How Has Somalia Come To Be Considered "A Failed State?" How They Came To Misrepresent OSLO (Murdoch Bin Laden?) Good-bye Amy!

(If throwing a contribution Pottersville2's way won't break your budget in these difficult financial times, I really need it, and would wholeheartedly appreciate it. Anything you can afford will make a huge difference in this blog's lifetime.)

[Desperately seeking donations (even as little as $5.00, please) for gas for this blog's continuation!]

Want to know one more reason it was so important that Ronald Reagan (specially selected as "the" candidate of the Rethugs because George H. W. Bush was too unpopular to win at that time) had to be the "It's Morning in America" time winner of the 1980 election? (I believe they were operating without a good editing staff and really meant "mourning.")

Far beneath the surface of the tragic drama of Somalia, four major U.S. oil companies are quietly sitting on a prospective fortune in exclusive concessions to explore and exploit tens of millions of acres of the Somali countryside. According to documents obtained by The Times, nearly two-thirds of Somalia was allocated to the American oil giants Conoco, Amoco, Chevron and Phillips in the final years before Somalia's pro-U.S. President Mohamed Siad Barre was overthrown and the nation plunged into chaos in January, 1991 . . . . Officially, the Administration and the State Department insist that the U.S. military mission in Somalia is strictly humanitarian. Oil industry spokesmen dismissed as "absurd" and "nonsense" allegations by aid experts, veteran East Africa analysts and several prominent Somalis that President Bush [Senior], a former Texas oilman, was moved to act in Somalia, at least in part, by the U.S. corporate oil stake. But corporate and scientific documents disclosed that the American companies are well positioned to pursue Somalia's most promising potential oil reserves the moment the nation is pacified. And the State Department and U.S. military officials acknowledge that one of those oil companies has done more than simply sit back and hope for peace. Conoco Inc., the only major multinational corporation to maintain a functioning office in Mogadishu throughout the past two years of nationwide anarchy, has been directly involved in the U.S. government's role in the U.N.-sponsored humanitarian military effort. (The Oil Factor in Somalia: Four American petroleum giants had agreements with the African nation before its civil war began. They could reap big rewards if peace is restored. - Los Angeles Times 1993) Somalia had been a colony of Italy and Britain. In 1969, a post-colonial government was formed under president Mohamed Siad Barre; major social programs in health and education were implemented, rural and urban infrastructure was developed in the course of the 1970s, significant social progress including a mass literacy program was achieved. The early 1980s marks a major turning point. The IMF-World Bank Structural Adjustment Program (SAP) was imposed on sub-Saharan Africa. The recurrent famines of the 1980s and 1990s are in large part the consequence of IMF-World Bank "economic medicine". In Somalia, ten years of IMF economic medicine laid the foundations for the country's transition towards economic dislocation and social chaos. By the late 1980s, following recurrent "austerity measures" imposed by the Washington consensus, wages in the public sector had collapsed to three dollars a month. The following article first published in 1993 in Le Monde diplomatique and Third World Resurgence centers on the historical causes of famine in Somalia. This article was subsequently included as a chapter in my book The Globalization of Poverty and the New World Order, first edition 1997, second edition, Global Research. Montreal, 2003. Somalia: the Real Causes of Famine Michel Chossudovsky First published in 1993, Third World Resurgence and Le Monde diplomatique. The IMF Intervention in the Early 1980s

Only Muslims can be terrorists? (By definition!) (Odd and odder "reporting" (hardly unbiased) by a self-described (and adored by the ma(e)sses) jihad expert with a blog called Jihadica (but anyone can invent a blog, right?).

How A Clueless "Terrorism Expert" Set Media Suspicion On Muslims After Oslo Horror Submitted by Benjamin Doherty on Sat, 07/23/2011

(Photo: geirolav - Bilde fra eksplosjonen 20 sek etter at det smalt. #oslxpl yfrog.com/kinyqpej)

Immediately after news of the bombing of government buildings in Norway’s capital Oslo, the Internet buzzed with speculation about who might have done it and why. Most speculation focused on so-called Islamist militancy and Muslims. The urge to speculate after grave events is understandable, but the focus of speculation, its amplification through social media, its legitimization in mainstream media, and the privilege granted to so-called experts is a common pattern.

The danger of such speculation is that it adds little knowledge but causes real harm by spreading fear and loathing of Muslims, immigrants and other vulnerable and routinely demonized populations, and whether intentional or not, assigns collective guilt to them.

“Experts” who supposedly study this topic — almost always white men and very often with military or government backgrounds — direct suspicion toward Muslims by pointing to claims of responsibility on “jihadi” web sites that only they have access to. Notorious attacks invariably inspire false claims of responsibility, or false reports of claims of responsibility, but this apparently doesn’t discourage the media and experts from giving them undue attention.

