Memorial and Veterans Day Hypocrisy

Annually America’s Warrior Tradition is Commemorated in Major Media Editorials and Op-Eds, Honoring Fallen Men and Women for Reasons NOT Explained

by Stephen Lendman

On May 29, The New York Times headlined, “Among the Graves This Memorial Day,” saying:

Besides families mourning soldiers “recently lost in Iraq or Afghanistan….(t)here is still a generation mourning friends, relatives and fellow servicemen lost in Vietnam, Korea and World War II….” “Whatever you make of the wars in which those soldiers fought, whatever you make of war itself, their sacrifices are real and permanent,” omitting what most needs explained about imperial arrogance responsibility for lost lives.

The Chicago Tribune headlined, “Hoist a glass for Red,” saying:

Red Madsen and others like him “gave portions of their lives to warfare but survived. This day is theirs too,” stressing shared sacrifices they all made “defend(ing) this country,” leaving unexplained that America’s war are imperial, unrelated to defense.

The Washington Post also reflected in an editorial headlined, “A Memorial Day remembrance.” It honored Navy Seals involved in the alleged bin Laden killing stunt and (until his May 25 death) Maryland’s last living Medal of Honor recipient (Baltimore’s Paul J. Wiedorfer).

It was mostly reflective boilerplate until the final thought, recalling an earlier Wiedorfer comment, saying:

“Wouldn’t it be wonderful if the Medal of Honor didn’t exist because there were no wars and we could all live in peace?”

Rarely ever do America’s media express that sentiment, never its warrior leaders, reflected in Obama’s 2011 proclamation saying:

“On this Memorial Day, we honor the generations of Americans who have fought and died to defend our freedom….From Gettysburg to Kandahar, America’s sons and daughters have served with honor and distinction, securing our liberties and laying a foundation for lasting peace.”

Waging multiple imperial wars, ready plans for others, and numerous proxy ones, his hypocrisy requires no comment, desecrating the graves he pretends to honor.

Memorial and Veterans Days of Shame

Commemorated on the last Monday in May, Memorial Day was first observed in 1866, called Decoration Day in 1868. In 1967, federal law officially made it the time to honor America’s fallen men and women. More on that below.

Veterans Day was formerly Armistice Day (Remembrance Day in Europe), commemorating WW I’s end on the 11th hour of the 11th day of the 11th month of the year in 1918 when guns on both sides went silent, or were supposed to. First observed in America in 1919, it became a legal holiday in 1938. In June, 1954, Congress changed its name to Veterans Day.

Both days, in fact, dishonor America’s war dead, omitting why they fought and died in vain, sacrificing their lives for imperial conquest, plunder, and new ones in an endless cycle of gratuitous violence, militarism, brutality, and destruction for power and profit.

Comfortably at home during hostilities, America’s privileged, in fact, let others do their dying for them, making the world safe for bankers, war profiteers, and other corporate favorites, sending innocent youths to conflicts based on lies, duplicitously saying it’s for freedom, democracy, and humanitarian concerns.

In fact, it’s for wealth and power, nothing else, conquering, colonizing, and exploiting resources and people ruthlessly, shifting from one theater to another, satisfying an insatiable desire for more, sucking life out of countries one at a time or several simultaneously, an American tradition from inception.

As a result, these holidays warrant special condemnation, representing a galling legacy of perpetual wars, false patriotism, and unattainable peace, the very notion intolerable to America’s leaders for generations, notably since WW II.

These days, in fact, testify to the nation’s depravity, commemorating the ultimate crime by wasting human lives, ignoring Lincoln in November 1863 at Gettsburg, saying:

“(W)e here resolve that these dead shall not have died in vain, that this nation under God shall have a new birth of freedom, and that government of the people, by the people, for the people shall not perish from the earth.”

The horror of America’s Civil War still continued, finally ending on June 22, 1865, the day the last shot was fired, weeks after another killed Lincoln on April 22 that year.

Both, in fact, metaphorically reflect endless death, destruction, and human suffering wars guarantee, at times consuming presidents, but mostly deceived youths sent to battle for reasons unexplained, not the fabricated ones used to rally them.

A Final Thought

Future commemorations should chart a new course, vowing never again and meaning it. Remembrance should be an act of contrition and path to redemption, honoring the living, pledging peace, non-violence, equity and justice by leaders backing rhetoric with policy.

Perhaps one day new generations will wonder why older ones fought wars, they long ago renounced. If so, commemorating dead and living warriors may be replaced by a Peace Day, honoring sacred life so dead soldiers didn’t die in vain. Pray it comes in time to matter.

ABOUT THE AUTHOR: Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net. Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.veteranstoday.com/2011/05/30/memorial-and-veterans-day-hypocrisy/

Bin Laden Death Script and the Needed Trigger for Next Step -- Pakistan

By Sibel Edmonds

From Boiling Frogs Post

It has been over two weeks since the orchestrated ever-changing Bin Laden Death. The question of what happened remains the same except it doesn't seem to matter any longer. The US media is done after making their initial splash, and the majority is left with one conclusion: the SOB is dead, and who gives a da" how it happened. Whether Osama held an AK-47 while using some damsel in distress as a shield, whether there was a real fight or not, whether it was really Osama's body in an organic edible shell we fed to the endangered sharks, whether the full credit goes to the CIA or the White House or the Pentagon ... no longer seems to matter. Dizzy-fying confusion induced by dozens and dozens of lies and discrepancies and denials has given way to post-adrenaline-rush exhaustion. The question of what happened has been classified as moot and irrelevant. Right or wrong I'll leave that question behind, at least for now, and instead, go back to focus on the more important question -- the question of "why and why now"'

As I stated during the first few days of covering the Bin Laden Death Script, when it comes to DC dirty politics, when it comes to the New World Order machine, and when it comes to US presidents, timing is everything and there are no such things as coincidences:

Considering the mainstream media's sensationalism and propaganda tactics and their cemented role as an extension of the establishment, one must step back and take in the entire landscape, the context, connections, and of course the timing. Only after that, after putting the pieces together instead of dumbly staring at the images spread before us by the media, we have a chance to get a grasp of the reality-facts; or at least a chance to come up with real questions.

