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Pentagon admits to surveillance of gay groups, releases documents

This is so incredible and awful, I gotta quote it in its entirety. Thanks for the pointer, Aspidistra Flying!

Anima

Link: PageOneQ | Pentagon admits to surveillance of gay groups, releases documents.

Pentagon admits to surveillance of gay groups, releases documents

by PageOneQ
 

The Servicemembers Legal Defense Network has released documents obtained under the Freedom of Information Act from the Department of Defense, which confirm the military's surveillance of organizations working to repeal the Military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell Policy, PageOneQ has learned.

The government's monitoring of anti-war protestors, including protests against the Military's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy, was first reported by Ron Brynaert of Raw Story.com in December.

"The very idea that the federal government believes freedom of speech is a threat to national security is unconscionable," Steve Ralls, Servicemembers Legal Defense Network’s Director of Communications told PageOneQ today. “The Pentagon has acknowledged that collection of the information was perhaps inappropriate,” Mr. Ralls said as he cited an earlier report by United Press International on the Pentagon’s admission.

Mr. Ralls also explained that Servicemembers Legal Defense Network fully expects the federal government to “discontinue surveillance because there was no legitimate reason to begin it in the first place."

The Department of Defense, according to the 16 pages of documents it released, monitored protests against the DADT policy at college campuses in New York City, Berkeley, and Santa Cruz. A counterintelligence agent reported on the protests against Military recruitment on campuses had "a strong potential for confrontation at this protest..." Discounting a theory that the protest was taking place in a separate location from Military recruiting, the agent wrote "tactics have included using mass text paging to inform others of the location of the recruiters."

The Department of Defense has indicated that it's search for documents relating to surveillance of groups opposed to Don't Ask, Don't tell continues.

The documents are available here.

The SLDN Press release is below.

WASHINGTON, DC – The Department of Defense (DoD) has released documentation confirming government surveillance of groups opposed to the military’s “Don’t Ask, Don’t Tell” law banning openly lesbian, gay and bisexual service members. The government’s TALON reports were released in response to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed by Servicemembers Legal Defense

Network (SLDN) in January. The release of the documents follows media reports indicating government surveillance of civilian groups at several universities across the country. The Department of Defense acknowledged that it had ‘inappropriately’ collected information on protestors in a letter to the Senate Armed Services Committee, according to a February report by United Press International.

“The Department of Defense has now confirmed the existence of a surveillance program monitoring LGBT groups,” said C. Dixon Osburn, executive director of SLDN. “Pentagon leaders have also acknowledged inappropriately collecting some of the information in the TALON database. That information should be destroyed and no similar surveillance should be authorized in the future. Free expression is not a threat to our national security.”

Although the recently released TALON reports may not be a complete list of groups monitored, it does confirm domestic surveillance of protests at New York University, the University of California at Berkeley, and the University of California at Santa Cruz. DoD has indicated that it continues to search for other documents related to SLDN’s FOIA request.

In February, SLDN filed a lawsuit as part of its efforts to obtain information related to the government’s domestic spy program. The TALON documents, complete information on the lawsuit and the domestic surveillance program are available online at www.Servicemembers Legal Defense Network.org.

 

Reflecting on Fukuyama's neocon defection

This book review by Paul Berman, raises some issues that I'm wanting to stew over some more. I'm still not sure what I think yet, but this feels like the most rational and pointed look at the ironies and contradictions that make the neoconservative philosophy so peculiar, and notable in its very peculiarities.

I just wanted to pull out the bits here that help me remember certain ideas, so I can think about them some more.

Link: 'America at the Crossroads,' by Francis Fukuyama - The New York Times Book Review - New York Times.

March 26, 2006

'America at the Crossroads,' by Francis Fukuyama

Neo No More

Review by PAUL BERMAN

In February 2004, Francis Fukuyama attended a neoconservative think-tank dinner in Washington and listened aghast as the featured speaker, the columnist Charles Krauthammer, attributed "a virtually unqualified success" to America's efforts in Iraq, and the audience enthusiastically applauded. Fukuyama was aghast partly for the obvious reason, but partly for another reason, too, which, as he explains in the opening pages of his new book, "America at the Crossroads," was entirely personal. In years gone by, Fukuyama would have felt cozily at home among those applauding neoconservatives. He and Krauthammer used to share many a political instinct. It was Krauthammer who wrote the ecstatic topmost blurb ("bold, lucid, scandalously brilliant") for the back jacket of Fukuyama's masterpiece from 1992, "The End of History and the Last Man."

