http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F1bn_coxh_E
Only through proxy - Google blocks this website: Federaljack.com
(ASIAN TRIBUNE) In March 2006 four US soldiers from the 101st Airborne Division gang raped a 14 year old Iraqi girl and murdered her and her family —including a 5 year old child. An additional soldier was involved in the cover-up.
One of the killers, Steven Green, was found guilty on May 07, 2009 in the US District Court of Paducah and is now awaiting sentencing.
The leaked Public Affairs Guidance put the 101st media team into a “passive posture” — withholding information where possible. It conceals presence of both child victims, and describes the rape victim, who had just turned 14, as “a young woman”.
The US Army’s Criminal Investigation Division did not begin its investigation until three and a half months after the crime, news reports at that time commented.
This is not the only grim picture coming out of Iraq U.S. forces being accused of using rape as a war weapon.
The release, by CBS News, of the photographs showing the heinous sexual abuse and torture of Iraqi POW’s at the notorious Abu Ghraib prison opened a Pandora’s Box for the Bush regime wrote Ernesto Cienfuegos in La Voz de Aztlan on May 2, 2004.
Journalist Cienfuegos further states “Apparently, the suspended US commander of the prison where the worst abuses took place, Brigadier General Janis Karpinski, has refused to take the fall by herself and has implicated the CIA, Military Intelligence and private US government contractors in the torturing of POW’s and in the raping of Iraqi women detainees as well.”
Brigadier General Karpinski, who commanded the 800th Military Police Brigade, described a high-pressure Military Intelligence and CIA command that prized successful interrogations. A month before the alleged abuses and rapes occurred, she said, a team of CIA, Military Intelligence officers and private consultants under the employ of the US government came to Abu Ghraib. “Their main and specific mission was to give the interrogators new techniques to get more information from detainees,” she said.
At least one picture shows an American soldier apparently raping a female prisoner while another is said to show a male translator raping a male detainee.
Further photographs are said to depict sexual assaults on prisoners with objects including a truncheon, wire and a phosphorescent tube.
Another apparently shows a female prisoner having her clothing forcibly removed to expose her breasts.
Detail of the content emerged from Major General Antonio Taguba, the former army officer who conducted an inquiry into the Abu Ghraib jail in Iraq.
Allegations of rape and abuse were included in his 2004 report but the fact there were photographs was never revealed. He later confirmed their existence in an interview with the Daily Telegraph in May 2009.
The London newspaper further noted “graphic nature of some of the images may explain the US President Obama’s attempts to block the release of an estimated 2,000 photographs from prisons in Iraq and Afghanistan despite an earlier promise to allow them to be published.”
Maj. Gen. Taguba, who retired in January 2007, said he supported the President’s decision, adding: “These pictures show torture, abuse, rape and every indecency.
“The mere description of these pictures is horrendous enough, take my word for it.”
In April, Mr. Obama’s administration said the photographs would be released and it would be “pointless to appeal” against a court judgment in favor of the American Civil Liberties Union (ACLU).
But after lobbying from senior military figures, Mr. Obama changed his mind saying they could put the safety of troops at risk.
In May, he said: “The most direct consequence of releasing them, I believe, would be to inflame anti-American public opinion and to put our troops in greater danger.”
In April 2004, new photographs were sent to La Voz de Aztlan from confidential sources depicting the shocking rapes of two Iraqi women by what are purported to be US Military Intelligence personnel and private US mercenaries in military fatigues. It is now known, Cienfuegos wrote in May 2004, that hundreds of these photographs had been in circulation among the troops in Iraq. The graphic photos were being swapped between the soldiers like baseball cards.
Asian Tribune carries here three of the ‘Rape’ photographs which have brought criticism that the U.S. forces in Iraq have used rape as a weapon of war.
- Asian Tribune -
http://www.asiantribune.com/news/2009/10/03/rape-iraqi-women-us-forces-weapon-war-photos-and-data-emerge
The “official” beginning of “The Great Recession” was December of 2007. As I recall: Wall Street’s Stocks (and my father’s retirement account) shed about 40 percent of it’s value in a short period of time. From December 2007 to July of 2010 more than eight million Americans were laid off.
I found a couple of lists that I thought were of particular interest for this article. The first list includes the worst offenders among the Wall Street titans for layoffs. The second list includes a number of companies that went out of business in the new millennium. Don’t get hung up on the lists because the real point of this editorial will be found beyond.
Layoff list: General Motors -107,357 Citigroup -73,056 Hewlett-Packard -47,540 Circuit City -41,495 Merrill Lynch -40,650 Verizon Wireless -39,000 Pfizer -31,771 Merck & Co. -24,400 Lehman Brothers -23,340 (The investment bank went out of business. Everyone lost their jobs). Caterpillar -23,024 JPMorgan Chase -22,852 Starbucks -21,316 AT&T -18,401 Alcoa -17,655 Dow Chemical -17,530 DuPont -17,000 Berkshire Hathaway -16,900 (While I applaud Warren Buffett, for requesting a tax hike for his income bracket, it is horrifying that he laid off nearly 17,000 people) Ford Motor -15,912 KB Toys -15,100 United States Postal Service -15,000 DHL Express USA -14,900 Sprint Nextel -14,500 Sun Microsystems -14,000 Boeing -13,715 Chrysler -13,672
A number of notable corporations went out of business in the new millennium. A few that I recognize are: The Equitable Life Assurance Society Capital Artists Converse Enron Montgomery Ward Polaroid Schwinn Bicycle Company Sunbeam Products TWA Napster Bethlehem Steel Spiegel Tower Records CompUSA Bennigan’s Countrywide Frontier Airlines IndyMac Bank Lehman Brothers Lenox Lillian Vernon Linens ’n Things Madoff Investment Securities Mervyns Olan Mills Pilgrim’s Pride The Sharper Image Vivitar Woolworths Group Crabtree & Evelyn Denver Newspaper Agency Extended Stay Hotels Reader’s Digest Association Trump Entertainment Resorts Waterford Wedgwood Air America Radio Blockbuster Hollywood Video Borders Ultimate Electronics
Every time that I have met someone, with an MBA, I asked them what they thought of the work of business scholar Dr. W. Edwards Deming (initially a Bell Labs Statistician). To a person, and this is more than “a few,” they looked puzzled. They did not readily recall the name. These are people who studied, (what?), BUSINESS. Now the real fault, for this blatant level of ignorance, lies with institutions and instructors. The fact that Dr. Deming is one of the most renowned intellects, in the sphere of instruction on the quintessential business/total quality model, was apparently completely missed by American Academics. It was also, unfortunately, missed by the US corporate world.
It may seem odd to be bringing awareness of Deming to readers who may be part of #OccupyWallStreet, or others who are just curious about the movement, but I assure you that there is a profound point in doing just that - Wall Street missed Dr. Demings message and it has cost them their souls.
Dr. Deming created a series of 14 points with which to manage a corporation. We need look no further than his first point to begin to understand just how badly the “Fortune 500” have fucked up. His first point is:
“Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs.”
Simple enough I suppose. But when you look at the two lists above you see that those Wall Street Titans are reduced to midgets by this point or, worse, erased completely.
Deming did not say “provide more jobs in _insert foreign country here_” - he said “provide more jobs.” Nor did Dr. Deming say “provide more jobs ’when the economy is good’.” Deming said, “provide more jobs.” You would have to read “Out of the Crisis” (Deming -500+ pages of fine print with one picture) to know this part: Deming puts all responsibility for the welfare of the company, it’s shareholders, and it’s employees squarely on the shoulders of leadership. No excuses - period.
Bad economy? No excuse. Labor costs or supplies “too high?” No excuse. Competitors? No excuse. You see, Deming understood the old Bible Quote: “The people perish without a vision.” We might adapt it here to read: Corporations perish without visionaries. Just ask Apple after it let Steve Jobs go.
This was just too much for fat-and-lazy corporate America. As long as theirs was “the only game in town,” went their thinking, “fuck it.” Well the Japanese liked what Dr. Deming had to say. And guess where America’s first real competition came from. I wonder what GM, Ford, and Chrysler (all on the list above) think of Toyota/Lexus now? But Deming’s point is that the problem is not competition, in fact he says that it’s not even “monopolies” (which can be quite okay if they are looking out for the best interest of their customers), the only real problem is a lack of leadership (and visionaries).
You cannot be competitive if you don’t have enough vision to market the fax machine (US companies shunned their own invention because “nobody would want one") or the mouse driven PC (a Xerox invention - that they were sure no one would want - co-opted by a couple of cats named Wozniak and Jobs).
When US corporations turned to layoffs, instead of adopting the philosophy to “Create constancy of purpose toward improvement of product and service, with the aim to become competitive and stay in business, and to provide jobs,” they shot their own foot off. When shareholders wanted a better bottom line, instead of thinking about the long term health of the object company of their investment, they shot their own foot off. (One Xerox CEO cut costs every year for about a decade. The numbers looked good every year - until his last one - when shareholders woke up to the fact that there was practically no company left).
