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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Israel: A Stalemated Action of History

By GABRIEL KOLKO

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Mossad linked to hijacking of Arctic Sea

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Tom Nagel
Paris, France

Former FBI translatorSibel Edmonds's testimony released

Yesterday, former FBI translator Sibel Edmonds's sworn testimony in a deposition in an Ohio elections complaint case filed by Representative Jean Schmidt (R-OH) against her Democratic challenger David Krikorian was released.

Edmonds's deposition matches with previous WMR reports on her deposition.

The sitting congresswoman mentioned below who was ensnared in a Turkish "hooking" operation involving a lesbian agent was previously reported by WMR to be Representative Jan Schakowsky (D-IL), the chair of the House Intelligence Committee's Subcommittee on Investigations and Oversight. The late Representative Tom Lantos (D-CA) is also mentioned as providing classified information to both Israel and Turkey in return for bribes and "other serious criminal conduct."

WMR's previous reports that House Speaker Dennis Hastert was involved in a homosexual circle involving congressional staffers also appears to be mentioned in the deposition, along with the fact that Hastert's activities were known to foreign intelligence agents and that the foreign agents sometimes participated in trysts at Hastert's townhouse. On October 7, 2006, WMR reported on Hastert's homosexual trysts: "The rumors about another top GOP member of the House being involved in sexual encounters with young "men for hire" are confirmed to WMR by well-placed sources in Washington's gay community. The member in question is House Speaker Dennis Hastert, whose 'alternate' life style is the primary reason for him and his staff covering up the scandal involving ex-Florida GOP Rep. Mark Foley and his lewd messages sent to underage male congressional pages. Hastert's penchant to receive anal sex is well-known to our sources in DC's gay community. Additionally, Hastert's reported extremely small penis is the subject of many jokes among Washington's gay circles." After leaving Congress, Hastert became a lobbyist for the Turkish government.

Edmonds statement:

"I believe he passed away, and Tom Lantos' office would be not only with the bribe, but also in disclosing highest level protected U.S. intelligence and weapons technology information both to Israel and to Turkey. His office was also involved with that. It was not only bribery, but it was other very serious criminal conduct.

Roy Blunt is there. There have been individuals with a question mark there. The reason there's a question mark is I lacked -- I was terminated by April 2002, but this particular Congresswoman -- the Turkish -- these Turkish organizations and operatives, if they can't do it by money, they do by blackmail. So they collect information on sexual lives and other information like that, and with this particular Congresswoman, it being 2000 until I left, they -- this individual, this Congresswoman's married with children, grown children, but she is bisexual.

So they have sent Turkish female agents, and that Turkish female agents work for Turkish government, and have sexual relationship with this Congresswoman in her townhouse actually in this area, and the entire episodes of their sexual conduct was being filmed because the entire house, this Congressional woman's house was bugged. So they have all that documented to be used for certain things that they wanted to request when I left. So I don't know whether she -- that Congresswoman complied and gave. That's why I couldn't use her name because I don't -- I meant her face because I don't know if she did anything illegal afterwards.

But she was -- there are things; information was being collected for blackmail purposes, and her lesbian relationship, and they, the Turkish entities, wanted both congressional related favoritism from her, but also her husband was in a high position in the area in the state she was elected from, and these Turkish entities ran certain illegal operations, and they wanted her husband's help. But I don't know if she provided them with those. I left. I was terminated.

Q And can you tell me how you know all that, everything you just told me?

A I can't discuss the intelligence gathering method by the FBI, but in general terms, when foreign targets among themselves discuss how they were going to achieve certain goals, objectives, and if those communications are collected and recorded, not only do you have that communications, but in some cases they involved field office surveillance team to see that actually they completed.

For example, if they say -- somebody says at five o'clock they're going to bug his house, the surveillance team would go out and see that he had (unintelligible). So there were various ways that things were collected.

Q All right. So just to make sure I understand this, the Turkish entities were at least preparing to blackmail this Congresswoman.

A Correct.

Q And is this Congresswoman still a sitting member of Congress?

A Yes.

Q And why, if you know, would they want to blackmail this Congresswoman?

A I don't know what reasons they had, why they just didn't do money. They needed -- I was trained as a language specialist by my agent for -- to find personal information, and one of the things that we was taught in the FBI -- everyone was taught in the counterintelligence -- that the target U.S. persons, whether they are in Congress or executive branch or whatever, first go by foreign entities to what they refer to as hooking period, and it was very common; it's a very common way of trying to find vulnerability, and that is sexual, financial,any other kinds of greeds, and it was -- it was done a lot, was being done a lot, and in some cases certain people from Pentagon would send a list of individuals with access to sensitive data, whether weapons technology or nuclear technology, and this information would include all their sexual preference, how much they owed on their homes, if they have gambling issues, and the State Department, high level State Department person would provide it to these foreign operatives, and those foreign operatives then would go and hook those Pentagon people, whether they were at RAND or some other Air Force base.

And then the hooking period would take some times. Sometimes it takes months, sometimes one year. They would ask for small favor, but eventually after they reviewed the targets that the U.S. person -- some small favor, then they would go blackmail and that person would give them everything, nuclear related information, weapons related information. It always worked for them. So it was not always money.

Q If you know, what was it that these Turkish entities wanted from this Congresswoman?

A I know for sure that Armenian genocide was one, but also where she came from, that city or the district where she came from is where certain Turkish operatives, lobby groups run illegal businesses for fund raising for themselves to generate money, and for laundering that money they needed her influence in that district where she is from and also her husband because he husband was also involved, had some high level position, not an elected person, with where she came from, and they had another Representative who was making it possible, but supposedly she at that point was kind of -- was an obstacle.

That's all I know.

Q In your experience, I mean, was this hooking technique used with other members of Congress by Turkish entities?