But that was then.

Today Fukuyama has decided to resign from the neoconservative movement — though for reasons that, as he expounds them, may seem a tad ambiguous. In his estimation, neoconservative principles in their pristine version remain valid even now. But his ex-fellow-thinkers have lately given those old ideas a regrettable twist, and dreadful errors have followed. Under these circumstances, Fukuyama figures he has no alternative but to go away and publish his complaint.

[...]

His resignation seems to me, in any case, a fairly notable event, as these things go, and that is because, among the neoconservative intellectuals, Fukuyama has surely been the most imaginative, the most playful in his thinking and the most ambitious. Then again, something about his departure may express a larger mood among the political intellectuals just now, not only on the right.

[...]

Fukuyama offers a thumbnail sketch of neoconservatism and its origins, back to the anti-Communist left at City College in the 1930's and 40's and to the conservative philosophers (Leo Strauss, Allan Bloom, Albert Wohlstetter) at the University of Chicago in later years. From these disparate origins, the neoconservatives eventually generated "a set of coherent principles," which, taken together, ended up defining their impulse in foreign affairs during the last quarter-century. They upheld a belief that democratic states are by nature friendly and unthreatening, and therefore America ought to go around the world promoting democracy and human rights wherever possible. They believed that American power can serve moral purposes. They doubted the usefulness of international law and institutions. And they were skeptical about what is called "social engineering" — about big government and its ability to generate positive social changes.

Such is Fukuyama's summary. It seems to me too kind. For how did the neoconservatives propose to reconcile their ambitious desire to combat despotism around the world with their cautious aversion to social engineering? Fukuyama notes that during the 1990's the neoconservatives veered in militarist directions, which strikes him as a mistake. A less sympathetic observer might recall that neoconservative foreign policy thinking has all along indulged a romance of the ruthless — an expectation that small numbers of people might be able to play a decisive role in world events, if only their ferocity could be unleashed. It was a romance of the ruthless that led some of the early generation of neoconservatives in the 1970's to champion the grisliest of anti-Communist guerrillas in Angola; and, during the next decade, led the neoconservatives to champion some not very attractive anti-Communist guerrillas in Central America, too; and led the Reagan administration's neoconservatives into the swamps of the Iran-contra scandal in order to go on championing their guerrillas. Doesn't this same impulse shed a light on the baffling question of how the Bush administration of our own time could have managed to yoke together a stirring democratic oratory with a series of grotesque scandals involving American torture — this very weird and self-defeating combination of idealism and brass knuckles? But Fukuyama must not agree.

The criticisms he does propose are pretty scathing. In 2002, Fukuyama came to the conclusion that invading Iraq was going to be a gamble with unacceptably long odds. Then he watched with dismay as the administration adopted one strange policy after another that was bound to make the odds still longer. The White House decided to ignore any useful lessons the Clinton administration might have learned in Bosnia and Kosovo, on the grounds that whatever Bill Clinton did — for example, conduct a successful intervention — George W. Bush wanted to do the opposite. There was the diplomatic folly of announcing an intention to dominate the globe, and so forth — all of which leads Fukuyama, scratching his head, to propose a psychological explanation.

The neoconservatives, he suggests, are people who, having witnessed the collapse of Communism long ago, ought to look back on those gigantic events as a one-in-a-zillion lucky break, like winning the lottery. Instead, the neoconservatives, victims of their own success, came to believe that Communism's implosion reflected the deepest laws of history, which were operating in their own and America's favor — a formula for hubris. This is a shrewd observation, and might seem peculiar only because Fukuyama's own "End of History" articulated the world's most eloquent argument for detecting within the collapse of Communism the deepest laws of history. He insists in his new book that "The End of History" ought never to have led anyone to adopt such a view, but this makes me think only that Fukuyama is an utterly unreliable interpreter of his own writings.

