OMNI
US WAR OF TERRORISM NEWSLETTER, #12, June 3, 2015.
Compiled by Dick
Bennett for a Culture of Peace.
(#4 Jan. 19,
2012; #5 May 29, 2012; #6 July 19, 2012; #7 Sept. 27, 2012; #8 May 28, 2013; #9
July 19, 2013; #10 Jan. 16, 2014; #11 April 12, 2014).
What’s at
stake: “Over the past
decades, the fear of terrorism—stoked by consistent exaggerations of the actual
threat—has been exploited by US leaders to justify a wide array of extremist
policies. It has led to wars of
aggression, a worldwide torture regime, and the detention (and even
assassination) of both foreign nationals and American citizens without any
charges. But the ubiquitous, secretive
system of suspicionless surveillance that it has spawned may very well turn out
to be its most enduring legacy.” Glenn
Greenwald, No Place
For
the poet Nizar Qabbani, “’terrorism’ is the word used by oppressors to defame a
national liberation struggle.” Tariq
Ali, Bush in Babylon (pp. 6-7).
There
is no incentive to end the “war”: In
contrast to the military-industrial complex Pres. Eisenhower warned us against,
the “new homeland security-industrial complex. . .is largely made up of a web
of intelligence agencies and their contractors”
[my emphasis] that “help Washington determine the scale and scope of the
terrorist threat; they make no money if they determine that the threat is
overblown or, God forbid, if the war on terror ever comes to an end.” This “permanent national security elite
rotates among senior government posts, contracting companies, think tanks, and
television commentary, opportunities that would disappear if America was suddenly
at peace. To most of America, war has
become not only tolerable but profitable, and so there is no longer any great
incentive to end it.” James Risen, Pay Any Price, pp. xiv-xv. Support: Michael Glennon, National Security and Double
Government. More on both books
below.
Here is the link to all OMNI
newsletters:
http://www.omnicenter.org/newsletter-archive/
Here is the link to the
Index: http://www.omnicenter.org/omni-newsletter-general-index/
Related Newsletters: Afghanistan, Air War, Allende’s Overthrow (9-11), Bases, Bush, CIA,
Domestic Repression, Drones, Fear, Guantanamo, Homeland Security, Imperialism,
Indefinite Detention, Iraq, Lawlessness (USA),
McCarthyism (domestic and foreign), Militarism, National Security State,
9-11, Obama, Pakistan, Pentagon,
Secrecy, State Terrorism,
Surveillance, Terrorism, Torture
, War Crimes, Wars, and more.
My blog:
We Have a War Department/We Need a Peace Department
We Have a War Department/We Need a Peace Department
See: 9/11 Newsletters
“Number
of private U.S.
Contents of #4-11 at end.
Contents of War on/of Terrorism
Newsletter #12
War on
Terror? War of Terror?
Dick, What Is
the Purpose of the so-called “War on Terrorism”?
Tomgram, Tom
Engelhardt, What Victims Count in Terror War?
Joanie Connors,
US Muslims Contrast to US Christians
Seymour Hersh,
Killing bin Laden
Stop Permanent War
Chomsky, US No.
1 Terrorist State
FCNL, No to War
Against ISIS
Nawaz, How Stop
Global Jihadism
Causes and Consequences of US Wars
Michael
Glennon, National Security and Double
Government, From Madisonians
to Trumanites
to Trumanites
James Risen, Pay Any Price: Greed, Power and Endless War
Corporate Media
Fear-and-War Mongers
D’Almeida, War of Terror Against Muslims, US Terror Suspects Face
Terrifying
Justice System
From 2001 to 2014, Permanent War: PTSD and Suicide, Jacob George
Justice System
From 2001 to 2014, Permanent War: PTSD and Suicide, Jacob George
Surveillance State
Mass
Surveillance Without Warrants: Betty
Medsger’s Review of Glenn
Greenwald’s No Place to Hide on Snowden’s Evidence of Massive US
Spying
Greenwald’s No Place to Hide on Snowden’s Evidence of Massive US
Spying
Jaycox, Patriot
Act vs. Democracy
Writing About the War on/of Terror
Warrior
Writers, Writing and Art by Veterans of War on/of Terror
Dick
Bennett, Why were Abdishakur and Ahmed Abdi Godane Killed? What is the Purpose of the “War on
Terrorism”?
Are our leaders and the troops fighting
only to “win” by killing a varied assortment of “terrorists,” or to expand
democracy at home and around the world, or what? Take the recent airstrike in Somalia that
killed, according to the headline, a “terror chief.” The “intelligence chief of Somali terror
group al-Shabab,” Abdishakur, and “two other Al-Shabab militants” were slain by
a U.S. “airstrike.” In September, we are
told, an “airstrike” killed al-Shabab’s leader, Ahmed Abdi Godane.
Now, what is al-Shabab? And how does its evil justify the killings? The reporter explains: “Al-Shabab is an
ultraconservative Islamic militant group that is linked to the al-Qaida
terrorist network. It wants to run
Somalia by its strict interpretation of Shariah law.” As a long-time member of the American
Humanist Association, strict Shariah law (different degrees exist) seem
abhorrent to me, but where does it occur in our Constitution or statutes
permission to kill adherents in another country to a repulsive form of
religion?
The report abounds with mysteries. What is the al-Qaida network, much hated in
the US for organizing the World Trade buildings bombings fourteen years ago,
whose leader was murdered by Navy Seals and its members allegedly (“linked”)
have fearsomely spread throughout the world, so that we can judge whether al
Shabab is “linked” to them, and where is the evidence?