A Well, when I worked for the FBI, I work on operations that were not only current, but specific period of 1996 till 2000, 2001, December, 2003 January. So there were a lot of things that certain field office had provided me to go over, and some of that I didn't complete, but one example would be with regard to Mr. Hastert. For example, he used the townhouse that was not his residence for certain not very morally accepted activities.

Now, whether that was being used as blackmail I don't know, but the fact that foreign entities knew about this, in fact, they sometimes participated in some of those not maybe morally well activities in that particular townhouse that was supposed to be an office, not a house, residence at certain hours, certain days, evenings of the week.

So I can't say if that was used as blackmail or not, but certain activities they would share. They were known.

Q With respect to the Congresswoman who they were -- you don't know what happened ultimately because you left, right?

A Correct.

Q Or you were terminated.

6 A Correct.

Q But with respect to that Congresswoman you said one of the things that they wanted was you said Armenian genocide. I assume you were referring to the fact they wanted her support --

A Yes.

Q -- to oppose the Armenian genocide resolution.

A Yes, and she was not leaning that way during that stage, until this hooking start.

Q And does it surprise you that theywould go to those lengths to gain her opposition to such a resolution?

A Not at all.

Q Why not?

A I don't know what their reason is, but they are going to this extent. I mean, they may have -- I can only guess what their reasons are, but I think they would do anything. It's a very important issue, and whether it's money, whether sexual blackmail, anything they would do to not let this happen or get the support so it wouldn't happen."

U.S. Air Intelligence Agency report stated Iran carried out PanAm 103 bombing

The neocons, in their normal group think fashion, are now teaming up to launch all-out attacks on Scotland for releasing from prison convicted PanAm 103 bomber Abdelbeset Ali Mohmed al Megrahi. Some neocons are urging a boycott of Scottish products and tourism. Of course, the demonization of Scotland comes as Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu visits Prime Minister Gordon Brown in London and follows Israeli attacks on Sweden's government over an Aftonbladet report on Israelis trafficking in Palestinian body parts removed from the bodies young Palestinians killed by Israeli troops, Ireland's former President and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson for receiving the Presidential Medal of Freedom from President Obama, and Norway over a boycott of Israeli products by a Norwegian regional government.

The blaming of Libya for the take down of PanAm 103 was concocted by the CIA and Mossad, working in tandem, to cover up their activities related to weapons smuggling with Iran in the 1980s. Had Iran been officially blamed for the December 1988 attack on PanAm 103, retaliation for the USS Vincennes attack on an Iran Air Airbus-300 in July 1988, the lucrative joint CIA-Mossad weapons smuggling program to and from Iran during the Iran-Iraq war would have become an embarrassment. Therefore, a cover story was created to blame Libya for the bombing and two Libyan agents, Megrahi, who was later convicted, and Al Amin Khalifa Fhimah, who was acquitted based on the same flimsy and dubious evidence used to convict Megrahi, were named as the perpetrators.

The Iranian connection was never revealed by the CIA, which was under orders to cook the intelligence to pin the blame for Lockerbie on Libya.

A declassified Air Intelligence Agency, formerly SECRET NOFORN WNINTEL, dated March 4, 1991, states that Iranian Interior Minister Ayatollah Ali Akbar Mohtashemi ordered the attack on PanAm 103 in retaliation for the Iran Airbus downing by the U.S. Navy. The relevant paragraph in the redacted report states:

"Mohtashemi is closely connected with the Al Abas and Abu Nidal terrorist groups. He is actually a long-time friend of Abu Nidal. He has recently paid 10 million dollars in cash and gold to these two organizations to carry out terrorist activities and was the one who paid the same amount to bomb Pan Am flight 103 in retaliation for the U.S. shootdown of the Iranian Airbus. Mohtashemi has also spent time in Lebanon."

Two veteran ABC News correspondents, one in Paris and the other in Nicosia, later told this editor that the wire transfer of $10 million from Iran via a Greek bank to the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine-General Command in Lebanon's Bekaa Valley for the construction of the Pan Am 103 bomb was intercepted by the National Security Agency (NSA) and the British Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) Ayios Nikolaos listening station in Cyprus. Both correspondents said the blaming of Libya for the Lockerbie bombing was fantasy from the beginning. It was later revealed that Nidal, who later was given asylum by Saddam Hussein in Baghdad and died there under suspicious circumstances in 2002, had alternately worked for the CIA, Mossad, and Egyptian and Kuwaiti intelligence.

The CIA and Mossad went to extreme lengths to keep their secret arms smuggling network to Iran from exposure. This was during the time of the Iran-contra scandal and the transition from Ronald Reagan to George H. W. Bush. Bush was deeply enmeshed in the Iran-contra scandal and its links to the smuggling of weapons to Ayatollah Khomeini's government in Iran.

In 1987, the up-and-coming Christian Democratic Union Premier of the German state of Schleswig-Holstein, Uwe Barschel, began objecting to the use of Hartenholm airport in his state for the smuggling of weapons to and from Iran. The Iranian-run airport was also used to smuggle nuclear materials and drugs. Barschel was lured to the Hotel Beau-Rivage in Geneva by what WMR was told were CIA and Mossad agents operating under diplomatic cover with the assistance of the Federal German Bundesnacrichtendienst(BND) intelligence service. On October 11, 1987, Barschel was discovered dead and fully-clothed in his hotel room's water-filled bathtub. The drug Lorazepam was found in his blood stream. The autopsy of Barschel indicated force was used against him before his death.