[...]

He proposes a post-Bush foreign policy, which he styles "realistic Wilsonianism" — his new motto in place of neoconservatism. He worries that because of Bush's blunders, Americans on the right and the left are going to retreat into a Kissinger-style reluctance to promote democratic values in other parts of the world. Fukuyama does want to promote democratic values — "what is in the end a revolutionary American foreign policy agenda" — though he would like to be cautious about it, and even multilateral about it. The United Nations seems to him largely unsalvageable, given the role of nondemocratic countries there. But he thinks that a variety of other institutions, consisting strictly of democracies, might be able to establish and sometimes even enforce a new and superior version of international legitimacy. He wants to encourage economic development in poor countries, too — if only a method can be found that avoids the dreadful phrase "social engineering."

[this is perhaps the most frightening observation I've seen, but I'm happy to see SOMEONE from the neocon camp at least acknowledging that the majority of the "non-nation-building" nation-building rhetoric out of the Bush administration appears to be lifted directly from the Woodrow Wilson playbook, with any notion of a "League of Nations" surgically removed and replaced with U.S. despotic dominance, the U.S. as the single superpower to assume sovereignty over all as a self-appointed United Nations of One.

What I find so frightening in Fukayama's view here, and in the views of others who hold these ideas as well, distinctly neocon ideas since they bear little resemblance to the ideas usually attributed to traditional conservatism, is that the "promotion of democracy" as some kind of saving grace is purely rhetorical and bears no resemblance to what is actually happening.

I believe the word "democracy" is being corrupted, used as a code word for "governments that are easy to manipulate using massive influxes of capital to interfere, influence, and buy elections for our hand-picked and corruptible puppets." In other words, the opposite of true democracy (although one could argue it has become the way "democracy" is currently being practiced in the U.S.)

Sure, the U.S. could put a chosen dictator or despot in place, as colonial powers have traditionally done, or perhaps use the methods of control previously employed by the Soviet empire, OR it could simply use capital and corruption to turn the word "democracy" into a pale shadow of it's true meaning, and simply use it as rhetorical cover for things we might call "democracy" that are really unregulated monopolies by non-local corporations seeking to find the best way to siphon as much wealth out of a nation as possible, as quickly as possible.]

[...]

I worry that Fukuyama's preferred language may shrink our predicament into something smaller than it ever was. He pictures the present struggle as a "counterinsurgency" campaign — a struggle in which, before the Iraq war, "no more than a few thousand people around the world" threatened the United States. I suppose he has in mind an elite among the 10,000 to 20,000 people who are said to have trained at bin Laden's Afghan camps, plus other people who may never have gotten out of the immigrant districts of Western Europe. But the slaughters contemplated by this elite have always outrivaled anything contemplated by more conventional insurgencies — as Fukuyama does recognize in some passages. And there is the pesky problem that, as we have learned, the elite few thousand appear to have the ability endlessly to renew themselves. HERE is where a rhetoric pointing to something larger than a typical counterinsurgency campaign may have a virtue, after all. A more grandiose rhetoric draws our attention, at least, to the danger of gigantic massacres. And a more grandiose rhetoric might lead us to think about ideological questions. Why are so many people eager to join the jihadi elite? They are eager for ideological reasons, exactly as in the case of fascists and other totalitarians of the past. These people will be defeated only when their ideologies begin to seem exhausted, which means that any struggle against them has to be, above all, a battle of ideas — a campaign to persuade entire mass movements around the world to abandon their present doctrines in favor of more liberal ones.

[that would entail actually being true advocates for liberal democratic ideas, rather than using them as a smokescreen for more fascist strong-arm tactics and overt manipulation.]

[...]

In "America at the Crossroads," Fukuyama describes the Hegelianism of "The End of History" as a version of "modernization" theory, bringing his optimistic vision of progress into the world of modern social science. But the problem with modernization theory was always a tendency to concentrate most of its attention on the steadily progressing phases of history, as determined by the predictable workings of sociology or economics or psychology — and to relegate the free play of unpredictable ideas and ideologies to the margins of world events.

