Al-Qaeda’s Air Force
February 22, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
Some Canadian military officers in private...referred to the NATO jets bombing Gadhafi’s troops as “al-Qaeda’s air force”
Canadian fighter pilots “flew 946 sorties and dropped almost 700 bombs” in last year’s NATO intervention in Libya. [1] But rather than enforcing a no-fly zone to protect civilians, the Canadian pilots—and their counterparts from other NATO countries—took sides in the conflict, intervening directly on behalf of anti-Gaddafi rebels.
But who exactly were the rebels that NATO sided with?
Private remarks by Canadian military officers, reported by the Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese, suggest the rebels weren’t everyday people thirsting for democracy, as NATO officials and mainline media made them out to be.
Gaddafi had claimed that “the rebellion had been organized by” Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb “and his old enemies the LIFG (Libyan Islamic Fighting Group), who had vowed to overthrow the colonel and return the country to traditional Muslim values, including Sharia law.” [2] But this was dismissed by the West as propaganda.
Still, a “Canadian intelligence report written in late 2009…described the anti-Gadhafi stronghold of eastern Libya” where the rebellion began, “as an ‘epicentre of Islamist extremism’ and said ‘extremist cells’ operated in the region.” [3]
And Canadian military intelligence noted “in 2004 (that) Libyan troops found a training camp in the country’s southern desert that had been used by an Algerian terrorist group that would later change its name to al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb or AQIM.” [4]
Abdel Hakim Belhaj, who had “joined the U.S.-backed resistance to the Soviet (intervention in) Afghanistan, fighting alongside militants who would go on to form al-Qaeda,” was emblematic of the militant Islamic character of the uprising.
“Mr. Belhaj returned to Libya in the 1990s and led the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group in fierce confrontations with Col. Gadhafi’s” government. The LIFG was aligned with al-Qaeda. [5]
Belhaj was “the rebellion’s most powerful military leader.” [6]
This should have aroused suspicions about the true nature of the uprising, but there was an earlier clue that the Benghazi revolt was inspired by something other than a thirst for democracy.
“On Feb. 15, 2011, citizens in Benghazi organized what they called a Day of Anger march. The demonstration soon turned into a full-scale battle with police.
“At first, security forces used tear gas and water cannons. But as several hundred protesters armed with rocks and Molotov cocktails attacked government buildings, the violence spiralled out of control. Demonstrators chanted, ‘No God but Allah, Moammar is the enemy of Allah’.” [7]
Today, Libya is a warzone of competing militias. The Transitional National Council, anointed by the West as the legitimate representative of the Libyan people, has no authority.
And now, one year after the uprising began, some NATO officials are admitting that NATO aligned itself with militant Islamic rebels to oust Gaddafi, who US officials had complained was engaging in “resource nationalism,” while oil companies denounced him for trying to “Libyanize” the economy. [8]
According to the Ottawa Citizen’s David Pugliese, some Canadian military officers in private refer “to the NATO jets bombing Gadhafi’s troops as ‘al-Qaeda’s air force’.” [9]
The parallels with Syria are obvious. As Gaddafi’s government struggled with a number of militant Islamic uprisings over the years, so too has the secular government of Bashar Assad in Syria. [10] Calls have been made for NATO countries to intervene there too, either as the rebels’ air force or arms supplier or both.
But it’s clear that a NATO intervention in Syria will be a repeat of Libya, with NATO forces backing militant Islamists with the sole goal of sweeping a government from power that the West’s economic interests are not wholly comfortable with. Syria too practices economic nationalism.
The Assad government has drafted a new constitution , to be put to a referendum later this month, which promises the multi-party democracy and democratic reforms the West demanded—but now, on the eve of their being delivered, dismisses as “meaningless.” [11]
Apart from allowing multiple parties to contest elections and multiple candidates to run for president, the new constitution mandates that the country’s resources be publicly owned (which is to say that the country will practice the “resource nationalism” that got Gaddafi in trouble), that taxation will be progressive, and that the economy will be directed, rather than laissez-faire. [12]
Democratic reforms are largely irrelevant to the West. Otherwise, it would do more to press Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Qatar, and other petro-despotisms—from which Western oil companies derive billions of dollars in profits—to change their ways. Instead, Bahrain, site of a renewed uprising that is being violently suppressed–as one there was last year–continues to receive US-backing and arms.
Calls for democratic reforms—in some countries, not others—are simply pretexts for intervention. The West’s real motivation for backing uprisings in Libya and Syria are economic: turning the countries away from resource nationalism and a measure of independent, self-directed economic development into profit-disgorging spheres of exploitation for Western banks, corporations and investors.
