The 7 CIA KIAs in Afghanistan: When revenge really means reprisal

Occupied Afghanistan--Remember all those WWII movies where the Nazis are being attacked by partisans and members of the resistance? This is what's happening in Afghanistan.
This doesn't mean the Afghans are "good guys," they're just reacting naturally, and they have their own issues. We're worse in our behavior at this historical moment.

The CIA are calling for "revenge" in an illegal war and remembering that this is an illegal occupation is the key (wars of aggression are illegal under international law): they're already kidnapping, torturing, and even slaughtering Afghan nationals, and now, someone they thought was going to be their "snitch" (informant) got into a military facility knowing seven of them were going to be there and blew himself and them up with a bomb strapped to his torso. That's desperation under a bloody occupation, not some arbitrary act for the hell of it, and it's not even necessarily extreme. It's what happens under bloody occupations.

What the CIA should have used was the term "reprisal," the one that the Nazis and their victims frequently used when they retaliated for deaths within their own ranks. The problem in their logic at Langley--and our own if we accept such arguments--is obvious. We're the wrong side, and we're the aggressors, not the Afghans. This kind of wrong-headed thinking is only going to keep us digging our own hole, and eventually, we're probably going to get our own Stalingrad in some form or another. This "revenge" is really reprisal, don't kid yourself. We're the bad guys. We're the wrong side. The Afghan that did this killed people who might have been there to torture in his mind, and certainly came as bringers of death.

Why won't President Obama fire the remaining Bush/Cheney loyalists?

Washington D.C.--This has been perplexing me for months now, but recall that when George W. Bush entered office, one of the very first things he did back in 2001 was to fire virtually all of the 93 standing U.S. Attorneys. What was he thinking? He didn't want anyone who wasn't on the same page or loyal to him--that's not legitimate, incidentally, not in the public interest.

That's why President Obama needs to fire every single standing U.S. Attorney now, but he won't. That speaks volumes about him if it continues much longer, that he's no different than George W. Bush and his administration. But it's possibly worse than that.

But why do mass firings and what's the problem? Very simple: It's becoming obvious--for example--that embedded appointees within the DOJ are working against the new president as well as at the Pentagon and even within the confines of the CIA and throughout the federal bureaucracy, working against him, his party, and the public will. This doesn't appear to concern President Obama.

Is he crazy? Is he nuts? Is he stupid? No.

I think the 2008 revelations about Attorney General Eric Holder and his connections to the Chiquita Brands International Inc. corporation as an attorney representing their interests in a recent civil suit states-it-plainly: the Obama administration is riddled with the same kinds of scumbags from the corporate world and the realm of the political operative, the corporate gutter. Oh yeah, and included many of the very same scumbags that were there in the bureaucracy under Bush II. This is unacceptable and shows so far that the Obama administration has no problem with politicizing law enforcement, a very dangerous road to go down in a democracy. But it's all about money, isn't it? Yes it is.

For years, Chiquita was paying off right wing paramilitaries (AUC, listed as terrorists at the time by our government) not to attack their banana plantations in Colombia during their "dirty war" with Marxist guerrillas, FARC. In the interest of fairness, both sides (the paramilitaries are generally allied with the drug-smuggling oligarchs in the North) sometimes run cocaine to fund their activities. So, Chiquita was breaking the law--did I mention there have been allegations that they were also reported running cocaine in some of their shipments? It appears that they wanted to pad their bottom line, but this is still unconfirmed.

At the time--March 2007--I and most of the nation began noticing the DC Madam scandal and her prosecutor, the moronic U.S. Attorney Jeffrey A. Taylor who'd been unethically appointed through a provision of the Patriot Act as an interim U.S. Attorney by George W. Bush while Congress was out of session, sometime in late September 2006. Just a few months later, Taylor was expediting the plea agreement for Chiquita...and bringing an indictment against Palfrey (no, I'm not drawing a connection here). Jeffrey was very busy during those months, covering-up for a gaggle of corporate bigwigs, Bush II appointees, government contractors, and not just with the DC Madam scandal--he had his work cut-out for him, but he's a rock, a skilled sycophant. Well...not exactly: he's also been known to file under the wrong statutes, but that's another story for another time.

