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The Palestine people were first forced from their homes 60 years ago.

The people who stole the land from the Palestinians have been aided by American Taxpayer funding for more than fifty years.

More than Fifteen million US dollars is given by US taxpayers each day for this military use, which presently involves the imprisonment of the remaining segregated ' Bantustan - Apartheid ' parcels of land occupied by millions of Palestinian.

Funding by the US Taxpayer for the enslavement of the Palestinian people continues to increase, estimated now considerably more than the previous 4 billion US dollars per year.

Photo: AP/Hatem Moussa

Coming home

Marwan Ibrahim Mahmoud Jabour said in his sworn affidavit that he would find himself subjected to similar — but even more intense — mistreatment by U.S. interrogators before he ended up on Israel's doorstep.

In Jabour's sworn affidavit, he presents himself as little more than a would-be jihadist.

In subsequent interviews with human rights groups and The Washington Post, he acknowledges having facilitated transportation and assistance for al Qaeda fighters fleeing Afghanistan into Pakistan after the 2001 U.S. invasion.

A U.S. ' counterterrorism official ' described him as "an all-around bad guy" who had contact with senior al Qaeda officials.

The offspring of Palestinian refugees, he spent his youth in Jordan and Saudi Arabia before moving to Pakistan in the 1990s to study computer engineering.

While in Pakistan he found religion, and a few years later he tried to answer the call of Saudi religious leaders who were urging followers to take up jihad against the Russians in Chechnya.

Jabour managed to make his way to Kabul, where he got a few months of rudimentary firearms instruction in a camp operated by the ' Taliban ' before being told that the Chechens didn't really want any more Arab fighters.

He returned to Pakistan and got married.

A couple of years later, after the September 11 attacks led to the U.S. invasion of Afghanistan, he again felt the call — not to fight for al Qaeda, but "to protect Afghanistan as a Muslim country."

Jabour went to Afghanistan and tried to join a group of Arab fighters, but when the ' Taliban ' deserted them on the front line, he decided to go home again without firing a shot.

Jabour made the mistake of befriending an assortment of wounded, destitute ex-comrades who wandered into Pakistan after the conflict, his affidavit goes on.

In 2004, he says, Pakistani intelligence agents forced him and a friend into a car, put hoods on their heads and took them to a facility in Lahore where Jabour was beaten and tortured for several days before his captors handed him over to the Americans.

An injured Palestinian boy clutches a stone as he is carried to an ambulance during a US paid for raid in the village of Qabatiyah, near the West Bank town of Jenin, Tuesday, June 5, 2007.

All created by US taxpayers and it is to them the reckoning, and to their children the debt.

The Palestine people were first forced from their homes 60 years ago.

The people who stole the land from the Palestinians have been aided by American Taxpayer funding for more than fifty years.

Funding by the US Taxpayer for the enslavement of the Palestinian people continues to increase, estimated now considerably more than the previous 4 billion US dollars per year.

Photo: AP/Mohammed Ballas

He then describes a haze of sedative injections and a jet ride.

Jabour found himself in a nameless facility where he says men in black uniforms and masks stripped off Jabour's clothes, bound him and put him in a tiny cell with a bucket for a toilet.

He remained naked and bound for three months, with a video camera suspended from the ceiling watching his every move.

Outside, large speakers played jet engine noises.

According to Jabour's affidavit, a U.S. interrogator told him that "whenever you hear this sound, you will remember why you are here" — a reference to the planes that crashed into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon.

After interrogators questioned Jabour, he related, they would throw him back in his cell, tie him in various uncomfortable positions and then subject him to loud noises and music, sometimes for up to four days at a time.

"I would scream for them to stop … and I would tell them I was going to talk," he says.

On other occasions, he says in the affidavit, interrogators tied a rope to his handcuffs and lifted him up for several minutes at a time or squeezed him in a tiny closet that had breathing holes punched in the door (he would later tell human rights advocates and journalists that he was threatened only with being put in the closet).

By the time a year had passed, the affidavit goes on, the severity of Jabour's treatment eased somewhat.

He was still subjected to interrogations, but he was in a larger cell and his captors let him out occasionally to watch documentary films on DVD or to take books out of the facility's library, which had thousands of books in Arabic and other languages.

Eventually, they gave him a drawing pad and an electronic chessboard.

By then, apparently, the United States had decided that Jabour either had no more useful information to offer or was too small of a catch to bother keeping in custody.

In July 2006, a clerk at the facility suddenly told Jabour that he was about to be transferred.

"Where to?" Jabour asked.

The American, the affidavit says, told him he didn't know.

The next day, guards came to Jabour's cell, bound him in chains, taped cotton over his eyes and put plugs in his ears.

He says he was driven to an airport, loaded on another jet and injected with something that made him lose consciousness.

A Palestinian youth runs past the Dome of the Rock Mosque in the Al Aqsa Mosque compound in Jerusalem's Old City, Tuesday, June 5, 2007.

Palestine situation sustained for more than half a century by US taxpayers and it is to them the reckoning, and to their children the debt.

The Palestine people were first forced from their homes 60 years ago.

The people who stole the land from the Palestinians have been aided by American Taxpayer funding for more than fifty years.

Funding by the US Taxpayer for the enslavement of the Palestinian people continues to increase, estimated now considerably more than the previous 4 billion US dollars per year.

Photo: REUTERS/Jerry Lampen

After the jet landed hours later, Jabour reports that he was carried into a building.

When his blindfold was removed, he was in a room with portraits of King Hussein and King Abdullah on the wall.

Jabour was back in Jordan, the land of his birth.

Jordanian agents began questioning him, he says, but the sessions were less brutal.

"The interrogators told me they know everything I've been through," he says.

For the first time, he was allowed to meet with a Red Cross representative.

He also was allowed to see his parents and other relatives.

But instead of releasing Jabour, the Jordanians turned the former U.S. prisoner over to the Israelis.

While U.S. interrogators reportedly have used the threat of rendition to Israel to frighten captives into talking, Jabour says that after a humiliating initial search (in which he was stripped and forced to squat several times), the Israelis didn't treat him quite as roughly as the Americans had.

He relates that he was questioned by a Shabak interrogator named Levi, who talked to him roughly a dozen times, three to four hours each time.

Levi had Jabour tell his life story, while Levi took notes on a computer.

None of the questions had anything to do with Israel or its national security, Jabour recalled in the affidavit.

Even so, Jabour was held without charges and was not allowed to see an attorney for the first month of his Israeli captivity.

Then, in late September 2006, he finally got a chance to speak with Nizar Mahajna, a lawyer for the Public Committee Against Torture in Israel, an Israeli human rights organization, who happened to run in to Jabour in the Kishon Prison where Jabar's military court hearing was taking place.

"I'm not one of them," Mahajna quotes Jabour as telling him, meaning that he was not a Palestinian from the West Bank or Gaza.

"Do you have time for me?"

"He seemed very frightened," the attorney would later recall.

In October 2006, Israeli security sources told ICIJ that Jabour most likely would be charged with membership in a terrorist organization, unauthorized military training and posing a threat to state security.

But apparently, over the next several weeks, Israeli officials changed their minds and decided that the former U.S. prisoner was not so much of a threat after all.

In November 2006, the day before a military court was scheduled to consider extending his remand, authorities simply released him to relatives in Gaza.

A view of the Dome of the Rock Mosque and the city of Jerusalem is seen ,Tuesday, June 5, 2007.

Palestine situation sustained for more than half a century by US taxpayers and it is to them the reckoning, and to their children the debt.

The Palestine people were first forced from their homes 60 years ago.

The people who stole the land from the Palestinians have been aided by American Taxpayer funding for more than fifty years.

Funding by the US Taxpayer for the enslavement of the Palestinian people continues to increase, estimated now considerably more than the previous 4 billion US dollars per year.

Photo: AP/Sebastian Scheiner

Using war to take
and swallow Palestine land

Torture techniques no surprise
to Palestine people

A New Documentary featuring Amy Goodman!

