Topics

1

Aneristic Illusions / Zawahiri, "Gladio B", Turkey and Sibel Edmonds

« on: May 21, 2013, 05:25:40 pm »

I've mentioned this story elsewhere, but it deserves its own thread:

http://www.counterpunch.org/2013/05/20/al-qaeda-enemy-or-asset/

Described by the American Civil Liberties Union as the “most gagged person in the history of the United States of America,” Edmonds studied criminal justice, psychology and public policy at  George Washington and George Mason universities. Two weeks after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, her fluency in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani earned her an FBI contract at the Washington DC field office. She was tasked with translating highly classified intelligence from operations against terrorism suspects in and outside the U.S..

In the course of her work, Edmonds became privy to evidence that U.S. military and intelligence agencies were collaborating with Islamist militants affiliated with al-Qaeda, the very forces blamed for the 9/11 attacks – and that officials in the FBI were covering up the evidence. When Edmonds complained to her superiors, her family was threatened by one of the subjects of her complaint, and she was fired. Her accusations of espionage against her FBI colleagues were eventually investigated by the Justice Department’s Office of the Inspector General, which did not give details about the allegations as they remained classified.

Although no final conclusions about the espionage allegations were reached, the Justice Department concluded that many of Edmonds’ accusations “were supported, that the FBI did not take them seriously enough and that her allegations were, in fact, the most significant factor in the FBI’s decision to terminate her services.”

When she attempted to go public with her story in 2002, and again in 2004, the U.S. government silenced Edmonds by invoking a legal precedent known as “state secrets privilege” – a near limitless power to quash a lawsuit based solely on the government’s claim that evidence or testimony could divulge information that might undermine “national security.” Under this doctrine, the government sought to retroactively classify basic information concerning Edmonds’s case already in the public record, including, according to the New York Times, “what languages Ms. Edmonds translated, what types of cases she handled, and what employees she worked with, officials said. Even routine and widely disseminated information — like where she worked — is now classified.”

Five years ago, Edmonds revealed to the Sunday Times that an unidentified senior U.S. State Department official was on the payroll of Turkish agents in Washington, passing on nuclear and military secrets. “He was aiding foreign operatives against U.S. interests by passing them highly classified information, not only from the State Department but also from the Pentagon, in exchange for money, position and political objectives”, Edmonds told the paper. She reported coming across this informationwhen listening to suppressed phone calls recorded by FBI surveillance, marked by her colleague Melek Can Dickerson as “not pertinent”.

In the Sunday Times exposé, Edmonds described a parallel organisation in Israel cooperating with the Turks on illegal weapons sales and technology transfers. Between them, Israel and Turkey operated a range of front companies incorporated in the U.S. with active “moles in sensitive military and nuclear institutions”, supported by U.S. officials, in order to sell secrets to the highest bidder. One of the  buyers was Pakistan’s Inter Services Intelligence (ISI) – which often used its Turkish allies, according to the Times, “as a conduit… because they were less likely to attract suspicion.”

The Pakistani operation was, the paper reported,  “led by General Mahmoud Ahmad, then the ISI chief” from 1999 to 2001, when the agency helped train, supply and coordinate the Afghan Taliban and gave sanctuary to their Arab allies brought together in the coalition named al-Qaeda. Ahmad, as the Timesnoted, “was accused [by the FBI] of sanctioning a $100,000 wire payment to Mohammed Atta, one of the 9/11 hijackers, immediately before the attacks.”

In her interview, Edmonds  insisted that after its initial exposé, the Times‘ investigation had gone beyond such previous revelations, and was preparing to disclose her most startling accusations. Among these, Edmonds described how the CIA and the Pentagon had been running a series of covert operations supporting Islamist militant networks linked to Osama bin Laden right up to 9/11, in Central Asia, the Balkans and the Caucasus.

While it is widely recognised that the CIA sponsored bin Laden’s networks in Afghanistan during the Cold War, U.S. government officials deny any such ties existed. Others claim these ties were real, but were severed after the Soviet Union collapsed in 1989.

