Octafish
Octafish's JournalWhat it's ALL about...
"Money trumps peace." -- George W Bush, pretzeldentin' on Feb. 14, 2007
Been that way, pretty much non-stop, since Smedley Butler was a pup.
Blood soaked fiends.
When it comes to making money, Columbia is wicked awesome!
Ask Richard Grasso (left, photo below), then-head of the New York Stock Exchange, as he gives a nice warm hug to Raul Reyes, (photo, right) then-living FARC #2.
The Real Deal: The Ultimate New Business Cold Call
NYSE's Richard Grasso and the Ultimate New Business "Cold Call"
Monday, 18 February 2002, 10:13 am
Column: Catherine Austin Fitts
Lest you think that my comment about the New York Stock Exchange is too strong, let's look at one event that occurred before our "war on drugs" went into high gear through Plan Colombia, banging heads over narco dollar market share in Latin America.
In late June 1999, numerous news services, including Associated Press, reported that Richard Grasso, Chairman of the New York Stock Exchange flew to Colombia to meet with a spokesperson for Raul Reyes of the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Columbia (FARC), the supposed "narco terrorists" with whom we are now at war.
The purpose of the trip was "to bring a message of cooperation from U.S. financial services" and to discuss foreign investment and the future role of U.S. businesses in Colombia.
Some reading in between the lines said to me that Grasso's mission related to the continued circulation of cocaine capital through the US financial system. FARC, the Colombian rebels, were circulating their profits back into local development without the assistance of the American banking and investment system. Worse yet for the outlook for the US stock market's strength from $500 billion - $1 trillion in annual money laundering - FARC was calling for the decriminalization of cocaine.
To understand the threat of decriminalization of the drug trade, just go back to your Sam and Dave estimate and recalculate the numbers given what decriminalization does to drive BIG PERCENT back to SLIM PERCENT and what that means to Wall Street and Washington's cash flows. No narco dollars, no reinvestment into the stock markets, no campaign contributions.
It was only a few days after Grasso's trip that BBC News reported a General Accounting Office (GAO) report to Congress as saying: "Colombia's cocaine and heroin production is set to rise by as much as 50 percent as the U.S. backed drug war flounders, due largely to the growing strength of Marxist rebels"
CONTINUED...
http://www.scoop.co.nz/stories/HL0202/S00069.htm
The Shah was developed for the BFEE
BFEE Overthrew Iranian Democracy for BP
PS: Thank you for the heads up on the Mercedes, FarCenter. Faszinierende.
For telling the truth about Bush and Iraq, Robert Scheer lost his LA Times gig to Jonah Goldberg.
Tick me off. So, the guy started his own web portal, TruthDig.com, which is BETTER than the the LA Times:The Good Germans in Government
Posted on Jun 25, 2013
By Robert Scheer
What a disgrace. The U.S. government, cheered on by much of the media, launches an international manhunt to capture a young American whose crime is that he dared challenge the excess of state power. Read the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution and tell me that Edward Snowden is not a hero in the mold of those who founded this republic. Check out the Nuremberg war crime trials and ponder our current contempt for the importance of individual conscience as a civic obligation.
Yes, Snowden has admitted that he violated the terms of his employment at Booz Allen Hamilton, which has the power to grant security clearances as well as profiting mightily from spying on the American taxpayers who pay to be spied on without ever being told that is where their tax dollars are going. Snowden violated the law in the same way that Daniel Ellsberg did when, as a RAND Corporation employee, he leaked the damning Pentagon Papers study of the Vietnam War that the taxpayers had paid for but were not allowed to read.
In both instances, violating a government order was mandated by the principle that the United States trumpeted before the world in the Nuremberg war crime trials of German officers and officials. As Principle IV of what came to be known as the Nuremberg Code states: “The fact that a person acted pursuant to order of his government or of a superior does not relieve him from responsibility under international law, provided a moral choice was in fact possible to him.”
