CIA Cannot Confirm or Deny Having Files on Infamous Nazi Doctor

Some things never fail to surprise. And surprise was my reaction to my recent FOIA request at the MuckRock website on a notorious Nazi doctor who had been tried at Nuremberg. The CIA returned a "Glomar" response to my FOIA on Doctor Kurt Blome.



The CIA wrote, "In accordance with section 3.6(a) of Executive Order 13526, the CIA can neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to your request."

Towards the end of the article, and quoted in full, is my appeal of this decision to the CIA. It is published here as a public service, to educate the public about an aspect of the war fought by the "greatest generation," that is not fully explored in a Tom Hanks movie or even a decent World War II history book. (A "no responsive records" on a similar FOIA to the FBI is also being appealed. A FOIA request to the Army has not received any response thus far.)

Glomar responses are considered in cases of "sensitive national security." Just how sensitive a national security issue can it be to admit the CIA has or does not have files on Kurt Blome? For those who are trying to get the truth out of the government on a multitude of different issues, beyond which whistleblowers like Edward Snowden or Chelsea (formerly "Bradley") Manning have been able to provide us, the fact that information more than 60 years old is so sensitive that the government can't admit or deny knowledge of it boggles the imagination.

As readers may or may not be aware, I've been researching the allegations that the U.S. used biological weapons during the Korean War. The charges are still considered valid in China and North Korea, and along with the connivance of the United States in covering up Japanese biological and chemical warfare and medical experimentation in China during World War II, the truth or falsity of these charges are still a hot-button issue in Asia. (My recent article on the subject showed documentary proof that the U.S. was lying, at least in part, publicly about what was going on, and also showed that the U.S. was possibly involved in chemical warfare in Korea as well!)

A South Korean newspaper, The Chosunilbo, responding to Japan's latest provocation -- a visit by Prime Minister Abe to the notorious Yakasuna war shrine, where war criminals from World War II are buried -- reported, "By visiting Yasukuni, Abe has made it clear that he does not intend to back down from a diplomatic and even military confrontation with South Korea and China over the issue of whitewashing his country's wartime atrocities, Tokyo's flimsy colonial claim to South Korea's Dokdo islets and other territorial issues. It is obvious that he will push ahead with his rightwing agenda at all costs."

But what's all this got to do with Nazis, you may ask?

The research took me to the issue of the Nazis' own biological warfare program. According to the Nuremberg trial record, and the few histories on the subject written since, the Nazi doctor Kurt Blome was in charge of the National Socialists' "bacteriological warfare" program. He had built a testing facility in Posen, Poland, reportedly not too different from the Unit 731 facility in Ping Fan. It was captured by the Soviets, but Blome got away. He was later captured by the Americans, and interrogated by the secretive ALSOS group. He was tried as part of the famous Doctors' Trial at Nuremberg, but was acquitted. Some have implicated a deal was made with him for his BW information, and what he could tell the Americans about other Nazi scientists.

My research into the Unit 731 story had led me to track down the intelligence (OSS/Central Intelligence Group) connections of one primary figure involved in the decision to give amnesty to the Japanese BW war criminals, in exchange for getting BW (and other) data from them for use by U.S. scientists working at Ft. Detrick (and likely, too, for the Special Operations Division there, working on poisons and mind control research for the CIA). (This is the subject of an article to come, so I'm not going to give many details on who that intelligence person was.)

So I thought I should at least send a FOIA on Kurt Blome to the CIA. After all, according to historians Ute Deichmann, Linda Hunt, and Tom Bower, Blome had been a candidate for Army's Operation Paperclip, which sought out Nazi scientists to bring to the U.S. (like Werner von Braun). But presumably the U.S. Foreign Office or State Department balked on bringing this Nazi zealot to the America. After he was released from U.S. custody, he was interviewed by Ft. Detrick scientists, and subsequently, was said to be employed by the United States as a "camp doctor" at the European Command Intelligence Center at Oberursel, West Germany.

Now why, I wondered, was a Nazi doctor hired at the largest U.S. interrogation facility in post-World War II Europe? Moreover, why did Blome's trail end there? (A few sources state he was later arrested by the French and jailed, but I can find no clear documentary evidence of this.)

For the record, and I believe the readers' interest, I'd like to quote a bit from the June 16, 1947 closing brief at the Doctors Trial at Nuremberg for the United States of America versus Kurt Blome:

Blome was Deputy Reich Health Leader and Deputy Leader of the Reich Chamber of Physicians and the National Socialist Physicians' Association. He was a close collaborator of [Reich Health Leader, Leonardo] Conti, who was in direct charge of the civilian health service. By virtue of these positions, Blome held considerable power and influence. He knew that concentration camp inmates were being systematically used in criminal medical experiments. 

As the responsible head of bacteriological warfare, Blome personally suggested and carried out criminal experiments in that field. In the same connection he had poisons tested on human subjects and reported to Himmler on this matter.

Blome had full knowledge of the murderous freezing experiments by [SS doctor Sigmund] Rascher, supported his efforts to gain admission as an academic lecturer on that subject, and, as a member of the Reich Research Council, personally issued a research assignment to Rascher for further freezing experiments. He collaborated with Rascher in the Polygal experiments, during which inmates were shot and killed. He also issued a research assignment to Rascher in support of these experiments.