But according to Edmonds, this narrative is false. “Not just bin Laden, but several senior ‘bin Ladens’ were transported by U.S. intelligence back and forth to the region in the late 1990s through to 2001″, she told this author, “including Ayman al-Zawahiri” – Osama bin Laden’s right-hand-man who has taken over as al-Qaeda’s top leader.

“In the late 1990s, all the way up to 9/11, al-Zawahiri and other mujahideen operatives were meeting regularly with senior U.S. officials in the U.S. embassy in Baku to plan the Pentagon’s Balkan operations with the mujahideen,” said Edmonds. “We had support for these operations from Pakistan and Saudi Arabia, but the U.S. oversaw and directed them. They were being run from a secret section of the Pentagon with its own office”.

Edmonds’ allegations find some independent corroboration in the public record. The Wall Street Journal refers to a nebulous agreement between Mubarak and “the operational wing of Egyptian Islamic Jihad, which was then headed by Ayman al-Zawahiri…  Many of that group’s fighters embraced a cease-fire with the government of former President Hosni Mubarak in 1997.”

Youssef Bodansky, former Director of the Congressional Task Force on Terrorism and Unconventional Warfare, cited U.S. intelligence sources in an article for Defense and Foreign Affairs: Strategic Policy, confirming “discussions between the Egyptian terrorist leader Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri and an Arab-American known to have been both an emissary of the CIA and the U.S. Government.” He referred to an “offer” made to al-Zawahiri in November 1997 on behalf of U.S. intelligence, granting his Islamists a free hand in Egypt as long as they lent support to U.S. forces in the Balkans. In 1998, Al Zawahiri’s brother, Muhammed, led an elite unit of the Kosovo Liberation Army against Serbs during the Kosovo conflict – he reportedly had direct contact with NATO leadership.

In recent interviews, two Sunday Times journalists confirmed to this author that the newspaper’s investigation based on Sibel Edmonds’ revelations was to break much of the details into the open.

“We’d spoken to several current and active Pentagon officials confirming the existence of U.S. operations sponsoring mujahideen networks in Central Asia from the 1990s to 2001,” said oneSunday Times source. “Those mujahideen networks were intertwined with a whole range of criminal enterprises, including drugs and guns. The Pentagon officials corroborated Edmonds’ allegations against specific U.S. officials, and I’d also interviewed an MI6 officer who confirmed that the U.S. was running these operations sponsoring mujahideen in that period.”

But according to Edmonds, citing the investigative team at the paper, the last two articles in the series were spiked under U.S. State Department pressure. She recalled being told at the time by journalists leading the Sunday Times investigation that the newspaper’s editor had decided to squash the story after receiving calls from officials at the U.S. embassy in London.

A journalist with the Sunday Times‘ investigative unit told this author he had interviewed former Special Agent in Charge, Dennis Saccher, who had moved to the FBI’s Colorado office. Saccher reportedly confirmed the veracity of Edmonds’ allegations of espionage, telling him that Edmonds’ story “should have been front page news” because it was “a scandal bigger than Watergate.” The same journalist confirmed that after interviewing Saccher at his home, the newspaper was contacted by the U.S. State Department. “The U.S. embassy in London called the editor and tried to ward him off. We were told that we weren’t permitted to approach Saccher or any other active FBI agents directly, but could only go through the FBI’s press office – that if we tried to speak to Saccher or anyone else employed by the FBI directly, that would be illegal. Of course, it isn’t, but that’s what we were told. I think this was a veiled threat.”

What is not mentioned in this article, but is mentioned on the author's personal site, is that the role Marc Grossman allegedly played.  Grossman was the former U.S. Ambassador to Turkey (1994-1997), and then afterwards "went onto become Assistant Secretary of State for European Affairs (1997-2000), then served as Under Secretary of State for Political Affairs under the Bush administration (2001-2005). His most recent political appointment was as Obama's special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan (2011-2012). He is currently Vice President of the Washington DC lobbying firm, The Cohen Group." 

