CIA Must Disclose Data on Human Experiments

[SEE:

CIAunderlying.pdf

  ;  Human Nature Is the Enemy of the State]

By ANNIE YOUDERIAN 
ShareThis

     (CN) – A federal magistrate judge in San Francisco ordered the CIA to produce specific records and testimony about the human experiments the government allegedly conducted on thousands of soldiers from 1950 through 1975.
     Three veterans groups and six individual veterans sued the CIA and other government agencies, claiming they used about 7,800 soldiers as human guinea pigs to research biological, chemical and psychological weapons.
     The experiments, many of which took place at Edgewood Arsenal and Fort Detrick in Maryland, allegedly exposed test subjects to chemicals, drugs and electronic implants. Though the soldiers volunteered, they never gave informed consent, because the government didn’t fully disclose the risks, the veterans claimed. They were also required to sign an oath of secrecy, according to the complaint.
     The veterans filed three sets of document requests to find out who was tested, what substances they were given, and how it affected them. Between October and April, the government produced about 15,000 pages of heavily redacted records, most of which related to the named plaintiffs only.
      The CIA argued that much of the information requested was protected under the Privacy Act and the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act.
      U.S. Magistrate Judge James Larson acknowledged that some of the requests were too broad and ordered the veterans to be more specific and to reduce the total number of requests.
      For example, Larson said the plaintiffs’ definition of "test program" is "overbroad," as it not only named experimental programs like "Bluebird," "Artichoke" and "MKUltra," but also included "any other program of experimentation involving human testing of any substance, including but not limited to ‘MATERIAL TESTING PROGRAM EA 1729.’"
     He ordered the veterans to provide a list of specific test programs and test substances.
     But once the plaintiffs narrow their requests, Larson said, they are entitled to most of the information. Each government agency must respond individually to each request, he said, and if an agency denies any request, it must explain — in sufficient detail — why the records are purportedly privileged.
      The CIA has already claimed that some documents are protected under the state-secrets privilege, but Larson said the agency needs to be more specific. He asked for a "supplemental declaration explaining with heightened specificity" why the documents are considered state secrets. Because these documents might contain sensitive information, the judge allowed the CIA to file the declaration under seal.
      Larson rejected the government’s bid to limit the scope of discovery, saying doing so "removes the remaining hurdle" for the CIA to respond to the veterans’ sets of requests.
     "Defendants should respond in earnest to Plaintiffs’ discovery requests, regardless of any ongoing or prior searches, investigations, or litigation," Larson wrote. He said the government can’t limit disclosure to information about the six individual plaintiffs.
     The CIA insisted discovery was unwarranted in its case, because it never funded or conducted drug research on military personnel.
     Larson wasn’t convinced.
     "[T]his court rejects the conclusion that the CIA necessarily lacks a nexus to Plaintiffs’ claims, and orders the CIA to respond in earnest" to the veterans’ requests, "particularly because defendants have presented evidence that would appear to cast doubt on that conclusion," he wrote.
     The government also tried to avoid deposition, claiming too much time had passed since the alleged experiments, and any witnesses familiar with the projects likely no longer work for the government. The CIA further argued, unsuccessfully, that the court should stay discovery until the Department of Defense completes its investigation of the experiments.
     Larson reminded the CIA that it "cannot use the DoD investigation as an excuse to avoid discovery responsibilities."
     He then addressed which topics are fair game for deposition, saying the government must produce witnesses to testify about the following: communication between the VA and test subjects on their health care claims; a 1963 CIA Inspector General report on an experiment called MKUltra, and the basis for each redaction on that report; the scope and conduct of document searches; the doses and effects of substances administered to test subjects; any contract or research proposals concerning the experiments; a confidential Army memo about the use of volunteers in research; all government-led human experiments from 1975 to date, but only those that involve specific drugs; and whether the government secretly administered MKUltra materials to "the patrons of prostitutes" in safe houses in New York and San Francisco, as the veterans claimed.
     Judge Larson ruled for the CIA on other issues, however, saying the agency’s not required to testify about test subjects who withdrew their consent or refused to participate; devices allegedly implanted into certain test subjects; the alleged use of patients at VA hospitals as guinea pigs in chemical and biological weapons experiments; or the drug research studies conducted by Dr. Paul Hoch, who was purportedly funded by the government and caused the death of a patient named Harold Blauer.
     Though Larson declined to sanction the government, as the veteranssought, he warned that he would impose sanctions for any "future unjustifiable discovery recalcitrance."
     Named plaintiffs are the Vietnam Veterans of America, Swords to Plowshare, the Veterans Rights Organization, Bruce Price, Franklin D. Rochelle, Larry Meirow, Eric P. Muth, David C. Dufrane and Wray C. Forrest.

Children of the Taliban

Children of the Taliban, posted with vodpod

[SEE:   Who Is Responsible for Suicide-Bomber Academies?]

Child soldiers: the other Taliban and Al-Qaeda militants

http://rabble.ca/blogs/bloggers/apicazo/2010/11/child-soldiers-other-taliban-and-al-qaeda-militants

BY ALHELI PICAZO

“A poignant reality of contemporary conflicts is that increasingly children are being used as cheap and readily available weapons of war. From Colombia to Sri Lanka, from Sierra Leone to Uganda, thousands of children have been used in armed conflict situations. In Afghanistan, our forces are seeing the increasing use of children in combat operations, including as suicide bombers.” ~  Senator Roméo A. Dallaire – Retired Lieutenant General and former commander of the United Nations Assistance Mission for Rwanda (UNAMIR) & Ishmael Beah – Former child soldier, author of A Long Way Gone: Memoirs of a Boy Soldier and a UNICEF representative from Sierra Leone. For the Toronto Star, August 18, 2010.

In the city of Peshawar, situated along Northwest Pakistan’s tribal area, lies Kachegori – one of the makeshift camps erected to house nearly one million citizens displaced by warring between the Taliban and the Pakistani Army.

More than 15,000 children call Kachegori Camp home, including Wasifullah and Abdurrahman who, in an interview with Frontline correspondent Sharmeen Obaid-Chinoy, call themselves best friends.

However, despite their shared interests and deep camaraderie, the boys hold opposing views on who’s to blame for the bombings and missile attacks that destroyed their village.

Wasifullah describes finding his 12 year old cousin among the 80 civilians who were killed by an American missile attack.

“His body was being eaten by dogs,” Wasifullah says, his face void of any emotion. “We brought his remains home in bags, [but] we could only find his legs, so we buried [his legs] in our village.”

Obaid-Chinoy notes that although American missile strikes “target the Taliban and Al-Qaeda leaders,” they inevitably kill civilians, adding that militants “are quick to make use of the destruction [which] becomes recruitment rally for the Taliban.”

When asked what he aspires to become in the future, Wasifullah replies “God willing, I will join the Taliban.”

In what some ways represents the burgeoning civil war within Pakistan, Wasifullah’s best friend Abdurrahman believes it’s the Taliban who are responsible for the destruction.

When asked what he believes the future hold for him, Abdurrahman replies he’d like “to be a Captain … in the Pakistani Army and kill all the terrorists in Pakistan.”

When confronted with the notion of the two boys meeting in battle, Obaid-Chinoyinquires whether each youngster would be willing to take the life of his best friend.

“Yes,” replies Abdurrahman, the future captain of the Pakistani Army. “If [Wasifullah] is attacking the army, I will retaliate fiercely.”

“Definitely,” counters Wasifullah, the prospective Taliban militant. “If [Abdurrahman] does wrong, I will fight him.”

Displaced, discontented and disconcerted, Wasifullah and Abdurrahman are eager to take up arms and fight against those whom they perceive to be the cause of the growing strife within Pakistan.

Which side of the fight each boy finds himself on, however, largely depends on which side of the battle is first to recruit him.

Looking South to Karachi, the largest city in Pakistan, where the slums have become “a recruiting ground for the next generation of Taliban fighters,” it’s easy to see what becomes of boys like Wasifullah and Abdurrahman.

With nowhere else to go, impoverished children are invited to study at talibanized madrassas. They receive free food and shelter in exchange for their unwavering commitment to learning a bastardized interpretation of the Koran – spending hours rocking back and forth ‘reading’ from a book “written in Arabic, a language they don’t understand.”

It is here they are indoctrinated with the teachings of the Taliban, and of Sharia Law.

“Women are meant for domestic care, and that’s what they should do,” explains Shaheed, a 14 year old madrassa student whose name literally translates as ‘martyr’.

“Sharia Law says it, so why are women wandering around? The government should forbid women and girls from wandering around outside. Just like the government banned plastic bags – no one uses them anymore – we should do the same with women.”

When asked by Obaid-Chinoy what he’ll do after he graduates, Shaheed says he’ll join the Taliban and fully intends to “support them in their war.”

Taking it one step further, Shaheed says he’d ‘love to’ become a suicide bomber, “[because] when I look at suicide bombers younger than me, or my age, I get so inspired by their terrific attacks.”

This sentiment is echoed by Shaheed’s teacher, who jovially tells the Frontlinereporter that war is “in our blood.”

“No matter how many Muslims die, we will never run out of sacrificial lambs [children] … [who] consider this an opportunity to achieve martyrdom. Someone who sees death as a blessing — who can defeat him?”

Qari Abdullah is the Taliban leader personally responsible for recruiting children to carry out suicide bombing operations. Abdullah was himself educated in a radicalized madrassa, and as a child was recruited to fight in Afghanistan.

Explaining in detail how he grooms children – some as young as 5 years of age – for a future with the Taliban, Abdullah tells Obaid-Chinoy:

“The kids want to join us because they like our weapons. They don’t use weapons to begin with, they just carry them for us – and off we go. They follow us because they’re just small kids.”

