Attacking Libya -- and the Dictionary - If Americans Don’t Get Hurt, War Is No Longer War

If Americans Don’t Get Hurt, War Is No Longer War
By Jonathan Schell

The Obama administration has come up with a remarkable justification for going to war against Libya without the congressional approval required by the Constitution and the War Powers Resolution of 1973. 

American planes are taking off, they are entering Libyan air space, they are locating targets, they are dropping bombs, and the bombs are killing and injuring people and destroying things. It is war. Some say it is a good war and some say it is a bad war, but surely it is a war.

Nonetheless, the Obama administration insists it is not a war. Why?  Because, according to “United States Activities in Libya,” a 32-page report that the administration released last week, “U.S. operations do not involve sustained fighting or active exchanges of fire with hostile forces, nor do they involve the presence of U.S. ground troops, U.S. casualties or a serious threat thereof, or any significant chance of escalation into a conflict characterized by those factors.” 

In other words, the balance of forces is so lopsided in favor of the United States that no Americans are dying or are threatened with dying. War is only war, it seems, when Americans are dying, when we die.  When only they, the Libyans, die, it is something else for which there is as yet apparently no name. When they attack, it is war. When we attack, it is not.

This cannot be classified as anything but strange thinking and it depends, in turn, on a strange fact: that, in our day, it is indeed possible for some countries (or maybe only our own), for the first time in history, to wage war without receiving a scratch in return. This was nearly accomplished in the bombing of Serbia in 1999, in which only one American plane was shot down (and the pilot rescued).

The epitome of this new warfare is the predator drone, which has become an emblem of the Obama administration. Its human operators can sit at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada or in Langley, Virginia, while the drone floats above Afghanistan or Pakistan or Yemen or Libya, pouring destruction down from the skies.  War waged in this way is without casualties for the wager because none of its soldiers are near the scene of battle -- if that is even the right word for what is going on.

Some strange conclusions follow from this strange thinking and these strange facts. In the old scheme of things, an attack on a country was an act of war, no matter who launched it or what happened next.  Now, the Obama administration claims that if the adversary cannot fight back, there is no war.

It follows that adversaries of the United States have a new motive for, if not equaling us, then at least doing us some damage.  Only then will they be accorded the legal protections (such as they are) of authorized war.  Without that, they are at the mercy of the whim of the president.

The War Powers Resolution permits the president to initiate military operations only when the nation is directly attacked, when there is “a national emergency created by attack upon the United States, its territories or possessions, or its armed forces.”  The Obama administration, however, justifies its actions in the Libyan intervention precisely on the grounds that there is no threat to the invading forces, much less the territories of the United States.

There is a parallel here with the administration of George W. Bush on the issue of torture (though not, needless to say, a parallel between the Libyan war itself, which I oppose but whose merits can be reasonably debated, and torture, which was wholly reprehensible).  President Bush wanted the torture he was ordering not to be considered torture, so he arranged to get lawyers in the Justice department to write legal-sounding opinions excluding certain forms of torture, such as waterboarding, from the definition of the word.  Those practices were thenceforward called “enhanced interrogation techniques.”
Now, Obama wants his Libyan war not to be a war and so has arranged to define a certain kind of war -- the American-casualty-free kind -- as not war (though without even the full support of his own lawyers). Along with Libya, a good English word -- war -- is under attack.

In these semantic operations of power upon language, a word is separated from its commonly accepted meaning. The meanings of words are one of the few common grounds that communities naturally share. When agreed meanings are challenged, no one can use the words in question without stirring up spurious “debates,” as happened with the word torture. For instance, mainstream news organizations, submissive to George Bush’s decisions on the meanings of words, stopped calling waterboarding torture and started calling it other things, including “enhanced interrogation techniques,” but also “harsh treatment,” “abusive practices,” and so on. 

Will the news media now stop calling the war against Libya a war?  No euphemism for war has yet caught on, though soon after launching its Libyan attacks, an administration official proposed the phrase “kinetic military action” and more recently, in that 32-page report, the term of choice was “limited military operations.” No doubt someone will come up with something catchier soon. 

How did the administration twist itself into this pretzel? An interview that Charlie Savage and Mark Landler of the New York Times held with State Department legal advisor Harold Koh sheds at least some light on the matter.  Many administrations and legislators have taken issue with the War Powers Resolution, claiming it challenges powers inherent in the presidency. Others, such as Bush administration Deputy Assistant Attorney General John Yoo, have argued that the Constitution’s plain declaration that Congress “shall declare war” does not mean what most readers think it means, and so leaves the president free to initiate all kinds of wars.

Koh has long opposed these interpretations -- and in a way, even now, he remains consistent. Speaking for the administration, he still upholds Congress’s power to declare war and the constitutionality of the War Powers Resolution. “We are not saying the president can take the country into war on his own,” he told the Times. “We are not saying the War Powers Resolution is unconstitutional or should be scrapped or that we can refuse to consult Congress. We are saying the limited nature of this particular mission is not the kind of ‘hostilities’ envisioned by the War Powers Resolution.”

In a curious way, then, a desire to avoid challenge to existing law has forced assault on the dictionary. For the Obama administration to go ahead with a war lacking any form of Congressional authorization, it had to challenge either law or the common meaning of words. Either the law or language had to give.
It chose language.

Jonathan Schell is the Doris M. Shaffer Fellow at The Nation Institute, and a Senior Lecturer at Yale University.  He is the author of several books, including The Unconquerable World: Power, Nonviolence, and the Will of the People. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Schell discusses war and the imperial presidency, click here, or download it to your iPod here.
Copyright 2011 Jonathan Schell

9/11 and the Orwellian Redefinition of "Conspiracy Theory"

by Paul Craig Roberts

While we were not watching, conspiracy theory has undergone Orwellian redefinition.

A “conspiracy theory” no longer means an event explained by a conspiracy.  Instead, it now means any explanation, or even a fact, that is out of step with the government’s explanation and that of its media pimps.

For example, online news broadcasts of RT have been equated with conspiracy theories by the New York Times simply because RT reports news and opinions that the New York Times does not report and the US government does not endorse.

In other words, as truth becomes uncomfortable for government and its Ministry of Propaganda, truth is redefined as conspiracy theory, by which is meant an absurd and laughable explanation that we should ignore.

When piles of carefully researched books, released government documents, and testimony of eye witnesses made it clear that Oswald was not President John F. Kennedy’s assassin, the voluminous research, government documents, and verified testimony was dismissed as “conspiracy theory.”

In other words, the truth of the event was unacceptable to the authorities and to the Ministry of Propaganda that represents the interests of authorities.

The purest example of how Americans are shielded from truth is the media’s (including many Internet sites’) response to the large number of professionals who find the official explanation of September 11, 2001, inconsistent with everything they, as experts, know about physics, chemistry, structural engineering, architecture, fires, structural damage, the piloting of airplanes, the security procedures of the United States, NORAD’s capabilities, air traffic control, airport security, and other matters.  These experts, numbering in the thousands, have been shouted down by know-nothings in the media  who brand the experts as “conspiracy theorists.”

This despite the fact that the official explanation endorsed by the official media is the most extravagant conspiracy theory in human history.

Let’s take a minute to re-acquaint ourselves with the official explanation, which is not regarded as a conspiracy theory despite the fact that it comprises an amazing conspiracy.  The official truth is that a handful of young Muslim Arabs who could not fly airplanes, mainly Saudi Arabians who came neither from Iraq nor from Afghanistan, outwitted not only the CIA and the FBI, but also all 16  US intelligence agencies and all intelligence agencies of US allies including Israel’s Mossad, which is believed to have penetrated every terrorist organization and which carries out assassinations of those whom Mossad marks as terrorists.

In addition to outwitting every intelligence agency of the United States and its allies, the handful of young Saudi Arabians outwitted the National Security Council, the State Department, NORAD, airport security four times in the same hour on the same morning,  air traffic control, caused the US Air Force to be unable to launch interceptor aircraft,  and caused three well-built steel-structured buildings, including one not hit by an airplane, to fail suddenly in a few seconds as a result of limited structural damage and small, short-lived, low-temperature fires that burned on a few floors.

