Leslie Griffith

Cheney’s Toys

Published on The Huffington Post, Salon.com, USAToday.com,SFgate,com,Alternet.com--April 6th, 2009

How many times did former vice president Dick Cheney whisper undermining, surreptitious words into the ears of Israeli and high-ranking Pentagon officials? Every day? Once a week? Several seditious rumors a month?

Those who listened are simply Cheney’s Toys. Sadly, Dick does not understand his play date is done and his tinker toys need putting away. In the words of Shakespeare, “Yond Cassius has a lean and hungry look.”

This week Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reported some sobering news. Now that the clock has run out on Bush/Cheney, the former vice president has, according to Hersh, not only called Israeli officials and told them “not to trust Mr. Obama because he was pro-Palestinian and not ready for the major leagues,” but Hersh went on to report that Cheney/Bush “Stay behinds,” loyal senior officials in the Pentagon, National Security Agency and even inside the White House, are still reporting back to Cheney. Those of us who regard Hersh as one of the greatest journalists of our generation tend to believe him.

Sleep deprived and soaked in worry after stomaching that gaseous news, a startling look at an often-ignored declassified military document leads one to consider how back-room whispers can stir up funnel clouds capable of causing long-term hurricanes.

Past is prologue. Shakespeare wrote it and it is carved in stone on the National Archives Building. Many secrets are buried in the piles of paper held in that building, but one document gives a clue to just how far those who proclaim love of country, but seem to prefer love of power, will go to destabilize it in the name of a poisonous “patriotic” ideology. Although seemingly unrelated to JFK’s murder, a plan for attacking Cuba called Operation Northwoods was declassified by the John F. Kennedy Assassination Records Review Board in 1997. It remained clouded in obscurity until James Bamford wrote about it his book on the National Security Agency titled “Body of Secrets” back in 2001. Even so, it has remained unknown to most, another victim of the mainstream media’s memory hole.

Written in May of 1962, a month after the Bay of Pigs fiasco; five months before the Cuban missile crisis; and a year before President John Fitzgerald Kennedy was assassinated; the Northwoods document illustrates in horrifying language that Kennedy, like Obama, had “hold over’s” and “loyalists”  willing to risk millions of American lives to further their own agenda.

Despite a legion of Soviet Missiles pointed toward America, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, guided by Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer and goaded by Curtis “Bombs Away” LeMay, were itching to kill themselves some Communists—even after Kennedy made it clear he did not want a war with Cuba. Scorning the wishes of the President and the restrictions of the US constitution, the Joint Chiefs contrived and plotted a way to stir one up. Duplicitous whispers no doubt echoed through the halls of power then, too. Mr. Cheney cannot keep his telescopic gun scopes from covertly targeting Iran, just as The Joint Chiefs’ fixation on Cuba led them to concoct a chaos-inducing secret plan to undermine their President, as the follow memo proves:

 

 

How far were the Joint Chiefs of 1962 willing to go? 

      

• "It is possible to create an incident which will demonstrate convincingly that a Cuban aircraft has shot down a chartered civil airliner enroute (sic) from the United States to Jamaica, Guatemala, Pamama or Venzuela.
• “We could blow up a US ship in Guantanamo bay and blame Cuba.”
• “We could develop a communist Cuban terror campaign in the Miami area, in other Florida cities and even Washington.”

For the complete Joint chiefs/Cassius collage see: http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/news/20010430/northwoods.pdf

We all remember how plotting and conniving against a democratically-elected president ended in November of 1963. And we have heard the comparisons between the young, vibrant JFK and this new President. May the parallels end there. Past cannot be Prologue.

“Forever and Forever farewell Cassius.”

U.S. quietly breaks U.N. treaty.

U.S. quietly breaks U.N. treaty.

Also published in Huffington Post and Truthout.org

On Friday,AT A UNITED NATIONS meeting in Geneva, the United States broke a series of legal promises. Keeping those promises would have proved extremely embarrassing to the United States government by pointing out that human rights abuses are being committed here at home, and at U.S. military installations abroad. 

In 1994 the United States senate ratified the U.N. CONVENTION ON ELIMINATION OF all forms OF RACIAL DISCRIMINATION promising to provide reports every two years on racial discrimination in the United States. The reports were to include anywhere in the world where the U.S. military is in charge. In other words, the United States military no matter where it was on the globe, agreed to report discrimination. That now includes Guantanamo and Abu Ghraib.