The President of the United States of
America, who is also a constitutional law professor, has ordered the
execution/murder of an alleged criminal without trial, and we are blithely told
of the event without explanation except by association with two bad
groups. How did we reach this low point
of “justice”?
The “Pentagon provided no details beyond saying it did not
believe that the attack caused any civilian or bystander casualties.” Did not believe, was not sure? They and our president are bombing and
shooting around the world in other sovereign nations, behavior utterly
forbidden by the UN Charter, and they are unsure whom they executed? The President of the U.S., who chooses the
“targets,” has ordered the execution of an alleged terrorist, and the Pentagon gives
only this lame assurance that innocent people have not also been
extra-judicially executed, a euphemism for murder, and by a “senior official”
who will not give his name, so on several levels nobody is accountable: “A U.S. airstrike killed. . . .”? Why
does he not say drone? Why does he not say assassination? Why does he use the passive voice, when
we need to know the agent? Nobody
ordered it, nobody pulled the trigger?
Only: “A senior defense official”
of the Pentagon “ said.
What kind of media have we now if this
Somalia “airstrike” report only partly exemplifies a lack of high standards of
reporting essential to a democracy? No
attributable, accountable source given from the Pentagon, and no media source, only
that it came geographically from Nairobi.
Associated Press? Reuters? Bloomberg News? The New
York Times? Who is responsible for
such uninformative, sloppy, uncritical, irresponsible reporting? How did our journalism reach this low point
of unprofessionalism?
In one major way, contrast with a real US
war exposes the ramified immorality, illegality, incompetence, and pathetic
shabbiness of the empire and militarism of the past several decades underlying
the Somalia report and the “War on/of Terror.”
Leading up to and during WWII, despite the enormous difficulties posed
by Depression, War, and opposition by corporate leaders, the nation under
President Roosevelt and the New Deal enlarged democracy by expanding liberty
and equality. Class inequalities decreased; for example, the income of the bottom
two-fifths of the population increased faster than the top 20 percent, infant
mortality declined by one-third, and life expectancy gained, especially for
African Americans. War preparation in
defense against aggression received widespread support. In
all, 16,000,000 men and women entered military service during WWII and at its
peak in 1943 55 million had joined the civilian labor force. The U.S. became truly the Arsenal for
Democracy.
But after WWII? US leaders—Pentagon, Congress, White House--initiated
war after war, intervention after intervention—over forty by one historian’s
account--, year after year frightening the public into accepting their nation’s
aggressions as normal, and the increases in the Pentagon budget and the
expansion of the military-industrial complex as necessary. And democracy—liberty and equality for
all—has simultaneously declined, from the Patriot Act to NSA surveillance, and
from the widening income divide to the waves of corporate and 1% money flooding
our elections.
Killing/assassinating al-Shabab’s
intelligence chief and two of his “militants” has nothing to do with US democracy
or even with the safety of the world’s still greatest arsenal. What is the purpose of our powerful nation’s
permanent fear and aggression? On one thing most agree: they know the assassination of Abdishakur was
not committed to secure the status quo of plutocracy.
“Somalia: Airstrike Killed Terror Chief.” Arkansas Democrat-Gazette (December
31, 2014), 4A.
31, 2014), 4A.
Harvey
Kaye. The Four Freedoms: What Made FDR and the Greatest
Generation Truly Great. 2014.
Generation Truly Great. 2014.
William
Blum. Killing Hope (1995) and Rogue
State (2000).
[Note to TomDispatch Readers: Don’t
forget that theTomDispatch donation page is
chock-a-block full of books that matter in our world right now, any one of them
ready to be signed and personalized for you in return for a $100 donation to
this site. Included are Nick Turse’s remarkable volume of independent
reportage on the U.S. military’s “pivot” to Africa, Tomorrow's Battlefield: U.S. Proxy
Wars and Secret Ops in Africa; Christian Appy’s insightful
history of how the Vietnam War played out in America to this moment, American Reckoning: The Vietnam War
and Our National Identity; and my own Shadow Government: Surveillance,
Secret Wars, and a Global Security State in a Single-Superpower World.
Contributing to TD is a great deal for both of us: you get a
book to remember and we get to keep going! Tom]
In the twenty-first-century world
of drone warfare, one question with two aspects reigns supreme: Who counts?
In Washington, the answers are
the same: We don’t count and they don’t
count.
The Obama administration has
adamantly refused to count. Not a body. In fact, for a long time, American
officials associated with Washington’s drone assassination campaigns and “signature strikes” in
the backlands of Pakistan, Afghanistan, and Yemen claimed that there were no bodies to count, that
the CIA’s drones were so carefully handled and so “precise” that they never produced an
unmeant corpse -- not a child, not a parent, not
a wedding party. Nada.
When it came to “collateral
damage,” there was no need to count because there was nothing to tote up or, at
worst, such civilian casualties were “in the single
digits.” That this was balderdash, that often when those drones unleashed
their Hellfire missiles they were unsure who exactly was being targeted, that
civilians were dying in relatively countable numbers -- and that others were
indeed counting them -- mattered little, at least in this country until
recently. Drone war was, after all, innovative and, as presented by two
administrations, quite miraculous. In 2009, CIA Director Leon Panetta called it “the only
game in town” when it came to al-Qaeda. And what a game it was. It
needed no math, no metrics. As the Vietnam War had proved, counting was
for losers -- other than the usual media reports that so many “militants” had
died in a strike or that some al-Qaeda “lieutenant” or “leader” had gone down for the
count.
