Monday, April 29, 2013

The Big Difference: When You Do It, It's Conspiracy Theory. When We Do It, It's Informed Speculation (Success Through Indirection, Mis-direction, Redirection, and Protection) I Am Not A Pleasure Unit Anymore!



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Now you know I'm not a conspiracist, but I have to admit that I haven't had so much fun wending my way through conspiracy theories since the 1974 Church Committee's JFK Assassination hearings, which were only allowed to happen due to the double shocks to the establishment owners' hold on the media, resulting from the unexpected outing of the Watergate CIA-funded-and-Howard-Hunt-directed Republican Party break-ins and Nixon's resignation.

Until now.

Seems that there's another pretty big one being promulgated by mainstream media (MSM) TV stations and newspapers, the oh-so-trustworthy Associated Press, and all of the fear-inspiring cable stations that have been summoned from the depths of hell, but being exposed little by little by bloggers and those with their own sites on the internet as we, the faithful believing-in-spirits taxpaying little people, try to make sense of each latest iteration of what will eventually come to be known as the Boston backpack bombera.

And this is definitely one zinger of a conspiracy theory as the main mouthpiece (at this time) is related to the supposed-bombers and went to school at Duke (before being recruited by the CIA) and met his future wife at UNC (before they both returned to, oh, Chechnya, for one place they camped out in for a while). So, it's a local story for North Carolina (as well as Massachusetts)! And you know how we all love a local story. Or a ghost story!

I can feel the Truth Troops gathering.

Boston Bombers’ Uncle Married Daughter of Top CIA Official


Posted on April 26, 2013 by Daniel Hopsicker

The uncle of the two suspected Boston bombers in last week’s attack, Ruslan Tsarni, was married to the daughter of former top CIA official Graham Fuller.

The discovery that Uncle Ruslan Tsarni had spy connections that go far deeper than had been previously known is ironic, especially since the mainstrean media's focus yesterday was on a feverish search to find who might have recruited the Tsarnaev brothers.

The chief suspect was a red-haired Armenian exorcist.  They were fingering a suspect who may not, in fact, even exist.


It was like blaming one-armed hippies on acid for killing your wife.



Ruslan Tsarni married the daughter of former top CIA official Graham Fuller, who spent 20 years as operations officer in Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. In 1982 Fuller was appointed the National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia at the CIA, and in 1986, under Ronald Reagan, he became the Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, with overall responsibility for national level strategic forecasting.



At the time of their marriage, Ruslan Tsarni was known as Ruslan Tsarnaev, the same last name as his nephews Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged bombers.

It is unknown when he changed his last name to Tsarni.

What is known is that sometime in the early 1990’s, while she was a graduate student in North Carolina, and he was in law school at Duke, Ruslan Tsarnaev met and married Samantha Ankara Fuller, the daughter of Graham and Prudence Fuller of Rockville Maryland. Her middle name suggests a reference to one of her father’s CIA postings.

The couple divorced sometime before 2004.

Today Ms. Fuller lives abroad, and is a director of several companies pursuing strategies to increase energy production from clean-burning and renewable resources.




On a more ominous note, Graham Fuller was listed as one of the American Deep State rogues on Sibel Edmonds' State Secrets Privilege Gallery. Edmonds explained it featured subjects of FBI investigations she became aware of during her time as an FBI translator.

Criminal activities were being protected by claims of State Secrets, she asserted. After Attorney General John Ashcroft went all the way to the Supreme Court to muzzle her under a little-used doctrine of State Secrets, she put up twenty-one photos, with no names.


One of them was Graham Fuller.

"Congress of Chechen International Organizations" c/o Graham Fuller



A story about a Chechen oil exec/uncle pairing up with a top CIA official who once served as CIA Station Chief in Kabul sounds like a pitch for a bad movie.

But the two men may have been in business together.

In 1995, Tsarnaev incorporated the Congress of Chechen International Organizations in Maryland, using as the address listed on incorporation documents 11114 Whisperwood Ln, in Rockville Maryland, the home address of his then-father-in-law. 

It is just eight miles up the Washington National Pike from the Montgomery Village home where “Uncle Ruslan” met — and apparently wowed, the Press after the attack in Boston.

The Washington Post yesterday called him a "media maven," while nationally syndicated Washington Post columnist Ester Cepeda , in a piece with the headline “The Wise Words of Uncle Ruslan” opined that he was her choice for "an award for bravery in the face of adversity.”

