Foreign backed terrorism in Iran: Part one -US/Israeli backed Salafists in Iran

Aram Mirzaei
The Saker blog 

While terrorism is a phenomenon most of us have come in touch with during our lifetime, much of the coverage is shadowed by terrorism in the Middle East, especially in Syria and Iraq, where US backed terrorist groups have wreaked havoc in devastating the wars that have plagued these countries.

Nonetheless, terrorism is widespread across the region, even in Iran. Due to Iran’s relatively strong internal stability, terrorist groups have been unable to catch major headlines in the Islamic Republic as terrorist groups often conduct hit and run attacks or the occasional kidnappings of young drafted border guards and soldiers near the Pakistan/Afghanistan border areas as well as across Iran’s western borders towards Iraq. Some groups are motivated by separatist goals, while others are driven by religious extremism. In this first part I will cover terrorism across Iran’s eastern borders, one that is driven by the Salafist ideology.

Iran has been familiar with terrorism for many decades through the Saddam Hussein-backed “People’s Mujahideen”, a strange group of “Marxist-Islamists” who waged war on their own country in an attempt to grab power, shortly after the Islamic Revolution. During Saddam’s 8 year war on Iran they were backed and armed by Iraqi security forces, often resorting to terrorist attacks, killing many innocent people in the process. While this group was effectively defeated, it has nonetheless survived as it was sheltered by the Saddam regime and recently have found refuge in Albania. I will come back to this group later.

Since the 9/11 attacks when Al-Qaeda became a household name, Takfiri groups have become increasingly widespread in the Middle East and central Asia. Many Takfiri groups have found their haven in neighbouring Pakistan which they use as a home base to launch cross border attacks on Afghanistan and Iran. Pakistan’s government and security apparatus are known to support Takfiri groups across the region, at the behest of WaTakshington, a fact that former Pakistani president Pervez Musharraf admitted to.

Pakistan is home to multiple Saudi funded so called Madrasas, terrorist recruitment centres focused on brainwashing young men into joining militant groups with similar ideologies such as the Taliban and Al-Qaeda. For decades, since the days of the Soviet-Afghan war, Islamabad has used terrorism as a tool for its foreign policy towards its neighbours. But it is important to understand that Islamabad and Pakistan’s security services are working for Washington’s interests, because had they had their own interests at heart, they wouldn’t allow the Waziristan province to turn into a terrorist controlled region in the country, endangering the lives of Pakistanis across the country. These Takfiri groups have committed heinous crimes against Pakistanis as well, such as the notorious Peshawar school shootings of 2014 where 132 schoolchildren were murdered.

Since 2003, Iran has been plagued by Takfiri terrorism that has penetrated through Iran’s south-eastern borders into the Sistan and Baluchistan province. One of the more active groups in the region was the Jundallah terrorist group, made up of the predominantly Sunni Muslim Baluchis (a people living in southeastern Iran and southwestern Pakistan). Jundallah claimed to be fighting for Baluchi rights in Iran while also espousing the formation of a Sunni Baluchi state. From their bases in Pakistan, over the course of 8 years, Jundallah conducted multiple terrorist attacks in Iran, such as the 2007 Zahedan bombings where 18 members of the IRGC were killed. 

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Robert Fisk Exposes Israel’s Hidden Role in the Brewing India-Pakistan Conflict

Whitney Webb 
MintPressNews

Israel’s export of Zionist nationalism and neocolonialism — and the accompanying oppression that in practice actually helps to create many of the very terrorist groups they fight against — is just as dangerous as its export of arms.

LONDON — Well-known British journalist Robert Fisk recently wrote a very telling and troubling article in The Independent regarding the outsized role of the state of Israel in the burgeoning tensions between India and Pakistan, two nuclear powers. The story — despite its importance, given the looming threat of nuclear war between the two countries — was largely overlooked by the international media.

The tit-for-tat attacks exchanged between India and Pakistan last week have seen long-standing tensions between the two countries escalate to dangerous proportions, though Pakistan helped to deescalate the situation somewhat by returning and “saving” an Indian pilot whose plane had been shot down in retaliation for India’s bombing of targets in a disputed area administered by Pakistan.

That bombing was retaliation for a car bomb attack launched by Jaish-e-Mohammed (JeM) militants, a group that both India and Pakistan recognize as a terrorist organization, against Indian forces. Some analysts have speculatedthat India’s decision to bomb this area was made by Indian President Narendra Modi, a Hindu ethno-nationalist, in order to rally his base ahead of upcoming Indian elections in May.

et, whatever the reason, the bombing has revealed the close ties that have formed between Modi’s India and Israel, particularly between their militaries. As Fisk notes, following the bombing, Indian media heavily promoted the fact that Israeli-made bombs — specifically, Rafael Spice-2000 “smart bombs” — had been used in the attack. Fisk writes:

Like many Israeli boasts of hitting similar targets, the Indian adventure into Pakistan might owe more to the imagination than military success. The ‘300-400 terrorists’ supposedly eliminated by the Israeli-manufactured and Israeli-supplied GPS-guided bombs may turn out to be little more than rocks and trees.”

