The Anti-Empire Report: WikiLeaks, Iran, TSA, Terrorism, Tea Party & Socialism, by William Blum

by William Blum
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
3 December, 2010

The Anti-Empire Report

If the house where Julian Assange of Wikileaks is staying is destroyed by a Predator drone, and the United States denies any involvement … Well, I’ll believe them.

One of the most common threads running through the Wikileaks papers is Washington’s manic obsession with Iran. In country after country the United States exerts unceasing pressure on the government to tighten the noose around Iran’s neck, to make the American sanctions as extensive and as painful as can be, to inflate the alleged Iranian nuclear threat, to discourage normal contact as if Iran were a leper.

Just by ending the damn wars…, by William Blum

by William Blum
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
6 February, 2010

The Anti-Empire Report

“In America you can say anything you want — as long as it doesn’t have any effect.” – Paul Goodman

Progressive activists and writers continually bemoan the fact that the news they generate and the opinions they express are consistently ignored by the mainstream media, and thus kept from the masses of the American people. This disregard of progressive thought is tantamount to a definition of the mainstream media. It doesn’t have to be a conspiracy; it’s a matter of who owns the mainstream media and the type of journalists they hire — men and women who would like to keep their jobs; so it’s more insidious than a conspiracy, it’s what’s built into the system, it’s how the system works. The disregard of the progressive world is of course not total; at times some of that world makes too good copy to ignore, and, on rare occasions, progressive ideas, when they threaten to become very popular, have to be countered.

Coleen Rowley on Accountability interviewed by Sibel Edmonds and Peter B. Collins

with Peter B. Collins and Sibel Edmonds
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
originally published by Boiling Frogs Post
February 5, 2010

Coleen Rowley shares with us her views on the latest spectacle surrounding the Christmas Day foiled terrorist attempt, and how it reflects on policies that were implemented after 9/11. She provides us with insight into the pretend investigations carried out by the 9/11 Commission, and how they conducted many of their interviews of FBI witnesses and experts inside the FBI HQ and offices. Ms. Rowley talks about the absence of real investigations and accountability in almost any government related wrong doing and issues, our shameful treatment of inmates in Guantanamo detention center, the alarming desensitization of our people bolstered by the culprit mainstream media, and much more.

Scott Horton Interviews Kurt Haskell on the “Sharply Dressed Man”

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AntiwarRadio
February 03, 2010

Antiwar Radio

Kurt Haskell, Detroit area attorney and passenger on Christmas bomber Northwest Airlines flight 253, discusses the change in the official narrative that now acknowledges the sharply dressed Indian man who helped bombing suspect Abdulmutallab board the plane in the Netherlands, the official US policy of helping terrorism suspects into the country in order to catch the entire terror network, the possibility that the sharply dressed man was acting on behalf of the US government and Richard Wolffes theory that individuals within US intelligence agencies may have intentionally botched the job.

The Obama Administration’s Cover-up of the Flight 253 Affair – “New Smoking Gun” Disclosures

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by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, January 25, 2010
Antifascist Calling…– 2010-01-22

Relevant questions begging for answers include: Who made the decision not to “connect the dots”? Are right-wing elements and holdovers from the previous administration actively conspiring to destabilize the Obama government? Was the attempted bombing a planned provocation meant to incite new conflicts in the Middle East and restrict democratic rights at home?

As with the 9/11 attacks, these questions go unasked by corporate media. Indeed, such lines of inquiry are entirely off the table and are further signs that a cover-up is in full-swing, not a hard-hitting investigation.

Nearly one month after passengers foiled an attempted suicide bomb attack aboard Northwest Airlines Flight 253 as it approached Detroit on Christmas Day, new information reveals that the White House and U.S. security agencies had specific intelligence on accused terrorist, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, far earlier than previously acknowledged.

ACLU Opposes Proposed Legislation Making Constitution Optional In Terrorism Cases

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American Civil Liberties Union
January 24, 2010

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
CONTACT: 212 549-2666; media@aclu.org

WASHINGTON – Criticizing the Obama administration’s decision to charge accused Christmas Day attacker Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab in the criminal court system, members of Congress are calling for legislation requiring intelligence officials to be consulted about how to handle terrorism suspects after their capture, arguing that options other than the criminal justice system should be considered. The Washington Post, in an editorial on January 23, supported this approach.

The members of Congress calling for the legislation are Senators Susan Collins (R-ME), Joseph Lieberman (ID-CT), Robert Bennett (R-UT) and John Ensign (R-NV).

The following can be attributed to Anthony D. Romero, Executive Director of the American Civil Liberties Union:

Flight 253: Anatomy of a Cover-Up by Tom Burghardt

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by Tom Burghardt
Global Research, January 11, 2010
Antifascist Calling…

New revelations about the failed Christmas Day attack on Northwest Airlines Flight 253 continue to emerge as does evidence of a systematic cover-up.

