20.5.09

This belongs here, as it's CRIMINAL

Funds to Close Guantánamo Denied

Published: May 20, 2009

WASHINGTON — The Senate voted overwhelmingly on Wednesday to cut from a war spending bill the $80 million requested by President Obama to close the detention center at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, and to bar the transfer of detainees to the United States and its territories.

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The vote, which complicates Mr. Obama’s efforts to shutter the prison by his deadline of Jan. 22, 2010, was 90 to 6. Republicans voted unanimously in favor of cutting the money.

“The American people don’t want these men walking the streets of America’s neighborhoods,” said Senator John Thune, Republican of South Dakota. “The American people don’t want these detainees held at a military base or federal prison in their back yard, either.”

The six Democrats who voted against the measure include some of their party’s most prominent voices on military affairs and criminal justice issues. Among them were Senators Carl Levin of Michigan, the chairman of the Armed Services Committee; Jack Reed of Rhode Island, a West Point graduate and former Army Ranger, and Patrick Leahy of Vermont, the chairman of the Judiciary Committee.

Senators Richard J. Durbin of Illinois, the majority whip; Tom Harkin of Iowa and Sheldon Whitehouse of Rhode Island were the others voting against the measure.

The vote was on an amendment to a $91.3 billion military spending bill that will finance the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan as well as some other national security programs, including preparations for pandemic flu, through Sept. 30.

The abrupt decision by Senate Democratic leaders to strip out the money for closing the Guantánamo detention center amounted to a strong rebuke of the Obama White House, which lawmakers in both parties have criticized for not providing a more detailed plan for what will be done with the 240 detainees currently held in the prison.

Senate Democrats had initially hoped to preserve the financing for closing the prison. House Democrats, however, had already stripped the money from their version of the military spending bill, saying they could not authorize funds without first reviewing Mr. Obama’s plans for the prisoners.

Mr. Obama is scheduled to outline some of those plans in a speech on Thursday in Washington.

Robert S. Mueller 3d, the director of the F.B.I., told a House panel on Wednesday that he is concerned that Guantánamo detainees could foment terrorism if they are sent to the United States. On Tuesday, a federal judge ruled that the United States could continue to hold some detainees at the base indefinitely without charges.

Even so, Mr. Obama has faced growing demands in recent days, from both parties but particularly from Republicans, to spell out in detail how he plans to close the Guantánamo detention center and to provide assurances that detainees would not end up on American soil, not even in maximum security prisons.

The move by Senate Democrats to bar, for now, any transfer of detainees to the United States, raised the possibility that Mr. Obama’s order to close the camp by Jan. 22, 2010, may have to be changed or delayed.

“Guantánamo makes us less safe,” the Senate majority leader, Harry Reid of Nevada, said on Tuesday at a news conference where he laid out the party’s rationale for its decision. “However, this is neither the time nor the bill to deal with this. Democrats under no circumstances will move forward without a comprehensive, responsible plan from the president. We will never allow terrorists to be released into the United States.”

Senate Democrats said they still backed Mr. Obama’s decision to close the prison. But lawmakers have not exactly been eager to accept detainees in their home states. When the tiny town of Hardin, Mont., offered to put the terrorism suspects in its empty jail, Montana’s senators, both Democrats, and its representative, a Republican, quickly voiced opposition.

Administration officials have indicated that if the Guantánamo camp closes as scheduled more than 100 prisoners may need to be moved to the United States, including 50 to 100 who have been described as too dangerous to release.

Of the 240 detainees, 30 have been cleared for release. Some are likely to be transferred to foreign countries, though other governments have been reluctant to take them. Britain and France have each accepted one former detainee. And while as many as 80 of the detainees will be prosecuted, it remains unclear what will happen to those who are convicted and sentenced to prison.

At the White House on Tuesday, the press secretary, Robert Gibbs, said the administration expected that Congress would eventually release the money to close the camp, and he suggested that the concerns of lawmakers would start to be addressed on Thursday, when Mr. Obama will present a “hefty part” of his plan.

At the Pentagon, a spokesman, Geoff Morrell, said Tuesday that he believed that the administration remained on track to meet the deadline for closing the prison. “I see nothing to indicate that that date is at all in jeopardy,” Mr. Morrell said.

As the administration has struggled with the issue, it has come under assault from the right and the left.

