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WATCH: Zero Days [U.S. & Israel Attack on Iran via Cyberwarefare, 2016 Documentary]

November 28, 2020

 

 

“What does it mean to be anti-imperialist? It means supporting nations under attack by empire even when or if it is opportunistically inconvenient. It means to stand with all nations under attack, without prejudice, without wavering, and to never serve interests of empire – even if it means you sacrifice popularity or lose social media followers.”

 

Alexandra Valiente, Internationalist360

 

 

“A black ops cyber-attack launched by the U.S. and Israel on an Iranian nuclear facility unleashed malware with unforeseen consequences. The Stuxnet virus infiltrated its pre-determined target only to spread its infection outward, ultimately exposing systemic vulnerabilities that threatened the very safety of the planet. Delve deep into the burgeoning world of digital warfare in this documentary thriller from Academy Award® winning filmmaker Alex Gibney.

 

[Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by Alex Gibney are those of the filmmaker’s and do not necessarily reflect the official position of WKOG. Any thoughts in the following interview contrary to WKOG’s expressed opinions are not intended to malign any region, group, country or people.]

 

DIRECTORS STATEMENT ALEX GIBNEY

What do you do when your government launches a global war and keeps it a secret?

That’s the question that haunted me when making “Zero Days,” a film about the spectre of a new generation of classified cyber weapons.

I started out making a small film investigating “Stuxnet,” the self-replicating computer virus invented by the US and Israel to infiltrate and sabotage the Iranian nuclear centrifuges at Natanz.   What I discovered was a massive clandestine operation involving the CIA, the NSA, the US military and Israel’s intelligence agency Mossad to build and launch secret cyber “bombs” that could plunge the world into a devastating series of criss-crossing attacks on critical infrastructure, shutting down electricity, poisoning water supplies and turning cars, trains and planes into deadly weapons.  Even more terrifying, this science fiction scenario, possibly resulting in the loss of millions of lives, could happen without anyone – including our own government – knowing who is responsible.

In the words of David Byrne, You may ask yourself: How did we get here?  

When I started, I knew that the Stuxnet worm (a self-replicating virus) had spread all over the world.  The secrecy of the operation was blown.  But every US official I asked about the operation either refused to talk about it or even admit that it happened.

Everyone justified their silence with claims of national security.  As Michael Hayden, former head of the CIA and the NSA, told me, a covert operation “automatically goes into the do-not-talk-about-it box.”

But Stuxnet wasn’t just another covert op.  It represented a fundamental change in the threat landscape.  For the first time in history, a computer virus crossed the threshold from the virtual reality of 1s and 0s to the physical world.  Stuxnet took control of machines and commanded them to destroy themselves.  Then the code leaked all over the world so that it could be re-purposed by other nations, criminals and terrorists.

Keeping that secret was like saying, after Hiroshima, “what bomb?”

And it reached the height of absurdity when I learned that the Department of Homeland Security triggered a high alert to protect the US from Stuxnet, since the NSA never let the other branches of government know that the weapon we launched was now attacking the homeland.  We had met the enemy and it was us.

Since government officials were trying to hide the dangers they had caused, my team and I reached out to others.  We first contacted the cyber detectives, Liam O’Murchu and Eric Chien, from the anti-virus company Symantec, who were the first ones to discover the purpose of Stuxnet.  They took apart the weapon for us so that we could understand both its delivery system and payload.

Then we traveled to Moscow – the capital of cyber crime and headquarters for Russia’s cyber weapons units – and to Israel, the key partner for the US in the development of Stuxnet.  What we discovered in Tel Aviv and Jerusalem, by talking to politicians, journalists and – on background – agents for Israel’s intelligence agency, Mossad, was that “Stuxnet” was not a technical computer story at all.  Rather, it was part of a much larger operation which involved the Mossad, the CIA, the US military unit, Cyber Command, and included covert operations – sometimes directed at American companies, like Microsoft – the assassination of Iranian scientists, and weapons of cyber mass destruction that made “Stuxnet” look like a computer game.

