Just wanted to add a few things to:
No Surprise: Samar ‘Albright’ Minallah Unrepentent
1. A Puppy I Once Knew:
The Samar Minallah Swat spanking video must me seen as what it is: A pure propaganda piece, as she has herself just admitted. It also reminds me something very similar that was done in America/Europe to “win-over” the public support. To achieve that objective, they released a video of a dog being gassed in a little room (Bet you forgot about that one):
It has since then rightly been described as:
“As the lies that led to war continue to unravel, it is worth looking back at one of the most shameless pieces of propaganda to ever cross the US [and European] Mainstream media. This was the video tape of a dog being gassed to death with was was claimed to be Iraq’s tests of a chemical weapon destined for the US. The tape was suspect right from the start, given that the dog used, actually a puppy, seemed chosen to produce the maximum sympathy in the viewer as it met its doom.
Well, the invasion is over. Turns out Saddam didn’t have any chemical weapons, nor was he developing any. Yet the video of the dog being gassed and blamed on Saddam remains. ”
We were supposed to view gassing a dog to test a chemical weapon with horror. But what we are seeing is someone gassing a dog to trick a nation into a war.
So, who killed the dog?
Samar’s video is an exact duplicate. Let me take the above passage and rephrase it:
As the lies that led to war (“Rah-e-Rast” — what double-speak!) continue to unravel, it is worth looking back at one of the most shameless pieces of propaganda to ever cross the Pakistani Mainstream media. This was the video tape of an alleged 17-year old girl being flogged with was was claimed to be show how cruel the Taliban were. The tape was suspect right from the start, given that the women used, actually a teenager, seemed chosen to produce the maximum sympathy in the viewer as it screamed in pain.
Well, the Swat deal is over and the killing commenced (and continues). Turns out the Taliban weren’t into this thing (an Ms Minallah herself wants to believe that, nor were they about to overrun Islamabad. Yet the video of the girl being flogged and blame on Taliban remains.
We were supposed to view flogging of the girl with horror. But what we are seeing is someone flogging the girl to trick a nation into a war.
So, who flogged the girl? (And who staged it? And who taped it? And who spread the video?)
Of course the trick worked there and the same trick worked like a charm. Our “civil” society lapped it up and like the dog video justified killing of millions, the flogging video to this day is “justification enough” for killing thousands and bringing misery to millions here.
Note: That Americans, Canadians, and Europeans themselves gas millions of dogs themselves of course is a fact conveniently set aside. That we rape, maim, burn, throw acid on, torture, karo-kari, bury alive, murder thousands of girls every year too was conveniently set aside and continues to be ignored by Ms Samar Minallah.
2. Everything You Always Didn’t Want To Know About NGOs/USAID But Here It Is Anyways
Briefly,
- USAID finances most NGOs
- USAID is an instrument of CIA/US Military
- US Military itself describes USAID and NGOs as “weapons of global war“.
NGOs (Samar Minallah In Black: "Just a little flogging is all I ask in return!")
Any Questions? Of course most of you will have trouble believing this — for you have been programmed to see USAID and NGOs as examples of “ultimate largess and great good” (just like we buy the philanthropy of every major crook and sing songs of his ‘nayki’). Someone actually countered me with this common belief:
“USAID is an organization that works under the State department of the US. It deals with civilian and humanitarian aid that is given by the US. Military aid does not come under its purview.”
That certainly is the common belief and that is what I am going to try and shatter (Shatter it I will but our educated house negros’ minds are so enslaved that no amount of proofs of things being otherwise seem to work). I said to the fella:
Next thing you know, you’d be telling us the “Centre for International Media Assistance” really does “brings together a broad range of media experts with the objective of strengthening support of free and independent media throughout the world”
Humbug!.
Of course this is what they want you to believe.
I am going to list a few of article and quote from the U.S. Military Field Manual itself so in case you don’t buy it, you know where to complain ;-):
Article 1:
Why They Hate Our Kind Hearts, Too: The NED, NGOs and the Imperial Uses of Philanthropy
“In recent years, nations have challenged the activities and very existence of non-governmental organizations. Russia, Zimbabwe, and Eritrea have enacted new measures requiring registration; “Open Society Institute” affiliates have been shut down in Eastern Europe; and Venezuela has charged the S�mate NGO leaders with treason. In Iraq and Afghanistan, staff of Western charitable NGOs (CARE and Doctors Without Borders) have been assassinated.”
[MAYBE THERE IS A REASON]
“Most funding and direction come from the wealthy nations. Often the donors form a conglomerate creating mutual responsibility and considerable ambiguity. CIVICUS, a partnership to promote “civil society” worldwide, is funded by, among others, American Express Foundation, Bristol-Myers Squibb Foundation, Carnegie Corporation, Canadian International Development Agency, Ford Foundation, Harvard University, Oxfam, and United Nations Development Programme.
