From our archives: articles you should have read the first time around but didn’t. Originally, Wed, 06/27/2012.

A Black Agenda Radio commentary by Glen Ford

 By Ralph Nader

Photo Credit: Ragesoss / Creative Commons

In watching the massive media coverage and the reaction to the brutal bombing at the finish line of the Boston Marathon, the wise poem “To A Louse…” composed in 1785 by the Scottish poet Robert Burns came to me:
“O wad some Pow’r the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!”
English translation:
“And would some Power the small gift give us
To see ourselves as others see us!”
What must the “others” in the Middle East theatre of the American Empire think of a great city in total lockdown from an attack by primitive explosives when Iraqis, Afghans, Pakistanis and Yemenis experience far greater casualties and terror attacks several times a week? Including what they believe are terror attacks by U.S. drones, soldiers, aircraft and artillery that have directly killed many thousands of innocent children, women and men in their homes, during funeral processions and wedding parties, or while they’re working in their fields.

[pullquote]Every day in the U.S. there are preventable tragedies that receive no media coverage because they aren’t part of the “war on terror”, which has been crowding out stories that would have led to corrective actions to leave this country safer from the corporate predators within its borders.[/pullquote]

Here’s what they are thinking: that America is very vulnerable and ready to shake itself upside down to rid itself and protect itself from any terror attacks. The Bush regime, after 9/11, sacrificed U.S. soldiers and millions of innocents in the broader Middle East, drained our economy, so as to ignore the necessities of saving lives and health here at home, and metastasized al-Qaeda into numerous countries, spilling havoc into Iraq and now Syria. We have paid a tremendous price in blowback, because of Mr. Bush’s rush to war.

Why is the reaction to the events in Boston viewed by some as bizarre? Our president said “We will finish the race.” Do we really think that the attackers are doing this to disrupt our pleasure in foot racing?

The attackers, be they suicide bombers over there or domestic bombers here, are motivated by their hatred of our invasions, our daily bombings, our occupations, our immersion in tribal preferences leading to divide-and-rule sectarian wars. Studies, such as those by the University of Chicago Professor Robert Pape, and former adviser to Barack Obama and Ron Paul during the 2008 presidential campaign, conclude that entry into paradise is not the motivation for these suicide bombers. What drives them is their despair and their desire to expel the foreign invaders from their homeland.

Another “ithers’ – admittedly a smaller number – must see a giant country going berserk with media, speculation, rumors, accusations, and random mobilizations of military equipment. There are enough of these younger people who must say to themselves, maybe it is worth giving up their lives for a place in history – to make a nation be fearful because of their rulers’ staggering overreaction.

Why give these contorted young minds, frustrated by what they perceive as U.S. attacks on their religion or their ethnic group in their home countries, such incentives?

Massive overreactions by the mass media (have you seen CNN’s frenzied, nonstop quest for every bit of trivia and speculation hour after hour?) crowds out coverage of far greater preventable loss of life and safety in our country. Other commentators have covered the lesser-known yet huge explosion at the West, Texas fertilizer factory that destroyed far more property and took more human lives than the Boston Marathon assault. But, the dangerous fertilizer plant was corporate criminal negligence, or worse.

Every day in the U.S. there are preventable tragedies that receive no media coverage because they aren’t part of the “war on terror”, which has been crowding out stories that would have led to corrective actions to leave this country safer from the corporate predators within its borders.

Individually, many Americans intuitively understand the consequences of neglecting problems in our own country to engage in lawless wars and military adventures. Unfortunately, Americans collectively sing the song “que será, será” or “whatever will be, will be” because the big boys in Washington and Wall Street will always make the decisions. Be assured that they will often be stupidly harmful in the long-run to our country, and not just to millions of defenseless people abroad who have become victims of the collective punishment or random ravages of our massive push-buttonweapon systems.

In an impressive collection of excerpts titled Against the Beast, a Documentary History of American Opposition to Empire edited by John Nichols; the eminent historian Chalmers Johnson had this to say:

“. . .where U.S.-supported repression has created hopeless conditions, to U.S.-supported economic policies that have led to unimaginable misery, blowback reintroduces us to a world of cause and effect.”

At a first-ever Senate hearing earlier this week on the use of armed drones away from battlefields, initiated by Senator Richard Durbin (D-Ill.) and arrogantly boycotted by the imperial Obama Administration, Farea al-Muslimi, a young Yemeni from a village just attacked by a U.S. drone strike, gave witness.

Al-Muslimi said, “When they think of America, they think of the terror they feel from the drones that hover over their heads, ready to fire missiles at any time. What radicals had previously failed to achieve in my village, one drone strike accomplished in an instant: there is now an intense anger and growing hatred of America.”

