Exposing Pentagon and CIA Corruption

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

June 11, 2008

SueAnn Arrigo’s Explosive Revelations

By STEPHEN LENDMAN

Information for this article comes from long-time business, finance and political writer and analyst Bob Chapman who publishes the bi-weekly International Forecaster. It’s power-packed with key information and a valued source for this writer. He obtained voluminous material directly from its source. People need to know it. Read on.

SueAnn Arrigo is the source. She was a high-level CIA insider. Her title was Special Operations Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). She also established the Remote Viewing Defense protocols for the Pentagon in her capacity as Remote Viewing Advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). It earned her a two-star general rank in the military. She called it a “ploy” so the Pentagon could get more of her time and have her attend monthly Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings. Only high-level types are invited, and she was there from October 2003 to July 2004.

Part of her job involved intelligence gathering on Iraq and Afghanistan – until August 2004 when she refused to spread propaganda about a non-existant Iranian nuclear weapons program and left. She followed in the footsteps of others at CIA who resigned for reasons of conscience and became critics – most notably Ray McGovern, Ralph McGehee, and Phil Agee.

On May 16, 2008, Arrigo sent extensive government corruption and cover-up information to Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee – in 12 separate cases. This article covers four of them or about one-third of what Congress got. The 12 are explosive and revealing but just the tip of the iceberg:

– of government corruption and war profiteering;

– sweetheart deals and kickbacks;

– high-level types on the take;

– trillions of missing dollars;

– on September 10, 2001, Rumsfeld admitting “According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions;”

– imagine the current amount;

– its corrosive effect on the nation; and people should

– demand accountability – who profits, who pays and what are the consequences of militarism gone mad.

SueAnn Arrigo offers a glimpse and at great personal risk. In August 2001, DCI George Tenet told her to assemble “a moving van full of Pentagon documents showing Defense Contractor kickbacks to Pentagon officials.” She did as instructed but not to expose corruption as she learned – to conceal it and in her judgment so CIA could divert defense business to Halliburton and “Carlyle-related contractors.” She stated: “The mood at the CIA and Pentagon was ‘war is coming’ because the Bush Family stands to make billions from it — so get ready.”

Arrigo was shocked at what she found and how brazenly the Pentagon wrote it up because it feels untouchable, especially since 2001. That notion proved misguided after CIA used the material to blackmail or bribe its officials “into ‘working on’ the Halliburton-Carlyle team.” Top CIA types were involved, and Tenet laid it out for Arrigo: You’ve “given me the keys to the kingdom. (These) documents will make me rich.”

She collected three types. Her report covers one but has plenty of incriminating evidence. Her precise recall of dates and names is incomplete, but events are factually right and damning on how Washington operates. It’s always been this way but never to the degree as under George Bush. Arrigo exposes the scheme – the systematic looting of the treasury to enrich contractors and high-level officials at Pentagon, CIA and others well-placed in government. Precise amounts are unknown, but at mimimum are countless multi-billions, even trillions – at taxpayer expense and diverted from essential social and infrastructure needs.

Case 1: Ordering Unneeded New Fighter Aircraft

Arrigo discovered high-level Pentagon corruption. It involved bid-rigging and implicated “an Air Force general on the JCS and a Defense Contractor, Boeing.” She disclosed it to JCS Chairman Hugh Shelton and DCI George Tenet, and in both instances drew blanks. She also reported it to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress. It was vetted and confirmed, but left unaddressed the larger issue of whether new generation planes are needed at an enormous cost to taxpayers. Arrigo believed not, and several Air Force generals agreed. Not other JCS members, however, who she learned are on the take.

There’s more. They “had the gall to try to force through another unneeded plane contract for Boeing.” At an early 2004 JCS meeting, Arrigo complained about the previous undelivered order because it didn’t meet Pentagon specifications. Yet one general in particular tried “to force the US military to buy another (unneeded) upgrade.” One other JCS member backed her to no avail, and the new order went through. Arrigo rightfully concluded that new plane orders were to enrich Boeing and high-level Pentagon types getting kickbacks for their cooperation.

She also learned how much – an average $22,000 “for each (JCS meeting) vote according to their bank” records. Not US ones. CIA-arranged Swiss accounts specifically for this purpose. Everyone at the meeting cashed in, except Arrigo and one dissenting general. More disturbing is that this is standard Pentagon practice – handouts to contractors; kickbacks to complicit brass; and taxpayers out multi-billions – year after year.

Jeff St. Clair wrote about it in his 2005 book “Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror.” It’s an explosive account of how contractors like Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Bechtel and the Bush family-connected Carlyle Group scam multi-billions at taxpayer expense and not a whiff of it in the mainstream. It’s the reason US annual “defense” spending tops $1.1 trillion (conservatively) with all military, homeland security, veterans, NASA, debt service and other allocations included.

Case 2: Halliburton Delivers Half Full Cartons to the Pentagon’s “Swing Shift”

Arrigo refers to the Pentagon’s Receiving Department “swing shift” personnel. They alone are on the take so other shifts are shut out and can’t report it. As a CIA insider, she checked and found damning evidence – about “the military (not) getting supplies to the troops on time.” She also learned that Halliburton has its “Representative to the CIA,” and one at the Pentagon as well. Both get federal salaries but neither was “hired by CIA or the military through their personnel departments. Neither had done military training or trained at (CIA’s) ‘Farm’ as a spy.” Arrigo was disturbed and with good reason when orders from the top said back off.

It got worse. Arrigo worked at CIA for over 30 years and reported directly to Tenet. But she wasn’t prepared for what she found – a new section at the Agency without her knowledge. It employed 40 people, all working for Halliburton “while being paid by the US taxpayer as if they were CIA.” It was secret. No files were on them. They were never interviewed, never vetted, and she concluded: “CIA had a back door in its security to let Halliburton put anyone they wanted in (its) hallways. It was an outrageous (breach) of US National Security,” and in a post-9/11 “war on terrorism” climate.

She was shocked and told Tenet. His reply: “Yes, I know.” Head of CIA building security also knew. Arrigo asked what he’d do about it. His answer: “Keep my mouth shut so I can stay alive and I suggest you do the same.” She asked if he, CIA or Halliburton would kill her if she talked. He didn’t think so. Would national security firm CACI do it because it’s affiliated with Halliburton and also has a CIA back door for its personnel at the Agency.

Arrigo dug deeper. She got inside Halliburton’s area and asked questions. Why was the company shipping half the contracted for amounts and shortchanging the troops and taxpayers. It was no different for war zones. Halliburton “set up the same corrupt system of swing shift receivers (for) at least 3 continents. They received the cartons and signed (off) that the goods were all received properly. Then the shortages later were chalked up to thefts or war damage, etc.”

Arrigo again informed Tenet. His answer: “This is nothing new,” then added: “Have a report about it on my desk before Christmas (2001).” It got worse. Arrigo told Tenet he’s responsible for “correct(ing) Halliburton’s short-shipping and its invasion of the CIA.” He said he couldn’t because the White House tied his hands. Call Congress, Arrigo said. DCI “should be a man of courage.” Tenet ignored her, so Arrigo faxed documents revealing Halliburton fraud to GAO – omitting national security secrets. One of them crowed about the scheme’s profitability, and having high-level officials involved made it foolproof.

It was clever and even more devious than Arrigo imagined. Halliburton uses each shortage complaint as a new order. “In that way (it) never (loses) by having to make good for (what’s) missing,” and (it gets) paid double for the same merchandise.

Arrigo knew too much, took risks to learn it, and what happened next is shocking. Halliburton’s “CIA Representative” confronted her, tore out her phone, ransacked her office, removed every shred of paper, and hauled her off bodily “to a prison cell” inside its basement offices. She was intimidated and threatened. Thought she might be killed. She survived, but the message was clear. She complained to Tenet. Showed him her bruises. He responded dismissively: “There, there, everything will be all right in the morning.”

GAO still has Arrigo’s files. It began investigating but stopped. She thinks that Congress can resume it and asked Waxman to do it. That’s where things now stand.

Case 3: The White House Conspiracy to Cook the Books – Halliburton, Carlyle and CIA

In 2002, Arrigo tried a new tact – ingratiating herself with “Halliburton’s Man” and using it to her advantage. She offered cooperation for access to his space and make him think she was on his side. It worked, went on for four and one-half months through late May, and it paid off – with plenty of insider knowledge “about Halliburton and how it works.” Enough to fill a book, she says, but her account sticks to highlights.

