With the US war in Iraq supposedly having reached a good conclusion (or halfway decent … or better than nothing … or let’s get the hell out of here while some of us are still in one piece and there are some Iraqis we haven’t yet killed), the best and the brightest in our government and media turn their thoughts to what to do about Afghanistan. It appears that no one seems to remember, if they ever knew, that Afghanistan was not really about 9-11 or fighting terrorists (except the many the US has created by its invasion and occupation), but was about pipelines.

President Obama declared in August 2009: “But we must never forget this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven from which al Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans.”

Never mind that out of the tens of thousands of people the United States and its NATO front have killed in Afghanistan not one has been identified as having had anything to do with the events of September 11, 2001.

Never mind that the “plotting to attack America” in 2001 was devised in Germany and Spain and the United States more than in Afghanistan. Why hasn’t the United States bombed those countries?

Indeed, what actually was needed to plot to buy airline tickets and take flying lessons in the United States? A room with some chairs? What does “an even larger safe haven” mean? A larger room with more chairs? Perhaps a blackboard? Terrorists intent upon attacking the United States can meet almost anywhere, with Afghanistan probably being one of the worst places for them, given the American occupation.

The only “necessity” that drew the United States to Afghanistan was the desire to establish a military presence in this land that is next door to the Caspian Sea region of Central Asia — which reportedly contains the second largest proven reserves of petroleum and natural gas in the world — and build oil and gas pipelines from that region running through Afghanistan.

Afghanistan is well situated for oil and gas pipelines to serve much of south Asia, pipelines that can bypass those not-yet Washington clients, Iran and Russia. If only the Taliban would not attack the lines. Here’s Richard Boucher, US Assistant Secretary of State for South and Central Asian Affairs, in 2007: “One of our goals is to stabilize Afghanistan, so it can become a conduit and a hub between South and Central Asia so that energy can flow to the south.”

Since the 1980s all kinds of pipelines have been planned for the area, only to be delayed or canceled by one military, financial or political problem or another. For example, the so-called TAPI pipeline (Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India) had strong support from Washington, which was eager to block a competing pipeline that would bring gas to Pakistan and India from Iran. TAPI goes back to the late 1990s, when the Taliban government held talks with the California-based oil company Unocal Corporation. These talks were conducted with the full knowledge of the Clinton administration, and were undeterred by the extreme repression of Taliban society. Taliban officials even made trips to the United States for discussions. ¹¹ Testifying before the House Subcommittee on Asia and the Pacific on February 12, 1998, Unocal representative John Maresca discussed the importance of the pipeline project and the increasing difficulties in dealing with the Taliban:

The region’s total oil reserves may well reach more than 60 billion barrels of oil. Some estimates are as high as 200 billion barrels … From the outset, we have made it clear that construction of the pipeline we have proposed across Afghanistan could not begin until a recognized government is in place that has the confidence of governments, leaders, and our company.

When those talks stalled in July, 2001 the Bush administration threatened the Taliban with military reprisals if the government did not go along with American demands. The talks finally broke down for good the following month, a month before 9-11.

The United States has been serious indeed about the Caspian Sea and Persian Gulf oil and gas areas. Through one war or another beginning with the Gulf War of 1990-1, the US has managed to establish military bases in Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Bahrain, Qatar, Oman, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Kazakhstan.

The war against the Taliban can’t be “won” short of killing everyone in Afghanistan. The United States may well try again to negotiate some form of pipeline security with the Taliban, then get out, and declare “victory”. Barack Obama can surely deliver an eloquent victory speech from his teleprompter. It might even include the words “freedom” and “democracy”, but certainly not “pipeline”.

William Blum is an American, historian and critic of United States foreign policy. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military & CIA Interventions Since World War II. He has described his life’s mission as: “If not ending, at least slowing down the American Empire. At least injuring the beast. It’s causing so much suffering around the world.“Mr. Blum can be reached through his website http://killinghope.org .

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

As we all know only too well, the United States and Israel would hate to see Iran possessing nuclear weapons. Being “the only nuclear power in the Middle East” is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. But — in the real, non-propaganda world — is USrael actually fearful of an attack from a nuclear-armed Iran? In case you’ve forgotten…

In 2007, in a closed discussion, Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni said that in her opinion “Iranian nuclear weapons do not pose an existential threat to Israel.” She “also criticized the exaggerated use that [Israeli] Prime Minister Ehud Olmert is making of the issue of the Iranian bomb, claiming that he is attempting to rally the public around him by playing on its most basic fears.” ¹

2009: “A senior Israeli official in Washington” asserted that “Iran would be unlikely to use its missiles in an attack [against Israel] because of the certainty of retaliation.” ²

In 2010 the Sunday Times of London (January 10) reported that Brigadier-General Uzi Eilam, war hero, pillar of the Israeli defense establishment, and former director-general of Israel’s Atomic Energy Commission, “believes it will probably take Iran seven years to make nuclear weapons.”

Early last month, US Secretary of Defense Leon Panetta told a television audience: “Are they [Iran] trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No, but we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability.” ³

A week later we could read in the New York Times (January 15) that “three leading Israeli security experts — the Mossad chief, Tamir Pardo, a former Mossad chief, Efraim Halevy, and a former military chief of staff, Dan Halutz — all recently declared that a nuclear Iran would not pose an existential threat to Israel.”

Then, a few days afterward, Israeli Defense Minister Ehud Barak, in an interview with Israeli Army Radio (January 18), had this exchange:

Question: Is it Israel’s judgment that Iran has not yet decided to turn its nuclear potential into weapons of mass destruction?

Barak: People ask whether Iran is determined to break out from the control [inspection] regime right now … in an attempt to obtain nuclear weapons or an operable installation as quickly as possible. Apparently that is not the case.

Lastly, we have the US Director of National Intelligence, James Clapper, in a report to Congress: “We do not know, however, if Iran will eventually decide to build nuclear weapons. … There are “certain things [the Iranians] have not done” that would be necessary to build a warhead. ⁴

Admissions like the above — and there are others — are never put into headlines by the American mass media; indeed, only very lightly reported at all; and sometimes distorted — On the Public Broadcasting System (PBS News Hour, January 9), the non-commercial network much beloved by American liberals, the Panetta quote above was reported as: “But we know that they’re trying to develop a nuclear capability, and that’s what concerns us.” Flagrantly omitted were the preceding words: “Are they trying to develop a nuclear weapon? No …” ⁵

One of Israel’s leading military historians, Martin van Creveld, was interviewed by Playboy magazine in June 2007:

Playboy: Can the World live with a nuclear Iran?

Van Creveld: The U.S. has lived with a nuclear Soviet Union and a nuclear China, so why not a nuclear Iran? I’ve researched how the U.S. opposed nuclear proliferation in the past, and each time a country was about to proliferate, the U.S. expressed its opposition in terms of why this other country was very dangerous and didn’t deserve to have nuclear weapons. Americans believe they’re the only people who deserve to have nuclear weapons, because they are good and democratic and they like Mother and apple pie and the flag. But Americans are the only ones who have used them. … We are in no danger at all of having an Iranian nuclear weapon dropped on us. We cannot say so too openly, however, because we have a history of using any threat in order to get weapons … thanks to the Iranian threat, we are getting weapons from the U.S. and Germany.”

And throughout these years, regularly, Israeli and American officials have been assuring us that Iran is World Nuclear Threat Number One, that we can’t relax our guard against them, that there should be no limit to the ultra-tough sanctions we impose upon the Iranian people and their government. Repeated murder and attempted murder of Iraqi nuclear scientists, sabotage of Iranian nuclear equipment with computer viruses, the sale of faulty parts and raw materials, unexplained plane crashes, explosions at Iranian facilities … Who can be behind this but USrael? How do we know? It’s called “plain common sense”. Or do you think it was Costa Rica? Or perhaps South Africa? Or maybe Thailand?

Defense Secretary Panetta recently commented on one of the assassinations of an Iranian scientist. He put it succinctly: “That’s not what the United States does.” ⁶

Does anyone know Leon Panetta’s email address? I’d like to send him my list of United States assassination plots. More than 50 foreign leaders were targeted over the years, many successfully. ⁷

Not long ago, Iraq and Iran were regarded by USrael as the most significant threats to Israeli Middle-East hegemony. Thus was born the myth of Iraqi Weapons of Mass Destruction, and the United States proceeded to turn Iraq into a basket case. That left Iran, and thus was born the myth of the Iranian Nuclear Threat. As it began to sink in that Iran was not really that much of a nuclear threat, or that this “threat” was becoming too difficult to sell to the rest of the world, USrael decided that, at a minimum, it wanted regime change. The next step may be to block Iran’s lifeline — oil sales using the Strait of Hormuz. Ergo, the recent US and EU naval buildup near the Persian Gulf, an act of war trying to goad Iran into firing the first shot. If Iran tries to counter this blockade it could be the signal for another US Basket Case, the fourth in a decade, with the devastated people of Libya and Afghanistan, along with Iraq, currently enjoying America’s unique gift of freedom and democracy.

On January 11, the Washington Post reported: “In addition to influencing Iranian leaders directly, [a US intelligence official] says another option here is that [sanctions] will create hate and discontent at the street level so that the Iranian leaders realize that they need to change their ways.”

How utterly charming, these tactics and goals for the 21st century by the leader of “The Free World”. (Is that expression still used?)

The neo-conservative thinking (and Barack Obama can be regarded as often being a fellow traveler of such) is even more charming than that. Listen to Danielle Pletka, vice president for foreign and defense policy studies at America’s most prominent neo-con think tank, American Enterprise Institute:

The biggest problem for the United States is not Iran getting a nuclear weapon and testing it, it’s Iran getting a nuclear weapon and not using it. Because the second that they have one and they don’t do anything bad, all of the naysayers are going to come back and say, “See, we told you Iran is a responsible power. We told you Iran wasn’t getting nuclear weapons in order to use them immediately.” … And they will eventually define Iran with nuclear weapons as not a problem. ⁸

What are we to make of that and all the other quotations above? I think it gets back to my opening statement: Being “the only nuclear power in the Middle East” is a great card for Israel to have in its hand. Is USrael willing to go to war to hold on to that card?

William Blum is an American, historian and critic of United States foreign policy. He is the author of Killing Hope: U.S. Military & CIA Interventions Since World War II. He has described his life’s mission as: “If not ending, at least slowing down the American Empire. At least injuring the beast. It’s causing so much suffering around the world.“Mr. Blum can be reached through his website http://killinghope.org .

 Notes

1. 1.     Haaretz.com (Israel), October 25, 2007; print edition October 26 ^↩
2. 2.     Washington Post, March 5, 2009^↩
3. 3.     “Face the Nation”, CBS, January 8, 2012; see video^↩
4. 4.     The Guardian (London), January 31, 2012″ ^↩
5. 5.     “PBS’s Dishonest Iran Edit”, FAIR (Fairness and Accuracy in Reporting), January 10, 2012^↩
6. 6.     Reuters, January 12, 2012 ^↩
7. 7.     http://killinghope.org/bblum6/assass.htm^↩
8. 8.     Video of Pletka making these remarks^↩

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Update: Well, we did it. iWatch News corrected the order. Now Ron Paul is third from the top-as he should always have been. Not only that, they were ‘forced’ to correct the numbers as well, and use the correct quarter.The only thing left: changing that picture!

Update: Thanks to vigilant readers and their pressure, iWatch News has been scrambling since 3:00 PM EST, and the numbers on the post have been mysteriously changing …of course not the ‘order’ of listing, or the picture selection, or any explanation for such colossal belligerence …

Yesterday, as part of my daily news comb, I visited “iWatch News,” one of several dozen websites on my list of news outlets on government related scandals-revelations. I usually skim the headlines and stories to see whether anything gets my attention as coverage-worthy. Well, their top headline yesterday fit what I was looking for: “Candidate Super PACS.” It was brief, but boldly showcased data on how much money each major presidential candidate has raised and how much each has spent to date. I was happy to find an important but quick and hassle-free read without too many embellishing words or subjective spicing. So I began reading the list. Starting from the top they had the number 1 candidate based on money raised and spent:

 Barack Obama: Total Raised-$88.3 million Total Spent-$28.8 million  

Then came candidate number 2:

 Mitt Romney: Total Raised-$32.6 million Total Spent-$17.5 million  

After that came the third on the list, Number 3:

Newt Gingrich: Total Raised-$2.9 million Total Spent-$2.5 million  

Gingrich was followed by Number 4:

 Rick Santorum: Total Raised-$1.3 million Total Spent-$1.1 million  

And finally, there came the last one, the one all the way at the bottom, candidate Number 5, and naturally, I expected to see the loser of the bunch, the candidate with the least money raised and spent, in other words, the least viable candidate when it comes to raising money, which is one of the major indicators of the winner to come:

 Ron Paul: Total Raised-$12.7 million Total Spent-$9.1 million  

I was ready to get out of the site and move on to the next news site for my daily internet news surf, but then, my eyes caught the numbers listed as raised and spent for Ron Paul. As you know I usually don’t use cuss words, but the only way I can describe my strong reaction-surprise is ‘having a serious WTF!’ moment.

This list starts chronological, based on the amount of money raised and spent by each major candidate. The chronological ordering works as it is supposed to: starting with Obama with the biggest bucks raised, then to Romney with the second biggest money raised, and then something happens. What? They forget the number 3 candidate in the amount of money raised and spent, and instead list Gingrich as the Number 3 – who happens to have raised only a quarter of the amount raised by Ron Paul! Then, their chronological ordering starts working again, and they list the candidate with the least amount of money raised and spent- about 10% of Ron Paul’s amount. And finally, everything turns almost upside down: they list Ron Paul as the 5^th candidate, the last one, the bottom of the barrel, in raising money!

Not only that. I want you to look up and checkout the candidates’ photos above. I took these pictures from that same iWatch News story. Please do it. What do you see? A tough and confident looking number 1-Obama. A happy, confident and relaxed smiling Romney. Lip smacking and beaming Newt Gingrich. A typical silly male bimbo on his way out of the race, but too silly to realize it, thus semi-smiling-Santorum. And then, there comes the candidate they list as the last in money raising, bottom of the barrel, the one on the loser-spot – a real worried, grim and sour looking-Ron Paul.

Reality in this case: As far as raising money for the campaign goes, Ron Paul is the third candidate in the race overall, As far as Republican candidates are concerned, Ron Paul is number 2 in both raising and spending money.

We’ve been reading everyday on the establishment media’s belligerent attitude towards Ron Paul and all their attempts to avoid providing coverage when it comes to him. But this? At this level? Come on. This goes way beyond belligerence. It reaches ultimate pathetic levels and makes them look like fools. Or a better way to say it: their role as the establishment’s jokers. 

*You may want to check iWatch News’ fund-ers here to make a better sense of things. Here are two to give you an idea on what I mean by ‘establishment’:

George Soros’ Open Society Foundations

Rockefeller Brothers’ Fund

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Last week Boiling Frogs Post broke the newly brewing story-line in the war propaganda against Iran involving an alleged Iranian terror plot in Azerbaijan. Yesterday we had a follow up on the emerging ‘alleged’ details in the ‘alleged’ plot claiming Israeli diplomats and religious figures were the intended targets of the alleged Iranian assassination plot [All Emphasis Mine]:

Three Azerbaijani citizens who were arrested by security forces last week planned to attack Jewish targets, including Israeli ambassador to Baku Michael Lotem, a local media outlet reported Tuesday. Israeli sources also speculated that the terror cell members plotted to attack the embassy in Baku and the ambassador… The men are suspected of plotting to kill a rabbi and a teacher at the Ohr Avner Chabad Jewish Day School in Baku as revenge for the recent killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran…Two of the suspects were identified as Rasim Aliyev and Ali Huseynov. According to reports, they received instructions from Balagardash Dadashov, who was in contact with Iranian intelligence and received a sniper rifle, pistols and explosive devices to attack Chabad emissaries operating in Baku.

…

As with many stories, especially those involving ‘alleged’ terrorism operations conducted by the nations on the list of our to-be invaded-occupied nations it is important to pay specific attention to the context, and other ancillary and related details and facts. Before we do that let’s note the most important fact in the case of Iran: which actor in the current global imperial pursuits has been the primary and most active force against Iran and for its invasion? I believe everyone would unanimously and very easily answer this question. Israel.

While the pressure and the venues of attacks on Iran have been growing and escalating- think nuclear arms development accusations, meddling in Iraq accusations, alleged assassination attempt against Saudi Diplomat in the US accusations …, we suddenly get a brand new allegation accusing Iran of plotting a terror act in Azerbaijan. Not only that, the targets of this alleged terror plot happen to be none other than Israel. If that doesn’t give you pause, make it a long pause, followed by firm skepticism, well, your mental faculties may be in need of a serious check-up followed by a thorough tune-up.

Now, let’s review the latest details providing needed context in the new allegations pointed directly at Iran by Israel and Azerbaijan.

Four days after we brought the readers’ attention to this significant developing story, four days late, the mainstream media began its coverage, of course with their own version. Here is a report by Reuters:

Authorities in Azerbaijan, a former Soviet republic bordering Iran, have arrested two men suspected of plotting to attack prominent foreigners including Israel’s ambassador and a local rabbi, officials and media reported on Wednesday.

The National Security Ministry said the men were connected to an Iranian citizen who had links with Iran’s intelligence.

…

Here is an excerpt clarifying Azerbaijan’s position and its intimate ties to Israel and the US, but fails to mention its status as ‘To-Be-NATO Member’ soon:

Azerbaijan, a secular Muslim country, is home to more than 9,000 Jews and has friendly ties with Israel and the United States. A major energy producer, it exports oil to Israel and imports weapons and military hardware.

And here is the US setting the stage for the next wave of conspiracy in setting up Iran:

The U.S. embassy issued a warning to its citizens saying “the possibility remains for actions against U.S. or other high-profile foreign interests in Azerbaijan”.

…

Diplomatic ties between Azerbaijan and Iran are cool, but Iranian companies operate and have stakes in oil contracts in the Caspian Sea state, which exports around 1 million barrels of crude a day (bpd) westward through a pipeline operated by a consortium led by BP.

…

Also yesterday, Israeli President Shimon Peres personally saluted Azerbaijan for allegedly foiling the alleged terror plot:

Peres, attending the World Economic Forum in Davos, Switzerland, told Ilham Aliyev that Israel saluted his country for “saving lives on your land from a murderous terrorist attack.” Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry revealed last week that it uncovered a cell planning terrorist attacks. Two Azerbaijanis and an Iranian citizen living in Iran were implicated in the plot. The two Azerbaijanis were arrested.

…

Here is what Aliyev emphasized:

Aliyev, according to Peres’s office, said the plot showed “to what degree we are in a difficult and dangerous neighborhood…Aliyev said Azerbaijan would continue to cooperate with Israel, especially on homeland security issues.

…

Speaking of relations getting more intimate between Azerbaijan and Israel:

During the signing ceremony SCC head noted that the State Customs Committee is interested in expanding cooperation with the Israeli Customs Directorate, “The agreement signed between the Azerbaijani and Israeli governments gives an impetus to bilateral relationships, and will accelerate the process of cooperation and integration of the parties.”

Azerbaijan has become an important trading partner with Israel on security and foreign affairs. Economic cooperation between Israel and Azerbaijan has grown significantly. In 2011, the trade between the two countries totaled more than $2.5 billion.

…

Remember those ‘conflicting’ reports on the ‘alleged’ Iranian assassination plot against the Saudi Diplomat in the US? You can refresh your memory here.  Well, this ‘alleged’ plot is also filled with ‘conflicting’ reports and details, already:

Conflicting reports have emerged about the terror plot. While local media said an Iranian-backed terror cell had planned to kill Jewish teachers at the Or Avner Jewish schooll just outside the capital Baku, other reports in the media claimed the men were offered $150,000 by Iran to assassinate Israel’s Ambassador Michael Lotem.

A spokesman for the Or Avner network of Jewish schools, however, denied on Tuesday night any knowledge of a planned attack. “The Jews of Baku and the administrators of the school have no information on what was reported in Azeri media last Thursday,” said the spokesman. “The community’s routine has not changed.”

…

Here is a video clip on this new alleged Iranian Terror Plot:

In the UK, the Telegraph also reported on the ‘alleged’ story, and of course, it added the usual UK twist and spice:

If true, the plot will be seen as the latest evidence of Iran’s intentions to strike at its enemies abroad. Last October, the US justice ministry said it had uncovered an Iranian conspiracy to use members of a Mexican drug cartel to assassinate the Saudi ambassador to Washington.

…

Speaking of Britain, the following data is also noteworthy:

The volume of investments made by BP and its partners in Azerbaijan amounted to $ 35 billion during its activity in the country, BP Azerbaijan company head Rashid Javanshir said during a ceremony of signing the agreement on the support with the National Olympic and National Paralympic Committees… BP will continue its activity to develop the economy as a whole and oil and gas industry in particular in subsequent years, he said.

…

We were the first US site to break and cover this still-brewing story. We will continue our coverage and rely on you to disseminate this new scheme in our nation’s desperate attempt to invade-occupy yet another nation.  Please stay tuned.

We Need Your Support

Boiling Frogs Post is solely dependent on your support. This project is brought to you without receiving a single penny in corporate money or advertisement, without getting any support from agenda-driven corporate foundations, while defying all partisan and status quo boundaries. Please Support our home for the irate minority.

SUPPORT BFP

Last week we broke the newly brewing story-line in the war propaganda against Iran here at Boiling Frogs Post. The new scenario was originated, disseminated and promoted by a known member of the loyal propaganda machine of our global imperial pursuits, Radio Free Europe. According to the new story-line, our soon-to-be-NATO member intimate ally regime in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, claims it has allegedly exposed an Iranian assassination plot and Iranian terror cell in its capital city-Baku [All Emphasis Mine]:

Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry (MNS) says it has uncovered a terror group that was plotting to assassinate public figures, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reports. The ministry said on January 19 that the group was planning terrorist acts and had illegally acquired firearms, military supplies, and explosives. The APA news agency quoted the MNS as saying that Azerbaijani citizens Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov, and Balaqardash Dadashov — the latter of whom is living in Iran — coordinated efforts to acquire firearms and explosives.It said those materials were brought illegally to Azerbaijan from Iran.

The MSN said Dadashov was in contact with Iranian special service bodies and ordered the assassination of prominent foreigners living in Baku. It claims that Dadashov promised Aliyev — his brother-in-law — $150,000 for his work.The MSN said Dadashov had told his accomplices that he would discuss their plans with Iranian secret services.

…

Today, brewing in the background are new allegations and  further thickening of this new plot directed against Iran, providing further unsubstantiated details.  According to the unsubstantiated new claims those arrested by Azeri security forces last week planned to attack Jewish targets, including Israeli ambassador to Baku, Michael Lotem:

Three Azerbaijani citizens who were arrested by security forces last week planned to attack Jewish targets, including Israeli ambassador to Baku Michael Lotem, a local media outlet reported Tuesday. Israeli sources also speculated that the terror cell members plotted to attack the embassy in Baku and the ambassador.

…

The men are suspected of plotting to kill a rabbi and a teacher at the Ohr Avner Chabad Jewish Day School in Baku as revenge for the recent killing of a nuclear scientist in Tehran. The Iranian regime claimed Israel was behind the assassination. Two of the suspects were identified as Rasim Aliyev and Ali Huseynov. According to reports, they received instructions from Balagardash Dadashov, who was in contact with Iranian intelligence and received a sniper rifle, pistols and explosive devices to attack Chabad emissaries operating in Baku.

…

Azeri politicians are accusing Iran of creating provocations following the uncovering of an alleged terror plot to allegedly assassinate Israel’s ambassador to Baku.

“On one hand, Iran talks of Shiite Muslim brotherhood, but on the other it cooperates with and supports terrorists of Christian-Armenian,” said chairman of the country’s Civil Solidarity Party Sabir Rustamkhanly…

…

For the last few months the empire’s nuclear weapons allegations against Iran have produced very little results; they haven’t really stuck. Most likely the Saudi Prince-Ambassador Assassination Plot-Scenario was outsourced to a not very competent or bright Hollywood producer-director; it failed big time and it certainly was embarrassing to all secondary actors such as the FBI. The empire still hasn’t invaded Iran. The Caspian Sea is waiting, and so many are drooling. It must be time for a new scenario. A new script. A brand new actor. Welcome Azerbaijan, a thickening new assassination plot, an alleged scary terror cell in Baku, and alleged Israeli targets. The powers up there seem desperate, and desperation can do stupid things with irreversible damage.

We Need Your Support

Boiling Frogs Post is solely dependent on your support. This project is brought to you without receiving a single penny in corporate money or advertisement, without getting any support from agenda-driven corporate foundations, while defying all partisan and status quo boundaries. Please Support our home for the irate minority.

SUPPORT BFP

The imperial establishment’s desperation to militarily go after and take over the last ‘real’ domino – Iran, has truly reached a peak, and with that desperation comes a new farfetched and fantastical scenario. Last time the script of their scenario was written based on a Saudi Diplomat actor. It was only three months ago when the puppet mainstream media jumped in with a made-up, dubious, far-reaching, murkily and vaguely-sourced story of the thwarted Iranian plot to kill the Saudi Ambassador in US. Here are a few excerpts from CNN’s fabulous-ized headline story that played around the clock for days, beating the war drums for its masters:  

U.S. agents disrupted an Iranian assassination-for-hire scheme targeting Saudi Arabia’s ambassador to the United States, U.S. officials said Tuesday…The Saudi ambassador was not the only intended target, U.S. officials said. The suspects also discussed attacking Israeli and Saudi embassies in Washington and possibly Buenos Aires, Argentina, a senior U.S. official said.

…

Of course CNN was not the lone wolf in the intense broadcasting and dissemination of this Washington script. The rest of the MSM puppets followed the same trend: Washington Post, New York Times, FOX … Not only that, the pseudo-alternative con outlets did exactly the same thing. Just check out the verbatim dissemination by Huffington Post and other ‘popular’ so-called alternatives. Thankfully we had enough facts, critical thinkers, and independent news fronts to expose all the holes in that concocted story:

A close analysis of the FBI deposition reveals, however, that independent evidence for the charge that Arbabsiar was sent by the Qods Force on a mission to arrange for the assassination of Jubeir is lacking. The FBI account is full of holes and contradictions, moreover. The document gives good reason to doubt that Arbabsiar and his confederates in Iran had the intention of assassinating Jubeir, and to believe instead that the FBI hatched the plot as part of a sting operation.

…

So that scenario script kinda failed. Of course the other long-cooking concoction on Iran’s nuclear weapons development has not gotten the establishment hawks far either. Even the mainstream has been grudgingly admitting the holes-filled allegations on dangerous nuclear weapons armed Iran!

You’d think all the debunked allegations and failed attempts would give the imperial hawks a bit of a pause to come up with a better concoction. At least go away for a while and rethink their strategy; no? Obviously not. Desperation can do amazingly stupid things to greed-driven, wild-eyed and blood-thirsty bullies in pursuit of expanded turf.  They just came out with a new concocted scenario and allegations. This time their lead actor happens to be Azerbaijan.

Our soon-to-be-NATO member intimate ally regime in Central Asia, Azerbaijan, claims it has allegedly exposed an Iranian assassination plot and Iranian terror cell in its capital city-Baku [All Emphasis Mine]:

Azerbaijan’s National Security Ministry (MNS) says it has uncovered a terror group that was plotting to assassinate public figures, RFE/RL’s Azerbaijani Service reports. The ministry said on January 19 that the group was planning terrorist acts and had illegally acquired firearms, military supplies, and explosives.

The APA news agency quoted the MNS as saying that Azerbaijani citizens Rasim Aliyev, Ali Huseynov, and Balaqardash Dadashov — the latter of whom is living in Iran — coordinated efforts to acquire firearms and explosives.It said those materials were brought illegally to Azerbaijan from Iran.

The MSN said Dadashov was in contact with Iranian special service bodies and ordered the assassination of prominent foreigners living in Baku. It claims that Dadashov promised Aliyev — his brother-in-law — $150,000 for his work.The MSN said Dadashov had told his accomplices that he would discuss their plans with Iranian secret services.

…

Now, interestingly the first place/source to start to disseminate our script writers’ new concocted scenario involving another ‘Iranian Plot’ was no other than … yes, you guessed it: Radio Free Europe. Check out this news’ origination by this long-propaganda machine of our global imperial pursuits here. The second source to pick up on it was no other than a Soros-Funded site on Central Asia here. Guaranteed: the other MSM outlets will be having a field day with this new propaganda. In fact, they’ve been hot on another related side story with the same actor written by the same writers. I kid you not; here it is: Azerbaijan claims that the recent cyber attacks that destroyed its government and news websites originated in … Iran! Let’s check out the headline on this today at …Business Week:

Jan. 21 (Bloomberg) — Cyber attacks that destroyed government and news websites in Azerbaijan this week mostly originated in Iran, government minister Ali Abbasov said. An investigation by Abbasov’s Ministry of Communications and Information Technology found that of 25 attacks, 24 came from Iran and one from the Netherlands, Abbasov told reporters in the Azeri capital, Baku, today.