That era ended on April 23rd when
President Obama entered the White House briefing room and apologized for the
deaths of American aid worker Warren Weinstein and Italian aid worker Giovanni
Lo Porto, two Western hostages of al-Qaeda. They had, the president
confessed, been obliterated in a strike against a terrorist compound in
Pakistan, though in his comments he managed not to mention the
word “drone,” describing what happened vaguely as a “U.S. counterterrorism
operation.” In other words, it turned out that the administration was
capable of counting -- at least to two.
And that brings us to the other
meaning of “Who counts?” If you are an innocent American or Western
civilian and a drone takes you out, you count. If you are an innocent
Pakistani, Afghan, or Yemeni, you don’t. You didn’t count before the
drone killed you and you don’t count as a corpse either. For you, no one
apologizes, no one pays your relatives
compensation for your unjust death, no one even acknowledges that you
existed. This is modern American drone reality and the question of who
counts and whom, if anyone, to count is part of the contested legacy of
Washington’s never-ending war on terror.
Stephen
Zunes "Despite what the bigots in Washington and in the media will tell
you, this survey indicates that American Muslims--compared with American
Christians, American Jews, and atheists/agnostics--are the least likely to
support terrorism."
|
KILLING
BIN LADEN
Why We Need to Take Sy Hersh’s
bin Laden Bombshell Seriously
The dean of American investigative journalism
knows a thing or two about how to vet sources and separate fact from fiction.
May 20, 2015 | This article appeared in the June 8,
2015 edition of The Nation. [In my print copy the title is “Sy Hersh’s
Bombshell.” --Dick]
Early in 2009, just before Barack Obama took office, I shared an
elevator with Michael Vickers, then an assistant defense secretary and chief
architect of America’s “war on terror.” “So,” I asked him, “is ISI [Pakistan’s
Inter-Services Intelligence] friend or foe?” Vickers exhaled audibly. “It’s
complicated—I’ll put it that way,” he replied. “It’s not black and white.”
Now, thanks to the indefatigable Seymour Hersh, the dean of
American investigative journalists, we may have gotten a glimpse into just how
complicated those relations are. In a 10,000-word blockbuster in the London
Review of Books, Hersh unfurls an astounding counternarrative about the May
2, 2011, raid that killed Osama bin Laden. Hersh dismantles the official story,
challenging virtually everything that’s been said about the attack on the
Abbottabad compound by Special Operations commandos, including the
fictionalized version in Kathryn Bigelow’s nail-biter Zero Dark Thirty and
the avalanche of commentary from self-styled terrorism experts, including CNN’s
Peter Bergen.
According to Hersh, the United States didn’t find bin Laden by
diligently sifting intelligence data and tracking an alleged courier, but
because a Pakistani defector walked into the US embassy in Islamabad and told
the CIA that Al Qaeda’s chief was holed up in Abbottabad. Nor was bin Laden
hiding—instead, says Hersh, he had been captured by the ISI in 2006 and was
being held prisoner. Pakistan, called out on its deception, then opted to
cooperate with Washington in a staged raid on bin Laden’s prison, withdrawing
guards and clearing the airspace for US helicopters, Hersh writes. Nor was
there a heroic firefight; instead, US forces executed bin Laden, an ailing
invalid, in a hail of gunfire.
Hersh’s story, if true, explains two big mysteries about the
2011 operation: Why was bin Laden in a compound smack in the middle of
Pakistan’s military and intelligence establishment, rather than in Waziristan
or some village in Yemen? And given his location, is it really possible ISI
didn’t know where he was? Back in 2009, during her first visit to Pakistan as
secretary of state, Hillary Clinton stunned her hosts by saying, “I find it
hard to believe that nobody in your government knows where [bin Laden and other
Al Qaeda leaders] are.” (Yet, two years later, just weeks after the 2011 raid,
Clinton reversed herself, insisting that Washington had “absolutely no evidence
that anyone at the highest level of the Pakistani government” had known bin
Laden’s whereabouts. If Hersh is right, Clinton’s second comment was part of an
official cover story.)
Predictably, the mainstream media’s reaction to Hersh’s scoop
was mostly one of disbelief, with many disparaging him for not naming his
sources—even though, in cases involving spies and skulduggery, few sources ever
speak on the record—and for retailing what some dismissed as a conspiracy
theory. “Journalists have largely attempted to tear down the messenger,” wrote
Trevor Timm in the Columbia Journalism Review. Paul Farhi, who
covers media for The Washington Post, summed up the criticism like
this: “Too thinly sourced, they say. Too conspiratorial. Even kind of crazy.”
CNN’s Bergen—described by Hersh, in a hilariously irascible Slate interview, as
someone who “views himself as the trustee of all things bin Laden”—called the
piece “a farrago of nonsense.” According to CJR, Slate ran five
separate “hit jobs” on Hersh within 36 hours. One of them was by James
Kirchick, a kind of neocon-in-training who called Hersh’s article a “fantasia.”
Similar criticism came from Politico and Vox. Few were deterred by Hersh’s
nearly half-century-long track record of uncovering government crimes and
corruption.
