The Slaughterhouse Informer

A Compendiium of Various Official Lies, Business Scandals, Small Murders, Frauds, and Other Gross Defects of Our Current Political, Business and Religious Moral Lepers.

Presenting a new magazine that contains material that is not found elsewhere and is very difficult to post on the Internet. The ‘Voice of the White House’ will appear in each issue containing material not found on TBR News for very obvious reasons.This publication will appear once a week, on Wednesday, every week, will be ten pages in length and is available by subscription only. The price is $5.00 a month and can be paid via PayPal or by check, sent to ‘Morris Productions, 1350 E. New Yort St. Ste A2-190, Aurora, Il 60504.’ If you don’t like it, and Bush supporters can read the Drudge Report for free, you can cancel at any time.

Civil insurrection in America and government countermeasures: The official papers

By Bradley Moscrip

An in-depth study of official American plans to construct FEMA detention centers in America and specific recent U.S. Army domestic counterinsurgency plans. Here is a sampling of the ebook contents:

Gun Control by Confiscation

As the American general population is known to be the most heavily armed in the world, immediately upon the declaration of Martial Law and the execution by the military of counterinsurgency programs, it has been determined that the BATF, will begin the process of rounding up all rifles, pistols and so-called assault weaponry from the civil population. Lists of gun collectors obtained from firearms dealers, gun magazine subscription lists and other sources will be the basis for these mass confiscations. Gun owners will be supplied documentation by the BATF showing which pieces have been confiscated so that in the future, they will be told, they can recover their weapons when the state of emergency has passed. In actuality, weapons that do not have a high value or are not suitable for arming loyalist police forces, will be destroyed by order

This study is available from tbrnews at $5.00 by PayPal  

The Voice of the White House

            Washington, D.C., November 20, 2008: “ If you thought the presidential campaign was nasty, you will be interested to learn that the Republicans are not going away and have much evil planned. With the country in a very, very serious economic crunch, these mavens of mendacity are now plotting to throw a wooden shoe into the machinery of economics and will start instituting, by various and diverse means, racial uproar in the United States. Mr. Moscrip, who has even better connections than I do, is preparing a two part article on the how of this for the edification of your readership. The techniques and specifics he knows but the why is evident. The GOP had what they blissfully thought was absolute power, only to see it melt in the sun and run through their fingers. They want the power back and certain elements do not care how they get it. They are building on the physical threats to the new President that are based solely on his race and nothing else. Some of them think it will “be a lot of fun” but I see it as a real threat to everyone and something that can very easily get out of hand and do as much damage to the United States as the economic crisis. I reminded one of them yesterday that it was Phil Gramm’s deliberate removal of all the marketplace checks and balances that has caused the current collapse, a removal that the Republicans in Congress heartily approved of. And we can dump all of this on Bush because he signed off on all of it. If you are being thrown out of your house, can’t get a loan or are watching your business implode, blame it all on Bush and his gang of greedy crooks. Now right wing lunatics like Limbaugh are blaming Obama for all of this which indicates that Rush should now be gobbling Prozac the way he gobbled Oxycontin and Viagra. The series, to which I have made some contributions, will start Monday.”

Uproar in Maine over Obama assassination sign

November 20, 2008

Reuters

BOSTON (Reuters) - Passions flared in a Maine town on Thursday over a sign in a store asking customers to place bets on an assassination of President-elect Barack Obama.

The Town Council in Standish condemned the sign on Thursday in a 6-0 vote and declared it reprehensible at a meeting where some residents defended the store owner, saying he had a right to free speech even if in bad taste, local authorities said.

"The town of Standish condemns in the strongest terms any such alleged activity calling for violence against any individual no matter their position, race or ethnicity," said the resolution posted on the town's website.

The sign in the Oak Hill General Store asked customers to place a $1 bet on the date of Obama's assassination, and said "Let's hope someone wins," the Portland Press Herald reported. It was called the "Osama Obama Shotgun Pool."

The store in the town of 9,285 people in southwest Maine has remained closed since reports of the sign appeared in the media on Sunday.

About 80 people attended the meeting, including some who defended the store owner, said town clerk Mary Chapman.

"There were folks on both sides of the issue," Chapman said in a telephone interview. "People were passionate of their opinion but very respectful of others."

Obama's historic election victory as the nation's first black president has sparked racist incidents nationwide, according to groups that monitor hate crimes.

Obama, an Illinois senator, won the November 4 presidential contest in Maine over Republic Sen. John McCain of Arizona.

(Reporting by Jason Szep; editing by Todd Eastham)

Cheney charged over jail 'abuses'

November 20, 2008

BBC News

A Texas grand jury has charged US Vice-President Dick Cheney for "organised criminal activity" related to alleged abuse of private prison inmates.

The indictment says Mr Cheney - who has invested $85m (£56m) in a company that holds shares in for-profit prisons - conspired to block an investigation.

The indictment has not been seen by a judge, who could dismiss it.

Mr Cheney's spokeswoman declined to comment, saying his office had not yet received a copy of the charges.

One Texas lawyer said the charges were politically motivated.

'Conflict of interest'

The indictment was overseen by county District Attorney Juan Guerra, an outgoing prosecutor at the end of his term of office.

He cites the case of Gregorio De La Rosa, who died on 26 April, 2001 inside a private prison in Willacy County, Texas.

