from democracy now:
Romeo Vasquez, a general who led the military coup in Honduras against President Manuel Zelaya, received training at the US School of the Americas. The SOA has trained more than 60,000 soldiers, many of whom have returned home and committed human rights abuses, torture, extrajudicial execution and massacres. According to School of the Americas Watch, Vasquez attended the SOA in 1976 and 1984. The head of the Air Force, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, also studied there in 1996. We speak with Father Roy Bourgeois, founder of the School of the Americas Watch.
15 July 2009
Gov’t Report: Bush Surveillance Program Was “Unprecedented”
Democracy Now!:
In other intelligence news, a government report released Friday found that the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 surveillance efforts went well beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program. The report called the surveillance program “unprecedented” and questioned its legal justification. The report also raised questions about the effectiveness of the surveillance operation. Some CIA officials complained that much of the data from the program was “vague and out of context,” so they turned to other information sources. The report was compiled at the request of Congress by five government agency watchdogs: the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, Directorate of National Intelligence and National Security Agency. More than 200 top officials and front-line agents in defense and intelligence agencies were interviewed for the report, but several top Bush administration officials refused to speak, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Justice Department attorney John Yoo, former CIA Director George Tenet, and David Addington, a former top aide to Vice President Cheney.
In other intelligence news, a government report released Friday found that the Bush administration’s post-Sept. 11 surveillance efforts went well beyond the widely publicized warrantless wiretapping program. The report called the surveillance program “unprecedented” and questioned its legal justification. The report also raised questions about the effectiveness of the surveillance operation. Some CIA officials complained that much of the data from the program was “vague and out of context,” so they turned to other information sources. The report was compiled at the request of Congress by five government agency watchdogs: the inspectors general of the Justice Department, Pentagon, CIA, Directorate of National Intelligence and National Security Agency. More than 200 top officials and front-line agents in defense and intelligence agencies were interviewed for the report, but several top Bush administration officials refused to speak, including former Attorney General John Ashcroft, former Justice Department attorney John Yoo, former CIA Director George Tenet, and David Addington, a former top aide to Vice President Cheney.
14 July 2009
Ex-FBI Agent: Why I Support a New 9/11 Investigation
From Raw Story:
In the absence of my being there in New York City to stand with the 9/11 families, first responders and survivors, I offer the following statement in support of your goal of a new investigation into the attacks of September 11th and the NYC CAN campaign to place it on the ballot for November.
At the time of 9-11, I had been an FBI agent for over 20 years. My main responsibilities by then were teaching criminal procedure to FBI agents and other law enforcement officers, mostly about 4th Amendment search and seizure, 5th and 6th Amendment law of interrogation, right to attorney and constitutional protection of rights to “free speech”, due process, habeas corpus, and against cruel and unusual punishment. A week before 9-11, I and the rest of the FBI’s ethics instructors were mandated (as a result of an earlier public FBI scandal) to give a one hour PowerPoint presentation, a form of remedial training on “law enforcement ethics” which I accomplished in a fairly perfunctory way, just reading the slides.
After 9-11, with the knowledge I had of the bitter internal dispute inside the FBI that was being hushed up but had kept some of our better agents from possibly uncovering more of the 9-11 plot before it happened, I couldn’t forget two of the slides in that Law Enforcement ethics curriculum: “DO NOT: Puff, Shade, Tailor, Firm up, Stretch, Massage, or Tidy up statements of fact.” And “Misplaced Loyalties: As employees of the FBI, we must be aware that our highest loyalty is to the United States Constitution. We should never sacrifice the truth in order to obtain a desired result (e.g. conviction of a defendant) or to avoid personal or institutional embarrassment.”
The official dissembling and excuse-making about the true causes and prior mistakes that gave rise to and allowed the terrorist attacks to happen, almost immediately ushered in the Bush-Cheney Administration’s egregious and lawless, post 9-11 “war on terror” agenda which bore no connection to the original causes and no connection to the goal of reducing terrorism and making the world safer. When I got a chance, about 8 ½ months after 9-11 to tell what I knew, I did so and my disclosures led to further investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General and figured in the 9-11 Commission Report.
But it was way too late for this emerging bit of truth that has continued to leak out in dribs and drabs to have any impact. The laws themselves, especially the criminal procedure ones rooted in the Constitution that I had spent my career teaching to law enforcement, have largely gone up in smoke. Having seen the cost of remaining silent, I publicly warned, a few months after my first memo, against launching the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. But false agendas had already filled the vacuum created by lack of truth. And we are still dealing with the disastrous consequences of these unjustified, pre-emptive wars.
