Remember in the last post I said that Michael Chertoff was going to get his own post in this series? Well, he's going to get at least two, and this is the first one. It's very serendipitous for him that he just happens to represent a company, ironically called Rapiscan (as in raping of civil rights) that is positioned to make a huge profit from the rhetoric generated by Chertoff in the wake the strange story of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab. Below are a few paragraphs from Antifascist Calling that summarize his involvement. And my guess is that these expensive machines will go the way of the discontinued Puffers

On New Year's eve, former Homeland Security chief Michael Chertoff penned a Washington Post op-ed that argued "whole-body imagers" should be deployed world-wide.

[...]
Currently TSA has fielded 40 machines at 19 airports with more on the way. Indeed, the agency handed out a $25 million contract last October to Rapiscan Security Systems for 30 more peep-show devices with funds generously provided by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act.

What Chertoff failed to disclose however, is that since leaving the secret state's employ his security consulting firm, The Chertoff Group, "includes a client that manufactures the machines" according to The Washington Post.

Scannergate: Terror Scares A Boon for Security Grifters

[I'm going to break my rule and give a ton of links. Sorry if it's too much info at once] This video clip is from the BBC documentary The Century of the Self, and it explains how the media allows itself to be manipulated and used to further the ends of those in power. They did it 50 years ago. They did it to sell the war in Iraq. And they're doing it today. The lobbyists are people they tell us are people we have to trust. For instance, former DHS Sec. Michael Chertoff who's going to get his very own post in this series or former DNI Mike McConnell, who happens to have made a bundle out of security contracts at Booz Allen

Ten years after leaving the government, McConnell was finally making real money -- two million dollars a year at Booz-Allen.

video link

Over the last few weeks there have been a series of posts at different websites that have documented the latest variations of the conjunction of the military and anti-terror industrial complex with our government. I'm going to call it the Fear Industrial Complex because to be boxed in into the Military Industrial Complex would be inaccurate and wouldn't even come close to defining the collusion of 1) the military wing, with 2) the security wing, with 3) the Congressional wing, with 4) the Presidential wing and lastly 5) the media wing of the complex . There are so many links that if I tried to put them all in one post it would take several hours to put together and would shortshrift them all and be a disservice to the thought-provoking information.

With that, here's the first post by Frida Berrigan, with an intro by Tom Engelhardt in the link. I'm posting the entire thing because things like this have a way of disappearing

America’s Global Weapons Monopoly

There's a lot more to this than meets the eye

There were a lot of warnings that were overlooked and a lot of strange things had to line up in order for the attempted bombing to take place and left a lot of questions begging to be answered ... for instance these ten. Then there was the unrelated (?) strange story that Police ‘forgot’ to take explosives off a flight to Dublin

More to come ...

The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint

By F. William Engdahl~Global Research

On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was “suspected” of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ‘War on Terror,’ namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.

This is such a good blog, I posted the entire thing. But please click on the header to read the original. What we are being sold about Afghanistan is a reprise of The Simla Manifesto

Remnants of an Army by Elizabeth Butler depicting William Brydon who was the sole British survivor after Britain's catastrophic retreat from Kabul.

Wednesday, December 2, 2009

What Empires Have Said Throughout History: "One More Surge"

 

A leading advisor to the U.S. military, the Rand Corporation, released a study in 2008 called "How Terrorist Groups End: Lessons for Countering al Qa'ida". The report confirms what experts have been saying for years: the war on terror is actually weakening national security.

As a press release about the study states:

"Terrorists should be perceived and described as criminals, not holy warriors, and our analysis suggests that there is no battlefield solution to terrorism."

Related: Senate Passes $636 Billion Military Bill"

ABC News: Is the U.S. Preparing to Bomb Iran?

