Let's get down to Basics: Terrorism 101

Washingtonsblog:

Sunday, September 12, 2010The Warped Mission of the American Military: "Out-Terrorize the Terrorists"

A number of American soldiers are blowing the whistle on the American military practice of indiscriminately killing Iraq civilians - by randomly firing bullets in a 360 degree circle - anytime that an improvised explosive device hits a U.S. soldier.

As Truthout notes:

Both [specialists Ethan McCord and Josh Stieber] say they saw their mission as a plan to "out-terrorize the terrorists," in order to make the general populace more afraid of the Americans than they were of insurgent groups.

In the interview with [Constitutional lawyer Scott] Horton, Horton pressed Stieber:

"... a fellow veteran of yours from the same battalion has said that you guys had a standard operating procedure, SOP, that said - and I guess this is a reaction to some EFP attacks on y'all's Humvees and stuff that killed some guys - that from now on if a roadside bomb goes off, IED goes off, everyone who survives the attack get out and fire in all directions at anybody who happens to be nearby ... that this was actually an order from above. Is that correct? Can you, you know, verify that?

Stieber answered:

"Yeah, it was an order that came from Kauzlarich himself, and it had the philosophy that, you know, as Finkel does describe in the book, that we were under pretty constant threat, and what he leaves out is the response to that threat. But the philosophy was that if each time one of these roadside bombs went off where you don't know who set it ... the way we were told to respond was to open fire on anyone in the area, with the philosophy that that would intimidate them, to be proactive in stopping people from making these bombs ..."

Terrorism is defined as:

The use of violence and threats to intimidate or coerce, especially for political purposes.

So McCord and Stieber are correct: this constitutes terrorism by American forces in Iraq.

Of course, America's institutionalized policy of torture (see this and this) is also terrorism. As I pointed out last year:

An article today in Der Spiegel describes a study on the use of torture over the last couple of thousand years:

A new book, ["Extreme Violence in the Visuals and Texts of Antiquity"] by Martin Zimmerman, a professor of ancient history in Munich, looks at current research into the kinds of violence that inspired "loathing, dread, horror and disgust."

In the ancient Far East, where there were large states peopled by many different ethnicities, leaders demonstrated their might by inventing ingenious new tortures and agonizing methods of execution -- as a way to keep the population obedient...

The issue of state-sanctioned torture to achieve political goals is still a current one.

The study reinforces what I wrote last year:

Listen to the testimony to Congress by a representative of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services:

"Governments that use torture intend to intimidate their citizens in order to maintain control; those who are tortured become examples of the consequences of dissent."

Indeed, this is a well-known tactic for brutal regimes. Take Zimbabwe, for example:

"Victims and eyewitnesses told Human Rights Watch that [Zimbabwe’s brutal regime] has set up detention centers . . . to round up and instill fear in suspected political opponents."

Torture is a form of terrorism, plain and simple.

As the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services director told Congress:

"... torture is the deliberate mental and physical damage caused by governments to individuals to ... terrorize society."

And the U.S. policy of assassinating people all over the world (including Americans) - without trial - is a form of terrorism as well.

Unfortunately, this is nothing new. As the former director of the National Security Agency said:

By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism - in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation.

(the audio is here).

And as Truthout points out, the 360 degree firing on innocent bystanders is most definitely a war crime:

High-level orders to kill civilians in the context of retaliation for attacks on forces have already been successfully prosecuted as a war crime. In 1944, German SS Obersturmbannführer Herbert Kappler ordered the execution of civilians in the ratio of ten to one for every German soldier killed in a March 1944 attack by Italian partisans. Kappler was sentenced to life in prison. The executions took place in the Caves of Ardeatine in Italy, and were made into the subject of a movie starring Richard Burton. None of the lower-ranking soldiers who actually carried the order out were prosecuted.

***

The attack which spurred the World War II German commander's retaliatory executions, intended as collective punishment for not informing on partisans, was an IED planted in a garbage container. Kappler's rank was the equivalent of a lieutenant colonel.

The ironic thing is that top conservative and liberal terrorism experts say that torture and other war crimes increase terrorism and reduce national security.

And terrorism is bad for the economy as well.

Homeland Security at Work

Does this sound familiar....?

savanahnow.com:

Effingham deputies call feds after arresting Russians with shovel, wire cutters outside Georgia Power plant

Posted: September 9, 2010 - 6:05pm | Updated: September 9, 2010 - 7:31pm

By DeAnn Komanecky

SPRINGFIELD — Effingham County sheriff deputies have reported the early Sunday morning arrest of three men to the federal Joint Terrorism Task Force.

The men, two from Russia and one from Kazakhstan, were found near Georgia Power’s Plant McIntosh on Old Augusta Road about 1 a.m. Sunday after a ranger with the Department of Natural Resources reported a suspicious vehicle, Effingham County sheriff’s spokesman David Ehsanipoor said.

Deputies reported the men, who were inside a 1995 Nissan Pathfinder, had a machete, shovel, wire cutters and ski masks. One man also had black silk stockings in his front left pocket.

Arrested were Evgeniy Luzhetskiy, of Kazakhastan Nail Idiatullin and Rustem Ibragimov of Russia. All three reported they lived in Charleston, S.C., deputies reported.

The men were all charged with possession of tools during the commission of a crime.

The three were released after being interviewed by task force members, Ehsanipoor said.

"They did all have visas that allowed them to be here and are supposed to be leaving the country soon."

Somehow I missed this US Senate testimony by Brzezenski

Here's the straight scoop from the guy who invented the concept of War in Afghanistan.

http://web.archive.org/web/20070206230803/http://www.senate.gov/%7Eforeign/testimony/2007/BrzezinskiTestimony070201.pdf

SFRC Testimony -- Zbigniew Brzezinski
February 1, 2007

Mr. Chairman:
Your hearings come at a critical juncture in the U.S. war of choice in Iraq,
and I commend you and Senator Lugar for scheduling them.

It is time for the White House to come to terms with two central realities:

1. The war in Iraq is a historic, strategic, and moral calamity.
Undertaken under false assumptions, it is undermining America’s
global legitimacy. Its collateral civilian casualties as well as some
abuses are tarnishing America’s moral credentials. Driven by
Manichean impulses and imperial hubris, it is intensifying regional
instability.

2. Only a political strategy that is historically relevant rather than
reminiscent of colonial tutelage can provide the needed framework for
a tolerable resolution of both the war in Iraq and the intensifying
regional tensions.

If the United States continues to be bogged down in a protracted bloody
involvement in Iraq, the final destination on this downhill track is likely to
be a head-on conflict with Iran and with much of the world of Islam at large.
A plausible scenario for a military collision with Iran involves Iraqi failure
to meet the benchmarks; followed by accusations of Iranian responsibility
for the failure; then by some provocation in Iraq or a terrorist act in the U.S.
blamed on Iran; culminating in a “defensive” U.S. military action against
Iran that plunges a lonely America into a spreading and deepening quagmire
eventually ranging across Iraq, Iran, Afghanistan, and Pakistan.

A mythical historical narrative to justify the case for such a protracted and
potentially expanding war is already being articulated. Initially justified by
false claims about WMD’s in Iraq, the war is now being redefined as the
“decisive ideological struggle” of our time, reminiscent of the earlier
collisions with Nazism and Stalinism. In that context, Islamist extremism
and al Qaeda are presented as the equivalents of the threat posed by Nazi
Germany and then Soviet Russia, and 9/11 as the equivalent of the Pearl
Harbor attack which precipitated America’s involvement in World War II.