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Full past archives available by search

Monday, June 4th, 2007

Politics of Naming: Genocide, Civil War, Insurgency

US Columbia University Professor Mahmood Mamdani discusses how the media and the Save Darfur Coalition has been misrepresenting the situation in Darfur.— Click Here

AMY GOODMAN: Last week's US announcement of sanctions blocks thirty-one companies tied to the Sudanese government from using the US banking system.

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: I think the larger question is the names — genocide, in particular — come into being against a background of the twentieth century and mass slaughter of the twentieth century, and particularly the Holocaust.

And against that background, Lemkin convinced the international community, and particularly states in the international community, they have an obligation to intervene when there is genocide.

He’s successful in getting the international community to adopt a resolution on this.

Then follows the politics around genocide.

And the politics around genocide is, when is the slaughter of civilians a genocide or not?

Which particular slaughter is going to be named genocide, and which one is not going to be named genocide?

So if you look at the last ten years and take some examples of mass slaughter:

For example, the mass slaughter in Iraq, which is — in terms of numbers, at least — no less than what is going on in Sudan

Or the mass slaughter in Congo, which, in terms of numbers, is probably ten times what happened, what has been happening in Darfur.

But none of these have been named as genocide.

Only the slaughter in Darfur has been named as genocide.

So there is obviously a politics around this naming, and that’s the politics that I was interested in.

AMY GOODMAN: And what do you think this politics is?

Instrumentalized by United States

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, I think that what’s happening is that genocide is being instrumentalized by the biggest power on the earth today, which is the United States.

It is being instrumentalized in a way that mass slaughters which implicate its adversaries are being named as genocide and those which implicate its friends or its proxies are not being named as genocide.

And that is not what Lemkin had in mind.

I was struck by the fact -- because I live nine months in New York and three months in Kampala, and every morning I open the New York Times, and I read about violence against civilians, atrocities against civilians.

There are two places that I read about

Une is Iraq.

The other is Darfur.

Largest political movement against mass violence on US campuses is on Darfur

I’m struck by the fact that the largest political movement against mass violence on US campuses is on Darfur and not on Iraq.

And it puzzles me.

Because most of these students, almost all of these students, are American citizens.

I had always thought that they should have greater responsibility, they should feel responsibility, for mass violence which is the result of their own government's policies.

And I ask myself, “Why not?”

I ask myself, “How do they discuss mass violence in Iraq and options in Iraq?”

And they discuss it by asking -- agonizing over what would happen if American troops withdrew from Iraq.

Would there be more violence?

Less violence?

It is easy to hold a moral position emptied of political content

But there is no such agonizing over Darfur.

Because Darfur is a place without history.

Darfur is a place without politics.

Darfur is simply a dot on the map.

It is simply a place, a site, where perpetrator confronts victim.

And the perpetrator’s name is Arab.

And the victim’s name is African.

And it is easy to demonize.

It is easy to hold a moral position which is emptied of its political content.

This bothered me, and so I wrote about it.

MAHMOOD MAMDANI:

Well, let’s begin with the numbers of the dead, OK?

The only group in a position to estimate how many people have died in Darfur is UNICEF, because UNICEF is the only one that did a comprehensive survey in 2005 in Darfur.

Everybody else only knows the piece of ground on which they work and will then extrapolate from it, like any other NGO, like Oxfam or Medecins Sans Frontieres or World Food Program.

The WFP estimate was 200,000.

Out of these 200,000, the WPF report tells you that roughly about 20% died of actually being killed, of violence, and 80% died mainly from starvation and from diseases.

And normally in our understanding of genocide, we put both those together and look at them as a result of the violence, because the violence prevents the medicine going in, etc., except in the case of Darfur, it’s not a single-cause situation.

Darfur is also the place which has been hit hard by global warming.

The UN commission which sat on global warming very recently spoke of Darfur as the first major crisis of global warming.

Desertification — Global Warming

In other words, from the late 1970s you have had a significant desertification, and you’ve been having in the north of Darfur basically a situation where people’s simply entire livelihoods are destroyed, and which has been one of the elements, because it has driven the nomadic population in the north down into the south.

So how many people are dying from desertification?

How many people are dying from the violence that has been unleashed through this civil war in Darfur?

Second element in this is that there’s a civil war going on in Darfur.

There are two rebel movements, and both rebel movements were born in the aftermath of the peace in the south.

And those who were unwilling to accept the peace in the south, who thought the peace in the south should have included a resolution for all of Sudan, particularly for Darfur and not simply for the south, they were the inspiration behind the two movements that developed.

One movement, the Sudan Liberation Army, was a movement strongly connected with the SPLA in the south, especially with those sections of the SPLA who were not happy with the partial nature of the settlement in the south.

Islamist rebel movement and secular rebel movement

The SPLA is the Sudan People's Liberation Army, which had organized and led the guerrilla war in the south for several decades under John Garang.

The second movement was the Justice and Equality Movement.

The Justice and Equality Movement, unlike the SLA, which is a secular movement, Justice and Equality is an Islamist movement.

And it was a break-off from the regime in the Sudan.

It was a break-off between two sections of the regime, the military and the civilian section, and particularly the section led by the chief ideologue, Hassan al-Turabi, who split from the military wing and was the inspiration behind the formation of the Justice and Equality Movement.

So you have, in a way, a very strong Islamist rebel movement and you have a strong secular rebel movement, and these two began their operations in 2003.

Sudan government's response was to pick a proxy and arm it

The government's response — and I saw the ambassador's response there, which was as disingenuous as Bush's response, in a sense, because he’s claiming that it’s just a civil war inside, the government has nothing to do with it.

It’s not true.

The government's response was to pick a proxy and arm it.

And the government was, in a way, smart enough to pick those who were the worst victims of the desertification and the drought.

It picked the poorest of the nomads from the north whose livelihoods had been entirely destroyed and who had simply no survival strategy at hand and gave them weapons.

And these guys went down south, and their object was not to kill the peasants in the south, but to drive them off their land.

The larger came from the regular Salvadoran armed forces and police.

He also had U.S. backing.

In fact, D’Aubuisson launched his career as a major figure in Salvador by going on TV and making a speech.

He had a video role as he spoke with an illustrated death list of union people and religious figures and others who he said should be killed as traitors to the country.

And the data for the list were supplied to him by American intelligence, again according to the officers there I interviewed.

MAHMOOD MAMDANI:

The government’s response was also to pick a second group, and that second group are the nomads from Chad who have come into Darfur.

Problem stems from Colonial Empires enhanced by US intervention

And to understand that, one has to look at the third dimension of the conflict, which is that over the last twenty-five, thirty years there has been a civil war going on in Chad.

Chad, during the Cold War, was a bone of contention, first and foremost between the US and France, and both had their allies in the region.

France allied with Libya.

The US allied with the military dictatorship in Sudan, with the Numeri dictatorship in Sudan.

And every oppositional movement in Chad had a base in Darfur, and they armed themselves, organized themselves in Darfur.

So Darfur was awash with weapons for two decades, OK.

And those who ran away from the civil war in Chad came into Darfur.

So the other wing of those who were armed, whether by the government or whether by this weaponry which was awash, were the Chad refugees in Darfur.

So what we call the Janjaweed are two groups.

They are the Chad refugees in Darfur, and they are the poorest of the northern camel - the pastoralists divide into two: the camel pastoralists and the cattle pastoralists.

And the camel pastoralists, because the camel is the only game which will survive in the worst conditions where even cattle will not survive, they are the poorest of the poor.

So these are what are called the Janjaweed.

AMY GOODMAN: I wanted to play a clip for you from John Prendergast.

He is the senior adviser for the International Crisis Group, leader of the Save Darfur Coalition, has argued that genocide is occurring in Darfur, that the Sudanese government is trying to mask what’s really happening.

JOHN PRENDERGAST: This policy of divide and conquer, which has been in place since the early part of this decade, had as its objective the creation of anarchy in Darfur.

So when people take a snapshot today and see Darfur and go, “My god, all these groups are fighting against each other. It seems like it’s chaos,” it’s precisely what the government intended.

US state-sponsored terrorist movement in Mozambique

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: We need to keep in mind, and John Prendergast needs to keep in mind, that the history of state-sponsored terrorism in that part of Africa begins with the US providing a political umbrella to South Africa to create a state-sponsored terrorist movement in Mozambique: RENAMO.

