Cables Shine Light Into Secret Diplomatic Channels WIKI!

[Joe Hillshoist]

Japanese and American officials discussed taking action to weaken a prominent anti-whaling group, with Tokyo insisting that Sea Shepherd's confrontations on the high seas actually hurt efforts to reduce whaling, U.S. diplomatic cables show.

Hows your whale hunting going now fuckers?

Sea Shepherd actually reduces the numbers of whales hunted by being annoying and interfering with the whalers at every opportunity.

[seemslikeadream]

Wikileaks claims Irishman gunned down in Bolivia was set up
U.S. cable links Bolivian govt to death plot, secret plan
By PATRICK COOPER , IrishCentral.com Staff Writer

Published Sunday, January 2, 2011, 7:22 AMUpdated Sunday, January 2, 2011, 7:50 AM

Michael Dwyer

An Irishman shot to death by the Bolivian Army in April 2009 was lured to his death, a new Wikileaks document claims.

Michael Dwyer, a 24-year-old man from Tipperary, was one of the three men shot in Santa Cruz last April 16th over an alleged plot to assassinate president Evo Morales.

Wikileaks quotes a U.S. Embassy cable which states the government set Dwyer and his fellow paramilitary gang members up in order to attack opponents of the Evo Morales government.

Bolivian investigators later claimed to have found email correspondence linking one of the men shot to Istvan Belovai, a former Hungarian military intelligence officer who defected to the U.S. in 1990 and later became a CIA agent.

But United States diplomats say this was a hoax and Dwyer was lured to his death as part of a plot by Bolivia’s own intelligence services aimed at Morales opponents.

The diplomatic cable from La Paz released by Wikileaks says Dwyer was hired by disguised Bolivian intelligence agents and set up to mount a phony terrorist campaign.

The cable says this campaign would have given President Evo Morales an excuse to go after right wing critics of his.

The cable quotes a local source saying Dwyer and the two others were shot in order to “erase tracks.’

The source interviewed by US officials stated that Rózsa Flores, the leader of Dwyer’s ‘terrorists’ group, was contracted by Col Jorge Santiesteban, head of police intelligence, and his deputy, Capt Wálter Andrade.

The cable appears to be backed up by evidence from La Razon newspaper in Bolivia, which received photographs dated from January 2007 and appeared to show Capt Andrade socialising with Rózsa Flores.

Sacha Llorenti, Bolivia’s interior minister has called the leaked cable “gossip." Bolivia’s public prosecutor last month charged 39 people in the alleged plot including many opposition leaders who have fled the country.

The Dwyer family continue to press the Irish governemnt for help in finding out exactly what happened to their son.

[Plutonia]

Moar

A few Wikileaks cables published in the Spanish newspaper El País (and not yet elsewhere).

Also Haikuleaks:

'We have made request
after request,' he said, 'Why
doesn't the U.S. respond?
04SANAA2346.txt


They also often
released hostages shortly
after their capture.
08STATE116943.txt

A Cuban woman
in her thirties confides, “It’s all
about who you know.
08HAVANA103.txt


We have not noted
any tendency to shake,
blink or roll his eyes.
06LIMA4570.txt

[Laodicean]

Deoxy.org:

WikiLeaks & Cablegate Feeds

To the cloud...

WikiLeaks CableCloud

WikiLeaks CableCloud measures words from 1984 Cablegate titles.

[JackRiddler]

.

Mike Whitney, good article on Venezuela, makes use of Wikileaks cables showing US continuing covert destabilization & infiltration measures.

http://counterpunch.org/whitney01042011.html

.

[stillrobertpaulsen]

Not sure where the best thread to post this is, so until Jeff starts a forum strictly for WikiLeaks cable revelations, here's my contribution:

Israel said it would keep Gaza near collapse: WikiLeaks

By Reuters
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011 -- 9:47 am

Israel told US officials in 2008 it would keep Gaza's economy "on the brink of collapse" while avoiding a humanitarian crisis, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by a Norwegian daily on Wednesday.

Three cables cited by the Aftenposten newspaper, which has said it has all 250,000 U.S. cables leaked to WikiLeaks, showed that Israel kept the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv briefed on its internationally criticized blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The territory, home to 1.3 million Palestinians, is run by the Islamist Hamas group, which is shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence or accept existing interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.

"As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to (U.S. embassy economic officers) on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge," one of the cables read.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/isra ... wikileaks/

[Simulist]

Not sure where the best thread to post this is, so until Jeff starts a forum strictly for WikiLeaks cable revelations, here's my contribution:

Israel said it would keep Gaza near collapse: WikiLeaks

By Reuters
Wednesday, January 5th, 2011 -- 9:47 am

Israel told US officials in 2008 it would keep Gaza's economy "on the brink of collapse" while avoiding a humanitarian crisis, according to U.S. diplomatic cables published by a Norwegian daily on Wednesday.

Three cables cited by the Aftenposten newspaper, which has said it has all 250,000 U.S. cables leaked to WikiLeaks, showed that Israel kept the U.S. Embassy in Tel Aviv briefed on its internationally criticized blockade of the Gaza Strip.

The territory, home to 1.3 million Palestinians, is run by the Islamist Hamas group, which is shunned by the West over its refusal to recognize Israel, renounce violence or accept existing interim Israeli-Palestinian peace deals.

"As part of their overall embargo plan against Gaza, Israeli officials have confirmed to (U.S. embassy economic officers) on multiple occasions that they intend to keep the Gazan economy on the brink of collapse without quite pushing it over the edge," one of the cables read.

http://www.rawstory.com/rs/2011/01/isra ... wikileaks/

I would be extremely interested in Alice's analysis of this information with regards to her thinking on WikiLeaks and Israel.

[barracuda]

I don't think there's any way to look at what's happened in Gaza outside of the context of a humanitaran crisis that has gone on for years. Whatever their plan was, the Israelis haven't avoided that outcome at all. Quite the contrary.

