Letter From Ken Mayers, Veterans For Peace Delegation to Palestine/Israel, Feb. 16 to March 4

 

I have been inspired to make this effort because of two tremendously moving experiences in the past two days.

 

Most of you on my address list are more aware of the situation in Palestine and Israel than the American public at large. You are a well-read group, and a few of you have visited this part of the world. Some have been much more closely connected to the situation than have I. And most of you have seen at least some of the photos that our intrepid journalist, Ellen Davidson has been capturing on our trip.

 

There have been some highly dramatic instances, but to me, the most meaningful experiences have been the quiet revelations of the past two days.

 

The first of these took place in Ramallah, the administrative home of the Palestinian Authority. The so-called “separation barrier” follows a snaky line intended to incorporate the maximum geographical area into Jerusalem’s municipal boundaries while eventually including the smallest number of Palestinian residents. To achieve this objective, the Israeli government deploys a variety of cruel strategies, many relying on the enforcement of unreasonable, unjust laws.   Probably the most common and the most visible is the demolition of homes built or expanded without a construction permit. And since the Israeli government never grants building permits to Palestinians, almost all homes are subject to demolition orders.

 

Yesterday afternoon, our Veterans For Peace delegation met with a gentleman who is one of the leaders of the resistance to the wall. He took us to visit one of the areas targeted by the government for “maximum geography, minimum demography” described above. In this neighborhood seven homes and two apartment buildings had been demolished. Demolition crews — caterpillar D9 bulldozers (made in America) protected by police and/or soldiers come in the middle of the night and give residents ten minutes to take what belongs they can carry and vacate the house. In a few hours, there is nothing left but rubble. After viewing several of these houses, our guide took us to a still standing house, adjacent to which was a pile of rubble. He took us into a small garden next to the house, where the owner welcomed us to his home and explained that the rubble behind the house had been a 4-unit apartment building that he had built at a cost of $200,000 to house his sons and their families when they finish their university studies. He then chased his younger children into the house to get glasses and a pitcher of water for his guests. We all sat down to chat with this kindly, gentle victim of Israeli cruelty, and soon coffee, tea, and dishes of fruit, vegetables, and hummus appeared on the table, a miracle of generosity to strangers from a man whose life-savings had been destroyed by a housing demolition order. His residence remained only because it had been built before the 1967 conquest of the West Bank by the Israeli army. For the time being, pre-1967 structures are exempt from demolition orders. I’m sure the taste of the fennel, apples, and oranges we were given in that garden will stay with us all.

 

Then today we all took the bus ride down to the Negev Desert to visit the Bedouin village of Al Araaqib, one of the dozens of Bedouin villages in the Negev that the Israeli government considers “unrecognized, and therefore ineligible for services such as water, electricity, and trash collection. Nonetheless, the village has been there for centuries as was recognized by the Ottoman Empire in 1905, the British Mandate in 1929, and even Israeli documents in 1975. In June, 2010, the Israeli government demolished the village, destroyed all the houses, bulldozing 4500 olive tree and 900 fruit trees (figs, avocados, lemons and oranges), as well as the water cistern and the electrical generator. Immediately after this disaster, the villages rebuilt the village insofar as the could and credited activist Jewish Israelis with helping them in the revival.   But not long thereafter, the government destroyed the reconstructed village. Since 2010, the village has been demolished many more times over the last 7 years. But the steadfast Bedouins persist. Each time their material belongings and surrounding deteriorate further, but the spirit of “sumud” is more powerful than the D9 bulldozers. When we visited Al Araaqib in 2013, they still had a number of travel trailers in the village, one of which served as a computer classroom. The Israeli government destroyed them all. They are poorer than ever, but as hospitable and generous as ever.

As soon as we arrived we were offered tea and water.

 

Then Aziz, our host started preparing coffee, while telling us how important morning coffee is to the community. He started with raw beans, roasting them in a skillet in which he was continually flipping them while telling of his culture and the attempts of the Israeli government to destroy both their culture and their history. But he started this commentary by saying that the first thing every morning when he wakes up, he raises thanks to God for his life, and then raises thanks to the activist Jews who help the community survive. He teaches his son that he must not hate Jews. He may hate the police, the army, the “green patrols,” and the JNF (Jewish National Fund) — all of which are trying to drive them off the land. But he must not hate the people — or any people.

 

When the coffee beans were roasted to his satisfaction, his friend Saleem pounded them into power in an iron mortar and pestle. He poured the grounds into a beautiful brass pitcher which had been boiling over a flame while the beans were being pounded. He gently shook the pitcher for a while, the dropped a handful of cardamom branches into the mortar and ground them up, eventually adding a handful of cardamom to the coffee. Finally he poured coffee for us all. Our colleague Mike Haines declared it the “best coffee ever!” We all agreed. It had been made with love.

