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Hypocrisy Rules in Posada Case
By Bill Weaver,
Jun 25th, 2005
http://narcosphere.narconews.com/story/2005/6/25/201416/689
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
George Bush, Dick Cheney, Don Rumsfeld and high level staff from various agencies sat around the large oval mahogany table, a gift from Richard Nixon to the United States, in the Cabinet Room of the White House. They were assessing the recent crises and the effectiveness of the intelligence community and the problems of a prying Congress, civil libertarians, and bad publicity. They especially lamented how outdated legal strictures were impeding the execution of policy. One complained that people do "not understand that intelligence problems must be treated in a special category," and that present exigent circumstances require relaxing legal standards, for "[i]t has always been the case in history where vital interests are involved," that the president has the power to take whatever action is necessary to safeguard the country. It is noted, as it has been many times since the terrorist attacks of 9/11, that "Lincoln suspended certain rights [and] we have had emergency laws . . . There are many examples." Speaking of civil liberties, Bush said "[w]e have gone too far at this business" and Secretary Rumsfeld agreed "entirely with all that has been said" and griped that because of an overly deferent attitude toward civil liberties "[w]e are being forced to give up sensitive information in order to prosecute" terrorists.
Despite the subject matter and the people involved, this discussion was not a recent one; it occurred on January 13, 1977, during the last National Security Council meeting of President Gerald Ford's administration. The same players as almost thirty years ago, with the addition of George Junior, are still at it, still working outside of law and diplomacy, still contemptuous of allies and their own citizens. Recent disclosures show an arrogance that is difficult to imagine, with numerous CIA employees violating law with impunity and living lavishly on taxpayer money at the same time.
Since Operation Northwoods, a stunning plan in the early 1960s that in part proposed for the United States government to carry out terrorist attacks against its own citizens, U.S. intelligence agencies have been seemingly willing to sacrifice countless innocent lives in their blind efforts to oust Cuban leader Fidel Castro and destroy leftist sentiment in Central and South America. There is an unbroken line of allegiance to this position leading directly from George Junior and Senior, Dick Cheney, and Don Rumsfeld back to the 1950s. A few miles away from where this is being written, Luis Posada sits in an immigration detention center. He is the living embodiment of a fifty-year-old misguided policy that was and is willing to sacrifice the innocent for an ideology. Posada's career is the career of sordid U.S. policy in Latin America, and he is a reminder that the excuses for aggression may change, but the underlying motivations remain the same. Posada was not a renegade or a convenient partner for U.S. policy; he was U.S policy.
William Cooper, the operations manager for the Iran-Contra debacle, listed Posada, under the alias "Ramon," right after "Home," on his "frequently used phone numbers" list. Posada, who was the "support director" for the operation went by the codename "Caretaker," and tellingly, since Posada and his pals had no use for diplomacy, the Department of State was pegged with the codename "Wimp." The "U.S. Government," meaning the executive branch (Ronald Reagan, Ollie North and company), on the other hand was labelled with virility; it was called "Playboy." This attitude, the disdain for diplomacy and the love of violence as a means to change, makes the U.S. shake with hypocrisy and is a betrayal to its citizens. George W. Bush continues the legacy of violence over negotiation, counting on the forgetfulness of nations and people to avoid embarrassments of the past. But Posada has lived long enough to complete the circle of embarrassment and make the U.S. Government face its own past. The U.S. has encouraged terrorism as an expedient substitute for diplomacy and the rule of law. But here in the U.S., in holding Posada captive, we are holding ourselves captive, we are pressed to face the truth of our past. Many people would rather face death than be made to face the truth, and so Posada is stowed away in El Paso, with Bush Junior and Senior, and Cheney and Rumsfeld hoping he will die before reaching sunlight again. El Paso is a good place to lose people; it always has been. Raymond Chandler's Philip Marlowe says in The High Window, "Nobody came in, nobody called, nothing happened, nobody cared whether I died or went to El Paso." Posada didn't die, but he did go to El Paso, and there are many who hope he never makes it out.
[KING RICHARD III
Give me another horse: bind up my wounds.