Wall Street ignored the wisest sage in business. Few US corporations are competitive with stated goals of staying in business and providing American jobs. You see, when you forsake a business prophet like Deming, for profits, you end up with plastic in baby formula, oil in the ocean, dead men in mines, cars and on oil rigs. You pollute the Earth, cut jobs, and create toxic/dangerous work environments. You destroy the Earth, the lives of workers and world’s economy.
Fuck ’em.
[Note: Paul Hawken is an inspiration to this writter as well. Anyone who is interested in what business SHOULD look like would do well to study Deming and Hawken]
http://disquietreservations.blogspot.com/2011/10/audacity-of-us-government-waging-wars.html
Eric Holder, Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, and Robert Mueller must have a very low opinion of the intelligence of the American people to think they can get away with dumping a pile of bullshit on the press and public.
This cast of the curious in the White House can’t be serious! Are they sane? Are they mad? Are they stupid? Are they psychopathic? Are they being blackmailed by Israel, AIPAC and the Neocons, or do they want to start a world war just as bad as they do?
The U.S. government’s public statements since the moment 9/11 happened have come straight out of Monty Python. 19 guys in a cave from the mountains of Afghanistan bringing down three towers with two airplanes in the middle of the biggest city of the biggest empire since Rome? It is impossible. It is science fiction. Dr. Steve Pieczenik hit the nail on the head: Washington is the theatre of the absurd.
The 9/11 hoax is too silly to believe even for a minute, so it’s scary that millions of people still believe the official story a decade later.
Under the Obama administration it seems The Onion website is being tasked with writing bogus terror scripts for the warmongers in Washington to advance their agenda for a total world war in the Middle East.
White House officials have provided no proof to back up their new crazy claim about Iran working with a Mexican drug cartel to infringe on American territory and kill officials from Saudi Arabia and Israel.
How can anyone believe this crap? An Iranian assassination and terror plot against Saudi Arabian and Israeli officials on American soil? No country would attempt such an obvious crime and act of war against America. It would be national suicide for any country that could manage to pull it off.
I can’t believe the chutzpah of the people who run the White House, to boldly lie to the world about such a grave matter as war. They are totally evil.
Do they think the world still believes anything the U.S. government says about terrorists, Al-Qaeda and Iran? Morally bankrupt White House officials lie about everything. They lie about the economy. They lie about the threat of terrorism to America. They lie about the rationale behind the war on terror.
The lie about WMDs in Iraq sank Washington’s reputation. And once the world finally realizes that the official 9/11 story was a lie too, heads in Washington and Israel will pop out and start rolling on the ground.
Watch the videos below about the U.S. government’s war on truth, reason and common sense: Judge Napolitano speaking with Lt. Col. Anthony Shaffer; former National Security Council member Hillary Mann Leverett talking about the plot on Al Jazeera and Press TV; Cenk Uygur of the Young Turks giving his take; and Alex Jones explaining the history of Washington’s fake terror plots and Eric Holder arming Mexican drug cartels via the fast and furious program.
Is Obama Admin Fabricating Iranian Assassination Plot To Distract From Fast & Furious Investigation?
WAKE UP AMERICA! - The Real U.S. Budget Problem: Defense & War Spending Equal 94% Of All Federal Income Tax Revenues!
What’s missing from the debt-ceiling discussion, albeit nothing new to DB readers, is spending on wars and the pentagon. It’s not even being mentioned as a possibility in any of the competing debt plans, despite the following undeniably depressing and disgusting facts:
From Reddit:
I thought this kind of puts things in perspective. In 2010, the US government collected $898 billion in federal income tax revenues. The same year, we spent $847 billion on useless wars and national defense. That means that 94% of all federal income tax revenue is equivalent to what we spend on the Pentagon. Who out there thinks it was money well spent?
Also, just to piss you off a little bit more - defense spending is equivalent to 443% of what we collect in total corporate taxes.
http://dailybail.com/home/wake-up-america-the-real-us-budget-problem-defense-war-spend.html
The Spektr-R, a space telescope that was put in orbit Monday, is just one of the ways the Russian space program is getting back on track.
By Fred Weir, Correspondent
posted July 19, 2011 at 2:16 pm EDT
Moscow
Russian scientists are jubilant at news that the Spektr-R, a powerful space telescope conceived in the depths of the cold war, was finally lofted into orbit aboard a Zenit rocket Monday from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan.
Once it is fully operational, the new radio telescope will sync up with ground-based observatories to form the biggest telescope ever built. It will be known as RadioAstron, with a “dish” spanning 30 times the Earth’s diameter. Experts say it will be able to deliver images from the remote corners of the universe at 10,000 times the resolution of the US Hubble Space Telescope.
“We’ve been waiting for this day for such a long time,” says Nikolai Podorvanyuk, a researcher at the official Institute of Astronomy in Moscow.
RELATED: Space photos of the day from the Hubble
“It’s been planned since the 1980s, but has repeatedly fallen through for a variety of reasons. But now it’s here, and we’re bracing for all the new information it’s going to deliver, especially about black holes,” he says.
The space-based component is actually a small radio telescope, with a 10-meter dish that’s far smaller than Earth-based radio telescopes, planted in an elliptical orbit about 340,000 kilometers (more than 212,000 miles) from Earth. But when its signals are combined with those of ground-based radio telescopes through a process known as interferometry, it effectively becomes one single telescope with a “dish” as large as the distance between its components, which will be able to deliver unprecedented pictures of mysterious cosmic phenomenon, such as quasars, pulsars, and supernovae.
According to its co-designer, Russian astrophysicist Nikolai Kardashev, one of RadioAstron’s key objectives will be to seek out the truth about black holes, which are intense concentrations of matter thought to exist in the centers of most galaxies with gravity so powerful they even swallow up light signals.
“Building this telescope was Academician Kardashev’s idea,” to enable us to actually see what’s happening around the edges of black holes, says Vladimir Fortov, director of the official Institute of Thermophysics in Moscow.
“This is going to open up a whole new era in astronomy and astrophysics,” he says. “It’s a huge contribution to world science. Russia has held advanced positions traditionally, and this is a logical next step for our space program. It’s just great.”
Scientists from more than 20 countries will participate in RadioAstron’s five-year mission, according to the Russian Space Agency.
Russia’s space program fell on hard times after the collapse of the USSR 20 years ago, and even a few years ago appeared to be little more than a “space taxi” to ferry astronauts to and from the International Space Station.
But with increased funding and improving morale, Russian space scientists now have a variety of ambitious projects on the agenda. They include a manned mission to Mars by 2030, a space plane to rival the US X-37B, and a nuclear-powered spacepod that could gobble up space junk like an orbiting Pac-Man.
Despite some very serious recent setbacks, Russia’s answer to the US Global Positioning System (GPS) navigational network, Glonass, is slated to be fully operational by the end of this year. In November, Russia will finally launch its long-awaited Phobos-Grunt probe, which aims to bring home a soil sample from the Martian moon Phobos.
And with the end of the US space shuttle program, even Russia’s traditional space niche of powerful rocket launchers and venerable Soyuz space vehicles is set to become the only game in town.
“Russia is returning to scientific programs in space after a long break,” Vladimir Popovkin, chief of the Russian space agency Roskosmos, was quoted as saying by the official Itar-TASS agency Monday.
But despite all this good news, some space experts strike a cautionary note.
“The old problems of Russian space industries are still with us: low productivity and lack of technical discipline,” says independent expert Andrei Ionin. “There could be lots of problems in future.
“Still, this is a great moment. Our people can raise their heads and be proud,” he adds.
RELATED: Space photos of the day from the Hubble
Is the United States "number one"? Many Americans take deep pride in their nation and the truth is that the U.S. has a lot going for it. The United States has the largest economy in the world. The United States also has the most powerful military on the entire planet. The United States has produced most of the greatest movies that the world has ever seen. But the United States is also number one in a lot of categories that are not go great. If we ever want to turn this country around, we need to be very honest with ourselves. We need to take a long, hard look in the mirror and realize that it is not a good thing that we are number one in divorce, drug addiction, debt, obesity, car thefts, murders and total crimes. We have become a slothful, greedy, decadent nation that is exhibiting signs of advanced decay. Until we understand just how bad our problems really are, we won't be able to come up with the solutions that we need.
A lot of people that write articles like this have a deep hatred for America. But that is not the case with me. I love the United States. I love the American people. America is like an aging, bloated rock star that has become addicted to a dozen different drugs. America is a shadow of its former self and it desperately needs to wake up before it plunges into oblivion.
If you do not believe that America is in bad shape, just read the list below. The following are 20 not so good categories that the United States leads the world in....
#1 The United States has the highest incarceration rate in the world and the largest total prison population on the entire globe.
#2 According to NationMaster.com, the United States has the highest percentage of obese people in the world.
#3 The United States has the highest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
#4 The United States is tied with the U.K. for the most hours of television watched per person each week.
#5 The United States has the highest rate of illegal drug use on the entire planet.
#6 There are more car thefts in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world by far.
