Wow, thanks again Uncle. Has court’s transcript there too, opens in new window, so you can read and listen. He’s at 1299 very near the bottom, though 2 witnesses at once is kind of fun. Here’s very end of his testimony. What amazes me, and should have earlier, is that JFK conspiros are mocked by otherwise smart people yet don’t respond with this. Why to 2015 not 1990? 150 years sealed? Whose feelings was LBJ trying to protect, Shirley Booth’s so she wouldn’t have to clean up?
Have said here before, scary knowledge squirrels ya up. At this point, I wouldn’t discount a ray being involved, only slightly different from that used on bureaucrats. Device probably has a handy dial, sold through very exclusive cable next to the snuff movies.
(Just thought of a furrylogick: Bulbous alien doll facing Captain Kirk doll: “No, he’s not an alien, aliens are impossible. He’s a Canadian.”
Kirk: “What is love?”
Not sure if he’s being tortured yet or not, not being a theologian.
A. Yes. I’m not a doctor. But what I
understood is that these — the brain’s
patterns of thinking are a physical aspect of
the human brain. That’s how we develop
patterns of thought, how we develop
associations.
And then, of course, the Mighty
Wurlitzer we talked about is still there,
it’s still playing its tune. And even though
you might think 30 years is a long time, that
almost everybody who might get in trouble is
probably dead by now, that’s — that’s how it
works. People obtain influence, people make
vast sums of money through this propaganda.
Those people pass that influence on to
others, they pass the money down the line,
and all of that can be at risk for a very,
very long time.
There are documents from the
investigation of the assassination of Abraham
Lincoln that are still classified. Don’t ask
me why, but they were originally sealed for
100 years. And then in 1965 President Linden
Johnson said, well, it’s so close to the
Kennedy assassination, if people read the
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1363
Lincoln documents, it might make them think
funny things about Kennedy, so he classified
them for another 50 years. So now the grand
children of anybody around Lincoln was around
are long dead, and these documents are
still — still classified. And we’re talking
today about a case that’s 100 years more
immediate than Lincoln. And the
establishment is still the establishment.
Q. Mr. Schaap, thank you very much for
joining us this afternoon.
A. Thank you.
MR. PEPPER: Nothing further,
Your Honor.
THE COURT: Just a moment.
Mr. Garrison?
MR. GARRISON: Your Honor, I
have no questions of this witness.
THE COURT: You have nothing.
Very well. Sir, you may stand down. Thank
you very much.
THE WITNESS: Thank you, Your
Honor.
(Witness excused.)
(Court adjourned until
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999
1364
December 1, 1999, at 10:00 a.m.)
DANIEL, DILLINGER, DOMINSKI, RICHBERGER, WEATHERFORD
(901) 529-1999

Posted by: plushtown | Mar 11 2008 13:32 utc | 4

Announcer doll (not sure yet, prob not Bernie from Sesame St), maybe Dr. Evil, holding a device:
“And now we interrupt our Bavid Berkowitz hosted “Snuff Movie Surprise”, stop screaming David, to show you this new nifty. Money will always rule, Lucifer forbid, but if you want to save money, and who in the top .000001% doesn’t, this works on bureaucrats, conspiros, mistresses, children. Just adjust the dial for delicious results.”
label: Very Exclusive Cable
(ist draft, may well start “Are your bureaucrats getting non-infuriating …. then go back to the show. Makes the offside screaming go better.)

Posted by: plushtown | Mar 11 2008 14:36 utc | 6

Sorry, b real, but anyone who writes “Rwanda genocide” as if butchering most of the Tutsis, 1 million people at least, which means 1/8 of your country, isn’t a real genocide, is a fucking moron who should get beaten up with a pipe lead.
It’s quite clear Kagame settled a large amount of scores once he took power. But to say he was primarily repsonsible for the genocide is indeed negationism of the worst kind. I mean, everyone knows that the whole genocide has been planned since months, which is why it was so efficient, though the contingency planning might not have meant it would be put into action. Still, there was a “just in case” plan there around, and it wasn’t made by Kagame’s goons, and it wasn’t Kagame’s goons who killed hundreds and hundreds of thousands of theirs.
But then, I suppose “The Jews had it coming” and “Stalin wanted to strike Germany, so Hitler was forced to attack and set up Operation Barbarossa”.

Posted by: CluelessJoe | Mar 11 2008 17:12 utc | 8

But then, I suppose “The Jews had it coming” and “Stalin wanted to strike Germany, so Hitler was forced to attack and set up Operation Barbarossa”
There is a difference in Rwanda: the Tutsis were in power for years and years, and are now back in power again. The massacre of Tutsis was about the Hutus getting revenge. All through my youth it was common knowledge that the Tutsis treated the Hutu like shit. Even when I was in Uganda in the 60s.

Posted by: Alex | Mar 11 2008 17:48 utc | 10

It’s time to face reality. Diplomacy has failed, completely, to halt Iran’s march toward nuclear weapons. Diplomacy works when both sides want peace. Iran doesn’t – they’re simply stalling for time until they can get their bombs ready. War is inevitable. It’s better to do it when we’re ready than when they’re ready. /snark
Fallon just resigned.

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 11 2008 20:15 utc | 12

more than a little interesting colombianonymous

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 11 2008 23:02 utc | 14

Hi there, here goes the working link for the second part of the post on Tattaglia & Barzini, that seems to have changed. Look for the “suicide” as line of investigation. If the link goes missing again, it could appear searching for body welsh mountains.

Posted by: Anonymous | Mar 12 2008 0:50 utc | 16

@CluelessJoe #8 –
we’ve linked to alot on the rwanda story here over the years, that the narrative pushed by the west & kagame is quite a bit off. for instance, here’s one thread from last april that had a number of posts in the comment section delving into the actual chronology of events.
david barouski wrote

Many expert witnesses at the ICTR have said the shoot down of Habyarimana’s plane was the event that triggered the killings. The RPF had raised ethnic and political tensions in the country to the bursting point and destroyed the plane at a time they knew would cause an explosion of violence in the country. They also knew the FAR did not have enough people to defend Kigali and stop the milita from killing, and, as General Kagame predicted, they chose to defend the city, the first duty of an armed force of the state. The RPF did not plan it, but they took advantage of the fact they knew it would happen. After the Arusha Accords were signed in 1993, the RPA got a battalion stationed at the old Parliament building as part of the deal. Immediately after they were signed, General Kagame told his men to prepare for war and he infiltrated Kigali in every sector from the gas pumps, to embedding and recuruiting Interahammwe members (read Ruyenzi, Ruzibiza, and Hakezabera testimony). They began assassinating leaders from the PL, MDR, and CDR. They then began assassinating civilians by chucking grenades into public places much like the Vietcong in the 1960-70s. It got so bad that all Tutsi were suspected of aiding the RPF and, when the killing started, any Hutu who wasn’t killing Tutsi was considered an RPF sympathizer and was killed. Many Hutu killed even though they didn’t want to just to save their families.

no position from me on erlinder’s use of quotes when refering to the civil war in rwanda, as i still have plenty of questions before understanding it all, but here is an extract from a piece that edward herman wrote last october – Genocide Inflation is the Real Human Rights Threat: Yugoslavia and Rwanda

