Monday, April 13, 2009
Somalia
You Are Being Lied to About Pirates
By Johann HariWho imagined that in 2009, the world's governments would be declaring a new War on Pirates? As you read this, the British Royal Navy - backed by the ships of more than two dozen nations, from the US to China - is sailing into Somalian waters to take on men we still picture as parrot-on-the-shoulder pantomime villains. They will soon be fighting Somalian ships and even chasing the pirates onto land, into one of the most broken countries on earth. But behind the arrr-me-hearties oddness of this tale, there is an untold scandal. The people our governments are labeling as "one of the great menace of our times" have an extraordinary story to tell -- and some justice on their side.
Pirates have never been quite who we think they are. In the "golden age of piracy" - from 1650 to 1730 - the idea of the pirate as the senseless, savage thief that lingers today was created by the British government in a great propaganda-heave. Many ordinary people believed it was false: pirates were often rescued from the gallows by supportive crowds. Why? What did they see that we can't? In his book Villains of All nations, the historian Marcus Rediker pores through the evidence to find out. If you became a merchant or navy sailor then - plucked from the docks of London's East End, young and hungry - you ended up in a floating wooden Hell. You worked all hours on a cramped, half-starved ship, and if you slacked off for a second, the all-powerful captain would whip you with the Cat O' Nine Tails. If you slacked consistently, you could be thrown overboard. And at the end of months or years of this, you were often cheated of your wages.
Pirates were the first people to rebel against this world. They mutinied against their tyrannical captains - and created a different way of working on the seas. Once they had a ship, the pirates elected their captains, and made all their decisions collectively. They shared their bounty out in what Rediker calls "one of the most egalitarian plans for the disposition of resources to be found anywhere in the eighteenth century." They even took in escaped African slaves and lived with them as equals. The pirates showed "quite clearly - and subversively - that ships did not have to be run in the brutal and oppressive ways of the merchant service and the Royal navy." This is why they were popular, despite being unproductive thieves.
The words of one pirate from that lost age - a young British man called William Scott - should echo into this new age of piracy. Just before he was hanged in Charleston, South Carolina, he said: "What I did was to keep me from perishing. I was forced to go a-pirating to live." In 1991, the government of Somalia - in the Horn of Africa - collapsed. Its nine million people have been teetering on starvation ever since - and many of the ugliest forces in the Western world have seen this as a great opportunity to steal the country's food supply and dump our nuclear waste in their seas.
Yes: nuclear waste. As soon as the government was gone, mysterious European ships started appearing off the coast of Somalia, dumping vast barrels into the ocean. The coastal population began to sicken. At first they suffered strange rashes, nausea and malformed babies. Then, after the 2005 tsunami, hundreds of the dumped and leaking barrels washed up on shore. People began to suffer from radiation sickness, and more than 300 died. Ahmedou Ould-Abdallah, the UN envoy to Somalia, tells me: "Somebody is dumping nuclear material here. There is also lead, and heavy metals such as cadmium and mercury - you name it." Much of it can be traced back to European hospitals and factories, who seem to be passing it on to the Italian mafia to "dispose" of cheaply. When I asked Ould-Abdallah what European governments were doing about it, he said with a sigh: "Nothing. There has been no clean-up, no compensation, and no prevention."
At the same time, other European ships have been looting Somalia's seas of their greatest resource: seafood. We have destroyed our own fish-stocks by over-exploitation - and now we have moved on to theirs. More than $300m worth of tuna, shrimp, lobster and other sea-life is being stolen every year by vast trawlers illegally sailing into Somalia's unprotected seas. The local fishermen have suddenly lost their livelihoods, and they are starving. Mohammed Hussein, a fisherman in the town of Marka 100km south of Mogadishu, told Reuters: "If nothing is done, there soon won't be much fish left in our coastal waters."
This is the context in which the men we are calling "pirates" have emerged. Everyone agrees they were ordinary Somalian fishermen who at first took speedboats to try to dissuade the dumpers and trawlers, or at least wage a 'tax' on them. They call themselves the Volunteer Coastguard of Somalia - and it's not hard to see why. In a surreal telephone interview, one of the pirate leaders, Sugule Ali, said their motive was "to stop illegal fishing and dumping in our waters... We don't consider ourselves sea bandits. We consider sea bandits [to be] those who illegally fish and dump in our seas and dump waste in our seas and carry weapons in our seas." William Scott would understand those words.
No, this doesn't make hostage-taking justifiable, and yes, some are clearly just gangsters - especially those who have held up World Food Programme supplies. But the "pirates" have the overwhelming support of the local population for a reason. The independent Somalian news-site WardherNews conducted the best research we have into what ordinary Somalis are thinking - and it found 70 percent "strongly supported the piracy as a form of national defence of the country's territorial waters." During the revolutionary war in America, George Washington and America's founding fathers paid pirates to protect America's territorial waters, because they had no navy or coastguard of their own. Most Americans supported them. Is this so different?
Did we expect starving Somalians to stand passively on their beaches, paddling in our nuclear waste, and watch us snatch their fish to eat in restaurants in London and Paris and Rome? We didn't act on those crimes - but when some of the fishermen responded by disrupting the transit-corridor for 20 percent of the world's oil supply, we begin to shriek about "evil." If we really want to deal with piracy, we need to stop its root cause - our crimes - before we send in the gun-boats to root out Somalia's criminals.
The story of the 2009 war on piracy was best summarised by another pirate, who lived and died in the fourth century BC. He was captured and brought to Alexander the Great, who demanded to know "what he meant by keeping possession of the sea." The pirate smiled, and responded: "What you mean by seizing the whole earth; but because I do it with a petty ship, I am called a robber, while you, who do it with a great fleet, are called emperor." Once again, our great imperial fleets sail in today - but who is the robber?
POSTSCRIPT: Some seem bemused by the fact that both toxic dumping and the theft of fish are happening in the same place - wouldn't this make the fish contaminated? In fact, Somalia’s coasline is vast, stretching to 3300km. Imagine how easy it would be - without any coastguard or army - to steal fish from Florida and dump nuclear waste on California, and you get the idea. These events are happening in different places - but with the same horrible effect: death for the locals, and stirred-up piracy. There's no contradiction.
Music Additions # 2
Mari Boine Persen is a Norwegian Sami musician known for having added jazz and rock to the yoiks of her native people. Boine (born 8 November 1956 in Finnmark, Norway) grew up amid the Laestadian Christian movement as well as amidst discrimination against her people. She was asked to perform at the 1994 Winter Olympics in Lillehammer, but refused because she perceived the invitation as an attempt to bring a token minority to the ceremonies. Gula Gula (first released by Iđut, 1989, later re-released by Real World) was her breakthrough release, and she continued to record popular albums throughout the 1990s.
Further Left Music Program
For the convenience of our room members and guests at Further Left Chat, here is the list of new additions to our music program.
9 - Abbey Lincoln - When The Lights Go On Again - (USA)
28 - Amadou & Mariam - La Politique, C'est Pas Bon - (Mali)
39 - Anita Baker - You´re My Everything - (USA)
270 - Eliane Elias - Call Me - (Brazil)
447 - Karrin Allyson.- Here There And Everywhere - (USA)
448 - Karrin Allyson.- Live For Life - (USA)
449 - Karrin Allyson.- Say It Over And Over Again - (USA)
487 - Lisa Ono - Elle, Lui, Nous - (Brazil)
488 - Lisa Ono - Ti Guardo Nel Cuore - (Brazil)
547 - Mari Boine - Eallin [Live] - (Sápmi)
548 - Mari Boine - Goaskinviellja [Brother Eagle] - (Sápmi)
549 - Mari Boine - It Sat Duolmma Mu [Finally Free] - (Sápmi)
550 - Mari Boine - Vilges Suola [White Thief] - (Sápmi)
551 - Mari Boine - Vuoi Vuoi Mu, Idjagiedas [Yellowbird] - (Sápmi)
756 - Sergio Cammariere - L'amore Non Si Spiega - (Italy)
757 - Sergio Cammariere - Per Ricordarmi Di Te - (Italy)
758 - Sergio Cammariere - Sorella Mia - (Italy)
759 - Sergio Cammariere - Tutto Quello Che È Un Uomo - (Italy)
763 - Shahram Nazeri - Man Cheh Daanam - (Iran)
The http://MUSIC.furtherleft.net link (always on the room top bar) lists our 889 audio selections from 81 nations that have been submitted by 58 users and tells how anyone can choose which play as well as contribute to our list. Last update was 12 April 2009.
9 - Abbey Lincoln - When The Lights Go On Again - (USA)
28 - Amadou & Mariam - La Politique, C'est Pas Bon - (Mali)
39 - Anita Baker - You´re My Everything - (USA)
270 - Eliane Elias - Call Me - (Brazil)
447 - Karrin Allyson.- Here There And Everywhere - (USA)
448 - Karrin Allyson.- Live For Life - (USA)
449 - Karrin Allyson.- Say It Over And Over Again - (USA)
487 - Lisa Ono - Elle, Lui, Nous - (Brazil)
488 - Lisa Ono - Ti Guardo Nel Cuore - (Brazil)
547 - Mari Boine - Eallin [Live] - (Sápmi)
548 - Mari Boine - Goaskinviellja [Brother Eagle] - (Sápmi)
549 - Mari Boine - It Sat Duolmma Mu [Finally Free] - (Sápmi)
550 - Mari Boine - Vilges Suola [White Thief] - (Sápmi)
551 - Mari Boine - Vuoi Vuoi Mu, Idjagiedas [Yellowbird] - (Sápmi)
756 - Sergio Cammariere - L'amore Non Si Spiega - (Italy)
757 - Sergio Cammariere - Per Ricordarmi Di Te - (Italy)
758 - Sergio Cammariere - Sorella Mia - (Italy)
759 - Sergio Cammariere - Tutto Quello Che È Un Uomo - (Italy)
763 - Shahram Nazeri - Man Cheh Daanam - (Iran)
The http://MUSIC.furtherleft.net link (always on the room top bar) lists our 889 audio selections from 81 nations that have been submitted by 58 users and tells how anyone can choose which play as well as contribute to our list. Last update was 12 April 2009.
Friday, April 10, 2009
Stanford Scheme
Texas Diamondback RattlesnakeStanford Laundered and Siphoned Money from Wealthy
Latin Americans to Fund Anti-Leftist Rebellions
By Wayne Madsen
Apr 7, 2009, 00:23
(WMR) -- An informed source close to the investigation of Sir Allen Stanford’s failed Stanford Financial Group and Stanford International Bank has told WMR that there is another link between Stanford’s activities and those of jailed Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff. While Madoff defrauded a number of wealthy American Jewish investors, Stanford, according to our source, was doing the same with the investments of a number of Latin American Jews, especially those from Mexico and Venezuela.
In some cases, however, Stanford, with the knowledge of the Jewish investors, was laundering and forwarding their money to groups planning the overthrow of elected progressive leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. The leaders allegedly threatened the investments of Stanford’s Jewish clients in each of the nations targeted for coups.
In 2007, Venezuelan police raided the La Hebraica Jewish Community Center in Caracas and searched for weapons and explosives. Earlier, in November 2004, the center was raided by police for clues in the car bombing assassination on November 18 of government prosecutor Danilo Anderson. Police suspected that Anderson’s killers may have had help from “foreign groups.”
However, not all Venezuelan Jews are opposed to Chavez. When the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked Chavez in 2006, Fred Pressner, president of the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela (CAIV), criticized the center for misinterpreting Chavez’s remarks and not consulting with CAIV before launching their tirade against Chavez.
In 2006, Chavez was challenged for the presidency by newspaper editor Teodoro Petkoff Malec, a one-time Communist guerrilla who abandoned communism to espouse neoconservative economic doctrines. Petkoff’s maternal heritage is Polish Jewish. Petkoff supported the U.S.-backed secessionist policies of oil-rich Zulia state governor Manuel Rosales, an opponent of Chavez. The Venezuelan Confederation of Israeli Associations has been a vocal opponent of Chavez.
In Bolivia, a strong opponent of Morales is Francisco Hubsch, the president of Bolivia’s Jewish community in the secessionist Santa Cruz region and Israel’s honorary consul in the city of Santa Cruz.
“Stanford handled the money from wealthy Latin American Jews in much the same way that Madoff handled the money of his Jewish clients in the United States,” said the source.
Another source likened the U.S. government’s investigation of Stanford to nude sun bathing. “When the tide went out on Madoff, Stanford was also left exposed and naked,” the source stated.
Perhaps fearing revelations coming from an indictment of Stanford, federal investigators have only thus far sued Allen Stanford for Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) violations. Stanford Financial Group Chief Investment Officer Laura Pendergest-Holt was indicted in February, while Chief Financial Officer James Davis is reportedly cooperating with the FBI and SEC in their investigations.
WMR has also learned of a financial relationship between Stanford’s operations in Antigua and principal players in the Russian-Israeli Mafia, which has long used the Caribbean island as a base for its money laundering operations.
WMR previously reported on Stanford’s operations in Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico being used to launder drug money for the CIA.
Last November, Venezuelan intelligence agents raided Stanford’s offices in Caracas and later charged that four of the firm’s employees in the Caracas office were U.S. intelligence agents. The Venezuelan agents also confiscated a number of files at the office.
Apr 7, 2009, 00:23
(WMR) -- An informed source close to the investigation of Sir Allen Stanford’s failed Stanford Financial Group and Stanford International Bank has told WMR that there is another link between Stanford’s activities and those of jailed Ponzi scammer Bernard Madoff. While Madoff defrauded a number of wealthy American Jewish investors, Stanford, according to our source, was doing the same with the investments of a number of Latin American Jews, especially those from Mexico and Venezuela.
In some cases, however, Stanford, with the knowledge of the Jewish investors, was laundering and forwarding their money to groups planning the overthrow of elected progressive leaders such as Hugo Chavez in Venezuela, Evo Morales in Bolivia, Rafael Correa in Ecuador, Cristina Fernandez de Kirchner in Argentina, and Daniel Ortega in Nicaragua. The leaders allegedly threatened the investments of Stanford’s Jewish clients in each of the nations targeted for coups.
In 2007, Venezuelan police raided the La Hebraica Jewish Community Center in Caracas and searched for weapons and explosives. Earlier, in November 2004, the center was raided by police for clues in the car bombing assassination on November 18 of government prosecutor Danilo Anderson. Police suspected that Anderson’s killers may have had help from “foreign groups.”
However, not all Venezuelan Jews are opposed to Chavez. When the Simon Wiesenthal Center attacked Chavez in 2006, Fred Pressner, president of the Confederation of Jewish Associations of Venezuela (CAIV), criticized the center for misinterpreting Chavez’s remarks and not consulting with CAIV before launching their tirade against Chavez.
In 2006, Chavez was challenged for the presidency by newspaper editor Teodoro Petkoff Malec, a one-time Communist guerrilla who abandoned communism to espouse neoconservative economic doctrines. Petkoff’s maternal heritage is Polish Jewish. Petkoff supported the U.S.-backed secessionist policies of oil-rich Zulia state governor Manuel Rosales, an opponent of Chavez. The Venezuelan Confederation of Israeli Associations has been a vocal opponent of Chavez.
In Bolivia, a strong opponent of Morales is Francisco Hubsch, the president of Bolivia’s Jewish community in the secessionist Santa Cruz region and Israel’s honorary consul in the city of Santa Cruz.