In the past two weeks, after talking with many experts and sources, both nationally and internationally, Pakistan has been surfacing as the common thread holding the most rational explanation of "why and why now.' Interestingly, I came across the following statement by Rep. Ron Paul during his interview on MSNBC's Morning Joe:

"The helicopters that landed in Abbottabad won't be the last to put American troops on the ground in Pakistan, I see the whole thing as a mess, and I think that we are going to be in Pakistan. I think that's the next occupation and I fear it. I think it's ridiculous, and I think our foreign policy is such that we don't need to be doing this."

I was planning to write a comprehensive piece based on information and analyses I have gathered from my solid intelligence and Pentagon sources. However, after watching the interview with Ron Paul (And he has his credible sources), I decided to go ahead and write a fairly quick commentary on why the question of "why and why now " keeps pointing to Pakistan as the next probable occupation target for our never-dying neocon objective-makers. Actually the following is more of significant developments and a time line than a subjective interpretation or commentary. I am going to put them together and have us look at the pattern and where these points point to, and that's exactly what I meant by "one must step back and take in the entire landscape, the context, connections, and of course the timing."

Let's start with Project for the New American Century (PNAC) which was launched in 1997 and became known for leading the public campaign to oust Saddam Hussein both before and after the September 11 attacks. As many of my highly aware readers know, those neocons, their objectives and activities, never go away. They may change names or change a few front faces, but like a leech they always hold on to the system; the system they help put in place in the first place:

The blandly-named Foreign Policy Initiative (FPI) -- the brainchild of Weekly Standard editor William Kristol, neo-conservative foreign policy guru Robert Kagan, and former Bush administration official Dan Senor -- has thus far kept a low profile; its only activity to this point has been to sponsor a conference pushing for a U.S. "surge" in Afghanistan. But some see FPI as a likely successor to Kristol's and Kagan's previous organization, the now-defunct Project for the New American Century (PNAC), which they launched in 1997 and which became best known for leading the public campaign to oust former Iraqi president Saddam Hussein both before and after the Sep. 11 attacks.
...

So what's their mission statement, and what have these neocons been cooking up with the new face, their new president, Obama? The following is from an article by Jim Lobe in 2009:

The mission statement opens by listing a familiar litany of threats to the U.S., including "rogue states," "failed states," "autocracies" and "terrorism," but gives pride of place to the "challenges" posed by "rising and resurgent powers," of which only China and Russia are named.

"FPI intends to make confrontation with China and Russia the centrepiece of its foreign policy stance. If this is the case, it would mark a return to the early days of the Bush administration, before 9/11, when Kristol's Weekly Standard took the lead in attacking Washington for its alleged "appeasement" of Beijing." FPI has chosen to push for escalating the U.S. military effort in Afghanistan. The organisation's first event, to be held here Mar. 31, will be a conference entitled "Afghanistan: Planning for Success."
...

For now, this is what I want you to take from the above on Obama's Neoconistic objectives: fiercely counter China-Russia when it comes to establishing US hegemony, especially in Central and South Asia, with emphasis on Afghanistan. Next, let's look at the strategic importance of the same region for China [All emphasis mine]:

In order for China to sustain its status as the emerging economic superpower, it must take all the necessary steps required in order to have sufficient energy resources for the near future. According to Pakistani think tank, BrassTacks, Chinese interests in the Indian Ocean became visible in 2002, when they invested heavily and began work on the Gwadar Port, located in Baluchestan, a province of Pakistan.

The Gwadar Port has its benefits for both Pakistan and China. According to Abdus Sattar Ghazali, executive editor for American Muslim Perspective, "The cost benefits to China of using Gwadar as the port for western China's imports and exports are as evident as the long-term economic benefits to Pakistan of Gwadar becoming a port for Chinese goods." Not only does Gwadar enable China to fulfill its energy needs, but it will also provide a strategic military footprint in the Arabian Sea, which has the United States worried.
...

Okay, now you have Obama's Neoconistic objectives with China as its main target and competitor, and you have China competing for the same strategic area, Pakistan, to fulfill its energy needs and establish a strategic footprint in the Arabian Sea, and in the middle of it, the point where US-China strategic objectives intersect: Pakistan.

In order to halt this, the globalists need to block China's access to the Arabian Sea by way of Gwadar. According to BrassTacks, to do this, "there needs to be a "new Pakistan" as indicated in Operation Enduring Turmoil." Operation Enduring Turmoil is PNAC's plan to disassemble Pakistan into three parts. According to a "game plan" drawn out by Lt. Col. Ralph Peters, in a 2006 article of the Armed Forces Journal, "Pakistan's Northwest Frontier," tribes would be reunited with their Afghan brethren [and] would also lose its Baluch territory to Free Baluchistan. The remaining "natural" Pakistan would lie entirely east of the Indus, except for a westward spur near Karachi." With this done, what was once the NWFP, a province of Pakistan, is now part of Afghanistan, and what was once Baluchistan, a province of Pakistan, is now its own state, Free Baluchistan. This would force China to impossibly go through Afghanistan and Free Baluchistan in order to reach the Arabian Sea. Such an arrangement would cut China's route to the Arabian Sea.
...

Now, please focus on our three main actors -- China, US and, in the middle, the strategically important Pakistan. Let's use our common sense, minus logic-clouding details, and consider what happens when the strategically crucial actor in the middle starts straying away from one main actor and moving toward the other.

This is from November, 2009:

"China has sent out an interesting signal ahead of US president Barack Obama's scheduled visit to Beijing by offering a set of advanced fighter jets to Pakistan. It has agreed to sell $1.4 billion worth of jets to Islamabad days ahead of the planned visit of the US president Barack Obama to Shanghai and Beijing on November 15-18.

"The move is expected to jolt the US administration as it works on notes and talking points for Obama's meetings with Chinese leaders. He is expected to discuss Beijing's relationship with India and its role in internal conflicts in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

"Beijing is keen to reduce US influence on Pakistan, which will make it easier for it to deal with India, sources said. Washington's recent decision to extend massive financial assistance to Islamabad is seen in some quarters as a policy setback for China.
...