The grand jury in Willacy County, near the US-Mexico border, accuses Mr Cheney of committing "at least misdemeanour assaults" of inmates by allowing other inmates to assault them.

It said there was a "direct conflict of interest" because Mr Cheney had influence over federal contracts awarded to prison companies.

US grand juries weigh evidence to decide whether a case is worthy of being sent for a full trial, before issuing formal charges known as indictments.

The three-page indictment also alleges that former US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales "used his position...to stop the investigations as to the wrong doings."

The grand jury wrote that it made its decision "with great sadness," but said they had no other choice but to indict Mr Cheney and Mr Gonzales "because we love our country."

Several other related indictments were brought against a host of public officials in what one lawyer called a circus act by the outgoing prosecutor, Mr Guerra, who he said was seeking revenge in his final weeks in office.

An offer they couldn't refuse

The CIA is often credited with 'advice' on Hollywood films, but no one is truly sure about the extent of its shadowy involvement

November 14, 2008

by Matthew Alford and Robbie Graham

Guardian/UK

            Everyone who watches films knows about Hollywood's fascination with spies. From Hitchcock's postwar espionage thrillers, through cold war tales such as Torn Curtain, into the paranoid 1970s when the CIA came to be seen as an agency out of control in films such as Three Days of the Condor, and right to the present, with the Bourne trilogy and Ridley Scott's forthcoming Body of Lies, film-makers have always wanted to get in bed with spies. What's less widely known is how much the spies have wanted to get in bed with the film-makers. In fact, the story of the CIA's involvement in Hollywood is a tale of deception and subversion that would seem improbable if it were put on screen.

                The model for this is the defence department's "open" but barely publicised relationship with Hollywood. The Pentagon, for decades, has offered film-makers advice, manpower and even hardware - including aircraft carriers and state-of-the-art helicopters. All it asks for in exchange is that the US armed forces are made to look good. So in a previous Scott film, Black Hawk Down, a character based on a real-life soldier who had also been a child rapist lost that part of his backstory when he came to the screen.

No matter how seemingly craven Hollywood's behaviour towards the US armed forces has seemed, it has at least happened within the public domain. That cannot be said for the CIA's dealings with the movie business. Not until 1996 did the CIA announce, with little fanfare, that it had established an Entertainment Liaison Office, which would collaborate in a strictly advisory capacity with film-makers. Heading up the office was Chase Brandon, who had served for 25 years in the agency's elite clandestine services division, as an undercover operations officer. A PR man he isn't, though he does have Hollywood connections: he's a cousin of Tommy Lee Jones.

But the past 12 years of semi-acknowledged collaboration were preceded by decades in which the CIA maintained a deep-rooted but invisible influence of Hollywood. How could it be otherwise? As the former CIA man Bob Baer - whose books on his time with the agency were the basis for Syriana - told us: "All these people that run studios - they go to Washington, they hang around with senators, they hang around with CIA directors, and everybody's on board."

There is documentary evidence for his claims. Luigi Luraschi was the head of foreign and domestic censorship for Paramount in the early 1950s. And, it was recently discovered, he was also working for the CIA, sending in reports about how film censorship was being employed to boost the image of the US in movies that would be seen abroad. Luraschi's reports also revealed that he had persuaded several film-makers to plant "negroes" who were "well-dressed" in their movies, to counter Soviet propaganda about poor race relations in the States. The Soviet version was rather nearer the truth.

Luraschi's activities were merely the tip of the iceberg. Graham Greene, for example, disowned the 1958 adapatation of his Vietnam-set novel The Quiet American, describing it as a "propaganda film for America". In the title role, Audie Murphy played not Greene's dangerously ambiguous figure - whose belief in the justice of American foreign policy allows him to ignore the appalling consequences of his actions - but a simple hero. The cynical British journalist, played by Michael Redgrave, is instead the man whose moral compass has gone awry. Greene's American had been based in part on the legendary CIA operative in Vietnam, Colonel Edward Lansdale. How apt, then, that it should have been Lansdale who persuaded director Joseph Mankewiecz to change the script to suit his own ends.

The CIA didn't just offer guidance to film-makers, however. It even offered money. In 1950, the agency bought the rights to George Orwell's Animal Farm, and then funded the 1954 British animated version of the film. Its involvement had long been rumoured, but only in the past decade have those rumours been substantiated, and the tale of the CIA's role told in Daniel Leab's book Orwell Subverted.

The most common way for the CIA to exert influence in Hollywood nowadays is not through anything as direct as funding, or rewriting scripts, but offering to help with matters of verisimilitude. That is done by having serving or former CIA agents acting as advisers on the film, though some might wonder whether there is ever really such a thing a "former agent". As ex-CIA agent Lindsay Moran, the author of Blowing My Cover, has noted, the CIA often calls on former officers to perform tasks for their old employer.

So it was no problem for CBS to secure official help when making its 2001 TV series The Agency (it was even written by a former agent). Langley was equally helpful to the novelist Tom Clancy, who was invited to CIA headquarters after the publication of The Hunt for Red October, an invitation that was regularly repeated. Consequently, when Clancy's The Sum of All Fears was filmed in 2002, the agency was happy to bring its makers to Langley for a personal tour of headquarters, and to offer access to agency analysts for star Ben Affleck. When filming began, Brandon was on set to advise - a role he repeated during the filming of glamorous television series Alias.