Writing in The Wall Street Journal, former CIA
deputy director Michael Morell disputed Hersh’s story and said he was troubled
by the fact that Hersh’s “allegations gained some traction.” In fact, Carlotta
Gall, who has spent a dozen years covering Afghanistan and Pakistan for The
New York Times, wrote for the Times that in her reporting,
she learned “that it was indeed a Pakistani Army brigadier…who told the CIA
where bin Laden was hiding, and that bin Laden was living there with the
knowledge and protection of the ISI.” NBC News, citing two intelligence
sources, also reported (before partially retracting its story) that a walk-in
revealed bin Laden’s whereabouts to the CIA. Pakistan’s The News
International confirmed the story and even named the defector. And
back in August 2011, security analyst R.J. Hillhouse reported many of the
details in her blog that Hersh later expanded on in his piece.
So is Hersh’s report accurate? I’d say that it is. However, the
measuring stick for a determination like that won’t be found in the opinions of
bloggers, upstart critics, and media-watchers, but in hard-nosed follow-up
reporting by journalists with a track record in South Asia and the murky world
of intelligence.
“It’s not my fault I have fucking sources that most reporters
don’t have,” Hersh told the Post’s Farhi. Perhaps he got some
details wrong, and perhaps he was led astray by Pakistani spies with an ax to
grind. But after decades at the highest level of journalism, Hersh might know a
thing or two about how to separate fact from fiction, how to vet sources, and
how to tell whether or not he’s being played.
Read Next: Greg Grandin on how to discredit Seymour Hersh
·
Share
·
·
STOP
PERMANENT WAR
Noam Chomsky
| The Long, Shameful History of American Terrorism
Noam
Chomsky, Reader Supported News, Nov. 15, 2014
Chomsky writes: "'It's official: The U.S. is the world's leading terrorist state, and proud of it.' That should have been the headline for the lead story in the New York Times on October 15, which was more politely titled 'CIA Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels.' The article reports on a CIA review of recent U.S. covert operations to determine their effectiveness."
READ MORE
Chomsky writes: "'It's official: The U.S. is the world's leading terrorist state, and proud of it.' That should have been the headline for the lead story in the New York Times on October 15, which was more politely titled 'CIA Study of Covert Aid Fueled Skepticism About Helping Syrian Rebels.' The article reports on a CIA review of recent U.S. covert operations to determine their effectiveness."
READ MORE
13
years, with what result? Stop War
Against IsIs
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HOW
COUNTER GLOBAL JIHADISM
What
Fuels Global Jihadism?
The recent Senate report about the CIA’s use of torture against
suspected terrorists renews important questions about the most effective and
ethical means to counter the threat of global jihadism. Maajid Nawaz, a former Islamist extremist
turned liberal activist, offered an assessment of how and why young men around
the world are recruited into jihadist groups as well as provide policy
prescriptions to reverse these trends. Carnegie’s Karim Sadjadpour moderated.
MAAJID NAWAZ
Maajid
Nawaz is co-founder and chairman of Quilliam, a globally active think tank
focusing on matters of integration, citizenship and identity, religious
freedom, extremism, and immigration. Having served four years as an Amnesty
International–adopted “prisoner of conscience” in Egypt, Nawaz is now a leading
critic of his former Islamist ideological dogma. Nawaz is a Liberal Democrat
parliamentary candidate in the May 2015 British general election. His
autobiography Radical has been released in the United Kingdom
and United States.
NAWAZ DISCUSSES WHAT FUELS GLOBAL JIHADISM
KARIM SADJADPOUR
Karim
Sadjadpour is a senior associate at the Carnegie Endowment for International
Peace. He joined Carnegie after four years as the chief Iran analyst at the International
Crisis Group based in Washington and Tehran, where he conducted dozens of
interviews with senior Iranian officials and hundreds with Iranian
intellectuals, clerics, dissidents, paramilitaries, businessmen, students,
activists, and youth, among others.
ABOUT THE MIDDLE EAST PROGRAM
The Carnegie Middle East Program combines in-depth local
knowledge with incisive comparative analysis to examine economic,
sociopolitical, and strategic interests in the Arab world. Through detailed
country studies and the exploration of key crosscutting themes, the Carnegie
Middle East Program, in coordination with the Carnegie Middle East Center in
Beirut, provides analysis and recommendations in both English and Arabic that
are deeply informed by knowledge and views from the region. The program has
special expertise in political reform and Islamist participation in pluralistic
politics.
CAUSES
AND CONSEQUENCES OF US WAR OF TERROR
REVIEW
OF GLENNON’S NATIONAL SECURITY AND
DOUBLE GOVERNMENT
DOUBLE GOVERNMENT
THE CORPORATE-MILITARY/PENTAGON-SURVEILLANCE/NSA/CIA-SECRECY-FEAR-MAINSTREAM
MEDIA-NATIONAL SECURITY COMPLEX
The
Shadow Lawmakers
By ALI SOUFAN. the
Wall Street Journal, Dec. 30, 2014 .
Elections matter. But they matter
far less than we like to think, according to Michael J. Glennon. In
“National Security and Double Government,” he argues that while congressional
and White House control waxes and wanes, America’s
national-security apparatus is essentially set in stone—a shadowy “second
government” made up of mostly nameless, faceless individuals who determine and
administer our policies.
Though we typically think about
the separation of powers in regards to the three branches of federal government,
Mr. Glennon argues that, at least when it comes to matters of national
security, the more significant division is between traditional representative
government (the people we vote for who are perceived to wield power) and
nonrepresentative government (the people who actually move all the key levers).
He labels the first group
“Madisonians” after James Madison, who firmly believed that the
checks and balances of our republic rest ultimately on “civic virtue—an
informed and engaged electorate,” without which ”the governmental equilibrium
of power would face collapse.” Too late, argues Mr. Glennon, a professor at
Tufts University’s Fletcher School of Law and Diplomacy and former legal
counsel to the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. This collapse is now decades
old.