“Stanford handled the money from wealthy Latin American Jews in much the same way that Madoff handled the money of his Jewish clients in the United States,” said the source.
Another source likened the U.S. government’s investigation of Stanford to nude sun bathing. “When the tide went out on Madoff, Stanford was also left exposed and naked,” the source stated.
Perhaps fearing revelations coming from an indictment of Stanford, federal investigators have only thus far sued Allen Stanford for Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) violations. Stanford Financial Group Chief Investment Officer Laura Pendergest-Holt was indicted in February, while Chief Financial Officer James Davis is reportedly cooperating with the FBI and SEC in their investigations.
WMR has also learned of a financial relationship between Stanford’s operations in Antigua and principal players in the Russian-Israeli Mafia, which has long used the Caribbean island as a base for its money laundering operations.
WMR previously reported on Stanford’s operations in Venezuela, Panama, Ecuador, Peru, and Mexico being used to launder drug money for the CIA.
Last November, Venezuelan intelligence agents raided Stanford’s offices in Caracas and later charged that four of the firm’s employees in the Caracas office were U.S. intelligence agents. The Venezuelan agents also confiscated a number of files at the office.
Obscene Obama
Obama's Obscene Remarks in Iraq
April 8, 2009
Obama in IraqIt is hard to know where to begin on Obama's remarks in Iraq yesterday during a visit described unnecessarily by our press as a "surprise" since that is the only sort of visit a US President can make to Iraq. What is more appalling? The casual obscenity of a US President calling upon a nation that the US has been beating, brutalizing, and raping (that is when not using like a pawn in geo political games) for decades to "take responsibility for itself" or the fact that he has absolutely no idea of how much like a criminal sociopath he sounds when making such remarks?
It isn't Obama's fault. He is, after all, a product of the imperial Beltway and thus has never been exposed to anything approaching reality . . . to anything that lies outside the allowable parameter of opinion on Iraq. This parameter runs the gamut from the kook "right wing" belief that still believes Iraq was behind 9/11 and that the WMDs were there but just got moved to Syria . . . to the "left wing" opinion that the Iraq war, though fought for noble reasons and with good intentions, was the wrong war at the wrong time but since "we" are there "we" should make the best out of it.
Not for a second are we ever exposed to the stark reality of Iraq: that DC, in our name, has brought murder, pain, and misery to the lives of millions of Iraqis for self serving opaque agendas that had no good intentions or noble reasons behind them and they hate us, with good and just cause, and want us gone, completely, from their country.
I want to make something clear here. Obama's remarks yesterday in Iraq were not extraordinary or atypical in any way for an American politician, official, or military commander to make. Rather, they were par for the course in their staggeringly narcissistic and sociopath like assumptions.
Within any rhetoric out of our imperial Beltway on Iraq are underlying assumptions such as that Iraqis should be grateful to the United States for invading their country on false pretenses, destroying its infrastructure, and turning their nation into our battle ground for a ludicrous war on a tactic wielded by a largely mythical organization that is conveniently and fluidly defined.
The Iraqis, you see, after decades of suffering the results of American policies that could be described, at best, as having nothing but brutal indifference toward the lives of even the most vulnerable and innocent among them, should be thankful to the United States for finally invading them and "liberating" them.
And it isn't our fault that though they haven't been "killing each other for thousands of years" as is the the idiotic and wrong American sound bite on Iraqi sectarian history that they are now doing so. Nope. We had nothing to do with creating the cauldron of horrendous sectarian violence in Iraq that is ongoing to this day (and that as a ratio of population produces one or two 9/11 type casualty events in Iraq every week- that is when one of the unreported hundreds of US air-strikes in Iraqi urban centers are not doing so).
Obama also called the Iraq war an "extraordinary achievement".
The "extraordinary achievement" that Obama called the Iraq war is a nation that high ranking American officials can't visit pre-announced. It is an "extraordinary achievement" with an "unknown" civilian casualty component- killed civilians by the way- the US military didn't even deem worthy of counting. It is an "extraordinary achievement" with as many as four million people (or nearly 20 percent of the population) either displaced or refugees. It is an "extraordinary achievement" with a capital city being walled off- as if an ancient city under siege- from the rest of the country and only allowing four access points. It is an "extraordinary achievement" still, six years on,without the same levels of pre-war clean drinking water.
But for Obama it is time this country of Iraq, this ungrateful country that has had the good fortune to be blessed with the presence of our moral troops, picked from the cream of our society, who have nothing but respect for them and their culture- to step up and "take responsibility" for their country because we are just so sick of doing such a good job for them.
Thursday, April 09, 2009
Homeland Security
Tuesday, April 07, 2009
China's Self Image
Is Far Too Rosy
BY JOHN POMFRET ON MARCH 30
For decades the rest of the world has derided Americans for being ignorant about lots of things. Not least on that list has been our ignorance of how we affect the world. We think the world loves us, our critics say, but it doesn't. But now, the United States seems to have found a rival in the race to be the most insensitive country on earth. China!
A new poll by researchers at the University of Maryland and Globescan sums it up in the starkest terms. A whopping 92 percent of Chinese surveyed believe that China has a mainly positive influence on the world; whereas a mere 39 percent of people polled in 20 other major countries agree. This is the largest perception gap among the countries' polled. (And it's getting worse. Views about China have declined markedly over the last year.)
Indeed, the survey makes us Americans look downright switched-on. According to the poll, some 60 percent of Americans surveyed thought the United States exerts a positive influence on the world; whereas 43 percent of people polled in the same 20 other major countries think it's mostly negative. A tiny gap when compared to China's. (Also China now ranks below the average the US in terms of positive influence for the first time since the poll was initiated five years ago.)
To me this poll illustrates one of the most interesting aspects of the world's interaction with China. That's the gap between how most Chinese perceive of their country and how the rest of us do. Most Chinese people appear to believe deeply in the benevolent role that China's plays around the globe. I saw this during the 10 years I lived in China. And I see it in the regular and friendly interaction I have with Chinese officials.
Why?
First, I think Chinese propaganda is very successful; Chinese have generally bought into the government that line that China's rise can only bring good things to the rest of the world. They deeply believe the line that China would never invade a foreign country, etc.
One of the reasons why Kung Fu Panda did so smashingly well in China was that the Chinese saw Po's story as mirroring that of their homeland. They think they're the dragon warrior, beloved by our global village. To make matters worse, very little negative news about China filters into the mainland. And what negative news there is, is routinely attacked by the Chinese blogosphere as anti-Chinese.
Second, there is an element of racism or just plain fear in the world's reaction to China's rise. Any new player on the world block is bound to make waves. China is no exception and it probably gets hit doubly hard because of the rest of the world's ignorance and in some circles dislike of Asians.
Some Chinese writers, such as Yan Lieshan, a columnist for Southern Weekend, have tried to address what he feels to be this dangerous gap in perceptions between China and the rest of the world. His pieces are popular and his most recent one is powerful. Here's a taste:
When asked about the behavior of Chinese tourists on overseas trips, Vice Foreign Minister Wu Dawei said he did not agree that the tourists had "backward habits" that "disgraced" the country. "Yes, it's always Chinese who gather in big crowds and talk loud in airports and restaurants, but it's just a habit. We Chinese are not used to the foreigners' murmuring and whispering at a close distance either," said Wu. I totally disagree with Vice Minister Wu.
Little voices such as Yan's can do little to shout down the triumphalism emerging from party central in Beijing.
link: http://newsweek.washingtonpost.com/postglobal/pomfretschina/2009/03/china_loves_itself_more_than_the_world.html
# posted by Anonymous @ 4/07/2009 07:36:00 AM
A truly "free" press makes all the difference.
Get ready for real propaganda once all the newspapers go out of business and TV cuts back due to budgetary constraints.The almighty government will be the only entity to fund news gathering and distribution.
Forget the internet, it's mostly all pick-up from newspapers and TV.
This does not bode well for REAL news in the future.
Sunday, April 05, 2009
Darkness Renewed
Terror as a Tool of Empire
By Chris Floyd
April 01, 2009 "EB" --- Here's a purely hypothetical scenario. Let's say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country's security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let's say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy – the machtpolitik – that you believe in.
But there's a problem. The general public – the cow-like herd out there that doesn't understand grand strategy the way you and your fellow elites do – is growing weary, and wary, of your Long War. The national treasury is bankrupt, the national infrastructure is rotting, the nation's communities are dying; millions of people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their dreams, spiraling down into want, privation and despair. Yet you have big plans to escalate the war, expand your war machine, and maintain the global dominance that you believe is the right and natural role for your special nation – and its elites. What to do? How to galvanize the truculent, self-absorbed herd into enthusiastically supporting your vital agenda once more?
Well, here's one purely hypothetical approach you might try. You goad and provoke violent extremist groups into retaliating against your attacks, your civilian-slaughtering invasions and incursions into their territory. Being unable to confront directly your war machine – the largest, most advanced military force in the history of the world, sustained by a tsunami of public money that each year surpasses the military spending of the rest of the world – they naturally respond with "asymmetrical" operations. At first, these are directed at nearby targets: your supply lines, the forces of your local proxies and allies, and other chaos-inducing depredations in the groups' own regions, designed to foul the lines of your control and drive you out. Just as naturally, you use these attacks to justify an even greater military presence in their regions. The cycle inevitably, inexorably ratchets upwards and outwards, until at last the extremists strike at your homeland – either with your connivance, or your covert acquiescence, or, in any event, with your foreknowledge that such an attack was sure to come. This is the moment you have waited for; this is exactly what you wanted. Now you can whip the herd back into a martial frenzy, keep the Long War going, and push aside the rabble's petty, small-minded desires for a peaceful, prosperous life at home, minding their own business.
One never knows exactly what goes on behind the imperial drapery in the Potomac palaces, of course; ordinary American citizens were long ago turned into Kremlinologists of their own government, trying to discern -- through ceremonial signs, backstairs gossip, and slight deviations in ritualized rhetoric -- just what their masters are really up to. But some cynics darkly suspect that scenarios something like the one sketched out above have already been enacted; for instance, in the "new Pearl Harbor" that struck America on September 11, 2001 – one year after a group channeling the views of future Bush Administration bigwigs (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby and many others) had openly pined for a "new Pear Harbor" to "catalyze" the American people into supporting their militarist agenda, which included an invasion of Iraq – whether Saddam Hussein was in power or not.
But leaving aside for now the ever-thorny matter of divining the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, foreknowledge, exploitation, incompetence and fate involved in 9/11, we can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the "Af-Pak" front to launch terrorist attacks.
In other words, just as I first wrote in the Moscow Times more than six years ago (and followed up three years later), the United States is deliberately fomenting terrorist attacks in order to pursue its political and military agendas.
[For more on how these policies and similar uses of terrorism and death squads have been realized in Iraq and elsewhere, see "A Furnace Seal'd: The Wondrous Death Squads of the American Elite," "Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq," and "Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia."]
Eagle-eyed Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com draws the connection between this policy and the most recent "asymmetrical" strike by a "tickled" terrorist group in Pakistan: the deadly attack on a police center in Lahore by the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The group, led by Baitullah Mehsud, said the attack was in retaliation for the American campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan's frontier regions – strikes which have killed many civilians along with usually unidentified "militants." As Ditz notes, one goal of the campaign – which has been intensified by Barack Obama – is precisely the aforementioned fomenting of terrorist activity:
The Obama Administration has launched an ever growing number of attacks in the FATA, generally aimed at Mehsud’s training facilities in North and South Waziristan. In September, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden said the attacks were an attempt to “provoke a reaction” from the militant groups led by Mehsud. It appears that now, six months later, they have finally done so. [Hayden described this bloodsoaked strategy as "tickling" terrorists into a response.]
What's more, Mehsud has now vowed to carry the fight back to American soil. As The Times notes (via Antiwar.com):
“Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," [Mehsud declared.] "The maximum they can do is martyr me. But we will exact our revenge on them from inside America."
Whether or not the rag-tag TTP could actually carry out such a threat is another matter, as Juan Cole notes. But that is not really the point. The point is that once again, a violent group has been knowingly prodded into murderous action. Even better, it has now set itself up as a "deadly terrorist threat" to the sacred Homeland itself: yet another made-to-order supervillain from central casting.
And remarkably, this new, open threat to bring terror to the American heartland comes just days after Barack Obama announced his vaunted surge in the Af-Pak War, citing – what else? – the need to protect the United States from terrorists based in Afghanistan and Pakistan as his chief reason for escalating and expanding the conflict. Yet another astonishing coincidence to justify the militarist agenda, which needs a constant supply of PR-plausible villains and hyped-up, nation-rattling threats like a junkie needs smack. And once again, we are left to puzzle out the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, exploitation, luck, etc., involved in this serendipitous pairing of declarations from Obama and Mehsud.
II.
It is worth looking again at the implications of this policy of terrorist-tickling. As we noted recently, such things are not just counters on the Great Gameboard: they are deadly realities that kill, maim and despoil multitudes of innocent people around the world. So let's go back to the first glimmers of this strategy in its Terror War context. This is from the Moscow Times article in November 2001:
In [a Los Angeles Times] article by military analyst William Arkin... [comes] the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception." According to a classified document prepared for [Donald] Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization – the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" – will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.
In other words – and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan – the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.
For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice – a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy... No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action – by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? – they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."
The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire.
When the Obama Administration speaks of "continuity" in American foreign policy, this is an integral part of what they are talking about. So look to see much more on TTP and the demon de jure, Baitullah Mehsud, as the bipartisan Long War grinds on and on, with its ever-present need for "catalyzing" – and terrorizing – the American people into support for the militarist project.
By Chris Floyd
April 01, 2009 "EB" --- Here's a purely hypothetical scenario. Let's say you were a dedicated imperial militarist who believed that your country's security, prestige and financial interests could best be served by war and the ever-present threat of war. Let's say you had some really hot and juicy operations going on, endless deadly conflicts that were pouring hundreds of billions of dollars into your war machine and entrenching national policy even more deeply in the militarist philosophy – the machtpolitik – that you believe in.
But there's a problem. The general public – the cow-like herd out there that doesn't understand grand strategy the way you and your fellow elites do – is growing weary, and wary, of your Long War. The national treasury is bankrupt, the national infrastructure is rotting, the nation's communities are dying; millions of people are out of work, losing their homes, losing their dreams, spiraling down into want, privation and despair. Yet you have big plans to escalate the war, expand your war machine, and maintain the global dominance that you believe is the right and natural role for your special nation – and its elites. What to do? How to galvanize the truculent, self-absorbed herd into enthusiastically supporting your vital agenda once more?
Well, here's one purely hypothetical approach you might try. You goad and provoke violent extremist groups into retaliating against your attacks, your civilian-slaughtering invasions and incursions into their territory. Being unable to confront directly your war machine – the largest, most advanced military force in the history of the world, sustained by a tsunami of public money that each year surpasses the military spending of the rest of the world – they naturally respond with "asymmetrical" operations. At first, these are directed at nearby targets: your supply lines, the forces of your local proxies and allies, and other chaos-inducing depredations in the groups' own regions, designed to foul the lines of your control and drive you out. Just as naturally, you use these attacks to justify an even greater military presence in their regions. The cycle inevitably, inexorably ratchets upwards and outwards, until at last the extremists strike at your homeland – either with your connivance, or your covert acquiescence, or, in any event, with your foreknowledge that such an attack was sure to come. This is the moment you have waited for; this is exactly what you wanted. Now you can whip the herd back into a martial frenzy, keep the Long War going, and push aside the rabble's petty, small-minded desires for a peaceful, prosperous life at home, minding their own business.