Blome had knowledge of [August] Hirt's [mustard] gas experiments in Natzweiler and furthered his work by issuing an assignment from the Reich Research Council.

As Deputy Reich Health Leader, Blome worked with the murderer [Arthur Karl] Greiser, Gauletier of Warthegan, who among other things assisted in the extermination of Jews in that area of Poland....

Historian, Michael H. Kater, in his book Doctors Under Hitler, said that Blome was one of a number of German doctors who were "instrumental not only in developing and introducing the Nuremberg race legislation but also in creating the severity with which its various enactments affected German Jews and the murderous ramifications thereafter" (p. 182)

Despite the crimes involved here, the story of U.S. government refusal to release records, and particularly obfuscation by the CIA, is nothing new. According to a 2005 Reuters story, "the CIA has refused to disclose documents about its postwar dealings with former Nazis who have not been accused of war crimes but belonged to organizations like the German Nazi party and the SS, congressional officials said. Some of the material is believed to deal with former Nazis who joined the allied Cold War effort against the Soviet Union in Europe, the officials said."

Former New York Congresswoman Elizabeth Holtzman told UPI at the same time as the Reuters article, "I think that the CIA has defied the law, and in so doing has also trivialized the Holocaust, thumbed its nose at the survivors of the Holocaust and also at Americans who gave their lives in the effort to defeat the Nazis in World War II."

What follows is the text of my FOIA appeal to the CIA:

December 12, 2013

Agency Release Panel
c/o Susan Viscuso
Information and Privacy Coordinator
Central Intelligence Agency
Washington, DC 20505

Reference: F-2014-00114

Dear Agency Release Panel:

This letter constitutes an administrative appeal to the Agency Release Panel, such appeal being guaranteed by Section 3.5(e) of Executive Order 13526.

I am writing to appeal the determination by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) with regard to my FOIA request filed on October 23, 2013, reference number F-2014-00114, for "all files pertaining to the former Nazi doctor Kurt Blome.”

The CIA response of November 6, 2013 indicated that, in accordance with section 3.6(a) of Executive Order 13526, the CIA could “neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive” to my request. CIA’s notification continued, “The fact of the existence or nonexistence of requested records is currently and properly classified and is intelligence sources and methods information that is protected from disclosure by section 6 of the CIA Act of 1949, as amended, and section 102A(i)(l) of the National Security Act of 1947, as amended.” This will be referred hereafter in this appeal by the popular name given to such a rejection, i.e., as a “Glomar” response.

The following are my reasons for appeal:

1) Some information related to cooperation Kurt Blome gave to both the military and intelligence agencies of the US government have already been released and are in the public record, and is further discussed below.

2) In her book, "Secret Agenda: The United States Government, Nazi Scientists and Project Paperclip, 1945-1990" (St. Martin’s Press, 1991), Linda Hunt noted that Kurt Blome had been interrogated as part of the Alsos missions at the end of World War II. Alsos was jointly staffed by the Office of Naval Intelligence, the Office of Scientific Research and Development, the Manhattan Project, and Army Intelligence (G-2), and mandated to investigate enemy scientific developments. The investigation included biological weapons. From the Nuremberg trial, where Blome was a defendant, we know that he was involved in biological weapons research for the Nazi government.

3) The record of Blome’s Alsos interrogation is in the public domain. See Alsos interrogation at the National Archives in the Kurt Blome INSCOM dossier XE001248. Arrest reports: in Blome's Nuremberg arrest file, Record Group (RG) 238, NARS.

INSCOM stands for U.S. Army Intelligence and Security Command.

Blome’s status as an accused defendant in the Nuremberg proceedings is well-known. The records of that trial are public domain, and it is difficult to believe that the CIA has no files or records or reports that discuss Blome in relation to the war crimes charges or the trial itself.

At the trial, it came out that Blome admitted at the Nuremberg Trial that he had been head of an institute in Posen that did research on biological warfare for the Nazis. Experiments had been carried out on Soviet prisoners-of-war as part of this research. See The Nuremberg Medical Trial, 1946/47 (Walter de Gruyter, 2001), p. 56.

4) Kurt F. L. Blome (F. L. for Friedrich Ludwig, the middle names of the same Kurt Blome who is the subject of my FOIA request and this appeal) is mentioned by name in a declassified list of “Foreign Scientist Case Files, 1945-1958”, part of the scientists who signed up to work for the U.S. government as part of Operation Paperclip, or the later Project 63. See URL: http://www.archives.gov/iwg/declassified-records/rg-330-defense-secretary/foreign-scientist-case-files.pdf

5) After Blome was acquitted at the Nuremberg Doctors’ Trial in August 1947, according to Hunt’s book, two months later, “four representatives of Fort Detrick -- the Maryland army base that was also headquarters of the CIA's biological warfare program -- interviewed Blome about biological warfare…. During a lengthy interview Blome identified biological warfare experts and their locations and described different methods of conducting biological warfare.” (p. 180) Blome was ultimately given a position working for the Americans at Camp King interrogation center, Oberursel, West Germany.

