China suspects false-flag attack in South Korean ship sinking

Beijing suspects false flag attack on South Korean corvette
By Wayne Madsen
Online Journal Contributing Writer


May 28, 2010, 00:18

(WMR) -- WMR's intelligence sources in Asia suspect that the March attack on the South Korean Navy anti-submarine warfare (ASW) corvette, the Cheonan, was a false flag attack designed to appear as coming from North Korea.

One of the main purposes for increasing tensions on the Korean peninsula was to apply pressure on Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama to reverse course on moving the U.S. Marine Corps base off Okinawa. Hatoyama has admitted that the tensions over the sinking of the Cheonan played a large part in his decision to allow the U.S. Marines to remain on Okinawa. Hatoyama's decision has resulted in a split in the ruling center-left coalition government, a development welcome in Washington, with Mizuho Fukushima, the Social Democratic Party leader threatening to bolt the coalition over the Okinawa reversal.

The Cheonan was sunk near Baengnyeong Island, a westernmost spot that is far from the South Korean coast, but opposite the North Korean coast. The island is heavily militarized and within artillery fire range of North Korean coastal defenses, which lie across a narrow channel.

The Cheonan, an ASW corvette, was decked out with state-of-the-art sonar, plus it was operating in waters with extensive hydrophone sonar arrays and acoustic underwater sensors. There is no South Korean sonar or audio evidence of a torpedo, submarine or mini-sub in the area. Since there is next to no shipping in the channel, the sea was silent at the time of the sinking.

However, Baengnyeong Island hosts a joint US-South Korea military intelligence base and the US Navy SEALS operate out of the base. In addition, four U.S. Navy ships were in the area, part of the joint U.S-South Korean Exercise Foal Eagle, during the sinking of the Cheonan. An investigation of the suspect torpedo's metallic and chemical fingerprints show it to be of German manufacture. There are suspicions that the US Navy SEALS maintains a sampling of European torpedoes for sake of plausible deniability for false flag attacks. Also, Berlin does not sell torpedoes to North Korea, however, Germany does maintain a close joint submarine and submarine weapons development program with Israel.

The presence of the USNS Salvor, one of the participants in Foal Eagle, so close to Baengnyeong Island during the sinking of the South Korean corvette also raises questions.

The Salvor, a civilian Navy salvage ship, which participated in mine laying activities for the Thai Marines in the Gulf of Thailand in 2006, was present near the time of the blast with a complement of 12 deep sea divers.

Beijing, satisfied with North Korea's Kim Jong Il's claim of innocence after a hurried train trip from Pyongyang to Beijing, suspects the U.S. Navy's role in the Cheonan's sinking, with particular suspicion on the role of the Salvor. The suspicions are as follows:

1. The Salvor engaged in a seabed mine-installation operation, in other words, attaching horizontally fired anti-submarine mines on the sea floor in the channel.

2. The Salvor was doing routine inspection and maintenance on seabed mines, and put them into an electronic active mode (hair trigger release) as part of the inspection program.

3. A SEALS diver attached a magnetic mine to the Cheonan, as part of a covert program aimed at influencing public opinion in South Korea, Japan and China.

The Korean peninsula tensions have conveniently overshadowed all other agenda items on Secretary of State Hillary Clinton's visits to Beijing and Seoul.

Previously published in the Wayne Madsen Report.

Copyright © 2010 WayneMadenReport.com

Used Camera

I'd dropped my old-by-now Canon S410 camera some time back. I sent it off to be repaired for $100 to Canon. The allegedly repaired camera lasted about a month before it crapped out again. I was unimpressed.

This past week it occured to me to look on eBay for the same camera, and I found one that sounds like it's in decent shape which I bid for and won. I'm excited about its arrival. I haven't had a functioning camera aside from the ultra-crappy camera built into my phone for a long time, now.

