I’m indebted to Jeremy Hammond (author of the excellent piece, “The Simplicity of the Israeli-Palestinian Conflict”) for the compilation of these quotes:
“I know how at least 80 percent of all of the incidents there started. In my opinion, more than 80 percent, but let’s speak about 80 percent. It would go like this: we would send a tractor to plowin the demilitarized area, and we would know ahead of time that the Syrians would start shooting. Continue reading
“Borrow the resources of an ally to attack a common enemy. Once the enemy is defeated, use those resources to turn on the ally that lent you them in the first place.”
—- Chinese strategies for creating chaos, “Obtain Safe Passage To Conquer The State of Guo“
“Those who have studied history know that nothing invigorates and empowers an authoritarian regime more than a spectacular act of violence, some sudden and senseless loss of life that allows the autocrat to stand on the smoking rubble and identify himself as the hero. It is at moments like this that the public—still in shock from the horror of the tragedy that has just unfolded before them—can be led into the most ruthless despotism: despotism that now bears the mantle of “security.” Continue reading
Note:
Please note. Bezmenov was talking about Soviet society and propaganda in the 1960s and 1970s. That means his analysis of the general dynamics of propaganda has to be cautiously reconfigured, when it comes to specifics. The US and USSR he described then (prior to the 1980s) had clearly differentiated economic/political systems. In the 30 years that have passed since, the ideological convergence he mentions elsewhere, has in many ways occurred, or is in the process of occurring. [I describe this in much greater depth in “The Language of Empire.”]
The USA hasn’t been free-market capitalist in any real way for some 20-30 years, at the very least. Instead, we’ve had ever-accelerating state intervention and crony capitalism that has turned into the final danse macabre of casino capitalism and pure plunder.
Thus the terms that Bezmenov uses in discussing the totalitarian communism of the Soviet system now actually apply to the US, albeit incompletely.
Bezmenov didn’t know, or perhaps chose not to express, since this was the country he defected to, that US propaganda and psyops were far more subtle, and thus in the long run more effective, than Soviet propaganda.
He also doesn’t acknowledge that at many levels “capitalist” and “communist” leaderships were/are symbiotic and that they have ultimately led to the globalized kleptocracy, in which the two ideological forms, while retaining different emphases, copulate and spawn the “third way” of corporatized politically-correct social democracy, which is the benign face of the corrupt neo-liberalism that has always been the power behind the throne of the multilateral institutions, such as the World Bank, IMF, EU, UN, and others…
There is no longer a west versus east polarity. The division is really between centralizers (neoliberal globalizers, central bankers) and decentralizers, in which, however, some of the decentralization is orchestrated to promote the globalizers’ agenda. One has to know the specifics of every situation. They can’t be understood ideologically.
Update:
Bezmenov divides the stages of ideological subversion into four:
1. Demoralization (15 -20 yrs) 2. Destabilization 3. Crisis 4. Normalization
My speculation:
1. The 1960s – 1980s is the period of demoralization
2. 1990s – 2001 The fall of the Berlin Wall marks the acceleration of this into active destabilization of the US’s economy and foreign policy (the neo-conservative paper, “A Clean Break,” as well as proposals for “full-spectrum” dominance; Yugoslav and Iraq wars; the total financialization and electronification of the US capital markets, leading to the stock market bubble). This period is initiated by the fall of the Berlin Wall, on November 9, 1989 (11-9-1989) and George Bush’s statement about a “new world order” on September 11, 9-11-1990.
3. 2001 – 2008 Period that entails vast changes in the political and economic systems, following two crises – one, political, on 9-11 and another exactly 7 years later, economic, around 9-11 too.
We are now still in the period of crisis, which, in my opinion, will throw up further catalyzing “events’ of all kinds, whether occurring spontaneously in the realm of politics/economics/nature, or whether manufactured.
Note:
Bezmenov was talking about Soviet society and propaganda in the 1960s and 1970s. That means his analysis of the general dynamics of propaganda has to be cautiously reconfigured, when it comes to specifics. The US and USSR he was describing (prior to the 1980s) had clearly differentiated economic/political systems. In the 30 years that have passed since then, the ideological convergence he mentions elsewhere, has in many ways occurred or is in the process of occurring. [I describe this in much greater depth in “The Language of Empire.”]
The USA hasn’t been free-market capitalist in any real way for some 20-30 years certainly, even longer. Instead, its experienced ever-accelerating state intervention/mercantilism and crony capitalism. Now that has turned into the final danse macabre of casino capitalism and pure plunder.