The former agent Milt Beardon took the advisory role on two less action-packed attempts at espionage stories: Robert De Niro's The Good Shepherd from 2006, which told an approximate version of the story of the famed CIA head of counter-espionage, James Jesus Angleton; and Charlie Wilson's War, the story of US covert efforts to supply the Afghan mujahideen with weaponry during the Soviet occupation of the 80s. In reality, this was a story that ended badly, as the Afghan freedom fighters helped give birth to the terrorists of al-Qaida. In the movie, however, that was not the case. As Beardon - who had been the CIA man responsible for the weapons reaching the Afghans - observed shortly before the movie came out, the film would "put aside the notion that because we did that [supply arms], we had 9/11".

Beardon's remark provides a clue to the real reason the CIA likes to offer advice to Hollywood, a clue that was expanded on by Paul Kelbaugh, the former associate general counsel to the CIA - a very senior figure in Langley. In 2007, Kelbaugh spoke at Lynchburg College of Law in Virginia - where he had become an associate professor - about the CIA's relationship with Hollywood. A journalist present at the lecture (who now wishes to be anonymous) reported that Kelbaugh spoke about the 2003 Al Pacino/Colin Farrell vehicle The Recruit. A CIA agent had been on set as a "consultant" throughout the shoot, he said; his real job, however, was to misdirect the film-makers. "We didn't want Hollywood getting too close to the truth," the journalist quoted Kelbaugh as saying.

Peculiarly, though, in a strongly worded email to us, Kelbaugh emphatically denied having said such a thing, and said he remembered "very specific discussions with senior [CIA] management that no one was ever to misrepresent to affect [film] content - EVER." The journalist stands by the original report, and Kelbaugh has refused to discuss the matter further.

So, altering scripts, financing films, suppressing the truth - it's worrying enough. But there are cases where some believe the CIA's activities in Hollywood have gone further - far enough, in fact, to be the stuff of movies. In June 1997, the screenwriter Gary DeVore was working on the screenplay for his directorial debut. It was to be an action movie set against the backdrop of the US invasion of Panama in 1989, which led to the overthrow of dictator Manuel Noriega. According to his wife, Wendy, DeVore had been talking to an old friend - the CIA's Chase Brandon - about Noriega's regime and US counternarcotic programmes in Latin America. Wendy told CNN: "He had been very disturbed over some of the things that he had been finding in his research. He was researching the United States invasion of Panama, because he was setting the actual story that he was writing against this; and the overthrow of Noriega and the enormous amounts of money laundering in the Panamanian banks, also our own government's money laundering."

At the end of that month, DeVore had been in Santa Fe, New Mexico, working on another project. He was travelling back to California when, at 1.15am on June 28, he called Wendy, a call she says has been excised from phone records. She told CNN she was "terribly alarmed" because he was speaking as though he were under duress. She was sure "someone was in the car with him". That was the last time Wendy DeVore heard from her husband.

A year passed, but the case refused to die and speculation mounted. Even the Los Angeles Times began contemplating CIA involvement. DeVore was presumed dead, but there was no body, and no end to the questions. Lo and behold, just nine days after the LA Times reported the case, DeVore's body was found, decomposing in his Ford Explorer, in 12 feet of water in the California Aqueduct below the Antelope Valley Freeway, south of Palmdale - a city located in "aerospace valley", so dubbed by locals for its reputation as a US military-industrial-complex stronghold - fuel to the fire for conspiracy theorists.

The coroner went on to declare the cause and manner of DeVore's death to be "unknown", but police eventually reached the tentative conclusion that the screenwriter's death was an accident: he had fallen asleep at the wheel, they said, before careening off the highway and into the water, where he drowned. But loose ends remain: DeVore's laptop computer containing his unfinished script was missing from his vehicle, as was the gun he customarily carried on long trips; after his disappearance, a CIA representative allegedly showed up at DeVore's house to request access to his computer; Hollywood private investigator Don Crutchfield noted that previous drafts of DeVore's script were inexplicably wiped from said computer during the same timeframe; police claimed that DeVore's vehicle careened off the highway, yet DeVore's widow was troubled by the absence of visible damage to the guardrail at the scene of the alleged accident; and how come no one noticed an SUV sitting in the water beneath a busy highway for a whole year? Perhaps the whole incident is too like a conspiracy movie to be a real conspiracy - but many remain troubled by De Vore's death.

Despite the CIA's professed desire to be more open about the role it plays in Holly-wood, it's hard to take its newfound transparency too seriously. After all, what use is a covert agency that does not act covertly, even if some of its activities are public? And if it is still not open about the truth of events decades ago, many of which have spilled into the public domain accidently, how can we be sure it is telling the truth about its activities now? The spy may have come in from the cold, but he still finds shelter in the dark of the cinema.

How the CIA created Osama bin Laden

19 September 2001

 by Norm Dixon    

“Throughout the world ... its agents, client states and satellites are on the defensive — on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They're doing so on almost every continent populated by man — in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America ... [They are] freedom fighters.”

Is this a call to jihad (holy war) taken from one of Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden's notorious fatwas? Or perhaps a communique issued by the repressive Taliban regime in Kabul?