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DNC Lawyer Scrambles To Block Evidence From Hidden Laptop Tied To Wasserman Schultz

Zero Hedge

A lawyer for former DNC IT staffer Imran Awan is scrambling to block evidence found on a hidden laptop which may contain proof of a massive spy ring operating at the highest levels of Congress, in what may be the largest breach of National Security in U.S. history.

Awan, a Pakistani national, worked for dozens of Democratic members of Congress along with his wife, two brothers and a friend. Following the publication of DNC emails by WikiLeaks in the lead-up to the 2016 election, Congressional investigators discovered that the Awans had a secret server being housed by the House Democratic Caucus backed up to an offsite Dropbox account.

“For members to say their data was not compromised is simply inaccurate. They had access to all the data including all emails. Imran Awan is the walking example of an insider threat, a criminal actor who had access to everything,” -Daily Caller

According to a briefing, "all five of the shared employees system administrators collectively logged onto the [House Democratic] Caucus system 5,735 times, or an average of 27 times per day,” despite only one of them being authorized to do so.

The Awans were banned from the House IT network on February 2, 2017 after being named in a criminal investigation - however they continued to work in the building for Congresswoman Debbie Wasserman Schultz until Imran Awan's arrest at Dulles Airport trying to flee the country in late July. Awan and his wife, Hina Alvi, were charged with conspiracy and bank fraud in relation to a real estate transaction.

The laptop in question was tucked away in a tiny room formerly used as a phone booth on the second floor of the Rayburn House Office Building late one night in March, only to be found by Capitol Police just after midnight on April 6, 2017 along with notebooks marked 'attorney client privilege,' letters addressed to the US Attorney of DC regarding Debbie Wasserman Schultz, and several forms of identification. Based on the contents of the backpack, some believe Awan wanted the laptop to be found.

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U.S. Celebrates 500th “Targeted Killing” Since 2002: 3,674 Dead including 473 Civilians

All Gov.

Another milestone has been reached in the ongoing war against suspected terrorists in the Middle East and elsewhere—the United States has launched 500 attacks, or “targeted killings” in governmentspeak. 

Micah Zenko at the Council on Foreign Relations published an accounting of attacks, overwhelmingly by drones, against people in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia. Although sources don’t always agree on the number of attacks, the realistic number reached through averaging is 500. The “targeted killings” aren’t as well targeted as they might be; 473 civilians are among the 3,674 who have died in the attacks.

Four hundred fifty of the attacks have come during the administration of President Barack Obama with George W. Bush ordering the first 50.

Despite all those attacks, the number of al-Qaeda affiliates remains about the same, according to the State Department. The only category where the numbers appear to have fallen is among Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, where the population has fallen from “several thousand” to 1,000.   

Last month, according to The Bureau of Investigative Journalism, there were nine U.S. drone strikes in Pakistan and at least one and as many as three in Yemen. Between 33 and 83 people were reported to have been killed in the October strikes. Previous counts of those killed by drone strikes in Pakistan reveal that as few as 12% of the dead were identified as militants, according to the Bureau.

-Steve Straehley

To Learn More:

America’s 500th Drone Strike (by Micah Zenko, Council on Foreign Relations)

October 2014 Update: U.S. Covert Actions in Pakistan, Yemen and Somalia (by Jack Serle and Abigail Fielding-Smith, Bureau of Investigative Journalism)

Only 12% of Pakistanis Killed by Drones Identified as Militants (by Noel Brinkerhoff, AllGov)

Majority of CIA Drone Attacks in Pakistan Hit Homes (by Steve Straehley, AllGov)

Total Drone Deaths in Pakistan Top 2,000 (by Steve Straehley, AllGov)

The world cannot turn a blind eye to America’s drone attacks in Pakistan

Why was Karim Khan prevented from speaking out against drone warfare?

 

Robert Fisk
Voices /The Independent 

Karim Khan is a lucky man. When you’re picked up by 20 armed thugs, some in police uniform – aka the Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) – you can be “disappeared” forever. A mass grave in Balochistan, in the south-west of the country, has just been found, filled with the “missing” from previous arrests. But eight days after he was lifted and – by his own testimony, that of his lawyer Shasad Akbar and the marks still visible on his body – tortured, Mr Khan is back at his Pakistani home. His crime: complaining about US drone attacks – American missiles fired by pilotless aircraft – on civilians inside Pakistan in President Obama’s Strangelove-style operation against al-Qa’ida. 

There are, as the cops would say, several facts “pertaining” to Mr Khan’s kidnapping. Firstly, his son Hafiz Zaenullah, his brother Asif Iqbal and another man – a stonemason called Khaliq Dad – were killed by a drone attack on Mr Khan’s home in December 2009. Secondly, he had filed a legal case in Pakistan against the American drone strikes, arguing that they constituted murder under domestic law. And thirdly – perhaps Mr Khan’s most serious crime – he was about to leave for Brussels to address European Union parliamentarians on the dangers of American drone strikes in Pakistan.

In Madiha Tahir’s recent documentary film Wounds of Waziristan, Mr Khan had talked about his family loss. His son Hafiz was a security guard at a local girls’ school, and also studying for Grade 10. Asif, who had a Master’s in English, was a government employee. Karim Khan saw what was left of their bodies, “covered in wounds”. He found some of their fingers in the rubble of his home.