As President Obama told the Israelis about the Palestinians, “Put yourselves in their shoes.”

In country after country, the terrifying whine of 24/7 hovering drones and the knowledge that special U.S. killing teams can drop from the skies at any time, creates a state of terror.

A brute-force foreign policy waging war can never effectively wage peace or sensibly engage in early conflict prevention or resolution. An illegal brute-force policy aligns itself with repressive regimes that crush their own people with American weapons and American political/diplomatic cover.

Jeremy Scahill, author of the new book Dirty Wars: The World is a Battlefield, who has been in these countries and spoken with these villagers, says that our government has created unnecessary enemies and banked lots of revenge among these people over the past ten years. “This is going to boomerang back around to us,” he fears, adding that we’re creating “a whole new generation of enemies that have an actual grievance against us…have an actual score to settle.” Killing innocent men, women and children creates blowback that lasts for generations.

From these overseas regions, the message from the bombing at the Boston Marathon is that, until now, the high-tech buttons were only being pushed by the drone operators against them. After Boston they can see that other low-tech buttons can now be pushed inside the U.S. against defenseless gatherings of innocent people.

For our national security, the American people must recover control of our runaway, unilateral presidency that has torn itself away from constitutional accountabilities and continues to be hijacked by ideologues who ignore our Founding Fathers’ wisdom regarding the separation of powers and avoiding foreign entanglements that become costly, deadly and endless quagmires.

RALPH NADER needs no introduction to our readers. A great progressive, a fighter for socialism, a brave critic of corporatism, he should be in the highest spheres of policymaking, but isn’t, a tribute to the massive ignorance and passivity of the American public, a conditioning derived from centuries almost of nonstop manipulation by the business elites. 

Crossposted with The Wild Wild Left

by Diane Gee

It was a scene of science fiction in January of 1968, a slave collar that would bring instant compliance by bringing the wearer to his knees in excruciating pain. Through electric shock, men and women were forced to battle one another as gladiators for the entertainment of disembodied beings in the episode The Gamesters of Triskelion.It was a shocking, to pointedly pun, idea.. so monstrous and alien that we in our grand enlightenment would never consider such a thing.  Slavery was over.  Never again.  And Americans didn’t torture.It was 1968 and the Civil Rights Bill was passing. It was 3 months before MLK was gunned down.  Freedom was the cry of the day, with heavy doses of Peace and Love mingled throughout.[pullquote]YOU ARE IN NO MORE DANGER THAN YOU WERE BEFORE 9/11 NOW.  YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE HIT BY A FALLING SATELLITE THAN TO BE HURT IN A REAL TERRORIST ATTACK.[/pullquote]No government, foreign, domestic or alien would ever do such a thing to us.They had killed John, Bobby, Martin and Malcolm. Vietnam ended, a victory for the Left, but more as a result of the mainstream media showing the images that turned middle class Americans thirst for blood into revulsion. Still?  For a while we believed.They would never do it to us.  Then they did.

