[A-List] The Anti-Empire Report

[Bill Totten <shimogamo@xxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

Some things you need to know before the world ends

by William Blum

killinghope.org (April 06 2007)


Land of the free, home of the War on Terrorism

"They told us this was one of the world's worst terrorists, and he got the
sentence of a drunken driver", said Ben Wizner, an attorney for the American
Civil Liberties Union, referring to David Hicks, a 31-year-old Australian who 
in a plea bargain with a US military court will serve nine months in prison,
largely in Australia. That's after five years at Guanta'namo Bay, Cuba without
being charged with a crime, without a trial, without a conviction. Under the
deal, Hicks agreed not to talk to reporters for one year (a slap in the face of
free speech), to forever waive any profit from telling his story (a slap - mon
Dieu! - in the face of free enterprise), to submit to US interrogation and
testify at future US trials or international tribunals (an open invitation to
the US government to hound the young man for the rest of his life), to renounce
any claims of mistreatment or unlawful detention (a requirement which would be
unconstitutional in a civilian US court).

"If the United States were not ashamed of its conduct, it wouldn't hide behind a
gag order", said Wizner. {1}

Like so many other "terrorists" held by the United States in recent years, 
Hicks had been "sold" to the American military for a bounty offered by the US, 
a phenomenon repeated frequently in Afghanistan and Pakistan. US officials had
to know that once they offered payments to a very poor area to turn in bodies
that almost anyone was fair game.

Other "terrorists" have been turned in as reprisals for all sorts of personal
hatreds and feuds.

Many others - abroad and in the United States - have been incarcerated by 
the United States simply for working for, or merely contributing money to,
charitable organizations with alleged or real ties to a "terrorist organization",
as determined by a list kept by the State Department, a list conspicuously
political.

It was recently disclosed that an Iraqi resident of Britain is being released
from Guanta'namo after four years. His crime? He refused to work as an informer
for the CIA and MI5, the British security service. His business partner is still
being held in Guanta'namo, for the same crime. {2}

Finally, there are those many other poor souls who have been picked up simply
for being in the wrong place at the wrong time. "Most of these guys weren't
fighting. They were running", General Martin Lucenti, former deputy commander 
of Guanta'namo, has pointed out. {3}

Thousands of people thrown into hell on earth for no earthly good reason. 
The world media has been overflowing with their individual tales of horror and
sadness for five very long years.   Said Guanta'namo's former commander, General
Jay Hood: "Sometimes we just didn't get the right folks". {4}  Not that the
torture they were put through would be justified if they were in fact "the right
folks".

Hicks was taken into custody in Afghanistan in 2001. He was a convert to Islam
and like many others from many countries had gone to Afghanistan for religious
reasons, had wound up on the side of the Taliban in the civil war that had been
going on since the early 1990s, and had received military training at a Taliban
camp. The United States has insisted on calling such camps "terrorist training
camps", or "anti-American terrorist training camps", or "al-Qaeda terrorist
training camps". Almost every individual or group not in love with US foreign
policy, which Washington wants to stigmatize, is charged with being associated
with, or being a member of, al Qaeda, as if there's a precise and meaningful
distinction between people retaliating against American imperialism while being
a member of al Qaeda and retaliating against American imperialism while NOT
being a member of al Qaeda; as if al Qaeda gives out membership cards to fit
into your wallet, as if there are chapters of al Qaeda that put out a weekly
newsletter and hold a potluck on the first Monday of each month.

It should be noted that for nearly half a century much of southern Florida has
been one big training camp for anti-Castro terrorists. None of their groups -
which have carried out many hundreds of serious terrorist acts in the US as well
as abroad, including bombing a passenger airplane in flight - are on the State
Department list. Nor were the Contras of Nicaragua in the 1980s, heavily
supported by the United States, about whom former CIA Director Stansfield Turner
testified: "I believe it is irrefutable that a number of the Contras' actions
have to be characterized as terrorism, as State-supported terrorism". {5}   
The same applies to groups in Kosovo and Bosnia, with close ties to al Qaeda,
including Osama bin Laden, in the recent past, but which have allied themselves
with Washington's agenda in the former Yugoslavia since the 1990s. Now we learn
of US support for a Pakistani group, called Jundullah and led by a Taliban,
which has taken responsibility for the recent kidnapings and deaths and of 
more than a dozen Iranian soldiers and officials in cross-border attacks. {6}
Do not hold your breath waiting for the name Jundallah to appear on the State
Department list of terrorist organizations; nor any of the several other ethnic
militias being supported by the CIA to carry out terrorist bombing and
assassination attacks in Iran. {7}

The same political selectivity applies to many of the groups which are on the
list, particularly those opposed to American or Israeli policies.

