Manning conviction: a line the US should not have crossed

OpEds

JOHN ROBLES, voiceofrussia.com

Closing Arguments Held In Bradley Manning Trial
The government of the United States of America has crossed a red-line in the sentencing of US Army Private First Class Bradley Manning to 35 years in prison. The government has proven that it has ceased to be legitimate and does not uphold the rule of law. By failing to prosecute those guilty of the war crimes exposed by Mr. Manning the US Government continues to flaunt international laws and norms, as war crimes are a crime against humanity, and it continues to selectively and prejudicially prosecute those who expose egregious illegality while protecting criminals who have committed crimes against all of humanity.

The record has shown that the United States of America has become a rogue authoritarian police state. The global military expansion of NATO, massive economic and political manipulation, the control and manipulation of information (in particular through its operations on the World Wide Web), illegal wars of aggression, all of the illegal actions associated with its “War on Terror” and its wanton disregard for international law and democratically accepted norms point to a state corrupted by absolute power and attempting to annex the entire planet and force all countries to be pliant surrogates. This is also underlined by its war against whistleblowers and journalists.

Mr. Manning is just one individual, but his persecution and unjust torture and confinement, for revealing war crimes, is beyond the pale and must not be allowed to stand. His sentencing proves that the United States Government has become a government unto itself, which refuses to listen to the voice of its own people, and egregiously prosecutes the innocent while protecting the worst kind of criminal known to mankind, namely those who commit crimes during a time of war under the color of their respective flags.

This is a call to the international community, to legal scholars, policy makers, the heads of international bodies, the leaders of all countries the world over (even those who have forsaken their own sovereignty to sheepishly comply with all U.S. demands) and in particular to all countries which are members of the United Nations.
This global call is necessary because the U.S. Government refuses to abide by international laws, as well as its own constitution, and has failed to be an instrument of its own people. It has shown itself to be unable to monitor and control itself and is dangerously and alarmingly growing more and more out of control.

Declaration:
I would propose that the international community demand that the United States of America cease the following practices and form a truly independent body to ascertain that these practices are stopped or are in the process of being remedied and that those responsible are being brought to justice. Until such is thus I propose sanctions to be implemented which are listed later. The United States of America must immediately cease:

1. The illegal profiling, suppression, arrest, detention, repression and brutality against peaceful protestors and the stifling of dissent in all forms. This would include freeing all political prisoners and the payment of restitution.
2. All questionable police, military and security service actions under the color of the “War on Terror” against innocent civilians, journalists and anyone else the state deems to be a threat. As well, the payment of restitution to all parties who have been falsely imprisoned, detained or harassed under terrorism statutes. This would not apply to real terrorists of course.
3. The highly illegal practice of extra judicial execution by drone or in special operations or by any other means that they are being carried out regularly by order of the U.S. president and his agents.
4. The practice of using drones for illegal surveillance, military operations where there is not an equal theater of operations, and for carrying out extra-judicial executions. This would include paying reparations to all of those who have suffered or been adversely affected as a result of the wanton killing of innocents that the U.S. drone war has brought about.
5. The practice of aggressive war under any guise, be it preventive, humanitarian or otherwise. This would include an end to the ability to go to war unilaterally or with the agreement of “allies” and would only allow the United States to go to war in a situation where there is a full United Nations mandate. This includes “secretly” funding, supporting or training warring parties on either side of any international or internal conflict. These practices must be ceased immediately.
6. The internal and now international practice of racial or other profiling by police, military, special services and other government bodies and compensation to those who have been unjustly victimized by such.
7. The practices of racial and other discrimination in, housing, health care, education, politics, banking, freedom of movement and freedom of residence within the United States and its territories.
8. The abolition of corporate donations to political parties and widespread reforms to make elections transparent and democratic. This includes an abolition of the two-party system, fair and equal opportunities for third parties, an end to harassment and even illegal detention of third party candidates and equal access for third parties to election resources including media and government funds.
9. Collecting, storing and using information on the world’s citizens,
international bodies, sovereign countries and international organizations and entities through the internet and by other illegal and secret means.
10. The practice of state sponsored executions and the death penalty, in keeping in line with the highest international norms and standards.
11. Discrimination against and pay repatriations to native American Indians and the ancestors of slaves.
12. All operations at the illegal offshore extra-judicial Guantanamo Bay Cuba detention facility and the freeing and repatriation of all of those held there.
13. The practice of pre-arrest or preventive arrest and detention.
14. The practice of secret arrest and detention and the denial of Habeas Corpus rights to all persons regardless of who they may be.
15. State sponsored racism. This includes segregation, grants, education and all forms of exclusion where race plays a factor. These practices must no longer be decided or regulated by the white minority or the power elites.
16. All practices that unfairly limit or infringe on worker’s rights, pensions, health care, education, housing and all social spheres.
17. All wars and occupations on invaded lands. This includes paying reparations and rebuilding infrastructure in invaded countries. This would go back to the invasion of Yugoslavia.
18. Promoting and attempting to coerce states and peoples to accept and adopt what for them are foreign and unacceptable concepts, such as equating homosexual relations to marriage, and other religious, cultural or social concepts that are endemic to the United States.
19. All war profiteering in countries that have been invaded by the United States or its surrogates. This includes charging countries to rebuild infrastructure which has been destroyed by U.S. aggression. Thus the United States must rebuild what they have destroyed at their own cost. This would also prohibit private U.S. bodies from profiteering in such rebuilding.
20. All operations and actions to subvert and over-throw the government of Syria and to depose its elected head of state.
21. Funding and supporting terrorists and all such destabilizing operations including fomenting revolutions, funding insurgents and overthrowing governments.
22. All persecution of journalists, whistleblowers and truth seekers including Julian Assange, Bradley Manning, Jeremy Hammond, Edward Snowden hacktivists, and all individuals, organizations and countries that have in any way supported them. This includes their immediate release.
23. The practice of illegally kidnapping and renditioning to the United States the citizens of third countries. This would include the freeing of such victims as Victor Bout and Constantin Yaroshenko.
24. Meddling in the internal affairs of sovereign nations and attempting to pressure foreign governments and organizations through any and all means. This includes compensation to all who have suffered because of overzealous U.S. persecution of individuals such as Julian Assange and Edward Snowden.
25. Manipulating, stealing and otherwise unfairly obtaining the resources of sovereign nations, including “all” resources from human to energy.
26. Torture and illegal detention in any way shape or form and in any location in, or outside of U.S. territory, by the U.S. Government and/or its agents be they public, private or foreign.
27. Monopolizing and controlling all international and extra-U.S. segments of the World Wide Web and committing spying and espionage through public worldwide channels.
28. The global expansion of NATO and all unilateral military formations on a worldwide level.
29. Protecting those guilty of war crimes, crimes against humanity, torture, aggressive war, illegal detention and extra-judicial executions. This would include their immediate arrest.
30. All practices which lead to the continued imprisonment of native Americans and which contribute to genocide. This includes reparations to native Americans.
31. Obfuscating the events of 9-11. This includes a true and independent international investigation of the events of 9-11-2001.
32. Cease the detention of all persons being held under secret arrest and indefinitely since 9-11. Reports say almost 9,000 people are currently being held.
33. Using terrorism as a pretext to get away with everything under the sun.
34. An immediate closure of the U.S./NATO military base on the territory of Kosovo, Serbia.