Have mercy, Jesu!--Soft! I did but dream.
O coward conscience, how dost thou afflict me!
The lights burn blue. It is now dead midnight.
Cold fearful drops stand on my trembling flesh.
What do I fear? myself? there's none else by:
Richard loves Richard; that is, I am I.
Is there a murderer here? No. Yes, I am:
Then fly. What, from myself? Great reason why:
Lest I revenge. What, myself upon myself?
Alack. I love myself. Wherefore? for any good
That I myself have done unto myself?
O, no! alas, I rather hate myself
For hateful deeds committed by myself!
I am a villain: yet I lie. I am not.
Fool, of thyself speak well: fool, do not flatter.
My conscience hath a thousand several tongues,
And every tongue brings in a several tale,
And every tale condemns me for a villain.
Perjury, perjury, in the high'st degree
Murder, stem murder, in the direst degree;
All several sins, all used in each degree,
Throng to the bar, crying all, Guilty! guilty!
-WS]
Bush Approves Spy Agency Changes
By Dan Eggen and Walter Pincus
Washington Post Staff Writers
Thursday, June 30, 2005; A01
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2005/06/29/
AR2005062900220.html
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
President Bush ordered another shake-up of the nation's intelligence services yesterday, forming new national security divisions within both the FBI and the Justice Department and, for the first time, putting a broad swath of the FBI under the authority of the nation's spy chief.
Building on previous changes required by Congress, the reorganization cements the authority of the new director of national intelligence, John D. Negroponte, over most of the FBI's $3 billion intelligence budget. It also gives him clear authority to approve the hiring of the FBI's top national security official and, through that official, to communicate with FBI agents and analysts in the field on intelligence matters.
The plan represents a particularly sharp rebuke to the historically independent FBI, which has struggled to remake itself into a counterterrorism agency since the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks and has been the target of withering reviews from both inside and outside the government. The moves also mark a victory for the CIA, which has endured its own blistering critiques but has successfully fought off proposals to cede some of its authority to the Pentagon.
Civil liberties advocates immediately criticized the changes at the FBI, arguing that they represent a radical step toward the creation of a secret police force in the United States. Many Justice prosecutors and FBI agents had also fiercely opposed the changes but were overruled by Bush's homeland security adviser, Frances Fragos Townsend, officials said.
"Spies and cops play different roles and operate under different rules for a reason," said Timothy Edgar, national security counsel for the American Civil Liberties Union. "The FBI is effectively being taken over by a spymaster who reports directly to the White House. . . . It's alarming that the same person who oversees foreign spying will now oversee domestic spying, too."
Attorney General Alberto R. Gonzales and FBI Director Robert S. Mueller III played down such concerns. Although Bush's memo gives Negroponte's office authority over the FBI's intelligence program, they said, he will not exercise authority over traditional criminal investigations conducted by the bureau.
"They're not going to be directing law enforcement," Gonzales said at a news conference. "Every law enforcement official within the FBI is going to remain under the supervision and authority of the FBI director and, ultimately, the attorney general."
As outlined in a memorandum to senior Cabinet officials, Bush adopted all but four of 74 recommendations made by a special intelligence commission headed by senior appellate judge Laurence H. Silberman and former senator Charles S. Robb (D-Va.). Although originally formed to examine intelligence failures in prewar Iraq, the panel chronicled broader shortcomings in the intelligence community's ability to monitor or prevent threats from terrorists or rogue states.
Bush also ordered the creation of a National Counter Proliferation Center, aimed at helping to combat the spread of weapons of mass destruction to terrorist groups and rogue states. In addition, a separate executive order released yesterday allows the freezing of assets of individuals, groups or companies allegedly involved in weapons proliferation, including eight specific organizations in Iran, North Korea and Syria.
The plans announced by the administration yesterday mark the latest in a series of reorganizations, new agencies and other changes that have roiled the government since the Sept. 11 attacks. In addition to the creation of the Department of Homeland Security, the FBI previously created a Directorate of Intelligence and has expanded the number of agents, analysts and other staff members dedicated to counterterrorism and counterintelligence.
