Bradley Manning, American Hero Four Reasons Why Pfc. Bradley Manning Deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom, Not a Prison Cell

By Chase Madar

We still don’t know if he did it or not, but if Bradley Manning, the 24-year-old Army private from Oklahoma, actually supplied WikiLeaks with its choicest material -- the Iraq War logs, the Afghan War logs, and the State Department cables -- which startled and riveted the world, then he deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom instead of a jail cell at Fort Leavenworth.

President Obama recently gave one of those medals to retiring Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, who managed the two bloody, disastrous wars about which the WikiLeaks-released documents revealed so much. Is he really more deserving than the young private who, after almost ten years of mayhem and catastrophe, gave Americans -- and the world -- a far fuller sense of what our government is actually doing abroad?

Bradley Manning, awaiting a court martial in December, faces the prospect of long years in prison. He is charged with violating the Espionage Act of 1917. He has put his sanity and his freedom on the line so that Americans might know what our government has done -- and is still doing -- globally. He has blown the whistle on criminal violations of American military law. He has exposed our secretive government’s pathological over-classification of important public documents.

Here are four compelling reasons why, if he did what the government accuses him of doing, he deserves that medal, not jail time.

1: At great personal cost, Bradley Manning has given our foreign policy elite the public supervision it so badly needs.

In the past 10 years, American statecraft has moved from calamity to catastrophe, laying waste to other nations while never failing to damage our own national interests. Do we even need to be reminded that our self-defeating response to 9/11 in Iraq and Afghanistan (and Pakistan, Yemen, and Somalia) has killed roughly 225,000 civilians and 6,000 American soldiers, while costing our country more than $3.2 trillion? We are hemorrhaging blood and money. Few outside Washington would argue that any of this is making America safer.

An employee who screwed up this badly would either be fired on the spot or put under heavy supervision. Downsizing our entire foreign policy establishment is not an option. However, the website WikiLeaks has at least tried to make public scrutiny of our self-destructive statesmen and -women a reality by exposing their work to ordinary citizens.

Consider our invasion of Iraq, a war based on distortions, government secrecy, and the complaisant failure of our major media to ask the important questions. But what if someone like Bradley Manning had provided the press with the necessary government documents, which would have made so much self-evident in the months before the war began? Might this not have prevented disaster? We’ll never know, of course, but could additional public scrutiny have been salutary under the circumstances?

Thanks to Bradley Manning’s alleged disclosures, we do have a sense of what did happen afterwards in Iraq and Afghanistan, and just how the U.S. operates in the world. Thanks to those disclosures, we now know just how Washington leaned on the Vatican to quell opposition to the Iraq War and just how it pressured the Germans to prevent them from prosecuting CIA agents who kidnapped an innocent man and shipped him off to be tortured abroad.

As our foreign policy threatens to careen into yet more disasters in Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, and Libya, we can only hope that more whistleblowers will follow the alleged example of Bradley Manning and release vital public documents before it’s too late. A foreign policy based on secrets and spin has manifestly failed us. In a democracy, the workings of our government should not be shrouded in an opaque cloud of secrecy. For bringing us the truth, for breaking the seal on that self-protective policy of secrecy, Bradley Manning deserves the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

2: Knowledge is powerful. The WikiLeaks disclosures have helped spark democratic revolutions and reforms across the Middle East, accomplishing what Operation Iraqi Freedom never could.

Wasn’t it American policy to spread democracy in the Middle East, to extend our freedom to others, as both recent American presidents have insisted?

No single American has done more to help further this goal than Pfc. Bradley Manning. The chain reaction of democratic protests and uprisings that has swept Egypt, Libya, Bahrain, Syria, Yemen, and even in a modest way Iraq, all began in Tunisia, where leaked U.S. State Department cables about the staggering corruption of the ruling Ben Ali dynasty helped trigger the rebellion. In all cases, these societies were smoldering with longstanding grievances against oppressive, incompetent governments and economies stifled by cronyism. The revelations from the WikiLeaks State Department documents played a widely acknowledged role in sparking these pro-democracy uprisings.

In Egypt, Tunisia, Bahrain, and Yemen, the people’s revolts under way have occurred despite U.S. support for their autocratic rulers. In each of these nations, in fact, we bankrolled the dictators, while helping to arm and train their militaries. The alliance with Mubarak’s autocratic state cost the U.S. more than $60 billion and did nothing for American security -- other than inspire terrorist blowback from radicalized Egyptians like Mohammad Atta and Ayman al-Zawahiri.

Even if U.S. policy was firmly on the wrong side of things, we should be proud that at least one American -- Bradley Manning -- was on the right side. If indeed he gave those documents to WikiLeaks, then he played a catalytic role in bringing about the Arab Spring, something neither Barack Obama nor former Secretary of Defense Robert Gates (that recent surprise recipient of the Presidential Medal of Freedom) could claim. Perhaps once the Egyptians consolidate their democracy, they, too, will award Manning their equivalent of such a medal.

3: Bradley Manning has exposed the pathological over-classification of America’s public documents.

“Secrecy is for losers,” as the late Senator and United Nations Ambassador Daniel Patrick Moynihan used to say. If this is indeed the case, it would be hard to find a bigger loser than the U.S. government.

How pathological is our government’s addiction to secrecy? In June, the National Security Agency declassified documents from 1809, while the Department of Defense only last month declassified the Pentagon Papers, publicly available in book form these last four decades. Our government is only just now finishing its declassification of documents relating to World War I.

This would be ridiculous if it weren’t tragic. Ask the historians. Barton J. Bernstein, professor emeritus of history at Stanford University and a founder of its international relations program, describes the government’s classification of foreign-policy documents as “bizarre, arbitrary, and nonsensical.” George Herring, professor emeritus at the University of Kentucky and author of the encyclopedic From Colony to Superpower: A History of U.S. Foreign Policy, has chronicled how his delight at being appointed to a CIA advisory panel on declassification turned to disgust once he realized that he was being used as window dressing by an agency with no intention of opening its records, no matter how important or how old, to public scrutiny.

Any historian worth his salt would warn us that such over-classification is a leading cause of national amnesia and repetitive war disorder. If a society like ours doesn’t know its own history, it becomes the great power equivalent of a itinerant amnesiac, not knowing what it did yesterday or where it will end up tomorrow. Right now, classification is the disease of Washington, secrecy its mania, and dementia its end point. As an ostensibly democratic nation, we, its citizens, risk such ignorance at our national peril.

