Paul Rigby
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Let's learn our lessons from the JFK plot.
To settle on a single motive is to defeat our efforts.
Charles
"Immediate purpose," sir, not "the only" - but the point is well made.
Paul
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PERVEZ HOODBHOY: ...So, the deal was that they—that is, the Bush administration—wanted to give a civilian face to Pakistan’s military government, and Benazir Bhutto was very happy to oblige, because she had been out of it all for now almost a decade.
I wonder at the depth of resistance within the Pakistan military to US imperialism? If so, expect to see a great deal more film on the assassination from Pakistan media - well, the bits with strong CIA backing anyway - appearing within and on mainstream Anglo-American media.
Pakistan warns requests for Musharraf to step down 'sedition'ISLAMABAD, Pakistan (AP) — Pakistan accused an international think tank Saturday of "promoting sedition" for issuing a report urging President Pervez Musharraf to resign before parliamentary elections next month.
The reaction against the strongly worded report by the International Crisis Group shows the government's sensitivity to criticism as it fends off accusations that Musharraf's allies may have had a hand in the Dec. 27 assassination of opposition leader Benazir Bhutto.
The report, released earlier this week by the Brussels-based think tank, called on the United States to use the Pakistani military to persuade the former general to resign, saying Musharraf was "a serious liability, seen as complicit" in Bhutto's death.
For the rest of the piece, follow this link:
http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2008-01-05-pakistan_N.htm
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The film authenticated by Zapruder...
Particularly the sequence capturing the turn of the presidential limousine from Houston onto Elm*:
Abraham Zapruder, WFAA-TV, circa 1400hrs CST, 22 November 1963: “And I was [filming?] as the President was coming down from Houston Street making his turn…,” Richard Trask, Pictures of the Pain (Danvers, Mass.: Yeoman Press, 1994), p.77.Longer version:
This transcript is from video tape of the live broadcast seen nationwide on the ABC network at about 2:10pm CST, November 22, 1963. The interviewer, seated on the left, is WFAA-TV program director Jay Watson. On the right, with his hat on the desk, is Abraham Zapruder.
WATSON: A gentleman just walked in our studio that I am meeting for the first time as well as you, this is WFAA-TV in Dallas, Texas. May I have your name please, sir?ZAPRUDER: My name is Abraham Zapruder.
WATSON: Mr. Zapruder?
ZAPRUDER: Zapruder, yes sir.
WATSON: Zapruder. And would you tell us your story please, sir?
ZAPRUDER: I got out in, uh, about a half-hour earlier to get a good spot to shoot some pictures. And I found a spot, one of these concrete blocks they have down near that park, near the underpass. And I got on top there, there was another girl from my office, she was right behind me. And as I was shooting, as the President was coming down from Houston Street making his turn, it was about a half-way down there, I heard a shot, and he slumped to the side, like this. Then I heard another shot or two, I couldn't say it was one or two, and I saw his head practically open up, all blood and everything, and I kept on shooting…
* As confirmed by the compilers of the Warren Report:
“The position of President Kennedy’s car when he was struck in the neck was determined with substantial precision from the films and onsite tests. The pictures or frames in the Zapruder film were marked by the agents, with the number ‘1’ given to the first frame where the motorcycles leading the motorcade came into view on Houston Street. The numbers continue in sequence as Zapruder filmed the Presidential limousine as it came around the corner and proceeded down Elm,” The Warren Report: The Report of the President’s Commission on the Assassination of President John F. Kennedy (Associated Press, 1964), p.41. -
Based on your response, I gather you no longer dispute that the film does in fact show the abrupt slowdown which is consistent with the eyewitness accounts.
An unwarranted assumption. It doesn't show "an abrupt slowdown."
Some eyewitnesses thought the slowdown lasted longer, perhaps, than is shown on the film, but the eyewitness descriptions of a "stop" or "what was tantamount to a stop" simply do not support an argument that the Zfilm was altered.There's no "perhaps" about it. Several eyewitnesses describe a stop of sufficient duration for a number of secret servicemen to swarm upon the presidential limousine. That's a long way from a brief slow down, and Clint Hill's lone sprint. I note with amusement that you seem very keen to avoid moving beyond the issue of the stop. Very wise. But, yes, if sufficient eyewitnesses say it stopped, and the film shows no such thing, I am obliged to accept the former and must account the film a fabrication.
According to a Nobel-winning physicist, this "stop" can be identified and measured on the Zfilm itself.Bear in mind that ALvarez was not trying to refute claims that the Z film was altered. The subject of Zfilm alteration had not even reared its ugly head when Alvarez was conducting his study.Alvarez's status and the timing of his study are irrelevant; and his conclusion worthless, as the film - his predicate - is a fake.
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OpEdNews
Original Content at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_pe...knoll_in_pa.htm
January 3, 2008
A Grassy Knoll in Pakistan
By Peter Chamberlin
In the article, “Key Pentagon strategist plots global war on terror” (Dec. 30), we learn that the man who planned the strategy and directed the actions of the former Afghan Mujajedeen has been given the same job in the new improved “Global War On Terror,” patterned after it.
"In the Pentagon's newly expanded Special Operations office, Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Vickers is working to implement the U.S. military's highest-priority plan: a global campaign against terrorism that reaches far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.
The plan details the targeting of al-Qaida-affiliated networks around the world and explores how the United States should retaliate in case of another major terrorist attack. The most critical aspect of the plan, Vickers said in a recent interview, involves U.S. Special Operations forces working through foreign partners to uproot and fight terrorist groups.
Vickers, a former Green Beret and CIA operative, was the principal strategist for the biggest covert program in CIA history...
http://naknews.co.in/newsdet.aspx?11297
CIA agents killed Bhutto: Hilal War'JKPPP will setup trust in memory of Benazir Bhutto, her father soon'
News Agency of Kashmir 1/3/2008 7:46:39 PM
Srinagar, Jan 03 (NAK): Blaming American Intelligence Agency CIA for the killing of Benazir Bhutto, JKPPP Kashmir Chapter Chairman Hilal Ahmad War today said he has decided to set up a trust in the memory of slain Pakistan’s former Prime Ministers Benazir Bhutto and her father Zulfikar Ali Bhutto.
“The trust will be set up shortly and aims and objectives will be formulated in the meeting of the central executive committee of the party soon” Hilal War informed reporters here today.
JKPPP chairman Hilal Ahmad War alleged Benazir Bhutto and her father were eliminated at the behest of "American intelligence agency CIA as the two leaders were opposed to the US policy of making Pakistan a satellite state for carrying out its plans".
"Bhutto killing is part of the policy of the US to disintegrate Pakistan into four independent states” War told reporters in a press conference.
“US was creating atmosphere in which it can give good reason for the takeover of nuclear arsenal of Pakistan," he claimed.
War alleged that the conglomerate led by Mirwaiz Umer Farooq was only interested in entering the "palaces of power", adding "This group has been all along trying to make Kashmir a protectorate of the United States," he claimed. (NAK)
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If Alvarez is correct (and I am not aware that anyone has so far proved him wrong on this particular issue) then the supposed contradiction between the film and the eyewitnesses is non-existent.
As you well know, the differences between film and witnesses are not reducible to that one question; and Alvarez's "explanation" does not explain eyewitness testimony about a stop of longer duration during which SS personnel (plural) went both to the presidential limousine and up the knoll.
So now we know - the true heirs of the Warren Commission are the anti-alterationists.J. Raymond Carroll:I don't think this comment is very helpful, and I certainly do not believe it is true.
