|
|
|
|
| 
|
|
|
|
|
also [latest WWIII news] - [WWIII news links]
The phoney 'War
on Terrorism' is designed to pave the way to a totalitarian New World Order
- DANGER: Western foreign policy and covert operations are actively
encouraging terrorist attacks from CIA Arab groups
'And ye shall hear of wars and rumours of wars: see that ye be not troubled: for all these things must come to pass, but the end is not yet' Matthew 24:6
Masterminded by and through the private
and seemingly respectable
Council
on Foreign Relations club, home of the military-industrial complex, the
USA's totalitarian energy-backed administration has begun a global war of
terror against threats to its economic interests. Those 'threats' include
democratic institutions and free peoples right across the world. This high-risk
strategy will be characterised by U.S. military vacillation, economic warfare,
lies, hypocrisy, brinkmanship and over-reaction, provoking attacks on
institutions of U.S. and western power. Rumours
(Matthew 24:6) Of War. These attacks
are welcomed privately by the elite because they justify increased military
spending, foreign intervention and takeover of natural resources. Meanwhile
Israel's destruction
of the Palestinian people and acquisition of their land is neatly 'covered',
the Balfour Declaration all but forgotten.
I believe President Kennedy was assassinated
in a military-industrial (CFR/CIA) coup in 1963. No president has dared take
on the CFR and the corporations again. Can we please stop referring to the
USA as a 'democracy' when it is now a totalitarian state. George W. Bush
is not a democratic president, he and his his Wall Street backers
stole the Florida vote. The supreme court acted illegally
in stopping the Florida recount.
War News Links:
Pro-war (go on, have a laugh as they go into apopleptic spin trying to justify armed-to-the-teeth bullies kicking innocent heads in) http://aboutthewar.com/
To save the lives of innocent fellow countrymen Western
rulers must stop military invasions, occupation and covert operations NOW!
How unreal... the 'experts' trying to justify war on our TV screens again. But are we being served up reasons, or excuses? The mainstream media's double standards stink to heaven. Has nobody told them that the US and other Western governments started this 'war'? And how, if our governments address the Western sponsored injustices in Palestine, Iraq and other non-compliant countries, the terrorist threat will evaporate. Or could it be they like it this way?
We are told that ordinary people support a military attack on Afghanistan. Yet at vigils we've been holding here in Bristol hundreds of cars, buses and vans that pass us have been 'honking for peace'.
There's the hardly unrelated matter of US oil giant Unocal's long-standing desire for a 1500km natural gas pipeline through Afghanistan. The new president of Afghanistan is a Unocal consultant. Bin Laden, it seems, has been holding up their plans.
There are cold economic and geostrategic imperatives for further US led interventionism on the Eurasian continent, or 'war'. See 'The Grand Chessboard' by Z Brzezinski. So any or all of the western intelligence agencies may be responsible for backing the WTC attack as part of their covert operations. The inaction of intelligence agencies, the CIA, Mossad and MI6 etc. must also be the subject of investigation.
By John R Bradley in Jeddah (Filed: 07/03/2003)
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F03%2F07%2Fwirq207.xml
Thousands of American soldiers are pouring into Saudi Arabia in preparation for an invasion of Iraq, independent sources say.
The Movement for Islamic Reform in Arabia, a London-based group opposed to the Saudi regime, said that between 2,000 and 5,000 United States troops landed in the northern garrison town of Tabuk in the last week.
Other credible independent reports said that American forces had taken control of Arar airport, less than 10 miles from the Saudi-Iraq border and that it had been closed to civilian air traffic.
The Saudi government, which is facing stiff opposition to the war at home, has not commented on the developments.
Last week The Telegraph reported that the White House and Riyadh had secretly agreed that American air operations against Iraq could be launched from Saudi soil, in return for a promise that all American forces would be withdrawn from the country after the war.
Some 5,000 United States troops are already stationed in Saudi Arabia, mostly at the Prince Sultan Air Base in Al-Kharj, 50 miles south of Riyadh, to enforce the "no-fly" zone over southern Iraq.
In Jeddah last week, Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, denied that Riyadh would allow American forces to launch or direct attacks against Iraq from its soil.
In the 1991 Gulf war 500,000 American troops were based in Saudi Arabia to liberate Kuwait and invade Iraq.
The official Saudi line remains that, without a second United Nations resolution, Saudi Arabia will not support another war.
But diplomats said that, despite its grave misgivings, the kingdom has decided that if the United States is determined to take military action it will stand by its ally in the name of friendship and self interest.
They added that the Saudi government believes a war will be shorter and more successful if the Americans can operate from Saudi facilities.
Saudi public opinion, inflamed by Israel's suppression of the Palestinian uprising, is totally against a US-led war against Iraq.
The ruling family is hoping that, as with the Afghanistan bombing campaign, any Iraqi war will be over before the anger among its people reaches boiling point.
But in an open show of support for America, Saudi Arabia has stockpiled 15 million barrels of oil and given a commitment to help meet Jordan's energy needs - for free - if necessary in the event of war.
Oil prices are at their highest for years, with traders fearing war in Iraq may disrupt exports from other Middle East producers, which account for 40 per cent of world production.
Saudi Arabia has more than a third of the world's known oil reserves and has already increased production to nine million barrels a day to ease concerns about a possible shortfall.
It is prepared to go to its full capacity of 10.5 million barrels a day, Arab officials said.
One official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said that Saudi Arabia, Kuwait and the United Arab Emirates had agreed to provide Jordan with 120,000 barrels of oil a day indefinitely, after pressure from the Bush administration to help Amman.
The official said Saudi Arabia would provide 50,000 barrels daily, Kuwait 50,000 and the UAE 20,000. He placed the net value at $1.3 billion and said delivery was expected to begin soon.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=%2Fnews%2F2003%2F03%2F07%2Fwirq207.xml
Martin Bright, Ed Vulliamy in New York and Peter Beaumont
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,905899,00.html
Sunday March 2, 2003
The Observer
The United States is conducting a secret 'dirty tricks' campaign against UN Security Council delegations in New York as part of its battle to win votes in favour of war against Iraq.
Details of the aggressive surveillance operation, which involves interception of the home and office telephones and the emails of UN delegates in New York, are revealed in a document leaked to The Observer.
The disclosures were made in a memorandum written by a top official at the National Security Agency - the US body which intercepts communications around the world - and circulated to both senior agents in his organisation and to a friendly foreign intelligence agency asking for its input.
The memo describes orders to staff at the agency, whose work is clouded in secrecy, to step up its surveillance operations 'particularly directed at... UN Security Council Members (minus US and GBR, of course)' to provide up-to-the-minute intelligence for Bush officials on the voting intentions of UN members regarding the issue of Iraq.
The leaked memorandum makes clear that the target of the heightened surveillance efforts are the delegations from Angola, Cameroon, Chile, Mexico, Guinea and Pakistan at the UN headquarters in New York - the so-called 'Middle Six' delegations whose votes are being fought over by the pro-war party, led by the US and Britain, and the party arguing for more time for UN inspections, led by France, China and Russia.
The memo is directed at senior NSA officials and advises them that the agency is 'mounting a surge' aimed at gleaning information not only on how delegations on the Security Council will vote on any second resolution on Iraq, but also 'policies', 'negotiating positions', 'alliances' and 'dependencies' - the 'whole gamut of information that could give US policymakers an edge in obtaining results favourable to US goals or to head off surprises'.
Dated 31 January 2003, the memo was circulated four days after the UN's chief weapons inspector Hans Blix produced his interim report on Iraqi compliance with UN resolution 1441.
It was sent by Frank Koza, chief of staff in the 'Regional Targets' section of the NSA, which spies on countries that are viewed as strategically important for United States interests.
Koza specifies that the information will be used for the US's 'QRC' - Quick Response Capability - 'against' the key delegations.
Suggesting the levels of surveillance of both the office and home phones of UN delegation members, Koza also asks regional managers to make sure that their staff also 'pay attention to existing non-UN Security Council Member UN-related and domestic comms [office and home telephones] for anything useful related to Security Council deliberations'.
Koza also addresses himself to the foreign agency, saying: 'We'd appreciate your support in getting the word to your analysts who might have similar more indirect access to valuable information from accesses in your product lines [ie, intelligence sources].' Koza makes clear it is an informal request at this juncture, but adds: 'I suspect that you'll be hearing more along these lines in formal channels.'
Disclosure of the US operation comes in the week that Blix will make what many expect to be his final report to the Security Council.
It also comes amid increasingly threatening noises from the US towards undecided countries on the Security Council who have been warned of the unpleasant economic consequences of standing up to the US.
Sources in Washington familiar with the operation said last week that there had been a division among Bush administration officials over whether to pursue such a high-intensity surveillance campaign with some warning of the serious consequences of discovery.
The existence of the surveillance operation, understood to have been requested by President Bush's National Security Adviser, Condoleezza Rice, is deeply embarrassing to the Americans in the middle of their efforts to win over the undecided delegations.
The language and content of the memo were judged to be authentic by three former intelligence operatives shown it by The Observer. We were also able to establish that Frank Koza does work for the NSA and could confirm his senior post in the Regional Targets section of the organisation.
The NSA main switchboard put The Observer through to extension 6727 at the agency which was answered by an assistant, who confirmed it was Koza's office. However, when The Observer asked to talk to Koza about the surveillance of diplomatic missions at the United Nations, it was then told 'You have reached the wrong number'.
On protesting that the assistant had just said this was Koza's extension, the assistant repeated that it was an erroneous extension, and hung up.
While many diplomats at the UN assume they are being bugged, the memo reveals for the first time the scope and scale of US communications intercepts targeted against the New York-based missions.
The disclosure comes at a time when diplomats from the countries have been complaining about the outright 'hostility' of US tactics in recent days to persuade then to fall in line, including threats to economic and aid packages.
The operation appears to have been spotted by rival organisations in Europe. 'The Americans are being very purposeful about this,' said a source at a European intelligence agency when asked about the US surveillance efforts.
http://www.observer.co.uk/international/story/0,6903,905899,00.html
By Toby Harnden in Washington (Filed: 27/02/2003)
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/02/27/wirq327.xml
The White House and the House of Saud have struck a deal to allow allied air operations against Iraq to be launched from Saudi, in return for the phased withdrawal of all American troops once hostilities are over.
Under the agreement, finalised after intensive negotiations this month, the command centre at Prince Sultan Air Base will be made available and American Awacs surveillance aircraft and Jstars radar aircraft will fly from Saudi airfields. It is also likely that jet fighters will launch interception missions from Saudi Arabia against Iraqi aircraft, while some secret bombing missions might take place.
A Bush administration official told the Washington Post: "We've reached agreements that affect facilities inside Saudi Arabia and a broad array of military operations that could happen in the event of hostilities with Iraq." There are 5,000 American military personnel stationed in Saudi Arabia as part of the United Nations requirement to police the "no-fly zone" over southern Iraq.