#7 There are more reported rapes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#8 There are more reported murders in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#9 There are more total crimes in the United States each year than anywhere else in the world.
#10 The United States also has more police officers than anywhere else in the world.
#11 The United States spends much more on health care as a percentage of GDP than any other nation on the face of the earth.
#12 The United States has more people on pharmaceutical drugs than any other country on the planet.
#13 The percentage of women taking antidepressants in America is higher than in any other country in the world.
#14 Americans have more student loan debt than anyone else in the world.
#15 More pornography is created in the United States than anywhere else on the entire globe. 89 percent is made in the U.S.A. and only 11 percent is made in the rest of the world.
#16 The United States has the largest trade deficit in the world every single year. Between December 2000 and December 2010, the United States ran a total trade deficit of 6.1 trillion dollars with the rest of the world, and the U.S. has had a negative trade balance every single year since 1976.
#17 The United States spends 7 times more on the military than any other nation on the planet does. In fact, U.S. military spending is greater than the military spending of China, Russia, Japan, India, and the rest of NATO combined.
#18 The United States has far more foreign military bases than any other country does.
#19 The United States has the most complicated tax system in the entire world.
#20 The U.S. has accumulated the biggest national debt that the world has ever seen and it is rapidly getting worse. Right now, U.S. government debt is expanding at a rate of $40,000 per second.
So are you convinced that we are in trouble yet?
The truth is that America has changed. Most of us don't even say hello to our neighbors anymore.
In fact, we have become so self-involved that many of us don't even notice when someone around us dies.
Just consider the following two examples.
*USA Today recently reported on the body of a dead woman that was not found for approximately a year even though a whole bunch of people walked right past the car where she died....
Bank contractors, inspectors and even the new owner of a foreclosed home walked past the silver Chevy Nova in the garage numerous times before discovering the former homeowner — dead on the front seat.
*In an even more shocking case, the CBS affiliate in Boston recently reported that a dead woman was lying on the bottom of a public pool for two days while large numbers of people swam right over her. How in the world could something like this possibly happen?....
It’s a mystery as murky as the water at Veteran’s Memorial swimming pool in Fall River public pool: how did swimmers, lifeguards, or inspectors not notice a woman’s body at the bottom of the pool for a few days?
Marie Joseph, 36, was last seen at the pool on Sunday. The pool was open to the public Monday and Tuesday with six lifeguards on duty, and no one noticed the body under 12 feet of water.
Most Americans have become so self-involved that they barely even notice anyone other than their family and close friends.
The love of most Americans is growing cold and when the collapse of the U.S. economy happens it is just going to make things worse. Instead of working as a community, most Americans will only be concerned with making sure that their own needs are taken care of.
The United States was once the most blessed nation on the face of the earth, but now we are literally falling to pieces.
Does anyone have any ideas about why this could be happening?
State Dept Threatens Prison for US Participants in Gaza Aid Flotilla
Says Aid Ships ‘Conspiring to Deliver Material Support’ to Hamas
by Jason Ditz, June 24, 2011
Israeli officials have been ratcheting up their rhetoric in demanding that the world unite to stop humanitarian aid from being delivered to the people of the Gaza Strip, calling such attempts an existential threat to Israel and a “deliberate provocation” by the world.
While this hasn’t resulted in European nations or others stopping humanitarian groups from moving forward with the aid, it has shifted the Obama Administration’s position from opposition to open threats.
Now, the US State Department is not only railing against the flotilla as “irresponsible” but is threatening criminal charges against American participants, claiming that the attempt to deliver aid to Gaza amounts to “conspiring to deliver material support” to Hamas and could lead to lengthy prison sentences.
Gaza aid ships have often had a solid American contingent, and an American was among those killed when Israeli troops attacked the Mavi Marmara for attempting to deliver wheelchairs to the strip. Though the administration apparently believes it can invoke terror charges, it is unclear how eager they would be to actually test such a move in open court.
http://www.iraq-war.ru/article/250363
Full Bilderberg 2011 Attendee List
Infowars
Friday, June 10, 2011
Thanks to the fantastic work of Bilderberg activists, journalists and the Swiss media, we have now been able to obtain the full official list of 2011 Bilderberg attendees. Routinely, some members request that their names be kept off the roster so there will be additional Bilderbergers in attendance.
Infowars will be on the scene identifying other attendees not on the list.
Belgium
■Coene, Luc, Governor, National Bank of Belgium
■Davignon, Etienne, Minister of State
■Leysen, Thomas, Chairman, Umicore
China
■Fu, Ying, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs
■Huang, Yiping, Professor of Economics, China Center for Economic Research, Peking University
Denmark
■Eldrup, Anders, CEO, DONG Energy
■Federspiel, Ulrik, Vice President, Global Affairs, Haldor Topsøe A/S
■Schütze, Peter, Member of the Executive Management, Nordea Bank AB
Germany
■Ackermann, Josef, Chairman of the Management Board and the Group Executive Committee, Deutsche Bank
■Enders, Thomas, CEO, Airbus SAS
■Löscher, Peter, President and CEO, Siemens AG
■Nass, Matthias, Chief International Correspondent, Die Zeit
■Steinbrück, Peer, Member of the Bundestag; Former Minister of Finance
Finland
■Apunen, Matti, Director, Finnish Business and Policy Forum EVA
■Johansson, Ole, Chairman, Confederation of the Finnish Industries EK
■Ollila, Jorma, Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
■Pentikäinen, Mikael, Publisher and Senior Editor-in-Chief, Helsingin Sanomat
France
■Baverez, Nicolas, Partner, Gibson, Dunn & Crutcher LLP
■Bazire, Nicolas, Managing Director, Groupe Arnault /LVMH
■Castries, Henri de, Chairman and CEO, AXA
■Lévy, Maurice, Chairman and CEO, Publicis Groupe S.A.
■Montbrial, Thierry de, President, French Institute for International Relations
■Roy, Olivier, Professor of Social and Political Theory, European University Institute
Great Britain
■Agius, Marcus, Chairman, Barclays PLC
■Flint, Douglas J., Group Chairman, HSBC Holdings
■Kerr, John, Member, House of Lords; Deputy Chairman, Royal Dutch Shell
■Lambert, Richard, Independent Non-Executive Director, Ernst & Young
■Mandelson, Peter, Member, House of Lords; Chairman, Global Counsel
■Micklethwait, John, Editor-in-Chief, The Economist
■Osborne, George, Chancellor of the Exchequer
■Stewart, Rory, Member of Parliament
■Taylor, J. Martin, Chairman, Syngenta International AG
Greece
■David, George A., Chairman, Coca-Cola H.B.C. S.A.
■Hardouvelis, Gikas A., Chief Economist and Head of Research, Eurobank EFG
■Papaconstantinou, George, Minister of Finance
■Tsoukalis, Loukas, President, ELIAMEP GrisonsInternational Organizations
■Almunia, Joaquín, Vice President, European Commission
■Daele, Frans van, Chief of Staff to the President of the European Council
■Kroes, Neelie, Vice President, European Commission; Commissioner for Digital Agenda
■Lamy, Pascal, Director General, World Trade Organization
■Rompuy, Herman van, President, European Council
■Sheeran, Josette, Executive Director, United Nations World Food Programme
■Solana Madariaga, Javier, President, ESADEgeo Center for Global Economy and Geopolitics
■Trichet, Jean-Claude, President, European Central Bank
■Zoellick, Robert B., President, The World Bank Group
Ireland
■Gallagher, Paul, Senior Counsel; Former Attorney General
■McDowell, Michael, Senior Counsel, Law Library; Former Deputy Prime Minister
■Sutherland, Peter D., Chairman, Goldman Sachs InternationalItaly
■Bernabè, Franco, CEO, Telecom Italia SpA
■Elkann, John, Chairman, Fiat S.p.A.
■Monti, Mario, President, Univers Commerciale Luigi Bocconi
■Scaroni, Paolo, CEO, Eni S.p.A.
