TBRNEWS August 31, 2010

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C., August 31, 2010: “Much in the news of late about acts of anti-Muslim activity here and there across this country, and others.

Condemned especially by Jewish groups who greatly fear that at some point, stirring up the public against ethnic groups might turn on them.

Black groups are similarly fearful.

Most of this is being stirred up by fanatics from the far right and promulgated by the three Republican lunatics: Beck, Palin and Limbaugh. Main-line Republicans affect horror but secretly giggle in their tea napkins at the thought of mass national rage boosting their strange candidates into public office…from where they can do even more damage to the national structure.

However, that having been said, militant Islam now poses a great danger to the rest of the world, thanks in part to the stupidity of the Bush administration in invading Muslim countries for fun and profit and also on the part of Israel who, according to Zionist rules, wants to evict all the non-Jewish Arabs from the Arabs ancestral homelands as part f the religious plan to Jewify all of the ancient Judea .

Some kind soul gave me a thick official U.S. Army analysis of the very critical situation in the Middle East that is a blockbuster. It will be published in our next edition and ought to cause as much trouble for the Zionists as they and their supporters are trying to create for the Muslims. Be patient, children, and you will have your bedtime story Wetting the bed after reading it is not part of the plan!”

Slavery, Terrorism and Islam:

by Dr. Peter Hammond

Islam is not a religion, nor is it a cult. In its fullest form, it is a complete, total, 100%  system of life.  Islam has religious,  legal, political, economic, social, and military  components.  The religious component is a  beard for all of the other  components.

Islamization begins when there are sufficient  Muslims in a country to agitate for their  religious privileges.  When politically  correct, tolerant, and culturally diverse  societies agree to Muslim demands for their  religious privileges, some of the other  components tend to creep in as  well.

Here’s how it  works:  As long as the Muslim population  remains around or under 2% in any  given country, they will be for the most part  be regarded as a peace-loving minority, and not  as a threat to other citizens.  This is the  case in:

United States — Muslim  0.6%
Australia — Muslim  1.5%
Canada — Muslim  1.9%
China — Muslim  1.8%
Italy — Muslim  1.5%
Norway — Muslim  1.8%

At 2% to 5%,  they begin to proselytize from other ethnic  minorities and disaffected groups, often with  major recruiting from the jails and among street  gangs.  This is happening  in:

Denmark — Muslim  2%
Germany — Muslim  3.7%
United Kingdom — Muslim  2.7%
Spain — Muslim  4%
Thailand — Muslim  4.6%

From 5% on,  they exercise an inordinate influence in  proportion to their percentage of the  population.  For example, they will push  for the introduction of halal (clean by Islamic standards) food, thereby securing food  preparation jobs for Muslims.  They will  increase pressure on supermarket chains to  feature halal on their shelves — along with  threats for failure to comply.  This is  occurring  in:

France  — Muslim  8%
Philippines —  5%
Sweden — Muslim  5%
Switzerland — Muslim  4.3%
The Netherlands — Muslim  5.5%
Trinidad & Tobago — Muslim  5.8%

At this point,  they will work to get the ruling government to  allow them to rule themselves (within their  ghettos) under Sharia, the Islamic Law.   The ultimate goal of Islamists is to establish  Sharia law over the entire  world.

When Muslims  approach 10% of the population, they tend to  increase lawlessness as a means of complaint  about their conditions.  In Paris, we are  already seeing car-burnings.  Any  non-Muslim action offends Islam and results in  uprisings and threats, such as in Amsterdam, with opposition to Mohammed cartoons  and films about Islam.  Such tensions are  seen daily, particularly in Muslim sections  in:

Guyana — Muslim  10%
India — Muslim  13.4%
Israel — Muslim  16%
Kenya — Muslim  10%
Russia — Muslim 15%

After reaching 20%, nations can expect  hair-trigger rioting, jihad militia formations,  sporadic killings, and the burnings of Christian  churches and Jewish synagogues, such as  in:

Ethiopia — Muslim  32.8%

At 40%,  nations experience widespread massacres, chronic  terror attacks, and ongoing militia warfare,  such as  in:

Bosnia — Muslim  40%
Chad — Muslim  53.1%
Lebanon — Muslim  59.7%
From 60%,  nations experience unfettered persecution of  non-believers of all other religions (including  non-conforming Muslims), sporadic ethnic  cleansing (genocide), use of Sharia Law as a  weapon, and Jizya, the tax placed on infidels,  such as  in:

Albania — Muslim  70%
Malaysia — Muslim  60.4%
Qatar — Muslim  77.5%

Sudan — Muslim 70%

After 80%, expect daily intimidation and violent  jihad, some State-run ethnic cleansing, and even  some genocide, as these nations drive out the  infidels, and move toward 100% Muslim, such as  has been experienced and in some ways is  on-going  in:
Bangladesh — Muslim  83%
Egypt — Muslim  90%
Gaza — Muslim  98.7%
Indonesia — Muslim  86.1%
Iran — Muslim  98%
Iraq — Muslim  97%
Jordan — Muslim  92%
Morocco — Muslim  98.7%
Pakistan — Muslim  97%
Palestine — Muslim  99%
Syria — Muslim  90%
Tajikistan — Muslim  90%
Turkey — Muslim  99.8%
United Arab Emirates — Muslim  96%

100% will usher  in the peace of ‘Dar-es-Salaam’ — the Islamic  House of Peace.  Here there’s supposed to  be peace, because everybody is a Muslim, the  Madrasses are the only schools, and the Koran is  the only word, such as  in:

Afghanistan — Muslim  100%
Saudi Arabia — Muslim  100%
Somalia — Muslim  100%
Yemen — Muslim 100%
Unfortunately, peace is never achieved, as in  these 100% states the most radical Muslims  intimidate and spew hatred, and satisfy their  blood lust by killing less radical Muslims, for  a variety of  reasons.

‘Before I  was nine, I had learned the basic canon of Arab  life.  It was me against my brother; me and  my brother against our father; my family against  my cousins and the clan; the clan against the  tribe; the tribe against the world, and all of  us against the infidel. — Leon Uris, ‘The  Haj’
It is important  to understand that in some countries, with well  under 100% Muslim populations, such as France,  the minority Muslim populations live in ghettos,  within which they are 100% Muslim, and within  which they live by Sharia Law.  The  national police do not even enter  these ghettos.  There are no national  courts, nor schools, nor non-Muslim religious  facilities.

In such situations, Muslims do  not integrate into the community at large.   The children attend madrasses. They learn  only the Koran.  To even associate with an  infidel is a crime punishable with death.  Therefore, in some areas of certain nations,  Muslim Imams and extremists exercise more power  than the national average would  indicate.
Today’s  1.5 billion Muslims make up 22% of the world’s  population.  But their birth rates dwarf  the birth rates of Christians, Hindus,  Buddhists, Jews, and all other believers.   Muslims will exceed 50% of the world’s  population by the end of this  century.

Well, boys  and girls, today we are letting the fox guard  the henhouse.  The wolves will be herding  the sheep!  Obama appoints two devout  Muslims to Homeland Security posts.   Doesn’t this make you feel safer  already?

Obama and  Janet Napolitano appoint Arif Alikhan, a devout  Muslim, as Assistant Secretary for Policy  Development.  DHS Secretary Janet  Napolitano swore in Kareem Shora, a devout  Muslim who was born in Damascus, Syria, as  ADC National Executive Director as a member of  the Homeland Security Advisory Council  (HSAC).

NOTE:  Has anyone ever heard  a new government official being identified as a  devout Catholic, a devout Jew or a devout  Protestant…?   Just wondering.

Devout Muslims being appointed to critical  Homeland Security positions?  Doesn’t this  make you feel safer already???  That should  make the US’ homeland much safer,  huh!!

Was it not  “Devout Muslim men” that flew planes into U.S.  buildings 8 years ago?  Was it not a Devout  Muslim who killed 13 at Fort  Hood?

