The White House’s “death of bin Laden” story has come apart at the seams. Will it make any difference that before 48 hours had passed the story had changed so much that it no longer bore any resemblance to President Obama’s Sunday evening broadcast and has lost all credibility?

So far it has made no difference to the once-fabled news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which on March 9, eight days later, is still repeating the propaganda that the SEALs killed bin Laden in his Pakistani compound, where bin Laden lived next door to the Pakistani Military Academy surrounded by the Pakistani army.

Not even the president of Pakistan finds the story implausible. The BBC reports that the president is launching a full-scale investigation of how bin Laden managed to live for years in an army garrison town without being noticed.

For most Americans the story began and ended with four words: “we got bin Laden.” The celebrations, the sweet taste of revenge, of triumph and victory over “the most dangerous man on the planet” are akin to the thrill experienced by sports fans when their football team defeats the unspeakable rival or their baseball team wins the World Series. No fan wants to hear the next day that it is not so, that it is all a mistake. If these Americans years from now come across a story that the killing of bin Laden was an orchestrated news event to boost other agendas, they will dismiss the report as the ravings of a pinko-liberal-commie.

Everyone knows we killed bin Laden. How could it be otherwise? We–the indispensable people, the virtuous nation, the world’s only superpower, the white hats– were destined to prevail. No other outcome was possible.

No one will notice that those who fabricated the story forgot to show the kidney dialysis machine that, somehow, kept bin Laden alive for a decade. No doctors were on the premises.

No one will remember that Fox News reported in December, 2001, that Osama bin Laden had passed away from his illnesses.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html

If bin Laden beat all odds and managed to live another decade to await, unarmed and undefended, the arrival of the Navy SEALS last week, how it is possible that the “terror mastermind,” who defeated not merely the CIA and FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with those of America’s European allies and Israel, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, airport security four times on the same morning, etc. etc., never enjoyed another success, not even a little, very minor one? What was the “terror mastermind” doing for a decade after 9/11?

The “death of bin Laden” serves too many agendas that cover the political spectrum for the obvious falsity of the story to be recognized by very many. Patriots are euphoric that America won over bin Laden. Progressives have seized on the story to excoriate the United States for extra-judicial murder that brutalizes us all. Some on the left-wing bought into the 9/11 story because of the emotional satisfaction they received from oppressed Arabs striking back at their imperialist oppressors. These left-wingers are delighted that it took the incompetent Americans an entire decade to find bin Laden, who was hiding in plain view. The American incompetence in finding bin Laden simply, in their minds, proves the incompetence of the US government, which failed to protect Americans against the 9/11 attack.

Those who ordered, and those who wrote, totally incompetent legal memos that torture was permissible under US and international law, thereby setting up George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the possibility of prosecution, are riding the euphoria of bin Laden’s death by declaring that it was torture that led the American assassins to bin Laden. All of a sudden, torture, which had fallen back into the disrepute in which it had been for centuries, is again in the clear. Anything that leads to the elimination of bin Laden is a valid instrument.

Those, who want to increase the pressure on Pakistan to shut up about Americans murdering Pakistani citizens in Pakistan from the air and from troops on the ground, have gained a new club with which to beat the Pakistani government into submission: “you hid bin Laden from us.”

Those who want to continue to fatten the profits of the military/security complex and the powers of Homeland Security, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, use bin Laden’s second, or ninth, death as proof that America is being successful in its war on terror and that the war must continue on such a successful path until all enemies are slain.

Most ominous of all was the statement by the CIA director that bin Laden’s death would lead to new attacks on America and new 9/11s from al Qaeda seeking revenge. This warning, issued within a few hours of President Obama’s Sunday evening address, telegraphed the inevitable “al Qaeda” Internet posting that America would suffer new 9/11s for killing their leader.

If the Taliban knew in December 2001 that bin Laden was dead, does anyone think that al Qaeda didn’t know it? Indeed, no member of the public has any way of knowing if al Qaeda is anything more than a bogyman organization created by the CIA which issues “al Qaeda” announcements. The evidence that al Qaeda’s announcements are issued by the CIA is very strong. The various videos of bin Laden for the last nine years have been shown by experts to be fakes. Why would bin Laden issue a fake video? Why did bin Laden cease issuing videos and only issue audios? A person running a world-wide terrorist organization should be able to produce videos. He would also be surrounded by better protectors than a couple of women. Where was al Qaeda, which according to former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, consists of “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” Had these most dangerous men alive abandoned their leader?

The CIA director’s warning of future terrorist attacks, followed by a suspect “al Qaeda” threat of the same, suggests that if the American public continues to lose its enthusiasm for the governments open-ended wars, which are conducted at the expense of the US budget deficit, the dollar’s exchange value, inflation, Social Security, Medicare, income support programs, jobs, recovery, and so forth, “al Qaeda” will again outwit all 16 US intelligence agencies, those of our allies, NORAD, airport security, Air Traffic Control, etc. etc., and inflict the world’s only superpower with another humiliating defeat that will invigorate American support for “the war on terror.”

I believe that “al Qaeda” could blow up the White House or Congress or both and that the majority of Americans would fall for the story, just as the Germans, a better educated and more intelligent population, fell for the Reichstag Fire–as did a number of historians.

The reason I say this is that Americans have succumbed to propaganda that has conditioned them to believe that they are under attack by practically omnipotent adversaries. Proof of this is broadcast every day. For example, on March 9, I heard over National Public Radio in Atlanta that Emory University, a private university of some distinction, treated its 3,500 graduating class to a commencement address by Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security.

This is the agency that has goons feeling the genitals of young children and adults and which has announced that it intends to expand this practice from air travelers to shopping malls, bus and train stations. That a serious university invited such a low-lifer, who clearly has no respect for American civil liberty and is devoid of any sort of sense of what is appropriate, to address a graduating class of southern elite is a clear indication that the Ministry of Truth has prevailed. Americans are living in George Orwell’s 1984.

For those who haven’t read Orwell’s classic prediction of our time, Big Brother, the government, could tell the “citizens” any lie and it was accepted unquestioningly. As a perceptive reader pointed out to me, we Americans, with our “free press,” are at this point today: “What is really alarming is the increasingly arrogant sloppiness of these lies, as though the government has become so profoundly confident of its ability to deceive people that they make virtually no effort to even appear credible.”

A people as gullible as Americans have no future.

PAUL CRAIG ROBERTS, onetime a major player in the Reagan administration, has become a progressive in recent years. His intelligence and outspokenness are prized virtues.  Why he served the devil in the 1980s remains a mystery.

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John Riddell

Pres. Morales reviews Bolivian troops.

Six years after Bolivians elected their first Indigenous-led government, their ongoing struggle for national and social liberation remains a subject of debate and disagreement among socialists around the world.

• Have the Bolivian masses been able to score significant gains under the government of President Evo Morales, first elected in December 2005?
• Or has the Morales presidency served to limit popular movements and block the possibility of significant change?

The second view is argued by Canadian socialist Jeffrey Webber in a new book and a variety of recent articles, including an interview published March 15 in The Bullet.[1] While Webber says that activists in the North should defend Bolivia against “imperialist meddling,” his primary concern is to disabuse First World socialists of illusions in the country’s government. Despite Morales’s “nominal inclusion of revolutionary slogans,” his actions involve only “relatively superficial policy initiatives,” Webber says. (Except as indicated, all quotations are from the March 15 interview in The Bullet.)

