The Great (Taliban) Escape

Whoops!

How the Taliban Pulled Off a Massive Prison Break

This morning, in a major setback to U.S. efforts in Afghanistan, almost 500 political prisoners--many of them Taliban fighters and commanders--escaped from the Sarposa prison in Kandahar through a tunnel in the second prison break orchestrated by the Taliban since 2008, when the group freed 1,200 prisoners in a suicide attack that killed 15 guards, according to The New York Times. An effort to recapture the escaped prisoners is underway. In the meantime, here's what we know about how the Taliban accomplished today's escape:

Prison guards discovered that prisoners in the institution's political wing were missing around 4 am, according to the Associated Press, but the Taliban claims the guards didn't discover the breach until closer to 7:30 am. In the photo above, an Afghan prison guard points to the hole that inmates used to escape through the tunnel.

The break came from without rather than within, according to the Taliban at least. Spokesman Zabiullah Mujahid explained in a statement that the Taliban worked for five months to dig a 320 meter-long tunnel into the prison that snaked below security checkpoints outside the facility and the Kabul-Kandahar highway (Afghan police, according to the Times, say the tunnel is more than 1,000 meters long). The militants launched the dig from a house "within shooting distance of the prison guard towers," the AP notes, but it's not clear whether they lived in the house as the dig continued. The head of Kandahar's prisons told The Guardian that constructing the tunnel must have been extremely labor-intensive given that the Taliban had to refrain from using heavy machinery that could attract attention to its efforts.

At 11 pm on Sunday night, per the Taliban's account, three Taliban prisoners who'd been informed of the plan ahead of time went from one cell to another, rousing several inmates at a time and escorting them to the tunnel. Mohammad Abdullah, who claimed he helped organize the escape from within the prison, told the AP that he and his associates got copies of cell keys from "friends"--suggesting that some prison guards may have acted as accomplices. The escape took place between 11 pm and 3:30 am, according to the Taliban, and one escapee told the BBC that it took him around 30 minutes to walk the full tunnel. When the prisoners emerged from the underground passageway, Taliban members greeted them and whisked them to waiting vehicles, which transported them to Taliban-controlled locations. As the prisoners boarded the vehicles, Taliban fighters and suicide bombers stood by in case security forces got wind of the scheme and tried to thwart the operation.

Update: The Daily Beast's Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai have a fascinating account of their interviews with two Taliban commanders who escaped today. One fighter explains how he feared the tunnel would collapse as he moved through it, while another notes that the prison break organizers confiscated the inmates' cell phones before they entered the tunnel to prevent them from informing people about their escape prematurely. The Daily Beast also learns that the Taliban dug their tunnel using pickups, tractor-pulled trailers, and donkey carts, and that the Taliban's original plan, aborted at the last minute, was for its suicide bombers to enter the jail after all prisoners had escaped and blow themselves up once prison security noticed the breach. "The escapees sounded more committed than ever to rejoin the fight," Moreau and Yousafzai observe. Yahoo

''We’re a nation of laws'' Says Obama As He Declares Manning Guilty

This is just one of the excellent links from Glenn Greenwald's main article at Salon. Another link leads to this irony of ironies where the writer has this to say about Obama's unconstitutional remarks declaring Manning guilty. Here he is talking about a similar gaffe by Nixon in declaring Charles Manson guilty pretrial.

What I didn’t recall from that time was that John Mitchell, easily American history’s crookedest Attorney General ever, was at Nixon’s side when he made that statement in Denver. He recognized right away that there was a serious problem with Nixon’s statement: article

But for the article proper you have to go to Salon where other links abound that shouldn't be ignored. I found the five links embedded in this one paragraph alone more than interesting, for exactly the same reasons as the writer notes.

But even more fascinating is Obama's invocation of America's status as a "nation of laws" to justify why Manning must be punished. That would be a very moving homage to the sanctity of the rule of law -- if not for the fact that the person invoking it is the same one who has repeatedly engaged in the most extraordinary efforts to shield Bush officials from judicial scrutiny, investigation, and prosecution of every kind for their war crimes and surveillance felonies. Indeed, the Orwellian platitude used by Obama to justify that immunity -- Look Forward, Not Backward -- is one of the greatest expressions of presidential lawlessness since Richard Nixon told David Frost that "it's not illegal if the President does it." More Salon President Obama speaks on Manning and the rule of law

All this, and I have never mentioned the ''H'' word once.

Obama on Manning: “He Broke the Law.” So Much for that Trial?
By: Michael Whitney
April 22 2011

President Barack Obama made stunning accusations about accused Wikileaks whistleblower PFC Bradley Manning, directly asserting that Manning “broke the law.” Apparently the President of the United States of America and a self-described Constitutional scholar does not care that Manning has yet to be tried or convicted for any crime.

In a discussion yesterday with Logan Price, a Bradley Manning supporter who was part of a group of activists who sang a song during the President’s San Francisco fundraiser, President Obama flatly stated that Bradley Manning “dumped” documents and that “he broke the law.” A rough transcript follows, provided by UK Friends of Bradley Manning:

OBAMA: So people can have philosophical views [about Bradley Manning] but I can’t conduct diplomacy on an open source [basis]… That’s not how the world works.

And if you’re in the military… And I have to abide by certain rules of classified information. If I were to release material I weren’t allowed to, I’d be breaking the law.

We’re a nation of laws! We don’t let individuals make their own decisions about how the laws operate. He broke the law.

Q: Didn't he release evidence of war crimes?]

OBAMA: What he did was he dumped…

Q: Isn't that just the same thing as what Daniel Ellsberg did?]

OBAMA: No it wasn’t the same thing. Ellsberg’s material wasn’t classified in the same way. (see main article where this particular argument falls apart)

This is the President of the United States speaking about a US military soldier detained for almost a year on charges of leaking classified (but not top secret, the level of files released by Ellsberg) documents. Manning’s lawyer is considering considered (corrected: his transfer made the writ moot) filing a writ of habeus corpus for the length of time and totality of abuse suffered by Manning while in military custody.

President Obama has already made up his mind. He thinks Manning “broke the law.” It’s no wonder he considered Manning’s abuse to “meet our basic standards” when he thinks Manning is already guilty.

This is vile.

As a reminder: the Pentagon plans to hold Manning indefinitely. Might as well, since they think he’s guilty already. source FDL

Obama Failed President - Best Actor

"The President Who Became an Actor": And This Year’s Oscar Goes To… Barack Obama
by Finian Cunningham

If Ronald Reagan was known as the actor who became a president, then perhaps Barack Obama should become known as the president who became an actor.

For every facial movement evinced, every gesture of the hand, every word enunciated by the 44th president turns out to be a complete charade.

This is the guy who ran for the presidency presenting himself before the US nation, hand on heart, as the candidate who would end the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan; end the killing of civilians in those countries; and the brutalizing of young American men. Two years on, Obama has donned the costume of US commander-in-chief with ever-frightening zeal. Far from ending the wars, Obama has not only ramped up America’s foreign wars of aggression, he has expanded them into new territories, including Pakistan, Libya and East Africa, adding countless more innocent lives to Washington’s global death toll.




This is the guy who promised to close the American gulag of Guantanamo Bay where hundreds of men have been rendered by kidnapping from various parts of the world, tortured and held without trial, not one of them convicted. Two years on, promise broken. US rendition and torture is still standard practice, a fact to which American soldier Bradley Manning can testify simply because he showed the moral courage to tell the truth about such US crimes against humanity.

This is the guy who promised with unctuous sincerity to make a new beginning in US foreign policy, to respect universal human rights. “Universal human rights begin in the lives of each and every individual,” he intoned with his by-now clichéd solemn voice and face. Two years on, US foreign policy has even less regard for human rights both abroad and at home. In Gaza, the world’s largest outdoor concentration camp besieged by the US-fuelled Israeli war machine, Obama’s rhetoric on respecting the rights of human beings stands as a grotesque mockery. Elsewhere in the Muslim world, this guy is seen as the genial peacemaker who let his mask slip to reveal an ugly warmongering face like all his other predecessors.