Let me therefore simply repeat the request I made to the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2002: “Foremost, we owe it to the public, especially the victims of terrorism, to be completely honest. I can only imagine what these crime and terrorism victims continue to go through. They deserve nothing but the complete, unfettered truth.”
Therefore, I fully support the 9/11 families, first responders, survivors and over 60,000 other New Yorkers who have endorsed a new 9/11 investigation in New York City as advanced by ballot referendum this coming November election.
Coleen Rowley is a former FBI staff attorney who turned whistle-blower after witnessing repeated failures within the bureau to properly investigate alleged 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. She was one of three Time Magazine Persons of the Year in 2002.
In the absence of my being there in New York City to stand with the 9/11 families, first responders and survivors, I offer the following statement in support of your goal of a new investigation into the attacks of September 11th and the NYC CAN campaign to place it on the ballot for November.
At the time of 9-11, I had been an FBI agent for over 20 years. My main responsibilities by then were teaching criminal procedure to FBI agents and other law enforcement officers, mostly about 4th Amendment search and seizure, 5th and 6th Amendment law of interrogation, right to attorney and constitutional protection of rights to “free speech”, due process, habeas corpus, and against cruel and unusual punishment. A week before 9-11, I and the rest of the FBI’s ethics instructors were mandated (as a result of an earlier public FBI scandal) to give a one hour PowerPoint presentation, a form of remedial training on “law enforcement ethics” which I accomplished in a fairly perfunctory way, just reading the slides.
After 9-11, with the knowledge I had of the bitter internal dispute inside the FBI that was being hushed up but had kept some of our better agents from possibly uncovering more of the 9-11 plot before it happened, I couldn’t forget two of the slides in that Law Enforcement ethics curriculum: “DO NOT: Puff, Shade, Tailor, Firm up, Stretch, Massage, or Tidy up statements of fact.” And “Misplaced Loyalties: As employees of the FBI, we must be aware that our highest loyalty is to the United States Constitution. We should never sacrifice the truth in order to obtain a desired result (e.g. conviction of a defendant) or to avoid personal or institutional embarrassment.”
The official dissembling and excuse-making about the true causes and prior mistakes that gave rise to and allowed the terrorist attacks to happen, almost immediately ushered in the Bush-Cheney Administration’s egregious and lawless, post 9-11 “war on terror” agenda which bore no connection to the original causes and no connection to the goal of reducing terrorism and making the world safer. When I got a chance, about 8 ½ months after 9-11 to tell what I knew, I did so and my disclosures led to further investigation by the Department of Justice Inspector General and figured in the 9-11 Commission Report.
But it was way too late for this emerging bit of truth that has continued to leak out in dribs and drabs to have any impact. The laws themselves, especially the criminal procedure ones rooted in the Constitution that I had spent my career teaching to law enforcement, have largely gone up in smoke. Having seen the cost of remaining silent, I publicly warned, a few months after my first memo, against launching the pre-emptive invasion of Iraq. But false agendas had already filled the vacuum created by lack of truth. And we are still dealing with the disastrous consequences of these unjustified, pre-emptive wars.
Let me therefore simply repeat the request I made to the Senate Judiciary Committee in June 2002: “Foremost, we owe it to the public, especially the victims of terrorism, to be completely honest. I can only imagine what these crime and terrorism victims continue to go through. They deserve nothing but the complete, unfettered truth.”
Therefore, I fully support the 9/11 families, first responders, survivors and over 60,000 other New Yorkers who have endorsed a new 9/11 investigation in New York City as advanced by ballot referendum this coming November election.
Coleen Rowley is a former FBI staff attorney who turned whistle-blower after witnessing repeated failures within the bureau to properly investigate alleged 9/11 co-conspirator Zacarias Moussaoui. She was one of three Time Magazine Persons of the Year in 2002.
13 July 2009
Iraq's weakened unions fight foreign oil firms
Reuters
By Aref Mohammed
BASRA, Iraq, July 13 (Reuters) - Unions are lobbying against Iraq's new oil contract with BP (BP.L) and China's CNPC, but the weakened labour movement may have a hard time thwarting deals desperately needed to revive a struggling oil sector.
The Federation of Oil Unions of Iraq and the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq have condemned the Oil Ministry's decision to award a foreign consortium the contract to develop Rumaila, the country's largest producing oilfield."
By Aref Mohammed
BASRA, Iraq, July 13 (Reuters) - Unions are lobbying against Iraq's new oil contract with BP (BP.L) and China's CNPC, but the weakened labour movement may have a hard time thwarting deals desperately needed to revive a struggling oil sector.
The Federation of Oil Unions of Iraq and the Federation of Workers Councils and Unions in Iraq have condemned the Oil Ministry's decision to award a foreign consortium the contract to develop Rumaila, the country's largest producing oilfield."
