Washington's embrace of Julani: The final collapse of the 'War on Terror' narrative

Kevork Almassian | Kevork's Newsletter 

The photograph of Abu Mohammad al-Julani walking through the White House — smuggled through a back door like contraband — should have been a geopolitical earthquake. Instead, the neoconservative commentariat, the self-appointed guardians against "Islamist infiltration," fell silent. The same voices that spent two decades terrorizing the American public about al-Qaeda said nothing when Washington received one of its senior alumni as Syria's new "president." Their sudden muteness tells us more than their theatrics ever did.

For us, none of this is surprising. It simply formalizes what we already knew: the so-called "War on Terror" was never about fighting terrorism. It was a geopolitical instrument that could be paused, reversed, or inverted whenever U.S. or Israeli strategic interests required it.

And Julani's rise proves that point better than anything else.

America's Betrayal: Not Only of Syrians, but of Its Own Veterans

I have American friends who served in Iraq and Afghanistan. They were told they were fighting al-Qaeda, fighting extremism, defending their country. Today, they live with PTSD, chronic wounds, and emotional scars, all while the very people they were told to fight are being escorted into the Oval Office for photo-ops. If I were in their shoes, I would feel deeply betrayed.

Meanwhile, Washington is rewriting history and hoping no one notices. The U.S. government had full knowledge of the jihadist engine that was being built in Syria. In 2012, Jake Sullivan emailed Hillary Clinton acknowledging that "al-Qaeda is on our side in Syria". The Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) warned the Obama administration in 2012 that the insurgency's core force was jihadists, Salafis, and the Muslim Brotherhood. Yet Obama approved "Timber Sycamore," the CIA program that armed and trained these very groups.

Now, over a decade later, we arrive at the inevitable destination: the United States hosting the former emir of Jabhat al-Nusra — the Syrian branch of al-Qaeda — as the U.S.-approved steward of a "new Syria."

It is macabre theater. 

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UK aware of Israel’s ‘terror’ for over 20 years

Declassified UK | Mark Curtis

The parallels are remarkable. 

There were “numerous reports that the Israeli authorities have prevented medical and other humanitarian assistance from reaching those in need”.

The Red Cross was saying “that their staff have been threatened at gunpoint, warning shots have been fired at their vehicles and two ICRC [Red Cross] vehicles have been damaged by tanks”.

There were “media reports of people dying for lack of treatment” and on the “humanitarian impact of curfews affecting over 1 million people”.

There were Israeli soldiers indulging in “theft and looting from homes and shops and the vandalism of people’s homes”. 

And “many reports of the killing of unarmed Palestinians”.

Sound familiar? 

But this is not Gaza in 2025. It was the occupied West Bank in 2002, described in an internal Foreign Office report revealed in the British archives. 

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New Snowden Leaked Memos Show NSA Aided Israel's "Targeted Assassinations"

Zero Hedge

A couple of new bombshell leaked NSA documents from the Snowden archive published days ago by The Intercept confirms the extremely close level of cooperation between American and Israeli intelligence services, especially as part of the so-called "global war on terror" since 9/11. The documents reveal the NSA even assisted in an aggressive targeted assassination campaign waged by Israel inside Lebanon, especially during the 2006 Lebanon War. 

According to The Intercept's report — aptly titled "Israel Hated American Ban on Sharing Intel for Assassinations, so US Made New Rules" —the newly unearthed NSA memos reveal attempts to find a legal loophole of sorts on the part of the US intelligence officials which would allow unprecedented information sharing related to a deeply controversial targeted assassination campaign by Israel.

The Intercept report states:

As Israel and the Lebanese militia Hezbollah exchanged blows during their short-lived but devastating 2006 war, Israeli military officials used private channels to pressure their American counterparts in the National Security Agency for intelligence to help assassinate Hezbollah operatives, according to a pair of top-secret NSA documents. The NSA was legally restricted from providing such information but, after Israeli officials asked for an exemption, U.S. intelligence officials decided on a new framework for information-sharing.

Essentially the Israeli SIGINT National Unit (ISNU), considered "Israel's NSA", convinced their US intelligence counterparts to circumvent US laws and procedures regarding intel sharing with with allied nations. 

"To ISNU, this prohibition [on sharing data for targeted killings] was contrary not only to supporting Israel in its fight against Hizballah but overall, to support the US Global War on Terrorism," the NSA memo stated. 

