Summary: News, opinions and analysis from the past couple of weeks, concentrating on the imperial systems of the West

UK, Ireland, and Falklands

• Eilis O'Hanlon: No need for secrecy on State soup

  Sometimes what is revealed by the State papers is of undoubted importance. The papers from 1982 released this New Year fleshed out, for instance, the tensions between Ireland and Britain over Northern Ireland and the Falklands conflict; as well as the contrasting closeness between the then government and the Catholic bishops in advance of the abortion referendum.
  
  Other items are intriguing because they show how little has changed in the interim. Thirty years ago, Charles Haughey was apparently as eager as Health Minister James Reilly nowadays to clamp down on Irish smokers; and women's groups were complaining about the "degrading treatment of women as sex objects in all forms of the media". Plus ca change, indeed.





• The British Punk Band That Fooled Reagan, Thatcher And The CIA





• Falklands' war Regan/Thatcher fake tape had CIA and MI6 in disarray for months





• Paddy Ashdown warned Thatcher about CIA’s activities

Mexico

• U.S. Government and Top Mexican Drug Cartel Exposed as Partners





• ​US govt struck deal with Mexican drug cartel in exchange for info - report

  Between 2000 and 2012, the US government had a deal with Mexican drug cartel Sinaloa that allowed the group to smuggle billion of dollars of drugs in return for information on its rival cartels, according to court documents published by El Universal.
  
  Written statements made by a Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA) agent and a US Department of Justice official in US District Court of Chicago following the 2009 arrest of Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla - son of a Sinaloa leader Ismael “El Mayo” Zambada and the organization’s alleged “logistics coordinator" - indicate that DEA agents met with top Sinaloa officials over 50 times beginning in 2000.

Asia

• Does God work for the CIA?

  The arrest and imprisonment in North Korea of US citizen Kenneth Bae raises once again the issue of the use of religion and humanitarianism as covert vehicles for furthering US hegemony.
  
  [...]
  
  It still remains a mystery just exactly what Kenneth Bae was doing in North Korea.





• US-Backed Islamic Terrorism: Dividing the Arab World, Weakening Russia and China

  Terrorism came into being as soon as humanity appeared, but the US special services turned it into a threat of global scale. The end of the 1970s can be considered as the starting point. Back then the Central Intelligence Agency launched a training program for €«Islamic brigades€» to entangle the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic into the war in Afghanistan. In 1998 Zbigniew Brzezinski wrote, €«According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahedeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise. Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention€». That was the time Osama bin Laden was recruited.





• The Secret World of American Spies in the Middle East

  This was the life of a few elite American Middle East specialists and spies in the early days of the Cold War: intrigue and a self-possessed sense of adventure in a region emerging from European colonialism and into, they insisted, a more magnanimous American orbit of what historian Hugh Wilford has called “disinterested benevolence.” If only it had happened that way.





• CIA used taxpayer funds for lap dances at “tittie bars” in Kazakhstan





• Court Rules That Woman Wrongfully Placed On No Fly List Should Be Taken Off The List... We Think

  We've written a few times about the troubling case of Rahinah Ibrahim, a PhD. student at Stanford who was wrongfully placed on the "no fly" list because (it appears) some clueless law enforcement officials mixed up the names of a networking group of professional Muslims in Malaysia who had returned from work or study in the US and Europe (which she was a part of) and a very, very different terrorist organization. While she had received something of an apology for initially not being allowed to fly to Malaysia (and then allowed to fly), it appeared that her name was then placed on the no fly list, preventing her from ever returning. She was later blocked from even flying back to the US for her lawsuit against the government.





• Despite Growing Military Budget, an Undercurrent of Skepticism

  United States military spending has ballooned since World War II, although Americans have historically been reluctant to go to war. The Times’s Sam Tanenhaus explains why.

Silencing the Press

• NY Times reporter fighting order to reveal his CIA sources





• New York Times Reporter James Risen, Fighting Obama Administration’s Attack on the Press, Turns to Supreme Court

  The Justice Department under President Barack Obama insists a journalist must testify against his source so they can prosecute and convict a former CIA officer for a leak. It has spent about six years trying to force him to testify, and now, having lost in an appeals court, he is taking his case to the Supreme Court.





• NY Times reporter appeals to top US court in leak case

  A New York Times reporter has asked the US Supreme Court to block an order that would require him to reveal the confidential source for his book exposing CIA secrets.

Conquering the Press

• Activists Continue To Push Washington Post To Disclose Its CIA Connection





• Why the Washington Post’s New Ties to the CIA Are So Ominous





• Why the Washington Post' New Ties to the CIA Are So Ominous

  A tip-off is that the Washington Post refuses to face up to a conflict of interest involving Jeff Bezos -- who's now the sole owner of the powerful newspaper at the same time he remains Amazon's CEO and main stakeholder.
  
  The Post is supposed to expose CIA secrets. But Amazon is under contract to keep them. Amazon has a new $600 million "cloud" computing deal with the CIA.
  
  The situation is unprecedented. But in an email exchange early this month, Washington Post executive editor Martin Baron told me that the newspaper doesn't need to routinely inform readers of the CIA-Amazon-Bezos ties when reporting on the CIA. He wrote that such in-story acknowledgment would be "far outside the norm of disclosures about potential conflicts of interest at media organizations."
  
  But there isn't anything normal about the new situation. As I wrote to Baron, "few journalists could have anticipated ownership of the paper by a multibillionaire whose outside company would be so closely tied to the CIA."