If the source is confusing, the message is usually clear: “democratization” strives for civil rights and elections, but it also must include an open door to foreign capital, labor contracts, resource extraction, and military training. These networks also define “civil society” to include rock concerts and street mobs, but not government-provided maternal health clinics, child care, or senior services.
Affluent nations’ government agencies are important NGO funders. The most notorious is the US National Endowment for Democracy (NED; ostensibly a nongovernmental foundation), created by Congress in 1983 to do openly what had been CIA cold war covert activities. When these operations were revealed in 1967, there was shock, not so much because the US was covertly funding foreign political and labor groups, but because organizations such as the National Education Association, American Newspaper Guild, American Federation of State, County, and Municipal Employees, and the National Student Association were secretly used as pass-throughs, and all but the top officers were unwitting. Actual and phony foundations also distributed CIA funds.
NED changed this-but not very much. It distributes grants both directly and through other organizations, now overtly. Its “core grantees” are the Center for International Private Enterprise (of the US Chamber of Commerce), the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (of the AFL-CIO), and, affiliated with the parties, the National Democratic Institute for International Affairs and the International Republican Institute. Some private foundations chip in, for example, Smith Richardson and Mellon-Scaife. The Mott Foundation gave the NDI $150,000 in 1998 “to increase public confidence in democratization and the transition to a market economy in Ukraine.” Foundations also directly co-fund NED’s ultimate grantees. Thus, the Lilly Endowment supports the Institute for Liberty and Democracy in Peru, headed by Hernando de Soto, which offers free-market remedies for poverty.
Other capitalist democracies now have government foundations similar to NED, and they work collaboratively, e.g., the Canadian Rights and Democracy and the British Westminster Foundation for Democracy. Additional US agencies have joined NED and the CIA in this work, notably, the Agency for International Development (USAID) and United States Information Agency (USIA), which support and create foreign NGOs and media….”
…
“Why would these philanthropic efforts offend anyone? Why do they hate our kind hearts?”
In the first place, these public-private philanthropies have worked together to fund and direct overthrow movements. We had a “Subversive Activities Control Board” here, but export was encouraged. The grantees’ activities included destabilization, the creation of mobs preventing elected governments from ruling, chaos, and violence. Among those funded were the Civic Forum in Czechoslovakia, Solidarity in Poland, Union of Democratic Forces in Bulgaria, Otpor in Serbia, and, more recently, similar groups in the succession states of the USSR. Sometimes mobs (especially of young people) have been moved around from one country to another to give the impression of vast popular opposition. The NED, Rockefeller and Ford Foundations, and the Soros philanthropies have been particularly active in these operations. Human Rights Watch (formerly Helsinki Watch) has nurtured opposition groups. Reformers seeking social democracy or democratic socialism were excluded; such systems might oppress the “vulture capitalists.”.
It is hard to know how much native support existed for the Western-funded revolutions, as media and information (especially if we can’t read Mongolian, Bulgarian, or Uzbeki) are produced by the same conglomerates. Of course, all revolutions are made by minorities, often with assistance of foreign allies. However, by today’s standards as embodied in the UN Charter, subverting with the intention of overthrowing foreign governments is a grave violation of international law. Many were shocked by the NED activities complementing other instruments of intervention that helped to destroy the Sandinista revolution in Nicaragua. Yet the 1990 election was judged by the NGO observers to be a free one; neither threats of physical annihilation nor millions of foreign dollars violated the purity of that process. “Cold-war liberal” policymakers have advocated covert actions as a peaceful alternative to invasion, but it isn’t as if military action has faded away; they work together.
Such attempts are ongoing. The Venezuelan indictment is just one indication of a larger NED-NGO operation. Plans for annihilating the Cuban revolution, via “independent libraries,” “Red Feminista Cubana,” and other created organizations, are clearly spelled out on the NED web site.
NGOs are also used to disrupt revolutionary or even reformist movements that might interfere with neo-liberal goals, hampering the ability of corporations to go anywhere and do anything. Thus, as James Petras has reported, radical social groups and their leaders are co-opted into NGOs dedicated to worthy, ameliorative projects that are no threat to Western interests. Instead of broad movements challenging systemic causes of oppression, activists are recruited into discrete, well-funded “identity” politics and single-issue organizations, and poverty is just another minority status.
In India and South Africa, the very poor have been organized into Slum Dwellers and Shack Dwellers Associations, which meet with the World Bank people to discuss what is to be done. Protesters against the Free Trade Area of the Americas (FTAA) were channeled into groups that were invited and funded to attend the meetings preparing this treaty. Those concerned with the devastation of oil, lumber, and mineral extraction throughout the world can utilize the “participatory mechanisms” of the Earth Council, one of whose board members is Klaus Schwab, director of the World Economic Forum. Conferences for the protesters “parallel” to the globalization elite’s are supported by that same elite. These do create fruitful interaction among dissidents; yet they may also function as a diversionary tactic. We won’t know unless these possibilities are investigated.
