VENEZUELA
NEWS
BULLETIN
PRÁXIS AND THEORY AND
EMANCIPATION
Cosmos AND
Einai
AND Nothing
SEE -- VER
In
Times of Universal Deceit, Telling
the Truth will be a Revolutionary Act.
(George
Orwell)
As
we said, urgently we have to get
rid of all wild Bush fires, all scorched Rice fields and all brainless
empty Rum bottles.
(Franz J. T. Lee)
No.
1222
August 23, 2006
BIENVENIDOS!!
WELCOME!! WILLKOMMEN!!
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**** Do not dare to touch Venezuela
with your poisoned tentacles!
By: Oscar Heck
Published: Sunday, April 16,
2006
Bylined to: Roy S. Carson
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Published: Wednesday, August 23, 2006
Bylined to: Oscar Heck
Oscar Heck: Do not dare to touch Venezuela with your poisoned tentacles!
VHeadline.com commentarist Oscar Heck writes: I was not going to write just yet ... I don't like to write when my adrenalin is this high ... and it has been for over two days now. If anyone out there thinks that the USA is innocent in any fashion, think again.
Even though I am Canadian-born, I consider myself Venezuelan. Venezuela is my favorite country (and I have been to 34 countries, so I can compare) ... and Venezuelans are amongst my favorite peoples ... along with the mores (ways and idiosyncrasies) of Venezuelan life.
Venezuela is my home, my heart, my family ... and I will protect my dear Venezuela with my life.
Don't touch Venezuela!
I fell in love with Venezuela (and my wife, who is Venezuelan) close to 30 years ago ... and now the sons of bitches (sorry about the swearing, but I have no other milder or more "acceptable" descriptive words to use in public at this time) have the balls to make a war-like move against Venezuela. Such a move against Venezuela implies the slow attempt at the systematic destruction of millions of innocent Venezuelan lives at the hands of the criminal USA.
It is an act of war ... and the USA is well aware of it ... and shamelessly at that ... as if they are the kings and the queens of the entire planet ... which they are not ... and far from it. The USA is a conglomerate of gutless pussy willows with big guns and arrogance ... immature and idiotized bullies with ruthless and psychopathic leaders and inhuman social values at the head of that monster's blood-soaked body.
The USA is impregnated with malice and a total lack of conscience ... and I have no qualms about stating this in such a fashion. It is my opinion and as such it stands. I no longer have, as I have mentioned to many letter-writers, any sympathy or empathy for the USA or for its people.
USA aggression against Venezuela will not be permitted. They will never win, they will never conquer ... they will never succeed against Venezuela.
Over my dead body!
I will not enter into details at this time. Perhaps later.
This is the last straw ... and it tried to break this camel's back ... but I have a good back ... and so do millions of Venezuelans who support democracy in Venezuela ... the only true democracy in the world (as far as I can see) ... that same participative democracy which Chavez, Venezuela's democratically-elected president, has brought to Venezuela for the first time in its entire history ... for the benefit of The People.
Do not dare to touch Venezuela with your poisoned tentacles!
In my eyes and in my heart and mind, the recent actions of the USA against Venezuela are now beyond any form of repair.
This is The Last Straw.
I have taken my decision and I make no apologies ... even at the expense of whatever "reputation" I may have left, if any.
Oscar Heck
oscar@vheadline.co
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=66793
De acuerdo a la tesis de
K.Marx. El
concepto de revolución debe interpretarse como todo proceso de
transformación
social donde todo el sistema burocrático existente, debe ser sustituido
en su
totalidad, es decir romper con todas las viejas estructuras anteriores
para
darle paso a la innovación y creación de un nuevo modelo socioeconómico
para
materializar en implementar un nuevo orden socio jurídico y político.
Mientras el Comandante
Fidel se encontraba
Convaleciente y en el medio Oriente se respira un clímax hostil: Se
detecto una
grave falla dentro del sistema de seguridad presidencial que tiene la
delicada
misión de garantizar y proteger todo el entorno administrativo del
Comandante
Hugo Chávez.
***Oscar
Flores y René Colmenares
Analistas
Políticos Socio comunitarios. (Chacao y Barlovento Edo. Miranda)
Con el nombramiento de la
ciudadana
Delcy Rodríguez como Ministra del Despacho de
Se constató que este grupo
de
personas traídos exclusivamente por la ex-ministra Delcy Rodríguez,
actualmente
se encuentran entorpeciendo y saboteando de manera intencional, todo lo
concerniente al trabajo de corte social que internamente se lleva acabo
diariamente en las dependencias administrativas del palacio y, que es
el
bastión fundamental para fortalecer el proceso revolucionario de allí que se ha generado un inmenso malestar
en el seno de un grupo de personas que tienen más de cuatro años
consecutivos
en palacio creyendo a diario en el discurso presidencial y que es
torpedeado
por estas estrellas y, muchos de ellos
han sido puestos a la orden de Recursos Humanos por instrucciones
precisas de
los saboteadores, en total 150, personas, una vez que ingreso a palacio
la
comitiva traída por la ex – ministra, sin habérseles constatado
cualquier vicio
o irregularidad administrativa en sus funciones rutinarias, a
continuación solo
vamos a detallar responsablemente los datos que las redes de
inteligencia socio
comunitaria han detectado y que se considera como un enorme falla del
entorno
presidencial.
Cabe destacar que la
presente
información en su debida oportunidad se analizo mediante informe y se
remitió
al despacho presidencial con la importancia y celeridad del caso
durante la estadía
de la mencionada ministra pero actualmente se desconocen las razones
por la
cual jamás le hizo entrega de esta información al Sr. Presidente.
En otro orden de ideas a
fin de
constractar las injusticias detectadas en esta oportunidad vamos a
mencionar
solo dos casos de personas que tienen más de cuatro años esperando la
firma de
su respectivo contratado y sus respectivos salarios, no llegan a los
dos
millones de bolívares en comparación con la lista de personas que
fueron
admitidas por la antecesora del nuevo ministro Adán Chávez a quien le
compete
administrativamente direccionar la respectiva investigación a fin de
establecer
los criterios imprescindibles para que ponga en práctica los
correctivos
necesarios y para que se establezca el total esclarecimiento de los
hechos ¿
Porque, como y con la venia de quien, se
infiltraron estas personas a ocupar cargos estratégicos en las
dependencias del
palacio ?
Así como también deseamos
que todos
aquellos que dicesen ser muy leales a la causa consideren que las
informaciones
en su momento tienen un costo y un beneficio en el tiempo y, el
espacio, pero
cuando se trata de luchar en impulsar la estabilidad pura y cristalina
del
proceso revolucionario, todo debe ser ganancia, tomando como referencia
los
conceptos del Art. 25, 26, 62, 57, 131, 132, 141, 145, 146 y 147, de nuestra
Carta Magna: A continuación solo reflejáramos dos trabajadores de una
lista de
ciento cincuenta personas que actualmente laboran el palacio para que
ustedes
mismos establezcan los parámetros diferenciales con relación al sueldo
actual
que vienen devengando.
YENIFER SALAS C.I.
14.501.661.
ABOGADO/ SUELDO
700.000.BS
BELQUIS PECHUE C.I.
11.668.779 TRAB.
SOCIAL / SUELDO 700.000.Bs.
Estos dos trabajadores del
palacio
actualmente, llevan más de cuatro años esperando su estabilidad laboral
y,
hasta la fecha aún permanecen sin suscribir su respectivo contrato.
El resto de los nombres de
estas
personas concerniente a la información acá
suministrada, quedara sujeta a nuestra
protección con una copia a todas las redes de inteligencia socio
comunitario
para mantenernos alerta a fin de evaluar las medidas que se presume
deben tomar
por los órganos correspondientes (
conforme a lo normado en los artículos 4, 9, 12, 13, 19 y 21, de la ley
de
simplificación de tramites administrativos ).Y reiteramos que nuestro
objetivo
es que se cumpla el ideario del Libertador y padre de la patria, “No
puede
haber Paz sino hay justicia, equidad e igualdad “en el marco de la
sociedad.
Exigiendo una severa sanción a los responsables de esta delicada
situación.
Finalmente
se hace saber que la red de inteligencia sociocomunitaria desplegada a
nivel
nacional, no persigue cargos, recomendaciones o condecoraciones de
ningún tipo,
tampoco requiere estar a diario en los principales programas de opinión
de
Los
que deseen formar parte de este equipo solo deben suministrar
informaciones que
al momento de que los organismos competentes inicien un procedimiento
investigativo tales hechos deben colegir
exactamente con lo expuesto en el contenido de la información,
sin
inflar la información ya que el objetivo es que una vez que se detecten
las
presuntas fallas se tomen acciones enérgicas que permitan corregir las
fallas
detectadas y que cada misión ordenada por el EJECUTIVO
se cumpla a cabalidad, no leyendo con un
papelito ante las cámaras de Venezolana de televisión lo que
supuestamente hizo
con los realitos que el jefe de estado les aprobó para cierto o
determinado
proyecto.
Cada venezolano patriota
debe
trabajar de la forma que pueda para reivindicar el discurso del Líder, ¡SIN MIEDO Y QUE NADIE ARRUGUE!
DE ESTA MANERA NO SE PUEDE
APOYAR A
Hemos dicho Patria o
muerte y
¡¡Viva Chávez carajo!!! Sin demagogia.
Los traidores No pasaran.
| Monday, Aug 21, 2006 |  |
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Billions of dollars spent, tens of thousands of lives lost, hundreds of hours of televised speeches and press conferences, extensive diplomatic efforts, political and military plans, years in Iraq, and much more.
None of this helped the US to achieve its president's announced goal of "winning the hearts and minds of the Arab people". Instead, George Bush seems to have lost the hearts and minds of many who had been supportive of US plans for the Middle East.
Someone else in the Americas seems to have the secret formula for achieving that goal; much more quickly and cheaply.
Hugo Chavez, the Venezuelan president, found himself at the centre of Middle Eastern politics when he announced that he was withdrawing his most senior diplomat from Israel, the Venezuelan charge d'affaires in Tel Aviv. Not for something Israel did to his country, but for what it does to Palestinians and Lebanese thousands of miles away.
The action was preceded by Chavez's repeated condemnation of what he describes as Israel's "aggression" against Lebanese land and its "genocide" against the Lebanese people. He was the first head of state to say such harsh words towards Israel after violence broke out on the Israeli Lebanese border last month, even before that of any Arab or Muslim country.
"I don't want to be an Arab. From now on I shall be Venezuelan"
Today on many Arabic internet sites one can read comments such as: "I am Palestinian but my president is Chavez, not Abu Mazen." Or: "I don't want to be an Arab. From now on I shall be Venezuelan."
