Today's
Stories
April 28, 2006
Werther
Operation Canned Meat and Its Derivatives
April 27, 2006
Winslow T. Wheeler
How Much is the War Costing? How
Many US Troops are Really in Iraq?
Robert Fisk
The United States of Israel?
Juan Santos
Immigration Endgame
Robert Jensen
Why Leftists Distrust Liberals
Dave Lindorff
Making America Safer: One Released
War Crime Victim at a Time
Jose Pertierra
Honor and Injustice:the Case of
the Cuban Five
April 26,2006
Robin Philpot
The Rich Life of Jane Jacobs
Sherry Wolf
Democrats, Their Apologists and Abortion:
the Jig is Up
Pratyush Chandra
Nepal: a Saga of Compromise and Struggle
Joshua Frank
Zig-Zagging Through the War With John
Kerry
Gary
Leupp
The Neo-Cons and Iran: No Negotiations
Bill
Quigley
Katrina: Eight Months Later
April
25, 2006
Paul
Craig Roberts
The World is Uniting Against the Bush Imperium
Linda
S. Heard
Is the US Waging Israel's Wars?: the Prophecy of Oded Yinon
Ralph
Nader
Political Science: Gingrich, "Futurism" and the Abolition
of the OTA
Mike
Whitney
Preparing for the Economic Typhoon
Michael
Donnelly
Lutherans Betray Michigan's Loon Lake Wetlands for Pieces of Silver
Sharon
Smith
Breathing New Life Into May Day
Website
of the Day
SDS Ver. 2
April
24, 2006
Tim
Wise
What Kind of Card is Race?
John
Stanton
Strike Iran, Watch Pakistan and Turkey Fall
Dave
Lindorff
Dangerous Times Ahead
Steve
Shore
Berlusconi Defeated: The Long Wait is Over ... Or Is It?
Amadou
Deme
Hotel Rwanda: Setting the Record Straight
Mickey
Z.
15 Minutes of Radical Fame: America Meets Bill Blum and Ward Churchill
Ralph Nader
Lee
Raymond's Unconscionable Platinum Parachute
Alexander
Cockburn
Obama's Game
Website
of the Day
Too Stupid to Be President?
April
22/23, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The General, GM and the Stryker
Jeff
Halper
SUMUD vs. Apartheid: the Elections in Palestine and Israel
Jeff
Klein
How to Manufacture a War Criminal: Saddam and Me, a True Story
Thomas
P. Healy
Out Now: an Interview with Anthony Arnove
David
Underhill
Stuck in Mobile with the Rev. Graham Blues Again
Lee
Sustar
"We are Going to Keep Marching": an Interview with Immigrant
Rights Organizer Martín Unzueta
Deb
Reich
The Little Mermaid on Highway Six: Rooting for Ordinary Israelis
to Wake Up
John
Chuckman
America's Gulag: Purge at the CIA
Fred
Gardner
More Suppression of Marijuana Research
Julian
Edney
Can Our Economy Run Without Fear?
Seth
Sandronsky
The GOP and California's Levees
Brynne
Keith-Jennings
The Meddlesome Ambassador Trivelli: Undermining Democracy in Nicaragua
Dave
Lindorff
Where are the Frogs?
Catherine
Ann Cullen and Harry Browne
Springsteen Polishes His Roots: First Impressions of "We Shall
Overcome"
Bill
Pahnelas
Bush Passes the Buck on Soaring Gas Prices
Jim
French
Time to Overhaul US Farm Policy
Ron
Jacobs
"I Know I'm Not Dreaming, Because I Can't Sleep Any More"
David
Krieger
The Courage of Sophie Scholl: Resisting Hitler
Jeffrey
St. Clair
Playlist: What I'm Listening to This Week
Poets'
Basement
Buknatski, Engel and Ford
Website
of the Weekend
Eye of the Storm
April
21, 2006
Jonathan
Cook
The Sinister Meaning of Olmert's "Hitkansut":
Deporting Hamas MPs
Lawrence
R. Velvel
Physical Courage, Moral Courage and American
Generals
Evelyn
Pringle
How to Out a CIA Agent
Christopher
Brauchli
The Rich are Different
Pratyush
Chandra
Pure-and-Simple Revolutions in Nepal and Venezuela
Michael
George Smith
This is What a Movement Looks Like
Missy
Comley Beattie
Serving at the Decider's Pleasure
Sarah
Hines
The Bracero Program: 1942-1964
Website
of the Day
Hunger Strike at U. of Miami
April 20, 2006
Chris
Kutalik
As Crisis Deepens, Is Labor Finally
Showing Signs of a Comeback?
