MEDIALENS

‘Dark Omens’ And ‘Horror Shows’: Scottish Independence, Power And Propaganda

In Alerts 2014

 

Post 15 September 2014

Last Updated on 15 September 2014 

By Editor

Established power hates uncertainty, especially any threat to its grip on the political, economic and financial levers that control society. And so it is with elite fears that the United Kingdom, formed by the 1707 Acts of Union, could be on the verge of unravelling.

No informed commentator doubts that elite interests will do all they can to maintain hegemony in an independent Scotland, should that historic shift occur following the referendum of September 18. But if it does happen, there will likely be significant consequences for the Trident nuclear missile system, the future of the NHS and the welfare state, education, climate policy, energy generation and other industry sectors, the media and many additional issues; not just in Scotland, but beyond, including Nato and the European Union. There is clearly a lot at stake and established power is concerned.

Just over a week ago, to the consternation of Westminster elites and their cheerleaders in media circles, a YouGov opinion poll showed that the 'Yes' vote (51%) had edged ahead of 'No' (49%) for the first time in the campaign, having at one point trailed by 22%. The Observer noted 'signs of panic and recrimination among unionist ranks', adding that 'the no campaign is desperately searching for ways to seize back the initiative'. The panic was marked by 'intensive cross-party talks' and underpinned George Osborne's announcement on the BBC Andrew Marr show on September 7 that 'a plan of action to give more powers to Scotland' in the event of a No vote would be detailed in the coming days.

Confusion reigned in the Unionist camp, and in media reporting of their befuddlement. According to the rules governing the referendum, the UK and Scottish governments are forbidden from publishing anything which might affect the outcome during the so-called 'purdah period' of 28 days leading up to September 18. So, how to reconcile the opportunistic 'promise' during purdah to grant Scotland new powers following a 'No' vote? BBC News dutifully reported the government sleight-of-hand that:

'the offer would come from the pro-Union parties, not the government itself.'

Voters, then, were supposed to swallow the fiction that the announcement came, not from the UK government represented by Chancellor George Osborne, but from the pro-Union parties represented by senior Tory minister George Osborne!

However, Alastair Darling, leader of the pro-Union 'Better Together' campaign, told Sky News that all new powers for Scotland had already been placed on the table before the purdah period. What had been announced was 'merely... a timetable for when the Scottish Parliament could expect to be given the limited powers already forthcoming.'

Thus, an announcement setting out a timetable for enhanced powers was completely above board and not at all designed to influence the very close vote on independence. This was establishment sophistry and a deeply cynical manipulation of the voters.

Media manipulation was exposed in stark form when Nick Robinson, the BBC's political editor, was rumbled by viewers able to compare his highly selective editing of an Alex Salmond press conference last Thursday with what had actually transpired. Robinson had asked Salmond a two-part question about supposedly solid claims made by company bosses and bankers -  'men who are responsible for billions of pounds of profits' - that independence would damage the Scottish economy. Not only did the full version of the encounter demonstrate that Salmond responded comprehensively, but he turned the tables on Robinson by calling into question the BBC's role as an 'impartial' public broadcaster. The self-serving report that was broadcast that night by Robinson on BBC News at Ten did not reflect the encounter which the political editor summed up misleadingly as:

'He didn't answer, but he did attack the reporting.'

The distorted BBC News reporting was picked up on social media and no doubt encapsulated what many viewers and listeners, particularly in Scotland, have been observing for months, if not years. One reader wrote an excellent email to us in which he said:

'Honestly, this is just ONE example of pathetic bias which more and more Scots are seeing through. I've long been a follower of your site, and I make a point of reading each and every alert. This is the first time I've taken to contacting you, and as I said, I imagine lots of others will be doing just that on the same subject.
'I've seen so much media bias with BBC Scotland since the turn of the year, but it's now getting to laughable proportions. And now that we have the entire London press-mafia crawling all over it too, it's daily headline news - all doom and gloom about how Scotland will fail, Scotland will be bankrupt, there's no more oil left, jobs will go, etc etc. It's been diabolical.'

The BBC's dismissive response to the public complaints about Robinson's skewed report concluded with the usual worn-out boilerplate text:

'the overall report [was] balanced and impartial, in line with our editorial guidelines.'

It is not only the bias in BBC News reporting that has alienated so many people, but the way the public broadcaster fails to adequately address public complaints - on any number of issues.

Scaremongering-A-Go-Go

On the day following the YouGov poll result (September 8), frantic headlines were splashed all over the corporate media:

'Ten days to save the Union' (Daily Telegraph)
'Parties unite in last-ditch effort to save the Union' (The Times)
'Ten days to save the United Kingdom' (Independent)
'Scotland heads for the exit' (i, a tabloid version of the Independent)
'Last stand to keep the union' (Guardian)
'Queen's fear of the break up of Britain (Daily Mail)
'Don't let me be last Queen of Scotland' (Daily Mirror)

And, of course, the laughably over-the-top Sun:

'Scots vote chaos. Jocky horror show'

Corporate journalists pressed on with their scaremongering over Scottish independence. In the Telegraph, business news editor Andrew Critchlow intoned ominously:

'Scottish homeowners face mortgage meltdown if Yes campaign wins.'

The same newspaper published a piece by Boris Johnson arguing:

'Decapitate Britain, and we kill off the greatest political union ever. The Scots are on the verge of an act of self-mutilation that will trash our global identity.'

A Times editorial twitched nervously:

'The British political class is in a fight for which it seemed unprepared. It needs to find its voice'. ('Signifying Much', September 8, 2014; access by paid subscription only)

Larry Elliott, the Guardian's economics editor warned that an independent Scotland 'would not be a land flowing with milk and honey'. Jonathan Freedland, the Guardian's executive editor who oversees the paper's opinion section and editorials, bemoaned that:

'If Britain loses Scotland it will feel like an amputation...the prospect fills me with sadness for the country that would be left behind.'