Conservatives have sought to portray the president as weak on national security. Liberals, including some human rights advocates, have criticized several of Mr. Obama’s decisions, including his plan to revive the military commissions created by the Bush administration to prosecute terrorism suspects held at Guantánamo.

Sheryl Gay Stolberg and David Stout contributed reporting.

18.5.09

Justices Turn Back Ex-Detainee’s Suit Over Abuses - NYTimes.com:

Justices Turn Back Ex-Detainee’s Suit Over Abuse

Published: May 18, 2009

WASHINGTON -- A Pakistani Muslim man who was arrested after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks may not sue John Ashcroft, the former attorney general, and Robert S. Mueller III, the director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation, for abuses he said he suffered in a Brooklyn detention center, the Supreme Court ruled on Monday.

Justice Anthony M. Kennedy, writing for the majority in the 5-to-4 decision, said a lawsuit filed by the man, Javaid Iqbal, must be dismissed at a preliminary stage because he failed to allege a plausible link between the officials’ conduct and the abuses he said he had suffered.

All that Mr. Iqbal’s suit plausibly suggested, Justice Kennedy wrote, “is that the nation’s top law enforcement officers, in the aftermath of a devastating terrorist attack, sought to keep suspected terrorists in the most secure conditions available until the suspects could be cleared of terrorist activity.”

Mr. Iqbal, a cable television installer on Long Island, was among thousands of Muslim men rounded up after the Sept. 11 attacks. Some were considered to be “of high interest,” and they were held in a special housing unit of the Metropolitan Detention Center in Brooklyn.

Mr. Iqbal said he was kept in solitary confinement at the center, denied medical care and subjected to daily body-cavity searches, beatings and extreme temperatures. He said that he was called a terrorist and a “Muslim killer,” and that he lost 40 pounds during six months in the special unit.

He eventually pleaded guilty to identity fraud and was deported to Pakistan.

Mr. Iqbal sued more than 30 officials for mistreatment based on his religion and national background. Monday’s decision, Ashcroft v. Iqbal, No. 07-1015, concerned only Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller.

Mr. Iqbal, Justice Kennedy wrote, failed to describe adequately how the actions of the two officials were connected to the mistreatment and discrimination he said he had suffered.

“It should come as no surprise,” Justice Kennedy wrote, “that a legitimate policy directing law enforcement to arrest and detain individuals because of their suspected link to the attacks should produce a disparate, incidental impact on Arab Muslims, even though the purpose of the policy was to target neither Arabs nor Muslims.”

Justice David H. Souter, writing for himself and Justices John Paul Stevens, Ruth Bader Ginsburg and Stephen G. Breyer, said the allegations against the two officials in Mr. Iqbal’s lawsuit were specific enough to satisfy the requirements for initiating a lawsuit.

“Iqbal does not say merely that Ashcroft was the architect of some amorphous discrimination, or that Mueller was instrumental in some ill-defined constitutional violation; he alleges that they helped to create the discriminatory policy he has described,” Justice Souter wrote.

Justice Souter added that the majority had engaged in a sort of legal sleight of hand, ignoring a concession from the government that Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller would be liable were Mr. Iqbal able to prove they actually knew of unconstitutional discrimination by their subordinates and were deliberately indifferent to it.

Instead of accepting that concession, Justice Souter continued, the majority decided that even proof of such knowledge was insufficient.

A plaintiff like Mr. Iqbal, Justice Kennedy wrote, must be prepared to prove that the defendants “acted with discriminatory purpose.” The lawsuit, Justice Kennedy said, did not go that far and so must be dismissed.

In his dissent, Justice Souter wrote that the assertions in Mr. Iqbal’s lawsuit, coupled with the government’s concession, should have been enough to allow it to proceed. At the early stages of a suit, Justice Souter added, such assertions need merely be plausible.

“The sole exception to this rule lies with allegations that are sufficiently fantastic to defy reality as we know it: claims about little green men, or the plaintiff’s recent trip to Pluto, or experiences in time travel,” Justice Souter wrote. “That is not what we have here.”

In response, Justice Kennedy said the problem with Mr. Iqbal’s suit was not that it was “unrealistic or nonsensical”; it was, rather, that Mr. Iqbal had made only “bald allegations” that “disentitles them to the presumption of truth.”