The author’s term for the government’s
thousands of civil servants and appointees is equally fitting. These are the
“Trumanites,” in homage to the president who signed the 1947 National Security
Act, thus creating the security state as we know it today, including the
Central Intelligence Agency, the National Security Agency and the Joint Chiefs
of Staff. To run these complex organizations, the Madisonians need experts, and
the Trumanites are nothing if not experts.
MORE http://www.wsj.com/articles/book-review-national-security-and-double-government-by-michael-j-glennon-1419983619
JAMES
RISEN, PAY ANY PRICE
www.nytimes.com/.../james-risens-pay-any-price.html
The
New York Times
Oct
15, 2014 - In “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War,”
James Risen holds up a mirror to the United States in the 13
years since 9/11, and what it ...
www.nytimes.com/.../in-pay-any-price-james-risen-ex...
The
New York Times
Oct
12, 2014 - In “Pay Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War,”
James Risen, a Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative reporter for
The New York Times, sets ...
In
the news
Antiwar.com - 14
hours ago
The
money should stagger you. Journalist James Risen, author of Pay
Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, a revelatory new book
about ...
www.democracynow.org/.../read_excerpt_from_james...
o
Democracy
Now!
Oct
14, 2014 - Read "Pallets of Cash," an excerpt from Pay
Any Price: Greed, Power, and Endless War, the new book by New York Times
investigative ...
www.democracynow.org/.../james_risen_prepared_to_...
Democracy
Now!
Oct
14, 2014 - Risen's answer to this saga has been to write
another book, released today, titled "Pay Any Price: Greed, Power,
and Endless War.
my.firedoglake.com/.../james-risens-pay-any-price-greed-po...
Firedoglake
2
days ago - In Pay Any Price, James Risen reveals an extraordinary litany
of the ... James Risen – Pay Any Price: Greed,
Power, and Endless War on Terror ...
US
CORPORATE MAINSTREAM MEDIA (MM) PROMOTION OF FEAR AND WAR IN THE MIDDLE EAST, From Extra! The Magazine of FAIR—the Media Watch (vol.
7, no. 10, Nov. 2014). Special Issue on
ISIS: Selling a New War
Five
articles, one comic strip, one “Sound Bite.”
The comic, Tom the
Dancing by Ruben Bolling, “How the Ape Brain Assesses Risk,” gives four major
causes of massive deaths—diabetes, traffic fatalities, and heart disease, and
global warming—and in the last two pictures the ape declares war on ISIS.
Rania Khalek, “Drone-Strike
Feminism.” MM uses the oppression of women to sell another Iraq War, when
sexual violence is also extreme in other countries.
Steve Rendall, “Addicted to
Intervention.” US interventions in Iraq and Syria helped create the chaos that
enabled ISIS.
Peter Hart, “Debating
How—Not Whether—to Launch a New War.”
Shows how little debate exists in Obama and mm over this new phase of
the “war on/of terror.”
Raed Jarrar
(AFSC) Interviewed, “’We Can’t Defeat Extremism by Dropping More Bombs.” Explodes several myths dominating US
government and mm.
Excerpt from
Patrick Cockburn’s new book, The
Jihadis Return: ISIS and the New Sunni Uprising. More refutations of myths used to justify
the four wars fought and being fought in the ME.
US
Terror Suspects Face "Terrifying" Justice System
Kanya D'Almeida, Inter Press Service, Reader Supported News, April 19, 2014
D'Almeida writes: "The vigil has drawn a mixed bag of supporters - some have their heads covered, a few are modestly concealed by hijabs, others are simply attired in jeans and T-shirts. Whatever their dress, they have gathered here for one reason - to protest the use of 'lawfare' on Muslim citizens accused of terror-related activity."
READ MORE
Kanya D'Almeida, Inter Press Service, Reader Supported News, April 19, 2014
D'Almeida writes: "The vigil has drawn a mixed bag of supporters - some have their heads covered, a few are modestly concealed by hijabs, others are simply attired in jeans and T-shirts. Whatever their dress, they have gathered here for one reason - to protest the use of 'lawfare' on Muslim citizens accused of terror-related activity."
READ MORE
Soldier’s
Heart: Remembering Jacob George, Afghan War Vet Turned Peace Activist Who Took
Own Life. Amy Goodman, Democracy Now! .
View on www.democracynow.org
MONDAY,
SEPTEMBER 29, 2014
Soldier’s
Heart: Remembering Jacob George, Afghan War Vet Turned Peace Activist Who Took
Own Life
We air a
remembrance of Jacob George, an Afghanistan War veteran and peace activist who
took his own life on September 17. He was 32 years old. George co-founded the
Afghan Veterans Against the War Committee, part of Iraq Veterans Against the
War. George was also a musician who biked around the country playing music for
peace, a campaign he called "A Ride Till the End." In 2012, at the
NATO summit in Chicago, he was among the veterans who hurled their military
medals toward the summit gates in an act of protest against the wars in Iraq
and Afghanistan. George spoke openly about his struggles with post-traumatic
stress disorder and with getting Veterans Affairs counselors to understand what
he saw as a "moral injury" from his time in Afghanistan. In a
storybook that accompanied his musical album "Soldier’s Heart,"
George wrote: "A wise medicine woman from Arkansas once told me that grief
is pain trying to leave the body. If you don’t allow yourself to grieve, it
gets stuck. But once you grieve, the body can heal itself. I won’t lie, some of
this stuff is heavy. But telling my story is a part of my healing process. And
it’s not just veterans who need to heal: all of us need to heal from war and
the roster of ailments produced by a nation at war." Hear George playing
the banjo and singing his song, "Soldier’s Heart."