In Gaza and Ramallah in the Palestinian Territories I am told that next to Arafat's and Che Guevara's posters, a new poster of Chavez is being added.
On world television channels one could even see Venezuelan flags in demonstrations in Beirut, next to Lebanese and Palestinian flags, and in many prominent newspapers across the Arab World, columnists wondered: why can't Arab leaders do what a Latin American non-Arab non-Muslim leader dared do?
Naturally, some anti-Chavez Venezuelans would rush to warn their president's Arab fans of what they say is the real Chavez: an authoritarian who is ruining their country.
But that would still not change much for his Middle Eastern supporters. When one internet user wrote saying that Chavez was a "dictator like Fidel Castro", the replies flooded the website one after the other defending Chavez and insulting the person who had criticised him.
Chavez's opponents see his position as a mere political manoeuvre to support his ally, Iran, and to attack his traditional enemy: the US, or the "empire" as he calls it. They also think that he wants to increase his popularity worldwide.
That could be true. But what is undoubtedly true is that Chavez's affinity with Arabs is nothing new. He often mentions them in his speeches and tells stories of his adventures with Arab leaders in their faraway lands. He admires the desert. He says he is a Nasserite (referring to the late nationalist president of Egypt, Gamal Abdul Nasser). He mentions Iraq more than Arab leaders do and never misses an opportunity to "salute the Iraqi resistance against imperialist forces".
This solidarity with Arab causes is widely shared by most Venezuelans, and also by most Latin Americans, especially the poor.
Many marched in the streets of Caracas and other cities in Venezuela - as well as in Brazil, Argentina, Uruguay,, Colombia and elsewhere - to show solidarity with the Lebanese and Palestinians in their plight.
Israel reacted slowly and rather indifferently to Chavez's decision to withdraw his diplomat, as though it was of little importance. Only after several days did it call its ambassador to Caracas for consultation.
Then Chavez went further, to say that he was probably going to break diplomatic relations altogether with Israel, a state with which he is not interested in sharing any business, offices or anything else.
The state of relations between the two countries at the moment is unclear. Nobody knows how long the Venezuelan charge d'affaires will stay away from Tel Aviv. Nor does anyone really know whether or when the Israeli ambassador is due back in Venezuela. The Israeli embassy still operates normally in Caracas.
But none of those details matters any more. What has been said and done will not be forgotten by any of the parties involved.
Accusations
Jewish people in Venezuela say they have received threats and feel uneasy about the whole thing. Security was tightened around all Jewish facilities in Caracas and nobody there was willing to give a comment to Al Jazeera. Some prominent Jewish figures spoke on local media and accused Chavez of being an anti-Semite.
At the same time, Chavez may well be accused of harbouring Hezbollah units. Last week there was talk on Western and Israeli media about such units abroad.
Whatever the consequence of Chavez's uncompromising position with Israel, it is evident that it embarrassed Arab leaders, as none of them cut or even downgraded ties with Israel despite all the massacres its army has committed in Lebanon and Palestine.
Those leaders whom he always praised and considered as his "brothers" might not like him as much as they did when he summoned them in Caracas in 2000 to put the oil prices up within Opec.
They surely do not like his closeness to Iran, which is seen by many as trying to spread its influence over the Middle East. And they probably feel that his continuous, provocative anti-Bush statements are too compromising.
Chavez probably realises all of that. For years he strove to forge alliances with Arab governments and share projects to break the current world economic order in which, as he sees it, third-world countries are all tied to the big powers and not to each other.
But he has seemingly given up on his Arab counterparts, or most of them at least, now that he has come to realise that they are not anti-imperialist - not even anti-Israeli - and that some strongly dislike his ally, Iran.
He and the whole world saw how close and obedient Arab leaders are to the US and how far and detached from their people they have grown. If what happened in Iraq, Palestine and Lebanon is not enough to make them speak out and stand up to defend Arab dignity, then nothing will.
That is where Chavez's talent to communicate with the man on the street comes in to fill the gap and make him more popular than Arab leaders in their own countries.
One internet user writes: "I wish there were elections to elect the leader of the Arab Umma [Islamic Nation] and I am sure 100 per cent that Chavez will win the elections although he is Venezuelan."
Legendary
It will be interesting to see what course official Venezuelan-Arab relations will take.
The sure thing is that in the mind of millions of Arabs, Chavez is now in the same league as Hassan Nasrallah, the leader of Hezbollah, and other "heroic" Arab figures.
At a time when nationalism in the Arab world is linked to Islamic movements such as Hamas in Palestine and Hezbollah in Lebanon, both branded as terrorist movements by Washington, Chavez represents a very different trend.
He does not belong to or lead a religious movement; he is not - yet - classified by Washington as terrorist; hee is, unlike Arab leaders, a democratically elected president and an anti-imperialist socialist who has no equal at the moment in the Arab world.
No wonder some Arab internet users call for cloning him to make sure they get a copy to replace their own leader.
Would there be a "Chavez of Arabia" just like the legendary "Lawrence of Arabia", the Englishman who won the trust and sympathy of Arabs in the desert when they were under English mandate?
History will decide. But for now, to many Arabs online he is "an honourable man in a world of few men" that many declare they are "ready to die for".
Aljazeera By Dima Khatib, Latin America Correspondent
Original source / relevant link:
Al Jazeera
http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/0393C044-9D53-43FB-9B2F-3F15DF88AF91.htm
http://www.venezuelanalysis.com/print.php?artno=1800
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On Wednesday, the interior ministers of Britain, Germany, France, Finland and Portugal held an impromptu meeting in London with the European Union’s justice commissioner and its counter-terrorism coordinator.
The informal talks were billed as an urgent response to the August 10 alleged terror plot that had caused panic and chaos across UK airports and disrupted flights internationally.
In reality, the terror scare merely provided a political pretext for Europe’s leaders to legitimise draconian measures that have been in preparation for more than a year.
Britain’s Home Secretary John Reid set the tone. In one of three photo-ops organised around the talks in the space of two hours, Reid warned, “As we face the threat of mass murder, we have to accept that the rights of the individual that we enjoy must and will be balanced with the collective right of security and the protection of life and limb.”
Even from a procedural standpoint, the convening of an international meeting to discuss sweeping proposals of dubious constitutional validity based on unproven allegations indicates a cynical disregard for democratic rights.
After more than a week, no evidence has been presented to back up police and government claims that they successfully thwarted another 9/11 aimed at causing “mass murder on an unimaginable scale.” No bombs have been found, and it transpires that none of those arrested for involvement in the alleged plot had purchased air tickets and some do not even have passports.
Amidst growing public scepticism, the extensive police investigation appears more to do with constructing a case after the fact. On the same day that the EU ministers met, a judge granted police extra time to continue questioning the 24 people detained in early morning raids. None of those arrested were allowed to make representations at the closed hearing, and all were informed of their continued detention via video link. Under draconian laws introduced by the Blair government, they can be held for a month without charge.
Still, Reid told a press conference, “It’s very important that the measures that are taken in one country are reflected in other countries because we want equal security for all our countries.”
The proponents of terror “would abuse our open societies, would misuse our freedoms and adapt the latest technology to their evil intent and have no regard for human life or for human rights,” he continued.
Based on such claims, the six ministers agreed to present plans to an EU meeting in September that will effectively seal off Europe and overturn fundamental civil liberties, including the right to free speech.
The proposals—many of which were drafted by Britain during its presidency of the EU in 2005—include expanding data-sharing on airline passengers, with “advanced passenger information” to be sent ahead to destinations throughout the EU. This will eventually include details of travellers’ biometric identifiers, such as fingerprints or iris scans.
Only in May, the European Court of Justice had thrown out a deal agreed to between the EU and Washington whereby European airlines hand over information on passengers travelling to the US before take-off. The Luxembourg court had ruled that this constituted an invasion of privacy and had no legal basis under European law.
The ruling caused a transatlantic row with Peter King, US Republican chair of the House Homeland Security Committee, complaining “Sometimes I think European parliamentarians don’t realise the reality of governing.”
The court had given policy makers until the end of September to resolve the conflict. In an interview on August 13, Michael Chertoff, head of US Homeland Security, said he hoped the terror scare would now end all objections to US demands. “I sure hope this is a great wake-up call,” he said.
Not only is Washington to get everything it demanded, but the ministers also proposed that a “full exchange” of passenger information, including “unfiltered” information, be established between Europe’s police forces.
“Our ideas are to extend to the European territory, to all flights into, through, from the territory of one or more member states and perhaps including the intra-EU flights,” Justice Commissioner Franco Frattini said.
“We could explore positive profiling for passengers allowing to be checked well in advance in order to make quicker and easier the controls on board,” he added.
According to reports, the Blair government is currently considering the introduction of a “trusted traveller” scheme that would allow 40,000 passengers to fast-track through security checks at airports. More stringent checks would be imposed on those travelling from “high-risk” countries.
This has been
coupled with demands for
greater passenger profiling
explicitly targeting those from a certain ethnic or religious
background explicit—a proposal one of Britain’s most
senior Muslim police officers described as tantamount to creating
a new offence of “travelling whilst Asian.”
Indeed, on August 10, Azar Iqbal, a British citizen travelling to Disneyland with his wife and three children, was thrown out of the US after he was reportedly told by Atlanta immigration officers that Asian people needed a special visa to enter America.
Azar says that he was questioned for four hours in front of his family, who were forced to go ahead without him. Before being put on the next flight back to the UK, he says immigration officers also quizzed him as to whether he had any connection with those that had been arrested in Britain early that morning.
EU ministers now look set to agree on Washington’s demands for a “no-fly” list, whereby passengers’ names will be vetted before take-off and any that appear on a security list will not be allowed to fly. Airlines had been resisting the move for fear of costly delays, but it was imposed as a “temporary” measure in the UK following the terror scare and is now expected to be made permanent.
The EU ministers are also to seek greater powers for policing the Internet, including banning web sites considered to be fomenting terrorism.
Measures to clamp down on the Internet have been in fruition for some time. For more than a year, the Council of the European Union has been discussing how to shut down web sites that “incite” or “glorify” terrorism but had difficulties in defining what constituted “terrorism.”
The six EU heads were similarly vague on the question. But according to reports, they intend to make the Internet a “hostile environment” for terrorists by banning web sites that “spread messages of hate, glorify murder and give practical advice on making bombs.”
