The Slaughterhouse Informer

A Compendiium of Various Official Lies, Business Scandals, Small Murders, Frauds, and Other Gross Defects of Our Current Political, Business and Religious Moral Lepers.

Presenting a new magazine that contains material that is not found elsewhere and is very difficult to post on the Internet. The ‘Voice of the White House’ will appear in each issue containing material not found on TBR News for very obvious reasons.This publication will appear once a week, on Wednesday, every week, will be ten pages in length and is available by subscription only. The price is $5.00 a month and can be paid via PayPal or by check, sent to ‘Morris Productions, 3015 E. New York St. Ste A2-190, Aurora, Il 60504.’ If you don’t like it, and Bush supporters can read the Drudge Report for free, you can cancel at any time.

Civil insurrection in America and government countermeasures: The official papers

By Bradley Moscrip

An in-depth study of official American plans to construct FEMA detention centers in America and specific recent U.S. Army domestic counterinsurgency plans. Here is a sampling of the ebook contents:

Gun Control by Confiscation

As the American general population is known to be the most heavily armed in the world, immediately upon the declaration of Martial Law and the execution by the military of counterinsurgency programs, it has been determined that the BATF, will begin the process of rounding up all rifles, pistols and so-called assault weaponry from the civil population. Lists of gun collectors obtained from firearms dealers, gun magazine subscription lists and other sources will be the basis for these mass confiscations. Gun owners will be supplied documentation by the BATF showing which pieces have been confiscated so that in the future, they will be told, they can recover their weapons when the state of emergency has passed. In actuality, weapons that do not have a high value or are not suitable for arming loyalist police forces, will be destroyed by order

This study is available from tbrnews at $5.00 by PayPal  

The Voice of the White House

Washington, D.C. November 4, 2009: “Because of the arrogance, lies and bungling of the Bush administration, the Democrats took control of the White House and Congress. No one disputes these obvious facts but what many very right wing Republicans believed would be a permanent Republican control over niggers, faggots and left-wing Jews has fallen to pieces and there is a frantic, and actually lunatic, attempt to regain power.

            This frenzy is manifested by hysterical, irrational public behavior by such strange people as Sarah Palin, ex-Governor of Alaska, Michelle Bachmann, a political figure famed for her far-right rantings, the bombastic and also irrational public rantings of fat Rush Limbaugh, a convicted drug abuser and right-wing radio host and Glen Beck, a highly vocal and very ignorant figure on the notorious right wing FOX News.

            It was creatures like this, pared with even more right wing American Jews like William Kristol and Robert Kagan who founded the Project for the New American Centuiry (PNAC).

            This group, begun by Kristol and Kagan in1997, ran through 2006. It was founded as a non-profit educational organization. The PNAC's stated goal was "to promote American global leadership. The PNAC were the view that "American leadership is both good for America and good for the world" and support for "a Reaganite policy of military strength and moral clarity."

            The PNAC exerted influence on high-level U.S. government officials in the administration of U.S. President George W. Bush and affected the Bush Administration's development of military and foreign policies, especially involving national security and the Iraq War.

                Kristol published the far-right wing Weekly Standard, fully financed by right wing news baron,  Rupert Murdoch- a failed  magazine that promoted the neocon credo, which was mandatory reading in both the White House staff quarters and also in Cheney's office.  

            The goal of the PNAC was world dominance or global hegemony by the United States.through a Republican control of all three branches of American government . During the ‘Weekly Standard’s” existance,  William Kristol and Erwin Stelzer, also of the ‘Standard; were publicly exposed for accepting money from the Bush-friendly Enron people.

            Kristol, who had once been chief of staff to former Vice President Dan Quayle, took $100,000 without disclosing the payments at the time. According to Bölsche, Rebuilding America's Defenses "was developed by Rumsfeld, Cheney, Wolfowitz and Libby, and is devoted to matters of 'maintaining US pre-eminence, thwarting rival powers and shaping the global security system according to US interests.

            Section V of Rebuilding America's Defenses, entitled "Creating Tomorrow's Dominant Force", includes the sentence: "Further, the process of transformation, even if it brings revolutionary change, is likely to be a long one, absent some catastrophic and catalyzing event––like a new Pearl Harbor"

            It is this sentence that, without any question, galavanized Karl Rove, Bush’s chief advisor, into finding a casus belli that would elevate Bush to the status of a wartime president, a position that would allow the president to rule by decree under certain circumstances and permit total control over the American people.

            George W. Bush, an intellectual lightweight and chronic drunk, was placed in the Oval Office by a Republican fiat and long before he was sworn in, Rove and men like Cheneh were plotting to ensure the permanent Republican rule.

            The Bush family had excellent connections with the wealthy and very influencial Saudi bin Ladin family and one of their members, Osama bin Ladin, was a CIA controlled leader of the Taliban guerrilla movement in Afghanistan that had, with full American and Saudi aid, contested with the occupying Russians and eventually drove them from the country.

            The 9/11 plot originated with Rove, was approved by Cheney, the senior Bush and various very high level Republicans. The Bush family connection with the bin Ladins’ allowed a team of Saudi terrorists to enter the United States from Hamburg, Germany and gave them the base, in Florida, from which they would plot out a powerful terrorist attack against America. The Israeli Mossad was asked to oversee this plotting so that it could be controlled and the plotters simply sat back and read the Mossad progress reports. One change was to strike the Pentagon with a hijacked commercial plane on an unoccupied side, far away from the offices of Bush supportinig Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld and another plane, destined to slam into the Capitol building, filled with legislators, crashed due to interference with the hijackers by some of the passengers.

