Why is the U.S. fighting the war on terror?

Ray McGovern has an article on alternet.org whose starting point is very interesting. The typical press briefing has journalists taking dictation from the press secretary, and the journalists simply report what was said. Very little analysis is being done by journalists today. Hence the Bush and now the Obama administrations have had a free hand to tell us what they want us to hear about the purpose and reason for this war on terror. Even though the Bush administration was clearly lying through its teeth the whole time, the journalists did not scratch very deep into the stories to learn the truth.

Journalists, McGovern says, are afraid of being labeled as non-patriotic or "with the enemy". That tactic, labeling critics as enemies of the state, was harshly used during the Bush43 years to stifle criticism.

At a White House Press Conference covering the underwear bomber (Abdulmutallab) of Dec 25, 2009, the press secretary and journalists were all going through the dictation exercise when Helen Thomas asked "Why?".

Thomas: "And what is the motivation? We never hear what you find out on why." Brennan: "Al Qaeda is an organization that is dedicated to murder and wanton slaughter of innocents… They attract individuals like Mr. Abdulmutallab and use them for these types of attacks. He was motivated by a sense of religious sort of drive. Unfortunately, al Qaeda has perverted Islam, and has corrupted the concept of Islam, so that he’s (sic) able to attract these individuals. But al Qaeda has the agenda of destruction and death." Thomas: "And you’re saying it’s because of religion?" Brennan: "I’m saying it’s because of an al Qaeda organization that used the banner of religion in a very perverse and corrupt way." Thomas: "Why?" Brennan: "I think this is a — long issue, but al Qaeda is just determined to carry out attacks here against the homeland." Thomas: "But you haven’t explained why."

That was McGovern's starting point on an very interesting exploration into the real "why" that the terrorists are doing what they're doing. By the way, this Ray McGovern is the former CIA analyst shown in Uncovered: The Whole Truth about the Iraq War giving great analysis into the truth behind the fictions of the Iraq War. Ray McGovern was a top CIA analyst who had been the intelligence briefer for Ronald Reagan and other top officials during the Reagan and Bush41 era. This sure gives a lot of credibility to what he has to say.

What we have here is a failure to communicate: The first issue McGovern raises is the Obama administration plan to increase efforts in communicating with the terrorists. By communicating clearly to Muslims Obama hopes to explain that the al Qaeda agenda is a perversion of Islam and that the U.S. stands with those who seek justice and progress. McGovern asks

Does a smart fellow like Obama expect us to believe that all we need to do is "communicate clearly to Muslims" that it is al Qaeda, not the U.S. and its allies, that brings "misery and death"? Does any informed person not know that the unprovoked U.S.-led invasion of Iraq killed hundreds of thousands of Iraqis and displaced 4.5 million from their homes? How is that for "misery and death"?

and

But why isn't there a frank discussion by America’s leaders and media about the real motivation of Muslim anger toward the United States? Why was Helen Thomas the only journalist to raise the touchy but central question of motive?

The reason given by Khalid Sheikh Mohammed as to why he masterminded the attacks on 9/11: Both the Bush43 and Obama administration have repeatedly given the same explanation of "why". Namely that the terrorists "hate our freedom" and that's why they're willing to continue this insane rampage of death and destruction. Being driven by perverted religious ideas their thought is to stamp out freedom? Um?

Instead McGovern quotes this apparently controversial bit from the 9/11 Commission report:

"America’s policy choices have consequences. Right or wrong, it is simply a fact that American policy regarding the Israeli-Palestinian conflict and American actions in Iraq are dominant staples of popular commentary across the Arab and Muslim world." (p. 376)

And this further bit the report has to say about KSM

"By his own account, KSM’s animus toward the United States stemmed … from his violent disagreement with U.S. foreign policy favoring Israel."

This wasn't about hating our freedom. It was about hating U.S. foreign policy. Especially our policy in the Middle East, in Israel, in Palestine, in Lebanon, etc. Occupation of Saudi Arabia, of Kuwait, etc. The killing of hundreds of thousands of civilians in Iraq. Or as McGovern put it:

After all, people in the Middle East already know how Palestinians have been mistreated for decades; how Washington has propped up Arab dictatorships; how Muslims have been locked away at Guantanamo without charges; how the U.S. military has killed civilians in Iraq, Afghanistan and elsewhere; how U.S. mercenaries have escaped punishment for slaughtering innocents.

