Announcement - Death of Eustace Mullins
Tuesday, February 02, 2010
Midday today Eustace Clarence Mullins, Jr. passed on to the higher realms where he will be joining his good friend, poet Ezra Pound. Less than two weeks ago Eustace suffered a stroke which resulted in his passing today.
Eustace's body will be transported to Stanton, Virginia by his close friend and traveling companion Jesse Lee. Eustace has surviving relatives that live in the Stanton area.
Thanks primarily to the singular effort of Jesse Lee, the last two years of Eustace's life have been one of adventure, camaraderie, and the continuation of Eustace Mullins' educational efforts to inform people of the great deception that has been perpetrated by a handful of individuals and is bringing this planet quickly to what will become officially known as World War III.
More will be added to this site in the near future concerning Eustace Clarence Mullins Jr.
For the moment, God bless and keep Eustace in a warm friendly embrace. He has earned this rest. And Eustace will be greatly missed by his many friends.
Friends of Eustace Mullins Society
http://foems.multiply.com/journal
*****************
Legendary historian Eustace Mullins dies
Legendary author of hundreds of books and pamphlets demolishing the lies of warmaking mainstream media, historian Eustace Mullins died Tuesday, Feb. 2, at the home of his caretaker in a small town in Texas.
Mullins, who would have been 87 in March, suffered a stroke three weeks ago in Columbus, Ohio. He had been on an extended tour of his admirers for much of the past year, visiting and chatting with many of his thousands of fans who jumped at the chance to buy his books from him in person.
The author of such incendiary books as “Secrets of the Federal Reserve,” “Murder by Injection,” and “The Curse of Canaan,” Mullins was harrassed by the FBI for almost a half century, and had one of his books burned in Germany in the 1950s. These stories are recounted in one of his books, “A Writ for Martyrs.”
A protege of the imprisoned patriotic poet Ezra Pound, Mullins compiled a well-researched corpus of works that detailed the passage down through time of a hereditary group of banker killers who have essentially ruled the world from behind the scenes since ancient times.
“Eustace Mullins was the greatest political historian of the 20th century, and not just because he was not beholden to the power structure that deters candid reports about significant events, but because, guided by the greatest poet of the 20th century who was imprisoned for broadcasting for peace, his meticulous research eventually uncovered virtually every political secret of the last 400 years,” said Internet essayist John Kaminski of Mullins’ passing.
“It’s a pity so many people are afraid to believe what Mullins told them, because it was much more of the truth than has ever been seen in our schools or our media,” Kaminski added.
Funeral arrangements and appropriate memorial information have yet to be released.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Eustace_Mullins
http://www.whale.to/b/mullins_h.html
http://foems.multiply.com/
http://johnkaminski.info/
02 February, 2010
ROSWELL CRASH TALK, BEFORE ALL THE HOOPLA
by Anthony Bragalia
In "Contact With Space" Wilhelm Reich makes a stop in Roswell and mentions the Roswell area's "strange imbalance" of what he believed were "UFO energies" related to forces he called "DOR/OR."
************
Skeptics who say that the Roswell UFO crash was never discussed before 1980 with the publication of the seminal book "The Roswell Incident" are wrong. In fact, the 1947 UFO event in New Mexico was brought up in many ways -and at many times- throughout the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's.
These naysayers maintain that witnesses only came forward when the Roswell story became "popularized" by the numerous books, movies, TV shows, documentaries and articles done in the 1980s and 1990s- many years after the crash event itself. They would like us to believe that after the original press release and newspaper articles in July of 1947 on the crash had appeared that nothing more was ever said until much later. The implication made by these disbelievers and cynics is that Roswell was a virtual "non-event" until the release of the first book on Roswell in 1980 and the subsequent publicity in following decades. But an examination of the literature -and confirmation of stories told privately- reveal that the alien episode was known and discussed well before all of the "hoopla."
WILHELM REICH – 1955
DR. WILHELM REICH
Dr. Wilhelm Reich was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who worked closely with Sigmund Freud. Known for his development of radical theories that related to a "life energy" that he referred to as "orgone energy," Reich was also very interested in the subject of extraterrestrial life and UFOs. Reich died in 1957, but his last book, published in the last year of his life, refers to Roswell and UFOs.
In 1957's "Contact With Space" Reich recounts a 1955 trip to Tucson, AZ to conduct "weather and energy experimentation" using a device that he designed and called a "cloudbuster" along with other devices made to attract UFOs. On his way to Tucson, he relates that he "felt compelled" to stop at a small town called Roswell, NM. Reich decided to make "field observations" there at Roswell. In the 1957 book, Reich makes specific (albeit brief) mention of what he called the Roswell area's "strange imbalance" of what he believed were "UFO energies" related to forces he called "DOR/OR."
Reich was known to conduct such unusual experimentation in geographic areas that he felt held special meaning and that were relevant to his UFO study. Though Reich was controversial -and his mention of Roswell oblique, without speaking to the actual crash there- others were far more direct:
TWO AUTHORS AND A SERGEANT – 1976
Continue reading:
http://www.ufocon.blogspot.com/
In "Contact With Space" Wilhelm Reich makes a stop in Roswell and mentions the Roswell area's "strange imbalance" of what he believed were "UFO energies" related to forces he called "DOR/OR."
************
Skeptics who say that the Roswell UFO crash was never discussed before 1980 with the publication of the seminal book "The Roswell Incident" are wrong. In fact, the 1947 UFO event in New Mexico was brought up in many ways -and at many times- throughout the 1950's, 1960's and 1970's.
These naysayers maintain that witnesses only came forward when the Roswell story became "popularized" by the numerous books, movies, TV shows, documentaries and articles done in the 1980s and 1990s- many years after the crash event itself. They would like us to believe that after the original press release and newspaper articles in July of 1947 on the crash had appeared that nothing more was ever said until much later. The implication made by these disbelievers and cynics is that Roswell was a virtual "non-event" until the release of the first book on Roswell in 1980 and the subsequent publicity in following decades. But an examination of the literature -and confirmation of stories told privately- reveal that the alien episode was known and discussed well before all of the "hoopla."
WILHELM REICH – 1955
DR. WILHELM REICH
Dr. Wilhelm Reich was a psychiatrist and psychoanalyst who worked closely with Sigmund Freud. Known for his development of radical theories that related to a "life energy" that he referred to as "orgone energy," Reich was also very interested in the subject of extraterrestrial life and UFOs. Reich died in 1957, but his last book, published in the last year of his life, refers to Roswell and UFOs.
In 1957's "Contact With Space" Reich recounts a 1955 trip to Tucson, AZ to conduct "weather and energy experimentation" using a device that he designed and called a "cloudbuster" along with other devices made to attract UFOs. On his way to Tucson, he relates that he "felt compelled" to stop at a small town called Roswell, NM. Reich decided to make "field observations" there at Roswell. In the 1957 book, Reich makes specific (albeit brief) mention of what he called the Roswell area's "strange imbalance" of what he believed were "UFO energies" related to forces he called "DOR/OR."
Reich was known to conduct such unusual experimentation in geographic areas that he felt held special meaning and that were relevant to his UFO study. Though Reich was controversial -and his mention of Roswell oblique, without speaking to the actual crash there- others were far more direct:
TWO AUTHORS AND A SERGEANT – 1976
Continue reading:
http://www.ufocon.blogspot.com/
01 February, 2010
Welcoming the Taliban
Welcoming the Taliban with Open Arms: Defectors and Deception in Afghanistan
By Douglas Valentine
Last week the U.S. Government began floating the idea of welcoming low and mid-level Taliban defectors into its war on terror against Al Qaeda. After waging an eight-year "dirty war" against the Taliban, U.S. military commanders and politicians are publicly acknowledging their "insurgent" enemy is actually part of the "fabric" of Afghan society.
