The Fateful Geological Prize Called Haiti

by F. William Engdahl

President becomes UN Special Envoy to earthquake-stricken Haiti.

A born-again neo-conservative US business wheeler-dealer preacher claims Haitians are condemned for making a literal ‘pact with the Devil.’

Venezuelan, Nicaraguan, Bolivian, French and Swiss rescue organizations accuse the US military of refusing landing rights to planes bearing necessary medicines and urgently needed potable water to the millions of Haitians stricken, injured and homeless.

Behind the smoke, rubble and unending drama of human tragedy in the hapless Caribbean country, a drama is in full play for control of what geophysicists believe may be one of the world’s richest zones for hydrocarbons-oil and gas outside the Middle East, possibly orders of magnitude greater than that of nearby Venezuela.

Haiti, and the larger island of Hispaniola of which it is a part, has the geological fate that it straddles one of the world’s most active geological zones, where the deepwater plates of three huge structures relentlessly rub against one another—the intersection of the North American, South American and Caribbean tectonic plates. Below the ocean and the waters of the Caribbean, these plates consist of an oceanic crust some 3 to 6 miles thick, floating atop an adjacent mantle. Haiti also lies at the edge of the region known as the Bermuda Triangle, a vast area in the Caribbean subject to bizarre and unexplained disturbances.

This vast mass of underwater plates are in constant motion, rubbing against each other along lines analogous to cracks in a broken porcelain vase that has been reglued. The earth’s tectonic plates typically move at a rate 50 to 100 mm annually in relation to one another, and are the origin of earthquakes and of volcanoes. The regions of convergence of such plates are also areas where vast volumes of oil and gas can be pushed upwards from the Earth’s mantle. The geophysics surrounding the convergence of the three plates that run more or less directly beneath Port-au-Prince make the region prone to earthquakes such as the one that struck Haiti with devastating ferocity on January 12.

A relevant Texas geological project

Leaving aside the relevant question of how well in advance the Pentagon and US scientists knew the quake was about to occur, and what Pentagon plans were being laid before January 12, another issue emerges around the events in Haiti that might help explain the bizarre behavior to date of the major ‘rescue’ players—the United States, France and Canada. Aside from being prone to violent earthquakes, Haiti also happens to lie in a zone that, due to the unusual geographical intersection of its three tectonic plates, might well be straddling one of the world’s largest unexplored zones of oil and gas, as well as of valuable rare strategic minerals.

The vast oil reserves of the Persian Gulf and of the region from the Red Sea into the Gulf of Aden are at a similar convergence zone of large tectonic plates, as are such oil-rich zones as Indonesia and the waters off the coast of California. In short, in terms of the physics of the earth, precisely such intersections of tectonic masses as run directly beneath Haiti have a remarkable tendency to be the sites of vast treasures of minerals, as well as oil and gas, throughout the world.

Notably, in 2005, a year after the Bush-Cheney Administration de facto deposed the democratically elected President of Haiti, Jean-Baptiste Aristide, a team of geologists from the Institute for Geophysics at the University of Texas began an ambitious and thorough two-phase mapping of all geological data of the Caribbean Basins. The project is due to be completed in 2011. Directed by Dr. Paul Mann, it is called “Caribbean Basins, Tectonics and Hydrocarbons.” It is all about determining as precisely as possible the relation between tectonic plates in the Caribbean and the potential for hydrocarbons—oil and gas.

Notably, the sponsors of the multi-million dollar research project under Mann are the world’s largest oil companies, including Chevron, ExxonMobil, the Anglo-Dutch Shell and BHP Billiton.[1] Curiously enough, the project is the first comprehensive geological mapping of a region that, one would have thought, would have been a priority decades ago for the US oil majors. Given the immense, existing oil production off Mexico, Louisiana, and the entire Caribbean, as well as its proximity to the United States – not to mention the US focus on its own energy security – it is surprising that the region had not been mapped earlier. Now it emerges that major oil companies were at least generally aware of the huge oil potential of the region long ago, but apparently decided to keep it quiet.

Cuba’s Super-giant find

Evidence that the US Administration may well have more in mind for Haiti than the improvement of the lot of the devastated Haitian people can be found in nearby waters off Cuba, directly across from Port-au-Prince. In October 2008 a consortium of oil companies led by Spain’s Repsol, together with Cuba's state oil company, Cubapetroleo, announced discovery of one of the world’s largest oilfields in the deep water off Cuba. It is what oil geologists call a ‘Super-giant’ field. Estimates are that the Cuban field contains as much as 20 billion barrels of oil, making it the twelfth Super-giant oilfield discovered since 1996. The discovery also likely makes Cuba a new high-priority target for Pentagon destabilization and other nasty operations.

No doubt to the dismay of Washington, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev flew to Havana one month after the Cuban giant oil find to sign an agreement with acting-President Raul Castro for Russian oil companies to explore and develop Cuban oil.[2]

Medvedev’s Russia-Cuba oil agreements came only a week after the visit of Chinese President Hu Jintao to meet the recuperating Fidel Castro and his brother Raul. The Chinese President signed an agreement to modernize Cuban ports and discussed Chinese purchase of Cuban raw materials. No doubt the mammoth new Cuban oil discovery was high on the Chinese agenda with Cuba.[3] On November 5, 2008, just prior to the Chinese President’s trip to Cuba and other Latin American countries, the Chinese government issued their first ever policy paper on the future of China’s relations with Latin America and Caribbean nations, elevating these bilateral relations to a new level of strategic importance. [4]

The Cuba Super-giant oil find also leaves the advocates of ‘Peak Oil’ theory with more egg on the face. Shortly before the Bush-Blair decision to invade and occupy Iraq, a theory made the rounds of cyberspace, that sometime after 2010, the world would reach an absolute “peak” in world oil production, initiating a period of decline with drastic social and economic implications. Its prominent spokesmen, including retired oil geologist Colin Campbell and Texas oil banker Matt Simmons, claimed that there had not been a single new Super-giant oil discovery since 1976, or thereabouts, and that new fields found over the past two decades had been “tiny” compared with the earlier giant discoveries in Saudi Arabia, Prudhoe Bay, Daquing in China and elsewhere. [5]

It is critical to note that, more than half a century ago, a group of Russian and Ukrainian geophysicists, working in state secrecy, confirmed that hydrocarbons originated deep in the earth’s mantle under conditions similar to a giant burning cauldron at extreme temperature and pressure. They demonstrated that, contrary to US and accepted Western ‘mainstream’ geology, hydrocarbons were not the result of dead dinosaur detritus concentrated and compressed and somehow transformed into oil and gas millions of years ago, nor of algae or other biological material.[6]

The Russian and Ukrainian geophysicists then proved that the oil or gas produced in the earth’s mantle was pushed upwards along faults or cracks in the earth as close to the surface as pressures permitted. The process was analogous to the production of molten lava in volcanoes. It means that the ability to find oil is limited, relatively speaking, only by the ability to identify deep fissures and complex geological activity conducive to bringing the oil out from deep in the earth. It seems that the waters of the Caribbean, especially those off Cuba and its neighbor Haiti, are just such a region of concentrated hydrocarbons (oil and gas) that have found their way upwards close to the surface, perhaps in a magnitude comparable to a new Saudi Arabia.[7]

Haiti, a new Saudi Arabia?

The remarkable geography of Haiti and Cuba and the discovery of world-class oil reserves in the waters off Cuba lend credence to anecdotal accounts of major oil discoveries in several parts of Haitian territory. It also could explain why two Bush Presidents and now special UN Haiti Envoy Bill Clinton have made Haiti such a priority. As well, it could explain why Washington and its NGOs moved so quickly to remove-- twice-- the democratically elected President Aristide, whose economic program for Haiti included, among other items, proposals for developing Haitian natural resources for the benefit of the Haitian people.