In pursuit of these goals, NATO countries are willing to ally with anyone. Even al-Qaeda.
America’s nuclear guinea pigs: Astonishing film that shows how Marines were used to test atomic weapons
February 21, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
They were the nuclear guinea pigs of the Cold War.
And this is the shocking film to show how U.S. Marines were used in hundreds of experiments by the US military to test the limits of nuclear bombs between 1951 and 1957.
During many of those tests, soldiers who thought of themselves as ‘ground grunts’ and were sworn to secrecy witnessed the atomic explosions first-hand, and from close range, before the devastating health risks of those bombs were fully understood.
Scroll down for video
Watching the blast: Soldiers in the 1950s witnessed atomic bomb explosions from close range
Only a test: In Operation Desert Rock, the military conducted a series of nuclear tests in the Nevada Proving Grounds between 1951 and 1957
I live in fear: A soldier watches a mushroom cloud leave a smoky trail in the skyIn Operation Desert Rock, the military conducted a series of nuclear tests in the Nevada Proving Grounds between 1951 and 1957, exposing thousands of participants – both military and civilian – to high levels of radiation.
In total, more nearly 400,000 American soldiers and civilians would be classified as ‘atomic veterans.’
Though roughly half of those veterans were survivors of World War II, serving at Hiroshima and Nagasaki, Japan, the rest were exposed to nuclear grounds tests which lasted until 1962.
In an article published last October, the Bangor Daily News, the paper notes that the government wished to keep the tests out of the public eye.
As a result, the plight of these soldiers exposed to high levels of radiation, suffering from radiation sickness, nausea, and cancers. Many of their children were born with deformities.
Former Marine James D. Tyler was one such soldier present at a bomb testing in 1957. He was told by his commanding officer to stand in six-foot ditch with fellow troops, keeping his head tucked under his arm, eyes closed.
He was 18 at the time, and participated with some 14,000 others in Operation Plumbbob. That operation consisted of 29 separate explosions as the military tested various types of warheads, in a move that is still controversial today.
Cloud of smoke: Soldiers look on as the mushroom cloud balloons and expands
Their eyes were watching God: Soldiers gaze up at the bomb from the Nevada desert, unaware of the deadly effects of radiationMr Tyler recounted his experience to the Daily News, and said that he was one of the lucky ones who didn’t show radiation symptoms.
The paper reports Mr Tyler has been in a bitter bureaucratic dispute with the Veteran’s Association to receive financial help for joint issues.
Operation Plumbbob released some 58,300 kilocuries of radioiodine into the atmosphere, large enough to produce thousands of cases of thyroid cancer and leukemia.
Close range: Some test dummies were put closer to the blast to see how they would fare
Walking by: Soldiers pass by a dummy lying on the groundAnother operation – called Operation Cue – sought to test how objects like buildings, food, clothing, and people, responded to nuclear explosions.
After the bomb deployed, soldiers would simulate operations like delivering food to victims of the attack and medically tending to them.
The fallout from that bomb reached 1,000 miles.
She’s so heavy: In another operation, two Marines clown around holding up the mushroom cloud of an atomic blast
Waiting for the future: Civil defense workers eat breakfast before Operation CueUS Media: Washington’s Prostitutes Tell & Sell Lies
February 20, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
Paul Craig Roberts on Silencing the Critics
I just finished reading Paul Craig Roberts’ latest commentary on silencing the critics. It is a must read- maybe not for the already-vigilant minority who’ve been saying and writing about this for years, but for those still in denial. Here are a few fiery excerpts telling the truth as it is:
The idea that the US is a democracy when it most definitely does not have a free watchdog press is laughable. But the media is not laughing. It is lying. Just like the government, every time the US mainstream media opens its mouth or writes one word, it is lying. Indeed, its corporate masters pay its employees to tell lies. That is their job. Tell the truth, and you are history like Buchanan and Napolitano and Helen Thomas.
…
Whose interests are being served by Washington’s endless and multi-trillion dollar wars? Certainly not the interests of the 50 million Americans with no access to health care, nor by the 1,500,000 American children who are homeless, living in cars, rundown motel rooms, tent cities, and the storm sewers under Las Vegas, while huge amounts of public funds are used to bail out banks and squandered in wars of hegemony.The US has no independent print and TV media. It has prostitutes who are paid for the lies that they tell. The US government in its pursuit of its immoral aims has attained the status of the most corrupt government in human history. Yet Obama speaks as if Washington is the font of human morality.