I didn't want to spent $150 or so on the Canon "loyalty" program in which they offer you a refurbished camera to replace your broken Canon camera. I can't possibly afford a "real" dSLR, which I think I'd love, but it's just out of the question. I have other things I'd rather spend $2500 on -- which I think is what the damage would be between a decent body, a decent lens and the requisite UV filter. Plus a real camera wouldn't exactly fit in my pocket.

Hopefully when the camera arrives it will function. Stay tuned...

---

The cheap used camera DID NOT WORK. The eBay seller said she'd received it from her mother and didn't think to test it before listing it. I wrote it off to experience and coughed up the $200 for a new small camera from Radio Shack in time for my kid's fifth-grade orchestra concert. The new camera cost about half what the old one did, is about half the weight and the LCD screen is about twice the size... so I'm pretty satisfied with it. I'm not happy about the dumb shit listing a broken camera, however. I sold my old nonfunctional camera and this new, used, nonfunctional camera to someone -- and I listed them as BEING nonfunctional. Didn't make any money but I got those cameras out of my house...

Tuesday 9.33

Got the kids out the door/to school. Did some dishes, doing some laundry. Got the mail, ate some scrambled eggs with hot salsa to which I added three roasted habaneros. Delicious. Love the heat.

My toe, which I somehow injured last Friday, still hurts but it's better than it was. Couldn't sleep Saturday night because it hurt too much. Took a bunch of Advil and have soaked my foot a few times in ice water.

Tomorrow I'm going with Cassidy to her middle school for her orientation. Will need the use of both of my feet to locomote around.

I guess I'll throw the laundry in the dryer and then try and squeeze out a decent drawing.

Six drawings

Working on another drawing. Can't stick with it. Why is it so hard to draw today?

Six drawings done and printed… "official" drawings at long, long last.

Why am I not making better progress on this drawing?

Out of money before the month begins

Money is looking VERY bad. I'll have to partially pay my six months of auto insurance instead of paying it all at once. My credit card bill is huge and I have an unusual expense $$$ for the will and trust revision. Money is looking VERY bad.

Kind of depressing.

Tomatoes

Stopped at Home Depot on the way home from school and bought two more tomatoes and a serrano chile. Planted them all before I went in the house after I got home. So I now have twelve tomatoes plus the cherry and/or grape tomatoes which have wintered over in back of the house.

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Protesters cry foul over election hires

Protesters cry foul over election hires

By Craig Gustafson
UNION-TRIBUNE STAFF WRITER

May 23, 2007

It doesn't take much to rile up opponents of electronic voting.

So when San Diego County decided to hire two new elections officials who critics say have questionable backgrounds the ensuing conflict was inevitable.


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About 35 protesters lashed out at county officials yesterday inside and outside of a Board of Supervisors meeting for their decision to hire Deborah Seiler and Michael Vu as the county's top two elections officials.

Seiler, who will take over as registrar of voters June 4, spent 15 years working for two electronic voting-machine companies – Diebold Election Systems and Sequoia Pacific Systems – before leading elections in Solano County. The county uses Diebold machines.

Vu, who was hired as assistant registrar last month, is regularly criticized by voting-rights advocates for his role as elections chief in Ohio's Cuyahoga County. His tenure there was marred when two of his employees received felony convictions for rigging the 2004 presidential recount to avoid a thorough review of ballots. Vu has staunchly defended the employees.

“San Diego has become the laughingstock of the country for election integrity,” said attorney Ken Simpkins, co-founder of Psephos, a nonprofit organization that monitors elections.

“It cannot be an accident that the most controversial elections officials in the country . . . are here in San Diego,” he told supervisors. “An agenda to deprive citizens of clean elections appears to be in place and the people most likely to benefit from such an agenda are incumbents who set the policy for our elections.”

Chief Administrative Officer Walt Ekard adamantly defended his decision to hire Seiler and Vu, saying they served honorably in their previous jobs and will ensure the integrity of elections here.

“I understand there are those of you who disagree with my hires,” Ekard said. “I have heard you. I have listened to you. I disagree with you and that's it.”

