Lew Rockwell, Jr.: America ‘headed to national socialism’; Documents detailing Bush’s illegal wiretapping program released; Bush White House blocked three investigations of a 2001 massacre by a C.I.A.-backed Afghan warlord; Obama ‘colonizing Iraq’; More than 800 Uighurs reportedly killed in ethnic clashes with the Chinese gov’t; ‘Terror suspect’ contributing to Afghan society; Georgia and U.S. preparing to invade near Russian borders?; G-8 threatens Iran; Russian president unveils world currency coin; and more…
“Headed to National Socialism” by Lew Rockwell, Jr. is a comparison of the economics of fascism, as analyzed in 1933, with America today. (LRC)
A report was released detailing the Bush Administration’s surveillance program. View the report [.pdf] via the ACLU. The report reveals that as the authorization was about to expire, a White House official went to then-Atty.-Gen. John Ashcroft immediately after a surgery, while in a hospital bed, to re-authorize extending the program with no hard legal justification.
The Bush Administration “repeatedly discouraged” an investigation into the 2001 post-invasion massacre of hundreds (or thousands) of Afghan detainees by U.S.-backed warlord, Gen. Abdul Rashid Dostum, who was on the C.I.A. payroll and worked with U.S. Special operations in 2001. “[O]ver a three-day period, Taliban prisoners were stuffed into closed metal shipping containers and given no food or water; many suffocated while being trucked to the prison. Other prisoners were killed when guards shot into the containers, ” reports James Risen. “The Pentagon, however, showed little interest in the matter.” (NYT) Physicians for Human Rights put the number of deaths at “up to 2,000” and reports the Bush Admin blocked three investigations.
Is colonizing Iraq, “The Obama Doctrine”? Read Tom Englehardt and Michael Schwartz’s article here.
“The U.S. military Thursday freed five Iranians who had been held since 2007 on suspicion of aiding Shiite Muslim militants, handing them over to the Iraqi government before their planned departure for Iran.” No one knows why the diplomats were released, according to the LAT. (The U.S. openly backs Sunni militants of Jundullah and the Marxist militants of Mujahideen-e-Khalq to undermine the regime in Iran.) The U.S. has until the end of the year to release over 10,000 people it’s detaining in Iraq. The U.S. is denying that the release is a “quid pro quo” with Iran.
A U.N. report says the U.S. caused ‘substantial damage‘ to historical site of Babylon after the 2003 invasion of Iraq. The U.S. troops and contractors ‘dug long trenches through the ancient ruins, bulldozed hilltops and drove heavy vehicles over the fragile paving of pathways which were once held sacred’. The U.S said it would’ve been worse had they not been there. Oh, OK then! (Sayyid)
“Kurdish leaders are pushing ahead with a new constitution for their semiautonomous region [establishing Kurdish claim to oil and gas within the territory], a step that has alarmed Iraqi and American officials who fear that the move poses a new threat to the country’s unity,” reports Sam Dagher. (NYT)
The World Uighur Congress (WUC) estimates up to 800 Uighurs have been killed this week in clashes with the Han Chinese and police. The WUC is based in Washington and China blames its exiled president for inciting riots (Der Spiegel). With no sympathy for the Chinese gov’t, I am interested in the WUC’s funding…. (Sayyid)
“China’s ethnic policies root cause of Uighur riots”: The Yomiuri Shimbun editorial. (McClatchy)
China banned Friday prayers in Urumqui for Muslim Uighurs protesting repressive policies by the Chinese gov’t. (AJE) Follow AJE’s Melissa Chan on Twitter for her reports from Xinjiang here.
U.K. Metropolitan Police are going to probe the MI5 involvement in the torture of recently freed Gitmo detainee, Binyam Mohamed. (The Independent)
“This is creating a culture of absolute Israeli control and absolute Palestinian dependency, enforced by proxy Palestinian rulers acting as mini-dictatorships,” writes Jonathon Cook on the current “two-state” offer from Israel. (AntiWar.com)
The EU has refused to deal with Israel on settlements “unless reached in the framework of a final-status agreement with the Palestinians,” writes Akiva Eldar (Ha’aretz). The EU quickly retracted.
Israel National Security Adviser Uzi Arad wants to ‘dramatically strengthen its arsenal to ensure that the nation has the ability to totally destroy Iran’. (AntiWar.com)
It’ll take a year for Palestinians to clear the 600,000 tons of rubble from Israel’s 22-day massacre on the Gaza Strip. (Ha’aretz)
Israel is rejecting any peace deal with Syria to withdraw its occupation of the Golan Heights. (BBC)
Haji Sahib Rohullah Wakil went from Gitmo to becoming a U.S. terrorist suspect. He’s now a political advocate in Afghanistan with a slew of evidence that he is not a terrorist and is never off the gov’t radar. Mr. Wakil was detained in Gitmo for six years and throughout that period attempted to be heard in court. Read Nancy Youseff’s great article here.