 

Then Aziz took us on a tour of the village fields. At one point he grasped a handful leaves from a plant that Mike said was called “mallow” in English. It grows wild in the winter in Al Araaqib and since time immemorial has been one of the staples of the Bedouin winter diet. But the Israeli government has declared it illegal to pick and had made violation subject to an 800 shekel fine (roughly $225 dollars.) He pointed out several more edible wild plants, all enthusiastically tasted by “forager Mike.” Then we were called back to the welcoming tent where a feast of Bedouin dishes had been set out for us. So once again, people from whom nearly everything had been taken were once again giving us loving hospitality so deeply rooted in their culture that it survives monstrous abuse.

 

After the feast, we joined them in their annual Sunday protest at the Lehavim highway crossing. Then the long bus ride back to Jerusalem.

 

What amazing human beings these are !!!

 

Peace,

Ken

Photos from Palestine – Ray will be back in the US March 5th

Miko and Ray discuss prospects for peace.

Back at the checkpoint, we are approached again to pose with this sign (as we were yesterday).

The reeds on the right are part of a filtration and aeration system for the pond.

In the greenhouse, they are trying different methods of hydroponics.

This is the “greenwall,” again using recycled plastic bottles to create a vertical garden.

And a shot of our group plus the staff–Mari from Norway on the left, Mazin in the middle, Yusuf, our driver next to him, and Annabel and Jesse on the right end.

Yusuf insists that I get into the shot too.

We stop for a photo op under the key.

He points out how this list of those massacred contains many clusters of people from the same family–you can see the same last name over and over.

Miko Peled and Ray McGovern

We then proceed to march up the street toward the wall, where soldiers are stationed on the other side.

Chanting “From the river to the sea, Palestine will be free,” we march up the hill with our banner.

We get near the gate.

A close-up of the soldier

Tarak notices the soldiers looking

They decide to turn the banner around

Munther knocks on the gate, telling them we are unarmed and we would like them to see our banner.

It looks like it’s only a tear-gas launcher, but it’s not reassuring to have it pointed directly at me from about five feet away.

They can seriously injure or kill people if fired directly at them–soldiers are supposed to shoot them into the air.

He goes away.

He returns and gestures us to leave.

We go out on a tour of the area to see how some villages have been cut off by the wall

We pull out our banner and set up in front of the roadblock.

When Will notes that the soldiers seem to be darker skinned and asks if they are more inclined to be symopathetic to Palestinians, Miko explains the skin-color hierarchy of Israel and says that in fact they are less inclined, since they are striving to emulate the white-skinned European Jews who are top of the heap.

Ray Puts Anti-Missile Defense in 45-Year Perspective

At the request of the Task Force to Stop THAAD and Militarism in Asia and the Pacific, which is trying to enhance awareness of the dangers inherent in deploying the U.S.THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) missile system in the Far East, Ray attempted to put the issue of anti-ballistic missile defense in some context during a Webinar on February 13.

 

Members of the Soviet Foreign Policy Branch Ray led in the 70s and Ray were personally involved in supporting the U.S.-Soviet SALT (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks) in Vienna and Helsinki which drafted the ABM Treaty concluded in May 1972. Ray had the privilege of being in Moscow when President Nixon came to sign the treaty and other arms agreements. The ABM Treaty was the linchpin of strategic stability until Bush and Cheney pulled the pin out in 2001.

 

Ray used four visuals to show the more recent trend in U.S.-Russian “non-negotiations” (since 2012), the real reasons behind the “Star Wars” ABM program, how seriously President Putin views recent developments, and the implications for strategic stability “going forward” (as they now say) after going backward for 16 years.

 

(special thanks to Veterans For Peace colleague Will Griffin for uploading it onto his Peace Report channel)

 

February 13, 2017 (14 minutes)

NSA Veteran Bill Binney Spreads Some Truth Around

 Former NSA Technical Director William Binney gave an excellent interview to WBAI radio’s Randy Credico on January 31. What Bill has to say should be REQUIRED LISTENING for those who feel a need for a cogent explanation, in understandable, non-technical language, of how NSA has been playing fast and loose with the Bill of Rights. Bill says the snooping has progressed to the point where the initials NSA now stand for “New Stasi Agency,” because NSA has become the East German Stasi (secret police) on steroids. Those who have seen the 2006 Academy Award winning “The Lives of Others” (Das Leben der Anderen) are likely to have a fuller understanding of the scarcely believable capabilities of today’s NSA and the effects that Stasi-like monitoring are already having on society. (For those who have not seen this film, it may be time you do.)

