In Response To The Story About Mossad Planning To Kill Prime Minister Erdogan of Turkey...

As soon as I heard it, I figured it was too obvious and had to be fabricated.  In fact, I had a pretty good guess who by.  I don't know enough about Turkish politics to comment on that, except that there have been elections (this week?) and these may even be among the reasons Erdogan said what he did in Switzerland - a show of strength, just as the Gaza attacks over Christmas could be interpreted as such in the run-up to Israel's own elections... but Mossad? Kill the guy who had openly criticised Israel at Davos earlier this year, and walked out?  A Head of State?  Am I also right in thinking he's rather right-wing? 

No.  It's never that simple.  So I decided to look for the story on a mainstream source, mostly because I like the person's work who brought it to my attention, and I wanted to make him think... it is not for me to teach or preach, but as an atheist from the UK and not a Muslim from Asia, I can afford to be less biased about Israel. 

The validity of Press TV as a source was called into question this week, right here on this group, and after this, I'm forced to assume it is a biased source until I can prove otherwise.  And if I can, I intend to.  Likewise Infowars... sensationalism and sometimes complete bull.

As a British atheist, I maintain that I abhor and condemn what Israel's foreign policy does to it's neighbours, and there is no doubt in my mind that intelligence agencies such as Mossad or the CIA, or even on the military SAS, could and would carry out high profile political assassinations... but this is simply about distorted news.

I could find no mention of the report other than those which had sourced it from the Turkish branch of Press TV.

But I found this at The Guardian : 

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2008/may/04/turkey.thefarright

Mystery of a killer elite fuels unrest in Turkey

Arrest of 47 people over alleged coup plot sparks fears of hidden ultra-right network

Jason Burke

in Istanbul The Observer, Sunday 4 May 2008

It has the elements of a thriller: a shadowy group of right-wing former soldiers, a mafia don, extremist lawyers and politicians; hand-grenades in a rucksack; plots to kill the Prime Minister and a Nobel-prize winning writer; allegedly planted evidence and falsified wire taps.

Even the name of the villains - the Ergenekon network - has an airport paperback flavour, and the stakes involved are high: the stability of one of the world's most strategically important countries. This highly charged political reality is splitting Turkey.

In the coming days the Ergenekon investigation will reach its climax. According to newspaper reports, a long-awaited indictment will be issued by the state prosecutor. After successive waves of arrests, 47 people are in custody. They include senior figures in the ultra-right-wing Workers' Party, a dozen retired senior army officers, journalists and a lawyer accused of launching legal attacks that drove Nobel award-winning writer Orhan Pamuk from his homeland.

Crimes being blamed on Ergenekon include a series of murderous bomb blasts, a grenade attack on a newspaper, the murder of an Italian bishop and the killing last year of Turkish Armenian journalist Hrant Dink - all aimed, investigators believe, at creating a climate of terror and chaos propitious to a military coup that would depose Turkey's moderate Islamist government.

The coup attempt has revealed deep divisions in Turkey's 73 million-strong population over the country's identity: pro-European or anti-European, fiercely nationalist, ethnically homogeneous and militaristic, or globalised and pro-Western, more or less Islamic, more or less sunk in historical bitterness and dark conspiracy theories.

'The cleavage is deep: every institution, every social class, everybody is divided,' said Professor Murat Belge of Bigli University, Istanbul, an analyst. 'I am deeply apprehensive about what is going on now and what might happen.'

But for Mehmet Demirlek, a lawyer defending a colleague accused of being a key member of Ergenekon, the allegations are 'imaginary'. 'There is not a shred of truth in them,' he said. 'This is 100 per cent political. It has all been cooked up by the government and by the imperialist powers, the CIA, Mossad and the Jewish lobby and the European Union to eliminate Turkish nationalism. There is no such thing as Ergenekon.' His imprisoned client, Kemal Kerincsiz, told The Observer in an interview prior to his arrest he was a 'patriot fighting the disintegration of the nation'.

For Fethiye Cetin, a lawyer representing Hrant Dink's family, Ergenekon has 'existed for years'. 'A small part of what has been previously hidden is being exposed. Call it the "deep state".'

An investigation was launched by state prosecutors after 27 hand-grenades, said to be the make used by the military, were found in a home in a rundown part of Istanbul last June. Investigators claim that they later uncovered an underground network dedicated to extremist nationalist agitation.

Wire taps led to further finds of explosives, weapons and documents listing security arrangements of senior political and military figures and death lists. The papers supposedly proving Ergenekon - the name of a mythic mountain in Asia where the ancestors of the Turkic peoples escaped the Mongols - was set up in 1999 as a clandestine and violent organisation aimed of maintaining a reactionary, purist vision of a strong, militaristic Turkey, the heritage, the extremists believed, of the founder of the nation, Kemal Ataturk.

The plotters tap 'into a psyche that is based on a new and extreme nationalism', said Cengiz Candar, one of Turkey's most prominent journalists. 'The idea is that to preserve Turkey it is necessary and legitimate to resist in any way. And anyone who is pro-European, liberal, who argues for increased rights for minorities and so on is a traitor.'

According to Candar, this new nationalism is the result of a coincidence of factors: the difficulties of Turkey's accession to the European Union, soul-searching over nation identity generated by the debate on Europe, the emergence of a strong, semi-autonomous Kurdish state in post-Saddam Iraq with all the potential implications that has for Turkey's large Kurdish population, and, perhaps most importantly, the continuing electoral success of the AKP, the Justice and Development party, the moderate Islamist party led by Recep Tayyip Erdogan to power in 2002. 'With no way of ousting them through democratic means, other means become attractive to the extremist nationalists. This country has a long tradition of such actions,' said Candar.

Turkey's political history has been marked by interventions by the army, each preceded by a period of violent instability and each justified by the need to preserve the constitution and the nation. The repeated electoral success of the AKP, its social and economic policies, its pro-European, pro-free market stance, the growth of newly wealthy, religiously conservative middle classes who vote for Erdogan and his colleagues and the party's break with Turkey's fiercely secular ideology - all threaten the nation's powerful military and bureaucratic establishment.

A legal bid to ban the party - on the grounds that it wants to impose Sharia law on Turkey and thus overturn the constitution - is one tactic, AKP party loyalists say. Violence and the activities of Ergenekon is another. 'How long are these people going to keep their power when it is incompatible with a European, fully democratic Turkey?' asked Belge. 'And how big is Ergenekon? Who are they? How high does it go?'

No official military spokesman would comment but General Haldun Solmazturk, who retired three years ago, told The Observer 'the Ergenekon group is trivial, barely worthy of attention', saying that though 'it was possible' a few military officers might have become involved in the group, the vast majority of Turkish soldiers were 'committed to maintaining democracy'.

Solmazturk, who said that his own views 'reflected those of most senior soldiers', insisted 'there are far more grave problems facing Turkey than a handful of right-wing crazies'. Instead, he said, it was the government that worried him. 'The AKP are a concern. There is no such thing as moderate Islam. Either a government is influenced by religion or it isn't. And if it is, then it is not secular and not democratic,' he said. 'We want to move democracy forward, they want to move it back and we are approaching a point of no return.'

In a rundown working-class suburb of Istanbul, far from the tourist sights of the historic centre, the deputy chairman of the Nationalist Action Party in the city, Nazmi Celenk, made an effort to show his party's moderate side. 'In Turkey we are on the front line of the clash of civilisations,' he said. 'We are the natural allies of America and Britain in this region. Our future is in Europe - but not necessarily in the European Union.'

Yet Celenk was critical of last week's reform of Turkey's strict rules on 'insulting Turkishness', pushed through parliament in the face of fierce resistance from the 70 deputies from his own party. If he was in power, Celenk said, the tight laws on freedom of expression would be maintained. And, if he had the power, he would invade Syria and split the state between Turkey and Iraq. The violent Kurdish activism in the south-east of his country would be solved 'in 24 hours'.

A street away, a group of mechanics and local shopkeepers played backgammon. They said they were worried by rising crime, drug use and low wages, but would not vote for the nationalists. 'They try and cause fights between us to get votes,' Hikmet, a bus owner, said.