I am not a legal scholar nor an official and the aforementioned and consequent suggestions are in no way connected to the Russian Government. They are my views and recommendations as a fair minded and concerned citizen of the world and a journalist who has been documenting and attempting to bring to light all of the aforementioned crimes for years now. You may take the above points as food for thought. They are chiefly directed at those able to affect policy or bring about change but if you agree with them I would ask you to spread this document around.

Sanctions:
Until the previous points are remedied or steps are taken by the U.S. to remedy them I propose the following sanctions:

The prohibition by all states to allow U.S. military bases to be based in, or military operations to be carried out of, their countries. This includes allied countries and surrogates including those who are NATO members or members of other military alliances.

A prohibition on all U.S. corporations, persons and entities both public and private from profiteering or taking advantage of resources, rebuilding operations or any other area in which they may obtain gains in any war zone, conflict zone or area that has been the subject to U.S. invasion or internal meddling. Including Iraq, Afghanistan, the former Yugoslavia, Libya, Syria, Iran and all other countries in which the U.S. has had a hand in destabilizing or in destroying the country or its government.

Economic, travel, trade, political, communications and military sanctions as determined by international bodies to be applied justly and fairly against those guilt of the aforementioned affronts to humanity.

Given all of the previous points and the current climate in the United States I would also call on all independent and just countries of the world to change their stance and policies on allowing U.S. citizens to obtain asylum and protection in their countries. Asylum should be granted to all of those seeking rule of law and who are exposing the illegality of the U.S. Government. It should also be granted to any member of the U.S. Government, military, or even special services who refuses to participate in illegality or attempts to expose it or stop it. Journalists, citizens, activists and all others who have suffered at the hands of the U.S. Government or due to the actions of its agents or surrogates should also be protected, including victims of racial, religious and other discrimination. Those whose conscience also leads the to cease to be willing to support the U.S. Government in any way shape or form should also be eligible for asylum if they wish to leave the United States.

The sentencing of Bradley Manning is a sign to all who would dare to expose illegality, it is designed to terrorize anyone who would speak out. I propose we make it a Red Line they have crossed, one which will force us (the world community) to end their illegality.

The views and opinions expressed here are my own. I can be reached robles@ruvr.ru
—John Robles

Read more: http://voiceofrussia.com/2013_08_21/Manning-conviction-a-line-the-US-should-not-have-crossed-5820/




For Whom the War Bill Tolls

greg-mankiwHarvardEcon


Greg Mankiw, Harvard economist but, in our view,  chiefly a corporate whore and propaganda asset for the status quo. Mankiw was chairman of the Council of Economic Advisers under George W. Bush. In 2006, he became an economic adviser to Mitt Romney and continued during Romney’s 2012 presidential bid.[1][2] He is a conservative[3][4][5][6] and he writes a popular blog, ranked the number one economics blog by US economics professors in a 2011 survey. That in itself says something about professional economists today.—Eds

STEPHEN GOWANS, What’s Left

The $1 trillion-plus Iraq and Afghanistan wars were the first US wars since the American Revolution to have been fought without a general tax increase to cover them. Without tax increases to pay for the Pentagon’s ballooning budget, the country’s debt as a percentage of GDP has grown. Since a rise in debt relative to income can’t continue indefinitely without undesirable consequences, politicians are looking for ways to arrest the trend. It’s very likely that the burden of covering the costs of ran-away US military spending will fall upon poor and middle-income Americans. High-profile economists like N. Gregory Mankiw are preparing public opinion for eventual rate hikes, concealing the role played by US war spending in driving up the percentage of debt to GDP, and blaming growing entitlement spending on the need to raise taxes.

Harvard economics professor N. Gregory Mankiw, economic policy adviser to George W. Bush and Mitt Romney, and author of a widely used introductory economics textbook, weighed in this Sunday in The New York Times on the growing ratio of US debt to gross domestic product and what to do about it. [1]

Forget about raising taxes on the wealthy, counselled Mankiw. Instead, stick it to everyone else. Here’s Mankiw’s reasoning:

•    Debt as a proportion of national income is growing “thanks largely to growth in entitlement spending.”
•    If debt to GDP continues to grow, investors will eventually refuse to lend at manageable rates, tipping the United States into a Greek-style financial crisis.
•    The crisis can’t be averted simply by raising taxes on the rich. There just aren’t enough wealthy taxpayers around to make much of a difference. Nor would tax increases on the wealthy be fair. “The current tax system looks plenty progressive,” says Mankiw. “The rich are not…shirking their responsibilities.”
•    Instead, entitlements need to be scaled back and taxes hiked on the vast majority of Americans.

Mankiw presents this as a corrective to too much wishful thinking on middle-class tax rates. But his argument is more snow job than corrective.

