by Stephen Lendman

A multitude of images exploit the young male "macho" instinct to prove himself in combat. Most recruits have absolutely no understanding of the real mainsprings of US foreign policy, and then they're further indoctrinated to look at the enemy as subhuman—a standard procedure in all militaries at war. (Credit: milpictures.com)

When asked why he robbed banks, Willie Sutton said that’s where the money is. Washington targets the Middle East, North Africa and Central Asia because it’s where most proved oil and gas reserves are.

Waging war require enemies. Pretexts create them. Muslims are demonized as threats. They’re portrayed as culturally inferior, dirty, lecherous, untrustworthy, religiously fanatical, and violent. Slanderous media commentaries suggest gun-totting terrorists threatening US interests.

Fear is heightened. Strategically timed false flag terror plots make headlines. So do arrests of entrapped Muslims despite no evidence of crime or intent to commit one. 

Americans are manipulated to believe domestic and foreign jihadists threaten national security. Resource wars follow.

Enemies are dehumanized. Military training creates Groupthink. Recruits are manipulated to hate. Indoctrination involves sensitizing them to become effective combat killing machines.

On May 10, wired.com contributors Noah Shachtman and Spencer Ackerman headlined “US Military Taught Officers: Use ‘Hiroshima’ Tactics for ‘Total War’ on Islam,” saying:

Total war is taught to protect America from Islamic terrorists. Options include destroying an entire “civilian population wherever necessary.”

The Norfolk, VA-based Joint Forces Staff College taught “Perspectives on Islam and Islamic Radicalism.” High-ranking officers were instructed to believe “Islam had already declared war on the West.”

A wired.com Danger Room investigation revealed it. Damage control followed. Lt. General George Flynn in charge of training and education said:

“It was inflammatory….(T)hat’s really not what we’re talking about. That is not how we view this situation or the challenges we have in the world today.”

The White House ordered counterterrorism training content reviewed. The “Perspectives” course was taught since 2004. It “not only evaded review, but had defenders in the Joint Forces Staff College (who) taught it.”

Lecturer Stephen Coughlin taught that “Islamic law is a danger to US national security.” College spokesman Steven Williams said around 90% of students considered course content “mostly positive.”

After revisions were made last year, some officers objected to offensive material. According to Flynn:

“We looked at it and we found the material to be objectionable and we started digging into it to see, how did the course get this way?” 

“Possibly, we did not follow the procedures we should have followed in academically approving the course, but that’ll be formally determined when we complete the inquiry into this.”

Course content allegedly had to follow “White House-approved guidelines issued by the Department of Homeland Security to prevent anti-Islam material from being taught by the US government.”

Flynn said “whatever action is warranted” will be done to assure compliance.

On May 10, Joint Chiefs Chairman General Martin Dempsey said instructor Lt. Colonel Matthew A. Dooley remains on Norfolk’s staff but is “no longer in a teaching status.”

He taught content about waging total war on Muslim civilians “wherever necessary.” He likened it to firebombing Dresden and Hiroshima/Nagasaki destruction. Other course lecturers encouraged students “to think of themselves as a ‘resistance movement’ to Islam.”

Demsey and Flynn “pulled the plug on the course last month.” An investigation began. Major General Frederick Rudesheim heads it. “Final judgment” awaits his findings.

“The military is hardly alone in dealing with anti-Islam instructional material passing itself off as responsible counterterrorism.” 

“Over the years, hundreds of documents claiming ‘mainstream’ Muslims are ‘violent’ have made their way into FBI curricula, alongside internal claims that agents working on counterterrorism cases could ‘bend or suspend the law.’ “

The Bureau teaches agents that “mainstream” Muslims are “violent,” that Islam “ma(kes) its followers want to commit ‘genocide,’ ” and an “FBI intelligence analyst compared Islam to the Death Star from Star Wars.”

An internal investigation followed. Conclusions weren’t revealed. Allegedly this type content was removed from course content. It compared the “Arab World” to the “Western Mind.”

It said Westerners were even-tempered. Emotional outbursts were “exceptional.” Arab “Outburst(s) and Loss of Control (are) Expected.”

