Body Counts

Call me heartless but to be honest I am not fascinated by the political "body counts" of incumbent administrations. The counts are as numerous and distracting as gnats on a dog's butt. Today's "scandals" of illegal spying and suiciding low-level players are re-runs of the Clinton Era body count, Bush I body count, Reagan body count, Nixon, Johnson.

At the conclusion of the Alternet article on the 2 European "suicides" is this comment : "As more troubling revelations come out of Europe, it may become more difficult to ignore how easily spying programs can be hijacked for illegitimate purposes. The brave soul who pursues this line of inquiry, however, should fear for his or her life.

Hmmm, so spy programs easily hijacked for illegitimate purposes is a troubling revelation? To who? Governments and the powerful have spied on everyone since at least Moses. Hijacked – most overused word of the new millenium.

Brave soul should fear for his life? Death awaits if you pursue your government or powerful people? Is that the real point of the article – got fear? Or is it distraction, chasing assassination conspiracies that will still be theories a century from now.

The article mentions Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, aka Abu Omar, an Egyptian cleric who was granted political asylum in Italy in 1997, after seeking asylum in Albania, Bosnia, and Serbia. Beautiful Italy was 4th choice?

Omar was supposedly kidnapped in Milan and flown to Cairo. The Italians had him under surveillance due to his preaching jihad from a Milan mosque and have stated had he not been taken to Egypt he would be in an Italian prison now because of his connection to an Italian network of Islamic extremists.

Abu Omar's story is that after his February 2003 disappearance from a Milan street, allegedly kidnapped by CIA, he was held in a Cairo prison for over a year, where he was interrogated, tortured, starved, beaten, subjected to freezing temperatures, force fed, electric shocks, etc. and then released in April 2004 under house arrest.

House arrest for an "Islamist extremist" after multiple intel agencies had launched such an elaborate kidnapping and interrogation plot? But a house arrest is better than Gitmo.

My question is, after wanting Abu Omar for a decade or more for involvement in an Islamic group which preached the overthrow of the Egyptian government, why did the Egyptians release him? Could they not make any charges stick? The teflon imam.

Why Egyptian intel didn't carry out the "kidnapping" alone beats the hell out of me. It's not as if Egypt's intel agency isn't capable. Egypt's first president, Nasser, 1956-1970, quickly put in place an intelligence network, according to the Odessa file, with the aid of former Nazis; similar to the CIA bringing Herr Gehlen to the US via the Dulles boys. Supposedly the Odessa file shows the Dulles boys invited fleeing Nazis to aid Nasser in setting up Egypt's new republic intel apparatus. (The CIA was behind Nasser in the 1952 military ousting of King Farouk aka spreading democracy.)

The 1950s was the decade of optimizing good ol' boy talents of Nazis who were allowed to survive and thrive after WWII. Winners and losers in WWII scrambled to acquire the best of German brains, Nazi or not.

The last time I checked 26 CIA agents have been named by Italian authorities in the illegal "rendition" of Abu Omar. What? Those 26 plus the dozens of Egyptian, US, Italian, and god knows who else allegedly in on the plot – not exactly a black op. Why not take out an ad in the paper: Keystone Spies Snatch & Grab Imam for Catch and Release Program.

At any rate, one theory now is that the abduction of Omar led to the subsequent death/murder/suicide of Adamo Bove, who " … at the direction of Milan prosecutors, … used mobile phone records to trace how a "Special Removal Unit" composed of CIA and SISMI agents abducted Abu Omar and flew him to Cairo where he was tortured." Bove's discoveries led to, according to Slate magazine Italy's Watergate.

Rest assured Italy's watergate will bring as much change in Italian politics as Watergate did for the US.

Bove had been employed, I believe since 2000, as head of security at Telecom Italia. Bove's work "discovered a flaw in the system allowing people to enter the Telecom system without a trace. Bove showed "… that private companies and reporters in connection with SISMI were able to access information regarding Italian citizens, using the system in place for legal wiretapping." Sound familiar? Similar to our own highly publicized and scandalous system of illegal snooping on millions of citizen Joes.

Bove, an investigative cop made a name for himself a decade ago when he caught two Camorra bosses, Francesco Schiavone and Mario Fabbrocino. Frank and Mario were involved in a slightly different sort of politics, the politics of drugs and crime … well actually no difference at all as drugs, crime, and politics are their own axis of evil.

After decades of crime bosses running Naples, becoming a "camorrista" was a criminal ideology young men aspired to, that is until Pasquale Galasso turned state's evidence in 1992 and sang like a canary. The Italian version of America's Joe Valachi, one of the first and few mobsters who violated omerta (code of silence). Being married to a Sicilian I have no problem believing Bove could have been murdered by the mob; it's unnerving how some folks never "get over it."

The CIA, and all national intels, use multinational mid-level executives as NOCs. Could Adamo Bove have been such a creature? A businessman/cop/spy doing a job for an intel group? Was there a security flaw as Bove claimed which allowed rampant easy untraceable access by anyone on anyone? How can we know who, when, what was accessed if access was untraceable? Is it a "look, someone snooped on you but we don't know who." Likely the guy demanding money or favors did it.

Evidence to the Greece illicit eavesdropping scandal has been destroyed. Oh well, take their word for it.

The average Joe of the West has long enjoyed the illusion of privacy, and spying was something governments did only on foreign bad guys to keep Joe safe and free. Joe buys that propaganda, usually all the way to purple hearts and the cemetery.

Monitoring Joe Average began in earnest back in 1936 with the SSN; similar to the Nazi's indexing of prisoners with serial numbers and/or tattoos; as technology advanced so did encroachment on the life of Joe Average, specifically what Joe does with his money which Big Brother intends to take as much of as possible. Today Joe's life is indexed in detail but without the physical tattoo. However, give the World Order more time. Chips are likely in the future; the evolution to neatness and invisibly tattooing the slaves, again, promoted as safety precautions.

I guarantee that any nation's domestic spying programs on Joe Blow is done for one reason and one reason only : REVENUE. Be it IRS debt collectors, taking Joe's bourgeois assets if need be, Joes who avoid taxation, con artists, non-State sanctioned illicit drug dealers, grandma's bank account receiving untaxed funds from the kids, etc.

We are all on the national/international radar. That out-of- state speeding ticket Joe ignored 20 years ago is gonna pop up the next time he renews his license, that 5K student loan with mega interest now at 25K he owes, those old tax warrants and liens – Joe's past is gonna catch up and take a big surprise bite, while he fears Big Brother snoops his 887-HOT-DATE calls and might know about that penis implant.

It's no coincidence that Italy's domestic spying scandal runs along with the US domestic spying, the Brits domestic surveillance, and other Anglo nations spying. Run white people run, the government is spying on you. I suppose those of us who, for generations, are accustomed to being watched simply for being Black, the idea of being "watched" does not create the same level of fear. Most Blacks have a healthy distrust of power/government - having always known "the man" can and will crawl up your ass at any time with a fine-tooth comb.

"Spying" on Joe is not for his political views, which are no threat with rigged elections, corporate world order, government sanctioned dumbing and doping and coddling of Joe – all the connected spying databases are simply the latest tool to track and nickel and dime Joe to death.

It works for the elite. Keeps Joe from demanding pols and laws which might prevent and/or lessen elite power. I.e. 6 year term limits for all DC pols, publicly funded campaigns, banning lobbyists, demanding an end to wealthyfare, an end to funding the war on drugs, war on terror, and other bogus programs and agencies. Now that would take a brave soul.