John Bart Gerald
Nightslantern.ca
May 21, 2013

Guatemala's Constitutional Court has overturned the Ríos Montt guilty verdict of May 10th, setting the legal proceedings back to April 19th - after the evidence was presented but before Ríos Montt was declared guilty. The 3 to 2 decision relies on a technicality brought into play when Ríos Montt's lawyers walked out of the court leaving him temporarily without representation. The New York Times reporting suggests the business federation, Cacif, brought extreme pressure to bear on the Constitutional Court.

      The highest court's nullification of the guilty verdict diminishes neither its truth nor effect, but undermines the ability of a nation's courts to deal with its own mass atrocities. Because this crime of genocide is a crime of policy, approved by President Reagan among others, it is an inconvenient atrocity for Washington and for business. International public opinion may simply reject the impunity of legal manoeuvres used to cover the crime so far. Because the arrogance of the privileged appears to be un-teachable - a genocide warning continues for Guatemala's Mayan Indians.

      The Guatemalan people are locked in a struggle for very basic human rights. On one side is the oligarchy, its former Kaibiles ⁽¹⁾ President Molina, his Kaibiles appointees, the military which serves them, the U.S. underwriting which trained, armed and advised them, the U.S. corporations which employ them, the mining interests which enrich them, the European traditions which nurture them, and the old order of terror they once ruled by under the veneer of privilege.

      On the other is a standard of what human beings must not do to each other. It is the people struggling to assert a norm shredded and manipulated since the U.S. takeover in 1954, balancing the madness of psychotic rulers with the people's right to live their daily lives without being murdered.

      There are so many guilty, trained into lethal madness by the School of the Americas. The atrocities by the Guatemalan military as commanded by Ríos Montt presents a group and cumulative crime so overwhelming, and conclusively single-minded in denying the humanity of Ixil Indians, as well as dissidents, labour leaders, and leftists, that the crime was recognized globally, as genocide. After the guilty verdict Guatemalan President Molina, implicated in the conviction of Ríos Montt, publicly denied that the military agenda to massacre hundreds of thousands of Ixil Indians was a genocide.

      The elite found the guilty verdict outrageous, putting forth numerous legal cases, procedural points as objections, threatening and publicly defaming Judge Jasmin Barrios, and proceeding with no humility before the crime which speaks for them. It is as if Ríos Montt's supporters, the elite, the military, their defence lawyers, and business interests have no comprehension of the inhumanity of what provably happened, of the meaning of the charges themselves, of the ultimate meaning of the tribunal court's judgement, which can't be contained by the Constitutional Court, or the Guatemalan oligarchy or its mentors throughout the world whose objections show no contrition, humility or shame.

      Tangled finally in a justice system of its own making the elite has lost its balance, as if atrocities are only a matter of spitting on the street. As if the thousands of individual lives and irreparable suffering and the lifelong fear brought on the Ixil people and those who believed in the basic rights of human beings, are of no concern to privilege. Historically, this separation of those in service to the rulers, from the victim group they would continue to strip of human value, becomes terminal.

      Warning of the Constitutional court decision was offered by Mary Anastasia O'Grady, editor and writer for The Wall Street Journal who prepared business readers for a genocide denial by the Constitutional Court, with her own, upholding defence testimony to purvey the crime as a military tactic required by resistance infiltration, while the trial itself is belittled as a "leftist" way to get back ("The Left's Cold War Revenge in Guatemala," May 19, 2013, The Wall Street Journal). With remarkable lack of concern for the murdered, Ms. O'Grady found the U.N.'s "so-called-human-rights experts" who approved the verdict "also come from places like China, Cuba and Syria."

      While the genocide under Ríos Montt may pre-date current direct authority of the International Criminal Court, impeding a genocide trial or obstructing the result of its verdict after Guatemala's accession to the Rome Statute, may not. Rationally, Guatemala's Constitutional Court risks contemporary complicity in the crime by overturning a verdict on the grounds of a staged technicality. It isn't likely the world's signatories will suddenly honour the Convention on Genocide, by charging the court's justices, because most world leaders participate in the same elite.