Several protesters yelled over Ekard's comments and board Chairman Ron Roberts ejected two of the loudest from the meeting. As one woman was leaving, she shouted, “Everything you're doing is wrong and you're subverting democracy, and we won't have it!”

Supervisor Pam Slater-Price called protesters' behavior “rude and totally unacceptable.” She said those concerned about electronic voting can cast absentee ballots, as she does each election.

Protesters took their message outside of the County Administration Center in downtown San Diego. They held signs that read “Seiler + Vu = Sleaze x 2” and “From taxpayer to Diebold” with pictures of dollars bills being exchanged.

Protesters called on county officials to halt the purchase of any more electronic voting machines until California Secretary of State Debra Bowen finishes a review of the systems in use. Bowen announced the review two weeks ago.

Psephos also plans to look at the possibility of launching an initiative that would make the registrar an elected position.

Welcome To The New Police State

Welcome To The New Police State
By Dick Allgire
5-18-7

http://www.rense.com/general76/amdd.htm

In the old days in The United States of America, a journalist didn't have to get permission to conduct an interview in a public place. But this is a new America, a place where armed security agents watch your every move and require their permission to exercise what used to be a first amendment right.

I've been a television news reporter for 33 years. I first began covering news when Richard Nixon was about to resign. I've gone to airports many times to film-yes we used to use film- and lately to video-tape and interview famous and infamous people getting on and getting off airplanes. I've been around a while and I've covered a lot of stories at airports. Things have changed.

I want to tell you what happened to me today (May 17, 2007) at Honolulu International Airport. I was assigned to meet and interview Nainoa Thompson, navigator of the Polynesian Voyaging Canoe Hokule'a. He and his crew were departing for Japan to sail their Hawaiian canoe on the final leg of an historic voyage. It was arranged for our crew to meet them on the sidewalk outside the check-in area. All I needed was a quick couple of sound bites with Nainoa and two of the young crew members who were leaving to fulfill a cultural mission of goodwill and Aloha.

I arrived with a news photographer at the Honolulu Airport and we paid to park in the parking garage. We walked to the public sidewalk in front of the check-in area where we met Nainoa and the young crewmembers. We turned on the camera and began talking with them.

This is something I have done at least a hundred times over the past 33 years. In the USA a reporter used to be able to go to any public place and interview someone without being rousted by authorities.

This was not a restricted area. We did not attempt to board an airplane, or walk past the security gate, or get out on to a runway. We were not taping near any TSA checkpoint. We were out on the sidewalk at a public facility.

While I was interviewing an 18-year old Hawaiian, asking how he felt about taking a voyage on a Hawaiian canoe several uniformed security agents walked up and stopped the interview. They insisted that we cease videotaping. They demanded to know what we were doing, who authorized us to be there, and whether we had permission.

EXCUSE ME???

In the United States of America that I grew up in a reporter was allowed to interview anyone in any public place, about anything, at any time, without requesting or having to be granted permission by unformed goons. Pardon me- I mean low wage security guards.

I snapped, and perhaps I should apologize to these poor rent-a-cops. I did not say it to their faces, but as I turned to go to the airport security office I did mutter an obscenity: "This is the f&#^ing United States. You don't need permission to do an interview in a public place. This is not supposed to be a goddamned fascist state!"

They heard me. Now I was asking for trouble. They called for backups. Several more armed security guards surrounded my cameraman. He told them, "It's not big deal; we're just trying to interview some people about sailing on the Hokule'a."

I went to the security office and got "permission" from airport authorities to do something that is supposed to be guaranteed under our (former) Constitution.

It saddens me to see America slipping into a state that allows armed security guards to demand "authorization" for something that used to be taken for granted. I never before had to get "permission" from "authorities" to talk to someone in a public place. I brought this up in the security office when they were so graciously "granting" me permission to resume my interview. A security guard in front of a bank of television surveillance monitors told me, "Things are different after 911."