Post-9/11, Muslims have been systematically targeted. In 2011, a New York University School of Law Center for Human Rights and Global Justice (CHR&GJ) report titled “Targeted and Entrapped: Manufacturing the ‘Homegrown Threat’ in the United States” explained Muslim persecution in detail.

Ruthless targeting entraps them. Paid informants infest mosques and communities. Many dozens are pursued on bogus charges. Invented plots are foiled in the nick of time. Media scoundrels headline them to heighten fear.

Muslims are portrayed as “potential threats” or “homegrown terrorists.” Federal, state and local law enforcement officials consider them more likely to become terrorists, easily radicalized, and compelled to commit violence in the name of Islam.

Counterterrorism policies mandate identifying and stopping them before they act.

Research, of course, contradicts these notions. Claiming Muslims “hate us” is spurious. Nonetheless, their cultural and religious practices are cited as indicators of potential terrorism. As a result, they’re maliciously persecuted for political advantage.

Obama’s Department of Homeland Security (DHS), FBI, and Justice Department (DOJ) embrace racist radicalization notions. They’re used as justification to entrap innocent victims with “preventive” policing despite no evidence of wrongdoing. 

Instead of pursuing real criminals, they target people for their faith, religious practices, ethnicity, national origin, political views, or appearance. Lawless tactics entrap them. They include paid informants, surveillance, and inducing, influencing, or provoking potential or actual crimes that otherwise wouldn’t have been committed.

FBI Domestic Investigative Operational Guidelines (DIOGs) are bent without supervisory approval or constraints to permit virtually anything.

The 2003 Department of Justice (DOJ) Guidance Regarding the Use of Race by Federal Law Enforcement Agencies bans racial and ethnic profiling. Nonetheless, it implicitly permits doing so for faith and national origin purposes. It also allows targeting anyone for national and border security related issues.

Post-9/11, entrapment and other abuses became policy. They remain so. No link whatever connects religion, ethnicity, national origin, or political views to a propensity to commit violence. 

However, most convictions result from bogusly conflating them as proof of intent or predisposition. As a result, innocent victims rot in America’s gulag. Justice is systematically denied. In an environment of hate and fear, no one is safe. Most of all, Muslims are public enemy number one. 

Pentagon damage control casts a veil over policy. Joint Forces Staff College course content changes (whether or not implemented) obscure the greater problem. 

Vilifying enemies is longstanding. Military training features dehumanization. Anti-Japanese WW II epithets and images were grotesque.

North Koreans were called “gooks” and “zipperheads.” 

Vietnamese were also “gooks,” as well as “dinks” and “slopes.” Arabs are called “ragheads” and “sand niggers.” Native Americans were called plundering, murdering savages. Common epithets today marginalize Blacks and Latinos.

Dehumanization facilitates warmaking. It also desensitizes law enforcement agents to target Muslims and other designated state enemies. Doing the wrong thing works best when Groupthink becomes polic

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour/.

by Stephen Lendman

An artist's impression of alleged 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed during Saturday's military commission proceedings at Guantánamo Bay. Photograph: Janet Hamlin/AP

At issue is prosecuting five 9/11 suspects: Khalid Sheikh Mohammed (KSM: the alleged mastermind), Ramzi bin al-Shibh, Walid bin Attash, Ali Abdul Aziz Ali, and Mustafa al Hawsawi. 

Defense lawyer James Connell announced a tentative May 2013 trial date. A scheduled one hasn’t been named. Army Brig. General Mark Martins expects months of defense motions delaying it. 

How admissible is confessions obtained after years of beatings and waterboarding? The show trial of these men signifies the complete collapse of the rule of  law in the United States.

“I am getting ready for hundreds of motions because we want them to shoot everything they can shoot at us,” he said.

On May 5, their Guantanamo arraignment was held. It took 13 hours. They remained mute. They refused to respond to alleged charges for good reason. Serious questions remain regarding their guilt, including KSM. More on why below

On April 4, 2011, Attorney General Eric Holder said:

“In November 2009, I announced that (KSM) and four other individuals would stand trial in federal court for their roles in the” 9/11 attacks.”