Freedland quoted with obvious approval an unnamed 'big hitter' in the 'No' campaign who claimed:

'none of this would be happening if there were a Labour government in Westminster.'

This is the classic liberal-left fairytale that things would be different if only Labour were in power: a delusion that all too many voters in Scotland, as elsewhere, have seen through ever since it was obvious that Blairism was a continuation of Thatcherism.
Freedland sighed:

'When I contemplate the prospect of waking up on 19 September to discover the union has been defeated, I can't help but feel a deep sadness.'

Given Freedland's role as a Guardian mover and shaker, with a big input to its editorial stance, it was no surprise when a Guardian leader followed soon after, firmly positioning the flagship of liberal journalism in the 'No' camp. The paper pleaded: 'Britain deserves another chance'. But the pathetic appeal for the Union was propped up by a sly conflation of independence with 'ugly nationalism', notwithstanding a token airy nod towards 'socialists, greens and other groups'. The paper's nastiness continued with the unsubstantiated assertion that 'a coded anti-English prejudice can lurk near the surface of Alex Salmond's pitch'.
Ironically, one of the Guardian's own columnists, Suzanne Moore, had a piece published two days earlier that inadvertently preempted the nonsense now being spouted by her paper's own editors:

'The language of the no camp – Westminster, bankers, Farage, Prescott, the Orangemen and Henry Kissinger – is innately patronising.'

To which we can now add the Guardian.
She continued:

'Do not give in to petty nationalism, they say. Just stick with the bigger unionist nationalism; it's better for you.'

In the Observer, sister paper of the Guardian, Will Hutton was virtually inconsolable:

'Without imaginative and creative statecraft, the polls now suggest Scotland could secede from a 300-year union, sundering genuine bonds of love, splitting families and wrenching all the interconnectedness forged from our shared history.'

He ramped up the rhetoric still further:

'Absurdly, there will be two countries on the same small island that have so much in common. If Britain can't find a way of sticking together, it is the death of the liberal enlightenment before the atavistic forces of nationalism and ethnicity – a dark omen for the 21st century. Britain will cease as an idea. We will all be diminished.'

Writing for the pro-independence Bella Caledonia website, Mike Small responded to Hutton's apocalyptic warnings:

'Unfortunately he has misunderstood the basic tenor of the British State, that is to cling to power, to centralise it, and to shroud it in obscurity.'

Small added that Hutton's caricature of the 'Yes' camp as 'the atavistic forces of nationalism and ethnicity' is 'such an absurd metropolitan misreading of what's going on as to be laughable.'
Small's crucial point is one we should remember when listening to senior politicans; that their first priority is always to cling to power. Craig Murray was scathing about the leaders of the main Westminster political parties, and their last-ditch desperate trip to Scotland last Wednesday to 'save the Union':

'Cameron, Miliband and Clegg. Just typing the names is depressing. As part of their long matured and carefully prepared campaign plan (founded 9 September 2014) they are coming together to Scotland tomorrow to campaign. In a brilliant twist, they will all come on the same day but not appear together. This will prevent the public from noticing that they all represent precisely the same interests.'

Murray nailed what is at stake when he said that the 'three amigos' 'offer no actual policy choice to voters', and he gave a list showing how tightly they march together:

'They all support austerity budgets
They all support benefit cuts
They all support tuition fees
They all support Trident missiles
They all support continued NHS privatisation
They all support bank bail-outs
They all support detention without trial for "terrorist suspects"
They all support more bombings in Iraq
They all oppose rail nationalisation'

In short:

'The areas on which the three amigos differ are infinitesimal and contrived. They actually represent the same paymasters and vested interests.'

These 'paymasters and vested interests' are surely trembling with fear at the power now residing in the hands of voters in Scotland. As George Monbiot observes:

'A yes vote in Scotland would unleash the most dangerous thing of all - hope.'

He expands:

'If Scotland becomes independent, it will be despite the efforts of almost the entire UK establishment. It will be because social media has defeated the corporate media. It will be a victory for citizens over the Westminster machine, for shoes over helicopters. It will show that a sufficiently inspiring idea can cut through bribes and blackmail, through threats and fear-mongering. That hope, marginalised at first, can spread across a nation, defying all attempts to suppress it.'

Whatever happens on Thursday, skewed media performance on Scottish independence - in particular, from the BBC - has helped huge numbers of people see ever more clearly the deep bias in corporate news media.

SUGGESTED ACTION

The goal of Media Lens is to promote rationality, compassion and respect for others. If you do write to journalists, we strongly urge you to maintain a polite, non-aggressive and non-abusive tone.
Useful resources include:
BBC Scotlandshire
Bella Caledonia
Derek Bateman blog
Lesley Riddoch's website
Newsnet Scotland
Wings over Scotland

DC

Noam Chomsky: America Is the World Leader at Committing 'Supreme International Crimes'

  WORLD  

AlterNet / By Noam Chomsky

 21 COMMENTS

Noam Chomsky: America Is the World Leader at Committing 'Supreme International Crimes'

The U.S.'s sledgehammer worldview is destroying countless lives and future generations.

July 7, 2014  

The front page of The New York Times on June 26 featured a photo of women mourning a murdered Iraqi.

He is one of the innumerable victims of the ISIS (Islamic State in Iraq and Syria) campaign in which the Iraqi army, armed and trained by the U.S. for many years, quickly melted away, abandoning much of Iraq to a few thousand militants, hardly a new experience in imperial history.