[Joe Hillshoist]

Speaking of Gaza:

Found this at Craig Murrays website.

http://www.facebook.com/pages/Gaza-Yout ... 4244840679


GAZAN YOUTH’S MANIFESTO FOR CHANGE

Fuck Hamas. Fuck Israel. Fuck Fatah. Fuck UN. Fuck UNWRA. Fuck USA! We, the youth in Gaza, are so fed up with Israel, Hamas, the occupation, the violations of human rights and the indifference of the international community! We want to scream and break this wall of silence, injustice and indifference like the Israeli F16’s breaking the wall of sound; scream with all the power in our souls in order to release this immense frustration that consumes us because of this fucking situation we live in;


Found it via Craig Murray

Sorry back to topic.

[seemslikeadream]

Bieber won the cover. But *inside* the February issue of Vanity Fair, a feature on Wikileaks teased as WIKIGATE: The Twisted Inside Story of How Julian Assange Spilled the Government's Biggest Secrets.

"For his WikiLeaks bombshells to land with maximum force, Julian Assange needed the mainstream media. Sarah Ellison reports on the Faustian pact between Assange and Britain's leading investigative paper."

It's not online yet.

[vanlose kid]

WikiLeaks: Israel charged bribes for Gaza access


By JOSEF FEDERMAN
The Associated Press
Thursday, January 6, 2011; 7:29 AM

JERUSALEM -- A U.S. diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks on Thursday quoted American officials as saying a key Israeli cargo crossing for goods entering the Gaza Strip was rife with corruption.

The June 14, 2006, cable, published Thursday by Norway's Aftenposten daily, says major American companies told U.S. diplomats they were forced to pay hefty bribes to get goods into Gaza. It was unclear whether the practice still continues.

There was no immediate comment from Israel.

The document quoted a local Coca-Cola distributor as saying he was asked to pay more than $3,000 to get a truckload of merchandise through the Karni crossing. The executive claimed an unidentified "high-level official" at the crossing headed the corruption ring.

"Corruption extends to Karni management and involves logistics companies working as middlemen for military and civilian officials at the terminal," the document says.

The executive was identified as Joerg Hartmann, with Coca-Cola's distributor in the West Bank. The company did not immediately return a call seeking comment.

The cable says other companies, including Proctor & Gamble, Caterpillar, Philip Morris, Westinghouse, Hewlett-Packard, Motorola, Aramex and Dell, had complained of corruption at the crossing. It was not clear which companies had actually paid the bribes, though the document said Caterpillar executives refused to pay.

The alleged corruption occurred a year before Hamas overran Gaza and Israel imposed an economic blockade. At that time, however, Israeli-Palestinian violence frequently closed the border crossings.

Hartmann told U.S. diplomats that the cost of the bribes would rise after extended closures of the border.

The document was identified as a "joint cable" by the U.S. ambassador to Israel in Tel Aviv and the American consul-general in Jerusalem, who works closely with the Palestinians. The embassy had no immediate comment.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/co ... 01488.html

*

[vanlose kid]

U.S. Embassy Turned a Blind Eye as Suspected CIA Banker Allen Stanford Bilked Investors, Secret Cables Reveal
by Tom Burghardt / January 3rd, 2011

While R. Allen Stanford was happily ensconced on the Caribbean island of Antigua, allegedly bribing officials there as he expanded his banking empire, secret cables released by the whistleblowing web site WikiLeaks revealed that U.S. Embassy officials held themselves at arm’s length even as they provided the accused fraudster with political cover.

As Antifascist Calling reported last summer, Stanford International Bank (SIB) and Stanford Financial Group (SFG), once conservatively valued at $50 billion, were no more legitimate than penny stock frauds or advance fee scams on the internet. To make matters worse, for years federal regulators turned a blind eye towards the bank’s reckless practices.

As it turns out, so too did the U.S. Embassy.

Cablegate file 06BRIDGETOWN755, “Cricket Breakfast Serves Up First Encounter with Allen Stanford,” dated 03 May 2006, revealed that “Ambassador Kramer met controversial Texan billionaire Allen Stanford for the first time at an April 21 ‘Legends of Cricket’ breakfast in Barbados.”

The confidential embassy cable reported that “Stanford bent the Ambassador’s ear concerning his significant new tourism and property investments in Antigua and plans for his Caribbean Star and Caribbean Sun airlines.”

The occasion for the meeting, an inadvertent encounter if the embassy’s account is to be believed, was an April 21, 2006 breakfast at the Barbados Hilton.

Stanford, who went on to donate some $20 million to the England and Wales Cricket Board, attended the lavish affair in the company of Barbados Prime Minister Owen Arthur, U.S. Ambassador Mary E. Kramer, assorted sports stars and local luminaries.

The cable averred that “Allen Stanford is a controversial Texan billionaire who has made significant investments in offshore finance, aviation, and property development in Antigua and throughout the region. His companies are rumored to engage in bribery, money laundering, and political manipulation.”

Rumored by whom, one might reasonably ask? An important point since this was certainly not general knowledge at the time, particularly amongst those who were being fleeced.

But rather than blowing the whistle when it could have mattered most to investors and Antiguan citizens, the Bush-appointed official took cover. “Embassy officers do not reach out to Stanford” we read, “because of the allegations of bribery and money laundering. The Ambassador managed to stay out of any one-on-one photos with Stanford during the breakfast.”

Why would Kramer have done otherwise? After all, as Secretary of State Hillary Clinton piously intoned last month denouncing WikiLeaks, “this is the role our diplomats play in serving America.”

A “Unique Investment Strategy”

When “Sir Allen” was arrested in 2009, the federal indictment charged that the high-flying Texan had sold more than $7 billion in fraudulent certificates of deposit and some $1.2 billion in mutual funds.

The centerpiece of SIB’s “unique investment strategy” were financial instruments that were claimed to be safe, liquid and redeemable at a moment’s notice.

According to a blurb on the “Sir Allen Stanford” web site, the Stanford Financial Group “provides private and institutional investors with global expertise in asset allocation strategies, investment advisory services, equity research, international private banking and trust administration, commercial banking, investment banking, merchant banking, institutional sales and trading, real estate investment and insurance.”

The reality was far different, however. In fact, the majority of Group “assets” were in very illiquid real estate holdings and private accounts managed by just two individuals, Allen Stanford and his college roommate, James M. Davis, the bank’s chief financial officer.

According to federal prosecutors, accounts were divided into three tiers, I, II and III with Tier III accounts representing “more than 80% of the purported total value of SIBL’s investments.”