Ian Welsh explains how the right thing morally is usually also the best thing practically

This is so true, and the fact that it's commonly ignored is so sad...

The right thing to do

2010 August 25

by Ian Welsh

What makes me saddest of all things in the world is this: the vast majority of the time the right thing to do morally is the right thing to do in terms of broad self-interest, and yet we don’t believe that and we do the wrong thing, thinking we must, thinking that we’re making the “hard decisions”.

This spans the spectrum of issues. It doesn’t matter whether you’re talking about foreign affairs, where the money used on Iraq and Afghanistan could have rebuilt America and made it more prosperous. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about health care, where everyone knew that the right thing to do was single payer or some other form of comprehensive healthcare, which would have reduced bankruptcies massively, saved 6% of GDP and massive numbers of lives. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the financial crisis, where criminally prosecuting those who engaged in fraud (the entire executive class of virtually ever major financial firm) and nationalizing the major banks, wiping out the shareholders and making the bondholders eat their losses was the right thing to do, and didn’t happen. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about drug policy, where the “war on drugs” has accomplished nothing except destabilizing multiple countries and giving the US the largest prison population proportional to population in the entire world and where legalizing marijuana, soft opiates and coca leaves would save billions of dollars, reduce violence, help stabilize Mexico and would help tax receipts. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about food, where we subsidize the most unhealthy foods possible and engage in practices which have reduced the nutritional content of food by 40% in the last half century. It doesn’t matter if you’re talking about environmental pollutants, which have contributed to a massive rise in chronic diseases so great it amounts to an epidemic.

And on, and on, and on.

Now the fact is that there is no free lunch. When you spend money on war, you can’t spend it on education or health or crumbling infrasture or civilian technology. When you allow oligopolies to control the marketplace and buy up politicians, the cost of that is a decreased standard of living. When you refuse to deal effective with externalized health pollution, whether from soda pop or carcinogens, you pay for that with the death of people you care for from heart disease, cancer and other illnesses.

The response is “we have to do this to protect ourselves/to make a profit”.

No, you don’t. America would be more prosperous and just as safe if you didn’t waste trillions on wars and a bloated military whose purpose isn’t to protect you but to beat on foreigners (who is going to invade the US? No one. Next.) You would be happier if you did not allow health pollution because you and your loved ones would be healthier and it’s damn hard to be happy when you or your loved ones get cancer, or diabetes, or asthma and so on. Cheap consumer goods do not make up for it and the costs are so high that it’s questionable that the consumer goods ARE cheap—you’re just paying for them in illness and health care bills.

All of these things are moral wrongs. We know it’s wrong to invade other countries that haven’t attacked us. We know that it’s wrong to put illness inducing substances into the air or food. We know that we shouldn’t subsidize high fructose corn syrup and that if we’re going to subsidize food we should subsidize healthy food. We know that’s immoral, yet we do it anyway.

One of the great ironies of human society is that we create it ourselves, but as individuals and even groups we feel powerless to control what we created. We forged our own chains, and can’t get out of them.

But the first step to freeing ourselves from our chains is to stop telling ourselves that the moral thing to do isn’t the right thing to do in practical terms. The right thing to do… is the right thing to do. When we refuse to do the right thing, instead we impoverish ourselves and our loved ones, we make ourselves sick and we kill ourselves. When we do horrible things to other people, we make them hate us, and then they try and do horrible things to us.

Doing the wrong thing, the immoral thing, is almost never the practical thing if you care about the well-being of yourself, your children, your friends and your family. It always blows back. If you’re lucky, you may die before the cost comes to bear, but that’s only if you’re lucky, and in the American context, if you aren’t dead yet, you probably aren’t going to get lucky.

So do the right thing. Not just because it is the right thing morally, but because it’s the right thing to do for you and your loved ones in a very practical way.

"Throwing money at the problem (Afghanistan) exacerbates the problem"

Funny. This sounds exactly like what I was getting at in the previous post below.

This is the final paragraph of the profile on General Stanley McChrystal in the upcoming issue of Rolling Stone Magazine. He's seen to be a brilliant, driven, canny, crafty tactician with extraordinary experience and skill, all being squandered on a mistake. Brilliance in the service of a misguided mission seems to me a tragic blunder.

Rolling Stone.com:

After nine years of war, the Taliban simply remains too strongly entrenched for the U.S. military to openly attack. The very people that COIN seeks to win over – the Afghan people – do not want us there. Our supposed ally, President Karzai, used his influence to delay the offensive, and the massive influx of aid championed by McChrystal is likely only to make things worse. "Throwing money at the problem exacerbates the problem," says Andrew Wilder, an expert at Tufts University who has studied the effect of aid in southern Afghanistan. "A tsunami of cash fuels corruption, delegitimizes the government and creates an environment where we're picking winners and losers" – a process that fuels resentment and hostility among the civilian population. So far, counterinsurgency has succeeded only in creating a never-ending demand for the primary product supplied by the military: perpetual war. There is a reason that President Obama studiously avoids using the word "victory" when he talks about Afghanistan. Winning, it would seem, is not really possible. Not even with Stanley McChrystal in charge.

This article appears in in RS 1108/1109 from July 8-22, 2010, on newsstands Friday, June 25.

Warlord cash flow is a positive feedback loop

Follow the Money! Follow the Money! The secret to why we engage in useless, seemingly-counterproductive wars! What is the magic of Privatization? Why is it profitable to convince people to slaughter each other? Follow the Money!

Notice how the Warlords are filling exactly the same niche as Prince's Blackwater Xe, as are a large majority of the Taliban. Mercenaries. Roughly 60% of "our" forces in Afghanistan are now mercenaries.*

IanWelsh.net:

June 22, 2010

by Dave Anderson

The BBC, among many other news agencies, are reporting on a Congressional investigation into Afghan security contractors and the US supply lines. The gist of the story is simple; privatizing convoy protection means pumping massive amounts of money into warlords who have every incentive to inflate the need for their services while also minimizing their risk. That means staging elaborate ‘faux’ ambushes and paying off insurgent groups that are strong enough to overrun convoys that are under their protection.

The document states that trucks carrying food, water, fuel, and ammunition may be supplying up to $4 million (£2.7m) per week to the firms.

A US congressional committee is expected to hear the evidence on the investigation from senior officials at the US Department of Defense later on Tuesday.

‘Vast protection racket’The congressional subcommittee that carried out the investigation says that bribes are paid to the Taliban and virtually every governor, police chief and local military commander whose territory the convoys pass through.

One of the security companies in question is alleged to be owned by two cousins of the Afghan President Hamid Karzai.

The report released late on Monday says the security agreements violate laws on the use of private contractors, as well as US Department of Defense regulations.

The report states that “although the warlords do provide guards and coordinate security, the contractors have little choice but to use them in what amounts to a vast protection racket”.

