Showing posts with label Pentagon. Show all posts

Tuesday, October 07, 2008

The worst news of all

The Pentagon’s alarming project: Avian Flu Biowar Vaccine

By F. William Engdahl

There is alarming evidence accumulated by serious scientific sources that the US Government is about to or already has ‘weaponized’ Avian Flu. If the reports are accurate, this could unleash a new pandemic on the planet that could be more devastating than the 1918 Spanish Flu epidemic which killed an estimated 30 million people worldwide before it eventually died out. Pentagon and NIH experiments with remains in frozen state of the 1918 virus are the height of scientific folly. Is the United States about to unleash a new racially selective pandemic through the process of mandatory vaccination with an alleged vaccine "against" Avian Flu?

There is reason to believe that sections of the international pharmaceutical industry cartel are acting in concert with the US Government to develop a genetically modified H5N1 virus substance that could unleash a man-made pandemic, perhaps more deadly than the 1918 ‘Spanish Influenza’ pandemic claiming up to 30 million lives.1

Rima E. Laibow, MD, head of the Natural Solutions Foundation, a citizen watchdog group monitoring the pharmaceutical industry states, "Our best intelligence estimate is that pandemic Avian Flu has already been created through genetic engineering in the United States, fusing the deadly genome of the 1918 Pandemic, misnamed the ‘Spanish Flu’, with the DNA of the innocuous H5N1 virus in a growth medium of human kidney cells, according to the National Institutes of Health and the vaccine’s manufacturer. Some virologists believe that this would insure that the man-made mutant virus recognizes human cells and knows how to invade them." 2

If true, as Laibow points out, "A basic virological fact that the public has not been told is that it is impossible to make a vaccine against a virus that does not yet exist. Public relations efforts to the contrary, IF a vaccine is being made against the Avian Flu virus in its pandemic form, that means that the pandemic virus must already exist, period, end of discussion."3

The genome of the 1918 pandemic, the so-called "Spanish Flu", was recently intentionally resurrected by the United States government from a frozen corpse that died of the flu in 1918 in Alaska. Because of that resurrection, both the Avian Flu, and its "vaccine" are now a significant threat to public health.

The Spanish Flu, which was not Spanish at all, was created in the US through an early bioweapons program and injected into healthy young men (i.e., ’soldiers’) as the first mandatory vaccination in the military during World War I. The "Spanish Flu", which originated in Kansas on US Military bases, was one of the deadliest pandemics in modern history. It was also one of the most successful biological weapons ever created, until now.Aspartame and Tyson Foods doubts

To date, there have only been around 385 human cases of Avian Flu identified worldwide (assuming those identifications are trustworthy, of course), with 243 deaths. To put the absurdity of this effort into perspective, Laibow points out, Sudden Cardiac Death (SCD), which researchers believe is heavily associated with aspartame consumption, is a leading cause of death which, according to the CDC, for example, killed 460,000 Americans in 1999 and the numbers keep rising (www.cdc.gov/mmwr/preview/mmwrhtml/mm5106a3.htm.)

But, aspartame is not under criticism. Interesting as a footnote on Aspartame, G.D. Searle, the Chicago drugs company that held the patent on Aspartame was in danger of losing its license from the US Government Food & Drug Administration in the 1980’s until Donald Rumsfeld, out of Government, was named President of Searle. Rumsfeld used his contacts in Washington to get the FDA to approve Aspartame despite known tests showing serious health effects on rats.

As I document in detail in my book, Seeds of Destruction: The Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation, the same Don Rumsfeld went on to become chairman and principal stockholder of a California pharmaceutical company, Gilead Sciences Inc., which developed and patented Tamiflu in 1996, first as a drug for AIDS, later as a vaccine for H5N1 Avian Flu. In 1997 Donald H. Rumsfeld was named Chairman of the Board of Gilead Sciences, where he remained until early 2001 when he became Defense Secretary. As Secretary he refused to sell his stock at the time he came under conflict of interest allegations when he ordered $1 billion worth of Tamiflu be bought to injected into the US military personnel as a "precaution." It was later proven that Tamiflu was in no antidote for H5N1 and its side effects were sometimes very severe.

Laibow adds, "Given the shockingly obvious lack of any threat from an un-weaponized H5N1 virus, how can we explain the Bush Administration spending billions of dollars preparing each of the 50 States, for what it calls the ‘inevitable Bird Flu pandemic,’ which they say could kill half or more of all Americans and similar numbers of people around the globe?"4

Ominously, on June 3, Associated Press reported, "Tyson Foods Inc. has begun killing and burying the carcasses of 15,000 hens from a flock that tested positive for exposure to a strain of the bird flu in northwest Arkansas, state officials said Tuesday."

Tyson Foods is the largest industrialized producer of chickens in the world and has been repeatedly under attack for its unsanitary conditions of breeding and slaughtering. In January 2005, a US Government Accountability Office (GAO) report to the US Senate, "Safety in the Meat and Poultry Industry," concluded that US meat and poultry processing plants had "one of the highest rates of injury and illness of any industry." They cited exposure to "dangerous chemicals, blood, faecal matter, exacerbated by poor ventilation and often extreme temperatures. Workers typically faced hazardous conditions, loud noise, must work in narrow confines with sharp tools and dangerous machinery."

The industrialization of chicken-raising and slaughtering in the USA has progressed to the point that by 2003 when the first cases of H5N1 Avian Flu virus were reported from Asia, five giant multinational agribusiness companies dominated the production and processing of chicken meat in the United States. The five companies were Tyson Foods, the largest in the world; Gold Kist Inc; Pilgrim’s Pride; ConAgra Poultry; and Perdue Farms.5 Most outbreaks of Avian Flu in Asia have been traced back to such mass chicken industrial factory centers.6

In May this year, The Canadian Press reported from Toronto, "An experiment mating H5N1 avian flu viruses and a strain of human flu in a laboratory produced a surprising number of hybrid viruses that were biologically fit, a new study reveals. And while none of the offspring viruses was as virulent as the original H5N1, about one in five were lethal to mice at low doses, showing they retained at least a portion of the power of their dangerous parent." 7

The Toronto article went on, "The work suggests that under the right circumstances - and no one is clear what all of those are - the two types of flu viruses could swap genes in a way that might allow the H5N1 virus to acquire the capacity to trigger a pandemic. That process is called reassortment. ‘This study is just showing exactly that: There is a risk this virus can successfully reassort with a human virus,’ said Richard Webby, director of the World Health Organization's collaborating centre for influenza research at St. Jude Hospital in Memphis, Tennessee." 8

Pentagon Bioweapon research

Prof. Mathew Meselson, a professor of molecular biology at Harvard, and well-respected scientist in the area of chemical and biological warfare, confirms that the United States government has extensively researched and developed biological weapons in the past. Meselson described an American facility, north of Terre Haute, Indiana, built in 1944 that would have produced 500,000 four pound anthrax bombs monthly once in full operation.