The Saudi royal family has been under domestic pressure to bring this arrangement to an end. American officials have said this would be acceptable because the no-fly zones would no longer be in operation once Saddam Hussein was overthrown. Saudi Arabia was the base for 500,000 of the allied ground troops that ejected Iraqi forces from Kuwait during the 1991 Gulf war. This time, however, the ground invasion is expected to be launched from Kuwait and Turkey.
Details of the deal are unlikely to be announced before the eve of an invasion. Prince Saud al-Faisal, the Saudi foreign minister, denied yesterday that any arrangements had been finalised.
A European diplomatic source, however, said that the principles behind the deal had been established several months ago. He said: "The Saudis didn't want to look too willing in a rush to war. They have a domestic problem - after all, this is where Osama bin Laden gets the funding for his campaign from. The minute it's over they'll want them out of there. If we do go to war and America runs Iraq for a while, the most interesting question is how quickly the Saudi air bases close down."
The Bush administration has been deeply divided over how to handle Saudi Arabia. Of the 19 September 11 suicide hijackers, 15 were Saudi citizens and there has been deep concern about Riyadh's reluctance to act against the financiers of al-Qa'eda.
The Bush administration has doubled its estimate of the cost of war to £60 billion for the combat phase and a reconstruction period of about six months.
http://news.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2003/02/27/wirq327.xml
http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,651594,00.html
Terry Jones Sunday February 17, 2002 The Observer
To prevent terrorism by dropping bombs on Iraq is such an obvious idea that I can't think why no one has thought of it before. It's so simple. If only the UK had done something similar in Northern Ireland, we wouldn't be in the mess we are in today.
The moment the IRA blew up the Horseguards' bandstand, the Government should have declared its own War on Terrorism. It should have immediately demanded that the Irish government hand over Gerry Adams. If they refused to do so - or quibbled about needing proof of his guilt - we could have told them that this was no time for prevarication and that they must hand over not only Adams but all IRA terrorists in the Republic. If they tried to stall by claiming that it was hard to tell who were IRA terrorists and who weren't, because they don't go around wearing identity badges, we would have been free to send in the bombers.
It is well known that the best way of picking out terrorists is to fly 30,000ft above the capital city of any state that harbours them and drop bombs - preferably cluster bombs. It is conceivable that the bombing of Dublin might have provoked some sort of protest, even if just from James Joyce fans, and there is at least some likelihood of increased anti-British sentiment in what remained of the city and thus a rise in the numbers of potential terrorists. But this, in itself, would have justified the tactic of bombing them in the first place. We would have nipped them in the bud, so to speak. I hope you follow the argument.
Having bombed Dublin and, perhaps, a few IRA training bogs in Tipperary, we could not have afforded to be complacent. We would have had to turn our attention to those states which had supported and funded the IRA terrorists through all these years. The main provider of funds was, of course, the USA, and this would have posed us with a bit of a problem. Where to bomb in America? It's a big place and it's by no means certain that a small country like the UK could afford enough bombs to do the whole job. It's going to cost the US billions to bomb Iraq and a lot of that is empty countryside. America, on the other hand, provides a bewildering number of targets.
Should we have bombed Washington, where the policies were formed? Or should we have concentrated on places where Irishmen are known to lurk, like New York, Boston and Philadelphia? We could have bombed any police station and fire station in most major urban centres, secure in the knowledge that we would be taking out significant numbers of IRA sympathisers. On St Patrick's Day, we could have bombed Fifth Avenue and scored a bull's-eye.
In those American cities we couldn't afford to bomb, we could have rounded up American citizens with Irish names, put bags over their heads and flown them in chains to Guernsey or Rockall, where we could have given them food packets marked 'My Kind of Meal' and exposed them to the elements with a clear conscience.
The same goes for Australia. There are thousands of people in Sydney and Melbourne alone who have actively supported Irish republicanism by sending money and good wishes back to people in the Republic, many of whom are known to be IRA members and sympathisers. A well-placed bomb or two Down Under could have taken out the ringleaders and left the world a safer place. Of course, it goes without saying that we would also have had to bomb various parts of London such as Camden Town, Lewisham and bits of Hammersmith and we should certainly have had to obliterate, if not the whole of Liverpool, at least the Scotland Road area.
And that would be it really, as far as exterminating the IRA and its supporters. Easy. The War on Terrorism provides a solution so uncomplicated, so straightforward and so gloriously simple that it baffles me why it has taken a man with the brains of George W. Bush to think of it.
So, sock it to Iraq, George. Let's make the world a safer place.
http://www.observer.co.uk/comment/story/0,6903,651594,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,874221,00.html
Jeevan Vasagar - Tuesday January 14, 2003 - The Guardian
Britain's biggest Muslim organisation yesterday warned Tony Blair that war with Iraq would cause community relations to deteriorate and breed "bitterness and conflict for generations to come".
Iqbal Sacranie, secretary general of the Muslim Council of Britain, urged the prime minister to use his influence to "avert the destruction of an important Muslim country" and warned of deep cynicism among British Muslims about the motives for the war on terror.
In a letter to No 10, Mr Sacranie described the plans for war as a "colonial policy".
"It is generally believed the real American objective behind such an invasion is to change the political map of the Middle East, appropriate its oil wealth and appoint Israel as a regional superpower exercising total hegemony over the entire Middle East and beyond," he wrote.
A war would worsen relations between communities and faiths in Britain as well as causing "lasting damage" to relations between the Muslim world and the west, Mr Sacranie added.
The opposition of the MCB, a moderate organisation linked to dozens of community groups, highlights the failure of the US and Britain to convince Muslims in the west of the validity of the war on terrorism.
Seven out of 10 British Muslims believe the war on terror is a war on Islam, according to an ICM poll published last month.
In the letter, Mr Sacranie expressed support for the anti-terrorist campaign, but wrote: "The war on terror should and can be won, but it has to be fought collectively not selectively, openly not secretively."
He told the Guardian that when he referred to fighting terrorism "collectively" he meant "in all areas, whether it is states - like Israel - or organisations."
Mr Sacranie said he did not believe there should be war even if Iraq was found to possess weapons of mass destruction.
"If WMD are being got rid of, all countries have to get rid of them, and war is not the way to go about this.
"If we are talking about the region, Israel has chemical, biological and nuclear weapons."
He also criticised the chief rabbi, Dr Jonathan Sacks, who has expressed conditional support for military action against Saddam Hussein.
"We are very saddened by the remarks made by the chief rabbi," Mr Sacranie said.
The MCB's letter praised Mr Blair's attempt to revive the Middle East peace process, but added: "A war on Iraq would certainly unravel whatever little has been achieved so far.
"The humiliation ... that would attend a military conquest is likely to provide a natural ground for the growth of bitterness and conflict for generations to come."
Both President George Bush and Mr Blair have stated that the prospective campaign against Iraq is directed at Saddam Hussein's regime and is not a conflict with the wider Muslim world.
A Downing Street spokeswoman said: "The prime minister has made clear that this is not about a war against Islam.
"The government has done lots of work with the Muslim community here and with the Arab world and will continue to do so."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/uk_news/story/0,3604,874221,00.html
1897: Long-established Union Pacific Railroad (UPR) bankrupted.
1898: Edward Henry Harriman & legal partner, Judge Robert Scott Lovett, buy UPR for $110 million, a deal brokered by New York-based Kuhn Loeb investment bank house, of which Felix Warburg was a partner. During this period, Samuel Prescott Bush was president of the Buckeye Steel Castings Co.
1914: With war looming, Percy A. Rockefeller took control of the arms manufacturer, Remington Arms & appoints Samuel F. Pryor as CEO.
1918: Robert Scott Lovett (above) now president of UPR. Samuel Prescott Bush (above) made director of the facilities division of the US War Industries Board under its chairman Bernard Baruch & his assistant, the banker Clarence Dillon.
Nov.1919: Founding members of W.A.Harriman & Co. bank: George Herbert Walker Snr (Pres./CEO); Averell Harriman (Chm); E.Rowland (‘Bunny”) Harriman (both sons of E.H.Harriman (above); & Percy Rockefeller (above). Averell Harriman was to become US Ambassador to the USSR [‘43 - ‘46]; US Secretary of Commerce [‘46 - ‘48]; & Governor of NY State [‘55 - ‘59])
1920: Averell Harriman & George Herbert Walker Snr. of W.A.Harriman & Co. gain control of the German Hamburg-Amerika Line after negotiations with the latter’s chief executive, William Cuno, & Max Warburg of the shipping line’s bankers, M.M. Warburg. The American holding now known as the American Ship & Commerce Corp. (ASCC). Samuel F. Pryor (above) of Remington Arms had been involved in the deal & now served on the board of ASCC. (Cuno was subsequently to become a heavy contributor to Nazi Party funds). It should be noted that Averell Harriman was chairman of UPR from 1920 -1946.
1922: Averell Harriman set up a branch of W. A. Harriman & Co. in Berlin under the presidency of his partner, George H. Walker Snr.
Oct. 1923: Fritz Thyssen’s contributions to the Nazi Party began with a donation of 100,000 marks (ref: his book “I Paid Hitler” ‘41).
Prior to 1924: As revealed in a US government memorandum dated Oct. 5 ‘42 to the Executive Committee of the office of the Alien Property Custodian: “W. Averell Harriman was in Europe sometime prior to 1924 & at that time became acquainted with Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist”, and they agreed to set up a bank for Thyssen in New York. It adds that the Thyssen agent “H. J. Kouwenhoven..came to the United States..prior to 1924 for conferences with the Harriman company in this connection”.
1924: W.A.Harriman & Co invested $400,000 in setting up Union Banking Corp. (UBC) in New York to act in partnership with the Thyssen-owned Bank voor Handel en Scheepvart (BHS) in Holland. The UBC was now in a position to transfer funds back & forth between the US and Thyssen’s companies in Germany - his Vereinigte Stahlwerke in particular.Prescott Sheldon Bush Snr. (son of Samuel Bush, & son-in-law of George H Walker Snr) joins the Harriman - controlled US Rubber Co.
1926: Prescott S. Bush Snr. made Vice-President of W. A. Harriman & Co.The Wall Street banker, Clarence Dillon (an old colleague of Prescott S. Bush Snr.’s father, Sam Bush - see above), of Dillon Read, set up the German Steel Trust with Thyssen & partner, Friedrich Flick, whereby Dillon Read would handle the Trust’s corporate banking in return for two Dillon Read representatives being on the board of the German Steel Trust, whose chief executive was Albert Voegler, another German industrialist who was to help Hitler into power. He (Voegler) also held directorships in the BHS bank, & the Hamburg-Amerika Line. The UBC was by now in partnership with Friedrich Flick’s vast steel, coal & zinc conglomerate operating in Germany & Poland - the Silesian Holding Co. Walker, Bush, & Harriman now owned one third of Flick’s conglomerate, calling their holding the Consolidated Silesian Steel Corp.