The pain and suffering inflicted on the Middle East by western forces (primarily the U.S.) is the main issue here. U.S. policy in the middle east is rather unjust. The word "Blowback" was invented after the 1952 U.S. intervention in Iran which put the Shah in power, which saw him toppled in 1978, which saw the U.S. embassy overtaken by Iranian radicals during 1979, and which has left Iran as a supposedly dangerous threat in the Middle East. McGovern doesn't say anything about Iran in his article, but this story is part of the background reasons for todays war on terror. As explained in earlier postings the Project for a New American Century (a neocon thinktank which included dozens of people who went on to positions of power during the Bush43 years) planned to completely reshape the Middle East by first toppling Iraq's government and then toppling either/both Syria and/or Iran (see Is Syria (or Iran) next? and Background material for the second Gulf "War").

Israel: In the U.S. criticising American support for Israel is routinely squelched. He explains one incident, a former CIA analyst and specialist on al Qaeda, Michael Scheuer, has been "outspoken on what he sees as Israel’s tying down the American Gulliver in the Middle East". Scheuer was recently on C-SPAN complaining "bitterly that any debate on the issue of American support for Israel and its effects is normally squelched" and then went on to explain how the Israel Lobby got him "him removed from his job at the Jamestown Foundation think tank for saying that Obama was 'doing what I call the Tel Aviv Two Step.'"

More to the point, Scheuer asserted: "For anyone to say that our support for Israel doesn’t hurt us in the Muslim world … is to just defy reality."

McGovern referred to a Salon.COM post by Glenn Greenwald discussing a little noticed Associated Press report about the underwear bomber, Abdulmutallab. Rather than hating our freedom his Yemeni friends noted "that he was open about his sympathies toward the Palestinians and his anger over Israel’s actions in Gaza". Abdulmutallab was not someone with prior "terrorist" affiliations but someone who's anger over the Israel/Palestine conflict was used to manipulate him into committing violence. The merger announcements of Saudi and Yemeni branches of al Qaeda into al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula "railed against the Israeli attack on Gaza".

And on Dec. 30, Humam Khalil Abu Mulal al-Balawi, a 32-year-old Jordanian physician from a family of Palestinian origin, killed seven American CIA operatives and one Jordanian intelligence officer near Khost, Afghanistan, when he detonated a suicide bomb.

All these are not about "hating American freedoms" but are blowback by "terrorist" forces against U.S. support of Israel.

Violence piled upon Violence only begets more Violence: This is a phrase which has been with me since September 11, 2001. McGovern has this to say:

Is the reported reaction of a CIA official to al-Balawi’s attack the appropriate one: "Last week’s attack will be avenged. Some very bad people will eventually have a very bad day."

In other words the CIA response to the al-Balawi suicide bombing is Revenge. We've seen above that the U.S. toppling of the Iran government to install the Shah led to a lot of "blowback" which is a strange reframing word for "revenge". McGovern also goes into the events surrounding the brutal killing of Blackwater contractors in March 2004.

They'd taken a wrong turn and ended up in Fallujah, then attacked, murdered, and a grisly scene ensued with their bodies being drug through the street and so on. Later that year, the week after Bush43 won the 2004 election, an attack was launched on Fallujah. Revenge. That act of Revenge by the U.S. led to a drastic uptick in violence in Iraq. Was the killing of Blackwater contractors simply the raving actions of insane radicals? I think this is what officialdom would have us believe.

McGovern says it was inspired by the "March 22, 2004, Israeli forces assassinated the then-spiritual leader of Hamas in Gaza, Sheikh Yassin — a withering old man, blind and confined to a wheelchair." The people leading the murder of the Blackwater contractors called themselves the "Sheikh Yassin Revenge Brigade" and pamphlets and brochures were all over the scene about Sheikh Yassin.

The U.S. revenge attack on Fallujah was caused by a revenge attack on Blackwater guards over the Israeli assassination of a Hamas leader in Gaza which was likely itself Israeli revenge over something or other. Violence piled upon Violence only begets more Violence.

What we have here is a failure to communicate: McGovern closes by describing U.S. officialdom as refusing to communicate clearly with the American people about these issues. As said above he describes the press as simply taking dictation and repeating the words officialdom wants them to say. It means that officialdom is not telling the public the whole story. It means the American people are in the dark about what's really going on.