            Some of the evidence for this monstrous deed is very concrete and some purely circumstantial but the reader is directed to the on-site television of the coverage of Bush’s state visit to a black Florida school. The public, thanks to the Moore movie, ‘Farenheit 911”, very clearly saw Bush when he was informed by an aide of the anticipated attack. He showed no interest or emotion and went on reading a book, later identified as ‘My Pet Goat.’

             Such indifference to a brutal and very public attack on Americans is surely an indicator that the President was hardly surprised because he had first-hand knowledge of the pending attack and did not respond because of his prior knowledge. A President hearing the news without previous knowledge would most certainly have reacted with shock and certainly anger. Bush merely sat there, face blank, while he read to the young children from a book.

            Any attorney will tell you that in the presentation of a case, circumstantial evidence is far more powerful that specific evidence. The results of the attacks did indeed give Bush his support but the failure of the attack on Congress was the one factor that prevented the far right from siezing, and keeping, total power in this country.

            Brian Harring is now working on an in-depth study of this horrifying example of realpolitik and has names and dates at hand for his forthcoming series. He calls the Kristol/Murdoch  group “a gang of failed Nazis” and his writing is not marked with either kindness or respect.”

Fort Hood army officer shouted 'Allahu Akbar' before shooting rampage

Army psychiatrist remains on ventilator after rampage that killed 13 people and wounded 28

November 6, 2009

by Helen Pidd and Ewen MacAskill

Guardian/UK

            A US army psychiatrist about to be deployed to Afghanistan allegedly shouted "Allahu Akbar", or "God is greatest", as he opened fire at a military base in Texas, killing 13 people and wounding 28.

The gunman, Major Nidal Malik Hasan, 39, shouted the Arabic phrase just before he began his shooting spree at Fort Hood military installation yesterday, according to the base commander, Lieutenant General Robert Cone.

Hasan's family said he had been dreading deployment to Afghanistan.

Cone praised a civilian police officer for stopping the rampage. Sergeant Kimberly Munley and her partner responded within three minutes of reported gunfire. Cone said Munley shot the gunman four times despite being shot herself. "It was an amazing and an aggressive performance by this police officer," he said.

Twelve of those killed were soldiers; one was a civilian. All of the wounded were in a stable condition, officials said at a press conference today. Among them are Hasan himself and Munley.

Contrary to initial reports, Hasan is alive but has not yet been interviewed by investigators as he is on a ventilator. "He is in a stable condition," an army medical spokesman said.

Commander Colonel Steven Braverman, who was a colleague of Hasan at the Darnall army medical centre on Fort Hood, said Hasan performed well in his job and had showed no obvious signs of trouble. "We are not aware of any problems that he had while he was here at Darnall," said Braverman, adding: "We had no problems with his job performance while he was working with us." Braverman confirmed Hasan had received orders to deploy to Afghanistan.

One of Hasan's cousins, Nader Hasan, told reporters he had been dreading going to war, having counselled scores of returning soldiers for post-traumatic stress disorder. "He was mortified by the idea of having to deploy," the cousin said. "He had people telling him on a daily basis the horrors they saw over there."

Family and fellow officers said Hasan had complained of harassment by other troops about his Middle Eastern ethnicity and Muslim faith.

The FBI was last night going through Hasan's phone and computer records to see if a motive could be identified. Agents were checking back on website postings by a man who identified himself as Nidal Hasan that appeared sympathetic to suicide bombings.

At about 1.30pm yesterday, Virginia-born Hasan is said to have opened fire with two handguns at the base's soldier readiness centre where troops were having equipment checks, dental treatment and undergoing other preparations before being flown to Iraq or as they returned from combat. Neither of the guns are believed to have been military issue.

Ford Hood's deputy base commander, Colonel John G Rossi, said about 500 soldiers were in the area when Hasan entered the centre wearing military uniform. He shot some victims at close range and others were injured as the bullets ricocheted, Rossi said.

Troops are not allowed to carry firearms on the base and armed military police quickly swarmed to the scene.

Soldiers tore up their uniforms to bandage the injured. Troops at a graduation ceremony nearby, attended by 600, have been praised for quickly blocking the doors when the firing began.

The base went into lockdown for several hours amid fears other gunmen were involved. Greg Schanepp, who was representing a local congressman at the graduation, told how a soldier who had been shot in the back came running towards him and alerted him to the shooting, telling him not to go in the direction of the killer.

The base commander, Cone, said only military police on the base carried guns. He did not speculate on a motive. Two other people were questioned and then released.

Federal law enforcement officials told Associated Press that Hasan had come to their attention at least six months ago because of his web postings, which discussed suicide bombings and other threats.

One of the web posts that authorities reviewed was a blog that equated suicide bombers with a soldier throwing himself on a grenade to save the lives of his comrades. "To say that this soldier committed suicide is inappropriate. It's more appropriate to say he is a brave hero that sacrificed his life for a more noble cause," said the post. "Scholars have paralled [sic] this to suicide bombers whose intention, by sacrificing their lives, is to help save Muslims by killing enemy soldiers."

The officials said Hasan appeared to have made the postings but it was still being checked.