One never knows exactly what goes on behind the imperial drapery in the Potomac palaces, of course; ordinary American citizens were long ago turned into Kremlinologists of their own government, trying to discern -- through ceremonial signs, backstairs gossip, and slight deviations in ritualized rhetoric -- just what their masters are really up to. But some cynics darkly suspect that scenarios something like the one sketched out above have already been enacted; for instance, in the "new Pearl Harbor" that struck America on September 11, 2001 – one year after a group channeling the views of future Bush Administration bigwigs (including Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld, Scooter Libby and many others) had openly pined for a "new Pear Harbor" to "catalyze" the American people into supporting their militarist agenda, which included an invasion of Iraq – whether Saddam Hussein was in power or not.
But leaving aside for now the ever-thorny matter of divining the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, foreknowledge, exploitation, incompetence and fate involved in 9/11, we can say this as an established fact: It is the policy of the United States government to provoke violent extremist groups into action. Once they are in play, their responses can then be used in whatever way the government that provoked them sees fit. And we also know that these provocations are being used, as a matter of deliberate policy, to rouse violent groups on the "Af-Pak" front to launch terrorist attacks.
In other words, just as I first wrote in the Moscow Times more than six years ago (and followed up three years later), the United States is deliberately fomenting terrorist attacks in order to pursue its political and military agendas.
[For more on how these policies and similar uses of terrorism and death squads have been realized in Iraq and elsewhere, see "A Furnace Seal'd: The Wondrous Death Squads of the American Elite," "Ulster on the Euphrates: The Anglo-American Dirty War in Iraq," and "Willing Executioners: America's Bipartisan Atrocity Deepens in Somalia."]
Eagle-eyed Jason Ditz at Antiwar.com draws the connection between this policy and the most recent "asymmetrical" strike by a "tickled" terrorist group in Pakistan: the deadly attack on a police center in Lahore by the Tehreek-e Taliban Pakistan (TTP). The group, led by Baitullah Mehsud, said the attack was in retaliation for the American campaign of drone strikes in Pakistan's frontier regions – strikes which have killed many civilians along with usually unidentified "militants." As Ditz notes, one goal of the campaign – which has been intensified by Barack Obama – is precisely the aforementioned fomenting of terrorist activity:
The Obama Administration has launched an ever growing number of attacks in the FATA, generally aimed at Mehsud’s training facilities in North and South Waziristan. In September, then-CIA Director Michael Hayden said the attacks were an attempt to “provoke a reaction” from the militant groups led by Mehsud. It appears that now, six months later, they have finally done so. [Hayden described this bloodsoaked strategy as "tickling" terrorists into a response.]
What's more, Mehsud has now vowed to carry the fight back to American soil. As The Times notes (via Antiwar.com):
“Soon we will launch an attack in Washington that will amaze everyone in the world," [Mehsud declared.] "The maximum they can do is martyr me. But we will exact our revenge on them from inside America."
Whether or not the rag-tag TTP could actually carry out such a threat is another matter, as Juan Cole notes. But that is not really the point. The point is that once again, a violent group has been knowingly prodded into murderous action. Even better, it has now set itself up as a "deadly terrorist threat" to the sacred Homeland itself: yet another made-to-order supervillain from central casting.
And remarkably, this new, open threat to bring terror to the American heartland comes just days after Barack Obama announced his vaunted surge in the Af-Pak War, citing – what else? – the need to protect the United States from terrorists based in Afghanistan and Pakistan as his chief reason for escalating and expanding the conflict. Yet another astonishing coincidence to justify the militarist agenda, which needs a constant supply of PR-plausible villains and hyped-up, nation-rattling threats like a junkie needs smack. And once again, we are left to puzzle out the varying proportion of connivance, acquiescence, exploitation, luck, etc., involved in this serendipitous pairing of declarations from Obama and Mehsud.
II.
It is worth looking again at the implications of this policy of terrorist-tickling. As we noted recently, such things are not just counters on the Great Gameboard: they are deadly realities that kill, maim and despoil multitudes of innocent people around the world. So let's go back to the first glimmers of this strategy in its Terror War context. This is from the Moscow Times article in November 2001:
In [a Los Angeles Times] article by military analyst William Arkin... [comes] the revelation of Rumsfeld's plan to create "a super-Intelligence Support Activity" that will "bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception." According to a classified document prepared for [Donald] Rumsfeld by his Defense Science Board, the new organization – the "Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG)" – will carry out secret missions designed to "stimulate reactions" among terrorist groups, provoking them into committing violent acts which would then expose them to "counterattack" by U.S. forces.
In other words – and let's say this plainly, clearly and soberly, so that no one can mistake the intention of Rumsfeld's plan – the United States government is planning to use "cover and deception" and secret military operations to provoke murderous terrorist attacks on innocent people. Let's say it again: Donald Rumsfeld, Dick Cheney, George W. Bush and the other members of the unelected regime in Washington plan to deliberately foment the murder of innocent people – your family, your friends, your lovers, you – in order to further their geopolitical ambitions.
For P2OG is not designed solely to flush out terrorists and bring them to justice – a laudable goal in itself, although the Rumsfeld way of combating terrorism by causing it is pure moral lunacy... No, it seems the Pee-Twos have bigger fish to fry. Once they have sparked terrorists into action – by killing their family members? luring them with loot? fueling them with drugs? plying them with jihad propaganda? messing with their mamas? or with agents provocateurs, perhaps, who infiltrate groups then plan and direct the attacks themselves? – they can then take measures against the "states/sub-state actors accountable" for "harboring" the Rumsfeld-roused gangs. What kind of measures exactly? Well, the classified Pentagon program puts it this way: "Their sovereignty will be at risk."
The Pee-Twos will thus come in handy whenever the Regime hankers to add a little oil-laden real estate or a new military base to the Empire's burgeoning portfolio. Just find a nest of violent malcontents, stir 'em with a stick, and presto: instant "justification" for whatever level of intervention/conquest/rapine you might desire.
When the Obama Administration speaks of "continuity" in American foreign policy, this is an integral part of what they are talking about. So look to see much more on TTP and the demon de jure, Baitullah Mehsud, as the bipartisan Long War grinds on and on, with its ever-present need for "catalyzing" – and terrorizing – the American people into support for the militarist project.
Rise Of Thai Fascism
What kind of country and society imprisons someone for making comments on the internet? What kind of Foreign Minister encourages armed conflict with neighbouring countries in order to distract attention from internal problems? What kind of government comes to power by a combination of a military coup, two judicial coups together with street violence, bribery and threats? What kind of Prime Minister tells lies to the foreign press and Oxford academics about the state of democracy and the use of the draconian lese majeste laws? What kind of ruling class uses “the love of the King” to justify a military coup, terrorist acts by its supporters at international airports and severe censorship? Yes, Thailand is now firmly among the ranks of tin-pot despotic regimes around the world.
That the Thai ruling elite, the military and the fascist PAD yellow shirts, together with the mis-named Democrat Party, should lock up people like Suwicha Takor for 10 years is not surprising. All that Suwicha did was to post a comment about the Monarchy on the internet. The fascist PAD leaders who used street violence and blocked the airports are still free and unlikely to be put in jail. The Generals who abused their power in a coup are still racking in the money. No one should be surprised that there is no justice in Thai courts. There is no transparency and accountability of any major public institutions, including the Monarchy, the Judiciary, the Government and the Army. The judges have their own version of the lese majeste law to stifle any criticism.
What should surprise and worry us is that almost the entire Thai NGO movement, almost the entirety of Thai academia and all the mainstream media have kept silent, or worse, supported this destruction of free speech and democracy. And what should anger us also, is that Amnesty International has refused to do anything of substance to defend prisoners of conscience in Thailand.
The NGO movement turned its back on “politics” and the primacy of mass movements in the 1980s. Instead they embraced “lobby politics”. First they loved-up to the Thai Rak Thai government. Then, when they were wrong-footed by the government’s pro-poor policies that proved that the NGOs had only been “playing” at development, they rushed over to love-up to the conservative Royalists. Such an about face was only possible by ignoring politics, international lessons and any theory. NGO leaders argued that they were the true activists, not book worms or theoreticians. This is explains why they can justify to themselves the support for the 2006 coup and why they have failed to defend democracy since. Instead of bothering to analyse the political situation, they beat a path to lobby generals, governments of every shade and anyone who has power.
The academics are even worse. For decades they have shunned political debate, preferring personal squabbles to principled arguments. No one is ever forced to justify or argue for their beliefs. On the occasion when papers are written, they are descriptive and ignore work by those who pose awkward questions. So when they defended their Middle-Class interests and supported the 2006 coup, they felt no need for a serious explanation other than to say that the poor “did not understand democracy”. This un-academic behaviour has rich rewards. Many have extra earnings from collaborating with the ruling elites.
The Thai conservative elite are playing a dangerous game. They have started a civil war between the people (now represented by the Red Shirts) and the Yellow-shirted Royalists. Early in 2006 they decided that they would use extra-Constitutional means to get rid of an elected government. Their justification was the “corruption” and “abuse of power” by the Thai Rak Thai Prime Minister Taksin Shinawat. While there is much to criticise in the actions of Taksin and Thai Rak Thai, it must also be said that the conservative elites, including the Monarchy, have always been corrupt and abused their power. What they didn’t like was that someone else might be getting more powerful than them through the democratic process.
These elites have for decades ruled Thailand from behind the scenes as if it were their own personal fiefdom. A poisonous patron client network draws in new recruits to this “elite feeding trough” where fortunes are to be made at the expense of the hard-working poor. This vast parasitic organism maintains its legitimacy by claiming that Thailand has an Absolute Monarchy, where the King is an all-powerful god. Yet the King is weak and has no “character” and his power is a fiction. .Army generals, politicians, businessmen and privy councillors prostrate themselves on the ground and pay homage to the “powerful” king, while exercising the real power in the land and racking in the profits. But the King is very old and his son is hated, feared or viewed with contempt. Where will the elite’s new meal ticket come from when the King dies?
Like the story of “the Emperor’s New Clothes”, the elites relied on telling the Thai population (and maybe even the King), a pack of lies in order to promote their own agenda. The King is a God! The King is all powerful! We serve the King! And the lese majeste law and other authoritarian measures are used to back up these lies. But the boy has already spoken! Most people in Thailand can see that the Emperor has no clothes! The King hasn’t “held together Thai society”. He hasn’t created justice and equality and he has sided in public with the military and the anti-democrats throughout his reign.
But the process of destroying the corrupt, privileged and authoritarian network around the Monarchy will take time. People like Suwicha Takor, Da torpido, Boonyuen Prasertying and many others will suffer in jail. The Red Shirts will have to mobilise and organise on a long-term basis. Meanwhile, politicians like Taksin, and many others, are still clinging to Royalist ideas, claiming to be “loyal subjects” of the King, while attacking privy councillors for planning the coup. Many Red Shirts are restless and want to go much further in order to build Democracy and Social Justice.
We must not be afraid anymore. But that is easier for me to say from the safety of Britain! We must all be the little boy who says what he sees as the Emperor walks past naked. Why should we, the Thai people, be “loyal subjects of the King”? In a democratic and equal society the King should be loyal to us. If he or any future Monarch is not prepared to listen to the people, respect the people as his master, and defend democracy, then we definitely need a republic.
3 April 2009 by Associate Professor Giles Ji Ungpakorn
Thursday, April 02, 2009
Poweful Thugs
Living the Thug Life in ArmaniReflections in a Petri Dish Wednesday, April 01, 2009
Most of the systems of government that have been employed on this planet would work just fine if the right people were employed for the right reasons. A lot more people would know what was going on and the systems would be far more liable to correction on the go if, people weren’t blinded by window dressing. This is the critical deception that permeates our lives. This is where the fashion and political worlds meet. This is where Fifth Avenue turns Wall Street and the governments into a ‘Members Only’, Plato’s Retreat. Those unfamiliar with Plato’s Retreat can rightly assume it’s got nothing to do with Plato.
You can also rightly assume that government has nothing to do with the principles behind it. That business has nothing to do with fair exchanges and able dealing …and that religion has nothing to do with God. What we have are thugs in Armani.
The soundtracks of our times; Gangsta Rap, Bitch Rap, Thug Rap, Bling Rap, Sex Dominator Rap and Saccharine, Mouseketeer Pop-Rocks come as no accident. They’re designed to set the beat to ruthless enterprise on the one hand and clueless submission on the other. What you see in the movies and on television are no accident and certainly not what the people have collectively asked for because this industry, like the fast food industry; the soft drink industry and the processed foods industry have had the need invented first, followed by the desire to acquire and consume. You can add in just about any industry you choose because it applies across the board.
Think of existence as an enveloping bubble, about as real as the game board, created in the movie “The Thirteenth Floor.” Think of existence as exactly the same as justice in the wilderness and the survival of the best adapted and then bring in the fashionistas and the spinmeisters, the set designers and the audio-video techs and you’ve got the jungle with sidewalks and subways. In Nature there’s a balance to all of this and it’s self-adjusting. In the MTV Real World there is no balance and it is not self-adjusting.
What we have are thugs in Armani and barbarian gangs in uniforms that provide a sense of organization and structure that takes upon itself the appearance of a reality other than what it is. It always comes back to ‘rule by the big dogs in the yard’. The big dogs are in London at the moment and Obama is going to have tea with The Queen. That should make all the Elton John fans happy.
Real students of history know that systems turn into each other. They know that systems based on personal freedom eventually turn to tyranny. They know that rampant capitalism inevitably turns to fascism and could well devolve, or evolve into socialism or communism should it survive long enough. Usually a system runs out of gas having corrupted its moving parts and, after a season of looting, the thugs move on to a new location.
The capitalist system is generally corrupt from the inception which is why the founders usually institute a balancing governor of checks and balances. It doesn’t take long for money and lawyers to take care of that problem which is why Shakespeare said that you should “first kill all the lawyers”. People always think something new is going to come along and that eventually we evolve into some bright future of the greatest good for the greatest number of people but these systems are not spirals, they are circles so… they evolve until they devolve. In the early days there is always the impression that justice and the other virtues are in operation. They put a good face on it. You have to look out, really look out, when they don’t even bother to put a good face on it any more and even put drunken clowns into the highest office of the land. When they don’t even hide what they are up to any more, then you are in for a spot of trouble.
In the land of liberty, wherever that may be, there is always the perception that any one of you can achieve to high office if service is your initial, Pollyanna drive. What none of the aspirants know is that the temporal side of things is controlled by a network of black magicians who come in all colors and from every nationality and patina of creed.
You might wonder at the injustice of that and why some higher authority doesn’t step in and crush these miscreants. My perception of this kingdom of existence is that it’s a testing ground for the individual and its intent is to display what their values are and to determine their future location. That’s my take, simply put. You’re free to speculate on your own about this but whatever the case may be that’s why the big dogs are running the yard and why you always see them displaying the forked hand and why people on the street are asking you, “’sup dog?” This is why the feminine principle is called a bitch and why Snoop "Dog' made so much money.