Under Bush's memo, the FBI will create a National Security Service by bringing together its counterintelligence, counterterrorism and intelligence divisions under one umbrella. The head of the new service will be hired by the FBI director and the attorney general, but with the "concurrence" of Negroponte, who will fund the FBI's intelligence activities. The memo said that Negroponte, "through the head of the FBI's National Security Service, can effectively communicate with the FBI's field offices, resident agencies and any other personnel in the National Security Service."
Across Pennsylvania Avenue at the Justice Department, Gonzales will also pull together several intelligence and counterterrorism operations to form a new national security division, and Bush will ask Congress to allow the hiring of a new assistant attorney general to run it.
Mueller said he views the changes as "the next step in our ability to protect the American public."
"I don't see it as a loss of independence at all," he said. "I see it as an acknowledgment and a furtherance of the development of the FBI to respond to the threats of today."
At the White House, Townsend said that many of the changes ordered yesterday were outgrowths of the Intelligence Reform Act approved by Congress in December, which created Negroponte's office and called for other changes in the intelligence community.
"The agencies did not approach this as a zero-sum game where some won and some lost," she said.
Negroponte's deputy, Air Force Lt. Gen. Michael V. Hayden, told reporters that the FBI's new service is "something we've not done before as a nation" but also said that Mueller's deputy already sits in with other intelligence agency managers at meetings with the director of national intelligence. The new FBI national security official will be "dual-hatted" and will report to both Mueller and Negroponte, he said.
Many details of the new plan remain to be worked out. Bush's order gives Gonzales 60 days to come up with an implementation plan.
Many of the dozens of changes recommended by the Silberman-Robb commission dealt with details of intelligence analysis, training and sharing of information. Hayden said that 30 initiatives relating to intelligence analysis, including many commission recommendations, have already been initiated. For the CIA, a new official will oversee human intelligence operations overseas by all agencies, including the FBI and the Pentagon.
Townsend said three commission recommendations required further study, including a finding that three agencies should be held accountable for failures on prewar intelligence in Iraq. Another recommendation, which was not identified because it is classified, has not been adopted, she said.
© 2005 The Washington Post Company
[Things are breaking down faster than even I had thought. Lundberg is eloquent as usual. - MCR]
Petrocollapse:
Can you live without indoor running water?
Written by Jan Lundberg
Culture Change Letter #101
http://culturechange.org/cms/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=14&
Itemid=2.html#cont
In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior interest in receiving the included information for research and educational purposes.
The answer to the question "Can you live without indoor running water?" is simple: you'll have to. The passing of abundant oil is not shaping up to be a soft landing for those with the fattest asses. And in this world, we all know which nation leads the way in obesity. Contrast this with the image of slender villagers carrying water casks on their heads, and how their food supply tends to be very local: this will be the envy of U.S. consumers caught short.
You can live without functional plumbing, but you cannot live without water. Some indoor plumbing may work after the energy crisis hits with all its might. But, as this report endeavors to warn, the water in your outdoor environment -- such as it is -- will be what you live on (or that doesn't allow you to live at all). What a discovery for the nature deniers to experience. Will frightened hoards be the rule in U.S. cities rather than the exception?
The average amount of water consumed per capita in the U.S. is 183 gallons a day (1990; U.S. EPA). This reflects public water supply usage, and it's twice as high in the western U.S. as in the east. One reason is that irrigation uses 81% of water in the nation. Problems with irrigation: huge energy demand for pumping; drawdowns of ancient aquifers, and salinization.
In Mesopotamia the salinization and deforestation once characterized the beginning of Western Civilization's illustrious march of degrading resources for profit and empire, culminating in today's occupation of Mesopotamia by the U.S. (The serpent is eating its tail.) Clean water is hard to come by in Iraq: 39% of the people don't have it. Deliberate bombing of water treatment and other such facilities has gone on through three U.S. presidents. Petroleum dependence for pumping, when petroleum is lacking in Iraq of all places, is another reason for poor supply. The contamination from petrochemicals and depleted uranium in Iraq is yet another matter for us water piggies in the U.S. to ignore as long as possible.