President Evo Morales and army chief Gen. Antonio Cueto inspect Bolivia’s army after it was declared “socialist, anti-imperialist and anti-capitalist.”

Far from moving toward socialism, Webber says, the Morales government has served to close off a “possibility of a fundamental, transformative overhaul of social, economic, and political structures” and to consolidate a “reconstituted neoliberalism.”

Jeffrey Webber has won international recognition for his writings on the social struggles in Bolivia, so his analysis deserves respectful consideration. His argument rests on his view – in my opinion correct – that Bolivia remains capitalist, and that a socialist transformation is not under way.

But surely that is only part of the story. The reforms that Webber derides as “superficial” have been violently opposed by the Bolivian oligarchy, who don’t seem to agree that Morales is strengthening capitalism. The U.S. embassy in La Paz has participated actively in attempts to overthrow the government. Internationally, the Bolivian government has joined ALBA, the progressive alliance founded by Cuba and Venezuela, and has taken other positive steps, including breaking diplomatic relations with Israel.

In my view, Webber and others who agree with him are measuring the Bolivian government against an impossible standard, against the ideal program of a hypothetical mass socialist movement. If we instead consider its real achievements, the gains it has made against formidable odds, we must conclude that our priority lies in support of Bolivia’s positive moves toward national sovereignty, social progress, and effective action on global warming.

Cochabamba Initiative for Climate Justice

Webber himself praises one recent Bolivian initiative of world import: the Morales government’s hosting of “a major anti-capitalist gathering in Cochabamba last year.” This was “a genuine step forward for the construction of international, eco-socialist networks,” he says.

Let us add that the conference, with more than 30,000 participants, provided a model of how social movements can establish an agenda for action by sympathetic governments. The conference also creatively applied an Indigenous perspective to the most urgent crisis facing humankind through its call for a “universal declaration of the rights of Mother Earth,” which has won significant international support.

Bolivia led an alliance of Global South countries in taking the Cochabamba resolutions to the world climate change conference in Cancun, Mexico, last December. There, Bolivia ended up standing alone in flatly rejecting an imperialist-imposed deal that again failed to act on climate change. The outcome in Cancun was a serious setback for ecological forces, but Bolivia, undeterred, is helping to spearhead organizing toward the next world climate change conference in Durban, South Africa, next December.

Imperialist powers are not accustomed to be defied in this way by a small Third-World country. Why did this historic challenge, the world’s first expression of a mass anti-capitalist ecological movement, come from Bolivia, a small and desperately poor country, remote from the world’s power centres, and weighed down with a historically fragile, dependent, and crisis-prone economy?

Agenda for Sovereignty

To explain the Cochabamba initiative, we examine its context: a reversal in U.S.-Bolivian relations since Morales was elected. Bolivia has long been subjected to aggressive U.S. intervention, supported by the country’s capitalist elite. Previously, the U.S. utilized three extended campaigns – the so-called wars against communism, drugs, and terrorism – to keep Bolivian society off balance and to pave the way for various forms of intervention. After Morales’s election in 2005, Washington turned to backing separatist forces in Bolivia’s internal conflicts.

But Bolivia shook off these aggressive intrusions and has now has taken the initiative, rallying international forces against U.S. sabotage of climate justice.[2]

Webber tips his hat to this reality, noting that “the Morales government has also developed a relatively more independent foreign policy.” This aspect of its record is worth closer attention, however, especially given Canada’s oppressive involvement in the region.

In December 2005, Morales concluded his first speech as elected president by repeating a slogan of the coca-farmers’ union, “Causachun coca, wañuchun yanquis” (‘Long live coca, death to the Yankees’). Defense of the coca leaf, significant in Indigenous culture, against the depredations of U.S. drug-war contingents was symbolic of a new course to affirm Indigenous and national dignity. In the following months:

• Bolivia broke with the previous practice of allowing U.S. ambassadors to influence appointments to senior government posts.
• Bolivia refused to grant legal immunity to U.S. soldiers operating in the country; in response, the U.S. cancelled 96% of its support to the Bolivian army.
• Bolivia broke with U.S. drug war policies and protected coca cultivation in family farms.
• When Washington caused visa problems for Bolivian government leaders seeking to visit the U.S., Bolivia slapped a compulsory visa requirement on all U.S. visitors.
• Bolivia cancelled the practice by which the International Monetary Fund and the World Bank had a say in the country’s financial policies, and ended its dependency on loans from these agencies.[3]

The last of these steps was part of a package of measures designed to free Bolivia’s finances from vulnerability to great-power economic pressure.

But Bolivia’s most effective challenge of North American tutelage lay in promoting steps toward regional integration, free of U.S. and Canadian intervention. Webber mentions Bolivia’s “closer ties to Venezuela, Ecuador, and Cuba”: in fact, these ties took shape in ALBA (the Bolivarian Alliance for the Peoples of Our America), a plan for alternative economic relationships on the basis of solidarity, not the capitalist market, and simultaneously a political bloc coordinating member countries’ resistance to U.S.-led imperialism.

The campaign against U.S. intervention led, in 2008, to the expulsion of the U.S. ambassador. In the Obama administration’s third year, it has yet to negotiate terms for its ambassador’s return to La Paz.

The main barrier to resuming normal diplomatic relations is Bolivia’s strong objections to subversive activities of U.S. agencies within the country. Indeed, the Morales government has just expelled the Environmental and Economic Development program of USAID, a U.S. government agency that has engaged in protracted efforts to undermine the government.

Bolivia’s campaign to free itself from U.S. tutelage and assert national sovereignty is an outstanding achievement, which was spearheaded by the Morales government.

Defeating a Rightist Insurgency

When elected, the Morales government had “substantial room for manoeuvre,” Webber tells us. “The U.S. was overextended in Iraq and Afghanistan” and the “domestic right had been politically destroyed.” Instead of taking advantage of this opening, he says, the Morales government’s policies, despite “superficial policy initiatives … that run against orthodox neoliberalism,” remain “pre-eminently concerned with the restoration of profitability and the subordination of the working class.”

This picture is hard to square with the reality of social polarization during the regime’s first years. Far from showing gratitude for Morales’s supposed efforts to restore capitalist profitability, major sectors of Bolivia’s capitalist class launched a violent rebellion, purportedly for regional autonomy but primarily designed to shatter the government’s authority in the country’s richest areas.

The rightist revolt was triggered by the government’s initiative for a new constitution that would refound Bolivia as a “plurinational” republic, and by fear that Indigenous peasants would use their enhanced status and authority insist on return of lands stolen by white, mestizo and foreign elites.

It is true, as Webber says, that the reform of the hydrocarbon industry, which vastly increased government royalties, fell short of full nationalization. Also, agrarian reform measures have been less radical, so far, than those that followed Bolivia’s 1952 revolution. Nonetheless, surely it is clear that, the present Bolivian government’s reform measures – the assertion of national sovereignty vis-à-vis the U.S. empire; the new constitution; the agrarian reform, with all its limitations; rights and dignity for Indigenous peoples; increased royalties from resource extraction; etc. – were regarded as crucially important by both the rightist oligarchy and popular movements.

The manner in which this confrontation was overcome is instructive. The right-wing insurgency took the form of a political movement mobilizing in the streets and seeking to impose its will through violence – the characteristic method of fascism. For a time, much of the eastern region where the rightists were strong was close to a no-go area for government leaders and their supporters. Washington threw its support strongly behind the anti-government forces.

