America Stands Should to Shoulder With Georgian Murderer

Dick Cheney has been vociferous in his support for Georgia during his visit to the country. In a press conference alongside Saakashvili, the American vice-president said:

"After your nation won its freedom in the Rose Revolution, America came to the aid of this courageous young democracy.

"We are doing so again as you work to overcome an invasion of your sovereign territory and an illegitimate unilateral attempt to change your country's borders by force that has been universally condemned by the free world."

Well, not universally condemned by the free world. Universally condemned by those subjected to Western propaganda, but I digress. Let's remind ourselves of what this 'courageous young democracy' stands for shall we?

• During a peaceful anti-government demonstration in the capital city, the state authorities sent in special military forces armed with machine guns to violently disperse the crowds. Twenty-five people were arrested, including five opposition politicians.
  

• In November last year, 50,000 people took to the streets to demonstrate against 'government corruption'. Tear gas, rubber bullets and water canons were used to once more break up the demonstration. Furthermore, men dressed in black (apparently working for the government) were sent in to attack protestors. As a result, over 500 people were admitted to hospital.

• And, just last month, Georgian forces were sent into South Ossetia to assert Georgian authority in the region. Churches were burnt down, 15 Russian peacekeepers were murdered, 30,000 South Ossetians fled to the north and a further 1,500 civilians were murdered by Georgian forces.

Yes, this is what the 'free world' stands by. Repression, corruption, murder and violence. All this wrapped up in American friendly neo-liberalism. This is what Cheney stands by. This is what America stands by. Another nail in the coffin of the free world.

Georgia Receives American Aid

The question is, what do the Americans get in return?

Chevron in Ecuador

Given Chevron's existing links to the White House (Condoleeza Rice sat on the board of Chevron for many years), it is perhaps unsurprising that another name connected to the White House has joined the company. However, given the recent revelations about the extent to which those at the seat of power had authorised torture techniques, it is quite surprising to learn who this man is, a certain William Haynes II.

Haynes was general counsel to the Pentagon from 2001 until February this year. As general counsel, Haynes was heavily involved in crafting legal policies that led to the horrific abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo Bay. So involved was Haynes, that he is currently under investigation by the Senate for his role at the Pentagon during this period. Perhaps his most important contribution to the Bush terror regime, was a memo relating to a further memo that claimed that torture conducted overseas is not covered by federal law. Consequently, Haynes and his boss, Donald Rumsfeld, used this memo to justify harsh interrogation techniques at Guantanamo. In short, Haynes was a crucial component of the Bush presidency who was particularly close to both Bush and Dick Cheney. In fact, he was such an ally to Bush, he even volunteered to make calls on Bush's behalf when Bush was up for election in 2000.

Haynes' role as chief corporate counsel could have serious repercussions for Chevron's ongoing battle in Ecuador relating to a charge of environmental damage. The damage is such that Richard Cabrera, a geologist appointed by the court, set a minimum of $7 billion in damages to remediate damage. He also added a maximum figure of $16 billion which would include penalties for "unjust enrichment." Of course, Chevron dismissed the findings out of hand and have attempted to have the report struck from the case claiming it is "flawed and patently partisan". Furthermore, there have been numerous accusations about Chevron's conduct during investigations, particularly regarding the efforts of Cabrera.

During the course of the investigations, Chevron has been accused of "engaging in a pattern of vicious,defamatory and unethical attacks" . These attacks include full page advertisements accusing Cabrera of being a criminal, stalking him whilst he was completing his fieldwork and filing a separate motion with another court to have him removed from the case. In fact, the harassment became so grave, that the trial judge 'ordered security agents to keep Chevron representatives away from Cabrera so he could complete his field work without interference or fear of intimidation'. Furthermore, although there is no proof that Chevron were responsible, Cabrera's office was broken into and a laptop containing files relating to the case went missing. Undoubtedly, there have been real concerted efforts to de-rail this case by Chevron. The efforts they have gone to underline quite how damaging this court case could be if they are ordered to pay damages to the people of Ecuador.

