Obama Suggests Mubarak Gov Didn’t Abuse Protesters

Posted on February 17, 2011 by Alicia

DEMOCRACY NOW! – Obama Suggests Mubarak Regime Didn’t “Shoot, Beat, Arrest” Protesters

On Tuesday, President Obama addressed the protests in Iran and across the Middle East at a news conference in Washington, D.C. Comparing the Iranian government’s crackdown on protesters with Egypt’s, Obama appeared to suggest the U.S.-backed Mubarak regime did not also try to violently repress the recent uprising.

President Obama: “What has been true in Egypt should be true in Iran, which is, is that people should be able to express their opinions and their grievances and seek a more responsive government. What’s been different is the Iranian government’s response, which is to shoot people and beat people and arrest people. And my hope and expectation is, is that we’re going to continue to see the people of Iran have the courage to be able to express their yearning for greater freedoms and a more representative government.”

Obama also defended his administration’s handling of the Egyptian uprising, claiming he wanted to avoid the appearance of meddling in pushing for a transition. But Obama refused to acknowledge that two top officials—Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and special envoy Frank Wisner—voiced support for Mubarak’s regime.

President Obama: “What we didn’t do was pretend that we could dictate the outcome in Egypt, because we can’t, so we were very mindful that it was important for this to remain an Egyptian event, that the United States did not become the issue, but that we sent out a very clear message that we believed in an orderly transition, a meaningful transition, and a transition that needed to happen not later, but sooner, and we were consistent on that message throughout.”

Democracy Now! also reports that as the Mideast “rolling revolution” grows, the U.S. dounces the Iranian crackdown, while remaining silent on the brutal repression and death of protestors in Bahrain, a key ally.

The transcript of this story can be found here: U.S. stays silent on key ally, Bahrain.

For more on the Bahrain crackdown, see the story by Democracy Now! – “People Are Bleeding in the Streets:” Bahrain Police Wage Brutal Overnight Attack on Hundreds of Pro-Democracy Protesters.

Check out Democracy Now! for more coverage of the Mideast ‘Rolling Revolution’.

High Court Upholds Anti-Terror Law Prized by Obama

Posted on June 26, 2010 by abby

AP– The Supreme Court upheld the government’s authority Monday to ban aid to designated terrorist groups, even when that support is intended to steer the groups toward peaceful and legal activities.

The court left intact a federal law that the Obama administration considers an important tool against terrorism. But human rights organizations say the law’s ban on providing training and advice to nearly four dozen organizations on a State Department list squanders a chance to persuade people to renounce extremism.

The justices voted 6-3 to reject a free-speech challenge from humanitarian aid groups to the law that bars “material support” — everything from money to technical know-how to legal advice — to foreign terrorist organizations.

The aid groups were only challenging provisions that put them at risk of being prosecuted for talking to terrorist organizations about nonviolent activities.

But Chief Justice John Roberts said in his opinion for the court that material support intended even for benign purposes can help a terrorist group in other ways.

“Such support frees up other resources within the organization that may be put to violent ends,” Roberts said in an opinion joined by four other conservative justices, but also the liberal Justice John Paul Stevens.

The court often looks skeptically on laws that criminalize speech and holds them to a high level of scrutiny. But Roberts said there is good reason in this case to defer to Congress and the president, “uniquely positioned to make principled distinctions between activities that will further terrorist conduct and undermine United States foreign policy, and those that will not.”

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AP Writer Matthew Lee contributed to this report.

Photo by flickr user dbking

© AP, 2010

Leaker of Wikileaks Massacre Video Arrested

Posted on June 12, 2010 by abby

HUFFINGTON POST– According to Wired, federal officials have arrested 22-year-old SPC Bradley Manning, an intelligence analyst with the US Army, for allegedly leaking the “Collateral Murder” Wikileaks video. The controversial video, released in April 2010, shows a 2007 Apache helicopter attack that left several noncombatants dead, including two Reuters employees and three civilians.

Manning was reportedly arrested two weeks ago at Forward Operating Base Hammer near Baghdad, by the Army’s Criminal Investigation Division. “Manning was turned in late last month by a former computer hacker with whom he spoke online,” Wired divulges. The hacker, Adrian Lamo, who has also contributed to Wikileaks, notified the Army when Manning claimed “he leaked a quarter-million classified embassy cables.”