Thus the Bezmenovian analyis might plausibly be applied both to the actual situation in the US, as well as to the propaganda the US directs toward its enemies.
Bezmenov didn’t know, or perhaps chose not to voice (since this was the country he defected to), the fact that US propaganda and psyops have been subtler, and thus in the long run much more effective, than Soviet propaganda.
He also doesn’t acknowledge that at many levels “capitalist” and “communist” leaderships have become symbiotic and created a globalized kleptocracy in which the two ideological forms, while retaining different emphases, copulate and spawn a “third way.” This is the corporatized politically correct social democracy that increasingly seems to be the benign face of corrupt neo-liberalism, which is the power behind the throne of the multilateral institutions – the World Bank, IMF, EU, UN, and others.
ORIGINAL POST
March 07, 2009 — Yuri Bezmenov 1983 Soviet subversion of Western Society
Yuri Bezmenov, a.k.a. Tomas Schuman, soviet KGB defector, explains in detail his scheme for the KGB process of subversion and takeover of target societies at a lecture in Los Angeles, 1983.
Yuri Alexandrovitch Bezmenov is a former KGB propagandist who was assigned to New Dehli, India, defected to the West in 1970, and was interviewed by Edward Griffin in 1985. Bezmenov explains his background, some of his training, and exactly how Soviet propaganda is spread in other countries in order to subvert their teachers, politicians, and other policy makers to a mindset receptive to the Soviet ideology.
He also explains in detail the goal of Soviet propaganda as total subversion of another country and the 4 step formula for achieving this goal. He recalls the details of how he escaped India, defected to the West, and settled in Montreal as an announcer for the CBC.
Note: As I said before about the wikileaks video, the notion that you need to ferret out secret documents, hack computers, or conduct spy v spy ops to understand what’s going on is simply romantic myth. 85% of KGB intelligence ops in the US, according to Schuman, is about ideological subversion or aggressive propaganda, which is intended to demoralize the population so that even when presented with all possible information it’s unable to draw common sense conclusions, protect its own self-interest, or act rationally. Even when confronted with evidence of war atrocities, such as those on the video, people will simply reframe the facts to fit their ideological predisposition.
I didn’t have time to complete this post from a week ago, but with the really bizarre story of the Polish plane, I thought I should revisit it, as is:
At the end of March, Haaretz (March 31) reported that the British Foreign Office issued a travel advisory last week to citizens traveling to Israel and Palestine, “hours” after it decided to expel an Israeli diplomat.
“The risk applies in particular to passports without biometric security features,” the warning on the [UK foreign office] Web site said. “We recommend that you only hand your passport over to third parties including Israeli officials when absolutely necessary.”
This follows confirmation last week that killers of a Hamas operative in Dubai used forged passports from multiple countries, including the UK, Australia, France, Ireland, and Germany.
An editor at the Guardian notes that this is the lowest point in Anglo-Israeli relations since 1988, when an Israeli diplomat was expelled for being an agent of the Mossad.
Current relations with Israel are already strained, because senior Israeli officials visiting the UK have been threatened with arrest for alleged war crimes.
[Note:
The Hamas operative Mahmoud al-Mabhouh was killed in January in a hit that Dubai police have said they are 99 percent certain was the work of Israel’s spy service, Mossad. Israel has neither confirmed nor denied this.
Dubai has named 27 alleged conspirators in the pursuit and killing of the Palestinian, and has claimed that they used fraudulent British, Irish, French, German and Australian passports to enter and depart from Dubai. More than half of the people identified share the names of foreign-born Israeli nationals].
Earlier, UK foreign secretary David Miliband had said there were “compelling reasons” to believe Israel was responsible and had called the use of 12 forged British passports “intolerable,” according to an earlier report by the BBC (March 23).
Meanwhile, Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, confirmed there would be no diplomatic retaliation, but expressed disappointment at Miliband’s decision. Israel has previously said there is no proof it was behind the killing at a Dubai hotel.
Israel claims the Australians are also going to follow suit, says this report:
“Official Israeli sources told The Australian newspaper that there is a high chance that Australia will follow Britain’s lead and also expel a high ranking Israeli diplomat. “It appears that Israeli officials have received indications in Canberra that Australia is preparing to expel a diplomat,” it said in the newspaper.”
Meanwhile, according to The Australian (March 31) ECAJ president Robert Goot told The Australian: “I think it would be an extreme reaction or possibly an overreaction (to expel an Israeli diplomat). The Jewish community would hope the Australian government might adopt a more nuanced position, depending on the outcome of the (Australian Federal Police) investigation.”