The meeting also agreed to take measures to create a “European Islam,” whereby EU governments would “train imams” (Muslim religious leaders). Frattini said this was “very important not only to show to the Muslim communities that we fully respect other religions, other faiths, but we also want them to respect national laws, European laws and fundamental rights, and first of all right to live.”
Such remarks are clearly aimed at branding all Muslims as potential terrorists by virtue of their faith.
This slander was echoed by Reid, who claimed that two fundamentally different sets of values are in play in Europe. One is the values of the European Union, he said. They include “democracy, freedom and justice to all.” The second is the values of “totalitarianism,” which aims to “subvert a religion whose very name stands for peace,” he said, referring to Islam.
In reality, it is Europe’s political leaders that constitute the greatest threat to democracy and freedom, as has been all too bloodily illustrated in Iraq and in Lebanon—where they were complicit in enabling Israel’s brutal offensive—not to speak of the measures implemented against asylum seekers and civil liberties in general.
This is further underscored by the political biographies of those who gathered in London.
Frattini, for example, was Italy’s foreign minister from 2002 to 2004—a time when Silvio Berlusconi’s government was playing a crucial role in lending international credibility to Washington’s aggression against Iraq. A member of Berlusconi’s Forza Italia, Frattini defended the US-led invasion, claiming that George Bush “is the president of a state that has and is bringing freedom to the world.”
Nicolas Sarkozy is a leading member of France’s right-wing Union for a Popular Movement. In his bid to replace President Jacque Chirac, Sarkozy has made an open pitch to supporters of the fascist National Front with his authoritarian law-and-order policies and anti-immigrant legislation. It was Sarkozy who imposed November’s state of emergency to crush the suburban youth revolt on France’s impoverished council estates and who drafted the Internal Security Law dramatically strengthening police powers, which became law in January.
Wolfgang Schäuble, of the Christian Democratic Union, has been described as “one of the most rigid neoconservative politicians in Germany”—no mean feat, given the Merkel government’s assault on social provision and civil liberties. He had proposed the deployment of armed forces during this year’s World Cup, and is currently leading plans to amend the German constitution to enable security forces to shoot down hijacked planes.
As for Reid, even before he became home secretary last year, a political profile by Kevin Toolis in the Guardian, in 2002, described him as, “more of a functionary than a potential leader; an apparatchik. If we had a Politburo instead of a cabinet, Reid would probably be running the State Security Division.”
The analogy is more politically germane that one would first imagine. A member of the Stalinist Communist Party during his university days—Reid reportedly said he joined it because it was one of the few non-Trotskyist groups on campus besides the chess club—he soon moved into the Labour Party, leading the witch-hunts against socialists and lefts in its ranks during the 1980s.
A loyal Blairite who is tipped to take over from the prime minister when he finally steps down, he has been crucial in enforcing the government’s big business policies in his various positions as head of transport, health, defence and now the home office. One of the home office’s latest plans is to forcibly return children whose applications for asylum have been rejected to such war-torn countries as Angola and the Democratic Republic of Congo.
Such is the reactionary record of those presuming to lecture others on “democracy” and “justice.”
| Traducción para Rebelión Horacio Garetto |
Según Michael Certoff, el Secretario de Seguridad Interior de Usamérica, si hubiera un segundo ataque terrorista del tipo del 11 de setiembre de 2001, un rasgo esencial de la “defensa” será la “ofensiva”. “La Seguridad Interior (Homeland Security) es una parte de una estrategia más amplia que consistirá en llevar la batalla al enemigo”
En el mes siguiente a los atentados de Londres del 7 de julio se informó que el vicepresidente Dick Cheney dio instrucciones al USSTRATCOOM de preparar un plan de contingencia para ser “empleado en respuesta a otro ataque terrorista del tipo del 11 de septiembre sobre suelo americano”. En este plan está implícito que Irán estará detrás del segundo 11 de septiembre.
Este “plan de contingencia” usa el pretexto de un “segundo 11 de septiembre”, que es un hecho que todavía no ha sucedido, para ir preparando operaciones militares de gran envergadura contra Irán, mientras en simultáneo ejercen presión sobre Teherán en relación con su por ahora inexistente programa de armas nucleares.
Lo que es diabólico en esta decisión del vicepresidente de Estados Unidos es que la justificación presentada para librar una guerra contra Irán no pasa del nivel de una mera hipótesis, no comprobada, de ninguna implicación de Irán en ningún ataque, cosa que como dijimos no ha ocurrido.
El plan incluye ataques aéreos de gran escala sobre Irán, empleando ambos tipos de armas, armas convencionales y armas nucleares tácticas. Dentro de Irán hay más de 450 objetivos estratégicos, incluyendo numerosos sitios sospechosos de desarrollar programas de armas nucleares. Muchos de esos objetivos son tan duros y están enterrados tan profundamente que no pueden ser atacados con armas convencionales, de ahí la opción nuclear. Como en el caso de Irak la respuesta no está condicionada a que Irán esté realmente implicado en algún acto de terrorismo contra USA. Varios altos oficiales de la Fuerza Aérea implicados en la planificación están espantados por las implicaciones de lo que están haciendo pero ninguno quiere dañar su carrera profesional planteando objeciones (Philip Giraldi, “Ataque a Irán, La guerra nuclear preventiva”, The American Conservative, 2 de agosto de 2005)
¿Estaremos comprendiendo bien que los planificadores militares de Usamérica, Gran Bretaña e Israel están esperando que suceda un “Segundo 11 de Septiembre” para extender la guerra aún más allá de las fronteras del Líbano, hasta lanzar un operación militar directa contra Siria e Irán?
Obsérvese bien que el “plan de contingencia” de Cheney no está enfocado en impedir un “Segundo 11 de septiembre”. El plan de Cheney se basa en la presunción de que Irán estará detrás del “Segundo 11 de Septiembre” y de que se puede activar inmediatamente un bombardeo de castigo, antes de conducir una investigación, parecido a la forma como se atacó Afganistán en Octubre de 2001, cuando se alegó que el ataque lo fue en represalia por el apoyo del gobierno de los talibanes a los terroristas del 11 de septiembre. Es importante comentar que ningún plan de guerra se hace en tres semanas. El bombardeo y la invasión de Afganistán se planearon bien antes del 11 de septiembre. Como lo señala Michael Keefer en un incisivo artículo:
“ A un nivel más profundo, lo que todo esto significa es, nada más y nada menos que un “ataque terrorista del tipo del 11 de septiembre” constituye un medio adecuado para legitimar guerras de agresión contra cualquier país seleccionado para darle ese trato por el régimen y por su sistema amplificado de propaganda corporativa …”(Keefer, febrero de 2006)
En una oportuna declaración, solo unos pocos días después de las masacres producidas por los bombardeos del Líbano, el Vicepresidente Cheney volvió a reiterar su advertencia: “El enemigo que golpeó el 11 de septiembre está fracturado y debilitado, pero sigue siendo letal y continúa empeñado en atacarnos de nuevo” (Waterloo Courier Iowa, 19 de julio de 2006, cursiva mía)
“Una justificación y una oportunidad para golpear a los estados que apoyan al terrorismo”.
En abril de 2006, el Secretario de Defensa Donald Rumsfeld, lanzó un vasto plan de reequipamiento militar para luchar contra el terrorismo en todas partes del mundo, con vistas a contragolpear en caso de un segundo gran ataque terrorista a Usamérica.
“El Secretario de Defensa Donald Rumsfeld aprobó un ambicioso plan militar para luchar contra el terrorismo en el mundo entero y contragolpear más rápido y más decisivo en caso de otro ataque terrorista en los Estados Unidos, de acuerdo con funcionarios de defensa.
El largamente esperado plan de campaña para la guerra global contra el terrorismo, como asimismo dos planes complementarios, fueron aprobados el último mes por Rumsfeld; son considerados la más alta prioridad del Pentágono, según oficiales familiarizados con los tres documentos que hablaron bajo condición de anonimato porque no están autorizados a hablar de ellos públicamente
Los detalles de los planes son secretos, pero en general todo tiene que ver con una importante expansión del rol de los militares y, en particular, de las fuerzas de Operaciones Especiales, en operación continua en Irak y Afganistán. Desarrolladas durante alrededor de tres años por el Comando de Operaciones Especiales (SOCOM) con sede en Tampa, Florida, el plan refleja una creciente implicación del Pentágono en dominios que tradicionalmente eran manejados por la Agencia Central de Inteligencia y el Departamento de Estado (Washington Post, 23 de abril de 2006)
El plan se basa en la posibilidad de un Segundo 11 de Septiembre y en la necesidad de tomar represalias si y cuando USA sea atacado:
El tercer plan expone como los militares pueden responder a un gran ataque terrorista a los Estados Unidos. Incluye larguísimos anexos que ofrecen un menú de opciones para un contragolpe militar veloz contra grupos terroristas específicos, personas o estados que se piensa que los apoyen dependiendo de quién se piense que está detrás de los ataques. Otro ataque crearía tanto una justificación como una oportunidad que hoy por hoy falta para contragolpear contra algunos conocidos objetivos, de acuerdo con actuales y anteriores funcionarios de defensa familiarizados con ese plan.
El plan especifica “qué terroristas y malos serían atacados si nos sacamos los guantes. No nos hemos sacado los guantes”, por el momento dijo un oficial que solicitó no ser identificado por lo delicado del tema (cursivas mías, Washington Post, 23 de abril de 2006) El documento se basa en la suposición de que un Segundo Ataque “que falta hoy” which is lacking today” sería de alta utilidad para crear tanto una justificación como una oportunidad para librar una guerra contra conocidos objetivos (Irán y Siria)
El anuncio del 10 de agosto de Oficina de Seguridad Interior Británica (British Home Office) de haber acabado de frustrar un ataque terrorista de amplia escala que se habría propuesto hacer estallar simultáneamente 10 aviones, transmite la impresión de que es el mundo Occidental el que se encuentra bajo ataque, no Medio Oriente.
La realidad se pone patas para arriba. La campaña de desinformación marcha a toda velocidad. Los medios de comunicación británicos y americanos están incrementando la campaña por una “guerra preventiva” como un acto de “autodefensa” contra Al Qaeda y los estados que apoyen al terrorismo, de los cuáles se pretende que estarían preparando un Segundo 11 de Septiembre. El objetivo subyacente es, a través del miedo y de la intimidación, es el de construir aceptación para la próxima etapa de la guerra en Medio Oriente, ahora directamente contra Irán y Siria.
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Published:
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
Bylined to: Mike
Ruppert
Ruppert: Mary is exactly the kind of gringo I came to Venezuela to get away from!