Meselson was part of a team that proved the accidental release of anthrax at a Soviet facility in 1979, disproved charges of biological warfare in Laos and Cambodia in the late 1970s, and was a driving force behind popularizing the Chemical Weapons Convention in 1994.

Since coming in office, the Bush-Cheney Administration has done much to weaken that Chemical Weapons Convention as well as ones on biological weapons. One of George W. Bush’s first acts as President in early 2001 was to oppose a proposed international Biological and Toxic Weapons Protocol, without explanation, leading to the death of the talks.

In a 2004 study, the British Medical Association warned that the world was perhaps only a few years away from "terrifying biological weapons capable of killing only people of specific ethnic groups," citing advances in genetic weapons technology. 9

The US Department of Homeland Security has ominously enough announced it is ordering production and stockpiling of a pandemic influenza vaccine: "The U.S. Government is taking steps to minimize the need to make vaccine allocation decisions by supporting efforts to increase domestic influenza vaccine production capacity. Significant funding is being

provided to develop new vaccine technologies that allow production of enough pandemic influenza vaccine for any person in the United States who wants to be vaccinated within six months of a pandemic declaration." 10The curious role of Sanofi Pasteur

The US Government has been financing the development of a vaccine against H5N1 on a "fast track" basis since 2004. Sanofi Pasteur in Swiftwater, Pennsylvania, a subsidiary of the giant French pharmaceutical firm, the third largest in the world, manufactured an inactivated vaccine made from an H5N1 virus isolated in Southeast Asia in 2004. Sanofi Pasteur, part of the French-based Sanofi Aventis Group, was awarded a contract by the US Government’s National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID), part of the National Institutes of Health (NIH), NIAID to manufacture the H5N1 vaccine in May 2004.11

In April 2007 the FDA approved the Sanofi Pasteur vaccine for H5N1 even though one year before the FDA cited Sanofi Pasteur for producing contaminated Fluzone vaccines.12 The FDA approved H5N1 vaccine is itself apparently not really effective in event of a human-to-human outbreak of Avian Flu. On announcing its approval, the FDA stated, "two injections given 28 days apart may provide ‘limited’ protection if a pandemic occurs. About 45% of people who got the vaccine in a study developed an immune response to the virus."13

Until now H5N1 has not mutated into a form that can easily spread from person to person. Is that what the researchers at Sanofi Pasteur and various labs under contract to the US Government are engaged in? If so it would be classified Top Secret, clearly. The respected British magazine, New Scientist, commented, "If H5N1 does mutate, it is unclear if vaccines developed now would still work against a pandemic strain. Manufacturers could tailor a new vaccine to that strain, but current production methods take months."14

The magazine noted that research on the Sanofi vaccine was conducted by the National Institutes of Health as part of the US Government's efforts to prepare for a flu pandemic. The salient question is whether they prepare "for a flu pandemic" or whether they prepare a flu pandemic. Why is the US Government spending hundreds of millions of taxpayer dollars to stockpile this H5N1 vaccine which likely would not work against such a pandemic outbreak?

On July 2, 2008, the London Daily Telegraph newspaper reported, "Three Polish doctors and six nurses are facing criminal prosecution after a number of homeless people died following medical trials for a vaccine to the H5N1 bird-flu virus." 15

The report added that the medical staff, from the northern town of Grudziadz, were being investigated over medical trials on as many as 350 homeless and poor people last year, which prosecutors say involved an untried vaccine to the highly-contagious virus. Authorities claim that the alleged victims received €3 to be tested with what they thought was a conventional flu vaccine but, according to investigators, was actually an anti bird-flu drug. The director of a Grudziadz homeless centre, Mieczyslaw Waclawski, told a Polish newspaper that last year, 21 people from his centre died, a figure well above the average of about eight.

The Polish report did not specify if it was the vaccine being developed under contract to the US Government Department of Homeland Security by Sanofi-Pasteur. However, it is known that Sanofi-Pasteur has been producing large quantities of such a vaccine at a factory they have in China.

Dr. Laibow reports that the "Pandemic Avian Flu Vaccine" was scheduled to be delivered to the United States this month by the French vaccine maker, Sanofi Pasteur, from a facility they own in China, where it is being produced. The US Government issued its "Vaccine" allocation plan in July. Laibow fears that a most sinister scenario of a deliberate release of Avian Flu pathogens on the population that could activate martial law and forced vaccination with resulting deaths in the millions could be imminent. Spanish Flu virus revived by Pentagon

In 2003 US Army scientists created ‘Spanish Flu’ virus in the laboratory. According to a report at the time by the watchdog group, The Sunshine Project, which monitors biological and chemical weapons research of the United States Government issued a statement that "The 'Spanish Flu' influenza virus that killed 20-40 million people in 1918 is currently under reconstruction. Several genes of the extraordinarily lethal 1918 flu virus have been isolated and introduced into contemporary flu strains. These proved to be lethal for mice, while virus constructs with genes from a current flu virus types had hardly any effect. These experiments may easily be abused for military purposes, but provide little benefit from a medical or public health point of view."

They continued, "The 1918 Spanish Flu was highly infectious and – in comparison to contemporary flu viruses – killed a very high percentage of those infected, including many younger people. The Spanish Flu alone caused the medium life expectancy in the US in 1918 to drop by 10 years. Hence, flu viruses are perceived today as a serious biological warfare threat. Just two weeks ago, a 15 million dollar research grant was awarded in the US to develop protective measures especially against a bioterrorist attack with flu viruses."