And it is after a full decade of that impunity that others learn the experience, and Charles Taylor begins it in Liberia.

The Sudanese government begins it in the south.

But this is the second thing, which builds on this history of political violence.

The third thing is that when the rebel movements begin in 2003 in Darfur, the Khartoum government responds in the same way, which is it looks at the scene, and it picks the weakest, the most vulnerable, the ones that they can bring under their wing.

It arms them and says, “Go for it.”

And they go for the land.

AMY GOODMAN: Professor Mamdani, you quote the saying, “Out of Iraq, into Darfur.”

What about intervention?

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, look, the question in Darfur is really, how do we stop the fighting.

Because if we want to stop the killing of civilians, we have to stop the fighting.

The only way to stop the fighting is a political resolution.

In 2005, African Union troops came into Darfur.

I interviewed the Ghanaian general who was deputy to Dallaire in Rwanda and who is the chief of the UN nucleus force in Darfur.

And he said to me that the African Union troops were spectacularly successful in 2005.

The killing came down dramatically.

Human bones and skulls lie inches below the surface
Mukjar, West Darfur, Sudan

And then, he said, two things happened.

Both happened around the question of finances, because African countries can provide troops but they don’t have finances to provide salaries or logistics.

So the first shift was around salaries.

The salaries of African troops were being paid by the European Union, which paid them from an emergency fund, and it shifted the payment to quarterly payments.

So they would make payment every three months.

They would only make the next three-month payment if the paperwork was done properly, if there was accountability.

So, as I speak now, African Union troops have not been paid for four months, because the EU says there hasn’t been proper accountability.

Second is about logistics.

The troops have to work with planes, and the planes provided are not military planes.

They are planes flown by civilian pilots.

And civilian pilots have the right to refuse to fly in areas which they consider dangerous.

Now, of course, all these areas are dangerous.

So you’re operating with logistics that you don’t control.

Civilian pilots will not.

The Ghanaian general said to me - I asked him, I said, “Why do you think these changes happened?”

He said, “I don’t know.

But the only thing I can think is that the reason would only be political.”

I had the same response when I heard President Bush’s speech.

West Darfur town of Mukjar
'Security bubble'
Janjaweed fighters stroll through marketplace rifles over shoulders

MAHMOOD MAMDANI:

The contention has been over who has political control over the troops in Darfur.

The African Union troops are under the political control of African Union.

And there is a concerted attempt being made to shift the political control of any intervention force inside Darfur from inside Africa to outside Africa.

The second thing is that the African Union is convinced that they cannot go in and fight.

They can only go in with the agreement of both sides, so they can only intervene consensually.

And that is crucial and important, because if they go in with the two sides not agreeing, the fighting will simply increase and the slaughter of civilians will increase.

President Bush's speech yesterday — the response of the UN, the UN Secretary General, was, “Look, we’re just arriving at an agreement.

We’ve been working for the last four, five months, and the Sudan government is agreeing.”

The South African response was the same.

Why sanctions now when we are about to arrive at an agreement?

Any sane thinking person would think that, intended or unintended, the consequence of these imposition of sanctions is to torpedo that process on the ground.

And that process is the political process which is absolutely vital to stopping the fighting.

AMY GOODMAN: You mentioned Congo.

What about the comparison of the conflicts and the attention given to each?

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, no two comparisons are exactly alike, of course. We know that.

But to the extent that numbers are being highlighted, the numbers are huge in Congo.

The Congo estimates are four million-plus [killed] over several years.

The Darfur estimates go from 200,000 to 400,000.

So why no concern about Congo?

Congo involves, again, multiple causes, like Darfur.

It’s a huge place.

But both states are allies of the US in the region so there's nothing said about it

But in Kivu province, where I have been, the conflict has been very Darfur-like, in the sense that you’ve had proxies being fed from the outside, the Hema and the Lendu.

You have the recruitment of child soldiers.

You have two states in the region arming these proxies: Uganda and Rwanda.

But both states are allies of the US in the region, so there's nothing said about it.

The most recent example is Somalia.

We can see that the civilian suffering is going up dramatically in Somalia since the intervention, Ethiopian intervention force.

And we know that the Ethiopian intervention force had at least the blessings of the US, if not more than that — I’m not privy to the information.

And nothing is being said about it.

So one arrives back at the question: what is the politics around it?

And I’m struck by the innocence of those who are part of the Save Darfur — of the foot soldiers in the Save Darfur Coalition, not the leadership, simply because this is not discussed.

Where does Save Darfur Coalition money go?

Let me tell you, when I went to Sudan in Khartoum, I had interviews with the UN humanitarian officer, the political officer, etc., and I asked them, I said, “What assistance does the Save Darfur Coalition give?”

He said, “Nothing.”

I said, “Nothing?”

He said, “No.”

And I would like to know.

The Save Darfur Coalition raises an enormous amount of money in this country.

Where does that money go?

Does it go to other organizations which are operative in Sudan, or does it go simply to fund the advertising campaign?

AMY GOODMAN: To make people aware of what’s going on in Darfur.

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: To make people aware of what is going on.

But people, who then, out of awareness, give money not to fuel a commercial campaign, but expecting that this money will go to do something about the pain and suffering of those who are the victims in Darfur.

So how much of that money is going to actually — how much of it translates into food or medicine or shelter?

And how much of it is being recycled?

Prepare mud bricks
Abu Shouk refugee camp, Al-Fasher, Darfur, Sudan

AMY GOODMAN: Do you think the UN process, if allowed to carry forward, would be the answer right now?

MAHMOOD MAMDANI: Well, the answer has to be a political process.

The African Union, if its hands are not tied — if this money was translated into salaries and logistics for the African Union force, it would untie those hands.

If the governments who claim to be speaking and acting for the people of Darfur, if they actually directed the money they intend to spend on intervention to paying salaries for the African Union forces, to providing the logistics without these constraints, the problem would be much closer to solving.

Published on Sunday, March 3, 2007 by Daniel Estulin — DanielEstulin.com

Bilderberg 2007 comes to an end

The sun has set on Bilderberg 2007.

After a sumptuous lunch, most Bilderbergers will return to their countries of choice freshly armed with precise instructions from the Steering Committee on how to proceed in covertly expanding the powers of One World Government.

Amongst this year’s delegates we can find:

Henry Kissinger

Henry Kravis of KKR

Marie Josee Kravis of Hudson Institute

Vernon Jordan

Etienne Davignon, Bilderberger President

Queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, daughter of one of the founders, Prince Bernhard and the Queen and King of Spain.

Final objective of this despicable group of hoodlums is World Fascist — One World Empire

As a rhetorical question, can someone please explain to me how is it that “good” liberals such as John Edwards and Hillary Clinton as well as “do-gooder” humanitarians with multiple social projects on the go such as Rockefeller and every Royal House in Europe can perennially attend Bilderberger meetings knowing that the final objective of this despicable group of hoodlums is a World Fascist — One World Empire?

Western Elite Militarism
Western Elite controlled Terror States
We'll replace a state here
Destroy a nation at will
Who cares how many people we kill

How could it be orchestrated?

The idea is to give to each country a political constitution and an appropriate national economic structure organised for the following purposes:

(1) Place the political power into the hands of chosen people and eliminate all intermediaries.

(2) Establish a maximum concentration of industries and suppress all unwarranted competition.

(3) Establish an absolute control of prices of all goods and raw materials.

[Bilderbergers make it possible through their iron grip control of the World Bank, IMF and the World Trade Organization]

(4) Create judicial and social institutions that would prevent all extremes of action.

Not private but secret
Although participants emphatically attest they attend the Club’s annual meeting as private citizens and not in their official government capacity, that affirmation is dubious — particularly when you compare the Chatham House Rule to the Logan Act in the United States.

The Logan Act states is absolutely illegal for elected officials to meet in private with influential business executives to debate and design public policy.

Bilderberg meetings follow a traditional protocol founded in 1919 in the wake of the Paris Peace Conference held at Versailles for the Royal Institute of International Affairs (RIIA) based in Chatham House in London.

While the name Chatham House is commonly used to refer to the Institute itself, the Royal Institute of International Affairs is the foreign policy executive arm of the British monarchy.