This is not surprising. Rumbles of this have been making the press for months now. Smart bloggers have been pointing out the logic and incentive structure of warlordism and decentralized armed groups cutting deals for local interests instead of American interests for even longer. The same basic set-up occurred in Iraq as local reconstruction funds were often paid to ‘respectable’ businessmen and tribal elites who then distributed the cash to their supporters as well as to insurgent groups through a bewildering array of kickbacks and sub-contractors to the subcontractors.The anti-government insurgencies in both Iraq and Afghanistan continued to grow as the US poured more money into each respective nation. The crumbs that fell off the US funded gravy train were more than sufficient to arm and sustain fighters who were able to deny the US its maximalist objectives. The more we spend in Afghanistan, the more crumbs we generate, and the more the Taliban and other anti-government and anti-US groups can raise. It is a nasty positive feedback loop that won’t be broken unless the United States, and more importantly Barrack Obama realizes he can take the short term domestic political hit of abandoning maximal goals and embracing a minimal and much cheaper goal set.

That is unlikely due to the revolt of the generals, fear of being called weak, a possibility of a Republican House in 2011, and the shut-down of the only Keynesian spending Blue-Dog Democrats and Republicans will support, military Keynesian spending.

*This from the Washington Post, 12-15-2010:

The CRS study says contractors made up 69 percent of the Pentagon's personnel in Afghanistan last December, a proportion that "apparently represented the highest recorded percentage of contractors used by the Defense Department in any conflict in the history of the United States." As of September, contractor representation had dropped to 62 percent, as U.S. troop strength increased modestly.

This from Bloomberg.com, 3-10-2009:

Vice President Joe Biden said at least 70 percent of Taliban guerrillas in Afghanistan are mercenaries who could be persuaded to lay down their arms, stepping up U.S. calls for outreach to “moderate” elements of the insurgency.

An oddball Global Warming Analogy:

More energy retained in the global weather system=more energetic storms, more extremes of hot and cold, draughts and floods.

More money into a war=more graft and corruption, more mercenaries killing other mercenaries, as well as more civilians, breeding more energetic terrorist storms, as well as more extremes of all kinds.

This might require a post of its own...

The War Racket (latest installment)

I just came across this post on Cryptogon.com:

Trillions in Resources & Funding Our Enemies

June 16th, 2010

Via: David Degraw:

Wherever there is a war, look for CIA/IMF/private military war profiteers covertly funding and supporting BOTH sides in order to keep the wars raging and the profits rolling in. As former CIA Station Chief John Stockwell explained: “Enemies are necessary for the wheels of the US military machine to turn.”

and it led me to David Degraw's site, which led me to these two stories of his, which are both exhaustive and exhausting to read, but amass a host of information into a pith, tragic narrative:

Af-Pak War Racket: the Obama Illusion Comes Crashing Down

Global War Racket Exposed: Trillions in Resources & Funding Our Enemies

Supreme Court: No Day in Court for Canadian Rendition Victim Maher Arar

Here's the story from the Center for Constitutional Rights, the folks who represented the victim in court.

Again, it leaves us with the question, what exactly is the function of our judiciary?

CCRJustice.org:

CCR Calls on President, Congress to Apologize and Compensate Arar for Rendition to Torture in Syria

Contact: press@ccrjustice.org

June 14, 2010, New York – Today, the United States Supreme Court decided not to hear the Center for Constitutional Rights (CCR) case on behalf of Canadian citizen Maher Arar against U.S. officials for their role in sending him to Syria to be tortured and detained for a year. The decision of the U.S. Court of Appeals for the Second Circuit, which the Supreme Court declined to review, was decided on the legal ground that Congress, not the courts, must authorize a remedy. As a result, the substance of Mr. Arar’s case, first filed in January 2004, has never been heard and now never will be.

Mr. Arar said, “Today's decision eliminates my last bit of hope in the judicial system of the United States. When it comes to ‘national security’ matters the judicial system has willingly abandoned its sacred role of ensuring that no one is above the law. My case and other cases brought by human beings who were tortured have been thrown out by U.S. courts based on dubious government claims. Unless the American people stand up for justice they will soon see their hard-won civil liberties taken away from them as well.”

Last month, the Obama administration chose to weigh in on Mr. Arar’s case for the first time. The Obama administration could have settled the case, recognizing the wrongs done to Mr. Arar as Canada has done. (Canada conducted a full investigation, admitting wrongdoing, exonerated Mr. Arar, apologized, and paid him $10 million in damages for their part in his injuries.) Yet the Obama administration chose to come to the defense of Bush administration officials, arguing that even if they conspired to send Maher Arar to torture, they should not be held accountable by the judiciary.

Said CCR cooperating attorney David Cole, "The courts have regrettably refused to right the egregious wrong done to Maher Arar. But the courts have never questioned that a wrong was done. They have simply said that it is up to the political branches to fashion a remedy. We are deeply disappointed that the courts have shirked their responsibility. But this decision only underscores the moral responsibility of those to whom the courts deferred – President Obama and Congress – to do the right thing and redress Arar's injuries."

Lower courts concluded that Mr. Arar’s suit raised too many sensitive foreign policy and secrecy issues to allow his case to proceed, and that therefore it was the role of the political branches to authorize a remedy.

Mr. Arar alleges that the U.S. officials named in the suit conspired with Syrian officials to have him tortured in Syria, delivered Mr. Arar to his torturers, provided them with a dossier on him and questions to ask him, and obtained the answers tortured out of him. The legal arguments in the case revolved around whether U.S. officials can be sued for damages if that is the only remedy available to the victim, whether the officials acted “under color of foreign law” when they conspired with Syria to have Mr. Arar tortured there, and whether Mr. Arar has a right to pursue his claims under the Fifth Amendment and the Torture Victim Protection Act.

Said CCR Senior Attorney Maria LaHood, “The Supreme Court has effectively condoned torture by denying Maher’s right to seek a remedy. It is now up to President Obama and Congress to apologize to Maher for what the Bush administration did to him, to make clear that our laws prohibiting torture apply to everyone, including federal officials, and to hold those officials accountable.”

For more on Mr. Arar’s case, including a timeline and links to videos, court papers and other documents, go to http://ccrjustice.org/ourcases/current-cases/arar-v.-ashcroft.

Katherine Gallagher of CCR, and Jules Lobel, professor at University of Pittsburgh Law School and CCR cooperating attorney, are co-counsel in Mr. Arar’s case.

The Center for Constitutional Rights represents other victims of the Bush administration’s programs, from Iraqis tortured and abused at Abu Ghraib prison to Muslim and Arab men rounded up and abused in immigration sweeps in the U.S. in the aftermath of 9/11, to Guantánamo detainees and their families.


BACKGROUND

Mr. Arar, a Syrian-born Canadian citizen, was detained at JFK Airport in September 2002 while changing planes on his way home to Canada. The Bush administration labeled him a member of Al Qaeda and sent him not to Canada, his home and country of citizenship, but against his will to Syrian intelligence authorities renowned for torture. He was tortured, interrogated and detained in a tiny underground cell for nearly a year before the Syrian government released him, stating they had found no connection to any criminal or terrorist organization or activity.

In January 2004, just three months after he returned home to Canada from his ordeal, CCR filed a suit on Mr. Arar’s behalf against John Ashcroft and other U.S. officials, the first to challenge the government’s policy of “extraordinary rendition,” also known as “outsourcing torture.”

The Canadian government, after an exhaustive public inquiry, found that Mr. Arar had no connection to terrorism and, in January 2007, apologized to Mr. Arar for Canada’s role in his rendition and awarded him a multi-million-dollar settlement. The contrast between the two governments’ responses to their mistakes could not be more stark, say Mr. Arar’s attorneys. Both the Executive and Judicial branches of the United States government have barred inquiry and refused to hold anyone accountable for ruining the life of an innocent man.