…
Thank you Mr. Roberts for telling it as it is. I’d also add government whistle-blowers to the list in this article- those who’ve been persecuted and prosecuted for exposing the current ugly truth about this beast called US Government.
While we are on the topic of media I want to respond to Justin Raimondo’s appeal for more generous funds at AntiWar.Com. In the past I was one of the vocal supporters of this website. I still am a follower of Raimondo and Philip Giraldi’s articles and analyses, and respect them both. However too much has changed over there. Since their newcomers the site has strayed away from being an alternative, and has become a major promoter of the same mainstream media it was originally created to counter. In fact, if you go and check their headlines you’ll see that over 50% of their ‘news’ is linked directly to the worst culprits among the mainstream media prostitutes: Washington Post, New York Times, BBC, Fox News … Just have a quick comb through their last few weeks and you’ll see what I am talking about.
Here are a few excerpts from what I wrote on this topic last December:
Next, I want you to monitor the Antiwar.Com website for a while. This once-upon-a-time excellent website has been going through tremendous not so pretty changes. Coincidentally, these changes coincide with recent mysterious appearances of their donor angels. What I want you to look for and keep tabs on:
1- More and more they’ve been citing articles and news from their once-culprit foe US MSM. Their updates are filled with NYT, WP, CNN, Huffington Post …created twists and spins.
2- If you remember, a few months ago they put on this publicity and PR campaign for the Soros-Rockefeller funded NGO who actually gave Obama an award for being the most transparent president of the United States.
3- Check out their author column. Do you notice my name there? Well, since the unnamed mysterious donors showed up, about 2 years ago, to round up their half a million dollars a year fund, they have decided to keep my name but completely censor anything I write on their ‘once-upon-a-time’ issues: police state, perpetual wars, secrecy, whistleblowers…
4- Contrary to their title, name, they have been loudly and repeatedly and unquestioningly reporting only the unsupported numbers killed by the Assad regime in Syria, Assad’s alleged inflicted massacres, and …Now, for a site called AntiWar, they are either willingly or unintentionally beating the war drums and spreading unconfirmed propaganda, exactly the same way our infamous MSM has been doing…
It is truly a shame. I like and have been following a few of their excellent editorial writers such as Raimondo and Giraldi. They usually have a good selection of editorials. And as I said, they used to be exemplary as an independent news roundup site on civil liberties and war related topics.
You can read my commentaries on this topic here and here.
We need solid true alternative news and views websites. We need to have more of them instead of losing the few we already have. It is not too late for AntiWar.Com. They can take this opportunity and review the ‘factors’ that have led to their changes that haven’t been for the better; or for any good at all. Do they need this newcomer woman who has been blocking true alternative views by those still listed at their site as contributors? Do they need a communicator who has been labeling all their critics as ‘Anti-Semite’? Do they want to have $400,000 a year to act as RSS Feed for the New York Times, Washington Post, BBC, Fox, AOL’s Huffington Post and LA Times?
Obviously I am not the only loyal follower they have lost. But it is not too late. At least I hope it isn’t.
What if the GOP is Pulling the Wool Over the Eyes of Republican Voters?
February 18, 2012 by Szandor Blestman
Filed under Commentary
Fox News has seen it fit to fire Judge Andrew Napolitano. His show “Freedom Watch” was, in my opinion, the only news program on Fox, perhaps on television, worth watching. He delivered the freedom message with great eloquence, consistency and integrity. He is certainly, again in my opinion, a much more watchable and likeable host than Bill O’Liely or Sean Scammity. He simply makes a lot of sense to me when he speaks. Read more
From Occupying To Liberating Keeping it Real – By (former Black Panther) Larry Pinkney
February 18, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
“They do this as a message to Indians, and further to anyone who might stand up to injustices as if to say, “We will do as we please.”…Recently, as many of you know, an act was passed and signed into law that allows for indefinite detention of American citizens without charge or trial. This is perhaps the final straw, the final nail in the coffin of American freedom, the end of habeas corpus and due process. “We will do as we please.”…We Indians said it for generations: If they can kill us indiscriminately, they will do it to anyone. If they can kidnap our children and take them to prison schools, they will do it it to anyone. If they can starve us and lie to us, they will do it to anyone. If they can wrongfully imprison us, they will do it to anyone. Now, sadly, this is another Indian prophecy fulfilled. “We will do as we please.”…”
-Leonard Peltier
“I want to live in a country where freedom means something.”