Fethiye Cetin, the Dink family lawyer, is still optimistic despite the tensions. She discovered her own minority roots - an Armenian grandmother - at the age of 25. 'This period is the peak of aggressive nationalism in Turkey, but there is still peace,' she said in her small office on a hill above the blue waters of the Sea of Marmara. 'But everyone always focuses on the negative side and never on the tens of millions who live together without any trouble at all.'

Victim of the plot?

Hrant Dink was a 52-year-old journalist, assassinated in January 2007. As co-founder of Agos, a newspaper published in both Turkish and Armenian, he became a prominent member of the Armenian minority in Turkey and pushed for Turkish-Armenian reconciliation and human rights.

Dink was shot in Istanbul by Ogün Samast, a 17-year old Turkish nationalist. 100,000 mourners turned out to Dink's funeral to chant: 'We are all Armenians'.

*************************************

If I turn out to be wrong, and the Ergenokon email surfaces as clear evidence, I'll write a written apology to Press TV and post one here to whom it may concern, if any offence is caused...  but diggers, please be careful with those sources.  Everyone has some bias.

Police identify 200 children as potential terrorists

Exclusive by Mark Hughes Crime correspondent

The number was revealed to The Independent by Sir Norman Bettison, the chief constable of West Yorkshire Police and Britain's most senior officer in charge of terror prevention.

He said the "Channel project" had intervened in the cases of at least 200 children who were thought to be at risk of extremism, since it began 18 months ago. The number has leapt from 10 children identified by June 2008.

The programme, run by the Association of Chief Police Officers, asks teachers, parents and other community figures to be vigilant for signs that may indicate an attraction to extreme views or susceptibility to being "groomed" by radicalisers. Sir Norman, whose force covers the area in which all four 7 July 2005 bombers grew up, said: "What will often manifest itself is what might be regarded as racism and the adoption of bad attitudes towards 'the West'.

"One of the four bombers of 7 July was, on the face of it, a model student. He had never been in trouble with the police, was the son of a well-established family and was employed and integrated into society.

"But when we went back to his teachers they remarked on the things he used to write. In his exercise books he had written comments praising al-Qa'ida. That was not seen at the time as being substantive. Now we would hope that teachers might intervene, speak to the child's family or perhaps the local imam who could then speak to the young man."

The Channel project was originally piloted in Lancashire and the Metropolitan Police borough of Lambeth in 2007, but in February last year it was extended to West Yorkshire, the Midlands, Bedfordshire and South Wales. Due to its success there are now plans to roll it out to the rest of London, Thames Valley, South Yorkshire, Greater Manchester, Leicestershire, Nottinghamshire, and West Sussex.

The scheme, funded by the Home Office, involves officers working alongside Muslim communities to identify impressionable children who are at risk of radicalisation or who have shown an interest in extremist material – on the internet or in books.

Once identified the children are subject to a "programme of intervention tailored to the needs of the individual". Sir Norman said this could involve discussions with family, outreach workers or the local imam, but he added that "a handful have had intervention directly by the police".

He stressed that the system was not being used to target the Muslim community. "The whole ethos is to build a relationship, on the basis of trust and confidence, with those communities," said Sir Norman.

"With the help of these communities we can identify the kids who are vulnerable to the message and influenced by the message. The challenge is to intervene and offer guidance, not necessarily to prosecute them, but to address their grievance, their growing sense of hate and potential to do something violent in the name of some misinterpretation of a faith.

"We are targeting criminals and would-be terrorists who happen to be cloaking themselves in Islamic rhetoric. That is not the same as targeting the Muslim community."

Nor was it criminalising children, he added. "The analogy I use is that it is similar to our well-established drugs intervention programmes. Teachers in schools are trained to identify pupils who might be experimenting with drugs, take them to one side and talk to them. That does not automatically mean that these kids are going to become crack cocaine or heroin addicts. The same is true around this issue."

But Inayat Bunglawala of the Muslim Council of Britain said the police ran the risk of infringing on children's privacy. He warned: "There is a difference between the police being concerned or believing a person may be at risk of recruitment and a person actually engaging in unlawful, terrorist activity.

"That said, clearly in recent years some people have been lured by terrorist propaganda emanating from al-Qa'ida-inspired groups. It would seem that a number of Muslim youngsters have been seduced by that narrative and all of us, including the Government, have a role to play in making sure that narrative is seen for what it is: a nihilistic one which offers no hope, only death and destruction."

A Home Office spokesman said: "We are committed to stopping people becoming or supporting terrorists or violent extremists. The aim of the Channel project is to directly support vulnerable people by providing supportive interventions when families, communities and networks raise concerns about their behaviour."

About the United Nations?

Thoughts on the UN?

A. ~ A Completely Worthless Institution where nothing of substance ever gets done

 

 8

B. ~ The UN is necessary to keep Western Hegemony in check

 

 1

C. ~ The UN only exists to give a platform for lesser countries to bitch about Zionism

 

 0

D. ~ The UN is place where all countries can talk to each other. Where wars are prevented and world issues get solved. It is an important institution!

 

 3

E. ~ A & C

 

 3

F. ~ B & D

 

 3

By the end of the Second World War (WWII), Europe and Japan were in shambles. The United Nations (UN) was established after WWII to prevent war from breaking out again. It was not founded to govern over the myriad nations of the earth, but rather to preserve the sovereignty of each through international oversight and action. All nations could have a seat in the General Assembly, but only five nations would comprise the UN Security Council: the United States (US), France, the United Kingdom (UK), the Soviet Union (USSR), and China. The UN Charter established a body that would provide a forum for communication between sovereign nations. It also authorized the collective use of force in defense of the international status quo.

http://www.wincustomize.com/articles.aspx?aid=174289&c=1

NEW YORK - President Bush yesterday attempted to shame the United Nations into action against Baghdad by hammering out a case that Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein's continued defiance threatens to make the world body as irrelevant as the League of Nations.

"Are Security Council resolutions to be honored and enforced, or cast aside without consequence?" the president said. "Will the United Nations serve the purpose of its founding, or will it be irrelevant?"

http://goliath.ecnext.com/coms2/summary_0199-2168355_ITM

The USA pays 30% of the total UN budget.  Why?

http://www.pbs.org/newshour/bb/international/july-dec00/holbrooke_12-22.html


Where do I stand?  I say close it down.  It's a joke.  How long have they been talking about a solution for Darfur?  Basically today's UN exists solely for eastern countries to get together and blame all their failures on mythical Zionism and the Jews.  While comical (and slightly pathetic) it's simply not worth the money to keep it open.  I wish my country (the USA) would pull all it's funding and concentrate on making alliances only with countries that share our values of personal liberty and freedom.

What say you?

THE CONCEPT OF A NOBLE LIE

The noble lie is a concept originated by Plato as described in The Republic. However, the concept has far greater scope and has been used by many commentators to talk about much more modern issues in politics.

Plato’s ‘Noble Lie’, albeit arguably a notion of ideological propaganda, is often where the debate begins concerning ‘expertise’. Plato did not believe most people were clever enough to look after their own and society’s best interest, so the few ‘clever’ people of the world needed to lead the rest of the flock. Therefore, the idea was born that only the elite should know the truth in its complete form and the rulers, Plato said, must tell the people of the city ‘The Noble Lie’ to keep them passive and content, without the risk of upheaval and unrest.

Strauss noted that thinkers of the first rank, going back to Plato, had raised the problem of whether good and effective politicians could be completely truthful and still achieve the necessary ends of their society. By implication, Strauss asks his readers to consider whether it is true that noble lies have no role at all to play in uniting and guiding the people.

Aristotle believed that politics should be a noble pursuit to which ethics is an introduction. The last chapter of the Nicomachean Ethics states “Since then our predecessors have left this matter of legislation uninvestigated, it will perhaps be better ourselves to inquire into it, and indeed into the whole question of the management of a state

Is it ok to lie to make people feel good about something, like the economy?

This is a re-post thing - for more good comments - LINK

Chinese Spy Who Defected to U.S. Tells All

Chinese spy who defected tells all

Says mission is to 'control'

by Bill Gertz for The Washington Times

Thursday March 19th 2009

A veteran Chinese intelligence officer who defected to the United States says that his country's civilian spy service spends most of its time trying to steal secrets overseas but also works to bolster Beijing's Communist Party rule by repressing religious and political dissent internally.

"In some sense you can say that intelligence work between two countries is just like war but without the fire," Li Fengzhi told The Washington Times in an interview aided by an interpreter.

