Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Showing posts with label CIA. Show all posts
Saturday, September 3, 2011
West Point Study - Libyan 'Rebels' Are Also Most Likely To Be The 'Foreign Fighters' Killing US Troops In Iraq
[Click for full size chart. Courtesy of West Point Military Academy and Land Destroyer]
Taken from a US West Point study [West Point, PDF] these graphs created by data obtained in Iraq clearly show that Libya's eastern region, and the cities of Darnah and Benghazi in particular, provided by far more militants found fighting US troops in Iraq than any other nation, including Saudi Arabia.
Further, a major part of the Libyan "rebel" army is still on U.S. State Department Terrorist Organization sanctions list:
"Belhaj/al-Hasidi and his men are being portrayed as reformed terrorists despite the fact that they are still LIFG fighters and LIFG itself is still listed as an international terrorist organization."
All docs at the above link, and an update here:
"West Point CTC Confirms LIFG Terrorists Leading Libyan Rebellion - then apologizes for them."
Tuesday, June 28, 2011
'The Baby And The Baath Water' - A Multi-Media History Of The West's Involvement In Syria & The Region Via The CIA Infiltrated Baath Party
THE BABY AND THE BAATH WATERAdam Curtis
Thursday, 16 June 2011
What is happening in Syria feels like one of the last gasps of the age of the military dictators. An old way of running the world is still desperately trying to cling to power, but the underlying feeling in the west is that somehow Assad's archaic and cruel military rule will inevitably collapse and Syrians will move forward into a democratic age.
That may, or may not, happen, but what is extraordinary is that we have been here before.
Between 1947 and 1949 an odd group of idealists and hard realists in the American government set out to intervene in Syria. Their aim was to liberate the Syrian people from a corrupt autocratic elite - and allow true democracy to flourish. They did this because they were convinced that "the Syrian people are naturally democratic" and that all that was neccessary was to get rid of the elites - and a new world of "peace and progress" would inevitably emerge.
What resulted was a disaster, and the consequences of that disaster then led, through a weird series of bloody twists and turns, to the rise to power of the Assad family and the widescale repression in Syria today.
I thought I would tell that story.
In 1968 a CIA agent called Miles Copeland (Ed. Conspiracy Buffs Note: His son is Stewart Copeland drummer for the well-known band "The Police".) wrote a book called 'The Game of Nations' that revealed what went on in 1947.
Back then Copeland was part of a mangement consulting team in Washington who were working out how America should contain the threat of communism in the Middle East, now the old European Empires had gone. This was before the CIA existed, and Copeland describes how they got together an odd group of diplomats, secret agents left over from the war, advertising men from Madison Avenue, and "pipe-smoking owls" (which is what intellectuals were called in those days).
Copeland describes an impassioned lecturer telling this group that their aim should be to change the leadership in the countries in the Middle East:
"Politicians in Syria, Lebanon, Iraq and Egypt seem to have been elected into power, but what elections! The winners were all candidates of foreign powers, old land-owners who tell their tenants and villagers how to vote, or rich crooks who can buy their votes. But peoples of these countries are intelligent, and they have a natural bent for politics. If there is a part of the world which is crying for the democratic process the Arab World is it."They decided to start with Syria. Compared to what was to come, it was all very sweet and innocent...
In Full
Author Adam Curtis also produced the excellent three part documentary "The Power Of Nightmares" for the BBC.
The documentary explains the roots of the Muslim Brotherhood, now much in the news due to the Egyptian revolt earlier this year, al-Qaeda, the Neoconservatives of the United States and elsewhere, and their common philosophical roots derived from a grossly dysfunctional 'reading' of Jewish philosopher Leo Strauss' works and teachings. There was an Egyptian national in Leo Strauss' lecture hall, and he returned home to Egypt with the same world view and vision as Elliot Abrahms Fred Kagan, Paul Wolfowitz, and other public figures who now have the ear of the American political Right and all to often, the confidences of sitting US presidents.
From the introduction:
This film explores the origins in the 1940s and 50s of Islamic Fundamentalism in the Middle East, and Neoconservatism in America, parallels between these movements, and their effect on the world today.The documentary is available at Internet Archive at two links:
From the introduction to Part 1:"Both [the Islamists and Neoconservatives] were idealists who were born out of the failure of the liberal dream to build a better world. And both had a very similar explanation for what caused that failure. These two groups have changed the world, but not in the way that either intended. Together, they created today's nightmare vision of a secret, organized evil that threatens the world. A fantasy that politicians then found restored their power and authority in a disillusioned age. And those with the darkest fears became the most powerful."