The Saudi terrorists were even able to confound the laws of physics and cause WTC building seven to collapse at free fall speed for several seconds, a physical impossibility in the absence of explosives used in controlled demolition.

The story that the government and the media have told us amounts to a gigantic conspiracy, really a script for a James Bond film. Yet, anyone who doubts this improbable conspiracy theory is defined into irrelevance by the obedient media.

Anyone who believes an architect, structural engineer, or demolition expert who says that the videos show that the buildings are blowing up, not falling down, anyone who believes a Ph.D. physicist who says that the official explanation is inconsistent with known laws of physics, anyone who believes expert pilots who testify that non-pilots or poorly-qualified pilots cannot fly airplanes in such maneuvers, anyone who believes the 100 or more first responders who testify that they not only heard explosions in the towers but personally experienced explosions, anyone who believes University of Copenhagen nano-chemist Niels Harrit who reports finding unreacted nano-thermite in dust samples from the WTC towers, anyone who is convinced by experts instead of by propaganda is dismissed as a kook.

In America today, and increasingly throughout the Western world, actual facts and true explanations have been relegated to the realm of kookiness.  Only people who believe lies are socially approved and accepted as patriotic citizens.

Indeed, a writer or newscaster is not even permitted to report the findings of 9/11 skeptics.  In other words, simply to report Professor Harrit’s findings now means that you endorse them or agree with them.  Everyone in the US print and TV media knows that he/she will be instantly fired if they report Harrit’s findings, even with a laugh. Thus, although Harrit has reported his findings on European television and has lectured widely on his findings in Canadian universities, the fact that he and the international scientific research team that he led found unreacted nano-thermite in the WTC dust and have offered samples to other scientists to examine has to my knowledge never been reported in the American media.

Even Internet sites on which I am among the readers’ favorites will not allow me to report on Harrit’s findings.

As I reported earlier, I myself had experience with a Huffington Post reporter who was keen to interview a Reagan presidential appointee who was in disagreement with the Republican wars in the Middle East.  After he published the interview that I provided at his request, he was terrified to learn that I had reported findings of 9/11 investigators.  To protect his career, he quickly inserted on the online interview that my views on the Iraq and Afghanistan invasions could be dismissed as I had reported unacceptable findings about 9/11.

The unwillingness or inability to entertain any view of 9/11 different from the official view dooms to impotence many Internet sites that are opposed to the wars and to the rise of the domestic US police state.  These sites, for whatever the reasons, accept the government’s explanation of 9/11; yet, they try to oppose the  “war on terror” and the police state which are the consequences of accepting the government’s explanation. Trying to oppose the consequences of an event whose explanation you accept is an impossible task.

If you believe that America was attacked by Muslim terrorists and is susceptible to future attacks, then a “war on terror” and a domestic police state to root out terrorists become necessary to make Americans safe. The idea that a domestic police state and open-ended war might be more dangerous threats to Americans than terrorists is an impermissible thought.

A country whose population has been trained to accept the government’s word and to shun those who question it is a country without liberty in its future.

Why the NATO powers are trying to assassinate Moammar Gaddafi

Protecting civilians or western oil companies?

By Brian Becker

Wikileaks-released State Department cables from November 2007 and afterwards show the real reason for the mounting U.S. hostility to the Libyan government prior to the current civil war.

NATO has been dropping devastating bunker-busting bombs on Muammar Gaddafi's home in an attempt to assassinate him. One son and several grandchildren have died but Gaddafi has survived. The State Department cables give background to the hostility directed against Gaddafi by the United States and other NATO powers.

One State Department cable from November 2007 (Wikileaks reference ID 07TRIPOLI967) sounds the alarm of “growing evidence of Libyan resource nationalism” by the Gaddafi government. This was almost identical language employed by the U.S. and British governments against Iranian Prime Minister Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh when he nationalized Iran’s oil field in 1951. Mossadegh was overthrown by a 1953 CIA coup that restored the Shah to the throne. It allowed U.S. and British oil companies to re-take ownership over Iran’s oil until the 1979 revolution.

The crime of “resource nationalism”

Condemning “Libyan resource nationalism” is diplomatic language. The U.S. government was furious that Gaddafi was moving to rein in and limit the power and profits of the western-owned oil giants that he permitted to come back into the country after George W. Bush in 2004 lifted economic sanctions against Libya.

The same cable refers to an angry speech that Gaddafi made in 2006 which was interpreted as a virtual act of war by the oil companies and the U.S. and western governments.

Gaddafi's speech included these unacceptable words: “Oil companies are controlled by foreigners who have made millions from them—now, Libyans must take their place to profit from this money.”

Oil reserves in Libya are largest in Africa

Libya has the largest oil reserves in Africa and the ninth largest in the world with 41.5 billion barrels as of 2007. The U.S. government and oil industry surveys conclude that Libya has 63 years of reserves at current production rates if no new reserves were to be found. But Libya is considered to have many unexplored reserves. Libya has been a big prize for the western oil giants both because of the quantity of oil and of the particularly high quality of Libyan oil.

In 2008, according to another leaked State Department cable, Gaddafi summoned Conoco-Phillips Chief Executive Jim Mulva to a meeting in Sirte, Libya. There he threatened to expel U.S. oil companies and “threatened to dramatically reduce Libya’s oil production.”

The oil companies and the State Department, as the cables indicate, were increasingly agitated by Gaddafi’s interference with their operations. The Washington Post, which is a big cheerleader for the U.S./NATO bombing campaign, published a story on June 11, 2011, about the leaked Libya cables: “Labor laws were amended to ‘Libyanise’ the economy, and oil firms were pressed to hire Libyan managers, finance people and human resource directors.”

Gaddafi 2009 speech suggested nationalizing Libyan oil

Another Wikileaks-released State Department cable from Jan. 30, 2009, (Wikileaks reference ID 09TRIPOLI71) discusses a January 2009 speech by Gaddafi, stating, “Muammar al-Qadhafi suggested that Libya and other oil exporting states could nationalize their oil production in view of sharply plummeting petroleum prices.”

The U.S. government fully backed the Saudi monarchy and the Mubarak dictatorship, but turned on Libya—not because the regime violated human rights or democracy, but because Gaddafi sought to limit their power. The oil companies, however annoyed they were by having to work with the Libyan government, would have certainly continued their current business operations. The opening of a civil war inside of Libya in February 2011, however, gave a perfect pretext to overthrow the regime and place in power a government that the NATO powers hope will serve as a client regime.

In any country, Libya included, the masses of people can have many valid and legitimate grievances against their government. Even those who support Gaddafi against the NATO bombers probably have grievances. But the U.S., British, French and Italian governments are at war to protect their own interests. Protecting civilians and promoting democracy is of zero concern to Conoco-Phillips, Exxon-Mobil or any of the other oil giants.

The Wikileaks-released State Department cables make it clear that the basis for U.S. hostility to the Gaddafi regime was about who should control Libya’s vast oil reserves. Should it be Libya or should it be the biggest capitalist oil enterprises from western countries?

“Those who dominate Libya’s political and economic leadership are pursuing increasingly nationalistic policies in the energy sector that could jeopardize efficient exploitation of Libya’s extensive oil and gas reserves,” the November 2007 cable states.

Anti-Gaddafi rebels in Washington, D.C.

In mid-May 2011, just six weeks after the NATO bombing of Libya began, leaders of the anti-Gaddafi rebel movement came to Washington, D.C., for “talks.” They spoke at the U.S.-Libya Business Council. The big oil companies were present. The rebels have employed a public relations/lobbying organization based in Washington, D.C., called the Harbour Group.

The principals of the Harbour Group include Hillary Clinton’s staff director from the 1992 presidential campaign of Bill Clinton. Another served as a spokesperson for the presidential campaigns of Ronald Reagan and other conservative Republicans. The third served as a public relations figure in the last three Democratic presidential conventions, according to Reuters.