Date: Tue, 22 Aug 2006 10:58:08 -0400
From: Mike Ruppert (email address withheld
for security reasons)
To: Editor@vheadline.com
Subject: Response to Mary's criticism of my viewpoints.
I don't think Mary read the same article that I wrote ... when I say that America is dead, I mean "brain dead." And -- with all due respect -- Mary is showing some of the exact same thinking I am talkingabout.
I cannot discuss the details of information I have but I have been advised to keep a very low profile here because of US agents in this country.
I am very low on funds and hardly having a vacation. I left with one suitcase, a backpack and my laptop. My company is close to failing for lack of funds and I am not at all sure how I am going to support myself yet. I need.
On another point not related to what Mary wrote, I am perfectly aware of the distinction between American (with an accent over the e), Estado Unidense, gringo and Norte Americano.
My article was written for a US audience in terms that they understand ... this is how all good writers write.
In conversation and correspondence with Venezuelans and Latin Americans I use the proper terms for this culture. Soy gringo. Pero, no soy gringo estupido, Gracias. Estoy, en este momento, un Americano.
Now as to what Mary wrote: Anyone who can claim that helping victims of the WTC catastrophe is offsetting the crimes of the US government is not speaking a language or a logic with which I am familiar. I did not say that Estado Unidenses weren't capable of being kind. Of course they are and have been. What I am saying is that Estado Unidenses are absolutely and totally impotent (because of their own conceptual thinking and failure to take real risks) to change the US government.
Mary makes the common plea made by most gringo/a activists when she says that she's struggling so hard to support a family that she can't do more. Yet I'll wager that she still banks in a major US bank, spends her money with major US corporations, expects her vote to count, has money in a retirement plan that invests in Wall Street and obediently serves the corporatocracy that is the US.
This is how US tyranny is funded.
As people here in Latin America understand, revolutions are made by people who cannot afford to feed their families. She's obviously not poor enough yet. I am.
And anyone who thinks that Michael Moore and Arianna Huffington are some kind of noble warriors, suffering for their courage, should sit down with me and have a Polar Ice while Moore flies around on private Gulfstream jets and gets choice seats at the Republican convention by invitation.
Moore and Huffington are protectors of the empire posing as activists.
Michael Moore firmly believes that there was no US government involvement in 9/11 and calls anyone who thinks so an idiot. Michael Moore is about making money for Michael Moore and not changing the US at all. It has made him wealthy. And as long as he remains an icon for US activists he is the best friend of the neocons and neolibs, George Bush and Hillary Clinton alike. People who follow him will accomplish nothing.
Actually, Arianna Huffington may be doing a little better job of economic truth-telling, but in other respects she still serves and protects the empire. We do not need to comment on how wealthy she is.
Mary exemplifies a line from Gilbert & Sullivan which said that "The guilty flee where no one pursueth." I think she sees and recognizes her own responsibility. Where she errs is in thinking that I am demanding of her that she do the same things I do. Mary is not Mike Ruppert. Mary has not felt 30 years of oppression from the US government nor has she had her offices invaded and computers smashed. She hasn't been shot at, infiltrated, sabotaged and vilified.
What she could do that would help is to completely disengage from the corporate financial system and get out of debt. She can move her money to a small locally-owned bank. She can stop spending any money with TIME-Warner, Coca-Cola, AOL, Citibank, GM, McDonald's etc. She can stop telling people that Michael Moore is a good guy.
All Mary has to do to prove my position totally incorrect is to point to one ... just one ... example where gringo activism has changed a damn thing in the world for the better over the last thirty years.
And please don't tell me that a few dolphins and whales have been saved ... or that a few more blacks got Mcjobs. These ridiculous claims of success fall on deaf ears in a world which is groaning under the death and suffering caused by the United States today.
For all the efforts made by US activists over the last thirty years the world has only gotten worse.
So why am I bad guy for pointing this out?
For holding US activists responsible for showing some results. In the 60s and 70s gringo activists got results. They ended the Vietnam war. Native Americans got more rights and economic access. Civil rights took giant leaps forward. Women got greater access to the economy. The Church-Pike committees resulted in serious restrictions for US intelligence (which have since been neutered) and the release of thousands of documents showing how the US really operates at home and in the world.
But on the whole the world and the US is a far more repressive place today than it was then.
Mary is exactly the kind of gringo I came to Venezuela to get away from ... the kind of gringo who, instead of expressing outrage that an authentic journalist could be harassed, have his computers smashed, threatened, intimidated, financially targeted and driven out of his country, chooses to punish the victim instead.
So much for her defense of free speech.
As for me, I am no longer a gringo. Soy Americano.
Mike Ruppert
(email address withheld for security
reasons)
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=66695
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Published: Monday, August 21, 2006
Bylined to: Michael Moore
Michael Moore: There are many Americans opposed to American fascism?
Sent:
Sunday, August 20, 2006 8:58 AM
From: Michael Moore mijmo@blueyonder.co.uk
To: mary@vheadline.com
Subject: Michael Ruppert
Whether Michael Ruppert is right or wrong about America, I’m afraid your rather reactionary article does little clarify the issues.
So there are many Americans who are opposed to American fascism?
Well don’t try and tell anyone that the so called “first responders” despite the nature of their work highlight the health and well-being of the nation.
Every tyrannical system that ever existed, including Nazi Germany and Stalinist Russia, had similar people; so what!
Look under the veneer of national hero status and you will often find the most vicious, reactionary and violent supporters of the state going about their business; heroes or not.
Michael
Moore
mijmo@blueyonder.co.uk
Loyalty above all else except Honor
Date:
Sun, 20 Aug 2006 15:55:53 -0700 (PDT)
From: Drew Raines drewraines@yahoo.com
To: mary@vheadline.com
Subject: Standing with you; yet disagree with you....
Dear Mary,
As I regain control of my computer investigating news not presented by mainstream media, I discover neo-cons have succinctly taken your hand as they lead you to slaughter during which you pound on your keyboard “this is America, you can’t do this” or informing us of what is going on.
Mary, I love your articles but NO ONE is standing up to put a stop to the tyranny ACTIVELY; even in the local townships for the people are ‘threatened', 'abused’, ‘deprived’ and ‘afraid.’
More sooner than later we the people of a once great nation will be forced to take a numbered ID or go to jail.
You have not walked in the shoes of Michael Ruppert, but you chastise him for choosing life, to fight another day, and YES as he left the country of his birth and one he loves, to go where? ...Venezuela, a county more free than we.
We should be proud Michael stood up and began the investigations of 9/11. Michael was getting too close to organizing evidence ... and proof matters for a jury to decide even when said is undeniable to even the most liberal, most Conservative including the Ann Coulters/Rush Limbaugh hypnotized federalist. The crime family began to shake.
YES Mary, we have a choice to live by Privilege (licenses} and slavery or silent slavery.
Mary, What does a man/family do when the Government is behind the breaking and entering of Michael’s business and home after many phones calls of threat and coercions … OH yes, they say “who us, not us, please prove it”… ok, lets look at Christopher Bollyn’s attack , read his story: http://www.americanfreepress.net/
Now tell me that there are no Government agenda’s stepping on the toes of free press.
Your own stories have encouraged many Americans to take a better look at what is going on, and you should be proud that your truth is getting out ... but when the thugs invade your home, threaten you, threaten your children and you have the wherefore to evacuate to a free country for asylum ... tell me you will not depart, you stand and fight, while your friends and family say ‘they can’t do that,’ she’s an American, she has freedom of the press, you can't take her to jail, she has a right to uncover evidence that will put the last three (3) Presidents of the United States in prison for crimes against the American People and the world ... including bribery, racketeering, murder, least of which is threatening the lives of people and condoning the spying of it own citizens under some bogie man innuendo.
I pray from the webmaster and Frank, that they too may live in peace and not have to forgo the route of asylum. However, if one moves to fight from afar, that does not mean he/she has departed the fight; they have chosen to fight another day, hopefully in safety, for many of us in these States once united independently but now enslaved by tyrants.
We are not safe, We are NOT free ... nor are things going to get better anytime soon.
Yes Mary, I Know you Love America, and YOU love our country’s foundation (as I do), but when is enough, enough, before you are forced to make the choice to leave because you are arrested for taking a picture of the police “Cell Phone Picture called obstruction of Justice” “Man Arrested for shooting photo of Police Activity” ... or forced to have sex in a jail cell.
Yes Mary, I pray for you and your family daily, for you have more to lose than just your freedom in a jail cell.
Michael, for what ever reason, believes he can fight ... but his fight must be from another country...
Viva Venezuela, land of real freedom, where he lives to fight another day.
Mary, I ask what will you do when the threat comes to your home, given the choice of the two women in the Philly jail to perform sex acts while police officers watched. or stay in jail for even more atrocities … what of your children? ….. can you allow yourself to be humiliated to the extreme with threats, how of the safety concerning what would happen to your family.
These atrocities are but a sampling, Mary, as our City Police Departments are “Federalized,” thusly, inhumane treatments are coming to your local jail near you by way of US Military torture cells in Iraq and Gitmo ... because we have political leaders who feel they are above the law, and they have an agenda THEY want to lead with. I pray these atrocities never happen to you or allowed in our society (in my heart I know they’re here already) and if something does force you to take your children and evacuate, you will have many of us financially able to help you so then you too, may return another day when masses of hypnotized people will rise up as in “V” for Vendetta and change our Capitalist-Fascist government back to one respected with HONOR, not feared for mandated democracy.
I personally will not go quietly in the night, Mary ... but I have no family, I have no wife or children to care for ... I have only my Schnauzer and she is but a friend accompanying me on this trail of life.
Mary, You, Michael and Christopher are more important alive writing the TRUTH from foreign lands, allowing those like me to stand & fight here for FREEDOM ... you have the pen and with God’s Help you will remember those of us who choose to stand allowing you and men like Michael Ruppert, Christopher Bollyn, Frank Whalen, and Roy Carson at VHeadline.com, to show the world not all Americans of the United States are terrorists enforcing THEIR will on the governed and not freedom for all.
Keep writing Mary ... bring forth TRUTH allowing William Penn to whisper in your ear “Believe nothing against another but on good authority; and never report what may hurt another, unless it be a greater hurt to some other to conceal it.”
God Bless these states United as a nation, and may she return to her rightful glory “Freedom and Justice for all.”
