TBR News December 19, 2010
The Voice of the White House
Washington, D.C., December 19, 2010: “This WikiLeaks business is very funny and very illustrative.
First of all, no one with any contacts inside the government or its intelligence agencies believes that poor Bradley Manning downloaded tens of thousands of sensitive documents and made some kind of a Devil’s Compact with Julian
No one here believes that Julian raped anyone. We all know how the government works when it wants to do something and planting a pair of jabbering tarts on Julian and then ordering them to begin screaming rape after being banged for two or three days is typical of the crude tactics our people always use.
Subtly or intelligent actions are well beyond them.
And it was not the Swedes who objected to Julian getting bail but our own government who demanded that the British government help them to lay their hairy hands on Julian. Their government complied, as it always does when Washington wants something, but the British courts obviously saw through all of this and Julian got out, under restrictions, and is not only able to better fight us but also dig into his files to cause further havoc with our reputation worldwide.
Screaming idiots from the far right like crazy Sarah Palin or the Bachmann creature are typical of what the public has to put up with.
Whatever one thinks of Julian, who went for the obvious honey trap, he has done nothing wrong. Someone, and it was not Manninig, dug into a reference file and sent the material to Julian.
Julian is not an American citizen and therefore could not commit treason as so many of the loud-mouthed assholes entrenched here are screeching.
Even more annoying are their paid friends in the Internet world who ape their every word. There is no question these are genuine documents and when we see some pin head screeching that they are fake, we hope they get the usual pen set and auto signed Christmas card from the Director himself.
As Napoleon said when someone complained about his issuing the Legion of Honor and called it a ‘bauble,’ ‘It is with such baubles that men are led.’ Of course the Emperor was speaking of his excellent soldiers, not pathetic and dimwitted government stool pigeons.
And a Merry Christmas to all of you!”
Cover-ups, Coups, and Drones – A Holiday
Sampler of What Wikileaks Reveals about the US
December 19, 2010
by Bill Quigley
Pacific Free Press
Human rights advocates have significant new sources of information to hold the United States accountable. The transparency, which Wikileaks has brought about, unveils many cover-ups of injustices in US relations with Honduras, Spain, Thailand, UK and Yemen over issues of torture at Guantanamo, civilian casualties from drones, and the war in Iraq.
US Government is Two Faced over Wikileaks
The US government has twisted itself into knots over Wikileaks. It routinely disregards the privacy of citizens while at the same time trying to avoid transparency for itself.
The US claims broad authority to secretly snoop on the lives of individuals inside and outside of the US. It also works tirelessly to prevent citizens from knowing what is going on by expansively naming basic government information “state secrets.” The government says it has to have the right to keep things secret in order to prevent crime.
But when it comes to revealing evidence of illegal acts by the US government it seeks the most severe sanctions against any transparency.
The most glaring example of the twisted logic is on display within the US Department of Justice. DOJ is searching for creative ways to criminally sanction Wikileaks for publishing US secrets. But the same Department of Justice solemnly decided it should not prosecute the government officials who brazenly destroyed dozens of tapes of water-boarding and torture by US officials. So, DOJ, destruction of evidence of crimes is OK and revealing the evidence of crimes is bad?
Holiday Sampler from Wikileaks
Here is a Holiday Sampler of what Wikileaks has published revealing the US role in cover-ups, drones, and coups.
Cover-ups
Spain
The US worked with high-ranking officials in Spain to try to derail legal accountability for torture by US officials.
Spain has opened two judicial inquiries into torture allegations against US officials at Guantanamo.
A series of cables details secret meetings and communications between officials of the two countries. An April 1, 2009 cable (Reference ID 09MADRID347) describes a meeting between the main Spanish prosecutor and US officials. The prosecutor promises to proceed slowly and to try to make sure the case is not assigned to the most pro-human rights judge in Spain, Judge Garzon. An April 19, 2009 cable (Reference 09MADRID392) tells of numerous meetings between US officials and Spanish officials, including the Attorney General of Spain, who promises not to support the case. A cable dated May 5, 2009 (Reference ID 09MADRID440) describes further meetings between US officials and the prosecutor who promises to “embarrass” the Judge into dropping the case.
It is noteworthy that the pro-human rights judge, Baltasar Garzon, was later indicted in April 2010 for probing into Spanish civil war atrocities in a way that Spanish government said was an abuse of power.
UK
The UK promised to protect US interests in the UK review of Iraq war. In a September 22, 2009 cable (Reference ID 09LONDON2198) UK officials “promised that the UK had put measures into place to protect your interest during the inquiry into the causes of the Iraq war. He noted that Iraq no longer seems to be a major issue in the US, but he said it would become a big issue – a feeding frenzy – in the UK when the inquiry takes off.”
Drones and Cover-ups
Amnesty International released pictures of a US manufactured cruise missile that carried cluster bombs used in December 17, 2009 attack on a community in Abyan, Yemen which killed 14 alleged members of Al Qaeda and 41 local residents – including 14 women and 21 children. At the time of the AI report, June 6, 2010, Yemeni officials said that its forces had carried out that attack. AI asked the US to explain its role but the US did not. After Wikileaks disclosures, it is clear that the US carried out the attack and both countries were lying.