U.S. and NATO officials are also offering bribes from a billion-dollar "Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund" to Taliban fighters to defect.
Taliban leaders have condemned the buyout strategy as a "trick" to divide and conquer its forces, and said that offers of reconciliation were futile without a withdrawal of foreign troops.
This billion dollar buyout may, indeed, seem a bizarre reversal of fortunes, but only if one believes the U.S. genuinely wants reconciliation with the Taliban. In reality, defectors programs like the one proposed for Afghanistan are an essential part of the traditional U.S. pacification policy. For example, the so-called Chieu Hoi "Open Arms" program is touted by military historians as having produced positive results throughout the Vietnam War by offering "clemency to insurgents."
Make no mistake about it: this too is propaganda. Defector "amnesty" or "clemency" or "open arms" programs are aggressive CIA intelligence operations and have nothing to do with reconciliation.
As former DCI William Colby told me, CIA political action teams in Vietnam (like Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan) employed defectors whose job was to "go around the countryside and indicate to the people that they used to be Vietcong and that the government has received them and taken them in, and that the Chieu Hoi program does exist as a way of VC currently on the other side to rally. [Defectors] contact people like the families of known VC," Colby said, "and provide them with transportation to defector and refugee centers."
Master spy Colby would certainly agree that information management – language – is the essence of political warfare in general and defector programs in particular. The first step in either case is concocting a slogan that appeals to the sensibilities of the targeted audience, which is why defectors programs are given names like "amnesty" or "clemency" or "open arms."
Such cleverly crafted slogans need have no basis in reality. Instead, by appealing to American (not Vietnamese or Afghan) sensibilities (or lack thereof), these slogans serve as the first step in creating deniability for the CIA’s roll in organizing repression.
During Senate hearings into CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders, deniability was defined by the CIA's deputy director of operations Richard Bissell as "the use of circumlocution and euphemism in discussions where precise definitions would expose covert actions and bring them to an end."
Apart from using circumlocution and euphemism, and Madison Avenue style slogans, the CIA creates deniability, and thus garners public approval, by composing and planting distorted articles in foreign and domestic newspapers. It also composes "official" communiqués which appear to have originated within, for example, the Karzai government in Afghanistan.
To ensure the deniability necessary for public support of its repressive policies, the CIA conducts covert action under cover of Civic Action programs that are advertised as fostering freedom, patriotism, brotherhood, and democracy.
Likewise, the Taliban defector buyout program is said to foster reconciliation.
In CIA jargon this manipulation of language is called "black propaganda" and is the job of political and psychological (PP) warfare officers in the covert action branch. "PP" officers played a major role in packaging the Phoenix Program for sale to the American public as a program designed "to protect the people from terrorism.""
CIA disinformation campaigns persuade predisposed Americans to offer their tax dollars to pay for the massive military and aid programs that support the CIA's covert action programs. The proposed billion-dollar Taliban defector program is just such a case.
Intelligence Potential
After arranging for deniability, the CIA will launch a covert action program like the Taliban defector program only if it has "intelligence potential." Such a program must be able to produce information on an enemy's political, military, and economic infrastructure or it will not be undertaken. The CIA after all, is not a "reconciliation" agency.
And defectors have superlative "intelligence potential."
Not only are defectors valued for their ability to sap the enemy's fighting strength and morale, but having worked on the inside, they are an accurate and timely source of intelligence on enemy unit strength and location. They also serve as guides and trackers, and after defecting, many are immediately returned to their area of operations with a reaction force to locate hidden enemy arms or food caches.
Others defectors, after being screened and interrogated by security officers, are turned into double agents. Defectors who return to their former positions inside enemy military units or political organizations are, as Colby explained, provided with a "secure" means of contacting their CIA case officer, to whom they feed information leading to the arrest or ambush of enemy cadres, soldiers, and secret agents.
Defector programs also provide CIA "talent scouts" with cover for recruiting criminals into counter-terrorist and political action programs. Burglars, arsonists, forgers, and smugglers have unique skills and no compunctions about preparing wanted posters or conducting interrogations.
In Vietnam, the entire Fifty-second Ranger Battalion was recruited from Saigon prisons.
With Obama’s surge and additional NATO forces providing cover for more expansive CIA covert actions, CIA political and psychological warfare experts are moving to the forefront of the occupation; and of course, their Provincial Reconstruction Teams are, as noted in a previous article, at the forefront of this "intelligence" surge. That is why the Taliban defector buyout program is being launched now.
Let me repeat: what makes such an intelligence operation "covert" is not any false impression on the part of the Taliban, but rather the CIA's ability to deny its involvement in the defector buyout program to the American public.
Continue reading
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/valentine4.1.1.html
By Douglas Valentine
Last week the U.S. Government began floating the idea of welcoming low and mid-level Taliban defectors into its war on terror against Al Qaeda. After waging an eight-year "dirty war" against the Taliban, U.S. military commanders and politicians are publicly acknowledging their "insurgent" enemy is actually part of the "fabric" of Afghan society.
U.S. and NATO officials are also offering bribes from a billion-dollar "Peace and Reintegration Trust Fund" to Taliban fighters to defect.
Taliban leaders have condemned the buyout strategy as a "trick" to divide and conquer its forces, and said that offers of reconciliation were futile without a withdrawal of foreign troops.
This billion dollar buyout may, indeed, seem a bizarre reversal of fortunes, but only if one believes the U.S. genuinely wants reconciliation with the Taliban. In reality, defectors programs like the one proposed for Afghanistan are an essential part of the traditional U.S. pacification policy. For example, the so-called Chieu Hoi "Open Arms" program is touted by military historians as having produced positive results throughout the Vietnam War by offering "clemency to insurgents."
Make no mistake about it: this too is propaganda. Defector "amnesty" or "clemency" or "open arms" programs are aggressive CIA intelligence operations and have nothing to do with reconciliation.
As former DCI William Colby told me, CIA political action teams in Vietnam (like Provincial Reconstruction Teams in Afghanistan) employed defectors whose job was to "go around the countryside and indicate to the people that they used to be Vietcong and that the government has received them and taken them in, and that the Chieu Hoi program does exist as a way of VC currently on the other side to rally. [Defectors] contact people like the families of known VC," Colby said, "and provide them with transportation to defector and refugee centers."
Master spy Colby would certainly agree that information management – language – is the essence of political warfare in general and defector programs in particular. The first step in either case is concocting a slogan that appeals to the sensibilities of the targeted audience, which is why defectors programs are given names like "amnesty" or "clemency" or "open arms."
Such cleverly crafted slogans need have no basis in reality. Instead, by appealing to American (not Vietnamese or Afghan) sensibilities (or lack thereof), these slogans serve as the first step in creating deniability for the CIA’s roll in organizing repression.
During Senate hearings into CIA assassination plots against foreign leaders, deniability was defined by the CIA's deputy director of operations Richard Bissell as "the use of circumlocution and euphemism in discussions where precise definitions would expose covert actions and bring them to an end."
Apart from using circumlocution and euphemism, and Madison Avenue style slogans, the CIA creates deniability, and thus garners public approval, by composing and planting distorted articles in foreign and domestic newspapers. It also composes "official" communiqués which appear to have originated within, for example, the Karzai government in Afghanistan.
To ensure the deniability necessary for public support of its repressive policies, the CIA conducts covert action under cover of Civic Action programs that are advertised as fostering freedom, patriotism, brotherhood, and democracy.
Likewise, the Taliban defector buyout program is said to foster reconciliation.
In CIA jargon this manipulation of language is called "black propaganda" and is the job of political and psychological (PP) warfare officers in the covert action branch. "PP" officers played a major role in packaging the Phoenix Program for sale to the American public as a program designed "to protect the people from terrorism.""
CIA disinformation campaigns persuade predisposed Americans to offer their tax dollars to pay for the massive military and aid programs that support the CIA's covert action programs. The proposed billion-dollar Taliban defector program is just such a case.