The Fort Detrick interrogation is known from Blome’s INSCOM dossier and his Joint Intelligence Objectives Agency (JIOA) dossier, RG 330, NARS.

According to the National Archives website, JIOA was “was established in 1945 as a subcommittee of the Joint Intelligence Committee (JIC) of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (JCS). The JIC served as the intelligence arm of the JCS, responsible for advising the JCS on the intelligence problems and policies and furnishing intelligence information to the JCS and the Department of State. The JIC was composed of the Army's director of intelligence, the chief of naval intelligence, the assistant chief of Air Staff-2, and a representative of the Department of State.”

“The JIOA was given direct responsibility for operating the foreign scientist program, initially code-named Overcast and subsequently code-named Paperclip.” (URL: http://www.archives.gov/iwg/declassified-records/rg-330-defense-secretary/)

Hence, the fact that Blome acted as an “intelligence source” for U.S. intelligence circles is no secret.

6) Some of the information that Blome could have given interrogators has been pieced together from German archives. The German historian, Ute Deichmann in her book, "Biologists Under Hitler" (Harvard Univ. Press, 1996) mentions, as an example of this kind of information, the Wolfram Sievers at the Institut fur Zeitgeschichte (MA 1406/1).

In these diaries, Blome is described as having conducted neutron radiation experiments, as well as making plans to carry out experiments with bacterial pathogens (p. 417).

7) According to BBC television producer Tom Bower in his book, "The Paperclip Conspiracy: The Hunt for the Nazi Scientists" (Little, Brown & Company, 1987), it is public record that Kurt Blome was hired by the U.S. Chemical Corps in August 1951 and certified by U.S. High Commissioner for Germany, John McCloy, as “not likely to become [a] security threat to the US” (p. 254) Bower gives as citation for this material RG 330 JIOA case file, “Blome,” in the National Archives.

8) The Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act (P.L. 105-246, 5 U.S.C. § 552) mandated that Government agencies, including the CIA, take necessary steps necessary to declassify and open remaining classified records related to Nazi war criminals and criminality. This included “any person with respect to whom the United States Government, in its sole discretion, has grounds to believe ordered, incited, assisted, or otherwise participated in the persecution of any person because of race, religion, national origin, or political opinion, during the period beginning on March 23, 1933, and ending on May 8, 1945, under the direction of, or in association with…. the Nazi government of Germany”.

This law included an exception that would “reveal the identity of a confidential human source, or reveal information about the application of an intelligence source or method, or reveal the identity of a human intelligence source when the unauthorized disclosure of that source would clearly and demonstrably damage the national security interests of the United States.

While there is an exception made similar to that which the CIA claimed in its “Glomar” response to my FOIA request, I would argue from the information above that there is already a good deal about Kurt Blome in the public record that likely is in CIA files, and withholding such information because of a possible revelation re an intelligence or methods source is a moot issue.

While there may be aspects of the request that could still be denied under one or another FOIA exemption, I would ask that the elements of the files and other information from my original request that can segregably be released, be so released.

In conclusion, I ask that the Agency Release Panel reconsider its “Glomar” decision to neither confirm nor deny the existence or nonexistence of records responsive to my request.

I have shown that there is already a documentary of both the interrogation and employment of Kurt Blome by U.S. military and intelligence sources. I have shown that Kurt Blome is known to have been a used as an intelligence and/or methods resource after he came under U.S. custody. I have further shown that some of Kurt Blome’s expertise in scientific matters that may have been of interest to U.S. intelligence, and hence the CIA, has already been made public in German archives.

Finally, I would argue that lacking any reason to consider information on Kurt Blome something subject to a “Glomar” denial, it is also important to consider that it was the legislative intent of the United States Congress, in a law signed by the President of the United States, to release information related to Nazi war criminals or possible criminality by such persons.

According to the CIA’s own website, the Nazi War Crimes Disclosure Act was “the largest congressionally mandated, single-subject declassification effort in history, and a special website at the CIA was set aside to openly display documents the CIA released under this act. (URL: http://www.foia.cia.gov/collection/nazi-war-crimes-declassification-act)

In the spirit of that Act, and of the CIA’s own efforts to release information according to such lawful request and special effort, and given that so much about Kurt Blome has already gone into the public record concerning his activities as an intelligence and/or methods resource, and, finally, given the blood and treasure the citizens of the United States spent in fighting the Nazis, I ask that the “Glomar” exception be removed and my FOIA request appropriately processed.

I look forward to receiving your decision on this appeal in a timely fashion. If you have any questions, or believe discussion of this matter would be beneficial, please contact me or MuckRock News.

Sincerely,

J.K.

My thanks to both Jason Leopold and NSA Archive for their assistance, online and off, for help in understanding the Glomar experience!

[Update, 2/9/2014: In a letter dated January 22, 2014, the CIA responded to my appeal letter with the statement, "Your appeal has been accepted and arrangements are being made for its consideration by the Agency Release Panel."]

