Seem like a pattern to me. What are we being setup for this time ? or Who is the message for ? ; if there is a message and it is not just the usual madness.
Canadian travelers are warned to maintain a high level of personal safety when vacationing overseas. Photograph by: Enrique Calvo, REUTERS
A travel advisory for Europe because of terrorism isn’t swaying flyers at James Richardson International Airport from going overseas.
The Obama administration has put out a travel advisory urging it's citizens living and traveling in Europe to be on alert in public places because of the potential for an attack by al Qaida.
Hours later, Ottawa's Foreign Affairs department followed suit, issuing a similar warning on it's website for Canadians.
It says Canadian travellers should keep a high level of personal security in places frequented by foreigners such as shopping malls and restaurants.
Carol Beauchemin is on her way to Germany. The advisory is not stopping her.
“It is a vacation. The way it was worded it didn’t make me consider canceling. If they said don’t go then I probably wouldn’t go.” said Beauchemin.
But she did say she might not visit certain tourist hot spots like the Eiffel tower.
That kind of hesitation has European officials worried about the potential loss of tourism dollars.
Re:An ill Meme is blowing again
« Reply #1 on: 2010-10-05 12:21:40 »
And so it blossoms.
Cheers
Fritz
graphical blog 2 - 2005.12.20
Terrorism, Vigilance and the Limits of the War on Terror
Source: Stratfor Author: George Friedman Date: 2010.10.05
The U.S. government issued a warning Oct. 3 advising Americans traveling to Europe to be “vigilant.” U.S. intelligence apparently has acquired information indicating that al Qaeda is planning to carry out attacks in European cities similar to those carried out in Mumbai, India, in November 2008. In Mumbai, attackers armed with firearms, grenades and small, timed explosive devices targeted hotels frequented by Western tourists and other buildings in an attack that took three days to put down.
European security forces are far better trained and prepared than their Indian counterparts, and such an attack would be unlikely to last for hours, much less days, in a European country. Still, armed assaults conducted by suicide operatives could be expected to cause many casualties and certainly create a dramatic disruption to economic and social life.
The first question to ask about the Oct. 3 warning, which lacked specific and actionable intelligence, is how someone can be vigilant against such an attack. There are some specific steps that people can and should take to practice good situational awareness as well as some common-sense travel-security precautions. But if you find yourself sleeping in a hotel room as gunmen attack the building, rush to your floor and start entering rooms, a government warning simply to be vigilant would have very little meaning.
The world is awash in intelligence about terrorism. Most of it is meaningless speculation, a conversation intercepted between two Arabs about how they’d love to blow up London Bridge. The problem, of course, is how to distinguish between idle chatter and actual attack planning. There is no science involved in this, but there are obvious guidelines. Are the people known to be associated with radical Islamists? Do they have the intent and capability to conduct such an attack? Were any specific details mentioned in the conversation that can be vetted? Is there other intelligence to support the plot discussed in the conversation?
The problem is that what appears quite obvious in the telling is much more ambiguous in reality. At any given point, the government could reasonably raise the alert level if it wished. That it doesn’t raise it more frequently is tied to three things. First, the intelligence is frequently too ambiguous to act on. Second, raising the alert level warns people without really giving them any sense of what to do about it. Third, it can compromise the sources of its intelligence.
The current warning is a perfect example of the problem. We do not know what intelligence the U.S. government received that prompted the warning, and I suspect that the public descriptions of the intelligence do not reveal everything that the government knows. We do know that a German citizen was arrested in Afghanistan in July and has allegedly provided information regarding this threat, but there are likely other sources contributing to the warning, since the U.S. government considered the intelligence sufficient to cause concern. The Obama administration leaked on Saturday that it might issue the warning, and indeed it did.
The government did not recommend that Americans not travel to Europe. That would have affected the economy and infuriated Europeans. Leaving tourism aside, since tourism season is largely over, a lot of business is transacted by Americans in Europe. The government simply suggested vigilance. Short of barring travel, there was nothing effective the government could do. So it shifted the burden to travelers. If no attack occurs, nothing is lost. If an attack occurs, the government can point to the warning and the advice. Those hurt or killed would not have been vigilant.
I do not mean to belittle the U.S. government on this. Having picked up the intelligence it can warn the public or not. The public has a right to know, and the government is bound by law and executive order to provide threat information. But the reason that its advice is so vague is that there is no better advice to give. The government is not so much washing its hands of the situation as acknowledging that there is not much that anyone can do aside from the security measures travelers should already be practicing.