Loyalty above all else except Honor,
Drew
Malone; Raines III
drewraines@yahoo.com
USMC 1967-1977
C.E.O. HEART & Associates
http://www.MatrixEnergySystems.com
Michael Moore & others _ So What
Date:
Sun, 20 Aug 2006 17:15:16 -0700 (PDT)
From: Drew Raines drewraines@yahoo.com
To: Mary@vheadline.com
Subject: Michael Moore & others _ So What
Dear Mary,
I was in disagreement of your article on Michael Ruppert but dear lady, I respect you for your belief, and your writings.... ****ALL**** OF US who stand in this fight on evil and enslavement must take the heat and in some times disagreement will arise, but to GIVE UP, because another one finds disagreement with ones issues is not loyal to one's belief .
Selfish to believe your right and everyone else is wrong, make you no better than those you attempt to uncover their evils...
Everyone will *NOT* agree with you ALL THE time; to believe so is unreasonable, unfair and not our FREE SPEECH WAY...
Stand up, yes I disagree, BUT LADY, I STILL respect you for YOUR belief; we have way too much in-fighting among patriots and the neo-cons set back and hoot; there are too few of us to fight the masses of evil to fight amongst ourselves and ridicule our brother patriots
IF you want out of the fight, that's one thing, and go in peace with love, but don't quit because you get a few hate mails or you can't take the heat ... that's just a cop out.
Per the Emails of hate of which 1/2 are from those evil ones who we are trying to expose, you should go forth and relax, drop them as a lesson learned. William Penn is whispering, choose your battle walk softly and carry a big pen.
Your choice to write or not to write that is YOUR question for YOUR heart not others, for I give you one more stand to remember when you decide to write for those to understand:
Some will -- Some won't -- So what --- "NEXT."
Drew
Raines
drewraines@yahoo.com
MEMO: if
friends can't disagree and remain friends there was never any respect
for one another and friendship was but a passing of misting aire.
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=66538
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US names spy operations 'manager' for Cuba, VenezuelaBY: sg.news.yahoo.com
The United States has named a special "manager" for its intelligence operations against Cuba and Venezuela, in effect putting the two Latin American nations on a par with "axis of evil" states confronted on multiple levels by the administration of President George W. Bush. North Korea and Iran are the only other countries that have been assigned so-called "mission managers," who supervise intelligence operations against them on what the office of national intelligence director called "a strategic level." In a statement released Friday, the office of National Intelligence Director John Negroponte said the manager would be responsible "for integrating collection and analysis on Cuba and Venezuela across the intelligence community" and "ensuring the implementation of strategies" that have not been disclosed. "Such efforts are critical today, as policymakers have increasingly focused on the challenges that Cuba and Venezuela pose to American foreign policy," the statement said. The director's office said the manager would also be asked to ensure "that policymakers have a full range of timely and accurate intelligence on which to base their decisions." The document did not say what kind of decisions US officials could be making with regard to either of the targeted countries. For the moment, the task of handling the Havana-Caracas axis fell to 32-year Central Intelligence Agency veteran J. Patrick Maher, whose previous job was deputy director of the CIA's Office of Policy Support. His biographical sketch supplied in the announcement indicates he was one of the architects of the CIA's current counterterrorism strategy in violence-torn Colombia and managed the agency's operations in the Caribbean basin. It was not immediately known whether he was directly involved in planning the 1983 US invasion of Grenada in response of a feared Cuban-backed leftist takeover of the island nation. The statement made it clear, however, that Maher would be only an "acting" manager while search for a permanent candidate for the job was under way. The decision to name an interim mission manager appeared to betray a sense of urgency in the Bush administration now that Cuba has entered a period of political uncertainty due to an illness of its longtime communist leader, Fidel Castro. Castro stunned the world on July 31, when he announced he had temporary ceded his presidential powers and the Communist Party leadership to brother Raul Castro, the defense minister, following his gastrointestinal surgery. Earlier Friday, Raul Castro announced the mobilization of tens of thousands of troops in response to activities by those he called US "war hawks." The Bush administration has bolstered its propaganda broadcasts to the island in the wake of Castro's illness. Earlier, it announced a plan to spend 80 million dollars in new money to bring about a pro-Western government in Cuba. On Friday, it rejected the Cuban transition plan, with State Department spokesman Tom Casey insisting that "some kind of dynastic succession on the island are certainly things that are not only not acceptable to us but we think in the long run aren't going to be acceptable to the Cuban people either." Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, a key ally of Castro and the chief supplier of oil to Cuba, said he believed Maher's appointment was also linked to presidential elections that are scheduled in Venezuela for December and that Chavez is widely expected to win. "This shows us that the empire does not rest, that it is hatching a plan for December or a period before December," the Venezuelan leader told reporters. "But whatever it is, we will thwart it." |
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Published: Friday, August 18, 2006
Bylined to: Russian
PRAVDA
US political scientist: Nuclear war will break out next Tuesday, August 22!
Russian PRAVDA: Nuclear war starting in 10 days? Such was the conclusion reached in the United States of America.
Russian generals and political scientists disagree only about its exact starting date.
Our world is on the brink of another world war ... it will originate August 22 in the Middle East. The prediction was presented not by Vagna or Nostradamus but by an American political scientist Bernard Lewis (in the acclaimed publication of Wall Street Journal).
Lewis believes it will be precisely Teheran who will unleash the ultimate conflict by attacking Israel. Why August 22? Perhaps simply because Washington has set a deadline for the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and has demanded a complete wrap up of the nuclear program by that day. It is obvious that Teheran has no intention to comply. Curiously, this year the night of August 22 happens to be night Muslims will celebrate the journey of their prophet Mohammed to Jerusalem and his ascension into heaven. According to Lewis the followers of Mohammed have a perfect opportunity to enrich their celebration by throwing an attack on Israel. An immediate retaliation will follow.
“Such a scenario does not seem too unrealistic to me,” comments Sergey Markov, a Russian political scientist, “These days anything is possible in the Middle East. People living there are crazy and they constantly keep playing with fire. Their situation has gone out of control and is ready to explode any minute. In fact, the new world war is already going in that place.”
The First Act
As the Israeli invasion of Lebanon continues it is becoming clearer that Tel-Aviv actually aims at much more than the elimination of Hezbollah. Israel could have long since used its omnipresent scouts to put an end to the resistance’s activity. Neither does the complete destruction of all Hezbollah’s rocket-launching sites present a problem for the Israeli army with its tremendous equipment and might.
So why the endless bombing of Lebanese cities and villages?
And why the overwhelming US support?
All this is happening precisely during the time when Americans seem unable to force Iran to comply with their demands. Lebanese occupation under the excuse of defending against Hezbollah is itself an excuse for solving the Iranian problem.
The Second Act
Israel has already achieved the minimum solution by getting rid of “Hezbollah” across the border. What more do they need? UN has already offered to fill the occupied area with troops and peace-keepers but Tel-Aviv has still not given its consent. The US is not in hurry to give the green light either. In all actuality it looks like the two countries are intentionally waiting until Iran gets involved in the conflict. The expecting parties might anticipate the attack in the face of fired Iranian rockets, which Tel-Aviv will intercept as they had often done previously with the rockets from Iraq. This time, however, Washington and Tel-Aviv will have acquired an official right to retaliate against Iran.
The Third Act
Israel will attack Iranian nuclear sites. The US will provide its support through the Navy in the Persian Gulf and perhaps through the Air Force. Iran will not delay with its own full-scale attack against the Israeli sites and the US ships.
At this point no one can guarantee that the rest of the Arab World is going to remain watching as an innocent and uninvolved bystander.
The Fourth Act
Very soon such participants as Turkey will inevitably get dragged into the funnel of war. In Iraq and Afghanistan anti-government militant groups will become very active. Finally the conflict will focus on the fighting for the control over the territories with major oil resources. That is exactly with the US is after.
The eventual possession of the oil treasury by one of the conflicting sides will provoke harsh resistance from both Asia and Europe. Russia is also very likely to get provoked into becoming an active participant. In the end this might become the Ultimate Fifth Act, in which no one wishes to believe…
Political Scientist’s Opinion
Alexander Prohanov, the main editor of “Zavtra” Newspaper:“Apocalypse Tomorrow”
- The pulling of the trigger leading to the tragic chain of events has been done. Syria and Iran will be pulled into the war right after Lebanon. Israeli and American attacks on Iran will lead to the interruption of oil exports into Europe and China. Their economies will suffer. In the conclusion there will be chaos all across Asia.The detonation device for the new apocalypse has been set off by Americans, obviously. They believe that they have the power and the authority to regulate the world’s chaos. But the US cannot even gain control over its own minor chaos in Latin America. Let us only hope that Russia will remain neutral throughout this universal nightmare.
Military’s Opinion
Alexander Vladimirov, major general and vice-president of the Board of Military Experts of Russia:“Collision of Civilizations”
- This war is utterly futile for either one of the sides. And as the one lacking in logic it is all the more dangerous. The most dangerous aspect lies in the fact that Israel (and perhaps even Iran by now) possess nuclear weapons and are able to put them to use. This means the beginning of the global war because other countries will not be able to remain uninvolved in the collision of civilizations of this magnitude.
Source: Moskovskii
Komsomolets
Translated by Natalia Vysotskaya
Nuclear
war starting in 10 days?
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=66347
![[info]](http://stat.livejournal.com/img/userinfo.gif){kind=small}
mparent7777)
schrieb:
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Published: Sunday, April 16, 2006
Bylined to: Roy S. Carson
Intelligence agencies: Top executives cooperating with Zulia separatists in plans for a US-led invasion of Venezuela's sovereign territory
VHeadline.com
editor & publisher Roy S. Carson writes: Although
some our our more vitriolic objectors may beg to differ, we do not take
our responsibilities as publishers of VHeadline.com lightly. We
subscribe to a code of ethics and an editorial manifesto which is 100%
in support of Venezuela's democracy, constitutionality and the rule of
law. Some, in their own peculiar fashion have chosen to see our
independence as being somehow joined at the hip to President Hugo
Chavez' political thrust ... and this is as may be, considering that he
is the democratically-elected President of the country and that he is a
servant to its democratically enacted and approved Constitution.
Venezuela's rule of law is another kettle of fish...
Under the 1999 Constitution, a set of rules and procedures were set out to handle a variety of aspects in the day-to-day living of each and every one of Venezuela's close on 25 million citizens and those others who reside within its legal jurisdiction.
It would be Valhalla to presume that every citizen is an angel and that every government official is targeting his or her responsibilities on the prospect of ultimate sainthood. Such is life, and it is for that reason ... in any society ... that laws and penalties are enacted for those who choose to live in discord with established norms.
The tragic reflection on pre-Chavez years was that Venezuelan justice was a recognized commodity to be bought and sold. To a significant degree that has continued to be the case as the Chavez government struggles to reform the judiciary, all the time within the constraints of a democratic constitution and knowing that, given the slightest opportunity, there are those who will seek out each nook and cranny, searching for convenient loopholes to circumvent the right and proper way of arriving at legal and equitable goals.
