The RAIN Newsletter (4-9-9)
http://original.antiwar.com/pilger/2009/09/03/lockerbie-megrahi-was-framed/
Lockerbie: Megrahi Was Framed
John Pilger:
Antiwar Forum September 04, 2009
The hysteria over the release of the so-called Lockerbie bomber reveals much
about the political and media class on both sides of the Atlantic,
especially Britain. From Gordon Brown's "repulsion" to Barack Obama's
"outrage," the theater of lies and hypocrisy is dutifully attended by those
who call themselves journalists. "But what if Megrahi lives longer than
three months?" whined a BBC reporter to the Scottish First Minister, Alex
Salmond. "What will you say to your constituents, then?"
Horror of horrors that a dying man should live longer than prescribed before
he "pays" for his "heinous crime": the description of the Scottish justice
minister, Kenny MacAskill, whose "compassion" allowed Abdelbaset Ali Mohmed
al-Megrahi to go home to Libya to "face justice from a higher power." Amen.
The American satirist Larry David once addressed a voluble crony as "a
babbling brook of bullsh*t." Such eloquence summarizes the circus of
Megrahi's release.
No one in authority has had the guts to state the truth about the bombing of
Pan Am Flight 103 above the Scottish village of Lockerbie on 21 December
1988 in which 270 people were killed. The governments in England and
Scotland in effect blackmailed Megrahi into dropping his appeal as a
condition of his immediate release. Of course there were oil and arms deals
under way with Libya; but had Megrahi proceeded with his appeal, some 600
pages of new and deliberately suppressed evidence would have set the seal on
his innocence and given us more than a glimpse of how and why he was
stitched up for the benefit of "strategic interests."
"The endgame came down to damage limitation," said the former CIA officer
Robert Baer, who took part in the original investigation, "because the
evidence amassed by [Megrahi's] appeal is explosive and extremely damning to
the system of justice." New witnesses would show that it was impossible for
Megrahi to have bought clothes that were found in the wreckage of the Pan Am
aircraft - he was convicted on the word of a Maltese shopowner who claimed
to have sold him the clothes, then gave a false description of him in 19
separate statements and even failed to recognize him in the courtroom.
The new evidence would have shown that a fragment of a circuit board and
bomb timer, "discovered" in the Scottish countryside and said to have been
in Megrahi's suitcase, was probably a plant. A forensic scientist found no
trace of an explosion on it. The new evidence would demonstrate the
impossibility of the bomb beginning its journey in Malta before it was
"transferred" through two airports undetected to Flight 103.
A "key secret witness" at the original trial, who claimed to have seen
Megrahi and his co-accused al-Alim Khalifa Fahimah (who was acquitted)
loading the bomb on to the plane at Frankfurt, was bribed by the US
authorities holding him as a "protected witness." The defense exposed him as
a CIA informer who stood to collect, on the Libyans' conviction, up to $4m
as a reward.
Megrahi was convicted by three Scottish judges sitting in a courtroom in
"neutral" Holland. There was no jury. One of the few reporters to sit
through the long and often farcical proceedings was the late Paul Foot,
whose landmark investigation in Private Eye exposed it as a cacophony of
blunders, deceptions and lies: a whitewash. The Scottish judges, while
admitting a "mass of conflicting evidence" and rejecting the fantasies of
the CIA informer, found Megrahi guilty on hearsay and unproven circumstance.
Their 90-page "opinion," wrote Foot, "is a remarkable document that claims
an honored place in the history of British miscarriages of justice."
(Lockerbie - the Flight from Justice by Paul Foot can be downloaded from the
Private Eye website for £5).
Foot reported that most of the staff of the US embassy in Moscow who had
reserved seats on Pan Am flights from Frankfurt canceled their bookings when
they were alerted by US intelligence that a terrorist attack was planned. He
named Margaret Thatcher the "architect" of the cover-up after revealing that
she killed the independent inquiry her transport secretary Cecil Parkinson
had promised the Lockerbie families; and in a phone call to President George
Bush Sr. on 11 January 1990, she agreed to "low-key" the disaster after
their intelligence services had reported "beyond doubt" that the Lockerbie
bomb had been placed by a Palestinian group contracted by Tehran as a
reprisal for the shooting down of an Iranian airliner by a US warship in
Iranian territorial waters. Among the 290 dead were 66 children. In 1990,
the ship's captain was awarded the Legion of Merit by Bush Sr. "for
exceptionally meritorious conduct in the performance of outstanding service
as commanding officer."
Perversely, when Saddam Hussein invaded Kuwait in 1991, Bush needed Iran's
support as he built a "coalition" to expel his wayward client from an
American oil colony. The only country that defied Bush and backed Iraq was
Libya. "Like lazy and overfed fish," wrote Foot, "the British media jumped
to the bait. In almost unanimous chorus, they engaged in furious
vilification and op-ed warmongering against Libya." The framing of Libya for
the Lockerbie crime was inevitable. Since then, a US defense intelligence
agency report, obtained under Freedom of Information, has confirmed these
truths and identified the likely bomber; it was to be centerpiece of
Megrahi's
defense.
In 2007, the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission referred Megrahi's
case for appeal. "The commission is of the view," said its chairman, Dr.
Graham Forbes, "that based upon our lengthy investigations, the new evidence
we have found and other evidence which was not before the trial court, that
the applicant may have suffered a miscarriage of justice."
The words "miscarriage of justice" are missing entirely from the current
furor, with Kenny MacAskill reassuring the baying mob that the scapegoat
will soon face justice from that "higher power." What a disgrace.