We were shocked and outraged, yet the murderers were not imprisoned, and eventually the Guard paid a little fine to the families, and most of us forgot about it.  Except we didn’t forget, exactly.  We remembered just enough to make us fear protesting anymore.By the time the FBI shot up the Jumping Bull Ranch on Pine Ridge, they had convinced us that even in self-defense shooting back at the FBI who attacked you unprovoked meant to expect the full force of the Police State (as it was then) would be upon you, fabricated evidence or not.Someone would pay.They had to make an example of what happens to anyone standing up to the State.  Yet, as cruel and wrong as it was, as corrupt as every iota was, Leonard Peltier got a trial and is in jail.The 80’s brought a more complacent time, Ronnie Raygun’s forays into the Middle East did not garner reaction.  In a time of relative peace and prosperity, services for our mentally ill were cut, and military spending skyrocketed. We needed Star Wars technology for security, and the ramping of hypernationalism began.By the 90’s Ruby Ridge and Waco happened. It was the beginning of normalizing extra-judicial murder.  They painted stories of bad people, likely true, and the brave heroism of the Feds who torched 76 women and children and men. They told us the people set themselves on fire.  The abuses of the Feds fed the fears of the fringe, the crazy became crazier, and militia movements surged.  Enter the insane Timothy McVeigh, and domestic terrorism was born.  The man and his partner Terry Nichols killed 168 people and injured over 800. He was rightly found guilty, and executed for his crime.We all know what the New Pear Harbor brought.  9/11 changed everything, right?  At first we got upset about warrantless wiretapping.  Then it became the new normal.  We didn’t like it, but got used to every keystroke we make being monitored, and the idea that any phone call may or may not be under surveillance.We tortured. We incarcerated people indefinitely without charge, trial or evidence – many over 10 years now. We started wars with people that had nothing to do with 9/11, and while people objected? The newest normal became “free speech zones” in which anti-war protestors were kettled behind barbed wire, out of the view of the media, and away from the politicians they sought to influence.  We were told this was for “security.” PAT Acts came and went and were replaced by ever more extreme PAT Acts.  A ‘panty bomber’ who was walked onto a plane by Homeland Security managed to torch only his genitals, and forever burn away our right to not be strip searched in public. Tasers became the new toy, and the floodgate of our tax dollars were opened to the MIC’s R & D departments for ever more draconian means of crowd control. Our new Hopium-filled donut of a President deemed by Executive decree that US citizens could be killed on sight if he considered them a threat, and because it was only a “brown Muslim” father and son…  America did not object.  One has to wonder how many we do not hear about that just disappear.  The creamy filling of the Brand D puppet was that and the sickening NDAA.  Now even journalists can be charged with abetting the “enemy” for reporting anything that reveal our “enemy’s” perspective.  And the enemy is not just Al Qaida, it is anyone the Government deems to be a “terrorist.”  Now, version 8,673 of CISPA is on the table again.  You will comply. Governors are taking over cities, disenfranchising the people, austerity is coming as the rich got 3x richer in the last 2 years. The Occupy movement was kettled, beaten, maced and tased into submission. Laws were passed to make it a federal felony to protest anywhere that a Secret Service Officer may or may not be present, with or without your knowledge.  Protestors were called violent, when by and large they were not.  They were called a threat to security by the police that abused them.  They were called terrorists. I have painted a meager, bleak picture of a timeline of lost rights, and new-found aggression against our citizens for a reason.  You cannot take the recent events without understanding its historical genesis and realizing that each slip down the slope becomes a precedent for a new normal that is NEVER diluted or changed.  Once gone?  Our rights never come back. Think of 300 unarmed black men slain a year by Police, most notably in Oakland, California and its surrounding area – and no policeman is ever found in the wrong. Fast forward to Boston and the bombing that occurred in that city. As stated in my report at the time: IF THE SHUT DOWN OF ALL OF BOSTON WAS TO “PROTECT” THE CITIZENRY – THEN WHY WAS IT LIFTED HOURS AND HOURS BEFORE THEY CAUGHT DZHOKAR??? The only answer to that is obvious.  It was never about their security. They are treating this as terrorism, feebly trying after the fact to connect it to extreme Islam with sudden “discoveries” of new evidence that fits the narrative; evidence they did not have when they made the terrorist claim in the first place.  Convenient, yes? Let me be perfectly clear here.  YOU ARE IN NO MORE DANGER THAN YOU WERE BEFORE 9/11 NOW.  YOU ARE MORE LIKELY TO BE HIT BY A FALLING SATELLITE THAN TO BE HURT IN A REAL TERRORIST ATTACK. The Martial Law of Boston was less than shocking to us…. remember it was a mere few weeks prior that combined police forces stormed a mountain in California, with the FBI at their sides to burn Chris Dorner alive rather than bring him in and try him.  There was Military grade equipment on that raid too.  But not nearly as much as in Boston. Think about the fact that in a manhunt for one person, we have become accustomed to tanks and armored personnel carriers rolling through our streets.  All they have to do is utter the WORD terrorist and illegal search, human right abuses and murder become ordinary. The normalization of these kind of actions requires a great deal of fear-pandering to the public.  The Left was appalled at the treatment of Occupy, which was generally a leftish movement.  The Right was calling for them to be taken down as dirty, lazy, hippie scum. To them, Socialists and Communists are terrorists. The right is usually on board with law-n-order badass policing. In order to get the centrists to back it, another attack by “Muslims” had to trigger the Pavlovian fear carefully bred by the Rovian disinformation campaign of 9/11. White middle class is horribly xenophobic, that is their trigger, and they want the “terrorsist” caught by ANY means necessary. How to get the Left on board? In the wake of the failed attempt at sane gun control, trot out some right wingers with guns, and they too will be crying “terrorists” with the right, happy to have the Government step in with extreme prejudice and keep them safe. Guns are their fear-trigger. Even the leftish rag Salon is pandering to that fear, citing the chance that some Libertarian doofus will get a 1000 men to brave marching on Washington with loaded rifles to prove they have 2nd Amendment rights.  In 1968, the ACLU backed the right of the KKK to march through a Black neighborhood.  In 2013, types who once believed in that sort of thing want to tag these idiots “terrorists” and see them taken out by any means necessary.If they break the law, let them be arrested, charged, tried, and pay the penalty.  As Dorner should have been. As perhaps the Tsarnaev’s should have been.  You know, old fashioned police work, without the Military Police State…. Once there is a group who you want stripped of their rights to be treated as citizens, rather than enemy combatants, you lose those rights for you and your target group as well.  There is no grey area on the slippery slope to hell. Its not just the big takeovers to fear.  It’s not just the sound cannons that can either drop you to your knees in pain, or suffocate you by making a vibration so hard your lungs cannot inflate nor the microwave cannons that will burn your skin off your body should they every want to put down a protest. It’s the everyday treatment of US citizens that should really make your skin crawl. Kill a cop 40 years ago?  You are a newly branded TERRORIST! (with all that implies including and up to murder by drone) Show insolence to a cop now, and the Police shoot you.  They have ways of making you confess. Ask Bradley Manning. No, there is more. The newest tool in the arsenal really, really goes back to the unthinkable of electronic slave collars.  I shit thee not. A corrections officer friend of mine reported:  Electronic control cuffs, which are worn around the ankle and cannot be removed by the wearer, can be activated to cause pain compliance through electric shock, by remote control. This is of great concern, and not just do to the potential for torturing inmates, but because the technology can go far beyond controlling inmates. People could be required to wear one to gain access to political or sports events, while driving, in the class room, or in the work place. So if torturing you into compliance wth remote control pain application isn’t enough?  They can inject you with sedatives against your will with a different set of cuffs. How did we survive the murder of a president, a million hippies marching against Vietnam, race riots and hundreds of US wars without all this?  Without calling citizens “terrorists,” while still allowing legal counsel and trials, while having privacy and free speech?  Without indefinite detention and torture? How did we survive it? Because we hadn’t been brainwashed into the fear. When they break out the suffocation cannons, and microwave cannons to put down a demonstration of people we hate or fear, will we applaud? Because once that is acceptable for ANYONE, they now have carte blanche to use that on us. Once accepted as the new normal, they will always be able to justify its use. V for Vendetta could not have been more prophetic.   The have Shocked us, and in our Awe we have let the Law become Lawless. We have let freedom become slavery.  We have let We have let “Terrorism” become the tool by which we ourselves are terrorized by the state. In 1968, unthinkable science fiction.  In 2013, reality.  I know why you did it, too. Because they weren’t coming for you…. ABOUT THE AUTHOR Diane Gee is editor / founder of The Wild Wild Left. Her Facebook group, Links for the Wildly Left is among the most respected political discussion venues on FB. She lives in Michigan.

