- Signs of the Times for Mon, 12 Jun 2006 -

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• The Good, The Bad And The Ugly
• Birds, Cows and Sheep

Once there, they were arbitrarily designated as enemy combatants and denied any rights, even the right to a trial of any kind, and have been regularly tortured under interrogation ever since. The forms of torture used included "dietary manipulation" i.e. allowing prisoners only a minimal amount of bread and water; "environmental manipulation" i.e., reducing air conditioning in summer, lowering heat in winter"; "sleep management" i.e. preventing inmates from sleeping; "isolation" for longer than 30 days; "stress positions" i.e., shackling inmates for hours or days in painful positions, and "presence of working dogs" i.e. setting large dogs on inmates, including allowing the dogs to bite them. Some alternative methods include urinating on the Koran in front of prisoners and sexually humiliating them. A constant, of course, was good old fashioned physical abuse and beatings by interrogators.

It has been alleged that such tactics are necessary due to the fact that these men are "dangerous terrorists" who want to "harm the American people". The reality however is that, if these men are guilty of a crime, why has no evidence been brought against the vast majority of them and why have they not been accused of a crime? Lawyers attempting to act on behalf of the men say that only 10 of the more than 450 inmates have been formally charged with any crime. "They also pointed to a report by New Jersey's Seton Hall University that showed, based on the military's own documents, that 55 per cent of the prisoners are not alleged to have committed any hostile acts against the US and that 40 per cent are not accused of affiliation with al-Qa'ida.

The same documents suggested only 8 per cent of prisoners are accused of fighting for a terrorist group and that 86 per cent were captured by the Northern Alliance or Pakistani authorities at a time when the US offered large bounties for suspected terrorists".

Clive Stafford Smith, a British lawyer who represents 36 of the men said:

"From what I have seen, just a little scratching of the surface proves the allegations to be false," he said. "One client of mine was alleged to be part of a British al-Qa'ida cell - at a time when he was 11 years old and living in Saudi Arabia."

He only has one head, no sign of any fangs or sharp claws. He looks like a normal, affable human being, right? Well, as we have been learning for several years now, appearances can be very, very deceptive. This guy has as much ability to empathise with the suffering of another human being as a can of beans. He shares this trait with the vast majority of our self-styled political leaders, and from this single fact, ladies and gentlemen, springs forth most of the world's ills.

If it were just a case of these uniformed idiots and politicos simply spouting their absurdities to the wind, we might not have much cause for concern, but the frightening reality is that millions of people in America and around the world, having been reared on a diet of lies and disinformation masquerading as truth, will swallow this utter nonsense with little or no question. The important point here is that insanity is the net result of the lies that government and military officials tell, it is not the source, and it is not the officials that are rendered insane (because they lie consciously) but otherwise well-intentioned citizens who are deceived into believing these lies promoted as truth. A diet of lies taken as truth will so warp an ordinary person's perception of reality that they can be made to commit and support acts of inhumanity all the while believing they are 'doing good'. As Voltaire said: "Those who can make you believe absurdities can make you commit atrocities."

Is it reasonable to suggest that the contents of a person's mind, that which they believe to be true, shapes their actions in a direct way? If so, then the contents of the minds of every person on this planet, that which they understand as reality and truth, in a very direct way shapes the conditions on our planet.

For example, billions of people believe that the US government generally tells the truth and that the war on terror is a just war against real Islamic terror. This belief directly contributes to the continuance of the butchering of innocent civilians that has been the net result of the U.S. and Israeli-led war on terror. 200,000 civilians in Iraq are dead because ordinary people around the world believed a lie that was widely promoted by the American, Israeli and British governments among others.

Through their established channels (the mainstream media) governments clearly invest massive time and energy into the dissemination of information that will ensure that the public continues to hold to a certain line of belief. The only plausible reason for such effort is that, if it were not done, then government plans for our future would go seriously awry. At this point in the history of our planet, there is a shocking level of lies and disinformation presented as truth. It is all-encompassing. From politics to science to culture to religion to the food we eat, all are imbued with and often based on a lie.

If there is on saving grace it is that, having started on this course of a massive campaign of deception and as time progresses, the lies by necessity must become larger and potentially more and more obvious. In the three Guantanamo suicides we have one such example, where a representative of the US government attempts to convince the world that when a tortured and despairing US government prisoner takes his own life, it is the U.S. government that is the victim. Truth has been turned on its head, and we must wait to see if there will ever be a breaking point for the already excessively stretched boundaries of public belief.

To test the waters a little, consider the U.S. government's web page on "Identifying Misinformation", where we are told that, in rooting out lies, we must "consider the source" and that "certain websites, publications, and individuals are known for spreading false stories", with some examples included.

Juxtapose that authoritative assertion with the following article from the 29th May 2006 edition of the UK daily newspaper "The Independent" which is entitled:

Bush 'planted fake news stories on American TV'

Federal authorities are actively investigating dozens of American television stations for broadcasting items produced by the Bush administration and major corporations, and passing them off as normal news. Some of the fake news segments talked up success in the war in Iraq, or promoted the companies' products.

Among items provided by the Bush administration to news stations was one in which an Iraqi-American in Kansas City was seen saying "Thank you Bush. Thank you USA" in response to the 2003 fall of Baghdad. The footage was actually produced by the State Department, one of 20 federal agencies that have produced and distributed such items.

in July 2005, the counter-misinformation team researched the allegation that U.S. soldiers in Iraq had killed innocent Iraqi boys playing football and then "planted" rocket-propelled grenades (RPGs) next to them, to make it appear that they were insurgents.

Using a variety of search terms in "Google," a researcher was able to find the article and photographs upon which the allegations were based. Because weapons did not appear in the initial photographs, but did appear in later photographs, some observers believed this was evidence that the weapons had been planted and that the boys who had been killed were not armed insurgents.

The researcher was also able to find weblog entries (numbered 100 and 333, on June 26 and July 15, 2005) from the commanding officer of the platoon that was involved in the incident and another member of his platoon. The weblog entries made it clear that:

* The teenaged Iraqi boys were armed insurgents;
* After the firefight between U.S. troops and the insurgents was over, the dead, wounded and captured insurgents were initially photographed separated from their weapons because the first priority was to make sure that it was impossible for any of the surviving insurgents to fire them again;
* Following medical treatment for the wounded insurgents, they were photographed with the captured weapons displayed, in line with Iraqi government requirements;

Thus, an hour or two of research on the Internet was sufficient to establish that the suspicions of the bloggers that the weapons had been planted on innocent Iraqi boys playing football were unfounded.

Marines staged Iraq killing

WASHINGTON, June 6 2006 (UPI) -- Evidence has emerged U.S. Marines deliberately killed an unarmed Iraqi civilian in April in the town of Hamdaniya, CNN reported Tuesday.

A military source with knowledge of a U.S. Naval Criminal Investigative Service investigation told the network the victim, identified by Knight Ridder as Hashim Ibrahim Awad, was dragged from his home and shot by Marines, who placed a shovel and AK-47 next to him to make it appear he was an insurgent. [...]

The source said murder charges are likely to be filed in the next few days.

The investigation is separate from two others involving an alleged massacre of 24 civilians at Haditha last November.