Western Elite Militarism
Western Elite controlled Terror States
We'll replace a state here
Destroy a nation at will
Who cares how many people we kill

According to RIIA procedures, “when a meeting, or part thereof, is held under the Chatham House Rule, participants are free to use the information received, but neither the identity nor the affiliation of the speaker(s), nor that of any other participant, may be revealed; nor may it be mentioned that the information was received at a meeting of the Institute.”

U.S. Logan Act
The Logan Act was intended to prohibit United States citizens without authority from interfering in relations between the United States and foreign governments.

There appear to have been no prosecutions under the Act in its almost 200-year history.

However, there have been a number of judicial references to the Act, and it is not uncommon for it to be used as a political weapon.

None of which is to say that private citizens can get away with anything when visiting or interacting with foreign countries.

Among those who have attended Bilderberg Club meetings and flaunted the Logan Act have been:

Allen Dulles (CIA)

Sen. William J. Fulbright (from Arkansas, a Rhodes Scholar)

Dean Acheson (Secretary of State under Truman)

Nelson Rockefeller and Laurence Rockefeller

Gerald Ford (former President)

Henry J. Heinz II (Chairman of the H. J. Heinz Co.)

Thomas L. Hughes (President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

Robert S. McNamara (Kennedy’s Secretary of Defence and former President of the World Bank)

Western Elite Militarism
Western Elite controlled Terror States
We'll replace a state here
Destroy a nation at will
Who cares how many people we kill

William P. Bundy (former President of the Ford Foundation, and editor of the Council on Foreign Relations’s Foreign Affairs journal)

John J. McCloy (former President of the Chase Manhattan Bank)

George F. Kennan (former U.S. Ambassador to the Soviet Union)

Paul H. Nitze (representative of Schroeder Bank—Nitze played a very prominent role in matters of Arms Control agreements, which have always been under the direction of the RIIA)

Robert O. Anderson (Chairman of Atlantic-Richfield Co. and head of the Aspen Institute for Humanistic Studies)

John D. Rockefeller IV (Governor of West Virginia, now U.S. Senator)

Cyrus Vance (Secretary of State under Carter)

Eugene Black (former President of the World Bank)

Joseph Johnson (President of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace)

Henry Ford III (head of the Ford Motor Co.)

Gen. Andrew J. Goodpaster (former Supreme Allied Commander in Europe, and later superintendent of the West Point Academy)

Zbigniew Brzezinski (National Security Adviser to President Carter, founder of the Trilateral Commission)

Gen. Alexander Haig (once European NATO Commander, former assistant to Kissinger, and was later Secretary of State under Reagan)

James Rockefeller (Chairman, First National City Bank).

Bilderberg 2007 conclusions
Thanks to our inside sources at the conference, we have compiled what we believe to be an accurate and a credible model of Bilderberger 2007 conclusions.

We are working against the clock to bring this information into the open.

Our Robert Zoellick report from Friday has now been confirmed by the Financial Times when this well respected periodical announced on the front page of June 2, 2007 edition that “Robert Zoellick is the World Bank’s new chief.”

We, of course, already knew that.

The issues we are working on deal with European Bilderbergers anger at Bush´s shift on climate issue.

The upcoming G8 meeting in Heiligendamm, Germany where Merkel and her European Bilderberg allies will position themselves as true leaders of the environment.

European Bilderbergers were fairly unhappy that a pre-G8 Bilderberg could not resolve and reconcile contradictory views on the issue.

As one German attendee stated:

“This requires feats of diplomatic acrobatics, something unfortunately greatly lacking in the current U.S. administration.”

Western Elite Militarism
Western Elite controlled Terror States
We'll replace a state here
Destroy a nation at will
Who cares how many CHILDREN we kill

Another issue of great concern to both American and European Bilderbergers is Russia’s current muscle flexing on the energy issue.

The TNK-BP license is just one of the many signs causing anger amongst the globalist elite.

After years of economic stagnation, said one American Bilderberger:

“Russia is acting against unipolarity's accommodating ideologies and politics, against its recently resurgent manifestations and machinations, and against the instruments of its perpetuation, such as the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO).”

Bilderberg 2007 served as a consensus building to decide on a common policy and strategy to deal with Russia’s resurgence.

Another subject under discussion dealt with Afghanistan.

It was commonly agreed by the attendees that the US-led NATO alliance and mission is in a state of quagmire and “that the situation is getting worse.”

Bilderbergers will be urging NATO and the US to decide on their real mission goals — economic development or the hunt for al-Qaeda and the Taliban.

Finally, get ready for a new phrase in the lexicon of realpolitik shortly to have its coming-out party — “sustainable consumption,” to define a more humane approach to global warming.

BBC — Sunday, 3 June 2007

Putin warns Europe in missile row

Mr Putin says US missile defence plans may spark another arms race

Moscow may target weapons at Europe if the US builds planned missile defence facilities in the region, Russian President Vladimir Putin has said.

Russia has not pointed missiles towards Europe since the end of the Cold War.

Last week, Russia said it had tested a ballistic missile to maintain "strategic balance" in the world.

The US wants to expand its missile defences into Eastern Europe. It says the system is not aimed at Russia but Moscow says its security is threatened.

'Not our fault'

Mr Putin made the comments in an interview published in Italian newspaper Corriere Della Sera ahead of the G8 meeting which starts in Germany on Wednesday.

President Vladimir Putin

He repeated warnings that the US defence shield could lead to a new arms race but said it would the fault of the Americans if this happened.

He said the US had "altered the strategic balance" by unilaterally pulling out of the anti-ballistic missile (ABM) treaty in 2002.

"If the American nuclear potential grows in European territory, we have to give ourselves new targets in Europe," Mr Putin said.

"It is up to our military to define these targets, in addition to defining the choice between ballistic and cruise missiles."

US President George W Bush is due to meet Mr Putin at the three-day G8 summit in the German resort of Heiligendamm.

Washington wants to deploy interceptor rockets in Poland and a radar base in the Czech Republic to counter what it describes as a potential threat from "rogue states" such as Iran and North Korea.

Last Tuesday, Russia tested an RS-24 missile that successfully struck its target 5,500km (3,400 miles) away.

It was designed to evade missile defence systems, Russia's defence ministry said.

BBC — Sunday, 3 June 2007

Gorbachev criticises US 'empire'

Mr Gorbachev said relations between Russia and the West were in a bad state

Gorbachev interview

The former Soviet leader, Mikhail Gorbachev, has blamed the US for the current state of relations between Russia and the West.

In a BBC interview, Mr Gorbachev said that the Russians were ready to be constructive, but America was trying to squeeze them out of global diplomacy.

He added that the Iraq War had undermined Tony Blair's credibility.

Mr Gorbachev accused America of "empire-building", which he said the UK should have warned it away from.

'New empire'

Moscow and the West have been in dispute over Iraq, America's plans for a missile defence system and civil rights within Russia itself.

Britain's extradition request for a Russian man in connection with the murder of ex-agent Alexander Litvinenko has also caused tension.

In an interview with Radio Four's The World This Weekend, Mr Gorbachev said relations between Russia and the West were in a bad state.

President Vladimir Putin

"Well, it's worse than I expected," he said through a translator.

"We lost 15 years after the end of the Cold War, but the West I think and particularly the United States, our American friends, were dizzy with their success, with the success of their game that they were playing, a new empire.

"I don't understand why you, the British, did not tell them, 'Don't think about empire, we know about empires, we know that all empires break up in the end, so why start again to create a new mess.'"

He added that the war with Iraq had damaged Britain's relationship with Russia after a promising start.

"Tony Blair and Putin established a very good relationship and that made it possible to advance our relationship," he said.

"But then Iraq happened and Tony found himself in the embrace of that military monster, of that war situation, and he lost a lot of his credibility in the world and in Europe."