That’s not likely, now that former Mossad case officer Victor Ostrovsky has told ABC Radio that the spy agency had used Australian passports for previous operations before last month’s hit on a top Hamas commander in Dubai that has been blamed on Israel. (see the Sydney Morning Herald (Feb 26, 2010)
Israel has previously dismissed claims from Ostrovsky, who has detailed various accusations against the country in his books. He said Mossad prefers to use “false flag” passports, as Israeli papers frequently invoke suspicion in the Middle East.
“They need passports because you can’t go around with an Israeli passport, not even a forged one, and get away or get involved with people from the Arab world,” he said.
“So most of these (Mossad) operations are carried out on what’s called false flag, which means you pretend to be of another country which is less belligerent to those countries that you’re trying to recruit from.”
Ostrovsky said Mossad had a “very, very expensive research department” dedicated to manufacturing the fake documents which simulates different types of paper and ink.
The Australian newspaper also said Ali Kazak, a former Palestinian representative to Australia, had warned in 2004 that a Mossad agent in Sydney had obtained 25 false Australian passports.
According to The Age (Feb 26, 2010), in Dec 2004, a second secretary in the Israeli embassy in Canberra was recalled because he was suspected of ties to passport fraud in New Zealand, where in March 2004 two suspected Mossad agents were convicted for fraudulently trying to get local passports. The New Zealand case eventually led to the downgrading of diplomatic ties and the canceling of Israeli PM Moshe Katsav’s visit.
The same report notes that Mossad used forged Canadian passports in 1997 in a bungled plot to assassinate Hamas leader Khaled Meshal.
Then, as now, the Israeli prime minister, who has to approve all assassination attempts, was Benjamin Netanyahu.
This link doesn’t work after updating my blog. Will replace it.
[Note: The video is from Russia Today, which some claim contains Russian disinformation].
Update: Russian investigators say that there was nothing wrong with the landing instruments on the plane and that it was pilot error that caused the crash. Also, it seems that the number of bodies found is 96.
Update 8:
At Asia Times, M. K. Bhadrakumar notes that as the so-called “color” revolutions in Central Asia (Ukraine, Georgia and Kyrgyzstan) have all gradually become undone, Kyrgyzstan has become destabilized, leaving the whole region from Af-Pak to Kyrgyzstan, on the very borders of China, volatile.
Point two. Like it or not, the US needs cooperation with Russia to help it out here before the excursion in Afghanistan is concluded, say, in 2011. It also needs help, as NATO expands into Central Asia, to contain both China and India, and (possibly) play them off against each other.
A strongly anti-Russian, reactionary Pole, like Kaczynski, might have been a very disturbing factor, a thorn also in the side of the much more tractable Polish PM, Donald Tusk.
Point three.
Tusk is on more amicable terms both with the Obama administration and with Russian PM Putin, with whom he met separately at Katyn last week. Tusk is also more Euro-friendly.
Point four. With Iran cementing natural gas deals not only with Pakistan, but with China and India (over US objections), and with a Euroskeptic Polish president (Kaczynski) making unexpected overtures to Russia, America’s power/leverage vis-a-vis Russia might suddenly seem less certain on both fronts, eastern and western, especially with the Russian natural gas pipeline in the Baltic, an initiative that tends to increase Russian influence in Europe.
Point five. The recent discovery of huge reserves of natural gas in Poland has foreign corporations scrambling for drilling rights there. That makes Poland a much bigger player in the region, especially in its ability to help or hurt a European recovery. Take that into account along with the recent devaluation of the Zloty, which is regarded as helpful to Polish exporters and the economy, but bad for Europe..
Update 7:
On April 8 Obama signed a new arms reduction treaty with Dmitri Medvedev (President of Russia) and met with East European heads of state, including Donald Tusk (Polish PM) to discuss the future of NATO and to allay fears Eastern Europe might have over the US-Russia deal.
In December 2009 Obama asked for stronger Polish support in Afghanistan
Update 6:
The more I think about it, the more this crash looks odd to me.
Digging for more information, I find the following:
Donald Tusk, the PM, was much less antagonistic to Russia and much more supportive of free market policies and integration of the country into the EU than Kaczynski.