■Tremonti, Giulio, Minister of Economy and FinanceCanada
■Carney, Mark J., Governor, Bank of Canada
■Clark, Edmund, President and CEO, TD Bank Financial Group
■McKenna, Frank, Deputy Chair, TD Bank Financial Group
■Orbinksi, James, Professor of Medicine and Political Science, University of Toronto
■Prichard, J. Robert S., Chair, Torys LLP
■Reisman, Heather, Chair and CEO, Indigo Books & Music Inc. Center, Brookings InstitutionNetherlands
■Bolland, Marc J., Chief Executive, Marks and Spencer Group plc
■Chavannes, Marc E., Political Columnist, NRC Handelsblad; Professor of Journalism
■Halberstadt, Victor, Professor of Economics, Leiden University; Former Honorary Secretary General of Bilderberg Meetings
■H.M. the Queen of the Netherlands
■Rosenthal, Uri, Minister of Foreign Affairs
■Winter, Jaap W., Partner, De Brauw Blackstone WestbroekNorway
■Myklebust, Egil, Former Chairman of the Board of Directors SAS, sk Hydro ASA
■H.R.H. Crown Prince Haakon of Norway
■Ottersen, Ole Petter, Rector, University of Oslo
■Solberg, Erna, Leader of the Conservative PartyAustria
■Bronner, Oscar, CEO and Publisher, Standard Medien AG
■Faymann, Werner, Federal Chancellor
■Rothensteiner, Walter, Chairman of the Board, Raiffeisen Zentralbank Österreich AG
■Scholten, Rudolf, Member of the Board of Executive Directors, Oesterreichische Kontrollbank AGPortugal
■Balsemão, Francisco Pinto, Chairman and CEO, IMPRESA, S.G.P.S.; Former Prime Minister
■Ferreira Alves, Clara, CEO, Claref LDA; writer
■Nogueira Leite, António, Member of the Board, José de Mello Investimentos, SGPS, SASweden
■Mordashov, Alexey A., CEO, Severstal
Schweden
■Bildt, Carl, Minister of Foreign Affairs
■Björling, Ewa, Minister for Trade
■Wallenberg, Jacob, Chairman, Investor ABSwitzerland
■Brabeck-Letmathe, Peter, Chairman, Nestlé S.A.
■Groth, Hans, Senior Director, Healthcare Policy & Market Access, Oncology Business Unit, Pfizer Europe
■Janom Steiner, Barbara, Head of the Department of Justice, Security and Health, Canton
■Kudelski, André, Chairman and CEO, Kudelski Group SA
■Leuthard, Doris, Federal Councillor
■Schmid, Martin, President, Government of the Canton Grisons
■Schweiger, Rolf, Ständerat
■Soiron, Rolf, Chairman of the Board, Holcim Ltd., Lonza Ltd.
■Vasella, Daniel L., Chairman, Novartis AG
■Witmer, Jürg, Chairman, Givaudan SA and Clariant AGSpain
■Cebrián, Juan Luis, CEO, PRISA
■Cospedal, María Dolores de, Secretary General, Partido Popular
■León Gross, Bernardino, Secretary General of the Spanish Presidency
■Nin Génova, Juan María, President and CEO, La Caixa
■H.M. Queen Sofia of SpainTurkey
■Ciliv, Süreyya, CEO, Turkcell Iletisim Hizmetleri A.S.
■Gülek Domac, Tayyibe, Former Minister of State
■Koç, Mustafa V., Chairman, Koç Holding A.S.
■Pekin, Sefika, Founding Partner, Pekin & Bayar Law FirmUSA
■Alexander, Keith B., Commander, USCYBERCOM; Director, National Security Agency
■Altman, Roger C., Chairman, Evercore Partners Inc.
■Bezos, Jeff, Founder and CEO, Amazon.com
■Collins, Timothy C., CEO, Ripplewood Holdings, LLC
■Feldstein, Martin S., George F. Baker Professor of Economics, Harvard University
■Hoffman, Reid, Co-founder and Executive Chairman, LinkedIn
■Hughes, Chris R., Co-founder, Facebook
■Jacobs, Kenneth M., Chairman & CEO, Lazard
■Johnson, James A., Vice Chairman, Perseus, LLC
■Jordan, Jr., Vernon E., Senior Managing Director, Lazard Frères & Co. LLC
■Keane, John M., Senior Partner, SCP Partners; General, US Army, Retired
■Kissinger, Henry A., Chairman, Kissinger Associates, Inc.
■Kleinfeld, Klaus, Chairman and CEO, Alcoa
■Kravis, Henry R., Co-Chairman and co-CEO, Kohlberg Kravis, Roberts & Co.
■Kravis, Marie-Josée, Senior Fellow, Hudson Institute, Inc.
■Li, Cheng, Senior Fellow and Director of Research, John L. Thornton China Center, Brookings Institution
■Mundie, Craig J., Chief Research and Strategy Officer, Microsoft Corporation
■Orszag, Peter R., Vice Chairman, Citigroup Global Markets, Inc.
■Perle, Richard N., Resident Fellow, American Enterprise Institute for Public Policy Research
■Rockefeller, David, Former Chairman, Chase Manhattan Bank
■Rose, Charlie, Executive Editor and Anchor, Charlie Rose
■Rubin, Robert E., Co-Chairman, Council on Foreign Relations; Former Secretary of the Treasury
■Schmidt, Eric, Executive Chairman, Google Inc.
■Steinberg, James B., Deputy Secretary of State
■Thiel, Peter A., President, Clarium Capital Management, LLC
■Varney, Christine A., Assistant Attorney General for Antitrust
■Vaupel, James W., Founding Director, Max Planck Institute for Demographic Research
■Warsh, Kevin, Former Governor, Federal Reserve Board
■Wolfensohn, James D., Chairman, Wolfensohn & Company, LLC
http://theintelhub.com/2011/06/10/full-bilderberg-2011-attendee-list/
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article28270.htm
By Chris Floyd
June 07, 2011 ----- I watched them marching toward the border. Row upon row of them in the hot, bright sun. They marched without guns, without tanks and missiles—although some, like the shepherd boy David, did pick up a few rocks to hurl into the impossible distance.
I watched them stream down the green hill toward the heaps of dirt and wire. I saw them, old and young, walk toward the occupied land. I saw them come closer—close enough for the heavily-armed occupying force to have them in range.
From a distance—behind the barbed wire, with the occupiers, where the cameras that showed the scene were set—I heard the dull pops and parps of the guns as they fired. I saw the marchers kept streaming down the hill, although the first wave was now breaking in disarray. I heard the guns again. I saw some marchers fall, others scramble back, and still more coming down.
Pop. Pop. Parp. The dull sounds, intermittent, careful. The bullets whizzed across the distance—the impossible distance, which no stone could traverse. The bullets threw up clouds of dirt, they struck flesh. I saw bodies twisting and going down. The march became a rescue party. The dead and wounded were lifted onto sheets and stretchers as the bullets kept coming: dull, intermittent, careful. Pop. Pop. Parp.
Finally, as many lay dead, many lay bleeding in bright, hot sun, finally, across the distance, from behind the barbed wire and hot-barrelled weapons, I watched the canisters of tear gas sailing through the air, trailing streams of smoke. They landed on the dirt and the green grass, and spewed their painful, irresistible fog.
Now, at last, the marchers—who had kept coming in the face of the bullets—turned and fled. Carrying the dead, the dying and bleeding, they ran back up the green hill.
Then suddenly the scene shifted to an anonymous government office, where a comely young spokeswoman, speaking crisp, American-accented English, explained that these unweaponed marchers walking in the hot, bright sun posed such an overwhelming threat to the heavily-armed occupying forces behind the walls of barbed wire that there was no alternative, no other choice, but to open fire across the impossible distance that no stone could traverse, to fire into the unarmed crowd, to fire again and again, to watch them twist and fall into the mounds of dirt. No choice. No alternative.
Her appearance on the screen lasted almost as long as the time given to the marchers and their dead. The reporter, who was standing near the border, behind the barbed wire, who had seen it all with his own eyes, dutifully concluded his piece with geopolitical context—one side says this, the other says that, plots and machinations lie behind every public outpouring. But even given all that, even he—speaking as the marchers were fleeing from the noxious clouds behind him—even he could not avoid the obvious question: Why use the tear gas last? Why shoot first? Why fire into the bodies, into the unarmed marchers, and kill them, when all along you were equipped with the proven means to disperse them without death and blood?
It seems, then, there was a choice for the occupying force. And they made the that choice. The choice to kill, to speak with death and blood across the impossible distance.
By William Blum
June 03, 2011 “Information Clearing House”—When they bombed Korea, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, El Salvador and Nicaragua I said nothing because I wasn’t a communist.
When they bombed China, Guatemala, Indonesia, Cuba, and the Congo I said nothing because I didn’t know about it.
When they bombed Lebanon and Grenada I said nothing because I didn’t understand it.
When they bombed Panama I said nothing because I wasn’t a drug dealer.
When they bombed Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Somalia, and Yemen I said nothing because I wasn’t a terrorist.
When they bombed Yugoslavia and Libya for “humanitarian” reasons I said nothing because it sounded so honorable.
Then they bombed my house and there was no one left to speak out for me. But it didn’t really matter. I was dead.
The Targets
It’s become a commonplace to accuse the United States of choosing as its bombing targets only people of color, those of the Third World, or Muslims. But it must be remembered that one of the most sustained and ferocious American bombing campaigns of modern times — 78 consecutive days — was carried out against the people of the former Yugoslavia: white, European, Christians. The United States is an equal-opportunity bomber. The only qualifications for a country to become a target are: (A) It poses an obstacle — could be anything — to the desires of the American Empire; (B) It is virtually defenseless against aerial attack.
The survivors
“We never see the smoke and the fire, we never smell the blood, we never see the terror in the eyes of the children, whose nightmares will now feature screaming missiles from unseen terrorists, known only as Americans.”