AMY GOODMAN: We
end the segment with a remembrance of Jacob George, an Afghanistan War veteran
and peace activist who took his own life earlier this month. George co-founded
the Afghan Veterans Against the War Committee, part of Iraq Veterans Against
the War. In 2011, he and fellow veteran Brock McIntosh returned to Afghanistan
to meet with young Afghan peace activists. McIntosh remembers George bonding
with a 15-year-old Afghan boy, who, like George, was a farmer. Together, they
discussed, quote, "the absurdity of poor farmers being sent to kill poor
farmers while people are starving," McIntosh said. George was also a
musician who biked around the United States playing music for peace, a campaign
he called "A Ride Till the End." In 2012, at the NATO summit in
Chicago, he was among the veterans who hurled their military medals toward the
NATO summit gates in an act of protest against the wars in Iraq and
Afghanistan.
JACOB GEORGE:
My name is Jacob George. I’m from the Ouachita Mountains in Arkansas. I’m a
three-tour veteran of the Afghan War, paratrooper and sergeant. And I have one
word for this Global War on Terrorism decoration, and that is
"shame."
Jacob George killed himself on September
17th, one week after President Obama unveiled the new U.S. military mission
against ISIS in Iraq and Syria.
George was 32 years old. We go to break with Jacob George singing
"Soldier’s Heart."
JACOB GEORGE:
[singing] Now, I’m just a farmer from Arkansas.
There’s a lot
of things I don’t understand,
Like why we
send farmers to kill farmers
In Afghanistan.
Now I did what
I was told
For my love of
this land,
And I come home
a shattered man
With blood on
my hands.
And now I can’t
have a relationship,
I can’t hold
down a job.
Oh, while some
may say I’m broken,
I call it a
soldier’s heart.
Because every
time I go outside,
I’ve got to
look her in the eyes,
Oh, and knowing
that she broke my heart,
And it turned
around and lied.
Oh, I said red,
white and blue,
I trusted in
you,
And you never
even told me why.
Now in the
summer of 2002,
I just got off
the Pakistan border....
AMY GOODMAN:
Jacob George singing "Soldier’s Heart." You can link to the whole
song on our website at www.democracynow.org
. He committed suicide on September 17th, an Afghan War veteran. This is Democracy Now!, democracynow.org, The
War and Peace Report. I’m Amy Goodman.
A Remembrance
and Celebration of Jacob was arranged by the OMNI Center for Peace, Justice,
and Ecology and other friends, Sunday, October 5, 11am-3pm Teatro Scarpino, 329 West Ave, Fayetteville, Arkansas 72701. His friends from all around the country
attended the event. As Jacob
recognized, all who abhor war, grieve.
“And it’s not just veterans who need to heal: all of us need to heal
from war and the roster of ailments produced by a nation at war." By “nation at war” Jacob came to understand
that the US was engaged in permanent aggression—over forty invasions and
interventions since 1945, and personally in his lifetime from 2001 to the
present and seemingly never to cease.
Jacob also understood, I think, that just as grief is intensely
individual and personal, so is sympathy.
Countless more people, in personal, private ways, grieve with Jacob over
the endless wars. And then, even though
it was not successful for Jacob, I think he would want us to rise, to arouse
ourselves, to see clearly what we must do, and work equally unceasingly against
those wars, that war.
SURVEILLANCE
How We Learned That the Government Was Watching Us
Glenn Greenwald’s No Place to Hide chronicles the publication of secret
NSA files that reshaped global conversations about government surveillance.
Betty
Medsger. The Nation.
June 3, 2014
·
Share
·
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Glenn Greenwald speaks to
reporters in Hong Kong, June 10, 2013. (AP Photo/Vincent Yu)
For several months journalist
Glenn Greenwald ignored the efforts of Cincinnatus, an anonymous source who
later identified himself as Edward Snowden, to give him information he promised
would be of interest. Greenwald thought he was just another nut with a “big”
story, the kind that seldom pans out. The aspiring source also irritated
Greenwald by instructing him to install encryption software so they could
communicate securely. Forget it. Greenwald was a busy guy and didn’t have time
for such complications.
Fortunately, documentary film
maker Laura Poitras, also contacted by Snowden, pushed Greenwald to respond to
the source. After meeting with Snowden last June in Hong Kong, Greenwald and
Poitras, along with Guardian reporter Ewen MacAskill, began
reporting on what the world now knows as the Snowden files—the thousands of
files that continue to inform Americans and people throughout the world that
since 9/11 the National Security Agency has turned the Internet and all forms
of electronic communication, even video games, into a vast spying machine.
Greenwald’s new book, No
Place to Hide, reports the full story of what has flowed from
private NSA contractor Snowden’s decision to sacrifice his freedom and, if
necessary, his life in order to collect and hand over to journalists a massive
archive of files he thought the public needed access to: evidence of the NSA’s
use of massive surveillance to spy on Americans without regard to suspicion of
crime, to influence foreign policy, to conduct industrial and economic
espionage and to develop new cyber warfare capacities.
As the revelations poured into
the public domain, it become clear that congressional intelligence oversight
committees—established in the mid-1970s after the exposure of secret FBI files
led to the first congressional investigations of intelligence agencies—had lost
their adversarial function and become largely cheerleaders for the agencies.
Telecommunication companies, the files revealed, are partners in the massive
surveillance and readily supply records of the calls of all of their customers.