Gold closed at 612.50 dollars an ounce on Friday, down 5.0% from $643.00 at the previous Friday's close. The dollar closed at 0.7912 euros on Friday, up 2.2% from 0.7741 for the week. The euro closed at 1.2640 dollars compared to $1.2918 at the end of the week before. Gold in euros would be 484.57 euros an ounce, down 2.8% from 497.99 for the week. Oil closed at 71.60 dollars a barrel, down 1.6% from $72.75 at the close of the previous week. Oil in euros would be 56.65 euros a barrel, up 0.6% from 56.32 euros at the end of the week before. The gold/oil ratio closed at 8.55, down 3.4% from 8.84 for the week. In the U.S. stock market, the Dow Jones Industrial Average closed at 10,891.92 on Friday, down 3.3% from 11,247.87 at the close of the previous Friday. The NASDAQ closed at 2,135.06, down 4.0% from 2,219.41 at the end of the week before. In U.S. interest rates, the yield on the ten-year U.S. Treasury note closed at 4.97%, down two basis points from 4.99 for the week.

The big news last week was the continued drop in stock prices.

U.S. Stocks Stumble, Ending the Worst Week Since April 2005

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- Inflation concerns sent U.S. stocks lower, ending the market's worst week since April 2005, after May import prices rose twice as much as economists forecast.

The government report fueled speculation that the Federal Reserve and central banks worldwide will stunt economic growth by raising interest rates to curtail inflation. Global equity markets had their biggest weekly losses in almost four years.

"Investors are still trying to sort out inflation and interest rates and how much further they're going to go up," said Franklin Morton, who helps oversee $19 billion at Ariel Capital Management in Chicago. "Until we get some clarity, markets are going to be flat to down."

Texas Instruments Inc., the world's biggest maker of mobile-phone chips, led the retreat. Citigroup Inc., citing slowing demand for handsets, cut its 2007 earnings estimate a day after the company raised forecasts for this quarter.

The Dow average dropped 46.90, or 0.4 percent, to 10,891.92, bringing its decline over the last five days to 3.2 percent. It fell 3.6 percent in the week ended April 15, 2005. The Standard & Poor's 500 Index lost 5.63, or 0.5 percent, to 1252.30, the lowest this year. The Nasdaq Composite Index declined 10.26, or 0.5 percent, to 2135.06, a level not seen since November.

The S&P 500 slipped 2.8 percent this week, also the biggest loss since April 2005, as speculation higher rates will push the economy and profits into a recession increased. The index, which briefly gave up its 2006 advance this week, has now dropped 5.5 percent from a five-year high set on May 5. The Nasdaq lost 3.8 percent this week.

Global Drop

Morgan Stanley Capital International's Europe, Australasia, Far East Index, or EAFE, declined 5.9 percent this week. The drop in the index, a benchmark for U.S.-based international investors, was the biggest since July 2002. The MSCI Emerging Markets Index tumbled 8 percent the last five days, as investors fled riskier assets.

Import prices rose 1.6 percent in May, on higher commodity prices, the Labor Department said. Economists expected a 0.7 percent increase. Last month's rise, coupled with April's 2.1 percent jump, was the biggest two-month gain in prices for imports since 1990. A shortfall in trade widened to $63.4 billion from $62 billion in March, the Commerce Department said.

The Fed has raised the benchmark U.S. rate to 5 percent from 1 percent in two years and comments from central bankers including Chairman Ben S. Bernanke this week suggest policy makers may lift them again this month. Bernanke said on June 5 that inflation is accelerating and "unwelcome."

Central banks for Europe and India were among those that raised lending rates this week...

Gold has dropped sharply from its peak, but it is actually up 5% for the quarter so far. I am not sure why gold has dropped so far recently. A correction was to be expected but this is a sharp correction. Maybe it dropped due to a perceived lessening in the likelihood of a U.S./Israeli/Neocon attack on Iran - or because the prospect of higher interest rates increases the value of currencies, thereby reducing the value of precious metals and commodities. Putting both things together - the rise in interest rates and the supposed lessening of the likelihood of war in Iran - we can see some reasons for the U.S. dollar's sharp rise against the euro last week.

Dollar Posts Biggest Weekly Gain Since November Versus Euro

June 9 (Bloomberg) -- The dollar gained this week by the most since November against the euro as Federal Reserve speakers suggested they will raise interest rates this month to keep inflation in check.

Traders pushed the dollar to the highest in a month against the euro after a government report showed U.S. import prices climbed in May. The U.S. currency has rallied five straight days against the euro as mounting expectations for higher U.S. rates led traders to exit bets on a dollar decline. Fed Chairman Ben S. Bernanke led a chorus of central bank officials this week signaling concern over inflation.

"What's given the dollar a lift this week is the Federal Reserve's hawkish campaign," said Marc Chandler, global head of currency strategy at Brown Brothers Harriman & Co. in New York. The remarks fueled "a large-scale unwinding" of holdings in emerging-markets and a flight to the dollar, he said.

The U.S. currency has advanced 2.1 percent this week to $1.2642 per euro at 4:13 p.m. in New York, and reached $1.2598, its strongest since May 4. The U.S. currency fell to 114.01 yen, from 114.24 late yesterday, when it reached 114.72 yen, the strongest since April 27.

For the week, the dollar has gained 2.1 percent versus the yen, the most since March.

The 1.6 percent increase in U.S. import prices followed a 2.1 percent surge the month before, the Labor Department said today in Washington. The jump compared with a 0.7 percent increase that was the median forecast in a Bloomberg survey.

Fed Odds

The dollar has rebounded about 2.5 percent from a 13-month low of $1.2979 per euro, reached June 5, and 4.6 percent from an eight-month low of 109 yen, touched last month.

Traders are pricing in about an 84 percent chance the Fed will boost its key rate a quarter-point to 5.25 percent in its June 28-29 meeting, up from 48 percent at the end of last week, interest-rate futures show.

The Fed has lifted its benchmark rate from 1 percent in June 2004. The European Central Bank raised its key rate by a quarter- point yesterday to 2.75 percent, the third increase since December. The Bank of Japan has kept its benchmark rate near zero since 2001. Fed Governor Donald Kohn yesterday described recent inflation data as "troubling."

Euro losses accelerated yesterday after ECB President Jean- Claude Trichet refrained from using the word "vigilant" in describing the bank's stance toward inflation, suggesting a slower pace of rate increases than some analysts had predicted.

Trade Gap

The U.S. currency also got support today as the U.S. trade gap, the amount by which imports exceed exports, widened to $63.4 billion in April from $61.9 billion in March, the government said. The shortfall was less than the median forecast of $65 billion in a Bloomberg survey.

The report may damp concern the dollar needs to weaken to narrow the U.S. trade shortfall. The dollar has dropped about 2 percent versus the euro and yen since the Group of Seven nations on April 21 called on China and other Asian nations to let their currencies strengthen to help shrink global trade deficits.

A narrower deficit "could add to the momentum of dollar bears having to take a back seat," said Samarjit Shankar, director of global strategy for the foreign exchange group in Boston at Mellon Financial Corp, before the report.

The dollar weakened to a record $1.3666 per euro in December 2004, partly on concern the U.S. would fail to attract enough international investment to compensate for the shortfall in the current account, the broadest measure of trade. The trade deficit reached a record $68.5 billion in January.

Investment Flow

The deficit in the current account, a measure of trade, services, tourism and investments, widened to a record $224.9 billion in the fourth quarter.

