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June 2, 2009
Links June 2 09
  • Why'd Obama switch on detainee photos? Maliki went ballistic McClatchy. This story is false and a disgrace for McClatchy. It was clearly planted by the U.S. military. There is actually no quote or whatsoever from the Iraqi government in it. The people mentioned are "two U.S. military officers, a senior defense official and a State Department official" who's say so is taken as non-interested neutral witnesses.

Please add your links, views and news in the comments

Posted by b on June 2, 2009 at 06:05 UTC | Permalink
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Sibel Edmonds’s Project Expose MSM A Heads up, or reminder to stay tuned.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 2 2009 7:26 utc | 1

Related?
DC Madam Palfrey’s D. A. is C.I.A. [and much, much more…]

U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia resigns — Taylor was king of cover-ups
May 29, 2009
U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia resigns — Taylor was king of cover-ups….
On May 28, 2009, Jeffrey Taylor, the U.S. Attorney for the District of Columbia, resigned to take up a position with the accounting firm Ernst & Young. A former counselor to two ethically-tainted Attorneys-General, John Ashcroft and Alberto Gonzales, Taylor has held the position of interim U.S. Attorney since 2006 because his nomination never moved out of the Senate Judiciary Committee. Although Taylor withdrew his nomination last September, he continued to serve as U.S. Attorney for the nation’s capital during the first four months of the Obama administration.
To say that Taylor lorded over a U.S. Attorneys office that was driven by politics over integrity and ethics would be an understatement.
Taylor’s major role was to declare “case closed” for a number of high-profile investigations that the Bush-Cheney administration did not want to see pursued further. Taylor declared U.S. Army Medical Research Institute for Infectious Diseases (USAMRIID) scientist Dr. Bruce Ivins single handedly carried out the post-9/11 anthrax attacks that saw Congress traumatized into passing without debate the draconian Patriot Act. Although there was and continues to be a wealth of evidence pointing to other culprits in the anthrax attacks, Taylor, with a straight face, stated on August 6, 2008, “Based upon the totality of the evidence we had gathered against him, we are confident that Dr. Ivins was the only person responsible for these attacks.”
Of course, Taylor took the opportunity to close the anthrax case because of a fortuitous occurrence for the Bush-Cheney administration: Ivins had allegedly committed “suicide” on July 29, a little over a week before Taylor’s announcement that Ivins was their guy all along. The reported cause of Ivins’ death was an overdose of Tylenol with codeine. Of course, no autopsy was performed.
Another troublesome “cold case” was simply whisked away by Taylor with a simple indictment. Taylor. After eight years of no leads, Taylor indicted illegal El Salvadorean immigrant ne’er-do-well, Ingmar Guandique, for the murder of Washington intern Chandra Levy, who also just so happened to be having an extramarital affair with House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence member Gary Condit. Taylor was never interested in what knowledge of a classified nature Levy may have garnered from Condit, knowledge that prompted her to avoid any direct flights from Dulles International Airport to San Francisco a little over four months from the 9/11 attacks.
A District of Columbia’s public defender appointed to represent Guandique summed up nicely the problems with Taylor’s case: “This flawed investigation, characterized by the many mistakes and missteps of the Metropolitan Police Department and every federal agency that has attempted to solve this case, will not end with the simple issuance of an arrest warrant against Mr. Guandique.”
However, for the Bush-Cheney administration, Taylor’s indictment of a tough who was already serving a 10-year prison sentence for attacking two women in Rock Creek Park in Washington, DC, was just good end-of-term housekeeping.
The third major housekeeping chore accomplished by Taylor was the prosecution of Deborah Jeane Palfrey, the so-called “Washington Madam,” whose Pamela Martin & Associates escort service catered for some 13 years to Washington’s high and mighty, including Senator David Vitter (R-LA), U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID) administrator Randall Tobias, and, as reported by WMR, Halliburton President and CEO Richard Bruce Cheney, who sued the pseudonym Bruce Chiles when engaging the services of Palfrey’s escorts for scatological trysts.
Taylor pursued an arcane Mann Act case against Palfrey, which prohibits interstate trafficking of persons for purposes of prostitution. Taylor also pressured the judge in the case to disallow Palfrey’s attempt to invoke the Classified Information Procedures Act (CIPA) in her case, a move that may have highlighted Pamela Martin’s clandestine work for the CIA. Taylor succeeded in having a jury find Palfrey guilty on counts of money laundering, mail fraud, and racketeering. But fortuitous for Taylor and his bosses, Palfrey, like Ivins, conveniently committed “suicide” by allegedly hanging herself in a shed next to her elderly mother’s house on May 1, 2008. Case closed again.
Taylor represents the extreme politicization of the Justice Department, not for political gain, but for the covering up of major crimes against the American people. While serving as a counselor to Ashcroft and Gonzales, Taylor oversaw the operations of the Office of Intelligence Policy and Review, the unit that implemented, over the objections of a number of career prosecutors, the illegal National Security Agency (NSA) warrantless wiretapping program code named “STELLAR WIND.”
Taylor will now be heading up something called the Fraud Investigation & Dispute Services (FIDS) area within the Americas Assurance practice at Ernst & Young…., i.e. CIA.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 2 2009 7:30 utc | 2