That is a heavy obligation, and the question we should be asking is not why do folks like Ellsberg, Snowden and Bradley Manning do the right thing, but rather why aren’t we bringing charges against the many others with access to such damning data of government malfeasance who remain silent? ..................(more)
CONTINUED...
http://www.truthdig.com/report/item/the_good_germans_in_government_20130625/
Some backstory for those wondering how a tiny magazine in 1966 should've been a wake-up call for America's "Free" press:
Vietnam Withdrawal Plans
The 1990s saw the gaps in the declassified record on Vietnam filled in—with spring 1963 plans for the complete withdrawal of U.S. forces. An initial 1000 man pullout (of the approximately 17,000 stationed in Vietnam at that time) was initiated in October 1963, though it was diluted and rendered meaningless in the aftermath of Kennedy's death. The longer-range plans called for complete withdrawal of U. S. forces and a "Vietnamization" of the war, scheduled to happen largely after the 1964 elections.
The debate over whether withdrawal plans were underway in 1963 is now settled. What remains contentious is the "what if" scenario. What would Kennedy have done if he lived, given the worsening situation in Vietnam after the coup which resulted in the assassination of Vietnamese President Diem?
At the core of the debate is this question: Did President Kennedy really believe the rosy picture of the war effort being conveyed by his military advisors. Or was he onto the game, and instead couching his withdrawal plans in the language of optimism being fed to the White House?
The landmark book JFK and Vietnam asserted the latter, that Kennedy knew he was being deceived and played a deception game of his own, using the military's own rosy analysis as a justification for withdrawal. Newman's analysis, with its dark implications regarding JFK's murder, has been attacked from both mainstream sources and even those on the left. No less than Noam Chomsky devoted an entire book to disputing the thesis.
But declassifications since Newman's 1992 book have only served to buttress the thesis that the Vietnam withdrawal, kept under wraps to avoid a pre-election attack from the right, was Kennedy's plan regardless of the war's success. New releases have also brought into focus the chilling visions of the militarists of that era—four Presidents were advised to use nuclear weapons in Indochina. A recent book by David Kaiser, American Tragedy, shows a military hell bent on war in Asia.
CONTINUED with very important IMFO links:
http://www.history-matters.com/vietnam1963.htm
Important, yet little-reported, history about President Kennedy and Vietnam, courtesy of The Education Forum operated by the great DUer John Simkin :
'SPOOKS' MAKE LIFE MISERABLE FOR AMBASSADOR LODGE
'Arrogant' CIA Disobeys Orders in Viet Nam
Richard Starnes
The Washington Daily News, Wednesday, October 2, 1963, p.3
SAIGON, Oct.2 - The story of the Central Intelligence Agency's role in South Viet Nam is a dismal chronicle of bureaucratic arrogance, obstinate disregard of orders, and unrestrained thirst for power.
Twice the CIA flatly refused to carry out instructions from Ambassador Henry Cabot Lodge, according to a high United States source here.
In one of these instances the CIA frustrated a plan of action Mr. Lodge brought with him from Washington because the agency disagreed with it.
This led to a dramatic confrontation between Mr. Lodge and John Richardson, chief of the huge CIA apparatus here. Mr. Lodge failed to move Mr. Richardson, and the dispute was bucked back to Washington. Secretary of State Dean Rusk and CIA Chief John A. McCone were unable to resolve the conflict, and the matter is now reported to be awaiting settlement by President Kennedy.
It is one of the developments expected to be covered in Defense Secretary Robert McNamara's report to Mr. Kennedy.
Others Critical, Too
Other American agencies here are incredibly bitter about the CIA.
"If the United States ever experiences a 'Seven Days in May' it will come from the CIA, and not from the Pentagon," one U.S. official commented caustically.
("Seven Days in May" is a fictional account of an attempted military coup to take over the U.S. Government.)
CIA "spooks" (a universal term for secret agents here) have penetrated every branch of the American community in Saigon, until non-spook Americans here almost seem to be suffering a CIA psychosis.
An American field officer with a distinguished combat career speaks angrily about "that man at headquarters in Saigon wearing a colonel's uniform." He means the man is a CIA agent, and he can't understand what he is doing at U.S. military headquarters here, unless it is spying on other Americans.
Another American officer, talking about the CIA, acidly commented: "You'd think they'd have learned something from Cuba but apparently they didn't."
