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EX-STATE DEPT.SECURITY OFFICER SPELLS OUT 9/11 COVER-UP
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Today's Stories March 1, 2006 Tom
Reeves February 28, 2006 Sen.
Russ Feingold Ralph
Nader Joshua
Frank Aziz
Haniffa Benjamin Dangl Norman Solomon Mike
Ferner Sharon
Smith Website
of the Day
February 27, 2006 Buncombe
/ Cockburn Paul
Craig Roberts Ingmar
Lee Ron
Jacobs Dave
Lindorff Pat
Wolff Lila
Rajiva Website
of the Day
February 25 / 26, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Lila
Rajiva Lee
Sustar Jennifer
Van Bergen / Madis Senner Justin
E.H. Smith Paul
Craig Roberts Jason
Leopold Gilad
Atzmon Zahid
Shariff Fred
Gardner Dick
J. Reavis David
Stocker John
Bomar Mike
Marqusee Pratyush
Chandra Ben
Tripp Dr.
Susan Block Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
February 24, 2006 Alan
Maass William
S. Lind Dave
Lindorff Pierre
Tristam Meg
Bannerji Robert
Jensen Mark
Engler Jennifer
Loewenstein Website
of the Day
February 23, 2006 Chet
Richards Jonathan
Feldman Joshua
Frank Ron
Jacobs Amira
Hass Samah
Sabawi Norman
Solomon Christopher
Reed Website
of the Day
February 22, 2006 Robert
Pollin Phil
Doe Pirouz
Azadi Saul
Landau Brian
McKinlay Sam
Smith Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Diane
Farsetta Website
of the Day
February 21, 2006 Paul
Craig Roberts Franklin
Spinney Dave
Lindorff Alevtina
Rea Bruce
K. Gagnon Dave
Zirin Bill
Quigley Website
of the Day
February 20, 2006 Jennifer
Van Bergen Rachard
Itani Gideon
Levy Joshua
Frank Newton
Garver Pratyush
Chandra Seth
Sandronsky Cockburn
/ St. Clair Website
of the Day
February 18 / 19, 2006 Werther Uzma
Aslam Khan Joe
DeRaymond Edward
F. Mooney Paul
Craig Roberts Elaine
Cassel P.
Sainath Thomas
P. Healy Brian
Concannon, Jr. Fred
Gardner Rep.
Cynthia McKinney Brian
Tokar Chan
Chee Khoon Andrew
Freedman St.
Clair / Walker Poets'
Basement Website
of the Weekend
February 17, 2006 Floyd
Rudmin Gervasio
Rodríguez Gary
Leupp Ramzy
Baroud Amira
Hass Matthew
Koehler Niranjan
Ramakrishnan Debbie
Nathan Website
of the Day
Febrauary 16, 2006 Lila
Rajiva Norman
Solomon Ron
Jacobs Paul
Craig Roberts Website
of the Day
February 15, 2006 Brian
Conacnnon, Jr. Dave
Lindorff Saree
Makdisi Joshua
Frank Amira
Hass CounterPunch
Wire Robert
Bryce Website
of the Day February 14, 2006 John
Sugg Don
Santina William
A. Cook Ray
McGovern John
Ross Website
of the Day
Lila
Rajiva Christopher
Brauchli Dave
Lindorff Ron
Jacobs Mike
Whitney Michael
Neumann Website
of the Day
February 11 / 12, 2006 Alexander
Cockburn Ralph
Nader Paul Craig
Roberts Pat Williams Fred Gardner Saul Landau John Chuckman Roger Burbach Seth Sandronsky Website of
the Weekend
February 10, 2006 Carl
G. Estabrook Sen.
Russell Feingold Roxanne
Dunbar----Ortiz Saree Makdisi Website of
the Day
February 9, 2006 Dave Lindorff Mike Marqusee Paul Craig Roberts Peter Phillips William S. Lind Christine Tomlinson Innocent Targets in the "Long War": False Positives and Bush's Eavesdropping Program Will Youmans Robert Robideau Richard Neville Peter Rost Website of the Day
February 8, 2006 Ron Jacobs Stan Cox Sen. Russ Feingold Robert Jensen Rep. Cynthia McKinney Niranjan Ramakrishnan Don Monkerud David Swanson C.L. Cook Christopher
Fons Jeffrey Ballinger Website of
the Day
February 7, 2006 Edward Lucie-Smith Robert Fisk Paul Craig Roberts Neve Gordon Joshua Frank Peter Montague Jackie Corr Jeffrey St.