…

For the last few months the empire’s nuclear weapons allegations against Iran have produced very little results; they haven’t really stuck. Most likely the Saudi Prince-Ambassador Assassination Plot-Scenario was outsourced to a not very competent or bright Hollywood producer-director; it failed big time and it certainly was embarrassing to all secondary actors such as the FBI. The empire still hasn’t invaded Iran. The Caspian Sea is waiting, and so many are drooling. It must be time for a new scenario. A new script. A brand new actor. Welcome Azerbaijan, a thickening new assassination plot, a scary terror cell in Baku, and savvy Iranian cyber-terrorists obsessed with this dingy little country’s dingier-littler government and news websites.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

I was scheduled for an interview on the latest developments on the Turkish-Syria topic, however, they had a last minute change and suddenly I was facing questions regarding the latest exposé on Bahrain-Washington Times. If you look carefully you’ll see my eye-balls turning rapidly (mine are too tightly connected to the wheels spinning inside my head) …Anyhow, I needed at least an extra five minutes to explain the real macro points on this topic (Yap, I’m one of those who cannot sum up things in short bullet points. Why do you think I always prefer interviews of a minimum of 30-minutes?), but life (TV interviews) doesn’t work that way. That, and feeling uncomfortable using my intended (and well-deserved) words: Whores-Pimps-Johns… Well, here is the RT clip:

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Our nation is famous for many things. Things that it is known for. Things that in one way or another represent it. Things that become synonymous with America or being Americans. Our foreign policy and our presidents are no exception. If you were to ask the recipients of our foreign policy there would be one adjective they’d all agree upon. Unanimously. There is one common and unanimously agreed upon ‘thing’ when it comes to US foreign policy and practices: It is called Hypocrisy. Granted there are slight variations here and there, but the never changing and ever present hypocrisy always remains.

Read the newspapers and watch the coverage of international news broadcast on our networks and cables. There it is. Glaring hypocrisy. Every single day. Hundreds of times a day. Listen to presidential and state department briefings and statements. There it is. Filled with it. Shameless hypocrisy. Check out our congressional records. Day in and Day out. Ever present. Consistent hypocrisy.

I could set up a whole new website to track US foreign policy hypocrisy examples, and it would be filled with them, tens of pages a day, and hundreds of instances. You don’t even need to have a well-developed hypocrisy-detector. It is so bold and obvious even way below-average processing minds can detect it! I am very serious.

This morning I found at least 32 bold examples of our hypocrisy-ridden foreign policy, practices and rhetoric. And I was not even looking for them. They were everywhere: mainstream, pseudo-alternative streams, semi-alternative streams … You name it! I wanted to pick one and showcase it. I could have picked any of them: Bahrain, Kuwait, Azerbaijan, Israel, Turkey … Basically any of our ‘intimate allies’ in ‘this and that’ part of the world. You name it. However, I exercised a bit of self-restrain and settled for one. And, here it is [All Emphasis Mine]:

Obama Gives Uzbekistan free Pass to Terrorize Press

Why is the Obama administration sanctioning one post-Soviet dictator with an atrocious human rights record and not another?

Barack Obama has signed a new bill banning some top Belarusian officials from visiting the United States — and requiring Washington to monitor restrictions on press freedom and human rights abuses in Belarus — because President Alexandr Lukashenko wantonly jails political opponents and journalists.

Sound familiar?

Those are hallmarks of Uzbekistan strongman Islam Karimov’s regime, where journalists are regularly imprisoned and critics tortured. Says the Committee to Project Journalists (CPJ): “He personally oversaw the May 2005 massacre in the city of Andijan, and his regime virtually annihilated the independent press after it spread the word about those brutalities.” But instead of censure, Karimov “has received stunningly cordial treatment from the Obama administration,” including, in the past few months, a friendly phone call from the president and a visit from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton.

…

Here is what CPJ had to Say:

There are scores of examples to position the Uzbek leader as far more brutal and dictatorial than Lukashenko’s regime. The human rights abuses include forced child labor; arbitrary detentions and torture of detainees; harassment of lawyers and imprisonment of rights defenders; absolute state control over the media and Internet; and eviction of the last international monitor–Human Rights Watch–from its offices in Tashkent. All of these and other issues are listed in the U.S. State Department’s own 2010 Human Rights report for Uzbekistan, which brands the country as “an authoritarian state.”

Yet, in September, Karimov received a warm phone call from Obama, and heard appraisal on his “progress” in human rights from Secretary of State Hillary Clinton during her October visit to Tashkent. Also last year, the U.S. Congress removed what was left of the 2004 arms embargo imposed against Uzbekistan in connection with its grave human rights record.

And here is a bit of explanation (Not talking ‘justification’!) from Eurasia Net:

So why the double standard? The answer, as EurasiaNet readers know, is that Uzbekistan is essential to prosecuting the war in Afghanistan. Because Pakistan does not offer a reliable supply route to Afghanistan, Washington has turned to post-Soviet Central Asia for a transit corridor. Most supplies for the NATO war effort now arrive via the Northern Distribution Network, a web of rail and truck traffic that ultimately bottlenecks in Uzbekistan before crossing over into northern Afghanistan.

…

This isn’t the first time a respected watchdog has slammed the hypocrisy in Obama’s realpolitik. With Uzbekistan increasingly essential to the war, it won’t be the last.

…

Yah, call it realpolitik, call it forced by necessity, call it whatever – everyone, anyone with a semi-working brain, would tell you what this is: hypocrisy. You see, the atrocious practices cited for Uzbekistan could be grounds (read ‘excuses’) for sanctions, no fly zone, embargo, and ultimately outright war if it were Syria, Iran, and soon to join the list-Venezuela. In this case, it is our dictator, it is our regime, and it is our water-carrying nation for our nasty-dirty-shady operations and wars. Thus, our president-government goes into its ‘praise-financial aid-military support-trade’ mode. Consistency is the enemy of hypocrisy. Otherwise, Mr. Obama would be talking Central Asia League Observers, Sanctions, and War Threats for Uzbekistan.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

The popular conception of the police state, derived mainly from works of science fiction,
revolves heavily around the deployment of exotic technologies for keeping the populace firmly under the thumb of an authoritarian government. Perhaps it is the frequency with which these devices are presented to us in fictionalized form that prevents many from noticing that this technology is not the stuff of sci-fi fantasy, but increasingly a part of our everyday lives.

Jack Cover, a NASA researcher, began development on the taser which was completed in 1974, although not widely adopted by police departments until the last decade. Since its inception as a standard police implement the taser has courted controversy, with critics blaming the weapon for as many as 515 American deaths since 2001. It has also been denounced by the United Nations Committee Against Torture, Amnesty International, and other organizations as a potential weapon of terror.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, introducing and presenting the taser, the use and implementation of this ‘pain technology’ in other settings, including airplanes, airports as the front line of the police state and a testing ground for new police state technology, and how the police, TSA and other law enforcement agents are being actively recruited and encouraged to be as aggressive as possible in dealing with the public, and aided in doing so by the federal government, the courts, and the upper ranks of their own departments.

Watch the Preview Here:

Watch the Full Video Report Here:

*The Transcript for this video is available at Corbett Report: Click Here

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Launched in 1995, Antiwar.com describes itself as a site “devoted to the cause of non-interventionism” whose “initial project was to fight against intervention in the Balkans under the Clinton presidency.” Explaining their “key role” in the battle for public opinion during that seminal “humanitarian intervention,” the editors write:

Our goal was not only to inform but also to mobilize informed citizens in concerted action to stop the war. The war at home was an information war: an attempt by the government to both limit and shape the information that Americans had. It was, above all, a propaganda war, one in which the American government and its allies in the media were bombing and strafing their own people with hi-tech lies.

Back in the early days of the internet, Antiwar.com did indeed do a very good job of countering the interventionist narrative. Writers such as John Laughland, Chad Nagle, Justin Raimondo, Christine Stone, and George Szamuely showed readers what was really going on in the Balkans and elsewhere, helping many to understand the imperative of non-interventionism. Today, only Raimondo still writes for Antiwar.com. 

By 2011, the information war had shifted from the former Yugoslavia to the Middle East and North Africa, as country after country was being destabilized by a wave of supposedly “spontaneous” uprisings against the region’s dictators — not unlike the one that toppled Serbia’s Slobodan Milosevic in 2000 — dubbed an “Arab Spring” by some dubious cheerleaders (the term was originally used by Israel partisans such as Charles Krauthammer to refer to an “initial flourishing of democracy” in 2005) and an “Arab Awakening” by others. But while the people were still being bombed and strafed by the interventionists’ lies, Antiwar.com appeared to be either missing in action or even to have gone over to the other side.

As the media focus quickly shifted from a “liberated” but devastated Libya to a besieged Syria, there was disturbingly little to distinguish between mainstream reports and those in Antiwar.com. Apparently having forgotten the interventionists’ need to “limit and shape the information” getting to the public, Antiwar.com managed to limit and shape it even further by providing a largely uncritical daily synopsis of mainstream reporting of suspect opposition claims, without even the mainstream’s caveat that “the opposition claims could not be independently verified.”

Its reliance on the interventionists’ “allies in the media” for its “news” on Syria can be gauged from examining its research editor’s choice of sources. In a survey of 10 news reports on Syria between December 14 and December 27, Jason Ditz linked to a total of 24 outside sources, 16 of which were from mainstream media such as the BBC, New York Times and Haaretz; two were from Voice of America, the official external broadcast institution of the US government and a key instrument of its regime change agenda; two from Monsters and Critics, a web-only entertainment/celebrity news and review publication with political commentary and news; and one was from Human Rights Watch, to which billionaire hedge fund manager and prominent “pro-democracy” advocate George Soros (astutely described in an excellent February 2001 Antiwar column as a “False Prophet-At-Large”) pledged $100 million last year, enabling it “to deepen its research presence on countries of concern.” The remaining three were taken from SANA, the Syrian Arab News Agency, whose claims were briefly mentioned only to be dismissed with a cynicism clearly absent in the credulous treatment of opposition sources.

The almost exclusive reliance on mainstream sources was clearly reflected in the content of the news reports. By far the most popular phrase appears to have been “At least … killed,” which appeared in at least 36 separate headlines on Syria in 2011, such as “Good Friday Massacre: At Least 88 Protesters Killed in Syria Crackdown” (April 22), “At Least 60 Killed as Protests Grow in Syria” (June 3), “Hama Massacre: At Least 140 Killed in Syrian Tank Offensive” (July 31), “Syrian Navy Attacks Latakia, At Least 31 Killed” (August 14), “At Least 16 Killed as Syrian Troops Launch New Crackdowns” (August 25), “At Least 17 Killed in Syria Protest Crackdown” (September 2), “At Least 40 Killed as Syria Protesters Call for ‘No-Fly Zone’” (October 28), “At Least 65 Killed in Two Days Since Syria Announced Arab League Deal” (November 3), “At Least 57 Killed in Two Days as Syrian Opposition Express Fear of New Massacre” (December 10) and “At Least 30 Killed as Syrian Forces Shell Homs” (December 26). A September 4 report typically entitled “At Least 24 Killed as Syria Crackdown Continues” encapsulates Jason Ditz’s tendentious analysis of the situation:

The violence marks continued public protests against the Assad regime and months of security forces attacking the demonstrators under the assumption that the attacks will eventually end the nationwide rallies.

Massive Negative Reader Feedback

Throughout the crisis in Syria, dismayed readers have pointed out Antiwar’s complicity in the propaganda war, despite the clear parallels with previous interventions, particularly the most recent one in Libya. In response to that September 4 report entitled “At Least 24 Killed As Syria Crackdown Continues,” someone called “keltrava” commented:

Let me get this wrapped around my head.

The article says as a matter of fact 24 “more” people killed. Yet when it comes to Syrian troops killed it is qualified as “reported by state media”. Why is it written in stone that 24 people [were] killed[?] What are the sources? This is typical of the reporting from Syria and Libya.

Even one of Antiwar’s top columnists was prompted to point out the obvious flaws in Jason Ditz’s reporting. Commenting on the July 31 “Hama Massacre” report, Phil Giraldi wrote:

Any story that is unsourced or is sourced to the rebels or to any of their supporters, as this story is, should be considered suspect. I don’t know what is happening in Syria but nor does any antiwar editor or any source that has a stake in what is going on and is probably writing his account from a hotel in Beirut. The US has clearly sided with the rebels and is doing everything in its power to advance their cause, including easing the passage of their propaganda into international media.

In stark contrast to the readers’ concerns about another Libya-style intervention, Ditz displayed what might most charitably be described as wishful thinking. In an October 25 report predictably entitled “At Least 24 Killed as Syrian Protestors Mass Nationwide,” he averred:

Enthusiasm has tended to grow in protest cities when other regimes fall, and while the situation in Syria isn’t the same as the one in Libya, the causes are largely the same. The protesters are hoping the end result will be too, though ideally without the multi-month civil war and the post-dictator mess Libya is facing.

Despite what another reader accurately described as “massive negative reader feedback,” Jason Ditz appears neither to have responded directly to the criticism nor to have let it in any way moderate his subsequent reports. Antiwar’s response to its readers’ (including at least two of its own writers’) concerns appears to have been mainly in the form of a moderator’s snide remarks attached to some of the more persistent critics’ comments. On December 29, an exasperated Gordon Arnaut exclaimed:

Even as readers have been pointing out the gaping holes in your so-called coverage…you have done NOTHING to address these problems…

You are a WASTE OF TIME…for anyone who is truly interested in truth about current events…

His criticism elicited this response from Thomas L. Knapp:

[Moderator's Note: Mr. Arnaut, if you consider Antiwar.com a waste of time, why do you waste so much time here? Pull down your hem, dear, your agenda is showing - TLK]

Arnaut replied:

Mr. Knapp:

Yes I have an agenda…it’s called THE TRUTH…

Yes I waste time here because I can’t stand FAKE NEWS…

On other occasions, Knapp did attempt to make a slightly more reasonable defence of Antiwar’s coverage. For example, in response to this writer’s question as to how its uncritical reporting of claims coming from Western-based and -backed opposition sources has differed from the pro-war propaganda in the mainstream media, Knapp replied:

If I could snap my fingers and cause Antiwar.com to be able to afford to send its own correspondent to Syria and environs to get the real scoop, I’d snap them immediately. Since I can’t, I try to be understanding of the fact that Mr. Ditz et. al have to rely on outside sources and try to squeeze the truth from the information they can get, a process that’s obviously vulnerable to error.

But as David Daniels had commented on a rather belated “Obama Secretly Preparing for Syria Intervention” on December 28:

And instead of leading the fight with facts and hard research against the lies that stimulate the R2P instinct, this website has once again fallen for all of the lies that led NATO into Libya and the various overt and covert interventions (like the lie of the “Green Movement”).

This is important and all readers should take note: Antiwar.com has repeatedly pushed the lies that lead NATO to attack. Draw your own conclusions. The “moderators” here will say that they just don’t have enough information and any mistakes are not theirs. Do you believe that, readers? Are you that gullible, or did you first come here as I did to see behind the bull**** of the mainstream propaganda machine?

If Antiwar.com had tried a little harder “to squeeze the truth from the information they can get” (or even paid better attention to the information that all too infrequently appeared on its own site) they would find that the reality in Syria (see a more recent and comprehensive analysis here) was quite different from what their research editor would have its readers believe. Moreover, it wasn’t as difficult as some seem to have have found it to see who was pushing hardest (as they had done in Libya and in previous interventions) to get America to take the “humanitarian” road to Damascus.

Ideological Blinders

 While most readers were perplexed by Jason Ditz’s blatant bias in favour of the Syrian opposition, a look at some of his earlier writings provides an explanation. In a March 3, 2008 post on the Antiwar Blog entitled “In Defense of Non-Violence,” Ditz opined:

Rather, we know precisely what strategy the Israeli military employs in response to non-violence, because it is the only strategy available to it. Indeed it is the only strategy militaries ever employ in response to non-violence, and we saw it clearly this weekend.

Escalation.

Seeing the path of non-violence to its necessary conclusion is not easy for precisely this reason: that every act of non-violence [sic] defiance is met with an act of increasingly disproportionate violence in the hopes of realizing a violent response and vindicating the claim that the posture of non-violence is an insincere one.

[…]

The people of the Gaza Strip must hold firm in their resolve for non-violence. They must make it clear to the Israeli military that they will not be swayed, nor will they respond violently. They must leave the Israeli government with only two choices: acquiescence or committing genocide. And despite what Israel’s Deputy Defense Minister or anyone else may say, they must remain confident that Israel cannot choose the latter.

This weekend may have been a setback for non-violence, but it is nothing resembling failure. Non-violence remains not just an option for the Palestinians in the face of occupation, but at the end of the day, the only one.

In March 2005, Ditz was the first to respond to a message on an Anti-State.com discussion forum entitled “Ideas for How Somalis can defend themselves” in which someone called “chemical_ali” notified participants of the Albert Einstein Institute’s release of Robert Helvey’s On Strategic Nonviolent Conflict as a free PDF. Describing “chemical_ali” – a rather odd choice of pseudonym for an advocate of nonviolence – as “probably my favorite new poster in the past year,” Ditz didn’t raise any questions (nor did anyone else in the discussion) about why Gene Sharp’s nice-sounding “nonviolent resistance thinktank” might be offering a book on strategic nonviolent conflict for free by the former military attaché at the US Embassy in Rangoon.

As luck would have it, Antiwar.com soon provided an answer. In his column on April 16, editorial director Justin Raimondo noted the collaboration between a key sponsor of nonviolent revolution (who later told the Wall Street Journal that he had given a sum in the “low eight figures” to the Albert Einstein Institute) with one of the more notorious proponents of violent regime change:

“Say You Want a Revolution,” is the title of a piece by neoconservative Michael “Faster Please” Ledeen, a tireless advocate of the U.S. waging endless wars of “liberation,” and Peter Ackerman, chairman of the International Center for Nonviolent Conflict (ICNC). Its theme: more U.S. tax dollars to fund “revolutionaries” in a new model of “regime change” – as in Ukraine, Georgia, and Kyrgyzstan. According to these two, Iran, Lebanon, and Syria are next. Now, before you say anything, it’s just a coincidence that all these countries are in the Middle East and just happen to be Israel’s worst enemies – stop being such a killjoy! Besides, the “revolutionaries” are ready to roll, but they can’t do it without U.S. tax dollars and other assistance.

Observing that Ackerman’s ICNC had been “at the center of machinations that have felled regimes from Belgrade to Bishkek and back,” Raimondo traced the business ties of its founding vice-chairman, Berel Rodal, to then Defense Policy Board member Richard Perle, whose short-lived controversial venture capital company, Trireme Partners LLP, invested in technology, goods, and services related to Homeland Security. Pointing out that “[t]he little stormtroopers of the ‘democratic’ revolutions are in most cases unwitting foot-soldiers of War Profits, Inc.,” Raimondo concluded that the seemingly idealistic advocates of nonviolent resistance and the most extreme warmongering ideologues were little more than two sides of the same deceptive coin:

Chameleon-like, they readily assume “left” and “right“-wing forms, appropriating the language of whatever audience they’re trying to manipulate: they speak the harsh language of nationalism and super-patriotism as well as the more polite PC lingo of “humanitarian intervention” and “human rights” internationalism. Ledeen invokes Mussolini’s ghost, while the ICNC channels Martin Luther King and Gandhi.

Interestingly, it was reported in an April 2005 profile of Ackerman in The New Republic, aptly entitled “Regime Change, Inc.,” that he had sent a trainer to Palestine “to spend twelve days creating a nonviolent vanguard to challenge Hamas” – three years before Antiwar’s Jason Ditz opined that nonviolence was the Palestinians’ only option.

Platform for Regime Change, Inc.

Yet despite Raimondo’s exposure of the nonviolent revolutionaries, the chameleon-like channelers of King and Gandhi continued to be given a platform at Antiwar.com. On February 28, 2011, its Viewpoints section featured a link to an interview with Gene Sharp entitled “Teaching People Power,” just as, in the words of Reason Magazine’s Jesse Walker, “the revolutionary fire lit in Tunisia in December was burning across the Middle East and Africa.” On December 5, as that Regime Change, Inc.-kindled fire was being directed against Damascus, Antiwar’s Viewpoints featured Gene Sharp’s “Choices for Defecting Syrian Soldiers,” in which “The 83 Year Old Who Toppled Egypt” offered strategic advice to the few who had already defected, suggesting that they “help the regime’s other soldiers also to defect from the Assad regime.”

While Regime Change, Inc.’s aging intellectual guru appears to have at least one or two fans at Antiwar.com, its “publicist within the progressive community,” Stephen Zunes, is even more popular there. During the so-called “Green Revolution” in Iran, they reprinted his “Iran’s Do-It-Yourself Revolution,” in which the well-paid chair of the academic advisory committee of Peter Ackerman’s International Center on Nonviolent Conflict attempted to deny the democracy-meddling establishment’s self-confessed role in that and other “colour revolutions.”

On one of the rare occasions that Regime Change, Inc.’s role in the so-called “Arab Spring” was actually acknowledged at Antiwar.com, Zunes appeared semi-anonymously in the comments section to pooh-pooh the very idea. In a June 24 column entitled “Invasion of the Mind Snatchers,” Nebosja Malic reviewed “The Revolution Business,” a documentary that shows veterans of Otpor, the Sharp/Helvey/Ackerman-linked Serbian youth group that toppled Milosevic, training the activists who directed the not-so-spontaneous-after-all “Arab Spring.” Touting one of the Serbian trainer’s “anti-imperial” credentials, “StephenZ” commented:

And does Malic really think that a handful of Serbs can get millions of peoples out on the streets? Does he really think that Arabs are simply sheep that a few white Europeans lead to a popular insurrection against entrenched US-backed dictatorships? Get real!

StephenZ did not respond to my comment inquiring whether this was part of his responsibilities as chair of the academic advisory committee for the International Center on Nonviolent Conflict.

More recently, “the great Stephen Zunes” was interviewed by Scott Horton on Antiwar Radio in which he argued that the Arab Spring was “the culmination of decades of peaceful rebellion against tyrannical governments.” Despite his collaboration with Otpor alumni in training activists in Egypt and elsewhere in nonviolent conflict (an important fact that was deftly obscured during the interview, unless we count Zunes’ oblique reference to having “met” Syrian activists), the ICNC’s academic advisor claimed that the US had “very little” to do with these “really exciting” developments.

But as Professor William I. Robinson, the author of the seminal critique of the “democracy promotion” establishment, Promoting Polyarchy: Globalization, US Intervention, and Hegemony, has written of the man who funds Zunes’ work:

That Ackerman is a part of the U.S. foreign policy elite and integral to the new modalities of intervention under the rubric of “democracy promotion,” etc., is beyond question. There is nothing controversial about that and anyone who believes otherwise is clearly seriously misinformed or just ignorant.

When it comes to Antiwar.com, however, one certainly cannot rule out the possibility of ignorance. Asked by Russia Today’s Adam Kokesh in early August “to help put what’s going on in Syria into the broader context of modern history in the Arab world,” Antiwar Radio producer Angela Keaton offered this astounding explanation of the mainstream media’s supposed “reluctance” to report the Syrian government’s alleged atrocities:

I mean, you know, [inaudible], Assad’s a US puppet. 

Change We Can Believe In?

While there had been a few exceptions to Antiwar’s biased coverage of Syria throughout 2011, most notably from Justin Raimondo, Philip Giraldi, Eric Margolis, and Pepe Escobar, the prevailing impression one got from reading it was a simplistic narrative of peaceful protestors being killed by a tyrannical regime. However, in his January 2, 2012 column, Justin Raimondo wrote:

The last bastion of Ba’athist secular rule in the region has been rocked by anti-government riots, with groups of well-armed men taking on the Syrian military and hundreds killed and wounded in violent street demonstrations. What’s interesting is that we hear much about the latter in the Western media, while the former is downplayed or not reported at all.

As the intensity of the anti-Syrian propaganda war picks up in the “mainstream” media – which focuses on alleged atrocities committed by government forces while maintaining a soft focus on the violence of armed rebel groups – the news that the Obama administration is making plans to intervene comes as no surprise. Indeed, the Americans are already intervening behind the scenes: the question is, will they come out in the open and call for “regime change”?

Considering that Jason Ditz’s reporting on Syria has been marked by the exact same bias, Raimondo’s criticism of the mainstream media seems disingenuous to say the least. Ironically, Raimondo’s link to “alleged atrocities” takes the reader to VOA News, one of his colleague’s most trusted sources, regularly cited as evidence of Assad’s alleged violent crackdown on peaceful demonstrators.

In a recent op-ed piece not published on Antiwar.com, Professor James Petras warns against the “anti-imperialism of the fools”:

The long history of imperialist manipulation of “anti-imperialist” narratives has found virulent expression in the present day. The New Cold War launched by Obama against China and Russia, the hot war brewing in the Gulf over Iran’s alleged military threat, the interventionist threat against Venezuela’s “drug-networks”, and Syria’s “bloodbath” are part and parcel of the use and abuse of “anti-imperialism” to prop up a declining empire. Hopefully, the progressive and leftist writers and scribes will learn from the ideological pitfalls of the past and resist the temptation to access the mass media by providing a ‘progressive cover’ to imperial dubbed “rebels”. It is time to distinguish between genuine anti-imperialism and pro-democracy movements and those promoted by Washington, NATO and the mass media. (emphasis added)

If Antiwar.com wants its claim to be “the central locus of opposition to a new imperialism that masks its ambitions in the rhetoric of ‘human rights,’ ‘humanitarianism,’ ‘freedom from terror,’ and ‘global democracy’ to be taken seriously, they will need to heed that warning.

However, if it is to regain the trust of its readers, Antiwar.com will also need to address the serious concerns raised in this report. An important first step would be to undertake an internal review of its reporting of last year’s tumultuous events in the Middle East and North Africa. For it to be worthwhile, it should provide its many disillusioned readers with satisfactory answers to the following questions:

1. Are all members of staff qualified to comment on foreign policy? Have some staff members allowed their ideological biases to adversely affect their analysis of complex foreign policy issues?

2. Why has well-documented information provided by readers that challenge its interpretation of events either been ignored or treated with contempt? Why do critical comments by certain readers either get deleted or have to be approved by the site admins before they appear publicly, while comments by others are banned altogether?

3. Why does it provide a platform for those who are “integral to the new modalities of intervention” while ignoring the work of others who could have provided a genuinely non-interventionist perspective on last year’s events? Among those overlooked by Antiwar.com in 2011 were Prof. Mark Almond, Ibrahim al-Amin, Michael Barker, Jeffrey Blankfort, Dr. K R Bolton, Alistair Crooke, Sibel Edmonds (banned from even posting comments on the site), Belén Fernández, Jeff Gates, Prof. David N. Gibbs, Diana Johnstone, Dr. Franklin Lamb, Prof. Joshua Landis (apart from a couple of references in articles by others), John Laughland, Dr. Rania Masri, Cynthia McKinney, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, Maidhc Ó Cathail (despite the submission of articles publishedin mainstream media), Gearóid Ó Colmáin, Dr. Adrienne Pine, Prof. William I. Robinson, Prof. Jeremy Salt, Soraya Sepahpour-Ulrich, Dr. Stephen J. Sniegoski, Julien Teil, and Amjad Yamein.

4. How can readers be assured that one or more of its “generous” but anonymous “angels” do not have an interest in interventionism?

Maidhc Ó Cathail is an anti-war journalist and Middle East analyst.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Yesterday Justin Elliott at Salon reported on an international media-lobbying intrigue involving Bahrain, a Lockheed Martin executive and the Washington Times:

A top executive at Lockheed Martin recently worked with lobbyists for Bahrain to place an op-ed defending the nation’s embattled regime in the Washington Times — but the newspaper did not reveal the role of the regime’s lobbyists to its readers. Hence, they did not know that the pro-Bahrain opinion column they were reading was published at the behest of … Bahrain, an oil-rich kingdom of 1.2 million people that has been rocked by popular protests since early 2011.

The episode is a glimpse into the usually hidden world of how Washington’s op-ed pages, which are prized real estate for those with interests before the U.S. government, are shaped. It also shows how Lockheed gave an assist to a major client — Bahrain has bought hundreds of millions of dollars of weapons from the company over the years —as it faces widespread criticism for human rights abuses against pro-democracy protesters.

…

The story is worth reading. Just remember this is an itsy bitsy tiny little case; only one example of many more similar cases occurring regularly. Hello? Think about our Congress and over 400 lobby-able crooks in it. Think about our government providing perks and access to ‘select’ reporters for being good pet boys. Think about dime-a-dozen plentiful retired generals linking their MIC bosses to the mighty purchaser Pentagon…on a daily basis hundreds of prostitution transactions like the one with the Washington Times. Come to think of it, one major difference between the examples I’m providing and prostitution in the true sense of the term is that usually the American public is at the center of services and transactions provided. That is, the services and products offered are their hard-earned dollars, their liberties, their security, their gullibly misplaced trust…

Let’s take Salon’s exposé on the Washington Times. The paper and the reporter appear to be the prostitutes. Now, figuring out the pimp(s) and distinguishing it from the client is a bit more difficult. You see, at first glance it looks like Bahrain is the client, and the Lockheed Martin Executive is the pimp, right? But if you really look at it you’ll see Lockheed Martin as the ultimate beneficiary: too much publicity on our Bahraini puppet regime may bring a few sanctions, and those sanctions may include an arms embargo, and then Lockheed Martin may lose a few hundred million dollars (peanuts of course, but hey…). Let me show you one example of the stakes for LM:

SYRACUSE, NY, October 2nd, 2007 — Lockheed Martin [NYSE:LMT] has delivered an AN/TPS-59(V)3B ballistic missile defense radar system to the Kingdom of Bahrain. The radar proceeded smoothly through a site acceptance test in August and now is being used by the Bahrain Defence Force for air surveillance. In May 2004, the U.S. Marine Corps awarded Lockheed Martin a $43.6 million contract to provide the long-range radar system to Bahrain, along with associated supplies, equipment and services, as a foreign military sale (FMS).