Intelligence Potential
After arranging for deniability, the CIA will launch a covert action program like the Taliban defector program only if it has "intelligence potential." Such a program must be able to produce information on an enemy's political, military, and economic infrastructure or it will not be undertaken. The CIA after all, is not a "reconciliation" agency.
And defectors have superlative "intelligence potential."
Not only are defectors valued for their ability to sap the enemy's fighting strength and morale, but having worked on the inside, they are an accurate and timely source of intelligence on enemy unit strength and location. They also serve as guides and trackers, and after defecting, many are immediately returned to their area of operations with a reaction force to locate hidden enemy arms or food caches.
Others defectors, after being screened and interrogated by security officers, are turned into double agents. Defectors who return to their former positions inside enemy military units or political organizations are, as Colby explained, provided with a "secure" means of contacting their CIA case officer, to whom they feed information leading to the arrest or ambush of enemy cadres, soldiers, and secret agents.
Defector programs also provide CIA "talent scouts" with cover for recruiting criminals into counter-terrorist and political action programs. Burglars, arsonists, forgers, and smugglers have unique skills and no compunctions about preparing wanted posters or conducting interrogations.
In Vietnam, the entire Fifty-second Ranger Battalion was recruited from Saigon prisons.
With Obama’s surge and additional NATO forces providing cover for more expansive CIA covert actions, CIA political and psychological warfare experts are moving to the forefront of the occupation; and of course, their Provincial Reconstruction Teams are, as noted in a previous article, at the forefront of this "intelligence" surge. That is why the Taliban defector buyout program is being launched now.
Let me repeat: what makes such an intelligence operation "covert" is not any false impression on the part of the Taliban, but rather the CIA's ability to deny its involvement in the defector buyout program to the American public.
Continue reading
http://www.lewrockwell.com/orig11/valentine4.1.1.html
28 January, 2010
A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn
Howard Zinn has died.
Video: A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn: on U.S. imperialism, ethnic cleansing, manifest destiny, invasion of Cuba, Phillipines, “this was no passive foreign policy but a series of violent interventions.”
Video: A People's History of American Empire by Howard Zinn: on U.S. imperialism, ethnic cleansing, manifest destiny, invasion of Cuba, Phillipines, “this was no passive foreign policy but a series of violent interventions.”
25 January, 2010
The Drone Surge: Today, Tomorrow and 2047
by Nick Turse
One moment there was the hum of a motor in the sky above. The next, on a recent morning in Afghanistan's Helmand province, a missile blasted a home, killing 13 people. Days later, the same increasingly familiar mechanical whine preceded a two-missile salvo that slammed into a compound in Degan village in the tribal North Waziristan district of Pakistan, killing three.
What were once unacknowledged, relatively infrequent targeted killings of suspected militants or terrorists in the Bush years have become commonplace under the Obama administration. And since a devastating December 30th suicide attack by a Jordanian double agent on a CIA forward operating base in Afghanistan, unmanned aerial drones have been hunting humans in the Af-Pak war zone at a record pace. In Pakistan, an "unprecedented number" of strikes -- which have killed armed guerrillas and civilians alike -- have led to more fear, anger, and outrage in the tribal areas, as the CIA, with help from the U.S. Air Force, wages the most public "secret" war of modern times.
In neighboring Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft, for years in short supply and tasked primarily with surveillance missions, have increasingly been used to assassinate suspected militants as part of an aerial surge that has significantly outpaced the highly publicized "surge" of ground forces now underway. And yet, unprecedented as it may be in size and scope, the present ramping up of the drone war is only the opening salvo in a planned 40-year Pentagon surge to create fleets of ultra-advanced, heavily-armed, increasingly autonomous, all-seeing, hypersonic unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Today's Surge
Drones are the hot weapons of the moment and the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review -- a soon-to-be-released four-year outline of Department of Defense strategies, capabilities, and priorities to fight current wars and counter future threats -- is already known to reflect this focus. As the Washington Post recently reported, "The pilotless drones used for surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a priority, with the goals of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and expanding Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013."
The MQ-1 Predator -- first used in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s -- and its newer, larger, and more deadly cousin, the MQ-9 Reaper, are now firing missiles and dropping bombs at an unprecedented pace. In 2008, there were reportedly between 27 and 36 U.S. drone attacks as part of the CIA's covert war in Pakistan. In 2009, there were 45 to 53 such strikes. In the first 18 days of January 2010, there had already been 11 of them.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force has instituted a much publicized decrease in piloted air strikes to cut down on civilian casualties as part of Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy. At the same time, however, UAS attacks have increased to record levels.
The Air Force has created an interconnected global command-and-control system to carry out its robot war in Afghanistan (and as Noah Shachtman of Wired's Danger Room blog has reported, to assist the CIA in its drone strikes in Pakistan as well). Evidence of this can be found at high-tech U.S. bases around the world where drone pilots and other personnel control the planes themselves and the data streaming back from them. These sites include a converted medical warehouse at Al-Udeid Air Base, a billion-dollar facility in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar where the Air Force secretly oversees its on-going drone wars; Kandahar and Jalalabad Air Fields in Afghanistan, where the drones are physically based; the global operations center at Nevada's Creech Air Base, where the Air Force's "pilots" fly drones by remote control from thousands of miles away; and -- perhaps most importantly -- at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a 12-square-mile facility in Dayton, Ohio, named after the two local brothers who invented powered flight in 1903. This is where the bills for the current drone surge -- as well as limited numbers of strikes in Yemen and Somalia -- come due and are, quite literally, paid.
In the waning days of December 2009, in fact, the Pentagon cut two sizeable checks to ensure that unmanned operations involving the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper will continue full-speed ahead in 2010. The 703rd Aeronautical Systems Squadron based at Wright-Patterson signed a $38 million contract with defense giant Raytheon for logistics support for the targeting systems of both drones. At the same time, the squadron inked a deal worth $266 million with mega-defense contractor General Atomics, which makes the Predator and Reaper drones, to provide management services, logistics support, repairs, software maintenance, and other functions for both drone programs. Both deals essentially ensure that, in the years ahead, the stunning increase in drone operations will continue.
These contracts, however, only initial down payments on an enduring drone surge designed to carry U.S. unmanned aerial operations forward, ultimately for decades.
Drone Surge: The Longer View
Back in 2004, the Air Force could put a total of only five drone combat air patrols (CAPs) -- each consisting of four air vehicles -- in the skies over American war zones at any one time. By 2009, that number was 38, a 660% increase according to the Air Force. Similarly, between 2001 and 2008, hours of surveillance coverage for U.S. Central Command, encompassing both the Iraqi and Afghan war zones, as well as Pakistan and Yemen, showed a massive spike of 1,431%.
In the meantime, flight hours have gone through the roof. In 2004, for example, Reapers, just beginning to soar, flew 71 hours in total, according to Air Force documents; in 2006, that number had risen to 3,123 hours; and last year, 25,391 hours. This year, the Air Force projects that the combined flight hours of all its drones -- Predators, Reapers, and unarmed RQ-4 Global Hawks -- will exceed 250,000 hours, about the total number of hours flown by all Air Force drones from 1995-2007. In 2011, the 300,000 hour-a-year barrier is expected to be crossed for the first time, and after that the sky's the limit.
More flight time will, undoubtedly, mean more killing. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the Washington-based think tank the New America Foundation, in the Bush years, from 2006 into 2009, there were 41 drone strikes in Pakistan which killed 454 militants and civilians. Last year, under the Obama administration, there were 42 strikes that left 453 people dead. A recent report by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based independent research organization that tracks security issues, claimed an even larger number, 667 people -- most of them civilians -- killed by U.S. drone strikes last year.