The treaty is the “Supreme law of the land” under the U.S. Constitution, article 6, clause 2. Every nation that signed the treaty was charged with giving a national report on such basic areas of discrimination as health care, education, and prison terms. According to the Meiklejohn Civil Liberties Institute and the National Lawyers Guild, the United States on Friday presented a report to the United Nations Committee, never mentioning Abu Ghraib, Guantanamo, or the behavior of U.S. corporations working under U.S. Military contracts.

Instead, U.S. officials presented facts on the federal level explaining (for instance) how much money was given to education, how much money was supplied to prisons etc. Only four states: Oregon, Illinois, New Mexico and South Carolina were mentioned, and officials in those states who were contacted by local activists, say they never received any phone calls of inquiry by Government officials. 

At least one hundred human rights groups were represented in Geneva on Friday anxious to hear what the government had to say about racism here at home and abroad.

According to the founder of the Meiklejohn Institute, Ann Fagan Ginger, her organization's independent report also delivered in Geneva on Friday, provides statistics on racism toward Katrina victims, as well as discrepancies in life expectancy and other health care problems among African Americans, Hispanics, Asian Americans and Native Americans. In regard to U.S. military interrogation centers, Wayne county circuit court judge Claudia Morcom, (ret.) representing the Meiklejohn Institute, told U.N. officials in Geneva what the world now knows.

The basic racism practiced by the U.S. military in both Abu Ghraib and in the detention centers of Guantanamo includes torture, degradation, and illegal detention of hundreds of prisoners in these two facilities based on race, nationality, ethnicity and religions of those arrested.

Meiklejohn founder, attorney Ann Fagan Ginger wrote,“There is no way any U.S. citizen will be safe, even if Caucasian and native born, if the United States government can treat human beings as the U.S. military has treated the men it sent to those two facilities.”

To view the reports, click here.

The article above was published on many web sites. Here are just some:
Tribe.net
Society without State
Nashir Khan blog

You can digg the story here Digg

Will the spies come out of the closet?

Published in The Huffington Post, 2/14/08

The president must be happier than a pig in slop tonight. Since he and I are both originally from Texas, I assume I can use that colloquialism. Yesterday the Senate voted to broaden the governments spy powers and legally protect the communications companies that help the Bush administration's warrantless spying. There is no doubt the American public is walking zombie-like deeper into post 9/11 disaster. Giving up rights is always easy, getting them back never is. With all the lies this administration has told the American people, how in the world can we give up our basic right to privacy?

There is no warrant needed, no judge involved, just hundreds of warehouses manned by people hired by the United States government to monitor every e-mail and every phone call they want to. AT&T, MCI, Sprint, Cingular, Verizon and South Bell are apparently all involved. Sprint was fighting MCI over the government contract to run the hundreds of surveillance warehouses across the country. No doubt the bills are piling up, and it 'aint chump change American taxpayers will have to pay.

The bill allows the government to eavesdrop on large bundles of "foreign-based" communications. With just about every service call I make outsourced to other countries, I like every other American, have foreign communications at least once a week. Will that make us all targets? If Americans had not been victims of political prevarications before, perhaps I could believe the administration. In the words of our president, "Fool me once shame on -- shame on you. Fool me -- you can't get fooled again."

Imagine the political ammo the Bush administration must also be collecting? Which Democrats are calling "phone sex from fat girls" or setting up a meeting in the boy's room to make hay while the sun shines. The voices of outspoken critics of the administration keep disappearing. Do we really believe the Bush administration will have access to information that could possibly destroy its homeland enemies and not use it? (Without congressional approval, of course.) If character is reflected in how one behaves behind closed doors, then the mind reels considering this administration's propensity for playing dirty. Have we forgotten Valerie Plame already?

If the House goes along with the Senate and agrees to augment the government's already out of control surveillance powers, AT&T, Verizon and other communication companies won't have to be worried about lawsuits resulting from eavesdropping without warrants. These new broadened spy powers will give legal protection to those communication companies acting illegally in the name of "patriotism" -- a word every tyrant throughout history has used to explain away culpability.

As far as anyone knows, Qwest is the only company with the good sense to say no. Let's hear it for them! A corporation in Qwest of good judgment. I'll bet the Bush administration makes sure Qwest suffers for its constitutional cognition.