Back in the USA: picture the state of mind of ornery citizens if four in ten people had really bad or insufficient water. It will be over 9 in 10 come petrocollapse. This is because of the extreme dependence on massively complex and centralized water supply systems that are run with mainly energy or materials from oil and natural gas. Although most of the systems run on electrical energy, and coal is the largest source of electrical energy, there is still a petroleum infrastructure involved: necessary to keep coal supplies moving and for running any system in the U.S. today. Also, petrocollapse -- System Collapse -- is going to bring down the coal sector as well, although not as fast as bringing down the petroleum-supplied aspect of the grid.
Although "every effort" will be made to keep water systems pumping and purifying, when supplies of fuel run short and other systems in the economy are affected and come to a standstill, the basics of industrial progress will show their vulnerability to bad planning and overpopulation. [Community solutions, covered later in this essay, may hold some hope for water supply.]
Water "return flow" means supplies recycled, such as in grey water gathered for the garden, as opposed to lost as in irrigation. Next time you see someone using a gallon of fresh water to wash a spoon, ask the person if that water could be useful for growing tomatoes -- on the balcony if there's no garden.
The U.S. is going to have to throw certain laws and regulations out the window if people are going to use greywater and take other measures for sustainable living. If for some reason water privatization accelerates before petrocollapse, and price rates jump, the behavior of militant Bolivians could be the model in the U.S.A. The U.S. corporation in question was ejected from Bolivia by protesters, and the nation's official leadership lost almost all its clout. [Later in this column: water politics and water history.]
U.S. officials in power today will be laughed about in future, if they're lucky. One hears of future hatred for our whole generation, even of everyone alive today -- although that's going too far.
I try not to pay too much mind to the constant errors and schemes of the wealthy elite and power players. I wish I could say it's because I'm busy writing songs. My main job that I don't like to be distracted from is to point out the main runaway freight trains on the tracks: a collapsing economy and nature batting last. It sure would be nice if the little boys in DC and London (and in most capital cities) would behave themselves, but what can ya do? Vote for a different little boy? It's too late to stop the train wrecks starting to overshadow human drama of the so-called status quo.
I say "so-called" because the status quo of almost anything is going to soon become history. There's good and bad in that, but those many people and other species that don't make it are not going to appreciate the good aspects of complete collapse.
Running water will be cut off and "the pump don't work," not because, as Bob Dylan sang "the vandals took the handles." It will be because energy, usually petroleum, is used for pumping water from major sources a long way from and to the now-teeming cities and wasteful factory-farms. Meanwhile, even drawing some cold water out of one's tap means warming the globe due to pumping-energy. Oops, well at least "I turn the tap off when I'm brushing my teeth."
A more optimistic scenario would include the following techniques, contributed by a reader in rural northern California:
"People in cities and burbs will eventually turn on a tap and get nothing. But they won't panic if enough folks in the community know and teach about rainwater collection, cisterns, barrels, and tanks, bucket composting toilets, composting one's waste (including urine and shit) into fertilizer, greywater reuse, swales, pavement removal, community gardens on a massive scale. -- etc etc etc. Hell, in-depth permaculture training should be mandatory in every school (if only I were dictator, ahh!). Don't sit in the dark quaking with fear, light an olive oil lamp (I've experimented quite a lot with them, and have written an article on it--easily feasible but a bit messy). Plant olive trees now, line city streets with them, so every neighborhood has a local source of veg oil."
I did not ask if you could live without indoor lighting; most places have windows and you can go to bed when it gets dark. In the long run, really living off the "fat of the land" (Hah!) of today's stressed ecosystems may mean the lighting source is rare beeswax candles where olive oil is not handy. What's that you say, "Oh how unlikely!"?
I did not ask you if you could live without food, because you can't. Not for long anyway. You can read my fasting treatise if you like, Culture Change Letter #92 April 8, 2005. Maybe the experience of a long fast will have an unexpected advantage, that of appearing sick and emaciated to those looking for fresh food in the form of human meat. There will be cannibalism for a few months at most, I figure, as the dust settles from petrocollapse. I am not supposed to say this, many readers say, even if it appears certain.
