The Naked Truth: Wikileaks And The US

This is the first installment in many leaks to come for the next 10 days or so...

There is nothing really new in this first installment,  for the people who are not blinded by US propaganda and bad western complacent journalism, in the latest leaks from Wikileaks.

Here is a short summary:

1. The Guardian quotes the leaks saying that Arab leaders are urging the US for a strike on Iran. Well actually, they might add 'Some' and we know who are these Arab leaders (Jordan, Egypt, Saudi Arabia, mainly)

2. Le Monde quotes one cable relating a meeting between US and Israeli officials on Iran: Israel is pushing the US for a harsher stance on Iran arguing that the politics of engaging Iran is simply buying time for Iran and is asking for GBU-28 bombs capable of reaching Iranian bunkers.  These bombs will be given to Israel, by the US, in May 2010.

3. The documents reveal also that Saudi donors remain chief financiers of terror groups like Al-Qaida.

4. Angry Arab is publishing on his blog information from cables relating to Israel, Lebanon and the Middle East.

5. The US is conducting a covert war in Yemen: ''One cable records that during a meeting in January with General David Petraeus, then US commander in the Middle East, Yemeni president Abdullah Saleh said: "We'll continue saying they are our bombs, not yours."

3. The US and the UK know that Pakistan's nuclear capacity might have ended up in the hands of small hostile groups

7.Suspicions over Afghan leaders' corruption...well that's really old news...and to be for such a long time at the stage of suspicions and do nothing is irresponsible...

8. The US is critical toward allies' military operations and leadership in Afghanistan (especially the UK)...When things go wrong, blame others...

9. The 'diplomatic' cables label Putin as an 'Alpha-dog', Karzai as 'paranoid', and Ahmadi-Nejad as 'Hitler'...

10. Ghaddafi is always accompanied by a 'voluptuous Ukrainian blonde nurse'...

11.  Spying on the UN...

12. Other items are related to the 'special relationship' with the UK:

They include high-level allegations of corruption against foreign leaders, harsh criticisms and frank insights into the world of normally- secret diplomacy.

Among literallyscores of revelations which may cause uproar, some will be particularly dismaying in Britain. They include:

• Highly critical private remarks about David Cameron and George Osborne's "lack of depth", made by Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England, to the US ambassador.

• A scornful analysis of UK "paranoia" over the US-UK so-called special relationship. It is suggested that "keeping HMGthe British government "off-balance" about itthe relationship might be a good idea.

• US shock at the rude behaviour of Prince Andrew when abroad.

• Secret US military missions flown from a UK base, which Britain alleged could involve torture.

• A plan to deceive the British parliament over the use of banned US weapons.

AND MORE...

Special Democracynow.org

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The Iraq War: More lies and forgeries uncovered

This latest forgerie, that the Bush administration paid a former Saddam intelligence officer to write a letter about Saddam's ties with Al-Qaida, comes as no surprise. The motivations behind it as it was done after the invasion are exposed in this informed comment on the story from professor Cole.

In his Nobel lecture Solzhenitsyn wrote:

"But let us not forget that violence does not live alone and is not capable of living alone: it is necessarily interwoven with falsehood. Between them lies the most intimate, the deepest of natural bonds. Violence finds its only refuge in falsehood, falsehood its only support in violence. Any man who has once acclaimed violence as his METHOD must inexorably choose falsehood as his PRINCIPLE. At its birth violence acts openly and even with pride. But no sooner does it become strong, firmly established, than it senses the rarefaction of the air around it and it cannot continue to exist without descending into a fog of lies, clothing them in sweet talk. It does not always, not necessarily, openly throttle the throat, more often it demands from its subjects only an oath of allegiance to falsehood, only complicity in falsehood.
And the simple step of a simple courageous man is not to partake in falsehood, not to support false actions! Let THAT enter the world, let it even reign in the world - but not with my help.
ONE WORD OF TRUTH SHALL OUTWEIGH THE WHOLE WORLD."

And the Iraq war lies are a paradigm for the interdependance between lies and violence.

Vandals of the Truth: Convenient Lies and Inconvenient Truth

A Lebanese man, a "self confessed sniper instructor", "languishing in a Minnesota jail for the past three years", and "convicted last year of immigration fraud" while "still facing outstanding charges of lying to the Federal Bureau of Investigation", has given a testimony considered 'pivotal' in the US decision to maintain Canadian Maher Arar on the no-fly list despite Arar's clearing of any wrongdoing by the Canadian government and his 10 millions compensation, the Globe and Mail learned from US sources.