The wounded were taken to hospitals in the central Texas region. Lisa Pfund said her daughter Amber Bahr, 19, was shot in the stomach and was in a stable condition.

Barack Obama, interrupting a speech in Washington, said the incident was a "horrific outburst of violence".

The gunman showed no signs of worry or stress when he stopped at a convenience store for his daily breakfast of hash browns, said Jeannie Strickland, manager of a local 7-Eleven. "He came in [Thursday] morning just like normal," she told the Houston Chronicle, "nothing weird, nothing out of the ordinary."

Video footage was shown on CNN last night apparently of Hasan in a shop in the morning ‑ about six to seven hours before the shooting ‑ looking relaxed as he bought some goods.

Organ donors hit with shocking bills

November 1, 2009

UPI

AUSTIN, Texas, Nov. 1 (UPI) -- Kidney donors may face huge medical bills because having one kidney may constitute a pre-existing condition under which coverage is denied, officials confirm.

A Texas hospital official said organ donors are told, but only orally, that having one kidney may be a pre-existing condition affecting insurance.

Philip Knisely, 53, of Austin, Texas, who donated a kidney to a co-worker a year ago, has received more than $18,000 in related medical bills, and said he was not informed that if he ever lost his employment-related insurance, insurers might consider his having a single kidney an uninsurable pre-existing condition, the American-Stateman reported Sunday.

James Pittman, transplant program director at North Austin Medical Center where the transplant was done, said donors receive that information orally, the newspaper reported.

As Congress debates reform of the healthcare system, it should require Medicare to ascertain that donors are covered, as provided by a 1972 law, regardless of states' conflicting policies, said Donna Luebke, a cardiology nurse practitioner at MetroHealth Medical Center in Cleveland, a kidney donor and nationwide advocate for living donors.

Luebke urges legislation prohibiting insurers from discriminating against donors for having "pre-existing conditions."

Some advocates also want a living-donor registry so it is easier to track them and any future medical problems they may have, the newspaper reported.

"Right now it is the issue for living donors in this country," Luebke said. "I know of donors who have paid thousands of dollars out of pocket for complications." 

Improving Homeland Security at the State Level

Needed: State-level, Integrated Intelligence Enterprises

by Dr. James E. Steiner

Needed is a single, integrated intelligence enterprise with well-defined lanes-in-the-road for each large, complicated state like New York.

             Following the terrorist attacks of 11 September 2001, a revolution has been underway in the relationships of federal, state, and local homeland security, law enforcement, and intelligence organizations. At the federal level, the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) has been created, the “wall” between law enforcement and intelligence has been nearly obliterated, some law enforcement organizations are being directed to become more like intelligence agencies, and the foreign intelligence community is being fundamentally reformed.

            The impact of these changes has been even greater at the state level: state governments have been assigned the lead role in homeland security. Most states have responded by bringing together existing public security, law enforcement, and emergency response capabilities—linking them to similar local assets—and opening channels to other states.

            But a piece has been missing. Before 9/11, none of the states had a robust intelligence capability. Most now have created multiple intelligence cells in existing structures, as well as fusion centers, which for the first time connect state and local homeland security and law enforcement—and especially the new intelligence organizations—with federal, community, and, in some cases, foreign intelligence services.

            Needed is a single, integrated intelligence enterprise with well-defined lanes-in-the-road for each large, complicated state like New York. We will see that this challenge is as daunting at the state level as it has been in the national Intelligence Community (IC).

States need to tailor the structures they build to accommodate the robust capabilities that national organizations with intelligence capabilities maintain within their geographic boundaries.

            One thing is clear—replicating the federal IC structure in 50 states is NOT appropriate. Some of the concepts we use in analyzing national intelligence missions and structures are useful—for example, differentiating between national (or state-level) intelligence and departmental intelligence. But for the most part, the federal model is just not relevant: collection is less a state function than is analysis; single-function collection agencies such as NSA and NGA have no comparable state analogue; HUMINT (confidential informants) is the dominant collection discipline at the state level; and we clearly do not want any state-level entities developing covert action capabilities. Finally, most states simply do not have the resources to create and maintain the multilayered, redundant structures so prevalent at the federal level. On the other hand, states need to tailor the structures they build to accommodate the robust capabilities that national organizations with intelligence capabilities maintain within their geographic boundaries. In addition, state requirements vary significantly across the country, and a single model will not meet every state’s needs.

            State and local fusion centers are the designated focal points connecting the federal IC to state and local intelligence collectors and analysts on counterterrorism threats. In most cases, state police manage state fusion centers. The centers’ primary mission is to move counterterrorism (CT) intelligence from the local level to the federal community and from the federal level back to local law enforcement. But as we shall see below, state-level intelligence missions go well beyond providing operational intelligence support to law enforcement CT programs. Some fusion centers have taken on broader missions, especially in the public safety arena, and have other customer sets, including state executives and the public. Others have remained narrowly focused on CT or intermediate all-crimes intelligence.

            Much has been written about fusion centers from the perspective of their primary mission and their relationship with federal law enforcement and the IC. This article will not duplicate that discussion. Rather, I will emphasize state-level intelligence requirements beyond the support-to-law-enforcement mission and focus on the primary, non-law enforcement customer—the state governor and his executive-level homeland security team.