A January 4, 2010 cable, (ID Reference 10SANAA4), noted Yemen officials expressed concerns about the killings of civilians in Yemen by US drone attacks. The US has been bombing Yemen with drones and other missiles for over a year, often trying to assassinate US citizen and accused Al Qaeda leader Anwar Awlaki and others. In this cable, US officials said “the only civilians killed were the wife and children an [al Qaeda] operative at the site.” Yemen officials complained that US cruise missiles are “not very accurate” and reportedly welcomed the use of aircraft-deployed precision-guided bombs instead. “We’ll continue saying the bombs are ours, not yours,” said the Yemen leader, prompting a Deputy Minister to joke that he had just “lied” by telling the Yemen Parliament that the bombs in Arhab, Abyan, and Shebwa were American-made but deployed by the Yemen military.
Coups and Cover-ups
When is a coup not a coup?
Wikileaks documents show the US knew in advance about the 2006 military coup in Thailand and changed its definition of the 2009 coup in Honduras within a 30 day period.
In a September 19, 2006 cable, (ID Reference 06BANGKOK5811) written just after a military coup deposed the elected government in Thailand while the Premier was at the UN, the US reminded Thai military coup leaders of an earlier conversation that promised US aid would be cutoff if there was a coup. The cable makes it clear that the US knew of the planning for the coup in advance. The cable goes on to observe that “a coup is a coup is a coup…”
In a July 23, 2009 cable (ID Reference 09TEGUCIGALPA645) written after “the June 28 forced removal of President Manuel “Mel” Zelaya” from Honduras, “the Embassy perspective is that there is no doubt that the military, Supreme Court, and national congress conspired on June 28 in what constitutes an illegal and unconstitutional coup against the Executive Branch, while accepting there may be a prima facie case that Zelaya may have committed illegalities and may have even violated the constitution. There is equally no doubt from our perspective that Roberto Micheletti’s assumption of power was illegitimate.”
Yet, a month later, in a August 25, 2009 Special Briefing by US State Department included this exchange with journalist Sergio Davila.
Davila: “If this is a coup – the State Department considers this a coup, what’s the next step? And I mean, there is a legal framework on the U.S. laws dealing with countries that are under coup d’état? I mean, what’s holding you guys to take other measures according – the law?”
The State Department official responded: “I think what you’re referring to, Mr. Davila, is whether or not this is – has been determined to be a military coup. And you’re correct that there are provisions in our law that have to be applied if it is determined that this is a military coup. And frankly, our lawyers are looking at that exact question. And when we get the answer to that, you are right, there will be things that – if it is determined that this was a military coup, there will be things that will kick in.
“As you know, on the ground, there’s a lot of discussion about who did what to whom and what things were constitutional or not, which is why our lawyers are really looking at the event as we understand them in order to come out with the accurate determination.”
The US backpedaling on the coup in Honduras continues to this day.
Wikileaks has revealed evidence of US human rights abuses around the world. Now the question is what are human rights activists going to do with this information?
Careful When Shooting the Messenger
December 19, 2010
by Eric Pfanner
New York Times
:
PARIS — In May 2009, The Daily Telegraph set off a political storm in Britain when it detailed widespread expense-account abuse by members of Parliament. Among the claims: £1,645, or $2,547, for a floating duck house in one lawmaker’s garden.
The reports were based on a leak, in the form of a stolen computer disk that The Telegraph obtained from a disgruntled public-sector employee, reportedly in exchange for a fee.
At first, the British political establishment was nearly unanimous in its condemnation of the newspaper. There was talk of prosecuting The Telegraph, and government lawyers boned up on the Official Secrets Act.
Eventually common sense prevailed and the government backed off, realizing that legal action would have made a bad situation worse. Given that the information had already escaped, shooting the messenger would have been pointless. And the damage to Britain’s image as an advocate of transparency and fair play would have been enormous.
The expenses scandal is worth considering as the U.S. government weighs its response to an even bigger leak of secret information obtained with the aid of digital technology — the publishing of thousands of American diplomatic cables by the Web site WikiLeaks. According to reports in The New York Times and the International Herald Tribune, its global edition, which have published articles based on the cables, the Justice Department is examining charges against Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks.
There are, of course, some differences between the expenses scandal and what WikiLeaks calls “Cablegate.” The cables are arguably more sensitive than the information on The Telegraph’s disk — in some cases, publication threatens lives, according to the U.S. government. Yet the expense reports provided more immediately compelling evidence of scandal; the WikiLeaks files contain a lot more “cable” than “gate.”
On the other hand, the alleged payment by The Telegraph adds a commercial factor to the newspaper’s motivation for publishing; WikiLeaks, meanwhile, says it acts purely in the interest of promoting transparency.
Still, there is one important parallel: A U.S. prosecution of Mr. Assange would carry significant downside risks for the United States. The issues at stake were described neatly in a recent policy paper by Google, about government efforts to disrupt the free flow of information on the Internet.
The paper does not mention WikiLeaks; it was widely seen as a broadside against China’s policy of filtering the Internet, after Google’s run-ins with the censors in Beijing. But it contained a useful summary of the different kinds of censorship practiced around the world, including this tactic: “Encouragement of self-censorship through means including surveillance and monitoring, threats of legal action and informal methods of intimidation.”
That sounds a lot like what is going on in the United States right now with regard to WikiLeaks. It is not necessary for America to erect a Chinese-style “Great Firewall” to filter out government criticism; if Mr. Assange were prosecuted, would-be whistleblowers and news tipsters would have to think twice before taking action.