Wasteful Military Spending

The former chairman of the council of economic advisers misses the elephant in the room on federal spending: the military and the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. According to World Bank figures, from 1999 US military expenditures have steadily increased as a share of national income, rising from 3.0 percent of GDP to 4.7 percent by 2011. [3] New York Times’ reporters Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller reported last year that the US military budget “has doubled to $700 billion a year since the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001.” [3] Yes, doubled. If anything is growing, the military is. The Pentagon’s budget is now “the highest in absolute and in inflation-adjusted, constant (for any year) dollars since 1946, the year after the Second World War ended. Adding non-Pentagon defense-related spending, the total may exceed $1 trillion.” [4]

Before anyone says, “Yes, but defense spending had to increase to deal with the threat of al-Qaeda,” doubling the military budget doesn’t stop someone from buying an airline ticket and concealing a bomb in his underwear. Police methods and foreign policy correctives, not stealth bombers and tanks, are needed to deal with terrorist attacks. Besides, whether the spending increase is justified or not, the fact of the matter is that outlays on the military have skyrocketed. That Mankiw fails to mention this is more than a little fishy.

The US defense budget exceeds the combined expenditures of the next 14 highest spenders—China, Russia, the UK, France, Japan, Saudi Arabia, India, Germany, Brazil, Italy, South Korea, Australia, Canada and Turkey. All but two of these countries are US allies. [5] China and Russia are not part of a US-led military alliance. But their combined military expenditures are less than one-third of the Pentagon’s budget. It’s difficult to imagine how hard headed deficit hawks aren’t scolding Washington for its wasteful overspending on defense, unless the professed deficit hawks are using debt as a pretext to argue for cut-backs in programs for poor and middle-income Americans.

The Pentagon’s obesity is largely due to the United States becoming entangled—no, starting—two completely unnecessary and extremely expensive wars: one on Iraq, based on the lie that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, and one on Afghanistan, to topple the Taliban who will likely return to power in a negotiated settlement.

Bumiller reported in 2010 that both wars had “cost Americans a staggering $1 trillion to date, second only in inflation-adjusted dollars to the $4 trillion price tag for World War II, when the United States put 16 million men and women into uniform and fought on three continents.” [6] With the war in Afghanistan dragging on at a cost of “about $2 billion a week” [7] another $200 billion has come due since Bumiller tallied up the original $1 trillion price tag. Genuine concern about managing US finances would have long ago led to an end to both wars (not just one), if not complete avoidance of either to begin with.

Taxes were not raised to pay for either war. This is the first time since the American Revolution that Washington hasn’t called upon taxpayers to ante up. [8] The reason Americans haven’t been asked to shell out for these wars is clear. Neither was likely to galvanize Americans to accept sacrifices. So, the only way to get Americans behind them was to fight the wars in a way that allowed the country to avoid “breaking a sweat,” as historian David Kennedy put it. [9]

Many Americans are willing to acknowledge that the wars should never have been fought, but rationalize them by pointing to the supposed good they’ve done (the toppling of Saddam Hussein, improved conditions for women in Afghanistan.) But how accepting will they be when they’re presented with the bill, as they most assuredly will be? Someone will have to pay eventually. The trick for politicians will be to blame the bill on something else. Entitlements come to mind.

The Flat Tax System

If Mankiw ignores the obvious links among rising military expenditures, absent tax increases, and a climbing debt to GDP ratio, he also ignores property, state, excise, and sales taxes, to argue that the wealthy are already paying their fair share, and that “the current tax system looks pretty progressive.” Well, yes, the current federal income tax system does look progressive, and Mankiw would be on target if federal income tax were the only one Americans pay. But they also pay sales taxes, property taxes and more. Factor in all other taxes and the tax system isn’t quite as progressive as Mankiw would have us believe. As Washington Post reporter Ezra Klein noted in September, “Confining the discussion to the federal income tax…makes the tax code look much more progressive than it actually is.” [10]

So, just how unprogressive is the tax system? According to the Institute on Taxation and Economic Policy, total taxes in 2011 as a percentage of income were [11]:

•    Top 1% of income earners, 29.0%
•    Bottom 99%, 27.5%

In other words, taking into account all the taxes Americans pay and not just the one Mankiw wants to confine the discussion to, the real tax system is essentially flat. The super-wealthy are paying about the same rate as everyone else. And yes, while the poor pay little if anything in federal taxes, they make up for it in state, local and other levies. Which means that were federal income taxes hiked on the bottom 99 percent, as Mankiw urges, the real tax system would go from flat to regressive.

Who Benefits?

It’s widely believed that taxes on the wealthy are redistributed to the poor, and while some redistribution of tax revenue from wealthy to poor does occur, what’s less widely known, and rarely talked about, is the massive redistribution of tax revenue from the bottom 99 percent to the top one percent. This is clear if we recognize that:

•    The bulk of taxes are paid by the bottom 99 percent (which is why defenders of the current flat tax system, like Mankiw, keep reminding us that hiking taxes on the rich will make little difference to government finances. The heavy lifting is done by poor and middle-income Americans.)
•    A large fraction of tax revenue is used to fund activities the wealthy disproportionately benefit from.

What do federal income taxes pay for?

A large part goes to defense contractors, companies like Lockheed-Martin, Boeing, Northrop Grumman, Raytheon and General Dynamics. The top executives and shareholders of these companies—in other words, the super-rich—make off like bandits in regular times, but have benefited even more handsomely ever since post 9/11 military expenditures doubled. Profits of the top five defense contractors “rose from $2.4 billion in 2002, adjusted for inflation, to $13.4 billion in 2011,” a 450 percent increase. [12]

Another part of US military funding is used to finance US wars. US military interventions almost invariably create profit-making opportunities for the top one percent. For example, then US ambassador to Libya Gene Cretz was positively rhapsodic about the business opportunities that were opened by the US-led (from behind) Nato assault that toppled Muammar Gadhafi, not just petroleum-related but infrastructure contracts too. [13] In the charmed circle of US capitalism, defense contractors reap a bonanza of profits by supplying the Pentagon with arms, which the Pentagon use to destroy infrastructure that US engineering giants like Bechtel rebuild. War can be profitable.