Chevron have already shown how far they prepared to push the boundaries of the law in Ecuador in order to protect their interests in the country. With the addition of Haynes to the team, there is no doubt that Chevron seem set to explore new methods to achieve their aims. If Chevron are willing to appoint a man who is partially responsible for gross human rights abuses in the name of national interest, one wonders just how far they are prepared to go in defending corporate interest. One can be sure that both Chevron, and Haynes, are preparing to take this battle to another level - a level that could have serious consequences for those seeking justice in Ecuador.


Further Information: ChevronToxico: Clean Up Ecuador Campaign

Cheney Authorised Torture

Presumably he has also ordered for the Statue of Liberty to be torn down:

The US vice-president approved the use of waterboarding against al-Qaeda suspects, US media reports have said.

Dick Cheney and other senior Bush administration officials attended meetings to approve harsh interrogation techniques, which took place after the September 11, 2001 attacks in the US, ABC news and The Associated Press reported.

The officials took care to insulate George Bush, the US president, from the meetings, where waterboarding - simulating drowning and feelings of suffocation by causing reflexive choking and gagging - sleep deprivation and slaps and pushes were approved, according to the reports.

Participants were said to be members of a National Security Council's Principals Committee, a senior group of advisors to the president Bush.

Condoleezza Rice, formerly national security adviser now US secretary of state, Donald Rumsfeld, the former US defence secretary, Colin Powell, who was secretary of state, George Tenet, the former CIA director and John Ashcroft, the former US attorney-general also reportedly attended the meetings.

All in the name of freedom and democracy. Don't it make ya proud?

Pots and Kettles and Dick Cheney

As intellectually bankrupt as ever, Dick Cheney had this to say about Iran:

"Our country, and the entire international community, cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions.''

Boy, I had to stifle a laugh at that one. Mind you, he is right. We cannot stand by as a terror-supporting state fulfills its grandest ambitions. Ahhh, the good old Dick Cheney double-standard. Someone pop a balloon behind his back, maybe the next heart-attack might finish him off.

Attack on Syria A 'Dry Run' For Assault on Iran?

That's the question in today's Observer. Despite Israel's refusal to comment on the incursion last week, Peter Beaumont claims that this was a 'major' incursion. According to Beaumont:

Far from being a minor incursion, the Israeli overflight of Syrian airspace through its ally, Turkey, was a far more major affair involving as many as eight aircraft, including Israel's most ultra-modern F-15s and F-16s equipped with Maverick missiles and 500lb bombs. Flying among the Israeli fighters at great height, The Observer can reveal, was an ELINT - an electronic intelligence gathering aircraft.

Beaumont also claims that the action by the Israeli air force was part of an attempt to address neo-conservative foreign policy concerns. Unsurprisingly, certified evil bastard, John Bolton, has been one of the key men pushing the propaganda for this raid. From the same article:

According to an intelligence expert quoted in the Washington Post who spoke to aircrew involved in the raid, the target of the attack, revealed only to the pilots while they were in the air, was a northern Syrian facility that was labelled as an agricultural research centre on the Euphrates river, close to the Turkish border.

According to this version of events, a North Korean ship, officially carrying a cargo of cement, docked three days before the raid in the Syrian port of Tartus. That ship was also alleged to be carrying nuclear equipment.

It is an angle that has been pushed hardest by the neoconservative hawk and former US ambassador to the United Nations, John Bolton. But others have entered the fray, among them the US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice, who, without mentioning Syria by name, suggested to Fox television that the raid was linked to stopping unconventional weapons proliferation.

As time goes on, this story is becoming more and more interesting. It would appear that this was part of a concerted strategy between the White House and Tel Aviv to flex a few muscles and send a warning to Syria (in terms of its activities in Lebanon) as well as Iran. It seems fairly obvious that at some point in the not too distant future, the Israeli airforce will conduct some military operation in Iran. After all, Cheney is already trying to drum up support for military intervention, any claims that this issue will be dealt through official channels (UN/IAEA) is nothing more than fantasy. Military action is clearly the preferred option for the US and her key franchise state in the region. The question is, how do we stop this folly.

