laws of foreign nations from Iceland and Jordan to Iraq. CTU also snatched children away from the foreign ex-husbands of American mothers in Bangladesh, Tunisia, and Saudi Arabia. The Kitterman murder does not stop with CTU. Kitterman, before starting Janus Construction in 2008, worked for Peregrine Development International, a Kuwaiti-financed firm whose president is Dennis Wright, Kitterman's former boss. Kitterman was known to be an "expert" in Iraq and served, according to Wright in an e-mail to The Washington Post, "more days on the ground in Iraq than any other American." Kitterman had been a contractor in Iraq since 2003, the year of the U.S. invasion and occupation. Part of that time was spent by Kitterman working for Kellogg, Brown and Root. The alibi that CTU president Feeney had been in the Philippines when Kitterman was murdered is also noteworthy. Last year, KGL Investment Company of Kuwait, was selected by Clark International Airport Corporation, with the blessing of the scandal-plagued Philippines President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo, to build a major air transportation logistics complex at the former U.S. Air Force base at Clark on the island of Luzon. The project is worth some $2 billion. Selected by KGL to develop the project was Peregrine, Kitterman's old firm.Part of the development work is the construction of storage facilities for the Malampaya gas field, northwest of Palawan island. The work was contracted to KBR/Halliburton in 2001. KGL maintains operations in Egypt, Kuwait, Jordan, Syria, Sudan and the United Arab Emirates. On August 25, 2008, the Manila Standard reported, "Mrs. Arroyo and KGL officials led by president Mark Williams, Evan McBride and Kevin Krucik will witness the laying of the time capsule by [Clark Airport President Jose] Luciano and project contractor Peregrine Development International represented by its president Dennis Wright." CTU's website also links to the Clark Eagle Sooting Range and Club website, described as "a multi-million peso state of the art firearms training facility located 80 kilometers north of Manila via the newly refurbished North Luzon Expressway, within the massive Clark Freeport (formerly Clark Air Base) situated adjacent to Angeles City in the province of Pampanga." CTU describes the Clark Eagle Range as the "CTU Training Facility in the Pilippines [sic]."

Kolko on Israel — worth reading -- Israel: A Stalemated Action of History

Israel: A Stalemated Action of History

By GABRIEL KOLKO

Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is World in Crisis, from which this essay has been excerpted.

In late 1949 I worked on a boat taking Jews from Marseilles to Haifa, Israel. Jews from Arab nations were in the front of the boat, Europeans in the rear. I was regarded by many of the Europeans as some sort of freak because I had a United States passport and so could stay in the land of milk and honey. One man wanted me to marry his daughter – which meant he too could live in the land of milk and honey. My Hebrew became quite respectable but the experience was radicalizing or, I should say, kept me radical, and I have stayed that way.

Later I learned from someone who ran a displaced persons camp in Germany that the large majority of Jews wanted to go anywhere but Palestine. They were compelled to state Palestine or else risk receiving no aid. I understood very early that there was much amiss in the countless Arab villages and homes I saw destroyed, and that the entire Zionist project – regardless of the often venal nature of the Arab opposition to it – was a dangerous sham.

The result of the creation of a state called Israel was abysmal. Jews from Poland have nothing in common with Germans and neither has anything to do with those from the Arab world. It is nationality, not religion, that counts most. Jews in Israel, especially the Germans, largely ghettoized themselves by their place of origin during the first generation, when a militarized culture produced the mixed new breed called sabras – an essentially anti-intellectual personality far different from the one the early Zionists, who were mostly socialists who preached the nobility of labor, expected to emerge. The large majority of Israelis are not in the least Jewish in the cultural sense, are scarcely socialist in any sense, and daily life and the way people live is no different in Israel than it is in Chicago or Amsterdam. There is simply no rational reason that justifies the state’s creation.

The outcome is a small state with a military ethos that pervades all aspects of Israel’s culture, its politics and, above all, its response to the existence of Arabs in its midst and at its borders. From its inception, the ideology of the early Zionists – of Labor Zionism as well as the rightist Revisionism that Vladimir Jabotinsky produced – embodied a commitment to violence, erroneously called self-defense, and a virtual hysteria. As a transcendent idea, Zionism has no validity because the national differences between Jews are overwhelming.