A year later, in October 2010, the following interesting perspective on how things were heating up between the US and Pakistan is published by Margolis:

"The neoconservative far right in Washington and its media allies again claim Pakistan is a grave threat to US interests and to Israel. Pakistan must be declawed and dismembered, insist the neocons. Pakistan's nuclear arsenal is reportedly being targeted for seizure or elimination by US Special Forces. There is also talk in Washington of dividing Afghanistan into Pashtun, Tajik and Uzbek mini-states, as the US has done in Iraq, and perhaps Pakistan, as well. Little states are easier to rule or intimidate than big ones. Many Pakistanis believe the United States is bent on dismembering their nation. Some polls show Pakistanis now regard the United States as a greater enemy than India.
...

It is important to remember how Obama passed AIPAC neocons' test on Pakistan during his presidential campaign in 2007. Obama said if elected in November 2008 he would be willing to attack inside Pakistan with or without approval from the Pakistani government, "If we have actionable intelligence about high-value terrorist targets and President Musharraf won't act, we will," Obama said.

Now, let's fast-forward to early April 2011:

"Pakistan's ambassador to China used a recent celebration of his country's Republic Day to give a rhetoric-filled talk about Beijing-Islamabad relations. If March 23, 1940, was the day the Muslim League decided to establish Pakistan, then the anniversary would be a time to declare that relations with China will define the way forward. "We shall take our bilateral relations to new heights,' Masood Khan proclaimed. [...] Pakistan has been moving into China's sphere of influence for decades and the countries routinely refer to each other as 'all-weather' partners.

"This year will mark the 60th anniversary of diplomatic relations. 'Even when I was there in 1981, '82, I could see Chinese military factories going up,' says Stephen Cohen, a Pakistan expert at the Brookings Institution. Now, Pakistan represents a major market for China's nuclear and military technology. According to SIPRI, a Swedish think tank, over 40 per cent of Chinese arms exports go to Pakistan -- the largest share of any country China sells to."

Obviously Obama's day-in, day-out bombing of Pakistan, his "let's drone the hell out of them" policy, had backfired, producing the opposite effect for his Neoconistic global hegemony objectives. Now, things begin to really heat up; this is from April 17, 2011:

"President Obama's rhetoric in Delhi had no substance except to rile the Pakistanis. The Delhi card didn't quite work. The Chinese Premier visited Islamabad and pledged $20 billion in investment in Pakistan during the next five years. How about them apples? The Pakistani retort is what it has always been we need 'Friends Not Masters.'

"Britain as a colonial power practiced 'Divide and rule' pitting religious and ethnic differences in the Middle East to rule continents. Bhutto famously theorized that the post-colonial powers were working on a 'unite and rule' strategy forcing Pakistan to work with India against China.

"'The idea of becoming subservient to India is abhorrent and that of cooperation with India, with the object of promoting tension with China, equally repugnant.' Zulfiqar Ali Bhutto.
...

"Most Pakistanis don't want closer relations with Washington -- they want to build closer relations with Beijing, and work on creating the Muslim Union (similar to the European Union) in Central Asia. Links with Tajikistan, Uzbekistan, Afghanistan, Iran and Turkey are key to the future of Pakistan.

"Islamabad is moving ever closer to China, both militarily and economically -- and that's a fact Jack."
...

By mid April things start going downhill; very fast.

"The transactional relationship between Washington and Islamabad is coming to an end. While US-Pakistani transactional relations are fraying at both ends, the opposite is true of Sino-Pakistani relations.

"Pakistan supported China when she was recognized only by Albania, and built the bridge to the USA. This fact cannot be forgotten by the Chinese who mention it in every summit and mentioned it in this summit also.
...

"There is renewed energy to pace up the development of Gwadar Port to provide China a shorter route and easy excess to world markets to dispatch its goods to Europe and America.

"The Gwadar port project will transform Pakistan's Navy into a force that can rival regional navies. The government of Pakistan has designated the port area as a 'sensitive defense zone.' The Gwadar port will rank among the world's largest deep-sea ports. The port provides China a strategic foothold in the Arabian Sea and the Indian Ocean.

"Located at the entrance of the Persian Gulf and about 460 kms from Karachi, Gwadar has had immense Geostrategic significance on many accounts. The continued unstable regional environment in the Persian Gulf in particular as a result of the Iran/Iraq war, the Gulf war and the emergence of the new Central Asian States has added to this importance. Considering the Geo-economic imperative of the regional changes, the ADB's Ports Master Plan studies considered an alternate to the Persian Gulf Ports to capture the transit trade of the Central Asian Republic (CAR) as well as the trans-shipment trade of the region."
...

And finally, on April 27, according to my sources, the following catalyst prompts the Obama team to execute the Kill Osama Bin Laden Script. This is the pivotal point in the Bin Laden Death Operation Script as a catalyst for the soon to come Pakistan Occupation:

"Pakistan is lobbying Afghan President Hamid Karzai against building a long-term strategic partnership with the United States, and urging him instead to look to Pakistan and its ally, China, for help in striking a peace deal with the Taliban and rebuilding the economy, according to Afghan officials.
...

"Washington''s relations with Pakistan have reached their lowest point in years following a series of missteps on both sides, and Pakistani officials say that they no longer have an incentive to follow the American lead in their own backyard, the report added.

"'Pakistan is sole guarantor of its own interest,' said a senior Pakistani official, adding: 'We're not looking for anyone else to protect us, especially the US. If they"re leaving, they're leaving and they should go.'"
...

The next day, on April 28, , a senior Pakistani government official said that the Export-Import Bank of China will loan Pakistan $1.7 billion to develop a city-wide train system in the eastern city of Lahore.

Since the holes-filled and never-explained "kill or capture" operation, the presidential PR machine, the US media and their extension guised under "alternative " have been beating the war drums. After all, as with any wars of ours, public opinion must be shaped, and public backing must be garnered. This is one of the latest reflecting just that:

"After the killing of Usama bin Laden in Pakistan, few American voters believe that country is an ally of the United States in the war against terrorism. Moreover, most doubt Pakistan is worthy of continued U.S. foreign aid.

