“I chose journalism to be close to the people. It might not be easy to change the reality, but at least I could bring their voice to the world.”
— Shireen Abu Akleh
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Update:
Murdered Al Jazeera journalist Shireen Abu Akleh has been laid to rest after mourners were denied a peaceful final farewell. In shocking scenes, Israeli police attacked the funeral procession, nearly forcing pallbearers to drop Abu Akleh’s coffin.
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Shireen Abu Akleh was a 51-year-old Palestinian-American and a veteran reporter for Al Jazeera. She was killed in Jenin yesterday morning:
She was there to do her job: reporting on how more Israeli soldiers were “raiding” – a euphemism for terrorising – more Palestinians.
She was wearing a helmet and body armour marked “Press”.
She was standing at a roundabout with other Palestinian journalists when she was shot in the face. An Al Jazeera producer, who survived, was shot in the back.
Abu Akleh’s body lay on the side of a road, next to a wall. Her colleagues screamed for help as they pulled her away from a sniper’s crosshairs. Later, an ambulance arrived. She died in hospital. Alone.
Another day, another murdered Palestinian.
Click here to read the full report published today by Al Jazeera colleague Andrew Mitrovica entitled “Some truths about Shireen Abu Aklen’s murder”.
The Electronic Intifada reports:
A preliminary investigation by Al-Haq, a Palestinian human rights group, based on an autopsy result and eyewitness testimony, concluded that Abu Akleh was killed by a bullet fired by Israeli soldiers.
Soldiers had surrounded a home in the camp on the pretext of searching for wanted persons, according to Al-Haq, and were met with armed resistance.
Abu Akleh was hit in the head by a bullet fired from the direction of the Israeli soldiers, who had full view of the Al Jazeera crew, and not the resistance fighters, whose fire would not have been able to reach the journalists.
Another journalist, Ali Samoudi, was shot in the back during the same incident and was reportedly in stable condition.
Moreover, the type of projectile found in Abu Akleh’s brain is a bullet issued to Israeli soldiers.
Al-Haq said that Abu Akleh’s killing may amount to “premeditated murder.”
Click here to read the full piece by Maureen Clare Murphy entitled “Shireen Abu Akled’s blood is on the hands of Israel’s ‘friends’”
Meanwhile as the entire western diplomatic apparatus and its media mouthpieces have condemned “the killing” and “expressed concerns” calling for investigations, the same authorities are actively blocking the International Criminal Court’s war crimes probe in Palestine:
Israeli media reported that a delegation from the country traveled to the US to meet government officials in early March to hammer out a joint campaign strategy against the ICC.
The team was reportedly led by Yuval Steinitz, Israel’s energy minister and a cabinet member tasked with leading the government’s campaign to thwart an ICC investigation.
Steinitz has previously described the findings of [the ICC chief prosecutor Fatou] Bensouda’s preliminary examination as “a type of ‘blood libel.’”
In the US, Israel seeks bipartisan backing against the ICC, and its delegation reportedly met Democratic lawmakers as well as White House and State Department officials.
Israel has already mobilized its allies elsewhere to argue against jurisdiction in the West Bank and Gaza Strip, with Australia, Brazil, Hungary, Austria, Germany and the Czech Republic intervening with the court to support Israel’s position, as has Uganda.
Canada also joined Israel’s cause, sending a letter to the ICC reiterating that it does not recognize a Palestinian state. The letter also reminded the court of the funding it receives from Canada, which Amnesty International said “appears to be a threat to withdraw financial support.”
Click here to read Maureen Clare Murphy’s full report entitled “US and Israel team up to thwart war crimes probes” published by Electronic Intifada on April 14th, 2020.
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Independent journalist Richard Medhurst pays tribute to Shireen Abu Akleh’s courage and integrity and expresses outrage at the blatant hypocrisy and double standards in western reaction and mainstream reporting of the murder of a highly respected journalist [warning: strong language]:
Commemorating the life of Desmond Tutu, his friend, fellow anti-apartheid activist and former African National Congress MP, Andrew Feinstein, spoke to Double Down News on January 4th.
Andrew Feinstein contrasted Desmond Tutu’s lifelong commitment to end apartheid in all countries across the world with the hypocrisy of Boris Johnson and his current UK government, western mainstream media outlets and Keir Starmer’s Labour Party, which would certainly have expelled him for his unflinching condemnation of Israel’s crimes against the Palestinians and his advocacy of boycott, divestment and sanctions [BDS]:
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A full transcript is reproduced below with relevant images and links provided:
Archbishop Desmond Tutu because of his views on Israel would be expelled from Keir Starmer’s Labour Party. This is the same Labour Party whose leadership is currently being advised by Lord Peter Mandelson, a friend of Jeffrey Epstein who appears on ten occasions in Ghislaine Maxwell’s “little black book”; someone who phoned Jeffrey Epstein when he was in jail on child abuse convictions.
What does it say about our politics, our public life, and, crucially, our media, that Jeremy Corbyn was criticised more for the way in which he pronounced Jeffrey Epstein’s name [here, here, here, here and here] than scrutiny is being given to the fact that Keir Starmer’s leadership is being advised by one of Jeff Epstein’s mates? What does that say about the morality of a party that today is suspending and expelling people who share the vision and the specific political views of Archbishop Desmond Tutu?
Desmond Tutu was the most courageous campaigner against human rights abusers around the world. I was privileged to know him personally because I’d come into contact with him during the anti-apartheid struggle in South Africa, but even more importantly when I was an ANC Member of Parliament and was trying to investigate millions of dollars worth of corruption in a hugely corrupt arms deal that was facilitated primarily by Tony Blair and BAE Systems. Then Tutu called me to his home to give his support.
Desmond Tutu campaigned against apartheid in South Africa and he campaigned against human rights abuses everywhere in the world including in Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories. When he visited Israel he was shocked and remarked that he felt that apartheid in Israel was, if anything, worse than it had been in South Africa.
David Frost:You said that what you saw in Israel something that was quite akin to the situation in South Africa before freedom came to the black people of South Africa.
Desmond Tutu:Well in many instances worse.
He was also deeply frustrated by the fact that the Israeli state supported the apartheid South African regime and helped it become a nuclear power and he would often say both privately and publicly that he never understood how a state such as Israel could cooperate with and arm the apartheid state in South Africa that was run by Nazi sympathizers, where a lot of the apartheid legislation was mimicked from the Nazi legislation between 1933 and 1938.
Tutu would often speak about the need to liberate not just those oppressed, but the oppressor as well. He saw how white South Africans became a bitter and hateful people as a consequence of the racism that dominated their daily lives. The dehumanising of the other that is such a central component of any system of oppression.
And when he visited Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories he saw the same thing amongst many Israelis: a hatred of the other who they had dehumanised. A shrinking of their own existence because they defined that existence in relation to those they subjugated and oppressed.
Desmond Tutu:Part of my own concern for what is happening there is, in fact, not what is happening to the Palestinians, but it is what the Israelis are doing to themselves. I mean when you go to those checkpoints and you see these young soldiers behaving abominably badly. They are not aware that when you carry out dehumanising policies. Whether you like it or not those policies dehumanise the perpetrator
He continued his search for a solution to the Palestinian issue throughout his life and continued steadfastly to call for boycott, divestment and sanctions against Israel just as he had against apartheid South Africa. Tutu felt very strongly – and we discussed this on a number of occasions – that the boycott, divestment and sanctions campaign was absolutely critical in bringing about an end to apartheid in South Africa because what it did was it started to undermine and corrode the comfortable life that white South Africans lived at the expense of the majority of people in South Africa.
Without the global movement towards BDS, apartheid would never have ended in South Africa, and it’s for that exact reason that he believes it is only when the Israeli government suffers the economic consequences of BDS that they will be forced to the negotiating table to bring an end both to apartheid within Israel, but also to the illegal and brutal occupation of the Palestinian territories.
Prime Minister Boris Johnson was fulsome in his praise of Archbishop Desmond Tutu on his passing, despite the reality that Boris Johnson’s government is in the process of trying to ban support for the boycott divestment and sanctions movement, which Desmond Tutu clearly stated was absolutely crucial in bringing about an end to apartheid in South Africa and is absolutely crucial in fighting against apartheid in Israel and the occupation of the Palestinian Territories.