“Now you can figure out who’s going to win, and the name is not Gaddafi,” Nansan Saleri, the founder of the Houston-based Quantico Reservoir Impact company told the Washington Post. Saleri, former head of reservoir management at Saudi Aramco, explained why the company wouldn’t do business in Libya until now. “Everything in Libya—everything—had to be approved by Gaddafi or one of his sons,” he told the Post. Saleri continued, “Certain things about the mosaic are taking shape. The western companies are positioning themselves.” Within five years, he predicted, “Libyan production is going to be higher than right now and investments are going to come in.”

Libya today is resisting the new colonialism. The colonizers assign noble names such as “protecting civilians” to their military mission. But their role in Africa and the Middle East during the past decades and centuries deprive such propaganda of any credibility. They rely though on the uniformity of the corporate-owned media coverage about their “humanitarian motives” to disguise their crass and cynical plans in Libya and elsewhere.

The cold hard cash counter-revolution By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE
The cold hard cash counter-revolution
By Pepe Escobar

To follow Pepe's articles on the Great Arab Revolt, please click here.

The counter-revolution, paraphrasing the late, great soul jazz poet Gil Scott-Heron, will not be televised; it will float downstream flush with hard cash. Take Egypt. The House of Saud has just given Supreme Military Council leader Field Marshall Tantawi US$4 billion in cold hard cash - although not even the Sphinx knows for sure how much power Tantawi, 75, deposed tyrant Hosni Mubarak's former minister of defense, really wields.

Washington extended Cairo $1 billion in "debt forgiveness" and another $1 billion in loan guarantees. Not much - compared to what Washington extends to Israel, but still a signal. And then the International Monetary Fund extended an extra $3 billion in loans. The "new" Egypt will start to do business already bound in unforgiving chains.

This goes a long way to explain how the "opening" of Rafah - the border with Gaza - was not really an opening. The quota of free-moving Gazans is a maximum of 400 a day; and no less than 5,000 Gazans remain blacklisted. So essentially the gulag situation remains similar to Mubarak-sanctioned levels.

This also goes a long way to explain why now you see it/now you don't tentative Egyptian presidential candidate Mohamed ElBaradei is now on an overdrive charm offensive on Saudi media - singing the praises of King Abdullah while performing the contortionism of ignoring frenetic Saudi support for Mubarak until (and beyond) the last minute.

Cash is king

In Yemen, the House of Saud is - what else - buying Yemeni tribes with cold hard cash, in the name of "stability in the region". Even though it is living up to its reputation of prime asylum for fleeing Arab dictators, the House of Saud officially is in favor of President Abdullah Saleh stepping down in the name of "less bloodshed and less unpredictability".

The House of Saud insists - no irony intended - Saleh is being hosted for "humanitarian motives". Officially, the House of Saud also abhors a "power vacuum". Said vacuum nonetheless remains quite persistent, now coupled with fears of "rising chaos". Washington, meanwhile, scans the horizon frantically trying to spot any dronable al-Qaeda in the Arabic Peninsula (AQAP) "targets".

If Saleh ships himself back to Yemen that could only happen because the House of Saud said so. So we have a situation where Saleh's son Ali is commanding the elite Republican Guard - from inside the presidential palace - and his four cousins are also in control of key military units. The current "acting" leader, Vice President Abdu-Rabo Mansur Hadi, is a figurehead.

Saudi Arabia seems to condone, for now, this theoretically vacuum-cleaned power arrangement. As for the wide-ranging Yemeni protest movement, their only shot now would be to force Hadi to hang on, push for a transitional government, and try to quell the counter-revolution, directed by Saleh's family, with people power. If that's the case, the House of Saud will brutally - and directly - step in.

In Bahrain, the House of Saud explicitly supports the National Human Rights Organization; no wonder, its head was appointed by King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa last year, so the organization must support the ruling dynasty - yet not as much as the Saudi masters. Bahrain's really independent human-rights organizations, meanwhile, have had their leading activists arrested and facing military trials.

And just like a thief in the dead of night, who sneaked into Washington to be received at the White House by US President Barack Obama this past Tuesday? No one else than Bahrain's Crown Prince Salman al-Khalifa.

There was no press conference. There were no pictures. It's like this conversation would self-destruct in five seconds - but it did take place, between a drone-heavy Nobel Peace Prize and the head of the military of a Persian Gulf American satrapy which is busy toppling its own people. No amount of rhetoric will alter the math: Washington fully backs outright repression all across the Persian Gulf - to the extreme delight of the House of Saud.

He is heavy, he's no brother

Then there's the Muslim Brotherhood question - essential in the context of the carefully orchestrated US/Saudi counter-revolution.

The Muslim Brotherhood is being instrumentalized by the House of Saud all across the board, from Syria to Egypt. In Egypt, the reactionary old guard Brotherhood is working very close with the Military Council; "rewards" for good behavior by both Washington and Riyadh should be in the works.

Clearly this won't translate as an endorsement of ElBaradei - whose appeal is towards disenfranchised young people, liberals, a few leftists and a smatter of progressive Islamists who defected from the "traditional" Muslim Brotherhood.

As for the even more reactionary Salafis, they are now getting into Facebook groups, in a public relations offensive to try to improve their dreadful image and sort of mingle with "other intellectual and political currents".

Saudi media meanwhile is awash with their own public relations extolling the merits of the kingdom and denigrating the "corruption of the ruling family and its cronies" in selected Arab republics such as Syria and Libya. According to the official platform of the Gulf Counter-Revolution Club, also known as Gulf Cooperation Council (GCC), all Arab monarchies are as virtuous as virgins in paradise.

As the cold hard cash counter-revolution goes on, the future of the great 2011 Arab revolt looks grimmer and grimmer. It all depends on how forcefully the Tahrir Square spirit will keep the Military Council in Egypt in check. And how progressive forces in Egypt, Yemen and beyond find ways to counterpunch the relentless impact of the House of Saud oil wealth.

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.

Bin Laden Death Script & the Needed Trigger for Next Step-Pakistan

Time to Talk about ‘Why & Why Now’ It has been over two weeks since the orchestrated ever-changing Bin Laden Death. The question of what happened remains the same except it doesn’t seem to matter any longer. The US media is done after making their initial splash, and the majority is left with one conclusion: the SOB is dead, and who gives a da… how it happened. Whether Osama held an AK-47 while using some damsel in distress as a shield, whether there was a real fight or not, whether it was really Osama’s body in an organic edible shell we fed to the endangered sharks, whether the full credit goes to the CIA or the White House or the Pentagon …no longer seems to matter. Dizzy-fying confusion induced by dozens and dozens of lies and discrepancies and denials has given way to post-adrenaline-rush exhaustion. The question of what happened has been classified as moot and irrelevant. Right or wrong I’ll leave that question behind, at least for now, and instead, go back to focus on the more important question- the question of ‘why and why now.’
As I stated during the first few days of covering the Bin Laden Death Script, when it comes to DC dirty politics, when it comes to the new world order machine, and when it comes to US presidents, timing is everything and there are no such things as coincidences:

Considering the mainstream media’s sensationalism and propaganda tactics and their cemented role as an extension of the establishment, one must step back and take in the entire landscape, the context, connections, and of course the timing. Only after that, after putting the pieces together instead of dumbly staring at the images spread before us by the media, we have a chance to get a grasp of the reality-facts; or at least a chance to come up with real questions.

In the past two weeks, after talking with many experts and sources, both nationally and internationally, Pakistan has been surfacing as the common thread holding the most rational explanation of ‘why and why now.’ Interestingly, I came across the following statement by Rep. Ron Paul during his interview on MSNBC’s Morning Joe:

“The helicopters that landed in Abbottabad won’t be the last to put American troops on the ground in Pakistan, I see the whole thing as a mess, and I think that we are going to be in Pakistan. I think that’s the next occupation and I fear it. I think it’s ridiculous, and I think our foreign policy is such that we don’t need to be doing this.”