Truth, as I have said often enough, is an unwelcome guest at dinner and any social celebration; political gathering, religious ceremony or weddings. Funerals are more likely but not even death seems to render the truth acceptable. All you need to know about how the thugs in Armani operate you can hear in the words of Joe Hill and Big Bill Haywood but that’s probably another system that also got co-opted and soon enough you couldn’t pick up a hammer on a construction site if you weren’t a carpenter. Cause they got thugs there too.
Two kinds of people in this world; let’s draw an imaginary line right through the center and postulate that the most compromised and clueless of the good and bad are touching each other at the center and that the intelligence and capacity of the aggregate increases in virtue and vice as it moves to the fringe and also becomes sparser and sparser as it goes until there are just a few truly good and truly evil people weaving a deep darkness or shining a brilliant light wherever they may be.
Back at the center and moving to the center of each of the two sections are the foot-soldiers of darkness and light. This is where all the little thug-bots are recruited from as well as those who unconsciously do good because it is the more prevailing aspect of their nature. This is who you move by, around and past each day wherever you are. You can see it at work. This is what makes it work for the big dogs in the yard and what keeps the opposition that there is, shining in their places. In these times it is more likely to find thug run entities because of the greater prevalence of confusion, fear and want.
It’s April now and the Iranian incursion is full bore ahead. Netanyahoo and his thug operatives are busy as rabid bees. “Job One”, says Nettie, “Is to see that visible doesn’t get anymore pistachios and job two is to murder a whole lot of new people.
Money is changing hands, promises are being made and arms are being twisted, in London and around the world because the goats in rut want some more blood pudding. I can see where this would be a frightening prospect for us all because an attack on Iran is going to create a world of uproar that will touch us everyone. You can be sure they have decided on the locations for the coming false flag(s) and you’ll know that is what it is when it happens.
The way I see it, this is just thug-evil destroying itself, along with whatever has aligned itself with thug-think. In the meantime, the new world that some of us have chosen to embrace, is smiling back at us from the secret heart of our common good. We have to stay focused and we need to be clear about what we want and what we can do without. It would be a pity for any of us to think that we might miss any of the misrepresented, unattractive, disappearing garbage and crap, enough to want to disappear with it when it goes.
A thug in Armani is still a thug and the best thing for you is to let them sort out their own demise without getting caught up in the mix. Keep your head down and your heart open and you might get more than you hoped for.
Most of the systems of government that have been employed on this planet would work just fine if the right people were employed for the right reasons. A lot more people would know what was going on and the systems would be far more liable to correction on the go if, people weren’t blinded by window dressing. This is the critical deception that permeates our lives. This is where the fashion and political worlds meet. This is where Fifth Avenue turns Wall Street and the governments into a ‘Members Only’, Plato’s Retreat. Those unfamiliar with Plato’s Retreat can rightly assume it’s got nothing to do with Plato.
You can also rightly assume that government has nothing to do with the principles behind it. That business has nothing to do with fair exchanges and able dealing …and that religion has nothing to do with God. What we have are thugs in Armani.
The soundtracks of our times; Gangsta Rap, Bitch Rap, Thug Rap, Bling Rap, Sex Dominator Rap and Saccharine, Mouseketeer Pop-Rocks come as no accident. They’re designed to set the beat to ruthless enterprise on the one hand and clueless submission on the other. What you see in the movies and on television are no accident and certainly not what the people have collectively asked for because this industry, like the fast food industry; the soft drink industry and the processed foods industry have had the need invented first, followed by the desire to acquire and consume. You can add in just about any industry you choose because it applies across the board.
Think of existence as an enveloping bubble, about as real as the game board, created in the movie “The Thirteenth Floor.” Think of existence as exactly the same as justice in the wilderness and the survival of the best adapted and then bring in the fashionistas and the spinmeisters, the set designers and the audio-video techs and you’ve got the jungle with sidewalks and subways. In Nature there’s a balance to all of this and it’s self-adjusting. In the MTV Real World there is no balance and it is not self-adjusting.
What we have are thugs in Armani and barbarian gangs in uniforms that provide a sense of organization and structure that takes upon itself the appearance of a reality other than what it is. It always comes back to ‘rule by the big dogs in the yard’. The big dogs are in London at the moment and Obama is going to have tea with The Queen. That should make all the Elton John fans happy.
Real students of history know that systems turn into each other. They know that systems based on personal freedom eventually turn to tyranny. They know that rampant capitalism inevitably turns to fascism and could well devolve, or evolve into socialism or communism should it survive long enough. Usually a system runs out of gas having corrupted its moving parts and, after a season of looting, the thugs move on to a new location.
The capitalist system is generally corrupt from the inception which is why the founders usually institute a balancing governor of checks and balances. It doesn’t take long for money and lawyers to take care of that problem which is why Shakespeare said that you should “first kill all the lawyers”. People always think something new is going to come along and that eventually we evolve into some bright future of the greatest good for the greatest number of people but these systems are not spirals, they are circles so… they evolve until they devolve. In the early days there is always the impression that justice and the other virtues are in operation. They put a good face on it. You have to look out, really look out, when they don’t even bother to put a good face on it any more and even put drunken clowns into the highest office of the land. When they don’t even hide what they are up to any more, then you are in for a spot of trouble.
In the land of liberty, wherever that may be, there is always the perception that any one of you can achieve to high office if service is your initial, Pollyanna drive. What none of the aspirants know is that the temporal side of things is controlled by a network of black magicians who come in all colors and from every nationality and patina of creed.
You might wonder at the injustice of that and why some higher authority doesn’t step in and crush these miscreants. My perception of this kingdom of existence is that it’s a testing ground for the individual and its intent is to display what their values are and to determine their future location. That’s my take, simply put. You’re free to speculate on your own about this but whatever the case may be that’s why the big dogs are running the yard and why you always see them displaying the forked hand and why people on the street are asking you, “’sup dog?” This is why the feminine principle is called a bitch and why Snoop "Dog' made so much money.
Truth, as I have said often enough, is an unwelcome guest at dinner and any social celebration; political gathering, religious ceremony or weddings. Funerals are more likely but not even death seems to render the truth acceptable. All you need to know about how the thugs in Armani operate you can hear in the words of Joe Hill and Big Bill Haywood but that’s probably another system that also got co-opted and soon enough you couldn’t pick up a hammer on a construction site if you weren’t a carpenter. Cause they got thugs there too.
Two kinds of people in this world; let’s draw an imaginary line right through the center and postulate that the most compromised and clueless of the good and bad are touching each other at the center and that the intelligence and capacity of the aggregate increases in virtue and vice as it moves to the fringe and also becomes sparser and sparser as it goes until there are just a few truly good and truly evil people weaving a deep darkness or shining a brilliant light wherever they may be.
Back at the center and moving to the center of each of the two sections are the foot-soldiers of darkness and light. This is where all the little thug-bots are recruited from as well as those who unconsciously do good because it is the more prevailing aspect of their nature. This is who you move by, around and past each day wherever you are. You can see it at work. This is what makes it work for the big dogs in the yard and what keeps the opposition that there is, shining in their places. In these times it is more likely to find thug run entities because of the greater prevalence of confusion, fear and want.
It’s April now and the Iranian incursion is full bore ahead. Netanyahoo and his thug operatives are busy as rabid bees. “Job One”, says Nettie, “Is to see that visible doesn’t get anymore pistachios and job two is to murder a whole lot of new people.
Money is changing hands, promises are being made and arms are being twisted, in London and around the world because the goats in rut want some more blood pudding. I can see where this would be a frightening prospect for us all because an attack on Iran is going to create a world of uproar that will touch us everyone. You can be sure they have decided on the locations for the coming false flag(s) and you’ll know that is what it is when it happens.
The way I see it, this is just thug-evil destroying itself, along with whatever has aligned itself with thug-think. In the meantime, the new world that some of us have chosen to embrace, is smiling back at us from the secret heart of our common good. We have to stay focused and we need to be clear about what we want and what we can do without. It would be a pity for any of us to think that we might miss any of the misrepresented, unattractive, disappearing garbage and crap, enough to want to disappear with it when it goes.
A thug in Armani is still a thug and the best thing for you is to let them sort out their own demise without getting caught up in the mix. Keep your head down and your heart open and you might get more than you hoped for.
# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 4/02/2009 06:06:00 PM
This is the most relevant and interesting post yet."When they don’t even hide what they are up to any more, then you are in for a spot of trouble." The trouble has began,the big dogs have stolen the last bone and are leaving the yard.
More Music
Mayte Martín Further Left Music Program
For the convenience of our room members and guests at Further Left Chat, here is the list of new additions to our music program.
210 - Cuarteto Zitarrosa & Pepe Guerra - Milonga En Doiores - (Uruguay)
364 - Ilan Chester - Para Enamorarte - (Venezuela)
376 - Jack Elliott - Richland Women Blues - (USA)
401 - Joan Manuel Serrat - La Saeta [Antonio Machado Poem] - (Spain)
402 - Joan Manuel Serrat - Mediterráneo - (Spain)
499 - L'Orchestra Italiana - Smorza 'E Llights - (Italy)
739 - Saúl Linares - Joe Arpaio de Arizona - (Mexico)
791 - Tete Montoliu & Mayte Martin - Contigo En La Distancia - (Spain)
792 - Tete Montoliu & Mayte Martin - El Dia Que Me Queras - (Spain)
793 - Tete Montoliu & Mayte Martin - El Reloj - (Spain)
794 - Tete Montoliu & Mayte Martin - Usted - (Spain)
# posted by Rancho Perros Bravos @ 4/02/2009 12:59:00 AM
The http://MUSIC.furtherleft.net link that is always on the chat room top bar lists the 870 music and spoken selections from 80 nations that have been submitted by 57 users. The page tells how anyone in the chat room can choose which play as well as contribute to the list. It is updated regularly; the last was 26 March 2009.
Tuesday, March 31, 2009
Letter to Hillary
Open Letter to US Secretary of State,Hillary Clinton
By Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Rejection of all interventionist behavior, Andrés Manuel López Obrador warns in a letter to Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State. Ready to "defend out right as a free and sovereign Nation" "It is an error to want to confront the problems of insecurity and violence with only an iron fist, soldiers, jails, tougher laws, and stiffer penalties."
Rejection of all interventionist behavior, Andrés Manuel López Obrador warns in a letter to Hillary Clinton, US Secretary of State. Ready to "defend out right as a free and sovereign Nation" "It is an error to want to confront the problems of insecurity and violence with only an iron fist, soldiers, jails, tougher laws, and stiffer penalties."
Mexico City. March 25, 2009
Mrs. Hillary Clinton
Secretary of State
Government of the United States of America
Presente
Esteemed Mrs. Clinton:
Even though only Mexicans can confront and resolve our homeland's internal issues, we consider it to be pertinent, given what you represent, to express to you the feelings of millions of citizens who struggle daily in order to make justice and democracy a reality in Mexico.
From our point of view, the problems of insecurity and violence in our country have arisen from the prevailing corruption and impunity, and because there hasn't been economic growth for 26 years and millions of youths have been marginalized from education and haven't had work opportunities.
You surely know that all of this began when a group of about 30 traffickers of influence and corrupt politicians, using the cover of so-called neoliberal economic policies, took control of the Mexican State, as well as a good part of national and so-called public goods. And these policies of pillaging that has enriched a minority in an exaggerated and obscene manner, in a way that has not occurred in any other part of the world, has condemned the Mexican people to exile and survival.
That is why we believe that it is an error to want to confront the problems of insecurity and violence with only an iron fist, with soldiers, with prisons, with tougher laws, and with stiffer penalties. The solution to the scourge of criminality lies in rescuing the State, in changing the current economic model, and in guaranteeing the people better living and working conditions. It can't be forgotten that peace and tranquility are fruits of justice.
Mrs. Clinton: As a result, as we have also made known to President Barack Obama, we maintain that the solution to the phenomena of migration and insecurity will not be found in the construction of walls nor in border militarization. Rather, it will be found in Mexico's social and economic development.
Therefore, it is essential that the relationship between Mexico and the United States is built upon cooperation for development and not in the use of coercive measures.
Likewise, we express to you that even though we suffer from a usurper and failed government, whose weakness could lead it to enter into agreements that go against the national interest, a strong citizen movement also exists that is determined to impede any interventionist behavior and to defend our rights as a free and sovereign nation.
We respectfully send you our regards and we wish you a nice stay in our country.
Sincerely,
Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Legitimate President of Mexico
Translated from Por Esto!
Mrs. Hillary Clinton
Secretary of State
Government of the United States of America
Presente
Esteemed Mrs. Clinton:
Even though only Mexicans can confront and resolve our homeland's internal issues, we consider it to be pertinent, given what you represent, to express to you the feelings of millions of citizens who struggle daily in order to make justice and democracy a reality in Mexico.
From our point of view, the problems of insecurity and violence in our country have arisen from the prevailing corruption and impunity, and because there hasn't been economic growth for 26 years and millions of youths have been marginalized from education and haven't had work opportunities.
You surely know that all of this began when a group of about 30 traffickers of influence and corrupt politicians, using the cover of so-called neoliberal economic policies, took control of the Mexican State, as well as a good part of national and so-called public goods. And these policies of pillaging that has enriched a minority in an exaggerated and obscene manner, in a way that has not occurred in any other part of the world, has condemned the Mexican people to exile and survival.
That is why we believe that it is an error to want to confront the problems of insecurity and violence with only an iron fist, with soldiers, with prisons, with tougher laws, and with stiffer penalties. The solution to the scourge of criminality lies in rescuing the State, in changing the current economic model, and in guaranteeing the people better living and working conditions. It can't be forgotten that peace and tranquility are fruits of justice.
Mrs. Clinton: As a result, as we have also made known to President Barack Obama, we maintain that the solution to the phenomena of migration and insecurity will not be found in the construction of walls nor in border militarization. Rather, it will be found in Mexico's social and economic development.
Therefore, it is essential that the relationship between Mexico and the United States is built upon cooperation for development and not in the use of coercive measures.
Likewise, we express to you that even though we suffer from a usurper and failed government, whose weakness could lead it to enter into agreements that go against the national interest, a strong citizen movement also exists that is determined to impede any interventionist behavior and to defend our rights as a free and sovereign nation.
We respectfully send you our regards and we wish you a nice stay in our country.
Sincerely,
Andrés Manuel López Obrador
Legitimate President of Mexico
Translated from Por Esto!
Weapons for Sale
Legal U.S. Arms Exports May Be Source of
Narco Syndicates Rising Firepower
Posted by Bill Conroy - March 29, 2009
More Than $1 billion In Private-Sector Weapons Exports Approved For Mexico Since 2004
Mainstream media and Beltway pundits and politicians in recent months have unleashed a wave of panic in the nation linking the escalading violence in Mexico, and its projected spread into the U.S., to illegal weapons smuggling.
The smokescreen being spread by these official mouthpieces of manufactured consensus is that a host of criminal operators are engaging in straw (or fraudulent) gun purchases, making clandestine purchases at U.S. gun shows or otherwise assembling small caches of weapons here in the states in order to smuggle them south of the border to the “drug cartels.”