Continue reading at
http://www.truthout.org/nick-turse-the-drone-surge-today-tomorrow-and-204756350
One moment there was the hum of a motor in the sky above. The next, on a recent morning in Afghanistan's Helmand province, a missile blasted a home, killing 13 people. Days later, the same increasingly familiar mechanical whine preceded a two-missile salvo that slammed into a compound in Degan village in the tribal North Waziristan district of Pakistan, killing three.
What were once unacknowledged, relatively infrequent targeted killings of suspected militants or terrorists in the Bush years have become commonplace under the Obama administration. And since a devastating December 30th suicide attack by a Jordanian double agent on a CIA forward operating base in Afghanistan, unmanned aerial drones have been hunting humans in the Af-Pak war zone at a record pace. In Pakistan, an "unprecedented number" of strikes -- which have killed armed guerrillas and civilians alike -- have led to more fear, anger, and outrage in the tribal areas, as the CIA, with help from the U.S. Air Force, wages the most public "secret" war of modern times.
In neighboring Afghanistan, unmanned aircraft, for years in short supply and tasked primarily with surveillance missions, have increasingly been used to assassinate suspected militants as part of an aerial surge that has significantly outpaced the highly publicized "surge" of ground forces now underway. And yet, unprecedented as it may be in size and scope, the present ramping up of the drone war is only the opening salvo in a planned 40-year Pentagon surge to create fleets of ultra-advanced, heavily-armed, increasingly autonomous, all-seeing, hypersonic unmanned aerial systems (UAS).
Today's Surge
Drones are the hot weapons of the moment and the upcoming Quadrennial Defense Review -- a soon-to-be-released four-year outline of Department of Defense strategies, capabilities, and priorities to fight current wars and counter future threats -- is already known to reflect this focus. As the Washington Post recently reported, "The pilotless drones used for surveillance and attack missions in Afghanistan and Pakistan are a priority, with the goals of speeding up the purchase of new Reaper drones and expanding Predator and Reaper drone flights through 2013."
The MQ-1 Predator -- first used in Bosnia and Kosovo in the 1990s -- and its newer, larger, and more deadly cousin, the MQ-9 Reaper, are now firing missiles and dropping bombs at an unprecedented pace. In 2008, there were reportedly between 27 and 36 U.S. drone attacks as part of the CIA's covert war in Pakistan. In 2009, there were 45 to 53 such strikes. In the first 18 days of January 2010, there had already been 11 of them.
Meanwhile, in Afghanistan, the U.S. Air Force has instituted a much publicized decrease in piloted air strikes to cut down on civilian casualties as part of Afghan War commander General Stanley McChrystal's counterinsurgency strategy. At the same time, however, UAS attacks have increased to record levels.
The Air Force has created an interconnected global command-and-control system to carry out its robot war in Afghanistan (and as Noah Shachtman of Wired's Danger Room blog has reported, to assist the CIA in its drone strikes in Pakistan as well). Evidence of this can be found at high-tech U.S. bases around the world where drone pilots and other personnel control the planes themselves and the data streaming back from them. These sites include a converted medical warehouse at Al-Udeid Air Base, a billion-dollar facility in the Persian Gulf nation of Qatar where the Air Force secretly oversees its on-going drone wars; Kandahar and Jalalabad Air Fields in Afghanistan, where the drones are physically based; the global operations center at Nevada's Creech Air Base, where the Air Force's "pilots" fly drones by remote control from thousands of miles away; and -- perhaps most importantly -- at Wright-Patterson Air Force Base, a 12-square-mile facility in Dayton, Ohio, named after the two local brothers who invented powered flight in 1903. This is where the bills for the current drone surge -- as well as limited numbers of strikes in Yemen and Somalia -- come due and are, quite literally, paid.
In the waning days of December 2009, in fact, the Pentagon cut two sizeable checks to ensure that unmanned operations involving the MQ-1 Predator and the MQ-9 Reaper will continue full-speed ahead in 2010. The 703rd Aeronautical Systems Squadron based at Wright-Patterson signed a $38 million contract with defense giant Raytheon for logistics support for the targeting systems of both drones. At the same time, the squadron inked a deal worth $266 million with mega-defense contractor General Atomics, which makes the Predator and Reaper drones, to provide management services, logistics support, repairs, software maintenance, and other functions for both drone programs. Both deals essentially ensure that, in the years ahead, the stunning increase in drone operations will continue.
These contracts, however, only initial down payments on an enduring drone surge designed to carry U.S. unmanned aerial operations forward, ultimately for decades.
Drone Surge: The Longer View
Back in 2004, the Air Force could put a total of only five drone combat air patrols (CAPs) -- each consisting of four air vehicles -- in the skies over American war zones at any one time. By 2009, that number was 38, a 660% increase according to the Air Force. Similarly, between 2001 and 2008, hours of surveillance coverage for U.S. Central Command, encompassing both the Iraqi and Afghan war zones, as well as Pakistan and Yemen, showed a massive spike of 1,431%.
In the meantime, flight hours have gone through the roof. In 2004, for example, Reapers, just beginning to soar, flew 71 hours in total, according to Air Force documents; in 2006, that number had risen to 3,123 hours; and last year, 25,391 hours. This year, the Air Force projects that the combined flight hours of all its drones -- Predators, Reapers, and unarmed RQ-4 Global Hawks -- will exceed 250,000 hours, about the total number of hours flown by all Air Force drones from 1995-2007. In 2011, the 300,000 hour-a-year barrier is expected to be crossed for the first time, and after that the sky's the limit.
More flight time will, undoubtedly, mean more killing. According to Peter Bergen and Katherine Tiedemann of the Washington-based think tank the New America Foundation, in the Bush years, from 2006 into 2009, there were 41 drone strikes in Pakistan which killed 454 militants and civilians. Last year, under the Obama administration, there were 42 strikes that left 453 people dead. A recent report by the Pakistan Institute for Peace Studies, an Islamabad-based independent research organization that tracks security issues, claimed an even larger number, 667 people -- most of them civilians -- killed by U.S. drone strikes last year.
Continue reading at
http://www.truthout.org/nick-turse-the-drone-surge-today-tomorrow-and-204756350
I Don't Even Want To Be Alive Anymore
Opinion – The Onion
I Don't Even Want To Be Alive Anymore
BY RUSH LIMBAUGH
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/i_dont_even_want_to_be_alive
I know there are a lot of people out there who are upset about some of the things I've been saying on my radio program lately. My comments about the situation in Haiti have hurt and angered many Americans who genuinely care about the plight of the Haitian people, and that hurt and anger will likely never go away. Many of you are probably wondering, "What would compel a human being to say things like that?" Well, here's your answer: I am a very bad person. And, to tell you the truth, I don't really want to be alive anymore.
Try to look at it from my point of view. I have no reason to live. In my 59 years, I've made millions of dollars, built a veritable media empire, and accomplished virtually everything that a man of my limited imagination and worldview could possibly accomplish. And yet, at this point, in no way could you refer to what I'm doing as "living," exactly. I just sort of exist. I derive no real pleasure from life. Oh, sure, I talk a big game about what a golf nut I am and how much I enjoy the taste of a fine cigar, but it's all horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit.
I don't enjoy that stuff. I don't enjoy anything. I don't even want to be here. The sadness and regret I feel every waking hour of my life is absolutely unbearable. I am a miserable pig and I do not want to exist.
The irony is that, even if I did die, the hell I would surely be sent to could not possibly be any worse than the bottomless pool of excrement I already paddle around in like some demented, shit-covered walrus. In fact, every time I hear my voice coming through the headphones I nearly gag, and I think, "What the fuck am I doing?" Why would I say that Michael J. Fox is faking his Parkinson's symptoms? Why would I find it funny to play a song called "Barack the Magic Negro"? Why would I tell people not to give aid to Haiti?
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I live in constant terror and that terror informs my every word, thought, and action.