First off, it’s pure myth that Dick Cheney stopped running the company. “He called in orders to the man I worked for almost every day and sometimes two or more times a day. He remained (Halliburton’s) functional head in all but name. No one….had the power to override his orders.” Second, Cheney never divested himself of Halliburton profits. “He merely hid how (he got them) through a series of shell companies.”

One of Arrigo’s jobs was to liaison between Halliburton and CIA’s “creative accounting departments.” In other words, their co-conspiratorial treasury looting efforts, and Arrigo got insider access to it. Her advanced math and computer software training qualified her. In a few months, she became expert in how CIA and Halliburton hid their “financial illegalities.”

She explained – “Computers are good ways to fool most people because (they don’t) look inside of them.” They can be programmed “to print out one set of books for regulators, another for Defense Contractors, another for the Pentagon, another for the taxpayer,” and so forth. It’s simple. Decide what you want, and machines will create it in any desired form. The trick is doing it expertly, most criminals can’t, so they need professionals to do it for them. It means crimes are never secret, and many computer experts know about them. CIA has always been tainted, kept it secret since inception, so far has been untouchable, but remains vulnerable to exposure by people of conscience like Arrigo.

She explained: Halliburton has eight software programmers at CIA. Its home office has many more. She was on conference calls with 60 of them on ways to conceal illegalities and assure none of it leaks out. The company has less expertise than CIA so the Agency took charge to make the two systems compatible. It took several years and over 100 programmers. They came, left for other jobs, and took insider knowledge with them. It risks more leaks about Halliburton, other contractors, CIA, the Pentagon, high-ups in government, and the Basel-based Bank of International Settlements for its part in corruption.

Many investigations are ongoing, but huge pressure is exerted to quash them. It’s feared leaks may unravel the whole scheme – a vast corruption web involving countless numbers of contractors, related companies, and many high level government and Pentagon insiders. Cover-up software hides it. Taxpayers fund it. Amounts keep getting greater, and they’re up to unimaginable levels.

Arrigo explained the system. Suppose Halliburton sold product A in 100 Lot Sizes, in Quantity X at Price Y to the Pentagon on a given date. Most civilian invoices disclose this. Pentagon ones don’t so contractors can cheat and Pentagon brass profit. Missing information conceals whether all merchandise was delivered as nothing indicates quantities shipped. Further, repackaging also hides proper amounts. Omitting the price alone conceals whether a shipment was shorted, but CIA is more clever than that. It experimented with “tested receivers at some of its front companies” to learn how best to deceive them. What works best is “shifting prices around like random noise” – one day this cost, another a different one, and so forth.

One company used a “gross overcharge method” that looked suspicious. It got receivers to discover the real price, and that defeated CIA’s scheme. When it works, it cooks the books, and no one’s the wiser. Ledger entries are inflated, undercut, omitted, added, or varied in amounts of similar transactions. Like a “professional crime institution,” CIA is expert at falsifying books so no one catches on. How? By random price variations to keep auditors off balance and unable to discover corruption patterns.

Another example:

CIA varies its front company prices monthly. Suppose Halliburton made a purchase “when it (used) a cost inflation idea of cheating. Halliburton (has) an incentive to inflate the cost of its purchases (to) justify (its) high (price) to the military.” So as standard practice it uses CIA’s highest price and claims that amount for its cost.

But comparing two sets of books reveals the scheme. So methodology became more sophisticated to conceal it. Halliburton takes CIA prices and doubles them on its books. It then claims the Agency recorded half the charge “accidently,” says its front company promised a 50% discount, but never delivered. CIA looks bad, and it balked. No matter. Halliburton still does it, but CIA has “lots of fronts with lots of customers and worse problems (to hide) than merely jacking up prices. Some fronts (are) fictitious and (make) no products.” Others have real customers plus fake ones to launder money. CIA tries to “make (their) crimes ‘undetectable.’ ” Halliburton hopes to “sneak by” until caught, then find a way to weasel out of it with minimal damage or cost.

Case 4: Halliburton’s Rigged Back Door Accounting Computer at the Pentagon

In early 2002, GAO got damning evidence: that Halliburton overbills and short-ships – deliberate fraudulent acts as standard company practice, confident it can get away with it, and most often it does.

GAO has the goods to expose it from Halliburton and Pentagon invoices. They reveal a problem. They don’t match, are grossly inflated, and payments exceed amounts billed – by about 35%. Arrigo met with GAO and compared notes. Halliburton has similar Pentagon and CIA-paid staff, and George Bush approved it in a secret Executive Order Arrigo has for proof. She gave it to GAO plus other documents showing national security is compromised and taxpayers cheated – hugely.

One document lists Halliburton’s CIA and Pentagon staff, what little official records discloses about them, their secret office locations, and information on their private security staff. Arrigo discovered that Halliburton’s top CIA man served time for felony fraud. Another at Pentagon was convicted as well – for stealing Army vehicles, then profiteering by transshipping them overseas.

Dick Cheney knew, blocked background checks to conceal it, but Arrigo found out and about the Pentagon fraud that followed. She has a handwritten Cheney memo instructing his man “to make sure that the Pentagon pays us all that it owes us and then some.” CIA’s forgery department verified the writing is Cheney’s.

Arrigo also has a letter from Halliburton’s Pentagon man to his CIA counterpart, and it’s damning. He brags how he’s “getting more than we bargained for (from) the Pentagon” and suggested they get together to compare notes. They did and Arrigo taped it. The evidence once more is damning – about how easy it is to scam the system; befriend accounting personnel; install company programmers; check bills supposedly behind in payments; install a special software code for higher amounts; and do all of the above at Pentagon and CIA.

Arrigo informed George Tenet so he’d stop “Halliburton from ripping off the American taxpayer via the CIA and Pentagon.” Tenet hardly blinked and responded casually: “Well, you certainly have done a thorough job as usual.” He then offered to inform the White House to “correct the problem.” Arrigo did herself, GAO as well, and later learned that the Bush administration (likely Dick Cheney) blocked an investigation.

This article covers four of Arrigo’s 12 cases. Their evidence is damning and shows systemic contractor, government, CIA and Pentagon fraud involving enormous amounts of money. One or more articles will follow if more material can be obtained. It’s not what Pentagon and CIA want outed so getting it is never simple and revealing it not without risks.

source : http://www.counterpunch.org/lendman06112008.html

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______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

USA Dictatorship : Scanners that see through clothing installed in US airports

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

USA Dictatorship : Scanners that see through clothing installed in US airports

Tue Jun 10, 2008

Security scanners which can see through passengers’ clothing and reveal details of their body underneath are being installed in 10 US airports, the US Transportation Security Administration said Tuesday.

A random selection of travellers getting ready to board airplanes in Washington, New York’s Kennedy, Los Angeles and other key hubs will be shut in the glass booths while a three-dimensional image is made of their body beneath their clothes.

The booths close around the passenger and emit “millimeter waves” that go through cloth to identify metal, plastics, ceramics, chemical materials and explosives, according to the TSA.

While it allows the security screeners — looking at the images in a separate room — to clearly see the passenger’s sexual organs as well as other details of their bodies, the passenger’s face is blurred, TSA
said in a statement on its website.

The scan only takes seconds and is to replace the physical pat-downs of people that is currently widespread in airports.

TSA began introducing the body scanners in airports in April, first in the Phoenix, Arizona terminal.

The installation is picking up this month, with machines in place or planned for airports in Washington (Reagan National and Baltimore-Washington International), Dallas, Las Vegas, Albuquerque, Miami and Detroit.

But the new machines have provoked worries among passengers and rights activists.

“People have no idea how graphic the images are,” Barry Steinhardt, director of the technology and liberty program at the American Civil Liberties Union, told AFP.

The ACLU said in a statement that passengers expecting privacy underneath their clothing “should not be required to display highly personal details of their bodies such as evidence of mastectomies,
colostomy appliances, penile implants, catheter tubes and the size of their breasts or genitals as a pre-requisite to boarding a plane.”

Besides masking their faces, the TSA says on its website, the images made “will not be printed stored or transmitted.”

“Once the transportation security officer has viewed the image and resolved anomalies, the image is erased from the screen permanently. The officer is unable to print, export, store or transmit the image.”

Lara Uselding, a TSA spokeswoman, added that passengers are not obliged to accept the new machines.

“The passengers can choose between the body imaging and the pat-down,” she told AFP.

TSA foresees 30 of the machines installed across the country by the end of 2008. In Europe, Amsterdam’s Schipol airport is already using the scanners.

source : http://afp.google.com/article/ALeqM5g2FtU5NbFoqCYHY2j5RB4Mi2xUnQ

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Center for Constitutional Rights (USA) Wins Supreme Court Decision on Guantanamo!