In a way this explains why there are so many deluded people in the U.S. The journalists whose proper role is investigation and exposing of lies, they're miserably failing at that job. This leaves the American people supporting stupid policies because they're woefully underinformed and misled by official lies.

Article Reference: 

Getting to the Bottom of Why "They" Want to Hurt Us

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ray_McGovern

Mega Giant Corporations Are Very Bad for America | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet

This is a tale of globalized megacorporations gone awry. I want to say at the outset that I believe the current state of deregulated globalized megacorporations comes about because the government has been weakened to the point it cannot rein in corporate excesses. Corporations have proved over and over they cannot be counted on to behave according to enlightened self interest, instead corporations have proved over and over they are willing to lie, cheat, steal, poison, and otherwise act to destroy their customers or employees. Corporations have proved over and over they have no ethics and no compunction about anything in the pursuit of profit. This despite the fact that corporations are made up of people, people who are making the horrendous decisions that lead to unethical business practices.

The story is about Walmart - the great bugaboo hobgoblin of the progressive. I myself immensely dislike that corporation and never set foot in one despite passing by their store quite regularly (it's across the street from the Whole Foods). The story in this article just cements my opinion about them.

When you have a corporation that "delivers at least 30% and sometimes more than 50% of the entire U.S. consumption of products" that corporation holds an inordinate amount of power. Namely: Walmart.

A few years ago a pet food quality scare opened up knowledge about bad stuff in the food industry. It was learned an Ontario-based company named Menu Foods was producing a massively large proportion of all pet food sold in the U.S. They delivered pet food under at least 150 different brand names from the high-end, expensive brands like Iams and Hill’s Pet Nutrition Science Diet to more pedestrian ones like SuperValu. Then double clicking on this food source it became known that essentially all production of wheat gluten had come to be controlled by China.

It isn't just wheat gluten and pet food at issue. It's that Chinese companies have gained complete control over production of various essential product components.

The issue isn't about China, it's about the risk inherent in putting control over essential resources in the hands of any other country. For example the U.S. is entirely beholden to OPEC countries for oil imports, a fact which puts the U.S. at risk to being controlled by those OPEC countries. As was proved during the mid 1970's during the fake oil crises of that era, if a country were to control supply of vital materials, that country can wield economic warfare against other countries.

China in particular has managed to gain a really strong position over the rest of the world through control over production of all sorts of things.

For those Americans who believe in what we were taught in civics class and Econ 101, the most disturbing revelation was not even the fragility of our food systems, but that some of our most cherished beliefs about how the U.S. economy works appear no longer to be true. We are told that companies are engaged in a mad scramble to discover exactly what we the U.S. consumers want and to devise perfectly tailored systems to supply those want as efficiently as possible. We are told that our economy is characterized by constantly chaotic yet always constructive competition and that any American with a better product and bit of gumption can bring that product to market and beat the big guys.

The true situation we have is nowhere near the wide open competitive paradise we seem to have. Instead we have stores full of basically identical products whose differ only in the color choice on the labels. It's all the same crap inside each one of the products.

Until we elected Ronald Reagan president, both Democrats and Republicans made sure that no chain store ever came to dominate more than a small fraction of sales in the United States as a whole, or even in any one region of the country. Between 1917 and 1979, for instance, administrations from both parties repeatedly charged the Great Atlantic and Pacific Tea Company, the chain store behemoth of the mid-twentieth century that is better known as A & P, with violations of antitrust law, even threatening to break the firm into pieces.

Then in 1981 we stopped enforcing that law. Thus, today Wal-Mart is at least five times bigger, relative to the overall size of the U.S. economy, than A & P was at the very height of its power.

A walk down the aisles of a megastore like Walmart may make it hard to believe there is no real choice. The dizzying array of brand names and product choices certainly looks like a huge variety of choice. But the truth is that megacorporations own the majority of the brand names, they enter into fake competition between their own brands, and in any case outsourcing means the source materials behind each product is the same.

Article Reference: 

Mega Giant Corporations Are Very Bad for America | Corporate Accountability and WorkPlace | AlterNet

Michael Chertoff's Pushing "Full-Body Scanners" for Airports but He Has a Conflict of Interest | World | AlterNet

When a former high ranking official preaches for a particular solution to a problem - maybe that former official might know some things about the cause of the problem, and know something about the best solution. Clearly the former official as a former insider would have better insight to the problem than us typical normal people. Or maybe, just maybe, that former official is abusing an emergency to push a product that he's being paid to promote regardless of how good (or not) that thing is.