“ISNU’s reliance on NSA was equally demanding and centered on requests for time sensitive tasking, threat warning, including tactical ELINT” — electronic intelligence — “and receipt of geolocational information on Hizballah elements,” the NSA official wrote. “The latter request was particularly problematic and I had several late-night, sometimes tense, discussions with ISNU detailing NSA’s legal prohibition on providing information that could be used in targeted killings.”

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We Have Spent $32 Million Per Hour on War Since 2001

Stephanie Savell
Activist Post

This March marked the 16th anniversary of the U.S.-led invasion of Iraq.

In 2003, President George W. Bush and his advisers based their case for war on the idea that Saddam Hussein, then dictator of Iraq, possessed weapons of mass destruction — weapons that have never been found. Nevertheless, all these years later, Bush’s “Global War on Terror” continues — in Iraq and in many other countries.

It’s a good time to reflect on what this war — the longest in U.S. history — has cost Americans and others around the world.

First, the economic costs: According to estimates by the Costs of War project at Brown University’s Watson Institute for International and Public Affairs, the war on terror has cost Americans a staggering $5.6 trillion since 2001, when the U.S. invaded Afghanistan.

 

$5.6 trillion. This figure includes not just the Pentagon’s war fund, but also future obligations such as social services for an ever-growing number of post-9/11 veterans.

It’s hard for most of us to even begin to grasp such an enormous number.

It means Americans spend $32 million per hour, according to a counter by the National Priorities Project at the Institute for Policy Studies.

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Half Million Killed by America's Global War on Terror 'Just Scratches the Surface' of Human Destruction

Common Dreams

The United States' so-called War on Terror has killed about half a million people in Iraq, Afghanistan, and Pakistan, according to a new estimate from the Costs of War Project at Brown University's Watson Institute.

"This update just scratches the surface of the human consequences of 17 years of war."
—Neta C. Crawford, The Costs of War Project

"This new body count signals that, far from diminishing, the war is only intensifying," Stephanie Savell, co-director of the project, pointed out in a piece for Axios. The overall death toll "is an increase of 113,000 over the last count, issued just two years ago."

The new report (pdf) estimates that since 2001, between 480,000 and 507,000 people have been killed because of war violence in those three nations—a tally that does not include "the more than 500,000 deaths from the war in Syria, raging since 2011, which the U.S. joined in August 2014," and "indirect deaths," or those killed by war's impact on public health, such as limiting access to food, water, hospitals, and electricity.

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Obama Kills on Tuesdays: Interview with Croatian author Vedrana Rudan

Sott.net

Under Obama, ten times more people were killed by US drones than under the Bush administrations. So far, under Trump, drone strikes have increased even further.

The US is a rogue state from the point of view of millions of people around the world who suffer death and destruction in the guise of American 'freedom and democracy'. Behind the ruse is greed and a lust for power. Will the ordinary people of world finally see the simple truth behind the noble-sounding rhetoric?  

In this 10 minute clip from the TV interview conducted a few years ago, Croatian author Vedrana Rudan speaks about the truth behind the West's war on terrorism and the hypocrisy that defines it.

New York gains approval for the nation's first 'suspected terrorist registry'

Bonnie Kristian
Rare

Following the Orlando nightclub shooting, New York's state senate passed a bill it's touting as a "Historic First-Ever State Terrorist Registry Proposed to Protect the Number One Terrorist Target in the United States - New York."

The basic concept is a lot like a sex offender registry, only for suspected terrorists:

Registrants would be required to complete a standardized registration form and law enforcement agencies would collect a current photograph, fingerprints and a DNA sample....

The New York State Terrorist Registry would be made available to local, state and federal law enforcement agencies.

And like the Sex Offender Registry, the non-confidential information of each registrant, would be available to the public.

Now, the bill's cosponsors are telling the press the registry will only include those who have been convicted of an act of terrorism. "This would give local law enforcement the tools that they need so that they are aware if there is somebody in their community that has been convicted of terrorism who still may be a threat to the safety and security of Americans," said State Senator Cathy Young, one of the cosponsors.

But the text of the legislation itself seems to say otherwise.

In subdivision one, the bill spells out not one but two ways to get on the terrorist registry:

"Terrorist" means any person who is convicted of any terrorist offense set forth in subdivision two of this section, and/or who has engaged in any verifiable act of terrorism pursuant to subdivision three of this section.