The statement added, "Despite the very dangerous nature of the 1918 virus, efforts to reconstruct it started in the mid 1990s, when Dr Jeffrey Taubenberger from the US Armed Forces Institute of Pathology in Washington DC succeeded in recovering and sequencing fragments of the viral RNA from preserved tissues of 1918 victims. In the current issue of the scientific journal Emerging Infectious Diseases new genetic details of the 1918 flu virus will be published."

Most ominously, they report, "But after (partially) unravelling the genetic sequence of the virus, the scientists went a step further and began bringing the Spanish flu back to life. Unnoticed by the public, they succeeded in creating a live virus containing two 1918 genes that proved to be very lethal in animal experiments. This experiment is only one genetic step away from taking the 1918 demon entirely out of the bottle." 16

They conclude, "A resuscitation of the Spanish flu is neither necessary nor warranted from a public health point of view. Allegedly, the recent experiments sought to test the efficacy of existing antiviral drugs on the 1918 construct. But there is little need for antiviral drugs against the 1918 strain if the 1918 strain had not been recreated in the first place. ‘It simply does not make any scientific sense to create a new threat just to develop new countermeasures against it.’ says Jan van Aken, biologist with the Sunshine Project, ‘Genetic characterization of influenza strains has important biomedical applications. But it is not justifiable to recreate this particularly dangerous eradicated strain that could wreak havoc if released, deliberately or accidentally.’"17

Let us sincerely hope not, but as Prof. Stephen Block, Stanford University biophysicist with years of experience in classified Pentagon and US Government biological research remarked in another context, "We’re tempted to say that nobody in their right mind would ever use these things." Block added, "But not everybody is in their right mind…" 18Sanofi Pasteur delivers H5N1 vaccine

On April 28 of this year in an official Press Release from Sanofi Pasteur US headquarters in Swiftwater, Pennsylvania and Lyon, France, the company stated, "Sanofi Pasteur, the vaccines division of Sanofi-Aventis Group, announced today that the US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) has accepted H5N1 bulk vaccine antigen to produce approximately 38.5 million doses of vaccine to protect against a new strain of avian influenza. Sanofi Pasteur has a multi-year contract with HHS as part of its pandemic program, and will receive a payment of $192.5 million booked in the second quarter of 2008 for acceptance of the bulk vaccine lot."19

Then, on June 16 of this year, Sanofi Pasteur issued the following release announcing that it will, "donate 60 million doses of H5N1 vaccine to the World Health Organization (WHO) over 3 years for the establishment of an H5N1 vaccine global stockpile."

The President and CEO of Sanofi Pasteur, Wayne Pisano, said in the release, "The H5N1 virus is currently circulating in some of the poorest regions of the world and an outbreak of pandemic influenza would most likely hit populations living in areas with limited access to vaccines. This donation of H5N1 vaccine aims to address the needs of those most vulnerable populations. In addition to supporting the efforts of governments," Pisano added, "it is essential that industry collaborates with international organizations such as WHO, the Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation and other global health players. This is the best way to build a stockpile of vaccines for developing nations, ready to be deployed on the ground in the event of a pandemic flu outbreak."20

The Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation, in addition to being a financial supporter of the so-called Doomsday Seed Vault in the Arctic, has dedicated its foundation billions to support population control especially inAfrica. Among other projects they, as well as the Rockefeller Foundation, are financing The Alliance for a Green Revolution in Africa, whose head is former UN Secretary General Kofi Annan. 21

As the world's leading influenza vaccine manufacturer, Sanofi Pasteur produces approximately half of the influenza vaccine distributed worldwide. In the US it produced more than 40 percent of the influenza vaccine distributed for the 2007-2008 influenza season. The fact that the US Government has revived the 1918 Spanish Flu virus to make "tests" indicates that anything is possible. There are in this world some people not in their "right mind." God forbid if it is so in this instance.

F. William Engdahl is author of Seeds of Destruction: the Hidden Agenda of Genetic Manipulation
He may be contacted through his website, www.engdahl.oilgeopolitics.net. (see details on William engdahl's book below)

Notes

1 Alfred W. Crosby, America’s Forgotten Pandemic: The Influenza of 1918, Cambridge, Cambridge University Press, 1989, pp.207-8. The Spanish Influenza was unusual in that it struck infants as well as elderly. Crosby described its effects: "a disease that turned people the color of wet ashes and drowned them in the fluids of their own bodies and inspired names like the ‘purple death.’

2 Rima E. Laibow, M.D., Weaponized Avian Flu Intelligence Report, in http://www.healthfreedomusa.org/?p=742

3 Ibid.

4 Ibid.

5 F. William Engdahl, Saat der Zerstörung: Die dunkle Seite der Gen-Manipulation, Kopp Verlag, Rottenburg am Neckar,2007, pp. 269-271.

6 GRAIN, Fowl Play: The Poultry Industry’s Central Role in the Bird Flu Crisis, http://www.grain.org/go/birdflu , February 2006. In their report they note, "The transformation of poultry production in Asia in recent decades is staggering. In the Southeast Asian countries where most of the bird flu outbreaks are concentrated—Thailand, Indonesia, and Viet Nam—production jumped eightfold in just 30 years, from around 300,000 metric tonnes (mt) of chicken meat in 1971 to 2,440,000 mt in 2001. China’s production of chicken tripled during the 1990s to over 9 million metric tons per year." (Cited in Engdahl, Op. Cit., p. 288.).

7 As well, a report by a Canadian organization, Beyond Factory Farming, described the transmission likely pathways from the giant industrialized chicken centers: ‘In Thailand, China and Vietnam there is a highly developed industrial poultry industry which has expanded dramatically in the past decade. The large poultry companies raise millions of birds, hatch chicks to supply other intensive poultry operations, export live birds and eggs to countries such as Nigeria (where the first Highly Pathogenic Avian Influenza outbreak in Africa was recently reported) and produce and export feed which often includes "litter" (i.e., manure) in the ingredients.