Years ago, the editor was provided with copies of TOP SECRET CIA cables intercepted by East German intelligence in 1987. The cables are between the military attache at the US. Embassy in Bern and the Joint Chiefs' Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center (ITAC) at the Pentagon, with copies to the CIA's Deputy Director of Operations and the Director of the NSA, that suggest that the decision was made to assassinate Barschel, code named "Perch," after two agents, a CIA agent code named "Lokal" and a Mossad agent code-named "Rabbi" met with Barschel in Geneva, code named "Laketown," only to discover the Schleswig-Holstein Premier was "unyielding" to their demands about permitting his state to be used for Iranian arms and drug smuggling. The German word for the fish "perch" is "Barsch."

The second intercepted CIA cable states: "Jerry took Perch to Temple met with Lokal and Rabbi at 2130 Perch unyielding refuses coop Rabbi ordered disposition alternative w asap advise no act." In can be assumed that the CIA was being informed that Mossad was recommending that Barschel be eliminated and the CIA was informing Langley that no action was required on the part of the CIA.

Two days after Barschel's meeting with the CIA and Mossad agents, his body was discovered in the bathtub in Room 317 at the Beau-Rivage.

A little over a year later, Pan Am 103, would be blown up over the skies of Scotland. To protect the Iranian-CIA-Mossad smuggling link, Libya would be framed for the attack. And in an added bonus, a group of CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) personnel who may have been aware of the CIA's connections to the Iran-contra and Israeli weapons smuggling operations with Iran happened to be on board the ill-fated Boeing 747: Matthew Gannon, the CIA's deputy station chief in Beirut; Major Chuck McKee, assigned to the DIA station in Beirut; Ronald Lariviere, a security officer at the U.S. embassy in Beirut; and Daniel O'Connor, a security officer at the U.S. embassy in Nicosia. Assistant Deputy Director Michael S. Bernstein, a special agent for the Office of Special Investigation at the Department of Justice.

Scottish Justice Minister Kenny MacAskill, who is under tremendous political fire for releasing Megrahi to Libya while he lives his last days with prostate cancer, may still have the last triumph. Megrahi is vowing to present new evidence establishing his innocence. Barack Obama, who shows more and more by his actions that he still answers to his old employer, the CIA -- while he worked for the CIA front Business International Corporation and perhaps before and after -- wants Megrahi kept under house arrest in Libya.

There is little wonder why the Israel Lobby and Obama and FBI director Robert Mueller are so incensed over MacAskill's actions. Mueller was assistant to Attorney General Richard Thornburgh in 1989 and prosecuted both Megrahi and Fhimah, as well as long-time CIA operative Manuel Noriega of Panama. Obama and Mueller are clearly trying to cover the tracks of their respective agencies as Megrahi prepares to tell all.

The Torture Archive - 83,000 Pages Now Online, Full-text and Indexed

Washington D.C., August 25, 2009 - The National Security Archive announces the publication of the Torture Archive -- more than 83,000 pages of primary source documents (and thousands more to come) related to the detention and interrogation of individuals by the United States, in connection with the conduct of hostilities in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as in the broader context of the "global war on terror."

The goal of the Torture Archive is to become the online institutional memory for essential evidence on torture in U.S. policy. Many of these documents are available in multiple locations on the Internet and in numerous private collections, thanks to landmark Freedom of Information Act and habeas litigation, leaks from whistleblowers, public relations releases from government, investigative reporting by journalists including the Torturing Democracy team, and Congressional investigations. But the disparate locations, enormous volume of documents, and lack of indexing or standard cataloging have presented real difficulties for users.

With support from the Open Society Institute and the JEHT Foundation since 2006, the National Security Archive has undertaken to bring together all these materials in digital formats, organize and catalog them for maximum utility and access, and publish them online in multiple packages including a comprehensive searchable database. By combining released executive branch policy memoranda, legal documents from U.S. and foreign courts, and on-the-ground information about actual practices by the U.S. military and intelligence personnel, the Torture Archive presents a comprehensive view of the war on terrorism, its foundations and its implications.

This initial launch of the Torture Archive includes the complete set of declassified Combatant Status Review Tribunal and Administrative Review Board files from the Pentagon, and thousands of documents resulting from FOIA litigation brought by the American Civil Liberties Union, the Archive and other plaintiffs. The Torture Archive will continue to add documents as they are released through Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) litigation or Executive discretion.

Together with the documentary film, Torturing Democracy, and the companion resources posted for viewers of the film, the Torture Archive provides multiple pathways for multiple levels of users, ranging from the high school student seeking a single key torture memo, to the dissertation writer needing a complete reference database of primary sources. Visitors can view the interactive timeline, the full annotated transcript of the film, interview transcripts, and YouTube excerpts, as well as the complete streaming video of the 90-minute film. Users can search the full database of documents by title, date, organization or keywords.

Special recognition for documentation efforts above and beyond the call of duty should go to the American Civil Liberties Union for the spectacularly successful FOIA lawsuit against the Department of Defense and other federal agencies for records on the treatment of prisoners apprehended by the United States in the "war on terror." This landmark litigation sparked strong open government rulings from federal Judge Alvin Hellerstein (Southern District of New York), is still pending in the courts, and has produced thousands of documents that would still be secret today if not for the ACLU's efforts. The ACLU filed their original FOIA requests in October 2003, together with the Center for Constitutional Rights, Physicians for Human Rights, Veterans for Common Sense, and Veterans for Peace. After the revelations of the Abu Ghraib photographs in April 2004, the ACLU and its partners renewed the FOIA request, and went to court in June 2004 when the government failed to respond.

The Center for Constitutional Rights has also brought major litigation that has contributed to the documentary and public record that constitutes the Torture Archive. CCR particularly has coordinated the more than 500 attorneys who have worked pro bono in representing the detainees at Guantanamo, in proceedings that have also placed much new evidence on the record. The Associated Press brought the Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that first opened the identities of the detainees at Guantanamo and forced the release of thousands of pages of related hearing transcripts. And the Senate Armed Services Committee, especially under the chairmanship of Sen. Carl Levin (D-Michigan), has pursued the torture issue from Abu Ghraib to the present and has compelled the release of hundreds of key documents and illuminating testimonies.