1928/1929: W.A.Harriman & Co. buy Dresser Industries (founded 1905 by Solomon R.Dresser), & Henry Neil Mallon is made Pres./Chm of Dresser. (Mallon had attended Yale University with E.Rowland (‘Bunny’) Harriman & Prescott Bush Snr.)
1930: Prescott Bush snr. Director of Dresser Industries (until ‘52)
1930/’31(?); As admitted by Fritz Thyssen during interrogation in Sept. ‘45, he arranged with Rudolph Hess for the transfer of “about 250-300,000 marks” via his (Thyssen’s) Dutch bank BHS to the Nazi Party - adding it was “about the sum I’d given before”. In total, he had donated & loaned more than one million dollars to the Nazi Party.
Jan. 1 1931: W. A. Harriman & Co. merged with the British-American investment house, Brown Brothers, resulting in Prescott S. Bush Snr., Thatcher M. Brown & the two Harriman brothers being the senior partners of the new Brown Brothers Harriman firm. A board member of Brown Bros., Robert A. Lovett (son of Robert Scott Lovett [above] & Asst. Sec. for Air [in WW2]; Under Sec. of State [‘47 - ‘49]; Dep. Sec. of Defense [‘50 - ‘51]; Secretary of Defense [‘51 - ‘53]), an American whose father had served on the War Industries Board of WW 1 with Sam Bush [above]), became another partner in the newly- merged firm. Prescott S. Bush Snr. now ran the New York office of the the newly-merged firm, while Thatcher Brown ran the London end. Certain pertinent facts about Brown Bros. are worthy of note here: Montagu Collet Norman, governor of the Bank of England & well-known Nazi sympathiser, was not only an ex-Brown Bros. partner - his grandfather had also been boss of Brown Bros. during the American Civil War when they (Brown Bros.) were shipping 75% of slave cotton from the southern states of America to British mills.
1932: As reported by the US embassy in Berlin to Washington not long before Hitler’s taking over of power, questions were being raised as to who were the financial backers behind the Nazi Party electioneering & their 300,000 - 400,000 SA & SS troops - adding that the American-owned Hamburg-Amerika Line was funding propaganda against the German government’s attempts to disband these troops!
Jan. 1933: Hitler assumes power in Germany.
Mar. 7 1933: Prescott S. Bush Snr. notified Max Warburg (above) that he (Warburg) was to be the American Ship & Commerce Line official representative on the board of the Hamburg- Amerika Line. Warburg had been a long-time advisor to Hjalmar Schacht (German Economics Minister & a close friend of Montagu Norman), & was an executive in the Reichsbank. A further pertinent connection: Max Warburg’s brothers ran the Kuhn Loeb investment bank, which had handled E. H. Harriman’s buy-out of the Union Pacific Railroad in the 1890’s (above).
Mar. 29 1933: As revealed in Moshe Gottlieb’s book “American Anti-Nazi Resistance ‘33 - ‘41”, Max Warburg’s son, Erich, cabled his cousin, Frederick Warburg - who was a director of the Union Pacific Railroad - instructing him to use his influence to stop all anti-Nazi propaganda & activity in America.
Mar. 31 1933: As a result: the American-Jewish committee (within which the Warburgs had much influence) & The B’nai B’rith (which subsequently became known as the Anti-Defamation League) issued a joint statement counselling “that no American boycott against Germany be encouraged”!
May. 20. 1933: As reported in the New York Times: on Hitler achieving power, an agreement to coordinate all trade between Germany & America was reached in Berlin after negotiations between Hitler’s Economics Minister, Hjalmar Schacht (above) & John Foster Dulles. As a result of this, the Harriman International Co. - under Oliver Harriman (Averell’s first cousin) - formed a syndicate of 150 firms/individuals to conduct all exports from Germany to America. It should be noted here that the two Dulles brothers, partners in the corporate law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, had acted for many Nazi enterprises during & after this period, including I. G. Farben, developer of the nerve gas, Tabun; SKF, supplier of 60% of its bearings to Germany; & the Schroeder Banking house, of which Allen Welsh Dulles became a director of its New York branch - a post he held until 1944. Further pertinent details of the Dulles brothers: J. F. Dulles became Secretary of State [‘53 - ‘59]; A. W. Dulles became CIA Deputy Director for Plans [‘51]; Deputy Director of Central Intelligence [‘51 - ‘53]; & Director of CIA [‘53 -’61].
Sept. 5 1933: North German Lloyd Co. merged with Hamburg-Amerika Line in Hamburg.
Nov. 4 1933: American Ship & Commerce Corp. (owners of Hamburg-Amerika - see above) installed long-time Harriman executive, Christian Beck as manager of ‘freight & operations’ in North America for this newly-merged company, now known as Hapag-LLoyd, whose chairman was Emil Helfferich, a Nazi. Nazi security guards accompanied all shipping so engaged in this trade.
Sept. 1934: At the US Senate Nye Committee hearings, it was revealed that Samuel Pryor, executive ctte. chairman of Remington arms & founding director of both the UBC & the American Ship & Commerce Corp., had joined in a cartel agreement with I. G. Farben, the German chemical/armaments conglomerate (see above). It was further revealed that the Nazi troops (noted above) were “nearly all armed with American guns”.
Dec. 7 1941: Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour - US now in World War 2.
Aug. 28 1942: Under the Trading with the Enemy Act, the US government - via Leo T. Crowley, the US Alien Property Custodian - ordered the seizure of all property of Hapag-Lloyd.
Oct. 20 1942: Leo T. Crowley, the US Alien Property Custodian - seized the stock shares of the Union Banking Corp. of New York, whose shareholders were: Chm./Dir. E. Rowland (‘Bunny’) Harriman (of Brown Brothers Harriman); Pres./Dir. Cornelis Lievense (banking functionary for the Nazis); Treasurer/Dir. Harold D. Pennington (of Brown Brothers Harriman); Dir. Ray Morris (of Brown Brothers Harriman); Dir. Prescott S. Bush Snr.(of Brown Brothers Harriman); Dir. H.J. Kouwenhoven (Dir./Chief foreign financial exec. of German Steel Trust & the man who had brokered the deal between Fritz Thyssen & the UBC); Dir. Johann G. Groeninger (Industrial Exec. in Nazi Germany). These seized shares were described in the Vesting Order as “shares held for the benefit of members of the Thyssen family, property of nationals..of a designated enemy country”.
Oct. 28 1942: US government seized 2 Nazi front companies - the Seamless Steel Equipment Corp & Holland-American Trading Corp. - both run by the UBC.
Nov. 17 1942: Nazi financial interests (only) in Silesian-American Corp. (above) seized, leaving US partners (UBC) “to carry on the business”.
Jul. 2 1945: As revealed by the US Treasury Dept. in hearings before a 79th Congress committee: the Vereinigte Stahlwerke (see above) had produced the following proportions of Nazi Germany’s total output: Pig iron 50.8%; Pipe & tubes 45.5%; Universal plate 41.4%; Galvanised sheet 38.5%; Heavy plate 36%; Explosives 35%; Wire 22.1%.
1948: George Herbert Walker Bush Snr. (son of Prescott S. Bush Snr., grandson of Samuel Bush & George Walker - see above) joins Dresser/IDECO, & two years later co-founds the Bush-Overby Development Co. (trading in oil leases & royalties) with a total capital of $300,000. James Gammell, a Scottish ‘eminence grise’ - whose father had served as Head of the British Military Mission in Moscow in ‘45, working closely with US Ambassador Averell Harriman (see above), invested $50,000 in Bush-Overby. (He was later to become director of Zapata). Other investors included: Eugene Meyer (World Bank) $50,000; & Prescott Bush Snr. $50,000 - all with not-a-little-help from George Herbert Walker (whose son, George Herbert Walker Jnr. holds directorships in both Bush-Overby & later - Zapata.) The job of this company entailed - in effect - conning the Texan farmer/land-owner into signing away his rights to any future oil-royalties for a token fee.
1952: Prescott Bush Snr. elected State Senator
1953: George Bush Snr. Joins Attorneys-at-Law brothers J.Hugh Liedtke & William Liedtke in setting up Zapata Petroleum with capital of $500,000 from Liedtke associates, & $500,000 from Walker associates - & Jimmy Gammell is given a directorship.
1954: George Bush Snr. now president of Zapata Offshore (oil drilling company 40% owned by Zapata Petroleum).
1966: George Bush Snr. elected to Congress.
1971 - 1972: George Bush Snr. made US ambassador to UN.
1972: George Bush Snr. made chairman of the Republican Party National committee.
1974 - 1975: In aftermath of President Nixon’s resignation, President Gerald Ford appointed George Bush Snr. to head the US Liaison Office in Beijing
Jan. 30 1976 - Mar. 9 1977: George Bush Snr. made Director of CIA. During this period a number of the CIA’s ‘clandestine aircraft were sold to Skyway Airline, owned by James Bath who had served in the military reserve with George W. Bush Jnr.(son of George Bush Snr.). Bath was the US representative of Salem bin Laden, a brother of Osama bin Laden. George Bush Jnr. formed the oil company Arbusto Energy. George Bush Snr. flies to London at the height of the 'MI5 Wilson Plot' to assure British Prime Minister Harold Wilson that if he had been under surveillance it was not the CIA which had been responsible. This was reported in the Sunday Times on 29th March 1981 under the headline 'The Hollis affair' and in 'The profession of intelligence', part 5, BBC Radio 4, 10th February 1982.
1978: James Bath invests $50,000 in Arbusto Energy
1979: During Jimmy Carter’s presidency, & as a result of the Sandanista rebellion led by Daniel Ortega, the Nicaraguan dictator Anastasio Somoza fled the country.
Jan. 20 1981: Ronald Reagan now president with George Bush Snr. hisVice-President. Defeat of the left-wing Sandanistas became an immediate aim of the Reagan Administration, & this was to be implemented using secretive methods (which were later to prove illegal) under the control of the Special Situations Group, whose chairman was Vice-President George Bush Snr. (who had wrested this post from Secretary of State Alexander Haig early on). Enter Lieutenant-Colonel Oliver North who served on both the Inter-Departmental Group on Terrorism & the Terrorist Incident Working Group - both under Bush. They were to set-up, finance & arm an anti-Sandanista militia, the Contras, using neighbouring Guatemala as a training ground.
1983: Contras begin offensive against Sandanistas in Nicaragua.
Apr. 1984: US congress refuses to authorise $24 million aid to Contras requested by Reagan.
1984: Arbusto Energy Inc. proves to be an unsuccessful venture & is bought out by another oil company, Spectrum 7 Energy Corp. George W. Bush Jnr. is made president of Spectrum.