So the first way is precisely what Young says it is: a conviction for terrorism.

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Terror and injustice: FBI planning to increase its policy of radicalization, entrapment, and plotting terror

RT

Sending someone undercover was once a last resort for the FBI - despite popular law dramas where it seems to happen every few weeks. But the FBI's use of undercover agents in the fight against Islamic State has some questioning its legality.

The Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) has significantly increased its use of agents and informants in terrorism cases according to a report from the New York Times. In fact, the FBI uses it so intensively that it is used in about two out of three prosecutions related to suspects believed to be supporting the Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL).

When agents and informants go undercover, they pose as anything from weapons and arms dealers to jihadists or just friends on social media. However, defense lawyers, civil right activists and Muslim leaders have all compared the tactics used by the FBI to entrapment.

"They're manufacturing terrorism cases," Michael German, a former undercover agent with the FBI and national security law researcher at New York University's Brennan Center for Justice, told the New York Times, adding: "These people are five steps away from being a danger to the United States."

For example, Emanuel Lutchman of Rochester, New York, was arrested in relation to a plot to abduct and kill the patrons at a Rochester bar on New Year's Eve. His grandmother, Beverley Carridice-Henry, told the Democrat and Chronicle that Lutchman had suffered from mental illness and was sent to prison when he was 16 years old. While there, he converted to Islam to gain protection after another inmate attempted to rape him.

Carridice-Henry told the Democrat and Chronicle that he had been hospitalized at least three times for suicide attempts and that his difficulties with mental health made him vulnerable to coercion, saying: "I'm not going to say he's a saint, but the thing about him is, he'd meet somebody and they were automatically his friend," adding, "And I told him, 'Not everyone you meet is your friend.' But to him they were."

She explained her frustration with the sting operation involving her allegedly homeless grandson, saying: "They sent this guy to befriend him and set him up in a sting. How is that right? For the federal government to set up youths that they know are vulnerable?... He didn't have money to buy Pampers for his son. How would he find money to go buy these [weapons]?"  

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Uncle Sam’s Support for Terrorism Laid Bare

Wayne Madsen
Strategic Culture Foundation

The McClatchy news service scoop that Labib al-Nahhas, the Syrian foreign affairs director of al-Qaeda’s ally Ahrar ash-Sham, visited Washington, DC in December 2015 should have created a huge political stir in a presidential election year.

However, the fact that the Obama administration has been consorting with terrorist allies of al-Qaeda and the Islamic State in Syria, Iraq, Yemen, Libya, and other countries has received little to no coverage in the American media. More astoundingly, Ahrar ash-Sham, which, along with the al-Nusra Front massacred 19 Alawite Muslims in the Syrian village of Zara in May, is not designated a terrorist group by the US State Department.

The simple fact is that from CIA director John Brennan to national security adviser Susan Rice and US Central Command chief General Joseph Votel to Senate Armed Services Committee chairman Senator John McCain, the Obama administration and the Republicans who control Congress have consorted with Islamist terrorists. These groups have included those who have executed Americans and who help finance and plan terrorist attacks against civilians around the world. The visit of al-Nahhas to Washington follows a long tradition of the US government consorting with Sunni Mujahideen (called the «muj» by their CIA overseers), jihadists, and Salafists starting with the support for Muslim insurgents in Afghanistan and continuing with the provision of military training and weapons to Sunni Arab guerrillas in Iraq.

Votel, who paid a May visit to northern Syria, is not the first US official who entered Syria for a «get acquainted with» session with US-armed jihadist rebels, which was disguised as a «fact-finding mission». In May 2013, Senator McCain entered northern Syria and met with a man who strongly resembles Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) leader Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. The more McCain’s staff and his neo-conservative apologists tried to claim the man was not al-Baghdadi but an unidentified commander of the Northern Storm Brigade, a group linked to the practically non-existent Free Syrian Army, the more McCain’s and the neocons’ lies became apparent. Reports from Damascus, Baghdad, Tehran, and Hezbollah’s media outlets in Beirut all confirmed that the CIA, along with the Israel Defense Force, were actively providing weapons, training, and logistics support to ISIL and allies units in Syria and western Iraq.

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Behind the mask of the 'War on Terror'

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

Have you ever believed something someone said and then found out it was a lie? You remember the initial feeling of shock and indignation, followed by anger at the audacity of the liar and then perhaps depression that human beings are prone to such weakness and insincerity. Then you might have struggled to understand why, and maybe you achieved that understanding, or not.