Günter Grass on Subs for Israel, Threats Against Iran: "I’ve had it with the West’s hypocrisy"

German author Günter Grass published a poem whereby he breaks his silence on the issue of Israel's nuclear capacity, and recent moves by German to facilitate that capacity with the sale of two submarines capable of launching nuclear missiles. All of this is, of course, in the context over the U.S.-inspired controversy over Iran's nuclear program.

Germany has already sold two new Dolphin-class submarines to Israel (to add to three older subs), and this sale would be for a sixth submarine. Germany originally balked at the sixth sale as a matter of protest against Israel's settlement policies on the West Bank (particularly "the construction of 1,100 homes in Gilo, an Arab part of Jerusalem captured from Jordan in the 1967 Six Day War"), but by February this year, the matter seemingly was dropped and the sale moved forward.

The subs are being built by Howaldtswerke-Deutsche Werft (HDW), a division of German steelmaker Thyssen-Krupp. Haaretz Daily reports that Germany subsidized 80 percent of the cost of the three original Dolphin submarines in the 1990s. According to Haaretz, the German-Israel dispute over the sixth submarine was not apparently about the settlements, but bickering over the cost of the German subsidy for the deal. The eventual February 2012 agreement has Germany paying a portion of the $700 million per sub price tag.

Apparently the Israelis had been testing the older Dolphin subs for nuclear missile launch. The new subs reportedly have a upgraded propulsion system. According to Defense Industry Daily last January:

It is also rumored that Israel has tested a nuclear-capable version of its medium-range “Popeye Turbo” cruise missile design for deployability from the 650mm torpedo tubes in its Dolphin Class submarines. The 2002 Popeye Turbo launch test location off Sri Lanka suggested that the tests may have been performed in cooperation with India.

The translated text below is reposted from pulsemedia.org.

What Must be Said

By Günter Grass

Why have I kept silent, silent for too long
over what is openly played out
in war games at the end of which we
the survivors are at best footnotes.

It’s that claim of a right to first strike
against those who under a loudmouth’s thumb
are pushed into organized cheering—
a strike to snuff out the Iranian people
on suspicion that under his influence
an atom bomb’s being built.

But why do I forbid myself
to name that other land in which
for years — although kept secret —
a usable nuclear capability has grown
beyond all control, because
no scrutiny is allowed.

The universal silence around this fact,
under which my own silence lay,
I feel now as a heavy lie,
a strong constraint, which to dismiss
courts forceful punishment:
the verdict of “Antisemitism” is well known.

But now, when my own country,
guilty of primal and unequalled crimes
for which time and again it must be tasked—
once again, in pure commerce,
though with quick lips we declare it
reparations, wants to send
Israel yet another submarine —
one whose specialty is to deliver
warheads capable of ending all life
where the existence of even one
nuclear weapon remains unproven,
but where suspicion serves for proof —
now I say what must be said.

But why was I silent for so long?
Because I thought my origin,
marked with an ineradicable stain,
forbade mention of this fact
as definite truth about Israel, a country
to which I am and will remain attached.

Why is it only now I say,
in old age, with my last drop of ink,
that Israel’s nuclear power endangers
an already fragile world peace?
Because what by tomorrow might be
too late, must be spoken now,
and because we—as Germans, already
burdened enough—could become
enablers of a crime, foreseeable and therefore
not to be eradicated
with any of the usual excuses.

And admittedly: I’m silent no more
because I’ve had it with the West’s hypocrisy
—and one can hope that many others too
may free themselves from silence,
challenge the instigator of known danger
to abstain from violence,
and at the same time demand
a permanent and unrestrained control
of Israel’s atomic power
and Iranian nuclear plants
by an international authority
accepted by both governments.

Only thus can one give help
to Israelis and Palestinians—still more,
all the peoples, neighbour-enemies
living in this region occupied by madness
—and finally, to ourselves as well.

“Was gesagt werden muss” published in Süddeutschen Zeitung (4 April 2012)

Translation by Michael Keefer and Nica Mintz

Senior Greek Official: “We may have an uprising in the making”

Originally posted at Firedoglake/Seminal

What if three million protesters poured into the streets of American cities, and with a general strike shut down all transportation, closing government offices, and setting banks and office buildings ablaze?

If one takes into account the size of Greece, a proportionate amount of the Greek population did just that on May 5. Over 100,000 protesters took took to the streets. But this was not your ordinary European mass rally. World markets, including Wall Street, felt the tremor from these demonstrations. The protests are against onerous economic cutbacks in the wake of a € 110 billion Euro ($145 billion) bailout for a near-bankrupt economy. But a large percentage of the Greek population doesn’t see itself paying for a generation for the corruption of their own officials, and the economic shock therapy dictated by the International Monetary Fund (IMF) and German bankers.

From the UK Guardian:

"All of us are angry, very, very angry," bellowed Stella Stamou, a civil servant standing on a street corner, screaming herself hoarse, a block away from where the bank had been set alight.

"You write that – angry, angry, angry, angry," she said, after participating in one of the biggest ever rallies to rock the capital since the return of democracy in 1974. "Angry with our own politicians, angry with the IMF, angry with the EU, angry that we have lost income, angry that we have never been told the truth."