"That's according to a Fox News poll released Wednesday.

"Nearly three out of four voters -- 73 percent -- say the United States should stop sending foreign aid until Pakistan demonstrates a deeper commitment to the war against terrorism. Some 19 percent would continue to provide funding.
...

"With the discovery that bin Laden apparently had been living in Pakistan for years, the consensus is Pakistan is not a friend (74 percent). A small 16 percent minority of voters views Pakistan as a strong U.S. ally in the war against terrorism."
...

You must be thinking: Pakistan must have tons in their own dossier to expose US government duplicities, lies, and nefarious activities. So why have they been relatively silent in all this? Why don't they open the flood gate on "facts" surrounding Bin Laden, his supposed role in 9/11, his supposed journey since 9/11, and his supposed death recently? And I have an answer for that: neither party has played all their cards yet. Just take a look at how Gates has been playing both sides carefully while measuring the outcome of various factors in play:

"Gates reiterated the accusation that elements within the Pakistani government knew about the location of Osama bin Laden and were keeping that information from the United States. Bin Laden was killed in a US raid earlier this month.

"At the same time, Gates echoed comments by other officials, conceding that the US has absolutely no evidence to that effect and that it is 'pure supposition on our part. ' The repeated accusations, despite being based on 'pure supposition' have done major damage to US-Pakistan ties, and have spawned calls from Congress to suspend all aid to Pakistan to punish them.

"Gates, who attended the conference with Joint Chiefs of Staff Chairman Admiral Michael Mullen, also said that the US raid that killed bin Laden had 'humiliated' the Pakistani government, and that they had 'paid a price' for bin Laden's presence. Mullen added that the US ability to attack Pakistan with impunity was 'a humbling experience" for the Pakistani military.'"
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The White House neocons are in the midst of age-old diplomatic games, bluffing, and hedging their bets. They have the "foreign & military ai d" card. They have the "ISI dirt files " card. They have the "ultimate China leaning" card. And of course, they have the "mighty power of preemptive occupation war " card, which is always blessed and supported by NATO and overlooked by their butlers in the UN.

China has its own set of cards; whether it is their biggest market for dumping goods, or carrying the US debt, or who knows what else. For now they are using the "talk " card with no real strings attached:

"Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao assured his Pakistani counterpart Yusuf Raza Gilani of China's 'all-weather friendship' on Wednesday, during a visit that sharply contrasted with anger between Washington and Islamabad.

"'I wish to stress here that no matter what changes might take place in the international landscape, China and Pakistan will remain forever good neighbours, good friends, good partners and good brothers,' Wen told Gilani at the start of a meeting in central Beijing's Great Hall of the People."

Suffice it to say that not all cards have been placed on the table. As the famous Kenny Rogers' Gambler lyrics go:

You got to know when to hold 'em, know when to fold 'em,
Know when to walk away and know when to run.
You never count your money when you're sittin' at the table.
There'll be time enough for countin' when the dealin's done.

As for us, the people, we'll be sitting and waiting for the three parties to conclude this stage of their global hegemony game. We'll be reading and watching and listening to their PR machine in the media give us one concocted fantasy after another. As in all other wars of ours we will have zero to say, zilch to gain, and plenty to lose. They have the cards, and we are the piled up tokens on the table.

Author's Website: www.nswbc.org

Author's Bio: Sibel Edmonds, a former FBI language specialist, was terminated from the bureau after reporting security breaches, cover-up, and blocking of intelligence with national security implications. Since that time, court proceedings in her whistleblower case have been blocked by the imposition of ?State Secret Privilege,? and Congress has been prevented from discussion of her case through retroactive reclassification by the Department of Justice. Edmonds, fluent in Turkish, Farsi and Azerbaijani; holds an MA in Public Policy and International Commerce from George Mason University, and a BA in Criminal Justice and Psychology from George Washington University.

From Nobel to Nobel: A letter to Barack Obama

By Adolfo Perez Esquivel

Dear Barack,

In addressing you I do so fraternally, and at the same time, to express my concern and indignation after seeing the destruction and death caused in several nations in the name of ‘freedom and democracy’, two words which have been twisted and stripped of meaning. They end up justifying murder, and is cheered on as if it were a sports event.

Indignation at the attitude of some parts of the US population, of heads of state in Europe and other countries who came out in support of the assassination of bin Laden, and by your complacency in the name of supposed justice. You didn’t look to seize and judge him for his alleged crimes, which generates more doubts. The objective was to assassinate him.

The dead are mute, and the fear of the accused who could disclose inconvenient facts for the USA, was turned into assassination, to ensure that the ‘death of the dog would end the madness’, without considering that you have only increased it.

When you were granted the Nobel Prize, of which we are holders, I sent you a letter which read: ‘Barack, I was very surprised by your having been awarded the Nobel Peace Prize, but now that you have it, you must use it in the service of peace among peoples, you have all the possibilities of doing it, to end the wars and begin correcting the severe crisis in your own country and the world’.

Unfortunately, you have increased hatred and betrayed the principles assumed during your electoral campaign before your people, such as ending the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, closing the prisons in Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib in Iraq. But on the contrary, you decided to start another war against Libya, backed up by NATO, and the shameful resolution of the UN to support you, when this high organisation, diminished and without its own mind, has lost its path and has been subjugated to the whims and interests of the dominant powers.

The foundational premise of the UN is the defence and promotion of peace and dignity among peoples. Its Preamble begins saying: ‘We, the peoples of the world...’ now absent from this organisation.

I would like to recall a mystic and teacher who has had a great influence in my life: Trapist monk Thomas Merton of the Gethsemane Abbey in Kentucky, who said ‘The greatest necessity of our time is to clean the enormous mass of mental and emotional garbage which blocks our minds and converts all public and social life into a disease of the masses. Without this domestic cleaning we can't begin to see. If we can’t see, we can’t think’.

Barack you were very young during the Vietnam war, perhaps you don’t remember the struggle of North American people to oppose the war. I have shared and accompanied the veterans of the Vietnam war, in particular Brian Wilson and his companions who were victims of this wars and of all wars.