In March 2004, some months before the University of Texas and American Big Oil launched their ambitious mapping of the hydrocarbon potentials of the Caribbean, a Haitian writer, Dr. Georges Michel, published online an article titled ‘Oil in Haiti.’ In it, Michel wrote,

… .[I]t has been no secret that deep in the earthy bowels of the two states that share the island of Haiti and the surrounding waters that there are significant, still untapped deposits of oil. One knows not why they are still untapped. Since the early twentieth century, the physical and political map of the island of Haiti, erected in 1908 by Messrs. Alexander Poujol and Henry Thomasset, reported a major oil reservoir in Haiti near the source of the Rio Todo El Mondo, Tributary Right Artibonite River, better known today as the River Thomonde. [8]

According to a June 2008 article by Roberson Alphonse in the Haitian paper, Le Nouvelliste en Haiti, “The signs, (indicators), justifying the explorations of oil (black gold) in Haiti are encouraging. In the middle of the oil shock, some 4 companies want official licenses from the Haitian State to drill for oil.”

At the time, oil prices were climbing above $140 a barrel -- on manipulations by various Wall Street banks. Alphonse’s article quoted Dieusuel Anglade, the Haitian State Director of the Office of Mining and Energy, telling the Haitian press: "We've received four requests for oil exploration permits…We have had encouraging indicators to justify the pursuit of the exploration of black gold (oil), which had stopped in 1979."[9]

Alphonse reported the findings from a 1979 geological study in Haiti of 11 exploratory oil wells drilled at the Plaine du Cul-de-sac on the Plateau Central and at L'ile de La Gonaive: “Surface (tentative) indicators for oil were found at the Southern peninsula and on the North coast, explained the engineer Anglade, who strongly believes in the immediate commercial viability of these explorations.”[10]

Journalist Alphonse cites an August 16, 1979 memo by Haitian attorney Francois Lamothe, in which he noted that “five big wells were drilled” down to depths of 9000 feet and that a sample that “underwent a physical-chemical analysis in Munich, Germany” had “revealed tracks of oil.” [11]

Despite the promising 1979 results in Haiti, Dr. Georges Michel reported that, “the big multinational oil companies operating in Haiti pushed for the discovered deposits not to be exploited.” [12] Oil exploration in and offshore Haiti ground to a sudden halt as a result.

Similar if less precise reports claiming that Haitian oil reserves could be vastly larger than those of Venezuela have appeared in Haitian websites. [13] Then in 2010 the financial news site Bloomberg News carried the following:

The Jan. 12 earthquake was on a fault line that passes near potential gas reserves, said Stephen Pierce, a geologist who worked in the region for 30 years for companies that included the former Mobil Corp. The quake may have cracked rock formations along the fault, allowing gas or oil to temporarily seep toward the surface, he said Monday in a telephone interview. ‘A geologist, callous as it may seem, tracing that fault zone from Port-au-Prince to the border looking for gas and oil seeps, may find a structure that hasn't been drilled,’ said Pierce, exploration manager at Zion Oil & Gas Inc., a Dallas-based company that's drilling in Israel. [14]

In an interview with a Santo Domingo online paper, Leopoldo Espaillat Nanita, former head of the Dominican Petroleum Refinery (REFIDOMSA) stated, “there is a multinational conspiracy to illegally take the mineral resources of the Haitian people.” [15] Haiti’s minerals include gold, the valuable strategic metal iridium and oil, apparently lots of it.

Aristide’s development plans

Marguerite Laurent ('Ezili Dantò'), president of the Haitian Lawyers’ Leadership Network (HLLN) who served as attorney for the deposed Aristide, notes that when Aristide was President -- up until his US-backed ouster during the Bush era in 2004 -- he had developed and published in book form his national development plans. These plans included, for the first time, a detailed list of known sites where the resources of Haiti were located. The publication of the plan sparked a national debate over Haitian radio and in the media about the future of the country. Aristide’s plan was to implement a public-private partnership to ensure that the development of Haiti’s oil, gold and other valuable resources would benefit the national economy and the broader population, and not merely the five Haitian oligarchic families and their US backers, the so-called Chimeres or gangsters. [16]

Since the ouster of Aristide in 2004, Haiti has been an occupied country, with a dubiously-elected President, Rene Preval, a controversial follower of IMF privatization mandates and reportedly tied to the Chimeres or Haitian oligarchs who backed the removal of Aristide. Notably, the US State Department refuses to permit the return of Aristide from South African exile.

Now, in the wake of the devastating earthquake of January 12, the United States military has taken control of Haiti’s four airports and presently has some 20,000 troops in the country. Journalists and international aid organizations have accused the US military of being more concerned with imposing military control, which it prefers to call “security,” than with bringing urgently needed water, food and medicine from the airport sites to the population.

A US military occupation of Haiti under the guise of earthquake disaster ‘relief’ would give Washington and private business interests tied to it a geopolitical prize of the first order. Prior to the January 12 quake, the US Embassy in Port-au-Prince was the fifth largest US embassy in the world, comparable to its embassies in such geopolitically strategic places as Berlin and Beijing.[17] With huge new oil finds off Cuba being exploited by Russian companies, with clear indications that Haiti contains similar vast untapped oil as well as gold, copper, uranium and iridium, with Hugo Chavez’ Venezuela as a neighbor to the south of Haiti, a return of Aristide or any popular leader committed to developing the resources for the people of Haiti, -- the poorest nation in the Americas -- would constitute a devastating blow to the world’s sole Superpower. The fact that in the aftermath of the earthquake, UN Haiti Special Envoy Bill Clinton joined forces with Aristide foe George W. Bush to create something called the Clinton-Bush Haiti Fund ought to give everyone pause.

According to Marguerite Laurent ('Ezili Dantò') of the Haitian Lawyers’ Leadership Network, under the guise of emergency relief work, the US, France and Canada are engaged in a balkanization of the island for future mineral control. She reports rumors that Canada wants the North of Haiti where Canadian mining interests are already present. The US wants Port-au-Prince and the island of La Gonaive just offshore – an area identified in Aristide’s development book as having vast oil resources, and which is bitterly contested by France. She further states that China, with UN veto power over the de facto UN-occupied country, may have something to say against such a US-France-Canada carve up of the vast wealth of the nation. [18]

Notes:

1 Paul Mann, Caribbean Basins, Tectonic Plates & Hydrocarbons, Institute for Geophysics, The University of Texas at Austin, accessed in
www.ig.utexas.edu/research/projects/cbth/.../ProposalCaribbean.pdf .

2 Rory Carroll, Medvedev and Castro meet to rebuild Russia-Cuba relations, London Guardian, November 28, 2008 accessed in http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/nov/28/cuba-russia.

3 Julian Gavaghan, Comrades in arms: When China’s President Hu met a frail Fidel Castro, London Daily Mail, November 19, 2008, accessed in http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-1087485/Comrades-arms-When-Chinas-President-Hu-met-frail-Fidel-Castro.html.

4 Peoples’ Daily Online, China issues first policy paper on Latin America, Caribbean region, November 5, 2008, accessed in http://english.people.com.cn/90001/90776/90883/6527888.html .

5 Matthew R. Simmons, The World’s Giant Oilfields, Simmons & Co. International, Houston, accessed in http://www.simmonsco-intl.com/files/giantoilfields.pdf .

6 Anton Kolesnikov, et al, Methane-derived hydrocarbons produced under upper-mantle conditions, Nature Geoscience, July 26, 2009.

7 F. William Engdahl, War and Peak Oil—Confessions of an ‘ex’ Peak Oil believer, Global Research, September 26, 2007, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=6880 .

8 Dr. Georges Michel, Oil in Haiti, English translation from French, Pétrole en Haiti, March 27, 2004, accessed in http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/oil_sites.html#oil_GeorgesMichelEnglish .

9 Roberson Alphonse, Drill, and then pump the oil of Haiti! 4 oil companies request oil drilling permits, translated from the original French, June 27, 2008, accessed in
http://www.bnvillage.co.uk/caribbean-news-village-beta/99691-drill-then-pump-oil-haiti-4-oil-companies-request-oil-drilling-permits.html

10 Ibid.

11 Ibid. The full text indicated that, “five big wells were drilled at Porto Suel (Maissade) of a depth of 9000 feet, at Bebernal, 9000 feet, at Bois-Carradeux (Ouest), at Dumornay, on the road Route Frare and close to the Chemin de Fer of Saint-Marc. A sample, a ‘carrot’ (oil reservoir) drilled up from the well of Saint-Marc in the Artibonite underwent a physical-chemical analysis in Munich, Germany, at the request of Mr. Broth. ‘The result of the analysis was returned on October 11, 1979 and revealed tracks of oil,’ confided the engineer, Willy Clemens, who had gone to Germany.”

