Persicus Maximus

  The House Permanent Select Committee on Intelligence has finaly released the notorius “28 pages” from the 9/11 Report, which had been kept classified, and which detail more or less exclusively with the culpability of the Saudi Arabian government in the attacks. Though the White House claimed even after the release, that the pages “proved” the Saudis had nothing to do with it, they did anything but that, providing considerable evidence that the hijackers had contact with two probable Saudi intelligence officers in advance of the attacks, and had received support from those officers. The information centers on two men, Omar Bayouni and Osama Bassman. Bayouni was said to have provided “substantial assistance” to the hijackers in 2000, and had extensive contact with the Saudi government at the same time. Bayouni was nominally an employee of Ercan, a subsidiary of a company with substantial ties to the Saudi Defense Ministry, and was in frequent contact with a Defense Mi...

  In the 1980s, the Reagan administration pioneered “perception management” to get the American people to “kick the Vietnam Syndrome” and accept more U.S. interventionism, but that propaganda structure continues to this day getting the public to buy into endless war. To understand how the American people find themselves trapped in today’s Orwellian dystopia of endless warfare against an ever-shifting collection of “evil” enemies, you have to think back to the Vietnam War and the shock to the ruling elite caused by an unprecedented popular uprising against that war. While on the surface Official Washington pretended that the mass protests didn’t change policy, a panicky reality existed behind the scenes, a recognition that a major investment in domestic propaganda would be needed to ensure that future imperial adventures would have the public’s eager support or at least its confused acquiescence. This commitment to what the insiders called “perception man...

On May 27,Foreign Policy reported that the Obama administration has decided to block the sale of additional cluster bombs to Saudi Arabia. This is great news, but it’s long past overdue and still not enough. U.S. companies, including Textron Industries – the makers of cluster munitions sold to Saudi Arabia – have profited far too long off the death and destruction caused by their products placed in Saudi hands. Cluster bombs are WMDs. They randomly spray hundreds of “bomblets” across a wide area and, almost invariably, some kill innocent civilians. They are also not very reliable weapons as many of these bomblets do not explode upon impact. Often these unexploded bomblets are then picked up by children, who are seriously injured or killed when they set them off. Due to the indiscriminate killing caused by cluster bombs, there is an international treaty banning the use of these horrific weapons, signed by 119 nations signed by 119 nations. Predictably, neither Saudi Arabia no...