President Obama came into office promising a “sunshine” policy for his administration while singing the praises of whistleblowers. He has since launched the fiercest campaign against whistleblowers the republic has ever seen, and further plunged our foreign policy into the shadows. Challenging the classification of each tightly guarded document is, however, impossible. No organization has the resources to fight this fight, nor would they be likely to win right now. Absent a radical change in our government’s diplomatic and military bureaucracies, massive over-classification will only continue.

If we hope to know what our government is actually doing in our name globally, we need massive leaks from insider whistleblowers to journalists who can then sort out what we need to know, given that the government won’t. This, in fact, has been the modus operandi of WikiLeaks. Our whistleblower protection laws urgently need to catch up to this state of affairs, and though we are hardly there yet, Bradley Manning helped take us part of the way. He did what Barack Obama swore he would do on coming into office. For striking a blow against our government’s fanatical insistence on covering its mistakes and errors with blanket secrecy, Bradley Manning deserves not punishment, but the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

4. At immense personal cost, Bradley Manning has upheld a great American tradition of transparency in statecraft and for that he should be an American hero, not an American felon.

Bradley Manning is only the latest in a long line of whistleblowers in and out of uniform who have risked everything to put our country back on the right path.

Take Daniel Ellsberg, leaker of the Pentagon Papers, a Pentagon-commissioned secret history of the Vietnam War and the official lies and distortions that the government used to sell it. Many of the documents it included were classed at a much higher security clearance than anything Bradley Manning is accused of releasing -- and yet Ellsberg was not convicted of a single crime and became a national hero.

Given the era when all this went down, it’s forgivable to assume that Ellsberg must have been a hippie who somehow sneaked into the Pentagon archives, beads and patchouli trailing behind him. What many no longer realize is that Ellsberg had been a model U.S. Marine. First in his class at officer training school at Quantico, he deferred graduate school at Harvard to remain on active duty in the Marine Corps. Ellsberg saw his high-risk exposure of the disastrous and deceitful nature of the Vietnam War as fully consonant with his long career of patriotic service in and out of uniform.

And Ellsberg is hardly alone. Ask Lt. Colonel (ret.) Darrel Vandeveld. Or Tom Drake, formerly of the National Security Agency.

Transparency in statecraft was not invented last week by WikiLeaks creator Julian Assange. It is a longstanding American tradition. James Madison put the matter succinctly: “A popular government, without popular information, or the means of acquiring it, is but a prologue to a farce or a tragedy; or, perhaps both.”

A 1960 Congressional Committee on Government Operations report caught the same spirit: “Secrecy -- the first refuge of incompetents -- must be at a bare minimum in a democratic society… Those elected or appointed to positions of executive authority must recognize that government, in a democracy, cannot be wiser than the people.” John F. Kennedy made the same point in 1961: “The very word ‘secrecy’ is repugnant in a free and open society.” Hugo Black, great Alabaman justice of the twentieth-century Supreme Court had this to say: “The guarding of military and diplomatic secrets at the expense of informed representative government provides no real security for our Republic.” And the first of World-War-I-era president Woodrow Wilson’s 14 Points couldn’t have been more explicit: “Open covenants of peace, openly arrived at, after which there shall be no private international understandings of any kind but diplomacy shall proceed always frankly and in the public view.”

We need to know what our government’s commitments are, as our foreign policy elites have clearly demonstrated they cannot be left to their own devices. Based on the last decade of carnage and folly, without public debate -- and aggressive media investigations -- we have every reason to expect more of the same.

If there’s anything to learn from that decade, it’s that government secrecy and lies come at a very high price in blood and money. Thanks to the whistleblowing revelations attributed to Bradley Manning, we at least have a far clearer picture of the problems we face in trying to supervise our own government. If he was the one responsible for the WikiLeaks revelations, then for his gift to the republic, purchased at great price, he deserves not prison, but a Presidential Medal of Freedom and the heartfelt gratitude of his country.

Chase Madar is a lawyer in New York and a frequent contributor to the London Review of Books, the American Conservative magazine, CounterPunch.org, and Le Monde Diplomatique. His next book, The Passion of Bradley Manning, will be published by O/R Books this fall. He is covering the Bradley Manning case and trial for TomDispatch.com. To listen to Timothy MacBain’s latest TomCast audio interview in which Madar discusses the Manning case, click here, or download it to your iPod here.

Copyright 2011 Chase Madar

What Does it Cost to Change the World? by WikiLeaks

What Does it Cost to Change the World? from WikiLeaks on Vimeo.

Libya: Unending American hostility

If I could publicly ask our beloved president one question, it would be this: "Mr. President, in your short time in office you've waged war against six countries — Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, Yemen and Libya. This makes me wonder something. With all due respect: What is wrong with you?"
The American media has done its best to dismiss or ignore Libyan charges that NATO/US missiles have been killing civilians (the people they're supposedly protecting), at least up until the recent bombing "error" that was too blatant to be covered up. But who in the mainstream media has questioned the NATO/US charges that Libya was targeting and "massacring" Libyan civilians a few months ago, which, we've been told, is the reason for the Western powers attacks? Don't look to Al Jazeera for such questioning. The government of Qatar, which owns the station, has a deep-seated animosity toward Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi and was itself a leading purveyor of the Libyan "massacre" stories, as well as playing a military role in the war against Tripoli. Al Jazeera's reporting on the subject has been so disgraceful I've stopped looking at the station.
Alain Juppé, Foreign Minister of France, which has been the leading force behind the attacks on Libya, spoke at the Brookings Institution in Washington on June 7. After his talk he was asked a question from the audience by local activist Ken Meyercord:

"An American observer of events in Libya has commented: 'The evidence was not persuasive that a large-scale massacre or genocide was either likely or imminent.' That comment was made by Richard Haass, President of our Council on Foreign Relations. If Mr. Haass is right, and he's a fairly knowledgeable fellow, then what NATO has done in Libya is attack a country that wasn't threatening anyone; in other words, aggression. Are you at all concerned that as NATO deals more and more death and destruction on the people of Libya that the International Criminal Court may decide that you and your friends in the Naked Aggression Treaty Organization should be prosecuted rather than Mr. Gaddafi?"

Monsieur Juppé then stated, without attribution, somebody's estimate that 15,000 Libyan civilians had been killed by pro-Gaddafi forces. To which Mr. Meyercord replied: "So where are the 15,000 bodies?" M. Juppé failed to respond to this, although in the tumult caused bt the first question, it was not certain that he had heard the second one. (For a counter-view of the Libyan "massacre" stories, see this video.)
It should be noted that, as of June 30, NATO had flown 13,184 air missions (sorties) over Libya, 4,963 of which are described as strike sorties. You can find the latest figures on the Allied Command Operations website.
If any foreign power fired missiles at the United States would Barack Obama regard that as an act of war? If the US firing hundreds of missiles at Libya is not an act of war, as Obama insists (to avoid having to declare war as required by US law), then the deaths resulting from the missile attacks are murder. That's it. It's either war or murder. To the extent there's a difference between the two.
It should be further noted that since Gaddafi came to power in 1969 there has virtually never been a sustained period when the United States has been prepared to treat him and the many positive changes he's instituted in Libya and Africa with any respect. For a history of this hostility, including the continual lies and scare campaigns, see my Libya chapter in Killing Hope.