From wiki:
“After being elected prime minister, relations between Tusk and President Lech Kaczynski were often acrimonious due to different political ideologies and the constitutional role of the
presidency. Using presidential veto powers, Kaczynski blocked legislation drafted by the Tusk government, including pension reform, agricultural and urban zoning plans, and restructuring state television.[16]Tusk and Kaczynski repeatedly sparred over issues ranging from European integration, homosexuality, foreign policy, to constitutional issues, with Tusk taking more socially liberal opinions than the conservative Kaczynski.
In his premiership, Tusk has proposed various reforms to the Polish constitution. In 2009, Tusk proposed changes to the power of the presidency, by abolishing the presidential veto”
It’s wholly plausible that as the second and worse leg of the economic crisis unfolds, and as sovereign default threatens several countries in Europe, a less prickly person as president of Poland might have seemed an attractive option to NATO.
Of course, at this point, all this is no more than speculation…
Update 5:
Former Czech president, Vaclav Havel comments on mounting speculation over the bizarre crash:
‘That speculation [that it was sabotage and not an accident] will influence the elections,’ he said, predicting some Poles would see an analogy to the 1943 plane-crash death of Wladyslaw Sikorski, Poland’s premier-in-exile. Some believe that Sikorski’s plane was deliberately brought down.
Update 4:
Eyewitness accounts says no explosion:
“A witness named himself Roman said he was washing his car in the village near the airport, when he saw a plane crashed down in the woods. “It was foggy here at that time, I couldn’t see it very clearly. I didn’t hear any explosion, but saw a lot of smoke. The plane flew forward a distance after one of the wings had been knocked off by the trees. Then the other wing also broke down, and the plane crashed in the woods 300 to 400 meters away from the airport, ” Roman recalled. A Xinhua reporter at the site saw pieces of the plane wreckage scattering in the sealed-off woods, where four rescuers were carrying out a body from the wreckage.”
One police officer pointed at a topless white birch tree about 300 meter away and told Xinhua that it was the first tree hit by the plane. Behind it, a number of treetops were cut off straight in the accident.”
Another eyewitness account says there was an explosion (Lila: this contradicts the other account, but that could be because the witness was closer to the crash).
The explosion was apparently so powerful that pieces were scattered near the outskirts of the town at a distance of a mile.
The plane is said to have crashed about half a mile on the runway. Some sections of the plane burned for more than an hour.
Update 3:
Some background on energy rivalry between Russia and Poland, which as focused on natural gas reserves/pipe line deals that had recently been cemented.
“Without consulting the Poles, Mr. Schroder (former German chancellor) had supported a major Russian-German gas pipeline, called Nord Stream, now being built under the Baltic Sea. For the first time, Russia could send gas directly to Western Europe, reducing its dependence on Poland, Belarus and the Baltic States as transit countries for sending Russian gas to its lucrative European markets.When the deal was struck between Mr. Schroder and then-President Vladmir Putin in September 2005, some Polish politicians said it was the beginning of a new Russian-German alliance.” (Lila: This would bring back to many Poles the history of German-Russian collusion at Gdansk to divide Poland)
“American technology to produce shale gas is unleashing a scramble for drilling rights in Poland, where experts believe vast reserves of unconventional gas exist that could help to weaken Russia’s grip on Europe’s energy supplies.
(Lila: Russia supplied 33% of European oil in 2009 and cut supplies to Ukraine during a fight over prices)
ConocoPhillips is poised to launch Poland’s first shale gas drilling programme next month near Gdansk on the Baltic coast. Two other American oil groups — Exxon-Mobil and Marathon — and Talisman Energy, of Canada, are set to follow. The technology has transformed America’s energy industry and driven gas prices to their lowest level in years.”
Update 2:
“In one of those rare moments of unity, the National Bank of Poland and the Polish government agreed on the need to weaken the Polish zloty, which over recent weeks has rebounded close to its pre-crisis strength. The currency’s strength is now seen a possible threat to economic recovery. After several verbal interventions over the past few days, the central bank intervened with real money Friday, for the first time in more than a decade.”
Update 1 (the following is paraphrased from a Polish newspaper that I translated with Google translator):
Smolensk’s Severny airport was, until October 15, the 103rd airport Military Transport Aviation Regiment. And, half an hour before the presidential plane landed, a military plane, Ilyushin Il-76, from Moscow, which was carrying a branch of the Federal Protection Service officers (the equivalent of BOR-u), tried to land. The pilot, originally from Smolensk was thoroughly familiar with local conditions and tried to land twice, before returning to Moscow. A Pole living in a hotel near the site says that the left wing hit a tree and the plane fell to the ground and disintegrated, immediately catching fire. Emergency services on the spot appeared after several minutes.
