Seems like when the CIA wanted folks killed, they just outsourced it to the private sector.

This is how it starts folks–private contractors come in and do your empire building for you and the next thing you know, some dude with an Indian accent is asking what foreign leader you want to axed next.

OK, so it probably won’t happen exactly like that, but the Blackwater story will continue to flow downstream just like it has been for years now. Independent journalist Jeremy Scahill has been going after them for many trips around the sun and even wrote a book about them. And here comes the Christian Science Monitor and CNN (see: the screencaps in this post, sources: here and here), both mainstream news sources that reported on not just Blackwater but Blackwater getting hired to kill folks for the CIA. This isn’t the first time the guys from DarkH2O have been in the MSM, either. They’ve gotten press for “possible” massacres, random killings and maybe you remember those “contractors” who got pulled from their SUV outside Fallujah, killed, set on fire and hung from a bridge? Yeah, those dudes were Blackwaterians.

Gee, what would have made Fallujans mad enough be that horrible to a couple of guys in an SUV?

Regardless, nothing they’ve done stops Blackwater from existing and I believe they’re still doing things for the USG, too. If memory serves there were even Blackwater guys on the ground in New Orleans after Katrina.

How can any of this be legal? It’s like the Federal Reserve only with guns. How do you expect your senators and/or House reps to control what this armed corporation does in our names? It’s not like you or I can just vote Eric Prince, CEO of Blackwater, out of office anymore than we can vote out Ben Bernanke as the guy running the Fed.

More and more keeps coming up about Blackwater (really scary stuff, too) and yet no one seems to do anything about it.

Neat.

Want to learn more about Blackwater? Read Scahill’s book or at the very least visit his website: RebelReports.com. He’s also on Twitter.

OH and in case you’re curious, Blackwater changed it’s name to Xe Services…

…and then changed it again to US Training Center. At least, you end up at the US Training Center website when you aim your browser at: BlackwaterUSA.com.

Yeah, they’re having some issues with their image lately. Can’t imagine why…

Arab states in the U.N. nuclear assembly on Friday won narrow approval of a resolution urging Israel to put all its atomic sites under U.N. inspection and join the Non-Proliferation Treaty.

The Jewish state deplored the measure for singling it out while many of its Islamic neighbors remained hostile to its existence, and said it would not cooperate with it.

Sheesh–how dare the UN take issue with Israel’s nukes!! How else can Israel threaten retribution against other countries??

“You wanna invade? You wanna invade? Oh, I’ll give you an invasion!… with RADIATION!!”

Wait. Was that just an Italian stereotype or a Jewish one?

Like there’s really a difference–the point I’m trying to sarcastically make here is that clearly, Israel needs it’s nukes to protect them against…

…against…

uh…

Who again?

Those Palestinian folks who blow themselves up in pizzerias?

Or the loud-mouthed Arabs who whine endlessly about how the Holocaust never happened?

Why the hell does anyone need nukes, by the way?

I have no problem with Israel existing–I just don’t understand why they get so much preferential treatment (and nukes). I’m not saying the US shouldn’t help them out should they get in trouble, but this whole thing with them and their nukes–it makes no sense to me.

First, they haven’t really admitted to having nukes.

Second, no one else in the area has nukes. (Let’s grow up kids, Iran doesn’t have nukes and keeps insisting they only want nuke power not nuke weapons–it’s not fair to assume they are lying without some sort of ACTUAL proof.)

Third, if ANYone does ANYthing to Israel, America will pounce immediately. None of that waiting months to invade Afghanistan or years to invade Iraq after 911. When Israel gets attacked, we’ll jump so fast.

And that’s fine with me. If we find ACTUAL evidence that Iran or any of the Arab nations on Israel’s block have nuke weapons, then I don’t mind moving sooner.

But until then, I think all countries should be as transparent as possible with their nukes–especially if we (and Israel) expect other countries to give into inspections.

That’s a photo my parents took of me and my little brother (I’m the cuter one on the left) sitting in front of The WTC Sphere sculpture as it originally stood, in between the Twin Towers. I’m guessing it had to be taken in the mid-to-early 1980s since my little brother is still shorter than me in this image (he’s really my step-brother and today towers over me by several inches).

A few decades later, while my wife and I walked past the site where that picture was taken, now a big hole in the ground surrounded by blue fencing, I looked for the memorial spotlights the City of New York had been using to commemorate the victims. In years past, I had heard that they were placed in the hole. However, they weren’t there on this September 11th. They were on, but several blocks south.

My wife suggested that perhaps they were moved to avoid getting in the way of construction of the permanent memorial. I replied:

“What construction?”