Clair Website of the Day
February 6, 2006 Christopher
Brauchli Robert Fisk John Chuckman Jenna Orkin Paul Craig
Roberts
February 4 / 5, 2006 Alexander Cockburn Mike Ferner James Petras Alan Maass Fred Gardner Ralph Nader Bill Glahn Saul Landau Laura Carlsen James Brooks Mike Roselle John Holt Sarah Ferguson William S.
Lind Niranjan Ramakrishnan Seth Sandronsky Derrick O'Keefe Michael Donnelly Ron Jacobs Elisa Salasin St. Clair / Vest Stew Albert Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
February 3, 2006 Toufic Haddad Heather Gray Tim Wise Conn Hallinan Eva Golinger Daniel Ellsberg Dave Zirin Robert Bryce Website of
the Day
February 2, 2006 Winslow T.
Wheeler Stan Cox Rachard Itani Mike Whitney Amira Hass Norman Solomon Michael Simmons Christopher
Reed Website of the Day
February 1, 2006 Sharon Smith Jason Leopold Cindy Sheehan Joseph Grosso Earl Ofari Hutchinson Steven Higgs Robert Robideau R. Siddharth Jim Retherford Rep. Cynthia
McKinney Paul Craig
Roberts Website of
the Day
January 31, 2006 Jeffrey St.
Clair Clancy Chassay Dave Lindorff Niranjan Ramakrishnan Oren Ben-Dor Winslow Wheeler John Ryan Mike Marqusee Ron Jacobs Andrew Cockburn Website of
the Day
January 30, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Winslow Wheeler Niranjan Ramakrishnan Marcus Dam John Bomar Ben Beachy Gideon Levy Michael Carmichael Missy Comley
Beattie Norman Solomon Brian Concannon,
Jr. Michael Ratner Website of
the Day
January 28 / 29, 2006 Alexander Cockburn
Ralph Nader Col. Dan Smith Paul Craig Roberts Tammara Rosenleaf Ron Jacobs Harry Browne Fred Gardner Christopher
Reed Bernard Chazelle Daniel Wolff Tom Kerr Asad Abu Khalil Chris Murphy Dr. Susan Block Kathy Deacon St. Clair /
Walker / Palmer / Shields Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
Suren Pillay Lawrence R.
Velvel J.L. Chestnut,
Jr Uri Avnery Gary Leupp Samar Assad Jeffrey St.
Clair Website of the Day
January 26, 2006 Robert Robideau Paul Craig
Roberts Gilad Atzmon Jason Leopold Joshua Frank Dave Lindorff Susan Lee Missy Comley Beattie Michael Carmichael Michael Neumann Website of
the Day
January 25, 2006 Saul Landau James Petras Lawrence R.
Velvel Vijay Prashad Kevin Zeese Alison Weir Bruce K. Gagnon Joan Roelofs Website of
the Day
January 24, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Kathy Kelly Jorge Mariscal Winslow T.
Wheeler John Walsh Youmans / Muaddi Roger Burbach Fr. Gerard
Jean-Juste Noam Chomsky Website of
the Day
Uri Avnery Susan Pynchon William Loren
Katz Christopher Brauchli Chris Floyd Joshua Frank Norman Solomon Jackie Corr Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
January 21/22, 2006 Tim Shorrock Ralph Nader Peter Feng Brian Cloughley Michael Donnelly Tom Kerr Dave Lindorff Daniel Wolff Fred Gardner Jason Leopold Matthew Koehler John Bomar Ron Jacobs Becky Akers Joanne Mariner St. Clair / Walker / Pollack Poets' Basement Website of the Day
Brian J. Foley Richard Gott Joshua Frank Pierre Tristam Bernstein /
Allegretto Elizabeth Schulte Website of
the Day
January 19, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Bill Simpich Kevin Alexander
Gray Sam Husseini Sam Smith Monica Benderman Winslow T.
Wheeler Website of the Day
January 18, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Norman Solomon Jonathan M.