12 Dr. Georges Michel, op. cit.

13 Marguerite Laurent, Haiti is full of oil, say Ginette and Daniel Mathurin, Radio Metropole, Jan 28, 2008, accessed in
http://www.margueritelaurent.com/pressclips/oil_sites.html#full_of_oil.

14 Jim Polson, Haiti earthquake may have exposed gas, aiding economy, Bloomberg News, January 26, 2010.

15 Espaillat Nanita revela en Haiti existen grandes recursos de oro y otros minerals, Espacinsular.org, 17 November, 2009, accessed in
http://www.espacinsular.org/spip.php?article8942 .

16 The Aristide development plan was contained in the book published in Haiti in 2000, Investir dans l’Human. Livre Blanc de Fanmi Lavalas sous la Direction de Jean-Bertrand Aristide, Port-au-Prince, Imprimerie Henri Deschamps, 2000. It contained detailed maps, tables, graphics, and a national development plan for 2004 “covering agriculture, environment, commerce and industry, the financial sector, infrastructure, education, culture, health, women's issues, and issues in the public sector.” In 2004, using NGOs and the UN and a vicious propaganda campaign to vilify Aristide, the Bush administration got rid of the elected President.

17 Cynthia McKinney, Haiti: An Unwelcome Katrina Redux, Global Research, January 19, 2010, accessed in
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=17063.

18 Marguerite Laurent (Ezili Danto), Did mining and oil drilling trigger the Haiti earthquake?, OpEd News.com, January 23, 2010, accessed in
http://www.opednews.com/articles/1/Did-mining-and-oil-drillin-by-Ezili-Danto-100123-329.html.

F. William Engdahl is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by F. William Engdahl

Noam Chomsky on the History of US Imperialism

I, like many others the world over, owe much of my political awareness to the work of Noam Chomsky. Described in 1979 by the New York Times, indeed of his many targets within establishment politics and media, as “arguably the most important intellectual alive, Chomsky’s dissection of political affairs certainly benefits from his formidable intellectual capacities. A study done by the Arts and Humanities Index in 1992, showed that between 1980 and 1992, he was the 8th most cited source in arts and humanities journals during that time. The complete list ran: Marx, Lenin, Shakespeare, Aristotle, the Bible, Plato, Freud, Chomsky, Hegel and Cicero. So it is not without substance that one can state that he ranks on a par with the greatest intellectuals in history including antiquity.

However it is not his intellectual capacities that makes him such an unparalleled incisive commentator. There are 2 factors that make him stand out:

1. His range. He knows an unbelievable amount of detail about an unbelievable number of topics. From libertarian anarchism, to American militarism, to the origins of the US Republic, to economics, to every conflict the West has been involved in the world over for the last few centuries, his passion for social justice is surely what fires his voracity for knowledge in these domains. As a result, his command of the facts regarding any particular situation will often immediately put him far ahead of any other commentator or detractor.

2. His moral clarity. So detached is Chomsky from the indoctrinations of propaganda systems that condition us to see black as white, that he is able to make observations that are startling and penetrating solely for their simplicity. When Condaleeza Rice stated that for violence in Iraq to cease there would need to be an end to “foreign fighters coming over the border”, though no mainstream journal noted it, it was left to Chomsky to point out the absurdity that the US army was precisely such an army, and one would be correct in concluding that they were indeed responsible for the bloodshed, as Rice unwittingly intimated.

Moral clarity is not something that is complicated- it usually just requires detachment from ones own interests in a given situation. We all know what is right and what is wrong. Where Chomsky rises above other intellectuals and writers in my eyes, is the fact that he combines not just the intellectual powers of a great scholar with the depth of knowledge of a hardened journalist, but also the moral clarity and steadfastness of any of the great popular leaders of the last century. It is the fusion of these 3 elements that make Chomsky what he is.

The following video is, even by Chomsky’s standards, just indispensable viewing.

U.S. Haiti relief operations -- Operation Child Abduction

The ten members of the Idaho-based New Life Children's Refuge (NCLR) arrested by Haitian authorities for attempting to abduct 33 Haitian children and spirit them into the Dominican Republic are part of an intertwined Southern Baptist network that involves the adoption of orphans.

The adoption network involves operations located at three addresses in Idaho that is linked to a Florida-based organization. According to an NCLR Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission document, NCLR's Haitian Team arrested by Haitian authorities is based at the East Side Baptist Church in Twin Falls, Idaho. However, donations to NCLR are made through a Wells Fargo Bank account maintained by the Central Valley Baptist Church in Meridian, Idaho. Haiti's Social Affairs Minister said two Haitians were also arrested with the Americans and cited the involvement of two pastors, one in Haiti and the other in Atlanta. The Haitian pastor who handed the Haitian children over to the American group was identified as being with a group called the Sharing Jesus Ministries.

Haitian Prime Minister Jean-Max Bellerive confirmed that Haitian children were being trafficked out of the devastated nation. NBC News reported that one of the children NCLR tried to remove from Haiti said her parents were still alive and that she was told she was going on a short vacation. NBC News reported that the director of the SOS Children’s Village in Croix des Bouquets said the Haitian police told him the NCLR group was planning to sell the traumatized children for $10,000 each. The Austrian-run orphanage took custody of the 33 children who were taken into custody by Haitian authorities at the Dominican border crossing.

Bellerive said some Haitian children were being trafficked for their organs. State Department spokesman P.J. Crowley, the National Security Council spokesman during the Clinton administration, and now the press shill for Hillary Clinton, said the Haitian adoption system that has been established "is working effectively." Crowley, a retired Air Force officer, is recognized by Washington insiders as an apologist and cover-up specialist for U.S. intelligence operations. He honed his skills when the U.S. feigned ignorance about the involvement of western nations in what prompted the genocide in Rwanda in 1994.

A statement on the Central Valley Baptist Church's website states: "A ten member church team traveled to Haiti to help rescue children from one or more orphanages that had been devastated in the earthquake on January 12. The children were being taken to an orphanage in the Dominican Republic where they could be cared for and have their medical and emotional needs attended to. Our team was falsely arrested today and we are doing everything we can from this end to clear up the misunderstanding that has occurred in Port au Prince." The ten Americans include members from the Meridian and Twin Falls churches, one from Bethel Baptist Church in Topeka, Kansas, and a businessman from Amarillo, Texas.

The NCLR, according to the group's mission statement, conducts business from an address at 1577 N. Linder Rd., Kuna, ID 83634. According to the mission statement, the group of Idahoans planned to travel to Santo Domingo on January 22 and charter a bus and drive to Port-au-Prince to "gather 100 orphans from the streets and collapsed orphanages, then return to the DR [Dominican Republic]." The document also states that on January 24, the group's bus planned to arrive in Cabarete, DR at New Life Children Refuge. However, the Haitian authorities arrested the NCLR group on the evening of January 29 at the Malpasse border crossing with the Dominican Republic with the 33 children said to be orphaned. There has been no mention of what became of the plan to take 100 orphans the group claimed it was to collect "from the streets" to deposit in Cabarete on January 24.

The NCLR document claims God "provided an interim solution in nearby Cabarete, where we will be leasing a 45-room hotel and converting it into an orphanage until the building is complete." The "new building" refers to a new church, school, and orphanage at Magante on the northern coast of the Dominican Republic. The new orphanage is planned to hold up to 200 children from newly-born infants to ten years old with future plans to house children up to the age of 16. The complex, reported to be a joint operation with the New Life Adoption Foundation, is also planned to include a chapel, medical facility, a greenhouse and farm for cows and chickens, a seaside restaurant, and seaside villas for "adopting parents to stay while fulfilling requirement for 60‐90 day visit as well as Christian volunteers/vacationing families." The directors of NCLR are listed as Laura Silsby and Charisa Coulter. They are president and vice president, respectively, of the Haitian Orphan Rescue Mission team detained by the Haitian authorities.

The NCLR team arrested claimed it was transporting orphans left homeless with the destruction of the New Life Children's Center orphanage in Port-au-Prince.