So ordinarily, in more US Congress-like scenarios, we’d have the pimps aka the lobby firms; we’d have the client, let’s say a MIC firm or a pharma or a foreign country, and then, we’d have the prostitutes: our elected representatives…

In this particular case there seems to be an absence of a ‘pimp.’ Pretty cost effective, efficient, direct and smart: the client, Lockheed, goes to the prostitute directly and gets ‘his thing’ done, but the Arab Sheikh pays for ‘the thing.’ But wait a minute, the ultimate payment, the real dough, is going to ultimately be paid to Lockheed for all those ‘arms.’ So, in a way, we are looking at a sucker paying a client for going to and getting his ‘thing’ done with a media prostitute …

Okay it gets a bit confusing. We have these sucker puppet Arab regimes. We have MIC or Oil as ultimate clients, and then, we have the media as … what? It is the ‘John’ the client who is getting paid, so it is not exactly prostitution because that would be too noble for what these guys in the media are and do. It is more like a whore than a good ole fashioned prostitute. Then allow me to recap one more time:

In this latest US media exposé we’ve got a case of a ‘John’ and a ‘sucker’ and a ‘whore’; no?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Have you noticed how it’s been all quiet on the Western MSM War Propaganda front? As more and more alternative news outlets are increasing their reporting on the real situation in Syria, as even the puppet Arab League is issuing observations contradicting previously reported ‘un-sourced and undocumented’ atrocities and a made-up huge death-toll caused by Assad’s regime, the mainstream media and corporate-funded NGO news fronts have been decreasing their Syria coverage. It is almost as if they’ve gotten ‘a black-eye’ and gone in hiding. Rest assured, there won’t be any retraction on previously publicized, that is, intensely, un-sourced, un-confirmed, un-documented, fictional death toll numbers and imaginary scenarios.

Let’s take a look at a few recent reports starting with an excellent piece at Asia Times today [All Emphasis Mine]:

Mistaken Case for Syrian Regime Change

What we are seeing in Syria is a deliberate and calculated campaign to bring down the Assad government so as to replace it with a regime “more compatible” with US interests in the region. The blueprint for this project is essentially a report produced by the neo-conservative Brookings Institute for regime change in Iran in 2009. The report – “Which Path to Persia?” [3] – continues to be the generic strategic approach for US-led regime change in the region.

A rereading of it, together with the more recent “Towards a Post-Assad Syria” [4] (which adopts the same language and perspective, but focuses on Syria, and was recently produced by two US neo-conservative think-tanks) illustrates how developments in Syria have been shaped according to the step-by-step approach detailed in the “Paths to Persia” report with the same key objective: regime change.

…

Arguably, the most important component in this struggle for the “strategic prize” has been the deliberate construction of a largely false narrative that pits unarmed democracy demonstrators being killed in their hundreds and thousands as they protest peacefully against an oppressive, violent regime, a “killing machine” [7] led by the “monster” [8] Assad.

Whereas in Libya, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) claimed it had “no confirmed reports of civilian casualties” because, as the New York Times wrote recently, “the alliance had created its own definition for ‘confirmed’: only a death that NATO itself investigated and corroborated could be called confirmed”. “But because the alliance declined to investigate allegations,” the Times wrote, “its casualty tally by definition could not budge – from zero”. [9]

In Syria, we see the exact opposite: the majority of Western mainstream media outlets, along with the media of the US’s allies in the region, particularly al-Jazeera and the Saudi-owned al-Arabiya TV channels, are effectively collaborating with the “regime change” narrative and agenda with a near-complete lack of questioning or investigation of statistics and information put out by organizations and media outlets that are either funded or owned by the US/European/Gulf alliance – the very same countries instigating the regime change project in the first place.

Then, the article sets about analyzing and exposing dubious MSM and Western-Funded dirty NGOs (You may want to see my previous report on how for months ‘AntiWar.Com,’ despite all appeals, disseminated and marketed the misinformation and propaganda by these exact same dirty sources here):

Claims of “massacres”, “campaigns of rape targeting women and girls in predominantly Sunni towns” [10] “torture” and even “child-rape” [11] are reported by the international press based largely on two sources – the British-based Syrian Observatory of Human Rights and the Local Co-ordination Committees (LCCs) – with minimal additional checking or verification.

Hiding behind the rubric – “we are not able to verify these statistics” – the lack of integrity in reporting by the Western mainstream media has been starkly apparent since the onset of events in Syria. A decade after the Iraq war, it would seem that no lessons from 2003 – from the demonization of Saddam Hussein and his purported weapons of mass destruction – have been learnt.

Of the three main sources for all data on numbers of protesters killed and numbers of people attending demonstrations – the pillars of the narrative – all are part of the “regime change” alliance. The Syrian Observatory of Human Rights, in particular, is reportedly funded through a Dubai-based fund with pooled (and therefore deniable) Western-Gulf money (Saudi Arabia alone has, according to Elliot Abrams [12] allocated US$130 billion to “palliate the masses” of the Arab Spring).

…

Please go read this stellar analysis by Aisling Byrne here at Asia Times. Bravo.

Russia Today has been reporting both sides and doing so with a fair balance. Here is the latest from RT:

Syrians Being Killed by Gangs & defectors

As Syrian forces reportedly continue to kill civilian protesters, armed rebels have threatened to step up their own attacks. Middle East expert Dr. Jeremy Salt says there is tunnel vision when it comes to deciding just who is doing the killing.

“In its report, the Human Rights Council said 4,000 [people have been killed in Syria to date]…but there was no information about where they got that figure from,” he said. “A few days later, Navi Pillay, who is the UN Human Rights Commissioner, stood up in the Security Council and said 5,000 – and the figure echoes around the world,” he told RT.
“I think it lodges in the popular imagination as 5,000 people being killed by the Syrian government – by the security forces, by the military – whatever. Whereas in fact, I don’t think there’s any doubt at all that a large number of military, of civilians have been killed by armed gangs and by defectors,” Salt explained.

…

Look, even the filthy-owned, puppet in disguise, Al Jazeera, who has been beating the War on Syria drums loudly for months, has begun backpedaling:

The case against military intervention in Syria

In this, the SNC repeated earlier appeals by the Free Syrian Army for a no-fly zone, as well as a few scattered calls in the street. The plight suffered by civilian protesters has indeed reached an unbearable level. This raises questions about how to achieve lasting change in Syria.

Foreign intervention paves the way for a dangerous strategic choice that opposition movements within and outside Syria should carefully weigh. It will be argued here that the struggle for change needs to be fought from within and transition to democracy peacefully implemented. This implies that foreign military intervention should, under all circumstances, be ruled out; domestically, resistance to the regime should also remain unarmed.

…

Ordinarily I wouldn’t ask our readers to waste their time and read this Arab branch of our MSM propaganda machine, but I am going to invite you to go and read the above piece and compare it to all their previous reporting on Syria in the last few months; including ‘filming a border city at 5:00 a.m. in order to claim town desertion by protesters!.’

I mean, come on people, even our puppets couldn’t find atrocity and genocidal acts to report back and appease their Western masters! And yet, the black-eyed MSM and corporate-funded and government-backed quasi alternatives are shameless enough to not retract their months-long BS reporting, statistics, and all that heavily promoted fiction.

Now, there are way too many solid and reliable real alternative news outlets to credit with excellent and critical reporting. I won’t be able to list them all, and I am sure many of you already know who they are. So I am going to list less than a handful and congratulate them on their relentless and vigilant reporting and editorials:

Asia Times (Especially Pepe Escobar)

Center for Research on Globalization

Tony Cartalucci’s Land Destroyer

Russia Today

Again, there are many others and they all deserve credit for fair and balanced, and most importantly, independent reporting on Syria. Thank you all!

Hmmmm. For the hall of shame, if I were to list all, I’d take several long web pages. I don’t believe you need that long list of reminders. Think NY Times, Washington Post, Fox News, MSNBC, NBC, CBS, Al Jazeera, News Week, Times …and keep going, and going, and going

On the other hand, I am going to list one major hall of shame member, my one major disappointment:

Antiwar.com

With the exception of Raimondo, Giraldi and a couple of other stellar writers there, their new additions, Ditz & Keaton, have been filling up their front page with all the culprit MSM headlines beating the war drums on Syria, and have been doing so for months. As I’ve said before, a few independent journalists and authors will be writing a series and providing astonishing statistics on AntiWar.Com’s recent troubling changes. Meanwhile I want to go on record and reveal that the new management has been refusing to publish any articles submitted to them on all documented contradictory, factual, reports on Syria. In fact, I have been banned and censored from even posting comments on their site (several respectful but critical comments were taken out, deleted and censored by their new managers).

You see, what really gets my blood boiling on AntiWar.Com is their name, title: Anti War, for Pete’s sake! And what these dubious new additions have been doing lately is the exact opposite. So I hope the good guys there would either kick out these infiltrators, or, just change their name to ProWar.Com. They made it to the top of our list of hall of shame contenders on Syria, Libya and beyond.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

One of the greatest problems in talking about the police state is that all such discussion of the subject is hampered by the lack of a clear-cut definition. Given the public’s own ignorance of the true nature and function of a police state, story after story after story of intolerable levels of official oppression, secret illegal surveillance, and increasingly sophisticated technology for tracking, apprehending, incapacitating and even killing dissenters can be dismissed because these stories are reported one at a time, in a contextless and therefore meaningless way that invites the interpretation that these stories are only warnings of what is to come instead of sign posts of a reality that is already here.

Those who seek to sow discord amongst the potential opposition to the growing control of the state over every aspect of the public’s lives can confuse and distract those opponents by engaging them in endless dialogues fretting about what a police state is, and whether our society is becoming one. Distracted in this way, the public can be tricked into believing that the police state is some imaginary future possibility, one that will only be realized when menacing troops in brown shirts, red arm bands and jack boots goose step people into internment camps against their will.

This is our EyeOpener Report by James Corbett, presenting the police state as a present reality rather than a future possibility, the distraction of the public by design, the need to look at the decades-long history documenting the step by step construction of our current system in order to recognize, understand and acknowledge our current police state status, and finally, the real key to dismantling our current police state.

Watch the Preview Here:

Watch the Full Video Report Here:

*The Transcript for this video is available at Corbett Report: Click Here

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

This morning I woke up to the following news headlines. Let me correct myself: This morning I found the US media and their quasi extension reporting on stale, at least 6-month old US operations on Syria. Now, that’s much better. I think it is safe to assume that the media has been given a ‘green light’ by the White House and Pentagon to report on long-ongoing war preparations, aka ‘intervention’ plans, on Syria while making it sound as fresh-new-recent. Let’s read together:

Obama Administration Secretly Preparing Options for Aiding the Syrian Opposition

As the violence in Syria spirals out of control, top officials in President Barack Obama‘s administration are quietly preparing options for how to assist the Syrian opposition, including gaming out the unlikely option of setting up a no-fly zone in Syria and preparing for another major diplomatic initiative.

…

And here is the almost comical egregious part:

After several weeks of having no top-level administration meetings to discuss the Syria crisis, the National Security Council (NSC) has begun an informal, quiet interagency process to create and collect options for aiding the Syrian opposition, two administration officials confirmed to The Cable.

…

Right! According to these ‘reporters’, up until now our imperialistic hawks have been sitting on their butts and doing absolutely nothing on Syria’s months-long prewar crisis! Just read the following by MSM’s favorite source WINEP, and please try not to laugh:

Andrew Tabler, a fellow at the Washington Institute for Near East Policy, said that the administration was caught off-guard by how the opposition became militarized so quickly. The administration’s message had been to urge the opposition to remain peaceful, but that ship has now sailed, he said.

…

All right; I’ll forgive you for laughing out loud. I admit; I laughed so hard I ended up with the hiccups. Now, let’s look at the casual introduction of Washington’s main artery, front, in executing their next takeover [All Emphasis Mine]:

The options that are under consideration include establishing a humanitarian corridor or safe zone for civilians in Syria along the Turkish border, extending humanitarian aid to the Syrian rebels, providing medical aid to Syrian clinics, engaging more with the external and internal opposition, forming an international contact group, or appointing a special coordinator for working with the Syrian opposition (as was done in Libya), according to the two officials, both of whom are familiar with the discussions but not in attendance at the meetings.

…

Basically, the Washington Bosses are telling their ‘boys’ what they’ve been doing since last May in Turkey, inside the Incirlik base, but tweaking the time-line, changing it to  soon-to-come action plans.

A few months ago these same MSM dudes were given all the documents and witnesses on the operations mentioned above which began in May 2011. I broke the story (since the MSM and their quasi buddies refused to run it) in November. And let me provide you with every single plan-operation quoted by the media as ‘soon-to-come,’ and show you how every single one was already reported here at Boiling Frogs Post based on our military sources in Turkey and the US:

On November 21, we reported that:

The joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US air force base in Incirlik, Turkey, began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria.

Col. Riad al-Assad has been in Turkey, working with U.S. & NATO, right inside the US Incirlik Base in Turkey, to do exactly what he vehemently denies: smuggle US weapons into Syria, participate in US psychological and information warfare inside Syria as the middle-man whom Syrian protesters tend to trust, and help with funneling intelligence and military operators across the border and night-time drop offs by air.

The HQ also includes an information warfare division where US-NATO crafted communications are directed to dissidents in Syria via the core group of Syrian military and Intelligence defectors.

Just compare the facts we reported on November 21 to the Washington ‘plans’ quoted by the Media as ‘soon-to-come’:

The options that are under consideration include establishing a humanitarian corridor or safe zone for civilians in Syria along the Turkish border, extending humanitarian aid to the Syrian rebels, providing medical aid to Syrian clinics, engaging more with the external and internal opposition, forming an international contact group, or appointing a special coordinator for working with the Syrian opposition (as was done in Libya), according to the two officials, both of whom are familiar with the discussions but not in attendance at the meetings.

…

Next, on December 3rd, we reported the following on the intentional censorship of these facts by the US media:

The story above only goes as far as ‘France’ and the French factor. It stops short of France and other NATO member nations led by the United States in NATO member country-Turkey.

I immediately started checking our infamous US mainstream media sites- still nothing on this significant information. I then contacted one of my high-level sources and asked why he had come to me with his documented report instead of going directly to the big guys. With several credible insiders as his corroborators and a high-level official in Turkey, he would have no problem getting their attention. And his response? Well here it is minus a few expletives:

Who said we didn’t go to MSM first? We got them the info back in October. First they were interested and drooling. At least the reporters. Then, they disappeared. We sat and waited for a few weeks, and no one followed up. It is Turkey. It is NATO. It is our CIA guys. The media hot shots would not touch those cases without State Department sanction attached…

By the way, our report, these confirmed facts, were reported by major international news outlets, and several major Turkish newspapers ran further confirmation reports. Here is my interview with Russia Today on the story:

Well, ladies and gentlemen, here we are: the US mainstream media has begun reporting on the real operations albeit with dictated time-line adjustments, twisted facts and a highly-adjusted tone. I am going to correct myself one more time:

The controlled reporting and propaganda by the Washington war machine has not been limited to the US mainstream media. Many popular quasi alternative channels have followed the exact same trend, the most troubling one being AntiWar.Com. For several months they refused to run any of these confirmed reports while they ran every single bit of propaganda coverage by the US mainstream media on Syria. Today, with the green light from Washington, and with the US MSM in the forefront, they ran the neocon-produced and widely neocon-quoted article on Obama’s not-so-secret plans on Syria. Check it out here.

I published a brief commentary on the very troubling switch of position and changes at AntiWar.Com, a site that I used to support and consider one of my favorites. Since their management change they have been banning not only me but other well-respected true alternatives. And they have been losing many supporters while gaining mystery-undisclosed funders. But the most troubling change is their consistent coverage of the New York Times, Washington Post and the rest of the US government and corporate propaganda machine. I have researchers who are compiling data on their recent changes, and running background checks on their new team members who have successfully altered this once truly valuable source of information.

I despise hypocrisy, and hypocrisy appears to be one of their newly gained characteristics. On one hand, they trash the US mainstream media and Soros-Funded quasi alternatives for smearing Ron Paul, and they pound us with the unreliability and falsehood of the MSM. And I completely agree with those positions. Yet, on the other hand, every single day they fill their entire website with the same exact MSM produced war propaganda and falsehoods. As I have said before, I hope it is not too late to put them back on track during this war-filled period when real AntiWar information sources are badly needed. And I hope you will all help with getting this accomplished. We have more than enough war propaganda machines, and cannot afford to lose the very few who were once on our side.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

I’ve been waiting; waiting for the ‘G’ word on Syria, and here it is, arriving right on time, as expected:

Arab League Observer: Assad Committing Genocide in Syria

A member of the Arab League observer team in Damascus told Al Arabiya broadcaster Monday that “what’s happening in Syria is genocide.”"This is a regime is taking revenge on its people,” Mostashar Mahgoub told the channel by telephone.

…

It is impossible not to recall the US media-marketed and sold false reports of invading Iraqi troops throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait in August 1990 — reports that were used to build public support and urgency for the 1991 Gulf War. These claims were part of an elaborate propaganda effort by the Washington PR consultancy Hill & Knowlton hired by the Kuwaiti government. Let’s watch the stellar performance choreographed by our government producers-directors:

And then there was that comical trial of Saddam Hussein’s ‘genocide’ deeds in the 80s; emphasis on the 80s-during the era when our Washington rulers considered this  ruler a friend and supplied him with all he needed to keep ruling. You see, at the time, in the 80s, we couldn’t care less how and how many Saddam butchered, we looked the other way when he fried Iranians and massacred the Kurds … as long as he got the ‘genocide enabling weapons’ from us, and as long as he remained our dictator:

Rumsfeld was to discuss with Iraqi officials the Reagan administration’s hope that it could obtain Export-Import Bank credits for Iraq, the Aqaba pipeline, and its vigorous efforts to cut off arms exports to Iran. According to an affidavit prepared by one of Rumsfeld’s companions during his Mideast travels, former NSC staff member Howard Teicher, Rumsfeld also conveyed to Iraq an offer from Israel to provide assistance, which was rejected [Document 61].

Although official U.S. policy still barred the export of U.S. military equipment to Iraq, some was evidently provided on a “don’t ask – don’t tell” basis. In April 1984, the Baghdad interests section asked to be kept apprised of Bell Helicopter Textron’s negotiations to sell helicopters to Iraq, which were not to be “in any way configured for military use” [Document 55]. The purchaser was the Iraqi Ministry of Defense. In December 1982, Bell Textron’s Italian subsidiary had informed the U.S. embassy in Rome that it turned down a request from Iraq to militarize recently purchased Hughes helicopters. An allied government, South Korea, informed the State Department that it had received a similar request in June 1983 (when a congressional aide asked in March 1983 whether heavy trucks recently sold to Iraq were intended for military purposes, a State Department official replied “we presumed that this was Iraq’s intention, and had not asked.”) [Document 44]

…

Iran had submitted a draft resolution asking the U.N. to condemn Iraq’s chemical weapons use. The U.S. delegate to the U.N. was instructed to lobby friendly delegations in order to obtain a general motion of “no decision” on the resolution. If this was not achievable, the U.S. delegate was to abstain on the issue. Iraq’s ambassador met with the U.S. ambassador to the U.N., Jeane Kirkpatrick, and asked for “restraint” in responding to the issue – as did the representatives of both France and Britain.

I encourage you to read further on mountains of evidence illustrating our selective support or oppositions to genocidal deeds of world dictators (Click here).

Last February, less than a year ago, we had another envoy declaring genocide for a nation deemed ready to be grabbed- invaded by the West:

Libya envoy accuses Gaddafi of ‘genocide’

Libya’s deputy ambassador to the United Nations has called for Muammar Gaddafi to stand down, accusing him of “genocide” and saying he should stand trial for war crimes.

“He has to leave as soon as possible. He has to stop killing the Libyan people,” Ibrahim Dabbashi told CNN and other hastily convened media at the UN in New York.

“Certainly the best scenario is to have him before the court, to prosecute him and to know from him everything about the crimes he committed before, whether it is the genocide of the prison of Abu Saleem or the genocide he is committing now or the disappearance of certain important personalities … and all the other crimes he has committed during the 42 years in power.”

…

You may accuse Washington and its tentacle media of many things-all bad, but please don’t accuse them of inconsistency. They adhere to their foreign policy imperialistic pursuits to the T. In Libya it started with mild adjectives on antidemocratic practices before it escalated to Genocide accusations, and the invasion a few weeks later. With Syria it’s gone from HR abuses to now, today, full-blown genocide. Meaning what? Less than a handful of weeks left for Assad?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Cutting through the disinformation and spin, Sibel Edmonds and Pepe Escobar reveal back stories about the conflict in Syria that are not reported in the mainstream media.

Edmonds has deep sources in Turkey, Iran, Syria, and the US policy community, and has broken a number of recent developments at Boiling Frogs Post.  Pepe Escobar has also done great enterprise reporting and analysis at Asia Times.  Together, they add a great deal of information about the players who are fighting the Assad regime, the increasingly shrill calls for Assad’s removal from Washington and Paris, and recent reports of likely NATO-aligned fighters assembling near the Jordan-Syria border. 

Escobar sees this as a proxy battle between US/NATO/Israel and a growing alliance between Russia and China, with all eyes on the oil and gas reserves of the Caspian basin.  We discuss Turkey’s role in some depth, and its desire to crush the Kurds of northern Iraq and southern Turkey; we talk about Iran’s intentions toward Syria and Iraq after the US withdrawal, and Iran’s own “Kurdish problem”.  Escobar predicts that 2012 will be a year of “creative destruction”, and sees a return to pre-9/11 dynamics in the region.  He also describes the House of Saud as the international center of the counter-revolution in response to the “Arab Spring”. 

Edmonds, who lived in Iran at the start of the Islamic revolution, talks about Iran’s interests and Jordan’s billions of dollars in US military aid since 2007.  It’s best to look at a map of the region as you listen, so you can appreciate the geographical and resource ties of the various neighbors.

Listen to the interview here @ the Peter B. Collins Show: Click Here

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Let’s start with Jordan. Last week we broke the story on reported US-NATO troops and operations in Jordan- on the Jordanian-Syrian border. Follow-ups to our report were carried out by only a few select international news organizations. Pepe Escobar had an excellent article on that (see here).

Today I received this report on the generous financial aid granted to Jordan by the United States.

US to Provide Jordan with $660 Million in Aid in 2012

AMMAN, Dec. 20 (Xinhua) — The United States will provide Jordan with 660 million U.S. dollars in 2012 as economic and military assistance, Jordan’s ministry of planning and international cooperation said Tuesday…The U.S. assistance to Jordan from 2007 to 2011 reached 2.4 billion, according to the ministry.
…

You see, Jordan is fairly dependent on US generosity, aka military-financial aid. And as expected, that dependency tends to ‘color’ a lot of things. Come to think of it, almost every member of the so-called Arab League appears to have similar dependencies: US financial-military aid and support to maintain and sustain their regimes’ existence. Hello, you remember our atrocious Bahrain regime, no? Oh well, they too are part of this ‘Arab League.’ So basically, these dependent puppet dictator regimes are now in charge of determining Syria’s level of dictatorship and soon–to-come final destiny. Ironic, no? Okay, I’ll have more on this when I reach the ‘calm’ period…

Next, I want you to monitor the Antiwar.Com website for a while. This once-upon-a-time excellent website has been going through tremendous not so pretty changes. Coincidentally, these changes coincide with recent mysterious appearances of their donor angels. What I want you to look for and keep tabs on:

1- More and more they’ve been citing articles and news from their once-culprit foe US MSM. Their updates are filled with NYT, WP, CNN, Huffington Post …created twists and spins.

2- If you remember, a few months ago they put on this publicity and PR campaign for the Soros-Rockefeller funded NGO who actually gave Obama an award for being the most transparent president of the United States.

3- Check out their author column. Do you notice my name there? Well, since the unnamed mysterious donors showed up, about 2 years ago, to round up their half a million dollars a year fund, they have decided to keep my name but completely censor anything I write on their ‘once-upon-a-time’ issues: police state, perpetual wars, secrecy, whistleblowers…

4- Contrary to their title, name, they have been loudly and repeatedly and unquestioningly reporting only the unsupported numbers killed by the Assad regime in Syria, Assad’s alleged inflicted massacres, and …Now, for a site called AntiWar, they are either willingly or unintentionally beating the war drums and spreading unconfirmed propaganda, exactly the same way our infamous MSM has been doing…

It is truly a shame. I like and have been following a few of their excellent editorial writers such as Raimondo and Giraldi. They usually have a good selection of editorials. And as I said, they used to be exemplary as an independent news roundup site on civil liberties and war related topics. 

I’ll have more on AW, and will inquire about their unnamed mysterious funder angels, but please go and review their last two year archives, and start accumulating your own research data…You may also want to send them e-mails-notes and encourage them to go back to what they used to be: an alternative, not an echo wall for the MSM. Hopefully they are not beyond rescue, and if they are, and they prove to be, then, I suggest their public donors look elsewhere to support…

I’ll be on Russia Today for an interview. I’ll post the clip as soon as it becomes available.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

In the last few years a commonly and frequently used catch phrase among US policy makers and movers and shakers of the think tank industry when it comes to their ‘vision’ for the new Middle East has been ‘Moderate Islam.’ However, there is a literal and rational definition of ‘Moderately Islamic Government,’ then there is the real meaning, interpretation, implications and application of the term meant and used by the US and its Western extension when it comes to the New World Order. In a recent excellent analysis Professor James Petras sums up the US Empire’s new vehicle of choice for its global order in the Muslim world today:

“Moderate” Islamists have become the Empire’s ‘contraceptive of choice’ against any chance the massive Arab peoples’ revolt might give birth to substantive egalitarian social changes and bring those brutal pro- western officials, responsible for so many crimes against humanity, to justice .

The West and their client officials in the military and police have agreed to a kind of “power-sharing’ with the moderate/respectable (read ‘reactionary’) Islamist parties. The Islamists would be responsible for imposing orthodox economic policies and re-establishing ‘order’ (i.e. bolstering the existing one) in partnership with pro-multinational bank economists and pro US-EU generals and security officials.

…

The most frequently cited example by the ruling Western elites for their ideal ‘Moderate Islamic’ government has been the AKP government of Turkey, in power since 2001. The AK Party portrays itself as a liberal conservative party in the Turkish political spectrum that advocates a liberal market economy and Turkish membership in the European Union. In 2005, the AK Party was granted observer membership in the European People’s Party.

Dr. Petras’ description of Western-Chosen and Western-Favored ‘Moderate Islamic Government’ fits Turkey’s AKP leadership to a T. This Western role model for the Muslim ‘Arab world’ has suavely maintained popular support by maintaining a balance between an illusionary Islamic stand and rhetoric, a for-show-only tough stand on Israel, and carrying out its  daily US-NATO dictated to-do list and behind-the-scenes appeasement of its Western masters in the military and financial fields.

Turkey’s recent and sudden change of position on Syria is an excellent example illustrating the real meaning of Western Ideal Islamic government. Just check the headlines on developments in Syria-Turkey relations in the last few months, and you’ll see what is meant by a Western-Approved Moderate Islamic government, aka submissive puppy state governing under the banner of Islam and Allah for show while fully performing for their Western puppy-masters.

I reported on the ongoing joint US-NATO secret training camp in the US Air Force base in Incirlik, Turkey, which began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. I broke that story on November 21, here at Boiling Frogs Post, based on information provided to me by multiple sources including highly credible insiders in Turkey and government insiders here in the US. Of course the story is still completely blacked out by the US media until further notice from their government masters. However, you’ll find no shortage of daily news on Turkey’s toughly-spoken threats, viciously imposed sanctions, and its harboring of Free Syrian Army-Rebels.

What you won’t find in the Western media is the almost intimate relationship between Syria and Turkey as recent as a year ago. That context would bring about obvious questions, and questions would enforce critical thinking, and critical thinking is one thing our masters and their media extensions don’t want you to get into. So I’ll take it upon myself to provide you with a brief background on how things were between the two nations until Western Masters snapped their fingers for their favorite moderately Islamic government in Turkey.

In May 2010, during President Assad’s visit to Turkey, the Turkish President made the following statement during a press conference:

For his part, President Gul pointed out in his speech that Turkey shares long borders with Syria, and that there are big joint projects for the interests of the two countries’ peoples, noting that important and significant developments have recently taken place in both countries, and that relations between them, carried out by officials and on the popular levels, are based on solid foundations.

President Assad reaffirmed the same sentiment:

He affirmed that Syrian-Turkish relations and their considerable positive outcomes have become a reality in politics, economy and all other fields that no one can deny. “In the past when we said reality it meant having something imposed on us and accepting it, but today this status quo is imposed and created itself by itself… It is a reality that is subject to our interests. We are not subject to it at all. It has not come from outside… The content of this reality is our mutual need for each other as well as our joint interests and similar cultures.”

…

The following report is from an April 2009 article published by Zaman:

As a sign of increased confidence in relations, Turkey and neighboring Syria plan to sign a letter of intent giving the green light for cooperation in the defense industry. The letter of intent will be signed on the sidelines of the 9th International Defense Industry Fair (IDEF’09), due to start today in Istanbul at the Tüyap Fair, Convention and Congress Center in Istanbul’s Büyükçekmece. Turkish defense industry sources told Today’s Zaman that the letter of intent to be signed between the two countries is a sign of the level of political relations reached between Turkey and Syria.

…

And this article in May 2009 emphasizes the close relationship and similarities between Presidents Gul and Assad, and the plans for furthering trade agreements-relations between Turkey and Syria:

Qabalan, a long-time journalist, presented his credentials to President Gül last Monday. He noted that his private talk with Gül at the Çankaya presidential palace was the best 15 or 20 minutes of his life. “He is a perfect man and a perfect leader,” he said of President Gül. As a journalist, Qabalan had conducted an interview with Gül during Syrian President Bashar Assad’s 2004 visit to Turkey. He described Gül as a strikingly modest person and said he believed that Assad and Gül had similar personalities, which would facilitate the improvement of relations between the two countries during Gül’s visit.

The Syrian ambassador noted that during Gül’s visit, the two countries would sign deals on trade and joint projects. Gül, who will be the first Turkish president to visit Aleppo, will attend the opening ceremonies of a number of Turkish hotels in Syria.