The U.S. needs to attract about $2.5 billion a day to fund the gap and keep the value of the dollar steady. Net holdings of Treasury notes, corporate bonds, stocks and other financial assets increased by $69.8 billion in March, less than February's $90.5 billion, the Treasury Department said last month.

This week's 2 percent gain in the U.S. Dollar Index is the biggest since March 2005. The index gauges the dollar's value against a basket of six currencies, including the euro and yen.

Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. advised investors to stop betting on a drop in the U.S. dollar in the next few weeks on speculation the Fed will lift rates this month.

Now, were Bernanke's signal that he wants to fight inflation by raising interest rates and Bush's diplomatic overtures to Iran both done precisely for this reason, to prop up the dollar and stop the rise in commodities? Most likely the two events are not related, but it is fun to speculate.

More generally, though, there is no doubt the long-term health of the imperial economy is tied to success in war and success in war has eluded the neocon leadership. I'm not counting the psyops fake killing of the already-dead-for-years fake terrorist leader al-Zarqawi as any kind of success. The playing of this card probably indicates how desperate they are. Of course we will know they are really in trouble (or the election is really near) when they announce they have killed the already-dead Bin Laden.

For a better view of the real success of the Global War on Terrorism, or whatever it is they are calling it, and some of the economic costs, here is Paul Craig Roberts:

You'd Better Shut Up - War Criminal Nation

By Paul Craig Roberts
June 9, 2006

Faced with mounting civilian carnage, both from war crimes committed by demoralized and broken US troops and from the raging civil war unleashed by Bush's ill-fated illegal invasion of Iraq, the House Defense Appropriations Subcommittee has decided to waste another $50 billion to continue the lost war for five more months. Our elected "representatives" are so in thrall to the powerful military-industrial complex that no amount of American shame, pariah status and military defeat can shut off the flow of taxpayers' funds to the merchants of death.

Bush's wars in Iraq and Afghanistan are costing hard-pressed US taxpayers $300,000,000 per day! These wars are lost. Yet, imbecilic members of Congress are in the process of funding the war for another year. Multiply $300 million by 365 days and you get $109,500,000,000. These are not the full costs. The huge figure does not include the destroyed equipment, destroyed lives, and long-term care of the maimed and disabled.

Gentle reader, are you getting enough vicarious pleasure from the slaughter of Iraqi women and children to justify this price tag? Is murdering "ragheads" that important to you? If so, you are one sick person, just like every member of the Bush administration.

US forces in Iraq and Afghanistan have killed far more civilians than they have resistance fighters. Bush administration spokespersons are crowing that they have killed Musab al-Zarqawi in an air strike. But al-Zarqawi was an al Qaeda leader, not a member of the Iraqi resistance. Al-Zarqawi's death will have no affect on the outcome in Iraq.

Far more important is the news that civil war in Baghdad alone claimed 1,400 deaths last month. Perhaps even more important is the news that the Taliban's resurgence has forced the Bush administration to launch more than 750 air strikes in Afghanistan in May. That is 25 air strikes per day! It is a foregone conclusion that most of the casualties are women and children.

America is drowning in the shame of war crimes. One monstrous slaughter of civilians after another, each denied and covered up until brought to light by photos and eye witnesses. The once proud US Marines, unable to defeat the resistance that is picking them off one by one, is now a frustrated, demoralized force that is getting even by murdering 3-month old babies and old women...

It may be that the dollar is being propped up solely by short term investments for the interest rate return. Surely knowing the facts laid out by Roberts in the above article - and those of us in the United States should make no mistake in thinking that the rest of the world, especially investors and central banks, is as fooled as we are about the reality of the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan - would make the longer term prospects for the dollar much weaker. And any backing down by Bush from confrontation with Iran is too late to stop the losses the U.S. is enduring in Iraq and Afghanistan. So why, even given the short term trends, is the dollar worth any thing at all? The Cryptogon blogger, "Kevin," raised this question in a discussion with a reader:

Robert wrote:
Subject: Comments on Gold/Stocks?

I enjoy the financial commentary on your blog, and while it may not be the central focus, I am curious to hear your thoughts on the current trends in gold and stocks. I am a novice at best when it comes to economics and market analysis, but it would stand to reason that gold would be trending upwards as stocks decline and investors look for safer investments. At the moment both gold and stocks are trending down. Perhaps there really is no logic left in economic decisions?

I wrote back:

Hi Robert,

How the system is up at all right now is a COMPLETE mystery to me. Specifically, I don't understand how the U.S. dollar is still viable, with the national debt closing in on $8.4 trillion... It's probably sheer voodoo and black ops at this point.

Don't get me wrong, I'm glad that it's up, because it would be difficult for my wife and I to establish our permaculture farm with the global economy in a state of collapse. After all, the same economic system that produces tanks, rockets and bombs also produces chicken wire.

We need chicken wire.

I think that the rest of the world will continue to prop up the U.S. for as long as possible, simply because the rest of the world has gotten used to exchanging its goods and services for funny money. How and why that state of affairs came to be is a long and complicated story that doesn't even matter anymore; not at this late stage of the game. But once it's clear that the scam is unraveling, the U.S. will just print money at will. Paying off the massive debt will then simply be a matter of zapping X trillion nearly worthless U.S. dollars into the central banks of America's creditors

The global economic system could, should and probably would collapse at that point.

When will it happen?

Who knows? Certainly not me. Maybe it will never happen and the U.S. national debt will be allowed to go to $50 trillion or $100 trillion and it will be new Hummers and iPods for all!

Or... Maybe the collapse is happening now, in slow motion. Look at the growing list of states that are divesting away from the dollar. Russia is the latest and most influential state to do this. Why is that happening? Because the U.S. has a bright future ahead?

The U.S. dollar works because people pretend that it's real, and nuclear weapons, thirteen carrier strike groups, and millions of soldiers make it so. As more and more major actors wake up to the fact that the dollar represents a total joke, and that the joke isn't funny anymore... Watch out.

Over the last few decades, the most powerful states in the world have lashed themselves to the mast of a sinking ship. It's that simple. And I'm not being cavalier about it! I don't feel financially secure because my money is out of the U.S. I firmly believe that, when the U.S. goes down, it will take the rest of the global economy down with it...

I think Kevin may be onto something with this: "Or... Maybe the collapse is happening now, in slow motion." Susan C. Walker, writing about the effects of a drop in housing prices, quoted a historian of the Great Depression:

The real problem is that markets can move much slower than we expect, which makes it all the more difficult to decide what to do. For reference, historian John Brooks wrote about how it felt to live during the Great Depression. In one word, it was "surreal." Keep in mind his description of the 1929-1933 experience:

[It] came with a kind of surrealistic slowness ... so gradually that, on the one hand, it was possible to live through a good part of it without realizing that it was happening, and, on the other hand, it was possible to believe one had experienced and survived it when in fact it had no more than just begun.

Or, as Bob Dylan put it: "There's a slow, slow train comin' up around the bend."

The coming recession will be more severe than most people expect because it will come after two huge historical bubbles, i.e. the 2000 technology stock market bubble and the 2005 real estate bubble. These two speculative bubbles are interrelated, since the second bubble developed because the Greenspan Fed attempted to stop the stock market decline in 2002 and avoid a recession after 9/11, by driving short term interest rates down to 1 percent over a two-year period. This was accompanied by a decline in mortgage rates and other long-term interest rates, which stimulated investments in real estate through long-term borrowing.