From the “experts” to The New York Times to the world…

The New York Times originally reported:

A terror group, Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or the Helpers of the Global Jihad, issued a statement claiming responsibility for the attack, according to Will McCants, a terrorism analyst at C.N.A., a research institute that studies terrorism.

In later editions, the story was revised to read:

Initial reports focused on the possibility of Islamic militants, in particular Ansar al-Jihad al-Alami, or Helpers of the Global Jihad, cited by some analysts as claiming responsibility for the attacks. American officials said the group was previously unknown and might not even exist.

The source is Will McCants, adjunct faculty at Johns Hopkins University. On his website he describes himself as formerly “Senior Adviser for Countering Violent Extremism at the U.S. Department of State, program manager of the Minerva Initiative at the Department of Defense, and fellow at West Point’s Combating Terrorism Center.” This morning, he posted “Alleged Claim for Oslo Attacks” on his blog Jihadica:

This was posted by Abu Sulayman al-Nasir to the Arabic jihadi forum, Shmukh, around 10:30am EST. Shmukh is the main forum for Arabic-speaking jihadis who support al-Qaeda. Since the thread is now inaccessible (either locked or taken down), I am posting it here. I don’t have time at the moment to translate the whole thing but I translated the most important bits on twitter.

The Shmukh web site is not accessible to just anyone, so he is the primary source for this claim. McCants stated from the beginning that the claim had been removed or hidden, and on Twitter he even cast doubt on whether it was a claim of responsibility at all.

. . . Coincidentally, Andrew Exum from the Center for a New American Security posted his top 5 terrorism experts, and McCants was at the very top.

_______________ From our most fun inside source, (the good) Roger Ailes:

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Let The Profiling Begin

As wingnut bloggers explicably lose interest in the Norway terrorism story, its time to take them seriously and implement the racial and religious profiling they demand in the name of Homeland Security.

OSLO — The Norwegian police on Saturday charged a man they identified as a right-wing fundamentalist Christian in connection with the bombing of a government building in central Oslo and a shooting attack on a nearby island that together killed at least 92 people. As stunned Norwegians grappled with the deadliest attack in the country since World War II and a shocking case of homegrown terrorism, a portrait began to emerge of the suspect, Anders Behring Breivik, 32. He was described as a religious, gun-loving Norwegian obsessed with what he saw as the threat of multiculturalism and Muslim immigration to the cultural and patriotic values of his country. "We are not sure whether he was alone or had help," a police official, Roger Andresen, said at a televised news conference. "What we know is that he is right wing and a Christian fundamentalist."

Airport screening based on race and religion. Prohibiting places of worship. Slander. Wiretapping. Waterboarding. Every last fucking bit of it.

And Wan Julliams will have to piss himself everytime he appears on FOX News.

Update: The article linked suggests that Breivik (not Breitbart) authored a number of internet postings, but apparently was not yet a #TCOT. One wonders if his Favorites list included any prominent Muslim-hating blogs.

posted by Roger 2:16 PM Monday, July 18, 2011

Murdoch Bin Laden

... with incriminating evidence:

Detectives are examining a computer, paperwork and a phone found in a bin near the riverside London home of Rebekah Brooks, the former chief executive of News International. ... The car park, under a shopping centre, is yards from the gated apartment block where Brooks lives with her husband, a former racehorse trainer and close friend of the prime minister David Cameron. It is understood the bag was handed into security at around 3pm and that shortly afterwards, Brooks's husband, Charlie, arrived and tried to reclaim it. He was unable to prove the bag was his and the security guard refused to release it. Instead, it is understood that the security guard called the police. In less than half an hour, two marked police cars and an unmarked forensics car are said to have arrived at the scene. Police are now examining CCTV footage taken in the car park to uncover who dropped the bag. Initial suspicions that there had been a break in at the Brooks' flat have been dismissed. David Wilson, Charlie Brooks's official spokesman, told The Guardian that Charlie Brooks denies that the bag belonged to his wife. "Charlie has a bag which contains a laptop and papers which were private to him," said Wilson. "They were nothing to do with Rebekah or the [phone-hacking] case." Wilson said Charlie Brooks had left the bag with a friend who was returning it, but dropped it in the wrong part of the garage. When asked how the bag ended up in a bin he replied: "The suggestion is that a cleaner thought it was rubbish and put it in the bin." Wilson added: "Charlie was looking for it together with a couple of the building staff.

Who doesn't loan a laptop computer to a friend with instructions to return it by leaving it lying around in a parking garage, where it might be mistaken for junk and thrown into a dustbin? Something very interesting should turn up on the hard drive, and it won't be photos of Gary Glitter.

posted by Roger 3:57 PM

Goodbye Amy. You had a million special gifts for us, yet weren't able to stay around long enough to give them to us, reminding us once again about the other artists who also didn't make it past the age of 27 and the dangers inherent in a life dominated by great talent and a high sensibility. My deeply felt "Thanks!" for the gifts that you left us. Perhaps you'll be the last of the "27's." __________________