A capitalist government’s standard response, faced with such a challenge, is to call in the police and army and impose its authority by force. If successful, such action in Bolivia would have left the army as arbiter of the situation; more likely, it would have led to civil war and foreign intervention.

It is thus striking that the Morales government relied not on the army but on the strength of social movements that had elected it to office. And far from resisting the government’s supposed measures to subjugate them, the country’s working people mobilized again and again to defend government initiatives against forcible right-wing obstruction. Fascist-type violence and provocation was thwarted through counter-mobilization, followed up by democratic consultations in which Morales obtained the backing of almost two-thirds of the voters. The neo-fascist thugs were isolated and marginalized. This historic achievement by Bolivian working people stands as a model of how to respond to Fascist-type movements.

Why Defend the Morales Regime?

Speaking of Bolivia today, Webber states that “the popular sectors are rightly concerned with defending the Morales regime against any imperialist meddling and right-wing efforts at destabilization when they emerge.” This is a welcome statement. Still, if Morales truly represents “reconstituted neoliberalism,” why should he be defended?

Certainly it is true that the Bolivian state remains capitalist, and the government functions within the framework of deeply entrenched capitalist culture and social relations. It rules through a capitalist state apparatus that is ill-adapted to implement progressive reforms. It is often at odds with popular struggles – particularly now that gains against the rightists and Washington have opened more scope for such movements. Capitalist state bureaucrats have attempted to infiltrate the MAS, and turn it to their own ends.

But it is equally true that, through the victories of the MAS, popular movements have taken positions of authority within the government and successfully used this leverage to drive forward a popular agenda on many issues that the Bolivian people feel are deeply important.

In Bolivia today, Webber notes, “a situation persists in which there is no organized, alternative socio-political force to the left of the ruling party.” Surely this fact suggests that, despite all strains, the tie between social movements in Bolivia and the Morales government has not been broken.

A Revolutionary Opportunity?

Webber regrets the “failure of the 2003 and 2005 mass mobilizations to translate into an overthrow of the existing capitalist state and the construction of a popular, sovereign, self-governing power of the Indigenous proletarian peasant majority from below.” He attributes this negative outcome to “the impact of the absence of a revolutionary party.”

Certainly, the presence of a broad, effective revolutionary organization would have strengthened the people’s movement and influenced the outcome. Yet it is striking that not only was a revolutionary party absent (a not uncommon situation in our world) but that no significant group on the left posed a viable alternative to MAS’s electoral project. How can this be? Was there something wrong with the Bolivian popular movements – with the human material, perhaps, or with their traditions? Or were there factors that made an all-out drive to overthrow the capitalist state less attractive than Webber implies?

The type of overturn that Webber describes – which I would call a socialist revolution – has not occurred since Cuba’s revolution of 1959-62. Indeed, some Marxists argue that there has been no successful socialist revolution anywhere since 1917. This decades-long delay cannot be put down to inadequacies of revolutionary will or organization. It points to the existence of deep-rooted cultural, social, and economic barriers to implementing a socialist agenda, which cannot be overcome quickly or in a small, isolated sector of the world.

Moreover, we must recall the overriding lesson of the great Russian anti-capitalist uprising of 1917-18: to survive and flourish, the revolutionary alternative had to be extended internationally. That was true not just “ultimately,” as Webber states, but immediately. The failure of revolution outside Russia had a swift, devastating impact on the new workers’ state that was keenly felt by 1919. Fortunately, Soviet Russia, which covered a sixth of the world’s surface, possessed a range of raw materials and diversified industries sufficient to enable it to withstand several years of capitalist blockade and armed assault. Bolivia, by contrast, has an economy that is totally dependent on imports and exports, and does not have even an ocean port, let alone the backing of a powerful sponsor such as that enjoyed by Cuba during and for many years after its anti-capitalist revolution.

The greatest barrier to a socialist overturn in Bolivia is not the Morales leadership but the absence of workers’ governments in economically advanced countries that could provide effective support.

The Morales government’s focus on developing ties with other progressive or semi-progressive regimes – and even (to Webber’s dismay) with other governments in conflict with imperialism such as Iran – represents intelligent revolutionary strategy. The ALBA alliance is an attempt to widen the options for poor, dependent countries, a project that, if it flourishes, will create more favourable conditions for anti-capitalist revolution.

As we know from experience in Canada, working people do not normally attempt to overthrow the capitalist state if the road to reform appears to be open. Revolution and the struggle for reform are not counterposed, but are rather part of a single process. A struggle for reforms can both strengthen workers’ combative power and demonstrate the limits of what can be achieved in capitalism. Certainly, in Bolivia, events have shown that the path to reform did indeed lie open. The Morales government did not overthrow capitalism and does not appear likely to do so, but its period in office has been marked by tangible advances for working people and, also, has demonstrated limits of reform under the present capitalist state.

Metropolitan Responsibilities

In terms of sheer drama and as a demonstration of the power and creativity of working people, struggles in Bolivia over the last decade call for close attention. Many writers on the left have studied this experience and expressed their opinions on where Bolivian workers acted wisely and where they took a wrong step. This process is natural and positive, and Webber has contributed to it significantly.

However, we must bear in mind that in the Bolivian drama we are not just analysts and critics, we are also actors. Bolivia’s struggle for democracy and sovereignty has been actively opposed by the Canadian government and its allies. Imperialist intervention in Latin America is under way right now – to restrict national sovereignty, shore up reactionary regimes, overthrow defiant governments, and crush popular movements. It is an urgent threat that has Bolivia in its gunsights.

In another article, Webber has written,

“From my perspective, the first priority of activists in the Global North should indeed be to oppose imperialist meddling anywhere. This means, concretely, opposition under any circumstances to imperialist-backed destabilization campaigns against Morales. But the political situation is too complicated to end our discussion at that stage. Our first allegiance ought to be with the exploited and oppressed themselves, rather than any leaders or governments who purport to speak in their name.”[4]

Agreed, our “first allegiance” should be to the masses, but Webber’s counterposition of the masses and the MAS leadership fails to acknowledge their close relationship.

Moreover, Webber’s use of the term “imperialist meddling” radically understates the systemic nature of imperialist domination or the devastating violence of its intervention in countries like Haiti, Honduras, or Colombia. Imperialist domination is not expressed merely in “destabilization campaigns” – it permeates and defines every aspect of Bolivia’s social, economic, and political reality.

In this situation, the “first priority of activists” is not criticism of the process in Bolivia, but solidarity – which must be expressed above all in opposition to Canadian government policies. In that spirit, all of us, including those who share Webber’s dim view of the Morales government, need to contribute to the broad movement of solidarity with the people of Bolivia and with other peoples victimized by imperialist domination. •

John Riddell is a member of Toronto Bolivia Solidarity, t.grupoapoyo.org.

Endnotes:

1. “From Red October to Morales: The Politics of Rebellion and Reform in Bolivia,” The Bullet, March 15, 2011.

See also Jeffrey R. Webber, From Rebellion to Reform in Bolivia: Class Struggle, Indigenous Liberation, and the Politics of Evo Morales, Haymarket Books: Chicago 2011; “From Rebellion to Reform: Bolivia’s Reconstituted Neoliberalism,” International Socialist Review, no. 73 (Sept.-Oct. 2010); “Fantasies Aside, It’s Reconstituted Neoliberalism in Bolivia under Morales,” ISR, #76 (Mar.-Apr. 2011); “Struggle, Continuity and Contradiction in Bolivia,” International Socialism, #25 (Winter 2010), “Evismo – Reform? Revolution? Counter-Revolution?” International Viewpoint, #382 (October 2006).