When asked if he thinks it’s wrong to use children for suicide attacks, Abdullah doesn’t flinch.

“If you are fighting, then God provides you with the means. Children are tools to achieve Gods will, and whatever comes your way, you sacrifice it. So it’s fine”

Youngsters who’ve been ‘sacrificed’ often appear in Taliban recruitment videos; Their loyalties are showcased, their final deeds glorified, their pledge to martyrdom chanted in a disturbing lullaby:

“If you try to find me / after I have died / you will never find my whole body. / You will find me in tiny little pieces.“

Three boys featured in a Taliban propaganda video are Zenola, Sadic, and Mehsud; all three recruits became child suicide bombers who killed six, twenty-two, and twenty-eight respectively.

Wasifullah, Abdurrahman, Shaheed, Zenola, Sadic, and Mehsud – these are The Children of the Taliban: Youngsters who are impoverished from birth, displaced by war, plucked from obscurity, indoctrinated by militants, and ultimately, recruited for terrorism.

They are brought up to believe they’ll be carrying out Gods will; that martyrdom will deliver them eternal salvation.

The indoctrination and recruitment of the Children of the Taliban, in many ways, mirrors the indoctrination and recruitment of Omar Khadr – the Child of Al-Qaeda.

Khadr, a Canadian citizen who, at 15 years of age, was seized by U.S. forces in Afghanistan following an intense firefight, was by every definition a child soldier.

Indoctrinated by his father Ahmed Said Khadr, a senior member of Al-Qaeda, and raised along side the Bin Laden family, Khadr was quite literally Al-Qaeda’s child; a “sacrificial lamb;” a “tool to achieve God’s will.”

Following his capture, however, Khadr became a tool to achieve the Bush Administration’s will; a sacrificial lamb for the Bush/Cheney ‘War on Terror.’

In a 2010 episode of Doc Zone entitled The U.S. vs Omar Khadr, CBC documents the questionable case against, and unjust prosecution of, Khadr; a situation Senator Roméo Dallaire (Lieutenant General, Ret’d) warned of three years earlier:

“Canadians must realize by now that the [Harper] government’s cynicism toward Omar Khadr’s tragic predicament reflects an unacceptable moral position. We are permitting the United States to try a Canadian child soldier using a military tribunal whose procedures violate basic principles of justice [...]

In recent years, we have heard troubling facts about Guantanamo Bay and incontrovertible evidence of U.S. malfeasance.

In July, 2006, the United Nations called for the closure of Guantanamo Bay, terming the indefinite detention of individuals without a charge “a violation of the convention against torture.” Two months later, more than 600 U.S. legal scholars and jurists called on Congress not to enact the Military Commissions Act of 2006, as it would rob detainees of fundamental protections provided by domestic and international law.

This act allows prosecutors to use evidence gleaned from abusive interrogations, including coercion and torture. The commissions also sabotage individuals’ ability to defend themselves by barring access to exculpatory evidence known to the U.S. government. In Mr. Khadr’s case, documents to be used as evidence for war-crimes charges, laid in February, 2007, have been altered.“

Furthermore, Dallaire detailed the global ramifications of prosecuting Khadr, a child soldier, as an adult:

“Within the international community, Canada is viewed as gullible for allowing one its citizens to be processed by an illegal tribunal system at Guantanamo, and as hypocritical for quietly acceding to the first ever child-soldier war-crimes prosecution.

Canada’s inaction has profound ramifications. The UN Special Representative for Children in Armed Conflict, Radhika Coomaraswamy, says Khadr’s prosecution sets a hazardous precedent in international law, which will endanger child soldiers in conflict zones. The impunity enjoyed by the real criminals – those who have recruited child soldiers – continues to the detriment of real victims: the thousands of child soldiers around the world.“

Militants throughout Afghanistan and Pakistan are recruiting child soldiers at record pace, using them to monitor the movement of NATO forces to ensure the insurgents’ attacks have maximum impact; Relegating to them the risky assignment of assembling and planting IED’s and land-mines; Arming them with high-tech weaponry and sending them into battle.

As the NATO mission in Afghanistan extends to 2014 and beyond, it’s only a matter of time before soldiers are faced with another ‘Omar Khadr;’ a child in the heart of the battle fighting alongside the either the Taliban or Al-Qaeda.

When that time comes, what will NATO’s response be? Will soldiers turn a blind eye to the thousands of youngsters planting IED’s and land-mines? Will child soldiers who engage in armed combat simply be slaughtered alongside those who recruited them? If apprehended, will adolescents follow the precedent set by the Khadr prosecution, and be arrested, tried, and convicted of war crimes?

It’s time for NATO to live up to it’s international obligations and adhere to the UN Optional Protocol to the Convention on the Rights of the Child, and “[recognize] the special needs of those children who are particularly vulnerable to recruitment or use in hostilities … [and] of the need [for] the physical and psychosocial rehabilitation and social reintegration of children who are victims of armed conflict.”

NATO cannot expect to achieve any lasting progress against either the Taliban or Al-Qaeda unless they’re fully prepared to focus, not on the prosecution, but the treatment and rehabilitation of the youngest generation of militant recruits.

Because ultimately, it’s with this generation of children in the Middle East on which the future stability of the entire region rests.

–

I highly encourage you to watch the entire Frontline documentary - Children of the Taliban

FRONTLINE/World editors: To protect certain people whose participation in the film may make them the target of threats, we made a decision to block access to the video in Pakistan.

 

Sec.Def. Gates Walks-Out of OAS Conference After Confrontation With Bolivian President Evo Morales

Tension in the stars between the U.S. and Bolivia

• by  Gianni Tarquini

Evo Morales

The Secretary of Defense of the United States abandons the work of the ninth Conference of Defense OAS after harsh attacks from the President of Bolivia Evo Morales has called his state and imperialist coup

ROME – The Conference of Defense Ministers of the Americas has been historically the place where born U.S. hegemony agreements for joint exercises, training for armies and police forces of the weaker nations, deployment of troops, the establishment of military bases , donation and purchase of weapons and vehicles. The ninth is being held in Santa Cruz in Bolivia, 22 to 25 November with the participation of representatives of 30 countries, and, in the wake of the autonomy gained in recent years by the progressive governments of the continent, the summit was the script, On this occasion, distorted and adds another piece to the difficulties in the United States.

The protagonists were the landlord, Evo Morales Ayma, Indian President of Bolivia and the U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates.
On the opening day of the Bolivian president has called the United States "a state coup" and imperialist, indicated as a supporter of the coup in Honduras in 2009 and those of 2002 in Venezuela and Ecuador in 2010. He recalled that in September 2008, the U.S. Ambassador to Bolivia, Philip Goldberg, had organized an anti-democratic coup civic leaning to the prefects in the eastern regions of his country to oust the elected government of the MAS (Movement Toward Socialism). In this round, Bolivia had the strength and dignity to expel Goldberg as a conspirator.
"The peace in the continent is at stake – has weighed in Morales – until the U.S. government will not cease to intervene with the aim of destabilizing the countries of the region."
The representative of Barack Obama responded to attacks leave the conference, after hearing, impassively, the speech by President of Bolivia. The U.S. Embassy also issued a statement in which he expressed his regret at the way that "Bolivia has missed an opportunity to make progress in key business that you are dealing with in the Conference, such as peace and confidence in the region , democracy, the armed forces and regional security, natural disasters. "

Before the work of the summit, Gates pointed to the dangers lurking for the continent as a result of the treaties that many countries are building with Iran (among these is Bolivia) Recalling the resolutions of the Security Council United Nations Convention against nuclear proliferation to which Iran would not assume. He also added his concerns regarding the increase of drug trafficking in the Andean zone.
Morales has taken these arguments supporting the right to negotiate with all countries of the world, without the "prohibitions" and without "democracies agreed" establishing "in developing countries holders of dignity and sovereignty", also recalled the persecution personally when he was executive producer of coca leaf (allowed and consumed by most of the population in Bolivia) in Cochabamba, where he worked the DEA (Drug Enforcemet Agency) U.S. with great freedom and that, under the pretext of combating drug trafficking, often acted with the purpose of political persecution. In those years, Morales was called the Andean Bin Laden.
The President of Bolivia has finally declared that during his mandate, his country no longer receive military training, they will participate in joint operations with the School of the Americas, directed by U.S. forces.

Santa Cruz Metro in bringing about the ninth Conference of Defence Ministers of the OAS (Organization of American States) in the U.S. Congress is holding the international seminar "Danger in the Andes: threats to democracy, human rights and security of the Inter- ", a sort of summit dell’ultradestra the continent. Participants include: Bolivians Sanchez de Losada Berzaìn Villas and Manfred Reyes, a former President of the Republic’s first Mayor and Prefect of Cochabamba and the second, driven by popular movements and now exiles sought by justice, Guillermo Zuloaga, a fugitive from Venezuelan justice and Globovision president, Otto Reich, left for Latin America of the government of George Bush, U.S. Congresswoman Ileana Ross Lehtinen especially supporter of Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban terrorist blown with Venezuelan citizenship, a former CIA agent.

Something is happening? The freedom won by many Latin American countries can lead to imprudent responses to stories that show the continent experienced any? What will be the position of Barack Obama? What is certain is that the recent victory of Dilma Roussef, and a new heir to President Lula of Brazil, the wind of change and consolidate the forces of the continent and aggregators also force the transnational economic powers and their hegemonic aims to act with greater caution and to deal with the new powerful Brazil and the new South American free states.