Gary Leupp
Cheney, the Neocons and China
Joshua
Frank
Stop the War! Dump the Democrats!
Diane Christian
The Authority to Kill
William
S. Lind
Sweeping Up: the Real Problem Wasn't
the Execution of the War, But the Enterprise Itself
Ramzy
Baroud
A Case for the Palestinan Government
Justin
E.H. Smith
Doctors and Lethal Injection
April 19, 2006
P. Sainath
More Kids? Pay More for Your Water
Norman
Solomon
When Diplomacy Means War: Bait-and-Switch
on Iran
Anthony Papa
When Justice Isn't Blind: Double Standards
for the Rich and Poor in New York
Mike
Ferner
Movement Blues
Stanley Heller
The Massacre at Qana, 10 Years Later:
Still No Justice
Rifundazione
"We Defeated Berlusconi"
Christopher
Reed
Secrets of the Garden of Bliss
Alexander
Cockburn
The Pulitzer Farce
Website of
the Day
Bunker
Busters: the Movie
April 18, 2006
Paul Craig Roberts
How Safe is Your Job?
Eric
Wingerter
Washington Post vs. Venezuela
Juan Santos
What Immigrants Need to Learn from
the Black Civil Rights Movement
Greg
Weiher
The Zarqawi Gambit Revisited
Sam Bahour
Is Hamas Being Forced to Collapse?
Behzad
Yaghmaian
In the Gaze of New Orleans
Website of
the Day
The
FBI and the Jack Anderson Files
April 17, 2006
Kevin Zeese
An Interview with the First Arab-American
Senator: Jim Abourezk on Bush's Lies and the Dems' Complicity
Uri Avnery
Olmert the Fox
Norman Solomon
Why Won't Moveon.Org Oppose the Bombing
of Iran?
John Ross
A Real Day Without Mexicans?
Laila al-Haddad
The Earth is Closing in on Us: Dispatch
from Gaza
Jeffrey Blankfort
A Tale of Two Members of Congress
and the Capitol Hill Police
Website of the Day
Dixie
Chicks: Not Ready to Back Down
April
15 / 16, 2006
Jeffrey
St. Clair
How Star Wars Came to the Arctic
Ralph
Nader
Remembering Rev. William Sloan Coffin
Thaddeus
Hoffmeister
The Ghost of Shinseki: the General Who Was Sent Out to Pasture for
Being Right
Kevin Prosen
/ Dave Zirin
Privilege Meets Protest at Duke
Thomas
P. Healy
Taking Care of What We've Been Given: a Conversation with Wendell
Berry
Kristoffer
Larsson
Are 40 Percent of All Swedes Anti-Semitic?: Anatomy of a Statistical
Flim-Flam
Fred
Gardner
Continuing Medical (Marijuana) Education
Edwin Krales
New York's Katrina: the Hidden Toll of AIDS Among Blacks and the
Poor
Brian
Cloughley
Don't Blitz Iran: Risking the Ultimate Blowback
John Holt
Walking Off Vietnam with Edward Abbey's Surrogate Son
Seth
Sandronsky
What Billionaires Mean By Education Reform: Oprah, Bill Gates and
the Privatization of Public Schools
Rafael Renteria
Making It Plain About New Orleans
Michael
Ortiz Hill
In the Ashes of Lament: an Easter Meditation
William A.
Cook
An Israel Accountability Act
Gideon
Levy
Shooting Nasarin: a Story About a Little Girl
Andrew Wimmer
Stopping the Bush Juggernaut: a New Citizens Campaign
Madis
Senner
Talking Points for Easter Weekend: Jesus Didn't Lie, Mr. Bush
Michael Kuehl
The Sex Police State: Women as "Rapists" and "Pedophiles"?
Mark
Scaramella
When Even God Can't Follow His Own Commandments: the Timeless Scarcasm
of Mark Twain
Nate Mezmer
187 Proof: Living and Dying Hip-Hop
Jesse
Walker
Playlist
Poets' Basement
Engel, Laymon and Subiet
Website
of the Weekend
Pink Serenades Bush
April
14, 2006
Col.