And yet, what dominated the 20th century, what drowned the century in oceans of blood, was precisely the free play of ideas and ideologies, which could never be relegated entirely to the workings of sociology, economics, psychology or any of the other categories of social science.  [...]  Fukuyama is always worth reading, and his new book contains ideas that I hope the non-neoconservatives of America will adopt. But neither his old arguments nor his new ones offer much insight into this, the most important problem of all — the problem of murderous ideologies and how to combat them.

Here's my deal: somewhere along the way I stopped worrying so much about the problem of murderous ideologies and how to combat them and instead started worrying more about those who pretend to ideologies, some potentially murderous, as crass cover for intentions that are far more devious.

Say what you like about Osama bin Laden, but the guy is apparently incorruptible and a true believer in his cause, however odious many of its basic principles may be to me.

So bin Laden has a murderous ideology, a cultural construct based in an interpretation of a venerable ancient religion. This is the lens through which he sees the world, and however I may not like it, it is reliable and consistent.

Many venerable ancient religions can be turned into murderous ideologies, perhaps ANY venerable and ancient religion, what with Pluto in Sagittarius. (I just had to throw that in... hey, you know Pluto will be moving out of Sag soon. Something to look forward to. When Pluto was in Scorpio, sex=death, and when Pluto moved into Sag, ideological purity=death. What do you suppose will happen when Pluto hits Capricorn, coming on the heels of these wars for ideology? Ambition=death. The will to power=death. So many people try to psych Pluto out, but Pluto has its own way of doing things, you know?)

But back to more rational thinking... It seems to me that it is easier to fight an ideologue than to fight a Machiavellian sophist. I dunno, maybe it's just me. One enemy seems a lot easier to understand and pin down than the other.

And once Pluto moves into Capricorn, we will just be aswim in Machiavellian sophists, as if we aren't gearing up for their ascendancy already.

So Berman may be more worried about how to characterize and combat an enemy that has an ideological beef with us, a clash of world views, and a desire to make one world view dominant over the other. So long as this fight is characterized by "my god is better than your god" thinking, a distinctly patriarchal view of religion that requires dominance just as surely as a dog pack requires an alpha, wars can only result. These are the wars of the "true believers," patriarchal true believers who make the fight an extension of rival high school football games with considerably more dick-waving, er, waving of big sticks. Even if the warfare is ultimately asymmetrical, broadswords vs. daggers or what have you.

Many cultures have allowed multiple religions, often matriarchal religions, to peacefully co-exist without a need for one to dominate or wipe out the others, without the culture of literalism, the book and the law, that demands the ascendancy one metaphysical interpretation of spirituality and one interpretation only.

In other words, this isn't high noon. The two patriarchal religions that are squaring off seem to think so, however, and they're saying, "This here globe isn't big enough for the two of us."

Both of them are of a piece, claiming allegiance to the same war-like Jehovah alpha god, nearly identical ascendant male deities, only with somewhat different commands and opposing claims of who exactly are the "chosen people."

I know one side is supposed to have white hats and the other side is supposed to have black hats, but they just look alike to me, with differences of degree in their oppression of women, the shrillness in which they impose their belief systems, and the manner in which they execute their will to power, to have power over others, and which commodities of power they prefer to use. Power and dominance are the coins in both of their realms. Ideology is merely the fuel that feeds it.

And me, I'm anticipating Pluto in Capricorn. I figure, ultimately, once Pluto moves, true believers will be corrupted by that power, by ambition. I'm not picking on Capricorn. Some of my best friends have their SUNS in Capricorn. But this is PLUTO in Capricorn, and power corrupts.

I think a day will come when we will wistfully long for true believers, as we face unending death, suffering, and wars over far less, over this person or that group's mere ambition and crass willingness to reach and grasp with Machiavellian slipperiness.

Anima

This site showed up on one of our Google ads under the heading "Private Prisons"

Link: Omni View: Innovative Incarceration.

When I clicked on the link, it mostly was talking about Native American reservation corrections sites... but I found the entire thing REALLY disturbing.