Military and non-military aid to other countries also eats up a sizeable chunk of the federal budget. The bottom 99 percent, who contribute the bulk of funds to these programs, benefit only indirectly, if at all. Instead, their tax dollars are converted into credits, which are doled out to other countries to purchase goods and service from US corporations, the direct beneficiaries. For example, the $3 billion in annual military aid Israel receives travels from taxpayers’ pockets to US defense contractors’ coffers. The arms industry sends military equipment to Israel, with payment for the purchase never leaving the United States. The same kind of arrangement is used to provide economic aid to poor countries. These countries don’t get cash to spend as they see fit. They get credits to spend on American goods and services. There may be benefits to poor and middle-income Americans in job opportunities, but the benefits are disproportionately enjoyed by the top executives and shareholders of the companies on which the credits are spent.

Another sizeable part of US tax revenue goes to purchasers of US debt—the debt that piled up to pay for the wars Washington didn’t want to raise taxes to pay for. Needless to say, poor and middle-income Americans are not major holders of US debt. The super-wealthy are. And super-wealthy bondholders are often the same people who own shares in companies that supply the Pentagon and benefit from new foreign business opportunities that US military interventions secure.

So, no, the tax system isn’t a one-way circuit where the super-wealthy pick up the tab for everyone else’s entitlements, as Mankiw and others would have us believe. Instead, a large part of the tax system’s function is to transfer tax revenues from the bottom 99 percent to activities—foreign aid, military appropriations, wars, and interest on debt—that the top one percent disproportionately benefit from.

Conclusion

The United States has doubled military spending since 9/11, outspending its peer competitors, China and Russia, by more than a factor of three. It has squandered more than $1 trillion on wars that never should have been fought, and continues to waste $2 billion a week on war in Afghanistan. This excess has been paid for by borrowing rather than taxes, presumably to avoid hurting Americans in their pocketbooks, a pain that would likely provoke anti-war opposition. But the bills are coming due. Mankiw, and other prizefighters for the super-wealthy, are drawing attention away from outsize military spending—a significant contributor to burgeoning debt—and directing it instead to entitlements. They’re also deceptively ignoring payroll, property, sales and other taxes, to argue that the US tax system is progressive and that the wealthy already pay their fair share. In other words, Mankiw is arguing for higher taxes on poor and middle-income Americans, misdirecting attention to entitlement spending to conceal what the bill is really for: military spending that the super-rich have used to fatten their bank accounts.

Lessons learned.

A. Nothing comes free. Military spending can’t be doubled—and $1 trillion-plus wars fought— without someone eventually being handed the bill. And in the United States, the bill is always paid by the bottom 99 percent. This bill will be paid in entitlement cutbacks and tax increases.

B. The job of establishment economists is to make robbing poor and middle-income Americans seem both necessary and desirable. Feudal lords relied on priests to justify the exploitation of serfs. Bankers, top executives and investors have economists.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR

Stephen Gowans is a leading Canadian activist and political commentator. He is the founding editor of What’s Left.

1. N. Gregory Mankiw, “Wishful thinking and middle-class taxes”, The New York Times, December 29, 2012.
2. The World Bank, http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/MS.MIL.XPND.GD.ZS
3. Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller, “Weighing Pentagon cuts, Panetta faces deep pressures”, The New York Times, November 6, 2011.
4. Thom Shanker and Elisabeth Bumiller, “Weighing Pentagon cuts, Panetta faces deep pressures”, The New York Times, November 6, 2011.
5. Stockholm International Peace Research Institute, 2012
6. Elisabeth Bumiller, “The war: A trillion can be cheap”, The New York Times, July 24, 2010.
7. David E. Sanger, Eric Schmitt and Thom Shanker, “Steeper pullout is raised as option for Afghanistan”, The New York Times, June 5, 2011.
8. Elisabeth Bumiller, “The war: A trillion can be cheap”, The New York Times, July 24, 2010.
9. Ibid.
10. Ezra Klein, “The one tax graph you really need to know”, The Washington Post, September 19, 2012.
11. http://ctj.org/images/taxday2012table.jpg
12. Study co-written by Lawrence J. Korb for the Center for American Progress, cited by Walter Pincus in “Excess-profits tax on defense contractors during wartime is long overdue”, The Washington Post, December 31, 2012.
13. David D. Kirkpatrick, “U.S. reopens its embassy in Libya”, The New York Times, September 22, 2011. Cretz said, “We know that oil is the jewel in the crown of Libyan natural resources, but even in Qaddafi’s time they were starting from A to Z in terms of building infrastructure and other things. If we can get American companies here on a fairly big scale, which we will try to do everything we can to do that, then this will redound to improve the situation in the United States with respect to our own jobs.”




Zero Snuff Thirty

by Joe Giambrone, The Political Film Blog

In a time when people dread the next pseudo-political bullshit-fest that Hollywood poops out…

In an age of war, of genetic engineering, of rising fascism, of the propaganda state…

In a world gone mad with terrorism, covert proxy armies, the reign of billionaires, and Kim Kardashian…

…yet another jingoistic American muscle picture smells like an Oscar.”

I’ve long ago given up on Hollywood providing anything in the neighborhood of a “true” story.  I’ve spoken with more than a few screenwriters who feel no obligation toward the actual objective history, or to piecing together what surely happened according to the available data.  Breezily they would prefer to toss out the facts in favor of “story.”  That’s the self-serving claim, anyway.  The reality is that history is always in second position to the “notes” of their superiors, and Hollywood scribes are simply corporate employees.  Any studio executive or producer in the chain can rewrite history at their own whim.  That is the reality of the American movie business, which few would dispute.

Enter Osama Bin Laden (boo, hiss!).  But, the first trailers for the Zero Dark Thirty snuff film actually omitted showing the dark lord bad guy, for some inexplicable reason.  Would he appear as an underdog up against the hyper-charged, well-armed younger Navy Seals?