[Lila: Now this part sounds a bit odd to me, although it could just be confusion at the scene of an accident].
The Russians stated that it made no sense to send ambulances to the site, since everyone was dead. The crash occurred in the forest, and the Russian services couldn’t enter the disaster area because of the mud at the site.
[Lila: How could they be so sure everyone was dead, especially, when many more bodies were recovered than were on the flight list (132 bodies versus 89 on the list)?]
ORIGINAL BLOG POST
Accident, Sabotage, or False Flag?
MSNBC reports that Polish President (from 2005-2010) Lech Kaczynski (1949-2010) and top Polish military and civilian leaders, historians, and activists were killed when the presidential plane crashed on landing in thick fog in Smolensk in western Russia on Saturday, killing 130, according to this report.
(Other reports have placed the death toll at 96, 97 88 (the number on the passenger list according to the Poles), 132, and 135).
Communication with the plane was lost at 10:50 local time (0656 GMT).
Pravda.ru says the plane came down at 11 AM local time about 1.5 km from the airport and 225 km from Moscow.
The Governor of Smolensk told official media there were no survivors of the crash and that the plane had clipped the top of the trees, crashed, and then broken into pieces.
Preliminary data collected show that the plane hit the treetops while approaching the airport in bad visibility, says an official with the Russian general prosecutor’s office, according to ITAR-Tass news agency, (reported by CBS).
A spokesman for the Smolensk regional government said publicly that air traffic controllers there had advised the pilot not to land in the thick fog at the military airport and to divert to Moscow or to Minsk (the capital of Belarus) instead.
BBC reported that Russian PM Putin visited the scene of the crash and said he would personally supervise the investigation. He also said the investigation would be a joint Polish-Russian investigation. The Russian emergency ministers said both of the plane’s information recorders (black boxes) had been found and would be examined.
The Polish group was on its way to the 70th anniversary of the massacre at Katyn forest near Smolensk, when thousands of Polish officers (including some who were also Jewish) were killed by the Soviet secret police, the NKVD, in 1940.
My Comment 2:
The significance of Katyn was that it was blamed on the Nazis by the Soviets, and, that despite this betrayal of its own ally, Poland, the US continued to treat the Soviets preferentially and cover-up for it.
Furthermore, at the end of WW II, the western powers again betrayed Poland – over whom the war was supposed to have been fought – by allowing it remain under the Soviet sphere of influence.
So, Katyn is not simply about Poland and Russia, as nation states, it’s also, equally, about Poland’s betrayal by the US and the Allies.
And it’s about the Polish Catholic suspicion of the atheistic Bolsheviks who primarily carried out the massacres ….
Religion, ethnicity, and nationalism all converge in this profound national trauma.
It’s important to remember that President Roosevelt officially rejected the conclusion of his own research team, and stated he was convinced that the Nazis were culpable. That is, he sided with Stalin against the Poles. And he actually ordered that the report that he himself had commissioned be suppressed. It was only more recently that the true history of the massacre of the flower of Poland by the Soviet NKVD has become common knowledge. This secret history is vital to understanding the symbolism involved in this crash.
This is not just about Poland and Russia. It is about the anti-Communist and anti-Nazi feelings of Catholics in Poland and their betrayal by the West.
Smolensk is only 11/2 hours away from Warsaw and the symbolism of the crash has struck many people, including former President Kwasniewski, who called Katyn “cursed.”
Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk called it the most tragic event of Poland’s post-World War II history, according to BBC.
My Comment 1:
1. It’s very strange that so many of the top brass would be on a single flight, especially on a plane as known for being unreliable and dangerous as the Soviet built Tupolev-154, which has suffered 16 crashes since 1994 (AP).
According to the Aviation Safety Network, there have been 66 crashes involving Tu-154 in the last 40 years, 6 in the last 5 years alone, and Aeroflot has withdrawn its Tu-154 fleet from service, although the TU-154 used to be the workhorse of the Soviets and the eastern bloc in the 1970s and 1980s. The Polish government had been thinking of replacing the planes for flights carrying government officials, but didn’t have the money for it.
Wouldn’t high level personnel have normally been booked on separate flights to avoid difficulties in the military/government in case of an accident? This particular plane was also 26 years old, had been overhauled recently at a Russian aviation facility, and had only few hours on it.
However, the Russian facility Aviakor has said that the plane was in good condition for the flight.
Another aviation expert also told Al-Jazeera that the TU-154 can operate in extreme weather conditions and can land on an unpaved airstrip. He believes the crash was a “fluke”.