Grossman is alleged to have been the agent on the payroll of Turkish intelligence, as alleged by Edmonds.  And, as the author notes, "The Pakistani daily, The News, reported on 10th September 2001 that the ISI chief held several "mysterious meetings at the Pentagon and National Security Council" that week, including CIA director George Tenet – but "the most important meeting was with Mark [sic] Grossman, U.S. Under Secretary for Political Affairs.""

2

Aneristic Illusions / Benghazi attacks definitely don't pass the smell test

« on: May 09, 2013, 01:22:23 pm »

If you're anything like me, you've probably noted how Obama's valiant defenders in the press have been keeping really, really quiet about the Benghazi attacks and subsequent questions that have arisen about the conduct of the State Department and the White House on the day of the attack.

Even people somewhat critical of the administration have been reluctant to look at Benghazi too closely, probably on the basis that the Republicans have been attempting to hammer Obama (and Clinton) over various aspects of that, and the Republicans are always wrong.

Well, things just got interesting:

While US diplomats were pulling bodies from a burning Libyan consulate and frantically smashing up hard drives last 11 September, their superiors blocked rescue efforts and later attempted to cover up security failings, according to damaging new evidence that may yet hurt Hillary Clinton's presidential hopes.

In vivid testimony to Congress on Wednesday, Gregory Hicks, deputy to murdered US ambassador Christopher Stevens, revealed for the first time in public a detailed account of the desperate few hours after the terrorist attacks on the US consulate in Benghazi.

Hicks claimed Clinton's chief of staff, Cheryl Mills, telephoned him to complain that he had given critical evidence to congressional investigators without the presence of a "minder" from the state department. "A phone call from that senior a person is generally considered not to be good news," said Hicks, who said he had since been demoted. "She was upset. She was very upset."

The career diplomat also alleged he was actively discouraged by officials from asking awkward questions about why other top Clinton aides, including the UN ambassador Susan Rice, initially blamed the attack on a spontaneous protest that got out of control. He described that briefing he described as "jaw-dropping, embarrassing and stunning". It is now thought the attacks, involving up to 60 heavily armed militia, were co-ordinated by Ansar al-Sharia, a group affiliated to al-Qaida, and timed to coincide with the 11th anniversary of the attacks on the World Trade Center in New York and the Pentagon in Washington.

The allegations of a state department cover-up follow equally embarrassing claims that military leaders blocked efforts to dispatch special forces troops to the Benghazi consulate.

Of course the Republicans are doing this as a roundabout way of attacking Obama and smearing Clinton, hoping to poison the well before a possible future Presidential bid.  I mean, duh.

But that doesn't mean there are some legitimate questions as to what exactly went down that day.  And what precisely the CIA were doing in Benghazi, which seems to be perhaps part of the reason for the White House's sudden drive towards damage control.  Saint Brennan of the Drones must be protected at all costs, especially if he was running some kind of covert op in Benghazi and missed out on the fact his people had been made, or had them too busy collecting Stingers to focus on their own safety.

3

Aneristic Illusions / Memo shows full extent of CIA influence on "Zero Dark Thirty".

« on: May 07, 2013, 01:12:32 am »

Surprise, it's propaganda!

The CIA's whitewashing effort is revealed in a cache of documents newly released under a Freedom of Information Act request about the CIA's cooperation with Bigelow and Boal. The documents include a 2012 memo—initially classified "SECRET"—summarizing five conference calls between Boal and the CIA's Office of Public Affairs in late 2011. "The purpose for these discussions was for OPA officers to help promote an appropriate portrayal of the Agency and the Bin Ladin operation," according to the memo. (Hundreds of pages of CIA documents about the film were released last year; the memo obtained by Gawker was approved for release late last month.)

During these calls, Boal "verbally shared the screenplay" for Zero Dark Thirty in order to get the CIA's feedback, and the CIA's public affairs department verbally asked Boal to take out parts that they objected to. According to the memo, he did.

Pro-tip: when the CIA says it is "absolutely comfortable" with the final product, chances are said product is bullshit.