It goes to the heart of the matter, which is why you don't like it.
It's also a direct riposte to a passage in the book under discussion. If you'd read it, you would have recognised that at once. I await your condemnation of the relevant passage in the book with interest.
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It's not difficult to find a motive for assassinating Diana.
The immediate purpose of Diana’s assassination has long been banished to the memory hole by the simple expedient of removing all reference to the murder’s political context: It was to influence the referenda on devolution for the UK. To follow, two contemporaneous press reminders of the plotters’ intent:
Tom Baldwin, “Referendum hangs in the balance: Labour fears low turn-out for devolution vote following funeral,” The Sunday Telegraph, 7 September 1997, p.21:
[ “Conservative strategists believe the impact of yesterday’s funeral could help to make the Scottish people think again about the dangers posed to the Union by devolution… ‘At least the grief we have seen and felt over the last few days has reminded everyone that there is an entity called Britain.’”Nick Watt, “Princess’ death may sway devolution vote,” The Times, Monday, 8 September 1997, p.13:
“The death of the Princess will make the people more British…”We should not lose sight of the plotters’ objective merely because it was not achieved. More, the proclaimed intent of the plotters'political allies should make us think again about the wave of national hysteria – widely denounced subsequently by newspaper columnists, who thought it bespoke a profound moral degeneration in the British people – which followed Diana’s death. For the plotters own media, from the BBC to the Daily Mail, were at the forefront of encouraging that very phenomenon.
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Paul...an ADMIRABLE response.
But as someone who started my research on DAY ONE, I must point out
that we early researchers had available VERY LITTLE on the Z film...and
it was carefully spoon-fed to us by Life Magazine, which was allowed
to OWN and SUPPRESS critical evidence of a murder, in contradiction of
law and common sense. A few published frames were all we had till
much later when the WC volumes were published in small bw images.
It is not too remarkble that critics did not comment on something which
was withheld from them.
I agree that suspicions should have been raised IMMEDIATELY, but not
through study of the film itself, which did not become available until
Jim Garrison allowed Penn Jones to have it copied, and thereafter Robert
Groden pirated it from the lab which Life had entrusted to make copies.
I did not get my copies of the film to study till the mid-seventies. Even
then, I considered it EVIDENCE for nearly ten years, till I started seeing
discrepancies. Note that in Jim Marrs' CROSSFIRE (1989) I first mentioned
my belief of alteration...so I have been an alteration advocate for
about twenty years.
So it is difficult to fault the early critics for not knowing about something
they had no access to. But as you say, they SHOULD have been alert to
the suspicious circumstances surrounding the film.
Jack
Jack,
All points well-made and taken. But look at Meagher in 1967. She knew about Chaney, the left veer and the stop; she had an encyclopaedic grasp of the testimony:
“After the assassination, reports that the President’s car had stopped after the first shot was fired were interpreted in some quarters as evidence that the driver believed that the shot came from somewhere in front of the car. The Warren Report dismissed the allegation:
The Presidential car did not stop or almost come to a complete halt after the firing of the first shot or any other shots…Motion pictures of the scene show that the car slowed down momentarily after the shot struck the President in the head and then speeded up rapidly.
This passage is found under “Rumours and Speculations,” an appendix to the Warren Report which the Commission used as a graveyard for the claims of various early critics of the lone-assassin theory. One such critic, Mark Lane, testified on March 4, 1964 that he believed that the car had come to a halt when the shooting began, on the basis of statements by
“…various witnesses, including Mr. Chaney, a motorcycle policeman, Miss Woodward, who was one of the closest witnesses to the President at the time that he was shot, and others. I think that is…conceded by almost everyone, that the automobile came to – almost came to a complete halt after the first shot…” (2H 45)
According to Lane, reporter Mary Woodward had corroborated, in a telephone conversation, the statement in her story in the Dallas Morning News of November 23, 1963 that “instead of speeding up…the car came to a halt.” (2H 43)
Lane’s allegation about Chaney is corroborated in the testimony of another motorcycle officer, M.L. Baker. Baker testified on March 24, 1964 that his fellow officer, James Chaney, had told him:
“He was on the right rear of the car or to the side, and then at the time the chief of police, he didn’t know anything about this, and he moved up and told him, and then that was during the time that the Secret Service men were trying to get in the car, and at the time, after the shooting, from the time the first shot rang out, the car stopped completely, pulled to the left and stopped…Mr. Truly was standing out there, he said it stopped. Several officers said it stopped completely.” (3H 266)
When he testified on March 24, 1964, Roy Truly corroborated Baker’s statement.
Truly: I saw the President’s car swerve to the left, and stop somewheres down in this area…Belin: When you saw the President’s car seem to stop, how long did it appear to stop?
Truly: It would be hard say over a second or two or something like that. I didn’t see – I just saw it stop. I don’t know. I didn’t see it start up…The crowd in front of me kind of congealed…and I lost sight of it.” (3H 221)
Various other witnesses said that the car had come to a complete stop or almost a standstill when the noise of the shot was heard – Senator Ralph Yarborough (7H 440), for example, and Mrs Earl Cabell (7H 487), among others. Policeman Earl V. Brown, who was stationed on the triple overpass farther down Elm Street, testified on April 7, 1964 that:
Brown: Actually, the first I noticed the car was when it stopped...After it made the turn and when the shots were fired, it stopped.Ball: Did it come to a complete stop?
Brown: That, I couldn't swear to.
Ball: It appeared to be slowed down some?
Brown: Yes; slowed down. (6H 233)
In sum, at least seven witnesses to the assassination indicated that the President's car had come to a complete stop, or what was tantamount to a stop. Two of those witnesses (James Chaney and Mary Woodward) were not asked to testify before the Commission on this or on other observations of some importance reported to the Commission as hearsay (see, for example, 2H 43-44 and CE 2084). Apparently the witnesses were mistaken in remembering that the car had stopped; motion pictures, according to the Commission, contradicted them. Yet it seems clear from the way in which counsel led witnesses that the Commission had considerable resistance to inferences which might be drawn from evidence that the car had stopped at the first shot. “Stopped” was transformed into “seemed to stop” and then into “slowed down.” Such leading of witnesses, which would have been challenged in a courtroom, was facilitated by the Commission's closed hearings, to which there was only one exception, by request of the witness concerned. (2H 33)
The films of the assassination have not been released for public showing, although it is possible to see the most important one, the Zapruder film – taken by amateur photographer Abraham Zapruder – at the National Archives. That film does not seem to support the witnesses who said that the car stopped dead. This being so, it is baffling that counsel conducted the questioning somewhat improperly and why the Report presents this evidence with some lack of partiality (in a passage failing to indicate that some seven witnesses mistakenly believed that the car had stopped at the first shot). Yet in dismissing an allegation related to the source of the first shot, the same passage seemingly yields ground on the source of the third. The statement that “the car slowed down momentarily after the shot that struck the President in the head “ is consistent with other evidence, to be discussed later, that the fatal shot came not from the Texas School Book Depository, as the Report maintains, but from a point in front of the car and to its right.
Sylvia Meagher. Accessories after the Fact: The Warren Commission, the Authorities & The Report (NY: Vintage Books, June 1992 reprint, first published 1967), chapter 1, “The Motorcade and the Shots,” pp.3-5So now we know - the true heirs of the Warren Commission are the anti-alterationists. Neither countenance(d) events such as the stop: both afford primacy to the film over the eyewitnesses. And neither were/are comfortable with questions about the film's chain of possession and early history.