Mr. Li worked for years as an Ministry of State Security intelligence officer inside China before defecting to the United States, where is he awaiting a response to his request for political asylum. He gave a rare, detailed interview to The Times on Sunday regarding the activities of the MSS, China's Communist-controlled civilian spy agency.

His prior work as a Chinese spy was confirmed to The Times by a Western government source familiar with his defection. The source spoke on the condition of anonymity because of the sensitivity of Mr. Li's case.

Mr. Li told The Times that the MSS focuses on both counterintelligence - working against foreign intelligence agencies - and the collection of secrets and technology.

The MSS, however, is unique from other nations' intelligence services in that it is patterned after the former Soviet Union's KGB political police. Its most important mission is "to control the Chinese people to maintain the rule of the Communist Party," he added.

Wang Baodong, a spokesman for the Chinese Embassy in Washington, did not address Mr. Li's comments directly but repeated past Chinese government statements regarding its intelligence activities.

"Allegations of China conducting spying activities against the United States are groundless and unwarranted," he said Wednesday. "China never engages itself in activities that will harm other countries' national interests."

Mr. Wang said communist rule in China produced historic economic and social progress and that China has contributed to a more secure world. "This is a fact no one can deny," Mr. Wang said.

On those who leave the party, Mr. Wang said "there are also a handful of people who betray their faith and leave the party, whose acts as well as some people's political lies will never shadow the great feats of the party."

Mr. Li said he left China's intelligence services to protest the agency's role in government repression of political dissidents and religious groups that are outside of the ruling communist system.

The MSS, mainly a foreign intelligence service, is "deeply" involved in domestic repression of nonofficial Christian churches and the outlawed Falun Gong religious group, Mr. Li said.

"The Ministry of State Security is actually not doing things for the security of the country, but rather they spend a lot of effort to control the people, the dissidents, the lower-class Chinese people, and make these people suffer and also make their life miserable," he said.

In the interview, he also said:

• China's spy agency is focused on sending spies to infiltrate the U.S. intelligence community, and also on collecting secrets and technology from the United States. "China spends a tremendous effort to send out spies to important countries like the U.S. to collect information," Mr. Li said.

• China is censoring the Internet to prevent the population from knowing about what occurs outside the country.

• An internal MSS manual that is kept secret from most officers outlines the primary role of the service as the promotion of Communist Party's interests.

• Ongoing cooperation between the CIA and FBI and the MSS in countering international terrorism can be constructive, but U.S. agencies need to be cautious because the MSS is mainly an organ of the Chinese Communist Party, and does not directly serve the interests of the Chinese nation or people, he said.

Mr. Li said he worked in the MSS department in charge of gathering economic, political and technical information in Eastern Europe and Central Asia. Some of the work involved targeting and recruiting foreign nationals who visit China.

He was born in 1968 in northern China and was first recruited into a provincial Chinese intelligence service before being promoted to the MSS in Beijing after several years.

Two groups in China that are a main focus of the MSS are unofficial Christian churches and the outlawed Falun Gong religious group, he said.

The MSS also has targeted pro-democracy activists, like those who were involved in the mass demonstrations in Beijing's Tiananmen Square in 1989, he said.

The MSS is China's main civilian spy service that is viewed by U.S. intelligence officials as one of the world's most active in stealing secrets and running foreign spies. The military counterpart, the Second Department of the People's Liberation Army, or 2PLA, is focused on stealing foreign technology, much of it for weapons and military systems.

Together, the Chinese services are estimated to have several thousand trained operatives working around the world, most posing as diplomats, journalists, business representatives and academics. Thousands of other Chinese nationals also function as semiprofessional information gatherers.

Former FBI Special Agent I.C. Smith, a specialist in Chinese counterintelligence, confirmed that the MSS focuses its activities on penetrating U.S. intelligence and government agencies.

"The goal of every intelligence agency is to get someone inside, and in the case of Chinese, they use not just intelligence people but academics and everybody else," Mr. Smith said in an interview.

Mr. Li said his access to information that was banned for the general public helped him to turn against the system, including internal reports on party ideology and information on American values of freedom and democracy.

Mr. Li said that as a doctoral candidate, the MSS sent him to study at an American university, an experience that influenced in his decision to defect. In 2004, after he defected, he was declared an enemy of the state by the MSS in at least two notices sent to security offices in China.

According to U.S. counterintelligence officials, China, unlike the Soviet Union, has had only a small number of defections of intelligence officers like Mr. Li over the past 30 years.

Another spy who defected was a Chinese intelligence officer known publicly by the code-name "Planesman," who gave the FBI data that led to 1985 arrest of CIA interpreter Larry Wu-Tai Chin.

Another intelligence defector was Sr. Col. Yu Jungping, a military intelligence officer once posted to the Chinese Embassy in Washington who came over in the 1990s.

Mr. Li said he is neither a Christian nor Falun Gong member, but that his interest in religion and fear of being persecuted by the MSS contributed to his decision to defect.

Mr. Li said he thinks there are significant numbers of pro-democracy MSS officers inside the service, including those at high levels, who do not support the party and are "even anti-Communsit Party" but fear taking any action.

"But I sincerely hope these people can play a special role in getting rid of the Communist Party," Mr. Li said.

The former intelligence officer, whose family left China with him, said it took him several years to change his views. "After a few years of my personal experience inside the system, I really knew that the Communist Party is very bad," he said.

"My true ideal, actually, in this Chinese security department is really to do something for the Chinese people and the nation. But I really hated doing things just for the interest of the Communist Party and a lot of times those things that are in the interest of the Communist Party are doing harm to the Chinese people."

Related:

http://www.google.com/hostednews/afp/article/ALeqM5ipXYPkPBNnz9RtuBT4RrTEiKDddg

http://indepth.news.sky.com/InDepth/topic/Li_Fengzhi_And_China

The Making of Adolf Hitler: The Birth and Rise of Nazism

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Eugene Davidson

The Making of Adolf Hitler: The Birth and Rise of Nazism By Eugene Davidson
Publisher: University of Missouri Press 1997 | 419 Pages | ISBN: 0826211178 | PDF | 1.1 MB

INFO:
"The Making of Adolf Hitler", by historian Eugene Davidson, is an examination of Germany in the three decades before the Nazi takeover. The complex political conflicts, including the harsh Armistice terms of 1918, the short-lived Weimar Republic, Hindenburg's senile vacillations, and behind-the-scene power plays form the backbone of this study.

LINKS FOR DOWNLOAD:
http://uploading.com/files/8LKYA2FP/TheMakingofAdolfHitler.rar.html
or
http://uploadbox.com/files/0a3c361427
or
http://depositfiles.com/en/files/t5fpm7ct4/

9/11 - The Myth and the Reality

Here, Dr. David Ray Griffin gives a speech on the myths surrounding the World Trade Centre tragedy of September 11th 2001, arguably the single most significant event in 21st Century history...   

 

 

(Many thanks to Uncle Bob for pointing this out)

 

The Prison-Industrial Complex

http://www.theatlantic.com/doc/199812/prisons
An excellent article form The Atlantic Monthly about the system of "corrections" in the United States, which is becoming a carceral society, a la Foucault - over 2,000,000 prisoners in the whole country!!! Together with those on parole and probation, the total came to over 7.2 million adults in 2006. That's about 3.2% of the U.S. adult population, or 1 in every 31 adults!!!
(More statistics here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prisons_in_the_United_States)

The article focuses especially on the private prison industry and everything that entails. Eisenhower warned the American society about the military-industrial complex when going out of office. It became a reality during Reagan's times, while the prison-industrial complex was the next step in the privatization madness, occurring under the watch of George W. Bush as Texas governor and later president.

This must be stopped. Health care, prisons, emergency management, environment and similar domains CANNOT and MUST NOT be privatized. The culture of greed has been slowly destroying this country and the world at least for the past three decades. It is about time to start turning things around and to begin a new chapter in history.

Follow the money

Contributions to Obama Campaign Track Bailout Money

Posted By Bob Owens On March 17, 2009 @ 11:31 am In Legal, Money, Politics, US News |

Barack Obama’s lack of leadership in a down economy has now hit [1] crisis proportions, as his claimed inability to block millions of dollars in bonuses for executives of bailout recipient AIG has caused even his supporters to turn on him.