12 July 2009
Cutting interest rates raises unemployment? (They would?)
Krugman Blog - NYTimes.com:
OK, not really. But here’s what the data actually look like (Fed funds inverted on left scale, unemployment rate on right):
"Of course, we all understand that the correlation runs the way it does because the Fed cuts rates in an effort to fight recessions.
But here’s the thing: a lot of people are asserting that because unemployment has risen along with the budget deficit, fiscal expansion has failed or even made things worse. Why don’t we apply the same standards to monetary policy?
OK, I actually know the answer: it’s ideological. Fiscal expansion bothers people because it violates the dogma that government is the problem, not the solution, whereas monetary policy has become accepted as a mainly technocratic thing without political implications.
But if we treated fiscal policy the same way we treat monetary policy, it would be clear that we need more stimulus, not less."
OK, not really. But here’s what the data actually look like (Fed funds inverted on left scale, unemployment rate on right):
"Of course, we all understand that the correlation runs the way it does because the Fed cuts rates in an effort to fight recessions.
But here’s the thing: a lot of people are asserting that because unemployment has risen along with the budget deficit, fiscal expansion has failed or even made things worse. Why don’t we apply the same standards to monetary policy?
OK, I actually know the answer: it’s ideological. Fiscal expansion bothers people because it violates the dogma that government is the problem, not the solution, whereas monetary policy has become accepted as a mainly technocratic thing without political implications.
But if we treated fiscal policy the same way we treat monetary policy, it would be clear that we need more stimulus, not less."
Blitz of “Cyber Attacks” as Rockefeller Bill Approaches
Global Research
A determined propaganda blitz is well underway as the government sets the stage for the passage of Cybersecurity Act of 2009, introduced in the Senate earlier this year. If passed, it will allow Obama to shut down the internet and private networks. The legislation also calls for the government to have the authority to demand security data from private networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access. In other words, the bill allows the government to impose authoritarian control over electronic communications.
A determined propaganda blitz is well underway as the government sets the stage for the passage of Cybersecurity Act of 2009, introduced in the Senate earlier this year. If passed, it will allow Obama to shut down the internet and private networks. The legislation also calls for the government to have the authority to demand security data from private networks without regard to any provision of law, regulation, rule or policy restricting such access. In other words, the bill allows the government to impose authoritarian control over electronic communications.
03 July 2009
Video: US sent Afghan mercenaries into Iraq (U.S. creates and controls all of its "enemies")
From Intel Daily:
Comment: What this really means is that the U.S. has no viable enemy...the U.S., as Brezinski puts it, is the sole global superpower."
Comment: What this really means is that the U.S. has no viable enemy...the U.S., as Brezinski puts it, is the sole global superpower."
Western Media Persists in Propaganda About Iraq’s Purported WMD
From Foreign Policy Journal:
"The Associated Press reports, “The documents also confirm previous reports that Saddam falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — the main U.S. rationale behind the war — because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, the hostile neighbor he considered a bigger threat than the U.S.”
The USA Today blog “On Deadline” similarly reports, “Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, in 20 formal interviews and at least five casual conversations with the FBI, said he was bluffing publicly about having weapons of mass destruction because he feared showing weakness to Iran, according to newly released FBI summaries.”
The Christian Science Monitor’s “global news blog” , under a headline reading “Why Saddam Hussein lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction“, states that “Saddam Hussein encouraged the perception that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) because he was afraid of appearing weak in Iran’s eyes, according to nearly two dozen declassified transcripts of an FBI agent’s conversations with the former Iraqi dictator released Wednesday.”"
"The Associated Press reports, “The documents also confirm previous reports that Saddam falsely allowed the world to believe Iraq had weapons of mass destruction — the main U.S. rationale behind the war — because he feared revealing his weakness to Iran, the hostile neighbor he considered a bigger threat than the U.S.”
The USA Today blog “On Deadline” similarly reports, “Iraqi dictator Saddam Hussein, in 20 formal interviews and at least five casual conversations with the FBI, said he was bluffing publicly about having weapons of mass destruction because he feared showing weakness to Iran, according to newly released FBI summaries.”
The Christian Science Monitor’s “global news blog” , under a headline reading “Why Saddam Hussein lied about Iraq’s weapons of mass destruction“, states that “Saddam Hussein encouraged the perception that Iraq had weapons of mass destruction (WMD) because he was afraid of appearing weak in Iran’s eyes, according to nearly two dozen declassified transcripts of an FBI agent’s conversations with the former Iraqi dictator released Wednesday.”"