And so, many other names that will be familiar from the Bush II years that never really ended were also involved in the Chiquita settlement; even the DOJ's/DHS's Michael Chertoff, but it was Holder and Taylor who brokered the deal that gave Chiquita a very tiny fine considering that they were paying off terrorists for several years, basically giving them material support. Holder has a lot to explain as their former attorney, and fine, he's going to claim attorney-client privilege so he's going to have to be investigated eventually if it ever even happens.

No criminal holding public office has ever been known to allow the prosecution of themselves, other than Richard Nixon, and he didn't go down quietly. Obama isn't going to fire these standing U.S. Attorneys from the Bush II years soon because he answers to the same bosses, and so does his Attorney General. Why fire the appointees after that? The current president is just another fraud. Power concedes nothing without a demand. Beware these businessmen who come at you with knives: they're you're businessmen.

"The Department of Justice, Corporations, Buying the Law-Part II: Strange Bargains," Larisa Alexandrovna and Muriel Kane, Rawstory, 07.21.2009: http://rawstory.com/08/news/2009/07/21/buying-the-law/

Are some of Louisiana Senator David Vitter's supporters domestic terrorists?

New Orleans, Louisiana--To put it mildly, whomever attempted to murder Brian Welsh--political adviser to porn star Stormy Daniels is trying to send him and the potential candidate a very obvious message: don't run against incumbent Republican Senator David Vitter. There's no other word but terrorism for this, domestic terrorism.

An act of domestic, political terrorism has happened once again on the streets of America and nobody's paying very much attention, if at all. This event happened the day before yesterday on the streets of New Orleans, but I have yet to see it get any play in the mainstream press. Yet, this is a very serious threat to the integrity of our political process, and the likelihood that this clown had sympathies with the Democratic Party are slim-to-none.

And so, this must come from the far right. Considering that it was probably a pipe-bomb, and that it was a solitary individual, the arrow already points decidedly to-the-right. Welsh stated yesterday:

“No one has seen anything like this before…not in such a dramatic fashion,” Welsh told ABC-26. “It’s too early for me to go pointing fingers. I’d like to hear officially what happened and then we can take it from there. If someone’s trying to send me a message like this, it’s not going to work.”

Daniels is considering a run for the Louisiana senate seat currently occupied by incumbent Republican David Vitter whose been linked to the “D.C Madam,” Deborah Jeane Palfrey. Vitter's cell phone number turned up numerous times in Palfrey's records. ("Political Advisor to Stormy Daniels Hit by Car Bomb," XBIX News Wire.com, 07.28.2009)

I'd agree that it's too early to point fingers at specific groups on the right, and I applaud his reaction of not being deterred, but they weren't doing this for the Democrats--there's no indication of this at all. But I do believe that this comes from the extremist right and that it's time to bring in the FBI, not that I care for the institution, but this is a high crime.

Welsh is wrong about "No one has seen anything like this before," this has happened, though not quite the same way, but it has been dramatic before; one just needs to recall the assassination of Bobby Kennedy, the violence of the Civil Rights era, or even the attempt on George Wallace's life in 1972. Then there's government-sponsored terrorism. Sometime around October 6, 1976, the anti-Castro Cuban terrorist group Alpha 66 (backed by elements of our government) placed a bomb on a Cuban airliner:

All 73 people aboard died in the Oct. 6, 1976 disaster, including 19 members of

Cuba's junior national fencing team returning from Caracas, most of them
teen-agers.

Two Cubans were jailed in Venezuela for masterminding the attack. One was
Orlando Bosch, a physician who left the United States after he was paroled from
a 10-year prison sentence for firing a rocket at a Polish ship anchored in Miami.

The other was Luis Posada Carriles, a former CIA agent who was trained as a
demolition expert for the Bay of Pigs.

Posada Carriles escaped from jail in Venezuela in 1985, reportedly disguised as a
priest. ("Bay of Pigs fiasco spawned anti-Castro plotters," CNN, 04.17.2001)

The CIA's great, but it's good to have friends in the Vatican too. These are just a few other examples, and there have been numerous others from the white supremacist movement over the years. No one would call anti-Castro Cubans leftists.