How ozone is made and destroyed

Stratosphere Ozone CFCs HCFCs

Closest to the planet are the Stratosphere and Troposphere, the troposphere being the lowest layer of the atmosphere, the site of our weather, our rain and our wind

UVC in the 10 to 290 nanometer band

UVB, 290 to 320 nanometers

UVA, 320 to 400 nanometers

Melting glaciers — Tibet, Peru, Bolivia, Chile, Argentina, Himalayas, Kilimanjaro, Mt Rainier, Cascades, Alaska, US

Ecological catastrophe across Asia as glaciers melt and continent's great rivers dry up

Soot ice melt, glaciers turn desert

Soot's effect on ice melt and glaciers

Washington State's Glaciers are Melting

If the civilization of Atlantis developed only on the shelves of the coastlines, the flowering of a society might well have been lost

As a gigantic shelf of ice became released from its mooring, a people could easily have been taken with a sudden submergence

Remnants of knowledge would be retained with those on higher ground. A few people here, a few there.

Translations of discussions with The WE

Published on Friday, June 1, 2007 by Marjorie Cohn — Uruknet.info

The Unitary King George

As the nation focused on whether Congress would exercise its constitutional duty to cut funding for the war, Bush quietly issued an unconstitutional bombshell that went virtually unnoticed by the corporate media.

National Security Agency.

Bush quietly issued an unconstitutional bombshell that went virtually unnoticed by the corporate media

The National Security and Homeland Security Presidential Directive, signed on May 9, 2007, would place all governmental power in the hands of the President and effectively abolish the checks and balances in the Constitution.

If a 'catastrophic emergency' — which could include a terrorist attack or a natural disaster — occurs, Bush's new directive says: 'The President shall lead the activities of the Federal Government for ensuring constitutional government.'

Photo: Uruknet.info

What about the other two co-equal branches of government?

The directive throws them a bone by speaking of a "cooperative effort" among the three branches, "coordinated by the President, as a matter of comity with respect to the legislative and judicial branches and with proper respect for the constitutional separation of powers."

The Vice-President would help to implement the plans.

Courtesy
"Comity," however, means courtesy, and the President would decide what kind of respect for the other two branches of government would be "proper."

This Presidential Directive is a blatant power grab by Bush to institutionalize "the unitary executive."

A seemingly innocuous phrase, the unitary executive theory actually represents a radical, ultra rightwing interpretation of the powers of the presidency.

Championed by the conservative Federalist Society, the unitary executive doctrine gathers all power in the hands of the President and insulates him from any oversight by the congressional or judicial branches.

Alito — not just some executive powers, but the executive power — the whole thing
In a November 2000 speech to the Federalist Society, then Judge Samuel Alito said the Constitution:

"...makes the president the head of the executive branch, but it does more than that.

The president has not just some executive powers, but the executive power — the whole thing."

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice addresses the media at a Women Leaders conference for Peace and Security in the Middle East in Vienna, 31 May 2007.

Rice tells Iran to change tactics and freeze uranium enrichment.

One day after sparring with Russia over missile defence and Kosovo, Rice launches a new attack against its old and newly emerging cold war foe on Thursday for a slide in democracy — as if the US elections of 2000, 2002, 2004 were not managed, and 2006, except the overwhelming numbers against the party in power made it too difficult to fix completely.

Rice reproaches Spain in a visit on Friday, June 1, 2007 for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

Photo: AFP/Dieter Nagl

These "unitarians" claim that all federal agencies, even those constitutionally created by Congress, are beholden to the Chief Executive, that is, the President.

This means that Bush could disband agencies like the Federal Communications Commission, the Food and Drug Administration, the Federal Reserve Board, etc., if they weren't to his liking.

Indeed, Bush signed an executive order stating that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee.

Consumer advocates were concerned that this directive was aimed at weakening the Environmental Protection Agency and the Occupational Safety and Health Administration.

Audacious presidential overreaching into the constitutional province
The unitary executive dogma represents audacious presidential overreaching into the constitutional province of the other two branches of government.

This doctrine took shape within the Bush administration shortly after 9/11.

On September 25, 2001, former deputy assistant attorney general John Yoo used the words "unitary executive" in a memo he wrote for the White House:

"The centralization of authority in the president alone is particularly crucial in matters of national defense, war, and foreign policy, where a unitary executive can evaluate threats, consider policy choices, and mobilize national resources with a speed and energy that is far superior to any other branch."

Western Elite militarism
Western Elite Terror States
Once was in Baquba
Returning to do the same to the 'land of the free' — soon

slide cursor here

A woman cries beside the body of her son outside a morgue in Baquba June 2, 2007.

The boy and four others were killed and three wounded while inside their houses in Baquba.

They were killed and wounded by an air strike by the U.S. military in Baquba on Friday.

Photo: REUTERS/Helmiy al-Azawi

Six weeks later, Bush began using that phrase in his signing statements.

Afghan Independent Radio, which broadcasts a program in Kandahar city, reports that missing children declarations are the most commonly placed adverts on the show.

"We get about four or five missing children a month. About 20 percent of them are found before we hit the air," said Ismael Tahir, director of radio programming at the station.

However, others are taken for child labour, or abuse, or are runaways, Tahir said, adding that the station is planning to log their names and addresses to help with investigations.

The radio station is at the front line of the search for missing children because public confidence in the police has sunk so low. Even the newly appointed police chief, Lieutenant General Mohammed Ayoub Salangi, concedes that there was probably official corruption behind the kidnappings.

"It seems as if local militia or tribal commanders were involved," he told AFP.

For Mohammed Tahir's family their nightmare had only just begun when they lost their son. Police arrested two of the child's uncles, keeping one of them, Abdul Zahir, for 18 days and torturing him to try and force him to admit to the crime.

"I couldn't admit it because I haven't done anything, but now our whole family wants to leave Kandahar because we think there were powerful people involved," he said.

No police investigators have been to look at the pictures the kidnappers sent to try to find out who might be behind the killings, he added.

"It should be possible to work out where this was developed and try to trace the kidnappers that way," he said holding out a picture of his dead nephew.

Western Elite militarism
Western Elite Terror States
Once was in Fallujah
Heading for the USA
Returning to do the same to the 'land of the free' — soon

A hooded man ' police man ' and a soldier stand outside a house during a patrol in Fallujah, May 2007.

Once was in Fallujah

Heading for the USA

Returning to do the same to the 'land of the free' — soon.

Photo: AFP/Dieter Nagl

As of December 22, 2006, Bush had used the words "unitary executive" 145 times in his signing statements and executive orders.

Yoo, one of the chief architects of Bush's doctrine of unfettered executive power, wrote memoranda advising Bush that because he was commander in chief, he could make war any time he thought there was a threat, and he didn't have to comply with the Geneva Conventions.

In a 2005 debate with Notre Dame professor Doug Cassel, Yoo argued there is no law that could prevent the President from ordering that a young child of a suspect in custody be tortured, even by crushing the child's testicles.

The unitary executive theory has already cropped up in Supreme Court opinions.

Structural advantages of unitary Executive
In his lone dissent in Hamdi v. Rumsfeld, Justice Clarence Thomas cited "the structural advantages of a unitary Executive."

He disagreed with the Court that due process demands an American citizen held in the United States as an enemy combatant be given a meaningful opportunity to contest the factual basis for that detention before a neutral decision maker.

Thomas wrote:

"Congress, to be sure, has a substantial and essential role in both foreign affairs and national security.

But it is crucial to recognize that judicial interference in these domains destroys the purpose of vesting primary responsibility in a unitary Executive."

Justice Thomas's theory fails to recognize why our Constitution provides for three co-equal branches of government.

In 1926, Justice Louis Brandeis explained the constitutional role of the separation of powers.

He wrote:

"The doctrine of the separation of powers was adopted by the convention of 1787 not to promote efficiency but to preclude the exercise of arbitrary power.

The purpose was not to avoid friction, but, by means of the inevitable friction incident to the distribution of the governmental powers among three departments, to save the people from autocracy."

Eighty years later, noted conservative Grover Norquist, describing the unitary executive theory, echoed Brandeis's sentiment.

You don't have a constitution — You have a king
Norquist said, "you don't have a constitution; you have a king."

One wonders what Bush & Co. are setting up with the new Presidential Directive.

Western Elite militarism
Western Elite Terror States
What they can do in Baquba
They can do in the 'land of the free'

slide cursor here

The grandmother of 11-year-old Mohammed Mahmoud Azzawi mourns behind the body of her grandson in a morgue in Baqouba, 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, on Saturday, June 2, 2007.