From the Wall Street Journal:

"For 30 years the Greek people have been held hostage," said Periandros Athanassakis, 48, a garbage collector in Piraeus, the port near Athens. "Those who stole the money should pay."

Some officials saw in Wednesday’s protests the seeds of broader discontent. "We may have an uprising in the making," one senior Greek official said.

The New York Times focused on the violence, predicting (in their hopeful way) that the violence would bring about a government reaction, and a backlash of Greeks "against a growing number of extremists". The Grey Lady intoned, "Some said they were willing to endure what some economists predict could be 10 years before the economy bounces back," even while others were responding differently:

… clustered among the protesters were subgroups numbering in the hundreds — mostly young and many clad in black, wearing hoods or masks and carrying helmets, wooden bats or hammers — that the police and other demonstrators identified broadly as anarchists. They led efforts to storm the Parliament building, chanting “thieves, thieves,” and hurling rocks and gasoline bombs.

Everyone agrees that the situation in Greece is dire. And Greece is the proverbial canary in the coalmine, as world financiers look doubtfully upon Spain’s 20% unemployment rate and indebtedness, and precarious economic conditions from the UK to Italy. The Germans are the real power behind the EU, and their economy is the one that others are looking to for a bail out the weaker states — but only at a price. The Germans are holding firm to the terms of their bailout, even as German chancellor Angela Merkel said, "Quite simply, Europe’s future is at stake."

What’s the Bailout Deal?

Greek Prime Minister George Papandreou has a difficult, maybe impossible austerity package to sell to the Greek people. The Greek state has been living on borrowed funds for some time. The bailout deal proposed by the Germans and IMF demands Greece reduce its national borrowing rate from 13.4% of national income to 3% within four years. But where’s the money going to come from?

According to another New York Times story:

The new measures include an increase of two percentage points in the value-added sales tax, which is now 19 percent; a further increase in the fuel tax; increases of 20 percent for alcohol taxes and 6 percent for cigarette taxes; a new tax on luxury goods; and a 12 percent cut in supplements to wages for civil servants, Mr. Petalotis said.

They also include a 30 percent reduction in the bonuses given to civil servants as holiday pay, which amount to two additional monthly wages, he said.

The Gerson Lehrman Company describes how the Greek economy is going to be chopped up and sold to the highest bidder, many of those foreign. Of course, they are quite sober about it all:

The government will accelerate privatizations (€ 2.5 bill. budgeted for 2010) and may change its mind regarding majority ownership by strategic (foreign/EU) investors of types of assets / industries that have been protected under the existing social /political model, including utility/infrastructure, transport or special state (monopoly) assets. Examples might include the railway company, water distribution companies, the electricity grid or the power company (PPC), as well as the soccer betting company (OPAP), gambling Casinos and the remaining stake in Hellenic Telecom (OTE), which will probably be sold to Deutsche Telekom. Other interesting candidates for privatization might include airports and seaports and enhanced PPP/PFI models will be considered for infrastructure investments.

So goodbye living wages, goodbye state-run utilities, transport, and telecom. As the quote above makes clear, German companies are primed to sweep up the goodies off the bargain basement floor. This is a bitter pill for the Greeks, who endured Nazi occupation during World War II, which they answered with a large bloody resistance. The old hatreds and resentments still simmer under the surface.

Back in February, Greek Deputy prime minister Theodoros Pangalos lashed out:

Nazi theft of Greek gold during the Second World War is to blame for the country’s faltering finances, Athens claimed yesterday….

Greece said the real culprit for its problems were the Nazis, whose occupation lasted from 1941 to 1945….

Germany swiftly rejected the accusation, saying it paid £50 million in compensation by 1960 and more to forced labourers of the Nazi regime.

Where is this all headed?

People in the U.S. are used to hearing about European general strikes. In the popular mind, fostered by a somnolent and ignorant press, such protests are quaint European customs, artifacts of a past that is not relevant anymore, especially since the fall of the Soviet Union. But this is a crisis that is not going to go away. And within living memory, European states have turned to violent coups and dictatorships to quell popular dissent, as in Greece and Portugal in the 1960s and 1970s.

In Italy, U.S./NATO-backed right-wing terrorists, part of the left-behind armies of Operation Gladio, facilitated the Italian government’s "strategy of tension" during the 1980s in order to keep the then-popular Italian Communist Party from entering the Italian government. Philip Willan covered the revelations of this story in the UK Guardian a decade ago:

The 300-page [Italian parliamentary] report says that the United States was responsible for inspiring a "strategy of tension" in which indiscriminate bombing of the public and the threat of a rightwing coup were used to stabilise centre-right political control of the country.

Those who carried out the attacks were rarely caught, it said, because "those massacres, those bombs, those military actions had been organised or promoted or supported by men inside Italian state institutions and, as has been discovered, by men linked to the structures of United States intelligence".

The crisis in Greece and the European Union in general is exposing the deep flaws within the post-Soviet economic and political structure in Europe. The fires in Athens are a harbinger of a bigger crisis to come, one that Americans will have to pay attention to. But do not count on the U.S. press to honestly report what will happen, or the U.S. government to stand aside in neutrality. The Obama administration is pushing the Europeans and the IMF to get the bailout deal in place quickly, even as right-wing Republicans are screaming they will not support the U.S. paying its portion of the IMF bailout funds.

