Value-added analysis and commentary on economic and social affairs. The blog name is my handle; G D A E are the four notes on a violin or mandolin; music is one of my diversions.
Showing posts with label State Department. Show all posts
Showing posts with label State Department. Show all posts
Regarding the US State Depaertment documents recently released by WikiLeaks:
The White House immediately condemned the release of the WikiLeaks documents, saying "such disclosures put at risk our diplomats, intelligence professionals and people around the world who come to the United States for assistance in promoting democracy and open government."
We all knew that Kissinger is a Murderer. Now we have another piece of evidence.
According to AP:
"On Sept. 21, 1976, agents of Chilean Gen. Augusto Pinochet planted a car bomb and exploded it on a Washington, D.C., street, killing both former Ambassador Orlando Letelier, and an American colleague, Ronni Karpen Moffitt. Letelier was one of the most outspoken critics of the Pinochet government."
Before this event the CIA and State Department officials were aware of the assassination aims of Chile against enemies of General Augusto Pinochet. Concerned, State Department staff sought to send a clear warning against conducting assassinations. They presented the proposal to Secretary of State Henry Kissinger for his decision.
Newly released State Department documents include a cable dated September 16, 1976. Under the SUBJECT: ACTIONS TAKEN, Subheading of "Operation Condor," AP reports:
The cable states that "secretary declined to approve message to Montevideo" Uruguay "and has instructed that no further action be taken on this matter."
The American silence, made official by Kissinger, was a green light.
Remember all of the lies about our fundamentally healthy economy? Some of us saw past them.
Now, they continue to tell lies. In this case, regarding our wars:
State Department spokesman Robert Wood said the attack [on the Marriott Hotel in Pakistan] showed the need for Pakistanis, Afghans and the U.S. to redouble efforts against extremists in the region.
"This was a heinous act that was committed by terrorists who have no interest in anything other than maiming and killing innocent civilians. And we're going to step up our efforts and work with the Pakistanis to do what we can," he said.
Not True. The "terrorists" have many stated interests other than "maiming and killing innocent civilians." Unless we can get past these kind of establishment lies repeated by the establishment media our "nation" risks traditional-security collapse on the same level as the on-going economic collapse (not just a "financial" collapse).
We watched the White House lie about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda's ties to Iraq, and we knew were were being lied to.
We watched Press Secretary Scott McClellan lie about the White House's role in leaking CIA operative Valerie Plame's identity, and we knew we were being lied to.
Yesterday, we watched State Department deputy spokesman Tom Casey lie about the US's role in attempting to over throw the democratically elected Hamas-led Palestinian parliament, and we know we are being lied to. Read Casey's hollow words, punctuated by transparent attacks on the credibility of the source, Vanity Fair:
The story alleges that there was some kind of secret plot on the part of the U.S. government to create an internal conflict within the Palestinians, specifically an armed conflict. That's absurd. That's ridiculous. I said this morning that I think Vanity Fair should stick to arty photos of celebrities since clearly, at least in this instance, their efforts at serious journalism leaves something lacking.
We know it is Tom Casey, and the US State Department, that has no credibility. We are living in a failing state, when power of legitimacy has given way to the use of force. Hamas knows that all too well. Hamas knows that the US and Israel have intentionally provoked the home-made missile attacks, to break Hamas's unilateral cease fire and be able to point at Hamas and say, "We have a right to defend ourselves," another hollow statement. Because the US and Israel provoked the rocket attacks, the Hamas rocket attacks have a logical basis of legitimacy, as in "You asked for it," literally.
I for one am tired of watching them lie. It's for that reason, and the logic of stopping impunity, that I devote some of my time to ensuring that Bush, Rice, Rumsfeld, Cheney, and a long list of others live the rest of their lives fighting off war crimes charges. They can run, but they can't hide. We'll smoke them out. They won't rest until they meet their maker.
And there are more dots to connect. First, this activity is far more insidious than the sealing of elections in Florid and Ohio. It's clear that a the US Attorney firing scandal has a deeper plot that is connected to voter suppression on a massive scale.
Second, there are foreign dots to connect. The Bush administration is implicated in two recent cases. We hear reports like the following:
U.S. tensions with Russia are on the rise over accusations of vote-meddling. On Monday, Russian President Vladimir Putin accused the Bush administration of trying to taint parliamentary elections set for next week. Putin says the U.S. influenced European monitors to cancel plans to observe the vote.
Why? Because, months after everyone has forgotten this news blip, Bush's "set up" will allow his operatives to say, "there were no monitors in the Russian election," thereby casting doubt on the election's legitimacy. The violation is so egregious that Vladimir Putin himself spoke out in response (translated):
We have information that, once again, this was done on the recommendation of the U.S. State Department. We, of course, will take this into account in our inter-state dealings; this is for sure. Actions such as these cannot wreck the elections in Russia. Their aim is to deprive the elections of legitimacy, that is absolutely clear. But they are not going to achieve that [1].
