THE ABSURD TIMES
illustration: THE GREAT LATUFF!
[Speaking of AIPAC, once we game special plaudits to him for coming in third in a list of anti-Semites compiled by some wannabe APAIC moron. We can not remember who came in first and second, but he did beat of number four, which was "European Football Fans". Now this in an amazing accomplishment. Do you have and idea of how many European football fans there are? Well, we've never counted, but there are millions, yes, there are millions. This is am accomplishment anyone should be proud of. It is overwhelming. Our hats are off to the Great Latuff, loved by millions!]
Has anything really changed?
Well, about 40 new Democrats were elected and replaced 40 Republicans. When you realize that this represents not only 40 more Democrat votes, but 40 less (pardon the expression) Republican votes, that amounts to an 80 vote difference. In almost every case, this was facilitated by disgust at Donald Trump. The recent income tax returns will add to the realization, finally, that he is not on their side. Maybe more will wake up.
I understand big Don shut down the government. He wants his wall. He's gonna hold his breath until you give him his wall! It is remarkably like a 3 year old, maybe a four year old? I'm not all that sure anymore, but he really is acting like a spoiled child who had his lollipop taken away. Anyway, doing that helped all those Democrats get elected, so that's fine.
This is a time to celebrate Valentine's Day, the anniversary of the Parkland mass shootings staunchly defended by the NRA. We can also commemorate the Valentine's Day massacre in Chicago. Also, now the 201st anniversary of the birth of Frederick Douglass of whom big don said "He is doing some great things." We can remember Abraham Lincoln having to escort him into the slave-built White House because he was black. Yes, we do know how to remember Black History Month.
Ilam Omar recently apologized for using anti-Semitic "Tropes." [There were tropes and schemes, all terminology from Renaissance
Rhetoric, collectively called "figures", numbering between two and three hundred. Beware of those evil Tropes.] So, everybody thought that would shut her up, the young representative from Minnesota, but she was immediately introduced to Eliot Abrams, Trump's nominee to oversee Venezuela.
Now I don't know if he is allowed to vote, this ex-con, as he was sent to prison for his role in Iran Contra, and then pardoned by George Bush the first, ex-CIA Director. Ollie North, also of that scandal, is now spokesman for the NRA, which we all assume is celebrating Valentine's Day. Eliot was behind the attempt to stage a coup of Chavez, but failed. Now he has a head start, still to subvert Venezuela. She said there is no reason to believe anything he says and Abrams attempted to B.S. her. She said, "That was not a question." So, she is still going.
There is no point in arguing with (pardon the expression) Republicans or other such idiots. Let us take, for example, the issue of climate change, or global warming which is causing climate change. The issue is settled so far as fact, data, science, and reason is concerned. There is no way around it. However, it is refuted by a Senator, a (pardon the expression) Republican, bringing in a snowball to the Senate chamber. See? Or how about this: on February 2019, a remote from the island of Maui showed the streets covered with snow. See? No climate change. There is really no point in discussing anything with this type of person.
The problem we have had recently with this stupidity and lying is that nobody who is that sort of person (a Trump Supporter) reads this, and those who do have a brain and are reading it, already know it. So what is the point? It is much like discussing the second amendment with these idiots. No, I'm not going to bother.
So now one of the new representatives (discussed above) pointed out that AIPAC spends a great deal of money on lobbying. Of course, that was "anti-Semitic." The same was said of Norm Finklestein whose mother had been in a concentration camp. Alan Derschowitz went after him. Alan now spends time on FOX News. Really, this is tiring.
Well, recently, Trump said that El Paso was one of the most dangerous cities in the United States. Actually, it never was. Furthermore, its crime rate steadily decreased over the years until some border fence or something like that was build. Then, the rate remained the same with no further declines. There we go again, talking about facts.