Alpha 66 was and still is allowed to operate from the swamps of Florida, incidentally. This is not to suggest that the New Orleans bomber was an anti-Castro Cuban (keep up with me, please), but to illustrate that there have been patterns of this criminal activity from the right many times before, and this isn't including the Oklahoma City bombing.

But the very recent murder by Scott Roeder (possibly inspired by the Army of God) of George Tiller, a Kansas abortion doctor, and the shooting-spree by white supremacist James von Brunn at the National Holocaust Museum were most certainly meant to instill fear in others and can be counted as acts of domestic terrorism from the far right. The key word here is "coercion," to prevent or to make someone do something that an individual or a groups wants as a result of the act. Yes, there is the possibility that this was some "lone nut" (either way, they were, let's be frank) who simply wanted to do it for personal reasons--certainly a possibility. Yeah?

Terrorism is known as a form of "asymmetrical warfare," in the parlance of counterterrorism, which jibes very closely with far right rhetoric and the formulation of the "lone wolf/lone-wolf fighter" approach advocated by such white hate luminaries as--once again--Tom Metzger and Alex Curtis. But who would benefit the most from a bombing that ended the campaign of a candidate running for the specific senate seat that porn star Stormy Daniels is setting her sights on?

The answer is pretty obvious: David Vitter. Granted, Daniels doesn't have a real chance of winning, and her candidacy is satirical--to remind Louisianans that Vitter used the prostitution services of the late Deborah Jeane Palfrey (aka the "DC Madam")--but there's nothing wrong with that, and her right to do so is protected under the First Amendment rights to freedom of speech and assembly, never mind the democratic right to run for public office. Whomever put the bomb in Welsh's car is an enemy of the democratic process itself and should be arrested and put on trial for their actions.

"Political Advisor to Stormy Daniels Hit by Car Bomb," XBIX News Wire.com, 07.28.2009: http://www.xbiznewswire.com/view.php?id=111062

ABC26's interview with Brain Welch from yesterday: http://www.abc26.com/videobeta/watch/?watch=4521787e-8dab-4de5-b48b-028fd8c72ac3&src=front

"Bay of Pigs fiasco spawned anti-Castro plotters," CNN, 04.17.2001: http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/bay-of-pigs/plotters.htm

Terrorism 100-years-ago: The Rider Named Death (2004) review

Indeed, the Russian film industry is not dead! Karen Shakhnazarov's take on the novel by Boris Savinkov, who could be equated with the main-character "Georges", is nearly flawless! Evoking Moscow during the 1905 Revolution, we are given access to the very secret world of a terrorist cell. It is unlikely--and Shakhnazarov's film illustrates this--that terrorism hasn't changed much at all, just some of the technologies.

From the lushness of Tsarist-circles, to the beggars in the alleys of Moscow, it's a vivid recreation of a time that is gone--and yet still alive with Chechen bombings in the heart of European Russia. The director notes astutely how minor acts of violence accumulate into a senseless bloodbath for its own sake.

The Revolution of 1917 (February by the Social Democrats, then October by the Bolsheviks) began what would be a civil war that didn't really end until Stalin's consolidation of power in the late-1930s. Tens-of-millions were murdered or died of starvation, and it all began with the Socialist Revolutionary Party--a party whose members included Lenin, Stalin, and "Georges."

Shakhnazarov's eye for composition is wonderful, and there are sweeping crane-shots, dollies, and static ones that would make Ozu proud. Most importantly, however, are the close-shots that capture the intimacy of the cell and its inhabitants. Georges dominance (and distance) over his cadre is made clear in every scene the character inhabits. Much of the history of Russian film is on-display here and it is breathtaking.

As part of the Socialist Revolutionary Party's underground, Georges and his cell anticipate Bolshevik terror and a complete surrender to nihilism and a worship of power that was common to that period. This nihilistic philosophy is most evident in cell leader Georges, with gradations in the members of the cell--yet they all yearn for some transcendence in revolutionary suicide. They all share an obsession with Georges and with death itself. Ultimately, Georges represents the human personification of death.