Taylor…
FBI Sweeps Anthrax Under the Rug
Jeff Taylor stated:

The FBI sought out the best experts in the scientific community and, over time, four highly sensitive and specific tests were developed that were capable of detecting the unique qualities of the anthrax used in the 2001 attacks.

This is an outright lie. No special tests were required to assess the genetic heritage of the Ames strain in the envelopes. The Washington Post reported on December 16, 2001 that “only five laboratories so far have been found to have spores with perfect genetic matches to those in the Senate letters.”
The distinguishing feature of the anthrax that killed five people in 2001 is not related to its genes. What made that anthrax unique was that it was highly weaponized. Anthrax is a common pathogen found in the soil in many places. It doesn’t become lethal unless produced in such a way that it behaves like a gas, floating easily in the air and deep into a victim’s lungs.

Posted by: Uncle $cam | Jun 2 2009 7:40 utc | 3

I believe the story on Maliki objecting to the publishing of the photos. Rembember that he was responsible for Iraqui policy whilst Abu Ghraib happened.

Posted by: outsider | Jun 2 2009 9:39 utc | 4

What Really Happened in Tiananmen Square?
The world’s media is gearing up for an anti-China campaign on the eve of the aniversary of the so called June 4th massacre in Tiananmen Square. We are supposed to ignore the hypocrisy and double standards of the mainstream media and forget the crimes of other nations: More than 1 million killed in Iraq, the Bloody Sunday massacre in Northern Ireland, the 2/28 massacre of 28000 people in Taiwan, the Indonesian massacres etc. etc. Which country has a clear conscience.
Besides the hypocrisy, do we even know what happened in Tiananmen square. The article I’ve posted a link to below raises quite a few questions and I can raise some more. If the demonstrators were peaceful how come there were military vehicles set on fire and how did Chinese soldiers die. Some witnesses claim to have seen a number of armed demonstrators. Could a demonstrator have started the violence. What was the CIA’s role in all of this besides releasing the initial false figures of the numbers killed to the press.
Why do the press never mention that the authorities had negotiated to let the students leave Tiananmen square peacefully. The fighting occured in the streets around Tiananmen not in Tiananmen square itself so where is the media’s evidence of a massacre within the square itself.
A BBC reporter claimed that a demonstrator standing right next to her was shot dead and that she tripped over him. She also had a camera man standing right next to her but he failed to capture any evidence of this.
The media claimed that tanks ran over demonstrators but there is no evidence of this. There is evidence of a tank trying to avoid running a demonstrator over. Of course some innocent people were killed in the streets around Tiananmen square but violence once started can quickly spiral out of control. I’d like to see a proper investigation into what really happened but obviously not by the mainstream media whores.
Do We Really Know What Happened in Tiananmen Square

Posted by: Charles | Jun 2 2009 11:01 utc | 5

Here is a link to the original BBC report on Tiananmen square. Note how the reporter said trucks caught on fire but didn’t say how. BBC reporter on the scene in a street near Tiananmen Square

Posted by: Charles | Jun 2 2009 11:19 utc | 6

@Outsider – Rembember that he was responsible for Iraqui policy whilst Abu Ghraib happened.
Torture in Abu Ghraib happened in 2003/2004. Maliki was in the de-baathification commission before he became prime minister in 2006. Politically he has nothing to fear. As for outrage over new pictures, I do not think there would be much in Iraq. People know exactly what happened.