“STANFORD and DAVIS” the charge sheet reads, “directed, managed, and monitored … the Tier III investments. According to internal SIBL documents, as of June 30, 2008, these Tier III investments comprised the majority of the purported value of SIBL’s investment portfolio. Approximately 50% of the purported value of Tier III (approximately $3.2 billion) included investments in artificially valued real estate and approximately 30% of the purported value of Tier III (approximately $1.6 billion) included notes on personal loans to STANFORD. STANFORD, DAVIS and others did not disclose to, and actively concealed from, investors, SGC and SIBL employees, and others the fact that approximately $4.8 billion in purported Tier III investments consisted of such artificially valued real estate and notes on personal loans to STANFORD.”

A sweet deal if you’re in on the fix.

Lured by “high rates that exceed those available through true certificates of deposits offered by traditional banks,” thousands of investors were indelicately relieved of their life savings. Of the more than $8 billion hoovered up by the banker and his cronies, only about $500 million has been recovered.

This raises the question: where did all that money go? Did it just simply vanish into thin air, secret Stanford accounts, or perhaps, was it diverted elsewhere by the banker’s silent partners in a certain three-lettered agency?

When asked during a 2009 interview by CNBC’s Scott Cohn whether he had been “helpful” to U.S. authorities in Latin America, Stanford replied, “Are you talking about the CIA?” Cohn: “Well, you tell me?” Stanford: “I’m just not going to talk about that.”

Stanford’s reticence to discuss possible Agency connections are certainly understandable.

We do know, however, that like many dubious banking ventures before it, Stanford Financial Group had powerful friends in high places, in the White House, Congress, amongst regulatory agencies and, plausibly, the CIA; all of whom tripped over themselves furnishing Stanford’s “family” of companies with a watertight “roof.”

The More Things “Change”

According to available evidence, why would the banker have believed his shady empire was on the brink of collapse in 2009, or that well-connected friends wouldn’t come to the rescue? After all, it happened before.

Last year The New York Times disclosed that Stephen J. Korotash, an associate regional director of enforcement at the Ft. Worth, Texas office of the Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) said the regulatory agency “stood down” their investigation “at the request of another federal agency, which he declined to name.”

A curious admission all the more damning for regulators considering that suspicions, and hastily-closed investigations, have dogged the bank for the better part of two decades.

Damning perhaps, but not surprising.

Nearly a quarter century before charges were laid against Allen Stanford, the late investigative reporter, Penny Lernoux, recounted in her still-timely book, In Banks We Trust, a fraudulent scheme by Citibank (now Citigroup) to evade paying taxes while cooking the books and dodging “legal requirements on bank reserves, liquidity, and lending limits.” And, similar to the Stanford grift, the SEC did worse than nothing.

Lernoux averred that even after a whistleblower and former bank vice president proved “conclusively” that Citibank had “systematically” violated the law, “the SEC’s enforcement staff refused to take any action against the bank on the ground that its pursuit of unlawful profits accorded with ‘reasonable and standard business judgement’.”

Here’s the kicker. Lernoux wrote that the “SEC also concluded that Citibank’s management had no duty to disclose improper actions since the bank had never claimed its top officers possessed ‘honesty and integrity’.” Sound familiar?

Fast forward to the era of the Bush crime family and we learn that in 2006, BusinessWeek revealed that the president “bestowed on his intelligence czar … broad authority, in the name of national security” to excuse companies from “their normal accounting and securities-disclosure obligations” if they revealed “certain top-secret defense projects.”

Would such “broad authority” also cover financial institutions accused of laundering drug money for select “War on Terror” allies?

Interestingly enough, Bush’s “intelligence czar” at the time, John D. Negroponte, was U.S. Ambassador in Honduras during the 1980s at the height of the Reagan administration’s anticommunist jihad in Central America.

In addition to covering for the CIA as the Agency stood-up death squads in Honduras, Negroponte, as The Baltimore Sun revealed in 1995, turned a blind eye as America’s “freedom fighters,” the Nicaraguan Contras, financed their terrorist insurgency against the leftist Sandinista government by importing billions of dollars of cocaine into the United States with a major assist from their ideological soul-mates, the Medellín and Cali drug cartels.

Recall that during this period of intensified U.S. covert operations, the Reagan Justice Department signed a Memorandum of Understanding with the CIA. That 1982 memo, brokered between U.S. Attorney General William French Smith and CIA Director William Casey, absolved the Agency from reporting drug smuggling by their assets, the Nicaraguan Contras and Afghan mujahideen.

Leveraging their anticommunist bona fides to import massive quantities of drugs into the United States, and laundering the proceeds through a spider’s web of U.S. and offshore banks including, as several investigative reports have alleged, a Stanford bank, one can only wonder whether similar cosy arrangements are in force today.

Recall also that illegal activities by institutions as diverse as Paul Helliwell’s Castle Bank and Trust in the Bahamas, Frank Nugan and Michael Hand’s Nugan Hand Bank in Sydney, Saudi Arabia and the Cayman Islands, or the far-flung, crooked empire of Agha Hasan Abedi’s Bank of Credit and Commerce International, were all financial black holes where organized crime, drug-fueled intelligence operations and geopolitical intrigue freely intermixed.

Separated in time and geography, what all three banks had in common was their close proximity to international drug trafficking networks and the CIA, particularly in areas of acute interest to U.S. policy planners. Did Stanford International Bank have an analogous relationship with the Agency?

After all the Stanford bank, like Castle, Nugan Hand and BCCI before it had been focal points of unseemly financial practices for years. Indeed, nearly thirty years ago investigative journalist, Nancy Grodin, reported in CovertAction (Number 16, March 1982), that like SIB, Nugan Hand enticed prospective investors “with offers of private banking services, high interest rates (higher than anywhere else in the region), tax-free deposits and complete secrecy.”

Across the decades, investigations revealed that leading figures in Castle, Nugan Hand and BCCI had actively conspired with drug traffickers to import narcotics into the United States.

Top bank officials Helliwell, Nugan, Hand and Abedi worked alongside organized crime figures and former intelligence and Pentagon officials, including a past director of the CIA. And when the chips were down, all managed to evade being held to account for the most serious charges: drug trafficking, money laundering, arms smuggling, murder, terrorism, even nuclear proliferation, precisely because such exposure would have revealed “sensitive intelligence operations.”