…

In less than a year, with quantum speed, and to the great satisfaction of its US-NATO masters, Turkey made its 180 degree turn. The following paragraphs from Turkish Newspaper Hurriyet in November of this year provide a good summary of this new status-stand:

Jeffrey Feltman, assistant secretary of state for Near Eastern Affairs, during his testimony on Syria at the U.S. Senate this week, summarized Turkey’s contribution to the events in Syria in three points: Sheltering refugees, opening up a space for Syrian oppositions to organize and imposing arms embargo on the Syrian regime. Luke Bronin, deputy assistant secretary at Department of Treasury, at the same panel, stated,”it is hard to overstate Turkey’s break with Syria.” Both officials compared Ankara’s close relations with Damascus only a year ago with today and appeared as if they were explaining a miracle taking place and they are certainly not alone.

…

One senior official from Ankara this week gave detailed account about how Turkey’s Syrian policy evolved over the summer. According to this official, “pursuing realist policy to protect our economic interests in Syria was one of the options. But we quickly brushed aside this option as we thought such policy only give more room to Assad to increase his pressure, possibly kill or torture many more people. In such a turn of events, we might have ended up facing with 300 to 500 thousand people in our borders as refugees.”

…

US-NATO’s assigned new role and position for Turkey is clearly stated in these excerpts:

Feltman said when we look at how far we came in recent weeks with regard to Syria, “I can basically say Assad is finished.” Feltman, for the first time, publicly mentioned there is the idea floating around of organizing an international contact group for Syria, one similarly and successfully done in the Libya case.

Turkey must lead such international gatherings to accelerate the transition in Syria. All indications show we are getting closer by day to that point and this time Turkey cannot excuse itself from leading.

…

Only yesterday there came headlines which read: Pentagon Appoints Turkey to Police Iraq & Confront Iran.

The U.S. secretary of defense is visiting NATO ally Turkey. He arrived in the Turkish capital, Ankara, after attending a withdrawal ceremony Thursday in Bagdad of American troops all of whom are due to leave by the end of the month. With the U.S. withdrawal, Turkey is now being seen by Washington as playing a potential key role in Iraq.

The NATO allies are already increasingly cooperating in the region. Last month, the U.S. transferred drones from Iraq to the Turkish airbase of Incirlik close to the Iraqi border.

…

“I suppose many more drones, flying over Iraq in order to continue to monitoring things,” said Ozel. “And I guess they want Incirlik to be open, more open, to American use as well. Politically, they would want Turkey to make sure that things never get of hand between Kurds and Arabs. And in [a] way maintaining the autonomy or viability of the Kurdistan regional government territory.” The semi-autonomous Iraqi Kurdish region, which borders Turkey, is, according to observers, strategically important to Washington.

Diplomatic columnist Semih Idiz for the Turkish daily Milliyet says Ankara shares Washington’s concerns about growing Iranian influence in Iraq. “The increase of the Iranian through Shia elements in Iraq, that is what Turkey will be worried about,” added Idiz. “And with Turkey there is a political competition going on for influence between Iran and Turkey.”

…

The Erdogan-Gul government may excel in public performances, such as tough-talk on Israel solely put on to appease their constituents while doing business as usual behind the scenes. They may be good at appearing as committed Muslim men serving their Muslim nation on behalf of their people. But when it comes to action and real servitude, they are not able to hide their real masters; those who come first-before Islam or maybe even Allah. They are and have been accessory to murders, and murders to be committed per order of their US-NATO masters in the game of Muslims killing Muslims. And that my friend is anything but moderately Islamic in the real sense.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

I am not sure if they will publish the full interview session; maybe later. However, the following clip is on Russia’s new draft resolution on Syria with a few highlights from my interview with RT:

Update: Here is the full length interview:

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

It’s now been exactly 24 days since I reportedon the ongoing joint US-NATO secret training camp in the USAir Force base in Incirlik, Turkey, which began operations in April- May 2011 to organize and expand the dissident base in Syria. I broke that story on November 21, here at Boiling Frogs Post, based on information provided to me by multiple sources including highly credible insiders in Turkey and government insiders here in the US. 18 days later Iranian Press TV ran the story with further confirmation based on intensive coverage and confirmation by the Turkish media. Impressively, despite far more serious pressure from the government, reporters in Turkey provided detailed coverage of the story I broke here in the US.

One extensively reported story had to do with BBC reporter John Simpson, who went to Turkey to follow up on the story we broke at Boiling Frogs Post, but was placed under surveillance, prevented from following up on the story of the US-NATO-Turkish-Syrian Rebel operation Center in Southern Turkey, stopped from interviewing Riad al Assad, and how BBC quickly excused the scandalous incident. Every major newspaper in Turkey covered this event. Sabah and Radikal were among dozens of TV and newspaper outlets in Turkey covering it.

Here is the spin placed on the story by BBC to make the incident look like ‘protecting Colonel Riad al Assad’ [All Emphasis Mine]:

The colonel’s name sounds close to but not quite the same as that of the President he wants to overthrow, Bashar al-Assad.He is based in a refugee camp at Apaydin, 9 miles (14km) from the town of Antakya and very close to the Syrian border. But he is not allowed to leave the camp, and cannot receive visitors.

To a considerable extent, this is for his own protection. The Turks seem to regard Colonel Asad as a potentially important figure for the future, and are determined that nothing untoward should happen to him.

As a result, getting to see Colonel Asad is remarkably difficult. No Turkish official wanted to help us, or indeed even speak about him on the record.

As we were filming his camp from a distance a group of Turkish soldiers briefly detained us. Yet the colonel is predictably keen to talk, and in the end we interviewed him via the internet.

…

To recap, 24 days ago Boiling Frogs Post broke the story on the US-NATO-Syrian Rebel Operation-Command Center in the US Air Base in Southern Turkey operating since May 2011. This story was first provided to all major US media, think NY Times, Washington Post, but no one was allowed to report due to ‘US government pressure.’ After we broke the story here at BFP, the Turkish media dared their government-military, and provided further confirmation and details. The story has since received coverage and confirmation by foreign publications such as Press TV and Russia TV. Still, not a peep in the US media, and that includes the corporate-foundation backed phony, aka Alternative Media.

Russia TV had good coverage on the latest here. And here is a Russia TV interview with James Corbett from Today:

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

For the past few months on a daily basis we have been forced to read, watch and listen to the awful deeds of select dictators here and there, but not everywhere. Our war-drummer TV networks suddenly found an atrocious dictator in Libya, and at lightning speed lined up victim after victim of this long-ruling but suddenly popular dictator called Gaddafi. Remember this CNN episode? Yes I am sure you do. How could anyone erase these horrifying images from memory? Our public was far too horrified and disgusted to stop and wonder why now; why so suddenly. No. For years while our government and corporate partners supplied this dictator with an expansive array of deadly war and police tools, while they basked in the profit’s glow, no one in our media showed the slightest interest in or desire for widely and readily available atrocity documents, victims and witnesses. They waited until their government-corporate masters gave them the expedited green light for manic-continuous coverage. Oh how the majority longed for and anticipated our government’s regime change there…How they clamored for the barbaric ridding of this ruthless evil dictator. One down. A few more to go. Only here and there. Certainly not everywhere.

In recent months we have been presented daily, perhaps more accurately, hourly, with another dictator’s atrocious deeds. Every hour seems to be ‘the Syria Hour’ in our media. Oh, those poor freedom fighters falling one after another…The innocent people up against the heavily armed ferocious army…The daily massacres …all televised, intensely written about, loudly talked about; everywhere. That evil Bashar Assad and his regime. That evil dictator…

Granted on and off we’ve been hearing about the Assad regime’s evilness and its status on our decade-ago designated axis of evil list. But now, well now it is a different deal. Out of the blue, suddenly, this regime and its deeds have become the center of our focus, and it has been forced into our living rooms, newspaper baskets, and car radios; on an hourly basis. Oh how our people’s hearts are bleeding for those freedom-seeking revolutionary rebels…How we despise this stinky mean dictator … We can’t wait to see the bastard taken out and beheaded; preferably live on TV.

Now, here is what you won’t be hearing from our corporate-government-owned mainstream and corporate-foundation-owned pseudo alternative media. Up until very recently, as recent as two years ago, our government, our military and intelligence agencies worked hand-in-hand with this dictator and his regime. After 9/11 this dictator and his regime became one of our top choices for outsourcing our illegal torture and detention practices. In fact, our government always coordinated its bashing and name-calling of this dictator directly with him to help him boost his public standing and popularity in Syria. You see, there are ways to support dictator regimes, and then there are other ways. In ‘certain’ cases it is strategically beneficial to a dictator, or a military regime, or a kingdom, to be outwardly bashed and be cosmetically antagonized by ‘certain’ superpowers, or Israel. Those cosmetically issued bashing-threats go a long way towards improving a dictator’s popularity at home. You know what I’m talking about, right? Think the Saudi Kingdom and Israel. The Kingdom, while best friend and partner with Israel, prefers to be shown and known as Anti-Israel. It is a matter of survival … for ‘certain’ dictators. Now back to Syria.

During my work at the FBI after the September 11 Terrorist Attacks, I worked in a very large unit-room with more than 250 translators and analysts; with no individual rooms or even cubicles separating us. I worked with those from the Saudi Arabia desk, Iran Desk, Israel Desk, Turkey Desk …and of course the Syria Desk. And I can tell you with one hundred percent factual certainty that we, the United States Government and its Intelligence Agencies and its Pentagon and State Department, worked very ‘cozily’ with Syria’s military-intelligence regime. This same dictator we see exposed and bashed by our government and its tentacles- media, readily gave us everything we wanted, and more, and in return, we gave him ‘certain’ things he wanted from us; including outwardly expressed condemnation and evil name-calling.

I also want to remind you of our close partnership with the Syria regime in implementing illegal torture and detention practices. You see this same dictator’s torture practices that are being advertised as intolerable and war-worthy, were exactly the practices our government valued, appreciated, and cherished. Let me give you an example, a well-known documented example, that is [All Emphasis Mine]:

Maher Arar is a telecommunications engineer with dual Syrian and Canadian citizenship who resides in Canada. Arar’s story is frequently referred to as “extraordinary rendition” but the U.S. government insisted it was a case of deportation. Arar was detained during a layover at JFK in September 2002 on his way home to Canada. He was held without charges in solitary confinement in the US for nearly two weeks, questioned, and denied meaningful access to a lawyer.

The US government suspected him of being a member of Al Qaeda and deported him, not to Canada, his current home, but to his native Syria, even though its government is known to use torture. He was detained in Syria for almost a year, during which time he was tortured, according to the findings of a commission of inquiry ordered by the Canadian government, until his release to Canada. That commission publicly cleared Arar of any links to terrorism. The Syrian government now says that Arar is “completely innocent.”

…

Despite the recent public rhetoric, at the time of Arar’s deportation, Syria was working closely with the United States government in their “War on Terror“. In November 2003, Cofer Black, then counterterrorism coordinator at the US State Department and former director of counterterrorism at the CIA, was quoted as saying “The Syrian government has provided some very useful assistance on al Qaeda in the past.” In September 2002, George Bush opposed the enactment of the “Syria Accountability Act” citing effectiveness of current sanctions and the ongoing diplomacy in the region. In addition, the administration noted the cooperation and support by Syria in fighting al-Qaida as a reason for its opposition to the “Syria Accountability Act”.

…

The Syrian government shared the results of its investigation with the United States. Arar believes that his torturers were given a dossier of specific questions by United States interrogators, noting that he was asked identical questions both in the United States and in Syria.

Allow me to recap here: The Syrian regime was the regime of choice for the US government when it came to rendition and torture practices. Arar was not the only US detainee sent, handed-over to Syria; others did not have the benefit of second western citizenship privileges. This was not about looking the other way. It was the US government’s tacit approval of the Syrian regime’s dictatorial torture practices. The US and the Syria regime worked very closely and shared intelligence-police-military information with each other.

The US media has conveniently forgotten all about our government’s approval and support of the Assad regime’s dictatorial and torture practices, and its partnership with this same regime in its dark and illegal operations.  Our media seem to have gone into their highly characteristic amnesiac mode. They don’t want people to know about the past. In fact, they don’t want people to know about the present either. For instance, they have been hard at work trying to twist and falsify the US government’s position and role in the recent uprising in Syria. Based on the fictional concoction they’ve been pouring out, Americans are under the false impression that we began our support for these rebels after the uprising, and as a reaction to the Assad regime’s retaliation against these freedom seekers. When in fact we started our operation last April-May, and actually manufactured-created this highly-coordinated and managed uprising and violence.  You can read my internationally reported coverage on this here, and stay tuned for more detailed coverage on Syria here at Boiling Frogs Post.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

And why haven’t I done this before? As the saying goes ‘choose your enemies carefully’. How about ‘there’s so little time and so much to fight against’? Well, I’m sure you have heard various versions of those sayings and others, and you get my meaning, thus the reason I chose to remain fairly quiet on this important aspect of whistleblowing and whistleblowers.

It will take far more than one brief article/commentary to discuss and analyze the cases of ‘fairytale whistleblowers’ and the purpose of popping up and propping up those select whistleblowers with tremendous help and participation from the media-publishers-Hollywood, corporate-owned and government-managed NGOs. That’s right: it takes the entire village of establishment participants to create these fairytale whistleblowers, promote and market them, and succeed in selling them to the public as genuine. Thus, for the purpose of this warm-up, introduction, I am going to limit myself to a few macro points and examples.

The real whistleblower armed with information really dangerous to the establishment-government ends up with one or more of the following outcomes and consequences: mysterious death, prison, prosecution, persecution, gag order-blackmail- threats (including their family members), financial destruction, scandalization, censure, marginalization by the media-publishers… 

The fairytale whistleblower trap meets the exact opposite end: no ‘real’ threat of prosecution or imprisonment, no ‘real’ censorship-gag order, fame, enormous financial gain-reward, wide media coverage, hero-status granted by the media, mega dollars book and movie deal, position with big-name corporate-foundation owned and government-ruled NGOs, future high-dollar government contracts and positions, clear and present partisan status…

Okay, now I am going to move from the above general ground rules to a bit more specific distinction between real whistleblowers versus fairytale whistleblower traps.

I am going to start with a man who is considered ‘the father of all government whistleblowers.’ I am talking about Dan Ellsberg: “the Most Dangerous Man in America.” It doesn’t matter whether you agree with Ellsberg’s views, politics or style, you know, and so does everyone, that he put it all at risk; that is, enormous risk. They persecuted him, scandalized him, prosecuted him, and were about to imprison him for life. Wouldn’t you agree he is the most famous government whistleblower in our history? Right. Now let me tell you something as someone who knows Ellsberg, has spent personal time with him, and considers him a friend: Ellsberg lives and has been living an extremely modest and frugal life (Dan, I know you read everything I write, and I hope you’ll forgive me for sharing a few personal examples here):

This man traveled (and still does) from one part of the country to the other via the cheapest airfare available, obtained under financial strains and difficulties, and while he suffered from excruciating back/knee pain, to be there for whistleblowers who needed his support. He wears years old pants lovingly patched were needed. He and his family live a modest frugal life.

Ellsberg, the most famous whistleblower of all time, was never offered a million-dollar movie deal. He was never given million-dollar book deals. He never took million-dollar positions in multi-million dollar establishment-front NGOs or the like. He has not held any position with government agencies since his case, and has never joined the government tentacle contractors or think-tanks offering mega bucks. You see, Ellsberg is still a very ‘dangerous man.’ And ‘they’ know that. He’d expose fraud and criminality today as fiercely as he did four decades ago. ‘They’ can’t afford having a ‘dangerous man’ like him inside the corrupt circle and extension of the establishment machine.

Then there was, and is, the FBI whistleblower, one of Time Magazine’s persons of the year, Coleen Rowley. She and I may not agree on everything, but a certain dynamic in our relationship remains a constant: I trust this lady, and I respect her integrity. What you see with Rowley is what you get, and what you get is this fierce and unrelenting adherence to integrity.

I remember one of our government whistleblowers’ congressional rallies in 2006 with Coleen Rowley as one of the participants. We had a short coffee recess in a café near one of the congressional buildings. An individual from one of the NGO circles bought a round of coffee for our group of 10-12 people. We offered to reimburse him but he waved us off. At the end of our coffee recess Rowley stopped by his table, placed 5 quarters on the table, and said something like until her official retirement she could not accept anything that could be considered as gift or contribution…

This may seem like an insignificant example to some, but it isn’t. It is a small representation of a much bigger picture of principle and integrity when it comes to Rowley. When she was offered generous speaking fees she’d ask to be compensated for her travel expenses (frugally arranged travel) and donate the fee to various charities. When she dared to challenge the political establishment by running for office at tremendous personal expense (time-energy-emotion), she refrained from being pocketed by anyone – whether those from the Israeli lobby groups who approached her or those from the big corporate fronts. Those of you who’ve known me and my writings know that I rarely compliment or list positives. The top adjectives I use to describe Rowley start with genuine, highly ethical, principled …

Coleen Rowley did not get millions of dollars for books and or Hollywood movie rights either. Her integrity has acted as a very strong repellent against corporate and corporate-foundations. And I have not detected any partisan marketing signal from this lady, and you know how sensitive my detectors for partisanship can be.

I could name and write about many other well-known and genuine whistleblower cases. Whether it is Richard Barlow, the CIA whistleblower who exposed AQ Khan’s nuclear network and paid an incredible price for doing so, or NSA whistleblower Russell Tice, these real heroes, genuine and well-known government whistleblowers, never received million-dollar book deals, multi-million-dollar movie deals, or became members of the mega-dollar contracting-consulting industry. It is as if they have these built-in and coded repellents that keep the establishment and their parasites at bay.

Then you have what I refer to as phony fairytale whistleblowers. Let me give you an example:

A former government insider who has set up a shop, his own firm, and becomes a lobbyist and a consultant, gets highly agitated when the new administration constantly leaves him out of mega-million dollar contract deals. Interestingly, his operations and activities, including his revenge plans against the new administration, were being recorded by the FBI due to nefarious foreign operations he was involved in. He cuts a deal with certain insiders, makes a pact with the ‘other’ political party, all together they get one of the top establishment mainstream media channels on board, and then he writes a true and semi-damaging commentary. Immediately after that, by design he is made out to be a heroic whistleblower.  And right after that, the involved establishment operators on his side concoct a partially-true scenario, and then they sell that as his scripted heroic whistleblowing. Now fast forward only a couple of years:

The man and his spouse collectively get a nearly $2 million book deal, regardless of tanking sale numbers in the end. Right after that they get another $2 million for a Hollywood deal; again, regardless of sinking outcome. Their collaborators pay for their entire legal costs for show only lawsuits. They buy a mansion and start living like their Hollywood impostors. Fast forward again:

Then comes 2008 and the fairytale whistleblower couple have to partially payback their collaborating masters. They sign up to actively campaign for one of the Democratic Party Presidential candidates, and they campaign for that dirty candidate big time. That Democratic Party candidate ends up not getting the presidency, but a lower position: Secretary of State. After a few months in office as Secretary of State, she starts forwarding lucrative government contract to the fairytale whistleblower couple.

It took an entire establishment village to concoct this fairytale whistleblower case. The entire establishment village participated: from the mainstream media providing the script-coverage, to Huffington Post spreading wings to go under, to publisher deal, to Hollywood deal, to Democratic Party position deals, to future lucrative government contract deals. The public was left with this grand and conning illusion. The concocted phony fairytale whistleblowers got a very fair deal and considered it a fair game to be engaged in. Those in the know did recognize the game, and they knew right from the start this was not a whistleblowing case, because real whistleblowing has never been a fair game. And it can never be- unless it is part of a fairytale-one concocted by the masters above.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds discuss the meaning of true alternative media, the role of corporate-foundations in mainstreaming the so-called alternative news, the shameful state of mainstream media as the mouthpiece for the government steered by mega corporations, the joint pseudo alternative-mainstream media black-outs on information pertaining to 9/11, government whistleblowers, secrecy, and the falsification of the truth by tentacles of our shadow government. We go on record with examples of establishment alternatives in disguise and real cases of operatives who sabotage true alternatives like Boiling Frogs Post. We talk about Boiling Frogs Post, our partners and team members, our goals, our pledge to complete independence from the corporates and their foundations, our stand on partisanship, and more!

Here are Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds unplugged & on Fire!

This is the final week of our Boiling Frogs Post subscription drive. As always I want to thank all our subscribers who believe in us; have faith in what we are doing, and have shown their support in action. We want to thank every single one of you who recognize, appreciate and support a true alternative without corporate or foundation ties.

We are entering the final week of our BFP Subscription Drive. We need 176 new subscribers to keep this home reachable to all. Please help us keep this ‘true alternative’ alive and kicking with your subscription. Without a single penny from corporate and their foundations we solely depend on you. Thank you!

“All compromise is based on give and take, but there can be no give and take on fundamentals. Any compromise on mere fundamentals is surrender. For it is all give and no take.” – Mohandas Gandhi

This is real life where there are compromises and there are pitfalls of being compromised. There is the question of flexibility, and then the notion of fundamental principles to stand by. There exists a fine line separating ‘bending the rules’ from actually breaking them. The question is where one begins to draw the line to separate compromise from being compromised, to hold to one’s fundamental principles while remaining flexible, and to bend core rules without actually breaking them.

When it comes to American politics the above dilemma has had but one answer. The same consistent answer throughout the past century: one can’t, and one won’t – that is, for those who seek viability for their candidacy and political campaigns. The fundamental rules every single political candidate in search of viability and a chance for success adheres to are: readily submit to being compromised, prepare to revise and change your fundamental principles and beliefs, and be ready to break without hesitation every rule you once adhered to.

Political candidates rise to lead the masses only to quickly turn to serving the interests of the very few- the few that count when it comes to gaining needed ‘viability’ and becoming a candidate with a ‘chance.’

Political actors must go through a crash course in learning the real art of compromise, which translates into willingness to part with core fundamental principles they once adhered to.

Wanna-be political leaders have to submit to training in becoming masters of breaking the rules while making it look as if they are only bending them.

The closer American political candidates get to the finish line where the ‘viable’ are separated from the ‘nonviable’, the more willing they become to give up old sentimental notions of principles and integrity- the greed that naturally flows from their intense desire and inflated egos now tied to the outcome: to win or to lose.

Everyone knows what is meant by becoming the devil’s advocate. Many have seen the film with that title. However, only a few are familiar with a slightly modified application of that term: the willingness to have the devil as the advocate; a familiar pattern showing up with every ‘viability seeking’ political candidate in the US. Just take a quick look at the last few presidents’ candidacies and you’ll see exactly what I am talking about.

We have already seen it vividly with Obama’s candidacy and presidency – appealing to the masses while placing his main focus on appealing to the few that held the key to his ultimate viability test and a real chance to win. What better way to do this than bringing in a few devils as the advocates! He wanted the support of and the green light from the powerful Israel lobby, so he brought in the dual citizen Israeli agent Rahm Emanuel as his advocate. Checkmark that. He wanted the nod from the Neocons so he brought an advocate or two from their camp and promised a key seat to one of their agents, Hillary Clinton. He sought the approval of the corrupt financial megas, so he brought in an advocate from their turf. Very quickly, with the real devils on board, Obama became a ‘viable candidate’, not withstanding his racial disadvantage, his lack of experience, and his less than stellar record.

With the interests of the very few, to name a few – the financial and military industrial complex and the Israel lobby, represented and check-marked, Obama was declared ‘viable’ and guaranteed the securing of the unknowing masses’ vote.

Let’s look at a recent candidacy resorting to advocacy by devils that is developing before our eyes as I type this article. I have written a series on the recent addition of Bruce Fein to the Ron Paul campaign as Paul’s Chief Legal Advisor. I am not going into too much detail here since I have covered the highly troubling case, but you can read more here.

Despite letters, e-mails and phone calls from Paul’s grassroots supporters to the campaign, and despite warnings and advice from Paul’s current and previous senior advisors, the campaign headquarters has refrained from removing Fein from this very key and sensitive position. The justification, more like an excuse, provided by the campaign heads, is the following: we are aware of Mr. Fein’s past and present conflicts but he has been a vocal advocate of the First Amendment and no one can deny his ability to help us expand our base by bringing in American Jewish communities and influential neocons…

This is a perfect example of the repeated pattern exhibited and practiced by US political candidates:  bringing in devils as advocates to seek ‘viability’ and to attempt to increase their chances to win. In Ron Paul’s case it becomes even more glaring. We are looking at a candidate who managed to remain outside the usual beltway corrupt machine yet succeeded in holding on to his office year after year. We are talking about a representative who had stayed away from foreign lobbyists and influence peddlers’ sphere of influence. We are speaking of Ron Paul, the man who had consistently opposed the US war machine, thus the bread and butter of the few MIC whose interests count tremendously when it comes to candidate viability. Ron Paul, who unabashedly has opposed the Israel lobby and its influence over US politics. Why?

According to insiders it is not Ron Paul but two key campaign managers who have become way too greedy and ambitious, and seek to expand at all cost and gain viability at any price. These men must have quickly forgotten the reasons in the first place for Ron Paul’s popularity among those rightfully disillusioned by the establishment candidates, and those who value integrity and honesty above the establishment glitz marketed by the US mainstream media. Bringing in a devil as an advocate comes with a high price. Has the ambition to become mainstream and viable made this price acceptable to Ron Paul?

Here in the United States we know we have a viable political candidate when principles quickly become ultra flexible, and when the art of compromise becomes the willingness to become compromised. And you know the path you are on when the devil becomes the advocate – It is the road leading to hell.

And with that, I will leave you with the following powerful quote from the movie ‘The Devil’s Advocate’:

“You sharpen the human appetite to the point where it can split atoms with its desire; you build egos the size of cathedrals; fiber-optically connect the world to every eager impulse; grease even the dullest dreams with these dollar-green, gold-plated fantasies, until every human becomes an aspiring emperor, becomes his own God… and where can you go from there?” – John Milton, ‘The Devil’s Advocate’

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

From ten years on, everything about 9/11 feels otherworldly and irrational, the reasons for it, the apparent helplessness in the face of it, the curious identities of the people involved and the American government’s response to it. It defied logic then and it still does. The World Trade Towers were proud symbols of who we were as early 21^st century Americans, at least who we thought we were. After all, wasn’t the spiritual motto of the original 1939 Flushing, NY World’s Fair “World trade center” pavilion dedicated to “world peace through trade?”  

There would be no peace after 9/11. The destruction loosed a demon that had been struggling for America’s soul since the creation of the Cold War in 1947. The U.S. would now be freed to pursue “evil” wherever it could be found and there would be no turning back. The creation of the World Trade Towers by Rockefeller brothers Nelson and David had been steeped in psychological symbolism from their start in the early 1960s. As the most well known scions of American business, the Rockefeller family brought more than just money to their endeavors, they brought a vision for the future of the planet and a philosophy to guide it.

Begun as a massive undertaking to revitalize lower Manhattan, Chase Manhattan Bank Chairman David and New York Governor Nelson pushed hard for the project and each tower stood as a symbol of their respective power. As metaphor, the towers were more than just two of the tallest buildings in the world. It might be said they were as important as the two pillars Joachim and Boaz which stood at the entrance to Solomon’s Temple; mystical gates to a Cathedral of wisdom in which all could worship under one religion; the religion of business, Capitalism.

The Rockefellers were no strangers to the power of psychological warfare and its impact on American opinion. During World War II Nelson had headed the U.S. government’s intelligence agency for Latin America, the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA). CIAA’s film division guided the 1942 production of Walt Disney’s Saludos Amigos to promote pro-American sentiment in South America. In 1954 Nelson was appointed as President Eisenhower’s White House special assistant on Cold War tactics and psychological warfare. Nelson Rockefeller played a central role in formulating domestic propaganda programs throughout the 1950s as chairman of the Planning Coordination Group which, in addition to its propaganda work, oversaw all CIA covert operations. His 1956 Special Studies Project directed by Rockefeller protégé Henry Kissinger produced many of the domestic policy recommendations that came to be known as President Kennedy’s New Frontier. His family’s philanthropic support of the arts had been carefully coordinated with the CIA and was both overtly and covertly propagandistic.

As a committed Anglophile, Rockefeller had aided British intelligence during World War II when he rented space in New York’s Rockefeller Center at a steep discount to a number of British propaganda agencies including their secret intelligence service for the Americas, the British Security Coordination (BSC). The BSC’s chief, Sir William Stephenson (Intrepid) set up shop in New York City with the help of some of New York’s wealthiest families with one main objective in mind: Get the United States into the war in Europe on Britain’s behalf.

One key agent in the psychological war for American public opinion was young RAF pilot Roald Dahl who along with James Bond creator Ian Fleming, playwright Noel Coward and Gallup pollster David Ogilvy were given free rein to commit sabotage, political subversion and propagandize “the natives” (Americans) through whatever means possible.

Dahl’s creative fiction earned him praise from the New York Times and publishing contracts from Random House as well as entrée to Hollywood where he would collaborate with Walt and Roy Disney in their studio’s transformation into an arsenal of animation while inspiring numerous imitators.  Dahl would go on to marry a movie star and become a Hollywood icon with perennial successes, most notably “Willie Wonka and the Chocolate Factory.” The cult of intelligence would ultimately become so seamlessly blended into every aspect of publishing, television and film, the CIA would jokingly be referred to as “the Chocolate Factory.” Along with Fleming, Ogilvy and Coward, Dahl would help to get the United States into the war with Germany and craft an enduring Anglo-centric cultural narrative in the public’s mind whose main objective was the promotion of a British agenda for the United States. That agenda would quickly shift from anti-fascist to aggressive Cold War anti-communist (read anti-Russian) as World War II ended, with Britain playing a seminal role in the creation of America’s national security state.