4

Aneristic Illusions / Your taxes at work - promoting Bahrain's despotism

« on: May 04, 2013, 02:57:00 pm »

So, this is an amusing little article by the British Embassy in Bahrain:

So-called human rights organisations, which unfortunately are largely administered by ex-ideologists and even terrorists, today propagate their own version of the word ‘freedom’, solely to take it away from others. They dismiss any notion that the minute someone’s freedom intrudes on that of another person, it becomes an act of violation. For absolute freedom is absolute chaos. Like any other state of being, it must be accountable. But in today’s world there is a frequent tendency for the press to brand those in power as ‘baddies’, and the real wrongdoers as victims.

During the last two years Bahrain has suffered hugely damaging media-inspired attacks on its image and integrity – without checks being made as to their veracity – whether news or comment.

Another thought…as much as beasts cannot be left to roam freely, so in human society the feral element’s freedom should be under control.

Respect for freedom should really start from an early age. Otherwise our society will only breed ranks of the undisciplined – staining the values of freedom.

Freedom of thought, thinking and writing, should all derive their essence from graceful wisdom, not from the dogma of hooligans.

Indeed, such hooliganism cannot be tolerated.

5

Aneristic Illusions / Remember kids, economics is a SCIENCE

« on: April 20, 2013, 01:33:22 am »

 

Via the BBC...

This week, economists have been astonished to find that a famous academic paper often used to make the case for austerity cuts contains major errors. Another surprise is that the mistakes, by two eminent Harvard professors, were spotted by a student.

It's 4 January 2010, the Marriott Hotel in Atlanta. At the annual meeting of the American Economic Association, Professor Carmen Reinhart and the former chief economist of the International Monetary Fund, Ken Rogoff, are presenting a research paper called Growth in a Time of Debt.

At a time of economic crisis, their finding resonates - economic growth slows dramatically when the size of a country's debt rises above 90% of Gross Domestic Product, the overall size of the economy.

Word about this paper spread. Policymakers wanted to know more.

And so did student Thomas Herndon. His professors at the University of Massachusetts Amherst had set his graduate class an assignment - pick an economics paper and see if you can replicate the results. It's a good exercise for aspiring researchers.

But no, he was correct - he'd spotted a basic error in the spreadsheet. The Harvard professors had accidentally only included 15 of the 20 countries under analysis in their key calculation (of average GDP growth in countries with high public debt).

Australia, Austria, Belgium, Canada and Denmark were missing.

Oops.

Herndon and his professors found other issues with Growth in a Time of Debt, which had an even bigger impact on the famous result. The first was the fact that for some countries, some data was missing altogether.

Reinhart and Rogoff say that they were assembling the data series bit by bit, and at the time they presented the paper for the American Economic Association conference, good quality data on post-war Canada, Australia and New Zealand simply weren't available. Nevertheless, the omission made a substantial difference.

Thomas and his supervisors also didn't like the way that Reinhart and Rogoff averaged their data. They say one bad year for a small country like New Zealand, was blown out of proportion because it was given the same weight as, for example, the UK's nearly 20 years with high public debt.

All sounds very scientific to me. 

6

Aneristic Illusions / Ah, history

« on: April 05, 2013, 10:03:48 pm »

At the time of the assassination, [David] Ferrie was a forty-five-year-old New Orleans resident. He possessed assorted talents and eccentricities. He was a pilot, having learned to fly in Cleveland at Sky Tech Inc. from 1942-45. He was a senior pilot with Eastern Airlines, until he was fired for homosexual activity on the job. He was also a hypnotist, accomplished pianist, a researcher of the origins of cancer, amateur psychologist, and a victim of a rare disease, alopecia, which made him lose his body hair. He listed his name in the telephone directory as Dr. Ferrie by right of a doctorate degree in psychology from an unaccredited school, Phoenix University of Bari, Italy. He was anti-Castro, anti-Kennedy, and anti-Communist; Ferrie was also a bishop of the Orthodox Old Catholic Church of North America. His odd lifestyle was embellished by an equally odd appearance, featuring a red toupee and false eyebrows. Investigator and Harrison Livingstone met Ferrie and remembered him as “an intense and sinister, cynical, disgusting, disheveled individual who was excited at the prospect of preying upon the vulnerable, the helpless, and the innocent.”