While some might argue that in the broad scheme of things considering the depth of capitalism’s economic meltdown, Stanford’s alleged grift was mere chump change compared to the trillions of dollars plundered by even bigger fish.

From a parapolitical perspective however, the multiple obfuscations, smokescreens and outright falsehoods surrounding the scandal indicate this is no simple case of greed or another tawdry example of “elite deviance.”

Rather, as researcher, Peter Dale Scott, has assiduously documented over the years, the vicissitudes of “L’affaire Stanford” may be emblematic of “continuous U.S. involvement in the global drug connection,” a “global financial complex of hot money uniting prominent business … and government as well as underworld figures” for purposes of “achieving and maintaining global American dominance.”

Drug Links Covered-Up

While Ambassador Kramer may have avoided having her photo snapped with the accused fraudster, her rather pedestrian concerns pale in comparison to the fact that Stanford has been the subject of multiple drugs investigations over a 20-year period that have all been scrupulously covered-up.

Indeed, years before the federal government ran SIB to ground, earlier probes, including those investigating drug-money laundering during the Iran-Contra period, were killed.

Stanford’s Montserrat-based Guardian International Bank, a suspected conduit for Contra drug funds, short-circuited investigators when it pulled-up stakes, surrendered its banking license and left the island.

By 1986, evidence emerged that top Contra officials and the Agency enjoyed cosy ties with both Pablo Escobar and the Orejuela brothers, respective kingpins of the Medellín and Cali drug cartels.

Under pressure from the Reagan administration, however, Congress and corporate media buried the drug angle to the investigation, as Consortium News journalist, Robert Parry, has documented in a series of groundbreaking reports.

After his departure from Montserrat under a cloud, the banker trained his sights on Antigua and Barbuda where he developed a close relationship with former prime minister Lester Bird.

The Independent reported that during the course of a joint Scotland Yard-FBI investigation, the bank “was suspected of laundering drug money from the notorious Medellin and Cali drug cartels run by Pablo Escobar and the Orejuela brothers.”

“Under the Bird family leadership” The Independent disclosed, “the island was widely regarded as one of the most corrupt in the Caribbean, with well-documented links to arms and drug smuggling and money laundering.”

The former FBI agent who led the Guardian probe, Ross Gaffney, told The Independent “we suspected that Stanford’s bank was involved in money laundering.” Gaffney said that even after Guardian closed, the FBI “continued to take an interest in Stanford and set up a second inquiry into that bank after receiving intelligence that it continued to launder money for the Medellin and Cali cartels.”

The former federal agent said, “We had hard intelligence about what he was doing and we began to develop it” but that investigation died or, more likely, was deep-sixed, by officials higher-up the food chain.

According to The Observer, a second FBI source “confirmed the agency was looking at links to international drug gangs as part of the huge investigation into Stanford’s banking activities.”

Other sources “in the US Drug Enforcement Administration” The Observer reported, “also confirmed that while the investigations into Stanford’s affairs were ‘with the FBI and Securities Exchange Commission, there may well have been a trail connecting his Mexican affairs to narco-trafficking interests’.”

But even after the stench of Iran-Contra faded from the headlines, drug probes targeting the bank continued well into the 1990s. The Houston Chronicle reported that according to court documents “operatives of the Juarez cartel began opening accounts at Stanford’s Antigua-based bank in an effort to launder money amassed under one of Mexico’s most vicious drug lords, Amado Carrillo Fuentes.”

“Together,” the Chronicle disclosed, “they used Stanford International Bank to open 10 accounts and deposit $3 million–a small sliver of the cartel’s fortunes but enough to pique authorities’ interest.”

Despite long-running investigations, federal sources told the Chronicle, “any alleged Stanford connection to drug cartels and their money could lie buried in the paperwork gathered for the Security and Exchange Commission’s civil inquiry.”

Federal officials claimed, despite probes that resulted in stiff fines for illicit practices by other U.S. banks including, most recently, Wachovia, as Bloomberg Markets magazine reported, that tracing drug profits laundered through offshore banks like Stanford’s “is difficult to document.”

That is, acutely “difficult” if investigators are ordered to look away, and evidence suggests they were. How else would one interpret the statement by The Observer’s DEA source who told the British newspaper, “I think we’ll find that any possible drug-related trail and SEC priorities are not all in the same frame.”

When the scandal broke, Cablegate file 09BRIDGETOWN114, 18 February 2009, “Antigua: Upheaval on the Eve of Elections,” informs us that the 17 February announcement of new parliamentary elections “was almost immediately overshadowed by an announcement by the Securities and Exchange Commission of action being taken against U.S.-Antiguan citizen, Sir Allen Stanford, for ‘massive, on-going fraud’.”

The Embassy informed the State Department that “local fears over Stanford indictment have led to a run on the Stanford Financial Group’s subsidiary the Bank of Antigua, with depositors lining up for an hour or more to withdrawal their money.”

As reported above, through a series of maneuvers and what were alleged to be illicit payments to former Antiguan Prime Minister Lester Bird, Stanford set up shop on the Caribbean island in 1990, and gobbled up prime real estate, acquired dual citizenship and a knighthood, and eventually took control of the Bank of Antigua in a highly-dubious “reorganization.”

The ripples from the indictment spread like a rogue wave across Antigua and the Eastern Caribbean. Antiguan officials, and the U.S. Embassy, were concerned that once the depth of the fraud sank in, “unrest” would follow in its wake.

Shortly after that 2009 embassy cable, The Guardian reported that an investigation by the Antiguan government uncovered “large payments … in Isle of Man bank accounts controlled by Antiguan politicians.”

According “to documents seen by The Guardian, HSBC bank, in the Isle of Man, accepted $3.2m (£2.3m) on behalf of Asot Michael, once chief of staff to the former Antigua prime minister Lester Bird.”

“The cash under investigation” the British newspaper disclosed, “came via an Israeli businessman, Bruce Rappaport, who is alleged to have diverted Antiguan funds into his own pocket while making payments to local politicians.”

HSBC denied all wrongdoing and “would publicly neither confirm nor deny information about individual Manx accounts,” saying the bank “has robust anti-money laundering policies and clearly defined policies and procedures concerning politically exposed persons.”