There is no doubt that, according to US standards in 'fighting terrorism', the life of honest people hangs, not only on the US government ability to hide the truth, but to give convenient lies priority over an inconvenient truth; that bearded Muslim terrorists are only few among all bearded Muslim men. And why is this latter truth inconvenient ? Because it refutes the core ideology of the 'War On Terror'. I always thought that the whole War On Terror business lacks basic Logic, and so do those who support it.

'I know what I believe' said once Tony Blair. Sadly, this could be extended to all those who are fighting in our names an unefficient war on terror. It could be extended to our media who are doing very little of investigative journalism and publishing press releases from our governments, unaltered . It could be extended to the siprit of our times and western civilisation which glorifies a liar and an extremist like Hirsi Ali as the ultimate liberal fighter and a 'Black Voltaire'.

Ali Eteraz: US double-speak on terrorism.

Irving Lewis Libby: Guilty !

It is this simple fact, the uncovering of a lie in a chain of lies and deception that will affect the course of foreign policy of the Bush adminstration more than anything else. For to keep the ugly truth for itself this administration had to lie, small lies, big lies, any size.

The neocon ideology and agenda rest entirely on lies. Should we halt these conspirators we must continue chasing their lies down their memory holes, track their web of false beliefs and smoke them out. The stakes are great, they are not ideological, they are humanitarian. There are men, women and children dying from their lies, there are shattered lives, mourning parents and families, an entire region wrecked, an entire religion persecuted and marginalised, and a nastier world.

The Libby verdict must become an indiction for every man and woman involved in this criminal ideology that is the neocon ideology and it must become the wake up call for self criticism starting with the western 'free' press who stupidly swallowed the neocon lies and gave them the mantle of objective information. Otherwise, if we don't follow in uncovering the lies, prosecuting them and learning from them, the Libby verdict would be useless. It would come to symbolise the accidental fall of one unlucky man instead of symbolising the will of the people of the free 'world' to rise against soft opression dressed in anti-terror law.

We owe it to the children of Iraq, the children of Lebanon and the children of Palestine, all these children who died as 'pirthpangs' for the Neocons Middle East, to bring down the people who performed at great lenght the art of the big lie forgetting in the process that some things have changed since Goebbels including our unwillingness to live in a constant state of fear and war.

The Vandalism Of The Truth in the Iraq War Should Be Prosecuted

When ordinary citizen lie to an official representative of their government, being a judge, a policeman or a tax inspector, they are held responsible and prosecuted. But it is not the case with our rulers who appear to bear no consequences for their lies, even though these lies have had tremendous tragic consequences like the wrecking of a country, the killing of hundreds thousands, and an irreversible damage to citizens security and basic rights.

I think the main effect of the Iraq war and the 'War on Terror' will be felt for a long time to come in our commitment, as a society, to live up to our ideals; Justice, Truth and Rationality, those ideals the West has proclaimed his own and has so cheerfully trampled on. As long as the Bush administration and its allies are not prosecuted for the amount of lies, fabrications, suffering and prejudice they produced, we can consider ourselves in danger of loosing these core values that make us human beings. Make no mistake, the immorality of the Iraq war is not only in its illegal character but also in the incredible amount of lying rulers have done to their people in order to wage this war.

''A report presented to the armed services committee by the Pentagon's inspector general, Thomas Gimble, exposes the Bush administration to new charges of manipulating intelligence to make its case for going to war against Saddam nearly four years ago.''

And what is the answer of one of the main culprits ? I am not guilty because I am not endorsing a lie that we fabricated in order to test and go against the consensus in the intelligence community, even though this lie has had tragic consequences.

''Mr Feith, who left the Pentagon in 2005 for a post at Georgetown University, yesterday played down the influence of his unit. "This was not an alternative intelligence assessment," he told the Washington Post. "It was from the start a criticism of the consensus of the intelligence community, and in presenting it I was not endorsing its substance."

