A useful primer to keep in mind, seeing how the war drums are beating louder these days.
Bonus: Something even MORE disturbing about Iran:
News of the Restless A door at the end of a dead-end street…
The History of Iran (that the US and Britain prefer you not to know)
January 24, 2012 — Sabina BeckerMerCHEdes? Of atrocities and apologies (still owing) from Mercedes-Benz
January 15, 2012 — Sabina Becker
Yes, the above is an atrocity, and a gross violation of rights. But not for the reasons the gusanos of Miami claim. Cubadebate explains what’s really horrible about it:
The luxury-vehicle company Mercedes-Benz apologized this week for having used the image of Che Guevara in a publicity campaign. Its apology, however, is for the wrong reasons.
The controversy arose last week, after the head of Mercedes-Benz, Dieter Zetsche, presented with much fanfare, in Las Vegas, a series of commercials for the luxury cars. One of these ads included a gigantic blow-up of the famous photo of Che Guevara in Havana, taken in 1960 by the Cuban photographer, Alberto Korda.
Zetsche’s idea was to promote a new Mercedes carpooling project, called CarTogether. The idea is to stimulate sales of the expensive cars with the idea that the owners transport multiple passengers, using the Mercedes as a kind of ostentatious free taxi.
The Mercedes-Benz director said in his presentation: “Some people think that car sharing is like communism. If that’s the way it is, long live the revolution.”
And at that point, he projected on a large screen the image of Che between two of the most luxurious cars offered to the consumer.
The use of the image of Che touched off a ferocious political campaign against Mercedes-Benz, led by a small group of Cuban-US citizens.
For example, a certain Ernesto Ariel Suárez launched a Facebook page, in which he wrote: “Tell Mercedes-Benz that it’s wrong to use the image of a mass murderer”. The ultra-conservative Heritage Foundation joined the fray, characterizing Che as “a psychopath…who killed for fun”. Miami-based publications and blogs also joined the crusade.
The criticisms worked. Mercedes-Benz apologized.
A company communiqué explained: “We were not supporting the life or the actions of this historic personage, or the political philosophy he was defending. We apologize to anyone who may have felt offended.”
To be sure, Mercedes-Benz has much to apologize for, but not because of the criticisms of the enemies of Che, that brave and pure revolutionary who gave his life so that others could live better. No.
The German car company must apologize for the unauthorized use of Korda’s iconic photograph. It should also apologize to the widow and children of Che Guevara for having associated his image with the buying and selling of luxury goods. The political philosophy Che defended with his life said that “man truly reaches his full human stature when he produces without the compulsion of physical necessity of selling himself like merchandise.”
It is a well known fact that the German auto company collaborated with the Nazi régime, and that its most famous employee was Adolf Eichmann, during the latter’s years of exile in Argentina. It is not so well known that the same company also collaborated closely with the Argentine military dictatorship during the Dirty Wars in the Southern Cone. The families of some of its victims, the disappeared workers of Mercedes-Benz in Buenos Aires — Oscar Alberto Alvarez Bauman, Miguel Grieco, Diego Núñez, Esteban A. Reimer, Alberto Francisco Arenas, Alberto Gigena, Fernando Omar del Conte, Jorge Leichner and Héctor Belmonte — have launched a lawsuit against the company in a US federal court.
The relatives allege in their suit that Mercedes-Benz had the unionists kidnapped in order to break a strike. The suit also includes the names of other unionists from the factory who survived the repression — Héctor Ratto, Eduardo Alasiregui, Ricardo Martín Hoffman, Eduardo Estivill, Alfredo Manuel Martín, José Barreiro, and Alejandro Daer. They alleged that they were kidnapped, held in secret prisons, and tortured with electroshock by the Argentine state security forces under the direction and control of Mercedes-Benz.
The crimes of Mercedes-Benz in its Buenos Aires plant took place between 1976 and 1977. Following an internal investigation, the parent company, Daimler AG, concluded in December 2003 that the factory directors in Argentina had given the names of the “subversive” workers to the military junta, and that the objective was, beyond any doubt, to break a strike in the plant that had paralyzed the production of automobiles.