I wonder- what does a well known television reporter interviewing young Hawaiian kids in a public place about sailing on a canoe have to do with 911? How is this a threat?

And the saddest thing for me is this- young people growing up today will simply submit. They won't even remember a time when a reporter- or any citizen- could go to an airport and talk to someone without having to get permission from authorities.



Dick Allgire

KITV News, Honolulu

And what would "Pro-Semitism" look like, pray tell..?

That question shut up one of my little Zionist squabble-mates in another forum -- what does "pro-Semitism" look like? Would it be a disproportionately high number of Jews in Congress? Would it be the unquestioning, eternal support, nay, fealty and the forging of foreign policy to please... Semites?

Really, what would "pro-Semitism" be?

The right hates Jews because we killed their messiah; the left hates Jews because we don't lay down and let ourselves be butchered by Arab haters. So what are we to do?

Play the victim card again. It works every time. You've got your "shitty little country" now. Take your claws out of my nation's government and get by on your own. You have more than enough money and do not need nor deserve 20% of the US foreign aid budget.

As if it's a sin to notice such things. "The old adage has it that, when visiting a foreign country, to ascertain who really runs things, one need determine only who is spoken about in whispers, if at all."

A Jewish President? No, I don't think so. Is that "anti-Semitic"? No, it's pro-American. Fuck off and die.

Holocaust archive "under embargo"

http://www.jta.org/cgi-bin/iowa/news/print/20070507badarolsenarchive.html

Holocaust archive coming to D.C.
Edwin Black

The International Tracing Service's secret Holocaust archive at Bad Arolsen, Germany, is preparing to transfer millions of images of concentration-camp prisoner documents to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum under embargo, according to sources.

WASHINGTON (JTA) -- The International Tracing Service's secret Holocaust archive at Bad Arolsen, Germany, is preparing to transfer millions of images of concentration-camp prisoner documents to the United States Holocaust Memorial Museum under embargo, according to sources in Germany and the United States familiar with the transfer.

A May 14 meeting of the 11-nation committee that oversees the archive is expected to authorize the partial transfer, but only on condition that an embargo be imposed on accessing the materials.

The embargo is needed because three of the 11 nations that must ratify the release of the documents -- Greece, Belgium and France -- have yet to sign the authorization agreement.

European sources familiar with the process suggested that Belgium and France would not sign the agreement until after this summer or even early next year because of domestic electoral considerations. Still, the process of data transfer is being accelerated to prepare for the eventual release.

The Holocaust museum has agreed to keep the documents secret until authorized by the 11-government committee -- meaning that for now, at least, the archive's legacy of secrecy will transfer as well.

Museum officials declined to confirm the information or provide details on the pending transfer.

JTA has learned, however, that the transfer will include 10 million digitized images of documents to be transported in several 500-gigabyte hard drives that plug into any computer via a simple USB connection. Small, lightweight, portable drives obviate the prospect of managing linear miles of archival documents.

The museum plans to assemble the raw images into a database with a search engine that can be accessed from one or more terminals in the museum's archive. The gargantuan collection will instantly double the size of the museum's holdings.

While the museum archive is among the most helpful in the Holocaust community, its small staff, handful of microfilm-reader machines and several computer terminals often cannot keep up with user requests, especially in the summer.

In addition to on-site usage of the archive, some 8,000 requests come to the museum each year via mail, phone and e-mail, and the archive staff tries to fulfill those as soon as possible. The backlog for inquiries at Bad Arolsen in 2006 exceeded 425,000, according to a recent congressional report prepared by the State Department.

The Bad Arolsen collection includes records of more than 19 million individuals. Holocaust museum sources admit that massive linguistic training would be needed before the staff could even begin to provide information.

Sources suggest that the information would be accessed mainly via a few on-site computer terminals at the museum. Terminal access would be strictly prohibited from outside the building, even though remote access is routinely available for government and historical databases.