            The article is informed by multiple state models, but it focuses on New York state. The Empire State has international land and maritime borders, coastal and riverine international ports, and a huge immigrant community from countries of special interest. It faces a broad array of threats emanating from terrorism, natural hazards (including floods, hurricanes, tornados), and pandemic diseases. But most importantly, the bulk of specific, credible terrorism threat intelligence collected since 9/11 specifies targets in New York City. (See table on facing page.)

 Know your Customer –the Governor

            The president has a director of national intelligence (DNI), but New York’s governor has no such focal point for intelligence. Intelligence is not seen as a separate function, but something embedded into other disciplines. For example, the governor looks to the superintendent of the state police to manage most law enforcement issues and expects that department to conduct law enforcement intelligence. Similarly, the governor looks to his homeland security adviser to help him define the homeland security threat and to manage risk (strategic mission) and meet his immediate public security priorities (operational)—the most basic of which is crisis management and recovery. He assumes that his homeland security adviser has built the intelligence capability to do his job.

 `          New York’s homeland security strategy demonstrates the centrality of both strategic risk management and operational crisis management/recovery to the governor and his senior resource managers in Albany.

Major Plots, Arrests, and Threats in New York State
during 2001–2008

The list below is representative of the terrorism-related cases and plots the state has faced over the past eight years. They vary in their severity and their plausibility.

·         September 11 (2001): The most deadly terrorist attack in history, when Al Qaeda operatives targeted the World Trade Center with commercial airliners, resulted in thousands of deaths in Lower Manhattan.

·         Anthrax Letters (2001): The mailing of letters containing weaponized Anthrax spores, mainly to media and political targets, resulted in five deaths as well as numerous injuries.

·         The Lackawanna Six (2002): A group of Yemeni-Americans from outside Buffalo were convicted of providing material support to terrorism after spending time in an Al Qaeda training camp.

·         Iyman Faris/Khalid Sheik Mohammed Brooklyn Bridge Plot (2003): Iyman Faris, a truck driver who had been in contact with numerous Al Qaeda leaders, was involved in a plot to damage or destroy the Brooklyn Bridge.

·         Subway Poison Gas Plot (2003): Reports suggest that a Bahrain-based Al Qaeda cell intended to target the New York City subway system with a device that would disperse cyanide gas.

·         Herald Sq. Subway Plot (2004): Two men from Queens and Staten Island were convicted of conspiring to bomb the subway station at Herald Square.

·         Albany Missile Sting (2004): Two Albany residents were convicted of supporting terrorism for an incident in which they agreed to help launder money to purchase a shoulder-fired missile for a militant group.

·         East Coast Buildings Plot (2005): Three British nationals were charged with conspiring to bomb buildings along the eastern seaboard of the United States, including the Citigroup Center and New York Stock Exchange.

·         PATH Tunnel Plot (2006): This plot, disrupted in early planning stages, centered on a Lebanese national and several other individuals planning to attack the Port Authority Trans Hudson Tunnel connecting New York and New Jersey.

·         JFK Airport Plot (2006): Four men, from the Caribbean and South America, were convicted of conspiring to bomb the fuel distribution pipeline at John F. Kennedy Airport in Queens.

·        Aafia Siddiqui (2008): An American-trained neuroscientist wanted for supporting terrorism, Siddiqui was captured in South Asia with detailed information about numerous targets including Times Square, the Statue of Liberty, the subway system, and the Plum Island biological facility.

Why Does AIPAC Spy on Americans?

November 5, 2009

by Grant Smith,

Antiwar.com

According to the Jewish Telegraphic Agency, Steven J. Rosen will be allowed to move ahead with his civil defamation lawsuit against the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC).  Rosen and fellow AIPAC employee Keith Weissman were indicted under the 1917 Espionage Act in 2005 along with Department of Defense Employee Col. Lawrence Franklin for passing classified national defense information.  Franklin pled guilty, but Rosen and Weissman’s case never went to trial — US attorneys gave up (PDF) after the presiding judge made a successful prosecution unlikely. 

Rosen’s 2009 civil lawsuit contends that AIPAC defamed him when its spokesperson claimed that he "did not comport with standards that AIPAC expects of its employees." Rosen’s many filings in court reveal that his fundamental case is that AIPAC commonly circulates and distributes classified US government information when it suits the organization’s purpose in lobbying for Israel.  AIPAC defamed him, he alleges, by claiming he was somehow unique. 

An FBI file declassified and released on July 31, 2009 (PDF) backs up Rosen’s assertions.  In 1984 AIPAC obtained a classified report compiled from the business secrets of US industries and associations opposed to signing a bilateral trade agreement with Israel.  The FBI found that AIPAC had "attempted to influence members of Congress with the use of a purloined copy of the ITC report and had usurped their authority."

The Washington Field Office of the FBI went on to assert that "AIPAC is a powerful pro-Israel lobbying group staffed by U.S. citizens.  WFO files contain an unsubstantiated allegation that a member of the Israeli Intelligence Service was a staff member of AIPAC."

Rosen is well on his way to claiming $20 million in damages for AIPAC’s "defamation" propelled by the court’s new ruling.  But for Americans much larger concerns linger.  Why isn’t AIPAC registering as an agent of a foreign principal if it is collaborating so closely with foreign intelligence services?  Why are these matters being litigated in civil court as a family squabble between members of the Israel lobby?  If espionage is a recurring, institutionalized feature of AIPAC, doesn’t that mitigate against its claims to be an American non-profit, working for American interests?  From the NRA to the AARP, no legitimate American nonprofit lobby has ever been found to be trafficking in so much intelligence information, or so frequently channeling it to foreign government parties and friends in the establishment media.