DoD Contracts for Oct. 2, 2009

McDonnell Douglas Corporation of St. Louis, Missouri was awarded a $51,900,000 contract to provide Massive Ordnance Penetrator Integration on B-2 test aircraft. At this time $32,150,000 has been obligated. 708 ARSG/PK, Eglin Air Force Base, Florida is the contracting Activity. (FA8681-09-C-0280,P00002)

Massive Ordnance Penetrator Integration = Bunker Busters

Pepe Escobar: It's Bomb, Bomb, Bomb Iran Time

Connecting the Dots: The Axis of Evil Closes in on Iran's Nuclear Sites, while the G20 stamps on our Civil Rights

In the great global chess match, the Axis of Evil exchanges pieces with Russia towards a check-mate on Iran, while Afghanistan is set to be the proving ground of an open-ended military strategy.

The G20 crowns itself queen of the global economy, as our civil liberties are pawned off the board for the illusion of security.

If the audience is the human masses, they seem blithely disinterested in the high-stakes moves on the board and only vaguely aware that beneath the board itself Mother Nature is shaking the table, rattling the Earth and making waves.

September was yet another episode in the slow motion collision of humanity's tragic history and reality.

Whoops: Anti-ACORN Bill Ropes In Defense Contractors, Others Charged With Fraud
Ryan Grim - ryan@huffingtonpost.com | HuffPost Reporting
First Posted: 09-22-09 02:03 PM | Updated: 09-22-09 05:26 PM

Going after ACORN may be like shooting fish in a barrel lately -- but jumpy lawmakers used a bazooka to do it last week and may have blown up some of their longtime allies in the process.

The congressional legislation intended to defund ACORN, passed with broad bipartisan support, is written so broadly that it applies to "any organization" that has been charged with breaking federal or state election laws, lobbying disclosure laws, campaign finance laws or filing fraudulent paperwork with any federal or state agency. It also applies to any of the employees, contractors or other folks affiliated with a group charged with any of those things.

In other words, the bill could plausibly defund the entire military-industrial complex. Whoops.

Two articles. I keep hearing that Obama has a huge mess to clean up (and he does), and that we should just be patient and let him play his eleventy-dimensional chess and he'll teach those neo-cons the 'whatfor' ... Not me anymore, I'm now not looking at what he says, but what he does

Justin Raimondo

September 02, 2009

The idea that the U.S. must fight in Afghanistan is buttressed by an all-too-familiar theme, whether it be uttered on the Left (Obama) or the neocon Right (Bill Kristol): the former says we must fight to prevent al-Qaeda from reestablishing "safe havens" so they can’t plot another 9/11, while the latter echoes this nonsense in a column attacking George Will’s call for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan by referencing "the area that was the staging ground for Sept. 11" and describing the Taliban as "the group that hosted the Sept. 11 attackers." It’s ironic – but typical of neoconservative Bizarro logic – that Kristol would dismiss Will’s call as based purely on "sentiment," yet so brazenly "wave the bloody shirt" (as he accuses Will of doing) in support of a losing, futile, and increasingly costly war. But that’s the Kristolian method, after all, and we ought to be used to it by now.

Yet the notion of al-Qaeda’s apparent omnipresence in the mountains of the Hindu Kush is flatly contradicted by U.S. Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s top adviser, Stephen Biddle, who, in an essay for The American Interest, averred that this actually isn’t about Afghanistan: it’s really all about Pakistan, which would be in some danger of falling into terrorist hands if we don’t stay the course in Afghanistan. Yet even Biddle admits the danger of Pakistan falling into al-Qaeda’s hands is small, and that it would take a series of major destabilizing events – the downfall of the Karzai regime in Afghanistan, the collapse of Pakistan’s "democratic" government, the victory of an Islamist insurgency and its installation in Islamabad, and the seizure of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal by al-Qaeda’s allies – before the worst-case scenario would occur. Oh, yeah, and by the way, even if we do manage to succeed in Afghanistan – defend the fragile Afghan government, hold off the Taliban, and engage is some pseudo-successful nation-building – according to Prof. Biddle there is "no guarantee" Pakistan won’t fall on its own, anyway.