Being lied to is undoubtedly something that most people have experienced, and it's a valuable experience in that, ideally, it enables us to spot lies and liars before they cause us too much harm or heartache. The point being, everyone knows that people lie, that they justify some things they do with lies to themselves and others. The reason people lie is generally well understood also. We all live our lives according to a spoken or unspoken set of rules or values. When what a person wants conflicts with those rules, they resort to lying to cover up their momentary departure from living a moral life. Such lies can be conscious or unconscious.

What most people rarely, if ever, experience in the course of their lives, however, is a person who lies as a matter of course or who makes a lifestyle out of lying. We're talking here about someone for whom what they want is always at odds with conventional morality and they can therefore never be honest or express what they really think, feel and want out of fear of being utterly rejected (or worse) by their peers. Such a person would constitute a fundamentally deviant or abnormal human being. They might be fully aware that their desires sharply diverge from those of the average person and actively seek to cover them up with lies, or they may simply react 'instinctively' in each moment with a lie in a (largely unconscious) effort to preserve their ability to exploit others in service to their unwholesome desires.

The reason for this brief analysis of lying is that it relates directly to a shocking realization I recently had about the 'war on terror'.

Over the course of the past few years of watching events play out on the geopolitical stage, it has become increasingly difficult for me to digest them in any classically Cartesian way. In fact, my attempts to do so resulted in a severe case of logical dyspepsia. The problem, which is plain for anyone with the eyes to see, is that the 'war on terror' - described by its architects as a war to eliminate terrorism and promote 'freedom and democracy' - has resulted in a large net increase in terrorism and social and political instability and a concomitant decrease in actual freedom and democracy.  

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U.S. War on Terror Defined: Video Shows Opposing Groups Both Using US-Supplied Weapons

The Free Thought Project

Aleppo, Syria — A recent video, apparently recorded just outside of Aleppo Syria and uploaded to Youtube, illustrates just how insane the US “War on Terror” has become.

What the video shows is the U.S. backed, armed, and financed Free Syrian Army, (aka moderate rebels, aka ISIS-linked terrorists) firing a U.S. Supplied anti-tank TOW guided missile.

Of course, the ‘moderate rebels’ firing a US missile is nothing out of the ordinary. However, what makes this U.S. paid for missile so special is that it was fired at what is clearly a U.S. paid for Humvee.

The description posted inside the video says that they destroyed a Humvee with a 14.5mm machine gun and that all occupants of the vehicle were killed.

Whether or not the Humvee belonged to the huge lot of “stolen” military gear in Iraq last year or if it was driven in by US-supplied Iraqi militias is unclear.

What is clear, however, is that whether directly or through error, the US is financing multiple sides of the conflict in Syria, thereby highlighting the ridiculous nature of America’s foreign policy.

As politicians continue to call for gun control domestically, these idiots are handing out guided missile systems to people linked to violent extremist groups by dropping crates from the sky.

As the death toll passes 250,000 in Syria, the US continues to peddle the bullshit notion that dumping troops and money and weapons into the hands of ‘moderate rebels’ will somehow accomplish peace in the region.

The reality is, however, far different, and those at the top of the global murdering empire know it.

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THE "WAR ON TERROR" IS THE HOAX FOUNDATION OF THE POLICE/SPY STATE

Paul Craig Roberts

The “war on terror” was a hoax. Americans were deceived by policymakers, who are pursuing a hegemonic agenda.The American people were too trusting and too gullible and, consequently, Americans were easily betrayed by Washington and by the presstitute media.

The consequences of the deceit, gullibility, and betrayal are horrendous for Americans, for millions of peoples in the Middle East, Africa, Ukraine, and for Washington’s European vassals.

The consequences for Americans are an aborted Constitution, a police/spy state and rising resentment and hatred of America around the world.
The consequences for peoples in Somolia, Libya, Afghanistan, Iraq, Yemen, Pakistan, Syria, Palestine, and Ukraine have been massive deaths and dislocations, infrastructure destruction, internal conflicts, birth defects, invasions, bombings, drones. Millions of peoples have been murdered by Washington’s pursuit of hegemony, and millions have been turned into refugees.
The consequences for Washington’s European vassals is that the millions of refugees from Washington’s wars are now overruning Europe, causing social and political discord and threatening the European political parties that enabled, and participated in, Washington’s massive war crimes in eight countries.
The populations of the eight countries and Washington’s vassals are stuck with the consequences of Washington’s evil, vicious, and illegal actions. And Americans are stuck with the police/spy state and militarized police who murder three Americans each day and brutalize countless others.

