Antony Loewenstein

The only real surprise about the release of the declassified CIA documents was the suggestion by Robert Gates that these events belonged to a chapter of the CIA that has been consigned to history. The sad fact is that by today’s standards, these scandalous revelations are not even regarded as extreme.

What’s different today is merely a question of scale: yet the general outlines of the neocon program of warmongering, waterboarding, and the waylaying of innocents took shape long ago. The Bush administration has merely refined and perfected the details. And that’s the main difference: yesterday our rulers had the decency to keep their immoral means and methods a secret, which meant they knew they had not only broken the law, but had done something profoundly wrong. Today, they invent elaborate legal and political theories designed to justify and even valorize their police-state methods.

While we are forever reminded that 9/11 changed everything, the fact is that it merely brought the extremists into the mainstream. What was regarded as unthinkable a decade ago is old news by today’s standards.

Much of what was “revealed” in the “family jewels” was already known, and in detail not recounted in the released documents. Furthermore, the history of the FBI and other U.S. government agencies is replete with precedents for the activities detailed in this particular document dump. In particular, it is well known that the “liberal” heroes FDR and Harry Truman utilized police-state methods to go after their political opponents, the former going so far as to order a “sedition” trial of war opponents and the latter instituting “loyalty oaths” and greatly expanding the domestic spying apparatus he inherited from That Man in the White House.

You have to wonder if the right wing’s obsession with icons of masculinity is compensating for something we don’t know about.

Anne Coulter, who at least pretends to be a woman, holds up Pat Tillman as the epitome of American masculinity (at least until she found out he was a fan of Chomsky) while deriding John Edwards and Al Gore as being gay. She is either very brave or very tragic, depending on your point of view, had this androgynous and anemic harpy ever been seen in public with male company.

Jonah Golberg, could hardly contain his admiration for Dick Cheney, confusing Cheney’s general contempt for humanity, with masculine resolve.

In just two minutes of chatty, giggly Cheney worship, the following tough-guy cliches flew from their mouths:

* Cheney “doesn’t bother talking the talk, he just walks the walk”;

* he’s “a politician who doesn’t look at the polls. . . another Harry Truman”;

* “love to have a beer with the guy”;

* “a smart, serious man in American life”;

* “Have you ever seen Dick Cheney give a speech? I mean, the contempt for the audience is palpable” — “I know, I — see, I love that. He looks like he should be eating a sandwich while he’s doing it, eating lunch over the sink . . I love that”;

* “I can just see him yelling, hey you kids, get off my lawn. I love it.”

As always, the pulsating need among the strain of individual represented by Tucker Carlson and Johan Goldberg to search endlessly for strong, powerful, masculine figures so that they can feel those attributes and pose as one who exudes them (Jonah Goldberg: “love to have a beer with the guy”) is its own stomach-turning though vitally important topic. The same is true of the fact that the movement of which they are a part virtually always venerates as Icons of Courageous Sandwich-Eating Masculinity precisely those figures who so transparently play-act at the role but whose lives never exhibit any such attributes in reality. That, too, is its own rich and abundant topic.

Once again the irony is unavoidable. The man that Golberg idolizes for his “strength” has a history that reads like the antithesis of masculinity. Cheney not only skipped the Vietnam draft through five draft deferments, but these days has taken paranoia to macabre extremes, and spends most of his time hiding away in some bunker.

As the interview continued, Golberg gave us an all too familiar insight into mentality that has infected the far right.

GOLDBERG: And you know, but I do think that what Cheney has learned after a lifetime in Washington as a power player, is that the person who holds the secrets has power. And he is using that for what I would say, or probably what he believes to be certainly good ends. A lot of people disagree on that, but he’s trying to do best as he can and he sees holding onto power as a tool to do that.

That, of course, is the defining mentality of the Authoritarian Mind, captured in its purest essence by Jonah. Our Leaders are Good and want to protect us. Therefore, we must accept — and even be grateful — when they prevent us from knowing what they are doing. The less we know, the more powerful our Leaders are. And that is something we accept and celebrate, for our Leaders are Good and we trust that the more powerful they are, the better we all shall be.

John Dean wrote a book about this very phenomenon. His interview with Keith Olbermann last year is quite an eye opener.

Judging by the headlines, you’d think that London police averted the detonation of a nuke.

BRITISH police have defused a car bomb in the heart of London, a week before the second anniversary of the city’s deadly July 7 bombings.