2. How is it that the information that the president’s wife had an uncle who was killed at Katyn was so widely and uniformly known that it appeared in a majority of global reports about the crash?
(Katyn is a national symbol of WW II and the anti-Communist struggle and stirs deep nationalistic feelings in Poland).
Another oddity in the media reports was the varying numbers given for the dead, when according to early reports, the Russians were able to collect all the bodies, and had verified that all on board had died. In that case, why such different numbers?
Also, how is it that the original flight list was for only 89 people (one didn’t show up)? How did some 30 plus extra passengers apparently fly…or is this a reference to something else?
3. What a bizarre coincidence that several people whose death would be calculated to arouse nationalist remembrance of the past (Katyn, communist crimes, Solidarity), should all die on a trip to Katyn, along with significant members of the political and military establishment? The people who died were all people significant to Poland’s anti-communist history. Kaczynski and his twin brother, Soviet era child actors, both played important roles in Polish politics.
“The twins (Kaczynski and his brother) pushed unashamedly for conservative values and a righting of historical wrongs with 20th century foes Russia and Germany in ways that ruffled feathers and often seemed out of step with the times,” says the WSJ.
The BBC noted that Kaczynski was a right-wing Catholic, who opposed rapid free-market reforms and favored retaining social welfare programs:
“He had advocated a right-wing Catholic agenda, opposed rapid free-market reforms and favoured retaining social welfare programmes.”
The LA Times noted his campaign against liberal sexual mores:
“At home, Kaczynzki, who was mayor of Warsaw before becoming president, sought to expose former communists and cleanse what he and his brother regarded as pervasive liberalism. He took a hard line against homosexuality and often assailed the media over salacious magazines and TV shows. His critics regarded him as a politically dangerous mix of Polish nationalism and religious conservatism.”
“The president was a conservative and a lifelong skeptic of Russia with many detractors at home and abroad.”
Consider also this piece of symbolism, among many other coincidences:
“Rossiya-24 showed footage from the crash site, with pieces of the plane scattered widely amid leafless trees and small fires burning in woods shrouded with fog. A tail fin with the red and white national colors of Poland stuck up from the debris.”(BBC)
4. In case this proves not to be an accident, Poles might be tempted look to the FSB (and Putin) as the possible culprit, since the plane was recently overhauled in Russia. Yet, Russia is unlikely to have downed a Polish plane with top military and civilian commanders on its own territory. That would be a political and military blunder almost unthinkable.
5. Exploring another angle, it’s been known for a while now that the CIA has a presence in Eastern Europe, as also suggested in a piece I wrote in 2005 on CIA black sites there.
Poland is a staunch ally of the US in other areas as well, thus provoking some dislike in Russia:
“The European Union member nation of 38 million people sent troops to the U.S.-led war in Iraq and recently boosted its contingent in Afghanistan to some 2,600 soldiers.
U.S. Patriot missiles are expected to be deployed in Poland this year. That was a Polish condition for a 2008 deal — backed by both Kaczynski and Tusk — to host long-range missile defense interceptors. The deal, which was struck by the Bush administration, angered Russia and was later reconfigured under President Barack Obama’s administration. Under the Obama plan, Poland would host a different type of missile defense interceptors as part of a more mobile system and at a later date, probably not until 2018.” (CNN)
Russians also distrusted his advocacy of NATO membership for the former Soviet states of Ukraine and Georgia and his support of Georgian President Mikhael Saakashvili during the 2008 Russo-Georgian war (CS Monitor).
6. However, in recent times, relations with Russia had thawed:
“Polish-Russian relations had been improving of late after being poisoned for decades over the Katyn massacre of some 22,000 Polish officers.”(Stanford Advocate, April 10, 2010).
Last year in September, Russian PM Putin met Kaczynski in Gdansk (Danzig) on the anniversary of the Hitler’s invasion of Poland and had made partial amends for the USSR’s role in breaking up Poland under the Molotov-Ribbentrop Pact (the Non-Aggression Treaty between Germany and the Soviet Union in 1939).
and this:
“Russia never has formally apologized for the murders but Putin’s decision to attend a memorial ceremony earlier this week in the forest was seen as a gesture of goodwill toward reconciliation. Kaczynski wasn’t invited to that event because Putin, as prime minister, had invited his Polish counterpart, Tusk.” (CBS) http://wcco.com/national/polish.Kaczynski.dead.2.1623978.html)
6. Exploring this from another angle, could this tragedy have anything to do with the another strange incident in Eastern Europe a few weeks ago?