…

‘Manure that may contain live virus is spread on surrounding farmland, or exported as fertilizer, and through run-off may end up in surface waters where wild birds feed and rest. Chicken manure is even found in fish farm feed formulations where it is introduced directly into the aquatic environment. Wild birds and poultry that

have fallen victim to HPAI in Asia, Turkey and Nigeria appear to have been directly exposed to HPAI virus originating in the factory farm system. In Asia, a flock of wild ducks died from HPAI—after having come into contact with the disease at a remote lake where a fish farm used feed pellets made from poultry litter from a factory farm. In Turkey a massive cull of backyard flocks—and the deaths of three children—took place after a nearby factory farm sold sick and dying birds to local peasants at cut rate prices. Nigeria has a large and poorly regulated factory poultry production sector which is supplied with chicks from factory farms in China.’ (Engdahl, Op. Cit., p. 289)

8 Study shows hybrids of bird flu and human flu viruses fit well, could occur, The Canadian Press, Toronto, undated. May 2008.

Ibid.

9 F. William Engdahl, Op. Cit., pp. 262-263.

10 United States Department of Homeland Security, Health & Human Services Department, Guidance on Allocating and Targeting Pandemic Influenza Vaccine, p. 2, accessed in http://www.pandemicflu.gov/vaccine/allocationguidance.pdf.

11 NIH News, NIAID Initiates Trial of Experimental Avian Flu Vaccine, Washington, D.C., March 23, 2005, accessed in http://www3.niaid.nih.gov/news/newsreleases/2005/avianfluvax.htm.

12 Quoted in, sanofi pasteur, The Largest Company In The World Devoted To Human Vaccines, April 18, 2007, accessed at http://noonehastodie.blogspot.com/2007/04/sanofi-pasteur-largest-company-in-world.html

13 The New Scientist, US Approves First Bird Flu Vaccine for People, 17 April, 2007, accessed at http://www.newscientist.com/channel/health/bird-flu/dn11626-us-approves-first-bird-flu-vaccine-for-people.html

14 Ibid.

15 Matthew Day, Homeless people die after bird flu vaccine trial in Poland, Daily Telegraph, July 2, 2008, accessed in http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/poland/2235676/Homeless-people-die-after-bird-flu-vaccine-trial-in-Poland.html.

16 The Sunshine Project, Lethal Virus from 1918 Genetically Reconstructed: US Army scientists create ‘Spanish Flu’ virus in laboratory - medical benefit questionable, 9 October 2003, accessed at http://www.sunshine-project.org/publications/pr/pr091003.html.

17 Ibid.

18 Cited in F. William Engdahl, Op. Cit., p. 277.

19 Press Release of Sanofi Pasteur, U.S. Government accepts $192 million of sanofi pasteur H5N1 bulk vaccine antigen for pandemic stockpile: Vaccine for new strain of virus broadens government readiness program, April 28, 2008, accessed at
http://198.73.159.214/sanofi-pasteur2/ImageServlet?imageCode=22971&siteCode=SP_CORP

20 Press Release of Sanofi Pasteur, Sanofi Pasteur to donate 60 million doses of H5N1 vaccine to WHO over 3 years for its influenza vaccine global stockpile, June 16, 2008, accessed at
http://198.73.159.214/sanofi-pasteur2/ImageServlet?imageCode=22987&siteCode=SP_CORP.

21 William Engdahl, ‘Doomsday Seed Vault’ in the Arctic: Bill Gates, Rockefeller and the GMO giants know something we don’t, in Global Research, December 4, 2007, accessed in http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7529

Original article posted here.

Sunday, August 31, 2008

Yes, a little old, but full of info and definitely not dated

Embedding the Analysts: Modern-Day Propaganda?

Commentary by Bill Berkowitz

PRA Right Web

rightweb.irc-online.org

Embedding the Analysts: Modern-Day Propaganda? Over the course of the Iraq War, the Pentagon has used hand-picked retired military officers as “message force multipliers” to shape public opinion, a New York Times investigation revealed last month.1 According to the report, which was the product of a two-year battle with the Pentagon over the release of some 8,000 pages of documents, briefers gave talking points to the retired military men, who were then frequently showcased as experts on war matters by various media that did not make viewers aware of the experts’ administration connections.2 In fact, the media outlets were generally unaware that the analysts had received administration briefings. From the administration, these analysts received access to top-level officials (as well as tours of Iraq and Guantanamo Bay and the accompanying insider knowledge), which some of them then parlayed into business advantages, for example for defense contractors for whom they worked. From media outlets, they sometimes received payments for their contributions. These serious conflicts of interest were not revealed until the Times’ investigation.

For this display of media manipulation, former Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs Victoria C. “Torie” Clarke deserves the lion’s share of credit. While Mohammed Saeed al-Sahhaf, who as Information Minister of Iraq epitomized the clueless propagandist (he proclaimed that Baghdad was not under attack, as images of U.S. troops on the outskirts of the city played on a television screen behind him), Clarke exemplifies the sophisticated, savvy operative dedicated to spinning the war favorably for the Bush administration.

“Clarke was the Pentagon mastermind for the selling of the war and management of the media,” John Stauber, executive director of the Center for Media and Democracy, told me. “She invented the Pentagon's 'twin towers of propaganda' that proved so effective: embedding news media with the troops, and embedding military propagandists into the TV media, as exposed recently by the New York Times.”3

Clarke came to her post in the George W. Bush administration in May 2001, after working in the private sector as a public relations specialist and after having served as a staffer in both the Ronald Reagan and George H.W. Bush administrations. Her biography on the website of the Harry Walker Agency, whose clients include a who’s who list of Democratic and Republican Party bigwigs, trumpets, “From the Pentagon to the private sector, Victoria Clarke has been at the center of some of the most historic events in the United States in recent years.” (E-mail requests for an interview with Clarke were unanswered at the time of publication.)

In her pre-Pentagon career, Clarke was president of Bozell Eskew Advertising, an issue-advocacy and corporate communications firm; vice president of the National Cable Telecommunications Association; and the Washington-office director for Hill & Knowlton, the public relations firm heavily involved in Gulf War I. She also served as the press secretary to Sen. John McCain (R-AZ), and after leaving her Pentagon post wrote Lipstick on a Pig: Winning In the No-Spin Era by Someone Who Knows the Game.