Right above the picture is the newspaper's famous motto: "All the News That's Fit to Print."

There is a crucial omission. The front page should display the words of the Nuremberg judgment of prominent Nazis - words that must be repeated until they penetrate general consciousness: Aggression is "the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole."

And alongside these words should be the admonition of the chief prosecutor for the United States, Robert Jackson: "The record on which we judge these defendants is the record on which history will judge us tomorrow. To pass these defendants a poisoned chalice is to put it to our own lips as well."

The U.S.-U.K. invasion of Iraq was a textbook example of aggression. Apologists invoke noble intentions, which would be irrelevant even if the pleas were sustainable.

For the World War II tribunals, it mattered not a jot that Japanese imperialists were intent on bringing an "earthly paradise" to the Chinese they were slaughtering, or that Hitler sent troops into Poland in 1939 in self-defense against the "wild terror" of the Poles. The same holds when we sip from the poisoned chalice.

Those at the wrong end of the club have few illusions. Abdel Bari Atwan, editor of a Pan-Arab website, observes that "the main factor responsible for the current chaos [in Iraq] is the U.S./Western occupation and the Arab backing for it. Any other claim is misleading and aims to divert attention [away] from this truth."

In a recent interview with Moyers & Company, Iraq specialist Raed Jarrar outlines what we in the West should know. Like many Iraqis, he is half-Shiite, half-Sunni, and in preinvasion Iraq he barely knew the religious identities of his relatives because "sect wasn't really a part of the national consciousness."

Jarrar reminds us that "this sectarian strife that is destroying the country ... clearly began with the U.S. invasion and occupation."

The aggressors destroyed "Iraqi national identity and replaced it with sectarian and ethnic identities," beginning immediately when the U.S. imposed a Governing Council based on sectarian identity, a novelty for Iraq.

By now, Shiites and Sunnis are the bitterest enemies, thanks to the sledgehammer wielded by Donald Rumsfeld and Dick Cheney (respectively the former U.S. Secretary of Defense and vice president during the George W. Bush administration) and others like them who understand nothing beyond violence and terror and have helped to create conflicts that are now tearing the region to shreds.

Other headlines report the resurgence of the Taliban in Afghanistan. Journalist Anand Gopal explains the reasons in his remarkable book, No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War through Afghan Eyes.

In 2001-02, when the U.S. sledgehammer struck Afghanistan, the al-Qaida outsiders there soon disappeared and the Taliban melted away, many choosing in traditional style to accommodate to the latest conquerors.

But Washington was desperate to find terrorists to crush. The strongmen they imposed as rulers quickly discovered that they could exploit Washington's blind ignorance and attack their enemies, including those eagerly collaborating with the American invaders.

Soon the country was ruled by ruthless warlords, while many former Taliban who sought to join the new order recreated the insurgency.

The sledgehammer was later picked up by President Obama as he "led from behind" in smashing Libya.

In March 2011, amid an Arab Spring uprising against Libyan ruler Moammar Gadhafi, the U.N. Security Council passed Resolution 1973, calling for "a cease-fire and a complete end to violence and all attacks against, and abuses of, civilians."

The imperial triumvirate - France, England, the U.S. - instantly chose to violate the Resolution, becoming the air force of the rebels and sharply enhancing violence.

Their campaign culminated in the assault on Gadhafi's refuge in Sirte, which they left "utterly ravaged," "reminiscent of the grimmest scenes from Grozny, towards the end of Russia's bloody Chechen war," according to eyewitness reports in the British press. At a bloody cost, the triumvirate accomplished its goal of regime change in violation of pious pronouncements to the contrary.

The African Union strongly opposed the triumvirate assault. As reported by Africa specialist Alex de Waal in the British journal International Affairs, the AU established a "road map" calling for cease-fire, humanitarian assistance, protection of African migrants (who were largely slaughtered or expelled) and other foreign nationals, and political reforms to eliminate "the causes of the current crisis," with further steps to establish "an inclusive, consensual interim government, leading to democratic elections."

The AU framework was accepted in principle by Gadhafi but dismissed by the triumvirate, who "were uninterested in real negotiations," de Waal observes.

The outcome is that Libya is now torn by warring militias, while jihadi terror has been unleashed in much of Africa along with a flood of weapons, reaching also to Syria.

There is plenty of evidence of the consequences of resort to the sledgehammer. Take the Democratic Republic of Congo, formerly the Belgian Congo, a huge country rich in resources - and one of the worst contemporary horror stories. It had a chance for successful development after independence in 1960, under the leadership of Prime Minister Patrice Lumumba.

But the West would have none of that. CIA head Allen Dulles determined that Lumumba's "removal must be an urgent and prime objective" of covert action, not least because U.S. investments might have been endangered by what internal documents refer to as "radical nationalists."

Under the supervision of Belgian officers, Lumumba was murdered, realizing President Eisenhower's wish that he "would fall into a river full of crocodiles." Congo was handed over to the U.S. favorite, the murderous and corrupt dictator Mobutu Sese Seko, and on to today's wreckage of Africa's hopes.

Closer to home it is harder to ignore the consequences of U.S. state terror. There is now great concern about the flood of children fleeing to the U.S. from Central America.

The Washington Post reports that the surge is "mostly from Guatemala, El Salvador and Honduras" - but not Nicaragua. Why? Could it be that when Washington's sledgehammer was battering the region in the 1980s, Nicaragua was the one country that had an army to defend the population from U.S.-run terrorists, while in the other three countries the terrorists devastating the countries were the armies equipped and trained by Washington?

Obama has proposed a humanitarian response to the tragic influx: more efficient deportation. Do alternatives come to mind?