“After consulting with prosecutors from the Department of Justice and Department of Defense and after thoroughly studying the case, it became clear to me that the best venue (was) federal court. I stand by that decision.”

Months of inaction let Congress “intervene and impose restrictions blocking the administration from bringing any Guantanamo detainees to trial in the United States, regardless of the venue.”

“(T)hose restrictions are unlikely to be repealed in the immediate future. And we simply cannot allow a trial to be delayed any longer….We must bring the conspirators to justice.”

On April 4, a Department of Justice press release headlined, “Justice Department Refers Five Accused 9/11 Plotters to Military Commissions,” saying:

“As the indictment unsealed today reveals, we were prepared to bring a powerful case against the 9/11 defendants in federal court, and had this case proceeded as planned, I’m confident our justice system would have” prevailed.

A 10 count, 80 page indictment accused them of:

1. “conspiracy to commit acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries; 
2. acts of terrorism transcending national boundaries; 
3. conspiracy to commit violent acts and destroy aircraft; 
4. violence on and destruction of aircraft; 
5. conspiracy to commit aircraft piracy; 
6. aircraft piracy; 
7. murder of US officers and employees; 
8. destruction of property by means of fire and explosives; and 
9. conspiracy to kill Americans.”

At the time, ACLU Director Anthony Romero called Holder’s “flip-flop devastating for the rule of law.” Military commissions have no legitimacy. They’re kangaroo courts, not real ones.

The 2006 Military Commissions Act (MCA) authorized them. Congress enacted sweeping unconstitutional powers to detain, interrogate, and prosecute alleged suspects and collaborators (including US citizens). 

They can be tortured and held without evidence (charged or uncharged) indefinitely in military prisons. Habeas and other constitutional protections are denied. 

Those charged are guilty by accusation. Presidents have diktat power to try suspects in military commissions or detain them indefinitely uncharged. On March 1, 2003, KSM was arrested in Rawalpindi, Pakistan. Some believe it was a year earlier in Karachi. 

Over 10 years later, his trial is tentatively scheduled to begin next year. It may be delayed further. Torture extracted evidence against him and co-defendants will be used. Throughout their detention, they were isolated with no counsel. KSM was horrifically treated.

He was isolated at black sites for over two years. He spent time at Afghanistan’s “Dark Prison” near Kabul International Airport. It’s infamous for its pitch darkness and brutalizing torture.

He was also held in a facility north of Kabul called the “Salt Pit.” One detainee was stripped naked and left chained to the floor in freezing temperatures to die.

In Afghanistan, KSM was hog-tied, stripped naked, hooded, and tortured. He was kept in a prolonged state of sensory deprivation for months. He was waterboarded over 180 times.

He was chained naked to a metal ring in his cell in a painful crouch in intense heat and extreme cold. He was also bombarded with deafening sounds round the clock for weeks.

He was thrown against walls forcefully. The procedure is called “walling.” At other times, he was suspended from the ceiling by his arms so his toes barely touched the ground.

He was beaten with electric cables and given electric shocks.

He was forced to endure a variety of stress positions for extended periods. Excruciating pain was inflicted.

In 2006, he was sent to Guantanamo where torture continued. His co-defendants received similar treatment. The ICRC said high-level detainees were repeatedly tortured. To extract a confession, KSM was told:

“We’re not going to kill you. But we’re going to take you to the brink of your death and back.”

After years of horrific torture, mistreatment, and deprivation, it’s astonishing he’s still alive to be tried. Doing so in military courts is scandalous. At issue is their illegitimacy. It’s also about using torture extracted evidence.

Torture is prohibited at all times, under all circumstances, with no allowed exceptions. Evidence so obtained is unreliable and inadmissible. Civil courts won’t allow it or shouldn’t. 

According to MCA provisions, it’s permitted. Appeals are prohibited. Convictions are certain. Executions will follow. Justice will be denied. The real 9/11 co-conspirators remain free. They’re in charge of condemning innocent suspects to death.