When Michael Chertoff, the former DHS secretary, is repeatedly calling for installation of full-body scanners for airports. Well, maybe he knows something or other about the matter. But what if he and his lobbying agency were being paid by the manufacturer of the machines in question?

Regardless of how good (or not) those machines are - that Chertoff is being paid by the manufacturer makes this smell.

Article Reference: 

Michael Chertoff's Pushing "Full-Body Scanners" for Airports but He Has a Conflict of Interest | World | AlterNet

Will Our 'Green Jobs' Dollars Help a Ritzy Car Company Open a Toxic Manufacturing Plant? | Politics | AlterNet

Tesla Motors has been hunting for a production plant at which to build their Model S sedan. A likely site is in Downey CA, and a recent alternet.org article suggests this comes with serious toxic problems. Further that it's tax dollars being put to use to develop green industry that is, in part, supporting Tesla to build this plant.

Let's look first at the government loans. The article discusses it as "tax dollars" being handed over to Tesla. The money is part of the DOE’s Advanced Technology Vehicles Manufacturing Loan Program whose purpose is to expand green business and especially manufacturing work related to green technology. The article doesn't make it very clear, but this is a loan not a grant. Tesla is required to repay the loan (it is a loan after all) and there are stringent business development goals Tesla has to meet for each phase the loan program. (See: Fisker, the vast rightwing conspiracy, and the $528 Mil DOE loan)

Many recent articles have raised the question of the proper role for government to play in shaping the economy and businesses around us. It seems many believe the government should keep it's hands off free market economic forces, and that the economy will sort everything out. On the other hand the DOE claims the program serves the common good of helping the country become free of foreign oil dependency. In my mind this is a very good argument especially because economic forces is a very bad mechanism for weaning the country from fossil fuels.

The last part of this saga is the plant that Tesla is looking at. It used to be a Boeing plant, for 70+ years, and is now thought to be very toxic. The article quotes a few people discussing health problems they think stem from work at that site. The site is currently underused because Boeing abandoned it a couple decades ago.

In other words it sounds like the typical polluted ex-industrial site. Maybe the local government desperately wants some industry at that location but there's a question over what to do about the pollution. However the article doesn't make it clear there is documented evidence of toxic pollution, instead it gives some hearsay style interviews.

Article Reference: 

Will Our 'Green Jobs' Dollars Help a Ritzy Car Company Open a Toxic Manufacturing Plant? | Politics | AlterNet

Naomi Klein: 3 Biggest Blown Opportunities of Obama's Presidency | Politics | AlterNet

No President since FDR has been handed as many opportunities to transform the U.S. into something that doesn't threaten the stability of life on this planet. Is he blowing it? That's from Naomi Klein. She starts the article with the failure to get a groundshaking deal at the Copenhagen summit. If Obama had come to Copenhagen with a transformative commitment to getting the U.S. economy off fossil fuels, the other major emitters would have stepped up. The EU, Japan, China and India all indicated that they were willing to increase their levels of commitment, only if the U.S. took the lead. Instead Obama arrived with embarrassingly low targets and the heavy emitters of the world took their cue from him. But the 3 FAIL's listed are economic, the stimulus package, and bailouts of the auto and banking industry. No President since FDR has been handed as many opportunities to transform the U.S. into something that doesn't threaten the stability of life on this planet.

Article Reference: 

http://www.alternet.org/politics/144720/naomi_klein%3A_3_biggest_blown_opportuni...

Twitter Tapping - government agents tracking public information

An NY TImes editorial Twitter Tapping discusses a Freedom of Information Act suit by the Electronic Frontier Foundation and the Samuelson Law, Technology and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law. There is widespread understanding that government agents are snooping around social networking sites looking for clues of nefarious activities.

The issue seems to be that various government agencies are hoovering around public social networks like twitter looking for clues. However it's not just public social networks as the editorial mentions Facebook specifically, and most of the social data on Facebook is supposedly under the control of privacy settings.

The editorial explains: The suit seeks to uncover what guidelines these agencies have about this activity, including information about whether agents are permitted to use fake identities or to engage in subterfuge, such as tricking people into accepting Facebook friend requests. For example there's some data on Facebook visible only to "friends" and a fake friend request could give some agency access to otherwise private information.