Without the information given by Mercedes-Benz, the security forces could not have kidnapped, tortured and “disappeared” the unionists. Evidently satisfied with the extra-official methods used by state security in collaboration with Mercedes to break the strike of ’77, the company executives wrote an internal memorandum, dated March 22, 1977, in which they conclude: “The result of the government’s methods was favorable, and opened for us a good perspective for the development of the country.”
Uff.
The “methods” praised by Mercedes Benz’s executives are those of crimes against humanity: Torturing, kidnapping and murdering those who dare to demand a just salary, better working conditions, and the end of social inequality.
The lawsuit alleges that Mercedes-Benz of Argetina violated the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, the United Nations Constitution, the International Convention of Civil and Political Rights, the International Convention Against Torture, the Victims of Torture Protection Act, the Alien Tort Claims Act, and numerous Argentine and international laws, statutes and regulations.
It is true that Mercedes-Benz owes apologies, but not to those who hate Che and slander his name in the corporate media.
The apology is owed to Korda, Che’s widow Aleida, their children, and especially the families of the Argentine factory workers, whom Mercedes-Benz tortured, disappeared and killed during the 1970s. The lawsuit against Mercedes-Benz has been before Judge Ronald M. Whyte in the federal court of San Francisco for more than 7 years. The defense’s tactic is to slow down and delay the process as much as possible. Meanwhile, the plaintiffs continue to wait for justice to be done.
What would Che say to all that?
Translation mine.
Oh, I have a fair idea what he’d say, but I don’t think it would be printable, even on this potty-mouthed blog. Just translating that makes me feel soiled, and ashamed of my German ancestry. And especially embarrassed of the fact that my mom, before she met and married my dad in Northern Ontario, worked in New York City…for the local Mercedes importer/reseller and his wife; she was their au pair and governess. All this almost makes me feel as if *I* owed someone an apology, because if that despicable motor company didn’t employ a certain German-descended US executive, who in turn employed my mother because he wanted his kids to have a German governess, I probably wouldn’t be here.
Yes, that IS fucked up.
But what’s even more fucked up is the Argentine junta, and every bloody thing it ever did. And so is this blatant abuse of Che’s image, with the Mercedes logo in place of the red star on his beret. I mean yeah, his face IS practically synonymous with the whole concept of revolution. But the revolution he stood for was one blatantly at odds with the junta, with Mercedes-Benz’s Buenos Aires plant, and the fascist crackdown against auto workers everywhere.
And it is a revolution blatantly at odds with the use of Che’s face to sell a vehicle which he, on well-founded principle, would NEVER have driven.
So, Daimler-Benz bastards? You know what you have to do. Don’t make me cuss you out in my mother tongue. It sounds even nastier than Che swearing a blue streak in Spanish. Trust me.
Cops Behaving Badly: Fuck the Police (Before They Fuck You)
January 3, 2012 — Sabina Becker
(Logo from the infamous Dave Rabbit sweatshirt, a limited-edition Vietnam War pirate radio joke product.)
Pardon my Anglo-Saxon and the explicit artwork, but given what shit is hitting the fan in Britain, it was only fittin’…
Undercover police officers routinely adopted a tactic of “promiscuity” with the blessing of senior commanders, according to a former agent who worked in a secretive unit of the Metropolitan police for four years.
The former undercover policeman claims that sexual relationships with activists were sanctioned for both men and women officers infiltrating anarchist, leftwing and environmental groups.
Sex was a tool to help officers blend in, the officer claimed, and was widely used as a technique to glean intelligence. His comments contradict claims last week from the Association of Chief Police Officers that operatives were absolutely forbidden to sleep with activists.
The one stipulation, according to the officer from the Special Demonstration Squad (SDS), a secret unit formed to prevent violent disorder on the streets of London, was that falling in love was considered highly unprofessional because it might compromise an investigation. He said undercover officers, particularly those infiltrating environmental and leftwing groups, viewed having sex with a large number of partners “as part of the job”.
“Everybody knew it was a very promiscuous lifestyle,” said the former officer, who first revealed his life as an undercover agent to the Observer last year. “You cannot not be promiscuous in those groups. Otherwise you’ll stand out straightaway.”
The claims follow the unmasking of undercover PC Mark Kennedy, who had sexual relationships with several women during the seven years he spent infiltrating a ring of environmental activists. Another two covert officers have been named in the past fortnight who also had sex with the protesters they were sent to spy on, fuelling allegations that senior officers had authorised sleeping around as a legitimate means of gathering intelligence.