Two Congressional hearings in October 2007 dealt with his case. On October 18, 2007 Mr. Arar testified via video at a House Joint Committee Hearing convened to discuss his rendition by the U.S. to Syria for interrogation under torture. During that hearing – the first time Mr. Arar testified before any U.S. governmental body – individual members of Congress publicly apologized to him, though the government still has not issued a formal apology. The next week, on October 24, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice admitted during a House Foreign Affairs Committee Hearing that the U.S. government mishandled his case.

The Court of Appeals case was heard a second time in December 2008 before twelve Second Circuit judges after a rare decision in August 2008 to rehear the case sua sponte, that is, of their own accord before Mr. Arar had even sought rehearing. On November 2, 2009, the Second Circuit Court of Appeals en banc affirmed the district court’s decision dismissing the case.

In a strongly worded dissent, Judge Guido Calabresi wrote, “I believe that when the history of this distinguished court is written, today’s majority decision will be viewed with dismay.”

The Center for Constitutional Rights is dedicated to advancing and protecting the rights guaranteed by the United States Constitution and the Universal Declaration of Human Rights. Founded in 1966 by attorneys who represented civil rights movements in the South, CCR is a non-profit legal and educational organization committed to the creative use of law as a positive force for social change.

A little analysis of how the 911 commission didn't even believe it's own report

Washington'sBlog:

Monday, June 14, 2010

SEC: Government Destroyed Documents Regarding Pre-9/11 Put Options

On September 19, 2001, CBS reported:

Sources tell CBS News that the afternoon before the attack, alarm bells were sounding over unusual trading in the U.S. stock options market.

An extraordinary number of trades were betting that American Airlines stock price would fall.

The trades are called "puts" and they involved at least 450,000 shares of American. But what raised the red flag is more than 80 percent of the orders were "puts", far outnumbering "call" options, those betting the stock would rise.

Sources say they have never seen that kind of imbalance before, reports CBS News Correspondent Sharyl Attkisson. Normally the numbers are fairly even.

After the terrorist attacks, American Airline stock price did fall obviously by 39 percent, and according to sources, that translated into well over $5 million total profit for the person or persons who bet the stock would fall.

***

At least one Wall Street firm reported their suspicions about this activity to the SEC shortly after the attack.

The same thing happened with United Airlines on the Chicago Board Options Exchange four days before the attack. An extremely unbalanced number of trades betting United's stock price would fall — also transformed into huge profits when it did after the hijackings.

"We can directly work backwards from a trade on the floor of the Chicago Board Options Exchange. The trader is linked to a brokerage firm. The brokerage firm received the order to buy that 'put' option from either someone within a brokerage firm speculating, or from one of the customers," said Randall Dodd of the Economic Strategy Institute.

U.S. investigators want to know whether Osama bin Laden was the ultimate "inside trader" — profiting from a tragedy he's suspected of masterminding to finance his operation. Authorities are also investigating possibly suspicious trading in Germany, Switzerland, Italy and Japan.

On September 29, 2001, the San Francisco Chronicle pointed out:

"Usually, if someone has a windfall like that, you take the money and run," said the source, who spoke on condition of anonymity. "Whoever did this thought the exchange would not be closed for four days.

"This smells real bad."

***

There was an unusually large jump in purchases of put options on the stocks of UAL Corp. and AMR Corp. in the three business days before the attack on major options exchanges in the United States. On one day, UAL put option purchases were 25 times greater than the year-to-date average. In the month before the attacks, short sales jumped by 40 percent for UAL and 20 percent for American.

***

Spokesmen for British securities regulators and the AXA Group also confirmed yesterday that investigations are continuing.

The source familiar with the United trades identified Deutsche Banc Alex. Brown, the American investment banking arm of German giant Deutsche Bank, as the investment bank used to purchase at least some of the options.

***

Last weekend, German central bank president Ernst Welteke said a study pointed to "terrorism insider trading" in those stocks.

On October 19, 2001, the Chronicle wrote:

On Oct. 2, Canadian securities officials confirmed that the SEC privately had asked North American investment firms to review their records for evidence of trading activity in the shares of 38 companies, suggesting that some buyers and sellers might have had advance knowledge of the attacks.

***

FMR Corp. spokeswoman Anne Crowley, said her firm -- which owns the giant Fidelity family of mutual funds in Boston -- has already provided "account and transaction" information to investigators, and had no objection to the new procedures announced yesterday. Crowley declined to describe the nature of the information previously shared with the government.

So the effort to track down the source of the puts was certainly quite substantial.

What were the results of the investigation?

Apparently, we'll never know.

Specifically, David Callahan - executive editor of SmartCEO - submitted a Freedom of Information Act request to the SEC regarding the pre-9/11 put options.

The SEC responded:

We have been advised that the potentially responsive records have been destroyed.

If the SEC had responded by producing documents showing that the pre-9/11 put options had an innocent explanation (such as a hedge made by a smaller airline), that would be udnerstandable.

If the SEC had responded by saying that the documents were classified as somehow protecting proprietary financial information, I wouldn't like it, but I would at least understand the argument.

But destroyed? Why?

Not the First Time

This is not the first destruction of documentary evidence related to 9/11.

I wrote in March:

As I pointed out in 2007:

The 9/11 Commission Report was largely based on a third-hand account of what tortured detainees said, with two of the three parties in the communication being government employees.

The official 9/11 Commission Report states:

Chapters 5 and 7 rely heavily on information obtained from captured al Qaeda members. A number of these "detainees" have firsthand knowledge of the 9/11 plot. Assessing the truth of statements by these witnesses-sworn enemies of the United States-is challenging. Our access to them has been limited to the review of intelligence reports based on communications received from the locations where the actual interrogations take place. We submitted questions for use in the interrogations, but had no control over whether, when, or how questions of particular interest would be asked. Nor were we allowed to talk to the interrogators so that we could better judge the credibility of the detainees and clarify ambiguities in the reporting.

In other words, the 9/11 Commissioners were not allowed to speak with the detainees, or even their interrogators. Instead, they got their information third-hand.

The Commission didn't really trust the interrogation testimony. For example, one of the primary architects of the 9/11 Commission Report, Ernest May, said in May 2005:

We never had full confidence in the interrogation reports as historical sources.

As I noted last May:

Newsweek is running an essay by [New York Times investigative reporter] Philip Shenon saying [that the 9/11 Commission Report was unreliable because most of the information was based on the statements of tortured detainees]:

The commission appears to have ignored obvious clues throughout 2003 and 2004 that its account of the 9/11 plot and Al Qaeda's history relied heavily on information obtained from detainees who had been subjected to torture, or something not far from it.

The panel raised no public protest over the CIA's interrogation methods, even though news reports at the time suggested how brutal those methods were. In fact, the commission demanded that the CIA carry out new rounds of interrogations in 2004 to get answers to its questions.

That has troubling implications for the credibility of the commission's final report. In intelligence circles, testimony obtained through torture is typically discredited; research shows that people will say anything under threat of intense physical pain.

And yet it is a distinct possibility that Al Qaeda suspects who were the exclusive source of information for long passages of the commission's report may have been subjected to "enhanced" interrogation techniques, or at least threatened with them, because of the 9/11 Commission....

Information from CIA interrogations of two of the three—KSM and Abu Zubaydah—is cited throughout two key chapters of the panel's report focusing on the planning and execution of the attacks and on the history of Al Qaeda.