We can’t get out of Afghanistan, because Pakistan will fall, and vice versa. But each may fall on its own. What kind of a shell game are war supporters playing? And what, by the way, are we fighting for? No one seems to know: or, more accurately, no one dares say what it’s really all about – revenge. It’s a war that has nothing to do with protecting America from another 9/11, and everything to do with institutionalizing an endless war of aggression the aim of which is slaughter for its own sake, as an end in itself.

[...]

Click Justin's name for more

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Dismantling Pakistan, a Quagmire of Imperial Slavery

By Talha Mujaddidi in Pakistan. Axis of Logic

Axis of Logic

Thursday, Jul 16, 2009

Talha Mujaddidi analyzes the "Quagmire of Imperial Slavery" for Axis of Logic from inside Pakistan: In January, 2005, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, former Pakistan High Commissioner to the U.K. wrote the following alert and warning:

"When it was over, I realised that everything had happened 'according to the plan'. This brings out of me the apprehension: are our military rulers working on an a similar agenda or something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in joint collaboration with CIA. It was poor Miraj Khalid who as interim prime minister in early 1997 had dared to confide to the Pakistanis that CIA had forecast Pakistan's denouement by the year 2015. ... the NIC report cast a dark shadow on Pakistan's future five years ago.

"It said that by the year 2015 Pakistan would be a failed state, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons and its complete Talibanization. It had predicted, 'Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction'. Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. Further domestic decline would benefit Islamic political activists, who may significantly increase their role in national politics and alter the makeup and cohesion of the military, once Pakistan's most capable institution. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the central government's control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi."

So, I was trying to come up with a subject for today's Science Friday, and at first I'm thinking it'd be something like the blue rats or guessing the number of M and M's in a jar.

But then I ran across this flashback to Gary Webb's story on the Army's use of video games in recruitment (scroll down for the article). And then there was this story on the "defense" industry utilizing video games graphics processing units (GPU's) to make complex calculations in "defense" applications. Then there was this story on Science Geeks having a conference in a World of Warcraft video game

After reading these stories I knew I had a subject - Gary Webb's article - in order to know why it's important you have to know the nature of how the mind processes information

Click: The Boobtube is an opiate ... btw, so is that video game

... That television (or video game) you watch every day, your secret best friend, is an addictive opiate, and not only that, it's one of the most potent mind control devices ever produced. And I'm not just basing this on intuition. I have the neurological evidence to prove it.

[...]

Of course, not all addictions are chemical. Any behavior that leads to a pleasurable experience will be repeated , especially if that behavior requires little work. Psychologists call this pattern "positive reinforcement" . This is what we mean, technically speaking, by addiction. In this sense, television certainly fits into the category of an addictive agent.

When you watch TV, brain activity switches from the left to the right hemisphere. In fact, experiments conducted by researcher Herbert Krugman showed that while viewers are watching television, the right hemisphere is twice as active as the left, a neurological anomaly. The crossover from left to right releases a surge of the body's natural opiates: endorphins, which include beta-endorphins and enkephalins. Endorphins are structurally identical to opium and its derivatives (morphine, codeine, heroin, etc.). Activities that release endorphins (also called opioid peptides) are usually habit-forming (we rarely call them addictive). These include cracking knuckles, strenuous exercise, and orgasm. External opiates act on the same receptor sites (opioid receptors) as endorphins, so there is little difference between the two.

[...]

Psychophysiologist Thomas Mulholland found that after just 30 seconds of watching television the brain begins to produce alpha waves , which indicates torpid (almost comatose) rates of activity. Alpha brain waves are associated with unfocused, overly receptive states of consciousness. A high frequency alpha waves does not occur normally when the eyes are open. In fact, Mulholland's research implies that watching television is neurologically analogous to staring at a blank wall.

Who's Behind Lanny Davis' Putsch Paycheck?