 

Randy Credico’s questions tease out the brutally succinct comments that are “typical Bill Binney,” dealing with questions – some of them naive — raised over recent months and years. Why should I care about “parallel construction?” for example; or “What, me worry? I have nothing to hide.” Binney tackles these head on. Ray uses some of the highlights – like “parallel construction” for further comment below:

 

http://nuarchive.wbai.org/mp3/wbai_170131_170002randyCrelof.mp3

Binney’s segment runs from minute 33:30 to 58:20. (It is preceded by an interesting interview of UK Ambassador Craig Murray – also worth a listen.)

 

Bulk collection, enabled by technology advances and “authorized” by secret “legal authorities,” effectively neuters the 4th Amendment to the Constitution, while violating the 1st (right to free association) and the 5th (right against self-incrimination), as well. Forget the large file rooms full to the ceiling with stacks of the paper folders used by the old Stasi and J. Edgar Hoover. Today’s data is accurate, timely, complete – and much easier to share and to store. Mind-boggling as it may be, NSA can “collect all,” and scan, read, store it all, as well. And it does.

 

Binney makes reference to then FBI Director Robert Mueller’s acknowledgement six years ago that the U.S. was collecting and storing information on U.S. persons. In March 2011 testimony to the Senate Judiciary Oversight Committee Mueller said: “We put in place technological improvements relating to the capabilities of a database to pull together past emails and future ones as they come in so that it does not require an individualized search.” And that’s not all Mueller acknowledged.

 

Parallel Construction

 

Under “parallel construction,” NSA shares data from its 4th Amendment-violating, bulk-collection to enable law enforcement to play fast and loose with the 5th amendment as well. Illegally acquired bulk collection is shared not only with the police, but also with the FBI, CIA, IRS, DHS, DEA et al. Using the data as tip-off, law enforcement then undertakes to use law-conforming police tactics to arrest, try, convict. Those aware of the illegal provenance of the tip-off evidence are prohibited from telling the accused, defense attorneys, prosecutors, judges, or jury about the information initially used to “construct” an ostensibly legal case.

 

Thus, as Bill points out, perjury is a major part of “parallel construction,” as well as infringement on the 5th amendment right to due process. He describes the program as “a perjury program run by the Department of Justice,” and notes that the indiscriminate, bulk collection of the wherewithal for the “parallel construction” was “approved” by a secret interpretation of Executive Order 12333, Section 2.3(c) which reads: “Information obtained in the course of a lawful foreign intelligence, counterintelligence, international narcotics or international terrorism investigation”

 

Parallel construction itself, though, is hardly a secret. Reuters revealed it in 2013. Ray wrote about it in June 2014 after he had a unique opportunity before a large audience at Georgetown University to ask former FBI Director Robert Mueller, who had been in charge of the “parallel construction” program, how he could legally justify it. Mueller explained that “various authorities” had been granted. The user-friendly audience moaned at Ray’s impertinent question. He was asking the FBI Director on what basis he justified violating the Constitution and the law; Mueller’s explanation citing “various authorities” seemed good enough for the vast majority of the audience.

 

How NSA Can Secretly Aid Criminal Cases

 

See Something, Say Something; “New Stasi Agency”-style.

 

Binney comments on current NSA procedures requiring workers to tattle on one another if they see, or think they see, an insider threat. This does not make for a good working atmosphere among colleagues, Bill quips. As for ex-NSA whistleblowers, some current employees of NSA who have tried to contact people like Tom Drake have been summarily fired. Bill explained that this is why he avoids trying to make any such contact, lest it risk the jobs and livelihood of former colleagues.

 

Ray knows only a few still “on the inside,” so this is not a major problem for him. Many of his fellow retirees who are “back on contract” have not returned his calls or emails for many years now. Sadly, this includes a former colleague and friend who, with other CIA alumni, took part in the founding meeting of Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence (See: samadamsaward.ch.) and in presenting its first annual award in 2003). This colleague/friend is even older than Ray, but may be still “back on contract,” so he will remain nameless.) Another former colleague, now a senior CIA official, told Ray that, having bumped into him and exchanged pleasantries at wake for an analyst in Ray’s branch in the 70s, he now “had to report the contact to Security,” since Ray is now a “journalist.”

 

Storage

 

For those familiar with how much data can be put on a thumb drive, minds will boggle at how much more storage space is being built – like would you believe 2.5 million square feet right there with NSA and Fort Meade?