I was planning to write a comprehensive piece based on information and analyses I have gathered from my solid intelligence and Pentagon sources. However, after watching the interview with Ron Paul (And he has his credible sources), I decided to go ahead and write a fairly quick commentary on why the question of ‘why and why now’ keeps pointing to Pakistan as the next probable occupation target for our never-dying neocon objective-makers. Actually the following is more of significant developments and a timeline than a subjective interpretation or commentary. I am going to put them together and have us look at the pattern and where these points point to, and that’s exactly what I meant by “one must step back and take in the entire landscape, the context, connections, and of course the timing.”
Let’s start with Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which was launched in 1997 and became known for leading the public campaign to oust Saddam Hussein both before and after the September 11 attacks. As many of my highly aware readers know, those neocons, their objectives and activities, never go away. They may change names or change a few front faces, but like a leech they always hold on to the system; the system they help put in place in the first place:

The blandly-named Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) – the brainchild of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, neo-conservative foreign policy guru Robert Kagan, and former Bush administration official Dan Senor – has thus far kept a low profile; its only activity to this point has been to sponsor a conference pushing for a U.S. “surge” in Afghanistan.But some see FPI as a likely successor to Kristol’s and Kagan’s previous organisation, the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which they launched in 1997 and which became best known for leading the public campaign to oust former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein both before and after the Sep. 11 attacks.
…

So what’s their mission statement, and what have these neocons been cooking up with the new face, their new president, Obama? The following is from an article by Jim Lobe in 2009:

The mission statement opens by listing a familiar litany of threats to the U.S., including “rogue states,” “failed states,” “autocracies” and “terrorism”, but gives pride of place to the “challenges” posed by “rising and resurgent powers,” of which only China and Russia are named.
…FPI intends to make confrontation with China and Russia the centrepiece of its foreign policy stance. If this is the case, it would mark a return to the early days of the Bush administration, before 9/11, when Kristol’s Weekly Standard took the lead in attacking Washington for its alleged “appeasement” of Beijing… FPI has chosen to push for escalating the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan. The organisation’s first event, to be held here Mar. 31, will be a conference entitled “Afghanistan: Planning for Success”.
…

For now, this is what I want you to take from the above on Obama’s Neoconistic objectives: fiercely counter China-Russia when it comes to establishing US hegemony, especially in Central and South Asia, with emphasis on Afghanistan. Next, let’s look at the strategic importance of the same region for China [All emphasis mine]:
In order for China to sustain its status as the emerging economic superpower, it must take all the necessary steps required in order to have sufficient energy resources for the near future. According to Pakistani think tank, BrassTacks, Chinese interests in the Indian Ocean became visible in 2002, when they invested heavily and began work on the Gwadar Port, located in Baluchestan, a province of Pakistan.
The Gwadar Port has its benefits for both Pakistan and China. According to Abdus Sattar Ghazali, executive editor for American Muslim Perspective, “The cost benefits to China of using Gwadar as the port for western China’s imports and exports are as evident as the long-term economic benefits to Pakistan of Gwadar becoming a port for Chinese goods.” Not only does Gwadar enable China to fulfill its energy needs, but it will also provide a strategic military footprint in the Arabian Sea, which has the United States worried.
…
Okay, now you have Obama’s Neoconistic objectives with China as its main target and competitor, and you have China competing for the same strategic area, Pakistan, to fulfill its energy needs and establish a strategic footprint in the Arabian Sea, and in the middle of it, the point where US-China strategic objectives intersect: Pakistan.

In order to halt this, the globalists need to block China’s access to the Arabian Sea by way of Gwadar. According to BrassTacks, to do this, “there needs to be a ‘new Pakistan’ as indicated in Operation Enduring Turmoil.” Operation Enduring Turmoil is PNAC’s plan to disassemble Pakistan into three parts. According to a “game plan” drawn out by Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, in a 2006 article of the Armed Forces Journal, “Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren [and] would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining ‘natural’ Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi.” With this done, what was once the NWFP, a province of Pakistan, is now part of Afghanistan, and what was once Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan, is now its own state, Free Baluchistan. This would force China to impossibly go through Afghanistan and Free Baluchistan in order to reach the Arabian Sea. Such an arrangement would cut China’s route to the Arabian Sea.
…

Now, please focus on our three main actors- China, US and in the middle, the strategically important Pakistan. Let’s use our common sense minus logic-clouding details, and consider what happens when the strategically crucial actor in the middle starts straying away from one main actor and moving toward the other.
This is from November, 2009:

China has sent out an interesting signal ahead of US president Barack Obama’s scheduled visit to Beijing by offering a set of advanced fighter jets to Pakistan. It has agreed to sell $1.4 billion worth of jets to Islamabad days ahead of the planned visit of the US president Barack Obama to Shanghai and Beijing on November 15-18.
The move is expected to jolt the US administration as it works on notes and talking points for Obama’s meetings with Chinese leaders. He is expected to discuss Beijing’s relationship with India and its role in internal conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Beijing is keen to reduce US influence on Pakistan, which will make it easier for it to deal with India, sources said. Washington’s recent decision to extend massive financial assistance to Islamabad is seen in some quarters as a policy setback for China.
…

A year later, in October 2010, the following interesting perspective on how things were heating up between the US and Pakistan is published by Margolis:

The neoconservative far right in Washington and its media allies again claim Pakistan is a grave threat to US interests and to Israel. Pakistan must be declawed and dismembered, insist the neocons. Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is reportedly being targeted for seizure or elimination by US Special Forces. There is also talk in Washington of dividing Afghanistan into Pashtun, Tajik and Uzbek mini-states, as the US has done in Iraq, and perhaps Pakistan, as well. Little states are easier to rule or intimidate than big ones. Many Pakistanis believe the United States is bent on dismembering their nation. Some polls show Pakistanis now regard the United States as a greater enemy than India.
…

It is important to remember how Obama passed AIPAC neocons’ test on Pakistan during his presidential campaign in 2007. Obama said if elected in November 2008 he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government,”If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won’t act, we will,” Obama said.
Now, let’s fast-forward to early April 2011:

Pakistan’s ambassador to China used a recent celebration of his country’s Republic Day to give a rhetoric-filled talk about Beijing-Islamabad relations. If March 23, 1940, was the day the Muslim League decided to establish Pakistan, then the anniversary would be a time to declare that relations with China will define the way forward. ‘We shall take our bilateral relations to new heights,’ Masood Khan proclaimed. [...] Pakistan has been moving into China’s sphere of influence for decades and the countries routinely refer to each other as ‘all-weather’ partners.
This year will mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations. ‘Even when I was there in 1981, ’82, I could see Chinese military factories going up,’ says Stephen Cohen, a Pakistan expert at the Brookings Institution. Now, Pakistan represents a major market for China’s nuclear and military technology. According to SIPRI, a Swedish think tank, over 40 per cent of Chinese arms exports go to Pakistan—the largest share of any country China sells to.”

Obviously Obama’s day in day out bombing of Pakistan, his ‘let’s drone the hell out of them’ policy, had backfired, producing the opposite effect for his Neoconistic global hegemony objectives. Now, things begin to really heat up; this is from April 17, 2011:

President Obama’s rhetoric in Delhi had no substance except to rile the Pakistanis. The Delhi card didn’t quite work. The Chinese Premier visited Islamabad and pledged $20 billion in investment in Pakistan during the next five years. How about them apples? The Pakistani retort is what it has always been we need “Friends Not Masters”.
Britain as a colonial power practiced “Divide and rule” pitting religious and ethnic differences in the Middle East to rule continents. Bhutto famously theorized that the post-colonial powers were working on a “unite and rule” strategy forcing Pakistan to work with India against China.
“The idea of becoming subservient to India is abhorrent and that of cooperation with India, with the object of promoting tension with China, equally repugnant.” Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
…
Most Pakistanis don’t want closer relations with Washington–they want to build closer relations with Beijing, and work on creating the Muslim Union (similar to the European Union) in Central Asia. Links with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey are key to the future of Pakistan.
Islamabad is moving ever closer to China, both militarily and economically– and that’s a fact Jack.
…

By mid April things start going downhill; very fast.