Two Gulf Stream V type jets equipped with sophisticated intelligence equipment violated Hungarian laws by flying low into Hungary without landing and then flew 1300 miles over Turkey, Hungary and Romania and disappeared, all around the same time a Syrian-Hungarian man implicated in money-laundering was mysteriously killed in Budapest, in what some have suggested was a Mossad hit. That incidence should be read in light of the recent expulsion of the Israeli ambassador from the UK, and the threat of diplomatic sanctions against Israel in Australia, following the revelation that the Mossad had forged multiple passports from different countries in carrying out the killing of a Hamas operative in Dubai, earlier this year.
But Kaczynski was on very good terms with the Jewish community in Poland, once almost wiped out by the Holocaust. In 2008, he became the first head of state to attend service at a synagogue in Poland, and before that, as mayor of Warsaw, he donated land for a projected museum on Jewish history. Israel and the Jewish community expressed deep shock at the deaths and called Kaczynski a great leader.
That would seem to make him an unlikely target for an Israeli false-flag operation.
Update: AP has a list of the top officials and political significant people who died in the crash. Here are some of them:
Lech Kaczynski (President), Maria Kaczynska (his wife), Andrzej Kremer (deputy foreign minister and chief of staff), General Franciszek Gagor (army chief of staff since 2006, Polish rep at NATO, 2004-06), General Andrzej Blasik (head of airforce, trained in Montgomery, Alabama in 2005), (Vice-Admiral Andrzej Karweta, Navy Chief since 2009, served as Supreme Allied Command Atlantic, Norfolk, Virginia, 2002-05), Gen. Tadeusz Buk (land forces commander, 2009, commander of Polish troop in Iraq since 2007), Slawomir Skrzypek (president of the National Bank since 2007, close friend of the president), Alexander Szczyglo, head of National Security Office, former defense minister, Jerzy Szmajdzinski (opposition candidate for president, deputy parliamentary speaker, defense minister during Iraq war), Ryszard Kaczorowski (last president in exile, who passed on presidency to first democratic president Lech Walesa), Janusz Kurtyka (head of the state-run National Remembrance Institute, commemorating communist crimes), Anna Walentynowicz (Solidarity activist whose firing sparked the movement which led to Polish freedom), Piotr Nurowski (head of Poland’s Olympic Committee), Krystyna Bochenek (deputy parliamentary speaker)
Mark Mitchell comments on the CFTC hearings and the manipulation of trading of gold and silver derivatives (read IOUs):
“Maguire added: “What’s going to happen, if you’re an Asian trader, or a non-Western trader, who has no loyalty, or doesn’t care about homeland security or anything else, who says, now wait a minute, if I can establish in my mind that there is 100 ounces of paper gold, paper silver for example, for each ounce of real silver, than I have a naked short situation here that I can squeeze and they can go on the spot market which is basically a foreign exchange transaction, short dollar, long silver to any amount they want – billions, trillions — whatever they want, and they can take this market, squeeze this market, and blow it up…”
In other words, the problem isn’t just that criminal naked short sellers manipulate the metals market downwards. It is that they have created a condition where a foreign entity can merely demand delivery of real metal to induce a massive “squeeze” that sends the price of metals skyrocketing, putting huge downward pressure on the dollar. Meanwhile, says Maguire, with prices rising, “for 100 customers who show up there is only one guy who is going to get his gold or silver and there’s 99 who will be disappointed, so without any new money coming into the market, just asking for that gold and silver will create a default.”
This would be a point, except…except..
1. This kind of fraudulent activity in the markets in the West is going to be seen by most foreigners as a direct act of financial aggression against them, not just domestic market participants. You can’t admit that your entire market system is rigged in favor of US and European banks, and then expect that the rest of the world is just going to stand there and not retaliate in some way…with justification.
Turnabout is fair play. Defense is not offense.
2. I doubt that Chinese, Saudis or any other foreigners are interested in squeezing the dollar, since they are the primary holders of dollars. In international markets, the dollar is still the reserve currency and most people save in it. Nor is the American middle class, loyal or disloyal, going to want a weaker dollar. They earn their money in dollars. The only people likely to attack the dollar are speculators, who will do it because they see a gain to be made from it. And the people most likely to do it successfully are the same people who are involved in manipulating it in the first place...the corrupt bankers and financiers who’ve got the most to gain in this and the least to lose.
Nothing that Paulson, Greenspan, Geithner, Summers, or Bernanke have been doing adds up to anything like a “strong dollar” policy. They’ve done everything but shout “bail” to dollar holders.