Paul
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'I'm shocked to learn there is gambling going on here' - Casablanca Police Chief in 'Ricks'' - Casablanca
US Steps Up Plans For Military Intervention In Pakistan
By Bill Van Auken
20 November, 2007
WSWS.org
Whatever limited lip service the US State Department gives to the call for ending the martial law regime imposed by Musharraf in Pakistan, the real aims and methods of the American ruling establishment—Democratic and Republican alike—emerge clearly in the Kagan-O’Hanlon article.
What is now being seriously contemplated is yet another colonial-style war in a region that stretches across the Middle East and Central and South Asia, from Iraq to Pakistan, with the objective of salvaging, with or without Musharraf, the Pakistani military—the corrupt and repressive instrument with which Washington has been aligned for decades.
OpEdNews
Original Content at:
http://www.opednews.com/articles/opedne_pe...knoll_in_pa.htm
January 3, 2008
A Grassy Knoll in Pakistan
By Peter Chamberlin
All things have come full circle in the mountains of Pakistan. The “great game” has been played-out. The cycle of death which we unleashed upon the world there, bringing the war on terrorism home to us, now draws us inexorably into the vacuum of its violent ending. The convulsions now wracking that country threaten to become a revolutionary explosion capable of bringing down the foundations of the world.
The rapidly building democratic-revolution is now entering the “critical mass” stage. Its expansion is accelerating beyond human control. The assassination of Benazir Bhutto was a calculated risk, intended to derail democracy in Pakistan because Islamic extremists were making the democratic transition from militias into political parties. For this reason, it is unlikely that she was assassinated by real Islamists, true Taliban. It is more likely that the hit on Bhutto was connected to the Administration’s getting the “green light” (the day before the attack), to move large numbers of Special Forces “trainers” into the tribal regions.
Even though Bhutto was allegedly stirring the cauldron, “...demanding after returning to Pakistan that the ISI be restructured; and in a press conference during her house arrest in Lahore in November she went as far as asking Pakistan army officers to revolt against the army chief” (1) recent revelations by various neocon-men points to a covert US plan to eliminate her.
"A large number of ISI agents who are responsible for helping the Taliban and al-Qaeda should be thrown in jail or killed. What I think we should do in Pakistan is a parallel version of what Iran has run against us in Iraq: giving money [and] empowering actors. Some of this will involve working with some shady characters, but the alternative - sending US forces into Pakistan for a sustained bombing campaign - is worse," Steve Schippert was quoted as saying a November 2007 issue of Weekly Standard. (1. Steve Schippert | November 28, 2007 at 12:39 am “For what it’s worth, the author attributed a comment to me that I did not make in the Weekly Standard article. While I ascribe fully to what the unnamed intelligence source who actually said it did in fact say, they are not my words.”)Musharref seems to be laboring under the illusion that the United States government supports his efforts to contain the building political explosion, when, in fact, the explosion of Pakistan is what the neocon traitors have been waiting for. With big “events” come big opportunities. Bush does not intend to do anything to help him stave off the inevitable. Their aim, all along, has been to plan for the day after the catastrophic event, for the day when their real plans could be fully implemented. The Pakistani leader let their ceaseless warnings about the day after move him into cooperating with them, in allowing the new expansion of the war into Pakistan. The actual neo-con objective, according to Professor Michel Chossudovsky, is:
“...fomenting social, ethnic and factional divisions and political fragmentation, including the territorial breakup of Pakistan. This course of action is also dictated by US war plans in relation to both Afghanistan and Iran.This US agenda for Pakistan is similar to that applied throughout the broader Middle East Central Asian region. US strategy, supported by covert intelligence operations, consists in triggering ethnic and religious strife, abetting and financing secessionist movements while also weakening the institutions of the central government.
The broader objective is to fracture the Nation State and redraw the borders of Iraq, Iran, Syria, Afghanistan and Pakistan” (2)
By cooperating with Bush and Cheney, Musharraf is supporting their efforts to revive the CIA training operation which had originally destabilized Pakistan. This had proven to be a winning strategy against powerful adversaries like the Soviet Union, but when the same strategy was tried elsewhere, where there were no large technological forces to attack, the trained militias targeted civilians. When it was transferred to the illegal “contra” war against Nicaragua it was quickly perverted, degenerating into organized death squads. “Targeted assassinations” and death squads, by trained, paid “militias” (mercenary armies) will overthrow regimes and terrorize the populations that dare to resist the American secret assault, will it will win no hearts and minds for the causes of democracy or freedom.
In the article, “Key Pentagon strategist plots global war on terror” (Dec. 30), we learn that the man who planned the strategy and directed the actions of the former Afghan Mujajedeen has been given the same job in the new improved “Global War On Terror,” patterned after it.
“In the Pentagon's newly expanded Special Operations office, Assistant Secretary of Defense Michael Vickers is working to implement the U.S. military's highest-priority plan: a global campaign against terrorism that reaches far beyond Iraq and Afghanistan.The plan details the targeting of al-Qaida-affiliated networks around the world and explores how the United States should retaliate in case of another major terrorist attack. The most critical aspect of the plan, Vickers said in a recent interview, involves U.S. Special Operations forces working through foreign partners to uproot and fight terrorist groups.
Vickers, a former Green Beret and CIA operative, was the principal strategist for the biggest covert program in CIA history: the paramilitary operation that drove the Soviet army out of Afghanistan in the 1980s... he directed an insurgent force of 150,000 Afghan fighters and controlled an annual budget of more than $2 billion in current dollars.
Today Vickers' plan to build a global counterterrorist network [to fight covert wars in 49 countries].”
According to the Guardian, Vickers will expand the Special Forces units now in Pakistan, to “...train the Frontier Corps and recruiting local militias to take on the insurgents.” We will train a large roving Frontier Corps paramilitary force, as well as local Islamic militias.
“A new and classified American military proposal outlines an intensified effort to enlist tribal leaders in the frontier areas of Pakistan in the fight against Al Qaeda and the Taliban, as part of a broader effort to bolster Pakistani forces against an expanding militancy, American military officials said.
Militants have extended their reach beyond the tribal areas. If adopted, the proposal would join elements of a shift in strategy that would also be likely to expand the presence of American military trainers in Pakistan, directly finance a separate tribal paramilitary force that until now has proved largely ineffective and pay militias that agreed to fight Al Qaeda and foreign extremists, officials said.
The “war on terrorism,” focused primarily on a fictional global insurgency named “al Qaida,” that, in fact, fought for American interests in Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia and Chechnya is an exercise in hypocrisy. The more “evidence” that is provided to us, to prove the al Qaida connection to every act of terrorism, the more evident it becomes that the war is a fraud, based on a cover-up of a treasonous attack, intended to whitewash history and to paint America as a heroic nation, dedicated to bringing freedom and democracy to all people. The United States’ claim to be promoting democracy, while it exports state terrorism, has demolished the hopes of all those who still believe in American “good will,” all over the world.
Informed people all over the world cannot fathom how the American administration can seriously claim to be pursuing “al Qaida-connected terrorists,” when they know that “al Qaida,” the terrorist organization never existed. Thanks to revelations by British MP Robin Cook in the Guardian, and French intelligence agent Pierre-Henry Bunel at the Wayne Madsen Report, people know that when the United States needed a new enemy, after the demise of the Soviet empire, they decided to call “the base” (an international computer data base in Saudi Arabia of Afghan fighters), designated as “al Qaida” [an email address], an international terrorist network.