The boy and four others were killed and three wounded while inside their houses in Baquba.

They were killed and wounded by an air strike by the U.S. military in Baquba on Friday.

Abu Ghraib photo shows a man, his clothes off, being threatened by a dog.

Second photo shows the arab man prone on the floor, naked from the waist down.

He has a wound on his leg, showing the dog had bitten him.

Photo: AP

This administration has gone to great lengths to remain in Iraq.

It has built huge permanent military bases and pushed to privatize Iraq's oil.

Bush and Cheney may be unwilling to relinquish power to a successor administration.

Her new book, Cowboy Republic: Six Ways the Bush Gang Has Defied the Law, will be (is) published by PoliPointPress.

What if, heaven forbid, some sort of catastrophic event were to occur just before the 2008 election?

Bush could use this directive to suspend the election.

Marjorie Cohn, MWC News Magazine senior editor, is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law, president of the National Lawyers Guild, and the US representative to the executive committee of the American Association of Jurists.

Photo from Australian broadcaster SBS TV shows a hooded prisoner being tortured at Iraq Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad in 2004.

Picture: SBS/Ho

SBS TV shows a hooded and bound prisoner being attacked by a dog in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, during interrogation by US soldiers.

Picture: SBS/Ho

(left)	Photo from Australian broadcaster SBS TV shows a hooded prisoner being tortured at Iraq Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad in 2004.
(right)	SBS TV shows a hooded and bound prisoner being attacked by a dog in Iraq's Abu Ghraib prison in Baghdad, during interrogation by US soldiers. Photos: SBS/Ho

Photo: http://bellaciao.org/en/

Western Elite militarism
Western Elite Terror States
Western Elite War Crimes

Western Elite militarism.

Western Elite Terror States.

Condoleezza Rice addresses the permanant council of the OSCE in Vienna.

No, you really cannot make this up.

One day after sparring with Russia over missile defence and Kosovo, Rice launched a new attack against its old and newly emerging cold war foe on Thursday for a slide in democracy — as if the US elections of 2000, 2002, 2004 were not managed, and 2006, except the overwhelming numbers against the party in power made it too difficult to fix completely.

Rice reproached Spain in a visit on Friday, June 1, 2007 for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

Picture: AFP/Dieter Nagl

Grandmother cries
US airstrike kills 3 injuring many
Baquba, Iraq

The grandmother of 11-year-old Mohammed Mahmoud Azzawi mourns behind the body of her grandson in a morgue in Baqouba, ( Baquba ), 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, on Saturday, June 2, 2007.

Mohammed Azzawi is one of 3 killed after a U.S airstrike this morning in the Al-mafraq district of central Baqouba, killing 3 people and injuring five.

The air strike attacked their homes.

The people were in their houses.

Picture: AP

(left)

Condoleezza Rice addresses the permanant council of the OSCE in Vienna.

One day after sparring with Russia over missile defence and Kosovo, Rice launched a new attack against its old and newly emerging cold war foe on Thursday for a slide in democracy — as if the US elections of 2000, 2002, 2004 were not managed, and 2006, except the overwhelming numbers against the party in power made it too difficult to fix completely.

Rice reproached Spain in a visit on Friday, June 1, 2007 for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

(right)

The grandmother of 11-year-old Mohammed Mahmoud Azzawi mourns behind the body of her grandson in a morgue in Baqouba, ( Baquba ), 60 kilometers (35 miles) northeast of Baghdad, on Saturday, June 2, 2007.

Mohammed Azzawi is one of 3 killed after a U.S airstrike this morning in the Al-mafraq district of central Baqouba, killing 3 people and injuring five.

The US air strike attacked their homes.

Photos: AFP/Dieter Nagl, AP

Robert Scheer: Rice More Sordid Than Foley

Posted on Oct 3, 2006

By Robert Scheer

They are such liars. On Monday, a State Department spokesman conceded that then-National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice had indeed been briefed in July 2001 by George Tenet, then-director of the CIA, about the alarming potential for an Al Qaeda attack, as Bob Woodward has reported in his aptly named new book, “State of Denial.”

“I don’t remember a so-called emergency meeting,” Rice had said only hours earlier, apparently still suffering from some sort of post-9/11 amnesia that seemed to afflict her during her forced testimony to the 9/11 Commission.

The omission of this meeting from the final commission report is another example of how the Bush administration undermined the bipartisan investigation that the president had tried to prevent. Nor is it just Rice who should be challenged, for Tenet seems to have provided Woodward with details concerning the administration’s indifference to the terrorist threat that he did not share with the 9/11 Commission.

Said he needed to see her right away

In his book, Woodward described an encounter between Rice and Tenet, in a near panic about a rising flood of intelligence warnings just presented to him by top aide Cofer Black. Tenet forced an unscheduled meeting with Rice on July 10, 2001, because he wanted the Bush administration to take action immediately against Al Qaeda to disrupt a possible domestic attack.

“Tenet ... decided he and Black should go to the White House immediately. Tenet called Condoleezza Rice, then national security adviser, from the car and said he needed to see her right away...”
“He and Black hoped to convey the depth of their anxiety and get Rice to kick-start the government into immediate action.”

A mountain of evidence proves that the Bush administration did nothing of the sort.

Not remembering confirms her inattention to terror reports

Now, if Rice truly does not remember that now-confirmed meeting—which was apparently first reported in the Aug. 4, 2002, Time magazine in an article titled “Could 9/11 Have Been Prevented?” — wouldn’t that indicate she didn’t take it that seriously?

Not remembering confirms her inattention to terror reports at a time the Bush administration was already fixated on “regime change” in Iraq.

Rice is famously sharp and has an awesome memory.

Considering the trauma of 9/11 and its effects, it is inconceivable that Rice would not recall such an ominous and prescient briefing by Tenet and Black, especially after the 9/11 Commission forced her to document and review her actions in those crucial months.

We were not presented with a plan

It is, however, as she stated Monday, “incomprehensible” that she, then the national security advisor to the president and the person most clearly charged with sounding the alarm, would have ignored the threat.

But ignore it the administration did, and then later tried to lay the blame on the Clinton administration, which, Rice claimed at the 9/11 Commission hearings, lied when it said it had given the incoming White House team an action plan for fighting Al Qaeda.

“We were not presented with a plan,” Rice infamously argued under questioning from former Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.), but instead were given a memo with “a series of actionable items” describing how to tackle Al Qaeda in Afghanistan.

Such weaseling would be funny if the topic were not so serious.

But there is no way Rice can squirm out of this one, despite her impressive track record of calculated distortion on everything from Iraq’s nonexistent WMDs to the trumped-up ties between Osama bin Laden and Saddam Hussein.

Can there be any better case for turning over control of at least one branch of Congress to the opposition party so that we might finally have hearings to learn the truth of this matter, which is far more important, and sordid, than the Foley affair?

Western Elite militarism
Western Elite Terror States
Western Elite War Crimes

Western Elite militarism.

Western Elite Terror States.

The younger sister stands watching in a hospital in Baquba June 2, 2007.

The injured sisted was wounded by a US air strike

3 people were killed after a U.S airstrike attacked this morning in the Al-mafraq district of central Baqouba, five were and injured.

The air strike attacked their homes.

The people were in their houses.

Picture: REUTERS/Helmiy al-Azawi

The US air strike attacked their homes
The people were in their houses
Baquba, Iraq

(left)

The younger sister stands watching in a hospital in Baquba June 2, 2007.

The injured sisted was wounded by a US air strike

3 people were killed after a U.S airstrike attacked this morning in the Al-mafraq district of central Baqouba, five were and injured.

(right)

A mother kisses the forehead of her son in a hospital in Baquba June 2, 2007

The boy is wounded by a US air strike,

3 people were killed after a U.S airstrike attacked this morning in the Al-mafraq district of central Baqouba, five were and injured.

Photos: REUTERS/Helmiy al-Azawi

Raul Castro turns 76 June 3, 2007

Raul Castro, head of Cuba's armed forces and brother of Cuba's President Fidel Castro, attends an event in Havana March 13, 2007.