See, the thing is, I honestly cannot control the bilious hatred and filth that oozes out of my mouth. I want to—believe me, I want to—but I can't. And every time I speak, a tiny voice inside my head is screaming, "Stop talking, you stupid, insensitive prick. JUST STOP FUCKING TALKING. All you do is spread hate and fear, and the world would be a better place without you, you worthless, amoral, cocksucking fuckface."
What I should really do is just commit suicide. I have this little Sunday ritual I started around the time I publicly compared the torture at Abu Ghraib to a fraternity prank, where I climb into my Jacuzzi and put a gun in my mouth. But I can never work up the guts to pull the trigger. A few times I came close to overdosing on prescription pain pills, but my goddamn doctors were always there to save me. If I had any sense, I would just hole myself up in a Red Roof Inn with a case of Jack Daniel's and slowly drink myself into the gaping maw of death itself.
But what can I say? I guess I'm just too much of a fat fucking pussy to follow through.
You know what? I wish someone would just kill me. I'm serious. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking: "Oh my God, how can you say such a thing? You can't print that in a newspaper!" But see, I don't care anymore. I've cried my tears. I've battled my demons, and I've lost. It's over. It's all over. The only thing left for me to do now is just go away. Have I even once contributed a single ounce of good to humanity? Put me out of my misery. I wouldn't make a fuss. I wouldn't even humiliate myself by saying goodbye. For the first time in my odious, pitiful life, I'd accept my fate with quiet dignity.
Then I wouldn't have to live with my wretched, wretched self. Oh, the release.
I've imagined my death a thousand times over, and it's always the same. In my mind's eye, a serene setting comes into view. I see a funeral procession driving down some small-town Main Street in Nowheresville, U.S.A. On one side of the street, a collection of sycophants and morons are paying their respects in subliterate, sanctimonious tones. Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, I can just make out the faint image of a young boy, his brow furrowed in confusion, clutching the hand of his father. "Who is that man, Daddy?" he asks as the hearse containing my bloated, lifeless body rolls by. "Who is that person they speak of?" The father will then lower his head and say, "There, my son, go the remains of Rush Hudson Limbaugh, the most abominable lump of festering dog shit in the history of American broadcasting. May the likes of him never again soil or tarnish the greatness of our fair country."
Please forgive me, everyone. I am so sorry.
I Don't Even Want To Be Alive Anymore
BY RUSH LIMBAUGH
http://www.theonion.com/content/opinion/i_dont_even_want_to_be_alive
I know there are a lot of people out there who are upset about some of the things I've been saying on my radio program lately. My comments about the situation in Haiti have hurt and angered many Americans who genuinely care about the plight of the Haitian people, and that hurt and anger will likely never go away. Many of you are probably wondering, "What would compel a human being to say things like that?" Well, here's your answer: I am a very bad person. And, to tell you the truth, I don't really want to be alive anymore.
Try to look at it from my point of view. I have no reason to live. In my 59 years, I've made millions of dollars, built a veritable media empire, and accomplished virtually everything that a man of my limited imagination and worldview could possibly accomplish. And yet, at this point, in no way could you refer to what I'm doing as "living," exactly. I just sort of exist. I derive no real pleasure from life. Oh, sure, I talk a big game about what a golf nut I am and how much I enjoy the taste of a fine cigar, but it's all horseshit. Complete and utter horseshit.
I don't enjoy that stuff. I don't enjoy anything. I don't even want to be here. The sadness and regret I feel every waking hour of my life is absolutely unbearable. I am a miserable pig and I do not want to exist.
The irony is that, even if I did die, the hell I would surely be sent to could not possibly be any worse than the bottomless pool of excrement I already paddle around in like some demented, shit-covered walrus. In fact, every time I hear my voice coming through the headphones I nearly gag, and I think, "What the fuck am I doing?" Why would I say that Michael J. Fox is faking his Parkinson's symptoms? Why would I find it funny to play a song called "Barack the Magic Negro"? Why would I tell people not to give aid to Haiti?
What the fuck is wrong with me?
I live in constant terror and that terror informs my every word, thought, and action.
See, the thing is, I honestly cannot control the bilious hatred and filth that oozes out of my mouth. I want to—believe me, I want to—but I can't. And every time I speak, a tiny voice inside my head is screaming, "Stop talking, you stupid, insensitive prick. JUST STOP FUCKING TALKING. All you do is spread hate and fear, and the world would be a better place without you, you worthless, amoral, cocksucking fuckface."
What I should really do is just commit suicide. I have this little Sunday ritual I started around the time I publicly compared the torture at Abu Ghraib to a fraternity prank, where I climb into my Jacuzzi and put a gun in my mouth. But I can never work up the guts to pull the trigger. A few times I came close to overdosing on prescription pain pills, but my goddamn doctors were always there to save me. If I had any sense, I would just hole myself up in a Red Roof Inn with a case of Jack Daniel's and slowly drink myself into the gaping maw of death itself.
But what can I say? I guess I'm just too much of a fat fucking pussy to follow through.
You know what? I wish someone would just kill me. I'm serious. Yeah, yeah, I know what you're thinking: "Oh my God, how can you say such a thing? You can't print that in a newspaper!" But see, I don't care anymore. I've cried my tears. I've battled my demons, and I've lost. It's over. It's all over. The only thing left for me to do now is just go away. Have I even once contributed a single ounce of good to humanity? Put me out of my misery. I wouldn't make a fuss. I wouldn't even humiliate myself by saying goodbye. For the first time in my odious, pitiful life, I'd accept my fate with quiet dignity.
Then I wouldn't have to live with my wretched, wretched self. Oh, the release.
I've imagined my death a thousand times over, and it's always the same. In my mind's eye, a serene setting comes into view. I see a funeral procession driving down some small-town Main Street in Nowheresville, U.S.A. On one side of the street, a collection of sycophants and morons are paying their respects in subliterate, sanctimonious tones. Meanwhile, on the other side of the street, I can just make out the faint image of a young boy, his brow furrowed in confusion, clutching the hand of his father. "Who is that man, Daddy?" he asks as the hearse containing my bloated, lifeless body rolls by. "Who is that person they speak of?" The father will then lower his head and say, "There, my son, go the remains of Rush Hudson Limbaugh, the most abominable lump of festering dog shit in the history of American broadcasting. May the likes of him never again soil or tarnish the greatness of our fair country."
Please forgive me, everyone. I am so sorry.
20 January, 2010
Mysterious friend calls Obama out
by Don Williams
Don Williams is a syndicated columnist. He may be reached at:
http://www.mach2.com/williams/synd.php
My flamboyant friend came running fast round the bend in tie-dyed t-shirt, yellow shorts and red shoes. He jogged up on my front porch and started pacing as he pulled a little plastic bag from his shorts, drew out a roll-your-own and pack of paper matches, then lit up. If there was a human being more conflicted than I, here he stood.
So what do you make of it? he gasped amid clouds of smoke.
"What?"
Year One. Obama's been president a solid year and I'm wondering what you think?
"I'm of two minds."
Duh. That's why I'm here. To help you sort it out.
"You read my columns. I'm a guarded supporter. Cautiously optimistic."
Kind of like the orchestra on the Titanic? Serenading us all with that rot about how Obama's doing the best he can. Look at the hand he was dealt. We could all be standing in bread lines by now. How sending 30,000 troops into Afghanistan is his way of getting out dontcha know? How he'll shut down Guantanimo eventually and that any healthcare reform's better than no reform. Just be patient, we've a framework in place for halting global warming one of these days... Yada yada yada.
He emitted smoke rings with his words.
"Are you copping an attitude?"
My, how perceptive we are. Tell me one thing, Oh Scribe. How much longer will your sort of rot wash? We're in Year Two, and if you ask me, Obama's morphing into a Bush-Cheney third term.
"So what would you suggest he do?"