When she joined the George W. Bush administration as part of Donald Rumsfeld’s Pentagon, Clarke came “to her job with distinct ideas about achieving what she called ‘information dominance,’” the New York Times reported.4

She spearheaded the idea of embedding of reporters with troops during the U.S. invasion of Iraq. In a February 2003 memo prepared for the National Security Council, Clarke—with Rumsfeld on board—argued that allowing journalists to report from the front lines would give Americans the opportunity to get the story, both “good or bad—before others seed the media with disinformation and distortions, as they most certainly will continue to do. Our people in the field need to tell our story. Only commanders can ensure the media get to the story alongside the troops. We must organize for and facilitate access of national and international media to our forces, including those forces engaged in ground operations.” 5

But given the opportunity, Clarke demonstrated that she would prefer to altogether circumvent reporters, who after all are generally expected to maintain independence, objectivity, and critical thinking in their work. Instead, she would use the military analysts to spread the Bush message. As the New York Times reported, “Other administrations had made sporadic, small-scale attempts to build relationships with the occasional military analyst. But these were trifling compared with what Ms. Clarke's team had in mind. Don Meyer, an aide to Ms. Clarke, said a strategic decision was made in 2002 to make the analysts the main focus of the public relations push to construct a case for war. Journalists were secondary. ‘We didn't want to rely on them to be our primary vehicle to get information out,’ Mr. Meyer said.”6

Anyone who watched television news during the run-up to the invasion, its initial phases, and the first few years of the occupation of Iraq, was probably struck by the many retired military officers who were given huge chunks of airtime. But no one—other than Pentagon officials—knew that these new media favorites on Fox News, CNN, MSNBC, ABC, CBS, and NBC had often been thoroughly briefed and armed with talking points by the Pentagon, State Department, White House, or other officials. The retired officers provided explanations of the action taking place on the ground, offered justifications for administration strategies, pointed out the hot spots in-country, and often led the pro-war cheerleading. And whenever there was an anti-war outcry that threatened to gain momentum—for example, in 2006 when former generals came forward en masse to criticize Rumsfeld and his handling of the war—the Pentagon public relations machinery would kick into gear, briefing the analysts, giving them material with which to rebut criticisms, and then keeping tabs on the analysts’ on-air performances.

Setbacks in Iraq—like the generals’ revolt, the Abu Ghraib scandal, and the growing insurgency—brought pushback from the Pentagon by way of a new set of talking points for the well-schooled retirees.

Given the Bush administration’s predilection for trying to manipulate and manage the media—buying favorable coverage for its various programs through payments to well-known sympathetic columnists, trying to skirt the mainstream media by giving interviews and special access to supportive local news outlets, paying for favorable coverage in Iraqi newspapers—one might expect that it would develop major league messaging capabilities. But it is surprising and disappointing to see the military retirees used in this fashion.

The analysts were a group of men who were respected, knowledgeable, and had long service records, who could reach a broad audience and influence policy. “In a spin-saturated news culture, [Clarke] argued, opinion is swayed most by voices perceived as authoritative and utterly independent. And so even before Sept. 11, she built a system within the Pentagon to recruit ‘key influentials’—movers and shakers from all walks who with the proper ministrations might be counted on to generate support for Mr. Rumsfeld's priorities.”7

It’s difficult to know exactly what drove these men to regurgitate misinformation and disinformation to the American public, even while some suspected they were being used. Were the secret Pentagon meetings with Rumsfeld the major draw? Was it the first-class trips on government aircraft and cushy hotel stays that drew them in? Perhaps it was the contracts that these former military officers realized they could get for the defense companies they lobbied for, and the consulting firms they headed? Maybe it was ego, the garnering of fame via television face time, or maybe it was the extra cash.

One of the things that made Clarke—who left the administration in 2003 and now works at ABC, one of the networks hoodwinked by Clarke’s team of retired military officers—an effective media spokesperson is that she is a likable mom. She isn’t shrill, and she manages to maintain a rather disarming demeanor, which was on display during her televised press briefings while with the administration, and on such television programs as 60 Minutes, Good Morning America, and The Daily Show with Jon Stewart. She “revolutionized the Defense Department's relationship with the media, humanizing the Bush administration's military effort and restoring respect for people in uniform,” Manuel Miranda, former counsel to the Republican former Senate Majority Leader Bill Frist, told me. “A different person in her role at the Defense Department might have led to very different result at a critical time."8

Clarke also may have indirectly brought about a “revolution” in the way the Pentagon does business during the remainder of the Bush presidency. Shortly after its groundbreaking investigative report appeared, the New York Times reported that Robert Hastings, principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for public affairs, decided to indefinitely suspend its briefings program "pending an internal review."9

Bill Berkowitz is a contributor to PRA’s Right Web (http://rightweb.irc-online.org).

Sources

1. David Barstow, “The Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand,” New York Times, April 20, 2008.
2. The Defense Department has made available on its website all of the documents released to the New York Times; the materials are available at http://www.dod.mil/pubs/foi/milanalysts/.
3. John Stauber, Center for Media and Democracy, personal communication (e-mail) with the author, April 23, 2008.
4. Barstow, “The Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.”
5. Victoria Clarke, Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Public Affairs, “Public Affairs Guidance (PAG) on Embedding Media during Possible Future Operations/Deployments in the U.S. Central Commands (Centcom) Area of Responsibility (AOR),” February 2003, http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2003/d20030228pag.pdf.
6. Barstow, “The Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.”
7. Barstow, “The Message Machine: Behind TV Analysts, Pentagon’s Hidden Hand.”
8. Manual Miranda, former counsel to Sen. Bill Frist (R-TN), personal communication (e-mail) with the author, April 23, 2008.
9. David Barstow, “Pentagon Suspends Briefing for Analysts,” New York Times, April 26, 2008.

Original article posted here.

Saturday, June 14, 2008

Even the puppet government won't swallow the US's imperial design

Thursday, June 12, 2008

Global governance at Bilderberg

Rice Formalized Missile Defense Policy At Bilderberg
Secretary of State discussed radar treaty with Czech Foreign Minister

Paul Joseph Watson

U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice moved the U.S. missile defense shield agenda a step forward during her attendance at the Bilderberg meeting last week, during which she formalized plans to sign a treaty on installing a U.S. radar base in the Czech Republic with Czech Foreign Minister Karel Schwarzenberg.