This is the guy who pretends to offer the best deal to the US public over the budget deficit by gallantly fending off Republican axemen. “I won’t slash you by $6 trillion, I’ll only slash you by $4 trilllion,” to paraphrase his fake logic. As if this is a benign alternative that the American people just can’t refuse. So the guy who once upon a time supposedly broke his heart over Chicago’s inner-city poor will now unleash massive austerity on many more of America’s poor and ground-down working class, by slashing $4 trillion worth of Medicaid and Medicare, public education, social welfare and jobs. Nowhere does our supposed chivalrous and cerebral hero Obama appear to be able or willing to think outside the box in which the corporate aristocracy has entombed their political vampires on Capitol Hill. How about ending the trillion-dollar wars he was supposed to end? Or re-appropriating the trillions of dollars that he lavished on the banksters? Or reversing tax breaks for the already obscenely wealthy. These alternatives would make a lot more economic sense, justice and peace than Obama’s attack on the very people who voted him in to make a change.

Above all, this is the guy who has shown that he can lie with a pious face, smile sweetly when he refers to murdering innocent people with aerial drones, and can almost bring a tear to the eye when he talks about “not being able to ignore humanitarian values in Libya” [while then proceeding to oversee the bombing of civilians in that country and in the same breath not giving a pause to murder of civilians by a US ally in Bahrain].

So at the next Oscar ceremony, a special category should be opened for Barack Obama, the acting president of the USA. He can then hang that along with his Nobel peace prize – which, come to think of it, could also be nominated for “funniest screenplay ever”. globalresearch

Finian Cunningham is a journalist and musician. He is Global Research's Middle East Correspondent.

Related: WikiLeaks Documents Reveal U.S. Knowingly Imprisoned 150 Innocent Men at Guantánamo Watch Democacy Now


Below, October 09, Michael Moore on the Sean Hannitty Show. Push it on to 4m 50s mark because I'm sure you don't want to listen to gobshite Hannity, and listen to Michael Moore until 6m 15s. And I remind you, this interview was eighteen months ago. How you feeling now Michael?

Scotish Buggery Club to Attack "Aggressive Secularism"

Yes "aggressive secularism," such a threat to world peace and human suffering. You're wasting your breath old lad, this country made up its mind on religion years ago, and the message was, you can stick your mumbo jumbo up your arse, or in your case, some little boy's arse.

Updates: BBC blah blah.

Opinion: Cardinal O’Brien: is this all that’s left of Christianity?

Older stuff: Bullets in the post Cardinal’s secular attack

Cardinal Keith O'Brien and the Lockerbie murderer: a jaw-dropping error of judgment by the leader of Scotland's Catholics

Pope knew priest was paedophile Times

Pope accused of mishandling case of paedophile priest Guardian

Cardinal Keith O'Brien criticises secularism

The leader of the Catholic Church in Scotland, Cardinal Keith O'Brien, will use his Easter message later to attack "aggressive secularism".

It was an issue Pope Benedict warned about on his state visit to Britain last year.

Cardinal O'Brien will say the enemies of Christianity want to "take God from the public sphere".

The cardinal has made a reputation for his robust defence of traditionalist Christian teaching.

But BBC religious affairs correspondent Robert Pigott says even by Cardinal O'Brien's standards his Easter sermon constitutes a vehement and outspoken attack on secularism and what he will describe as the enemies of the Christian faith in Britain and the power they currently exert.

He will call on Christians of all denominations to resist the efforts of such people to destroy Christian heritage and culture.

In a reference to equality legislation preventing discrimination against homosexual people, Cardinal O'Brien will denounce what he claims is the way Christians have been prevented from acting in accordance with their beliefs because they refuse to endorse such lifestyles.

The Cardinal will say: "Perhaps more than ever before there is that 'aggressive secularism' and there are those who would indeed try to destroy our Christian heritage and culture and take God from the public square.

"Religion must not be taken from the public square.

"Recently, various Christians in our society were marginalised and prevented from acting in accordance with their beliefs because they were not willing to publicly endorse a particular lifestyle.

"Yes - Christians must work toward that full unity for which Christ prayed - but even at this present time Christians must be united in their common awareness of the enemies of the Christian faith in our country, of the power that they are at present exerting, and the need for us to be aware of that right to equality which so many others cry out for."

Cardinal O'Brien will remind his congregation at St Mary's Cathedral in Edinburgh of the plea by the Pope that Christians of different denominations should rediscover their common ancestry to unite in resisting the sidelining of religion.

The Anglican archbishops of Canterbury and York, Dr Rowan Williams and Dr John Sentamu, are also due to deliver Easter messages on Sunday.

The Catholic archbishop of Westminster, the Most Reverend Vincent Nichols, will speak of his hopes for peace in conflict-hit countries such as Libya, Syria, Afghanistan and Ivory Coast. BBC

Pat Condell: Aggressive Atheism.



Pat Condell: Buggery Club

Nick Gisbourne: Noah's Ark. Deleted, he drones on too much.

Marching for Anzac in the 51st State

Marching for Anzac in the 51st State
By John Pilger
April 22, 2011

The street where I grew up in Sydney was a war street. There were long silences, then the smashing of glass and screams. Pete and I played Aussies-and-Japs. Pete’s father was an object of awe. He weighed barely 100 pounds and shook with malaria and was frequently demented. He would sit in a cane chair, drunk, scything the air with the sword of a Japanese soldier he said he had killed. There was a woman who flitted from room to room, always red-eyed and fearful, it seemed. She was like many mothers in the street. Wally, another mate, lived in a house that was always dark because the black-out blinds had not been taken down. His father had been “killed by the Japs”. Once, when Wally’s mother came home, she found he had got a gun, put it in his mouth and blown his head off. It was a war street.

The insidious, merciless, life-long damage of war taught many of us to recognise the difference between the empty symbolism of war and the actual meaning. “Does it matter?” mocked the poet Siegfried Sassoon at the end of an earlier slaughter, in 1918, as he grieved his younger brother’s death at Gallipoli. I grew up with that name, Gallipoli. The British assault on the Turkish Dardanelles was one of the essential crimes of imperial war, causing the death and wounding of 392,000 on all sides. The Australian and New Zealander losses were among the highest, proportionally; and 25 April, 1915 was declared not just a day of remembrance but the “birth of the Australian nation”. This was based on the belief of Edwardian militarists that true men were made in war, an absurdity about to be celebrated yet again.

Anzac Day has been appropriated by those who manipulate the cult of state violence - militarism - in order to satisfy a psychopathic deference to foreign power and to pursue its aims. And the “legend” has no room for the only war fought on Australian soil: that of the Aboriginal people against the European invaders. In a land of cenotaphs, not one stands for them.

The modern war-lovers have known no street of screams and despair. Their abuse of our memory of the fallen, and why they fell, may be common among all servitors of rapacious power, but Australia is a special case. No country is more secure in its strategic remoteness and the wealth of its resources, yet no western elite is more eager to talk war and seek imperial “protection”.

Australia’s military budget is A$32 bn a year, one of the highest in the world. Less than two months’ worth of this war-bingeing would pay for the reconstruction of the state of Queensland after the catastrophic floods, but not a cent is forthcoming. In July, the same fragile flood plains will be invaded by a joint US-Australian military force, firing laser-guided missiles, dropping bombs and blasting the environment and marine life. This is rarely reported. Rupert Murdoch controls 70 per cent of the capital city press and his world-view is widely shared in the Australian media.

In a 2009 US cable released by WikiLeaks, the then Labor prime minister, Kevin Rudd, who is now foreign affairs minister, implores the Americans to “deploy force” against China if Beijing does not do as it is told. Another Labor leader, Kim Beazley, secretly offered Australian troops for an attack on China over Taiwan. In the 1960s, prime minister Robert Menzies lied that he had received a request from the American-created regime in Saigon requesting Australian troops. Oblivious, Australians waved farewell to a largely conscripted army, of whom almost 3000 were killed or wounded. The first Australian troops were run by the CIA in “black teams” - assassination squads. When the government in Canberra made a rare complaint to Washington that the British knew more than they about America’s war aims in Vietnam, the US national security adviser, McGeorge Bundy, replied, “We have to inform the British to keep them on side. You in Australia are with us come what may.” As an Australian soldier once said to me: “We are to the Yanks what the Gurkas are to the British. We’re mercenaries in all but name.”