First of all, what kind of outfit tries to sell itself as a "Private Prison"?! What is a Private Prison?

If there are "private prisons" in the U.S. (or elsewhere) it would seem to me that they would have to be EXTRA-LEGAL facilities for incarceration of human beings, because as far as I know, only governments are given the power to confine and enslave people against their will, based on their legal systems.

SO, if an entire system of "private prisons" exists (and I'm thinking of the "prison franchises" in Neal Stephenson's wonderful sci-fi cyberpunk book Snow Crash, the "Hoosegow" and "The Clink") they'd either come from this freakish movement to "privatize" and subcontract government functions (yeah, like to Haliburton)...

OR the Google ad is pandering directly to an invisible subculture of facilities confining humans against their will, say for sweatshop labor, sex slaves, etc, in other words, a winked-at subculture reinstituting slavery.

Now that last bit is just pure speculation on my part, spinning out from that bizarro Google Ad Words phrase "Private Prisons," I suppose appealing to the eccentric millionare owning an island (if ads are out to reach these people they must be a dime a dozen) needing to enslave an entire facility of human beings for forced island labor.

See, I made that whole thing up too, OK?

I don't think there are hundreds of millionares in the market for private prisons. I don't know that a million would be enough to pull it off these days, unless you buy the island from some dictator in a currency-deflated devasted, poverty-stricken economy usually associated with the so-called "Third World," but now shown to be alive and well and propagating in the U.S. (see also Katrina and New Orleans).

So if we rule out elitist oligarchies hunkering down with a kidnapped slave class on islands and in isolated compounds, ready to open the plantation for business with the apocalypse at the end of the world's oil supply (within 30 years to one generation, sources say), what kind of market does that leave for "private prisons"?

Enough of a market to advertise on Google, I guess. Chinese factories? I dunno. The link above is definitely a site I will watch, to see if it is linked to such evils.

Anima

COMBAT Operations in New Orleans?! Fighting an "Insurgency"?

Why in the hell is the military trying to turn New Orleans into Baghdad?!

http://www.armytimes.com/story.php?f=1-292925-1077495.php

September 02, 2005

Troops begin combat operations in New Orleans

By Joseph R. Chenelly
Times staff writer

NEW ORLEANS — Combat operations are underway on the streets “to take this city back” in the aftermath of Hurricane Katrina.

“This place is going to look like Little Somalia,” Brig. Gen. Gary Jones, commander of the Louisiana National Guard’s Joint Task Force told Army Times Friday as hundreds of armed troops under his charge prepared to launch a massive citywide security mission from a staging area outside the Louisiana Superdome. “We’re going to go out and take this city back. This will be a combat operation to get this city under control.”

Jones said the military first needs to establish security throughout the city. Military and police officials have said there are several large areas of the city are in a full state of anarchy.
Dozens of military trucks and up-armored Humvees left the staging area just after 11 a.m. Friday, while hundreds more troops arrived at the same staging area in the city via Black Hawk and Chinook helicopters.

“We’re here to do whatever they need us to do,” Sgt. 1st Class Ron Dixon, of the Oklahoma National Guard’s 1345th Transportation Company. “We packed to stay as long as it takes.”

While some fight the insurgency in the city, other carry on with rescue and evacuation operations. Helicopters are still pulling hundreds of stranded people from rooftops of flooded homes.

Army, Air Force, Navy, Marine Corps, Coast Guard and police helicopters filled the city sky Friday morning. Most had armed soldiers manning the doors. According to Petty Officer 3rd Class Jeremy Grishamn, a spokesman for the amphibious assault ship Bataan, the vessel kept its helicopters at sea Thursday night after several military helicopters reported being shot at from the ground.

Numerous soldiers also told Army Times that they have been shot at by armed civilians in New Orleans. Spokesmen for the Joint Task Force Headquarters at the Superdome were unaware of any servicemen being wounded in the streets, although one soldier is recovering from a gunshot wound sustained during a struggle with a civilian in the dome Wednesday night.

“I never thought that at a National Guardsman I would be shot at by other Americans,” said Spc. Philip Baccus of the 527th Engineer Battalion. “And I never thought I’d have to carry a rifle when on a hurricane relief mission. This is a disgrace.”