Following the money trail in the Honduran coup

By Bill Conroy

July 22, 2009 "Narco News" -- (Lea en Español Aquí) -- Going to bat for an illegal coup used to be the job of shadowy CIA operatives back in the good ol' days of the Cold War.

But that is bygone era. Today’s junta-enablers no longer have to work in secret. In fact, illegal usurpers can now shop openly in Washington for a hired gun of their choosing to grease the wheels of Congress and commerce to assure their coup d'état remains a fait accompli.

Enter Lanny Davis — a long-time friend and Yale Law School chum of Hillary Clinton and former White House Counsel to Bill Clinton [as well as a consummate shill for their agendas].

Davis also is a lawyer and lobbyist now employed by the D.C. office of global law firm Orrick, Herrington & Sutcliffe. In that capacity, Davis was recently retained by the Business Council of Latin America (CEAL) to hawk for the coup in Honduras — or as is the preferred description among the pushers of simulation, the administration of “de facto” Honduran President Roberto Micheletti [elected by virtue of having cast the most bullets in deposing the people’s choice in Honduras, President Manuel Zelaya).

Davis is now scampering about the Hill setting up meetings with Congressional insiders and throwing money around on advertising and other such frills to build a case for supporting the new militarily elected Honduran regime.

Davis may be many things, but one thing he is not is cheap. So the question is begged: Whose paying for this charade?

The best way to get a peek under those covers most certainly should be to take a look at who is in bed with CEAL, Davis’ current contract employer.

Well, here’s the scoop on the pecuniary bedfellows:


Camilo Alejandro Atala Faraj, president of the Honduras chapter of CEAL, also happens to be a vice president of a major banking institution in Honduras, Banco Financiera Comercial Hondurena S.A [or Banco Ficohsa), which is part of the financial holding company Grupo Financiero Ficohsa.

[I've wanted to do this for a week but haven't had time. And I know this has been covered ... a little bit ... but no where near as much as the Iranian elections which have had wall-to-wall coverage. Wonder why that is? And it's nice that the Peruvian Parliament has "suspended" the disputed laws which caused the protests, but I have a feeling they will go back into place once the US military base at Palanquero, Colombia gets built - what? you haven't heard of it? Hmmm, sounds like one of the next blogs. Anyway click the links for the three articles, and here's another really good one from indymedia Ireland]

Massacre in the Amazon: The U.S.-Peru Free Trade Agreement Sparks a Battle Over Land and Resources

Raúl Zibechi | June 16, 2009

On June 5, World Environment Day, Amazon Indians were massacred by the government of Alan Garcia in the latest chapter of a long war to take over common lands—a war unleashed by the signing of the Free Trade Agreement (FTA) between Peru and the United States.

Three MI-17 helicopters took off from the base of the National Police in El Milagro at six in the morning of Friday, June 5. They flew over Devil's Curve, the part of the highway that joins the jungle with the northern coast, which had been occupied for the past 10 days by some 5,000 Awajún and Wampi indigenous peoples. The copters launched tear gas on the crowd (other versions say that they also shot machine guns), while simultaneously a group of agents attacked the road block by ground, firing AKM rifles. A hundred people were wounded by gunshot and between 20-25 were killed.

The population of the nearby city of Bagua, some thousand kilometers northeast of Lima near the border with Ecuador, came out into the streets to support the indigenous people's demonstration, setting fire to state institutions and local office of the official party APRA (Alianza Popular Revolucionaria Americana). Several police officers were attacked and killed in the counter-attack, and other indigenous protestors were killed by police. At the same time, a group of 38 police who were guarding an oil station in the Amazon were taken hostage. Some were killed by their captors, while some 1,000 Indians threatened to set fire to Station Number 6 of the northern Peruvian oil pipeline.