WikiLeaks has disclosed the American role in the Canberra “coup” in 2010 against Rudd by Julia Gillard. Lauded in US cables as a “rising star”, Gillard’s Labor Party plotters have turned out to be assets of the US embassy in Canberra. Once installed as prime minister, Gillard committed Australia to America’s war in Afghanistan war for the next 10 years - twice as long as Britain. Gillard likes to appear on TV flanked by flags. With her robotic delivery and stare, it is an unsettling tableau. On 6 April, she intoned, “We live in a free country... only because the Australian people answered the call when the decision came.” She was referring to the dispatch of Australian troops to avenge the death of a minor imperial figure, General Charles Gordon, during a popular uprising in Sudan in 1885. She omitted to say that a dozen horses of the Sydney Tramway Company also “answered the call” but expired during the long voyage.

Australia’s reputed role as America’s “deputy sheriff” (promoted to “sheriff” by George W Bush) is to police great power designs now being challenged by most of the world. Leading Australian politicians and journalists report on the Middle East having first had their flights and expenses paid by the Israeli government or its promoters. Two Green Party candidates who dared to criticise Israel’s lawlessness and the silence of its local supporters, are currently being set upon. One Murdoch retainer has accused the two Greens of advocating a “modern rendering of Kristallnacht”. Both have since received multiple death threats. Put out more flags, boys. www.johnpilger.com

Obams Backs Warrantless GPS Surveillance: Starship Amerika

For a black Democrat he makes a great Republican.

Starship Amerika
23 April 2011
by: Juan Cole, Truthdig

President Barack Obama is actually siding with police who want to use GPS devices to track you without a warrant. It always disturbed me when on “Star Trek” the captain asked the ship’s computer where a crew member was and was told the person’s exact location. Even the ship’s physician and empathy counselor were not immune from these inquiries, the answers to which could after all sometimes have been embarrassing. Is America heading toward being one big star ship, where government officials can casually inquire at will into our whereabouts and private doings?




Among the many elements of the Obama administration that have disappointed civil libertarians is its interest in spying on Americans. The Bush administration had instituted massive warrantless wiretapping and gathering of telephone records, with the complicity of most telecom corporations. Those who care about the Bill of Rights had hoped that Eric Holder’s Department of Justice would take a stand for the Fourth Amendment, which should be on the endangered species list along with the golden tree frog and the St. Helena dragonet.

The administration is appealing a Washington, D.C., federal appeals court ruling that threw out the case that law enforcement had built against a suspected cocaine distributor because the officers attached a global positioning satellite tracking device to his automobile without a warrant and then followed his movements for a whole month. That they tracked the suspect for so long without bothering to involve a judge was one basis for the ruling.

Supporters of warrantless surveillance of this sort argue that a person’s movements in public are not protected by the Fourth Amendment. But GPS tracking is very precise and can follow a car everywhere—onto farms or estates and into enclosed garages on private property. If there is evidence that a crime is being committed in, say, a garage, then a warrant should be obtained from a judge. In the absence of such evidence it is unconstitutional for the government to monitor the precise location of a piece of private property being driven on or parked on private property.

It should be remembered that it is perfectly possible for the police to make a mistake or act maliciously and to monitor someone who is innocent. The ACLU charges that these practices are increasingly common. If police and other security personnel are allowed to engage in domestic surveillance of this sort without a court warrant, they can start following large numbers of innocent people and learn details of their private lives. Just this year, Tacoma, Wash., police engaged in unconstitutional surveillance of anti-war activists, using an employee at a military base, which is even more troubling. Blanket permission for law enforcement to conduct warrantless GPS tracking of activists could reveal their private peccadilloes, which in turn could be used to blackmail them.

Another egregious case is that of college student Yasir Afifi, who found an FBI tracking device on his automobile during an oil change. Afifi, from a mixed American and Egyptian heritage, has no known associations with radicals, but his father had been active in the local Muslim community until his death last year and the family sends remittances to relatives in Egypt, a pattern of behavior that may have triggered the surveillance. Disturbingly, the federal Ninth District Court of Appeals found that the FBI had a rightto put the device on Afifi’s car as it sat in his driveway. This ruling violates the principle of “curtilage,”which holds that the area immediately around a person’s house is protected from unreasonable search by the Fourth Amendment. In a fiery dissent, Judge Alex Kozinski complained that his colleagues’ decision gives “the government the power to track the movements of every one of us, every day of our lives.” It is not known whether the FBI, who monitored Afifi for three to six months, ever obtained a court warrant or, if so, how many months it covered.

In the Washington, D.C., appellate court decision, handed down last fall, Judge Douglas H. Ginsburgshot down the argument that GPS tracking was like tailing a suspect in public. He wrote, “We hold the whole of a person’s movements over the course of a month is not actually exposed to the public because the likelihood a stranger would observe all those movements is not just remote, it is essentially nil.”

The decision made a distinction between a brief initial evidence-gathering foray and an intensive month long act of spying: “It is one thing for a passerby to observe or even to follow someone during a single journey as he goes to the market or returns home from work. It is another thing entirely for that stranger to pick up the scent again the next day and the day after that, week in and week out, dogging his prey until he has identified all the places, people, amusements, and chores that make up that person’s hitherto private routine.”

Part of what defines public and private is a reasonable citizen’s expectations. You wouldn’t expect all your movements for a month to be public, even if they were in an automobile. It is that understandable expectation of privacy that brings the Fourth Amendment into play. Ginsburg continued, “A reasonable person does not expect anyone to monitor and retain a record of every time he drives his car, including his origin, route, destination, and each place he stops and how long he stays there; rather, he expects each of those movements to remain disconnected and anonymous.” The full court of nine judges upheld the three-judge panel’s decision to throw out the case, which was against nightclub owner Antoine Jones.

The federal rulings so far on GPS tracking have been all over the map, so to speak, and that the Fourth Amendment will meaningfully survive the almost cosmic electronic surveillance capabilities of our burgeoning national security state is not at all clear. So far many of our eminent federal judges seem perfectly content with having police officers sneak around in our driveways, with allowing them to attach tracking devices to our private property, and with permitting them then to monitor everywhere we go and everyone we visit, without a warrant, for months at a time. Judge Ginsburg and two colleagues are so far all that stand in the way of this dystopian future becoming our present reality. Unfortunately, because Obama and Holder disagree with Ginsburg, his principled arguments will prevail only if they are permitted to do so by the likes of Antonin Scalia and Clarence Thomas. Welcome to Starship Amerika. truthout

Who The Hell Do You Think You Are? A Few Home Truths on Libya

I don't normally feature preacher men and I refuse to blog about Libya, but I'll make exceptions for both on this occasion, particularly for this home truths rant from Minister Louis Farrakhan. My rip.

ATF. A Balls Up In Other Words: Obama's Fast and Furious Denial

Is it me that's just never come across a success story involving the ATF, or is it every time those three letters appear you just know the story is going to involve a fuck up?

Obama's Mexicogate?
By Laura Carlsen
April 20, 2011


A secret operation to run guns across the border to Mexican drug cartels — overseen by U.S. government agents — threatens to become a major scandal for the Obama administration.

The operation, called “Fast and Furious,” was run out of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms, and Explosives (ATF) office in Phoenix, Arizona. ATF sanctioned the purchase of weapons in U.S. gun shops and tracked the smuggling route to the Mexican border. Reportedly, more than 2,500 firearms were sold to straw buyers who then handed off the weapons to gunrunners under the nose of ATF.

But once across the border, the agency seemed to lose track of the weapons. Hundreds of AK-47s and Barrett .50 caliber rifles — favorites of warring drug cartels —made it easily into the hands of some of Mexico’s most ruthless crime organizations.

Gunwalking

In arms trafficking parlance, knowingly allowing smugglers to go about their business is called “gunwalking.” According to ATF whistleblowers, the agency stood by and watched as buyers purchased up to 20 weapons at a time and quickly passed them off to smugglers in nearby parking lots. The hope was to trace the guns into Mexico and bust a major cartel.