Thanks to constant reports of his kidnapping in the courageous Pakistani media and to the Rawalpindi bench of the Lahore High Court who ordered the Pakistani government to produce Karim Khan by next Thursday, the anti-drone campaigner is safe. For the moment.

But this is going to set the world on fire. The “drone war”, as American journalists inevitably call it – after all, it’s not as if al-Qa’ida or the innocent victims are firing back with drones of their own – started under George W Bush, but most of the attacks, 384 of them since 2008, have been authorised by Mr Obama.

The statistics of civilian deaths fluctuate wildly since most of the missiles are fired into the Pakistani frontier districts in which the government has little power. The minimum figure for civilian victims is almost 300 dead – some say almost 900 – out of a total of 2,500 killed. At least 50 people are believed to have been killed in follow-up strikes which slaughtered those going to the rescue of the wounded.

Of course, the drone syndrome has spread across the Middle East. The missiles rain down on al-Qa’ida and civilians alike in Yemen. The Israelis fired them into Lebanon in 2006; when a youth on a motorcycle fired at a night-time drone over Beirut, it fired back a missile that destroyed a downtown civilian apartment block. In Gaza, the Palestinian Centre for Human Rights reported 825 deaths from Israeli drones during the 2008-09 war, a large percentage of them civilians.

Pakistani witnesses have told me that the missiles don’t just appear suddenly in the sky. The drones arrive in clusters – 10 or 12 at a time, circling villages for an hour or two – a looking for targets on behalf of their “pilots” in the United States. Until at least 2009, the Americans flew drones – the most impressive was called the Reaper – from air bases inside Pakistan. Hence the sensitivities of the boys from the ISI and their irritation with Karim Khan.

The ethical disgrace of the drone syndrome is not that Mr Obama – or some US officer near Las Vegas – decides on the basis of satellite pictures, mobile phone calls, numbers dialled and the speed of vehicles, who should live or die. The really shameful aspect is that the drone war has become normal. It has gone on so long – and been the subject of so much protest, so regularly – that it has become banal, boring, matter-of-fact.

It was just the same in the 1990s when the US and Brits went hunting for Iraqi targets over the so-called “no-fly zones” in Iraq. For years they bombed and missiled “military targets” that supposedly threatened them. In the eight months up to August 1999, US and British pilots had fired more than 1,100 missiles against 359 Iraqi targets, flying about two-thirds as many missions as Nato pilots conducted over Yugoslavia during the 78-day bombardment of the same year. As well as anti-aircraft batteries, oil pipelines were blown up, storage depots destroyed and dozens of civilians killed, including several in a Basra housing estate. But each air raid was merely “nibbed” in our newspapers – a nib is a single paragraph in an inside-page News in Brief column – so that an entire air campaign was effectively carried out behind the backs of the US and British public in the years before the 2003 invasion.

In southern Lebanon, the Israelis controlled for 28 years a torture prison at Khiam for insurgents and their families – women as well as men – and electricity was frequently used on inmates by Israel’s “South Lebanon Army” thugs. Amnesty, Human Rights Watch and the International Red Cross complained. But I will always remember the words of a Swiss Red Cross official when I asked him, within sight of Khiam, why the world did not condemn this dreadful place. “It has become normal,” he replied.

And that’s it. Kill or torture often enough, over a long enough time – not too many massacres, just a dribble of deaths over months and years – and you’ll get away with it. If you kill the bad guys, it’s OK. Pity about the rest. Just make sure that the war is sufficiently prosaic, and don’t listen to Karim Khan.

The Sochi Olympic Games and the Threat of a Terrorist Attack. Who is Behind the Caucasus Terrorists?

Global Research
Michel Chossudovsky

In the weeks leading up to the Sochi Winter Olympics, the Western Media has released a dribble of “trustworthy reports” examining “the likelihood” of a terrorist attack at the height of the Olympic games. 

In late January, the British government warned “that more terrorist attacks in Russia (following the Volgograd attack in December) are “very likely to occur before or during the Winter Olympics in Sochi”. (BBC, January 27, 2014).

As the Olympic torch reaches Sochi, CNN released, in a timely fashion, the results of an “authoritative” opinion poll (based on a meager sample of 1000 individuals): “57% of Americans think terror attack likely at Sochi Games”

Earlier news reports focussed on the mysterious menace of a so-called “Black Widow” terrorist attack emanating from Chechnya, Russia’s hotspot of Islamic terrorism. According to a so-called “catastrophe expert”  Dr Gordon Woo, a Black Widow attack “is almost certain to happen”:

“Because of the history between the Russians and the Chechen people who splintered to form the Caucasus Emirate, Sochi is a prime target for terrorism,” said Woo, who has advanced insurance modelling of catastrophes, including designing a model for terrorism risk. (Business Times, UK)

The Sochi Games are occurring at the height of a Worldwide crisis marked by the confrontation between the US and Russia on the geopolitical chessboard. In turn, the ongoing protest movement in Ukraine has a bearing on Russia’s geopolitical control of the Black Sea.

What would be the underlying political objective of a terrorist attack?

Are these slanted media reports solely intended to create an aura of fear and uncertainty which causes political embarrassment to the Russian authorities?

