Nimmo has his finger on the gatekeepers, Right and Left. Here he details, among other things, why you won't see his byline on Counterpunch any longer: he dared suggest, in one of his CP offerings, that the official story regarding 911 wasn't accurate. --Ronald
http://kurtnimmo.com/blog/index.php?cat=1
Michel Chossudovsky and the Dogs of Reprisal
Monday August 22nd 2005, 8:46 pm
Filed under: Politics
As I walked through the living room, on my way outside to play with the incoming coax cables (on occasion I have to do this to get my broadband working), I passed my wife camped out before the television, watching a “debate” between FBI whistleblower Colleen Rowley and a loud, obnoxious, an interruptive Mark Williams who claimed, as I drifted past, that Saddam Hussein had “chemical weapons” (even Williams should know this was an obvious lie) and Rowley is a “traitor” because she opposes the “war” that is in fact not a war. I paused for a few seconds as the powder-puffed and air headed anchor asked Rowley why “Democrats” like Cindy Sheehan and her are against the “war” that is not a war but rather a prolonged session of organized (more or less) mass murder. Williams and this teleprompter-reading bimbo ganged up on Rowley, who is in fact one of the last remaining decent people in the country and a patriot that makes Williams look like what he is—an ill-informed yahoo who happens to have a radio program somewhere.
I felt my blood pressure on the rise, so I went outside and fiddled with the cables.
As I stood in the intense late afternoon New Mexico sun twisting on and off coax cables, I admonished myself, if only a little: don’t let them get to you. Cindy Sheehan is a thorn in the side of right-wingers, thankfully. It really irks them she is receiving the media coverage she is, albeit that coverage is biased in favor of Bush and the wingers—thus once again demonstrating there is of course no “liberal bias” in the corporate media. Cindy drives them bonkers and there is a modicum of pleasure therein. At the same time there is danger in false patriots hiding behind flags made in China demanding “traitors” such as Sheehan and Rowley be dealt with. It is a truly and sincerely scary prospect. It is also mind-boggling to consider there are such intolerant neanderthals on the loose, demanding retribution—public scorn, lost jobs, prosecution for treason, maybe even prison terms and violence—against those who believe this “war” is illegal and immoral. Because there seems to be a dozen or more Mark Williamss for every Cindy Sheehan. Indeed, much of the country has gone insane with blood-lust and warmongering dementia.
Finished with the coaxial cables, I went back inside the house. I had broadband finally. So I fired up the browser and began to read the news.
In Canada, the B’nai Brith is hounding Michel Chossudovsky for the content posted on his Global Research web site. “Michel Chossudovsky’s website may contain anti-Semitic material, but it’s not the University of Ottawa’s job to figure out if it does, according to the Canadian Association of University Teachers,” an article posted on the Ottawa Citizen site begins. “Part of the complaint was based on Mr. Chossudovsky’s status as a professor at a major university. This not only lends credibility to his views, but also puts him in a position to influence his students, according to B’nai Brith legal counsel Anita Bromberg.” And what precisely is the complaint? “Articles and postings by other writers on the website describe conspiracy theories that ‘echo the age-old anti-Semitic expressions,’ said Frank Dimant, executive vice-president of B’nai Brith.”
Funny, I have read Chossudovsky’s site for years now and have never encountered anti-Semitic material—that is unless you consider the possibility Israel may have had something to do with nine eleven anti-Semitic “hate speech” or the documented fact Israel had spies in the United States (and the documented fact Israel spies followed around Mohammed Atta and the so-called nine eleven conspirators). If we are to consider such theories anti-Semitic (theories about the Israeli government, not Jews in particular) then Bush and Congress and millions of Americans are anti-Semitic for accusing Arabs (who are Semitic, whereas many Israelis are of European stock) of killing 3,000 people on nine eleven, a crime with almost no evidence and certainly no physical evidence. But of course the B’nai Brith is not concerned with that sort of anti-Semitism because a small number of people who happen to be Jews with an axe to grind (and a profitable Holocaust dog and pony show to run) have cornered the market on what is or is not Semitism.
Last time I communicated with Alex Cockburn, he took me to task for mentioning the Odigo fiasco in an anthology published by Counterpunch. Odigo is an Israeli instant message company that allegedly (according to its employees) received advanced warning of the attacks on nine eleven. I made mention of this in an article detailing the travails of one Amiri Baraka, a Beat poet who mentioned this down-the-memory-hole fact in a poem written soon after nine eleven. Apparently, Cockburn had taken heat for my in-passing mention of this allegation—reported in the Israeli newspaper Haaretz—and he didn’t appreciate it, especially after I bugged him about his willy-nilly defense against right-wingers slandering him in the media (for losing a job at the Village Voice many years ago). Needless to say, I have not bothered to send an article to Counterpunch since, not that they had posted an article I sent to them a week or so before (in standard fashion, they simply ignore articles they do not want to post on their web site, a sort of e-rejection slip—but then of course I am a “conspiracy nut” and Counterpunch, as most of the left, does not put credence in nine eleven conspiracy theories, basically swallowing the Bush version of events hook, line, and sinker; i.e., malicious and murderous Arabs are responsible for what happened on that day, even though, as I say over and over like a broken record, there is no evidence of this, that is unless you consider the word of a pathological and repeat offender liar evidence).
Problem is, I am not “progressive” or “left” enough to be published by the likes of Counterpunch and of course it does not help I pissed off Cockburn. I consider the avoidance or disbelief on the part of lefties of the very real prospect the United States government (and the British and, yes, as anti-Semitic as it will be considered, Israeli government) complicit in the crime against humanity that is nine eleven. Meanwhile, hateful cheerleaders such as Mark Williams, Ann Coulter, Rush Limbaugh, Michael “Savage” Weiner, et al, ad nauseam, who are nothing less than apologists for mass murder in Iraq (based on lies) and who shamelessly exploit the dead of nine eleven to make excuses for killing even more people (more than a 100,000 so far in Iraq), are allowed wide berth in the corporate media. It is now fashionable (employing intellectual laziness and large doses of omission) to declare “we” are in Iraq because that’s where the locus of terrorism exists in the wake of nine eleven, a nothing short of preposterous argument (as if there were “terrorists,” even made-in-America terrorists, as was Osama, before he croaked, in Iraq before nine eleven, remarkably an assertion still made by right-wingers, even with scads of evidence to the contrary, but then, as we know, Bush and crew don’t do reality and the upside-down theories of Bushzarro world rule).
So I have chalked off Counterpunch and a few other lefty web sites and magazines (even as I continue provide links to them on my blogroll)—which of course makes me a right-wing nut since there are only two hues to the political spectrum in this country. In America, you can be yanked from one side of the political carnival to the other with little more than a paragraph or so posted on some obscure web site. It is testament to our bizarrely unique and truly insane political landscape—a sort of badlands where “progressive Democrats” can find the space to “support” the “war” against the utterly defenseless Iraqi people and also believe the scary campfire story about evil-doer Muslims who want to kill our children (al-Zarqawi is a sort of twisted cross between John Wayne Gacy and the Hollywood stereotypical Arab, a dark-skinned psychopath, ready to slip a knife in when you’re not looking).
Anyway, the B’nai Brith is after Chossudovsky, who I admire for his tireless dedication to the nearly thankless quest to reveal facts so few others will touch with a ten-foot pole, and they want to pull a Ward Churchill on him—get him fired, wreck his career and life, and gloat as right-wingers are wont to do. So B’nai Brith wants to paint Chossudovsky as a scurrilous anti-Semite (or a self-hating Jew) because deviating from the official version (or fairy tale) about nine eleven is defamation and beyond the pale, that is to say it deviates from the commonly held assertion only Muslims are capable of wholesale butchery and treachery, even though more than few experts familiar with the inner workings of intelligence agencies (including Mossad, the CIA, MI6, and others) relate the indisputable fact that an operation such of nine eleven could only be accomplished by state players and not a gaggle of medieval Muslims hiding out in caves in one of the most backward countries on the face of the earth (armed with little more than satellite phones, laptops, Kalashnikovs, and mules). From now on, Chossudovsky will be forced to wear the anti-Semite and Holocaust revisionist albatross about his neck. Chossudovsky will be considered a “neonazi” from here out thanks to intolerant fanatics who cannot stand for anybody, including Jews, to buck their carefully constructed (and highly profitable) orthodoxy.
I was not surprised when the Zionist amen corner chimed in—for instance the Scaife-funded wingers over at David Horowitz’s slander portal. “Canada has a growing number of jihadniks, neonazis, and leftist anti-Semites infesting its universities.” declares the Israeli settler and former American Steven Plaut on Horowitz’s Moonbat blog. Chossudovsky, according to the libel-mongering Plaut, “is an active member of the anti-war movement in Canada, and has been involved in the propagation of preposterous conspiracy ‘theories’ regarding the September 11 terrorist attacks. We could not find a single article by him in any refereed journal of economics.” For Plaut, a teacher of Israeli-centric economics in the land God promised Plaut and his fellow Arab haters and various Likudniks and off-the-wall worshippers of Jabotinsky, one is not entitled to an opinion unless he or she is “refereed” in one of a few hundred or so incestuous academic journals. “Chossudovsky’s website, www.globalresearch.ca, also reprints articles from other writers that accuse Jews of controlling the U.S. media and masterminding the terrorist attacks of Sept. 11, 2001. Other postings suggest Israel, the U.S. and Britain are the real perpetrators of the recent attacks on London.” Of course, as an Arab hater and would-be destroyer of Islam and all things Muslim, Plaut believes Muslims are responsible for the London bombings, sans any credible evidence. “Naturally the good professor has been endorsed by several of the neonazis who write for Counterpunch, including Donna J. Volatile, Scott Laughrey and the chronically unemployed Uruknet spokesman Kurt Nimmo.”
As previously stated, I am not a “spokesman” for anybody or any particular group—and my blog posts are re-posted on Uruknet at the discretion of that site’s owners—but all of this is lost on Plaut due to the fact he is a traducing and mean-spirited Zionist who thinks Ariel Sharon is a softie when it comes to killing Palestinians and also hates the idea people who disagree with him are allowed to exist minus never-ending punishment and retaliation. As for jobs, Plaut and the Moonbatites (including the “degreed” ones) desire for all who would dare disagree with their authoritarian and racist views to be reduced to jobless poverty and this is in fact what they are attempting to do in the case of Chossudovsky and other academics such as Ward Churchill—get them fired and pitched into lives of misery and poverty. It says a whole lot about their character—sadism and vindictiveness rule, thus making them perfect examples of the typical inhabitant of Bushzarro (and Likudite) world.
I expect another malware attack on my web site soon—and launched perniciously against others as well. For the haters and fake patriots and Arab-bashers and Bush worshippers cannot stand for the opposition to be allowed space in the commons to air their views (and one arrives at the conclusion as well these sadists resent sharing air with those they hate and wish to destroy—that is to say they have the capacity for murder, or at least a voyeuristic form of murder—thus no sense of outrage or horror at the prospect of Iraqi children cluster-bombed to death in great numbers because the Plauts of the world are essentially sociopaths).
But enough of this. I have spent a large part of the evening writing this. Outside the sun is going down and when that happens in New Mexico the sky alights with color and is a wonder to behold. I simply hope I am allowed to witness the miracle of the planet for the rest of my days. But I fear this will soon come to an end because the sociopaths and sadistic destroyers of life are in control and have unleashed the dogs of avengement and they seem to be staffing the depths of the Bush administration and B’nai Brith and classrooms in Israel where lessons in economics are allegedly taught.
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Opus Dei Columnist Novak Slams Sheehan
Monday August 22nd 2005, 11:29 am
Filed under: Politics
It was mildly amusing when right-wing columnist Robert Novak childishly stormed off the CNN set after an encounter with pit bull James Carville. It is not amusing, however, to read Novak’s August 20 Creators Syndicate, Inc. column slamming Citizen Sheehan for her protest against the Bushites for their illegal and immoral invasion and occupation of Iraq. Blowhard Novak takes Cindy Sheehan to task for working with Code Pink-Women For Peace, United for Peace & Justice, and Veterans For Peace, complaining that these organizations “openly support the Iraqi insurgency against U.S. troops,” in other words they oppose the occupation and continuing mass murder of the Iraqi people.
It irks Novak that these “organizations were represented at a mock ‘war crimes’ trial in Istanbul that on June 27 produced a joint declaration backing the insurgency. Based on the United Nations Charter, it said ‘the popular national resistance to the occupation is legitimate and justified. It deserves the support of people everywhere who care for justice and freedom,’” but then right-wing elitists such as Novak hate the United Nations, or at least its charter, even though the globalist organization engages faithfully in the handiwork of the neoliberals who are working feverishly to reduce the world to a sweatshop where “national resistance” to occupation and unbridled thievery of natural and human resources is eradicated with a bevy of new weapons and nightmarish covert operations.