-Assata Shakur
Even as the corporate-controlled farce of elections and ‘democracy’ smothers the legitimate needs and aspirations of everyday Black, White, Brown, Red, and Yellow people in this nation, the United States of Legalized Fascism, has come into its own.
The promise of ‘America,’ as embodied in the U.S. Constitution, is betrayed. It is particularly sad and horrible that this egregious betrayal has been adroitly brought about by, and under the auspices of, the highly touted so-called “hope and change” president of this republic. Nevertheless, it corroborates the validity of the age-old African adage that says: “Beware of the naked man who offers you clothes.” Indeed, this hideous betrayal did not come about by coincidence or some kind of unstoppable partisan coercion. It was well planned and executed by the corporate elite to whom the politicians of both the Democratic and Republican parties, from the White House on down, overwhelmingly give unswerving systemic de facto allegiance.
There is but one hope left to us, and it is to be found in the awakening of everyday women and men throughout this land as to who the real enemies of humanity are. Everyday people are incessantly lied to by Democratic and Republican politicians who wage fake debates with one another as the lives and livelihoods of the people of this nation hang in the balance. Notwithstanding the daily evidence of this, there continue to be those systemic gate-keepers who would have everyday people ignore the ever so thinly veiled obvious. They utilize the corporate-stream media to postulate phony debates in a phony democracy wherein even a semi-conscious one-eyed man could sense a rat.
The ‘Occupy Movement,’ which has swept this nation and indeed the planet, poses a serious threat to the self-preservation of the corporate-owned, blood sucking, political pimps of the Democratic and Republican parties, precisely because it has enhanced the consciousness of everyday people. Ordinary everyday people, despite being deluged by a daily diet consisting of diversions and distortions by the corporate media, are steadily beginning to awaken to the fact that the Democratic and Republican parties are in essence mutual admiration and support entities whose very existence depends upon keeping people artificially divided, perpetually manipulated, and constantly controlled. The foxes of the party of so-called ‘Democrats’ are busily about the business of attempting to co-opt (and thereby neutralize) the Occupy Movement, even as the Republican party wolves blatantly call for the absolute crushing of this people’s movement. Either way, the end result would be exactly the same, i.e. the destruction of the people’s Occupy Movement. This why the reaction by the U.S. government, and its various police departments nationwide, has been so unabashedly brutal. As Malcolm X [el-Hajj Malik el Shabazz] so correctly warned: “The wolf and fox are both enemies of humanity…Both have the same objective but differ only in methods.”
As persons become increasingly cognizant, even the illusion of ‘democracy’ is being shredded. Moreover, awareness of the draconian aspects of COINTELPRO (the Counter Intelligence Program), the Patriot Act, and the indefinite detention law (known as the National Defense Authorization Act of 2012), etc., makes it irrefutably clear that genuine people’s democracy in the United States is nothing more than a well perpetuated illusion. So-called ‘corporate personhood’ is the law of the land in this nation at the expense of human personhood and human rights. U.S. corporate-government political and economic war on the people of this nation, and perpetual bloody U.S. wars against the peoples of other nations is the order of the day. This cannot be allowed to continue.
It has been correctly suggested by some that perhaps it is time to evolve from being merely an ‘Occupy Movement’ to a Liberation Movement. The extremely important and fundamental step of occupying our own minds and consciousness has been reignited by the Occupy Movement. Now, let us move forward to liberate ourselves and each other collectively, each one teaching one – each one drawing links and making the connections as we actualize our desires for a better, more equal, and more just society and world. Educate to liberate!
Malcolm X predicted this present period of the people’s struggle when he said: “I believe that there will ultimately be a clash between the oppressed and those who do the oppressing. I believe that there will be a clash between those who want freedom, justice, and equality for everyone and those who want to continue the system of exploitation. I believe it will be that kind of a clash, but I don’t think it will be based on the color of the skin…”
Be clear about this: The corporate politicians of the Democratic and Republican parties, from the White House on down, and irrespective to their color, gender, or obfuscated, self-serving political rhetoric, are in fact, “those who want to continue the system of exploitation.” They must not be allowed to do so, nor will they be.
It is time, in the words of the late great historian Howard Zinn, to further develop this just and noble struggle, for it is an integral part of the ongoing “people’s history of the United States.” For ourselves and rest of the everyday people of this nation. For the everyday people of all nations. For Mother Earth herself. Let us remember the words of Joe Hill, “Don’t Mourn. ORGANIZE!”
Onward, then, my sisters and brothers! Onward!