Also:  This is very  interesting and we all need to read it from  start to finish.  Maybe this is why our  American Muslims are so quiet and not speaking  out about any atrocities.  Can a good  Muslim be a good American?  This question  was forwarded to a friend who worked in Saudi  Arabia for 20 years.

The following is his  reply:

Theologically – no . . . Because his allegiance  is to Allah, The moon God of  Arabia

Religiously – no… Because no other religion is  accepted by His Allah except Islam (Quran,  2:256)(Koran)

Scripturally – no… Because his allegiance is to  the five Pillars of Islam and the  Quran.

Geographically – no… Because his allegiance is  to Mecca, to which he turns in prayer

five times  a  day.

Socially – no… Because his allegiance to Islam  forbids him to make friends with Christians or  Jews..

Politically – no…Because he must submit to the  mullahs (spiritual leaders), who teach  annihilation of Israel and destruction of  America, the great  Satan.

Domestically – no… Because he is instructed to  marry four Women and beat and scourge his wife  when she disobeys him (Quran  4:34)

Intellectually – no… Because he cannot accept  the American Constitution since it is based on  Biblical principles and he believes the Bible to  be  corrupt.

Philosophically – no… Because Islam, Muhammad,  and the Quran do not allow freedom of religion  and expression.  Democracy and Islam cannot  co-exist.  Every Muslim government is  either dictatorial or  autocratic.

Spiritually – no… Because when we declare ‘one  nation under God,’ the Christian’s God is loving  and kind, while Allah is NEVER referred to as  Heavenly father, nor is he ever called love in  The Quran’s 99 excellent  names.

Therefore, after much study and  deliberation….  Perhaps we should be very  suspicious of ALL MUSLIMS in this country. – –  –  They obviously cannot be both ‘good’  Muslims and good Americans.

Call it what you  wish, it’s still the truth.  You had better  believe it.  The more who understand this,  the better it will be for our country and our  future.  The religious war is bigger than  we know or understand.

Can a muslim be a good soldier???  Army  Maj. Nidal Malik Hasan, opened fire at Ft. Hood  and Killed 13.  He is a good  Muslim!!!

Footnote: The Muslims have said  they will destroy us from  within.

Economy edges closer to stalling, government says

August 27, 2010

by Christopher S. Rugaber

Associated Press

WASHINGTON — The economy turns out to be weaker than we thought, and the outlook for the rest of the year is now looking dimmer.

New figures issued Friday show the economy struggled this spring, growing at a meager 1.6 percent annual pace. The initial estimate was 2.4 percent, and even that was anemic. Analysts say the summer should be disappointing, too.

Shortly after the government’s revision, Federal Reserve chief Ben Bernanke said the Fed was ready to take additional steps to prevent a second recession, if the economy deteriorates further. But he stopped short of promising any action.

The Fed “will do all that it can to ensure continuation of the economic recovery,” he said.

Several economists said they expected the economy to keep growing slowly for the rest of the year. That would almost certainly not be enough to bring down the jobless rate, already at 9.5 percent, and unemployment could actually increase.

The performance is “very disappointing,” said Ethan Harris, an economist at Bank of America-Merrill Lynch. “Usually you get a bigger bounceback.”

In the first quarter of the year, the economy grew much faster, at a 3.7 percent pace. Since then, though, the housing market has slumped after the expiration of a homebuyer tax credit, and business spending and manufacturing activity are both cooling off.

Bernanke, speaking to a Fed conference in Jackson Hole, Wyo., acknowledged the economy has slowed more than policymakers had anticipated and said it is “vulnerable to unexpected developments.”

He did say he expects growth will pick up next year. The central bank chairman also sought to reassure the financial markets that he has the tools needed to bolster the economy and will use them if business activity slows further.

Bernanke outlined several options, including having the Fed buy more securities, most likely government debt or mortgage investments, as a way to drive down interest rates on all sorts of debt and spur more spending that might get the economy going.

Bernanke made clear “he is willing to act to ensure that the recovery remains on the right path,” said Zach Pandl, an economist at Nomura Securities.

That reassured the financial markets, which rose sharply after the Fed chairman’s speech. The Dow Jones industrial average finished 164 points higher and back over 10,000, and broader markers registered solid gains.

Wall Street looked past a disappointing statement from computer chip maker Intel, which said it was cutting its sales forecast for the quarter after sensing weaker demand from customers in the U.S. and Europe. A little more than a month ago, Intel reported its biggest quarterly profit in a decade.

How much the government could help at this point is an open question. The Fed has already lowered its key short-term interest rate to nearly zero, but that has yet to rejuvenate the economy. The benefits of federal stimulus programs are fading, and Congress has declined to pass any major new aid.

Pakistan floods: people return home to find nothing left, nothing at all

The monsoon deluge turned mud houses in north-west Pakistan into a sodden mess

August 24, 2010

Saeed Shah in Drab Korona

The Guardian/UK

Sirajuddin stares at the shallow muddy pool of water. He had come to salvage whatever he could from his home. There is nothing, nothing at all.

“This was our house,” said 30-year-old Sirajuddin, pointing to the pool.

Before the great flood came at the end of July there were some 120 homes in the village of Drab Korona, in Charsadda district in north-west Pakistan. Today, only a mosque, two schools and the odd brick wall of other buildings have survived. The rest of the buildings were made mostly of mud. A torrent of freezing cold water, which eventually went roof-high, had come in the dead of night and by the next afternoon, almost everything was washed away.

The province of Khyber Pakhtunkhwa was the first hit by the monsoon deluge. While further south in the country, the floods continue to the eat up more land, in the north-west the waters have receded, removing the danger of drowning but leaving behind the threat of disease and a destitute population. Pakistan’s federal flood commission has reported that 178,484 homes were destroyed or damaged in this province alone.

With the flood waters gone, Drab Korona looks like a muddy refuse site, a jumble of battered remains encased in thick sludge. Strewn around are broken furniture, trucks, rafters that had been used to support houses … evidence that homes once stood here.

Sirajuddin had lived here with his wife and four children, and the families of his two brothers, in a three-room mud home set in a modest compound. That had gone and there was a just a trace of his all-important wheat store, where some ruined grain was lying in a heap.

They had bought the house six years ago for 140,000 rupees (£1,080), with money loaned and gifted from relatives. Before the floods, Sirajuddin used to make 4,000 rupees to 5,000 rupees (£31 to £38) a month as a labourer.

“We don’t have anything now, even to feed ourselves, so how can we remake this house?” said Sirajuddin, who is living in a tent in another part of Charsadda district. “Our relatives are giving us food but how long can they do that?”

Under a baking sun in sapping humidity, the village air is heavy with the gut-churning smell of rotting flesh, a stench that seems to come in waves. Most of the buffalos and other animals were drowned. Their carcasses lie putrefying somewhere under the slushy mess. Villagers who have returned to search for belongings complain of skin problems. The stagnant water and animal remains have turned Drab Korona into a breeding ground for germs.

A few metres away, Aman Gul, an 18-year-old dressed in a dark vest and traditional baggy trousers, had come to retrieve what he could. Both his home and his father’s village shop were washed away. It was a four-room mud house, which had been home to 17 people, including his grandparents. He had managed to find an electric fan and some duvets that were stored in a trunk. A bed, deposited on a pile of mud, marked the spot where the shop had stood.

In the hurry to get away on the morning of the flood, in water that was already neck high, two of Gul’s aunts, his mother’s sisters, had drowned. They had each been holding a child when the current took them away. Gul’s father managed to save the children. One of the aunts, Shahnaz, was carrying the family’s savings, 45,000 rupees (£350) in cash and 25 grams of gold. They found her body six days later, though there was no sign of valuables. In all, seven people from the village died.

