WikiLeaks and the U.S.-Supported Dictatorship in Tunisia

Monday, January 17, 2010
WikiLeaks and the U.S.-Supported Dictatorship in Tunisia
by Jacob G. Hornberger

What has happened in Tunisia provides a perfect encapsulation of U.S. foreign policy and why U.S. officials are so angry over the WikiLeaks leaks.

According to the New York Times, some of the WikiLeaks cables "make it clear just how much United States officials, preoccupied with the threat of terrorism in many other Muslim countries, valued Mr. Ben Ali's cooperation and ability to maintain order."

And who was Mr. Ben Ali? He was the dictator who the people of Tunisia have just ousted from power in a revolution. Yes, a dictator, one who had been in power for 23 years.

"Impossible!" American statists say. "It's just not possible that the U.S. government would ever be supporting a dictator! In my public schools, we were taught ­ it was ingrained in us ­ that the U.S. government is exceptional. It only favors democracy. In fact, didn't the U.S. government invade Iraq to spread democracy, well, at least after those infamous WMDs failed to materialize?"

That's the myth, one that we here at The Future of Freedom Foundation have been piercing for 21 years. It's one of the myths that is inculcated in American schoolchildren from the time they're six years and continuing regularly thereafter.

The truth is that the U.S. government loves dictatorships, especially military ones, at least when the dictator is considered a loyal member of the U.S. Empire. Whenever a dictator goes independent, he immediately becomes a target for regime change, one in which the recalcitrant dictator is replaced with a compliant dictator, one that maintains "order and stability" within his country, even if that means employing terror and torture to accomplish it.

Look at Saddam Hussein. He was a dictator. The U.S. government loved him and partnered with him to kill Iranians. But when Saddam went independent, he became the target of regime change.

Look at the Iranian prime minister, Mohammed Mossadegh. He was democratically elected and was independent of U.S. control. The CIA targeted him for regime change, and the operation was successful. He was replaced with the unelected dictator the Shah of Iran, who maintained "order and stability" with terror and torture against his own people. He was loved by the U.S. government because he was a loyal member of the U.S. Empire. That was when Iran was considered "our friend."

Look at Jacobo Arbenz. He was the democratically elected president of Guatemala. Even though he was adopting the socialist policies of Franklin Roosevelt, he was independent of U.S. government control. The CIA targeted him for regime change. He was ousted and replaced by a string of military generals whom the U.S. Empire loved because they provided "order and stability." Never mind that Guatemala was thrown into a civil war that ended up killing hundreds of thousands of people.

Look at Chilean military strongman Gen. Augusto Pinochet. The U.S. Empire loved him and embraced his military coup against the democratically elected president of Chile, Salvador Allende, and supported Pinochet's campaign of terror and torture against his own people. In fact, the CIA even participated in the murder of a young American journalist during the coup.

Look at Pervez Musharraf, the unelected military dictator of Pakistan. The U.S. Empire loved him because, again, he provided "order and stability." Never mind that he also terrorized and tyrannized his own people, until they ousted him from power.

So, what does WikiLeaks have to do with what's happening in Tunisia? Well, it turns out that the WikiLeaks leaks disclosed secret cables by U.S. officials detailing the massive corruption of the Tunisian regime that the U.S. Empire was partnering with as part of its grandiose war on terrorism. According to the cables, the corruption included a "'lavish' dinner of the American ambassador, Robert F. Godec, with Mr. Ben Ali's son-in-law, Mohamed Sakher el-Materi, in his beachfront home in Hamamet. There was 'staff everywhere' and 'ancient artifacts everywhere: Roman columns, frescoes and even a lion's head from which water pours into the pool.'"

Apparently the information provided in the WikiLeaks leaks was the straw that broke the camel's back. Upon reading the Wikileaks cables, the people of Tunisia revolted against the U.S.-supported dictatorship, and Mr. Ben Ali fled the country.

What does the U.S. government say about the ouster of its war-on-terrorism friend and ally, the 23-year dictator Mr. Ben Ali? Oh, it's playing the game. Empire officials are celebrating his ouster, changing their chameleon colors to "pro-democracy," thereby maintaining the myth that is inculcated in the American people from the time they're six years old. Ostensibly supporting the pro-democracy crowd that succeeded in ousting his buddy from power, President Obama said, "I applaud the courage and dignity of the Tunisian people."

One thing's for sure though: Obama isn't praising the courage and dignity of Bradley Manning, Julian Assange, and WikiLeaks, whose leaks triggered the ouster of the U.S.-supported Tunisian dictator Mr. Ben Ali. Obama is still going after them with the same vengeance that his friend and ally Mr. Ben Ali employed against the Tunisian people during 23 years of brutal dictatorship.

http://www.fff.org/blog/jghblog2011-01-17.asp

**JP** Japan’s Frozen Aquarium

Japan's Frozen Aquarium Please wait images are loading .....     As a way of battling the summer heatwave that hit Japan this year, authorities have inaugurated a frozen aquarium that will keep visitors cool and entertained. Kori no Suizokukan is located in Kesennuma, Miyagi Prefecture and features around 450 specimens of around 80 species of marine wildlife, all captured at a nearby sea port. Visitors can enjoy a brief break from the scorching sun and admire all sorts of fish, crabs or octopuses, as well as unusual objects like action figures, bottles of sake, or flowers, all embedded in huge blocks of ice. The Frozen Aquarium was inaugurated, in Kesennuma’s fish market, in 2002, and uses flash-freezing technology to conserve fresh specimens and keep them looking so good. While the Frozen Aquarium is a welcome tourist attraction, visitors can only spend a few minutes inside. Because temperatures inside the aquarium reach -20 degrees Celsius, a special suit is needed to keep people from becoming freezing exhibits themselves. Without these special suits, visitors would start feeling severe pains in just five minutes time.