Numerous investigative journalists have also contributed to the documentary record by posting online at various Web sites the original records they obtained through their reporting, often through leaks from whistleblowers, or by quoting the records at length in their published articles. This list notably includes Seymour Hersh and Jane Mayer of The New Yorker, Dana Priest and Barton Gellman of the Washington Post, Michael Isikoff of Newsweek, Charles Hanley of the AP, Carlotta Gall and Tim Golden and Scott Shane of The New York Times, and the staff of Salon.com. Other documents in the Torture Archive have come from the National Security Archive’s own FOIA and declassification requests.

The Archive thanks the Washington Research Library Consortium for hosting the Torture Archive in yet another example of cooperative digital publishing innovation, as pioneered by the Archive’s work with our partners here at the Gelman Library of The George Washington University.

• Document acquisition: Kristin Adair, Yvette White, Owen Davies, Yvette Chin, Tom Blanton, Peter Kornbluh, Sherry Jones, and Carey Murphy.

• Document compilation and preparation: Wendy Valdes.

• Indexers: Stacy Chambers, Autumn Kladder, and Lisa Thompson.

• Digital acquisition: Suboh Suboh

• Digital publication: Allison Zhang (WRLC)

• Project management: Joyce Battle, Carlos Osorio, Tom Blanton.

• Web production: Michael Evans

Bill Fletcher Keynote at Veterans for Peace Nat'l Convention

Campaign against Presidential Medal of Freedom winners stoked by UN-Israel Lobby liaison

WMR has learned from UN sources that the campaign by the Israel Lobby in the United States to discredit former Irish President and UN Human Rights Commissioner Mary Robinson was aided and abetted by a long-time UN liaison "consultant" who has worked for both Secretary Generals Kofi Annan and Ban Ki-moon.

The consultant attempted to put the imprimatur of the UN on a number of news stories that were placed in the major media. On May 10, former U.S. ambassador to the UN John Bolton, who is now a senior fellow with the neocon citadel, the American Enterprise Institute, penned a screed against Robinson in the Wall Street Journal that accused Robinson of tolerating an anti-Semitic, anti-Israel, and anti-American platform at the World Conference Against Racism in Durban, South Africa in 2001.

Major Jewish organizations in the United States criticized President Obama for awarding Robinson the Presidential Medal of Freedom at a White House ceremony yesterday. Obama was also criticized by the minions of the Israel Lobby for awarding the same medal to retired South African Anglican Archbishop Desmond Tutu. The same Israeli Lobby interests were also at the forefront of criticism of former President Jimmy Carter for his defense of the Palestinians and his likening their situation to blacks in apartheid South Africa. Carter was likewise accused of "anti-Semitism," a rather familiar refrain from apologists for Israel's brand of apartheid practiced against Palestinians and Israeli Arabs alike.

The program to discredit Robinson and Tutu may have had the opposite effect of what Jewish organizations and the Israel Lobby intended. The venal barrage against Robinson and Tutu, both of whom are highly thought of among UN diplomats, has created a backlash against both the Israel Lobby in the United States and Israel, according to our UN sources.

The actions against Robinson and Tutu are not helped by the fact that the Israeli government is refusing to cooperate with a UN probe into Israeli war crimes in Gaza.

Critics of the Durban conference cite the discussions held there about the nature of Zionism as a racist philosophy. If the case of former U.S. Representative and 2008 Green Party presidential candidate Cynthia McKinney is any indication, Israel has institutionalized racism. After McKinney and her party of human rights campaigners were arrested in international waters in June for trying to deliver critical humanitarian supplies to the beleaguered people of Gaza, McKinney was put into a prison in Ashdod, assigned prisoner number 88794, and segregated into a cell with female Ethiopian economic refugees. And if that bit of Jim Crow tactics with a Kosher flair was not enough, McKinney told WMR that she was subjected by her Israeli jailers to everything "but a full body search."

WMR has also learned that Israel's El Al Airlines is doing a booming business in transporting expelled critics of Israel back to their home countries. Last year, American Professor Norman Finkelstein, a critic of Israeli policies, was expelled from Israel after being detained for 24 hours. Last year, Israel also expelled American Professor Richard Falk, the UN's special rapporteur on the Palestinian territories, after being detained in a shabby Israeli prison cell. Finkelstein and Falk are both Jewish.

Other travelers to Israel, including Americans of Arab descent and those supporting the Palestinian cause, are routinely taken into custody by Israeli security forces, imprisoned, and expelled on the first available El Al flight.

UPDATE 1X. JFK Jr.'s plane crash was originally treated as murder investigation

WMR has learned from a source who was a close friend of the late John F. Kennedy, Jr. that the FBI originally treated the July 16, 1999, crash of his Piper Saratoga in the waters off Martha' Vineyard as a murder investigation. Kennedy, his wife Carolyn Bessette Kennedy, and his sister-in-law Lauren Bessette were killed when their plane plummeted into the Atlantic en route from Caldwell Airport in Essex County, New Jersey to Martha's Vineyard. Kennedy's wife was also three month's pregnant with a boy.

Kennedy was to drop off Lauren Bessette at Martha's Vineyard before flying to Hyannisport to attend his cousin Rory's wedding.

According to the Kennedy friend, the son of the late president and publisher of "George" magazine, was about ready to announce his run for the U.S. Senate from New York. Kennedy was acutely aware of his vulnerability and hired on a personal security team just prior to his announcing for the Senate. Kennedy also decided, unlike all previous flights, not to file a flight plan at Caldwell. Instead, Kennedy, instead of filing an FAA flight plan, provided his own "flight following" by having a Kennedy friend waiting at the Martha's Vineyard airport. When the plane was overdue the friend notified Woods Hole Coast Guard Station which, in turn, notified the FAA and other agencies.