The Obama administration is now sending hundreds of additional federal agents to the border in an effort to interdict this illegal arms smuggling to reassure an agitated middle-America that Uncle Sam will get these bad guys. The cascade of headlines from mainstream media outlets printing drug-war pornography assures us in paragraphs inserted between the titillation that the ATF’s Operation Gunrunner and other similar get-tough on gun-seller programs will save America from the banditos of Mexico.
To be sure, some criminal actors in the U.S. are smuggling small arms across the border. But the drug war in Mexico is not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns. The drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.
At least one report in a mainstream media outlet deserves credit for recognizing that trend.
“[Mexican] traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals,” states a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. “The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government's 2-year-old war against drug organizations. …”
Narco News, in a report last December [“Juarez murders shine a light on an emerging Military Cartel”] also examined the increasing militarization of narco-trafficking groups in Mexico and pointed out that U.S. military-issued ammunition popped up in an arms cache seized in Reynosa, Mexico, in November 2008 that was linked to the Zetas, a mercenary group that provides enforcement services to Mexican narco-trafficking organizations.
So where are these military-grade weapons really coming from?
Rather than address that valid question head on, the mainstream media, and now even the Obama administration, have been attempting to paint lipstick on the pig, trumpeting, in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the “courageous efforts undertaken by [Mexican] President Calderon.”
And the “courageous” Mexican President Felipe Calderon, for his part, redirects the blame for the Mexican narco-organization’s increasing firepower back to the U.S.
In a story published by the Associated Press in late February of this year, Mexican President Calderon is quoted alleging the following:
We need to stop the flow of guns and weapons towards Mexico. Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades.
But no matter how hard Calderon and U.S. officials try to disguise the pig, it still oinks.
A Narco News investigation into the flow of arms across the U.S. border appears to lead right back to the systemic corruption that afflicts a vast swath of the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon and this nation’s own embrace of market-driven free-trade policies.
The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons —are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.
“As in other criminal enterprises in Mexico, such as drug smuggling or kidnapping, it is not unusual to find police officers and military personnel involved in the illegal arms trade,” states an October 2007 report by the for-profit global intelligence group Stratfor, which Barron’s magazine once dubbed the Shadow CIA. “… Over the past few years, several Mexican government officials have been arrested on both sides of the border for participating in the arms trade.”
Counting Commerce
The U.S. State Department oversees a program that requires private companies in the United States to obtain an export license in order to sell defense hardware or services to foreign purchasers — which include both government units and private buyers in other countries. These arms deals are known as Direct Commercial Sales [DCS]. Each year, the State Department issues a report tallying the volume and dollar amount of DCS items approved for export.
The reports do not provide details on who the weapons or defense services were exported to specifically, but do provide an accounting of the destination countries. Although it is possible that some of the deals authorized under the DCS program were altered or even canceled after the export licenses were issued, the data compiled by State does provide a broad snapshot of the extensive volume of U.S. private-sector arms shipments to both Mexico and Latin America in general.
According to an analysis of the DCS reports, some $1 billion in defense hardware was approved for export to Mexico via private U.S. companies between fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2007 — the most recent year for which data was available. Overall, during the same period, a total of some $3.7 billion in weapons and other military hardware was approved for export under the DCS program to all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
In addition to the military hardware exports approved for Mexico, some $3.8 billion in defense-related “services” [technical assistance and training via private U.S. contractors] also were approved for “export” to Mexico over the same four-year period, according to the DCS reports.
That means the total value of defense-related hardware and service exports by private U.S. companies to Mexico tallied nearly $5 billion over the four-year window. And that figure doesn’t even count the $700 million in assistance already authorized under the Merida Initiative [Plan Mexico] or any new DCS exports approved for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 [which ends Sept. 30].
Following is a sample of the types of arms shipments approved for export to Mexico through the DCS program during fiscal years 2006 and 2007 alone:
• $3.3 million worth of ammunition and explosives, including ammunition-manufacturing equipment;
• 13,000 nonautomatic and semiautomatic firearms, pistols and revolvers at a total value of $11.6 million;
• 42 grenade launchers valued at $518,531;
• 3,578 explosive projectiles, including grenades, valued at $78,251;
• Various night-vision equipment valued at $963,201.
A troubling revelation about the DCS program, which has direct relevance to the drug war in Mexico, is contained in a fiscal 2007 report issued by the State Department. That report summarizes the results of the State Department’s Blue Lantern end-use monitoring program for DCS exports.
That Blue Lantern report found that "the Western Hemisphere (especially Latin America and the Caribbean) continues to be a region with a high incidence of unfavorable cases involving firearms and ammunition." The unfavorable finding indicates that fraud may have occurred and those cases "may be subject to civil enforcement actions or referred to law enforcement for criminal investigation."
For the entire DCS program, and this is a disturbing figure, of the 634 Blue Lantern cases closed in fiscal year 2007, a total of 143, or 23 percent, were deemed “unfavorable."
The Blue Lantern report does not mention specific transactions in detail, but does provide case-study examples. One included in the report indicated that a Latin American firearms dealer acted as a “front company for another Latin American company.”
“[The] owner admits that [the] company exists only on paper…,” the fiscal year 2007 Blue Lantern report states. “[The] host country authorities had temporarily suspended the firearms import licenses to [the] parent company because of its link with small arms smuggling to gangs in [a] third country.”
Given Mexico’s strict gun laws with respect to private individuals, it is likely most of the DCS program defense hardware approved for export to that nation was directed toward the military or law enforcement agencies. But it is precisely that fact which should be raising some alarm in Washington.
Mexico, by Calderon’s own admission, is dealing with a serious corruption problem within the ranks of Mexican law enforcement.
From a December 2008 report in the Los Angeles Times:
Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday said his government was making strides against corruption but warned that graft remained a threat to the nation's efforts against crime.
Calderon’s rival in the 2006 Mexican presidential race, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in recent open letter published in the Mexican newspaper Por Esto! and addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, is even more blunt in his assessment of the extent of corruption within the Calderon regime.
You surely know that all of this began when a group of about 30 traffickers of influence and corrupt politicians, using the cover of so-called neoliberal economic policies, took control of the Mexican State, as well as a good part of national and so-called public goods. And these policies of pillaging that has enriched a minority in an exaggerated and obscene manner, in a way that has not occurred in any other part of the world, has condemned the Mexican people to exile and survival.
And that corruption is not limited to Mexican law enforcement. Sources provided Narco News with a PowerPoint presentation prepared for the DEA that indicates the following:
Between Jan 2000-Dec 2006: More than 163,000 military members were criminally processed during former president Vicente Fox’s 6 years term of office. The majority of the crimes were: [the list includes abuse of power, homicide, embezzlement, kidnapping, bank robbery, illegal possession of firearms and health crimes [essentially organized crime].
Another slide in that same DEA PowerPoint presentation states that the Mexican military reported an average of 1,200 desertions per month in 2006.
And it should not be ignored that the Zetas, one of the most violent drug-organization groups in Mexico right now, was founded by former elite Mexican special-operations troops — many of whom received some training in the United States.
The Elephant in the Room
A former senior U.S. Customs Inspector, who asked that his name not be used, provided the following reaction when presented with the DCS data:
I would agree entirely [that] DCS (and DoD gifted, as opposed to DCS sold) weapons are obviously the simplest explanation for the massive rise in the number of fully automatic weapons, grenades, rockets, etc., obtained by the narcotics gangs. … That is to say, they are obtaining their weapons from their own, Mexican, government, by various illegal means.
… The Mexican government has a long and well-documented history of corruption at all levels, from city to federal. Most of the weapons being "displayed" [in the media] are simply not available for sale to American civilians, particularly including the grenades — both 40mm and hand types. …
… The source of these weapons can be easily traced by ATF. … All foreign sales must be reported to ATF prior to shipment, just in case the government wishes to hold up a shipment to a particular country, etc. Tracing the serial numbers would be easy, with US government assistance, of course.
But that assumes the Mexican government, and our own government, really want to trace those weapons. A November 2008 report in the San Antonio Express News, which includes details of the major weapons seizure in Reynosa, Mexico, that same month involving the Zetas, reveals the following:
Another example of coordination problems occurred this month. Mexican authorities in Reynosa across the border from McAllen, seized the country’s single largest stash of cartel weapons — nearly 300 assault rifles, shoulder-fired grenade launchers and a half million rounds of ammunition.
But weeks later, Mexican authorities still have not allowed the ATF access to serial numbers that would help them track down the buyers and traffickers on the U.S. side.
To be sure, cartel corruption and intimidation of Mexican law enforcement at every level and in every agency has caused some dysfunction.
A former DEA agent, who also asked not to be named, says the shipment of military-grade weapons to the Mexican government under the DCS program, given the extent of corruption within that government, is essentially like “shipping weapons to a crime syndicate.”
At least one individual with long connections to U.S. intelligence agencies is convinced that the corrupt transfer of arms between the Mexican military and narco-criminals in Mexico is more than theory.
Tosh Plumlee is a former CIA contract pilot who flew numerous missions delivering arms to Latin America and returning drugs to the United States as part of the covert Iran/Contra operations in the 1980s, according to public records. After becoming troubled by those government-sanctioned missions, Plumlee decided to take his concerns to Congress.
Plumlee was eventually called to testify before Congress on a number of occasions, only to find that the Congressional committees hearing his testimony ordered it classified — which meant if Plumlee later spoke about it publicly, he would be violating the law.
Plumlee, however, still has deep contacts in the spook world, some of whom, it seems, want him to bring some information forward concerning the nature of the drug war in Juarez, Mexico. As a result, Plumlee says he recently made a journey with individuals he described as “sensitive sources” to a small warehouse in Juarez — located just across border from El Paso, Texas. Plumlee says he agreed to accompany the sources because he is currently doing research for a book he is writing about the drug war.
Plumlee says it was clear to him that the warehouse was not part of a Mexican military operation, yet it was packed with U.S. military weapons — including grenades, grenade launchers, LAW anti-tank weapons [essentially high-tech bazookas], M16 rifles and night-vision equipment.
Plumlee says his sources indicated that the U.S. weapons in that warehouse — as well as another warehouse located elsewhere in Juarez that he did not visit — were now under the control of a narco-trafficking organization, which had obtained the munitions from corrupt elements of the Mexican military.
Plumlee concedes he does not know why he was allowed to step inside that warehouse and later walk out alive. All he can say for sure is that he was being used to get the information out and suspects that those weapons have since been relocated.
As incredible as Plumlee’s story sounds, it cannot really be surprising that there would be stores of weapons in clandestine warehouses in a city like Juarez, which, since the beginning of 2008, has produced about 2,000 of the estimated 7,000 murders in Mexico’s bloody drug war. And whether anyone chooses to believe Plumlee’s information or not, it is clear he has a long history of being a player in the netherworld of black operations, and might well be trusted by some players who still engaged in that dark art.
Mike Levine, a former DEA agent who has years of experience participating in dangerous undercover operations overseas, says Plumlee is who he claims to be. Levine now hosts a radio show in New York City on a Pacifica Radio station [the Expert Witness Radio Show] and Plumlee has appeared on that show several times over the years.
Here’s what Levine has to say about Plumlee’s credibility:
Before I invited Tosh to come on the air, because his story was so incredible, I vetted him through government agents, all of whom said he is the real thing. I have a copy of the air map he turned over to a San Diego Weekly newspaper, bearing notations of all his drug flights, which first sold me on the guy.
After he had made many revelations on-air in New York, and mainstream media continued to ignore him, Congress was apparently listening. I had been told by my own sources that agencies like CIA were regularly recording our show. (I used to remind them, on air, to make sure they pressed the red button to record.)
So Tosh calls me one day in around 1997 and says that Congress had asked him to testify about his experiences, in closed-door session. I told him, "If you do that, they are going to do nothing but classify your testimony making it illegal for you to tell your own story."
And that, indeed, is what did happen, according to Tosh.
Could it be that Plumlee was used as a type of message in a bottle because, like has happened so many times in the past history of this nation, the normal chain of command and our politicians in Washington, D.C., simply don’t want to hear the truth, don’t want to risk rocking the boat of international relations with Mexico or interrupting the free-trade flow of a multi-billion dollar “legal” arms business?
After all, if our government had to concede that the Mexican military is so wracked with corruption and beyond the control of Mexican President Calderon that it cannot be trusted to control its own weapons, then how can U.S. cooperation with Calderon’s government have any hope for success in what many would argue is an already ill-conceived drug war?
In fact, if that is what we are now confronting in Mexico, it is likely that U.S. cooperation with Calderon’s government, when it takes the form of U.S. weapon shipments, is likely only going to fuel further bloodshed and put U.S. agents and operatives now in the field assisting in those efforts at grave risk.
Narco News did seek to get comment from officials at both the Department of Justice and the Department of State about the issues raised in this story. To date, those queries — both by phone and e-mail — have been met with dead silence.
Stay tuned ….
More Than $1 billion In Private-Sector Weapons Exports Approved For Mexico Since 2004
Mainstream media and Beltway pundits and politicians in recent months have unleashed a wave of panic in the nation linking the escalading violence in Mexico, and its projected spread into the U.S., to illegal weapons smuggling.
The smokescreen being spread by these official mouthpieces of manufactured consensus is that a host of criminal operators are engaging in straw (or fraudulent) gun purchases, making clandestine purchases at U.S. gun shows or otherwise assembling small caches of weapons here in the states in order to smuggle them south of the border to the “drug cartels.”
The Obama administration is now sending hundreds of additional federal agents to the border in an effort to interdict this illegal arms smuggling to reassure an agitated middle-America that Uncle Sam will get these bad guys. The cascade of headlines from mainstream media outlets printing drug-war pornography assures us in paragraphs inserted between the titillation that the ATF’s Operation Gunrunner and other similar get-tough on gun-seller programs will save America from the banditos of Mexico.
To be sure, some criminal actors in the U.S. are smuggling small arms across the border. But the drug war in Mexico is not being fought with Saturday night specials, hobby rifles and hunting shotguns. The drug trafficking organizations are now in possession of high-powered munitions in vast quantities that can’t be explained by the gun-show loophole.
At least one report in a mainstream media outlet deserves credit for recognizing that trend.
“[Mexican] traffickers have escalated their arms race, acquiring military-grade weapons, including hand grenades, grenade launchers, armor-piercing munitions and antitank rockets with firepower far beyond the assault rifles and pistols that have dominated their arsenals,” states a recent story in the Los Angeles Times. “The proliferation of heavier armaments points to a menacing new stage in the Mexican government's 2-year-old war against drug organizations. …”
Narco News, in a report last December [“Juarez murders shine a light on an emerging Military Cartel”] also examined the increasing militarization of narco-trafficking groups in Mexico and pointed out that U.S. military-issued ammunition popped up in an arms cache seized in Reynosa, Mexico, in November 2008 that was linked to the Zetas, a mercenary group that provides enforcement services to Mexican narco-trafficking organizations.
So where are these military-grade weapons really coming from?
Rather than address that valid question head on, the mainstream media, and now even the Obama administration, have been attempting to paint lipstick on the pig, trumpeting, in the words of U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, the “courageous efforts undertaken by [Mexican] President Calderon.”
And the “courageous” Mexican President Felipe Calderon, for his part, redirects the blame for the Mexican narco-organization’s increasing firepower back to the U.S.
In a story published by the Associated Press in late February of this year, Mexican President Calderon is quoted alleging the following:
We need to stop the flow of guns and weapons towards Mexico. Let me express to you that we've seized in this two years more than 25,000 weapons and guns, and more than 90 percent of them came from United States, and I'm talking from missiles launchers to machine guns and grenades.