Armed with this level of detail, we returned to the United States and were able to persuade some people inside the NSA and the CIA to talk to us provided we kept their identities a secret.  By now, it’s well known that the Obama Administration has prosecuted more whistleblowers than all previous administrations combined.  So we had to take careful precautions to protect our sources.

We recorded interviews on audio recorders with no wifi capability, transcribed them on electric typewriters and then destroyed the data cards.  We used a system of codes to identify the sources and then integrated their testimony in a “script” that was factually accurate but which masked phrases that could lead investigators to identify our witnesses.   Then we used a system called “Depthkit,” to photograph our “essential source” via a 3-D video capture device that allowed us to break down a human face into separate fields of flesh, dots and lines.  In final post, we recombined those elements with new computer tilts and pans to portray a cyber whistleblower whose “hacked” look harmonized with the film’s animation of the actual Stuxnet code.

(Note: in the code animation sequences we only used excerpts of the Stuxnet code, which would not allow anyone reconstitute the weapon.  That said, our co-producer, Javier Botero, didn’t have much difficulty obtaining the entire code, something that makes the government secrecy about it all the more absurd.)

Our whistleblowers were able to give us an entirely new perspective on the Stuxnet operation, known inside the government as “Olympic Games,” and the new world of cyber weapons.   Among the key elements of information in “Zero Days” that have been revealed in the popular media for the first time are:

-The US, as a matter of policy, has not dedicated sufficient resources to cyber defense. Instead, it is focusing on cyber offense, and hoping that the threat of counterattack will prevent our enemies from launching cyber weapons against us.  So far, that strategy has failed.  Russia, China, Iran and North Korea have all launched limited cyber attacks against us and likely hidden thousands of backdoors to computer networks that have the potential of damaging key portions of our critical infrastructure: power grids, water filtration plants, transportation systems, heat, air conditioning, etc

-While “Olympic Games” was a joint operation between the US and Israel, each country had the ability to modify and deploy the OG cyber weapons in ways they wished. This caused animosity and tension, when the Mossad – pressured by an impatient Bibi Netanyahu – launched, without consultation with the US, a virulent version of the virus that spread all over the world.  This raises very difficult questions about the nature of our relationship with Israel.

-Following “Olympic Games,” the NSA developed far more powerful cyber weapons. One operation involving those weapons, named “Nitro Zeus” (disclosed for the first time in “Zero Days”) had the capacity to jam all of Iran’s air defenses and to shut down many of the key power grids in Iran.  As one of our sources told us, “the science fiction cyber war scenario is here.”

-Department of Defense officials in US Cyber Command showed a remarkable lack of sophistication or concern about the amount of destruction that these weapons could cause. As one source noted, when key power plants are shut down, they don’t just “pop back up.  It’s more like Humpty Dumpty…lots of people die.”  In discussing targets in Iran, State Department lawyers objected to the fact that US cyber attacks would shut down hospitals causing large numbers of fatalities.  The Department of Defense overruled those objections.

-“Olympic Games” was a CIA-led operation. For every attack, an officer from the CIA had to stand behind NSA computer operators and give them attack commands.

-When Iran, in retaliation for Stuxnet, launched a cyber attack on US banks, the US government was aware that the attacks were coming from Iran but did not counterattack because the the computers controlling the “botnet” (a network of private computers infected with malicious software)was in another country and the US State Department was concerned that a US attack might involve a friendly nation in a growing cyber conflict.  This highlights one of the dilemmas of cyber war: attribution is very difficult, raising the spectre of “false flags” and mistaken counterattacks that could lead to a cyber world war.

-The “Stuxnet” virus was autonomous. No operator commanded it to attack.  Once Stuxnet found its target inside Natanz, it was programmed to launch its attack on its own, without human intervention.  An increasing number of  cyber weapons share this characteristic.