Indeed, since 2002, the Fed has flooded the U.S. banking system with excess liquidity. The increase in liquidity has been phenomenal. In 2005 alone, the Fed increased liquidity by about $850 billion, printing money through various open market operations. As a consequence, the absolute level of money in the U.S. economy has been increasing at a 10 percent yearly rate, much higher than the growth in nominal GDP and nominal disposable income.

The main beneficiaries of this excess liquidity and low real short-term interest rates have been the financial markets (stocks and bonds), the market for commodities, the housing market and the consumption side of the economy. Some of this hot money has washed into financial markets abroad and helped push prices higher there also. This is why the coming financial retrenchment will be worldwide, and not reserved to the U.S. economy.

American consumers increased their mortgage debt and went on a spending spree on other goods and services, pushed by a "wealth effect" resulting from higher stock prices and the rise in the price of properties. In particular, they have refinanced their homes and taken out the increased equity to finance other spending, from restaurant and travel expenses to automobile purchases, pushing consumption growth way in excess of income growth. In 2005, the market value of owner-occupied homes, in the U.S., was evaluated at US$18 trillion. We can realize the size and growth of this real estate wealth, considering it was valued at US$8 trillion only ten years before, -and that total financial assets in the entire world is estimated to be at about US$74 trillion, with $36 trillion in equities, $18 trillion in bonds and $20 trillion in liquid assets.

Owners were helped in their rush to consume real estate wealth by new "innovative" mortgage financing by U.S. banks and credit unions, such as 'interest-only' mortgages or even with mortgages that capitalized first year interest payments. This came on top of the $10,000 worth of credit-card debt that the average American now carries. The unwinding of this mountain of mortgage debt and consumers debt will most likely spell the death of the booming housing market and of the consumer-driven growth boom. Fast increasing debt supports higher prices, but it is also true that the liquidation of debt brings about lower asset prices. It is therefore to be expected that sharply rising mortgage payments will be accompanied by rising foreclosures, and possible difficulties for mortgage lenders, and that housing prices will decline.

If housing prices start to tumble and consumer spending dips, while energy prices are still rising, the Fed may be in a quandary. On the one hand, against the background of the deterioration in the U.S. long-term fiscal situation, a huge American current account imbalance, high energy prices and with the U.S. housing boom cooling, the Bernanke Fed may hesitate between raising interest rates further to sustain the dollar and contain inflation, and declaring a pause to avoid a real estate collapse.

On the other hand, if core inflation remains above 2 percent, the Fed may have no choice but to keep tightening monetary conditions to prevent inflation from intensifying. Such tightening will most likely reverse the growth in the U.S. real estate wealth and with it, the above-trend growth in U.S. consumption spending. Mind you, the Fed has already raised its benchmark short-term interest rate target to 5 percent in 16 consecutive 25 basis-point (bp) rate increases since June 2004. Even if it were to stop its monthly rate increases for a few months, it may have to resume the increases shortly thereafter, if inflation remains elevated.

The answer to the dilemma may come from the behavior of the U.S. dollar and from capital flows. Foreign investors hold over US$6 trillion worth of U.S. financial assets and the fear of capital losses may induce them to withdraw some of these investments from the United States. A foreign capital flight from the U.S. would be bad news for the Fed, since this would prompt a sharp devaluation of the dollar, an acceleration of domestic inflation and a prolonged period of economic weakness.

A period of economic slowdown and rising inflation - in other words, stagflation could be in the cards for the coming years. - "Stagflation" is a word invented during the 1970's. The term refers to a period when rising commodity prices and previously lax monetary policy weaken the central banks' ability to control inflation through interest-rate rises, and economies start to stagnate. A nightmare for the Fed and the U.S. would be a new bout of stagflation - a combination of a stagnating economy and soaring interest rates. Just as it was bad news for the Democratic Carter administration in the late '70s, it would also be bad news for the Republican Bush Jr. administration.

Finally, let me say that if George W. Bush decides to bomb Iran, in the same reckless way he did in launching a war of aggression against Iraq, the above scenario will become a virtual certainty. Expect oil to hit US$200 a barrel and gold to rise to $2,000 an ounce, with the dollar falling and interest rates rising.

In conclusion, it is no time to go deeply into debt in this uncertain economic climate. One has to be reminded that the world economy presently stands at the end of the long 54 year Kondratieff debt-inflation cycle and at the end of the 18 year Kuznets real estate cycle. It would be prudent to take these facts into account as the trough in these cycles unfolds over the next few years.

Original

Propaganda is when the Western corporate media tries to influence public opinion in favor of the Iraq War by consistently tampering with truth and distorting reality. It is to be expected. And it is to be recognized for what it is. On occasions when the media does its job responsibly and reports events like the November 19, 2005, Haditha Massacre, it must also be willing and able to anticipate and counter propaganda campaigns that will inevitably follow. It is to be expected that the responsible members of the media fraternity will stick to their guns and not join the propagandists.

This piece is a summary of five most commonly deployed crisis management propaganda tactics which the State and Media combine that we can expect to see in relation to the Haditha Massacre. Listed in a loose chronological order of their deployment, the tactics are: Delay, Distract, Discredit, Spotlight and Scapegoat. Each of the five public relations campaigns will here be discussed in the context of the Haditha Massacre.

Delay

Al-Jazeera channel, with over 40 million viewers in the Arab world, is the largest broadcaster of news in the Middle East. It has been bearing the brunt of an ongoing violent US propaganda campaign. Their station headquarters in both Afghanistan and Baghdad were destroyed by US forces during the US invasions of both countries. In Baghdad, the attack on their office by a US warplane killed their correspondent Tareq Ayoub. Additionally, al-Jazeera reporters throughout Iraq have been systematically detained and intimidated before the broadcaster was banned outright from the country. These are somewhat contradictory actions for an occupying force ostensibly attempting to promote democracy and freedom in Iraq.

On November 19, 2005, the day of the Haditha Massacre, al-Jazeera had long since been banned from operating in Iraq. The station forced to conduct its war reporting from a desk in Doha, Qatar, was doing so via telephone. Two Iraqis worked diligently to cover the US occupation of Iraq through a loose network of contacts within Iraq. Defying the US-imposed extreme challenges, al-Jazeera, by dint of its responsible reporting, had the entire Haditha scoop as soon as it occurred, which they shared with Western and other media outlets, while the latter were content to participate in delaying the story nearly four months by regurgitating unverified military releases.

Two days after the massacre, DahrJamailiraq.com was the only free place on the Internet that carried al-Jazeera's report translated into English (it could be viewed at MidEastWire.com for a fee).

The anchorperson for al-Jazeera in Doha, Qatar, interviewed journalist Walid Khalid in Bahgdad. Khalid's report, translated by MidEastWire.com, was as follows:

Yesterday evening, an explosive charge went off under a US Marines vehicle in the al-Subhani area, destroying it completely. Half an hour later, the US reaction was violent. US aircraft bombarded four houses near the scene of the incident, causing the immediate death of five Iraqis. Afterward, the US troops stormed three adjacent houses where three families were living near the scene of the explosion. Medical sources and eyewitnesses close to these families affirmed that the US troops, along with the Iraqi Army, executed 21 persons; that is, three families, including nine children and boys, seven women, and three elderly people.