For a reply by Federico Fuentes, see “Government, social movements, and revolution in Bolivia today,” ISR, #76 (Mar.-Apr. 2011).

2. See Martin Sivak, “The Bolivianisation of Washington-La Paz Relations: Evo Morales’ Foreign Policy Agenda in Historical Context,” in Evo Morales and the Movimiento al Socialismo in Bolivia, London: Institute for Study of the Americas, 2011.

3. Sivak, “Bolivianisation,” pp. 161–71.

4. Webber, “Rebellion to Reform”; also quoted in “Fantasies Aside.”

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Reminiscent of Nazi Germany, jingoism and overwhelming sanctimony are stifling free speech in America. Behind the myth of rugged individualism, the US has always been a land of abject conformity, but the pressures manufactured by the political and media classes are today stamping out any possibility of really practicing the First Amendment. As for the behavior of the repulsive corporate class, twhere so many of our problems originate, it comes as no surprise they have failed to uphold the spirit of the Constitution.

By Jerry White  | 7 May 2011

Rashard Mendenhall. Well done, man. Don't give in to the conformity pack.

Following the assassination of Osama bin Laden, the news media and virtually every avenue of American popular culture was activated to manufacture an atmosphere of jingoism and celebration over the dirty killing of the Al Qaeda leader.

As has so often been the case, in particular since September 11, 2001, professional sports has been used to create a false aura of “national unity” and intimidate anyone critical of the criminal actions of the US government.

The backward chants of “USA! USA!” by a section of the crowd at the Philadelphia Phillies vs. the New York Mets baseball game Sunday night—following the announcement of the bin Laden killing—was followed by a week of sporting events where soldiers threw out the ceremonial first pitches and the routine singing of the national anthem at the National Basketball playoffs became the occasion for even more crude displays of flag-waving patriotism and militarism.

Sportscasters from the ESPN cable network were immediately dispatched to solicit pro-government comments from prominent athletes in an effort to demonstrate the supposed unanimity of public opinion. In an interview with Minnesota Vikings football coach Mike Priefer, a former Navy helicopter pilot, ESPN commentator Jay Crawford urged the coach that defensive players who tackle ball carriers on kickoff returns were a “well-trained team, working in precision,” just like the Navy Seal assassination squad.

Whether they shared the right-wing political conceptions or were naïve and taken in by the propaganda blitz, several prominent athletes issued statements praising the military and President Obama. There were, however, notable and, in the present circumstances, courageous exceptions. Since sports cable channels and news media would not broadcast such statements, the athletes making criticisms used their Twitter accounts.

The day after Obama’s announcement of the killing, Rashard Mendenhall, the 23-year-old star running back for the Pittsburgh Steelers football team, tweeted: “What kind of man celebrates death? It’s amazing how people can HATE a man they have never even heard speak. We’ve only heard one side.”

Mendenhall’s comments—which were bound up with his religious convictions and skepticism in the government’s version of the 9/11 events—were immediately seized upon for a rabid campaign accusing the football player of being disloyal and contemptuous of the 3,000 Americans killed by the terrorist attacks. The fraternity of cable television sportscasters—who, with few exceptions, generally appeal only to the base instincts of sports fans—demanded that the National Football League block athletes from having access to Twitter and social networking sites.

On Tuesday, Pittsburgh Steelers President Art Rooney II released a statement regarding Mendenhall, saying it “is hard to explain or even comprehend what he meant with his recent Twitter comments.” He added, “The entire Steelers organization is very proud of the job our military personnel have done.”

In the face of the torrent of criticism, Mendenhall issued a clarification on his blog, which, while expressing religious conceptions and some conciliation to pro-war propaganda, nevertheless upheld his initial comments and the right to the express them.

“This controversial statement was something I said in response to the amount of joy I saw in the event of a murder. I don’t believe that this is an issue of politics or American pride; but one of religion, morality, and human ethics. I wasn’t questioning Bin Laden’s evil acts. I believe that he will have to face God for what he has done. I was reflecting on our own hypocrisy. During 9/11 we watched in horror as parts of the world celebrated death on our soil. Earlier this week, parts of the world watched us in horror celebrating a man’s death.”

On Friday, sports apparel maker Champion fired Mendenhall, who recently signed a four-year contract and had been a sponsor with the company since his NFL career started in 2008. While hypocritically claiming to respect his right to express such views, the company said, “We no longer believe that Mr. Mendenhall can appropriately represent Champion and we have notified Mr. Mendenhall that we are ending our business relationship.”

The statement added, “Champion is a strong supporter of the government’s efforts to fight terrorism and is very appreciative of the dedication and commitment of the US Armed Forces” and said Mendenhall’s comments and opinions “were inconsistent with the values of the Champion brand.”

Despite the witch-hunt atmosphere, other athletes also spoke out. Milwaukee Bucks basketball player Chris Douglas-Roberts tweeted after hearing of Bin Laden’s death, “Is this a celebration??”

Responding to several hostile tweets he went on to express his anti-war position in the regards to the killing of bin Laden.

“It took 919,967 deaths to kill that one guy.

“It took 10 years & 2 Wars to kill that…guy.

“It cost us (USA) roughly $1,188,263,000,000 to kill that………..guy. But we’re winning though. Haaaa. (Sarcasm).”

With more negative reaction being tweeted at Douglas-Roberts, he went on to clarify his position.

“What I’m sayin’ has nothing to do with 9/11 or that guy (Bin Laden). I still feel bad for the 9/11 families but I feel EQUALLY bad for the war families. …

“People are telling me to get out of America now b/c I’m against MORE INNOCENT people dying every day? B/c I’m against a 10-year WAR?

“Whatever happened to our freedom of speech? That’s the problem. We don’t want to hear anything that isn’t our perspective.”

The effort to stampede public opinion, of course, has an effect. But the overwhelming sentiment of the population is one of suspicion towards the government and its official explanations and a concern over the erosion of deeply felt democratic rights in the name of the “war on terrorism.”

The American population—including athletes—have had ample experience with the lies of the US government and their exploitation of 9/11. Eight months after the terrorist attacks, Arizona Cardinal football player Patrick Tillman left a lucrative career to join the military. His death in Afghanistan, near the Pakistan border, was used by the Bush administration and Pentagon to promote support for the war, even as they concealed the fact from the American public and his family that he had been killed by friendly fire from US troops.

In 2007 testimony before a US congressional hearing, Tillman’s brother Kevin Tillman testified: “The deception surrounding this case was an insult to the family: but more importantly, its primary purpose was to deceive a whole nation. We say these things with disappointment and sadness for our country. Once again, we have been used as props in a Pentagon public relations exercise.”

While the military presented Tillman as a pro-war sports icon, his family and friends later made public that the young man developed anti-war and left-wing views while in the military and was preparing to write an anti-war book when he returned from Afghanistan.

JERRY WHITE writes on politics for the World Socialist Web Site.

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The DeVos clan represents a natural marriage of raw capitalism and crude calvinism,  with reactionism the inevitable product. Their Amway subculture is one of open worshipping of wealth and materialism, the whole brew well larded with ample amounts of jingoism—toxic by any standard of comprehension. —Eds

By Rachel Tabachnick, AlterNet
Posted on May 7, 2011

Amway's Dick DeVos. Prominent in Michigan Republican circles for decades, and rabid supporter of freemarketism.