DeLay found guilty of two felonies

DeLay found guilty of two felonies, posted with vodpod

Pak Army has allowed US military presence in Quetta: Pentagon report

Afghanistan News.Net
Thursday 25th November, 2010 (ANI)

Pakistan has allowed the United States military and its coalition partners in Afghanistan to maintain a presence in Quetta, Balochistan, the US Department of Defence told Congress in a report.
"Pakistan Army General Headquarters recently approved an ODRP and Coalition presence at the PAKMIL 12 Corps HQ in Quetta, Balochistan," the Pentagon said in its report on the ‘Progress Toward Security and Stability in Afghanistan’.
It said that while the US government "recognizes the tremendous effort continuous PAKMIL operations represent for the Pakistan Government, insurgent safe havens along the border will remain the primary problem to achieving a secure and stable Afghanistan."
"One initiative toward this end is increasing the cooperation between Afghanistan, ISAF, and Pakistan Forces along the border to provide a more comprehensive approach to eradicating the insurgency," it added.
The report said that overall, US relations with the PAKMIL have improved. "There have been many positive steps taken to dismantle extremist networks and deny terrorists safe havens in Pakistan. There is still much work to be done, but there is a positive trend line toward achieving the overall strategic goals," it maintained.
The report also took notice of the importance of India’s role in Afghanistan, saying, "India’s presence in Afghanistan cannot be understood without considering the tense, fragile relationship between Pakistan and India. In the beginning of the reporting period, April 26-27, President Karzai visited New Delhi. The visit was seen as successful from both sides, with India reaffirming its commitment to Afghanistan as a reliable partner."
"India continues to be one of Afghanistan’s largest assistance donors, providing 1.3 billion USD funding for major infrastructure projects like power transmission, power lines, roads, etc. Work on the Salma hydroelectric dam in Herat Province continues.
In addition, India provides agriculture assistance and has increased access to degree scholarships and training programs," it added.
The report declared that the long-term stability and security of Afghanistan was intertwined in the dynamics of the region and the continuing influence, both positive and negative, of Afghanistan’s neighbours. (ANI)

Erdogan: We Won’t Remain Silent to Any Israeli Attack on Lebanon

Visiting Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan vowed on Thursday not to stand idle during any future Israeli attack on Lebanon or Gaza.
"You are asking us to remain silent while you enter Lebanon with the most advanced tanks and destroy schools and hospitals," Erdogan said about Israel.
He made his comment during a speech at the Annual Arab Banking Conference in Beirut.
Turkey’s only objective in the region is peace and stability, Erdogan said.
His speech came ahead of a trip to south Lebanon to visit Turkish troops serving with UNIFIL and inaugurate a Turkish-funded medical center that specializes in treating burn victims in Sidon.

The TSA, the CIA and the hidden truth about the Christmas bomber

Joseph Cannon

Many opinion pieces have linked the TSA outrages to last year’s “Christmas bomber” incident, which remains a very mysterious affair. This timeline is of use:

* In 2008, former U.S. Department of Homeland Security secretary Michael Chertoff authored a 38 page report warning of terrorists exploiting our security deficiencies – including air travel.

* On Christmas Day 2009, just before the “attempted bombing incident” on board flight 253, there were a total of 40 body scanners in use in 19 airports in the U.S.

* On Christmas Day 2009, numerous witnesses watched while Abdulmutallab, the supposed ‘terrorist’ was escorted TO the plane by several men in suits.

* After the ‘bombing attempt’ Chertoff made a flurry of media appearances suggesting that the “attempted bombing incident” could have been avoided if all airports were using full body scanners.

* The Washington Post printed an article on January 1, 2010, calling Chertoff out for using his government credentials to promote a product that benefits his clients. It was revealed that Rapiscan Systems, the manufacturer of the naked body scanner Chertoff was recommending, was a client of Chertoff’s security consulting agency.

* Rapiscan has since received over $250 million in scanner orders.

Hard Times Turn Single-Family Homes Into Familial Communes

More families find three generations living under the same roof

http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10329/1105985-28.stm

By Tim Grant, Pittsburgh Post-Gazette

United Feature Syndicate

An illustration of Ed Stein, author/illustrator of the comic strip “Freshly Squeezed.”

Families are coming back together in ways this nation has not seen in 50 years.

Multiple generations of the same family are finding themselves living under one roof, as children take longer to leave home, grandparents care for grandchildren and adult children help care for their aging parents.

Since bottoming out around 1980, the trend has risen to a 50-year high point because of more people in need of help after losing jobs, filing for bankruptcy, facing foreclosure or having their savings wiped out in the stock market.

As of 2008, a record 49 million Americans, or 16.1 percent of the total U.S. population, lived in a family household that contained at least two adult generations or a grandparent and at least one other generation, according to a recent Pew Research Center analysis of Census data.

Those numbers are believed to be even higher today.

“This is a trend we will see increase in the immediate future,” said Jeff Passel, a senior demographer at the Pew Research Center in Washington, D.C., and leading author of the multigenerational family study.

In the past, it was fairly common for multiple generations to share the same roof.

The fictitious Walton family had three generations living together in the hit 1970s TV series set in the Virginia mountains during the Great Depression. Even so, there were only 32 million multigenerational families in the 1940s compared with nearly 50 million today.

Even the White House now qualifies as a multigenerational household with the president, first lady, their two daughters and girls’ grandmother sharing the family living quarters.

The trend has found its way into the newspaper funny pages.

Cartoonist Ed Stein brings a modern twist to the comics page with his strip, “Freshly Squeezed,” which looks at family togetherness after the economic collapse.

In the new strip — which is running in the Post-Gazette through this week on a test basis — Liz and Sam have it all: a happy marriage, a precocious preteen son and a house that’s just the right size for the three of them. But when Liz’s parents lose their retirement savings in the economic collapse, they’re forced to move in with their grown children and grandchild.

The strip, launched in September, is based on Mr. Stein’s own experience 20 years ago when his mother died and his then 80-year-old father decided to move in with him while he and his wife raised toddlers.

“It’s not easy to try to balance a life where three generations are living under the same roof,” said Mr. Stein, who lives in Denver. “I wanted to design a comic strip that touched the emotional reality of what people are experiencing.

“I hope it is emotionally honest about the issues that come up,” he said.

Older adults, however, are not the age group most responsible for the overall rising trend. That distinction belongs to young adults ages 25 to 34 who have boomeranged back to live with their parents after being on their own.

Just 11 percent of young adults in this age group lived in multigenerational family households in 1980. By 2008, 20 percent did, according to Pew researchers.

“If there is a positive to this trend, it’s that people and families realize we are interdependent and need each other,” said Donna Butts, executive director of Generations United in Washington, D.C.

“Multigenerational family living is our roots. We will see a larger population of American families living in multigenerational households in the foreseeable future,” she said, adding that even divorced people are cohabitating with ex-spouses now because they can’t afford to move out.

The multigenerational household trend is a fact of life here as well as across the country.

More often these days, when families in the Pittsburgh area shop for new homes, they want more than anything else extra bedrooms and more living space to accommodate more family members.

“It’s as if they know it’s going to happen, and they want to plan ahead,” said Robbins Bobbitt, an agent with Howard Hanna Real Estate. “Some of it might be due to the economy, and some of it is due to families pulling together to take care of each other.”

She said many clients were asking for flexible space such as a gameroom that could do double duty, a first-floor office that could be converted to a bedroom, a first-floor master bedroom or a basement apartment.

Circumstances vary in each case. Grown children are moving back into their old rooms. Families are taking in Grandma and Grandpa. Down-and-out brothers and sisters need a chance to get back on their feet, and even out-of-work aunts and uncles are looking for a place to crash until the economy recovers.

These family reunions are not always happy occasions.

This week, a Hempfield man admitted to police that he shot his wife in the shoulder while they were arguing over a relative moving in. The 63-year-old man fetched a loaded .357-caliber Magnum from a cupboard and pointed it at his 58-year-old wife. He claimed he wanted only to scare her and that the shooting was an accident.

Multigenerational living arrangements work best when families come back together by choice, such as when elder parents move in to help care for a child, or so grown children can care for their own parents without traveling outside the home.

“They realize a richness in past family traditions and culture being passed to younger generations,” Ms. Butts said.

The living arrangements are not always as positive when prompted by stressful circumstances.

Several families in the Pittsburgh area who live in multigenerational housing conditions declined to be interviewed for this report due to the embarrassment some family members felt regarding the economic reasons that forced them to move in with relatives.

There was a time when multiple generations living under the same roof was as normal as horse-drawn buggies. In 1940, about 25 percent of the population lived in a household with more than one generation.

But the extended family household fell out of favor in this country right after World War II when the suburbs developed and single-family homes proliferated.

By 1960, Pew researchers say, 15 percent of households in this country were multigenerational families. The number continued to drop until it hit its lowest level of 12.1 percent in 1980. From there, it’s been inching back up.

“The reversal has taken place among all major demographic groups, and it, too, appears to be the result of a mix of social and economic forces,” the Pew report said.

One factor, according to Pew researchers, has been a wave of immigration dominated by Latin Americans and Asians that began around the 1970s. These immigrants are more inclined to live in multigenerational households to establish themselves after arriving here.

But the trend accelerated among native-born Americans in recent years as the Great Recession took center stage. The Pew research showed that in 2008, 2.6 million more Americans were living in such a household than in 2007.

Census data shows Hawaii has the largest percentage of multigenerational family households because of the high cost of housing there and because it is a more culturally acceptable way of life.

Tim Grant: tgrant@post-gazette.com or 412-263-1591.