In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today's supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators, and their holy war against the “evil empire”, was issued by US President Ronald Reagan on March 8, 1985. The “evil empire” was the Soviet Union, as well as Third World movements fighting US-backed colonialism, apartheid and dictatorship.

How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities — the most despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working people in New York and Washington on September 11 — bin Laden the “freedom fighter” is now lambasted by US leaders and the Western mass media as a “terrorist mastermind” and an “evil-doer”.

Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the vicious movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists that plague Algeria and Egypt — and perhaps the disaster that befell New York.

The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his toxic brand of Islamic fundamentalism.

Mujaheddin

In April 1978, the People's Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA) seized power in Afghanistan in reaction to a crackdown against the party by that country's repressive government.

The PDPA was committed to a radical land reform that favoured the peasants, trade union rights, an expansion of education and social services, equality for women and the separation of church and state. The PDPA also supported strengthening Afghanistan's relationship with the Soviet Union.

Such policies enraged the wealthy semi-feudal landlords, the Muslim religious establishment (many mullahs were also big landlords) and the tribal chiefs. They immediately began organising resistance to the government's progressive policies, under the guise of defending Islam.

Washington, fearing the spread of Soviet influence (and worse the new government's radical example) to its allies in Pakistan, Iran and the Gulf states, immediately offered support to the Afghan mujaheddin, as the “contra” force was known.

Following an internal PDPA power struggle in December 1979 which toppled Afghanistan's leader, thousands of Soviet troops entered the country to prevent the new government's fall. This only galvanised the disparate fundamentalist factions. Their reactionary jihad now gained legitimacy as a “national liberation” struggle in the eyes of many Afghans.

The Soviet Union was eventually to withdraw from Afghanistan in 1989 and the mujaheddin captured the capital, Kabul, in 1992.

Between 1978 and 1992, the US government poured at least US$6 billion (some estimates range as high as $20 billion) worth of arms, training and funds to prop up the mujaheddin factions. Other Western governments, as well as oil-rich Saudi Arabia, kicked in as much again. Wealthy Arab fanatics, like Osama bin Laden, provided millions more.

Washington's policy in Afghanistan was shaped by US President Jimmy Carter's national security advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, and was continued by his successors. His plan went far beyond simply forcing Soviet troops to withdraw; rather it aimed to foster an international movement to spread Islamic fanaticism into the Muslim Central Asian Soviet republics to destabilise the Soviet Union.

Brzezinski's grand plan coincided with Pakistan military dictator General Zia ul-Haq's own ambitions to dominate the region. US-run Radio Liberty and Radio Free Europe beamed Islamic fundamentalist tirades across Central Asia (while paradoxically denouncing the “Islamic revolution” that toppled the pro-US Shah of Iran in 1979).

Washington's favoured mujaheddin faction was one of the most extreme, led by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. The West's distaste for terrorism did not apply to this unsavoury “freedom fighter”. Hekmatyar was notorious in the 1970s for throwing acid in the faces of women who refused to wear the veil.

After the mujaheddin took Kabul in 1992, Hekmatyar's forces rained US-supplied missiles and rockets on that city — killing at least 2000 civilians — until the new government agreed to give him the post of prime minister. Osama bin Laden was a close associate of Hekmatyar and his faction.

Hekmatyar was also infamous for his side trade in the cultivation and trafficking in opium. Backing of the mujaheddin from the CIA coincided with a boom in the drug business. Within two years, the Afghanistan-Pakistan border was the world's single largest source of heroin, supplying 60% of US drug users.

In 1995, the former director of the CIA's operation in Afghanistan was unrepentant about the explosion in the flow of drugs: “Our main mission was to do as much damage as possible to the Soviets... There was a fallout in terms of drugs, yes. But the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.”

Made in the USA

According to Ahmed Rashid, a correspondent for the Far Eastern Economic Review, in 1986 CIA chief William Casey committed CIA support to a long-standing ISI proposal to recruit from around the world to join the Afghan jihad. At least 100,000 Islamic militants flocked to Pakistan between 1982 and 1992 (some 60,000 attended fundamentalist schools in Pakistan without necessarily taking part in the fighting).

John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC television network and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, has revealed that Muslims recruited in the US for the mujaheddin were sent to Camp Peary, the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where young Afghans, Arabs from Egypt and Jordan, and even some African-American “black Muslims” were taught “sabotage skills”.

The November 1, 1998, British Independent reported that one of those charged with the 1998 bombings of US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, Ali Mohammed, had trained “bin Laden's operatives” in 1989.

These “operatives” were recruited at the al Kifah Refugee Centre in Brooklyn, New York, given paramilitary training in the New York area and then sent to Afghanistan with US assistance to join Hekmatyar's forces. Mohammed was a member of the US army's elite Green Berets.

The program, reported the Independent, was part of a Washington-approved plan called “Operation Cyclone”.

In Pakistan, recruits, money and equipment were distributed to the mujaheddin factions by an organisation known as Maktab al Khidamar (Office of Services — MAK).

MAK was a front for Pakistan's CIA, the Inter-Service Intelligence Directorate. The ISI was the first recipient of the vast bulk of CIA and Saudi Arabian covert assistance for the Afghan contras. Bin Laden was one of three people who ran MAK. In 1989, he took overall charge of MAK.