Thomas Merton, analysing a stamp postmark which had just arrived saying ‘The U.S. Army, key to peace’ (‘El ejercito U.S., clave de la paz’) said: ‘No army is the key to peace. No nation has the key to anything which is not war. Power has nothing to do with peace. The more men increase military power, the more they violate peace and destroy it.’

We should protect LIFE to leave future generations a more just and fraternal society, re-establishing equilibrium with Mother Earth. If we don’t react to change the current situation of suicidal arrogance which is dragging peoples down, it will be very hard to come out and see the light. Humanity deserves a better fate.

You know, hope is like the flower which grows in the mud and blossoms in all its splendour, showing its beauty. Leopoldo Marechal, the great Argentine writer, said that: ‘You get out the maze via the top’.

I believe, Barack, that after following your erring way, you find yourself in a maze, unable to find the exit and you are burying yourself more and more in violence, devoured by the domination of power, and you think you possess all the power anyone could have, and that the world is at the feet of the USA. So large are the atrocities committed by different US governments in the world... It is a sad reality, but there is also the resistance of peoples who do not capitulate before the powerful.

Bin Laden, alleged author of the attack of the Twin Towers, has been made the devil incarnate who terrorised the world, identified as the ‘axis of evil’ and this has served you to wage the wars that the military industrial complex needs to place its products of death.

You should not ignore that researchers of the tragedy of September 11 have declared that the attacks were in many ways self-inflicted, such as the crash of a plane into the Pentagon and the prior evacuation of the Towers; an attack which provided a motive to launch the war against Iraq and Afghanistan and now against Libya; arguing based on the lie that all is done to save peoples in the name of ‘freedom and the defence of democracy’. And cynically stating that the deaths of women and children are ‘collateral damage’.

The word is devoid of values and meaning. You dub assassination ‘death’ and finally the US has ‘killed’ bin Laden. I am not in any way defending bin Laden, I am against all terrorism, by both these armed groups and the terrorism of the State which your government exercises in various parts of the world, supporting dictators, imposing military bases and armed intervention, using violence to maintain yourself via terror at the hub of world power. Is there only one ‘axis of evil’?

Peace is a practice of life in relations between persons and among peoples; it is a challenge to humanity's consciousness. Its path is difficult, daily and hopeful; where people build from their own lives and their own history. Peace can't be gifted, it is built. And this is what you're missing lad, courage to assume the historical responsibility with your people and with humanity.

You cannot live in the labyrinth of fear and control, ignoring international treaties, pacts and protocols of governments which are signed and then transgressed once and again. How can you speak of peace if you don’t want to honour anything, except in the interests of your country?

How can you talk about freedom when you keep innocent people in the prisons of Guantanamo, in the USA, in Iraq and in Afghanistan?

How can you speak of human rights and the dignity of peoples when you perpetually violate them and block those who don’t share your ideology and must endure your abuses?

How can you send military forces to Haiti after a devastating earthquake, instead of humanitarian aid to that suffering people?

How can you speak of freedom if you massacre the peoples in the Middle East and foster endless conflict which bleeds the Palestinians and Israelis?

Barack: Try to look at your maze from above; you may find the star that guides you, even knowing you can never reach it, as Eduardo Galeano said so well. Try to be consistent between what you say and do, it's the only way to not lose the path. It's a challenge of life. The Nobel Peace Prize is a tool at the service of the peoples, never for personal vanity.

I wish you much strength and hope, and we hope you will have the courage to correct your path and find wisdom and Peace.

Adolfo Pérez Esquivel

Buenos Aires, 5 May 2011

P.S. On a day like today 34 years ago, I came back to life; I was on a flight to death during the military dictatorship in Argentina supported by the USA… Thanks to God I survived, and had to find my way out of the labyrinth above desperation, and discover in the stars the path to be able to say like the prophet: ‘the darkest hour is when the dawn begins’.

http://pambazuka.org/en/category/features/73422

Americans Are Living In 1984

By Dr. Paul Craig Roberts

The White House’s “death of bin Laden” story has come apart at the seams. Will it make any difference that before 48 hours had passed the story had changed so much that it no longer bore any resemblance to President Obama’s Sunday evening broadcast and has lost all credibility?

So far it has made no difference to the once-fabled news organization, the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), which on May 9, eight days later, is still repeating the propaganda that the SEALs killed bin Laden in his Pakistani compound, where bin Laden lived next door to the Pakistani Military Academy surrounded by the Pakistani army.

Not even the president of Pakistan finds the story implausible. The BBC reports that the president is launching a full-scale investigation of how bin Laden managed to live for years in an army garrison town without being noticed.

For most Americans the story began and ended with four words: “we got bin Laden.” The celebrations, the sweet taste of revenge, of triumph and victory over “the most dangerous man on the planet” are akin to the thrill experienced by sports fans when their football team defeats the unspeakable rival or their baseball team wins the World Series. No fan wants to hear the next day that it is not so, that it is all a mistake. If these Americans years from now come across a story that the killing of bin Laden was an orchestrated news event to boost other agendas, they will dismiss the report as the ravings of a pinko-liberal-commie.

Everyone knows we killed bin Laden. How could it be otherwise? We--the indispensable people, the virtuous nation, the world’s only superpower, the white hats-- were destined to prevail. No other outcome was possible.

No one will notice that those who fabricated the story forgot to show the kidney dialysis machine that, somehow, kept bin Laden alive for a decade. No doctors were on the premises.

No one will remember that Fox News reported in December, 2001, that Osama bin Laden had passed away from his illnesses. http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,41576,00.html

If bin Laden beat all odds and managed to live another decade to await, unarmed and undefended, the arrival of the Navy SEALS last week, how it is possible that the “terror mastermind,” who defeated not merely the CIA and FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with those of America’s European allies and Israel, the National Security Council, the Pentagon, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, airport security four times on the same morning, etc. etc., never enjoyed another success, not even a little, very minor one? What was the “terror mastermind” doing for a decade after 9/11?