      The Constitutional Court's decision places Guatemala's human rights community, judges, witnesses, and entire legal system at risk. So far, North American prevention-of-genocide organizations, the strongly funded and corporate NGO's, have shown no overt support for Guatemala's judges who dared faithfulness to the Convention on Genocide. North American anti-genocide mechanisms should be assuring the safety of the justices and prosecutors, human rights workers and witnesses, and their families currently under threat of a violence taught Guatemalan society by Kaibiles atrocities. Guatemala should be monitored by the International Criminal Court for any current encouragements to genocide against the Mayan population.

      During the trial four Xinca Indian leaders opposed to a Canadian Tahoe Resources Mining project were abducted March 17th and one of them murdered. President Molina gathered a substantial military force to protect the San Rafael Region Tahoe Resources mine from protesters. A soldier was killed. Troops were dispersed after tape recorded evidence was provided of the mining security chief, Alberto Rotondo, giving orders to kill native protestors. He was subsequently arrested trying to leave the country. Tahoe Resources of Canada, partially owned by Goldcorp Canada, has offices in Vancouver B.C. and Reno Nevada.

      The Guatemalan oligarchy is not an isolated or singular elite. The United States is directly challenged by war crimes trials in the Americas since the crimes are often committed under the covert influence of American advisors. The worst atrocities have become a signature of training by the School of the Americas (WHINSEC). Court cases in Argentina, Chile and Guatemala so far have stopped short of the inevitable next step which is to call the U.S. government to account.

      In Argentina the elite's former dictator Jorge Rafael Videla was recently returned to trial among 25 charged with the excesses of Operation Condor, a multi-government effort to kill dissidents, communists, trade unionists, wherever they were, in a program with some parallels to U.S. policies in the current "war on terror." Videla was previously imprisoned for life by his country's courts due to atrocities / war crimes, then pardoned, then charged and convicted for his policy of kidnapping children of his murdered prisoners and raising them in a manner the Argentine elite deemed proper. After a recent court appearance Videla called the trial illegal, much as Ríos Montt has in Guatemala, and threatened Argentina with a military uprising if the trial continued.

      Yet the Operation Condor trial in Argentina has resumed despite the inherent obstacles, and among them: the U.S. provided military assistance to all the countries involved in Operation Condor; the proceedings fell from international news pages as an Argentine became the new Pope and King Willem-Alexander of the Netherlands was crowned; the wife of the new King is from Argentina's elite and her father's service to the Videla dictatorship both as a junior minister and from 1979 to 1981 as Videla's Minister of Agriculture, proves an ongoing embarrassment. There is an unset compound fracture at the interface with a regime where privilege claims the right to atrocity. On May 17, Videla is reported to have died in prison of natural causes.

      Within this context, Efraín Ríos Montt has been well cared for by the Guatemalan people. A victor's military court would have shot him after conviction. A Nuremberg court would have had him hung. The restraint of those in Guatemala who are not of the elite is admirable and should assure honour and safety to all who have attempted justice through law. Beyond the oligarchy's understanding they want justice rather than revenge, and they teach endurance until justice is done, as we consider the crimes of our own elites.

Endnotes

[1] The Kaibiles are an elite Guatemalan commando unit known for extremes of atrocity and degradation of their victims.