“Bin Laden was, though, a product of a monumental miscalculation by western security agencies. Throughout the 80s he was armed by the CIA and funded by the Saudis to wage jihad against the Russian occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Qaida, literally "the database", was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujahideen who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.” - Robin Cook"The truth is, there is no Islamic army or terrorist group called Al Qaida. And any informed intelligence officer knows this. But there is a propaganda campaign to make the public believe in the presence of an identified entity representing the 'devil' only in order to drive the 'TV watcher' to accept a unified international leadership for a war against terrorism. The country behind this propaganda is the US and the lobbyists for the US war on terrorism are only interested in making money." - Pierre-Henry Bunel
“Elements associated with al Qaida” has become the new official catch-all phrase, used as often as possible, to incite terror among the American people and to justify new attacks by American forces and American-supported militia groups. We are going into Pakistan in force, to train new Pakistanis to fight other Pakistanis that we had trained too well in the past. How will we separate the “friendly” al Qaida from the unfriendly ones, when we bundle the whole bunch together under the rubric “al Qaida?”
Why are Islamists like Ayman al Zawahiri considered al Q., after they provided the US Islamic fighters in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Macedonia, as well other Islamic recruits who served US interests in Chechnya? The Islamic mercenaries were fighting for us when the embassies were bombed in Kenya and Tanzania in 1998, even after bin Laden and Zawahiri announced the establishment of "The International Islamic Front for Holy War Against Jews and Crusaders," (an umbrella organization linking Islamic extremists in scores of countries around the world, the bin Laden group that was renamed Al Qaida). The militant group, now called al Qaeda was the instant answer to the 9/11 attacks, even though it was never what it was alleged to be, the ultimate terrorist bogeyman. The conjunction of US and al Qaida interests all over the Muslim world should warn thinking individuals, whenever attacks happen to occur in just the places that the neo-con war planners would most like to invade.
It is more than reasonable to question where al Qaida ends and the secret world of their CIA trainers begins. Was it other trained al Qaida agents who pre-planted the demolitions that brought the towers down, obtained US security codes, timed the attacks into ongoing war games and stood down fighter cover, or was that part of the act of war the CIA’s domain? Questioning further along that line, was Pakistan’s ISI (secret service) still acting as the CIA’s surrogate, when ISI head General Mahmud Ahmad allegedly had Sheik Omar wire Mohammed Atta $100,000? According to Chossudovsky:
“The FBI had information on the money trail. They knew exactly who was financing the terrorists. Less than two weeks later, the findings of the FBI were confirmed by Agence France Presse (AFP) and the Times of India, quoting an official Indian intelligence report (which had been dispatched to Washington). According to these two reports, the money used to finance the 9-11 attacks had allegedly been "wired to WTC hijacker Mohammed Atta from Pakistan, by Ahmad Umar Sheikh, at the instance of [iSI Chief] General Mahmoud [Ahmad].”According to the AFP (quoting the intelligence source):
"The evidence we have supplied to the U.S. is of a much wider range and depth than just one piece of paper linking a rogue general to some misplaced act of terrorism."The name “Sheikh Omar” should set off alarms to those who are paying attention. He was the one who Bhutto fingered on the David Frost interview on 2nd November 2007 (2:15), “Omar Sheikh, the man who murdered Osama bin Laden.” Omar is mentioned in connection with a man that Bhutto feared might be involved in threats against her.
President Musharraf, in his book In the Line of Fire stated that the Sheikh was originally recruited by British intelligence agency, MI6 to go to the Balkans. Here is another shadowy figure linked to al Qaida, Western intelligence agencies and the US program, organized by Bill Clinton, to bring radical Islamist Jihadis to the war in Yugoslavia. They fought on the US side, in a war prosecuted by the United States, as an Islamic paramilitary force.
The new secret world war, based on the contra strategy, follows on the heels of what has been described as a “winning strategy” in Iraq, where the strategy was implemented and proven to be faulty. In Iraq, another former military/CIA contra trainer, James Steele has helped to implement the “El Salvador option,” injecting the same training that he provided to Central American “death squads” during the illegal covert war against Nicaragua. But we know that the scenario, as it played-out in Iraq, produced the same results as in El Salvador, that of further polarizing the populace and turning the people against the US efforts. But, in Iraq, the policy was judged successful, by some, because of the unexpected bonus of inciting religious sectarian civil warfare. Between this new policy of promoting religious civil war and hiring armies of mercenaries, Bush & co. think that they are now winning in Iraq. For this reason, they plan to repeat the pattern in Pakistan.
We have seen elements of this new war strategy backfire in Gaza and Lebanon, where the political forces associated with Elliott Abrams sought to create viable insurgencies, like Mohammad Dahlan’s U.S.-backed Preventive Security Services who were ran out of Gaza and the Lebanese Fatah al-Islam faction, allied with Said Hariri, who were driven from the Nahr el-Bared Palestinian refugee camp near Tripoli. These small forces were far too weak to successfully engage the Lebanese government, or the Hamas government in Gaza, yet the US was willing to gamble on them.
Joint efforts between the CIA and the Israeli Mossad to train offshoots of the PKK terrorist organization in Iraq, for cross-border attacks upon Iran, have also gone astray, leading to Turkish military action in Iraq, to eliminate the intolerable terrorist attacks upon it, that were a bi-product of misguided American efforts. Similar efforts to train Jundallah terrorists in Pakistan to attack Iran succeeded in killing a few Iranians, but managed to bring international opprobrium on the US for its support of terrorism.
The new program to inflict mass terrorism upon Pakistan’s Western Provinces will backfire as well, further compounding America’s military dilemma, while increasing the suffering and tribal hatred of the Pakistani and Afghan people exponentially.
If America would only stop being the world’s number one sponsor of terrorism, then its leaders might realize that promoting real democracy is the only answer to the global unrest. In Pakistan, democratic forces will sweep Musharraf and the Americans completely out of power there. Both he and Bush must decide to do whatever is necessary to make that “clean sweep” a relatively peaceful one. There is no room for a dictator in any democracy – not in Pakistan, or America. If the attempt by the Pakistani government to cover-up the Bhutto assassination, by claiming that she was not shot is any indication of the path that Musharraf has chosen for Pakistan, then there will be no chance for peace in that beleaguered country.
Authors Website: Morty's Cabin
Authors Bio: antiwar activist/writer thirty years. Op-ed writer The Herald-Dispatch, Huntington, WV
(1) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=7709
(2) http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?con...va&aid=7705
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The most recent Bhutto assassination has offered the curious spectacle of key components of the Anglosphere media suddenly taking the subject of high-level conspiracy seriously – the same media outlets, it should be noted, who have historically given conspicuously short-shrift to the merest suggestion of a conspiracy underpinning the death of John Fitzgerald Kennedy. At least one American blogger has turned his attention to the striking inconsistency:
http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2007-12-31.aspHornberger’s Blog
Saturday, December 31, 2007
Hornberger’s Blog Index
Bhutto, JFK, and Conspiracies
by Jacob G. Hornberger
It’s interesting to compare the attitude of the U.S. mainstream press toward the assassination of Benazir Bhutto with its attitude toward the assassination of President John Kennedy.
The immediate reaction of the American press (and U.S. government officials) to the Bhutto killing has been a presumption of a conspiracy. Equally important, among the prime suspects are Pakistani intelligence agencies.
For example, the New York Times reported:
“Pakistani and Western security experts said the government’s insistence that Ms. Bhutto, a former prime minister, was not killed by a bullet was intended to deflect attention from the lack of government security around her…. Her vehicle came under attack by a gunman and suicide bomber as she left a political rally in Rawalpindi, where the Pakistani Army keeps its headquarters, and where the powerful Inter-Services Intelligence agency has a strong presence.”