America and its perpetual quest for love

Why can't we "get some of the people in these downtrodden countries to like us instead of hating us."
– President Dwight D.Eisenhower, in a March,1953 National Security Council Meeting ¹

The United States is still wondering, and is no closer to an understanding than Good Ol' Ike was almost 60 years ago. American leaders still believe what Frances Fitzgerald observed in her study of American history textbooks: "According to these books, the United States had been a kind of Salvation Army to the rest of the world: throughout history, it had done little but dispense benefits to poor, ignorant, and diseased countries. ... the United States always acted in a disinterested fashion, always from the highest of motives; it gave, never took." ²
In 2007 I wrote in this report about the US military in Iraq:

I almost feel sorry for them. They're "can-do" Americans, accustomed to getting their way, accustomed to thinking of themselves as the best, and they're frustrated as hell, unable to figure out "why they hate us", why we can't win them over, why we can't at least wipe them out. Don't they want freedom and democracy? ... They're can-do Americans, using good ol' American know-how and Madison Avenue savvy, sales campaigns, public relations, advertising, selling the US brand, just like they do it back home; employing psychologists and anthropologists ... and nothing helps. And how can it if the product you're selling is toxic, inherently, from birth, if you're totally ruining your customers' lives, with no regard for any kind of law or morality, health or environment. They're can-do Americans, accustomed to playing by the rules — theirs; and they're frustrated as hell.

Here now the Google Cavalry rides up on its silver horse. Through its think tank, Google Ideas (or "think/do tank"), the company paid for 80 former Muslim extremists, neo-Nazis, U.S. gang members and other former radicals to gather in Dublin June 26-28 ("Summit Against Violent Extremism", or SAVE) to explore how technology can play a role in "de-radicalization" efforts around the globe. Now is that not Can-do ambitious?
The "formers," as they have been dubbed by Google, will be surrounded by 120 thinkers, activists, philanthropists and business leaders. The goal is to dissect the question of what draws some people, particularly young people, to extremist movements and why some of them leave.
The person in charge of this project is Jared Cohen, who spent four years on the State Department's Policy Planning staff, and is soon to be an adjunct fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations (CFR), focusing on counter-radicalization, innovation, technology, and statecraft. ³
So ... it's "violent extremism" that's the big mystery, the target for all these intellectuals to figure out. ... Why does violent extremism attract so many young people all over the world? Or, of more importance probably to the State Department and CFR types: Why do violent extremists single out the United States as their target of choice?
Readers of this report do not need to be enlightened as to the latter question. There is simply an abundance of terrible things US foreign policy has done in every corner of the world. As to what attracts young people to violent extremism, consider this: What makes a million young Americans willing to travel to places like Afghanistan and Iraq to risk their life and limbs to kill other young people, who have never done them any harm, and to commit unspeakable atrocities and tortures?
Is this not extreme behavior? Can these young Americans not be called "extremists" or "radicals"? Are they not violent? Do the Google experts understand their behavior? If not, how will they ever understand the foreign Muslim extremists? Are the experts prepared to examine the underlying phenomenon — the deep-seated belief in "American exceptionalism" drilled into every cell and nerve ganglion of American consciousness from pre-kindergarten on? Do the esteemed experts then have to wonder about those who believe in "Muslim exceptionalism"?

This just in! American leaders do have feelings!

Afghanistan President Hamid Karzai's criticism of US and NATO forces in his country grows more angry and confrontational with each passing week. Recently, US Ambassador Karl Eikenberry was moved to reply to him: "When Americans, who are serving in your country at great cost — in terms of lives and treasure — hear themselves compared with occupiers, told that they are only here to advance their own interest, and likened to the brutal enemies of the Afghan people ... they are filled with confusion and grow weary of our effort here. ... We begin to lose our inspiration to carry on."
That certainly may apply to many of the soldiers in the field. But oh, if only American military and political leaders could really be so offended and insulted by what's said about them and their many wars.
Eikenberry — who has served in Afghanistan a total of five years as a senior US Army general and then as ambassador — warned that if Afghan leaders reach the point where they "believe that we are doing more harm than good," then Americans may "reach a point that we feel our soldiers and civilians are being asked to sacrifice without a just cause," and "the American people will ask for our forces to come home."
Well, if Eikenberry is really interested, a June 8 BBC World News America/Harris Poll found that 52% of Americans believe that the United States should move to get its troops out of Afghanistan "now", with only 35% believing that the troops should stay; while a Pew Research Center poll of mid-June showed 56% of Americans favor an "immediate" pullout.
"America has never sought to occupy any nation in the world," the ambassador continued. "We are a good people." ⁴
How nice. Reminds me of US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, after the 1999 78-day bombing of the helpless people of the former Yugoslavia, a war crime largely instigated by herself, when she declared: "The United States is good. We try to do our best everywhere." ⁵
Do these grownups really believe what comes out of their mouths? Does Mr. Eikenberry actually think that "America has never sought to occupy any nation in the world"? Sixty-six years after World War II ended, the United States still has major bases in Germany and Japan; 58 years after the end of the Korean War, tens of thousands of American armed forces continue to be stationed in South Korea; for over a century, the United States has occupied Guantanamo Bay in Cuba against the fervent wishes of the Cuban people. And what other term shall we use to describe the American presence in Iraq for more than eight years? And Afghanistan for almost ten?
George W. Bush had no doubt: The Iraqis are "not happy they're occupied," he said. "I wouldn't be happy if I were occupied either." ⁶
However, the current Republican leader in the House, John Boehner appears to be a true believer. "The United States has never proposed establishing a permanent base in Iraq or anywhere else," he affirmed a few years ago. ⁷
If 18th century Americans could resent occupation by the British, when many of the Americans were British themselves, then how much easier to understand the resentment of Iraqis and Afghans toward foreign occupiers.