Posted by: b | Jun 2 2009 11:31 utc | 7

In all fairness, I don’t need some reporter to tell me why Obama has switched his stance on the detainee photos. Wallowing in the detail of such rationalizations is wonkish obfuscation that will impede you from seeing the forest for the trees.You have to love that euphemism…..detainee. It sounds so innocuous, doesn’t it? Anyway, doesn’t Obama say one thing and do another? Hasn’t that been his modus oprandi thus far? Didn’t people like me and Malooga say this would be the case? As Sam said in the other thread, actions speak louder than words. The Obamians would have us do otherwise. We should pity him, or spend one day in his shoes. Nonsense. As if someone with any integrity would ever be hand-picked to be a sloganeer for Empire.
For the record, when I say Obama, I mean who, and what Obama represents, not the man himself. He, himself, is nothing more than a political whore selling his services to Empire for a future of power and fortune. He’s told what to say and do, and in return, he’s a lifetime member of the club.

Posted by: Obamageddon | Jun 2 2009 12:58 utc | 8

McClatchy has another propaganda piece up today, re: missiles & terrorists in Venezuala.

Venezuela’s recent purchase of the most lethal shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missiles in the Russian arsenal is sharpening U.S. concerns that parts of President Hugo Chávez’s massive weapons buildup could wind up in the hands of terrorists or guerrillas in neighboring Colombia.

Posted by: Jeremiah | Jun 2 2009 14:10 utc | 9

Jeremiah Well I can understand the fears of the US officials. They can’t risk other nations’ weapons ending up in the hands of terrorist as that would be competition. Weapons from the US end up in the hands of terrorists more than those from any other nation and the US wants to maintain their leading position.