Very much like the real history provides no actual photographic evidence that bin Laden was even there in Abbottabad, or shot that night, or dumped into the ocean.  In this film, in addition to producers and studio heads, we have the federal government giving notes and purporting to give us the truth (from a demonstrably unreliable source).

Be that as it may, we are certain to get nothing in the way of truth about whom this villain bin Laden actually was, what he did, who he worked for, and with, and what the hell he might actually have had to do – if anything – with the September 11th attacks.  Our glorious hit men are clearly the stars of this tense, gripping, riveting thriller.  Not just good Americans, but the best of the best, these gunslingers ask no questions and go anywhere to silence crucial witnesses who could provide some very damaging trial testimony.

No doubt the Dark Thirty script will provide the he-men no choice, and bin Laden will wield a bazooka while wearing a dirty bomb vest as he cackles maniacally, “Say hello to my little Jihad!  Ha ha ha.”

Maybe not.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Some disturbing subplots, which I don’t expect to find in this patriotic tale of guns and glory—

When asked why there was no mention of the 9/11 attacks on Osama Bin Laden’s FBI’s Most Wanted web page [FBI Spokesman Rex Tomb] said, “The reason why 9/11 is not mentioned on Usama Bin Laden’s Most Wanted page is because the FBI has no hard evidence connecting Bin Laden to 9/11.”
Osama bin Laden fought on the same side as the United States in several conflicts including Afghanistan in the 1980’s, Kosovo and Bosnia in the 1990’s.  Reports indicated cooperation with the US Central Intelligence Agency.

The Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) served as the go-between for the US intelligence and the bin Laden network tracing back to the 1980’s.  As bin Laden is alleged to have taken refuge in Pakistan, half a mile from the Pakistani military academy, what was the role of Pakistan’s ISI in protecting him, and who in the US intelligence community knew of this?  Bonus financial subplot – why are we still giving Pakistan billions of our tax dollars and who is trying to stop it?

Bin Laden, a prominent Saudi national, maintained ties to Saudi Arabia as well, and the Saudi government was repeatedly implicated in the September 11th attacks, although never prosecuted for an act of war.  What is the relationship between the Saudi royals, the bin Laden network and those in the United States who would cover up these connections?

Was bin Laden given the green light to be airlifted out of Kunduz Afghanistan in November of 2001, at a time when the US Air Force could easily have shot down any escaping aircraft?

Was Osama bin Laden admitted to a Rawalpindi, Pakistan military hospital for treatment on September 10th, 2001, as reported by CBS?

Was Osama bin Laden treated at a United States military hospital in Dubai, UAE, in July of 2001, as reported by French intelligence in Le Figaro?

No.  Of course the Obama administration won’t be providing details to the eager filmmakers about any of that, not one whit.  Obama’s justice department (sic) actually sided with the Saudi royals and against the 9/11 victim’s families in their lawsuit.  Disclosure was thwarted, and the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that the Saudis – whether guilty or not – enjoyed “immunity” from lawsuits by pesky citizens whose families were murdered on September 11th.

Don’t expect true stories from the US federal government, nor from the Hollywood motion picture business.  Put them both together, and surely this must be a comedy, a very dark comedy.

JOE GIAMBRONE is editor in chief of the Political Film Blog.

//




FILMS: Zero Snuff Thirty

With increasing frequency we see Hollywood actioners in their new favored groove, as military thrillers, singing the tunes dictated by the Pentagon and State Department. Imperial cinema, anyone? One of the earliest of this insidious kind was “Top Gun”, which came as close as any film before or since to serve as a blatant recruitment poster.

Synopsis

(WiKi)

_________________________________

Zero Snuff Thirty

by Joe Giambrone

In a time when people dread the next pseudo-political bullshit-fest that Hollywood poops out…
In an age of war, of genetic engineering, of rising fascism, of the propaganda state…
In a world gone mad with terrorism, covert proxy armies, the reign of billionaires, and Kim Kardashian…yet another jingoistic American muscle picture smells like an Oscar.

I’ve long ago given up on Hollywood providing anything in the neighborhood of a “true” story.  I’ve spoken with more than a few screenwriters who feel no obligation toward the actual objective history, or to piecing together what surely happened according to the available data.  Breezily they would prefer to toss out the facts in favor of “story.”  That’s the self-serving claim, anyway.  The reality is that history is always in second position to the “notes” of their superiors, and Hollywood scribes are simply corporate employees.  Any studio executive or producer in the chain can rewrite history at their own whim.  That is the reality of the American movie business, which few would dispute.

Enter Osama Bin Laden (boo, hiss!).  But, the first trailers for the Zero Dark Thirty snuff film actually omitted showing the dark lord bad guy, for some inexplicable reason.  Would he appear as an underdog up against the hyper-charged, well-armed younger Navy Seals?

Very much like the real history provides no actual photographic evidence that bin Laden was even there in Abbottabad, or shot that night, or dumped into the ocean.  In this film, in addition to producers and studio heads, we have the federal government giving notes and purporting to give us the truth (from a demonstrably unreliable source).

Be that as it may, we are certain to get nothing in the way of truth about whom this villain bin Laden actually was, what he did, who he worked for, and with, and what the hell he might actually have had to do – if anything – with the September 11th attacks.  Our glorious hit men are clearly the stars of this tense, gripping, riveting thriller.  Not just good Americans, but the best of the best, these gunslingers ask no questions and go anywhere to silence crucial witnesses who could provide some very damaging trial testimony.

No doubt the Dark Thirty script will provide the he-men no choice, and bin Laden will wield a bazooka while wearing a dirty bomb vest as he cackles maniacally, “Say hello to my little Jihad!  Ha ha ha.”

Maybe not.  We’ll have to wait and see.

Some disturbing subplots, which I don’t expect to find in this patriotic tale of guns and glory—

No.  Of course the Obama administration won’t be providing details to the eager filmmakers about any of that, not one whit.  Obama’s justice department (sic) actually sided with the Saudi royals and against the 9/11 victim’s families in their lawsuit.  Disclosure was thwarted, and the lawsuit dismissed on the grounds that the Saudis – whether guilty or not – enjoyed “immunity” from lawsuits by pesky citizens whose families were murdered on September 11th.