Since the 2010 elections, voucher bills have popped up in legislatures around the nation. From Pennsylvania to Indiana to Florida, state governments across the country have introduced bills that would take money from public schools and use it to send students to private and religious institutions.

Vouchers have always been a staple of the right-wing agenda. Like previous efforts, this most recent push for vouchers is led by a network of conservative think tanks, PACs, Religious Right groups and wealthy conservative donors. But “school choice,” as they euphemistically paint vouchers, is merely a means to an end. Their ultimate goal is the total elimination of our public education system.

The decades-long campaign to end public education is propelled by the super-wealthy, right-wing DeVos family. Betsy Prince DeVos is the sister of Erik Prince, founder of the notorious private military contractor Blackwater USA (now Xe), and wife of Dick DeVos, son of the co-founder of Amway, the multi-tiered home products business [which many critics regard as little more than a pyramid scheme for suckers.—Eds].

By now, you’ve surely heard of the Koch brothers, whose behind-the-scenes financing of right-wing causes has been widely documented in the past year. The DeVoses have remained largely under the radar, despite the fact that their stealth assault on America’s schools has the potential to do away with public education as we know it.

Right-Wing Privatization Forces

The conservative policy institutes founded beginning in the 1970s get hundreds of millions of dollars from wealthy families and foundations to develop and promote free market fundamentalism. More specifically, their goals include privatizing social security, reducing government regulations, thwarting environmental policy, dismantling unions — and eliminating public schools.

Whatever they may say about giving poor students a leg up, their real priority is nothing short of the total dismantling of our public educational institutions, and they’ve admitted as much. Cato Institute founder Ed Crane and other conservative think tank leaders have signed the Public Proclamation to Separate School and State, which reads in part that signing on, “Announces to the world your commitment to end involvement by local, state, and federal government from education.”

But Americans don’t want their schools dismantled. So privatization advocates have recognized that it’s not politically viable to openly push for full privatization and have resigned themselves to incrementally dismantling public school systems. The think tanks’ weapon of choice is school vouchers.

Vouchers are funded with public school dollars but are used to pay for students to attend private and parochial (religious-affiliated) schools. The idea was introduced in the 1950s by the high priest of free-market fundamentalism, Milton Friedman, who also made the real goal of the voucher movement clear: “Vouchers are not an end in themselves; they are a means to make a transition from a government to a free-market system.” The quote is in a 1995 Cato Institute briefing paper titled “Public Schools: Make Them Private.”

Joseph Bast, president of Heartland Institute, stated in 1997, “Like most other conservatives and libertarians, we see vouchers as a major step toward the complete privatization of schooling. In fact, after careful study, we have come to the conclusion that they are the only way to dismantle the current socialist regime.” Bast added, “Government schools will diminish in enrollment and thus in number as parents shift their loyalty and vouchers to superior-performing private schools.”

But Bast’s lofty goals have not panned out. That’s because, quite simply, voucher programs do not work.

The longest running voucher program in the country is the 20-year-old Milwaukee School Choice Program. Standardized testing shows that the voucher students in private schools perform below the level of Milwaukee’s public school students, and even when socioeconomic status is factored in, the voucher students still score at or below the level of the students who remain in Milwaukee’s public schools. Cleveland’s voucher program has produced similar results. Private schools in the voucher program range from excellent to very poor. In some, less than 20 percent of students reach basic proficiency levels in math and reading.

Most Americans do not want their tax dollars to fund private and sectarian schools. Since 1966, 24 of 25 voucher initiatives have been defeated by voters, most by huge margins. Nevertheless, the pro-privatization battle continues, organized by an array of 527s, 501(c)(3)s, 501(c)(4)s, and political action committees. At the helm of this interconnected network is Betsy DeVos, the four-star general of the pro-voucher movement.

The DeVos Family Campaign for Privatization of Schools

The DeVoses are top contributors to the Republican Party and have provided the funding for major Religious Right organizations. And they spent millions of their own fortune promoting the failed voucher initiative in Michigan in 2000, dramatically outspending their opposition. Sixty-eight percent of Michigan voters rejected the voucher scheme. Following this defeat, the DeVoses altered their strategy.

Instead of taking the issue directly to voters, they would support bills for vouchers in state legislatures. In 2002 Dick DeVos gave a speech on school choice at the Heritage Foundation. After an introduction by former Reagan Secretary of Education William Bennett, DeVos described a system of “rewards and consequences” to pressure state politicians to support vouchers. “That has got to be the battle. It will not be as visible,” stated DeVos. He described how his wife Betsy was putting these ideas into practice in their home state of Michigan and claimed this effort has reduced the number of anti-school choice Republicans from six to two. The millions raised from the wealthy pro-privatization contributors would be used to finance campaigns of voucher supporters and purchase ads attacking opposing candidates.

Media materials for Betsy DeVos’ group All Children Matter, formed in 2003, claimed the organization spent $7.6 million in its first year, “impacting state legislative elections in 10 targeted states” and a won/loss record of 121/60.

Dick DeVos also explained to his Heritage Foundation audience that they should no longer use the term public schools, but instead start calling them “government schools.” He noted that the role of wealthy conservatives would have to be obscured. “We need to be cautious about talking too much about these activities,” said DeVos, and pointed to the need to “cut across a lot of historic boundaries, be they partisan, ethnic, or otherwise.”

Reinventing Vouchers

Like DeVos, several free-market think tanks have also issued warnings that vouchers appear to be an “elitist” plan. There’s reason for their concern, given the long and racially charged history of vouchers.

School vouchers drew little public interest until Brown v. Board of Education and the court-ordered desegregation of public schools. Southern states devised voucher schemes for students to leave public schools and take the public funding with them.

Author Kevin Michael Kreuse explains how this plan was supposed to work in White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism. “At the heart of the plan to defend school segregation, for instance, stood a revolutionary scheme called the ‘private-school plan.’ In 1953, a full year before Brown, Governor Talmadge advanced a constitutional amendment giving the General Assembly the power to privatize the state’s entire system of public education. In the event of court-ordered desegregation, school buildings would be closed, and students would receive grants to attend private, segregated schools.”

Given the racist origins of vouchers, advocates of privatization have had to do two things: obscure the fact that the pro-privatization movement is backed primarily by white conservatives, and emphasize the support of African American and Democratic lawmakers where it exists.

In 2000, Howard Fuller founded the Black Alliance for Education Options. The group was largely funded by John Walton and the Bradley Foundation. Walton, a son of Walmart founder Sam Walton, contributed millions to the Betsy DeVos-led All Children Matter organization, including a bequest after his death in a plane crash in 2004.

A report by People for the American Way questions whose interest was being served in the partnership between the Alliance and conservative foundations. The summary of the report reads, “Over the past nine months, millions of Americans have seen lavishly produced TV ads featuring African American parents talking about school vouchers. These ads and their sponsor, the Black Alliance for Educational Options (BAEO), portray vouchers as an effort to help low-income kids. But a new report explores the money trail behind BAEO, finding that it leads directly to a handful of wealthy right-wing foundations and individuals that have a deep agenda — not only supporting the school voucher movement, but also backing anti-affirmative action campaigns and other efforts that African American organizations have opposed or considered offensive.”