Amelioration is important to keep those societies newly “marketized” on a steady course despite crushing poverty. In Mongolia (as elsewhere), “shock therapy,” decimating both employment and social services, has resulted in street children, child prostitution, and increasing maternal mortality, none of which occurred in its “undeveloped” or communist phases. However, the rock concerts and street mobs have attained freedom. Enter PACT (originally, Private Agencies Collaborating Together; funders now include the Ford Foundation, US AID, Mercy Corps International, the Nature Conservancy, the World Bank, Citigroup, Chevron, Levi Strauss, and Microsoft), which provides some substitutes for the former socialist institutions, while desperation drives Mongolia’s leaders to welcome foreign garment industries and copper and gold extraction….
…
NGO staff members have been accused of being spies. Whether or not this is the case, the system allows access to remote native cultures, where the lay of the land and sociograms of local influentials can be charted for any purpose. This type of missionary penetration, attained through Bible translation in the Amazon River basin, has been recounted in Thy Will Be Done, by Colby and Dennett.
NGOs are now extensively occupied in the relief of disasters, whether natural or man-made, and the US military (with its “coalition”) is deeply involved in both the comforting and the afflicting. To receive US funds, humanitarian organizations must support US foreign policy. Consequently, some, such as Oxfam UK, have withdrawn their workers from Iraq. Those remaining are often regarded as collaborators, which is not surprising, as many international NGOs have been handmaids to subversion, overthrow, and occupation. Some have even supported “humanitarian” bombing, especially in the case of Yugoslavia…
…
The peak of international NGOs, the World Social Forum, meets at the same time as the World Economic Forum, only far away. The WSF’s general funding is rarely scrutinized by the participants, whose travel expenses come from similar sources. An exception is a report by the Research Unit on Political Economy-India, which explains why foundation funding was refused for the 2004 WSF in Mumbai, and discusses critically the activities of the Ford Foundation in India.
It is news when any NGO nibbles at the hand that feeds it, as did a Pakistani theater group last November. Invited to a women’s theater festival in India, they were sent home because the organizers deemed their contribution too anti-US for a Ford Foundation-sponsored event.
As all generalizations have exceptions, let it be noted that some NGOs are impeccable, and even peccable ones often have humanitarian staff and directors. A recent attempt by dissidents seeking international donors to “democracy promotion” in the US, the International Endowment for Democracy, could give an effective jolt. Yet it may be that democracy, justice, or equality are not readily attainable by such means. For several centuries NGOs have been providing “disaster aid” for societies being “marketized.” What can we learn from this history?
Article 2:
Democratisation, NGOs and “Colour Revolutions”
“… US government expenditure on the orange revolution has been put at $14 million, while the overall civil-society promotion budget set by Washington for Ukraine (2003-2004) was $57.8-$65 million. The Soros Foundation and Freedom House pumped in a steady flow of funds through Ingos and local NGOs for “elections-related projects.”
Massing of pro-Yushchenko crowds in Kiev’s Independence Square was a meticulous operation of “careful, secret planning by Yushchenko’s inner circle over a period of years” that oversaw distribution of thousands of cameras, backup teams of therapists and psychologists, transportation, heaters, sleeping bags, gas canisters, toilets, soup kitchens, tents, TV and radio coverage, all of which needed “large sums of cash, in this case, much of it American.” (Daniel Wolf.)
Local oligarchs and US-based émigré Ukrainian businesspersons also chipped in with sizeable contributions to the neo-liberal Yuschchenko. The shadowy and fungible ties between the US government and democratisation Gongos leave little doubt that the latter were purveyors of large amounts of money in Ukraine that will not appear in audits or annual reports. Public acknowledgements of spending are understatements akin to official casualty figures given by governments during counterinsurgencies.
According to Congressman Ron Paul, the US allocated $60 million for financing the orange revolution “through a series of cut-out NGOs – both American and Ukrainian – in support of Yushchenko.” The figure happens to be “just the tip of the iceberg”. Claims that “Russia gave Yanukovych far more money than the United States (gave to Yushchenko)” rest on the myth that US government financing through the NED family “is publicly accountable and transparent.”…
Article 3:
NGOs: The Self-Appointed Altruists
Their arrival portends rising local prices and a culture shock. Many of them live in plush apartments, or five star hotels, drive SUV’s, sport $3000 laptops and PDA’s. They earn a two figure multiple of the local average wage. They are busybodies, preachers, critics, do-gooders, and professional altruists.
Always self-appointed, they answer to no constituency. Though unelected and ignorant of local realities, they confront the democratically chosen and those who voted them into office. A few of them are enmeshed in crime and corruption. They are the non-governmental organizations, or NGO’s.
Some NGO’s – like Oxfam, Human Rights Watch, Medecins Sans Frontieres, or Amnesty – genuinely contribute to enhancing welfare, to the mitigation of hunger, the furtherance of human and civil rights, or the curbing of disease [I take strong excetion to this statement and can prove through example about each why this is not true: nota]. Others – usually in the guise of think tanks and lobby groups – are sometimes ideologically biased, or religiously-committed and, often, at the service of special interests.
