A Pakistani CIA operative who ran a fake vaccination program in
Abbottabad, Pakistan, to try and obtain DNA samples via needle pricks from the
residents of Osama bin Laden’s compound there in order to confirm their
identities prior to the SEAL assassination mission, has been sentenced to 33
years in prison by a Pakistani Tribal Court for treason for working for the CIA
and not notifying Paki authorities.
This case bears comparison to three cases in which the shoe was on
the other foot- Jonathan Pollard, the
Cuban Five, and Bradley Manning. But first, let us review:
Secretary of State Hillary Clinton condemned the verdict: “Lastly, on the conviction of Dr. Shakil
Afridi in Pakistan, as I’ve said before, the United States does not believe
there is any basis for holding Dr. Afridi. We regret both the fact that he was
convicted and the severity of his sentence. His help, after all, was
instrumental in taking down one of the world’s most notorious murderers. That
was clearly in Pakistan’s interests
as well as ours and the rest of the world. This action by Dr. Afridi to help
bring about the end of the reign of terror designed and executed by bin Ladin was not in any way a betrayal of Pakistan.
And we have made that very well known and we will continue to press it with the
Government of Pakistan.” “"We are raising it, and we will
continue to do so, because we think that his treatment is unjust and
unwarranted. As I have said before, the
United States does not believe there is any basis for holding Dr. Afridi.
We regret both the fact that he was convicted and the severity of his sentence."
[May 24th.][My emphases.]1
Actually every country on earth outlaws espionage and treason, including the U.S. That’s a “basis” right there. It’s the basis on which Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. civilian Naval analyst, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for passing classified information to Israel. His supporters argue, just as Clinton does in the Afridi case, that no harm was done to the country imprisoning him, and that it was a Good Deed, helping Israel “defend” itself. And Israel is a very close ally (supposedly- more like a doted on and spoiled brat dependent) to the U.S., very different from the U.S.-Paki relationship. To this day the Israelis and their U.S. fifth columnists have been unable to spring Pollard from prison, despite their strenuous efforts. And was it not in both the U.S.’s and Israel’s “interests” that U.S. information of a military nature be shared with Israel? (If you believe in Israeli regional hegemony, which the U.S. obviously does, the answer would seem to be yes.) And Pollard was not “betraying” the U.S. That is, he did not aid a U.S. enemy.
Actually every country on earth outlaws espionage and treason, including the U.S. That’s a “basis” right there. It’s the basis on which Jonathan Pollard, the former U.S. civilian Naval analyst, was sentenced to life imprisonment in 1987 for passing classified information to Israel. His supporters argue, just as Clinton does in the Afridi case, that no harm was done to the country imprisoning him, and that it was a Good Deed, helping Israel “defend” itself. And Israel is a very close ally (supposedly- more like a doted on and spoiled brat dependent) to the U.S., very different from the U.S.-Paki relationship. To this day the Israelis and their U.S. fifth columnists have been unable to spring Pollard from prison, despite their strenuous efforts. And was it not in both the U.S.’s and Israel’s “interests” that U.S. information of a military nature be shared with Israel? (If you believe in Israeli regional hegemony, which the U.S. obviously does, the answer would seem to be yes.) And Pollard was not “betraying” the U.S. That is, he did not aid a U.S. enemy.
Clinton was reiterating what the U.S. position was all along since
Afridi’s arrest. A day earlier State Dept. spokeswoman Victoria Nuland repeated the “no basis” line during the “Daily Press Briefing”
(that’s the title on the State Dept. website): “Well, I think you know that
Secretary Clinton spoke to this issue back in February when she was testifying.
Secretary Panetta has spoken to our concerns with regard to this matter. Our
views on it haven’t changed. We will – we
continue to see no basis for Dr. Afridi to be held.” [My emphasis.]
Senator John McCain pronounced himself “outraged.”2
Senator Carl Levin, chair of the Armed Services Committee, joined McCain
in his high dudgeon. (McCain is the ranking Republican on the committee.) And Congress
cut $33 million off Pakistan’s annual bribe money- one million for each year of
Dr. Afridi ‘s sentence, they made sure to point out. (Oooh, pointed message,
politicians!) This on top of earlier cuts. (Not that I think the U.S. should
have given
all those billions to build up the Paki military against India in the first place.) Meanwhile, on the same day Clinton
spoke, “an American drone struck
militant hide-outs, killing 7 to 10 people BELIEVED to have been militants,”
according to the NY Times. [Emphasis
mine, obviously.] For good measure, McCain and Levin threatened further cuts in
“aid” to the Pak military if Afridi wasn’t sprung forthwith. [Levin-McCain
statement at bottom of essay.]