Desmond Tutu campaigned indefatigably against press censorship, freedom of speech, freedom of the media. It is something that on certain uncomfortable topics today like Israel and the occupied Palestinian territories more and more our media our self-censoring. Our political parties are censoring their members what they can and cannot say and believe on these topics.
What Desmond Tutu taught us is that we must always listen to each other we must always hear each other regardless of how uncomfortable it is. In our world of social media we don’t listen. We don’t hear. We abuse. By instinct. Without thought.
Many of those who bandy about the word “antisemite” aren’t doing so because they care about actual anti-semitism or racism, they’re using it as a weapon to attack those who are critical of Israel. They’re trying to boil down Judaism to be equivalent to the State of Israel that is, in itself, an anti-semitic construct. They are doing it in such a way that effectively renders the term “anti-semitic” meaningless.
Alan Dershowitz:The world is mourning Bishop Tutu, who just died the other day. Can I remind the world that although he did some good things – a lot of good things on apartheid – the man was a rampant anti-semite and bigot.
The fact that Dershowitz used the slur of “anti-semitism” to attempt to demean the reputation and legacy of this remarkable human being very sadly says more about Dershowitz and more about the way in which “anti-semitism” has been weaponised and equated with any criticism of Israel; its own discrimination – what is often called apartheid within Israel; and its brutal and illegal occupation of the Palestinian territories. It is the same slur of “anti-semitism” that was used against Jeremy Corbyn in the United Kingdom; that was used against Bernie Sanders in the United States; and that is still being used supposedly in the name of fighting anti-semitism.
This is the same Alan Dershowitz who acted as Jeffrey Epstein’s defence attorney securing a sweetheart deal in a 2008 plea agreement thereby enabling his friend to serve out his jail term on day-release, and who later confessed to receiving a massage courtesy of Epstein although he says he kept his underpants on, and who the BBC very recently saw fit to share his twisted opinion on the verdict against Ghislaine Maxwell:
So in today’s Labour Party, for instance, a Jewish member of the Labour Party is five times more likely to be investigated, suspended or expelled by the Labour Party for “anti-semitism” than anyone else in the party. Think for a moment of the absurdity of expelling anti-racist Jews to thwart anti-semitism. It is into that complete madness that Dershowitz’s comments about Desmond Tutu should be located.
Keir Starmer, leader of the Labour Party, eulogised Desmond Tutu despite the fact that the former leader of the Labour Party Jeremy Corbyn, who was a tireless campaigner against apartheid South Africa at a time when it was not fashionable to be so, remains suspended from Keir Starmer’s Labour Party along with countless other anti-racists who echo the words of Desmond Tutu on Israel, on the Palestinian territories, on injustice, and on true anti-racism. This was craven hypocrisy from Keir Starmer.
Jeremy Corbyn MP is arrested during the City of London Anti-Apartheid Group picket of South Africa House in 1984 [Photo: Rob Scott]
The Labour Party’s shadow Foreign Secretary, David Lammy, was also full of praise for Archbishop Desmond Tutu in virtually the same moment at which he apologised for having nominated Jeremy Corbyn for the leadership of the Labour Party, despite the fact that just a few years ago he was singing Corbyn’s praises.
Tutu was the rock on which non- violent resistance to Apartheid was built. His integrity, passion and urgency was integral in mobilising South Africans to protest,resist and keep the faith while rallying the global community to compassion, solidarity,and sanctions. #DesmondTutu
It is worth bearing in mind that David Lammy never thought it necessary to apologise for voting for the invasion of Iraq that has led to over a million deaths, that accelerated the rise of ISIS, that has caused untold suffering in Iraq and the wider Middle East region, but he did feel it necessary to apologise having nominated the only Labour leader who has apologised for the invasion of Iraq.
Jeremy Corbyn:So I now apologise sincerely on behalf of my party for the disastrous decision to go toward Iraq.
Desmond Tutu refused to share a platform with Tony Blair because he believed that Tony Blair should be on trial for war crimes at the International Criminal Court. I know which Desmond Tutu would apologise for.
Desmond Tutu:Those who want to wage war against Iraq must know it would be an immoral war.
It is my belief that the most important thing we can do is to learn from our history rather than repeat it.
It is incredibly hypocritical of our political leaders to praise the person who fought and overcame apartheid in the past while at exactly the same time they are stifling and trying to prevent us from halting apartheid today. The reality that Desmond Tutu would be suspended or expelled by the current Labour Party for his support of BDS against Israel is a reflection on the current morality of Keir Starmer’s Labour Party.
That is not the legacy of Archbishop Desmond Tutu. Tutu’s legacy is that we have the principles, the courage, and the convictions, to stand up against all racism, to stand up against human rights abuses wherever they occur, and whoever they are perpetrated by.
Desmond Tutu:Let’s send a message to governments that a critical mass of people want to see an end to the Israeli occupation of Palestine and the oppression of its people by acting together we can break cycles of injustice and the occupation and build a new world based on our common humanity and justice. Support freedom for Palestine. Peace. Shalom. Salam.
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Additional:
The following comment and link was received shortly after posting the article above.
Please consider publishing / publicizing the petition:
SUSPEND Lord Mandelson from the Labour party while carrying out an independent investigation into the extent of his involvement with the sex traffickers Jeffrey Epstein and Ghislaine Maxwell.
Mike Howard was the Jewish son of a family that escaped the Nazi pogroms in what is today Lithuania and Poland to settle in the East End of London. At school he suffered constant racist abuse being teased as “a fat little Jew boy”. Irrespective of his background and his longstanding commitment to international socialism, in June 2020 he received an email from the Labour Party accusing him of antisemitism on the basis of a few pro-Palestinian posts on Facebook, and in spite of the fact that many of these posts had actually included his own back story.
Mike Howard was outraged but more so for knowing that the letter had very probably come from people inside Labour HQ who were not even Jewish, but anonymously making false accusations when his own family had actively fought the fascists before, during and after the war, and had fought racism the whole of their lives. A very active member of the party, coincidentally, he had just been reselected to run for councillor in the May elections – previously he was elected and served as councillor on two occasions. He immediately appealed against his suspension but heard nothing.
Mike Howard became one of seven members known as Labour Activists For Justice (LA4J) who took the Labour Party to court over its disciplinary process for investigating complaints of antisemitism:
The members of the group, four of whom are Jewish, have all had disciplinary action taken against them and are currently under investigation over alleged rule breaches relating to antisemitism, which they strongly reject. They know that many other members are in similar situations. They are making this High Court claim because the suggestion in many cases, including their own, that there is anti-Semitic content in the evidence provided by the Labour Party is unfounded and offensive. They want a fair disciplinary process to be implemented for ALL Labour Party members where the criteria by which they will be judged are clear and public and the procedures are fair.
When they lost their case at the High Court in July, Jewish Voice for Labour issued a statement that begins:
It’s difficult not to get the impression that the recent judgment, on the claim against the Party by several members accused of antisemitism, is one of those cases where the judge decided what he wanted to do and then thought of some reasons to justify it. In fact, his comment at the end of his judgment, where he declared that it’s effectively the policy of the courts not to intervene in disciplinary proceedings, meant that he was never going to agree with the claimants.
And concludes:
The difficulty for anyone challenging the Labour Party on anything to do with antisemitism allegations is that they are fighting what has become an entrenched conventional wisdom i.e. that there is rampant antisemitism in the UK in general and in the Labour Party in particular. Indeed, the way the judge listed the draft charges against one of the claimants (unnamed) seemed intended to indicate what a dreadful bunch they must be.
After a short illness, yesterday [Nov 11th 2021] Mike passed away with his family around him. He was still suspended from the Labour Party.
Click here and here to read each of the reports published by Jewish Voice for Labour (JVL).
“He was the United States’ man in Caracas. He worked for the CIA for, by his own admission, over 24 years. It just goes to show you, if you’ve got friends in high places, even though you may be a terrorist, the United States will protect you.”
— José Pertierra, a Cuban attorney based in Washington, D.C 1
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Luis Posada Carriles died peacefully at “a government home for veterans” in Miramar, Florida last Wednesday. News of his death passed largely unnoticed, although a few media outlets did produce obituaries.