Contrast this to the reportage of the slaughter by the New York Times, the "newspaper of note" in the United States. Unquestioningly parroting the military press release, their story of November 21, 2005, read: "The Marine Corps said Sunday that 15 Iraqi civilians and a Marine were killed Saturday when a roadside bomb exploded in Haditha, 140 miles northwest of Baghdad. The bombing on Saturday in Haditha, on the Euphrates in the Sunni-dominated province of Anbar, was aimed at a convoy of American Marines and Iraqi Army soldiers, said Capt. Jeffrey S. Pool, a Marine spokesman. After the explosion, gunmen opened fire on the convoy. At least eight insurgents were killed in the firefight, the captain said."

The organization Iraq Body Count (IBC) immediately endorsed this, clearly demonstrating how its tally of Iraqi civilian deaths due to the war is way below the actual numbers. Exclusively referencing samples from the Western media that willingly embrace the official propaganda, IBC can hardly constitute an unbiased or truthful source of information.

In April 2006, their database of media sources cited an AP story and a Reuters story from November 20, 2005, along with a March 21, 2006, London Times article. This is how IBC distilled the stories; "Haditha - fighting between US Marines and insurgents-gunfire" and the number of civilians killed was recorded as 15. It is difficult to understand why IBC has once again opted to cite US fabrications mindlessly repeated by the Western media rather than take into account the readily available English translation of al-Jazeera's Haditha report.

On June 6, 2006, the Haditha Massacre is recorded by IBC as "family members in their houses and students in a passing car" and the declared number of victims is 24. One cannot help wonder how many uncorrected, unverified and unchallenged pieces of US military propaganda lurk in IBC's database. Haditha could be just the tip of the iceberg.

It wasn't until four months after the event that the Western corporate media started to straighten out the story. On March 19, 2006, it was Time Magazine that "broke" the Haditha story in a piece titled "Collateral Damage or Civilian Massacre in Haditha." The primary sources for this piece were a video shot by an Iraqi journalism student produced the day after the massacre and interviews conducted with witnesses. Another glaring evidence of how a few simple interviews with Iraqis and some readily available photographs and video can drastically correct the glaring errors in the Western media's representations of the occupation.

It is significant that this "exclusive" story came from the same publication that graced its cover with George W. Bush as the 2004 Person of the Year for "reframing reality to match his design." That brazen advertisement for the most unpopular re-elected US president in history more than establishes the fact that the magazine has an agenda that has less to do with responsible journalism than it does with influencing public opinion. That Time set its clocks back four months in regard to Haditha, when evidence was readily available the day after the event, only supports the charge that it willingly participates in US state propaganda. Journalists should aggressively expose the truth that Time, like its acclaimed 2004 person of the year, also reframes reality to match its design. If journalists do not look at Time's story with a skeptical eye as an exercise in PR before jumping on the Haditha bandwagon, they too risk shortchanging the public's trust with a meaningless opportunity to participate in a PR crisis anagement campaign.

But the Haditha Massacre is far from being the only story that the Western corporate media has delayed covering. On May 4, 2004, journalist Dahr Jamail, one of the authors of this piece, wrote "Telltale Signs of Torture Lead Family to Demand Answers." The story, published by the NewStandard, was about a 57-year-old Iraqi named Sadiq Zoman, who was detained at his residence in Kirkuk on July 21, 2003, when US troops raided the Zoman family home in search of weapons and, apparently, to arrest Zoman. Over a month later, on August 23, soldiers dropped Zoman off, comatose, at the main hospital in Tikrit. His body bore telltale signs of torture: point burns on his skin, bludgeon marks on the back of his head, a badly broken thumb, electrical burns on the soles of his feet and genitals and whip marks across his back.

Jamail originally wrote the story in January 2004 and shared the information with over 100 newspapers in the US for them to report on. The story was conveniently ignored by the US corporate media until it was forced to run other torture photos from Abu Ghraib after journalist Seymour Hersh threatened to scoop 60 Minutes II by running his piece about torture in the New Yorker, in late April 2004.

Another example of this delayed "reporting" involved the report on the use of white phosphorous by the US military against civilians in Fallujah during the November 2004 assault on the city. Jamail originally reported a story titled "Unusual Weapons Used in Fallujah" with Inter Press Service. US corporate media ignored the story until the Independent in the UK ran his reporting about the atrocity. Even after this, aside from a few token editorials that mentioned this war crime, most major news outlets continued in their silence. This despite the fact that the Pentagon admitted to the use of these weapons, and residents of Fallujah like Abu Sabah had long since told a reporter, "They used these weird bombs that put up smoke like a mushroom cloud, then small pieces fall from the air with long tails of soke behind them." He also described pieces of these bombs that exploded into large fires that burnt the skin when water was thrown on the burns.

There are countless other stories which the US corporate media has deliberately delayed from their reportage and which may never reach the wide US audience that they deserve. It is necessary to ask, when will the corporate media report on stories such as the following:

November 19, 2004: "As US Forces Raided a Mosque," Inter Press Service (At least four worshippers are killed and 20 wounded during Friday prayers when US and Iraqi forces raided Abu Hanifa Mosque in Baghdad.

April 19, 2004: "US Troops Raid Abu Hanifa Mosque, Destroy Fallujah Relief Goods," The NewStandard News (Tanks and Humvees are used to crash through the gates of a mosque in the middle of the night. Foodstuffs stockpiled for Fallujah relief are destroyed, worshippers are terrorized, shots fired, copies of the Holy Qu'ran are desecrated.)

December 13, 2004: "US Military Obstructing Medical Care," Inter Press Service (US military prevented delivery of medical care in several instances and regularly raided hospitals in Iraq.)

April 23, 2004: "Fallujah Residents Report US Forces Engaged in Collective Punishment," The NewStandard News (Despite what Marines called a "ceasefire" in Fallujah, refugees trapped outside and Fallujans still under siege continued to face measures of collective punishment.)

January 3, 2004: "US Military Terrorism and Collective Punishment in Iraq" (Mortars fired at a farmer's home and land in al-Dora, near Baghdad. As Jamail wrote in the aforementioned web log at that time, residents reported, "We don't know why they bomb our house and our fields. We have never resisted the Americans. There are foreign fighters who have passed through here, and I think this is who they want. But why are they bombing us?" When the farmer was asked what happened when he requested that US military remove the unexploded mortar rounds, he said, "We asked them the first time and they said 'OK, we'll come take care of it.' But they never came. We asked them the second time and they told us they would not remove them until we gave them a resistance fighter. They told us, 'If yo won't give us a resistance fighter, we are not coming to remove the bombs.'" He held his hands in the air and said, "But we don't know any resistance fighters!")

November 18, 2004: "Media Repression in 'Liberated' Land," Inter Press Service (Journalists increasingly detained and threatened by the US-installed interim government in Iraq. Media were stopped particularly from covering recent horrific events in Fallujah. The "100 Orders" penned by former US administrator in Iraq L. Paul Bremer included Order 65, passed March 20, 2004, to establish an Iraqi communications and media commission. This commission has powers to control the media because it has complete control over licensing and regulating telecommunications, broadcasting, information services and all other media establishments. Within days of the "handover" of power to an interim Iraqi government in June 2004, the Baghdad office of al-Jazeera was raided and closed by security forces from the interim government. The network was banned initially for one month from reorting out of Iraq, subsequently extended to "indefinitely." The media commission ordered all news organizations to "stick to the government line on the US-led offensive in Fallujah or face legal action.")