The U.S. regards Dr. Afridi as a hero for doing what they
deem to be a good deed. On the other hand, Private Bradley Manning is treated
as a despicable traitor for doing the good deed of revealing to the public information
everyone on earth is entitled to be aware of, including U.S. atrocities like
the helicopter assassination of a Reuters crew in Iraq and the war crime
shooting of a civilian who tried to put the victims in his van, in the process
of which children in his van were wounded. Having the information that
WikiLeaks obtains was clearly “in the interest of the rest of the world.” So
who gets prosecuted for that? The chuckling war criminals in the helicopter?
(The onboard video is on the Internet, so you can hear their chuckling for
yourself.) No, Bradley Manning is prosecuted. That’s a LOT, LOT more “outrageous”
than Pakistan prosecuting Dr. Afridi.
And speaking of assassinations, a number of members of the
U.S. nomenklatura have publicly
called for Julian Assange’s murder. We should not shy away from comparing the
political culture of the U.S. to that of the Third Reich. It is similarly
openly violent and murderous.
But I suppose Manning “harmed” the U.S. in that by revealing
some of its crimes, he tarnishes the undeservedly favorable image the U.S. projects of itself via
propaganda. (See, for example, the U.S. media on any day of the week.) That’s the
same kind of “harm” that refugees reporting on Nazi atrocities did to Germany
during World War II, or the “harm” that dissidents in places like China and in U.S.
allies such as Egypt and Bahrain are imprisoned for. (“Insulting the reputation
of the army” in Egypt, for example.)
Dr. Afridi, by the way, did great harm to legitimate
vaccination programs and aid agencies in Pakistan. But the U.S. never gives a
shit about anything except its power aims. (Except rhetorically. There’s that
fabulous propaganda machine again.)
The U.S. pretends to be fighting “terrorism.” So if this
were true, than Cuba fighting terrorism would be in the U.S.’s “interests” too,
just as Clinton claims what the U.S. did in Pakistan was in Pakistan’s
interests. (The U.S. just couldn’t trust the Pakis enough to let them know what
was going down. And the U.S. is probably right about that.)
So Cuba was fighting terrorism and trying to defend itself.
And not by assassinations or kidnappings or imprisonment without trial either.
The U.S. response was to round up its operatives- Cuban citizens- and sentence
them harshly- up to life “plus” 18 years. And since they’re political
prisoners, the U.S. does its usual thing of treating them with gratuitous
cruelty, denying them visitation rights. (It did this by denying their wives
and relatives visas to enter the U.S., on the grounds that they’d be a “security
risk.” Right, U.S. Sounds reasonable.
The Cuban Five certainly did no harm to the U.S., either. So
by Clinton’s criteria, they should never have been prosecuted or imprisoned. But
the U.S. is okay with terrorism against regimes it doesn’t like. (See also
Nicaragua in the 1980s, for another of many examples.)3
In all of these cases, at least some of the defendants were
sentenced more harshly than Dr. Afridi. (Manning of course hasn’t been
sentenced or convicted yet, but he faces the death penalty and I expect he will
get life. One of the Cuban Five has been released and is being held in effect
prisoner in Miami “on parole,” giving the exile fanatics a chance to murder
him. Nice touch, U.S.! And then you’ll pretend you aren’t responsible!)
Yes yes, Cuba is an oppressive country. So’s the U.S. And I
don’t agree that blowing civilian airplanes out of the sky somehow strikes a
blow for “freedom.” And guess what? The U.S. is about as repressive towards
dissidents as Cuba. It’s just less honest about it. In Cuba they charge
dissidents with political crimes. In the U.S. they frame up dissidents for “non-political”
crimes. The U.S. Way of political persecution is much craftier, in that they
reduce principled political opponents to common criminals.
So if imprisoning “terrorists” on the whim of faceless
police state bureaucrats is OK, and if allowing them to murder “terrorists” is
also kosher, then obviously what‘s next up on the agenda is murdering more
protesters than has already been usual in the U.S.
Even the U.S. media admits that bin Laden was operationally
neutered by the time the U.S., got around to slaughtering him. The gain in
assassinating bin Laden was a symbolic political victory for the U.S. and
especially for Obama personally, who planned to use it to help reelect his
sorry blood-soaked ass.