-The secrecy over offensive cyberweapons and their capability is not only impeding democratic debate but also making us less safe. Indeed, our sources came forward because they believe that secrecy itself is putting us all at enormous, possibly existential, risk.

-The revelation of “Nitro Zeus” sheds new light on the Obama Administration’s deal with Iran on nuclear weapons. While many critics have suggested that Obama was negotiating from a position of weakness, it is likely – given “Nitro Zeus” – that he was negotiating from a position of strength, knowing that the US could virtually shut down the entire country in the event that Iran cheated on the deal.

-Our sources have confirmed that, since the launch of Stuxnet, offensive cyber operations – conducted by nation states – are an every day occurrence. (O’Muchu and Chien from Symantec have confirmed that the number of nation state attacks have increased exponentially in the last few years.) Government secrecy and the inability of the media to report on this story is the only reason we don’t know more about cyberweapons. They are being launched – by and against us – every day.

 

Alex Gibney, April 2016 – New York City

 

Modern Day White Mercenaries in the Congo

Libya 360 Internationalist News Agency

June 17, 2015

by Keith Harmon Snow

 

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Excerpt from the article Western-Backed Terrorism in the Congo: Where is General Laurent Nkunda?

“People are killed every day, here and there,” says one Congolese human rights investigator in eastern Congo.  “U.S. intelligence agents and the organizations they work with produce disinformation favorable to Rwanda and Uganda.  These guys are on someone’s payroll and they have enough money to throw around to their own networks of informants in the Great Lakes region.”

karte-demokratische-republik-kongo-osten-2

The U.S. and its allies, primarily Australia, Belgium, Britain, Canada, Germany, Holland and Israel, are all part of the networks of multinational interests plundering the natural resources of the Great Lakes countries.  The corporations involved in eastern Congo are never mentioned, and no pictures are ever shown of their networks of exploitation that exist in parallel and coincidence with the violence.

The corporations operating in eastern Congo protected by the media and western intelligence apparatus, but soaked in Congolese blood, include Banro Gold, Casa Mining, Mwana Africa, Loncor, Anglo-Gold Ashanti, Kilo Gold, Moku Gold, Randgold and Alphamin Resources.

Israeli Dan Gertler — one of the Congo’s greatest current enemies — has bought up petroleum operations in the lakes regions on the Uganda-Congo frontier.  Gertler’s political allies in power in Israel have been making deals with Rwanda.  Another Israeli has been awarded oil-drilling rights in Virunga National Park just in the past two weeks after Canadian oil company SOCO International pulled out under public pressure.

Corporations like Alphamin promise to provide community development programs, with all kinds of publicity of their supposed largesse and generosity. Usually these are cheap exchanges, the equivalent of trinkets for land and minerals, the legacy of colonial occupation and theft.

On 10 June 2015, communities dispossessed of lands and livelihoods by Banro Gold in South Kivu began to confront Banro Gold for the substandard homes provided by Banro. “There is trouble in Luhwindja where Banro is exploiting,” reported one Congolese human rights investigator on 10 June 2015. “Banro did nothing to help the locals. The houses they [Banro] built are falling down because people had to abandon them. People are dying from pollution.”

The operations of the big mining companies present in eastern Congo are completely whitewashed by the western press and western mercenaries and intelligence front group organizations like the International Crises Group, International Rescue Committee, ENOUGH, Raise Hope For Congo, the U.S. Committee for Refugees and the Social Science Research Council.[63]

enough-staff

Enough staff and CFCI leaders deliver letter to Avaaz co-founder and Special Envoy Tom Perriello

The reappearance on the ground in Congo of these Rwandan warlords illuminates the apparatus of impunity involving western governments, non-government front organizations, the United Nations, multinational corporations, think tanks, western academia, the genocide industry, and the industries that profit through the creation of careers and markets for the euphemistically named AID, charity, humanitarian relief, conflict-resolution, and development industries.   None of these latter industries would flourish without the market-based manufacture of suffering, despair, disease and deracination, or the market-based production of internally displaced persons (IDPs) and refugees.