Oct. 1984: Congress cuts off any funding & support to the Contras. John Ellis (‘Jeb’) Bush, the 2nd eldest son of George Bush Snr. - & a real estate developer - had been acting as the Reagan administration’s unofficial link with Contra & Nicaraguan exiles in Miami. He also put the right-wing Guatemalan politician, Dr. Mario Castejon, in touch with Oliver North, which led to Castejon & Henry Whaley ( a former arms dealer) proposing that the State Department supply medicines, field hospitals & light aircraft to the Contras. This proposal was passed to the CIA via TGS International, a firm owned by Ted Shackley, who had served as Associate Deputy Director of Operations in the CIA under George Bush Snr. (‘76 - ‘77).
Dec. 1985: Congress partially lifts ban on Contra aid, & authorises $13 million in aid - plus $27 million for ‘humanitarian’ aid.
1986: Behind-the-scenes machinations of the US Administration becomes public knowledge with the revelation of the illegal ‘Arms for Hostages’ scandal - known as the ‘Iran-Contra affair’. The Spectre 7 Energy Corp. (above) proves to be another unsuccessful venture for George W. Bush Jnr. It is sold to another small oil company, Harken Energy Corp., a deal whereby the partners in Spectrum received $2 million worth of shares in Harken, & George Bush Jnr. was made director & consultant of the Harken - with the added bonus of $600,000 extra shares.
Oct. 1986: US Congress lifts remaining ban & authorises £100 million aid to Contras.
1987: In a CBS interview with Jane Wallace, Michael ‘Mickey’ Tolliver, a pilot involved in the trade of drugs, revealed details of one flight he had made involving the Contras: he had flown to Honduras with a cargo of 28.000 lbs of guns & ammunition, & after a 3-day rest there he had returned with a cargo of 25,360 lbs of marijuana - landing at the US Airforce Base in Homestead, Florida, where the cargo was unloaded! He had been paid $75.000. Saudi banker Salem Massaoud invests $25 million in Harken.Mar. 11 ‘88: Robert McFarlane (Reagan’s National Security Advisor ‘83 - ‘85) found guilty of criminal charges of witholding information from Congress about secret aid to the Contras.
Mar. 16 1988: John Poindexter (National Security Advisor from ‘85 - ‘86) & Oliver North (National Security Council - see above) both charged with conspiracy to defraud the US Government - but trials delayed.
Late ‘88: US Federal Regulators shut down Silverado Banking Savings & Loan co., due, primarily, to non-repayment of questionable loans they had made. Neil Mellon Bush (3rd son of George Bush Snr.) had been director of Silverado from ‘85.
Jan. 20 1989: George Bush Snr. inaugurated as president of US.
May 1989: Oliver North convicted on 3 counts, & in July ‘89 is fined $150,000 - plus a 3-year suspended jail sentence.
June 1989: President George Bush Snr. imposed economic sanctions on China as a result of Tiananmen Square killings. Soon after these sanctions were imposed, the President’s older brother, Prescott Bush Jnr. of the consultancy firm Prescott Bush Resources, was hired by Asset Management International Financing & Settlement at a fee of $250,000 for consultation re-its (Asset’s) joint venture with China to set up the latter’s internal communications network. (This involved $300 million worth of Hughes Aircraft satellites - a key component of the deal). Concurrent with this, Prescott Bush Jnr. was also acting as middleman for the buying-out of Asset Management by West Tsusho, a Tokyo-based investment firm controlled by the Inagawakai branch of the Yakuza, the well-known politically influential Japanese Mob. For this he received a $250,000 ‘finder’s fee’ & promised an annual retainer of $250,000 for the next 3 years - as consultant.
Nov. 1989: US Congress passed additional sanctions specifically barring the export of US satellites to China - unless the president found the sale “in the national interest”.
Dec. 19 1989: President George Bush Snr. lifted the sanctions, citing “the national interest”.
1990: Orlando Bosch, an anti-Castro Cuban, leader of the Coordination of United Revolutionary Organisations, who had masterminded many bombings in Cuba & a Cuban airliner over Barbados on October 5th ‘76, had finally been imprisoned in 1988 in Miami for firing a bazooka at a Polish freighter in Miami harbour. He is now paroled after John Ellis Bush has lobbied his father’s administration for his release from prison.
Jan. 1990: Somewhat surprisingly for a small company, Harken Energy Corp. clinches a deal with the Gulf State of Bahrain, whereby the latter gives Harken exclusive right for oil & gas exploration. The report of the Office of Thrift Supervision into the failure of Silverado Banking revealed that Neil Mellon Bush (see above) had failed to disclose to Silverado Banking (on whose board he sat) his business connections with Ken Good & Bill Walters who had defaulted on $132 million in loans from Silverado. (1) Good had given Neil Mallon Bush a $100,000 loan to invest in the commodities market. (2) Neil Bush had Silverado write a letter of recommendation to Argentina, where Good International - in partnership with Neil Bush’s oil company JNB Exploration (which he had founded in ‘83) - was exploring for gas & oil. (3) Bill Walters had contributed $150,000 to the initial capitalisation of JNB, and - through his bank Cherry Creek National Bank -had extended a $1.5 million line of credit to JNB (from which he, Bush, had drawn a salary of $500,000 over the next 5 years).
Apr. 7 1990: John Poindexter convicted on 5 counts, & sentenced to 6 months imprisonment - but convictions of both North & Poindexter subsequently ‘set aside’.
June 22 ‘90: George W. Bush Jnr. sold $848,560 of his Harken shares - & one week later the company announces a $23 million loss for the past quarter, & loses a further 60% of its value over the following 6 months. As the ‘News & World Report’ noted at the time: Bush Jnr. had recently been appointed by Harken to study the possible economic restructuring of the company!
‘1990 to 1994: George W. Bush Jnr. made Director of Carlyle Group subsidiary: Caterair.
Aug. 2 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait.
Mar. 1991: Asset Management (see above) goes bankrupt, & the following year West Tsusho filed a $2.5 million suit against Prescott Bush Jnr. for not protecting their $5 million investment in Asset Management.
Apr.19 1991: US Government declared Neil Mallon Bush a bankrupt & imposed sanctions on him for violating ‘conflict of interest’ rules.
1992: Caspar W. Weinberger (Secretary of Defense ‘81 - ‘87) indicted on 5 counts of lying to Congress.
Dec. 24 1992: President George Bush Snr., having just been defeated by Clinton, pardons all those principal players (above) in the Iran-Contra scandal.
1998: George W. Bush Jnr. governor of Texas (for the second time); John Ellis (‘Jeb’) Bush governor of Florida.
Jan. 20 ‘2001: George W. Bush Jnr. inaugurated as president of the USA (with not a little help from his brother ‘Jeb’).
2001: Revealed by the ‘Wall Street Journal’ that George Bush Snr. had brokered a deal with the Saudi Bin Laden family, whereby the latter would invest heavily in the prestigious Carlyle Group (see above). As noted in the ‘Petroleum Supply Annual 2001, Vol. 1 Table 21: Iraq supplied 289,998,000 barrels of crude oil to The USA in the year 2001.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,867137,00.html
Paul Foot
Wednesday January 1, 2003
This year, I suppose, for many of us will be George Orwell year. He was born in 1903, and died in 1950, and has loomed over the British literary scene ever since. This centenary year there is certain to be an entertaining re-run of the arguments on the left between his supporters, including me, and his detractors who hail back to the good old days under comrade Stalin. So I start Orwell year with a reminder that his famous satire 1984, though essentially an attack on Stalin's Russia, is not exclusively so. It foresees a horrific world, divided into three power blocks constantly changing sides in order to continue fighting against each other. The governments of all three keep the allegiance of their citizens by pretending there has only ever been one war, one enemy. "The Party said that Oceania had never been in alliance with Eurasia. He, Winston Smith, knew that Oceania had been in alliance with Eurasia as short a time as four years ago. But where did that knowledge exist? Only in his own consciousness. All that was needed was an unending series of victories over your own memory. 'Reality control' they called it: in Newspeak, 'doublethink'."
There is doublethink going on now as Oceania (the US and Britain) prepares for war against Iraq. We, the Winston Smiths of today, know that 15 years ago, the US and Britain were in alliance with Iraq. We know that the British Foreign Office sided with Saddam Hussein when he did those terrible things to his own people listed in Jack Straw's recent doublethink dossier. We know that our government changed their own guidelines in order to sell Saddam the ingredients of any weapons of mass destruction he may or may not now have. We also know that the key bases from which US bombers will take off to kill Iraqis are in Saudi Arabia, whose regime is even more dictatorial, savage and terrorist than Saddam's. But where does that knowledge exist? Only in our own consciousness.
Orwell's great novel was not only a satire, but a warning. He wanted to alert his readers to the dangers of acquiescence in the lies and contortions of powerful govern- ments and their media toadies. The anti-war movement is growing fast, in Britain and the US. Fortunately, we can still, as Orwell urged in another passage, "turn our consciousness to strength" and shake off the warmongers "like a horse shaking off flies". If we don't, we are in for another awful round of victories over our own memories and of doublethink.
· Probably the best speech I ever heard was in the summer of 1999. The speaker was my friend Eamonn McCann from Derry. His subject was the peace process in Northern Ireland, and his theme was the insistence by the state that the population in Northern Ireland must be divided into Protestant and Catholic. For an hour, he had the huge London audience in an almost permanent state of merriment as he quoted from the official documents sent out for the 2001 census.
The documents were quite different to those in England and Scotland. There were for instance 73 different categories of religion specified for the 1.5 million people in Northern Ireland, compared to 17 religions available to the 50 million people in Britain. What amused us was the stubborn refusal of the census authorities to concede that there were people in Northern Ireland who are neither Protestant nor Catholic. Even if you said you had no religion, you were obliged to disclose the religion of your parents or grandparents or the name of your school, so you could be shoved against your will into an appropriate (if inaccu rate) category. Eamonn proposed his only possible answer: "I am an atheist - and I come from a long line of atheists". His point was that if the state insists on dividing people by religion, there is little hope for genuine reconciliation, or for peace.
Last week the Northern Ireland census figures were published. Press reports concentrated on the diminishing gap between Protestants and Catholics, but by far the most hopeful revelation was that 14% of the Northern Ireland population refused to be classified in either group, or said they had no religion. These had duly been "reclassified" as Protestant or Catholic by reference to their school or family. Ironically, one official reason why the Northern Ireland census insists on religious classification is the law against discrimination. The authorities argue that if they are to protect Catholics from discrimination, they must know exactly who is Catholic, and who is Protestant, even if neither is true. The rather obvious answer is that this process discriminates against people who have no religion and are proud of it.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,867137,00.html
http://www.guardian.co.uk/comment/story/0,3604,853885,00.html
US propaganda fuelled the first Gulf war. It will fuel this one too - and the risks are even greater
Maggie O'Kane
Thursday December 5, 2002 - The Guardian
I have a picture from the last Gulf war. It was taken in the basement of the Al Rashid hotel, the night the war started. The look on my face is one you might expect of a 28-year-old reporter at the centre of one of the biggest stories of my lifetime: earnest, excited and thrilled to be in Baghdad.
Eleven years later, I'm on maternity leave and the news of an impending second Gulf war follows me around the kitchen. This time, I feel only a sense of intense danger as the Middle East lurches towards a possible chemical and biological war.