NASA has announced an audacious new mission, launching a spaceship that will travel for four years to land on an asteroid, where it will collect dust from the surface and deliver the precious cargo to Earth, where scientists will then examine the material for clues to how life began. Truly the stuff of science fiction. However, I personally would regard it as a much greater accomplishment of humankind if we could put an end to America’s bombings and all its wars, and teach some humility to The Holy Triumvirate — The United States, the European Union and NATO — who recognizes no higher power and believe they literally can do whatever they want in the world, to whomever they want, for as long as they want, and call it whatever they want, like “humanitarian.”
The fall of the American Empire would offer a new beginning for the long-suffering American people and the long-suffering world.
Why is the United States waging perpetual war against the Cuban people’s health system?
In January the government of the United States of America saw fit to seize $4.207 million in funds allocated to Cuba by the United Nations Global Fund to Fight AIDS, Tuberculosis and Malaria for the first quarter of 2011, Cuba has charged. The UN Fund is a $22 billion a year program that works to combat the three deadly pandemics in 150 countries.
“This mean-spirited policy,” the Cuban government said, “aims to undermine the quality of service provided to the Cuban population and to obstruct the provision of medical assistance in over 100 countries by 40,000 Cuban health workers.” Most of the funds are used to import expensive AIDS medication to Cuba, where antiretroviral treatment is provided free of charge to some 5,000 HIV patients.
The United States sees the Cuban health system and Havana’s sharing of such as a means of Cuba winning friends and allies in the Third World, particularly Latin America; a situation sharply in conflict with long-standing US policy to isolate Cuba. The United States in recent years has attempted to counter the Cuban international success by dispatching the US Naval Ship “Comfort” to the region. With 12 operating rooms and a 1,000-bed hospital, the converted oil tanker has performed hundreds of thousands of free surgeries in places such as Belize, Guatemala, Panama, El Salvador, Peru, Ecuador, Colombia, Nicaragua and Haiti.
However, the Comfort’s port calls likely will not substantially enhance America’s influence in the hemisphere. “It’s hard for the U.S. to compete with Cuba and Venezuela in this way,” said Peter Hakim, president of the Inter-American Dialogue, a pro-US policy-research group in Washington. “It makes us look like we’re trying to imitate them. Cuba’s doctors aren’t docked at port for a couple days, but are in the country for years.”
The recent disclosure by Wikileaks of US State Department documents included this little item: A cable was sent by Michael Parmly from the US Interests Section in Havana in July 2006, during the runup to the Non-Aligned Movement conference. He notes that he is actively looking for “human interest stories and other news that shatters the myth of Cuban medical prowess”.
Michael Moore refers to another Wikileaks State Department cable: “On January 31, 2008, a State Department official stationed in Havana took a made-up story and sent it back to his headquarters in Washington. Here’s what they came up with: [The official] stated that Cuban authorities have banned Michael Moore’s documentary, ‘Sicko,’ as being subversive. Although the film’s intent is to discredit the U.S. healthcare system by highlighting the excellence of the Cuban system, the official said the regime knows the film is a myth and does not want to risk a popular backlash by showing to Cubans facilities that are clearly not available to the vast majority of them.” Moore points out an Associated Press story of June 16, 2007 (seven months prior to the cable) with the headline: “Cuban health minister says Moore’s ‘Sicko’ shows ‘human values’ of communist system.”
Moore adds that the people of Cuba were shown the film on national television on April 25, 2008. “The Cubans embraced the film so much it became one of those rare American movies that received a theatrical distribution in Cuba. I personally ensured that a 35mm print got to the Film Institute in Havana. Screenings of Sicko were set up in towns all across the country.”
The United States also bans the sale to Cuba of vital medical drugs and devices, such as the inhalant agent Sevoflurane which has become the pharmaceutical of excellence for applying general anesthesia to children; and the pharmaceutical Dexmetomidine, of particular usefulness in elderly patients who often must be subjected to extended surgical procedures. Both of these are produced by the US firm Abbot Laboratories.
Cuban children suffering from lymphoblastic leukemia cannot use Erwinia L-asparaginasa, a medicine commercially known as Elspar, since the US pharmaceutical company Merck and Co. refuses to sell this product to Cuba. Washington has also prohibited the US-based Pastors for Peace Caravan from donating three Ford ambulances to Cuba.
Cubans are moreover upset by the denial of visas requested to attend conferences in the field of Anesthesiology and Reanimation that take place in the United States. This creates further barriers for Cuba’s anesthesiologists to update themselves on state of the art anesthesiology, the care of severely ill patients, and the advances achieved in the treatment of pain.
Some of the foregoing are but a small sample of American warfare against the Cuban medical system presented in a Cuban report to the United Nations General Assembly on October 28, 2009.
Finally, we have the Cuban Medical Professional Parole (CMPP) immigration program, which encourages Cuban doctors who are serving their government overseas to defect and enter the US immediately as refugees. The Wall Street Journal reported in January of this year that through Dec. 16, 2010, CMPP visas had been issued by US consulates in 65 countries to 1,574 Cuban doctors whose education had been paid for by the financially-struggling Cuban government. 7 This program, oddly enough, was initiated by the US Department of Homeland Security. Another victory over terrorism? Or socialism? Or same thing?
Wait until the American conservatives hear that Cuba is the only country in Latin America offering abortion on demand, and free.
Items of interest from a journal I’ve kept for 40 years, part IV
“Remember the scene in Battle of Algiers in which, after the French have ‘killed off’ the revolution, mist fills the screen and then, gradually, coming out of the mist, the Algerians appear waving their fists, ululating with that sound both thrilling and frightening? That’s how I see 9/11 for those of us who grew up believing that the US stood for something grand, despite eras such as slavery, indigenous genocide, Jim Crow, etc. Many people say ‘Everything changed on 9/11.’ I think it’s more that ‘Everything became clear, finally, on 9/11.’ The mist cleared away.” — Catherine Podojil
From a reader in Slovakia: I used the word “democracy” and not “capitalism”, because we were told [after the dissolution of the Soviet Union] that democracy was introduced in Slovakia, not capitalism. Everything was done in the name of democracy and not in the name of capitalism.
“If someone other than Stalin had gained ascendancy in the Soviet Union, it is likely that millions of lives would have been spared — but millions of others still would have been caught up in the maw of the state machine, because the system itself was based on violence, repression and lawlessness — all in the name of ‘preserving the Revolution,’ a phrase which served the same function for the Kremlin as ‘national security’ does for the American elite, or the ‘higher law’ of God does for religious extremists of every stripe.” — Chris Floyd
Bill Richardson, as US ambassador to the UN, re the newly-formed International Criminal Court in 1998: The United States should be exempt [from the court’s prosecution] because it has “special global responsibilities”.
Russia might be a target of an American invasion some day because it’s the most powerful geopolitical opponent of the United States, with the power to extinguish the US in 30 minutes. The US might want to control the Russian oil and have complete control of Central Asia. That’s what’s behind the many missile sites the US has been building in Europe, not the stated fear of Iran.
Bolivia has South America’s largest hydrocarbon deposits after Venezuela.
“The notion that we ought to now go to Baghdad and somehow take control of the country strikes me as an extremely serious one, in terms of what we’d have to do when we got there. You’d probably have to put some new government in place. It’s not clear what kind of government that would be, how long you’d have to stay. For the U.S. to get involved militarily in determining the outcome of the struggle over who’s going to govern in Iraq strikes me as the classic definition of a quagmire.” – Dick Cheney, when he was Secretary of Defense in 1991.
When the plans for a new office building for the U.S. military were brought before the Senate on Aug. 14, 1941, Sen. Arthur Vandenberg of Michigan was puzzled. “Unless the war is to be permanent, why must we have permanent accommodations for war facilities of such size?” he asked. “Or is the war to be permanent?” (Steve Vogel, “The Pentagon: A History” (2007) p.84)
The combination of free trade and heavy US subsidies to American businesses has crippled the Mexican agricultural sector, causing impoverished former subsistence farmers to immigrate to the US by any means necessary. Conservative policies of supporting free trade while restricting immigration are inherently incompatible.
The head of the Coalition Provisional Authority, the first US occupation administration of Iraq in 2003, Paul Bremer, made free enterprise a guiding rule, shutting down 192 state-owned businesses where the World Bank estimated 500,000 people were working. (UPI, July 25, 2007)
If an individual were behaving as Israel does as a country, that person would be removed to an institution for the criminally insane and subjected to intense drug therapy and a lobotomy. The person might find the guy next door to be named America.
The United States threatens other states sufficient to cause those states to engage in defensive responses in order to exploit these to justify increasing “defense” expenditures.
Bush, Obama and Western Europe have used criticism of Russian President Vladimir Putin’s authoritarianism as a way of showing their publics how they allegedly stand up for democracy.