Cheney Behind Moves To Launch Attack on Iran

According to The Guardian, Bush is becoming more convinced of Cheney's 'military solution' to Iran. According to the report:

The balance in the internal White House debate over Iran has shifted back in favour of military action before President George Bush leaves office in 18 months, the Guardian has learned.

The shift follows an internal review involving the White House, the Pentagon and the state department over the last month. Although the Bush administration is in deep trouble over Iraq, it remains focused on Iran. A well-placed source in Washington said: "Bush is not going to leave office with Iran still in limbo."

The White House claims that Iran, whose influence in the Middle East has increased significantly over the last six years, is intent on building a nuclear weapon and is arming insurgents in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The vice-president, Dick Cheney, has long favoured upping the threat of military action against Iran. He is being resisted by the secretary of state, Condoleezza Rice, and the defence secretary, Robert Gates.

Well hey, I never saw that coming. When you dig a little into Cheney's past at Halliburton, his views on Iran become even more intriguing. For example, take this statement he made in March 1996:

“Let me make a generalized statement about a trend I see in the U.S. Congress that I find disturbing, that applies not only with respect to the Iranian situation but a number of others as well,” Cheney said. “I think we Americans sometimes make mistakes . . . There seems to be an assumption that somehow we know what’s best for everybody else and that we are going to use our economic clout to get everybody else to live the way we would like.”

Yes, you did not mis-read that. But it gets even more interesting:

Cheney was the chief executive of Halliburton Corporation at the time he uttered those words. It was Cheney who directed Halliburton toward aggressive business dealings with Iran—in violation of U.S. law—in the mid-1990s, which continued through 2005 and is the reason Iran has the capability to enrich weapons-grade uranium.

It was Halliburton’s secret sale of centrifuges to Iran that helped get the uranium enrichment program off the ground, according to a three-year investigation that includes interviews conducted with more than a dozen current and former Halliburton employees.

So, in case you missed it Halliburton supplied centrifuges to Iran to help it enrich uranium. Sounds remarkably similar to the chemical weapons Saddam had that were supplied by the West, doesn't it? Why would Cheney be instrumental in dealings with Iran, particularly as they have been considered an enemy of the US ever since the revolution. As always, Bill Hicks seems to sum it up best............

Guantanamo 'Close' to Shutting Down?

I won't hold my breath, but encouraging signs from Al Jazeera:

The White House has refused to confirm a report that it is close to a decision to shut down the prison at Guantanamo Bay.

A White House spokesman told Al Jazeera that George Bush, the US president, had "long expressed a desire" to close the prison in a "responsible way".

The Associated Press had reported that the Bush administration was close to a decision to shut down the prison and move detainees to military prisons on US soil.

Although miserable evil genius, Dick Cheney has other ideas:

Cheney's office and the justice department have been firmly opposed to the step, arguing that moving "unlawful" enemy combatant suspects to the United States would give them undeserved legal rights.

Of course, the question still remains as to what would happen to the inmates were Guantanamo to close. I suspect the US government will be less than straightforward in how they deal with this matter.

Please, We Need Your Vote - Now

As courageously drafted by Dennis Kucinich, H.Res.333 was filed last week. It is the first and most central ground statement toward impeaching Vice President Cheney. It was Cheney who led the fabricating charge as a case to invade Iraq. The charge was based on phony weapons of mass destruction. Now, almost as if it were timed to coincide with that initiative, former CIA head George Tenet revealed that they knew that the evidence was flimsy, erroneous and just plain bogus all along, but Cheney tauted his exaggerations in the threat anyway. This is without question the most momentous issue of our time and, whether you agree that Cheney should be impeached,or not, your voice is needed in order to speak out by telling Congress what they should do about it. You can either vote yes or you can vote no. Either way, we cannot afford to remain silent.

Of course, anyone who's been honestly and fairly paying attention to this also knows that since the exposure of the Downing Street Minutes, we were misled into the Iraq quagmire by an executive branch that could not be bothered with the actual facts nor a serious policy debate about those facts. When Richard Clarke spoke the same thing he was smeared in the corporate media for speaking up about his truth as has every other previous whistle blower. What will the contemptuous talking heads say now that the chief of the CIA at the time is another and perhaps the most clinching, confirming witness?