With the White House in crisis mode since the attempted bombing, President Obama met for two hours January 5 with top security and intelligence officials. Obama said that secret state agencies “had sufficient information to uncover the terror plot … but that intelligence officials had ‘failed to connect those dots’,” The New York Times reports.

The latest iteration of the “dot theory” floated by the President, aided and abetted by a compliant media, claims “this was not a failure to collect intelligence” but rather, “a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

“Mr. Obama’s stark assessment that the government failed to properly analyze and integrate intelligence served as a sharp rebuke of the country’s intelligence agencies,” declared the Times uncritically.

Is Anyone Telling Us The Truth? By Paul Craig Roberts

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By Paul Craig Roberts
ICH
January 08, 2010

What are we to make of the failed Underwear Bomber plot, the Toothpaste, Shampoo, and Bottled Water Bomber plot, and the Shoe Bomber plot? These blundering and implausible plots to bring down an airliner seem far removed from al-Qaida’s expertise in pulling off 9/11.

If we are to believe the U.S. government, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, the alleged al-Qaida “mastermind” behind 9/11, outwitted the CIA, the NSA, indeed all 16 U.S. intelligence agencies as well as those of all U.S. allies including Mossad, the National Security Council, NORAD, Air Traffic Control, Airport Security four times on one morning, and Dick Cheney, and with untrained and inexperienced pilots pulled off skilled piloting feats of crashing hijacked airliners into the World Trade Center towers, and the Pentagon, where a battery of state of the art air defenses somehow failed to function.

Terror in the Skies From 9/11 to the ‘Underwear Bomber’ by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH

by Steven Jonas, MD, MPH
Featured Writer
Dandelion Salad
crossposted on Buzzflash.com
Jan. 5, 2010

I was going through an old floppy disk of mine, mining some health-and-wellness columns that I wrote awhile back for text that I could use presently. I still do quite a bit of such writing and I found that some of that old text, edited and brought up-to-date, could still be quite useful to me. (If you are interested in that side of my work, you can check it out at my own Web site and on an English one on where I publish about a column a month.)

While I was browsing through that old disk, I came across a letter-essay on 9/11 and its aftermath that I had sent to a friend on February 19, 2002. How that essay came to be on that particular health-stuff disk I have no idea. But anyway, reading through it, I thought that I would share it with you here and add a few comments in re the current “Nigerian terrorist” situation. So here goes.

Ron Paul: I challenge Ben Stein to a debate

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campaignforliberty
December 30, 2009

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more about “Ron Paul: I challenge Ben Stein to a …“, posted with vodpod

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Ron Paul SLAMS Ben Stein on Larry King – Dec 28,2009

Obama answers failed airline bombing with threat of new wars By Bill Van Auken

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By Bill Van Auken
http://www.wsws.org
30 December 2009

Three days after the failed attempt by a 23-year-old Nigerian student to trigger an explosion on a Northwest Airlines passenger jet, President Barack Obama threatened to unleash US military power in Yemen and across the globe.

Obama interrupted his Hawaii vacation Monday to deliver his bellicose remarks in the face of a crescendo of Republican criticism. The Republican right has tried to exploit the abortive attack in order to indict the Democratic administration as “soft” on terrorism.

[…]

In his remarks Monday, Obama justified these actions as a means of keeping the American public “safe and secure” in the face of what he termed “a serious reminder of the dangers that we face and the nature of those who threaten our homeland.”

The reality is that the military actions being prepared by Washington will have just the opposite effect. If the statement attributed to the group Al Qaeda of the Arabian Peninsula claiming responsibility is to be believed, the attempted airline bombing was undertaken in retaliation for the December 17 US bombing of Yemen that claimed the lives of more than 60 civilians, nearly half of them women and children.

[…]

via Obama answers failed airline bombing with threat of new wars

Disturbing questions in thwarted US plane bombing + The Yemen War

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By Barry Grey
http://www.wsws.org
28 December 2009

‘Explosion attempt’ on US flight + Passenger caught with explosives on US plane

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Various news organizations’ reports on the incident in Detroit.

Al Jazeera English
Dec. 26, 2009

A reported attempt by a Nigerian man to light an explosive aboard a US passenger aircraft has been described by the White House as “an attempted act of terrorism”.

Abdulmutallab, who was overpowered by passengers and crew of Delta Flight 253, was taken into custody after the jet landed safely in Detroit.

US officials said he appeared to have links to al-Qaeda.

via Al Jazeera English – Americas – ‘Explosion attempt’ on US flight