US right-wingers have a desire to replace our constitutional form of government with an authoritarian theocracy, and to (militarily) spread that theocratic construct around the world. (Ironically, the exact same objective fundamentalist Muslims have!) — Kerry Thomasi, Online Journal
“Behind the ‘unexamined nostalgia for the “Golden Days” of American intelligence’ lay a much more devastating truth: the same people who read Dante and went to Yale and were educated in civic virtue recruited Nazis, manipulated the outcome of democratic elections, gave LSD to unwitting subjects, opened the mail of thousands of American citizens, overthrew governments, supported dictatorships, plotted assassinations, and engineered the Bay of Pigs disaster. ‘In the name of what?’ asked one critic. ‘Not civic virtue, but empire’.” — Frances Stonor Saunders, The Cultural Cold War: The CIA and the World of Arts and Letters (1999)
... a more just world, a deeper democracy and a liveable planet ...
“Colin Powell’s presentation at the UN, February 5, 2003 seems like something out of Monty Python, with one key British report cited by Powell being nothing more than a student’s thesis, downloaded from the Web — with the student later threatening to charge U.S. officials with plagiarism.” — Bill Moyers
“Venezuela’s well-off complain endlessly that their economic power has been diminished; it hasn’t; economic growth has never been higher, business has never been better. What the rich no longer own is the government.” – John Pilger
Notes
Full list of US bombings since World War 2 ↩
Martin Kelly, publisher of a nonviolence website ↩
Prensa Latina (Cuba), March 12, 2011 ↩
The Militant (US, Socialist Workers Party), April 4, 2011↩
Bloomberg news agency, September 19, 2007 ↩
Huffington Post, December 18, 2010 ↩
Wall Street Journal, “Cuban Doctors Come In From the Cold” (video), January 14 2011 ↩
–
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 http://www.killinghope.org
You’re Not Defending Our Freedoms
Looting and murdering is not Defense!
By Jacob Hornberger
Dear Troops:
June 03, 2011 “fff” - May 31, 2011—Yesterday — Memorial Day — some people asserted, once again, that you are “defending our freedoms” overseas.
Nothing could be further from the truth. Those people are just repeating tired old mantras. The reality is that you are not defending our freedoms with your actions overseas. In fact, it is the exact opposite. Your actions overseas are placing our freedoms here at home in ever-greater jeopardy.
Consider your occupation of Iraq, a country that, as you know, never attacked the United States, making it the defender in the war and the United States the aggressor. Think about that: Every single person that the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in Iraq had absolutely nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
Yet, the countless victims of the U.S. invasion and occupation of Iraq have friends and relatives, many of whom have become filled with anger and rage and who now would stop at nothing to retaliate with terrorist attacks against Americans.
Pray tell: How does that constitute defending our freedoms?
It was no different prior to 9/11. At the end of the Persian Gulf War, the troops intentionally destroyed Iraq’s water and sewage facilities after a Pentagon study showed that this would help spread infectious illnesses among the Iraqi people.
It worked. For 11 years after that, the troops enforced the cruel and brutal sanctions on Iraq that killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqi children. (See “America’s Peacetime Crimes against Iraq” by Anthony Gregory.) You’ll recall U.S. Ambassador to the UN Madeleine Albright’s infamous statement that the deaths of half-a-million Iraqi children from the sanctions were “worth it.”
By “it” she meant the attempted ouster of Saddam Hussein from power. You will recall that he was a dictator who was the U.S. government’s ally and partner during the 1980s, when the United States was furnishing him with those infamous WMDs that U.S. officials later used to excite the American people into supporting your invasion of Iraq.
The truth is that 9/11 furnished U.S. officials with the excuse to do what their sanctions (and the deaths of all those Iraqi children) had failed to accomplish: ridding Iraq of Saddam Hussein and replacing him with a U.S-approved regime.
That’s what your post-9/11 invasion of Iraq was all about — to achieve the regime change that the pre-9/11 deadly sanctions that killed all those children had failed to achieve.
No, not mushroom clouds, not freedom, not democracy, and certainly not defending our freedoms here at home. Just plain old regime change.
In the process, all that you — the troops — have done with your invasion and occupation of Iraq is produce even more enmity toward the United States by people in the Middle East, especially those Iraqis who have lost loved ones or friends in the process or simply watched their country be destroyed.
In principle, it’s no different with Afghanistan. I’d estimate that 99 percent of the people the troops have killed, maimed, or tortured in that country had absolutely nothing to do with 9/11.
Why did you invade Afghanistan or, more precisely, why did President Bush order you to do so?
No, not because the Taliban participated in the 9/11 attacks and, no, not because the Taliban were even aware that the attacks were going to take place
President Bush ordered the troops to invade Afghanistan — and, of course, kill Afghan citizens in the process — because the Afghan government – the Taliban — refused to comply with his unconditional extradition demand. You will recall that the Taliban offered to turn bin Laden over to an independent tribunal to stand trial upon the receipt of evidence from the United States indicating his complicity in the 9/11 attacks.
Bush responded to the Taliban’s offer by issuing his order to the troops to invade Afghanistan, kill Afghans, and occupy the country. In the process, U.S. officials installed one of the most crooked, corrupt, and dictatorial rulers it could find to govern the country, one who is so incompetent he cannot even hide the manifest fraud by which he has supposedly been elected to office.
In the process of installing and defending the Karzai regime, the troops have killed brides, grooms, children, fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, sons, daughters, uncles, aunts, cousins, friends, and countrymen, most of whom never attacked the United States on 9/11 or at any other time. They simply became “collateral damage” or “bad guys” for having the audacity to oppose the invasion and occupation of their country by a foreign regime. (It should be noted for the record that U.S. officials considered these types of “bad guys,” as well as Osama bin Laden and other fundamentalist Muslims, to be “good guys” when they were trying to oust Soviet troops from Afghanistan.)
Was there another way to bring bin Laden to justice? Yes, the criminal-justice route, which was the route used after the 1993 terrorist attack on the World Trade Center.
That’s right. Same target, different date. In fact, the accused terrorists — Ramzi Yousef in 1993 and Osama bin Laden in 2001 — were ultimately located in the same country, Pakistan.
In Yousef’s case, he was arrested some three years after the attack, brought back to the United States, prosecuted, and convicted in federal district court. He’s now serving a life sentence in a federal penitentiary.
No invasions, no bombings, no occupations, no killing of countless innocent people, no torture, no war on terrorism, and no anger and rage that such actions inevitably would have produced among the victims, their families, and friends.
In bin Laden’s case, we instead got a military invasion and occupation of Afghanistan, where the troops have killed, maimed, tortured, and hurt countless people who had nothing to do with the 9/11 attacks.
How in the world have your invasions and occupations of Afghanistan and Iraq defended our freedoms here at home? Indeed, how have the assassinations and bombings in Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and who knows where else defended our freedoms?
All these things have accomplished is keeping foreigners angry at us, thereby subjecting us to the constant and ever-growing threat of terrorist retaliation here at home. As I have pointed out before, the U.S. military — that is, you, the troops — have become the biggest terrorist-producing machine in history. Every time you kill some Iraqi or Afghan citizen, even when accidental, ten more offer to take his place out of anger and rage.
That’s the same thing that was happening prior to 9/11. In fact, there were some, including those of us here at The Future of Freedom Foundation, who were warning prior to 9/11 that unless the U.S. Empire stopped what it was doing to people in the Middle East (including the deadly sanctions on Iraq, the support of Middle East dictators, the stationing of U.S. troops near Islamic holy lands, and the unconditional money and armaments to the Israeli regime), Americans would be increasingly subject to terrorist attacks. On 9/11, we were proven right, unfortunately. (See Blowback: The Costs and Consequences of American Empire by Chalmers Johnson.)
How does the constant threat of terrorist retaliation arising from your actions in Iraq and Afghanistan make us freer here at home, especially when you — the troops — are responsible for engendering the anger and rage that culminates in such threats, owing to what you are doing to people over there?
Consider also what the U.S. government does to our freedoms here at home as a direct consequence of the terrorist threat that you, the troops, are producing over there. It uses that threat of terrorism to infringe upon our freedoms here at home! You know what I mean — the fondling at the airports, the 10-year-old Patriot Act, the illegal spying on Americans, the indefinite detention, the torture, the kangaroo tribunals, Gitmo, and the entire war on terrorism — all necessary, they tell us, to keep us safe from the terrorists — that is, the people you all are producing with your actions over there.
In other words, if you all weren’t producing an endless stream of terrorists with your invasions, occupations, torture, assassinations, bombings, and Gitmo, the U.S. government — the entity you are working for — would no longer have that excuse for taking away our freedoms.
This past Sunday, the Washington Post carried an article about American wives who were recently greeting their husbands on their return from Afghanistan. Newlywed Anne Krolicki, 24, commented to her husband on the death of one of her friends’ husband: “It’s a pointless war,” she said.
That lady has her head on straight. She’s has a grip on reality, doesn’t deal in tired old mantras, and speaks the truth. Every U.S. soldier who dies in Iraq and Afghanistan dies for nothing, which was the same thing that some 58,000 men of my generation died for in Vietnam.