However Jon Murphy, Acpo’s spokesman on serious and organised crime, said last week that undercover officers were not permitted “under any circumstances” to sleep with protesters.
Heh. Sounds like the police have quite the bit of cognitive dissonance going. One officer says he was required to screw around with activists, literally, as part of his undercover spy work, while the brass indignantly insists otherwise.
This all begs the question: Why would police feel the need to have sex with activists they were spying on, anyway?
The answer, as you might have guessed, is fucking ludicrous:
The former SDS officer claims a lack of guidelines meant sex was an ideal way to maintain cover. He admitted sleeping with at least two of his female targets as a way of obtaining intelligence.
“When you are on an undercover unit you were not given a set of instructions saying you could or couldn’t do the following. They didn’t say to you that you couldn’t go out and drink because technically you’re a police officer, that you shouldn’t go out and get involved in violent confrontations, you shouldn’t take recreational drugs.
“As regards being with women in very, very, very promiscuous groups such as the eco-wing, environmental movement, leftwing, or the Animal Liberation Front – it’s an extremely promiscuous lifestyle and you cannot not be promiscuous in there.
“Among fellow undercover officers, there is not really any kudos in the fact that you are shagging other people while deployed. Basically it’s just regarded as part of the job. It’d be highly unlikely that you were not [having sex].
“When you are using the tool of sex to maintain your cover or maybe to glean more intelligence – because they certainly talk a lot more, pillow talk – you would be ready to move on if you felt an attachment growing.
“The best way of stopping any liaison getting too heavy was to shag somebody else. It’s amazing how women don’t like you going to bed with someone else,” said the officer, whose undercover deployment infiltrating anti-racist groups lasted from 1993 to 1997. Two years later the SDS became the National Public Order Intelligence Unit, the secretive organisation that employed Kennedy and whose activities are the subject of three investigations.
The officer added that undercover police were strictly encouraged not to form a bond with women they were sleeping with and said that he knew Jim Boyling, the undercover officer who married an activist he was supposed to be spying upon.
See? Ludicrous.
I don’t know of any environmentalist group where promiscuity is actually de rigueur, as the cop-spook claims it was in these so-called “terrorist” cells. In fact, since environmentalists are apt to be politically progressive all around, compulsory promiscuous sex would be considered a flagrant ethical violation, and likely to undermine the solidarity of the group as well, rather than bolster it (much less help members to sniff out infiltrators in their midst). It would be mutually destructive and counterproductive, particularly when that old boogerbear known as Human Nature rears its jealous, possessive head. There has never yet been a commune or cult where a compulsory-promiscuous lifestyle hasn’t ultimately devolved into either a sexualized dictatorship, or else led to the dissolution of the group.
So, as you may have guessed, I’m calling shenanigans on the insistence that promiscuity was just a way for the undercover cops to blend in. Instead, I’m going to just come right out and label it for what it was: Police brutality, sexual assault, and agent provocateurism.
It is police brutality because it involves officers taking advantage of their official status to commit violence upon citizens who have done nothing wrong.
It is sexual assault because it involves officers taking advantage of their official status to secure sexual favors under false pretenses.
And it is agent provocateurism because it is all being done to covertly undermine the group, to riddle it with schisms and ultimately, to get it to dissolve.
And there is really nothing left to say on the subject except FUCK THAT SHIT.
Some call them drones…
December 31, 2011 — Sabina Becker
…others call them Job Creators:
America’s growing drone operations rely on hundreds of civilian contractors, including some, such as the SAIC employee, who work in the so-called kill chain before Hellfire missiles are launched, according to current and former military officers, company employees and internal government documents.
Relying on private contractors has brought corporations that operate for profit into some of America’s most sensitive military and intelligence operations. And using civilians makes some in the military uneasy.
At least a dozen defense contractors that supply personnel to help the Air Force, special operations units and the CIA fly their drones are filling a void. It takes more people to operate unmanned aircraft than it does to fly traditional warplanes that have a pilot and crew.
The Air Force is short of ground-based pilots and crews to fly the drones, intelligence analysts to scrutinize nonstop video and surveillance feeds, and technicians and mechanics to maintain the heavily used aircraft.