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Center for Constitutional Rights (USA) Wins Supreme Court Decision on Guantanamo!

Today is a historic victory for the rule of law. We won! For the third time, the Supreme Court has upheld the fundamental rights of Guantanamo detainees. In its historic decision in CCR’s case, Boumediene v. Bush, the Court affirmed detainees’ right to habeas corpus. One of the oldest and most basic legal protections, habeas corpus affords the incarcerated the right to challenge the legality of their detention before a judge and keeps the king and president from arbitrarily locking people up and throwing away the key.

We’re asking you to take action in two important ways: please make a contribution to CCR today so we can continue this important work, and please write to the presidential candidates to demand that they uphold the Supreme Court’s decision.

The Administration has delayed, ignored and sought to evade two prior Supreme Court decisions, Rasul v. Bush in 2004 and Hamdan v. Rumsfeld in 2006, both of which upheld the rights of Guantanamo detainees.

This decision was, in many ways, made possible by the support of so many – the over 500 volunteer habeas counsel who have committed themselves to defending the rights of Guantanamo’s detainees, the thousands upon thousands who have acted to demand that the Constitution be upheld, and all of our supporters, who have made this work possible. Today, your support is urgently needed, now more than ever, to ensure that the Supreme Court’s decision is implemented and the Constitution restored.

CCR was the first organization to step forward to defend the detainees, long before anyone else would take the risk. Please click here to donate to support CCR’s work today so that we can continue to take on the risky cases!

Join CCR today to write to the candidates for President of the United States, Barack Obama (D) and John McCain (R), and demand that they affirm their commitment to not only implement the Supreme Court’s decision, but also to close Guantanamo and undo all of the policies of the Bush administration that have trampled upon our Constitution.

Click here to write to the candidates!

This six-year-long nightmare is a lesson in how fragile our constitutional protections truly are in the hands of an overzealous executive. Let us celebrate, but let us remain vigilant.

Sincerely,
Vincent Warren
Executive Director, Center for Constitutional Rights

Learn more about this case at the CCR website by clicking here.

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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Worse Than Fascists: Christian Political Group ‘The Family’ Openly Reveres Hitler

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

By Lindsay Beyerstein, AlterNet

Posted on June 12, 2008, Did you know that the National Prayer Breakfast is sponsored by a shadowy cabal of elite Christian fundamentalists? Jeff Sharlet’s new book, “The Family: The Secret Fundamentalism at the Heart of American Power,” offers a rare glimpse of this remarkable network, which is known variously as the Family, the Fellowship and the International Foundation.

The Family was founded 70 years ago by Abraham Vereide, a Norwegian immigrant evangelist based in Seattle. In 1935, Vereide said, God appeared to him in a vision and revealed where Christianity had gone wrong: preoccupation with the poor, the weak and the suffering.

The down-and-out were in no position to bring about the Kingdom of God, Vereide realized. Some Christians believe that the rapture is imminent, but not the Family. They’re convinced that Jesus won’t return until we get our collective house in order. If they were to wait for the down-and-out to remake the world in God’s image, we could be here forever.

Besides, in Seattle in the 1930s, union agitators were making a play for the down-and-out. Christianity promised rewards in the hereafter, but workers in the Pacific Northwest were starting to wonder why they had to wait so long. Instead of competing for market share with the Industrial Workers of the World, Vereide sought a different niche.

His new plan was to target men who were already powerful and turn them to God — and wouldn’t you know it, God hated unions, too.

Through personal relationships and small group encounters, Vereide united captains of industry and politicians as a Biblical bulwark against the increasing power of organized labor.

In the late 1940s, the Family helped roll back key pro-labor provisions of the New Deal. Later, the Family did its part for the Cold War by cultivating anti-communist strongmen around the world, including repressive leaders like Suharto of Indonesia and Jonas Savimbi of Angola.

The roster of current and former Family members includes senators, congressmen, Fortune 500 CEOs, generals and at least one Supreme Court justice. The Family does not publish membership lists, and its members are sworn to secrecy, so a full accounting is impossible.

Sen. Hillary Clinton has been involved with the Family since 1993 when, as first lady, she joined a White House prayer circle for political wives. Clinton has also sought spiritual counseling from the current head of the Family, Doug Coe. Sharlet argues that Clinton’s longtime association with the Family has helped her forge working relationships with powerful religious conservatives such as Family member and anti-abortion crusader Sen. Sam Brownback of Kansas.

The Family nurtures the next generation of prayer warriors in suburban dormitories. Sharlet spent nearly a month living at Ivanwald, a dormitory in Virginia where sons of the Family are sent to immerse themselves in Jesus and clean the toilets of congressmen and senators.

The Family also runs a house on C Street in Washington, D.C. The C Street Center has housed a number of federal legislators, including Sen. John Ensign of Nevada. Residents allege that the center is just a cheap place to live, but as an Ivanwald brother, Sharlet saw firsthand that the center is a religious community. As far as the IRS is concerned, the C Street Center is a church.

Members will tell you that the Family is just a group of friends. As Sharlet discovered, 600 boxes of documents at the Billy Graham Center Archives tell a different story.

AlterNet writer Lindsay Beyerstein recently sat down with Jeff Sharlet at a Brooklyn coffee shop to discuss the Family.

Lindsay Beyerstein What is the Family?

Jeff Sharlet: It’s an international network of evangelical activists in government, military and business. The Family is dedicated to this idea that Christianity has gotten it all wrong for two thousand years by focusing on the poor, the suffering and the weak.

The Family says that instead, what Christians should do is minister to the up-and-out — as opposed to the down-and-out — to those that are already powerful. Because if they can win those people for Christ, they win the whole deal. That’s what this network is dedicated to. It includes nonprofit organizations, it includes think tanks, it includes various ministries.

Lindsay Beyerstein: Where did they get the idea that they should be ministering to the up-and-out? There doesn’t seem to be a lot basis in Christianity for that view.

Jeff Sharlet: Two places. The founder of the Family, Abraham Vereide, would describe it as his “new revelation” that came to him in the middle of the night, very literally: in a vision from God in 1935 in response to the Great Depression and, more particularly, to a series of very successful labor strikes that he saw as challenging God’s sovereignty. So, God comes and gives him this new revelation to say, “This is what I really meant …”

Early on, Vereide and the Family weren’t actually talking about scripture, but as time went on they began invoking more and more a particular verse of Paul’s Letter to the Romans, which is popular among fundamentalists, Romans:13: “The Powers that Be are Ordained of God.” And it goes on to say that if you resist those powers, you’re in a lot of trouble. Interpreted literally, this is the key text in authoritarian Christianity. So, that’s where they’re getting it.

Lindsay Beyerstein: In “The Family,” a lot of subjects explicitly state their admiration for Hitler and other authoritarian political figures. How much of that is admiring their style, and how much is admiring their substance?

Jeff Sharlet: I’d argue that there isn’t a hell of a lot of difference. I spent a lot of time living with these guys, and I remember at one point asking them, “What’s the deal with all this Hitler talk?” And they’d say, “Oh, it’s not the ends, it’s the means.” But to most of us, the means seem pretty bad, too. The means are authoritarianism.

It’s pretty close to the substance because it grows out of this very broad movement in the 1930s of elites concluding that democracy has run its course, that democracy was a temporary phase in world history. And so, these people were experimenting with all sorts of different alternatives. And remember, before World War II it was considered a perfectly legitimate and acceptable position to endorse fascism.

Lindsay Beyerstein: When I read the book, I found myself thinking about Umberto Eco’s essay, “Eternal Fascism,” which provides a kind of checklist of the essential characteristics of fascism. How many of those criteria does the Family meet?

Jeff Sharlet:The book I find helpful as a succinct guide to fascism is a book by historian Robert Paxton. He’ll boil it down into five principles or ten principles. The Family’s always hovering around 80 percent, but never all the way.

And that’s an important distinction to make. I think many progressives want to reduce everything bad to fascism. There’s more than one kind of bad under the sun. One of the arguments in this book is that these guys aren’t fascists; they’re ultimately something worse. They’re not fascists because they don’t explicitly revere violence. Lots of violence occurs through various dimensions, but in fascism, violence is thought to have redemptive power.

Lindsay Beyerstein: So, they don’t literally believe in physical conflict when they describe themselves as warriors for Christ?