An excerpt from William Blum's memoir of the 1960s-1970s: West-Bloc Dissident

What our natural enemies didn't do to us, we naturally did to ourselves, as did many of the other underground newspapers and movement groups in the '60s: disagreements developed, factions formed, and, eventually, a split that rent the organization hopelessly in two — the left's traditional circular firing squad.
Putting it in the broadest terms, there were two species of activists in these large dysfunctional families who kept bumping heads, here, there, and everywhere. We can call them the "politicos" and the "yippies" (subspecies: hippies, anarchists).
The politicos placed their faith in organization and in the intellect — a mass movement, "vanguard" political parties, hierarchies and leaders, heavy on meetings, ideology, and tracts, at times doctrinaire sounding, using words and ideas to convince the great middle class, if not the great unwashed. There were theories to justify these tactics, theories based on class analysis, presented with historical annotation to certify their viability; theories that Norman Mailer disparagingly referred to as "the sound-as-brickwork-logic-of-the-next-step in some hard new Left program."
The yippies looked upon all this with unconcealed impatience, scorn, and unbelief. Said a yippie to a politico back then: your protest is so narrow, your rhetoric so boring, your ideological power plays so old fashioned ...
Let's listen to Jerry Rubin, certainly the yippies' most articulate spokesperson:

The long-haired beast, smoking pot, evading the draft, and stopping traffic during demonstrations is a hell of a more a threat to the system than the so-called "politicos" with their leaflets of support for the Vietcong and the coming working class revolution. Politics is how you live your life, not whom you vote for or whom you support.

The most important political conflict in the United States for Rubin was not of classes, but "the generational conflict". "The respectable middle-class debates LBJ while we try to pull down his pants."

Is [American society] interested in reform, or is it just interested in eliminating nuisance? What's needed is a new generation of nuisances. A new generation of people who are freaky, crazy, irrational, sexy, angry, irreligious, childish, and mad ... people who burn draft cards, people who burn dollar bills, people who burn MA and doctoral degrees, people who say: "To hell with your goals", people who proudly carry Vietcong flags, people who re-define reality, who re-define the norm, people who see property as theft, people who say "fuck" on television, people who break with the status-role-title-consumer game, people who have nothing material to lose but their bodies ... What the socialists like the SWP and the Communist Party, with their conversions of Marxism into a natural science, fail to understand is that language does not radicalize people — what changes people is the emotional involvement of action.

Hardly anyone, of course, fit precisely and solely into either of these classifications, including Jerry Rubin. Much of the yippie "party line" was to be taken metaphorically, unless one's alienation had reached the level of an alien, while most politicos were independent of any political party.
Ray Mungo, one of the founders of Liberation News Service, later wrote of LNS:

It is impossible for me to describe our "ideology," for we simply didn't have one; we never subscribed to a code of conduct or a clearly conceptualized Ideal Society ... And it was the introduction of formal ideology into the group which eventually destroyed it, or more properly split it into bitterly warring camps.

When Mungo speaks of "formal ideology", he's referring to the "politicos" who joined LNS after its inception. These people, whom he refers to as "the Vulgar Marxists", as opposed to his own "anarchist" camp ...

believed fervently in "the revolution", and were working toward it — a revolution based on Marx and Lenin and Cuba and SDS and "the struggle"; and people were supported only on the basis of what they were worth to the revolution; and most of the things in life which were purely enjoyable were bourgeois comforts irrelevant to the news service, although not absolutely barred. ... Their method of running the news service was the Meeting and the Vote, ours was Magic. We lived on Magic, and still do, and I have to say it beats anything systematic."

Mungo would have one believe that ideology is a "thing" introduced from the "outside", like tuberculosis, that is best to avoid. I would argue, however, that "ideology" is nothing less than a system of ideas in one's head, whether consciously organized or not, that attempts to answer the questions: Why is the world the way it is? Why is society the way it is? Why are people the way they are? And what can be done to change any of this? To say you have no ideology comes dangerously close to saying that you have no opinions on — and perhaps no interest in — such questions. Ray Mungo, I believe, was overreacting to people whom he saw as too systematic and who didn't appreciate his "Magic".
Just as I knew instinctively that I wasn't a Quaker or a pacifist, I knew I wasn't a yippie, hippie or anarchist, which didn't mean that I couldn't enjoy and even take part in some of their antics. Jerry Rubin was mistaken in my case, as in many others — language, spoken and print, had played a major role in my radicalization; equally indispensable had been the sad state of the world, but it was language which had illuminated and brought home to me the sad state of the world and proffered explanations for why it was the way it was.
During the American Revolution, Thomas Paine's Common Sense, which sold hundreds of thousands of copies in the first few months of 1776, used language suffused with both reason and emotion to argue powerfully the case for independence, to strike convincingly at one of the greatest obstacles to separation: American veneration of royalty; and to point out that beyond the politics and legalities of the conflict, the colonies were sources of profit the crown would never voluntarily relinquish. This message clarified the revolution for thousands of confused rebels who had been debating points of law with London. Imagine if Paine had been a yippie instead of a politico — his primary message might have been to pull down the king's pants.
It was the movement's politicos who stayed the course, continuing to be activists well past the '60s, while Rubin's long-haired beast and Mungo's Magic people — lacking the convictions of their courage — could more likely be found in the '70s sitting cross-legged at the feet of the newest-flavor guru, probing interpersonal relations instead of international relations, or seeking fulfillment through vegetarianism, "the land", or Rolfing. By the '80s they had evolved into yuppies.

Notes

1. New York Times, August 10, 2003 ^↩
2. Frances Fitzgerald, America Revised (1980), pp.129, 139 ^↩
3. Foreign Policy, "State Department Innovator Goes to Google", September 7 2010; Washington Post, June 24, 2011 ^↩
4. Washington Post, June 19, 2011^↩
5. Washington Post, October 23, 1999 ^↩
6. Washington Post, April 14, 2004 ^↩
7. United Press International, July 26, 2007 ^↩

–
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

Napoleon "Sarkonaparte's" neo-colonialist designs for Africa

The NATO war on Libya is largely the brainchild of the ideological descendant of Napoleon Bonaparte, the "little Corsican." The "little Hungarian" Nicolas Sarkozy has now violated the UN Security Council's Resolution 1973 by directly providing Libyan rebels battling the central government forces of Muammar Qaddafi with weapons.

Sarkozy's move on Libya, has the not-so-secret backing of Israel via the private "shuttle diplomacy" of Sarkozy's friend Bernard-Henri Levy, an ardent Zionist who knows that one of the proposed homes for the Zionist state was in the Green Mountains in Cyrenaica, near Benghazi. Levy, who was born into a Sephardic Jewish colonialist household in French Algeria, bears the unmistakable and common "pied-noir" brand of antipathy toward Arabs.  Levy negotiated a 30-year lease for an Israeli base in eastern Libya from the rebel National Transitional Council and a promise of recognition of Israeli by the rebels if they gain control of Tripoli. The goal of Levy and Sarkozy is to bring Libya into a neo-colonialist French African realm that will not only consolidate the French hold on the former French African colonies but expand French influence into Libya, Sudan, and the Democratic Republic of Congo.