I've become somewhat interested in the Kennedy assassination due to James Ellroy's American Underword trilogy.  Not interested enough to come to any firm conclusions, just to read around it, in my spare time.  Finding out things like this is always fun.

7

Techmology and Scientism / Spam war? No. Cyber-sabotage? Yes

« on: March 28, 2013, 02:11:56 pm »

You may remember internet issues yesterday were being attributed to a war between a NATO bunker and prolific spammers.

Unfortunately, this may not be the case, as news out of Egypt is suggestive of another cause.

CNet News:

Egypt's naval forces arrested three divers cutting through an undersea Internet cable today, the country's military representative said, raising the possibility that saboteurs are behind severed lines and days-long Internet disruptions.

A coast-guard patrol stopped a fishing boat near Alexandria and arrested three men "while they were cutting a submarine cable" line belonging to Telecom Egypt, the country's main communications company, Col. Ahmed Mohammed Ali said on his official Facebook page. The page offered no details on the divers' identities, according to published reports.

Egypt has long been known as a central node for the world wide web, with its cables connecting several continents together.  If anyone wanted to disrupt the internet, for whatever reason, the undersea cables would be the place to hit.

I for one am very interested in what the motivations of these divers might be.

8

Techmology and Scientism / Scientists create jellyfish-rat monstrosity

« on: March 23, 2013, 07:29:20 pm »

The truth is, in fact, even more disturbing than the title:

“Morphologically, we’ve built a jellyfish. Functionally, we’ve built a jellyfish. Genetically, this thing is a rat,” says Kit Parker, a biophysicist at Harvard University in Cambridge, Massachusetts, who led the work. The project is described today in Nature Biotechnology.

9

Aneristic Illusions / Iraq War apologia

« on: March 21, 2013, 12:20:29 pm »

Anyone else amused and slightly disgusted by the 10 year rememberances in the press of, well, why we shouldn't ever trust the press?

Ezra Klein seems to have taken the most shit for his terrible article, and rightfully so, but this 2002 line from Nicholas Kristof is amazing:

President Bush has convinced me that there is no philosophical reason we should not overthrow the Iraqi government.

10

Aneristic Illusions / Nixon's "October Surprise" confirmed

« on: March 16, 2013, 06:44:12 pm »

Only 44 years too late:

Declassified tapes of President Lyndon Johnson's telephone calls provide a fresh insight into his world. Among the revelations - he planned a dramatic entry into the 1968 Democratic Convention to re-join the presidential race. And he caught Richard Nixon sabotaging the Vietnam peace talks... but said nothing.

It begins in the summer of 1968. Nixon feared a breakthrough at the Paris Peace talks designed to find a negotiated settlement to the Vietnam war, and he knew this would derail his campaign.

He therefore set up a clandestine back-channel involving Anna Chennault, a senior campaign adviser.

At a July meeting in Nixon's New York apartment, the South Vietnamese ambassador was told Chennault represented Nixon and spoke for the campaign. If any message needed to be passed to the South Vietnamese president, Nguyen Van Thieu, it would come via Chennault.

In late October 1968 there were major concessions from Hanoi which promised to allow meaningful talks to get underway in Paris - concessions that would justify Johnson calling for a complete bombing halt of North Vietnam. This was exactly what Nixon feared.

Chennault was despatched to the South Vietnamese embassy with a clear message: the South Vietnamese government should withdraw from the talks, refuse to deal with Johnson, and if Nixon was elected, they would get a much better deal.

So on the eve of his planned announcement of a halt to the bombing, Johnson learned the South Vietnamese were pulling out.

He was also told why. The FBI had bugged the ambassador's phone and a transcripts of Anna Chennault's calls were sent to the White House. In one conversation she tells the ambassador to "just hang on through election".

Johnson was told by Defence Secretary Clifford that the interference was illegal and threatened the chance for peace.