Posted by: Charles | Jun 2 2009 14:20 utc | 10

The Dawning Age of Obama as a Potentially Teach-able Moment for The Left

There has been a lot of left-wing teeth-gnashing over the policies of the United States’ fake-progressive president Barack Obama. Left-progressives’ anger with the Obama administration is understandable given the new White House’s actions to (for example):
* Significantly expand the reach and intensity of imperial violence (replete with the mass slaughter of civilians and the related escalation of targeted assassinations) in South Asia.
* Promote a notorious assassin and death-squad leader (Lt. General Stanley A McChrystal – former chief of the military’s special Joint Special Operations Command) to the position of Commander of U.S. Forces in the newly merged “Af-Pak” war theater. [1]
* Sustain the criminal occupation of Iraq beneath rhetoric of withdrawal. [2]
* Increase “defense” (empire) spending, consistent with the following statement in a report issued by the leading Wall Street investment firm Morgan Stanley one day after Obama’s presidential election victory: “As we understand it, Obama has been advised and agrees that there is no peace dividend.”[3]
* Revive military commissions.
* Continue the practice of renditions.
* Maintain secret prisons for persons “held on a short-term, transitory basis.”
* Continue the unspeakable torture of prisoners by an “extrajudicial terror squad” (Jeremy Scahill’s description of the Pentagon’s sadistic “Immediate Reaction Force” in Cuba) at Guantanamo Bay. [4]
* Advance the policy of “indefinite detention” (potentially permanent incarceration) for Guantanamo prisoners for whom no legally compelling evidence can be marshaled.
* Intimidate England (with a threat to withhold intelligence data on potential terrorist attacks!) into preventing a Guantanamo victim from having his day in court on the Bush administration’s torture practices. [5]
* Sustain the Bush administration’s abrogation of habeas corpus rights in regard to the roughly 600 “enemy combatants” kept at the Bagram Air Base in Afghanistan (where people rendered out of other countries like Yemen and England can be considered “war [-zone]” prisoners!. [6]
* Advance nauseatingly specious legal and moral arguments (“better to look forward than backward”) to prevent serious federal investigation of the Bush administration’s human rights crimes.
* Sustain George W. Bush’s domestic wiretapping program.
* Invoke the “state secrets” (akin to the divine right of kings) doctrine to prevent disclosure of evidence in response to lawsuits emerging from Bush era rendition and surveillance policies.
* Suppress photographic evidence of U.S. torture practices.
* Justify all this and more in the name of the supposed “global war on terror” that was supposedly launched in legitimate defense against the supposedly unprovoked jetliner attacks of September 11, 2001.
* Disregard qualified progressive defenders of civil liberties and human rights from consideration for appointment to succeed Supreme Justice David H. Souter and to thereby counter the hard right leanings of the court’s conservative majority. [7]
* Send clear signals of intent to roll back and partially privatize Social Security and Medicare benefits.
* Betray campaign pledges to renegotiate the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) to insert stronger labor and environmental protections. [7A]
* Betray campaign pledges of serious intent to advance an elementary and overdue labor law reform (the Employee Free Choice Act).
* Force and approve an automobile industry re-structuring that drastically cuts domestic autoworkers’ jobs, wages and benefits while subsidizing General Motors’ further shifting of jobs abroad. [8]
* Advance a tepid, business-friendly health care “reform” that leaves the leading parasitic insurance corporations (major campaign sponsors of his) in power.
* “Methodically erase single-payer advocates from the picture” (Glen Ford) of health care reform despite the fact that a majority of Americans have long favored a single-payer (“Medicare for all”) health insurance system. [9]
* Spend trillions of federal dollars on taxpayer handouts to giant Wall Street firms who spent millions on his campaign and who drove the economy over the cliff. Obama’s Wall Street bailout rejects the elementary bank nationalizations and public financial restructuring that are required to put the nation’s credit system on a sound and socially responsible basis, choosing instead to guarantee the financial, insurance, and real estate industries’ toxic, hyper-inflated assets while keeping existing Wall Street management in place. It amounts to a giant effort to “keep perpetrators afloat” (liberal economist James Gailbraith) through a scheme in which the government takes more than 90 percent of the risk but private investors reap at least half the reward.
I could go on. It’s not a pretty story. And it’s only going to get worse.
…
Infuriating as these policy actions (and inactions) and this corporate sponsorship may be to people of the actual Left (a different category than the broad-brush “Left” used in “mainstream” U.S. media), however, serious progressives have no business being surprised or disappointed by Obama’s presidential trajectory. Candidate Obama made his “deeply conservative” [10] corporate-imperial centrism clear to those willing to undertake elementary investigations of his political and ideological record. As Scott Horton noted last March on Antiwar.com, “those who bought into the slogans ‘Hope’ and ‘Change’ last fall should have read the fine print. We were warned.”[11]
There’s another and better (or at least more pleasing) reason, moreover, for radicals to temper their angst over the “betrayals” and other transgressions of the new White House. There is something to be gained on the longer path to radical change from experiencing all this terrible if predictable – and in fact predicted – policy under the nation’s new chief executive.
The dawning Age of Obama is potentially a great “teach-able moment” for left thinkers, communicators, activists who are ready and willing to take up the challenges of productive and progressive demystification and rebellion.
Here are five (my short list) teach-able and Left lessons from the emerging Obama era…
…

Posted by: b real | Jun 2 2009 14:53 utc | 11

quote:
“Chinese assets are very safe,” Geithner said in response to a question after a speech at Peking University (..)
His answer drew loud laughter from his student audience, reflecting scepticism in China about the wisdom of a developing country accumulating a vast stockpile of foreign reserves instead of spending the money to raise living standards at home.
reuters, june 1
Who laughs in public at Turbo Tim in the US? Normally, free expression at home is allowed and can be quite wild (“entre nous”), and it is visitors / dignitaries from elsewhere in formal, or semi-formal occasions, who are treated with respect (or silent disagreement.)
The US has a big problem.