It is unfair to omit exercises of "soft power" and the role of the private sector. A good example is Chevron's decision to abandon its widely touted renewable energy programs, because fossil fuels are far more profitable.

Exxon Mobil in turn announced "that its laserlike focus on fossil fuels is a sound strategy, regardless of climate change," Bloomberg Businessweek reports, "because the world needs vastly more energy and the likelihood of significant carbon reductions is 'highly unlikely.'"

It is therefore a mistake to remind readers daily of the Nuremberg judgment. Aggression is no longer the "supreme international crime." It cannot compare with destruction of the lives of future generations to ensure bigger bonuses tomorrow.

© 2014 Noam Chomsky -- Distributed by The New York Times Syndicate

Noam Chomsky is a professor of linguistics and philosophy at MIT.

TRADITIONAL FINNISH CHRISTMAS

TRADITIONAL FINNISH CHRISTMAS

The Viking heritage

In the pre-Christian Nordic countries, it was a custom to celebrate the "return of the light" in time of the winter solstice in December, which marked the beginning of longer days.

Vikings — the Swedes, the Norwegians, the Danes and the Icelanders — celebrated the coming of the sun by sacrificing for their gods, eating and drinking well, playing games, burning bonfires and exchanging gifts during a three-day feast.

The celebrations had many elements that are still common in the modern Nordic Christmas celebration.

The Swedish, Norwegian and Danish word for Christmas, jul, the Icelandic jól, the Finnish joulu and the Estonian jõul all have their origin in the old Viking word hjul, meaning "sun wheel".

Nordic countries:
1 - Iceland
2 - Norway
3 - Denmark
4 - Sweden
5 - Finland

Areas not visible in the picture: Greenland and
the Svalbard Islands

Finnish kekri

The Finnish Christmas has its roots in the old pagan harvest feast called kekri, named after the ancient Finnish cattle protector and fertility god.

Kekri was celebrated around the end of November, or the end of the harvest season, marking the end of the year in the old agrarian calendar.

Picture on right: Finnish Christmas dinner table setting from the 21st century

After Christianity reached Finland in the 12th century, the traditions and habits of kekri began to assimilate with Christian Christmas celebration.

These preserved habits include food traditions, such like eating ham from pagan times and lutefisk during fast days from the Roman Catholic time.

Picture on left: Finnish Christmas treats from the 19th century (Helsinki City Museum - Burgher's House)

The Protestant reformation started by the German monk and theologian Martin Luther (1483 - 1546) also affected Sweden and Finland from ca 1520 on, and the Christmas traditions changed once more.

Picture on right: portrait of Martin Luther by Lucas Cranach the Elder (1532), photographed at the National Gallery of Denmark.

Many Catholic religious symbols, like nativity scenes, were banned. However, nowadays they have become increasingly popular again among the Finnish Lutherans.

Read more about traditional Finnish Christmas dinner here.

You will find traditional Finnish Christmas recipes here.

FINNISH CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION

FINNISH CHRISTMAS CELEBRATION

Christmas Eve

Unlike in most Christian countries, the highlight of the Finnish Christmas celebration is the Christmas Eve, December 24th, and not the Christmas Day itself.

In the old town of Turku, the former capital of Finland, a special ceremony is held to declare the beginning of "Christmas peace" period, starting at 12 o'clock noon on Christmas Eve and lasting for twenty days.

The tradition of declaring Christmas peace is known to date back to 13th century. It used to be common to all the Nordic countries, but only in Finland has it been maintained almost uninterruptedly up to our days. In the declaration, the citizens are wished a merry Christmas and prompted to spend the Christmas time peacefully, avoiding "noisy and rowdy behaviour".

For many Finns, watching or listening to the declaration ceremony broadcasted live on television or radio signals the proper start of Christmas celebration.

Although Finland is a rather secular country, the celebrating of Christmas here is still very pronounced when compared to most other Christian countries.

On Christmas Eve afternoon, the whole country seems to freeze down as the public transport seizes and all the stores are closed. It is still and quiet everywhere when people start getting prepared for the evening.

Some people attend the Christmas Eve church service and many visit cemeteries to light candles on the graves of their deceased relatives and loved ones. Towards the darkening evening, the cemeteries are glowing with a sea of twinkling lights.

Most Finns have a tradition of going to sauna to bathe and relax before attending the celebrations of the evening.

Warming up the sauna on Christmas is an ancient custom in Finland. Among the rural folk, it was believed that the spirits of dead ancestors came to bathe in sauna after sunset.

In picture on left: Christmas sauna warming up.

Sauna was regarded as a holy place where many important acts of life were carried out — from giving birth to dying and treating and healing of sicknesses. Also today, the sauna in Finland is a symbol for purity. For more information, visit The Finnish Sauna Society website.

After the last preparations for the evening have been made, families from toddlers to great-grandparents gather together to have Christmas dinner.

Especially for children, this is a magical time full of joyous anticipation, and many adults as well have their warmest childhood memories linked to Christmas celebrations of the years past.

Not to forget the true meaning of Christmas, it is a custom in some families to read aloud the Christmas gospel by St. Luke, describing the events at the time of the birth of Jesus. If there are young children present, the reading is usually done by the youngest literate child.

In picture above left: reading of the Christmas gospel.

After the Christmas dinner, some families may have a visit from joulupukki, the Finnish Santa Claus. He will bring Christmas presents, which are placed under the Christmas tree.

In picture on right: Christmas presents under the Christmas tree.

Later in the evening, the presents will be handed out and opened.

Christmas Day and end of holiday season

Christmas Day is usually spent quietly at home, relaxing and resting, with some people perhaps attending the early morning church service. The following St. Stephen's Day (Boxing Day) is traditionally a day for family visits.