“Our No. 1 manning problem in the Air Force is manning our unmanned platforms,” said Gen. Philip M. Breedlove, Air Force vice chief of staff. Without civilian contractors, U.S. drone operations would grind to a halt.
About 168 people are needed to keep a single Predator aloft for 24 hours, according to the Air Force. The larger Global Hawk surveillance drone requires 300 people. In contrast, an F-16 fighter aircraft needs fewer than 100 people per mission.
With a fleet of about 230 Predators, Reapers and Global Hawks, the Air Force flies more than 50 drones around the clock over Afghanistan and other target areas.
The Pentagon plans to add 730 medium and large drones in the next decade, requiring thousands more personnel.
I believe that’s what we call a fatal flaw in the system. A weak spot that could be turned to advantage for those, like me, who don’t EVER want to see drones — whether controlled by militaries or mercenaries — turned against civilians.
Unfortunately, that day may not be far off…
Congress first authorized Customs and Border Protection to buy unarmed Predators in 2005. Officials in charge of the fleet cite broad authority to work with police from budget requests to Congress that cite “interior law enforcement support” as part of their mission.
In an interview, Michael C. Kostelnik, a retired Air Force general who heads the office that supervises the drones, said Predators are flown “in many areas around the country, not only for federal operators, but also for state and local law enforcement and emergency responders in times of crisis.”
But former Rep. Jane Harman (D-Venice), who sat on the House homeland security intelligence subcommittee at the time and served as its chairwoman from 2007 until early this year, said no one ever discussed using Predators to help local police serve warrants or do other basic work.
Using Predators for routine law enforcement without public debate or clear legal authority is a mistake, Harman said.
“There is no question that this could become something that people will regret,” said Harman, who resigned from the House in February and now heads the Woodrow Wilson International Center for Scholars, a Washington think tank.
In 2008 and 2010, Harman helped beat back efforts by Homeland Security officials to use imagery from military satellites to help domestic terrorism investigations. Congress blocked the proposal on grounds it would violate the Posse Comitatus Act, which bars the military from taking a police role on U.S. soil.
Proponents say the high-resolution cameras, heat sensors and sophisticated radar on the border protection drones can help track criminal activity in the United States, just as the CIA uses Predators and other drones to spy on militants in Pakistan, nuclear sites in Iran and other targets around the globe.
For decades, U.S. courts have allowed law enforcement to conduct aerial surveillance without a warrant. They have ruled that what a person does in the open, even behind a backyard fence, can be seen from a passing airplane and is not protected by privacy laws.
Advocates say Predators are simply more effective than other planes. Flying out of earshot and out of sight, a Predator B can watch a target for 20 hours nonstop, far longer than any police helicopter or manned aircraft.
Today it’s criminals, tomorrow it will be citizens. I guarandamntee you that. Any government that is capable of deploying torture weapons like pepper spray and noise cannons against peaceful protesters, or of planting infiltrators and provocateurs in social-justice coalitions, is not going to stop shy of this. After all, it’s a very lucrative business, with lots of private-sector involvement, and thus, attractive to fascists who would love to paint themselves as Job Creators and saviors of Law ‘n’ Order.
Monkey wrench, anyone?
Cristina gets cancer, Chavecito gets topical, Jezebel gets Teh Stoopid
December 28, 2011 — Sabina BeckerDear lord, what is it with progressive LatAm leaders getting the fucking C-word? First it was Dilma, then Lugo, then Chavecito, then Lula, and now Cristina?
President Cristina Kirchner is suffering from a papillary cancer in the right lobe of her thyroid gland, according to an official statement from the Casa Rosada [presidential palace of Argentina].
According to her public-communications secretary, Alfredo Scoccimaro, “tests show no existing metastases”, and an operation has been scheduled at the Austral Hospital for January 4.
“A papillary cancer of the right lobe of the thyroid gland has been detected. Today it was confirmed that there was no involvement of the lymph nodes, and no metastasis. The localization of the disease is limited to the gland.”
According to Scoccimaro, Pedro Saco, the chief of the Department of surgery at the hospital, will be in charge of the operation, to be performed by his medical team.
“The probable time of hospitalization will be 72 hours,” Scoccimaro said.