While network TV and the tabloids have their eyes riveted on the Black Widow, the more fundamental question as to Who is behind the Caucasus terrorists goes unmentioned.

None of the news reports has focused on the fundamental question which is required in assessing the terror threat.

Both the history of Al Qaeda as well as recent developments in Syria and Libya confirm unequivocally that the Al Qaeda network is covertly supported by Western intelligence.

History: Who is Behind the Chechen Terrorists?

What are the historical origins of the Chechen jihadists, which are now allegedly threatening the Sochi Games? Who is behind them?

In the 1990s, following the collapse of the Soviet Union, the US waged a covert war against Russia. The objective was to promote the secession of Chechnya, a “renegade autonomous region” of the Russian Federation, at the crossroads of strategic oil and gas pipeline routes.

This was a covert intelligence operation. The main Chechen rebel leaders, Shamil Basayev and Al Khattab, were trained and indoctrinated in CIA-sponsored camps in Afghanistan and Pakistan.

The two main Chechen jihadist formations, affiliated to Al Qaeda were estimated at 35,000 strong. They were supported by Pakistan’s Military intelligence (ISI) on behalf of the CIA; funding was also channeled to Chechnya through the Wahabbi missions from Saudi Arabia.

The ISI played a key role in organizing and training the Chechnya rebel army:

“[In 1994] the Pakistani Inter Services Intelligence arranged for Basayev and his trusted lieutenants to undergo intensive Islamic indoctrination and training in guerrilla warfare in the Khost province of Afghanistan at Amir Muawia camp, set up in the early 1980s by the CIA and ISI and run by famous Afghani warlord Gulbuddin Hekmatyar. In July 1994, upon graduating from Amir Muawia, Basayev was transferred to Markaz-i-Dawar camp in Pakistan to undergo training in advanced guerrilla tactics. In Pakistan, Basayev met the highest ranking Pakistani military and intelligence officers (Levon Sevunts, “Who’s Calling The Shots? Chechen conflict finds Islamic roots in Afghanistan and Pakistan”, The Gazette, Montreal, 26 October 1999.)

Following his training and indoctrination stint, Basayev was assigned to lead the assault against Russian federal troops in the first Chechen war in 1995. (Vitaly Romanov and Viktor Yadukha, “Chechen Front Moves To Kosovo”, Segodnia, Moscow, 23 Feb 2000)

The Geopolitics of the Sochi Winter Olympics

The Sochi Olympics are at a strategic location on the Black Sea at the crossroads of Russia’s oil and gas pipelines.

The forbidden question (both by the West as well as by the Russian government) in addressing the possibility of a terror attack is: Who is behind the Terrorists?

While the US sponsored Chechen rebels were defeated in the 1990s by Russian forces, various Al Qaeda affiliated formations –including the “Caucasus Emirate militant group, Imarat Kavkaz (IK) — remain active in the Southern Caucasus region of the Russian Federation (e.g. Chechnya, Dagestan, Ingushetia) and Abkhazia.

Both the Russian based Al Qaeda groups as well as the broader network of jihadist formations in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Balkans constitute CIA “intelligence assets” which could potentially be used to trigger a terrorist event at the height of the Sochi Olympics.

Needless to say, Moscow is fully aware that Al Qaeda is an instrument of Western intelligence. And Moscow is also aware that the US is covertly supporting terror groups which threaten the security of the Olympic Games.

Within the Russian military and intelligence establishment, this is known, documented and discussed behind closed doors. Yet at the same time, it is a “forbidden truth”. It is taboo to talk about it in public or to raise it at the diplomatic level. Washington knows that Moscow knows: “I know you know I know”.
The more fundamental questions which both the Russian and Western media are not addressing for obvious reasons:

• Who is behind the Caucasus terrorists?
• What geopolitical interests would be served, were the US and its allies to decide to trigger a “False Flag” terror event before or during the Sochi Olympic Games?

The wind beneath Malala's wings

Asia Times

My introduction to Malala Yousafzai through her schoolteacher father, Ziauddin Yousafzai, was somewhat accidental. It happened during the Taliban's unprecedented ban on girls' education in Pakistan's Northwestern Swat Valley in December 2008. 

I had been covering the story for the BBC's Urdu-language service. The ban prompted me to pitch to my editors the idea of enlisting a young schoolgirl to write a blog for our widely read website. The concept was simple - to document life under the Taliban as seen by a schoolgirl.

After getting the go-ahead from the editors, I approached one of my key contacts in Swat [in northwest Pakistan], Ziauddin.

He ran a private school and was a vocal member of the anti-Taliban Swat Qaumi Jirga (community assembly), and provided great insight into his troubled homeland.

 

Within days he introduced me to one of his 10th-grade students who was eager to write the blog but soon backed out because of parental pressure. Nonetheless, I persisted and pressed Ziauddin to help me in finding a replacement. He eventually turned to his 11-year-old daughter, who gladly accepted the challenge.

It was the worst of times in Swat. After years of fighting in the remote western tribal regions along Afghanistan's border, the Taliban had expanded their reach and captured a strategic district close to Pakistan's heartland and imposed harsh rule. Floggings of alleged thieves and fornicators, beheadings, suicide attacks, and targeted killings were everyday occurrences. Raising a voice against Taliban atrocities in Swat was practically akin to signing your own death warrant. 