The Democratic Party’s top Machiavellian architect, James Carville, will be advising the opposition candidate to Afghan Pres. Hamid Karzai, Ashaf Ghani (AntiWar.com). See my comment on this and how it may connect to the recent C.I.A. scandal here. (Little Alex)
The secret C.I.A. program was an “attempt to create a new intelligence capability and said it was related to the collection of information on suspected terrorists that was instituted after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks”. The connection between the program and JSOC targets, I built on, doesn’t exist, as far as Paul Kane and Ben Pershing report (WaPo), but I stand by my analysis of the Obama Administration agenda regarding Gen. McChrystal bump up to Afghan commander to use terror tactics to oust Afghan Pres. Karzai. That said, Rep. Anna Eshoo (D-CA), who I quoted from the House Intelligence Committee wouldn’t deny the C.I.A. program link to JSOC.
Two more U.S. drone strikes in South Waziristan brought the death toll over 100 for the week. (AntiWar.com)
U.S.-backed Georgia is flying unmanned spy planes over the Republic of Abkhazia, raising fears there and in South Ossetia that the U.S. and Georgia are colluding to re-start its aggression that led to the war with Russia last August. (Pravda)
The U.S. should “use covert operations … to create a gasoline-led crisis to try and replace the regime” in Iran, Fmr. U.S. Speaker of the House (and very influencial Republican) Newt Gingrich told al Jazeera, as “one piece of many” tactics in such a strategy. See a piece of the interview here. Thousands more gathered to demonstrate, commemorating Thursday’s tenth anniversary of 18 Tir, the brutal suppression of student-lead protests in 1999, and were quickly attacked by riot police to break them up.
The G-8 issued a September deadline to Iran for it to “negotiate with the West over its [legally verified, peaceful, civilian] nuclear programme”. (AJE) Pres. Obama admitted Iran wasn’t developing a nuclear weapon, but said that Iran has to meet the deadline or the G-8 would “take further steps“. Toward what actions isn’t really up to the imagination. Search “Dennis Ross” on this blog and you’ll see the strategy of the Obama Adminstration to force Iran to become a U.S. puppet.
“Russian President Dmitry Medvedev illustrated his call for a supranational currency to replace the dollar by pulling from his pocket a sample coin of a ‘united future world currency.'” (Bloomberg)
China wants to “promote a diversified and rational international reserve currency system“, attacking the U.S. dollar at the G-8 Summit in Italy. U.K. Prime Minister Gordon Brown literally acted as if he didn’t hear it said. (FT)
“The world needs a new global governance,” declared the G-5 (Group of Five major developing countries — China, India, Brazil, Mexico, and South Africa) at the G-8 Summit. (IPS) Anyone else think these G-x‘s are getting stupid? You have the G-2 of the U.S. and China, the G-8 of industrialized nations, these G-5, the G-6 of the most populous European nations, the G-20 of the 20 largest economies. Then, you have the G-x+y — y signifying countries crashing the party. Just call them gatherings of the elite deciding to collude against their own people, but moreso against every country that who isn’t there. (Sayyid)
The G-8 agree to a deal with the goal of cutting their greenhouse gas emissions by 80% by 2050, by 50% globally (FT). U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon says there should be a goal for 2020. However this translates into policy might make me start saying that the conspiracy theorists were right. I still don’t understand the propaganda for this garbage, but I know how governments operate with goals like these — tax and tariff the shit out of people, eliminating small and localized industry, as the high costs are paid by those who can afford it least, and watch the corporate corruption of the governments involved skyrocket as the big guns compete for favoritism. As for the other 184 nations in the world, primarily China and India, who knows what these leaders have in plan to use violent sanctions, land grabbing and tariffs on 2bn+ people of these countries to enforce their voodoo science? (Little Alex)
Hong Kong is promoting wider use of the renminbi. 86% of H.K.’s reserves are in U.S. dollars (USD), to which its currency is pegged. China is signing bilateral agreements worldwide to swap currencies and credit to shift the global currency away from the USD over to them (FT).
China has surpassed the U.S. as the largest trader with Latin America. “Trade between Latin America and China rocketed from $10 billion in 2000 to $140 billion in 2008.” (McClatchy)
Donald Kohn, #2 man at the Federal [sic] Reserve, argued that auditing the Fed would ‘erode its independence’ and fearmongered that it would result in higher interest rates and more inflation and a giant alien spacecraft would rape all the women (OK, not the last part). (FT)
The U.S. Treasury has allocated $30bn for public-private partnerships. The Federal [sic] Reserve’s investment is unknown for this program that is set to need $1tn in extra liquidity. (FT) Doug Shoen promotes this corporatist fascism at HuffPo. As much as I hate Jonah Goldberg, HuffPo contributors’ take on economic issues make his book, Liberal Fascism, ring so true in a lot of ways.
More on the odd amount of high-value cyber-attacks this week — target that’ve included many U.S. government agencies, South Korea, the New York Stock Exchange in yesterday’s LAT.
Equatorial Guinea has robbed its population of “billions” in oil revenue, since oil was discovered there in the early 1990’s. The GDP has increased 5,000% since then. “Here is a country where people should have the per capita wealth of Spain or Italy, but instead they live in poverty worse than in Afghanistan or Chad,” said Arvind Ganesan, director of the Business and Human Rights Programme at Human Rights Watch. (IPS)
Little Alex in Wonderland 