That would be bad news for American journalism, and it might be even worse for U.S. technology giants, whose global dominance is underpinned by a sense that American values align with the spirit of openness and free expression that has generally prevailed on the Internet. Technological superiority is not the only reason why Google, and not Baidu of China, is the world’s pre-eminent search engine.
Google argues in the paper that censorship should be viewed as a barrier to trade, given the increasing importance of the Internet in moving goods and ideas around the world.
In the WikiLeaks saga, other commentators have elevated the stakes further, describing the cable dump, the bellicose official response and the juvenile efforts by hackers sympathetic to WikiLeaks as the opening salvoes of a long-awaited cyberwar.
US empire could collapse at any time
December 17th, 2010
by Nathan Diebenow
Raw Story
America’s military and economic empire could collapse at any time, but predicting the precise day, week or month of its potential demise is unattainable, according to a former New York Times war correspondent who spoke with Raw Story.
“The when and how is very dangerous to predict because there’s always some factor that blindsides you that you didn’t expect,” Pulitzer-winning journalist Chris Hedges said in an exclusive interview. “It doesn’t look good. But exactly how it plays out and when it plays out, having covered disintegrating societies, it’s impossible to tell.”
He explained that he learned this lesson as events unfolded around him in the fall of 1989. Then, members of the opposition to the Soviet Empire told him that they predicted travel across the Berlin Wall separating East from West Germany would open within the year.
“Within a few hours, the wall didn’t exist,” he said.
Hedges was one of the 131 activists were arrested in an act of civil disobedience outside the White House yesterday, even as Obama was unveiling a new report citing progress in the Afghanistan war.
Speaking to Raw Story on Wednesday night, he said the signs of US collapse are plain to see and compared the country’s course through Afghanistan to Soviet Russia’s.
“We’re losing [the war in Afghanistan] in the same way the Red Army lost it,” he said. “It’s exactly the same configuration where we sort of control the urban centers where 20 percent of the population lives. The rest of the country where 80 percent of the Afghans live is either in the hands of the Taliban or disputed.”
“Foreigners will not walk the streets of Kabul because of kidnapping, and journalists regularly meet Taliban officials in Kabul because the whole apparatus is so porous and corrupt,” he said.
One day after this interview was conducted, reports hit the global media noting the CIA’s warning to President Obama, that the Pakistan-supported Taliban could still regain control of the country.
Hedges predicted that President Obama’s war report released Thursday would “contradict not only [US] intelligence reports but everything else that is coming out of Afghanistan.”
His prediction came startlingly true: the CIA’s own assessment was said to stand in striking contrast with President Obama’s report.
Defense Secretary Robert Gates, however, insisted that the US controlled more territory in Afghanistan than it did a year ago.
‘A corporate coup d’état in slow motion’
Hedges said he attended the protest and planned to get arrested because he is against the corporate powers that have enveloped the nation.
“We’ve undergone a corporate coup d’état in slow motion,” he said. “Our public education system has been gutted. Our infrastructure is corroding and collapsing. Unless we begin to physically resist, they are going to solidify neo-feudalism in this country.”
“If we think that Obama is bad, watch the next two years because these corporate forces have turned their back on him,” Hedges warned.
Hedges, author of “Death of the Liberal Class,” said that his vision of America is one with a functioning social democracy, which stands in stark contrast to the nihilism of the corporate state.
“American workers, as they are repeatedly told, will have to become competitive with prison labor in China,” he said. “That’s where we’re headed, and all the pillars of the liberal establishment are complicit in this.”
“At least if you get sick in the UK, you don’t go bankrupt or die,” he added.
Hedges said that another pressure point is the US dollar, which he pointed out had been dropped by Russia and China in favor of modified ruble/renminbi exchanges.
“A few more deals like that, and our currency becomes junk,” he said.
Hedges continued, “As long as we have relative stability, these lunatic fringe movements can be held at bay, but if we don’t undertake serious structural reform, which we’re not doing, then it is inevitable that we will come to a tremendous crisis – economic and political as well as environmental.”
Governments and Corporations Attempt to Repress Wikileaks: Holding Up Mirrors
IndyMedia
WikiLeaks has struggled to stay online after initiating the slow release of over 250,000 leaked US diplomatic cables on 28th November 2010. The releases, dubbed “Cablegate” have been carried in newspapers around the world. The four-year-old WikiLeaks organistaion has been under constant political attack, especially from the conservative side of politics, whilst it’s website has been subjected to a series of sophisticated cyber attacks. Reporters Without Borders condemned this hounding of Wikileaks.
Spokesperson for Wikileaks, Julian Assange, was put on Interpol’s most wanted list for detention and extradition to Sweden in relation to two allegations of sexual abuse against him which had previously been dropped. The Swedish prosecutor is described as “overzealous” in the mainstream German weekly, Die Zeit. Assange surrendered his passport to British police and offered sureties of £180,000, but a Westminster Court denied his bail application. (Court protest)
Global resistance in support of Wikileaks and Assange is taking the form of over 1,200 websites mirroring Wikileaks and street protests such as in Australia. The Indymedia Network is hosting one of these Mirrors. Noam Chomsky, Professor Peter Singer and other prominent people in Australia have released an open letter to Australian Prime Minister Julia Gillard calling for Julian Assange to be given full support as an Australian citizen and urged a statement of Australia’s commitment to freedom of political communication.