I'd urge him to fight every battle for righteousness' sake.
"Say what?"
Hey, I was raised Southern Baptist, believe it or not. I lay things out in black and white when I get excited. Obama shoulda been the righteous one and gave 'em hell.
"Specifically?"
For starters, he should've leveled with the American public and told us some cold, hard truths.
"Such as?"
Number One, that he was turning away from his predecessors in a very clear way, because they were war criminals and science deniers in the service of Big Oil, the arms merchants and the military industrial complex. He should've acknowledged that our invasion, occupation and bombing of Iraq was based on a pack of lies. He should've told the truth about Curveball, Chalabi and al-Libi, just to name three of the criminals our secret forces either bribed or tortured into telling most of the lies Dick Cheney used to make a phony case for war. You know, all that crap about how Saddam was giving nukes to terrorists and training them in anthrax and so on that made it into all those speeches in 2002 and 2003. And he shoulda told us that 9/11 was in part blowback for failed policies in Afghanistan going back a quarter century. Obama should not have swept that stuff under a rug.
"I'm listening," I said as my friend hot-boxed his smoke so that glowed fiercely. It was clear he was only warming up.
He should've apologized to the world for America's role in the deaths of maybe a million Iraqis, the displacement of 5 million others, the emotional and psychic trauma of 14 million more, and he should've appointed a special prosecutor to hold anyone accountable who knowingly propagated a phony whatsit, you know, casus belli, for starting the war or engaging in torture, and if it led to George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, so be it. He coulda started that ball rolling Week One. Don't you hear what I'm sayin'? Obama shoulda been the one who set things right.
"Get real. We would've had rioting in the streets."
Yeah? Instead we had rioting in town halls.
"OK, keep on."
He should've announced we're not bailing out any more banks or Wall Street firms and car companies, rather that he was earmarking a trillion dollars to subsidize upside-down mortgages that would keep worthy people in their homes and refinance banks honestly, from the bottom up, then build a green-friendly energy grid that would employ a million people and break our addiction to oil. He could've announced that Week Two.
"And Week Three?"
Lay out the truth about the great American healthcare rip-off. Put doctors, pharmaceutical companies and insurance firms on notice that he's appointing a panel of actual scientists and doctors to thoroughly assess the healthcare systems of the planet's 50 leading democracies and we're going to pick the three that work best to model ours on, so your Sister Rebecca and my Uncle Frank get the dignified healthcare they deserve.
"Ok, I get your drift."
No, I'm just getting started. I'd have him use his executive authority or whatever arm-twisting pertained in Congress to halt mountaintop removal, depleted uranium, outrageous usury, shut down any plans to build new nukes, and aggressively prosecute anyone in violation of the Clean Air Act.
"And if the economy tanked and Obama went down?"
At least we'd know he stood up.
Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist, short story writer, freelancer, and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of stories, essays and poems. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He just finished a novel, "Oracle of the Orchid Lounge," set in his native Tennessee. Publishers or agents may inquire via email. His book of selected journalism, "Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People" by Don Williams, is due a second printing. For more information, email donwilliams7@charter.net. Or visit the NMW website at www.NewMillenniumWritings.com. In 2007, he gave up his weekly column at the Knoxville News-Sentinel rather than see it cut back to every-other-week by his editors who endorsed Bush-Cheney.
If you'd like to support this column with a donation, please visit... https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=8466358
Don Williams is a syndicated columnist. He may be reached at:
http://www.mach2.com/williams/synd.php
My flamboyant friend came running fast round the bend in tie-dyed t-shirt, yellow shorts and red shoes. He jogged up on my front porch and started pacing as he pulled a little plastic bag from his shorts, drew out a roll-your-own and pack of paper matches, then lit up. If there was a human being more conflicted than I, here he stood.
So what do you make of it? he gasped amid clouds of smoke.
"What?"
Year One. Obama's been president a solid year and I'm wondering what you think?
"I'm of two minds."
Duh. That's why I'm here. To help you sort it out.
"You read my columns. I'm a guarded supporter. Cautiously optimistic."
Kind of like the orchestra on the Titanic? Serenading us all with that rot about how Obama's doing the best he can. Look at the hand he was dealt. We could all be standing in bread lines by now. How sending 30,000 troops into Afghanistan is his way of getting out dontcha know? How he'll shut down Guantanimo eventually and that any healthcare reform's better than no reform. Just be patient, we've a framework in place for halting global warming one of these days... Yada yada yada.
He emitted smoke rings with his words.
"Are you copping an attitude?"
My, how perceptive we are. Tell me one thing, Oh Scribe. How much longer will your sort of rot wash? We're in Year Two, and if you ask me, Obama's morphing into a Bush-Cheney third term.
"So what would you suggest he do?"
I'd urge him to fight every battle for righteousness' sake.
"Say what?"
Hey, I was raised Southern Baptist, believe it or not. I lay things out in black and white when I get excited. Obama shoulda been the righteous one and gave 'em hell.
"Specifically?"
For starters, he should've leveled with the American public and told us some cold, hard truths.
"Such as?"
Number One, that he was turning away from his predecessors in a very clear way, because they were war criminals and science deniers in the service of Big Oil, the arms merchants and the military industrial complex. He should've acknowledged that our invasion, occupation and bombing of Iraq was based on a pack of lies. He should've told the truth about Curveball, Chalabi and al-Libi, just to name three of the criminals our secret forces either bribed or tortured into telling most of the lies Dick Cheney used to make a phony case for war. You know, all that crap about how Saddam was giving nukes to terrorists and training them in anthrax and so on that made it into all those speeches in 2002 and 2003. And he shoulda told us that 9/11 was in part blowback for failed policies in Afghanistan going back a quarter century. Obama should not have swept that stuff under a rug.
"I'm listening," I said as my friend hot-boxed his smoke so that glowed fiercely. It was clear he was only warming up.
He should've apologized to the world for America's role in the deaths of maybe a million Iraqis, the displacement of 5 million others, the emotional and psychic trauma of 14 million more, and he should've appointed a special prosecutor to hold anyone accountable who knowingly propagated a phony whatsit, you know, casus belli, for starting the war or engaging in torture, and if it led to George W. Bush or Dick Cheney, so be it. He coulda started that ball rolling Week One. Don't you hear what I'm sayin'? Obama shoulda been the one who set things right.
"Get real. We would've had rioting in the streets."
Yeah? Instead we had rioting in town halls.
"OK, keep on."
He should've announced we're not bailing out any more banks or Wall Street firms and car companies, rather that he was earmarking a trillion dollars to subsidize upside-down mortgages that would keep worthy people in their homes and refinance banks honestly, from the bottom up, then build a green-friendly energy grid that would employ a million people and break our addiction to oil. He could've announced that Week Two.
"And Week Three?"
Lay out the truth about the great American healthcare rip-off. Put doctors, pharmaceutical companies and insurance firms on notice that he's appointing a panel of actual scientists and doctors to thoroughly assess the healthcare systems of the planet's 50 leading democracies and we're going to pick the three that work best to model ours on, so your Sister Rebecca and my Uncle Frank get the dignified healthcare they deserve.
"Ok, I get your drift."
No, I'm just getting started. I'd have him use his executive authority or whatever arm-twisting pertained in Congress to halt mountaintop removal, depleted uranium, outrageous usury, shut down any plans to build new nukes, and aggressively prosecute anyone in violation of the Clean Air Act.
"And if the economy tanked and Obama went down?"
At least we'd know he stood up.