Feldman Michael Carmichael Paul D'Amato Cynthia McKinney Norman Finkelstein Website of the Day
January 17, 2006 M. Shahid Alam John Ross Tariq Ali Michael Donnelly Amira Hass Doug Giebel Bill Quigley Ron Jacobs Mike Stark Werther
John Walsh Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Roger Burbach Norman Solomon Robert Jensen Sam Husseini Paul Craig
Roberts Website of the Day
January 14 / 15, 2006 Alexander Cockburn JoAnn Wypijewski James Petras Ron Jacobs Brian Cloughley Marianne McDonald Bruce Tyler Wick Fred Gardner Flavia Alaya Gary Leupp Dr. Susan Block Nicole Colson Jeffrey Kolakowski Missy Comley
Beattie Charles Thomson St. Clair /
Walker / Vest Poets' Basement Website of
the Weekend
January 13, 2006 Ralph Nader Leonard Weinglass Amira Hass Chris Kutalik
/ Jennifer Biddle Lawrence R. Velvel Dave Lindorff Mike Whitney David Price
January 12, 2006 Jennifer Van
Bergen Jeremy Brecher / Brendan Smith Lawrence R.
Velvel Ralph Nader / Robert Weissman Jackie Corr Jared Bernstein Russell D.
Hoffman Aubrey Streit Clancy Sigal Website of the Day
January 11, 2006 Kevin Zeese Ray McGovern Allan Maass
/ Joe Allen Earl Ofari
Hutchinson Annie Murphy Allan Lichtman Ramzy Baroud Joshua Frank Kathleen and
Bill Christison Website of
the Day
January 10, 2006 Uri Avnery Saul Landau Noam Chomsky Brian J. Foley Lenni Brenner Ronan Sheehan Paul Craig
Roberts
January 9, 2006 Behzad Yaghmaian George Bisharat Dave Lindorff Norman Solomon Christopher Brauchli Aharon Shabtai Andrew Cockburn
January 7 / 8, 2006 Lawrence Velvel James Petras J.L. Chestnut Mike Ely Andrew Wilson Lila Rajiva William Cook Ramor Ryan Thomas Kleine-Brockhoff Peter Montague Ron Jacobs Neve Gordon Fred Gardner Josh Mahon Dr. Susan Block Jeffrey St. Clair Poets' Basement Website of the Weekend
January 6, 2006 José
Pertierra Joe Allen Winslow T. Wheeler John Bomar Jason Leopold Norman Solomon Robert Pollin
January 5, 2006 Scott Boehm Zoltan Grossman Heather Gray Haninah Levine Pierre Tristam Remi Kanazi Gilad Atzmon Kathleen and
Bill Christison
January 4, 2006 Ron Jacobs Lila Rajiva Huibin Amee
Chew Pat Williams Linda Milazzo Nick Dearden James Petras Website of
the Day
January 3, 2006 James Ridgeway Laith al-Saud Dick J. Reavis Joshua Frank Rochelle Gause Missy Comley
Beattie Paul de Rooij
January 2, 2006 Paul Craig
Roberts Clancy Sigal Cindy Sheehan Alexander Cockburn
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March 1, 2006 An Aussie PerspectiveSpinning Us to War with IranBy ANTONY LOEWENSTEIN During former US President Bill Clinton's recent trip to Australia, he said the two greatest threats facing the 21st century were terrorism and global warming. The Age welcomed Clinton's presence in Melbourne as the coming of an almost god-like figure. "While much of the world's population struggles simply to survive", it breathlessly offered, "large numbers of the rest of us are searching for heroes." The fact that Clinton oversaw the bulk of sanctions against Iraq, and the death of over 500,000 men, women and children, was airbrushed out of existence. For the Age, Clinton wasn't Bush or a Republican, and therefore a person worth respecting. Clinton was right on one issue, however. Global warming is a major problem and still largely side-lined by governments and mainstream media alike. Readers of the UK Guardian on February 8 were treated to this striking piece of news: "Sweden is to take the biggest energy step of any advanced western economy by trying to wean itself off oil completely within 15 years - without building a new generation of nuclear power stations. The attempt by the country of 9 million people to become the world's first practically oil-free economy is being planned by a committee of industrialists, academics, farmers, car makers, civil servants and others, who will report to parliament in several months." Sweden is the first Western country to attempt such an endeavour and yet the news was ignored in Australia. Instead, our self-appointed terrologists, "war on terror" devotees and fear-mongering government prefer to focus the public's attentions on the next target of liberation: Iran. As the quagmire in Iraq deepens, and Islamophobia becomes both politically correct and encouraged, the same blood-stained figures that led us into Saddam's lair are now trying to achieve a similar result next-door. Perhaps somebody should inform John Howard. He told Southern Cross Radio on February 27 that Iraq is "inching towards a more stable future" and foreign troops were needed for the "stabilisation process." In reality, the occupation is the main source of the ongoing insurgency. The fact that Howard is lying is dismissed as part of the political game. In the UK, there are currently moves to ensure politicians promise to never lie while in office. The chairman of the Committee on Standards in Public Life, Sir Alaistair Graham, says that the public demands politicians "tell it as it is and own up to mistakes." Taking a country to war on a lie would hopefully classify as a "mistake." We live in an environment where Muslims are portrayed as backward, looking for Western assistance and irrationally violent. Take this example from UK columnist Julie Burchill, writing in Haaretz on February 17:
Perhaps Muslims need a good dose of Western invasion and occupation. And Iran is the next victim. A poll taken in the US in mid February suggested that people believe Iran will develop nuclear weapons but also use them against the United States. We are constantly told that Iran is a "threat". Barry Cohen, federal Labor MP from 1969-1990 and a minister in the Hawke government, informed readers in the Australian on February 17 that Iran was led by fanatics and desired to destroy Israel with nuclear weapons. "The fanatics don't care if they die", he wrote, "On the contrary, many will welcome it. At the risk of being repetitive we have a problem." His solution wasn't articulated, but he clearly believed that military strikes against Iran were both necessary and urgent. The Iranian people a recent report said that untold thousands of civilians would die in a US attack were clearly irrelevant. Larry Derfner, a senior journalist and columnist at the Jerusalem Post, offered another perspective. He believed that Iran was going to get nuclear weapons whether the West liked it or not. His answer, however, was for Israel to build "more and better nuclear weapons of its own." This kind of "deterrence", Derfner wrote, "works well." He also encouraged the Jewish state to develop better chemical and biological weapons than Iran. The lunatics have most certainly taken over the asylum. Witness Republican Senator John McCain, who told US television last Sunday that, "The Iranian threat to the world is the biggest since the Cold War." What he meant to say, of course, is that the Iranian threat is the biggest since the Iraqi threat, which is the biggest since the Taliban threat. The world asked Saddam Hussein to "prove a negative" and insisted he prove that he did not have weapons of mass destruction. Now we are asking Iran to prove another negative: that it is not developing nukes. Common sense teaches us that it is impossible to prove that something does not exist. The rise of a supposedly nuclear Iran is not to be tolerated, we're informed, but India and Pakistan can build their arsenals with Western blessing. Israel's open secret of between 200 and 500 nuclear warheads isn't even susceptible to international inspections, while Iran has allowed UN inspectors to comb the country looking for weapon's material. It should be noted that North Korea has undoubtedly learnt the best way to avoid US invasion. Build a bomb - maybe a few - and watch the world suddenly lower the rhetoric. The inevitability of some kind of Western offensive against Iran is gathering steam. Even ABC Radio's PM is not immune. In mid-February, host Mark Colvin interviewed an English professor on international affairs and asked him how the West should deal with the "Iranian nuclear threat." John Pilger recently explained in the New Statesman how we are being set up again:
The deputy head of Russia's foreign intelligence service told a Russian daily on February 22 that his country had no evidence Iran had any nuclear warheads or a sufficient amount of plutonium for constructing them. Flynt Leverett, former senior director for Middle East affairs in the US National Security Council (NSC) revealed in late February that the Bush administration deliberately sabotaged Iran's assistance on al-Qaeda in the period after September 11, as the mullahs had many contacts in Afghanistan and were willing to share them with Washington. Furthermore, even though Iranian officials assisted the US in unseating the Taliban in Afghanistan, the neo-conservatives were determined to isolate Iran and include it in the "axis of evil." It is therefore unsurprising that Iran would feel the need to at least explore its nuclear options in response to US aggression. Perhaps the biggest bomb-shell - as yet unreported in the mainstream media - lies in the case of Valerie Plame, a former CIA agent outed by the Bush administration after her husband, Joe Wilson, challenged White House allegations about Iraq allegedly obtaining uranium from Niger. The Raw Story website discovered in mid-February that one of the main reasons Plame may have been outed was because she was working on discovering Iran's nuclear capabilities, if any, and represented a direct threat to the neo-con agenda. In other words, by removing Plame from the scene, the US intelligence community was virtually blind in determining Iran's nuclear progress - the neo-con's ideal situation. Step forward the same charlatans and war-freaks who led us into Iraq. We live in an age of extreme spin. The US Government Accountability Office released a report in mid February that revealed the Bush administration spent at least US$1.6 billion on public relations and advertising campaigns over 30 months. It is a startling though unsurprising figure. The Bush regime recently asked Congress for a further US$75 million to broadcast US radio and television into Iran, assist Iranians to study in America and support pro-democracy groups inside the Islamic state. Since 9/11, however, many students of the Arab world have decided to shun the US and study elsewhere. Aside from overly