In retaliation against corporate censorship action against Wikileaks anonymous hackers working as Operation Payback have taken down a bank website that froze Julian Assange’s defence fund and the Mastercard site was subject to a DDOS attack after wikileaks donations were banned.
US constitutional lawyer Glenn Greenwald said on Democarcy Now that the freedom of the whole internet is now at stake.
The manner of these revelations has been described as “holding a mirror” to the mainstream press and their friends in governments. The governments clearly don’t like to see the ugliness of their own depravity, which is ususally hidden from view by the press. Will we allow Wikileaks and Julian Assange to be destroyed for daring to tell the world the truth about wars and the criminal deeds of governments around the world? Or will we support the upholding of mirrors – both technical and journalistic – in the struggle for openness?
Will the Afghanistan war break Obama’s presidency?
Barack Obama is suffering his own Vietnam moment, waging a war he can neither explain nor afford
December 16, 2010
by Simon Tisdall
guardian.co.uk
Barack Obama puts a brave face on it. The Afghan war is winnable, he insists. “We are going to break the Taliban’s momentum,” he told US troops at Bagram this month. He repeated the mantra today. But American commentators and analysts, across the political spectrum, are wondering aloud: will it happen the other way around? Will the war break Obama’s presidency?
Obama is not yet the Rose Garden prisoner of a failed policy – the fate that befell a Democrat predecessor, Jimmy Carter, whose administration was taken hostage by Iran’s revolutionary mullahs. But he’s uncomfortably close, for all the determined White House talk.
Obama the presidential candidate talked up the war, spoke of fighting the good fight in Afghanistan in contrast to Iraq, wrote Peter Feaver in Foreign Policy. But Obama the president struggles to communicate his aims, much as he struggled on healthcare. Feaver said:
“The administration’s strategy appears to be to drive the public narrative underground.”
In other words, Obama would rather not talk about it unless he cannot avoid it.
This reluctance is political and intellectual. Veteran foreign policy analyst Leslie Gelb, writing in the Daily Beast, said Obama can no longer persuasively answer the basic question: why are 100,000 American troops in Afghanistan, at an annual cost of $113bn?
“Afghanistan is no longer a vital interest of the United States but continuing the war there tears at our own nation’s very vitals,” Gelb said, arguing that international terrorism now has many bases, including Stockholm and London, and is no longer centred in the Hindu Kush (if it ever was). He added:
“With America drowning under a $1.5tn deficit for next year and an almost $15tn overall debt, we are verging on banana republic-hood… Of course I feel for the Afghans; but I feel far, far more for Americans.”
Obama’s electoral vulnerability, waging a war he can’t explain and can’t afford, is explored further by the conservative columnist George Will. With US casualties at record highs and public support falling, Will speculated about a repeat not of Carter’s misfortunes but of Lyndon Johnson’s:
“Taliban leaders surely know that North Vietnam won the Vietnam war not in Vietnam but in America. And they surely known the role played by North Vietnam’s 1968 Tet offensive. Although US forces thoroughly defeated the enemy, the American public, seeing only chaos and the prospect of many more years of it, turned decisively against the war.”
On this analysis, the all-powerful General David Petraeus can “surge” the reinforcements Obama sent him as long as he likes. Increased violence has the opposite effect to that intended. It strengthens the general’s most potent foes – who stand behind him, not in front of him.
These “foes” include a majority of the public, the CIA (which believes that Pakistani support for the jihadis is fatally undermining the whole counter-insurgency project), many Democrats in Congress, White House containment advocates such as vice-president Joe Biden, and maybe even Obama himself.
To a degree, he was trapped by his own stump rhetoric. But insider accounts suggest Obama knows in his heart he was bounced into an escalating conflict by a bunch of Iraq-tainted military top brass keen to prove they can win a war. He sacked generals McKiernan and McChrystal. But he can’t sack ’em all.
Obama, of course, is adamant that a phased troop drawdown will begin next July. But the real deadline has been pushed back and back. As they say in Kabul: “2014 is the new 2011”. And even that may not stick, especially if sections of the Afghan security forces continue their impersonation of Dad’s Army.
All the same, next summer may still prove to be showdown time for Obama’s war – for both his presidency and his hopes of a second term. “Obama’s most ardent political supporters are the most fervent opponents of his war policies,” said Feaver. If limited July, 2011 withdrawals “start a rapid rush to the exit”, as the American left hopes, the Republicans whose votes have sustained Obama will desert him. If Obama adheres to Petraeus’s slower, “conditions-based” withdrawal through 2014 and beyond, Obama may lose his political base. “Any remaining left-leaning props undergirding public support will likely collapse altogether,” Feaver predicted.
Will makes the same point a different way. Whether Obama is re-elected in 2012 “depends partly on whether the party’s left, which provides a disproportionate portion of the party’s energy, is energised,” he said, adding:
“Whatever one thinks of the current strategy, Obama is prosecuting it with a vigour that indicates a refusal to allow political calculations to condition national security. This presidential virtue could imperil his presidency.”
Analyst Tony Cordesman, quoted in Politico, said Obama had six months to show results – or face the electoral consequences. “Few in America or outside it will be willing to hear another explanation of why the new strategy has not yet been validated in the field.”
The writing is on the wall for Obama. The latest opinion poll, published yesterday by the Washington Post/ABC News, is chilling for the White House. A record 60% of Americans now believe the war is not worth fighting; only 45% approve Obama’s handling of the conflict.