Wired reports:

Manning told Lamo that he enlisted in the Army in 2007 and held a Top Secret/SCI clearance, details confirmed by his friends and family members. He claimed to have been rummaging through classified military and government networks for more than a year and said that the networks contained “incredible things, awful things … that belonged in the public domain, and not on some server stored in a dark room in Washington DC.

“I wouldn’t have done this if lives weren’t in danger,” Lamo told Wired. “He was in a war zone and basically trying to vacuum up as much classified information as he could, and just throwing it up into the air.”

The US Army has called Wikileaks exposés “potentially actionable information” and the Pentagon labeled the organization a “national security threat.”

Crashed Jet Carrying Cocaine Linked to CIA

Posted on May 10, 2010 by abby

ONLINE JOURNAL– A private jet that crashed last year in eastern Mexico and was found to be carrying more than 3 tons of cocaine was also used by the Central Intelligence Agency for clandestine operations, the Mexican daily El Universal reported September 3.

The newspaper cited documents from the United States and the European Parliament which “show that that plane flew several times to Guantanamo, Cuba, presumably to transfer terrorism suspects.” It said the European Parliament was investigating the jet for its possible use in “extraordinary rendition” flights, whereby prisoners are covertly transferred by the U.S. to a third country.

In June 2006, the British Department for Transport website published flight data on US aircraft into or out of the UK. According to the site, “This data had previously been released by Eurocontrol to the Parliamentary Assembly of the Council of Europe to assist with its enquiry into allegations of ‘extraordinary rendition’ flights operating in Europe.” The jet that crashed in Mexico, with registration number N987SA, is listed in the data report.

According to El Universal, FAA records show that the jet flew to Guantanamo on May 30, 2003. From June 23 to July 14, the jet flew from New York to Iceland, France, Italy, and Ireland. From July 16 to 20, it flew from the U.S. to Canada, the UK, Ireland, the UK, Canada, and back to the U.S. again. From April 7 to 12, 2004, it went from New York to Canada, the UK, Canada, and again to the U.S. The jet then flew to Guantanamo again. On April 21, it flew from the U.S. to Canada, France, the UK, Canada, and back to the U.S. It left the U.S. for Guantanamo once more on January 21, 2005.

The jet crashed on September 24, 2007. According to an Aviation Safety Network description of the accident, the Gulfstream Aerospace G-1159 Gulfstream II jet with registration N987SA crashed near Tixkokob in the northern part of the Yucatan Peninsula. ASN describes it as an “Illegal Flight” and reports that “When being chased by Mexican military helicopters, the crew carried out a crash-landing. No bodies were found in the wreckage, but soldiers found 132 bags containing about 3.6 tons (3.3. metric tons) of cocaine.”

An initial Reuters report on the crash noted, “Drug planes packed with South American cocaine — often with passenger seats ripped out to make space — frequently fly through Mexico and Central America en route for the United States. Some unload their cargo at clandestine airstrips south of the border where traffickers send it on by road or sea.”

El Universal, in its initial report on the crash in 2007, stated that the cocaine was in 132 bags and noted the registration number of the wrecked plane.

McClatchy Newspapers observed a few days after the crash that “news reports have linked the plane to the transport of terrorist suspects to the U.S. detention center at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba, but those reports cite logs that indicate only that the plane flew twice between Washington, D.C., and Guantanamo and once between Oxford, Conn., and Guantanamo.”

In November of last year, reporters from the Tampa Tribune followed up on the international investigation that resulted after the Gulfstream II crash. An expert on the drug trade from the University of Miami told the reporters that cocaine is being moved by air through Florida more frequently, as an alternative to being brought into the U.S. in the southwest.

The Gulfstream II jet was one of two planes being used by the Mexican Sinaloa drug cartel, also known as the Pacific Cartel, to carry cocaine. The other jet, a DC-9, had been seized and was found to be carrying 5.5 tons of cocaine. Both aircraft were purchased by the cartel from St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport.

The DC-9 with tail number N00SA, was seized on April 11, 2006, carrying an amount of cocaine valued at an estimated $82.5 million, according to Airport-Dat.com. Reportedly sold in March, the jet was scheduled to depart for Simon Bolivar International airport in Venezuela on April 5. FAA records show that at the time of the seizure, it was still registered to Royal Sons Inc., which operates out of St. Petersburg-Clearwater International Airport. It was deregistered two days after the seizure and listed as exported to Venezuela.