According to the source, Kennedy, contrary to press reports, decided not to fly over open ocean from Montauk at the eastern tip of Long Island to the Vineyard but instead hugged the Connecticut and Rhode Island coast lines until flying direct to the island. Kennedy did not identify his ultimate destination on the radio - he said that6 he was flying "east of Teterboro."

Fearing for his safety, Kennedy thought it best to be within sight of the coastline. According to the Kennedy friend, Kennedy told him his plans prior to his departure. Kennedy had also arranged for all the onboard bags, including his own and that of his family, to be hand searched by security personnel at Caldwell prior to departure. Kennedy decided not to take along a co-pilot because he felt his flight was somewhat of a risk. Kennedy's friend said Kennedy was always concerned about the "underdog" and did not want to put a co-pilot in any potential danger. In any event, Kennedy felt confident of his and his family's security since he had retained a security firm to provide for his protection prior to his Senate run announcement.

Media reports at the time of the disappearance suggested that the weather near Martha's Vineyard was "hazy" and Kennedy may have become disoriented, causing the crash. However, the Kennedy friend states that this was not the case and cites the fact that visibility around the Vineyard was clear at 9:41 pm when the plane disappeared from the sky. The following is from the National Transportation Safety Board (NTSB) report on the crash and quotes the Martha's Vineyard tower manager:

"During an interview, the tower manager stated that no actions were taken to augment or edit the ASOS during his shift. He also stated the following:

'The visibility, present weather, and sky condition at the approximate time of the accident was probably a little better than what was being reported. I say this because I remember aircraft on visual approaches saying they had the airport in sight between 10 and 12 miles out. I do recall being able to see those aircraft and I do remember seeing the stars out that night...To the best of my knowledge, the ASOS was working as advertised that day with no reported problems or systems log errors.'"

ASOS is the Automated Surface Observation System. Media reports claimed that visibility was around 2 miles with haze, a far cry from what the tower manager at Martha's Vineyard stated to the NTSB.

The weather report around the time of the crash also indicated clear weather in the area:

"2053...Clear at or below 12,000 feet; visibility 8 miles; winds 250 degrees at 7 knots; temperature 23 degrees C; dewpoint 19 degrees C; altimeter 30.09 inches of Hg.

2153...Clear at or below 12,000 feet; visibility 10 miles; winds 240 degrees at 10 knots, gusts to 15 knots; temperature 24 degrees C; dewpoint 18 degrees C; altimeter 30.10 inches of Hg"

Some twelve minutes after Kennedy's plane crashing, visibility around Martha's Vineyard was reported at 10 miles, described as near perfect conditions by professional pilots.

There were also questions raised about Kennedy's piloting skills. However, he had logged in 310 hours. The NTSB report also reported Kennedy's most recent flight record:

"In the 15 months before the accident, the pilot had flown about 35 flight legs either to or from the Essex County/Teterboro, New Jersey, area and the Martha's Vineyard/Hyannis, Massachusetts, area. The pilot flew over 17 of these legs without a CFI [Certified Flight Instructor] on board, including at least 5 at night. The pilot's last known flight in the accident airplane without a CFI on board was on May 28, 1999."

Kennedy's most recent three legs were with a CFI on board and along the same route taken on July 16 but significant rain and a 800 foot ceiling. Kennedy had, according to his friend, been flying for 17 years. Before Kennedy flew the Piper Saratoga he flew a Cessna 182.

There were also media reports that Kennedy was impeded by a foot cast from an accident he suffered while parasailing. However, according to Kennedy's friend, the cast had aready been removed when Kennedy took to the skies on July 16.

The Kennedy friend also stated that he learned from an FBI agent, as well as a Secret Service agent, who were friends of the Kennedy family that the FBI originally treated their investigation of the plane crash as a possible murder. Kennedy no longer enjoyed Secret Service protection as a protected person, according to the friend.

FBI agents, after the crash, fanned out across convenience and other stores in the Caldwell, New Jersey area and asked if anyone had recently purchased epoxy. According to the French magazine, France Dimanche, a pilot at the Caldwell airport had reported he heard a "weird noise" coming from Kennedy's plane on takeoff. The FBI theorized that a whistle had been glued on the aft section of the plane in order to emit a distinct, unique, and high-pitched noise for the benefit of someone on the ground who wanted to correctly identify the plane when it descended for landing at Martha's Vineyard.

The FBI asked pilots if a whistle attached to the rear of a plane such as Kennedy's could be heard from the cockpit. The answer from all the pilots was no because the sound would only be heard by those on the ground as the plane passed overhead while descending to an audible range. There was also a belief that if the whistle had been fashioned from a water-soluble material, such as plaster-of-paris, it would have dissolved in the seawater.

The FBI discovered that there was "suspicious boating activity" in an area of Martha's Vineyard where Kennedy's plane was descending to 2000 feet for its final approach to the airport. The "suspicious" boaters claimed to be fishing for striped bass. However, when the FBI asked local fishermen to corroborate the suspicious boaters' story, they stated that the particular area where they were discovered was not an area where Atlantic striped bass would be found. In fact, salt water striped bass do not start to run in Massachusetts coastal waters in great numbers until the autumn.

The FBI also found an unusual number of extra batteries in the fishermens' boat. The FBI was suspicious of the boat's contents because after the plane's wreckage was discovered, investigators found, according to Kennedy's friend, that every light bulb, including that in the emergency flashlight, had been blown out on the plane and every circuit board, including those in the engine sensors and other electronic equipment, had been literally "melted." FBI agents on the scene preliminarily concluded that a "massive electromagnetic event" caused Kennedy's plane to crash. FBI agents also found that the cockpit voice recorder (CVR) had its battery removed, possibly before the flight. Every simulation the FBI conducted of a plane in Kennedy's situation, with all lights off at night and with only the engine and the vacuum pump-operated attitude indicator functioning, resulted in the same result: the plane crashing into the water.