Read more: http://www.post-gazette.com/pg/10329/1105985-28.stm#ixzz16Huq9YrW

The Dirt on Yair Klein In Columbia/Antigua/Honduras/Guatemala/Costa Rica

The Quest for Security in the Caribbean: Problems and Promises in Caribbean

By Ivelaw Lloyd Griffith

http://books.google.com/books?id=vpsXKLynSCgC&pg=PA261&lpg=PA261&dq=Vere+Bird+Jr.,+Lt.+Col.+Clyde+Walker,&source=bl&ots=d3KpfiDsov&sig=clJssa-6K8Wkf7FkEuwAu5fpRnA&hl=en&ei=o63tTPmHOIOClAfb5PSMAQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=3&ved=0CDQQ6AEwAg#v=onepage&q&f=false

Drooling Body Scanner Technician Caught Masturbating While High School Girls Waited In Line

Body Scanner Operator Caught Masturbating at Colorado Airport

[Cache link from Twelfth Bough, thanks to malcontent ]

August 4th, 2010

by Hugh Muzzbe

Not only do the new airport body scanners take risque pictures but according to the U.S. Marshals Service, the images in their thousands are being saved on hard disks.

DENVER – USA – A full body scanner operator was caught masturbating during a scanning session by airport staff late Tuesday.

Airport officials at Denver International airport were on high alert yesterday when a full body scanner operator was caught masturbating in his booth as a team of High School netball players went through the scanner.
"The young ladies were going through the scanner one by one, and every time one went through, this guys face was getting redder and redder. His hand was moving and then he started sweating. He was then seen doing his ‘O’ face. That’s when the security dragged him out of his booth and cuffed him. He had his pants round his ankles and everybody was really disgusted," Jeb Rather, a passenger on a flight to New York told CBS news.
The controversial scanners display every minute detail of a person’s body and have been called intrusive by privacy campaigners. Body scanners penetrate clothing to provide a highly detailed image so accurate that critics have likened it to a virtual porn shoot. Technologies vary, with millimeter wave systems capturing highly detailed pictures of genitals, and backscatter X-ray machines able to show precise anatomical detail. The U.S. government likes the idea because body scanners can detect concealed weapons better than traditional magnetometers.
"What do you want to do, get blown up by a goddamn Arab at 30,000 feet or we get to see your private parts? It’s up to you, the ball’s in your park," head of the TSA’s scanning department, Rodney Schroeder, told CNN.

TIP OF THE SPEAR

by SIMON BLACK

November 23, 2010
Sydney, New South Wales, Australia

Military tacticians and historians often make use of the term ‘tip of the spear.’ It refers to a combat force that is used to puncture the enemy’s initial lines of defense, to be quickly followed by concentrated forces which destroy any remaining threat.

Tactically, the tip of the spear is a bit of a blitzkrieg– an unexpected onslaught of firepower and destruction that takes the enemy by surprise, scatters his resources, and fractures his morale.

I’m convinced that what we’re seeing right now from the US Transportation Security Administration (TSA) is the tip of the spear in the government’s battle for increased control of the public.

The groundwork has been laid for years– legislation empowering the TSA has gradually eroded civil liberties to the point that airports in the United States have now become ‘no rights’ zones. “Please remove your shoes” has now become “Take out your prosthetic breast so I can check it for explosives.”

Passengers who show up to an airport in the United States are now given two options: (a) go through the radiation bath [don't worry, the government says it's safe...] and let the TSA see you naked, or (b) let the TSA thugs grope you and fondle your children’s genitals.

This is not enhanced security protocol, this is a systematic desensitization to government intrusion. The idea is to get people used to new procedures, then continue to add more layers of government control.

Certainly, people will complain. They will be outraged… YouTube videos will abound of TSA agents stroking women’s breasts and disrobing 5-year old boys. The government will hold firm, though, responding that the tactics are necessary and that they will ‘look into’ egregious violations.

To be clear, some of the tactics are designed to be scaled back as concessions. It’s like turning up the volume from 0 to 10… everyone starts screaming that it’s too loud, so the government turns it down to 8. People think, “ah, that’s not as bad…” and eventually become accustomed to the noise.

In time, the government turns it up from 8 to 20. People pour into the streets again, protesting until the government turns it down from 20 to 15. People once again become accustomed to the noise as the new normal. This cycle escalates until no one can remember the sound of silence any longer.

It’s fairly easy to do– there will always be politicians and bureaucrats who can invent stories about innocuous white powders and men in caves that scare the daylights out of people.

Similarly, there will always be long lists of sociopaths, perverts, and pedophiles who are attracted to a job description that authorizes them to grope, fondle, humiliate, and intimidate others.

And of course, there will always be spineless nincompoops who stand by without protest as their wives and children get violated by government agents… and then rationalize their inaction as a necessary sacrifice for safety.

When I was in Bali the other day, I was flipping through channels on the TV and saw Mike Huckabee interviewing Whoopi Goldberg on FoxNews. “Now there’s a couple of intellectual luminaries,” I thought to myself. Whoopi wasted no time in summing up her intellect when she had this to say of the TSA’s tactics:

“… if it’s going to keep me from getting blown out of the sky, you can check anything you want; and if you feel something you like and squeeze it… what am I going to do? [acknowledging laughter from Huckabee]”

This coming from a woman who used to be a prostitute speaking to a man who thinks the earth is 5,000 years old.

The fact is that body scanners are as ineffective at threat detection as metal detectors. Furthermore, the government has ruled out the idea of scanning air or seaborne cargo… because, clearly, cargo would never be a target. The little old lady with the prosthetic hip? Definitely. Cargo? No chance.

These tactics are not about security… they’re about submission, obedience, and cultivating the slave mentality– that people should be afraid of their government and happily yield to authority without question or hesitation.

To be fair, it’s not just in the US; I woke up this morning to a front page photo in the Wall Street Journal of a machine gun toting policeman in Germany cruising a passenger train because of some hackneyed terror threat. Much of the world is living in a similar state.

This is the tip of the spear, and what comes next can only be worse. I don’t say this to stir emotion or create a sense of panic, but rather to appeal to reason:

The threat is very clear– we need not fear men in caves or silly powders, but rather the malignant intentions of our governments and the perverse men who are attracted to its works. If these aren’t the clearest signs of a police state, I don’t know what else could be.

I’m really interested to hear from you about this– what have you experienced during recent travels? Are these offenses -finally- enough to make you consider leaving? If not, where is the limit?

Does This Mexican Compound House Tons of U.S. Spies?

[Spencer identifies the building at 265 Paseo de la Reforma as a compound; it looks more like a modern high-rise to me, complete with an enormous helicopter landing pad on the roof.  From Google “street view,” the street address is clearly seen on the front of this gigantic, super-secret lawman’s nest, which the CIA and the Pentagon both claim doesn’t exist.  Reminds me of the super-embassies that the State Dept. is throwing-up all over the world.]

• By Spencer Ackerman

Located just down the street from the U.S. embassy in Mexico City, this unassuming compound might house a smorgasbord of U.S. government agencies, devoted to spying on drug cartels, crime syndicates the Mexican security services and anyone else its inhabitants feel like. But Pentagon says the truth is much more boring.

In a recent story for Mexico’s Proceso, Jorge Carrasco A. and J. Jesús Esquivel introduced the world to the Office of Bi-National Intelligence, supposedly a joint U.S.-Mexico spy apparatus that isn’t so Bi in practice.

Located at 265 Paseo de la Reforma, the “super spy center” is home to (deep breath) the CIA; the FBI; the Department of Homeland Security; the Treasury; the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms; the National Reconnaissance Office, the NSA; the Defense Intelligence Agency; and the Drug Enforcement Agency. Not evidently included: Mexican agencies.

That might be because Mexican Presidents Vicente Fox and Felipe Calderon authorized and stood up the office “without taking into account any objections from the Mexican military,” according to the Procesopiece, and allowed it to “spy on Mexican government agencies, including the Secretariat of National Defense, Navy, and the diplomatic missions in Mexico.”

The U.S. government says it’s doing nothing of the sort. Representatives from the Pentagon and the CIA say there is no Office of Bi-National Intelligence.

A Pentagon spokesman, Lieutenant Colonel Robert Ditchey, says the compound is actually called the Bilateral Implementation Office for the Merida Initiative, a two-year old multimillion-dollar program providing U.S. aid to train Latin American law enforcement entities. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton announced its establishment in March 2009 during a Mexico City presser, and it opened its doors this past August 31.

“We have space within the office to use when we visit and attend coordination meetings,” Ditchey says, “however, we do not have personnel assigned there at this time.”

We’re told by a different government agency — cough — there aren’t any spies at the compound. Um, OK. But there appears to be information being exchanged at the facility. When announcing it, Clinton pledged that the Merida Initiative would “use every tool at our current disposal through administrative actions to track illegal guns, to arrest and punish those who are trafficking in illegal guns, to share more information with the Mexican Government so that they can also track and seize these guns.”

Since the establishment of Merida, the United States has become involved in Latin American efforts to stop the flow of drugs and guns to the tune of $1.3 billion. Roberta Jacobson, a senior State Department official for Latin American affairs, bragged in April about seizing “record amounts of drugs” from the cartels and “strengthening institutions, working with the Mexican government on the expansion of their national police.”

The United States has also provided Mexico with five Bell 412 Enhanced Performance helicopters for tracking and harassing the drug dealers — which has alarmed some in Mexico as a measure to even further militarize the increasingly violent struggle with the cartels.

And that’s what really concerns the Proceso writers. As the U.S. military increases its training efforts in Mexico, they write, “the Pentagon has brought counter-insurgency and counter-terrorism expertise from Iraq and Afghanistan to their offices in central Mexico.” Indeed, Robert Killebrew, a retired Army colonel now at the Center for a New American Security, argues that the best way to understand the rise in cartel violence across the Americas is through the prism of insurgency.

But Defense Secretary Robert Gates has been careful to avoid such characterizations. “In terms of helping Mexico, we’re prepared to help the Mexicans insofar as they want our help. They are a sovereign state,” he said in Bolivia yesterday. I would say that our military relationship is probably better now than it has been ever. But there are still obvious sensitivities in Mexico and we have to be attentive to those.”