February 14, 2005: "Media Held Guilty of Deception," Inter Press Service (A people's tribunal held much of Western media guilty of inciting violence and deceiving people in its reporting of Iraq. The panel of judges in the Rome meeting of the World Tribunal on Iraq (WTI), an international people's initiative seeking to unearth the truth about the war and occupation in Iraq, accused the United States and the British governments of impeding journalists in performing their task, and intentionally producing lies and misinformation.)

Distract

Once a damaging, and most likely delayed, story hits the Western corporate media consciousness, concurrent stories may be released that distract the audience or dilute the potency of the main story. The handling of the Haditha story by corporate Western media is being managed similarly.

For example, on June 1, 2006, the BBC released a story detailing an alleged "massacre" at Ishaqi on March 15, 2006. Dahr Jamail had reported on the incident and had photographs posted nearly two months before. The BBC's story was suspicious: not only was it delayed by two and a half months, but its timing was concurrent with a peak in media interest in the Haditha Massacre scandal. Meanwhile, the BBC's version of the Ishaqi story itself, while tragic, didn't seem to be much of a scandal at all. It was not surprising that the day after the BBC story "broke," ABC published a story entitled, "US Military Denies New Abuse Allegation at Ishaqi" reporting that the US Military had conductd an investigation and found that there was no basis for claims of a massacre at Ishaqi. The idea that the BBC could "break" a story and the military could respond, investigate and have a press release about it in time for ABC to report findings of innocence the next day is unbelievable if not outright ridiculous. This series of media events served primarily to distract people from the Haditha story and sow seeds of doubt in their minds about the Haditha Massacre. One would expect savvy journalists to recognize the set-up from a mile away.

On June 5, 2006, the New York Times provides us with two additional distractions - one involving paid Internet advertising and the other the front page of the paper.

If one did a Google search on "Haditha" on June 5th, one was presented with a story entitled "Disbelief Over Haditha": via Google's AdSense. The story is essentially a patriotic piece comprised of interviews with military individuals at Camp Pendelton on Memorial Day where the interviewees were granted a national audience in the Times and an opportunity to shower sympathy on the soldiers involved in the massacre and cast doubt on the event itself. The fact that the NYT is paying for this story to appear every time one types in "Haditha" in Google, and that this story unarguably serves to create doubts about the events that occurred in Haditha, is clearly a distraction from the horrendous fact of the massacre itself. A question to ask: why isn't the New York Times paying to promote a neutral piece about the Haditha Massacre rather than for a piece promoting blatant and exclusive American patriotism and denial?

But on this same day, the New York Times goes further in obfuscating the Haditha Massacre with distraction and doubt by swallowing whole a media event sponsored by the US military. Two reporters were flown by the US government to an excavated mass grave site in a military helicopter. The mass grave site was ostensibly created when Saddam Hussein's secret police murdered people connected with the Shiite uprising in 1991. Coincidentally, the number of people found in this site is 28, nearly the same number allegedly killed in the Haditha Massacre. The reason that the US flew the reporters to the site is clear; this story of a similar massacre at Saddam Hussein's hands distracts the public from the Haditha Massacre with the faulty logic of, "Well, if he did it ..." The New York Times did not feel the need to delay the story and published "Uncovering Iraq's Horrors in Desert Graves" on the front page merely two days after the journalists received a government tour of the site. After the kind of directed criticim of the role that the New York Times, via US state and military propagandists like Judith Miller and Thomas Friedman, has played in orchestrating Iraq War propaganda, one would imagine that reputable journalists would know better than to accept a US-sponsored media outing in Iraq. Reputable journalists should additionally wonder why the New York Times continues to accept this type of propaganda as news, while ignoring events such as the ones where the people of Fallujah dug mass graves to bury the thousands killed during the US assault of the city in November 2004.

But the mother of all distractions came on June 8, 2006, in the media spasm over the alleged killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. We can be certain of this week's front page news. The ridiculous thing is that Zarqawi himself is perhaps more a US propaganda and media fabrication more than a real threat to the Iraqi people, let alone the security of the US. The story of Zarqawi served to simplify and put an al-Qaeda face on what is really a much more complicated situation regarding the resistance and rising sectarian tensions in Iraq. Now with Zarqawi's alleged death reported by the US Government, the media is swallowing the state's version of this story whole, despite all the fraud that we've seen in past US propaganda stunts, such as the Jessica Lynch "rescue," the Pat Tillman fabrication, the pulling down of Saddam Hussein's statue in Firdos Square in Baghdad, and even the capture of Hussein himself. Will the death of Zarqawi slow the violent resistance in Iraq? No. Will the death of Zarqawi bring improvement n the electricity, water and medical infrastructure in Iraq? No. Will the death of Zarqawi bring stability and security to the Iraqi people? No. But is the death of Zarqawi a perfect distraction from the Haditha Massacre, total failure of the US occupation of Iraq, and the ongoing US military assault on the city of Ramadi? Absolutely. And his death conveniently distracts the corporate media from reporting that while the Prime Minister of Iraq appointed most of his cabinet last weekend, the position of Vice President Abel Abdul Mahdi, which had been set over a month ago, was the re-appointment of one of the most aggressive supporters of the economic agenda of the Bush administration in Iraq. An agenda which includes the implementation of corporate globalization of Iraq's laws and far, far greater US corporate control of Iraq's oil supply.

Discredit

Perhaps the most interesting propaganda campaign we have seen in connection with the Haditha Massacre was a massive and well-coordinated effort on the part of FOX news and the right wing bloggers to discredit any allegations of war crimes simultaneously running down the entire "left wing" Internet. This campaign came in the form of fraudulent video testimony from Jesse MacBeth. In this video "testimony" Jesse MacBeth claims to have been a soldier in Iraq and to have committed a variety of horrendous war crimes. The video barely made a stir on the web since people questioned its validity within hours of its release. Yet, on May 24, 2006, mere days after the video's first appearance on the web, FOX news spun fabrications about the video calling it an "anti-war video" and claiming "that thing posted on the Internet [was] the #2 most cicked-on blog on the Internet in the last few weeks." #2 most clicked-on blog? One should question where FOX news had been able to obtain data on the most popular blogs - unless Dick Cheney's news favorite is even closer with the NSA than some might suspect. The data comparing traffic to various web sites certainly is not available to FOX to make such a claim. But the claim was false anyway. Jesse MacBeth never had a blog. The video was posted on a small, low bandwidth web site that could never have handled anywhere near the kind of traffic required for the #2 blog. In fact, three days before FOX's show, the web site publicly registered just over 1,500 hits - total - and the video wasn't available because the site couldn't meet even that meager demand. At 5 pm pst, two days before FOX's wild promotion of the MacBeth video, a Google search on Jessie MacBeth revealed only two obscure references to the video at all. The video was in fact downright difficult to find anywhere on the web that day, let alone! the "last few weeks" before FOX's broadcast. FOX's deceptive promotion of this video and concurrent discrediting was deliberate propaganda to pre-empt any future or existing claims of war crimes, such as the Haditha Massacre, as well as an attempt to dismiss the entire left wing blogosphere and the "anti-war" movement. By far the greatest promoters of the MacBeth video were FOX news and the right-wing bloggers.