The involvement of human organ traffickers with the abduction of children comes as Narco News's Brenda Norrell reported that Evergreen International Aviation, Inc. of McMinnville, Oregon and the Israeli firm Elbit Systems have teamed up to provide unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) reconnaissance of "rural orphanages in Haiti employing Elbit Systems Skylark" UAV.

On February 22, 2008, WMR reported that Dr. Francis Delmonico, Professor of Surgery at Harvard Medical School, told a February 21, 2008 seminar at the Cato Institute in Washington that Israel was outsourcing kidney and liver transplants to Colombia and the Philippines. It was latr reported that Israel Defense Force personnel were harvesting the organs of Palestinians killed by Israeli security forces. WMR's February 22, 2008 report also stated: "Israel has, in the past, been a center for dubious human organ trafficking operations. It is also the case that Palestinian prisoners in Israel have sought to sell their kidneys to feed their children. The Israel Medical Association is opposing a bill that would allow the donors of certain organs to be reimbursed by the state. The group claims this will 'open the door' to organ sales."

There is another reason to be fearful of the trafficking of Haitian children to the north coast of the Dominican Republic. The tourist centers that populate the coast attract a number of pedophiles looking for children trafficked for sexual exploitation. On April 11, 1997, the Inter-Press Service reported: "In the Dominican Republic, where there are entire beaches and centers dedicated to sex tourism, another variant of prostitution are the 'hanky panky' workers." Hanky panky workers are beach boys and girls as young as 13 years old who are introduced to foreign sex tour visitors.

On June 22, 2005, Michael E. O'Connor, Jr. Director of Operations of the South Asia International Justice Mission told the House Financial Services Subcommittee on Domestic and International Monetary Policy, Trade and Technology that websites are used to provide pedophiles with information on the child sex trade in the Dominican Republic. He cited one posting dated January 19, 2002 by a prospective visitor to the Dominican Republic: "I am interested in meeting small, petite, young (18, or ones who look younger) with light skin and haven't had any babies. Am I asking too much? How can I meet these higher end girls and what would they cost per hour or per day? Are they best picked up a bar or Brothel? I'm 45 years old but I like them yung and babyless with a fine body and nice skin. What are the best place or people to contact for this kind? Are there newspaper ads that offer higher end girls .. Any comments ( + or - ) are appreciated. Do they mind if you video tape them while you are with them?"

Dyncorp International, the private military contractor that received a 2008 contract to train the Haitian National Police, was cited in a child prostitution scandal in the Balkans.

NCLR may have links far beyond Idaho. On the January 29, 2010 "The O'Reilly Factor" broadcast on Fox News, Geraldo Rivera stated on the subject of what relief charities are honest in Haiti: "What I would suggest -- I saw a little place called the World Harvest Mission, one of these small Christian faith driven -- the New Life Children fund. Give to the people who are actually hands on helping."

The Associated Press reported on January 15, 2010, that the New Life Children's Center in Port-au-Prince was run by the World Harvest Missions Outreach of Lake Wales, Florida. The group's website echoes the charge made by Rev. Pat Robertson linking Haiti to Satan: "Haiti is probably the poorest country in the Western Hemisphere, while practically the neighbor to the richest country in the world. Haiti is also the voodoo capital of the world, was dedicated to Satan at its independence, and is now a growing New Age tourist mecca." The group, formed in 1977, also lists one of its Haiti projects as the "New Life Children’s Home."

Christian organizations that operate missionaries and orphanages are set up in a manner much like CIA front companies. Many use the same names and their links are circuitously masked mainly due to the opaqueness derived from their tax-exempt status. A World Harvest Missions operation based in Jacksonville, Indiana has supported a Baptist orphanage in civil war-ravaged Liberia.

The case of the attempted children abductees in Haiti mirrors a similar case involving a group with links to French President Nicolas Sarkozy. On October 29, 2007, WMR reported: "a mysterious French group known as 'Zoe's Ark,' and which stands accused of attempting to spirit 103 Chadian children out of Chad to France, is suspected of links to French neocon President Nicolas Sarkozy . . . After Chadian and French authorities accused Zoe's Ark of criminal activity, the group said it had the support of President Sarkozy, his now-estranged wife Cecilia, and the Elysee Palace."

On November 5, 2007, WMR followed up with the following: "Sarkozy flew to Ndjamena, the Chadian capital, to intercede on behalf of French, Belgian, and Spanish nationals who had been arrested for suspicions by Chad of involvement in the caper. One of the French journalists who was freed is now reporting that Zoe's Ark is a duplicitous organization . . . The Spanish charter crew members appear to have been duped by Zoe's Ark into believing the charity was legitimately operating in Chad with official Chadian government sanction using another corporate identity, Children Rescue . . . It has now been learned that the 103 children to be spirited out of Chad were not Darfur war orphans from Sudan but children with families from Chad. Zoe's Ark aid workers even wrapped bandages around some of the children's arms and dabbed the bandages with a liquid that appeared to be dried blood to make it appear that they had been wounded. Other children were lured with biscuits and candy by aid workers . . . Some Chadian families revealed the Zoe's Ark workers promised that the children would be taken to school in Chad to learn Arabic, French, English, and their local dialect while other children were told they would be schooled in France and then receive big cars to drive. It has now been revealed that French Army peacekeepers in Chad provided Zoe's Ark with logistics assistance in the African nation . . . Zoe's Ark is an enigma. It was started in the aftermath of the tsunami of December 26, 2004 by 'French motoring enthusiasts' and set up four camps in Indonesia's Banda Aceh for children displaced by the tsunami. WMR has previously reported on the trafficking of orphans from the tsunami in Indonesia and Thailand, some of it for prostitution purposes . . . During the presidential election campaign, Sarkozy opined that pedophilia is not properly understood. The comment set off a firestorm in France and earned Sarkozy a strong rebuke from the Archbishop of Paris. Some critics of the mercurial Sarkozy began referring to him as 'Sarko le Pedo.'"

On December 31, 2007, WMR also reported that French Foreign Minister Bernard Kouchner was also linked to Zoe's Ark: "Not only has Zoe's Ark been linked to Sarkozy and the Elysee Palace but Sarkozy's Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner, has also been connected to Zoe's Ark. Kouchner who founded the humanitarian groups Doctors Without Borders and Doctors of the World, reportedly knew of Quai d'Orsay (French Foreign Ministry) classified reports on the illegal activities of Zoe's Ark but failed to take appropriate action. Zoe's Ark has also been linked to the extraction of children from Banda Aceh, Sumatra, Indonesia following the devastating tsunami on December 26, 2004 and the adoption of Cambodian orphans . . . some French media outlets have reported on the close relationship between Zoe's Ark's number two leader, Stephanie Dhainault-Lefebvre, of Paris Biotech Sante, a semi-public medical research firm, and Dr. Francois Sarkozy, a pediatrician who is also a director of Paris Biotech Sante. Francois Sarkozy is the brother of Nicolas Sarkozy. Francois Sarkozy is involved in the testing of bio-pharmaceuticals on human subjects. AIDS- and cancer-treating pharmaceuticals are of particular interest to Francois Sarkozy and Paris Biotech Sante. The possibility that Sarkozy, who has infuriated African leaders with his racist rhetoric, may have been providing cover for the use of African child test subjects by his brother's Big Pharma friends cannot be ruled out."

Kouchner criticized the Obama administration for turning Port-au-Prince airport into a virtual annex of Washington. However, based on the Chad child abduction scandal, Kouchner's indignation may have been far from altruistic.

Israel and Haiti- Helping Haitians in order to better torture Palestinians

Following the devastating earthquake in Haiti, which may have wiped out up to 3% of the population, one of the most publicised national aid and rescue efforts was provided by Israel. The day following the quake, a delegation including Ministry of Foreign Affairs, IDF Home Front Command and IDF Medical Corp Personnel left immediately to see how they could assist, and between then and the 27th January, the 218 IDF soldiers and officers, and 18 civilians treated more than 1,110 patients, conducted 319 successful surgeries, and delivered 16 births. The IDF Search and Rescue force also rescued or assisted in the rescue of 4 individuals.