Please don’t write me to tell me that you all are good people or that you’re “patriots” for simply following whatever orders you are given. All that is irrelevant. What matters is what you are doing over there. And what you are doing is not defending our freedoms, you are jeopardizing them
Sincerely,
Jacob G. Hornberger - President - The Future of Freedom Foundation - http://www.fff.org
Fake Al-Qaeda (created and run by the CIA in the USA) has chosen a former Egyptian Special Forces officer as interim leader of the make believe violent extremist group in the wake of CIA agent Osama bin Laden’s death.
Saif al-Adel, a top CIA puppet and senior military leader, has been tapped as “caretaker” chief of the CIA black ops group.
The decision to choose Adel, also known as Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, came as the CIA needed a new poster boy over the lack of a formal successor to their secret agent Osama bin Laden, who was killed for the 9th time in a dramatic fake US commando raid deep in Pakistan on May 2.
...number two can you hear me?
LONDON: The head of the CIA has admitted that there was no live video footage of the raid on Osama bin Laden’s compound as further doubts emerged about the US version of events.
Leon Panetta said there was a 25-minute blackout during which the live feed from cameras mounted on the helmets of the US special forces was cut off.
A photograph issued by the White House appeared to show the President and his aides in the situation room watching the action as it unfolded. In fact they had little knowledge of what was happening for long periods.
Armenian Genocide Day (24 Apr), Australian-NZ Anzac Day (25 Apr), Australian genocide complicity & denial
Armenian Genocide Day, 24 April, commemorates the death of 1.5 million Armenians who died in the Turkish-imposed Armenian Genocide that commenced on 24 April 1915, the day prior to the Anglo-French and Australia New Zealand Army Corp (ANZAC) invasion of Turkey at Gallipoli in the Dardanelles on 25 April 1915.
25 April is Anzac Day in Australia and New Zealand that commemorates war dead of both these sister countries. Yet Australia resolutely ignores its causal connection to the Armenian Genocide and indeed to 23 other genocidal atrocities as a participant n in Anglo—American wars.
The Dardanelles Campaign was the brain-child of racist, imperialist and militarist Winston Churchill who conceived the plan to capture the Dardanelles (that links the Mediterranean and the Black Sea) in order to supply the Russians who were fighting the Germans on the Eastern Front.
The Turks who had been pushed by the Anglo-French Allies into Alliance with Germany and Austria were fighting the Russians in eastern Anatolia and were paranoid about Christian Armenian support of Christian Tsarist Russia.
About 1 month of Allied naval shelling of the Dardanelles and a huge build up of an Allied invasion force preceded the invasion of the Gallipoli Peninsular by the Allies on that first Anzac Day, 25 April 1915. The 1915-1923 Armenian Genocide commenced on the preceding day, 24 April 1915, with the round up and murder of Armenian community leaders (doctors, lawyers, engineers, teachers, priests, councillors, mayors) and the butchery that was to kill 1.5 million Armenians.
Australia has been, and still is, involved in numerous genocidal atrocities linked to its association with the British Empire and thence with the American Empire. However people naturally enough want to think the best of themselves and these genocidal atrocities are remorselessly ignored in Australian public life, whether 19th century atrocities in Africa and Asia, the Armenian Genocide (1.5 million dead, 1915 -1923) and the ongoing Iraqi Holocaust ( 4.5 million dead, 1990-2011) and Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide (5.0 million dead, 2001-2011).
A powerful illustration of this Australian national censorship and self-censorship is provided by extraordinary under-reportage and indeed non-reportage in relation to the Armenian Genocide by the Australian Broadcasting Corporation (the ABC, Australia’s equivalent of the taxpayer-funded UK BBC). The ABC has Search Device that enables one to “search results from the entire ABC site”. However a search of the ABC for “Armenian Genocide Day” yields zero (0) results (see: http://search.abc.net.au/search/sea… ) whereas a Google Search for the same phrase “Armenian Genocide Day” yields 109,000 results.
A search for “Armenian holocaust” yields 1 result from the ABC (as compared to 39,900 for a Google Search) which turns out to be an ABC TV Lateline interview with an Israeli Security expert Hirsh Goodman of the Institute of National Security Studies, Tel Aviv University, about the Israeli terrorist attack on the Gaza Aid Flotilla in which Israeli terrorists killed 9 Turks (1 an Turkish American ), kidnapped over 600 people in international waters, including 5 Australians of whom one was tasered and another shot, with a reported 3 Australian Israeli terrorists involved in this act of international piracy and terrorism). Goodman offensively stated: “Here we’ve got an ally, it’s called Turkey, we sell them their most sophisticated weapons, we allied with them on a lot of things - including not demanding an international Armenian Holocaust Day - we send 150,000 tourists there a year, we do $2 billion worth of trade a year and here they go, send a ship full of provocateurs to one of the worst enemies that this country’s ever seen - Hamas, who is dedicated to this country’s destruction… It all began with an outright provocation and a test of Israeli sovereignty. And I hope I’m not coming across as a propagandist here but I’m an Israeli and I’m saying it straight. The Institute of National Security Studies we try to look at the objectives objectively and I’m saying it all is part of an orchestrated Turkish geopolitical thing of trying to rework itself, reinvent itself, in the post military era and into a-a soft fundamentalistic state that has been rejected from Europe and is now trying to play off Iran and Syria against us” (see “Israeli commandoes were provoked: security expert”, ABC TV Lateline, 3 June 2010: http://www.abc.net.au/lateline/cont...).
A further powerful example of Australian censorship, self-censorship, holocaust complicity, genocide complicit, holocaust-ignoring, genocide-ignoring and effective holocaust denial and genocidal denial is again provided by the ABC in its non-reportage and under-reportage of the Bengali Holocaust in which the British deliberately starved to death about 6-7 million Indians in an atrocity greater in magnitude that the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million dead, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation). It should be noted that the WW2 Jewish Holocaust was part of the WW2 Holocaust that killed about 30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies but this vastly wider atrocity has been remorselessly ignored by the racist Zionists and cowardly, dishonest, holocaust-complicit, holocaust-ignoring, pro-Zionist Western Media. The Bengali Holocaust was indeed the first holocaust atrocity of World War 2 to be described as a “holocaust” (by Indian writer N.G. Jog in his 1944 book “Churchill’s blind-spot: India”, New Book Company, Bombay).
Searches of the ABC for the terms “Bengali Holocaust”, “Bengali Genocide”, “Bengal Holocaust” and “Bengal Genocide” yield zero (0) results as compared to the results from the corresponding Google Searches that yield 2,900, 1,920, 604, and 2,110 results, respectively. A search of the ABC for the term “Bengal famine” yields 10 results (of which 4 are due to my attempts to restore this atrocity to history in the English-speaking world) and an ABC search for “Bengali famine” yields 6 results (all due to my holocaust-reporting efforts). . In contrast a Google Searches for the terms “Bengal famine” and “Bengali famine” yield 125,000 an 125,000 results, respectively.
Of course this Australian non-reportage or massive under-reportage of holocaust and genocide atrocities in which Australia has been variously complicit is not confined to the ABC. Thus leading Australian historian Professor Geoffrey Blainey AC (Companion of the Order of Australia) was well aware of the 1943-1945 Bengal Famine (Bengali Holocaust) but this huge atrocity is completely absent from his “A Short History of the World” (1997) and his “A Very Short History of the World” (2007).
At this point, in the face of such ignoring from such an eminent Australian historian and from the important Australian medium the ABC, the reader may begin to doubt to my veracity or sanity and so I must direct them to a recent UK BBC radio program on the Bengal Famine involving my self, Economics Nobel Prize winner Professor Amartya Sen and other scholars and entitled “Bengal Famine”, this program being part of a belated BBC series entitled “Things we forgot to remember” (see: http://www.open2.net/thingsweforgot… ). For detailed, in-context accounts of this atrocity that numerous English-speaking publishers refused to publish see my books “Jane Austen and the Black Hole of British History. Colonial rapacity, holocaust denial and the crisis in biological sustainability” (see: http://janeaustenand.blogspot.com/ ) and “Body Count. Global avoidable mortality since 1950”: http://globalbodycount.blogspot.com/ ).
Of course one must carefully define the terms “holocaust’ and “genocide”. Holocaust simply means death of a huge number of people as exampled by the WW2 Jewish Holocaust (5-6 million people killed, 1 in 6 dying from deprivation), the WW2 Holocaust in general (30 million Slavs, Jews and Gypsies killed), the WW2 Bengali Holocaust (6-7 million Indians deliberately starved to death by the British) and the 35 million Chinese killed associated with the Japanese occupation of China in the1930s and 1940s.
However the definition of “genocide” by Article 2 of the UN Genocide Convention involves Assessment of “intent’ by those responsible, and states “In the present Convention, genocide means any of the following acts committed with intent to destroy, in whole or in part, a national, ethnic, racial or religious group, as such: a) Killing members of the group; b) Causing serious bodily or mental harm to members of the group; c) Deliberately inflicting on the group conditions of life calculated to bring about its physical destruction in whole or in part; d) Imposing measures intended to prevent births within the group; e) Forcibly transferring children of the group to another group.”