As it is with the western human rights corpus “that keeps intact the hierarchical relationships between European and non-European populations,” [64] so it is with all these other industries.  Suffering is big business.

 

[62][endif] Private communication, 5 May 2015.

[63][endif] http://www.ssrc.org/programs/drc-affinity-group/

 

[A participant at the 65th Annual Conference on World Affairs, Keith Harmon Snow is the 2009 Regent’s Lecturer in Law & Society at the University of California Santa Barbara.  Some of his reportage, writings, photography and human rights reports can be seen on the web sites: Conscious Being AllianceAll Things Pass & Keith Harmon Snow. keith harmon snow, USA: +1.413.626.3800, 84 Goshen Road, Williamsburg, MA 01096 USA.]

Read the full article:

Western-Backed Terrorism in the Congo: Where is General Laurent Nkunda?

https://libya360.wordpress.com/2015/06/17/western-backed-terrorism-in-the-congo-where-is-general-laurent-nkunda/

 

Millenium Development Goals: Wall Street’s Global Plan

A Culture of Imbeciles

October 2, 2014

B9

Poverty-pimping is as old as liberalism; broken promises likewise. Under neoliberalism, though, this betrayal is orchestrated as humanitarian. As a dishonest broker, the UN plays a key role in this fraud.

Promising relief from poverty, disease, and oppression, ubercapitalists and sycophants like Gates and Clinton join the IMF and World Bank in supporting the UN Millenium Development Goals. As contributing architects of the final solution, the Gates and Clinton foundations lend a philanthropic veneer to Free Market brutality under the guise of promoting equality.

While this veneer might seem laughable to anyone paying attention, it holds considerable sway when repackaged by NGOs acting as fronts for Wall Street. Like the humanitarian war charade and Free Market Ponzi schemes over climate change, pimping poverty relief through mega-development on indigenous territories requires expertise in controlling minds.

The illusion of ubercapitalist philanthropy, now unraveling in the aftermath of the Buffett/350 scandal, was dealt another blow with the revelation of Gates Foundation investments in G4S — a company “highly complicit in the Israeli military occupation of Palestine.” While social engineering by the capitalist elite, using private foundations, is as old as tax loopholes, mobilized Free Market multitudes is largely a social media phenomenon.

As Michael Barker notes, most telling are the covert, anti-democratic campaigns funded by corporations like Microsoft. By manipulating media, Gates foundation – like Ford and Rockefeller – undermines democracy worldwide. The philanthropic colonization of civil society is just one more means of their corrosive social engineering.

Palestine | Letters of Note: When a Real and Final Catastrophe Should Befall Us…

March 4, 2010

Letters of Note

On April 9th, 1948, a month before Israel declared independence, just over one hundred residents of Deir Yassin were massacred by members of two militant Zionist groups – Lehi and Irgun – as part of an effort to cleanse the area of its Arab population. The next day, Albert Einstein wrote the following passionate letter to Shepard Rifkin, a New York-based representative of Lehi who had recently written to Einstein in the hope of garnering some high-profile support for the group’s efforts. His belief that Einstein – a man who publicly backed the creation of a Jewish homeland in the British Mandate of Palestine, but by different means – would agree to such a suggestion was clearly misplaced.

Transcript follows.

Transcript

April 10, 1948

Mr. Shepard Rifkin
Exec.Director
American Friends of the Fighters
for the Freedom of Israel
149 Second Ave.
New York 3,N.Y.

Dear Sir:

When a real and final catastrophe should befall us in Palestine the first responsible for it would be the British and the second responsible for it the Terrorist organizations build up from our own ranks.

I am not willing to see anybody associated with those misled and criminal people.