In December 2010 “walked” guns were identified as the murder weapons in the death of Border Patrol agent Brian Terry by drug cartels. An anguished ATF agent made the decision to expose the gunwalking operation, after the bureau ignored months of complaints.

Agent John Dodson blew the whistle on Fast and Furious in an interview with CBS News on Mar. 3. Dodson had been concerned about the operation since well before the Terry murder. As large numbers of guns freely crossed the border during the early part of 2010, he and other ATF agents noted with alarm the rise in violent crime south of the border. He said he told his supervisors, “The more our guys buy, the more violence we’re having down there.”

Dodson reports that his supervisor replied, “If you’re going to make an omelet, you’re going to scramble some eggs.”

Even some of the gun shop owners expressed discomfort with the number of weapons they were selling to shady customers, but were reportedly told to continue the operation.

Soon after the Dodson interview, the director of the ATF Mexico office, Darren Gil, told CBS that he began to receive disturbing reports of an unusually high number of Phoenix-area guns showing up in Mexican cartel violence. When he began asking questions, Gil discovered that his team had been blocked from computer access to information on Fast and Furious.

Gil questioned officials at U.S. headquarters who told him they were under direct orders from the Department of Justice and that he should say nothing to the Mexican government about the program.

Gil resigned in disgust in December 2010 after watching “seizure after seizure after seizure” of walked guns turned up at violent crime scenes in Mexico.

Congress Steps In

In early 2011, Senator Charles Grassley (R-IA) requested an ATF briefing. The agency refused. Congress has now issued a subpoena summoning ATF to report on the Fast and Furious program.

Meanwhile, U.S. government officials are attempting to deny being involved without actually confirming that the operation took place. Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano did not deny allegations concerning the program, but claimed she found out about the operation only after Agent Terry’s murder and had no information regarding the participation of Customs agents.

In the hot seat, Attorney General Eric Holder assigned an inspector general to investigate. President Obama defended Holder twice — on Univision and CNN — stating that neither he nor Holder knew about the operation.

The investigation will result in one of two conclusions, neither positive for the attorney general. The first is that Holder authorized an operation that likely violated U.S., Mexican, and international law and armed dangerous drug traffickers.

The second is that the head of the Justice Department is presiding over rogue staff that decided not to tell their boss about an operation that poses major legal, ethical and diplomatic breaches.

Holder recently issued a memo to Southwest border attorneys ordering them not to permit arms trafficking to Mexican cartels. The memo states, “We should not design or conduct undercover operations which include guns crossing the border.” Logically, a memo advising justice officials not to engage in illegal gunwalking would be unnecessary were it not for a precedent to the contrary.

Some ATF officials have justified the program by claiming the operation could result in prosecutions of individuals higher up the smuggling chain. The ATF issued a press release the day of Dodson’s interview announcing a decision to “review the bureau’s current firearms trafficking strategies…”

Mexican Response

Mexican President Felipe Calderon and his cabinet have been remarkably sanguine about the possibility that guns were trafficked to the archenemy with the encouragement of a foreign government. National Security spokesperson Alejandro Poire refused to accept that the operation existed and reserved comment until after the results of the pending U.S. investigation are released.

Calderon appears unwilling to risk jeopardizing the U.S. government’s political and financial support for his war on drugs by complaining too loudly. His counternarcotics strategy has come under heavy criticism in his country in the last few months due to sharply increasing violence and corruption.

Opposition members of the Mexican Congress, media, and public have ordered an investigation and called the operation a violation of international law and even an act of war. The outrage increased when William Brownfield, the State Department’s head of International Narcotics, praised the program to the Mexican press and confirmed it was “ongoing.” The former ambassador to Colombia and long-time promoter of the drug war scoffed at criticisms, stating that the number of arms that have passed to “uncontrolled destinations” was “limited.”

But for many U.S. and Mexican legislators and citizens even a single weapon allowed to fall into the hands of brutal cartels is one too many. The gunwalking program has increased public skepticism toward the “shared responsibility” that Obama and Calderon have tried to sell in numerous public statements, and fueled the growing popular protests within Mexico that reject the violent drug war model for dealing with illicit narcotics trafficking and consumption.

Major Scandal?

With evasive responses from government agencies, major international implications, and persistent questions of “who knew what, and when,” the Fast and Furious operation could develop into a major scandal for the Obama administration. That will depend on the administration’s response. .

The Obama administration faces a tough choice: either orchestrate a cover-up, as the ATF appears to be doing, or open up the case and accept the consequences.

The gunwalking case tests the integrity of the Obama government. It also further weakens support for a failing drug war strategy. The administration is currently seeking millions more dollars in security aid to Mexico under the Merida Initiative.

The best path forward is to fully investigate the operation and punish those responsible — no matter how high up the blame goes. It is also time to end support for a war on drugs that becomes more entrenched and more violent every day. FPIF

For even more madness: Texas' Deadliest Export, the 'Bingeing on Bullets' article I found particularly insane.

Koch Industries Employees Votes: Be Very Afraid

Of all the stories that I have read that highlight America's implosion as a democracy and the eroding of citizens rights, this surely has to be one of the scariest things I have ever come across. And you don't need to be an American to appreciate the implications and dangers of this blatant economic blackmail perpetrated by Koch Industries on its employees in pursuit of its own political ends. It is scary stuff indeed.

Thought Control: Right-Wing Koch Brothers Caught Telling Thousands of Employees How to Vote

AMY GOODMAN: We turn now, though, to an exposé just published in The Nation magazine that raises alarming questions about the ability of corporations to influence their employees’ voting decisions. In an article titled "Big Brothers: Thought Control at Koch," Mark Ames and Mike Elk report on an urgent letter that Koch Industries sent to most of its 50,000 employees on the eve of the November elections. The letter advised them on whom to vote for and warned them of the dire consequences to their families, their jobs and their country, should they choose to vote otherwise. Koch Industries is run by billionaire brothers Charles and David Koch. They have helped bankroll the Tea Party movement and dozens of other right-wing causes.

Koch Industries and other corporations are legally allowed to pressure their workers to adopt their political views at the ballot box because of last year’s Citizens United Supreme Court decision. The ruling granted free speech rights to corporations and effectively removed regulations preventing employers from politically manipulating their workers. In practice, employers can also fire workers who refuse to attend political seminars or dare to voice their dissenting opinions too loudly.

For more, we’re joined by the authors of the exposé, Mike Elk and Mark Ames. Both are contributing editors to The Nation. Mike joins us from Washington, D.C., Mark Ames from here in New York.

Mark, let’s begin with you. Start off with the documents that you got.

MARK AMES: Well, as we were investigating the story, it was Mike Elk, my partner on the story, who got a hold of this newsletter that was sent out. It was October 4th of last year, and it was sort of an election packet, dated October 4th, with a cover letter from the CEO and president of Koch Industries, which is the head of this giant conglomerate, saying that "for the first time we feel that these elections"—that is, last November’s elections—"are so urgent, and we’re in such a dire situation, that we’re actually sending out this entire voting packet, including a list of candidates in federal and local elections that we believe, we urge you, or we strongly recommend that you vote for." And, of course, most of the candidates—I mean, of the 19 candidates on the list that we obtained, which was for the Washington State elections, of 19 candidates, 16 were Republican and, you know, very Tea Party Republican, and of the three Democrats for local races, two were from a Democratic—a right-wing faction of the Democratic Party called the "Roadkill Caucus." I guess, you know, this is like their Blue Dog, but Roadkill. I don’t know who the roadkill is in this case.

And then, along with that, there was a bunch of really pretty bizarre and disturbing sort of John Birch Society-like propaganda about, you know, just a paranoid vision of the world, in which free markets and freedom are constantly under attack from E.U. bureaucrats and the liberal media and all this other stuff, and sort of trying to warn or trying to advise their workers, you know, who to vote for, what to do. And on top of it, one of the most bizarre parts was a sort of an essay from Charles Koch—he’s the head of the company—telling workers who he thought the best president of the 20th century was. And he named Warren B. Harding and Calvin Coolidge, but he named them sort of as one president, one administration, as the best president of the 20th century. And he blamed Herbert Hoover for the Crash and for starting socialism in America. It’s the most bizarre thing you’ve ever read in your life.