Black Commentator.com was more blunt, describing vouchers as “The Right’s Final Answer to Brown” and tracking the history of vouchers from die-hard segregationists to the Heritage Foundation’s attempt to attach vouchers to federal legislation in 1981. The article stated, “The problem was, vouchers were still firmly (and correctly) associated with die-hard segregationists. Memories of white “massive resistance” to integration remained fresh, especially among blacks, who had never demanded vouchers — not even once in all of the tens of thousands of demonstrations over the previous three decades.”

The article continues, “Former Reagan Education Secretary William Bennett understood what was missing from the voucher political chemistry: minorities. If visible elements of the black and Latino community could be ensnared in what was then a lily-white scheme, then the Right’s dream of a universal vouchers system to subsidize general privatization of education, might become a practical political project. More urgently, Bennett and other right-wing strategists saw that vouchers had the potential to drive a wedge between blacks and teachers unions, cracking the Democratic Party coalition. In 1988, Bennett urged the Catholic Church to ‘seek out the poor, the disadvantaged…and take them in, educate them, and then ask society for fair recompense for your efforts’ — vouchers. The game was on.”

In this winning formula, vouchers or “scholarships” are advertised as the only hope for under served and urban minority children. Those who dare to defend public education from voucher schemes are, ironically, implied to be racist. Glossy brochures published by the DeVos-led entity All Children Matter show smiling faces of little children as well as those of the African American and Democratic politicians who have joined the campaign. Kevin Chavous, a former D.C. city councilman who takes credit for “shepherding” vouchers in D.C. and New Orleans, served as senior advisor to All Children Matters and now leads the BAEO and sits on the board of the DeVos-led AFC and Democrats for Education Reform.

All Children Matter was fined $5.2 million dollars in Ohio for breaking campaign finance laws, and lost an appeal in early 2010. The fine has not been paid. The DeVos-led organization also received bad press due to a fine in Wisconsin for failing to register their PAC as well as complaints in other states. In 2010 the entity began working under the name American Federation for Children (AFC) and registered new affiliate PACs across the nation, just in time for the 2010 elections.

The 2010 effort included a state that was not even included in Dick DeVos’ list of potential targets when he spoke to the Heritage Foundation in 2002 — Pennsylvania. An affiliate of AFC registered a PAC in Pennsylvania in March 2010 and less than a year later a voucher bill, SB-1, was sponsored in the Senate.

Throughout this well-coordinated campaign, the Pennsylvania press never once mentioned the name Betsy DeVos.

The Religious Right Foot Soldiers

The strategy in Pennsylvania in 2010, like efforts in other states, benefited from years of previous efforts to build alliances in the voucher movement. The conservative policy institutes have limited reach in the general public. In order to win the battle for hearts and minds, a larger public relations effort is required. The Religious Right fills this role with their tremendous broadcast capability and growing access to churches and homes. The partnership between free market fundamentalists and social conservatives is often contentious, but they share a common goal — to end secular public education. The free marketers object to the “public” aspect while the Religious Right objects to the “secular” component of public education.

A significant forum that brings together free-market power brokers and Religious Right leaders is the Council for National Policy (CNP), a secretive group that has met several times annually behind closed doors since 1981. Richard DeVos described CNP as bringing together the “donors and the doers.” This partnership gives the Religious Right access to major funders, including Richard Mellon Scaife, who are not social conservatives.

Many of the free-market think tanks are secular, but there is a trend toward merging free-market fundamentalism with right-wing religious ideology. The Acton Institute is described by religious historian Randall Balmer as an example of the merging of corporate interests with advocates of “dominion theology.” Dominionism is the belief that Christians must take control over societal and government institutions. The Acton Institute funds events featuring dominionist leaders including Gary North, who claims that the bible mandates free market capitalism or “Biblical Capitalism.”

Betsy DeVos has served on the board of Acton, which is also funded by Scaife, Bradley and Exxon Mobil. A shared goal of this unlikely group of libertarians and theocrats is their battle against environmental regulation. One of the Acton Institute fellows leads a group of Religious Right organizations called the Cornwall Alliance, which is currently marketing a DVD titled Resisting the Green Dragon. The pseudo-documentary describes global warming as a hoax and claims environmentalism is a cult attacking Christianity. Another shared goal of the free marketers and Christian dominionists is eradicating secular public education.

Gary North explains why getting students out of public schools is key to the Christian dominionist camp. “So let us be blunt about it: we must use the doctrine of religious liberty to gain independence for Christian schools until we train up a generation of people who know that there is no religious neutrality, no neutral law, no neutral education, and no neutral civil government. Then they will get busy in constructing a Bible-based social, political, and religious order which finally denies the religious liberty of the enemies of God.”

And the Christian Right has been busy enacting this vision. One of the first goals of the Christian Coalition was to take control of 500 local public school boards, and it’s a strategy the Religious Right has continued. One prominent example is Cynthia Dunbar, one of the members of the Texas State Board of Education which made controversial changes to the state’s social studies curriculum in 2010. Dunbar, who was advised by right-wing self-styled “historian” David Barton, is author of One Nation Under God and has described sending children to public schools as “throwing them into the enemy’s flames, even as the children of Israel threw their children to Moloch.”

In addition to getting Trojan horses on school boards, the Religious Right has played a significant role in disseminating anti-public school propaganda and forming alliances to support vouchers for private schools. Family Research Council (FRC), one of the entities funded by the Prince and DeVos families, documents the effort in Pennsylvania to cultivate a partnership between Protestants and Catholics who wanted public funding for their sectarian schools.

The data accompanying proposed bill SB-1, indicates that the majority of the public school funds that will be spent on vouchers will pay tuition for students already enrolled in private schools. In Milwaukee 80 percent of voucher program schools are religiously affiliated, according to the Milwaukee Journal Sentinel. In Cleveland, 52 percent of the students in the 29 Catholic diocesan schools are using taxpayer-funded vouchers, according to the Plain Dealer.

FRC’s Web site includes a 1999 speech by one of Pat Robertson’s biographers, in which he describes the school choice alliance in Pennsylvania of Protestant and Catholic leaders along with the Commonwealth Foundation and REACH Alliance. Commonwealth is a state think tank funded by the Scaife foundations. REACH Alliance is the statewide pro-voucher activist organization funded by the DeVos-led Alliance for School Choice (now also renamed American Federation for Children). This alliance is further described in the speech as forming “ties to black legislators based in Philadelphia, including Dwight Evans. This was big news for the Pennsylvania education reform movement because Evans is a powerful legislator and community leader.”

Evans would indeed become key to expanding vouchers in the Philadelphia area, and he and state Senator Anthony Williams (not to be confused with the D.C. mayor by the same name), both Democrats, serve as directors of the BAEO.

The Battle for Pennsylvania

By the 2010 election, the groundwork had been laid and the heavy artillery brought into the state of Pennsylvania. First, a PAC was registered in March 2010 by Republican strategist Joe Watkins under the name Students First. Affiliated with the DeVos and Chavous-led AFC, the PAC shared the name with the organization founded by Michelle Rhee, a star of the popular pro-privatization movie Waiting for Superman. The Web site of Students First PAC touts the African-American Watkins’ experience as an adviser to a president and pastor. There is no mention of the fact that the president was George W. Bush. The bio also neglects to include Watkins’ ties to the Republican Party or his role in attack ads run on Fox News against presidential candidate Barack Obama in 2008.