Amid growing pressure from their home countries and international human rights
advocates, scores of Guanta'namo detainees have been quietly repatriated in the
past three years. Now, a new analysis by lawyers who have represented detainees
at this 21st century Devil's Island says this policy undermines Washington's own
claims about the threat posed by many of the prison camp's residents. The report,
based on US government case files for Saudi detainees sent home over the past
three years, shows inmates being systematically freed from custody within weeks
of their return. In half the cases studied, the detainees had been turned over
to US forces by Pakistani police or troops in return for financial rewards. 
Many others were accused of terrorism connections in part because their Arab
nicknames matched those found in a computer database of al-Qaeda members,
documents show.  In December, a survey by the Associated Press found that 84
percent of released detainees - 205 out of 245 individuals whose cases could 
be tracked - were set free after being released to the custody of their native
countries.

"There are certainly bad people in Guanta'namo Bay, but there are also other
cases where it's hard to understand why the people are still there", said Anant
Raut, co-author of the report, who has visited the detention camp three times.
"We were struggling to find some rationality, something to comfort us that it
wasn't just random. But we didn't find it."

The report states that many of the US attempts to link the detainees to
terrorism groups were based on evidence the authors describe as circumstantial
and "highly questionable", such as the travel routes the detainees had followed
in flying commercially from one Middle East country to another. American
officials have associated certain travel routes with al Qaeda, when in fact,
says the report, the routes "involve ordinary connecting flights in major
international airports". With regard to accusations based on similar names, 
the report states: "This accusation appears to be based upon little more than
similarities in the transliterations of a detainee's name and a name found on
one of the hard drives".

Raut said he was most struck by the high percentage of Saudi detainees who had
been captured and turned over by Pakistani forces. In effect, he said, for at
least half of the group in the study, the United States "had no first-hand
knowledge of their activities" in Afghanistan before their capture and
imprisonment. {8}

When Michael Scheuer, former CIA officer who headed the Agency's Osama bin Laden
unit, was told that the largest group in Guanta'namo came from custody in
Pakistan, he said: "We absolutely got the wrong people". {9}

Never mind. They were all treated equally. All thrown into solitary confinement.
Shackled, blindfolded, excruciating physical contortions for long periods,
denied medicine. Sensory deprivation, sleep deprivation. And two dozen other
methods of torture which American officials do not call torture. (If you torture
these officials, they might admit that it "torture lite".)

"The idea is to build an antiterrorist global environment", a senior American
defense official said in 2003, "so that in twenty to thirty years, terrorism
will be like slave-trading, completely discredited". {10}

When will the dropping of bombs on innocent civilians by the United States, 
and invading and occupying their country, without their country attacking or
threatening the US, become completely discredited? When will the use of depleted
uranium and cluster bombs and CIA torture renditions become things that even men
like George W Bush, Dick Cheney, and Donald Rumsfeld will be too embarrassed to
defend?

Australian/British journalist John Pilger has noted that in George Orwell's 1984
"three slogans dominate society: war is peace, freedom is slavery and ignorance
is strength. Today's slogan, war on terrorism, also reverses meaning. The war is
terrorism."


Throwing the earth on the mercy of the market

Al Gore appeared before a House Energy and Commerce Committee hearing on global
warming on March 21. The star of "An Inconvenient Truth" was told by Congressman
Joe Barton of Texas: "You're not just off a little - you're totally wrong". 
In the afternoon Gore testified before the Senate Environment and Public Works
Committee, during which the former vice president was told by Senator James
Inhofe of Oklahoma: "You've been so extreme in some of your expressions that
you're losing some of your own people". {11}

These members of Congress know the facts of economic life in the United States.
Fighting global warming is a threat to the principal human generator of it -
corporations - who avail themselves of the best congress members money can buy
to keep government regulations as weak as can be.