Previously, especially in rural areas, merry and boisterous horse-drawn sleigh rides were popular on St. Stephen's Day, as Saint Stephen is a patron saint of horses. Since the Middle Ages, it was a custom to race home from church after the service. Following the old traditions, many horse farms and riding schools provide horse riding or sleigh rides on St. Stephen's Day.

The Christmas Eve, Christmas Day and St. Stephen's Day (from December 24th to 26th) are all public holidays in Finland. Some people, especially parents with small children, may take leave from work until the New Year's Day to spend the holidays with the family. In the beginning of January, children start their school again.

After the Christmas holidays, it is time to get prepared to welcome the New Year. Christmas time ends with Epiphany, January 6th. By this day, most people have already put away the Christmas ornaments and stripped down and thrown out the Christmas tree.

Read more about traditional Finnish Christmas dinner here.

You will find traditional Finnish Christmas recipes here.

Timeline: Osama bin Laden's life history

Telegraph.co.uk

Timeline: Osama bin Laden's life history

A timeline of Osama bin Laden's life history, from birth, to terrorist leader, to his death in a compound in Pakistan.

9:03AM BST 02 May 2011

1957: Osama bin Laden was born in Riyadh, one of some 54 children born to Mohammad bin Laden, a building tycoon. His mother was of Syrian origin.

1969: Mohammed bin Laden dies in a helicopter crash. Osama, then aged around 11, is believed to have inherited $80 million.

1984: Bin Laden travels to Afghanistan, responding to calls for a jihad, or holy Islamic war, against the Soviet occupying force. There, he finances and takes command of a force of some 20,000 Islamic fighters recruited from around the world.

1988: Bin Laden founded his group Al-Qaeda (the base).

1989: The Soviet Union withdraws its forces from Afghanistan.

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1991: A US-led alliance launches a war to expel Iraqi forces from Kuwait, which Iraq had occupied the previous year. Bin Laden declares jihad against the United States because it has based forces in his native Saudi Arabia, where Islam's two most holy places are located.

1992: Bin Laden returns to Saudi Arabia, but his support for violent Islamic extremist groups in Egypt and Algeria leads his home country to his explusion and the cancellation of his passport.

1993: An explosion in the basement of the World Trade Center in New York kills six people and injures around 1,000. The attack is later blamed on Al-Qaeda.

1995: A bomb kills US military advisors to Saudi national guard. Five US soldiers killed and more than 60 people are injured.

1996: A truck loaded with explosives destroys a building at the US military base of Khobar in Saudi Arabia. Nineteen US nationals are killed and 386 are wounded. Sudan forces Bin Laden to leave and he resurfaces in Afghanistan where the Taliban movement has just seized Kabul.

1998: Near-simultaneous bomb attacks against US embassies in Nairobi and Dar-es-Salaam kill 224 people, most of them Africans, and injure thousands. The US retaliates Bin Laden training camps in Afghanistan and Sudan with cruise missiles, killing at least 20 people.

1999: The US Federal Bureau of Investigation places bin Laden on its "10 most wanted" list.

2000: A suicide attack on the destroyer USS Cole in the port of Aden in Yemen kills 17 US Marines and wounds 38. The attack is attributed to Al-Qaeda.

2001: Two hijacked US airliners crash into the twin towers of the World Trade Center in New York, which subsequently collapse. A third hijacked plane crashes into the Pentagon outside Washington and a fourth in rural Pennsylvania. The attacks kill around 3,000 people. Washington offers a $25-million-dollar reward for any information leading to the arrest of bin Laden. US-led strikes on Afghanistan begin, aimed at forcing the ruling Taliban to hand over Bin Laden. Bin Laden vows no peace for the US and its citizens in a message broadcast via the Al-Jazeera television network. While not explicitly claiming responsibility for the attacks, he praises those who carried them out.

2002: Bin Laden is variously reported to be in Afghanistan, Iran, Pakistan - or dead.

2003: Pakistan's President Pervez Musharraf says bin Laden is probably alive and hiding in Afghanistan, but claims al-Qaeda is no longer an effective terrorist organisation.

2003: Bin Laden releases a series of statements including comments on the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan, threats of more attacks, and offers of a truce with the United States.

2004: "I present a reconciliation initiative... to stop operations against all (European) countries if they promise not to be aggressive towards Muslims." (Al-Arabiya audiotape)

2008: Warns Europe of a "reckoning" after controversial cartoons of Prophet Mohammed published.

2010: Claims botched Christmas Day bombing of US airliner and threatens more strikes on US targets. Last message blames industrial nations for climate change and the United States for refusing to sign up to the Kyoto protocol, while urging a US dollar boycott.

2011: Bin Laden is killed in a firefight with covert US forces in the Pakistani city of Abbottabad, northeast of the capital Islamabad, Obama announces in a televised address.

see also: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/CIA_%E2%80%93_Osama_bin_Laden_controversy

Osama bin Laden, A.K.A. CIA Asset "Tim Osman"

Russia's Great December Evolution

Russia's Great December Evolution

Katrina vanden Heuvel on December 12, 2011 - 11:21am ET

On December 10, in what one Russian blogger called “The Great December Evolution”—a play on the Bolsheviks’ Great October Revolution—tens of thousands of people protested peacefully in central Moscow. It was the most striking display of grassroots democracy and activism since the early 1990s. Police showed restraint, and Moscow’s mayor even provided free bus rides to protesters who had arrived at the wrong location. “Everything is flowing and changing,” a Russian friend e-mailed me Sunday night.