NGO’s – such as the International Crisis Group – have openly interfered on behalf of the opposition in the last parliamentary elections in Macedonia. Other NGO’s have done so in Belarus and Ukraine, Zimbabwe and Israel, Nigeria and Thailand, Slovakia and Hungary – and even in Western, rich, countries including the USA, Canada, Germany, and Belgium.
The encroachment on state sovereignty of international law – enshrined in numerous treaties and conventions – allows NGO’s to get involved in hitherto strictly domestic affairs like corruption, civil rights, the composition of the media, the penal and civil codes, environmental policies, or the allocation of economic resources and of natural endowments, such as land and water. No field of government activity is now exempt from the glare of NGO’s. They serve as self-appointed witnesses, judges, jury and executioner rolled into one.
Regardless of their persuasion or modus operandi, all NGO’s are top heavy with entrenched, well-remunerated, extravagantly-perked bureaucracies. Opacity is typical of NGO’s. Amnesty’s rules prevent its officials from publicly discussing the inner workings of the organization – proposals, debates, opinions – until they have become officially voted into its Mandate. Thus, dissenting views rarely get an open hearing.
Contrary to their teachings, the financing of NGO’s is invariably obscure and their sponsors unknown. The bulk of the income of most non-governmental organizations, even the largest ones, comes from – usually foreign – powers. Many NGO’s serve as official contractors for governments.
NGO’s serve as long arms of their sponsoring states – gathering intelligence, burnishing their image, and promoting their interests.
Article 4: (From the CIA’s Mouth itself)
Can the USG and NGOs Do More?
Information-Sharing in Conflict Zones [Read Spying]
Over the past decade and a half, three phenomena have expanded dramatically: the availability of information through the diffusion of information technology; the role of nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) as important players in international affairs; and the demand for international engagement in failed or weak states, some having suffered from devastating conflicts. These three facts interact and raise a number of issues for US policymakers and for the Intelligence Community. This article examines how information-sharing between the government and the NGO sector has evolved and considers whether changes in that relationship are warranted, even needed, for accomplishing the shared objective of improved international response to conflicts and other crises in weak states.[1] …
Article 5:
“…The funded organisations sometimes managed to weaken and even eliminate opposition to friendly governments, while creating a climate favourable to US interests. There were coups, such as the one in Brazil in 1964 that overthrew President Joí£o Goulart. The coup against Chilean president Salvador Allende in 1973 showed that the US government had not abandoned such methods. Agee claimed: “To prepare the ground for the military, we funded and channelled the forces of leading organisations in civil society and the media. It was an improved version of the coup in Brazil….
…
…The NED’s talent for channelling money, establishing NGOs, electoral manipulation and media brainwashing owed much to the long experience of the CIA, the State Department’s foreign aid agency USAID, and members of the conservative elite associated with US foreign policy (including John Negroponte, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Francis Fukuyama). Terrorism apart, the Reagan administration used the same methods in eastern Europe, where it conducted “a non-governmental crusade for human rights and democracy which avoided accusations of imperialism by presenting itself as a direct response to the needs of dissidents and reformers worldwide” (8)….”
Article 6:
Former CIA agent tells: How US infiltrates “civil society” to overthrow governments
…The CIA and the Agency for International Development (AID) would have key roles in this program as well as a new organisation christened in 1983 — the National Endowment for Democracy (NED).
Actually, the new program was not really new. Since its founding in 1947, the CIA had been deeply involved in secretly funding and manipulating foreign non-governmental voluntary organisations.
These vast operations circled the globe and targeted political parties, trade unions and business associations, youth and student organisations, women’s groups, civic organisations, religious communities, professional, intellectual and cultural societies, and the public information media. The network functioned at local, national, regional and global levels.
Over the years, the CIA exerted phenomenal influence behind the scenes in country after country, using these powerful elements of civil society to penetrate, divide, weaken and destroy organisations on the left, and indeed to impose regime change by toppling governments.
Such was the case, among many others, in Guyana, where in 1964, culminating 10 years of efforts, the Cheddi Jagan government was overthrown through strikes, terrorism, violence and arson perpetrated by CIA agents in the trade unions.
About the same time, while I was a CIA agent assigned to Ecuador, our agents in civil society, through mass demonstrations and civil unrest, provoked two military coups in three years against elected, civilian governments.
Anyone who has watched the opposition to President Hugo Chavez’s government in Venezuela develop can be certain that the CIA, AID and the NED are coordinating the destabilisation and were behind the failed coup in April 2002 as well as the failed ”civic strike” of last December-January.
The Cuban American National Foundation was, predictably, one of the first beneficiaries of NED funding. From 1983 to 1988, CANF received US$390,000 for anti-Castro activities….