Newly emerging declassified facts are reminders to concerned Americans that AIPAC is not at all what it claims to be. Rosen’s lawsuit will not likely make good on his and former lobbyist Douglas Bloomfield’s implicit threats to reveal AIPAC as a stealth, unregistered foreign agent of the Israeli government.

Fortunately for Americans, that uncomfortable fact is now emerging in myriad ways, even in the midst of AIPAC’s new attempts to engineer policies that could accelerate the downfall of the US economy.

Grant F. Smith is the author of the new book Spy Trade: How Israel’s Lobby Undermines America’s Economy. He is currently director of the Institute for Research: Middle Eastern Policy in Washington, D.C.

Welcome to Pashtunistan
by Pepe Escobar

Asia Times

There must be some way out of here
Said the joker to the thief
There's too much confusion
I can't get no relief - Bob Dylan, All Along the Watchtower

            PARIS - Something's happening in AfPak, but you don't know what it is, do you Mr Beltway think-tanker?

            As Washington mashes up the "Taliban" - be they Afghan neo-Taliban or Pakistani Tehreek-e-Taliban (TTP) - in Empire of Chaos logic to justify perennial United States/North Atlantic Treaty Organization troops stationed in AfPak, an increasing number of Pashtuns living on both sides of the border have seized the opportunity and started to look to the Taliban as a convenient facilitator for the emergence of Pashtunistan.

            But the Pentagon, make no mistake, knows exactly how to play its New Great Game in Eurasia. Balkanization of AfPak - the break-up of both Afghanistan and Pakistan - will engineer, among other states, an independent Pashtunistan and an independent Balochistan. Empire of Chaos logic is still British imperial divide-and-rule, remixed; and, at least in theory, yields territories much easier to control.

            Don't mess with Pashtun nationalism

            Tribal Pashtuns (from eastern Afghanistan to western Pakistan) have never given up on being united again. Everyone familiar with AfPak knows the region is still paying the price for the fateful and - what else - divide-and-rule British imperial decision in 1897 to split tribal Pashtuns through the artificial Durand Line. The line remains the artificial border between Pakistan and Afghanistan. Anyone who ever crossed it at, for instance, Torkham, at the foot of the Khyber pass, knows it is meaningless; people swarming on both sides are all cousins who never stopped dreaming of a pre-colonial, Afghan Durrani empire that straddled a great deal of contemporary Pakistan.

            Few have noticed that Pashtuns were recently insisting on a very basic demand - that North-West Frontier Province (NWFP) in Pakistan have its name changed to Pakhtunkhwa ("Land of the Pashtuns"). The demand was shot down this past September by the dominant Punjabis in Pakistan. Pashtun nationalists protested en masse in fabled Peshawar, the NWFP capital. Pashtun national liberation is at fever pitch. Pashtun Guevaras are already issuing a call to arms.

            But as much as Washington, now with a little help from its friend/client government of President Asif Ali Zardari in Islamabad, has been conducting essentially a war on Pashtuns since 2001, this is no monolithic movement. It all goes back to the early 21st-century maxim that virtually every Taliban is a Pashtun, but not every Pashtun is a Taliban. There are significant strands of secular Pashtuns that shun the TTP and its brand of Islamic fundamentalist dystopian dogma, even while the Pashtun masses may see in the TTP the ideal vehicle for the advent of Pashtunistan.

            If we follow the money, we see that the TTP in Pakistan is now being financed mostly by wealthy, pious Gulf businessmen and not anymore by Islamabad. The financiers are more interested in jihad than in Pashtun nationalism, and that undermines the legitimacy of the Taliban as vehicles for Pashtun nationalism. At the same time, if the TTP and its Pashtun allies manage to establish full control over a strategic corridor straddling eastern Afghanistan and western Pakistan, with or without jihadi support, and for example with a partial control of Peshawar thrown in, the public relations coup couldn't be bigger: that means an Islamic emirate for all practical purposes constituted as Pashtunistan.

            Other factors apart from the TTP facilitate the drive towards Pashtunistan. The West's economic and aid packages to AfPak are pitiful and never trickle down to the average Pashtun. The "revelation" in the US of what was never a secret in Afghanistan, that Ahmed Wali Karzai, brother of the "winner" of the soiled Afghan presidential election, has been on the Central Intelligence Agency's payroll for years, erased any possibility of Pashtuns believing in anything emanating from Kabul.

            United States corporate media dabbles on the Afghan presidential election kabuki (with rice) while ignoring that what passes for US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) intelligence is bribing top warlords for on-the-ground "security" (a swell business for them) coupled with bribing the Taliban for a license not be killed by their explosive devices. And bribing itself just won't do; the Taliban, via their former foreign minister, Mullah Muttawakkil, have just refused an American offer of eight permanent NATO bases for six provincial Taliban governorships. They want their Kabuli rice - and eat it too.

             Islamabad's military and security establishment, a state within a state, remains an annex of Washington's; Pashtuns see the current offensive in Waziristan as Zardari selling out to Washington - same as "Busharraf", president Pervez Musharraf, before. A Pakistani failed government, this one or any other one, has zero chance to control what are de facto Afghan lands on the Pakistan side of the Durand Line. In 2009 alone, more than two million Pashtuns have been forced to become refugees; there's ample talk of a "Pashtun genocide".