AMY GOODMAN: Mike Elk, you are a labor reporter. Talk about the significance of the letters being sent out to the employees of Koch Industries around the country. More and twenty minute video.

Fukushima Prefecture Unscientific Optimism

Fukushima Prefecture, where concern for the local economy seems to take precedent over all other matters. My emphasis.

Fukushima Residents Seek Answers Amid Mixed Signals From Media, TEPCO and Government
21 April 2011
by: Makiko Segawa, The Asia-Pacific Journal

Mistrust of the media has surged among the people of Fukushima Prefecture. In part this is due to reports filed by mainstream journalists who are unwilling to visit the area near the crippled Fukushima Daiichi nuclear power plant. But above all it is the result of contradictory reports released by the media, TEPCO and the government.

On the one hand, many local officials and residents in Fukushima insist that the situation is safe and that the media, in fanning unwarranted fears, are damaging the economy of the region. By contrast, many freelance journalists in Tokyo report that the central government is downplaying the fact that radiation leakage has been massive and that the threat to public health has been woefully underestimated. While the government long hewed to its original definition of a 20 kilometer exclusion zone, following the April 12 announcement that the Fukushima radiation severity level has been raised from a level 5 event (as with Three Mile Island) to a level 7 event (as with Chernobyl), the government also extended the radiation exclusion zone from 20 kilometers to at least five communities in the 30-50 kilometer range.

In recent weeks, many Fukushima residents who fled in the first week of the nuclear crisis have begun returning home and attempting to resume normal activities. For example, some local people in Iwaki city, 40-50 km from the Fukushima Daiichi reactor, are convinced that it is now safe to return despite the high radiation levels recorded. Here is one example.

In Japan, April's cherry blossoms signal a symbolic beginning, a new stage in life. On April 6th, along with school children across the nation, Iwaki City, within the 40 km radiation exclusion zone, held many school entrance ceremonies for elementary, middle and high schools.

Iwaki's Yumoto Daini Middle School's ceremony was a bit different: not only were there 33 new students, but refugees living on the school grounds and some members of the Self Defense Force also attended. Overall 107 people participated in the ceremony. Headmaster Sawai Shiro may have exceeded his authority in taking the humanitarian step of granting permission for the refugees to remain on campus as the school year begins, at the risk of being punished later for breaking rules.

Local sources report that in the first week or so after the nuclear crisis began, Iwaki City experienced difficulties in receiving supplies like food and fuel because many agents refused to deliver. Since early April, refugees who had evacuated outside the prefecture started returning. Restaurants in downtown Iwaki are reopening and many convenience stores boast reasonably well-stocked shelves, while gas, water and electricity have been restored. Iwaki City has repeatedly confirmed that "radiation is at a stable level which is not harmful to human health." Iwaki officials explain that this judgment is based on figures provided by the Fukushima prefectural government regularly updated since March 11.

Principal Sawai began his welcome speech by saying, "I am glad to be able to confirm that all 33 new students are participating in this ceremony amidst a disaster that had forced many people to leave Yumoto." "In our district," he continued,"some people survived by drinking water from their bath for weeks as there was no running water. I want you to care for each other especially for anyone who is in trouble." He concluded, "You young students, are the future of Japan. Now, we should be bound as one beyond differences in ideas, position or self interest."

Though all the new students attended, not all teachers were there. As a result of the catastrophe, personnel for the school was frozen and new teachers were not dispatched to the school, Sawai explained. As a result of the lack of teachers, there will be only one class run by a teacher for each grade.

Following the principal's speech, the school's doctor in his white coat stated matter-of-factly that, based on science, people should know that the worst of the earthquake damage had passed and that radiation leakages from the Fukushima Daiichi plant were decreasing and would soon fade away.

"The radiation problem is already finished," he told the children and their parents. "You can go to school and go outside without any problem. You should not fear malicious gossip."

While the doctor's assurance that all major risks have ended would certainly raise eyebrows among most people outside the prefecture, many locals share this belief. We note the difference in perspective between radiation experts and people assessing the issues at a distance and those on the ground facing the destruction of their livelihood. While rumors of the dangers of radiation continue to swirl, many locals are even more afraid that rumors will destroy their businesses and any hope of securing their livelihood and rebuilding their communities.

Ikarashi Yoshitaka, 33, is one who is particularly keen on restoring his business and the local economy, a goal that leads him to downplay warnings of radiation risk."It is just an emotional thesis that ours is 'a city in danger!'" he insisted. Together with dozens of volunteers from across Japan, Ikarashi has visited many areas throughout the radiation exclusion zone. He confidently asserts that his $600 made in U.S "Geiger counter" has detected no abnormal amount of radiation.

Ikarashi is troubled by the fact that the milk business he manages suffered a 90% drop in sales as a result of radiation fears. Some farmers have been forced to throw away their milk, and at least one local farmer is rumored to have committed suicide over the ruin of his business.

Following the government announcement of level 7, Ikarashi observed that "residents will not listen; they don't trust the government. The greatest concern for locals is to restore their towns and I'm doing my best to restore Iwaki City."

Honma Hiroshi, 56, on patrol with the SDF in Iwaki comments: "I'm surprised that local people are so calm. Even within the 30 km radiation exclusion zone, they don’' even wear special anti-radiation clothes (Taibex). Even after the level 7 announcement, there has been no panic in the city."

Desperation over the destruction of the local economy appears to have provoked an unscientific optimism concerning radiation in some local communities struggling to get back on their feet.

Ikarashi points out that the reason for the absence of trustworthy information and the presence of baseless gossip is "lack of information"; the national media tend to avoid entering the radiation exclusion zone, fearing contamination and merely regurgitate the claims of the local government and officials obtained by telephone.

A more intense form of the same crisis struck Minami-Soma City, closer to the nuclear plant within the 20 km zone but on its northern side. For more than a week, the city was like an island bereft of food, water, and gasoline. Finally, in desperation, on March 24, Mayor Sakurai Katsunobu sent an SOS to the world through YouTube begging for support to his dying community.

Mayor Sakurai explained that his gambit of airing a Youtube call for help succeeded in drawing the attention of the central government, and Tokyo has taken seriously subsequent requests. However, Sakurai, said that as of April 6, only 20,000 residents remained of a population of 70,000. "We have to think of the means to save the remaining weak people (aged people and someone who do not have money to evacuate)", Sakurai said sadly.

On April 7, the mayor made a second Youtube, observing that "Many businesses had started operating. But, there is no reliable information on the nuclear reactor!"

In the nuclear radiation exclusion zone close to the plant, large numbers of people are out of work. The Fukushima Labor Bureau, on March 29, said that as a result of the East Japan Earthquake and Tsunami disaster, about 58,000 people in approximately 4,800 work places within the 30 km exclusion zone around the Fukushima Nuclear Reactor have lost jobs.

Local people voice concern that the jobless rate is being inflated as a result of pernicious rumors. At the same time that the school ceremony was being held, a long queue of people was lined up in front of the Public Employment Agency in Taira, Iwaki from 8 a.m. in hope of finding work.

"Before, people formed queues several kilometers long at gas stations; now people stand in a long line at the employment agency," Mori Akira, 63, pastor of the Global Mission Chapel, sighed.

Shimoyamada Matsuto, 50, director of public relations for Iwaki city Disaster Management Headquarters, explained, "Since harmful rumors are so powerful, not only are farming and fishing industries affected, even some industries have been damaged as a result of claims that even machines are contaminated!"

Fukushima provides one third of the electric power for the Tokyo Metropolitan Area, including both nuclear and thermal power plants. "If Fukushima goes down, the entire capital region will panic!" Shimoyamada warned.