Don’t expect true stories from the US federal government, nor from the Hollywood motion picture business.  Put them both together, and surely this must be a comedy, a very dark comedy.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR
Author and filmmaker Joe Giambrone edits the Political Film Blog, where this commentary appeared.

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MUST READ: The struggle for hegemony in the Muslim world

•••

For half of the last century, Arab nationalists, socialists, communists and others were locked in a battle with the Muslim Brothers for hegemony in the Arab world.—Tariq Ali [1]

By Stephen Gowans, What’s Left

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which played a major part in the rebellion to depose Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, may have plotted the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi which led to the death of US ambassador Christopher Stevens, according to US officials.

The Jihadists who toppled the secular nationalist Gaddafi government—and not without the help of Nato bombers, dubbed “al Qaeda’s air force” [2] by Canadian pilots who participated in the bombing campaign—are no longer disguised in the pages of Western newspapers as a popular movement who thirsted for, and won, democracy in Libya. Now that they’ve overrun the US consulate in Benghazi and killed the US ambassador, they’ve become a “security threat…raising fears about the country’s stability” [3]—exactly what Gaddafi called them, when Western governments were celebrating the Islamists’ revolt as a popular pro-democracy uprising. Gaddafi’s description of the unrest in his own country as a violent Salafist bid to establish an Islamic state was doubtlessly accepted in Washington and other Western capitals as true, but dismissed in public as a transparent ploy to muster sympathy. This was necessary to sanitize the uprising to secure the acquiescence of Western publics for the intervention of their countries’ warplanes to help Islamic guerillas on the ground topple a secular nationalist leader who was practicing “resource nationalism” and trying to “Libyanize” the economy– the real reasons he’d fallen into disgrace in Washington. [4]

Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, which played a major part in the rebellion to depose Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, may have plotted the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi which led to the death of US ambassador Christopher Stevens, according to US officials.  The uprising of militant Muslim radicals against a secular state was, in many respects, a replay of what had happened in Afghanistan in the late 1970s, when a Marxist-inspired government came to power with aspirations to lift the country out of backwardness, and was opposed by the Mullahs and Islamist guerillas backed by the United States, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia and China.

An Afghan Communist explained that,

“Our aim was no less than to give an example to all the backward countries of the world of how to jump from feudalism straight to a prosperous, just society … Our choice was not between doing things democratically or not. Unless we did them, nobody else would … [Our] very first proclamation declared that food and shelter are the basic needs and rights of a human being. … Our program was clear: land to the peasants, food for the hungry, free education for all. We knew that the mullahs in the villages would scheme against us, so we issued our decrees swiftly so that the masses could see where their real interests lay … For the first time in Afghanistan’s history women were to be given the right to education … We told them that they owned their bodies, they would marry whom they liked, they shouldn’t have to live shut up in houses like pens.” [5]

That’s not to say that Gaddafi was a Marxist—far from it. But like the reformers in Afghanistan, he sought to modernize his country, and use its land, labor and resources for the people within it. By official Western accounts, he did a good job, raising his country’s standard of living higher than that of all other countries in Africa.

_______
For decades the United States and its allies worked hard to stamp out all vestiges of leftism and progressivism in the Arab and Central Asian world, often urging various strongmen (i.e. Saddam, the Shah, etc.) to persecute and eliminate the left. As a result, the whole region is now being fought over by two equally despicable forces: American led Western imperialism and the utterly reactionary Islamic fanatics and factions of Al-Qaeda.”—Eds

_______

Gaddafi claimed that the rebellion in Libya had been organized by Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb, or AQIM, and by the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which had vowed to overthrow him and return the country to traditional Muslim values, including Sharia law. A 2009 Canadian government intelligence report bore him out. It described the anti-Gaddafi stronghold of eastern Libya, where the rebellion began, “as an ‘epicenter of Islamist extremism’ and said ‘extremist cells’ operated in the region.” Earlier, Canadian military intelligence had noted that “Libyan troops found a training camp in the country’s southern desert that had been used by an Algerian terrorist group that would later change its name to Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.” [6] Significantly, US officials now believe that the AQIM may have plotted the attack on the US consulate in Benghazi. [7]

Abdel Hakim Belhaj, the Libyan rebellion’s most powerful military leader, was a veteran of the U.S.-backed Jihad against the Marxist-inspired reformist government in Afghanistan, where he had fought alongside militants who would go on to form al-Qaeda. Belhaj returned to Libya in the 1990s to lead the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, which was linked to his al-Qaeda comrades. His aim was to topple Gaddafi, as the Communists had been toppled in Afghanistan. The prominent role Belhaj played in the Libyan uprising should have aroused suspicions among leftists in the West that, as Western governments surely knew, the uprising was not the heroic pro-democracy affair Western media—and those of reactionary Arab regimes—were making it out to be. Indeed, from the very first day of the revolt, anyone equipped with knowledge of Libyan history that went back further than the last Fox News broadcast, would have known that the Benghazi rebellion was more in the mold of the latest eruption of a violent anti-secular Jihad than a peaceful call for democracy. [8]

“On Feb. 15, 2011, citizens in Benghazi organized what they called a Day of Anger march. The demonstration soon turned into a full-scale battle with police. At first, security forces used tear gas and water cannons. But as several hundred protesters armed with rocks and Molotov cocktails attacked government buildings, the violence spiraled out of control.” [9]

As they stormed government sites, the rampaging demonstrators didn’t chant, “Power to the people”, “We are the 99 percent”, or “No to dictatorship.” They chanted “‘No God but Allah, Moammar is the enemy of Allah’.” [10] The Islamists touched off the rebellion and did the fighting on the ground, while U.S.-aligned Libyan exiles stepped into the power vacuum created by Salafist violence and Nato bombs to form a new U.S.-aligned government.