She had marched to Bolotnaya Square on December 10 in a group which included Communists, liberals, anarchists and nationalists, even members of the Russian Orthodox Church—a cacophonous coalition unified, for the moment, in demanding the immediate release of prisoners arrested last week in connection with the protests and the investigation of election violations. (Some, but not all, favor the scheduling of new parliamentary elections and the registration of opposition parties that have been unable to cross the threshold to win seats in Parliament or put forward presidential candidates.)

Moscow’s demonstration—and many of the others in sixty cities, from Saratov in the south to Siberia, with people gathering in below-zero temperature—also rallied unusual coalitions. Organizers sought to send a message of unity, urging the crowd to respect the diversity of speakers’ views. On the stage in Bolotnaya Square, the liberal “Yabloko” leader Grigory Yavlinsky, whose party failed to meet the threshold for Parliamentary representation, called for annulling the elections. One of the Communist Party’s young and photogenic leaders, 30-year old Andrei Klichkov, decried voting abuses by Putin’s party. And Oleg Kashin, a journalist who was savagely beaten by local authorities for his anti-corruption reporting, read a speech by the well-known blogger and whistleblowing activist Aleksei Navalny. (He is best known for having dubbed Putin’s party, “the party of crooks and thieves.”) The speech was smuggled out of jail—Navalny was arrested in last week’s demonstrations.

Dozens of speakers railed against voting fraud, and the abuse of the state’s “administrative resources”—state television time, pork barreling and intimidation—deployed to ensure United Russia’s victory. They also took delight in pointing out that such abuses could no longer be hidden. “The Internet has arrived,” one speaker announced. While I was in Moscow last month, a journalist friend told me of the many amateur videos exposing voting abuses that were already rocketing around the blogosphere. One of the most popular showed the city manager of Izhevsk telling local veterans’ organization that their funding would depend on how their district voted in the parliamentary elections.

For more than a decade, Russians appear to have quietly accepted Vladimir Putin’s system of “managed democracy.” Yet, under the radar and virtually unreported in the United States, a new civic activism has been emerging. In fact, Russia’s civil society today may be as engaged and active in ways not seen since the Perestroika and Glasnost period of 1986–1991, on into the early ’90s. (That may be one reason why former Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, the architect of perestroika and glasnost, called for new elections; perhaps he sees the protesters as the “grandchildren of perestroika.”)

A new generation of web-savvy civic activists has been building a participatory, non-ideological movement versus official corruption. “The forest uprising” which (temporarily) blocked the government’s construction of a highway through the suburban forest Moscow forest of Khimki, rode that growing wave of civic activism. Yevgenia Chirikova, the entrepreunerial 33-year-old mother of two who led the movement, believed that with organization, hard work and persistence, ordinary people have the power to effect change even in the absence of a functioning democracy, provided they focus on concrete issues close to their lives. Chirikova is now closely involved in today’s protests.

Some of these civic activists—bloggers, human rights advocates, environmentalists—gathered this past June at what was known as the anti-Seliger encampment, a 4-day training camp for activists designed to counter the Kremlin’s well-funded Seliger youth organizing gathering. Many who attended the camp are involved in today’s protests.

It’s interesting to note that Russia’s protesters, at least not yet, have avoided challenging the country’s obscene inequality, or attacking the oligarchical plundering that occurred on Yeltsin’s watch in the 1990s. (Considering that several of the leading protest leaders are neoliberals implicated in 1990s corruption—Boris Nemtsov, Mikhail [2 percent] Kasyanov, to name a few, this should not surprise.) Nor are there calls to repatriate the billions parked abroad in overseas bank accounts; nor are there demands to halt the rampant tax evasion and capital flight—estimated at $70 billion this year. The vast majority of protesters do not seem agitated about the crony capitalism or the corruption of Russia’s corporate and financial institutions. (The fact that Putin’s inept handling of oligarch Mikhail Khodorkovsky’s case—turning him into a political martyr—may be one reason why the protesters’ ire is fixed on the Kremlin, not the oligarchs. Or perhaps many see them as one and the same.)

One political commentator on Moscow’s leading opposition radio station Ekho Moskvy put it succinctly: “This is not a protest of empty pots. The people coming onto the streets of Moscow are very well off. These are people protesting because they were humiliated.They were just told ‘Putin is coming back’.” Indeed, many of the protesters are squarely middle class, even upper middle class by Russian standards, and have benefited from Putin’s economic steps. Yet, as the New York Times pointed out in an article, as was the case in Gen. Augusto Pinochet’s Chile, economic growth can unwittingly undermine authoritarian rule by creating an urban middle class that seeks new political reforms and rights. The demands, so far, are therefore more reformist: for electoral reform, not for dismantling electoral structures or the restructuring of the economic system. There are, of course, those in the independent labor movement and economic social movements who predict that the country will see protests more focused on economic and social conditions. In an interview in November, Zhenya Otto, of the Moscow Committee for a Workers’ International, warned that laws cutting social spending and healthcare were being postponed until after the election, and if implemented “mass protests will start then,” she predicted. And longtime left analyst and labor activist Boris Kagarlitsky believes the protests may well evolve, in certain parts of Russia, from a more liberal, reformist orientation to one more focused on economic conditions and structures.

Russia’s potent nationalist movement will also play a part in the days and months ahead. As we are witnessing across Eastern Europe, especially Hungary, conditions are rife for a resurgence of rightwing nationalism. Last month, on National Unity Day, Moscow’s nationalist “Russian March” gathered what some estimated to be as many as 20,000 ultra-nationalists and open neo-Nazi supporters in Manezh Square, a stone’s throw from the Kremlin. Many chanted slogans such as “Russia for Russians.” Navalny’s participation in the march confounded and infuriated many of his supporters. (His now-famous characterization of the Kremlin and its ruling “party of crooks and thieves” was largely drowned out by shouts to kill migrants and people from the Caucasus.)

