Am at Schiphol again at 5.30am, after an overnight flight from Accra, waiting eight hours for a connecting flight to Washington, and thinking “Why oh why do I put myself through this?” Slightly mitigated by the joy of being able to post again on a working internet connection.
AFGHANISTAN, PAKISTAN, IRAN, IRAQ, VIETNAM: EXPOSING OFFICIAL LIES
Ward Circle Building, Room 2, American University
Wednesday, October 21 at 8:10 pm
Keynote Speaker: Col. Larry Wilkerson (USA, ret.) Chief of Staff to Secretary of State Colin Powell during the critical period from August 2002 until January 2005; Served as Army officer for 31 years;
Recipient of 2009 Award from Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence
Daniel Ellsberg, Former Defense and State Department official who released the Pentagon Papers to the press in 1971, for which he was put on trial facing a possible sentence of 115 years; Author, Secrets: A Memoir of Vietnam and the Pentagon Papers; Subject of newly released documentary “The Most Dangerous Man in America,” which he was called at the time by Henry Kissinger
Coleen Rowley, Former Special agent and legal counselor, Minneapolis FBI, who called the FBI director’s attention to serious flaws that might have prevented 9/11; Time Magazine Person of the Year in 2002; Sam Adams Award Recipient, 2002
Craig Murray, Former U.K. Ambassador to Uzbekistan, who exposed the use of torture, declaring, “I would rather die than have someone tortured in attempt to give me more security.” Sam Adams Award recipient, 2005
Ray McGovern, Veteran CIA analyst, whose duties included preparing and briefing the President’s Daily Brief under Nixon, Ford, and Reagan; Co-founder Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity (VIPS); Colleague of Sam Adams
Peter Kuznick, Professor of History; Director, American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute; Co-writer (with Oliver Stone) “Secret History of the United States” (forthcoming on Showtime)
The late Sam Adams, in calculating the number of Vietnamese Communists under arms, came up with more than twice the number Gen. William Westmoreland, Commander of U.S. forces, would allow the Army to acknowledge. The country-wide offensive at Tet in January-February 1968 proved Sam right.
Sponsored by Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence, American University History Department, American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute
To Tell the Truth
Coleen Rowley and Ambassador Craig Murray
Ray McGovern, moderator
Date/Time: THURSDAY, October 22, 7-9 PM
Place: Festival Center/Servant Leadership School
1640 Columbia Road, NW
Washington, DC 20009
202 328 0072Cost: free (but free-will offerings welcome)
We are all taught to tell the truth. But when some folks enter government service, they seem to claim an exemption. Truth telling becomes quaint, obsolete. Misfeasance and malfeasance get covered up, and we never seem to learn from our mistakes.
Worse still, governments start wars on flimsy pretexts; and this leads to what the Nuremberg Tribunal labeled “accumulated” evils?”like torture. Although a chosen few in our Congress are briefed on such evils, we the people never get to know, UNLESS…
… people of conscience have the integrity and courage to speak out. Our presenters will draw on their personal experience in this kind of speaking out; what it’s like; and what happened to them as a result:
Coleen Rowley, as legal counsel/special agent in the FBI’s Minneapolis Bureau, became aware of the repeated?”but unheeded?”warnings her colleagues sent to FBI headquarters before 9/11. In a memorandum to the FBI Director and Congress she exposed many of the shortcomings and became persona non grata when a lawmaker gave the memo to the press. Time Magazine honored her by naming her Person of the Year in 2002.
Craig Murray was Great Britain’s Ambassador to Uzbekistan when he discovered that his hosts were boiling people alive to extract “intelligence” on “terrorists.” He discovered to his dismay that his Foreign Office superiors thought that this was okay, so long as Craig didn’t do it. He left the Foreign Service and is now Rector of the University of Dundee?”one of Britain’s leading universities, described by Nobel Prize winner Seamus Heaney as “having its head in the clouds and its feet firmly on the ground.”
Rowley and Murray are past recipients of the annual Sam Adams Award for Integrity in Intelligence. This forum is follow-on to the Oct. 21event at American U. (see: http://tinyurl.com/ygm55pe)
Sponsored by Speaking Truth to Power/Tell the Word
Press release
Union of Uzbek non-governmental organisations
No – it’s not a race issue, but it IS a religious and cultural one as well as an economic one. I had a Lebanese grandfather who migrated here from the Turkish Empire as it then was, and he was totally committed to integrating into British society and values whilst retaining his own family and cultural links in the Middle East.