Success Through Indirection, Mis-direction, Redirection, and Protection



Uncle Ruslan’s spy connections go far deeper than was already known, which was that he spent two years working in Kazakhstan for USAID.

But the mainstream media was looking the other way.

Under the headline Did 'Misha' influence Tsarnaevs? In Watertown, doubts,” USA Today reported: “Misha. A new name has emerged in the Boston Marathon bombing case — one familiar to the family of the two young men accused of the atrocity and apparently of interest to the Russian and American security services as well.”

Ruslan Tsarni was the first to bring up the supposed man's supposed name. Or rather, he brought up a first name:  Misha. But it was enough. We were off to the races . . .

Attention All Cars: Be On Lookout for Chubby Armenian Exorcist

Tsarni described Misha to CNN as being "chubby, a big guy, big mouth presenting himself with some kind of abilities as exorcist . . . having some part-time job in one of the stores, not married. All of the qualifications of a loser, just another big mouth.”



According to Uncle Ruslan, Misha was the man who over a considerable period of time had radicalized Tamerlan.

It seemed strange, then, that in contrast to his “you are there” verbal picture of the man, even with all his supposed concerns, and given his high level of education and abundant resources (Big Sky Energy was paying him in excess of $200,00 a year, according to documents filed with the SEC) Ruslan had somehow never found out just who the bad guy was.

He never got a name, something that in spook-dom is considered
something of a faux pas. Then again, no one else had either.

Worse, Tsarni's vivid description seemed to be taken from personal observation, from, in other words . . . real life. But that isn’t possible. Tsarni had stated he hadn’t been physically in the presence of his Boston relatives since December 2005. And Misha, if he existed, didn’t show up on the scene until 2008 at the earliest.


Still, just a few days later, the entire family began chiming in. Misha anecdotes were flying fast furious, and the nation’s scribblers were busy uncritically scribbling down their every word.

Maybe their Twitter account got hacked again?

No performance was nearly as masterful, however, as that of the Associated Press.

“Bomb suspect influenced by mysterious radical,” reported the Associated Press.

"Tamerlan's relationship with Misha could be a clue in understanding the motives behind his religious transformation and, ultimately, the attack itself," reported the Associate Press.

Only to take it all back in the very next line.


"Two U.S. officials say he had no tie to terrorist groups."

The AP’s “story” about the mysterious “Misha” was 1145 words, long enough for an editor to squeeze in a caveat.

“It was not immediately clear whether the FBI has spoken to Misha or was attempting to,” the national wire service reported. “Efforts over several days by The Associated Press to identify and interview Misha have been unsuccessful.”

The big difference: when you do it, it's conspiracy theory. When we do it, it's informed speculation.


In any other context, this might be seen as the rankest kind of “conspiracy theory.” But, apparently, when the Associated Press does it, it's news.

Then Uncle Ruslan made a clear mis-step.


“An uncle of the alleged bombers claims that Misha, an Armenian convert to Islam, had a huge influence on the elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev.
Describing him as an "Armenian exorcist," Tsarni said, “Somehow he just took his brain.”

Armenians are a deeply-rooted Christian community, which is proud of the fact that their country was the first in the world to adopt Christianity as state religion in 301 AD.
Moreover this is the week every year when they remember the Armenian Holocaust, when as many as 1,000,000 Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish Muslims.

In the large and close-knit Boston Armenian community, a red-bearded Armenian named Misha becoming a radicalized Muslim would stand out.

"I've never heard of him, nor has anyone that I know," Hilda Avedissian, executive director at the Armenian Cultural & Educational Centre.

So what if the guy was involved with the biggest bank fraud in history?

"For an Armenian to convert to Islam is like finding a unicorn in a field," Nerses Zurabyan, 32, an information technology director who lives in nearby Cambridge told USA Today.

The report reveals that the bomber’s Uncle, made famous for his outspoken condemnation of his nephews, which aired repeatedly on international news networks, is a well-connected oil executive who at one point worked for a Halliburton shell company used as a front to obtain oil contracts from the Kazakh State.

Ruslon Tsarni was implicated in an investigation involving the laundering and theft of $6 billion.

But everybody loves Uncle Ruslon. At least most of America’s mainstream media does.

There has, to date, been no speculation at all about whether an uncle of the men suspected of the bombing who had been involved in international intrigue at the hightest levels, and who married the daughter of a top CIA official, might warrant a closer look.

It’s enough, isn’t it, to turn even reasonably rational adults into — gasp! — conspiracy theorists.