Among those trained by Mohammed were El Sayyid Nosair, who was jailed in 1995 for killing Israeli rightist Rabbi Meir Kahane and plotting with others to bomb New York landmarks, including the World Trade Center in 1993.

The Independent also suggested that Shiekh Omar Abdel-Rahman, an Egyptian religious leader also jailed for the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, was also part of Operation Cyclone. He entered the US in 1990 with the CIA's approval. A confidential CIA report concluded that the agency was “partly culpable” for the 1993 World Trade Center blast, the Independent reported.

Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden, one of 20 sons of a billionaire construction magnate, arrived in Afghanistan to join the jihad in 1980. An austere religious fanatic and business tycoon, bin Laden specialised in recruiting, financing and training the estimated 35,000 non-Afghan mercenaries who joined the mujaheddin.

The bin Laden family is a prominent pillar of the Saudi Arabian ruling class, with close personal, financial and political ties to that country's pro-US royal family.

Bin Laden senior was appointed Saudi Arabia's minister of public works as a favour by King Faisal. The new minister awarded his own construction companies lucrative contracts to rebuild Islam's holiest mosques in Mecca and Medina. In the process, the bin Laden family company in 1966 became the world's largest private construction company.

Osama bin Laden's father died in 1968. Until 1994, he had access to the dividends from this ill-gotten business empire.

(Bin Laden junior's oft-quoted personal fortune of US$200-300 million has been arrived at by the US State Department by dividing today's value of the bin Laden family net worth — estimated to be US$5 billion — by the number of bin Laden senior's sons. A fact rarely mentioned is that in 1994 the bin Laden family disowned Osama and took control of his share.)

Osama's military and business adventures in Afghanistan had the blessing of the bin Laden dynasty and the reactionary Saudi Arabian regime. His close working relationship with MAK also meant that the CIA was fully aware of his activities.

Milt Bearden, the CIA's station chief in Pakistan from 1986 to 1989, admitted to the January 24, 2000, New Yorker that while he never personally met bin Laden, “Did I know that he was out there? Yes, I did ... [Guys like] bin Laden were bringing $20-$25 million a month from other Saudis and Gulf Arabs to underwrite the war. And that is a lot of money. It's an extra $200-$300 million a year. And this is what bin Laden did.”

In 1986, bin Laden brought heavy construction equipment from Saudi Arabia to Afghanistan. Using his extensive knowledge of construction techniques (he has a degree in civil engineering), he built “training camps”, some dug deep into the sides of mountains, and built roads to reach them.

These camps, now dubbed “terrorist universities” by Washington, were built in collaboration with the ISI and the CIA. The Afghan contra fighters, including the tens of thousands of mercenaries recruited and paid for by bin Laden, were armed by the CIA. Pakistan, the US and Britain provided military trainers.

Tom Carew, a former British SAS soldier who secretly fought for the mujaheddin told the August 13, 2000, British Observer, “The Americans were keen to teach the Afghans the techniques of urban terrorism — car bombing and so on — so that they could strike at the Russians in major towns ... Many of them are now using their knowledge and expertise to wage war on everything they hate.”

Al Qaeda (the Base), bin Laden's organisation, was established in 1987-88 to run the camps and other business enterprises. It is a tightly-run capitalist holding company — albeit one that integrates the operations of a mercenary force and related logistical services with “legitimate” business operations.

Bin Laden has simply continued to do the job he was asked to do in Afghanistan during the 1980s — fund, feed and train mercenaries. All that has changed is his primary customer. Then it was the ISI and, behind the scenes, the CIA. Today, his services are utilised primarily by the reactionary Taliban regime.

Bin Laden only became a “terrorist” in US eyes when he fell out with the Saudi royal family over its decision to allow more than 540,000 US troops to be stationed on Saudi soil following Iraq's invasion of Kuwait.

When thousands of US troops remained in Saudi Arabia after the end of the Gulf War, bin Laden's anger turned to outright opposition. He declared that Saudi Arabia and other regimes — such as Egypt — in the Middle East were puppets of the US, just as the PDPA government of Afghanistan had been a puppet of the Soviet Union.

He called for the overthrow of these client regimes and declared it the duty of all Muslims to drive the US out of the Gulf states. In 1994, he was stripped of his Saudi citizenship and forced to leave the country. His assets there were frozen.

After a period in Sudan, he returned to Afghanistan in May 1996. He refurbished the camps he had helped build during the Afghan war and offered the facilities and services — and thousands of his mercenaries — to the Taliban, which took power that September.

Today, bin Laden's private army of non-Afghan religious fanatics is a key prop of the Taliban regime.

Prior to the devastating September 11 attack on the twin towers of World Trade Center, US ruling-class figures remained unrepentant about the consequences of their dirty deals with the likes of bin Laden, Hekmatyar and the Taliban. Since the awful attack, they have been downright hypocritical.

In an August 28, 1998, report posted on MSNBC, Michael Moran quotes Senator Orrin Hatch, who was a senior member of the Senate Intelligence Committee which approved US dealings with the mujaheddin, as saying he would make “the same call again”, even knowing what bin Laden would become.

“It was worth it. Those were very important, pivotal matters that played an important role in the downfall of the Soviet Union.”

Hatch today is one of the most gung-ho voices demanding military retaliation.

Another face that has appeared repeatedly on television screens since the attack has been Vincent Cannistrano, described as a former CIA chief of “counter-terrorism operations”.