The news underscores the fact that important policy decisions are advanced at Bilderberg and that the event is not an insignificant talking shop, as debunkers often claim.

Reports out of both Czech newspapers and Chinese sources confirm that Rice formalized the policy at Bilderberg.

"U.S. Secretary of State of Condoleezza Rice has confirmed she will fly to Prague in early July to sign two U.S.- Czech treaties on the installation of a radar base on the Czech soil, the Czech daily Pravo said Tuesday," reports Xinhua.

"According to the paper, Rice confirmed her plan to Schwarzenberg at the Bilderberg conference in Chantilly, Virginia, last week."

"Bilderberg Club, also called the "Group of the Powerful," is an informal invitation-only organization of politicians, representatives of the military and industrial complex, bankers and businessmen. Schwarzenberg was the only Czech participant in this year's forum," according to the report.

The prospect of the radar base, along with the planned installation of an interceptor missile base in Poland, has infuriated the Russians who believe the program is aimed at countering the Kremlin as well as Chinese military dominance, and not as a means of defending against Iranian nuclear ambitions as the U.S. claims.

In response to U.S. aggression, Russia has resumed long-range bomber patrols over the Atlantic which were mothballed at the end of the Cold War. NATO warplanes have intercepted Russian Bear Bombers on numerous occasions.

In February, Russia’s military chief of staff General Yuri Baluyevsky (pictured above) threatened to use nuclear weapons to defend Russia should an attack on Iran put the Kremlin in the line of fire.

In November last year, Baluyevsky dubbed America "evil" while cautioning that the "insidious" U.S. missile defense shield weapons system has nothing to do with countering Iran and is aimed squarely at Moscow.

"If the Americans deploy the radar by 2011 and anti-ballistic missiles by 2012-2013, they will certainly be directed against Russia, and we can easily prove it," Baluyevsky told Russia Today.

"Today, there is no need to be afraid of the Russian Armed Forces. However, I do not believe that the Russian military is obliged to defend the world from the evil Americans," he added.

Original article posted here.

Monday, May 26, 2008

Earthquake in China with strange lights. Looks like HAARP, looks like chemtrail type clouds, looks like ENMOD

Saturday, May 24, 2008

It will go down an a textbook example of assymetrical warfare

How the US dream foundered in Iraq

By Michael Schwartz

On February 15, 2003, ordinary citizens around the world poured into the streets to protest President George W Bush's onrushing invasion of Iraq. Demonstrations took place in large cities and small towns globally, including a small but spirited protest at the McMurdo Station in Antarctica. Up to 30 million people, who sensed impending catastrophe, participated in what Rebecca Solnit, that apostle of popular hope, has called "the biggest and most widespread collective protest the world has ever seen".

The first glancing assessment of history branded this remarkable planetary protest a record-breaking failure, since the Bush administration, less than one month later, ordered US troops across the Kuwaiti border and on to Baghdad.

And it has since largely been forgotten, or perhaps better put, obliterated from official and media memory. Yet popular protest is more like a river than a storm; it keeps flowing into new areas, carrying pieces of its earlier life into other realms. We rarely know its consequences until many years afterward, when, if we're lucky, we finally sort out its meandering path. Speaking for the protesters back in May 2003, only a month after US troops entered the Iraqi capital, Solnit offered the following:

We will likely never know, but it seems that the Bush administration decided against the "shock and awe" saturation bombing of Baghdad because we made it clear that the cost in world opinion and civil unrest would be too high. We millions may have saved a few thousand or a few tens of thousand of lives. The global debate about the war delayed it for months, months that perhaps gave many Iraqis time to lay in stores, evacuate, brace for the onslaught.

Whatever history ultimately concludes about that unexpected moment of protest, once the war began, other forms of resistance arose - mainly in Iraq itself - that were equally unexpected. And their effects on the larger goals of Bush administration planners can be more easily traced. Think of it this way: in a land the size of California with but 26 million people, a ragtag collection of Ba'athists, fundamentalists, former military men, union organizers, democratic secularists, local tribal leaders and politically active clerics - often at each other's throats (quite literally) - nonetheless managed to thwart the plans of the self-proclaimed New Rome, the "hyperpower" and "global sheriff" of planet Earth. And that, even in the first glancing assessment of history, may indeed prove historic.

New American century goes missing in action
It's hard now even to recall the original vision Bush and his top officials had of how the conquest of Iraq would unfold as an episode in the president's "war on terror". In their minds, the invasion was sure to yield a quick victory, to be followed by the creation of a client state that would house crucial "enduring" US military bases from which Washington would project power throughout what they liked to term "the Greater Middle East".

In addition, Iraq was quickly going to become a free-market paradise, replete with privatized oil flowing at record rates onto the world market. Like falling dominos, Syria and Iran, cowed by such a demonstration of American might, would follow suit, either from additional military thrusts or because their regimes - and those of up to 60 countries worldwide - would appreciate the futility of resisting Washington's demands. Eventually, the "unipolar moment" of US global hegemony that the collapse of the Soviet Union had initiated would be extended into a "New American century" (along with a generational Pax Republicana at home).

This vision is now, of course, long gone, largely thanks to unexpected and tenacious resistance of every sort within Iraq. This resistance consisted of far more than the initial Sunni insurgency that tied down what former defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld pridefully labeled "the greatest military force on the face of the Earth". It is already none too rash a statement to suggest that, at all levels of society, usually at great sacrifice, the Iraqi people frustrated the imperial designs of a superpower.

Consider, for example, the myriad ways in which the Iraqi Sunnis resisted the occupation of their country from almost the moment the Bush administration's intention to fully dismantle Saddam Hussein's Ba'athist regime became clear. The largely Sunni city of Fallujah, like most other communities around the country, spontaneously formed a new government based on local clerical and tribal structures.

Like many of these cities, it avoided the worst of the post-invasion looting by encouraging the formation of local militias to police the community. Ironically, the orgy of looting that took place in Baghdad was, at least in part, a consequence of the US military presence, which delayed the creation of such militias there. Eventually, however, sectarian militias brought a modicum of order even to Baghdad.