Clip of Putin Statement
Then, on November 28, 2007, we heard Venezuelan Foreign Minister Nicolas Maduro reveal that he had a document that appeared to be from an American at the embassy in Caracas referring to a plan to impede a referendum on Sunday to consider giving new powers to the Venezuelan executive branch.
If it's true, we are going to declare this official from the U.S. Embassy persona non grata and eject him from the country because he would have been interfering in the internal matters of Venezuela. [2]
But it doesn’t stop there. The Republicans have institutionalized their elections interference through the US taxpayer funded “National Endowment for Democracy.” This nice sounding institution funded the International Republican Institute of Washington, an arm of the GOP, to run training sessions for the youth wing of the right wing Mexican PAN political party and fund a US corporation to collect data that was likely used to suppress votes.
The illegal operations all involve pre-election suppression tactics. The US company ChoicePoint, which helped purge Florida voter rolls prior to 2000 election, is implicated widely. According to BBC investigative journalist Greg Palast. Referring to ChoicePoint, which received a no-bid contract from the Bush administration to collect data supposedly for use in "fighting terrorism," it appears the information was used to scrub voter rolls or to cage voters and create challenge lists:
Foreign — that is, American — interference in political campaigns is a crime. That didn’t stop Team Bush. However, when the theft of its citizen files was discovered, Argentina threatened to arrest ChoicePoint contractors until the company returned the tapes — and Mexico’s attorney general did in fact arrest the ChoicePoint data thieves to avoid his party from looking too much the stooge of its Washington patron.
Similar operations were conducted in Venezuela using ChoicePoint.
More suppression occurs during the voting process, such as challenging voters via caging lists developed prior to the election, allocating too few voting machines in targeted districts to create long lines, changing polling places to sow confusion or force the use of provisional ballots, which are less likely to be counted, etc, which leads to...
One can go on and on about what can no longer be denied. The Bush Republicans have been conducting illegal voter suppression campaigns, inside and outside the United States, on a sophisticated level, and continue to do so. If this makes your blood boil, check out Black Box Voting, citizens who are taking action.
The latest in the Blackwater brouhaha over the killing of [at least] 13 Iraqi civilians is that Condi Rice is ordering State Department in-house security agents to accompany Blackwater guards as they accompany State Department diplomats. But, if State Department security agents are now in the diplomat's convoy, why is Blackwater needed? Federal agents should not have to baby-sit redundant $500-a-day "cowboy" contractors in a hostile war zone.
The good news is that the House just passed legislation that would place all private government contractors in Iraq under U.S. criminal statutes. However, staunch resistance can be expected as the bill makes its way through the Senate and then a conference committee if it gets that far. We'll see what comes out the other end.
Reacting to the most recent killing of civilians by Blackwater USA in Iraq, Baghdad resident Halim Mashkoor told AP Television News:
"We see the security firms ... doing whatever they want in the streets. They beat citizens and scorn them..." "If such a thing happened in America or Britain, would the American president or American citizens accept it?"
Larry Johnson got fired by FOX News for sharing insights that didn't conform with their right-wing, false view of the World.
According to transcripts cited below, Larry Johnson was an intelligence officer with the CIA from 1985 to 1989. He served in the State Department's Office of Counter-Terrorism from 1989 to 1993. He now provides consulting services and helps the U.S. train military forces carrying out counterterrorism missions.
Unfortunately, Johnson has a loose definition of terrorism, which undermines the intellectual integrity of his cause. He considers the 1995 Iraqi attempted assasination of George H.W. Bush to be a terrorist act. Assasination of a head of state shouldn't be categorized as "terrorism." Terrorism traditionally involves attacks on civilian targets to influence a political goal.
So, back to why FOX News fired Larry Johnson:
I would like to say I was one of those who, before the [Iraq] war started, said, "this is a crock." I didn't. However, I did get fired from the Fox News network as a news analyst for having the audacity in November of 2002 to say, that if we went into Iraq, it would be a diversion in the war on terror.
Of course, we all know, and Johnson should too, that the "war on terror" is also a crock. It's surprising how long it takes some insiders to catch on.
Johnson continues with a commentary on the value of blogs:
And in January of 2003, I put together a paper — this was in my pre-blog days. I'm convinced, if I'd known more about blogs then, and there were more blogs active, we might have stopped the war.
We all knew that Kissinger is a Murderer. Now we have another piece of evidence.
Remember all of the lies about our fundamentally healthy economy? Some of us saw past them.