Politics and miscellaneous city-BS has kept anything else from being built on the spot over the last eight years. This is absolutely fine with me, since I’ve always felt that the spotlights were the perfect homage to the victims of the September 11, 2001 attacks on the WTC. Poetic, haunting, somber, and practically impossible to exploit for a quick buck. They’re actually suggesting that shopping areas be included in the memorial in some capacity.

I say we pave over the whole thing and leave the spotlights in place, year-round. Have a gift shop and a non-profit org to pay for the electricity that the spotlights use. Hell, we could even take
donations to set up solar panels to gather energy in the day to power the spotlights at night.

I used to think that Ground Zero should just have another pair of
towers built on it and let a bunch of businesses set up shop inside. My idea was that we’d be showing the terrorists that they haven’t won.

The problem is, they did win.

Ground Zero, to me, is a tomb stone, not just for the 2752 people who were killed thanks to the attacks, but for the countless number of people who have died because of how America reacted to the attacks–American soldiers, Iraqis and Afghanis who have died because of the wars we were so convinced were necessary after we were attacked by a handful of rag-tag loser-extremists who got very lucky that day.

Let the lights stay.

Let them serve as an eternal flashlight on ourselves and our decisions in the days, weeks, months and years following that horrible day in September.

We need anything but “business as usual.”

Yes, this is actually GOOD news. BBC news reported today that the Pentagon has
decided to "grant" Afghan prisoners at Baghram the right to challlenge their detention. Here is a short cutting from the BBC News article:

US defence department spokesman Bryan Whitman said inmates would be allowed to go before a panel "periodically" to contest their detention, reports AFP.

Huh, that sounds like the right of Habeus Corpus–the right for any detained person to see the body (corpus) of evidence brought before them. It’s one of the oldest "unalienable" rights guaranteed man, existing long before the US Constituion which, I believe, also guarantees it (which says to me the Pentagon is likely in violation of international law by not guaranteeing it).

So while this BBC News article and the Pentagon call this a "new" right that’s been "granted" to these prisoners, you should note that this is one of the oldest rights in the book and that the right isn’t being "granted," but "returned." You should also note that in order for the Pentagon to "return" something they must first "take it away."

Here’s the fun little ironic cherry on top, though–check out another cutting from the Beeb News article:

Mr Whitman added that it was a process the US had used in Iraq.

It helped US officials there "manage the detainee population and ultimately reduce the detainee population by ensuring that we are only holding those that are the most dangerous threats," he said.

So, basically, if the Pentagon had been doing this all along it would have helped them run their prison better.

Don’t these people THINK before they do anything?

UPDATE 9/14/9 4:31 EDT: Today’s Democracy Now points out why the prisoners aren’t even getting full Habeus Corpus back–it turns out the prisoners don’t get lawyers–they just get a US military official who, in theory, will help each prisoner “gather witnesses and evidence, including classified material, on behalf of the prisoners to challenge their detention in proceedings before a military-appointed review board.”

Well, it’s still an improvement.

So, here’s what Greenwald found was done in our name, to keep us “safe,” and to preserve our wonderful freedom:

Threats of execution (img)
Threats to kill detainee and his children (img)
Threats to rape detainee’s female relatives in front of him (img)
“Buttstroking” with rifles and knee kicks (img)
Blowing smoke in detainee’s face for five minutes (img)
More “convincing and poignant” waterboarding of the type we prosecuted Japanese war criminals for using (img)

You can click each of those to see scans of the pages of the report that match up with the type of torture to read some of the details. Unfortunately, too many of the details have been redacted by the USG, but hey, at least we know for sure that this definitely happened. The government admitted it did these things and they all sound illegal to me.

Don’t think they’re that bad? Well, Greenwald adds:

The IG Report also documents numerous other abuses that have been documented by prior OLC memos, including having waterboarded detainees 82 and 183 times; hanging them by their arms until interrogators thought their shoulders might be dislocated; stepping on their ankle shackles to cause severe bruising and pain; putting them in a diapers and leaving them doused with water on cold concrete floors in cold temperatures to induce hypothermia, etc. Some of the numerous deaths of detainees during interrogations were also discussed (for details on detainee deaths, see here and here). After documenting all of that, the IG Report notes:

(img)

Yeah, so this stuff is all wrong. There has been no declaration of war against the country of Al Qeada, so we can’t treat them as POWs and even if we could, we’d be forced to treat them better than this. These people are just that–people. They deserve a fair trial and every other right promised every human on the planet in the US Constitution. Just because we don’t like them doesn’t mean they stop being human. But if we do this stuff, it’s we who stop being human.