The documentary presented in a player-on-page with a number of video formats available for download here.
Here is the link to the landing page for an ISO file ready to burn to DVD.
Friday, February 25, 2011
SUCH A Kidder! EX-general Stanley McChrystal Says "...to defeat a networked enemy we had to become a network ourselves." (A Network Using al Qaeda)
Today in Foreign Policy Magazine (with the comments closed), resigned in disgrace EX-general Stanley McChrystal said:"In bitter, bloody fights in both Afghanistan and Iraq, it became clear to me and to many others that to defeat a networked enemy we had to become a network ourselves." (source)
He's SUCH A KIDDER!... We have (re)created that network... with al-Qaeda as part of our not-yet-announced but underway War On Pakistan!.
(See Here and Here for more on our "Madeline's War NATO affiliated al-Qaeda network and Here (the site's New Yorker link is dead...It's here, with more here) for information on our dealings with them regarding Iran and our attempt to stymie a Shiite rise to power elsewhere in the Middle East)
Al-Qaeda is generally translated as: The Database... of CIA affiliated Muslim fighters who fought our proxy war against the Russians in Afghanistan and worked for the Pentagon and NATO elsewhere.. the former Yugoslavia, in 'Madeline's War', where Osama bin-Laden had been tasked with recruiting mercenaries for the Kosovo Liberation Army.In recent history, the U.S. was first in line to acknowledge Kosovo as a new 'independent' Nation (with an economy based on smuggling and a government led by a wanted terrorist)
Journalist Mike Whitney give us a very clear picture of the US Foreign Policy Apparatus' ONGOING INVOLVEMENT with al-Qaeda affiliated elements in Pakistan and elsewhere in a freshly minted article @ CounterPunch, and he also gives us many (many!) details on the recent imbroglio in Lahore Pakistan where a supposed "diplomatic aide" named Raymond Davis apparently shot and killed two people he said were trying to mug him...
Or perhaps not...
Breaking: US reveals that CIA agent Raymond Davis worked for private security firm Xe, formerly known as Blackwater. "...eyebrows were raised when it emerged that he shot the men 10 times, one as he fled the scene." More @ Guardian UK
An Excerpt From Whitney's Article At...
CounterPunch
The CIA's Killing Spree in Lahore
By Mike Whitney
February 24, 2011
When CIA-agent Raymond Davis gunned down two Pakistani civilians in broad daylight on a crowded street in Lahore, he probably never imagined that the entire Washington establishment would spring to his defense. But that's precisely what happened.
Barack Obama, Hillary Clinton, Mike Mullen, John Kerry, Leon Panetta and a number of other US bigwigs have all made appeals on Davis's behalf. None of these stalwart defenders of "the rule of law" have shown a speck of interest in justice for the victims or of even allowing the investigation to go forward so they could know what really happened. Oh, no. What Clinton and the rest want, is to see their man Davis packed onto the next plane to Langley so he can play shoot-'em-up someplace else in the world.
o
o
o
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But why all the intrigue and arm-twisting? Why has the State Department invoked the Vienna Convention on Diplomatic Relations to make its case that Davis is entitled to diplomatic immunity?
If Davis is innocent, then he has nothing to worry about, right?
Why not let the trial go forward and stop reinforcing the widely-held belief that Davis is a vital cog in the US's clandestine operations in Pakistan?
The truth is that Davis had been photographing sensitive installations and madrassas for some time, the kind of intelligence gathering that spies do when scouting-out prospective targets. Also, he'd been in close contact with members of terrorist organizations, which suggests a link between the CIA and terrorist incidents in Pakistan. Here's an excerpt from Wednesday's The Express Tribune:
"His cell phone has revealed contacts with two ancillaries of al Qaeda in Pakistan, Tehreek-e-Taliban of Pakistan (TTP) and sectarian Lashkar-e-Jhangvi (LeJ), which has led to the public conclusion that he was behind terrorism committed against Pakistan's security personnel and its people ....This will strike people as America in cahoots with the Taliban and al Qaeda against the state of Pakistan targeting, as one official opined, Pakistan's nuclear installations." ("Raymond Davis: The plot thickens, The Express Tribune)
"Al Qaeda"? The CIA is working with "ancillaries of al Qaeda in Pakistan"? No wonder the US media has been keeping a wrap on this story for so long.