But while the ire of Congress and the media focus are on the $165 million that AIG paid out in bonuses to their executives, the president is hoping you won’t notice the $100 billion in taxpayer bailout dollars that AIG paid out to other banks, including $58 billion to foreign banks and [2] $36 billion given to French and German banks alone.

The Obama administration is allowing AIG to bail out the rest of the world with your tax dollars.

So by all means, the president is happy to have you railing at “evil” but relatively small potatoes AIG executive bonuses, as it points your outrage away from his own far more costly executive abuses.

And of course, the re-distributor-in-chief hopes you won’t notice where much of the rest of the AIG bailout cash is being spent.

While $58 billion of your tax dollars — or more accurately, your children’s tax dollars — are being used to pay foreign banks, a substantial portion of that money  ($43.5 billion) is being used to pay American banks, including Goldman Sachs, Merill Lynch, Bank of America, Citigroup, Wachovia, Morgan Stanley, AIG International, and JP Morgan.

The following recipients of President Obama’s trickle-down-to-my-donors bailout plan rank among his top 20 contributors to his 2008 presidential election campaign, according to [3] Open Secrets:

Goldman Sachs: $955,473

Citigroup: $653,468

JP Morgan Chase & Co.: $646,058

Morgan Stanley: $485,823

Three other banks that were significant contributors to Obama received money through AIG:

Bank of America: $274,493

Wachovia: $214,151

AIG: $112,170

Lehman Brothers, which did not survive long enough to join the list of banks leaching off the work of the American taxpayer, also gave the Obama campaign [4] $276,088.

Individuals identifying themselves as working for the banks above gave Barack Obama’s presidential campaign $3,617,724. In other words, more than 3.6 million reasons for the president to help focus the media’s glare on the relatively minuscule $165 million in AIG executive bonuses, and away from their $43.5 billion portion of $100 billion of taxpayer dollars the administration, by design or incompetence, filtered to other banks through AIG.

In receiving $43.5 billion for their investment of just over $3.3 million, it looks like the banks that gambled on Wall Street certainly got their money’s worth out of their investment in Barack Obama.

---

Article printed from Pajamas Media: http://pajamasmedia.com

URL to article: http://pajamasmedia.com/blog/contributions-to-obama-campaign-track-bailout-money/

URLs in this post:
[1] crisis proportions: http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/16/AR2009031600640_pf.html
[2] $36 billion given to French and German banks alone: http://www.businessweek.com/the_thread/economicsunbound/archives/2009/03/german_and_fren.html#more
[3] Open Secrets: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/contrib.php?cycle=2008&cid=N00009638
[4] $276,088: http://www.opensecrets.org/pres08/search.php?cid=N00009638&name=%28all%29&employ=lehman+brot
hers&state=%28all%29&zip=%28any+zip%29&submit=OK&amt=a&sort=A

Kurdistan, Her People, Her Places, Her Tragedy & Her Triumphs.

Kurdistan, wild, and colorful, filled with dancing and laughter, tears and blood. She has a history of triumph and betrayal, war and passion. In these pics you will see the people, the places, the wilderness, and mountains, the Peshmerga and the PKK, ruins, mosques and yazidi temples, the effects of the an-fal campaign, her flag and much more. In days and weeks to come, each of these facets of Kurdish life and history will be explored further. Viva Kurdistan!

Operation Cauldron (1952)

I came across this article when I was doing some research about chem trails & ended up going off on a tangent. This was the first I've heard of this incident, and I'm curious to know if there was any further explanation from the Govt after the BBC aired the program in 2005.

I was also interested to see on wikipedia that the tests were initially judged to be a success, both in terms of the effectiveness of the biological agents and the test platform. However, a year later, this decision was reversed, with the tests on plague bacteria being described as a "failure" and the statement that "brucellosis has not increased its reputation as a dangerous agent."

Trawler steamed into germ warfare site and no one said a word

 

By Ben Fenton
Last Updated: 12:23PM BST 20 Sep 2005

Winston Churchill's government was prepared to let Blackpool suffer the Black Death rather than admit experimenting with germ warfare, a survivor of a test that went awry said yesterday.

Derek Bellerby was a crewman on the trawler Carella from Fleetwood, Lancs, which in Sept 1952 was the focus of panicked signals from the Admiralty after she accidentally sailed through the site of an experiment with pneumonic and bubonic plague germs.

A decision was taken not to stop the fishermen and give them medical checks, but let them steam on towards their home port and to enjoy shore leave that could have started an epidemic in Britain's most famous seaside resort.

"We knew nothing about it at the time and we sailed home to Fleetwood and I have no doubt that me and my mates went off to have quite a few beers in Blackpool and talk to a few friendly ladies, just like we always did," Mr Bellerby, now 73, but then a 20-year-old fisherman, told The Daily Telegraph.

"It sounds like whoever decided to let us do that rather than tell us what had been going on was ready to let Blackpool get infected with this disease, doesn't it?"

The first detailed examination of the disastrous experiment and the resulting cover-up of Cold War biological weapons research will be broadcast on BBC radio this week after members of the Carella's crew and naval officers who took part in the experiments were tracked down by producer Jolyon Jenkins.

Mr Bellerby, who spent 40 years at sea and retired to Hull, said that before he met Mr Jenkins earlier this year, he had no idea that he and his shipmates had come so close to death.

"After I met the BBC chap I checked my records and I realised that it was on that trip that I had this strange thing where my hair started falling out in clumps."

Hair loss is not a symptom of the plague, but the Ben Lomond, the converted tank landing craft that carried out the experiments, was carrying other, top-secret biological strains as well.

The extraordinary story began on Sept 16, 1952, when the Ben Lomond was reaching the end of a series of tests, codenamed Operation Cauldron, involving strains of plague and brucellosis in an isolated bay 25 miles north of Stornoway in the Outer Hebrides.

For a week before the last tests, in which pneumonic plague germs were to be released and allowed to drift over a pontoon on which cages of monkeys and rabbits had been placed, the wind had been blowing in the wrong direction. In the evening of Sept 16, it changed and the captain of the Ben Lomond decided to begin his trial. One minute before the germs were to be released, the Carella came into view, but Capt Philip Welby-Everard RN decided that there was still time to warn the trawler off.

The plague germs began their wind-borne journey, but repeated danger signals from the Ben Lomond and her escorts to the Carella were ignored and the fishermen travelled within about two miles of the pontoon, passing through the path of the germ cloud 16 minutes after the experiment began.

Capt Welby-Everard calculated that the wind speed was not high enough to carry the bacteria to the Carella, so his first report to the Admiralty was not taken as seriously as his second, in which he re-stated the wind speed as 7-9 mph instead of 6 mph.

This caused the biological warfare specialists at Porton Down to tell the Admiralty that there was a risk of contamination. The matter was dealt with at the highest levels, with the involvement of the First Sea Lord and Rab Butler, who as Chancellor of the Exchequer was deputising for the absent Winston Churchill as Prime Minister. It was considered of the highest "political consideration" not to alert the crew and the nation to what had happened, not least because the scientists were warning that all the rats on the Carella should be killed and the ship fumigated and the Admiralty believed that would be a clear sign that plague was suspected.

So the Carella and her crew of 18 were allowed to go back to port and to put to sea again. A destroyer and a fisheries vessel shadowed her from over the horizon, listening to her radio broadcasts, waiting to see if she called for medical assistance.

"I was very shocked when I first heard that," Mr Bellerby said.

Why the incident happened remains a mystery. Ted Harris, the son of the trawler's skipper, also called Ted, added: "My father was an ex-Royal Navy lieutenant-commander and I am sure he would not have ignored a danger signal like that."

But Roger Welby-Everard, son of the Ben Lomond's commanding officer, said: "I was a submariner in those waters and I have to say that up there the trawlers are a law unto themselves."

Eventually, with the Admiralty and No 10 anxiously waiting for reports, the Carella returned in complete good health to Fleetwood for a second time.

The Admiralty issued orders for all files, except one which is now open in the National Archives in Kew, to be burned and Blackpool's brush with the Black Death was consigned to the silence of official history.