The versions are contradictory. The government claimed days after the events that there are 11 indigenous dead and 23 police. The indigenous organizations reported 50 dead among their ranks and up to 400 disappeared. According to witnesses, the military burned bodies and threw them into the river to hide the massacre, and also took prisoners among the wounded in the hospitals. In any case, what is certain is that the government sent the armed forces to evict a peaceful protest that had been going on for 57 days in the jungle regions of five departments: Amazonas, Cusco, Loreto, San Martin, and Ucayali.

The Inter-American Human Rights Commission (CIDH), part of the Organization of American States, condemned the violent acts on June 8 and reminded the Peruvian government of its obligation to clear up the facts and to compensate for the consequences and called on both sides to promote a process of dialogue.1 On June 9, the National Coordination of Human Rights announced that it found a series of irregularities and possible human rights violations in the Bagua area. It denounced the government's refusal to divulge what police are in charge of the investigation of the events, and expressed concern for the situation of 25 detained at the El Milagro base and the 99 arrested since a curfew was imposed in Bagua.2

President Garcia accused the Indians of being "terrorists" and spoke of an "international conspiracy," in which, according to government ministers, Bolivia and Venezuela are involved because as oil- and gas-producing countries they want to keep Peru from exploiting these resources and becoming a competitor.3 Just a few weeks ago, Peru granted asylum to the anti-Chavez leader, Venezuelan Manuel Rosas, accused of corruption, and three former Bolivian ministers from the government of Gonzalo Sanchez de Lazada prosecuted for the death of nearly 700 persons during the "gas war" of October 2003.

[...]

Peru: Battle lines drawn over the Amazon

By Ben Powless

June 8, 2009

Translation: The Untold Story of Victor Jara and The Disappeared

United States complicity: The U.S., the Argentine Military and the Coup; The Pinochet File; Pinochet: A Declassified Documentary Obit; Chile and Operation Condor; Operación Cóndor; Chile and the United States: Declassified Documents relating to the Military Coup, 1970-1976

A human rights mystery is solved in Chile

Details emerge about a Pinochet-era murder

By John Dinges - GlobalPost

Published: June 3, 2009 12:02 ET

NEW YORK — A Chilean court has uncovered the gruesome details surrounding the death of one of Latin America’s most famous human rights victims, the folk singer Victor Jara. A 4,500-word account of the singer’s death was published last week by the Chilean investigative journalism site CIPER, the day before the court announced murder charges against a former soldier who confessed to participating in the brutal killing in 1973.

The case attracted international attention after the military coup in September 1973 that brought Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet to power and overthrew the elected government of Socialist president Salvador Allende. Victor Jara was a leading figure in the flourishing cultural scene during Allende’s 1,000-day presidency from 1970 to 1973. He was a theater director, poet and guitarist whose numerous songs became icons of the Latin American Nueva Cancion (New Song) movement of the 1970s and 1980s.

Jara was detained with other leftist activists at a Chilean university the day after the Sept. 11 military coup. His bullet-riddled body was found in the morgue four days later. The CIPER account, based on the court’s interrogation of soldiers at the detention center where Jara was held, described the brutal torture to which the folk singer was submitted, and the details of his execution in an interrogation cell. It also tells the story of a valiant government worker who discovered Jara’s body and prevented it from being buried anonymously in a mass grave.

The soldier, Jose Alfonso Paredes Marquez, was an 18-year-old army draftee assigned to guard prisoners in the Chile Stadium, a Santiago sports and performance arena that had been turned into a makeshift prison holding several thousand prisoners. He said Jara was among 15 prisoners brought to an interrogation room in the basement of the stadium. Paredes said he and other soldiers recognized Jara, who had already been severely beaten.

He said a second lieutenant, who was not identified in the court documents, singled out Jara and began to play Russian Roulette, pointing his pistol at Jara’s head and pulling the trigger until it fired. Paredes said Jara fell writhing to the floor. The second lieutenant ordered Paredes and the other guards to fire their weapons at the body to finish the execution. When Jara’s body was eventually found, it had 44 bullet wounds.