Don Williams is a prize-winning columnist, short story writer, freelancer, and the founding editor and publisher of New Millennium Writings, an annual anthology of stories, essays and poems. His awards include a National Endowment for the Humanities Michigan Journalism Fellowship, a Golden Presscard Award and the Malcolm Law Journalism Prize. He just finished a novel, "Oracle of the Orchid Lounge," set in his native Tennessee. Publishers or agents may inquire via email. His book of selected journalism, "Heroes, Sheroes and Zeroes, the Best Writings About People" by Don Williams, is due a second printing. For more information, email donwilliams7@charter.net. Or visit the NMW website at www.NewMillenniumWritings.com. In 2007, he gave up his weekly column at the Knoxville News-Sentinel rather than see it cut back to every-other-week by his editors who endorsed Bush-Cheney.
If you'd like to support this column with a donation, please visit... https://www.paypal.com/cgi-bin/webscr?cmd=_s-xclick&hosted_button_id=8466358
15 January, 2010
Pat Robertson Blames Haitian Victims
Pat Robertson's Racist Blaming of Haitian Victims; and the Televangelist Misuse of History
By Juan Cole
And you know Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True Story, and so the Devil said OK it's a deal. And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they've been cursed by one thing after the other desperately poor. That island is Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle. On one side is Haiti on the other side is the Dominican republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc.. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island.
It is of course morally despicable for Robertson to blame a horrific earthquake on the supposed misdeeds of the distant ancestors of the current victims! But then, he blamed the September 11 atrocity on the United States, as well. I have nothing against evangelicals in general, and I know that televangelists are peculiar in typically not being under any church authority and so they can hold very strange views. But the Robertson type of evangelicalism strikes me as a social pathology that is actively evil and damaging to rational ethical thinking in our republic.
So what in the world is Pat Robertson talking about? Presumably he is referring to the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s through independence in 1804. The latter part of the revolution was against Napoleon Bonaparte, not against his nephew Napoleon III (r. as emperor 1852-1870). So Robertson was off by a mere 50 or 60 years.
As Charles Tilly pointed out, all revolutions are multiple revolutions. The Rights of Man were declared by the French Convention in 1789. Thomas Jefferson and other US Founding Fathers were delighted about this, by the way. Initially it was the mixed-race free mulattoes who agitated to have the Rights of Man applied to them in Haiti. But then slave revolts broke out and by 1794 the French legislature had abolished slavery in French overseas territories. So you had urbane, French-speaking free persons of color demanding inclusion in the new liberties proclaimed by the French Republic. But you also had slave revolts, in which newly-arrived slaves from West Africa (places such as what is now Benin) participated--though the organization was probably supplied by longer-established slaves. The newly-arrived slaves had after all been free Africans not so long ago. Despite the efforts of French orders such as the Dominicans and Capuchins, many slaves had still not become Christians or wore their Christianity very lightly. Some proportion of the slaves was Muslim, and some historians have suggested that previous slave revolts were led by Muslims. Over time, Muslim Africans were forcibly converted to Catholicism.
So some of the slave revolts invoked African religion against white French colonial power. What many now call voodoo or voudoun is a Haitian version of religious traditions roughly from what is now Benin, Togo, Nigeria and the Congo. The word just means spirit. The African slave religious traditions were expressed in Creole or Kreyole, based on Kwa dialects but incorporating elements of French.
[…]
So Robertson's account sees the assertion of African religion in 1791 against slaving Christianity as a 'pact with the devil' that then led Haiti to be cursed ever after. But even in his own terms, how does he account for the multiple steps by subsequent Haitian states reinstating privileges for Christianity? Even if he does not count Catholicism as Christianity, what about the fact that about a quarter of Haitians are now evangelical Protestants? Didn't the earthquake hit them? And, why is West Africa where the initial African version of voudoun originated and is still practiced by a minority, among the least earthquake-prone regions in the world?
Ultimately, Robertson's version of Haitian history as cursed replicates the old racist anti-Black 'curse of Ham' theme in White American popular religion. Is he saying that Haitians had less right to revolt against European colonialism than did white Americans? (Only about 16% of colonial-era Americans belonged to a church, so it isn't as if they were more pious). And, ultimately, his account fails to deal with the sins of slavery and racism in which Southern US Christian traditions-- Baptism, evangelicalism, etc., were deeply implicated. There is a Southern Baptist church to this day, almost all-white, precisely because it split from the national organization to protect the enslavement of African-Americans.
Evil and the devil are tricky. Robertson projected them on a revolt of African slaves asserting their African traditions against oppressive white colonial society. But they lurk in the traditions of his 700 Club, in the exaltation of irrationality, in blaming the victim, in a subtext of racism, and in a failure to repent for White Christian enslavement of Africans for centuries.
By Juan Cole
And you know Christy, something happened a long time ago in Haiti and people might not want to talk about it. They were under the heel of the French, uh you know Napoleon the third and whatever. And they got together and swore a pact to the devil. They said we will serve you if you'll get us free from the French. True Story, and so the Devil said OK it's a deal. And they kicked the French out. You know, the Haitians revolted and got themselves free. But ever since they've been cursed by one thing after the other desperately poor. That island is Hispaniola is one island. It's cut down the middle. On one side is Haiti on the other side is the Dominican republic. Dominican Republic is prosperous, healthy, full of resorts, etc.. Haiti is in desperate poverty. Same island.
It is of course morally despicable for Robertson to blame a horrific earthquake on the supposed misdeeds of the distant ancestors of the current victims! But then, he blamed the September 11 atrocity on the United States, as well. I have nothing against evangelicals in general, and I know that televangelists are peculiar in typically not being under any church authority and so they can hold very strange views. But the Robertson type of evangelicalism strikes me as a social pathology that is actively evil and damaging to rational ethical thinking in our republic.
So what in the world is Pat Robertson talking about? Presumably he is referring to the Haitian Revolution of the 1790s through independence in 1804. The latter part of the revolution was against Napoleon Bonaparte, not against his nephew Napoleon III (r. as emperor 1852-1870). So Robertson was off by a mere 50 or 60 years.
As Charles Tilly pointed out, all revolutions are multiple revolutions. The Rights of Man were declared by the French Convention in 1789. Thomas Jefferson and other US Founding Fathers were delighted about this, by the way. Initially it was the mixed-race free mulattoes who agitated to have the Rights of Man applied to them in Haiti. But then slave revolts broke out and by 1794 the French legislature had abolished slavery in French overseas territories. So you had urbane, French-speaking free persons of color demanding inclusion in the new liberties proclaimed by the French Republic. But you also had slave revolts, in which newly-arrived slaves from West Africa (places such as what is now Benin) participated--though the organization was probably supplied by longer-established slaves. The newly-arrived slaves had after all been free Africans not so long ago. Despite the efforts of French orders such as the Dominicans and Capuchins, many slaves had still not become Christians or wore their Christianity very lightly. Some proportion of the slaves was Muslim, and some historians have suggested that previous slave revolts were led by Muslims. Over time, Muslim Africans were forcibly converted to Catholicism.
So some of the slave revolts invoked African religion against white French colonial power. What many now call voodoo or voudoun is a Haitian version of religious traditions roughly from what is now Benin, Togo, Nigeria and the Congo. The word just means spirit. The African slave religious traditions were expressed in Creole or Kreyole, based on Kwa dialects but incorporating elements of French.
[…]
So Robertson's account sees the assertion of African religion in 1791 against slaving Christianity as a 'pact with the devil' that then led Haiti to be cursed ever after. But even in his own terms, how does he account for the multiple steps by subsequent Haitian states reinstating privileges for Christianity? Even if he does not count Catholicism as Christianity, what about the fact that about a quarter of Haitians are now evangelical Protestants? Didn't the earthquake hit them? And, why is West Africa where the initial African version of voudoun originated and is still practiced by a minority, among the least earthquake-prone regions in the world?
