Tag: the war of terror

CIA Backs ‘Monsters’ and ‘Radicals’ to Sow Global Chaos — Former Psy-Ops Officer

The US has a long history of backing military coups and ‘colour revolutions’ against foreign governments which refuse to bow down to Washington — and invading when all else fails. Counter-terrorism expert Scott Bennett explains why the morality of its proxy forces is not an issue.

The US military trains mercenaries and terrorists for CIA-run destabilisation and coup operations around the world, a former US Army psy-ops expert says.

On Monday a major US daily newspaper reported on newly-released Department of Defense (DoD) documents that revealed the Pentagon was not screening militants recruited for its proxy force training programs for previous human rights abuses.

The US Congress, which approved $115 million in 2018 to recruit, arm and train “counterterrorism” and insurgent forces, has blocked previous efforts to require vetting for involvement in atrocities.

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Bringing the War on Terror Home to Target Americans for ‘Disinformation’

The U.S. government took the information techniques it learned after 9/11 and has turned them on Americans. America may have lost the Great War on Terror, but our technocratic elites could still win their war against American liberty.

That’s the argument made by Jacob Siegel in a 13,000-word Tablet magazine article titled “A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century,” which seeks to explain “a high-level hoax perpetrated against the American people” by elitists “who believe themselves to be infallible.”

Specifically, Siegel writes, these “infallible” elitists believe they are saving the world from “disinformation,” which is whatever they view as untruths about Russia, Ukraine, Donald Trump, Covid, climate change, election fraud, Brexit, etc. You name a flavor of disinfo, and they want to save us from it. And they’re operating in the State Department and other federal agencies, in numerous foundations and NGOs, and at a hundred academic “centers” that have sprung up like ‘shrooms since 2016.

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The US and the War Crimes in the War on Terror

For the past two decades, the International Criminal Court has concentrated on the war crimes and criminals who have operated in Africa.  Over the past month, however, the court has issued an arrest warrant for Russian President Vladimir Putin and his Commissioner or Children’s Rights.  Our own Department of Justice is even considering a federal indictment of Syrian leaders responsible for the torture and execution of an American human rights worker, Layla Shweikani.  The war crimes of Syrian President Basher al-Assad are well known, but this would mark the first time that the United States has criminally charged Syrian officials with human rights abuses. There is no indication, however, that the ICC or the Department of Justice will take on the war crimes committed by the United States during its Global War on Terror in the wake of the 9/11 attacks in New York City and Washington.

The mainstream media has been giving increased attention to the issue of war crimes as well as the 20th anniversary of the start of the Iraq War, but there has been no attempt to link the issues.  The war itself could be labeled a war crime or a “crime against the peace,” which was the charge against Germany introduced at the Nuremberg Trials in 1945 and 1946.  The most prominent war crimes were the Central Intelligence Agency’s detentions and renditions program as well as the sadistic program of torture and abuse, which have been devoid of any accountability whatsoever.  One of the leaders of the program, Gina Haspel, even became Donald Trump’s CIA director.

Nor has there been any focus on the U.S. military’s role in renditions and detentions, including the detaining of individuals suspected of involvement in 9/11.  There are many reasons for closing down the wartime prison at Guantanamo Bay, but the obvious one deals with prisoners there who have never been charged with a crime over a period of 20 years and/or were subjected to numerous forms of torture and abuse.  It was Vice President Dick Cheney who convinced President George W. Bush to locate the prison at Guantanamo Bay in Cuba in an effort to put it out of reach of the U.S. legal system.  A federal appeals course is still dealing with the issue of whether the Gitmo prisoners have due process rights under the Constitution, but the relevant opinions have not been released because they reportedly contain classified information.  Once again, we are witnessing the application of security classifications to hide embarrassing information.

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How the CIA created Osama bin Laden

“Throughout the world … its agents, client states and satellites are on the defensive — on the moral defensive, the intellectual defensive, and the political and economic defensive. Freedom movements arise and assert themselves. They’re doing so on almost every continent populated by man — in the hills of Afghanistan, in Angola, in Kampuchea, in Central America … [They are] freedom fighters.”

Is this a call to jihad (holy war) taken from one of Islamic fundamentalist Osama bin Laden’s notorious fatwas? Or perhaps a communique issued by the repressive Taliban regime in Kabul?

In fact, this glowing praise of the murderous exploits of today’s supporters of arch-terrorist bin Laden and his Taliban collaborators, and their holy war against the “evil empire”, was issued by US President Ronald Reagan on March 8, 1985. The “evil empire” was the Soviet Union, as well as Third World movements fighting US-backed colonialism, apartheid and dictatorship.