Partial online sources for this article: "Guatemala Awaits Constitutional Court's Rulings Following Rios Montt Guilty Verdict." Raquel Aldana, May 15, 2013, Open Society Justice Initiative; "Efraín Ríos Montt Found Guilty of Genocide!" Caso Cerado, School of the Americas Watch; "Human rights groups welcome Guatemala genocide ruling," May 17, 2013, Vatican Radio; "Argentine Dictator Jorge Videla, 87, Dies in Prison," Shane Romig, May 17, 2013, The Wall Street Journal; "Willem-Alexander becomes Dutch king after Beatrix abdicates," AP, April 30, 2013, CBC News; "Argentine junta casts shadow over new Dutch Queen," Agence France-Presse, April 30, 2013, GlobalPost; "Bad education: U.S. training of Guatemalan military leaders is just one example," Palmer Legare, current, SOA Watch; "Tahoe Resources Mining executive in Guatemala gives direct orders to kill protestors," The Guatemala Times, May 9, 2013, upsidedownworld.org; "State of Seige: Mining Conflict Escalates in Guatemala," Sandra Cuffe May 2, 2013, Upside Down World; "Guatemalan Court Overturns Genocide Conviction of Former Dictator," Elisabeth Malkin, May 20, 2013, The New York Times online; "Guatemala ex-leader Rios Montt's genocide conviction overturned," May 21, 2012, BBC News.

John Bart Gerald
May 21, 2013

Source : http://www.nightslantern.ca/genocide-denial-in-guatemala.htm

Are there too many coincidences in the Boston Bombings official narrative to call them coincidences? Behind each one lurks the shadow of Graham Fuller—a top CIA strategist who famously advocated co-opting Islamic extremists to further advance the US agenda in Central Asia—and his cozy ties with the accused brothers’ uncle. William Engdahl delves into the ramifications of the Fuller-Tsarni connection, the most compelling of the Boston smoking guns, and the threatening can of worms it has opened up.

by F. William Engdahl
Voltaire Network
20 May 2013

One of the many unexplained (at least not officially) anomalies of the persons claimed to have carried out the Boston Marathon bombings is the presence of key CIA figure in the direct family of the accused brothers. Ruslan Tsarnaev, the outspoken uncle of the brothers was married to Samantha A. Fuller until 2004. Samantha’s father is Graham Fuller, the senior CIA person who architected the Afghan Islamic fundamentalist Mujahideen war against the Soviets. He is also implicated in creating a global jihad network, presumably acting on behalf of CIA interests.

Ruslan Tsarnaev, who changed his name to Ruslan Tsarni, lives in a posh Washington DC suburb of Bethesda Maryland. He has worked in the past for companies tied to Dick Cheney’s Halliburton as well as a “consultant” in Kazakhstan with the State Department’s USAID which has been identified as a CIA front. [1] Take it all in: The two brothers, Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, Tamerlan Tsarnaev, accused though never proven in a court of law to have been responsible for the Boston Marathon bombings, had an uncle, the same uncle who agreed to bury the remains of the one dead brother. This uncle was married to the daughter of Graham Fuller, one of the most important CIA architects of using Islamic Jihadists/terrorists against the USSR during the Cold War and after, throughout Central Asia, including Chechnya and Kazakhstan. Coincidence?

The Fuller CIA Link

The discovery of the connection between a very, very senior CIA man, Graham Fuller, to the uncle of the accused Boston bombers was more than a bit embarrassing for Fuller. He took what for a professional CIA agent was an extraordinary step of issuing a public denial. In an exclusive interview on what reportedly is a CIA-linked website, “Back Channel—Al-Monitor,” Fuller hurriedly denounced media links of his CIA connection to the bombers’ uncle: “…possible connections between Ruslan and the Agency through me are absurd.” [2] Fuller then went on to admit, “Samantha was married to Ruslan Tsarnaev (Tsarni) for 3-4 years…They also lived in our house in [Maryland] for a year or so…” [3]

Fuller went on to claim Ruslan was “homesick” for Chechnya, and that his English was “shaky,” yet after the Boston bombings, a very English-fluent Ruslan gave a press conference from his posh Maryland home denouncing his nephews.