A police spokesman confirmed the device was a bomb, and that it was found after a member of the public reported a suspicious vehicle shortly before 2am (11am Melbourne time).

Explosives officers defused the device, found in a car parked in The Haymarket, a central London street, London police said. “They discovered what appeared to be a potentially viable explosive device. This was made safe.

So what was this mysterious device?

Larry Johnson was hardly impressed:

So I turn on the telly this morning and find breathless CNN anchors hyperventilating over the nuclear suicide car weapon of mass destruction discovered smoldering outside of a London nightclub. One report from the scene notes that:

London police were contacted when witnesses saw a Mercedes being driven erratically near London West End night club Tiger Tiger, and the driver jumped out of the automobile and ran away. The car was reported to have two gasoline canisters and be full of nails.

CNN adds:

Explosives officers discovered the fuel and nails attached to a “potential means of detonation,” inside the vehicle. Officers “courageously” disabled the trigger by hand, he said. Security sources told CNN that the “relatively crude device” in the first car contained at least 200 liters, or about 50 gallons, of fuel in canisters.

You know what you call a vehicle with 50 gallons of gas? A Cadillac Escalade. The media meltdown over this incident is simply shameful.

For starters, gasoline is not a high explosive. If we were talking 50 pounds of Semtex or the Al Qaeda standby, TATP, I would be impressed. Those are real high explosives with a detonation rate in excess of 20,000 feet per second. Gasoline can explode (just ask former owners of a Ford Pinto) but it is first and foremost an incendiary. If the initial reports are true, the clown driving the Mercedes was a rank amateur when it comes to constructing an Improvised Explosive Device aka IED. Unlike a Hollywood flick the 50 gallons of gas would not have shredded the Mercedes into lethal chunks of flying shrapenal.

The fact that “officers courageously disabled the trigger by hand” coupled with the report of the smoke in the car leads me to believe that the mad London “bomber” tried to construct a Molotov cocktail of sorts and lit a cloth fuze. Fortunately he left the windows in the car up and there was not enough oxygen to really get the fire going. Looks like the brave British police reached in and snuffed the flame.

Judging from the overreaction to this non-incident I think we can safely conclude that Osama Bin Laden will remain holed up in Pakistan and let the fear mongers at CNN, MSNBC, and FOX do the dirty business of scaring the shit out of people.

Whatever you do, don’t break the law in Saudi Arabia:

Saudi authorities on Thursday beheaded a Saudi man convicted of killing a fellow national, the Interior Ministry said.

Al-Humaidi Al-Ghamdi shot Aeydh Al-Ghamdi to death after a dispute, the statement carried by the official Saudi Press Agency said. It did not explain the nature of the dispute.

Both the initial killing and the subsequent execution took place in the southern region of Aseer, the ministry said.

Saudi Arabia follows a strict interpretation of Islam under which those convicted of murder, drug trafficking, rape and armed robbery are executed in public with a sword.

Wednesday’s executions brought to 95 the number of people beheaded in the kingdom this year. Saudi Arabia beheaded 38 people last year and 83 people in 2005.

I’m keeping my hands to myself at all times.

Alastair Crooke, London Review of Books, June 28:

There was no peace process. And, in the view of most Palestinians, there is little prospect of one. On the contrary, the leadership of Hamas – like their colleagues in Hizbullah – are preparing for the long hot summer of regional conflict that inevitably lies ahead. The real cost of Hamas’s military putsch against the Dahlan militia is the weakening of that significant faction within Fatah which, for some time, has been uncomfortable with Dahlan’s and Fatah’s co-option by US and Israeli interests, and has – until now – advocated real co-operation between Fatah and Hamas. But now that Fatah has been humiliated the grass-roots are unlikely to be in a mood to support anyone who argues for a working partnership with Hamas. It is one thing to be perceived by fellow Palestinians as a Western proxy: to be regarded as a failed Western proxy is far worse.

It is too early to judge, but it is possible that the Hamas putsch will come to be seen by Muslims beyond Palestine as an event as significant as the outcome of the Israeli-Hizbullah war last July. The next few weeks may see the beginnings of efforts at mediation on the part of other Arab states, in an attempt to form a fresh unity government in Palestine. If this happens, the issue of security has already been decided: Hamas has settled the facts on the ground. The Americans and Europeans, however, can be expected to continue to resist any transformation of the political dispensation. What they want, and remain wedded to, is a reversion to the status quo ante of Oslo, however discredited its processes now are. But in attempting to ensure Fatah’s continued hold on power, they risk schism, renewed violence, and a fracturing of the Palestinian body politic for years to come.