After the surgery, the president will be off work until the 24th of the same month, as per Article 88 of the Argentine constitution, which allows for a 20-day leave of absence. Her duties in the meantime will be taken over by her vice-president, Amado Boudou.
Translation mine.
And as I told a friend on Facebook this morning when he posted the above link, if I were conspiracy-minded, I’d be tempted to say this was a purpose-built epidemic of carcinomas. Right-wing LatAm leaders are strangely untouched. Unless Piñochetera comes down with it in the coming year to lend some balance to the ledger, this sure smells iffy to me. Of course, it’s quite possible that this is just a strange coincidence…
And yeah, how about that Chavecito, daring to utter the words no one else can bring themselves to say? As much as the paranoid anticommunist/antisocialist idiot brigade at Jezebel may be tempted to make fun of him for that, there’s always this inconvenient little documentary, which came out in 2003 and has a disturbing ring of truth to it:
So yeah, smartasses, there IS a vaccine that can give you cancer, and it WAS developed long ago, in the USA, by the CIA. How long ago? Well, it dates back to before the JFK assassination, so do your math, kids.
Quite the fucking coincidence, eh? And we all know how much they have it in for Latin American leaders (or, hell, US presidents!) who don’t toe the hard-anticommunist Washington line. Fidel was supposed to get it, but Hurricane Flora put the quash to that. So they gave it to Jack Ruby instead.
Mr. Ruby, you may recall, died rather quickly of lung cancer, even though he was well known to be a health-conscious non-smoker. (And no, I don’t think just hanging around in smoky boîtes de nuit would be enough to do it, even for a mob-connected small-time nightclub owner like Ruby.)
Just a coincidence, you say? Yeah, a sinister coincidence when you consider his famous last press conference:
He hinted that there was a lot more that could come to light. Surely not anything to do with CIA assassination programs, in collusion with the Mafia…in which he was, rather conveniently, also a cog?
Oh yeah, and there’s also the salient fact that Jack Ruby himself claimed to have been injected with cancer-inducing vaccines while in prison. But of course he lied! Just another paranoid loony, eh?
Yeah. Sure. He and all those other disappearing witnesses. One of them, by another sinister coinkydink, was Dr. Mary Sherman, mentioned in the documentary as one of those working on that ha-ha-ha-so-nonexistent cancer vaccine.
But hey, Jezzies, keep tarring Chavecito with that ol’ crazyman brush. Good crapaganda doggies — here ya go, have a Milk-Bone! Just know that you’re insulting the intelligence of 6 out of 10 Venezuelans — who, unlike the average US citizen, aren’t fooled anymore by the lies of the right-wing corporate media. And who, unlike the average US citizen, aren’t afraid to vote for a truly progressive leader. That’s a disturbing little trend that’s catching on in Latin America. And it’s not totally insane to propose that the US would resort to sneaky measures to stop it. Including an injectable, discreet, plausibly deniable method of assassination.
After all, just look at how many times and ways you guys tried to kill Fidel. Which makes you kind of the world-record holder for assassination ineptitude, when you think about it.
Your record for character assassination sucks, too.
Festive Left Friday Blogging: Fidel’s Guinness record
December 16, 2011 — Sabina Becker
Courtesy of Cubadebate, we have the following amusing little item to celebrate today:
The historic leader of the Cuban Revolution, Fidel Castro, is the person subject to the greatest number of assassination attempts, according to the Guinness Book of World Records and, surely, the archives of the US Central Intelligence Agency, the principal promoter of these frustrated homicide attempts.
According to the data reiterated on Tuesday by the Yahoo portal blog, as of 2006, the count of assassination attempts against him stands at 638, almost all of them perpetrated by the CIA.
The methods aimed at killing him were many, though all of them failed: from snipers, explosives hidden in his shoes, poison injected in a cigar, to a small explosive charge inside a baseball, among others.
From the very moment in which he headed the triumphant Cuban Revolution in 1959, enemies began to plot his physical demise. Among those most interested in killing the former prime minister of Cuba were the North American agencies of espionage and subversion.
Translation mine.
I couldn’t help snickering the entire time I was translating that. Either Fidel is incredibly clever and preternaturally good at outwitting his enemies, or (and personally, I suspect this latter is more the case) they are just that fucking stupid in Langley. Great at concocting elaborate plans, sure, but the execution is always lacking (pun intended).