After French forces invaded Ivory Coast to depose President Laurent Gbagbo in favor of their hand-chosen candidate Alassane Ouattara, a former deputy director of the International Monetary Fund and former governor of the Central Bank of Western African States, the contrivance that mints and circulates the Communauté financière d'Afrique franc (CFA franc), Sarkozy and the French military assigned French officers to "assist" Ouattara in governing Ivory Coast. The CFA franc is the neo-colonialist monetary unit that France uses to dominate the economies and political affairs of Ivory Coast, Benin, Togo, Senegal, Burkina Faso, Mali, Niger, and Guinea-Bissau.

French and French-backed troops of Ouattara's "Republican Forces of Cote d'Ivoire" now guard Gbagbo and his top ex-government officials who are being held under arrest by Ouattara's government. The Ouattara government is considering asking the International Criminal Court, which has indicted and issued arrest warrants for Qaddafi and his son Seif al Islam al-Qaddafi, to also indict Gbagbo. However, no one is asking for the indictment of Ouattara, whose forces have killed some 95 Ivorians since April when the civil war between Ouattara and Gbagbo ended. Many Gbagbo supporters form the south of the country remain in exile in Liberia and Togo, fearful to return lest they face retribution from Ouattara's thugs from the north of the country. Sarkozy and French billionaires Martin Bouygues and Rothschild bank alumnus Vincent Bollore attended Ouatarra's swearing -in ceremony in May. Meanwhile, French military officers are re-organizing Ivory Coast's armed forces to purge Gbagbo supporters and make the force compatible with NATO and the US Africa Command (AFRICOM), the command that will eventually re-colonize Africa for NATO. The French invasion and occupation of Ivory Coast had the support of the UN, ,much as the NATO attack on Libya has been done with the cover of UN support.

French Prime Minister Francois Fillon is die in Ivory Coast in July 14, French Bastille Day, to consolidate Paris's hold over the country.

The Undersecretary General of the UN for Political Affairs is Lynn Pascoe, whose foreign service career in Beijing, Moscow, Jakarta, Kuala Lumpur, and Taipei suggests ties to the CIA, has been a champion of Ouattara and the Libyan rebel forces.

Ouattara's wife, Dominique Folloroux-Ouattara, like Bernard-Henri Levy, was born into a Jewish pied-noir French colonial family in Algeria, owns AICI of Paris, a property management company with real estate holdings in Ivory Coast, Gabon, Burkina Faso (where Alassane Ouattara was born), and Cannes. AICI is also the North American franchisee for Jacques Dessange beauty salons and products. As the property manager for long-time Ivory Coast President Felix Houphouet-Boigny, Folloroux was believed to have also been his mistress. After Houphouet-Boigny, who died in 1993, became feeble, Folloroux married Ouattara in 1991 in Paris. The wedding was attended by none other than the billionaire friend of Sarkozy, Martin Bouygues. What is of major interest to the billionaires who support Sarkozy is Ivory Coast's huge cocoa industry. For Folloroux-Ouattara's Zionist friends, the interest in Ivory Coast has to do less with chocolate bars and more with gold bars and diamonds.

Ivorian and Libyan sources have told WMR that what helped trigger the French-backed military invasions of Ivory Coast and Libya, which the French have now escalated to include weapons deliveries to Libyan rebel forces, was the support by Gbagbo for Qaddafi's plan to establish a gold-backed African currency unit that would replace the Paris-controlled CFA franc in its former West African colonies. Sarkozy and his billionaire and Zionist friends became alarmed at the prospect and Levy was dispatched to meet with the rebels and secure early French recognition, the first by any nation, for their Benghazi-based "government."

One of those interested in the Qaddafi idea was Philippine-Henri Dacoury-Tably, the former Ivorian governor of the Central Bank of West Afrucan States, the post previously held by Ouattara. Dacoury-Tabley now finds himself imprisoned and charged by Ouattara's government with "infractions against private banks and the Central Bank of West Africa." It is obvious that the worst "crime" against the international bankers was to unhinge West Africa's economy from the Rothschild banking houses of Paris, London, and New York. The threat to the banks is also part of the reason why Qaddafi is under attack by the very countries where the Rothschild banks dominate: France, Britain, Italy, Sweden, and the United States -- with Israel smiling in the background.

Israel's global propaganda blitzkrieg against Palestine statehood knows no bounds

Israel's global propaganda blitzkrieg against Palestine statehood knows no bounds

Part I of a two-part report.
Israel has pulled out all the stops in its worldwide campaign to prevent further diplomatic recognition of Palestinian statehood and independence, as well as ensure that the UN General Assembly vote on Palestine's independence, scheduled for September, is not a landslide for Palestine. Israeli officials have expressed an interest in keeping the pro-Palestine vote below the two-thirds majority needed for passage of a "Uniting for Peace" resolution in the General Assembly that could overshadow an expected U.S. veto of support for Palestine independence in the Security Council.

At the very least, Israel is trying to ensure that at least 30 nations vote "no" on the Palestine independence resolution in the General Assembly. Israeli diplomats are traveling the world to pressure governments of large and small nations to vote "no" or abstain on Palestine independence. Similarly, foreign ambassadors in Tel Aviv and visiting leaders in Jerusalem are having their arms twisted to veto Palestine's bid for statehood.

Also being enlisted by Israel are its sizable assets in the news media and entertainment industry. This past weekend saw multiple airings of the movie "Exodus" on WETA-TV, the Public Broadcasting System station in Washington, DC. The showing of "Exodus" was intended to generate sympathy for Israel, just as its premier in 1960 was designed by its Zionist backers to increase support for Israel from a largely neutral American public. In 1956, President Eisenhower actually pressured Israel and its British and French allies to withdraw from the Suez Canal and Sinai, a move that split NATO and infuriated Zionists in the United States. Eleanor Roosevelt was enlisted as a supporter for the Israeli cause from the inception of the State of Israel in 1947 but it was a steady stream of propaganda, such as "Exodus," that began to see Americans slant to the Israeli cause. "Exodus," based on the novel by Leon Uris, was directed by Otto Preminger, with the screenplay being written by Dalton Trumbo. The film was pushed by United Artist's production chief, Arnold  Picker, later the chair of the National Center for Jewish Film, and public relations guru Edward Gottlieb.