            So it would be so much easier, and infinitely less bloody, for Washington to adopt the Pentagon line all the way: let's pull another Yugoslavia; let's Balkanize; let's restore the Afghan Durrani empire.

            The second coming

            A rough beast, its hour come at last, Pashtunistan is already being born.

            To start with, those "cousins" on both sides of the border are all tribal Pashtuns, mostly rural. They follow the same conservative religious rituals, enshrined by the ultra-reactionary South Asian Deobandi school of Sunni Islam and propagated by a vast network of made-in-Pakistan madrassas (seminaries). Their business is thriving, as can be attested by a visit to Spinbaldak, in southern Afghanistan, on the way between Kandahar and Quetta; the big fish thrive on smuggling and the narco-trade, and everyone else thrives on transportation or the timber business. The cash flow, in and out, is massive, especially out of remittances from Pashtun workers toiling around the Gulf and beyond.

             Politically, the Pashtuns are represented by parties such as the Jamaat-e-Ulema-e-Islami (JUI). Diplomatically, they are very well connected to the Persian Gulf and to most of the Organization of the Islamic Conference countries. From a military point of view, they are represented by myriad Taliban groups, not only the TTP. And strategically, they perform a delicious irony: a rural, ultra-religious, nationalist movement fighting tooth-and-nail a corrupt, urban-based government as if they were a post-colonial fantasy of the noble tribal savage - a la Rousseau - fighting the colonialist West.

            This may not be what leftist, relatively secular Pashtun intellectuals had in mind; they maintain that the Punjabi-infested security agencies control both the Taliban and the Pakistani army, and they would rather get rid of both. A nationalist group such as the Pashtun Awareness Movement believes Pashtuns themselves should get rid of the Taliban, not the Pakistani army under the boot of the Pentagon. As for the predominantly Pashtun Awami National Party, which is in power in NWFP and has to compose somewhat with Islamabad, its dream of a more balanced Pashtunistan is still a long way away.

            There may be only one thing missing for Pashtunistan to come of age: a passport. It's not hard to see who will profit from it.

            "The horror ... the horror." General Stanley McChrystal, the Pentagon supremo in Afghanistan, is being massively sold in the US as a Zen warrior - a 21st-century stalwart incarnation of the "best and the brightest". But he may be a warrior intellectual more like Colonel Kurz than Captain Willard in Francis Ford Coppola's Apocalypse Now. He led an elite death squad in Iraq and, for all of his Confucius-meets-counter-insurgency social engineering schemes, still appears not to understand what Pashtuns are really all about.

             McChrystal remains bemused about why, in Afghanistan, most young Pashtuns decide to become Taliban. Because Kabul is immensely corrupt; because the Americans have bombed theirhouses or killed their families and friends; because they can improve their social status. They simply won't sell out for (devalued) American dollars. Their infinite drive is geared towards throwing the occupiers out - and re-establishing the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan, governed by sharia law. In this sense, McChrystal's soldiers are the new Soviets, no different from the Red Army that waged war in Afghanistan during the 1980s.

             McChrystal - with all his "secure the population" talk - cannot possibly level with the American public about the Taliban. Afghans know that if you don't mess with the Taliban, the Taliban don't mess with you. If you're an opium poppy grower, the Taliban just collect a little bit of tax on it.

             Conquering Pashtun hearts and minds Westmoreland, sorry, McChrystal-style is a no-win proposition. There's nothing McChrystal's non-Pashto speaking soldiers can say or do to counteract a simple Taliban-to-villager one-liner "we're in a jihad to throw out the foreigners".

            As for the Taliban/al-Qaeda nexus, the Taliban nowadays simply don't need al-Qaeda, and vice-versa. Al-Qaeda is closely linked with Pakistani outfits, not Afghan, such as Lashkar-e-Taiba. If McChrystal wants to find al-Qaeda jihadis, he should set up shop in Karachi, not in the Hindu Kush.

            Over the summer of 2009 alone, 20,000 US and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) troops, practicing the iron dogma of "clear, hold and build", were able to secure only a third of desert Helmand province. The Taliban control at least 11 provinces in Afghanistan. It's easy to do the math on what it would take to "secure" the other 10 provinces, not to mention the whole country until, well, 2050, as the British high command has been speculating. No wonder Washington is drowning in numbers - rife with speculation that McChrystal wants 500,000 boots on the ground before 2015. If Confucian McChrystal doesn't get them, goodbye counter-insurgency; it's back to a devastating hell from above drone missile war.

If you break it, you control it

            The Pentagon as well as NATO will never be cheerleaders for a strong, stable and really independent Pakistan. Washington pressure over Islamabad will never be less than relentless. And then there's the return of the repressed: the chilling Pentagon fear that Islamabad might one day become a full Chinese client state.

            Think-tankers in their comfy leather chairs do entertain the dream of the Pakistani state unraveling for good - victim of a clash within the military of Punjabis against Pashtuns. So what's in it for the US in terms of balkanization of AfPak? Quite some juicy prospects - chief of all neutralizing the also relentless Chinese drive for direct land access, from Xinjiang and across Pakistan, to the Arabian Sea (via the port of Gwadar, in Balochistan province).