The Rothschild Octopus ~ by Dejan Lucic

http://www.dejanlucic.net/THE%20ROTHSCHILD%20OCTOPUS
Serbian Dejan Lucic on the Rothschild banking dynasty's tentacles of power... including a few familiar names. Lucic is Serbian and reading him, his pro-Russia bias is obvious. Still, interesting article.

A Companion to the History of the Middle East

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Youssef M. Choueiri

Youssef M. Choueiri " A Companion to the History of the Middle East"
Wiley-Blackwell | 2005-09-19 | ISBN: 1405106816 | 624 pages | PDF | 4,2 MB

A Companion to the History of the Middle East offers a fresh account of the multifaceted and multi-layered history of this region.
* A fresh account of the multifaceted and multi-layered history of the Middle East.
* Comprises 26 newly-commissioned essays by leading international scholars.
* Primarily focused on the modern and contemporary periods.
* Covers religious, social, cultural, economic, political and military history.
* Treats the region as four differentiated political units - Iran, Turkey, Israel and the Arab world.
* Includes a section on current issues, such as oil, urban growth, the role of women, and democratic human rights.
Link for download:
http://images.saharaman.multiply.com/attachment/0/SVFSkQoKCC0AAExYwUs1/A%20Companion%20to%20the%20History%20of%20the%20Middle%20East.pdf?nmid=152834299

Under The Bombs

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Movies
Genre:	Drama

I had expectations of this multiple award-winning film and wasn't disappointed. I don't watch that many films and write even less reviews, but when I do it's a special one. Non-anglosphere cinema is reknowned for not being as dumbed-down as Hollywood, I'm thinking of French mainly, and just about anything with subtitles [from Blockbuster] is worth at least reading the synopsis on the back. Thus, this caught my eye. Having seen so much news on Gaza recently, it was probably the bombed building on the cover that struck a chord of familarity.

An 'Artificial Eye' film by Phillipe Aractingi, starring nobody I'd heard of and shot in Arabic with English subtitles, it is set during the 2006 Israeli-Lebanese conflict. Nada Abou-Farhat plays Zeina, a mother who has travelled from Dubai to Lebanon to find her six-year-old son Karim, incognito and feared dead under rubble.

It's a road movie, with only two central characters, Zeina and the taxi driver who she persuades to take her to the south, 'under the bombs' (though there is a ceasefire, there is a tension throughout that the rain could start again at any moment). The cinematography, shot almost as if it were a documentary, jerky and of varying picture quality, adds to this.

Tony the cabbie is an opportunist and not someone you trust at first, but the emotional content of this superb drama, for him, concerns his being opened up by his beautiful passenger. Initially he's just after money, and maybe getting to sleep with her if he can, but you see his character grow. Or rather, what was buried inside him, comes to the surface. Zeina, we see as a bit cold and ungrateful to him for doing what none of the other cabbies would do, but their warming to each other is one of the central threads in the narrative. Her character isn't as complex, I felt, but conveys the pain of loss and the stress felt by those under attack. The children they meet along the way are remarkably mature and war-hardened, the viewer being reminded of how every few years, the bombs fall again and this is everday life for these kids who have never known any different.

You can imagine what effect it has on a 'road-movie' when the vehicle encounters an enormous crater in the road? Their journey is full of detours which show us both the beauty of Lebanon and the kindness of a people pulled closer together by a common outside enemy. There is some pointing out how the Israelis bomb tactically - a petrol station is hit just because it is 'the most beautiful' one, for example. Those of us following the same nation's recent bombing of schools and hospitals in Gaza this year may be familiar. It's a Lebanese film and far from unbiased, but in general it is anti-war, showing Hezbollah as a violent negative force also. It's a love story; a mother's love for her son, a bubbling potential romance between the central characters, and a people's love for their war-torn country.

Subtitles might put off some people, but if you're one of them, you're missing out on some great films. I was a bit put off by Tony's striking resemblance to one of my friends, Mario... but fortunately he's a bit of an opportunist with a heart too, so that soon faded.

Only a film of course, but it shows close up, as best a film can, what it looks and feels like to be 'under the bombs'. I highly recommend it. The more sensitive you are to sad 'movies', or the subject matter, be warned... it will provoke an emotional response. That, I think, is the measure of a story well told.

"The History of Kuwait (The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations)"

Rating:	★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Michael S. Casey

Michael S. Casey, "The History of Kuwait (The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations)"
Greenwood Press | 2007-08-30 | ISBN: 0313340730 | 184 pages | PDF | 1,1 MB

The tiny country of Kuwait grabbed the world's attention during the Gulf War, during which its natural petroleum resource became the envy of its neighboring country of Iraq. But Kuwait's history goes back long before any oil was discovered, back to Mesopotamian settlements as early as 3000 BCE. Ideal for high school students as well as general readers, History of Kuwait offers a comprehensive look at how such a small country could, essentially, rule the world with just one natural resource. From sheikhdom to British protectorate to independence to invasion, Kuwait's history is long and rich with culture. Michael S. Casey demonstrates how this Middle Eastern gem has grown throughout the centuries. The work includes a timeline of important events, starting with pre-history, biographies of important figures in Kuwait's history, a glossary of terms, and a bibliographic essay. Chapters include: BLThe Land and People of Kuwait BLDesert Origins and Settlement (ca. 3000 BCE-1756 CE) BLDesert Sheikhdom (1756-1899) BLBritish Protectorate (1899-1961) BLIndependence and Nationhood (1961-1990) BLInvasion and Occupation (1990-1991) BLLiberation (1991) BLReconstruction (1992-1999) BLKuwait Today (2000-Present)

LINKS FOR DOWNLOAD:
http://uploading.com/files/5SPLAT0G/0313340730.rar.html
or
http://uploadbox.com/files/t9ONXl0Ux2

Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Andrea Nusse

Andrea Nusse - Muslim Palestine: The Ideology of Hamas
Routledge | 1998 | ISBN: 9057023342 | Pages: 208 | PDF | 1.51 MB

The ideology of Islamic fundamentalists is of central importance in the modern world, but it is often distorted or misunderstood by the international media. This detailed study provides an insightful analysis of the Palestinian Hamas movement's world-view, and shows how the theoretical framework developed by thinkers like Hassan al-Banna, Sayyid Qutb and al-Mawdudi is applied to a specific political, social and economic context. Nusse explains the fundamentalist position on recent events, such as the Gulf War, the Madrid peace negotiations and the Hebron massacre, and helps to dissipate myths surrounding modern fundamentalist movements and their overwhelming success as opposition forces in the Islamic world.

LINK FOR DOWNLOAD:
http://images.saharaman.multiply.com/attachment/0/Sb057AoKCC0AABcmb7U1/Hamas%20Ideology.pdf?nmid=219359219

The History of Afghanistan (The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations)

Rating:	★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Meredith L. Runion

Meredith L. Runion, "The History of Afghanistan (The Greenwood Histories of the Modern Nations)"
Greenwood Press | 2007-10-30 | ISBN: 0313337985 | 184 pages | PDF | 1,6 MB

After the September 11th attacks on America, many nations became entrenched in the War on Terror. With this escalating conflict came the names of many countries that the American public knew little about. Prior to 9/11, Americans knew Afghanistan simply as a country in the Middle East area. In the aftermath of 9/11, Americans now associate Afghanistan with words like "Al Qaeda" and "the Taliban". Despite the recent press coverage on this land-locked nation, few understand the history of Afghanistan, including the rich cultural aspects, political climate, and society of this country. As the future of Afghanistan is being lived and written right now, a clear understanding of the country's history is imperative in our new global circumstances. Ideal for students and general readers, the History of Afghanistan is part of Greenwood's Histories of Modern Nations series. With nearly forty nation's histories in print, these books provide readers with a concise, up-to-date history of countries throughout the world. Reference features include a biographical section highlighting famous figures in Afghanistan history, a timeline of important historical events, a glossary of terms, and a bibliographical essay with suggestions for further reading...
LINKS FOR DOWNLOAD:
http://uploading.com/files/LHU4ULYF/0313337985.rar.html
or
http://uploadbox.com/files/PchZHjz7wT

Red Cross Described 'Torture' at CIA Jails Secret Report Implies That U.S. Violated International Law

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2009/03/15/AR2009031502724.html?hpid=topnews

Red Cross Described 'Torture' at CIA Jails

Secret Report Implies That U.S. Violated International Law

The report graphically describes abuse of Abu Zubaida. (Associated Press)   Enlarge Photo

By Joby Warrick, Peter Finn and Julie Tate

Washington Post Staff Writers

Monday, March 16, 2009; Page A01

 

The International Committee of the Red Cross concluded in a secret report that the Bush administration's treatment of al-Qaeda captives "constituted torture," a finding that strongly implied that CIA interrogation methods violated international law, according to newly published excerpts from the long-concealed 2007 document.