The alert serves another purpose beyond alerting the public. It communicates to the attackers that their attack has been detected if not penetrated, and that the risks of the attack have pyramided. Since these are most likely suicide attackers not expecting to live through the attack, the danger is not in death. It is that the Americans or the Europeans might have sufficient intelligence available to thwart the attack. From the terrorist point of view, losing attackers to death or capture while failing to inflict damage is the worst of all possible scenarios. Trained operatives are scarce, and like any strategic weapon they must be husbanded and, when used, cause maximum damage. When the attackers do not know what Western intelligence knows, their risk of failure is increased along with the incentive to cancel the attack. A government warning, therefore, can prevent an attack.
In addition, a public warning can set off a hunt for the leak within al Qaeda. Communications might be shut down while the weakness is examined. Members of the organization might be brought under suspicion. The warning can generate intense uncertainty within al Qaeda as to how much Western intelligence knows. The warning, if it correlates with an active plot, indicates a breach of security, and a breach of security can lead to a witch-hunt that can paralyze an organization.
Therefore, the warning might well have served a purpose, but the purpose was not necessarily to empower citizens to protect themselves from terrorists. Indeed, there might have been two purposes. One might have been to disrupt the attack and the attackers. The other might have been to cover the government if an attack came.
In either case, it has to be recognized that this sort of warning breeds cynicism among the public. If the warning is intended to empower citizens, it engenders a sense of helplessness, and if no attack occurs, it can also lead to alert fatigue. What the government is saying to its citizenry is that, in the end, it cannot guarantee that there won’t be an attack and therefore its citizens are on their own. The problem with that statement is not that the government isn’t doing its job but that the job cannot be done. The government can reduce the threat of terrorism. It cannot eliminate it.
This brings us to the strategic point. The defeat of jihadist terror cells cannot be accomplished defensively. Homeland security can mitigate the threat, but it can never eliminate it. The only way to eliminate it is to destroy all jihadist cells and prevent the formation of new cells by other movements or by individuals forming new movements, and this requires not just destroying existing organizations but also the radical ideology that underlies them. To achieve this, the United States and its allies would have to completely penetrate a population of about 1.3 billion people and detect every meeting of four or five people planning to create a terrorist cell. And this impossible task would not even address the problem of lone-wolf terrorists. It is simply impossible to completely dominate and police the entire world, and any effort to do so would undoubtedly induce even more people to turn to terrorism in opposition to the global police state.
Will Rogers was asked what he might do to deal with the German U-boat threat in World War I. He said he would boil away the Atlantic, revealing the location of the U-boats that could then be destroyed. Asked how he would do this, he answered that that was a technical question and he was a policymaker.
The idea of suppressing jihadist terrorism through direct military action in the Islamic world would be an idea Will Rogers would have appreciated. It is a superb plan from a policymaking perspective. It suffers only from the problem of technical implementation. Even native Muslim governments motivated to suppress Islamic terrorism, like those in Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Algeria or Yemen, can’t achieve this goal absolutely. The idea that American troops, outnumbered and not speaking the language or understanding the culture, can do this is simply not grounded in reality.
The United States and Europe are going to be attacked by jihadist terrorists from time to time, and innocent people are going to be killed, perhaps in the thousands again. The United States and its allies can minimize the threat through covert actions and strong defenses, but they cannot eliminate it. The hapless warning to be vigilant that was issued this past weekend is the implicit admission of this fact.
This is not a failure of will or governance. The United States can’t conceivably mount the force needed to occupy the Islamic world, let alone pacify it to the point where it can’t be a base for terrorists. Given that the United States can’t do this in Afghanistan, the idea that it might spread this war throughout the Islamic world is unsupportable.
The United States and Europe are therefore dealing with a threat that cannot be stopped by their actions. The only conceivably effective actions would be those taken by Muslim governments, and even those are unlikely to be effective. There is a deeply embedded element within a small segment of the Islamic world that is prepared to conduct terror attacks, and this element will occasionally be successful.
All people hate to feel helpless, and this trait is particularly strong among Americans. There is a belief that America can do anything and that something can and should be done to eliminate terrorism and not just mitigate it. Some Americans believe sufficiently ruthless military action can do it. Others believe that reaching out in friendship might do it. In the end, the terrorist element will not be moved by either approach, and no amount of vigilance (or new bureaucracies) will stop them.