During that same time period, the same army shot 11 Palestinian civilians, including 2 children, overwhelming during peaceful demonstrations; conducted 41 military raids into Palestinian communities, arrested 63 Palestinian civilians, including 5 children, as well as continuing the annexation of Palestinian land and destruction of homes in the West Bank, and the suffocation of Gaza.

“The Goldstone threat”

The goal behind the rapid and enthusiastic Israeli response is clearly therefore not a concern for human life, but rather the logical alternative, namely a conscious and well-planned PR operation. This much was indeed admitted by the IDF Home Front Command Chief, Major General Yair Golan, who stated that “we had three missions: Saving lives, providing medical services, and representing the State of Israel honorably”. Given that the latter element overarches the first two, it follows that the prime motivation behind Israel’s activities in Haiti was to clean up the nation’s tarnished image on the world stage. This is a need that is seen as being so urgent following the Goldstone Report into the Gaza massacre (note, not the massacre itself), as to be almost existential. Benyamin Netanyahu, addressing the Knesset in December, stated that there is a triple threat facing the state: “the Iranian [nuclear] threat, the missile threat and a threat I call the Goldstone threat”. The nature of the “Goldstone threat” is clearly one solely of image, and so Israel needs to do what it can to ensure that this threat, namely that of negative perception in the West, is neutered. Israel’s leaders largely felt that the mission to Haiti had been a major step towards achieving this. As Netanyahu stated gleefully to the returning soldiers, “You have raised human spirits and elevated the name of the State of Israel and the Israel Defense Forces. As many plot against us, distort and muddy our names, you have shown the real IDF.” IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi said that “Many have tried recently to tarnish our image. With your deeds, you have proven that the opposite is true.” Ashkenazi was taking a break from his own efforts to prevent such “tarnishing”, namely by stymieing any attempts at the remote possibility of a moderately serious internal probe into Israeli conduct during Operation Cast Lead; it is thus only natural that he should praise the soldiers for sharing some of his burden.

Chief of Staff for the IDF, Gabi Ashkenazi

Closer inspection of the Israeli relief effort tells the same story. Professor Yoel Donchin, director of the Patient Safety Unit at the Hadassah Medical Centre in Jerusalem, and veteran of Israeli relief efforts, states that Israel’s priorities were not non-showy staples such as chemical toilets and water purification systems- “If we went down that track we would miss out on seeing that child who was born with the assistance of our physicians”- but rather a 2 week field hospital that Donchin states will have little significant effect, since “(t)o be truly effective a field hospital needs to remain for two or three months, but that’s a condition that Israel cannot meet…It is much more media savvy to show an Israeli hospital, replete with stars of David and of course the dedicated doctors and nurses, dressed in their snazzy uniforms with an Israeli flag on the lapel…It is only in the Israeli aid compound in Haiti that large signs carrying the donor country’s name hang for all to see.”

An IDF soldier in Haiti

From a more general perspective, despite Netanyahu’s statement that the mission was “in accordance with the best Jewish tradition of aiding one’s fellow men”, the most telling proof of such a contention, namely donations to third world countries, tells precisely the opposite story. Israel donates only 0.042% of its GDP in aid to developing countries, which is 1/5 the average amount donated by countries of the OECD, the organization which Israel is seeking to join. Hence Israeli arguments about deep concern for human life, already impossible to take seriously during the regular Palestinian assaults, apparently extend to the rest of the developing world as well- ironic, given the degree to which Israel is itself dependent on aid from a paternal benefactor, namely the US.

US aid to Israel

Helping Haitians in order to better torture Palestinians

Of course giving tuppence with the left hand to conceal daylight robbery with the right is an art at which Israel has become expert. In fact the biggest example of such is the entire peace process itself. Certainly since the Taba talks in 2001, it is just inconceivable that even the most sincere sounding blandishments at peace from Israel have been anything but a smokescreen to continue advancing what apologists for Israeli crimes call “the realities on the ground” further and further away from any situation that would allow for any sort of a peace to be established. That this is the case can be easily demonstrated. The only realistic peaceful solution is the 2 state settlement. The greater the annexation of land in the West Bank, the less viable the second state (the Palestinian state) becomes. This is because the aforementioned “realities on the ground”- large Jewish settlements like Ma’ale Adumim, the Separation Wall, Israeli transport networks etc- turn the West Bank into a series of small, cramped bantustans, thus removing the potential for contiguity; a prerequisite for any state. Since Taba, settlement activity, destruction of Palestinian homes, and seizure of Palestinian land, have continued unabated; thus Israeli actions to vitiate any potential peace agreement have carried on at the same time as their continual statements of their desire for peace. They are stating they want peace with words, while vitiating any potential peace with their actions. Given that actions count for more than words, it follows that Israeli comments as to their desire for a peaceful settlement with the Palestinians are merely a public relations veneer for actions which remove the potential for peace in the most drastic way possible.

A further tactic that assists this goal is to attach impossible prerequisites to any peace agreement. The most commonly heard one, is requests that for any peace negotiations to occur, Palestinians must, among other conditions, recognize Israel and renounce violence. Given that Israel does neither of the two, it is obviously impossible to expect that Palestinians would ever agree to do the same. Yet making such statements allows Israel to plead to the world that it is making strong efforts for peace but is being held back by the intractable Palestinians. Anyone who takes the time simply to look and think can see that such demands illustrate that Israel does agree to road maps, on the sole proviso that they start at the end of a cul-de-sac.

Personal responsabilities

Though Israel is guilty in its stunning malevolence of helping Haitians in order that it might better torture Palestinians, there is a grave hypocrisy that casts a blight over what has otherwise been a heart-warming global effort to assist the suffering Haitians. A brief look at the history of Haiti shows that the reason why 200,000 people should have died in a 7.0 earthquake is that the country has been crucified by twin torturers the US and France, ever since being the first country in the world to stage a successful slave-led anti-colonialist revolt in 1804. Due to their impudence at daring to feel that they should not be in bondage to their Caucasian overlords, they were forced, with significant pressure imposed by the US, to pay reparations to the French for the next 70 years, bankrupting the country. Further, there was an embargo placed on the island by France, and the US, who wanted to counter the threat of the good example- the real ‘domino effect’, which is a doctrine that exists to this day as a justification behind some of the US’s most egregious crimes- in order to discourage any idea of slave revolution in the US. The torture continued further with Woodrow Wilson’s invasion in 1915, and then 19-year occupation, in order to secure American corporate interests, and then with Papa and Baby Doc Duvalier, father and son US-backed military dictators, whose economic and brutally oppressive policies further ravaged the country during their reign between 1957 and 1986. Clinton’s neo-liberalism caused further economic destruction in the 1990’s, and then George W. Bush’s support for the coup against the democratically elected president, and one ray of hope, Jean-Bertrand Aristide, nailed the coffin lid shut. Such that when the earthquake hit, so ramshackle was the country and its infrastructure that it collapsed like a house of cards, killing everyone underneath. So though CNN may entitle its coverage “Saving Haiti”, the efforts that would need to be taken in reality to save Haiti- i.e. a liberation from US imperialist and neo-liberal domination- is an effort that CNN, as well as the rest of the mainstream media, would far more likely prevent than contribute to.

Destruction in Haiti

The critical point is that though financial aid may help restore a fractional part of what has been destroyed, financial participation in the policies that lay the groundwork for such destruction is by far the more significant element. And this is what is occurring right now in Gaza. Were there to be an earthquake tomorrow in Israel- and it is predicted that Israel is due for one- Gaza, with its rickety housing and tinpot infrastructure, would most likely suffer a similar torment to the one that Haiti is currently suffering. This torment is one for which our governments- and thus we- are currently sowing the seeds with the support for the utter asphyxiation in every way of a territory of 1.5 million people. It is worth wondering whether the people in the US and the UK, among those who contributed around $300m for Haiti following the celebrity fundraiser, thought about the fact that while they are contributing to the Haitian aid effort out of a desire to help lift people out of suffering, their tax dollars and pounds are being spent by their governments to create the exact same groundwork necessary for an identical destruction to occur elsewhere. Humans are compassionate creatures, and it is hard to imagine that were people fully apprised of this, that they would stand for such abuses of power by their elected officials. It is in this way, that by a cruel twist of circumstance, the people of the West are participating inadvertently in the same aforementioned dynamic as Israel, namely that of giving tuppence with the left hand, while taking massively with the right. With a greater clarity into the PR devices employed by Israel, people will have a greater capacity to take actions that sit comfortably with their conscience, and the injustices of the past that lead to the catastrophes of the present will be more likely avoided.