Raul Castro, who turns 76 on June 3, 2007, stepped out from the shadow of his famous elder brother Fidel Castro 10 months ago act as leader while his brother is recuperating.

Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Daut

June 1, 2007

47 Years Later in Havana
Return to Cuba

By SAUL LANDAU
I landed at Jose Marti International airport in May of 1960, 17 months after a young, bearded man and his fellow barbudos had captured control of the island and sent a hated dictator fleeing.

Musicians played a lively tune as the passengers deplaned, a young woman pushed a rum-flavored drink into my hand and I spotted a young, uniformed man with lieutenant's bars on his shoulders.

I gave him the note that Raulito Roa (of the Cuban UN delegation) had given me in New York, saying I was a young progressive writer and to provide me with help in understanding the revolution.

Cuba signs trade agreements with Vietnam General Secretary Nong Duc Manh

Cuba's acting President Raul Castro, right, and General Secretary of Vietnam's Communist Party, Nong Duc Manh, joke before a ceremony at the Revolution Palace in Havana, Friday, June 1, 2007.

Photo: AP/Javier Galeano
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

Bola de Nieve performing at Hotel Nacional where Meyer Lansky ran Mafia operations until January 1959

Richard's velocity of speech outpaced my meager comprehension of Spanish, but I did understand that "the revolution had opened the prisms of hope in the eyes of the Cuban people," and that I should wait outside the Hotel Presidente at 8 a.m. to get picked up for a trip to eastern Cuba.

I spent a few hours walking around Havana and trying to engage people in conversations.

I had a rum drink at Club Red and heard a singer called La Lupe.

I saw a sign for Bola de Nieve performing at the Hotel Nacional where Meyer Lansky ran Mafia operations until January 1959.

I saw the sign Habana Libre, flashing from the hotel that used to say Havana Hilton.

Disabled children and dolphins play
Cuba's National Aquarium has been helping children with special needs

Disabled children and their therapists play with dolphins at the Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana, Wednesday, April 11,2007.

Dolphins, sea tortoises and sea lions at Cuba's National Aquarium have been helping children with special needs, such with autism, Down Syndrome or mental retardation, increasing both their independence and sociability.

Photo: AP/Javier Galeano
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

I hadn't yet realized Santeria played a more powerful role in spiritual life of the island than the Church

I didn't hear explosions and shooting in the street, although the CIA's terrorist campaign from Florida was well underway.

I walked along the Malecon (the ocean walk), passing couples necking, others fishing.

In the morning, a jeep stopped in front of the hotel, a young man asked my name, introduced himself as Julio, grabbed my suit case and motioned for me to hop in.

I shared the ride with three Chileans back to the airport, bound for Santiago de Cuba, some 500 miles to the east.

What kind of revolution is this, I thought, filled with music and dancing in a Catholic country — I hadn't yet realized that Santeria played a more powerful role in the spiritual life of the island than the Church.

Marta, one of the Chileans, questioned Cuba's growing connection to the Soviet Union as well as the ever advancing role of the Cuban Communist Party in revolutionary decisions.

Dolphins, sea tortoises and sea lions all get into the action

Disabled children and their therapists play with dolphins at the Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana, Wednesday, April 11,2007.

Photo: AP/Javier Galeano
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

We cruised the countryside outside Santiago de Cuba seeing the revolution's new construction and slum clearance projects

In the October 1959 election for head of Cuba's National Labor council Fidel personally had stepped in to prevent the victory of David Salvador who was an outspoken anti-communist.

In the same time period, Fidel personally arrested Huber Matos, who commanded Camaguey Province.

Matos had objected to the sweeping land reforms and to the growing relationship with Moscow.

The militant anti-imperialist and anti-Yankee language of Che Guevara, for example, and Raul Castro's past links with Cuba's Communist Youth movement had provoked U.S. newspaper columnists and Congressmen alike to question Fidel's commitment to the very axioms of the Cold War: anti-Sovietism uber alles.

By June 1960, we cruised the countryside outside Santiago de Cuba and saw the revolution's new construction and slum clearance projects; I heard only praise for the Soviets from revolutionary cadre.

Marta's skepticism increased.

Cuba's National Aquarium
April, 11, 2007

A therapist shows a sea tortoise to a boy, who has Down syndrome, at the Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana, Wednesday, April 11, 2007.

Dolphins, sea tortoises and sea lions at Cuba's National Aquarium have been helping disabled children and children with special needs, such with autism, Down Syndrome or mental retardation, increasing both their independence and sociability.

Disabled children play with a sea lion at the Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana, Wednesday, April 11, 2007.

Contact helps increase independence

The contact with dolphins, sea tortoises and sea lions helps children with autism, Down syndrome or mental retardation, to increase their independence and sociability.

A disabled child watches dolphins at the Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana Friday, April 22, 2007.

Disabled child watches

Photo: AP/Hadi Mizban
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

The slum neighborhood seemed endless as we trudged through mud and slime

The Manzana de Gomez, a slum neighborhood in Santiago, seemed endless as we trudged through mud and slime, rickety shacks made of every leftover substance one could imagine on either side.

A trickling stream filled with garbage and feces wound its way through the center of the makeshift street.

One middle aged man, seemingly drunk, offered a girl, of about 13 or 14, to the Chilean men and me.

His daughter?

The Cuban guides said something harsh to him.

He laughed.

Some women seemed intent on sweeping their dirt floors; some even looked clean, with ironed dresses.

Mostly, I recall the barefoot kids, the emaciated dogs

Mostly, I recall the barefoot kids, the emaciated dogs, my sense of being inside chaos and cacophony.

It had seemed like hours of watching a live horror show. My watch indicated that we had only walked for ten minutes.

"Seen enough?" one of the guides asked.

You can not make this stuff up folks
The United States is in Spain asking that Spain use its influence to get Cuba to change its ways

You can not make this stuff up folks.

A man rides a bike carrying an iron structure on an improvised trailer at the Revolution square in Havana in January 2007.

The United States hopes that Spain will use its influence over Cuba to help change the Caribbean island and make it more like the United State, senior US official was saying Thursday May 31, 2007 in a newspaper interview.

Photo: AFP/Adalberto Roque
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

It should not be permitted for human to live like this

One of the Chilean men shook his head, his complexion slightly green.

Marta looked angry. "It should not be permitted for human to live like this," she said:

"But in Chile there are similar shantytowns.

I would imagine that almost every city in Latin America has them."

By the end of the visit Marta had become convinced that Cuba could not rely on any help from the United States, and had no option but to turn to Moscow. "But in Chile there are similar shantytowns.

"This one won't be here long," one of the Cubans pledged. "But in Chile there are similar shantytowns."

"The plans to raze it and construct new housing are well underway.

But under the old regimes no one cared to do anything about such conditions.

This is why we're showing it to you, so you'll understand why we had to make a revolution."

Western Elite militarism
Spanish cameraman killed

A U.S. tank at the entrance of the Palestine Hotel, Baghdad, May 9, 2003.

A Spanish judge decided on Thursday to press on with charges against three U.S. soldiers for killing a Spanish television cameraman while he was in the Palestine Hotel shortly after the intial attack on Iraq, denying a state appeal.

Photo: Zohra Bensemra/Reuters

No, you really cannot make this up
Rice reproaches Spain for its business contacts with Cuba, says Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.
Madrid, Spain
June 1, 2007

Rice poison is on the placard.

Demonstrators shout slogans against the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in central Madrid, June 1, 2007.

Rice reproached Spain in a visit on Friday for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

What can we say!

Rice, Bush bulldog and Uncle Tom

Rice reproached Spain in a visit on Friday for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

Western Elite militarism
Empty coffin of dead soldier driven to demonstration by father protesting illegal war

People protest at the main gate of the U.S. Coast Guard Academy in New London, Conn., Wednesday, May 23, 2007, as Bush arrives.

An empty coffin of US Marine Lance Cpl. Alexander S. Arrendondo, slain in Iraq in 2004, was driven to the demonstration by his father Carlos.

Photo: AP/George Ruhe

US paid for insanity
Notice the surrounding US taxpayers give him

US paid for insanity.