Yet what is ironic about these protests is that while the allegations of voting fraud by Putin’s party are real, and call out for investigation (and not just by President Medvedev, who has lost support among supporters for his failure to implement any of the reforms or previous investigations he has called for), is it the case that this election was more fraudulent than previous ones held on Putin—or Yeltsin’s— watch? Probably not.

Many Russian commentators and political figures, including those now protesting these election results, know full well that the 1996 Presidential election between Yeltsin and Russian Communist leader Gennady Zyganov was rigged—and that massive infusions of oligarchical money and state resources determined the outcome. The difference—this time the fraud and ballot-stuffing was filmed, documented, and posted online.

Activists, journalists and ordinary citizens spread feisty viral videos on YouTube, “Zhivoi Zhurnal,” “VKontakte”, Russia’s Facebook equivalent, on ”tvitter” and a passel of other Internet outlets, which remain fairly free and open. The use of the new media was clear during the Parliamentary vote as electoral observers, opposition figures and ordinary citizens saw documented abuses for all the world to see. Unlike China, Russia’s government has left the blogosphere (and much of the print press) virtually untouched —while imposing strict control over state television. And until Saturday’s massive demos, most government TV channels, if they reported on the protests at all, tended to portray protesters as lawbreakers and troublemakers. As protests grew and became increasingly difficult to ignore—especially as reports ricocheted through the blogosphere—the three main government-controlled channels each led their evening broadcasts with reports about the protests. Notably absent was mention of Putin, but in candid street interviews people at rallies complained about their votes having been stolen and expressed a desire for new elections.

Another reason for state television’s startling shift in coverage may involve the Kremlin’s self-interest in displaying tolerance for peaceful protest in contrast to the nightly images (broadcast in what seems a virtual twenty-four-hour loop on Russian state TV) of arrests at Occupy Wall Street (and other encampments), of police brutality, pepper-spraying and evictions. Indeed, the fact that a massive and peaceful protest was taking place the same day Boston’s police arrested forty-six people and evicted Occupy Boston did not go unnoticed on Russian TV or among many commentators and protesters.

* * *

One of the underreported stories of this election, and one virtually ignored by the US media, is that the Russian Communist Party is now the country’s leading opposition party. Its vote this election nearly doubled and the party increased its representation in the Parliament to ninety-two seats. Millions voted for the Communists as an opposition vote. The Party over the last years has brought out crowds of 35,000–50,000 in Moscow’s center; it has brought in younger members, though the US media would have you believe it’s just a bunch of Stalinist pensioners. Yet even after its showing in these elections, the US media show virtually no interest in analyzing the reasons for the rebirth and resurgence of a party it buried, figuratively, in 1991 after the end of the Soviet Union, and again in 1993 after Yeltsin’s attack on a sitting Parliament and again in 1996 after the Communist leader lost in a (rigged) runoff to Yeltsin. The Communist Party—not the partially US-funded GOLOS vote monitoring organization—had the most effective vote monitoring organization in precincts and provinces across the country. Indeed, its monitors claim that some 15 percent of its votes were stolen, or reallocated, by United Russia, and that if the count had been fair the Communists should have received 35 percent.

* * *

What hasn’t changed is that Vladimir Putin will (likely) be elected president in March. Despite the growing and genuine public disillusionment with his rule, Putin remains—according to recent figures from the independent Levada Center— a very popular politician with roughly 60 percent support. And though his September announcement that he would run for president next year was not a surprise, it left many frustrated and with a sense of almost existential fatigue about the political system. In the time between now and March, however, the Kremlin will—no doubt learning from its experience with these elections—become more adept at using its “administrative resources”—state and Kremlin oligarchical money and control of state television—more effectively to make sure there are no setbacks in the 2012 presidential election.

In important ways, though, millions have had a change of political consciousness. Perhaps that change of sensibility and stance is best expressed in Alexei Navalny’s words, read by the journalist Oleg Kashin at the December 10 rally: “Everyone has the single most powerful weapon that we need—dignity, the feeling of self-respect…It’s impossible to beat and arrest hundreds of thousands, millions. We have not even been intimidated. For some time, we were simply convinced that the life of toads and rats, the life of mute cattle, was the only way to win the reward of stability and economic growth…We are not cattle or slaves. We have voices and votes and we have the power to uphold them.”

The air of infallibility Putin has enjoyed—and counted on —for the past decade is deflated.

Also gone is the nearly unconditional support most Russians had not just for Putin but for the system he has built and presided over in the past decade. That system, at least in the popular thinking, and according to legitimate polls, brought stability and prosperity after the chaos and poverty of Yeltsin’s 1990s. But for many Russians, especially younger ones, those days are a fading memory and the quest for political and free speech rights is sharpening. The involvement of so many young people in Moscow’s protests is, as one journalist put it, “a game-changer….All at once, a generation understood it has two options: to leave the country, or to start the struggle.”