Article 7:
How United States Intervention Against Venezuela Works
It is no secret that the government of the United States is carrying out a program of operations in favor of the Venezuelan political opposition to remove President Hugo Chávez Frías and the coalition of parties that supports him from power. The budget for this program, initiated by the administration of Bill Clinton and intensified under George W. Bush, has risen from some $2 million in 2001 to $9 million in 2005, and it disguises itself as activities to “promote democracy,” “resolve conflicts,” and “strengthen civic life.” It consists of providing money, training, counsel and direction to an extensive network of political parties, NGO’s, mass media, unions, and businessmen, all determined to end the bolivarian revolutionary process. The program has clear short, medium, and long-term goals, and adapts easily to changes in the fluid Venezuelan political process.
The program of political intervention in Venezuela is one more of various in the world principally directed by the Department of State (DS), the Agency for International Development (AID), the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), and the National Endowment for Democracy (NED) along with its four associated foundations. These are the International Republican Institute (IRI) of the Republican Party; the National Democratic Institute (NDI) of the Democratic Party; the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) of the US Chamber of Commerce; and the American Center for International Labor Solidarity (ACILS) of the American Federation of Labor-Congress of Industrial Organizations (AFL-CIO), the main US national union confederation. In addition, the program has the support of an international network of affiliated organizations.
The various organizations carry out their operations through AID officials at the U.S. Embassy in Caracas and through three “private” offices in Caracas under the Embassy’s control: the IRI (established in 2000), the NDI (2001), and a contractor of AID, a U.S. consulting firm called Development Alternatives, Inc. (DAI) (2002). These three offices develop operations with dozens of Venezuelan beneficiaries to which they contribute money originating from the State Department, AID, NED, and, although no proof is yet available, most probably the CIA. The operations of the first three are detailed extensively in hundreds of official documents acquired by U.S. journalist Jeremy Bigwood through demands under the Freedom of Information Act, a law that requires the declassification and release of government documents, although many are censured when released.
Venezuelan associates of the U.S. intervention programs participated in the unsuccessful coup against President Chavez in April 2002, in the petroleum lockout/strike of December 2002 to February 2003, and in the recall referendum of August 2004. Having failed in their three first attempts, the U.S. agencies mentioned above are currently planning and organizing for the Venezuelan national elections of 2005 and 2006. This analysis seeks to show how this program functions and the danger it represents….
Article 8:
NED et. al.: The CIA’s Successors and Collaborators
…A non-governmental crusade
The NED’s talent for channelling money, establishing NGOs, electoral manipulation and media brainwashing owed much to the long experience of the CIA, the State Department’s foreign aid agency USAID, and members of the conservative elite associated with US foreign policy (including John Negroponte, Jeane Kirkpatrick and Francis Fukuyama). Terrorism apart, the Reagan administration used the same methods in eastern Europe, where it conducted “a non-governmental crusade for human rights and democracy which avoided accusations of imperialism by presenting itself as a direct response to the needs of dissidents and reformers worldwide” (8). Here the gap between rulers and ruled made it easier for the NED and its network of organisations to use money and advertising to manufacture thousands of supposed dissidents. After regime change, most of these individuals and the groups to which they had belonged evaporated.
One of the most historic victories was in Poland. As early as 1984 the NED was distributing direct aid to set up trade unions, newspapers and human rights groups, all “independent”. For the 1989 parliamentary elections, the NED handed $2.5m to the Solidarity movement, whose leader Lech Walesa, a powerful ally of the US, was elected president in 1990.
The collapse of the Soviet Union was a prelude to the NED’s global expansion….
Article 9 (In ‘honor’ of the media):
Journalism And The CIA: The Mighty Wurlitzer
…Troublesome notes were heard from the Wurlitzer in the 1960s — but not from American journalism, which had already sold its soul to the empire. Instead, the announcement that the emperor had no clothes was made by a new generation. Much that was dear to this counterculture was stylistic and superficial, and there were many within this culture itself, and certainly within the straight media, who mistook this excess baggage for its essence. Nevertheless, the youth culture’s rumpled opposition was sufficient to slow down the machine and let in some light.
The ruling class failed to see the naked contradiction that they had created. They expected that the most-privileged, best-educated generation in history could be forcibly drafted to fight a dirty war against popular self-determination some 8,000 miles away — a war that clearly had more to do with anticommunist ideology and corporate greed than it did with the defense of America. The elites didn’t have a clue that this was even a problem; President Johnson’s knee-jerk response to the student antiwar movement, for example, was to pressure the CIA into uncovering the nefarious (and nonexistent) foreign influences behind it. …
Article X (Last BUT NOT LEAST!!!):
From Unconventional Warfare in the 21st Century: U.S. Surrogates, Terrorists and Narcotraffickers talking about the (U.S.) Army Special Operations Forces Field Manual FM 3-05.130, titled “Unconventional Warfare”.