What Zionism confirmed, if any confirmation were needed, is that accidents are more important in shaping history than is all too often allowed. Here was the intellectual café, which existed in key cities – Vienna at the turn of the twentieth century or the Lower East Side of New York before World War I – filled with immensely creative people full of ideas and longing for a golden era to come. Ideas – good, bad, and indifferent – flourished. In this heady atmosphere, Zionism was born.

But Zionism has produced a Sparta that traumatized an already artificially divided region partitioned after the collapse of the Ottoman Empire during World War I led to the Versailles Treaty and the creation of the modern Middle East. The state of Israel has always relied on military solutions to political and sociological problems with the Arabs. The result is constant mobilization.

Even more troublesome for peace and stability in the vast Middle East, Zionism has always been symbiotic on some great power for the security of its national project, realized in a state called Israel. Before 1939 it was the British; during the 1950s it was France. Israel has survived since the late 1960s on the influx of US arms and money, and this has allowed it to encourage its fears of annihilation – a fate its possession of nuclear weapons makes most unlikely. But Israel also has an importance far beyond the fantasies of a few confused literati. Today its significance for American foreign policy is far greater because the Soviet Union no longer exists and the Middle East provokes the fear so essential to mobilizing Congress and the US public. “The best hopes and the worst fears of the planet are invested in that relatively small patch of earth” – as George Tenet, the former head of the CIA, put it in his memoir – and so understanding how and why that patch came into being, and the grave limits of the martial course it is following, has a very great, even transcendent value.

In July 2003 Foreign Minister Shalom predicted that Iran would have nuclear bomb capability by 2006. It did not have nuclear weapons in 2006, though in fact a successful strike by conventional missiles on Dimona, Israel’s nuclear facility, would radioactivate a good part of Israel – and both Iran and Syria have such missiles. Defense Minister Ehud Barak, during Vice-President Dick Cheney’s visit in late March 2008, stated that “Iran’s weapons program threatens not only the stability of the region, but of the whole world,” and he did not rule out a war with it. By spring 2008 Israel was also very concerned about the growing ascendancy of Hizbollah in Lebanon and its greatly increased firepower – mainly in the form of rockets capable of striking much of Israel. It regards Hizbollah as a tool of Iran, and its focus on Iran concerns its control over Hizbollah as well as its ability to challenge Israel’s nuclear monopoly. But there can be no doubt that Hizbollah’s strength has only grown since Israel attacked it in Lebanon in the summer of 2006. Israel now has an enemy that can inflict immense damage on it, probably resulting in highly skilled Jews migrating far faster than they already are at present – even now, more Jews are leaving Israel than migrating to it.

The existence of Israel is scarcely the only reason American policy in the region is as bad as it is. After all, it did not take Zionism to encourage Washington to seek the elimination of British influence in the region, and today no one can tell how long the US will remain mired in the affairs of the Middle East. But Israel is now a vital factor. While the extent of its role can be debated, without it the politics of the entire Middle East would be different – troubled but very different.

At least equally nefarious in the long run, Israel’s existence has radicalized – but in a negative sense – the Arab world, distracting it from natural class differences that often overcome religious and tribal ties. It has fanned Arab nationalism abysmally and given it a transcendent negative identity.

I am very realistic – and pessimistic – about an eventual negotiated solution to the crisis that has surrounded Palestine and Israel. Given the magnitude of the changes needed, the present situation justifies the most dismal conclusions. After all, the Arabs that live under Israeli control will quite soon outnumber the Jewish population, leaving a de facto Jewish state in which Jews are a minority! This fact is becoming deeply troublesome within Israeli politics today, causing former expansionists to reverse their position and leading to more and more internal controversy. Nor will there ever be an administration in Washington ready to do diplomatically what none has ever dared do since 1947, namely compel Israel to make an equitable peace with the Arabs.