President Harry Truman’s March 12, 1947 proclamation laying out the rationale for the Cold War (Truman Doctrine), fundamentally altered America’s identity by embedding a permanent psychology of fear. But a hidden aspect of this conflict was the slow, grinding corruption that its unreality fostered in America’s leadership. That unreality was finally revealed in the catastrophe of Vietnam.

In a remarkably self-effacing (especially by today’s standards) January 8, 1972 New Yorker article tracing the origins of the devastation caused by Vietnam titled “Reflections: In Thrall To Fear,” Senator J. William Fulbright bemoaned the mental corruption caused by the Truman Doctrine during the 1940s, 50s and 60s, whereby “Our leaders became liberated from the normal rules of evidence and inference when it came to dealing with Communism… The effect of the anti-Communist ideology was to spare us the task of taking cognizance of the specific facts of specific situations. Our ‘faith’ liberated us, like the believers of old, from the requirements of empirical thinking… Like medieval theologians, we had a philosophy that explained everything to us in advance, and everything that did not fit could be readily identified as a fraud or a lie or an illusion.”

What Fulbright’s brilliant but tragic reflections fail to include is that America’s assumptions about the Cold War were never empirical. In fact the assumptions weren’t even necessarily American but had been crafted by America’s Anglo-centric intelligence bureaucracy and rooted in messianic 19^th century British designs for control of the Eurasian landmass. A recent release of classified documents reveals that Britain’s wartime Prime Minister Winston Churchill was so obsessed with Eurasian conquest, he’d envisioned rearming Germany and attacking the Soviet Union right up to the end of World War II in a plan named Operation Unthinkable. Faced with the absurdity of confronting an overwhelmingly superior Soviet force and starting World War III, Churchill’s operation was shelved, but his famous Iron Curtain speech of 1946 would animate the idea while establishing the ideological narrative by which all future U.S./Soviet relations would be defined.   

The inspiration for Churchill’s speech and its warning of the growing Communist threat to “Christian civilization” was the American child of British immigrants, James Burnham. As the godfather of neoconservatism, Burnham would work his way from Bolshevik revolutionary Leon Trotsky in the 1930s, to authoring a book that would forge the foundations of a new kind of planned, centralized society, to the Office of Strategic Services (OSS) during World War II. His much critiqued landmark 1940 The Managerial Revolution would be read and admired by Hitler’s general staff and viewed as the blueprint for George Orwell’s 1984 in which a new class of business executives, technicians, bureaucrats and soldiers would destroy the old capitalist order, crush the working class and seize all of society’s wealth for themselves.

In a 1945 Partisan Review article titled “Lenin’s Heir” Burnham, while still at the OSS, infused his apocalyptic political views with mystical allusions to the Eurasian heartland as “the magnetic core” of Soviet power, comparing it to the mystical “reality of the One of Neo-Platonism,” whose inexorable and unstoppable “emanative progression… descends through the stages of Mind, Soul, and Matter” towards its ultimate destination beyond the Eurasian boundaries and through “Appeasement and Infiltration (England, the United States).”  Burnham was a keen advocate of dirty tricks. He would play an important role in the overthrow of Iran’s Mohammed Mosaddeq and the installation of the Shah. His book The Machiavellians would become a handbook for CIA planners. 

As an “anti-Communist ideology” Burnham’s apocalyptic warnings about the inevitability of Soviet expansion from Eurasia’s magnetic core ring like a medieval theologian’s incantation throughout Churchill’s  “Iron Curtain” speech. George Orwell even makes clear in his 1946 “Second Thoughts on James Burnham” that Burnham’s words read like a mystical invocation and were most likely intended to hypnotize.  

Twenty six years later, Senator Fulbright would realize that only because of the disastrous outcome of Vietnam was there any willingness at all to reexamine the basic assumptions of American postwar policy toward the Soviet Union and what had brought the United States to such a sorry state. The 1972 Strategic Arms Limitation Talks SALT would spring from this realization, as would the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty ABM and eventually SALT II, until in January of 1980 President Jimmy Carter would ask the Senate to delay consideration of the Treaty on the Senate floor because of the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. That treaty would never be passed.

Our involvement in the Afghanistan story began in the summer of 1979 when we began production of a documentary titled Arms Race and the Economy: A Delicate Balance. During the next months numerous experts including economist John Kenneth Galbraith lent their experience to our understanding of the unseen damage that a massive new diversion of tax dollars and investment capital would represent to the civilian economy. Galbraith insisted that accelerated defense spending and renewing the Cold War – as the neoconservative right was demanding at that critical moment – would ultimately destroy the civilian economy. He was convinced that the Cold War had already made America more and more like the Soviet Union, ruled by a military-industrial-academic establishment suspended from reality.

But by the time our program aired that winter, the argument was no longer whether our government should call a halt to the nuclear arms race and reinvest in the civilian economy. The December 27, 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan had rolled back the narrative to 1947, the Truman Doctrine, to Churchill and Burnham’s mystical, medieval enchantment and the psychological warfare campaign necessary to bring it back to life was about to begin.

J. William Fulbright’s 1972 “Reflections: In Thrall To Fear” represented an awakening from the deep hypnotic trance imposed upon Americans by Cold War ideology. The Soviet invasion of Afghanistan brought about its re-emersion, but this time to a deeper and totally detached level of unreality.

With the election of Ronald Reagan in the fall of 1980, the United States not only rejected Fulbright’s concerns for the intellectual dishonesty represented by the continuation of the Cold War, but willfully embraced the fraud, the lie and the illusion as its own and was willing to take it one step further.   

The U.S. had silently, almost imperceptibly crossed through a mirror in 1947 with the creation of a second and covert national-security-government. But few in Washington understood at the time, the Faustian bargain they were signing onto. Now that secret government would take the U.S. on a fairytale journey into a mirrored image of itself from the 1940s, interweaving its own delusion with a remanufactured, two dimensional Hollywood invention named Ronald Reagan as the host. America would never be the same.

As an actor, Reagan had been implanted into America’s subconscious as a hero during the 1940s and his militaristic campaign of Peace through Strength  was sold to Americans as the Reagan revolution. It was in fact a counter-revolution engineered by a reactionary gang of consummate insiders headed by former Research Industry of America employee, OSS veteran and Wall Street lawyer William J. Casey with the intention of restoring America’s militarist Cold War thinking.

As Reagan’s intelligence chief, Casey had key access to the concentric circles of international power necessary to carry off the tectonic shift of wealth from Main Street to Wall Street that would transfer power to an already wealthy globalist elite. As one of OSS chief Wild Bill Donovan’s Knights Templar during World War II, Casey took his “Crusade for Freedom” and a one world religion of Capitalism as creed, and as Director of Central Intelligence was perfectly positioned to put James Burnham’s dirty tricks and Machiavellian philosophy to work in the heartland of Eurasia.

Casey’s passion for the Afghan jihad was messianic. An ultra-conservative Catholic, Casey saw little difference in the antimodernist beliefs of the Wahhabist House of Saud and the anti-enlightenment views of the newly installed Polish Pope, John Paul II. Disguised as a war to liberate Afghanistan from Soviet aggression, Casey’s campaign was intended to infiltrate covert teams beyond Afghanistan into the Soviet Union’s Muslim provinces and provoke an insurrection. Backed by neoconservatives, the Saudis and secretive organizations like the Safari Club, Le Cercle, the Bilderberg Group and the 6I, it would play out in propaganda from Rambo to Charlie Wilson’s War as the greatest American victory of the Cold War.

In reality, Casey’s team would so tear down the wall between fact and fiction, legal and illegal, truth and the lie, it would make 9/11 inevitable.

But if anyone deserves the prize for the culture of triumphalist self-deception which lives on today in the endless war on terror and the Homeland Security State-culture-of-fear, it is James Burnham.  On February 23, 1983 James Burnham was awarded the Presidential Medal of Freedom by Ronald Reagan culminating his fifty years of service as one of the “guiding lights in mankind’s quest for truth.” Burnham’s 1940 prediction that Nazi Germany would win the war had actually been wrong as was his prediction that the Soviet Union would lose. His subsequent revised prediction that the Soviets would win and expand beyond the Eurasian heartland followed only after a Soviet victory appeared obvious in 1944.

In George Orwell’s 1946, “Second Thoughts on James Burnham,” Orwell clinically diagnosed Burnham’s convenient powers of revisionist prophecy as the product of a “mental disease” whose “roots lie partly in cowardice and partly in the worship of power, which is not fully separable from cowardice.”

Ten years after the events of September 11, 2001, thirty two years after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan and sixty four years after the creation of the Cold War, James Burnham lives on as an icon to a deeply corrupted Homeland Security-culture “In Thrall to Fear.” We have no one to blame but ourselves for allowing that culture’s acolytes, their lies and their fabrications to continue to hypnotize us.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by subscribing .

The root cause of what the United States suffers from today, both politically and economically stems from the psychological warfare campaign triggered by the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan.  At that time, Americans responded dutifully if not robotically to the threat as a barrage of propaganda poured from a hoard of foreign policy “experts” claiming vindication for Vietnam while bemoaning America’s military weakness. Zbigniew Brzezinski himself claimed that the Soviet invasion was a vindication of his prediction that the Soviets would be emboldened by a lack of U.S. resolve elsewhere. The shaken president, Jimmy Carter announced a U.S. boycott of the 1980 Moscow Olympics, the creation of a rapid deployment force to the Middle East and a new get tough posture toward the Soviet Union.

On January 2, 1980 the MacNeil Lehrer News Hour presented former U.S. Ambassador Theodore Eliot and Harvard Professor Richard Pipes to speculate on the implications of the invasion. As an unabashed neoconservative ideologue, Pipes should have been considered a controversial choice sitting alongside the thoroughly Eastern establishment Eliot. But on this evening Pipes had been carefully chosen to play the very special role of delegitimizing détente with the Soviet Union while moving the discussion permanently and irretrievably to the neoconservative right.  Paired with Eliot, the dean of American diplomacy and soon to be Secretary General for the United States of a gathering of international elites calling itself, the Bilderberg group, the two were there to send the signal that the ideology of neoconservatism, globalism and the institutions of the American government were now one and the same.

It was a moment that would change the United States in ways that few Americans would immediately understand and many continue to find baffling. Years earlier, Pipes had been chosen to chair a highly controversial operation known as the Team B experiment in competitive analysis.

The decade of the 1970s had presented a series of strategic shocks to the United States. The Watergate scandal and the Arab oil embargo, campus protests, combined with the American military failure in Vietnam had shaken Washington’s own belief in the American narrative. Vietnam had removed the veil from America’s Cold War defense-intellectual elite, revealing their elaborate plans and complex mathematical formulas to be useless as a guide to action. But even before the end of that war in 1975, pressure had been building from a powerful collection of right-wing ideologues to ignore their own complete intellectual failure, wind back the clock and return to an openly militarized Cold War approach to the Soviet Union.

Backed by Gerald Ford’s CIA director George W. Bush, the President’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board (PFIAB) vice chairman, Leo Cherne, and the father of Cold War thinking, Paul Nitze, Team B’s goal was to turn the CIA’s thinking about the Soviet Union on its head.

“The intensity and scope of the current Soviet military effort in peacetime is without parallel in twentieth century history,” they claimed in their top secret 1976 report. The Soviets were preparing for a “third world war” and were comparable only to “Nazi remilitarization of the 1930s.” Given military superiority and the will to use it, they reasoned, at some point in the near future the Soviets would make a strategic move that the United States would be militarily unable to stop.

But it was in their claim that the Soviets would first “intimidate smaller powers . . . adjacent to the USSR . . . where pro-Soviet forces have an opportunity to seize power but are unable to do so without military help,” that the Team B assessment attained a level of prophecy.

If anything could be described as a psychological warfare operation come unhinged, it was the Team B experiment. Team B effectively exposed the government’s own process of rational analysis to an irrational exercise in personalized, politicized, ethnic and faith-based psychological warfare. And it succeeded.

By 1979, the Team B and its acolytes Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Zalmay Khalilzad had so managed to overlay their alternate reality onto the mind of government that when the invasion of Afghanistan took place in 1979 their fantasy appeared to be as real and foreordained as it was intended to be.

Richard Pipes made clear in that January 2, 1980 broadcast that Afghanistan was “a superb springboard from which to launch offensives both into the Indian subcontinent and into Iran and the Iranian Gulf….” And then invoked the magic of World War II by stating that never before had the Soviets “felt bold enough… to engage in a direct blitzkrieg. So if they get away with it in Afghanistan, there’ll not only be great danger for our whole Middle eastern position but we will have encouraged them to engage in actions of this sort in other parts of the world, including, for example, Southeastern Europe or possibly even Western Europe.”

A “direct blitzkrieg” aimed at the Middle East, India, Southeastern and even Western Europe? Just like the phantom threat posed by Saddam Hussein in 2003 and brought forward by the very same people, the idea that the Soviets might cut off a vital oil supply was all that was needed to capture public opinion. That spring CBS News anchor Dan Rather followed up with a coast to coast broadcast reinforcing the company line: the American people were asleep to Soviet designs and had better start supporting the Mujahideen “freedom fighters” before it was too late. 

The major media had been priming the pump for months prior to the invasion citing Brzezinski and the importance of the “arc of crisis,” and predicting that the Soviet Union would be driven toward the Persian Gulf within the decade due to intelligence reports that it was “running short of the oil it needs to fuel an expanding economy.” Never mind that the Soviet economy was actually contracting at that point and the CIA’s secret 14-page memo titled “The Impending Soviet Oil Crisis,” was pure hokum.

Brzezinski and his Team B allies wanted the Soviets in Afghanistan as part of a long standing plan for the conquest of Eurasia and the psychological warfare campaign to convince Americans of the Soviets’ malevolent desires for world domination was already gearing up to make it reality.

International Rescue Committee Chairman Leo Cherne was well practiced in the arts of such deception. As of 1978, the year of the Marxist coup in Afghanistan the IRC was already at work stating in their Annual Report that they were actively engaged in bringing Afghan refugees to Europe and the United States following “The takeover of Afghanistan by dictatorial forces sympathetic to the Soviet Union…” The IRC’s Annual Report that year featured a photograph of Cherne’s old protégé at the Research Institute of America, board member William J. Casey while conducting a tour of Southeast Asia. Casey would serve as Chairman of the Executive Committee the next year before running Ronald Reagan’s 1980 election campaign and shortly thereafter becoming his CIA director.

The IRC in cooperation with the CIA had virtually created the elaborate psychological warfare mechanism that sold the U.S. military buildup in Vietnam to the American public. By 1975 their campaign of black lies had been exposed as a dangerous fraud. But in faraway Afghanistan, those mistakes would be forgotten with the help of the Europeans and a covert globalist agenda. 

It was obvious to us in 1980 that the Soviet invasion was not what it seemed and even more obvious that the Western response to it was not what it should have been. 1979 was a critical moment in American history. Vietnam had created huge problems for the post World War II infrastructure and economy. Huge debt and a military resurgence was the last thing the U.S. needed. But when Theodore Eliot showed up at a preview of our first-person 1981 Afghan documentary on life behind Soviet lines and demanded to know who in the U.S. government had “authorized” our project, we realized we had penetrated a psychological warfare campaign that was steeped in the irrational.  

Like clockwork, the 1979 Soviet invasion would open a back door for a small band of globalists to bleed, loot and ultimately disassemble the Soviet Union, just the way the very same people would use 9/11 to go through the front door to bleed, loot and disassemble the United States.

Join us next for Willie Wonka and the National Security State as the U.S. resumes a holy war begun in the 19^th century through a syncretistic cult-like British foreign policy known as Mystical Imperialism.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

The state’s use of psychological warfare to bend the population to war is as old, if not older than the existence of states themselves. But it was perhaps Nazi Reichsmarschall Hermann Goering whose statement while on trial at Nuremberg best summed up the cynical simplicity of the logic.

“Of course people don’t want war. But after all, it’s the leaders of the country who determine the policy and it’s always a simple matter to drag the people along whether it’s a democracy, a fascist dictatorship, or a parliament, or a communist dictatorship. Voice or no voice, the people can always be brought to the bidding of the leaders, that is easy. All you have to do is tell them they are being attacked, and denounce the pacifists for lack of patriotism and exposing the country to greater danger.”

Psychological warfare in the form of propaganda comes in all shapes and sizes as well as shades of black, grey or white.  America’s coordinated use of psychological warfare began in earnest during World War II and ever since has grown and expanded into public relations, advertising, cinema, radio and television, electronic video games and now social media. Its pro-war boosterism extends over sports, religion, education, news and entertainment (and of course the military) to form a seamless electronic cocoon-like web. It is employed on an ever growing list of those deemed as enemies of America as well as on a confused and agitated American public – whose corporate news networks frame and manage an increasingly shallow narrative while engaging in a kind of Orwellian Kabuki Theatre of fairness and balance.

Americans were heavily propagandized to support a U.S. entry into World War II and again heavily propagandized to accept the morality of deploying the atomic bomb to end it, despite dissent from within the scientific community. Even Mickey Mouse was conscripted for America’s total war effort along with the minds of America’s youth. Following the war Americans were heavily propagandized to accept the Cold War, the need for maintaining a permanent army, navy and air force as well as the buildup of a nuclear weapons arsenal.

 Since 9/11 Americans have been bathed in psychological warfare on Islamic terrorism despite the fact that only a handful of incidents in the West can be attributed to radical Islamists. What is generally not appreciated by America’s leadership about this kind of prolonged use of propaganda on the American public is that it exposes the rationale for the longest war in American history in Afghanistan as flimsy and unconvincing and completely sidesteps the outright lies and deceptions used to justify the 2003 invasion and occupation of Iraq.

The origins of Washington’s war in Afghanistan have always been strategic, long term and particularly black, obscured throughout the Cold War by a narrative adapted from Britain’s 19^th century colonial expansion.

Given little priority during the U.S.’s long involvement in Vietnam in the 1950s and 60s, America’s psychological warfare campaign shifted its attention to Central Asia in 1973 when Afghanistan’s king was overthrown by his brother in law and cousin Mohammed Daoud with the help of the Parcham faction of the Marxist/Leninist People’s Democratic Party of Afghanistan (PDPA). The role of the Communist party meant so little to the U.S. media at the time it remained invisible in both Time and Newsweek’s published reports of the coup. But to U.S. ambassador Robert G. Neumann, the presence of the PDPA meant that a “limited Great Game” with the Soviet Union was now back in play.

A coordinated campaign of pressure from U.S.-backed Pakistan and Iran soon ousted Daoud’s Marxist partner while the Shah’s dreaded spy agency SAVAK moved in to help Daoud clean house of leftists. The Shah even readied a military force to invade should Daoud waver in his newfound anti-Communist zeal. But by 1978 a new day for Iran and Afghanistan was about to dawn.  

Enter Hafizullah Amin. Before, during and after World War II the U.S. had created a number of psychological warfare organizations designed to compete with the political propaganda of Nazi Germany and the Soviet Union.  Integrated closely into the CIA’s intelligence and psychological warfare units after the war, organizations like Leo Cherne’s International Rescue Committee (IRC) and according to the CIA’s own website, the Congress for Cultural Freedom “helped to solidify CIA’s emerging strategy of promoting the non-Communist left–the strategy that would soon become the theoretical foundation of the Agency’s political operations against Communism over the next two decades.”

In constant competition with the KGB, the CIA was also known to target foreign students destined to hold high rank in their home countries.  Handpicked by U.S. administrators to participate in a UNESCO/Columbia University program, Amin was sent to New York in 1957. He later completed a master’s degree at Columbia—coincidentally at a time when future National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski was gaining prominence as a professor there.

Amin claimed to have become radicalized at the University of Wisconsin in 1958. He also claimed to have become a Marxist that summer but would conceal his emergence as a leader in the Kalq faction of the PDPA until much later. Despite being a Marxist, Amin was again chosen in 1962 by the Americans to attend Columbia, this time as a doctoral candidate and rose quickly to become the president of the Afghan Student Association. A disclosure in Ramparts magazine in 1967 would reveal the CIA’s sponsorship of that same Afghan Student Association during that time. Following his return Amin rose rapidly in Afghan politics and by 1978 was positioned to play a pivotal role in another Palace coup, this time of Prince Mohammed Daoud himself.

1978 was a pivotal year in the foreign policy of the United States as President Jimmy Carter’s National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski made steady inroads into Secretary of State Cyrus Vance’s power. By that year he had persuaded Carter to transfer jurisdiction over the CIA from the Inter-Agency Policy Review Committee, (headed by the secretary of state) to the National Security Council’s Special Coordinating Committee which he chaired. This shift gave Brzezinski control over covert operations in Afghanistan. It also gave him control of the psychological warfare campaign necessary to make those operations work both at home and abroad.

Hafizullah Amin played the perfect foil to Brzezinski’s propaganda war which, regardless of the lack of evidence, painted the PDPA takeover in Kabul as a clear example of the growing dangers of Soviet expansionism and their pursuit of dominance in the Persian Gulf. Throughout 1978 and into 1979 Amin’s actions dovetailed perfectly into the expanding psychological warfare campaign with Brzezinski blaming Amin’s February 1979 assassination of American Ambassador Adolph Dubs, on the Soviets.

Transcripts from Politburo meetings in Moscow from March 1979 show a Soviet leadership confounded as the events unfolded, referring to conversations with Amin as looking “like a detective novel.” Had the operation been scripted in advance by the CIA to confuse Moscow, it was working brilliantly.

The subsequent, December 1979 Soviet invasion of Afghanistan ended détente, renewed the Cold War and opened a U.S. relationship with Communist China that could not have been imagined at the time. It established a new narrative of an expanding Evil Empire threatening America’s vital interests in the Persian Gulf and would redefine U.S. objectives along neoconservative lines. These lines were laid out within days of the Soviet invasion by former U.S. Ambassador to Afghanistan Theodore Eliot and Harvard Professor Richard Pipes in a MacNeil Lehrer broadcast on January 2, 1980.

But it wasn’t until we probed this new narrative by going to Afghanistan ourselves in 1981 and were challenged personally in a public forum for doing so by Ambassador Eliot, that we realized there was much more to Ambassador Eliot and his narrative than met the eye.

*Join us next as we look at the strange team behind the psychological warfare campaign that brought the United States into Afghanistan and kept it there and how that campaign has come home to haunt America in a post 9/11 world.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould are the authors of Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story and Crossing Zero The AfPak War at the Turning Point of American Empire Visit their website here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Anyhow, today I am going to talk about another very confusing label-adjective that is being used too often, and most often too broadly, confusedly and inaccurately. The fashionable adjective is ‘progressive;’ being progressive. What does it really mean to be progressive? Once upon a time I was sure I knew what it meant. Then came a time when I was not sure what it was. And now, I don’t have a clue what it means to be a progressive. I’ll go even further and say, if it means what many people claim it does, and use it as, then, I consider it an adjective far from flattery.

Sure. You can look it up in any dictionary and give progressive a common definition. Progressive: Favoring or advocating change, improvement, or reform; employing or advocating more enlightened ideas… Or find the popular definition of progressivism as a political attitude favoring or advocating changes or reform through governmental action. If you were to stop here, stay within this once-upon-a-time definition and usage frame, and then call me a progressive, I’d nod and say ‘thank you.’ However life is never that simple. And in this case the overly popular progressive does not mean what it used to mean, and is not used as it once was.

Allow me to put it in perspective. I am going to use real-life context and experiences; the real life being my life, and the experiences coming directly from me and my surroundings:

A few months ago I was having lunch with a good friend whom I’ve known for over 20 years. He has university degrees and a high-level position in an IT related company. I was telling him how happy I’d been without a TV and garbage propaganda sold as news for over the past six years. He agreed and said: “I try to limit myself and only watch progressive news delivered by real progressive reporters. Most of the time I tune in to the Daily Show- Jon Stewart.” I asked: “you mean for fun and satire?’ He said: ‘Not really. For a progressive take on major news.’

My friend used the word ‘progressive’ three times in describing himself and his choice for ‘news.’ I have heard Jon Stewart being described as a real progressive reporter, and a solid source for real news for some progressives more than a few times. Let’s move to another experience-context:

One of the mothers in my daughter’s play group is a teacher who considers herself politically savvy and an activist; that is, in a progressive way. A few weeks ago we were casually chatting about activism and alternative news sites for activism. She said: ‘I don’t like the mainstream. I go to a few progressive sites to get my real news and real take on political issues.’ I asked, ‘Which progressive site tops your list?’ And she replied: ‘Of course Huffington Post!’

To make a long story short on that particular experience: my daughter’s friend’s progressive mother considers Madame Huffington the mother of all progressives. And next:

A few days ago a former colleague stopped by for a cup of coffee. We started talking about the awfulness of our plentiful wars. I took the opportunity and asked him whether he regretted his Obama vote. He responded: ‘Of course not. That was a progressive thing to do. Even with all these wars and stuff we are better off. We proved to the world that yes we can elect a black man as our president, and that is a sign of a progressive nation. Electing Obama as a president is a win for all of us progressives; no matter what…’

Suffice it to say, my progressive friend is determined to vote progressive again in order to make a progressive statement to the rest of the world. He will vote a progressive vote; he will vote Obama.

I know more than a few activists who consider themselves progressive, and define their progressive activism as actively chatting at DailyKos on a daily basis. I also know progressive antiwar activists who consider our war in Libya a progressive intervention, not war. I know a few progressives who consider raising the debt ceiling while increasing government expenditures as we increase all taxes real progress…

[By the way if you are worried about my personal neighbors, friends and former colleagues who were exhibited in the examples above (albeit without their personal information) getting ticked off by what I am saying here, please don’t. They consider this site far from being progressive, thus never visit here.]

If Jon Stewart is a real progressive reporter delivering progressive news; if Arianna Huffington and her AOL-owned site is the mother of all progressive websites; if Obama is a progressive president and electing him a progressive thing to do; if our new wars can be written off as progressive interventions …Then, if you call me a progressive I’ll consider it a cuss word; a real insult!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

I simply don’t get it! Actually, I haven’t been ‘getting it’ for a while. Maybe you can help me get it; will you? Here is the quandary:
There are several major websites out there with quite a following. These websites advertise themselves as the ‘alternative.’ That is, the alternative to the mainstream media. They market themselves as ‘raw’ news and commentary sites. That is, the ‘real & raw’ news versus the processed, filtered, span bull sh.. sold to the public as ‘news.’ So, they say all that, right? Well, that was the straight forward and easy part. Here is where the quandary begins:

I have been visiting these ‘alternative & raw’ news and analyses sites for a year or two. I go to these sites and check out every single headline-title boldly displayed on their homepage. When I click and check out these titles-headlines-links I end up finding myself standing right in the middle of the mainstream media news outlets: New York Times, Washington Post, MSNBC, LA Times, ABC …And I go ‘ what the he..’. I check to see whether I made a mistake, took a wrong turn along the way, that is from the moment I entered these ‘alternative’ sites and clicked on their supposed ‘alternative’ headlines links, and frankly, I can’t see how I (or anyone) could have lost my way and ended up right in the bosom of the very mainstream media I’ve been trying to avoid. I then turn around, all disgusted, and quickly leave the very mainstream sites I have come to despise, thinking; heck I ended up adding one more hit to their traffic stats, and most likely contributed a penny or two to their corporate advertisers. Are you still with me? I kinda get it up to this point, and this is where I get stuck:

I, and many others like me, go to these ‘alternative & raw’ news and information sites because I know not to trust and support the corporate-owned and government-controlled mainstream news sites. But then, when I go to these ‘alternative & raw’ sites and check out their bold headlines, I am either taken directly to those same mainstream sites I try so hard to avoid, or, I am given the same propaganda’s summarized version with an audacious note indicating the source as the same evil mainstream media outlet. If this trend had applied only to …let’s say 25% of their content, headlines, then, I’d say ‘okay; tons of good for a little evil-bad.’ However, this trend applies to more than 75% of these major ‘alternative & raw’ news sites. Don’t take my word for it; go check and compile your statistics/numbers. Then why the he.. do I bother checking out these ‘alternative & raw’ sites? Why the he.. do I expose myself to the same propaganda only delivered via a third party?

And while we are at it: don’t these ‘alternative & raw’ news sites actually participate in disseminating the establishment-mainstream propaganda?  Aren’t they increasing the visitors traffic thus the corporate advertiser revenue for these establishment-mainstream propaganda outlets? Then, when it comes down to it, aren’t these ‘alternative & raw’ outlets extensions of and pimps for the establishment-mainstream media?

Then why the he.. would anyone bother visiting these quasi ‘alternative & raw’ news sites? I don’t get it. Do you? Any food for thought?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Welcome. This is our EyeOpener Video Report by James Corbett for BoilingFrogsPost.com :

“Despite the faux-shock with which the mainstream media seems to be “discovering” the extent of Murdoch’s political clout, the facts about News Corporation’s ownership of a bewildering number of media outlets around the world has been a matter of public record for some time. Nor should the idea that Murdoch uses his political influence to shape public policy come as a surprise to anyone who has followed the admissions from his broadcasting networks and from Murdoch himself that this is precisely what he has been attempting to do.”

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Mainstream media is up in arms over the latest revelations in the ever-growing Murdoch scandal. In a firestorm of outrage, reporters are screaming at the top of their lungs about stunning privacy violations. Members of Congress passionately demand that everyone responsible be investigated and prosecuted. In his letter to FBI Director Mueller, Rep. Peter King, R-N.Y., who chairs the House Homeland Security Committee, had cited reports that News of the World journalists “attempted to obtain phone records of victims of the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11 through bribery and unauthorized wiretapping.”

He also cited reports that the reporters had solicited a New York police officer “to gain access to the content of private phone records” of the 9/11 victims. The NYPD does not intend to conduct an investigation into these shocking allegations. They’re leaving it up to the federal authorities, even though accusations of bribery against one of its own would certainly be within the police department’s purview. Ironically, the FBI has been aware of News Corp’s criminal misconduct for years, but elected not to pursue it until now.