Still, should the United States ratchet up its aid to Mexico — or move firmly into spycraft down there — 265 Paseo de la Reforma is likely to be where it’s coordinated.

Image: GoogleMaps

Relatives of Chabad Victims on 26/11: Obtain U.S. court summons for ISI chief Pasha, and Terrorist Saeed

26/11: U.S. court summons ISI chief, Saeed

PTI

A U.S. court has issued summons to senior Inter-Services Intelligence officials including its powerful chief Maj. Gen. Ahmed Shuja Pasha, along with Mumbai attack masterminds and Lashkar-e-Taiba leaders Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi in response to a lawsuit filed by relatives of two American victims accusing them of providing material support for the 26/11 attacks.

The 26-page lawsuit was filed before a New York Court on November 19 against the ISI and LeT by the relatives Rabbi Gavriel Noah Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who were both gunned down by militants at the Chhabad House in Mumbai. Their son Moshe was saved by his Indian nanny.

The 26-page lawsuit accusing the ISI of aiding and abetting the LeT in the killing of more than 160 people was filed before a New York Court on November 19, following which the Brooklyn court issued summons to Major Samir Ali, Azam Cheema, the ISI, Major Iqbal, Lakhvi, LeT, Sajid Majid, Mr. Pasha, Saeed and Nadeem Taj.

“The ISI has long nurtured and used international terrorist groups, including the LeT, to accomplish its goals and has provided material support to the LeT and other international terrorist groups,” said the lawsuit filed by relatives of the slain Rabbi.

Mr. Pasha, who has been director general of the ISI since September 2008, has been summoned, so is Nadeem Taj, the director general of ISI from September 2007 to September 2008.

Major Iqbal and Major Samir Ali are other ISI officers who have been issued summons.

The one of its kind lawsuit also brings as defendants Lashkar operatives like operations commander Lakhvi, JuD chief Saeed, and Azam Cheema.

“The Mumbai terrorist attack was planned, trained for and carried out by members of defendant, the LeT. Defendant ISI provided critical planning, material support, control and coordination of the attacks,” the lawsuit alleges.

It accuses ISI officers Mr. Pasha, Mr. Taj, Maj. Iqbal and Major Ali of being purposefully engaged in the direct provision of material support or resources including weapons and explosives.

“On and prior to November 26, 2008, the ISI, Pasha, Taj, Iqbal and Ali (as well as other officials, agents and employees of the ISI) directed, engaged and/or relied upon the efforts of U.S.-based individuals, including but not limited to David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, for raising funds, building a network of connections, recruiting participants and planning the operation of the Mumbai terror attack,” the lawsuit claims.

Noting that the LeT still operates training camps in Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan, the petition said the group has openly advocated violence against India, Israel and the United States.

It names Muridke, Manshera and Muzaffarabad as centres of training camps operated by the LeT.

The 10 LeT members who undertook the on-the-ground Mumbai terrorist attack underwent extensive training in the LeT camps in Pakistan, the lawsuit alleged.

It also says that Pakistani American LeT operative David Headley, who has already pleaded guilty for his role in the plotting of the attack, built a network of connections from Chicago to Pakistan, undertaking these efforts at the direction and with the material support of both LeT and the ISI.

Prior to and following each trip to Mumbai, Headley reported to and received further instructions from both the LeT, including defendants Majid and Maj. Iqbal, and the ISI, it alleges.

“In September 2008, the 10 LeT attackers were moved to Karachi and installed in an ISI/LeT safe house and isolated from outside contact,” it said, adding that while staying in the Karachi safe house, they received specific instructions on Mumbai targets.

The safe house was part of the ISI’s “Karachi Project,” an initiative by which anti-Indian groups were tasked and supported by the ISI in a surreptitious fashion to engage in acts of international terrorism.

“During the period Headley communicated with and took directions from the ISI regarding the Mumbai plot, defendant Taj, as ISI’s Director-General, exerted full command and control over the ISI.

“During the final two months of training of the LeT attackers and throughout the attack, defendant Pasha exerted full command and control over the ISI,” it alleged.

During the Mumbai attacks, the lawsuit alleges defendant Majid along with other LeT men operated from a mission control room in Karachi, passing instructions and encouragement to the attackers via telephone.

“By reason of the foregoing, LeT, Saeed, Lakhvi, Cheema and Majid are each liable to each plaintiff, individually and as the personal representative and/or surviving family member of their decedents, for compensatory damages in excess of $75,000, such amount to be determined by a jury,” it said.

The “Legitimate Press” Almost Gets It On Afghanistan

[If you didn’t read past the second paragraph, the following would be interesting news.  As it is, the author then honors her Washington press credentials and blames our losing the Afghan war on everybody but us.  My point in posting it is the issue of fake “Taliban.”  Anytime the legitimate press raises this topic I feel that we should all join in.  The British creation of this fake Taliban negotiator, “Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansour” is just the British “Plan B” to their failed attempt to create the “fake Taliban” (SEE: What exactly were Mervyn Patterson and Michael Semple doing in Helmand?).  I guess that I shouldn’t consider Patterson and Semple’s efforts as “failures,” since they DID accomplish their objective by creating the fake “Taliban,” the Tehreek Taliban Pakistan (TTP).  They seem to be stuck on the name “Mansour,” since they used infamous Taliban warlord Mullah Dadullah’s little brother Mansour for their gambit in Wana, S. Waziristan (SEE: Dissecting the Anti-Pakistan Psyop).

The spooks have a tendency to reuse aliases and psy-ops over and over.  That makes it easier for us to spot the “anomalies” that they create in our Matrix world.

“A déjà vu is usually a glitch in the Matrix; it happens when they change something”—Trinity.]

The Great Game Imposter

By MAUREEN DOWD / NY times
And we wonder why we haven’t found Osama bin Laden.

 

 

 

 

 

 

Though we’re pouring billions into intelligence in Afghanistan, we can’t even tell the difference between a no-name faker and a senior member of the Taliban. The tragedy of Afghanistan has descended into farce. In the sort of scene that would have entertained millions if Billy Wilder had made a movie of Kipling’s “Kim,” it turns out that Afghan and NATO leaders have been negotiating for months with an imposter pretending to be a top Taliban commander — even as Gen. David Petraeus was assuring reporters that there were promising overtures to President Hamid Karzai from the Taliban about ending the war.
Those familiar with the greatest Afghan con yet say that the British had spent a year developing the fake Taliban leader as a source and, despite a heated debate and C.I.A. skepticism, General Petraeus was buying into it. The West was putting planes and assets at the poseur’s disposal, and paying him a sum in the low six figures.

Karachi: The underside of a scandal that has rocked the French Republic

Karachi: The underside of a scandal that has rocked the Republic

Le Nouvel Observateur is back this week on the political issue what has become the investigation into the attack in Karachi. After the declarations of Charles Million and those of Dominique de Villepin, the investigations of the judges have just taken a new turn. They highlight a war that tore the right.

• Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin (AFP)

The old ghosts have reappeared as devils in their box. Those cursed at the time of the Chirac-Balladur war, hatred annealed, the dirty tricks, large and small betrayals, which had plunged the French right in a suicidal battle. That was more than fifteen years. The 1995 presidential election. An eternity. Since, after the victory of Nicolas Sarkozy in 2007, both sides observed a peace army, believed to be final. In fact, nothing has been forgotten. It was enough of a spark. The case of the attack in Karachi, which killed eleven of our compatriots, May 8, 2002, refers to this major confrontation between Chirac’s and balladuriens, sarkozystes become today. And old scandals buried, and suffocated, emerge. Dominique de Villepin, Clearstream, the specter of war chest of Balladur, dirty money from arms sales, the alleged role of future President Sarkozy in gloomy stories of shell companies and retro-commissions. An explosive issue that follows the Elysee under the microscope. He reappears at a worse time for the President of the Republic comes out just the "sequence" catastrophic Woerth-Bettencourt. The tenant of the Elysee Palace, after six months of indecision, chose a reshuffle "light" and tasteless, but had one goal: resolder family around sarkozystes UMP and Chirac’s. The case of Karachi could be shattered this beautiful scenario. For, cruel irony of history: his key ministers today, Alain Juppe (see interview page …), Michele Alliot-Marie, Baroin, Bruno Lemaire, and some others, have all experienced the clashes. The opposite side. The first two, in varying degrees, have experienced very closely the record deal that judges and Trévidic Marc Renaud Van Ruymbeke.

ON THE SAME SUBJECT

• [INFO EX] Karachi: the opacity of the committees of the DCN pointed in a report
• Balladur campaign: mysterious money bags
• Karachi: For Giscard, it "is a list of rétrocommissions"
• Nicolas Sarkozy attacked the "media system"
• Juppe transmit documents to the judge but …

Brief history. 1993-1995, right Chirac lives with Francois Mitterrand. Edouard Balladur, Prime Minister, prancing in the polls, betraying the agreement with Jacques Chirac not to stand for election. He brings with him Nicolas Sarkozy, Francois Leotard, Charles Pasqua and a host of other ministers. The Chirac’s are a handful of faithful, irreducible described as "suicidal Grunts".Among them, Dominique de Villepin, Alain Juppe. Problem for Balladur: the "traitors" have failed to seize the RPR and can not qualify for funding a political party. In disasters, they are seeking funds. At the time, rumor has thinned the ranks of Chirac’s team that Balladur was thrown arms shortcuts on arms sales contracts, sector where huge commissions are paid, and where the opacity of transactions allows all manipulation. The prosecution is based?Anyway, in 1994, balladuriens are very active in this sector.