Neither a one- nor two-state solution will come to pass. But the Jewish population is very likely to decline, and if it falls sufficiently then demography may prove to be a crucial factor. The ratio of Jews to Arabs would then become highly significant. The Jews in Israel are highly skilled and many have gotten out, migrating abroad. The Israeli military is the most powerful in the region because it has been deluged with American equipment, which it has learned to service. But US forces need repairmen to service the very same equipment, more than ever because recruitment into the American military is now lower than it has been in a quarter-century (not to mention its astronomical suicide rate), and skilled Israelis can take jobs with America’s armed forces that they are eminently qualified to fill. Moreover, Iran and the other Arab states will eventually develop or acquire nuclear weapons, making Israel incredibly insecure for its highly mobile Jewish population – one exhausted by regular service in compulsory reserves. And as already suggested, destroying Dimona with conventional missiles or mortars would be a cheap way to radioactivate a good part of Israel. Even worse, Osama bin Laden, or someone like him, may acquire a nuclear device, and one nuclear bomb detonated in or near Israel will effectively destroy what is a tiny area. Whoever destroys Israel will be proclaimed a hero in the Arab world. To those with skills, the answer is clear: get out. And getting out they are.

There are also Orthodox Jews in Israel but Israeli mass culture is now virtually indistinguishable from consumerism anywhere – in many crucial respects, there is more Judaism in parts of Brooklyn or Toronto than in most of Israel. The Orthodox too may be ready to leave behind the insecurity and troubles confronting those who live in a nation that is, after all, a part of a highly unstable region.

Sober and quite rational Israelis exist, of course, and I cite them often enough, but American policy will be determined by factors having nothing to do with them. Unfortunately, rational Israelis are an all too small minority.

Gabriel Kolko is the leading historian of modern warfare. He is the author of the classic Century of War: Politics, Conflicts and Society Since 1914, Another Century of War? and The Age of War: the US Confronts the World and After Socialism. He has also written the best history of the Vietnam War, Anatomy of a War: Vietnam, the US and the Modern Historical Experience. His latest book is World in Crisis, from which this essay has been excerpted.

Mossad linked to hijacking of Arctic Sea

WMR's Finnish sources are reporting that there is increased speculation that the Russian-crewed, Maltese-flagged ship "Arctic Sea" that was en route from Finland to Algeria with a cargo of timber was hijacked by a group linked to the Israeli Mossad. There are two lines of thought on what prompted the hijacking of the ship in Swedish waters: either the vessel was actually transporting suspicious cargo along with the timber or the Israelis acted in a "false flag" operation designed to embarrass Russian President Dmitry Medvedev and Prime Minister Vladimir Putin over Russia's defense ties to Iran.

Circulating in the Russian and Ukrainian press is a story that the "Arctic Sea" was transporting X55 cruise missiles and S300 anti-aircraft rockets to Iran via Algeria.

The August 24 Finnish afternoon newspaper Iltalehti stated: "according to recent rumors which have become known to the public, Israel's Mossad may have been behind the capture of the 'Arctic Sea.' According to Russian and Ukrainian newspaper articles, the Russians tried to secretly ship missiles to Iran from Pietarsaari through Algeria. Israel may have received some intelligence about the shipment and they sent their agents to take action.

According to Russian newspapers, the crew of 'Arctic Sea' was aware of the fact that it was transporting 'unusual' cargo, but did not exactly know what it was. The eight men who captured the ship have been arrested and they will be interrogated in Moscow. Also, most of the crew members have arrived in Russia but they have not yet been able to meet their relatives. Mossad is one of the most effective intelligence services in the world and internationally it has become known for arresting Nazi criminals and the assassination of Arab terrorists."

Helsingin Sanomat on August 25 reported: "Russia does not 'reveal' the Arctic Sea mystery. Concerning the investigation of the capture of 'Arctic Sea,' very little information has been available from Russia, though Russian authorities have interrogated the crew and the captors for several days. The Russian fleet captured the 'Arctic Sea' last Monday (August 17th) and flew part of the crew and their captors to Moscow last Thursday, where they were moved to a prison awaiting trial in Lefortovo. Finnish criminal police have no information concerning why the crew was in custody or whether they are also suspect. A Russian prosecutor stated during the weekend that the crew has been moved to protective custody, because they required witness protection. Finnish criminal police investigators have not travelled to Russia to make their own determinations, but the situation may change. Finnish criminal police are interested in the 'Arctic Sea' ship, which Russia has reported to have been docked at the Black Sea port of Novorossiisk. "It is the place where the crime was committed," and it is of interest for that reason. In addition, "there is the cargo, the destination for which is Algeria, and the company here [in Helsinki] is of interest." Estonia has joined the international investigation group with Finland, Sweden and Malta. Finnish crimonal police think this will ease the information exchange, as the suspected capturers are Estonian citizens or residents of Estonia. Also, EU and EUROPOL are interested in the company. Concerning the investigation responsibilities, there is no agreement with Russia."