The chances of Saddam Hussein using chemical and biological weapons if attacked are, according to the testimony of the CIA to the US Senate intelligence committee on October 7, "pretty high" - a scenario that even one of greatest hawks in US history, Brent Scowcroft, former national security adviser to George Bush senior, says would lead to meltdown in the Middle East. As of December 7, when Iraq is expected to produce its definitive dossier, there should be no illusions: no matter what Baghdad discloses, America and almost certainly Britain are going to war. The "material breach", if it does not happen by itself, will be manufactured, so wringing consent for the second Gulf war just as consent was manufactured with breathtaking cynicism in 1991.
There were two glaring examples of how the propaganda machine worked before the first Gulf war. First, in the final days before the war started on January 9, the Pentagon insisted that not only was Saddam Hussein not withdrawing from Kuwait - he was - but that he had 265,000 troops poised in the desert to pounce on Saudi Arabia. The Pentagon claimed to have satellite photographs to prove it. Thus, the waverers and anti-war protesters were silenced.
We now know from declassified documents and satellite photographs taken by a Russian commercial satellite that there were no Iraqi troops poised to attack Saudi. At the time, no one bothered to ask for proof.
No one except Jean Heller, a five-times nominated Pulitzer prize-winning journalist from the St Petersburg Times in Florida, who persuaded her bosses to buy two photos at $1,600 each from the Russian commercial satellite, the Soyuz Karta. Guess what? No massing troops. "You could see the planes sitting wing tip to wing tip in Riyadh airport," Ms Heller says, "but there wasn't was any sign of a quarter of a million Iraqi troops sitting in the middle of the desert." So what will the fake satellite pictures show this time: a massive chemical installation with Iraqi goblins cooking up anthrax?
The US propaganda machine is already gearing up. In its sights already is Hans Blix, the chief weapons inspector. He's too much of a softie for Saddam, the former CIA director James Wolsey told the Today programme last week. His work is of "limited value". He was Kofi Annan's "second choice".
Meanwhile, in Britain, Jack Straw's new human rights dossier on Iraq is timed to coincide with the build-up. Convenient, eh? The second tactic used to get consensus for war in 1991 was another propaganda classic: dead babies. Then, the daughter of the Kuwaiti ambassador in Washington, Nijirah al-Sabah, tearfully described how, as a volunteer in the Al Adnan hospital in Kuwait City, she had watched Iraqi soldiers looting incubators to take back to Baghdad, pitching the Kuwaiti babies on to "the cold floor to die".
Except it never happened. The Filipina nurses, Frieda Construe- Nag and Myra Ancog Cooke, who worked in the maternity ward of the Al Adnan hospital, had never seen Ms al-Sabah in their lives. Amnesty admitted they had been duped. Middle East Watch confirmed the fabrication, but it was too late: a marginal US congress had been swung to vote for war. George Bush senior mentioned the "incubator babies" seven times in pre-war rallying speeches. It was months before the truth came out. By then, the war was over.
This time, we have yet to see what propaganda will be used to rally consensus for the second Gulf war by proving a "material breach". It is highly likely that Saddam Hussein maintains at least some chemical and biological capacity. In a war in which his own survival is unlikely (and already rumoured to be ill with cancer) Saddam Hussein has nothing to lose. If he knows his fall is imminent, what terrible legacy might he choose to leave behind? What better present to his extremist Arab brothers than an attack on Israel? And how will the US, Britain or Israel respond if their troops or cities come under chemical or biological attack?
In 1995, the Washington-based Defense News reported on the outcome of the then highly classified Global 95 Wargame, a high-level military exercise enacted at the US Naval War college. Global 95 played out a simultaneous threat from North Korea and Iraq. The North Korean situation was diffused, but Iraq attacked US troops in the region with biological weapons. Washington replied with a nuclear bomb on Baghdad. The main observation during the Global 95 experiment was just how quickly the situation escalated.
But the greatest irony, and most important issue, is that although the war on Iraq may indeed get George Bush re- elected, it will not win the war on terrorism. It will instead fuel it.
In 1998, I spent an afternoon with Abu Ziad, an elderly accountant in Baghdad. He recounted how, at 2am on February 13, 1991, two bombs had hit the Amiryia bomb shelter near his home. The first pierced the roof, slicing into the central heating tank and sending gallons of boiling water pouring over the women and children below. The second bomb, 15 minutes later, exploded with such force that he never had the chance to identify the bodies of his wife and four of their five children: Zena,14, Fuad, 12, Lena, seven and Sadaad, six. He remembers standing outside the shelter in the early morning and noticing the ankles of dead women and children marked by the red hot mattress springs they had fought to climb over to get out of the shelter before the second bomb dropped.
The Abu Ziads of the second Gulf war will be seen on al-Jazeera TV giving their heartbreaking testimony to a new generation of disaffected and dispossessed young Muslim men from Palestine, Indonesia, the Middle East and Africa. And we can all hear the death chant of a hundred suicide bombers: Allahu Akbar. It's a high price to pay for another four years in the White House.
I am not some naive pacifist. I supported intervention in Bosnia, the war in Kosovo and military intervention in East Timor. Baghdad is a city where terror hangs in the air in every home. Iraqis literally dare not speak Saddam Hussein's name. But now he is cornered, dangerous and possibly dying. Provoking him is criminally irresponsible and provoking him in order to secure a second presidential term is unforgivable.
Remember the words of JFK to his brother Bobby, spoken in the ante-room of the Oval Office the night before the Cuban missile crisis, now declassified. "I have to do it, Bobby," said John Kennedy, explaining why he was facing up to the Soviets. "I'll lose the presidency if I don't." Krushchev had a way out. He ordered the Soviet ships to turn around. What would have happened if he had nowhere to turn?
· Maggie O'Kane is editorial director of GuardianFilms. She was named European Journalist of the Year this week for its first documentary, Looking for Karadzic.
maggie.okane@guardian.co.uk
from Rumourmillnews
from Rumourmillnews
Date: Sun Nov 10, 2002 12:23 am
The following set of three articles below unmasks both the Bush-Cheney regime and its principal local partner, the Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo-Angelo Reyes government, of their lies that they are seriously fighting terrorism here in the Philippines. For these articles show that *they themselves are the ones coddling the terrorists in our midst.*
Michael Meiring, an American with British and South African references who was seriously hurt by a blast caused by high-powered explosives *in his own possession* last May 16 in Davao, has been exposed as a terrorist by a true advocate of good government, Davao City Prosecutor Raul Bendico.
And what did the US Embassy here, the NSA (National Security Agency of the US), the CIA, and the FBI do? They immediately gave Meiring full protection from Davao police authorities last May; gave him the attention of an expert doctor assigned by the US embassy; the local US vice consul paid his bills in Davao; and they whisked him pronto to a naval base in San Diego, where these alphabet soup agencies desperately hope he won't be followed by the trail of terrorism he left behind.
And that is how the US government *actually* handles terrorists caught red-handed: with tender loving care! Obviously, both Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo and Angelo Reyes did not mind that this terrorist got away. (They never raised a hoot!) They *clearly did not mind that this terrorist--and, more importantly, his partners in crime here in the Philippines, both American and Filipino, both in and out of government, both at low and high levels--are not dragged into the searing light of public scrutiny and indignation!*
But their actions on this case run awfully afoul of the widespread yearning of Filipinos and Americans from all walks of life to be freed of this scourge. A scourge that is *actually fostered at the highest levels of both the Bush-Cheney and Arroyo-Reyes regimes.* A scourge that is *part and parcel of the insidious covert action apparatus worldwide of the 21st-century power-mad Reich with Dubya Bush and Cheney as its crime-soaked figureheads.*
Unless Meiring is brought to court and prosecuted for his crime, unless we support Davao City Prosecutor Raul Bendico's and Davao Mayor Rodrigo Duterte's courageous efforts against Meiring and his handlers, we might never begin to untangle the web of terrorism that stalks our land today, and we will remain hostage to the Agenda of Chaos, Fear, Unhappiness and Mass Disempowerment of these Masters of Terror and War.
The first article is the centerpiece of the three-part expose below. It was posted at the main indymedia website. The webpage seems sloppy though; some text isn't reversed on the black background, but shows up when you copy and paste all the webpage's text to, for example, Notepad.
The second article is among the earliest of the news items re Meiring ever posted, which showed up at the Philippine Daily Inquirer's (PDI) website.
(Funny, PDI didn't carry over the Meiring story to its May 17, 2002 website edition; obviously, it's not a main story in its printed edition then, if ever it came out.)
The third article is a gem: it's the only extensive investigative report on the Meiring affair that ever came out, even until now. Dorian Zumel-Sicat and Jeannette Andrade has put one over our more lettered so-called Investigative Journalists in TV, radio and print. (I hope that's not an effect of grants they accepted from CIA-linked foundations!) We challenge these Great Investigative Journalists to follow Zumel-Sicat and Andrade's trail to unveil The Real Terrorism in our country now.
Please print the articles below, read them carefully, pass them on to everyone who are now hostaged by these SuperTerrorists, and let's get better organized and continue to mount direct concerted democratic action to expose this and other despicable and barefaced acts of high complacency with the real Terrorism in our midst.
Craig Hanley, October 10, 2002
http://www.indymedia.org/front.php3?article_id=209145&group=webcast
Filipino media can't keep up with American spook sightings. Despite official denials, one story from Mindanao will not go away:
Jun Bersamin, Radio dzMM September 27, 2002
also posted at http://www.bc-alter.net/dfriesen/wwwboard/messages/1597.html
DAVAO CITY - The City Prosecution Office on Friday tagged the American victim of an explosion in his hotel room four months ago as a terrorist. City Prosecutor Raul Bendico said findings from the investigation of the case indicated that Meiring apparently attempted to set up explosives intended to blow up Evergreen Hotel when the accidental explosion went off, mangling his lower limbs.
Michael Meiring, 65, of California, was rushed to Davao Medical Mission Hospital on May 16 after the blast inside his room at the hotel located on Ramon Magsaysay Avenue here. Meiring was charged with illegal possession of explosives and reckless imprudence "for failing to practice proper attention and diligence regarding the handling of explosive materials." But he was reportedly whisked away by agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation and brought to the United States. Authorities want Meiring brought back to the country to face the criminal charges filed against him.
What is unusual about the case, The Manila Times reported, is that Meiring was whisked out of Davao, past the Philippine National Police guarding him at the hospital, and on to a chartered plane, accompanied by what Immigration officials described as agents of the US National Security Agency and agents of the US Federal Bureau of Investigation.
The National Security Agency intervention, confirmed by Immigration Deputy Commissioner Daniel Queto, sparked intense local speculation as to why an agency that reports directly to the Office of the President of the United States would send an entourage of bodyguards to speed Meiring to a hospital in Manila.