 

The Sam Adams Award

 

On January 22, 2015 in Berlin, Sam Adams Associates for Integrity in Intelligence gave William Binney its 14th annual award, presenting him with the traditional Sam Adams corner-brightener candlestick holder in symbolic recognition of his courage in shining light into dark places.

 

 

His award citation read, in part:

 

“Bill Binney represents the patriotic side of a duel between two unequal adversaries: an exceedingly powerful and ruthless state and Bill, an official who would not break his solemn oath to defend its Constitution. … On both sides of the Atlantic we hear the mantra: ‘After 9/11/2001 EVERYTHING CHANGED;’ just like ‘everything changed’ after the burning of the Reichstag in Berlin on 2/27/1933. That event led many Germans into what the writer Sebastian Haffner called “sheepish submissiveness” — with disastrous consequences.

 

“As a young German lawyer in Berlin at the time, Haffner wrote in his diary one day after the Reichstag fire that Germans had suffered a nervous breakdown. ‘No one saw anything out of the ordinary in the fact that, from now on, one’s telephone would be tapped, one’s letters opened, and one’s desk might be broken into. What was missing, wrote Haffner, was ‘a solid inner kernel that cannot be shaken by external pressures and forces, something noble and steely, a reserve of pride, principle, and dignity to be drawn on in the hour or trial.’

 

“These traits were NOT missing in Bill Binney. Nor were they missing in Edward Snowden, whose patriotic risk-taking opened the way for Bill and his colleagues to expose the collect-it-all fanatics and the damage they do to privacy everywhere.”

 

However, we learned at the award ceremony in Berlin that, ironically, it was the other way around; it was Binney who “opened the way” for Snowden – something low-key Bill knew but kept quiet about. It fell to Ed Snowden himself, as he was streamed into Bill’s awards ceremony, to set the record straight: “Without Bill Binney there would be no Ed Snowden,” he said.

 

Ed explained that it was Binney’s outspoken condemnation of NSA abuses that helped embolden Ed to blow the whistle and make available to Bill and others documentary evidence showing how close the American people were/are to what Ed called “turnkey tyranny.”

 

Waxing biblical, one might put it this way: Binney begat Snowden; Snowden begat – well, it’s hard to be sure. It does seem altogether possible, though, that Snowden begat the insider(s) who leaked to WikiLeaks the emails showing how Mrs. Clinton and the Democratic National Committee stole the nomination from Bernie Sanders; paid the Saudis back handsomely for their huge contributions to the Clinton Foundation; and told Wall Street it had nothing to fear from her “inevitable” presidency. It is a safe guess that Ed Snowden’s willingness to risk everything to show how close the U.S. is to “turnkey tyranny,” has already inspired – and will “beget” – still other whistleblowers.

Are There More Truth-Tellers?

 

Surely, there are some courageous patriots – and potential whistleblowers – still in the ranks of NSA and other intelligence agencies today. They, like Binney and Snowden – not to mention other courageous colleagues like Kirk Wiebe, Thomas Drake – may honor their oath to defend the Constitution against ALL enemies foreign and domestic and take some risk to thwart the slide toward Stasi-type tyranny.

 

A good way for them to begin would be to tell us what to think about former President Barack Obama’s parting shot about “Russian hacking.” Although the “mainstream media” missed this, at Obama’s last press conference (Jan. 18), he admitted that: “the conclusions of the intelligence community with respect to the Russian hacking were not conclusive as to whether WikiLeaks was witting or not in being the conduit through which we heard about the DNC e-mails that were leaked. (Emphasis added)

 

So Obama went out the door with inconclusive conclusions and admitted that there remains a gaping gap between “Russian hacking” and WikiLeaks. It appears that NSA does not know who gave the emails to WikiLeaks. Is Binney correct in saying that NSA would certainly know about anything “hacked” and sent over the blanket-covered network? Does this prove that leaking was involved, and not hacking – by the Russians or anyone else? This, after all is what Bill Binney – and Ambassador Craig Murray, a friend of WikiLeaks’ Julian Assange, and Assange himself – have been saying for many months.

 

Ray has been pointing out that, in professional intelligence analysis of highly technical issues, appropriate weight is traditionally given to highly experienced technical experts with a proven record for reliability – as opposed to reporters from, say, the New York Times. Thus, it remains a puzzle why even solid analysts like James Carden wait – as he did in an otherwise excellent recent article – until paragraph 45 (of 50) to mention Binney as author of what Carden labels “an alternative theory” on the Russian hacking story. Carden quotes from a Jan. 5 op-ed in the Baltimore Sun in which Binney says: “It is puzzling why NSA cannot produce hard evidence implicating the Russian government and WikiLeaks. Unless we are dealing with a leak from an insider, not a hack.”