Study Session with Hatoyama Yukio and Freelance Journalists: Questioning the Media, the Government and TEPCO

In Tokyo, on April 6, a group of freelance journalists centered on Uesugi Takashi, 43, held a media session with dozens of DPJ lawmakers, including former Prime Minister Hatoyama Yukio, to question the performance of the media in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

Kawauchi Hiroshi, a DPJ member of the House of Representative, stated that "Information about radiation diffusion should be correctly revealed to the nation. However, so far only once was this done."He explained the frustration of local officials. "The information from TEPCO (Tokyo Electronic Power Company) should be precisely conveyed. I talked to the mayor of Iidate village (in the 30km zone), whotold me, 'There is no information and I do not know what to do.'"

The Media Corruption that Protects TEPCO

Uesugi Takashi explained the core of the problem behind misinformation and rumors.

"Freelance journalists and foreign media are pursuing the facts, even going into the radiation exclusion zone. However, surprisingly, the Japan government continues to prevent freelance journalists and overseas media from gaining access to official press conferences at the prime minister's house and government."

Uesugi stated that since March 11th, the government has excluded all internet media and all foreign media from official press conferences on the "Emergency Situation". While foreign media have scrambled to gather informationabout the Fukushima Reactor, they have been denied access to the direct information provided by the government and one consequence of this is that "rumor-rife news has been broadcast overseas."

In fact, access has been limited in two ways. First, while Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano Yukio holds twice daily press conferences for representatives of the big Japanese media, registered representatives of freelance and internet media are limited to a single press conference per week. Second, in contrast to Japanese media who are briefed regularly by Edano and periodically by Prime Miniser Kan, foreign media are briefed exclusively by administrative staff.

Uesugi also notes that at TEPCO press conferences, which are now being held at company headquarters, foreign correspondents and Japanese freelancers regularly ask probing questions while mainstream journalists simply record and report company statements reiterating that the situation is basically under control and there is nothing to worry about. One reason for this, Uesugi suggests, is that TEPCO, a giant media sponsor, has an annual 20 billion yen advertising budget. "The media keeps defending the information from TEPCO!" "The Japanese media today is no different from the wartime propaganda media that kept repeating to the very end that 'Japan is winning the war against America,'" Uesugi exclaimed.

There is one particularly telling example of the media shielding TEPCO by suppressing information. This concerns "plutonium". According to Uesugi, after the reactor blew up on March 14, there was concern about the leakage of plutonium. However, astonishingly, until two weeks later when Uesugi asked, not a single media representative had raised the question of plutonium at TEPCO's press conferences.

On March 26, in response to Uesugi's query, TEPCO stated, "We do not measure the level of plutonium and do not even have a detector to scale it." Ironically, the next day, Chief Cabinet Secretary Edano announced that "plutonium was detected".

When TEPCO finally released data on radioactive plutonium on March 28, it stated that plutonium -238, -239, and -240 were found in the ground, but insisted that it posed no human risk. Since TEPCO provided no clarification of the meaning of the plutonium radiation findings, the mainstream press merely reported the presence of the radiation without assessment (link). Nippon Television on March 29 headlined its interview with Tokyo University Prof. Nakagawa Keiichi, a radiation specialist, "Plutonium from the power plant—No effect on neighbors."

On March 15, Uesugi criticized TEPCO for its closed attitude toward information on a TBS radio program. For this, he was immediately dismissed from his regular program. The scandal involving TEPCO's silencing of the media took an interesting turn two weeks later. At the time of the disaster on March 11, TEPCO Chairman Katsumata Tsunehisa was hosting dozens of mainstream media executives on a "study session" in China.When asked about this fact by freelance journalist Tanaka Ryusaku at a TEPCO press conference on March 30, Katsumata defended the practice.

"It is a fact that we traveled together to China," he said, "[TEPCO] did not pay all the expenses of the trip, but we paid more than they did. Certainly they are executives of the mass media, but they are all members of the study session."

When Tanaka requested the names of the media executives hosted by TEPCO in China, Katsumata retorted, "I cannot reveal their names since this is private information." But it is precisely such collusive relations between mainstream media, the government and TEPCO, that results in the censorship of information concerning nuclear problems.

Now the Japanese government has moved to crack down on independent reportage and criticism of the government’s policies in the wake of the disaster by deciding what citizens may or may not talk about in public. A new project team has been created by the Ministry of Internal Affairs and Communication, the National Police Agency, and METI to combat "rumors" deemed harmful to Japanese security in the wake of the Fukushima disaster.

The government charges that the damage caused by earthquakes and by the nuclear accident are being magnified by irresponsible rumors, and the government must take action for the sake of the public good. The project team has begun to send "letters of request" to such organizations as telephone companies, internet providers, cable television stations, and others, demanding that they "take adequate measures based on the guidelines in response to illegal information." The measures include erasing any information from internet sites that the authorities deem harmful to public order and morality. japanfocus

Indifference. The Meaning of Chernobyl (and Fukushima)

No regime built on limitless self-delusion is capable of retaining a shred of legitimacy once the scale of its self-deception is exposed.

This article, although about Chernobyl, goes a long way in summing up my feelings regarding the Japanese Government's criminal disregard for the safety of its citizens.

The meaning of Chernobyl
Twenty-five years on, the Chernobyl disaster has more to do with secrecy than nuclear safety, politician argues.
by Yuliya Tymoshenko

The central lesson of the Chernobyl disaster is that governments who turn a blind eye to the fate of citizens will ultimately condemn themselves to failure, says Yuliya Tymoshenko

It began as a grey and muddy spring day, like so many others in my homeland. It ended in dread and mourning.

Of course, none of us knew the precise moment when catastrophe struck at Chernobyl 25 years ago. Back then, we lived under a system that denied ordinary people any right whatsoever to know about even essential facts and events.

So we were kept in the dark about the radiation leaking from the shattered reactor at Chernobyl – and blowing in the winds over northern Europe.

But the more bizarre fact about the Chernobyl disaster, we now know, is that Mikhail Gorbachev, general secretary of the Communist party of the Soviet Union, was also kept in the dark about the magnitude of the disaster.

Indeed, it may be this very fact that finally condemned the old system to the dustbin of history a mere five years later. No regime built on limitless self-delusion is capable of retaining a shred of legitimacy once the scale of its self-deception is exposed.

Because only fragments of reliable information reached ordinary Ukrainians at the time, my memories of Chernobyl are necessarily sketchy.

I recall now only the first hushed, frightened whispers of disaster from a family friend. I remember the abject fear I felt for my young daughter. A virtual torrent of near hysterical hearsay and trickle-down stories about the disaster soon followed.

All of these memories, of course, remain indelible. But even 25 years later I find it difficult to connect what I really know of the disaster with when I came to know it.

Today, the Chernobyl meltdown is judged severely in both moral and metaphysical terms. It cast a dark shadow over humanity, one unseen since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.

But, unlike Japan's Fukushima nuclear crisis, Chernobyl's real lesson is not about nuclear-plant safety. It is about official arrogance and indifference to suffering, and a cult of secrecy that allows information to be shared only among a narrow elite obsessed with stability.

Ukrainians are being reminded of the consequences of this mindset right now – by a government that has slashed health benefits for the men who heroically fought to contain the Chernobyl disaster.

So, what was the source of the carelessness with which the Chernobyl crisis was handled? What caused such arrogant unconcern for the health of those who lived near the plant, for those heroic men and women who tried to limit the damage (whom officials still treat as pawns), and for the millions who lived beneath the radioactive cloud as it spread?

Government indifference is a strange and unnatural state of mind, in which the lines between crime and punishment, cruelty and compassion, and good and evil blur.

Having grown up in the USSR, I know that Soviet leaders practically made contempt for suffering and moral concerns a foundation of their philosophy of rule. Unaccountable governments are almost inevitably unconcerned about their citizens' fate.

Can indifference ever be a virtue? Of course, in times of horror such as the Holocaust and Ukraine's Holodomyr, isolated and powerless individuals may swaddle themselves in indifference simply to retain some shred of sanity.

But, even then, it can never be justified fully, and the nameless, nagging guilt of which Primo Levi wrote so movingly invariably follows.

It is official indifference, however, that is truly unpardonable, perhaps because indifferent officials never feel the guilt of which Levi wrote. Indeed, for some political leaders, indifference is seductive.