Sincerely yours,

(Signed, ‘A. Einstein’)

Albert Einstein

What Would it Take to Get Israel to Stop? What the American Left Has Trouble Saying

“However much he deplored violence, Gandhi did deem it much preferable to inaction in the face of injustice. Should one be incapable of nonviolently resisting an outrage, the only honorable option would be to resist violently, whereas flight would be wholly shameful. For, if there was one thing Gandhi detested more than violence, it was ‘mute submissiveness’ — and what was yet worse, such submissiveness masquerading as nonviolent resistance.” – Norman Finkelstein, 2008

 

“The question central to the emergence and maintenance of nonviolence as the oppositional foundation of American activism has not been the truly pacifist formulation, ‘How can we forge a revolutionary politics within which we can avoid inflicting violence on others?’ On the contrary, a more accurate guiding question has been, ‘What sort of politics might I engage in which will both allow me to posture as a progressive and allow me to avoid incurring harm to myself?’ Hence, the trappings of pacifism have been subverted to establish a sort of ‘politics of the comfort zone’…” -Ward Churchill, 2007

 

“Time and again, people struggling not for some token reform but for complete liberation — the reclamation of control over our own lives and the power to negotiate our own relationships with the people and world around us — will find that nonviolence does not work, that we face a self-perpetuating power structure that is immune to appeals to conscience and strong enough to plow over the disobedient and uncooperative. We must reclaim histories of resistance to understand why we have failed in the past and how exactly we achieved the limited successes we did. We must also accept that all social struggles, except those carried out by a completely pacified and thus ineffective people, include a diversity of tactics. Realizing that nonviolence has never actually produced historical victories toward revolutionary goals opens the door to considering other serious faults of nonviolence.” – How Nonviolence Protects the State

by

 

Here’s an answer to the question of what it would take for Israel to stop that you won’t hear from most of the American left: violence, Palestinian violence. Don’t agree? Here’s what an Israeli journalist said about it on November 17, 2012:

If history has taught us something, it’s that in those rare occasions when the other party is able to inflict too much pain and discomfort on Israelis – thus making the status quo “less tolerable” – concessions are finally made. This is the way the First Intifada led to Oslo and the second one to the disengagement (much in the way the 1973 war lead to the peace treaty with Egypt). In all these cases, the Palestinians (or Egyptians) paid a heavy price – much heavier than Israel – but they were able to move Israel out of its comfort zone. Israeli leaders often express the desire to “teach the Palestinians a lesson against the use of violence” or “to burn it into their consciousness,” as Deputy Prime Minister Moshe Ya’alon famously said. But in reality the terrible lesson we have taught them is that in order to get something out of Israel, violence is not enough – one needs a lot of violence. It seems that the world understands that, and after two decades of diplomatic efforts, the latest escalation is met with indifference (which Israelis wrongly interpret as support). 1

– Noam Sheaf, Israeli journalist

The arguments being emphasized now by American leftists about how the number of Israelis killed by Palestinian resistance are so low compared to the thousands of Palestinians killed by Israel are of course true.

But all this talk of the disproportionate impact on Israel is really a way to not deal directly with the truth: Palestinian families have a legal right to resist occupation, including the use of violent resistance. Therefore, Israel has no right to self defense.

“…[A]ccording to international law today, Israel has no rights to or in the Occupied territories of Palestine.  According to the same international law, the occupation ought to have ceased one year after its beginning, that is by June 1968.  The United Nations Security Council passed a resolution requiring Israel to withdraw from all occupied territories, Resolution 242 in November 1967.” 2

– Lynda Burstein Brayer, South African, Israeli trained human rights lawyer.

Catherine Charrett’s piece on Mondoweiss says it perfectly:

Palestinian factions represent a non-state (as we all know way too well Palestine does not have its state yet) and therefore, any form of violence Palestinian movements engage in will be, by de facto, that of a non-state actor. War or violence launched by a non-state actor, is so quickly coupled with militant or terrorist in the Western discourse on legitimate uses of violence. Palestine continues to be forbidden its status and capability as a viable state; how then is Palestine meant to resist its occupation, when Israeli leaders wage their own war on Palestine and simultaneously work so energetically and aggressively to dissallow its status as a state? How are Gazan resistant movements, which do enjoy almost unanimous support from the entire Gaza population, meant to resist in a way which is legitimate to western governments? If these Western narratives were more dedicated to their own professed adherence to human rights then they would not be able to stand in defence of Israel. According to the Geneva Conventions a people under occupation have the legal right to resist their occupation; this Article 1 (4) of Protocol 1 stresses that force may be used to pursue the right of self-determination. States and actors who attempts to suppress the Palestinian right to resist violent occupation is in direct contradiction with the UN Charter, the Universal Declaration on Human Rights and the Declaration on the Granting of Independence to Colonial Countries and Peoples, which all legally aim to provide support to those fighting colonial regimes. The Western discourse on the legitimate use of violence needs to sensitise and educate its view: Palestinians have the legal right to resist and that is exactly what they are doing. 3

So, not only is Palestinian resistance, including the use of violence, legal, it’s also effective. And given how ineffective the world community is at even recognizing Palestinians as Israel’s target of genocide, much less defending Gaza, any support for Gaza now should include uproarious cheers for every rocket that lands in Israel.

Perhaps this is why, as even the New York Times knows, Gaza is a place “where resistance is an honored part of the culture.”4

 

Suzanne Nossel Executive Director of Amnesty International USA

September 30, 2012

Human Rights Investigations

Suzanne Nossel was appointed Executive Director of Amnesty International USA in January 2012. This is from her blurb on the Amnesty USA site:

Most recently, she served as Deputy Assistant Secretary for International Organizations at the U.S. Department of State, where she was responsible for multilateral human rights, humanitarian affairs, women’s issues, public diplomacy, press and Congressional relations. At the State Department, Nossel played a leading role in U.S. engagement at the U.N. Human Rights Council, including the initiation of groundbreaking human rights resolutions on Iran, Syria, Libya, Cote d’Ivoire, freedom of association, freedom of expression and the first U.N. resolution on the rights of lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender persons. Prior to that, Nossel served as Chief Operating Officer for Human

Suzanne Nossel

Rights Watch, where she was responsible for organizational management and spearheaded a strategic plan for the global expansion of the organization. During the Clinton administration she served as deputy to the Ambassador for U.N. Management and Reform at the U.S. Mission to the United Nations, where she was the lead U.S. representative to the U.N. General Assembly negotiating a deal to settle the U.S. arrears to the world body. During the early 1990s Nossel worked in Johannesburg, South Africa, on the implementation of South Africa’s National Peace Accord, a multi-party agreement aimed at curbing political violence during that country’s transition to democracy; she has also done election monitoring and human rights documentation in Bosnia and Kosovo. Nossel is the author of a 2004 article in Foreign Affairs magazine entitled “Smart Power” and coined the term that Secretary of State Hillary Clinton has made a defining feature of U.S. foreign policy.

Fundamental to understanding the thinking behind the new leadership at Amnesty International is an understanding of how Nossel conceives ‘Smart Power’ and her understanding of US foreign policy.

In her 2004 article Nossel states:

The Bush administration has hijacked a once-proud progressive doctrine–liberal internationalism–to justify muscle-flexing militarism and arrogant unilateralism. Progressives must reclaim the legacy of Wilson, Roosevelt, Truman, and Kennedy with a foreign policy that will both bolster U.S. power and unite the world behind it.

So before having a closer look at what Nossel means by ‘Smart Power’, lets look have a quick look at Nossel’s heroes’ foreign policies.

It was President Wilson who took the US into the First World War and who, despite his splendid internationalist rhetoric, imposed the humiliating Versailles Settlement on Germany, a major factor in the rise of authoritarianism and eventually the Nazi Party. This was a man whose racism is evident from his writing:

“Self-preservation [forced whites] to rid themselves, by fair means or foul, of the intolerable burden of governments sustained by the votes of ignorant negroes.”

It was under Roosevelt’s watch that the USAF participated in the firebombings of Dresden and other German cities which resulted in the deaths of thousands of civilians, refugees, innocent women and children.