“News,” someone once wrote, “is selection. And selection is always based on an ideology and agenda, which is something to remember next time you watch, listen, or read the ‘news.’”

Too true.

Comments:

  1. I have always believed the corporate right realized the power of controlling the message and have been building a powerful vertical infrastructure for the last 3 decades starting with the repeal of the Fairness Doctrine in '86 . . . No coincidence that RUSH came on the scene in '87.

    Joseph Goebbels recipe (paraphrased) You can control a people any where at any time by doing 3 things:

    1. Always have an enemy (GOVT, Obama, illegals, gays etc)
    2. Always be the UBER Patriot (see Tea Party group names or listen to Fox and AM RADIO)
    3. Always have the means to saturate and repeat and repeat and repeat your message until it becomes the “truth” (see talk radio) It may be old technology but over 20 million listen DAILY.

    • Your observations are astute, Lynne: The only hope lies in the verticality. All Empires crash – this one will be no exception. The problem is, we’re underneath them.
  2. It may be difficult to swallow, but Americans may have to face the reality that mediocrity and willful ignorance have become the norm in our society. If the Kochs can buy these papers and keep them in circulation, it just proves they have a better handle on America’s sentiments than those of us who find the idea repulsive. The great conceptual fallacy of the “Occupy” movement was the idea that it represented 99% of anything, let alone the political mood of the country. Of course, the delusional notion that anything could succeed without stating goals, aims or a strategy didn’t help. Nobody bothered to look into the bankrupt ideology of its feckless progenitor, David Graeber. No social movement succeeds without disrupting something. Just ‘being there” was Occupy’s apparent strategy. Thousands of people volunteered to get bludgeoned, brutalized, pepper sprayed and arrested for no specific goal. Those memories, in conjunction with the visual impact accomplished by the lockdown of Boston by martial law, have solidified in the public psyche the futility of the “right to assembly” and the “redress of grievances”. Unions once wielded power because they could exact a financial toll by stopping production. The Kochs have thus taken great pains to subvert unions, and the electorate, mind you, voted for the politicians that helped them do it. America, my friends, appears to despise even what little is left of its own freedom. If it didn’t, it wouldn’t keep voting against its own interests. If “Occupy” actually represented even 50% of anything, it could have bankrupted McDonalds, or CitiBank, or WalMart, or Kentucky Fried Chicken. It could have picked a minimum wage sweatshop and boycotted it nation-wide. With the political clout that would have inspired, it would have gotten immediate media attention. Jackass politicians fighting over gay marriage and gun laws instead of unemployed, sick, and poverty stricken Americans would have been trembling in their collective alligator shoes. Instead, Americans will likely be reading about the shortage of beds in “for profit” prisons and the need for more assault weapons, helicopters and armored military vehicles to maintain law and order in our crumbling cities. They’ll be reading about that in the Koch Brothers’ newspapers, because what Americans REALLY love is not their freedom. What they REALLY love is seeing somebody punished for being less fortunate than they are. If I’m wrong, they’ll simply boycott those newspapers…but don’t count on it.

    • The Kochs don’t buy these to run them profitably. They run them as a propaganda tool to prop up their other interests that give them much more money and power than they would ever get from the newspaper business. They already own the state government of Kansas.

      Also, media is not there to inform or entertain. It is there to sell advertising, mostly to big right wing corporations. Who better to sell advertising to the right wing than another of their fellow propagandists (see Fox News & Fox Street Journal).

      It’s difficult to boycott monopolies and oligopolies when they are the only game in town. In almost all cases there’s no difference between any of them when it comes to product or treatment of suppliers, customers and employees.
  3. Great comment Lynn, perfect and to the point.

    I always felt the media was in the back pocket of Washington. AM radio became their launching pad for the right when it began to change in the mid 80′s. How many times can you call the media liberal. Look who owns the media today, that should say it all.
  4. Koch and Murdoch want to make sure that there is no independent news media to challenge the Jewish lobby’s grip over westerners’ minds.

    Two years ago, the disgraced Israel-Firster media tycoon, Rupert Murdoch, was honored by one of America’s top Israel lobby groups, ADL, for his “stalwart support of Israel and his commitment to promoting respect and speaking out against anti-Semitism”.

    Christopher Bollyn claimed in 2003 that Murdoch has Zionist Jewish family roots and he had prior knowledge of 9/11.