It would follow then that the West will have to live with the terrorist threat for the foreseeable future. This does not mean that military, intelligence, diplomatic, law-enforcement or financial action should be stopped. Causing most terrorist attempts to end in failure is an obviously desirable end. It not only blocks the particular action but also discourages others. But the West will have to accept that there are no measures that will eliminate the threat entirely. The danger will persist.
Effort must be made to suppress it, but the level of effort has to be proportional not to the moral insult of the terrorist act but to considerations of other interests beyond counterterrorism. The United States has an interest in suppressing terrorism. Beyond a certain level of effort, it will reach a point of diminishing returns. Worse, by becoming narrowly focused on counterterrorism and over-committing resources to it, the United States will leave other situations unattended as it focuses excessively on a situation it cannot improve.
The request that Americans be vigilant in Europe represents the limits of power on the question of terrorism. There is nothing else that can be done and what can be done is being done. It also drives home the fact that the United States and the West in general cannot focus all of its power on solving a problem that is beyond its power to solve. The long war against terrorism will not be the only war fought in the coming years. The threat of jihadism must be put in perspective and the effort aligned with what is effective. The world is a dangerous place, as they say, and jihadism is only one of the dangers.
Read more: Terrorism, Vigilance and the Limits of the War on Terror | STRATFOR
this requires not just destroying existing organizations but also the radical ideology that underlies them.
[Blunderov] Stratfor doesn't seem to be aware that radical ideologies are not confined to the other side of the Koran Curtain. American Oil Imperialism might be considered such too. US and Themism par excellence. Otherwise an interesting article.
<Snip>We do know that a German citizen was arrested in Afghanistan in July and has allegedly provided information regarding this threat</snip>
Pakistan: 5 German among 8 foreign nationals killed in drone strike Edited on Tue Oct-05-10 05:45 AM by maddezmom Source: CNN
CNN) -- Pakistani intelligence officials confirmed Tuesday that five German nationals were killed in a drone strike in northwest Pakistan a day earlier.
The Germans were among 11 suspected militants killed Monday. Three others were foreigners whose nationalities were not disclosed, said the officials -- who did not want to be named. The rest were Pakistanis.
¬snip¬
The strike comes a day after the U.S. Department of Homeland Security and the FBI issued a joint bulletin warning that terror attacks were being plotted against targets Europe. European intelligence officials said Monday that a group of jihadists from Germany were at the heart of the plots, but it was not immediately clear if the warning and the suspected drone strike were related.
The reported plots prompted the U.S. State Department to issue a Europe-wide security advisory for Americans traveling abroad
BERLIN — German officials are being tightlipped about details surrounding a U.S. missile strike in Pakistan's rugged mountain border area that Pakistani officials say killed five German militants.
U.S. officials believe a cell of Germans and Britons at the heart of a terror alert for Europe — a plot that U.S. officials link to al-Qaida leader Osama bin Laden — are believed to be hiding in that region.
German public television ARD cited unnamed sources Tuesday as saying that four German citizens of Turkish descent were killed in the missile attack.
Re:An ill Meme is blowing again
« Reply #3 on: 2010-10-05 16:51:56 »
As Viktor Bout story continues to unfold I felt surely there is a tie in to this thread, given all the groups he has dealt with.
Nice tie in with the German nationals in Pakistan Blunderov. I'm thinking the Chinese have a story to tell, as well.
Cheers
Fritz
PS: Quote:
[Blunderov] Stratfor doesn't seem to be aware that radical ideologies are not confined to the other side of the Koran Curtain. American Oil Imperialism might be considered such too. US and Themism par excellence. Otherwise an interesting article.
I always flinch a bit when referencing Stratfor, they do have an America can do no wrong subtext unfortunately, me thinks.
Thailand court dismisses charges against suspected Russia arms dealer
Source: Jurist Author: Jay Carmella Date: 2010.10.05
[JURIST] The Bangkok Criminal Court on Tuesday dismissed money laundering and fraud charges against suspected Russian arms dealer Viktor Bout [BBC profile; JURIST news archive], paving the way for his extradition to the US. The court found that there was insufficient evidence [BBC report], in addition to other technicalities, to prosecute Bout. The charges [indictment, PDF] were filed by US prosecutors in February in order to keep Bout in jail while attempts were made to have him extradited. The decision to drop the charges comes just a day after the court decided to proceed [JURIST report] with the action. The US and Thai prosecutors sought to have the money laundering and fraud charges dropped after a Thai appeals court ruled [JURIST report] in August that Bout could be extradited to the US within three months to face several charges, including conspiracy to kill US nationals and conspiracy to provide material support to a proscribed terrorist group. Bout's lawyer continues to profess his client's innocence on all charges, and plans to file an appeal [Bangkok Post report] should prosecutors pursue the extradition.