Justice Kennedy, who was joined by Chief Justice John G. Roberts Jr. and Justices Antonin Scalia, Clarence Thomas and Samuel A. Alito Jr., wrote that Mr. Iqbal’s “account of his prison ordeal could, if proved, demonstrate unconstitutional misconduct” by officials other than Mr. Ashcroft and Mr. Mueller. Justice Kennedy added that the lower courts may yet decide to allow Mr. Iqbal to amend his lawsuit to make more specific allegations about the complicity of the two men.

Alexander Reinert, a law professor at the Benjamin N. Cardozo School of Law and one of Mr. Iqbal’s lawyers, said the decision represented a detour rather than a roadblock.

“What they’re telling us,” Professor Reinert said, “is that we need to put a little more meat on the bones of our complaint.”

17.5.09

History of American false flag operations

History of American false flag operations

History of
American False Flag Operations

The leaders of smaller and less industrialised nations are not madmen (whatever the media claims). They also are generally better informed than their citizens. In a war an attacker does not need equal forces compared to the enemy. The attacker needs a 5-fold local superiority, or better. No one begins wars without very definite objectives and a quick victory in sight. If a war with more even military balance erupts, someone has been mislead and walked into a trap (usually arranged by third party).

After the American war of Independence (1776-1779), and an English challenge to that independence (1812-1814) no single nation has planned an offensive war against the USA. It is probable that a strong coalition of Anglo-French-led European nations planned to split the USA into two states through diplomatic recognition of the Confederate states possibly followed up by naval blockade embargoing the Union. At that time the British Empire was the strongest naval power, and the French the second strongest. The events led, however, into the Civil War (1860-1865) and due to the Russian intervention 1863 (1863) on the Union's side, those European plans were quietly abandoned.

Mexican wars 1819, 1846-48: Long series of operations, commencing with the annexion of Florida (1819) and followed by a declaration of independence of Texas from Mexico (1836). Provocative troop movements near the U.S. southern border caused an incident which led to war. (It is said the US built a fortification 150 km inside the Mexican border.) The annexation of Texas by the USA and the conquest of California, New Mexico, and nearby territories followed. Mexico had a weak government at that time, because after Napoleon conquered Spain (1809) their former colonies soon revolted. Mexico had been a colony of the Spanish kingdom but now they revolted and formed a republic. There were a series of revolts, not just one.

Spanish-American war, 1898: The surprise explosion of the battleship Maine at Havana, Cuba. 255 of the crew died. The Hearst press accused the Spanish, claiming that the explosion was caused by a remote-controlled mine. The USA declared war on Spain, and conquered Philippines, Guam and Cuba. Subsequent investigations revealed that the explosion originated inside the Maine and that it was either an accident, such as a coal explosion, or some type of time bomb inside the battleship. Divers investigating the shipwreck found that the armour plates of the ship were blown bending outwards, not inwards.

World War I, 1914-1918: A U-boat torpedo hit ocean liner Lusitania near Britain and some 1200 people, including 128 Americans, on board lost their lives. Subsequent investigations revealed that the major explosions were inside the Lusitania, as it was secretly transporting 6 million pounds of artillery shells and rifle ammunition, as well as other explosives on behalf of Morgan banking corporation to help their clients, the Britain and the France. It was against US laws to transport war materials and passengers in the same ship.

World War 2, 1939-1945: A U-boat torpedo hit the ocean liner Athenia near Britain with some 1100 passengers, of which 311 were Americans. The sea was calm and only 118 people on board lost their lives. The ship was sunk because it behaved like a military transport, blackened out and zigzagging. This incident wasn't enough to precipitate war, and the Germans also refused to be provoked by several American acts of war. Americans confiscated German merchant ships, and Americans started to support the British with various lend-lease items, US volunteer pilots joined the RAF and some RAF pilots were trained in the US, US gave the British 50 old but usable WW1 destroyers and 20 modern torpedo boats, tanks, light bombers, fighter aircraft like P-40s and so on. American destroyers also escorted the convoys bound to Britain, and attacked German U-boats even far away from those convoys. The US did not maintain a neutral stance attitude towards the warring nations.

The US naval intelligence, chief of Japan desk planned and suggested "8 insults", which should bring Japan into war with the US. President Roosevelt executed this plan immediately and also added some other insults, enraging the Japan. The most serious one was a total blockade of Japanese oil imports, as agreed between the Americans, British and the Dutch. FDR also declared an all-out embargo against the Japan and forbade them the use of Panama canal, impeding Japan's access to Venezuelan oil.