The countries we have destroyed have no recourse to restitution.

Our European vassals will have to provide from their own pockets for the refugees that Washington’s wars are sending to them.

As for Americans, they seem to have settled into acquiescence to the brutal police/spy state that has crowded out freedom and democracy.

But Americans could do something about it.

It is a proven fact that the police/spy state rests on a foundation of lies and deceptions, and these lies and deceptions are now known. Even George W. Bush has admitted that Saddam Hussein had no weapons of mass destruction. Thousands of independent experts consisting of physicists, nanochemists, structural engineers, highrise architects, fire fighters and first responders, and military and civilian pilots have provided the detailed explanations of September 11, 2001, that Washington failed to provide. Today not even an idiot believes the official explanation. The corrupt neoconservative Bush regime created a false reality and sold it to a trusting population that was anxious to prove its patriotism.

The American electorate knew that the Bush/Cheney regime had deceived them about many things, and the people, believing Obama’s promises of change, put him in office to rectify the situation. Instead, Obama protected the criminal Bush/Cheney regime and continued with the neoconservatives agenda.

We don’t have to stand for this. We can turn off Fox “News,” CNN, NPR and all the rest of the presstitutes who lie for a living. We can cease purchasing the useless newspapers. We can demand that the police/spy state that was created entirely on the basis of lies and deceptions be rolled back.

Who can possibly believe that the massive PATRIOT Act was written so quickly in the aftermath of 9/11?It is not possible that every member of Congress and the staff does not know that such a massive document was sitting on the shelf waiting its opportunity.
Who can possibly believe that a handful of Saudi Arabians acting without the support of any state and any intelligence service could outwit the entire apparatus of the American National Security State and inflict a humiliating defeat on the world’s only superpower?
9/11 is the worst national security failure in world history. Who can possibly believe that not a single one of the national security officials who so totally failed in their responsibilities was held accountable for their failures that brought total humiliation to the proud United States?
Who can possibly believe that the Bush regime’s invasion and destruction of Iraq was a response to 9/11 when Bush’s Treasury Secretary publicly stated that the invasion of Iraq was the topic of the Bush regime’s first cabinet meeting long prior to 9/11?

Are the American people really such washed-up sheeple, such cowards, that they acquiesce to a police/spy state, the foundation of which consists of nothing but lies told by criminals and repeated endlessly by whores pretending to be journalists?

If so, the American people are not a people who any longer matter, and they will continue to be treated by Washington and by their local police as people who do not matter.

The Pentagon’s Law of War Manual: Part one

A blueprint for total war and military dictatorship


Tom Carter
World Socialist Website 


The new US Department of Defense Law of War Manual is essentially a guidebook for violating international and domestic law and committing war crimes. The 1,165-page document, dated June 2015 and recently made available online, is not a statement of existing law as much as a compendium of what the Pentagon wishes the law to be.

According to the manual, the “law of war” (i.e., the law of war according to the Pentagon) supersedes international human rights treaties as well as the US Constitution.

The manual authorizes the killing of civilians during armed conflict and establishes a framework for mass military detentions . Journalists, according to the manual, can be censored and punished as spies on the say-so of military officials. The manual freely discusses the use of nuclear weapons, and it does not prohibit napalm, depleted uranium munitions, cluster bombs or other indiscriminate weapons.

The manual might have more properly been titled A Manifesto for Total War and Military Dictatorship.

The manual is an expression of the incompatibility of imperialist militarism and democracy. In the 25 years since the liquidation of the USSR, and especially over the 14 years since the launching of the so-called “war on terror,” the United States has been almost perpetually at war, seeking to offset its economic decline by threats and military violence around the world.

The same government that orchestrated a coup led by fascists in the Ukraine, that backs a military dictatorship and repression in Egypt, and that supports mass killings and destruction in Gaza can hardly be expected to remain true to the rule of law and democratic principles at home.

Through both the Bush and Obama administrations, the “war on terror” has been accompanied by a steady abrogation of democratic rights within the United States, including a barrage of police state legislation such as the Patriot Act, unrestricted spying on the population by the National Security Agency and other agencies, the militarization of the police, and the establishment of precedents for the detention and assassination of US citizens without charges or trial.