A more telling statistic perhaps is that 54% of Americans support the July 2011 start date for beginning troop withdrawals, while 27% say they should start sooner. According to a separate poll this month, a majority of Afghans also believes the US and Nato should leave by mid-2011 or earlier.
This clamour cannot be ignored indefinitely. If Obama allows his generals to drag their feet, and the casualties keep mounting, he risks a political meltdown and the destruction of his presidency.
Rubens painting once owned by victim of the Nazis is to stay in Britain
December 19, 2010
by Jamie Doward
The Observer/UK
Ownership panel rules in favour of Courtauld Institute after Jewish banker’s descendants lose fight to own painting
An historically important painting of the Virgin Mary by Peter Paul Rubens will stay in Britain, after an emotional battle between the Courtauld Institute and the family of its original owner.
The Coronation of the Virgin was sold in haste by its Jewish banker owner, who was forced to flee Germany when the Nazis took over in the 1930s. More than half a century later, his descendants launched a claim to recover it, in a move that could have seen it leave one of Britain’s most prestigious galleries. But after hearing lengthy arguments, parliament’s Spoliation Advisory Panel, which rules on the ownership of disputed artworks, decided in favour of its current owner, the Courtauld Institute in London.
The panel heard that the painting – an oil sketch – had been in the collection of a German Jewish banker, Herbert Gutmann, son of the founder of the Dresdner Bank, Eugen Gutmann. An avid collector of Islamic art and European old master paintings and decorative arts, Gutmann was appointed as director of Dresdner Bank on his father’s death, but had to step down in the wake of the 1931 German banking crisis. Five years later, he fled Nazi Germany for the UK, having sold his art collection at an auction house in Berlin in April 1934. His descendants maintain that he was forced to sell before the Nazis seized the collection and therefore the Courtauld was obliged to return the 46cm x 61.4cm work, believed to have been painted in 1613 and described in the auction house brochure as a “beautiful work of Peter Paul Rubens in his own hand”.
The painting came to Britain after it was acquired at auction at Sotheby’s by a noted collector, Count Antoine Seilern, who bequeathed it to the Courtauld Institute in 1978. While the painting is one of Rubens’s lesser known works, it is considered important as it is part of a group of oil sketches by the German-born artist made in preparation for a series of larger paintings that decorated the ceiling of a Jesuit church in Antwerp destroyed by fire in the 18th century.
Central to the row over ownership was whether Gutmann had been forced to sell the painting because of antisemitism, as his descendants contend. The panel heard evidence that Gutmann’s Dresdner Bank became “Nazified” and was encouraged to persecute Jewish employees. The panel report notes: “While there is no documentary record of Gutmann having owed any money to the Dresdner Bank before 1933, documents start recording money owed by Gutmann from this point onwards, beginning with a debt, reported in July 1933, of 200,000 reichsmarks owed to a Dresdner Bank share syndicate set up in 1927, in which Gutmann was a participant.”
But the panel also heard that Gutmann had run up debts in connection with disastrous investments in Egyptian cotton futures that eroded his wealth. The Courtauld insisted that Gutmann sold his art collection because of these financial losses and that the decision to offload it was simply a “cold financial calculation”, not because of antisemitism. The panel agreed and ruled that the moral strength of the claimants’ case was insufficient to recommend transfer of the painting to the claimants or an ex gratia payment. A ruling against the Courtauld could have raised questions about the due diligence it conducted before accepting the work.
The decision closes another chapter on the tragic Gutmann family saga. Arrested by the SS in 1934, together with other members of centrist and rightwing parties, several of Gutmann’s contemporaries were murdered on the orders of Hitler, who feared that they might support a coup against him. Gutmann had been a target of the Nazis even before they came to power, and was described by one of their propaganda posters as a “profiteer and a Jewish manipulator”.
He fled to the UK in October 1936 and died there six years later. His brother and his wife, who remained in Germany, were murdered by the Nazis. Gutmann’s remaining assets were seized by the Nazis in 1940.
Last year another of Gutmann’s paintings, Hans Makart’s The Death of Pappenheim, was returned to the family by a decision of Vienna municipal council.
Blessed Prozac Moments!
IS THE TRUTH REALLY OUT THERE?
WIKI-WARNING – LITTLE GREEN MEN COMING
December 16, 2010
by Gordon Duff
VeteransToday
Those “in the know” have long since picked up the fact that Wikileaks is a game, or “game theory warfare” as Jeff Gates puts it. The players, a Rothschild law firm, the pro-Israel gang at the New York Times, Guardian and Der Spiegel and the Mossad. The leaks have been, as Zbigniew Brzezinski puts it, a combination of chickenfeed and “seeded, pointed material” from an “intelligence agency.” Now we are told by Wayne Madsen and others that Wikileaks has UFO materials and is going to buy its way out of the “dog house” with them.
Wikileaks was Israel. Now, Wikileaks is going to be X-Files.
What can we expect, what is in the UFO files of the United States Air Force?
UFO secrets have been the Holy Grail of the intelligence community since 1947 and the Roswell landing or Roswell crash, more appropriately, in New Mexico. The Air Force initially released a story of a “flying saucer” landing but, in an almost “military” manner, clumsy and “ham handed,” rescinded its own reports and screamed “weather balloon.” I was at Wurtsmith AFB in October 1973, a “national secret,” when the UFO flyover happened there. This “national secret” was, at the time, witnessed by thousands of people, reported on TV, newspapers and joked about by everyone but the Air Force personnel that a 300 foot flaming “whatever” traveling at Mach 1.5 scared the bejeezus out of.