Cannistrano is certainly an expert on terrorists like bin Laden, because he directed their “work”. He was in charge of the CIA-backed Nicaraguan contras during the early 1980s. In 1984, he became the supervisor of covert aid to the Afghan mujaheddin for the US National Security Council.

The last word goes to Zbigniew Brzezinski: “What was more important in the world view of history? The Taliban or the fall of the Soviet Empire? A few stirred up Muslims or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the Cold War?”

From: Archives, Green Left Weekly issue #465 19 September 2001.

Comment: Osama bin Laden is dead. He died in 2001 in a Pakistani military hospital of renal failure. Since he has made an excellent bugaboo, the CIA, with the full knowledge of the White House, has been faking his “massages” down in Texas. This is considered a huge joke at Langley who view the American public as easily-led sheep.  Brian Harring

Lidl issues scavenger poisoned food apology

 November 13, 2008 

AFP

                Discount German supermarket chain Lidl has issued an apology after workers at one of its Swedish stores deliberately poisoned discarded food in a bid to keep homeless people at bay. Lidl Sweden has been informed that cleaning liquids have been poured into the trash to stop trespassers from stealing garbage at one of our stores during a short time period," Mathias Kivikoski, Lidl's chief executive in Sweden, said in a statement.

                "We deeply regret what has happened and this is not something the company recommends or permits," it added.

                A newspaper in the Stockholm suburb of Solna revealed that Lidl employees at a local store had become tired of homeless people searching trash bins had last week begun pouring toxic cleaning products on discarded food.

                They put up a sign near the bins warning that the goods had been poisoned, but it remained unclear if anyone had eaten the food, the Mitt i Solna paper reported.

                Food had disappeared from the bins after the staff began poisoning it, it said.

                Rolf Nilsson, who heads a Stockholm homeless organization, described the employees' actions as "crazy."

                "This is just so upsetting and distressing. We're talking about people who have to dig in garbage containers to find food to eat," Nilsson told the Aftonbladet daily.

                AFP (news@thelocal.se)

Pirates seize 7 ships in 12 days, latest from Iran
November 18, 2008

by Mohamed Sheikh Nor and Barbara Surk
AP


            U.S. Navy Commander Jane Campbell of the Bahrain-based 5th Fleet said the bulk cargo carrier was flying a Hong Kong flag but was operated by the Islamic Republic of Iran Shipping Lines. The status of the crew or the cargo was not known, she said.

                Elsewhere, pirates anchored a hijacked Saudi supertanker loaded with $100 million in crude oil off the Somali coast on Tuesday, causing residents in impoverished fishing villages to gawk in amazement at the size of the 1,080 foot (329 meter) tanker.

                Pirate attacks off the coast of Somalia have surged recently, despite the presence of NATO ships, U.S. warships and a Russian frigate all working to prevent piracy in one of the world's busiest shipping lanes.

                International Maritime Bureau on Sunday reported five hijackings since Nov. 7, before the hijackings of the Saudi ship or the Iranian ship were announced.

                With few other options, shipowners in past piracy cases have ended up paying ransoms for their ships, cargos and crew.

                The U.S. and other naval forces decided against intervention for now. NATO said it would not divert any of its three warships from the Gulf of Aden and the U.S. Navy's 5th Fleet also said it did not expect to send ships to try to intercept the Saudi supertanker, the MV Sirius Star. The tanker was seized over the weekend about 450 nautical miles off the Kenyan coast.

                Never before have Somali pirates seized such a giant ship so far out to sea — and never a vessel so large. The captors of the Sirius Star anchored the ship, with a full load of 2 million barrels of oil and 25 crew members, close to a main pirate den on the Somali coast, Harardhere.

                "As usual, I woke up at 3 a.m. and headed for the sea to fish, but I saw a very, very large ship anchored less than three miles off the shore," said Abdinur Haji, a fisherman in Harardhere.

                "I have been fishing here for three decades, but I have never seen a ship as big as this one," he told The Associated Press in a telephone interview. "There are dozens of spectators on shore trying to catch a glimpse of the large ship."

                He said two small boats floated out to the ship and 18 men — presumably other pirates — climbed aboard with a rope ladder. Spectators watched as a small boat carried food and qat, a narcotic leaf popular in Somalia, to the supertanker.

                Saudi Foreign Minister Prince Saud al-Faisal called the hijacking "an outrageous act" and said "piracy, like terrorism, is a disease which is against everybody, and everybody must address it together."

                Speaking during a visit to Athens on Tuesday, he said Saudi Arabia would join an international initiative against piracy in the Red Sea area, where more than 80 pirate attacks have taken place this year.

                He did not elaborate on what steps the kingdom would take to better protect its vital oil tankers. Saudi Arabia's French-equipped navy has 18,000-20,000 personnel, but has never taken part in any high-seas fighting.

                Meanwhile, the Norwegian shipping group Odjell SE said it ordered its more than 90 tankers to sail all the way around Africa to avoid the risk of attack by Somali pirates. That means ships will go past South Africa's Cape of Good Hope instead of taking the Suez Canal shortcut through the Gulf of Aden.

                "We will no longer expose our crew to the risk of being hijacked and held for ransom by pirates in the Gulf of Aden," said Terje Storeng, Odjell's president and chief executive.

