Ray McGovern

Pvt. Manning on the left. - In today's America, pro-
secutors & hanging judges use any means to convict.

When I was asked to speak at Saturday’s rally at Fort Meade in support of Pvt. Bradley Manning, I wondered how I might provide some context around what Manning is alleged to have done.

(In my talk, so as not to think I had to insert the word “alleged” into every sentence, I asked for unanimous consent to using the indicative rather than the subjunctive mood.)

What jumped into my mind was the letter Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. wrote from the Birmingham City jail in April 1963, from which I remembered this:

“Like a boil that can never be cured as long as it is covered up, but must be opened with all its pus-flowing ugliness to the natural medicines of air and light, injustice must likewise be exposed, with all of the tension its exposing creates, to the light of human conscience and the air of national opinion before it can be cured.”

I suggested that this is precisely what Bradley Manning did when he saw the need to uncover war crimes like the indiscriminate murder of civilians and torture he witnessed in Baghdad and read about in cables.

What he had become witness to was the inevitable result of aggressive war, which the post-World War II Nuremberg Tribunal called the “supreme international crime,” differing from other war crimes only inasmuch as it contains within itself the “accumulated evil of the whole.” Was he to obey orders to keep his mouth shut? Or was he to follow his conscience and lance this ugly boil of accumulated evil?

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Khalid Amayreh in occupied Palestine

Some of the pseudo intellectuals in the Arab world are lamenting the demise of "progressive regimes" in Libya, Tunisia and Egypt as well as the looming demise of some other regimes in the region.

These hypocrites and hangers-on, who had benefited immensely, financially and otherwise, from their close association with some of the defunct regimes, are now bewailing the allegedly negative impact of Arab revolutions on the overall Palestinian cause.

These orphans of tyranny and despotism falsely think that Arab tyrants, the ones who have been consigned to the dustbin of history and the others awaiting their turn, preserved the Palestinian cause from possible demise and prevented Israel from achieving its expansionistic goals.

The truth of the matter, however, is that all these regimes exploited the legitimate Palestinian cause in order to repress and torment their own people and stay in power as long as possible, all under the false rubric of challenging Zionism and Western imperialism.

Thus, thousands, probably tens of thousands of innocent Arabs and Muslims were brutally killed and tortured in the name of fighting Israel and Zionism. Hundreds of thousands were imprisoned and persecuted for demanding freedom, dignity and human rights.

The great Arab poet, al-Mutanabbi, may have had sycophants like these in mind when he said: "The tears of the eye betray their man if they happen to harrowing after the traitors."

Well, since when would the merciless murder of our fellow Arab citizens lead to the liberation of Palestine.

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Stephen Lendman

In today's America, prosecutors and hanging judges use any means to convict. Innocence and judicial fairness don't matter, just imprisoning another Muslim for political advantage with considerable major media help.

Post-9/11, Mehanna is one of hundreds of Muslim Americans victimized, vilified, and persecuted for their faith, ethnicity, prominence, activism, and at times charity.

On October 21, 2009, an FBI press release said:

"A Sudbury, Mass. man was charged today in federal court with conspiracy to provide support to terrorists."

Maliciously and spuriously, Mehanna was accused of

"conspir[ing] with Ahmad Abousamra and others to provide material support and resources for use in carrying out a conspiracy to kill, kidnap, main or injure persons or damage property in a foreign country and extraterritorial homicide of a US national."

Despite no evidence whatever proving it,

"Mehanna and co-conspirators [were accused of having] discussed their desire to participate in violent jihad against American interests and that they would talk about fighting jihad and their desire to die on the battlefield."

"[They also] attempted to radicalize others and inspire each other by, among other things, watching and distributing jihadi videos."

[In addition], Mehanna and two of his associates traveled to the Middle East in February 2004, seeking military-type training at a terrorist training camp [to] prepare them for armed jihad....including [against] US and allied forces in Iraq....[One] of Mehanna's coconspirators made two similar trips to Pakistan in 2002."

"....Mehanna and the co-conspirators had multiple conversations about obtaining automatic weapons [from a Mr. Maldonado, now serving a 10-year sentence for training with Al Queda in Somalia] and randomly shooting people in a shopping mall, and that the conversations went so far as to discuss the logistics of a mall attack, including coordination, weapons needed and the possibility of attacking emergency responders."

Yet no attack occurred. None, in fact, was planned or contemplated. According to FBI scoundrels, however, it was because no automatic weapons could be obtained even though legal semi-automatic ones are freely sold and illegal automatic ones easily gotten.

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Stephen Lendman

Right: Jacob Schiff, the Rothschild lieutenant who funded
communist revolution and the Japanese invasion of China.

The late Georgetown University historian Carroll Quigley said in his book titled, "Tragedy and Hope":

"(T)he powers of financial capitalism had another far-reaching aim, nothing less than to create a world system of financial control in private hands able to dominate the political system of each country and the economy of the world as a whole. This system was to be controlled in a feudalist fashion by the central banks of the world acting in concert, by secret agreements arrived at in frequent private meetings and conferences."

By controlling democratic and despotic governments as well as others in between, they've moved closer to absolute global control of money, credit and debt to dominate economies, politics, commerce, and imperial adventurism. As a result, they've benefitted handsomely at the expense of nations and popular interests.

Josiah Stamp, former Director of the Bank of England said:

"Banking was conceived in iniquity and was born in sin. The bankers own the earth. Take it away from them, but leave them the power to create money, and with the flick of the pen they will create enough deposits to buy it back again." "However, take it away from them, and all the great fortunes like mine will disappear and they ought to disappear, for this would be a happier and better world to live in. But, if you wish to remain the slaves of bankers and pay the cost of your own slavery, let them continue to create money."

Aesop said "We hang the petty thieves and appoint the great ones to public office." Bankers with money power are the most pernicious of all.

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