             Washington's rationale for occupying Afghanistan - never spelled out behind the cover story of "fighting Islamic extremism" - is pure Pentagon full spectrum dominance: to better spy on both China and Russia with forward outposts of the empire of bases; to engage in Pipelineistan, via the Trans-Afghan (TAPI) pipeline, if it ever gets built; and to have a controlling hand in the Afghan narco-trade via assorted warlords. Cheap heroin is literally flooding Russia, Iran and Eastern Europe. Not by accident, Moscow regards opium/heroin as the key issue to be tackled in Afghanistan, not Islamic fundamentalism.

            As for those think-tankers, they do remain incorrigible. Last week at a Rand-sponsored Afghanistan bash in the Russell Senate Office Building in Washington, former president Jimmy Carter's national security adviser, Zbigniew Brzezinski, the man who gave the Soviets their Vietnam in Afghanistan, announced that he had advised the George W Bush administration to invade Afghanistan in 2001; but he also told then Pentagon supremo, Donald Rumsfeld, that the Pentagon should not stay on "as an alien force". That's exactly what the Pentagon is right now.

            And yet, Zbigniew believes the US should not leave Afghanistan; it should "use all our leverage" to force NATO to fulfill the mission - whatever that is. Not surprisingly, Zbigniew couldn't help revealing what the heart of the "mission" really is: Pipelineistan, that is, to build TAPI by any means necessary.

            China, India and Russia may agree that a regional - and not an American - solution to Afghanistan may be the only way to go, but still can't agree on how to formalize a proposal which would be offered in the cadre of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization. Li Qinggong, the number two at the China Council for National Security Policy Studies, has been a key voice of this proposal. Washington, not surprisingly, wants to remain unilateral.

            It all harks back to a 1997 Brookings Institution publication by Geoffrey Kemp and Robert Harkavy, Strategic Geography and the Changing Middle East, in which they identify an "energy strategic ellipse" with a key node in the Caspian and another in the Persian Gulf, concentrating over 70% of global oil reserves and over 40% of natural gas reserves. The study stressed that the resources in these zones of "low demographic pressure" would be "threatened" by the pressure of billions living in the poor regions of South Asia. Thus the control of the Muslim Central Asian "stans" as well as Afghanistan would be essential as a wall against both China and India.

            So all along the watchtower, the princes of war keep their view. That spells balkanization all along. It's full spectrum dominance against the Asian energy security grid. The Pentagon well knows that AfPak is the key land bridge between Iran to the west and China and India to the east; and that Iran has all the energy that both China and India need. The last thing full spectrum dominance wants is to have the AfPak theater subjected to more influence from Russia, China and Iran.

            There could not be a more graphic illustration of empire of chaos logic in action than the AfPak theater. While the McChrystal show amuses the galleries, what's really at stake for Washington is how to orchestrate a progressive encirclement of Russia, China and Iran. And the name of the game is not really AfPak - even with all the breaking up and balkanization it may entail. It's all about the New Great Game for the control of Eurasia.

 Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007) and Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge. His new book, just out, is Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

Glenn Beck's Hotline to Nowhere

The White House has no obligation to correct willful ignorance.

November 5, 2009

by Thomas Frank

The Weall Street Joutrnal

Glenn Beck, the popular Fox News host, has a red telephone on his desk that never seems to ring. Every now and then, in a moment of acute frustration, he will pick it up and give the camera his trademark pleading-puppy look.

What Mr. Beck wants to hear from the phone are answers, and he wants to hear them from the highest authority in the land: the phone, he says, is "a dedicated line right to the White House." And when Mr. Beck gets things wrong, he wants his antagonists on Pennsylvania Avenue to correct him. But "They don't call. They're not going to call."

One of the specific answers Mr. Beck wanted, on one of the days I watched his program last week, had to do with White House Communications Director Anita Dunn, who has been caught on film quoting one of those Mao Zedong aphorisms that wouldn't look out of place on a motivational poster. She also remarked that Mao was one of her "favorite political philosophers," an honor the Chinese Communist shared with Mother Teresa.

Obviously Ms. Dunn was yet another person who deserved to be added to the long list of radicals that Mr. Beck had uncovered within the government.

What's more, no one would call that red phone to reassure Mr. Beck, to tell him that the Obama administration isn't crawling with traitors or to explain why his many nightmare scenarios will not actually come to pass.

"They won't call me," he tells the camera. "Communists, revolutionaries, socialists, Marxists, followers of Chairman Mao appointed by Obama to the executive branch in positions of the government-call, call me. Explain it. Explain it any other way. Call me, right now."

Yet there the mute telephone sits, a quiet symbol of Middle America's frustration. The diabolical liberals in the White House refuse even to acknowledge our queries. "Their silence is their answer," the host sighs.

Is it really? On Monday I wrote to an old friend, Robert McChesney, a professor of communications at the University of Illinois who has been a frequent target of Mr. Beck in recent weeks for his left-wing views and also for co-founding Free Press, an advocacy group on media policy. Did Mr. McChesney get a chance to respond on the red phone or any other way? No. "He never asked me or Free Press to call the red phone," Mr. McChesney wrote me.

Then I emailed Mark Lloyd, the Chief Diversity Officer at the Federal Communications Commission. Mr. Beck has attacked Mr. Lloyd numerous times in recent weeks, repeatedly airing video clips in which he appears to hold noxious views. Did Mr. Lloyd get a chance to call the red phone? "No, no one gave me a phone number to call Beck."

Nor should Mr. Beck require a phone call from the White House to understand that lots of people, including conservatives, have cited Mao and Lenin and other such demonic figures in all sorts of contexts, and that they aren't always careful, when so citing, to point out what bad people these were.