“Only two of us can work in this family, my father and me,” said Gul, who has a job on a building site across the border in Jalalabad, Afghanistan, where he makes 250 rupees a day (£2). “If we can get some money together, we will make one room, so at least we can live in our own place.”

Gul’s family are now living in a tent in a camp that has sprung up on the main Nowshera Road nearby, alongside the Flying Craft paper mill, a largely defunct factory that once used to provide much employment to the village. A dozen or so people are crowded into each tent there, on an exposed sitethat appears to receive little or no help from the authorities or aid organisations. There, they rely on the charity of townsfolk, who arrive by car with supplies of food to hand out, these days in the late afternoon before the breaking of the fast. Despite the calamity, all the adults in the camp are observing Ramadan. The north-west is a deeply religious region of the country.

Next to Drab Korona, the adjacent village of Fakirabad Majoki had been a marginally more prosperous settlement of about 1,000 houses, set on higher ground, where many of the homes were made from brick. But, to save money, locals had used mud rather than cement to bind the bricks, which simply dissolved in the flood, leaving mounds where walls had once stood, as if an earthquake had struck. Unlike, Drab Korona, now a wasteland, a few of the residents have drifted back to Fakirabad Majoki. A dozen old men knelt in prayer at the village mosque, which survived.

Farman Ali’s home has a surviving, but badly bowed, compound wall. But inside, the rooms are gone. He’s pitched a tent on his plot, where he and his seven children now live. It is better than sleeping on the side of the main road, where they had been staying. Over the last 25 years, Ali had slowly converted the original mud-built rooms into brick. Earlier this year, he took early retirement from a lowly job at the state electricity company. Now, the home is wiped out and has hasn’t started to receive his pension.

“We got out when the water had reached over our heads,” said Ali. “At least we’re alive. How we’ll live, I don’t know. We have faith in God. He will do something. Send some angel perhaps.”

Amid the fatalism of some, there is also burning anger, at the authorities, in particular the provincial government which is run by the secular Awami National Party. Charsadda district was the party’s base but in Fakirabad Majoki, residents spat expletives at the ANP, praising instead the mildly Islamist party of former prime minister Nawaz Sharif and the pro-Taliban Jamiat Ulema-e-Islam, which they said had come to their aid or at least shown concern.

“The ANP is not here, it doesn’t exist for us,” said Hameedullah, a 55-year-old villager. “Asfandyar [Wali Khan, the ANP leader] hasn’t come here, even to his own area. If I saw him, I would become a suicide bomber against him myself.”

According to a senior official in the Charsadda administration, Kamran Rehman Khan, the floods affected 74,000 families in the district, roughly 500,000 people, with 54,000 of those families now housed in schools or tents.

“The whole catastrophe is overwhelming,” said Khan. “Whatever we do, is not enough.”

The flooding began at the end of July, in the mountains of the north of Pakistan, caused by very heavy monsoon rain, with the flood waters moving southwards since then, inundating new areas of the southern province of Sindh this week.

Flood facts

• Pakistan estimates that 2.5%, or nearly $5bn, will be wiped off expected growth this year as a result of the floods. Growth will also be hit next year. Infrastructure damage will also have an adverse effect on GDP

• Some economists believe the inflation rate could spike to 25% in the short term

• President Asif Zardari says recovery will take at least three years

• Population affected: approximately 20 million in more than 11,000 villages

• Area affected: 100,000 sq km – almost the size of England

• Cultivated land affected: 2.6m acres. The floods have destroyed an estimated 23% of the current national crop, including much of the cotton crop, which is Pakistan’s major export driver

• Deaths: 1,539

• Houses damaged or destroyed: 1.2m

• Agriculture lost: 200bn rupee (£1.5bn)

• International aid pledged so far: $815m (£527m)

Anti-Latino Hate Crime is Spreading, Says Report

August 26, 2010

by Jamilah King

ColorLines

On the heels of a horrific anti-Muslim attack in New York City on Tuesday night, there’s new disturbing evidence that hate crimes are on the rise across the country for Latinos.

The Southern Poverty Law Center (SPLC) is reporting an upward tick in anti-Latino hate crimes, and apparently it’s a general trend that’s been in the works for years. Hate crimes against Latinos had already increased in each of the four years between 2003 to 2007, according to FBI statistics. After taking a slight dip last year, the trend seems to be picking up just as the national debate over immigration reform rages on.

SPLC cited some pretty startling examples. There’s the case in Maricopa County, Ariz., (home to Sheriff Joe Arpaio) where Juan Varela was killed and his brother was shot in the neck by Gary Thomas Kelley. According to the U.S. attorney’s office in Phoenix, Kelley pointed a gun at Valera and said, “Hurry up and go back to Mexico or you’re gonna die.” The dead man was a third-generation, native-born American, reports SPLC.

There’s also news that since April, there have been 11 assaults on Mexicans in the Staten Island City of Port Richmond. The Los Angeles Times recently reported that there have been 26 suspected hate crimes in the city this year, and of the 11 proven assaults, all but one is considered a bias-related crime carried out by the city’s black residents against Mexicans.

The report also takes great aims to place blame for the uptick squarely on the shoulders of politicians’ whose hefty anti-immigrant talk has severely driven anti-Latino sentiment. In one notorious, Texas Republican Reps. Louie Gohmert and Debbie Riddle warned the world of “terrorist babies.” Both men claimed pregnant terrorists were hatching a plan to sneak across the border and give birth to future terrorists who’d finish off a plan to “destroy our way of life.” FBI Director Tom Fuentes eventually took to CNN to debunk the rumor.

“There was never a credible report—or any report, for that matter …  to indicate that there was such a plan for these ‘terror babies’ to be born,” Fuentes said.

It’s clear that when it comes to the “Ground Zero mosque” debate and the furor over immigration reform, hot-headed political rhetoric has very real life and death consequences.

August 27, 2010  CommonDreams.org

Obama Boxed In by Generals on Afghanistan

by Ray McGovern

Just back from Afghanistan, Marine Commandant, Gen. James Conway held a news conference Tuesday to add his voice to the Pentagon campaign to disparage the July 2011 date President Barack Obama set for U.S. troops to begin leaving Afghanistan.

Conway claimed that intelligence intercepts suggest that this deadline has strengthened the conviction of those resisting the U.S.-led occupation that it is just a matter of time before most foreign forces leave.

Thus, Conway:

“In some ways … it’s probably giving our enemy sustenance. … We think he may be saying to himself … ‘Hey, you know, we only have to hold out for so long.'”

Conway, however, was quick to reassure supporters of the war in Afghanistan that Taliban morale is likely to drop when, “come the fall [of 2011] we’re still there hammering them like we have been.”

Conway began his press conference by adding a new measure to the refrain led by Gen. David Petraeus, commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, that considerable time will be required before Afghan forces can take over from U.S. troops.

The Marine general said, “I honestly think it will be a few years before conditions on the ground are such that turnover will be possible for us,” adding, “When some American unit somewhere in Afghanistan will turn over responsibilities to Afghan forces in 2011, I do not think they will be Marines.”

President Obama and his generals have emphasized that any withdrawal will be “conditions based,” much as President George W. Bush did regarding Iraq. But setbacks in Afghanistan over the past several months — in particular, the failure of the large Marine campaign to secure Marja, a rural area of Helmand province — have made it abundantly clear that “conditions” are not likely to favor more than a token withdrawal next July.

On a June visit to Afghanistan, Joint Chiefs Chairman, Adm. Mike Mullen discussed the setbacks with Washington Post columnist David Ignatius. Mullen admitted, “We underestimated some of the challenges” in Marja, which the Marines tried to clear in March, only to have Taliban fighters return.

“They’re coming back at night, the intimidation is still there,” said Mullen. Marja had been widely advertised by the Pentagon as the warm-up for driving the Taliban out of Kandahar beginning in June 2010.

The U.S. military postponed the campaign against Kandahar in May, and Mullen conceded that, “It’s going to take until the end of the year to know where we are” there.