BBC news reported:
Luis Posada Carriles, a Cuban-born former CIA agent who dedicated much of his life to trying to overthrow the communist government on the island, has died in Florida aged 90. 2
It described Carriles in its headline as simply a “Cuba anti-communist activist”. Meanwhile, The New York Times, beneath a movie star portrait of the younger Carriles, ran with “Luis Posada Carriles, Who Waged Quest to Oust Castro, Dies at 90”, and printed eulogies from his friends:
“He had that magnetic quality to him that I’m sure explains how he was able to survive all those years,” said Mr. Posada’s lawyer, Arturo V. Hernandez. “He was able to establish alliances to help him. You can’t do that if everybody hates you.”
Exiles sent him money, and they bought his paintings to help him survive. (He had learned how to paint in prison.) They paid bribes to sneak him out of jails and countries and into others.
“He was a charmer,” said Santiago Alvarez, a longtime Miami activist who has served time in prison for his anti-Castro efforts. “He had stories for everything. He made you laugh. He was good company.”
Frances Robles, the author of the NYT piece summarised Carriles’ life as follows:
Mr. Posada spent nearly 60 years on a quixotic and often bloody mission to bring down Fidel Castro by any means possible. He was accused of using bombs and bullets in a crusade that took the lives of innocents but never did manage to snare that Cuban leader, who died at 90 in 2016. 3
But the real life Carriles was no hero and was “accused of using bombs and bullets… that took the lives of innocents” because he did. It stands as a fact and not an accusation that Carriles was a most notorious and unrepentant terrorist, who very certainly murdered hundreds of people, the majority of whom were entirely innocent bystanders, and afterwards as he once boasted to a different New York Times reporter, Ann Louise Bardach, when interviewed in 1998, had “slept like a baby”. 4
A comprehensive catalogue of the known crimes committed by Carriles with corroborating evidence contained in documents from the CIA and other US agencies is available at the website of the National Security Archive, the center for research and documentation:
Luis Posada Carriles is certainly on any terrorist expert’s list of top 10 most prolific purveyors of violence over the last 30 or 40 years. He was a Cuban, left Cuba after the revolution, started to work with the CIA, was a paid asset and trainer in sabotage, in explosions — in explosives for the CIA, training other Cuban militants in the mid-1960s. He was on the CIA payroll from 1965 through 1976. He left the United States in 1967 and moved to Caracas, Venezuela, where he became a very high official in the Venezuelan secret police, DISIP.
And while he was in Caracas, in October of 1976, according to CIA and FBI declassified secret documents, he was one of the two masterminds of one of the most heinous acts of international terrorism in the Western Hemisphere before our own 9/11: the bombing of a Cubana flight, mid-air, killing 73 men, women and children on October 6, 1976.
He has a long history beyond that. He went on to orchestrate a series of hotel bombings in Cuba in the late 1990s. He was arrested in Panama in November of 2000 with a car full of C-4 explosives and dynamite in an effort to blow up Fidel Castro during an Iberian-American summit. I mean, the list goes on and on and on.
And we had hoped that he would actually be convicted and, at 83 years old, spend the rest of his life in prison. Instead, it may be that he is able to live in retirement in Miami, which is, you know, a complete stunning turn of events for anybody who cares about the security of U.S. citizens and justice for the victims of international terrorism.
— Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive at the George Washington University and the Cuba Documentation Project *
To learn more watch Posada Carriles: Terrorism Made in the USA (2007) — a documentary from renowned Venezuelan filmmaker Angel Palacios which details his longstanding relationship with the CIA, dating back to the 1960’s.
The film took two years of meticulous research by an investigative team that examined declassified documents and criminal files, and interviewed witnesses and survivors from several Latin American countries.
Reposted in full below is an earlier article (one of the first posts on this blog) published in May 2011 shortly after Carilles had been tried and acquitted by a court in Texas of immigration-related charges.
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On January 10[th] one of the most dangerous terrorists in recent history will go on trial in a small courtroom in El Paso, Texas. This is not the venue the Obama administration has finally selected to prosecute the perpetrators of 9/11; it is where the reputed godfather of Cuban exile violence, Luis Posada Carriles, may finally face a modicum of accountability for his many crimes.
Writes Peter Kornbluh in an article published on January 24th in The Nation magazine:
In the annals of modern justice, the Posada trial stands out as one of the most bizarre and disreputable of legal proceedings. The man identified by US intelligence reports as a mastermind of the midair destruction of a Cuban airliner—all seventy-three people on board were killed when the plane plunged into the sea off the coast of Barbados on October 6, 1976—and who publicly bragged about being behind a series of hotel bombings in Havana that killed an Italian businessman, Fabio Di Celmo, is being prosecuted for perjury and fraud, not murder and mayhem. The handling of his case during the Bush years became an international embarrassment and reflected poorly on the willingness and/or abilities of the Justice Department to prosecute crimes of terror when that terrorist was once an agent and ally of America. For the Obama administration, the verdict will carry significant implications for US credibility in the fight against terrorism, as well as for the future of US-Cuban relations. 5
Whilst James C. McKinley Jr., writing in The New York Times on January 9th, asks why this elderly former CIA agent is on trial not for terrorism but perjury:
An elderly Cuban exile who once worked for the C.I.A. and has been linked to bombings in Havana and the downing of an airliner in the 1970s is scheduled to go on trial this week in a Texas courtroom — not on terrorism charges, but for perjury.
His article continues:
“The C.I.A. trained and unleashed a Frankenstein,” said Peter Kornbluh, an analyst with the National Security Archive who has studied Mr. Posada’s career. “It is long past time he be identified as a terrorist and be held accountable as a terrorist.”
Mr. Posada’s lawyer, Arturo Hernandez, predicted that his client would be acquitted. “He’s innocent of everything,” Mr. Hernandez said.
The defendant in question, Luis Posada Carriles, has in fact worked with the CIA on many different occasions – and especially during America’s Cold War campaign against Castro:
Mr. Posada has long been entwined with American intelligence services, going back to the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961. He worked directly for the agency until 1967, spying on Cuban exile groups in Miami and running paramilitary training camps, according to declassified documents. He was also a “paid asset” of the agency in Venezuela from 1968 to 1976, according to declassified documents and an unclassified summary of his career in the court record.
“The C.I.A. taught us everything — everything,” he told The [New York] Times in 1998. “They taught us explosives, how to kill, bomb[,] trained us in acts of sabotage.” 6
But then, back in May 2005, the 77-year-old Posada Carriles was arrested in Miami, and held for entering the US illegally; the judge eventually ruling that he could not be deported to face charges in Venezuela:
The judge said Luis Posada Carriles – wanted by Caracas over a 1976 plane bombing which killed 73 people – faced the threat of torture in Venezuela.
The Venezuelan government reacted angrily to the ruling, accusing the US of having a “double standard in its so-called war on terrorism”. 7
Click here to read full report from the BBC News in September 2005.
The record of terrorist offences Mr Posada is charged with is a very long one: Posada has actually admitted to involvement with bombings of Cuban hotels and nightclubs, and has already been convicted in Panama for his involvement in many other plots, including the attack which brought down Cubana Flight 455. Stephen Kinzer, writing for The Guardian, in May 2007, says he only narrowly escaped becoming one of those victims:
One October day in 1976, a Cuban airliner exploded over the Caribbean and crashed, killing all 73 people aboard. There should have been 74. I had a ticket on that flight, but changed my reservation at the last moment and flew to Havana on an earlier plane.
I was sitting by the pool of the Hotel Riviera when I heard news of the crash. A few days later, I attended a powerfully moving ceremony at which one million Cubans turned out to hear Fidel Castro denounce the bomb attack. On the reviewing stand next to him were flag-draped coffins of the few victims whose remains had been found.
Investigators in Venezuela, where the doomed flight originated, quickly determined that a famous anti-Castro terrorist, Luis Posada Carriles, had probably planned this attack. More than 30 years later, however, Posada remains amazingly immune to prosecution. Instead of going to jail, he went to work for the CIA.