Bout's situation has created political tension for Thailand. Russia has shown strong support for Bout, claiming that he is an innocent businessman, while the US is seeking to prosecute him for supporting terrorism. Last week, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva [official website, in Thai; BBC profile] said that, although the case must work its way through the court system, he will make the final decision [AP report] as to whether Bout will be extradited to the US. The August appeals court decision overturned a 2009 decision by the Bangkok Criminal Court, refusing to extradite [JURIST report] Bout on the basis that the accusations made by the US were not cognizable under Thai law. The appeals court ruled that the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC) [GlobalSecurity backgrounder], the group Bout is accused of supporting, is a cognizable terrorist group [Guardian report] under Thai law and that Thailand is obligated to honor its extradition treaties with the US. Lawyers for Bout argued that his safety would be in jeopardy in the US and that he would be unable to receive a fair trial. If convicted in a US court, Bout could be sentenced to life in prison.
Recent claims by a retired colonel about founding an alleged clandestine strike unit that is suspected in many unsolved murders have done little to dispel the mystery surrounding the organization. While experts say many of the colonel’s claims are unbelievable, they also call for an investigation to help shed light on dark parts of Turkey’s past JİTEM, whose existence is denied by the Turkish military, has been accused of using illegal means to fight terrorism and of being behind dozens of unsolved murders during the 1990s.
JİTEM, whose existence is denied by the Turkish military, has been accused of using illegal means to fight terrorism and of being behind dozens of unsolved murders during the 1990s.
Despite the reopened cases and new confessions drawing renewed attention to an alleged covert intelligence and strike unit within the gendarmerie, the mysteries surrounding it are unlikely to be revealed soon, experts have said.
Retired Col. Arif Doğan is at the center of much of the recent controversy with his claims of founding the clandestine group, known as JİTEM, that is claimed to be the intelligence unit of the gendarmerie, though never officially recognized by the military. The Ergenekon suspect, who is in poor health, told two newspapers last week that he wants to reveal everything he knows about the organization before he dies, prompting Ergenekon Prosecutor Zekeriya Öz to take his testimony immediately.
But journalist and author Ertuğrul Mavioğlu is suspicious about how the investigation into Doğan’s claims is being carried out.
“Let me speak openly; if they ran a real investigation, they would have to face the dirty past of the state,” Mavioğlu told the Hürriyet Daily News & Economic Review. “I am almost sure [the recent acts] are playing to the crowd.”
The journalist expressed suspicions about why Öz acted on the two newspaper interviews rather than evaluating the eight sacks of documents confiscated from Doğan’s house when he was arrested within the scope of the Ergenekon coup-plot investigation in 2008. “Only the titles of these documents are present in the second Ergenekon indictment; their content is censored,” Mavioğlu said. He claimed they include details about how JİTEM was organized and how its members carried out raids on villages in southeastern Turkey disguised as members of the outlawed Kurdistan Workers’ Party, or PKK.
JİTEM has been accused of being behind dozens of unsolved murders, especially in the 1990s; an ongoing case in Diyarbakır is looking into some of those unsolved murders from 1993-95. The General Staff, however, still officially denies the existence of such an organization. Doğan, its self-proclaimed founder, is suspected of involvement in the alleged assassination of Gen. Eşref Bitlis, who died in a plane crash in 1993. Doğan denies the charges, saying he disbanded JİTEM in 1990. Another Ergenekon suspect, retired Gen. Veli Küçük, has long been believed to be the actual founder of JİTEM.
Though various experts told the Daily News that Doğan’s comments are worthy of investigation, all expressed doubts about his claims of founding, and then shutting down in 1990, the group on his own. Retired Gen. Nejat Eslen said founding a vast covert organization within the military is not possible “if you are respectful toward the law.” He added that “a colonel cannot build such an organization alone.”
The timing of Doğan’s statements is important, Eslen said, because even though the retired colonel is a micro-factor in a larger plan, the recent efforts to solve the Kurdish issue are leading the country down a dangerous path that may lead to the breakup of Turkey. “I am neither a judge nor a prosecutor, but things smell rotten as the colonel [Doğan] speaks,” he said. “What was this colonel promised that he speaks now?”
Doğan’s comments aim to dilute the seriousness of claims about the covert organization, according to Önder Aytaç, an academic and security specialist, who accused the retired colonel of trying to muddy the waters. “Even the children in southeastern Turkey know the truth about JİTEM very well,” Aytaç said.