The central question is who is Graham Fuller? The answer turns out to be that he was perhaps if not THE most instrumental, one of the most instrumental people inside the CIA during the 1980’s who convinced CIA Director Bill Casey and the Reagan Administration to recruit fundamentalist Muslim Salafists or Jihadists from Saudi Arabia, Pakistan and elsewhere, train them in techniques of guerilla insurgency and send them against the Soviet-occupied Afghanistan. They were called Mujahideen. [4] One of the more famous of those Mujahideen was a young Saudi from a very wealthy family named Osama bin Laden. In a sense then we might call Graham Fuller the “Godfather of Al Qaeda.”

Fuller was also the key CIA figure in convincing the Reagan Administration to tip the balance in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war by using Israel to channel weapons to Iran in what became the Iran-Contra Affair. As well, in 1999, around the time his daughter Samantha and “Uncle” Ruslan Tsarni (aka Tsarnaev) lived at his home near Washington, Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence, then a senior figure at the Pentagon and CIA-linked neo-conservative RAND corporation, advocated using Muslim forces to further US interests in Central Asia. He stated,

“The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against [the Russians]. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.” [5]

This is precisely what happened in Chechnya with hundreds of CIA-trained Jihadists and Al Qaeda fighters sent into Chechnya, Dagestan and other parts of the former Soviet Union, precisely where Uncle Ruslan and his two Tsarnaev nephews came to the USA from. Coincidence?

Is it mere “coincidence” that the uncle of the two young men accused of the Boston bombings was related in marriage to the CIA figure who advocated using the networks which were later named “Al Qaeda” across Central Asia including Chechnya where the Tsarnaev brothers had roots? The more independent researchers examine evidence around the Boston terror bombings, the more the official US Government version of events stinks. Closeup pictures of obviously fake red paint designed to look like blood from a man whose legs were supposedly blown off of flesh to the bone, pictures of private security contractors carrying large backpacks at the direct bombing site after the bombing and chatting with police, reports of eyewitnesses of police over loudspeakers telling marathon runners there was a “terrorism exercise” taking place as a test that day. All these anomalies, combined with the CIA ties of Uncle Ruslan, present an incredible set of coincidences. It is time for an open and serious citizen commission of inquiry be formed to investigate.

In a future article we will look closely at the role of the same Graham Fuller in creation of what is rapidly becoming an Islamic fundamentalist dictatorship in Turkey and across the Islamic world. The Graham Fuller-Ruslan Tsarni connection opens up what looks to be a very ugly can of worms. The two accused of the Boston bombings were never proven guilty. Their mother in Russia vehemently insists they were set up as patsies by the US Government to be blamed. [6]

It may be that carelessness somewhere exposed Graham Fuller and the tip of a very secret and very explosive network of international terror whose ties with Langley and the US Government are inadvertently coming into daylight in what might well be the most important revelation of destructive secret intelligence operations in modern history. Graham Fuller, ’methinks thou doth protest too much,’ when you proclaim absurd ties between the CIA and accused Boston bombers and that is drawing the spotlight of the civilized world to you and your accomplices and activities. Fuller’s earlier role in Turkey with another network of Salafist fundamentalist Islam will be our next view into the murky underworld of intelligence agencies and attempts to manipulate entire parts of the human population.

F. William Engdahl, US-German author and analyst of geopolitical and economic issues. His newest book is Myths, Lies and Oil Wars. Earlier works include A Century of War : Anglo-American Oil Politics and the New World Order (2011, republished in a new edition) and Gods of Money: Wall Street and the Death of the American Century (2010).

[1]  Emine Dilek,The Tale of Uncle Tsarnaev CIA Chief Graham Fuller and a Turkish Islamist Who Lives in USA, April 27, 2013.

[2]   Laura Rozen, Former CIA officer: ‘Absurd’ to link uncle of Boston suspects, Agency,, The Back Channel, April 27, 2013.

[3]   Ibid.

[4]  Center for Grassroots Oversight, Profile: Graham Fuller.

[5]   Ibid.

[6]   RT, Tsarnaev brothers’ mother: My sons are innocent, this is a setup, 19 April 2013.