Dan Smith
Candor or Career?: Why Few Top Military Officials
Resign on Principle
Saul Landau
Ho Chi Minh City Moves On Without Regrets
Stan
Cox
The Real Death Tax
Kevin Zeese
Hersh vs. Bush on Iran: Who Would You Believe?
Brian
McKinlay
Bad Times for Bush's Buddies
Howard Meyers
Dwarves, Knives and Freedom: Bush, Jr. is No LBJ
Ishmael
Reed
The Colored Mind Doubles: How the Media Uses Blacks
to Chastize Blacks
Website of
the Day
Asshole: a Film Strip
April
13, 2006
CounterPunch
News Service
Powell's "Bitch"?
Norman
Solomon
The Lobby and the Bulldozer
Stanley Heller
Time to Shake Up the Peace Movement
Jeff
Birkenstein
Bush and Freedom of Speech
Evelyn J.
Pringle
Not So Fast, Mr. Powell
Michael
Donnelly
The Week the Bush Administration Fell Apart
Kamran Matin
Synergism of the Neo-Cons: What's Going On In Iran?
Website
of the Day
"Don't Be Afraid of the Neo-Cons"
April
12, 2006
Vijay Prashad
Resisting Fences
Alan
Maass
The Suicide of Anthony Soltero
Dave Lindorff
Bush's Insane First Strike Policy: If You Don't Want to Get Whacked,
You'd Better Get Your Nation a Nuke ... Fast
Ron
Jacobs
Resistance: the Remedy for Fear
Ramzy Baroud
The Imminent Decline of the American Empire?
Randall
Dodd
How a Wal-Mart Bank will Harm Consumers
Missy Comley
Beattie
The Boy President Who Cried "Wolf!"
P. Sainath
The Corporate Hijack of India's Water
Website of
the Day
"The System is Irretrievably Corrupt"
April
11, 2006
Al
Krebs
Corporate Agriculture's Dirty Little Secret: Immigration
and a History of Greed
Lawrence
R. Velvel
The Gang That Couldn't Leak Straight
Sonia Nettinin
Palestinian Health Care Conditions Under Israeli Occupation
Willliam
S. Lind
The Fourth Plague Hits the Pentagon: Generals as Private Contractors
Robert Ovetz
Endangered Species in a Can: the Disappearance of Big Fish
Pratyush
Chandra
Nepalis Say, "Ya Basta!"
Grant F.
Smith
The Bush Administration's Final Surprise?
Laray
Polk
Loud, Soft, Hard, Quiet: Marching Through Dallas for Immigrant Rights
Francis Boyle
O'Reilly and the Law of the Jungle: How to Beat a Bully on His Home
Turf
José
Pertierra
A Glimpse into the Mindset of Terrorists: Posada Carriles, Orlando
Bosch and the Downing of Cubana Flight 455
Website of
the Day
The Dead Emcee Scrolls
April
10, 2006
Ralph
Nader
Tinhorn Caesar and the Spineless Democrats
Heather Gray
Atlanta and the Assassination of Martin Luther King, Jr.
Uri
Avnery
The Big Wink
Joshua Frank
Big Greens and Beltway Politics: Betting on Losers
Seth
Sandronsky
Immigration and Occupations
Michael Leonardi
The Italian Elections: "Reality is No Longer Important"
Evelyn
Pringle
Did Bush Pull a Fast One on Fitzgerald?
Tom Kerr
FoxNews Does Ward Churchill
Lucinda
Marshall
The Lynching of Cynthia McKinney
Website of
the Day
Brown Berets
April
7 -9, 2006
Alexander
Cockburn
If Only They'd Hissed Barack Obama
Jeffrey
St. Clair
The Saga of Magnequench: Outsourcing US Missile
Technology to China
Patrick
Cockburn
The War Gets Grimmer Every Day
David Vest
The Rebuking and Scorning of Cynthia McKinney
Dave
Lindorff
The Impeachment Clock Just Clicked Forward
Gary Leupp
"Ideologies of Hatred:" What Did Condi Mean?
Elaine
Cassel
The Moussaoui Trial: What Kind of Justice is This?