Jeff Sharlet: Oh, no. (They think) that’s fine, but they don’t love violence the way that fascism did. Their leader, Doug Coe, says that the Bible is filled with mass murderers. And it is. The difference is that European fascism was based on this idea that you can only become truly human through violence. The Family will say, oh no, we’re pursuing peace. Hitler wasn’t pursuing peace. The goal was this constant redemptive violence.

The other thing is they differ in the strictness of their nationalism. The Family is an American ideology, and it has a lot of American ideology involved, but still it was founded by a Norwegian immigrant. It’s more pluralist than European fascism that was about cleansing the blood. The Family is an imperial ideology, which is why I think it’s ultimately worse than fascism. Since the Second World War, fascism hasn’t been a very powerful ideology, but imperialism has.

Lindsay Beyerstein: What kind of empire do they envision?

Jeff Sharlet: They envision the empire that we have. Doug Coe says, “We work with power where we can and build new power where we can’t.” Usually they can work within power. Rob Shank, another Christian right activist in Washington, says, “The Family is into living with what is.”

In the immediate postwar era, they were talking about Christian D-Day and Washington as the world’s Christian capital. And World War Three, they were very excited about that, all full-steam ahead. But they sort of subsided and were subsumed into the American Cold War project, which ended up becoming an imperial project.

Lindsay Beyerstein: What did the Family have to do with a B-movie called “The Blob”?

Jeff Sharlet: The best illustration of the Family’s involvement in the Cold War was something that I stumbled on by accident: The 1958 film “The Blob.” It began at the 1957 National Prayer Breakfast. “The Blob” was a famous horror movie that was a metaphor for Communism. This is their imagination of how Communism spread. At the time, the American imagination couldn’t grasp ideology, so it had to be an actual goo that globs more and more people and grows and becomes expansive. As I recall, they have to blow up the town at the end. The logic of “The Blob” is that we must destroy the village in order to save it. That’s the logic of Vietnam.

The project actually began at the National Prayer Breakfast. This filmmaker who had been making fundamentalist films, Irvin “Shorty” Yeaworth, was on the lookout for someone to make this film. (The writer) Kate Phillips was a B-movie sci-fi actress. Not a Christian Right person; (she was) there as a guest of a friend of hers. She’s there at the breakfast and they become friends. They end up making this movie.

“The Blob” was paralleled with this other movie. This other movie that comes out of the Prayer Breakfast is “Militant Liberty.” John Groger, on Family payroll and on the Pentagon payroll, he was obsessed with making these kooky films that were almost too weird for the Pentagon, like “Operation Abolition,” because it was so trippy and so bent on blaming the spread of Communism on Japanese youth culture.

Lindsay Beyerstein: On Japanese youth culture?

Jeff Sharlet: Don’t forget, there was a pretty powerful Japanese communist movement after the Second World War. Japan would have been a communist country had it not been for us buying their political system wholesale.

So, that’s “The Blob.” The whole approach represents their understanding of Communism and the way America responded. Tim Weiner, in “Legacy of Ashes,” has a devastating critique. The real issue is incompetence — they never understood who they were fighting. You might say, “Hey, I’m down with anti-communism” — but they were always bent on fighting with these crazy schemes and networks. That’s not the way to combat Stalinism, which is an evil ideology.

It’s just as true now, when I look at what the Family does today in the Central Asian Republic. The 1999 Silk Road Strategy Act, sponsored by Sam Brownback, and Rep. Joe Pitts renewed it in 2006. Combat militant Islam in Central Asia by pouring American aid into dictatorial regimes. This same kind of top-down aid.

Thugs have always understood that they could use the Family. … When you see Suharto getting down on his knees and praying to Jesus with members of the Family — he’s Muslim, technically, but he’s not even really that; he’s a dictator.

Lindsay Beyerstein: Sort of like Daniel Plainview in the movie “There Will Be Blood”? (Plainview is the cynical oil man who makes a big show of converting to Christianity at a revival meeting to consolidate his power in town.)

Jeff Sharlet: Daniel Plainview had more integrity. That’s a nice comparison, I hadn’t thought of that. Some of these central Asian dictators are not drinking the Kool-Aid.

(At some level, the Family understands.) One member says that he’d rather let in a few wolves then keep out one sheep. I just want to know: When is the sheep getting here? Because all they’ve got are wolves.

The more interesting analysis is to view it not as cynicism but as a logical outcome of a theology that reveres power. This is not their system not working; it’s their system working.

Lindsay Beyerstein: Does this attitude have to do with the Family’s unusual theology? In the book you say that they teach a kind of ultrasubjectivism, stripping away all history, doctrine, institutions and all rituals until “religion” is just what pops into your head.

Jeff Sharlet: This is very important. It’s a seductive idea for many on the left as well. These attitudes go back to 1930s. It was part of the feeling that democracy had run its course.

Whenever you strip away history, you are stripping away accountability. The irony is that sometimes people on the left make the same kind of noises, like, “We’re not going to get all caught up in institutions and religions” — leaving aside the history of that rhetoric in anti-Catholicism and anti-Semitism.

Whenever you strip away history, you are stripping away things you wish you hadn’t done, and accountability for that. When people say that “we’re not going to get all caught up in the law and the rules,” they mean anti-Semitism. They may not know they mean that that’s the history of it.

Lindsay Beyerstein: They think it’s bad even to know about history?

Jeff Sharlet: They just don’t care. One of the ironies of this book is that now they’re in my debt. I know more about the history of their movement than they do. (That’s why they were so casual about what ended up in the Family’s records at the Billy Graham archives.) It didn’t even occur to them that anyone would find anything wrong there, including various government documents that shouldn’t have been there.

Lindsay Beyerstein: There’s a story in the book that says a lot about how the Family operates, the one about the South African secrecy memo …

Jeff Sharlet: My favorite document in the entire archives. This was, I think, sometime in the ’80s, the Family was very involved in South Africa supporting a right-wing black movement lead by Mangosuthu Buthelezi. They were part of a group of white South Africans cultivating him. A Family operative wrote a letter to a colleague saying, “You’ve got to be very careful, those outside we don’t understand. That’s why we do things through networks and friendships and travel around. Never put anything too specific on paper.” The guy wrote back: “I understand, I’ve made copies of this for all my co-workers.” I don’t know whether he was passive aggressive, or just dumb as a brick.

Lindsay Beyerstein: In the book you say that the Family treats powerful women like Hillary Clinton as if they belonged to a kind of “third gender” that’s female but not subordinate like ordinary women …

Jeff Sharlet: When I was at Ivanwald, I’d see these young women as servants. They came from wealthy families. They were women who have a lot of privileges in life. You’d have expected to have gone on to great things because they started with a big push [LB Note: But the Family had them scrubbing floors and serving coffee.] Then a woman political leader would come around and it would be a whole different story.

There are wives like Grace Nelson, wife of conservative Democrat Bill Nelson. Bill was an astronaut — still has a spacesuit. He still wears it for occasions.

Lindsay Beyerstein: The suit still fits?

Jeff Sharlet: He’s quite trim, I’ll give him that. But Grace is obviously the political mover and shaker in that couple. She served on board of the Fellowship Foundation. Still, she’s just the wife, secondary. Same with Joanne Kemp. Jack Kemp is a pretty aggressive leader, but it was Joanne who brought Christian ideas to Washington to start the Schaeffer Foundation nonprofit for the study of these ideas.

Two ways third gender works in the Family: There are these very strong wives who oftentimes are very strong-willed people. I’m just reading Katherine Joyce’s book on Quiverfull … And the other are women like Hillary Clinton, who’s just a man as far as they’re concerned.

Lindsay Beyerstein: What’s Hillary’s involvement with the Family? What is she getting out of it?

Jeff Sharlet: As I was researching the book, I knew Hillary had this strange connection. I didn’t think much of it until I was reporting on Sen. Sam Brownback. Everyone knew I was a reporter from “Rolling Stone,” probably more liberal than they were. So, a way that a lot of Family people would reach out to be friendly was to tell me that Hillary Clinton was OK with them. They’d tell me that HRC was going for regular spiritual counseling with Doug Coe.

Lindsay Beyerstein: Is she still getting counseling from him?

Jeff Sharlet: This was in 2005, and she refused to say anything about this. When NBC questioned her about this, her only answer was that (she’s) not a member and (she) has never given Doug Coe money — which was a strangely parsed kind of answer.

Lindsay Beyerstein: The Family has some strange ideas about what it means to be chosen by God. Tell me about the incident in the book when Doug Coe’s son, David Coe, dropped by Ivanwald to give the brothers instruction on chosenness.