                Experts say the much longer journey adds 12 to 15 days to a tanker's trip, at a cost of between $20,000-$30,000 a day.

                Abdullkadir Musa, the deputy sea port minister in northern Somalia's breakaway Puntland region, said if the ship tries to anchor anywhere near Eyl — where the U.S. earlier said it was heading — then his forces will try to rescue it.

                Forces from Puntland have sometimes confronted pirates, though Somalia's weak central government, which is fighting Islamic insurgents, has been unable to mount a response to increasing piracy.

                Puntland forces, their guns blazing, freed a Panama-flagged cargo ship from pirates on Oct. 14.

                The Dubai-based owner of the Saudi tanker, Vela International Marine Ltd., said the oil tanker's 25 crew members "are believed to be safe." The statement made no mention of a ransom or contacts with the bandits.

                The Sirius Star's cargo is worth about $100 million at current prices, but the pirates have no known way to unload it from the tanker.

                In Vienna, Ehsan Ul-Haq, chief analyst at JBC Energy, said the seizure was not affecting oil prices, since traders were focused instead on "the overall economy."

                The U.S. Navy is still surrounding a Ukrainian ship loaded with tanks and other weaponry that was seized by pirates Sept. 25 off the Somali coast

Russia to send more warships to battle Somali pirates
November 20, 2008 

AFP

                MOGADISHU – Russia announced Thursday it would send more warships to combat piracy in the waters around Somalia, as the Saudi owners of the Sirius Star negotiated with the pirates holding their oil tanker.

                Admiral Vladimir Vysotsky, the top commander of the Russian navy, made the announcement according to a report by RIA Novosti news agency.

                ‘After the Neustrashimy (Fearless), ships from other fleets of the Russian navy will head to the region,’ Vysotsky said, referring to a frigate sent to the area in September.

                ‘This is needed because of the situation that has developed in the vicinity of the Horn of Africa and the Gulf of Aden, where Somali pirates have sharply increased their activities,’ he said, according to RIA Novosti.

                The announcement from Moscow was the latest sign of growing international frustration over a situation described by the International Maritime Bureau as ‘out of control’.

                Somali pirates who hijacked the Sirius Star said Thursday they wanted 25 million dollars and have set a 10-day deadline.

                ‘We are demanding 25 million dollars from the Saudi owners of the tanker. We do not want long-term discussions to resolve the matter,’ Mohamed Said told AFP from the ship anchored off the Somali coast.

                ‘The Saudis have 10 days to comply, otherwise we will take action that could be disastrous,’ Said added, without elaborating.

                The company which operates the Sirius Star has remained tight-lipped about the claims of negotiations.

                ‘We cannot confirm, nor deny’ reports of negotiations with the hijackers, said Mihir Sapur, the spokesman of Vela International, a subsidiary of Saudi oil giant Saudi Aramco.

                But Saudi Arabia’s Foreign Minister, Prince Saud Al Faisal, told reporters in Rome on Wednesday: ‘I know that the owners of the tanker, they are negotiating on the issue.’

                Seized in the Indian Ocean some 500 miles (800 kilometres) off the east African coast on Saturday, the Sirius Star is now anchored at the Somali pirate lair of Harardhere, according to local officials.

                The super-tanker was loaded to capacity with two million barrels of oil when it was seized along with its crew of 25 — 19 from the Philippines, two from Britain, two from Poland, one Croatian and one Saudi.

                It was the largest ship yet taken by Somali pirates and the attack furthest away from Somalia.

                The Indian frigate INS Tabar, one of dozens of warships from several countries protecting commercial shipping lanes in the Gulf of Aden, sank a Somali pirate ship late Tuesday after coming under fire, navy spokesman Nirad Sinha said.

                Pirates use mother ships, generally hijacked trawlers or deep-sea dhows, to tow speedboats from which they launch their attacks with grapnel hooks tied to rope ladders before neutralising the crews at gunpoint.

                The incident came as shipping groups reported a new surge in hijackings off Somalia, with three captured since the Sirius Star was taken.

                On Wednesday, pirates released another Hong Kong-flagged ship, MV Great Creation, and its 25 crew seized two months ago.

                Noel Choong, head of the piracy reporting centre at the IMB in the Malaysian capital Kuala Lumpur, said ‘the situation is already out of control.’

                But the United States, which also has warships patrolling off Somalia, said a military approach was not the answer to a surge of piracy off the Horn of Africa.

                ‘You could have all the navies in the world having all their ships out there, you know, it’s not going to ever solve this problem,’ said Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell.

                ‘It requires a holistic approach from the international community at sea, ashore, with governance, with economic development,’ he told reporters.

                Morrell said at least 18 ships are currently being held for ransom by Somali pirates, along with 330 mariners taken hostage. This year there have been 95 attempted ship seizures by pirates in the Gulf of Aden, 39 of them successful.

                The European Union said Tuesday it would launch its anti-piracy operation-its first-ever-off Somalia December 8.

                But the piracy threat has already prompted Norwegian shipping company Odfjell to order its ships to use the longer, more expensive but safer route around Cape of Good Hope, thus avoiding the Suez Canal and the Somali coast.

Why world finds it hard to control rampant Somali piracies
November 20, 2008
www.chinaview.