Few Know CIA Strength
Few people other than Mr. Richardson and his close aides know the actual CIA strength here, but a widely used figure is 600. Many are clandestine agents known only to a few of their fellow spooks.
Even Mr. Richardson is a man about whom it is difficult to learn much in Saigon. He is said to be a former OSS officer, and to have served with distinction in the CIA in the Philippines.
A surprising number of the spooks are known to be involved in their ghostly trade and some make no secret of it.
"There are a number of spooks in the U.S. Information Service, in the U.S. Operations mission, in every aspect of American official and commercial life here, " one official - presumably a non-spook - said.
"They represent a tremendous power and total unaccountability to anyone," he added.
Coupled with the ubiquitous secret police of Ngo Dinh Nhu, a surfeit of spooks has given Saigon an oppressive police state atmosphere.
The Nhu-Richardson relationship is a subject of lively speculation. The CIA continues to pay the special forces which conducted brutal raids on Buddhist temples last Aug. 21, altho in fairness it should be pointed out that the CIA is paying these goons for the war against communist guerillas, not Buddhist bonzes (priests).
Hand Over Millions
Nevertheless, on the first of every month, the CIA dutifully hands over a quarter million American dollars to pay these special forces.
Whatever else it buys, it doesn't buy any solid information on what the special forces are up to. The Aug. 21 raids caught top U.S. officials here and in Washington flat-footed.
Nhu ordered the special forces to crush the Buddhist priests, but the CIA wasn't let in on the secret. (Some CIA button men now say they warned their superiors what was coming up, but in any event the warning of harsh repression was never passed to top officials here or in Washington.)
Consequently, Washington reacted unsurely to the crisis. Top officials here and at home were outraged at the news the CIA was paying the temple raiders, but the CIA continued the payments.
It may not be a direct subsidy for a religious war against the country's Buddhist majority, but it comes close to that.
And for every State Department aide here who will tell you, "Dammit, the CIA is supposed to gather information, not make policy, but policy-making is what they're doing here," there are military officers who scream over the way the spooks dabble in military operations.
A Typical Example
For example, highly trained trail watchers are an important part of the effort to end Viet Cong infiltration from across the Laos and Cambodia borders. But if the trailer watchers spot incoming Viet Congs, they report it to the CIA in Saigon, and in the fullness of time, the spooks may tell the military.
One very high American official here, a man who has spent much of his life in the service of democracy, likened the CIA's growth to a malignancy, and added he was not sure even the White House could control it any longer.
Unquestionably Mr. McNamara and Gen. Maxwell Taylor both got an earful from people who are beginning to fear the CIA is becoming a Third Force co-equal with President Diem's regime and the U.S. Government - and answerable to neither.
There is naturally the highest interest here as to whether Mr. McNamara will persuade Mr. Kennedy something ought to be done about it.
SOURCE:
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7534&mode=threaded
ADDENDUM from Education Forum writer:
“The most important consequence of the Cold War remains the least discussed. How and why American democracy died lies beyond the scope of this introductory essay. It is enough to note that the CIA revolt against the presidency of John Fitzgerald Kennedy – the single event which did more than any other to hasten its end – was, quite contrary to over forty years of censorship and deceit, both publicly anticipated and publicly opposed.
No American journalist worked more bravely to thwart the anticipated revolt than Scripps-Howard’s Richard Starnes. His ‘reward’ was effectively to become a non-person, not just in the work of mainstream fellow-journalists and historians, but also that of nominally oppositional Kennedy assassination writers. It could have been worse: John J. McCone, Director of Central Intelligence, sought his instant dismissal; while others within the agency doubtless had more drastic punishment in mind, almost certainly of the kind meted out to CBS’ George Polk fifteen years earlier.
This time, shrewder agency minds prevailed. Senator Dodd was given a speech to read by the CIA denouncing Starnes in everything but name. William F. Buckley, Jr., suddenly occupied an adjacent column. In short, Starnes was allowed to live, even as his Scripps-Howard career was put under overt and intense CIA scrutiny - and quietly, systematically, withered on the Mockingbird vine.”
From “Light on a Dry Shadow,” the preface to ‘Arrogant’ CIA: The Selected Scripps-Howard Journalism of Richard T. Starnes, 1960-1965 (provisionally scheduled for self-publication in November 2006).