As Andrew Sullivan and others note, Novak “is a convert not just to Catholicism but to its most hardline sect, Opus Dei,” which may partially explain Novak’s right-wing mindset. Opus Dei is an elitist secret society and was at home in the Generalissimo Francisco Franco “Falangist” (in other words, fascist) regime in Spain and in Chile under General Augusto Pinochet (other converts include Watergate criminal Charles Colson, South Carolina Senator Jim DeMint, and the former Somalian dictator Mohammed Siad Barre). “Ascetism, anticommunism, a rigid hierarchicalism, religious militancy and secrecy have become the distinguishing marks of the organization,” explains Right Web. “In an interview for the Catholic diosesan newspaper, the Brooklyn Tablet, Fr. Angel de la Parte Paris observed that Opus Dei professes a fundamentalist theology, condemns Liberation Theology, has no concern for social problems, leaves little freedom to an individual’s conscience, and is associated with secular power structures.” In short, it is a perfect fit for the religiously inclined among the neolib elite, especially those attracted to fascism or authoritarianism. Fascists have no problem dehumanizing those who disagree with them, and either do adherents to Opus Dei. “Escrivá teaches to take away oneself’s heart, senses and emotions (maxims 166, 181, 188); this proves that [José María Escrivá de Balaguer, the founder of Opus Dei] was a psychopath, because psychopaths despise all feelings in order to satisfy their desires. These teachings can produce people so cruel as nazis,” notes the Maria Auxiliadora Prayer Group.
“Though Novak’s adherence to Opus Dei has never been confirmed—as a policy, the organization doesn’t reveal its rolls—D.C. insiders have for years noted the pundit’s close relationship with Father C. John McCloskey III, an eminent member of the group who helped baptize the Jewish-born Novak into Catholicism in 1998,” writes Radar Online. “McCloskey is also believed to have brought other high-profile Washington conservatives into the group, including book publisher Alfred Regnery, Republican Kansas Senator Sam Brownback, and Novak’s former CNN colleague, Larry Kudlow.” Brownback, yet another Republican presidential wanna-be, considers himself part of “the righteous remnant,” that is to say rich people with evangelical religious views. Brownback is also known as “the new internationalist,” i.e., a radical and fascist Catholic globalist.
Considering the above, Novak’s distaste for Sheehan and the anti-war movement is perfectly natural, although—as the corporate media has demonstrated over the last couple weeks—one need not be an Opus Dei crackpot in order to hate Sheehan: a garden variety right-winger and mindless Bush supporter, fully vested in the upside-down tenants of Bushzarro world, will suffice. However, it is demonstrative that a guy like Novak—an icon of the corporate media—would be involved with the legacy of Franco, Pinochet, and the self-flagellating misogynist and mental case José María Escrivá de Balaguer.
13 Comments
Iraq: Chuck Hagel Doesn’t Get It—and then He Does
Monday August 22nd 2005, 8:46 am
Filed under: Politics
Nebraska Sen. Chuck Hagel, who got himself shot up in Vietnam (or “earned” two Purple Hearts, anyway), doesn’t get it. He says the “war” in Iraq “has destabilized the Middle East,” according to the Guardian, and believes there needs to be an exit strategy. “I think our involvement there has destabilized the Middle East. And the longer we stay there, I think the further destabilization will occur.” Well, Chuck may not realize it, but that is precisely the game plan—the neocons want to destabilize the Middle East, decimate Islamic societies and culture, and instigate a revamped Sykes-Picot Agreement of sorts, that is to say carve up the Middle East like the Brits and French did in 1916.
Of course, it is not 1916, the Middle East is not emerging from under six hundred years under Ottoman rule, modern Arab nationalism has existed for nearly a century, and Arabs and Muslims are all too willing to resist invasion and occupation, taking as their example the enduring struggle for self-determination of the Palestinians. Hagel, the man who would be president, also said Iraq is beginning to look more and more like Vietnam. Hagel said the United States is “locked into a bogged-down problem not unsimilar, dissimilar to where we were in Vietnam.” It doesn’t take a rocket scientist to figure this one out: people will resist occupation by all means available, even if it takes “terrorism,” that is to say blowing stuff up and killing people. It would seem Congress is rife with people who are unable to understand the most rudimentary concepts of human nature.
Meanwhile, Sen. George Allen, yet another presidential wanna-be, disagreed. “I think this is a very crucial time for the future of Iraq,'’ said Allen, appearing on ABC. “The terrorists don’t have anything to win the hearts and minds of the people of Iraq. All they care to do is disrupt.” Indeed, they are disrupting the neocon plan to turn Iraq (and the rest of the Middle East) into a neolib vassal state run by a few hand-picked autocrats with a brutal military and state police at their disposal to deal with troublemakers, that is to say people who don’t cotton to making a thirty cents an hour in a Nike sweatshop. Once again, the real disrupting force in Iraq is the presence of the United States military and their winnowed would-be kings, tribal dons, and warlords.
It was Sunday and the Congress critters were out in number, taking the powder puff on the corporate media news programs. “The worst-case scenario is not staying four years. The worst-case scenario is leaving a dysfunctional, repressive government behind that becomes part of the problem in the war on terror and not the solution,” said Sen. Lindsey Graham, a South Carolina Republican, on Fox. Of course, in the beginning, as Bush fished for an excuse to invade, we were told Iraq had scads of weapons of mass destruction, and then when that turned out to be a lie (as more than a few of us said it would), the excuse turned into the sickeningly disingenuous claim that Bush and crew were delivering democracy to benighted Arabs (not that the Straussian-Machiavellians surrounding Bush would know real democracy, even if it came up and bit them on the derriere), but that was of course not a good enough reason to get a couple GIs a day killed, so now Bush and the would-be presidential Congress critters tells us the United States is occupying Iraq in order to fight the interminable war on terrorism.
Finally, the good ol’ boy Sen. Trent Lott threw in his two cents. Much like a blind man caressing an elephant ear, Lott said the U.S. is winning in Iraq but has “a way to go'’ before it “meets its goals” there. Meanwhile, more needs to be done to lay out the strategy, Lott said on NBC. Of course, this is now a standard mantra, a Bushzarro maxim—the United States is “winning,” when in fact it is losing because the Iraqi people (who see themselves as Palestinians and the Americans as Zionists) are determined to keep blowing up Humvees, piling up the dead and wounded, until the United States leaves, as it did in Vietnam.
In the meantime, there is a “way to go” before this reality—minus extreme brutality, the United States will never be able to seriously occupy Iraq, as the French were unable to occupy Algeria (where some serious brutality was in fact levied, all for naught)—sinks in. Cindy Sheehan is but one grieving mother of a son meat grinded by the neocon death machine. More Cindy Sheehans will emerge as the United States “meets its goals” in Iraq. Such a grassroots movement will either put an end to the Straussian-Machiavellian death machine or the state will redouble its effort, as it did in the 60s with COINTELPRO, to kill what will be anti-war democracy in action.
5 Comments
MindWar: Full Spectrum Fake Terrorism
Sunday August 21st 2005, 9:53 am
Filed under: Politics
Jeffrey Steinberg, in an article appearing in the August 26 issue of the Executive Intelligence Review, mentions Col. Paul E. Vallely, the Commander of the 7th Psychological Operations Group, United States Army Reserve, and a document he authored entitled From PSYOP to MindWar: The Psychology of Victory (note: link is a PDF document). “MindWar must be strategic in emphasis, with tactical applications playing a reinforcing, supplementary role,” Vallely wrote in 1980. “In its strategic context, MindWar must reach out to friends, enemies, and neutrals alike across the globe—neither through primitive ‘battlefield’ leaflets and loudspeakers of PSYOP nor through the weak, imprecise, and narrow effort of psychotronics [the relationship between matter, energy, and consciousness]—but through the media possessed by the United States which have the capabilities to reach virtually all people on the face of the Earth.” In short, the corporate media, Vallely wrote 25 years ago, is an integral and essential component and “force multiplier” of forever war waged against enemies, including the American people.
Steinberg spends a lot of time documenting the occult and paranormal activities of Pentagon researchers (and also “weapons that directly attack the targetted population’s central nervous system and brain functioning,” including “such phenomena as atmospheric electromagnetic activity, air ionization, and extremely low frequency waves), but for my dime the interesting part of Steinberg’s analysis concerns the use of fake terrorism, or “pseudo gang” terrorism and “psychological operations” of the sort used against the “targetted population” here in the United States since nine eleven and, more recently, in Britain. For instance, Steinberg references Seymour Hersh, who quoted Naval Postgraduate School defense analyst and Pentagon counterinsurgency advisor John Arquilla (see my January blog entry on Hersh and Arquilla in regard to pseudo terrorism and the kidnapping and apparent murder of Margaret Hassan). “Hersh hinted [in his New Yorker article, The Coming Wars] that U.S. Special Forces units were being unleashed to create their own terrorist ‘pseudo gangs’ to more easily infiltrate terrorist groups like al-Qaeda,” as Steinberg summarizes. “When conventional military operations and bombing failed to defeat the Mau Mau insurgency in Kenya in the 1950s, the British formed teams of friendly Kikuyu tribesmen who went about pretending to be terrorists,” writes Arquilla. “These ‘pseudo gangs,’ as they were called, swiftly threw the Mau Mau on the defensive, either by befriending and then ambushing bands of fighters or by guiding bombers to the terrorists’ camps. What worked in Kenya a half-century ago has a wonderful chance of undermining trust and recruitment among today’s terror networks. Forming new pseudo gangs should not be difficult.”
It is my contention al-Qaeda (or more precisely, al-CIA-duh) is just such a “pseudo gang,” initially created in Afghanistan in the 1980s to fight the Soviets but held over—as are all successful intelligence operations (and the CIA admits the creation of the Islamic Terror Network is its largest and most successful operation to date; see Chalmers Johnson). As the corporate media (as a willing participant in psychological warfare against the American people) would have it, al-CIA-duh reformulated itself without intelligence assistance after the United States abandoned Afghanistan in the wake of the Soviet defeat in that backwater and more or less strategically meaningless country (that is until a consortium of oil and natural gas corporations decided they wanted to build a pipeline there in the 1990s). There is ample evidence that al-CIA-duh remained a valued intelligence “asset” (and covert warfare workhorse) after Afghanistan, the primary example being its activities in the Balkans (see my From Afghanistan to Iraq: Transplanting CIA Engineered Terrorism) and elsewhere.
As Steinberg notes, once again referencing the detective work of Hersh, “[Evangelical Christian Lieutenant-General William “Jerry” Boykin] and his immediate boss, Undersecretary of Defense for Intelligence Stephen Cambone, are directly in charge of the Special Operations search-and-kill squads touted by John Arquilla in his pseudo-gang promo.” Joe E. Kilgore, writing for Special Warfare in the Winter of 2002, declares that the “future holds great promise for the Center and School and for the students it trains. The commanding general of SWCS [John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School], Major General William G. Boykin, is developing the ARSOF School of the Future, an innovative concept designed to ensure that SWCS instructional facilities and techniques will meet the challenges of the 21st century. The SWCS Special Forces Evolution Steering Committee is developing a road map to facilitate the transformation of the Special Forces Branch. Improvement plans for both CA and PSYOP have been approved, and those plans are scheduled to be implemented beginning in FY 2002.” An integral component of the Pentagon’s ambitious psyop program is Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG). “P2OG would launch secret operations aimed at ’stimulating reactions’ among terrorists and states possessing weapons of mass destruction, meaning it would prod terrorist cells into action, thus exposing them to ‘quick-response’ attacks by US forces. The means by which it would do this is the far greater use of special operations forces,” David Isenberg wrote for the Asia Times in November, 2002. P2OG, however, is only the public relations face of a much larger and sinister plan that stretches back at least to 1980 and Col. Paul E. Vallely’s seminal MindWar document and the idea of psychological warfare waged against the American people.
Vallely, of course, does not mention “pseudo-gang” warfare explicitly and instead puts forward the idea of “full spectrum” warfare in all fronts, including disinformation or propaganda warfare waged against the American people. Indeed, the idea of fake or deceptive terrorism is much older and originated in its modern form and was field tested by General Frank Kitson, a British officer “who first thought up the concept that was later used in the formation of Al Qaeda. He called it the ‘pseudo gang’—a state sponsored group used to advance an agenda, while discrediting the real opposition. The strategy was used in both Kenya and Northern Ireland. In the case of Northern Ireland, most of the violence that was attributed to ‘Loyalists’ was in actuality not their handiwork, but the result of the activities of the death squads affiliated to the British secret state,” writes Ian Buckley (see my General Frank Kitson: Trail Blazing Fake Terrorism).
15 Comments
ADE Hacked
Saturday August 20th 2005, 12:27 pm
Filed under: Politics
ADE suffered a malware exploit early Thursday. I restored the site this afternoon and will be posting later in the day.
45 Comments
On Jack Blood’s Show
Wednesday August 17th 2005, 2:05 pm
Filed under: Politics
I will be a guest on Jack Blood’s radio program—1:00 to 3:00 Central Time. Check it out online via streaming audio here.
7 Comments
Danger Will Robertson! Osama in Iraq!
Wednesday August 17th 2005, 10:54 am
Filed under: Politics
Oh, brother, here we go again. “Al-Qaeda leader, Osama bin Laden, is headed for Iraq to boost his network’s standing as it embarks on an ‘offensive whose scale and importance rival September 9/11,’ a media report said,” the Hindustan Times expects us to believe (incidentally, the story originates in Jerusalem, as it states below the byline). “Coded electronic signals intercepted in recent days among Al-Qaeda’s Middle Eastern elements across secret Internet sites carry the message that the terror network’s supreme leader has come out of his hiding in Afghanistan and has set out, or is about to set out, for Iraq, Debkafile, a weekly, known for investigative journalism reported.” Debkafile is a Zionist propaganda organ and should be discounted out of hand.
“The signals cap a secret exchange of messages in recent weeks in which the organization’s Iraq commander, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, attempted to persuade Bin Laden to leave Afghanistan and take command of the Ramadan offensive in Iraq.” Not so secret if the media knows about it. But never mind.