Before the FBI could begin examining the ocean floor for any "special equipment" that may have been thrown overboard from the fishing boat, their "murder" investigation was abruptly called off by FBI headquarters in Washington.

Kennedy was preparing to re-tool "George" magazine to take on investigations of a number of major stories, not least of which was the actual story behind the assassination of his father in Dallas on November 22, 1963. According to an article in Germany's Bild am Sonntag on August 1, 1999, Kennedy was also preparing to meet with the deputy chief of Mossad, Amiran Levine, at the Oak Room in Manhattan's Plaza Hotel the Wednesday after Kennedy was killed. The subject was the assassination of Israel's Prime Minister Yitzhak Rabin in 1995 and that Rabin was assassinated by one of his body guards and not the convicted murderer Yigal Amir.

Kennedy's friend said the real priority of the "George" publisher was to re-open the case of the assassination of President John F. Kennedy and the role that the father of the all-but-announced Republican presidential candidate for the upcoming 2000 election -- George W. Bush -- played in the assassination. Apparently, some documents had come into Kennedy's possession that pointed to George H. W. Bush as a prime participant, on behalf of the CIA, in President Kennedy's murder.

On a 1997 visit to see Cuban President Fidel Castro in Havana for an interview for "George," the Cuban President reportedly told Kennedy a number of details about those behind his father's assassination. The occasion of Kennedy Jr.'s visit was the 35th anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis between his father and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev. According to Kennedy's friend, Castro confided to Kennedy that a mafia ring headed up by Meyer Lansky, who lost his Cuban gambling holdings to Castro's revolution, and a Canadian Zionist veteran of Israel's Haganah army, Louis Bloomfield, were the primary planners of the Dallas "hit" on his father. Jack Ruby, who killed the alleged assassin Lee Harvey Oswald, worked directly for Lansky's organization, Kennedy was told.

Although the information on J.F.K. Jr.'s plans to more thoroughly examine the facts of his father's assassination came from a single source -- a friend of the late Kennedy Jr. -- this editor is in a unique position to corroborate part of the story.

On Saturday, July 17, 1999, I was driving to a hotel in Crystal City, Virginia to proctor a certification examination for a group of computer security professionals. Listening to the radio, the bulletin came across that John F. Kennedy Jr.'s plane was missing. The news came as a body blow. In a few weeks, I was scheduled to meet with Kennedy at his magazine's offices in Washington, DC to discuss hiring on as one of a few investigative journalists Kennedy wanted to dig deep into a number of cases, but most importantly that of his father's assassination. Kennedy had made initial contact with me via a colleague with The Village Voice. I signaled my readiness to do whatever Kennedy wanted because, first of all, I have always been an admirer of the Kennedy family, and after twelve years under Bush presidencies, that admiration has developed into a loyalty for which I make no apologies.

My past discussions with President Kennedy's press secretary Pierre Salinger and Texas Governor John Connally led me to believe that the young Kennedy was on to the story of a lifetime -- a lifetime that for Kennedy Jr. would be tragically snuffed out early.

After I heard the news report about Kennedy's plane and knowing of his plans, I knew deep down that he was gone and that the renewed investigation of America's worst crime of the 20th century was dead along with him. Little did I realize at the time, but I heard the news about Kennedy as I was driving along Route 110 past the side of the Pentagon where the worst crime of the 21st century would take place under the administration of George W. Bush.

In the end, Hillary Clinton was elected to the U.S. Senate seat that Kennedy was to run for. Kennedy's sister, Caroline Kennedy Schlossberg, would see her own hopes to be appointed to the Senate seat dashed when, according to John H. Kennedy Jr.s' friend, Senator Charles Schumer and Barack Obama chief of staff Rahm Emanuel conspired to have New York Governor David Paterson appoint a virtual unknown, Kirsten Gillibrand, to the seat. Caroline Kennedy was instead offered a consolation prize of the post of U.S. ambassador to the Vatican, a position that Schumer and Emanuel knew in advance she would never accept.

The Anti-Empire Report Number 72

August 4th, 2009
by William Blum
www.killinghope.org

Keeping track of the empire's crimes

If you catch the CIA with its hand in the cookie jar and the Agency admits the obvious — what your eyes can plainly see — that its hand is indeed in the cookie jar, it means one of two things: a) the CIA's hand is in several other cookie jars at the same time which you don't know about and they hope that by confessing to the one instance they can keep the others covered up; or b) its hand is not really in the cookie jar — it's an illusion to throw you off the right scent — but they want you to believe it.

There have been numerous news stories in recent months about secret CIA programs, hidden from Congress, inspired by former vice-president Dick Cheney, in operation since the September 11 terrorist attacks, involving assassination of al Qaeda operatives or other non-believers-in-the-Empire abroad without the knowledge of their governments. The Agency admits to some sort of program having existed, but insists that it was canceled; and if it was an assassination program it was canceled before anyone was actually assassinated. Another report has the US military, not the CIA, putting the plan — or was it a different plan? — into operation, carrying out several assassinations including one in Kenya that proved to be a severe embarrassment and helped lead to the quashing of the program.¹

All of this can be confusing to those following the news. And rather irrelevant. We already know that the United States has been assassinating non-believers, or suspected non-believers, with regularity, and impunity, in recent years, using unmanned planes (drones) firing missiles, in Yemen, Afghanistan, Pakistan, and Somalia, if not elsewhere. (Even more victims have been produced from amongst those who happened to be in the same house, car, wedding party, or funeral as the non-believer.) These murders apparently don't qualify as "assassinations", for somehow killing "terrorists" from 2000 feet is morally and legally superior to doing so from two feet away.