Posted by: Tangerine | Jun 2 2009 16:02 utc | 12

r.i.p. to an influential deep ecologist
Thomas Berry, environmentalist-priest, dies
Thomas Berry, renowned cultural historian, dies

Posted by: b real | Jun 2 2009 16:21 utc | 13

Uncle$cam @ 2,3:
Wayne Madsen has been covering Debra Jean Palfrey for over a year. He seems to be credited within the story (WMR = Wayne Madsen Reports), but not in the links. If you’re interested in a fuller list of DJP’s Washington clients, or Cheney’s kinky personal tastes, check out Wayne Madsen’s archives.

Posted by: senecal | Jun 2 2009 16:24 utc | 14

What surprised me about the release of the torture photos story was that Obo ever agreed to let them be made public. Those photos are political, legal, image, dynamite. Worse than dynamite, nukulear or tsunami like..How could he be so naive?
There is plenty of room for B.O “transparency” elsewhere, whether fake, genuine or in-between. I think it doesn’t matter much exactly who put pressure on B.O. to reverse, it will in any case have been an avalanche from all across the board – old guard, previous gvmt., advisors, finance, military, image ppl, etc., maybe even some outside the US.

Posted by: Tangerine | Jun 2 2009 16:30 utc | 15

I couldn’t agree more. O’geddon…
And I don’t know about you, but whenever I see our President and First Lady enjoying themselves like rock stars in front of the camera, I’m reminded that they have no intention whatsoever of wanting to live the modest life as our public servants. I used to to think that Obama don’t want to give up any of the ill-gotten, anti-American, unconstitutional presidential powers that Bush so ruthlessly accumulated over the years only because he wants to get away with being just as sleazy of a criminal as Bush was. But now I think it’s also because he wants the freedom to live the high life as a bloody royal.
Look at it this way, if we as Americans wanted a royal as a president, we might just as well have voted for one while sitting comfortably in front of the TeeVee, instead of while standing tirelessly in long lines at the voting booth. And if we as Americans wanted a royal as a president, then our forefathers should have never fought and died for our independence from Great Britain. And if any of forefathers were still around today, believe me, they’d go absolutely ballistic just knowing that our Presidential Couple could easily pass for King and Queen of Great Britain!

Posted by: Cynthia | Jun 2 2009 16:51 utc | 16

US combat troops to leave all Iraqi cities-Odierno
The amazing thing is that the US might actually be going to keep its word. Odierno wouldn’t be saying that of his own free choice.

Posted by: alex_no | Jun 2 2009 17:08 utc | 17

thnx for links b-real

Posted by: Cloud | Jun 2 2009 19:15 utc | 18

alex_no @17
I read a news article last week which said the US military was redrawing the boundaries of many of the Iraqi cities so they could stay where they were without being ‘in the city.’

Posted by: Ensley | Jun 2 2009 21:34 utc | 19

redrawing the boundaries of many of the Iraqi cities
That’s mainly Camp Victory that has to be redefined as outside Baghdad. You can’t expect them to give that up straight away.
But there are many in the military, including Odierno, who don’t want to go even that far. That is why it is a significant issue.

Posted by: alex_no | Jun 2 2009 23:16 utc | 20

Greg Palast breaks down Grand Theft Auto

Here’s the scheme: Rattner is demanding the bankruptcy court simply wipe away the money GM owes workers for their retirement health insurance. Cash in the insurance fund would be replaced by GM stock. The percentage may be 17 per cent of GM’s stock – or 25 per cent. Whatever, 17 or 25 per cent is worth, well … just try paying for your dialysis with 50 shares of bankrupt auto stock.
Yet Citibank and Morgan, says Rattner, should get their whole enchilada — $6 billion right now and in cash — from a company that can’t pay for auto parts or worker eye exams.

must read the whole piece. is this what’s really going down with the GM bankruptcy?
the war against the worker, the laborer, the poor, the dwindling middle class, has become so overt, so merciless, so reckless, one can only surmise creating the environment for large scale civil unrest in this country is part of the plan.
while arnie moves to cut all welfare for cali, the dems are flipping their base face down telling us to relax, change takes time, while the financier fist fucking continues unabated.
maybe parviz can explain to me one more time why i should put any kind of trust that Oscamya is going to do any thing other than provide me a taxbreak for lubricant, to minimize chafing from the vigorous, relentless raping of the most vulnerable segments of our population, and the world’s.