BlackCommentator.com Editorial Board Member, Larry Pinkney, is a veteran of the Black Panther Party, the former Minister of Interior of the Republic of New Africa, a former political prisoner and the only American to have successfully self-authored his civil / political rights case to the United Nations under the International Covenant on Civil and Political Rights. In connection with his political organizing activities in opposition to voter suppression, etc., Pinkney was interviewed in 1988 on the nationally televised PBS News Hour, formerly known as The MacNeil / Lehrer News Hour. For more about Larry Pinkney see the book, Saying No to Power: Autobiography of a 20th Century Activist and Thinker, by William Mandel [Introduction by Howard Zinn]. (Click here to read excerpts from the book.) Click here to contact Mr. Pinkney.
Sun Tzu and Mankind’s Destiny of Freedom
February 17, 2012 by Szandor Blestman
Filed under Commentary
The Chinese philosopher Sun Tzu is best known for writing “The Art of War.” He is recognized by many as the quintessential expert on that subject and one of the top war strategists of all time. Many people like to use his quotes. He simplified his strategies into wise maxims that many have extrapolated into other aspects of life. What does it say when one considers strategies of war to be appropriate to use in life’s other endeavors? I thought maybe I’d take a closer look at some of his saws and see how they can apply to some situations I see cropping up in the politics of the times. Read more
US Secret Armies Gear Up for Global War
February 17, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
To what OATH will these Mercs Pledge their allegiance to?
The “tide of war is receding” is a phrase President Barack Obama has employed ad nauseam—once in his State of the Union address, twice in the course of remarks last month at the unveiling of the Pentagon’s new military strategy document, once again during his speech at the United Nations, also in his announcement of troop withdrawals from Iraq and Afghanistan, and in a Veteran’s Day address.
The constant repetition of this hackneyed metaphor is aimed at obscuring the obvious—that US militarism has escalated dramatically under the Democratic president and its tide threatens to engulf the entire planet.
Among the latest indications is a behind-the-scenes campaign by the chief of the US military’s Special Operations Command (SOCOM) for greater autonomy in dispatching elite killer squads to every corner of the globe.
Adm. William McRaven, who heads SOCOM, is, according to the New York Times, seeking “more autonomy to position his forces and their war-fighting equipment where intelligence and global events indicate they are most needed.”
The admiral’s proposal, the Times notes, “would also allow the Special Operations forces to expand their presence in regions where they have not operated in large numbers for the past decade, especially in Asia, Africa and Latin America.”
McRaven argues that “[t]hickening the Special Operations deployments in these other regions would allow the United States to be ready to respond more rapidly to a broader range of threats.”
SOCOM includes as its key sub unit the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, which is made up of such outfits as the Navy Seals and the Army’s Green Berets, which carry out armed missions abroad. It is one area of the US military that is being spared even the minimal cuts that are being imposed on the Pentagon budget.
Its funding is being increased, a top officer in SOCOM reassured those attending last week’s annual conference of the National Defense Industries Association, the premier lobby for America’s vast military-industrial complex. “Because we will be continuing to engage in counter-terrorism operations around the globe, we are going to protect the investments in special operations forces,” Lt. Gen. Bradley Heithold, SOCOM’s vice commander, told the audience of war profiteers. He confided that Pentagon plans are to increase the command to “70,000 SOF [special operations forces] warriors.”
SOCOM’s personnel has doubled since 2001 to its current headcount of 66,000, while its budget has risen from $4.2 billion to $10.5 billion. JSOC’s growth has been even more meteoric, going from just 1,800 troops in 1980 to over 25,000 today.
Special operations forces have already been deployed in over 75 countries, ranging from the Dominican Republic and Peru to the Philippines, Yemen, Somalia and central Asia.
According to published reports, the US troop withdrawal from Iraq and the draw-down of tens of thousands of soldiers and Marines from Afghanistan is to be offset by more extensive use of special operations forces. In Iraq, some of these forces will be kept in the country covertly, operating out of uniform, while others will be just across the border in Kuwait. In Afghanistan, a force of some 9,000 special ops troops will remain even after the 2014 formal deadline for a NATO troop withdrawal.
In both countries, JSOC units have been involved in some of the worst atrocities. They carried out wholesale assassinations of opponents of the Iraqi occupation during the 2007 “surge” ordered by the Bush administration, and were implicated in systematic torture of detainees.
In Afghanistan, these units were responsible for the infamous 2002 wedding massacre, when they called in an AC-130 gunship to rake a wedding party and other civilian targets, leaving hundreds dead and wounded. They remain hated by the population for their night raids against Afghan homes and the calling in of air strikes.