How things change. In the aftermath of a series of terrorist atrocities — the most despicable being the mass murder of more than 6000 working people in New York and Washington on September 11 — bin Laden the “freedom fighter” is now lambasted by US leaders and the Western mass media as a “terrorist mastermind” and an “evil-doer”.

Yet the US government refuses to admit its central role in creating the vicious movement that spawned bin Laden, the Taliban and Islamic fundamentalist terrorists that plague Algeria and Egypt — and perhaps the disaster that befell New York.

The mass media has also downplayed the origins of bin Laden and his toxic brand of Islamic fundamentalism.

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DRONES AND MOTOS

THE LOOK ON Miriam’s face was abject fear. Her pink, white, and green veil had mostly slipped from her head, and her dark eyes grew wide as she stared down at her lavender smartphone. In a flash, she pulled it to her ear. “Allo!” she said, her pitch rising as her other hand nervously cradled her chin.

In the courtyard of her family’s tree-lined compound in a well-to-do neighborhood in Niger’s capital, members of Miriam’s ethnic group had been describing jihadist attacks on their historic community in a rural region to the north. Now, the six or seven men wearing tagelmusts — a combination of turban and scarf worn by Tuareg men to provide protection from sun and dust — were also glued to their phones as chimes announced incoming texts and calls. Voices on the phones sounded panicked. There were gunshots, and a familiar roar rumbled through the desert scrubland 100 miles away. At any moment, relatives warned, they expected an attack by the “motorcycle guys.”

Over the last decade, Niger and its neighbors in the West African Sahel have been plagued by terrorist groups that have taken the notion of the outlaw motorcycle gang to its most lethal apogee. Under the black banners of jihadist militancy, men on “motos” — two to a bike, their faces obscured by sunglasses and turbans, armed with Kalashnikovs — have terrorized villages across the borderlands where Burkina Faso, Mali, and Niger meet. These militants, some affiliated with Al Qaeda or the Islamic State group, impose zakat, an Islamic tax; steal animals; and terrorize, assault, and kill civilians.

Jihadist motorcyclists, Miriam reminded me, had thundered into the village of Bakorat on March 21, 2021. As described afterward by one of the survivors, the motos “swept into the village like a sandstorm, killing every man they saw. They shot one of my uncles in front of me. His 20-year-old son ran to save him, but he perished as well. We found them, slumped over each other.” Attacking in overwhelming numbers and with military precision, the jihadists executed men and boys while looting and burning homes. “They attacked the well like it was a military objective, opening fire on the dozens of men there. As they killed, I heard the attackers saying, ‘This is your time … for working with the state,’” another survivor told Human Rights Watch. “I collapsed, seeing the carnage … my father, my brothers, my cousins, my friends lying there, dead and dying.” Human Rights Watch said more than 170 people were massacred near Bakorat and Intazayene villages and nearby nomad camps that day. Miriam and her relatives put the number at 245.

As we sat in the courtyard, it all seemed to be happening again.

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A Guide to Understanding the Hoax of the Century

If the underlying philosophy of the war against disinformation can be expressed in a single claim, it is this: You cannot be trusted with your own mind. What follows is an attempt to see how this philosophy has manifested in reality. It approaches the subject of disinformation from 13 angles—like the “Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Blackbird,” Wallace Stevens’ 1917 poem—with the aim that the composite of these partial views will provide a useful impression of disinformation’s true shape and ultimate design.

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The Department of Homeland Security Turns 20. Its Legacy Is Disastrous.

To those who don’t remember the events of September 11, 2001, it can be difficult to convey the sense of dread and uncertainty that followed. As horrible as the attacks were, many of us wondered: What’s next?

It was in this context that Congress quickly passed, and President George W. Bush signed, such legislation as the USA PATRIOT Act, less than two months after 9/11. While that law was drafted with the best of intentions—strengthening the nation’s defenses against potential future attacks—in practice, authorities overwhelmingly use it to circumvent Americans’ basic freedoms like privacy and due process.

Similarly, less than a month after the attacks, Bush signed an executive order establishing the Office of Homeland Security. The office would “coordinate the executive branch’s efforts to detect, prepare for, prevent, protect against, respond to, and recover from terrorist attacks within the United States.”

But that was apparently not enough: In June 2002, Bush proposed an entirely new Cabinet department dedicated to “transforming and realigning the current confusing patchwork of government activities into a single department whose primary mission is to protect our homeland.” Bush’s proposal promised that by consolidating multiple agencies under a single director, the new department would “improve efficiency without growing government.”

In November of that year, Congress passed the Homeland Security Act of 2002, which established the Department of Homeland Security (DHS) and brought nearly two dozen disparate agencies, including the Transportation Security Agency (TSA), the U.S. Secret Service, and the Coast Guard, under its purview. The newly incorporated department officially opened 20 years ago today, on March 1, 2003.

