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Bart Playing In the Rosemary
I remember when George W. Bush said after he was no longer President that his only regret was not being able to "reform" (obliterate) Social Security.
Leading me to wonder what Obama's will be.
Perhaps not bribing enough foreigners?
Or will actually obliterating Social Security be enough?
Need I mention again . . . they are not that smart.
But they are sooooooo clever. Notice how the Ed Snowden international controversy has forced Obama to call off his summit with Putin? Right.
You read it here. (Okay. Everywhere by now probably.)
Coincidence? Not to Jethro and me.
Saudi Rulers Pour Money Into Arming Militants in Region
By Finian Cunningham
August 11, 2013
If Saudi rulers had more brains, they might be formidably dangerous. Even with lackluster intelligence assets, they are already causing enough havoc and bloodshed across the Middle East and North Africa regions, pouring millions-of-dollars-worth of weaponry into Al Qaeda and other Takfiri networks that are destroying once proud civilizations in Iraq, Lebanon, Syria and Libya through nihilistic sectarianism.
And if the Saudi paymasters of terrorism could have it all their way, they would salivate at the chance of extending this destruction to Iran - the Shia power that they fear as their nemesis.
Fortunately, the Saudi rulers’ agenda of covert terrorism - an agenda that serves its Western masters - is not well concealed. This is because “Saudi state intelligence” is something of an oxymoron and leaves a trail of self-incriminating clues wherever it goes.
This uncovering of the real authors of regional violence and their motives curtails the plotters and will lead eventually to their downfall through their own damnation.
Take the latest disclosure that the Saudis tried to bribe Russia into abandoning its long-time ally, Syria. Given their own venal form of feudal rule, the Saudis seem to think that everyone else can be bought at a price. Apparently, Saudi Arabia’s intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan dangled a $15-billion arms deal in front of Russia’s President Vladimir Putin if the latter would jettison his country’s strategic alliance with Syria’s President Bashar al-Assad.
From past Saudi arms deals with British Premier Margaret Thatcher, involving multi-million-dollar bribery, kickbacks and other corruption, it is a fair bet that Prince Bandar also gave a nod and a wink for personal funds to be arranged for President Putin. To his credit though, Putin reportedly rebuffed any such treachery with the Saudis.
But what is significant here is that the disclosure of this sleazy business - thanks to Saudi unintelligence - represents a fatal gaffe for the whole Western-coordinated conspiracy against Syria.
For the past two years, the US, Britain and France have sedulously contrived a narrative that they are supporting “a pro-democracy uprising” in Syria. In this “noble endeavor”, the purportedly law-abiding and human-rights-upholding Western states are ostensibly supporting “freedom-loving rebels” out of the sheer goodness of their hearts.
In one fell-swoop, however, the Saudi gaffe-machine has blown a giant hole in the Western narrative over Syria. This is not the first time that the Saudi loose cannon has swung around on its Western patrons. A few months back, a Saudi “thinker” close to the House of Saud let it slip to the media that a top concern motivating Riyadh’s interference in Syria was to neutralize the regional influence of Iran.
In the meeting between Prince Bandar and Vladimir Putin, the Saudi spy chief went on to say that “whatever regime comes after” Assad will be “completely” in Saudi hands.
So, there you have it. It’s not about supporting democracy in Syria. It’s about installing a regime in Damascus that will be under the boot of Riyadh, which in turn, means that any such regime will be under the geopolitical control of Washington and its allies, and thus aligned in the imperialist axis of antagonism against Tehran.
Of course, astute observers are already aware of the Western criminal conspiracy against Syria, and we should know this anyway from the preposterous notion that feudal-style Persian Gulf dictators are claiming to champion the cause of democracy in Syria.
Nevertheless, it is valuable when this conspiracy is exposed and admitted to by the co-conspirators themselves. Western political leaders, diplomats and media tend to be more savvy in the art of sophistry and deception. We can analyze and identify their criminal agenda, but it is rare to uncover an admission. But the reliably hapless Saudi rulers have done just that in their bribery attempt with Russia’s Putin.