Previous reports that the hijackers are ethnic Russians from Russia, Estonia, Latvia and that three are "stateless" and one is of unknown nationality and that all are possibly linked to the Russian-Israeli Mafia, with one report from Russia linking Ukraine to the caper, fits a well-known pattern of joint Israeli criminal syndicate-Mossad operations intended to undermine Russia. Two Estonians of Russian descent have been named as part of the hijacking team: Yevgeni Mironov, an Estonian citizen and Igor Borisov, an Estonian legal resident. Russia has cracked down on dual Russian-Israeli criminal tycoons, many of whom now live in Israel and Britain with INTERPOL arrest warrants hanging over their heads. Mironov and another hijacker, Dmitry Bartenev, have past criminal records.

The attempt by the usual Russian-Israeli media suspects, mainly those that operate with funding from George Soros and Boris Berezovsky, to pin something sinister on Russia is normal procedure. There is also the secret marching orders for NATO's new Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen: as a Scandinavian, he is expected to use his influence to bring the Baltic Sea's two remaining non-NATO members into the organization. With France abandoning the Gaullist principle of a European defense organization independent of the United States, it is now expected that all Europe Union members, including Sweden and Finland, also become members of NATO, the organization that keeps the beak of the American eagle under Europe's tent.

Answering the shofar call, some papers in Europe are now reporting that the "Arctic Sea" took on a consignment of weapons for Iran or Syria in the Russian port of Kaliningrad and was able to sail to the Finnish port of Pietarsaari to take on a cargo of timber that cleverly hid the weapons. That, of course, would have involved the collusion of the Russo-Finnish operator Solchart Arkhangelsk Ltd. and the largest paper and pulp producer in Europe, Stora Enso Oy. The Arctic Sea was then boarded by "pirates" near the Swedish island of Oland where ship and boating traffic is heavy and sailed "undetected" all the way to the waters near the Cape Verde islands.

There was also a report that the "Arctic Sea's" captain told the Russian Navy interception team off Cape Verde that his ship was actually the North Korean vessel Chongdin 2, en route from Havana to Sierra Leone with palm timber, an unusual cargo for a country where palms are prevalent. However, North Korea verified that the Chongdin 2 was in Angola. However, the fact that the "Arctic Sea" was heading in the direction of Angola at the time it was intercepted may have been part of a plan to confuse the two vessels and embroil North Korea in a Mossad-planned ruse to link Russia, Algeria, Syria, Iran, and North Korea, what can be described as Tel Aviv's "Axis of Evil."

For Rasmussen, this is a God-send: Finland and Sweden are obvious holes in NATO's northern security and they should be brought into the fold. As for Russia, Israel and its exiled Russian mobster pals chalk up another embarrassment for their sworn enemy Putin. It is also noteworthy that after the "Arctic Sea" was found by the Russian Navy off Cape Verde, Israeli President Shimon Peres immediately flew to Sochi to tell Medvedev not to sell Iran the S-300 anti-aircraft missile system, which reportedly renders Israeli offensive measures and countermeasures useless.

LTTE: Hillary's fear factor, maintains Bush's scare tactics

An open letter to Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, copy to President Barrack
Obama

When you have had an electronic mailbox as long as I have, it is inevitable that large quantities of unwanted mail start showing up, usually in waves with brief periods of respite when the antiviral software gears up and shuts down the spammers.

One piece of mail I get every three to six months was unexpected. The “Worldwide Caution – Warden Message” letter sent from the U.S. Embassy in Paris to registered U.S. citizens in France. I expected to get just about anything under the reign of G.W. Bush from the Warden, but since President Obama has taken office the same “service” continues. The last note (July 29, 2009) is over 2,300 words and six pages of dire warnings to overseas Americans that they are in grave danger from “terrorist attacks, demonstrations, and other violent actions”. The letter is if anything, inclusive, as it covers not only France, but also the Middle East, North Africa, East Africa, West Africa, South and Central Asia and the rest of Europe. There are detailed descriptions of dozens of “bombings, hijackings, hostage taking, kidnapping and assassinations” and assaults with “explosive devices … non-conventional weapons, including chemical or biological agents …”.