Though Doğan’s claims about founding and closing JİTEM are unbelievable, his statements may still help shed light on thousands of unsolved murders, said Orhan Miroğlu, a columnist and author who survived an assassination attempt allegedly carried out by the covert group. Miroğlu told the Daily News that the controversial book by Hanefi Avcı, the recently arrested Eskişehir police chief, also has important things to say regarding the past acts of JİTEM.
“I do not think the nongovernmental organizations in [southeastern Turkey] are doing their job well on the matter, nor is the [pro-Kurdish Peace and Democracy Party, or BDP],” Miroğlu said. “From the beginning, they stood faithful to [jailed PKK leader Abdullah] Öcalan’s order to stay out of [the Ergenekon case].” Many have criticized the Ergenekon investigation for not “passing the Eurphates River,” meaning not looking into the JİTEM accusations.
The columnist criticized the country’s Kurds for not standing up against JİTEM when the alleged clandestine organization had shed so much of their blood. He added that he will try to be more active in the struggle to reveal the truth about the group by writing about it more and by applying to the courts as a victim of the assassination attempt against him, an attack that took the life of his uncle, journalist and author Musa Anter.
Journalist Mavioğlu said any investigation into JİTEM should be expanded to look into past chiefs of General Staff in order to make sense. He added that he does not trust the investigation into Bitlis’ death either because he believes both the key actors at that time and the current investigators are “in consensus” on protecting the state.
Academic Aytaç said if light is shed on just two or three of the unsolved murders in Turkey’s past, the rest would be solved easily and quickly, revealing connections either to the “deep state or organized crime.”
nine people arrested in Marseille were being investigated for suspected links to a 'terrorist enterprise', police said [AFP]
Paris, France - French police have arrested 12 people in two separate counter-terrorism raids, amid a state of high alert for attacks in the country.
Nine people arrested in Marseille, the southern port city, on Tuesday morning were being investigated for suspected links to a "terrorist enterprise", police said.
Weapons including a Kalashnikov rifle, a pump action shotgun and ammunition were also seized in the raid, an official was quoted by the AFP news agency as saying.
Another three men were arrested in Marseille and Bordeaux, in France's southwest, on alleged ties to a group recruiting fighters for Afghanistan.
The trio were linked to Ryad Hannouni, a Frenchman arrested in the Italian city of Naples last weekend and suspected of being connected to al-Qaeda fighters, police said.
Officials said investigators wanted to question Hannouni on suspected links to armed fighters coming to Europe from Afghanistan, the AFP news agency reported.
The arrests come days after the US state department and a number of other governments warned of an increased risk of attacks in Europe. France recently said it was on high alert, with the government warning that the country faces a serious threat of attack.
False alerts in recent weeks have prompted evacuations of train stations and Paris's Eiffel Tower.
Last month five French nationals were among seven people kidnapped, by the Northern African wing of al-Qaeda last, and continue to remain held hostage.
The arrests also come as reports suggest five German have been killed in a suspected drone attack in Pakistan that killed a group of fighters.
The are concerns that growing numbers of fighters are going from the West to remote war zones for training with al-Qaeda.
Brice Hortefeux, the French interior minister, said the threat of an attack in the country was "real".
"Yes there is a terrorist threat at the moment in Europe. It must be neither overestimated nor underestimated," he said.
"The threat is real, our vigilance is total and every French person must know that we're doing everything to ensure their security and their protection."
Hortefeux said he would take stock of the situation again on Thursday with European Union counterparts meeting in Luxembourg.
Intelligence reports have said well-armed teams of jihadists planned to seize and murder Western hostages in a manner similar to the attacks two years ago in the Indian city of Mumbai on two hotels and its main railway station.
France, Germany and Sweden at centre of US terror alert
Source: EU Observer Author: ANDREW RETTMAN Date: 2010.10.04
Patrick Kennedy: 'We've had intensive discussions in the past few weeks about the nature of the ongoing threat with these key allies through various channels, including at the head of state, head of government level' (Photo: wikipedia)
EUOBSERVER / BRUSSELS - France, Germany and Sweden are at the centre of official warnings by the US and the UK on the risk of a terrorist attack by Islamist groups in the run-up to Christmas.
The US State Department on Saturday (3 October) published a blanket Travel Alert for US citizens in Europe valid until 31 January based on "current information" about "al-Qaeda and affiliated organisations" and mentioning "subway and rail systems, as well as aviation and maritime services."