The department’s stated intent was to prevent terrorist attacks and protect the homeland. Twenty years later, what is there to show for it?

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‘Ministry of Truth’: Critics warn Washington extremism bill targets free speech

As the Washington State Attorney General’s Office continues work on a database for police use of force incidents, a House bill would set up a 13-member commission within that same office to develop a data collection process on incidents of “domestic violent extremism,” or DVE.

Although the term DVE is not defined in the bill, under State Attorney General Bob Ferguson’s description it would include noncriminal activities or speech.

HB 1333 sponsored by Rep. Bill Ramos, D-Issaquah, creates a Domestic Violent Extremism Commission to develop ways to combat “disinformation and misinformation,” though the two words are not defined in the bill. Also not defined is the term DVE.

The legislation is derived from a recommendation by the Attorney General’s Office own 2022 “Domestic Terrorism” study, which cautioned that “effective State intervention to address these threats has the potential to implicate speech or association that may be protected by the First Amendment, or the individual right to bear arms protected by the Second Amendment.”

Among the report’s recommended was the creation of a commission to explore not just data collection, but potentially adding a definition of DVE to state statue. State law already addresses hate crimes, and the FBI defines “domestic terrorism” within the context of actual crimes or intent to commit a crime.

However, the attorney general’s 2022 report argues that “rather than exclusively address ‘domestic terrorism’ per se, these recommendations seek to best support Washington State to respond to this panoply of challenges, which together combine to create the threat of—and indeed, are often precursors to—acts of domestic terrorism.”

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Biden Regime Quietly Frees One of 9/11 Terrorist Planners from Gitmo as the Whole Country Watches the Chinese Spy Balloon

As the whole country was preoccupied with the Chinese spy balloon last week, one of the 9/11 terrorist planners was quietly released from Guantanamo Bay in Cuba by the Biden regime.

On Thursday, Majid Khan, now 42, was moved to Belize, his legal team announced.

“Today, more than 16 years after he was brought to Guantánamo Bay and almost a year after he completed a military commission sentence there, pursuant to a plea and cooperation agreement with U.S. authorities, Majid Khan was transferred to Belize,” his legal team said in a statement.

Khan is one of the few detainees to be relocated to the Western Hemisphere and the first to be resettled under the Biden regime.

“He is the first of the prisoners transferred from secret CIA detention to Guantánamo in September 2006 to be released, and the first third-country resettlement by the Biden administration. Mr. Khan and his legal team are deeply grateful to Belize for offering him a chance to begin a new life.”

“I have been given a second chance in life and intend to make the most of it,” said Khan in a statement issued by his legal team. 

“I deeply regret the things that I did many years ago, and I have taken responsibility and tried to make up for them. I continue to ask for forgiveness from God and those I have hurt. I am truly sorry. The world has changed a lot in 20 years, and I have changed a lot as well. I promise all of you, especially the people of Belize, that I will be a productive, law-abiding member of society. Thank you for believing in me, and I will not let you down. My actions will speak louder than my words.”

Around a dozen countries were contacted by the Biden administration in an effort to provide Khan a new home, according to NBC.

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The Legacy of George W. Bush and His Torturers

In the days and months following the attacks of 9/11, the government laid the blame for orchestrating the attacks on Osama bin Ladin. Then, after bin Ladin was murdered in his home in Pakistan in 2011, the government decided that the true mastermind of 9/11 was Khalid Shaikh Mohammed.

By the time of bin Ladin’s death, Mohammed had already been tortured by CIA agents for two years in Pakistan and charged with conspiracy to commit mass murder, to be tried before an American military tribunal at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba.

Throughout the entire existence of the U.S. military detention camp at Gitmo, no one has been tried for causing or carrying out the crimes of 9/11. The government only tried one person for crimes related to 9/11. That was Zacharias Moussaoui who pleaded guilty in federal court in Virginia to being the 20th hijacker and then was tried in a penalty phase trial where the issue was life in prison or death. The government spent millions in its death penalty case, which it lost. A civilian jury sentenced Moussaoui, who never harmed a hair on the head of anyone, to life in prison.

Mohammed, meanwhile, and four other alleged conspirators, have been awaiting trial since their arrivals at Gitmo in 2006. Since then, numerous government military and civilian prosecutors, as well as numerous military judges, have rotated into and out of the case.

The concept of military tribunals was born in the administration of President George W. Bush, who argued that 9/11, though conducted by civilians, was an attack of military magnitude and thus warranted a military response. This pathetic knee-jerk argument, of course, not only brought us the fruitless and destructive wars in Afghanistan and Iraq; it also brought a host of legal problems unforeseen by Bush and his revenge-over-justice thirsty colleagues.

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