The Anti-Empire Report #116

By William Blum 

Boston Marathon, this thing called terrorism, and the United States

What is it that makes young men, reasonably well educated, in good health and nice looking, with long lives ahead of them, use powerful explosives to murder complete strangers because of political beliefs?

I’m speaking about American military personnel of course, on the ground, in the air, or directing drones from an office in Nevada.

Do not the survivors of US attacks in Iraq, Afghanistan, Yemen, Pakistan, Somalia, Libya and elsewhere, and their loved ones, ask such a question?

The survivors and loved ones in Boston have their answer – America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

That’s what Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the surviving Boston bomber has said in custody, and there’s no reason to doubt that he means it, nor the dozens of others in the past two decades who have carried out terrorist attacks against American targets and expressed anger toward US foreign policy. 1 Both Tsarnaev brothers had expressed such opinions before the attack as well. 2 The Marathon bombing took place just days after a deadly US attack in Afghanistan killed 17 civilians, including 12 children, as but one example of countless similar horrors from recent years. “Oh”, an American says, “but those are accidents. What terrorists do is on purpose. It’s cold-blooded murder.”

But if the American military sends out a bombing mission on Monday which kills multiple innocent civilians, and then the military announces: “Sorry, that was an accident.” And then on Tuesday the American military sends out a bombing mission which kills multiple innocent civilians, and then the military announces: “Sorry, that was an accident.” And then on Wednesday the American military sends out a bombing mission which kills multiple innocent civilians, and the military then announces: “Sorry, that was an accident.” … Thursday … Friday … How long before the American military loses the right to say it was an accident?

3 This did not prevent the United States government from showering the man with large amounts of aid to fight against the Soviet-supported government of Afghanistan. 4 Hekmatyar is still a prominent warlord in Afghanistan.

[pullquote]American presidents have been speaking of “our friends” for many years. What they all mean, but never say, is that “our friends” are government and corporate leaders whom we keep in power through any means necessary – the dictators, the kings, the oligarchs, the torturers – not the masses of the population, particularly those with a measure of education.[/pullquote]

A similar example is that of Luis Posada who masterminded the bombing of a Cuban airline in 1976, killing 73 civilians. He has lived a free man in Florida for many years.