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Counterinsurgency, Death Squads, and the Population as the Target: Empire Under Obama, Part 4

 

By Andrew Gavin Marshall
www.andrewgavinmarshall.com/

Part 1: Political Language and the ‘Mafia Principles’ of International Relations
Part 2: Barack Obama’s Global Terror Campaign
Part 3: America’s “Secret Wars” in Over 100 Countries Around the World

While the American Empire – and much of the policies being pursued – did not begin under President Obama, the focus of “Empire Under Obama” is to bring awareness about the nature of empire to those who may have – or continue – to support Barack Obama and who may believe in the empty promises of “hope” and “change.” Empire is institutional, not individual. My focus on the imperial structure during the Obama administration is not to suggest that it does not predate Obama, but rather, that Obama represents ‘continuity’ in imperialism, not “change.” This part examines the concept of ‘counterinsurgency’ as a war against the populations of Iraq, Afghanistan and spreading into Pakistan.

Continuity in the imperialistic policies of the United States is especially evident when it comes to the strategy of ‘counterinsurgency,’ notably in Afghanistan. As examined in Part 1 of this series, language plays a powerful role in the extension and justification of empire. George Orwell noted that political language was “largely the defense of the indefensible,” where horrific acts and policies – such as maintaining colonial domination, dropping atomic bombs on cities – can only be defended “by arguments which are too brutal for most people to face.” Thus, political language is employed, consisting “largely of euphemism, question-begging and sheer cloudy vagueness.” One specific example was provided by Orwell in his essay – Politics and the English Language - which holds particular relevance for the present essay: “Defenseless villages are bombarded from the air, the inhabitants driven out into the countryside, the cattle machine-gunned, the huts set on fire with incendiary bullets: this is called pacification.” Virtually the same process or strategy is today employed using words like counterinsurgency or counterterrorism. These military strategies are frequently employed, and the words are carelessly thrown around by military officials, politicians, intellectuals and media talking heads, yet little – if any – discussion is given to what they actually mean.

Near the end of the Bush administration in 2008, General David Petraeus was appointed as the Commander of CENTCOM (Central Command), the Pentagon’s military command structure over the Middle East and Central Asia, overseeing the two major ground wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. In 2010, Obama had appointed Petraeus as commander of the NATO forces in Afghanistan, and in 2011, he was appointed as CIA Director. Petraeus is a good starting point for the discussion on counterinsurgency.

Petraeus was previously commander of U.S. forces in Iraq, having quickly risen through the ranks to lead Bush’s “surge” in 2007. Prior to the surge, Petraeus was initially sent to Iraq in 2004 given the responsibility of training “a new Iraqi police force with an emphasis on counterinsurgency.” While in Iraq, Petraeus worked with a retired Colonel named Jim Steele, who was sent to Iraq as a personal envoy of Defense Secretary Rumsfeld. Steele acquired a name for himself in ‘counterinsurgency’ circles having led the U.S. Special Forces training of paramilitary units in El Salvador in the 1980s, where he turned them into efficient and highly effective death squads waging a massive terror war against the leftist insurgency and the population which supported them, resulting in the deaths of roughly 70,000 people.[1]

Jim Steele had to leave a promising military career after his involvement with the Iran-Contra scandal – trading arms to the Iranians for their war against Iraq to finance the death squads in Central America – and so he naturally turned to the private sector. But he had so impressed a Congressman named Dick Cheney, that when Cheney was Vice President, he and Rumsfeld maintained a cozy relationship with Steele who was then sent to Iraq in 2003 to help train the Iraqi paramilitary forces. Steele, working with David Petraeus and others, helped establish “a fearsome paramilitary force” which was designed to counter the Sunni insurgency which had developed in reaction to the U.S. invasion and occupation, running ruthless death squads which helped plunge the country into a deep civil war. Petraeus’ role in helping to create some of Iraq’s most feared death squads was revealed in a 2013 Guardian investigation.[2]

However, in 2005, the Pentagon had openly acknowledged that it was considering employing “the Salvador option” in Iraq in order “to take the offensive against the insurgents.” John Negroponte, who had been the U.S. Ambassador to Honduras when the U.S. was running death squads out of Honduras in Central America was, in 2005, the U.S. Ambassador to Iraq. The Pentagon and the CIA were considering what roles they could play, possibly using U.S. Special Forces, to help train Iraqi “death squads” to hunt down and kill “insurgents.”[3]

Within the first three years of the Iraq war and occupation, the British medical journal, The Lancet, published research indicating that between 2003 and 2006, an estimated 650,000 – 940,000 Iraqis had died as a result of the war.[4] A survey from 2008 indicated that there had been more than one million deaths in Iraq caused by the war.[5]

This is referred to as a “counterinsurgency” strategy. In 2006, General Petraeus wrote the foreward to the Department of the Army’s Field Manual on Counterinsurgency, in which he noted that, “all insurgencies, even today’s highly adaptable strains, remain wars amongst the people.”[6] A 1962 U.S. counterinsurgency guide for the U.S. war in Vietnam said it even more bluntly when it noted that, “The ultimate and decisive target is the people… Society itself is at war and the resources, motives, and targets of the struggle are found almost wholly within the local population.”[7]