“It is unclear” the Embassy averred, “if either party will try hard to use the Stanford indictment as an election issue–Stanford amassed his fortune under an ALP [Antiguan Labor Party] government, and was knighted by a UPP [United Progressive Party] government, so all hands are likely equally dirty.”

Many worry that these issues [crime, fraud and violence] could not only spell disaster for the UPP, but for the country’s economy as a whole, leading to a severe economic depression and intolerable unemployment creating more violence and a cycle of less tourism, more unemployment and more crime.

Curiously, while corporate media have focused on Stanford’s lavish lifestyle, girlfriends and upscale island properties, nary a word has been whispered about the banker’s alleged links to notorious drug cartels or to some of the CIA’s dirtiest operations.

Even at this late date, it appears that the dodgy banker has well-connected friends who want to bury this angle of a scandal that has defrauded thousands and wrecked entire economies.

The question is, why?

Follow the Money, but Where?

Investors in the Stanford Ponzi scheme have lost their shirts, and its likely they’ll never recover even a fraction of their losses.

“In the past two years” the Houston Chronicle reported, “Stanford himself has ceased to be the story. The most amazing aspect of the Stanford saga is how little money has been recovered. As the court-appointed receiver has chased assets around the globe, he’s found Stanford’s accounts stunningly empty.”

During the investigation that led to the indictments, auditors learned that that funds were moved through Stanford-controlled accounts to offshore banks, including HSBC London; Bank Julius Baer, Zurich; Credit Suisse, United Kingdom; SG Private Banking, Geneva; Banque Franck Galland & Cie S.A., Geneva; RBS Coutts, Zurich; Coutts Bank Von Ernst, Geneva and Toronto Dominion Bank, Canada; banks which have figured in past money laundering or tax-avoidance scandals. In all, 28 numbered accounts were listed by prosecutors, veritable black holes that escaped regulatory scrutiny.

Nearly a decade ago, investigative journalist, Stephen Bender, wrote in Z Magazine that “an understanding of the drug trade’s machinations is incomplete without an analysis of the crucial role transnational banks play in the laundering of drug proceeds.”

The House Permanent Subcommittee on Investigations reported back in 2000: “Despite increasing international attention and stronger anti-money laundering controls, some current estimates are that $500 billion to $1 trillion in criminal proceeds are laundered through banks worldwide each year, with about half of that amount moved through United States banks.”

Recall that at the height of capitalism’s current global economic meltdown, Antonio Maria Costa, the director of the United Nations Office on Drugs and Crime told The Observer that “drugs money worth billions of dollars kept the financial system afloat at the height of the global crisis.”

Costa told the British newspaper he saw substantial evidence that that proceeds from the illicit trade were “the only liquid investment capital” available to some banks on the brink of collapse last year and that “a majority of the $352bn (£216bn) of drugs profits was absorbed into the economic system as a result.”

The UN drugs chief said that in “many instances, the money from drugs was the only liquid investment capital.” And with markets tanking and major bank failures a near daily occurrence, “liquidity was the banking system’s main problem and hence liquid capital became an important factor.”

If only a tiny portion of these illegal proceeds were siphoned-off by secret state agencies, including the CIA, funds available for covert operations and other dubious purposes, such as suborning treason amongst foreign officials to spy on their own governments, as WikiLeaks diplomatic cables revealed, the amounts would be staggering.

Bender informed us that one conduit for laundering drug profits is the private banking system.

“U.S.-based private banks” Bender wrote, “operate in a regulatory twilight zone enabling the laundering of drug profits as confirmed by the GAO. Private banks are ‘not subject to the Bank Secrecy Act,’ thus exempting banks from complying with ‘specific anti-money-laundering provisions…such as the one requiring that suspicious transactions be reported to U.S. authorities’.”

And with “international private banking” a prominent selling-point of the Stanford firm’s dark web, one might reasonably surmise that drug traffickers would also view this regulatory black hole in the most favourable light.

Indeed, this “twilight zone” was precisely where Allen Stanford operated. As The Miami Herald reported, state and federal regulators allowed SIB to move “vast amounts of money offshore–without reporting a penny to regulators.”

SIB’s arrangements with the Florida Office of Financial Regulation were so lax that the company “was allowed to sell hundreds of millions in bank notes without allowing regulators to check for fraud.” Indeed, Florida regulators granted Stanford’s bank “sweeping powers never given to a private company.”

But what if that “private company” were handed an exemption from “their normal accounting and securities-disclosure obligations” as BusinessWeek reported, on grounds of “national security,” and investigations into that firm were squashed “at the request of another federal agency,” wouldn’t this also suggest that Stanford’s Ponzi scheme may have also been a cover for ongoing U.S. intelligence operations?

And once the scope of the fraud became too large to ignore, it wouldn’t be a stretch to conclude that the Agency decided to cut their losses and “move on”?

As investigative reporters, Jonathan Beaty and S.C. Gwynne, uncovered in their stunning exposé, The Outlaw Bank, it wouldn’t be the first time.

For years the CIA had concealed their close involvement with the crooked Bank of Credit and Commerce International (BCCI), tied to everything from drug trafficking to money laundering and from nuclear proliferation to the financing of terrorist groups, including those that morphed into Al-Qaeda.

And when they “came clean” to Treasury Department officials in a report that remains classified to this day, “suddenly, and for no apparent reason,” Beaty and Gwynne wrote, Treasury “lost all interest in BCCI.”

Perhaps for similar reasons too, in the years ahead, we’ll find that “any alleged Stanford connection to drug cartels and their money could lie buried in the paperwork gathered for the Security and Exchange Commission’s civil inquiry,” where its likely to stay buried.

http://dissidentvoice.org/2011/01/u-s-e ... es-reveal/

[embedded links and more at source]

*

[JackRiddler]

It's been hard to get the 'brutal dictator' label to stick with Ahmadinejad, because guess what---he's not. At least according to leaked State Dept. cables (thanks Wikileaks!). The unequivocal "WL is spyops" folks can spin and are spinning this however they can.

http://www.theatlantic.com/international/archive/2011/01/do-we-have-ahmadinejad-all-wrong/69434/

Do We Have Ahmadinejad All Wrong?