The transactional relationship between Washington and Islamabad is coming to an end. While US-Pakistani transactional relations are fraying at both ends, the opposite is true of Sino-Pakistani relations.
Pakistan supported China when she was recognized only by Albania, and built the bridge to the USA. This fact cannot be forgotten by the Chinese who mention it in every summit and mentioned it in this summit also
…
There is renewed energy to pace up the development of Gwadar Port to provide China a shorter route and easy excess to world markets to dispatch its goods to Europe and America.
“The Gwadar port project will transform Pakistan’s Navy into a force that can rival regional navies. The government of Pakistan has designated the port area as a “sensitive defense zone.” The Gwadar port will rank among the world’s largest deep-sea ports. The port provides China a strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.
Located at the entrance of the Persian Gulf and about 460 kms from Karachi, Gwadar has had immense Geostrategic significance on many accounts. The continued unstable regional environment in the Persian Gulf in particular as a result of the Iran/Iraq war, the Gulf war and the emergence of the new Central Asian States has added to this importance. Considering the Geo-economic imperative of the regional changes, the ADB’s Ports Master Plan studies considered an alternate to the Persian Gulf Ports to capture the transit trade of the Central Asian Republic (CAR) as well as the trans-shipment trade of the region.
…

And finally, on April 27, according to my sources, the following catalyst prompts the Obama team to execute the Kill Osama Bin Laden Script. This is the pivotal point in the Bin Laden Death Operation Script as a catalyst for the soon to come Pakistan Occupation:

Pakistan is lobbying Afghan President Hamid Karzai against building a long-term strategic partnership with the United States, and urging him instead to look to Pakistan and its ally, China, for help in striking a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuilding the economy, according to Afghan officials.
…
Washington’’s relations with Pakistan have reached their lowest point in years following a series of missteps on both sides, and Pakistani officials say that they no longer have an incentive to follow the American lead in their own backyard, the report added.
“Pakistan is sole guarantor of its own interest,” said a senior Pakistani official, adding: “We”re not looking for anyone else to protect us, especially the US. If they”re leaving, they”re leaving and they should go.”
…

The next day, on April 28, , a senior Pakistani government official said that the Export-Import Bank of China will loan Pakistan $1.7 billion to develop a city-wide train system in the eastern city of Lahore.
Since the holes-filled and never-explained ‘kill or capture’ operation, the presidential PR machine, the US media and their extension guised under ‘alternative’ have been beating the war drums. After all, as with any wars of ours, public opinion must be shaped, and public backing must be garnered. This is one of the latest reflecting just that: 

After the killing of Usama bin Laden in Pakistan, few American voters believe that country is an ally of the United States in the war against terrorism. Moreover, most doubt Pakistan is worthy of continued U.S. foreign aid.
That’s according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.
Nearly three out of four voters — 73 percent — say the United States should stop sending foreign aid until Pakistan demonstrates a deeper commitment to the war against terrorism. Some 19 percent would continue to provide funding.
…
With the discovery that bin Laden apparently had been living in Pakistan for years, the consensus is Pakistan is not a friend (74 percent). A small 16 percent minority of voters views Pakistan as a strong U.S. ally in the war against terrorism.
…

You must be thinking: Pakistan must have tons in their own dossier to expose US government duplicities, lies, and nefarious activities. So why have they been relatively silent in all this? Why don’t they open the flood gate on ‘facts’ surrounding Bin Laden, his supposed role in 9/11, his supposed journey since 9/11, and his supposed death recently? And I have an answer for that: neither party has played all their cards yet. Just take a look at how Gates has been playing both sides carefully while measuring the outcome of various factors in play:

Gates reiterated the accusation that elements within the Pakistani government knew about the location of Osama bin Laden and were keeping that information from the United States. Bin Laden was killed in a US raid earlier this month.
At the same time, Gates echoed comments by other officials, conceding that the US has absolutely no evidence to that effect and that it is “pure supposition on our part.” The repeated accusations, despite being based on “pure supposition” have done major damage to US-Pakistan ties, and have spawned calls from Congress to suspend all aid to Pakistan to punish them.
Gates, who attended the conference with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, also said that the US raid that killed bin Laden had “humiliated” the Pakistani government, and that they had “paid a price” for bin Laden’s presence. Mullen added that the US ability to attack Pakistan with impunity was “a humbling experience” for the Pakistani military.
…

The White House neocons are in the midst of age-old diplomatic games, bluffing, and hedging their bets. They have the ‘foreign & military aid’ card. They have the ‘ISI dirt files’ card. They have the ‘ultimate China leaning’ card. And of course, they have the ‘mighty power of preemptive occupation war’ card which is always blessed and supported by NATO and overlooked by their butlers in the UN.
China has its own set of cards; whether it is their biggest market for dumping goods, or carrying the US debt, or who knows what else. For now they are using the ‘talk’ card with no real strings attached:

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao assured his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani of China’s “all-weather friendship” on Wednesday, during a visit that sharply contrasted with anger between Washington and Islamabad.
“I wish to stress here that no matter what changes might take place in the international landscape, China and Pakistan will remain forever good neighbours, good friends, good partners and good brothers,” Wen told Gilani at the start of a meeting in central Beijing’s Great Hall of the People.

Suffice it to say that not all cards have been placed on the table. As the famous Kenny Rogers’ Gambler lyrics go:
You got to know when to hold ‘em, know when to fold ‘em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you’re sittin’ at the table.
There’ll be time enough for countin’ when the dealin’s done.
As for us the people, we’ll be sitting and waiting for the three parties to conclude this stage of their global hegemony game. We’ll be reading and watching and listening to their PR machine in the media give us one concocted fantasy after another. As in all other wars of ours we will have zero to say, zilch to gain, and plenty to lose. They have the cards, and we are the piled up tokens on the table.
# # # #
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Tags: Afghanistan, Bin Laden Death, Bin Laden Death Timing, Boiling Frogs Post, Central Asia, China, Gwadar Port, neocons, New World Order, Obama, Osama Death Script, Pakistan, PNAC, Ron Paul, sibel edmonds, South Asia.

Posted in Uncategorized by Sibel Edmonds

1. May 20th, 2011 at 10:07 am
   
   Jon Gold Says:
   The United States pointing fingers at Pakistan is like Al Capone pointing fingers at Frank Nitti.
   http://911truthnews.com/death-of-bin-laden-may-distract-from-a-more-disturbing-story/
   http://911truthnews.com/scapegoating-the-pakistani-isi/
   Sibel, please read both… they are both extremely relevant to all of this.
   
2. May 20th, 2011 at 11:08 am
   
   Bill Bergman Says:
   Things appear to be heating up on this score, e.g.
   http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20110520/wl_nm/us_pakistan_blast
   It seems like we have to read mainstream news with two eyeballs, one eyeball taking it for granted that they are trying to tell the truth, and the other eyeball considering how and why they might be lying to us, and then putting the messages from both eyeballs together in our brains, and try to make sense out of it.
   
3. May 20th, 2011 at 12:09 pm
   
   yoshi Says:
   For those of you here who think that Ron Paul will be the answer to Obama, consider some points.
   We live in a hypervigilant world (thanks largely to MSM and govt. conditioning). We must defeat the terrorists! We must protect the Homeland at all costs! Also, politicians being what they are (with some rare exceptions), can you can name one national name that would dare to oppose that mentality?
   Set aside the dump-the-Fed-and-fire-Bernanke stuff for a moment. What other examples has Paul done to really differeniate himself from the neocons? No, cable news soundbites don’t count. I’m talking about actual hearings or bills that he’s introduced that have been passed and signed into law.
   Answer? He doesn’t have any.
   If he really opposes the wars that we’re in, why doesn’t he hold a press conference and announce that until we withdraw from said wars, he won’t pay his taxes? Why doesn’t he take a taypayer-funded “Congressional delegation” trip to Gaza to show the world what our “Israeli aid” is really doing there? Why doesn’t he publically back Ken O’Keefe and his efforts to finally bring peace to the Midddle East? Why doesn’t he stand up to Obama and say that he’s using terrorist tactics to “stop terrorism” which is only making it worse?
   Because here politicians don’t stand up to AIPAC. When most members of the House signed a letter pleding their “loyal support” to Israel, did Paul sign it as well? Just making appearances on “Hardball” or some neocon think tank that C-SPAN decides to show really means nothing.
   This tell me that his “campaign strategists” want him to be everything to everybody. He’s not a Democrat, but he’s also not your typical neocon. What does THAT mean?
   Before going into the House, Paul was a Naval flight surgeon. This means that he was under Tri-Care (the military’s national health care). Now, he’s under govt. national health care. I’ve never heard him say that health care is a human right. Coming from a doctor, that’s frankly really disappointing. Why is he entitled to the best care possible but I’m not?
   IMO, Paul has no chance. Millions will vote for Obama because they’re conditioned to think that he’s the lesser of two evils. So that makes it ok. The other thing is that not all but many just don’t care any more. If that’s not true, then we’d have daily millions-in-the-streets protests that the MSM couldn’t avoid talking about. What else could it be?
   