USA Today reported a few months ago about a rebel fighter in Syria who told the newspaper in an interview: “The afterlife is the only thing that matters to me, and I can only reach it by waging jihad.” 5 Tamerlan Tsarnaev may have chosen to have a shootout with the Boston police as an act of suicide; to die waging jihad, although questions remain about exactly how he died. In any event, I think it’s safe to say that the authorities wanted to capture the brothers alive to be able to question them.

It would be most interesting to be present the moment after a jihadist dies and discovers, with great shock, that there’s no afterlife. Of course, by definition, there would have to be an afterlife for him to discover that there’s no afterlife. On the other hand, a non-believer would likely be thrilled to find out that he was wrong.

Let us hope that the distinguished statesmen, military officers, and corporate leaders who own and rule America find out in this life that to put an end to anti-American terrorism they’re going to have to learn to live without unending war against the world. There’s no other defense against a couple of fanatic young men with backpacks. Just calling them insane or evil doesn’t tell you enough; it may tell you nothing.

But this change in consciousness in the elite is going to be extremely difficult, as difficult as it appears to be for the parents of the two boys to accept their sons’ guilt. Richard Falk, UN special rapporteur on human rights in the Palestinian territories, stated after the Boston attack: “The American global domination project is bound to generate all kinds of resistance in the post-colonial world. In some respects, the United States has been fortunate not to experience worse blowbacks … We should be asking ourselves at this moment, ‘How many canaries will have to die before we awaken from our geopolitical fantasy of global domination?’” 6

Officials in Canada and Britain as well as US Ambassador to the United Nations Susan Rice have called for Falk to be fired. 7

President Kennedy’s speech, half a century ago

I don’t know how many times in the 50 years since President John F. Kennedy made his much celebrated 1963 speech at American University in Washington, DC 8 I’ve heard or read that if only he had lived he would have put a quick end to the war in Vietnam instead of it continuing for ten more terrible years, and that the Cold War might have ended 25 years sooner than it did. With the 50th anniversary coming up June 13 we can expect to hear a lot more of the same, so I’d like to jump the gun and offer a counter-view.

Kennedy declared:

Let us re-examine our attitude toward the Soviet Union. It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write. It is discouraging to read a recent authoritative Soviet text on Military Strategy and find, on page after page, wholly baseless and incredible claims such as the allegation that “American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of war … that there is a very real threat of a preventative war being unleashed by American imperialists against the Soviet Union” … [and that] the political aims – and I quote – “of the American imperialists are to enslave economically and politically the European and other capitalist countries … [and] to achieve world domination … by means of aggressive war.”

It is indeed refreshing that an American president would utter a thought such as: “It is discouraging to think that their leaders may actually believe what their propagandists write.” This is what radicals in every country wonder about their leaders, not least in the United States. For example, “incredible claims such as the allegation that ‘American imperialist circles are preparing to unleash different types of war’.”

In Kennedy’s short time in office the United States had unleashed many different types of war, from attempts to overthrow governments and suppress political movements to assassination attempts against leaders and actual military combat – one or more of these in Vietnam, Cambodia, Laos, British Guiana, Iraq, Congo, Haiti, Brazil, Dominican Republic, Cuba and Brazil. This is all in addition to the normal and routine CIA subversion of countries all over the world map. Did Kennedy really believe that the Soviet claims were “incredible”?

And did he really doubt that that the driving force behind US foreign policy was “world domination”? How else did he explain all the above interventions (which have continued non-stop into the 21st century)? If the president thought that the Russians were talking nonsense when they accused the US of seeking world domination, why didn’t he then disavow the incessant US government and media warnings about the “International Communist Conspiracy”? Or at least provide a rigorous definition of the term and present good evidence of its veracity.

Quoting further: “Our military forces are committed to peace and disciplined in self-restraint.” No comment.

“We are unwilling to impose our system on any unwilling people.” Unless of course the people foolishly insist on some form of socialist alternative. Ask the people of Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, British Guiana and Cuba, just to name some of those in Kennedy’s time.

“At the same time we seek to keep peace inside the non-Communist world, where many nations, all of them our friends …” American presidents have been speaking of “our friends” for many years. What they all mean, but never say, is that “our friends” are government and corporate leaders whom we keep in power through any means necessary – the dictators, the kings, the oligarchs, the torturers – not the masses of the population, particularly those with a measure of education.

“Our efforts in West New Guinea, in the Congo, in the Middle East, and the Indian subcontinent, have been persistent and patient despite criticism from both sides.”