Over the past decade, the Iraq and Afghanistan wars have tied down 80 percent of special operations forces. If the White House and the Pentagon are now discussing shifting their expanded use to become a more global strike force, it is because they anticipate not a “receding tide” of war, but rather an explosion of US militarism.
The Obama administration has relied ever more heavily on these elite military units, which have become what amounts to a secret army under the command of the US president and accountable to no one. JSOC, like the CIA, has been empowered to draw up kill lists of alleged terrorists and launch assassination missions. Unlike the CIA, it is not required to secure a “presidential finding” authorizing lethal covert operations, or submit to congressional oversight.
The increasing reliance on such methods has been facilitated by the embrace of militarism and imperialism by a layer of the affluent upper-middle class that previously was identified with anti-war sentiments. Typical of this milieu is Newsweek editor Tina Brown, who penned a nauseating editorial recently praising Obama for being “the Caped Crusader when it comes to commanding America’s killing machine.” She described a recent exploit by American special ops forces in Somalia as “like hearing from afar the lost chords of ‘America the Beautiful,’” adding that “Seal Team 6 has become a more vivid symbol of the power of the great American idea than positive GDP statistics.”
Those prepared to extol the exploits of elite killing squads abroad as the essence of the “American idea” will not shrink from the use of similar methods in suppressing any challenge to the rule of the financial elite at home.
The deepest global economic crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s once again confronts mankind with the threat of world war and dictatorship. A successful struggle against these threats can be waged only by means of the independent political mobilization of the working class against their source, the capitalist profit system.
Bill Van Auken is a frequent contributor to Global Research. Global Research Articles by Bill Van Auken
Ron Paul: Why Can’t We ‘Put Into Our Body Whatever We Want?’
February 17, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
As long as Big Rockefeller Pharma / Petro-Chemical gets a cut… You can.
VANCOUVER, Wash. (AP) — Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul decried the “war on drugs” Thursday night, telling supporters in Washington state that people should be able to make their own decisions on such matters.
Voters in Washington are likely to decide this year whether to legalize the recreational use of marijuana
“If we are allowed to deal with our eternity and all that we believe in spiritually, and if we’re allowed to read any book that we want under freedom of speech, why is it we can’t put into our body whatever we want?” Paul told more than 1,000 people at a rally in Vancouver, a suburb of Portland, Ore.
Paul did not mention his rivals for the Republican nomination but criticized President Barack Obama for killing American citizens with suspected terrorist ties and for expanding federal regulations.
“People who are strong believers in issues and ideas and principals, they do lead the way,” he said.
Paul is the second Republican to hold a major public event in Washington. Former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum was in Olympia and Tacoma on Monday. Washington’s caucuses are scheduled for March 3.
Some in the Vancouver audience came from neighboring Oregon, which has a primary set for May 15.
Paul was spending Thursday campaigning in Idaho and Washington and has rallies planned Friday in Richland and Spokane. He is expected to hit most of Washington’s media markets before the state’s nonbinding caucuses.
Ron Paul draws Massive (Obomba size) Crowds in Washington
Stealing Maine for Mitt… More on The Maine Republican Party’s Stolen 2012 GOP Caucuses – And How It Appears They Did It…
February 17, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
By Brad Friedman
[Now UPDATED at bottom of article. The Maine GOP executive committee has now decided to include Washington County's results from their upcoming caucuses in the final totals after all. They will also 'reconfirm' other results across the state next month. More details at bottom of story.]
It figures. The one time we’re on the road and unable to keep up with things on a minute-by-minute basis, a major election would be stolen outright. And there’s not a disenfranchising polling place Photo ID restriction in the world that could have done a thing to stop the thieves.
Despite the reputation The BRAD BLOG has gained in some quarters over the years, I don’t believe we have ever outright declared an election as “stolen.” That has now changed as the Republican Party of Maine has blatantly stolen the 2012 GOP Caucuses in their state for Mitt Romney, as we detailed yesterday.
That fact is just the latest data point in a remarkable and rapidly expanding spate of GOP election fraud by very high profile Republicans across the nation, as we also detailed in yesterday’s report.
The question now: Can it be “stolen back”?
Happily, even though we’re on the road, the issue is being covered very well this time around by Rachel Maddow at MSNBC. Her coverage last night honed in on a few additional points in this remarkable story, underscoring the blatant theft and breathtaking hypocrisy in the entire embarrassing, if enlightening, affair.