The report, an account alleging physical and psychological brutality inside CIA "black site" prisons, also states that some U.S. practices amounted to "cruel, inhuman or degrading treatment." Such maltreatment of detainees is expressly prohibited by the Geneva Conventions.

The findings were based on an investigation by ICRC officials, who were granted exclusive access to the CIA's "high-value" detainees after they were transferred in 2006 to the U.S. detention camp at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. The 14 detainees, who had been kept in isolation in CIA prisons overseas, gave remarkably uniform accounts of abuse that included beatings, sleep deprivation, extreme temperatures and, in some cases, waterboarding, or simulating drowning.

At least five copies of the report were shared with the CIA and top White House officials in 2007 but barred from public release by ICRC guidelines intended to preserve the humanitarian group's strict policy of neutrality in conflicts. A copy of the report was obtained by Mark Danner, a journalism professor and author who published extensive excerpts in the April 9 edition of the New York Review of Books, released yesterday. He did not say how he obtained the report.

(MORE...)

De Menezes - Murder or Mistake?

As Requested!

It was quite difficult finding a link that just dealt with the facts. Wiki seems to be the best one:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jean_Charles_de_Menezes

Treacherous Alliance: The Secret Dealings of Israel, Iran, and the United States

Rating:	★★★★★
Category:	Books
Genre:	History
Author:	Trita Parsi

reposted from Blog section, originally posted by Saharaman

Yale University Press | 2007 | ISBN: 0300120575 | Pages: 384 |


"This is an important piece of work. It is original and fills a much needed gap in the literature. For anyone working in this field it would be essential."-Gary Sick, Columbia University (Gary Sick )

"This book is outstanding and important."-Nikki Keddie, author of Modern Iran: Roots and Results of Revolution (Nikki Keddie)

"In Treacherous Alliance, Trita Parsi makes a persuasive case that since the 1979 Islamic Revolution, Iran has consistently used ideology to achieve hardheaded national interest objectives, rather than sacrifice national interest on the altar of extremist ideological goals. This is an extremely important point to bear in mind as Iran''s relations with US and Israel deteriorate and the prospect of yet another Persian Gulf conflict looms. This work, based on extensive interviews with decision makers in three countries, contributes both to our historical understanding and our current policy debate."-Francis Fukuyama, author of America at the Crossroads (Francis Fukuyama)

"A penetrating, provocative, and very timely study that deciphers how U.S. policy in the Middle East has been manipulated both by Iran and by Israel even as relations between these two oscillated between secret collusion and overt collision."- The Honorable Zbigniew Brzezinski, former US National Security Advisor to President Jimmy Carter (The Honorable Zbigniew Brzezinski)

"A brilliant interpretation of one of today's most enigmatic conflicts. In a sober and original analysis, Dr. Parsi unearths the true nature of the tension in the triangle Iran-Israel-USA as a manipulation by all parties-especially the Israelis and the Iranians-of ideological differences to conceal what can be a solvable strategic dispute. This is a study about the manipulation of ideology and religion in the struggle for mastery in the Middle East."-Shlomo Ben-Ami, Israel's former foreign minister and author of Scars of War, Wounds of Peace: The Israeli-Arab Tragedy (Shlomo Ben-Ami)

"Trita Parsi has written an outstanding book, filled with fascinating detail and trenchant analysis. Treacherous Alliance discusses Iran and Israel in dispassionate and smart ways, which is rarely done in the United States."-John Mearsheimer, University of Chicago (John Mearsheimer)

PDF Book File is attached for download here below...
http://images.saharaman.multiply.com/attachment/0/Sb0pUAoKCC0AAEssHkc1/Treacherous%20Alliance.pdf?nmid=219341963

Timeline of Iranian History from Ancient Persia to the Islamic Republic

http://www.on-the-matrix.com/mideast/IranTimeline.aspx
Only goes up to 1989...

Basque History by The BBC

http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/548545.stm
And here's the CIA's file on Spain:

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/sp.html

Kosovo

https://www.cia.gov/library/publications/the-world-factbook/geos/kv.html
I'm wary of saying anything much about Kosovo... the tiny sovereign state slap bang in the middle of the former Yugoslavia, and significantly Islamic. Everyone's got an opinion...

Canadian Airborne Regiment in Somalia - A Soldier's Journals

http://www.commando.org/somalia.php
Former member 3 Commando Canadian Airborne Regiment tells first hand account of events surrounding Somalia torture incident by 2 Commando that lead to disbandment of Airborne Regiment.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Somalia_Affair

UK involved in alleged torture

http://jurist.law.pitt.edu/paperchase/2009/03/guantanamo-ex-detainee-claims-memos.php

Guantanamo ex-detainee claims memos show UK involved in alleged torture

Lucas Tanglen at 9:55 AM ET



 

[JURIST] Former Guantanamo Bay [JURIST news archive] detainee Binyam Mohamed [BBC profile; JURIST news archive] claimed in Sunday media reports that documents sent from MI5 [official website] to the CIA [official website] show that the British intelligence agency was involved with his alleged torture in Morocco [JURIST news archive]. Mohamed
claimed [Daily Mail report] the documents reveal that MI5 fed the CIA questions that ended up in the hands of his Moroccan interrogators. A telegraph to the CIA dated November 5, 2002, reportedly has the heading, "Request for further Detainee questioning." Mohamed, a native of Ethiopa [JURIST news archive] who claims to have been transferred to Morocco for torture under a US program of extraordinary rendition [JURIST news archive], said he obtained the documents through the US
legal process while seeking his release from Guantanamo Bay. Conservative MP David Davis [political website] called for investigations [Telegraph report] into British collusion in torture.



Last week, the UK government's independent reviewer of terror laws called for a judicial inquiry [JURIST report] into British complicity in US rendition and torture. British media reported last week that UN special rapporteur on torture Manfred Nowak told British ministers that MI5 may have been complicit [JURIST report] in torture committed while detainees including Mohamed were in US custody. Mohamed was returned to the UK [JURIST report] last week following seven years of detention, including five at Guantanamo Bay, where he was held on charges of conspiring to commit
terrorism. Those charges were dismissed [JURIST report] in October, but Mohamed remained in custody while US authorities considered filing new charges.

March 12, 2009

Israel Stance Was Undoing of Nominee for Intelligence Post

By MARK MAZZETTI and HELENE COOPER

WASHINGTON — When Dennis C. Blair, the director of national intelligence, announced that he would install Charles W. Freeman Jr. in a top intelligence post, the decision surprised some in the White House who worried that the selection could be controversial and an unnecessary distraction, according to administration officials.

Just how controversial the choice would be became clear on Tuesday, when Mr. Freeman, a former ambassador to Saudi Arabia under the first President Bush, angrily withdrew his name from consideration and charged that he had been the victim of a concerted campaign by what he called “the Israel lobby.”

Mr. Freeman had long been critical of Israel, with a bluntness that American officials rarely voice in public about a staunch American ally. In 2006, he warned that, “left to its own devices, the Israeli establishment will make decisions that harm Israelis, threaten all associated with them and enrage those who are not.”

He did not soften his tone even on Wednesday, saying in an interview that “Israel is driving itself toward a cliff, and it is irresponsible not to question Israeli policy and to decide what is best for the American people.”

The critics who led the effort to derail Mr. Freeman argued that such views reflected a bias that could not be tolerated in someone who, as chairman of the National Intelligence Council, would have overseen the production of what are supposed to be policy-neutral intelligence assessments destined for the president’s desk.

Some of Mr. Freeman’s defenders say his views on Israel are extreme only when seen through the lens of American political life, and they asked whether it was possible to question American support for Israel without being either muzzled or marginalized.

“The reality of Washington is that our political landscape finds it difficult to assimilate any criticism of any segment of the Israeli leadership,” said Robert W. Jordan, who was ambassador to Saudi Arabia from 2001 to 2003.

