Jaraparilla: Lessons of History: The #CIA In #Australia
via @PamelaDrew
I am reposting the article below from the American Buddha website, partly because it’s impossible to read there (yellow text on red background wtf?) but also because it’s an excellent summary of US meddling in Australian politics over the past 50 years or more.
If you are puzzled by the Australian government’s demonisation of WikiLeaks and total abandonment of Julian Assange, perhaps this will help explain it. If you notice any inaccurate information or outdated facts, please advise - it looks pretty solid to me.
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#Drone Documents: Why The #US Government Won’t Release Them
by Cora Currier, June 25, 2012
The covert U.S. effort to strike terrorist leaders using drones has moved further out of the shadows this year — targeted killing has been mentioned by President Obama and defended in speeches by Attorney General Eric Holder and Obama counterterrorism adviser John Brennan. The White House recently declassified the fact that it is conducting military operations in Yemen and Somalia.
But for all the talk, the administration says it hasn’t officially confirmed particular strikes or the CIA’s involvement.
Over the past year, the American Civil Liberties Union and reporters at The New York Times have filed several requests under the Freedom of Information Act seeking information about the CIA’s drone program and the legal justification for attacks that killed terrorists and U.S. citizens. The government answered with a Glomar response — neither verifying nor denying that it has such documents.
So both the Times and the ACLU sued, claiming that there is widespread acknowledgement by government officials of drones and targeted killing, as well as the CIA’s involvement.
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Drone Documents: Why The Government Won’t Release Them - ProPublica
Unconfirmed: #CIA recruited 6,000 Arab militants to fight in #Syria? #wagthedog #blackops
I’m getting reports saying that Bulent Aslanoglu, the VP of the Turkish Labor Party, confirmed the rumors that claimed the CIA has recruited 6,000 Arab militants to fight in Syria.
This comes a day after the NYT revealed the CIA is regulating arms trade in Syria/Turkey.
Note: I’ll be keeping an eye out for news on this.
(via cultureofresistance)
CIA ‘should pay for Nazi-like Poland prison’
02 April, 2012, via @PamelaDrew
The smoldering scandal around an alleged CIA secret prison in Poland has exploded again, as charges have been brought against the country’s former intelligence chief for allowing the site. For years, Poland’s top officials denied the prison existed.
Former U.S. president George W. Bush stipulated that important prisoners should be interrogated in a special way, which implied having a secure place to do so. The Polish facility was one of these, former CIA officer Raymond McGovern, who followed the story for years, told RT.
“How it came to be? Of course, there was probably some money that passed hands,” McGovern said, adding that he will be very interested in the results of the investigation to see how much the head of Polish intelligence was able to gain from the venture.
“This is the kind of thing the Nazis did in WWII,” McGovern stated.
The practice of harsh interrogation techniques has often come under fire in the last few years. While President Bush insisted it helps to prevent terror acts, U.S. Army intelligence suggests that “no good information is ever made available through harsh interrogation techniques”, McGovern quotes.
“Everyone knows torture does not give reliable information,” the former CIA officer stressed, “if you want unreliable information – torture works like a charm.”
“If you want to “prove” that Saddam Hussein had ties with Al Qaeda and cannot do it yourself – give those people over to the Egyptians, they know how to make people “confess”,” McGovern said, explaining that this was how the information was obtained about Saddam Hussein being somehow related to 9/11.
Obviously, it was not only Polish secret service that violated the law. The CIA agents interrogating prisoners are also guilty, and should be held accountable for their actions, McGovern said.
He stresses that since the Nuremberg Trials, “I was only following orders” has not been a good enough excuse.
“That does not work, ok? Nuremberg says that does not work,” McGovern stated.
“Accountability is a noun that has been missing from the vocabulary of Washington officials and even jurists. If the Poles can do this – maybe we can all do this,” he concluded.
The former CIA officer also told RT that the extraordinary rendition programs of the US are a “puzzle”.
“The US administration has asserted the right to do rendition, but I have no indication that the kind of abuses that happened under the Cheney/Bush regime are continuing anywhere else in the world,” McGovern acknowledged.
Note Anonymiss Express: “Should Pay” … Hmmm, I don’t think paying it off will work. Change it for starters, then give a genuine unconditional apology, and ask what you can do to make amends, if at all still possible. Of course the CIA and US govt can also choose to stay on the spiral and have things escalate further, which will require even more suppression and oppression and war, and that will become harder and harder as more people are becoming aware of the military-industrial-complex and how it doesn’t serve them, and of what’s being done to other humans in their name.