In this context, the Pentagon manual is a significant milestone in the drive to establish the framework of a police state.

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Wanted dead or alive: The U.S. is still hunting down 16,000 dead 'terrorists'

Sputnik

Over 16,000 purported terrorists who are either "confirmed" or "reportedly" dead are included in various US 'terror' lists, a recently-leaked US Department of Homeland Security (DHS) document marked "for official use only" reveals.

According to an assessment that was prepared by the DHS's Office of Intelligence and Analysis in August 2015, US agencies can't properly trace or detect suspected terrorists. This is due to the breakdown of the so-called "watchlist" system which the US government had implemented, the popular whistleblower website The Intercept, which obtained that document, reported.

"A significant number of 'dead' and 'reportedly dead' KSTs [known or suspected terrorists] cannot be placed on the No Fly List, because of insufficient biographic information needed to deny boarding to them," The Intercept quoted the Office of Intelligence and Analysis as saying.

Another expert, Hina Shamsi, the director of the American Civil Liberty Union's National Security Project, outlined that not only dead suspects get wrongfully included in the lists; they also contain the names of people who are alive and sometimes innocent. She pointed out that detecting suspects using a 'no-fly list' usually leads to the "most draconian consequences" for unjustly convicted individuals.

"There is no meaningful way to challenge wrongful inclusion and correct government error," she said.

The other obstacle is that many of the watch lists compiled by different agencies appear to partly overlap, which leads the US authorities to make more and more mistakes when searching for terrorists, the media outlet noted. For instance, the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), State Department and FBI all have separate databases containing intelligence on suspected terrorists.

What's more, the DHS's document reads that those agencies also have different approaches to dealing with the term 'death'. In practice, this leads to various possibilities for the interpretation of different lists. For example, the paper said that about 20 percent of those 'confirmed dead' in NCTC's Terrorist Identities Datamart Environment list are marked as 'remain watchlisted' in the FBI's Terrorist Screening Database. When it comes to 'reportedly dead' terrorists, the figures are almost the same - roughly 20 percent of them are being searched for via the no-fly list. 

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Russia, Syria and the anglo-American existential gas war in the Middle East

Joe Quinn
Sott.net

On our weekly radio show last Sunday, I commented that the response from the U.S. and its Western allies to Russia's launch of an actual war on terrorism in Syria has been largely silence, deafening silence , a bit like Netanyahu's 'silence spectacle' at the UN recently, only even more deafening. So deafening in fact, that it came full circle and I began to hear something.

At first it was just a mealy-mouthed American-accented, 'Russia is making things worse'. But it quickly grew in strength to announce in a Queen's English accent, "we're bombing ISIS too you know!" And before long it had become a cacophonous coprocopia of nonsense about Russia "killing innocent civilians in Syria" and, most recently, "dangerously invading the airspace" of our NATO ally Turkey.

Still, it was, and is, all 'sound and fury', because the bottom line is that U.S. has had its 'war on terror' bluff called in spectacular fashion by Russia and there is nothing, and I mean nothing, that the terror masterminds in Washington and Langley can do about it, short of declaring war on Russia.

The only more or less honest statements about Russia's move into Syria from the West have come from the same person, U.S. Air Force Gen. Philip Breedlove, head of U.S. European Command. Speaking on Sept. 28th at a meeting in Berlin of the 'German Marshall Fund' - a US think tank that commemorates the Marshall Plan, an initiative through which the USA gained economic control over most of Western Europe after WW2 - Breedlove said that Russia had installed "very sophisticated air defense capabilities/anti-access area denial" that were not aimed at the Islamic State but "about something else". Of course, "something else" here means "NATO bombs".

General Strangelove, er, Breedlove: 'Might doesn't make right. Except when we do it.'

At the same meeting, Breedlove also said that US aircraft had begun arriving at Diyarbakir Air Base in southeast Turkey so as to "better recover our coalition partners should they need assistance in Syria or Iraq." This was an informed and well-advised move, because about 36 hours later a Russian general walked into the US embassy in Baghdad and told a consulate staffer "bombing begins in an hour." We'll never know if any CIA/US military operatives frantically requested an 'evac' from the vicinity of ISIL or FSA training camps in Syria just before Russian missiles turned them into holes in the ground, but the thought that they may have is very inspiring.