Saul Landau
Vietnam Diary: Hue Without Rules
James
Ridgeway
"This is Betty Ong Calling": a Short Film
Ron Jacobs
Why Iran was Right to Refuse US Money
John
Walsh
Kerry Advocates Iraqization: Too Little, Too Late
Ramzy Baroud
The US Attitude Toward Hamas: Disturbing Parallels with Nicaragua
Christopher
Brauchli
Bush Finds Democracy Has Its Limits
Todd Chretien
What the Pentagon Budget Could Buy for America
Jonathan
Scott
Javelins at the Head of the Monolith
John Bomar
What They're Saying About Bush in Arkansas
Michele
Brand
Iran, the US and the EU
Ronan Sheehan
Remember When the Irish First Met the Chinese?
Mickey
Z.
Let Us Now Praise OIL
Don Monkerud
March of the Bunglers
Michael
Dickinson
The Rich Young Man: a Miracle Play
Website
of the Weekend
The Case Against Israel and Munich: Compare and Contrast
| April
28, 2006
When Governments Deceive and
Provoke
Operation Canned
Meat and Its Derivatives
By WERTHER
“Mundus
vult decipi” (“the world wants to be deceived”)
Martin Luther (1483-1546)
Item:
On the evening of 31 August 1939, members of the S.S. took a concentration
camp prisoner, Franciszek Honiok, to a German radio station in Gleiwitz
(now Gliwice), on the border with Poland. S.S. operatives then broadcast
a message in Polish urging Poles living in Silesia to attack Germans.
After administering a lethal injection to Honiok, the operatives
shot the corpse to simulate his having been shot while attacking
the radio station. The German government invited police officials
and the members of the press corps to view Honiok’s corpse
as evidence of a Polish attack. As the S.S. referred to concentration
camp inmates used for this purpose as “canned goods,”
the operation became known to history (once it was revealed during
the Nuremberg Tribunal) as “Operation Canned Meat.”
Item:
During the late 1940s through the mid-1950s, the Strategic Air Command
ordered RB-29s, RB-36s, and RB-47s into Soviet air space, ostensibly
to test Soviet air defenses and reconnoiter defense installations.
The appearance of those aircraft being identical to their nuclear
weapon-equipped stable mates, it raises the question of precisely
what the United States government intended, given that the country
whose sovereignty was being violated by military aircraft was nuclear
armed, declared hostile, and presumed to be paranoid. Stalin was
in power at this time.[1]
Item:
On 13 March 1962, the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, General
Lyman Lemnitzer, submitted a document to Secretary of Defense Robert
McNamara. It proposed as part of an anti-Castro program (Operation
Mongoose), staging the assassinations of Cubans living in the United
States, developing a fake “Communist Cuban terror campaign
in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even in Washington,”
including “sink[ing] a boatload of Cuban refugees (real or
simulated),” faking a Cuban air force attack on a civilian
jetliner, and fabricating a major incident by blowing up a U.S.
ship in Cuban waters and blaming the incident on Cuban sabotage.
The attack on the jetliner was an elaborate false-flag operation
that involved unmanned drones. [2] The specific plan was dropped;
however, covert operations under the rubric of Mongoose continued.
These included poisoning the Cuban sugar cane fields.
Item:
On 5 August 1964, President Johnson announced in an address to the
nation that U.S. naval vessels on routine patrol were attacked on
the high seas by North Vietnamese forces. He thereupon ordered bombing
attacks on North Vietnam. Subsequently, Congress passed the Gulf
of Tonkin Resolution (78 Stat. 384), officially recognizing the
presumed fact and authorizing use of military force. The North Vietnamese
attacks, however, were apparently imaginary. And the ships in question
were covering South Vietnamese fast boats on raids into North Vietnamese
territorial waters; the operation was known as OPLAN 34-A. Daniel
Ellsberg, who was on duty at the Pentagon the night of the incident,
claims the U.S. vessels were on a so-called DeSoto mission inside
territorial waters to probe North Vietnamese radars.
Item:
According to a British government memo seen by Phillipe Sands, a
Queen’s Council and professor of international law at University
College, London, discussions between the President of the United
States and the British Prime Minister prior to the invasion of Iraq
included discussion of provocations. The President told the Prime
Minister that “the U.S. was so worried about the failure to
find hard evidence against Saddam that it thought of ‘flying
U2 reconnaissance aircraft planes with fighter cover over Iraq,
painted in UN colors.’” [3] The evident intent was to
provoke a military reaction, justifying an invasion.
