The Secret Government PBS 1987 Bill Moyers

Crimes of the government

RT Interview on UNGA

http://dl.dropbox.com/u/61994337/ulrich.asf

The Moslem World’s Rage; Justified or Misplaced?

Media outlets are abuzz with news of the Moslem world’s rage over the release of the provocative film “Innocence of Moslems”.  Pundits are quick to condemn the protests across 20 nations, and the gullible and callous citizens of the “West”, mimicking pundits who are paid to mislead and misinform,  are placing the blame on the aggrieved Moslem community – they simply don’t understand how “free speech” works in America.  But those who are not intellectually blind see a different reality – the fallacy of free speech.   

There is a precedent to curbing free speech when deemed harmful.  In a landmark Supreme Court hearing -- Schenck v. United States, 249 U.S. 47 (1919), the actions of Schenck, an anti-war individual who had printed and distributed leaflets in order to  discourage enlisting servicemen, was not afforded protection under the First Amendment.   The issue before the court was whether Schenck's actions (words, expression) were protected by the free speech clause of the First Amendment.   The Court ruled:

 "The most stringent protection of free speech would not protect a man in falsely shouting fire in a theatre and causing panic.” Holmes argued that “The question in every case is whether the words used are used in such circumstances and are of such nature as to create a clear and present danger that they will bring about the substantive evils that Congress has a right to prevent.”

Since the events of  9/11, the whole Moslem community has been engulfed in panic, death, and destruction through such provocative expressions of “free speech”.    The United States government, in defiance of this  precedent has decided not to prevent such “substantive evils”.    

The desecration of the Koran in 2002 by Guantanamo prison guards revealed in 2005, caused riots globally and took the lives of 15 people.   The lack of inaction by the authorities may have given Florida pastor Terry Jones reason to be encouraged and to burn a Koran on March 20, 2011.  Pictures which were posted on his church’s website.    Shortly thereafter, protests broke out in Afghanistan where a U.N. building was attacked and 12 people killed.   The government inaction continued.  As such, it did not come as a surprise that in February 2012,  US forces in Afghanistan burnt copies of Korans at U.S. bases.   Angry protests ensued resulting in 30 deaths.  There were no criminal charges against the troops, only unspecified administrative punishment.

While the First Amendment enabled insults to be hurled at Moslems, Moslems living in the United States were deprived of “free speech”.  Moslem students at California State University in Irvine (UCI) were suspended for a year for interrupting the speech of the Israeli Ambassador to the U.S., Michael Oren.  The same state allowed the censorship of professors who spoke out against the bombing of Gaza and slaughtering of the Palestinians (see link).         

On October 16, 2004, President George W.  Bush signed the Israel Lobby's bill, the Global Anti-Semitism Review Act. This legislation requires the US Department of State to monitor anti-Semitism world wide.  (It is noteworthy that 4 years later, Republican candidates ran on a platform of promoting hatred of Islam - -see HERE).   In line with policies of selective “free speech”, and in the same month that no criminal charges were brought  against troops in Afghanistan for burning Korans and urinating on Afghan corpses, August 2012, California passed a resolution  (House Resolution 35) against criticism of Israel.    What is perhaps more revealing than the Resolution itself, is the desire and the power to curb “free speech” (read Resolution).     

In light of the recent examples, is the Moslem world’s anger at the United States misplaced when clearly the United States government has the power to curb speech (the most recent case in point being the State of Georgia’s denial of KKK group's application to “Adopt a Highway”)?   Perhaps for the protestors, it is hard to understand that the President’s kill list allows  the assassination of American individuals ‘based merely on patterns of behavior”  yet he is not able to exercise power to curb speech denigrating Islam.   

Why has there been no will to put a stop to these insults and the ensuing violence?  One may never know the answer.   What is clear is that although the Moslem countries have been grossly violated, their cities bombed, their men, women, and children killed, their spirit has not been crushed.  As was brilliantly depicted in a different kind of movie -- Gillo Pontecorvo’s 1965 production of “The Battle of Algiers”, bombs and guns can crush a man’s frail body but not his resistant spirit; ideology will always prevail over bullets.

NAM Summit in Tehran - August 2012

Interview with RT

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_u2LdVi8os0

Terrorists Supported by NATO Target Syria and Algeria

Superb Global Research article by Tony Cartalucci
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32560

Terrorists Supported by NATO Target Syria and Algeria

by Tony Cartalucci

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=32560

Western policy makers admit that NATO's operations in Libya have played the primary role in emboldening Al Qaeda's AQIM faction (Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb). The Fortune 500-funded Brookings Institution's Bruce Riedel in his article, "The New Al Qaeda Menace," admits that AQIM is now heavily armed thanks to NATO's intervention in Libya, and that AQIM's base in Mali, North Africa, serves as a staging ground for terrorist activities across the entire region.