As far as I am aware, the remarkable example (above) of what Claud Cockburn called “preventative journalism” has never appeared in its entirety anywhere on the internet. Instead, readers have had to make do with the next-day riposte of the NYT’s Arthur Krock. The latter, it should be noted, was a veteran CIA-mouthpiece and messenger boy.
Dick Starnes was 85 on July 4, 2006. He remains, in bucolic retirement, a wonderfully fluent and witty writer; and as good a friend as any Englishman could wish for.
I dedicate the despatch’s web debut to Judy Mann, in affectionate remembrance.
http://educationforum.ipbhost.com/index.php?showtopic=7534
--------------------
The Education Forum is an outstanding resource for those interested in President Kennedy, his administration, and his assassination.
From what we've learned in the last few years is that Lodge also was disregarding orders -- from President Kennedy.
JFK said, ''No'' to those wanting war at least four times.
Even though they knew their invasion plans were compromised, the CIA and Pentagon tried to force Kennedy to make war over the Bay of Pigs.
While an attack on Soviet missile bases in Cuba and on ships at sea would escalate to nuclear war, the Pentagon and most of the Cabinet tried to force Kennedy to make war, nuclear if necessary -- the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Pentagon and the Hawks in Congress and his Cabinet recommended war in Vietnam and southeast Asia to stop the spread of Communism, Kennedy sent volunteers -- which he ordered out by the end of 1964 -- but said he would never commit U.S. draftees to fight in another country's civil war, Vietnam.
Most troublesome to me, seeing how the Hawks lied America into invading Iraq twice in the last 22 years, DCI Allen Dulles and Chairman of the Joint Chiefs Lyman Lemnitzer counseled Kennedy to order an all-out nuclear attack on the Soviet Union in Fall of 1963 -- the optimal time for a successful pre-emptive war.
Two Bullets
And it's a whole different world.
Consider, please, what happened when Archduke Ferdinand got killed at that hairpin turn in Sarajevo. Not predicting anything, but just warning about unintended consequences of military action in Syria and the greater Middle East.
From Eyewitness to History
The Assassination of Archduke Ferdinand, 1914:
Two bullets fired on a Sarajevo street on a sunny June morning in 1914 set in motion a series of events that shaped the world we live in today. World War One, World War Two, the Cold War and its conclusion all trace their origins to the gunshots that interrupted that summer day.
The victims, Archduke Franz Ferdinand - heir to the throne of the Austro-Hungarian Empire, and his wife Sophie, were in the Bosnian city in conjunction with Austrian troop exercises nearby. The couple was returning from an official visit to City Hall. The assassin, 19-year-old Gavrilo Princip burned with the fire of Slavic nationalism. He envisioned the death of the Archduke as the key that would unlock the shackles binding his people to the Austro-Hungarian Empire.
SNIP...
The road to the maneuvers was shaped like the letter V, making a sharp turn at the bridge over the River Nilgacka (Miljacka). Francis Ferdinand's car could go fast enough until it reached this spot but here it was forced to slow down for the turn. Here Princip had taken his stand.
Hairpin turns. History. Hmm. Sounds familiar, for some reason. Back to the present day...
Once I would have written, "Before We the People allow our elected leaders to rush into war on Syria." Now, I have to write, "Before our elected leaders rush into war on Syria" because they have not shown the least concern with the will of We the People for a long time now.
Nevertheless, I have to write and ask DU and all who read this: Do you really want to see the United States start something that could quickly devolve into World War III?
Saudi rOils worried about losing credit...
...at the casino.
PLUSH: THE DINING FACILITIES ON BOARD
SAUDI PRINCE AL-WALEED BIN TALAL’S PRIVATE BOEING 747
BTW, anyone seen Bandar Bush lately?
If Saddam is Hitler then who is George Bush? Analogical mapping between systems of social roles.
Spellman, Barbara A.; Holyoak, Keith J.
Journal of Personality and Social Psychology, Vol 62(6), Jun 1992, 913-933.