A less well-known and less well-understood case of genocide inflation–and possibly even more important, misapprehension of the true source and major direction of the killings– is that of Rwanda. In the establishment narrative, genocide irrupted suddenly following the April 6, 1994 shooting down of a plane at the Kigali airport that killed the Hutu presidents of both Rwanda (Juvenal Habyarimana) and Burundi (Cyprien Ntaryamira). According to the narrative, the Hutu genocidaires and the Interahamwe militias unleashed a huge pre-planned killing spree against the minority Tutsi population that wiped out some 800,000 to 1.2 million people, mainly Tutsis. In the myth structure, Bill Clinton made a regrettable error in pressing for the withdrawal of UN forces that might have protected civilians, for which he apologized. In a major article of September 2001 in the Atlantic Monthly, Samantha Power and others dubbed the United States “bystanders to genocide,” which is also a myth.
Contrary to the establishment narrative: (1) The plane was shot down by Paul Kagame and his Tutsi associates, with active or tacit help from the Belgians, UN representative Romeo Dallaire, and possibly the CIA. This act was part of the Kagame-Tutsi final assault to seize power after a four-year war, with the assistance of the U.S.-sponsored Ugandan military. When the chief investigator for the Rwanda Tribunal, Australian Michael Hourigan, reported solid evidence on this locus of responsibility for the April 6th assassination to Chief Prosecutor Louise Arbour in 1997, she immediately closed down the investigation and ordered him to destroy his files. This finding, which does not comport with the idea of a pre-planned Hutu murder program, has been suppressed in the Free Press.
(2) The two leaders whose plane was shot down on April 6, 1994, were Hutus. A third Hutu leader, Melchior Ndadaye, an earlier president of Burundi, was assassinated by his Tutsi military in October 1993, which was followed by an anti-Hutu pogrom that killed tens of thousands and drove hundreds of thousands of Burundian-Hutu refugees into Rwanda.
(3) Clinton and his Western allies (UK, Belgium) sponsored the U.S.-trained Kagame, supported his invasions of Rwanda from Uganda and massive ethnic cleansing prior to April 1994, and via their control of the Security Council refused to allow additional UN troops into Rwanda in April 1994, in fact forcing a reduction of the UNIMIR contingent in Rwanda from 2,500 to 270, not because of caution but because Kagame didn’t want them there to interfere with his conquest of Rwanda, which Clinton and his allies supported.
(4) The Hutu authorities urged more UN troops—and in light of the Kagame/U.S. (etc.) opposition to such civilian-protective assistance, this once again calls into question who it was that did the main killing in Rwanda.
(5) A suppressed 1994 UNCHR (Gersony) Report documented massacres of civilians in Kagame-controlled areas of Rwanda, which was confirmed by contemporaneous Amnesty and HRW reports.
(6) A University of Maryland research team led by Christian Davenport and Allan Stam, sponsored by the Western-organized Rwanda Tribunal, initially found that only about 250,000 civilians had been killed in Rwanda and that two out of three victims were Hutus. This caused a great deal of dismay and the authors have been under attack and in retreat ever since. The 800,000 (and higher) figures have no basis in any other scientific studies but are essentially the Kagame regime’s numbers.
To an amazing degree, the Western media and NGOs swallowed the propaganda line and lies on Rwanda that turned things upside down. They made the prime aggressors and genocidists, who were responsible for the dual assassination of April 6, 1994 that precipitated the mass killing, into heroic defenders against the de facto victims. The dictator Paul Kagame, one of the great mass murderers of our time, was made into an honored savior deserving and receiving strong Western support. Philip Gourevitch and the New Yorker whipped up sympathy in the West by labeling the Tutsis the “Jews of Africa;” the label stuck, and it garnered even greater support for Western anti-“genocide” intervention. These big lies are now institutionalized and are part of the common (mis)understanding in the West.
Because the Western propaganda machine succeeded so well in making the Hutus the villains and killers, and Paul Kagame the defender/savior of Rwanda, this cleared the ground for Kagame and Yoweri Musevemi–Kagame’s ally and fellow U.S. client and dictator (of Uganda)—to periodically invade and occupy the Eastern Congo (then Zaire) and beyond without “international community” opposition as they were allegedly cleaning out the genocidaires. The Pentagon very actively supported this on the ground, even more than it supported the Kagame machine’s drive in Kigali. This led to the killing of hundreds of thousands of civilian Hutu refugees in a series of mass slaughters, and also provided cover for a wider Kagame-Musevemi assault in the Congo that has led to the deaths of literally millions.

there seems to be a lot of valid criticism of the ICTR & accusations that it is set up as a u.s.-controlled alternative to the ICC. that is why i linked to the first erlinder commentary – essentially the ICTR says it will send individuals convicted there back to rwanda — an autocracy headed up by a man widely believed to be a war criminal & protected by the u.s. & its proxies.
a spokesperson for the ICTR has a rebuttal up today at the same site – The UN-Rwanda Prisoner Agreement: The ICTR Replies. make of it all what you will. the march 5th press release (“Rwanda signs Agreement on Enforcement of ICTR Sentences”) still up at the ICTR site clearly states “Rwanda has become the seventh country designated to receive persons convicted by the International Criminal Tribunal for Rwanda (ICTR) for the purpose of serving their sentences.”

Posted by: b real | Mar 12 2008 3:20 utc | 18

agreed, and they’re also significant in illustrating the charges against the ICTR as a kangaroo, or at least compromised, court. from keith harmon snow’s interview w/ paul (“hotel rwanda”) rusesabagina linked in the april thread mentioned earlier

KHS: Did you ever hear anything about the investigations into the shooting down of the presidential plane? The 6 April 1994 event that is always credited with “sparking the genocide?”
PR: Well, I heard about the investigations, and I heard that, at a given time, they had come up with a result. But they couldn’t declare the results [at the International Criminal Tribunal on Rwanda], because the prosecutors didn’t want the results to appear. And even today, which is still a mystery, the prosecutor does not take the assassination of President Habyarimana into his mission. And yet according to his mission given by his security council, given by the U.N. resolution of 1994, he was supposed to deal with the Rwandan genocide, crimes against humanity, and war crimes between January 1 and December 31, 1994, the whole year. So he is excluding the most important point of his mission — the investigation of the death of the presidents of Rwanda and Burundi. And he does not consider this, even now: the ICTR IS not concerned about Habyarimana’s death.
KHS: Right. It’s inside the bounds of the court — the ICTR — what the court is allowed and required or mandated to investigate, but they have ignored it completely, and they are still ignoring it, and they have told you that they will continue to ignore it.
PR: Yes. And myself, I will never understand. An International Court for Rwanda, given a mission — a mission of reconciliation — but never talking about a terrorist act. To me — assassinating two presidents — that is a terrorist act. First of all, a peace agreement had been signed between the [RPF] rebels and the [Habyarimana] government.
KHS: The Arusha Accords.
PR: Yes. There was a ceasefire; no one was allowed to fight. Whoever killed, that is a terrorist. So, if someone comes as a tribunal, and this is defined, well defined, in their mission, they are supposed to handle what happens between January 1st and December 31st, 1994. That is the U.N. resolution on Rwanda. So, saying that this double presidential assassination is outside of their boundaries, is unbelievable.

Posted by: b real | Mar 12 2008 4:49 utc | 20

correction on minor point in #21 – that was the fbi’s resident agency in media, PA, of course

Posted by: b real | Mar 12 2008 14:33 utc | 22

The assassinations, murders, and acts of terrorism, not to mention the rantings and incitements of the infiltrators in Kigali (see the interview with Mr. Nizeyimana for some examples), raised tensions between the political parties and the ethnic (or racial in the case of Rwandans) groups to the point where the president’s assassination was the last straw and triggered the genocide. After each political assassination leading up to April 6th, Tutsi were killed and a larger-scale genocide may have erupted but President Habyarimana was able to restore calm by speaking on Radio Rwanda each time. Without him around, and the Army Chief of Staff murdered in the plane as well, there was nobody to give orders or act as a voice of moderation to slow the enraged mobs. This was discussed at the RPF meeting of March 31 1994, where General Kagame and his high command decided to commit to the plan, as testified by Lt. Ruyenzi. The orders for preparation were given on April 1st, which is confirmed by radio intercepts by the FAR in evidence at the ICTR. After the shootdown, RPF infiltrators in the Interhamwe encouraged the mobs to kill. Segahutu testified at the ICTR last year that he saw people 100% known to be working for the RPF manning the roadblocks in Kigali. In the southwest, esp. Butare Prefecture, Burundian refugees began killing Tutsi in retaliation for the murder of 2 Hutu Burundian presidents in less than 8 months. They believed the RPA was responsible for both of the assassinations. All these things are mentioned simply to demonstrate that the reality was much more complicated than originally thought based on what we were all originally told, myself included. Be on the lookout for something special from me for this year’s April 6th anniversary.