Naturally, most Pakistanis now believe that the US is colluding with terrorists to spread instability, weaken the state, and increase its power in the region. But isn't that America's M.O. everywhere?
Also, many people noticed that US drone attacks suddenly stopped as soon as Davis was arrested. Was that a coincidence? Not likely.
Davis was probably getting coordinates from his new buddies in the tribal hinterland and then passing them along to the Pentagon. The drone bombings are extremely unpopular in Pakistan. More then 1400 people have been killed since August 2008, and most of them have been civilians.
And, there's more. [A MUST READ @ CounterPunch]
Labels:
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Tuesday, November 23, 2010
The TSA's Panic Searches & PETN: Quite Simply There Are More Ways To Blow Things Up Than You Could Ever Possibly Prevent
Quite simply there are more ways to blow things up than you could ever possibly prevent.Just in case anyone was wondering what the TSA's panic mode search procedures are all about...
Your government doesn't want you to know that.
Further, there only seem to be two solutions to the dilemma of non-state actor terrorism.
A: Learn to live in a totalitarian police state.
B: Do something (anything!) to ameliorate the reasons WHY someone from that region of (or anyplace in) the world would want to blow up airliners with civilians on board or commit other terror acts.
I fear most Americans will opt-in to the do-nothing method... "A", than sacrifice an inch, a second, of affluent lifestyle...
...a lifestyle BTW that could not possibly last very long under a totalitarian regime and an economy necessary to prevent terror attacks.
Your government doesn't want you to be aware of that last little detail either.
Something ELSE their friends in the Homeland-Security-Industrial Complex don't want you to be aware of...
The scanner companies have DRAMATICALLY increased their spending on convincing your elected representatives that THEIR vision of a police state is a safer state:
"As the national debate over airport screening practices intensifies, little attention has been paid to the increasing lobbying power the manufacturers of full-body scanning machines have in Washington.
USA Today reports L3 Communications has spent $4.3 million on lobbying, up from $2.1 million in 2005. L3 has sold nearly $40 million worth of machines to the federal government. Lobbyists for L3 have included Linda Daschle, the wife of former US Senate Majority Leader Tom Daschle.
Meanwhile, Rapiscan Systems has spent more than $270,000 on lobbying so far this year, compared with $80,000 five years earlier. The company made headlines last year when it hired former US Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, who has become a prominent proponent of body scanners. The CEO of Rapiscan's parent company, Deepak Chopra, recently traveled with President Obama on his three-day trip to India."
(And, no, not that Deepak Chopra. The New Age guru would determine your terrorist potential by evaluating your aura, no machines or strip-searches necessary.) [Source]
Let me state this ANOTHER way..
From a comment I made to the professor on his post:
JC: Al-Qaeda is about using small numbers of men and low-tech techniques to paralyze a whole civilization...
Auntie Imp: Sort of like the CIA, right?
Because THEY WERE CIA.
Right?
AFAICT, they're doing a GREAT job of supplying our Foreign Policy rationale for Central Asia, "where the Gas Pipes are", and the Middle East, "Where the Oil Wells are" and perhaps should STILL be on the CIA's payroll for doing that yeoman's work if they were ever actually relieved of duty.
(Removing tongue from cheek now)
Looking for PETN, Scanning Grandma at the Airport, and the Future of Air TravelPosted on November 22, 2010 by Juan
In all the furor about the new TSA scanners and pat-downs at airports, what surprises me is that there is very little discussion of what exactly the inspectors are now looking for and why they are shifting tactics.
The old scanners and procedures designed to discover metal (guns, knives, bombs with timers or detonators) are helpless before a relatively low-tech alternative kind of explosive that is favored by al-Qaeda and similar groups.
The inspectors are looking for forms of PETN, or pentaerythritol tetranitrate, which is from the same family of explosives as nitroglycerin and which is used to make plastic explosives such as Semtex.