Syria’s Hafiz Asad, and other secular nationalists, from his comrade Salaf Jadid, who he overthrew and locked away, to his son, Bashar, who has followed him, have also been denounced as enemies of Allah by the same Islamist forces who violently denounced Gaddafi in Libya and the leaders of the People’s Democratic Party in Afghanistan. The reason for their denunciation by Islamists is the same: their opposition to an Islamic state. Similarly, Islamist forces have been as strongly at the head of the movement to overthrow the secular nationalists in Syria, as they have the secular nationalists in Libya and the (secular) Marxists in the late 1970s-1980s Afghanistan.

As they stormed government sites, the rampaging demonstrators chanted “‘No God but Allah, Moammar is the enemy of Allah’.”

As they stormed government sites, the rampaging demonstrators chanted “‘No God but Allah, Moammar is the enemy of Allah’.”

The secular nationalists’ rise to power in Syria was a heavy blow to the country’s Sunni Islamic militants who resented their society being governed by secular radicals. Worse still from the perspective of the Islamists, the governing radicals were mostly members of minority communities the Sunnis regarded as heretics, and which had occupied the lower rungs of Syrian society. From the moment the secular nationalists captured the state, Islamists went underground to organize an armed resistance. “From their safe haven deep in the ancient warrens of northern cities like Aleppo and Hama, where cars could not enter, the guerrillas emerged to bomb and kill.” [11]

In 1980, an attempt was made to group the Sunni opposition to the secular nationalists under an “Islamic Front’, which promised free speech, free elections, and an independent judiciary, under the banner of Islam. When militant Islamic terrorists murdered Egyptian president Anwar Sadat a year later in Egypt, Islamists in Damascus promised then president Hafiz Asad the same fate. Then in 1982, Jihadists rose up in Hama—“the citadel of traditional landed power and Sunni puratinism” [12]—in a bid to seize power in the city. The ensuing war of the Islamic radicals against the secular nationalist state, a bloody affair which costs tens of thousands of lives, convinced Asad that “he was wrestling not just with internal dissent, but with a large scale conspiracy to unseat him, abetted by Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, Israel and the United States.” [13] Patrick Seale, a veteran British journalist who has covered the Middle East for decades, described the Islamists’ movement against Syria’s secular nationalists as a “sort of fever that (rises) and (falls) according to conditions at home and manipulation from abroad.” [14]

Media accounts of Syria’s civil war omit mention of the decades-long hostility between Islamists and secular nationalists—a fierce enmity that sometimes flares into open warfare, and at other times simmers menacingly below the surface—that has defined Syria in the post-colonial period. To do so would take the sheen off the armed rising as a popular, democratic, progressive struggle, a depiction necessary to make Western intervention in the form of sanctions, diplomatic support, and other aid, against the secular nationalists, appear just and desirable. Today, only Trotskyists besotted by fantasies that the Arab Spring is the equivalent of the March 1917 Petrograd uprising, deny that the content of the Syrian uprising is Islamist. But the question of whether the uprising was initially otherwise—a peaceful, progressive and popular movement aimed at opening democratic space and redressing economic grievances–and only later hijacked by Islamists, remains in dispute. What’s clear, however, is that the “hijacking”, if indeed there was one, is not of recent vintage. In the nascent stages of the rebellion, the late New York Times reporter Anthony Shadid noted that the “most puritanical Islamists, known by their shorthand as Salafists, have emerged as a force in Egypt, Libya, Syria and elsewhere, with suspicions that Saudi Arabia has encouraged and financed them.”[15]

Secular nationalists, socialists and communists in Muslim lands have struggled with the problem of Islamist opposition to their programs, to their atheism (in the case of communists) and to the secular character of the state they have sought to build. The Bolsheviks, perhaps alone among this group, were successful in overcoming opposition in the traditional Muslim territories they controlled in Central Asia, and improving the lives of women, who had been oppressed by conservative Islam. Female seclusion, polygamy, bride price, child and forced marriages, veiling (as well as circumcision of males, considered by the Bolsheviks to be child abuse) were outlawed. Women were recruited into administrative and professional positions and encouraged – indeed obligated – to work outside the home. This followed Friedrich Engels’ idea that women could only be liberated from the domination of men if they had independent incomes. [16]

Western governments, led by the United States, have made a practice of inflaming the Islamists’ hostility to secular nationalists, socialists and communists, using militant Muslim radicals as a cat’s paw to topple these governments, which have almost invariably refused to align themselves militarily with the United States or cut deals against the interests of their own people to fatten the profits of corporate America and enrich Wall Street investment bankers. But whether Washington aggravates fault lines within Muslim societies or not, the fact remains that the fault lines exist, and must be managed, but have not always been managed well.

For example, no matter how admirable their aims were, the reformers in Afghanistan had too narrow a political base to move as quickly as they did, and they rushed headlong into disaster, ignoring Moscow’s advice to slow down and expand their support. The Carter and Reagan administrations simply took advantage of their blunders to build a committed anti-communist guerilla movement.

Salah Jadid, who Hafiz Asad overthrew and locked away. Jadid pursued an un-apologetically leftist program, and boasted of practicing “scientific socialism.” The Soviets thought otherwise. Jadid came to power in a conspiracy and never had more than a narrow base of support.

Salah Jadid, who Hafiz Asad overthrew and locked away. Jadid pursued an unapologetically leftist program, and boasted of practicing “scientific socialism.” The Soviets thought otherwise. Jadid came to power in a conspiracy and never had more than a narrow base of support.

The leftist Syrian regime of Salah Jadid, which Hafiz Asad overthrew, did much that would be admired by leftists today. Indeed, Tariq Ali, in an apology apparently intended to expiate the sin of seeming to support the current Asad government, lauds Jadid’s regime as the “much more enlightened predecessor whose leaders and activists…numbered in their ranks some of the finest intellectuals of the Arab world.” [17] It’s easy to see why Ali admired Asad’s predecessors. Jadid, who lived an austere life, refusing to take advantage of his position to lavish himself with riches and comforts, slashed the salaries of senior ministers and top bureaucrats. He replaced their black Mercedes limousines with Volkswagens and Peugeot 404s. People connected with the old influential families were purged from government. A Communist was brought into the cabinet. Second houses were confiscated, and the ownership of more than one was prohibited. Private schools were banned. Workers, soldiers, peasants, students and women became the regime’s favored children. Feudalists and reactionaries were suppressed. A start was made on economic planning and major infrastructure projects were undertaken with the help of the Soviets. And yet, despite these clearly progressive measures, Jadid’s base of popular support remained narrow—one reason why the Soviets were lukewarm toward him, regarding him as a hothead, and contemptuous of his claim to be practicing “scientific socialism.” [18] Scientific socialism is based on mass politics, not a minority coming to power through a conspiracy (as Jadid and Asad had) which then attempts to impose its utopian vision on a majority that rejects it.