FDR (and Truman) were also responsible for Operation Keelhaul under which Soviet POWs and refugees were returned to face internment, torture and in many case immediate execution by firing squads.

It was President Truman, another of Nossel’s heroes, who ordered the annihilation of both Hiroshima and Nagasaki via experimental terror weapons resulting in the massacre and maiming of some 200,000 Japanese women, children and old people.

He also took the United States to war against North Korea without consulting congress.

It was President Truman who participated in the McCarthy era witch hunts against American communists calling them “traitors.”

It was President Truman who set forth the Truman Doctrine in order to justify intervening in Greece on the side of the forces of the right against the anti-Nazi partisans saying:

At the present moment in world history nearly every nation must choose between alternative ways of life. The choice is too often not a free one.
One way of life is based upon the will of the majority, and is distinguished by free institutions, representative government, free elections, guarantees of individual liberty, freedom of speech and religion, and freedom from political oppression.
The second way of life is based upon the will of the minority forcibly imposed upon the majority. It relies upon terror and oppression of controlled press and radio; fixed elections, and the suppression of personal freedoms.
I believe it must be the policy of the United States to support free peoples who are resisting attempted subjugation by armed minorities or by outside pressures.

In the campaign against the Greek leftists, President Truman authorised the first use of napalm in warfare using ten spitfires and 200 German-made drop tanks.

The Truman Doctrine was of course a cloak for American imperialism and provided the theoretical justification for the support of repressive regimes, military dictatorships and terrorist gangs the world over.

President John F Kennedy saw Vietnam as an opportunity forth USA to show its “smart power” and by the time he was assassinated 6,000 US military were in the country (up from 900). It was this hero of Nossel who instituted the notorious program (Operation Ranch Hand) using chemical defoliants on the Vietnamese jungle and on farmers’ crops.

It was also Kennedy who on November 30, 1961 authorised aggressive covert operations against the communist government of Fidel Castro known as Operation Mongoose. Operation Mongoose was a secret program of terrorism against Cuba the ultimate objective of which was to be able to provide adequate justification for a US military intervention in Cuba.

Under President Kennedy, Operation Northwoods was formulated by Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Lyman Lemnitzer. This operation has been described by James Banford:

Operation Northwoods, which had the written approval of the Chairman and every member of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, called for innocent people to be shot on American streets; for boats carrying refugees fleeing Cuba to be sunk on the high seas; for a wave of violent terrorism to be launched in Washington, D.C., Miami, and elsewhere. People would be framed for bombings they did not commit; planes would be hijacked. Using phony evidence, all of it would be blamed on Castro, thus giving Lemnitzer and his cabal the excuse, as well as the public and international backing, they needed to launch their war

Apparently Kennedy didn’t care for this scheme nor Lemnitzer’s other suggestion which was for the launch of a surprise nuclear war on the Soviet Union. He was so disgusted with him, in fact, that he subsequently appointed him NATO Supreme Allied Commander Europe.

What is smart power?

Suzanne Nossel succinctly explained what she means by smart power in an interview on the Council of Foreign Affairs web site:

I talked about smart power in terms of a couple of different dimensions.

One is combining both hard power, military force, coercion with what has been called soft power; diplomacy, the appeal of American culture, its people, economic ties, and viewing those two elements not as alternatives in an either/or sense but rather as complimentary and elements of US power that need to be brought to bear in concert.

A second key piece is knowing which of these elements to bring to bear at what time and being creative and innovative in terms of combining different sources of US power to influence the situation. So kind of wisely choosing between a wide array of different tools.

And the third piece I talked about was the idea that the use of American power needs to be sustainable and renewable. We need to deploy our power in ways that make us stronger, not weaker.

Just to reiterate, the Executive Director of Amnesty International USA believes that the USA needs to use military force and diplomacy, in concert, in order to make American power stronger.

Lets look at some other aspects of Nossel’s published writings so that we have an even clearer idea of where she is taking the organisation.