The “death of bin Laden” serves too many agendas that cover the political spectrum for the obvious falsity of the story to be recognized by very many. Patriots are euphoric that America won over bin Laden. Progressives have seized on the story to excoriate the United States for extra-judicial murder that brutalizes us all. Some on the left-wing bought into the 9/11 story because of the emotional satisfaction they received from oppressed Arabs striking back at their imperialist oppressors. These left-wingers are delighted that it took the incompetent Americans an entire decade to find bin Laden, who was hiding in plain view. The American incompetence in finding bin Laden simply, in their minds, proves the incompetence of the US government, which failed to protect Americans against the 9/11 attack.

Those who ordered, and those who wrote, totally incompetent legal memos that torture was permissible under US and international law, thereby setting up George W. Bush and Dick Cheney for the possibility of prosecution, are riding the euphoria of bin Laden’s death by declaring that it was torture that led the American assassins to bin Laden. All of a sudden, torture, which had fallen back into the disrepute in which it had been for centuries, is again in the clear. Anything that leads to the elimination of bin Laden is a valid instrument.

Those, who want to increase the pressure on Pakistan to shut up about Americans murdering Pakistani citizens in Pakistan from the air and from troops on the ground, have gained a new club with which to beat the Pakistani government into submission: “you hid bin Laden from us.”

Those who want to continue to fatten the profits of the military/security complex and the powers of Homeland Security, such as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, use bin Laden’s second, or ninth, death as proof that America is being successful in its war on terror and that the war must continue on such a successful path until all enemies are slain.

Most ominous of all was the statement by the CIA director that bin Laden’s death would lead to new attacks on America and new 9/11s from al Qaeda seeking revenge. This warning, issued within a few hours of President Obama’s Sunday evening address, telegraphed the inevitable “al Qaeda” Internet posting that America would suffer new 9/11s for killing their leader.

If the Taliban knew in December 2001 that bin Laden was dead, does anyone think that al Qaeda didn’t know it? Indeed, no member of the public has any way of knowing if al Qaeda is anything more than a bogyman organization created by the CIA which issues “al Qaeda” announcements. The evidence that al Qaeda’s announcements are issued by the CIA is very strong. The various videos of bin Laden for the last nine years have been shown by experts to be fakes. Why would bin Laden issue a fake video? Why did bin Laden cease issuing videos and only issue audios? A person running a world-wide terrorist organization should be able to produce videos. He would also be surrounded by better protectors than a couple of women. Where was al Qaeda, which according to former Pentagon chief Donald Rumsfeld, consists of “the most dangerous, best-trained, vicious killers on the face of the earth.” Had these most dangerous men alive abandoned their leader?

The CIA director’s warning of future terrorist attacks, followed by a suspect “al Qaeda” threat of the same, suggests that if the American public continues to lose its enthusiasm for the governments open-ended wars, which are conducted at the expense of the US budget deficit, the dollar’s exchange value, inflation, Social Security, Medicare, income support programs, jobs, recovery, and so forth, “al Qaeda” will again outwit all 16 US intelligence agencies, those of our allies, NORAD, airport security, Air Traffic Control, etc. etc., and inflict the world’s only superpower with another humiliating defeat that will invigorate American support for “the war on terror.”

I believe that “al Qaeda” could blow up the White House or Congress or both and that the majority of Americans would fall for the story, just as the Germans, a better educated and more intelligent population, fell for the Reichstag Fire--as did a number of historians.

The reason I say this is that Americans have succumbed to propaganda that has conditioned them to believe that they are under attack by practically omnipotent adversaries. Proof of this is broadcast every day. For example, on March 9, I heard over National Public Radio in Atlanta that Emory University, a private university of some distinction, treated its 3,500 graduating class to a commencement address by Janet Napolitano, Secretary of Homeland Security.

This is the agency that has goons feeling the genitals of young children and adults and which has announced that it intends to expand this practice from air travelers to shopping malls, bus and train stations. That a serious university invited such a low-lifer, who clearly has no respect for American civil liberty and is devoid of any sort of sense of what is appropriate, to address a graduating class of southern elite is a clear indication that the Ministry of Truth has prevailed. Americans are living in George Orwell’s 1984.

For those who haven’t read Orwell’s classic prediction of our time, Big Brother, the government, could tell the “citizens” any lie and it was accepted unquestioningly. As a perceptive reader pointed out to me, we Americans, with our “free press,” are at this point today: “What is really alarming is the increasingly arrogant sloppiness of these lies, as though the government has become so profoundly confident of its ability to deceive people that they make virtually no effort to even appear credible.”

A people as gullible as Americans have no future.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24698

The Predators: Where is Your Democracy?

by Kathy Kelly

On May 4, 2011, CNN World News asked whether killing Osama bin Laden was legal under international law. Other news commentary has questioned whether it would have been both possible and advantageous to bring Osama bin Laden to trial rather than kill him.

World attention has been focused, however briefly, on questions of legality regarding the killing of Osama bin Laden. But, with the increasing use of Predator drones to kill suspected "high value targets" in Pakistan and Afghanistan, extrajudicial killings by U.S. military forces have become the new norm.

Just three days after Osama bin Laden was killed, an attack employing remote-control aerial drones killed fifteen people in Pakistan and wounded four. CNN reports that their Islamabad bureau has counted four drone strikes over the last month and a half since the March 17 drone attack which killed 44 people in Pakistan’s tribal region. This most recent suspected strike was the 21st this year. There were 111 strikes in 2010. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan estimated that 957 innocent civilians were killed in 2010.

I’m reminded of an encounter I had, in May, 2010 ,when a journalist and a social worker from North Waziristan met with a small Voices for Creative Nonviolence delegation in Pakistan and described, in gory and graphic detail, the scenes of drone attacks which they had personally witnessed: the carbonized bodies, burned so fully they could be identified by legs and hands alone, the bystanders sent flying like dolls through the air to break, with shattered bones and sometimes-fatal brain injuries, upon walls and stone.

“Do Americans know about the drones?” the journalist asked me. I said I thought that awareness was growing on University campuses and among peace groups. “This isn’t what I’m asking,” he politely insisted. “What I want to know is if average Americans know that their country is attacking Pakistan with drones that carry bombs. Do they know this?”

“Truthfully,” I said, “I don’t think so.”

“Where is your democracy?” he asked me. “Where is your democracy?”