Among the points she expanded on last night (several of which we’d flagged in our coverage yesterday): the call by a Maine county Republican committee for the immediate removal of the shameless and breathtakingly dishonest state GOP Chair Charlie Webster and how the state party leadership not only seems to have lied to voters about results from postponed caucuses to be held this Saturday in Washington County, but how new evidence from Waldo County suggests the party may have simply just made up “results” out of whole cloth — and then tried to keep those fake numbers a secret from the public in order to award the race to Mitt Romney by 194 votes over Ron Paul.
All of that, remember, before an entire county — Washington County, one of just 16 in the entire state — has even managed to hold their caucuses and vote at all in the statewide contest.
This is remarkable stuff and perhaps made more remarkable by the fact that this isn’t currently at the top of every news outlet in the nation…
UPDATE 6:56pm PT: From Bangor Daily News tonight:
…
“The results of the Washington County caucus will be reviewed at the March 10 Republican State Committee meeting,” Maine GOP Chairman Charlie Webster said in a prepared statement approved by the state party’s executive committee.“The executive committee voted unanimously to recommend to the state committee that they include the results in the final tally for the presidential preference poll as their caucus had been scheduled to occur by the February 11 deadline, however it was postponed due to inclement weather. “
…
In addition, the executive committee is working to reconfirm results that were turned in before Feb. 11
Not sure what “reconfirming” means, but that seems to refer to the numbers that were initially reported by the GOP as zeroed out in town after town last Saturday night when Webster initially (and fraudulently) announced Romney as the “winner” by 194 votes.
ALSO SEE:
Charlie Webster’s newest Excuse: Maine GOP: Results went to “spam”
Maine Republican Party chairman Charlie Webster has admitted that the state party made numerous clerical errors in counting the state’s caucus results — even omitting some votes because emails reporting tallies “went to spam” in an email account.
Zionist Casino Donor pops another 10 million into dead dog Newt campaign
February 17, 2012 by Jack Blood
Filed under Commentary
We Vote for the uSA not Israel
Former House Speaker Newt Gingrich’s faltering campaign is about to get another shot in the arm, CBS News has learned.
Billionaire casino magnate Sheldon Adelson (More on him below) plans to give another $10 million to the outside group backing the former Georgia lawmaker who is running behind former Massachusetts Gov. Mitt Romney and former Pennsylvania Sen. Rick Santorum in the race for the Republican presidential nomination, a source close to Adelson told CBS News.
Adleson and his family have already given $11 million to “Winning our Future,” the super PAC backing Gingrich. The group, which bombarded the airwaves in South Carolina last month ahead of the primary there, is largely credited with helping Gingrich win in the Palmetto state.
The latest $10 million cash injection would raise the Adelson family’s contribution to $21 million, and a different source close to Adelson said he is prepared to drop another $4 million for a total of $25 million. The Huffington Post calculated that the billionaire casino owner earns about $3.3 million an hour.
The donation is expected to arrive at “Winning Our Future” within days, the source said, but still too late to make deadline for the scheduled release of donations on February 20th. The donation details are expected to be revealed in the March 20th filing with the Federal Election Commission.
Adelson has previously indicated his support for Gingrich is based on their shared commitment to Israel. But the billionaire has also indicated that despite his ongoing support for Gingrich, he will maintain a commitment to whoever becomes the Republican nominee.
A “Winning Our Future” spokesman declined comment.
Gingrich: I could lose Georgia
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Sheldon Adelson, Las Vegas casino and hotel magnate and his Israeli born wife Miriam
In 2007, Adelson made an unsuccessful bid to purchase the Israeli newspaper Maariv. When this failed, he proceeded with parallel plans to publish a free daily newspaper to compete with Israeli, a newspaper he had co-founded in 2006 but had left. The first edition of the new newspaper, Israel HaYom, was published on July 30, 2007.
According to Target Group Index(TGI) survey published in July 2011, Israel HaYom, which unlike all other Israeli newspapers is distributed for free, became the number one daily newspaper (on weekdays) four years after its inception.This survey found that Israel HaYom has a 39.3% weekday readership exposure, Yedioth Ahronoth 37%, Maariv 12.1%, and Haaretz 5.8%. The Yedioth Ahronoth weekend edition is still leading with 44.3% readership exposure, compared to 31% for the Israel HaYom weekend edition, 14.9% for Maariv, and 6.8% for Haaretz. This trend was already observed by a TGI survey in July 2010.
In 2006 Adelson contributed $25 million to the Yad Vashem Holocaust Martyrs’ and Heroes’ Remembrance Authority.Since 2007, the Adelson Family Foundation has made contributions totaling $100 million to Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel.