(Published in September 2008, the 248-page document though unclassified, is restricted “to U.S. Government agencies and their contractors only to protect technical or operational information from automatic dissemination under the International Exchange Program or by other means.” The Department of the Army urges recipients to “destroy by any method that will prevent disclosure of contents or reconstruction of the document.”)
Economic Subversion
For the authors of FM 3-05.130, “properly integrated manipulation of economic power can and should be a component of UW.” Never mind that such “manipulation” can and did result in the deaths of hundreds of thousands of human beings in Iraq prior to the 2003 U.S. invasion and occupation as well as in a score of other nations that have defied the U.S.
The cases of Chile and Nicaragua are instructive in this regard, where the disgraced president, Richard Nixon, vowed to “make the economy scream,” prior to the 1973 coup, or the crippling sanctions and economic embargo imposed on Nicaragua’s Sandinista government. Various sanctions regimes unambiguously “can build and sustain international coalitions waging or supporting U.S. UW campaigns.” A similar methodology is being applied today against Iran as “punishment” for its legal development of civilian nuclear power.
Like all other instruments of U.S. national power, the use and effects of economic “weapons” are interrelated and they must be coordinated carefully. Once again, ARSOF must work carefully with the DOS and intelligence community (IC) to determine which elements of the human terrain in the UWOA are most susceptible to economic engagement and what second- and third-order effects are likely from such engagement. The United States Agency for International Development’s (USAID’s) placement abroad and its mission to engage human groups provide one channel for leveraging economic incentives. The DOC’s can similarly leverage its routine influence with U.S. corporations active abroad. Moreover, the IO effects of economic promises kept (or ignored) can prove critical to the legitimacy of U.S. UW efforts. UW practitioners must plan for these effects. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 2-7)
Indeed, ARSOF plans for waging UW take an integrated approach and assert that they “can and should exploit the active and analytical capabilities existing in the financial instruments of U.S. power.” The application of financial warfare however, including the “persuasive influence” of state and nonstate “actors” regarding the availability and terms “of loans, grants, or other financial assistance” is predicated on towing the U.S. line. The authors aver that “such application of financial power must be part of a circumspect, integrated, and consistent UW plan.” In other words, threats, bribery and economic subversion generally can work wonders in getting the attention of recalcitrant states not “on board” with the U.S.
Narcotrafficking Networks and the “Global War on Terror”
For decades, investigative journalists, researchers and analysts have noted the symbiotic relationship amongst international narcotrafficking syndicates, neofascist political groups, U.S. intelligence agencies and U.S. Special Forces in the war against leftist adversaries.
Dozens of books and hundreds of articles by journalists and writers such as Alfred W. McCoy, Peter Dale Scott, Henrik Krüger, Robert Parry, Gary Webb, Jonathan Marshall, Douglas Valentine, Daniel Hopsicker, Bill Conroy as well as exposés by former DEA investigators such as Michael Levine and Celerino Castillo III, have documented the long and bloody history of U.S. complicity in the global drugs trade.
While the United States has pumped billions of dollars into so-called drug eradication programs in target countries such as Colombia, Peru, Bolivia, Afghanistan and Mexico through ill-conceived projects such as Plan Colombia and the Mérida Initiative, also know as Plan Mexico, recent reports, most notably by The Narco News Bulletin, have documented the close interrelationships amongst narcotraffickers, rightist extremists, political elites and U.S. intelligence agencies.
Indeed, investigative journalist Bill Conroy recently documented how a U.S. trained and equipped special operations group within the Mexican army (the Zetas) “is now assisting the Mexican military in its narco-trafficking operations along the border.”
None of this however, phases the authors of Unconventional Warfare. And why should it. As they themselves describe the doctrine, unconventional warfare is “conducted by, with, or through surrogates; and such surrogates must be irregular forces,” the next logical step in the equation is the utilization of transnational criminal networks to advance U.S. national power. The section, “Law Enforcement Instrument of United States National Power and Unconventional Warfare,” states this explicitly: no tinfoil hat needed here!
Actors engaged in supporting elements in the UWOA may rely on criminal activities, such as smuggling, narcotics, or human trafficking. Political and military adversaries in the UWOA will exhibit the same sensitivity to official exposure and engagement because criminal entities routinely seek to avoid law enforcement. Sometimes, political and military adversaries are simultaneously criminal adversaries, which ARSOF UW planners must consider a threat. At other times, the methods and networks of real or perceived criminal entities can be useful as supporting elements of a U.S.-sponsored UW effort. In either case, ARSOF understand the importance of coordinating military intelligence preparation of the battlefield (IPB) for specific UW campaigns with the routine intelligence activities conducted by U.S. law enforcement agencies. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 2-7)
During subversive operations by U.S. ARSOF soldiers in target areas, indigenous networks, many of whom are linked to far-right and narcotrafficking groups (Nicaragua, Bosnia, Kosovo), including “former” allies such as al-Qaeda, are referred to as “The Underground” and “The Auxiliary” in FM 3-05.130. Details however, are few and far between and the authors state unambiguously:
There is more SF participation in developing and advising underground [and auxiliary] elements than is widely understood or acknowledged. Most such participation is classified and inappropriate for inclusion in this manual. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 5-5)
Preparing the ground for U.S. attacks and/or subversive operations by proxy forces aligned with American goals are a key component of UW theory. Whether a population is “on-board” with U.S. geostrategic goals or the tactical modalities employed in such campaigns is irrelevant to the new cold warriors of the GWOT. When “persuasion” fails the muscle moves in to get the attention on the “natives.”