Spotlight

When an issue becomes too large and too damaging to control effectively, savvy PR professionals work to focus the public's attention on a single topic within the larger issue. The public thereby loses its view of the forest - the more damaging and larger issue - for the single tree of a selective topic or event related to the issue. This single topic needs to be controversial enough to capture a large audience, but sufficiently containable so that the particulars remain debatable and do not spiral out of control. We have seen this pattern of PR repeated over and over in the war. Examples include endless debates about the 500 prisoners illegally held in Guantanamo Bay, when the reality of the larger issue involves over 14,000 Iraqis detained without trail in both disclosed and undisclosed Iraqi prisons, as well as countless people held in secret US detention chambers in Eastern Europe. Another instance is the torture "scandal" at Abu Ghraib, where public attention was focused on sexual humiliation and inane ebates over the uses of dogs or water-boarding, when in fact there exists documentation of torture much more violent, systematic and widespread at US hands.

The Haditha Massacre is becoming the Spotlight event in the much broader and more volatile issue of US War crimes in Iraq. Haditha is by no stretch of the imagination an isolated incident. Journalists should work to broaden the reporting of Haditha to include a discussion of the much broader issue of International Law and War Crimes. This is, after all, a war where US Attorney General Alberto Gonzales described the Geneva conventions as "quaint," chemical weapons were used on a civilian population in Fallujah, violent torture continues at the hands of the US or its proxies, arbitrary detentions of Iraqis continue in violation of international law, hospitals have been intentionally destroyed and occupied, cluster bombs and flechettes have been deployed on dense civilian habitations, civilians are being killed daily, and journalists have been intentionally targeted by US troops. If we lose the forest for the trees on the issue of the Haditha Massacre, we risk participation in US propaganda.

Scapegoat

Parallels are being drawn between what happened in Haditha on November 19, 2005, and the 1968 massacre in My Lai during the Vietnam War, in which US forces ruthlessly slaughtered 500 unarmed women, men and children in a small village. The most direct parallels will probably involve what happens legally to those chosen by the internal military investigation to take the blame for the event in Haditha. In the case of My Lai, a lengthy internal investigation was launched, and followed by a court-martial. Despite the massively brutal nature of the massacre, the cover-up, and the many people involved, in the end, one man, Lt. William Calley, spent roughly 3 years under house arrest.

As we see the media spotlight on the Haditha Massacre, we can expect to see damage control measures through inventing scapegoats as was done in My Lai and Abu Ghraib. As in the Abu Ghraib torture media blitz, the military will not concern itself with loyalty for the troops that put their lives on the line daily. The military will readily sacrifice its Charles Graners and Sabrina Harmans while its superiors dodge and evade responsibility and the incident is made to look isolated. Haditha will be erroneously presented as the crime of a few "bad apples." With the massive cover-up by military superiors, countless other war crimes occurring in Iraq, and a US media landscape that has assisted in the cover-up, journalists need to do more than produce propaganda of the various trials and legal minutiae of the scapegoats identified to pay for the Haditha massacre. There are much bigger stories that await telling if the offered PR bait can be rejected.

Conclusion: Is the US Corporate Media Complicit in War Crimes?

According to principles set during the Nuremburg Trials and the UNESCO Charter, the primary responsibility of journalists during a time of war is not to incite the public to violence. In the case of the Haditha Massacre cover-up, we need to ask: Is the US Corporate Media complicit in the cover-up of this War Crime? By helping to cover up countless events like the Haditha Massacre, is the US Corporate Media inciting the public to violence by distorting the truth about the war in Iraq?

Already, stories from the US Media and "journalists" like Judith Miller who promoted the war with fabrications have failed the test of journalistic responsibility set by the Nuremburg Trials and the UNESCO Charter. But the US corporate media seems extremely resistant to responsible reform. How can the New York Times be satisfied publishing an unverified official account of what happened in Haditha presented by a military that has been caught in countless lies, such as the Pat Tillman fabrication and the invented Jessica Lynch "rescue?" Is the US corporate media prepared to challenge these government propaganda deceptions? Or are they going to remain engaged in aiding and abetting the war crimes of the US military and its commander in chief?

"The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date." - Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's chief spokesman

So too with Channel 4 'News'. Jon Snow's email 'news'-letter (8/6/06) had this to say

The bombing and killing of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the point man for al-Qaeda in Iraq, is a dramatic and important moment.

Important? For whom exactly? In what way can the death of the alleged 'al-Zarqawi' be an important moment for the illegal occupation of Iraq? The implication is that with 'al-Zarqawi' out of the way, the resistance to the occupation will, by some process known only to Jon Snow, melt away. Point man? This kind of nonsense is not even worthy of comment.

He's been responsible for the beheading and slaughter of untold numbers of people. He was certainly a Godfather of the Sunni insurgency and specifically of targeted sectarian killings.

Alleged beheading? Godfather? Please Mr. Snow, who writes your abyssmal, infantile copy? The only assertion of 'al-Zarqawi's involvement in beheadings were the deaths of David Berg and Ken Bigley about which there are more questions than answers. Neither beheadings have been proved to be the work of 'al-Zarqawi'. If they have Mr Snow, where is your proof? A video tape of masked individuals? Pu-leese!

Back in May 2004, I wrote a piece on the Berg assassination ('Psy-Ops?', www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0237.html). Included were the following references,

A CNN story tells us that,

"The voice on the tape could not be verified as that of al-Zarqawi. CNN staffers familiar with al-Zarqawi's voice said the voice on the tape did not sound like him."

And according to MSNBC,

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was killed in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq "during the American bombing there," according to a statement circulated in Fallujah this week and signed by the "Leadership of the Allahu Akbar Mujahedeen." www.msnbc.msn.com/id/4446084/

In the piece I also referred to the fact that the Website that the Berg video appeared on had a London address. An address I found in a couple of minutes using WHOIS:

Site: Al-Ansar
Domains: al-ansar.net, al-ansar.biz, ansar.ws_
Address: 202.157.176.119
Host: Jazzira Net
Hail St.47, Umloj, Tabuk, Saudi Arabia
Whois summary for al-ansar.net/ansar.ws:
R., rachid alansar_net@hotmail.com
Al-ansar Net
184 High Holborn
London, London WC1V 7AP
United Kingdom
2078312310 (this a fax/data line, I phoned it)

To my knowledge this information, freely available on the Internet was never pursued by anybody, neither the press nor the intelligence agencies pointing to the fact that neither the government nor the press were at all interested in establishing the facts surrounding the death of Berg nor where the video really came from.

Snow's email continued,

Zarqawi was not only the architect of the violent insurgency against the Americans and the murderous assault on other foreign troops, but from an early stage he has run a parallel bloody sectarian conflict which is now disfiguring the 'new Iraq', with the attacks on Shias and their holy sites.

It just gets more outrageous with every paragraph. So now 'al-Zarqawi' is the architect of the resistance? Snow, get a life man. But worst is Snow's assertion that 'al-Zarqawi' "disfigur[ed] the 'new Iraq'"! Blasting the country back into the Stone Age doesn't qualify as disfigurement according to Snow.

And make no mistake, al-Zarqawi's death provides more than breathing space for the Americans.

From what, criticism? The resistance continues unabated with or without the 'help' of 'al-Zarqawi'.

Amazing, totally unsubstantiated and unmitigated garbage but this is typical of the kind of stuff the corporate media is shovelling out to an uninformed public. There is not a shred of real, hard evidence to support anything Snow has to say about 'al-Zarqawi'. You might call it a 'Snow job'.