Ideally, in a democracy, people are educated about important matters, and they can influence decisions about these issues by voting for people who represent their point of view.

Only a handful of U.S. officials have broached the issue of whether or not it is right for the U.S. to use unmanned aerial vehicles to function as prosecutor, judge, jury and executioner in the decision to assassinate anyone designated as a “high value target” in faraway Pakistan or Afghanistan.

Would we want unmanned aerial vehicles piloted by another country to fly over the U.S., targeting individuals deemed to be a threat to the safety of their people, firing Hellfire missiles or dropping 500 pound bombs over suspected “high valuetargets” on the hunch of a soldier or general without evidence and without any consideration of which innocent civilians willalso be killed?

Fully informed citizens might be invited to consider the Golden Rule of “do unto others as you would have them do unto you,” but they would certainly be involved in the debate over how we will be treated in future years and decades when these weapons have proliferated. In 1945, only one country possessed the atomic bomb, but within decades, the “nuclear club” had expanded to five declared and four non-declared nuclear-armed states in a much less certain world. Besides the risk of nuclear war, this weapon proliferation has consumed resources that could have been directed toward feeding a hungry world or eradicating disease or easing the effects of impoverishment.

As of now, worldwide, 49 companies make 450 different drone aircraft. Drone merchants expect that drone sales will earn $20.2 billion over the next 10 years for aerospace war manufacturers. Who knows? One day drone missiles may be aimed at us.

Also worth noting is the observation that drones will make it politically convenient for any country to order military actions without risking their soldiers’ lives, thereby making it easier, and more tempting, to start wars which may eventually escalate to result in massive loss of life, both military and civilian.

Voices for Creative Nonviolence believes that standing alongside people who bear the brunt of our wars helps us gain needed insights. Where you stand determines what you see.

In October and again in December of 2010, while in Afghanistan, I met with a large family living in a wretched refugee camp. They had fled their homes in the San Gin district of the Helmand Province after a drone attack killed a mother there and her five children. The woman’s husband showed us photos of his children’s bloodied corpses. His niece, Juma Gul, age 9, had survived the attack. She and I huddled next to each other inside a hut made of mud on a chilly December morning. Juma Gul’s father stooped in front of us and gently unzipped her jacket, showing me that his daughter’s arm had been amputated by shrapnel when the U.S. missile hit their home in San Gin.

Next to Juma Gul was her brother, whose leg had been mangled in the attack. He apparently has no access to adequate medical care and experiences constant pain.

It's impossible to conjecture what would have happened had Osama bin Laden been apprehended and brought to appear before a court of law, charged with crimes against humanity because of his alleged role in masterminding the 9/11 attacks. But, I feel certain beyond doubt that Juma Gul posed no threat whatsoever to the U.S., and if she were brought before a court of law and witnesses were helped to understand that she was attacked by a U.S. unmanned aerial vehicle for no reason other than that she happened to live in proximity to a potential high value target, she would be vindicated of any suspicion that she committed a crime. The same might not be true for those who attacked her.

Kathy Kelly, a co-coordinator of Voices for Creative Nonviolence. Kathy Kelly's email is kathy@vcnv.org

http://www.commondreams.org/view/2011/05/09-5

"American Justice": The Targeted Assassination of Osama Bin Laden

by Prof. Marjorie Cohn

Extrajudicial executions are unlawful

When he announced that Osama bin Laden had been killed by a Navy Seal team in Pakistan, President Barack Obama said, “Justice has been done.” Mr. Obama misused the word "justice" when he made that statement. He should have said, "Retaliation has been accomplished." A former professor of constitutional law should know the difference between those two concepts. The word "justice" implies an act of applying or upholding the law.

Targeted assassinations violate well-established principles of international law. Also called political assassinations, they are extrajudicial executions. These are unlawful and deliberate killings carried out by order of, or with the acquiescence of, a government, outside any judicial framework.

Extrajudicial executions are unlawful, even in armed conflict. In a 1998 report, the United Nations Special Rapporteur on extrajudicial, summary or arbitrary executions noted that “extrajudicial executions can never be justified under any circumstances, not even in time of war.” The U.N. General Assembly and Human Rights Commission, as well as Amnesty International, have all condemned extrajudicial executions.

In spite of its illegality, the Obama administration frequently uses targeted assassinations to accomplish its goals. Five days after executing Osama bin Laden, Mr. Obama tried to bring “justice” to U.S. citizen Anwar al-Awlaki, who has not been charged with any crime in the United States. The unmanned drone attack in Yemen missed al-Awlaki and killed two people “believed to be al Qaeda militants,” according to a CBS/AP bulletin.

Two days before the Yemen attack, U.S. drones killed 15 people in Pakistan and wounded four. Since the March 17 drone attack that killed 44 people, also in Pakistan, there have been four drone strikes. In 2010, American drones carried out 111 strikes. The Human Rights Commission of Pakistan says that 957 civilians were killed in 2010.

The United States disavowed the use of extrajudicial killings under President Gerald Ford. After the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence disclosed in 1975 that the CIA had been involved in several murders or attempted murders of foreign leaders, President Ford issued an executive order banning assassinations. Every succeeding president until George W. Bush renewed that order. However, the Clinton administration targeted Osama bin Laden in Afghanistan, but narrowly missed him.

In July 2001, the U.S. Ambassador to Israel denounced Israel’s policy of targeted killings, or “preemptive operations.” He said “the United States government is very clearly on the record as against targeted assassinations. They are extrajudicial killings, and we do not support that.”

Yet after September 11, 2001, former White House press secretary Ari Fleischer invited the killing of Saddam Hussein: “The cost of one bullet, if the Iraqi people take it on themselves, is substantially less” than the cost of war. Shortly thereafter, Bush issued a secret directive, which authorized the CIA to target suspected terrorists for assassination when it would be impractical to capture them and when large-scale civilian casualties could be avoided.

In November 2002, Bush reportedly authorized the CIA to assassinate a suspected Al Qaeda leader in Yemen. He and five traveling companions were killed in the hit, which Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz described as a “very successful tactical operation.”