Organization of the larger indigenous population from which the irregular forces are drawn–the mass base–must likewise be conducted primarily by the irregular organization itself under indirect guidance of SF. The primary value of the mass base to UW operations is less a matter of formal organization than of marshaling population groups to act in specific ways that support the overall UW campaign. The mass base, or general population and society at large, is recognized as an operational rather than a structural effort for ARSOF in UW. Elements of the mass base are divided into three distinct groups in relation to the cause or movement–pro, anti/con, and those who are uncommitted, undecided, or ambivalent. ARSOF, the underground, and the auxiliary then conduct irregular activities to influence or leverage these groups. These groups may be witting or unwitting of the UW nature of the operations or activities in which they are utilized. (Unconventional Warfare, p. 5-5)
In Colombia for example, U.S. “counterdrug” assistance to the corrupt Uribe government flowed directly to the narcotrafficking far-right death squad, the Autodefensas Unidas de Colombia, or AUC. Though designated a Foreign Terrorist Organization by the U.S. State Department, the Uribe government’s military high command, directly advised by the Pentagon, funneled weapons and intelligence that was used by the narcofascists to murder union organizers, often after payment by U.S. multinational corporations such as Chiquita Brands International, of anyone the group identified as a “guerrilla.”
In ARSOF parlance, AUC “influence”–dragging unsuspecting citizens off a bus and beheading them in front of their children, for example–is what is meant when corporate- or drug-linked death squads “conduct irregular activities” to “leverage these groups.” But the international community has another term to describe these activities: state terrorism.
In 2004, as part of broad U.S. efforts to unseat Venezuela’s socialist President Hugo Chávez, Venezuelan authorities arrested some 100 AUC fighters who were planning to attack specially-selected targets in Caracas. According to published reports, several high-ranking American and Colombian military officers were implicated in the operation.
The parapolitical scandal which continues to rock Bogotá, revealed high-level involvement by Colombia’s political and military elite with the narcofascist AUC. But the scandal also revealed the involvement of the U.S. 7th Special Forces Group and the 1st Psychological Operations Battalion in directly training and advising Colombian military units responsible for the worst human rights abuses.
Numerous reports have emerged that detail these linkages, including the 2007 disclosure by the National Security Archive that Colombian Army commander General Mario Montoya “engaged in a joint operation with a Medellín-based paramilitary group. ‘Operation Orion’ was part of a larger military offensive in the city during 2002-03 to attack urban guerrilla networks. The sweep resulted in at least 14 deaths and dozens of disappearances. The classified intelligence report confirmed ‘information provided by a proven source,’ according to comments from the U.S. defense attaché included in the document.”
This is but the tip of the proverbial iceberg, however.
In Afghanistan, the world’s number one producer and processor of opium and its finished “product” heroin, bound for European and U.S. markets, drug trafficking according to the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime (UNDOC) in their 2008 World Drug Report, is “out of control.” According to UNDOC, drug money is used as “a lubricant for corruption, and a source of terrorist financing: in turn, corrupt officials and terrorists make drug production and trafficking easier.”
Indeed, since the 2001 U.S. invasion and occupation, opium production has skyrocketed some 1,000% and accounts for a large percentage of the country’s gross domestic product. Tellingly, some of the staunchest U.S. allies in the area are directly tied to international narcotics organizations. According to UNDOC, the global increase in opium production “was almost entirely due to the 17% expansion of cultivation in Afghanistan, which is now 193,000 ha [hectares]” reaching 8,700 metric tons in 2007, accounting for a staggering 92% of global opium production!
Despite these horrendous statistics, the authors of FM 3-05.130 can asset that “the methods and networks of real or perceived criminal entities can be useful”! Indeed they can, as a seemingly limitless source of black funds earmarked for U.S. planetary subversion in the interest of expanding American corporate power.
According to a June 2008 report by The Times, after last year’s bumper crop sent the price of opium spiraling downwards, the Taliban and U.S.-connected drug lords linked to Hamid Karzai’s government, are stockpiling vast quantities of opium in order to induce a rise in world prices. And Time Magazine reported in October that the value of hoarded opium may be as much as $3.2 billion.