Posted by: Lizard | Jun 3 2009 4:17 utc | 21

I’m on your side, Lizard —
so since Obama can’t be trusted to fix the system, what are we going to do about it?
Maybe get every progressive in the U.S. to move to Detroit? There’re thousands of rotting houses there, cities all ready to go and make over into a new vision of the U.S. —
and with the right demographics, and right movement, we could make political history: create a progressive bastion within the U.S., make it a conscious demonstration of the truth and value of a better way of living.
I’ll bring the bamboo, and will happily serve as the Taiwan liaison.

Posted by: china_hand2 | Jun 3 2009 11:18 utc | 22

The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord, wiki) has seen to it that Presidents can become prez. (or prime minister, etc.) on populist image, by-passing the ordinary or usual political rise, vetting, expressed clear policies, allegiances, etc.
Recently, Tony Blair, Nicolas Sarkozy and now Obama, are all ppl who could not become famous in any other way, could not acquire power / financial advantage in other areas, such as in show biz, business, real consequent enterprises, academe, science, sports, the arts or even finance (which tends to stay hidden under the radar.)
They perceived the deliquescence of politics and set out to exploit it, for only two reasons –
-fame which is needed to fuel narcissism, – money, not earned, but taken as it is offered.
Of course the cash is small potatoes but the authority, attendant admiration, and rubbing shoulders with the hyper rich, makes up for it. Up to a point.
Stepping on a luxury yacht, showing off Mont-Blanc pens, new tinsel, a new wife, is orgasmic. The servant, your pliable pol, will posture and declaim and make promises…
They were all voted in.
Berlusconi, for ex, with his media empire and riches, his lies and idiocies, is revered by a large number of Italians. They think he is cool, pray for him in church, and would like to be in his shoes. They are living in a soap.

Posted by: Tangerine | Jun 3 2009 16:40 utc | 23

The Society of the Spectacle (Guy Debord, wiki) has seen to it that Presidents can become prez. (or prime minister, etc.) on populist image, by-passing the ordinary or usual political rise,
The “spectacle” isn’t about the illusion of power and the adumbration of some more real power in the images of pop culture, or what-not. The spectacle is not epiphenomenal. The spectacle, as debord used it, is the social relations determined by the capitalist mode of production which are now mediated by the spectacle of advanced communications technology and surveillance.
Debord was a marxist. He wasn’t another version of Marshall McLuhan.

Posted by: slothrop | Jun 3 2009 17:13 utc | 24

Lizard, with the bankruptcy the pensions will the thrown onto the Pension Benefit Guarantee Program. This means that We will be bailing out GM yet again.
The top 9 of 10 US auto factories for production/hour, cost were all GM or Ford, the exception was a GM Toyota factory. A GM employee costs $2 more per hour versus Honda, Toyota or Nissan workers. ($27 v $29/hour) The $70 figure you’ve all heard is due to Sloan not funding their pensions in the 70’s and 80’s.
I think Obama will use this crisis to appeal for a simple single system. He won’t press but, I do think(hope) he will throw it out there. I believe the simplicity of a single payer will save doctors a fortune in overhead and real burdensome time and staff costs incurred by our current buffet system.
Someone should compare the performance of USAA versus any private competitor. USAA kicks ass and is profitable and offer incredible service. Geico has some terrific commercials but…

Posted by: scott | Jun 3 2009 17:37 utc | 25

I think Obama will use this crisis to appeal for a simple single system.
No way. The Senate, which is democratically controlled, has excluded single-payer advocates from the debate table. Healthcare and Insurance contributed greatly to Obama’s campaign. They will see a positive return on their investment. Brand Obama will keep their positions secure. What’s the opposite of Hope and Change? Obama.

Posted by: Obamageddon | Jun 3 2009 18:41 utc | 26

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