Obama just okayed drone murders of strangers spotted on the
ground whose identities aren’t known. So now they’re explicitly killing people without even knowing who they’re killing,
if they “look like terrorists” to the CIA secret police cutthroats. These are
called “signature drone strikes” in U.S. Imperialist- aka “national security”-
jargon. This is after they’ve killed hundreds of civilians, which they lie
through their teeth about and deny.
Killing civilians and lying about it is now an established U.S. and NATO pattern. In Afghanistan, to
mention one example, French helicopters murdered some shepherd boys and
insisted they were Taliban fighters. In Libya, NATO adamantly denies, against
overwhelming evidence, even after an
extensive NY Times report, that they bombed and killed any innocent civilians. It’s scummy, stupid, and immoral, and
self-defeating to not apologize and pay reparations. But like I said, stupid. Or maybe they’re just
cheapskates who don’t want to pay compensation. Meanwhile, they squeezed close
to 2.7 BILLION dollars out of Qaddafi for blowing up Pan Am flight 103 over Lockerbie,
Scotland. (That’s a cool ten million dollars per victim. And the U.S. media likes to squeal
about “exorbitant” jury awards in the U.S.! Oh well, the examples of hypocrisy
are endless once you start deconstructing American bullshit.) That’s $2.64 billion more than the U.S. paid for deliberately shooting down an Iranian
civilian airliner taking pilgrims to Mecca, in 1988. [Iran Air Flight 655.] If
you feel like having your blood boil over U.S. criminality and lying, read the
article in the Proceedings of the U.S. Naval Institute by a retired USMC Lt.
Colonel, about this “incident.” As of this writing it’s still at http://www.usni.org/magazines/proceedings/1993-08/vincennes-case-study. Download a copy in case it
disappears.4
By the way, dead Afghans are worth a few hundred bucks a pop
to the U.S., when it’s willing to admit women and children it killed were NOT “Taliban
militants.”
At a billion dollars a head, the rate charged the Qaddafi
regime for blowing up Pam Am 103, the U.S. couldn’t pay the tab for the
millions it’s killed starting from its unholy birth in genocide if it lasted a
thousand years. Which, like the Thousand Year Reich, it won’t.
11) To be sure, the “trial” of Afridi was a
travesty. But so are political trials in the U.S. And military “tribunals” in
Guantanamo Bay. And the persecution of Private Bradley Manning. A Paki pooh-bah
on BBC May 2th defended the tribal “court” sham by saying the
territory is under British law from the 19th century. Inexplicably,
the BBC woman interviewing him didn’t point out that Pakistan is an independent
nation not bound to keep British law. (Israel keeps some British colonial law
too- law from when Britain controlled Palestine. This law is used to imprison
Palestinians without charges or trial under “administrative detention.” The Jewish
Israelis figured that this tool previously used to suppress them would come in
handy for oppressing Palestinians.)
22) McCain said “All of us
are outraged at the imprisonment and sentence of some 33 years, virtually a
death sentence, to the doctor in Pakistan who was instrumental — not on
purpose, but was instrumental and completely innocent of any wrongdoing.”
But of course McCain is perpetually
outraged. Rage is his normal emotional state. This is well-known by other
politicians and the media, which keep it secret. He has screamed vile
sputtering abuse at his wife in front of “journalists” who refuse to report it.
(Guess “character” is only important when they want it to be, like when they’re
engaging in character assassination.)
McCain bellowed words like “fucking cunt” at her in front of others, which I
bet was deeply humiliating for her. What an ingrate the “war hero” is. He
married her wealth. That greased the skids for his political career. He should at
least be grateful, the rabid militarist dog. Why are women so attracted to
beastly louts instead of to nice guys? It’s an enduring mystery. Is it
biologically encoded, on the theory that the beastly ones have a survival
advantage? Assuming their mates survive their violent dispositions. Maybe it’s
time for women to become conscious human beings and transcend the dictates of
DNA.
However, the non-perpetually outraged U.S. pols were outraged too.
Like “liberal” Democratic Senator Carl Levin. With McCain, Levin called the sentence "shocking and
outrageous" and called Afridi’s actions "courageous, heroic and
patriotic." (The U.S. defines patriotism for all people on this
planet as loyalty and service to the U.S. There’s no such thing as patriotism
for other countries. That’s “nationalism.”