At the risk of being redundant, let me put it even more simply: counterinsurgency implies a war against the population. An insurgency is an armed rebellion by a significant portion – or sector – of a population against an institutional authority or power structure (usually a state or imperial power). Thus, for the American Empire – adhering to its rigid ‘Mafia Principles’ of international relations – an ‘insurgency’ is always a threat to imperial domination: if people are able to resist domestic power structures (say, a specific U.S. ally/client state), then other people around the world may try the same. The United States will seek to counter insurgencies for several reasons: to maintain the stability of their ally, to maintain the confidence of other allies, to maintain its reputation as the global hegemon, and to counter more direct threats to U.S./Western interests, such as the loss of access to resources or key strategic points, or in the case of U.S. military occupations, to crush any and all resistance.

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Duped by Obama? Ask the Organ Grinder not the Monkey

I'm reposting this with editions as I'm so sick of people harping on about how Obama is trying his best and he hasn't had a chance and other ridiculous excuses...

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"The argument that the two parties should represent opposed ideals and policies, one, perhaps of the Right and the other of the Left, is a foolish idea acceptable only to the doctrinaire and academic thinkers. Instead the two parties should be almost identical, so the that American people can 'throw the rascals out' at any election without leading to any profound or extensive shifts in policy." - Dr. Carroll Quigley "Tragedy and Hope" (1975)

Infrakshun
M.K. Styllinski


The last article by Arthur Silber uses strong words, emotive you might even say. However, he tells the truth by not masking his words. It is about as objective a truth as you can get. This  truth is sourced from a huge number of innocents murdered for nothing more than the imperial ambitions of a rapidly crumbling USA. And that is the only legacy Obama has right now. There is nothing else.

It is a tragic reality that since the assassinations of the Kennedy Brothers there has not been one president that hasn't been carefully marketed and groomed for the whitehouse by essentially, a pack of psychopaths. There is no democracy in the US. There hasn't been for many decades.

With a vast $billion advertising campaign launched by the very same people that insinuated the Bush monkey into power Barack was catapaulted into the dumbed down and vulnerable consciousness of a primed US populace. The arrival of Mr. Obama was the perfect antidote to theBush-Cheney administration. He was an intelligent, African-American with a pretty wife, some cutsie children and of course, a suitably winning smile. The left, progressive liberals, African-Americans and other ethnic groupings were falling over themselves to welcome this political messiah. Obamamania reigned in all it's vomitable glory.  That famous catch phrase "Yes we can" partnered with the idea of hopey-changey oratory, feel-good visions laced with a whole host of (soon to be broken) promises and a tidal wave of anticipation and genuine fervour to leave behind the Bush Reich. It all seemingly guaranteed the success of a new, chastened face of America.  

Many weren't fooled. Most were.

The problem was most of America didn't read the small print that states the political system had already been bought and sold down the corporate river to nowwhere. The mere fact that Obama arrived in the whitehouse was testament to a future that he would fail to deliver. And that is the whole point. Until we realise that there is no Democrat or Republican party in Congress, only a ONE PARTY SYSTEM giving the illusion of choice, then we will never see the kind of change that offers a way out from endless wars, environmental degradation and the emptiness of a materialist ethos.

Obama has no real power at all for lasting change. Only change that is firmly within the confines of a very narrow view of reality, a reality that is wholly unsustainable and anti-human. Weapons manufacturers, the cult of the CIA, corporate predators and their Zio-Con lobbyists, a wholly corrupt Congress, the trashing of the constitution and civil rights, the myth of Al-qaeda and the phoney war on terror all ensure a particular agenda spawned from an Anglo-American elite.

These people are not like you and I. They do not think in the same way. Thus, they thrive on those who think that their tried and tested formula of manipulation, genocide, murder, torture, rampant resource monopoly and financial and corporate consolidation is just "misguided" or a "failure of intelligence" or that they have merely given in to the all too familiar frailties of greed and incompetence.

To imagine that it is all just human weakness and a lack of political will borne of socio-cultural conditoning is a dangerous illusion. Rather, it is a due to a comprehensive deception from the apex of military-corporate pyramid that is defined by a creeping and institutionlised psychopathology. It can also be seen as a complex networking of interlocking systems that are all following a particular perception of reality that is "entropic" in nature. Such a reality has been allowed to grow unchecked by our collective ignorance with the result that we live under social systems that encourage and propagate the erosion of conscience. The driving force is a minority of psychopaths who consider "normal" people as amusing and inferior; "useless eaters" and the great unwashed. To that end, schizoidal puppets like Obama prove extremely valuable in duping the normal people of this world in accepting chaos as a normal part of life.