The lobbying campaign against Mr. Freeman included telephone calls to the White House from prominent lawmakers, including Senator Charles E. Schumer, the New York Democrat. It appears to have been kicked off three weeks ago in a blog post by Steven J. Rosen, a former top official of the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, a pro-Israel lobbying group.

On the Middle East, Mr. Rosen wrote, Mr. Freeman’s views are “what you would expect in the Saudi Foreign Ministry,” rather than from someone who would become essentially the government’s top intelligence analyst.

Because President Obama himself has been viewed with suspicion among many pro-Israel groups, the attacks on Mr. Freeman had the potential to touch a nerve. Many of these groups applauded Mr. Obama’s appointments of Hillary Rodham Clinton as secretary of state and Dennis B. Ross as a special adviser for Iran and Persian Gulf issues, but remain suspicious of other members of his administration who will be dealing with Arab-Israeli matters.

After complaints from some pro-Israel groups during his presidential campaign, Mr. Obama distanced himself from Zbigniew Brzezinski, the national security adviser under President Jimmy Carter, who has sometimes been critical of Israel.

Five days after Mr. Rosen’s blog item appeared, Senator Schumer telephoned Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, to ensure that the White House was aware of Mr. Freeman’s past comments about Israel. According to Senator Schumer, his staff then sent the White House copies of the statements.

Mr. Schumer said that Mr. Freeman showed an “irrational hatred of Israel” and that his statements were “over the top.”

Mr. Freeman said that nobody in the White House ever pressured him to withdraw. He said that he and Mr. Blair had agreed on Tuesday afternoon that he should step aside to avoid any perception of taint to the intelligence assessments he would have overseen at the National Intelligence Council. Hours earlier, Mr. Blair defended Mr. Freeman for his strong views and quick mind, and said he hoped he would challenge an intelligence community that for years had been criticized for groupthink.

In the days after Senator Schumer’s first phone call, other lawmakers and pro-Israel groups began applying pressure on the White House. Representative Steve Israel, a New York Democrat, also called Mr. Emanuel about the pick, and pushed Mr. Blair’s inspector general to examine possible conflicts of interest surrounding Mr. Freeman’s relationships with the Chinese and Saudi governments.

“I was prepared to present my case to anyone at the White House who would listen to it,” Representative Israel said.

Pro-Israel groups weighed in with lower-ranking White House officials. The Zionist Organization of America sent out an “action alert” urging members to ask Congress for an investigation of Mr. Freeman’s “past and current activities on behalf of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia.”

With opposition to Mr. Freeman mounting, many in the White House were debating the wisdom of the selection, despite Mr. Blair’s public support for him. “In conversations with people associated with this administration, I never detected any enthusiasm for this pick,” said Ira N. Forman, executive director of the National Jewish Democratic Council.

Robert Gibbs, the White House spokesman, declined to comment on Wednesday.

Before his ambassadorship, Mr. Freeman held a variety of State Department posts. Since leaving government, he has worked with nonprofit groups and on the board of the state-owned China National Offshore Oil Corporation, a past position that his critics said could be a conflict of interest in his new job.

As head of the Middle East Policy Council, he was a frequent critic of policy toward Israel. In a speech in 2005 he said that “as long as the United States continues unconditionally to provide the subsidies and political protection that make the Israeli occupation and the high-handed and self-defeating policies it engenders possible, there is little, if any, reason to hope that anything resembling the former peace process can be resurrected.”

Critics also unearthed e-mail messages attributed to Mr. Freeman that seemed to support the Tiananmen Square crackdown in 1989, saying it was not “acceptable for any country to allow the heart of its national capital to be occupied by dissidents intent on disrupting the normal functions of government, however appealing to foreigners their propaganda may be.”

Mr. Freeman said Wednesday that the passage was taken out of context, and that he had been describing the dominant view in China in the years after the crackdown.

Mr. Freeman, who severed his financial and professional ties to several organizations to re-enter government, said he had yet to decide what was next for him.

“I’m in a position to redefine my life and to press the reset button, and you don’t get that very often,” he said.

Northern Ireland - There may be Trouble Ahead

The Zimbabwean Imbroglio

I suppose that one of the more distressing things that might happen to a person is finding that one’s salary, which is paid one in – literally – sacks full of money, can’t buy one a ride home from one’s workplace, or a loaf of bread to eat. It’s not something that I warrant most of us have had to face in our lives – nor something I anticipate that any of us is very likely to face. At least, not unless our economies completely and absolutely implode; and then barter is likely to be a more viable alternative anyway.

However, there have been times in history when such has happened; in Germany, most infamously, in 1923, it happened – and indirectly aided the rise of Hitler to power ten years later. And it’s happening today, in Zimbabwe, as I suppose we all know – in Zimbabwe, the land that suffers under the geriatric iron fist of Robert Mugabe, who has to be forced out of power for it all to stop.

Will it? Well...

In fact, Mugabe has been in control of Zimbabwe since the end of white minority rule in 1980, and for nearly twenty years afterwards, the country wasn’t doing all that badly. Until 1995, going by economic indicators, it was doing pretty well for a nation whose economy was almost entirely agriculture-based, actually.



And then, suddenly, it all fell apart.

It fell apart because, it’s said, Mugabe decided to appropriate the farms belonging to white farmers and hand them over to his cronies and lackeys; and the innocent white farmers who did not knuckle down and hand over their properties were threatened, beaten and murdered. And because the white farmers had all the knowledge, Zimbabwean food production fell through the floor, causing hyperinflation (since, as I said, Zimbabwe has an agrarian economy) and all it brings in its wake – starvation, rampant crime (because money is worthless, if you don’t have anything to barter with, you will take it by any means you can if you need it badly enough) and illegal emigration. All because of the racist anti-white policies of Robert Mugabe.



Oh, Mugabe is a tyrant, true enough; but, as the world has been slowly and painfully discovering, the stories disseminated by the West aren’t always as clear-cut good versus evil tales, shall we say, as they seem.

Now before I go on further to discuss Zimbabwe’s current condition, let’s take a moment to discuss just why Mugabe would want to strip the white farmers of their lands; after all they were as much Zimbabwean citizens as anyone else. The answer had to be plain racism, right?

Wrong.

The answer has everything to do with the history of East and Southern Africa during the colonial period, of how a tiny minority of white farmers ended up occupying virtually all of the land and became the de facto controllers of the national economy. In the beginning, the land was settled by tribal groups whose agriculture was basically on the subsistence level, since the tribes had a barter economy and did not need to produce more than they could consume. But the land was there, and fertile, and the white settlers decided that all that land could make huge farms that could make gigantic profits. There was only one problem – much of that land was already occupied by the tribes.

Nothing simpler than to solve that problem, really. You remember that this was the nineteenth century, and that the loudest talking was done by the Gatling gun. In a process called “alienation”, the black tribesman was removed from his farm, which was handed over to the white colonial settler. The settler, in fact, took over much more land than he could productively use, the idea being to leave the black no land on which to carry out his subsistence farming, so that he would have to go to work on the farm of the new white owner. This was necessary because in the 19th and early 20th centuries farm machinery was rare to nonexistent and farming was a labour-intensive occupation. The policy was explicitly stated as being tailored to force the black to seek employment on white farmsteads, and as recently as the eve of the First World War the leader of the white farmers in the British colony of Kenya was demanding that further land be confiscated from the blacks in order to force them to work for the white planters.

The result of this policy, of course, was that almost all of the arable land available had become the property – without the payment of a penny – of a small clique of white farm owners; and working for them were a black underclass whose members were very conscious of the fact that they were working as labourers on land that had either been theirs or would have been theirs by the process of inheritance. Imagine what that knowledge did to them. (Source: Mau Mau From Within, by Donald Barnett and Karari Njama)

Along with the alienation policy came the need for a further control – because once you have the black man as a labourer on your farm, you need to keep him there. You cannot have experienced and cheap labour migrating afield in search of better employment. The answer was a document which was known in Kenya as the kipande. I don’t know what it was called in Zimbabwe (then, of course, Rhodesia) but for the purposes of this discussion I shall call it the kipande there too.