North Korea is not reducing its nuclear capabilities even though they said they were in favor of "de-nuclearizing" [what a disgusting trope] the Korean Peninsula. One thing that has been overlooked – they meant the ENTIRE area, which would include all United States nukes as well. Big Don wants just the North part taken care of. You know, the Libyan model as the psychopath Bolton proclaimed.
Sarah Huckabee, the press secretary, announced that "God wants Trump to be President." If this is really that case, God has a great deal to answer for, especially since the Southern Baptist Church has now been revealed to have dealt in sexual child abuse on a grand scale and forcing abortions in some cases (who says the Catholic Church has the most fun?). Maybe if we built a wall around the Baptist churches things would be better?
Let us not forget Venezuela. It turns out that a group that used to work with the CIA during the Bush administrations, also Reagan, has been flying arms to Venezuela. It is a bit tiring to repeat the whole Iran Contra episode that eventually led to Ollie North being spokesman from the NRA and it's not worth it here. Suffice to say that the same shit is going on now. You may have heard all the major networks weeping over the "humanitarian" aid we sent to aid our puppet, but little about how the United Nations has condemned that action. People are not hungry in Venezuela because of "Socialism," but because of our blockade of trade and appropriation of funds from the country. You might as well know that. It seems that the ex-CEO of Starbucks is also afraid of Socialism. Too many voters now never lived though all the "socialism" scares our governments used as the USSR no longer exists.
Anyway, I was going to simply publish this as it is, above, but it turns out by happy coincidence that Amy Goodman has an interview that should redeem the CIA in the minds of many. Here it follows.
Bye
A North Carolina-based air freight company has halted flights to Venezuela following a report by McClatchy linking it to possible arms smuggling. Last week, Venezuelan authorities claimed they had uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela's third-largest city. The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air based in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plane had made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11, the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term. The flights ended after McClatchy first reported on them. Venezuela accused the U.S. government of sending the arms as part of its attempt to topple the Maduro government. While no definitive links between 21 Air and the U.S. government have been established, McClatchy reports the chairman of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, as well as another employee at the company have ties to Gemini Air Cargo, which was involved in the CIA's rendition program during the administration of George W. Bush. We speak to McClatchy reporter Tim Johnson, who broke the story. Johnson was part of a team that shared a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of the Panama Papers.
Transcript
This is a rush transcript. Copy may not be in its final form.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: We turn now to Venezuela. A North Carolina-based air freight company has halted flights to that country following a report by McClatchy linking it to possible arms smuggling. Last week, Venezuelan authorities claimed they uncovered 19 assault weapons, 118 ammunition cartridges and 90 military-grade radio antennas on board a U.S.-owned plane that had flown from Miami into Valencia, Venezuela's third-largest city. The Boeing 767 is owned by a company called 21 Air based in Greensboro, North Carolina. The plane had made nearly 40 round-trip flights between Miami and spots in Venezuela and Colombia since January 11th, which is the day after Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro was sworn in to a second term. The flights ended after McClatchy first reported on them. Venezuela accused the U.S. government of sending the arms as part of its attempt to topple the Maduro government. Bolivarian National Guard General Endes Palencia Ortiz said, "This materiel was destined for criminal groups and terrorist actions in the country, financed by the fascist extreme right and the government of the United States."
AMY GOODMAN: 21 Air has denied knowledge of the arms shipment, saying the flight had been chartered by another company called GPS-Air, which also denied sending arms. While no definitive links between 21 Air and the U.S. government have been established, McClatchy reports the chairman of 21 Air, Adolfo Moreno, as well as another employee at the company have ties to Gemini Air Cargo, which was involved in the CIA's rendition program during the administration of George W. Bush. In 2006, Amnesty International identified Gemini as a front company that had authorization to land on U.S. military bases worldwide.
The CIA has a long history of running front companies for covert actions. Most famously, the CIA ran a front airline called Air America, which operated from 1950 to 1976. In the '80s, a CIA front company called Southern Air Transport was used to send arms to the U.S.-backed Contras in Nicaragua.