Students First PAC received over $6 million in donations for use in the 2010 elections, much of that donated by three mega-donors whose names were unfamiliar to most Pennsylvanians. The three mega-donors, Joel Greenberg, Jeffrey Yass and Arthur Dantchik, also contributed over a million dollars to the AFC-affiliated PAC in Indiana and $6,000 dollars each to the gubernatorial campaign of Scott Walker. The Indiana PAC total was raised to almost $6 million by a few contributors, including Betsy DeVos herself and several Walton family members. Most of that money did not stay in Indiana but was distributed to affiliated PACs in six other states, including over a million sent back to Pennsylvania’s Students First.

Much of the Students First money went to the long-shot gubernatorial campaign of Anthony Williams. Williams lost in the primaries, but he brought statewide attention to his primary campaign cause — school vouchers. Among Students First’s millions of expenditures was a $575 payment for conference registration to the Council for National Policy.

Pennsylvania press did not pay much attention to the background of the donors of the unprecedented millions pouring into the election in support of a single issue, describing them simply as supporters of school choice. Greenberg serves on the board of the Betsy DeVos-led AFC; Yass on the board of the pro-privatization think tank Cato Institute; and Dantchik on the board of the Institute for Justice, which describes itself as a merry band of libertarian litigators and is perhaps best known for its battles against affirmative action. It’s funded by Koch, Bradley, Olin, Scaife and Walton foundations and has now become a champion of school vouchers. The organization was credited by Dick DeVos in his 2002 speech as serving a significant role through challenges to the Blaine Amendments in numerous states, which disallow public funds to be spent supporting religious schools.

Money continues to be spent on attack ads against both Republican and Democratic senators opposed to SB-1. The Scaife-funded Commonwealth Foundation has created a webpage to pressure wavering Republicans. The Koch-funded FreedomWorks sponsored mailers attacking Republican state Senator Stewart Greenleaf. The mailer is headlined, “There’s a battle in Harrisburg over our children’s future. Who will win? Our children or the powerful teacher’s union?” A Students First PAC mailer attacks Democratic state Senator Daylin Leach as opposing the bill because, “he is listening to teacher union leaders who oppose SB-1 and have contributed a fortune to people like Leach.”

Much of the Indiana PAC money was also used in media campaigns, including funds sent to Florida for media purchases. AFC was the sole funder of a pro-voucher group that ran ads in Jewish publications attacking Dan Gelber, a Jewish candidate for Florida attorney general who opposed vouchers. Full page “wanted ads” were purchased in Jewish publications accusing Gelber of “crimes against Jewish education.” Other ads purchased just prior to the election described Gelber as “Toxic to Jewish Education” in red Halloween-style letters.

Dick DeVos’ model for “rewards and consequences” as described in his 2002 speech, is at work in Pennsylvania, Florida, and elsewhere, and it’s a project funded by a few mega-donors. The voucher warriors with their unlimited funding are trying to create the absurd impression that they are the altruistic David in battle against the teachers’ union Goliath.

Betsy DeVos has announced that Pennsylvania Governor Tom Corbett and Wisconsin Governor Scott Walker are scheduled to speak at the National Policy Summit of the American Federation for Children on May 9. Walker wants to expand vouchers in Milwaukee despite the program’s failure, made clear by disappointing standardized test results. Walker’s response? To halt the testing. Pennsylvania voucher supporters have already taken care of the pesky issue of accountability by defeating an amendment that would require the students using vouchers to take standardized tests.

During the AFC’s summit, it’s doubtful there will be speeches about eradicating public education but there will certainly be public relations-produced media everywhere, showing the beautiful faces of the little children these voucher proponents are supposedly saving. And Betsy DeVos, the four-star general of the voucher wars, will continue to advance a stealth campaign against American communities and working families — the battle to eradicate public education.

© 2011 Independent Media Institute. All rights reserved.

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Our colleague Stephen Lendman remains unimpressed by the barrage of
communiqués laying out the official version of events

Osama: Rumor and hearsay underscores his passing through contemporary history

BY STEPHEN LENDMAN

Corporate media manipulators love a big story they can hype, distort and falsify to attract large audiences, unaware they’re getting managed news, not truth.  Moreover, the bigger the event, the worse the reporting, and no matter how often they’re fooled, madding crowds rely on proved unreliable sources like US cable and broadcast TV, as well as corporate broadsheets and popular magazines publishing rubbish not fit to print.

After Obama’s May day announcement, round-the-clock coverage now features “story one” ad nauseam, cheerleading the death of a dead man with no one allowed on to refute it.

A previous article did, accessed through the following link:

http://sjlendman.blogspot.com/2011/05/lies-damn-lies-and-bin-ladens-death.html

Separating fact from fiction, it explained:

(1) Significant facts from David Ray Griffin’s important book titled, “Osama Bin Laden: Dead or Alive?” In it, he provided objective and testimonial evidence of his December 2001 death, likely from kidney failure, not a special forces hit squad getting their man then or now.

(2) Forensic evidence that post-9/11 videos and audios were fake.

(3) Bin Laden’s role as a CIA asset, as well as called “Enemy Number One,” using him advantageously both ways.

(4) Also, reports of his 2001 hospitalizations in Pakistan and Dubai where (in July) the emirate’s CIA station chief visited him in his hospital room. Why not if he was a valued asset, his likely status until his natural, not violent, death.

Nonetheless, Western politicians and media, notably America’s, never miss a chance to report fiction, not fact, especially on headline news like bin Laden’s death, a decade after it happened.

Examples of Media Misreporting

Several May 2 New York Times articles provide painful reading, including Mark Mazzetti, Helene Cooper and Peter Baker’s headlined, “Behind the Hunt for Bin Laden,” saying:

“For years, the agonizing search for (him) kept coming up empty. Then last July, Pakistanis working for the (CIA) drove up behind a white Suzuki navigating the bustling streets near Peshawar, Pakistan,” and discovered, after checking its license, that it belonged to his “most trusted courier….”

Claiming he lead them to bin Laden’s location, it said:

“79 American commandos in four helicopters descended on (it). Shots rang out….Of the five dead, one was a tall, bearded man with a bloodied face and a bullet in his head.”

Bin Laden’s manhunt ended, said the writers, when he was identified, then quickly buried at sea to hide the evidence, though under English common law most often, no body means no killing or crime. In other words, without proof, prosecutorial allegations are baseless.

Nonetheless, Mazzetti, Cooper and Baker recounted a decade-long fantasy, including detainee interrogations in secret Eastern Europe prisons, widespread surveillance, wiretaps, satellite images and more before tracking bin Laden to a Abbottabad, Pakistan compound and killing him.

No matter that none of it was true and much more. International and constitutional law prohibit sending uninvited military forces to another country for any reason.

Moreover, no one suspected of any crime may be summarily executed with no arrest, no due process, no no judicial fairness, and no trial. Just a bullet, bomb or slit throat, Washington’s version of summary judgment besides torture and imperial wars as official policies.

These topics were ignored in major media reports, focused solely on killing a decade earlier dead man.

On May 2, Times writers Scott Shane and Robert Worth headlined, “Even Before Al Qaeda Lost Its Founder, It May Have Lost Some of Its Allure,” saying:

Bin Laden had “long been removed from managing terrorist operations and whose popularity with Muslims worldwide has plummeted in recent years,” calling him a “violent extremis(t) without saying he was replaced after his 2001 death so, of course, his influenced waned. Out of sight, out of mind, especially when dead.