It has in fact been commented upon that Venezuelans are so adept at the game of 'find the loophole' that they are often expensively blinded to the fact that the proper way of doing things is perhaps the easiest solution and certainly the least time consuming ... the latter factor, perhaps, is the raison d'etre for the legions of handsomely-paid lawyers who scavenge the corridors of power in Caracas and elsewhere.
The Rule of Law is therefore a concept that is yet to be prized in Venezuela, especially among the so-called upper echelons of the government's administrative machinery where nefarious practices still abound as paper-pushers invent spurious delays with the obvious intent of inciting hoped-for rewards to clear fictive bottlenecks. By any other ugly name it is still corruption with a capital C.
It was therefore heartening to hear President Hugo Chavez Frias say he was to launch a war against corruption throughout the bureaucracy and the land as a social entity ... but waving the big stick (at the risk of being accused by North American big-stick wavers of being a dictator himself) is one thing and the practicalities of doing it is quite another.
Yet the urgent task facing President Hugo Chavez Frias is to grab the red-hot tongs and begin branding the animals for what they are. Will he be able to do it? Who knows? It is a mightier task than most men have ever faced and he faces a mountain that would even have perplexed Mohammed with any thought to move.
The task is, however, all the more urgent as our sources at the Foreign Ministry (MRE) described just last Friday and as we have revealed afflicting the Ministry of Communications & Information on several occasions.
Were it but these two that have been singled out, the task incumbent upon the President and his closest executive team would be difficult as it is, but when corruption permeates all levels of just about every ministry, municipality and mayoralty across the vastness of Venezuela it will take very much more than the powers of Mandrake the Magician who (at the beginning of his presidential tenure in 1999) President Chavez admitted, frankly, he wasn't...
As an e-publication focused on Venezuela, its hopes and aspirations we've been challenged on numerous occasions by the country's penchant for easy pay-offs, back-handers, baksheesh or other impolite forms of financial inducement. It would have been so easy for us to succomb to a double-invoice requirement from the manager of a leading hotel chain who offered an attractive source of advertising revenue provisional upon a significant payment (commission?) to be paid to his personal Miami bank account. We declined.
There have been other opportunities too numerous to mention here. Suffice to say that VHeadline is in a constant state of borderline bankruptcy where we prize our ideals over surrender to the dark side.
Of course, we have had our own debacle with MCI and more recently with CITGO where an executive (with many years of anti-VHeadline obstructionism) pulled the plug on a successful advertising campaign that had already over the space of the last two years produced around four times the internet industry average response. Rafael Gomez had joined CITGO from Caracas last May on the heels of countless sighs of relief at PDVSA public affairs when his departure hit the water coolers. Gomez' anti-VHeadline.com fetish apparently stretches back to the infancy of this e-publication when we challenged the lunacy of a PDVSA-sponsored radio campaign to legalize cocaine ... but was exacerbated just a few years back, when the still Caracas-ensconced PDVSA executive let violently fly that a foreign-based top executive was "a ****ing Nazi!" WOW!
It was roughly around the same time that our colleague, Las Vegas-based film maker Harry Minetree had gotten involved with a project to cover the 2004 Presidential Recall Referendum. Harry recalls his innocent induction into the nether world of Venezuelan corruption when he authored a production plan and entered into a deal with PDVSA-owned CITGO's then-president Luis Marin to fund the project. His suspicions were primarily aroused by a shadowy figure who spuriously claimed to be President Chavez' illegitimate offspring; understood that he was a key player in what later proved to be nothing short of subterfuge. As a detective novel would continue, the whole process was drugs, sex and rock & roll but the guy who got stiffed on the penultimate page was Harry ... to the tune of $130,000 ... significantly less than we were stiffed by Rafael Gomez, but!
Harry, of course, has fought his own battle with stonewalling executives and personal secretaries at CITGO's Tulsa and Houston headquarters and we've published quite a few of his remonstrations in VHeadline.com as regular readers must now be aware. Whether or not the deal with Harry will be dealt with honorably is still a matter of speculation but the longer the spaghetti is left to unravel, the more the journalistic exercise gets intriguing.
Our natural concern has always been that, while attacking corruption and indolence in CITGO, PDVSA, MRE, MCI or elsewhere in the Venezuelan administration, our ultimate goal is NOT to cause damage to any of these institutions but rather to activate those in responsible executive control to exercise that executive responsibility and to cut the cancer from the core before their nefarious actions cause lasting damage to the whole.
...and that is why, although (from valued sources) we have been inundated with compromising information on quite a few of the key players in Venezuela's continuing foreign and domestic drama, we have shied away from publishing details which could easily be turned back upon us as somehow venting our own disappointment at having been shafted.
It would have been too easy to let slip the confidential reports we have received from intelligence services of under-the-table dealings, cocaine and prostitution.
We were recently about to publish shattering details which -- if documented -- would have given the US State Department more than several reasons to break open a case load of Chablis, when even more astonishing details came to us by way of British and German intelligence officers concerned by top-level executive infiltration as part of a covert plan to cooperate with Zulia separatists in the event of a US-led invasion of Venezuela's sovereign territory.
We could (perhaps should) name names but at this stage the government of President Hugo Chavez Frias has already been made aware that senior foreign-based executives have been "in talks with" a major US oil company and Pentagon officials with a view to an immediate executive takeover of Venezuela's western oilfields in Zulia and part of Tachira as well as possible incursions across Venezuela's porous border with Guyana to seize the country's oil wealth and millions upon millions of tonnes of mineral deposits in the southeastern Guayana and Amazonas regions.
Harry Minetree was stiffed for $130,000 and we at VHeadline.com were stiffed for considerably less ... but it is at strategically critical times of Venezuela's imminent peril that we should, for a time, step aside for President Chavez and his ministerial team to urgently clear the decks and prepare for what will hopefully not be their final battle.
Roy S.
Carson
Editor@VHeadline.com
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=5
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Published: Thursday, August 17, 2006
Bylined to: Michael C.
Ruppert
"Disappeared" Michael C. Ruppert turns up alive and well in Caracas...
“Sometimes you get your best light from a burning bridge”
– Don Henley, “My Thanksgiving”
From The Wilderness (Michael C. Ruppert): Caracas, August 16, 2006, It was about a week
before I left the United States forever that I watched Robert F. Kennedy, Jr.
tell Charlie Rose something all of us already know in our hearts.
“Today,” he said, “the United States is hated around the world far
worse than it was at the height of the Vietnam War.”
I remember the Vietnam War ... I will never forget it.
I opposed that war, and I still remember riots on the UCLA campus in May,1970 when four students were shot dead by National Guard troops at Kent State University in Ohio. I was a college student then, and I was 2S-deferred for the draft. A year later I would be re-classified 1A as the nation shifted to a lottery system. At least someone in my country was willing to risk his life in the face of injustice. It gave me hope.
That kind of risk-taking was commonplace then, from the civil rights movement to the anti-war movement, to the American Indian Movement. American blood was shed regularly on American soil to resist American tyranny; from Watts, to Detroit, to Selma, to San Francisco to Memphis to Wounded Knee. It fertilized our lives and souls as it touched the ground. The willingness to endure physical suffering, material sacrifice, and jail for the sake of justice was a singular mark of the American character that earned respect as it infected the world.
What is the United States infecting the world with today?
Now it seems the American people won’t even risk their credit ratings, student loans, the next piece of ass, or a sideways glance from people who look at them like AIDS patients for daring to deviate from the corporate, media-instilled norm. We have come a long way backward. Rodney King’s “Can’t we all just get along” has become the modern day theme song for the surrender of America’s character, and the L.A. Rebellion of 1992 was probably the last flame of will to fight injustice in American history.
This new quiescence comes at a time when US crimes are far worse and more far-reaching than they were in 1970; certainly in the eyes of the world. In 2001 the US government both facilitated and executed the attacks of 9/11 against its own people, killing thousands of its citizens as an excuse to launch a neo-imperial conquest for energy. A few Americans held small rallies, organized some ineffective groups, bought a few hundred thousand books and DVDs, listened to a few radio programs and lectures, and then quietly lined up to have their bags, emails, credit histories, minds and bodies searched. Critical mass was never achieved as Executive Orders along with the Patriot and Homeland Security Acts shredded the 1st, 4th, 5th, 6th and 8th Amendments to our Bill of Rights.
In my book Crossing the Rubicon I wrote that events that took place in the five years following those attacks would determine the course of human history for centuries to come. We now stand at the brink of that fateful anniversary.
After the 9/11 attacks the US government lied to create a war for oil in Iraq telling us that Saddam Hussein had weapons of mass destruction, almost-ready atom bombs, poison gas and deadly germs. We were told that he helped execute the 9/11 attacks. It was all lies, and no one has held the US accountable for the hundreds of thousands of deaths (murders) in Iraq and Afghanistan since then. Few have tried to hold the government accountable for 2,500 Americans who have died needlessly, and those who have, have been remarkably ineffective.
US presidential elections were stolen in 2000 and 2004 through rigged electronic voting software and intimidation. Not one drop of blood was spilled anywhere, even as the US Supreme Court rendered an illegal decision supporting the overthrow of the Constitution and trampling the rights of individual states.
I never thought I would call the 60s and 70s “the good old days”. I would cry tears of joy today to see just one campus overrun by a modern equivalent of the Students for a Democratic Society. I would cheer to see a general strike paralyze a city. It would be living proof that American character had not been submerged, drugged, weakened, and rendered anemic beyond revival.
My country is dead. Its people have surrendered to tyranny, and in so doing, they have become tyranny’s primary support group; its base constituency; its chief defender. Every day they offer their endorsement of tyranny by banking in its banks and spending their borrowed money with the corporations that run it. The great Neocon strategy of George H.W. Bush has triumphed. Convince the American people that they can’t live without the “good things”, then sit back and watch as they endorse the progressively more outrageous crimes you commit as you throw them bones with ever-less meat on them. All the while, lock them into debt. Destroy the middle class, the only political base that need be feared. Make them accept, because of their own shared guilt, ever-more repressive police state measures. Do whatever you want.
No amount of mind control spin can absolve any of us from acknowledging this ugly truth about the US and its crimes today. It lurks invisibly behind every corporate news broadcast, every commercially-made television show, every infomercial, every new magazine ad, and almost every new popular song that leads Americans deeper into ever-less-satisfying consumption, self-indulgence and debt. It stands grinning behind every report on the world’s rapacious financial markets and every new automobile, shampoo, or other product that promises to give the world larger and more potent sexual organs, bigger (more ridiculous) breasts, a better love life, and peace of mind.