“The new images of the men who appear to have been Ms. Bhutto’s assassins showed one dressed in a sleeveless black waistcoat and rimless sunglasses, and holding aloft what appeared to be a gun. He had a short haircut and wore the kind of attire reminiscent of plainclothes intelligence officials, though Al Qaeda and other militants have also been known to dress attackers in Western-style clothing in order to disguise them.”
Yet, in the Kennedy assassination, the presumption has always been the exact opposite. After the killing, the U.S. mainstream press immediately embraced the conclusion quickly reached by U.S. officials that Lee Harvey Oswald was a lone assassin as well as the decision by federal officials to immediately shut down any serious investigation into whether there was a conspiracy behind the killing, including a conspiracy in which U.S. intelligence agencies might have participated.
Why is the mainstream press considering the possibility that Pakistani intelligence agencies were behind the Bhutto killing? According to the Guardian, Pakistan’s intelligence agencies “are widely believed to carry out kidnappings, unlawful detentions and extrajudicial killings. The speed with which the government accused al-Qaida did little to allay fears of state involvement, and conflicting accounts of the cause of death have convinced many of a cover-up.”
Yet, as everyone knows, U.S. intelligence agencies, especially the CIA, have long been involved in the same sort of nefarious activities — kidnappings, torture, coups, murder, and assassinations, even as far back as the Kennedy administration.
Now, notice that no one in the mainstream press is screaming, “Conspiracy theory! Conspiracy theory!” in response to the suspicion that Pakistani intelligence agencies might have been behind the Bhutto killing. On the contrary, the mainstream press is actually treating such a conspiracy as a viable possibility.
Yet, whenever someone suggests that U.S. intelligence agencies might have been involved in the JFK killing, the immediate attitude of the U.S. mainstream press is exactly the opposite: “Conspiracy theory! Conspiracy theory!”
The longtime protective attitude toward the CIA among the mainstream press has been most recently reflected in the controversy over the CIA’s obstruction of justice and cover-up in the George Joannides matter. Despite the ominous overtones of the Joannides scandal, the entire matter has been met with a collective yawn of indifference among the mainstream press.
During the time that Oswald was in New Orleans, one of the groups with which he interacted was a virulent anti-Castro student group in New Orleans. Oswald first approached the group by offering his services as a former U.S. Marine to help train anti-Castro guerrillas. Soon after that, Oswald switched roles and took a pro- Castro position, causing him to get into an altercation with the same anti-Castro group.
Soon after the Kennedy assassination, that New Orleans anti-Castro group made a big deal to the press about Oswald being a pro-Castro advocate. What no one knew at the time, however, was that the CIA was funding the group, a fact that, for some reason, CIA officials knowingly, intentionally, and deliberately kept from the Warren Commission.
Then, when the House Select Committee on Assassinations reopened the investigation into the Kennedy assassination in the 1970s, the CIA called a CIA official, George Joannides, out of retirement to serve as the liaison between the CIA and the House committee.
Why Joannides? Well, he was the CIA contact for the anti-Castro group in New Orleans with whom Oswald had had that interaction. He was the guy in charge of funneling the CIA money into the group. He, along with his superiors at the CIA, kept his role secret from the Warren Commission. He was also the guy who kept his role secret from the House Select Committee during the 1970s even though the CIA was supposedly cooperating with the committee’s investigation.
In other words, when Joannides was called out of retirement to serve as the CIA’s liaison with the House Committee, CIA officials knew that he could be trusted to keep the Joannides information secret from the House investigators.
For the past few years, the CIA has been fighting vehemently to keep the American people from viewing its Joannides files. Why? Well, the CIA’s position is that if the public were to see such files, the entire security of the United States would be threatened.
Now, think for a moment how ridiculous that position is. How in the world could the disclosure of files relating to a CIA’s relationship to an anti-Castro group with whom Lee Harvey Oswald interacted some four decades ago threaten the national security of the United States? The fact is: It couldn’t. It’s a ridiculous claim.
A few weeks ago, a U.S. Court of Appeals ordered the CIA to search for the Joannides files and provide a report of its findings to a federal district judge. My hunch is that the CIA, which is currently undergoing scrutiny for its intentional destruction of videotapes showing CIA agents torturing a suspected terrorist, is going to have a difficult time finding those files, perhaps for the same reason that it can’t produce those torture videotapes.
Yet, the U.S. mainstream press will undoubtedly accept without any question whatever explanation the CIA comes up with, including “national security,” even while the press accepts as perfectly natural the possibility that Pakistani intelligence agencies killed Bhutto.
I can’t help but wonder whether Pakistani military dictator Pervez Musharraf will appoint a blue-ribbon investigatory commission to investigate the Bhutto killing, headed up by one of those Supreme Court justices that he recently appointed to the court after he fired the independent justices that were serving on the court. Such a commission might not satisfy the Pakistani people but at least it would be likely to resolve doubts among the U.S. mainstream press.
Jacob Hornberger is founder and president of The Future of Freedom Foundation. Send him email.
So why has the Anglosphere media offered abundant material undermining the Pakistan government’s (hastily revised – and just who prompted that risibly unconvincing about-face?) version of events?
Part of the answer lies in the racism which underpins the Anglosphere media. Eight years ago, I wrote a piece attacking a then Guardian columnist, Francis Wheen, in the course of which I pointed to the race hierarchy which pertained in the paper’s treatment of conspiracies:
In the good old days of C.P.Scott, British Intelligence was invisible, even as it played a key, perhaps dominant, covert role in the rise of Europe’s fascist dictatorships. Today’s Guardian appears very different. In the columns of Wheen and colleagues, spook malfeasance is regularly exposed and denounced. More attentive scrutiny reveals, alas, a less edifying truth: A more subtle dishonesty has merely supplanted an older, and cruder pattern of lying. The new dispensation offers us a world in which MI5 conspires frequently, MI6 when in conflict with CIA, and Langley only when the New York Times decrees. No such reticence, it is striking, attends the paper’s treatment of conspiracies among what the paper presumably considers the lesser races: Africans, Asians, Latin Americans and the white tribe of southern Africa invariably conspire. For the past decade or so, the paper has found CIA- detection in any of these continents difficult to impossible,”A Viscious Experiment in Wheenland, April 1999
In addition, we must factor in a specific US goal – the collapse of the Musharraf regime. The undermining of the official account of Bhutto’s death has been lead within Pakistan by two media organisations, the Dawn publishing empire, and Geo TV. Here’s a Pakistani poster’s take on the latter:
http://progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboa...;topic_id=8036780439, Yes. Even in chaos they must have a special place
Posted by Gaya, Wed Jan-02-08 12:09 AM
GEO Tv, an American CIA station to bring us democracy, was doing this always but Mush shut it down and now America forced it back up. GEO never showed any good news like Islamabad Peshwar motorway but instead it show dead people all the time....they never discuss 5.1 billion dollar of oil refinery in Pakistan instead they show beheading of Pakistani people and always blaming it on different sects.
Bringing Iraq-like democracy in Pakistan is what they want - chaos and civil war. They will bomb Shia mosques and Sunni monques and stand back and watch the people fight. They want inter-ethnic warfare, moderates against extremists, wives against mother-in-laws - anything that promotes conflict.