Destruction in Gaza

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JSOC - The Joint Special Operations Command

31st January 2010, 03:32 pm by Stan

The Joint Special Operations Command, known by the acronym JSOC, pronounced jay-sock by members of the US armed forces, carries with it a mystique. The press, JSOC’s promoters and its critics, as well as the entertainment media, have all contributed to its mystique; and that mystique is promoted my the military because it functions as a kind of deterrent.

One of the advantages of offical secrecy is its contribution to this mystique - writ large for secretive units, but this mystique-maintenance is also useful throughout the military. Hollywood, pulp fiction, television drama, infotainment “news,” and military-veteran boosterism all contribute to the vast ignorance of military matters, by overdramatizing military life and military operations, and by idealizing it.

Film and popular literature are packed with protagonists whose past or present CV includes membership in some elite and highly secret combat unit, where individuals are seven-language linguists, flawless marksmen with every firearm ever manufactured, field surgeons, helicopter pilots, chess masters, and gymnasts.

The arms race among entertainment moguls to one-up each other’s fantasies has only accelerated this stupidity; and the thirst among (primarily male) consumers for this drivel has corresponding and escalating ratio of profit to humbug.

Hannah Arendt once noted:

The trouble with Eichmann was precisely that so many were like him, and that the many were neither perverted nor sadistic, that they were, and still are, terribly and terrifyingly normal. From the viewpoint of our legal institutions and of our moral standards of judgment, this normality was much more terrifying than all the atrocities put together.

Obviously, I insert this quote with the subject of evil in mind, and in the context of a discussion of this mystique-laden military institution, JSOC. Because that is what they actually do, evil, and not some salvific secret missions that keep us unkowingly safe abed at night. Moreover, they are not the idealized archetypes, but simply a bunch of men who are conjoined primarily by their overarching commitment to US nationalism, their belief that ends justify means, and their personal pursuit of probative masculinity.

Few are multi-lingual, most are only marginally in better physical condition than the average civilian gym rat, many are stupid - moreso than you want to know - and all are committed, when under orders, to bully and kill helpless people.

They are far more banal than anyone would like to believe; and the culture is closer than anything else to a boys locker room. They like sports, pornography, gun culture, video games, alcohol, and misogynist humor.

A little background.

For the record, I was a member of a constituent organization for a few years in the 80’s while they were forming JSOC as a coordinating command in the wake of the 1979 hostage rescue debacle in Iran. Like all these coordinating elements that recieve truckloads of money, it grew into a kind of bureaucratic empire that was planted in some upscale digs on the boundary between Fort Bragg, NC, and the adjacent Pope Air Force Base. This is a process I call institutional dog-waggery… when the coordinaton and support apparatus becomes the tail that ends up wagging the dog.

Included in JSOC, then, were special counter-terrorism units from the Army and Navy, with special aircraft and air coordination asssets from the Army and Air Force. God only knows what tack-ons have happened since then, especially since Donald Rumsfeld privileged the role of so-called special operations as part of his doctrinal rewrite for the entire Department of Defense.

Money has flowed like water into special operations; and this is the institutional equivalent of pouring buckets of ox blood into the Atlantic Ocean at the mouth of the Chagres River. Along with the boys who want to kill to prove themselves have come opportunists and mountebanks of every stripe, not unlike the intellectual swindlers who sold Rumsfeld on his doctrine in the first place. Well, to be honest, Rumsfeld himself was one of the chief con artists, but that’s another story.

In time, the very precise and limited skill sets that had been developed by the early counter-terrorist units - mostly geared to hostage-barricade resolution - had diffused out of the CT units, via retirees and ex-members, as well as training agreements with other agencies, until anyone who wants to observe what used to be called close-quarter battle (CQB) can see it reenacted with a fair amount of verisimiltude on prime time tv… SWAT tactics to the layperson.

The original Delta Force commander, Charlie Beckwith, RIP, who wanted to ensure that these skills remained close-hold, used to tell subordinates that “the only way to keep a secret is don’t tell anybody.” He was prescient, as it turns out, and the CT units had - within a decade - worked themselves out of their dangerous and exclusive job.

This applied to JSOC, which also included infantry support units, i.e., Ranger Battalions, like the one Pat Tillman worked for when he was killed by his own comrades in Paktia Province Afghanistan in 2004. That was a JSOC operation; and it was not helpful in the maintenance of the enemy-deterring mystique. Three or so Taliban irregulars with an RPG and a couple of AKs, shooting ineffectively from half a mile away, created a public relations crisis that contributed to the disappearance of the Secretary of Defense, killing three people in the process.

The debacle in Somalia in 1993? JSOC.

Given the proven ability of special operations to fail, and given the diffusionary loss of its original focus, the only asset that remained for JSOC to do things that are “special” was its high level of secrecy. Many alumni are now performing special duties at six-figure salaries as mercenary contractors… still paid by the Department of Defense - that is, with your taxes - only without that pesky potential Congresdsdional overisght. I say potential, because Congress has no stomach to oversee anything military. The idealization of the military has ensured that.

Which brings me to the sycophancy of elected officials in the face of military commanders, and that includes Barack Obama.

Elected officials are forced to factor the mystique into anything and everything they say about anyone and everyone military. A sizeable fraction of the voting public believes that cops are like the interesting, intelligent people they see on endless Law and Order reruns, and they believe that military people are like the equally complex and ethical characters played by their favorite actors in idealized representations by the media. Or they are related to military members, an equally biasing condition.

Consequently, we have been forced to repress our gag reflex every time one of these Generals comes before a Congress that lines up to see who can fawn most effusively before the stars.

Barack Obama is terrified of the military-security nexus within his own government, because they are uniquely positioned, by this special status, to bring him down… his legal status as Commander-in-Chief notwithstanding. That is why he has dragged his feet on don’t-ask-don’t-tell - which he could suspend by fiat now until law is repealed; and that is why Obama didn’t sack Stanley McChrystal - a la Truman-McArthur - when McChrystal, now the military viceroy of Afghanistan, leaked a report last year to back McChrystal’s own play to increase troop strength in Afghanistan by 45,000.

Instead, Obama gave him 30,000 - enough less to save a little face, and enough more to dig the Obama administration deeper into the hole that the Afghanistan-Pakistan-Yemen war has become.

General Stanley McChrystal, by the way, is the fomrer commander of JSOC; and he was the JSOC commander who alerted then Commander-in-Chief George W. Bush to drop references to Pat Tillman in a speech, when it became apparent that the original cover-up of Pat Tillman’s death by fratricide was going to unravel around a fraudulent award that couldn’t be retrieved. McChrystal was in charge of the operation, in the loop on the cover-up, and helped Bush dodge the PR bullet on it.

In the military, we used to say, “No fuck-up shall go unrewarded,” and McChrystal is living proof. But that doesn’t tell us what else McChrystal and JSOC have been doing with themselves, aside from hiding. What other kinds of things does this secrecy permit?

Well, for one, McChrystal ran Task Force 6-26, which became temporarily famous after the killing of Abu Masab al-Zarqawi, a boogyman figure cultivated by the military-media complex. What made TF 6-26 infamous was their activity in Camp Nama, Iraq: torture. Massive, systematic, sustained torture, by JSOC operators, under the supervision of Stanley McChrystal, this deceptively soft-spoken officer.

The camp in Baghdad was used almost exclusively for the torture of detainees. The torture went on before, during, and after the scandal at Abu Ghraib. Detainees were killed by their torturers, members of the most elite units in the US armed forces. Almost in celebration of the activity of the camp, placards were hung that said, “No Blood, No Foul,” meaning if you don’t make them bleed, you can’t be charged with the crimes you are committing.

Impunity. That’s what secrecy buys. JSOC’s new “special” is impunity.

In an article in Harpers this month, Scott Horton, a fomer classmate of now-JSOC commander Admiral “Billy” McRaven, published a stunning expose of this impunity at Guantanamo Bay’s still-open prison camp. Apparently, within Guantanamo Bay, there is a “special” prison within a prison, quite likely run by JSOC, called “Camp No” by the soldiers now speaking out, meaning, no, it doesn’t exist. It was in this camp that three prisoners, held in Guantanamo for years now without any charges, allegedly commited suicide.