Aldous Huxley, novelist and social critic, gave a talk at the University of Berkeley on the dictatorship he saw in the future of the United States, a “scientific” dictatorship, he termed it. In it, control would be maintained by narcotizing the population with conveniences, entertainment, consumerism, and drugs. Ultimately, compliance would become pleasurable..
‘Today we are faced, I think, with the approach of what may be called the ultimate revolution, the final revolution, where man can act directly on the mind-body of his fellows.”
(Huxley, The Ultimate Revolution, University of Berkeley, March 20, 1962)
Asia Times columnist M. K. Bhadrakumar writes that US citizen David Headley, a key player (Indian sources say, the mastermind), in the November 2008 Mumbai terrorist attack that killed 166 people* has reached a plea bargain with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that allows the US Government to hold back from producing evidence against him in a court of law that would have revealed details of his ties to US intelligence. [*163, according to the NY Times, March 26, 2010; 165, according to the Wash Po, March 27, 2010]
Headley will be protected from cross-examination by the prosecutor, and the 166 victims will not be represented by a lawyer at the Chicago trial that’s now commencing.
Nor can he be extradited to India or questioned by Indian agencies about his links to US and Pakistani intelligence.
(Note: He will be accessible to India through video conferencing, deposition, and Letters Rogatory)
Headley, the son of a former Pakistani diplomat and an American socialite from Philadelphia (according to the NY Times piece), was a drug-pusher in the 1990s who then went on to work for the Drug Enforcement Agency.
He’s said to have prepared for the attack with five visits to India between 2006 and 2008, each time returning via Pakistan and meeting with several handlers, some of whom included members of the terrorist group Lakshar-e-Toiba (LeT), which has close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)
Headley has reportedly named five-six serving officers of the Pakistan army as among the leaders of the Karachi Project, which organizes attacks on India through fugitive Indian jihadis being sheltered in Karachi by the ISI and the LeT.
The Asia Times article goes on to ask some questions about the CIA’s possible involvement that are likely to strain US-Indian relations:
“How much did the CIA know?
The plea bargain details that while working as an American agent Headley attended at least five “training courses” conducted by the LeT in Pakistan, including sessions in the use of weapons and grenades, close-combat tactics and counter-surveillance techniques, from February 2002 until December 2003.
Training courses in April and in December 2003 were each of three months’ duration and in such close proximity to the 9/11 attacks that it stretches credulity to believe the CIA didn’t care to know what their agent was doing in the LeT training camps.
Today, the heart of the matter is how much did the CIA know in advance about the Mumbai terrorist strike and whether the Obama administration shared all “actionable intelligence” with Delhi?
A senior Indian editor wrote on Sunday, “Headley … was convicted on drug charges and sent to jail in the US. We know also that he was subsequently released from jail and handed over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which said that it wanted to send him to Pakistan as an undercover agent. All this is a matter of public record. What happened between the time the US sent Headley into Pakistan and his arrest at Chicago airport a few months ago? How did an American agent turn into a terrorist? The US will not say.”
Yet, cooperation in the fight against terrorism lies within the first circle of US-India strategic cooperation. The Mumbai attacks led to unprecedented counter-terrorism cooperation between India and the US – “breaking down walls and bureaucratic obstacles between the two countries’ intelligence and investigating agencies”, as a prominent American security expert, Lisa Curtis, underscored in US congressional testimony on March 11 regarding the Mumbai attacks and Headley.
To quote Curtis, “Most troubling about the Headley case is what it has revealed about the proximity of the Pakistani military to the LeT.”
Curtis put her finger spot on the US government’s deliberate policy to view the LeT through the prism of India-Pakistan adversarial ties. This is despite all evidence of the LeT’s significant role since 2006 as a facilitator of the Taliban’s operations in Afghanistan by providing a constant stream of fighters – recruiting, training and infiltrating insurgents across the border from the Pakistani tribal areas.
The US policy is impeccably logical. It prioritizes the securing of Islamabad’s cooperation on what directly affects American interests rather than squandering away Pakistani goodwill by Washington covering for the Indians.
This political chicanery lies at the core of the unfolding Headley drama. What emerges, even if one were to give the benefit of the doubt to the CIA, is that Headley was its agent but he possibly got involved with Pakistan-based terrorist organizations and became a double agent
No doubt, the US administration is behaving very strangely. It has something extremely explosive to hide from the Indians and what better way to do that than by placing Headley in safe custody and not risk exposing him to Indian intelligence?”