Most people reading this have no doubt already internalized the objective truth about the US-led war on terror; that it is nothing more than a cynical cover for US imperial expansion, specifically aimed at 'containing' Russia as the only real threat to US global hegemony. For the last 70 years or so, that hegemony has been secured largely through US control over Middle Eastern oil by way of repeated US meddling in the affairs of Middle Eastern nations, up to and including carrying out coup d'etats and other dirty tricks to destabilize the region. At the same time, Washington expended vast amounts of money and military power to control other nations around the world and enforce a pax Americana that ensured the USA stayed on top. 

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The 7/7 London Bombings

James Robertson
Crimes of Empire

The London Bombings of July 7th, 2005.

Almost all of the evidence presented here is a distilled version of Tom Secker’s authoritative work Secrets, Spies and 7/7 the most comprehensive account of these events that was available and for which I am immensely grateful and heavily indebted.

Covert MI5 Recording of 21st February 2004.

“Mohammed Sidique Khan: Are you really a terrorist eh?

Omar Khyam: They’re working with us.

Mohammed Sidique Khan: You’re serious, you are basically…

Omar Khyam: No I’m not a terrorist but they are working through us.”

An Historical Context – Within the War on Terror.

On July 7th , 2005 the public transport system in London was struck by a number of explosions that killed 56 people and wounded hundreds more causing the largest single loss of life in Britain since World War 2.

The July 7th bombings formed and continue to form a key part of the War on Terror narrative. Of the dozens, indeed hundreds of mass casualty attacks attributed to the “al Qaeda” synthetic terror outfit in the first decade of the 21st century the London attacks along with the 911 events, the Bali bombings, the Madrid attack of 2004 and the Mumbai massacre of 2008 stand out as the “iconic” attacks that are still utilised to promote the War on Terror narrative of foreign wars and the domestic police state  whilst many other massacres such as the attack in Djerba, Tunisia in March 2002, and the series of blasts that struck Istanbul in late 2003 have been largely forgotten.

Historian Webster Tarpley in his 2004 work “911 Synthetic Terror Made in the USA”” provides an analysis of the phenomenon of modern terrorism that explains why all events of world changing political violence should be subjected to intense scrutiny.

“We start from the strong presumption that terrorism is therefore an activity which is controlled by a faction of government, probably acting under the influence of financier factions which are generally the ultimate source of authority in the globalized universe after 1991. Terrorism cannot be described as a spontaneous sociological phenomenon, as the old saying goes – it must rather be seen as a phenomenon developed by sociologists, along with psychologists, profilers, psychiatrists, case officers, handlers, and cut-outs. For every terrorist and terrorist group in the field, an extensive bureaucratic support system is necessary. Spontaneous combustion is the last thing that should be expected.”
9/11 SYNTHETIC TERRORISM MADE IN USA page 57.

The next time you hear the British Prime Minister David Cameron refer to the supposed threat from non-violent extremists, a farcical and meaningless category, it might be worth asking this question.

If everything about the 7/7 attacks is as they have claimed why are the British establishment not simply content to win every debate on the subject?

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What threatens us most - terrorist attack by 'radical Islam' or being killed by a bee?

The Intercept 

Glenn Greenwald & Josh Begley 
 

It’s hard to overstate how trivial the threat of “radical Islam” is to the average American compared to so many other risks. 

 

THE THINK TANK New America issued a report today documenting “the lethal terrorist incidents in the United States since 9/11.” 

 

It found that a total of 26 Americans have been killed by “deadly jihadist attacks” in the last 14 years, while almost double that number - 48 - have been killed by “deadly right wing attacks”.

The significance of that finding was well-captured by the New York Times caption, promoting the paper’s article that included this quote from Terrorism Professor John Horgan: “There’s an acceptance now of the idea that the threat from jihadi terrorism in the United States has been overblown.”

That the US government, media and various anti-Muslim polemicists relentlessly, aggressively exaggerate “the terror threat” generally and the menace of Muslims specifically requires no studies to see. 

It’s confirmed by people’s everyday experiences. On the list of threats that Americans wake up and worry about every morning, is there anyone for whom “terrorism by radical Islam” is high on the list?

To believe the prevailing US government/media narrative is to believe that radical Islam poses some sort of grave threat to the safety of American families. 

The fearmongering works not because it resonates in people’s daily experiences and observations: it plainly does not. 