Firstly, we still don’t have bin Laden. Two wars, over a trillion dollars, countless dead and eight years later, we STILL haven’t caught the guy the USG says was behind the 911 attacks.

Secondly, the FBI has YET to update bin Laden’s “FBI’s Most Wanted” page to reflect his suspicion in the attacks of eight years ago today.

Thirdly, we still have combat troops in both Iraq and Afghanistan where democracy has yet to take hold (let’s be honest, folks).

Fourth, we still have huge problems at home , the failing economy, high-priced health care, cancer and climate change all seem like bigger threats to our lives than terrorism could ever be, yet we still spend an awful lot on the military in both money and men.

Some other things to consider:

My attack on People Magazine featuring scans of People’s 911 memorial issue which included print ads for things like Tide clothing detergent, V-8, and life insurance, opposite pictures of survivors being rescued from the rubble of the Twin Towers. Yeah, class act. Nice to see corporations have changed a lot since then–oh wait–they haven’t. SIGH…

My previous 911 memorial blog posts (some of the links may be broken):

2008: The Only 911 Memorial We Have
2008: 911 Memorial Post: Osama bin Laden in Custody (SIKE!)
2007: 911 MEMORIAL POST: BIN LADEN STILL FUGITIVE
2006: Happy 911 Day
2005: 300 IN AL QAEDA?
2004: MEMORIAL POST TO 911 VICTIMS
2002: MY 911 TRIBUTE

After reading today’s column from Andrew Sullivan at TheAtlantic.com, I have had my fears reinforced and have come to feel that the United States Government has been and continues to be a sociopathic entity. Sullivan’s column is called “The American Way Of Torture” and includes select quotes from the Office of the Inspector General’s report on how the CIA systemically tortured terror suspects during the Bush years. There are some disturbing truths that Sullivan’s piece forces us to consider:

1) this new OIG report pretty much damns the Bush Administration by proving they not only endorsed torture, but did so in writing.

2) this was definitely torture–what else do you call it when detainees are left in their own excrement?

3) Sullivan makes the point best:

In the past, the US was known for being a country whose soldiers would never mistreat prisoners; now, the US wants the world to know that US custody is something to be dreaded.

This is the same technique used by Grand Moff Tarkin in the original Star Wars movie–his exact line was “Fear will keep the systems in line…”

So yes, all those Daily Show jokes about Cheney were accurate: the United States was run by an evil, cartoonish bad guy.

Now this next part popped into my head thanks to Democracy Now, quoting one leader who spoke about Afghanistan:

The insurgency in Afghanistan didn’t just happen overnight, and we won’t defeat it overnight. This will not be quick nor easy. But we must never forget, this is not a war of choice. This is a war of necessity. Those who attacked America on 9/11 are plotting to do so again. If left unchecked, the Taliban insurgency will mean an even larger safe haven, from which al-Qaeda would plot to kill more Americans. So this is not only a war worth fighting; this is fundamental to the defense of our people.

That’s not an old quote from Bush–that’s Obama speaking at the Veterans of Foreign Wars national convention in Phoenix, Arizona, last week.

So, here comes Obama, explaining that we have no choice but to be in Afghanistan, mimicking the same rhetoric that came from the Bush 43 Admin for so many years. We did it because the Taliban were harboring Osama bin Laden and Al Qaeda. My question is, how big a threat is Al Qaeda to America? OK, fine, Obama, they’re plotting
against us–but how many of us can they really kill?

In 2008 34,017 Americans were killed in car accidents according to the DOT.

In 2005 (the most recent year numbers are available) 159,217 Americans died of lung cancer alone according to the CDC.

In 2007 around 2 million people worldwide were killed by AIDS according to Avert.org.

In 2007 terrorism caused 22,685 deaths worldwide according to the US National Counter Terrorism Center. The number of American civilian deaths by terrorism is almost non-existent since Americans have to leave the country to be killed by a terrorist.

What this all means is that terrorism is a tiny, tiny, tiny threat to the American way of life. Yet, the Bush administration and now the Obama administration thinks it’s worth ignoring our morals and our principles to stop the killing of less than 23,000 Earthlings while seven times that number die of lung cancer in America, alone. 53,005 died of colorectal cancer, 27,259 American women died of gynecological cancers, 41,116 American women died of breast cancer–and I could go on.

So, in the end, our government is “protecting” us from nothing. We’re spending over a trillion dollars in Iraq and Afghanistan to stop this threat which does not even really exist. My only conclusion is that our government actually enjoys being horrible to people–it’s literally sociopathic. Either that, or our government is too addicted to fear, or rock-stupid, to check and compare the statistics, which took me about 30 minutes to do.

With all these people dying of Cancer in the US right now, wouldn’t it be nice to have a War on Cancer, instead of a War on Terror?