“According to Debkafile’s exclusive [Likudite] counter-terror sources, Zarqawi is said to have argued that Bin Laden’s presence in Iraq would boost Al-Qaeda’s standing before setting on an ‘offensive whose scale and importance rival the September 2001 operation’ and goes well with his own safety.” Never mind both these guys are dead and buried, as previously documented. But even if Osama was alive, the question remains: traveling on the Q.T., how would he get his regular kidney dialysis procedure? Maybe he put one of these on the back of a mule?
“The weekly had earlier reported that Al-Qaeda has established a new marine base in the remote Gawatar Bay, a Persian Gulf inlet down the middle of which runs the Pakistani-Iranian border.” Now we’re told al-CIA-duh has a “marine base” (al-CIA-duh battleships?) and for some reason nobody has bothered to bomb this base. Note the inclusion of the word “Iran” here.
“Its operatives are said to be active on both shores, on the Pakistani side, using the Baluchi villages strung along the River Dasht which empties into the divided bay as sanctuaries. On the Iranian side, they move around the Baluchi port of Chah-Bahar (Bandar Beheshti).” It is awfully odd that MEK (the Mujahedin el Khalq) and al-CIA-duh share the same turf (or rather it is not so odd). MEK are Straussian neocon darlings (recall Richard Perle, aka the Prince of Darkness, gave a speech at a MEK fundraiser).
Obviously, this Debka-based story is rubbish. Osama and Abu are dead, al-Qaeda is a scary public relations scam (note that most al-CIA-duh detainees at Camp Gitmo and elsewhere are basically hapless dirt farmers and cab drivers), and Bush is looking for a new way to pump life back into his faltering “war” against the Iraqi people. Bush (or rather his handlers in the Pentagon) may believe the apparition of Osama in Iraq (a mercurial presence like Abu Musab al-Zarqawi) may be the ticket. However, this will do absolutely nothing to stop the Iraqi people from resisting Bush’s illegal and immoral occupation.
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De Menezes: Another Corpse on the Road to Globalist Fascism
Wednesday August 17th 2005, 9:51 am
Filed under: Politics
The blogger Aangirfan draws a parallel between the execution of the seemingly hapless Jean Charles de Menezes on 22 July in the London subway and Operation Gladio. As Aangirfan points out, de Menezes “behaved normally” when he entered Stockwell Tube station, did not run from police (or rather a “Special Reconnaissance Regiment, modeled on an undercover unit that operated in Northern Ireland,” according to the Guardian), did not jump a tollgate and used his Oyster card (a travel smartcard), nor was he wearing bulky clothes (see this gruesome image), he was apparently unaware the SRR hit squad was tailing him, and he did not trip as he ran and was in fact shot as he sat in the subway car. (See Blunders led to police killing of an innocent man, the Scotsman.)
All of this, of course, is at variance with the original story, prompting us to wonder why Brit officials decided to completely distort the story. Is it possible they did so because the SRR executed de Menezes because he was somehow involved in the staged “suicide bombings” on July 7, possibly as a technician (de Menezes was an electrician and recall there were “electrical surges” reported prior to the bombings). For some reason, the SRR did not want de Menezes to travel on the subway and decided to snuff him, regardless of the fact there were witnesses on the carriage. Since the cover story is completely decimated—he was a terrorist, a possible suicide bomber, and attempted to flee—there are now plenty of questions about the cold-blooded murder of Charles de Menezes, questions that will probably never be resolved.
In regard to the Gladio angle, as mentioned by Aangirfan, I have problems with this. Aangirfan provides an excellent summation of Gladio and its fascist “kontrgerilla” operations. However, the blogger fails to explain why such a Gladio operation would execute de Menezes. As we know, through ample (and generally ignored) documentation, Operation Gladio was devised to blame terrorism on leftist and progressive political organizations, thus alienating them from the public. This was its overriding raison detre. Now, if de Menezes was killed in a Gladio assassination op, it would make sense for his killers to present themselves as Muslims, thus affixing blame to the target group of such an operation (and affix the impression of crazed Muslim assassins on the loose). Instead, de Menezes was killed by people identified at first as police, later as SRR goons, who made no effort to pass themselves off as Muslims. In fact, after the hit, the Brit authorities claimed the execution was part of a “shoot-to-kill” directive, an effort (based on Israeli practices) to eliminate suicide bombers before they strike. As we now know, this was pure and unadulterated nonsense. In fact, the shoot-to-kill policy was recently embraced by the International Association of Chiefs of Police and their proposed guidelines would embrace a “more aggressive posture than typical lethal-force guidelines,” according to the Age, thus promoting the globalist plan to militarize police forces around the world (or those not already militarized) and get people accustomed to death squads (and Israeli-styled “targeted assassination”) in the name of fighting (state-sponsored, false flag) terrorism.
No, I don’t believe Jean Charles de Menezes was executed in a Gladio-styled operation. However, I do believe the Brits (and their counterparts in the United States) are now entirely willing to assassinate their opponents (or perform “clean up crew” operations of lower echelon players in false flag covert ops) in public, as they did in Northern Ireland, Malaya, Kenya, and as they continue to do in Iraq (the latter can be considered a virtual testing ground for “counter-insurgency” black operations, from forming and fronting “pseudo-gang” terrorist groups and individuals—think Abu Musab al-Zarqawi and the so-called al-Qaeda Organization in the Land of Two Rivers—as prescribed under the now largely forgotten P2OG, or the Proactive Preemptive Operations Group as brainstormed by Rumsfeld’s Defense Science Board in 2002). “The new apparatus for covert operations and the growing government secrecy associated with the war on terrorism reflect the way the Bush administration’s most senior officials see today’s world,” writes William M. Arkin, a military affairs analyst for the Los Angeles Times. “The [Defense Science Board] recommends creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group, (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence, and cover and deception.” I believe the execution of Jean Charles de Menezes was associated with such covert action and the P2OG network (for lack of a more inclusive term) is global, encompassing not only the Pentagon but the far reaches of British military intelligence. As for the Gladio connection, consider that MI6 had an affinity for fascism, as demonstrated prior to WWII by Wing Commander Frederick Winterbottom, who argued that Britain and Germany unite against the Soviet Union and communists in general.
21 Comments
Whitewash Crew Attempts to Bury Able Danger Revelations
Tuesday August 16th 2005, 12:23 pm
Filed under: Politics
It really is a no-brainer: Mohamed Atta (and his doubles) was allowed to run around the country unmolested, apparently plotting mayhem (as instructed), even though a DIA op dubbed Able Danger discovered him and attempted sound the alarm. In a lame effort to bury this damaging revelation, nine eleven whitewash commission taskmasters Thomas Kean and Lee Hamilton issued a joint statement declaring “that panel staff members have found no documents or other witnesses to back up claims made by a U.S. Navy officer, who told the commission staff in July 2004 that he recalled seeing Atta’s name and photograph on a chart prepared by another officer. Panel officials also said they have found no evidence to support similar claims made to reporters by a second person, a former defense intelligence official,” reports the Washington Post. “None of the documents turned over to the commission mention Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers,” the whitewash commission statement continued. “Nor do any of the staff notes on documents reviewed in the [Defense Department] reading room indicate that Mohamed Atta or any of the other future hijackers were mentioned in any of those documents.” I guess Kean and Hamilton never heard of a paper shredder.
“The importance of this week’s revelation that an Army intelligence unit was tracking Mohamed Atta’s movements in the U.S. during 1999 and 2000 is so mind-boggling that it seems nobody quite gets it yet,” opines Daniel Hopsicker. “Here’s the big question nobody seems to be ready to ask: Upon what basis did the 9.11 Commission conclude that the FBI’s timeline was correct and that an elite Army Intel unit was mistaken in saying they were tracking Mohamed Atta roaming freely across America during 1999 and 2000?” Another no-brainer: the FBI timeline fits the official nine eleven cover story whereas the timeline brought to light by Congress critter Curt Weldon does not. “This is much ado about nothing,” declared a senior Pentagon official, attempting to bury the damn thing. It really is an embarrassment and needs to be buried along with a dog bone and junior’s homework, preferably in the depths of Foggy Bottom where the skeletons are stacked high.
Back in 2002, it was revealed (by Oliver Schroem in the German publication Die Zeit) that the CIA knew exactly what their proxy (al-CIA-duh) was up to as they had Malaysian spooks monitoring an al-CIA-duh confab in Kuala Lumpur, where the attacks on the USS Cole and World Trade Center were planned. “The CIA was able to determine the identities of the participants, if not the entire agenda. Among those attending: …Ramzi Binalshibh, a student in Germany who then returned there and supposedly organized the Hamburg cell led by Atta; and … Khalid Almihdhar and Nawaf Alhazmi. They subsequently entered the United States and moved around the country freely for 18 months, before they allegedly helped to hijack the Pentagon plane on Sept. 11,” the New York Times reported at the time. “Although the C.I.A. identified the two men as suspected extremists, the agency did not request that they be placed on the government’s watch lists to keep them out of the United States until late August 2001. By that time, they were both already in the country. In addition, while the two men lived in San Diego, their landlord was an F.B.I. informant, but the bureau did not learn of their terrorist links from the informant.”
In other words, we are expected to believe both the CIA and the FBI are completely brain-dead and unable to process the most basic intelligence information. In fact, the CIA (with the assistance of the so-called Israeli “art student” spies and covert op facilitators) micromanaged the nine eleven plot patsies, from Hamburg to flight training and beyond. “Rather than uncover the real story of the terrorist attacks, the commission conducted a sophisticated cover-up of the real relations between US government agencies and the terrorists who killed 3,000 people,” writes Patrick Martin. “Meanwhile, [Philip] Zelikow, the chief organizer of the 9/11 panel, has been rewarded for his services to the Bush administration and to the military/intelligence apparatus with an appointment as senior counselor to US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, a longtime friend and associate.” In short, moles working for the real nine eleven plotters are in the process of receiving accolades for all their hard work.
Of course, the Able Danger revelations are less than worthless—and will be swept under the rug in due time—because most Americans have swallowed the official version of events hook, line, and sinker, and are not keen to discover what really happened on nine eleven, as they blissfully go about their way like herded sheep, unquestioningly taking whatever pabulum their government dishes out, and limiting their political activity and awareness to sporting yellow magnetic ribbons on their SUVs.
20 Comments
Fake Liberalism and the Threat of Cindy Sheehan
Monday August 15th 2005, 1:58 pm
Filed under: Politics
On the drive home from a doctor appointment, I did it again: switched on AM radio. As a political blogger, it should not be surprising I listen and watch political commentary on the radio and television. But here in southern New Mexico, as in most of the rest of the country, the media outlets are glutted with Republican radio and television, so my choices are limited, if not completely constricted. So I listened to Rush Limbaugh, who comes off as a flaming liberal when compared to the guy who is on in the evening—Michael Weiner, who likes to call himself Savage. Predictably, Limbaugh was talking about Cindy Sheehan, the scourge-de-jure of far right Republicans. Said Limbaugh—and I paraphrase—Sheehan is basically a sock puppet for people who hate this country. I had a chuckle over that one. I sure the heck do not hate this country—as if one can truly hate everything about the country where he was born and lived his whole life—but I sure dislike the Limbaugh Republicans and the Savage fascists who dominate the airwaves and remarkably claim there is “liberal bias” in the corporate media.
Once home, I of course flipped on the computer, checked the blog (moderated a couple dozen comments) and went about reading the news and commentary of the day. Cliff Kincaid and Roger Aronoff, on the National Ledger web site (naturally I read the far right fruitcakes as well as the “liberal” and “hate America” web sites and blogs), where banner ads featuring teenage girls in their underwear seem normal (semi-naked girls huckstering cell phones are a fad over there), are P.O.’d at the “liberal” media for paying attention to Cindy Sheehan. According to Kincaid and Aronoff, the Washington Post is an “anti-war” newspaper, a rather delusional assertion considering it was on of the last newspaper to come out against the Vietnam War. I guess Kincaid and Aronoff consider the Times “liberal” or “anti-war” because the newspaper has resisted any hostile take-over “bid” by the likes of Fox’s Rupert Murdoch. In fact, the Washington Post is “liberal” to a certain degree—that is to day neoliberal.
“With a 21st-century perspective, where internationalism has become globalization, and monopoly capitalism is so powerful it no longer needs to mask its agenda with welfare programs, we can see the Establishment’s ‘liberalism’ for the ruthless neoliberalism it has always been,” writes Michael Hasty. “Yet the more powerful and elite the ruling class, the greater its need for an effective propaganda system to maintain that power; and the Washington Post remains, as writer Doug Henwood described it in 1990, ‘the establishment’s paper.’” It should also be noted that the Washington Post has a history of serving as a propaganda organ for the likes of the CIA and military intelligence—Philip Graham, who owned the paper after the Second World War, had been in military intelligence, and “Watergate-era editor Ben Bradlee also had an intelligence background; and before he became a journalist, reporter Bob Woodward was an officer in Naval Intelligence,” writes Hasty. “In a 1977 article in Rolling Stone magazine about CIA influence in American media, Woodward’s partner, Carl Bernstein, quoted this from a CIA official: ‘It was widely known that Phil Graham was somebody you could get help from.’ Graham has been identified by some investigators as the main contact in Project Mockingbird, the CIA program to infiltrate domestic American media.” I guess, in Bushzarro world, the CIA is considered liberal, especially after it failed to go along with Dick Cheney and the Straussian neocons and clank out lie after outrageous lie about Saddam Hussein.