In Fallujah and elsewhere, these same militias soon became effective instruments for reducing, and - for a time - eliminating, the presence of the US military. For the better part of a year, faced with improvised explosive devices and ambushes from insurgents, the US military declared Fallujah a "no-go" zone, withdrew to bases outside the city, and discontinued violent incursions into hostile neighborhoods. This retreat was matched in many other cities and towns. The absence of patrols by occupation forces saved tens of thousands of "suspected insurgents" from the often deadly violence of home invasions, and their relatives from wrecked homes and detained family members.

Even the most successful of US military adventures in that period, the second battle of Fallujah in November 2004, could also be seen, from quite a different perspective, as a successful act of resistance. Because the United States was required to mass a significant proportion of its combat brigades for the offensive (even transferring British troops from the south to perform logistical duties), most other cities were left alone. Many of these cities used this respite from the US military to establish, or consolidate, autonomous governments or quasi-governments and defensive militias, making it all the more difficult for the occupation to control them.

Fallujah itself was, of course, destroyed, with 70% of its buildings turned to rubble, and tens of thousands of its residents permanently displaced an extreme sacrifice that had the unexpected effect of taking pressure off other Iraqi cities for a while. In fact, the ferocity of the resistance in the predominantly Sunni areas of Iraq forced the American military to wait almost four years before renewing their initial 2004 efforts to pacify the well-organized Sadrist-led resistance in the predominantly Shi'ite areas of the country.

Rebellion of oil workers
In another arena entirely, consider the Bush administration's dreams of harnessing Iraqi oil production to its foreign policy ambitions. The immediate goals, as American planners saw it, were to double pre-war output and begin the process of transferring control of production from state ownership to foreign companies.

Three major energy initiatives designed to accomplish these goals have so far been frustrated by resistance from virtually every segment of Iraqi society. Iraq's well-organized oil workers played a key role in this by using their ability to bring production to a virtual standstill to abort the transfer - only a few months after the US toppled Saddam's regime - of the operation of the southern oil port of Basra to the management of then-Halliburton subsidiary KBR.

This and other early acts of labor defiance turned back the initial assault on the Iraqi government-controlled system of oil production. Such acts also laid a foundation for successful efforts to prevent the passage of oil policies shaped in Washington that were designed to transfer control of energy exploration and production to foreign companies. In these efforts, the oil workers were joined by both Sunni and Shi'ite resistance groups, local governments, and finally the new national parliament.

This same sort of resistance extended to the whole roster of neo-liberal reforms sponsored by the US-controlled Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA). From the beginning of the occupation, for instance, there were protests against mass unemployment caused by the dismantling of the Ba'athist state and the shuttering of state-owned factories. Much of the armed resistance was a response to the occupation's early violent suppression of these protests.

Even more significant were local efforts to replace the government services discontinued by the CPA. The same local quasi-governments that had nurtured the militias sought to sustain or replace Ba'athist social programs, often by siphoning off oil destined for export onto the black-market to pay for local services, and hoarding local resources such as electrical generation. The result would be the creation of virtual city-states wherever US troops were not present, leading to the inability of the occupation to "pacify" any substantial portion of the country.

The Sadrist movement and the Mahdi Army militia of cleric Muqtada al-Sadr was probably the most successful - and most anti-occupation - of the Shi'ite political parties-cum-militias that systematically sought to develop quasi-government organizations.

They tried to meet, however minimally, some of the basic needs of their communities, supplying food baskets, housing services, and serving a host of other functions previously promised by the Ba'athist government, but forsworn by the US occupation and the Iraqi government that the US installed when "handing over" sovereignty in June 2004.

The American occupationaires expected that their plans for the rapid privatization and transformation of the state-driven economy would indeed generate resistance, but they were convinced that this would subside quickly once the new economy kicked into gear. Instead, as the occupation wore on, demands for relief grew more strident and insistent, while the country itself, in chaos and near collapse, became visible evidence of the failure of the Bush administration's "free market" policies.

An Iraqi agenda for withdrawal

Occupation officials faced the same dilemma in the political realm. The original goal of the Bush administration was a stable, pro-Washington government, stripped of its economic and political dominance over Iraqi society, but a bastion of resistance to Iranian regional power. This vision, like its military and economic cousins, has long since disappeared under the weight of Iraqi resistance.

Take, for example, the two high-profile Iraqi elections, celebrated in the mainstream American media as a unique Bush administration accomplishment in the otherwise relentlessly autocratic Middle East. Inside Iraq, however, they had quite a different look.

It is important to remember that the US initially planned to sustain its direct rule - the CPA - until the country was fully pacified and its economic reforms completed. When the CPA became a hated symbol of an unwanted occupation, planning shifted to the idea of installing an appointed Iraqi government, based on community meetings that only supporters of the occupation could attend. Full-scale elections would be postponed until winners fully supportive of the Bush agenda were assured. An outpouring of protest from the predominantly Shi'ite areas of the country, led by Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, forced CPA administrators to move on to an election-based strategy.

The first election in January 2005 delivered a sizeable parliamentary majority voted in on platforms calling for strict timetables for a full US military withdrawal from the country. American representatives then forcefully pressured the newly installed cabinet to abandon this position.

The second parliamentary election in December 2005 followed a similar pattern. This time, the backroom bargaining was only partially effective. The newly installed prime minister, Nuri al-Maliki, reneged on his campaign promises by publicly supporting an ongoing American military presence, which caused deep fissures in the ruling coalition.

After a year of unproductive negotiations, the 30 Sadrists in parliament, originally a key part of Maliki's ruling coalition, withdrew from both that coalition and the cabinet in protest over the prime minister's refusal to set a date for the end of the occupation. Subsequent parliamentary demands for a date certain for withdrawal were ignored by both the government and US officials. While Maliki continued in office without a parliamentary majority, the controversy contributed to the soaring popularity of the Sadrists and waning support for the other Shi'ite governing parties.

By early 2008, with provincial elections looming in November, there was little doubt that the Sadrists would sweep to power in many predominantly Shi'ite provinces, most critically Basra, Iraq's second-largest city and southern oil hub. To prevent this debacle, Iraqi government troops, supported and advised by the US military, sought to expel the Sadrists from key areas of Basra.