In the days ahead, with another massive protest planned for December 24, several key questions arise: How will the protests continue, evolve and grow in numbers, diversity of focus and geographically? Will the authorities maintain restraint? Will the protesters remain peaceful and nonviolent? Will government-controlled television, where the majority of Russians continue to receive their news, continue covering protest and open the airwaves to a wider range of opposition voices? Will the unity of coalition around vote fraud—from Communists to liberals to nationalists—be sustainable? Will the Kremlin party, United Russia, be pushed to develop genuine coalitions with other parties in the new parliament? Will the rising demand for new elections—with the Russian Orthodox Church surprisingly adding its voice to the call—gain traction? Will Russia’s vibrant Internet remain a largely free and unregulated space, mobilizing young and old, exposing abuses and skewering authority? Or will we see the social media that nourished protests coming under pressure? (Already, a top official of the Russian Facebook equivalent “Vkontakte” said this week his company has been pressured by the Federal Security Service to block opposition supporters from posting.) How will President Medvedev pursue his promised, though quickly ridiculed, investigation into voter fraud? And how will workers in provincial cities and factory towns, many devastated by loss of jobs and opportunity, relate to these middle and professional class protests and engage with this new moment? And will the US government understand that it would be wise to cease issuing hectoring statements about Russia’s election, and in a step of ethical realism allow the savvy people of a great nation to sort out their own struggles? As my Russian friend e-mailed the other night: “This is only the beginning of a long and tough struggle. It is our struggle.”

Nuclear war on the horizon

05.12.2011

It might be the lazy way, to just sit and accept the utter bilge and lies coming from the mainstream western media when they report on events in Syria and Iran. But is it worth it? Would those who accept these lies still think it's worth it, not to look for the truth, if they realize that we are heading straight for a third world war?

There comes a point in time, a point from which there is no return. Someone is going to get fed up and take that step, ignite that spark, that will lead to the beginning of another world war. This world is as close to world war as it was during the Cuban Missle Crisis.

Thirteen days in October 1962, the world looked on as Nikita Khrushchev and John Kennedy both, thankfully, tried to avoid a collision course that would set off a nuclear war between the two superpowers.

While conducting a spying mission on the Island of Cuba, the U2 aircraft discovered that missiles had been installed on the island to prevent the threat of any future invasion.

Kennedy decided to impose a naval blockade, or a ring of ships, around Cuba. The aim of this "quarantine," as he called it, was to prevent the Soviet Union from bringing in more military supplies. He demanded the removal of the missiles already there and the destruction of the sites.

On October 22, President Kennedy spoke to his countrymen about the crisis in a televised address. Eye to eye, furious communications later, finally an agreement was made and both sides were able to stand down.

The missiles in Cuba would be removed, as would those in Turkey, and a promise to leave Cuba alone...demanded by Khrushchev. Later, movement towards peace and cooperation included the establishment of a teletype "Hotline" between the Kremlin and the White House and the signing of the Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty on July 25, 1963.

Iran's military said on Sunday it had shot down a U.S. reconnaissance drone aircraft in eastern Iran, a military source told state television. What was this drone doing over Iranian territory?

A potential conflagration between the two superpowers is reaching frightening levels in the Mediterranean with vessels of both the US and Russia maneuvering into confrontational positions.

The United States and its European allies have run roughshod over international law, rendering it null and void. The bloody aggression and genocidal campaign against Libya were just a beginning of the end.

The Yugoslavia campaign of lies and false accusations was repeated once again, while rubber stamp robots incorporated, known as the UN, gave the coalition of barbaric savages their cover of legitimacy with UN Resolutions 1970 and 1973, which were also repeatedly run over, violated and trashed as they crept toward total war and invasion rather than the established no-fly zone and no boots on the ground.

Infamous were the lies about weapons of mass destruction in Iraq and no less ridiculous were the claims that the Gaddafi government was "killing its own people." Now they say the same about Syria and accuse Iran of trying to use nuclear energy to make nuclear weapons.

In a court of law, if the judge catches you lying even once, he will totally disregard your case because you were caught in a lie. All it takes is just one lie. You have destroyed your credibility totally and forever in his eyes.

If I find out you've lied to me once, from that time forward you will have to prove you're not lying again when you make claims, otherwise I have no reason to not think you are not just lying again.

So, too, any thinking person cannot take what the U.S. and Europeans say or claim as remotely even credible, along with their Israeli friends. In all cases, they have to prove they are not lying because all they ever do is lie.

It's more a case of these entities projecting their own evil intentions onto their marked, targeted victims.

So people out there, don't accept what they say at face value, not from PROVEN LIARS.

Iran, one of their next targets of choice, does not constitute a threat to global security, or a threat to the security of Israel. Iran hasn't done anything aggressive in over 250 years...and they have repeatedly allowed inspections beyond the call of reason and assured others that they have no intention of making nuclear weapons.

In Syria, so many lies already coming fast and furiously...inventing incidents that never happened. The people at the locations where several incidents were alleged to occur say no such thing ever happened.

Why is the west, as in the case of Libya, sending terrorists and weapons into Syria? Why are snipers shooting at unarmed civilians and at police/military?

They have declared they want Assad gone, just as they declared they wanted Gaddafi gone.

Who gives them the right? Let the people decide, and not a gang of terrorists and garbage faced airplanes dropping bombs on innocent civilians. Leave people alone.

The world community is getting fed up with this. China and Russia cannot be hoodwinked now into approving sanctions or approving military action.

The forces of demonic evil now have come nose to nose with the forces of reason. Ships from the U.S. and ships from Russia are now on the coast of Syria. Anything could happen.

Something will happen.

These two counties, China and Russia, also know they are on the list of targets.

You cannot on one hand have a fully armed, nuclear weapons possessing Israel and then tell Iran they cannot even use nuclear energy for peace...their right as signatories of the NPT, a treaty that Israel refuses to sign while also refusing any inspections.

Any one of a number of confrontations is going to start the next world war. These powerbroker elitists think they can escape the effects of a nuclear exchange...just shows how insane they are. They must be stopped and this warning must be taken seriously.

Either the citizens of the world demand these war pigs stand down, or face total global nuclear war. Demand that they stop the lies. Demand that they stop sending terrorists to disrupt the peaceful lives of your brothers and sisters.

　

Lisa Karpova

Pravda.Ru