It is so much easier to avert your eyes from citizens than to grapple with their plight. It is so much easier – and often less costly – to avoid individuals' tragic circumstances than it is to adjust your policies to their needs.

For the state official who turns his back on suffering, his country's citizens lack consequence. Their lives are meaningless. Their hidden or even visible anguish is worthless, a cipher's despair.

Such indifference is more dangerous than anger and hatred. Anger can actually be artistically and politically creative. Pushkin wrote some of his greatest poems as a result of anger; Beethoven's great symphonies were written in the grip of overpowering emotions; and Nelson Mandela, Václav Havel, and Aung San Suu Kyi all endured imprisonment because they were angry at the injustice they had witnessed.

Indifference, by contrast, is never creative, for it means that no response to injustice, and no help for the suffering, will ever come.

It is the tool of governments that are, in fact, the enemy of their people, for it benefits only the ruler – never the victim, whose pain is magnified by neglect.

Political prisoners, hungry children, the homeless Chernobyl refugees, or the irradiated workers in need of a lifetime of medical help – to dismiss their plight, to refuse to offer some spark of hope, is to exile them to a netherworld of helplessness. Government officials who deny human solidarity in this way deny their own humanity.

From his prison cell awaiting his execution by Hitler's Gestapo, Dietrich Bonhoeffer declared that we must all "share in God's suffering".

Indifference for Bonhoeffer was not only a sin, but also a type of punishment.

This is perhaps the central lesson of Chernobyl: governments that systematically turn a blind eye to their citizens' fate ultimately condemn themselves. aljazeera

Yuliya Tymoshenko was twice prime minister of Ukraine.

Depleted Uranium Ain't Very Humanitarian Mister President

Another land poisoned and destroyed forever.

'West using depleted uranium in Libya'

Western coalition forces have been using depleted uranium in their airstrikes on crisis-hit Libya, says an expert, despite the forces' denial of using the highly-poisonous metal.

Conn Hallinan, a columnist with Foreign Policy in Focus, told Russia Today news network on Wednesday that after examining the impact wounds left on tanks in Libya, he is almost certain that depleted uranium is being utilized.

“Politically, it's a bad idea. Medically, it's an extremely bad idea. It's just one of those things that's an effective weapon that you have to step away from,” he went on to say.

He added that given the amount of depleted uranium in the hands of Washington, the US military is going to only further saturate foreign battlefields with the toxic metal for years to come.

Depleted uranium has a half-life of 4.5 billion years and has thus earned the title “The silent killer that will never stop killing” in troubled Libya.

Shells, bombs and cruise missiles tipped with depleted uranium and tungsten easily pierce through heavy armor and fortifications.

Air, water and soil are also contaminated when such weapons are used.

Dr. Doug Rokke, the ex-director of the Pentagon's Depleted Uranium Project, says there is no way to totally decontaminate an area hit with uranium.

Serious long-term health problems caused by the use of depleted uranium in bombs can range from cancer to leukemia and genetic mutations.

The United Nations has prohibited the manufacture, testing, use, sale and stockpiling of depleted uranium weapons.

The US dropped thousands of depleted uranium bombs on the Iraq city of Fallujah in 2003, which killed thousands of people.

A great proportion of all births in Fallujah since the strike have suffered from abnormalities and the rate of mutation among newborns is higher than what was found in Japan after America attacked the Asian country during the Second World War.

US, British, French, Canadian, Danish and Belgian warplanes have launched strikes on Libya since March 19 under UN Security Council Resolution 1973 that authorized "all necessary measures" to protect civilians.

This is while Libya continues to be struck with the conflict between revolutionaries and forces loyal to the North African country's embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi.

AFP says that Gaddafi's forces have killed at least 10,000 people during the ongoing fighting; and Libya's National Transition Council said Tuesday that another 30,000 were wounded and 20,000 more are still missing. globalresearch



US-NATO Forces Used Depleted Uranium Ammunition in Libya. Selected Articles
by Vincent Lane

Mounting alarm over US use of depleted uranium arms in Libya, Rob Edwards http://www.heraldscotland.com/mobile/news/home-news/mounting-alarm-over-us-use-of-depleted-uranium-arms-in-libya-1.1094257 US Suspected of Using Depleted Uranium on Libya http://www.newser.com/story/116517/us-suspected-of-using-depleted-uranium-on-libya.html NATO uses depleted uranium bombs against Libya http://english.ruvr.ru/2011/03/30/48203222.html Toxic Avengers: Is NATO Dumping DU on Libya? http://www.pacificfreepress.com/news/1-/8394-toxic-avengers-is-nato-dumping-du-on-libya.html What A Strange Way To Protect Civilians, Depleted Uranium And Libya http://original.antiwar.com/david-wilson/2011/04/15/what-a-strange-way-to-protect-civilians-depleted-uranium-and-libya/ NATO Irradiates Libya http://www.counterpunch.org/mountain04152011.html Cruise missiles with depleted uranium on Libya, A first assessment of environmental impact and health by Prof. Massimo Zucchetti http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24212 CIA's Obama, Libya, Depleted Uranium, and the Family Farmer, http://www.opednews.com/Diary/CIA-s-Obama-Libya-Deplet-by-Steven-G-Erickson-110415-421.html US Denies Depleted Uranium Use in Libya, But Refuses to Rule Out Future Use, Air Force Spokeswoman claims that A-10s were not loaded with DU ammunition, but does not rule out future use in the conflict. http://www.bandepleteduranium.org/en/a/402.html NATO forces use uranium weapons in Libya, Western coalition forces have been using depleted uranium in their airstrikes on crisis-hit Libya, says an expert, despite the forces' denial of using the highly-poisonous metal. http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=238827 Cruise missiles with depleted uranium on Libya, By Prof. Massimo Zucchetti http://www.tehrantimes.com/index_View.asp?code=238790

Global Research Articles by Vincent Lane

Is Japan's Elite Hiding a Weapons Program Inside Nuclear Plants?

Not quite as far fetched as you might imagine as you read on.

Is Japan's Elite Hiding a Weapons Program Inside Nuclear Plants?
By Yoichi Shimatzu BeiJing April 7, 2011

Confused and often conflicting reports out of Fukushima 1 nuclear plant cannot be solely the result of tsunami-caused breakdowns, bungling or miscommunication. Inexplicable delays and half-baked explanations from Tokyo Electric Power Company (TEPCO) and the Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry (METI) seem to be driven by some unspoken factor.

The smoke and mirrors at Fukushima 1 seem to obscure a steady purpose, an iron will and a grim task unknown to outsiders. The most logical explanation: The nuclear industry and government agencies are scrambling to prevent the discovery of atomic-bomb research facilities hidden inside Japan's civilian nuclear power plants.

A secret nuclear weapons program is a ghost in the machine, detectable only when the system of information control momentarily lapses or breaks down. A close look must be taken at the gap between the official account and unexpected events.

Conflicting Reports

TEPCO, Japan’s nuclear power operator, initially reported three reactors were operating at the time of the March 11 Tohoku earthquake and tsunami. Then a hydrogen explosion ripped Unit 3, run on plutonium-uranium mixed oxide (or MOX). Unit 6 immediately disappeared from the list of operational reactors, as highly lethal particles of plutonium billowed out of Unit 3. Plutonium is the stuff of smaller, more easily delivered warheads.

A fire ignited inside the damaged housing of the Unit 4 reactor, reportedly due to overheating of spent uranium fuel rods in a dry cooling pool. But the size of the fire indicates that this reactor was running hot for some purpose other than electricity generation. Its omission from the list of electricity-generating operations raises the question of whether Unit 4 was being used to enrich uranium, the first step of the process leading to extraction of weapons-grade fissionable material.

The bloom of irradiated seawater across the Pacific comprises another piece of the puzzle, because its underground source is untraceable (or, perhaps, unmentionable). The flooded labyrinth of pipes, where the bodies of two missing nuclear workers—never before disclosed to the press— were found, could well contain the answer to the mystery: a lab that none dare name.

