James Petras

Introduction:

The recent rash of civilian killings by NATO forces in occupied Afghanistan raises several basic questions: Why do US – NATO air and ground forces kill so many civilians, so persistently, over such long stretches of time, in regions throughout the country? Why have the number of civilians killed, increased in the course of the conflict? Why do NATO-US airplanes continue to bomb civilian housing and village gatherings and ground troops indiscriminately assault homes and workshops? Why are the pleas of NATO collaborator President Karzai to desist in home bombings go unheeded? Finally, knowing that the killing of civilians, entire families including children, mothers and the elderly alienates the local population and breeds widespread and profound hostility, why do the NATO-US military refuse to alter their tactics and strategy?

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Interview by Kourosh Ziabari

Anthony Lawson

Without any redundant exaggeration, Anthony Lawson is an inimitable, conscientious and unique man. What he does can be described as professional and committed video-journalism. Lawson is a retired international-prize-winning commercials director, cameraman, ad agency creative director and voice over. He calls himself as a "stickler for accuracy" and his record demonstrates the rightfulness of this description. His articles and videos on the Israeli-Palestinian conflict, 9/11 attacks and U.S. foreign policy have appeared on a number of media outlets and news websites including Sabbah Report, Veterans Today, Salem News, Intifada Palestine, Media With Conscience, Rense.com and Ramllah Online.

"Suppressing free and open discussion on any subject is as bad as telling lies, and knowingly suppressing the truth is the biggest lie of all, because it is based, not on a mistake or a genuine error, but on a deliberate intention to deceive," writes Anthony Lawson in one of his articles.

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James Petras

The US bombing of Libya in support of rebel clients in the spring of 2011 is part and parcel of a sustained policy of military intervention in Africa since at least the mid 1950’s.

According to a US Congressional Research Service Study[1] published in November 2010, Washington has dispatched anywhere between hundreds and several thousand combat troops, dozens of fighter planes and warships to buttress client dictatorships or to unseat adversarial regimes in dozens of countries, almost on a yearly bases. The record shows the US armed forces intervened 46 times prior to the current Libyan wars[2]. The countries suffering one or more US military intervention include the Congo, Zaine, Libya, Chad, Sierra Leone, Somalia, Ruanda, Liberia, Central African Republic, Gabon, Guinea-Bissau, Kenya, Tanzania, Sudan, Ivory Coast, Ethiopia, Djibouti and Eritrea. The only progressive intervention was in Egypt under Eisenhower who forced the Israeli-French-English forces to withdraw from the Suez in 1956. Between the mid 1950’s to the end of the 1970’s, only 4 overt military operations were recorded, though large scale proxy and clandestine military operations were pervasive. Under Reagan-Bush Sr. (1980-1991) military intervention accelerated, rising to 8, not counting the large scale clandestine ‘special forces’ and proxy wars in Southern Africa.

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[Author’s Note: I am working on a Psychohistory analysis of one of the most popular websites on the Internet, DailyKos (Alexa Traffic Rank 4,025)]

Mentioning DailyKos to outsiders will provoke a rant about a leftwing gatekeeper website populated by left wing ignorant kooks kept in line by a sexist man working for the CIA.

Daily Kos is blog where pinko retard basement dwellers highlight the moar deluded of the leftard section of the tinfoil hat crowd's conspiracy theories about George W. Bush, conservatives, and the state of the nation. Articles on this shrill blog repeat how Bush stole the election ad infinitum, that Dick Cheney is a robot when he is actually just an eminence gris, and fantasize about Ann Coulter being a man. This last claim is particularly cruel in view of the Daily Kos viewpoint that shemales should always be identified as women.

The site is controlled by the CIA but not for the purpose of disinformation or gate keeping. The CIA run the site to manage the emotional band of the community just above apathy but below effective activism. A psychohistory case study explaining why it is important to keep the members of the Dailykos community engaged in the Democratic process is coming soon.

DailyKos is owned and operated by Markos Moulitsas Zuniga and in one of those coincidences that don’t happen very often, was born September 11, 1971.

And speaking of 9/11 and 'Conspiracy Theories' in general, they are forbidden at DailyKos.

The FAQ (rules and guidelines for posting diaries)

DailyKos accepts that the 9/11 attacks were perpetrated by agents of Al-Qaeda. It is forbidden to write diaries that:

• refer to claims that American, British, Israeli, or any government assisted in the attacks
• refer to claims that the airplanes that crashed into the WTC and Pentagon were not the cause of the damage to those buildings or their subsequent collapse. Yes, this does include 'controlled demolition' of WTC 7.

“911 Truthers are Dummies” published at Dailykos on August 4 (below) and was my successful attempt at getting around the rules and guidelines.

My position on September 11:

I’ll get right to the point, I have read the books and watched the documentaries on September 11 for three years and the 9/11 official story:

Nineteen fanatical Arab hijackers, masterminded by an evil genius named Osama bin Laden, crash airplanes into steel skyscrapers because they “hate our freedom to consume” and inexplicably on 9/11 jet fuel, which is basically kerosene that burns at about 400c, took on the qualities of an explosive demolition agent, vaporizing 70 tons of aircraft into a puff of smoke and causing 110-story buildings to collapse into a pile of rubble. [1]

Is so stupid Bush, Cheney and Rumsfeld didn’t expect you to believe it.

I will donate $10.00 for each comment (up to 150.00) to our favorite website, The Peoples Voice, for feedback from this community. My email address is mandrell2010@gmail.com.

911 Truthers are Dummies (hyperlink provided in case you want to read the comments at DailyKos. The Kogs missed the subtle message. My guess is that you guys will figure it out.)

By Katherine Smith, PhD

[DailyKos Disclaimer about why conspiracy theorists are consistently wrong. All conspiracy theories (C/T) can be reduced to a supposed discrepancy or anomaly in one official record or another. To the conspiracy theorists the holes in an “official story” are some kind of truth that conspirators are trying to cover up. However, because theorists rarely if ever have any coherent beginning-to-end narrative of what they think happened, the perceived discrepancies constitute the entire basis of their arguments.

What the conspiracy theorists consistently ignore (and rarely does anyone point out) is how simple it would be for the criminals to change or falsify the alleged discrepancy or anomaly. The act of doing so would be trivial compared to the magnitude of other acts the theorists claim the conspirators committed.]

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