Spc. Cliff Ferguson of the 527th Engineer Battalion pointed out that he knows there are plenty of decent people in New Orleans, but he said it is hard to stay motivated considering the circumstances.

“This is making a lot of us think about not reenlisting.” Ferguson said. “You have to think about whether it is worth risking your neck for someone who will turn around and shoot at you. We didn’t come here to fight a war. We came here to help.”

Aspidistra Flying

Life in the U.S. military... and out of it... and in it again

My new neighbor is married to a former Air Force guy, a pilot. He recently got out, got a job as a pilot, and moved to our state. They bought a house, she got a job with the county, and they have a toddler. Her husband had done tours (funny word in this context, eh?) in Afghanistan and in Iraq, and he was supposed to be DONE.

Earlier this year, they found out that he was called up again and scheduled to return to Iraq in September. There was nothing they could do about it so they prepared.

She's an environmentalist but I had assumed that she was a conservative because of being married to an enlisted guy. I only learned that she was a left-winged liberal when she said some wonderfully snide political comment, which I applauded while warning her that we were surrounded by born-again, right-wing, conservative, Promise-keeper Republicans. She replied that she had figured that out, but had learned to pass when they were stationed in Texas.

Last Wednesday, she found out her husband will be leaving for Iraq in two weeks. She wasn't in tears when she told me but was visibly upset. All I could tell her was that I was sorry.

kyotey

Baghdad Burning: Riverbend's blogging friend kidnapped

Link: Baghdad Burning.

Friday, July 15, 2005

Prayers for Khalid...

Raed of Raed in the Middle has some very bad news. His brother Khalid of the blog Tell Me a Secret has been abducted by the new Iraqi mukhabarat.

We're all praying he'll be alright and that Allah/God gives his family the strength to make it through this.

Nid3eelek bil salameh wil rijoo3 ila il a7ibeh wil ahal wil 7'irooj min hathihi il mi7neh bi 7'air ya Khalid...

- posted by river @ 12:01 PM

So did General Miller perjure himself, or lie later?

Link: KRT Wire | 07/14/2005 | General contradicted his sworn testimony on Pentagon, Abu Ghraib.

Posted on Thu, Jul. 14, 2005

Fog looks at Italian coverage of the charges against the CIA agents

The evolving coverage from June 25th to June 30th...

6-25-05

More news here at the BBC:

Italy seeks 'CIA kidnap agents'

Italian authorities have issued arrest warrants for 13 people they claim are agents "linked to the CIA".

The imam was allegedly driven to a US military base after his abduction.

The suspects are accused of abducting an Islamic cleric in Milan in 2003 and flying him to Egypt for interrogation.

Osama Mustafa Hassan, also known as Abu Omar, was already being investigated in Italy as part of a terrorism inquiry.

Italian prosecutors believe the operation was part of a controversial US anti-terror policy known as "extraordinary rendition".

The policy involves seizing suspects and taking them to third countries without court approval.

Human rights organisations say some of the countries to which terror suspects have been deported are known to use torture, and critics have branded it "torture by proxy".

The US embassy in Rome has not commented on the arrest warrants issued against the 13 people - 10 men and three women.

Also on Friday, another Milan-based judge issued an arrest warrant for the Egyptian-born imam himself, whose whereabouts are currently unknown.

No arrests have been made. None of the suspects is currently believed to be in Italy.

[...]

I can add that the opposition's MPs have made several demands of urgent explanations to the government. They want to understand if the Italian authorities were aware of the presence of these CIA agents in Italy. If they knew, why they had been left free to act (or worse if they had been helped in the act). If they didn't know, what they are going to do to make sure that this violation of our sovereignity never happens again. The government is expected to answer in the next days.

Fog

6-26-05

Seems that the CIA agents are accused also of "obstruction of justice". When the wife and friends of the imam denounced the kidnapping, the police started the investigations. The CIA head chief in Milan officially told the police that they had been surveilling the man and that they knew he had escaped in Bosnia, probably because he was sick of his wife.