Posted by: DB | Mar 12 2008 21:37 utc | 24

Pentagon Report on Saddam’s Iraq Censored?

ABC News’ Jonathan Karl Reports: The Bush Administration apparently does not want a U.S. military study that found no direct connection between Saddam Hussein and al Qaeda to get any attention. This morning, the Pentagon cancelled plans to send out a press release announcing the report’s release and will no longer make the report available online.
The report was to be posted on the Joint Forces Command website this afternoon, followed by a background briefing with the with the authors. No more. The report will be made available only to those who ask for it, and it will be sent via U.S. mail from Joint Forces Command in Norfolk, Virginia.
It won’t be emailed to reporters and it won’t be posted online.
Asked why the report would not be posted online and could not be emailed, the spokesman for Joint Forces Command said: “We’re making the report available to anyone who wishes to have it, and we’ll send it out via CD in the mail.”
Another Pentagon official said initial press reports on the study made it “too politically sensitive. […]

HAHAHAHAHAHAHAHA!!!!!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 13 2008 2:25 utc | 26

I have got a cd coming. Or I just signed up for the camps…either way, they can kiss my arse…
Drinks on me! Barkeep!

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 13 2008 3:00 utc | 28

another day, another Iraqi child “liberated” from this mortal coil by cowardly, trigger-happy US military goons in Iraq.

Posted by: ran | Mar 13 2008 4:12 utc | 30

Pentagon Cites Tapes Showing Interrogations

The officials said the nearly 50 tapes they identified documented interrogations of two terrorism suspects, Jose Padilla and Ali al-Marri, and were made at a Navy detention site in Charleston, S.C., where the two men have been held.
…
Mr. Black, the spokesman for the Defense Intelligence Agency, said its director, Lt. Gen. Michael D. Maples, had reviewed the tape and was satisfied that Mr. Marri’s treatment was acceptable.
He said that Mr. Marri was chanting loudly, disrupting his interrogation, and that interrogators used force to put duct tape on his mouth, while Mr. Marri resisted. Mr. Black said most of the videos showing Mr. Marri’s interrogations had been destroyed. The government has never charged Mr. Marri, but because of his designation as an enemy combatant, the Pentagon is allowed to hold him indefinitely.

So how do you conduct an “interrogation” when the person has duct tape on his mouth?

Posted by: b | Mar 13 2008 14:39 utc | 32

a couple items on AFRICOM
gen kip ward ‘s prepared stmt [pdf – 54kb] for thursday’s house armed services committee hearing on the FY2009 nat’l defense authorization budget request for AFRICOM.
looking to bring a national security state model to africa, but we already knew that

AFRICOM’s theater strategy will be based on the principle of Active Security. Active Security is defined as a persistent and sustained level of effort oriented on security assistance programs that prevent conflict and foster continued dialogue and development.

…

Societies require security to flourish, for security provides the foundation for political, diplomatic, and economic development, which is essential to building long-term stability. AFRICOM will contribute to this goal by employing a wide range of tools at its disposal–from conducting security cooperation activities to prosecuting combat operations–to promote security.

strengthening national armies –> strengthening militarism on the continent
latin america deja vu, anyone?
also, daniel volman has summarized both the DOS and DOD FY 2009 requests
U.S. Security Assistance Programs – The FY 2009 DoS and DoD Budget Request

For Fiscal Year 2009 (which begins on 1 October 2008), the Bush administration is asking Congress to approve the delivery of some $500 million worth of military equipment and training to Africa (including both sub-Saharan Africa and north Africa) in the budget request for the State Department for Fiscal Year (FY) 2009. The administration is also asking for up to $400 million for deliveries of equipment and training for Africa funded through the Defense Department budget and another $400 million to establish the headquarters for the Pentagon’s new Africa Command (Africom).
The State Department budget request includes funding for major new arms deliveries and increased military training to the Democratic Republic of the Congo, Botswana, Djibouti, Ethiopia, Guinea Bissau, Kenya, Liberia, Nigeria, Senegal, South Africa, Sudan, and Uganda. It will be channeled through a variety of programs, including a number of new programs initiated by the Bush administration as part of the “Global War on Terrorism.” These include the Trans-Saharan Counter-Terrorism Partnership, the East African Regional Security Initiative, and the Anti-Terrorism Assistance program. The U.S. government is also expected to license up to $100 million worth of private commercial sales of military and police equipment through the State Department’s Direct Commercial Sales program in FY 2009.
The following description is based on information contained in the State Department Budget Justification for Foreign Operations for FY 2009 (released by the State Department in March 2008) and the Defense Department Summary Justification for the Budget Request for FY 2009 (released in February 2008).
…

Posted by: b real | Mar 14 2008 3:24 utc | 34

All Barflies may wish to access these hearings sometime over the next 3 days. Winter Soldier Hearings – Soldiers Eyewitness Accounts of Iraq & Afghanistan continue tomorrow. You can watch Here. Or listen Here
It’ll be interesting to see what, if any, coverage they get in the Elite Propaganda System 🙂

Posted by: jj | Mar 14 2008 8:07 utc | 36

Closed House Doors To Debate Surveillance Bill

WASHINGTON (AP) — House doors were locked Thursday night as lawmakers prepared for their first closed session in 25 years to debate surveillance legislation.
Republicans requested privacy for what they termed “an honest debate” on the new Democratic eavesdropping bill that is opposed by the White House and most Republicans in Congress.
The private session was scheduled for nighttime so the House chamber could be swept by security personnel to make sure there were no listening or recording devices.
The last such session in the House was in 1983 on U.S. support for paramilitary operations in Nicaragua. Only five closed sessions have taken place in the House since 1825.
Many Democrats initially objected, calling it a political ploy by Republicans to delay the vote. Indeed, it did: House leaders pushed off the scheduled vote until Friday, just before taking a two-week recess. If passed, the bill would have to be approved by the Senate.
President Bush vowed to veto the House Democrats’ version of the terrorist surveillance bill, saying it would undermine the nation’s security.

Indeed, this is the House that we democrats elected into power. Y’all proud of this?
Like the dark of night Patriot Act; We are not a democracy when our leaders decide for us in secret.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 14 2008 9:34 utc | 38

Speaking of NSA, you’ve got to read this comment @end of Fitt’s piece linked above Jaw Dropper

Posted by: jj | Mar 14 2008 9:53 utc | 40

Join me for some Cartoons… anyone?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 14 2008 10:14 utc | 42

this is from irin, the u.n. news agency
AFRICOM to focus on military, not humanitarian role

WASHINGTON, 14 March 2008 (IRIN) – In a key briefing to Congress on 13 March, General William “Kip” Ward, head of the US Command for Africa, AFRICOM, devoted only 15 seconds of his four-and-a-half minute opening remarks to a possible humanitarian role.
Focusing instead on military training, security and counter-terrorism, his remarks came in sharp contrast to a year ago when officials announced that the command would concentrate on humanitarian assistance, alarming many aid agencies, which were concerned that US military involvement in humanitarian aid would undermine their neutrality.

duh… as i’ve been telling anyone who’ll listen, AFRICOM is a unified combatant command and soliders undergo rigorous training & indoctrination to break down their “humanitarian” side to become killers (not ‘warriors’) – expecting the military to act as a humanitarian agent was a very sick joke. AFRICOM is about controlling, exploiting & killing. beware of any continued efforts by state or professional NGO & human rights orgs to spin this imperialist experiment otherwise.