Top Brass vs. President

The Obama administration’s reluctance to discipline senior generals for comments bordering on insubordination seems to have encouraged the generals to believe they can speak their mind with impunity about President Obama’s management of the Afghan conflict.

The exception to this rule was the extraordinary case of Gen. Stanley McChrystal, who was commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan until he became the subject of a Rolling Stone article, “Runaway General,” in which McChrystal and his military inner circle were quoted as mocking Obama and the civilian leadership.

The title had an ironic twist since the derogatory comments enabled McChrystal to run away from the consequences of his stumbling war effort, by getting himself fired. After Marja and the abject failure of his campaign to win hearts and minds of most Afghans, McChrystal knew better than anyone that the war was hopeless.

Crusty old Marines like Gen. Conway do not run away — they no longer “fade away,” either. Scheduled to retire this fall after 40 years, he also isn’t angling for some big promotion. Nor is he inclined to sugarcoat military realities in order to calm political nerves in Washington and elsewhere in the country.

Conway has spoken out before against what he considered — legitimately, in my view — arrogant politicians trying to micromanage Marine offensives in ways that caused needless killing of his Marines. For instance, he objected to the Bush administration’s cavalier use of Marines to crush resistance in Fallujah, Iraq, in the spring of 2004. (See below for more detail on Conway’s experience in Fallujah.)

So Gen. Conway let loose at Tuesday’s press conference, pointing out “The President was talking to several audiences at the same time when he made his comments regarding July 2011.” Implication: The July 2011 date was pure politics; there was no military justification for the deadline then; and there is certainly no military justification for it now.

Conway may be insubordinate, but he is also correct about that.

Obama tried to have it both ways, giving the hawks in his administration the escalation they wanted while offering the doves in his political base a fixed date for beginning a troop withdrawal. Such cleverness can work sometimes in politics, but it won’t work in a difficult war like the one in Afghanistan.

However much Obama may have resented it, by last fall he had to admit to himself that he had been thoroughly outmaneuvered by high-profile generals. Take McChrystal, for example, who was well known to have run special operations assassination squads for five years in Iraq under the aegis of Vice President Dick Cheney. McChrystal also demonstrably lied about who killed football-star-turned-soldier Pat Tillman in Afghanistan.

And yet, Obama couldn’t say no, when Defense Secretary Robert Gates and the Pentagon’s most famous “water-walker,” Gen. Petraeus, told the President to put McChrystal in charge of the war in Afghanistan.

Either from naiveté or hubris or a combination of both, Obama apparently felt he still could maintain some control over the situation through his persuasive skills. Instead, he found himself in a corner.

The Long Reassessment

During last year’s long review of U.S. strategy in Afghanistan, McChrystal’s recommendations for a major escalation of troops and an open-ended commitment for 10 years or more were leaked to the press. Joint Chiefs Chairman Mullen also made a public case for a long-term commitment, as did Petraeus, who was chief of the Central Command.

Then, during a public presentation in London on Oct. 1, 2009, McChrystal himself said he could not support a presidential decision to fight the war primarily with drone aircraft and Special Forces, the more limited approach advocated by Vice President Joe Biden.

Instead of firing McChrystal then, Obama on Oct. 2 gave the general a 25-minute counseling session on Air Force One. He then told Pentagon leaders to stop their public advocacy of McChrystal’s proposals.

In the book, The Promise: President Obama, Year One, author Jonathan Alter said the President was sending the Pentagon “an unmistakable message: Don’t toy with me.” Obama wasn’t going to let himself get backed into a corner, said Alter. Right.

Mullen and Gates were summoned to the White House, but all that emerged was a flaccid statement from Gates saying it was “imperative” that generals provide their advice “candidly but privately.” Mullen did tell the generals to knock off the public campaign for a substantial troop buildup in Afghanistan, and the leaks mostly stopped.

However, Obama had been softened up politically. By October 2009, with the reassessment on Afghanistan having dragged on for months, Obama came under attack from former Vice President Dick Cheney and others for supposedly “dithering.”

Yet, behind the scenes, other generals — former ones, with less personal stakes in the Afghan War — were resisting the push for major escalation.

James Jones, Obama’s national security adviser and a former four-star general, had been pushing back against McChrystal and other hawks. Undercutting the rationale for escalation, Jones told the press on Oct. 4, 2009:

“I don’t foresee the return of the Taliban. Afghanistan is not in imminent danger of falling. … The al-Qaeda presence is very diminished. The maximum estimate is less than 100 operating in the country, no bases, no ability to launch attacks on either us or our allies.”

In early November, Obama also received cogent, sober advice from his ambassador in Kabul, Karl Eikenberry, himself a former general who knew twice as much about Afghanistan as McChrystal and Petraeus put together. From 2002 to 2003, Eikenberry was responsible for training Afghan security forces. He then served 18 months (2005-2007) as commander of U.S. forces in Afghanistan.

In two highly sensitive cables of Nov. 6 and 9, 2009, (the texts of which were almost immediately leaked by an unknown U.S. official to the New York Times), Eikenberry declared, “I cannot support [the Defense Department’s] recommendation for an immediate Presidential decision to deploy another 40,000 here.”

Damning McChrystal’s recommendations with faint (and condescending) praise, Eikenberry described them as “logical and compelling within his [McChrystal’s] narrow mandate to define the needs for a military counterinsurgency campaign within Afghanistan.”

Eikenberry then went on to list a dozen compelling factors that would make adding more troops a fool’s errand — among them these three:

–Hamid Karzai was not and never would be “an adequate strategic partner;”

–“More troops won’t end the insurgency as long as Pakistan sanctuaries remain … and Pakistan views its strategic interests as best served by a weak neighbor;”

–“We overestimate the ability of Afghan security forces to take over … by 2013.”

(Who would be better qualified to make the judgment on security forces than the senior officer trying to build and train a fledgling, predominantly illiterate Afghan army from 2002 to 2003?)

Obama Bows to the Four-Stars

But Obama found himself outgunned politically by the pro-escalation crowd. Thanks in large measure to a fawning media, Gen. Petraeus and Gen. McChrystal enjoyed much higher public profiles that James Jones and Ambassador Eikenberry.

And, besides, if the U.S. and NATO failed to prevail in Afghanistan (whatever “prevail” might mean), the overly smart advisers in Obama’s White House thought they could blame the generals. After all, the President was giving them what they had demanded.

This kind of reasoning seemed to persuade Obama to dismiss the informed commentary of Ambassador Eikenberry and national security adviser Jones, as well as the views of Vice President Biden.  Whether Petraeus and McChrystal had it right or wrong, the politically smart ting to do would be to defer to them.

On Nov. 11, 2009, Veterans Day, Obama called his key advisers and generals together. According to Jonathan Alter, it was then that the President gave preliminary approval for 40,000 more troops to be sent to Afghanistan. But he wanted them in and out quickly.

The Pentagon was to prepare a “targeted” plan for protecting population centers, training Afghan security forces, and beginning a real — not a token — withdrawal within 18 months of the escalation.

Too Inexperienced & Too Clever by Half

Obama’s dilemma was how to project an image of strength in the fight against the Taliban and still avoid letting Afghanistan become an albatross around his neck in 2011-2012 as the next presidential election drew near.

In Obama’s calculation, the image of toughness was to come from giving the generals pretty much what they demanded to carry the fight to the Taliban. The albatross would be avoided, the President thought, by giving the generals a deadline — a date on which U.S. troops would start coming home. Such a deadline would also be helpful in appeasing what used to be called Obama’s base-more recently branded “the professional left.”

The dual message was crafted presumably with the help of the inept folks who led the long assessment with the wrong conclusions — functionaries like former CIA official Bruce Riedel and Ambassador Richard “we’ll-recognize-success-when-we-see-it” Holbrooke. Never ones to pick a fight with beribboned four-stars, they probably repeated their mantra: the military knows best.