By Reza Aslan Jan 13 2011, 7:30 AM ET

Is it possible that Iran's blustering president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, long thought to be a leading force behind some of Iran's most hard-line and repressive policies, is actually a reformer whose attempts to liberalize, secularize, and even "Persianize" Iran have been repeatedly stymied by the country's more conservative factions? That is the surprising impression one gets reading the latest WikiLeaks revelations, which portray Ahmadinejad as open to making concessions on Iran's nuclear program and far more accommodating to Iranians' demands for greater freedoms than anyone would have thought. Two episodes in particular deserve special scrutiny not only for what they reveal about Ahmadinejad but for the light they shed on the question of who really calls the shots in Iran.

In October 2009, Ahamdinejad's chief nuclear negotiator, Saeed Jalili, worked out a compromise with world power representatives in Geneva on Iran's controversial nuclear program. But the deal, in which Iran agreed to ship nearly its entire stockpile of low enriched uranium to Russia and France for processing, collapsed when it failed to garner enough support in Iran's parliament, the Majles.

According to a U.S. diplomatic cable recently published by WikiLeaks, Ahmadinejad, despite all of his tough talk and heated speeches about Iran's right to a nuclear program, fervently supported the Geneva arrangement, which would have left Iran without enough enriched uranium to make a nuclear weapon. But, inside the often opaque Tehran government, he was thwarted from pursuing the deal by politicians on both the right and the left who saw the agreement as a "defeat" for the country and who viewed Ahmadinejad as, in the words of Ali Larijani, the conservative Speaker of the Majles, "fooled by the Westerners."

Despite the opposition from all sides, Ahmadinajed, we have learned, continued to tout the nuclear deal as a positive and necessary step for Iran. In February 2010, he reiterated his support for the Geneva agreement saying, "If we allow them to take [Iran's enriched uranium for processing], there is no problem." By June, long after all parties in the Geneva agreement had given up on the negotiations and the Iranian government had publicly taken a much firmer line on its nuclear program, Ahmadinejad was still trying to revive the deal. "The Tehran declaration is still alive and can play a role in international relations even if the arrogant (Western) powers are upset and angry," he declared. Even as late as September, Ahmadinejad was still promising that "there is a good chance that talks will resume in the near future," despite statements to the contrary from Iran's Supreme Leader, Ayatollah Khamenei.

The second revelation from WikiLeaks is even more remarkable. Apparently, during a heated 2009 security meeting at the height of the popular demonstrations roiling Iran in the wake of his disputed reelection, Ahmadinejad suggested that perhaps the best way to deal with the protesters would be to open up more personal and social freedoms, including more freedom of the press. While the suggestion itself seems extraordinary, coming as it does from a man widely viewed by the outside world as the instigating force behind Iran's turn toward greater repression, what is truly amazing about this story is the response of the military brass in the room. According to WikiLeaks, the Revolutionary Guard's Chief of Staff, Mohammed Ali Jafari, slapped Ahmadinejad across the face right in the middle of the meeting, shouting, "You are wrong! It is you who created this mess! And now you say give more freedom to the press?"

Taken together, these revelations paint a picture of Iran's president as a man whose domestic and foreign policy decisions - whether with regard to his views on women's rights or his emphasis on Iran's Persian heritage - are at odds not only with his image in the West but with the views and opinions of the conservative establishment in Iran.

Take, for example, Ahmadinejad's comments in June 2010, when he publicly condemned the harassing of young women for "improperly" covering themselves, a common complaint among Iranians. "The government has nothing to do with [women's hijab] and doesn't interfere in it. We consider it insulting when a man and a woman are walking in the streets and they're asked about their relationship. No one has the right to ask about it." Ahmadinejad even criticized "the humiliating high-profile [morality] police crackdown already underway," and recommended launching what he called a "cultural campaign" against "interpretations of Islamic dress that have been deemed improper by authorities."

In response to those rather enlightened statements, the head of the clerical establishment in the Majles, Mohammad Taghi Rahbar, lambasted Ahamdinejad. "Those who voted for you were the fully veiled people," Rahbar said. "The badly veiled 'greens' did not vote for you, so you'd better consider that what pleases God is not pleasing a number of corrupt people." The ultra-conservative head of the Guardian Council, Ayatollah Ahmad Jannati, also weighed in on Ahmadinejad's criticism of the morality police. "Drug traffickers are hanged, terrorists are executed and robbers are punished for their crimes, but when it comes to the law of God, which is above human rights, [some individuals] stay put and speak about cultural programs."

Ayatollah Jannati's comments reflect the growing rift between the president and the country's religious establishment, perhaps best exemplified by Ahamdinejad's unprecedented decision to stop attending meetings of the Expediency Council, whose members represent the interests of Iran's clerical elite. Ahamdinejad later questioned the very concept of clerical rule in Iran, raising controversy in Tehran and drawing the ire of the powerful religious establishment. "Administering the country should not be left to the [Supreme] Leader, the religious scholars, and other [clerics]," Ahmadinejad declared, lampooning his religious rivals for "running to Qum [the religious capital of Iran] for every instruction."

Ahmadinejad's brazen opinions were echoed by his closest adviser and chief of staff, Esfandiar Rahim Mashaei. "An Islamic government is not capable of running a vast and populous country like Iran," Mashaei said. "Running a country is like a horse race, but the problem is that [the clergy] are not horse racers."

Bear in mind that advancing such anti-regime, anti-clerical views can be considered a criminal offense in Iran, one potentially punishable by death. And yet, they seem to be part of a larger push by Ahmadinejad and his circle to change the nature of the Islamic Republic. Indeed, Ahmadinejad seems to be actively pursuing what Meshaei has termed "an Iranian school of thought rather than the Islamic school of thought" for Iran, one that harkens back to Iran's ancient Persian heritage, drawing particular inspiration from Iran's ancient king, Cyrus the Great.

While many Iranians - particularly among the supporters of Ahmadinejad's 2009 presidential rival, Mir-Hossein Mousavi, who frequently used ancient Persian imagery during the campaign - share precisely the same view, the country's conservatives and the religious establishment most definitely do not. "The president should be aware that he is obligated to promote Islam and not ancient Iran," cried one member of Parliament, "and if he fails to fulfill his obligation, he will lose the support and trust of the Muslim nation of Iran."

Even Ahmadinejad's spiritual mentor, Ayatollah Mesbah-Yazdi, criticized the notion of emphasizing Iran's Persian past, condemning those who support such a view as being "not our comrades; we have no permanent friendship to anyone, but to those who are following Supreme Leader Ayatollah Khamenei and Islam," Mesbah-Yazdi said. "Did Imam Khomeini ever refrain from mentioning Islam in a speech and say Iran instead?"