The worry felt by many white British people – and not only poor undereducated working class ones – is that the Asian Muslim immigrants who have settled in many of our towns and cities over the past thirty years do not wish to espouse our values and liberal social attitudes, and are intent on not merely preserving their own traditions in a self-imposed apartheid, but want to see an eventual imposition of their beliefs, sharia laws and customs on the rest of the population. It is this fear which is articulated and exploited in twisted racist terms by the BNP because none of the mainstream parties are willing to confront it and to admit that their shibboleth of multiculturalism will only work if all concerned want it to and that it has so far failed.
I am not hostile to Muslims personally – I know some very pleasant ones – but I do have a sense of unease as to where their ultimate loyalties lie. The so-called ‘extremists’ are simply following the logic of Islamic orthodoxy and the mainstream moderates we hear so much about keep their heads well down and their mouths mostly shut.
Until the mainstream parties do far more to address these very real concerns of a far wider segment than BNP voters, the latter will, I fear, continue to gather support it doesn’t deserve, and our democracy will suffer.
I do agree that immigration has been immensely beneficial to England. The great thing about immigrants is that they are really intelligent and self motivated. They actually got off their arse, and travelled thousands of miles to come to the Promised Land…
Can’t we just export the stupid lazy racist moaners to New Zealand or somewhere. I know we used to do this. They would be good with the sheep – most are the same colour – and New Zealand is still very underpopulated…Whilst England is becoming one of the most densely populated countries in the World and its not due to The English having too many babies.
It is Actually a Massive Compliment to Our Country That So Many People Want To Come Here.
Tony
In retrospect this is rather weird, cos I was rather shy at school, but when I finally got a proper job, I just saw things that needed doing and did them, and ended up getting promoted very quickly…
So I was about 23 and had a team of people working for me… One of them was a Member of The Socialist Workers Party, and another guy was a Member of the National Front. The NF guy took his politics very seriously and even put himself up as a Parliamentary Candidate. The SWP bloke also took his politics very seriously…
At the weekends when they were in their free time – they both used to attend the protests, the demos and the race riots… They used to throw bricks at each other…
Of course I was their boss and couldn’t take sides and had to be impartial…
I said I couldn’t care less what you do in your spare time, but when you are in Work, you will behave Professionally, and You Will Work with each other – because you are both a part of the same team…
And they did. They put aside all their politics when in work and got on really well.
I understood both their viewpoints and they both were correct.
20 years later, I took my Young Son to show him the house I grew up in, and the entire area had changed completely. The entire culture was totally different. The change was so dramatic I was totally amazed. It was like walking through a town in Northern India or Pakistan.
Tony
Excellent links upstream here.
http://www.fff.org/comment/com0908m.asp
Posted by: Willie Warrior at October 22, 2009 2:09 PM
This is a classic for anyone wanting to know the inside story on Gitmo . Col Lawrence Wilkerson is an OK guy !
The second is a vicious but perfectly truthful demolition of Jack Straw in the Indie . In the past Craig has dismissed the paper, but I check it every day, and it is good value. You get some stories all the other qualities miss.
http://www.independent.co.uk/opinion/commentators/matthew-norman/matthew-norman-of-all-the-new-labour-toadies-jack-straw-must-be-the-worst-1807563.html
PS I like toads. Object to the use of their name in comparison to the execrable Straw. I thought he was vile on QT last night – puffed up with his pretence of giving a damn about our liberties with his faux patriotism. Should have been an actor like Bliar.
Posted by: mary at October 23, 2009 7:02 AM
————————
I actually came to post the link but Mary was first.
I could still remember the name of the SWP guy – well his first name, but I couldn’t remember the name of the NF guy. But my memory didn’t fail me, because I found his surname within 2 minutes of starting a Google search, and could then remember his first name.
The SWP guy had dark long fuzzy curly hair, amd was really slim and about 5′ 7″ tall. His mate looked like Robert Plant.
The NF guy was slim, tall and very straight. He was about 6’1″ tall and had short fair hair.
I think it us unfair to find out what has happenned to either of them since, as this is ancient history over 30 years old.
Tony
A friend who lives in the US went to the talk where Craig was one of the speakers and said he was very good.
Here is Craig being interviewed on Real News by Paul Jay. Torture in Uzbekistan and the geo political background to the War(s) on Terror. Excellent. Link from medialens.
Murray: CIA used Uzbek torture to create false intelligence; support for regime continues
Posted by chapultepec on October 24, 2009, 12:37 pm
http://therealnews.com/t/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&id=31&Itemid=74&jumival=4368&
video
videos.therealnews.com/cmurraypt1_med.mp4
mp3
therealnews.com/media/downloadmp4.php?file=trn_2009-10-04/cmurraypt1.mp3