Last week a federal judge in Texas threw out a case against Posada. The Bush administration has power under the Patriot Act to detain him indefinitely, and could even extradite him to Venezuela. Instead it has chosen to protect him. 8
Posada Carriles was released from US custody on April 19th 2007, after paying his bond. Peter Kornbluh picks up the story again:
In April 2006 government lawyers decided to hold a naturalization interview with Posada while he was in jail, surreptitiously gathering self-incriminating evidence against him in the hotel bombing case…
Instead, on January 11, 2007, Posada was indicted in El Paso on six counts of making “false statements” and one of fraud about how he came to the United States and for his use of false names and false passports—charges that carry an maximum sentence of five to ten years each. To make matters worse for the credibility of the US legal system, four months later Judge Kathleen Cardone dismissed all charges against Posada. The government, she ruled, had engaged in “fraud, deceit and trickery” in obtaining evidence against Posada under the guise of conducting a naturalization review. The court, she declared, could “not set aside [Posada’s legal] rights nor overlook Government misconduct [just] because Defendant is a political hot potato.”
A free man, Posada took up residence in Miami…
Ironically, it is now the legal proceedings against Posada that could be embarrassing to, and carry significant implications for, WOLADY [the CIA’s codeword for the United States]. In the six years Posada has been in the United States, his case has become a spectacle around the world. Now, if he is found guilty and in effect proven to be a mastermind of terrorism, the US government will have to address the scandalously short sentence the perjury charges carry. If he is found innocent and released, the Obama administration will have to confront the fact that the US legal system is inadequate to hold Posada even minimally accountable for his violent crimes, and that the United States is, in the end, harboring an international terrorist.”
Hardly surprisingly, some of the relatives of Posada’s victims were already outraged that a known terrorist was only going to trial to face charges of perjury:
“He is not being charged as a terrorist but rather as a liar,” says Livio Di Celmo, whose brother, Fabio, was killed in one of the hotel bombings in Cuba. “My family and I are outraged and disappointed that a known terrorist, Luis Posada, is going to trial for perjury and immigration fraud, not for the horrific crime of masterminding the bombing of a civilian airliner,” Roseanne Nenninger, whose 19-year-old brother, Raymond, was aboard the Cuban plane, told The Nation. “Our hope is that the US government will designate Posada as a terrorist and hold him accountable for the pain, suffering and loss he has caused to us and so many other families.”
But they needn’t have worried because in April, the now 83-year-old Posada Carriles was acquitted of even these relatively minor offences, and so the case is presumably closed:
A US court has acquitted a veteran Cuban anti-communist activist and former CIA agent, Luis Posada Carriles, on immigration charges.
US federal prosecutors had accused him of lying to immigration officials, but a jury found him not guilty. 9
Click here to read the full report from BBC News on April 8th.
Back in May 2007, Stephen Kinzer had written:
“After last week’s verdict, a spokesman for the US Department of Justice said Posada’s case is under review. A grand jury in New Jersey is investigating his role in the bombing of Cuban hotels in the 1990s. So far, though, the services he provided to the CIA for more than four decades have protected him.
“If you harbour a terrorist, you are a terrorist,” President Bush famously declared after the attacks of September 11, 2001. The United States is now harbouring Luis Posada Carriles. His continued freedom mocks victims of terrorism everywhere. It also shows how heavily the “war on terror” is overlaid with politics and hypocrisy.”
This latest verdict merely goes to show how the double standards that applied during Bush’s “war on terror” have been perpetuated under the Obama administration.
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1 José Pertierra, a Cuban attorney based in Washington, D.C, speaking on Democracy Now! on Friday 25th.
Click here to read the watch the interview and read a full transcript on the Democracy Now! website.
6 From an article entitled “Terror Accusations, but Perjury Charges” by James C. McKinley Jr, published in The New York Times on January 9, 2011. www.nytimes.com/2011/01/10/us/10posada.html
8 From article entitled: “The terrorist Bush isn’t after: Luis Posada Carriles is a terrorist – but an anti-Castro one, so as far as America is concerned he’s all right.” by Stephen Kinzer, The Guardian, published on May 15, 2007. www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/2007/may/15/theterroristbushisntafter
* Peter Kornbluh, director of the National Security Archive at the George Washington University and the Cuba Documentation Project, speaking on Democracy Now! on April 11th 2011.
Click here to read the watch the interview and read a full transcript on the Democracy Now! website.
When Nelson Mandela died on December 5th, throughout the world people mourned the loss of a peacemaker and great statesman. The Telegraph, of all newspapers, immediately announced the release of a seven-part biography “of Mandela’stempestuous life, filled with hardship and struggle and crowned by a singular triumph” under a strapline that read:
Nelson Mandela, who has died aged 95, was the architect of South Africa’s transformation from racial despotism to liberal democracy, saving his country from civil war and becoming its first black president.1
There had been a time, of course, and not so long ago, when organs of the British establishment such as the Daily Telegraph were in the habit of branding Mandela not merely a communist but a terrorist too. Indeed, as an article in the Washington Post points out, until astonishingly recently the United States had quietly maintained its position that Mandela was persona non grata:
But with all the accolades being thrown around, it’s easy to forget that the U.S., in particular, hasn’t always had such a friendly relationship with Mandela – and that in fact, as late as 2008, the Nobel Prize winner and former president was still on the U.S. terrorism watch list.2
But suddenly, with world leaders, assorted celebrities, demi-celebrities (Richard Branson springs to mind) and even the media itself jostling to bathe in Mandela’s reflected glory, the bigger historical picture was being brushed aside and overwritten. An excellent article written by Chris McGreal (this time in the Observer) offered a better perspective:
Listening to the leaders of the free world compete to extol South Africa’s first democratically elected president, there is a striking absence of acknowledgement not only of how little their countries did to get him out of prison but how much they supported the regime that kept him locked up for 27 years. No mention from David Cameron of Margaret Thatcher’svigorous opposition to sanctions against the white regime and her deriding of Mandela’s supporters as “living in cloud cuckoo land” for believing he might one day lead South Africa. No acknowledgement from Barack Obama of Ronald Reagan’s trumpeting of the Afrikaner-led government as a beacon of democracy in Africa while he consigned Mandela and the African National Congress to the terrorism list.
With Mandela’s parting, it is rather easy to make comparisons to Gandhi. ‘Father’ to their respective nations, both had thrown off the yoke of oppressive regimes, and once in power, had pressed for reforms that would be inclusive, reconciliatory and democratic. That said, where Gandhi’s methods for overthrowing British rule had been strictly non-violent, Mandela’s resistance ultimately was not. Inspired in part by the writings of Gandhi, but also by Che Guevara and Mao, he had eventually felt compelled to take a more aggressive stance, confronting the political violence of the state with a campaign of sabotage.
Here is a little more from the piece by Chris McGreal:
But perhaps the most shameless piece of historical revisionism of recent days came from Binyamin Netanyahu, Israel’s prime minister. He greeted news of Mandela’s death by proclaiming him “a freedom fighter who disavowed violence”. That was a pointed jab at the Palestinians. It’s also untrue. Mandela was instrumental in founding the ANC’s armed wing and stood by the right to violent resistance until apartheid was buried. It may not have been a very effective armed campaign, and it did not resort to the indiscriminate killing of civilians by suicide bomb, but Mandela never disavowed violence in the struggle against a violent system.3
Ariel Sharon was another tenacious fighter for a different cause, but when he died only a few weeks later on January 11th, it was hardly surprising that the obituaries were more circumspect. After all, what can one politely say about a man nicknamed “the Bulldozer” (a favourite weapon he used to flatten Palestinian homes) who had forced the displacement of thousands of Palestinians and then shredded their homeland with the construction of illegal settlements and Berlin-style walls? Or Sharon as primary architect of the 1982 Lebanon War which had resulted in the deaths of 20,000 people, including somewhere between 800 and 3000 (depending on estimates) of mostly women, children and elderly men indiscriminately slaughtered in the Sabra and Shatila massacres.