Footnotes in the panel's report indicate when information was obtained from detainees interrogated by the CIA. An analysis by NBC News found that more than a quarter of the report's footnotes—441 of some 1,700—referred to detainees who were subjected to the CIA's "enhanced" interrogation program, including the trio who were waterboarded.

Commission members note that they repeatedly pressed the Bush White House and CIA for direct access to the detainees, but the administration refused. So the commission forwarded questions to the CIA, whose interrogators posed them on the panel's behalf.

The commission's report gave no hint that harsh interrogation methods were used in gathering information, stating that the panel had "no control" over how the CIA did its job; the authors also said they had attempted to corroborate the information "with documents and statements of others."

But how could the commission corroborate information known only to a handful of people in a shadowy terrorist network, most of whom were either dead or still at large?

Former senator Bob Kerrey of Nebraska, a Democrat on the commission, told me last year he had long feared that the investigation depended too heavily on the accounts of Al Qaeda detainees who were physically coerced into talking ....

Kerrey said it might take "a permanent 9/11 commission" to end the remaining mysteries of September 11.

Abu Zubaida was well-known to the FBI as being literally crazy. The Washington Post quotes "FBI officials, including agents who questioned [alleged Al-Qaeda member Abu Zubaida] after his capture or reviewed documents seized from his home" as concluding that he was:

[L]argely a loudmouthed and mentally troubled hotelier whose credibility dropped as the CIA subjected him to a simulated drowning technique known as waterboarding and to other "enhanced interrogation" measures.

For example:

Retired FBI agent Daniel Coleman, who led an examination of documents after Abu Zubaida's capture in early 2002 and worked on the case, said the CIA's harsh tactics cast doubt on the credibility of Abu Zubaida's information.

"I don't have confidence in anything he says, because once you go down that road, everything you say is tainted," Coleman said, referring to the harsh measures. "He was talking before they did that to him, but they didn't believe him. The problem is they didn't realize he didn't know all that much."

***

"They said, 'You've got to be kidding me,' " said Coleman, recalling accounts from FBI employees who were there. " 'This guy's a Muslim. That's not going to win his confidence. Are you trying to get information out of him or just belittle him?'" Coleman helped lead the bureau's efforts against Osama bin Laden for a decade, ending in 2004.

Coleman goes on to say:

Abu Zubaida ... was a "safehouse keeper" with mental problems who claimed to know more about al-Qaeda and its inner workings than he really did.

***

Looking at other evidence, including a serious head injury that Abu Zubaida had suffered years earlier, Coleman and others at the FBI believed that he had severe mental problems that called his credibility into question. "They all knew he was crazy, and they knew he was always on the damn phone," Coleman said, referring to al-Qaeda operatives. "You think they're going to tell him anything?"

ACLU, FireDogLake's Marcy Wheeler and RawStory broke the story yesterday that (quoting RawStory):

Senior Bush administration officials sternly cautioned the 9/11 Commission against probing too deeply into the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001, according to a document recently obtained by the ACLU.

The notification came in a letter dated January 6, 2004, addressed by Attorney General John Ashcroft, Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and CIA Director George J. Tenet. The ACLU described it as a fax sent by David Addington, then-counsel to former vice president Dick Cheney.

In the message, the officials denied the bipartisan commission's request to question terrorist detainees, informing its two senior-most members that doing so would "cross" a "line" and obstruct the administration's ability to protect the nation.

"In response to the Commission's expansive requests for access to secrets, the executive branch has provided such access in full cooperation," the letter read. "There is, however, a line that the Commission should not cross -- the line separating the Commission's proper inquiry into the September 11, 2001 attacks from interference with the Government's ability to safeguard the national security, including protection of Americans from future terrorist attacks."

***

"The Commission staff's proposed participation in questioning of detainees would cross that line," the letter continued. "As the officers of the United States responsible for the law enforcement, defense and intelligence functions of the Government, we urge your Commission not to further pursue the proposed request to participate in the questioning of detainees."

Destruction of Evidence

The interrogators made videotapes of the interrogations. The 9/11 Commission asked for all tapes, but the CIA lied and said there weren't any.

The CIA then destroyed the tapes.

Specifically, the New York Times confirms that the government swore that it had turned over all of the relevant material regarding the statements of the people being interrogated:

“The commission did formally request material of this kind from all relevant agencies, and the commission was assured that we had received all the material responsive to our request,” said Philip D. Zelikow, who served as executive director of the Sept. 11 commission ....

“No tapes were acknowledged or turned over, nor was the commission provided with any transcript prepared from recordings,” he said.

But is the destruction of the tapes -- and hiding from the 9/11 Commission the fact that the tapes existed -- a big deal? Yes, actually. As the Times goes on to state:

Daniel Marcus, a law professor at American University who served as general counsel for the Sept. 11 commission and was involved in the discussions about interviews with Al Qaeda leaders, said he had heard nothing about any tapes being destroyed.

If tapes were destroyed, he said, “it’s a big deal, it’s a very big deal,” because it could amount to obstruction of justice to withhold evidence being sought in criminal or fact-finding investigations.

Indeed, 9/11 Commission co-chairs Thomas Keane and Lee Hamilton wrote:

Those who knew about those videotapes — and did not tell us about them — obstructed our investigation.

The CIA also is refusing to release any transcripts from the interrogation sessions. As I wrote a year ago:

What does the fact that the CIA destroyed numerous videotapes of Guantanamo interrogations, but has 3,000 pages of transcripts from those tapes really mean?

Initially, it means that CIA's claim that it destroyed the video tapes to protect the interrogators' identity is false. Why? Well, the transcripts contain the identity of the interrogator. And the CIA is refusing to produce the transcripts.

Obviously, the CIA could have "blurred" the face of the interrogator and shifted his voice (like you've seen on investigative tv shows like 60 Minutes) to protect the interrogator's identity. And since the CIA is not releasing the transcripts, it similarly could have refused to release the videos.

The fact that the CIA instead destroyed the videos shows that it has something to hide.

Trying to Create a False Linkage?

I have repeatedly pointed out that the top interrogation experts say that torture doesn't work.

As I wrote last May:

The fact that people were tortured in order to justify the Iraq war by making a false linkage between Iraq and 9/11 is gaining attention.

Many people are starting to understand that top Bush administration officials not only knowingly lied about a non-existent connection between Al Qaida and Iraq, but they pushed and insisted that interrogators use special torture methods aimed at extracting false confessions to attempt to create such a false linkage.

Indeed, the Senate Armed Services Committee found that the U.S. used torture techniques specifically aimed at extracting false confessions (and see this).

And as Paul Krugman wrote in the New York Times:

Let’s say this slowly: the Bush administration wanted to use 9/11 as a pretext to invade Iraq, even though Iraq had nothing to do with 9/11. So it tortured people to make them confess to the nonexistent link.

[A]ccording to NBC news:

• Much of the 9/11 Commission Report was based upon the testimony of people who were tortured

• At least four of the people whose interrogation figured in the 9/11 Commission Report have claimed that they told interrogators information as a way to stop being "tortured."
  

• One of the Commission's main sources of information was tortured until he agreed to sign a confession that he was NOT EVEN ALLOWED TO READ
  

• The 9/11 Commission itself doubted the accuracy of the torture confessions, and yet kept their doubts to themselves

In fact, the self-confessed "mastermind" of 9/11 also confessed to crimes which he could not have committed. He later said that he gave the interrogators a lot of false information - telling them what he thought they wanted to hear - in an attempt to stop the torture. We also know that he was heavily tortured specifically for the purpose of trying to obtain false information about 9/11 - specifically, that Iraq had something to do with it.