Something to think about is the distinction between publicly disclosed and privately disclosed information. Twitter is a public site, and every tweet is public. Facebook however is largely private with the information only visible to friends (depending on each users privacy settings). Obviously publicly disclosed information can be freely read by anyone, right? What kind of privacy expectations could one have for tweets or other publicly disclosed postings? Facebook goes to great length to create an illusion of privacy but maybe the government has a special arrangement with Facebook?

The EFF press release (below) has this to say: "Millions of people use social networking sites like Facebook every day, disclosing lots of information about their private lives," said James Tucker, a student working with EFF through the Samuelson Clinic. "As Congress debates new privacy laws covering sites like Facebook, lawmakers and voters alike need to know how the government is already using this data and what is at stake."

The U.S. government has been, for a long time, increasing its ubiquitous surveillance capabilities. It's worthwhile for more to be known about this since Americans have a huge expectation of privacy and belief that "Big Brother" will never happen in America. (see Big Brother is watching us all)

During this decade the "war on terror" has of course been a major concern and it seems some privacy intrusions have been instituted under the guise of finding and stopping terrorism. But does this supposed war on terror justify the government in destroying core qualities of America?

Some of the intrusions are "link analysis" where the FBI is looking at "envelope" information in emails and telephone calls of pretty much everybody. (see: F.B.I. Data Mining Reached Beyond Initial Targets and Spy Agency Mined Vast Data Trove, Officials Report - New York Times)

Satellite images are an example of public information being consulted by spy agencies. I say "public" because something visible from an orbiting satellite can be seen by any number of commercial or government owned cameras. (see An example of likely legal U.S. spying inside U.S.)

This sort of effort is very similar to the programs under the umbrella Total Information Awareness (TIA) project formerly run by DARPA and (supposedly) canceled. However various elements of the TIA have obviously lived on. The TIA was publicly disclosed 2001, a time before widespread use of social networking websites, but clearly this kind of information hoovering is exactly what the TIA would have developed. (see DARPA's Information Awareness Office, The Total Information Awareness System; Or, Big Brother in-carnate)

Lawsuit Demands Answers About Social-Networking Surveillance

Government Agencies Withholding Information on Data-Gathering from Facebook, Twitter, and Other Online Communities

San Francisco - The Electronic Frontier Foundation (EFF), working with the Samuelson Law, Technology, and Public Policy Clinic at the University of California, Berkeley, School of Law (Samuelson Clinic), filed suit today against a half-dozen government agencies for refusing to disclose their policies for using social networking sites for investigations, data-collection, and surveillance.

Recent news reports have publicized the government's use of social networking data as evidence in various investigations, and Congress is currently considering several pieces of legislation that may increase protections for consumers who use social-networking websites and other online tools. In response, the Samuelson Clinic made over a dozen Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) requests on behalf of EFF to the Central Intelligence Agency, the Department of Justice, the Department of Homeland Security, and other agencies, asking for information about how the government collects and uses this sensitive information.

"Millions of people use social networking sites like Facebook every day, disclosing lots of information about their private lives," said James Tucker, a student working with EFF through the Samuelson Clinic. "As Congress debates new privacy laws covering sites like Facebook, lawmakers and voters alike need to know how the government is already using this data and what is at stake."

When several agencies did not respond to the FOIA requests, the Samuelson Clinic filed suit on behalf of EFF. The lawsuit demands immediate processing and release of all records concerning policies for the use of social networking sites in government investigations.

"Internet users deserve to know what information is collected, under what circumstances, and who has access to it," said Shane Witnov, a law student also working on the case. "These agencies need to abide by the law and release their records on social networking surveillance."

For the full complaint:
http://www.eff.org/files/filenode/social_network/social_networking_FOIA_complaint_final.pdf

Technosanity #42: contemplating the cost of making tea

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Making tea is such a simple thing isn't it? Or, is it? Where do the tea leaves come from and what is the environmental impact of growing the tea? Where does the paper for the tea bag come from, what is the environmental impact of that? What about limited water resources? Is the tea shipped across the planet?

Many tea makers attempt to appeal to green consciousness with fair trade practices, or claiming to grow the tea sustainably, etc. All that is laudible, but then they ship the tea thousands of miles and the environmental impact of the globalized shipping probably destroys several times over the gains from the sustainable farming practice.

Technosanity #42: contemplating the cost of making tea

Links: 

Making Tea (on youtube)