    In June 2012, former British prime minister Tony Blair’s ex-communications director, Alastair Campbell claimed in his diaries published by British daily The Guardian – that Murdoch called Blair on March 11, 2003 – eight days before US invasion of Iraq – urging him not to do anything that could delay the start of the invasion (for Israel).
    Campbell said that Murdoch had pledged that News International — the division which runs his British newspapers — would support Britain if it backed the United States on the issue . . .

    When I wrote “Barry & the Boys” almost ten years ago I had no idea that the story of America’s most famous drug smuggler would shortly have relevance to the biggest event of the still-young 21st Century, the 9/11 attack.

    But it did. And it still does.

    When a Lear-jet belonging to the owner of the flight school where Mohamed Atta had just begun flight training was seized in July 2000 carrying 43 lbs of heroin (according to the Orlando Sentinel, a Central Florida record) the story would have had huge implications for unanswered question about why Atta’s 9/11 terrorist cadre chose a tiny retirement community with the second oldest population in the entire United States as their home.
Would have had huge implications — except it was suppressed.


And the embarrassing fact that one of the men with drug smuggler and CIA pilot Barry Seal in the now-famous photograph on the cover of “Barry & the Boys’” was Porter Goss, picked in 2004 by President George W Bush to head America’s Central Intelligence Agency, would have been big news.

Would have been — except it, too, has been suppressed. See the pattern?

Currently over 100 books cite my two books as references, by Google’s count.   You might think this would be enough to excite interest from a major American publisher, especially since so many readers and reviewers seem to think highly of the book.

But you’d be wrong. None have expressed any interest. When my next book arrives, it will have been through my own efforts, and those of my friends, especially friend and courageous publisher Kris Millegan and his Trine Books out in Eugene, Oregon. That's about as far from the center of American publishing as you can get.


The much-noted author Salman Rushdie wrote a quite undiplomatic (for a rather gentlemanly diplomatic type man of the world) essay published in yesterday's NYT about how the relatively recent worry about offending anyone's sensibilities is causing the rebirth of any type of free-speech or freedom-of-thought movement (in the wake of the 9/11 scare) to be even further away from reality than the Age of Enlightenment was from the Renaissance (however you measure it).


THIS new idea — that writers, scholars and artists who stand against orthodoxy or bigotry are to blame for upsetting people — is spreading fast, even to countries like India that once prided themselves on their freedoms.
In recent years, the grand old man of Indian painting, Maqbool Fida Husain, was hounded into exile in Dubai and London, where he died, because he painted the Hindu goddess Saraswati in the nude (even though the most cursory examination of ancient Hindu sculptures of Saraswati shows that while she is often adorned with jewels and ornaments, she is equally often undressed).
Rohinton Mistry’s celebrated novel “Such a Long Journey” was pulled off the syllabus of Mumbai University because local extremists objected to its content.
The scholar Ashis Nandy was attacked for expressing unorthodox views on lower-caste corruption. And in all these cases the official view — with which many commentators and a substantial slice of public opinion seemed to agree — was, essentially, that the artists and scholars had brought the trouble on themselves. Those who might, in other eras, have been celebrated for their originality and independence of mind, are increasingly being told, “Sit down, you’re rocking the boat.”

America isn’t immune from this trend. The young activists of the Occupy movement have been much maligned (though, after their highly effective relief work in the wake of Hurricane Sandy, those criticisms have become a little muted). Out-of-step intellectuals like Noam Chomsky and the deceased Edward Said have often been dismissed as crazy extremists, “anti-American,” and in Mr. Said’s case even, absurdly, as apologists for Palestinian “terrorism.” (One may disagree with Mr. Chomsky’s critiques of America but it ought still to be possible to recognize the courage it takes to stand up and bellow them into the face of American power. One may not be pro-Palestinian, but one should be able to see that Mr. Said stood up against Yasir Arafat as eloquently as he criticized the United States.) 

It’s a vexing time for those of us who believe in the right of artists, intellectuals and ordinary, affronted citizens to push boundaries and take risks and so, at times, to change the way we see the world. There’s nothing to be done but to go on restating the importance of this kind of courage, and to try to make sure that these oppressed individuals — Ai Weiwei, the members of Pussy Riot, Hamza Kashgari — are seen for what they are: men and women standing on the front line of liberty. How to do this? Sign the petitions against their treatment, join the protests. Speak up. Every little bit counts.

And it does. But seemingly not in the U.S. of A. anymore.

Repeat after me:

I am not a pleasure unit (for the powers-that-be) anymore.



1 comment:

PR said...

Anyone who doesn't recognize Obama as a far right corporatist is part of the problem not part of any solution