Speaking at a conference call with press on Sunday, senior State Department official Patrick Kennedy advised US travelers to register their whereabouts with US consulates, to avoid putting US stickers on their bags and to ensure that people do not overhear their conversations about holiday plans.
"We're not saying don't travel to Europe. We're not saying don't visit tourist, major tourist attractions or historic sites or monuments," he added, amid concern about potential flight and hotel cancellations in the run-up to the vacation season.
State Department spokesman Philip J Crowley told EUobserver the same day that the alert is linked to previous warnings in Germany and Sweden.
"We are issuing a caution to American citizens that is consistent with what European countries have done," he explained. "We have been in close co-ordination with European countries regarding this threat and advised them before we issued our travel alert."
The UK at the weekend also upgraded its terrorist threat level for Germany and France from "general" to "high" while leaving its domestic setting unchanged on "severe." "I would urge the public to report any suspicious activity to the police," foreign minister William Hague said in a statement.
Sweden officially raised its domestic threat level on Friday. France upgraded its level in mid-September but has not gone beyond the earlier warning in reaction to the US and UK alerts.
Germany has not changed its level so far. But German officials have briefed press in recent days that a German Islamist, Ahmad Sidiqi, told US interrogators at the Bagram base in Afghanistan that Osama bin Laden has put up the money for a strike on multiple European targets.
A spokesman for the Belgian interior ministry, Peter Mertens, told Agence France Press that Belgium is also keeping its threat level unchanged. The EU capital is this week hosting 31 prime ministers and heads of state from Europe and Asia at three back-to-back summits.
The French news agency reported that the US will give extra information to a scheduled meeting of EU interior ministers in Luxembourg on Thursday.
"We don't even like to talk about the threat of a Mumbai-type attack in Europe in order not to give people ideas," a source in the EU institutions told this website.
The Pakistani Taliban group Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2008 landed several boatloads of men armed with machine guns in Mumbai, India, who later opened fire on civilians going about their normal business in the city, killing over 150 people.
A cyber attack on the transport system is Britain's most immediate terror threat, security chiefs will warn today.
They fear militants could breach internet sites to bring roads, railways and airports to a standstill.
Their defence strategy document also warns banks, TV and phone networks could be hacked to create chaos. It argues such dangers must be regarded alongside terrorism as major threats. But they are said to be the kind of attacks the UK is least prepared for.
Speaking before the paper's publication, Foreign Secretary William Hague declared: "Cyber attacks are increas-ingly big threats to governments and individual people. We have to make sure we are equipped for the 21st century."
The review comes as the cross-party Public Administration select committee of MPs said the national interest is threatened by a lack of strategic thinking at the heart of government.
Re:An ill Meme is blowing again
« Reply #7 on: 2010-10-20 00:04:50 »
So given that the drone attachs are not dealing with the problem as the west see it. Is all this terrorist talk a prelude to attacking north Pakistan ? (and maybe Somalia )
The 2010 article seems regressive given the 2007 article.
Sigh
Fritz
Pakistani soldiers regard Afghan Taliban as freedom fighters
Source: Der Spielgel Author: The Independent Date: 2010.10.07
The US military’s hope of a year ago that a surge in troop numbers inside Afghanistan would turn the tide in the guerrilla war is fading fast. The Taliban have extended their grip in the north and west of the country.
The one option left to America and its allies is to try to force the Pakistan army to act decisively against the Taliban in Pakistan. But it is not going to happen. Most Pakistani soldiers are happy to fight the Pakistan Taliban, but of their Afghan equivalents they view them as freedom fighters combating a foreign occupation.
A second reason why the Pakistan military is unlikely to attack the Taliban is that we may be seeing the opening moves in the endgame in Afghanistan. If the Pakistani army plays its cards right, then the outcome of any successful peace negotiations would be a power-sharing government in Kabul in which the Taliban would play an important role. Pakistan, with its strong influence over the Taliban, would be established as a regional power.
Pakistan highlighted the hold it has over the US and NATO forces in Afghanistan by stopping their supply trucks from crossing the Afghan frontier, in retaliation for US helicopters making an attack on the Pakistani side of the border and killing three Pakistani soldiers.
One almost comic aspect of Pakistan shutting down NATO’s supply line through the Khyber pass is that the Taliban themselves may not be too pleased to see the ban go on too long. –The Taliban receives a large part of the $1,500 protection money paid by trucking companies for every one of the 1,000 or so trucks entering Afghanistan each day with supplies for US and NATO forces. This type of extortion may be as important to the Taliban’s revenues as the heroin trade.