Two earlier Supreme Court decisions ruled torture extracted evidence constitutionally inadmissible. In Brown v. Mississippi (February 1936), the court held:

“The rack and torture chamber may not be substituted for the witness stand.” 

The ruling cited an earlier Fisher v. State (November 1926) High Court decision, stating:

“Coercing the supposed state’s criminals into confessions and using such confessions so coerced from them in trials has been the curse of all countries.” 

“It was the chief iniquity, the crowing infamy of the Star Chamber (the notorious 15 – 17th century English court), and the Inquisition, and other similar institutions.” 

“The Constitution recognized the evils that lay behind these practices and prohibited them in this country wherever the court is clearly satisfied such violations exist, (and) it will refuse to sanction such violations and will apply the corrective.”

In other words, confessions and alleged evidence obtained under torture are unreliable, suspect, and inadmissible. That was then. This is now. KSM and co-defendants face certain unjust convictions. 

On May 5, they stayed silent for good reason. Some call their proceedings the “trial of the century.” Independent jurists call it a sham.

Defense lawyers raised issues of torture and mistreatment. Military judge Colonel James Pohl dismissed them. Also requests to wear civilian clothes was denied.

Attorney David Nevin said KSM won’t address the court. “I believe he’s deeply concerned about the fairness of the proceedings.”

Lawyers were told earlier they’re prohibited from raising torture accusations. They’re central to the case but can’t be introduced.

Nonetheless, Nevin asked Pohl whether KSM’s “treatment during incarceration, which consisted of torture, is appropriate mitigation” for lesser punishment. Pohl declined to answer.

Nevin also asked if he had “any experience with the issue of torture of prisoners?” Pohl refused to use the word torture. He said only that he’s been involved in detainee abuse cases after the Abu Ghraib scandal. Several low-level soldiers were prosecuted. Higher-ups ordering their behavior remain uncharged.

Bin Attash’s attorney, Cheryl Bormann, said her client was forcibly dragged from his cell to the hearing. Scars on his arms bear testimony. Bin Attash tried removing his shirt to show them. He was ordered to keep it on.

Al-Shibh was the only one to speak. He interrupted an exchange between his lawyer and Pohl with comments on Muammar Gaddafi. When Pohl told him to be quiet, he continued in broken English, saying:

“Maybe they will kill me and say I committed suicide. Maybe you are not going to see me any more. This is the way that we are treated in this camp.”

A handful of family members who lost loved ones on 9/11 were chosen by lottery to attend the proceedings. Those of defendants are considered non-persons. KSM and others are guilty before verdicts are rendered.

Long ago justice was compromised in US civil courts. Today, ordinary people haven’t a chance. Imagine what’s ahead for KSM and co-defendants. Executions will follow convictions. 

Given what they’ve been through with no possibility of freedom, they may yearn for ending their long ordeal. 

Between now and then, Washington will make it tough as possible on them. That’s how police states operate. On a global scale, America’s by far the worst.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. 

His new book is titled “How Wall Street Fleeces America: Privatized Banking, Government Collusion and Class War”

http://www.claritypress.com/Lendman.html

Visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.progressiveradionetwork.com/the-progressive-news-hour.

• Inform your media and political representatives of this vital information on false flag operations. To contact those close to you, click here. Urge them also to join in calling for the release of secret documents related to such operations and for a new, impartial investigation of 9/11.
• Learn more about 9/11 and the secret societies which may have been involved in this powerful lesson from the free Insight Course.
• Read concise summaries of revealing major media reports available here suggesting elements of government either allowed or facilitated the 9/11 attacks.
• Spread this news to your friends and colleagues, and recommend this article on key news websites so that we can fill the role at which the major media is sadly failing. Together, we can make a difference.

GLOBAL warming isn’t a prediction. It is happening. That is why I was so troubled to read a recent interview with President Obama in Rolling Stone in which he said thatCanada would exploit the oil in its vast tar sands reserves “regardless of what we do.”

If Canada proceeds, and we do nothing, it will be game over for the climate.