WikiLeaked: Ex-Blackwater ‘helps regime change’ in Syria
21 March, 2012
A US government-contracted private security firm is helping the Syrian opposition to overthrow the Bashar al-Assad regime, leaked Stratfor emails indicate. The same firm earlier operated extensively in Libya.
The private military company SCG International had been contracted to engage the Turkey-based Syrian opposition, according to correspondence released by WikiLeaks.
Their assignment was called a “fact finding mission”, but “the true mission is how they can help in regime change,”an email addressed to Stratfor VP for counter-terrorism Fred Burton says.
The source reporting the info is most reliable – it is SCG Chief Executive James F. Smith, who used to be director of notorious company Blackwater, now known as Academi. In a separate message Smith introduces himself to Stratfor as having background in CIA and heading a company “comprised of former DOD, CIA and former law enforcement personnel.”
SCG’s mission with the Syrian opposition is said to have “air cover from Congresswoman [Sue] Myrick,” a Republican lawmaker from North Carolina, who is a member of the US House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence. The body is charged with overseeing the American intelligence community.
The email adds that Smith “intends to offer his services to help protect the opposition members, like he had underway in Libya.”
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More information
Syria Uprising: Mossad, Blackwater And CIA ‘Led Operations In Homs’, 7 Mar 2012 Huffington post
March 8:
Mossad CIA and Blackwater involved in Syria, 12 Mar 2012, moral outrage
Former CIA Officer Michael Scheuer on the Economics of War with Iran
Does the US imperial machine manufacture weapons in order to confront new threats, or does it manufacture threats in order to sell new weapons? We try to answer that questions and more on today’s Capital Account with ex-CIA agent Michael Scheuer as the UN security council votes to extend its mission in libya, and as America’s oldest active duty warship leaves for its last deployment to Iran and Syria. We look at the economics of war and ask Michael Scheuer what he thinks is at stake for America if it were to attack Iran and what he thinks is really driving the policy to bomb that country. What are the malign interests at work here, and who really stands to benefit from an attack on Iran? What is Israel’s role in all of this, and what is the likelihood that an attack would put the US at greater risk of a terrorist attack?
And as the US budget deficit is released for february at close to 232 billion dollars, reportedly the highest ever, how can anyone with half a brain separate America’s growing indebtedness from a bloated military budget that takes up more than 50% of discretionary spending. We’ll look at defense’s drain on the American economy. Could this money be better spend elsewhere, and who really benefits from our military and oil subsidies?
And though few may be aware of it, today is reportedly the 10th anniversary of the US anti-terror color-coding system. Remember that? It was phased out last year, but now, there’s a new warning system that is being tried out. We dub it “Terror Warning System 2.0,” and it features a very special actor — Nicholas Cage — who the government thinks could help raise the bar when it comes to “fear and loathing” in the heartland. We cover this with Demetri, Lauren and Shannon in our “Loose Change” segment.
(by CapitalAccount)
Targeted Killing #Drone Strikes: Secret or Not? The Government Wants It Both Ways
Posted by Nathan Freed Wessler, National Security Project, via @TyphonMind
Today was the first court hearing in our Freedom of Information Act lawsuit demanding information about the government’s targeted killing program, including the legal rationale and evidentiary basis for the targeted killings of three U.S. citizens in Yemen last year. The government has told the ACLU—and the court—that its targeted killing program is so secret that it can’t even acknowledge that it exists. Today we explained to the judge that the government’s position is untenable because officials have repeatedly discussed the program in both attributed and anonymous statements to the press.
In response to the ACLU’s FOIA request, the government refused to confirm or deny whether it has any records about the CIA’s targeted killing program or about a Justice Department memo that provided legal justification for targeting and killing Anwar al-Awlaki, a U.S. citizen born in New Mexico. Yet the government has the chutzpah to sing the praises of the targeted killing program when it thinks doing so will advance its agenda, while insisting that it can’t talk about the program in front of a federal judge. To be clear, our complaint is not that the government is disclosing information to the press. Indeed, we wish it would disclose more. Our complaint is simply that the government should not be permitted to declare in court that discussing a program would jeopardize national security when it has disclosed the same program to the public.
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