Jadid backed the Palestinian guerrillas. Asad, who was then minister of defense, was less enamored of the guerrillas, who he saw as handing Israel pretexts for war. Jadid defined the bourgeoisie as the enemy. Asad wanted to enlist their backing at home to broaden the government’s base of support against the Muslim Brothers. Jadid spurned the reactionary Arab regimes. Asad was for unifying all Arab states—reactionary or otherwise—against Israel. [19]

Asad—who Ali says he opposed—recognized (a) that a program of secular nationalist socialism couldn’t be implemented holus bolus without mass support, and (b) that the government didn’t have it. So, after toppling Jadid in a so-called “corrective” movement, he minimized class warfare in favor of broadening his government’s base, trying to win over merchants, artisans, business people, and other opponents of the regime’s nationalizations and socialist measures. At the same time, he retained Jadid’s commitment to a dirigiste state and continued to promote oppressed classes and minorities. This was hardly a stirring program for Marxist purists—in fact it looked like a betrayal—but the Soviets were more committed to Asad than Jadid, recognizing that his program respected the world as it was and therefore had a greater chance of success. [20]

In the end, however, Asad failed. Neither he nor his son Bashar managed to expand the state’s base of support enough to safeguard it from destabilization. The opposition hasn’t been conjured up out of nothing by regime change specialists in Washington. To be sure, regime change specialists have played a role, but they’ve needed material to work with, and the Asad’s Syria has provided plenty of it. Nor did Gaddafi in Libya finesse the problem of mixing the right amount of repression and persuasion to engineer a broad enough consent for his secular nationalist rule to survive the fever of Salafist opposition rising, as Patrick Seale writes, according to conditions at home and manipulation from abroad . The machinations of the United States and reactionary Arab regimes to stir up and strengthen the secular nationalists’ opponents made the knot all the more difficult to disentangle, but outside manipulation wasn’t the whole story in Gaddafi’s demise (though it was a significant part of it) and hasn’t been the sole, or even a large part of the, explanation for the uprising in Syria.

The idea that the Syrian uprising is a popular, democratic movement against dictatorship and for the redress of economic grievances ignores the significant history of struggle between secularist Arab nationalists and the Muslim Brothers, mistakenly minimizes the role of Salafists in the uprisings, and turns a blind eye to Washington’s longstanding practice of using radical Muslim activists as a cat’s paw against Arab nationalist regimes.

The idea that the Syrian uprising is a popular, democratic movement against dictatorship and for the redress of economic grievances ignores the significant history of struggle between secularist Arab nationalists and the Muslim Brothers, mistakenly minimizes the role of Salafists in the uprisings, and turns a blind eye to Washington’s longstanding practice of using radical Muslim activists as a cat’s paw against Arab nationalist regimes.

The idea that the uprisings in either country are popular, democratic movements against dictatorship and for the redress of economic grievances, (a) ignores the significant history of struggle between secularist Arab nationalists and the Muslim Brothers, (b) mistakenly minimizes the role of Salafists in the uprisings, and (c) turns a blind eye to Washington’s longstanding practice of using radical Muslim activists as a cat’s paw against Arab nationalist regimes that are against sacrificing local interests to the foreign trade and investment interests of Wall Street and corporate America. With Islamists lashing out violently against US embassies in the Middle East, their depiction by US state officials and Western media as pro-democracy fighters for freedom may very well be supplanted by the labels used by Gaddafi and Asad to describe their Islamist opponents, labels that are closer to the truth –“religious fanatics” and “terrorists.”

Reactionary Islam may have won the battle for hegemony in the Muslim world, as Tariq Ali asserts, and with it, the United States, which has often manipulated it for its own purposes, but the battle has yet to be won in Syria, and one would hope, never will be. That’s what’s at stake in the country: not a fragile, popular, egalitarian, pro-democracy movement, but the last remaining secular Arab nationalist regime, resisting both the oppressions and obscurantism of the Muslim Brothers and the oppressions and plunder of imperialism.

NOTES

1. Tariq Ali, “The Uprising in Syria”, www.counterpunch.com, September 12, 2012.
2. Stephen Gowans [A], “Al-Qaeda’s Air Force”, what’s left, February 20, 2012. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2012/02/20/al-qaedas-air-force/
3. Patrick Martin, “Anti-American protests seen as tip of the Islamist iceberg”, The Globe and Mail, September 13, 2012.
4. Gowans [A]
5. Rodric Braithwaite. Afghantsy: The Russians in Afghanistan 1979-1989. Profile Books. 2012. pp. 5-6.
6. Gowans [A]
7. Siobhan Gorman and Adam Entous, “U.S. probing al-Qaeda link in Libya”, The Wall Street Journal, September 14, 2012.
8. Gowans [A]
9. David Pugliese, “The Libya mission one year later: Into the unknown”, The Ottawa Citizen, February 18, 2012.
10. Pugliese
11. Patrick Seale. Asad of Syria: The Struggle for the Middle East. University of California Press. 1988, p.324.
12. Seale, p. 333.
13. Seale, p. 335.
14. Seale, p. 322.
15. Anthony Shadid, “After Arab revolts, reigns of uncertainty”, The New York Times, August 24, 2011.
16. Stephen Gowans [B], “Women’s Rights in Afghanistan”, August 9, 2010. http://gowans.wordpress.com/2010/08/09/women%e2%80%99s-rights-in-afghanistan/
17. Ali
18. Seale
19. Seale
20. Seale

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