Persistent, yes. Patient, often. But moral, fostering human rights, democracy, civil liberties, self-determination, not fawning over Israel … ? As but one glaring example, the assassination of Patrice Lumumba of the Congo, perhaps the last chance for a decent life for the people of that painfully downtrodden land; planned by the CIA under Eisenhower, but executed under Kennedy.

“The Communist drive to impose their political and economic system on others is the primary cause of world tension today. For there can be no doubt that, if all nations could refrain from interfering in the self-determination of others, the peace would be much more assured.”

See all of the above for this piece of hypocrisy. And so, if no nation interfered in the affairs of any other nation, there would be no wars. Brilliant. If everybody became rich there would be no poverty. If everybody learned to read there would be no illiteracy.

“The United States, as the world knows, will never start a war.”

So … Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia, Cuba, and literally dozens of other countries then, later, and now, all the way up to Libya in 2012 … they all invaded the United States first? Remarkable.

And this was the man who was going to end the war in Vietnam very soon after being re-elected the following year? Lord help us.

Bush’s legacy

This is not to put George W. Bush down. That’s too easy, and I’ve done it many times. No, this is to counter the current trend to rehabilitate the man and his Iraqi horror show, which partly coincides with the opening of his presidential library in Texas. At the dedication ceremony, President Obama spoke of Bush’s “compassion and generosity” and declared that: “He is a good man.” The word “Iraq” did not pass his lips. The closest he came at all was saying “So even as we Americans may at times disagree on matters of foreign policy, we share a profound respect and reverence for the men and women of our military and their families.” 9 Should morality be that flexible? Even for a politician? Obama could have just called in sick.

At the January 31 congressional hearing on the nomination of Chuck Hagel to be Secretary of Defense, Senator John McCain ripped into him for his critique of the Iraq war:

“The question is, were you right or were you wrong?” McCain demanded, pressing Hagel on why he opposed Bush’s decision to send 20,000 additional troops to Iraq in the so-called ‘surge’.

“I’m not going to give you a yes-or-no answer. I think it’s far more complicated than that,” Hagel responded. He said he would await the “judgment of history.”

Glaring at Hagel, McCain ended the exchange with a bitter rejoinder: “I think history has already made a judgment about the surge, sir, and you are on the wrong side of it.” 10

Before the revisionist history of the surge gets chiseled into marble, let me repeat part of what I wrote in this report at the time, December 2007:

The American progress is measured by a decrease in violence, the White House has decided – a daily holocaust has been cut back to a daily multiple catastrophe. And who’s keeping the count? Why, the same good people who have been regularly feeding us a lie for the past five years about the number of Iraqi deaths, completely ignoring the epidemiological studies. A recent analysis by the Washington Post left the administration’s claim pretty much in tatters. The article opened with: “The U.S. military’s claim that violence has decreased sharply in Iraq in recent months has come under scrutiny from many experts within and outside the government, who contend that some of the underlying statistics are questionable and selectively ignore negative trends.”

To the extent that there may have been a reduction in violence, we must also keep in mind that, thanks to this lovely little war, there are several million Iraqis either dead, wounded, in exile abroad, or in bursting American and Iraqi prisons. So the number of potential victims and killers has been greatly reduced. Moreover, extensive ethnic cleansing has taken place in Iraq (another good indication of progress, n’est-ce pas? nicht wahr?) – Sunnis and Shiites are now living more in their own special enclaves than before, none of those stinking mixed communities with their unholy mixed marriages, so violence of the sectarian type has also gone down. On top of all this, US soldiers have been venturing out a lot less (for fear of things like … well, dying), so the violence against our noble lads is also down.

How long can it be before vacation trips to “Exotic Iraq” are flashed across our TVs? “Baghdad’s Beautiful Beaches Beckon”. Just step over the bodies. Indeed, the State Department has recently advertised for a “business development/tourism” expert to work in Baghdad, “with a particular focus on tourism and related services.” 11

Another argument raised again recently to preserve George W.’s legacy is that “He kept us safe”. Hmm … I could swear that he was in the White House around the time of September 11 … What his supporters mean is that Bush’s War on Terrorism was a success because there wasn’t another terrorist attack in the United States after September 11, 2001 while he was in office; as if terrorists killing Americans is acceptable if it’s done abroad. Following the American/Bush strike on Afghanistan in October 2001 there were literally scores of terrorist attacks – including some major ones – against American institutions in the Middle East, South Asia and the Pacific: military, civilian, Christian, and other targets associated with the United States.