Jeff Sharlet: David Coe used to be the heir apparent in the Family. He’s still involved in ministry to congressmen, and at the time he was also meeting with Hillary. He’d come around to talk to the young guys at Ivanwald to talk about his vision of Biblical leadership. One day he says to brother Beau: “Suppose I heard you’d raped three little girls, what would I think of you?” Beau, being a human being, says, “That I’m pretty bad?” But David Coe says: “No, no, I wouldn’t. Because you’re chosen … like King David.”

Lindsay Beyerstein: Does the Family have a different perspective on sexual morality than mainstream fundamentalism?

Jeff Sharlet: In one sense, their sexual morality is a very restrictive, traditional, fundamentalist morality. Yet one of their major influences was Frank Buchman of Moral Re-Armament in the 1930s. He was all but “out” as gay. But he was also one of the early architects of anti-gay invective on the Christian right. He even wrote a pamphlet on how to spot gay men: their green shoes and their affection for suede.

Lindsay Beyerstein: Explicit sexual confession in small groups is a big deal in the Family, right?

Jeff Sharlet: Yes. I started paying attention when I visited Westmont College, a major recruiting base for the Family. Some of the professors are very concerned about the focus on small group sex confessions: Parents are spending $80,000 to send their kids to college, and they go off to become a driver for Doug Coe. Then they tell their parents that they sat in a circle and talked about masturbation. Of course, they don’t do that sort of thing at the weekly prayer meeting in the Senate.

Sam Brownback told me, there are two functions of sexual confession: You confess, and they help you. You say, “My girlfriend and I almost held hands the other day.” And they say “Don’t do it, brother!” It’s also a way of creating a bond in the group: If I have had gay thoughts and I tell the group, then they have something on me. And if you say you’ve cheated on your wife, they have something on you.

Lindsay Beyerstein: Kind of a mutually assured destruction?

Jeff Sharlet: Yeah.

Lindsay Beyerstein: An interesting paradox comes through in the book. The Family is both revolutionary and elitist. They see themselves as warriors fighting to remake the world, but really they are the establishment.

Jeff Sharlet: All that revolutionary rhetoric serves a very status quo version of the world. The real threat of the right is not what they’re going to do, but what they’ve done. You have to consider what happens in America, which is part of the empire, versus what happens in the rest of the world. Here, they think things should stay as they are. Like rolling back FDR’s New Deal. FDR came along and said, “Let’s change things.” The Family said no.

Lindsay Beyerstein: So, you have to consider what happens in America, which is part of the empire, versus what happens in the rest of the world.

Jeff Sharlet: All that revolutionary rhetoric serves a very status quo version of the world. The real threat of the right is not what they’re going to do, but what they’ve done. You have to consider what happens in America, which is part of the empire, versus what happens in the rest of the world. Here, they think things should stay as they are. Like rolling back FDR’s New Deal. FDR came along and said, “Let’s change things.” The Family said no.

Abroad, Suharto was supporting very violent revolution that reasserted hierarchical control. People had gotten out from under colonial yoke; if they go democratic, they might choose socialism or whatever. But Suharto came along and reasserted the hierarchy.

Lindsay Beyerstein: So, the Family loves the revolutionary rhetoric, but they’re really about keeping things the way they are?

Jeff Sharlet: It’s about the co-optation of cool by Madison Avenue. Counterculture is cool, and it’s the bestselling tool ever. Capitalism has always had this understanding that we could use this counterculture rhetoric (as an alternative to communist rhetoric). In the 1950s, Eisenhower recognized that the rhetoric of communism was much more appealing to the average person than rhetoric of capitalism. “Everyone’s going to share” is more appealing than “If you’re lucky, you’ll make a living, and if you’re not lucky, it’s your own damned fault and you’ll suffer.”

So, the government in a big way turns toward the Religious Right to market capitalism. It flopped. So, they tried spreading people’s capitalism by focusing on the love part.

The right understood that in a way that the left doesn’t. A left that organizes itself solely in a reactionary way is missing something. You can’t just say: “Look, another corrupt Bush official!” No. What’s needed is a much more joyful politics.

source :

http://www.alternet.org/story/87665/

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Middle East Pop Quiz

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Middle East Pop Quiz

by Charley Reese – June 8, 2008

It’s time for another pop quiz on America’s favorite region of the world – the Middle East. Let’s get started with the subject of nuclear weapons.

Which country in the Middle East actually possesses nuclear weapons?

Israel.

Which country in the Middle East refuses to sign the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty?

Israel.

Which country in the Middle East refuses to allow international inspections of its nuclear facilities?

Israel.

Which countries in the Middle East have called for the region to be a nuclear-free zone?

The Arab countries and Iran.

Which country in the Middle East occupies land belonging to other people?

Israel, which occupies a piece of Lebanon, a larger piece of Syria, East Jerusalem, the West Bank and Gaza.

Which country in the Middle East has for 60 years refused to allow refugees to return to their homes and refused to consider compensation to them for their lost property?

Israel.

Which country has roads on which citizens who are Arab may not drive and housing developments where Arabs may not live?

Israel.

Which country in the region has violated more United Nations resolutions than any other?

Israel. The United States has on more than one occasion gone to war ostensibly to enforce U.N. Security Council resolutions, but when it comes to resolutions directed against Israel, the U.S. is like the amoral monkey that sees, hears and says nothing. That raises the question of who’s the dog and who’s the tail?

Which country in the region has in the past been led by men who at one time were terrorists with a price on their heads?

Israel. Former Prime Minister Yitzhak Shamir once led the Stern Gang and ordered, among other things, the assassination of Count Folke Bernadotte, a Swedish diplomat working for the United Nations. Former Prime Minister Menachem Begin led the Irgun, a terrorist gang that among other things blew up one wing of the King David Hotel, killing nearly 100 people.

Which country in the Middle East openly employs assassination against its political enemies?

Israel. There have been assassinations carried out by some of the Arab governments, but they usually don’t own up to them. Israel has created a euphemism that the suck-up American press has readily adopted: “targeted killings.” A British journalist told me once, “The Palestinians have a talent for picking bad leaders, and the Israelis have a talent for murdering their good ones.”

What are the top five countries from which we import oil?

Here they are in order of volume: Canada, Saudi Arabia, Mexico, Nigeria and Venezuela. The next time you hear some blowhard politician ranting about how the Arabs control our oil imports, remind him or her of the facts. By far, a majority of oil imports come from non-Arab countries.

Which country in the region receives an annual gift of $3 billion or more from Congress?

Israel.

Which foreign-aid recipient is the only one allowed to receive its aid in a lump sum and which routinely invests part of it in U.S. Treasuries so that taxpayers pay them interest on the taxpayers’ gift?

Israel.

Which country in the Middle East has the most powerful lobby in the U.S.?

Israel.

Which country in the Middle East are most American politicians, journalists and academics afraid to criticize?

Israel.

On behalf of which country has the U.S. vetoed the largest number of U.N. Security Council resolutions?

Israel.

What country do the people in the region consider the world’s biggest hypocrite?

The United States.

Which countries in the Middle East have attacked U.S. ships in international waters?

Iraq and Israel. A lone Iraqi plane fired one missile at a U.S. ship by mistake. The Iraqi government quickly compensated the U.S. In 1967, Israeli airplanes and torpedo boats attacked the USS Liberty, killing 34 Americans. The U.S. government declared it an accident even before the ship limped into port, and to this day Congress has never held a public hearing and allowed the survivors to tell their story. Their story, by the way, is that the attack was deliberate. Israel compensated the families of those who were killed, but resisted for years paying compensation for the ship.

source : http://www.antiwar.com/reese/?articleid=12955

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Kapolri: AKKBB Sendiri yang Cari Masalah

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Kamis, 12 Jun 08 19:31 WIB

Insiden bentrokan antara Front Pembela Islam (FPI) dan Aliansi Kebangsaan untuk Kebebasan Beragama dan Berkeyakinan (AKKBB) menjadisalah satupembahasan antara Komisi III DPR kepada Kapolri Jenderal (Pol) Sutanto yang berlangsung di Gedung DPR, Jakarta, Kamis (12/6).

Kapolri Jenderal Sutanto mengatakan, jika saja pada 1 Juni lalu, Aliansi Kebangsaan untuk Kebebasan Beragama dan Berkeyakinan (AKKBB) mengikuti rute yang sudah disepakati, maka insiden tersebut tidak akan terjadi. Rute yang seharusnya dilalui AKKBB, jelas dia, Gambir-Kedubes AS-Air Mancur-BI-Thamrin-HI. Di lokasi tersebut sudah ditempatkan sekitar 400 personel.