Anyway, I find it refreshing (and entertaining) that paranoid neocon nut-jobs are all atwitter over Cindy Sheehan, showing their true colors by viciously slamming her and, by way of extension, her dead son. It is ridiculous to say the “anti-war” corporate media—an oxymoron if ever there was one—is on Cindy’s side. In fact, they are on the side of making a quick buck by exploiting whatever story comes along and the Cindy Sheehan story is a big one with plenty of potential for cash revenue—that is until the next Natalee Holloway story comes along. According to Kincaid and Aronoff, Cindy is a “hostage of far-left elements,” as if there is a McCarthy-like left-wing plot afoot in America, an absurdity to anybody who looks at the political situation in this country minus the ocular exercises of Bushzarro world.
In fact, the far right views of Cliff Kincaid and Roger Aronoff are far more common than they would have us believe (rabid right-wing Republicans need to stop claiming they are underdogs, lest they become a laughingstock) and a few semi-liberal editorials on social issues in the New York Times make not a leftist conspiracy. As we know, in regard to foreign policy and Bush’s invasion and occupation of Iraq, the corporate media is slavishly in step with the Bushcons and the radical right. Media corporations—hierarchical and basically authoritarian organisms—are incapable of sincere liberalism, even the faux liberalism preached by the likes of Hillary Clinton and Howard Dean.
27 Comments
Turkish Intelligence: Al-Qaeda a U.S. Covert Operation
Monday August 15th 2005, 3:14 am
Filed under: Politics
Consider the following, published in Zaman, the fifth largest newspaper in Turkey: “Amid the smoke from the fortuitous fire [i.e., the capture of Louai Sakra, said to be the al-CIA-duh regional boss in Turkey] emerged the possibility that al-Qaeda may not be, strictly speaking, an organization but an element of an intelligence agency operation. Turkish intelligence specialists agree that there is no such organization as al-Qaeda. Rather, Al-Qaeda is the name of a secret service operation. The concept ‘fighting terror’ is the background of the ‘low-intensity-warfare’ conducted in the mono-polar world order. The subject of this strategy of tension is named as ‘al-Qaeda.’” Note the use of the phrase “strategy of tension,” an obvious reference to Gladio, the state-sponsored terrorist operation in Italy (basically a series of fascist false flag operations, or “low intensity warfare,” blamed on leftists). It is interesting that Turkish intelligence would admit that the neocon “war against terrorism” is an entirely artificial construct.
Moreover, according to Turkish intelligence, “Sakra has been sought by the secret services since 2000. The US Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) interrogated him twice before. Following the interrogation CIA offered him employment. He also received a large sum of money by CIA. However the CIA eventually lost contact with him.” It is curious how alleged key people in the al-CIA-duh network end up working for the CIA and other intelligence agencies.
For instance, Abdurahman Khadr, who (according to ABC News Online) “lived side-by-side with Osama bin Laden,” was a “double agent, sent to spy on Al Qaeda fighters at Guantanamo Bay and in Bosnia.” Ali Mohamed, a former U.S. Army sergeant who trained Osama bin Laden’s bodyguards and helped plan the 1998 bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya, worked for the FBI (Mohamed, obviously with the grace of the feds, brought Ayman al-Zawahiri to San Francisco on a covert fund-raising mission), according to the San Francisco Chronicle. Hamid Reza Zakeri claimed (during the trial of Abdelghani Mzoudi, a Moroccan accused of helping the nine eleven hijackers) that “Iran’s secret service had contacts with Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda network ahead of the September 11 attacks,” according to Reuters. It just so happens Zakeri claims the CIA owes him $1.2 for services rendered as a double agent. Mullah Krekar, the leader of Ansar al-Islam, told al-Hayat newspaper in 2003 he had “a meeting with a CIA representative and someone from the American army in the town of Sulaymaniya (Iraqi Kurdistan) at the end of 2000. They asked us to collaborate with them,” an offer Krekar said he refused. Osama Moustafa Hassan Nasr, aka Abu Omar, “a dangerous terrorist who once plotted to kill the Egyptian foreign minister,” according to the Chicago Tribune, was such a valued CIA asset it was deemed necessary to kidnap him off the streets of Milan after he had second thoughts about his work. And then there was Muhammad Naeem Noor Khanm, the al-Qaeda “computer engineer” who “became part of a sting operation organized by the CIA,” according to the Washington Post.
Of course, all of this CIA funny business is coincidental. Remember, the CIA is ineffectual, even if it did create Islamic terrorism—the agency actually boasts about this, says the Afghan Mujahideen (aka “al-Qaeda”) was its most successful operation to date—and it was “intelligence failures” that caused nine eleven.
21 Comments
We Don’t Need an Abbie Hoffman
Sunday August 14th 2005, 12:37 pm
Filed under: Politics
Consider the following, buried in a San Francisco Chronicle article about Cindy Sheehan: “This generation of anti-war activists has so far produced few, if any, personalities that have connected with a majority of Americans. There are no Abbie Hoffmans or Tom Haydens, who emerged during the Vietnam War’s protest movement. No Yippies. Not even a young John Kerry, who testified against that war before Congress wearing his Army uniform. Some anonymity is intentional. In the words of Bill Dobbs, an organizer with United for Peace and Justice, anti-war leaders have been reluctant to promote a personality over their message because ‘power corrupts.’” Of course, the corporate media would love a new Abbie Hoffman or Tom Hayden, somebody they can slap on the television screen and magnify and exploit their all-too-human foibles. In fact, the strength of the decentralized anti-war (and anti-Bush) movement (even as it fails) is precisely in the fact it has no Abbie Hoffman leader type of personality.
I am old enough to remember the last anti-war movement and recall how it was destroyed precisely because it had leaders and offices with street addresses. It was called COINTELPRO, or Counter Intelligence Program. “The purpose of the program was, in FBI Director J. Edgar Hoover’s own words, to ‘expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit and otherwise neutralize’ specific groups and individuals,” write Mike Cassidy and Will Miller. “Its targets in this period [the 1950s, 1960s, and early 1970s] included the American Indian Movement, the Communist Party, the Socialist Worker’s Party, Black Nationalist groups, and many members of the New Left (SDS, and a broad range of anti-war, anti-racist, feminist, lesbian and gay, environmentalist and other groups). Many other groups and individuals seeking racial, gender and class justice were targets who came under attack, including Martin Luther King, Cesar Chavez, the NAACP, the National Lawyer’s Guild, SANE-Freeze, American Friends Service Committee, and many, many others.”
I’m afraid the movement coalescing around Cindy Sheehan (especially her own organization, Gold Star Families for Peace) will fall victim to same tactics. It would be naive to think there are not FBI agents in the process of infiltrating Sheehan’s organization and others currently aligning themselves with Sheehan’s cause.
But it is exceeding difficult for the FBI (and the CIA, admittedly working out of FBI offices around the country) to effectively go after thousands of us not connected to a particular group or organization, those of us who run anti-war web sites and blogs, who spread the word through cyberspace. Granted, most of what we do is preach to the converted, but that is the case with traditional organizations as well. However, my blog received over a million and a half hits last month and between four and five thousand unique visitors come here every single day. Multiply that across the board and you have a lot of people educating themselves (and hopefully educating others). Of course, due to the fact most people get their information from the corporate media—and the corporate media consistently downplays the role of web sites and blogs (even accuses them of facilitating terrorism)—we have a whole lot of work to do. As it now stands, the only way the government can put a stop to the growing tide of people tuning out the corporate media in favor of alternative web sites and blogs would be to pull the plug on the internet (or classify sites such as this as “terrorist” and expunge our DNS entries). I’m not sure they will be able to do this in short order.
In the meantime, it is probably best to stay away from crowds, especially when such crowds are crawling with FBI agents and agents provocateurs.
43 Comments
Sheehan: It’s About PNAC and the Neocons
Sunday August 14th 2005, 11:06 am
Filed under: Politics
In response to a comment posted on this blog—claiming I am an anti-Semitic conspiracy nut who blames everything on the poor Jews—allow me to quote Cindy Sheehan: “Am I emotional? Yes, my first born was murdered. Am I angry? Yes, he was killed for lies and for a PNAC Neo-Con agenda to benefit Israel. My son joined the Army to protect America, not Israel. Am I stupid? No, I know full-well that my son, my family, this nation, and this world were betrayed by George [W.] Bush who was influenced by the neo-con PNAC agenda after 9/11. We were told that we were attacked on 9/11 because the terrorists hate our freedoms and democracy…not for the real reason, because the Arab-Muslims who attacked us hate our middle-eastern foreign policy. That hasn’t changed since America invaded and occupied Iraq…in fact it has gotten worse.”
Is Cindy Sheehan a Nazi-loving anti-Semite who wants to shove Jews in crematoria ovens—or is she simply telling the truth (and a well-documented truth, albeit consistently ignored by the corporate media)? Naturally, it didn’t take long for the far right-wing apologists to scream “Sheehan’s a Jew-hating anti-Semite” from the rooftops—or from the depths of the blogosphere, anyway (see this knee-jerk entry at Israpundit).
According to the concentration camp apologist Michelle Malkin, Sheehan is a dupe for “the far Left and in the MSM” (translation: the “MSM,” or mainstream media, read corporate media, reported this story, so they are complicit in the treasonous plot to bring the troops home). As Ms. Malkin sees it, the “Cindy Sheehan juggernaut has resulted in an uptick in profanity-laced moonbat hate mail from Bush Derangement Syndrome sufferers incapable of rational debate.” In other words, arguing that the Iraq invasion and occupation is an untenable disaster indicates one is “incapable of rational debate” (as defined by Malkin and the neocons) and opposition to such lunacy as killing 140,000 (give or take 10 or 20 thousand) innocent Iraqis predicated on a stinking passel of lies is a symptom of the “Bush Derangement Syndrome.” However, it would appear Malkin suffers from a mental illness of her own—not uncommon in Bushzarro world—because she believes the “MSM” is infiltrated with America-hating leftists (for instance, the American-hating folks at General Electric, who manufacture jet engines for Boeing, Lockheed Martin, and other military aircraft makers, and also own and control NBC, CNBC, Telemundo, and msnbc.com).
But anyway, the point here is that you cannot avoid reality—even from the murky depths of Bushzarro world where the Michelle Malkin apologists for mass murder and forever-war reside. I keep citing the following news article as a primary example of how indeed the invasion and occupation of Iraq is in Israel’s interest (War Launched to Protect Israel - Bush Adviser) but this fact is studiously ignored. It is also well-established that the invasion of Iraq was pushed by the likes of neocon “think tanks” such as PNAC, as Sheehan notes, and also the American Enterprise Institute, Middle East Media Research Institute, Hudson Institute, Washington Institute for Near East Policy, Middle East Forum, Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs, Center for Security Policy, and others less influential. Again, this is not some Elders of Zion conspiracy theory but established fact (for more detail, see Jason Vest, The Men From JINSA and CSP).
On February 19, 1998, in an “Open Letter to the President,” the Machiavellian neocon Committee for Peace and Security in the Gulf proposed “a comprehensive political and military strategy for bringing down Saddam and his regime,” in other words killing even more Iraqis than they had killed up to that point (around a million, half of them children, through medieval sanctions). “Among the letter’s signers were the following current Bush administration officials,” notes Stephen J. Sniegoski. “Elliott Abrams (National Security Council), Richard Armitage (State Department), Bolton (State Department), Feith (Defense Department), Fred Ikle (Defense Policy Board), Zalmay Khalilzad (White House), Peter Rodman (Defense Department), Wolfowitz (Defense Department), David Wurmser (State Department), Dov Zakheim (Defense Department), Perle (Defense Policy Board), and Rumsfeld (Secretary of Defense). In 1998 Donald Rumsfeld was part of the neocon network and already demanding war with Iraq…. Signers of the letter also included such pro-Zionist and neoconservative luminaries as Robert Kagan, William Kristol, Gaffney (Director, Center for Security Policy), Joshua Muravchik (American Enterprise Institute), Martin Peretz (editor-in-chief, The New Republic), Leon Wieseltier (The New Republic), and former Rep. Stephen Solarz (D-N.Y.).” Such facts are easily obtained and hardly constitute a crack-brained conspiracy theory, as some allege. Fact of the matter is pro-Zionist neocons engineered the invasion of Iraq and Cindy Sheehan is absolutely correct (and allow me to add): her son died for a gaggle of racist and hateful chicken hawk Likudnik-lovers bent on “reshaping” the Muslim Middle East (i.e., destroying Islamic societies and culture).
Of course, for the neocons—ensconced in the Bush administration and their right-wing funded foundations, or criminal organizations—the invasion and occupation of Iraq is only the beginning. If they have their way more Casey Sheehans will be slaughtered (and thousands, possibly millions, of Muslims). Just so we understand where the Straussian neocon Machiavellian clash of civilizations crowd stands, consider the following, penned by the dynamic duo of all-war-all-the-time, Robert Kagan and William Kristol, in 2002:
When all is said and done, the conflict in Afghanistan will be to the war on terrorism what the North Africa campaign was to World War II: an essential beginning on the path to victory. But compared with what looms over the horizon—a wide-ranging war in locales from Central Asia to the Middle East and, unfortunately, back again to the United States—Afghanistan will prove but an opening battle…. But this war will not end in Afghanistan. It is going to spread and engulf a number of countries in conflicts of varying intensity. It could well require the use of American military power in multiple places simultaneously. It is going to resemble the clash of civilizations that everyone has hoped to avoid.