On January 13th, Democracy Now! presented, as part of its own retrospective on Sharon, a description of the killings by Ellen Siegel, a Jewish-American nurse who was working at the Sabra camp at the time of the attacks:
So Sharon, the “warrior”, as he titled his autobiography, was also Sharon, the war criminal. Nevertheless, Sharon still has his apologists. Here is the Telegraph again:
The life of the late Ariel Sharon tells us a great deal about the shifting politics of Israel. He came to the world’s attention as a militant willing to use controversial methods to secure his country’s future. But he ended his career with a more complex image, as a tough-minded statesman searching for peace. His example offers hope.4
Hope of what precisely? For the Palestinians, many of whom actually celebrated Sharon’s death (just as many in Britain celebrated Thatcher’s demise last year), his example offered only reason to despair. And as for a man “searching for peace”; this is a grotesque parody of the truth.
As Avi Shlaim, Emeritus Professor of International Relations at Oxford University, explained on the same Democracy Now! broadcast, Sharon, who regarded himself as a crusader for a greater Israel, shunned diplomacy unless, under cover of negotiations, he saw a way to gain strategic advantage against his enemies. Withdrawal from Gaza, his one decisive act of non-aggression, was also a tactical retreat to strengthen Israel’s position in the West Bank. Shlaim reminds us:
Sharon committed his first war crime as a young major in 1953 when he destroyed many houses in the Jordanian village of Qibya, and he was responsible for the massacre of 69 civilians. So that was his first war crime, but it was not to be his last. And the consistent thread in his career as a soldier and as a politician was to use brute force, not just against the regular armies of the Arab states, but also against Palestinian civilians. And the other consistent thread is to shun diplomacy and to rely on brute force to impose Israeli hegemony on the entire region. President George W. Bush famously called Sharon a man of peace. Sharon was nothing of the sort. He was a man of war through and through, and he called his autobiography Warrior, not Diplomat. His approach to diplomacy reversed Clausewitz’s dictum; for Sharon, diplomacy was the pursuit of war by other means. For the last 40 years, the Arab-Israeli conflict has been my main research interest, and I can honestly say that I have never come across a single scintilla of evidence to support the notion of Sharon as a man of peace.
Mandela had committed himself body and soul to the dismantling of the apartheid system in South Africa and he succeeded. Tribalism was something Mandela disdained. So under Mandela, white apartheid was not about to be replaced by its black equivalent. But whereas Mandela will be remembered for trying unify his nation, Sharon’s memorial is a twenty-foot concrete barrier protected by sniper towers that snakes across the occupied West Bank. A wall that divides his own tribe from the neighbours, ensuring an apartheid within Israel-Palestine that will be enduring.
“There is a convention that you’re not supposed to speak ill of the recently dead”, said Noam Chomsky after Sharon’s death, continuing “which unfortunately imposes a kind of vow of silence because there’s nothing else to say.”
Click here to watch the full discussion of Sharon’s legacy with Avi Shlaim, Noam Chomsky, and Rashid Khalidi, who is Edward Said Professor of Arab Studies at Columbia University, on the Democracy Now! website.
If you want the hagiography then I recommend BBC news. Tributes to our Iron Lady that roll on and on and on. All very hard to stomach. But what did Mrs T actually achieve aside from, as The Sun newspaper famously put up, saying “Up yours Delors”! What did the policies of a government led by a Prime Minister who told us that she didn’t believe in society, actually do to our society? The answer is that she set about dismantling it altogether.
There were winners, of course, but that was inevitable given that Thatcher’s aims were all about winners and losers. So as she asset-stripped the nation, selling off our telecommunications, our electricity and gas companies, and our water supplies (government gradually reduced to the role of the banker in a game of Monopoly) those who bought the shares at bargain prices made a quick buck, thank you very much. And money was also flooding into the coffers from the sale of council houses, but mostly thanks to the boom in North Sea oil.
So where was all that money spent? Well, mostly it was redistributed by way of tax cuts; our own money given away so that it would supposedly trickle down back to us, ha ha… but of course the money never did trickle back down, and simply percolated upwards, lining the pockets of the new millionaires and then trickling away altogether into the off-shore tax havens and Swiss Bank accounts of the super-elites.
But Thatcher’s policies didn’t only ensure the tremendous wealth transfer from the poor to the rich. In achieving these ends she had also set about smashing up the trade unions, making ready to begin deindustrialising the country, whilst simultaneously “liberalising” the markets. So a country that had once been a powerhouse of industrial output was being reduced, cut down to leave our so-called “service economy”, and increasingly dependent upon sustained growth within The City of London. Growth that was delusory, since it was, we now realise, based upon an ever-expanding bubble of new “financial instruments”. A growth that was eating into the economy itself.
In short then, Thatcher encouraged us to be more selfish than ever whilst deregulating those parts of our society that most needed regulation. Deregulation that has carried us to where we find ourselves today… on the brink of bankruptcy. But obviously I wouldn’t expect those who still love and admire Mrs T to believe me when I say that this financial mess is actually her one true and lasting legacy. No, please don’t listen to me. Listen instead to Paul Craig Roberts, the former head of policy at Department of Treasury under Reagan and so-called Father of Reaganomics; the man behind the same neo-liberal policies and strategies that were also being applied at the very same time across the Atlantic:
Here’s what Paul Craig Roberts wrote in a recent article [March 6th] posted on his own website (please note that had Thatcher been American, she would undoubtedly have described herself as a Libertarian):
Libertarians will be the last to comprehend that the return of crony capitalism, robber barons, and economic insecurity is the direct consequence of a quarter century of deregulation. As I show in my new book, The Failure of Laissez Faire Capitalism And Economic Dissolution Of The West, it is the failure of the latest laissez faire experiment that has saddled us with crony capitalism. Monopoly concentration and rule by the few, not Libertarian nirvana, is what deregulation and unbridled greed produce.
More on how the economic policies of Thatcher and Reagan were the root cause of this present economic crisis, as well as proposed strategies for rescuing ourselves from an otherwise inevitable financial catastrophe, can be found in my earlier post [published July 2011] entitled “The answer to TINA… is TRISH”.
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Additional:
And this is British author, journalist and political activist, Tariq Ali, offering his own brief assessment of Thatcher’s legacy on today’s Democracy Now!:
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Update:
On the latest episode of the Keiser Report [broadcast on RT, April 10th], Max Keiser and Stacy Herbert examined the question of whether Margaret Thatcher “saved Britain.” They draw attention to the economic impact of peak North Sea oil revenues, and ask, if Thatcher had saved some of our nation’s oil wealth, just how large might a UK sovereign wealth fund be today:
In the second half of the show, Max Keiser also talked to Jan Skoyles of The Real Asset Company about whether the safest way to protect your money is by investing in gold, silver or Bitcoin – an informed and interesting discussion.
On February 27th 1989, the Venezuelan army, under orders from President Carlos Andrés Pérez, put down a mass uprising against the imposition of IMF led “austerity measures”; a protest which became known as the Caracazo (“the big one in Caracas”). According to official government reports “only” 276 people were killed in their attempts to “restore order”, however estimates for the actual number of casualties range between 500 to more than 3000.
Just a few years on, in 1993, and having narrowly survived two failed coups attempts, Carlos Andrés Pérez (otherwise known simply as CAP) was suddenly forced out of office when the Supreme Court found him guilty of embezzlement. With the impeachment of CAP, the next directly elected President was Rafael Antonio Caldera Rodríguez, and it was Rafael Caldera who, during his second term in office, had pardoned the leader of the original coup against CAP, a then little known military officer by the name of Lt. Colonel Hugo Chavez Frías.
Back in the 1990s news stories from Venezuela rarely if ever made our headlines, and unless you happen to be Venezuelan, there is a good chance you have never heard of either Carlos Andrés Pérez or Rafael Caldera. But this is not the case for the man who succeeded Caldera following the 1998 elections. For whatever else might be said of the late Hugo Chavez, there is no dispute that his political leadership during the last fourteen years – Chavez having been voted into office on four separate occasions in free elections – has put Venezuela altogether more firmly on the political map. So when Chavez died on Tuesday, it was an event that reverberated across the world. The debate over what his lasting legacy will be, and what happens next for Venezuela, buzzing in newsrooms and all over the internet.