Meantime, as a reporter there's another issue that particularly worries me. I know of at least one mega-media-corporation that is a mass-communication giant as well. So, let me see if this equation is as problematic as it seems -- a mass communication company putting out news while spying for the government at the same time. Holy Toledo -- we are certainly not in Kansas anymore, but the government certainly is. Osama must be smiling at his dialysis machine about now.

I was reporting in Moscow during the cold war and remember looking up over the bathtub to see a camera lens pointing down at me. The KGB followed our crew where ever we went. It was un-nerving being watched and followed in a country where no one trusted anybody. When I arrived back in America I kissed the ground, and called my family. A phone call that most likely would be monitored today.

That's America Baby

"That's America Baby" one of my dearest friends said today when I told her the president was about to veto a second health insurance program that would give the nation's children the chance be healthy. What a day for the insurance lobbyists and CEOs. A double header today---with two apparent wins. Both are a sad reflection of what America has become.

Insurance lobbyists and CEOs have been busy. There are two insurance related bills under debate in congress that make me wonder if the insurance CEOs have the same psychological profiles as the CEOs of the tobacco companies who swore nicotine was not addictive. One bill would provide 10 million of the nations children with health insurance their parents cannot afford. The president apparently has the veto pen perched in hand waiting to keep those sick kids out of doctor's offices.

How does anyone justify keeping an estimated 10 million American children from the right to be healthy? Have we really come to this? What do these CEOs do with their hearts as they make their back room promises? How in the world can the president speak the name of a higher power and condone such utter greed and disrespect for life? "That's America Baby. That's America." My friend's sarcasm rings in my head.

What profound irony that the same group wanting to deny health insurance for the nations children because it's too expensive are the same people trying to turn back the clock making abortion illegal again. What twisted logic is that? Keep them alive, then let them die of neglect? "That's America Baby."

The President, I know, doesn't get out on the streets much, but there are homeless and poverty stricken children everywhere. An estimated 43 million Americans have no health insurance at all, they cannot afford it. The middle class is disillusioned and disappearing. Both parents work and there's still not enough money to pay for health care. The middle class citizens who do have health insurance are using it to pay for pharmaceuticals to keep them from feeling miserable. I'm walking to the medicine cabinet now. Many in this nation are heart broken, feel lied to, betrayed, are financially broke, angry at the wars, missing the soldiers and wanting to punch something. They feel helpless to get politicians to listen, so many are turning on each other becoming more tribal than the terrorists.

The subject of terrorism brings me to the insurance company's second apparent victory today. The extension of the 9/11 risk program, which is basically "Terrorism Insurance." If terrorists kill Americans and blow things up, the insurance companies won't go bust and things can get rebuilt. It reminds me of the mid-nineties when black insurance salesmen walked door to door selling burial insurance to the mothers of young black men living in the ghettos. Knowing then that one in five would not live to have a twentieth birthday. Insurance company Motto: get while the gettin's good. But, an addendum added to one version of the terrorism insurance bill provides an epiphanal moment. It would add nuclear, biological and radioactive coverage. Don't the insurance CEOs and politicians understand a world needing that kind of insurance is not a world worth living in? Do politicians really believe that if a nuclear bomb goes of, we wipe off the dust, get reimbursed and go about our daily lives? Not too many people would want to live in a world that needs that kind of insurance. Let's talk about ways to eliminate conflict, so this ridiculous kafkaesque environment ends some day. Ever heard of a insurance company sponsoring a peace conference? Step up to the plate guys. I'm desperate for understanding from the powerful here. Hence the baseball line. Some Americans may not want health care for children, but a baseball strike still brings the country to its knees. "That's America baby."

So here we are: living in a country that is so hated by the world and driven by it's own greed; lobbyists are spending millions fighting for higher deductibles on terrorism insurance. The insanity certainty makes me want to check out like most of the young people I know. Go live on a mountain and wait for the inevitable. But, I can't. I'm fighting hard to stay present. We have to or nothing will be left for our kids. We have to keep asking, where are the schools teaching tolerance and diversity and making sure hate is abated? Without that, all the insurance in the world won't save us from much of the worlds contempt.

Why not care for our children and give them health of body and health of mind by educating them. Perhaps if we invested in our children now and taught them tolerance and conflict resolution, the need for terrorism insurance would not exist.