Security tightened around the wounded man immediately. Press were told that only his doctor—handpicked by the US Embassy—had access, and Meiring was promptly airlifted to San Diego, home to a US naval base. The American Embassy has refused comment. Vice-consul Michael Newbill settled the hospital bills in Davao City.
The Manila Times quoted a friend of Meiring who said he was told by a Filipino in Davao, carrying a message from the US Embassy that Michael would never be charged with a crime in connection with the explosion. The investigation will end up as a stonewall. Michael will be protected and...the incident will be shortly forgotten, if you're willing to forget it.
Officials in Davao City will not forget. The suspicious blast took place during a wave of terror bombings across Mindanao as US and Philippine troops conducted anti-terror exercises. President Arroyo threatened to declare a state of emergency and demanded that lawmakers rush through her tough new anti-terror bill. Rush it through they did
Now Prosecutor Bendico says the US-shielded `terrorist' was trying to blow the hotel up.
The Philippine Star explained why his findings are worrisom
Edith Regalado July 9, 2002
archived at http://www.philstar.com
DAVAO CITY — The efforts of government prosecutors here to go after a British-American national who was the victim of a hotel blast on May 16 could very well prove futile as the US Central Intelligence Agency has already taken him in custody in California.
Highly reliable sources told The STAR Michael Terrence Meiring, 65, reportedly was deployed by the CIA, sometime in the early up to the mid `90s, on assignment here in Southern Mindanao...
"He overshot his mandate. That was why the Americans had to find a way that he could be spirited out of the country fast because the CIA has to also take hold of him," the same source said.
three bracketed paragraphs form the rest of the Philippine Star article:
("Meiring lost his left leg and suffered severe burns in various parts of his body when an explosive went off inside his room at the Evergreen Hotel here May 16. Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) agents from the US Embassy in Manila reportedly sneaked him out of a Davao City hospital four days after the explosion and was brought to the Makati Medical Center for treatment.
"Local officials here, including the police and the city prosecutors, have demanded that Meiring be brought back to Davao City to answer the charges of illegal possession of explosives as well as the possible filing of the non-bailable offense of destructive arson.
"Davao City Mayor Rodrigo Duterte was particularly irked by the way the American embassy facilitated Meiring’s transfer to the Makati Medical Center which he described as arrogant and without due respect to local officials concerned. 'Meiring is now in California and the CIA has taken hold of him already,' the same source said.")>
Here is the `confusing background' of the American terror bomber handled by the National Security Agency of the Bush White House, compiled by Dorian Zumel-Sicat and Jeannette Andrade for a three-part Manila Times investigation that ran May 29-31, 2002
Meiring was born in 1932 in South Africa and later became a naturalized US citizen. His wife Angela is a nurse at a 7th Day Adventist hospital in Loma Linda, California. He has been described as a surgeon, a con-man, a student of medicinal herbs, a treasure hunter and, most recently, a terror bomber.
Charred US federal bank notes were found in his exploded hotel room, with a three-week old fax from Derek S. Fawell, of 3 Glenhurst Avenue, Yorkshire, England that read: "With regard to your ordnance disposal problem, I have talked with our experts. They will be at your location upon the time frame that you instruct. The device that you have described is highly volatile and must be dealt with quite delicately."
Meiring's company letterhead, PAROUSIA International Trading, Inc., also lists a UK address: Patchole Manor, Kentisbury Ford, North Devon, England. Under the address are the words: When in residence. The address of record for Meiring in his passport and with US authorities is 381 Smokeridge Trail, Calimesa, California.
He first came to the Philippines in 1992, where he spent almost a year in Metro Manila and North Luzon in the company of agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI) and under the protection of Ricardo Diaz, the NBI Chief of Interpol.
In and out of Davao City for the past 10 years, Meiring had close ties to well-placed government authorities in southern Mindanao, national government officials and Philippine National Police officials like Colonel Segundo Duran. Others in the circle: former Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) chairman Nur Misuari, Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chief Hashim Salamat and suspected New People's Army (NPA) leader Father Navarro.
Meiring also has close ties with `shady people' like MNLF Commander Tony Nasa and others in Cotabato who acted as `front men' for his dealings with the Abu Sayyaf.
He spent millions of dollars while in the Philippines, the source of his funds unknown. According to The Manila Times, "his trail leads back to...boxes supposedly containing US Federal Reserve notes and bonds obtained from the Abu Sayyaf."
Meiring told David Hawthorn, an American, he'd found a "fabulous treasure" in US Federal Reserve notes and, in 1992, sold a `box' full of them worth $500 million plus. That loot was said to be part of an old war chest for American and Filipino guerillas fighting the Japanese.
The MNLF, MILF, and Abu Sayyaf have recently sold similar US bonds and notes to finance their arms purchases. Local authorities have made several arrests.
Meiring fronted for a very wealthy, powerful group in Manila. He and his American and Filipino associates were known to use explosives throughout the south for `treasure salvage' and to supply other `treasure hunters' with explosives.
Philippine intelligence officers refused to let The Manila Times publish the names of `current' treasure hunters in Mindanao because they are all being monitored for links to the MNLF, MILF, Abu Sayyaf, and other radical Islamic fundamentalists.
Older names in the `game' cleared for release are almost as exotic as Michael Meiring. Many have been linked to undergound Muslim independence campaigns in Mindanao. In 1990-91, Bob Gould from Hayward, California, Filipino-American Frederick Obado and others in Davao City made plans to invade Sabah, Malaysia.
A close friend of Gould from Fremont, California, Nina North maintained contact with Obado from 1990-92. The Manila Times reports that North was linked to the CIA, involved with ?back door? transfers of gold bullion from the Philippines and regularly dealt with representatives of Osama Bin Laden and high officials in the Mid-East.
So, to answer the question directly:
Michael Terrence Meiring is a Manila-controlled CIA-connected White House-protected explosives expert who spent the last ten years in the southern Philippines hanging out with Filipino intelligence and police brass, Muslim rebels and other `shady people'.
He equipped many of his acquaintances throughout Mindanao with explosives, spent large sums of mystery cash and traded in US Federal Reserve notes with the Abu Sayyaf Group - terrorists who regularly use the notes to buy weapons....a gang that provided the excuse for the new US-Philippine military alliance.
Meiring is an American with a base in England and explosive expert colleagues in England who were contracted to assist him with his 'ordnance' endeavors at the time he blew his legs off while making a bomb in his hotel room during the region-wide terror bombing spree that traumatized Mindanao five months ago.
A boo-boo that earned a chop-chop hush-hush Uncle Sam medevac to San Diego.... ...for the rebel-friendly man Prosecutor Bendico classified as a terrorist two weeks ago.
The Meiring episode is the best substantiated of several wild reports this year that have Filipinos convinced there's a "stealth invasion" of their country underway. Consistent themes include the involvement of Meiring's favorite Muslim rebel armies -- the MNLF, MILF and Abu Sayyaf - and the invasion of Sabah, Malaysia.
On February 21, Rosanna Halong, wife of notorious Abu Sayyaf leader Abu Sabaya, phoned Radyo Agong dxMD in Koronodel City and announced that her husband was in on a CIA plot to break Sabah away from Malaysia and fuse it with Mindanao to form an independent country - a plot long popular with CIA-linked treasure hunters like Gould and North.
Halong insisted her husband hatched his version with Jeffrey Schilling. Sabaya took Schilling captive for eight months in the jungle after he suspected the Berkeley grad was a CIA agent. Schilling swore the mix-up was the fault of his friendship with another Zamboanga-based African-American named Shaun, a `former Marine' the rebels `had met' earlier.
"Perhaps he was also a CIA agent," Schilling said matter-of-factly, "and due to my association with him they assumed I was also a CIA agent."
Stories like the following explain why locals assume that every Yankee is a spook in a country where Philippine Senator Aquilino Pimentel describes the Abu Sayyaf as "a CIA monster." A group, he points out, whose original members were organized, funded and trained by Ronald Reagan's secret agents in the 1980s and sent to Afghanistan to help kick out the Russians. Twenty years ago, that skullduggery was overseen by exactly the kind of people Michael Meiring hung out with, in exactly the same part of the country.
Four days before Sabaya's wife said her man was an American puppet, the Daily Zamboanga Times reported on a new and improved super-power puppet army in Mindanao. The term "Bangsamoro" as used below means "Filipino Muslim people":
Bangsamoro News Agency February 17, 2002
A new emerging powerful revolutionary group in Mindanao yesterday revealed that the Bangsamoro people of Mindanao have now decided to include in their objective the liberation of North Borneo, which they claim as part of their traditional homeland...
The leaders of the group, who refused to be identified for the meantime so as not to preempt their formal declaration of liberation of Mindanao and North Borneo in due time, told the Bangsamoro News Agency that their organization was organized in November last year, has now more than 50,000 strong armed forces in Mindanao and another 50,000 in North Borneo with highly sophisticated firepowers, including anti-tank, anti-aircraft surface-to-air missile (SAM). Their forces, they said, is fast growing in number.
The group claimed they are receiving financial and logistic support from super-power countries, which they refused to identify. But apparently one of these countries is the United States of America (USA).
The group is also highly confident that the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF)* of Chairman Nur Misuari and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF)* of Chairman Salamat Hashim and other armed groups in Mindanao fighting against the Philippine government, as well as the people of Sabah and North Borneo....will support their aspiration.
The group is also confident that the development-oriented Christian** settlers in Mindanao will support the independence as one country of Mindanao and North Borneo.
The same group also called on the peace-loving and democracy loving people of Malaysia to reject the "arrogant, dictator and greedy" leadership of Mahathir Mohammed if they don't want the wrath of the mighty American power, and instead, install a true pro-people, God-fearing and democratic leader.
The group proposed the formation of the "United States of Mindanao and North Borneo".
One month later, the Indigenous People's Federal Army (IFPA) went public, calling on the Arroyo government to amend the national constitution. A spokesman for the heavily armed `defense forces' warned of a social volcano unless Arroyo set up separate federal governments for the indigenous people, Muslims* and Christians**.
Weeks before Michael Meiring blew his legs off while preparing to blow up the Evergreen Hotel, IFPA leader Roger Adamat was identified as the man behind the bomb scares in Manila and Cotabato intended to dramatize the group's bid for a federal state.
The IFPA circulated cell-phone text messages throughout General Santos City that 18 bombs were primed. At 3:15 pm on April 21, a powerful explosion outside the FitMart shopping mall killed 15 people, including four children, tricycle cab drivers, street vendors and a passerby.
And Ms. Arroyo demanded and got her tough anti-terror bill.
Michael Meiring's controversial NSA-sponsored "flight" three weeks later and his new status as a wanted terrorist is of great interest in the wake of the recent mystery bombing that just cost a Green Beret his life, and which has been attributed to the Abu Sayyaf.
This bombing comes as Ms. Arroyo prepares to sign a Mutual Logistics and Support Agreement with the Bush Administration that will give the Pentagon wide-open access to the Philippines.
Securing such access was a major objective before September 11, 2001.