After the Holocaust, Winston Churchill wanted to execute the Nazi leaders without trials. But the U.S. government opposed the extrajudicial executions of Nazi officials who had committed genocide against millions of people. U.S. Supreme Court Justice Robert H. Jackson, who served as chief prosecutor at the Nuremberg War Crimes Tribunal, told President Harry Truman: “We could execute or otherwise punish [the Nazi leaders] without a hearing. But undiscriminating executions or punishments without definite findings of guilt, fairly arrived at, would . . . not set easily on the American conscience or be remembered by children with pride.”

Osama bin Laden and the “suspected militants” targeted in drone attacks should have been arrested and tried in U.S. courts or an international tribunal. Obama cannot serve as judge, jury and executioner. These assassinations are not only illegal; they create a dangerous precedent, which could be used to justify the targeted killings of U.S. leaders.

Marjorie Cohn is a professor at Thomas Jefferson School of Law and past president of the National Lawyers Guild. She is deputy secretary general of the International Association of Democratic Lawyers. Her latest book, “The United States and Torture: Interrogation, Incarceration and Abuse” was published earlier this year by NYU Press. See www.marjoriecohn.com

http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24703

Osama bin Laden's Useful Death

By paul craig roberts

In a propaganda piece reeking of US Triumphalism, two alleged journalists, Adam Goldman and Chris Brummitt, of the Associated Press or, rather, of the White House Ministry of Truth, write, or copy off a White House or CIA press release that "Osama bin Laden, the terror mastermind killed by Navy SEALs in an intense firefight, was hunted down based on information first gleaned years ago (emphasis added) from detainees at secret CIA prison sites in Eastern Europe, officials disclosed Monday."

How many Americans will notice that the first paragraph of the "report" justifies CIA prisons and torture? Without secret prisons and torture "the terror mastermind" would still be running free, despite having died from renal failure in 2001.

How many Americans will have the wits to wonder why the "terror mastermind" -- who defeated not merely the CIA and the FBI, but all 16 US intelligence agencies along with Israel's Mossad and the intelligence services of NATO, who defeated NORAD, the National Security Council, the Pentagon and Joint Chiefs of Staff, the US Air Force, and Air Traffic Control, who caused security procedures to fail four times in US airports in one hour on the same day, who caused the state-of-the-art Pentagon air defenses to fail, and who managed to fly three airliners into three buildings with pilots who did not know how to fly -- has not pulled off any other attack in almost ten years? Do Americans really believe that a government's security system that can so totally fail when confronted with a few Saudi Arabians with box cutters can renew itself to perfection overnight?

How many Americans will notice the resurrection of the long missing bin Laden as "terror mastermind" after his displacement by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the Guantanamo prisoner who confessed to being the "mastermind of 9/11" after being water-boarded 183 times?

Americans are too busy celebrating to think, a capability that seems to have been taken out of their education.

Americans are so enthralled over the death of bin Laden that they do not wonder why information gleamed years ago would take so long to locate a person who was allegedly living in a million-dollar building equipped with all the latest communication equipment next to the Pakistani Military Academy. Allegedly, the "most wanted criminal" was not moving from hide-out to hide-out in desolate mountains, but ensconced in luxury quarters in broad daylight. Nevertheless, despite his obvious location, it took the CIA years to find him after claiming to have gained information of his whereabouts out of captives in secret prisons. This is the image of the CIA as the new Keystone Cops.

In an immediate follow-up to the announcement that the Navy SEALs and CIA mercenaries acted in an exemplary fashion following the rules of engagement while a cowardly bin Laden hid behind a woman shield when the gunfire erupted, we have from the pressitutes that "U.S. officials conceded the risk of renewed attack. The terrorists almost certainly will attempt to avenge bin Laden's death, CIA Director Leon Panetta wrote in a memo. . . . Within a few hours, the Department of Homeland Security warned that bin Laden's death was likely to provide motivation for attacks from "homegrown violent extremists'."

John Brennan, White House counter-terrorism adviser, told reporters that "it was inconceivable that the terrorist fugitive didn't have support in Pakistan where his hideout had been custom built six years ago in a city with a heavy military presence."

So the claimed murder of bin Laden by the US in a sovereign foreign country with which the US is not at war, a crime under international law, has set up three more self-serving possibilities:

Terrorists will avenge bin Laden's death, says the CIA, setting up another false flag attack to keep the profits flowing into the military/security complex and the power flowing into the unaccountable CIA. Homeland Security can extend the domestic police state, abuse of travelers, and arrests of war protestors. And Pakistan is under the gun of invasion and takeover (for India, of course) for shielding bin Laden.

The Israel Lobby's representatives in the US Congress quickly fell in with the agenda. Senator Carl Levin, Chairman of the Senate Armed Services Committee, declared that the Pakistani Army and intelligence agency "have a lot of questions to answer, given the location, the length of time and the apparent fact that this was actually -- this facility was actually build for bin Laden, and its closeness to the central location of the Pakistani army."

The two reporters question nothing in the government's propaganda. Instead, the reporters join in the celebration. Nevertheless they let slip that "officials were weighing the release of at least one photo taken of bin Laden's body as part of what Brennan called an effort to make sure "nobody has any basis to try and deny the death.'"

As the Guardian and European newspapers have revealed, the photo of the dead bin Laden is a fake. As the alleged body has been dumped into the ocean, nothing remains but the word of the US government, which lied about Iraqi weapons of mass destruction and al Qaeda connections, about yellowcake, about Iranian nukes, and, according to thousands of experts, about 9/11. Suddenly the government is telling us the truth about bin Laden's death? If you believe that, I have a bridge in Brooklyn that I'll let you have for a good price.

My initial interpretation of the faked bin Laden death was that Obama needed closure of the Afghan war and occupation in order to deal with the US budget deficit. Subsequent statements from Obama regime officials suggest that the agenda might be to give Americans a piece of war victory in order to boost their lagging enthusiasm. The military/security complex will become richer and more powerful, and Americans will be rewarded with vicarious pleasure in victory over enemies.

http://www.opednews.com/articles/Osama-bin-Laden-s-Useful-D-by-paul-craig-roberts-110503-988.html