Image: NATO's intervention in Libya has resurrected listed-terrorist organization and Al Qaeda affiliate, LIFG. It had previously fought in Iraq and Afghanistan, and now has fighters, cash and weapons, all courtesy of NATO, spreading as far west as Mali, and as far east as Syria. The feared "global Caliphate" Neo-Cons have been scaring Western children with for a decade is now taking shape via US-Saudi, Israeli, and Qatari machinations, not "Islam." In fact, real Muslims have paid the highest price in fighting this real "war against Western-funded terrorism."

AQIM, like their Libyan counterparts, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) are both listed by the US State Department as "Foreign Terrorist Organizations." Likewise, both the UK Home Office (.pdf, listed as GSPC) and the UN recognize both organizations as terrorists. 

Despite this, military intervention in Libya was pursued by the West and condoned by the UN with full knowledge that the militants leading so-called "pro-democracy uprisings" were in fact merely the continuation of decades of violent terrorism carried out by Al Qaeda affiliates. The West had full knowledge of this, primarily because it was Western intelligence agencies arming and supporting these militants for the last 30 years, in Libya's case, while coddling their leaders in Washington and London.

Additionally, the US Army itself meticulously documented foreign terrorists fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan, noting that the highest percentage per capita emanated from Libya's cities of Benghazi and Darnah, the so-called "cradle" of 2011's "pro-democracy uprisings" in Libya.

What unfolded was a premeditated lie - where placard waving "activists" overnight turned into battle-hardened heavily armed, tank driving, jet flying militants waging a nationwide battle against Libyan leader, Muammar Qaddafi. In reality, it was the fruition of 30 years of covert support the West has poured into militant groups across the region - support that would not end with the fall of Qaddafi.

LIFG terrorists promptly turned both east to Syria and west to Mali beyond their borders - a logistical matter they had perfected during their operations in Iraq and Afghanistan over the past decade. LIFG commander Abdul Hakim Belhaj, as early as November 2011, arrived on the Turkish-Syrian border to provide cash, weapons, and LIFG terrorist fighters, overseen by Western intelligence along with US funding and arms laundered through Gulf Cooperative Council (GCC) members such as Qatar and Saudi Arabia. Since then Libyan militants have been confirmed to be leading entire brigades of foreign fighters inside Syria.

And as Bruce Riedel of Brookings concedes, these weapons went west to Mali as well. Algeria had feared just such a scenario unfolding with NATO's intervention in Libya - a fear now fully realized. Ironically, Riedel, in August 2011, had tried to make a case for Algeria being "next to fall" in an article titled literally, "Algeria Will Be Next to Fall."

A year ago, Riedel attempted to argue that it would be the so-called "Arab Spring" that would spread into Algeria after having taken root in neighboring Libya. He had eluded to, and it has now become abundantly clear, that by  "Arab Spring," Riedel meant, US-backed subversion, and more specifically NATO-armed Al Qaeda-brand militancy and terrorism.

With the US now openly arming, supporting, and literally "cheering" Al Qaeda in Syria, it is clear that the "War on Terror" is an unprecedented geopolitical fraud perpetuated at the cost of millions of lives destroyed and an incalculable social and economic toll. NATO, with full knowledge of the consequences is literally carving out of North Africa and the Middle East, the so-called "Caliphate" Western leaders had held over their impressionable people's heads as the impetus to perpetually wage global war. Torn from the pages of Orwell's 1984, an artificial war has been created to carry forward corporate-financier machinations both abroad and domestically. The so-called threat to Western civilization is in fact a foreign legion of Western corporate-financier interests, executing Wall Street and London's foreign policy on a global scale where and in a manner traditional Western forces cannot.

NATO's terrorist blitzkrieg across the Arab World will not end in Syria. It will continue, if allowed, into Iran, through the Caucasus Mountains and into Russia, across China's western borders, and even across Southeast Asia. The price for ignorance, apathy, and complicity in supporting the West's so-called "War on Terror" will ironically reap all the horrors and then some in reality, that were promised to us if we didn't fight this "Long War."

Our support of both the political gambits of our politicians, as well as our daily patronage of the corporate-financier interests driving this agenda have already reaped an unprecedented and still growing regional safe haven for terrorists - and as moderate secular governments continue to be undermined and toppled, we can only imagine the blowback, retaliation, and other consequences as this destructive foreign policy unfolds. To imagine that such meddling will not end up being visited back upon us, even if in the form of a false flag attack dwarfing 9/11, would be folly.

Already, we are suffering economic devastation and an increasingly stifling security apparatus at home, and as long as we capitulate to this current agenda instead of asserting a more rational one of our own, it will only get worse.