And here’s some of the back story to the Musharraff regime’s pre-assassination battle to control Langley’s favourite Pakistani newspaper group, and TV station:
http://www.despardes.com/pk/newsbriefs/2007/20070331.htmlMusharraf govt puts the squeeze on "Dawn"
MAR 27 - The Dawn Group of Newspapers, Pakistan's largest English language newspaper and magazine publishing house, is facing serious economic pressures as well as legal harassment by the government of Pakistan for its independent coverage of sensitive topics such as the military action against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in North and South Waziristan areas bordering Afghanistan, the insurgency in parts of the restive south western province of Balochistan, and a possible resurgence of covert government support to Kashmiri militants.
In September 2006, the government approached the Dawn Group seeking a news blackout on coverage of Balochistan and the troubled North and South Waziristan tribal areas, but the group turned down the request as being unreasonable. Since December 2006, the government has imposed massive advertising cuts on the publishing house equivalent to two thirds of total federal government advertisements.
The government also retaliated by withholding a television broadcast license to the group. According to Dawn, in December 2005, Mr. Shaukat Aziz, the Prime Minister of Pakistan, had himself informed Mr. Hamid Haroon, Chief Executive of the Dawn Group, that the government was keen that the group should start an English language news channel. (PPF)
Pak military voices concerns?
NJ, MAR 19 - Rumors are floating in Pakistan, according to Stratfor, that certain corps commanders within the military hierarchy have written a letter to President Gen. Pervez Musharraf expressing their concern for the way in which the matter of the suspension of the Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar is being handled as well the police raid on the offices of private television channel GEO. Moreover, the political fate of the embattled president could be decided in a meeting of the corps commanders as early as next week, the US-based news intelligence service Stratfor says. Meanwhile, President Musharraf said March 17 that a conspiracy had been hatched against him. He spoke to a large crowd in Pakpattan, a town about 150 miles from Lahore.
Riot police trash Geo TV station; Rafiq Tarar bundled up
MAR 16 - Riot police smashed into the offices of Geo television in Islamabad Friday after editors refused to stop transmitting pictures of police clashing with stone-throwing protesters. Glass doors were broken and journalists were assaulted by officers who ordered them to remove a rooftop camera with a panoramic view of the street violence. President Gen Musharraf later rang the television station to make an unprecedented live apology. Police also fired rubber bullets and tear gas, and detained opposition leaders as protests escalated over the ousting of the country's top judge. For the past eight days Gen Musharraf has been trying to sack the chief justice, Iftikhar Muhammad Chaudhry, claiming he is guilty of unspecified charges of misconduct. But the judge and his swelling brigade of supporters, who have paralyzed the courts, say the charges have been cooked up to ensure Gen Musharraf can be easily re-elected as president later this year. In Lahore former president of Pakistan, Rafiq Tarar, was bundled into a police vehicle and driven away, and in Islamabad Qazi Hussain Ahmed, leader of the Jamaat Islami religious party, was arrested. The incidents are a measure of how badly government efforts to deflate the judicial crisis are failing, wrote The Telegraph.
Judiciary crisis in Pakistan deepens
NJ, MAR 16 - According to a BBC Online (Urdu) report, Sharifuddin Pirzada, noted Pakistani constitutional lawyer and Senior Adviser to Prime Minister Shaukat Aziz, has expressed his inability to represent the government in the reference by President General Musharraf against Justice Chaudhry.
The Judge was suspended by the General last week for "misuse of authority", escorted home, put under house arrest incommunicado. He is reported to have got back his television and his son's car, but the car is without keys. Besides, an Urdu daily is the only newspaper he is getting. He and his family have also been restrained from moving freely inside their home, media reports monitored here said.
Meanwhile, sources told Dawn newspaper that a top GEO TV official was summoned to Islamabad on Wednesday and `requested’ by the government to immediately stop the popular TV show titled `Aaj Kamran Khan key sath’. The show’s host, Kamran Khan said his TV channel would abide by the government's decision. The TV channel official was also told that such coverage of the judicial crisis was completely unacceptable.
Latest: Pakistani riot police stormed GeoTV - a private television channel's offices and tear-gassed employees after its editors refused to stop broadcasting pictures of protests in Islamabad over moves to sack the country's top judge. Geo News Bureau Chief Hamid Mir said on television that police broke windows, scuffled with staff and released teargas in the office. The channel was able to broadcast live pictures of the helmeted police carrying shields and batons bursting into the channel's building, and vehicles parked outside were damaged. The neighboring office of The News daily was also damaged by police. “We hold the president and the prime minister directly responsible for all this,” said News bureau chief Ansar Abbasi.
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What’s next, are you going to cite...Information barked to you by Sam your neighbor’s dog?
Naargh, intellectual mis-match: the dog's a Jack Russell, and thus has a mind of its own. You'd be out-foxed.
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So I stand corrected...
No need. Sit down. Pour a drink. Enjoy some more lone nuttery:
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic...p;&start=40
Posted: 28 Dec 2007 08:13 pm
If all the conjectures point that if the job was not completed from outside then the only way it was done was from inside the car when it sped away. Some one inside the car did the rest.
http://forums.bharat-rakshak.com/viewtopic...;&start=120
Posted: 29 Dec 2007 04:18 am
Bullets in abdomen will confirm that it is either armour piercing bullets, confirming army's involvement or someone shooting from inside the SUV, which means someone close to BB is involved in the assassination.
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Nothing in the footage indicates anything other than she was killed by the gunman and/or the suicide bomber, no one (except Paul) has disputed that.
Oh dear, wrong again, Len - and that's discounting other contributors to this thread:
http://www.americanthinker.com/blog/2007/1...led_bhutto.html
December 27, 2007Who Killed Bhutto? (updated)
Rick Moran
Conventional wisdom would point the finger at Islamic extremists in Pakistan as the ones who pulled off the successful assassination of former prime minister Benazir Bhutto. They made no secret of the fact that killing Bhutto was their number one priority.
They despised her relative secularism and the fact that she was a woman doing man's work. But most of all, they needed to kill her in order to bring unrest to Pakistan, thus setting the stage for what they hope could turn into a bloody civil war and the victory of extremists.
In this scenario, al-Qaeda and those who sympathize with them both in and out of government could be responsible for her death. The intelligence service, ISI, has many Islamist sympathizers in its ranks and getting through the security that surrounded Bhutto could have been facilitated by the professionals in Pakistani intelligence. As details of the attack are revealed, that aspect of the puzzle may come together.
Who else might have carried out such an attack? The Pakistani people are apparently blaming President Musharraf, thinking he offed her in order to get rid of a rival for power. Or, their reasoning goes, he had Bhutto killed in order to re-establish some kind of one man rule.
The problem with blaming Musharraf is that the last thing the Pakistani president wants at this point is violence in the streets. Dawn is reporting that tear gas is already being used against protestors in Peshwar and the possibility of millions of Pakistanis rioting in the major cities is Musharraf's main nightmare at the moment. This is not to say, as I mention above, that elements of the government weren't in on the plot. But Musharraf would have to have a death wish to kill Bhutto.
Is it possible that this was a lone nut? Possible but not very likely. Security surrounding Bhutto was several layers deep and it would seem extremely unlikely that someone could wander through the security net and blow himself up. This is why the finger keeps coming back to a detailed plot with perhaps complicity among Bhutto's bodyguards. The reason for that speculation is that early reports indicate that shots were fired inside the vehicle immediately before the suicide bomber detonated himself.
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Hi Paul,
In my book, the Zapruder film is described and dealt with contemporaneously, primarily through the eyes of the critics. There is a passing reference to the question of authenticity, which is in the book's Epilogue. Authenticity was never an issue when the earliest critics were active and so I do not deal with it.