But whatever the real story is behind the current rash of speculation, we should not fall into the media's practice of at times intimating that multiple or routine CIA assassination attempts would be something shocking or at least very unusual.

I've compiled a list of CIA assassination attempts, successful and unsuccessful, against prominent foreign political figures, from 1949 through 2003, which, depending on how you count it, can run into the hundreds (targeting Fidel Castro alone totals 634 according to Cuban intelligence)²; the list can be updated by adding the allegedly al Qaeda leaders among the drone attack victims of recent years. Assassination and torture are the two things governments are most loath to admit to, and try their best to cover up. It's thus rare to find a government document or recorded statement mentioning a particular plan to assassinate someone. There is, however, an abundance of compelling circumstantial evidence to work with. The list can be found here.

For those of you who collect lists about splendid US foreign policy post-World War II, here are a few more that, lacking anything better to do, I've put together: Attempts to overthrow more than 50 foreign governments, most of which had been democratically-elected.

After his June 4 Cairo speech, President Obama was much praised for mentioning the 1953 CIA overthrow of Iranian prime minister Mohammed Mossadegh. But in his talk in Ghana on July 11 he failed to mention the CIA coup that ousted Ghanian president Kwame Nkrumah in 1966³, referring to him only as a "giant" among African leaders. The Mossadegh coup is one of the most well-known CIA covert actions. Obama could not easily get away without mentioning it in a talk in the Middle East looking to mend fences. But the Nkrumah ouster is one of the least known; indeed, not a single print or broadcast news report in the American mainstream media saw fit to mention it at the time of the president's talk. Like it never happened.

And the next time you hear that Africa can't produce good leaders, people who are committed to the welfare of the masses of their people, think of Nkrumah and his fate. And think of Patrice Lumumba, overthrown in the Congo 1960-61 with the help of the United States; Agostinho Neto of Angola, against whom Washington waged war in the 1970s, making it impossible for him to institute progressive changes; Samora Machel of Mozambique against whom the CIA supported a counter-revolution in the 1970s-80s period; and Nelson Mandela of South Africa (now married to Machel's widow), who spent 28 years in prison thanks to the CIA.⁴

• Gross interference in democratic elections in at least 30 countries⁵
• Waging war/military action, either directly or in conjunction with a proxy army, in some 30 countries
• Dropping bombs on the people of more than 30 countries
• Attempts to suppress dozens of populist/nationalist movements in every corner of the world⁶

The Myths of Afghanistan, past and present

On the Fourth of July, Senator Patrick Leahy declared he was optimistic that, unlike the Soviet forces that were driven from Afghanistan 20 years ago, US forces could succeed there. The Democrat from Vermont stated:

"The Russians were sent running as they should have been. We helped send them running. But they were there to conquer the country. We've made it very clear, and everybody I talk to within Afghanistan feels the same way: they know we're there to help and we're going to leave. We've made it very clear we are going to leave. And it's going to be turned back to them. The ones that made the mistakes in the past are those that tried to conquer them."⁷

Leahy is a long-time liberal on foreign-policy issues, a champion of withholding US counter-narcotics assistance to foreign military units guilty of serious human-rights violations, and an outspoken critic of robbing terrorist suspects of their human and legal rights. Yet he is willing to send countless young Americans to a living hell, or horrible death, or maimed survival.

And for what? Every point he made in his statement is simply wrong.

The Russians were not in Afghanistan to conquer it. The Soviet Union had existed next door to the country for more than 60 years without any kind of invasion. It was only when the United States intervened in Afghanistan to replace a government friendly to Moscow with one militantly anti-communist that the Russians invaded to do battle with the US-supported Islamic jihadists; precisely what the United States would have done to prevent a communist government in Canada or Mexico.

It's also rather difficult for the United States to claim that it's in Afghanistan to help the people there when it's killed tens of thousands of simply for resisting the American invasion and occupation or for being in the wrong place at the wrong time; not a single one of the victims has been identified as having had any kind of connection to the terrorist attack in the US of September 11, 2001, the event usually cited by Washington as justification for the military intervention. Moreover, Afghanistan is now permeated with depleted uranium, cluster bombs-cum-landmines, white phosphorous, a witch's brew of other charming chemicals, and a population, after 30 years of almost non-stop warfare, of physically and mentally mutilated human beings, exceedingly susceptible to the promise of paradise, or at least relief, sold by the Taliban.

As to the US leaving ... utterly meaningless propaganda until it happens. Ask the people of South Korea — 56 years of American occupation and still counting; ask the people of Japan — 64 years. And Iraq? Would you want to wager your life's savings on which decade it will be that the last American soldier and military contractor leaves?

It's not even precise to say that the Russians were sent running. That was essentially Russian president Mikhail Gorbachev's decision, and it was more of a political decision than a military one. Gorbachev's fondest ambition was to turn the Soviet Union into a West-European style social democracy, and he fervently wished for the approval of those European leaders, virtually all of whom were cold-war anti-communists and opposed the Soviet intervention into Afghanistan.

There has been as much of the same "causes" for wars that did not happen as for wars that did.

Henry Allingham died in Britain on July 18 at age 113, believed to have been the world's oldest man. A veteran of World War I, he spent his final years reminding the British people about their service members killed during the war, which came to about a million: "I want everyone to know," he said during an interview in November. "They died for us."⁸

The whole million? Each one died for Britain? In the most useless imperialist war of the 20th century? No, let me correct that — the most useless imperialist war of any century. The British Empire, the French Empire, the Russian Empire, and the wannabe American Empire joined in battle against the Austro-Hungarian Empire and the Ottoman Empire as youthful bodies and spirits sank endlessly into the wretched mud of Belgium and Germany, the pools of blood of Russia and France. The wondrous nobility of it all is enough to make you swallow hard, fight back the tears, light a few candles, and throw up. Imagine, by the middle of this century Vietnam veterans in their 90s and 100s will be speaking of how each of their 58,000 war buddies died for America. By 2075 we'll be hearing the same stirring message from ancient vets of Iraq and Afghanistan. How many will remember that there was a large protest movement against their glorious, holy crusades, particularly Vietnam and Iraq?