The future of the American-Filipino `anti-terror' alliance became clear last month when Arroyo took up the issue of granting landing rights to Taiwanese military pilots.
That move is a US orchestration to formalize a Washington-Manila-Taipei triad in the South China Sea and coincides with the offensive return of the USNS Bowditch.
The same American spy ship that sparked last year's deadly mid-air collision of military planes over Hainan Island was back looking for trouble last month in coastal waters off the People's Republic. The Chinese insist the new intrusions of the Bowditch violate international law. The US Navy says PRC patrol planes `harass' the crew as they gather data for battle. Six months after the director of the CIA warned Congress about the 400 missiles Beijing now brackets the Straits with, Congress sent its new Foreign Relations Authorization Act to President Bush. Newly signed into law, the bill upgrades Taiwan to major non-NATO ally status and orders US flags to fly at American buildings on the island Beijing calls a renegade.
The US has been heading towards China via the Philippines ever since Mr. Bush took office.
Months before September 11, The Role of Southeast Asia in US Strategy toward China, a Rand Corporation study, advised Donald Rumsfeld that he must re-base American forces in the Philippines in order to retain US military dominance in Asia.
A Rand board member since 1977, Rumsfeld joins Dick Cheney and Paul Wolfowitz as leaders of a militaristic "Blue Team" that sees China as a "competitor" which must be "contained" and kept "afraid" as part of the "hedging strategy" recommended in the Rand study. Wolfowitz, an old Indonesia hand, has been particularly outspoken in regards to the Fujian missile bases.
The Rand study helped give birth to the new National Security Strategy of the United States, which justifies pre-emptive strikes to enforce American global economic supremacy and specifically cites the PRC as a top-of-mind target.
Meiring's British connections and the Bangsamoro claim to multiple superpower sponsors for the rebel army in Mindanao and Sabah raise a very interesting question.
At this stage of the game it is impossible to tell if the robust Anglo-American military alliance is active in Asia. But Philippine Defense Secretary Angelo Reyes has been briefed in London repeatedly and Prince Andrew was recently in Manila promoting stronger naval ties and weapon sales to assist Arroyo with her "maritime challenges". The Arroyo government has already authorized anti-terror partnerships between her national police forces and Scotland Yard, the Special Boat Service (SBS) and other British commando.
And Tony Blair is sold on a global crusade he perceives as altruistic. For all the fine reasons spun out by neo-imperialist guru Robert Cooper.
An alliance willing to defy the UN and to use first-strike nukes as it sees fit will not hesitate to `fudge' a little chaos in order to secure long-term power projection bases in Asia. The United States has fudged chaos in the Philippines before.
The first President Bush saluted America's first covert Filipino-Muslim freedom fighters, and his son's inner circle has its own reasons to resurrect the secret Muslim army trick. As soon as Arroyo signs the Pentagon's proposed mutual support agreement, any unrest in Sabah, Zamboanga City or Mindanao means the US must intervene.
The Rand study advised the Pentagon to keep the zone "warm" militarily. That is the purpose of the current rolling series of anti-terror exercises against the CIA's Abu Sayyaf Group. That was also the likely purpose of the terror-bomber rescued by the Bush White House.
Future events will reveal America's game plan for Southeast Asia and who the confederates are.
Last month, after a series of disturbances in Sabah work camps, Malaysia expelled an estimated 30,000 undocumented Filipino laborers from the troubled state in North Borneo that so many CIA plots seem to target...a state where the Bangsamoro army claimed in February to have 50,000 insurgents armed and funded by the USA and other super-powers.
To protest the expulsion, Arroyo immediately moved to renew the Philippine claim to Sabah. The President has ordered her chief Army officer to prepare for all emergencies and to develop the `new rules of engagement' `we need'.
To guarantee the safety of returning workers, she has proposed the permanent stationing of a Philippine navy ship off the Sabah coast. On October 6, she called for even closer security ties with the United States.
[Primary research Zamboanga City, Manila, S. Leyte. * global@devil.com * http://www.messagecycle.com/]
Posted: 5:09 PM (Manila Time) | May 16, 2002
Agence France-Presse
DAVAO – A British man and four Filipinos were seriously injured in two separate explosions in the southern Philippines on Thursday, police said.
Michael Meiring, said to be in his mid-60s, was believed to have lost both legs and was rushed to hospital after the blast in his room at the Evergreen Hotel in Davao City, city police chief Samuel Yordan said.
Police had initially identified him as Michel Mering but hotel records showed his real name.
The hotel management said Meiring is a Briton who had been staying at the hotel for several years while hunting for treasure in the troubled southern Philippines, Yordan added.
The region is said to be a trove of loot left by departing Japanese troops in World War II.
The cause of the explosion has not yet been determined but police have ruled out "outside perpetrators" and said it could have resulted from equipment stored in Meiring's room.
A fire resulting from the explosion was swiftly put out.
"Since he is a treasure hunter, it is probable he had explosive materials," Yordan told Agence France-Presse.
Chief Inspector Fe Basan said it was likely the victim would lose one leg and was still in critical condition.
A gift-wrapped bomb went off outside the public market of Midsayap town in the south about four hours later, injuring four people, said the Midsayap police chief, Sr. Supt. Raul Supeter.
He said one of his men was among the injured after he found the suspicious-looking package inside a market stall and carried it outside the marketplace, preventing potentially greater casualties.
No group has claimed responsibility for the bombing.
There have been several deadly explosions in the south in recent months, some of them linked to Muslim separatists.
By Dorian Zumel-Sicat, Correspondent
Wednesday, May 29, 2002
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2002/may/29/top_stories/20020529top5.html
Michael T. Meiring had basked in the shadow of inscrutability. By some accounts, he is a treasure hunter, and a physician who dabbled in herbal medicine. There is mention of a wife, a nurse who worked in a hospital in California. He doesn’t smoke, and drinks only occasionally.
It is said he has been in and out of Davao City for the past 10 years, always staying in Suite 306 of the Evergreen Hotel. The talk in Davao is that Meiring hobnobs with influential political personalities in Mindanao, among them Nur Misuari and Hashim Salamat.
An explosion in his Davao hotel suite on May 16 ripped off that mantle of obscurity, exposing Meiring to the public limelight. What has been revealed, however, is a more complex man whose trail leads back to South Africa and a box supposedly containing US Federal Reserve notes.
Since the May 16 blast, there have been attempts by authorities to keep the circumstances surrounding the incident hush-hush.
Meiring lost both his legs in the explosion, which also left a big portion of his body badly burned. What is unusual is that he was reportedly whisked out of Davao on a chartered plane, accompanied by what Immigration officials described as agents of the US National Security Council.
The mystery doesn’t stop there. Meiring’s present whereabouts are unclear. One report said he was taken to the Makati Medical Center in Makati City, where he is still under intensive care. Another version has it that Meiring was flown to San Diego, California after a brief stay at Makati Medical.
Piecing together an accurate story about Meiring will be difficult. But there are indications that he is part of a bigger, more spellbinding tale, one detailing a quest for treasure, intrigue and, possibly, double-cross.
What is definitely known about Meiring is that he was born in 1932 in South Africa and later became a naturalized US citizen. He first came to the Philippines in 1992, where he spent almost a year in Metro Manila, where he stayed at the Sundowner Hotel or the Manila Garden Hotel.
While in Manila he went around with two agents of the National Bureau of Investigation (NBI). He was in the Philippines primarily to hunt for treasure and do research in herbal medicine. His wife, Angelita (or Angelina) is a nurse at a 7th Day Adventist hospital in Loma Linda, California.
Meiring had close links with some well-placed government authorities in southern Mindanao as well as with national government officials. Included in this circle are former Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF) chairman Nur Misuari and Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF) chief Hashim Salamat, and even suspected New People’s Army (NPA) leader Father Navarro.
Meiring’s connections with rebel leaders made the military wary about him. He was under surveillance by more than one intelligence unit on more than one occasion. Still, there was little to add to his dossier.
Meiring is believed to have spent millions of dollars while in the Philippines. Where he got his funds was not known. Medical research grants from South Africa could be one source. “He has told me that the South African government gives him some support,” says Meiring’s private secretary, Sylvia Durante.
According to close friend, American David Hawthorn, Meiring told him he had found a fabulous treasure in US Federal notes.
The way Hawthorn told it, Meiring in 1992 was able to sell a “box” full of US Federal Reserve notes worth more than $500 million.
That box was one of 12 said to be part of a war chest for American and Filipino guerillas fighting Japan forces during World War II. After the war, the boxes disappeared.
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2002/may/29/top_stories/20020529top5.html
By Dorian Zumel-Sicat, Correspondent and Jeannette Andrade, Reporter
Thursday, May 30, 2002 - A TIMES EXCLUSIVE
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2002/may/30/top_stories/20020530top6.html
Philippine and US investigators chasing the case of Michael Meiring, the American who sustained critical injuries from a mysterious explosion in his Davao hotel suite, have to dig through a wide circle of acquaintances — ran-ging from South African anti-apartheid warriors to American white supremacists.
The Manila Times confirmed yesterday from a source at the Makati Medical Center that Meiring remains confined at the hospital’s cardiovascular unit. The Times also learned that police in Davao City had finally filed illegal possession of explosives charges against the American.
The Times tried to visit Meiring but was told only his doctor — handpicked by the US Embassy — has access to him. The Times was also not allowed to see any of Meiring’s watchers.
A close friend of the American had earlier claimed Meiring was airlifted to San Diego, California. Other American sources from the California city, home to a sprawling US naval base, also insisted yesterday that Meiring had arrived there.
Among the most startling developments in the Meiring case was Immigration Deputy Commissioner Daniel Queto’s admission last week, that no less than agents of the US National Security Council had brought Meiring from Davao to Manila.
At the time of the blast, journalists were confused about Meiring’s nationality. Some dubbed him British, others American. Meiring was formerly a citizen of South Africa, of British descent. He fled to the United States, sources said, towards the end of South Africa’s apartheid regime.
While the same sources said Meiring was a doctor for the South African police, they also stressed his ties to the African National Congress of Nelson Mandela, and hinted that he fled because of pursuit by state security officials.
American David Hawthorn, a close friend of Meiring, claimed the blast victim had confessed passing to Mandela’s government the proceeds of a box of old US federal notes. That box was one of 12, containing an estimated $500-million worth of notes.
Hawthorn said Meiring showed him a letter from the South African government and a US Treasury permit to back his claim. Hawthorn also saw a “packing list” that had a cover sheet printed with the words “US Army,” the Army seal, some numbers and a group of upper case letters. Meiring, he said, claimed the list represented the serial numbers of the missing notes, dating back to 1937.
Meiring had spent the last nine years looking for more boxes and other treasure, securing a permit during the Ramos administration to recover treasure from sunken Japanese and American ships around Mindanao, and to look for gold bars and “Victory” notes.