Cf. the U.S. media.) "Afridi's
actions were completely consistent with the multiple, legally-binding
resolutions passed over many years by the United Nations Security Council,
which required member states to assist in bringing Osama bin Laden and his al
Qaeda network to justice," Levin and McCain indignantly sputtered in a
joint statement. "Afridi set an example that we wish others in Pakistan
had followed long ago. He should be praised and rewarded for his actions, not
punished and slandered."
Well, what are UN resolutions for if
not to be broken? Just ask Israel. And international law? You mean like against
torture? Or assassinations? Or war
crimes? Or like the Geneva Conventions, explicitly abrogated since the Bush
regime? (Don’t ask.)
You might recall (you should, at any rate, for there are certain
crimes against humanity that must not be forgotten) that it was Levin who
concocted and made part of the so-called “National Defense Authorization Bill”
(“defense” is what the U.S. calls its aggression and intimidation all around
the planet) a section that “legalizes” locking up “terrorists” indefinitely
without the nitpicking nicety of having to charge them with a crime or put them
on trial- the kind of “technicalities” by which the guilty routinely beat the
rap, in the Dirty Harry fascist wetdream version of reality. And of course a “terrorist”
is whoever they say is one, by their perfect Alice in Wonderland logic. And
since the entire planet constitutes the “battlefield” in the “global war on
terror,” doesn’t matter where they grab you. Could be from in front of your
fireplace at home.
The fact that we have come to this pass was totally
foreseeable at the beginning of this slippery slope, when the Bush regime
seized the hapless Jose Padilla in Chicago and fraudulently claimed he was part
of a “dirty bomb” plot to detonate radioactive material in a city. I could see
at the time that it was pure bullshit. But they needed to put on a Big Show of “fighting
terrorism,” for which they needed victims to play the part of the Evil Ones,
and to distract attention from the fact that the secret police agencies
permitted the 9/11 airliner kamikaze attacks to occur. (That’s another story.)
After years of being held incommunicado in the Marine brig/torture
center at Quantico, he was finally charged with “terrorism” for – get this-
trying to aid Muslims in Bosnia who were being murdered by Serbs and Croats.
What business that is of the U.S., or how that constitutes a crime under U.S.
law, or why that’s terrorism, the U.S. media didn’t bother to explain. They
merely confirmed that Padilla was a “terrorist,” and threw the “dirty bomb” “plot”
down the memory hole.
33)
Wikipedia has some pretty good basic information
on the Cubana terror bombing at https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cubana_Flight_455
and elsewhere.
Other airliners shot down with very different consequences from
the Lockerbie bombing include Israel’s (them again!) deliberate shootdown of a
Libyan (irony! and did that goad Qaddafi to do the same?) airliner over the
Sinai desert in 1973, and Korean Air 007 (not
a coincidental flight number, but U.S. “intel” being cute) over highly sensitive
Soviet military installations. [In brief, the plane of the U.S.-satrapy Korea was
deliberately sent hundreds of miles off course in order to cause Soviet air defense
radars to be switched on, enabling the U.S. to spy on those radar emissions and
concoct countermeasures in order to perfect the ability to launch a nuclear
attack against Soviet missiles. The Reagan regime pursued an aggressive policy of
developing a first strike capability against the Soviet Union, which included
placing nuclear armed missiles in Europe which could reach the Kremlin ten
minutes after launch, decapitating the Soviet Command structure. Having the
Soviet shoot down the hapless civilian jet was a propaganda bonus for the U.S.
Richard Nixon had been booked on the flight but was warned off.]
Edward Herman has a pretty good examination of the U.S. media’s
glaring double standard when dealing with airliners shot out of the sky, which
reveals its propagandistic nature. "The New York Times on the Libya-Pan Am 103 Case: A Study in Propaganda Service," Global Research, 9/22/07.
See also "GOP & KAL-007: 'The Key Is to Lie First'" by
Robert Parry at Consortium News.
4) The U.S. eventually paid parsimonious compensation, grudgingly, to the victims it murdered when shooting down the Iranian Airbus- only after Iran sued in the International Court of Justice. The payment occurred eight years after the shootdown, in 1996. The payment of compensation was explicitly characterized as being on an "ex gratia" basis, and the U.S. denied having any responsibility or liability for the crime.
The U.S. agreed to a measly $300,000 per wage-earning victim, $150,000 per non-wage-earner, for a total of $61.8 million.
For the outrageous statements by Reagan, Bush, et al about the murders, see Shooting Down Iran Air Flight 655 [IR655]. By the way, the Captain of the USS VIncennes, who entered Iranian territorial waters to attack Iranian patrol boats and ordered the airliner shot down at the same time, was feted by the U.S. media and public upon his return and given a medal for his brave feat. A medal for an alleged "accident" or "mistake"? Sounds like premeditated murder by all involved.