A gem from Istaputz.

What I’ve done is going to be puzzled over and studied and followed… forever. — John Doe

Yes, I may be at 30 percent in the polls, but in 20 or 30 years, they’ll appreciate what I’ve done. — President Bush

Blair has landed the job he’s least suited for. This appointment is about as appropriate as giving John Wayne Gacey the responsibility of looking after a day care center. This sends an unambiguous signal to the Middle East. That the US has no intention of establishing peace in the region.

There’s no stopping Vladimir Putin. The controversial Russian leader is seizing on a finding by Russian geologists that Russian’s northern Arctic region is directly linked to the North Pole via an underwater shelf, and decided that this piece of land should belong to Russia.

This is not an insignificant piece of land either. Putin has his sights set on 460,000 square miles of territory. That’s equal to the land mass of Italy, Germany and France, combined.

Needless to say, the prize is a bounty of natural resources, with twice as much oil as Saudi Arabia.

Even the most conservative estimates of untapped oil and mineral wealth in the currently frozen Arctic are in the range of many trillions of dollars. Unofficial estimates, the kind that oil and mining companies don’t make public, because they are usually guesstimates, think there could be tens of trillions of dollars worth of oil, gas, coal and various minerals up there.

Predictably the US has expressed outrage over the move, but given the fact that they are occupying Iraq and killing Iraqis by the thousand, no one’s really turning to them for moral leadership about stealing land and resources these days.

And Israeli Merkava 4 tank was destroyed this week by an anti-tank rocket.

This is significant, because it reveals that these weapons are available to the Palestinian resistance. As we saw last year in Lebanon, Hezbollah’s arsenal of anti-tank weaponry had a major influence over the outcome of that conflict.

The Western media generally reports the non-Western world in a woefully inadequate way?

A CIA prison in Tunisia? Barely registers.

Vanity Fair’s latest edition on Africa…that hardly mentions the Africans?

Or the US role in the recent Gaza explosion?

Most corporate journalists prefer not to to ask the key questions because the answers are utterly predictable and uncomfortable for the Western powers-that-be. Besides, many reporters have no problem with the major powers conducting business as they do.

Australia’s Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, reveals his brilliant analytical skills during a recent interview with Haaretz:

“In another 20 years, the historians will ask how another president would have reacted to September 11 and if he had alternatives. Bush did not have to go into Iraq, but what would have happened if Saddam Hussein had emerged from the battle against the U.S. and the whole world with the upper hand? Where would we be today if in addition to the Iranian threat, we would have had to deal with Saddam? Do you believe that Iraq would have become a factor advocating quiet? Would the Middle East have been a safer place when a dictator like Saddam controls vast oil resources and strives to obtain weapons of mass destruction?”

So, always remember. Iraq may not have been a real threat before 9/11 but is a real threat now, and that’s why the US needed to create a threat to be able to control it today.

The prosecutors trying Jose Padilla want to present “evidence” that is completely unrelated to anything Padilla is charged with. What’s worse is that the judge has approved it.

Judge Cooke agreed to a prosecution request to play for the jury a 1997 CNN taped interview with Osama bin Laden. Judge Cooke excised what she said were the most inflammatory 13 minutes from the 20 minute tape, so the jury will hear only 7 minutes of this manipulative terrorist spouting his self-serving narrative. The reason for the jury to review the 7 minutes of Osama is the prosecution has taped phone conversations between two of the defendants, Adham Amin Hassoun and Kifah Wael Jayyousi, celebrating the contents of the interview, even, according to prosecutor John Shipley, rejoicing over bin Laden’s incendiary words.

This is what is driving Padiila’s attorney, Andrew Natale a tad crazy. There is no evidence, repeat, no evidence that Padilla ever heard or saw the bin Laden interview. “How the heck can we defend against something he’s never seen, never discussed, never had anything to do with?” Natale asked. Good question.

Padilla is being tried along with two other defendants, but neither of them ever met Bin Laden.

How relevant is the bin Laden tape to the trial in Miami? It’s a 1997 CNN interview with bin Laden in eastern Afghanistan in late March of 1997. Obviously Padilla is not involved in the conversation. He wasn’t even involved in discussing it with Hassoun and Jayyousi years later. Padilla never saw the interview.

The case against Padilla must be incredibly weak if this stunt is the best the prosecution can come up with.