Even the claim that the War on Terrorism kept Americans safe at home is questionable. There was no terrorist attack in the United States during the 6 1/2 years prior to the one in September 2001; not since the April 1995 bombing of the federal building in Oklahoma City. It would thus appear that the absence of terrorist attacks in the United States is the norm.

William Blum speaking in Wisconsin, near Minnesota

Saturday, July 13th, the 11th Annual Peacestock: A Gathering for Peace will take place at Windbeam Farm in Hager City, WI. Peacestock is a mixture of music, speakers, and community for peace in an idyllic location near the Mississippi, just one hour’s drive from the Twin Cities of Minnesota. Peacestock is sponsored by Veterans for Peace, Chapter 115, and has a peace-themed agenda. Kathy Kelly, peace activist extraordinaire, will also speak.

You can camp there and be fed well, meat or vegetarian. Full information at:http://www.peacestockvfp.org

Notes

1. They Hate US for our Occupations”, Salon, October 12, 2010 ↩
2. ↩
3. Tim Weiner, Blank Check: The Pentagon’s Black Budget (1990), p.149-50. ↩
4. William Blum, Killing Hope: U.S. Military and CIA Interventions Since World War II↩
5. USA Today, December 3, 2012 ↩
6. ForeignPolicyJournal.com, April 21, 2013 ↩
7. ↩
8. Full text of speech ↩
9. Remarks by President Obama at Dedication of the George W. Bush Presidential Library↩
10. Los Angeles Times, February 1, 2013 ↩
11. Anti-Empire Report, #52, December 11, 2007 ↩

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission, provided attribution to William Blum as author and a link to this website are given.

by Joe Giambrone

Why isn’t the Boston bombing suspects’ uncle Ruslan Tsarnaev/Tsarni considered a “person of interest” by the FBI?  Or, heavens forbid, a “suspect” in the Boston Marathon bombing plot?

Is it because of his work with State Department and CIA connected USAID around the Caucasus region?  Is it because he was formerly married to the daughter of a very high-ranking CIA official?  Is it because this high-ranking CIA official, Graham E. Fuller, was deeply involved in “Islamic extremism,” for which he is a noted author and strategist?  Or that Graham Fuller was CIA station chief in Kabul, Afghanistan?  Could it be because his former father-in-law, Graham Fuller, “served 20 years in the Foreign Service, mostly the Muslim World, working in Germany, Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, North Yemen, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. In 1982 he was appointed the National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia at CIA, and in 1986 Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council at CIA, with overall responsibility for all national level strategic forecasting.”

Could it be related to Fuller’s paper that launched the Iran/Contra activities?  Or could it simply be Graham Fuller’s role in “strategic forecasting” both then and now?

Whatever the reasons, the Federal Bureau of Investigation should surely be interested in a little organization that Mr. Ruslan Tsarni set up in 1995 called the “Congress of Chechen International Organization[s].”

Why should FBI care about an old “Congress” of Chechen organizations?  There are several reasons known so far, perhaps many more, to look into this group and its activities.

America’s Rottweiler, Daniel Hopsicker, has sunk his fangs into Ruslan Tsarnaev’s history, and he doesn’t appear to be letting go any time soon.  Uncle Ruslan became the darling of the US press by immediately denouncing the two brothers as “losers” and even claiming that their brains were “stolen” by some radical Islamic cleric whom he had never met or spoken to.

But Uncle Ruslan Tsarni/Tsarnaev’s work for USAID and his close connections to one of the top CIA strategists and a boastful expert on “Islamic extremism,” should cause us to take a very close look at his own actions.  A quick search of USAID’s longtime ties to the CIA turns up this gem of a document, which once was “top secret,” but now declassified tells us:

Memorandum For: Deputy Director of Operations

Subject: Joint CIA/USAID Terrorist (Technical) Investigations Course #7 (English Language)…

1. This effort is a joint CIA/USAID training program for foreign police/security personnel…

This was dated March 7^th of 1973 and is hosted right on the USAID website (at least at the time of writing).

Bloomberg told us that Ruslan Tsarni “was a legal consultant to a U.S. company contracted under USAID in a program of economic assistance for Kysrgyzstan.”  Hopsicker exposed that Uncle Ruslan Tsarni is also a Halliburton connected oil man who profited generously from Kazakhstan’s oil fields.

Well, don’t the coincidences just keep piling up around this guy?  Are we in the trillions to one range yet?

Two students from Kazakhstan were charged Wednesday morning for “destroying” evidence related to Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, including fireworks without the gunpowder.  Destroying evidence?  Or planting?  They don’t seem to have “destroyed” it very well.

What would motivate some “friends” to go and tamper with evidence on the biggest terrorism case since 9/11?  This seems out of the ordinary activity, to say the least.  A third man is also facing criminal charges in this evidence tampering and Obstruction of Justice.