It is staggering to review the
importance of the Snowden files released so far, including a report that
explains that “collect it all,” the motto of General Keith B. Alexander,
director of the NSA, is not a joke about grandeur; it is the actual goal that
has governed expanding operations in pace with the ever-increasing capacity of
data-gathering technology rather than in line with what technical prowess is
actually needed in order to improve national security. One NSA file documented
the staggering volume collected was “far more content than is routinely useful
to analysts.” The agency, according to another file, processes more than 20
billion communication events (Internet and telephone) from around the world
every day.
In Greenwald’s account of the
remarkable year he has been at the helm of the reporting of one startling
intelligence revelation after another, he strongly criticizes mainstream news
media for being what he sees as primarily protectors of the government’s
secrets:
Like Greenwald’s sometimes
sledgehammer analysis of mainstream journalism, reports about him, as well as
about Snowden, also were extremely harsh. Though Greenwald reported the files
in a straightforward way, some journalists described him as an activist, as
someone who expressed opinion. It was a description that seemed calculated to
suggest his reporting should not be taken seriously. (Since 2001 he had been
writing a political blog; he later wrote for Salon and had been a columnist
since 2011 at The Guardian. In early 2014,
Greenwald, Poitras and Jeremy Scahill became editors of The Intercept, the new
journalism website funded by eBay founder Pierre Omidyar.)
On CNN, Alan Dershowitz said of
Greenwald’s reporting on the Snowden files, “Greenwald—in my view—clearly has
committed a felony.” His reporting “doesn’t border on criminality—it’s right in
the heartland of criminality.” David Gregory, host of NBC’s Meet
the Press, asked Greenwald, “To the extent that you have aided and
abetted Snowden…why shouldn’t you, Mr. Greenwald, be charged with a crime?” A hostile
story about Greenwald’s reporting by longtime Washington Post reporter Walter Pincus required a
200-word correction. New York Times financial columnist Andrew Ross
Sorkin stated on his CNBC show: “I would arrest him [Snowden], and now I would
almost arrest Glenn Greenwald.”
Major news organizations
published baseless speculation about Snowden from nameless sources. The
New York Times reported:
“Two Western intelligence experts, who worked for major government spy
agencies, said they believed that the Chinese government had managed to drain
the contents of the four laptops that Mr. Snowden said he brought to Hong Kong .” Snowden was accused by officials and
journalists of being a traitor who gave the NSA files to Russia in exchange for asylum there, and who
gave files to China before
he flew to Russia for a
connecting flight to Latin America he was unable to make because the United States
The significance of Snowden’s
revelations could not be denied. Nor could the high quality of the reporting by
Greenwald and Poitras and also by Barton Gellman of The
Washington Post and
others with whom Greenwald and Poitras collaborated. Their stories prompted an
international debate about the implications of massive surreptitious
surveillance, about surveillance intended to humiliate targeted Muslims, about
the right to privacy and about the far-reaching implications of a plan, being
carried out with the NSA’s British counterpart GCHQ, to develop the capacity to
tap into any phone, any time, anywhere in the world.
Nowhere was the anger about the
surveillance of other countries’ citizens greater than in Germany
In January, seven months after
Greenwald’s first NSA reports, The New York Times called for Snowden, “in light
of his role as a whistle-blower,” to be granted clemency: “Considering the
enormous value of the information he has revealed, and the abuses he has
exposed, Mr. Snowden deserves better than a life of permanent exile, fear and
flight. He may have committed a crime to do so, but he has done his country a
great service. It is time for the United States
In April, Greenwald, Poitras and
Barton Gellman and their publications, The Guardian and The
Washington Post, were awarded the top prize in American journalism,
the Pulitzer Prize for public service reporting, and also the prestigious
George Polk award, for their reports on the NSA files.
Despite intense global response
to the the Snowden files, discussions in government chambers in many countries
about the need for new intelligence policies and Greenwald’s major role in
bringing the files to light, the publication of Greenwald’s book has prompted
perhaps the harshest criticism of him. As more Americans moved toward seeing
Snowden as a whistleblower rather than as a traitor, and Greenwald’s peers muted
their criticism and honored him, Michael Kinsley declared in The
New York Times Book Review that
neither Greenwald nor other journalists should be able to decide to publish
government secrets.
“The Snowden leaks were
important,” wrote Kinsley, “and we might never have known about the N.S.A.’s
lawbreaking if it hadn’t been for them.” Nevertheless, he continued, “In a
democracy…that decision must ultimately be made by the government. … Someone
gets to decide, and that someone can’t be Glenn Greenwald.”
His assertion that journalists
should not decide to publish government secrets stands in opposition to some of
the most important journalism. The Constitution provides for the press to be an
important check on the power of government. History is replete with examples
that show the necessity of that check. Intelligence agencies and other
high-level government agencies seldom voluntarily reveal their excessive or
illegal practices. Reporting by journalists—usually made possible by
whistleblowers willing to risk their freedom to provide documentary evidence of
official wrongdoing—is the usual path to exposure of government wrongdoing. For
example, the public learned about the lies that were the basis of much of the
rationale for the Vietnam War because The New York Times and The Washington Post in 1971 published the Pentagon Papers,
the secret official history of the war given to newspapers by former Defense
Department official Daniel Ellsberg, who was prosecuted. Similarly, the wall of
secrecy that shielded a half-century of illegal cruel operations by the FBI
under Director J. Edgar Hoover was cracked by a group of citizens determined to
find evidence of whether the FBI was systematically suppressing dissent. They
stole files from the FBI office in Media ,
Pennsylvania
Snowden, the 30-year-old
whistleblower at the heart of Greenwald’s important book, has been criminally
charged under the 1917 Espionage Act for making public the evidence that the
NSA conducts countless operations that are the antithesis of what most
Americans would be willing to have done in their name. In doing so, he
challenged journalists, the government, the American people and the
international community to assume responsibility for what the future of this
vast international electronic spying machine will be.