The Flying Tigers volunteer air group successfully fighting the Japanese in China with some 90 fairly modern P-40Bs was another effective provocation that is not generally acknowledged by historical accounts of World War 2, most of which fail to mention any air combat action prior to 7th December 1941. But at that time the Japanese had already had lost about 100 military aircraft, mostly bombers, to the Tigers. After Pearl Harbor these squadrons were some of the the hardest-hitting ones in the US service.

The attack on Pearl Harbour followed some 6 months later. Having broken the Japanese encryption codes, the Americans knew what was going to happen, when and where, but the president did not dispatch this information to Pearl Harbor. Americans even gave their friends the British 3 Magic decrypting machines which automatically opened encrypted Japanese military traffic. But this same information was not available to the commanders of Hawaii. The movement of the fleet was also visible in the very effective radio direction finding network. Japan had an alliance with Germany, and the Germans upheld their promises by declaring the war against the USA right after the Japanese declaration.

Two scapegoats, the navy commander Admiral Husband Kimmel, and the army commander Lt. General Walter Short were found incompetent and demoted as they were allowed to retire. Short died 1949 and Kimmel 1958. In 1995, the US Congress re-examined this decision and endorsed it. Then in 2000 some archive information came to light and the US Senate passed a resolution stating that both hadserved in Hawaii "competently and professionally". In 1941 they were denied vital information, and even on presidential orders purposefully mislead into believing that the Japanese feet could be expected from the southwest. These commanders have yet to be rehabilited by the Pentagon.

Korean War, 1950-1953: South Korean incursions (the Tiger regiment etc.) into North Korea (1949) led to contrary claims and into war. The cause of this war propably was covert action involving leaders of Taiwan, South Korea and the US military-industrial complex (John Foster Dulles has been mentioned as an organizer of the hostilities.) After the unpublished hostilities in 1949, the communist powers were strongly backing North Korea.

Chiang Kai Sek was being abandoned, isolated and falling prey to the powerful communist Chinese operations. The right-wing South Korean ruler was expected to loose the soon-to-be-elections. The American military-industrial complex went into high gear again, and huge government orders for equipment were flowing in.

The American-led UN forces had difficult times early in the war, but after sufficient forces arrived they advanced victoriously and penetrated deep into the North Korea. The strong Chino-Russian intervention into the war once again turned the tides, the Chinese with vast armies on ground, and the Soviets less visibly with large numbers of aircraft, nearly costing the UN forces the war.

Finally the front stabilised along the original 38th parallel armistice line. The war resulted in the death of 3 million Korean Chinese and the destruction of virtually all of the Korean cities, and left Taiwan in strong American protection and South Korea firmly in the hands of the right-wing president Syngman Rhee. Some 55,000 Americans lost their lives.

Vietnam War: "The Tonkin incident", where American destroyer Maddox was supposedly attacked twice by three North Vietnamese torpedo boats in 1964 in the Gulf of Tonkin never happened. What was happening at the time were aggressive South Vietnamese raids against the North in the same general area. Huge American presence wasn't decisive and President Nixon negotiated a "peace with honour" 1973. This war was lost, when the North Vietnam finally conquered South Vietnam 1975.

Grenada invasion: The Grenadian leader favouring the left and having invited Cubans to help building the infrastructure, extending the airport to accomodate long range Soviet aircraft, was replaced at a moment when he was negotiating in the UN, New York for a more open UN UFO policy based on Grenada initiatives. The proffered reason for the immediate invasion was that American medical students studying in the Grenada were in danger due the Cuban presence. The new leader supported by the US favoured more traditional values and the right.

War on Drugs: The war was launched by Richard M Nixon sometime around June 17,1971. The drug problem was found bad within the army in Viet Nam around 1968 prompting action was required towards the end of the war. Nowadays it is estimated that the military will never win the War on Drugs. The street prices of illicit drugs did not change significantly in the USA despite the military action in foreign drug-producing countries. The Colombian experience, with local military supported by the US, has shown that peace is more important than war against drugs. The Colombians have successfully negotiated some 1000s of guerrilla fighters back into the society and out of jungle.

This "war" actually seems to be a pretext for military invasions into less developed countries, where covert "bad" drug lords on behalf of western intelligence services are producing drugs into US and first world markets. This operation produces huge incomes, generating black budget money for those intelligence services managing the global drug operations.