We could only wish that our politicians, law enforcement and the mainstream media were eager to act when our own government engages in the same abuses against law-abiding citizens. Anyone responsible for conducting warrantless surveillance, wiretapping and hacking should be held accountable. The Department of Justice announced that it does not intend to prosecute any government officials responsible for unlawful acts committed under the guise of a “war on terror”. Instead, whistleblowers who exposed the very unlawful acts in question are the ones being prosecuted.

In the mean time, the Murdoch firestorm continues to spread high and wide, engulfing mainstream media’s power structure in its wake. Implications of this case go far beyond the unsavory tabloid tactics employed by the international media empire. It will mar and negatively alter the image of journalism, politics and law enforcement. This case exposed the corruption and media manipulation on a mind-boggling scale that involves 9/11 victims, politicians, celebrities, the royal family, police corruption, murdered children and victims of the 2005 London subway bombings. Murdoch tried to downplay the magnitude of this fiasco by telling his own publication, the Wall Street Journal, that his executives had made only “minor mistakes.” These peccadilloes went far beyond digging through garbage bins. They reportedly included unauthorized wiretapping, bribing the police to gain law enforcement access to confidential records (including medical and financial files of prominent politicians) and hacking.

While it’s only now exploding on such a massive scale in the worldwide media, the Murdoch case is actually quite old. News Corp. paid out more than 1 million pounds ($1.6 million) to settle lawsuits that accused their journalists of using information obtained by illegally hacking into mobile phones of public figures, politicians, sports stars and entertainers, as well as gaining unlawful access to tax records, social security files, bank statements and itemized phone bills. According to the Guardian, Murdoch’s newspapers entered into confidential out-of-court settlement agreements with respect to three such cases, gagging their victims in the process.

During his Parliament testimony, Murdoch repeatedly slapped the table with his hand and did his best to appear indignant. He touted the number of his employees, made excuses for not knowing that they were breaking the law and denied having any responsibility whatsoever as the head of the company. These denials ring hollow, since Murdoch had to be aware of the lawsuits and investigations going on against his company for several years. The News of the World entered into settlement agreements, paid out huge amounts to its victims, was confronted with the evidence of unlawful activities by its reporters and took legal action to silence their targets. While Murdoch refuses to accept any responsibility, he claims to be the best person to stay in charge and “clean this up”. Why, then, didn’t he clean it up years earlier?

In 2008, when the high court ordered the News of the World to pay damages to one of its victims, the paper published the following message: “It is not for the powerful and the influential to run to the courts to gag newspapers from publishing stories that are TRUE…This is all about the public’s right to know.” At the same time, company’s lawyers were persuading the courts to seal the files containing evidence of their illegal actions and paying off its targets to ensure their silence.

In doing so, they prevented the public from knowing anything about criminal behavior by journalists on its payroll. Saying the right thing and doing the right thing is not quite the same.

Perhaps one of the most important aspects of the Murdoch downfall is the elaborate cover-up that went on for years, including media blackouts, suppression of relevant information through avoidance and rampant police corruption. Free press turned out to be Scott-free, operating under the misapprehension that they are above the law. Their arrogance was bought with bribes, as well as close-knit connections to law enforcement, prominent politicians and the Saudi shadow government.

Since August 2006, the evidence of wrongdoing was gathering dust at Scotland Yard, including 11,000 pages of handwritten notes. They were filled with explosive revelations, listing nearly 4000 celebrities, politicians, sports players, police officials and crime victims whose phones may have been hacked by News of the World. Interestingly enough, senior police officials claim that no one bothered to process and analyze the damning paperwork, because they were too busy with counterterrorism investigations. In reality, the police have become so intertwined with the tabloid that they had a common agenda of shutting down any investigations into their own wrongdoing.

Rebekah Brooks, former chief executive of News International, who previously served as the editor of the News of the World, appeared before the Commons media committee in 2003 and testified that her newspaper paid police for stories. She later retracted that statement and claimed that she was referring to the industry in general.

Members of Parliament are apoplectic over a ”revolving door” between the police and News International. Company executives enjoyed close social ties to Scotland Yard’s top officials. Since the beginning of the hacking scandal in 2006, Police Commissioner Paul Stephenson shared meals with company executives and editors 18 times. Assistant Commissioner John Yates also regularly dined with editors from News International. Andy Hayman, who was running the hacking investigation as the chief of the counterterrorism unit, socialized with News International personnel as well. During the same time frame, senior police officials assured Parliament, the news media and the public that there was no evidence of widespread hacking by the news agency in question. Hayman left the Metropolitan Police, turning in his badge for a pen, in December 2007. He was hired to write a column for The Times of London, a News International paper. Apparently, loyalty to the Murdoch Empire is richly rewarded.

Faced with worldwide scrutiny, police later admitted that they botched up the case and acknowledged being inappropriately cozy with those they were obligated to investigate. Stephenson resigned because of his close ties to Neil Wallis, a former News of the World editor involved in the phone hacking and police bribery scandal. Stephenson hired Neil Wallis as his secret PR advisor, from whom he accepted lavish offerings.

Within 24 hours of Stephenson’s resignation, his deputy, John Yates, followed suit. Yates was set to be suspended because of his links with Wallis and his refusal to reopen the case into phone-hacking on two separate occasions. While he was working for the police on the hacking case, Wallis was reporting back to News International. He had also informed Murdoch’s former aide Rebekah Brooks about The New York Times’ reporting on the matter.

Brooks is one of ten participants arrested so far on suspicion of conspiring to intercept communications and corruption. During her latest appointment with the police, she was arrested and promptly bailed out. Brooks is known to have many friends in high places. Those who know her describe Rebekah as a networker extraordinaire. “She buttered up a lot of middle-aged men, and she’s good at that. They probably each thought they were a special adviser and confidant. She was very good at keeping those old warhorses well and truly on her side,” said one former co-worker.

British Prime Minister David Cameron reportedly had dozens of interactions with News International executives and editors, including Rebekah Brooks. She defiantly continued to socialize with political figures amidst the furore over the Prime Minister’s ties to the Murdoch Empire. Brooks managed to keep her job even as the 168-year-old News of the World was shut down, displacing 200 other journalists. Dubbed Murdoch’s “fifth daughter“, Brooks’s closeness to the octogenarian magnate was apparent when Murdoch was asked what his priority was in the current crisis. He pointed to Brooks and said: “This one.”

Murdoch initially insisted that Brooks must not resign, but caved in to the pressure from News Corp.’s second biggest shareholder, Saudi billionaire, Prince Al-Waleed bin Talal. His slice of the pie is topped only by the holdings of Rupert Murdoch himself. As soon as Alwaleed called for the resignation of Brooks, Murdoch and Cameron concurred. In addition to appeasing the richest man of the Arab world and a longstanding Murdoch ally, these public statements appear to be an attempt to distance themselves from the frenzy prompted by the sensational allegations.

Alwaleed has financial links to the “Ground Zero Mosque”, having donated hundreds of thousands of dollars to support the building of a Muslim community center and mosque near Ground Zero in Manhattan. He was quoted asserting that Arab countries can influence U.S. decision-making “if they unite through economic interests, not political…We have to be logical and understand that the U.S. administration is subject to U.S. public opinion…And to bring the decision-maker on your side, you not only have to be active inside the U.S. Congress or the administration, but also inside U.S. society.”

Alwaleed has bragged that it only took a phone call to ensure that the Fox News Channel coverage of Muslims rioting in France not be described as “Muslim”. Money buys all kinds of undue influence over American and British mainstream media. Is anyone still surprised that there is virtually no open discussion as to the issues of Saudi influence in the western media and politics, as well as Saudi links to Al Qaeda and 9/11?

The Murdoch scandal took another dark turn, as the News of the World whistleblower, reporter Sean Hoare, was found dead at his home on July 18, 2011. Just one week before his demise he told the Guardian that “there’s more to come, this is not going to go away.” He repeatedly expressed the hope that the hacking scandal would lead to journalism in general being cleaned up, stating that as his reason for blowing the whistle. Hoare said, “I want to right a wrong, lift the lid on it, the whole culture. I know, we all know, that the hacking and other stuff is endemic. Because there is so much intimidation.” He emphasized that he was not making any money from telling his story.

Sean Hoare recently told the New York Times that reporters at the News of the World were given access to police technology to locate people using their mobile phone signals, in exchange for bribes to police officers. He explained that journalists were able to pinpoint the coordinates of their targets through the use of “pinging” by measuring the distance between a cell phone and a number of phone masts to determine the location of a person they were following.

After Hoare was found dead, there was a notable delay in the arrival of forensics officers at the scene. His death is currently being treated as “unexplained”, but police commented that they are not considering it “suspicious”.

To deal with the public scrutiny, Murdoch hired Steven Rubenstein, a PR guru, whose clients also include Robert De Niro, David Letterman, Paramount Pictures and its head, Brad Grey. Murdoch was also briefed by Dan Tench, one of the UK’s leading entertainment lawyers. Michael Wolff, Murdoch’s biographer, said the head of the media empire is “awful at this sort of stuff. He is pretty inarticulate, mumbles all the time and is incredibly defensive… that is the reason that when he does do interviews they tend to be to his own papers.”

The firestorm already crossed the ocean, as Les Hinton, CEO of the Murdoch-owned Dow Jones and publisher of the Wall Street Journal, resigned. Hinton has worked for Murdoch’s News Corp. for 52 years and headed Murdoch’s British newspaper arm while the hacking and corruption took place. In 2009, Hinton testified to a Parliamentary Committee that phone hacking was an isolated incident involving solely one jailed reporter. Scotland Yard assigned a new team to the hacking allegations only after The New York Times published an article raising questions about the mishandling of the case.

The police are just now starting to notify nearly 4000 targets in the staggering scandal. More arrests are looming on the horizon, as the Metropolitan Police itself is the subject of a judicial inquiry into its handling of this case, as well as the allegations of bribes received by police officials in exchange for supplying confidential information to reporters.

Why didn’t anyone stop the corruption? The Murdoch Empire simply seemed too big to fail, too massive to expose. News International Limited owns the Sunday Times of London, the Times of London, the British tabloid The Sun and newspapers such as the News Limited in Australia and all over the world. It’s a subsidiary of News Corp, a publicly traded American company, whose U.S. holdings include the Wall Street Journal, Fox Broadcasting Co. network, Fox Entertainment Group, New York Post, the 20th Century Fox movie studio, HarperCollins Publishing and two dozen local television stations.

Authorities were looking the other way while the media monopoly continued to grow. The Justice Department that was so eager to pursue a sweeping antitrust suit against Microsoft was not the least bit concerned with the worldwide reach of the Murdoch tentacles. During the last two decades, the number of corporations controlling most of America’s mainstream media outlets, book publishers and movie companies has dwindled from 50 to only 5.

Corporate news media skillfully creates an impression of being free, independent and objective. In reality, the mainstream is quite crafty at pursuing certain stories and blackballing the matters it elects to suppress. Unpopular topics are disposed of by omission, as the media moguls have perfected the art of avoidance. For example, the tragic demise of a child receives mind-numbing amounts of tedious coverage, pushing the populace to disregard multiple murders happening because of misguided wars. Stories that are truly sensational are being avoided or purposely downplayed, while the pieces that pose no threat to the establishment are unduly sensationalized.

The press tiptoes around the minefield of reports dealing with national security shortcomings, which are amongst the least likely topics to receive substantial media exposure. If suppressed stories receive coverage in the so-called “alternative media,” the mainstream reluctantly jumps on the bandwagon. They do so only to dismantle and discredit any politically inconvenient exposé that makes it past the silent treatment stage. The government gets exonerated for their unlawful activities under the guise of “the war on terror,” greedy corporations are defended as “job creators” and corrupt management is favored over “disgruntled” employees with an “axe to grind”.

When so few serve as the opinion-makers for so many, there is no true freedom of the media and no sincere representation of diverse points of view.

The mainstream loathes the alternative media’s use of the Internet, since it defies their blatant media manipulation – but they have a plan for dealing with any threats to their dominance. Meet the Protect IP Act or PIPA (Preventing Real Online Threats to Economic Creativity and Theft of Intellectual Property Act of 2011, also known as United States Senate Bill S.968). Senator Wyden placed a hold on this deceptive bill, noting that overreaching legislation poses a significant threat to Internet commerce, innovation and free speech.

The bill seeks to give control of the Internet to government agencies and corporations by allowing them to blacklist and deny public access to “rogue” websites, especially those registered outside the United States. It would give the United States Department of Justice the power to “expeditiously” make the target website invisible. It would also include the removal of hyperlinks to such websites from search engines and other sites linking to content.

The bill was criticized for not being specific about what constitutes an “infringing” web site and for providing sweeping new powers for removing Internet content without any notification to the alleged offenders. Similar legislation was previously introduced under the name of Combating Online Infringements and Counterfeits Act (COICA), which failed to pass in 2010 and was re-written under the new heading.  

PIPA is supported by government associations, unions, corporations and trade associations. It is opposed by individuals, consumer rights groups such as the Electronic Frontier Foundation as well as Google, Yahoo!, eBay, American Express, Reporters Without Borders and Human Rights Watch.  

Even without this legislation websites are already being seized by Immigrations and Customs Enforcement (ICE), a division of the Department of Homeland Security (DHS). ICE’s stated primary mission is “to protect national security, public safety and the integrity of our borders”. Instead, between 2008 and 2011, in the course of its operation “In Our Sites” ICE conducted 2,889 website investigations, devoting 834,360.00 hours to policing the Internet. This is a harbinger of bad things to come.

In the agency’s official presentation to the U.S. Chamber of Commerce’s Coalition Against Counterfeiting and Piracy (CACP), belligerent ICE bragged that it was “Kicking ass and seizing websites – While you were eating your turkey.” Terrorists must have been shaking in their boots reading about the Department of Homeland Security’s priorities. At the same time, the DHS is not the least bit concerned with Saudi involvement in continuing to fund terrorist activities, while they freely operate in the U.S. and abroad, exercising unprecedented control over our mainstream media.

Conflicts of interest that influence media and politics are prevalent on both sides of the shark-infested pond. Tony Blair attempted to downplay the Murdoch scandal by stating that he was surprised by the amount of attention it was receiving. According to Blair, such activities were business as usual for any newspaper and he learned to just “live with it”.

Surely that couldn’t possibly have anything to do with Blair’s close relationship with Murdoch, widespread beliefs that Murdoch was secretly functioning as the hidden member of Tony Blair’s cabinet, the fact that Blair aided Murdoch in overcoming other investigations and the fact that Blair was promised a senior role in his News Corporation (which may no longer seem as such a tempting proposition). Blair is also well known for doing his best to protect the interests of his powerful Saudi friends and alliances, so his efforts to downplay the Murdoch debacle might serve a dual purpose.

Apparently, cartoonish plans of world domination exist not only in “Austin Powers” movies, but also in real life.

Now Rupert Murdoch is taking out ads to say “We are sorry.” I bet everyone responsible for the News of the World disaster is sorry – sorry they got caught. Whether justice prevails at the end of the day remains to be seen. At the very least, Murdoch should find out how his victims felt when their privacy was stolen by his unscrupulous henchmen. Unlike their unsuspecting targets, the Murdoch Empire actually deserves such exposure to let the world see that the Emperor has no clothes.    

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

 I said I was not going to waste time writing about the Ahmed Wali Karzai assassination story and let the stenographers in our media spread the preapproved nonsense. I wrote my piece and provided you with my own humble two cents, and I was ready to move on:

…on the other hand, once things sour, when those liabilities begin to surpass the asset and the profits, you’ll see the media rush and begin swarming around the no-longer-a-favorite Kingpin. Then comes a short period of silence, and after that Bam: You have an assassinated, murdered, suicide-d, or disappeared Old Kingpin case. Alas; no surprise there since this is how these Kingpins ultimately meet their end- this one ‘supposedly’ by the currently fashionable enemy: the Taliban. I promise you won’t be hearing a single word about this in a few days and forever-The Langley Way.

            …

The entire scenario of a Taliban-Turned confidante bodyguard didn’t sit well with me; way too Langley. When you get a chance read a bit about the assassination of Vietnam’s Diem Brothers, and then you’ll understand what I mean when I say ‘Too Langley.’

Anyhow, this morning I read the following headline: Bodyguard Who Killed Karzai’s Brother Was Trusted CIA Contact :

The bodyguard who assassinated President Hamid Karzai’s brother had been working closely with US Special Forces and the CIA …

Everything made sense up to this point, but then came the following sentences:

…before he was recruited by the Taliban, raising fears over the Islamist movement’s increasingly sophisticated intelligence apparatus which has managed to threaten the inner circles of power in Afghanistan.

…

Utter nonsense; that is, if you start adding 2 and 2 and another 2, and then check the result against the one presented to you by the media. Let’s add up a few twos here:

-We know that Ahmed Wali Karzai was a CIA operative and trusted asset for years.

-We know that the CIA relationship- aka working arrangement soured with Ahmed Wali Karzai around 2008, so he was outed by Langley.

-We know that Ahmed Wali Karzai had a pretty good relationship with a certain group of Taliban figure-heads and was pro dialogue with the Taliban.

-We know that Ahmed Karzai’s bodyguard, Sardar Mohammad, spent years as a CIA trusted asset and US ally.

-We know that Karzai’s Bodyguard was a well-know Taliban Foe and played an important role as a snitch reporting on Taliban and helping with their arrest.

Here is what the above twos add up to:

The known Taliban Foe CIA Asset assassinates former CIA Asset-Operative whose relationship with the CIA had soured, and who had relationships and dialogue with certain Taliban figureheads.

And here is the add up by the media:

The bodyguard turned out of the blue into a Taliban and assassinated former US operative who turned out to be a drug kingpin Ahmed Wali Karzai.

Now it is your turn. Please go ahead and do the math.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

James Bamford joins us to discuss the case of NSA whistleblower Thomas Drake, the government’s overreach in bringing espionage charges against him, and the Obama Administration’s unprecedented level of retaliation against government whistleblowers. He discusses the Obama Administration’s shift from military wars to covert-secret wars, the increased use of the CIA as a war branch, and Obama’s violation of the Presidential War Powers Act. Mr. Bamford talks about the CIA operations in Yemen and the use of cluster bombs there as early as December 2009, the implications of WikiLeaks, the absurdity of Obama’s Nobel Peace Award and his recently given Transparency Award, the ineffectiveness and uselessness of NSA in monitoring Osama Bin-Laden’s activities, the absence of real coverage and analyses in the US Mainstream Media, and more!

James Bamford is one of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues. His books include “The Puzzle Palace,” “Body of Secrets,” “A Pretext for War: 9/11, Iraq and the Abuse of America’s Intelligence Agencies,” and most recently “ The Shadow Factory”. Mr. Bamford coproduced NOVA’s “The Spy Factory”, which was based on his latest book. He has written for many magazines, including investigative cover stories for The New York Times Magazine, The Washington Post Magazine and The Los Angeles Times Magazine, and is a contributing writer for Rolling Stone. His 2005 Rolling Stone article “The Man Who Sold the War” won a National Magazine Award for reporting. He also spent a decade as the Washington investigative producer for the ABC News program, World News Tonight with Peter Jennings, and taught at the University of California, Berkeley, as a distinguished visiting professor.

Here is our guest James Bamford unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

There is no point in wasting too many words and space rehashing what every media outlet has been reporting and recounting on the assassination of Afghan Heroin Kingpin Ahmed Wali Karzai. The US media began reporting on the Kingpin, his heroin network and operations, his shady deals and even shadier connections over two years ago. This is how it always goes when the relationship between Kingpins like Karzai starts souring with their masters in Langley:

For years, or actually decades, while the relationships are prosperous and mutually beneficial, these Kingpins are miraculously shielded from the media; here and abroad. No matter how much evidence and legitimate reports from even more legitimate sources come available you can’t get the media to even mention Kingpins like Karzai; that is, when the Langley bosses see that their assets surpass all the negative liabilities. On the other hand, once things sour, when those liabilities begin to surpass the asset and the profits, you’ll see the media rush and begin swarming around the no-longer-a-favorite Kingpin. Then comes a short period of silence, and after that Bam: You have an assassinated, murdered, suicide-d, or disappeared Old Kingpin case. Alas; no surprise there since this is how these Kingpins ultimately meet their end- this one ‘supposedly’ by the currently fashionable enemy: the Taliban. I promise you won’t be hearing a single word about this in a few days and forever-The Langley Way.

That’s right. This is why I am not going to sit here and type away on this particular Kingpin; the Old Kingpin. While the media is busy getting the readers’ and listeners’ and watchers’ attention on the assassination of the Old Kingpin, Langley is busy installing their already groomed and prepared new Kingpin; while  no one is looking. Instead I am busy looking at several likely candidates; the possible new heirs to the Old Kingpin. I have a fairly short but fairly solid list. Today I’ll provide you with one from that list, in an attempt to get you to look at a possible new Kingpin the Media-Langley duo doesn’t want you to be looking at.

Langley’s “Chubby” Protégé: Hamed Wardak

About two years ago while no one was really looking at the people Langley didn’t want them to look at, I wrote a piece called: In the Name of a General, His Son, a Spook & the Godmother of Neocons. Please take some time and read the entire piece (it is fairly long and comprehensive) in order to get the entire picture on this potential Kingpin. Here are a few excerpts from what I wrote on Hamed Wardak:

Once upon a time there was an Afghani general named Abdul Rahim Wardak. He had studied in both US and Egyptian military schools before joining the army in Afghanistan. In the 1980s, a few years after he joined the army, he decided to defect and joined the Mujahideen movement. We don’t know exactly who in the United States gave him the order to defect, because no one is willing to go on record. However, we know very well that due to their fight against the Communist Soviet Union, the Mujahideen were significantly financed, armed, and trained by the CIA, Saudi Arabia, and Pakistan, along with several other not as significant nations. We also know that back then, when we were supporting, financing, training and cheering for the Mujahideen as ‘freedom fighters,’ those labeled today as terrorist evil-doer radicals, Osama Bin Laden and the Taliban, were viewed and treated as our allies and entourage. 

…

Our General Wardak disappeared from the Afghan scene at the beginning of the civil war in the 1990s. He brought his family to the United States where he settled comfortably with enough wealth from undetermined sources, and he enrolled his son, Hamed, in Georgetown University.

Hamed Wardak, a quite chubby and ambitious young man, arrived at Georgetown University, and by the time he got to his senior level he was taken under the wings of one of his professors as her protégé. That professor was none other than our Jeane Kirkpatrick, the proud Godmother of the Neocons. Our savvy readers will understand that this was not due to chance and Hamed’s stars being all aligned. After all, his General father had done his job well serving Kirkpatrick’s and other Neocons’ foreign policy objectives at all costs in Afghanistan and Pakistan. As mentioned earlier, his General father was flown to the US several times and coached by this crowd to give speeches before the US Congress to obtain funds for their overt and covert operations involving the Saudis, Pakistanis and Taliban. So no, these relationships don’t evaporate and disappear. Wardak and his family were accommodated quite well after they were brought to the US, and the Neocons’ future plans for Afghanistan would have plenty of roles for the Wardak family to fill.

Wardak Junior was a known figure among the radical pro-Taliban sympathizers in Washington DC circles. Here are a few quotes from an excellent piece written on the Wardak(s) and Karzai(s): …

…

The Karzai brothers took a great interest in Wardak Junior, and he enjoyed the benefits of the Karzais’ flashy and high-flying friends. After the September 11 Terror Attacks, the Karzais made Hamed the Vice President of the Afghan-American Chamber of Commerce, which was founded by Mahmood Karzai. As I mentioned briefly in my piece, our Neocon Ex-Congressman Don Ritter happens to be the co-founder of this organization. Hamed was also appointed to an advisor’s post with President Karzai’s first Finance Minister, Ashraf Ghani. No small accomplishment for the barely 30 year old Hamed!

Hamed Wardak’s most productive venture in tapping into the US Defense Sector Pot(s) of Gold began with joining a Washington DC contracting firm, Technologists Inc., founded by Aziz Azimi, who happened to be a very close buddy of Qayum Karzai…

…

Our General Wardak was promoted and taken back to Afghanistan to serve in Karzai’s regime as the Minister of Defense. Was he given citizenship when he was brought back to the US to settle? No one is really talking. Did anyone in Afghanistan question having US citizens in their quasi democratic government posts? No one in the US media is reporting. If you are trusted within the Afghan Diaspora in the DC area you’ll hear hushed comments about Wardak, his corrupt practices, and the rumors, fairly consistent rumors, of his close connections to the poppy world.

Back to Wardak Junior in Washington DC; With his dad now in Afghanistan as the Defense Minister, and with his Karzai partners and friends, he was busy running from one pot of gold to another: …

…

Okay, enough excerpts for a bit of background, but as I mentioned you need to read the entire piece here to get the entire picture. Now let’s get a more up-to-date report on where Hamed Wardak is today and what he’s been doing.

A few months after my coverage of Wardaks-Karzai-Ritter the media began taking  notice of Langley’s “Chubby Boy” Hamed Wardak:

A major investigation has been launched into contracts awarded by coalition forces in Afghanistan that are worth hundreds of millions of pounds. The probe into construction and logistics contracts of the International Security Assistance Force (Isaf) has been ordered by Major General Nick Carter, commander of Isaf forces in the south of the country.

Members of prominent Afghan families, including Hashmat and Ahmed Wali Karzai, brothers of President Karzai, and Hamed Wardak, the son of the Defence Minister, Rahim Wardak, are among those accused of controlling private security firms benefiting from lucrative security contracts by paying off the Taliban.

…

Then, in August 2010 the news of Hamed Wardak being arrested by the FBI came out, but where? Not in the US media. Not a peep. The news of the FBI raid resulting in the arrest of Langley’s Chubby Wardak and other Afghan operators only made it into a few foreign publications and in very small print:

Hamed Wardak, son of Afghan Defense Minister and the owner of NCL international company, has been detained in America. Also arrested in the US are Asaadullah Ramin, brother of a former Cabinet minister, and a brother of Hamidullah Farooqi, former Transport Minister.

…

Again, Chubby Wardak’s quiet release also didn’t make it into the US media. According to Langley former insiders: ‘FBI had to back off once the Langley men stepped in to rescue their very own boy.’

More recently a far more detailed profile of Hamed Wardak emerged in DC Guest of a Guest, and thankfully I had copied the content before it started disappearing and reappearing in the net archives:

While Mr. Wardak is in fact a refugee from Afghanistan, having come to the United States at age three, he is also profiting from the War in Afghanistan, now in its 10th year, to the tune of almost half a billion dollars, according to the Washington Post. In addition, he is connected to lobbying efforts (spearheaded by Patton Boggs, LLC – a sponsor of Wednesday’s event) to keep the United States involved in the Afghanistan conflict, according to The Nation.

… 

Guess where this “Chubby Billionaire’s” office for his billions of dollars operations is located? Right; in McLean Virginia, literally a few blocks from his Langley Operators:

Though Washington Life magazine, another sponsor of Wednesday night’s “Blue Key: Miami to DC“ event, called Wardak a “philanthropist,” the magazine makes no mention (and neither did Wardak) of his McLean-based “transportation company” that scored up to $360 million in defense contracts for safe transportation for U.S. trucks and convoys in Afghanistan. ..Wardak is profiled as a man of many connections, possibly to the Taliban and corrupt Afghan officials, and mysterious spending and accounting. Wardak’s money comes from a transportation company that, according to the Washington Post, is based in “a bare bones office” in McLean, VA “with no trucks.”

…

As with many Kingpins, “chubby” Wardak too appears to follow the ‘Front Businesses’ and ‘Glitzy Miami Circle’ trend:

Mired in scandal, Wardak would seemingly like for everyone to associate his name with Ludus Athletics, a new clothing company he founded recently in Miami. At this time, the Ludus Athletics Web site is merely a full-page advertisement for Wednesday’s event. He would also seemingly like for you to associate his name with peace efforts between the United States and Afghanistan. According to HamedWardak.com, in which he bills himself as CEO of Ludus Athletics (again, failing to mention NCL Holdings), Wardak says that he “plays an active role in the US-Afghanistan relations.

…

You know how the Hollywood movies depict kingpin types, usually those from Columbia: Big Miami homes and parties with go-go dancers entertaining the rich powerful ugly old men?  Now read this from a party thrown by Chubby Wardak at a hot DC club:

Dignitaries such as Zalmay Khalilzad, former US Ambassador to the United Nations, and Washington’s elite and social set nevertheless turned out on Wednesday to see the POV at the W Hotel “turned into an an ultrachic Miami lounge,” as the event invitation promised. It was rumored that Ludus imported young Miami women up the East Coast to the Nation’s capital to dance scantily-clad in new Ludus Athletic wear, while Miami’s “top DJ’s” helped Ludus and other sponsors to convert the POV at the W hotel “for the night into the hottest club in DC.” Other attendees and VIPs listed on the event press release include Qubad Talabany, son of President Jalal Talabany of Iraq, and Roman Popadiuk, US Ambassador to Ukraine. There were also assorted Ultimate Fighting Championship celebrities in attendance.

…

Of course even the savviest journalists wouldn’t have been able to discern the Langley guys among the big crowd, but trust me many of them were present according to my retired but active Langley source.

I guess you now understand why I don’t bother covering Ahmed Wali Karzai, the Old Kingpin that proved to exceed in liabilities for the CIA over assets. Instead I’ve been busy looking into identifying and following the current Kingpin(s), the valuable assets bringing high-value profits for our Langley. The Old Kingpin is dead, but not the operations, profits, and Langley’s new Kingpin(s) already hard at work while completely shielded from the media’s long-ceased-to-exist probing eyes.