I'm afraid realism is something that the US progressives are still sorely lacking in relation to their once bouyant dream-boat that was Obama. The reality MUST tell us that it is actions not words that deliver. And the results were in long before Mr. Obama was even elected. Glenn Greenwald summed it up precisely, showing us what it actually means to support the Obama Administration:

Yes, I’m willing to continue to have Muslim children slaughtered by covert drones and cluster bombs, and America’s minorities imprisoned by the hundreds of thousands for no good reason, and the CIA able to run rampant with no checks or transparency, and privacy eroded further by the unchecked Surveillance State, and American citizens targeted by the President for assassination with no due process, and whistleblowers threatened with life imprisonment for “espionage,” and the Fed able to dole out trillions to bankers in secret, and a substantially higher risk of war with Iran (fought by the U.S. or by Israel with U.S. support) ... - Progressives and the Ron Paul fallacies

To support such actions is symptomatic of cognitive dissonance and an unwillingness to face the truth that the progressive left was indeed duped by the marketing and by their own appalling lack of education regarding the mechanics of political power. The Organ grinder, or the shadow government comprises of the Joint chief of staffs, elements within the intelligence agencies, international banking and corporate representatives, several think tank or steerage groups and many members of congress and media. These all make up a non-elected by highly influential body that decides who and who will not be President. Obama was picked a long time ago using an electoral system that is run on game theory, mass marketing and a wholly baised media along with the reduction of choice by supporting "non-candidates" and massive voting fraud.

You see, Obama may be a narcissist, with major delusions of grandeur, an egotistical, arrogant son-of-a-bitch who believes his own lies much the same as Tony Blair does. He may even be a psychopath. It is especially possible when you realise that during his tenure he's actually managed to surpass the toxic legacy of the Bush-Cheney administration by continuing and expanding their policies both in foreign and domestic terms and still manage to collect a Nobel Peace Prize. Surreal is not the word. (Then again if Henry Kissinger can receive one then anyone can.) Yet he is just a symptom, a natural by-product of the system. Our denials of reality will always come back to haunt us. The greater the denials the more painful the eventual shocks.

When are the majority of Americans going to see that Obama NEVER WAS going to change things? Understanding that psychopaths and their singular perception of reality dominated all political, social paradigms and were still in power behind the scenes meant that Obama never had a chance, even if his conscience was intact. It isn't rocket science. Many folks were saying that this was a danger even at the beginning of the Bush administration's "victory". When you know how the "nuts and bolts" of how the beast works, prediction becomes easy.

There is little point in sniggering and looking toward ones peers to confirm the reflexive, media-fed dissing of conspiracy "theory" when the very nature of military-corporate-political complex is conspiriatiorial by nature. Conspiracy "theory" has long since become fact since the creation of the National Security State in the 1950s along with the rat-lines injection of the Post-war, Nazi intelligentsia straight into the heart of the American establishment.

Does it mean we see everything coated in shadows? Of course not. But let's not look at the sunshine until we go blind either.

Obama, like so many presidents before him was chosen for the role that he would play based on his profile that was guaranteed to appeal to the pure-of-heart but willfully ignorant of the way the world works. Even now you see celebrities who jumped on the Obama bandwagon, - even when they were seeing the warning signs that all was not well - say they are "disappointed" or that they feel "let down" yet they would still vote for him "while holding their noses."  

Clearly, there are many in the US that have difficulty distinguishing between fact and fiction and willingly gulp the kool-aid. Touchy-feely, liberal-minded activism means diddly-squat if there is not an awareness of the political process and our present understanding of media-touted capitalism which is woefully misplaced. We do not have capitalism and haven't had it since the fifties. We have rampant and endemic corruption and exploitation. Geo-political manipulations in a variety of countries that happen to be an impediment to Anglo-American-Israeli world domination IS the reality. Terrorist attacks the world over are directly or indirectly perpertrated by OUR GOVERNMENTS with the help of a compliant media. Without this understanding which means some cherished beliefs must fall by the wayside, we end up being part of the problem. Despite what some fool said: ignorance is not bliss. It is dangerous and stupid.

GOVERNMENTS DO NOT EXIST TO FOSTER FREEDOM AND THINKING IN ITS PEOPLE. GOVERNMENTS EXIST TO CONTROL THE PEOPLE AND MAINTAIN A CAST IRON FENCE AROUND THEIR POTENTIAL TO THINK CREATIVELY.

That's it. In a nutshell. If you think that centralised government in its present form is redeemable then you are living in a dreamworld of the Psychopath's making. And they will love you for it, rather like a butcher loves his carcasses: they provide an income.

Obama is one of the best examples of a wolf in sheep's clothing I have ever seen. And those "progressives" who are still seeing Obama as someone worth supporting really need to get with the picture and start seeing him for what he is. If it howls like a wolf, it's a wolf. He is a representative of a system that is rotten to the core. It's done. Spent. Over. We have to start again from scratch and ensure that if there is to be something resembling an authentic electoral process or consensus, that the individuals in question must have led lives that are examples of life sustaining, cooperative, inclusive and just principles rather than the ruthless, violent, rapacious and cruel. In other words, it is not Obama per se, that is the problem, it is the very notion of politics and our socio-economic and cultural systems as they presently stand which mirror the perceptions of the psychopath and his prediliction for consumption and exploitation, war and elitism.

However, the first port of call in ridding ourselves of thumb-sucking belief-traps is to see that ALL politicians under this current disease of pathology are non-starters. Those that are genuine are fighting against a very filthy tide indeed. There are those that harp on about Ron Paul being the next President. This is simply a waste of time. The system will not allow it. Strike at the roots of the system then folks like Ron Paul (and better) may actually stand a chance. Which is why Obama is so dangerous. He was hand-picked for a purpose, but it was not to draw a line under the Bush-Cheney era. It was to continue and expand such a mindset and it's policies as part of a very long term strategy.