Increasingly financing younger Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas
Source: Der Spielgel Author: David Rohde Date: 2007.10.30
The growing numbers of foreign fighters in Afghanistan are more violent and extreme than their local allies.
Taliban guerrilla fighters at a secret base in eastern Afghanistan in February. Authorities have seen an increase in the number of foreign militants joining their ranks.
Taliban guerrilla fighters at a secret base in eastern Afghanistan in February. Authorities have seen an increase in the number of foreign militants joining their ranks. Afghan police officers working a highway checkpoint near here noticed something odd recently about a passenger in a red pickup truck. Though covered head to toe in a burqa, the traditional veil worn by Afghan women, she was unusually tall. When the police asked her questions, she refused to answer.
When the veil was eventually removed, the police found not a woman at all, but Andre Vladimirovich Bataloff, a 27-year-old man from Siberia with a flowing red beard, pasty skin and piercing blue eyes. Inside the truck was 1,000 pounds of explosives.
Afghan and American officials say the Siberian intended to be a suicide bomber, one of several hundred foreign militants who have gravitated to the region to fight alongside the Taliban this year, the largest influx since 2001.
The foreign fighters are not only bolstering the ranks of the insurgency. They are more violent, uncontrollable and extreme than even their locally bred allies, officials on both sides of the Afghan-Pakistan border warn.
They are also helping to change the face of the Taliban from a movement of hard-line Afghan religious students into a loose network that now includes a growing number of foreign militants as well as disgruntled Afghans and drug traffickers.
Foreign fighters are coming from Pakistan, Uzbekistan, Chechnya, various Arab countries and perhaps also Turkey and western China, Afghan and American officials say.
Their growing numbers point to the worsening problem of lawlessness in Pakistan’s tribal areas, which they use as a base to train alongside militants from Al Qaeda who have carried out terrorist attacks in Afghanistan, Pakistan and Europe, according to Western diplomats.
“We’ve seen an unprecedented level of reports of foreign-fighter involvement,” said Maj. Gen. Bernard S. Champoux, deputy commander for security of the NATO-led International Security Assistance Force. “They’ll threaten people if they don’t provide meals and support.”
In interviews in southern and eastern Afghanistan, local officials and village elders also reported having seen more foreigners fighting alongside the Taliban than in any year since the American-led invasion in 2001.
In Afghanistan, the foreigners serve as mid-level commanders, and train and finance local fighters, according to Western analysts. In Pakistan’s tribal areas, they train suicide bombers, create roadside-bomb factories and have vastly increased the number of high-quality Taliban fund-raising and recruiting videos posted online.
Gauging the exact number of Taliban and foreign fighters in Afghanistan is difficult, Western officials and analysts say. At any given time, the Taliban can field up to 10,000 fighters, they said, but only 2,000 to 3,000 are highly motivated, full-time insurgents.
The rest are part-time fighters, young Afghan men who have been alienated by government corruption, who are angry at civilian deaths caused by American bombing raids, or who are simply in search of cash, they said. Five to 10 percent of full-time insurgents — roughly 100 to 300 combatants -- are believed to be foreigners.
Western diplomats say recent offers from the Afghan president, Hamid Karzai, to negotiate with the Taliban are an effort to split local Taliban moderates and Afghans who might be brought back into the fold from the foreign extremists.
But that effort may face an increasing challenge as foreigners replace dozens of midlevel and senior Taliban who, Western officials say, have been killed by NATO and American forces.
At the same time, Western officials said the reliance on foreigners showed that the Taliban are running out of midlevel Afghan commanders. “That’s a sure-fire sign of desperation,” General Champoux said.
Seth Jones, an analyst with the Rand Corporation, was less sanguine, however, calling the arrival of more foreigners a dangerous development. The tactics the foreigners have introduced, he said, are increasing Afghan and Western casualty rates.
“They play an incredibly important part in the insurgency,” Mr. Jones said. “They act as a force multiplier in improving their ability to kill Afghan and NATO forces.”
Western officials said the foreigners are also increasingly financing younger Taliban leaders in Pakistan’s tribal areas who have closer ties to Al Qaeda, like Sirajuddin Haqqani and Anwar ul-Haq Mujahed. The influence of older, more traditional Taliban leaders based in Quetta, Pakistan, is diminishing.