***

Remember, as discussed above, the torture techniques used by the Bush administration to try to link Iraq and 9/11 were specifically geared towards creating false confessions (they were techniques created by the communists to be used in show trials).

***

The above-linked NBC news report quotes a couple of legal experts to this effect:

Michael Ratner, president of the Center for Constitutional Rights, says he is "shocked" that the Commission never asked about extreme interrogation measures.

"If you’re sitting at the 9/11 Commission, with all the high-powered lawyers on the Commission and on the staff, first you ask what happened rather than guess," said Ratner, whose center represents detainees at Guantanamo. "Most people look at the 9/11 Commission Report as a trusted historical document. If their conclusions were supported by information gained from torture, therefore their conclusions are suspect."...

Karen Greenberg, director of the Center for Law and Security at New York University’s School of Law, put it this way: "[I]t should have relied on sources not tainted. It calls into question how we were willing to use these interrogations to construct the narrative."

The interrogations were "used" to "construct the narrative" which the 9/11 Commission decided to use.

Remember (as explored in the book The Commission by respected journalist Philip Shenon), that the Executive Director of the 9/11 Commission was an administration insider whose area of expertise is the creation and maintenance of "public myths" thought to be true, even if not actually true. He wrote an outline of what he wanted the report to say very early in the process, controlled what the Commission did and did not analyze, then limited the scope of the Commission's inquiry so that the overwhelming majority of questions about 9/11 remained unasked (see this article and this article).

***

As constitutional law expert Jonathan Turley stated:

[The 9/11 Commission] was a commission that was really made for Washington - a commission composed of political appointees of both parties that ran interference for those parties - a commission that insisted at the beginning it would not impose blame on individuals.

Other Obstructions of Justice

[Other examples of obstructions of justice include the following:]

• The chairs of both the 9/11 Commission and the Joint Inquiry of the House and Senate Intelligence Committees into 9/11 said that government "minders" obstructed the investigation into 9/11 by intimidating witnesses

• The 9/11 Commissioners concluded that officials from the Pentagon lied to the Commission, and considered recommending criminal charges for such false statements
  

• The tape of interviews of air traffic controllers on-duty on 9/11 was intentionally destroyed by crushing the cassette by hand, cutting the tape into little pieces, and then dropping the pieces in different trash cans around the building as shown by this NY Times article (summary version is free; full version is pay-per-view) and by this article from the Chicago Sun-Times

• Investigators for the Congressional Joint Inquiry discovered that an FBI informant had hosted and even rented a room to two hijackers in 2000 and that, when the Inquiry sought to interview the informant, the FBI refused outright, and then hid him in an unknown location, and that a high-level FBI official stated these blocking maneuvers were undertaken under orders from the White House. As the New York Times notes:
  

  Senator Bob Graham, the Florida Democrat who is a former chairman of the Senate Intelligence Committee, accused the White House on Tuesday of covering up evidence . . .
  

  * * *

  The accusation stems from the Federal Bureau of Investigation's refusal to allow investigators for a Congressional inquiry and the independent Sept. 11 commission to interview an informant, Abdussattar Shaikh, who had been the landlord in San Diego of two Sept. 11 hijackers.

  In his book "Intelligence Matters," Mr. Graham, the co-chairman of the Congressional inquiry with Representative Porter J. Goss, Republican of Florida, said an F.B.I. official wrote them in November 2002 and said "the administration would not sanction a staff interview with the source.'' On Tuesday, Mr. Graham called the letter "a smoking gun" and said, "The reason for this cover-up goes right to the White House."

We don't need to even discuss conspiracy theories about what happened on 9/11 to be incredibly disturbed about what happened after: the government's destruction of important documentary evidence and other obstructions of justice.

Indeed, the 9/11 Commissioners themselves are disturbed:

• The Commission's co-chairs said that the CIA (and likely the White House) "obstructed our investigation"

• 9/11 Commissioner Bob Kerrey said that "There are ample reasons to suspect that there may be some alternative to what we outlined in our version . . . We didn't have access . . . ."
  

• 9/11 Commissioner Timothy Roemer said "We were extremely frustrated with the false statements we were getting"
  

• 9/11 Commissioner Max Cleland resigned from the Commission, stating: "It is a national scandal"; "This investigation is now compromised"; and "One of these days we will have to get the full story because the 9-11 issue is so important to America. But this White House wants to cover it up"
  

• The Senior Counsel to the 9/11 Commission (John Farmer) - who led the 9/11 staff's inquiry - said "At some level of the government, at some point in time...there was an agreement not to tell the truth about what happened". He also said "I was shocked at how different the truth was from the way it was described .... The tapes told a radically different story from what had been told to us and the public for two years.... This is not spin. This is not true."

The Sad Truth about Massacres these days

The really really sad part of this is that this author is wrong about one vital point. See if you can find it.

From an email from ANSWER SF Alerts:

One drop in a sea of blood

The statement below was authored by Michael Prysner, an Iraq war veteran and co-founder of March Forward!, an affiliate of the ANSWER Coalition.

Dear STEVE,


Click here to see the video

The harrowing Apache footage released by WikiLeaks gives us a stomach-turning glimpse of war. Seventeen minutes of cold-blooded massacre in a war of more than seven years. A brief clip of one Apache video; a quick look at one part of one mission. Hundreds of those missions take place every day.

The video came to light thanks to military whistleblowers who provided it to WikiLeaks together with supporting documents. Imagine if we had access to all such videos, the things we would see. Imagine all the Iraqis killed who have no one to uncover the truth about their deaths. Had the death of two Reuters news staffers not generated interest in this video, then the destruction of three families by hellfire missiles fired into an apartment building with no provocation, in a separate engagement also featured in the video, would have never been made public.

This massacre is a drop in a sea of blood. Many other such “incidents” will never be known.

Officers claimed there was “no question” that the pilots were responding to enemy fire; the video shows there is no question that they were not responding to enemy fire. They said that they had “no idea” how the journalists were killed; the video shows that they know very well how those journalists were killed. They were gunned down standing in a crowd of unarmed people.

After the slaughter of that group, the pilots beg for permission to kill the innocent passers-by who had come to the aid of one of the wounded, like any of us would have done if we saw our neighbor dying on the ground as we drove down the street. They kill everyone trying to help the dying journalist, and critically wound two children seen sitting in the front seat.

We see a group of unarmed men mowed down by a machine gun designed to destroy armored vehicles. We see a vanload of good Samaritans obliterated for trying to help a dying victim. We see all this with the soundtrack of the pilots mocking the dead, congratulating each other and laughing about the massacre.

No wonder the U.S. military goes to such great lengths to keep such videos from us. They want us to see Iraq and Afghanistan through their lens, through their embedded reporters, filtered by censorship and restrictions. They know that, once the people of this country see the extreme racism and brutality behind these occupations, they will be repulsed by what their tax dollars are paying for.

The military brass and the White House politicians have tried to justify this senseless atrocity. “Cut the pilots some slack. This was in Baghdad. This was a battle zone”—that’s been their line. The pilots had been indoctrinated with the same colonial mentality. “That’s what they get for bringing their kids into battle,” one pilot says.