The "Exodus, formerly a Chesapeake Bay ferry called the "President Wakefield," was sold by American Zionist supporters of Israel in violation of a U.S. military embargo against the belligerents fighting in Palestine. The ferry had been bought through the suspices of the New York-based Sonneborn Institute, run by Zionist millionaire Rudolf G. Sonneborn. The ship set sail from France bound for Palestine on July 11, 1947, with 4515 passengers. After being rammed and boarded by British naval personnel, the vessel was towed to Haifa. Most of the passengers were deported to Germany.

In the Hollywood version, Paul Newman, who plays Haganah underground soldier Ari Ben Canaan, whose father is involved in the terrorist bombing of the King David Hotel in Jerusalem, is discussing with Eva Marie Saint, playing American Kitty Fremont, what the Israelis would do if the "Exodus" were boarded and what he describes is a full-blown false flag attack, with the intent of killing Jews, that would be the basis for generating worldwide sympathy for people who were up against the British Empire and "brutal" Arab thugs who had been allied with the German Nazis.

The following in the salient part of the script from "Exodus":

              Saint: Either you compromise, or you lose.
              Newman: We won't lose.
              If the British give in and let us go, we've won.
              And if we starve to death aboard this ship, we've still won.
              Saint: They'll wait.
              They'll wait until you're too weak and then come aboard and take you off.
              Newman: It doesn't take much strength to set off 200 pounds of dynamite.
              Saint: You'd still set it off, knowing you've lost?
              Newman: Of course.
              Saint: Without any regard for the lives you'd be destroying?
              Newman: With every regard in the world for them.
              Saint: I don't understand.
              Newman: Each person on board this ship is a soldier.
              The only weapon we have to fight with is our willingness to die.
              Saint: But for what purpose?
              Newman: Call it publicity.
                 Saint:-Publicity?
              Newman: -Yes, publicity.
              A stunt to attract attention.
              A letter to the newspapers.
              A help-wanted ad to the official journal of the United Nations.
              "Wanted by 600 men, women and children, a country...
              "...a native land, a home."
              That's all they're dying for.
              Just to call attention to Israel...
              ...without ever having seen it themselves.
              Saint: Does the vulgarity of it shock you?
              You can't fight the whole British Empire with 600 people.
              It isn't possible.
              Newman: How many Minutemen did you have at Concord when they fired...
              ...the "shot heard round the world"?
              Saint: -I don't know. -  .
              Newman: 77
              Saint: Look, please understand me.
              I wish you could win.
              I wish it were possible for you to have a country of your own.
              But it isn't.
              You're offering the lives of all these people
              for something that can never happen.
              I know. I've been in Palestine.
              Newman: -When were you there?
              Saint: -A year ago.
              Mr. Ben Canaan, even if you get a partition and a free Jewish state...
              ...the Arabs won't let you keep it.
              500,000 Jews against 50 million Arabs?
              You can't win.

The other major reason for the full-court press of "Exodus" is the scene of the UN General Assembly vote on the 1947 resolution that partitioned Palestine into Jewish and Arab states. This is the basis for the Palestinian declaration of statehood. However, there is no mention of the word "Palestinian" in the film, only "Arab." Those Zionists who argue that it was the Hashemite Kingdom of Jordan that was the Arab state created by the UN partition do so to falsely convey the notion that Arab Palestinians have no right to the part of Palestine UN-mandated territory: east Jerusalem and Gaza and, eventually, the West Bank after 1967, that was reserved for the nascent Arab state by the UN.

The following is the script from Exodus where Jews in Palestine are following the partition votge on the radio:

                Norway votes...
                ...for partition.
                 Pakistan...
                ...against.
                Cast member:
                -Who cares?
                Cast member: -How is it now?
                20 for Partition, 8 against, and  8 abstaining.
                If we get over the next 4 I think we're in.
                Republic of Panama...
                ...for.
                The Republic of  Paraguay...
                ...votes...
                ...for  partition.
                The Republic of Peru...
                ...for.
                The  Philippines Republic votes...
                ...for.
                We've got two-thirds. I'm going to announce it!
                Cast member: -But we haven't got the final vote yet.
                Cast member:  -What's the difference?   We won!
                The Polish People's Republic votes...
                ...for . . .
                "The final vote of the United Nations on
                the question of the partition of Palestine...
                "...into an independent Jewish state and an independent Arab state...
                "...is as follows:
                "   for...33"
                ...  13 against,  2  abstentions."

The re-airing of the Zionist propaganda film "Exodus" is, once again, a clear attempt to confuse and propagandize the American public. It is a scheme being played out by Israel and its agents of influence around the world.

The Israelis are concentrating on nations that voted for the 1947 partition to now vote against the establishment of the Palestinian state. The United States and Canada are in Israel's pocket and the Obama administration is fully backing Israel against Palestinian statehood, with the two Zionist State Department spokespersons, Victoria Nuland, who is married to arch-neoconservative war-hawk Robert Kagan, and Mark Toner, echoing the Israeli line one hundred percent. Joining The Hillary Clinton State Department in pressuring the UN and its member states into supporting Israel is Representative Steve Chabot (R-OH), who has called for the U.S. to withhold funding for the UN if it votes to approve Palestinian statehood.

Other UN members that voted for the 1947 partition being pressed hard by Israel to vote no on Palestine are Australia; Belgium; Brazil; Costa Rica; the Czech Republic and Slovakia, the successor states of Czechoslovakia, which voted for partition; Denmark; Dominican Republic;  France; Guatemala; Haiti, Iceland; Liberia; Luxembourg; Netherlands; New Zealand; Norway; Panama; Paraguay; Peru; Philippines; Poland; Sweden; Ukraine, the successor to the Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republic; South Africa; Uruguay; Russia, the successor to the USSR.

It is unlikely that Belarus, the sucessor to the Byelorussian SSR; Venezuela; Bolivia; or Ecuador, all of which voted for the 1947 partition, will vote with Israel against Palestine.

Those nations that voted against the 1947 partition: Afghanistan, Cuba, Egypt, Greece, India, Iran, Iraq, Lebanon, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Turkey, and Yemen can be expected to vote for Palestine.

The nations that abstained in 1947 are Argentina, Chile, China, Colombia, El Salvador, Ethiopia, Honduras, Mexico, and the United Kingdom, along with now-defunct Yugoslavia, are of special interest for Israeli diplomats. China has indicated it will vote for Palestine but Colombia will support Israel.  Israel's ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, stated that Mexico will vote with Israel. In an interview Israel's "Globes," Prosor said: "We are not giving up on any country. We are currently mapping out the various countries. We are deciding which to approach, and how to approach them. There are 192 member nations in the UN. We are not giving up on Latin American countries, the Caribbean, or countries along the Pacific Ocean coastline and Asia." The one nation that was absent in 1947, Siam, now Thailand, is also subject to intense Israeli pressure to vote no on Palestine.