There is no international coordination among the naval powers that are patrolling the area.
A second problem was the "very lawless nature" of Somalia itself.
Third is the attractiveness of lawless regions like Somalia for terror groups like al-Qaida.

BEIJING, (Xinhuanet) — Despite the fact that the U.S. Fifth Fleet is patrolling the area and NATO is also present, why is it that the world cannot control the rampant piracy near the coast of Somalia?

                The real problem, according to Commodore C Uday Bhaskar, an Indian expert, is that there is no international coordination among the naval powers that are patrolling the area.

                A second problem was the "very lawless nature" of Somalia itself, where the state has receded to becoming almost absent. Until the international community joins forces to rebuild a semblance of a state, piracy will continue unabated, the experty said.

                Third, and more dangerous, is the attractiveness of lawless regions like Somalia for terror groups like al-Qaida, which is currently sponsoring an insurgency in Somalia. It's not a huge leap of faith to imagine that al-Qaida could soon be running these profitable piracy operations from these coasts, said B Raman, a terrorism analyst.

                The lawless nature of Somalia means that operations on sea cannot be backed by land operations against the pirates, the security experts believe. The pirates can carry out their attacks on sea and disappear on land to reappear again. So, they said, the only way to control these pirates is to overrun their land bases.

                But this would not happen unless the main countries with navies in the region pool their forces together. Until the capture of the Saudi-owned supertanker "Sirius Star," even Saudi Arabia was "lukewarm" to the entire phenomenon.

                India too awoke after a Japanese vessel with Indian crew was taken some time back. Instead, international shipping corporations are circling the Cape of Good Hope, in order to escape the pirates, adding another 4,000 km to their journeys.

                The International Maritime Bureau reported that at least 83 ships have been attacked in the shipping lanes near Somalia since January 2008. Of these, 33 were hijacked. Twelve of these ships, with a total of 250 crew members, are still in the custody of Somali pirates. In fact, since "Sirius Star," the pirates have captured three more vessels.

                Last but not least, Somali pirates are soundly equipped and quite sly.

                Operating skiffs with powerful outboard engines, GPS systems and satellite phones, the Somali pirates who seized a Saudi supertanker have left officials open-mouthed in astonishment at their audacity.

                "Both the size of the vessel and the distance from the coast where the hijackers struck is unprecedented," Commander Jane Campbell, a spokeswoman for the U.S. Fifth Fleet, based in Bahrain, is quoted in the Guardian as saying. "It shows how quickly the pirates are adapting."

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The near-monopoly on natural gas maintained by the Russians must be broken. Virtually all of the gas lines to Europe in the map below pass through Russian, or Russia-friendly, territory.

<!--[if gte vml 1]> <![endif]--><!--[if !vml]--><!--[endif]--> click here to enlarge INOGATE Map of Natural Gas Pipelines

                “Russia holds the world’s largest natural gas reserves, the second largest coal reserves, and the eighth largest oil reserves. Russia is also the world’s largest exporter of natural gas, the second largest oil exporter and the third largest energy consumer. According to IMF and World Bank estimates, the oil and gas sector generated more than 60 percent of Russia’s export revenues (64% in 2007)”

                The surest way to undermine Russian attempts to counter US moves into the Caucasus is to deprive it of a chunk of this income. This will also undermine Russia’s capability to dictate to Europe in the winter and its attempt to challenge American hegemony over Europe.

                There is some speculation in the Western media that the “great testing” of Obama will come with a Russian military move to consolidate its position in Ukraine and the other breakaway countries, in order to create a path for its own new transmission line to Europe. The South Stream pipeline will run under the Black Sea to the European Union.

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If Russia is allowed to maintain this domination of European gas it will be in a position to challenge US domination, something the neocon West has promised never to countenance. The two former superpowers are headed for a collision over this issue of central Asian pipelines, as they maneuver themselves into an advantageous position for a title fight over future energy sources. Even if one side manages to come out on top after a potential conflict, it would not be able to supply the first cubic meter of gas or oil for at least three years. We are going into a fight based on sheer speculation. The anticipation of future profits is fueling war fever right now.

If the United States had not spent the past eight years antagonizing the rest of the world with our wars of conquest and bullying domination we might be in a better position today to help other nations develop the next generation of energy suppliers (like Kazakistan, Azerbaijan, even Cuba). This next step in energy production and transmission cannot be developed without major investments by Western governments and oil companies. These new resources could be developed at half their potential costs if major wars were not required to create them.

                The Santos basin off the Brazilian coast is estimated to be the third largest oil reservoir in the world and will be in production long before the first drop transits the Caspian or Black Seas.

Brazil Energy Ministry: Existing Oil Contracts to Be UpheldBrazil’s Mines and Energy minister estimated the deep-water reserves to be between 50 billion to 150 billion barrels.

The oil wars of Bush and Cheney will not end even if they submit to the coming transition of power, just as the robbing of America will not be diminished by nationalizing the savings and retirement accounts of ordinary Americans. The looting and pillaging of Americans can only accelerate, just as the wars being fought to enrich the same evil men who are behind both the military and economic crises can only intensify and spread under the cloak of “change” that is “Obamaism” personified. The only “changes” in foreign policy that the Democrats are laying-out before us will not be ones that bring hope.

In the next 3-4 months we shall bear stark witness to the proof that there is only one party in the United States, the party of war and limitless greed.

peter.chamberlin@yahoo.com