Bush walks on the South Lawn of the White House Washington, DC. May 23, 2007

Photo: AFP/Saul Loeb

The jeep took us about a thousand feet up into the Sierra Maestra where the guerrillas successfully operated for two years between late December 1956 and their successful capture of the island in January 1959.

I asked Julio how a few hundred men could possibly have defeated an army that numbered some fifty thousand.

He smiled.

"We had will, determination, the cooperation of a large underground organization and the vast majority of the people.

The Batista government had no support, except from Washington.

They not only tortured and murdered; they did nothing for the people.

Look around.

Moreover, Cuba's institutions did not function, which made it ripe for revolution."

The villages we saw had neither electricity nor running water.

Kids ran barefoot.

I saw no school or a church in most of the villages.

In two, I noticed a crude, hand painted sign: "El Dios se encuentra aqui. (God is here)"

"Protestants," explained our guide.

"Some kind of primitive religion," said Julio.

The sun seemed to toast the ground.

The villages had no electricity or running water.

The thatched-roof houses, bohios, had existed even before Columbus, one guide asserted.

I didn't ask how he knew.

The rocky dirt roads worsened as we climbed.

Patches of corn and malanga, clusters of coffee trees and unhealthy farm animals dotted the landscape.

The villagers filled sacks with ripe coffee beans, loaded them on burros and brought them down the dirt roads to market.

Saul Landau www.counterpunch.org June 1, 2007

Madrid
Spain
June 1, 2007

US paid for insanity.

A woman holds a poster saying ' Oil war, No ' during a protest against the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in central Madrid, June 1, 2007.

Rice reproached Spain in a visit on Friday for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

US government says yes to torture.

Western Elite Terror States
Western Elite militarism
Canberra, Australia

Protesters against the torture taking place at Guantanamo including former Guantanamo detainee Mamdouh Habib (R), march from Parliament House to the U.S. embassy in Canberra, February 6, 2007.

A US military prosecutor on Thursday rejected the charge that Australian David Hicks pleaded guilty to a terrorism charge just to win his release from the Guantanamo detention camp.

The US Supreme Court has decided dozens of Guantanamo Bay prisoners have no right to challenge their detention in federal court, handing the Bush administration a major 'victory' for its 'war on terror'.

Extreme horror.

Most are forced to undergo daily force-feedings at the hands of their U.S. captors — an often brutal and dehumanizing process that lawyers and human rights advocates say is meant to make detainees suffer more.

According to 'Cruel and Inhuman: Conditions of Isolation for Detainees at Guantánamo Bay,' a report released earlier this month by Amnesty International, the situation inside Guantanamo is actually becoming worse for detainees — particularly the approximately 160 (out of a total of 385) detainees who are thought to be housed at Camp 6.

Photo: Stringer/Reuters

47 Years Later in Havana
— Return to Cuba

By SAUL LANDAU

D ark-skinned peasants, in dirty yellowish hats and weathered faces waved or nodded as we passed their caravans of animals with jingling bells on their necks.

Often the men rode on horseback; their wives — I presumed — walked next to them.

"Seen enough?" Julio asked, as one Chilean complained of physical discomfort — kidney exercise in the jeep.

I tried to imagine Fidel and his bearded men disembarking to face an ambush, cries of betrayal amidst rifle and machine gun fire
Then the guides brought us to the place near Manzanillo where the yacht Granma landed in early December 1956.

Western Elite militarism
Western Elite Terror States
Madrid, Spain

Spanish police try to unchain demonstrators dressed as Guantanamo prisoners during a protest against the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in central Madrid, June 1, 2007.

Rice reproached Spain in a visit on Friday for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

Photo: REUTERS/Andrea Comas
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

I tried to imagine Fidel and his bearded men disembarking to face an ambush, cries of betrayal amidst rifle and machine gun fire, the sight and smell of human blood on the road lined with white shelled crabs, crawling to and from the swampy grasses on either side of the road.

Fidel and a small group of sick, wounded and exhausted guerrillas somehow escaped and climbed to the high points of the nearby mountains.

One of the guides told us of Fidel peering across the island and commenting to the weary survivors: "The days of the dictatorship are numbered."

As we drove downhill, I wondered whether President Eisenhower, who had supposedly authorized the CIA to organize anti-Castro Cuban exiles to in the near future invade the island and overthrow the revolutionary government, had any idea of the already living legend he would be facing.

Plans to redistribute wealth to and make investment in the impoverished countryside
Julio talked of plans to redistribute wealth to and make investment in the impoverished countryside.

The revolutionaries had already expropriated large estates and many other businesses, including major U.S. companies.

Shortly after I returned to Havana, in July 1960, Fidel took over the U.S.-owned oil refineries, which had refused on orders from Washington to refine imported Soviet oil.

Eisenhower retaliated by cutting the Cuban sugar quota, depriving Cuba of badly needed cash and credit as well.

Walking from the bus to the Tropicana to hear a jazz combo, we ran into Guillermo Cabrera Infante, then editor of Lunes de Revolucion, the cultural supplement of Revolution, the government's newspaper, and passed a demonstration denouncing Ike.

"Sin cuota pero sin amo" read the placards carried by chanting marchers.

Cabrera Infante sneered: "Sin cuota pero sin ano."

(Without a quota but without an ass).

I chuckled at his wit.

Rice, US Dollars
and Torture

Rice, US Dollars and Torture.

Demonstrators dressed as Guantanamo prisoners stage a protest against the visit of U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice in central Madrid, June 1, 2007.

Rice reproached Spain in a visit on Friday for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

Photo: REUTERS/Andrea Comas
Image inserted by TheWE.biz

I also feared both slogans might be right.

(Lunes de Revolucion was closed in 1961. Cabrera Infante served as Cuba's cultural attaché in Belgium. He defected in 1964 and in England wrote several acclaimed novels before his death.)

When I left Cuba in February 1961 I saw young men hoisting four barreled anti aircraft guns onto the roof of the lobby of the Hotel Riviera.

Others planted dynamite under bridges.

All of Cuba awaited the U.S.-backed invasion that finally came in April 1961 at the Bay of Pigs.

When the battle ended, Cuba had symbolically lost its boss and still had its ass.

Over the next decades it struggled to keep it.

Boy buys bread at Agro (farmers market)
March 1962, Cuba guarantee citizens a basic amount of food at low prices
Havana
June 1, 2007

A boy walks after buying some bread at a farmer market, known as 'agro', in Havana, Saturday May 26, 2007.

Cuba's universal ration was launched in March 1962 to guarantee citizens a basic amount of food at low prices.

Rice reproached Spain in a visit on Friday for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

Ricardo Alarcon (L), president of Cuba's National Assembly, shakes hands with Rosa DeLauro, member of the U.S. congress in Havana May 29, 2007.

I would look that way also if I were a member of the U.S. congress visiting Cuba, May 29, 2007
No, you really cannot make this stuff up.
Rice is in Spain two days later reproaching Spain for its business contacts with Cuba, saying Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing

Rice is in Spain Friday, June 1, 2007 reproaching Spain for its business contacts with Cuba, and said Spain should be killing more Afghanistan people as the United States is doing.

Therapist Yenia Exposito kisses a dolphin as Dianis Perez, who has Down syndrome, looks on at the Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana Wednesday, April 11, 2007.

Kisses Dolphin

The contact with dolphins, sea tortoises and sea lions helps children with autism, Down syndrome or mental retardation, to increase their independence and sociability.

Therapist Daniel SanPedro and disabled children play with a dolphin at the Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana, Wednesday, April 11, 2007.

The contact with dolphins, sea tortoises and sea lions helps children with autism, Down syndrome or mental retardation, to increase their independence and sociability.

Therapist Madelen Fernandez and a disabled child swim with a dolphin at the Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana, Wednesday, April 11, 2007.

Ecuador's Vice President Lenin Moreno (C) tours Old Havana during his official visit to Cuba May 27, 2007.

Ecuador's Vice President Lenin Moreno tours Old Havana during his official visit to Cuba May 27, 2007

Photo: REUTERS/Claudia Daut

Three-year-old David Roman, who has Down syndrome, plays with a sea lion at the Cuba's National Aquarium in Havana, Thursday, May 17, 2007.