Tony Cartalucci is a frequent contributor to Global Research.  Global Research Articles by Tony Cartalucci

Interview with RT on US missile tranfer to Persian Gulf countries

There are two versions of the interview -- a full one and a shorter clip.

short clip
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=f6DcpqSdIDE
full version
http://www.rt.com/news/iran-us-missile-defense-315/

A Temple and a Mosque: Worship in America

On August 5,  a Sikh temple in Southern Wisconsin was attacked.  Six worshippers lost their lives before the gunman was killed.   There was an outbreak of condemnation – rightly so.  President Obama ordered flags at public buildings to be flown at half-staff and Mrs. Clinton called her Indian counterpart. Mitt Romney offered his prayers to the families of the victims.   Left ignored, was the burning down of a mosque in Missouri -  predictably so.  Worship in America is a political prerogative in sink with U.S. policies.  

But India and Indian Sikhs have privileges; so why were Sikh worshippers targeted?  It may well be that the perpetrator, Wade Michael Page who allegedly had links to the white supremacist movement ignored the political relations in favor of his ideology -- white supremacy,  articulated by President T. Roosevelt who said of America: “Democracy has justified itself by keeping for the white race the best portion's of the earth's surface."

Or perhaps, as CNN opined, “Sikh's "unfairly" mistaken for Muslims and targeted.” This would not be the first time, and as Public Radio International (PRI) has reported, since the events of 9/11, Sikh men have been targeted as Moslems.  Even the cordial relations with India could not prevent the perception that an Indian Sikh resembles a Moslem and fair target. 

Scapegoating Moslems had been planned as early as 1991 (see full article here).   The end of the Cold War had left neoconservatives fearful that with the demise of the Soviet Union, and the splintering of the America’s right wing faction, there would no longer be an unconditional support for a U.S.-Israel alliance.  The threat of communism was replaced with the threat of Islam.  The promotion and branding of Islam as an enemy came to fruition with the events of 9/11.

In line with this neoconservative strategy, the mainstream media in the US framed September 11 within the context of Islam, ignoring all other inquiry, including the fact that a new U.N. Human Rights Council assigned to monitor Israel was calling for an official commission to study the role neoconservatives may have played in the September 11, 2001 terrorist attacks (New York Sun[i]).   As neocon Bernard Lewis was busy teaching the concept of ‘jihad’ versus‘crusade’[ii]Moslem bashing, Moslem killing, and Mosque burning became fair game.

The strategy of demonizing Islam was so successful that in 2008 the presidential candidates centered their qualification for Office on Moslem-bashing.  Former New York mayor and the hero of 9/11, Rudy Giuliani, made the threat of 'Islamic terrorism' the centerpiece of his campaign.  Podhoretz also joined Giuliani (later he joined McCain), as did John Deady who resigned after it came out that he said the following of Giuliani: "He's got, I believe, the knowledge and the judgment to attack one of the most difficult problems in current history and that is the rise of the Muslims. Make no mistake about it, this hasn't happened for a thousand years, these people are very dedicated and they're also very, very smart in their own way. We need to keep the feet to the fire and keep pressing these people until we defeat or chase them back to their caves or, in other words, get rid of them."  Renowned Evangelical Pat Robertson gave Giuliani his endorsement[iii].
Tony Perkins, head of the Family Research Council, allegedly dissuaded contender Mike Huckabee from “reaching out” to the 'Muslim world'.   Mitt Romney, a contender in 2008 and the 2012 GOP presidential hopeful, raised eyebrows when he suggested that mosques be wire-tapped[iv].   For almost a decade, U.S. military officers were being taught to wage a ‘total war’ on Islam and target civilians.  

The Sikh Temple shooter, Wade Michael Page, a former U.S. Army veteran, is condemned for the violent and meaningless murder of innocent worshippers, but is he alone responsible for this act of insanity?  If these killing were truly a case of mistaking Sikhs as Moslems,  should those who implement seeds of hatred not be held accountable aslo? 

Who will persecute those who taught army officers to kill Moslems -  the  Commander-in-Chief hopefuls and their advisors who promoted hatred and persecution of Moslems, and the neoconservatives who planted the seeds of hatred among us?  Will their deeds be buried with Page? What of all the other hate crimes against Moslems, the burnt mosques? As Jonathan Swift said: “I never wonder to see men wicked, but I often wonder to see them not ashamed.”

---

[i] Eli Lake, “U.N. Official Calls for  Study of Neocons’ Role in 9/11”,  The New York Sun, 10 April 2008

[ii] Bernard Lewis, ‘Learning the Lingo. Jihad vs. Crusade. A Historian’s Guide to the New War’, Wall Street Journal (27 Sept. 2001).

[iii] “The Religion Card; GOP Candidates Play on anti-Muslim Sentiments”The Progressive, Biography Resource Center, USC Feb 2008

[iv] The Religion Card, Ibid.