“Intent” to commit mass murder is only rarely explicitly expressed but can be established by relentless, remorseless sustained conduct (e.g. in establishing the “intent” of a crime-denying serial killers).
As outlined below, the Armenian Genocide and the Bengali Holocaust are but 2 of some 24 holocaust and genocide atrocities in which has Australia has been involved since the Anglo invasion of Australia in 1788 - relentless, remorseless, sustained and therefore “intentional” conduct, indeed.
1. 18th-19th century Aboriginal Genocide (the Indigenous Aboriginal population dropped from about 1 million to 0.1 million in the first century after invasion in 1788).
2. Tasmanian Aboriginal Genocide (the “full-blood” Indigenous population dropped from 6,000 to zero in 1803-1776; however there are several thousand “mixed race” descendants of Tasmanian and Mainland Aborigines still living in Tasmania today).
3. British Indian Genocide (Indian Holocaust) (post-invasion excess deaths 0.6 billion, 1757-1837; 0.5 billion, 1837-1901 under Queen Victoria; 0.4 billion, 1901-1947; 1.5 billion in total and 1.8 billion victims if the various royalty-ruled Indian States are included).
4. European Chinese Genocide (20-100 million deaths in the European imperialism-driven Tai Ping rebellion period; Australia was involved in suppressing the Boxer rebellion).
5. Maori Genocide (Maori population dropped from 0.1-0.2 million in 1800 to 42,000 in 1893; Australia was involved in the 19th century Maori wars).
6. African Genocide (scores of million perished over 5 centuries of European slavery and colonialism; Australians participated in the Sudan War, 1881-1898).
7. Pacific Genocide (there was a catastrophic population decline due to introduced disease and slavery; thus 40,000 Fijians died from measles out of a population of 150,000 in 1876; “blackbirding” slavery was conducted by Australians in the late 19th century).
8. Boer (Afrikaaner) Genocide (1899-1902; 28,000 Afrikaaner women and children died in British concentration camps; Australians participated in the Boer War as immortalized in the movie “Breaker Morant”).
9. Armenian Genocide (1.5 million killed; the Australian invasion of Gallipoli as part of an Anglo-French force in 1915 helped to precipitate this atrocity; indeed April 24 is Armenian Genocide Day and April 25 is the day of the Australia invasion in 1915 and also a sacred war dead remembrance day for Australians and New Zealanders – it is called Anzac Day after the Australian and New Zealand Army Corps (ANZAC) which stormed ashore on that first Anzac Day at Gallipoli in 1915).
10. Bengali Genocide (6-7 million perished in the “forgotten” man-made Bengal Famine atrocity in Bengal and adjoining provinces in British India, 1943-1945; Australians were there and indeed the Governor of Bengal in 1944 was an Australian R.Casey). 11. British post-1950 Third World Genocide (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries subject to British occupation as a major occupier in the post-war era totalled 727 million; Australia has the same Head of State as the UK and continues to be a loyal military ally of the UK in Occupied Iraq and Occupied Afghanistan).
12. US post-1950 Third World Genocide (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries subject to US occupation as a major occupier in the post-war era totalled 82 million; Australia participated in all post-1950 US Asian Wars in Korea, Indo-China, Iraq and Afghanistan with Indigenous Asian violent deaths and excess deaths from war-imposed deprivation now totalling 28 million).
13. Australian Colonial Genocide (1950-2005 excess deaths in countries subject to Australian occupation as a major occupier in the post-war era, namely Papua New Guinea and the Solomon Islands totalled 2.1 million).
14. 20th century Aboriginal Genocide (total excess deaths clearly of the order of 1million; 0.1 million Stolen Generations Aboriginal children forcibly removed from their Mothers in the 19th and 20th centuries; excess deaths in the 12 years of the Bush-ite Coalition Government totalled over 100,000 for 1996-2007 - more deaths than of all Australian military deaths in all wars).
The following Australian genocide involvements in this catalogue of horrors are ongoing.
15. Palestinian Genocide (post-1967 excess deaths 0.3 million, post-1967 under-5 infant deaths 0.2 million and 7 million refugees; with bi-partisan agreement, pro-Zionist Australia provides diplomatic, financial and haven support for Israeli state terrorism – even when directed against tens of thousands of Australian citizens as in Lebanon in mid-2006 - and up to life imprisonment for anyone giving support to the Hamas Party that overwhelmingly won the 2006 Occupied Palestinian elections, wining 76 out of 132 seats).
16. Iraqi Holocaust, Iraqi Genocide (4.5 million violent deaths plus excess deaths from war-imposed deprivation, 1990-2011; 2.6 million post-invasion excess deaths, 0.8 million post-invasion under-5 infant deaths and 5-6 million refugees).
17. Afghan Holocaust, Afghan Genocide (5.0 million post-invasion violent deaths plus excess deaths from war-imposed deprivation, 2.6 million post-invasion under-5 infant and 3-4 million refugees; Australia involved militarily since 2001).
18. Ongoing Aboriginal Genocide (9,000 excess deaths annually; over 100,000 excess deaths in the recent dozen years of Bush-ite Coalition rule i.e. more avoidable Indigenous deaths than all Australian military deaths in all wars).
19. Biofuel Genocide (18 million die avoidably each year in the Developing Worlds minus China, but this is increasingly biofuel-impacted as the legislatively-mandated US, UK and EU biofuel perversion forces up global food prices; Australia is a major sugar cane grower and sugar exporter with 60% of sugar going to bioethanol production worldwide; Australia has biofuel-promoting legislation and is a major canola grower, this being a major source for biodiesel).
20. Climate Genocide (18 million die avoidably each year already from deprivation and deprivation-exacerbated disease in the Developing World minus China; Professor James Lovelock FRS says that over 6 million will perish this century die to unaddressed climate change; on a per capita basis Australia is among the very worst greenhouse gas (GHG) polluters – in terms of 2005-2008 figures for “fossil fuel-derived annual per capita CO2 pollution” Australia is about 25 times worse than India and 60 times worse than Bangladesh if you include Australia’s world number 1 coal exports).
21. Tamil Genocide (scores of thousands killed, 0.3 million incarcerated in concentration camps, horrendous human rights abuses; Australia is directly involved in this atrocity by declaring Tamil activists to be “terrorists” under Australia’s draconian anti-terrorism laws, preventing medical aid for Tamils, “suspending” the human rights of Tamil refugees and providing military, diplomatic and lying propaganda assistance to the genocidal Sri Lankan authorities).
22. Muslim Genocide (9.5 million Muslims violently or non-violently killed in the Iraq War, 1990-2011, and Afghan War, 2001-2010, alone; 1950-2005 avoidable deaths from deprivation in the Muslim World totalled 0.6 billion; it is predicted that 3 billion Muslims will die due to unaddressed man-made global warming this century; 20 million Muslim refugees have been created by the US Alliance of which Australia is a slavishly loyal part; Australia is a leading player in the ongoing and worsening Muslim Genocide and Climate Genocide).
23. Asian Holocaust, Asian Genocide (Australia has been involved in all post-1950 US Asian wars , wars that have been associated so far with about 28 million violent deaths plus deaths from war-imposed deprivation, the breakdown being 3 million (Korea), 15 million (Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam), 4.5 million (Iraq), Palestine (0.3 million), 5.0 million (Afghanistan) i.e. about the same number as the number of Slavs, Jews an Gypsies murdered by the Nazis in WW2).
24. Arab Holocaust, Arab Genocide (Australians were involved in massacring Palestinian villagers in WW1; Australians were involved in massacring Egyptian democracy activists in 1919; Australia variously involved in the Palestinian Genocide and Iraqi Genocide with violent deaths plus avoidable deaths from deprivation totalling about 5 million)
Small wonder that Australians don’t want to look under the carpet. Yet history ignored yields history repeated. Australia enthusiastically backs the France-UK-US (FUKUS) Coalition invasion of Libya that on the precedents of the Afghan Holocaust and Iraqi Holocaust is set to become an endless civil war and a Libyan Genocide and Libyan Holocaust.
The genocide-ignoring ABC is now hysterically reporting unrest in Syria and Australia will no doubt back commencement of a Syrian Holocaust and Syrian Genocide.
About half the victims of these Australia-complicit holocausts and genocides have been children. Messages to look-the-other-way Australia on Anzac Day, 2011: remember the tens of millions of children and women victims of war; “thou shalt not kill children”; and those who ignore, obfuscate, deny, minimize, support or are otherwise complicit in the mass murder of women and children (not to mention men) have crossed the line separating decent humanity from Nazi-style barbarity.
On 9 January 2010 I sent a Formal Complaint to the International Criminal Court (ICC) re US Alliance and Australian involvement in Palestinian, Iraqi, Afghan, Muslim, Aboriginal, Biofuel and Climate Genocides (see: https://sites.google.com/site/musli… ).
What can decent people do? Decent people must (a) inform everyone they can about gross abuses of humanity (of which active and passive killing are the most egregious examples) and (b) apply sanctions and boycotts against all people, politicians, corporations and countries involved in gross abuse of humanity.