repressive entry requirements, many Muslims feel marginalised in the land of the free. Free speech is also under attack, with Senator Lindsay Graham recently suggesting to Attorney General Alberto Gonzales that a new target for the administration's domestic spying operations should be so-called "fifth columnists", allegedly disloyal Americans who sympathise and collaborate with the enemy. Presumably tens of millions of Americans are guilty as charged, both questioning and challenging the spurious "war on terror." The situation in Iran remains uncertain. I, for one, am not suggesting Iran's leadership hasn't made inflammatory or outrageous comments, not least President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's suggestion that Israel should be "wiped off the map" and denial of the Jewish Holocaust. Such statements are both unacceptable and repulsive, though the priorities of the European Jewish Congress to file a complaint in the International Criminal Court in the Hague against the Iranian leader, for incitement to genocide, seems misplaced. Rather than focusing on leaders who have actually caused death and destruction take Bush, Blair and Howard in Iraq and the estimated toll of over 100,000 dead the Jewish group wanted the world to focus on a country that poses no direct threat to anybody. Sadly, Israel and many of its supporters are at the forefront of demonising Iran and advocating military action. Not unlike Iraq, Iran is a perceived threat to the Jewish state and must therefore be obliterated. Israeli generals and politicians know Iran is not a serious threat but they never underestimate the political need to create a regional bogeyman to rally an ever-fearful Israeli population. One of the great unspoken truths about the so-called "war on terror" has been the ascendency of Iran. Iranian influence now stretches through Iraq, through the Kurdistan region into Turkey, a weak Syria and through into Lebanon's Hezbollah-dominated south, on Israel's border. Iran's reach also extends into the Arabian peninsula through Shiite communities scattered in the Persian Gulf countries. The US is fearful that as their regional influence is waning, a religious doctrine is taking its price. What better way to distract public opinion than a trumped-up scare campaign? The Financial Times reported last week that US marines are already launching probes into Iran's ethnic minorities in an attempt to determine whether Iran "would be prone to a violent fragmentation along the same kind of fault lines that are splitting Iraq." It should be noted that China is rushing to complete a deal worth as much as US$100 billion that would allow a Chinese state-owned energy firm to take a leading role in developing a massive oil field in Iran. Clearly, not everybody is worried about Tehran. When Murdoch's pro-war mouthpiece, the Australian, tells its readers that "the media must not become the tool of propagandists", we truly know that responsible commentary is dead. Fancy the Australian telling us about propaganda, an institution more than willing to support the neo-liberal agenda in the far corners of the globe. The paper's editorial on February 16 concluded: "The distortion of accuracy and loss of trust among a wider public that looks at biased news coverage, smells a rat, and switches off is only part of the danger. The other, more sinister, side of the equation is that any old despot can ensure favourable coverage of his regime, so long as he presents a properly anti-Western front. Venezuela's Hugo Chavez, for one, is a master of this tactic. When news judgments are clouded by a warmed-over postmodernism that filters every conflict through a cloudy lens of class and power struggles, and where the US is the worst bad guy of all, totalitarians and terrorists turn the West's hard-won free press into their own ministry of propaganda." The total failure of the Iraq project should not be taken as a comforting reason the US and its allies would not attack Iran. The storm clouds are nearly upon us. The US and Israel are gathering public opinion on board for yet another illegal and immoral intervention. It is the media's duty to stop it. Unfortunately, the corporate media's sole responsibility is to make money in the marketplace. Truth already comes a distant second to happy shareholders. Antony Loewenstein is a Sydney-based freelance journalist and author. He is currently writing a book on the Israel/Palestine conflict for Melbourne University Publishing, due July 2006. Random House will publish his next book, on the Australian media, in 2007. He website is at http://www.antonyloewenstein.com/ He can be reached at antloew
[at] yahoo.com.au |
from CounterPunch Books! The Case Against Israel By Michael Neumann Grand Theft Pentagon: Tales of Greed and Profiteering in the War on Terror by Jeffrey St. Clair Sick of sit-on-the-Fence speakers, tongue-tied and timid? CounterPunch Editors Alexander Cockburn and Jeffrey St Clair are available to speak forcefully on ALL the burning issues, as are other CounterPunchers seasoned in stump oratory. Call CounterPunch Speakers Bureau, 1-800-840-3683. Or email beckyg@counterpunch.org. |