“Rute-rute tersebut sudah diamankan, tapi AKKBB tidak menepati janji. Kalau menepati rute mereka, pasti tidak akan terjadi (bentrokan). Kalau polisi dibilang tidak siap, tidak tepat. Mereka (AKKBB) sendiri yang cari masalah, ” ujar Kapolri menjawab pertanyaan anggota Dewan.

Ketika itu, pihak kepolisian sendiri menurunkan sekitar 10.000 hingga 14.000 orang. Sementara jumlah massa yang melakukan aksi pada saat itu 6.000 orang ada berbagai macam kegiatan yakni ada unjuk rasa menentang kenaikan harga BBM dan peringatan hari lahir Pancasila.

Kapolri juga mengatakan agar masyarakat turut aktif mencegah terjadinya tindak kekerasan. “Kita harus menyikapi situasi dengan jernih dan arif. Jangan sampai terjadi tindakan kekerasan dan jatuh korban, ” pungkasnya.

Sebelumnya, Kapolda Metro Jaya Irjen Pol. Adang Firman juga menegaskan, sebelum terjadinya Insiden Monas, pihaknya sudah mengingatkan berkali-kali untuk tidak melakukan kegiatan pada hari itu, karena sudah cukup banyak yang melakukan kegiatan.

“Kata siapa tidak diingatkan, sudah berkali-kali kita ingat untuk tidak melakukan kegiatan di hari Minggu, jadi tolong jangan di bolak-balik, ” tegasnya.

Kapolda mengatakan, pihaknya sudah memintai keterangan untuk mengklarifikasi hal perizinan itu, salah satunya dengan memanggil penanggung jawabnya.

Setelah SKB tiga menteri diterbitkan, pihak pendukung Ahmadiyah berencana melakukan aksi besar-besaran menolak kebijakan tersebut.

Ia mempersilakan Jamaah Ahmadiyah Indonesia (JAI) untuk berdemontrasi menolak SKB, namun dia mengingatkan jangan anarkistis.

“Kalau mau demo ya silakan saja sejauh tidak anarkis. Tapi kalau Anarkis kita akan mengikuti ketentuan hukum yang berlaku, ” ujarnya

Adang menilai memang setiap sebuah keputusan keluar, selalu saja ada pihak yang puas dan tidak puas. “Tapi kami di kepolisian akan melakukan antisipasi secara kontinyu, ” pungkasnya. (novel)

sumber : http://www.eramuslim.com/berita/nas/8612171358-kapolri-akkbb-sendiri-cari-masalah.htm

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

More from Karen Johnson on 9/11 …

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

More from Karen Johnson on 9/11 …

State Sen. Karen Johnson, R-Mesa, on Tuesday plans to blast Congress and President Bush for their handling of the investigation into the 9/11 attacks. Johnson has previously voiced doubt about the official explanation of the attacks, and speculated that the World Trade Center collapsed as a result of a government-led controlled demolition.

Johnson has recently taken up arms with an adjunct professor from Scottsdale who is engaged in a hunger strike outside Sen. John McCain’s office in Phoenix. The professor, Blair Gadsby, says he’s not going anywhere until McCain pledges to meet with him and leaders of the 9/11 Truth Movement.

Johnson issued a press release Monday afternoon. Here are some of the juicy parts:

– “It has been nearly seven years and we are faced with new evidence that turns the conclusions of the 9/11 Commission upside down. We are fighting a war because of 9/11 – and we still don’t really know what happened.”

- “Ground Zero was treated like little more than the site of a building demolition – which, of course, is exactly what it was. Everyone who has studied it recognizes that the twin towers and Building 7 came down as a result of controlled explosions – not because of the airplanes and fires.”

- “The U.S. government is constantly interfering with states in matters that are none of its business. Yet when it comes to the one really significant job the Constitution assigns to the government – defending our nation – the federal government failed miserably. Not only did they fail to put up any sort of a defense after the first plane struck the North Tower, but they failed to mobilize the air defense system, they failed to protect the president, who sat reading in a public school for 20 minutes while the attacks occurred, and they failed to defend our most important military installation – the Pentagon.”

- “Finding out what happened on 9/11 and bringing the perpertrators to justice is the job of Congress and the Executive Branch. We need to get answers to the many unanswered questions that still exist. We need an investigation – especially of the new evidence. It’s time for Congress and our president to act.”

source: http://www.azcentral.com/members/Blog/PoliticalInsider/25308

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Iraq Jails…Injustice, Torture, Bribes

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Iraq Jails…Injustice, Torture, Bribes

Afif Sarhan, IOL Correspondent

June 10, 2008

BAGHDAD ­ When police arrested Ahmed Qasim, the Iraqi man never thought he would end up in a tiny, dirty, smelly, crowded cell for almost a year without seeing his day in court.

“I never saw a court to judge me,” Qasim, whose name has been changed for security reasons, told IslamOnline.net.

“I stayed for more than nine month in prison accused of something I didn’t do.”

The 39-year-old, who was recently released from jail, remembers the first time he tried to ask for a chance to defend himself.

“When I was taken for interrogation in a senior officer’s room, I didn’t have a chance to refute the accusations. Each time I opened my mouth to say anything, I was beaten.”

Under the Iraqi constitution, detainees must see a judge within 24 hours of arrest.

During that hearing, a judge determines whether to move forward with the charges and the investigation process begins.

But it usually takes months or longer before a prisoner faces a judge to learn about his charges.

After the brutal interrogation, Qasim was taken to a tiny, dirty, smelly cell which he had to share with eight other prisoners for nine long months.

“Even an animal deserves better food. Hair was common to find mixed with it and sometimes you could find crockets and ants,” he said, visibly moved by the bitter memory.

“Rats were crossing our cell all day and no one every came to clean it.”

Iraqi jails have a notorious reputation of appalling conditions and prisoners waiting for justice in vain.

Nearly 20,000 people were in Iraqi-run prisons, detention camps, police stations and other holding cells in 2007, according to a UN report.

But Ali Samer, an Interior Ministry media officer, insisted there was no problem with the system.

“Prisoners are receiving good treatment,” he told IOL.

“They are being judged in court and their families can pay constant visits.”

Torture

Qasim says that after a while, he learnt to be grateful for his tiny cell that could have been replaced with a much worse alternative.

“Everyday I could hear someone screaming of pain. There were torture sections,” he explains.

“We just discovered how terrible it was when one man who was in our cell was taken to this torture section and when returned couldn’t speak for more than a week because of the pain.”

Omar Lattif, another recently released prisoner, was not as lucky as Qasim.

Two years behind bars without the chance to see his family even for once left him scared for life.

“I was beaten and given electric shocks,” he describes his torture sessions.

“When I left, I lost one of my legs. The doctors who attended to me when I was released said they couldn’t save it.”

Lattif argues that he is no exception inside Iraq’s notorious jails, insisting that torture is practiced on a daily basis.

He says Sunnis accused of membership in or association with resistance groups suffer the most.

“Most of the officers are Shiites and you can image what they will do with Sunni resistance members.”

Bribes

When Dana Mohammad knew about the routine abuse of prisoners, she was ready to do anything to spare her husband the nightmare.

“We have tried all ways to take him out from there but the maximum we could get was to pay a bribe and help him to survive,” she told IOL.

Mohammad, 31, first knew about bribing jail officials from a mother of another prisoner she had met while visiting her husband.

The woman told her she could save her husband from torture and ill-treatment by paying the guards.

Mohammad did not hesitate to raise as much as $5,000.

“I had to pay so he would be taken to a better cell and receive better treatment,” she said.

“It is a business.”

The helpless wife has been paying jailers for almost a year now just to insure her husband’s safety.

“I know we cannot check if it is happening, but under such pressure, I don’t have much of a choice.”

Human rights groups have been campaigning and pressing to be given access to check jails and how people behind bars are being treated, but in vain.

The Prisoners’ Association for Justice (PAJ), a local NGO, has been repeatedly denied requests to visit prisons.

“We have heard that women and children are among men prisoners,” a spokesman said.

“Many ex-prisoners have left prisons with serious psychological disorders and many of them with signs of tortures,” he added.

“They are hiding something inside these prisons.”

source: http://www.uruknet.de/?p=m44759&hd=&size=1&l=e

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-muslim voice-
______________________________________
BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Modus operandi of a pre-9/11 Israeli “art student” revealed

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Modus operandi of a pre-9/11 Israeli “art student” revealed

By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer

Jun 11, 2008, 00:18

(WMR) — One of the over 120 Israeli “art students” who cased federal office buildings and military bases during a year and a half before the 9/11 attacks has revealed details of her “assignment” in the United States to a WMR source.