The father driving that van was not “bringing his kids into battle.” He was bringing them to school, driving down the street where they live. But the U.S. occupation has made all of Iraq a battle zone. To those pilots, to their commanders over the radio and to the generals in the Pentagon, every single person in Baghdad and in Iraq is “fair game.”

The pilots joked about the people they killed, laughed about U.S. military vehicles running over dead bodies, knowing that their commanders were listening and that they were being recorded. They were not acting out of character. This is the culture of the occupation. This is how these wars are being conducted.

Having seen this, one cannot honestly believe that these atrocities are committed day in and day out for the liberation of the Iraqi people.

The Pentagon’s talking heads and media lackeys are hard at work putting their spin on this story. It’s time to tell the truth. For more than seven years, the U.S. has unleashed criminal, unprovoked aggression against the people of Iraq, and they have been doing the same thing in Afghanistan for more than eight years.

The U.S. military presence in Iraq is a colonial occupation force. The only way forward is a complete, immediate and unconditional withdrawal of all U.S. forces from Iraq and Afghanistan. This government will not do that unless all of us who are outraged by these criminal acts stand up and demand it.

Michael Prysner
Iraq war veteran and co-founder of March Forward

Did you catch the error?

He said:

No wonder the U.S. military goes to such great lengths to keep such videos from us. They want us to see Iraq and Afghanistan through their lens, through their embedded reporters, filtered by censorship and restrictions. They know that, once the people of this country see the extreme racism and brutality behind these occupations, they will be repulsed by what their tax dollars are paying for.

Now, anyone who follows the news closely will realize that the extreme racism and brutaity behind these occupations have been on display for the whole world to see, including the US public, and what has been the official result? No One Cares!

The reaction seems to be either jingoistic bloodthirsty enthusiasm from those who think it's great, or dejected withdrawal and a feeling of helplessness from those who are replused by it and realise they are powerless to effect it. But either way, it turns out the military has nothing to fear!

The prevailing opinion allowed into the mainstream media are those who either see it as an abberation by a few "bad apples" or those that support it. The rest of us are usually represented by either no voice in the official discussion at all, or else officially consigned to the "don't count" off-the-wall extremist looney bin, which is the permanent home of Dennis Kucinich, Cindy Sheehan, Noam Chomsky, and anyone else who dares to actually talk rationally about reality.

A little biographical note about Eric Holder

Eric Holder...honest now, did you ever hear of him before he was nominated to be Attorney General of the United States? I knew nothing of him whatsoever.

For your consideration: two articles via Cryptogon—

First, a story from this week:

Courthouse News:

Hostages Say Chiquita Funded Death Squads

By BARBARA LEONARD
(CN) - Three U.S. citizens were held hostage by a Colombian death squad for 5 years, and one was murdered, while Chiquita Brands International gave the terrorists weapons and millions of dollars in "protection payments," the former hostages and their families claim in Tampa Federal Court.
Former hostages of the Fuerzas Armadas Revolucionarias de Colombia (FARC) say Chiquita owes them treble damages under the U.S. Anti-Terrorism Act, because the New Jersey-based company paid FARC up to $200,000 a year for 10 years.
In a March 2007 plea agreement, Chiquita admitted it had paid $25 million and funded the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia (AUC) - a right-wing, anti-labor death squad - and other terrorist groups, according to the eight plaintiffs' 82-page complaint.
The FARC and the AUC fought for control of land and lucrative cocaine crops for years, through open war, death squads and terror.
A February 2009 report from the Special Litigation Committee of the Chiquita board of directors found that the company began paying FARC "protection money" in the late 1980s.
In 2003 the FARC shot down a plane carrying Keith Stansell, Marc Gosalves, Thomas Howes and Thomas Janis, who were conducting a civilian counternarcotics surveillance mission for their employer, Northrup Grumman.
The plane's five passengers all survived the crash, but FARC members shot to death the U.S. citizen pilot, Janis, and the Colombian host-nation rider, Sgt. Luis Alcides Cruz, within minutes of taking the group hostage, according to the complaint.
Stansell, Gosalves, Howes and Janis' wife and four children demand damages from Chiquita for its giving money, arms and ammunition to FARC - "a foreign terrorist organization that has killed, maimed, injured, kidnapped and held hostage thousands of civilians, including many U.S. citizens," according to the complaint.
The three hostages say they were held captive for 1,967 days, until they were rescued on July 2, 2008.
The FARC publicly took credit for the kidnapping and promised to release the Americans and 250 high-level Colombian citizens in exchange for certain political concessions, territory in a demilitarized zone for FARC's base of operations, and the release of hundreds of FARC combatants apprehended by the Colombian authorities, according to the complaint.
"FARC supports its operations through kidnappings, extortion, drug trafficking and 'war taxes' it collects from residents, businesses and landowners," according to the complaint.
Chiquita made its first "guerrilla payment" of $10,000 to Chiquita in 1989 - when the banana giant opened its Banadex export subsidiary in Colombia - and ultimately paid $100,000 to $200,000 a year through 1999, according to the complaint.
"Over time, the payments were fixed to a percentage of Banadex's gross revenues, with as much as 10 percent being diverted to FARC," the complaint states.
The former hostages say Chiquita knew about FARC's practice of murdering and kidnapping Americans. At least 23 Americans were taken hostage between 1993 and 1997. But Chiquita benefited from its relationship with terrorists and spent years covering it up, according to the complaint.
"During the period relevant to this action, FARC held significant influence over, controlled, or was fighting other terrorist organizations for control of labor unions in Colombia's banana-growing regions," the complaint states.
The former hostages say Chiquita worked with FARC-controlled labor unions, such as Sintrabanano, and helped FARC subvert many local labor unions.
By helping FARC wrest control of local labor unions, Chiquita carved out "a competitive advantage over other banana growers facing less accommodating unions," according to the complaint. Chiquita also allegedly benefited from FARC's harassment of competitors in the region.
"Defendants knew that FARC engaged in acts of terrorism against U.S. interests in Colombia and knew the danger that providing material support to FARC would pose to the safety of other individuals and entities working within Colombia, but defendant ignored these risks in order to further their own narrow business interests in growing and exporting bananas in Colombia," according to the complaint.
The former hostages and Janis' family seek treble damages from Chiquita. They are represented by Newton Porter with Porter & Korvick of Miami.

Now, one from a year and a half ago:

Huffington Post:

Lawyer for Chiquita in Colombia Death Squad Case May be Next U.S. Attorney General

In its recent report entitled, "Breaking the Grip? Obstacles to Justice for Paramilitary Mafias in Colombia," Human Rights Watch (HRW) had specific recommendations for the U.S. Department of Justice. Specifically, HRW recommended that, in order to assist with the process of ending the ties between the Colombian government and paramilitary death squads, the U.S. Department of Justice should, among other things, "[c]reate meaningful legal incentives for paramilitary leaders [a number of whom have already been extradited to the U.S.] to fully disclose information about atrocities and name all Colombian or foreign officials, business or individuals who may have facilitated their criminal activities," and "[c]ollaborate actively with the efforts of Colombian justice officials who are investigating paramilitary networks in Colombia by sharing relevant information possible and granting them access to paramilitary leaders in U.S. custody."

Do not expect these recommendations to be carried forward if Eric Holder decides to forgo his lucrative corporate law practice at Covington & Burling and accept the U.S. Attorney General position for which many believe he is the top contendor. Eric Holder would have a troubling conflict of interest in carrying out this work in light of his current work as defense lawyer for Chiquita Brands international in a case in which Colombian plaintiffs seek damages for the murders carried out by the AUC paramilitaries - a designated terrorist organization. Chiquita has already admitted in a criminal case that it paid the AUC around $1.7 million in a 7-year period and that it further provided the AUC with a cache of machine guns as well.