Next stop for Obama in deciding how to massage the message was to consult with his own inside group of political wheeler-dealers — folks with long experience in Congress and in White House positions, such as chief of staff Rahm Emanuel, CIA Director Leon Panetta, former White House chief of staff John Podesta, and Joe Biden.

With the help of this brain trust, Obama settled on what he thought would be a win-win solution — for his administration, if not for U.S. troops.

In the formal meeting on Nov. 29, Obama would get the top brass on record buying into the escalation and timetable. In other words, he would turn the tables on the generals, boxing them in for a change. According to Alter, the dialogue went like this:

Obama: “David [Petraeus], tell me now. I want you to be honest with me. You can do this in 18 months?”

Petraeus: “Sir, I am confident we can train and hand over to the ANA (Afghan National Army) in that time frame.”

Obama: “If you can’t do the things you say you can in 18 months, then no one is going to suggest we stay, right?”

Petraeus: “Yes, sir, in agreement.”

Mullen: “Yes, sir.”

Obama then asked Defense Secretary Gates if he had any problems with the scenario, eliciting a response from Gates saying he was fine with the decision.

Obama: “I’m not asking you to change what you believe, but if you don’t agree with me that we can execute this, say so now. Tell me now.”

Mullen: “Fully support, sir.”

Petraeus: “Ditto.”

Am I the only one who finds that scene extraordinary?

Alter adds that as Biden walked with the President to the meeting, the Vice President asked if the new policy of beginning a significant withdrawal in 2011 was a direct Presidential order that could not be countermanded by the military. Obama said yes.

That response no doubt accounts for the assurance that Biden later gave at the end of an interview in his West Wing office: “In July 2011 you’re going to see a whole lot of people moving out [of Afghanistan]. Bet on it. Bet on it.”

I imagine that this is not the first foolish bet Joe Biden has made. How naïve for him and Obama to think that they had the generals boxed in and that the generals — along with their powerful allies — could not figure out some way to insist that a change in circumstance necessitated a longer time frame or additional resources.

The next two years are far more likely to witness a Donnybrook between the Pentagon and White House, as the security situation in Afghanistan continues to deteriorate and Petraeus — now commander of U.S. and allied forces in Afghanistan, with his vaunted reputation riding on success — inevitably demands more troops.

Can Obama really believe that Petraeus will honor his Nov. 29 pledge; that when things go really bad in Afghanistan the beribboned general will say, “Shucks, I was wrong”; and then tuck tail, forfeiting any ambition he may harbor eventually to run for President?

With all due respect, President Obama and Vice President Biden, I wouldn’t bet on it.

Gen. Conway and Fallujah

We are likely to hear more from Gen. James Conway before he retires this fall. The Marine Commandant has been outspoken for over five years — and with very good reason since his Marines were often the ones bearing the brunt of the fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, at times taking casualties because of politically inspired orders that made no military sense.

After turning over command of the 1st Marine Expeditionary Force in Iraq in early September 2004, Conway let not a day pass before excoriating higher officials for misguided, counterproductive orders to attack the Iraqi Sunni stronghold of Fallujah in retaliation for the brutal killing of four U.S. Blackwater contractors on March 31, 2004.

Conway did not repeat the criticism of UN envoy in Iraq, Lakhdar Brahimi, and many others who denounced the Fallujah offensive as “collective punishment,” a war crime under international law. But the Marine general did observe that the attack “certainly increased the level of animosity that existed.”

Conway stressed the stupidity of ordering the attack, in which six Marines were killed and six more wounded, and then halting it just three days later.

The reason for the rash order to attack and the sudden reversal related to concerns within George W. Bush’s White House, first, that the killings of the contractors could not go unpunished, followed by the realization that the worsening war in Iraq could affect Bush’s chances in the 2004 election.

Conway found particularly galling what happened after he was ordered to break off the attack. A handful of former Iraqi generals were allowed to form the “Fallujah Brigade” and were put in charge of the city.

The 800 AK-47 assault weapons, 27 pick-up trucks and 50 radios that the Marines gave this “Brigade” wound up in the hands of the resistance, which remained in control of Fallujah. The equipment also was used against Marines positioned near the city.

Asked who issued the order to attack and then halt, Conway would only say that he had advised against the attack in the first place but that “we follow our orders.” According to The Washington Post, senior U.S. officials in Iraq said the command to attack and then desist originated in the White House.

Just days after Bush won a second term in November 2004, the assault on Fallujah resumed with U.S. forces virtually leveling the city, partly in retribution for the dead Blackwater contractors and the humiliation that had been dealt the Bush administration.

Eye for an Eye

Most Americans are unaware of this sequence of events in Fallujah in 2004, but should know and ponder what actually happened. First, the Blackwater contractors had taken a wrong turn on March 29 and ended up in the wrong neighborhood in Fallujah.

Western press accounts left the impression that the murder of the four Blackwater operatives was the work of fanatics who acted without provocation and eventually got — along with thousands of their neighbors — the punishment they deserved. Few are aware that the killings of the contractors represented the second turn in that particular cycle of violence.

On March 22, 2004, Israeli forces assassinated in Gaza the spiritual leader of Hamas, Sheikh Yassin — a withering old man, blind and confined to a wheel chair. The Blackwater operatives in Fallujah were killed by a group that described itself as the “Sheikh Yassin Revenge Brigade.” One of the trucks that dragged the bodies of the mercenaries had a large poster of Yassin in its window, as did many Fallujah storefronts.

Gen. Conway may already know the full story. As his retirement nears, he may feel free to point out the actual sequence of events stretching from Gaza to Fallujah and join other realists who have served in the U.S. military and noted the increased dangers to U.S. troops that flow from the widespread perception that U.S. policy is identical to that of Israel.

Ray McGovern works for Tell the Word, the publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. He served as an Army Infantry/Intelligence officer, and then as a CIA analyst for a total of almost 30 years. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS).

This article appeared first on Consortiumnews.com.

Don’t Let the Military’s Deadly “Pain Ray” Machine Invade the L.A. County Jail

August 25, 2010

by David Shapiro, National Prison Project

ACLU

Los Angeles County Jail has just installed an Assault Intervention Device — an invisible microwave-beam weapon originally developed by the military — as a way to subdue inmates by focusing a microwave beam on them to make them feel “intolerable heat.”

Sheriff Lee Baca unveiled this giant robot-like device at a news conference last week, noting the “The Assault Intervention Device appears uniquely suited to address some of the more difficult inmate violence issues,” since it will “allow us to quickly intervene without having to enter the area and without incapacitating or injuring either combatant.”

The claim that the 7 ½-foot tall high-power microwave device — dubbed the “Pain Ray” by the media — will cause no injury is highly dubious, to say the least: There is good evidence from the United States military that it is capable of inflicting not only intolerable pain, but death.

The ACLU and the ACLU of Southern California sent a letter today to Sheriff Baca, demanding an assurance that he will never use the high power microwave device against the inmates of the Los Angeles County Jails.

The device, developed by the Raytheon Company of Waltham, Mass., was dubbed the “Active Denial System” (ADS) in its original military incarnation and was mounted on trucks for “crowd control,” evidently intended to be used against protesters outside American military bases. The U.S. Justice Department claimed that the device “does not cause permanent injury” — but that claim has been shown to be false.

In September 2006, the Secretary of the Air Force said the ADS should be used for crowd control in the U.S. to prove its harmlessness before deployment on the battlefield, or he would be “vilified” in the world press. While the device was being tested by the Air Force, however, a miscalibration of its power settings caused five airmen in its path to suffer lasting burns, including one whose injuries were so severe that he was airlifted to an off-base burn treatment center.