The people of Greece seem determined they will not pay for the orgy of corruption and double-dealing that has left their economy in tatters. Whether it was Goldman Sachs playing funny with derivatives to help the Greek government to hide its debt, or German companies rushing to buy up newly privatized industries, or the wide-spread corruption of Greek politicians, they are saying something that American workers and middle class might be thinking, and that has some people afraid: "’let the plutocracy pay’…’400">

Will Obama's Afghan War Spark Its Own Antiwar Movement?

According to multiple accounts, as the White House leaks the news, building up to his speech at West Point on Tuesday, President Barack Obama, channeling a dead president, Lyndon Baines Johnson, and mimicking a live one, George W. Bush, will be calling for an escalation in the Afghanistan War. The administration is said to be considering sending 30-35,000 troops to join the 68,000 U.S. troops already deployed there.

Famously, Obama's head general in Afghanistan, former Special Forces General McChrystal -- a man implicated in torture and war crimes -- had called for 40,000 new troops to fulfill his counterinsurgency plans. It appears that some NATO countries -- primarily Britain, Slovakia, Turkey, Georgia, South Korea and tiny Montenegro -- are positioned to make up the shortfall in troops by adding another four to six thousand, up from the approximately 36,000 non-U.S. troops in the NATO force.

But, according to a posting by fflammeau at Firedoglake, top NATO member Germany is balking:

Days before President Obama escalates the American presence in Afghanistan, Germany’s military chief of staff (General Wolfgang Schneiderhan) and his top aide (Peter Wichert) have resigned over accusations that the German military suppressed evidence of the death of dozens of civilians in an airstrike that killed 142 people. General Schneiderhan’s resignation not only is shaking the Merkel government in Germany, it has raised resistance in Germany (and perhaps other Nato countries) to their involvement in Afghanistan just as Obama seeks more troops from them. In late breaking news... reported by the authoritative Deutsche Welle, top politicians in Germany are now calling for a rethink of their role in Afghanistan and a quick exit strategy. In short, the Germans appear reluctant to play "the poodle role" to Obama.

The U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have never been about getting Saddam Hussein, or stopping the Taliban, or helping women achieve literacy. They have been about projecting U.S. dominance in that portion of the world, and was made possible by the collapse of Soviet power in the early 1990s.

Since then, China and the European allies (except Britain) have not been especially happy about the expansion of the U.S. in the newly "unipolar" world, but put up with it for the time being. But the writing is on the proverbial wall: sooner or later, Germany, and possibly France and Italy, will tire of U.S. "leadership", and feel they are not getting their piece of the world pie. This re-eruption of European imperialist ambition will mark a new and dangerous chapter in modern foreign affairs. The "terrorist" enemy of today, who themselves replaced the old specter of a soulless Red Army galumphing over Western Europe, will in the future become fear of a new Chinese Red Army, or a reincarnated Wehrmacht, all intent on destroying "our way of life."

Fox News Chides the Left

Meanwhile, Fox News, which like the broken clock gets it right about two times a day, has published an article salivating over both the inevitable pushback against Obama on the Afghan War issue from the Democratic Party's left wing, and also the likely tepid antiwar response from this same group. Quoting Paul Kawika Martin, political director for Peace Action, Fox writer Stephen Clark writes:

The White House has said that the U.S. won't be in Afghanistan for another eight or nine years. But that won't satisfy liberals, Martin said.

Even though Obama's announcement is sure to reawaken the anti-war movement, Martin said, the protests won't be as intense as they were in the Bush era because the movement has been weakened by the economic recession -- some organizations have shed up to 40 percent of staff in the past year, he said -- and is distracted by the national health care debate. He also said many members of the movement voted for Obama and trust him more than the Bush administration.

"So you don't have that same type of anger," he said.

I don't know Martin or his group, so I don't know how reliable they are as a voice of the left, but I do know that the Democratic Party left has fallen down on the torture issue, once Obama indicated that it was time to "look forward" and not "backwards". A small coterie of liberal bloggers, and the nation's top civil liberties groups, opposed this capitulation and still fight bravely on (see the ACLU's latest batch of FOIA docs on the destroyed CIA torture tapes, and some analysis by Marcy Wheeler here and here), but after some desultory hearings about having hearings by Senator Leahy last March, Congress turned to other issues, turning their backs aggressively on those who have been tortured.

While the left hasn't fielded a large-scale antiwar demonstration in years -- really since the beginning of the current Irag war -- there have been some protests. Antiwar and peace groups have not disappeared, and some very intelligent writing in opposition to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been published of late (see the latest from David Dayen, which notes the opposition to the war from Democrat Bill Hedrick, or Derrick Crowe, or Glenn Greenwald, not to mention the incomparable Chris Floyd).

But the old antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s was spearheaded by a generation of leftists who are no longer on the scene: Stalinists and Maoists, Trotskyists and social-democrats, pacifists and anarchists. If there are some remnants (World Can't Wait gets a hefty amount of organizational drudge work -- and enthusiasm -- from the rank and file of Bob Avakian's old Revolutionary Communist Party), the left as a whole is anemic, and if one is looking for antiwar fervor from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's Congressional Democrats, they will be strain their necks from searching. The most "radical" proposition coming from those ranks is a threat to raise a surtax to pay for Obama's war campaign.