We're joined now by Tim Johnson, who has been reporting on the storyfor McClatchy, joining us from Pennsylvania.
Welcome to Democracy Now! Tim, would you lay out what you found?
TIM JOHNSON: Well, as you mentioned, this air charter company, 21 Air, went repeatedly to places in Venezuela and Colombia starting January 11th. Prior to that, it had largely operated domestically, and suddenly it began to change its patterns. And often there would be even two flights a day between Miami and places in Colombia or Venezuela.
I actually learned about this from somebody who tweeted about it. A gentleman in Canada who follows ship and plane movements noticed this, and we started looking into the history of the chairman of 21 Air and saw that he has a number of businesses. And two of those businesses used an address in northwest Miami that were previously used by a subsidiary of Gemini Air Cargo, which, as you mentioned, was listed in that Amnesty International report as having participated in renditions.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Now, Tim Johnson, a Boeing 767 is a pretty big plane, and the cache of weapons that the Venezuelan government claims they found, while they're clearly lethal weapons, is not a huge shipment. I'm wondering: Do you have any way of being able to tell what the manifest of this flight, as well as the other 39 or so flights that this airline engaged in—what they were claiming to hold?
TIM JOHNSON: I actually don't know. We've tried to get that, and we haven't been able to get the manifests yet. So, you know, what was aboard the other flights going to South America, we don't know. This is a very puzzling case. If you look on social media and dig into the backgrounds of employees of 21 Air and associated companies, you see that there are many accounts of employees who follow the Venezuelan opposition, and opposition accounts that follow them, as well. So, there's certainly some sympathy from employees within the company to the opposition to Maduro in Venezuela.
AMY GOODMAN: Talk more about the leadership of the company that you investigated, based in North Carolina. And explain what you mean when you talk about the links to rendition under President George W. Bush.
TIM JOHNSON: Well, Adolfo Moreno is a 75 percent owner of 21 Air, and he's got many other companies, but he's been involved out of Miami. I don't know—while the company is registered in North Carolina, the operations really are out of Miami, as far as I can tell. That's where many of the flights have been operated. They have a huge operation center at Miami International Airport.
A curious secondary aspect of this story is that the company that consigned the cargo also has tangential links to, you know, this historical—the Iran-Contra affair. The head of GPS Air is a man named José Manuel Calvo, and he, like Moreno, has many companies. And one of those companies, with the partner that he used to create this company, is a company called Heavylift Air. And that company has a subsidiary out of the UAE that is controlled by in Iranian American named Farhad Azima, who also had a role in Iran-Contra. So there's all these circumstantial things, but there's really no smoking gun, that I could tell. You know, this may be just circumstantial.
AMY GOODMAN: Are you reporting this new now on Iran-Contra, what you're saying? And explain, for people who aren't familiar with the Iran-Contra scandal, this happening under the Reagan-Bush years, the selling of weapons to Iran to take that money to support the Contras in Nicaragua, which violated U.S. law, the Boland Amendment.
TIM JOHNSON: Yes. So, that scandal involved Southern Air Transport, which also was a CIA front company. That really exploded into the news back in 1986 because the Sandinista army shot down a twin-engine plane that was run by Southern Air Transport, that was taking armaments to the Contra rebels fighting in Nicaragua. So, Southern Air Transport was actually heavily involved in all the arms shipments to Iran and from the Middle East to the Contra rebels in Nicaragua.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: Well, I want to ask you about Eugene Hasenfus, who you mention in your article. In 1986, he was aboard a U.S. plane that was shot down in Nicaragua while on a secret mission to bring arms to the Nicaraguan Contras. He the only passenger to survive. I want to turn to a documentary made by Wisconsin Public Television called the The Eugene Hasenfus Story from 1991. It featured an excerpt from the station's initial coverage of what happened to him in 1986.