*”War On Terror” is a registered trademark of U.S. Imperialism. Or should be.
4) The U.S. eventually paid parsimonious compensation, grudgingly, to the victims it murdered when shooting down the Iranian Airbus- only after Iran sued in the International Court of Justice. The payment occurred eight years after the shootdown, in 1996. The payment of compensation was explicitly characterized as being on an "ex gratia" basis, and the U.S. denied having any responsibility or liability for the crime.
The U.S. agreed to a measly $300,000 per wage-earning victim, $150,000 per non-wage-earner, for a total of $61.8 million.
For the outrageous statements by Reagan, Bush, et al about the murders, see Shooting Down Iran Air Flight 655 [IR655]. By the way, the Captain of the USS VIncennes, who entered Iranian territorial waters to attack Iranian patrol boats and ordered the airliner shot down at the same time, was feted by the U.S. media and public upon his return and given a medal for his brave feat. A medal for an alleged "accident" or "mistake"? Sounds like premeditated murder by all involved.
*”War On Terror” is a registered trademark of U.S. Imperialism. Or should be.
A note on nomenclature. In CIA lingo, an agent is NOT a CIA
employee. It’s a person outside the
CIA that the CIA uses. An officer is an employee of the CIA, a secret
policeman, who controls the agents. Agents can be foreign or U.S. citizens.
Only U.S. citizens can join the CIA. The media ignorantly refers to CIA
officers as “agents.” They are not.
On the other hand, FBI secret policemen are “agents,” formally
“special agents” in the propaganda title Hoover came up with for his minions.
He was a great branding and image manager, not just an architect of a secret
police force with great media and political power. The people the FBI uses as
tools are called “informants.” (I.e. informers and agents provocateur.)
The U.S. media deliberately hides the fact that these are
secret police agencies by referring to the FBI as a “law enforcement” agency,
and the CIA as an “intelligence” agency and its secret policemen as “spies.” An
important euphemism for repression is “security.” This term is even used when
referring to the repressive apparatus of, for example, the Assad regime in
Syria.
Of course the FBI very selectively enforces laws (as well as
framing up political dissidents under the guise of law enforcement) and the CIA
(and FBI) spies- and conducts political surveillance. Yet the U.S. media has no
trouble referring to the erstwhile East German secret police, Stasi, as “secret
police,” while describing their former domestic surveillance (political spying)
operations. What the Stasi did was no different from what the FBI and CIA do
here. And the U.S. media has never reported any assassinations by the Stasi,
whereas both the FBI and CIA have murdered Americans inside the U.S. (Including
the President of the United States in 1963, his brother four and a half years
later, and Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr. after he refused the FBI blackmail order
that he kill himself, among many other victims.)
Statement by Senators
McCain and Levin on Sentencing of Pakistani Doctor who Assisted in Bin Laden
Search
Wednesday, May 23,
2012
Washington, D.C. –
U.S. Senators John McCain (R-AZ) and Carl Levin (D-MI) today released the
following statement on the news that Dr. Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor
who assisted the United States in the search for Osama bin Laden, has been
sentenced to 33 years in prison for the crime of treason:
“It is shocking and
outrageous that Dr. Shakil Afridi, the Pakistani doctor who assisted the United
States in the search for Osama bin Laden, has been sentenced to 33 years in
prison for the crime of treason. What Dr. Afridi did is the furthest thing from
treason. It was a courageous, heroic, and patriotic act, which helped to locate
the most wanted terrorist in the world – a mass murderer who had the blood of
many innocent Pakistanis on his hands.
“Dr. Afridi’s actions
were completely consistent with the multiple, legally-binding resolutions
passed over many years by the United Nations Security Council, which required
member-states to assist in bringing Osama bin Laden and his Al-Qaeda network to
justice. Dr. Afridi set an example that we wish others in Pakistan had followed
long ago. He should be praised and rewarded for his actions, not punished and
slandered.
“We call upon the
Pakistani government to pardon and release Dr. Afridi immediately. At a time
when the United States and Pakistan need more than ever to work constructively
together, Dr. Afridi’s continuing imprisonment and treatment as a criminal will
only do further harm to U.S.-Pakistani relations, including diminishing
Congress’s willingness to provide financial assistance to Pakistan.”
No comments:
Post a Comment