The three cases that gave rise to suspicions? The contract Agosta, concluded September 21, 1994, related to the sale to Pakistan by the Directorate of Naval Construction, three submarines equipped with high technology (5.4 billion). Sawari II contract, signed November 19, 1994, concerning the purchase by Saudi Arabia of three frigates Lafayette (19 billion francs). The third contract, called "Bravo" is the sale of six Lafayette frigates to Taiwan. It is initialed on the left, to 14.7 billion francs in 1991, then, to the surprise of experts, under the Balladur government, amounted to 16 billion francs.During this period a little agitated, many senior defense officials at the Directorate General of Armament, but also to the staff of the Navy, surprised the excess precipitation policies. And also the impromptu appearance of a multitude of intermediaries. Observers point out these anomalies. In vain. Suspicions of retro-commissions balladuriens are then practically an open secret. Must still prove it. Because, officially, these three contracts, supervised by Nicolas Sarkozy, then budget minister, and Francois Leotard, Minister of Defence, are validated properly. Commissions, legal until 2000, are declared to the Inland Revenue (see page document …). Nothing can detect a lump of dirty money in a box of party or candidate for President of the Republic. But suspicions remain.

Elected in 1995, Jacques Chirac blocked in July 1996, payments of commissions for all the questionable contracts. Dominique de Villepin, the then Secretary General of the Elysee, oversees this "purge". Charles Millon, Minister of Defence, is responsible for triggering internal investigations. Some plays are performed on employees of Francois Leotard and other logically with the green light from Alain Juppe, the Matignon. An investigation is launched at the Budget Department, which operated Nicolas Sarkozy (see document …). The DGSE is mobilized to try backtracking payment of commissions. The Secret Service, despite their infiltration systems data bank, their most successful hackers, stumbles on the identity of "corrupt" French, hidden behind a thicket of offshore companies, a myriad of nominees and company screen-based in tax havens.Finally, Jacques Chirac and Dominique de Villepin, a time forget their resentment against the "traitors", not without putting the sound files they have sulfur in the elbow against Sarkozy and his friends. "It is especially important to remember that in 1997, Jospin arrived at Matignon, said a former officer of the DGSE. The new cohabitation complicates the game because Chirac has more elbow room for further investigation. It is supervised. Especially since the left is itself involved in the issue of Taiwan frigates, with suspicions of corruption around Roland Dumas and Christine Deviers-Joncour, back then followed by Judge Eva Joly. As a result, the operation ‘Clean Hands’ is put to sleep … " Forget the three contracts that were threatening to blow up the Republic … The reason the State then carries the low political revenge.

Occurs when the attack in Karachi, May 8, 2002, where eleven employees of the Directorate of Naval Construction of Cherbourg in the death, Jacques Chirac has just been reelected. The shock was immense in the opinion. Soon, the leaders of the DCN are convinced that the tragedy is linked to the blocking of committees and that the trail of a revenge sponsored cheated by middlemen is most likely. In September 2002, one of their investigators, Claude Thevenet, a former officer of DST, a terrorism expert and the Muslim world, provides a report, called "Nautilus" incredibly accurate. "After numerous contacts, both in Europe and Pakistan," wrote the investigator, we reach the conclusion that the attack in Karachi on 8 May 2002 was carried out with complicity in the military and within offices to support Islamist guerrillas of the ISI (Pakistani Secret Service, Ed). The military figures who manipulated the Islamist group which has carried out the action pursued a financial goal. It was about getting the payment Fees not paid, and promised by the network El Asir when signing the contract in September 1994. The cancellation of these commissions was issued in 1995, following the political change in France, and sought to dry up the networks covert funding of the Association for the Reform of Édouard Balladur. "

Claude Thevenet has not worked alone. He was "coached" by Gerard Philippe Menai, CFO of the commercial arm of DCN, the man who oversees the network of intermediaries and payment of commissions. This specialist behind the scenes of world arms sales knows any dealings cheated by intermediaries since Operation Clean Hands "by Jacques Chirac. But revealing such information would cause an earthquake in the country. The report Nautilus he was sent to the Elysee, as seems logical? Dominique de Villepin said he had a copy in the fall of 2002? In any case, it is buried in the cellar of state secrets and is not sent to Judge Bruguiere following the trail of Al Qaeda. The scenario suits everyone. Despair and the families of victims. In 2008, their spokespersons, and Sandrine Leclerc Magali Drouet, decided to change lawyers and designate Me.Olivier Morice. Paris Bar, the lawyer, former rugby third center, contemporary art lover, has a reputation bomber and a maverick. This is great: to move this folder that gets stuck, it takes a man that is not afraid to "plunge into the fray." He hammered for months on the formula shock all media: "Sarkozy is at heart of corruption." The lawyer made the thundering seat of Judge Marc Trévidic, anti-terrorist judge known for his pugnacity and his composure. The first is hometown and lover of good wine. The second is built like a marathoner, dry and tireless. The two men discover the existence of the report Nautilus, thanks to a revelation of the weekly Le Point, December 4, 2008. Since then they searched the track in the middle of vengeance shortchanged without qualms. In May 2010, they are helped by the publication of a book written by two journalists from the site Mediapart, Ardi and Fabrice Fabrice Lhomme, "The Contract", published by Stock. The book is a goldmine for the magistrate, and a model of investigative journalism "American." The two investigators have recovered hundreds of documents, interviewed key players back, including Gerard Philippe and Claude Thevenet Menai. They also interviewed at length by a man never heard justice, key witness for the inquiry, the Comptroller General Porchia. This senior official of the Directorate General of Armament, which specializes in monitoring programs, investigated the case Agosta, from the summer of 1997, the beginning of the Chirac-Jospin cohabitation. It makes a "confidential defense" in March 1999. Its conclusions are unequivocal: we must institute criminal proceedings in the highest level, even in the entourage of Francois Leotard. Is this the report that prompted the former defense minister to quit politics?

In the process, the officer will investigate the contract Sawari 2. We find in fact the same network of intermediaries in the case Agosta, the network K, El Asir, and Ziad Ben Musalam Takieddine. Refusal of the authorities. The report Porchia, strangely, was never brought to justice. Marc J. calls Trévidic the past six months. Contrary to the assertions of the highest state authorities, to the Elysee, nothing has been done to facilitate the task of the magistrate. Instead … But Magali Drouet and Sandrine Leclerc did not intend it that way. They multiply media interventions. They have a grudge against Nicolas Sarkozy since he awkwardly responded to Brussels, a journalist from AFP’s questions on his role in the affair. "Who can believe such a fable? (…) Finally, if there is a robbery in Brussels today, I was …" (Laughter in room) The President drops a sly smile, pleased with his joke, then, including his blunder: "No, sorry, eh, I laugh at all, because Karachi is the grief of families and stuff like that … " (Video nouvelobs.com). Front of their television, families are appalled. With this President too casual, "rupture" is used.

Then comes the record another actor, Renaud Van Ruymbeke, appointed since October on the component ‘obstruction "and" corruption and abuse of social goods "in the investigation Karachi, alongside Marc Trévidic . For victims, the arrival of Renaud Van Ruymbeke is a blessing. For the Head of State, however … "Van Ruymbeke can be regarded as a personal enemy of Sarkozy, said an adviser. The President has not forgotten that this judge has officiated in the Clearstream affair and sought his smoky secret accounts. Van Ruymbeke is in revenge. On its political corruption, he came out through the door, he came back out the window … It is not clear that justice would be greatly enhanced … "In Within a few weeks, the judge many actions punches, claiming a search of the DGSE, recovers the tax investigations, collects records of Claude Thevenet and those of Jean-Marie Boivin, CEO Heine-off society Luxembourg shore responsible for ventilating the money committees of the three suspects contracts, Agosta, Sawari 2 and Bravo. This last contract, he knows by heart. He has investigated for years on dirty money from Taiwan frigates, which involved balladuriens networks, but also socialist. He hit consistently at the Secret-defense that led him to pronounce a place not in 2008. But this time, the case seems more solid.

That is indeed to update the judge? Jean-Marie Boivin, in September 2001, was commissioned by the French authorities to negotiate an arrangement with the intermediary Andrew Wang, Geneva, and once he had handed over the sum of 83 million francs against his silence and refund of the original contracts of all commissions for Taiwan frigates. Prudent, Boivin retained the document in his safe at UBS in Zurich. In the middle of intermediaries, such sprained blocking commissions by Jacques Chirac caused outrage and anger.DCN and some contacts with the Department of Defense are then threatened with retaliation. "The trail of a revenge cheated network, namely that of the Lebanese and Saudi Assir El Sheikh Ali bin Musalam, is more plausible, says a police officer in charge of the investigation. The two men were very close Pakistani intelligence services and Islamic terrorist networks. Musalam Ben Ali, who died in 2004, curiously, in unknown conditions, was known to fund the most radical movements in Pakistan. Was he the victim of a homo operation, execution, by the French at that time?

Other key information collected by the judges in the fall of 2004, surrounded by Clearstream affair, Boivin is ousted from all contracts for the DCN. Reason: it is feared that the money ventilated commissions, it filtered through a sub-account of the Clearstream bank (see note Gérard-Philippe Menai) is spotted and identified beneficiaries. Furious, Boivin threatens to reveal the contents of his trunk. He claims 8 million euros. The direction of the DCN refuses to pay, considering the exorbitant sum. Boivin wrote to Jacques Chirac and Nicolas Sarkozy. According to Boivin, emissaries of the latter would have visited October 26, 2006, threatening him if he did not keep his tongue and if he does not destroy the famous documents locked in his safe in Zurich (see page document) . Boivin, frightened, then decided to make an appointment with Me Claude Arnaud, friend and partner of Nicolas Sarkozy over twenty years. The latter firmly rebuffed. That have said the two men?