The former art student, who is now assigned to work with a non-governmental organization (NGO) in South Africa on research on violent crime against South African whites by blacks, said she was first assigned to work at an Israeli-owned shopping mall kiosk in Orange County, California, in early 2001 to “brush up on her American English language skills.”

From California the young Israeli woman was transferred to Chicago and then to Houston, where she worked in an office close to the sprawling port facility. Her “cover” was as an accountant for an Israeli intelligence front company involved in the shipping business. It should be noted that former CIA Southeast Region Station Chief Roland V. Carnaby, shot to death on April 29 by two Houston police officers, was known to have been concerned about the lack of security at the port of Houston, was monitoring the activities of Israeli intelligence in the greater Houston area, and was known to have clashed with the Department of Homeland Security over its lack of interest in providing security for the Port of Houston.

After her stint in Houston, the Israeli art student was transferred to New York City for a two-week “holiday.” However, she and her group were ordered by their superiors to be “out of the city” on September 11, 2001.

The Israeli woman was granted access to the United States on a student visa and she was identified as an “art student” in her visa application. It was later discovered that none of the Israeli “art students” were, in fact, art students. Those detained as a result of a joint investigation by the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), the Marshal’s Service, and other federal law enforcement agencies were simply deported to Israel without facing a trial for wrongly stating their purpose for coming to the United States.

The Israeli “art student” also claimed that while working at mall kiosks in California she was “working on other things.”

source: http://onlinejournal.com/artman/publish/article_3359.shtml

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-muslim voice-
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BECAUSE YOU HAVE THE RIGHT TO KNOW

Exposing Bush Administration Corruption

bismi-lLahi-rRahmani-rRahiem
In the Name of Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful

=== News Update ===

Exposing Bush Administration Corruption

Stephen Lendman

Information for this article comes from long-time business, finance and political writer and analyst Bob Chapman who publishes the bi-weekly International Forecaster. It’s power-packed with key information and a valued source for this writer. He obtained voluminous material directly from its source. People need to know it. Read on.

SueAnn Arrigo is the source. She was a high-level CIA insider. Her title was Special Operations Advisor to the Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). She also established the Remote Viewing Defense protocols for the Pentagon in her capacity as Remote Viewing Advisor to the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). It earned her a two-star general rank in the military. She called it a “ploy” so the Pentagon could get more of her time and have her attend monthly Joint Chiefs of Staff meetings. Only high-level types are invited, and she was there from October 2003 to July 2004.

Part of her job involved intelligence gathering on Iraq and Afghanistan – until August 2004 when she refused to spread propaganda about a non-existant Iranian nuclear weapons program and left. She followed in the footsteps of others at CIA who resigned for reasons of conscience and became critics – most notably Ray McGovern, Ralph McGehee, and Phil Agee.

On May 16, 2008, Arrigo sent extensive government corruption and cover-up information to Henry Waxman, Chairman of the House Oversight and Government Reform committee – in 12 separate cases. This article covers four of them or about one-third of what Congress got. The 12 are explosive and revealing but just the tip of the iceberg:

– of government corruption and war profiteering;

– sweetheart deals and kickbacks;

– high-level types on the take;

– trillions of missing dollars;

– on September 10, 2001, Rumsfeld admitting “According to some estimates, we cannot track $2.3 trillion in transactions;”

– imagine the current amount;

– its corrosive effect on the nation; and people should

– demand accountability – who profits, who pays and what are the consequences of militarism gone mad.

SueAnn Arrigo offers a glimpse and at great personal risk. In August 2001, DCI George Tenet told her to assemble “a moving van full of Pentagon documents showing Defense Contractor kickbacks to Pentagon officials.” She did as instructed but not to expose corruption as she learned – to conceal it and in her judgment so CIA could divert defense business to Halliburton and “Carlyle-related contractors.” She stated: “The mood at the CIA and Pentagon was ‘war is coming’ because the Bush Family stands to make billions from it — so get ready.”

Arrigo was shocked at what she found and how brazenly the Pentagon wrote it up because it feels untouchable, especially since 2001. That notion proved misguided after CIA used the material to blackmail or bribe its officials “into ‘working on’ the Halliburton-Carlyle team.” Top CIA types were involved, and Tenet laid it out for Arrigo: You’ve “given me the keys to the kingdom. (These) documents will make me rich.”

She collected three types. Her report covers one but has plenty of incriminating evidence. Her precise recall of dates and names is incomplete, but events are factually right and damning on how Washington operates. It’s always been this way but never to the degree as under George Bush. Arrigo exposes the scheme – the systematic looting of the treasury to enrich contractors and high-level officials at Pentagon, CIA and others well-placed in government. Precise amounts are unknown, but at mimimum are countless multi-billions, even trillions – at taxpayer expense and diverted from essential social and infrastructure needs.

Case 1: Ordering Unneeded New Fighter Aircraft

Arrigo discovered high-level Pentagon corruption. It involved bid-rigging and implicated “an Air Force general on the JCS and a Defense Contractor, Boeing.” She disclosed it to JCS Chairman Hugh Shelton and DCI George Tenet, and in both instances drew blanks. She also reported it to the Government Accountability Office (GAO), the investigative arm of Congress. It was vetted and confirmed, but left unaddressed the larger issue of whether new generation planes are needed at an enormous cost to taxpayers. Arrigo believed not, and several Air Force generals agreed. Not other JCS members, however, who she learned are on the take.

There’s more. They “had the gall to try to force through another unneeded plane contract for Boeing.” At an early 2004 JCS meeting, Arrigo complained about the previous undelivered order because it didn’t meet Pentagon specifications. Yet one general in particular tried “to force the US military to buy another (unneeded) upgrade.” One other JCS member backed her to no avail, and the new order went through. Arrigo rightfully concluded that new plane orders were to enrich Boeing and high-level Pentagon types getting kickbacks for their cooperation.

She also learned how much – an average $22,000 “for each (JCS meeting) vote according to their bank” records. Not US ones. CIA-arranged Swiss accounts specifically for this purpose. Everyone at the meeting cashed in, except Arrigo and one dissenting general. More disturbing is that this is standard Pentagon practice – handouts to contractors; kickbacks to complicit brass; and taxpayers out multi-billions – year after year.

Jeff St. Clair wrote about it in his 2005 book “Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Corruption and Profiteering in the War on Terror.” It’s an explosive account of how contractors like Halliburton, Lockheed Martin, Boeing, Bechtel and the Bush family-connected Carlyle Group scam multi-billions at taxpayer expense and not a whiff of it in the mainstream. It’s the reason US annual “defense” spending tops $1.1 trillion (conservatively) with all military, homeland security, veterans, NASA, debt service and other allocations included.

Case 2: Halliburton Delivers Half Full Cartons to the Pentagon’s “Swing Shift”

Arrigo refers to the Pentagon’s Receiving Department “swing shift” personnel. They alone are on the take so other shifts are shut out and can’t report it. As a CIA insider, she checked and found damning evidence – about “the military (not) getting supplies to the troops on time.” She also learned that Halliburton has its “Representative to the CIA,” and one at the Pentagon as well. Both get federal salaries but neither was “hired by CIA or the military through their personnel departments. Neither had done military training or trained at (CIA’s) ‘Farm’ as a spy.” Arrigo was disturbed and with good reason when orders from the top said back off.

It got worse. Arrigo worked at CIA for over 30 years and reported directly to Tenet. But she wasn’t prepared for what she found – a new section at the Agency without her knowledge. It employed 40 people, all working for Halliburton “while being paid by the US taxpayer as if they were CIA.” It was secret. No files were on them. They were never interviewed, never vetted, and she concluded: “CIA had a back door in its security to let Halliburton put anyone they wanted in (its) hallways. It was an outrageous (breach) of US National Security,” and in a post-9/11 “war on terrorism” climate.

She was shocked and told Tenet. His reply: “Yes, I know.” Head of CIA building security also knew. Arrigo asked what he’d do about it. His answer: “Keep my mouth shut so I can stay alive and I suggest you do the same.” She asked if he, CIA or Halliburton would kill her if she talked. He didn’t think so. Would national security firm CACI do it because it’s affiliated with Halliburton and also has a CIA back door for its personnel at the Agency.