Capped this article just now on my iPhone (source) and it makes me wonder if more violence will be used as an all too convenient excuse to “find” ourselves “forced” to leave troops in Iraq.

Forget that Iraq will have to take over their own country eventually, there are those who will use this bombing and any further violence as an excuse to keep our men and women over there.

In fact, new violence in Iraq is such a convenient excuse that it makes me wonder just who was behind the bombing and whose side they are on.

TimesOnline.co.uk is reporting that Israeli warships are positioning themselves in the Suez Canal in preparation for a possible invasion of Iran.

Speaking strictly as the fiction writer and the observer of world events that I am, I must say the timing of this does make some amount of tactical (if I’m using the word correctly) sense from the Israeli standpoint. Iran is a mess after its government cracked down, rather oppressively, on protestors (mostly students, apparently). There’s been talk for the past month of a complete revolution in Iran–the leaders can’t seem to decide if their recent election counts or even if the ballots were properly counted and it’s not the easiest thing to get an accurate account of the state of things inside Iranian borders due to a crackdown on foreign press.

So, with that kind of chaos–a stumbling government and a rather large contingent of their citizens feeling pretty rebellious, Israel may have picked a perfect time for invasion–one that just might catch the Iranian military at a place where they simply will not have their shit together enough to defend against an attack.

The theory before the recent Iranian crackdown was that even though the populace didn’t seem to generally care for the leadership, said leaders could still rally the Iranian people to rise up and defend the country from any outside attackers. After showing such bloodthirsty instincts on it’s own people, Iran’s leaders just might find it harder to get support from those people–at least, that’s what I bet Israel is thinking.

Does this mean an Israeli attack on Iran is moral or even legal? No and no–not from my perspective, anyway. Iran would have to attack Israel in order to make an attack on Iran legal in the eyes of the UN Charter (aka international law). On a moral level (think the Golden Rule) Israel can’t invade a country that may be talking shit, but isn’t doing shit to mess with them–so how could Israel feel the need to attack? But then, Israel is the country that’s been occupying a people for decades for no easily discernible reason, so anything is possible.

No, I don’t hate Jews, nor do I hate Israel. I just don’t like what their government is doing. Drawing first blood is never a good thing–end of story. PR, rhetoric, even blatant threats do NOT justify an attack on another country. ONLY an unprovoked attack from that country justifies an attack on it.

Let’s hope Israel is just going for a sail.

Fingers crossed!

This is hilarious–well, assuming you think massive incompetence being a Pentagon job requirement is funny. Can you believe this? Apparently there was a password on the politically sensitive file at this URL:

http://oneteam.centcom.mil/isc/Shared%20Documents/NATO%20Master%20Narrative.doc

By the look of it, the only thing protecting the contents of this file is the fact that it’s a password-protected MS Word doc. Wtf?? What bright-eyes thought this would be a good idea? Let’s just leave a politically sensitive WORD DOC in an unprotected directory and expect a fracking MS Word password to keep it safe. WHAT COULD HAPPEN?

So, anyway, the post at Wikileaks.org (see screencap above or original here: https://secure.wikileaks.org/wiki/N1 ) doesn’t explain how the “encryption” was “cracked” but I suspect it was something simple, like the highly technical process of entering random words until something worked.

You may be wondering what was so politically sensitive in the Word doc. Well, it turns out it was a document meant for NATO officials, and it tells them not to tell anyone that the country of Jordan is involved in helping us with the War Against Terror (aka tWAT) in Afghanistan. What’s the catch with the world knowing Jordan is involved? It’s supposed to be a secret. Apparently, back in 2001 they officially withdrew from the ISAF (International Security Assistance Force), which is officially in charge of our efforts in Afghanistan. It seems like they sure didn’t stop helping us.

Why is it a big deal that Jordan is still involved in our Afghani efforts? Well, it seems they’re real big in the torture community. They are also said to be big helpers with our extraordinary renditions program. So, essentially, they help us when we go into one country, kidnap a suspect and deliver said suspect to another country where we ask them questions and let local authorities torture if we don’t like the answers.

In an obviously related story the Pentagon shut their entire site down this afternoon. Gee, I wonder why they did that!

Does anyone still wonder why the world has so much wrong with it when our leaders are smegging moronic enough to use only a single password to protect sensitive information?

OH yeah and the password on the doc? Progress.

Well done, Pentagon! Well done!!

Massive kudos to Twitter-user Zaibatsu who posted about Wikileaks cracking the password on the NATO file.

I wonder if this story will hit CNN or any of the other MSM news “sources.”

Posted via email from thepete’s posterous