Hugo Chavez was a social reformer, outspoken and with unashamedly revolutionary intent; his frequently stated ambition being nothing less than to inspire the downtrodden and oppressed of Latin America and beyond with his own brand of Bolivarian “participatory socialism”. To those ends, Chavez had immediately set about nationalising the Venezuelan oil industry, and then redirecting the huge profits to fund social projects both at home and abroad. Poverty levels in Venezuela were soon halved, and extreme poverty reduced by more than two thirds. Chavez also opened up education for the poorest in society and brought in a system of universal free healthcare.
That his programme of reforms has gradually improved the standard of living for the vast majority of Venezuelans is now acknowledged even by his fiercest critics, and so during last year’s election campaign, which he again won comfortably, the main opposition parties did not even challenge his social programme – their criticisms being reserved for his failures in other ways. That his policies have not allowed the Venezuelan economy to flourish as it should have (which seems odd given that Venezuela has actually maintained growth even throughout these troubled economic times), that inflation levels are unacceptably high (which is perhaps true although inflation is only a little higher now than during the period immediately prior to his presidency), and that Venezuela is suffering from a breakdown in law and order. This last charge is perhaps the most warranted, with Chavez unquestionably paying too little attention to the vital issue of ensuring law and order, but even here his supporters will fairly claim that the escalation in violent crime is to some extent a direct consequence of drug trafficking from neighbouring Colombia.
Incidentally, you can find a useful breakdown of all the statistics here.
Of course, the most serious charge levelled against Chavez is that his government has systematically turned a blind-eye or actually encouraged the violation of the human rights of his opponents. Human rights abuses that mostly seem to have come in the form of threats and intimidation, but which also include use of blacklists, other forms of exclusion, and in a few cases, even false imprisonment. This is obviously not acceptable. That said, it is sadly the truth that nearly every government on earth can also be charged with comparable abuses and more often than not with tactics that are very much more brutal again.
In Venezuela, unlike in America and the fifty and more states (including the UK) that have helped them out with “extraordinary rendition”1, torture and kidnapping are not sanctioned. In Venezuela, there is no equivalent to Guantánamo or the many “black sites” where inmates are indefinitely detained without charge. And if you still imagine that America, to return once more to the self-proclaimed home of freedom, has no political prisoners of its own then you evidently fail to take into account what has recently happened to John Kiriakou and Bradley Manning. In reminding readers of all this, it is not my intention to make excuses for Chavez and his government, but simply to put the charges against him into a more honest context.
Overall, it is surely fair to say that Chavez not only fundamentally altered the course of his home nation, with a dramatic shift away from the imposed neo-liberalism of his predecessors and the new emphasis placed on social justice, but alongside the popular success of those policies, he also more directly helped to establish other socialistic leaders across the whole of Latin America. In other words, it was Chavez above all others who spearheaded the Latin American Spring (not that it is ever called this of course) – the beginnings of a social and economic revolution that has been sweeping an entire continent for more than a decade, bringing with it a desperately needed power shift away from the oligarchs and the interests of their neo-imperialist associates. An upheaval, which being against the interests of the ruling establishment in the West (their own puppets having been vanquished), and by virtue of remaining fundamentally peaceful, has been consistently overlooked and misrepresented.
In short then, Chavez steadily won the political debate in South America, and not only in the barrios of Caracas, but also more widely, and this is the reason why millions to have taken to the streets to mourn his loss. A devout Catholic, Chavez was not a saint and he certainly was not infallible, but neither was he a tyrant or a dictator. He was a shrewd politician and more rarely and importantly, an uncommonly reliable one – a politician who actually abided by his own manifesto promises. A national leader who encouraged the previously disenfranchised to become actively involved in the democratic process of change and someone who engendered real hope in a people trying to transform their own future for the better.
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Also last Tuesday, a trial began in Argentina that is set to reveal new details about how six Latin American countries coordinated with each other in the 1970s and 1980s to eliminate political dissidents. The campaign known as Operation Condor had involved military dictatorships in Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Chile, Paraguay, Peru and Uruguay. It was launched by the Chilean dictator Augusto Pinochet, but evidence shows how both the CIA and former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger were complicit from its outset. The objective of Operation Condor has a familiar ring: it was to track down, kidnap and kill people they labelled as subversives and terrorists — leftist activists, union leaders, students, priests, journalists, guerrilla fighters and their families.
On Thursday [March 7th] Democracy Now! spoke with John Dinges, a professor at the Columbia School of Journalism and the author of “The Condor Years: How Pinochet and his Allies Brought Terrorism to Three Continents”, who explained the significance of the latest hearings:
Well, there have been several trials, and this goes back to when Pinochet was arrested in London in 1998. That unleashed an avalanche of evidence that went across Europe and led to trials in many places—Rome, Paris, Argentina, Chile—but all of them much smaller than this one. This one has 25 people accused. Unfortunately—or fortunately, who knows?—many of the people who were involved in this have already died, they’re getting old, of the top leaders. But this is 25 Argentinians and one Uruguayan, all of whom were in military positions, all of whom were involved directly with the actions of Operation Condor.
This is historic in the sense that we’re going to hear from 500 witnesses. And really, in the Latin American legal system, it’s unusual. It’s really only coming to the fore now that you hear witnesses, as opposed to just seeing them give their testimony to judges in a closed room, and then later on people like me might go and read those testimonies, but really it doesn’t become public. This is all public. And apparently, a lot of it is being videotaped. So this is—this is the first time that the general public is going to hear the details of this horrible, horrible list of atrocities that killed so many people.
The United States, in this period, the 1970s, was a major sponsor of the military dictatorships that had overthrown some democracies, some faltering civilian governments, [and] whatever it was, the result [of the overthrow] was governments, like Videla, like Pinochet, like Banzer in Bolivia, who were killing their citizens with impunity. The United States knew about the mass killing. We had this kind of schizophrenic, Machiavellian attitude toward it. We really don’t want these communists to be taking over governments, and we fear that democracy is leading to communist governments. Indeed, a leftist government led by Salvador Allende installed a democratically elected, civilian and revolutionary government in Chile, and that’s why—and Pinochet overthrew that government. The United States was deathly fearful that this would spread in Latin America, and so supported the coming of dictatorships.
Click here to read the full transcript or to watch the interview on the Democracy Now! website.
In April 2002, Chavez had himself narrowly survived an American-backed coup, and a 2003 documentary entitled The Revolution Will Not Be Televised (Spanish: La revolución no será transmitida) provides a fascinating insight and behind the scenes account of the attempted overthrow. Irish filmmakers Kim Bartley and Donnacha Ó Briain, who had been given direct access to Chavez with the intention only of making a fly-on-the-wall biography, suddenly finding themselves trapped in the midst of quite extraordinary political turmoil. Three days which changed the course of Venezuelan history:
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Chávez: Inside the Coup (as the documentary is also known) first aired on RTÉ1 on 18th February 2003, as an installment of the Irish channel’s True Lives documentary series. It was later broadcast on BBC2 on 16th October 2003, as part of the channel’s Storyville documentary strand, and repeated on BBC4 on 18th November 2003.
The October broadcast by the BBC had caused considerable furore, the corporation receiving 4,000 e-mails demanding that Storyville‘s commissioning editor, Nick Fraser, should be sacked. And these attacks could hardly have come at a worse time. Already under the spotlight of the Hutton Inquiry, which had been set up ostensibly to investigate the circumstances surrounding the death of David Kelly, although as it turned out Lord Hutton was actually more intent on censuring the BBC. Blaming the messenger for accurately leaking the truth about the “sexed up” intelligence dossiers used justify the invasion of Iraq, rather than the government and security services who had conspired to fabricate those lies. For the BBC to re-screen Bartley and Ó Briain’s film just a month later must therefore have taken considerable courage.
Meanwhile, the claims made by those critical of the film were taken up by Ofcom, who eventually ruled in September 2006 that it had not upheld the complaints. A subsequent appeal in November was also dismissed by Ofcom, validating the BBC’s original decision to air the documentary.
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Additional:
In an article from March 5th for Vice Magazine and also posted up on his own website, Greg Palast asks:
Despite Bush’s providing intelligence, funds and even a note of congratulations to the crew who kidnapped Chavez (we’ll get there), Hugo remained in office, reelected and wildly popular.