A 2008 report by noted physicist and less-lethal weapons expert Joergan Altmann explained that the ADS device’s microwave beam heats the skin without lasting harm only if the beam is switched off immediately once a temperature of 122 F. is reached — and then only if the beam is not retriggered. Dr. Altmann noted:

The power and duration of emission for one trigger event is controlled by a software program. Model calculations show that with the highest power setting, second- and third-degree burns with complete dermal necrosis will occur after less than 2 seconds. Even with a lower setting of power or duration there is the possibility for the operator to re-trigger immediately. … As a consequence, the ADS provides the technical possibility to produce burns of second and third degree.

Further, the Altmann report said, the possibility of retriggering on the same subject puts avoidance of burns at the discretion of the weapons operator: “Without a technical device that reliably prevents retriggering on the same target subject, the ADS has a potential to produce permanent injury or death.”

The notion that a military weapon intended to cause intolerable pain — and so capable of causing lethal injury when used for crowd control — should now be used against county jail inmates is staggeringly wrongheaded. It is all the more disturbing that the use of the Pain Ray is being entrusted to the deputies of L.A. County Jail, where the long-troubled history of deputy violence, retaliation and abuse against inmates, as well as a subculture of falsification of official records, has been documented by the ACLU in its role as court-appointed monitor of the jails in the federal litigation Rutherford v. Block.

Moreover, inmates at the jail — most of whom are not convicted, but awaiting trial — will not be the only potential victims of this Star Wars technology’s domestic use. We could all get burned. The Justice Department’s National Justice Institute specifically developed the smaller, portable version of the microwave weapon — the device that Sheriff Baca is now preparing to deploy against detainees in L.A. County Jail — for use in the homeland, and not only by corrections officials against unruly inmates, but by law enforcement officers for civilian “crowd control.”

Social Security Cuts Threaten to Hurt Low-Income Americans More

August 26, 2010

by Martha C. White

The Washington Independent

This summer, Social Security – the government program that provides a steady check for seniors – turned 75. In Washington, lawmakers celebrated its platinum anniversary not with champagne, but with a heated argument over whether to reform the costly entitlement program by slashing benefits or raising the retirement age. Indeed, with the national debt over $13 trillion and the government running at a $1 trillion a year loss, the Obama administration created a deficit commission – the bipartisan National Commission on Fiscal Responsibility and Reform – to find ways to return the country to the black. In anticipation of its report, and in anticipation of possible changes to the program, lawmakers have started discussing how to reform Social Security.

After running a surplus for years and building up a sizable trust fund, Social Security now runs in the red. Though the program is far from bankrupt, more money is pouring out than going in. Economists project that the trust fund will be emptied by 2037. From there, opinions diverge on how far into debt the program will fall if nothing is done.

“Social Security is not in immediate trouble. There’s been a lot of exaggeration of that problem,” says Alice Rivlin, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution and a member of the deficit commission. “It is not on a solid basis for the long run, however. The sooner we act, the less we have to do.”

The problem is, there’s no consensus on what form that action should take. And many of the most commonly discussed tactics for stemming the flow of red ink would disproportionately impact lower-income Americans, the segment of the population that depends on Social Security the most.

One idea that comes up frequently is raising the retirement age. House Minority Leader John Boehner (Ohio), for instance, proposes lifting it to 70; some economists have suggested lifting it to as high as 75.

The idea sounds good: People are living longer, so it makes sense they will be working longer as well, right? But raising the retirement age will not necessarily keep people in the workforce longer, says Dean Baker, co-director of the Center for Economic Policy Research. For lower-income Americans, it would often just consign them to a retirement of lower benefit checks.

Already, around two-thirds of non-disabled workers elect to begin receiving smaller checks at 62 rather than full payments at 65. The hardship of raising the retirement age falls disproportionately on low-income workers who work in physically demanding professions, jobs they may not be able to continue through their seventh decade. According to Baker, 45 percent of workers over the age of 58 hold physically demanding jobs. Among those who lack a high-school diploma, that percentage skyrockets to around 75 percent. “If the hope is that people will work longer, that’s a very difficult thing for low and moderate income Americans to do,” Baker says.

Moreover, though the average lifespan has increased since Social Security’s creation, those extra years aren’t enjoyed equally by all Americans. Overall, Americans are living about 7 years longer. But the poorest 20 percent of Americans are living just two years longer – coinciding with that increase in retirement age. Baker notes that minority Americans fare even worse. “Even at 65, there’s a gap of about two years in lifespan. Also, on average, they have much lower wealth at retirement, so they’re much more dependent on Social Security.”

Center and right-leaning policy experts say another way to limit Social Security expenditures is to change the baseline for the benefits calculator from a wage index to a price index. Since the price of goods tends to grow more slowly than wages do, this shift would reduce the amount the program would have to pay out in the future. Supporters of this proposal say that because the benefits will still increase along with price inflation, seniors won’t suffer a shortfall in real-dollar terms.

This logic works in theory. But in practice, it would seriously impact lower-income Americans. Why? Seniors spend differently than average-aged workers: They buy more healthcare goods and services. And healthcare costs are skyrocketing well above the average inflation rate, so lowering benefits would make it more difficult for retirees to cover their costs. The more economically strapped the American, the more it would hurt.

Other plans would have less impact on those least able to shoulder the burden. One idea would be to reduce benefits for wealthy retirees. The idea is that “Bill Gates doesn’t need social security,” says Brookings’ Rivlin.

The problem is deciding where to set the bar: Too low, and you ensnare middle-class families, too high, and you only earn the ire of the superrich without contributing much to the bottom line. Some experts, including Rivlin, think the political cost probably wouldn’t be worth the impact on the bottom line. Polls show that even wealthy Americans want their Social Security, and are willing to pay for it. The government might net a little more money, but it would lose the public support and buy-in of wealthy (and thereby influential) citizens.

“U.S. benefits relative to earnings are low by comparison with those in other wealthy nations,” says Henry Aaron, senior fellow at the Brookings Institution. “I don’t think there’s a strong case for cutting benefits on the merits of the idea. In my view, the bulk of the fix should come from the revenue side.”

Many economists on the left share that sentiment. “It makes sense to fix social security by increasing revenues and making sure a good chunk of those revenues come from the high end of the income distribution,” says Monique Morrissey, an economist at the Economic Policy Institute.

Raising the payroll cap is one popular idea. Currently, the first $106,800 an American makes is subject to the Social Security tax; above that, the earner pays nothing. “If you eliminate the cap, you’re probably getting very close to eliminating the entire Social Security deficit for the next 75 years,” says Christian Weller, senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. “The more common proposal is to raise the cap so 90 percent of earnings are subject to the tax, which would eliminate about a third of the deficit.”

Another idea under consideration is raising the payroll tax rate by a fraction of a percentage point. Although the flat rate of this tax is inherently regressive, some left-leaning experts say it’s preferable to a cut in benefits, especially when the prospect is discussed in conjunction with other modifications like a minimum benefit, as described in a recent report by the Urban Institute.

Not everyone thinks adding to the payroll tax rate is the way to go, though. “It seems to me that raising the payroll tax is the least desirable way to try to move the program towards solvency,” says Will Marshall, president of the Progressive Policy Institute. “It’s a tax on work and makes it more expensive for employers.”

Marshall supports ideas more commonly embraced by the right to make up the shortfall, including an increase in the retirement age and a downward adjustment on the formula used to calculate benefits.

Some Republican politicians are still pushing for privatization, pointing to the rise of the stock market over the long term. Mike Tanner, senior fellow at the Cato Institute, asserts that even if a retiree cashed out at the trough of the market in 2009, he or she would have still experienced a growth in wealth. Given the wariness with which many Americans bruised by a drop in their 401(k) and home values now view the stock market, though, privatization may be a tough sell at least until the current bear market fades from our collective memory. “A lot of Republicans seem to view private investment as some kind of panacea, which I don’t think is correct,” says PPI’s Marshall. “That wouldn’t solve the underlying structural problems.”