Posted by: b real | Mar 14 2008 14:45 utc | 44

Pitting Race Against Gender
Reappropriate critiques the Clinton camp strategy to compete on victimization. A.k.a., which candidate is the bigger loser?
One of the lovely side benefits of the ’08 elections is that it pays for a deflating of solidarity among people who might otherwise identify with each other and unite.

Posted by: citizen | Mar 14 2008 16:32 utc | 46

Race OR gender? Why check on when you can check two boxes?

Posted by: lg | Mar 14 2008 17:39 utc | 48

jj is right,
Live streaming Winter Soldier 2008 KPFA.org
is very much worth your time..
Antonia Juhasz author of The Bush Agenda: Invading the World, One Economy at a Time, just spoke…She went into the history of exploiting oil in the region since the 1920s plus shutting out Iraqis from the ‘rebuilding’ of Iraq.
Jeremy Scahill up next…
John Kerry and many other have turned down chances to speak… cold shoulder from dems…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 14 2008 19:44 utc | 50

lg,
I agree, McKinney is the representative who is most clearly upholding her oath to the Constitution. She’s the only pol. who inspires in me loyalty.

Posted by: citizen | Mar 14 2008 21:29 utc | 52

David Mamet explains why – “I am right wing now,” proving that one can do human dialog and have no idea about social dialog.
Fortunately alicublog and Lawyers, Guns, & Money provide perspective

Posted by: citizen | Mar 15 2008 2:26 utc | 54

U$,
Campagna was vibrant!
I’m tending more towards culture carnival today, so for an immature chuckle: Testicle Festival

Posted by: citizen | Mar 15 2008 4:35 utc | 56

So the CIA continues with secret prisons and torture: C.I.A. Secretly Held Qaeda Suspect, Officials Say

The Central Intelligence Agency secretly detained a suspected member of Al Qaeda for at least six months beginning last summer as part of a program in which C.I.A. officers have been authorized by President Bush to use harsh interrogation techniques, American officials said Friday.
The suspect, Muhammad Rahim, is the first Qaeda prisoner in nearly a year who intelligence officials have acknowledged has been in C.I.A. detention. The C.I.A. emptied its secret prisons in the fall of 2006, when it moved 14 prisoners to Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, but made clear that the facilities could be used in the future to house high-level terrorism suspects.
Mr. Bush has defended the use of the secret prisons as a vital tool in American counterterrorism efforts, and last July he signed an executive order that formally reiterated the C.I.A.’s authority to use interrogation techniques more coercive than those permitted by the Pentagon.

Posted by: b | Mar 15 2008 7:11 utc | 58

Nice voice. #59.

Posted by: beq | Mar 15 2008 15:10 utc | 60

based on that poll b, it is almost certain that McCain will be the next president of the US.
I believe it was Churchill who said that Americans can be counted on to do the right thing, after they have tried everything else. So, we will try more of the same….it just has to work this time! and 3 percent of Germany agree.

Posted by: dan of steele | Mar 15 2008 16:09 utc | 62

How to Destroy a Country in Five Years
Iraq’s Blood-Sodden Anniversaries
By PATRICK COCKBURN
Baghdad
“It reminds me of Iraq under Saddam,” said a militant opponent of Saddam Hussein angrily to me last week as he watched red-capped Iraqi soldiers close down part of central Baghdad so the convoy of Iraqi prime minister Nouri al-Maliki might briefly venture into the city.
Five rears after the invasion of Iraq the US and the Iraqi government both claim that Iraq is becoming a less dangerous place, but the measures taken to protect Mr Maliki told a different story. Gun-waving soldiers first cleared all traffic from the streets. Then four black armored cars, each with three machine gunners on the roof, raced out of a heavily fortified exit from the Green Zone, followed by sand-coloured American Humvees and more armoured cars. Finally, in the middle of the speeding convoy, we saw six identical bullet proof vehicles with black windows, one of which must have carried Mr Maliki.
The precautions were not excessive since Baghdad remains the most dangerous city in the world. The Iraqi prime minister was only going to the headquarters of the Dawa party to which he belongs and which are only half a mile from the Green Zone but his hundreds of security guards acted as if they were entering enemy territory.
Five years of occupation have destroyed Iraq as a country. Baghdad is today a collection of hostile Sunni and Shia ghettoes divided by high concrete walls. Different districts even have different national flags. Sunni areas use the old Iraqi flag with the three stars of the Baath party and the Shia wave a newer version, adopted by the Shia-Kurdish government. The Kurds have their own flag.
The Iraqi government tries to give the impression that normality is returning. Iraqi journalists are told not to mention the continuing violence. When a bomb exploded in Karada district near my hotel killing 70 people the police beat and drove away television cameraman trying to take pictures of the devastation. Civilian casualties have fallen from 65 Iraqis killed daily from November 2006 to August 2007 to 26 daily in February. But the fall in the death rate is partly because ethnic cleansing has already done its grim work and in much of Baghdad there are no mixed areas left. More than most wars the war in Iraq remains little understood outside the country. Iraqis themselves often do not understand it because they have an intimate knowledge of their own community, be it Shia, Sunni or Kurdish, but little of other Iraqi communities. It should have been evident from the moment President George W Bush decided to overthrow Saddam Hussein that it was going to be a very different war from the one fought by his father 1991. That had been a conservative war waged to restore the status quo ante in Kuwait.
The war of 2003 was bound to have very radical consequences. If Saddam Hussein was overthrown and elections held then the domination of the 20 per cent Sunni minority would be replaced by the rule of the majority Shia community allied to the Kurds. In an election Shia religious parties linked to Iran would win, as indeed they did in two elections in 2005. Many of America’s troubles in Iraq have stemmed from Washington’s attempt to stop Iran and anti-American Shia leaders like Muqtada al-Sadr filling the power vacuum left by the fall of Saddam Hussein.
The US and its allies never really understood the war they won which started on March 19, 2003. Their armies had an easy passage to Baghdad because the Iraqi army did not fight. Even the so-called elite Special Republican Guard units, well paid, well equipped and tribally linked to Saddam, went home. Television coverage and much of the newspaper coverage of the war was highly deceptive because it gave the impression of widespread fighting when there was none. I entered Mosul and Kirkuk, two northern cities, on the day they were captured with hardly a shot fired. Burned out Iraqi tanks littered the roads around Baghdad, giving the impression of heavy fighting, but almost all had been abandoned by their crews before they were hit.
The war was too easy. Consciously or subconsciously Americans came to believe it did not matter what Iraqis said or did. They were expected to behave like Germans or Japanese in 1945, though most of Iraqis did not think of themselves as having been defeated. There was later to be much bitter dispute about who was responsible for the critical error of dissolving the Iraqi army. But at the time the Americans were in a mood of exaggerated imperial arrogance and did not care what Iraqis, in the army or out of it, were doing. “They simply thought we were wogs,” says Ahmad Chalabi, the opposition leader, brutally. “We didn’t matter.”
In those first months after the fall of Baghdad it was extraordinary, and at times amusing, to watch the American victors behave exactly like the British at the height of their power in nineteenth century India. The ways of the Raj were reborn. A friend who had a brokerage in the Baghdad stock market, told me how a 24 year old American whose family was a donor to the Republican Party had been put in charge of the market and had lectured the highly-irritated brokers, most of whom spoke several languages and had PhDs, about the virtues of democracy.
There was a further misconception that grew up at this time. Most Iraqis were glad to be rid of Saddam Hussein. He had been a cruel and catastrophically incompetent leader who ruined his country. All Kurds and most Shia wanted him gone. But it did not follow that Iraqis of any description wanted to be occupied by a foreign power. Later President Bush and Tony Blair gave the impression that overthrowing the Baathist regime necessarily implied occupation, but it did not. “If we leave, there will be anarchy,” friends in the occupation authority used to tell me in justification for the occupation. They stayed, but anarchy came anyway. In that first year of the occupation it was easy to tell which way the wind was blowing. Whenever there was an American soldier was killed or wounded in Baghdad I would drive there immediately. Always there were cheering crowds standing by the smoking remains of a Humvee or a dark blood stain on the road. After one shooting of a soldier a man told me: “I am a poor man but my family is going to celebrate what happened by cooking chicken.” Yet this was the moment when President Bush and his Secretary of Defence Donald Rumsfeld were saying that the insurgents were ‘remnants of the old regime’ and ‘dead enders’. There was also misconception among Iraqis about the depth of the divisions within their own society. Sunni would accuse me of exaggerating their differences with the Shia but when I mentioned prominent Shia leaders they would wave a hand dismissively and say: “But they are all Iranians or paid by the Iranians.” Al Qa’ida in Iraq regarded the Shia as heretics as worthy of death as the Americans. Enormous suicide bombs exploded in Shia market places and religious processions slaughtering hundreds, and the Shia began to hit back with tit-for-tat killing of Sunni by Shia death militia death squads or the police.
After the Sunni guerrillas blew up the Shia shrine in Samarra on 22 February 2006 sectarian fighting turned into a full blown civil war. Mr Bush and Mr Blair strenuously denied that this was so, but by any standard it was a civil war of extraordinary viciousness. Torture with electric drills and acid became the norm. The Shia Mehdi Army militia took over much of Baghdad and controlled three quarters of it. Some 2.2 million people fled to Jordan and Syria, a high proportion of them Sunni.
The Sunni defeat in the battle for Baghdad in 2006 and early 2007 was the motive for many guerrillas, previously anti-American, suddenly allying themselves with American forces. They concluded they could not fight the US, al Qa’ida, the Iraqi army and police and the Mehdi Army at the same time. There is now an 80,000 strong Sunni militia paid for and allied to the US but hostile to the Iraqi government. Five years after the American and British armies crossed into Iraq the country has become a geographical expression.
*apologise for the cut & paste