Does Al Gore know the same facts of American economic life? Of course, but you
would have a hard time discerning that from his film. It's as cowardly in
dealing with the corporations as Gore was in fighting the theft of the 2000
election. In the film's hour and a half, the words "corporations" or "profit"
are not heard. The closest he comes to ascribing a link between the rape of the
environment and the incessant corporate drive to optimize profits is a single
passing mention of American automakers' reluctance to increase car gas mileage.
He discusses the link between tobacco and lung cancer, as an example of how we
have to "connect the dots" on environmental issues, with no mention of the
tobacco corporations or their gross and deliberate deception of the American
people. He states at another point that we must choose the environment over the
economy, without any elucidation at all. Otherwise, the film's message is that
it's up to the individual to change his habits, to campaign for renewable energy,
and to write his congress member about this or that. In summary, the basic
problem, he tells us, is that we're lacking "political will".

It would be most interesting if Al Gore were the president to see how tough he'd
get with the corporations, which every day, around the clock, are faced with
choices: one method of operation available being the least harmful to the
environment, another method being the least harmful to the bottom line. Of
course, Gore was vice-president for eight years and was in a fantastic and
enviable position to pressure the corporations to mend their ways and Congress
to enact tougher regulations; as well as to educate the public on more than
their own bad habits. But what exactly did he do? Can any readers enlighten me
as to what extent the man used his position and his power then in a manner
consistent with the image and the word of his new film?

But could Gore be elected without corporate money? And how much of that money
would reach his pocket if he advocated (choke, gasp!) free government-paid
public transportation - rail, bus, ferry, et cetera? That would give birth to a
breathtaking - or rather, breath enhancing - reduction in automobile pollution;
easily paid for by ceasing America's imperialist wars.


Microsoft and the National Security Agency

I have long felt that the American media's gravest shortcoming is its errors of
omission, rather than its errors of commission. It's what they leave out that
distorts the news more than any factual errors or out-and-out lies. In January
the Washington Post reported that Microsoft had announced that its new operating
system, Vista, was being brought to us with the assistance of the National
Security Agency. The NSA said it helped to protect the operating system from
worms, Trojan horses and other insidious computer attackers. "Our intention is
to help everyone with security", said the NSA's chief of vulnerability analysis
and operations group. The spy agency, which provided its service free, said it
was Microsoft's idea to acknowledge NSA's role, although the software giant
declined to be specific about NSA's contributions to Vista. {12}

What the Post - and most likely the entirety of mainstream American media - do
not remind us of is what came out in 1999 and 2000, although it's all over the
Internet.

In September 1999, leading European investigative reporter Duncan Campbell
revealed that NSA had arranged with Microsoft to insert special "keys" into
Windows operating systems, beginning with Windows 95. An American computer
scientist, Andrew Fernandez of Cryptonym in North Carolina, had disassembled
parts of the Windows instruction code and found the smoking gun - Microsoft's
developers had failed to remove the debugging symbols used to test this software
before they released it. Inside the code were the labels for two keys. One was
called "KEY". The other was called "NSAKEY". Fernandez presented his finding at
a conference at which some Windows developers were also in attendance. The
developers did not deny that the NSA key was built into their software, but they
refused to talk about what the key did, or why it had been put there without
users' knowledge. Fernandez says that NSA's "back door" in the world's most
commonly used operating system makes it "orders of magnitude easier for the US
government to access your computer". {13}

In February 2000, it was disclosed that the Strategic Affairs Delegation (DAS),
the intelligence arm of the French Defense Ministry, had prepared a report in
1999 which also asserted that NSA had helped to install secret programs in
Microsoft software. According to the DAS report, "it would seem that the
creation of Microsoft was largely supported, not least financially, by the NSA,
and that IBM was made to accept the (Microsoft) MS-DOS operating system by the
same administration". The report stated that there had been a "strong suspicion
of a lack of security fed by insistent rumours about the existence of spy
programmes on Microsoft, and by the presence of NSA personnel in Bill Gates'
development teams". Microsoft categorically denied all the charges and the
French Defense Ministry said that it did not necessarily stand by the report,
which was written by "outside experts". {14}