4. May 20th, 2011 at 1:38 pm
   
   Blackflag Says:
   Sibel,
   I will re-review your post in more detail later, but off the top of my head….
   I would suggest rather that Iran is the center piece of the geo-political play here.
   The invasion of Iraq does not support the isolation tactics over China. I cannot connect this dot directly to a China play.
   However, Iraq invasion specifically connects the dot to an Iranian play.
   With Pakistan, Iran is totally surrounded by America -
   -bases (and troops?) in Turkmenistan
   -NATO ally Turkey on one border
   -US-occupied Iraq on one border
   -US-occupied Afghanistan on one border
   -(maybe) US-occupied Pakistan on one border
   -Arabian sea full of US carriers.
   Iran has no outs.
   Now, it could be argued that Iran is a sub-play in a large China play….
   
5. May 20th, 2011 at 1:41 pm
   
   Blackflag Says:
   Further,
   Iran has been a oozing sore since Truman. It was also the first country that Eisenhower doctrine (you are either with us or against us) was applied.
   The overthrow of the Shah significantly disrupted American geo-political position as Iran was one of the two cornerstones of the US projection of power in the region (the other being Israel).
   I think this game over Iran has been in the works since Reagan took office in 1980’s.
   
6. May 20th, 2011 at 2:40 pm
   
   Sibel Edmonds Says:
   @Bill: Many thanks for the link; fits well.
   @Jon: I’ll check them out later today; thanks.
   @Blackflag: Have you seen the headlines today on 9/11 suit against Iran? Interesting, ey?!
   @Yoshi: Thanks for sharing, but I disagree with you. He is the only chance I see; currently.
   

Reality Check: The Profound Hypocrisy of President Obama’s Speech on the Middle East

By Brian Becker and Mara Verheyden-Hilliard

President Obama took to the airwaves today to discuss the revolts and conflicts spreading throughout the Middle East. The U.S. dominance over this strategic and oil-rich region has been the pivot of U.S. foreign policy for decades. Utilizing a system of proxy and client regimes, in addition to its own vast military forces in the region, the United States has supported a network of brutal dictatorships and the Israeli regime for decades.

Now that system of imperial control has been shaken by the popular risings that started in Tunisia and spread to Egypt and elsewhere, the Obama administration spoke today at the U.S. State Department as part of an effort to reassert U.S. leadership over the swiftly changing region.

Using the rhetoric of democracy and freedom to mask the responsibility of U.S. imperialism in the enduring oppression and suffering of the peoples of the Middle East, President Obama’s speech was a demonstration of profound hypocrisy.

Hypocrisy: President Obama said that the “greatest untapped resource in the Middle East and North Africa is the talent of its people.”

Reality: The U.S. strategy is based on control of the Middle East’s most coveted resource: two-thirds of the world's known oil supply. The U.S. government has given billions of dollars and armed the most brutal dictatorships in the Middle East for decades, a practice fully continued by the Obama administration. The U.S. government never cut funds to the Mubarak dictatorship even while the regime murdered more than 850 peaceful protestors. More than 5,000 civilians in Egypt have been convicted and jailed since Jan. 25 following trials conducted by the Egyptian military. The United States continues to provide massive funding to Egypt's military in spite of the ongoing repression against the people.

Hypocrisy: President Obama stated, “it will be the policy of the United States to promote reform across the region, and to support transitions to democracy.”

Reality: The only governments in the Middle East that have been targeted for invasion, economic sanctions and overthrow by the U.S. government are those that pursue policies that are independent of U.S. economic, political and military control. The U.S. never imposed economic sanctions on the Mubarak dictatorship and only came out publicly against Mubarak when the tide of revolution had become irresistible. Likewise, the U.S. supports the brutal Saudi monarchy.

Hypocrisy: President Obama championed for the people of the Middle East the “basic rights to speak your mind and access information,” stating, “the truth cannot be hidden; and the legitimacy of governments will ultimately depend on active and informed citizens.”

Reality: The Obama administration has gone out of its way to punish those who would inform the public by shedding light on the activities of the U.S. government. Bradley Manning remains jailed with the threat of life in prison, having been held in brutal conditions that caused the U.N. Special Rapporteur on Torture to seek an investigation. The Justice Department is working at full speed to find a way to prosecute Julian Assange of Wikileaks for disclosing government documents to the public, many of which expose the U.S. role in the Middle East. The Obama administration has undertaken a major campaign more aggressive than any prior administration to criminally prosecute whistleblowers who expose the truth of illegal government actions.

Hypocrisy: President Obama stated: “The United States opposes the use of violence and repression against the people of the region.”

Reality: The United States under Obama is involved in the invasion, occupation, and bombings of four predominantly Muslim countries simultaneously: Iraq, Afghanistan, Libya and Pakistan. Moreover, the head of state who has been the single biggest violator of the basic human rights of Arab people and the perpetuator of violence in the region is George W. Bush, whose illegal invasion of Iraq cost the lives of more than one million people. The March 19, 2003, invasion was a war of aggression against a country that did not pose any threat to the United States or the people of the United States. The invasion and occupation of Iraq led to the deaths of more Arab people than have been killed by all the dictatorships in the region combined. President Obama today called Osama Bin Laden a mass murderer. September 11, 2001, was indeed a great crime that took the lives of thousands of innocent working people, but measured in order of the magnitude of victims killed, Bush’s crime of mass murder in Iraq is unmatched. George W. Bush has not been arrested for the mass killings of Iraqi people but is treated honorifically by the Obama administration.

Hypocrisy: In an effort to appease Arab public opinion, President Obama's speech made it appear as if the United States was insisting that Israel return to its pre-1967 borders. Obama stated, “precisely because of our friendship, it is important that we tell the truth: the status quo is unsustainable, and Israel too must act boldly to advance a lasting peace.”

Reality: Israel’s war against the Palestinian people would be impossible without U.S. support, which continues unabated. The single biggest recipient of U.S. foreign aid is the state of Israel, which uses the $3 billion it receives annually to lay siege to the people of Gaza, continue the illegal occupation of the West Bank and prevent the return of the families of the 750,000 Palestinians who were evicted from their homes and villages in historic Palestine in 1948. The United Nations in various resolutions has condemned the 1967 Israeli invasion and occupation of Gaza, the West Bank, and Syria’s Golan Heights. Far from imposing economic sanctions, President Obama has promised Israel a minimum of $30 billion in military aid over the next 10 years, thus functioning as a partner in the occupation. Obama’s speech also made it clear that the United States would support Israel retaining vast swaths of the West Bank. This is what he meant by referring to “land swaps.” In the coming days, Obama will have private meetings with Benjamin Netanyahu and will be a featured speaker at the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) conference. He will undoubtedly reinforce the strong U.S.-Israeli military ties and U.S. financial support.

Hypocrisy: President Obama stated: “We support a set of universal rights. Those rights include free speech; the freedom of peaceful assembly; freedom of religion; equality for men and women under the rule of law; and the right to choose your own leaders – whether you live in Baghdad or Damascus; Sanaa or Tehran…. [W]e will continue to insist that universal rights apply to women as well as men.”

Reality: While the U.S. government – along with Britain and France (the former colonizers of the Middle East and Africa) – are bombing Libya with the latest high-tech bombs and missiles in the name of “protecting civilians” and “promoting democracy,” the Obama administration offered the most tepid pro-forma criticism of the Bahrain monarchy as it and the Saudi monarchy kill and imprison peaceful protestors in Bahrain. No sanctions have even been hinted at for Bahrain or Saudi Arabia. The Saudi monarchy is the ultimate negation of democracy, depriving women of all rights, depriving workers of the right to form unions and depriving all sectors of the population of any right to free speech, assembly or press. There has never been an election in Saudi Arabia. But the Saudi monarchy functions as a client of the U.S. government and, as such, is not targeted for economic sanctions or “regime change” as are the governments of Syria and Libya. The Bahrain monarchy likewise functions as a U.S. client and allows the U.S. Fifth Fleet to use Bahrain as its home port, which is why he referred to the monarchy as “a long-standing partner.”