And of course, Fidel IS very smart, much smarter than they, which is why Cuba remains the only Latin American country with no child malnutrition. It’s also why Cuba exports literacy and medical education to the rest of Latin America. And, oh yeah, this and so much more is why any effort to reverse the Revolution has failed to take. The problem with the so-called Cuban dissidents isn’t that they’re so few or so oppressed (they are neither), but because they have no fresh ideas. All they have is the financing and backing of the same failed US state organ that’s made a record number of assassination attempts on one leader who has now retired, since they couldn’t kill him out of office. Is it any wonder that they lack credibility? At this rate, Fidel will live to be 100, only to die peacefully in his sleep, and, one gets the feeling, merrily thumbing his nose in the general direction of Gringolandia.
Anyway: Enjoy your retirement and your Guinness, Fidel, ya big barbudo. You’ve certainly earned both.
Spyware for Arab despots: Germany’s latest source of shame
December 15, 2011 — Sabina BeckerWikileaks just keeps exposing the imperialist underside of western “democracy”. And one of the latest to be embarrassed by revelations is Germany — an unlikely player in the imperial game, seeing as it’s been officially out of it since World War II ended. But what used to be done overtly by governments has since been taken over covertly by private corporations. Der Spiegel chimes in on the same themes as the above documentary:
The Cyber Warfare Europe conference, held in Berlin in September, was another key event for the intelligence and surveillance community. A former officer with the US Marines conducted the event in a windowless conference room at the Marriott Hotel.
A new, alarming attempt to create total surveillance at the expense of freedom was on display in Berlin. Functionality of the products is a priority, but so too is marketability. They are sold to any ruler who can afford it, no matter who he declares to be an enemy of the state and how he treats such so-called enemies. The attendees in Berlin seemed enthusiastic about what they were seeing, which included the latest tools for hacking into the suspects’ computers. The providers of the software promise that they can even provide interested third parties with access to encrypted emails and telephone conversations.
Representatives of the Gamma Group, a conglomerate that owns two companies headquartered in a Munich office building, had their own booth at Cyber Warfare Europe. Gamma describes itself as a leader in the field of cyber surveillance. The current brochure on its flagship product, “FinFisher,” reads like an investigator’s wish list — and a nightmare for civil rights activists. The 41-page brochure describes spy software for all kinds of devices and electronic eavesdropping situations.
Gamma offers a product, for example, known as an “active password sniffer,” which is supposedly capable of hacking into password-protected data transmissions in online banking (SSL), as well as private, encrypted WLANs. A product called “FinSpy” is designed to facilitate live surveillance through webcams and microphones, download files without being detected, and even monitor Skype conversations and chats.
In its marketing videos, Gamma promises “full access to target systems,” that is, the computers and mobile phones of those to be spied on. Of course criminals, as well as real or alleged regime opponents, should not be aware that any of this is taking place. The spy programs are installed on their computers through such tools as “fake software updates.”
According to the videos, unsuspecting users download the spyware onto their devices when they update their Apple iTunes program or BlackBerry software. Once a BlackBerry, for example, has been infected, the originators of the “FinSpy Mobile” spyware can not only listen in on conversations and read text messages, but can also view contacts, photos, calendar entries and other files stored on the device — no matter where in the world the device is being used at any given moment. Apple has just closed the security loophole that was being used for this purpose with a real iTunes update.
This in turn has me wondering if I got “finfished”, since I have iTunes and am frequently being urged to update it. Every time I get the latest update, there’s a new one a week later! It’s exasperating, all this updating. I’m reluctant to do so if it still works all right as is. A new look, and a few extra bells and whistles, aren’t as attractive as some might like to think.
And if it can happen in Iran, in Bahrain, in Oman and who knows where else, who’s to say it can’t also happen in Germany…or Canada? We already know that there is immense corporate interest in spying on private individuals. We also know that the Harper Government™ likes to spy on and repress anyone who contradicts THEM. I wouldn’t put it past them to waste taxpayer dollars on this shit, any more than I would put it past an Arab despot — or a corporate dictator wanna-be.
What is up with Ol’ Pineapple Face?