Right-leaning experts tend to paint a bleaker view of the Social Security situation in general. Cato’s Tanner explains that the difference is that they include in their calculation of upcoming obligations the cost to be borne by the Treasury when the program cashes in its trust fund bonds. Obviously, that money will have to come from somewhere, but progressive economists like CAP’s Weller, counter that it’s disingenuous for the right to say those bonds pose an economic risk when the Social Security surplus is one factor that was used to justify Bush-era tax cuts in the first place.

Experts of all stripes like to point out that Social Security reform should be a snap compared to changing more complex programs like Medicare. In a strictly economic sense, that’s true. But the discussion around Social Security often threatens to collapse under the metaphorical weight lawmakers have conferred on the program. “It’ll probably be more politically determined than substantively determined,” PPI’s Marshall concedes. “Right now neither side wants to come out of its assigned place.”

The 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 twenty-seventh  chapter

Conversation No. 27

Date: Friday, Thursday, July 25, 1996

Commenced: 9:55 AM CST

Concluded: 10:22 AM CST

EC: Hello.

GD: Good morning, Mrs. Crowley. Is Robert available?

EC: He’s upstairs. Let me call him.

GD: If it’s too much….

EC: No, dear, I’m sure he would like to talk to you.

(Pause)

RTC: Good morning, Gregory. I was going through some papers.

GD: No problem. I can get back to you later.

RTC: No trouble. I was going to talk with you about your forthcoming books. I think you must be aware that the first book came on slowly but has gathered steam. That loud-mouth, Damato,[1] has the Jews behind him and he wants answers from people. The Jews are absolutely outraged at the thought that our Israel-loving government would have even considered hiring the head of the Gestapo, and this is anathema to them. And as you know, an angry Jew can be heard for two blocks with your windows shut.

GD: Tell me about it. I get all kinds of squealing emails from them demanding that I recant this or prove that.

RTC: How do you deal with this?
GD: Well, if they’re polite, I’m polite but when the shrill demands start or the orders to do this or that, I basically tell them to suck my ass.

RTC: In such language?
GD: Sometimes. I told you that I have all the German concentration camp records on microfilm that I got from the Russians and they either want to see if their aunt Sophie is there or are horrified that the Russians would dare send these to an unauthorized person. I being the unauthorized person. I am not a Jew and only a Jew may look at these precious and sacred records, let alone write about them. I mean I might discover that the huge death tolls are fakes. Can’t have that. Why all the holocaust museums would have to shut down and all across America, weeping librarians would be pulling down the Anne Frank diaries and either tossing them into the dumpster or putting them into the fiction section. Anyway, they are very, very unhappy and most of them want me to send them something, anything, to prove I have the files. I always send one or two pages, just enough to make my point and then I put them on the block. Jesus, such self-centered and self-important assholes. I don’t hear the Armenians, who really were massacred by the Turks, making such an uproar. I mean, it’s like someone I don’t know demanding that I attack the government of Great Britain because they got a traffic ticket they feel was unjust. Don’t these rodents realize that outside of their incestuous groups, no one else gives a flying fuck about their crazy stories? Six million gassed, my ass. The highest toll I can find is about two hundred thousand Russian Jews shot or hanged by the German security police in occupied Russian territory  and my God, I have reams of correspondence between the French, the Hungarians, the Latvians and, oh my, especially the Greeks, begging the Germans to rid them of their Jews. I mean begging them. The Hungarians were the most strident.  Now, of course, we hear stories of weeping Italians begging the evil Germans to let all their boxcars full of Jews go free. And as the train steamed off, headed for the enormous gas chambers of the dread Auschwitz, the Italians waved goodbye. Oh, and here is a really funny one. Now, it seems, trains of wailing Jews went from Italy through Switzerland on their way to martyrdom and the soap factory and while the trains were stopped in Swiss stations, the evil Swiss came down and pissed on them. Of course this is another legend because none of the camp trains ever went through Switzerland. Alfonse the Tomato is typical of his breed. He’s doing badly in the polls so the Jews offer to give him a few dollars and the price is to act as their hand puppet. On it goes, Robert, on it goes.

RTC: My, you must be on the second pot of coffee, Gregory.

GD: Actually, I’ve been sniffing glue. Sorry to rant here but I do get so tired of listening to the same old wailing  If I ever get around to trying to decipher Mueller’s notes and put out the daily diary he kept while he was over here, what is now the wind will become the whirlwind. And this time, your people will be beating their drums and blowing the tin horns to accompany the Hebrew cries for justice and money. In reverse order, actually. Of course, we could talk about all the calls you get from the Kimmel DOJ people about how truly evil I am and why you should never, ever talk to me.

RTC: Oh God, don’t bring that up. I don’t get as many calls as I used to but they still come in. I write their names and extension numbers down and send them to you. What do you do with them, by the way? Send them huge take-out Chinese dinners?

GD: No, I  ring them up and ask them who the fuck they think they are.

RTC: Actually, I don’t think they know. Someone puts them up to this, of course. And Kimmel hasn’t helped the situation by hovering in the background wearing a black cloak and hissing to his minions. Bill gets some of this and Bill will run with the hares and hunt with the hounds, if you take my meaning.

GD: I have come to that conclusion. Not a bad fellow and his wife is very nice but he wants to be important so he will pass something to me today, and ask me their questions tomorrow. I humor him, Robert, and if I give him information, I do so to mislead him and those who want the information. It’s so much fun to lead them down the secret trails right into the quicksand. For example, I know of someone who is a serious FBI informer so I once told Bill that the snitch was the one who was supplying me with the really awful documents from the files. Of course someone is supplying me but not the one I very privately tell him.

RTC: Yes, Mr. Mueller’s tag for you is perfect, Gregory. Mr. Sunshine indeed. I think they view you as old Nick himself with brimstone smells and a long tail.

GD: Well, sorry to have been so intense today but I bottle all this up and when it comes out, there is a lot of it.

RTC: Sounds like a dose of salts.

GD: More or less. Well, you’re Catholic Irish and I’m Protestant German but inside your Beltway, we are in the minority.

RTC: That’s sadly true.

GD: Instead of a chaplain starting sessions of Congress, pretty soon they’ll have the rabbi up there chanting. And eventually they will go too far and when the public finds out about it, and that will take some time because they own all the papers and the television stations, then El Al flights will be booked solid with a huge mass of one-way passengers, all carrying large carpetbags filed with dollars.

RTC: Do you really think so, Gregory? Or are you only trying to make an old man feel hopeful?

GD: No, it’s inevitable. Well, as Louis XIV said on his deathbed, ‘Oh Lord, come quickly!’

RTC: I think ‘go quickly’ would be more to the point.

GD: Let us pray, Robert, and a miracle of deliverance might suddenly come upon us.

(Concluded at 10:22 AM 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.

Note: We understand that a large collection of documents, assembled by Robert T. Crowley, will be offered to the public in the near future. Here is a listing of some of the documents which will be included:

DOCUMENT CATALOG

Catalog Number                  Description of Contents __________________________________________________________________________________

1000 BH          Extensive file (1,205 pages) of reports on Operation PHOENIX. Final paper dated January, 1971, first document dated  October, 1967. Covers the setting up of Regional Interrogation Centers, staffing, torture techniques including electric shock, beatings, chemical injections. CIA agents involved and includes a listing of U.S. military units to include Military Police, CIC and Special Forces groups involved. After-action reports from various military units to include 9^th Infantry, showing the deliberate killing of all unarmed civilians located in areas suspected of harboring or supplying Viet Cong units. *

1002 BH          Medium file (223 pages)  concerning the fomenting of civil disobedience in Chile as the result of the Allende election in 1970. Included are pay vouchers for CIA bribery efforts with Chilean labor organization and student activist groups, U.S. military units involved in the final revolt, letter from  T. Karamessines, CIA Operations Director to Chile CIA Station Chief Paul Wimert, passing along a specific order from Nixon via Kissinger to kill Allende when the coup was successful. Communications to Pinochet with Nixon instructions to root out by force any remaining left wing leaders.