But no matter how hard Calderon and U.S. officials try to disguise the pig, it still oinks.
A Narco News investigation into the flow of arms across the U.S. border appears to lead right back to the systemic corruption that afflicts a vast swath of the Mexican government under President Felipe Calderon and this nation’s own embrace of market-driven free-trade policies.
The deadliest of the weapons now in the hands of criminal groups in Mexico, particularly along the U.S. border, by any reasonable standard of an analysis of the facts, appear to be getting into that nation through perfectly legal private-sector arms exports, measured in the billions of dollars, and sanctioned by our own State Department. These deadly trade commodities — grenade launchers, explosives and “assault” weapons —are then, in quantities that can fill warehouses, being corruptly transferred to drug trafficking organizations via their reach into the Mexican military and law enforcement agencies, the evidence indicates.
“As in other criminal enterprises in Mexico, such as drug smuggling or kidnapping, it is not unusual to find police officers and military personnel involved in the illegal arms trade,” states an October 2007 report by the for-profit global intelligence group Stratfor, which Barron’s magazine once dubbed the Shadow CIA. “… Over the past few years, several Mexican government officials have been arrested on both sides of the border for participating in the arms trade.”
Counting Commerce
The U.S. State Department oversees a program that requires private companies in the United States to obtain an export license in order to sell defense hardware or services to foreign purchasers — which include both government units and private buyers in other countries. These arms deals are known as Direct Commercial Sales [DCS]. Each year, the State Department issues a report tallying the volume and dollar amount of DCS items approved for export.
The reports do not provide details on who the weapons or defense services were exported to specifically, but do provide an accounting of the destination countries. Although it is possible that some of the deals authorized under the DCS program were altered or even canceled after the export licenses were issued, the data compiled by State does provide a broad snapshot of the extensive volume of U.S. private-sector arms shipments to both Mexico and Latin America in general.
According to an analysis of the DCS reports, some $1 billion in defense hardware was approved for export to Mexico via private U.S. companies between fiscal year 2004 and fiscal year 2007 — the most recent year for which data was available. Overall, during the same period, a total of some $3.7 billion in weapons and other military hardware was approved for export under the DCS program to all of Latin America and the Caribbean.
In addition to the military hardware exports approved for Mexico, some $3.8 billion in defense-related “services” [technical assistance and training via private U.S. contractors] also were approved for “export” to Mexico over the same four-year period, according to the DCS reports.
That means the total value of defense-related hardware and service exports by private U.S. companies to Mexico tallied nearly $5 billion over the four-year window. And that figure doesn’t even count the $700 million in assistance already authorized under the Merida Initiative [Plan Mexico] or any new DCS exports approved for fiscal years 2008 and 2009 [which ends Sept. 30].
Following is a sample of the types of arms shipments approved for export to Mexico through the DCS program during fiscal years 2006 and 2007 alone:
• $3.3 million worth of ammunition and explosives, including ammunition-manufacturing equipment;
• 13,000 nonautomatic and semiautomatic firearms, pistols and revolvers at a total value of $11.6 million;
• 42 grenade launchers valued at $518,531;
• 3,578 explosive projectiles, including grenades, valued at $78,251;
• Various night-vision equipment valued at $963,201.
A troubling revelation about the DCS program, which has direct relevance to the drug war in Mexico, is contained in a fiscal 2007 report issued by the State Department. That report summarizes the results of the State Department’s Blue Lantern end-use monitoring program for DCS exports.
That Blue Lantern report found that "the Western Hemisphere (especially Latin America and the Caribbean) continues to be a region with a high incidence of unfavorable cases involving firearms and ammunition." The unfavorable finding indicates that fraud may have occurred and those cases "may be subject to civil enforcement actions or referred to law enforcement for criminal investigation."
For the entire DCS program, and this is a disturbing figure, of the 634 Blue Lantern cases closed in fiscal year 2007, a total of 143, or 23 percent, were deemed “unfavorable."
The Blue Lantern report does not mention specific transactions in detail, but does provide case-study examples. One included in the report indicated that a Latin American firearms dealer acted as a “front company for another Latin American company.”
“[The] owner admits that [the] company exists only on paper…,” the fiscal year 2007 Blue Lantern report states. “[The] host country authorities had temporarily suspended the firearms import licenses to [the] parent company because of its link with small arms smuggling to gangs in [a] third country.”
Given Mexico’s strict gun laws with respect to private individuals, it is likely most of the DCS program defense hardware approved for export to that nation was directed toward the military or law enforcement agencies. But it is precisely that fact which should be raising some alarm in Washington.
Mexico, by Calderon’s own admission, is dealing with a serious corruption problem within the ranks of Mexican law enforcement.
From a December 2008 report in the Los Angeles Times:
Mexican President Felipe Calderon on Tuesday said his government was making strides against corruption but warned that graft remained a threat to the nation's efforts against crime.
Calderon’s rival in the 2006 Mexican presidential race, Andres Manuel Lopez Obrador, in recent open letter published in the Mexican newspaper Por Esto! and addressed to U.S. Secretary of State Clinton, is even more blunt in his assessment of the extent of corruption within the Calderon regime.
You surely know that all of this began when a group of about 30 traffickers of influence and corrupt politicians, using the cover of so-called neoliberal economic policies, took control of the Mexican State, as well as a good part of national and so-called public goods. And these policies of pillaging that has enriched a minority in an exaggerated and obscene manner, in a way that has not occurred in any other part of the world, has condemned the Mexican people to exile and survival.
And that corruption is not limited to Mexican law enforcement. Sources provided Narco News with a PowerPoint presentation prepared for the DEA that indicates the following:
Between Jan 2000-Dec 2006: More than 163,000 military members were criminally processed during former president Vicente Fox’s 6 years term of office. The majority of the crimes were: [the list includes abuse of power, homicide, embezzlement, kidnapping, bank robbery, illegal possession of firearms and health crimes [essentially organized crime].
Another slide in that same DEA PowerPoint presentation states that the Mexican military reported an average of 1,200 desertions per month in 2006.
And it should not be ignored that the Zetas, one of the most violent drug-organization groups in Mexico right now, was founded by former elite Mexican special-operations troops — many of whom received some training in the United States.
The Elephant in the Room
A former senior U.S. Customs Inspector, who asked that his name not be used, provided the following reaction when presented with the DCS data:
I would agree entirely [that] DCS (and DoD gifted, as opposed to DCS sold) weapons are obviously the simplest explanation for the massive rise in the number of fully automatic weapons, grenades, rockets, etc., obtained by the narcotics gangs. … That is to say, they are obtaining their weapons from their own, Mexican, government, by various illegal means.
… The Mexican government has a long and well-documented history of corruption at all levels, from city to federal. Most of the weapons being "displayed" [in the media] are simply not available for sale to American civilians, particularly including the grenades — both 40mm and hand types. …
… The source of these weapons can be easily traced by ATF. … All foreign sales must be reported to ATF prior to shipment, just in case the government wishes to hold up a shipment to a particular country, etc. Tracing the serial numbers would be easy, with US government assistance, of course.
But that assumes the Mexican government, and our own government, really want to trace those weapons. A November 2008 report in the San Antonio Express News, which includes details of the major weapons seizure in Reynosa, Mexico, that same month involving the Zetas, reveals the following:
Another example of coordination problems occurred this month. Mexican authorities in Reynosa across the border from McAllen, seized the country’s single largest stash of cartel weapons — nearly 300 assault rifles, shoulder-fired grenade launchers and a half million rounds of ammunition.
But weeks later, Mexican authorities still have not allowed the ATF access to serial numbers that would help them track down the buyers and traffickers on the U.S. side.
To be sure, cartel corruption and intimidation of Mexican law enforcement at every level and in every agency has caused some dysfunction.
A former DEA agent, who also asked not to be named, says the shipment of military-grade weapons to the Mexican government under the DCS program, given the extent of corruption within that government, is essentially like “shipping weapons to a crime syndicate.”
At least one individual with long connections to U.S. intelligence agencies is convinced that the corrupt transfer of arms between the Mexican military and narco-criminals in Mexico is more than theory.
Tosh Plumlee is a former CIA contract pilot who flew numerous missions delivering arms to Latin America and returning drugs to the United States as part of the covert Iran/Contra operations in the 1980s, according to public records. After becoming troubled by those government-sanctioned missions, Plumlee decided to take his concerns to Congress.
Plumlee was eventually called to testify before Congress on a number of occasions, only to find that the Congressional committees hearing his testimony ordered it classified — which meant if Plumlee later spoke about it publicly, he would be violating the law.
Plumlee, however, still has deep contacts in the spook world, some of whom, it seems, want him to bring some information forward concerning the nature of the drug war in Juarez, Mexico. As a result, Plumlee says he recently made a journey with individuals he described as “sensitive sources” to a small warehouse in Juarez — located just across border from El Paso, Texas. Plumlee says he agreed to accompany the sources because he is currently doing research for a book he is writing about the drug war.
Plumlee says it was clear to him that the warehouse was not part of a Mexican military operation, yet it was packed with U.S. military weapons — including grenades, grenade launchers, LAW anti-tank weapons [essentially high-tech bazookas], M16 rifles and night-vision equipment.
Plumlee says his sources indicated that the U.S. weapons in that warehouse — as well as another warehouse located elsewhere in Juarez that he did not visit — were now under the control of a narco-trafficking organization, which had obtained the munitions from corrupt elements of the Mexican military.
Plumlee concedes he does not know why he was allowed to step inside that warehouse and later walk out alive. All he can say for sure is that he was being used to get the information out and suspects that those weapons have since been relocated.
As incredible as Plumlee’s story sounds, it cannot really be surprising that there would be stores of weapons in clandestine warehouses in a city like Juarez, which, since the beginning of 2008, has produced about 2,000 of the estimated 7,000 murders in Mexico’s bloody drug war. And whether anyone chooses to believe Plumlee’s information or not, it is clear he has a long history of being a player in the netherworld of black operations, and might well be trusted by some players who still engaged in that dark art.
Mike Levine, a former DEA agent who has years of experience participating in dangerous undercover operations overseas, says Plumlee is who he claims to be. Levine now hosts a radio show in New York City on a Pacifica Radio station [the Expert Witness Radio Show] and Plumlee has appeared on that show several times over the years.
Here’s what Levine has to say about Plumlee’s credibility:
Before I invited Tosh to come on the air, because his story was so incredible, I vetted him through government agents, all of whom said he is the real thing. I have a copy of the air map he turned over to a San Diego Weekly newspaper, bearing notations of all his drug flights, which first sold me on the guy.
After he had made many revelations on-air in New York, and mainstream media continued to ignore him, Congress was apparently listening. I had been told by my own sources that agencies like CIA were regularly recording our show. (I used to remind them, on air, to make sure they pressed the red button to record.)
So Tosh calls me one day in around 1997 and says that Congress had asked him to testify about his experiences, in closed-door session. I told him, "If you do that, they are going to do nothing but classify your testimony making it illegal for you to tell your own story."
And that, indeed, is what did happen, according to Tosh.
Could it be that Plumlee was used as a type of message in a bottle because, like has happened so many times in the past history of this nation, the normal chain of command and our politicians in Washington, D.C., simply don’t want to hear the truth, don’t want to risk rocking the boat of international relations with Mexico or interrupting the free-trade flow of a multi-billion dollar “legal” arms business?
After all, if our government had to concede that the Mexican military is so wracked with corruption and beyond the control of Mexican President Calderon that it cannot be trusted to control its own weapons, then how can U.S. cooperation with Calderon’s government have any hope for success in what many would argue is an already ill-conceived drug war?
In fact, if that is what we are now confronting in Mexico, it is likely that U.S. cooperation with Calderon’s government, when it takes the form of U.S. weapon shipments, is likely only going to fuel further bloodshed and put U.S. agents and operatives now in the field assisting in those efforts at grave risk.
Narco News did seek to get comment from officials at both the Department of Justice and the Department of State about the issues raised in this story. To date, those queries — both by phone and e-mail — have been met with dead silence.
Stay tuned ….
Saturday, March 28, 2009
Bombing Iraq
Truth Behind Iraq War
I assume that the purpose of any inquiry into the war in Iraq is to establish truth transparently, not bury it ("Miliband pledge to hold Iraq war inquiry dismissed as playing for time' ", The Herald, March 26). Truth enshrines due regard for history.
That Saddam was a very bad man is not in doubt; but those who nurtured the man may be considered equally bad. Donald Rumsfeld was such a man. Nor was I ever in any doubt that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), not least because shortly before I arrived in Baghdad, in 1984, Mr Rumsfeld had been in the city to sell Saddam pathogenic material.
So whoever else might have been surprised by the attack on Halabja in 1987, in which 5000 Kurds were gassed, I wasn't one of them.
That Saddam was a very bad man is not in doubt; but those who nurtured the man may be considered equally bad. Donald Rumsfeld was such a man. Nor was I ever in any doubt that Saddam had weapons of mass destruction (WMD), not least because shortly before I arrived in Baghdad, in 1984, Mr Rumsfeld had been in the city to sell Saddam pathogenic material.
So whoever else might have been surprised by the attack on Halabja in 1987, in which 5000 Kurds were gassed, I wasn't one of them.
The invasion of Kuwait and the onset of genocidal sanctions marked a pivotal change and I tended to the view, promoted by the French and others, that from 1991 Saddam's WMD stockpile had degraded out of existence. Otherwise, what stopped him from deploying (again) the weaponry formerly held? However, it was his alleged arsenal of WMD, no less, that led to the deaths of two million Iraqis from 1991 to 2003 via economic sanctions, which included coalition cruise missile and bombing attacks. A key such episode was Operation Desert Fox (ODF), in 1998, encompassing remorseless US/UK attacks.
For four terrifying nights, a defenceless nation was assaulted by an unseen enemy in the dark. Non-military targets destroyed included the Baghdad Teaching Hospital, the Baghdad Museum of Natural History and the Tikrit Teaching Hospital.
The US Navy launched 325 cruise missiles, the US Airforce 100. Additionally, US and UK bombers flew 650 sorties with RAF Tornadoes alone dropping 50 200lb bombs. There were massive civilian losses. ODF was the direct responsibility of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and, like "shock and awe", five years later, it was predicated on a lie: that Saddam, now firmly the bad guy, owned WMD. The inquiry must also investigate both the politics and the quality of intelligence behind ODF again. As Rumsfeld himself might put it, "stuff happens". Question is, what?
Chris Walker West Kilbride.
For four terrifying nights, a defenceless nation was assaulted by an unseen enemy in the dark. Non-military targets destroyed included the Baghdad Teaching Hospital, the Baghdad Museum of Natural History and the Tikrit Teaching Hospital.
The US Navy launched 325 cruise missiles, the US Airforce 100. Additionally, US and UK bombers flew 650 sorties with RAF Tornadoes alone dropping 50 200lb bombs. There were massive civilian losses. ODF was the direct responsibility of Tony Blair and Bill Clinton and, like "shock and awe", five years later, it was predicated on a lie: that Saddam, now firmly the bad guy, owned WMD. The inquiry must also investigate both the politics and the quality of intelligence behind ODF again. As Rumsfeld himself might put it, "stuff happens". Question is, what?