Political Assassinations in Lebanon: Truth And Consequences

The UN Inquiry on the assassination of former Lebanese PM Rafiq Hariri and other political assassinations in Lebanon is stumbling on the unwillingness of ten countries to collaborate. Collaboration with the inquiry was a number one requirement in all UN resolutions concerning the inquiry. The head commissioner, Serge Brammertz, did not publish the names of the countries who won't collaborate, but speculations are running high since the Russian ambassador, Vitaly Tchourkine, asked for the divulgation of the names.

Rafiq Hariri was killed on a Valentine day, February 14th, in Beyrouth, after 'supposedly' a car exploded near his convoy. There is no final official report about the assassination since Brammertz's predecessor, Detlev Mehlis, was discharged after his line of inquiry collapsed in a serie of false and fabricated testimonies which were the only 'proofs' he had produced accusing Syria of the assassination. Syria's army left Lebanon after a public and international outrage at the assassination designated the Syrians as prime suspects. The follow-up to this event was an election victory of the March 14th movement led by Hariri son and Walid Jumblatt as well as other pro-US political movements in Lebanon. However, the March 14th movement is, since then, unable to overcome the dwindling of its political support inside Lebanon resulting from its inability to build consensus and from the fact that most Lebanese see the movement as accomplice of the latest July Israeli agression which was overtly supported by March 14th's western political mentors, the US and the UK.

While not mentioning the names of the countries not collaborating with the inquiry, Brammertz declared being totally satisfied with the Syrian collaboration. On his blog, Alain Gresh, a 'Le Monde Diplomatique' correspondant and specialist of the Middle East, reveals the names of some of these uncooperative countries as published on January 12th by the Lebanese daily Al-Akhbar, a daily seen as close to the Lebanese opposition. They are:
The US who have satellite pictures of the assassination;
Israel who has pictures taken before and after the assassination by its spy planes continously flying over Lebanon;
France who detains a suspect, Mohammed Said Saddik, who made a false testimony to the first UN inquiry headed by Mehlis;
Among other countries mentioned by the Lebanese daily are Germany, Saudi Arabia, Koweit, Australia, UAE, and Brazil.

It is known to these countries that:
The site of the assassination had undergone a 'cleanup' before any evidence gathering;
The first UN inquiry was marred by the lack of professionalism and lack of neutrality on Mehlis's part;
Precious time was lost for collecting and analysing the evidence;
Other politicians and prominent figures died since Hariri was killed, they all are related to the March 14th movement, and their assassinations prompted, eache time, accusations against Syria;
These political assassinations were included by the UN in the mandate of the commission at the demand of the Lebanese state;

Given that Brammertz was making progress and briefing the UN along the way to the point some assume that the change of method in the latest assassination in Lebanon (that of Pierre Gemayyel) was propably prompted by informations on Brammertz's progress and a will to derail the inquiry, one may wonder why these countries, who are all supporting the corrupt pro-US Lebanese government of Fouad Sanyura, won't help a honest inquiry into a series of assassinations that destabilised Lebanon and brought it to the edge of a new civil war ?

Ironically, the March 14th movement and its accolytes had the word 'Truth' as a main slogan on their protest banners (Haqiqa, in Arabic).

Slavoj Zizek on Bush, Saddam, and Other Murderous Dictators

Read Slavoj Zizek at his best in 'Denying the Facts, Finding the Truth'.

''The violent outbursts of the recent Bush politics are thus not exercises in power, but rather exercises in panic.''

''...why was there little talk of delivering Saddam Hussein or, say, Manuel Noriega to The Hague? Why was the only trial against Mr. Noriega for drug trafficking, rather than for his murderous abuses as a dictator? Was it because he would have disclosed his past ties with the C.I.A.?
In a similar way, Saddam Hussein’s regime was an abominable authoritarian state, guilty of many crimes, mostly toward its own people. However, one should note the strange but key fact that, when the United States representatives and the Iraqi prosecutors were enumerating his evil deeds, they systematically omitted what was undoubtedly his greatest crime in terms of human suffering and of violating international justice: his invasion of Iran. Why? Because the United States and the majority of foreign states were actively helping Iraq in this aggression. ''

The execution of Saddam and the vandalism of the Truth

Usually, I am not a Dawkins fan. I always thought that his ultradarwinism was actually hurting the public perception of the theory of evolution.

But Dawkins is a brilliant mind and with his brilliant mind he brings a different and unique perspective on Saddam's execution and hanging. A highly recommended reading...