Not only that, but in the same encounter Prince Bandar revealed much more about the criminal collusion against Syria. Another sweetener offered to Putin by the Saudis was that “Saudi Arabia would not sign any contracts damaging Russian interests by allowing [Persian] Gulf countries to transport gas across Syria to Europe”.
Prince Bandar, in his zeal to grease Putin’s hand, inadvertently tells the world of a major strategic reason why the Persian Gulf monarchs are so keenly sponsoring criminal regime change in Syria. Apart from isolating Iran, there is evidently an important oil and gas incentive. It’s worth reading Bandar’s words again: “Saudi Arabia would not sign any contracts damaging Russian interests by allowing [Persian] Gulf countries to transport its gas across Syria to Europe”.
It has been speculated before that the Persian Gulf oil and gas sheikhdoms want to obviate the narrow Strait of Hormuz on the eastern side of the Gulf through which most of their hydrocarbons are transported - some 17 million barrels of crude every day or nearly 20 per cent of the world’s daily total. Safe passage through the Strait is the gift of Iran, which controls most of the territorial waters. The Persian Gulf Arab dictators and their Western patrons know that if Iran is antagonized too far, then this maritime lifeline can be cut off and with that the petrodollar capitalist world economy will be sunk.
Because of this strategic vulnerability, it seems that the Saudis, Qataris and Emiratis want an alternative oil and gas supply route out of the Persian Gulf, to the North West. Syria’s land offers a prime route for this Arab oil and gas to the Mediterranean and thence to the vast market of Europe.
This would get the House of Saud and its cronies off the hook with regard to dependency on Iranian goodwill; and, further, the newfound geopolitical freedom would allow these adversaries to adopt an even more bellicose line towards Tehran - something that Washington and its allies would gladly approve of.
Prince Bandar’s admission in his meeting with Putin, held at the end of July, attests to this plan of the Persian Gulf sheikdoms breaking out of the Straits of Hormuz straitjacket via the Levantine territory of Syria. For the Arab monarchs to achieve that, they have to overthrow the government of Bashar al-Assad - a close ally of both Russia and Iran.
That goal, by Bandar’s own admission, is one more explanation for why the Arab dictators have funneled at least $100 million to the mercenaries fighting in Syria to topple Assad. The latest expenditure was reportedly $50 million, spent by Saudi Arabia to buy weapons from Israel for supply to the militants. Most of those weapons are going to the Al Qaeda groups, such as Al Nusrah Front and Islamic State of Iraq and Shams.
Moreover, when Putin repudiated the Saudi bribery, it is reported that Prince Bandar then told Russian officials “the only option left in Syria is a military one - and that they should forget about the Geneva-2 international peace conference because the opposition would not attend”.
In other words, the Saudis are self-incriminating by openly declaring more state terrorism on behalf of the Western regime change plot against President Assad.
In this way, the Western propaganda façade over Syria is exploded more than ever by Saudi “intelligence”. The agenda is driven solely by geopolitics and oil and gas resources, involving state-sponsored terrorism to achieve these ends. In a word, it is criminal, and the criminals have just openly confessed.
In the war of information and truth over the conflict in Syria and the region, the Western co-conspirators just shot themselves in the foot. Clearly, having more money than brains can have a major downside.
(Finian Cunningham, originally from Belfast, Ireland, was born in 1963. He is a prominent expert in international affairs. The author and media commentator was expelled from Bahrain in June 2011 for his critical journalism in which he highlighted human rights violations by the Western-backed regime. He is a Master’s graduate in Agricultural Chemistry and worked as a scientific editor for the Royal Society of Chemistry, Cambridge, England, before pursuing a career in journalism. He is also a musician and songwriter. For many years, he worked as an editor and writer in the mainstream news media, including The Mirror, Irish Times and Independent. He is now based in East Africa where he is writing a book on Bahrain and the Arab Spring.He co-hosts a weekly current affairs programme, Sunday at 3pm GMT on Bandung Radio)
I've been aware since even before the Judith Miller travesty that the New York Times had two tiers of "serious" news. One for whatever D.C. wanted them to report and one for the news that their owners wanted them to report.