Source : “Graham Fuller, Uncle Ruslan, the CIA and the Boston Bombings”, by F. William Engdahl, Voltaire Network, 20 May 2013, www.voltairenet.org/article178524.html

A human rights association in Spain has denounced five NATO commanders of the US-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) in Afghanistan for committing war crimes in the war-torn country.

On Monday, President of the Rene Cassin Committee, Spanish attorney Alberto Revuelta, issued a statement saying that the military commanders from the United States, Britain, Italy and Spain committed war crimes after they bombed the town of Shigal in Afghanistan's Kunar Province on April 6 and killed at least 10 children and a woman.

The bombardments carried out by US-led forces in the war-ravaged country “could be characterized as war crimes, defined in the Rome Statute of the International Criminal Court as serious violation of the Geneva Conventions of August 1949,” the statement said.

This comes after a formal complaint was filed against the commanders, namely US Marine Commander for ISAF Gen. Joseph Dunford; Briton Nick Patrick Carter; US Lt. Gen. James I. Terry, the commander of the ISAF’s Neutralization Operations; Italy’s Giorgio Battisti; and the ISAF personnel chief and Spanish Gen. Javier Cabeza Taberna in the Audiencia Nacional (Spain’s National Court).

The United States and its allies entered the war in Afghanistan in October 2001 as part of Washington’s so-called war on terror. The offensive removed the Taliban from power, but after more than 11 years, the foreign troops have not been able to establish security in the country.

Many civilians have lost their lives in US-led operations in various parts of Afghanistan over the past decade with Afghans becoming increasingly outraged at the seemingly endless number of the deadly assaults.

Source : http://www.presstv.ir/detail/2013/05/20/304531/nato-commanders-denounced...

Intense fighting is reported from the strategic Syrian town of Qusair, as rebels and government forces fight to control the area. Opposition activists say 30 members of Hezbollah were killed, while the government claims to have captured the area.

Earlier Monday, Syrian state news agency SANA reported that the army had "restored security and stability to most Qusair neighborhoods" and was "chasing the remnants of the terrorists in the northern district.” The agency quoted a military source as saying that army units dismantled a number of explosive devices, planted by terrorists in al-Souk area in the middle of the city.

The source added that army units are continuing hunting the remnants of terrorists in some hideouts in the northern and southern areas of the city.

“The Syrian army managed to make a full circle around the city, fighting the opposition fighters. The main achievement is to stop the line of supply chain between Lebanon and Syria,” local journalist Abdallah Mawazini told RT.

“They started from the western side of the city, in the rural areas. They control this zone with some fighters from Lebanon. Some extremist groups were preparing to go into Syria to fight with the rebels, they were going to go make a bigger front in order to fight and expand the fighting line between the government and the opposition,” he said.

Read more : http://rt.com/news/syria-qusair-hezbollah-rebels-518/

Ars catches Microsoft accessing links we sent in our test messages.

If you think the private messages you send over Skype are protected by end-to-end encryption, think again. The Microsoft-owned service regularly scans message contents for signs of fraud, and company managers may log the results indefinitely, Ars has confirmed. And this can only happen if Microsoft can convert the messages into human-readable form at will.

With the help of independent privacy and security researcher Ashkan Soltani, Ars used Skype to send four Web links that were created solely for purposes of this article. Two of them were never clicked on, but the other two—one beginning in HTTP link and the other HTTPS—were accessed, by a machine at 65.52.100.214, an IP address belonging to Microsoft. For those interested in the technical details, the log line looked like this:

'65.52.100.214 - - [16/May/2013 11:30:10] "HEAD /index.html?test_never_clicked HTTP/1.1" 200 -'

The results—which were similar but not identical to those reported last week by The H Security—prove conclusively that Microsoft not only has ability to peer at the plaintext sent from one Skype user to another, but that the company regularly flexes that monitoring muscle.

In one sense, this shouldn't come as news. Skype's privacy policy clearly states that it may (emphasis added) use automated scanning within Instant Messages and SMS to identify spam and links to sites engaged in phishing and other forms of fraud. And as Ars reported last year, since Skype was acquired by Microsoft, the network running the service has been drastically overhauled from its design of the preceding decade.