December 11, 2011 — Sabina BeckerRussia Today has the backgrounder; the CBC has the story:
Former military strongman Manuel Antonio Noriega was flown home to Panama on Sunday to be punished once again for crimes he committed during a career that saw him transformed from a close Cold War ally of Washington to the vilified target of a U.S. invasion.
Noriega left Orly airport, south of Paris, on a flight of Spain’s Iberia airlines, delivered directly to the aircraft by a four-car convoy and motorcycles that escorted him from the French capital’s La Sante prison. The flight, which stops in Madrid, left at 8:08 a.m. local time, about a half-hour behind schedule.
Noriega has spent more than 20 years in U.S. and French jails for drug trafficking and money laundering.The French Justice Ministry, in a one-line statement, said France turned Noriega over to Panamanian officials on Sunday in accordance with extradition proceedings. It was the only official remark.
“Drug trafficking and money laundering”. Ain’t that a pip? Meanwhile, his worst crimes have gone not only unpunished, but untried. Now why do you suppose THAT is?
Noriega began working with U.S. intelligence when he was a student at a military academy in Peru, said Everett Ellis Briggs, the United States ambassador to Panama from 1982 to 1986.
As he rose in the Panamanian military during the 1970s and 1980s, Noriega co-operated closely with the CIA, helping the U.S. combat leftist movements in Latin America by providing information and logistical help. He also acted as a back channel for U.S. communications with unfriendly governments such as Cuba’s.
What the CBC isn’t telling us is that Pineapple Face was BFFs with Dubya’s dad during that entire time. George Bush the Elder actually referred to him as “my boy”. (No, I’m NOT kidding.) And their coke-smuggly friendship even made the nightly news at one point (as well as a cameo appearance in Donnie Darko):
The only thing Michael Dukakis did wrong here was to pull his punches. He could have very credibly tied Bush Sr., a former CIA head, to the cocaine trade. Mike Ruppert did, as did Gary Webb.
If Manuel Noriega is ever tried for his real crimes, I know who will have to stand in the dock alongside him. Unfortunately, since he’s a former POTUS, VP and CIA head, his role will be permanently consigned to the memory hole.
#RIPHugoChavez = #Twitterfail
December 8, 2011 — Sabina Becker
Riddle me this: When is a Trending Topic NOT a trending topic? Courtesy of Patria Grande, here comes a wake-up call for all you internauts who love Venezuela, and who want to keep abreast of all the dirty tricks of empire:
Today, the Trending Topics of Twitter woke to the hashtag #QEPDHugoChávez (#RIPHugoChavez). This phenomenon may appear “spontaneous”, massive, and communitarian, but in case you didn’t believe it, it came from the laboratories of the North, and in this article we will demonstrate that fact.
The trending topics on Twitter, or TTs , are, in theory, the topics most talked about in the debates of the social network. Recently, with the Occupy demonstrations in various cities of the United States, it was demonstrated that Twitter censors topics, but we have found out something much more interesting: the administrators of the social network promote topics, in some cases admitting that it is a promotion on the part of Twitter, and, in other cases, no. Trending topics are not always those which are being most tweeted. This opens the possibility that Twitter can determine politically and ideologically the conversation in microblogging form. Suppose that, in order for a topic to become a trend, it must fulfill certain criteria, such as language, popularity, total number of tweets, and total number of users, but above all that it be a new topic or, if it was a formerly popular topic, it has been picked up by a new group of users. According to these parameters, the hashtag #QEPDHugoChávez should not be one of the TTs. Twitter should remove TT topics when it is the same group of users tweeting, not new people, or when the topic surreptitiously incites assassination.
The control of Twitter over Trending Topics is not just any old thing. They are in the position to penalize commentaries — in fact, they even reserve the right to close an account if you use more than one unrelated hashtag to get attention or repeat a topic or hashtag without adding anything new to the discussion. Write on all topics to attract people to your profile, especially if you’re seeking publicity, or if you want to be followed on Trending Topics.
Twitter has a “secret formula” to select Trending Topics, which it has not revealed, and at the same time uses politically and ideologically.
Cyberwar: Twitter vs. Venezuela
On Twitter, for example, the hashtag #FreeVenezuela united, for some time, fascist sectors with greater or lesser degree of commitment in destabilization tactics, but whose objective was, and remains, the same: Get rid of Chávez.