It might seem shocking to both casual and dedicated Iran-watcher that the bombastic Ahmadinejad could, behind Tehran's closed doors, be playing the reformer. After all, this was the man who, in 2005, generated wide outrage in the West for suggesting that Israel should be "wiped from the map." But even that case said as much about our limited understanding of him and his context as it did about Ahmadinejad himself. The expression "wipe from the map" means "destroy" in English but not in Farsi. In Farsi, it means not that Israel should be eliminated but that the existing political borders should literally be wiped from a literal map and replaced with those of historic Palestine. That's still not something likely to win him cheers in U.S. policy circles, but the distinction, which has been largely lost from the West's understanding of the Iranian president, is important.

As always, both Ahmadinejad the man and the Iranian government he ostensibly leads resist easy characterization. The truth is that the opaque nature of Iran's government and the country's deeply fractured political system make it difficult to draw any clear or simple conclusions. It's not obvious whether Ahmadinejad is driven by a legitimate desire for reform or just tactical political interests. But if you oppose the Mullahs' rule, yearn for greater social and political freedoms for the Iranian people, and envision an Iran that draws inspiration from the glories of its Persian past, then, believe it or not, you have more in common with Mahmoud Ahmadinejad than you might have thought.

A bit from a cable:

Here is the full description of the incident from the cable:

2. (S) According to source, President Ahmedinejad surprised other SNSC members by taking a surprisingly liberal posture during a mid January post-Ashura meeting of the SNSC called to discuss next steps on dealing with opposition protests. Source said that Ahmedinejad claimed that “people feel suffocated,” and mused that to defuse the situation it may be necessary to allow more personal and social freedoms, including more freedom of the press.

3. (S) According to source, Ahmedinejad’s statements infuriated Revolutionary Guard Chief of Staff Mohammed Ali Jafari, who exclaimed “You are wrong! (In fact) it is YOU who created this mess! And now you say give more freedom to the press?!” Source said that Jafarli then slapped Ahmedinejad in the face, causing an uproar and an immediate call for a break in the meeting, which was never resumed. Source said that SNSC did not meet again for another two weeks, after Ayatollah Janati succesfully acted as a “peacemaker” between Jafarli and Ahmedinejad. Source added that the break in the SNSC meeting, but not the slap that caused it, has made its way on to some Iranian blogs.
http://thelede.blogs.nytimes.com/2011/01/03/ahmadinejad-was-slapped-by-general-leaked-cable-says/

[vanlose kid]

Wikileaks: US pressured Labour leader over Afghanistan

Monday 17 January 2011

Labour MPs have reacted with shock to claims that senior Dutch civil servants urged US officials to pressure former Labour party leader Wouter Bos to support a continued Dutch military mission in Afghanistan.

The claims flow from US diplomatic cables leaked by the Wikileaks website. Labour's refusal to back a longer stay in Afghanistan eventually led to the government's collapse.

In one cable, officials write that Bos must be made aware the Netherlands' invitation to take part in an important G20 summit is thanks to the country's efforts in Afghanistan.

'Senior Dutch officials... have repeatedly asked the embassy to have a senior Washington official convey to Bos the real reason for the Dutch G20 invitation,' the cable states. 'They complain 'he just doesn't get it,' reflecting the frustrations of the prime minister, foreign minister and defense minister, who support the Dutch remaining in Afghanistan post-2010.'

Another cable talks of the 'discreet, coordinated engagement' necessary to assist committed Dutch leaders in gaining consensus from Bos and later approval by parliament.

Labour MPs now want a parliamentary debate on the issue. 'If this is true, we have a big problem,' Labour MP Ronald Plasterk told the Volkskrant. 'Imagine a US civil servant making plans with the Dutch government against president Obama? It's impossible to imagine such a thing.'

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2 ... labour.php

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NRC, RTL access 3,000 Wikileaks cables from The Hague

Friday 14 January 2011

Iran, Geert Wilders and the joint strike fighter are among the subjects covered in some 3,000 diplomatic cables from US officials in The Hague to Washington, the NRC reports on Friday.

The NRC and RTL news were given access to the cables - part of the 250,000 cable Wikileaks collection - by Norwegian newspaper Aftenposten using a back door route.

The cables cover Iran, the JSF fighter jet, queen Beatrix's possible abdication, Islam critics Ayaan Hirsi Ali and Geert Wilders, the general election, parliamentary debates and how the US can influence them, the NRC said.

One cable, published by the Telegraaf on Friday afternoon, focuses on a meeting between queen Beatrix and the new US ambassador Fay Hartog Levin in August 2009.

During their talks, the queen reportedly tells the ambassador 'it will be difficult' to extend the Dutch military mission in Afghanistan.

The NRC says that while many of the cables are tagged 'secret' or 'confidential', the collection does not include any with a 'top secret' stamp.

http://www.dutchnews.nl/news/archives/2 ... ileaks.php

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dutch wikileaks cables: http://nos.nl/artikel/211837-de-nederla ... ables.html

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[vanlose kid]

WikiLeaks points to US meddling in Haiti
US embassy cables reveal how anxious the US was to enlist Brazil to keep the deposed Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti


Kim Ives guardian.co.uk, Friday 21 January 2011 18.24 GMT


Confidential US diplomatic cables from 2005 and 2006 released this week by WikiLeaks reveal Washington's well-known obsession to keep exiled former President Jean-Bertrand Aristide out of Haiti and Haitian affairs. (On Thursday, Aristide issued a public letter in which he reiterated "my readiness to leave today, tomorrow, at any time" from South Africa for Haiti, because the Haitian people "have never stopped calling for my return" and "for medical reasons", concerning his eyes.)

In a 8 June 2005 meeting of US Ambassador to Brazil John Danilovich, joined by his political counsellor (usually, the local CIA station chief), with then President Lula da Silva's international affairs adviser Marco Aurelio Garcia, we learn that:

"Ambassador and PolCouns ... stressed continued US G[overnment] insistence that all efforts must be made to keep Aristide from returning to Haiti or influencing the political process … [and that Washington was] increasingly concerned about a major deterioration in security, especially in Port au Prince."