Based on the following essay, my guess is that the GITMO lies have worn so thin with the populace that the New York Times has been selected to lead the charge for change. Which is a great new role for the "paper of record" or the paper of last resort now.
And does it really matter after over a decade of abuse?
For the poor innocents still alive there, of course it does, but there are not that many of them still there we hear.
Guantánamo Bay: The US Was Dead Wrong, But No One Can Admit It
When John Grisham heard Guantánamo prisoners were requesting his books, he wanted to learn more. What he found out about Nabil Hadjarab – detained for 11 years – horrified him
By John Grisham
August 12, 2013
The Guardian
About two months ago I learned that some of my books had been banned at Guantánamo Bay. Apparently detainees were requesting them, and their lawyers were delivering them to the prison, but they were not being allowed in because of "impermissible content".
I became curious and tracked down a detainee who enjoys my books. His name is Nabil Hadjarab, and he is a 34-year-old Algerian who grew up in France. He learned to speak French before he learned to speak Arabic. He has close family and friends in France, but not in Algeria. As a kid growing up near Lyon, he was a gifted soccer player and dreamed of playing for Paris Saint-Germain, or another top French club.
Tragically for Nabil, he has spent the past 11 years as a prisoner at Guantánamo, much of the time in solitary confinement. Starting in February, he participated in a hunger strike, which led to his being force-fed.
For reasons that had nothing to do with terror, war or criminal behaviour, Nabil was living peacefully in an Algerian guesthouse in Kabul, Afghanistan, on 11 September 2001. Following the US invasion, word spread among the Arab communities that Afghanistan's Northern Alliance was rounding up and killing foreign Arabs. Nabil and many others headed for Pakistan in a desperate effort to escape the danger. En route, he said, he was wounded in a bombing raid and woke up in a hospital in Jalalabad.
Nabil Hadjarab joined a hunger strike at Guantánamo Bay in February
At that time, the US was throwing money at anyone who could deliver an out-of-town Arab found in the region. Nabil was sold to the US for a bounty of $5,000 and taken to an underground prison in Kabul. There he experienced torture for the first time. To house the prisoners of its war on terror, the US military put up a makeshift prison at Bagram air base in Afghanistan.
Bagram would quickly become notorious, and make Guantánamo look like a church camp. When Nabil arrived there in January 2002, as one of the first prisoners, there were no walls, only razor-wire cages. In the bitter cold, Nabil was forced to sleep on concrete floors without cover. Food and water were scarce.
To and from his frequent interrogations, Nabil was beaten by US soldiers and dragged up and down concrete stairs. Other prisoners died. After a month in Bagram, Nabil was transferred to a prison at Kandahar, where the abuse continued.
Throughout his incarceration in Afghanistan, Nabil strenuously denied any connection to al-Qaida, the Taliban or anyone or any organisation remotely linked to the 9/11 attacks. And the Americans had no proof of his involvement, save for bogus claims implicating him from other prisoners extracted in a Kabul torture chamber.
Several US interrogators told him his was a case of mistaken identity. Nonetheless, the US had adopted strict rules for Arabs in custody – all were to be sent to Guantánamo. On 15 February 2002, Nabil was flown to Cuba; shackled, bound and hooded.
Restraint chair used to force-feed Guantánamo hunger strikers. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Since then, Nabil has been subjected to all the horrors of the Gitmo handbook: sleep deprivation, sensory deprivation, temperature extremes, prolonged isolation, lack of access to sunlight, almost no recreation and limited medical care. In 11 years, he has never been permitted a visit from a family member. For reasons known only to the men who run the prison, Nabil has never been waterboarded. His lawyer believes this is because he knows nothing and has nothing to give.