# # # #

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

In the spring of 2010 the Carnegie Corporation issued a glowing report on their favorite government watchdog Project on Government Oversight (POGO). The report was meant to justify and showcase the large grants given to POGO by the corporation over the last few years. In 2008 and 2009 alone the corporation had given over $700,000 to this pet-project (lap-dog aka watch-dog). After reading the report one can’t help but wonder at the miscalculation that went with this report’s intention. What was intended to be a glowing report ends up being a major indicator as to the real nature of this corporate-foundation funded government watch-dog turned lap-dog. Allow me to explain further:

Real government watchdogs, if they are doing what they are supposed to be doing, if they are engaged in what they say they are engaged in, become the object of the government’s wrath and hatred. There is no way around this. No way. The executive branch agencies would be up in arms against them: digging their graves as ferocious and as fast as they can; overtly and covertly. And this includes the office of the United States President; the White House.

The legislative branch would be extremely wary of real government watchdogs. After all, real separation of powers ceased to exist a long time ago. Not only that; the last thing the US Congress wants is the existence of whistleblowers in their own backyard. Considering the level of corruption in Congress (think foreign lobby influence; think various methods of going around campaign finance laws; think campaign donors and conflicts of interest when it comes to the congressional decision and legislation making process) how many whistleblowers have we had coming out of congressional offices with reports of corruption, bribery, and other related misdeeds? I believe I have made the case here; suffice to say, Congress has never liked whistleblowers or genuine watchdog groups, evident by their resistance to providing real protection for whistleblowers, holding real hearings on legit whistleblower cases, and holding the executive branch accountable based on proven reports provided to them by whistleblowers.

I’ll go even further: The corporate mainstream media has never been very kind to government whistleblowers, and they usually perceive a genuine watchdog group as a real threat exposing their own cover-up or biased-filled reporting tainted by their masters in corporate and government. I mean, come on, what happens if a genuine watchdog group issues a report exposing illegal wiretapping by the government, when a giant media group, per order of their bosses, chooses to bury and sit on that same revelation? You see what I mean? The reason for the dislike goes beyond a ‘competitive’ relationship; way beyond it.

Now what should be the first thing, first inference, first conclusion, to come to mind (a rational mind that is) when one comes across a self-proclaimed tax-exempt mega corporation-funded watch-dog that happens to be adored by mega corporations, intensely liked by the Congress, truly liked by the executive branch including the White House, and very much admired and complemented by the tainted corporate media? Do you see something extremely disturbing yet very revealing with this picture? Then, with that in mind, let’s read the glowing report issued by the mega corporation, Carnegie Foundation, on their favorite watch-dog, POGO:

Its (POGO’s) offices are located between the Capitol and the White House, and POGO has been treading a path to both locations. Powered by $850,000 in Carnegie Corporation grants, POGO has made itself known at the White House, where it works with President Obama’s staff on open government.

POGO has achieved a D.C. organization’s dream by working with the White House on open government issues. “They have a really solid impact,” Miller says, “particularly in this administration, which is far more sympathetic to the notion of contractor abuse than the previous one.”

So what is Carnegie Corporation saying here? Because of their dollars, and of course many Carnegie men and women in the  White House who have been appointed by the President, POGO has been working with (or ‘for’) the White House and the President’s staff (including Carnegie men and women?) on open government. Considering this White House, this President’s record as the worst US president when it comes to secrecy and persecution-prosecution of government whistleblowers, shouldn’t we go ahead and give POGO possibly deserved credit as one of the responsible parties in this sorry state of governance? Not only that, doesn’t this give you a pretty good idea as to why POGO awarded this ‘worst’ president with the ludicrous ‘Transparency Award’?

Here comes POGO’s entry inside various executive branch agencies ‘enabled by mega corporations’ backing and dollars’:

Not content just to work outside the government, POGO is also trying to strengthen the progress of federal investigations inside the bureaucracy…It has an ongoing effort to work with inspectors general in various agencies throughout the vast federal government bureaucracy.

Can you imagine our corruption, inaptitude and waste ridden federal agencies giving that level of access to any ‘Real’ government watch-dog? Do you know what it takes to gain that level of trust (confidence) of these waste-ridden tax-dollar abusers? Now ask yourself, how in the world would they allow a real government watch-dog in? Even Congress can’t get that level of access; not even with subpoenas!

POGO is the type of organization where Capitol Hill aides and POGO staffers unwind at the annual holiday party by engaging in small talk on federal whistle-blower statutes.

A highly successful program, which spawned the book noted above, is POGO’s Congressional Oversight Training series. The monthly series is extremely popular on Capitol Hill. Topics range from “The Nuts ‘n Bolts of Investigations” to “How to Prepare for an Oversight Hearing” to “Working with Insiders and Whistleblowers.”

Congressional aides from both parties praise the training seminars. Honorary chairs are Republican and Democratic members of Congress, including well-known senators Charles Grassley (R-Iowa) and Carl Levin (D-Michigan). Staffers who have gone to the seminars routinely refer new colleagues to the POGO training. “There aren’t really places in Washington where you can say, ‘this is how you do oversight,’” one congressional committee aide points out. “They serve as sort of a touchstone or rallying point for like-minded individuals.”

Have you been screaming about the declining oversight and performance by Congress? Well, Carnegie says you have POGO to thank. POGO has been responsible for training the entire Congress (representatives and their staff) on oversight and whistleblowers. This Congress, the entire entity, has abdicated their oversight responsibilities for years and has done nothing (or many negative things) when it comes to protection for whistleblowers. And Carnegie Corporation says you have POGO to thank for this disastrous state of the United States Congress. Another point to consider here is how a congress known for its disdain for government whistleblowers, recognized for its contempt for pro-liberties and watchdog groups-overtly and covertly, is so willingly and readily to greet a supposed government watch-dog with open arms and accept them as their ‘trainers & partners’? Does that make sense to you?

According to Carnegie Corporation the mainstream media accepts and likes POGO very much, and in fact relies on POGO regularly for their reporting. Known for their disastrous state of reporting: burying facts and real issues, censoring and obfuscating the truth, and acting as the mouthpiece for their corporate owners and the government, should this actually be considered a complimentary statement on POGO’s integrity? I certainly don’t think so.

With congressional connections, ongoing relationships with investigative reporters, and a highly active web site and social networking efforts, POGO regularly demonstrates Washington public relations savvy in promoting its work on opening up the government. The project’s investigative research is featured in articles in The Washington Post, The New York Times, television news, public radio and congressional hearings.

“They’ve spread out” from their origins, says David Burnham, a former New York Times reporter and investigative journalist who believes in the organization to the point of having his own investigative nonprofit’s D.C. office at POGO headquarters in downtown Washington.

New York Times Burnham serves on POGO’s board.

Carnegie Corporation likens POGO to savvy investigative journalists who watch and expose government through investigative reports. In the same breath, Carnegie Corporation brags about their pet-dog POGO being loved by the executive and legislative branch, so much that they are given access and entry to these agencies and Congress. Imagine what would be said of media investigative reporters targeting government agencies who receive the constant approval and affection of these targets. Can you? We have seen a few cases like that; haven’t we? Remember our embedded journalists covering our wars from the inside? You remember, right? Recall Judith Miller and in-bedded journalists adored by the executive branch and with ‘special access?’ Well, according to Carnegie Corporation that’s exactly the kind of ‘investigative journalism’ POGO is engaged in; adored by all its targets and proud of unprecedented access to government.

The Robber Barons of the 1800s and 1900s grew not only in mega fortunes but also in calculative suaveness and shrewdness when it came to politics, government, societal control and manufacturing consent. They had to. It was and still is a matter of survival for them. The Carnegie Corporation, the Rockefeller and Ford dynasties, and their modern day counterparts such as George Soros, knew only too well that purchasing, propping and controlling government operators would not suffice in controlling the masses, thus their mega fortunes and influence. Other needed ingredients were the information source- education and media, and means to keep a close tab on dissent, grassroots and public restlessness and activism- foundations and NGOs. As long as they had their men and women in key places, from the White House to key government agencies, from mainstream publications to government watchdog and activist groups, all was going to be well that ended well:

Foundations like Carnegie, Rockefeller, and Ford have a corrosive influence on a democratic society; they represent relatively unregulated and unaccountable concentrations of power and wealth which buy talent, promote causes, and, in effect, establish an agenda of what merits society’s attention. They serve as “cooling-out” agencies, delaying and preventing more radical, structural change. They help maintain an economic and political order, international in scope, which benefits the ruling-class interests of philanthropists and philanthropoids

The hefty grants, fierce backing and glowing reports by Carnegie Corporation when it comes to a supposed government watchdog tell quite a story. Remember all the Carnegie Corporation men and women in the  White House and key executive branch agencies: Condoleeza Rice, Vannevar Bush, Thomas Kean, Richard Celeste, Sam Nunn, Thomas Pickering and …Now, would the Carnegie Corporation want a real government watchdog on these men and women’s back? Add to this the men and women from other megas-Rockefeller-Soros-Ford who have confiscated various high-level seats within the executive branch and the president’s office, start using some common sense, and you have it.

We already know about the mega dollars coming to POGO from Mega corporations. We are aware of dozens of these mega corporations’ men and women in the executive branch and others. We pretty much understand how congressional election campaigns are financed by the megas. And we have long suspected and finally accepted our mainstream media’s role as servants of the same megas and megas’ men and women in government. As Carnegie puts in this report: The White House, the executive agencies, the Congress, and the mainstream media all approve, support, and partner up with this government watchdog. So do the Megas. For them POGO is a watchdog for all seasons, and for all players involved. Who they ‘really’ are watching is the question that remains.

*Our investigative researchers Julia Davis & Bill Bergman have contributed to this series.

Coming up Next: Part IV. Project on Government Oversight (POGO) – Lap-Dance for Corporate-Foundation Sugar Daddies

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Russ Baker joins us to discuss the case of the former Israeli Spy Chief Meir Dagan, who contends that Israel’s top leaders lack judgment, considers a military attack on Iran “a stupid idea”, and criticizes Israel for having failed to put forward a peace initiative with the Palestinians by foolishly ignoring the Saudi peace initiative promising full diplomatic relations in exchange for a return to the 1967 border lines. He talks about the Obama administration’s harsh and hawkish stand on Iran, the evidence pointing to a plan to create an “Arab Spring” for the Good Old Boys—CIA, banks, and oil companies, the poor journalism by the mainstream media in covering Libya and the alleged crimes committed by Qaddafi as a part of a larger disinformation effort of the sort that has always been part and parcel of war, and more!

Russ Baker is an award-winning investigative journalist and the author of Family of Secrets- – the Bush Dynasty, America’s Invisible Government, and the Hidden History of the Last Fifty Years. He has written for The New Yorker, Vanity Fair, The Nation, The New York Times, The Washington Post, the Village Voice and Esquire. He has served as a contributing editor to the Columbia Journalism Review, and is the founder of WhoWhatWhy, a nonpartisan, nonprofit investigative news organization.

Here is our guest Russ Baker unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Paul Fitzgerald and Elizabeth Gould, a husband and wife team, began their experience in Afghanistan when they were the first American journalists to acquire permission to enter behind Soviet lines in 1981 for CBS News and produced a documentary, Afghanistan Between Three Worlds, for PBS. In 1983 they returned to Kabul with Harvard Negotiation project director Roger Fisher for ABC Nightline and contributed to the MacNeil/Lehrer News Hour. They continued to research, write and lecture about the long-term run-up that led to the US invasion of Afghanistan. They are featured in an award winning documentary by Samira Goetschel. Titled, Our own Private Bin Laden which traces the creation of the Osama bin Laden mythology in Afghanistan and how that mythology has been used to maintain the “war on terror” approach of the Bush administration. Their recent book, Crossing Zero, focuses on the nuances of the Obama administration’s evolving military and political strategy, those who have been chosen to implement it, and the long-term consequences for the U.S. and the region. Invisible History: Afghanistan’s Untold Story published by City Lights, January 2009 chronicles their three-decade-focus on Afghanistan and the media.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Once upon a time an evil witch visits a kingdom and poisons the central well with a potion that drives people mad. The next morning all who drink from that well go crazy. The king, however, knew about this in advance, and didn’t drink from the communal well. The next day, those who drank the poisoned water came to the king and accused him of being the crazy one. The king, aware of what had transpired, was faced with a dilemma: drink from the well and lose his sanity like the rest of his subjects, but remain king; or don’t drink, remain sane, but be swept from power by those who would view his very sanity as madness.

Today in our nation those who refrain from drinking from the well poisoned by the establishment witches are categorized, marginalized, and labeled extremists, crazies, conspiracy theorists, and other adjectives along the same lines:

The political candidate who choose to run as a ‘people’s candidate,’ not the establishment candidate representing this special interest or that foreign interest’s agenda, is referred to as an extremist.

Those groups who fight for accountability and demand justice are dismissed as radicals.

Those in government who dare to come forward, speak up, and tell the truth are labeled as disgruntled whistleblowers.

Those activists who dare to ask for ‘real’ investigations in matters such as 9/11 are grouped and stuffed in a bucket as insane conspiracy theorists.

We have the witches of the establishment pouring the poisoned concoction into the communal wells. Maybe a little bit of pseudo patriotism mixed with a fair amount of fear-mongering laced with dependency-inducing barbitals topped with fluffy fantasy puffs. Maybe three portions of false security shaken with two portions of false prosperity hallucinogenic elixir blended with a shot of apathy-enhancing liquor. Maybe all of the above and more.

Equally if not more importantly we have the poison-water bearers. After all, the objective of poisoning the majority is too important to be left to chance. What if some decide to collect rainwater instead of going to the well? What if some chose river water over well water? You see, for the poisoned well plot to work, most if not all should drink from the poisoned wells, so what better way to ensure than having water bearers deliver to most if not all. The mainstream poison-water-bearers do just that: take the water poisoned by the establishment witches, put it into easy-to-swallow portions and easy-to-drink containers, and then deliver it to as many people as they can. Think establishment witches’ 9/11-national security state-wars concoction, and then think New York Times and Washington Post. You see how it works? Right. You take the establishment poisons, mainstream media poisons-bearers, and you get a whole a lot of poisoned people acting crazy as hell. And if by any chance you have refrained from drinking, then you better be ready to be singled out, pointed to, and called a nut and a crazy.

In a recent article at LWR Tom woods addresses this issue extremely well:

Extremism is a sacred word in the bipartisan lexicon, solemnly reserved for willful and persistent deviations from the holy mainstream. For that reason, it is not extremism to favor a policy that led to 2 million deaths in Vietnam. Our mainstream politicians supported that, you see. It is not extremism to have favored the indefensible war in Iraq, which led to at least hundreds of thousands of deaths and four million people displaced. How could it be? Why, the Washington Post and the New York Times favored it!

How about a sanctions policy that led to the deaths of 500,000 Iraqi children? Even if this statistic were false, American officials, including former Secretary of State Madeleine Albright and former US Ambassador to the United Nations Bill Richardson, said half a million dead Iraqi children were “worth it.” No mainstream outlet I am aware of has referred to Albright and Richardson as extremists.

For that matter, no one has been called an extremist for thinking it’s all right for people to stick their hands down your pants at the airport. This is a matter of public policy, citizen.

…

You can read the entire article here and watch his related YouTube clip here.

The potent concoction for the 2012 elections is almost ready. What you see right now is the aperitif being served by the mainstream-poison-water-bearers to stimulate the thirst and appetite for the coming potion. I am going to pass, and then pass again. Would you care to join the sane crowd and be called crazy by crazies and dare to hope to have the majority with you this time around?
 

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

U.S. Government Will Adopt Gold Standard in the Next Five Years, Forbes Predicts

Return to the gold standard by the United States within the next five years now seems likely, since that move would help the nation to solve a variety of economic, fiscal and monetary ills, Steve Forbes predicted during an exclusive interview Monday with Human Events.

The only probable 2012 U.S. presidential candidate who has championed a return to the gold standard so far is Rep. Ron Paul, R-Texas. But the idea “makes too much sense” not to gain popularity as the U.S. economy struggles to create jobs, to recover from a housing bubble induced by the Federal Reserve’s easy-money monetary policies, to stop rising gasoline prices and to restore fiscal responsibility to U.S. government’s budget, Forbes explained.

…

You can read the rest of this article here, but what really got my attention was the irony. For years, if not decades, the mainstream media has been ridiculing Representative Ron Paul’s reasoned arguments on monetary policy, the pitfalls of fiat money and the urgency of returning to ‘backed money’-the Gold Standard. Even the idea of returning to the Gold Standard has been greeted with a gasp, the life-vest of irrational gangs- the labeling game and name calling, and foaming mouths spitting mockery and or profanity-filled adjectives:

“Soon every citizen will have the right to have their own pot of gold as we convert America to a Leprechauny! Here to advocate for this bright future, please join me in welcoming live via satellite, Congressman Ron Paul…”

Here is Megan McArdle, in 2007, ridiculing Ron Paul’s categorization of certain financial-banking institutions as ‘shadowy’ in defense of the Banking institution:

Fiat money inflation benefits those shadowy figures who receive access to artificially inflated money before the inflationary effects kick in [Ron Paul]. Those shadowy figures being the bankers who loaned it to you so that you could buy your house [Megan McArdle]…

That’s right, and those shadowy figures were also the ones who brought about the massive foreclosures of your houses! McArdle, while foaming at the mouth, called Paul’s categorization of these banking institutions, the shadowy entities, wrong, ridiculous and with few or no support within the mainstream economist colony. Oh boy, only a year later, in a June 2008 speech, U.S. Treasury Secretary Timothy Geithner, then President and CEO of the NY Federal Reserve Bank, placed significant blame for the freezing of credit markets on a “run” on the entities in the shadow banking system by their counterparties!

Well, let’s see if the mainstream will be quick to get all over Steve Forbes and many others who have been joining the Gold Standard choir. For years they had a punching bag who remained consistent in his view of the desperate need for turning our sickly monetary policy upside down and considering a return to the Gold Standard. They called it wacky, nutty, a lone wolf howling …you name it. Now I want to see them take on the expanded group of believers in the face of the mess we’ve been sinking in deeper and deeper every day. Will it happen? You tell me.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

There are ‘experts’ views,’ and then there are experts’ views. There are ‘government sources,’ and then there are government sources. Not all experts are equal. And, not all sources are reliable. Am I talking in riddles? Of course not; give me a chance and I’ll explain.

We have members of the popular media (mainstream and quasi alternatives alike) ever anxious to market and disseminate government conspiracy and propaganda. They, members of the popular media, have their own rolodex of ‘experts’ and analysts, some on their payroll, to help them propagate the delivery and execution of government-given propaganda-conspiracy. The same principle applies to ‘sources.’ The popular media relies on their government sources who act as middle-men-government messengers who’ve been given a government written and approved script to be delivered; almost always anonymously. Well, this is exactly what we have been getting from our media, around the clock, since the announcement of the Bin Laden Death Operation: ever-changing government scripts, delivered mainly by anonymous government sources to the US media, and further embellished and expanded upon by government-connected experts and analysts on the payroll.

On the other hand, there are many independent real experts whose analyses and views you won’t, or rarely, get to hear or read about; at least not in the mainstream media or at quasi-alternative sites. And there are current and former government sources not tasked with messenger duties; many of whom don’t see the ‘calculated’ necessity to remain ‘anonymous.’ I can assure you, you do not, and will not, read or hear these experts’ and sources’ statements, analyses or views when it comes to government-written stories and their media buddies.

Last weekend Boiling Frogs Post contacted several independent sources and experts, and asked them for their straight-forward take on the absurdity-filled and ever-changing Bin Laden Death story. I say independent, because they are. As you’ll see these veterans and sources come from all different walks of Intelligence-Law Enforcement-Military, and as far as political orientation goes, they fall into every single category-liberal, conservative, libertarian and none. I want to thank them all for honoring the request given to them on extremely short notice, and for being honest, direct, commonsensical, and in some cases realistically humorous. Here is what they had to say, and say it briefly per my request, starting with my favorite investigative reporter and bestselling author, whom I respect tremendously and consider ‘truly independent,’ James Bamford:

I don’t know what happened, but here’s what I suspect.  The White House press office was horrified.  The image of an unarmed Bin Laden killed in his PJs, and his unarmed wife shot as she was trying to protect him, was too bland for prime time TV.  So after consulting with the “perception managers” at The Rendon Group, they quickly called together a team of experts for a conference in the Roosevelt Room to come up with a better narrative.

Among those present was Nurse Nayirah, daughter of the former Kuwaiti ambassador to the U.S., accompanied by several PR representatives from Hill & Knowlton.  It was her false claim that she had witnessed Iraqi soldiers take babies out of incubators in Kuwait and leave them on the floor to die, a lie propagandized around the world by H&K, that helped push the U.S. into the first Gulf War.  Sitting next to her was Ahmed Chalabi, the man whose deceptions about Saddam and his WMD, heavily promoted by the New York Times, helped lead the country to war with Iraq.  Then there was Jim Wilkinson, the Bush master propagandist who needed to find a way to get the country behind the war.  He thus fed the story to the media of how Pvt. Jessica Lynch fearlessly mowed down Fedayeen terrorists with her M16 until she ran out of ammo, whereupon she was shot, stabbed, captured, tortured and raped.  Unfortunately, through no fault of Lynch, it was later discovered to be totally made up. Finally, there was General Stanley McCrystal, largely responsible for promoting the fact that football star and Army private Pat Tillman was killed in a heroic battle in Afghanistan when in reality he was accidentally shot by his own men.  The false story was then ballyhooed by the press and used by the Army as a major recruiting tool for the Afghan War.

After a few hours going around the table for ideas, the White House press people finally had their story.  With one hand wrapped around his wife as a shield, Bin Laden used the other in a desperate effort to fight off capture by firing wildly at the commandos with an AK-47, but was finally taken down with a bullet right between his eyes. 

James Bamford- One of the country’s leading writers on intelligence and national security issues.

If you factor in growth in government and the actual costs of the military and intelligence effort that finally succeeded in killing Osama bin Laden after fifteen years of trying, the renowned terrorist becomes the $3 trillion dollar man.  Considering that he has not personally directed a successful terrorist operation since 9/11 that is quite impressive, somewhat like winning a lifetime achievement Oscar at the Academy Awards ceremony.  And even 9/11 is by no means a slam-dunk for Osama as the Justice Department never charged him with that particular crime because they knew they did not have enough evidence to convince a jury.  So his story ends, shot down in Pakistan while resisting or possibly surrendering, with his wife and son or alone, in a lavish mansion or a shack, as a result of a great spy operation or maybe not, and with the President of the United States personally directing the operation or possibly just sitting in for a photo op.  Requiescat in Pace Osama. 

Philip Giraldi- Former Counterterrorism Specialist & military Intelligence Officer  of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency

The executive-ordered assassination of Osama bin Laden, in what is now described as a rubbish-strewn, dirt-infested and barely habitable compound, does free up a spot on the FBI’s “Most Wanted” list.   As a result of this grand and newsworthy success, after an interminable decade of really, really, really hard work, the flag-draped and platinum-plated military-industrial-intelligence complex is poised for even greater rewards, in both glory and gold.   Constitution-minded and economically strapped Americans, and those who oppose unnecessary undeclared wars of any kind, need to get back under the Bush-Obama bus, and quick.  Here’s why: President Obama will not remind Americans that bin Laden was never “wanted” by the FBI for the 9/11 attacks, and as such, bin Laden’s death is irrelevant to Washington’s long war in Afghanistan.  Likewise, former President Bush will not tell the country that the bin Laden connection to Saddam Hussein was manufactured in 2002 by neoconservatives bent on invasion, and as a result, bin Laden’s death has no bearing on Washington’s 9-year occupation and nation-building project in Iraq.    Come to think of it, not having Osama around anymore is stagnation we can believe in. 

Lt Col Karen Kwiatkowski- Retired U.S. Air Force lieutenant colonel and a specialist on the Middle East 

Two UN guys are sitting in a bar in Kabul – and one turns to the other and says “Did you hear the one about the president, the terrorism advisor and the pope?” The second guy turns to the other and says “Well – no – I have not” – and the first guys says “Me neither  – but it cannot be any more funny than the way the White House has handled the narrative of the Bin Laden raid.”

Four days after the Bin Laden raid, and in the middle of what must have been the 10^th White House modification to the story, I was asked in an on-air interview “don’t you (in the Special Operations Community) have plans for dealing with the media?” – well yes, yes, we do…but this plan was not used due to the White House insinuation of their “academic smart guys and gals” – so the plan was not followed – because the raid became a White House center piece that was quickly (and badly) absorbed for purposes of supporting the President’s reelection.

National security – and what is best and necessary for the nation – should NOT be an issue that is used by either side for political gain…the harsh reality is that it often is.  As I have said many time: “I am not anti-war, I am anti-stupidity…” we have sycophants in the White House who will do or say anything to get the President re-elected and sacrifice the truth, and the nation’s best interests, in the process as they drive the clown car of freedom around the nation for a victory lap…

Lt Col Tony Shaffer- Intelligence Officer & recipient of the Bronze Star, with 25 years of field experience commanding and directing several key operational intelligence organizations
 

The “fog of war” excuse for the Obama Administration’s horrendous series of factual errors in reporting bin Laden’s killing was mostly due to rushing to make the U.S. press deadline and take credit before being upstaged by leaks from international press.  One small detail that reveals the over-arching importance placed on Obama’s need for a bold, decisive press image lies in his unqualified announcement about getting his man that was made even before the DNA testing was completed.  The White House later clarified that they were 90 to 95% certain it was bin Laden based on photo comparisons and later they upped that to 95% certainty but there’s nothing scientific about “facial analysis” photo comparisons.  Quite likely another reason the Administration doesn’t want the dead bin Laden photo out now is that it would invite scrutiny of the hasty announcement.  I think the series of errors was mostly based on the rush to frame this quickly for the press so Obama would appear bold and strong on terrorism and get what Charley Cook projected as a 13% “bounce” in the polls.

Coleen Rowley- Retired FBI Agent and Former Cchief Counsel of the FBI Minneapolis field office
So we come through the mountain passes that are being watched by tribal warlords who have our left over stinger missiles from the Soviet’s little adventure there, because if we fly too high the Pakistani defense radar network will pick us up.  We don’t know who is in this compound, so we shoot-to-kill every unarmed male resident on the spot, before we even know if Bin Laden is there.  And we insist Pakistan’s ISI intelligence service knew nothing of Bin Laden being in the middle of their retirement neighborhood for military generals and intelligence officials.  Oh, we wanted to do it one week earlier, but our government knew that on that day the Easter Bunny would be hiding multi colored eggs for all the little Pakistani children!

Russell D. Tice- Former Intelligence Analyst for the U.S. Air Force, Office of Naval Intelligence, Defense Intelligence Agency & National Security Agency

From my own 25-years experience on the inside much of it doing international covert operations, I’m pretty certain that the competing federal bureaucracies’ decades long, often bizarre war for headlines is at the root of this whole weird episode. Of course this is fueled by the ease with which mainstream media is manipulated into printing absolutely anything that comes from their “inside” usually “anonymous” sources.

With the Bin Laden hit, the media skirmish started with the scramble for “credit” by the public affairs offices of each of the parties involved a.  First the Pentagon (Defense Intelligence) and White House take the lead.  Then the CIA, the Criminal Inept Agency, sorely hurting from five decades of being total and abject losers and perpetually at war with DIA, grabs the whole ball and runs with it, like they invented it.   This pisses off the DIA and leaks and counter-leaks begin to spring in every direction from inside sources on both sides, sniping at each other’s “story.”

But you can’t count out the FBI, the Federal Bureau of Incompetence, who has been totally and insultingly left out of the whole mix.  Rumor is they even had an FBI Files episode on “How the FBI killed Bin Laden, “ready to go into production, no matter how Bin Laden died.  All they needed was a body.  Leaving them totally out of the kill of the dude for whom they’ve spent half their PR budget hunting, is…well…insulting to say the least. And you do NOT want to piss off the FBI.  Remember Cointelpro?!

Finally. What really happened? My bet is that some Navy Seal captain in charge of the guys out there circling around Pakistan’s night skies in helicopters like sitting ducks waiting for the Washington suits to make up their minds, said, “Screw it!  I’ll take responsibility.  Let’s do it guys!”

Mike Levine- Retired supervisory agent, Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA); also served the U.S. Customs Service, IRS (Criminal Investigations Division) & the FBI/DEA Task Force

  Obama’s Idea — Whatabad!

Killing Osama in Abbottabad

Serves only to get a whole lottabad

guys planning in sync

To pay back Murder, Inc.

From Kandahar to Jalalabad.

Ray McGovern- Retired CIA Analyst, former Army Intelligence Officer & Founder of the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity

A part of me is going to miss Bin Laden, at least I understood him.  I certainly do not condone his methods or his twisted logic; but his actions were extremely predictable (I was one of the few people that actively tried to prevent 9-11). But I do not understand our own government.  First we attack a country that had nothing to do with 9-11, we lower our moral standing in the eyes of the world, we violate our Constitution, we turn our military into the Peace Corps resulting in thousands of our own military casualties and tens of thousands of innocent civilian casualties overseas, we treat our own citizens as guilty of something until proven otherwise at airports, the list is endless.  The final straw, however, is the PR campaign of the killing of BL.  If ever there was a “black operation” in the traditional use of the term, this was it.  Our government should have said nothing about this assassination.  Oh, word would have leaked out over time and years from now we could have our day in the sun, but this isn’t the time.  We celebrate this killing like it’s the winning touch-down at the Super Bowl.  All this dog and pony show is a rallying cry for the same fanatics that rioted and killed over cartoons.  How many more innocent lives will be lost just so our politicians can make a little splash in the news?