Hypocrisy: President Obama denounced the Iranian government, stating that “we will continue to insist that the Iranian people deserve their universal rights,” and condemned what he called Iran’s “illicit nuclear program.”

Reality: He failed to mention that it was the CIA along with its British counterpart that staged the overthrow of Iran’s democratic government in 1953 and reinstated the Shah’s monarchy. They overthrew Iran’s democracy when Iran nationalized its own oil from AIOC/British Petroleum. The U.S. only broke relations with the Iranian government when the Shah’s dictatorship was overthrown by a populist national revolution. Regarding nuclear weapons, the Israeli government has refused to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and has accumulated 200 “illicit” nuclear weapons. Of course, the United States has thousands of nuclear weapons and remains the only country to have used nuclear weapons, destroying Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

Hypocrisy: President Obama told the world that the United States shares the goals of the Arab revolution, that “repression will fail, that tyrants will fall, and that every man and woman is endowed with certain inalienable rights.”

Reality: The U.S. government, whether it is led by Democrats or Republicans, views the oil-rich Middle East through the lens of empire. Operating through a network of proxy regimes including Israel, Saudi Arabia, the Mubarak dictatorship in Egypt, the Shah of Iran until his overthrow in 1979, and other regimes in the region – and supplemented by tens of thousands of U.S. troops positioned in U.S. bases throughout the region and on aircraft carriers – the United States aims to dominate and control a region that possesses two-thirds of the world’s known oil supply. It has and continues to finance a network of brutal client dictatorships, and it has funded the Israeli war machine and staged repeated invasions, bombing campaigns, and occupations against the people of the region.

Legal threat to coalcares.org (THE YES MEN) from Peabody Energy

The following letter has been sent to lawyers for Peabody Energy in response to their threat:

Dear Andrew Baum, Foley Lardner LLP, and Peabody Energy,

Thank you for your thoughtful letter demanding that we remove Peabody’s name from www.coalcares.org and cease falsely suggesting that Peabody cares about kids made sick by coal.

Your threat, although entirely baseless (see this response, and the EFF's blog post later today), did make us realize one thing: that Peabody, despite being our country's largest coal producer, and one of the largest lobbyists against common-sense policy, accounts for a mere 17% of U.S. coal production. The remaining 83% comes from 28 other companies, who are, every bit as much as Peabody, giving kids asthma attacks and other illnesses.

As even you may agree, the root of the problem is not Peabody, but rather our system of subsidies, regulations, and lobbying that lets your whole industry continue its lethal work. To make this clear, we have changed every instance of the word “Peabody” on www.coalcares.org to a rotating selection of the names of other large U.S. coal producers who, like Peabody, also need to be stopped from killing kids.

Very truly yours,
Coal is Killing Kids and the Yes Lab
coalcares@yeslab.org, (314) 472-5539

P.S. You suggest in your letter that “Peabody has a First Amendment right not to be involved with the dissemination of a message with which it does not agree,” a statement which, while completely untrue, does recall the World Resources Institute’s longstanding demand that you cease falsely attributing to them the nonsense statistic that “for every 10-fold increase in per-capita energy use, individuals live 10 years longer.” As the WRI notes:

First, WRI has never made such an assertion and has never done analysis to that effect. Second, this conclusion ignores critical factors related to energy production and human health. WRI’s longstanding support for a global transition to cleaner, low-carbon energy is well-documented.
We would be grateful if you would stop misquoting WRI and issue a corrective statement within the next 24 hours.

Osama and the real Dalai Lama

By Peter Lee

LOS ANGELES - In reporting on remarks of the Dalai Lama during his visit to the University of California in Los Angeles on May 3, the LA Times ignited something of a media firestorm.

Under the headline, "Dalai Lama suggests Osama bin Laden's death was justified", Mitchell Landsberg wrote:

[I]n an appearance Tuesday at USC, [the Dalai Lama] appeared to suggest that the United States was justified in killing Osama bin Laden.

As a human being, Bin Laden may have deserved compassion and even forgiveness, the Dalai Lama said in answer to a question about the assassination of the al-Qaeda leader. But, he said, "Forgiveness doesn't mean forget what happened ... If something is serious and it is necessary to take

 

counter-measures, you have to take counter-measures." [1]

That started the ball rolling:

NPR: A Symbol Of Compassion, Dalai Lama Hints Bin Laden's Killing Was Justified. [2]

Stephen Jenkins at the Guardian: It's not so strange for a Buddhist to endorse killing; the Dalai Lama's attitude to Bin Laden's death should not be too surprising - Buddhism is not as pacifist as the West fantasizes [3]

AFP: Dalai Lama 'says bin Laden killing justified' [4]
Jeffrey Goldberg at the Atlantic: Dalai Lama Suggests Approval for Bin Laden Killing. [5]

Michael Crowley at Time: Clearly, the precise legalities involved in killing bin Laden are murky ... But unless you are opposed to capital punishment in the absolute, or believe that we are compelled to put on trial any terrorist we are able to capture, the morality is less complicated. Heck, even the Dalai Lama isn't bothered. [6]

Jay Leno's monologue: This is my favorite thing; in an address at USC the other day, the Dalai Lama seemed to suggest that killing Bin Laden was okay. That's when you know you're a bad guy, when the Dalai Lama's going, "I didn't see nothing." [7]

Actually, the real story was less-than-stellar reportage.

Landsberg did get one thing right:

The audience, which included some 3,000 USC students, responded to his message respectfully, even adoringly. Afterward, however, some complained that they had trouble understanding him; the Dalai Lama often speaks about thorny concepts in accented English, sometimes relying on a translator to fill in gaps.

Include Landsberg as one of the audience with an understanding problem. I know, because I was there.

During the question and answer following his remarks at the Galen Center, the Dalai Lama responded to an submitted question as to whether "ensuring justice was more important than being compassionate" in the case of the death of Osama bin Laden. Specifically, was it OK to celebrate his death because, in the official US formulation, he had been "brought to justice"?

This was not a particularly difficult question for the Dalai Lama, and he responded:

Now here must make distinction between actor and action. His actions of course destructive ... they must bring him into justice way. But actor - as human being, as human brother, we must show compassion, sense of concern for his well-being.

In other words, something along the lines of "love the sinner but hate the sin".

The "justice way", in this context, looks like the working of the criminal justice system in dealing with Bin Laden's actions, not some kind of morally endorsed retribution on Bin Laden's person.

Once the "justice way" formalities were out of the way, the Dalai Lama was definitely not suggesting that shooting Bin Laden in the head was a suitable exercise of compassion.

The Dalai Lama continued on in this vein for a couple minutes, saying:

The basis of forgiveness does not mean forget what happened ... but because of that action, keep ill-feeling toward that person, wrong.

So, celebrating Bin Laden's death, definitely wrong.

Things then got somewhat more ambiguous, at least for some listeners.

The Dalai Lama moved on from the actor to his or her actions, to clarify that compassion for Bin Laden didn't mean doing nothing about his destructive actions:

So towards action - destructive action - we must take appropriate action to stop that...if something serious and necessary to take counter-measures, you have to take countermeasures.

It was clear that the Dalai Lama considers flying airplanes into buildings filled with thousands of people as the kind of "destructive actions" that should be stopped with "counter-measures" if possible. Presumably, if Bin Laden had taken up a weapon and the SEALS had shot him in self-defense and in a "more in sorrow than in anger" kind of way, the Dalai Lama would also have approved.