They later reported that one as a “weather balloon” also. It was seen flying 2000 miles across the United States, burning like the sun the entire way. I believe them. It was a weather balloon. I just want to know what it was made of. I want everything I own to be made out of that stuff.
For years, the reports have been of the Air Force adapting UFO technology at the Area 51 base in Nevada, triangular aircraft capable of unusual maneuvers with some type of drive capable of using aspects of physics I won’t begin to describe. Dozens, maybe even hundreds of movies, books and television shows have been made about this subject or various derivations of the Majestic 12 document, the “Protocols of the Elders of Zion” of the UFO world.
THE WIKI-RUMOR, WIKI-BLACKMAIL
These stories, true or not, national secrets or conspiracy theory of such power and breadth as to become a major cultural phenomena, are old news, long debunked by “debunkers” long proven to be unreliable, untruthful and untrustworthy. Welcome to uncertainty.
Where there is uncertainty, there is also something to hide. The rumor wouldn’t be “out there” unless it had power of some kind. Accept the fact that something startling may or may not be released to the public, depending on whether some agenda of Wikileaks or Wikileaks and Israel, is met.
Can America’s UFO secrets force an attack on Iran? This is the kind of game that could be played here.
AIR FORCE RUMORS, PATRIOTS OR DELUSIONAL LUNATICS?
For decades, Air Force pilots have told of UFO’s. Even America’s astronauts have seen them, up close and personal. The number of reports, “close encounters” of one kind or another, 1 through 4, number in the tens of thousands. The number of UFO witnesses who can be considered “extremely credible” is over 1000. Many world governments consider UFOs a real threat and are, occasionally, public about it.
Whenever I receive “rumors,” and they flood in from the Air Force like anything, I try to consider why I am being told what I am being told. Everyone has an agenda. Destroying the credibility of a journalist is a joke. I report on people who are narcissists, sociopaths and degenerates and these are our civilian and military leaders. Is something going to make me seem worse, worse than Bush and Cheney? I don’t think so.
This is the extent of what I am being told by people who are responsible parties, Air Force officers, folks normally seen as having “the right stuff.”
- America has UFO technology and aircraft that perform well beyond anything the public imagines
- some aspect of the fictional version, be it Men in Black or X Files, isn’t fiction
Is this where Wikileaks is going?
WORSE, CRAZIER OR WIKI-CRAZIER?
The Wiki-rumors talk about UFO, Nazi Germany and a base in Antarctica. There is a reference, from several sources, of some kind of UFO war. I know absolutely nothing about this but…
This is what I was told by sources who had known escaped Nazi elite:
During the war, Hitler had been in contact with aliens. Some sort of agreement or arrangement was made. A base was built in Antarctica. Germany had build a “complimentary” facility in Chile which existed until well after the war. The “Nazi/Space Alien” base in Antarctica was also controlled by the Nazis and, at some point, by Nazis and Americans, well after the end of the war.
I know of people alive today, folks serious as a “heart attack,” who claim to have visited these facilities. These are “ratline” people.
Now many of us are being told that Wikileaks has materials referencing exactly this.
MY RECOMMENDATION, DO EXACTLY AS I SAY
My first recommendation is to not listen to me at all. I don’t really trust anyone. Oh. I am now “Mulder” of X Files. Didn’t he always say that: “Trust no one.”
Good advice, trust no one. I certainly don’t trust Wikileaks, not because everything they say is false, some certainly is, but because Wikileaks has been “outed” as having an agenda.
I can make assumptions, predictions, that I seem to be good at. The Air Force is keeping something from us and someone, finally, has gotten into their “underwear drawer.” Every high official, more than a few presidents included, has sought the secret UFO files. Carter, Reagan, Gore, others, have claimed these files exist but were denied access to them.
Is the truth so unpleasant, so disgusting that it can’t be revealed?
This is a probability.
Everything points that direction, what is seen and proven, the rumors, the secrecy, and now the threat from Wikileaks.
What I do know is that what we will be told. Unless the United States relinquishes defacto control of our military forces to the State of Israel, Julian Assange is going to unleash his stockpile of UFO documents.
The sign that the United States has surrendered will be increased rhetoric from President Obama over Iran’s peaceful nuclear program and, at some point, the false flag attack on American forces in the Persian Gulf that the Bush administration was prevented from enacting in 2007.
We watch, we wait, but do we believe?
Comment: This one is a real howler!
Conversations with the Crow
When the CIA discovered that their former Deputy Director of Clandestine Affairs, Robert T. Crowley, had been talking with author Gregory Douglas, they became fearful (because of what Crowley knew) and outraged (because they knew Douglas would publish eventually) and made many efforts to silence Crowley, mostly by having dozens of FBI agents call or visit him at his Washington home and try to convince him to stop talking to Douglas, whom they considered to be an evil, loose cannon.
Crowley did not listen to them (no one else ever does, either) and Douglas made through shorthand notes of each and every one of their many conversation. TBR News published most of these (some of the really vile ones were left out of the book but will be included on this site as a later addendum ) and the entire collection was later produced as an Ebook.