It works because it’s grounded in tribalistic appeals (our tribe is better than that one over there) and the Otherizing of the marginalized (those people over there are not just different but inferior): historically very potent tactics of manipulation and propaganda. 

Add to that all the pragmatic benefits from maintaining this Scary Muslim mythology — the power, profit and policy advancement it enables for numerous factions — and it’s not hard to see why it’s been so easily sustained despite being so patently false. 

It’s literally hard to overstate how trivial the risk of “radical Islam” is to the average American.

If anything, the chart below severely understates how exaggerated the threat is, since it compares the total number of deaths caused by “Muslim extremists” over the past 14 years to the number of deaths caused daily or annually by threats widely regarded as insignificant. 

This is the “threat” in whose name the US and its Western allies have radically reduced basic legal protections; created all sorts of dangerous precedents for invasions, detentions and targeted killings; and generally driven themselves to a state of collective hysteria and manipulation.

Politicians push to declassify censored 9/11 reports

New York Post

On Wednesday, the former co-chairman of the panel that produced the heavily-redacted 2002 report will hold a Capitol Hill press conference calling for its complete release. Former Democratic Sen. Bob Graham will join Reps. Walter Jones (R-NC) and Stephen Lynch (D-Mass.), as well as 9/11 families, to demand President Obama shine light on the entire blanked-out Saudi section.

Graham claims the redaction is part of an ongoing “coverup” of the role of Saudi officials in the 9/11 plot. He maintains the Saudi hijackers got financial aid and other help from the Saudi consulate in Los Angeles and the Saudi embassy in Washington, as well as from wealthy Sarasota, Fla., patrons tied to the Saudi royal family.

Jones and Lynch say they will reintroduce their resolution urging Obama to declassify the information in the newly seated Congress. The bipartisan bill has attracted 21 co-sponsors, including 10 Republicans and 11 Democrats, since first introduced 12 months ago.

President George W. Bush claimed he couldn’t release the information because it was too sensitive and could jeopardize the War on Terror. But Obama has declared both the Iraq and Afghanistan wars over, making his reluctance more curious. 

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The killer on the (Saudi) king's highway

Pepe Escobar
Asia Times Online

There's danger on the edge of town
Ride the king's highway, baby
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway west, baby
The Doors, The End

The killer awoke before dawn. He put his American desert boots on. He took a knife from the ancient gallery. And he walked on down the hall - bathed in desert sunlight.

The killer spoke with a British accent (London's East End?) Father (Saud), I want to kill you. Mother (Langley?) I want to...

yeeeaaahh, c'mon!

Then the sartorially composed Man in Black beheaded American photojournalist James Foley.

This is not the end, beautiful friend. It's just a new beginning in the never-ending Global War on Terror. Now starring Papa Saud's brand new bag - The Caliph and his goons. This is the way Shock and Awe morphs into "Assad must go" morphs into Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, morphs into The Caliph's Black Britannia goon responding to "humanitarian" bombing. I'm my own baby now. Watch me work. Bring it on.

Choice scenery. Good sound and vision production values. Careful editing. No unnecessary gore. No blood splattering. No Allahu Akbar shrieks. "A Message to America", indeed - but most of all a message to the Ummah. As in we're the Men in Black badasses. We run The Caliphate. We're no mere death cult; we're winners. And we take no prisoners.

And why did Islamic State, formerly ISIS, become winners? Because the "West" regimented, schooled, trained, logistically helped and weaponized most of IS's Takfiri goons with a mission at hand: to destroy Syria. The "West" lauded them as "Syrian rebels". Freedom fighters.

Washington even promoted Jabhat al-Nusra (the official al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, and a "terrorist organization", according to the State Department) as "good" jihadis, as well as the preferred Saudi combo, the Islamic Front.

No wonder after photojournalist James Foley was kidnapped in November 2012 the Washington-sanctioned version was that he was being kept by "Assad must go" forces in a prison near Damascus. 

Read more

Government agents ‘directly involved’ in most high-profile US terror plots

Comment: Another one for the: "we've been saying this for years"file. It's called The Terror Industry.

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The Guardian

Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants, a new report says.

Some of the controversial "sting" operations "were proposed or led by informants", bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist. 

The lengthy report, released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, raises questions about the US criminal justice system's ability to respect civil rights and due process in post-9/11 terrorism cases. It portrays a system that features not just the sting operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial detentions and convictions significantly removed from actual plots. 

"In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act," the report alleges.

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