The ambassador and his adviser were also anxious about "reestablishing [the] credibility" of the UN Mission to Stabilise Haiti (Minustah), as the UN occupation troops are called. The Americans reminded Garcia that then US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice had called "for firm Minustah action and the possibility that the US may be asked to send troops at some point".

Careful reading between the lines of the cable shows that Garcia was a bit taken aback by the Americans' "insistence"; he reassured the duo "that security is a critical component, but must move in tandem with", among other things, "an inclusive political process". Garcia also noted that "some elements of Lavalas [Aristide's political party] are willing to become involved in a constructive dialogue and should be encouraged", although there was "continued Brazilian resolve to keep Aristide from returning to the country or exerting political influence".

Aristide "does not fit in with a democratic political future" in Haiti, Garcia is quoted as saying. However, he was "cautious on the issue of introduction of US forces" into Haiti, and "would not be drawn into discussion".

The American duo then met on 10 June with Brazilian Under-Secretary for Political Affairs Antonio de Aguiar Patriota. They told him, and he acknowledged, that "Minustah has not been sufficiently robust." All this dismay was over the leadership of Brazilian General Augusto Heleno Ribeiro, then Minustah's military commander. Heleno had repeatedly voiced trepidation about causing unnecessary casualties and, more importantly, being hauled before an international court for war crimes. (At the time, there was an independent International Tribunal on Haiti preparing to hold hearings on the crimes committed by UN troops, Haitian police and paramilitaries during the 2004 coup and the runup to it.)

Less than a month after these meetings, on 5 July 2005, a browbeaten Heleno would lead Minustah's first deadly assault on the armed groups resisting the coup and occupation in Cité Soleil. Attacking in the middle of the night with helicopters, tanks and ground troops, the Brazilian-led operation fired tens of thousands of bullets and dropped bombs, killing and wounding many dozens of innocent civilians, including children and infants.

Later that month, Heleno was cycled out of Minustah and replaced by 57-year-old General Urano Teixeira da Matta Bacellar. Like Heleno, Bacellar was reluctant to use force in Haiti's shanty towns. But pressure from Washington for "robust" action continued, and in late December 2005, "Bacellar had tense meetings with UN and coup regime officials and the rightwing business elite," reported the Haiti Action Committee at the time:

"They reportedly put 'intense pressure' on the general, 'demanding that he intervene brutally in Cité Soleil,' according to AHP. This coincided with a pressure campaign by Chamber of Commerce head Reginald Boulos and sweatshop kingpin Andy Apaid, leader of Group 184 [the civic front that took part in the 2004 coup against Aristide]. Last week, Boulos and Apaid made strident calls in the media for a new UN crackdown on Cité Soleil."

On 6 January 2006, Minustah's then civilian chief, Chilean Juan Gabriel Valdès, said that UN troops would "occupy" Cité Soleil, which UN troops already surrounded.

"We are going to intervene in the coming days," Valdès said. "I think there'll be collateral damage but we have to impose our force, there is no other way."

But some UN officials said that Bacellar "had opposed Valdès' plan", according to Reuters. "The general had insisted that his job was to defend the Haitian constitution, but not to fight crime," the Independent of 9 January reported.

Then, on 7 January 2006, General Bacellar was found dead in his suite at Pétionville's deluxe Montana Hotel, a bullet through his head. He had been sitting in a chair on his balcony, apparently reading. Initially, Brazilian army officials called the shooting a "firearm accident". After a few days, they changed the official verdict to "suicide".

Four days later, US State Department Deputy Assistant Secretary Patrick Duddy met with Dominican President Leonel Fernandez, who "inquired about the circumstances surrounding the death" of Bacellar, another WikiLeaks-released cable reveals. Duddy said that it looked like suicide, but "Fernandez expressed skepticism. He had met General Bacellar; to him, suicide seemed unlikely for a professional of Bacellar´s caliber."

Fernandez suspected Bacellar had been assassinated by "a small group in Haiti dedicated to … creating chaos; [and] that this group had killed Minustah members in the past (a Canadian and a Jordanian, and now the Brazilian General) … The President said he knew of a case in which a Brazilian Minustah member had killed a sniper."

When Duddy asked who might be in this group, the only name Fernandez suggested was that of former soldier and police chief Guy Philippe, the Haitian anti-Aristide "rebel" leader in 2004. A former Dominican general, Nobles Espejo, told a March 2004 fact-finding delegation (on which I travelled) that Philippe's contras had been armed by the US. Philippe had staged guerrilla raids and then invaded Haiti from the Dominican Republic under Fernandez's predecessor, Hipòlito Mejia.

While Fernandez wouldn't rule out "an accidentally self-inflicted wound", the cable explains:

"He believes that the Brazilian government is calling the death a suicide in order to protect the mission from domestic criticism. A confirmed assassination would result in calls from the Brazilian populace for withdrawal from Haiti. Success in this mission is vital for President Lula of Brazil, because it is part of his master plan to obtain a permanent seat on the UN security council."

Fernandez's suspicions – if that's all they were – seem well-founded. It seems unlikely that a decorated army veteran, parachutist and instructor would be careless enough with a pistol to accidentally shoot himself in the head. Furthermore, Bacellar was a very religious man, with a wife and two children in Brazil. He had just returned to Haiti four days earlier from a Christmas visit home. Even if suicide cannot be ruled out, one would have expected such a man to leave behind a message of some sort.

Yet, according to the sources of Brazilian journalist Ana Maria Brambilla, Bacellar "did not display any signs of depression during his last days". He was accustomed, after "39 years of service, to pressure far worse than he had seen in his four months in Haiti," his military colleagues told the Independent.

According to the South African newspaper Beeld, "the latest reports in the Dominican media questioned the feasibility of suicide, as no bullet casing was found near the body … He would have been an easy target for a sniper." Most incongruously, Bacellar's T-shirt and boxer-clad body was reportedly found with a book on his lap, according to the Dominican daily El Nacional, as he had apparently been reading and relaxing in his underwear on his balcony when the urge to shoot himself came on.

Is it possible some interested party may have wanted to kill Bacellar for his reluctance to crack down on the rebellious shanty town of Cité Soleil? We can only hope that further documents from the WikiLeaks cache will discover the truth.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree ... -wikileaks

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