No discerning person would conclude from Ms. Dunn's dimwitted remark that she is a Maoist. That would require more evidence-and that's what makes Mr. Beck's pantomime fear and trembling so odious: He doesn't appear to be interested in further evidence, or really any evidence that doesn't serve his shtick.

Consider a few of the other grand assertions tossed out by the panic-peddling host last week: that the cause of last year's financial crisis was pressure exerted by Acorn and "the people in Washington" on otherwise-reluctant mortgage lenders; that the cause of the inflation of the 1970s was President Jimmy Carter's quest for a "socialist utopia."

These are postulates that it is only possible to believe after you have utterly closed yourself off to conventional ways of knowing, after you have decided that the reporting and analysis and scholarship on these subjects are not worth reading, and that you will choose ideological fairy tales over reality until the day a magical phone call comes from on high.

What Mr. Beck's silent phone really symbolizes is a new kind of ignorance, a coming high-tech dark age in which people can choose to blow off professional standards of inquiry; in which they can wall themselves off with cable TV and friendly Web sites, dismiss what displeases as liberal bias, and demand that any contrary view be transmitted to them via telephone call from the president himself.

Why not let Mr. Beck and his viewers have their fun? Because ideas have consequences. Maybe, as many believe, Glenn Beck is indeed the future of the conservative movement. From tea parties to town-hall meetings, thousands are signing up and fitting themselves out with their very own hotline to nowhere.

One in five mammal species on extinction 'red list'

Many reptiles and amphibians also critically endangered, while up to 70% of plants could be wiped out, say conservationists

November 2, 2009

by Stephen Bates

Guardian/UK

            A fifth of the world's known mammals, a third of its amphibians, more than a quarter of its reptiles and up to 70% of its plants are under threat of extinction according to the red list of threatened species, the latest annual survey compiled by the International Union for Conservation of Nature.

Among the critically endangered species are the western lowland gorilla and the bactrian camel. The golden-headed lion tamarin is listed as endangered and the socorro dove is extinct in the wild. Only a single male specimen of the Rabb's fringe-limbed tree frog, which lives in central Panama, has been heard calling in the last three years and attempts to breed it in captivity have so far failed.

The IUCN estimates that nearly 17,300 of the world's 47,677 assessed species are under threat of extinction.

Dr Ben Collier, research fellow at the London Zoological Society, whose scientists contributed to the survey, said: "We must take decisive action to reverse the serious declines we see in wildlife. We need to ensure that our enduring legacy is not to wipe out the small things that provide us with great benefits such as nutrient recycling and climate regulation."

Of the world's 5,490 mammal species, 79 are believed to be extinct, at least in the wild, 188 are critically endangered, 449 endangered and 505 vulnerable. Among the latter is the eastern voalavo, a rodent endemic to Madagascar, whose habitat is threatened by slash-and-burnfarming methods. The Panay monitor lizard in the Philippines is endangered for the same reason, as is the sail-fin water lizard whose hatchlings are sought for the pet trade.

Among amphibians, the Kihansi spray toad of Tanzania is thought to be extinct in the wild, due to fungal disease in its habitat and the construction of a dam upstream of the Kihansi falls that has dried out its habitat. Of the 12,151 plant types on the endangered list, there are 8,500 threatened with extinction and 112 believed to be extinct.

The Queen of the Andes plant, which produces seeds only once in 80 years and then dies, is holding on, though climate change is impairing its ability to flower and cattle are trampling its young plants.

The Afghan/Iraq Death Toll: November 5

November 5, 2009

by Brian Harring

November 2, 2009

            The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

             Spc. Adrian L. Avila, 19, of Opelika, Ala., died Oct. 29 at Khabari Crossing, Kuwait, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related accident.   He was assigned to the 1343rd Chemical Company, 151st Chemical Biological Radiological and Nuclear Battalion, 115th Fires Brigade of the Alabama Army National Guard, in Fort Payne, Ala.

The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.

 The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

             Pfc. Lukas C. Hopper, 20, of Merced, Calif., died Oct. 30, southeast of Karadah, Iraq, of injuries sustained during a vehicle roll-over. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 505th Parachute Infantry Regiment, 3rd Brigade Combat Team, 82nd Airborne Division, Fort Bragg, N.C.

 The circumstances surrounding the accident are under investigation.

 The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

  Spc. Christopher M. Cooper, 28, of Oceanside, Calif., died Oct. 30 in Babil province, Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident. He was assigned to the 2nd Battalion, 28th Infantry, 172nd Infantry Brigade, Schweinfurt, Germany.

   The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.

November 3, 2009

 The Department of Defense announced today the death of a soldier who was supporting Operation Iraqi Freedom.

 Spc. Jonathon M. Sylvestre, 21, of Colorado Springs, Colo., died Nov. 2 in Kut, Iraq, of injuries sustained from a non-combat related incident. He was assigned to the 1st Battalion, 10th Field Artillery Regiment, 3rd Heavy Brigade Combat Team, 3rd Infantry Division, Fort Benning, Ga.

The circumstances surrounding the incident are under investigation.

The Department of Defense announced today the death of a Marine who was supporting Operation Enduring Freedom.

Sgt. Cesar B. Ruiz, 26, of San Antonio, Texas, died Oct. 31 while supporting combat operations in Helmand province, Afghanistan. He was assigned to Marine Forces Reserve, New Orleans.