***
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/09/05/business/economy/05jobs.html?ref=us
In Unemployment Report, Signs of a Jobless Recovery
By PETER S. GOODMAN and JACK HEALY
NY Times Op-Ed: September 5, 2009
The unemployment rate surged to 9.7 percent in August, signaling that
joblessness and financial anxiety were likely to endure in millions of
American homes for many months.
The Labor Department's latest employment report, released Friday, added
weight to a growing belief that, at least technically, the economy had
already escaped the grip of recession. Though 216,000 net jobs vanished in
August, the losses continued to moderate from their worst numbers of the
year.
Yet the report also lent credence to a deepening consensus that, even as the
economy resumes expansion, the recovery was likely to be weak, prompting
most companies to hold back from aggressive hiring.
"In the context of a full-blooded recovery, this report is disappointing,"
said Alan Ruskin, an economist with the Royal Bank of Scotland in Stamford,
Conn. "We're still clawing our way back."
Many experts envision a jobless recovery, in which the economy grows but job
losses persist. That would reprise the end of the last recession in 2001,
when payrolls continued to decline for nearly two years afterward.
Such an outcome would confront the Obama administration with a potentially
nettlesome political problem heading into next year's midterm elections.
After the government unleashed $787 billion to stimulate economic growth,
and after it bailed out financial institutions and the auto industry, the
unemployment rate exceeds worst-case projections envisioned by the
administration early this year.
On Friday, Jared Bernstein, the top economic adviser to Vice President
Joseph R. Biden Jr., said the picture would look far worse were it not for
the stimulus spending. He added that more help was on the way as the
government distributed the remaining two-thirds of the package.
"Our interventions have contributed to significant cuts in the rate of job
loss," Mr. Bernstein said. "We're headed in the right direction, but we're
far from out of the woods. There are simply too many Americans seeking
work."
If the jobless rate continues to climb, as is widely expected, that could
generate pressure for another stimulus spending package. But given
intensifying concern about the size of federal budget deficits - now
projected to exceed $9 trillion within a decade - any new spending could be
politically perilous.
The latest snapshot of the nation's labor situation testified to the drastic
improvement since early this year, when nearly 700,000 jobs a month were
disappearing. Yet it also underscored the continued bleakness of the
economic landscape.
"It's a good picture compared to where we were, which was just a free fall,"
said Dean Baker, a director of the Center for Economic and Policy Research
in Washington. "But compared to anything else, this is just a horrible
report. The rate of decline is slowing, but it's not going to stop. We're
likely on a path toward more than 10 percent unemployment."
Most economists see recent improvements as the result of pulling away from
the disaster of last fall - when the investment giant Lehman Brothers
collapsed, spreading fear throughout the financial system - and not a sign
of vigorous growth ahead.
After years of borrowing against soaring home values, tapping credit cards
and harvesting stock market winnings to spend in excess of their incomes,
millions of households are being forced to conserve. That limits consumer
spending, which makes up 70 percent of the nation's economy. And that makes
businesses that might otherwise hire and expand more inclined to hunker
down.
"Household balance sheets are shot," Mr. Ruskin said. From here, spending
"has to come from income, and income has to come from employment, and at
this juncture it looks like employment will only improve very slowly."
The unemployment rate is up from 9.4 percent in July, when the economy lost
276,000 jobs.
The jobs report underscored the broad reach of the labor crisis, which has
imposed austerity even on those still employed. In the last year, average
weekly earnings have increased by only 0.8 percent - a decline, after
factoring in the rising cost of goods. So many companies have trimmed
working hours that paychecks have shrunk.
The so-called underemployment rate - which counts the jobless along with
those working part time because their hours have been cut or they cannot
find full-time jobs - reached 16.8 percent in August.
In recent months, the economy has benefited from a slowdown in the pace at
which businesses have slashed inventories, prompting factories to expand
production. Auto sales have been aided by the cash-for-clunkers program,
which gave buyers incentives to trade in cars. Home sales have been
stimulated by a tax credit for first-time homebuyers, an inducement that
expires in November.
After those programs wear off, the nation may again confront a fundamentally
weak economy.
"Everybody is looking around saying, 'Where is a robust recovery going to
come from?' and not finding it," said Heidi Shierholz, an economist at the
labor-oriented Economic Policy Institute in Washington. "We're going to have
elevated unemployment for four years to come."
In Williamsburg, Va., Ginny Hoover, 49, has remained unemployed since she
lost her job at a pharmaceutical company in November 2007. She has maxed out
her credit cards and borrowed money from friends. She broke her apartment
lease and moved in with her boyfriend. But other than an offer to sell
insurance door-to-door for commissions only, she has found no work.
"I thought maybe a month or two and I'd have another job," Ms. Hoover said.
"I never would have guessed that it would be as brutal as it was out there."
Despite increased factory production, manufacturing shed 63,000 jobs in
August. Construction lost 65,000 jobs. Health care remained a rare bright
spot, adding nearly 28,000 jobs.
"I don't think businesses will hire back anytime soon," said Allen Sinai,
chief global economist at Decision Economics. "Companies are rewarded by the
stock markets for not hiring and keeping their costs down. We will see
another jobless recovery."
In Delray Beach, Fla., Donna Angelillo lost her job as a property manager in
May and quickly exhausted her savings. Her $1,000 monthly unemployment check
does not cover her $1,030 monthly rent.
Jobs are scarce, she said. Past-due bills are abundant.
"I don't have September rent, but right now I'm more concerned about the
electricity," she said. "Either today or tomorrow, they're going to shut it
off. I'm getting desperate."
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