It doesn't matter if Obama is "just a politician" he is presiding over the worst erosion of US civil rights and liberties in history along with the the instignation and escalation of wars abroad the likes of which would make Atilla the Hun blush. Don't forget that it is this man who gave the go-ahead for an active assassination team that is tasked with taking out American citizens without trial and without the rule of law for God's sake! That is a dictatorship. Just beacuse you can still drive your car down the highway and go to the mall when you want doesn't mean that your rights are safe. This is the arrival of a "soft dictatorship" along the route of "Brave New World" rather than "1984." There is still time for these two expressions of totalitarianism to merge.

If you are still one of those reading this with a smirk on your face with the thoughts: "Gee this guy is extreme...Hold off on the sensationalism." Well, you simply haven't dug deep enough. And frankly, there's no excuse, not while we are now firmly racing along the information superhighway. It's up to you whether we crash and burn or start networking and making sense of all this mess. It is up to everyone to face the fear and put a cap on apathy.

Americans (and all of us) have been brainwashed into thinking that their social systems and institutions are not run by pathological folks. There is a reason why we repeat the same tired cycle of wars and disease, famine and poverty; economic boom and busts with the lid firmly shut on a more spiritual, creative and cooperative world. Many of us still don't want to see the truth that we have been comprehensively duped having willingly given our power and vision away to a minority of psychopathological individuals and "elite" families that presently have a stranglehold on what we watch on the TV, what we read, what we buy, who we elect and how our children our educated. We have followed the pied piper down the entropic road to nowhere and now it's crunch time.

It doesn't have to be like this. We do not have to be "normalised" to the Psychopath's world.

There are signs that the Occupy Movement, maybe heralding a change. But for that to be successful and for the human spirit to blossom and act as a much needed antidote to all the above we must revolutionize what we know about the psychology of the human and find ways to manage those anti-human individuals, to include them in societies but to exclude them from ANY positions of power and responsibility. Unless we recognise and engage with this truth, then ALL movements, ideologies and systems of betterment for human kind that could emerge from this new dispensation will be infected from the outset, and it will be our refusal to take aboard psychopathological knowledge that will have doomed us to repeat, yet again, another cycle of darkness.

Utopia is not possible. But a more equitable and just world certainly is. We only have to have the courage to step out of our beliefs together and have the willingness to re-enchant truth through wiser eyes and ears.

Don't place your trust in pathological systems you have grown up with. By all means, let's take the best that they had to offer and discard the rotten and the corrupted. But above all, let's not place our trust in government but return to having faith and trust in binding communities and the natural self-organising, self-regulating of ordinary people and the boundless potential for creative change.

One thing is for certain. It is now or never. 

Background reading: 

How Obama picked up where George Bush left off and assassinated the rule of law 

20 Examples of the Obama Administration Assault on Domestic Civil Liberties

Obama Worse than Bush 

Peace prize winner Obama waging seven wars 

Obama: A Disaster for Civil Liberties

Political Ponerology: A Science on The Nature of Evil adjusted for Political Purposes

Twilight of the Psychopaths

The Face of the Killer Who Is Your President

 
What a big man...

Uruknet

The killer said:

"Ask Osama bin Laden and the 22 out of 30 top al-Qaeda leaders who’ve been taken off the field whether I engage in appeasement," the president fired back at an impromptu news conference at the White House.

"Or whoever’s left out there," he added. "Ask them about that."

Watch the video at the link provided above. It's instructive, particularly Obama's expression when he adds, "Or whoever's left out there." He speaks of murder, yet the words are breezy and casual: this is a murderer so used to killing that he talks of his past and future victims interchangeably, and in terms of approximation. Just "whoever's left out there." He wants to be sure you know he'll order all of them killed in time. His face is expressionless, the eyes dead. This is a man without a soul in any healthy, positive sense. He murders -- and he's proud of it.

More than a million innocent Iraqis were murdered as the result of the United States' criminal war of aggression on that country. Obama has heralded America's "success" in Iraq as "an extraordinary achievement."

The continuing murders in Pakistan and Afghanistan are so numerous and so regular that they barely merit notice for more than a few days, at least as far as the United States government and most Americans are concerned. Over the recent Thanksgiving weekend, the United States government murdered at least 25 Pakistanis. (NATO and the U.S. government are indistinguishable in any matter of importance, in any matter of murders of this kind.) Pakistan is deeply angry and unhappy. The United States government and Obama are concerned only to the extent that Pakistan's unhappiness might interfere with the U.S.'s intention to dominate and control that part of the world. The U.S. government and Obama aren't particularly upset about the murders, but about the strategic problem that might result from the murders.

On the same weekend: "Six children were among seven civilians killed in a NATO airstrike in southern Afghanistan, Afghan officials said Thursday." The story has already fallen into the well of forgetfulness. It must be the case that incidents like this occur at least once a day given the number of military operations ordered by the Murderer-in-Chief and carried out by those who follow his orders. Perhaps only one innocent person is killed. "Only" one. Perhaps we should ask "whoever's left out there" what that one loss signifies.

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