Now, we reliably learn, various Washington alphabet agencies are trying to find a way to block the circulation of this highly negative, entertaining and dangerous work, so to show our solidarity with our beloved leaders and protectors, and our sincere appreciation for their corrupt and coercive actions, we are going to reprint the entire work, chapter by chapter. (The complete book can be obtained by going to:
http://www.shop.conversationswiththecrow.com/Conversations-with-the-Crow-CWC-GD01.htm
Here is the fifty third chapter
Conversation No. 53
Date: Thursday, December 5, 1996
Commenced: 2:10 PM CST
Concluded: 2:25 PM CST
GD: Good afternoon, Robert. Still coping with the cold?
RTC: The temperature or my nose?
GD: Oh, both.
RTC: I stay inside and take medicine. At my age, the cold goes away and so does the person. No, pretty much under control. How are you doing?
GD: The diabetes is under control but my son is not. If he ever told me the truth, I would fall flat on the floor. He has the unfortunate habit of knocking his girl friends up and then ditching them. Not only do I disapprove of such behavior but I am the one who has weeping and pregnant people on my front porch while he hides in the bathroom. I have other things I would rather do, I can assure you.
RTC: Well, no, such is not good. What happens with the pregnant ones?
GD: I have to pay for the abortions and I am quite opposed to abortion. It would be a mess otherwise. Of course, he will never pay me back. I will have to take him to the vet one of these days and have him neutered. Save me a lot of grief and money.
RTC: There are always problems, aren’t there?
GD: Increasingly, Robert, increasingly. Listen, you and I spoke once about the origin of AIDS….
RTC: That wasn’t us; it was the Navy if you will recall.
GD: I think we have talked about this more than once. And killing of the chink’s rice crops. Well, from a pragmatic point of view, I can see the benefit of doing that. China is coming up very fast and soon enough, she will produce goods better and cheaper than we do. That’s what was behind the First World War. The Brits had a lock on manufactured goods until the Germans caught up with them. Instead of competing, they started a war and everyone went down. I suppose starving the Chinese would be better than nuking them. Less radioactive material in the air. Still, if the Chinese get too big, too fast, they will collapse internally unless, and I stress this, unless they get rid of the ancient Communist bosses and go over to a Western style republic complete with corruption at the highest levels. With their natural business acumen, industrious nature and a rigid dictatorship over everything, something will give in sooner or later. I suppose your people will be giving them a push. Maybe internal strife, maybe something else.
RTC: Well, I am out of it now and it’s their worry. Did you ever talk to Herr Mueller about things like this?
GD: Sometimes but when I was living in Bern, I discussed these things with a very senior KGB person.
RTC: Anyone I know?
GD: First Directorate and all. Probably. Is it snowing there?
RTC: Not now. I don’t suppose….
GD: No, I would rather not. It’s funny about our counter-intelligence. They won’t talk with me even though I know more than they do about their subjects.
RTC: Oh, of course not. Tell the FBI that the CIA wants to talk with you in private and see how fast they occupy your living room.
GD: One against the other, eh? Do it all the time in business. Oh and yes, I almost forgot. A Russian publisher’s representative was chatting with me the other day and mentioned, in passing, that your agency is now full of Jews and that a number of these are keeping their diplomatic pouches crammed with our secrets. You knew that?
RTC: I believe it. Can you give me names?
GD: A pleasure. I will have a list with names and home addresses sent to you from a friend in Maryland. I know nothing about it. Would you shoot them?
RTC: Heart attacks are much easier and less ostentatious. We can’t have that, Gregory. But something from the Russians to us via you is suspect. Not that you are a problem but how do we know they won’t pick out especially effective agents and ruin them?
GD: We don’t, so watch them and see. If they visit the Israeli embassy there, why then you have some confirmation. How would I do it? Take the suspect aside and give them some very reasonable but entirely false information with some zingers included. Then, if this shows up, you have confirmation. And then the car accident or the heart attack.
RTC: Gregory, the additives are not original with you but I applaud your grasp.
GD: Why not just ship all of them down to a new CIA station on McMurdo Sound in the Antarctic and forget to fly in winter supplies. Like food and heating oil. Come spring, a tragic discovery when the snow-covered camp is dug out by rescuers who were alarmed by the lack of reports on the bowel movements of penguins.
RTC: You have a perverse sense of humor Gregory but there is something to say about that.
GD: Or send them on special missions into Arab territory and tip off the Arabs. Let them draw and quarter them without any assistance from you. A nice condolence letter, machine-signed from the director, and some plastic flowers would do nicely.
RTC: Yes and a nice star on the wall.
GD: If I were doing it, there would more stars than the Milky Way.
RTC: We have had to remove a number of bad apples from our barrels, Gregory. Not Jews generally although a few got too uppity.
GD: Do you have any black agents in the field?
RTC: Now that you mention it, we do not. But by God, we do have black waiters in the executive dining rooms. Does that sound better to you?
GD: It’s a start. I note that the Jews like to sponsor blacks so if things go wrong, they will have walking sandbags to absorb the bullets that are meant for them. You should read ‘The True Believer’ by Hoffer. Very good book. Short, sharp and very much to the point. Speaking of landfill candidates, how are the Switzers across the street doing?
RTC: Still there. Maybe you can come up with another idea.
GD: Well a huge car bomb set off just as their Ambassador is starting on a drive to some function might make a point.
RTC: You forget, Gregory, that I live right across the street. Think of my windows.