Fox News forgot one important point. The escalation of the Afghanistan War will not work, not even by the standards of the U.S. military. But the current crop of military leaders, and their civilian hangers-one, are drunk on their vision of a unipolar world, led by the progeny of West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, and feeling almost omnipotent, having gotten away with waging a totally illegal war, and spread torture across dozens of countries, all while the populace back home indicated a persistent proclivity for indifference (or fearful complacency, which amounts to the same thing in the end).

Whether Obama is the tool of the hawks, or playing along for time, or even really believes the Global War on Terror inanity (and yes, right-wingers, I know there are dangerous terrorists; they just aren't enough of a danger to anywhere come near changing political and military reality to the degree it has changed, e.g. Patriot Act, torture, invading and destroying other countries), whatever Obama's own intentions are almost doesn't matter.

Days before President Obama escalates the American presence in Afghanistan, Germany’s military chief of staff (General Wolfgang Schneiderhan) and his top aide (Peter Wichert) have resigned over accusations that the German military suppressed evidence of the death of dozens of civilians in an airstrike that killed 142 people. General Schneiderhan’s resignation not only is shaking the Merkel government in Germany, it has raised resistance in Germany (and perhaps other Nato countries) to their involvement in Afghanistan just as Obama seeks more troops from them. In late breaking news... reported by the authoritative Deutsche Welle, top politicians in Germany are now calling for a rethink of their role in Afghanistan and a quick exit strategy. In short, the Germans appear reluctant to play "the poodle role" to Obama.

The U.S. invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan have never been about getting Saddam Hussein, or stopping the Taliban, or helping women achieve literacy. They have been about projecting U.S. dominance in that portion of the world, and was made possible by the collapse of Soviet power in the early 1990s.

Since then, China and the European allies (except Britain) have not been especially happy about the expansion of the U.S. in the newly "unipolar" world, but put up with it for the time being. But the writing is on the proverbial wall: sooner or later, Germany, and possibly France and Italy, will tire of U.S. "leadership", and feel they are not getting their piece of the world pie. This re-eruption of European imperialist ambition will mark a new and dangerous chapter in modern foreign affairs. The "terrorist" enemy of today, who themselves replaced the old specter of a soulless Red Army galumphing over Western Europe, will in the future become fear of a new Chinese Red Army, or a reincarnated Wehrmacht, all intent on destroying "our way of life."

Fox News Chides the Left

Meanwhile, Fox News, which like the broken clock gets it right about two times a day, has published an article salivating over both the inevitable pushback against Obama on the Afghan War issue from the Democratic Party's left wing, and also the likely tepid antiwar response from this same group. Quoting Paul Kawika Martin, political director for Peace Action, Fox writer Stephen Clark writes:

The White House has said that the U.S. won't be in Afghanistan for another eight or nine years. But that won't satisfy liberals, Martin said.

Even though Obama's announcement is sure to reawaken the anti-war movement, Martin said, the protests won't be as intense as they were in the Bush era because the movement has been weakened by the economic recession -- some organizations have shed up to 40 percent of staff in the past year, he said -- and is distracted by the national health care debate. He also said many members of the movement voted for Obama and trust him more than the Bush administration.

"So you don't have that same type of anger," he said.

I don't know Martin or his group, so I don't know how reliable they are as a voice of the left, but I do know that the Democratic Party left has fallen down on the torture issue, once Obama indicated that it was time to "look forward" and not "backwards". A small coterie of liberal bloggers, and the nation's top civil liberties groups, opposed this capitulation and still fight bravely on (see the ACLU's latest batch of FOIA docs on the destroyed CIA torture tapes, and some analysis by Marcy Wheeler here and here), but after some desultory hearings about having hearings by Senator Leahy last March, Congress turned to other issues, turning their backs aggressively on those who have been tortured.

While the left hasn't fielded a large-scale antiwar demonstration in years -- really since the beginning of the current Irag war -- there have been some protests. Antiwar and peace groups have not disappeared, and some very intelligent writing in opposition to the escalation of the war in Afghanistan has been published of late (see the latest from David Dayen, which notes the opposition to the war from Democrat Bill Hedrick, or Derrick Crowe, or Glenn Greenwald, not to mention the incomparable Chris Floyd).

But the old antiwar movement of the 1960s and 1970s was spearheaded by a generation of leftists who are no longer on the scene: Stalinists and Maoists, Trotskyists and social-democrats, pacifists and anarchists. If there are some remnants (World Can't Wait gets a hefty amount of organizational drudge work -- and enthusiasm -- from the rank and file of Bob Avakian's old Revolutionary Communist Party), the left as a whole is anemic, and if one is looking for antiwar fervor from Nancy Pelosi and Harry Reid's Congressional Democrats, they will be strain their necks from searching. The most "radical" proposition coming from those ranks is a threat to raise a surtax to pay for Obama's war campaign.