While his compatriots have their own very personal reasons for joining the cause of terrorizing the aristocracy, Georges appears to have no other reason for directing his terror attacks than a desire to kill and to stir Russian society towards...what? Even Georges seems to be unsure why he does what he does, and he doesn't care upon reflection of this fact. That is not an uncommon feeling for terrorists and insurgents, as the Weather Underground sometimes displayed during the late-1960s and early-1970s at times (it should be noted that the Weathermen were just one-of-many groups during the Vietnam war who bombed government buildings, there were thousands of incidents).

But unlike Savinkov and his co-conspirators, the Weathermen never targeted people for death, only property was to be destroyed to weaken an illegal and genocidal war in Southeast Asia. International examples are almost endless.

In-short, a cell leader is responsible for harnessing all these different reasons for why these individuals have "come to the cause." He channels these various agendas towards a few fundamental goals: the destruction of other human beings for some abstract ideology, some abstract end, and the instilling of terror and fear in a population for political ends. There are so many powerful moments in this film which convey these aspects of terrorism that you really must watch it carefully to appreciate the scope of what it's saying, making it an allegory, and one based-on Savinkov's real life experiences. Very few thrillers are this tense, this precise and studied.

There is a very sad poetry here that speaks-directly to the issues facing our own tortured era.

From the rapid-editing in the assassination attempt scenes, to the incredible atmosphere in the making of the bombs, we're treated to the best of Russian cinema. It appears that no-expense was spared in the recreation of early-1900s Tsarist Russia, down to the beggars and the filthy-streets, the uniforms of the Russian Gendarmes ("Отдельный корпус жандармов"). The acting is also of the highest order here, and the sumptuousness of Tsarist physical culture is breathtaking.

It's criminal that this film was not nominated for an MPAA award for Best Foreign Film, it's completely absurd. Without the DVD release by Kino in North America, would we even know it exists? Likely, this was the best-film of all of 2004!

Very few outside of the Slavic-speaking world know about Boris Savinkov and his exploits. There were once some English-language editions of the novel he wrote that was the basis of this great film. It's time to understand the phenomena of terrorism more fully: its genesis, its cultural contexts, and the individual agendas and motivations that spur those peopling its ranks into action. Usually, it's to right a perceived wrong.

The roots, then, of most terrorism, come from injustices committed by the powerful. Savinkov and his cohorts in the SR were hardly the only guilty parties, and they exist in a netherworld where switching sides is a formality. The motivations have a rational-basis, yet murder and death become the final goal and the end-result.

Savinkov was thrown from a window (defenstration) by his Bolshevik interrogators in 1925, crashing onto the cobblestone pavement below. His goal was accomplished: he was dead, and Russia was in ruins, to his eternal shame.

Three centuries of Tsarist oppression, indifference to the plight of the average person, and the devastation of WWI (Russia lost to Germany), gave would-be revolutionaries all the tinder they needed to create a new conflagration. Savinkov and the Bolsheviks were the spark. Russia burned throughout the entire 20th century. Shakhnazarov gives us the weight of Russian and human history in one film. The ultimate source of terrorism--then--is the State and the power backing it. For power, nothing succeeds like failure.

Revised 11.17.2008

Songs from the Site Meter: The Return of the U.S. Army's 5th Signal Corps--Over Ret. Col. Ronald Roughead

Site Meter--So guys, can you bring me that Zagnut next time around? And if you're diverting traffic from this site, or screwing around with anything, remember that that's a violation of my First amendment rights. It's illegal. I know, I know, orders are orders. Cyber units aren't a secret on the Internet, just so you know.

You have to wonder if Ron got any from that call to Pamela Martin & Associates, or if he was "getting some" for one of his superiors. Is he still working for SAIC after his retirement from the Pentagon? What difference does it make these days? Ken Silverstein should really give Ronald Roughead a visit sometime, he might discover something interesting, and it's only a short little hop around the corner from Capitol Hill to Alexandria.

Why did a former Defense Attache who was at the bombing of a U.S. Embassy in Kenya? Why did a recent former head of the Iraqi Media Network call the DC Madam's escort service in late-2005? Why did the brother of Navy's highest officer call? Nobody appears to want to know, which is curious...

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