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 16 2008 3:12 utc | 64

me @65

Posted by: citizen | Mar 16 2008 5:33 utc | 66

mother scratcher! that final link for #67 is Hero of Hotel Rwanda Calls Kagame a War Criminal
i cited part of a longer interview w/ him in #20 above

Posted by: b real | Mar 16 2008 6:21 utc | 68

two from uganda on viktor bout’s relations w/ that country
radio katwe: Arrested Arms Dealer Viktor Bout’s links to Ugandan Mafia

Our one and only revolutionary Yoweri T. Museveni (Father of Modern Mafioso in Africa) and his long time henchmen Amama Mbabazi (Security Minister) and Salim Saleh (half brother) went into a panic after learning of the arrest of their fellow thug, one Victor Bout a Russian Arms dealer.
Victor Bout has been a long time wanted fugitive and arms dealer selling all types of arms to African unprincipled leaders of the Museveni type and their rebel friends like Savimbi, Bemba and Colonel Nkunda in exchange for minerals and timber. From time to time, he has been hiding in Uganda, staying with Museveni at “his” ranches in Kisozi or Rwakitura whenever the UN and other law enforcement agencies closed in.
…
You may hate the arms dealers but they are usually very smart operators. Morally speaking they are the filth of the earth, but it is sometimes difficult to catch them because they are specialists when it comes to operating in a legal grey zone. That is how Bout has survived all these years.
His most important asset is local war lords and corrupt governments who provide legal cover, protection and immunity from prosecution. But we have no doubt that if the Congolese, Sudanese and Angolan governments or any other interested party moved quickly and lodged charges at the ICC or ICJ against Bout, Museveni and company for arming and sponsoring wars, training and arming children in their respective countries, with Bout being the arms supplier and Museveni as his enabler and protector, the evidence is enough to get a conviction.

daily monitor: UPDF generals linked to ‘merchant of death’

MR Viktor Bout, the world’s most notorious illegal arms baron who was arrested in Thailand at the weekend, sold arms to Uganda and illegally used Entebbe International Airport to ship arms to DR Congo and Liberia.
Former Russian KGB officer Bout – nicknamed the “Merchant of Death” – is believed to have supplied weapons to dozens of rebel groups the world over, including the Taliban and al-Qaeda-linked groups. A report by the Belgian International Peace Information Service (IPIS) reveals how Mr Bout, with the help of top Ugandan military officers, fueled conflict in DR Congo, Africa’s vast and mineral-rich country.

Posted by: b real | Mar 16 2008 7:38 utc | 70

I know this may be of interest to many at MOA…
Closing Antioch College: Cui Bono?

How Antioch University is cozying-up with developers amidst regional military base realignment

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 16 2008 15:37 utc | 72

Doh! opps…
US F-16 bombs Tulsa, OK

F-16’s ‘dummy bomb’ slams into Tulsa apartment complex
Here’s a lead that got our attention: “Federal authorities are investigating why a a dummy bomb traveling about 600 mph crashed into a building at a Tulsa apartment complex Thursday evening.”
The news comes to us from the Tulsa World, which reports that a military pilot thought he or she had dropped the 25-pound “inert military ordnance” over Kansas. In fact, it hit a densely populated area in Oklahoma.
“Two or three feet over and it would have actually entered apartments,” police Capt. Rick Helberg tells KTUL-TV.

Of course, none of the MSM seems to have picked this up…
Could you have imagined had this been the B52 carrying the 5 live loose nuke missiles?
Bet it would’ve made the news then…

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 17 2008 5:44 utc | 74

Ghaith Abdul-Ahad from Baghdad (with video you might want to see): Death, destruction and fear on the streets of cafes, poets and booksellers

I grew up in Karrada, a mixed neighbourhood, but I went to school in Adhamiya, a strongly Sunni area where the insurgency started. Soon after the war Adhamiya was taken over by al-Qaida but today it is controlled by an anti al-Qaida Sunni militia. The main threat comes from across the highway: the Shia area of Qahira. The highway between the two areas resembles a scene from the West Bank: two high concrete walls separating the two sides of the road. The militiamen say they feel safe inside Adhamiya, but a few yards outside the neighbourhood it is very different. “Our limit is the checkpoint at Antar square,” their commander tells me. “After that the Mahdi army of Qahira will kidnap us.”
In the market the vegetable sellers say that each time they bring in food supplies, they must bribe the Iraqi army soldiers manning checkpoints. “We are worse than Gaza because if they don’t let me through that checkpoint I have to drive all around the area and try to get through another checkpoint, and 99% I will be dead.”

Posted by: b | Mar 17 2008 12:01 utc | 76

tom engelhardt builds an entire essay on u.s. impunity for ‘the right to kill civilians’ around the missile attacks on somalia two weeks ago, which we diligently covered here
Blowing Them Away Means Never Having to Say You’re Sorry

For the dead Somalis, not surprisingly, we have no names. In stories like this, the dead are regularly nobodies and, though the townspeople of Dobley did indeed march angrily in protest yelling anti-American slogans, just about no one noticed.

i never found any names in the coverage on shabelle media or garowe online

In places like Somalia, we deliver death, and every now and then an American bomb or missile actually obliterates a terrorist suspect. Then we celebrate. The rest of time, it’s hardly even news. When the deeper principle behind such global strikes is mentioned in our papers, in some passing paragraph, it’s done — as in a recent Washington Post article about a Predator strike, piloted from Nevada, that killed a suspected “senior al-Qaeda commander” in Pakistan — in this polite way: “Independent actions by U.S. military forces on another country’s sovereign territory are always controversial…” (Imagine the language that the Washington Post would use, if that had been a Pakistani drone strike in Utah.)
This version of globalization is already so much the norm of our world that few here even blink an eye when it’s reported, or consider it even slightly strange. It’s already an American right. In the meantime, other people, who obviously don’t rise to the level of our humanity, regularly die.

chris floyd recently wrote about the missile strikes on somalia as well – Silent Scream: Anguish Grows in the Terror War’s Forgotten Victim
and, shifting gears, an article on tom dispatch from earlier last week by michael klare on the oil stituation — The $100-plus Barrel of Oil and What It Means

Posted by: b real | Mar 17 2008 15:29 utc | 78

Citizen, that’s interesting in light of the following which imo resonates with your #79 even though it’s hosted on a not so valid or trust worthy website. Don’t shoot the messenger either here or there, “take what you like and leave the rest” is an old saying, however, I say “take what you like and save the rest until more data comes in.” Put things under the category of high probability or low probability, but never dismiss things out of hand.
This is making the rounds:
Spitzer Destroyed Over Of Threat To Bush Cartel?