Then we see the Long Emergency, as James Howard Kunstler calls it, although I don't share his visualizing much industrial activity and consuming based on reliance on coal for major electricity generation. Petrocollapse is going to put a massive, crippling monkeywrench into business-as-usual. The extent and degree of upheaval will be matched by its rapidity and apparent suddenness. It is too late to escape it no matter who were put in charge of economics and planning for oil-guzzling nations. Meanwhile, petrocollapse is close on the horizon but is officially ignored. Must that be the way such a watershed of humanity's experience is dealt with? We could call it The Big Oops.
"Peak oil" can almost be an interchangeable concept with peak human population. The correlations on a graph, with plummeting extraction of crude and plummeting population size, are worth contemplating. I would like to be wrong about how imminent and sweeping collapse will be. Still, even if I am a bit premature, it's not like the collapse will "just be our children's children's problem" -- that would be too optimistic as to putting the time off into the future.
As to the potential for large disruption to supply from a relatively small shortfall of petroleum, a recent simulated energy crisis found "It was striking that by taking such small amounts off the market, you could have such dramatic impact" on world oil prices, said Robbie Diamond, the president of Securing America's Future Energy. He participated in the mock crisis on June 23, 2005 in Washington, DC with two former CIA directors and several other former top policy-makers. Drawing from my work at Lundberg Survey where we predicted the Second Oil Shock in 1979, I have been saying for years that the next energy crisis will be triggered by a relatively small shortfall of petroleum.
So, what will you do about clean water? Use a plastic tarp or the asphalt-shingled roof for rainwater when the petrochemicals therein are a health hazard? Yep, you betcha. I even did it myself when I lived in my own shelter in the redwood forest. But I made sure that tarp had been pounded by the rain for a good spell before drinking out of it. Sure was handy though.
For fat-asses to get in shape for petrocollapse, they might switch from drinking soda pops with dangerous chemicals and empty calories from sugar, and instead enjoy fresh water out of the tap (a safer source than plastic bottles).
I look forward to hearing from you on any of the above. I'm getting a lot of inquiries lately, so our new website will soon have a forum/bulletin board system.
Peace.
Jan
p.s. - Water wisdom from Mexico: Culture Change's Editorial Board member Miguel Valencia Mulkay wrote over the weekend,
"Water is in the origin of law and politics; the most ancient recollection of registers speak about water as the center of people's agreements; water has been in history the basis for peace and coming to terms. Since the beginning of the water confinement as tap water in the XIX century, water consumption exploded: from one to three gallons a day per capita to 183 gallons mentioned above; water consumption went up at least twenty times when pipes and pumps were introduced. Today superpumps and superpipes and the use of English WC ( defecatión in clean water) have become the origin of clean-water exhaustion.
"The 4th World Water Forum to be celebrated in México in march 2006, promoted by the World Water Council (The World Bank and the big water multinationals like Coca Cola, Nestle, Suez Ondeo, Vivendi Veolia, Bechtel, FW Thames and others) is a political marketing effort to change laws in weak countries like México, to promote privatizatión of all water facilities. The more bottled water is sold the more unclean water comes from tap water; the more fresh water is contaminated by industry the more great business: To produce a liter of milk in México requires 1,100 liters of freshwater. Water in now very expensive for poor people in our country.
"Now, the big business is water: the Blue Gold as is called by Maude Barlow from The Council of Canadians: one liter water costs more than a liter of gasoline."
*****
Further reading:
Fasting for health and inner peace:
http://culturechange.org/e-letter-Fasting92.htm
Jan Lundberg's analysis of June 20, 2005, End-time for U.S.A. upon oil collapse: a scenario for a sustainable future http://energybulletin.net/6933.htm
Peak Oil and Community Solutions - second annual conference, Sept. 23, 2005, Jan Lundberg and Richard Heinberg among speakers. Yellow Springs, Ohio http://www.communitysolution.org/05conf1.html
To donate to Culture Change, please visit http://www.culturechange.org/funding.htm
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Hypocrisy Rules in Posada Case