The Independent too went OTT over 'al-Zarqawi' with a front-page spread that would do credit to the red-tops with its hysterical coverage of the death of the alleged 'al-Zarqawi' describing his life as "drenched in blood". The story bylined to Patrick Cockburn perpetuates the mythology with its talk of a

"macabre innovation, [whereby] he staged beheadings of Western hostages such as Ken Bigley which were then uploaded to the Internet to ensure the maximum publicity."

Once again, there is not a single shred of evidence to support the claim that 'al-Zarqawi' was the 'mastermind' behind the beheadings. Cockburn's assertion is also factually untrue as the actual beheadings were never shown on the Internet or anywhere else for that matter. All is smoke and mirrors. Moreover, it was coverage by the Independent and others that assured the maximum publicity for 'al-Zarqawi'.

And indeed, on page 2 just to confuse the reader, we read that

"Zarqawi is believed to have beheaded two US hostages"

Note the use of the word "believed" as opposed to the front page definative statement. In fact, the only references to the link between the beheadings and 'al-Zarqawi' are those sown by the US government, which as we will see are part of a carefully engineered psy-ops operation extending back as far as 2002. There are in fact no independent sources to verify a single allegation by the US concerning the role of 'al-Zarqawi' in anything at all, aside from the original involvement of al-Zarqawi in Ansar al-Ansam in northern Iraq, but even this has been called into question by other members of the defunct Ansar al-Ansam.

Let's take a closer look at 'Abu Musab al-Zarqawi'. He made his first public appearance in Colin Powell's infamous disinformation presentation to the United Nations in early 2003, although his name had already cropped up (dead) in a CIA briefing paper as the alleged leader of a splinter group based in the Kurdish area of northern Iraq. Dead because according to the CIA, the base was flattened by a US bombing raid in April 2003.

There is also the appearance al-Zarqawi himself, if indeed it is the 'real' Zarqawi. First he lost a leg in Afghanistan, then some pretty sophisticated surgery apparently restored it. Then even more remarkably, he rose from the dead as acccording to a story dated 4 March 2004, Zarqawi was killed when the US bombed the HQ of the Ansar al-Ansam where Zarqawi was allegedly hiding out, in the north of Iraq in April 2003. But even this is questionable,

"None of the former Ansar members remembers ever seeing or even hearing that Jordan-born Abu Musab Zarqawi was in Sargat, or anywhere else in the small Ansar enclave. Washington accused Mr. Zarqawi - whose leg was amputated in a Baghdad clinic in 2002 - of being Iraq's prewar link with terrorism." Christian Science Monitor October 16, 2003, www.csmonitor.com/2003/1016/p12s01-woiq.html

I wrote following up in a story dated 24 October, 2004 ('Psycho-Wars', www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0279.html).

"Last winter Zarqawi was supposedly working with explosives and deadly toxins at a terror camp in northeast Iraq. US Secretary of State Colin Powell warned the United Nations Security Council of the dangers he posed in a presentation in February last year. Powell claimed that Zarqawi and Ansar al-Islam were Saddam's link to al-Qaeda. The "evidence" behind Powell's assertions proved as empty as that on WMDs." Asia Times, February 18, 2004 www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/FB18Ak04.html

But most damning of all is a story that was published on the Editor & Publisher Website detailing the role of 'al-Zarqawi' as part of a sophisticated US psy-ops disinformation campaign. The piece titled 'A U.S. 'Propaganda' Program, al-Zarqawi, and 'The New York Times' By Greg Mitchell reveals the following,

Midway through Thomas Ricks' Washington Post scoop on Monday detailing a U.S. military "propaganda program" aimed at convincing Iraqis that Abu Musab al-Zarqawi has a very prominent role in directing violence in that country, there is one specific tip on how the plan may have also targeted American reporters and audiences.

Ricks found that one "selective leak"-about a recently discovered letter written by Zarqawi-was handed by the military to Dexter Filkins, the longtime New York Times reporter in Baghdad. Filkins's resulting article, about the Zarqawi letter boasting of foreigners' role in suicide attacks in Iraq, ran on the front page of the Times on Feb. 9, 2004.

"Leaks to reporters from U.S. officials in Iraq are common, but official evidence of a propaganda operation using an American reporter is rare," Ricks observed. He quoted Brig. Gen. Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. military's chief spokesman when the propaganda campaign began in 2004: "We trusted Dexter to write an accurate story, and we gave him a good scoop ... [but Filkins] told Ricks he was skeptical about the document's authenticity then, and remains so now.

The story continues

Rod Nordland, [Newsweek's] Baghdad bureau chief, on March 6 wrote: "The letter so neatly and comprehensively lays out a blueprint for fomenting strife with the Shia, and later the Kurds, that it's a little hard to believe in it unreservedly. It came originally from Kurdish sources who have a long history of disinformation and dissimulation. It was an electronic document on a CD-ROM, so there's no way to authenticate signature or handwriting, aside from the testimony of those captured with it, about which the authorities have not released much information." www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/...

The kicker however is the final sentence, where Ricks reveals an internal briefing, authored by the U.S. military headquarters in Iraq, which revealed that Kimmitt had concluded that, "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date." [my emph. WB]

Of course you'll search high and low for any references to any of this information either in the Independent, the BBC or on Channel 4. The hype surrounding the 'death of al-Zarqawi' reveals more than anything else, the desperate failure of the USUK occupation to stem the rising tide of resistance to the barbarism being carried out on the people of Iraq.

Here are some other background sources on the mythological al-Zarqawi:

The Timely Death of al-Zarqawi Hubub in Hibhib By CHRIS FLOYD http://counterpunch.org/floyd06082006.html

A U.S. 'Propaganda' Program, al-Zarqawi, and 'The New York Times' By Greg Mitchell www.editorandpublisher.com/eandp/news/
article_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=1002314713

Beyond Niger: Are All Terrorism Files Forgeries?
By Cyte cytations.blogspot.com/2005/
11/to-work-closely-with-jordan-to.html

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi: An Arab Villain Right Out Bushcon Central Casting Kurt Nimmo Another Day in the Empire July 6, 2005
http://www.williambowles.info/iraq/zarqawi/zarqawi_central_casting.html

Big, Bad Abu Musab al-Zarqawi - The creation of a myth
Is it time to 'dispose' of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi? Has he 'outlived' his usefulness?
by William Bowles - 1 June 2005
http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0335.html

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the Silver Bullet by Kurt Nimmo May 26, 2005 http://www.williambowles.info/iraq/zarqawi/silver_bullet.html

Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's Laptop by Kurt Nimmo http://www.williambowles.info/iraq/zarqawi/zarqawi_laptop.html

Rumours of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi's survival were greatly exaggerated By Gavin Gatenby
So who really killed Nick Berg? Possum News Network 11 April 2006
http://www.williambowles.info/iraq/zarqawi/zarqawi_rumours.html

Whatever happened to what's-his-name? by William Bowles - Friday, 3 February, 2006 http://www.williambowles.info/ini/2006/0206/ini-0391.html

The Myth of Zarqawi by Loretta Napoleoni November 11, 2005 www.antiwar.com/orig/napoleoni.php?articleid=7988

al-Zarqawi or al-Invention? William Bowles 6 July 2004
http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0253.html

The more things change the more they stay the same William Bowles 17 November 2004
http://www.williambowles.info/ini/ini-0288.html



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