As the museum gears up to receive the trove, several members of the U.S. Congress, the archival community and members of grassroots Holocaust groups are questioning why the museum should be given the documents.

Some 75 percent of Bad Arolsen's holdings provide information on non-Jewish Holocaust victims, which has led several experts on Nazi documentation to say that the collection would be more suited to the National Archives and its regional network.

Critics also are concerned that the museum's unwritten taboo on issues relating to corporate involvement in the Holocaust is inconsistent with a collection that largely involves slave labor. The museum repeatedly has refused to discuss questions involving IBM, General Motors, Ford, Standard Oil, the Carnegie Institution, the Rockefeller Foundation and other leading American corporate icons that funded, supported, participated or profited from the Holocaust.
Paul Shapiro, the museum's point man for Bad Arolsen, told JTA that he has quietly assembled a list of companies he has seen in Bad Arolsen archives, but it remains secret. Museum officials refused to discuss "Shapiro's list."

Most of all, some survivor groups are asking why the records would be housed in Washington, where many elderly survivors cannot access them because of the cost, the logistics and their frail health.

"I don't think Washington would be an appropriate place for the documents because the majority of survivors live in New York or Miami," said Leo Rechter, president of the National Association of Holocaust Survivors. "We know that 50,000 survivors live in New York City. Relatively few live in Washington, D.C. The majority of survivors are not computer savvy.

"From a practical point of view, a copy should be here in New York where anyone can easily get to it," he said. "We can arrange rides downtown if need be to ask a clerk to help. But in Washington, these files would be just another museum attraction."

David Mermelstein, co-chairman of Miami Holocaust Survivors of Dade County, agreed.

"If the files are in Washington, it would be a problem. It should be in Florida, Brooklyn, Chicago and Los Angeles, he said. "We have 10,000 survivors here. Most of them of them do not use computers or they have bad eyesight."

Nonetheless, museum officials said they will not permit archival access via the open Internet or via terminals at libraries and universities around the country, the way other databases of documents are commonly accessed. Museum officials declined to explain their motives for restricting access.

However, Mermelstein passionately argued for unrestricted access.

"Every day," he said, "there are people dying not knowing what happened to their loved ones. With the documents here in Florida, we can ensure that anyone could get a ride to the library so they could ask someone to check their name."

One congressional source close to the Bad Arolsen transfer asked, "What am I missing? Why can't these documents be located near the survivors themselves?"

Edwin Black is The New York Times' best-selling author of the award-winning "IBM and the Holocaust" and is responsible for a series of investigations revealing the contents of the ITS archives at Bad Arolsen. His stories on the subject can be viewed at http://www.ibmandtheholocaust.com/BadArolsenArticles.php.

The Chutzpah Industry

Saturday, May 5, 2007
The Chutzpah Industry

by JON WIENER

[from the May 21, 2007 issue]

Alan Dershowitz is at it again: First he tried to get California Governor Arnold Schwarzenegger to stop the University of California Press (UCP) from publishing a book highly critical of him, and now he's trying to get DePaul University to deny tenure to the author. The object of his fury? Norman Finkelstein, with whom Dershowitz has been feuding for years. The subject? Israel, of course.

Dershowitz has been telling anyone who will listen, as well as many who didn't ask, that Finkelstein's book Beyond Chutzpah--published by UCP in 2005 despite Dershowitz's efforts--is "wholly illegitimate" and "part of a conspiracy to defame" him. (In his book Finkelstein called Dershowitz's The Case for Israel "among the most spectacular academic frauds ever published on the Israel-Palestine conflict." For more, see my "Giving Chutzpah New Meaning," July 11, 2005. Disclosure: A Nation editor served as a freelance editor of Beyond Chutzpah.)