Richard Reid, the shoe bomber, used PETN, as did Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the crotch bomber, last year this time over Detroit. PETN was in the HP cartridges sent by a Yemeni terrorist in cargo planes recently. And, a suicide bomber put some up his anus and used it in an attempt to assassinate the son of the Saudi minister of the interior (which does counter-terrorism). Yes, he was the first ass bomber, and he missed his target, though he no longer cares about that, what with being dead and all.
The problem with PETN is that it cannot be detected by sniffing dogs or by ordinary scanners. But if you had a pouch of it on your person, the new scanners could see the pouch, and likewise a thorough pat-down would lead to its discovery.
The TSA guys are trying to look more systematically for PETN. That is why they have adopted these more intrusive methods. And, there has been chatter among the terrorist groups abroad about launching attacks on American airliners with this relatively undetectable explosive.
None of us likes the result, which is a significant invasion of privacy.
But if al-Qaeda and its sympathizers could manage to blow up only a few airliners with PETN, they could have a significant negative effect on the economy and could very possibly drive some American airlines into bankruptcy. Al-Qaeda is about using small numbers of men and low-tech techniques to paralyze a whole civilization, which was the point of the September 11 attacks.
Since the Bush administration hyped the ‘war on terror’ trope half to death, many in the American public no longer want to hear about this danger. But it is part of my business in life to deliver the horrific news that the threat is real.
The question is really what level of risk Americans are willing to live with. On the one hand, studies suggest that the crotch bomber could not really have brought down the airliner over Detroit last year, even if he had been able to detonate his payload. And, 500 million Europeans decline to take off their shoes when they travel by air, but there haven’t been any successful shoe bombings over there, nevertheless.
On the other hand... [In full...]
(The comments are well worth reading as well)
Saturday, October 9, 2010
The Worthless War Chronicles - Afghanistan, Year Ten
Rethink Afghanistan
Auntie thinks we should all ruminate on what we've achieved in those ten long years.
Corrupt colonial governments?
Yes.
Peace?
No.
Security?
NOT!
Dead soldiers?
Absofuckinglutely!
Lance Cpl. Joshua Bernard is tended to by fellow U.S. Marines in Afghanistan.
Photograph: Julie Jacobson/AP
But the Pentagon and the other monetarily interested parties in America's wars to feed the gaping maw of the Military-Financial-Educational-Industrial Complex want you to just simply play along with their murderous imperial wars like "Good Americans-cum-Germans" and certainly don't want you to think about... REALLY think about, those Absofuckinglutely dead soldiers.
(Here's what Stars and Stripes thinks too!)
They want you to think of...
"Little America In Afghanistan" (click)
[Pre-1942 American Classroom Salutes Flag]
Source, PoP dEFECT Radio, Courtesy of Skidmark Bob Freek Radio Santa Cruz |
The Way It Was, one day after, October 08, 2010:
Seven more fuel tankers have been burned in Pakistan as the country's security service, the ISI, is being accused of supporting the Talib in those attacks... and in Afghanistan the Talib have killed a politician ostensibly associated with the Northern Alliance (CIA affiliated Opium grower's army) and the Peace Commission/truce meeting is still in it's infancy with much secrecy and no word yet.
Juan Cole with more on our FUBAR involvement in the region:
Sen. Carl Levin of the Senate Armed Services Committee announced a report on Thursday on the way the private security contractors hired by the US military (even to guard bases!) are subject to little oversight, are corrupt, and sometimes pass on money or resources to what are essentially Taliban.[Quote Source]
That is, the US may be indirectly hiring the Taliban to hit US bases.
At the same time, the some 3000 Afghans serving in the private CIA army in Afghanistan have been accused of carrying out among the worst attacks in that country. Erica Gaston of the Open Society Institute talks about her own experiences on the ground in this regard.
The Open Society Foundation reports the finding of Open Society Institute social scientists that ordinary Afghans blame US and NATO military actions as much or more than they blame the Taliban for civilian losses.
The tendency to blame the US is visible in Todd Pitman’s excellent piece revisiting Marjah.
Remember Marjah?
This cluster of farm houses in the Taliban poppy-growing region of Helmand Province was supposed to be a demonstration project for Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s counter-insurgency campaign (take, clear, hold and build). All these months later, the US forces have not dislodged the Taliban, and it seems clear that there are places that GIs cannot go without incurring a firefight.