Ultimately, Robertson's version of Haitian history as cursed replicates the old racist anti-Black 'curse of Ham' theme in White American popular religion. Is he saying that Haitians had less right to revolt against European colonialism than did white Americans? (Only about 16% of colonial-era Americans belonged to a church, so it isn't as if they were more pious). And, ultimately, his account fails to deal with the sins of slavery and racism in which Southern US Christian traditions-- Baptism, evangelicalism, etc., were deeply implicated. There is a Southern Baptist church to this day, almost all-white, precisely because it split from the national organization to protect the enslavement of African-Americans.
Evil and the devil are tricky. Robertson projected them on a revolt of African slaves asserting their African traditions against oppressive white colonial society. But they lurk in the traditions of his 700 Club, in the exaltation of irrationality, in blaming the victim, in a subtext of racism, and in a failure to repent for White Christian enslavement of Africans for centuries.
iONic Update
Starting on Wed., Jan.20, Dr. Carolyn Dean, Ion, and Bob Neveritt will be guests on www.achieveradio.com's CASH FLOW for 3 hours each week - from 2pm-5pm EST.
Achieveradio itself has been picked up by www.powerhitz.com so we will have a wider audience.
Below is a comment from a new listener which inspires us to keep broadcasting:
[My first time tuning in live --- I can see why there would be an audience for a 3 hour program --- really "great stuff" --- from explanations and definitions of the "other side of the veil" to "time" etc. all delivered in fun, funny, clever, rapid word play with Carolyn Dean and Bob Neveritt as great foils to the truly Incredible Ion with his great insights (pun intended)! Ion is also a punster and I can also see that he has a great sense of humor and the ability to put everything into perspective. And, so much wisdom to impart! Could talk for hours on subject of "contrasts" alone. A better program could not have been scripted minute by minute!]
Remember, iON ("a zillion entities from the Guf") just showed up 10 months ago.
With iON, there is only one rule: THERE ARE NO RULES.
Bob Dobbs
11 January, 2010
President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up
President Obama, the CIA and the Master of the Cover-Up
“McLaughlin was the "villain" behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.”
The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.
With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA's most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency's chief apologist.
So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the "smartest man he had ever met."
Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.
Washington insiders remember that it was CIA director Tenet who told President George W. Bush, "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," in response to the president's demand for stronger intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide to the American people. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the "slam-dunk" briefing to the president in January 2003.
McLaughlin was the "villain" behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.
When Kay returned to CIA headquarters from Baghdad, Tenet and McLaughlin made sure that Kay was given a tiny, windowless office at the end of a distant, deserted corridor undergoing construction. It had no secure phone or classified computer. Kay called it Siberia.
McLaughlin was also the villain behind the CIA's preparation of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that used phony intelligence to convince an international audience of the need for war. According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell's chief of staff, Tenet and McLaughlin lied to the secretary of state about the sourcing of serious allegations dealing with Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain strategic weapons.
The most serious allegation came from an Iraqi con man known as "Curveball," who maintained that Iraq had mobile biological laboratories, a key charge in the phony intelligence to justify the Iraq war. German intelligence debriefed Curveball, and German intelligence officials warned the CIA that Curveball was unstable and that there was no validation for his claims. Tyler Drumheller, the chief of CIA's European Division, knew that Curveball was mentally unstable and a liar, and he urged McLaughlin to drop all references to the mobile biological labs from Powell's speech. McLaughlin ignored him, too.
Five weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Powell and McLaughlin shared a table at the White House correspondents' dinner, where McLaughlin, an amateur magician, agreed to perform a few magic tricks during a break in the action. The CIA deputy director conjured coins out of thin air and transformed a single dollar into a $100 bill; everyone at the table laughed except for Powell, who seemed tense and out of sorts.
According to Bob Drogin, who wrote an authoritative book on Curveball, Powell stared at McLaughlin and requested another trick. "Let's see you find the WMD in Iraq," an unsmiling Powell demanded. McLaughlin looked surprised and his broad grin faded. "We will," he replied, "they're there and we'll find them."
In addition to being one of the ideological drivers for the CIA's policies of torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary renditions, McLaughlin demonstrated early in his career that he was a company man willing to do what was necessary to advance his career. In the 1980s, when CIA Director William Casey and his Deputy Robert Gates were "cooking the books" on intelligence dealing with the Soviet Union, Central America and Southwest Asia, McLaughlin offered no dissent.
“McLaughlin was the "villain" behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.”
The Obama administration quietly announced Friday the appointment of John McLaughlin, former deputy CIA director, to head the internal investigation of the intelligence failures that led to the Christmas Day attempted bombing of a Delta airliner headed for Detroit as well as the events leading to the shootings at Fort Hood in November.
With this appointment, President Barack Obama has assured that the culture of intelligence cover-up will continue. McLaughlin has participated in and sought to cover-up many of the CIA's most egregious failures and misdeeds of the past decade. When he left the CIA, he then served as the agency's chief apologist.
So, who is John McLaughlin? Most of official Washington and the mainstream media view McLaughlin as the mild-mannered, professorial CIA bureaucrat, who former CIA director George Tenet called the "smartest man he had ever met."
Few people understand, however, that McLaughlin played the most important role in making sure that the Bush administration received the intelligence that would be used and misused to justify the use of force against Iraq in 2003.
Washington insiders remember that it was CIA director Tenet who told President George W. Bush, "Don't worry, it's a slam dunk," in response to the president's demand for stronger intelligence on Iraq's weapons of mass destruction (WMD) to provide to the American people. Few people remember that it was McLaughlin who actually delivered the "slam-dunk" briefing to the president in January 2003.
McLaughlin was the "villain" behind the politicized intelligence on Iraq in the run-up to the war. He perverted the intelligence process, ignored high-level briefings on the weakness of the intelligence on WMD and tried to silence David Kay, the chief of the Iraq Survey Group, when the weapons inspectors found no evidence of strategic weapons in Iraq.
When Kay returned to CIA headquarters from Baghdad, Tenet and McLaughlin made sure that Kay was given a tiny, windowless office at the end of a distant, deserted corridor undergoing construction. It had no secure phone or classified computer. Kay called it Siberia.
McLaughlin was also the villain behind the CIA's preparation of Secretary of State Colin Powell's speech to the United Nations in February 2003 that used phony intelligence to convince an international audience of the need for war. According to Col. Lawrence Wilkerson, who served as Powell's chief of staff, Tenet and McLaughlin lied to the secretary of state about the sourcing of serious allegations dealing with Saddam Hussein's efforts to obtain strategic weapons.
The most serious allegation came from an Iraqi con man known as "Curveball," who maintained that Iraq had mobile biological laboratories, a key charge in the phony intelligence to justify the Iraq war. German intelligence debriefed Curveball, and German intelligence officials warned the CIA that Curveball was unstable and that there was no validation for his claims. Tyler Drumheller, the chief of CIA's European Division, knew that Curveball was mentally unstable and a liar, and he urged McLaughlin to drop all references to the mobile biological labs from Powell's speech. McLaughlin ignored him, too.
Five weeks after the invasion of Iraq, Powell and McLaughlin shared a table at the White House correspondents' dinner, where McLaughlin, an amateur magician, agreed to perform a few magic tricks during a break in the action. The CIA deputy director conjured coins out of thin air and transformed a single dollar into a $100 bill; everyone at the table laughed except for Powell, who seemed tense and out of sorts.
According to Bob Drogin, who wrote an authoritative book on Curveball, Powell stared at McLaughlin and requested another trick. "Let's see you find the WMD in Iraq," an unsmiling Powell demanded. McLaughlin looked surprised and his broad grin faded. "We will," he replied, "they're there and we'll find them."
In addition to being one of the ideological drivers for the CIA's policies of torture and abuse, secret prisons and extraordinary renditions, McLaughlin demonstrated early in his career that he was a company man willing to do what was necessary to advance his career. In the 1980s, when CIA Director William Casey and his Deputy Robert Gates were "cooking the books" on intelligence dealing with the Soviet Union, Central America and Southwest Asia, McLaughlin offered no dissent.
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