Item:
For more than a year, the press has reported, with gauzy and anonymous
sourcing, the overflights of U.S. reconnaissance drones within the
Islamic Republic of Iran. The apparent hope of the authors of these
operations is that the Iranians would turn on their radars. We also
hear stories of special operations into that country, courtesy of
the irrepressible Seymour Hersh. New York Times reporter James Risen
recounts in his book State of War (published January 2006) the intriguing
tale of a U.S. attempt to plant a bogus nuclear bomb recipe on the
Iranians--a plan that backfired. There is also the tale of a “found”
Iranian laptop brimming with nuclear secrets. Why do one’s
thoughts turn to Ahmed Chalabi, Michael Ledeen, and Yellowcake?
And there is this latest bulletin, an obscure Reuters dispatch,
reproduced in full below. [4]
What
are we to conclude from this tour d’horizon of history’s
dark crevices? We can hardly guess at the implications. Some incidents
led to horrifying carnage; some fizzled out; one at least is indeterminate
as of this writing. And for every incident like those recounted
here, how many others have gone unrecorded?
Looking
back on our historical period from the perspective of geological
time, some ethereal intelligence might disdainfully surmise that
the then-dominant species, being after all merely a belligerent
primate, had devised deceitful behavior in order to give rise to
incidents allowing him to vent his primitive aggressive impulses.
At the same time, he could beat his chest in simian rage about being
the aggrieved party.
That
is speculation. But man, the naked ape, has occasionally risen above
his degraded condition to make more cerebral conclusions than the
norm. In 1946, the Nuremberg Tribunal deposed the perpetrator of
Operation Canned Meat, S.S. Sturmbannfuhrer (Major) Alfred Naujocks,
who testified to his role in the incident. Hearing of such outrages
against the peace, the chief prosecutor at the tribunal, Justice
Robert Jackson, was moved to say this:
"We
must make clear to the Germans that the wrong for which their leaders
are on trial is not that they lost the war, but that they started
it. And we must not allow ourselves to be drawn into a trial of
the causes of the war, for our position is that no grievances or
policies will justify resort to aggressive war. It is utterly renounced
and condemned as an instrument of policy."
And
again this:
“Let
me make clear that while this law is first applied against German
aggressors, the law, if it is to serve a useful purpose, must condemn
aggression by any other nations, including those which sit here
now in judgment. We are able to do away with domestic tyranny and
violence and aggression by those in power against the rights of
their own people only when we make all men answerable to the law.”
Werther is the pen name of a Northern Virginia-based
defense analyst.
[1]
In his Air University (and thus quasi-official) 225-page tome, A
Need to Know: The Role of Air Force Reconnaissance in War Planning,
1945-1953, author John Thomas Farquhar, Lt. Col., USAF (Ret.) claims
that he can find no documentation of such flights (page 162, footnote
18). How odd that a retired SAC pilot, Col. Hal Austin, posted a
story on the internet asserting he flew such a mission in an
RB-47.
And
Walter Boyne, the unofficial bard of the world’s most expensive
flying club, states in Air
Force Magazine, the journal of the Air Force Association, that
more than 200 SAC pilots were killed in shoot-downs over or on the
periphery of Soviet air space:
[2]
That the United States government was thinking so far ahead, at
a period when airplane hijackings were virtually unheard of, may
be of interest to scholars on the subject of airline security and
may enrich their understanding of the hijacking phenomenon. The
JCS document may be viewed here: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf
[3]
http://politics.guardian.co.uk/iraq/story/0,,1700881,00.html
[4]
Iran shells Kurd positions in Iraq: Kurd official
Fri Apr 21, 2006 7:16 AM ET
SULAIMANIYA,
Iraq (Reuters) - Iranian forces shelled Iranian Kurdish guerrilla
positions inside mountainous northern Iraq early on Friday morning
to repel an attack, a Kurdish official said.
"This
morning Iranian Kurdish fighters infiltrated the border into the
Iranian side and the Iranian army bombed the area and repelled them.
The shelling hit Iraqi land at Sidakan," said Saadi Pira, an
official of the Iraqi Kurdish, Patriotic Union of Kurdistan, party.
There
was no word on casualties in the shelling of the Iranian Kurdish
rebels of the PJAK movement.
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