A few weeks later, against the opinion of management of the DCN, Boivin the blackmailer is successful. In January 2007, a Memorandum of Understanding is signed on the Isle of Man between DCN, Thales and the French state. Since then, Luxembourg has been muted. What state secrets he will reveal to the judge Renaud Van Ruymbeke when it wants to hear? With Judge Trévidic, the magistrate Financial much left to do.From fishing to documents first. Retrieve the deliberations of the Constitutional Council, which in 1995 had approved the accounts of Edouard Balladur against the advice of rapporteurs (see article by Olivier Tosca).Then, to consolidate all documents "Secret Defense" that Nicolas Sarkozy has suddenly promised to deliver to the magistrates, whose eavesdropping on DGSE clan Balladur. And so, irony of history, Nicolas Sarkozy himself had been tapped in 1995? The King of hearings is just beginning …

Serge Raffy

“Borg-man” To Watch His Own Back

The NYU Professor With a Third Eye

By Matthew Uhlmann

Ever have a teacher in grade school tell you they had eyes in the back of their head? A performance artist and professor at NYU’s Tisch School of The Arts implanted a camera in back of his head as an allegory for the things that we never see and leave behind.

Wafaa Bilal will wear a small camera in the back of his skull for an art project that will appear at the Arab Museum of Modern Art in Qatar, titled “The 3rd I.”

The camera is 2 inches wide and one inch thick. It will make Bilal look like a very low tech cyborg, and for a man of Middle Eastern descent, surely he’ll be completely screwed at allTSA security checkpoints. Other than a Turban or a Burqa, The only greater bullseye for a TSA agent is probably a piece of electronic equipment projecting from the body.

Airport security concerns aside, the art piece is one of several by the NYU professor that are not only controversial, but seemingly approachable, avoiding unnecessary abstraction. He tattooed a map of Iraq on his back for a piece titled “…And Counting”, with American deaths dotted in regular ink and Iraqi deaths dotted in UV ink, only detectable under blue light.

Not only is his work politically relevant, it is also a testament to his being something of a hard-ass.

Besides the tattoo piece, he did another in 2007 titled “Domestic Tension”. For the piece, viewers were allowed to shoot Bilal with paintballs over a 24 hour period. Soon after, the Chicago Tribune named him Artist of The Year.

In 2008, he designed a video game piece titled “Virtual Jihadi” that would eventually be censored from the city of Troy, NY. The game narrative involved him as the main character of a suicide bomber hunting former President Bush. Bilal said it was meant to point out the hateful stereotypes that are injected into modern video games like “Call of Duty” or “Quest For Saddam.”

The art piece will be unveiled on December 15th in Qatar, and it will also be streamed onBilal’s site. It may turn out to be less entertaining than a video game and less masochistic than a full body tattoo, but it will mark the first performance art piece by a man/machine hybrid.

The Birth of A.I.?

MoNETA: A Mind Made from Memristors

DARPA’s new memristor-based approach to AI consists of a chip that mimics how neurons process information

By MASSIMILIANO VERSACE, BEN CHANDLER 

 

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Illustration: Chad Hagen

Stop us if you’ve heard this one before: In the near future, we’ll be able to build machines that learn, reason, and even emote their way to solving problems, the way people do.

If you’ve ever been interested in artificial intelligence, you’ve seen that promise broken countless times. Way back in the 1960s, the relatively recent invention of the transistor prompted breathless predictions that machines would outsmart their human handlers within 20 years. Now, 50 years later, it seems the best we can do is automated tech support, intoned with a preternatural calm that may or may not send callers into a murderous rage.

So why should you believe us when we say we finally have the technology that will lead to a true artificial intelligence? Because of MoNETA, the brain on a chip. MoNETA (Modular Neural Exploring Traveling Agent) is the software we’re designing at Boston University’s department of cognitive and neural systems, which will run on a brain-inspired microprocessor under development at HP Labs in California. It will function according to the principles that distinguish us mammals most profoundly from our fast but witless machines. MoNETA (the goddess of memory—cute, huh?) will do things no computer ever has. It will perceive its surroundings, decide which information is useful, integrate that information into the emerging structure of its reality, and in some applications, formulate plans that will ensure its survival. In other words, MoNETA will be motivated by the same drives that motivate cockroaches, cats, and humans.

Researchers have suspected for decades that real artificial intelligence can’t be done on traditional hardware, with its rigid adherence to Boolean logic and vast separation between memory and processing. But that knowledge was of little use until about two years ago, when HP built a new class of electronic device called a memristor. Before the memristor, it would have been impossible to create something with the form factor of a brain, the low power requirements, and the instantaneous internal communications. Turns out that those three things are key to making anything that resembles the brain and thus can be trained and coaxed to behave like a brain. In this case, form is function, or more accurately, function is hopeless without form.

Basically, memristors are small enough, cheap enough, and efficient enough to fill the bill. Perhaps most important, they have key characteristics that resemble those of synapses. That’s why they will be a crucial enabler of an artificial intelligence worthy of the term.

The entity bankrolling the research that will yield this new artificial intelligence is theU.S. Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA). When work on the brain-inspired microprocessor is complete, MoNETA’s first starring role will likely be in the U.S. military, standing in for irreplaceable humans in scout vehicles searching for roadside bombs or navigating hostile terrain. But we don’t expect it to spend much time confined to a niche. Within five years, powerful, brainlike systems will run on cheap and widely available hardware.

How brainlike? We’re not sure. But we expect that the changes MoNETA will foment in the electronics industry over the next couple of decades will be astounding.

Artificial intelligence hasn’t stood still over the past half century, even if we never got the humanlike assistants that some thought we’d have by now. Computers diagnose patients over the Internet. High-end cars help keep you from straying out of your lane. Gmail’s Priority Inbox does a pretty decent job of prioritizing your e-mails.

But even the most helpful AI must be programmed explicitly to carry out its one specific task. What we want is a general-purpose intelligence that can be set loose on any problem; one that can adapt to a new environment without having to be retrained constantly; one that can tease the single significant morsel out of a gluttonous banquet of information the way we humans have evolved to do over millions of years.  (read HERE)

Suicide Bomber Strikes Shiite Procession in Yemen

Suicide bomber kills Shiites in Yemen

A suicide car bomber has killed 17 and wounded more than a dozen in Yemen after hitting a convoy of Shiites on their way to a religious ceremony, according to a security official.

Yemen is the ancestral homeland of al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden Photo: REUTERS

 

Authorities suspect that al-Qaida was behind Wednesday’s attack, which took place on a road in the al-Jawf province, more than 100 miles east of the capital, Sanaa, according to the official.

The official says those attacked were supporters of al-Hawthi Shiite rebels who have waged an on-and-off uprising against the government. He spoke on condition of anonymity because of the ongoing investigation.

If confirmed, it would be the first reported al-Qaida attack on Yemeni Shiites.

Explosion in north Yemen kills 12 rebels

By Mohammed Ghobari

SANAA (Reuters) – Twelve Shi’ite rebels were killed and 17 others wounded in north Yemen Wednesday when an explosion rocked a convoy of cars heading to a religious celebration, a spokesman for the rebel group said.

The spokesman said it was still unclear what caused the explosion, which took place in the northern Jawf province.

Yemen’s government has been trying to maintain a shaky truce with the Shi’ite Muslim rebels, who are known as Houthis after their leader Abdel Malek al-Houthi and complain of being marginalised by Sanaa.

A February cease-fire halted a war that has raged on and off since 2004 and displaced around 350,000 people.

Yemen, neighbour to top oil exporter Saudi Arabia, is under pressure from Riyadh and the United States to quell the conflict in the north and a separatist rebellion in the south, in order to combat a resurgent regional al Qaeda wing based in the country.

The northern truce has largely held despite sporadic clashes between Houthis and pro-government tribesmen.

The impoverished Arabian Peninsula state surged to the forefront of western security concerns after two U.S.-bound parcel bombs claimed by al Qaeda’s Yemen-based branch were intercepted in Britain and Dubai.

Around 30,000 Yemeni troops are currently deployed in the turbulent south, often a site of bloody clashes between Islamist and separatist militants and the state, in order to maintain security as it hosts a regional soccer tournament, the Gulf Cup.

(Writing by Erika Solomon; Editing by Jon Boyle and Noah Barkin)

Back In the Neo-Soviet Union

Kremlin going "Back in the USSR" for New Year’s Eve ball

Moscow – Aides to Russian President Dmitry Medvedev are planning a Soviet-themed New Year’s Eve ball complete with a lookalike of former Communist Party leader Leonid Brezhnev.

The Kremlin administration has asked for the equivalent of 16,000 dollars to stage the event, being held under the motto Back in the USSR, the government website said Tuesday.

Some 350 Kremlin staffers have been invited to the party, which will feature discomusic and is projected to go on until 5 am, with partiers dancing to tunes by Boney M and Modern Talking.

Another double, of Russian pop icon Alla Pugatshova, 61, is expected to put in an appearance. But the highlight will be the lookalike of Brezhnev: the real article having died in 1982.

Medvedev has often been critical of the Soviet era, calling the leadership of the period ‘totalitarian.’ His predecessor, Viktor Putin, said the collapse of the Soviet Union in 1991 was a ‘calamity.’

Iran-Nuke NIE—the Spooks Did Their Job

Iran-Nuke NIE Stopped Bush on War

By Ray McGovern

Why should George W. Bush have been “angry” to learn in late 2007 of the unanimous judgment of all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies that Iran had stopped working on a nuclear weapon four years earlier? Seems to me he might have said “Hot Dog!” rather than curse under his breath.

Nowhere in his memoir, Decision Points, is Bush’s bizarre relationship to truth so manifest as when he describes his dismay at learning that the intelligence community had redeemed itself for its lies about Iraq by preparing an honest Estimate that stuck a rod in the wheels of the juggernaut rolling toward war with Iran.

Nowhere is Bush’s abiding conviction clearer, now as then, that his role as “decider” included the ability to create his own reality.