In case the above disturbs your image of Bill Gates and his buddies as a bunch
of long-haired, liberal, peacenik computer geeks, and the company as one of the
non-military-oriented halfway decent corporations, the DAS report states that
the Pentagon at the time was Microsoft's biggest client in the world. The
Israeli military has also been an important client. In 2002, the company erected
enormous billboards in Israel which bore the Microsoft logo under the text "From
the depth of our heart - thanks to The Israeli Defense Forces", with the Israeli
national flag in the background. {15}


The Myth of the Good War

Readers of this report will be aware that one of the points I try very hard to
convey is that the reason so many Americans support US atrocities abroad is that
they're convinced that no matter how bad things may look, the government means
well. American leaders may make mistakes, they may blunder, they may lie, they
may even on the odd occasion cause more harm than good, but they do mean well.
Their intentions are honorable. Of that most Americans are certain. And one of
the foundation stones for this edifice of patriotic faith is the Second World
War, an historical saga that all Americans are taught about from childhood on.
We all know what its real name is: "The Good War".

Which leads me to recommend a book, "The Myth of the Good War", by Jacques
Pauwels, published in 2002. It's very well done, well argued and documented, an
easy read. I particularly like the sections dealing with the closing months of
the European campaign, during which the United States and Great Britain
contemplated stabbing their Soviet ally in the back with maneuvers like a
separate peace with Germany, using German troops to fight the Russians, and
sabotaging legal attempts by various Communist Parties and other elements of the
European left to share in (highly earned) political power after the war. This
last piece of sabotage was of course very effectively realized. Stalin learned
enough about these schemes to at least partially explain his post-war suspicious
manner toward his "allies". In the West we called it "paranoia". {16}


NOTES

{1} Seattle Times, March 31 2007

{2} Washington Post, March 30 2007, page 11

{3} Financial Times (London), October 4 2004

{4} Wall Street Journal, January 26 2005

{5} Testimony before the House Subcommittee on Western Hemisphere Affairs, 
April 16 1985

{6} ABC News, April 3 2007

{7} Sunday Telegraph (London), February 25 2007

{8} Washington Post, March 18 2007

{9} Richard Ackland, "Innocence ignored at Guantanamo", 
Sydney Morning Herald, February 24 2006.

{10} New York Times, January 17 2003, page 10

{11} Washington Post, March 22 2007, page 2

{12} Washington Post, January 9 2007, page D1

{13} Duncan Campbell's article of September 3 1999 can be found on the website
of TechWeb: http://www.techweb.com/wire/29110640

{14} Agence France Presse, February 18 and 21 2000

{15} To see one of the billboards: www.inminds.co.uk/boycott-news-0022.html

{16} http://www.alys.be/pauwels/2publi_the_myth.htm
Available in English, Spanish, French, German, Italian, and Dutch editions



William Blum is the author of:-

Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventions Since World War 2 
(Common Courage Press, 1995)

Rogue State: A Guide to the World's Only Superpower (Zed Books, 2002)

West-Bloc Dissident: A Cold War Memoir (Soft Skull Press, 2002)

Freeing the World to Death: Essays on the American Empire 
(Common Courage Press, 2004)


Portions of the books can be read, and copies purchased, at
http://www.killinghope.org and previous Anti-Empire Reports can be read at this
website.

To add yourself to this mailing list simply send an email to bblum6@xxxxxxx 
with "add" in the subject line. I'd like your name and city in the message, but
that's optional. I ask for your city only in case I'll be speaking in your area.

Or put "remove" in the subject line to do the opposite.

Any part of this report may be disseminated without permission. I'd appreciate
it if the website were mentioned.

http://killinghope.org/aer44.htm


http://www.billtotten.blogspot.com
http://www.ashisuto.co.jp