However, it can be stated with a high degree of confidence that the Dalai Lama did not consider the killing of Bin Laden to be "justified" - ie deserved and appropriate punishment for his crimes.
In fact, the Dalai Lama addressed the Bin Laden issue in 2006. In an interview in Dharamsala, India - home to his exiled Tibetan government, he told the Alice Thomson of the UK's Daily Telegraph that terrorists must be treated humanely:

"Otherwise, the problem will escalate. If there is one Bin Laden killed today, soon there will be 10 Bin Ladens. Awesome. Ten Bin Ladens killed, the hatred is spread; 100 bombed, and 1,000 lose members of their families." [8]

After the kerfuffle, the Tibetan government in exile issued a flash news item summarizing the Dalai Lama's remarks. Concerning the Bin Laden question, it stated:

The first question was on His Holiness' emphasis on compassion as a basis of ethics. It asked whether in some situation ensuring justice is more important than being compassionate to the perpetrator of a crime. It referred to the news of the death of Osama Bin Laden and the celebrations of it by some, and asked where compassion fit in with this and ethics. In his response, His Holiness emphasized the need to find a distinction between the action and the actor.

He said in the case of Bin Laden, his action was of course destructive and the September 11 events killed thousands of people. So his action must be brought to justice, His Holiness said. But with the actor we must have compassion and a sense of concern, he added. His Holiness said therefore the counter measure, no matter what form it takes, has to be compassionate action. His Holiness referred to the basis of the practice of forgiveness saying that it, however, did not mean that one should forget what has been done. [9]

Not good enough for the Margherita Stancati of the Wall Street Journal's Chinarealtime blog, who sniffed:

The question explicitly referred to Osama bin Laden, who was killed Sunday night during a US raid in Pakistan's town of Abbottabad.

This placed the Dalai Lama - a man who famously frowns at the idea of killing mosquitoes - in the position of either having to compromise his unflinching commitment to non-violence or publicly declaring his compassion for the world's most wanted terrorist. In a poorly-orchestrated PR move, he managed to do both. [10]

Actually, the Dalai Lama made a point of stating he squashed an occasional mosquito as a way of saying that human forbearance has its limits, even for living Buddhas. Violence is an inevitable element of human existence; the goal is to understand its roots, appreciate its karmic costs, and take measures to reduce it.

Depending on one's degree of pessimism, one can either view the affair as evidence of further decline in standards of stenography and reportage, America's alarming need for enthusiastic, universal validation of its killing of Bin Laden, or a demonstration of the admirable efficiency of the world's press in exploiting the Dalai Lama's global popularity to create a faux controversy and fill a news hole.

Fortunately, the University of Southern California has now posted the Youtube video of the Dalai Lama's remarks, so interested viewers can judge for themselves.

The Bin Laden question appears at around the 45:00 mark. [11]

Notes
1. Dalai Lama suggests Osama bin Laden's death was justified, LA Times, May 4, 2011.
2. A Symbol Of Compassion, Dalai Lama Hints Bin Laden's Killing Was Justified, NPR, May 4, 2011.
3. It's not so strange for a Buddhist to endorse killing, Guardian, May 11, 2011.
4. Dalai Lama 'says bin Laden killing justified', AFP, May 4, 2011.
5. Dalai Lama Suggests Approval for Bin Laden Killing; Human Rights Watch Condemns, The Atlantic, May 4, 2011.
6. Why Was Bin Laden Shot?, Time, May 4, 2011.
7. Steven Tyler interview on Leno, M&C, May 7, 2011.
8. 'Westerners are too self-absorbed', Telegraph, Apr 1, 2011.
9. His Holiness Talks About Secular Ethics and Human Development at University of Southern California, Central Tibetan Administration (in exile), May 4, 2011.
10. Dalai Lama in bin Laden Quandary, Wall Street Journal, May 5, 2011.
11. Secular Ethics, Human Values and Society: The Dalai Lama at the USC Galen Center, YouTube, May 5, 2011.


Peter Lee writes on East and South Asian affairs and their intersection with US foreign policy.

Pakistani-Indian nuclear war seen as real possibility

With the breakdown of relations between Washington and Islamabad over recurring U.S. drone attacks inside Pakistan and the controversy over the U.S. Special Forces raid on Abbottabad that allegedly killed Osama Bin Laden, western intelligence agencies have concluded that a Pakistani-Indian nuclear exchange is now a distinct possibility.

Intelligence sources have also told WMR that Pakistan has recently updated its nuclear target list for India. The Indian high-technology city of Bangalore, which hosts a number of IT firms that provides outsourced jobs for U.S. companies for Indian employees,  has been added to Pakistan's list of targets to be hit in a first wave Pakistani pre-emptive to retaliatory nuclear attack.

India is expected to add some 50 million highly-skilled jobs to its work force in the next decade, with many of the jobs located in the Bangalore high-tech center. A nuclear attack by Pakistan on Bangalore would all but wipe out India's high-tech capabilities, dealing a severe blow to India's economy.

Pakistan still maintains its nuclear attack protocol of avoiding striking Indian cities with large Muslim populations.

Western defense officials are also concerned about new security guarantees given by China to Pakistan as a shield from either Indian or U.S. aggression. China could retaliate against both India and the U.S. Seventh Fleet in Asian waters if an attack by either country were launched against Pakistan.

British spy was assassinated by Mossad team

WMR's well-placed British sources report that Gareth Williams, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) employee who was seconded to the British Secret Intelligence Service (MI-6) and whose badly decomposed body was found stuffed into a sports bag in an MI-6 safe house in the Pimlico neighborhood of London on August 23, 2010, was a victim of a professional Mossad hit team.

The London Metropolitan Police and FBI are continuing to investigate Williams's death as "suspicious and unexplained." Williams's body was discovered in the security-protected MI-6 flat on Alderney Street, not far from MI-6 headquarters. The MI-6 safe house was protected by a fingerprint recognition and retinal scan access system, according to our sources. The safe house was registered to a labyrinth of MI-6 front companies to hide the identity of the actual owners of the residence. The safe house flat's owner was registered in the British Virgin Islands to a company called New Rodina, which was not listed in registered companies in the United Kingdom. The legal representative for New Rodina was a London law firm called Park Nelson, which has ceased to exist. WMR has learned that the safe house's actual owner was incorporated in the Dominican Republic.

Williams had worked for MI-6 on secondment from GCHQ for a year and he had recently visited the National Security Agency (NSA) before his body was discovered.

Immediately after Williams's body was discovered there were leaks to the British media that suggested that Williams died from a "sex game" that had gone wrong. Williams's body was embalmed before a full autopsy could be performed that would helped answer some of the questions raised by Williams's parents, who live in Wales. Leaks to the media of bizarre sexual activities that result in the "accidental" deaths of high-level intelligence and political murder victims represents a classic British intelligence ploy that is intended to ward off demands for full investigations by the next-of-kin.

Williams was a mathematics child prodigy who earned his first college degree in mathematics at age 17. He was one of GCHQ's top experts in encryption.

WMR has learned from our British intelligence sources that Williams was brought to MI-6 from GCHQ in Cheltenham to participate in a major investigation of Israeli Mossad penetration of GCHQ's and MI-6's encrypted communications networks, including those of GCHQ that process signals intelligence (SIGINT) intercepts of communications. Williams visited NSA a number of times to help the American SIGINT agency conduct an investigation of the extent to which Mossad was able to penetrate NSA systems via  interfaces, such as the Zircon instant messaging network, with GCHQ networks.

A "Mediterranean looking" young man and woman, believed to be between 20 and 30 years of age, are suspects in Williams's death, now believed by British police to have been due to poisoning. "Mediterranean" is a politically-correct code phrase used by British police to describe the Israeli Mossad hit team. The FBI uses a similar code phrase, "Middle Eastern-looking," to describe Israeli spies in the United States. The Mossad duo was last seen entering the MI-6 residence where Williams lived in July 2010.

Some British intelligence officials are privately fuming over the cover-up of the details of Williams's murder and Israel's involvement in it. They have promised to exact severe revenge on Israel in a "quiet manner" but one that will leave Tel Aviv under no doubt that it is in retaliation for Mossad's murder of one of Britain's ace intelligence officers.

As for NSA, the penetration of GCHQ by Mossad has endangered America's own encrypted signals intelligence and cyber-warfare networks with the possibility that Israel has had or continues to have access to America's most delicate classified information.