On the face of it the kipande was nothing very exceptional – it was an identity card issued to the farm labourer identifying him, his place of work and his employer. In practice, though, what it meant was a document of slavery. The labourer could never be off the farm without his kipande, which would have to carry written authority from his employer to allow him even to visit a friend on another farm or a relative in town. Being caught without the kipande was a serious offence that would result in imprisonment and loss of employment.

Therefore the black labourer on the farm was an artificially impoverished bonded slave with no rights of movement or freedom of employment, compelled to work on land which would have been his in the normal course of things. Under any circumstances this wiould build up a massive upswell of resentment.

Then, during the Zimbabwean liberation struggle, first against Britain and then against Ian Smith’s illegal Rhodesian regime, the white farmers openly supported the white racialist government. I still have British military manuals celebrating Rhodesian military action against the “terrorists” (British term as used) of the Zimbabwe African National Union (ZANU) of Robert Mugabe, who were fighting against white minority rule, and, not incidentally, for the right of black people to reclaim the farms that were owned by the white minority.  

But when the fighting ultimately culminated in Zimbabwean independence in 1980, the whites remained in place on their farms, part of the unfinished business of the liberation struggle. (Those who remember the last days of apartheid rule in South Africa will recall apocalyptic warnings of anti-white pogroms which, of course, never came to pass. I still remember photos of young white South Africans taking training in the use of handguns for self defence against the black hordes. South Africa, one might argue, only got rid of formal apartheid by allowing the white minority to retain its economic and social privileges virtually intact, and, in fact, blacks in South Africa have benefited little from almost twenty years without apartheid.)

In Zimbabwe, by the last years of the twentieth century, a growing black population that had, like the South African blacks, got little out of independence, exerted its own pressures. The Zimbabwean Army was stuck in the brutal Congolese Civil War, the economy was shrinking, Mugabe had to sack public servants and privatise some firms; disaffection was steadily growing. Mugabe, in order to consolidate his hold on power, decided to fulfil the old pledge of removing the white control over farmland. He claimed that since the farms were white owned not by purchase but by conquest, they belonged by right to the Zimbabwean people and if the white farmers deserved compensation, it was the British government, due to whose policies they had acquired the farms, who should pay for them – not the government of Zimbabwe. It seems rather difficult to counter the logic of this argument, and the British government had earlier agreed to provide such compensation – but later reneged.

The problem was, of course, in the implementation of such a land-reform policy. A century of white ownership and control meant that only the whites possessed the knowledge and ability to run these large farms. The logical move would have been to nationalise the farms and keep on the whites as managers and trainers of black successors as an intermediate measure. What Mugabe did was the direct, but populist, opposite: claiming to return the farms to the people, he sent in armed gangs of “freedom fighters” (many of whom were far too young to have ever been in the freedom struggle) to expel the whites. The predictable result was the collapse of farm production, and in a primarily agricultural nation, it meant the collapse of the economy.

Now Zimbabwe, since 1987, had been a one party state. This by itself is not necessarily a bad thing (there are plenty of one party states, some of them in disguise) – but the fact of the one-party nature of the state means that suddenly Mugabe  found himself called a “dictator” and targeted accordingly with sanctions. At around the same time, other dictators in Africa and elsewhere, like Egypt’s Hosni Mubarak, Uganda’s Youweri Museweni, and Ethiopia’s Meles Zenawi, were left perfectly untouched, since they were close to the West. Can it be that we are seeing an element of revenge at play here, to pay out Mugabe for Zimbabwean independence? And is it just possible that had these farm owners been black, there might not have been a reaction in the West? Surely not...

To get back to the point, as AIDS took hold and the agriculture dependent economy collapsed from mismanagement and sanctions, there was large scale emigration until it’s estimated that today, a third of the Zimbabwean population is abroad. Meanwhile, with rising tensions, a group called the Movement for Democratic Change, under Morgan Tsvangirai, was adopted and cheered on by the West.

Now I’ll admit to a particular bias of mine; if the West, by which I mean the USA, its appendages (primarily Britain, Canada and Australia) and the European Union, backs a particular politician or candidate anywhere in the rest of the world, I assume that the said backing is because of some ulterior motive (classic examples are the Western-engineered colour-coded pseudo-revolutions in Eastern Europe, all of which have made life infinitely worse for the peoples of those nations). So even if I have no reason to believe that Mr Tsvangirai, who was recently injured in a vehicular crash that killed his wife, is personally a Western puppet, a Zimbabwean Mikheil Saakashvili or Viktor Yushchenko, I am absolutely sure that the forces behind him are preparing to manipulate him for that role.

The recent history of Zimbabwe is too well known for me to keep going over it now, but I’ll mention a few things:

First, the propaganda. It’s true that Mugabe is a dictator; but the intensity and blatant one-sidedness of  the propaganda unleashed, mostly very crudely but often subtly, against him in the West is proof, if any were needed, that there’s something more at play here than the obvious. Nobody is ever all good or all evil; if someone’s projected as one or the other, any normal-thinking individual ought to think twice before accepting what he or she is told. Especially he or she ought to think twice if the same people who claimed Saddam Hussein had a WMD programme and Britain was “45 minutes from annihilation” now make claims like this.

Second, the fact is that Mr Tsvangirai (I shall always include the “Mr” honorific for him but never for Mugabe, whom I shall not call President Mugabe; not because of any bias I have in the matter but just to point out the crass propaganda lenses through which we all have to look at that hapless nation) is now the Prime Minister of Zimbabwe after a power sharing agreement with Mugabe. It is true that in all probability Mr Tsvangirai would have won elections and so acceded to the President’s chair; but Mugabe (for reasons I shall shortly discuss) did not accept those election results, and after much violence that power sharing agreement was hammered out, with Mugabe retaining power over the military, but Mr Tsvangirai still controlling a large part of the power. This was not the ideal solution for Mr Tsvangirai, who by rights might have expected to control all of the government, but was still better than what happened to the Islamic party which won an election in Algeria and were completely and violently blocked out of power by the Army – while the same West had cheered.

Third, the fact is that although Mugabe and Mr Tsvangirai are now sharing power, the United States and the West (by and large American camp-followers) have continued to impose sanctions against Zimbabwe “as long as Mugabe remains in power”. That might be a very, very long time indeed, because Mugabe will be very reluctant to cede power if he is not granted immunity from prosecution. He will remember the history of Charles Taylor of Liberia, who was extradited from Nigerian asylum to stand trial before the International Criminal Court, a place which seems to specialise in the prosecution of non-white/East European accused only (surely it ought to have indictments, at the very least, made out against George W Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and Tony Blair over Iraq?). Anyway, to return to the point, there is absolutely no way Mugabe, or his generals, will give up power unless they are assured of a trouble-free life thereafter. It may not be pleasing to those who regard Mugabe as a cannibal monster, but the fact remains that the chances of Mugabe relinquishing power decrease in direct proportion to his being demonised.

Fourthly, the economic condition of Zimbabwe defies imagination. The word “hyperinflation” does not do it justice any more; money loses most of its value between the time it arrives in banks and its being disbursed; the inflation rate has passed all rational computing; and of course the misery of the people is burgeoning. Under these circumstances, to continue sanctions is no longer a bad joke but a crime, and a counterproductive crime at that. Unless hard currency is available, and fast, there is no way the condition of life for the ordinary Zimbabweans is going to improve – and it is, even according to the propaganda, the ordinary poor Zimbabweans who are suffering the most from the conditions in their country.



All of which seems to point at only one likely answer – the West has no desire that things should improve in Zimbabwe.

Therefore, the question to be asked is...why?

As always in these things, the answer lies in a further question: who benefits? In this context, obviously, there is nothing much to be got out of Zimbabwe; even if a few white farmers are restored their farms, it is not going to rescue the country overnight. So we must look elsewhere.

And if we look elsewhere, and see the implosion of Zimbabwe through other eyes, that we see the reason; Zimbabwe is being made an example of, a warning of what happens to those who dare to oppose Imperial decree. Specifically, it would be a warning to South Africa, whose vibrant (by current standards) economy is still firmly in white hands and where a new, populist President, Jacob Zuma, is due to win next month’s elections. If Zuma’s African National Congress wins a big enough majority, he could potentially make South Africa a one-party state, nationalise foreign-owned companies, and take real steps to empower the blacks at the expense of the white power elite. Any or all of these steps would be anathema to the Imperium.

And that is why Zimbabwe shall continue to suffer.