Indeed, Holder himself, using his influence as former deputy attorney general under the Clinton Administration, helped to negotiate Chiquita's sweeheart deal with the Justice Department in the criminal case against Chiquita. Under this deal, no Chiquita official received any jail time. Indeed, the identity of the key officials involved in the assistance to the paramilitaries were kept under seal and confidential. In the end, Chiquita was fined a mere $25 million which it has been allowed to pay over a 5-year period. This is incredible given the havoc wreaked by Chiquita's aid to these Colombian death squards.

According to Mario Iguaran, the Attorney General of Colombia, Chiquita's payments to the AUC paramilitaries led to the murder of 4000 civilians in the banana region of Colombia and furthered the growth of the paramilitaries throughout Colombia and their violent takeover of numerous Colombian regions. Iguaran, in response to the claims of both Chiquita and Eric Holder himself that Chiquita was somehow forced to pay "protection" to the paramilitaries (see, Washington Post and Conde Nast Portfolio), stated unequivocally that "[t]his was not payment of extortion money. It was support for an illegal armed group whose methods included murder." See, Christian Science Monitor, "Chiquita Case Puts Big Firms on Notice."

One former paramilitary leader who is in federal custody in the U.S., Salvatore Mancuso, has stated that he has more knowledge about Chiquita's relationship with the paramilitary death squads in Colombia. Mancuso further claims that Dole and Del Monte also made payments to the paramilitaries, just as Chiquita did. Yet, Dole and Del Monte remain un-indicted. Query whether, as Human Rights Watch recommends, a Justice Department under Holder would be interested in pursuing this and other similar leads. This is a serious matter given the fact that the Justice Department has already come under great scrutiny for turning a blind eye to what appears to be rampant corporate support for terrorist groups in Colombia. See, L.A. Times, "U.S. accused of bending rules on Colombian Terror."

While Eric Holder is also known to be actively involved in laudable charitable activities, it should be of grave concern to those, like myself, who hope for change from the new Obama Administration, that the new Attorney General would be involved in not only defending corporations against serious corruption and human rights charges, but also publicly apologizing for such abuses. That is not the type of Attorney General we need in the wake of the recent economic collapse created by the unfettered greed of such corporate firms.

Tea Partiers vs. Liberal Warmongers

Here's a somewhat different viewpoint than any I've heard recently...


Charlie Davis via TinyRevolution.com:

Thursday, March 25, 2010

Liberals with guns: scarier than Tea Partiers

I often begin my political science courses with a brief introduction to the idea of "the state." The state is the entity that has a monopoly on the legitimate use of violence, force and coercion. If an individual travels to another country and kills its citizens, we call it terrorism. If the state does it, we call it war. If a man kills his neighbor it is murder; if the state does it is the death penalty. If an individual takes his neighbor's money, it is theft; if the state does it, it is taxation.

Maria Harris-Lacewell is a professor at Princeton University, as so subtly alluded to in the above excerpt from her latest drivel for The Nation, and she's concerned about the "legitimacy" of the state -- a legitimacy she assumes but doesn't explain -- which she notes some backwards reactionaries have had the temerity to challenge in the age of Democratic government. Now, considering that U.S. government imprisons more of its own citizens than any other in the history, with 25 percent of the world's prisoners; that it has more military bases in more countries than any previous empire in history, and has killed millions of people from Iraq to Vietnam; and that its current head, Barack Obama, is openly targeting for extrajudicial killing Americans and foreigners alike, one might ask: why is a liberal magazine so concerned about this state's legitimacy?

Because of the Tea Party movement, you see, whose flashes of racism and disrespect toward politicians is of more concern to Ivy League academics than the "legitimate" state violence they applaud. Tea Partiers, by accusing the current administration of "various forms of totalitarianism . . . are arguing that this government has no right to levy taxes or make policy," the professor writes, apparently under the mistaken belief that most taxes the state levies go to gumdrop bridges and fairy dust health clinics, rather than less wholesome things like aircraft carriers and daisy cutters. Rather than focusing on what the state actually does, though, Harris-Lacewell, like most liberals, would prefer we focus on their shining, abstract ideal of what it could be, while sanctimoniously dismissing those who see no distinction between state-sponsored and private sector murder, an approach befitting the wait-until-you're-called merit-class liberal mentality that dominates the Democratic Party and the progressive press.

As The Nation's house political scientist explains it, adopting an argument that one could never imagine being applied to the left, "When protesters spit on and scream at duly elected representatives of the United States government it is more than act of racism. It is an act of sedition."

Put another way: offenses against the state are inherently more despicable than any offense one could commit against some poor schmuck civilian. An overstatement? Well, no, as Harris-Lacewell herself demonstrates in writing about Congressman John Lewis (D-GA), who "is no longer just a brave American fighting for the soul of his country- he is an elected official. He is an embodiment of the state." Yeah, you know, before Lewis just marched in the streets against racism and state-enforced segregation as a (ho-hum) private citizen, but now he chairs a subcommittee -- show him some respect!

Hooping and hollering at an elected official -- sorry, "an embodiment of the state" -- might give liberals at The Nation the vapors, and right-wing protesters who cheered on the Bush administration's abuses of power may not be my cup of tea, but color me unimpressed with the argument that I have more to fear from the talk radio right than I do the incarcerating-and-assassinating state. Now while there's little chance you'll catch me marching against compact fluorescent light-bulbs or Obamacare anytime soon -- though I promise nothing -- I just don't fear a rollback of the Reconstruction period "and the descent of a vicious new Jim Crow terrorism" as much as I fear and abhor the actual, happening-right-now terrorism carried out by my esteemed public officials with the tacit approval of the humanitarian progressives too busy lecturing the rabble on the need to pay taxes and pledge allegiance to their betters in Washington than to challenge their leader's wars. In addition to the hundreds killed without so much as a show trial by hellfire missiles since the glorious advent of The Liberal Ascendancy, agents of the U.S. government have been implicated in several headline-grabbing atrocities, the latest of which involved the pre-dawn slaying of a pair of pregnant women and a teenage girl. That female civilians are being killed at a level on par with Afghan males is no doubt being hailed in the halls of Brookings as a feminist triumph, but it's more troubling to me than the idea of some people questioning the legitimacy of the perpetrators' employer.

Perhaps they shouldn't just be ignored, but until Glenn Beck's followers kill two dozen people in a remote village, I'm going to spend most of my time focusing on those with control over the tanks and nuclear weapons. And rather than seeking to bolster the state and reinforce the idea of some mythical, mystical social contract, I just might seek to undermine this government, so far as I can, for as long as it continues enriching a politically connected corporate elite while imprisoning and enlisting the rest of its population, no matter how "duly elected" our politicians might be as a result of the sham two-party electoral system. When political leaders are engaged in senseless war and widespread human rights abuses -- and the occupation of Afghanistan and the U.S. prison system at home and abroad qualify -- the person of conscience's duty is not to the state but to justice, which usually means opposing the state and questioning its presumed legitimacy.

The proper attitude toward a criminal government is not deference and respect, however much some at The Nation might love a smooth-talking Democrat, but defiance and rebellion -- of the non-violent variety.