That is, the ‘clear’ phase has hit a Himalayan-sized snage. Much less hold and build. It was on the “success” of the Marjah campaign that the long-delayed attack on the major southern city of Qandahar was to have been modeled. I wouldn’t advise the US to try to attack and occupy Qandahar if they cannot even deal with Marjah.
While it won’t yield results soon, the negotiations of the Karzai government with insurgents are likely to point the way toward the end of the foreign military presence and the establishment of a new, more inclusive government in the medium to long term. [In Full @ Informed Comment]
One Last Thing... from Razer, with Auntie Imperial seconding:
An un-indicted co-conspirator in "Torture under the color of law" dies an early death.
He and his traitorous ilk WILL NOT be mourned.
Scott Caplan, a Portland lawyer who was caught up in a scandal over flying terror suspects to secret prisons, died this week after suffering a heart attack. He was 49.
As reported in The Lake Oswego Review, Caplan was playing tennis Monday at the Lake Oswego Tennis Center when he collapsed from a heart attack. He died on Tuesday morning.
In 2007, WW reported on Caplan’s ties to the CIA’s so-called “extraordinary rendition” program flying terror suspects to countries that practice torture.
Caplan’s law practice in large part consisted of acting as a registered agent for companies. In 2003 he set up Bayard Foreign Marketing LLC, a company whose listed owner—Leonard T. Bayard—had no official history and didn’t appear to exist.
In 2004, days after reporters blew open the story of the CIA’s secret flights, Bayard bought one of the program’s busiest planes from a company in Dedham, Mass., that reporters determined was a CIA front. The tail number of the Gulfstream V executive jet was changed, but it continued to make flights to countries like Egypt and Iraq... [More]
Thursday, March 25, 2010
"Bullets from the Drug War" - Dimitry Orlov (kollapsnik @ ClubOrlov) On America's Border Drug War
Bullets from the Drug Warby kollapsnik (Dmitry Olov)
[One-year update: I posted this a year ago. Right now, the Secretary of State, the Head of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and other American top brass are in Mexico City trying to spin this. Let's see if any of what I said a year ago needs to be revisited.]
* The US has lost the "War on Drugs"
* The losing side is usually not the one to decide when a fight is over or how it ends
* Unlike other recent defeats, this lost war is a defeat followed by an invasion
* Mexico is the natural staging area for the invasion (inconvenient though it is for the Mexicans)
* New franchises are being set up to service the North American drug market (which is the biggest in the world)
* The CIA has to eat, and all they know how to do competently is run guns and drugs and control thugs; they get a seat at the table
* The narcs have to eat too, and all they are trained to do is deal (with) drugs; they get a seat at the table too
* As the federales grow weak in the US and Mexico, the battle lines will advance north of the border, leaving Mexico a quiet and largely intact backwater
* This is an inter-US conflict, because Americans are the most avid consumers, sellers, and prosecutors of drugs
* Life in the USA gives everyone a pain that is for many people simply not survivable without drugs: either alcohol, pharmaceuticals or illegal drugs
* Illegal drugs are far more cost-effective than either pharma or alcohol — government-licensed industries which are either excessively lucrative or taxed heavily
* As Americans give up hope, they will need to self-medicate in ever-larger numbers
* They will be far more able financially to afford illegal drugs than either pharma or alcohol.
* Illegal drugs (and moonshine) are two very large post-collapse enrepreneurial opportunities within the USA [Post-Soviet Lessons for a Post-American Century, Orlov 2005]
* This is no longer a war against drugs; it is now a contest between alternative drug distribution systems
* One alternative is a centralized, paramilitary organization run by CIA remnants, former military, and former police
* Another alternative is ethnic mafias, which will diversify into many other kinds of trade.
* The third, nautrally most cost-effective alternative will be provided by informal, local distribution networks based on barter, which will be all that is left once the dust settles
* The downside of all this is that it will be hard to find anyone sober enough to operate a light switch
* The upside to that is that the national electrical grid goes away, so there will be very little demand for competent light switch operators
[source]
Visit Dimitry @ ClubOrlov, and if you haven't, be sure to check his (2006) presentation "Closing the 'Collapse Gap': the USSR was better prepared for collapse than the US" at energybulletin.net and a recent update: "Collapse Gap Revisited"
Labels:
CIA,
ClubOrlov,
Drug Trade,
Drug Wars,
Economics,
Mexico,
Narcotics,
War On Drugs
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