I wonder when reading the Warden’s message just how all this effects me and my family who have lived in central Paris for the past thirty-five years and have seen our share of demonstrations, and a period of terror back in the 1990’s that has never been elucidated.

A similar note a while back when the Bush people were still in office alerted me to the immanent danger of a demonstration between the Place de la Nation and La Bastille that “could deteriorate and become a threat to American nationals”. The striking French nurses did not lash out at me with their stethoscopes as I wandered by totally absorbed by my crossword puzzle from the International Herald Tribune. If there were any potential terrorists ready to commit grievous acts, they took it out on their patients in the following weeks and I was grateful to have avoided hospitalization during those difficult days.

I also wonder that if I express my disgust with this spewing out of fantasies of disorder, decline and humiliation, whether I am exposing myself. If anything happens to me will I be ridiculed or held accountable for not maintaining a suitable level of paranoia? Is it better to keep my mouth shut than to tick off the powers that be? Apparently if the current administration and Secretary of State Hillary Clinton require that the U.S. Embassy vomit out this tripe to maintain a necessary state of vigilance among the citizenry, then we must be in tight straights indeed.

I am sorry; I will not keep my mouth shut. The people who are paid to churn out this letter are not defenders of democracy. They are populist demagogues who are a danger to us and themselves.

In 1995 a series of assassinations, bombings and attempted bombings electrified France. The police worked quietly and mostly in secret killing one suspect in a shootout and identifying a radical Islamist group from Algeria (the GIA) as the probable terrorists responsible. The GIA had been very effective in eliminating the non-Islamist opposition to the Algerian generals. The question never answered was: is the GIA a terrorist organization or a front organization for the Algerian secret police? See Nzaima Bouteldja, “Who Really Bombed Paris” in http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2005/sep/08/france.comment. In all cases these are really bad guys and I wouldn’t want to meet them in the metro. The
noticeable difference between the reactions of the U.S. government now and the French government then, was that the French did not pamper up to populist fear mongering. Parisians had to go out of their way to find out where the investigations were going. The citizenry carried on with a stiff upper lip. When the free publicity for terrorist recruiters was not forthcoming, terror, as if by magic, dried up and lapsed from public consciousness, while the police went about the real work of tracking down the guilty.

Fascism grows in the disturbed soil of a mature democracy in crisis. Fascist movements take root, turn into real political parties, and seize their seat at the table of power in such circumstances described in this letter. When the power elite form a deliberate, committed institutional partnership with brownshirts, then we are on the road to real fascism. (All these steps are cited from Robert Paxton, The Journal of Modern History, 1998, as analyzed by Sara Robinson in “Is the U.S. on the Brink of Fascism” on
http://www.alternet.org/story/141819.)

So let’s be positive and propose an alternative to President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton before it’s too late. First of all you should fire these Bush holdovers. They haven’t got a clue what overseas Americans have for everyday issues. They are not going to endorse this administration’s programs unless they are the same programs Bush shoved down our throats through blatant lying, distortion and state-sponsored terror. These guys would be of much more use back in southside Chicago. There have been no warnings from the Warden to U.S. citizens concerning visits to Illinois (my home state). There were more murders in Chicago last year (509) than U.S. soldiers killed in Iraq (314). This year shows no improvement on either front.

Secondly, as a cost saving measure, if the State Department must publish such grim warnings, why not take out a subscription to the National Enquirer for all overseas Americans. It would at least give us a hint of what’s happening “back in the world” as well. Some observers have even pointed out that since the Enquirer switched from “flying saucers – freaks – felons” format to celebrity gossip they have been better than many at ferreting out dirt on Washington wrong doers.

Third, in all cases, at least adhere to internet standards for embassy email. Internet publicists are required to put an “unsubscribe” link on the bottom of the page. Without it most anti-viral software will automatically class your letters as spam, which is what they are, with or without the unsubscribe
button.

Tom Nagel
Paris, France