Fox News forgot one important point. The escalation of the Afghanistan War will not work, not even by the standards of the U.S. military. But the current crop of military leaders, and their civilian hangers-one, are drunk on their vision of a unipolar world, led by the progeny of West Point, Annapolis, and Colorado Springs, and feeling almost omnipotent, having gotten away with waging a totally illegal war, and spread torture across dozens of countries, all while the populace back home indicated a persistent proclivity for indifference (or fearful complacency, which amounts to the same thing in the end).

Whether Obama is the tool of the hawks, or playing along for time, or even really believes the Global War on Terror inanity (and yes, right-wingers, I know there are dangerous terrorists; they just aren't enough of a danger to anywhere come near changing political and military reality to the degree it has changed, e.g. Patriot Act, torture, invading and destroying other countries), whatever Obama's own intentions are almost doesn't matter.

The real direction of American politics and society is being decided in this next period. Will it follow the road of Cheney and Bush, albeit with a supposedly kinder face, or will the forces who believe in social justice, world peace, promotion of economic equality, and a fight against the forces of exploitation, torture, and war profiteering, wake up, fight, and realize that failure to act is a profound evil in and of itself? It makes other evil possible.

The Wonderful World of the "Democracies"

Crossposted at NION
It's almost remarkably easy to concentrate on only the U.S. government's crimes and ineptitude, its jingoism and racism. Now, there comes along a reminder that the Pentagon has no monopoly on racist insensitivity and imperialistic hauteur. This time, it involves one of our Afghanistan War "coalition" partners. Now, which one could it be?

BERLIN - A German army instructor ordered a soldier to envision himself in New York City facing hostile blacks while firing his machine gun, a video that aired Saturday on national television showed.

The president of the Bronx, the New York City borough that the army instructor referred to in his directions to the soldier, demanded an apology from the German military and said the clip "indicates that bias and assumptions and racism is alive and well around the world."

Coming after scandals involving photos of German soldiers posing with skulls in Afghanistan and the abuse of recruits by instructors, the video seemed likely to raise more questions about training practices in Germany's conscript army.

And, not to have forgotten about the good old U.S. of A., take a gander at a very moving column by former Army Sargeant Sam Provance over at AlterNet. Provance was "the only uniformed military intelligence officer at the Iraqi prison to testify about the abuses during the internal Army investigation" at Abu Ghraib. Recently, he went to see a screening of the HBO documentary, "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib", which documents the torture at that U.S.-run prison, and how it was planned.

For those of you who have not heard of me, I am Sam Provance. My career as an Army sergeant came to a premature end at age 32 after eight years of decorated service, because I refused to remain silent about Abu Ghraib, where I served for five months in 2004 at the height of the abuses. Share this article

A noncommissioned officer specializing in intelligence analysis, my job at Abu Ghraib was systems administrator ("the computer guy"). But I had the misfortune of being on the night shift, saw detainees dragged in for interrogation, heard the screams, and saw many of them dragged out. I was sent back to my parent unit in Germany shortly after the Army began the first of its many self-investigations.

In Germany, I had the surreal experience of being interrogated by one of the Army-General-Grand-Inquisitors, Major General George Fay, who showed himself singularly uninterested in what went on at Abu Ghraib.

I had to insist that he listen to my eyewitness account, whereupon he threatened punitive actions against me for not coming forward sooner and even tried to hold me personally responsible for the scandal itself.

The Army then demoted me, suspended my Top Secret clearance, and threatened me with ten years in a military prison if I asked for a court martial. I was even given a gag order, the only one I know to have been issued to those whom Gen. Fay interviewed....

Walking into the fancy government building to see the documentary proved to be a bizarre experience. Hardly in the door, I saw a one of the guests shaking his head, saying in some wonderment, "The young woman at the front desk greeted me with a cheerful smile; Abu Ghraib? she said. Right this way, please."

The atmosphere did seem more appropriate for an art show than a documentary on torture. People were dressed to the nines, heartily laughing, and servers with white gloves were walking about with wine and hors d'oeuvres....

When the lights dimmed and the documentary started, I began to be affected more emotionally than I had expected.

It was the words of the other soldiers that touched me most deeply, because I could relate to them; I knew those soldiers on one level or another. I got worried I might not make it through the screening, that I would break down right there.

Ironically, it was my anger at their plight that kept me composed. Everything in the film was all too familiar to me. The soldiers explaining they were just following the orders of their supervisors; the higher-ups vigorously shifting blame from themselves onto soldiers of lesser rank -- the whole nine yards.

And to see those Iraqi faces again -- the broken hearts and ruined lives of innocent Iraqi citizens detained, abused, tortured. And the systematic cover-up, with the Army investigating itself over and over again, giving the appearance of a "thorough" investigation....

Anyone who knows much about Abu Ghraib knows that all kinds of Army brass lived and worked there, and that it was host to visits by former Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, his deputy Paul Wolfowitz, U.S. pro-consul Paul Bremer, Gen. Ricardo Sanchez, Gen. Geoffrey Miller (in charge of "Gitmo-izing Abu Ghraib), Gen. Barbara Fast, and even National Security Council functionary Frances Townsend.

They were all there.