As Sniegoski notes, we can only conclude, considering the facts (and follow the above link to Sniegoski’s article to get the whole story), “not only that the neoconservatives are obviously in the forefront of the pro-war bandwagon but also that pro-Israeli Likudnik motives are the most logical, probably the only logical, motives for war,” although, the “deductions drawn” from Sniegoski’s essay “seem obvious but are rarely broached in public because Jewish power is a taboo subject. As the intrepid Joseph Sobran puts it: ‘It’s permissible to discuss the power of every other group, from the Black Muslims to the Christian Right, but the much greater power of the Jewish establishment is off-limits.’”
Cindy Sheehan has broached this taboo—and with millions of people watching—and this is driving the neocons and right-wingers bonkers, as Malkin’s nonsensical blog entry demonstrates. Meanwhile, feeling threatened and pissed off that the “liberal” media (owned by war profiteers such as General Electric) would even give Sheehan one sound bite, the rabid right-wingers have mobilized. “Demonstrators backing President Bush’s war on terrorism [or war on dark-skinned Muslims] traveled to Crawford, Texas, on Friday and Saturday—as the media continued to focus on Gold Star mother Cindy Sheehan’s anti-war protest outside Bush’s ranch,” reports NewsMax. “On Saturday, reinforcements arrived in the form of ‘The Heart of Texas’ Chapter of FreeRepublic.com, which staged a support-the-troops rally that drew 250 people, according to WCBS Newsradio 880.”
FreeRepublic is the freedom-loving web site or forum that loves to drop a dime on the FBI, CIA, and IRS and rat out people like Justin Raimondo who they love to hate (and hate is their raison detre). Considering how the “Freepers” consistently target activists (they are fond of calling clergy and church-based activists who disagree with them “commies”) it is entirely possible there will be a lot of screaming and confrontation when this contingent arrives in Crawford, a few miles from Bush’s faux cowboy ranch.
Any “violence” will, of course, bring an end to Cindy Sheehan’s embarrassing protest and Bush’s stubborn refusal to meet Sheehan—and no doubt such an outcome will bring a smile to the face of Michelle Malkin and Matt Drudge and neocons far and wide who—like vampires—hate the light of day.
38 Comments
Germans Wary of Dubya the Destroyer
Sunday August 14th 2005, 8:46 am
Filed under: Politics
Gerhard Schroeder, German chancellor, wants nothing to do with Bush’s latest round of saber-rattling against Iran. “Let’s take the military option off the table. We have seen it doesn’t work,” Schroeder told Social Democrats at a rally in Hanover, the BBC reports. Schroeder told the German weekly Bild am Sonntag Bush’s military threats are “extremely dangerous” and Bush and his crew of neocon psychopaths can “exclude any participation by the German government under my direction.” According to the BBC, however, Schroeder is laying on the anti-war rhetoric because he is behind in the polls. In 2002, carping about the impending Iraq invasion gave Schroeder a boost in the polls. In other words, Gerhard Schroeder is simply another politician exploiting anti-war sentiment in Europe, or so it would seem if you read the BBC web site. Never mind that the vast majority of the people in the world (with the exception of the Americans and Israelis) are afraid of Bush’s death-dealing juggernaut.
Meanwhile, the Iranians are not taking Bush’s latest threats—issued during a Q and A on Israeli television nonetheless—lightly: “Iran notched up the rhetorical battle with the United States on Sunday, declaring its options, if attacked by Washington, far exceeded those of the Americans,” reports the Associated Press. “I think Bush should know that our options are more numerous than the U.S. options,” said Iranian Foreign Ministry spokesman Hamid Reza Asefi. “If the United States makes such a big mistake, then Iran will definitely have more choices to defend itself.” The Associated Press commented: “He offered no specifics but characterized Bush’s words as part of an ongoing psychological war against Iran.”
Asefi did not need to offer specifics. Obviously, when the United States attacks Iran, all hell will break loose in the neighborhood. As I noted in February, quoting a report in the Boston Globe, “Iran has begun publicly preparing for a possible US attack, announcing efforts to bolster and mobilize recruits in citizens’ militias and making plans to engage in the type of ‘asymmetrical’ warfare that has plagued American troops in neighboring Iraq.” According to Wayne Madsen’s sources (within the German Federal Intelligence Service), the U.S. will hit Iran with “heavy saturation bombing using bunker buster bombs and tactical nuclear weapons” and on the ground against urban and rural critical infrastructure through “sabotage carried out by elements of the People’s Mujaheddin (MEK), Pentagon Special Operations units, and other Iranian dissident groups.”
Iran knows where the rhetorical source stems from—Israel and the Israel-centric neocons in the United States—and thus has declared that if they are attacked they will respond in kind against Israel. “Iran’s Revolutionary Guards said Iranians would ‘crush’ Israel if it attacked the Persian state,” the China Daily reported last August. “Iranian Defense Minister Ali Shamkhani, upped the ante … telling Al-Jazeera television that his government might launch pre-emptive strikes to protect its nuclear facilities if they were threatened.
Of course, all of this may be little more than part of the ongoing psychological warfare between the United States and Iran at the behest of the Likudites and their operatives in the Bush administration. It is significant, however, that Bush directed his comments toward the Israeli public. Sharon and his cabal of right-winger Likudites have pounded the war drums against Iran for years and Bush’s comments were likely embraced by many in Israel, although the Israeli public, not unlike the American public, remains largely clueless when it comes to the murderous intention of their government. Sharon and the Machiavellian neocons sincerely want to invade Iran and kill thousands of Iranians.
But Gerhard Schroeder and the Germans may know something we don’t, as Madsen’s sources seem to indicate. Schroeder seems to be inserting distance between himself and Bush as Bush pitches another propaganda hard ball in preparation for what may turn out to be the all-out “saturation” bombing of Iran’s “nuclear program” (i.e., Iran’s civilian infrastructure, similar to what Bush did in Iraq, with devastating results).
For most Americans, the fact that the United States is slowly moving toward another Iraqi disaster in Iran does not even register on the intellectual radar screen. More Americans know and pay attention to the vapid proclamations of Jessica Simpson who tells a “Simpson-breast-craving world” that “mine are definitely real.”
11 Comments
Clarifying Bush: I Will Kill Iranians
Saturday August 13th 2005, 8:34 am
Filed under: Politics
In Bushzarro world, when our potentate speaks, translation is often required. For instance, when Bush fielded questions from the corporate media at the faux cowboy ranch in Crawford, he responded to a question about Iran from an Israeli public television reporter as follows: “All options are on the table.” Of course, this means the Bushcons are considering bombing the dickens out of Iranian school kids and grandmothers. “The use of force is the last option for any president. You know we have used force in the recent past to secure our country.”
For this president, “force” (i.e., wanton mass murder) is the only option when dealing with Muslims. As for securing “our country,” it remains to be seen how making up a passel of lies about nukes and Saddam hobnobbing with Osama accomplished this—but then the invasion and subsequent occupation were not about making America safe, although the perception held by some is that it made Israel safe (see the comments of Philip Zelikow, executive director of the nine eleven white wash commission). Bush used the weapons of mass destruction ruse to kill thousands and thousands of Iraqis. Ditto Iran—in due time.
As Mike Whitney pointed out earlier this week, the “facts about Iran’s ‘alleged’ nuclear weapons program have never been in dispute. There is no such program and no one has ever produced a shred of credible evidence to the contrary…. Iran has no nuclear weapons program. This is the conclusion of Mohammed el-Baradei the respected chief of the IAEA. The agency has conducted a thorough and nearly-continuous investigation on all suspected sites for the last two years and has come up with the very same result every time; nothing.” In Bushzarro world, however, not having nukes means you have nukes. No matter what the Iranians do, they will be attacked.
Ace researcher Wayne Madsen provides details:
According to sources within the German Federal Intelligence Service (Bundesnachrichtendienst - BND), the Bush administration has drawn up plans to hit Iran’s nuclear, other WMD, and military sites with heavy saturation bombing using bunker buster bombs and tactical nuclear weapons. The attack will be coordinated with urban and rural critical infrastructure sabotage carried out by elements of the People’s Mujaheddin (MEK), Pentagon Special Operations units, and other Iranian dissident groups. The German intelligence comes from classified briefings provided by elements within the CIA that are concerned the neocons in the Bush administration will, in attacking Iran, set off a chain of events that will lead to world war.
And “world war” (or as the neocons call it, world war IV) is exactly what Bush and crew desire. “This fourth world war, I think, will last considerably longer than either World Wars I or II did for us. Hopefully not the full four-plus decades of the Cold War,” former CIA director (and PNACite and JINSAite) James Woolsey said in early 2003 (parroting his neocon buddy and fellow Defense Policy Board member Eliot Cohen, according to Right Web). “Only fear will re-establish [Arab] respect for us…. We need a little bit of Machiavelli.” (Quoted in the Glasgow Sunday Herald, April 13, 2003.) Niccolo Machiavelli, of course, believed the ends justify the means and “the worst and most treacherous acts of the ruler are justified,” as the historian Steven Kreis puts it. In other words, in order to get your way, it’s perfectly legitimate to start a world war, no matter millions of people may be killed.
“The Iranians refused to comply with the demands of the free world, which is: do not, in any way shape or form, have a program that could lead to a nuclear weapon,” Bush continued. “In this particular instance, the EU three—Britain, France and Germany—have taken the lead in helping to send the message, a unified message to the Iranians…. In all these instances we want diplomacy to work and so we are working feverishly on the diplomatic route and, you know, we will see if we are successful or not. As you know I’m skeptical.” Bushzarro translation: Bush and his neocon taskmasters have long planned to attack Iran and allowing the Europeans to send “unified message” is another ruse to buy time.
Of course, the impending attack and mass murder in Iran has nothing to do with the Europeans or their squeamishness about illusory nukes in Iran. As usual, it is about Israel and the neocon plan to slice and dice up the Middle East, eviscerate Muslim societies and culture, and fine tune the “new and improved” neoliberal approach to dominating “markets” through wholesale destruction and mass murder.
33 Comments
First They Came for Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri
Friday August 12th 2005, 2:21 pm
Filed under: Politics
If Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri didn’t hate the United States, as the FBI claims he does, before he was abducted in December, 2001, and accused of acting as an al-CIA-duh “sleeper cell,” he probably does now. On August 8, a “lawsuit filed …. against U.S. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld reveals the gratuitous cruelty inflicted on a foreign student held without charges for more than two years as an ‘enemy combatant’ in a South Carolina naval brig, Human Rights Watch said,” reports Reuters. “Although three men have been confined in the United States after being designated ‘enemy combatants’ by President George Bush, the complaint by Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri provides the first look into the treatment of any of them in military custody.”
Al-Marri alleges his captors—who apparently plan to keep him locked up in a military brig until the engineered war on Islamic societies and culture is over (a generation or two)—are sadistic sub-humans who get their jollies inflicting humiliation and privation upon him. Jamie Fellner, director of Human Rights Watch’s U.S. Program, tells Reuters:
“It is bad enough that al-Marri has been held indefinitely without charges and incommunicado…. Now we learn that his life in the brig has also been one of cruelty and petty vindictiveness. Whatever the Bush administration believes he has done or wanted to do, there’s no excuse for how they are treating him.”
Note the disgusting particulars:
Al-Marri’s complaint describes virtually complete isolation from the world. He has been confined round the clock in a small cell with an opaque window covered with plastic. He has not been allowed to speak to his wife or five children. He is allowed no newspapers, magazines, books (other than the Koran), radio or television. He is allowed no personal property. His cell contains a steel bed, a sink and a toilet. During the day, the mattress on his bed has been removed.
Out-of-cell time has been limited to three showers and three short periods of solitary recreation a week-but al-Marri has frequently been denied that out-of-cell time. Once he went 60 days without being permitted to leave his cell at all. When bad weather prevents him from going outside, he must remain in hand cuffs and leg irons during his indoor recreation. Leg irons and handcuffs are placed on him when he goes to the shower.
Al-Marri alleges that on occasion he has been denied basic hygiene products such as a toothbrush, toothpaste, soap and toilet paper. When not provided with toilet paper, he has had to use his hands to clean himself after he defecates, and it has taken more than an hour before soap was brought to him so that he could wash his hands. The water in his cell has frequently been turned off. He has been denied socks or footwear for months at a time, including during the winter months. Officers at the brig often lower the temperature in his cell until it becomes exceedingly cold, but they do not give him extra clothes or blankets to keep warm.
(…)
Al-Marri also claims he has been denied appropriate care for medical and mental health symptoms he has developed while in the brig. Prolonged solitary confinement pushes the boundary of what humans can psychologically tolerate. It can cause serious mental damage.
As an “enemy combatant” (i.e., he can be treated like a caged animal), al-Marri has yet to see the inside of a courtroom, or does it appear the sadist Bush will ever allow him to have his day in court. It took years before the government finally agreed to let him have access to counsel.
“In 2003, President Bush designated al-Marri an enemy combatant, and shortly before his criminal trial was to begin, the criminal charges against him were dismissed, and he was sent to the Consolidated Naval Brig in North Charleston, South Carolina.” Of course, all of this is an egregious violation of international law, but then Bush and his clash of civilizations (or eradication of certain civilizations and “failed states,” i.e., states where Muslims live) taskmasters don’t do international law.
Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri is being confined and tortured—like the unfortunates at Camp Gitmo and Abu Ghraib in Iraq—because he is an Arab (from Qatar) and a devout Muslim. Al-Marri’s treatment is a microcosm of the treatment the hate-mongering and demented neocons (and their reactionary right-wing fellow travelers in Congress) want to inflict on approximately 2 billion Muslims (of every four humans in the world, one of them is Muslim).
Of course, this sort of sadism will not stop with Muslims. In the not too distant future, it can be predicted with a fair degree of accuracy (if history serves) that the neocon globalists (a rather malevolent strain or faction under the neoliberal rubric) will use the same depravity against their non-Muslim enemies—that is to say, anybody who disagrees with them or resists the neolib-transnational Cosa Nostra.
Or maybe you think I’m suffering from “political paranoia” (now considered a mental illness). If so, consider t he following: the Security Act of 1950, Rex 84 (containing an emergency civilian detention plan, as sketched out by the Iran-Contra criminal Oliver North), Operation Cable Splicer, Garden Plot (also known as United States Civil Disturbance Plan 55-2), and of course the documented fact there are more than 800 FEMA camps spread out around the country. In order to give this noxious brew a bit more substance, do a bit of reading on COINTELPRO and a few other history lessons, such as the Palmer Raids (a perfect example of American citizens arrested and held without charge en masse), or do a Google search on Executive Orders 11000 through 11004.
Eventually, the sadistic abuse meted out against Ali Saleh Kahlah al-Marri will be used against ordinary citizens (it should be noted that José Padilla, an American citizen, is being held indefinitely and without charge in a military brig under the orders of the Constitution-crunching potentate Bush, so people should not think that because they were born here, are not Muslim, they are immune to kidnapping and spending the rest of their lives in a dungeon or the sort of remote concentration camps advocated by the likes of the “conservative” Michelle Malkin).
Consider it a done deal on the day after the next big terrorist attack (we are incessantly promised it is not a matter of if but when) hits America. Remember, Rex 84 was, according to Wikipedia, designed to “accommodate the detention of large numbers of American citizens during times of emergency” (i.e., an al-CIA-duh false flag operation) in “an undisclosed number of concentration camps …. set in operation throughout the United States, for internment of dissidents and others potentially harmful to the state.”
16 Comments
Martial Law: Chertoff to the Rescue
Thursday August 11th 2005, 1:51 pm
Filed under: Politics
Fear Not. Michael Chertoff, Ministry of Homeland Security head honcho and longtime member and activist in the Federalist Society (self-described as a “cabal against the libs” to push justices toward the reactionary far right), informs us that in the event there are (fake) terror attacks in America, he will be at the helm, not the neocon hired guns over at the Pentagon. I don’t know about you, but this sure the heck doesn’t make me feel any better. “The Department of Homeland Security has the responsibility under the president’s directives to coordinate the entirety of the response to a terrorist act here in the United States,” Chertoff said on CNN, according to the Baltimore Sun. Never mind that there will be no genuine terrorist attacks, only al-CIA-duh attacks when and if our neocon masters and their semi-moronic chieftain decide the time is right. Chertoff’s flaccid reassurance is of course predicated on “Defense” Department plans to declare martial law in response to “15 possible scenarios… such as the July 7 [false flag] bombings in London.”
Chertoff isn’t fooling us, though. His declaration not to allow the military to take over the country is simply a smoke screen for the fact such would be a direct and egregious violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, forbidding the military to take on duties otherwise assigned to local and state police (although, as of late, considering the militarization of law enforcement around the country, there really will not be much difference). Posse Comitatus was enacted in response to jackbooted abuses perpetuated during the fifteen year military occupation by the US Army in the post-Civil War South. Over the years, however, Posse Comitatus has been weakened, most notably during the phony “war on drugs” (i.e., the CIA and the government imported drugs, created a crisis of addiction and misery, and then responded by chipping away at civil liberties and Posse Comitatus—a classic example of the Hegelian dialectic if ever there was one). 18 USC 831, for all intents and purposes, murdered the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878—it allows the Attorney General to request that the Secretary of Defense provide emergency assistance if civilian law enforcement is inadequate to address certain types of threat involving the release of nuclear materials, such as potential use of a nuclear or radiological weapon (and thus we will probably experience a radiological event in the near future).
Leave it up to the corporate media to make excuses. “Article 2 of the Constitution, which designates the president as commander-in-chief of the armed forces and charges him with protecting the nation, theoretically allows him to deploy troops inside the United States. Actions authorized by the Constitution do not fall under the Posse Comitatus Act,” speculates Nicole Gaouette for the Los Angeles Times (supposedly a “liberal” newspaper). “The use of military troops under civilian authority in times of emergency has a long history, such as in the aftermath of natural disasters. Security specialists outside the government said the plans did not appear to be a substantive break with past practice.”
In other words, according to the ink slingers at the Los Angeles Times, it is perfectly American for jackbooted SWAT-garbed thugs to break down your door, search your house for weapons or contraband, traumatize your kids, and “shoot-to-kill” you (as is logical under martial law) for insisting there (was once) something called the Fourth Amendment to the Constitution. Obviously, Ms. Gaouette has no knowledge of the maxim that declares ‘’every man’s house is his castle,” demonstrated by the Semayne’s Case, decided in 1603, or that our own revolution was based in good part upon the idea that “writs of assistance” (generalized warrants) were illegal and the King’s agents had no right to search and seize property without probable cause. ‘’The rights to be secured in their persons, their houses, their papers, and their other property, from all unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated by warrants issued without probable cause, supported by oath or affirmation, or not particularly describing the places to be searched, or the persons or things to be seized,” wrote James Madison. Under military dictatorship and martial law, no “oath or affirmation” is required.
“Obviously the Department of Defense has certain capabilities, including the ability to put a lot of hospitals and a lot of personnel in the field, which would be critical if we had a truly mass event,” Chertoff said on CNN’s The Situation Room. In fact, what Chertoff meant to say is the Department of Perpetual War has “certain capabilities” when it comes to rounding up dissidents, people who demand the Constitution be enforced, rabble-rousers who consider Bush a war criminal, and throwing them all in FEMA camps. If the government seriously cared about the welfare of the people, they would not have allowed nine eleven to happen (and the “intelligence failure” excuse is precisely that, an excuse) and if the Pentagon cared about the people they would not have planned Operation Northwoods, a series of terrorist events targeting the American people, who they consider chattel, or at best collateral damage.
“Throughout any homeland emergency, Homeland Security would play the role of quarterback, organizing and directing the response,” James A. Carafano, a senior research fellow at the Heritage Foundation (i.e., the radical far right “think tank” that devised the very idea of creating the Ministry of Homeland Security) told the clueless Los Angeles Times. “The responsibility is at the local level, and the state and federal assets that come are in support. In 9/11 [New York Mayor Rudolph W.] Giuliani was the guy in charge.” Indeed, he was in charge of selling thousands of pounds of nine eleven debris (otherwise know as evidence) to India, Japan, South Korea, China, and Malaysia. Forbid an authoritarian presidential wanna-be like Giuliani is appointed to call the shots in my town on the day state-sponsored terrorists light off a nuke or two.
Michael Chertoff is no friend of the American people. “As the architect of the post-September 11th initiatives on the domestic war on terror, Chertoff supervised the round-up of 750 Arabs and other Muslims on suspicion of immigration violations,” notes Right Web. “Treated as suspected terrorist sympathizers or material witnesses, the ’suspects’ were held without bond for as long as three months, often in solitary confinement, despite having never been charged with any crime. Eventually, most were released or deported after secret tribunals.” As the author Steven Brill explains, Chertoff obstructed the access by the post-nine eleven detainees to lawyers, reasoning that they “could be questioned without lawyers present because they were not being charged with any crime.” In other words, Chertoff is the perfect “guy in charge” come the day Bush and his coterie of chickenhawk Straussian neocons declare martial law in the wake of a staged terror attack. It doesn’t matter if Chertoff sits in a DHS office or one in the Pentagon.
23 Comments
General Byrnes: Our Smedley Butler?
Thursday August 11th 2005, 6:34 am
Filed under: Politics
I have often wondered why people in the military have not risen up and pulled off a coup against the Straussian neocon warmonger faction in the Pentagon. It’s said the brass in the U.S. military does not want to jeopardize their careers and pensions—in other words, we are expected to believe everybody in the military without exception is a self-seeking careerist unable to realize that the neocon vision will result in a situation where a career and pension will be meaningless (a post-nuclear war retirement is untenable). Well, if reports are correct, one soldier, the head of Fort Monroe’s Training and Doctrine Command, four star general Kevin P. Byrnes, was fired for standing up to the neocons, although the corporate media insists he was dismissed for “sexual misconduct.”
Others, however, insist Byrnes was fired for organizing against the neocon warmongers. “According to reporter Greg Szymanski, anonymous military sources said that Brynes was the leader of a faction that was preparing to instigate a coup against the neo-con hawks in an attempt to prevent further global conflict,” write Paul Joseph Watson and Alex Jones. I am reminded of Smedley Darlington Butler, the most decorated marine in U.S. history, who told the Congress in 1933 that a failed coup had been plotted by plutocratic industrialists to overthrow the government of President Franklin D. Roosevelt. Butler was an outspoken critic of war profiteering (see War is a Racket) and what he saw as creeping fascism in the United States.
I sincerely doubt Byrnes is another Butler. However, if he was indeed the leader of a faction opposed to the Straussian-Machiavellian neocons, who want to nuke Iran (and possibly a city in America—under cover of a JTF-CS exercise—as a pretext to start their version of the 30 Years’ War), we can hold out at least a modicum of hope in the realization that the military does not consist solely of self-seekers and warmongering psychopaths.
51 Comments
Magdy al-Nashar is Afraid of British Blood Lust
Wednesday August 10th 2005, 6:04 pm
Filed under: Politics
Can you blame Magdy al-Nashar for being afraid? He was falsely accused by the British government of participation in the London bombings and now is afraid to return to Britain. “Magdy al-Nashar, 33, said that he wants to resume his work and life but fears the British public still regard him as a terror suspect,” reports the Times Online. “How are people going to know about my innocence? What can I do? Tell each person on the street I am innocent to avoid that an angry person unexpectedly attacks me?” According to the Islamic Human Rights Commission, which monitors racist violence against Muslims in Britain, there was a 13-fold increase in incidents four years ago, the San Francisco Chronicle reported. “Figures published by Scotland Yard on Tuesday showed a 600 percent increase in faith-hate crimes since the first attack on July 7 compared with the same period one year ago. At the same time there have been increasing complaints from young Asian men that they are being singled out for police searches,” reports the International Herald Tribune. Magdy el-Nashar’s fear and the grim stats on violence against Muslims are good news for the neocon clash of civilizations crowd. It means their despicable rhetoric and faux terror attacks are working on the public psyche like a slow but persistent acid. One or two more engineered terror attacks and the masses will be ready to plunge headlong into the New 30 Years’ War. It should be noted that the first 30 Years’ War (1618-1648) resulted in the Peace of Westphalia and initiated modern diplomacy between states, a tenet currently under attack by the neocon miscreants. In 30 years (recall our warmongering leaders declaring the “war against terrorism” will last a generation or more) we may be in the mood to initiate another Peace of Westphalia—that is if the sociopaths currently in control of the government have not destroyed the biosphere and thus all of humanity.
7 Comments
Angry, Isolated Sting Op Victims
Wednesday August 10th 2005, 3:04 pm
Filed under: Politics
It’s not only al-CIA-duh, mind you. It’s also “angry, isolated men” who present a threat to society and must be hunted down, arrested, and imprisoned. “Slumping in his prison clothes and pallid from a year behind bars, Shahawar Matin Siraj didn’t look like much of a threat as he silently endured a routine hearing in federal court this month,” reports the Associated Press. “But the 23-year-old Pakistani immigrant stands accused of a scheme to attack a busy New York subway station with bombs hidden in backpacks.” Of course, as usual, things are not on the up-and-up in regard to Siraj and his co-defendant James Elshafay.
“Siraj was working at an Islamic bookstore in Brooklyn when he was approached in 2003 by an Egyptian-born police informant. The informant spent months secretly monitoring Siraj and his co-defendant James Elshafay. As a result, police say they have recordings of the two men and the informant discussing how attacks on three spots—the Verrazano Narrows Bridge and subway stations at Herald Square near Macy’s and next to Bloomingdale’s on Manhattan’s East Side—could damage the economy as part of a holy war against the United States.” Defense attorney Khurrum Wahid “described Siraj as a hardworking immigrant entrapped by an informant who whipped his client into a rage over abuses against Muslims like the scandal at Abu Ghraib prison in Iraq…. ‘He manages to convince them that they need to do something,’ Wahid said. ‘He puts the idea of attacking the United States into their head.’” In short, the two men are victims of a sting operation.
In the old days, before “everything changed,” the police and the judiciary were required to follow certain rules when conducting sting operations—for instance, the operations could be “mounted only against persons against whom some evidence of criminality already exists and a sting operation is considered necessary for getting conclusive evidence,” as B. Raman of the South Asia Analysis Group notes. Of course, these days, all Arabs and south Asians are considered suspicious, potential terrorists, especially if they hold strong opinions about the torture of women and children in Bush’s gulag, as Siraj apparently did in relation to Abu Ghraib. How many people would be considered terrorists if they were incited to anger by police informants? Millions.