The police archived the investigation, but then the guy was freed (in a sort of parole) from his jail in Egypt and telephoned his wife and a friend in Milan (and told them he had been kidnapped and tortured). They sent a lawyer and alerted the police. The lawyer sent Egyptian doctors to visit Abu Omar (that soon after was rearrested). They found the evidence of the tortures inflicted on him and sent everything to Milan. The package never arrived in Italy.

So it is rumored that the judges accuse the CIA of false declarations, misleadings, suppression of evidence, among the rest.

Fog

6-29-05

This editorial here: http://www.corriere.it/Primo_Piano/Editoriali/2005/06_Giugno/28/venturini.shtml

La svolta trattativista degli Usa

Il pragmatismo e l’incoerenza

di Franco Venturini

It was published on the most important Italian newspaper today. It's in Italian but if you can translate it in a decent way (I'd do it but it's long and it's too hot I gotta go to bed and try to sleep) it's well worth it. Concise and straight to the point, for the series "We're not idiots, we're not without memory"

Another editorial from today's Corriere: (I translate it because it's just too good). From Gianni Riotta (often considered right-wing). This is a MUST READ!

L'arroganza non basterà (Arrogance won't be enough)

L'imam rapito, la Cia, le domande inevase (The kidnapped imam, the CIA, the unanswered questions)

In the usual summer seminars, in the tedious scholarly books, in the bitter memories of the old pioneers, they often bemoan the death of the classical journalist enquiry, considering the anemy that provoked the loss of credibility of the media.

Therefore, we must welcome with joy the reportages from colleagues Guido Olimpio and Paolo Biondani who, thanks to a precise journalistic work, exposed the clandestine operation of the US' CIA to kidnap and secretly move to Egypt Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a.k.a Abu Omar, suspect of organizing
terrorist fundamentalist cells.

Followed in a Milan street, paralyzed with a chemical spray, kidnapped, secretly moved to the Aviano air base, from there to the secret cells of Mubarak's regime, without any legal defense, Abu Omar may divide USA and Italy even more, after the unfortunate epilogue of Sgrena's case, with Nicola Calipari's death. This is a kidnapping that took place on the soil of a sovereign nation, friend and allied of Washington, that bravely helped the after war peace process in Iraq with its troops in Nassyria, that exposed itself to terrorist retaliations as the Madrid one. That the CIA decided to move its commando without informing the italian authorities, between luxury hotels and expenses worth of James Bond's confirms that the US administration still doesn't realize how much the image of the USA is damaged by Guantanamo's chains, by Abu Grahib's pics and by the CIA's secret missions, whose strategic project was exposed yesterday on Corriere by former director of US' Secret Affairs.

[Fog's note: the credit cards used were traced to several very luxurious expenses, your Congress should be interested in how its agents treat themselves, right?]

mr. Robert Baer. What's worth ms. Rice's frank speech that admonished the Egyptian and Saudi allies to open up to democracy, if the CIA sends Abu Omar, illegally kidnapped in Italy, to Cairo to be interrogated with gloves off, without transparency and due process, considered by Washington's hawks as something too soft for wartime? The best American history, from Lincoln to Roosevelt, shows that -even among lights and shadows- it's possible to defend democracy with arms, without snaturating it. Olimpio and Biondani's work shows how important and vigorous is the job of a free press in a free country if it's without games and byzantine second meanings and if it's able to go straight to reality.

[Fog's note: the Corriere is these days object of an attempted takeover by a stocks mogul with unclear
money]

The Corriere's enquiry also brings forth the assumption of serious responsibilities: was it just a "deviate" CIA operation?

[Fog's note: that's the term we use to describe when secret services use their means to do unauthorized or explicitly forbidden things unknown to their superiors-controllers]

Did the White House know? Did the Pentagon know? And up to which level? Did the italian authorities give the green light? Or even a yellow one? Did anyone take part to the briefings, and if so, why did they agree? University of Georgia's professor Peter Spiro is quick: "The US will never collaborate". Probably, but from these pages Abu Omar bounced on the New York Times, the Boston Globe, the Washington Post and the other historical US newspapers, the tv's ABC and CNN, hundred of newspapers worldwide, from the Belfast Telegraph to the british Independent, to the Calgary Sun from Canada to the australian Gold Coast Bulletin. A global chorus that will hardly be silenced. And that is already starting to breach the wall of the White House's official bulleting up to now fixed on its 'no comment's.