1003 BH          Medium file (187 pages) of reports of CIA assets containing photographs of Soviet missile sites, airfields and other strategic sites taken from commercial aircraft. Detailed descriptions of targets attached to each picture or pictures.

1004 BH          Large file (1560 pages) of CIA reports on Canadian radio intelligence intercepts from the Soviet Embassy in Ottawa (1958) and a list of suspected and identified Soviet agents or sympathizers in Canada, to include members of the Canadian Parliament and military.

1005 BH          Medium file (219 pages) of members of the German Bundeswehr in the employ of the CIA. The report covers the Innere Führung group plus members of the signals intelligence service. Another report, attached, covers CIA assets in German Foreign Office positions, in Germany and in diplomatic missions abroad.

1006:BH          Long file (1,287 pages) of events leading up to the killing of Josef Stalin in 1953 to include reports on contacts with L.P. Beria who planned to kill Stalin, believing himself to be the target for removal. Names of cut outs, CIA personnel in Finland and Denmark are noted as are original communications from Beria and agreements as to his standing down in the DDR and a list of MVD/KGB files on American informants from 1933 to present. A report on a blood-thinning agent to be made available to Beria to put into Stalin’s food plus twenty two reports from Soviet doctors on Stalin’s health, high blood pressure etc. A report on areas of cooperation between Beria’s people and CIA controllers in the event of a successful coup. *

1007 BH          Short list (125 pages) of CIA contacts with members of the American media to include press and television and book publishers. Names of contacts with bios are included as are a list of payments made and specific leaked material supplied. Also appended is a shorter list of foreign publications. Under date of August, 1989 with updates to 1992. Walter Pincus of the Washington Post, Bradlee of the same paper, Ted Koppel, Sam Donaldson and others are included.

1008 BH          A file of eighteen reports (total of 899 pages) documenting illegal activities on the part of members of the U.S. Congress. First report dated July 29, 1950 and final one September 15, 1992. Of especial note is a long file on Senator McCarthy dealing with homosexuality and alcoholism. Also an attached note concerning the Truman Administration’s use of McCarthy to remove targeted Communists. These reports contain copies of FBI surveillance reports, to include photographs and reference to tape recordings, dealing with sexual events with male and female prostitutes, drug use, bribery, and other matters.

1009 BH          A long multiple file (1,564 pages) dealing with the CIA part (Kermit Roosevelt) in overthrowing the populist Persian prime minister, Mohammad Mossadegh. Report from Dulles (John Foster) concerning a replacement, by force if necessary and to include a full copy of AJAX operation. Letters from AIOC on million dollar bribe paid directly to J.Angleton, head of SOG. Support of Shah requires exclusive contracts with specified western oil companies. Reports dated from May 1951 through August, 1953.

1010 BH          Medium file (419 pages) of telephone intercepts made by order of J.J. Angleton of the telephone conversations between RFK and one G.N. Bolshakov. Phone calls between 1962-1963 inclusive. Also copies of intercepted and inspected mail from RFK containing classified U.S. documents and sent to a cut-out identified as one used by Bolshakov, a Russian press (TASS) employee. Report on Bolshakov’s GRU connections.

1011 BH          Large file (988 pages) on 1961 Korean revolt of Kwangju revolt led by General Park Chung-hee and General Kin-Jong-pil. Reports on contacts maintained by CIA station in Japan to include payments made to both men, plans for the coup, lists of “undesirables” to be liquidated  Additional material on CIA connections with KCIA personnel and an agreement with them  to assassinate South Korean chief of state, Park, in 1979.

1012 BH          Small file (12 pages) of homosexual activities between FBI Director Hoover and his aide, Tolson. Surveillance pictures taken in San Francisco hotel and report by CIA agents involved. Report analyzed in 1962.

1013 BH          Long file (1,699 pages) on General Edward Lansdale. First report a study signed by DCI Dulles in  September of 1954 concerning a growing situation in former French Indo-China. There are reports by and about Lansdale starting with his attachment to the OPC in 1949-50 where he and Frank Wisner coordinated policy in neutralizing Communist influence in the Philippines.. Landsale was then sent to Saigon under diplomatic cover and many copies of his period reports are copied here. Very interesting background material including strong connections with the Catholic Church concerning Catholic Vietnamese and exchanges of intelligence information between the two entities.

1014 BH          Short file (78 pages) concerning  a Dr. Frank Olson. Olson was at the U.S. Army chemical warfare base at Ft. Detrick in Maryland and was involved with a Dr. Gottleib. Gottleib was working on a plan to introduce psychotic-inducing drugs into the water supply of the Soviet Embassy. Apparently he tested the drugs on CIA personnel first. Reports of psychotic behavior by Olson and more police and official reports on his defenstration by Gottleib’s associates. A cover-up was instituted and a number of in-house CIA memoranda attest to this. Also a discussion by Gottleib on various poisons and drugs he was experimenting with and another report of people who had died as a result of Gottleib’s various experiments and CIA efforts to neutralize any public knowledge of these. *

1015 BH          Medium file (457 pages) on CIA connections with the Columbian-based Medellín drug ring. Eight CIA internal reports, three DoS reports, one FBI report on CIA operative Milan Rodríguez and his connections with this drug ring. Receipts for CIA payments to Rodríguez of over $3 million in CIA funds,showing the routings of the money, cut-outs and payments. CIA reports on sabotaging  DEA investigations. A three-part study of the Nicaraguan Contras, also a CIA-organized and paid for organization.

1016 BH          A small file (159 pages) containing lists of known Nazi intelligence and scientific people recruited in Germany from 1946 onwards, initially by the U.S. Army and later by the CIA. A detailed list of the original names and positions of the persons involved plus their relocation information. Has three U.S. Army and one FBI report on the subject.

1017 BH          A small list (54 pages) of American business entities with “significant” connections to the CIA. Each business is listed along with relevant information on its owners/operators, previous and on going contacts with the CIA’s Robert Crowley, also a list of national advertising agencies with similar information. Much information about suppressed news stories and planted stories. *

CIA paper cites Jewish acts of terrorism

August 26, 2010

JTA

A recent CIA paper cited Jewish acts of terrorism in the West Bank in its analysis of whether the United States is an exporter of terrorism.

The papers were released by the whistleblower website WikiLeaks Wednesday. They were classified under the relatively low-grade “secret.”

The documents analyze U.S.-backed Jewish, Muslim and Irish terrorist attacks. They conclude that international perceptions that the United States is an exporter of terrorism may lead to foreign countries’ non-cooperation in anti-terrorism operations and less willingness to share relevant intelligence. Those perceptions could even lead to the arrest of CIA or other American agents overseas, according to the documents.

The analysis cites the example of Jewish-American doctor Baruch Goldstein, among others, as an example that the U.S. exports terrorism. Goldstein emigrated from New York to the West Bank in 1994 and joined the extremist group Kach. In 1994, he killed 29 Palestinians praying at a mosque in Hebron.

The paper was released in February by the CIA’s Red Cell, a think tank set up by former CIA director George Tenet to analyze intelligence issues. Last month WikiLeaks published 76,000 classified U.S. military records and reports about the war in Afghanistan.

---

[1] Alfonse Marcello D’Amato August 1, 1937 former Republican United States Senator from New York from 1981 to 1999. Attempting to curry favor with powerful Jewish interests in his district, D’Amato began an investigation into the CIA’s hiring of Heinrich Müller but it went nowhere as neither the U.S. Army (who had carried Müller on their rolls as a Colonel in the General Staff, nor the CIA who used him as one of their senior experts on Communism would release files to either the Senator, his staff or members of the DoJ’s Office of Special Investigations, a make-work small organization attempting to ferret out possible Nazis living in America. That there were a large number of Nazis living in America is unquestioned but almost all of them had been brought into the country as rocket scientists or SS specialists on Commuinsm.