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We're conflating proper dissent and terrorism

We're conflating proper dissent and terrorism
It's both misguided and distracting to direct our homeland security efforts against protesters.
By COLEEN ROWLEY
Last update: January 15, 2011 - 6:22 PM

A secretive, unaccountable, post-9/11 homeland security apparatus has increasingly turned inward on American citizens.

The evidence includes everything from controversial airport body scanners to the FBI's raids last September on antiwar activists' homes in Minneapolis and Chicago. A federal grand jury investigation in Chicago was recently expanded.

Unless the erosion of proper legal safeguards is halted, we risk a return to Vietnam-era abuses on the part of the FBI and other security agencies.

Agents are now given a green light, for instance, to check off "statistical achievements" by sending well-paid, manipulative informants into mosques and peace groups.

Forgotten are worries about targeting and entrapping people not predisposed to violence.

Forgotten also are the scandals that came to light just months before 9/11 of decades-long FBI operations involving "top echelon informants" (high-level violent criminals) such as Boston crime boss Whitey Bulger.

Even if government officials are well-intentioned, the current tactics and incentives have opened the floodgates of error and opportunism.

Most important, what's been forgotten is that the protection of civil liberties does not weaken our overall security but actually helps to strengthen it.

When security agencies expend their energy against war protesters and environmental advocates, they lose effectiveness in preventing real terrorist violence.

No agency connected the dots before Nidal Malik Hasan allegedly killed 13 and wounded over 40 at Fort Hood, or before airline passenger Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab attempted to detonate his "underwear bomb" on Christmas Day 2009, or before Faisal Shahzad planted his car bomb in Times Square.

Tragedy was averted in the latter two incidents only because alert people happened to be on the scene. Yet the perpetrators of these three major events on U.S. soil were in direct communication with the same Yemeni cleric who was allegedly connected to three of the 9/11 hijackers.

A good place to begin reform is by challenging the handful of words in the "Patriot Act" that enlarged the definition of "material support of terrorism" to encompass "expert advice and assistance" given to designated "foreign terrorist organizations."

This phrase essentially makes mere advocacy of peace and humanitarian issues illegal with respect to groups listed by the State Department.

The Patriot Act thus condemns a large range of nongovernmental efforts, which have tended to be more effective than government-backed ones at furthering education, providing humanitarian assistance, and ensuring free and fair elections throughout the world.

Such a chilling effect only makes nonviolent conflict resolution and mediation more difficult and terrorism more likely.

Next, it's necessary to reverse the erosion of attorney general guidelines governing initiation of domestic investigations, which were adopted after the Church Committee uncovered abuses in the 1970s.

In one of its last official acts, the Bush administration lowered the level of necessary suspicion to the point where the FBI needs only deny that it is targeting a group based solely on its exercise of First Amendment rights.

Like the Patriot Act provision, this opens the door wide to FBI harassment of nonviolent activists.

In 2003, a spokesman for the California Anti-Terrorism Information Center said, apparently without thinking too hard, that evidence wasn't needed to issue warnings about war protesters: "You can make an easy kind of a link that, if you have a protest group protesting a war where the cause that's being fought against is international terrorism, you might have terrorism at that [protest]. ... You can almost argue that a protest against [the war] is a terrorist act."

In a similar vein, the Department of Defense asked on its annual mandatory antiterrorism test, "What is an example of low-level terrorism activity?" The correct answer was "protest."

But protest and civil disobedience are not terrorism. Until that distinction is made at every level of the security system, and proper institutional safeguards are implemented, the "war on terror" will continue to shred civil liberties while failing to prevent terrorist outrages.

The massive and largely irrelevant data collection now occurring only adds hay to the haystack, making it even harder to see patterns and anticipate events.

"Top Secret America" needs to ask itself who is more guilty of furnishing "material aid to terrorism" -- its own operatives, or the activists and protesters it so wrongheadedly targets.


Coleen Rowley, a former FBI special agent and legal counsel in the Minneapolis field office, wrote a "whistleblower" memo in May 2002 and testified to the Senate Judiciary on some of the FBI's pre-9/11 failures. She retired in 2004 and is now a writer and speaker.

http://www.startribune.com/opinion/commentary/113637589.html

Dining out over the years

 

 

A group of 15-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner. Finally, they agreed to meet at the Dairy Queen next to the Ocean View restaurant because they had only $6.00 among them and Jimmy Johnson, the cute boy in Social Studies, lived on that street. 10 years later, the group of 25-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner. Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the beer was cheap, the restaurant offered free snacks, the band was good, there was no cover and there were lots of cute guys. 10 years later, the group of 35-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner. Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the cosmos were good, it was right near the gym and, if they went late enough, there wouldn't be too many whiny little kids. 10 years later, the group of 45-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner. Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the martinis were big and the waiters had tight pants and nice buns. 10 years later, the group of 55-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner. Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the prices were reasonable, the wine list was good, the restaurant had windows that opened (in case of a hot flashes), and fish is good for cholesterol. 10 years later, the group of 65-year-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner. Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the lighting was good and the restaurant had an early bird special. 10 years later, the group of 75-years-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner. Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View restaurant because the food was not too spicy and the restaurant was handicapped-accessible. 10 years later, the group of 85-years-old girlfriends discussed where to meet for dinner. Finally, they agreed to meet at the Ocean View restaurant because they were pretty sure they had never been there before.

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Prayer for 2011!!

 

 

Dear God, my prayer for 2011 is for a fat bank account & a thin body. Please don't mix these up like you did last year. AMEN!!!

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