I disagree with the semantics of your remark that "the early critics you deal with omitted any reference to the early descriptions." The word "omitted" implies some deliberate behavior. You might feel, with hindsight, that this was an area that could have been explored at that time. Since, in the first years, the Zapruder film could only be seen at the National Archives, I don't think that was the case.
Happy New Year to you, John, and thanks for the response.
In principle, I agree with your refusal to impose upon the early critics the preoccupations of subsequent generations. Nor is it fair to expect prophetic powers in the former. But I’m not insisting upon either. What I find inexcusable in the work of the early critics with regard to the Zapruder film is something much more mundane – hypocrisy.
The point is that the early critics insisted the Z film was evidence. As such, it should have been treated in exactly the same way as, let us say, a pristine bullet alleged to have inflicted a series of wounds on two men. The early critics demolished the claims, manifestly ludicrous, advanced for CE399, yet remained mute when it came to the Zapruder film chain of custody.
So, was the latter evidence? And, if so, why was the film not subject to precisely the same kind of rigorous examination as the aforementioned CE399?
The early critics failure to deal with the basic question of the film’s veracity is even more curious given, among many other considerations:
a) the very early evidence of photographic manipulation (the backyard photos of Oswald obligingly posing with weapons and leftist papers);
the appearance of said photos in the pages of the same media conglomerate that ostensibly possessed the Zapruder film;c) the known politics of Henry Luce and his media empire;
d) the utter incompatibility of much of the eyewitness testimony – which the early critics prided themselves on knowing better than the Warren Report’s compilers - with the Zapruder film;
e) the inconsistency of the film-photographic evidence (most notably, Altgens #5 v. Zapruder/Nix)
None of the above required “hindsight.” Nor easier access to the Zapruder film. It merely required the early critics to view and report accurately what was readily available to them.
Personally, I am not interested in the authenticity issue because I think it clouds things. As I noted earlier, I think there is only one way to interpret the Zapruder film as we have come to know it. I'm sorry to have to quote Ray Marcus again, but I did talk to him about this, and he said: "They’ve tried to take evidence that’s both clear and convincing that you get over to a lay public – that’s the crucial thing, they don’t care about a few people – that a lay public can understand, and to render them seriously arguable."Is this the same Ray Marcus who, in Addendum B, solemnly opined of Truman’s December 1963 piece, “US should hold CIA to Intelligence Role,” that “according to my information, it was not…picked up by any other major newspaper”?. The claim is simply untrue: See Richard Starnes’ Scripps-Howard column, “Truman and the CIA” (New York World-Telegram & Sun, 24 December 1963, p.13). Still, hardly an earth-shattering mistake of the kind that caused Meagher to turn against Garrison and become an active supporter of Clay Shaw (the latter a nugget from your book that really did surprise me).
For more worthy of condemnation, however, is the authentic note of contempt for the general public that Marcus’ remark conveys. Don’t tell ‘em difficult truth, is the thrust, just give the unwashed sufficient to get them marching in step. Now that really is awful, not least because it allows the real perps to skip off scott free and land the crime on a different set of patsies (Cubans, the Mob, take your pick).
Paul
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...the US protection racket can rachet up a level to ensure the newly-menaced Gulf States continue to trade oil in dollars...
Right on cue, up pops the dead guy to reinforce the message:
http://www.reuters.com/article/ousiv/idUSL...0071230?sp=true
Bin Laden remarks make Gulf dollar peg likelierBy Daliah Merzaban
DUBAI (Reuters) - Gulf Arab oil producers may be less likely to drop their currency pegs to the weak U.S. dollar after Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden criticized dollar pegs as "unjust and arbitrary", economists said on Sunday.
The Saudi-born militant leader urged Muslims in a video recording on Saturday to support militants so they can "preserve your oil and wealth and protect your money that is slipping between your fingers due to the unjust and arbitrary dollar pegs."
"Your support to sincere mujahideen (holy fighters) ... guarantees all aspects of your security," bin Laden said.
Saudi Arabia and four other Gulf countries have insisted on their commitment to maintaining pegs to the dollar, which hit all-time lows versus the euro and a basket of major currencies last month.
"Comments like this will make their commitment to the peg even stronger and it will be even harder for them to move away from the dollar," said Marios Maratheftis, regional head of research at Standard Chartered Bank.
"They don't want this to become more of a political topic than it already is."
Annual inflation in Saudi Arabia, which has not changed the riyal's rate against the dollar since 1986, hit 5.35 percent in October, the highest since at least 1995.
Its smaller, wealthier neighbors, including Qatar and the United Arab Emirates, are concerned the weaker dollar is eroding savings of expatriates, who dominate their workforce, and hampering their central banks in the fight against inflation.
Price rises in Qatar are just off a record 15 percent and inflation in the UAE hit a 19-year high of 9.3 percent last year.
The UAE dirham hit a 17-year high last month after Central Bank Governor Sultan Nasser al-Suweidi said he was under mounting social and economic pressure to sever the dirham's peg and track a currency basket.
Suweidi backtracked on his remarks after Gulf rulers agreed at a summit in Qatar this month to retain dollar pegs and keep any talks on currency reform secret.
KUWAIT DROPS PEG
Kuwait broke ranks with its neighbors and dropped its dollar peg in May, saying dollar weakness was driving up imported inflation by making some imports more expensive.
The Middle East's fourth-largest oil exporter has allowed the dinar to rise almost 6 percent since adopting a currency basket on May 20 comprised mainly of dollars.
Despite growing pressure to do the same, Gulf countries could have less political will to follow for fear of appearing to be yielding to pressure from bin Laden, said a Gulf-based economist, who did not want to be identified.
"Bin Laden's comments do make it less likely that Gulf countries will move away from their pegs," the economist said.
Dollar pegs force Gulf countries to track U.S. monetary policy at a time when the Fed is cutting rates to contain the fallout of a mortgage crisis.
A group of Saudi clerics issued a rare warning earlier this month to Saudi leaders that they must take action to curb rising inflation, which has prompted public anger. (Additional reporting by Inal Ersan, editing by Jacqueline Wong)
© Reuters 2008 All rights reserved
Assassination as integrated component of imperial strategy. Turning into a bit of a text book example, this one.
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The onus of supporting such speculation - at this stage - does not really apply (unless you make a really wild speculation, such as "It was actually Elvis who fired the fatal shot using a M61 Vulcan canon, which was mounted in a flying saucer to the rear of the car, but cannot be seen because it was covered by holographic projections of clear sky."
THAT sort of speculation requires at least some evidence to be seriously considered.
Be careful, Evan, any one capable of producing such an imaginative, albeit satirical, scenario may yet find himself fielding a recruitment pitch from the ISI or its master!
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Enough of crackpot theories that ignore the overwhelming weight of available evidence.
You couldn't be more right - now practice what you preach, and stop offering us anything emanating from, or filtered through, the motley assortment of murderers and thugs known as the Pakistan government. The latter is as credible as George "We don't torture" Bush.
Have a splendid New Year!
Paul
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There is a problem about motive. The American government paid Butto large sums of money to go back to Pakistan. Bush's intention was for Butto to work as a "democratic front" for Musharraf. Butto's death has therefore caused political problems for Bush. I therefore fail to see the sense of the CIA being involved in the death of Butto. She was Bush's type of foreign politician - corrupt.
The problem here, John, is that a consistent theme of neo-con polemics has been the CIA's pursuit of different policies and agendas. Bush is, when all is said and done, a transient politician, and thus of little consequence.