Continue reading about the Crashed Jet Carrying Cocaine Linked to CIA.

Jeremy R. Hammond is an independent researcher and writer whose articles have appeared on numerous alternative news websites. He maintains a website, www.yirmeyahureview.com, dedicated to critical analysis of U.S. foreign policy, particularly with regard to the U.S. “war on terrorism” and the Middle East. He currently resides with his wife in Taiwan. You may contact him at [email protected].

Bush Planned Iraq Regime Change Before 9/11

Posted on May 2, 2010 by abby

INFORMATION CLEARING HOUSE– A secret blueprint for US global domination reveals that President Bush and his cabinet were planning a premeditated attack on Iraq to secure ‘regime change’ even before he took power in January 2001.

The blueprint, uncovered by the Sunday Herald, for the creation of a ‘global Pax Americana’ was drawn up for Dick Cheney (now vice- president), Donald Rumsfeld (defence secretary), Paul Wolfowitz (Rumsfeld’s deputy), George W Bush’s younger brother Jeb and Lewis Libby (Cheney’s chief of staff). The document, entitled Rebuilding America’s Defences: Strategies, Forces And Resources For A New Century, was written in September 2000 by the neo-conservative think-tank Project for the New American Century (PNAC).

The plan shows Bush’s cabinet intended to take military control of the Gulf region whether or not Saddam Hussein was in power. It says: ‘The United States has for decades sought to play a more permanent role in Gulf regional security. While the unresolved conflict with Iraq provides the immediate justification, the need for a substantial American force presence in the Gulf transcends the issue of the regime of Saddam Hussein.’

The PNAC document supports a ‘blueprint for maintaining global US pre-eminence, precluding the rise of a great power rival, and shaping the international security order in line with American principles and interests’.

This ‘American grand strategy’ must be advanced for ‘as far into the future as possible’, the report says. It also calls for the US to ‘fight and decisively win multiple, simultaneous major theatre wars’ as a ‘core mission’.

The report describes American armed forces abroad as ‘the cavalry on the new American frontier’. The PNAC blueprint supports an earlier document written by Wolfowitz and Libby that said the US must ‘discourage advanced industrial nations from challenging our leadership or even aspiring to a larger regional or global role’.

The PNAC report also:

-Refers to key allies such as the UK as ‘the most effective and efficient means of exercising American global leadership';

-Describes peace-keeping missions as ‘demanding American political leadership rather than that of the United Nations';

-Reveals worries in the administration that Europe could rival the USA;

-Says ‘even should Saddam pass from the scene’ bases in Saudi Arabia and Kuwait will remain permanently — despite domestic opposition in the Gulf regimes to the stationing of US troops — as ‘Iran may well prove as large a threat to US interests as Iraq has';

-Spotlights China for ‘regime change’ saying ‘it is time to increase the presence of American forces in southeast Asia’. This, it says, may lead to ‘American and allied power providing the spur to the process of democratisation in China';

-Calls for the creation of ‘US Space Forces’, to dominate space, and the total control of cyberspace to prevent ‘enemies’ using the internet against the US;

-Hints that, despite threatening war against Iraq for developing weapons of mass destruction, the US may consider developing biological weapons — which the nation has banned — in decades to come. It says: ‘New methods of attack — electronic, ‘non-lethal’, biological — will be more widely available … combat likely will take place in new dimensions, in space, cyberspace, and perhaps the world of microbes … advanced forms of biological warfare that can ‘target’ specific genotypes may transform biological warfare from the realm of terror to a politically useful tool';

-Pinpoints North Korea, Libya, Syria and Iran as dangerous regimes and says their existence justifies the creation of a ‘world-wide command-and-control system’.

Tam Dalyell, the Labour MP, father of the House of Commons and one of the leading rebel voices against war with Iraq, said: ‘This is garbage from right-wing think-tanks stuffed with chicken-hawks — men who have never seen the horror of war but are in love with the idea of war. Men like Cheney, who were draft-dodgers in the Vietnam war.

‘This is a blueprint for US world domination — a new world order of their making. These are the thought processes of fantasist Americans who want to control the world. I am appalled that a British Labour Prime Minister should have got into bed with a crew which has this moral standing.’

@MediaRootsNews