Bogdan Dzakovic- Special Agent, Team Leader of the Red Team (terrorist team) and Federal Air Marshals for the Federal Aviation Administration(FAA), and  Former Coast Guard Officer & Federal Criminal Investigator

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

The standard, call it classic, definition of PSYOP is badly in need of an update. When you look it up, you see something along these lines [Emphasis are mine]: planned propaganda operations to convey selected information and indicators to foreign audiences to influence their emotions, motives, objective reasoning, and ultimately the behavior of foreign governments, organizations, groups, and individuals. It is way past time to add ‘domestic’ in there. Isn’t it? Come on; remember our mini PSYOP cases like Jessica Lynch and Pat Tillman. I say ‘mini’ because they were mini, thus, eventually exposed. The ‘major’ ones, at least here in the US, tend to go unnoticed or not widely debated. Right now, we may be very well looking at one of those major ones as it is unfolding: White House Osama Death PSYOP Script.

On Monday, less than a day after the supposed operation, I started covering the Osama Death sensationalism. In my first post I said: “It is way too early for a comprehensive analysis or even a short commentary.” I wish others, the so-called media had exercised the same restraint, instead of spreading the far-fetched and fantastical script given to them by their masters to fire up and round up the gullible and easily hurray-ing majority. 

On Tuesday, I pointed out the uncanny resemblance between the script and method used in the Jessica Lynch PSYOP case and the latest Osama Death case: “It is too early. I can talk about the strange timing, absurdity of some mysterious burial at sea, questionable coincidences, and or our government’s pretty tainted record when it comes to facts: Remember Iraq’s WMD lies, Pentagon’s made-up script on Jessica Lynch, wrongfully accused Steven Hatfill, questionable Anthrax suspect Bruce Ivins, Niger Yellowcake fantasy…” Again, it took the resourceful media another 24-48 hours and tons of pounding to make the connections.

Here are the latest changes to the Obama administration’s lies-filled script. Let’s keep track of them, and keep them on the front burner, because as you know, as more come out, as we get more confirmed contradictions, the fantastical story tends to get pushed onto the backburner by the media, from front page stories-headlines to Page A2, and from there to B18, and pretty quickly into the usual black hole:

We have gone from the heavy and intensely fought operation against fighting armed men in the Bin Laden compound to no real fight and only one little armed man:

Four of the five people shot to death in the operation that killed Osama bin Laden, including the al-Qaida leader himself, were unarmed and never fired a shot…

We went from armed Bin Laden using his wife as a shield to armed Bin Laden using an anonymous woman as a shield, to unarmed Bin Laden using some kind of a woman as a shield, and now, unarmed Bin Laden in pajamas using no one as a shield!

But last night, the White House said Bin Laden was not armed when a U.S. Navy SEAL confronted and killed him during Sunday night’s assault on his compound.
…

Security officials said they did not recover any arms and explosives during their detailed search of the compound and the 13-roomed house, during which they removed two buffalos, a cow and around 150 chickens.

…

We were told that Bin Laden’s compound was a lavish mansion worth over one million dollars, and now we hear it was a humble mud –covered house with not even an air-conditioning system worth less than $250,000:

Bin Laden’s house, described by the US government as a $1m (£605,000) mansion, is in fact worth no more than $250,000 say property professionals in Abbottabad, the town where he was killed.

…

Descriptions of Bin Laden’s hideout have also been prone to exaggeration. After Sunday night’s dramatic raid by US Navy Seals, a senior Obama administration official told reporters that the property, an “extraordinarily unique compound” in an “affluent suburb”, was valued at around $1m.But two property professionals in Abbottabad – a quiet, military-dominated town – said that much of that was incorrect. Based on the size of the plot and the house, which was built in 2005, and using recent property sales as a guide, they estimated that it would fetch no more than $250,000 on the current market.

“Twenty million rupees, maximum,” said property dealer Muhammad Anwar, a 22-year veteran of the local market, at his Abbottabad office. “No swimming pool. This is not a posh area. We call it a middling area.”

…

We were given torture, traditional long-term interrogation techniques and surveillance as the major factors leading to the scripted victory, and now we get official statements from Pakistan indicating that they, the Pakistani intelligence, had provided Bin Laden’s location to Mr. Obama over 2 years ago, and again six months ago!

Pakistan hit back Wednesday about US fears that it could not be trusted with details of the raid on osama bin Laden’s compound and claimed it had identified the potential hideout as far back as 2009.

…

Bashir went on to claim that the ISI passed on its suspicions about the compound in Abbottabad two years ago.

“The fact is, on this particular occasion, it was pointed out by our intelligence quite some time ago to the US intelligence,” he said. “We had indicated as far back as 2009 [it was] a possible place.” The ISI said it again warned just six months ago that “suspicious foreigners” and even “al Qaeda operatives” were potentially inside the compound but denied knowing bin Laden was among them, according to Sky News. There was no immediate response to that claim from the Obama administration.

…

And last but not least, they told us our President and Presidents’ Men were watching the entire operation, second by second, via satellite and real time. Now, our President and Presidents’ Men are backpedaling in face of exposed lies and contradictions, and use ‘Fog of War’ for lack of truth and accuracy. Did the fog fog up the White House real-time TV show and mislead our popcorn-eating President and his Men?!

The White House Tuesday blamed “the fog of war” for conflicting statements in its recounting of the events surrounding the Abbottabad raid that killed Osama bin Laden…

I will be covering this topic as it unfolds further, and I am asking you to help us with keeping this major domestic PSYOP on the front-burner, as you know, when sticky and revelatory facts come out contradicting our officials’ story line, things tend to get buried and transferred to the back-burners!
 

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

I can’t help it. Every time I read or hear the lines on the White House Popcorn-Movie session with ‘Operation Osama Live’ being televised, I keep getting the same flashback. Hmmmm, I wonder why?

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

The media spent the first two days of Bin Laden’s Death hailing and saluting the greatness of the Obama presidency. Bit by bit the White House PR script writers fed them Tom Clancy inspired bylines, each new bit more glorified than the previous one. Hollywood must be working on movies as I’m typing this post. Do they have to get any specific rights for this particular manuscript? Or is it considered free for all public info? Anyhow, now we are entering Chapter Two, Set Two, or Stage Two. Time to shine the spotlight on the other players: CIA Special Forces and maybe a few private contractors collectively known as Secret Kidnapping Torturers. You see, according to ‘ANONYMOUS’ government and White House sources, we have those black sites, the torturers and the brutal torture tactics to thank for Bin Laden’s action and mystery filled death and disappearance (aka secret burial at sea).

Obama’s buddy, his unofficial press secretary and favorite fundraiser, and the new queen of the AOL PR machine, has just released the second chapter of the Clancy-like manuscript-Glory, Glory Hallelujah, the Black Site Torturers Keep Marching on[emphasis are mine]:

In a secret CIA prison in Eastern Europe years ago, al-Qaida’s No. 3 leader, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, gave authorities the nicknames of several of bin Laden’s couriers, four former U.S. intelligence officials said. Those names were among thousands of leads the CIA was pursuing.

One man became a particular interest for the agency when another detainee, Abu Faraj al-Libi, told interrogators that when he was promoted to succeed Mohammed as al-Qaida’s operational leader he received the word through a courier. Only bin Laden would have given al-Libi that promotion, CIA officials believed.

…

The revelation that intelligence gleaned from the CIA’s so-called black sites helped kill bin Laden was seen as vindication for many intelligence officials who have been repeatedly investigated and criticized for their involvement in a program that involved the harshest interrogation methods in U.S. history.

“We got beat up for it, but those efforts led to this great day,” said Marty Martin, a retired CIA officer who for years led the hunt for bin Laden.

Mohammed did not reveal the names while being subjected to the simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding, former officials said. He identified them many months later under standard interrogation, they said, leaving it once again up for debate as to whether the harsh technique was a valuable tool or an unnecessarily violent tactic.

…

As for Huffington’s wonderful source citation, journalistic work, we have the following declaration which says it all:

Then in the middle of last year, the courier had a telephone conversation with someone who was being monitored by U.S. intelligence, according to an American official, who like others interviewed for this story spoke only on condition of anonymity to discuss the sensitive operation.

…Story continues below

I am going to place one of my famous bets again. I bet you no one will ever go after these particular anonymous sources from our intelligence agencies. You see, they are disclosing what they are told to disclose, and it wouldn’t make the tiniest difference how classified or sensitive the intentionally leaked information is. When the government has a PR mission and a polished script to go with it, releasing all sorts of ‘classified or sensitive’ intelligence is kosher. But may God help those who release information classified to cover up government criminality such as NSA illegal wiretapping.

Please go and read this Clancy-Like novella chapter at Huffington Post. Pay special attention to anonymous sourcing and glorified kidnap-torture methods meant to program unknowing Americans: Torture, assassination, illegal operations are all good when the end justifies the means. Hail to President Bush for starting those programs, and hail to President Obama for continuing them!!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Grant F. Smith joins us to discuss Start-Up Nation: The Story of Israel’s Economic Miracle, a 2009 Council on Foreign Relations book authored by Dan Senor and Saul Singer. He tells us about rarely discussed “massive non-market subsidies and distortions” designed and implemented to benefit Israel, such as an agreement with the Pentagon for Israel to provide goods and services to the US military, and gain access to the US military procurement system, and other congressionally approved agreements that create jobs in Israel rather than in the US. Mr. Smith talks about AIPAC, Israel’s vast network of legal and illegal campaign contributions, their influence and propaganda infrastructure with the US media, and more!

Grant F. Smith is director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C. He is the author of Spy Trade: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy, America’s Defense Line: The Justice Department’s Battle to Register the Israel Lobby as Agents of a Foreign Government and Foreign Agents: The American Israel Public Affairs Committee from the 1963 Fulbright Hearings to the 2005 Espionage Scandal. He is a contributor to Radio France Internationale and Voice of America’s Foro Interamericano, and has appeared on BBC News, CNN, and C-SPAN.

Here is our guest Grant Smith unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

To my good friends and supporters who have been warning and preparing me for the ‘siege to come’ after writing my last post on the Israel Lobby: Here I am still standing, stronger than ever, after speaking the ‘unspeakable.’ Granted some of those warnings were anything but friendly. I’d say they were more like ultimatums. Others reminded me of Paul Revere’s Midnight Ride: watch out woman, the labeling Nazis are coming! As always I lost a few registered users and various forum followers, and gained some new forum friends and registered BFP followers; I’d say on balance I am up;-)

Here is what I have to say to those of you who have not very gracefully (and unsuccessfully) gone down the classic labeling attack route: your efforts were totally wasted. I don’t have a paid media job you can take away via your usual tactics. I don’t have a think tank or NGO position you can eliminate. I don’t have a book promotion you can try to sink. I don’t depend on advertisers to run this site, and you don’t have a way of putting it out of business…Basically I ain’t got nothing ‘you’ can take away. I would have thanked you if I were seeking publicity, since negative publicity is far better than no publicity, but since I don’t I don’t owe you a thank you either. And finally, I consider myself pretty much ‘label-proofed,’ and here is how: I’ve been every woman!

Despite many warnings by colleagues and friends I chose to report wrongdoing aka becoming a whistleblower. They said I’d be labeled a disgruntled employee. And some did try to stick that label to me, as they have done to all whistleblowers before and after me: the Disgruntled Government Employee.

My family warned me about disclosures concerning my home country Turkey. They said I’d be considered a Traitor. I chose to take that risk for what I believed to be the greater good (it’s debatable whether it was or not), and to some over there in Turkey, I became that; a Traitor.

When I went to the United States Senate with my documented disclosures both parties found me to be potentially worrisome. A Republican Senator told my legal representative: ‘on bringing up the issues regarding the Bush administration she sounds like a Bleeding Heart Liberal.’ A Senator from the other party had different worries: ‘Is she a trap set up by the Republicans? Because the stuff on the Clinton administration seems like a God Da.. Republican Ploy!’ So I became a God Da.. Republican Ploy and Bleeding Heart Liberal simultaneously. And to this date they haven’t come to any conclusion!

During my 7 years of legal and congressional battles with the Bush administration I may have become the left’s favorite whistleblower heroine, but I got tons of attacks from the blinded right for being a secret Democrats’ Puppet Woman. Then Obama came, and my unabashed criticism of him turned me into a villain in the blinded and wanna-be progressive Democrat community, and gave me a new name there: Anti Liberal Repug.

Then came this website, my articles, interviews, and commentaries:

I write on Imam Fethullah Gulen, and some attack me with Anti-Muslim & Anti-Islam labels.

I write on the Israel lobby contributions to candidates, and others come after me with Anti-Israel & Anti-Semite tags.

I write on the Turkish lobby and it’s octopus like tentacles in purchasing politicians, and I become Anti-Turkey & Anti-Turkish to some.

I interview a respected guest like Chris Hedges, and my new label becomes Socialist-Communist within certain circuits.

My Boiling Frogs Podcast presents an admirable expert Dr. Woods on significant issues, and I get Tea-Bagger labels thrown at me from various websites and forums.

I criticize certain Neocon policies, and I am an Unrealistic Liberal Fantasist to certain people who consider themselves realists.

I go after our out-of-control federal government police practices, and I am called Libertarian Anarchist by a few.

I stand by my rights and do my share by handing out information on TSA-DHS airport abuses, and many stop to call me Terrorist Sympathizer.

I choose to raise my daughter as a full-time stay at home mother, and to some I become a disgrace to the Feminist movement.

My whistleblower organization members happen to be mainly men, and I’m accused of being Sexist.

I could write pages and pages on the labels I have received, the things I’ve been accused of, and the names I’ve been called: Despicable Middle Eastern, Feminist, Anti-Feminist, Right Wing Mouthpiece, Left Wing Agent, Tea Bagger, Anarchist, Racist, Traditionalist, Modernist, Anti-Semite, Too Conservative, Too Liberal, Socialist, Communist, Islamist, CIA Mole, 9/11 Disinformation Agent, Sexist …

I am not going to disregard my long-term kind supporters and pass over the positives. It is just that it is hard to list nice and positive compliments (or labels), and not sound egotistical. You have kindly considered and called me: courageous, dignified, patriotic…and other similarly supportive adjectives. Even those of you who have complemented me in some strange ways with even stranger imagery to go with them, such as ‘when it comes to guts and courage far more testicularly endowed than most men in this country’!! I humbly thank you for all that.

So there you have it my recent Labelers. You see, I’ve been every woman, and I’ve lived through them all; I’m still standing. What are you gonna do about it, ey??!!
 

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Tom Woods joins us to discuss his latest article on the Phony Arguments for Presidential War Powers which has triggered intriguing reactions from the media on both sides of the isle. He provides us with historical background and a ‘real’ constitutional view of war making powers vested in US presidents, and tells us why the mainstream, left and right, usually proclaims the congressional power to declare war  “obsolete.” Dr. Woods defines ‘State Nullification,’ provides us with examples and an historical context for this power vested in the states, and counters uninformed arguments and generalizations spread by the mainstream on this topic. He talks about the Federal Reserve and the disastrous government bailout, the polarized and sound-bite oriented media, the labeling of critics of the status quo,  the case of the states and medical marijuana, the man most responsible for the beginning of the  imperial presidency in the US, and more!

Thomas E. Woods, Jr., is a senior fellow of the Ludwig von Mises Institute. He holds a bachelor’s degree in history from Harvard and his master’s, and Ph.D. from Columbia University. He is the author of eleven books, most recently Rollback: Repealing Big Government Before the Coming Fiscal Collapse and Nullification: How to Resist Federal Tyranny in the 21st Century. His other books include The New York Times bestsellers Meltdown: A Free-Market Look at Why the Stock Market Collapsed, the Economy Tanked, and Government Bailouts Will Make Things Worse and The Politically Incorrect Guide to American History, as well as Who Killed the Constitution? The Fate of American Liberty from World War I to George W. Bush (with Kevin R.C. Gutzman). Dr. Woods’ writing has appeared in dozens of popular and scholarly periodicals, including the American Historical Review, the Christian Science Monitor, Investor’s Business Daily, Modern Age, American Studies, New Oxford Review, Catholic World Report, and Journal of Libertarian Studies. He is presently a contributing editor of The American Conservative magazine, and a contributor to six encyclopedias. He publishes regularly at his website http://tomwoods.com.

Here is our guest Tom Woods unplugged!

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.

Here is a round up with a few noteworthy developments and articles and an absurdity or two. This week Peter B Collins and I will be recording interviews with two special guests. It is going to be lively, interesting and I think rather controversial. Stay tuned.

The Conditional Antiwar Movement- Party Based AntiWar-ism

The following article is based on a new study showing that the antiwar movement in the US demobilized as Democrats, who had been motivated to participate by anti-Republican sentiments, withdrew from antiwar protests when the Democratic Party achieved electoral success. The findings are complementary (unfortunately) to my previous post on partisan & biased media reports. Ignorant & blinded partisanship in action: atrocious wars and major presidential abuses are all okay if committed by X Party, but awful and impeachable offenses if exercised by Y party.

Did Obama’s Election mean the End of the Anti-War Movement? 
By Bernie DeGroat, Spero News

As president, Obama has maintained the occupation of Iraq and escalated the war in Afghanistan,” said Heaney, U-M assistant professor of organizational studies and political science. “The antiwar movement should have been furious at Obama’s ‘betrayal’ and reinvigorated its protest activity.

“Instead, attendance at antiwar rallies declined precipitously and financial resources available to the movement have dissipated. The election of Obama appeared to be a demobilizing force on the antiwar movement, even in the face of his pro-war decisions.”

Heaney and Rojas analyzed the demobilization of the antiwar movement by using surveys of 5,400 demonstrators at 27 protests mostly in Washington, D.C., New York, Chicago and San Francisco from January 2007 to December 2009. The surveys asked questions on basic demographics, partisan affiliations, organizational affiliations, reasons for attending the events, histories of political participation, and attitudes toward the movement, war and the political system.

…

A New Memo Reveals: FBI Had Mole Inside ABC News- Why the surprise?!

A recently declassified FBI memo reveals that a senior ABC News journalist acted (and performed) as a confidential informant to the bureau in the 1990s. I know this is significant, but shocking? That’s what I don’t understand. Do you?

Memo Suggests FBI Had Mole Inside ABC News in 1990s 
By John Solomon & Aeron Mehta

A once-classified FBI memo reveals that the bureau treated a senior ABC News journalist as a potential confidential informant in the 1990s, pumping the reporter to ascertain the source of a sensational but uncorroborated tip that the network had obtained during its early coverage of the Oklahoma City bombing.

The journalist, whose name is not disclosed in the document labeled “secret,” not only cooperated but provided the identity of a confidential source, according to the FBI memo — a possible breach of journalistic ethics if he or she did not have the source’s permission.

The ABC employee was even assigned a number in the FBI’s informant database, indicating he or she was still being vetted for suitability as a snitch after providing “highly accurate and reliable information in the past” and then revealing information the network had obtained in the hours just after the 1995 terrorist attack by Timothy McVeigh.

…

More on Biased-Partisan Media & Double Standards

On Friday I published a brief commentary on the Lefts’ Hypocrisy when it comes to investigative reporting on the Obama administration’s atrocities nationally and internationally. Considering the level of controversy accompanied by lots of snarls, spits and insults, it must have struck a chord with ‘some people.’ Suddenly, these people forget my 7-year long battle during the Bush administration-the gag orders I received, polygraphs, being fired, secrecy…you name it. I used to be, back in the Bush days, their heroine, their respected whistleblower. Obama administration comes in, I see what goes on, I write about it and voice my opinion against the same atrocities, and suddenly I become the …hmmmmm, I am not going to use their x-rated and colorful adjectives. If I remember correctly, it started with this piece I wrote during the early Obama days: Two Sides of the Same Coin … Heads-Heads. No worries; I won’t be easily deterred. Here is another commentary on the Left’s double standards when it comes to ‘their’ president of wars-abuses:

Double Standards on Impeachment 
By John Walsh, Campaign for Liberty

The lead editorial in the April 11 issue of The Nation, “The Libya Intervention,” leaves one wondering. Whatever the editorial may be, it does not qualify as a resounding condemnation of Barack Obama for his war on Libya.

It begins by naming, a president, but that president is George Bush not Barack Obama. The editorial notes that the Libyan “intervention” comes eight year’s to the day after “Bush began his ‘shock and and awe’ war.” It appears that W wages war, but Obama merely “intervenes.” Noting that Bush’s war ravaged Iraq and brought America’s reputation low, The Nation observes that Obama “seems to have learned this lesson.” Then the editorial goes on to praise Obama for taking military action only as a last resort to prevent a “potential” massacre of civilians. But does that not mean that the Libyan adventure is a preemptive war just like Bush’s?

The Nation then heaps praise on Obama for deciding to “support” the Security Council resolution, ignoring the fact that the U.S. browbeat the Security Council into (just barely) passing that resolution. The editorial continues: “The (UN) resolution makes clear that its goal is the protection of civilians rather than regime change. Thus the administration’s decision to support the UN action is an important defense of a multipolar world that operates according to international law.” Sounds so far like Obama is doing a great job.Only when one arrives at the fifth paragraph of this nine paragraph editorial do we begin to find criticism of Obama. The fact that Obama has taken the country to war without a declaration by Congress is duly noted — but there is no mention of impeachment as the remedy, not even a hint.

…

So The Nation was in favor of impeachment when the war was Bush’s and it was useful to win votes for Dems in the 2006 elections. The Nation‘s editor was delighted with Holtzmann’s article featured on the cover. But The Nation and the same editor now stand mute when the war and the violation of the Constitution are Obama’s. The words of those who place Party over principle merit considerable contempt, especially when it comes to issues of war, but they do not deserve to be taken seriously.

…

Not To Be Missed Interview @ Peter B Collins Show: Pepe Escobar on Libya

This is directly from the Peter B Collins Show:

Escobar is a globetrotting journalist and author who writes for Asia Times and was a guest on a Boiling Frogs interview last year. He is as outspoken here as in print, and he offers accounts not available in the US corporate media. He notes that the Libyan opposition has been renamed Interim National Council–or INC, the same acronym for the Pentagon’s program supporting Iraqi exile Ahmed Chalabi and his Iraqi National Congress. And, like Chalabi with Iraq, it appears we have a Libyan exile army colonel, Khalifa Hifter, who spent 20 years living right down the road from CIA headquarters in Virginia, now inserted back into Libya and designated as a leader of the opposition to Qaddafi…

We have had Pepe Escobar here at Boiling Frogs Post, and this interview is at least as good. I’d say a not to be missed show! Listen To Pepe Escobar on Libya @ PBC Show

A Fifth of the Federal Budget: Entirely Off Limits?

Pentagon’s spending has gone from $300 billion to more than $663 billion in the last ten years. The defense budget is the single largest spending item under Congress’ direct control. Yet, the Defense Department has never bothered to comply with federal rules requiring annual audits .Hmmmm, and obviously they have gotten away with this easily. Or is it the other way around, since they know they have carte blanche they don’t bother complying with cosmetic federal rules like that. Anyway, Washington Times had the following on this, and they did a fairly hard-hitting job with the absurdity of this mammoth taxpayer money spender (waster!) and toothless Congress:

Budget Hawks May Not Turn a Blind Eye to Pentagon
Seth McLaughlin, Washington Times

“At a minimum, we need to freeze defense spending until the Pentagon can audit its books,” said Sen. Tom Coburn, Oklahoma Republican. “Our military leaders have said our debt is our greatest national security threat. In order to defeat that threat, we have to put everything on the table, including defense spending that, in some cases, does nothing to defend our nation.”

Still, proposals to slice the department’s spending have been few and far between, and the ones that lawmakers have put forward have gained little traction.

In the debate over cutting 2011 spending levels, military spending has basically been AWOL, while the competing 2012 budget blueprints rolled out by President Obama and House Budget Committee Chairman Paul Ryan, Wisconsin Republican, include billions of additional dollars for defense, though at a reduced rate of growth. Lawmakers, meanwhile, are proposing deep cuts to the other federal agencies, which, unlike the Pentagon, conform to the audit guidelines.

Lawmakers and fiscal conservatives say auditors can’t get a clear picture of the Defense Department’s books because it operates on outdated networks and systems that make it impossible to track where the money is going.

“Congress does not know how the Pentagon spends money, and the Pentagon does not know how the Pentagon spends its money,” said Winslow T. Wheeler, a military analyst at the Center for Defense Information who worked on national security issues for 31 years for members of the U.S. Senate. “It is not that DOD annually flunks audits, it is the fact that it can’t be audited.”

He added, “If you flunk an audit, you can track the money and find that it was not spent as intended. If you can’t be audited, you can’t track the money. In other words, it is literally true that it would be a vast improvement if DOD were to flunk an audit.”

…

Surprise, Surprise: USA Government Admits to Secret Afghan Prisons!

Do you remember Obama’s presidential campaign promises on closing the Guantánamo Bay prison, ending illegal detention, banning the use of torture and ending the immunity of those responsible? Hey, it has been less than three years, so you must remember. What is the situation now? We still have many detainees in Guantánamo Bay whose fate has not yet been decided.  We still have ‘secret prisons,’ ‘suspected’ terrorists being held under mysterious and ambigious circumstances, and of course military-operated prisons all over Afghanistan …where prisoners can be held, mistreated and interrogated without charge. Under the same Obama who snarled at the same practices under his predecessor Bush. Now, Obama and his clan admit to continuing, maybe even expanding, secret and without charge detention and interrogation practices; at least in Afghanistan.

Afghan terror suspects held weeks in secret
AP

The secret network of jails, known as “black sites,” that grew up after the Sept. 11 attacks are gone. But suspected terrorists are still being held under hazy circumstances with uncertain rights in secret, military-run jails across Afghanistan, where they can be interrogated for weeks without charge, according to U.S. officials who revealed details of the top-secret network to The Associated Press.

The Pentagon has previously denied operating secret jails in Afghanistan, although human rights groups and former detainees have described the facilities. U.S. military and other government officials confirmed that the detention centres exist but described them as temporary holding pens whose primary purpose is to gather intelligence.

…

The most secretive of roughly 20 temporary sites is run by the military’s elite counterterrorism unit, the Joint Special Operations Command, at Bagram Air Base. It’s responsible for questioning high-value targets, the detainees suspected of top roles in the Taliban, al-Qaeda or other militant groups.

The site’s location, a short drive from a well-known public detention centre, has been alleged for more than a year.

The secrecy under which the U.S. runs that jail and about 20 others is noteworthy because of President Barack Obama’s criticism of the old network of secret CIA prisons where interrogators sometimes used the harshest available methods, including the simulated drowning known as waterboarding.

Human rights advocates say the severest of the Bush-era interrogation methods are gone, but the conditions at the new interrogation sites still raise questions. Obama pledged when he took office that the United States would not torture anyone, but former detainees describe harsh treatment that some human rights groups claim borders on inhumane.

…

This Week’s Hillary Clinton Joke!

Please listen to this: Clinton urges China to free activists!!  Is this a joke? You bet. A real joke? Yes. I mean a joke that is based on something that actually, truly, really took place? Aha. This is the same woman who got activist Ray McGovern beaten up & jailed, supports and maintains our secret prisons (think Bagram), is part of the same government that comes down on antiwar activists and jails government whistleblowers …keeps Guantanamo running …And, this woman turns around and tells China to improve its human rights record. Huh. Further, our mainstream media reports this with a straight face!

 Clinton urges China to free activists
By Shaun Tandon, AFP

US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton urged China to free dozens of government critics rounded up this year including a prominent artist and said Beijing’s rights record was worsening.

…

“In China, we’ve seen negative trends that are appearing to worsen in the first part of 2011,” Clinton told reporters.”As we have said repeatedly, the United States welcomes the rise of a strong and prosperous China,” she said.”However, we remain deeply concerned about reports that since February, dozens of people including public-interest lawyers, writers, artists, intellectuals and activists have been arbitrarily detained and arrested.”

She mentioned the case of Ai Weiwei, an outspoken artist who helped design the Bird’s Nest Olympic Stadium for the 2008 Beijing Games. He was detained on Sunday for unspecified “economic crimes.”

…

Please read this part, so funny, sadly funny:

“Such detention is contrary to the rule of law, and we urge China to release all of those who have been detained for exercising their internationally recognized right to free expression and to respect the fundamental freedoms and human rights of all of the citizens of China,” Clinton said.

…

Okay, I am going to end this round up on many of our nation’s absurdities with a well-written commentary by William Reed for Florida Courier:

Message to Barack-Make Luv, Not War
By William Reed, FL Courier

Blacks who believe Barack Obama can do no wrong would grimace at Texas Congressman Ron Paul calling him “a warmonger.” Dr. Paul would infuriate the Obama Faithful further in saying, “The military industrial complex is firmly entrenched in Washington and Barack Obama is one of their guys.”

Like those who occupied the Oval Office before him, the military industrial complex overly influences President Obama.  Their business is war, and military industry people are in line with Obama’s going to Libya.   Every time a Tomahawk cruise missile blows up a building in Libya (and everyone inside it), Raytheon makes $1.5 million.   

History has a habit of repeating itself.  Unfortunately, not enough people pay attention to obvious parallels right before their eyes. What is unfolding now in Libya is a tragic replay of what has gone before.  Wars are costly and extremely expensive, but don’t count on Obama or America’s military apparatus leaving Iraq or Afghanistan anytime soon.  

…

There is no anger or agitation among African-Americans against President Obama and a Congress that should be ending the wars we were already in, or against our military leaders starting new ones such as Libya.  With Obama leading the pack, Black Americans are part and parcel of imperialists’ acts against Arabs and other people of color the U.S. is “warring against.”

One would think that two horrendously expensive military disasters would be enough for this president and his advisers. After all, we’re already spending $1 million per soldier per year in Afghanistan, and will spend close to a half-trillion dollars.   

…

It is an unapologetically written and effective article, and it is short. I encourage you to take a few minutes and read the entire piece here.

This site depends exclusively on readers’ support. Please help us continue by contributing directly and or purchasing Boiling Frogs showcased products.