The suicide story was given to an uncritical press in June 2006, right after all three prisoners died, with the bizarre statement by Camp Commander Rear Admiral Harry Harris that the suicides were act of war against the US.

The U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service (yes, the NCIS of the popular tv program… “Characters Welcome”) conducted an investigation of the suicide story, declared the official story valid, then classified the investigative report and placed it off limits to the public… until a Freedom of Information Act request forced the Navy to cough up a highly redacted copy.

In Horton’s article, he explains:

According to the NCIS documents, each prisoner had fashioned a noose from torn sheets and T-shirts and tied it to the top of his cell’s eight-foot-high steel-mesh wall. Each prisoner was able somehow to bind his own hands, and, in at least one case, his own feet, then stuff more rags deep down into his own throat. We are then asked to believe that each prisoner, even as he was choking on those rags, climbed up on his washbasin, slipped his head through the noose, tightened it, and leapt from the washbasin to hang until he asphyxiated. The NCIS report also proposes that the three prisoners, who were held in non-adjoining cells, carried out each of these actions almost simultaneously.

Four soldiers from the 629th Military Intelligence Battalion who were at Guantanamo Bay (now named Camp America) have now come forward with a different story, a story about Camp No.

Salah Ahmed Al-Salami, Mani Shaman Al-Utaybi, and Yasser Talal Al-Zahrani did not simultaneously commit suicide in their separate cells as an act of asymmetric spite against the United States of America. They died at Camp No, in an extraordinary circumstance that the Harpers story outlines very well.

Given that these men appeared likely to have proven their innocence if granted a hearing in accordance with the most minimal standards of jurisprudence, the question arises, why were they killed?

I’ll make a suggestion, not an accusation, since I have no direct knowledge of this incident. Proving innocence can be very damaging, especially if release brings revelations of more torture, rape, and murder… all of which happened, involving special operations, at various times in the conduct of the now expanding war. These are felonies; and they can send people to prison.

Anyone who hoped the Obama administration would investigate these kinds of activities during the Bush era has been disappointed. On the contrary, Obama has expanded the war into new countries, expanded the participation of the CIA and JSOC, left Guantanamo intact, refused to initiate independent investigations of military actions, and promoted the former JSOC commander - tainted by cover-ups and torture - to the most powerful warlord in Afghanistan.

Now the Obama administration’s Justice Department is declining to investigate Guantanamo and the NCIS.

Meanwhile, JSOC flourishes, cloaked in secrecy with just the mystique peeking out. But there was no leaping over tall buildings in a single bound, no warrior-poets protecting us from the manifold dangers lurking outside our borders. There’s just garden variety machismo, men who beat, torture, and kill unarmed detainees… men who have learned to relish violence, because it raises their esteem in the eyes of other men - the terrrible escalations of probative masculinity that continue to underwrite war like no other phenomenon.

What Simone Weil said remains unfortunately true:

As soon as men know that they can kill without fear of punishment or blame, they kill; or at least they encourage killers with approving smiles.

U.S. TO HAITI: "STAND IN LINE, CHILDREN, OR...we’re not going to help you.”

Thanks to television, on Tuesday, January 19, I heard a member of the U.S. military say to a group of Haitians, “If you don’t stand in line, we’re not going to help you.” I hope the Haitians didn’t understand him.



A week had passed since the tragic earthquake struck Haiti. These Haitians had been waiting seven days, “standing in line,” shall we say? And this well-fed U.S. soldier had the gall to say to them that if they didn’t stand in line the way he wanted them to do so, “we’re not going to help you.”

It is fortunate that he probably couldn’t speak the Haitian Creole, or even the French that some people there speak. But wouldn’t it have been nice if he would have said to a translator, “Please ask the people to stand in line, so we can distribute (whatever he was going to distribute) as fast as possible. Tell them we want to be of help, but we need their help and cooperation.”

And he should have also added, “Please tell them we are sorry that it has taken us so long to get here. Please forgive us.”

The Haitian tragedy happened Tuesday afternoon, January 12. By Wednesday morning Venezuela had the first plane land with supplies and rescue personnel. By Thursday morning, China had a similar plane there—before one arrived from the U.S. And then, seven days later, U.S. planes were dropping supplies in front of the onlooking Haitians, together with soldiers carrying weapons in their arms. There were complaints of looting. There wouldn’t have been as many if food and other necessary supplies had arrived sooner. Yes, in behalf of the citizens of the United States, he should have asked for forgiveness.

A kind elderly Catholic bishop once told me that Saint Vincent DePaul said we should ask forgiveness from the needy when we give them bread. The same should be in order for us U.S. citizens.

Even Anderson Cooper and two other CNN reporters said that excessive security measures were keeping the Haitian people from receiving help they needed. They mentioned they had no problem going wherever they wanted to go without security. The Haitians were treating them with respect.

During those first days of the tragedy, I also heard that the Haitian ambassador to the U.S. advised his countrymen and women that they should not try to enter the U.S. They would be turned back. Then I heard that the Venezuelan government formed a Haitian-Venezuelan brigade to go to Haiti. And, also, that the government planned to speed up documents for any illegal Haitian immigrant in the country that wanted to join the brigade so that they would have no problem returning to Venezuela when they wanted to do so.

Writing what I just have written makes me sad. I love my native country. I don’t want the U.S. to be the best country in the world. I just want it to be as great as every other; but I also have to recognize that we do have great power. I grew up with the impression that we also had high ideals in everything we did as a nation. It hurts to learn that we have fallen far short in the past. It hurts even more to see that we are still fumbling our responsibility, because as Uncle Ben told Peter Parker in Spiderman, “with great power comes great responsibility.” It also calls for gentleness.

I have read that there is a custom in Haiti that when one knocks at a door, one should also say, “Honor.” The person inside replies, “Respect.” After having troops in Haiti for so many years, we could have learned that custom. We should have.

-30-

This reflection was prepared originally for 21st Century Socialism .

For social justice in the face of permanent aggression

• Interview with Venezuelan-American researcher and lawyer Eva Golinger

Olga Díaz Ruiz and Geisy Guía (Journalism student)

THE Havana Book Fair has accustomed us to good, interesting publications. Its 19th edition brings us Eva Golinger, the Venezuelan-American writer and lawyer, for the launch of her book, USAID, NED and the CIA: Permanent Aggression, an ambitious compilation and analysis of current situations, written by Golinger and Jean-Guy Allard, a Canadian journalist resident in Cuba.
On this occasion, the perspicacity of Golinger, who is participating in the international fair for the second time, impelled her to expose the constant onslaught of U.S. imperialism in Latin America, "which, to date, we have been unable to halt," after studying the cases of Cuba, Bolivia, Honduras and Venezuela.
"This is a visit of exposé, to achieve maximum impact and, in one way, a pretext to outline that message and to prompt reflection on the constant imperial acts of aggression and their various manifestations." Moreover, it lays out "all the marvelous things that we have achieved" in the subcontinent, she affirmed in an interview with Granma.
Golinger proposes to take up this selection of political, economic, cultural and social events that are evidence of Washington’s tactics and strategies in 2009, maintaining its interference in the region, as "a weapon in the defense of our revolutions."
At this point in the conversation, she stops to observe that the coup d’état in Honduras last June "has taught us the need to take care of our spaces, to recognize that the enemy is everywhere," adding that the book is to be published in Honduras this year.
Likewise the author of The Chávez Code (2005) and Bush vs. Chávez: Washington’s War on Venezuela, the writer believes that the strengthening of Latin American integration, fundamentally through the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America (ALBA) has prompted an increase in U.S. right-wing aggression, "Because we constitute a threat to its domination in the region."
Integration that has expanded its borders to the rest of the world, and that "seeks to lift up our countries without exploitation, or competition, through the principles of solidarity, integration and cooperation," she notes, commenting that Cuba and Venezuela constitute the vanguard of this South-South union.
Despite the fact that she was born and raised in the United States and "talks like a gringo" – as she reproaches herself – Golinger directs all her energy and passion into fighting for social justice, and emphasizes that cooperation among ALBA countries "is perceived outside of our bloc with much hope, because we are constructing a more just social model."
She gives the example of the Bolivarian Revolution, which has transformed all sectors of Venezuelan society, as well as making an impact at international level on account of that nation’s significance to the world, with the figure of Chávez. "We are constructing a country that was in ruins, despite its natural resources. Then this president comes along, without experience in politics, moreover, and look what he’s done!"
In this struggle against constant aggression, the writer notes the leading role of the alternative media: "Telesur has had a fundamental role in dismantling the received opinions of the international media and in promoting another class of journalism, which consists of going into and bearing witness to the facts."
At the same time, she expresses her enthusiasm at one of the first printed copies of the only Venezuelan English-language newspaper, Correo de Orinoco International. "It is the first time that there is information in English from a Venezuelan perspective, from the Venezuelan revolution," she affirms with pride.
Golinger told us that she intends to continue exposing the principal maneuvers of the powerful in Latin America and in that proposition, she says, she can count on her friend and colleague Jean-Guy Allard.