REPORTER: A Wisconsin man has been the focus of international news this week. Forty-five-year-old Eugene Hasenfus of Marinette was captured in Nicaragua after his cargo plane was shot down. At a press conference Thursday, Hasenfus said his mission was directed by the CIA. But U.S. officials say the flights were privately directed. Mrs. Sally Hasenfus joined her husband in Nicaragua this week. Hasenfus has been jailed and may stand trial.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: The documentary also featured an interview with Eugene Hasenfus's wife, Sally.
SALLY HASENFUS: The next morning, I tried to call President Reagan. I thought, "Well, it's the only place I'm going to get answers." He's—you know, I should be able to trust him. He's the president. And I knew he knew. He put me in touch with a man named Elliott Abrams. He said, "I don't know who you are, and I don't know what you're talking about." I got angry. And before I hung up, he did admit that he knew what I was talking about. And he kept warning me that—you know, "Be careful of the press, and be careful what you say. Be careful what you do."
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And interestingly or coincidentally, Elliott Abrams is now the special envoy of the White House to Venezuela. I'm wondering your assessment of this affair back then, the impact it had on what was going on at the time, in terms of the war on the Contras?
TIM JOHNSON: I'm not sure I can really speak to the historical impact. But, of course, it—you know, I think it helped lead to a negotiated settlement, leading to the elections in Nicaragua in 1990, because it was, you know, clearly a major impact on that. But I really couldn't speak further to that.
AMY GOODMAN: But this whole issue of Eugene Hasenfus, this former marine, a mercenary, shot down over Nicaragua, then held by Nicaragua, eventually released, and his contact with the U.S. government at the time, and now you raising this issue in your current piece around the arms shipment that was found going into Venezuela—not clear exactly if there's a connection to the U.S. government, but clearly the U.S. government is very overtly supporting the attempted overthrow of Maduro, explicitly, and these flights starting a day after Maduro's inauguration on January 10th.
TIM JOHNSON: Well, yes, there's a lot of these coincidental links, and it's worth paying quite close attention to. Again, I use "coincidental" only because we don't really know. You know, other people point out to me that there are many people that could have a vested interest in this, whether the arms were really aboard that plane. Or, is it possible that this was something that was ginned up by the Venezuelan government to rally support for Maduro? I don't know. I just—we haven't been able to determine for a fact that those weapons were loaded aboard that 767 in Miami, that somehow they passed through the normally rigorous screening by TSA for air cargo. These are things that are just yet to be investigated.
JUAN GONZÁLEZ: And has the company answered in terms of—as you mentioned, they normally were not traveling to Venezuela and Colombia—the 40 flights, what they were actually carrying, or are they saying they just didn't know?
TIM JOHNSON: Both have been very limited in what they've said, other than denying that they knew what the cargo was. Generally, an air charter company would trust the consignee of the freight to handle any declarations, I believe. And for its part, GPS-Air said, well, it was—you know, it doesn't know what was in the cargo.
AMY GOODMAN: And finally, back to that issue of rendition, though you don't know exactly who this company was working for, what you do have a record of is the company being involved with the U.S. government during the President George W. Bush years, being involved with rendition and having clearance to land on any military base in the world. Can you explain what those renditions, so-called, what some called kidnappings, were about?
TIM JOHNSON: Well, basically, the renditions were to take terrorist suspects, following 9/11, for interrogation in black site jails scattered around the world. There were a number of them in Eastern Europe. I know there was one outside of Chiang Mai, Thailand, elsewhere. And these were used to, you know, forcefully interrogate, waterboard even, suspects in the war against terror. So these rendition flights were commonly used in the period after 9/11.
AMY GOODMAN: Well, I want to thank you so much for joining us, Tim Johnson, McClatchy reporter who's been covering national security and technology issues since 2016, his recent article headlined "Venezuela says plane from Miami delivered weapons for use by enemies of Maduro." Tim Johnson was part of a team that shared a 2017 Pulitzer Prize for its investigation of the Panama Papers. Earlier in his career, he spent two decades as a foreign correspondent in Asia and Latin America. We'll link to your piece at democracynow.org.
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