The surge of this hashtag had nothing to do with spontaneity; it appeared on February 2, the day Venezuelans celebrated the 10th anniversary of Chávez taking power. The promoters of this “initiative” were in the National College of Journalists, the Press Workers’ Union, and the Graphic Reporters’ Circle, by way of a call to action published in the [right-wing] newspaper El Nacional. Impartiality?
Enrique Ubieta followed the rise of the hashtag and described its amazing elevation to the most important topics on Twitter: “In the first ten minutes #FreeVenezuela appeared eighth on the list of the top ten topics; 20 minutes later it was in fourth place, and after one hour of tweets, it was in third. For two hours it remained there. It was the first time a Venezuelan topic appeared on a list that supposedly reflects the highest levels of concurrency. Internet rarities, some may say; useless suspicions, according to others. But there is one easily detectable fact that no one in the media commented on: Of the some 300 initial internauts, more than 65% were tweeting from the United States, and another 25% from Colombia. A Venezuelan protest?”
Google’s “How to Kill Chávez”
It’s not the first time Chávez has been assassinated on the Internet. In the past, if you entered the word “how” on a Google search, the first option it displayed was “How to kill Chávez”, even without the words “to kill”.
Google, Facebook and Twitter are politicized companies, in that they not only put weight on the ideological components, but the economic factors as well. The government of the United States uses the technologies “to resolve local matters before they become regional conflicts”.
Even during the government of George W. Bush, the Internet demonstrated itself as an alternative within the strategies of fourth-generation warfare. Today, it is a fundamental point of politico-ideological advance for the empire. With the arrival of Obama in the White House, the Web and its communicational possibilities have been institutionalized as a mechanism of political destabilization.
On January 21, 2010, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton recognized that the administration conceptualizes and structures “21st Century Diplomacy”, in which the Internet plays a key role which also supersedes traditional mechanisms.
In her speech, Clinton took pride in the politics of interference of the State Department, which, she confessed, relies on agents in 40 other countries working in different parts of the Web. Venezuela, Moldova, and Iran are on the list.
Coup Manual 2.0
These destabilization techniques are supported by social networking platforms in order to propagate content favorable to the interests of imperialism and its allies. The idea is simple: Create opinion templates and make them sustainable enough so that a collective, however minoritarian, can be organized around an idea. “Rebel thresholds” are generated, which are connections of nodes to share messages and political intents which have the capacity to mobilize and make impact via the net.
The famous Trending Topics of Twitter correspond to this mechanism. Messages raise awareness in a social sector, with a view to mobilizing them and making them present in social networks. As soon as they reach the “rebel thresholds”, they are organized in virtual communities, sectorized groups, associations of various types which project a riotous activism that has no support in real politics. Thus, it is no coincidence that the message was uniformly disguised in euphemisms, such as the reference to the president as “Esteban”. This motto served to identify opposition groups on the social network.
To that end, they exalt the most violent members of their gang and develop campaigns to create tensions and polarize political discussion on the Internet. Success is guaranteed by the support of the media, who serve as publicists to the virtual “dissident” groups.
In a pre-election year such as this one, we must be aware of how the adversary moves, how they come together, and how they destabilize. The ideological battle has come to the ‘net. And even in this scenario, we will win out. And what will rest in peace is Capitalism.
Translation mine.
There isn’t a whole lot that I can add to this, other than that it’s well worth keeping this in mind the next time you see a “news” story to the effect that Hugo Chávez is dying (he isn’t), or that the opposition will win the next election (they won’t). Or just the next time you’re on the tweeter, and you suddenly see flocks of “Venezuelan” birds (who are really tweeting, for the most part, from the US or Colombia) flying out en masse to take a shit on Chavecito’s head, and missing, as usual. Rumormongering is the oldest dirty trick in the book, and even in this fast-paced cyber-age, it’s still in heavy rotation. Happily, the same technology that the enemy uses to generate the Big Lie, can be used to counteract it; see the coup of ’02, when television was used to spread the putschist message…and, less than 48 hours later, to get the truth out that the coup was over, and that Chavecito was on his way back. Then, it was TV; now, it will be Twitter, Google, Facebook…and of course, this humble blog right here.
Venceremos.