Regardless of what you think of the ethics behind this particular police sting operation or the absurd charge that Siraj and Elshafay are dangerous terrorists as opposed to mere hotheads, the corporate media has, in the wake of the London “suicide bombings,” jumped on this story like white on rice in a continued effort to convince us that we are surrounded by jihadists who hate us (and want to kill us) simply for our freedoms. Moreover, this story and its “lone wolf” angle are custom-made for the corporate media, addicted to sensationalism.
“Besides the 1993 World Trade Center bombing and the attack of Sept. 11, 2001, the nation’s most significant terrorist plots and attacks were by men acting alone or in pairs without ties to known radical networks, said Bruce Hoffman, a terrorism expert at the Rand Corporation,” the Associated Press continues (note: the Rand corporation, set up by the Air Force in 1948, shares an interlocking relationship with such globalist operations as the Ford, Rockefeller, and Carnegie foundations, and two-thirds of its “research” consists of “national security” issues). These scary lone wolves “include Theodore Kacyznski, Timothy McVeigh and Eric Rudolph, as well as Palestinian-born Ali Abu Kamal, who shot a group of tourists at the Empire State Building in 1997, killing one. Others include Egyptian immigrant Hesham Mohamed Hadayet, who opened fire at an El Al ticket counter in Los Angeles in 2002, killing two.” Although Hoffman said he believes a more ominous threat is presented by al-CIA-duh, he still buys into the absurd lone wolf theory. “The lone wolf, when influenced by day-to-day events, is harder to stop, harder to know about, much more difficult to defend against.”
Indeed, especially when the so-called lone wolves are easily aroused to anger over the horror of U.S. foreign policy and are careless enough to fantasize about violence in the presence of strangers who are in fact police informers.
4 Comments
Atta’s Green Card and the Bush Whitewash Commission
Wednesday August 10th 2005, 12:59 pm
Filed under: Politics
Bush nine eleven whitewash commission co-chairman Lee Hamilton is in a pickle. As noted here yesterday, the Department of Perpetual War put the finger on the psychopath cat-killer and lap dance addict patsy Mohammed Atta and his al-CIA-duh terror cell (including Marwan al-Shehhi, Khalid al-Mihdar, and Nawaf al-Hazmia) a full year before the nine eleven attacks and did nothing about it (in fact, they made sure not to inform the FBI) and the rest is history, including the murder of nearly 3,000 innocent humans. “The Sept. 11 commission did not learn of any U.S. government knowledge prior to 9/11 of surveillance of Mohammed Atta or of his cell,” said Hamilton. “Had we learned of it obviously it would’ve been a major focus of our investigation.” No doubt Mr. Hamilton is relieved this bit of crucial info did not emerge when he and his co-cover-uppers were “investigating” selective material, otherwise they would have been forced to hurriedly rationalize yet another red flag (as an “intelligence failure”) or ignore it completely, as they ignored just about everything else.
As Sen. Max Cleland, who resigned from the whitewash commission, said at the time, “As each day goes by we learn that this government knew a whole lot more about these terrorists before September 11 than it has ever admitted…. Let’s chase this rabbit into the ground. They had a plan to go to war and when 9/11 happened that’s what they did; they went to war.” In non-Bushzarro world, a sincere investigation would have mentioned not only the drive to war, but historical precedent and cause and effect—for instance, the indisputable fact the United States created what the government and the corporate media now call “al-Qaeda” (as Bev Conover notes, “Osama bin Laden was the CIA’s point man in Afghanistan, during the time the Reagan administration was bent on pushing the Soviets out of that country. Nor does the commission note that al Qaeda is a creature of the CIA, born out of the Afghan Mujahadeen”), or is the fact mentioned that the U.S. has considered covert terrorist attacks in the past (i.e., Operation Northwoods), or did it consider the awful fishy fact the WTC evidence was carted away and sold as scrap well before any investigation commenced (same thing happened in Oklahoma City), or did it dare address the absurd theory that a Boeing 757 (over 124 feet from wingtip to wingtip and, including the tail, over 44 feet high) fit into a impossibly small hole in the Pentagon (see this photo illustration).
As evidence that Bush’s whitewash commission had absolutely no interest in the fact Atta was in the United States, plotting the nine eleven attacks (as micromanaged patsies), Fox News reports the following: “[Rep. Curt Weldon] told FOX News on Wednesday that staff members of the Sept. 11 commission were briefed at least once by officials on Able Danger [the intelligence op that discovered the “al-CIA-duh” cell], but that he does not believe the message was sent to the panel members themselves. He also said some phone calls made by military officials with Able Danger to the commission staff went unreturned,” hardly surprising since the Bush whitewash commission was specifically tasked with covering up the truth and rolling out a “magic bullet” theory of cave-dwelling medieval Muslims being responsible for the highly coordinated attacks.
“A group of Sept. 11 widows called the September 11th Advocates issued a statement Wednesday saying they were ‘horrified’ to learn that further possible evidence exists, and they are disappointed the Sept. 11 commission report is ‘incomplete and illusory,’” and obvious understatement, to say the least. No doubt the September 11th Advocates—indeed the entire country—would be “horrified” to learn the truth surrounding nine eleven: it was a rogue intelligence black op, a classic false flag operation, designed to blackmail Bush and move the country closer to a dictatorship and jackbooted police state and, as well, advance the neocon clash of civilizations agenda for domination in the Middle East (through “World War IV,” as the neocons fondly refer to plan to attack Islamic societies and “reshape” Muslim nations such as Iran and Syria) and also send a message to North Korea, China, Russia, and any other state, especially in Asia or where there are natural resources the neolibs, multinational corporations, and bankers want to steal.
12 Comments
Nine Eleven Plot Almost Derailed in 2000
Tuesday August 09th 2005, 10:19 pm
Filed under: Politics
How much more evidence do we need that false flag terrorist operations are being run out of the Pentagon, more than likely by rogue DIA operatives plugged into a larger network (CIA, MI6, and Mossad)? Not much. Consider the following, posted the GSN (Government Security News) site: “In September 2000, one year before the Al Qaeda attacks of 9/11, a U.S. Army military intelligence program, known as ‘Able Danger,’ identified a terrorist cell based in Brooklyn, NY, one of whose members was 9/11 ringleader Mohammed Atta, and recommended to their military superiors that the FBI be called in to ‘take out that cell,’ according to Rep. Curt Weldon… The recommendation to bring down that New York City cell—in which two other Al Qaeda terrorists were also active—was not pursued during the weeks leading up to the 2000 presidential election, said Weldon. That’s because Mohammed Atta possessed a ‘green card’ at the time and Defense Department lawyers did not want to recommend that the FBI go after someone holding a green card.” In other words, it appears a legitimate anti-terrorism program, dubbed Able Danger, had collided with the nine eleven plot and would have derailed it if not for the absurd green card ruse and what we are expected to believe passes for political correctness.
29 Comments
Aswat and the False Flag Patsies at the Mall
Tuesday August 09th 2005, 7:49 pm
Filed under: Politics
Not to worry, says Arik Arad, the former head of Israel’s shopping mall security. “Arad told [mall] owners to forget about the stringent measures Israelis take to stave off bombings, including hand-held metal detectors, machine guns and explosives-sniffing dogs. Instead, he advised them to bolster security personnel’s ability to spot a would-be bomber, a measure more palatable to Americans,” reports NewsMax. “Suicide bombers commonly case a target before an attack to search for vulnerabilities or conduct a dry run. Homeland Security is also now offering courses on recognizing terrorist behavior to security companies that guard shopping malls.” And what exactly are the tell-tale signs of “terrorist behavior,” according to the Ministry of Homeland Security? Same as usual—”an overcoat on a warm day, a refusal to make eye contact or a tight grip on a backpack.” Of course, flagging this sort of behavior didn’t stop the London bombings, but then the subway bombs were under the train, not in backpacks, as passengers Bruce Lait and Crystal Main explained (only to be ignored by the corporate media who had a vested interest in pushing the “suicide bomber” campfire story).
On the one hand, we are told al-Qaeda is a threat to civilized nations, and on the other we learn from reading news reports that al-Qaeda “terrorists” (or rather al-CIA-duh patsies) are imbeciles who use cell phones easily tracked and clumsily attempt to light shoe bomb fuses on crowded airplanes. But none of this incompetence matters because patsy-terrorists such as Haroon Rashid Aswat are allowed to travel around the world (Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Botswana, Mozambique, and South Africa) because they are intelligence assets (useful patsy idiots). Aswat “attended an al-Qaeda camp in Afghanistan” and supposedly became a “combat training expert” who “met Osama bin Laden,” according to the Times Online. Former Justice Department prosecutor and supposed terror expert John Loftus recently told Fox News that the so called al-Muhajiroun group, which we can safely categorize as another British intel terrorist-patsy-useful idiot group, was “the recruiting arm of Al-Qaeda in London; they specialized in recruiting kids whose families had emigrated to Britain but who had British passports. And they would use them for terrorist work.” As it turns out, al-Muhajiroun-cum-al-Qaeda (or al-CIA-duh or in this case al-MI6-duh) teamed up in Kosovo with the criminal drug-running and terrorist outfit the KLA, the preferred troublemakers and globalist agenda servants of NATO, the United States, and Britain in the Balkans.
“Many members of the Kosovo Liberation Army were sent for training in terrorist camps in Afghanistan,” James Bissett, former Canadian ambassador to Yugoslavia, told Isabel Vincent of the National Post. “The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan, supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo,” Vincent continues. “When NATO forces launched their military campaign against Yugoslavia … to unseat Mr. Milosevic, they entered the Kosovo conflict on the side of the KLA, which had already received ’substantial’ military and financial support from bin Laden’s network, analysts say.” In other words, since Osama was a known CIA asset (a false flag patsy who thought he was waging jihad against the Great Satan), and the training camps were bankrolled by the United States and micromanaged by Pakistan’s ISI (considered the CIA’s most successful operation to date), the mujahideen operation in the Balkans was a contract job and Haroon Rashid Aswat was an employee recruited by MI6 for the clash of civilizations game plan. Aswat was apparently doing such a good job recruiting fellow patsies and setting up so-called terrorist camps, “the US Justice Department ordered the Seattle prosecutors [who wanted to throw the book at Aswat for his part in setting up terrorist camps in the United States] not to touch Aswat,” according to Loftus.
Naturally, Fox News didn’t ask why the Justice Department would allow a terrorist who supposedly met Osama bin Laden to enter the country, instead taking the Brits to task for allowing radical Muslims to harbor in their country. Of course, this mystery is easy enough to address—Aswat, like his mentor Bin Laden (and dozens of other stefordized Islamic fanatics), works for the CIA-MI6-Mossad black op alliance and was, until very recently, a useful idiot. Now, with his cover blown, Aswat will suffer the fate of other patsies and useful idiots—yesterday he sat in Belmarsh prison, southeast of London, and was marched before Bow Street magistrates, having arrived not long before on a charter jet from Zambia, where he was arrested on immigration charges.
On June 20th, an FBI affidavit charged Aswat with attempting to set up a training camp in Bly, Oregon, to train jihadists. Of course, the FBI’s affidavit is nothing short of ludicrous, considering who employed the dupe Aswat. But then, thanks to the corporate media, Aswat’s checkered past as a faithful servant (and expendable pawn) for the clash of civilization gang will be swept under the rug.
Meanwhile, here in the United States, we can expect the Ministry of Homeland Security to use the Aswat case and the London bombings to hype its draconian plans to turn the country into a police state. “An unsettling ‘Security Alert’ report in the Wall Street Journal reveals that on July 18—less than two weeks after the London subway bombings—the Homeland Security Department disseminated a collection of CIA threat assessments that listed shopping malls as among the soft targets most at risk of bomb attacks,” NewsMax reports. “Security personnel [i.e., high school dropouts paid the minimum wage] at many of the nation’s 1,200 enclosed malls have been stepping up preparations for dealing with a bomber… They included limiting the number of people entering a mall, placing metal detectors at each door and screening shoppers for weapons.” Of course, this is nothing new. On December 30, 2003, a New Jersey Star-Ledger article announced that the “Short Hills shopping center [was] now off limits for pre-opening strolls.” On that day, the mall “suspended the pre-opening walks by VIP, or Very Important Pacers, amid heightened security over the Department of Homeland Security’s orange alert.”
It was another instance of the neocon Grinches who stole Christmas.
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Shoot to Kill: Britain Brings Home Its Dirty War
Monday August 08th 2005, 7:02 pm
Filed under: Politics
As it turns out, Jean Charles de Menezes was executed by “the Special Reconnaissance Regiment, modeled on an undercover unit that operated in Northern Ireland,” according to the Guardian. “The regiment absorbed 14th Intelligence Company, known as ‘14 Int’, a plainclothes unit set up to gather intelligence covertly on suspect terrorists in Northern Ireland. Its recruits are trained by the SAS.” Regiments.org, billed as a “historical encyclopedia,” describes the Special Reconnaissance Regiment as “formed with HQ at Hereford from volunteers of other units to support international expeditionary operations in the fight against international terrorism, absorbing 14th Intelligence Company (formed for operations against Ulster terrorists), Intelligence Corps, and releasing the SAS and SBS for the ‘hard end’ of missions.”