Read Next: A
condensed version of the first chapter of Greenwald’s No Place to Hide
June 3, 2014
GREENWALD’S SUMMARY OF THE HARMS CAUSED BY THE US WAR
ON
FALSE JUSTIFICATION OF PATRIOT ACT’S DISMANTLING OF FOURTH AMENDMENT
Only 1/2 of 1% of
"Patriot" Act Secret Warrants Used Against Terrorism
Mark Jaycox, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reader Supported News (October 31, 2014).
Jaycox reports: "Throughout the Patriot Act debate the Department of Justice urged Congress to pass Section 213 because it needed the sneak and peak power to help investigate and prosecute terrorism crimes 'without tipping off terrorists.'"
READ MORE
Mark Jaycox, Electronic Frontier Foundation, Reader Supported News (October 31, 2014).
Jaycox reports: "Throughout the Patriot Act debate the Department of Justice urged Congress to pass Section 213 because it needed the sneak and peak power to help investigate and prosecute terrorism crimes 'without tipping off terrorists.'"
READ MORE
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Book - Warrior Writers Move,
Shoot and Communicate Edited by Lovella Calica. The first publication from
Warrior Writers featuring poetry and prose written by
AFTER
ACTION REVIEW: A COLLECTION OF WRITING AND ARTWORK BY VETERANS OF THE GLOBAL
WAR ON TERROR
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Edited by Lovella Calica. The
second publication from Warrior Writers featuring poetry, prose, photography,
and illustrations created by
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Our third anthology features
powerful and vibrant creative writing, poetry, and visual artwork by post
9/11 veterans. Secure your copy of our new book for only $20!
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From the
“Afterword” by James A. Moad II: “The
words and images are much more than the collective expressions of America
CONTACT
ARKANSAS’ CONGRESSIONAL DELEGATION
Contents
#8 May 28, 2013
Sirota,
“Terrorism” Is Retaliation for US Terrorism
PBS Frontline, Dana Priest and William Arkin’s “Top Secret
America” Notes by
Dick
Dick
Dick Bennett, Puritan Roots of US Permanent War,
Connecting Fulbright’s The
Arrogance of Power
Arrogance of Power
Greenwald, Scheer, Ackerman
Bello, Permanent
Prisoners, No Charge, No Trial, the Wars Fought for
“Freedom”?!
“Freedom”?!
Honigsberg,
Human Consequences of War on Terror: Mass Killing, Maiming,
Exile
Exile
Brooks and
Manza, Public Opinion Toward War on Terror, Fear Justifies Mass
Slaughter
Slaughter
Film on
Canada’s “War on ‘Terror’”: “The Secret
Trial 5”: US Infecting Other
Nations
Nations
Singham, FBI
Sets Up “Terrorists’ for Permanent Fear
Greenwald on
Andrew Sullivan
Aronson, War on
Terror a US Creation
Sibel Edmonds,
CIA Whistleblower Gagged
Looking Back
Sirota, Draft
Ended 40 Years Ago June 30, 1973. Did it
ensure Permanent War for the Warmongers?
Woodworth,
Reviewing Evidence of 9/11
Looking Ahead
Bob Baskin,
Peace Alliance: President Obama’s
Speech to Decrease War on Terror
More to be
checked.
Contents #9
OMNI Book Forum
July 17
Support Cong.
Lee’s Bill to Repeal AUMF/Authorization for Use of Military Force
Gibson, Repeal
the “Patriot Act”
President
Obama’s Speech on Counter-Terrorism
Noam Chomsky , US
Ellen Ray, 2
books
Aaronson, FBI’s
Construction of Terror War
Mayer, The Dark Side, Rev. Bettie Lu Lancaster
Herman, Taking Liberties
Contents #10 Jan. 16, 2014
TomGram and
Nick Turse
Greenwald Film,
Unmanned
Scahill,
Perpetual War
Filkins, Rise
of Taliban, Invasions of Afghanistan
and Iraq
Chatterjee, CIA
Bungled War on Terror (War
OF
Terror)
Mazzetti, CIA
and Drones, How CIA Became Mossad
Engelhardt, CIA Kidnapping Case in Italy
UN Special
Rapporteur Report on Extra-Judicial Killing
Davies, War on
Terrorism Good for Business
Neumeister,
Ghailani Appeals
Johnsen,
Al-Qaeda in Yemen
Contents of War of Terrorism Newsletter
#11
Repeal the Authorization
Pierce on Johnsen, Authorization
for the Use of Military Force and Permanent War
FCNL, Write Your Congressman to
Vote to Repeal the Authorization
FCNL, End Permanent War
Cockburn, Failure of the War of
Terror
Davies, Failure of War of Terror
Beinart, End of US “Exceptionalism”
Alex Kane, Abuses of the “War”:
Hashmi, Maximum Security Prisons, Solitary Confinement
Dick: Yemen
Greenberg, Guantanamo
Greenwald and Hussain, Moazzam Begg
Susan Faludi’s The Terror Dream: Two Reviews
END WAR ON/OF TERRORISM NEWSLETTER #12
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