Eager to Tap Iraq's Vast Oil Reserves, Industry Execs Suggested Invasion
From t r u t h o u t | J Leopold:
"Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain 'a prisoner of its energy dilemma' as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.
That April 2001 report, 'Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,' was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the US Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves."
"Two years before the invasion of Iraq, oil executives and foreign policy advisers told the Bush administration that the United States would remain 'a prisoner of its energy dilemma' as long as Saddam Hussein was in power.
That April 2001 report, 'Strategic Policy Challenges for the 21st Century,' was prepared by the James A. Baker Institute for Public Policy and the US Council on Foreign Relations at the request of then-Vice President Dick Cheney.
In retrospect, it appears that the report helped focus administration thinking on why it made geopolitical sense to oust Hussein, whose country sat on the world's second largest oil reserves."
Murdoch CEO Labels Bloggers “Political Extremists”
From Info Wars:
"When the people know that the corporate media is deliberately lying to them about Niger yellowcake and weapons of mass destruction, they are going to seek alternative avenues of information. The fact that the corporate media habitually lies is a manifestly provable reality, not a “myth” as Hartigan ludicrously claims."
"When the people know that the corporate media is deliberately lying to them about Niger yellowcake and weapons of mass destruction, they are going to seek alternative avenues of information. The fact that the corporate media habitually lies is a manifestly provable reality, not a “myth” as Hartigan ludicrously claims."
28 June 2009
Ecuador to sue WSJ over FARC allegations
From Press TV:
"Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has vowed to sue the Wall Street Journal for linking his government to the Colombian FARC rebels.
'We will sue this newspaper because we are sick of their lies,' Correa told reporters on Thursday after addressing the UN General Assembly's Conference on the world financial crisis, Reuters reported.
'We demand the Wall Street Journal provide proof,' he said, dismissing the journal's accusations that he is affiliated with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
WSJ writer Mary Anastasia O'Grady alleged in a column published on June 22 that she had obtained information linking Correa and his government to the FARC guerrillas."
"Ecuador's President Rafael Correa has vowed to sue the Wall Street Journal for linking his government to the Colombian FARC rebels.
'We will sue this newspaper because we are sick of their lies,' Correa told reporters on Thursday after addressing the UN General Assembly's Conference on the world financial crisis, Reuters reported.
'We demand the Wall Street Journal provide proof,' he said, dismissing the journal's accusations that he is affiliated with the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
WSJ writer Mary Anastasia O'Grady alleged in a column published on June 22 that she had obtained information linking Correa and his government to the FARC guerrillas."
27 June 2009
CIA Discovered Planning “Soft Revolution” in Early 2009
From Global Research 2009:
"The “soft revolution” plan is based in Dubai and is similar to a U.S. plan that targeted the Soviet Union in 1959, the director of the counterespionage department of the Intelligence Ministry told reporters at a press conference here on Monday.
He said the CIA was seeking to implement the plan under the cover of scientific and cultural contacts between Iranian and U.S. nationals. Unfortunately, some Iranian nationals, especially cultural and scientific figures, were deceived through such activities, he added.
“The U.S. intelligence agency was seeking to (repeat) its experiences of color revolutions through such public contacts with influential persons and elites.” The CIA tried to attain its goals by taking advantage of people-to-people contacts, joint studies, efforts to share scientific experiences, and other similar projects, he added."
"The “soft revolution” plan is based in Dubai and is similar to a U.S. plan that targeted the Soviet Union in 1959, the director of the counterespionage department of the Intelligence Ministry told reporters at a press conference here on Monday.
He said the CIA was seeking to implement the plan under the cover of scientific and cultural contacts between Iranian and U.S. nationals. Unfortunately, some Iranian nationals, especially cultural and scientific figures, were deceived through such activities, he added.
“The U.S. intelligence agency was seeking to (repeat) its experiences of color revolutions through such public contacts with influential persons and elites.” The CIA tried to attain its goals by taking advantage of people-to-people contacts, joint studies, efforts to share scientific experiences, and other similar projects, he added."
Memo Reveals US Plan to Provoke an Invasion of Iraq
from t r u t h o u t | observer:
"The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.
Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan 'to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover'. Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions."
"The memo, written on 31 January 2003, almost two months before the invasion and seen by the Observer, confirms that as the two men became increasingly aware UN inspectors would fail to find weapons of mass destruction (WMD) they had to contemplate alternative scenarios that might trigger a second resolution legitimising military action.
Bush told Blair the US had drawn up a provocative plan 'to fly U2 reconnaissance aircraft painted in UN colours over Iraq with fighter cover'. Bush said that if Saddam fired at the planes this would put the Iraqi leader in breach of UN resolutions."
21 June 2009
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
Posts
Cartoon from Brad Blog