Defense Secretary Geoff Hoon announced the formation of the Special Reconnaissance Regiment on April 5, well before the July attacks. In addition to working in Britain, the SRR “is expected to play a key role in hunting down insurgents in Iraq and in the forthcoming UK-led operation against al-Qaeda remnants—including Osama bin Laden—in Afghanistan,” the Scotsman reported On April 6. “Members will be expected to infiltrate terrorist organizations and identify targets to be attacked by other units.”
The 14th Intelligence Company and SAS (or Special Air Service) have a sordid history, including organizing massacres of republican fighters in Northern Ireland. It should be noted that the SAS officers commanded some of the infamous “pseudo gangs” that terrorized the civilian population in Kenya during the Mau Mau rebellion (in other words, they created fake terrorist groups; see Seán Mac Mathúna, The SAS, their early days in Ireland and the Wilson Plot).
As noted in the documentary Death on the Rock, aired on the ITV network on 28 April 1988, the SAS engaged in execution of IRA members. “The program interviewed witnesses who claimed to have heard no prior warning given by the SAS troops and to have seen the shooting as one carried out ‘in cold blood,’” explains a Museum of Broadcast Communications review. “Furthermore, the defense that the IRA team might, if allowed time, have had the capacity to trigger by remote control a car bomb in the main street,” essentially the same reasoning offered after de Menezes was executed.
As Mathúna notes in the above cited piece, the “shoot to kill” policy now used in Britain against so-called “terrorists” (who are demonstrated intel op patsies) was perfected in Northern Ireland. Moreover, “Psychological warfare, including the use of black propaganda, an integral part of counter-insurgency operations, emerged in 1971 with the creation of Information Policy.” The 14th Intelligence Company played in an integral role in these destabilizing operations.
On July 25, 2004, the Telegraph reported that SRR “will at first be formed from members of a highly secret surveillance agency—the Joint Communications Unit Northern Ireland—which has worked in Ulster for more than 20 years. The unit, which worked with the SAS, MI5 and the Special Branch, perfected the art of covert surveillance in urban and rural areas and created a network of double agents who supplied the British security forces with intelligence on terrorist attacks.”
“From the early 1970s, British imperialism waged a notorious dirty war against the Republican movement in Northern Ireland as part of its efforts to maintain control of the six counties,” writes Julie Hyland. “The 14th Intelligence was one of three army-sponsored undercover squads dedicated to this aim. The others were the Force Research Unit (FRU) and 22 Squadron.” FRU, explains Neil Mackay, ran “proxy assassins” for British intelligence. “Military handlers would pass to agents inside loyalist paramilitary organizations documents—such as photographs and address details–on Sinn Fein activists, republican sympathizers, IRA men and sometimes just innocent Catholics. The agents would then give these details to loyalist gunmen [i.e., the outlawed Ulster Defense Association] who would use them to plan assassinations.”
It appears the cold-blooded execution of Jean Charles de Menezes has signaled the start of a “dirty war” on British turf against Muslims (although de Menezes was Brazilian). The SRR’s objective, according to Hilaal, posting on the Irish Indymedia site, “is to infiltrate mosques and keep Muslims under surveillance. Attempts are being made to recruit those of Middle Eastern or Mediterranean appearance, as well as Muslims and members of ethnic minorities,” as per Tony Blair’s recent promise to crack down on Muslims in Britain.
Hilaal continues:
At present recruits to the new regiment are being assessed and undergoing a six month course in covert surveillance, communications, driving skills, first aid and close-quarter battle skills. Those who pass the course will be sent on an Arabic course at the Armed Forces language school at Beaconsfield, Buckinghamshire. The regiment will be based in south Wales and report to the Director of Special Forces.
The unit will operate on a global basis and closely with Mossad and the C.I.A. although the bulk of its operations will be on the islands of Ireland and Britain. It will at first be formed from members of a highly secret surveillance agency—the Joint Communications Unit Northern Ireland and all three branches of the British armed forces. The Joint Communications Unit organized the massacre of three unarmed IRA members in Gibraltar in 1988 and was also behind the Loughgall massacre in County Tyrone, in 1987 where eight IRA members were ambushed and massacred.
Hilaal offers no documentation to back up his claim. However, considering the past behavior of British intelligence, the CIA, and Mossad—and the current anti-Islamic rhetoric gaining momentum in Britain in the wake of last month’s bombings (resulting in serious violence against innocent Muslims and people of south Asian heritage)—a “dirty war” on the scale (or more than likely surpassing) that waged in Ireland is a distinct possibility on the streets of London and other British cities. It is, as well, significant the SRR will also work against Iraqis (and, for all we know, against Iranians and Syrians), as the manufactured “war on terrorism” intends to disregard borders and become global in nature.
Britain is obviously serving as an incubator for things to come here in the United States where there are (for the moment) restrictions against direct military action against the citizenry. Bush pushed the envelope, peeling back the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, in October 2002 when he called in Pentagon spy planes to canvas the entire Washington area when two snipers went on a rampage. “The use of … RC-7 planes, operated by military personnel, appeared to be a brazen breach of the Posse Comitatus Act,” notes James Bovard. “But the mass panic that gripped the Washington area indicated how feeble the status of Posse Comitatus is. In the political world after 9/11, laws appear to provide far less restraint on the use of the military than in the past. Public opinion polls apparently carry far more weight than a federal statute book.”
Indeed, it can be argued the so-called Washington snipers are patsies. “On his Nationally Syndicated Radio Show, Documentary Filmmaker Alex Jones has consulted with many law enforcement and military experts, including Colonel Craig Roberts (formerly of US Army Intelligence, a former Marine Corps Sniper and the Best-selling Author of One Shot One Kill) who stated on-air that this operation could only be State-sponsored and was clearly the work of a rogue element from the top levels of global intelligence agencies. On The Alex Jones Show, Roberts said that the MO of the sniper attacks are indicative of a 2-3 man team trained in the Special Forces ambush tactics of reconnaissance, insertion, concealment and successful evasion. According to Jones’ research, the sniper team’s attack profile is consistent with US Special Forces ambush assassination tactics,” an Alex Jones press release explains.
In the months ahead, we can expect more brazen police state tactics as the global neocon-neolib elite manufacture and unleashed more false flag operations as an excuse to strip away our remaining civil liberties and militarize our society and local law enforcement. Death squads roaming the streets of London will not reduce Islamic “extremism” (much of it, as we know, created by British intelligence)—but it will send an indisputable message to average Britons and Londoners: you are living in the beginning stages of a police state. As engineered Muslim “terrorism” increases (and it will, as promised), the government’s response will be exponentially thuggish and jack-booted.
29 Comments
Israeli Spy Ring Update
Sunday August 07th 2005, 8:28 pm
Filed under: Politics
On occasion I will receive an email stating that I know nothing about Israel and the Israelis are our only friends in the Middle East. Of course, there is a pile of documentation revealing that in fact the Israelis are not our friends—the Franklin/AIPAC espionage case and, more significantly, the U.S.S. Liberty incident immediately come to mind—and may be considered a rather ruthless enemy (I cannot recall the last time Iraq or Syria attacked a U.S. ship or were caught with top secret documents in their possession). Adding a significant piece of change to the very real Israel-as-enemy ante, crack researcher Wayne Madsen has updated and consolidated information on the Israeli “art students” and “movers” spy story (a story, it should be added, almost completely ignored by the corporate media, with the exception of Fox’s Carl Cameron, although his exposé was trounced and flushed down the memory hole). “It was an intelligence operation directed against the United States and the American people. Elements of false flags, security penetrations, photographing America’s critical infrastructure, and spying on Arab cells in the United States all point to a well-coordinated operation that was tolerated by senior members of the Bush administration. The results of a three and a half year investigation now revealed,” writes Madsen in a blurb introducing The Israeli Art Students and Movers Story. It is a long document but well worth the read, although I am sure Madsen will be chalked up as a scurrilous anti-Semite for doing so.
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Iraqi Death Squad Executes American Journalist
Sunday August 07th 2005, 3:10 pm
Filed under: Politics
It wasn’t very smart for Steven Vincent, an American writer and blogger who fancied himself a new Jack Kerouac, to run around Basra, Iraq, telling it the way he saw it. In fact, such foolhardy behavior cost Vincent his life. According to the New York Times, Vincent’s murder on August 2 “was the first time an American journalist has been attacked and killed during the war. A handful of American journalists have died in vehicle accidents or from illness.” In fact, as it now appears, Vincent was the victim of a death squad. “Suspicion for this killing,” writes Patrick Martin, “focuses not on Al Qaeda or Sunni-based insurgents, but on the police of the Shiite-based administration installed in Basra with the support of US and British occupation forces.”
As the Los Angeles Times reported, one of Vincent’s abductors was “an Interior Ministry employee,” and a witness was told it was the “duty” of the U.S.-installed puppet government to grab people off the street and murder them. “A few hours later, the journalist’s body was found dumped by a road outside the city, with multiple bullet wounds to the head. He suffered bruises to his face and shoulder, had been blindfolded and his hands were tied in front with plastic wire.” Smells like democracy to me.
Vincent’s mistake was reporting “how militias linked to … Shiite parties had attacked students, harassed women deemed in violation of strict Islamic codes of conduct, threatened local journalists, and carried out the political assassination of as many as 1,000 people, mainly Sunni Muslims, in a three-month period. He criticized the British military, the ultimate authority in Basra, for not cracking down on these activities.”
In other words, it appears the “Salvador Option” is in full swing, killing not only scads of Iraqis but American journalists as well.
Following the “Salvador Option” model, “one Pentagon proposal would send Special Forces teams to advise, support and possibly train Iraqi squads,” wrote Michael Hirsh and John Barry earlier this year, “to target Sunni insurgents and their sympathizers, even across the border into Syria, according to military insiders familiar with the discussions. It remains unclear, however, whether this would be a policy of assassination or so-called ’snatch’ operations, in which the targets are sent to secret facilities for interrogation. The current thinking is that while U.S. Special Forces would lead operations in, say, Syria, activities inside Iraq itself would be carried out by Iraqi paramilitaries.” If eye witness accounts mean anything, Steven Vincent was assassinated by a paramilitary led by the Interior Ministry.
In May, the Detroit Free Press reported how a refashioned Iraqi intelligence service (or Mukhabarat in Arabic) “is not working for the Iraqi government—it’s working for the CIA,” according to Hadi al-Ameri, an Iraqi lawmaker and commander of the Badr Brigade. The Detroit Free Press continues:
The Iraqi official said the CIA recruited agents from the SCIRI, the Dawa Party, the two main Kurdish factions and two secular Arab parties: the Iraqi National Congress led by Ahmad Chalabi and the Iraqi National Accord led by Ayad Allawi, who later became the interim prime minister. This group, the prototype for an Iraqi intelligence group that represented Iraq’s diversity, became CMAD: the Collection, Management and Analysis Directorate.
When the U.S.-led occupation authority ceded power to the semi-sovereign interim government last June… the CMAD was split, with roughly half the agents going to the new Interior Ministry and the rest going to work on military intelligence in the Defense Ministry. Both ministries’ intelligence departments are led by Kurds, the most consistently U.S.-friendly group in Iraq, and report to the Iraqi prime minister. (Emphasis added.)
A “Salvador Option” pattern is now emerging in Iraq and it is targeting not only the Sunni resistance but American journalists as well. In El Salvador during the 1980s, members of the Salvadoran security services—including National police, National Guard, and Treasury Police—were trained as death squad goons by the CIA. “The CIA and military advisers have helped organize, trained, financed and advised Salvadoran army and intelligence units engaged in death squad activities and torture. Information from two well-informed sources in Salvadoran government,” writes Ralph McGehee, a former CIA employee, citing the Christian Science Monitor (5/8/1984). “Many of 50,000 Salvadorans killed in 1981-85… attributable to death squad activity.” In fact, the creation of Iraq’s CMAD follows a close parallel to similar paramilitary organizations devised in El Salvador.
“It is widely accepted, in the mainstream media and among human rights organizations, that the Salvadoran government is responsible for most of the 70,000 deaths which are the result of ten years of civil war,” writes David Kirsch for Covert Action Quarterly, Summer 1990. “The debate, however, has dwelled on whether the death squads are strictly renegade military factions or a part of the larger apparatus. The evidence indicates that the death squads are simply components of the Salvadoran military. And that their activities are not only common knowledge to U.S. agencies, but that U.S. personnel have been integral in organizing these units and continue to support their dally functioning.”
The New York Times article on the abduction and execution of Steven Vincent mentions how “Mr. Vincent had been working on a story about the role of police officers in the recent assassinations of former Baath Party officials,” but does not speculate on who may have killed the journalist, even though the Los Angeles Times mentioned an eye witness to the abduction who saw an Interior Ministry employee at the scene. Of course, if the journalists at the New York Times were worth their salt, they would have tracked down the Detroit Free Press article documenting the CIA links to the Interior Ministry. But then we cannot expect the New York Times to arrive at such conclusions.
Incidentally, Vincent was no friend of the Iraqi resistance. “He denounced all armed resistance to the US occupation of Iraq as the work of ‘Islamo-fascism’ and right-wing ‘death squads,’ and, according to the New York Times, ‘even compared his trips to Iraq to the tours taken by journalists covering the rise of fascism in Europe during the Spanish Civil War,’” an obvious absurdity for even a causal student of history. Even so, the abduction and execution of Steven Vincent is ample evidence that the CIA-Rumsfeld Pentagon black op created reactionary government of Iraq will liquidate anybody who gets in their way, be they resistance or potential allies such as Steven Vincent.
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