This use of military force to prevent electoral defeat was only one of many indications that the Iraqi government was feeling the pressure of public opinion. Another was the reluctance of Maliki to maintain an antagonistic stance toward Iran. Despite fervent Bush administration efforts, his government has promoted social, religious and economic relationships between Iraqis and Iranians.

These included facilitating visits to the holy cities of Karbala and Najaf by hundreds of thousands of Iranian Shi'ite pilgrims, as well as supporting extensive oil transactions between Basra and Iranian firms, including distribution and refining services that promised to integrate the two energy economies. A formal military relationship between the two countries was vetoed by US authorities, but this did not reverse the tide of cooperation.

The river of resistance
As the occupation wore on, the Bush administration found itself swimming against a tide of resistance of a previously unimaginable sort, and ever further from its goals. Today, cities and towns around the country are largely under the sway of Shi'ite or Sunni militias which, even when trained or paid by the occupation, remain militantly opposed to the US presence. Moreover, though the prostrate Iraqi economy has been formally privatized, these local militias - and the political leaders they worked with - continue to raise demands for vast government-funded reconstruction and economic development programs.

The formal political leadership of Iraq, locked inside the heavily fortified, US-controlled Green Zone in Baghdad, remains publicly compliant when it comes to Bush administration plans to transform Iraq into a Middle Eastern outpost - including the continued presence of American troops on a series of mega-bases in the heart of the country. The rest of the government bureaucracy and the bulk of Iraq's grass roots are increasingly insistent on an early American departure date and a full-scale reversal of the economic policies first introduced by the occupation.

In Washington, for Democratic as well as Republican politicians, the outpost idea remains at the heart of the policy agenda for Iraq in this election year, along with a neo-liberal economy featuring a modernized oil sector in which multinational firms are to use state-of-the-art technology to maximize the country's lagging oil production.

Iraqi resistance of every kind and on every level has, however, prevented this vision from becoming reality. Because of the Iraqis, the glorious sounding "war on terror" has been transformed into an endless, hopeless actual war.

But the Iraqis have paid a terrible price for resisting. The invasion and the social and economic policies that accompanied it have destroyed Iraq, leaving its people essentially destitute. In the first five years of this endless war, Iraqis have suffered more for resisting than if they had accepted and endured American military and economic dominance. Whether consciously or not, they have sacrificed themselves to halt Washington's projected military and economic march through the oil-rich Middle East on the path to a new American century that now will never be.

It is past time for the rest of the world to shoulder at least a small share of the burden of resistance. Just as the worldwide protests before the war were among the upstream sources of the Iraqi resistance-to-come, so now others, especially Americans, should resist the very idea that Iraq could ever become the headquarters for a permanent US presence that would, in the words of Bush speechwriter David Frum, "Put America more wholly in charge of the region than any power since the Ottomans, or maybe even the Romans." Unlike the Iraqis, after all, the citizens of the United States are uniquely positioned to bury this imperial dream for all time.

Michael Schwartz, professor of sociology at Stony Brook University, has written extensively on popular protest and insurgency. His forthcoming Tomdispatch book, War Without End: The Iraq Debacle in Context (Haymarket, June 2008) explores how the militarized geopolitics of oil led the US to dismantle the Iraqi state and economy while fueling a sectarian civil war. His email address is Ms42@optonline.net.

Original article posted here.

Tuesday, May 20, 2008

Keith clarifying prior Keith rages

Thursday, May 15, 2008

Trying to destroy our ability to communicate

Air Force Seeks Full Spectrum Dominance Over "Any And All" Computers

"Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement" plans announced

Steve Watson

The U.S. airforce has announced plans for a two-year, $11 million project that will seek the capability to hack into, fully control and even destroy any form of computer or network there is, in its ongoing "national cybersecurity initiative".

The Air Force Research Laboratory introduced the plans earlier this week in a a request for proposals as a "Dominant Cyber Offensive Engagement."

The request states:

Of interest are any and all techniques to enable user and/or root level access to both fixed (PC) or mobile computing platforms. Robust methodologies to enable access to any and all operating systems, patch levels, applications and hardware are of interest.

The purpose for this is clear:

...this BAA's objective includes the capability to provide a variety of techniques and technologies to be able to affect computer information systems through Deceive, Deny, Disrupt, Degrade, Destroy (D5) effects. Of interest are any and all techniques including enabling D5 effects to computers and their networks...

"...research efforts under this program are expected to result in complete functional capabilities." The request notes.

The program will also focus on a stealth approach:

Also, we are interested in technology to provide the capability to maintain an active presence within the adversaries' information infrastructure completely undetected...

...it is desired to have the capability to stealthily exfiltrate information from any remotely-located open or closed computer information systems with the possibility to discover information with previously unknown existence... Consideration should be given to maintaining a "low and slow" gathering paradigm in these development efforts to enable stealthy operation.

This approach will provide an alternative to another program being proposed under the same overall initiative that will see the airforce build its own zombie network to forcefully and openly "Carpet Bomb" any target computers or networks.

As Wired.com notes, recently the military, mirroring it's pre-emptive war strategy, has shifted to an offensive posture where cyberspace is concerned, rather than a defensive one:

in the last year or so, the tone has changed -- and become more bellicose. “Cyber, as a warfighting domain . . . like air, favors the offense,” said Lani Kass, a special assistant to the Air Force Chief of Staff who previously headed up the service's Cyberspace Task Force. "If you’re defending in cyber, you’re already too late."

"We want to go in and knock them out in the first round," added Lt. Gen. Robert Elder, commander of the 8th Air Force, which focuses on network issues.

"An adversary needs to know that the U.S. possesses powerful hard and soft-kill (cyberwarfare) means for attacking adversary information and command and support systems at all levels," a recent Defense Department report notes. "Every potential adversary, from nation states to rogue individuals... should be compelled to consider... an attack on U.S. systems resulting in highly undesireable consequences to their own security."

"Full Spectrum Dominance" has always been the military aim and exactly as it has done over land, sea and air, the military is seeking to aggressively exert it's control over cyberspace and all those who reside within that terrain.

Multiple programs are being rolled out by the Pentagon and its offshoot agencies such as DARPA, in a secret war with the internet that has been described as a $30 billion "electronic Manhattan Project".

Original article posted here.