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Nowadays, "reasonable access to JFK assassination evidence" is as simple as a computer with internet access. I do not refer to forums such as this one or, God help us, alt.conspiracy.jfk (if it still exists). I do, however, mean YouTube: I think the Zapruder film is all you really need to to see to understand the simplest of truths, which is that the head shot was fired from the right front. I don't think there is any other way to interpret the movement of Kennedy's head and upper body.
John,
I've just finished your book: I enjoyed it, and found much that was new and intriguing. Of the several criticisms I would make, the first and most important lies in your attitude to the Z film.
Like the early critics you write so lucidly about, you accept uncritically its veracity and fail to acknowledge, let alone discusss, any of the early descriptions of the film. Yet these descriptions are, in some instances, radically at odds with both the duration and content of the version we have today. Why did you ignore the welter of material challenging its authenticity? And why do you think all of the early critics you deal with omitted any reference to the early descriptions?
Paul
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There is also an organization called “Conservative Friends of Israel”. They also provide a lot of money to constituencies willing to promote the policies of Israel. It was revealed yesterday that one of the main financial backers of this organization is a Finnish billionaire named Polu Zabludowicz. You may well ask why a rich man from Finland is interested in political decisions made in the UK. The answer to this question could have something to do with how Zabludowicz got his money. It comes from a company called Soltam, that was started by Polu’s father, Sholomo Zabludowicz after the war. Soltam was an Israeli arms company. Over the last few years it has reinvented itself as a property company. This is what the criminal community call money laundering.
Sounds like a very spooky outfit - any firm evidence on that score?
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Mind you Paul, the "shooter-in-the-car" theory appears to have been the case in the Yitzak Rabin assassination and held up extremely well under considerable scrutiny. And I have a feeling that you could be right.
If you recall, official history has it that Rabin was shot "twice" by a young Jewish zealot from behind. I watched the tape of it taking place and yup, clearly two shots were fired from behind. But the really curious thing is that a third shot (a "contact" shot) to the chest appears to have been the death shot - according to the surgeon who attended Rabin when he was "slowly" rushed to hospital.
"Slowly" rushed to hospital... as in the Diana case.
Agreed, and good to see such an apposite example instanced. I would also add the remarkable case of Fred Woodruff, the CIA station chief who was the victim of the Georgian "package."
These people are experts at changing history and modifying facts. Thereafter all they need is for their trained spinners -- "bots that trot" so to speak -- to trot out the prepared newspeak story to befuddle hearts and minds.Enough of Len Colby...
I suppose they consider the after event news coverage to be the least of their problems, in view of the hugely compliant and supine media organisations. The critical thing is to make certain that the assassination is succesful. One way or another. Thereafter, in the scheme of things, the "spin" can be easily managed.Again, agreed - the job, first and last, is to destroy the target, which is why I think a "gut" shot is overwhelmingly likely. The video footage of the youthful assassin in the shades is a) merely the inner layer of deception and
powerful evidence of the uncertainty of this method. (Look how unstable the hand is...) To make sure, really sure, one needs to be both direct and positive ie up close and able to observe the results.Paul
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Paul your theory that she was shot by the occupants of her car is about as legless as your theory Mir Amal Kasi wasn’t the CIA shooter
Curiously, Len, it's got you working over-time!
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May a gross of gods save us!
There appears to be an endless supply, one supplemented daily.
"institutions for the indoctrination of the young" (this Emersonian phrase comes from the 1973 Carnegie Report on US Education, which recommended an increased emphasis on Community Colleges as the cure for student radicalism at four year schools in the late 1960s)That was really the phrase employed? Goodness. How very Stalinist.
How much longer did Starnes survive such editorial frankness?Thanks to Walker Stone, he survived John McCone's demand for his dismissal, but his reports from Saigon terminated the foreign jaunts. Can't have reporters reporting anything significant, now, can we? Where would it all end? An informed citizenry?
Have a happy and rewarding New Year,
Paul
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Sarcasm aside yes slips happen. Perhaps Mr. Drago who seems to think otherwise can explain why Bhutto would tell a British audience that her opponents were tied to the person who killed OBL as a way to put them in a bad light and put that crime on par with beheading British tourists? I wonder if he ever watched the clip, somehow I doubt it.
The true measure of US concern for Bhutto's continued survival:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml.../wbhutto230.xml
Bhutto 'blocked from hiring US bodyguards'By Philip Sherwell in New York
Last Updated: 2:42am GMT 30/12/2007
“It's odd and disturbing that the Pakistan government did not do a better job of protecting her and that the US apparently could not do more to persuade them," said Bruce Riedel, a former CIA officer and former National Security Council director for South Asia. "She made it very clear privately and publicly that she did not have enough security. That was abundantly clear after the attack on her return.
"I can't explain why the Bush administration didn't pressure Musharraf to do more. Her death leaves the US with a Pakistan policy that is completely bankrupt."
And on the real link between the corpse OBL and the campaign against Bhutto:
http://progressiveindependent.com/dc/dcboa...;topic_id=80188
Retired Brigadier supervising Benazir's security was Osama's handler, says experthttp://in.news.yahoo.com/071019/139/6m5uk.html
Chennai, Oct.19 (ANI): The retired brigadier who was given the responsibility of securing former Pakistan Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's car journey through Karachi on Thursday, used to be the handling officer of Osama bin Laden and Taliban chief Mulla Omar when he was attached with the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI).
Disclosing this information in an article for the rediff website, former Additional Secretary in the Cabinet Secretariat, B.Raman says that Brigadier (retired) Ejaz Shah, whose resignation is being demanded by Benazir Bhutto, is a close confidante of President General Pervez Musharraf.
Raman says that after Musharraf seized power on October 12, 1999, he had Shah posted as the Home Secretary of Punjab. He also says that Omar Sheikh, who orchestrated the kidnapping and murder of American journalist Daniel Pearl, surrendered before Shah because Omar Sheikh knew him before and was confident that Ejaz Shah would see that he was not tortured.
So close are the links between Shah and Musharraf that when several allegations were filed against him, Musharraf sought to send him as Ambassador to Australia or Indonesia. Both countries reportedly refused to accept him. Musharraf then made him the Director General of the Intelligence Bureau and he saw to it that the death sentence against Omar Sheikh for his role in the Pearl case was not executed.
The courts have been repeatedly postponing hearings on the appeal filed by Omar Sheikh against the death sentence.
Shah, according to Raman, also played an active role in the campaign to discredit Supreme Court Chief Justice Iftikhar Mohammad Caudhury after he started calling for the files of a large number of missing persons who were taken into custody by the police and the intelligence agencies.
Shah is also a close personal friend of many Punjabi leaders of the Pakistan Muslim League (Qaid), which is opposed to Benazir's return.
According to these sources, the suicide bomber or bombers managed to penetrate the security cordon of the police and IB officers without being frisked, but could not penetrate the inner cordon of security guards of the PPP. When stopped on Thursday night, they blew themselves up at a distance from her vehicle. At the time of the explosion, Bhutto had gone inside the vehicle to rest for a while. This seems to have contributed to her miraculous escape. Had she been standing on top she might have been injured, if not killed? (ANI)
the appearance of said photos in the pages of the same media conglomerate that ostensibly possessed the Zapruder film;
Bhutto Murder
in Political Conspiracies
Posted
Fascinating piece from Global Research site:
http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=7709
Ahmed Quraishi is an investigative reporter, currently hosting a weekly political talk show titled Worldview from Islamabad