Domestic Backlash

• One Month After JFK’s Murder, Former President Harry Truman Called For Abolishing The CIA

  
  
  One month to the day after the assassination of President John F. Kennedy in Dealey Plaza in Dallas, Texas, former President Harry Truman recommended that the U.S. abolish the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA).





• The Internet fights back against the NSA with the biggest protest since SOPA





• A Republic If You Can Keep It

  expansion of presidential powers in the United States.





• Legislating Tyranny

  
  
  Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF - September 2001) approved open-ended permanent wars. They rage out-of-control. They do so at home and abroad.
  
  The FY 2014 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) targets freedom. It prioritizes militarism and permanent wars. It authorizes over $600 billion for global belligerence, mass killing and destruction.





• "Our Leaders Do Not Mean Well"

  Blum is the author of the famous book Killing Hope: US Military and CIA Interventionssince World War II (Common Courage Press). The book enjoyed remarkable success, becoming required reading for students and professions in numerous fields. Professor Noam Chomsky said of the book, “It is far and away the best book on the topic.” The book is astounding, as Blum breaks down the post-war CIA in more than 50 fascinating chapters. Actions everywhere from Albania to Zaire are discussed in the book. I met with William Blum in early December in Washington, DC.





• Washington Drives the World Toward War — Paul Craig Roberts

  Washington has had the US at war for 12 years: Afghanistan, Iraq, Somalia, Libya, Pakistan, Yemen, and almost Syria, which could still happen, with Iran waiting in the wings. These wars have been expensive in terms of money, prestige, and deaths and injuries of both US soldiers and the attacked civilian populations. None of these wars appears to have any compelling reason or justifiable explanation. The wars have been important to the profits of the military/security complex. The wars have provided cover for the construction of a Stasi police state in America, and the wars have served Israel’s interest by removing obstacles to Israel’s annexation of the entire West Bank and southern Lebanon.





• Obama admin to hold firm in pursuit of neutrality amid ‘global rebalancing’





• The Years of Living Stupidly

  A workable solution to the perpetual foreign policy crisis requires a new economy and civil society institutions that provide a political fund to promote demilitarized politicians, supported by an alternative ethos of diplomacy, foreign aid, and non-militarized soft power. Social movements might explore how universities contribute to the cycle of violence by marginalizing discourses related to disarmament, alternative security and an ecologically-rooted conversion of big oil, auto and defense firms. Otherwise, expect another several years of dismal headlines in newspapers chronicling blow back, terror states, and meaningless violence.

Slow Justice

• Ex-Nazi SS soldier charged in WWII massacre in France

Mandela

• CIA sued for targeting Nelson Mandela as 'terrorist threat'

• CIA allegedly involved in 1962 arrest of the late, Nelson Mandela

• CIA sued over Madiba arrest docs

• Lawsuit seeks proof of CIA meddling in Mandela's arrest

• CIA Sued To Solve Decades-Old Nelson Mandela Mystery





• ​CIA sued for records on possible role in Nelson Mandela arrest

  A Massachusetts Institute of Technology graduate student sued the Central Intelligence Agency on Wednesday to compel release of its records on Nelson Mandela, the former South African president and anti-apartheid activist who died last month at age 95.

Border Tyranny

• Stripped of dignity at Ben-Gurion airport: Now you know what the Jews went through

  Security staff allegedly plumb new depths when they subjected D. to a humiliating body search, referencing the Holocaust during their invasive actions.





• Federal judge rules that TSA, FBI can detain and arrest you for carrying Arabic flashcards

  A former college student detained at Philadelphia International Airport after Transportation Security Administration (TSA) officials discovered he was carrying Arabic language flashcards lost his bid to sue the federal agents who detained him.
  
  Nicholas George alleged that the TSA agents violated his First and Fourth Amendment rights when they arrested him as he tried to board a flight from his Philadelphia home to Pomona College in 2009.
  
  According to Chief Judge Theodore McKee’s ruling, despite the fact that George clearly had the right to carry the flashcards, the TSA agents were “at the outer boundary” of justifiability in detaining him. In addition to everyday words and phrases like “day before yesterday,” “fat,” “cheap,” and “pink,” the deck of flashcards also contained and phrases like “bomb,” “terrorist,” “explosion,” and “to target.”





• Can Robots Better Spot Terrorists at Airports? (taking more biometrics from most people)





• I flew on a plane without going through security. It was amazing and no one died.

Misc.

• Lynne Stewart, Dying Ex-Lawyer Convicted In Terror Case, Released From Prison

  Stewart was convicted of helping a blind Egyptian sheik communicate with his followers from prison. She had been imprisoned since 2009 and had said she didn't want to die in "a strange and loveless place."





• Julian Assange to be guest on Radio 4's Today programme

  Julian Assange, the founder of WikiLeaks who has been holed up in an embassy in London for more than a year, is to be a guest on BBC Radio 4's Today programme.
  
  Assange, who has been granted asylum by Ecuador but faces arrest if he leaves the country's London embassy, will be giving his thoughts on the history of the control of information on Thursday.





• Israeli nuclear ambiguity as an illusion

  Americans who volunteered to distribute books in Russia didn’t know the CIA paid for the printing.





• Strange psychological testing at the CIA





• Piss test at the CIA





• 'Caro Quintero is Protected by the White House': Former CIA pilot