11

Aneristic Illusions / Crazification Factor

« on: March 14, 2013, 10:44:46 pm »

http://rationalwiki.org/wiki/Crazification_factor

Crazification factor is a neologism coined by blogger John Rogers to refer to the portion of the electorate comprising the nuttiest of the wingnuts and the batshit crazy. In Rogers' words:

“”Obama vs. Alan Keyes. Keyes was from out of state, so you can eliminate any established political base; both candidates were black, so you can factor out racism; and Keyes was plainly, obviously, completely crazy. Batshit crazy. Head-trauma crazy. But 27% of the population of Illinois voted for him. They put party identification, personal prejudice, whatever ahead of rational judgement. Hell, even like 5% of Democrats voted for him. That's crazy behaviour. I think you have to assume a 27% Crazification Factor in any population.[1]

Thus, people in this category are called the "27 percenters." Perhaps the greatest confirmation of the existence of said factor in the last decade can be found in a 2003 poll of Russian attitudes toward Josef Stalin in which 36% thought he was a pretty cool dude.

http://www.gallup.com/poll/110806/bushs-approval-rating-drops-new-low-27.aspx

According to a Sept. 26-27 USA Today/Gallup poll, just 27% of Americans approve of the job George W. Bush is doing as president, the lowest rating of his presidency.

And just today:

http://ukpollingreport.co.uk/blog/archives/7141

Ipsos MORI’s monthly political monitor is out, with topline figures of CON 27%(-3), LAB 40%(-2), LDEM 11%(+4), UKIP 13%(+4).

12

Aneristic Illusions / Wont see this in many stories about the new Pope

« on: March 14, 2013, 04:06:25 pm »

The new Pope is actually far worse than the "Nazi" Pope we had before:

Bergoglio was the head of the Jesuits in Argentina during the military dictatorship of 1976-1983, during which the military murdered upwards of 30,000 people (as well as kidnapping hundreds of children whose parents the regime had tortured and murdered). Unlike Catholic officials in neighboring Chile and Brazil, where priests, bishops, and even cardinals spoke out against human rights abuses and defended victims of abuses, in Argentina, the Catholic Church was openly complicit in the military regime’s repression. Bergoglio wasnot exemptfrom this involvement:military officers have testified that Bergoglio helped the Argentine military regime hide political prisoners when human rights activists visited the country. And Bergoglio himsel fhad to testify regarding the kidnapping of two priests who he stripped of their religious licenses shortly before they were kidnapped and tortured. This isn’t just a case of Bergoglio being a member of an institution that supported a brutal regime; it’s a case of Bergoglio himself having ties, direct and indirect, to that very regime.

13

High Weirdness / SKULLS FOR THE SKULL GOD

« on: March 13, 2013, 07:36:10 am »

I've got nothing:

The first skull in cherry-red wrapping was found on February 20 in a planter near a residential building downtown. Since then, seven others have been found near Mormon temples or consulates, including those for Russia, the Czech Republic and South Africa. The skulls are old, with traces of dirt.

14

Techmology and Scientism / THE ALIEN INVASION HAS BEGUN

« on: March 12, 2013, 01:06:23 pm »

Sorta.

http://www.technologyreview.com/view/512381/astrobiologists-find-ancient-fossils-in-fireball-fragments/

On 29 December 2012, a fireball lit up the early evening skies over the Sri Lankan province of Polonnaruwa. Hot, sparkling fragments of the fireball rained down across the countryside and witnesses reported the strong odour of tar or asphalt.

Over the next few days, the local police gathered numerous examples of these stones and sent them to the Sri Lankan Medical Research Institute of the Ministry of Health in Colombo. After noticing curious features inside these stones, officials forwarded the samples to a team of astrobiologists at Cardiff University in the UK for further analysis.

The results of these tests, which the Cardiff team reveal today, are extraordinary.  They say the stones contain fossilised biological structures fused into the rock matrix and that their tests clearly rule out the possibility of terrestrial contamination.

But don't get your hopes up too soon

There are other explanations, of course. One is that the fireball was of terrestrial origin, a remnant of one of the many asteroid impacts in Earth’s history that that have ejected billions of tonnes of rock and water into space, presumably with biological material inside. Another is that the structures are not biological and have a different explanation.

15

Aneristic Illusions / Hugo Chavez is dead

« on: March 06, 2013, 12:47:15 pm »

Where's my expected orgy of Serious Liberals celebrating the death of history's greatest monster?