Translated by Granma International

Israel: Please, No More Bin Laden Tapes, Nobody Is Buying It!

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Christmas Bombing Audio Tape Lamest Yet You Were Caught, Admit It And Move On With Life

By Gordon Duff* | Sabbah Report | www.sabbah.biz

The new audio tape from "Osama bin Laden" taking responsibility for the idiotic and childish incident in Detroit where moronic Nigerian armed with a useless "bomb" is simply too much. Now using audio tapes because, supposedly, nobody in Al Qaeda got a flash drive video recorder for Christmas is even more of a joke. Please, with the hundreds of millions our Saudi allies have given to terrorists, a video camera the size of an Ipod might have been a nice touch. Even funnier was releasing the audio, using algorithm software probably illegally downloaded off the internet, and giving it to Al Jazeera.

Pundit Debbie Schussell, former Mark Siljander (VT staff writer) staffer, has bitterly complained about the strong ties between Fox News and Al Jazeera. Fox owner, Rupert Murdoch, is the most powerful "influencer" of the ultra-rightists in Israel. Attempts by the press to present Al Jazeera of today as the "pro-terrorist" media it seemed like many years ago is an epic misrepresentation.

A further abuse, of course, is not only that we are no longer seeing the easily debunked bin Laden doubles whose video tapes were "mysteriously" released by SITE Intelligence, the Rita Katz/Israeli group that seems to find them in trash bins behind delicatessens. The "new" audio tape itself contains statements claiming credit for 9/11 in direct contradiction to the real bin Laden videos, the only ones authenticated. If you wondered why the FBI doesn't list Osama bin Laden as a suspect in 9/11, I think you have your answer. If they think the bin Laden "admissions" aren't credibile, I wonder who the FBI is investigating or if they have simply been told to mind their own business.

The terrorist incident itself is the last thing Al Qaeda would ever take responsibility for despite the claims by SITE Intelligence that they found an unnamed and unverified internet site that confirmed this. Who in the name of all that is holy would want to take responsibility for an idiot who was led onto an American bound plane by passing around searches, customs and passport control in an airport run by an Israeli security company but who carried a "bomb" designed by a three year old.

Who would be so stupid as to try to pass off this childish tape when reliable witnesses saw the terrorist being led onto the plane in Amsterdam in a manner that required full cooperation from security personnel, passport control and the airline itself. We don't even have to go into the fact that the "terrorists" in Yemen that supposedly claimed responsibility were released from Guantanamo under the personal signature of Vice President Cheney in 2007 or that before the incident, the government of Yemen tied these individuals to Israeli controllers thru captured computers.

I am only thankful that the duped terrorist, or as Lee Oswald had said, "patsy", was the moronic son of a long time Mossad business associate in Nigeria. Mr. Mutallab, banker, but mostly head of Nigeria's defense industry, DICON, managed almost entirely by Israelis, may have much more story to tell other than the one he told CIA Chief of Station on November 19, 2009. Do we want to follow former Homeland Security director Chertoff, not only a Jewish activist but currently representing companies selling body scanners to airports and the mysterious ability for someone on worldwide terrorist watch lists to be escorted onto a US bound airliner without passport or search?

Billions in profits were realized almost instantly after this incident. Companies tied to Chertoff, Israel and India were on the receiving end.

The only reliable information the world has on Osama bin Laden is that he was killed by American troops on December 13, 2001 and buried outside Tora Bora by his following, 30 Mujahideen. At least 6 of these witnesses were alive at last check. Since his death, every "leaked" video or statement has been timed for convenient electoral "terrorist" scares, been childishly unprofessional and has only worked to discredit Islam.

Every effort has been made by the MSM/corporate press to cover the facts behind the Christmas "bombing" and push the blame on everyone but the obvious culprits. That effort was deemed so successful that now a brazen attempt to resurrect long dead Osama bin Laden to take responsibility for trying to set off a bomb with a flame igniter that could only be exploded using a blasting cap, is being made.

Is this an attempt to make Al Qaeda look stupid?

"My name is Osama bin Laden. I had a moron carry a defective bomb onto a plane full of Islamic families returning to Detroit, the most Muslim city in the west, as part of a terror campaign. I chose a flight that connected from the Middle East so I could kill as many of the innocent faithful as possible. Please excuse this and the dozen or other mistakes made but being dead has left me less sharp than I once was. No, I do not work for the Mossad, they simply tape and distribute my interviews. This is part of an agreement with my talent agent who is Jewish. All talent agents are Jewish, ask anyone in Hollywood. What do you expect, miracles? 10% of nothing is nothing.

For my faithful followers, I expect to be a regular on Californication next season on Showtime. I'll be the guy with the beard who seems dead."

The second possibility, one designed for the "spiritual" crowd is this:

"I am Osama, the ghost of Tora Bora. Please give more money to Israel, vote to extend the Patriot Act and buy new airport scanners from the companies listed on my weekly newsletter distributed by SITE Intelligence. Watch for more insane threats coming in the future and have a nice weekend. Remember to stop eating pork."

Any group that could make 5 airliners outwit NORAD, the most advanced air defense system in the world, any group that could train terrorist pilots inside the United States itself with nobody catching on, and it gets worse. Sources tell us that FBI Special Agent Stephen Butler may have "accidentally" been cashing checks for and paying rent for two of the 9/11 hijackers. Can people who can get this kind of thing done put a moron on an aircraft at an airport secured by an Israeli company, "extremely closely" related to the same company that managed security at all of the airports used on 9/11?

When Michigan attorney Kurt Haskell and his wife witnessed the famous, "he has no passport, he is a Sudanese refugee, we do this all the time", incident in Amsterdam, only a phony bin Laden tape could make America forget, or so "they" hope. Imagine our terrorist being taken to meet the security head for the "airline" with his "Indian looking" handler, bomb strapped to his underwear. Think of this exploding moron and his handler and who they would have had to know to get past, not only airline security and the Israeli company guarding the airport but Dutch passport control as well.

Anyone with the power to load the "crotch bomber" on a plane with no passport could have put a nuclear weapon in luggage easier. Nukes are seldom on watch lists or have parents running to the CIA reporting them as "terrorists." Next time we are being lied to, please, have more respect. Not everyone is a dumb as a Fox News, CNN, the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times.

It is one thing claiming that poor, long dead Osama bin Laden runs terrorists in Yemen. It is quite something else proving that he manages an airport in Europe or runs the Dutch government. When US Senators can't get thru airport security without being detained, bin Laden's ability to get diplomatic VIP treatment for known terrorists makes him more than a threat, it makes him a magician.

We are thankful that nobody was seriously injured and that we can all laugh about this, maybe not all of us. The people of Nigeria don't think it is funny. Millions of Muslims aren't seeing the joke either. Air travelers are having their bad moments also. Some, however, have benefitted in a major way, politically, financially and militarily. None of those people, however, are ever openly accused of terrorism.

* Gordon Duff is a Marine Vietnam veteran, grunt and 100% disabled vet. He has been a UN Diplomat, defense contractor and is a widely published expert on military and defense issues. He is active in the financial industry and is a specialist on global trade. Gordon Duff acts as political and economic advisor to a number of governments in Africa and the Middle East.