The US government says otherwise. In documents, military prosecutors say Nabil was staying at a guesthouse run by people with ties to al-Qaida and that he was named by others as someone affiliated with terrorists. But Nabil has never been charged with a crime. Indeed, on two occasions he has been cleared for a "transfer", or release.
In 2007, a review board established by President George W Bush recommended his release. Nothing happened. In 2009, another review board established by President Obama recommended his transfer. Nothing happened.
According to his guards, Nabil is a model prisoner. He keeps his head down and avoids trouble. He has perfected his English and insists on speaking the language with his British lawyers. He writes in flawless English. As much as possible, under rather dire circumstances, he has fought to preserve his physical health and mental stability.
In the past seven years, I have met a number of innocent men who were sent to death row, as part of my work with the Innocence Project, which works to free wrongly convicted people. Without exception they have told me that the harshness of isolated confinement is brutal for a cold-blooded murderer who freely admits to his crimes. For an innocent man, though, death row will shove him dangerously close to insanity. You reach a point where it feels impossible to survive another day.
Depressed and driven to the point of desperation, Nabil joined a hunger strike in February. This was not Gitmo's first hunger strike, but it has attracted the most attention. As it gained momentum, and as Nabil and his fellow prisoners got sicker, the Obama administration was backed into a corner.
The president has taken justified heat as his bold and eloquent campaign promises to close Gitmo have been forgotten. Suddenly, he was faced with the gruesome prospect of prisoners dropping like flies as they starved themselves to death while the world watched. Instead of releasing Nabil and the other prisoners who have been classified as no threat to the US, the administration decided to prevent suicides by force-feeding the strikers.
A tube used to force-feed hunger strikers. Photograph: Joe Raedle/Getty Images
Nabil has not been the only "mistake" in our war on terror. Hundreds of other Arabs have been sent to Gitmo, chewed up by the system there, never charged and eventually transferred back to their home countries. (These transfers are carried out as secretly and as quietly as possible.) There have been no apologies, no official statements of regret, no compensation, nothing of the sort. The US was dead wrong, but no one can admit it.
In Nabil's case, the US military and intelligence agents relied on corrupt informants who were raking in American cash, or even worse, jailhouse snitches who swapped false stories for candy bars, porn and sometimes just a break from their own beatings.
The Obama administration has announced it is transferring some more Arab prisoners back to Algeria. It is likely that Nabil will be one of them, and if that happens another tragic mistake will be made. His nightmare will only continue. He will be homeless.
He will have no support to reintegrate him into a society where many will be hostile to a former Gitmo detainee, either on the assumption that he is an extremist or because he refuses to join the extremist opposition to the Algerian government. Instead of showing some guts and admitting they were wrong, the US authorities will whisk him away, dump him on the streets of Algiers and wash their hands.
What should they do? Or what should we do?
First, admit the mistake and make the apology. Second, provide compensation. US taxpayers have spent $2m a year for 11 years to keep Nabil at Gitmo; give the guy a few thousand bucks to get on his feet. Third, pressure the French to allow his re-entry.
This sounds simple, but it will never happen.
By Henry A. GirouxAmerica is descending into madness. The stories it now tells are filled with cruelty, deceit, lies, and legitimate all manner of corruption and mayhem.By Chris HedgesIn America, when you are poor, you can instantly disappear like this into the subterranean rabbit holes of our vast jail and prison complex.By Karin Price Mueller"They know he's literally in a life and death situation and for 26 cents, they're denying him the right to get the health insurance coverage he needs," he said.By Ingenious PressIn the 21st century, they desperately want to avoid having you see for yourself just HOW FAR BEHIND our country has fallen.
Comment:
InsideJobber · 1 hour ago
In Switzerland they look down on American billionaires, and offer them cheap hand-bags.
"I would call Americanism - a totalitarian doctrine."
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