Chris Walker West Kilbride.
Friday, March 27, 2009
Working is no Crime
Border Lines
Reporting from the TransBorder Project of the
Center for International Policy
The TransBorder Project is a project of the Americas Policy Program in Mexico City and the Center for International Policy in Washington, DC. Directed by CIP senior analyst Tom Barry, the TransBorder Project and its Border Lines Blog aim to foster policy alternatives and to improve understanding of such transborder issues as immigration, trade, illegal drug flows, and environmental degradation.
Click Here for their blog to learn more about how the American people treat the workers they tempted to their country with words of good pay and freedom, and the language they use to describe their fellow human beings.
Click Here for their blog to learn more about how the American people treat the workers they tempted to their country with words of good pay and freedom, and the language they use to describe their fellow human beings.
Criminal Aliens Without End
Fourth in a 12-part BorderLines series
"Aliens, Crime, and Drugs: Making the Connection"
Monday, March 23, 2009
There is no good estimate of the number of criminal aliens because it’s a constantly expanding population, as the number of new immigrants grows and as the number of immigrant residents who are convicted of crimes grows.
It’s also a rising number because the federal government’s definition of deportable crimes keeps expanding, and because new border control and interior enforcement programs at DHS have been increasingly turning immigration violations into criminal violations.
There are roughly 20 million legal noncitizen residents and 11 million illegal residents in the United States. ICE estimates that there are 300,000 to 450,000 criminal aliens detained at federal, state, and local prisons and jails. Once it gets data systems fully operating and with sufficient budgeting ($2-3 billion), ICE can remove all these aliens, most of whom are legal residents.
An unknown number, presumably much larger than those currently detained, of legal residents who have at any time during their residence been convicted of a “removable offense” are also criminal aliens. They are “removable” but will likely remain outside ICE’s custody until they are identified by a cross-check of the government’s increasingly integrated immigration/criminal databases – as when they reenter the country after a foreign visit, apply for citizenship, booked in a local jail, stopped by a law enforcement official.
In other words, if a legal resident has ever been convicted of a crime, even if the sentence was waived, they can at any point in their life be arrested and deported as a criminal alien. To this expanding pool of criminal aliens, any noncitizen who in the future commits a removable offense will be added.
All 11 million immigrants are removable, in addition to the 300,000 – 500,000 additional immigrants who each year enter illegally or overstay their visas. If any of these are convicted of a crime or charged with a criminal violation of immigration law, they are considered criminal aliens, and will likely serve a prison sentence before being turned back to ICE for detention and removal.
Next: The Widening Net Posted by Tom Barry at 10:28 PM Labels: Making the Connection
Wednesday, March 25, 2009
Mandatory Service
German youth praising HitlerSenate Rubber Stamps National Enslavement Bill
(Whats coming up for the American people)
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
The Senate last night rubber stamped a nightmare domestic draft bill that legislates mandatory national service and creates an “army” of at least 7 million civilian enforcers working at the the behest of the government, while also containing language that threatens to ban free speech and the right to protest.
Last week, we reported on the House passage of the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act, which was carried with a 321-105 margin vote.
A passage contained in section 6104 of the original House version entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed.” This language has been dropped from the version passed by the Senate.
However, Section 120 of the bill discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.” This part remains in the version passed by the Senate.
Roles which will be staffed by members of the programs, labeled “Required National Service Corps,” include “criminal justice,” “environmental stewardship,” and “public safety”.
Aside from the programs aimed at college students and young people, others will be specifically targeted towards, “Retired and other former law enforcement, fire, rescue, and emergency personnel, and other individuals with backgrounds in disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery.”
The bill was rubber stamped by the Senate last night in a 74 to 14 motion, in what is described as a “procedural vote,” a move that creates “An army dispersed to help with education, health services and the environment, (which) would vastly enlarge the notion of “community organizing,” and allow, as Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, said tonight, for about 7 million people to be engaged in such work,” reports the New York Times.
The Senate will meet tomorrow morning to formally ratify the bill and finalize amendments. Call your Senator and demand that at least the mandatory language contained in this bill be removed.
References to the program as the creation of a civilian “army” have dominated mainstream news coverage of the legislation.
7 million members of this civilian “army” equates to about one member for every 50 Americans, a similar figure to the number of East Germans who collaborated with the Stasi and informed on their own citizens during the cold war.
The GIVE Act is just one of many pieces of legislation that vastly expand service organizations in line with Obama’s agenda to create a “national civilian security force”.
In January we also reported on the introduction by the Department of Defense of a “civilian expeditionary workforce” that will see American civilians trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of worldwide military missions.
The DoD report states, “Management retains the authority to direct and assign civilian employees, either voluntarily, involuntarily, or on an unexpected basis to accomplish the DoD mission.”
Though the civilian expeditionary workforce program is restricted to DoD employees, similar programs have already been established for public sector workers.
One such program has seen hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers recently trained and dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.
Similar initiatives have been introduced in other western countries, including recently in the UK with the announcement that MI5 is currently training up to 60,000 UK citizens as part a civilian network of terrorist spotters, according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and home secretary, Jacqui Smith.
In addition, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, publicly stated his intention to help create “universal civil defense training” in 2006.
In an interview with Ben Smith of the New York Daily News, Emanuel outlined the agenda for military-style training, essentially a domestic draft, aimed at preparing Americans for a chemical or biological terrorist attack.
Asked by Smith about the universal service plan and whether people would have to live in military barracks, Emanuel laughed before responding, “We’re going to have universal civil defense training, somewhere between the ages of 18 to 25 you will do three months of training….but there can be nothing wrong with all Americans having a joint similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service in service of the country, in preparation, which will give people a sense of what it means to be an American.”
“It will be a common experience and we will be prepared, God forbid, God forbid that there is a chemical hit, another terrorist act or natural disaster becoming more frequent - there’ll be a body of citizens who are ready and capable and trained - that’s all you have to think about,” said Emanuel before smugly declaring, “We’re all here for you OK? It’s a circle of love.”
Asked if the training would be military style, with people wearing uniforms, Emanuel stated, “If you’re worried about are you going to have to do 50 jumping jacks the answer is yes,” adding that the service could be done through state national guard.
Shockingly, the GIVE legislation also contains language that could completely demolish the 1st amendment.
The 12th amendment to the act states, “Amendment to prohibit organizations from attempting to influence legislation; organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes; and assist, promote, or deter union organizing.”
As Gary Wood writes, “Those in support of this legislation will argue this amendment is limited in scope and is not meant to interfere with the rights of citizens to protest, petition, boycott, or strike in resistance to government proposed laws. However, the people associated through service under the GIVE Act are considered volunteers, still free citizens, yet it will be unlawful for them to take part in any protests against any legislation. This is as close to a sedition act, a violation of 1st Amendment rights, as has been proposed in recent history. A basic right as a part of our natural, inalienable rights, is to resist government. Our founders not only knew it was a right but it was a responsibility. This legislation begins to break that down significantly.”
Fears about Obama’s plans to create involuntary servitude and domestic spy squads were first stoked in July 2008, when Obama told a rally in Colorado Springs, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”
Despite denials that Obama plans to institute a mandatory program of national service, his original change.gov website stated that Americans would be “required” to complete “50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year”. The text was only later changed to state that Americans would be “encouraged” to undertake such programs.
Numerous other national service bills have been introduced which target everyone from schoolchildren to the elderly. They include the Service For All Ages Initiative, the Summer of Service Act, the Semester of Service Act, the Encore Service Act and the ACTION Act.
Regarding the GIVE Act, “The bill’s opponents — and there are only a few in Congress — say it could cram ideology down the throats of young “volunteers,” many of whom could be forced into service since the bill creates a “Congressional Commission on Civic Service,” reports Fox.
“We contribute our time and money under no government coercion on a scale the rest of the world doesn’t emulate and probably can’t imagine,” said Luke Sheahan, contributing editor for the Family Security Foundation. “The idea that government should order its people to perform acts of charity is contrary to the idea of charity and it removes the responsibility for charity from the people to the government, destroying private initiative.”
Lee Cary of the conservative American Thinker warns that Obama’s agenda is to, “tap into the already active volunteerism of millions of Americans and recruit them to become cogs in a gigantic government machine grinding out his social re-engineering agenda.”
The passage of such shocking legislation with barely a whimper from political activist groups goes to show how well the corporate media has performed in camouflaging the legislation with flowery characterizations of helpful volunteerism, when in reality the bill creates the pretext for mandatory national service and the creation of a multi-million man domestic civil defense unit who will be tasked with spying on their fellow Americans under the justification of protecting the country from terrorism.
The Senate last night rubber stamped a nightmare domestic draft bill that legislates mandatory national service and creates an “army” of at least 7 million civilian enforcers working at the the behest of the government, while also containing language that threatens to ban free speech and the right to protest.
Last week, we reported on the House passage of the Generations Invigorating Volunteerism and Education Act, known as the GIVE Act, which was carried with a 321-105 margin vote.
A passage contained in section 6104 of the original House version entitled “Duties,” in subsection B6, states that a commission will be set up to investigate, “Whether a workable, fair, and reasonable mandatory service requirement for all able young people could be developed.” This language has been dropped from the version passed by the Senate.
However, Section 120 of the bill discusses the “Youth Engagement Zone Program” and states that “service learning” will be “a mandatory part of the curriculum in all of the secondary schools served by the local educational agency.” This part remains in the version passed by the Senate.
Roles which will be staffed by members of the programs, labeled “Required National Service Corps,” include “criminal justice,” “environmental stewardship,” and “public safety”.
Aside from the programs aimed at college students and young people, others will be specifically targeted towards, “Retired and other former law enforcement, fire, rescue, and emergency personnel, and other individuals with backgrounds in disaster preparedness, relief, and recovery.”
The bill was rubber stamped by the Senate last night in a 74 to 14 motion, in what is described as a “procedural vote,” a move that creates “An army dispersed to help with education, health services and the environment, (which) would vastly enlarge the notion of “community organizing,” and allow, as Senator Barbara Mikulski, Democrat of Maryland, said tonight, for about 7 million people to be engaged in such work,” reports the New York Times.
The Senate will meet tomorrow morning to formally ratify the bill and finalize amendments. Call your Senator and demand that at least the mandatory language contained in this bill be removed.
References to the program as the creation of a civilian “army” have dominated mainstream news coverage of the legislation.
7 million members of this civilian “army” equates to about one member for every 50 Americans, a similar figure to the number of East Germans who collaborated with the Stasi and informed on their own citizens during the cold war.
The GIVE Act is just one of many pieces of legislation that vastly expand service organizations in line with Obama’s agenda to create a “national civilian security force”.
In January we also reported on the introduction by the Department of Defense of a “civilian expeditionary workforce” that will see American civilians trained and equipped to deploy overseas in support of worldwide military missions.
The DoD report states, “Management retains the authority to direct and assign civilian employees, either voluntarily, involuntarily, or on an unexpected basis to accomplish the DoD mission.”
Though the civilian expeditionary workforce program is restricted to DoD employees, similar programs have already been established for public sector workers.
One such program has seen hundreds of police, firefighters, paramedics and utility workers recently trained and dispatched as “Terrorism Liaison Officers” in Colorado, Arizona and California to watch for “suspicious activity” which is later fed into a secret government database.
Similar initiatives have been introduced in other western countries, including recently in the UK with the announcement that MI5 is currently training up to 60,000 UK citizens as part a civilian network of terrorist spotters, according to Prime Minister Gordon Brown and home secretary, Jacqui Smith.
In addition, Obama’s Chief of Staff, Rahm Emanuel, publicly stated his intention to help create “universal civil defense training” in 2006.
In an interview with Ben Smith of the New York Daily News, Emanuel outlined the agenda for military-style training, essentially a domestic draft, aimed at preparing Americans for a chemical or biological terrorist attack.
Asked by Smith about the universal service plan and whether people would have to live in military barracks, Emanuel laughed before responding, “We’re going to have universal civil defense training, somewhere between the ages of 18 to 25 you will do three months of training….but there can be nothing wrong with all Americans having a joint similar experience of what we call civil defense training or civil service in service of the country, in preparation, which will give people a sense of what it means to be an American.”
“It will be a common experience and we will be prepared, God forbid, God forbid that there is a chemical hit, another terrorist act or natural disaster becoming more frequent - there’ll be a body of citizens who are ready and capable and trained - that’s all you have to think about,” said Emanuel before smugly declaring, “We’re all here for you OK? It’s a circle of love.”
Asked if the training would be military style, with people wearing uniforms, Emanuel stated, “If you’re worried about are you going to have to do 50 jumping jacks the answer is yes,” adding that the service could be done through state national guard.
Shockingly, the GIVE legislation also contains language that could completely demolish the 1st amendment.
The 12th amendment to the act states, “Amendment to prohibit organizations from attempting to influence legislation; organize or engage in protests, petitions, boycotts, or strikes; and assist, promote, or deter union organizing.”
As Gary Wood writes, “Those in support of this legislation will argue this amendment is limited in scope and is not meant to interfere with the rights of citizens to protest, petition, boycott, or strike in resistance to government proposed laws. However, the people associated through service under the GIVE Act are considered volunteers, still free citizens, yet it will be unlawful for them to take part in any protests against any legislation. This is as close to a sedition act, a violation of 1st Amendment rights, as has been proposed in recent history. A basic right as a part of our natural, inalienable rights, is to resist government. Our founders not only knew it was a right but it was a responsibility. This legislation begins to break that down significantly.”
Fears about Obama’s plans to create involuntary servitude and domestic spy squads were first stoked in July 2008, when Obama told a rally in Colorado Springs, “We cannot continue to rely on our military in order to achieve the national security objectives we’ve set. We’ve got to have a civilian national security force that is just as powerful, just as strong, just as well funded.”
Despite denials that Obama plans to institute a mandatory program of national service, his original change.gov website stated that Americans would be “required” to complete “50 hours of community service in middle school and high school and 100 hours of community service in college every year”. The text was only later changed to state that Americans would be “encouraged” to undertake such programs.
Numerous other national service bills have been introduced which target everyone from schoolchildren to the elderly. They include the Service For All Ages Initiative, the Summer of Service Act, the Semester of Service Act, the Encore Service Act and the ACTION Act.
Regarding the GIVE Act, “The bill’s opponents — and there are only a few in Congress — say it could cram ideology down the throats of young “volunteers,” many of whom could be forced into service since the bill creates a “Congressional Commission on Civic Service,” reports Fox.
“We contribute our time and money under no government coercion on a scale the rest of the world doesn’t emulate and probably can’t imagine,” said Luke Sheahan, contributing editor for the Family Security Foundation. “The idea that government should order its people to perform acts of charity is contrary to the idea of charity and it removes the responsibility for charity from the people to the government, destroying private initiative.”
Lee Cary of the conservative American Thinker warns that Obama’s agenda is to, “tap into the already active volunteerism of millions of Americans and recruit them to become cogs in a gigantic government machine grinding out his social re-engineering agenda.”
The passage of such shocking legislation with barely a whimper from political activist groups goes to show how well the corporate media has performed in camouflaging the legislation with flowery characterizations of helpful volunteerism, when in reality the bill creates the pretext for mandatory national service and the creation of a multi-million man domestic civil defense unit who will be tasked with spying on their fellow Americans under the justification of protecting the country from terrorism.