A May 2 Times editorial headlined, “The Long-Awaited News,” saying:

“The news that (he’d) been tracked and killed by American forces filled us, and all Americans (sic), with a great sense of relief….(but we must) remember that the fight against extremists is far from over.”

Noting years of painstaking “vigilance and persistence,” it praised Obama for “show(ing) that he is a strong and measured leader. His declaration on Sunday night that ‘justice has been done’ was devoid of triumphalism.”

In fact, he affirmed continuity of America’s war on terror – state terror, including four imperial wars and numerous proxy ones, expending enormous sums while popular needs go begging.

Ignoring truth, he repeated lies endorsed shamelessly by America’s media, notably by Times correspondents, op-ed contributors, and editorial writers with comments like:

“Bin Laden’s death is an extraordinary moment for Americans and all who have lost loved ones in horrifying, pointless acts of terrorism.”

Unmentioned was decades of US and Israeli-sponsored state terrorism responsible for millions of deaths, destruction and human suffering. Earlier, noted scholar/activist Eqbal Ahmad (1934 – 1999) called it:

“illegal violence, (including) torture, (attacking and bombing) villages, destruction of entire peoples, (and) genocide,” adding, “Who will define the parameters of terrorism, or decide where terrorists lurk? Why, none other than the United States, (its leading practitioner) which can from the rooftops of the world set out its claim to be the sheriff, judge and hangman, all at one and the same time.”

So while rhetorically supporting equal justice and democratic values, Washington spurns international and constitutional law, using brute force to assert might over right, all the while proclaiming just cause reasons for its actions.

No wonder Ahmad called America “a troubled country,” sowing “poisonous seeds” globally, saying “(s)ome have ripened and others are ripening (with no) examination of (what they’ve) sown,” adding that “(m)issiles won’t solve the problem.” In other words, violence assures more of it, but don’t expect America’s media to explain.

On May 2, Washington Post writers Greg Miller and Joby Warrick headlined, “Bin Laden discovered ‘hiding in plain sight,’ ” recounting the same fantasy as Times writers, saying:

“The commandos swept methodically through (his) compound’s main building, clearing one room and then another” until they got their man. Sounding more like bad fiction, they said the operation was secretly planned for months, culminating with Sunday’s assault, adding bin Laden wasn’t hiding in a cave after all.

A WP editorial headlined, “Possible consequences of the bin Laden coup,” saying:

“There are multiple reasons to celebrate” his death, including loss of Al Qaeda’s leader, the prowess of US intelligence and military, and that the “prime (9/11) author (finally was) brought to justice.”

It brought “a rare moment of common celebration and relief in a divided America. But (it’s) not clear to what degree al-Qaeda’s operations will be affected by the loss of its leader.” It may, in fact, strengthen its resolve. History shows dead militants often inspire followers.

Ignoring illegal operations on foreign soil, it worried most about ending or curtailing them prematurely, no matter the toll in human life and neglect for popular domestic needs. For now, celebratory joy takes precedence, even for false reasons.

A Wall Street Journal editorial headlined “Victory in Abbottabad,” saying:

Killing bin Laden “doesn’t end the war against Islamic terror (note the racism), but it is a crucial and just victory that is rightfully cause for celebration.”

Ignoring daily US war crimes, including killer drones murdering civilians, it railed against “combatants who hide in the world’s dark corners, who rarely fight in the open and who attack innocents far from any conventional battlefield.”

Praising Obama, it called it “a moment to salute George W. Bush….a vindication of (his war on terror, intelligence, and) interrogation policies,” torturing innocent victims to extract false confessions and information about things they know nothing about, including bin Laden’s alleged whereabouts.

His death, said the writer, “is a measure of justice for the thousands he killed (and) a warning to others who would kill Americans that they will meet the same fate, no matter how long it takes or where they try to hide.”

This and other accounts like it, sadly, is what passes for corporate opinion in America, endorsing state terror and vilifying those against it.

Huffington Post contributor Michael Calderone headlined “Network Anchors Head to Ground Zero for Bin Laden Coverage,” saying:

They never miss a chance to misreport major news, including the three broadcast anchors: NBC’s Brian Williams, ABC’s Diane Sawyer, and CBS’ Katie Couric (an entertainer impersonating a newsperson) “host(ing) an expanded, one-hour May 2 edition of their nightly broadcasts from” Ground Zero.

Several cable channels joined them, including CNN and Fox, reporting fiction about a decade earlier dead man.

Time magazine’s cover story featured bin Laden’s full-page image with a pronounced red X crossing him out, highlighting what didn’t happen to the detriment of readers believing inaccurate reporting.

Al Jazeera was just as bad with stories like one headlined, “Obama says world safer without Bin Laden,” saying:

He “claimed responsibility for planning the September 11 attacks on New York and Washington,” providing no corroborating evidence. In fact, in David Ray Griffin’s  writings, he said:

“(T)here is no good evidence that bin Laden had planned or even specifically authorized the 9/11 attacks.” Those believing it cite his misinterpreted September 2001 Al Jazeera interview, rejoicing in the attacks but denying knowledge or responsibility.

Griffin said one of his aides confirmed that he had “no information or knowledge about the attack(s)” but he “thanked Almighty Allah and bowed before him when he heard this news.” Days later he told Al Jazeera:

“I stress that I have not carried out this act, which appears to have been carried out by individuals with their own motivation.”

During two subsequent October 2001 interviews, he praised the “vanguards of Islam (who) destroyed America,” but again admitted no knowledge or responsibility.

Al Jazeera now claiming it is a lie.

BBC aired the same misinformation as did America’s National Public Radio (NPR) and Public Broadcasting (PBS), calling his death a blow to Al Qaeda. So did Democracy Now, ignoring bin Laden’s decade earlier natural, not violent, death.

Nation magazine editor Katrina vanden Heuvel also swallowed the big lie, headlining her article, “With Osama bin Laden Dead, It’s Time to End the ‘War on Terror,’ ” that was entirely bogus from inception, saying:

“Today, President Obama and his team have a chance to reset our fight against terrorism,” vanden Heuvel not condemning its lawlessness, America’s imperial wars, a president with no credibility, a falsely reported 9/11 event, and that the only relevant terror is what Washington unleashes globally against nonbelligerent nations.

Instead, she praised Obama’s “humane and sober” position, calling it “a relief to hear in his words reminders of” a brief post-9/11 period before America went to war in Afghanistan, then Iraq, undertakings Nation magazine supported at the time and still stops short of rejecting.

A Final Comment

On May 2, Fairness & Accuracy in Reporting’s Peter Hart headlined, “Bush’s Palpable Persistence in Pursuit of bin Laden,” suggesting he stopped looking, knowing he died, quoting him saying in March 2002:

“Who knows if he’s hiding in some cave or not. We haven’t heard from him in a long time….I don’t know where he is. I really just don’t spend that much time on him, to be honest with you.”

Washington Monthly’s Steve Benen offered more evidence of no interest in pursuing him, saying:

“In July 2006, we learned that the Bush administration closed its unit that had been hunting bin Laden,” reported also by New York Times writer Mark Mazzetti on July 4, saying the CIA ceased all efforts last year pursuing him.

Along with David Ray Griffin’s important work, it’s more proof of bin Laden’s 2001 death, putting a lie to Obama’s announcement and shameless journalists repeating it.

STEPHEN LENDMAN lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also 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/.

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