GD: True. Well, give me some time and I can come up with a solution.
RTC: A Final Solution?
GD: Ah, there we go with the Jews again. My God, what was that sound?
RFC: I was sneezing and knocked over a lamp.
GD: I thought someone blew up the Swiss Embassy.
RTC: There you go, trying to cheer an old man up. There’s broken lamp all over the floor and maybe we can talk again later.
(Concluded at 2:25 PM CST)
Dramatis personae:
James Jesus Angleton: Once head of the CIA’s Counterintelligence division, later fired because of his obsessive and illegal behavior, tapping the phones of many important government officials in search of elusive Soviet spies. A good friend of Robert Crowley and a co-conspirator with him in the assassination of President Kennedy
James P. Atwood: (April 16, 1930-April 20, 1997) A CIA employee, located in Berlin, Atwood had a most interesting career. He worked for any other intelligence agency, domestic or foreign, that would pay him, was involved in selling surplus Russian atomic artillery shells to the Pakistan government and was also most successful in the manufacturing of counterfeit German dress daggers. Too talkative, Atwood eventually had a sudden, and fatal, “seizure” while lunching with CIA associates.
William Corson: A Marine Corps Colonel and President Carter’s representative to the CIA. A friend of Crowley and Kimmel, Corson was an intelligent man whose main failing was a frantic desire to be seen as an important person. This led to his making fictional or highly exaggerated claims.
John Costello: A British historian who was popular with revisionist circles. Died of AIDS on a trans-Atlantic flight to the United States.
James Critchfield: Former U.S. Army Colonel who worked for the CIA and organizaed the Cehlen Org. at Pullach, Germany. This organization was filled to the Plimsoll line with former Gestapo and SD personnel, many of whom were wanted for various purported crimes. He hired Heinrich Müller in 1948 and went on to represent the CIA in the Persian Gulf.
Robert T. Crowley: Once the deputy director of Clandestine Operations and head of the group that interacted with corporate America. A former West Point football player who was one of the founders of the original CIA. Crowley was involved at a very high level with many of the machinations of the CIA.
Gregory Douglas: A retired newspaperman, onetime friend of Heinrich Müller and latterly, of Robert Crowley. Inherited stacks of files from the former (along with many interesting works of art acquired during the war and even more papers from Robert Crowley.) Lives comfortably in a nice house overlooking the Mediterranean.
Reinhard Gehlen: A retired German general who had once been in charge of the intelligence for the German high command on Russian military activities. Fired by Hitler for incompetence, he was therefore naturally hired by first, the U.S. Army and then, as his level of incompetence rose, with the CIA. His Nazi-stuffed organizaion eventually became the current German Bundes Nachrichten Dienst.
Thomas K. Kimmel, Jr: A grandson of Admiral Husband Kimmel, Naval commander at Pearl Harbor who was scapegoated after the Japanese attack. Kimmel was a senior FBI official who knew both Gregory Douglas and Robert Crowley and made a number of attempts to discourage Crowley from talking with Douglas. He was singularly unsuccessful. Kimmel subsequently retired and lives in retirement in Florida
Willi Krichbaum: A Senior Colonel (Oberführer) in the SS, head of the wartime Secret Field Police of the German Army and Heinrich Müller’s standing deputy in the Gestapo. After the war, Krichbaum went to work for the Critchfield organization and was their chief recruiter and hired many of his former SS friends. Krichbaum put Critchfield in touch with Müller in 1948.
Heinrich Müller: A former military pilot in the Bavarian Army in WWI, Müller became a political police officer in Munich and was later made the head of the Secret State Police or Gestapo. After the war, Müller escaped to Switzerland where he worked for Swiss intelligence as a specialist on Communist espionage and was hired by James Critchfield, head of the Gehlen Organization, in 1948. Müller subsequently was moved to Washington where he worked for the CIA until he retired.
Joseph Trento: A writer on intelligence subjects, Trento and his wife “assisted” both Crowley and Corson in writing a book on the Russian KGB. Trento believed that he would inherit all of Crowley’s extensive files but after Crowley’s death, he discovered that the files had been gutted and the most important, and sensitive, ones given to Gregory Douglas. Trento was not happy about this. Neither were his employers.
Frank Wisner: A Founding Father of the CIA who promised much to the Hungarian and then failed them. First, a raging lunatic who was removed from Langley, screaming, in a strait jacket and later, blowing off the top of his head with a shotgun.
Robert Wolfe: A retired librarian from the National Archives who worked closely with the CIA on covering up embarrassing historical material in the files of the Archives. A strong supporter of holocaust writers
Register of the Dead in the Bush/Obama war 34
http://www.defense.gov/Releases
December 1, 2010
The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
1st. Lt. Scott F. Milley, 23, of Sudbury, Mass., died Nov. 30 in Logar province, Afghanistan, of wounds suffered when insurgents attacked his unit using small arms fire. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 30th Infantry Regiment, 4th Brigade Combat Team, 10th Mountain Division, Fort Polk, La.
The Department of Defense announced today the death of an airman who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.
Lt. Col. Gwendolyn A. Locht, 46, of Fort Walton Beach, Fla., was medically evacuated from Kandahar, Afghanistan, on May 22 for treatment of a non-combat related illness. She died Nov. 16 in Houston, Texas. Locht was assigned to the 96th Inpatient Operations Squadron, Eglin Air Force Base, Fla.