Panama invasion: The incident between American and Panamanian troops led to invasion. The leader Noriega was changed and the earlier Carter administration plan to hand the control of the canal over to Panama was cancelled. The strategic importance of the canal has surpassed any more just thinking in the US global domination policy.

US-Israeli sponsored war between Iraq and Iran, 1980-1988: The US has built power bases in the Middle East in Iran starting with the CIA-organised coup 1953, where Iranian prime minister Mossadeq was replaced with the Shah of Iran Reza Pahlavi and he by his son Mohammad Reza Pahlavi. Iran was equipped with the best western military equipment, including the American F-14 fighters with Phoenix missiles and the British Chieftain MBTs. Unfortunately there was in 1979 a coup of ayatollah Khomeini replacing the Shah and founding an Islamite nation.

After this, the US warmed up relations with their good Iraqi friend Saddam Hussein, and started to build a nation capable of challenging the Iran. Iraq acquired large numbers of effective weapons including factories able to produce older versions of gas warfare agents. These would later be called WMDs, which of course they were not, being the WW1-vintage weapons.

The war broke out and was fought to exhaustion because third-party powers, especially Israel, were carefully monitoring the power balance supplying more weapons to the side which seemed to be loosing. "Too bad they both cannot loose" is how Kissinger evaluated this situation.

Desert Storm (First Gulf war), 1991): Hussein asked for permission from the US (via their ambassador April Gillespie) and got an answer that the US does not care Arab quarrels. That was a trap, and after Saddam occupied Kuwait, George Bush Sr. mobilised a coalition of some 40 nations to "liberate Kuwait" and to smash the recently-built Iraqi military power base. This also involved a media hoax, where the daughter of Kuwaiti US ambassador played nurse on TV and testified to "witnessing" Iraqi soldiers throwing babies out of incubators in Kuwait.

War on Terror: The war was launched by Bush administration October 2001. The war was claimed to be the response on terrorism, especially the 9-11 incidents. Most of the people in the world today know that these reasons are false and that those events were based on MIH type (make it happen) inside job.

Enduring Freedom (Afghanistan invasion), 7.10.2001-: Without any evidence, the former CIA-asset, a Saudi-Arabian Osama bin Laden was claimed to be the mastermind behind the 9/11 strikes at the WTC and the Pentagon. Such a complex operation, if actually executed which it was not, in this case would be much beyond the capabilities of anything in Afghanistan. Only some top ten intelligence services in the world could hope to be successful in such an operation involving forgery, infiltration, living "underground" in a foreign non-Muslim country, coordination of moves, illegal arms, hi-quality flight training, accurate aircraft navigation in no-visibility conditions and so on. Perhaps even less, because the friends of the US (at that time, still most of the world) would also have been interested in stopping the attack.

Enduring Justice (Second Gulf war), 20.3.2003-: later known with less irony as Operation Iraqi Freedom The claimed reason of the attack was that Iraq was a clear and present danger to the US with wmd's available within less than an hour after the decision to assemble them has been made. Since no wmd's were found, and after the Iraqi also scrapped some 800 long range Scud style missiles before the US coalition attack, the reason for the invasion was changed into "bringing the democracy into Iraq".



References

Why the Pearl Harbor took place

Robert B. Stinnett: Day of Deceit: the Truth about FDR and Pearl Harbor, 2000
Mark Emerson Wiley: Pearl Harbour - mother of all conspiracies
http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/pearl.html

Cordell Hull's Ultimatum to Japan

http://www.geocities.com/Pentagon/6315/hullno26.html

What the US usually knew in advance (books)

Fredrick W. Winterbotham: The Ultra secret, 1974
Bradley F. Smith: The Ultra-Magic Deals, 1992
F.H.Hinsley: British Intelligence in the WW2 (4 large volumes), 1988

How to create innocent-looking wars

http://www.sweetliberty.org/issues/wars/

How wars are made

http://tacklingthetoughtopics.net/default.htm
Especially these items: World War 1, World War 2, Korean War, The Vietnam War

How to create distant future wars

The Best Enemy Money Can Buy by Antony C. Sutton
Wall Street and the Bolshevik Revolution by Antony C. Sutton
Wall Street and the Rise of Hitler by Antony C. Sutton