Soon the silences, arrogant or embarrassed, won't be enough anymore and they'll have to give the truth, the whole truth, on what appears an evil violation of Italy's sovereign authority.

Here's some more links, unfortunately all in Italian, all from the Corriere della Sera:

Bob, the secret agent without limits: who covered him?

(very highly recommended read)

This covers the US media reactions

6-30-05

Fog answers some questions submitted by members of the Agora:

>1) Is the Corriere a big time paper like the New York Times,
>that is, is it read by most Italians, or is it considered leftist?
>That is, does it represent the anger of most Italians, or do
>most Italians even know about the kidnapping?

It's the most important, more read, more authoritative and one among the
oldest newspapers of Italy. It's usually considered fair and pretty
balanced. The 'experts' say that generally the news are written by
journalists leaning slightly to the left while the editorials (like
yesterday's) by big names leaning more on the right, but usually for the
average reader it's difficult to grasp the difference. The news are on the
front page of every newspaper and tv news.

>2) Has the government, specifically Berlusconi, made an official
>statement of complaint to Bush?

One Minister did, denying thet the government knew of the operation in any
way, and Berlusconi confirmed it. He also summoned the US ambassador for
tomorrow (it's rumored that he did it to complain about the news appeared on
some US newspaper that said that Italy knew).

>I do hope this outrage stays in the public eye, but only if the
>Italian government makes a lot of noice abou it. It is Italy
>who was screwed.

Oh, now that the leftist press has caught the news they won't let it pass so
easily. And the government wants to come out clean. They know they'll have a
hard time no matter what (if they knew, because they did, if they didn't
because they should have!) and surely they will try everything to shift the
blame even more on the US.

Fog

for heavens' sake, don't mention the war

(originally posted at unlocking the air)

A friend of mine has, through offending some god or other, gotten her name carved in stone onto a GOP mailing list. Occasionally, she shares her pain with others, which is how I got a copy of this latest effort of theirs. And as long-term readers will know, I sometimes talk to my mail…

Yesterday's era of Democrats like Franklin Delano Roosevelt and John F. Kennedy brought real ideas and solutions to the table in an attempt to make a better life for the American people.

Yesterday's era of Republicans just hated them for it, too.

Unfortunately, today's Democrat Party is not the one your parents knew.

More's the pity.

Instead, today's Democrats are singularly focused on obstruction and over-the-top rhetoric, adding nothing to raise the level of discourse and address the concerns of Americans. See for yourself, watch this new web video on GOP.com!

Which is NOT singularly focused on obstruction and over-the-top rhetoric! We swear! There's pony rides, too! And free iPods!

The RNC's latest web video illustrates how far the Democrats have gone in debating the people's business in Washington, D.C.

How dare they debate the people's business! Goddamn commie wankers.

Democratic National Committee Chairman Howard Dean says Republicans are pretty much all "white Christians."

That Dean, such a kidder! Why, I personally can attest to at least 80% of Republicans being devil-worshippers.

Senate Minority Leader Harry Reid, Senator Hillary Clinton and House Minority Leader Nancy Pelosi also show that Democrats are without a plan but not without unhelpful rhetoric.

Thank goodness for the unhelpful rhetoric, I was afraid the plan-less thing would sink us.

See for yourself. Watch the newest RNC web video on GOP.com!

It's GOP-ilicious!

Kent State Anniversary

On May 4th, 1970 - 35 years ago today - National Guardsmen opened fire on a crowd of unarmed students at Kent State University. Four students were killed and nine others wounded. We commemorate the 35th anniversary by airing an excerpt of the documentary, "Kent State: The Day the War Came Home" that includes interview with students and National Guardsmen who were there.

Listen/Watch/Read
http://www.democracynow.org/article.pl?sid=05/05/04/1342257

Apidistra Flying