But why the Bush regime’s hate, hate, HATE of the President of Venezuela?
The answer, of course, is the obvious one:
Reverend Pat [Robertson] wasn’t coy about the answer: It’s the oil.
“This is a dangerous enemy to our South controlling a huge pool of oil.”
A really BIG pool of oil. Indeed, according to Guy Caruso, former chief of oil intelligence for the CIA, Venezuela hold a recoverable reserve of 1.36 trillion barrels, that is, a whole lot more than Saudi Arabia.
If we didn’t kill Chavez, we’d have to do an “Iraq” on his nation. So the Reverend suggests,
“We don’t need another $200 billion war… It’s a whole lot easier to have some of the covert operatives do the job and then get it over with.”
A short (about 25 mins) made for BBC television film based on Palast’s own encounters with Chavez, his kidnappers and his would-be assassins is also available as a FREE download.
Osama Bin Laden is finally dead. It’s official. Although, of course, you may recall some earlier pronouncements to similar effect. Indeed, investigator James Corbett has recently catalogued at least eight earlier instances (with links to the relevant articles) when heads of state, high-ranking government officials, and intelligence agencies have spoken of Bin Laden’s demise:
“Given Bin Laden’s documented kidney problems and consequent need for dialysis, government officials, heads of state and counterterrorism experts have repeatedly opined that Osama Bin Laden has in fact been dead for some time. These assertions are based on Bin Laden’s failing health in late 2001 and visible signs of his deteriorating condition, as well as actual reports of his death from the same time frame.
In July of 2001, Osama Bin Laden was flown to the American Hospital in Dubai for kidney treatment. According to French intelligence sources, he was there met by the local CIA attache. When the agent bragged about his encounter to friends later, he was promptly recalled to Washington.
On the eve of September 11, Osama Bin Laden was staying in a Pakistani military hospital under the watchful eye of Pakistan’s ISI, the Pakistani equivalent of the CIA with deep ties to the American intelligence community.”
On January 18, 2002, Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf announced quite bluntly: “I think now, frankly, he is dead.”
On July 17, 2002, the then-head of counterterrorism at the FBI, Dale Watson, told a conference of law enforcement officials that “I personally think he [Bin Laden] is probably not with us anymore,” before carefully adding that “I have no evidence to support that.”
In October 2002, Afghan President Hamid Karzai told CNN that “I would come to believe that [Bin Laden] probably is dead.”
In November 2005, Senator Harry Reid revealed that he was told Osama may have died in the Pakistani earthquake of October that year.
In September 2006, French intelligence leaked a report suggesting Osama had died in Pakistan.
On November 2, 2007, former Pakistani Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto told Al-Jazeera’s David Frost that Omar Sheikh had killed Osama Bin Laden.
In March 2009, former US foreign intelligence officer and professor of international relations at Boston University Angelo Codevilla stated: “All the evidence suggests Elvis Presley is more alive today than Osama Bin Laden.”
In May 2009, Pakistani President Asif Ali Zardari confirmed that his “counterparts in the American intelligence agencies” hadn’t heard anything from Bin Laden in seven years and confirmed “I don’t think he’s alive.”
Why then has this week’s pronouncement been accepted as credible? Well, as Corbett points out, the big difference this time round is not that we have proof at last, but that news of Bin Laden’s death comes direct from the White House:
“Now in 2011, President Obama has added himself to the mix of people in positions of authority who have pronounced Osama Bin Laden dead. Some might charge that none of the previous reports had any credibility, but as it is now emerging that Osama’s body was buried at sea less than 12 hours after his death with no opportunity for any independent corroboration of his identity, the same question of credibility has to be leveled at this latest charge. To this point, the only evidence we have been provided that Osama Bin Laden was killed yesterday are some images on tv of a burning compound and the word of the man currently occupying the oval office.”
Now if the man occupying the White House still had the name Bush, then there can be little doubting that this story would have come under far greater scrutiny than it is receiving. The sketchiness and strangeness of many details, and importantly, the lack of a body, or as yet, even any photos of a body, would surely have raised more eyebrows under Bush. And still we have only excuses for why none of this evidence has been presented. In other words, we have Obama’s word.
Of course we know Bush lied – both of them. George W. told us there were WMDs in Iraq, just as his father had sworn, a decade earlier, that Saddam’s forces were throwing babies out of incubators and leaving them to die on the hospital floors of Kuwait. Both these stories turned out to be complete fabrications, although they still passed sufficiently under the mainstream radar to help ignite two different wars. But Obama is different. He’s not Bush, and he’s not even Clinton. He actually inhales. So if he says they killed Bin Laden then that’s good enough for me, right? After all, it’s not as if he’s in need of any more wars…
Whether more solid evidence emerges to prove the story of Bin Laden’s death, we must wait and see (though I wouldn’t hold your breath), whilst bearing in mind that it wasn’t long for the first major deception to appear – a badly photo-shopped fake image of his corpse – quickly passed off as authentic by almost every national newspaper. The Guardian (May 2nd) just happened to be a little wiser and more cautious:
“Osama bin Laden corpse photo is fake: Image of bloodied man picked up by British newspapers has been circulating online for two years”
“An image apparently showing a dead Osama Bin Laden broadcast on Pakistani television and picked up by British newspaper websites is a fake.
The bloodied image of a man with matted hair and a blank, half-opened eye has been circulating on the internet for the past two years. It was used on the front pages of the Mail, Times, Telegraph, Sun and Mirror websites, though swiftly removed after the fake was exposed on Twitter.
It appears the fake picture was initially published by the Middle East online newspaper themedialine.org on 29 April 2009, with a warning from the editor that it was ‘unable to ascertain whether the photo is genuine or not’.”
So Bin Laden is finally dead, apparently. What’s the likely upshot? Does this mark some kind of closure to the war on terrorism? Can we now move away from a policy of secret detainment and legitimised use of torture? Can we end the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan? Might we also begin to reverse the anti-civil rights measures and systems of surveillance purportedly in place to save us from terrorist attacks? Can we all sleep more comfortably in our beds? Well, sadly, the most frequent answers we’re getting are simply no, no, and no again.
Let’s begin with Pakistan. Of the many mysteries still hanging over Bin Laden’s assassination, one of the strangest is that his hide-out was located just a few hundred yards from Pakistan’s prestigious military academy in Abbottabad. So how was it that Pakistan’s own intelligence service had failed to notice him? Indeed, how had it taken the US so long? Or was there some kind of a conspiracy afoot? A report from The Telegraph on May 2nd turns up some interesting documents:
“WikiLeaks: Osama bin Laden ‘protected’ by Pakistani security – Pakistani security forces allegedly helped Osama bin Laden evade American troops for almost 10 years, according to secret US government files.”
“American diplomats were told that one of the key reasons why they had failed to find bin Laden was that Pakistan’s security services tipped him off whenever US troops approached.
Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence Directorate (ISID) also allegedly smuggled al-Qaeda terrorists through airport security to help them avoid capture and sent a unit into Afghanistan to fight alongside the Taliban.
The claims, made in leaked US government files obtained by Wikileaks, will add to questions over Pakistan’s capacity to fight al-Qaeda.” […]
“According to a US diplomatic dispatch, General Abdullo Sadulloevich Nazarov, a senior Tajik counterterrorism official, told the Americans that “many” inside Pakistan knew where bin Laden was.
The document stated: ‘In Pakistan, Osama Bin Laden wasn’t an invisible man, and many knew his whereabouts in North Waziristan, but whenever security forces attempted a raid on his hideouts, the enemy received warning of their approach from sources in the security forces.’”
So is this actually true? Well, it’s in a document – so that bit’s true. Obviously, we don’t know if the information is true, however, and in light of what has happened since, the release of these documents has, to put it mildly, been a little inconvenient for Pakistan. On the other hand, of course, for those seeking justification for Obama’s military incursions into Pakistan, the release of these documents is a godsend.
And here is another article from The Telegraph, also May 2nd, and based on “information” contained in other leaked documents, which asks whether: “The killing of the world’s most wanted man as a direct result of information obtained from Guantanamo detainees such as KSM [Khalid Sheikh Mohammed] will reignite the debate over whether torture is a legitimate interrogation technique in the ‘war on terror’”:
“WikiLeaks: Osama bin Laden killed after tip-offs from Guantanamo – The mastermind of the 9/11 attacks, who was interrogated using “torture” techniques, gave the United States the breakthrough that resulted in the killing of Osama bin Laden.”
“Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM), who was repeatedly subjected to methods including ‘waterboarding’ and stress positions, provided the CIA with the name of bin Laden’s personal courier, according to US officials.
A second source – also an al-Qaeda ‘leader’ held at Guantanamo Bay – then confirmed the courier’s identity, sparking an intense manhunt that resulted in the dramatic final raid.
Secret documents seen by The Daily Telegraph disclose that this second source – the terrorist operations chief, Abu Faraj al-Libi – played a key role in finding ‘safe havens’ for bin Laden and lived in the military town where he was finally found.”
So does this mean we now need even more secret detainment and torture? Bin Laden’s death making the world still more brutal and barbaric…
As for the world being a safer place – and quite aside from the already flourishing speculation about “almost certain” and “highly likely” reprisals – if previous newspaper reports are to be understood correctly, then this might have been the very worst thing that ever happened – if, that is, the “information” contained in these documents (also recently released by wikileaks) is to be believed. Here’s one from February 1st, published in The Vancouver Sun:
‘Al-Qaida on brink of using nuclear bomb’
“Al-Qaida is on the verge of producing radioactive weapons after sourcing nuclear material and recruiting rogue scientists to build “dirty” bombs, according to leaked diplomatic documents.
A leading atomic regulator has privately warned that the world stands on the brink of a “nuclear 9/11”.
Security briefings suggest that jihadi groups are also close to producing “workable and efficient” biological and chemical weapons that could kill thousands if unleashed in attacks on the West.
Thousands of classified American cables obtained by the WikiLeaks website and passed to The Daily Telegraph detail the international struggle to stop the spread of weapons-grade nuclear, chemical and biological material around the globe.
At a Nato meeting in January 2009, security chiefs briefed member states that al-Qaida was plotting a program of “dirty radioactive IEDs”, makeshift nuclear roadside bombs that could be used against British troops in Afghanistan.
Click here to read the full article by Heidi Blake and Christopher Hope (of The Daily Telegraph).
And a day later, another article about the leaks appeared in the Daily Mail:
“World ‘on brink of nuclear 9/11’ as Al Qaeda plans large ‘dirty’ bomb”
“Al Qaeda is attempting to stockpile ‘dirty’ radioactive explosives that could be used to target British troops or for a larger urban attack, it has emerged.
New diplomatic documents released by WikiLeaks show that U.S. intelligence personnel have been informed of terrorist attempts to acquire dangerous amounts of uranium and plutonium.
The cables warn of a large trafficking operation of chemical weapons material and threats of a ‘nuclear 9/11’ unless the West intervenes swiftly.
Security chiefs briefed a Nato meeting in January 2009 that Al Qaeda was planning a programme of ‘dirty radioactive improvised explosive devices (IEDs)’.
The IEDs could be used against coalition forces in Afghanistan but would also contaminate the surrounding land with nuclear waste for years to come.” 1
And now we have this – right on time – published April 26th in The Telegraph:
“Wikileaks: Al-Qaeda plotted chemical and nuclear attack on the West: Guantanamo interrogators have uncovered a determined attempt by al-Qaeda to attack Western countries using chemical or nuclear weapons, according to the top-secret files.”
“One of the terrorist group’s most senior figures warned that al-Qaeda had obtained and hidden a nuclear bomb in Europe that would be detonated if Osama bin Laden was killed or captured.
Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the al-Qaeda mastermind currently facing trial in America over the 9/11 atrocities, was involved in a range of plans including attacks on US nuclear plants and a“nuclear hellstorm” plotin America.”
“According to the US WikiLeaks files, a Libyan detainee, Abu Al-Libi, “has knowledge of al-Qaeda possibly possessing a nuclear bomb”. Al-Libi, the operational chief of al-Qaeda and a close associate of Osama bin Laden before his detention, allegedly knew the location of a nuclear bomb in Europe that would be detonated if bin Laden were killed or captured.”
Now just think about this story for a moment – if a nuclear bomb were already planted in Europe or the US, would al-Qaeda then just “sit on it”, waiting for their enemy to strike whilst simultaneously hoping they don’t get too lucky; discovering the bomb before they get to Bin Laden? Or would they just have pressed the button long ago, in fact shortly after acquiring it, making sure to perpetrate the greatest terrorist attack in history, bar none? All of these leaks just seem too good to be true – at least, for anyone looking to perpetuate the “war on terror” and put an extra squeeze on Pakistan.
But there are also other doubts about the killing of Bin Laden. For instance, and given that the Americans had apparently been on his tail for months, if not years, why hadn’t they planned an operation to capture him alive? Especially as it seems he’d been holed up in this compound without phone or internet connection for years – so a sitting duck, basically – and that Bin Laden wasn’t even armed when they reached him.
By killing instead of capturing him, they’ve missed the chance to interrogate the man who was formerly at the helm of al-Qaeda, and remains accused of planning the 9/11 attacks. So why didn’t they put him on trial? On top of which, bringing Bin Laden to justice might have eased a little of the sting from any anti-American backlash. It would have demonstrated to the world that America really can occupy the moral high-ground. Yet instead of this, it seems that they couldn’t kill and bury Bin Laden fast enough, which inevitably looks suspicious.
Whatever the final truth – and information, let alone truth, seems to be in such short supply at present – Bin Laden’s demise couldn’t have been better timed for the US administration. Coming immediately in the wake of Obama’s reshuffling of his war-room staff last week, it has already helped him to legitimise America’s continuing role in what is now a whole decade of bloody imperialist interventions. At another stroke, it has established Obama’s newly nominated Secretary of Defense and former CIA chief, Panetta, as the latest in a long line of all-American heroes. And aside from being a helpful distraction from Obama’s many current domestic difficulties and failings, not to mention the deepening crisis in Libya, it will no doubt help rally support for the President, delivering a vital shot in the arm at the start of his re-election campaign.
As it happens, Bin Laden’s death also comes on the eve of the tenth anniversary of the 9/11 attacks, the event that brought him such infamy in the first place, and so we must hope that his end brings with it, an end to this post-9/11 era. Worryingly, however, there remains no end in sight for the “war on terror” – a war, or rather wars, that supposedly began with the singular object of finding Bin Laden “dead or alive” – the manhunt is now officially over, and yet, and aside from the unedifying spectacle of street celebrations, it actually feels like nothing has changed…
Of course, the many people cheering and waving flags at Ground Zero were already eager to believe that Bin Laden was killed by US special forces, just as Obama said; and obviously it’s always easier selling propaganda to the willing. Hardly surprisingly, in Pakistan, the public reaction has been quite different. The same story linking their own country directly to al-Qaeda, the Pakistani people have every reason to be suspicious of a frame-up and fearful of what comes next, especially given what happened to the last place that had “harboured” Bin Laden. If recent history has taught us anything, then it’s that we should be doubtful too.
The simple fact is that we are all swimming against constant currents of propaganda – currents that certainly strengthened in the wake of 9/11. And if you don’t notice these currents, then, as the joke goes, that just shows how really effective they are. Those cheering did so because they want to believe that U-S-A has won, or is winning. It has not, and it is not. And for just so long as this ridiculous and endless “war on terror” goes on, everyone has lost and will continue losing — everyone except for the corporate profiteers, that is.
But since Bin Laden is officially dead, the mission is accomplished, right? – which means it’s high time to stop the fighting and bring the troops home. And if not now, Obama, then when?
1 What the document fails to say is that the land in Afghanistan has in all likelihood already been contaminated “with nuclear waste for years to come” thanks to our use of so-called “depleted uranium”. This is certainly the case in Iraq:
“US rejects Iraq DU clean-up”:
“The US says it has no plans to remove the debris left over from depleted uranium (DU) weapons it is using in Iraq. It says no clean-up is needed, because research shows DU has no long-term effects. It says a 1990 study suggesting health risks to local people and veterans is out of date.”
Click here to read full article by Alex Kerby, BBC News Monday 14th April, 2003.
wall of controversy 