Arrigo dug deeper. She got inside Halliburton’s area and asked questions. Why was the company shipping half the contracted for amounts and shortchanging the troops and taxpayers. It was no different for war zones. Halliburton “set up the same corrupt system of swing shift receivers (for) at least 3 continents. They received the cartons and signed (off) that the goods were all received properly. Then the shortages later were chalked up to thefts or war damage, etc.”

Arrigo again informed Tenet. His answer: “This is nothing new,” then added: “Have a report about it on my desk before Christmas (2001).” It got worse. Arrigo told Tenet he’s responsible for “correct(ing) Halliburton’s short-shipping and its invasion of the CIA.” He said he couldn’t because the White House tied his hands. Call Congress, Arrigo said. DCI “should be a man of courage.” Tenet ignored her, so Arrigo faxed documents revealing Halliburton fraud to GAO – omitting national security secrets. One of them crowed about the scheme’s profitability, and having high-level officials involved made it foolproof.

It was clever and even more devious than Arrigo imagined. Halliburton uses each shortage complaint as a new order. “In that way (it) never (loses) by having to make good for (what’s) missing,” and (it gets) paid double for the same merchandise.

Arrigo knew too much, took risks to learn it, and what happened next is shocking. Halliburton’s “CIA Representative” confronted her, tore out her phone, ransacked her office, removed every shred of paper, and hauled her off bodily “to a prison cell” inside its basement offices. She was intimidated and threatened. Thought she might be killed. She survived, but the message was clear. She complained to Tenet. Showed him her bruises. He responded dismissively: “There, there, everything will be all right in the morning.”

GAO still has Arrigo’s files. It began investigating but stopped. She thinks that Congress can resume it and asked Waxman to do it. That’s where things now stand.

Case 3: The White House Conspiracy to Cook the Books – Halliburton, Carlyle and CIA

In 2002, Arrigo tried a new tact – ingratiating herself with “Halliburton’s Man” and using it to her advantage. She offered cooperation for access to his space and make him think she was on his side. It worked, went on for four and one-half months through late May, and it paid off – with plenty of insider knowledge “about Halliburton and how it works.” Enough to fill a book, she says, but her account sticks to highlights.

First off, it’s pure myth that Dick Cheney stopped running the company. “He called in orders to the man I worked for almost every day and sometimes two or more times a day. He remained (Halliburton’s) functional head in all but name. No one….had the power to override his orders.” Second, Cheney never divested himself of Halliburton profits. “He merely hid how (he got them) through a series of shell companies.”

One of Arrigo’s jobs was to liaison between Halliburton and CIA’s “creative accounting departments.” In other words, their co-conspiratorial treasury looting efforts, and Arrigo got insider access to it. Her advanced math and computer software training qualified her. In a few months, she became expert in how CIA and Halliburton hid their “financial illegalities.”

She explained – “Computers are good ways to fool most people because (they don’t) look inside of them.” They can be programmed “to print out one set of books for regulators, another for Defense Contractors, another for the Pentagon, another for the taxpayer,” and so forth. It’s simple. Decide what you want, and machines will create it in any desired form. The trick is doing it expertly, most criminals can’t, so they need professionals to do it for them. It means crimes are never secret, and many computer experts know about them. CIA has always been tainted, kept it secret since inception, so far has been untouchable, but remains vulnerable to exposure by people of conscience like Arrigo.

She explained: Halliburton has eight software programmers at CIA. Its home office has many more. She was on conference calls with 60 of them on ways to conceal illegalities and assure none of it leaks out. The company has less expertise than CIA so the Agency took charge to make the two systems compatible. It took several years and over 100 programmers. They came, left for other jobs, and took insider knowledge with them. It risks more leaks about Halliburton, other contractors, CIA, the Pentagon, high-ups in government, and the Basel-based Bank of International Settlements for its part in corruption.

Many investigations are ongoing, but huge pressure is exerted to quash them. It’s feared leaks may unravel the whole scheme – a vast corruption web involving countless numbers of contractors, related companies, and many high level government and Pentagon insiders. Cover-up software hides it. Taxpayers fund it. Amounts keep getting greater, and they’re up to unimaginable levels.

Arrigo explained the system. Suppose Halliburton sold product A in 100 Lot Sizes, in Quantity X at Price Y to the Pentagon on a given date. Most civilian invoices disclose this. Pentagon ones don’t so contractors can cheat and Pentagon brass profit. Missing information conceals whether all merchandise was delivered as nothing indicates quantities shipped. Further, repackaging also hides proper amounts. Omitting the price alone conceals whether a shipment was shorted, but CIA is more clever than that. It experimented with “tested receivers at some of its front companies” to learn how best to deceive them. What works best is “shifting prices around like random noise” – one day this cost, another a different one, and so forth.

One company used a “gross overcharge method” that looked suspicious. It got receivers to discover the real price, and that defeated CIA’s scheme. When it works, it cooks the books, and no one’s the wiser. Ledger entries are inflated, undercut, omitted, added, or varied in amounts of similar transactions. Like a “professional crime institution,” CIA is expert at falsifying books so no one catches on. How? By random price variations to keep auditors off balance and unable to discover corruption patterns.

Another example:

CIA varies its front company prices monthly. Suppose Halliburton made a purchase “when it (used) a cost inflation idea of cheating. Halliburton (has) an incentive to inflate the cost of its purchases (to) justify (its) high (price) to the military.” So as standard practice it uses CIA’s highest price and claims that amount for its cost.

But comparing two sets of books reveals the scheme. So methodology became more sophisticated to conceal it. Halliburton takes CIA prices and doubles them on its books. It then claims the Agency recorded half the charge “accidently,” says its front company promised a 50% discount, but never delivered. CIA looks bad, and it balked. No matter. Halliburton still does it, but CIA has “lots of fronts with lots of customers and worse problems (to hide) than merely jacking up prices. Some fronts (are) fictitious and (make) no products.” Others have real customers plus fake ones to launder money. CIA tries to “make (their) crimes ‘undetectable.’ ” Halliburton hopes to “sneak by” until caught, then find a way to weasel out of it with minimal damage or cost.

Case 4: Halliburton’s Rigged Back Door Accounting Computer at the Pentagon

In early 2002, GAO got damning evidence: that Halliburton overbills and short-ships – deliberate fraudulent acts as standard company practice, confident it can get away with it, and most often it does.

GAO has the goods to expose it from Halliburton and Pentagon invoices. They reveal a problem. They don’t match, are grossly inflated, and payments exceed amounts billed – by about 35%. Arrigo met with GAO and compared notes. Halliburton has similar Pentagon and CIA-paid staff, and George Bush approved it in a secret Executive Order Arrigo has for proof. She gave it to GAO plus other documents showing national security is compromised and taxpayers cheated – hugely.

One document lists Halliburton’s CIA and Pentagon staff, what little official records discloses about them, their secret office locations, and information on their private security staff. Arrigo discovered that Halliburton’s top CIA man served time for felony fraud. Another at Pentagon was convicted as well – for stealing Army vehicles, then profiteering by transshipping them overseas.

Dick Cheney knew, blocked background checks to conceal it, but Arrigo found out and about the Pentagon fraud that followed. She has a handwritten Cheney memo instructing his man “to make sure that the Pentagon pays us all that it owes us and then some.” CIA’s forgery department verified the writing is Cheney’s.

Arrigo also has a letter from Halliburton’s Pentagon man to his CIA counterpart, and it’s damning. He brags how he’s “getting more than we bargained for (from) the Pentagon” and suggested they get together to compare notes. They did and Arrigo taped it. The evidence once more is damning – about how easy it is to scam the system; befriend accounting personnel; install company programmers; check bills supposedly behind in payments; install a special software code for higher amounts; and do all of the above at Pentagon and CIA.

Arrigo informed George Tenet so he’d stop “Halliburton from ripping off the American taxpayer via the CIA and Pentagon.” Tenet hardly blinked and responded casually: “Well, you certainly have done a thorough job as usual.” He then offered to inform the White House to “correct the problem.” Arrigo did herself, GAO as well, and later learned that the Bush administration (likely Dick Cheney) blocked an investigation.

This article covers four of Arrigo’s 12 cases. Their evidence is damning and shows systemic contractor, government, CIA and Pentagon fraud involving enormous amounts of money. One or more articles will follow if more material can be obtained. It’s not what Pentagon and CIA want outed so getting it is never simple and revealing it not without risks.

Stephen Lendman is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization. He lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to The Global Research News Hour on RepublicBroadcasting.org Mondays from 11AM to 1PM US Central time for cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests. All programs are archived for easy listening.

http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=9229

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