In 2010, Adelson donated $1 million to American Solutions for Winning the Future, a political action committee (PAC) supporting Republican former Speaker of the House Newt Gingrich. In December 2011, during Gingrich’s bid for the U.S. presidency, Adelson spoke favorably of controversial remarks Gingrich had made about Palestinians, saying “read the history of those who call themselves Palestinians, and you will hear why Gingrich said recently that the Palestinians are an invented people.”
President George W. Bush appointed the Adelsons to serve on the Honorary Delegation to accompany him to Jerusalem for the celebration of the 60th anniversary of the State of Israel in May 2008
Should a Dual citizen like Adelson be able to single-handedly support a candidate for POTUS?
Critics have said Adelson’s backing of Gingrich ushers in a dangerous new world where America’s wealthiest people might feel able to single-handedly sponsor a major candidate’s bid for the White House.
It is not just the American right that is Adelson’s great political passion. There is also Israel. Always proud of his Jewish heritage, Adelson’s activism took a pronounced leap when he married his second wife, Miriam, in 1991. She was an Israeli citizen who had been working in New York. The Adelsons are friends of Israel’s prime minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, and Adelson purchased a Hebrew-language newspaper to support him.
Adelson is an impassioned opponent of an independent Palestine. He has given at least $60m to the charity Taglit-Birthright, which brings young Jewish Americans on trips to Israel. He has established a thinktank in Jerusalem and given large sums of cash to Yad Vashem, the Holocaust research centre. In the US he has donated to the lobbying group the American Israel Public Affairs Committee, helping fund the trips of Republican congressmen to Israel.
All of this dovetails with Gingrich’s policies on Israel. Gingrich has vowed that on the very first day of his administration he would order America’s Israeli embassy to move from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. He has called for regime change in Iran and repeatedly denied that Palestinians are a real people, saying instead they have been “invented”.
*Abraham Foxman, the amiably chatty director of the Jewish civil rights group, the Anti-Defamation League, has a story to tell about his friend, the 78-year-old multi-billionaire casino mogul Sheldon Adelson.
BIGGER THAN AIPAC?
As the Washington Post article points out, Adelson and his Israeli-born wife, Miriam, have spent time and money lobbying for a bill to move the U.S. Embassy in Israel from Tel Aviv to Jerusalem. Gingrich has promised that his first executive order as president would be the embassy move.
Adelson is an ardent Zionist. Since 2007 the Adelson Family Foundation has made contributions totaling $100 million to Birthright Israel, which finances Jewish youth trips to Israel, Adelson is such a hard-line Zionist that he even stopped supporting AIPAC when it appeared to support a 2007 peace initiative championed by Olmert, President Bush, and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice.
In 2009, the Zionist Organization of America (ZOA), which is a hard-line Zionist group that wants Israel to retain the occupied territories and expand the Jewish settlements, presented Adelson its most distinguished and historic award, the Theodor Herzl Gold Medallion for outstanding achievement in Zionism. His wife received the Louis D. Brandeis Award. The couple now have their names on one of ZOA’s major awards, the Dr. Miriam & Sheldon Adelson Defender of Israel Award.
Adelson is intimately involved in Israeli politics. Since 2007, Adelson has owned a daily newspaper in Israel called Israel Hayom, which distributed free of charge, has the largest circulation of any newspaper in the country. The newspaper is ultra-supportive of Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, to whom Adelson is a close ideological ally and personal friend. The newspaper also has been doing much to promote Gingrich.
Sheldon Adelson’s Billions And Newt Gingrich: A Match Made In Israel
Like most American conservatives, Gingrich purports to identify with the wisdom of the Founding Fathers, but catering to a person with a view such as Adelson’s puts Gingrich in a position completely opposite to that of George Washington, who, in his Farewell Address of 1796, warned Americans of the grave danger of those who had a “passionate attachment” to a foreign country.
When the Republicans presidential candidates (Ron Paul being the exception) have talked about foreign policy, it often seems that they are running for the top spot in the Israeli Likud Party, rather than President of the United States of America. Consequently, it is difficult for any candidate to outdo his competitors. However, Sheldon Adelson’s financial backing of Gingrich would seem to indicate that he is the best candidate from the standpoint of the Israeli Right. And Gingrich might go a little farther than his competitors since he even suggests clemency for Israeli spy Jonathan Pollard.
Sheldon Adelson,saying he “unfortunately” wore the uniform of the American military not the Israeli army, and that he wants his son to be a sniper for the Israeli army (4:45 on). “All we care about is being good citizens of Israel.”