The analogy between World War II and the 1991 Persian Gulf crisis led people to construct a coherent system of roles for the participants in the Gulf crisis. The Analogical Constraint Mapping Engine (ACME), a model of analogical mapping by constraint satisfaction (K. J. Holyoak & P. Thagard, 1989), makes predictions about the types of correspondences people are likely to draw between the people and countries in these analogs. Both a survey (Exp 1) and an experimental study (Exp 2) revealed clear evidence that people have a strong tendency to generate mappings that honor certain basic coherence constraints. In Exp 3, with science-fiction materials, further evidence for the generality of these constraints was obtained. Computer simulations of Exps 2 and 3 using ACME yielded mappings similar to those generated by Ss. General models of analogical reasoning may have implications for everyday understanding of complex systems of social roles. (PsycINFO Database Record (c) 2012 APA, all rights reserved)
http://psycnet.apa.org/?&fa=main.doiLanding&doi=10.1037/0022-3514.62.6.913
CIA holds many JFK assassination documents that need to see the light of day.
50 years later, sealed JFK files still raise questionsSerious researchers and conspiracy theorists alike note that several hundred pages of investigative documents related to the assassination of President John F. Kennedy remain classified. Many questions hinge on a deceased CIA agent and his activities before the assassination.
By David Porter, Associated Press
Christian Science Monitor / August 17, 2013
Five decades after President John F. Kennedy was fatally shot and long after official inquiries ended, thousands of pages of investigative documents remain withheld from public view. The contents of these files are partially known — and intriguing — and conspiracy buffs are not the only ones seeking to open them for a closer look.
Some serious researchers believe the off-limits files could shed valuable new light on nagging mysteries of the assassination — including what US intelligence agencies knew about accused assassin Lee Harvey Oswald before Nov. 22, 1963.
It turns out that several hundred of the still-classified pages concern a deceased CIA agent, George Joannides, whose activities just before the assassination and, fascinatingly, during a government investigation years later, have tantalized researchers for years.
"This is not about conspiracy, this is about transparency," said Jefferson Morley, a former Washington Post reporter and author embroiled in a decade-long lawsuit against the CIA, seeking release of the closed documents. "I think the CIA should obey the law. I don't think most people think that's a crazy idea."
Morley's effort has been joined by others, including G. Robert Blakey, chief counsel for a House investigation into the JFK assassination in the 1970s. But so far, the Joannides files and thousands more pages primarily from the CIA remain off-limits at a National Archives center in College Park, Md.
CONTINUED...
http://www.csmonitor.com/USA/Latest-News-Wires/2013/0817/50-years-later-sealed-JFK-files-still-raise-questions
Al Gore Tears Into NSA Defenders: 'We Don’t Do Dial Groups On The Bill Of Rights'
by Evan McMurry
MEDIAite.com, 11:17 pm, June 14th, 2013
Former Vice President Al Gore was quick and vociferous in denouncing the NSA’s surveillance programs when they were revealed last week, and he continued his intense critique on Friday.
[font color="blue"]“This in my view violates the Constitution,” Gore told The Guardian. “The Fourth Amendment and the First Amendment and the Fourth Amendment language is crystal clear. It is not acceptable to have a secret interpretation of a law that goes far beyond any reasonable reading of either the law or the Constitution and then classify as top secret what the actual law is.”
Whereas many high-profile Democrats have defended the practice as necessary to stop terror plots, Gore remained steadfast in his belief that the surveillance programs went against the spirit, if not the letter, of the law, saying “I quite understand the viewpoint that many have expressed that they are fine with it and they just want to be safe but that is not really the American way.”[/font color]
When asked about public support for surveillance, which wavers depending on which survey you consult, Gore replied, “I am not sure how to interpret polls on this, because we don’t do dial groups on the Bill of Rights.”
[font color="blue"]“I think that the Congress and the administration need to make some changes in the law and in their behavior so as to honor and obey the Constitution of the United States,” he said. “It is that simple.”[/font color]
CONTINUED w links...
http://www.mediaite.com/online/al-gore-tears-into-nsa-defenders-we-don%E2%80%99t-do-dial-groups-on-the-bill-of-rights/
PS: He does get it, Pholus. Do you think Albert G. will run in '16? I sure hope so.
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