Here is more and very credible info on why the plug was pulled on Spitzer. Read his oped piece from the Feb. 14, Post and you can see that he was pointing the finger at the Bush crime syndicate. See the last paragraph. So it seems that Spitzer’s true crime was stupidity — how could he think that he would visit high-priced call girls and also attack the Bushinistas at the same time without being counterattacked? — Jim
Predatory Lenders’ Partner in Crime
How the Bush Administration Stopped the States From Stepping In to Help Consumers
(The following oped by Eliot Spitzer was published barely a month prior to the unfolding scandal and his demise as Governor of the State of New York. Does the scandal bear any relationship to Spitzer’s intent to reveal the criminal nature of the subprime mortgage scam and the role of the Bush adminstration. Was the scandal intended to silence Eliot Spitzer?)
By New York Governor Eliot Spitzer
The Washington Post
Feb. 14, 2008
Several years ago, state attorneys general and others involved in consumer protection began to notice a marked increase in a range of predatory lending practices by mortgage lenders. Some were misrepresenting the terms of loans, making loans without regard to consumers’ ability to repay, making loans with deceptive “teaser” rates that later ballooned astronomically, packing loans with undisclosed charges and fees, or even paying illegal kickbacks. These and other practices, we noticed, were having a devastating effect on home buyers. In addition, the widespread nature of these practices, if left unchecked, threatened our financial markets.
Even though predatory lending was becoming a national problem, the Bush administration looked the other way and did nothing to protect American homeowners. In fact, the government chose instead to align itself with the banks that were victimizing consumers.
Predatory lending was widely understood to present a looming national crisis. This threat was so clear that as New York attorney general, I joined with colleagues in the other 49 states in attempting to fill the void left by the federal government. Individually, and together, state attorneys general of both parties brought litigation or entered into settlements with many subprime lenders that were engaged in predatory lending practices. Several state legislatures, including New York’s, enacted laws aimed at curbing such practices.
What did the Bush administration do in response? Did it reverse course and decide to take action to halt this burgeoning scourge? As Americans are now painfully aware, with hundreds of thousands of homeowners facing foreclosure and our markets reeling, the answer is a resounding no.
Not only did the Bush administration do nothing to protect consumers, it embarked on an aggressive and unprecedented campaign to prevent states from protecting their residents from the very problems to which the federal government was turning a blind eye.
Let me explain: The administration accomplished this feat through an obscure federal agency called the Office of the Comptroller of the Currency (OCC). The OCC has been in existence since the Civil War. Its mission is to ensure the fiscal soundness of national banks. For 140 years, the OCC examined the books of national banks to make sure they were balanced, an important but uncontroversial function. But a few years ago, for the first time in its history, the OCC was used as a tool against consumers.
In 2003, during the height of the predatory lending crisis, the OCC invoked a clause from the 1863 National Bank Act to issue formal opinions preempting all state predatory lending laws, thereby rendering them inoperative. The OCC also promulgated new rules that prevented states from enforcing any of their own consumer protection laws against national banks. The federal government’s actions were so egregious and so unprecedented that all 50 state attorneys general, and all 50 state banking superintendents, actively fought the new rules.
But the unanimous opposition of the 50 states did not deter, or even slow, the Bush administration in its goal of protecting the banks. In fact, when my office opened an investigation of possible discrimination in mortgage lending by a number of banks, the OCC filed a federal lawsuit to stop the investigation.
Throughout our battles with the OCC and the banks, the mantra of the banks and their defenders was that efforts to curb predatory lending would deny access to credit to the very consumers the states were trying to protect. But the curbs we sought on predatory and unfair lending would have in no way jeopardized access to the legitimate credit market for appropriately priced loans. Instead, they would have stopped the scourge of predatory lending practices that have resulted in countless thousands of consumers losing their homes and put our economy in a precarious position.
When history tells the story of the subprime lending crisis and recounts its devastating effects on the lives of so many innocent homeowners, the Bush administration will not be judged favorably. The tale is still unfolding, but when the dust settles, it will be judged as a willing accomplice to the lenders who went to any lengths in their quest for profits. So willing, in fact, that it used the power of the federal government in an unprecedented assault on state legislatures, as well as on state attorneys general and anyone else on the side of consumers. [emphasis added]
The writer is governor of New York.

How’s that for buttockal penetration?

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Mar 17 2008 20:23 utc | 80

afp: US universities turn schools for spies and more

WASHINGTON (AFP) — That young American exchange student who stayed with you last summer to do a language immersion course could be part of a new program to educate the next generation of US intelligence agents.
But don’t worry: even if she does end up working for the CIA, the likelihood of her becoming an undercover operative is slim.
“Intelligence doesn’t just mean spying, skulking around in a trench coat,” said Jim Robbins, director of the Intelligence Community Center for Academic Excellence (IC CAE) at Trinity University in Washington, one of nine programs aimed at revamping the US intelligence community.
…
Trinity opened the doors to the pilot course for the Intelligence Community Centers for Academic Excellence three years ago.
The program is funded by the Office of the Director of National Intelligence (ODNI), the umbrella agency which oversees the 16 intelligence agencies in the United States, some of which — such as the Treasury or Department of the Environment — would not be linked automatically to intelligence activities.
Since 2005, the center has swelled, with eight more universities across the United States signing on to the program that wants to revamp the way young Americans perceive intelligence — it isn’t just spying — and are trained to work in the very diverse field.
The program aims to “bring in groups to the intelligence community — women, minorities, what have you — who were previously under-represented,” said Robbins.
…
The ODNI grant is used to send students abroad to study a language and learn about another culture.
…
“Every university that has a grant has to identify students to become IC CAE scholars,” Gant explained.
“Those students are required to go abroad and study a language or study culture and they get a stipend to go abroad,” she said.
Florida International University (FIU) sent 16 students abroad last year as part of its IC CAE program.
“People want to go to China, to Brazil to study Portuguese, to Spain. They want to study Arabic, which is a critical language need. So far we have had people go to Morocco, Jordan and Egypt,” David Twigg, associate director of the Gordon Institute for Public Policy and Citizenship Studies at FIU, told AFP.
“They’re not going there as spies; they’re going there as people who are trying to understand what’s going on.”

spying? us? of course not – we’re just gathering intelligence…

Posted by: b real | Mar 18 2008 5:17 utc | 82

Barack Obama may just have begun to lead the the coalition he was heading. I’ll take this fight.
So, you’re not owning class in the US, but you think you’re not black?
or
White resentment and black resentment could be economic brothers
(excerpts)