In Part 2, Israel's diplomatic and intelligence machinations, particularly in what Prosor referred to as "the Pacific coastline," will be revealed.
 
Israel using "super-power" clout to scare up UN votes against Palestine independence

Second part of a two-part series
Israel is using the kind of diplomatic clout usually exercised by a super-power in pressuring the nations of the world to vote "no" or abstain on an expected UN General Assembly resolution recognizing the independence of Palestine within 1967 borders. However, Israel does have the full backing of the United States and Germany, which are using their own diplomatic muscle to reward and threaten those nations based on their votes in the UN. Israel, through its lobbying arms, particularly the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) and the American Jewish Committee, has managed to get key Republicans in the House of Representatives to threaten to limit U.S. funding for the UN and its specialized agencies if the General Assembly votes to recognize Palestine.

The German government of Chancellor Angela Merkel is reportedly threatening a cut-off in economic aid to developing nations that vote for Palestine. German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle and International Aid Minister Dirk Niebel have been at the forefront of the pressure operations.
Israel's new ambassador to the UN, Ron Prosor, has been twisting the arms of delegates from large and small countries to vote with Israel and against Palestine. Prosor's replacement as the ambassador in London, Daniel Taub, was chosen for the job because he and his wife Zehava were both born in London and educated in the UK before emigrating to Israel. The Taubs are well-connected to Britain's Jewish community, including Labor Opposition Leader Ed Miliband, and can use their influence to try and dissuade the Tory-Liberal Democratic coalition government from voting for Palestine at the UN.

Israeli Deputy Foreign Minister Danny Ayalon has been making his rounds to suppress the pro-Palestine vote in the UN. Even the Vatican City micro-state has not been ignored by Israel. Although only a UN observer, the Vatican has diplomatic clout with majority Catholic countries in Latin America and the Caribbean, as well as nations in Africa with sizable Catholic populations. Ayalon met with Vatican Under-Secretary for Relations with States Monsignor Ettore Balestrero at the Vatican a few weeks ago to discuss various "political issues."

A few days after returning to Jerusalem from Europe, Ayalon requested Vietnam to vote no on Palestine. Ayalon had been meeting with Vietnamese Minister of Information and Communications Le Doan Ho. Earlier in June, Ayalon traveled to El Salvador to address the summit of the Organization of American States where he held bilateral discussions with several delegates to lobby for a no vote on Palestine. Ayalon's trip was designed to convince those Western Hemisphere nations that had previously recognized Palestine to abstain or vote against Palestine in the General Assembly. Mexico was a key target of the Israeli arm-twisting and Prosor later stated in New York that Israel had bagged Mexico's vote.

The former Soviet states of Azerbaijan and Kazakhstan have been lobbied by Israeli President Shimon Peres who paid visits to both nations in 2009.

Ayalon later claimed success in stemming the tide of Palestinian support in Latin America and Europe.

Israel's rabidly anti-Arab racist Foreign Minister, Avigdor Lieberman, has sent classified cables to Israel's ambassadors around the world instructing them to seek promises from nations to vote against Palestine by stressing that a yes vote for Palestine would somehow "de-legitimize" Israel. Lieberman has visited Albania, Croatia, and Austria soliciting no votes on Palestine. Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu will visit Romania, Bulgaria, Hungary, and Poland to persuade them to also vote no on Palestine.

Israel's strategy is to see 60 members of the UN vote no or abstain on the Palestine vote. At they very least, Israel wants some members to be absent on the day of the vote.

Prosor has stated that one of Israel's main targets in its campaign are "countries along the Pacific Ocean coastline." That strategy was part of the reason Israeli Knesset Speaker Reuven Rivlin visited the south Pacific island nation of Tonga in April.
Three former U.S. Trust Territories that vote with the United States and Israel in a manner reminiscent of the lockstep support that the former Byelorussian and Ukrainian Soviet Socialist Republics gave to the USSR in the United Nations are expected to vote against Palestine. In May, Stuart Beck, the UN ambassador of Palau, one of these " freely Associated States," which are bound to the U.S. by treaty, said, "Palau is the number one friend of the US, ahead of everyone, including Israel. We overtook Israel this year." Palau's voting record with the United States in the UN is 96.5 percent. Palau is followed by the Federated States of Micronesia at 94 percent, Israel at 91.8 percent and the Republic of the Marshall Islands at 81 percent. The United States, Israel, and the three "associated states" often vote as a unified small minority block against a vast majority of the UN member states.
Vanuatu: A case of just how far Israel and its allies are willing to go
The South Pacific island nation of Vanuatu is best known to Americans as the scene of one of the "Survivor" television shows. However, its history of diplomatic poker playing between China and Taiwan has made it well-known as a nation that can be swayed easily on the global stage.

In May, when Vanuatu decided to recognize the Georgian breakaway region of Abkhazia as independent, joining Russia, Venezuela, Nicaragua and Vanuatu's South Pacific partner Nauru, alarm bells went off not only in Georgia but in Israel, a close ally of Georgia. A number of dual Georgian-Israeli citizens have served or are serving as members of the Georgian government of President Mikheil Saakashvili and Israel counts Georgia as a major diplomatic ally at the UN.

Almost immediately after the Vanuatu government of Prime Minister Sato Kilman recognized Abkhazia, Vanuatu's ambassador to the UN, Donald Kalpokas, stated that Vanuatu recognized only Georgia and not Abkhazia. It is quite clear that Kalpokas was taking his orders not from his own government but from the US and Israeli ambassadors, Susan Rice and Prosor, both ardent supporters of Georgia. However, Vanuatu Foreign Minister Alfred Carlot, who had been on a visit to China, confirmed that Vanuatu had, in fact, recognized Abkhazia and appeared on a YouTube video confirming the recognition.

Meanwhile, New Zealand's conservative and pro-Israeli Prime Minister John Key, made some comments about Russian influence in the South Pacific at the same time his Foreign Minister Murray McCully was touring the island states on a mission tied to continued New Zealand economic assistance, a mission that may have been in concert with Germany's threat to withhold aid to nations that voted with Palestine at the UN. McCully's mission took him to Vanuatu and the Solomon Islands, with Papua New Guinea being dropped at the last minute after its foreign minister was fired.

After Abkhazian authorities produced the document signed by the prime ministers of Abkhazia and Vanuatu establishing diplomatic relations, a funny thing happened to Vanuatu Prime Minister Kilman. The nation's Supreme Court fired Kilman and appointed his predecessor Edward Natapei, dismissed in December 2010 after he lost a no-confidence vote. The court ruled that Kilman's election as prime minister was null and void because the parliamentary vote was by a show of hands rather than a secret ballot.