I left my last classes that spring day in 1970 after four students had been murdered, crying from both the emotional pain and the tear gas that wafted up the Janns Steps and onto the Quad at UCLA. I went to my job as an intern at the Los Angeles Police Department. After donning my khaki uniform without gun or badge I returned to UCLA to work at LAPD’s command post, ferrying dispatches and running errands for Deputy Chiefs, Commanders, and Captains as LAPD batons shed the blood of my fellow students. My life has always been full of ironies. Then, I believed that the system could be changed from the inside. Then, I believed that the United States could be changed from the inside.
Mistrusted by both sides there was no safe place for me to cry that day.
My shame today is that it took a set of circumstances where my life was in danger to make me make the right choice, a choice I would now like to say was totally a matter of conscience, but it was not.
The truth is that I was prompted to do what I should have done long ago out of a well-justified desire to save my life.
In this life I have chosen not to die a martyr’s death. As I am learning every day, there are more difficult and demanding ways to write the final chapters of one’s life. I left the United States with one large suitcase, my laptop, and a backpack. I left behind my precious library, most of my clothing, my personal possessions, my guns, and a house full of furniture. I brought with me less than eight thousand dollars in cash and gold to start the final segment of my life.
My permanent exodus from the US was actually ordained thirty years -- to the month -- before I left for good on July 18, 2006.. It was thirty years ago that my then-fiancée, a career contract agent for the CIA, disclosed to me that “her people” were interested in giving a major boost to my career with LAPD if I would become involved with her “anti-terror” operations that involved “overlooking” (i.e. protecting) large drug shipments coming in while facilitating the movement of large quantities of firearms going out. I refused to compromise my ethics as a police officer and -- as I wrote on page 6 of Crossing the Rubicon -- “that has determined the course of my life ever since.”
Like all humans I want to hold on to dreams for as long as possible, even long after I know they will never come true. I have tried and sacrificed with every fiber of my being to change my country, but the plain fact is that the United States of America cannot and will never be changed from within. I recall the words spoken to me by a senior FBI agent in Los Angeles in 1986: “Mike, the world doesn’t want to be saved.”
Stupid me. I still believe it does -- at least the parts of it that lie outside the US, Great Britain, and Israel; the real Axis of Evil.
Today the United States is the cause of ever-expanding wars (covert and overt), carnage, suffering, and political and economic exploitation -- even within its own borders against its own people -- that fill our corporate-issued headlines and TV shows. The US economy, the privately-owned Federal Reserve system, and the government which they operate like a franchise are the greatest enemies of the entire human race and especially the rapidly- deteriorating and fragile ecosystem which supports all life. U.S. citizens are slowly discovering that they are not immune because of their nationality. On our planet today, what happens to one must inevitably happen to all. Peak Oil and global warming will spare no nationality in the end.
The US economy, driven by a fiat currency, fractional reserve banking, debt-based financing -- and “doped” with the billions of dollars of drug profits laundered through its corporations and banks -- is a superheated pyramid scheme of infinite growth wherein 5% of the world’s population consumes 25% of the world’s energy and a totally disproportionate share of the world’s diminishing resources and commodities.
In their silence and acquiescence Americans have voted -- even if by abstention -- to stand on the shoulders of all drowning peoples in the vain hope that they will somehow be saved from a paradigm which they support and empower by obeying it; by endorsing it with their silence or knowingly impotent protests; by refusing to throw themselves against the gears of the machine. In this world, a protest which is allowed and encouraged, corralled into free-speech areas, and then policed by the ruling government only to be ignored by the media is, by definition, meaningless.
The US is a nation where the “non-negotiable” and unsustainable “American” way of life is propped up by global conflict, out-of-control military spending, massive and unsustainable debt, and an increasingly-aggressive fascist police state. It is a nation where all US citizens who do not resist and disconnect from this paradigm enjoy their ever-diminishing privileges with the guilty knowledge that somewhere else, hopefully in some “other” country, others are paying the price for it.
The world is now my country.
With the passage of time, the degree of corporate oppression, the outrageousness of the cruelty, and the absurdity of the lies can only increase as dwindling resources diminish and desperation erupts. Ironically, the disappearing American middle class will still cheer at each new millionaire success story, even if they quietly understand that a hundred or a thousand of their kind had to disappear to create it. They chase illusions of hope rather than the real possibility of justice and change like lottery players with a one-in-a-billion chance of winning. They prefer that to hard work and sacrifice with much better odds where almost everybody can win something.
As the human race enters the first stages of inevitable collapse resulting from Peak Oil, it does so ass-backwards, in complete denial, and in the one way most certain to guarantee the greatest amount of suffering and death for future generations. It does so because, for a time at least, US foreign, military, and economic policy holds the steering wheel of human destiny through dollar hegemony, military force, technology and globalization.
This control is inevitably weakening, and other hands in other countries are successfully struggling for an ever-increasing measure of influence. The Empire is dying from within, and like all wounded beasts, it is becoming more vicious and dangerous in the process; its lies more transparent.
A different world is possible. A better world is possible. It took the imminent threat of my own death at the hands of my government to make me fully admit to my innermost self what I have known for years. Having failed to change my country’s direction after 30 years of effort, I had to stop living in the problem and start living in the solution. If I did not, my soul would have died just as surely as my body would have died after the recent burglary that savaged our offices.
I do not know where I will spend the rest of my days. Maybe in Venezuela, maybe in Mexico with the Zapatistas, maybe in Bolivia, maybe in France, Germany, or even Russia.
Being freer to speak, to learn, to experience and to witness real solutions being discovered and implemented by peoples willing to take risks and who understand the challenges, I will be better able to report usefully to FTW readers and the world in future books and articles. I am currently in a country where the people have changed and are changing their government; where the elected head of state has won six elections while George W. Bush has stolen two.
Is it any wonder I feel better already?
One thing is certain about fascism and that is that its behavior and evolution are remarkably predictable. Five years ago I helped bring into world consciousness a forgotten quote from Benito Mussolini wherein he said that, “Fascism ought to more properly be called corporatism since it is the merger of state and corporate power.”
Nothing better describes the state of the world today. The US is a nation of the corporation, by the corporation, and for the corporation. As such it has placed something different from and opposed to the welfare of human beings on the compass as its “true North”.
Fascism always becomes more vicious as it evolves. It never retreats, and as with drug addition, larger and larger doses of oppression and violence are always required to sustain its inevitable path towards self-destruction. As the great Cynthia McKinney said to me not long before her just-orchestrated ouster from the House of Representatives, “any fool can see it coming.”
KRISTALNACHT
The burglary that took place at the new FTW offices in Ashland, Oregon on Sunday, June 25th of this year was the equivalent of my Kristalnacht, a replay of the night in 1938 when Nazi storm troopers, aided by an increasingly cowed and cowardly citizenry, raided synagogues all over Germany and smashed every piece of glass and every window they could find. German Jews not in denial who could (literally) read the writing on the walls (Juden Raus!) fled for their lives in the short time remaining before The Holocaust. Those who denied the meaning of that very specific warning remained in Germany, and their fate was sealed.
As a man who owns his own mind I can and do vehemently oppose the Israeli government and its policies and still have no ill will at all towards any Jew anywhere. Israel is a country. Judaism is a religion. All men and women are free to worship their God or Gods as they see fit, and in so doing, to bring knowledge of the unknowable and their truths to a human table that is increasingly deprived of compassion, love, justice, balance, and mercy. These will always remain the common threads in all true spirituality. Truly what is needed now is some spirit.
Those who do know history are not destined to repeat it.
DETAILS
As for the burglary itself, there will be another time and another place, when I can and will say more about what happened. Certain important events have yet to unfold, and I’m holding other key facts until the time is right. There are facts about the timing of the burglary that may eventually connect to events here in Venezuela. But for now, suffice it to say that it was the final outrage in almost three decades of attempts to silence my voice and the eight-year-old voice of From The Wilderness.
It is almost certain that the burglary was perpetrated, at minimum, based upon inside information provided by recently fired or resigned FTW staff members. There is -- or was -- only one television program I cared about, HBO’s Deadwood. It was common knowledge in FTW’s new offices that I was obsessed with the show, and on June 25 I was certain to be home watching one of the first episodes of the new season I had been anticipating for a year. As everyone knew, I worked late and had irregular hours every other day of the week. I may never find out if Al Swearingen got the best of George Hearst, but in retrospect, it’s a small price to pay for my new freedom.
The burglary followed on the heels of my humiliation of the perpetrator of a feeble and stupidly executed sexual blackmail plot that began when a newly-hired staff writer (with a clean record and a Master’s degree in English) began a torrid (and not very discrete) sexual affair with my long-term IT manager. The IT manager was, at the time, involved in a committed relationship with a woman in Los Angeles. The same female employee also made simultaneous direct sexual advances to my Operations Manager who is married. These included her showing naked photographs of herself to both men in our offices, something which they kept from me until later.
Eventually the sexual intrigue resulted in an altercation between the three which wound up on my doorstep late on a Sunday night in April. It seems no one involved in the altercation was capable of telling the whole truth. It was also clear that my IT manager -- who was known for his appetites -- had fallen hopelessly in the grasp of ann attractive sexual smorgasbord that was fulfilling his every wish. This is what he said to people in phone conversations who later told me about them. He reportedly described her as a “sexual demon.” He lied to his girlfriend. He lied to me when he told me that he had ended the relationship. Then he lied to his friend, the Operations Manager, about it. I could no longer trust him, and this was of enormous concern to me.
After all of the previous attempts to sink FTW over the years I was well-prepared when the same woman started making advances to me. How dumb did they think I was? I concealed a tape recorder in my office as she directed me, after regular office hours, to pornographic web sites and continually tried to tempt me with scanty outfits, G-strings and hints of sexual delights including descriptions of her private parts. She was doing all this at a time when she made 103 cell phone calls in one month to my IT Manager on a cell phone that FTW was paying for. I got the bills. Most of the calls were made during business hours. The second month’s bill was just as bad when it arrived after she had been fired.
My IT Manager had been my most trusted employee and a close friend. I may never be able to forgive his betrayal even if the Siren’s song had overwhelmed him. In previous years FTW computers had been sabotaged, our web site had been hacked, and several attempts had been made to financially sabotage our operations. Being fully aware that he was likely revealing our most sensitive proprietary information, including account access codes, I had but two choices.