Be that as it may, the US media has gone dark on Mr. Graham Fuller and his undeniable relationship with Mr. Ruslan Tsarni/Tsarnaev.  Not one corporate news outlet has covered this Hopsicker initiated piece despite it being incontrovertible.  Fuller wrote about Ruslan in his memoir, Three Truths and a Lie.  Not only does Mr. Fuller’s name link directly, by marriage, to the Tsarnaev clan, his home address links directly to a Chechen front organization used to funnel funds to named terrorists.

Here is where the plot coagulates.  Hopsicker was not satisfied with a failed marriage.  He went deeper.  The Congress of Chechen International Organization[s] assisted one Shaikh Fathi in 1996 by using a “charity” called Benevolence International to get “aid” to the Chechen freedom fighters.  All fine and well, except for a couple of years later we have 9/11, and then American prosecutors like Patrick Fitzgerald begin turning over stones.

One of those slimy, moss covered stones leads to Shaikh Fathi.  The Fitzgerald indictment reads: “Sheikh Fathi was a major conduit for providing material support to the Chechen rebels.”  The indictment was against Benevolence International.  That “charity” was shut down after the US Treasury Department determined that they were “financiers of terrorism.”

The document that Hopsicker acquired, on Congress of Chechen International Organization[s] letterhead, is potentially the Achilles Heel of the entire covert war in Chechnya against the Russians.  Beyond the Boston bombing, this exposes a Chechen front group created by the son in law of a top CIA official that used this same CIA official’s home address on the official application when Ruslan set up the front!  This may be considered “poor tradecraft.”  A bad decision in 1995 may have just exposed the entire CIA connected terrorism nexus to the world.  And not one US “news” outlet will say one word about it.

Dozens of reporters gave open microphones to Ruslan Tsarni/Tsarnaev when he denounced his two nephews as “losers” and that he wished they had “never existed.”  But what a contrast in news coverage now that this man Ruslan Tsarni himself is found to be very close to the Central Intelligence Agency, since 1995.

It seems as though the name “Graham Fuller” cannot be published in connection to this case, in any corporate media organization in the United States, nor in Europe.  This is essentially Orwellian manipulation of the public, and should be considered the top censored news story of the year, and perhaps of the decade.

Another international terrorist threat warning concerned Tamerlan Tsarnaev, this time in 2012 from Saudi Arabia.  A Saudi official told Daily Mail UK about a letter to US intelligence and that they wouldn’t even allow Tamerlan Tsarnaev to enter Saudi Arabia last December, 2012, for his desired pilgrimage to Mecca.  The Saudi intelligence did not just repeat what Russia had said, and instead the warning was “based on human intelligence developed independently in Yemen.”  Apparently the Saudi Foreign Minister and National Security Chief then met with Barack Obama in the Oval Office to discuss it early in 2013. Denied, denied, denied.

The usually reliable Israeli intelligence website DebkaFile suggested two things about this Boston Marathon bombing case that were not readily apparent at the time.  These were 1) that the brothers (or older brother) were recruited by US intelligence, and that 2) they turned on their recruiters as double agents for Jihad.

The second part is speculative.  But the first part suggests more detailed knowledge of the Tsarnaevs and of covert activities in the Caucasus.  Most of the data concerning Uncle Ruslan were public and accessible, just waiting for someone like Hopsicker to piece it together.  The freakish response of the FBI to Tamerlan Tsarnaev, despite international terrorist threat warnings, suggests something odd about this case.  While double-agents are not unique and this has precedents, such as Ali Mohamad, we still have no proof that the brothers actually committed the bombings.  They are being tried in the media, piece by piece, without legal recourse to challenge the accusations or the so-called evidence against them.

Russian news outlet Izvestia provides another piece of the puzzle, and it supports the Israeli claim that the brothers were recruited by US intelligence.  On Tamerlan’s trip to Russia in 2012 (Jan. to July), there is a report by Georgian intelligence that Tamerlan Tsarnaev attended “training” at the Jamestown Foundation, connected with the Caucasus Fund.  All have ties to CIA.  As for Jamestown Foundation, guess who gave a keynote speech in 2008 there called “Turkey & the Caucasus after Georgia”?

Only your favorite “strategist,” the man whose name US media dare not speaketh.  What a little tiny world we’ve inherited.

[Editor’s note: A previous version of this article said that Tamerlan Tsarnaev had entered Georgian territory and attended “training” at the Jamestown Foundation; however, Izvestia article from which this was sourced didn’t say he entered Georgia, only that Georgian intelligence was aware of the training. The error has been corrected.]

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