Canada’s tar sands, deposits of sand saturated with bitumen, contain twice the amount of carbon dioxide emitted by global oil use in our entire history. If we were to fully exploit this new oil source, and continue to burn our conventional oil, gas and coal supplies, concentrations of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere eventually would reach levels higher than in the Pliocene era, more than 2.5 million years ago, when sea level was at least 50 feet higher than it is now. That level of heat-trapping gases would assure that the disintegration of the ice sheets would accelerate out of control. Sea levels would rise and destroy coastal cities. Global temperatures would become intolerable. Twenty to 50 percent of the planet’s species would be driven to extinction. Civilization would be at risk.

That is the long-term outlook. But near-term, things will be bad enough. Over the next several decades, the Western United States and the semi-arid region from North Dakota to Texas will develop semi-permanent drought, with rain, when it does come, occurring in extreme events with heavy flooding. Economic losses would be incalculable. More and more of the Midwest would be a dust bowl. California’s Central Valley could no longer be irrigated. Food prices would rise to unprecedented levels.

If this sounds apocalyptic, it is. This is why we need to reduce emissions dramatically. President Obama has the power not only to deny tar sands oil additional access to Gulf Coast refining, which Canada desires in part for export markets, but also to encourage economic incentives to leave tar sands and other dirty fuels in the ground.

The global warming signal is now louder than the noise of random weather, as I predicted would happen by now in the journal Science in 1981. Extremely hot summers have increased noticeably. We can say with high confidence that the recent heat waves in Texas and Russia, and the one in Europe in 2003, which killed tens of thousands, were not natural events — they were caused by human-induced climate change.

We have known since the 1800s that carbon dioxide traps heat in the atmosphere. The right amount keeps the climate conducive to human life. But add too much, as we are doing now, and temperatures will inevitably rise too high. This is not the result of natural variability, as some argue. The earth is currently in the part of its long-term orbit cycle where temperatures would normally be cooling. But they are rising — and it’s because we are forcing them higher with fossil fuel emissions.

The concentration of carbon dioxide in the atmosphere has risen from 280 parts per million to 393 p.p.m. over the last 150 years. The tar sands contain enough carbon — 240 gigatons — to add 120 p.p.m. Tar shale, a close cousin of tar sands found mainly in the United States, contains at least an additional 300 gigatons of carbon. If we turn to these dirtiest of fuels, instead of finding ways to phase out our addiction to fossil fuels, there is no hope of keeping carbon concentrations below 500 p.p.m. — a level that would, as earth’s history shows, leave our children a climate system that is out of their control.

We need to start reducing emissions significantly, not create new ways to increase them. We should impose a gradually rising carbon fee, collected from fossil fuel companies, then distribute 100 percent of the collections to all Americans on a per-capita basis every month. The government would not get a penny. This market-based approach would stimulate innovation, jobs and economic growth, avoid enlarging government or having it pick winners or losers. Most Americans, except the heaviest energy users, would get more back than they paid in increased prices. Not only that, the reduction in oil use resulting from the carbon price would be nearly six times as great as the oil supply from the proposed pipeline from Canada, rendering the pipeline superfluous, according to economic models driven by a slowly rising carbon price.

But instead of placing a rising fee on carbon emissions to make fossil fuels pay their true costs, leveling the energy playing field, the world’s governments are forcing the public to subsidize fossil fuels with hundreds of billions of dollars per year. This encourages a frantic stampede to extract every fossil fuel through mountaintop removal, longwall mining, hydraulic fracturing, tar sands and tar shale extraction, and deep ocean and Arctic drilling.

President Obama speaks of a “planet in peril,” but he does not provide the leadership needed to change the world’s course. Our leaders must speak candidly to the public — which yearns for open, honest discussion — explaining that our continued technological leadership and economic well-being demand a reasoned change of our energy course. History has shown that the American public can rise to the challenge, but leadership is essential.

The science of the situation is clear — it’s time for the politics to follow. This is a plan that can unify conservatives and liberals, environmentalists and business. Every major national science academy in the world has reported that global warming is real, caused mostly by humans, and requires urgent action. The cost of acting goes far higher the longer we wait — we can’t wait any longer to avoid the worst and be judged immoral by coming generations.