One of Natapei's first actions was to nullify Vanuatu's recognition of Abkhazia. But there is yet another wrinkle to the ouster of Kilman. Natapei's acting foreign minister Joe Natuman, in "de-recognizing" Abkhazia, also announced that Australian attorney Ari Jenshel, an official with the Australian Agency for International Development (AUSAID), as rife with Australian Security Intelligence Organization (ASIO) agents as the US Agency for International Development (USAID) is with CIA agents, would be welcomed back to Vanuatu after his expulsion by the Kilman government for espionage. Natapei charged that Kilman's government was receiving "bribes" from businessmen from unnamed foreign countries. Jenshel, who is close to Australian Jewish circles, worked for five years in the Vanuatu Attorney General's office under an AUSAID program.

From the Kilman government's vantage point, Jenshel was in a position to rifle through documents and other sensitive material, copy them, and send them to Canberra. The Vanuatu government, in fact, charged Jenshel with copying sensitive documents and sending them to Australia. Jenshel was also accused of copying classified communications between the Kilman government and that of Fiji's military ruler, Commodore Frank Bainimarama. Fiji's vote on Palestine at the UN and its possible following Vanuatu in recognizing Abkhazia may have been the subject of the classified communications, which would have been of interest to ASIO, Mossad, and the CIA.

After his dismissal by the Supreme Court, Kilman was re-elected by the Vanuatu parliament with 29 out of 52 votes, defeatinf rival Serge Vohor by six votes. Kilman's entire government, including Foreign Minister Carlot, who arranged for the recognition of Abkhazia, was re-instated. There is no indication that the Kilman government will abide by the "de-recognition" decision of interim Prime Minister Natapei and with more evidence surfacing about Australian, Israeli, and U.S. intrigue behind Vanuatu's "constitutional coup," something that Australians are painfully aware of as a result of the CIA's 1975 constitutional coup against Australian Labor Prime Minister Gough Whitlam, Vanuatu may be an example of an intelligence operation "blow back," with Kilman and his South Pacific partners voting for Palestine at the UN General Assembly as a warning to Canberra, Wellington, Tel Aviv, Tbilisi, and Washington to stay out of South Pacific affairs.

But, as is normal, the Obama administration has not gotten the message from the South Pacific. In a throwback to "gunboat diplomacy," it is dispatching the USS Cleveland (LPD-7), a Navy amphibious ship with a Marine contingent, on a "goodwill" tour of Vanuatu, Tonga, Micronesia, Timor-Leste, and Papua New Guinea as part of "Pacific Partnership 2011." The CIA's official diplomatic cover "political officers" will undoubtedly be on hand to ensure that the five nations visited by the ship are "on side" for the General Assembly vote.

GREEK OFFICIALS ATTEMPT TO BLOCK U.S. BOAT TO GAZA FROM LEAVING GREEK PORT --- PASSENGERS SUSPECT ISRAEL/US ECONOMIC PRESSURE ON BELEAGUERED GREEK GOVERNMENT

GREEK OFFICIALS ATTEMPT TO BLOCK U.S. BOAT TO GAZA FROM LEAVING GREEK PORT

PASSENGERS SUSPECT ISRAEL/US ECONOMIC PRESSURE ON BELEAGUERED GREEK GOVERNMENT

Athens - Passengers on the U.S. Boat to Gaza, The Audacity of Hope, are asking Greek government officials to clarify whether the boat they are leasing is being blocked from leaving Greece because of an anonymous request of a private citizen concerning the seaworthiness of the ship or whether a political decision has been made by the Greek government in response to U.S. and Israeli government pressure. They specifically want to know if the U.S. is using its leverage at the International Monetary Fund over the implementation of an ongoing bailout of European banks with massive Greek debts to compel the Greek government to block the U.S. Boat to Gaza from leaving Greece.

On the morning of June 23, the American passengers learned that a "private complaint" had been filed against the U.S. Boat to Gaza, which is part of an international flotilla scheduled to sail to Gaza in the next few days. This complaint, its origin still unknown to the Americans, claimed that the boat is "not seaworthy" and therefore requires a detailed inspection. On June 25 a police order declared that until the complaint is resolved the boat will not be permitted to leave.

The passengers are wondering if Israel, which has extensive economic trade and investments in Greece, is using its clout to pressure the Greek government. "Israel has said openly that it is pressuring governments to try to stop the flotilla, and clearly Greece is a key government since several of the boats plan to leave from Greece," says passenger Medea Benajmin. "It is unconscionable that Israel would take advantage of the economic hardship the Greek people are experiencing to try to stop our boat or the flotilla."

Given the very close relationship between Israel and the U.S., and the public efforts by Israel to denounce and try to stop the flotilla, the passengers on the U.S. boat want to know if the Obama Administration is using U.S. leverage at the IMF to compel the Greek authorities to stop the U.S. boat from leaving Greece. Greece's economic and political crisis is a result of extreme austerity measures imposed by the European Union and the largely U.S.-controlled International Monetary Fund. Past U.S. governments have used their influence at the IMF to impose political conditions on indebted countries that have nothing to do with restoring economic growth.

Mark Weisbrot, Co-Director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research in Washington, said: "Greece is not going to be able to meet the targets that it is pledging to the IMF and the European authorities. In this situation the IMF and therefore the U.S. government will have enormous leverage because the Fund and EU authorities will decide what will be acceptable benchmarks for Greece to receive future tranches of IMF/EU funding."

"We are guests here," said Robert Naiman, a passenger on the U.S. boat. "But we ask the Greek authorities to be honest with us. What is the origin of this complaint? Is the decision to stop our boat from leaving truly due to legitimate technical issues that can be resolved, or is it a sign that our boat will be stopped from leaving no matter what we do? What is the role of the Israeli and U.S. governments in the Greek decision to stop our boat from leaving?"

"We have a right to protest the blockade of Gaza," said Ann Wright, an organizer and passenger on the U.S. boat. "To its credit, the Greek government, like the Red Cross, Amnesty International, and Oxfam, agrees with us that the blockade on Gaza must be lifted. But for years, the only effective international action to challenge the illegal blockade has been freedom flotillas. We call upon the Greek government, which agrees that our cause is just, not to stand in the way of our peaceful protest in pursuit of our shared goal of lifting the blockade. The boat we are leasing for this journey, after its refitting for the voyage to Gaza, was surveyed by a professional surveyor and successfully completed its sea trials. There is no reason for any further delays on this matter, we are ready to sail."

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.