Celebrated by the Pentagon and the U.S. media as a “splendid victory,” the 2001 invasion and occupation of Afghanistan quickly spiraled out of control and the country now faces a resurgent Taliban, a new base of operations for al-Qaeda in the tribal areas of Pakistan and evidence of Pakistani ISI involvement in aiding the fundamentalist insurgents and the global drugs trade. But for American unconventional warriors, a full accounting of war crimes that ARSOF supervised and their Northern Alliance “allies” carried out have yet to be answered.
As Peter Dale Scott noted in 2002,
It’s a bitter irony: The largely successful U.S. campaign against the Taliban and al Qaeda in Afghanistan is resulting in an increase of funds for terrorists around the globe.
It is true, as President Bush has insisted, that global terrorism is financed by the flow of illicit drugs. Yet by installing and rewarding a coalition of drug-financed warlords in Kabul, the United States has itself helped restore the flow of Afghan heroin to terrorist groups, from the Balkans and Chechnya to Tajikistan, Pakistan and Kashmir. (”Poppy Paradox: U.S. War in Afghanistan Boosts Terror Funds,” Dissident Voice, August 3, 2002)
Indeed, among the staunchest U.S. allies in the region, characters such as Hazrat Ali and Gul Agha, “have been ‘bought off’ with millions in deals brokered by U.S. and British intelligence.” But while America was happy to endorse a drug-linked status quo that relied on its so-called “warlord strategy” to “stabilize” Afghanistan, part of the blowback from these dubious alliances included allowing bin Laden to escape into Pakistan in 2001 after the “battle” of Tora Bora.
But for Pentagon proponents of unconventional warfare, the “price is always right” when it comes to strategic and tactical alliances with narcotraffickers and international terrorists. After all, since “UW must be conducted by, with, or through surrogates; and such surrogates must be irregular forces,” everything is permitted.
3. Kill Me, Rape Me, Torture Me But Please Don’t Spank Me
Compare and contrast:
With:
Now we are expected to believe the first one is the deadliest. And it is because of people like Ms Minallah that we fall for this crap, no matter how nonsensical it is. We are all guilt of this from time to time. What Ms Minallah managed to do with her little video was convince the “civil society” that this:
was worst than all this combined:
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
Samar Minallah: “No spanking, no Human Rights abuse here”
(I know none of these picture are from Swat (most are from Afghanistan and a couple from Iraq) BUT if our media and the so called HR Activists like ms Ms Minallah had been doing their job, I am sure they would look something like this. The media collectively is a partner in this crime. The only job they have done is to repeat ISPR lies. )
BTW: Ever wonder why Ms Minallah never raised a voice against what happened at Lal Masjid? Is it because she was too busy shouting “Kill ‘em! kill ‘em all!!”???
Shame on all who think that spanking is the only HR violation that has happened in Swat — in fact, the whole country. And shame on those who ignore the misery brought on the people of Swat since that act of Ms Minallah’s
P.S. Forgot to mention one more thing. I had claimed that it was ms Minallah distributing the video the world over. She of course had denied it. But then Guardian exposed her lie on April 02, 2009:
“The Guardian received the video through Samar Minallah, a Pashtun documentary maker and anthropologist who lived in Swat for two years in the late 1990s. It has been passed between Swat residents by mobile phones.”
(The date too is significant. She first time she mentioned the video was on the night April 01, 2009 (Capital Talk with Hamid Mir Show). That means for this story to appear in The Guardian April 02, 2009, she must have already sent it to them even before she came on the show. She also has never accepted this fact that she indeed was the distributor and gives credit to YouTube).
Sudan: The two F-16s caught the trucks deep in the northern desert. Within minutes, the column of vehicles was a string of shattered wrecks burning fiercely in the January sun. Surveillance drones spotted a few vehicles that had survived the storm of bombs and cannon shells, and the fighter-bombers 
Overall, contractors (armed and unarmed) now make up approximately 50% of the “total force in Centcom AOR [Area of Responsibility].” This means there are a whopping 242,657 contractors working on these two U.S. wars. These statistics come from two reports just released by Gary J. Motsek, the Assistant Deputy Under Secretary of Defense (Program Support): “Contractor Support of U.S. Operations in USCENTCOM AOR, IRAQ, and Afghanistan and “Operational Contract Support, ‘State of the Union.’” 
Wither Iraqi style democracy? According to a very ominous cover story in Newsweek, it’s here in Pakistan. Newsweek is confident in asserting that ‘today no other country on earth is arguably more dangerous than Pakistan’. Not even Iraq. In fact, according to Newsweek Iraq is so 2006, Pakistan is it now; we’re the new black. We’ve managed to kick Iraq off the pages as the world’s most horrifying, most destructively precarious country and reclaim the title for ourselves. According to the Newsweek article, Pakistan has ‘everything Osama Bin Laden could ask for’ including a vibrant jihadi movement, political instability, access to worrisome weaponry, and a lonesome nuclear bomb. The article quotes a now deceased Taliban commander as romantically noting that ‘Pakistan is like your shoulder that supports your RPG’. It is swoon worthy stuff really. 
Scrub towers in the distance,
F*ck Politics 
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