I could fire the young woman. But if I did so she would be angry outside the company and still have the IT Manager as helpless as Ulysses’ crew in her vindictive grasp. Or, I could keep her close, play along with her games, prepare myself against the blackmail I knew would come, and try to find out what kind of damage she was intent on doing and head it off. When she could not compromise me sexually, she turned the IT Manager against me, and he gave sudden notice. That was damaging enough. His last day of work was to be June 1st. I decided immediately that that would be her last day of work too, and so it was.
As June 1 approached I baited her with actions I knew would force her to show her hand. She did on May 29th and that’s when I let it be known how I had protected myself. She immediately went -- no doubt with the guidance of our IT Manager -- to a ridiculous pseudo-journalist who has been hounding FTW and other 9/11 activists for years. In a previous sabotage attempt in 2005 this same pseudo-journalist had been directly connected to the FBI by a tape recording.
Her allegations of sexual harassment against me fell flat on their faces, and she was publicly humiliated. She had also been showing highly erratic emotional behavior consistent with drug use in her last two weeks of work. On the day she was terminated she and the IT manager frantically rushed to erase large quantities of data from her office computer. This was witnessed by the entire office staff. Fortunately for us, the erasures were only made with one-pass deletions, and most of what they were trying to hide remains recoverable.
This was on my mind when I came into the office at 7:30 a.m. on June 26 and saw all seven of our computers dismantled and smashed in a vacant portion of our building. As luck would have it, the right hard drives were not damaged beyond recovery.
But other facts started to indicate government involvement. As soon as I discovered the burglary I ran next door to the offices of the US Forest Service which shares the same building (rented from a California property management company). A female Ranger who was raising the flag out front seemed unusually nervous even before I got to her. I asked if they had surveillance cameras covering the front of the building and our only parking lot. Reacting as though I was scaring her to death, she hastily replied, “No.” I couldn’t help but feel she already knew about the burglary.
If I didn’t know that there were no surveillance cameras on a government building then how could the burglars have been so confident?
The street our offices are on is a long “no outlet” street, and the only place to park late at night is directly in front of FTW’s front door. My next step was to look for any one of the three small and run-down motor homes belonging to poor people who always parked right in front of our offices at night. It was a rent-free place for them to sleep, and it had a great view. Maybe they had seen something. All three were gone. One of them had been parking diagonally across the street every day since the day we moved in, and I had (correctly, I believe) pegged that one as government surveillance.
These witnesses would have been invaluable because they would have seen whoever came to the office in the quiet business park that was always abandoned after sunset. After I left the states, allegations were floated that I had smashed my computers myself. But who could have missed my Blue and Gold, 1996 Ford Bronco? It stands out like a sore thumb. And I could hardly have walked a block or two with a sledge hammer over my shoulder without risking being noticed.
There are between eight and twelve screws that need to be removed to take the cover off of each of our computers. There were seven computers, and every one had their covers removed before being smashed. This was not a one-man job. Someone with computer savvy was involved. Four interior doors were also smashed with multiple sledge hammer blows. I estimated between three and five blows per door. Each computer had been disconnected from its monitor and peripherals. That was three to six connections per computer. This feat would have taken one person hours, and it would have been physically exhausting.
All the evidence showed that one person was waiting to dismantle each computer as it was brought into the vacant office (where there was plenty of room to swing the hammers) by another person who was doing the disconnecting, while a third person went ahead with the sledgehammer to open the doors to which the fired female employee never had the keys, from which to make copies before she was fired. I suspect that a minimum of two sledge hammers were used.
One door to a storage area which held no computers at all was needlessly smashed. That was wasted time and effort. Likely one or more of the burglars didn’t know where the computers were. Or maybe they just had a little too much crystal meth in their system and needed to burn off some energy.
There was, however, one other way that the burglars could have gained entry to the interior of the building. That is through a back door which is accessible only through a high-security parking lot controlled by the Forest Service which covers the entire back side of the building. No one else can get to the back doors. The burglars could have been waiting inside the Forest Service offices for me to leave. This would have left no telltale cars out front and would have provided an easy, secure escape route in the event that I or a police car pulled up out front unexpectedly. No one would ever have been seen entering via the front door, the only way FTW employees could get in.
Also, about a week after the burglary, my Operations Manager, who we have since discovered was apparently in the process of destroying our paper financial records, disclosed that the fired female employee was a multi-year close friend of a convicted methamphetamine manufacturer and dealer who had served five years in prison.
That was the last straw, and it was then I started realizing that it was time to go.
Convicted drug dealers are usually on parole. They have little or no rights and can be violated and sent back to prison at any time. Whether it’s federal or state parole, they’ll do anything the government wants them to in order to curry favor, including the commission of crimes “under color of authority.”
The COINTELPRO records of the FBI from the 60s and 70s against civil rights and anti-war activists; against the Black Panther Party and the American Indian Movement; show clearly how these convicted felons were used as ideal plausibly deniable weapons of infiltration and mass destruction by the US government against enemies of the state.
THE END OF HISTORY
In 2001 a high school classmate who had served in the US Army and worked for the National Security Agency, led FTW into a financial trap promising a major investment to re-publish suppressed books documenting US government corruption. After FTW had invested thousands of dollars in layout and committed to spending more for printing, the investor disappeared leaving us with a huge loss.
In late 2003 our then General Manager, Michael Leon, suddenly abandoned his job and fled to New Zealand. That nearly put us out of business. We have since learned that he was, at minimum, a key material witness in a huge federal Ponzi scheme prosecution, US v. Osaki. (I had absolutely no connection to the case). In 2005 information surfaced in federal court that he had provided the FBI with information, and I have -- based on other information -- concluded that he was an active FBI informant while working for FTW.
Throughout 2004 and 2005 a series of successive employees (one of whom was a retired FBI agent presenting herself as a victimized whistleblower) engaged in ruthless sabotage which came closer to sinking us than anything ever had. Other links to the FBI were well-documented. FTW struggled for survival, and I successfully fought back, ultimately winning a case in Small Claims Court wherein I proved deliberate sabotage and won a small judgment. That nine-month effort ended just two months before we moved to Oregon.
Then came the events I just described in Ashland. To the end of my days I will never forget the indescribable beauty of the Rogue Valley in the brief time I was allowed to live there. I will always remember the wonderful, spiritual and courageous friends who came to our aid in time of need and who still remain close friends and supporters of FTW.
But at 55, as I looked at the smashed computers and realized that I had humiliated the government one too many times, I understood two things. I was too old to go on fighting these increasingly ugly and dangerous battles. And there was nothing left in the United States worth fighting for. The next battle would surely mean death for me. Additionally, according to their own figures, and after an independent review by a Los Angeles area law firm specializing in royalty rights, Rubicon’s publisher, New Society, appears to have defrauded me out of between $38,000 and $58,000 dollars of royalties.
I made my decision on July 1. It really wasn’t difficult.
A NEW BEGINNING
Since my departure Carolyn Baker, Michael Kane, Stan Goff, Jamey Hecht and the remaining FTW office staff consisting of Brendan, Spencer and Luke have been performing heroically. A brave and honorable Ashland attorney has valiantly stepped in with complete power of attorney over my affairs. My agent and publicist Ken Levine has been steadfast and true. It was he who helped to get me out of the country in secret. In the coming weeks some of these wonderful people will provide our subscribers with their accounts of my last days in the US. There were many poignant moments in the way we put together and executed a plan to get me out of the country in just 18 days, even as I noticed renewed and ominous surveillance around the office.
To all those who will assert -- and I’m sure they will -- that all of these things happened because I’m some kind of deranged maniac who pisses everyone off, I ask how I could possibly have earned and retained the loyalty of these wonderful people and all of our subscribers for all these years.
FTW is going to be bigger and better. I will continue to write and offer editorial guidance, but my days of running the business are over. Carolyn Baker, Mike Kane and Stan Goff are giants in their own rights, and they need room to blossom and carry on the FTW tradition with their own unique styles and personalities.
Since leaving the US I have been offering occasional editorial guidance, but I have come to realize that FTW’s writers need very little of this. They have the map and are reading it well. Listen to them.
FTW needs your help now. We need donations. We need sales. Very soon we will have a new DVD which will show you my last two public appearances ever in the United States. It will be my farewell message to all of you even as I say hello in a new form. After FTW’s current, considerable expenses and staff are paid, some of that badly-needed money will find its way to me in Venezuela where I sorely need it.
I have said time and again that the only thing that matters to me is effecting real change in the political landscape. Revolution is not a dinner party. The economy and government of the United States of America are my enemies and the enemies of the entire human race and even of the American people themselves. They must be weakened, defeated and replaced by something which places the welfare of human beings ahead of profits and share value.
With these words I have committed a crime in the eyes of US law. There is no turning back. The bridge is burned. But I will reply with the words of the Declaration of Independence which state:
We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain inalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty, and the pursuit of Happiness, -- That to secure these rights, Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just powers from the consent of the governed, -- That whenever any Form of Government becomes destructive of those ends, it is the Right of the People to alter or abolish it,…
But when a long train of abuses and usurpations… evinces a design to reduce them under absolute Despotism, it is their right, their duty, to throw off such Government.
In 1776 there was no concept of any limitation in terms of resources, space or possibilities. We live in a fundamentally different era today, and so therefore, I would add to these truths the following:
We must also recognize that Happiness cannot be defined solely within the mind and the will of individuals alone, without regard to the availability of the same potential for all mankind and all life placed here by the Creator. One human being, or group of human beings, cannot possess a disproportionate share, deprive others, and justly call this Happiness. True Happiness and Peace result from harmony between peoples, the planet and all life forms without which no life is possible. These can only be achieved in a world where men and women in all places realize the need for Balance, Equity, Harmony and Justice and that only these will ensure equal and fair Rights for subsequent generations and the sustainability of the planet itself.
In many lectures I have uttered another one of my trademarked lines: The human race is now being presented by a dispassionate universe with one test; either evolve or perish. I, for one, have chosen to evolve.
Now that I am in the world and not a “country,” my prayer is that my future adventures for as long as I live will connect me with other world-changers so that we can support and empower each other and all peoples. I am already finding out that there are more people who clearly see these challenges than I ever suspected.
But I am also under no illusions about the increased danger this will bring. Even though life is very difficult now as I live on the cheap and struggle to become halfway fluent in Spanish, I wake up each morning with something I haven’t felt in a long time ... hope, real hope.
I promise to send some home.
**The opinions expressed here are not necessarily or entirely those of From The Wilderness as a corporation.**
Michael C. Ruppert -- a free man in
Plaza Altamira, Caracas
http://www.fromthewilderness.com/free/ww3/081606_burning_bridge.shtml
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