A Reprise of the Iraq-WMD Fiasco?

 

Just before Mr. and Mrs. Obama got on the departing helicopter, Ray made a stab at decoding the ex-president’s Delphic remark, two days before, in: “Obama admits gap in Russian Hack Case.”

https://consortiumnews.com/2017/01/20/obama-admits-gap-in-russian-hack-case/

But Ray is no longer an “insider,” and technically (no pun intended) neither is Bill Binney. Bill quit NSA in 2001, as soon as he learned that the programs he devised were being changed to enable gross violation of Americans’ 4th Amendment right to privacy. Bill can give interviews to alternative media and appear in documentaries (see below), and Ray can be skunk at picnics – as when he asked questions of congressmen like Adam Schiff, ranking member on the House Intelligence Committee (See the following two-minute clip: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SdOy-l13FEg ), but, again, neither Bill nor Ray are “insiders” like the ones in whom Schiff says he places great confidence.

 

Needed: Another Patriot

 

Will an inside whistleblower rise to the occasion and clarify the evidence – or lack of evidence – regarding the all important gap – or a link — between Russian hacking and WikiLeaks? And, please, this time let’s not resort to the Rumsfeld aphorism that worked so well with the “WMD” in Iraq – “The absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.”

 

This is not to beat a dead horse; the horse is very much alive. Extremists like Sen. John McCain have characterized Russian hacking as an act of war, and a very strange bi-partisan assortment of neocons’/Republican Russia-haters’/Hillary-defeat-explainers’ knives are out for Mr. Putin – and for President Trump. California Congresswoman Maxine Waters is now suggesting impeachment proceedings based on the evidence-free notion that Trump assisted the Russian hacking that eased him into the presidency.

 

A Decent Newspaper Gets Burned; Kahl’s Kool Aid

 

The only recent sign of hope came this morning, when Germany’s leading newspaper, the Sueddeutsche Zeitung, revealed that Bruno Kahl, head of the German Intelligence, was aping his U.S. counterpart, CIA Director John Brennan, late last year in claiming that the BND had evidence that Russia manipulated the voting for Trump, adding that the Kremlin is interfering in similar ways in Germany. Kahl read from the same script as Brennan and the U.S. “mainstream media,” telling the Sueddeutsche in November: “The perpetrators are interested in delegitimizing the democratic process as such.”

 

Apparently, the Sueddeutsche felt burned when it learned the truth after drinking Kahl’s Kool Aid and publishing it in November. Today the SZ was the first to publish the conclusion of a yearlong joint inquiry by the German equivalents of the CIA and FBI, which have been searching for evidence of Russian interference in Germany’s domestic affairs. “We have not found any smoking gun,” a German cabinet source told the newspaper.

 

Like the almost dead horse in Washington, however, the German steed remains kicking. Chancellor Angela Merkel has sent the two spy agencies back to the drawing board. Her office has ordered a new inquiry, this one led by a joint “psychological operations group,” to investigate Russian news agencies’ coverage in Germany. Ray did a short interview on this earlier today: (See: https://youtu.be/A8vjhA9oGzk )

 

The “Sources and Methods” Canard

 

As for the facile, all-too-familiar excuse – used by Adam Schiff, for example – that one cannot risk compromising “sources and methods,” there are many effective ways to protect them and still disclose key information, when the situation requires. Ronald Reagan, for example, insisted that a TOP SECRET encoded communication between Libyan operatives responsible for a lethal bombing in Berlin be divulged, in full knowledge the U.S. intelligence capability to intercept and decrypt such communications would be blown (for higher national purpose). See:

A Demand for Russian ‘Hacking’ Proof

 

If potential whistleblowers need still more inspiration/courage, it will be readily available this month, as movie theaters begin to show “A Good American,” featuring Bill Binney and a handful of his courageous colleague whistleblowers – playing themselves. ( agoodamerican.org/ ) Oliver Stone has given the film high marks, describing it earlier as a “powerful prequel to SNOWDEN.” (Note to NSA employees: remember not to use your own credit card to purchase a ticket.)

 

We have now wandered a bit from the Bill Binney’s interview on WBAI last week. It may be appropriate to close with a 200 year-old warning from Goethe, a quote that Bill managed to slip into that interview:

 

“No one is more a slave than he who thinks himself free, but is not.”

 

“Niemand ist mehr Sklave, als der sich für frei hält, ohne es zu sein*.