In fact, a similar anger exists within segments of the white community. Most working- and middle-class white Americans don’t feel that they have been particularly privileged by their race. Their experience is the immigrant experience – as far as they’re concerned, no one’s handed them anything, they’ve built it from scratch. They’ve worked hard all their lives, many times only to see their jobs shipped overseas or their pension dumped after a lifetime of labor. They are anxious about their futures, and feel their dreams slipping away; in an era of stagnant wages and global competition, opportunity comes to be seen as a zero sum game, in which your dreams come at my expense. So when they are told to bus their children to a school across town; when they hear that an African American is getting an advantage in landing a good job or a spot in a good college because of an injustice that they themselves never committed; when they’re told that their fears about crime in urban neighborhoods are somehow prejudiced, resentment builds over time.
Like the anger within the black community, these resentments aren’t always expressed in polite company. But they have helped shape the political landscape for at least a generation. Anger over welfare and affirmative action helped forge the Reagan Coalition. Politicians routinely exploited fears of crime for their own electoral ends. Talk show hosts and conservative commentators built entire careers unmasking bogus claims of racism while dismissing legitimate discussions of racial injustice and inequality as mere political correctness or reverse racism.
Just as black anger often proved counterproductive, so have these white resentments distracted attention from the real culprits of the middle class squeeze – a corporate culture rife with inside dealing, questionable accounting practices, and short-term greed; a Washington dominated by lobbyists and special interests; economic policies that favor the few over the many. And yet, to wish away the resentments of white Americans, to label them as misguided or even racist, without recognizing they are grounded in legitimate concerns – this too widens the racial divide, and blocks the path to understanding….
We can tackle race only as spectacle – as we did in the OJ trial – or in the wake of tragedy, as we did in the aftermath of Katrina – or as fodder for the nightly news. We can play Reverend Wright’s sermons on every channel, every day and talk about them from now until the election, and make the only question in this campaign whether or not the American people think that I somehow believe or sympathize with his most offensive words. We can pounce on some gaffe by a Hillary supporter as evidence that she’s playing the race card, or we can speculate on whether white men will all flock to John McCain in the general election regardless of his policies.
We can do that.
But if we do, I can tell you that in the next election, we’ll be talking about some other distraction. And then another one. And then another one. And nothing will change.
That is one option. Or, at this moment, in this election, we can come together and say, “Not this time.” This time we want to talk about the crumbling schools that are stealing the future of black children and white children and Asian children and Hispanic children and Native American children. This time we want to reject the cynicism that tells us that these kids can’t learn; that those kids who don’t look like us are somebody else’s problem. The children of America are not those kids, they are our kids, and we will not let them fall behind in a 21st century economy. Not this time.

Not this time.
This is much better than “change”. Perhaps it can become a call to battle.

Posted by: citizen | Mar 18 2008 18:41 utc | 84

Sir Arthur C. Clarke has died at the age of 90.
Best known for his intense collaboration with Stanley Kubrick on the film 2001 A Space Oddysey, based on his short story the Sentinel, he has lived for the past 50 years in Sri Lanka where he was a avid diver and explorer.
That movie spoiled science fiction films for me ever since I first saw it on my birthday in 1969. The vistas of space showing the graceful docking between a Pan Am space plane and orbital space station while the music of Strauss welled in the background will remain with me forever.
Clarke is also the inventor of the radio satellites which allow international telephone and television communications.
He must have known he was nearing the end; last year he recorded a birthday video saying goodbye.

Posted by: jonku | Mar 18 2008 23:31 utc | 86

on tuesday, condie rice formally declared one of the insurgent groups in somalia — al-shabaab, one of the islamist militant groups engaged in battle against the imposed/unpopular/unelected transitional federal govt (which is backed solely by foreign govts, primarily ethiopia & the united states) — “as a Foreign Terrorist Organization under Section 219 of the Immigration and Nationality Act (as amended) and as a Specially Designated Global Terrorist under Section 1(b) of Executive Order 13224 (as amended).”
now i’m not defending al-shabaab or making the claim that they’re all actually clean-cut fellas out there fighting the good fight, but i do think that it is fair game to criticize this move by the u.s. state dept. after all, if it wasn’t for u.s. meddling in somali politics, there wouldn’t even be an insurgency, somalia wouldn’t be (illegally) occupied by a hostile army, and more than one million somalis wouldn’t be displaced pushing the country to the brink of a critical humanitarian crisis.
the txt of the declaration states, in part,

Al-Shabaab has used intimidation and violence to undermine the Somali government and threatened civil society activists working to bring about peace through political dialogue and reconciliation. The group scattered leaflets on the streets of Mogadishu warning participants in last year’s reconciliation conference that they intended to bomb the conference venue. Al-Shabaab promised to shoot anyone planning to attend the conference and to blow up delegates’ cars and hotels. Although al-Shabaab did not carry out these particular threats, the group has claimed responsibility for shooting Deputy District Administrators, as well as several bombings and shootings in Mogadishu targeting Ethiopian troops and Somali government officials. Al-Shabaab’s leader, Aden Hashi Ayrow, has ordered his fighters to attack African Union (AU) troops based in Mogadishu. Ayrow has also called for foreign fighters to join al-Shabaab in their fight in Somalia. Given the threat that al-Shabaab poses, the designation will raise awareness of al-Shabaab’s activities and help undercut the group’s ability to threaten targets in and destabilize the Horn of Africa region.

meles zenawi & his cadres are likely laughing their asses off. now it’s al-shabaab who is destabilizing the HOA according to the official narrative. wtf? exactly who is responsible for destabilizing both somalia & the HOA.
perhaps the resistance is realizing too many successes of late? or maybe by focusing on one of the insurgent groups in somalia, the entire resistance can be pigeon-holed into a useful, soundbite & target for further GWOT operations.
reuters, as usual, steps up to the plate in helping disseminate this story w/ some carefully phrased sentences
U.S. puts Somali Islamist group on terrorism list

NAIROBI, March 18 (Reuters) – The United States has formally designated Somalia’s al Shabaab militants a foreign terrorist organisation to increase pressure on what Washington says is al Qaeda’s main link in the Horn of Africa nation.
The al Shabaab is the militant wing of the Somalia Islamic Courts Council that took over most of southern Somalia for the second half of 2006, until Somalia’s interim government and its Ethiopian military allies routed the group in a two-week war.
The group, whose leader Aden Hashi Farah Ayro survived a U.S. airstrike in January 2007, is thought by security experts to be leading an insurgency that has killed 6,500 people since last year.
The designation put the Shabaab alongside groups such as al Qaeda, Sri Lanka’s Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam, the Palestinian Hamas group and Lebanon’s Hezbollah.
“I hereby designate that organisation and its aliases as a foreign terrorist organisation,” U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said in a notice published on Tuesday in the U.S. government’s Federal Register.

oh, says the uninformed reader, so it’s the insurgency that is responsible for 6,500 deaths. the causal force is the resistance, but the “experts” aren’t positive who is leading it. hmmm…
and this group is the main AQ link in somalia, huh, and they were routed after taking over the country in 2006? well, by golly, sounds like terrorists to me.
who’d they take over the country from? what? from a network of brutal, much-hated cia-backed warlords who terrorized the citizens, using extortion, rape, and violence to hold onto power? now wait a moment…
actually, since the rout by the u.s. & ethiopia, the union has fragmented, w/ the al-shabaab group taking on the most militant form of the resistance to the occupation.
as an analysis at islam online put it back in january of this year

After the Ethiopian troops took over the country, however, Islamist movement have reformulated both the style and ideology of their operation despite differences.
These movements and nationalist leaders formed new Alliance for Reconstitution of Somalia (ARS) to drive Ethiopian forces out of the country, but disputes over war terminology has split ARS with other movements apart.
Alshabab, the most militant, adopts the Islamic concept of self-defense “Jihad” to describe attacks on invading Ethiopian forces. The ARS prefers the term “liberation” instead.
Sheikh Mukhtar Robow Ali, known as Abu Mansoor, a leader of Alshabab militants, declared that his team is no longer member of the Asmara-based ARS because of their interpretation of Jihad.
Abu Mansoor said the Asmara-based alliance refused to use the Islamic term “Jihad” instead of “Liberation” in order to please Western powers. “ARS respected the western powers, and we respect Allah,” he said.