In the fall, before their vote on tenure for Finkelstein, members of the DePaul political science department received an unsolicited packet from Dershowitz containing his "dossier of Norman Finkelstein's most egregious academic sins, and especially his outright lies, misquotations, and distortions." This kind of intervention in a tenure case is virtually unprecedented. It's one thing to have over-the-top debates, especially on Israel and Palestine; we call that freedom of speech. But it's another thing when one of the parties tries to get the other one fired and publication of his book stopped--we call that illegitimate interference.

The procedures governing tenure review require that department chairs solicit evaluations by outside experts in the field. Freelance submissions by declared enemies are pretty much unheard of. DePaul's Faculty Governance Council objected to Dershowitz's intervention and, according to The Chronicle of Higher Education, voted unanimously in November to write to administrators at both DePaul and Harvard, where Dershowitz teaches, expressing "the council's dismay at Professor Dershowitz's interference in Finkelstein's tenure and promotion case." Michael Budde, chair of DePaul's political science department, told the New York Times that Dershowitz's campaign "shows no respect for the integrity of our process and institution."

Tenure votes are among the most carefully guarded secrets in the academy, but not in this case. In separate meetings, both the political science department and a committee of the college voted to give Finkelstein tenure. The department vote, according to The Chronicle, was 9 to 3, and the College Personnel Committee's was 5 to 0. The confidential departmental report, according to The Chronicle, concluded that "while not all members of the department share a love of polemic and inflammatory rhetoric as practiced by Norman and his adversaries, there is clearly a substantial and serious record of scholarly production and achievement." But Charles Suchar, dean of the College of Liberal Arts and Sciences, recommended against tenure. In what The Chronicle called "language similar to that used by Mr. Dershowitz," the dean wrote, "I find the personal attacks in many of Dr. Finkelstein's published books to border on character assassination and, in my opinion, they embody a strategy clearly aimed at destroying the reputation of many who oppose his views."

Among the numerous comments on the case, the most thoughtful come from University of Chicago historian Peter Novick, who has written the definitive book on the history of US Holocaust commemoration (see my "Holocaust Creationism," July 12, 1999). He's been a sharp critic of Finkelstein's writing, declaring that many of the assertions in Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry are "pure invention" and calling the book "a twenty-first century updating of 'The Protocols of the Elders of Zion.'" But Novick objects to the way Dershowitz portrayed him--as an ally in the campaign to block Finkelstein's tenure.

At Dershowitz's suggestion, the political science chair asked Novick for "the clearest and most egregious instances" of Finkelstein's malfeasance. Novick replied that while inviting outside opinions on a candidate for tenure was common, soliciting "the dirt" was totally improper, and he wouldn't satisfy such a request. Novick then published key parts of his letter in The Chronicle to publicly disassociate himself from Dershowitz's tactics.

"Of course Finkelstein's work--like that of all of us--is 'flawed,'" Novick wrote. The question, he said, is "whether, on balance, the positive contribution of the totality of his scholarly work outweighs its faults." His own published criticisms of Finkelstein's The Holocaust Industry "reflect my values, my sensibility, who I am...but I don't confuse those criticisms with holy writ." Novick then appealed for "pluralism" in the academy: "There are those who relish the adversarial role, who delight in combat, whose greatest joy is in advancing a cause... such people are often inclined to stretch evidence to the breaking point, and occasionally beyond.... Professor Finkelstein seems to be of that number, as does Professor Dershowitz." That was not his own style, Novick said. While it would be "disastrous," he wrote, "to have a university composed exclusively of people like Finkelstein and Dershowitz," it would be "equally undesirable to have a university composed exclusively of people like me."

Finally, Novick wrote that "Dershowitz's highly publicized intervention has, it seems to me, made it impossible for DePaul to reject Finkelstein's bid for tenure without everyone concluding that DePaul had capitulated to Dershowitz's bullying." If the administration denied him tenure on legitimate scholarly grounds, he said, they'd have to live with the fallout.

Novick told me that he thinks Finkelstein and Dershowitz "deserve each other." But he added that "it's not Finkelstein who's threatening Dershowitz's employment." DePaul's final decision, to be made by the university president, is expected in June.