Political Warfare

In reaction to Prime Minister Naoto Kan's demand for prompt reporting of problems, the pro-nuclear lobby has closed ranks, fencing off and freezing out the prime minister's office from vital information. A grand alliance of nuclear proponents now includes TEPCO, plant designer General Electric, METI, the former ruling Liberal Democratic Party and, by all signs, the White House.

Cabinet ministers in charge of communication and national emergencies recently lambasted METI head Banri Kaeda for acting as both nuclear promoter and regulator in charge of the now-muzzled Nuclear and Industrial Safety Commission. TEPCO struck back quickly, blaming the prime minister's helicopter fly-over for delaying venting of volatile gases and thereby causing a blast at Reactor 2. For "health reasons,” TEPCO 's president retreated to a hospital ward, cutting Kan's line of communication with the company and undermining his site visit to Fukushima 1.

Kan is furthered hampered by his feud with Democratic Party rival Ichiro Ozawa, the only potential ally with the clout to challenge the formidable pro-nuclear coalition

The head of the Liberal Democrats, which sponsored nuclear power under its nearly 54-year tenure, has just held confidential talks with U.S. Ambassador John Roos, while President Barack Obama was making statements in support of new nuclear plants across the U.S.

Cut Off From Communications

The substance of undisclosed talks between Tokyo and Washington can be surmised from disruptions to my recent phone calls to a Japanese journalist colleague. While inside the radioactive hot zone, his roaming number was disconnected, along with the mobiles of nuclear workers at Fukushima 1 who are denied phone access to the outside world. The service suspension is not due to design flaws. When helping to prepare the Tohoku crisis response plan in 1996, my effort was directed at ensuring that mobile base stations have back-up power with fast recharge.

A subsequent phone call when my colleague returned to Tokyo went dead when I mentioned "GE.” That incident occurred on the day that GE’s CEO Jeff Immelt landed in Tokyo with a pledge to rebuild the Fukushima 1 nuclear plant. Such apparent eavesdropping is only possible if national phone carrier NTT is cooperating with the signals-intercepts program of the U.S. National Security Agency (NSA). more Updated link.

Truth Hurts, Fukushima Will be Permanently Uninhabitable, So Retract It

I can't decide if this state of denial thing is part of the culture or if they are just fucking insane. Follow the link at the bottom of the page for lots more.

Scandal: Japan Forces Top Official To Retract Prime Minister’s Revelation Fukushima Permanently Uninhabitable

Doublespeak, newspeak and more. A top government official forced to retract his report that the Prime minister said Fukushima will be permanently uninhabitable. Milk from Fukushima allowed back on store shelves with record levels of radiation being detected in food from the area. After WHO warns real risk is radiation in food supply and Fukushima upgraded to same level as Chernobyl, WHO says there is no need for new public health measures.

Japan Rewrites History Forcing Top Official To Retract Statement Fukushima Will Remain Permanently Uninhabitable.

Japanese media is reporting that Government has forced a top official to retract his report about comment the Prime Minister of Japan made behind closed doors.

A top Japanese Cabinet adviser revealed to the press that the Prime Minister said that the areas around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant would not be inhabitable for a long period of time.

Apparently the comment made behind closed doors was not supposed to be made public and the official has been forced to retract the report and Prime Minister denies ever making the comment.

Edano apologizes over Kan’s reported remark

Chief Cabinet Secretary Yukio Edano has apologized to the public over media reports about the long-term inhabitability of areas around the Fukushima Daiichi nuclear plant.

An adviser to the Cabinet, Kenichi Matsumoto, at first told reporters on Wednesday that the Prime Minister remarked that areas around the nuclear plant will be inhabitable over a long period. He later retracted his comment and the Prime Minister himself also denied making such a statement.

But the reports have angered local leaders, including the Fukushima governor.

Speaking to reporters on Thursday, Edano reiterated that Kan never made such remarks.

But Edano said it is regrettable that the reports have caused concern to residents who have evacuated from around the plant.

April 14, 2011

Source:NHK

In related news food from the area surrounding the power plant is now showing high levels of nuclear radiation from the plant. more alexanderhiggins.com

Conflict of Interest: Bush Cousin Presides Over 9/11 Federal Court Case

I stay away from 9/11 for a variety of reasons, principally because there are plenty out there doing a far better job than I could possibly hope to achieve. There are also murky areas, which I have neither the time or the inclination to delve into further. But there is one area that is far from murky, it is in fact crystal clear, the Pentagon was not hit by aeroplane. Not then, not now, not in a million years.

And it is of this particular incident that first cousin of George W. Bush, Judge John Walker, refuses to recuse himself in hearing arguments in a case involving Cheney, Rumsfeld and Myers. Not content with flying in the face of judicial procedure, Walker and his cohorts attack the lawyer filing the motion, questioning his bona fides and his fitness to be heard before the court.

Which for me, brings it down to just the one thing, the judiciary have stopped even pretending that a person has recourse in law when filing suite against the establishment.

Extraordinary Conflict of Interest: Bush Cousin Presides Over Federal Court Case Against Former Bush Administration Officials

NEW YORK, April 7, 2011
Confounding lawyers and legal scholars all over the world, Judge John Walker, first cousin of former President George W. Bush, was one of three judges of the 2nd Circuit Court of Appeals to hear argument Tuesday in Gallop v. Cheney, Rumsfeld and Myers.

The lawsuit was brought by a soldier injured during the attack on the Pentagon and accuses former Vice President Dick Cheney, former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, and former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Richard Myers, of conspiring to facilitate the terrorist attacks of 9/11.

The attacks killed 3000 Americans, plus many who have died from the toxic clean-up conditions at Ground Zero.

Attorney William Veale, acting for April Gallop, learned of the assignment the usual 5 days before the argument, and filed a motion to disqualify Judge Walker.

There was no prior decision regarding the motion, and when Veale asked about it in court the motion was denied by Judge Winter. Veale then requested a continuance to seek appellate review of the court's ruling but that was denied as well.

Argument followed but Walker, and fellow judges Cabranes and Winter diverted attention to whether Veale, former Chief Assistant Public Defender, and lecturer in Criminal Trial Practice at the University of California, Boalt Hall, was properly licensed to practice before the court.

The Tuesday appeal followed a ruling by then District Court Judge Denny Chin, dismissing Ms. Gallop's lawsuit with prejudice, writing that the allegations are "implausible" and the product of "cynical delusion and fantasy." The judges were apparently unaware of growing world doubts about the official story of 9/11, including a recent poll by Germany's prestigious Emnid Institute, reporting 89.5% of Germans in doubt.

Gallop's appeal brief stated that Judge Chin's summary misrepresented important allegations in the case, and failed to consider virtually half of the factual assertions contained in the Complaint. Chin also failed to mention the words, actions, and locations of the three defendants at the time of the crime.

Veale, amidst frequent interruptions from the three judges, managed to point out Cheney's direct involvement in tracking and dealing with the airplane that was heading for the Pentagon, as reported to the 9/11 Commission by then Secretary of Transportation Norman Mineta, a winner of the Presidential Medal of Freedom.

Judge Cabranes gave no sign of being familiar with the allegations in the Complaint concerning conflicts about the flight path of AA 77 (which allegedly hit the Pentagon) between the National Transportation Safety Board and the 9/11 Commission.

Nor did he show any sign of being aware of the scrubbing of the radar tracks in the area at the time of the attacks, nor of the counter-intuitive strategy of the suicidal hijacker who chose not to kill 20,000 occupants of the Pentagon, including Secretary Rumsfeld, by flying into the roof of the Pentagon.

Instead this novice pilot allegedly executed a spiraling descent, beyond the capacity of the plane and certainly the capability of the pilot, to accomplish an incredible horizontal ground level entry into a sparsely occupied and recently reinforced section of the building, causing 125 deaths.

Veale asked what offense to justice could come from allowing the case to go forward, when the possibility of sanctions awaits purveyors of frivolous accusations. Gallop's lawyer's final lament acknowledged the existence of evil in the world, its attraction to power and its disregard for citizenship, but Walker interrupted that sentence before it could be completed as well. globalresearch

Media contact: William Veale, centerfor911justice@gmail.com