Supreme nonsense

Senate hearings to question a nominee for the Supreme Court are a supreme bore. The sine qua non for President Obama choosing Sonia Sotomayor appears to be that she's a woman with a Hispanic background. A LATINA! How often that word was used by her supporters. She would be the first LATINA on the Supreme Court! Dios mio!

Who gives a damn? All anyone should care about are her social and political opinions. Justice Clarence Thomas is a black man. A BLACK MAN! And he's as conservative as they come.

Supreme Court nominees, of all political stripes, typically feel obliged to pretend that their social and political leanings don't enter into their judicial opinions. But everyone knows this is rubbish. During her Senate hearing, Sotomayor declared: "It's not the heart that compels conclusions in cases. It's the law."

The former Chief Justice of the Supreme Court, Charles Evan Hughes, would not agree with her. "At the constitutional level where we work," he said, "ninety percent of any decision is emotional. The rational part of us supplies the reasons for supporting our predilections."⁹

By Sotomayor's own account, which echos news reports, she was not asked about her position on abortion by either President Obama or his staff. But what if she is actually anti-abortion? What if she turns out to be the swing vote that overturns Roe vs. Wade?

What if she's a proud admirer of the American Empire and its perpetual wars? American dissidents, civilian and military, may depend on her vote for their freedom from imprisonment.

What does she think about the "War on Terror"? The civil liberties and freedom from torture of various Americans and foreigners may depend on her attitude. In his 2007 trial, Jose Padilla, an American citizen, was found guilty of aiding terrorists. "The jury did seem to be an oddly cohesive group," the Washington Post reported. "On the last day of trial before the Fourth of July holiday, jurors arranged to dress in outfits so that each row in the jury box was its own patriotic color — red, white or blue."¹⁰ No one dared to question this blatant display of patriotism in the courtroom; neither the defense attorney, nor the prosecutor, nor the judge. How can we continue to pretend that people's legal positions exist independently of their political sentiments?

In the 2000 Supreme Court decision stopping the presidential electoral count in Florida, giving the election to George W. Bush, did the politics of the five most conservative justices play a role in the 5 to 4 decision? Of course. Judges are essentially politicians in black robes. But should we care? Don't ask, don't tell. Sonia Sotomayor is a LATINA!

Given the large Democratic majority in the Senate, Sotomayor was in very little danger of being rejected. She could have openly and proudly expressed her social and political positions — whatever they may be — and the Democratic senators could have done the same. How refreshing, maybe even educational if a discussion ensued. Instead it was just another political appointment by a president determined to not offend anyone if he can help it, and another tiresome ritual hearing. The Republican senators were much less shy about revealing how they actually felt about important issues.

It didn't have to be that way. As Rabbi Michael Lerner of Tikkun.org pointed out during the hearings: "Democratic Senators could use their time to ask questions and make statements that explain why a liberal or progressive worldview is precisely what is needed on the Supreme Court."

NATO and Eastern Europe resource

No one chronicles the rise of the supra-government called NATO like Rick Rozoff in his "Stop NATO" mailings. NATO has become an ever-expanding behemoth, making war and interfering in political controversies all over Europe and beyond. The United States is not the world's only superpower; NATO is another, as it surrounds Russia and the Caspian Sea oil reserves; although the distinction between the two superpowers is little more than a facade. This year marks the tenth anniversary of the NATO/US 78-day bombing of Yugoslavia. On April 23, 1999 missiles slammed into Radio Television Serbia (RTS) in downtown Belgrade, killing 16 employees. The station, NATO claimed, was a legitimate military target because it broadcast propaganda. (Certainly a novel form of censorship; not to mention the fact that NATO could simply have taken out the station's transmitter.) What apparently bothered the Western powers was that RTS was reporting the horrendous effects of NATO's bombing as well as passing footage of the destruction to Western media.

To mark the anniversary, Amnesty International recently issued a demand that NATO be held accountable for the 16 deaths. Amnesty asserts that the bombing was a deliberate attack on a civilian object (one of many during the 78 days) and as such constitutes a war crime, and called upon NATO to launch a war crimes probe into the attack to ensure full accountability and redress for victims and their families.

Readers might consider signing up for the "Stop NATO" mailing list. Just write to: rwrozoff [at] yahoo.com. Rozoff scours the East European press each day and comes up with numerous gems ignored by the mainstream media. But a warning: The amount of material you'll receive is often considerable. You'll have to learn to pick and choose. You can get an idea of this by reading previous reports at http://groups.yahoo.com/group/stopnato/messages.

Notes

1. The Guardian (London) July 13, 2009 ^↩
2. Fabian Escalante, "Executive Action: 634 Ways to Kill Fidel Castro" (Ocean Press, 2006) ^↩
3. William Blum, Killing Hope, chapter 32^↩
4. William Blum, Rogue State, chapter 23 ^↩
5. Ibid., chapter 18 ^↩
6. Rogue State, chapter 17, intermixed with other types of US interventions ^↩
7. Vermont TV station WCAX, July 4, 2009, WCAX.com ^↩
8. Washington Post, July 19, 2009 ^↩
9. William O. Douglas, The Court Years, 1939-1975 (1980), p.8 ^↩
10. Washington Post, August 17, 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

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

Previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6 [at] aol.com with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.