Read more : http://arstechnica.com/security/2013/05/think-your-skype-messages-get-en...

PlanxtySumoud --  A very unsatisfactory interview with Keith Finnegan of Galway Bay FM radio station: not once did he enquire into the serious situation in the West Bank, instead, his line of questioning is anchored in establishing my bona fides as a card carrying journalist (non existent) and guilt tripping me with the accusatory "why do I put my life in danger," when the elephant in the room question - and other genuine enquiries on the parlous situation here - should be; "Why do Israeli Occupation Forces put the Palestinians lives in danger and indeed murdering them." His kind of "limelighting" I shun and abhor.

13 May 2013 -- People living in rented houses will have their wages docked to pay the property tax if they do not respond to letters from the Revenue.

Under the legislation, it is the landlord who is responsible for paying the property tax bill.

However, if a letter is addressed to the renter – and they do not inform Revenue that it is the landlord who is actually liable – they will have the tax docked from their wages.

Finance Minister Michael Noonan warned that people should not listen to "irresponsible advice" to ignore the property tax letters from Revenue if they are not the owners of the house.

He said they would still have their wages deducted if they did not notify the Revenue that they were not the owner of the house.

Read more : http://www.independent.ie/irish-news/wages-will-be-docked-if-revenue-doe...

New generation of elites taking the transnational reins?

Jurriaan Maessen
Infowars.com
May 13, 2013

As today’s groundbreaking revelations by Infowars will possibly reveal, Bilderberg is moving itself into a new hybrid leviathan, with Google as the new vehicle for policy implementation. A new generation has emerged, alligning itself with the good old boys at Bilderberg. Not that this newer generation has appeared out of thin air to rock the world of the old-timers. Far from it. The key players now taking the digital helm in this probable “Googleberg” construct are literally the offspring of the older players who are keenly aware that if the ancient agenda is to endure, a merger with the new guard needs to be established.

One such key player who has presumably been offered the steering wheel in both policy setting- and operational activities, is the son of the former queen Beatrix of the Netherlands, Constantijn van Oranje-Nassau. As EU commissioner Neelie Kroes’ first man in her “digital agenda” cabinet, Constantijn is well placed to play a key role in securing the reigns in the hands of international bankers who make the final decisions. Constantijn was described as “programme associate” of the Bilderberg group on the official royal website back in 2009. Although the website scrubbed the mention shortly after I published this information on Infowars.com, the original cached page was salvaged thanks to vigilant observers in the alternative media.

Authoritarian, anti-democratic power networks are being re-branded as trendy, philanthropic-style forums

Paul Joseph Watson & Alex Jones
Infowars.com
May 13, 2013

The secretive Bilderberg Group is currently undergoing a major transformation that will see it and other high profile networks merge under the banner of Google as the elite accelerates its plan to consolidate its technocratic agenda.

This past weekend, Infowars reporters Paul Joseph Watson and Jon Scobie visited the luxury Grove Hotel in Watford, UK, site of the 2013 Bilderberg Group conference set to take place June 6-9, a clandestine annual gathering of over 100 of the world’s most influential power brokers in the fields of politics, academia, technology, business and banking.

The investigation was prompted by our sources, who advised us to visit the Grove in advance of Bilderberg 2013. This is part one of what promises to be a developing story as the pieces of the jigsaw fall into place backed up by years of Bilderberg tracking and research.

What we discovered was groundbreaking and represents one of if not the most important development in Bilderberg’s 59 year history.

Put simply, Bilderberg is merging with Google under the stewardship of Google CEO Eric Schmidt, a regular Bilderberg attendee. Google’s annual Zeitgeist conference, which has been based at the Grove since 2007, immediately precedes the Bilderberg Group conference by a matter of days.

Read more : http://www.infowars.com/google-berg-global-elite-transforms-itself-for-t...