The Fawning Corporate Media (FCM) has missed that part of the book. And hundreds of Dallas “sheriffs,” assembled to protect the decorum at the Bush library groundbreaking last week, kept us hoi polloi well out of presidential earshot.

But someone should ask Bush why he was not relieved, rather than angered, to learn from a National Intelligence Estimate that Iran had had no active nuclear weapons program since 2003. Also, one might ask why Bush thought Israel should have been “furious with the United States over the NIE.”

It seems likely that Bush actually dictated this part of the book himself.  For, in setting down his reaction to the NIE on Iran, he confirmed the insight that Dr. Justin Frank, M.D., who teaches psychiatry at George Washington University Hospital, gave us veteran intelligence officers into how Bush comes at reality — or doesn’t.

“His pathology is a patchwork of false beliefs and incomplete information woven into what he asserts is the whole truth… He lies — not just to us, but to himself as well… What makes lying so easy for Bush is his contempt — for language, for law, and for anybody who dares question him…. So his words mean nothing. That is very important for people to understand.” [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Dangers of a Cornered Bush.”]

Not Enough Sycophants

When the NIE on Iran came out in 2007, Bush may have pined for his sycophant-in-chief, former CIA Director George Tenet, who had shepherded the bogus Iraq-WMD analysis through the process in 2002 but had resigned in 2004 when his role in the deceptions had become obvious.

Tenet and his CIA cronies had been expert at preparing estimates-to-go — to go to war, that is. They had proved themselves worthy rivals of the other CIA, the Culinary Institute of America, in cooking intelligence for the White House menu.

On Iraq, they had distinguished themselves by their willingness to conjure up “intelligence” that Senate Intelligence Committee chair Jay Rockefeller described as “uncorroborated, unconfirmed, and nonexistent,” after a five-year review by his panel. (That finding was no news to any attentive observer, despite Herculean — and largely successful — efforts by the FCM to promote drinking the White House Kool-Aid.)

What is surprising in the case of Iran is the candor with which George W. Bush explains his chagrin at learning of the unanimous judgment of the intelligence community that Iran had not been working on a nuclear weapon since late 2003.

That was certainly not what the Israelis and their neoconservative allies in Washington had been telling the White House — and not what President Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney were dutifully proclaiming to the rest of us.

Shocked at Honesty

Bush lets it all hang out in Decision Points. He complains bitterly that the NIE “tied my hands on the military side.” He notes that the Estimate opened with this “eye-popping” finding of the intelligence community:

“We judge with high confidence that in fall 2003, Tehran halted its nuclear weapons program.”

The former president adds that the “NIE’s conclusion was so stunning that I felt it would immediately leak to the press.” He writes that he authorized declassification of the key findings “so that we could shape the news stories with the facts.” Facts?

The mind boggles at the thought that Bush actually thought the White House, even with the usual help from an ever-obliging FCM, could put a positive spin on intelligence conclusions that let a meretricious cat out of the bag, that the Bush administration’s case for war against Iran was as flimsy as its bogus case for invading Iraq.

How painful it was to watch the contortions the hapless Stephen Hadley, national security adviser at the time, went through in trying to square a circle.

His task was the more difficult since, unlike the experience with the dishonestly edited/declassified version of what some refer to as the Whore of Babylon — the Oct. 1, 2002, NIE on WMD in Iraq, this time the managers of the Estimate made sure that the declassified version of the key judgments presented a faithful rendering of the main points in the classified Estimate.

A disappointed Bush writes, “The backlash was immediate. [Iranian President Mahmoud] Ahmadinejad hailed the NIE as a ‘great victory.’” Bush’s apparent “logic” here is to use the widespread disdain for Ahmadinejad to discredit the NIE through association, i.e. whatever Ahmadinejad praises must be false.

But can you blame Bush for his chagrin? Alas, the NIE had knocked out the props from under the anti-Iran propaganda machine, imported duty-free from Israel and tuned up by neoconservatives here at home.

How embarrassing. Here before the world were the key judgments of an NIE, the most authoritative genre of intelligence report, unanimously approved “with high confidence” by16 agencies and signed by the Director of National Intelligence, saying, in effect, that Bush and Cheney were lying about the “Iranian nuclear threat.”

It is inconceivable that as the drafting of the Estimate on Iran proceeded during 2007, that the intelligence community would have kept the White House in the dark about the emerging tenor of its conclusions.

And yet, just a month before the Estimate was issued, Bush was claiming that the threat from Iran could lead to “World War III.” [There is even new doubt about intelligence that the Iranians were working on a nuclear warhead before 2003. See Consortiumnews.com’s “Iranian Nuke Documents May Be Fake.”]

The Russians More Honest?

Ironically, Russian President Vladimir Putin, unencumbered by special pleading and faux intelligence, had come to the same conclusions as the NIE.

Putin told French President Nicolas Sarkozy in early October 2007: “We don’t have information showing that Iran is striving to produce nuclear weapons. That’s why we’re proceeding on the basis that Iran does not have such plans.”

In a mocking tone, Putin asked what evidence the U.S. and France had for asserting that Iran intends to make nuclear weapons. And, adding insult to injury, during a visit to Tehran on Oct. 16, 2007, Putin warned: “Not only should we reject the use of force, but also the mention of force as a possibility."

This brought an interesting outburst by President Bush the next day at a press conference, a bizarre reaction complete with his famously tortured syntax:

Q. “Mr. President, I’d like to follow on Mr.–on President Putin’s visit to Tehran … about the words that Vladimir Putin said there. He issued a stern warning against potential U.S. military action against Tehran. …Were you disappointed with [Putin’s] message?”

Bush: “I — as I say, I look forward to — if those are, in fact, his comments, I look forward to having him clarify those … And so I will visit with him about it.”

Q. “But you definitively believe Iran wants to build a nuclear weapon?”

Bush: “I think so long — until they suspend and/or make it clear that they — that their statements aren’t real, yes, I believe they want to have the capacity, the knowledge, in order to make a nuclear weapon. And I know it’s in the world’s interest to prevent them from doing so. I believe that the Iranian — if Iran had a nuclear weapon, it would be a dangerous threat to world peace.

“But this is — we got a leader in Iran who has announced that he wants to destroy Israel. So I’ve told people that if you’re interested in avoiding world war III, it seems like you ought to be interested in preventing them from have the knowledge necessary to make a nuclear weapon. I take the threat of Iran with a nuclear weapon very seriously, and we’ll continue to work with all nations about the seriousness of this threat.”

Can’t Handle the Truth

In his memoir, Bush laments: “I don’t know why the NIE was written the way it was. … Whatever the explanation, the NIE had a big impact — and not a good one.”

Spelling out how the Estimate had tied his hands “on the military side,” Bush included this (apparently unedited) kicker:

“But after the NIE, how could I possible explain using the military to destroy the nuclear facilities of a country the intelligence community said had no active nuclear weapons program?”

Thankfully, not even Dick Cheney could persuade Bush to repair the propaganda juggernaut and let it loose for war on Iran.

The avuncular Vice President has made it clear that he was very disappointed in his protégé. On Aug. 30, 2009, he told “Fox News Sunday” that he was isolated among Bush advisers in his enthusiasm for war with Iran.

“I was probably a bigger advocate of military action than any of my colleagues,” Cheney said when asked whether the Bush administration should have launched a pre-emptive attack on Iran before leaving office.

Bush briefed Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert before the NIE was released. Bush later said publicly that he did not agree with his own intelligence agencies. [For more on the Bush memoir’s conflicts with the truth, see Consortiumnews.com’s “George W. Bush: Dupe or Deceiver?”]

And it is entirely possible that the Iran-war juggernaut would have been repaired and turned loose anyway, were it not for strong opposition by the top military brass who convinced Bush that Cheney, his neocon friends and Olmert had no idea of the chaos that war with Iran would unleash.

There’s lots of evidence that this is precisely what Joint Chiefs Chairman Mike Mullen and then-CENTCOM commander Adm. William Fallon told Bush, in no uncertain terms. And it is a safe bet that these two were among those pointing out to Bush that the NIE was likely to “leak,” if he did not himself make it public.

Whew!

What About Now

The good news is that Cheney is gone and that Adm. Mullen is still around.

The bad news is that Adm. Fallon was sacked for saying “We’re not going to do Iran on my watch,” and there are few flag officers with Fallon’s guts and honesty.

Moreover, President Barack Obama continues to show himself an invertebrate vis-à-vis Israel and its neocon disciples.

Also, an updated NIE on Iran’s nuclear program, completed earlier this year, is dead in its tracks, apparently because anti-Iran hawks inside the Obama administration are afraid it will leak. It is said to repeat pretty much the conclusions of the NIE from 2007.

There are other ominous signs. The new Director of National Intelligence, retired Air Force Lt. Gen. James Clapper, is a subscriber to the Tenet school of malleability.

It was Clapper whom Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld put in charge of imagery analysis to ensure that no one would cast serious doubt on all those neocon and Iraqi “defector” reports of WMD in Iraq.

And, when no WMD caches were found, it was Clapper who suggested, without a shred of good evidence, that Saddam Hussein had sent them to Syria, a theory also being pushed by neocons both to deflect criticism of their false assurances about Iraq’s WMD and to open a new military front against another Israeli nemesis, Syria.

So perhaps there is some value in keeping the NIE update bottled up. At least that way, Clapper and other malleable intelligence officials won’t have the chance to play chef to another “cooked-to-go” analysis.

Ray McGovern works with Tell the Word, a publishing arm of the ecumenical Church of the Saviour in inner-city Washington. During his 27 years serving as a CIA intelligence analyst, his duties included chairing NIEs. He now serves on the Steering Group of Veteran Intelligence Profesionals for Sanity (VIPS).