Apparently what galled Tenet enough for him to spill the beans on his own complicity (other than an O.J. scale book advancement) was that the Bush administration, in its typical cowardly fashion, worked the media in order to pin him with the entire blame for the failure of its wrong-headed strategic debacle.

"Tenet told us it was a slam dunk." Cheney pleaded on TV, as the five time military deferment kings again tried to escape any public responsibility for his own primary malfeasance. Yet, in an astonishing twist, Tenet revealed what the words "slam dunk" actually meant in the context that it was intended.

In his book, Tenet confessed that he was not being asked at the time to vouch for the quality of intelligence. He says that he was being asked if the case could be sold to the American people. That's all that was cared about, not whether there was any factual support for their arguments. It was about whether they could get away with bum rushing the rest of us. Therefore, when Tenet said "slam dunk", what he mean twas that they were positively sure that they would be able to stuff their pre-cooked intelligence down our throats.

It's with great hope that you can see where this information is incredibly damning. Tenet unleashed the intelligence's community with the equivalent of, "If, I Helped Them Do It". They were not having a policy debate about the strength of the case against Iraq, they were having a sales meeting of con men who plotted how far they could go while cheating us out of our present lives and our children's future lives with the contents of our treasury. They were determined to go all the way with it and at any cost. "Slam dunk" was not an intelligence assessment,it was a sales projection about their conjured up product.

Tenet was neither the victim of a bad rap, nor the unwitting excuse.Instead he was a willing co-conspirator, happy enough to play along with the war fever and collect his ill-gotten medal of freedom while mooching all the other various perks of the power they had seized. The criminal mastermind of the sordid affair was none other than Richard B. Cheney and that truth can no longer be hidden by even this most secretive of administrations.

What will it take for Congress to impeach him and put him on trial in the Senate for highest of all high crimes, launching a war of immoral and unjustifiable aggression that has cost more American lives than it did on 9/11, moreover, upwards of a million Iraqis, based on nothing but deliberate and calculated lies?

What it will take? All that is required is your voice, and the voices of your friends, neighbors and acquaintances. Vote now in the National Impeachment Poll and send your personal messages to Congress at the same time. In just a couple days over 18,000 folks have cast their votes. Everyone who has ever submitted an action page is needed to cast his or her vote in this one. There's no reason why we can't present Congress with a million votes on this, and it can be achieved. Once completed, impeachment hearings will become a reality on Capitol Hill. When that happens, what a handful of corrupt and overpaid pundits may have said will not matter.

Please take the much needed action of voting now, so we can win the victories that are intended as ours just as the Constitution promises,"We The People..."

Make your concerns known by casting your vote at the link below.

http://www.usalone.com/cheney_impeachment.php

(Courtesy of Maryannaville)

US Government Releases Charges Against Hicks

The timing of this is key. Dick Cheney is due to visit Australia next week and, given the controversy surrounding Hicks' imprisonment, the release of these details is an attempt to head off any major criticism. The charges certainly make for interesting reading, Hicks is accused of taking part in a training programme by Al Qaida which included:

1) learning about covert photography
2) the use of dead drops, and
3) wearing disguises.

Wearing disguises. So now the act of wearing a disguise is worthy of a spell at Guantanamo? The charges are hardly an indication of a dangerous terrorist that should be locked up for good. Learning about photography? Passing messages? Wearing a fake beard? The US administration has truly lost it.

Meanwhile, Hicks continues to suffer at the hands of an establishment that defies all international norms. There is still no end in sight for his ordeal, and his mental condition is rapidly deteriorating. It is time that the American government sent David Hicks back home and put an end to this disgraceful travesty of justice.

Obama and Cheney

Interesting piece in The Guardian today:

Now here's a thing. Did you know that Mareen Duvall, a great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-great-grandfather of Democratic hopeful Barack Obama, was also a great-great-great-etc-grandfather of Republican veep Dick Cheney? Well, courtesy of some remarkable and important work by US genealogist William Addams Reitwiesner, we can now reveal that he was. Amazing, really.