it makes it easy to target the group since just the mention of the loaded term jihad alone is enough to scare western reactionaries & score propaganda points. so here comes the united states to the rescue. like james swan, from the african affairs dept, told VOA today,

We see this organization as a threat to the Somali people. The organization has conducted a number of attacks whose victims have been principally Somalis. Moreover, the group is an impediment, and it’s violent acts have proven an impediment to the reconciliation process in Somalia that in our view is essential to the restoration of peace, stability and prosperity of the country…

give us a break, the u.s. govt doesn’t give fig about somali people. look at the harm & tragic suffering they’ve put them through again & again. look at the war crimes that have been permitted. what the u.s. wants, by labeling the insurgency as terrorists, is to remove support for the insurgency in order to force their own ideas of reconciliation onto somalia.
as an editorial in garowe online came right out & stated

It can be said that not only has the “international community” forgotten about the Somali crises, but the “international community” has condoned war criminals to take the lead on the path to national restoration. This is the same “international community” that responded with deafening silence as more than 50,000 Ethiopian troops invaded Somalia under the auspices of “protecting” the warlord-led transitional government, which lacks grassroots legitimacy and support as it nears the end of its mandate.

will anyone ever be held accountable? besides those in the insurgency, that is.

Posted by: b real | Mar 19 2008 5:38 utc | 88

shabelle media: Former Somali president accuses the US of involving Somali crisis

In news conference he held today in Mogadishu on Thursday Abdi Qasim Salad Hassan the former Somali president has indicted the United States that it’s behind the violence continue in Somalia.
He also informed that it’s indispensable that Ethiopian troops to withdraw from Somalia and he also appealed to return the fled IDPs to the capital and to put into practice a ceasefire among the warring sides to prevent further civilian causalities.
Abdi Qasim also warned against the additional well-planned killings occur in Mogadishu.
He also declared that there is no any criticism from Somalis to AMISOM forces but he told that AU peace keeping forces didn’t arrive in Somalia with the approval of Somali people.
He also called for the government to release the civilians in its detention centers and asked the civil society to take part the reconciliation of Somalia to sort out the depressing situations in Somalia.
He also inquired to deploy UN peacekeeping forces in Somalia

he also didn’t get coverage in the western media from said news conference

Posted by: b real | Mar 21 2008 4:50 utc | 90

much has been made of the thug/writer david mamet’s conversion to the right. his adoration of the neocons & his hatred of humanism
in these last 20 years indeed for the century it is only a relatively small group of artists who have been committed to social causes & been prepared to pay the price for it
contrary to the mythology of conservative ideologues – the artist more & more have aligned themselves with power & not the people
& the hollowness which is at the core of so much contemporary culture is a reflection of not ‘living’ in this world – of not engaging in conflict with societies that at their heart administer oppression in perhaps the ugliest way since the time of dickens
i’m not being metaphoric. i see it every day in my work. you have a reasonable idea of what the underclass live like from the rigorous work of john pilger & for the great party of the people posting here from the united states are familiar in one way or another of the landsape of the underclass & the working poor
culture today is in essence about power. the mùajority of people who possess that power are criminals or fools or both. if they have an ideology & i personally don’t think they have the intelligence to possess one – is a hatred, a profound hatred of humanism
sure they are sentimental but in the crudest possible way – whether it is a telethon or some reality show based on the redmption of the poor – for the powerful it is a sordid little joke at our expense
as is everything else
i have chosen an alliance with the poor since i was 14 – as much for an instinctive understanding of their resources as well as ideological reasons
they have taught me technical innovation . technical innovation in a way an engineer might understand but most artists cannot
to be truthful – the work of my contemporaries disgust me – if i feel anything at all. walter benjamin always insisted on this – on techinical innovation over “spiritual redemption” which turns so easily to fascism
when i refelct on my own education – i think of mayakovsky, of nazim hikmet, of cesar vallejo, of mahmoud darwich & adonis, of yannis ritsos, odysseus elytis of pablo neruda niconna parra, of the many many latin american poets who have given us not only beauty but they have given us visions & tools. i think of ezrensburger in germany, or of rene char in france & of tadeusz rocewicz of poland. all who have allied themselves with struggle & all who have advanced the technical imperatives of creation
they fed me in 1970
the feed me still
a david mamet is so much shit on newsprint. there are no ideas in his work – just impulses. & even then those impulses have no grandeur
at least when jackson pollock stuck himself in the middle of his paintings like the american indians – there is something approaching grandeur. when we look at the black wall of mark rothko we know this is resourced very much by the experience of being a jew in the 20th century, or we feel what a fucked up world we live in when we see the work of phillip guston or cy twombly
but today alas – they are just scribblers & daubers
i might be very sick in the body but i owe the good health of my mind to my constant collaboration with the oppressed
dominant culture would have both demeaned & degraded what is the steel of the human heart
& i personally devote time here on moon to posts that otherwise might be consecrated to my work on poems but it is clear for all of us to understand the imperatives of communication in a dying culture
& for a david mamet – who might say – that i envy what he has – well i’d reply like theresa russel to art garfunkel in the magisterial film of nicolas roeg, ‘bad timing’ – that i do not want what i have so surely i don not want what he possesses
because real creation suggest the obvious – there is no such thing as possession – all is trace – all is in movement – the ending of one poem is the beginning of the next – & that poem informs the praxis you take on the day to day level. possession & power within this construct is ludicrous.
it is as empty as it appears
david mamet – whose entire oeuvre – isn’t worth a single sentence of james agee – go to your right wing anarchist pals as christopher hitchens has done but i will remind you of a short ditty of vladimir vlamirovich mayakovsy :
eat your turkey
drink your wine
your days are numbered
bourgeois swine

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 21 2008 21:03 utc | 92

rgiap @ 92
beautiful, comrade.

Posted by: ran | Mar 21 2008 23:34 utc | 94

all power to the people – a film by lee lew lee – in 6 parts

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 21 2008 23:57 utc | 96

great post #92

Posted by: anna missed | Mar 22 2008 1:39 utc | 98

& it is this link with creation which makes me utterly oppossed to u s imperialism. & to the imperial exercises of china, too.
but there can be no question what is the main threat to humanity, what constitutes the strongest menace & it remais u s imperialism
for my whole life it has covered the world in blood
that struggle against u s imperialism was the most determining factor of my existence. the person has ebbed & flowed – but my position has only got more whole, not less so
what u s imperialism has done from reagan onwards was to deliberately, slowly & methodically to draw back on all the gifts of th enlightenment & to turn them into mud, or into mush
& that mush – is its culture
& what culture u s imperialism has created has been paralleled by unimaginable crimes. certainly of the historical kind but i imagine it has destroyed ‘spiritually’ destroyed generation after generation of people since the 2nd world war
what little light we see today in the changes in latin america – awkward as they are – are for me the only resonances of a possible humanity
when i think of all the monsters we have been taught to hate for 50 years – always the ‘next adolf hitler’ – whether it was abenz, or castro, or sukarno, or ho or mao or nasser, or quadaffi, por arafat – on & on endlessly the list of these monsters we were taught to hate – yet i find something beautiful in the most aberrant of them
yet the ‘leaders of the free world, those “moral authorities” have got progressively more demonic as we passed through nixon reagan & the bushes, thatcher & blair, such monsters even literature would have a hard time creating – the berlusconis, the sarkoy’s & the kohls are every bit the equal of a cecescaua or a milosovich, or a mobote or a bokassa. they are all the family of papa & bay doc duvalier – with all the evil deeds attached
a sentient human being is obliged to oppose u s imperialism – it is the artist implacable duty to do so

Posted by: remembereringgiap | Mar 23 2008 1:39 utc | 100