It was then that he entered into a partnership with private hunters. According to both Hawthorn and secretary Silvya Durante, Meiring had fronted for a very wealthy, powerful group in Manila. He returned to the country six months ago to buy another box of federal notes but was told the treasure was still in Mindanao. After a month, the impatient Meiring flew to Davao, after getting information on the box’s whereabouts.
The American’s friends fear the Manila group, threatened of losing the box, could have plotted against Meiring.
The group, they told The Times, was connected to a long-time Meiring financier, James Rowe of Nevada, who joined the victim during a 1993 visit.
Rowe is executive producer of Wild Rose Productions, an independent film and video documentary company based in New Green Valley, Nevada, near Las Vegas. One of the projects of Wild Rose was to do a documentary on Yamashita treasure allegedly hidden and recovered by highland tribes in parts of Mindanao.
American intelligence analyst Dan Crawford said Rowe had links to a right-winged, white supremacist and tax revolt group in Nevada that is linked with the neo-Nazi party of the United States and the “Fifth Reich” in Germany.
Treasure hunters claim much of Yama#####a’s ‘treasure’ was money, jewels, and gold belonging to the Nazis. Their descendants, inspired by some of the surviving and aged minion of Adolf Hitler, are in search of that treasure, believing that they can recover it, they can revive the movement and fulfill their dreams of a world run by a superior Aryan race.
Those same people harbor a deep-seeded resentment against Nelson Mandela and those who dismantled the racist apartheid system of South Africa. Meiring, being a supporter of Mandela is considered a “traitor” to the white race.
Another right-wing associate of Meiring is an American named Chuck Ager, from somewhere in Colorado, USA. Ager is a mining engineer. He was tasked by Meiring to supervise more than 30 tunneling operations in search of the remaining 12 boxes and the Yama#####a treasure. In all, Ager was in charge of more than P5-million worth of mining and digging equipment purchase over the years by Meiring from a hardware store in the vicinity of the Evergreen Hotel.
Both Hawthorn and Durante claimed that Meiring had feared for his life in recent weeks. Each time that Hawthorn asked why, Meiring would only say, “it has to do with the treasure.”
The intelligence source also said that within three weeks of the blast, Meiring was in communication with a man from England named Derek S. Fawell, of Yorkshire. Fawell knew Meiring well, according to communications from him to Meiring that was recovered by the source. “With regard to your ordinance disposal problem, I have talked with our experts. They will be at your location upon the time frame that you instruct. The device that you have described is highly volatile and must be deal with quite delicately,” says one paragraph of that facsimile communication shown to me by the source. Fawell’s address is listed as 3 Glenhurst Avenue, Yorkshire, England.
On Meiring’s company letterhead, PAROUSIA International Trading, Inc., with Evergreen Hotel, Davao City address and telephone number, is a UK address: Patchole Manor, Kentisbury Ford, North Devon, England. Under the address, in italicized letters are the words: When in residence. The only address of record for Meiring, in his passport and with US authorities is, 381 Smokeridge Trail, Calimesa, California.
Almost immediately after the blast, security tightened around Meiring. Hawthorn told The Times: “I was told by a Filipino in Davao, carrying a message from the US Embassy that Michael would never be charged with a crime in connection with the explosion. The investigation will end up at a stone wall. Michael will be protected and eventually taken back to the safety of the United States. The incident will be shortly forgotten, if you’re willing to forget it.”
But even that doesn’t explain why a treasure hunter and collector of medicinal herbs merited attention from the powerful US NSC.
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2002/may/30/top_stories/20020530top6.html
Friday, May 31, 2002 A TIMES EXCLUSIVE:
By Dorian Zumel-Sicat
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2002/may/31/top_stories/20020531top6.html
LOST and hidden treasures are the stuff of which legends are made. The legends of the treasures of Mindanao are full of international intrigue, accounts of treachery and betrayal, tales about shadowy characters, shady deals all mixed with a bit of the noble and of compassion.
Michael T. Meiring was critically injured in a blast that gutted his hotel room, Suite 305 of the Evergreen Hotel in downtown Davao City on May 16. He will not fully recover from those injuries. Both of his legs were amputated at the knee because of irreparable compound fractures. He suffered first to third degree burns in 40 percent of his body. The “who” and “why” of the blast remains unknown amidst an array of speculation by investigators and reporters.
Meiring’s background is murky but that, military defense officials note, is par for the course. Terrorists and intelligence operatives of all stripes about among treasure hunters’ circles.
The Americans have used treasure hunting as a cover for intelligence activities. In 1963, a C-47 US Air Force Cargo plane crashed somewhere in the central highlands of Mindanao, sinking into the depths of a lake that has yet to be charted. Top secret is the tag on this story.
According to sources in the United States who will remain anonymous, the plane was carrying the stolen cache of Madame Ngu who fled from Vietnam in 1963 after a successful US-led coup. The light was unmanifested and had no flight plan. But sources say that it was enroute to Clark Air Base. There is record of a sole survivor of the crash, Airman Lawrence Havelock.
Havelock reported struggled to Cagayan de Oro, where he was treated at a hospital for exposure and minor injuries. Later he was repatriated and then mysteriously given a general discharge from the US Air Force.
Several years after his discharge Havelock returned to Mindanao to try to find the crash site and the plane. He never did. He returned to the States broke and in debt. He finally ended up convicted of a federal fraud.
Terrorists, too, have been known to put up treasure hunting fronts. The three Vietnamese terrorists arrested last year for plotting to blow up the Vietnamese Embassy here were assets of the US intelligence community. They and their Japanese colleague were also involved in treasure hunting — and the export of marijuana. They had links to close friends of deposed presidents Joseph Estrada and Ferdinand Marcos and their patroness and financier hobnobbed with a poseur who called himself a son of Marcos. There are other names that come up in the treasure hunter game.
Intelligence officers allowed The Manila Times to publish only the names of those involved during the 1990s, saying “current” names of the list were being monitored for links to a strange circle of white supremacists and
Bob Gould (in the Philippines in March of 1990 and June of 1991) came from Hayward, California. His connection was a Frederick Obado, Filipino-American, who was linked to a group of Kodar Kiram, son of the late Sultan Jumalul Kiram and younger brother of Rodinod Kiram. Gould and others in Davao City made plans in 1990 and 1991 to invade Sabbah and claim it for the Sultanate of Sabbah-Sulu. Gould has connections with a Libertarian group in California and is the subject of an Internal Revenue Service investigation on tax evasion.
Nina North. A close friend of Gould. Her acquaintances claim she has connections to the Central Intelligence Agency, but those connections are too vague. In 1990, 1991, and 1992, she maintained contact with Obado and was dealing with high officials in the Mid-East, including representatives of Khadaffy and Bin Laden, with regard to transfer of gold bullion from the Philippines, through the “back door.” North is from Fremont, California.
Andy Gould (no relation to Bob), an Australian and John Lawrence, a Brit, both hangers-on in Ermita (back in the early ’90s). They also had dealings with Obado, Bob Gould, and Swihart with regard to gold bullion and the Yama#####a treasure.
“Tinoy” Simbahon of Magpet, North Cotabato. A treasure guide. His wife had met with Obado and Gould on several occasions in the Manila Pen back in 1990. He had met with Obado and a certain De Lara, in late 1991 in Magpet to make a deal for the purchase of gold bullion. Simbahon had admitted to Gould that he was secretly working for Swihart to help Muslim independence in Mindanao.
Fred Eder, Honolulu, Hawaii. He is a tailor. But he has a corporation registered under the name of Rose Mining and Exploration Company, with headquarters somewhere in General Santos City. Simbahon is a partner. This is the group that enticed Obado and Gould to look for treasure. Eder is also somehow connected with a Fil-Am group that once supported the defunct Movement for Independent Mindanao (MIM). On radio station KNDY, Honolulu, as late as 1999, Eder was heard advocating independence for Muslim Mindanao.
http://www.manilatimes.net/national/2002/may/31/top_stories/20020531top6.html
Please visit http://www.unansweredquestions.org/
Because we all deserve answers .
Read the real news and their real implications at http://www.whatreallyhappened.com/
WEDNESDAY, NOVEMBER 6, 2002
By Sarah H. Wright
MIT - News Office
Veteran journalist Helen Thomas brought the grit and whir of a White House press conference to Bartos Theater on Monday evening, speaking with passion about the media's role in a democracy whose leaders seem eager for war.
Actually, the 82-year-old former United Press International reporter didn't just speak: she surged into her topic, giving everyone present an immediate sense of the grumpy wit and fierce precision that gave her reporting on American presidents Kennedy through Bush II such a competitive and lasting edge.
"I censored myself for 50 years when I was a reporter," said Thomas, who is now a columnist for Hearst News Service. "Now I wake up and ask myself, 'Who do I hate today?'" Her short list of answers seems not to vary from war, President Bush, timid office-holders, a muffled press and cowed citizens, pretty much in that order.
Angered by what she views as the Bush administration's "bullying drumbeat," Thomas referred early and often to her own hatred of war, quoting from poets and politicians to bear down on President Bush and his colleagues.
Winston Churchill, Alfred Lord Tennyson, Louis Brandeis, George Santayana, Abraham Lincoln, Thomas Jefferson and Martin Luther King Jr. all made appearances in Thomas' sweeping portrayal of what she sees as the administration's betrayal of both the character and will of the American people and the principles of democracy.
"I have never covered a president who actually wanted to go to war. Bush's policy of pre-emptive war is immoral - such a policy would legitimize Pearl Harbor. It's as if they learned none of the lessons from Vietnam," she said to enthusiastic applause.
Thomas ignored the clapping just as she once ignored the camera flashes and shouting matches of the Washington press corps.
"Where is the outrage?" she demanded. "Where is Congress? They're supine! Bush has held only six press conferences, the only forum in our society where a president can be questioned. I'm on the phone to [press secretary] Ari Fleischer every day, asking will he ever hold another one? The international world is wondering what happened to America's great heart and soul."
Like any star, Thomas, who resigned from UPI in 2000, appreciated her audience's thirst to get the insider's view of our national leaders, and she gave generously, in snapshots, though the Reagan and both Bush regimes were cast in darker hues.
"Great presidents have great goals for mankind. During my years of covering the White House, Kennedy was the most inspired; Johnson rammed through voting rights and public housing; Nixon will be remembered for his trip to China and for his resignation; Ford for helping us recover from Nixon; and Carter for making human rights the centerpiece of foreign policy," Thomas said in an even, respectful tone. She just sighed over Clinton, who "tarnished the Oval Office."
Thomas' mood became visibly more somber at the mention of Ronald Reagan's military buildup and at the name Bush. Again and again, Thomas warned the MIT audience, "It's bombs away for Iraq and on our civil liberties if Bush and his cronies get their way. Dissent is patriotic!"
After her talk, Thomas participated in a panel discussion with MacVicar Faculty Fellows David Thorburn, professor of literature, and Charles Stewart III, professor of political science. Philip S. Khoury, dean of the School of Humanities, Arts and Social Sciences, introduced the speakers.
"Helen Thomas offered a very