Paul Joseph Watson
Tuesday, March 24, 2009
Agent Orange Again
Ignoring Health Concerns in Nuevo Laredo, US Border Patrol Will Spray 1.1 Miles of Border Land with Chemical Herbicide
By FNS
Frontera NorteSur
March 21, 2009
In the Vietnam War, the United States sprayed vast tracts of land with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange as part of a counter-insurgency strategy aimed at removing forest cover for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. Although the toxic dioxin released by Agent Orange was later blamed by US veterans’ groups and Vietnamese officials for illnesses and diseases that struck thousands of former US soldiers and upwards of four million Vietnamese citizens, the US Supreme Court recently refused to consider a case by pursued by Vietnamese plaintiffs against the manufacturers of Agent Orange.
Four decades later, on the US-Mexico border, the US Border Patrol intends to employ a chemical herbicide in order to eradicate stands of the Carrizo cane, an invasive plant that grows as tall as 30 feet and provides convenient cover for undocumented border crossers and smugglers. The variety of Carrizo cane that is common in the Laredo-Del Rio borderlands is from the region of Valencia, Spain.
Possibly beginning next week, the US Border Patrol could commence aerial herbicide spraying along a slice of the Rio Grande between the twin cities of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. The experimental spraying would cover an area that stretches 1.1 miles between the Laredo Railroad Bridge and Laredo Community College directly across from Mexico, said Roque Sarinana, public affairs officer for the Border Patrol’s Laredo sector.
In addition to aerial spraying of the herbicide Imazapyr, the Border Patrol will employ hand-cutting and mechanical methods that involve applying the killer chemical at ground-level, Sarinana told Frontera NorteSur in an a phone interview. Getting rid of Carrizo cane should improve the Border Patrol’s “line of sight up and down the river, ” Sarinana said.
Depending on weather conditions, the first dustings of Imazapyr could begin March 25, Sarinana confirmed. “As of now, that’s the plan,” he said.
Concerned about risks to public health from possible herbicide spray drift, runoff and leaching, officials from the city government of neighboring Nuevo Laredo are steadfastly opposed to aerial spraying. “I’ve always been respectful of the law and sovereignty,” said Nuevo Laredo Mayor Ramon Garza Barrios. “But herbicides that affect health in both countries can’t be sprayed.”
Mayor Garza’s stance is supported by other elected and appointed officials in Mexico. On Thursday, March 19, the Tamaulipas State Legislature issued a statement requesting information about the proposed spraying from the Mexican and US sections of the International Boundary and Water Commission as well as Mexican federal agencies.
The zone targeted for spraying is across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo’s Hidalgo neighborhood and only hundreds of yards from the Mexican city’s public water intake system.
Carlos Montiel Saeb, general manager for Nuevo Laredo’s water utility, said the Border Patrol advised his office to turn off water pumps a few hours prior to spraying. “If there is no problem, why are they asking us to do this?” Montiel questioned.
Border Patrol spokesman Sarinana said he had not seen a written objection from Mayor Garza, but stressed it did not mean other US officials had not received a letter. “This is all in the works, so we’ll see what happens,” Sarinana said, adding the Border Patrol plans on releasing a more detailed statement about the future of the Carrizo cane project.
Opposition to the Border Patrol’s aerial spraying plans is likewise growing in Laredo, Texas. The two sides turned out to a March 16 meeting of the Laredo City Council in which elected officials narrowly approved by a controversial 5-4 vote an easement for the US government on city property targeted for spraying.
Jay J. Johnson Castro, Sr., executive director of the Rio Grande International Studies Center at Laredo Community College told Frontera NorteSur the planned aerial spraying caught residents off guard. The aerial applications could threaten more than 1,000 bird and other species at a time when spring hatchings begin and migratory birds are still in the area, Johnson said by phone from his office. The Border Patrol’s Carrizo Cane Eradication Project abuts a nature trail running near the community college, Johnson lamented.
“Nobody knows the impact of Imazapyr,” Johnson contended. “It’s no different than Agent Orange.” Citing the program’s environmental assessment, Johnson said aerial spraying could eventually extend along a strip of river bank 16 miles upriver from the pilot project zone. Despite the potential magnitude of the project, the Border Patrol did not gather local input as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, Johnson charged.
Like virtually all chemical pest control agents, lack of complete public information and multiple, contradictory reports surround the history of Imazapyr, a substance first registered in 1984 and currently manufactured under the trade name Habitat by the multinational BASF corporation.
A fact sheet prepared by the Washington State Department of Agriculture reported Imazapyr was “low in toxicity to invertebrates and practically non-toxic to fish, birds and mammals.” Still, the fact sheet reported Imazapyr was highly mobile and persistent in soils.
In 2007, BASF spokesman Joel Vollmer told the press his company’s Imazapyr product was widely used in wildlife refuges across the US and along the Pecos River and its tributaries to control salt cedar, another troublesome, invasive plant species afflicting the US Southwest.
Public controversies over Imazapyr applications have previously erupted in Alaska, California and Colombia, where experimental use of the herbicide to control illegal coca plantings was approved in 2000. A report on the chemical’s history developed for the non-governmental group Alaska Community Action on Toxics said evidence existed that identified imazapyr as a contaminant of soil, groundwater and surface water. Imazapyr also contains an acid that can irritate the eyes, skin and respiratory system, the report stated. According to the report’s authors, additional evidence linked the herbicide to Parkinson’s Disease-like symptoms.
In developing its Carrizo cane aerial spraying project, the Border Patrol ignored studies by Laredo Community College researchers that examined different means of killing off the invasive species, Johnson charged.
“We are not opposed to the eradication of Carrizo,” he affirmed. “We think it has to go because it consumes about 500 gallons of water per meter and chokes out native vegetation.”
At the federal level, Department of Homeland Security-sponsored researchers earlier explored using biological controls, including wasps, to control Carrizo cane.
US officials have been urging a Carrizo cane eradication program for some time. In 2007, US Representative Henry J. Cuellar (D-Tx) called the tall, thirsty plant a national security issue. Quoted in the news media, Rep. Cuellar said then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had been to the border to get a first-hand look at the Carrizo cane foe. The Laredo Congressman assured the press officials were “looking at what is the fastest, safest way to address the effectiveness of addressing this issue of Carrizo.”
With the clock ticking, Johnson and a growing network of activists on both sides of the border are lobbying high officials to prevent aerial spraying before it occurs.
In an e-mail, longtime border environmental advocate and Sierra Club activist Bill Addington contended spraying would violate the 1983 La Paz accord between the United States and Mexico that requires mutual notification in the event of projects impacting the environment within a 60 mile radius on either side of the border.
“We considering all democratic options-court actions, political protests, media attention,” Johnson added. “We expect our message to be heard by the environmentally-friendly Obama administration. This is too unprecedented to aerially spray a toxic chemical in a densely-populated area.”
Meanwhile, word of the planned herbicide spraying is spreading fast in the two Laredos. Interviewed on the banks of the Rio Grande, a 26-year-old Honduran migrant told the Mexican press he intended to cross into the US without papers before spraying commenced. “They say they will put poison into the river,” said Walter Hernandez. “That’s why I want to cross before then.”
Mario Garcia, a Mexican national who frequents the Rio Grande on the Nuevo Laredo side with his sons, also expressed concern to a Mexican reporter. “I frequently come to fish in the area,” Garcia said. “With what degree of confidence are we going to eat a fish if we know it is contaminated?”
In response to an article about the Imazapyr controversy in the Laredo Morning Times, several readers sent pointed e-mails to the news publication that proposed solutions to the Carrizo cane issue or, as is increasingly the case with border news web sites, used the immediate topic at hand to vent ideological broadsides on issues of race, the environment and US-Mexico relations.
By FNS
Frontera NorteSur
March 21, 2009
In the Vietnam War, the United States sprayed vast tracts of land with the chemical defoliant Agent Orange as part of a counter-insurgency strategy aimed at removing forest cover for Viet Cong and North Vietnamese forces. Although the toxic dioxin released by Agent Orange was later blamed by US veterans’ groups and Vietnamese officials for illnesses and diseases that struck thousands of former US soldiers and upwards of four million Vietnamese citizens, the US Supreme Court recently refused to consider a case by pursued by Vietnamese plaintiffs against the manufacturers of Agent Orange.
Four decades later, on the US-Mexico border, the US Border Patrol intends to employ a chemical herbicide in order to eradicate stands of the Carrizo cane, an invasive plant that grows as tall as 30 feet and provides convenient cover for undocumented border crossers and smugglers. The variety of Carrizo cane that is common in the Laredo-Del Rio borderlands is from the region of Valencia, Spain.
Possibly beginning next week, the US Border Patrol could commence aerial herbicide spraying along a slice of the Rio Grande between the twin cities of Laredo, Texas, and Nuevo Laredo, Tamaulipas. The experimental spraying would cover an area that stretches 1.1 miles between the Laredo Railroad Bridge and Laredo Community College directly across from Mexico, said Roque Sarinana, public affairs officer for the Border Patrol’s Laredo sector.
In addition to aerial spraying of the herbicide Imazapyr, the Border Patrol will employ hand-cutting and mechanical methods that involve applying the killer chemical at ground-level, Sarinana told Frontera NorteSur in an a phone interview. Getting rid of Carrizo cane should improve the Border Patrol’s “line of sight up and down the river, ” Sarinana said.
Depending on weather conditions, the first dustings of Imazapyr could begin March 25, Sarinana confirmed. “As of now, that’s the plan,” he said.
Concerned about risks to public health from possible herbicide spray drift, runoff and leaching, officials from the city government of neighboring Nuevo Laredo are steadfastly opposed to aerial spraying. “I’ve always been respectful of the law and sovereignty,” said Nuevo Laredo Mayor Ramon Garza Barrios. “But herbicides that affect health in both countries can’t be sprayed.”
Mayor Garza’s stance is supported by other elected and appointed officials in Mexico. On Thursday, March 19, the Tamaulipas State Legislature issued a statement requesting information about the proposed spraying from the Mexican and US sections of the International Boundary and Water Commission as well as Mexican federal agencies.
The zone targeted for spraying is across the Rio Grande from Nuevo Laredo’s Hidalgo neighborhood and only hundreds of yards from the Mexican city’s public water intake system.
Carlos Montiel Saeb, general manager for Nuevo Laredo’s water utility, said the Border Patrol advised his office to turn off water pumps a few hours prior to spraying. “If there is no problem, why are they asking us to do this?” Montiel questioned.
Border Patrol spokesman Sarinana said he had not seen a written objection from Mayor Garza, but stressed it did not mean other US officials had not received a letter. “This is all in the works, so we’ll see what happens,” Sarinana said, adding the Border Patrol plans on releasing a more detailed statement about the future of the Carrizo cane project.
Opposition to the Border Patrol’s aerial spraying plans is likewise growing in Laredo, Texas. The two sides turned out to a March 16 meeting of the Laredo City Council in which elected officials narrowly approved by a controversial 5-4 vote an easement for the US government on city property targeted for spraying.
Jay J. Johnson Castro, Sr., executive director of the Rio Grande International Studies Center at Laredo Community College told Frontera NorteSur the planned aerial spraying caught residents off guard. The aerial applications could threaten more than 1,000 bird and other species at a time when spring hatchings begin and migratory birds are still in the area, Johnson said by phone from his office. The Border Patrol’s Carrizo Cane Eradication Project abuts a nature trail running near the community college, Johnson lamented.
“Nobody knows the impact of Imazapyr,” Johnson contended. “It’s no different than Agent Orange.” Citing the program’s environmental assessment, Johnson said aerial spraying could eventually extend along a strip of river bank 16 miles upriver from the pilot project zone. Despite the potential magnitude of the project, the Border Patrol did not gather local input as required by the National Environmental Policy Act, Johnson charged.
Like virtually all chemical pest control agents, lack of complete public information and multiple, contradictory reports surround the history of Imazapyr, a substance first registered in 1984 and currently manufactured under the trade name Habitat by the multinational BASF corporation.
A fact sheet prepared by the Washington State Department of Agriculture reported Imazapyr was “low in toxicity to invertebrates and practically non-toxic to fish, birds and mammals.” Still, the fact sheet reported Imazapyr was highly mobile and persistent in soils.
In 2007, BASF spokesman Joel Vollmer told the press his company’s Imazapyr product was widely used in wildlife refuges across the US and along the Pecos River and its tributaries to control salt cedar, another troublesome, invasive plant species afflicting the US Southwest.
Public controversies over Imazapyr applications have previously erupted in Alaska, California and Colombia, where experimental use of the herbicide to control illegal coca plantings was approved in 2000. A report on the chemical’s history developed for the non-governmental group Alaska Community Action on Toxics said evidence existed that identified imazapyr as a contaminant of soil, groundwater and surface water. Imazapyr also contains an acid that can irritate the eyes, skin and respiratory system, the report stated. According to the report’s authors, additional evidence linked the herbicide to Parkinson’s Disease-like symptoms.
In developing its Carrizo cane aerial spraying project, the Border Patrol ignored studies by Laredo Community College researchers that examined different means of killing off the invasive species, Johnson charged.
“We are not opposed to the eradication of Carrizo,” he affirmed. “We think it has to go because it consumes about 500 gallons of water per meter and chokes out native vegetation.”
At the federal level, Department of Homeland Security-sponsored researchers earlier explored using biological controls, including wasps, to control Carrizo cane.
US officials have been urging a Carrizo cane eradication program for some time. In 2007, US Representative Henry J. Cuellar (D-Tx) called the tall, thirsty plant a national security issue. Quoted in the news media, Rep. Cuellar said then-Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff had been to the border to get a first-hand look at the Carrizo cane foe. The Laredo Congressman assured the press officials were “looking at what is the fastest, safest way to address the effectiveness of addressing this issue of Carrizo.”
With the clock ticking, Johnson and a growing network of activists on both sides of the border are lobbying high officials to prevent aerial spraying before it occurs.
In an e-mail, longtime border environmental advocate and Sierra Club activist Bill Addington contended spraying would violate the 1983 La Paz accord between the United States and Mexico that requires mutual notification in the event of projects impacting the environment within a 60 mile radius on either side of the border.
“We considering all democratic options-court actions, political protests, media attention,” Johnson added. “We expect our message to be heard by the environmentally-friendly Obama administration. This is too unprecedented to aerially spray a toxic chemical in a densely-populated area.”
Meanwhile, word of the planned herbicide spraying is spreading fast in the two Laredos. Interviewed on the banks of the Rio Grande, a 26-year-old Honduran migrant told the Mexican press he intended to cross into the US without papers before spraying commenced. “They say they will put poison into the river,” said Walter Hernandez. “That’s why I want to cross before then.”
Mario Garcia, a Mexican national who frequents the Rio Grande on the Nuevo Laredo side with his sons, also expressed concern to a Mexican reporter. “I frequently come to fish in the area,” Garcia said. “With what degree of confidence are we going to eat a fish if we know it is contaminated?”
In response to an article about the Imazapyr controversy in the Laredo Morning Times, several readers sent pointed e-mails to the news publication that proposed solutions to the Carrizo cane issue or, as is increasingly the case with border news web sites, used the immediate topic at hand to vent ideological broadsides on issues of race, the environment and US-Mexico relations.
Labels: agent Orange, border, borders, Mexico, USA