“We see more and more resources going to their fellow travelers,” said Christopher Alexander, the deputy special representative for the United Nations in Afghanistan. “The new Taliban commanders are younger and younger.”
In the southern provinces of Oruzgan, Kandahar and Helmand, Afghan villagers recently described two distinct groups of Taliban fighters. They said “local Taliban” allowed some development projects. But “foreign Taliban” -- usually from Pakistan -- threatened to kill anyone who cooperated with the Afghan government or foreign aid groups.
Hanif Atmar, the Afghan education minister, said threats from foreign Taliban have closed 40 percent of the schools in southern Afghanistan. He said many local Taliban oppose the practice, but foreign Taliban use brutality and cash to their benefit.
“That makes our situation terribly complicated,” Mr. Atmar said. “Because they bring resources with them, their agenda takes precedence.”
Large groups of Pakistani militants operate in southern Afghanistan, according to Afghan officials. In the east, more Arab and Uzbek fighters are present.
Mr. Bataloff, the Russian arrested in a burqa, insists he is a religious student who traveled to Pakistan last year to learn more about his new faith. In an hourlong interview in an Afghan jail in Kabul, he said his interest in Islam blossomed three years ago when he was living in Siberia.
“First, I heard from TV, radio and newspapers about Islam,” he said in Russian. “I found Islam had a lot of good things, especially that Islam respects all prophets, including Jesus.”
But he declined to describe many details of his trip and grew angry when asked about his personal background. “Homicide and suicide is not allowed in any religion,” he said, when asked about the allegations against him. “Why are you asking me these questions?”
Mr. Bataloff said he grew up in Siberia, but would not identify his hometown or region. He said he could not remember the names of the Pakistanis he met or the two Afghan men who drove the pickup truck.
He said he decided to go to a predominantly Muslim country last fall to study Islam and learn about “the morals, the customs, the ethics and the literature.” He flew alone from Russia to Iran, he said, and met a Russian-speaking “guide” in the airport.
After spending 10 days in Iran, he crossed into Pakistan and traveled to North Waziristan, a remote tribal area that is a longtime Taliban and Qaeda stronghold. There, he spent a year living and studying in a small mosque in Mir Ali.
Pakistani security officials say the Islamic Jihad Union, a terrorist group led by militants from Uzbekistan, operates a training camp in Mir Ali.
[In mid-October, in some of the heaviest fighting in four years, the Pakistani military said 50 foreign fighters were among 200 militants reported killed in three days of clashes around Mir Ali. The dead foreigners were said to include mostly Uzbeks and Tajiks, as well as some Arabs, the army said.]
Some of the suspects arrested in a failed bombing plot in Germany in September received training in the tribal areas, according to German officials. Several men involved in the July 2005 London transit bombings and a failed August 2006 London airliner plot did as well.
Mr. Bataloff said he met no foreign militants in his 10 months in the tribal areas. But American military officials said he had told interrogators that he had attended a terrorist training camp in North Waziristan. He said local militants forced him to go to the camp and taught him how to fire an AK-47 assault rifle, the officials said.
“I didn’t have any specific teacher,” he said, when asked about Pakistanis he met there. “There were local people who knew the Koran.”
A second foreign prisoner produced by Afghan officials identified himself as Muhammad Kuzeubaev, a 23-year-old from Temirtau, Kazakhstan. Afghan officials said he was a bombmaker arrested in September in Badakhshan Province in northern Afghanistan.
In an interview, Mr. Kuzeubaev, who also spoke fluent Russian, said he was visiting Afghanistan as a tourist. “I was close to the border,” he said. “I thought I would go explore the country.”
In Badakhshan, he said, two Afghan men abducted him and demanded he join Al Qaeda. He agreed to do so fearing he would be killed, he said. That night, the men showed him parts of a suicide vest and promised to take him to Pakistan for training.
“They showed me the explosives, the vest and grenade,” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “The next day, they brought some kind of weapons.”
Two days later, Afghan police officers surrounded the house and arrested him, he said. Afghan interrogators beat him, chained him to a wall and prevented him from sleeping for four days, he said.
“They are saying, ‘You are the man who was making the vests,’ ” said Mr. Kuzeubaev. “But the ammunition and other explosives were not mine.”
Re:An ill Meme is blowing again
« Reply #8 on: 2010-10-31 17:10:12 »
"Surreptitiously Trolling" .... at the bottom of what lake or swamp would that be ?
Cheers
Fritz
Top spy cites N. Korea, Iran as CSIS probes threat
Source: CTV Author: The Canadian Press Date: 2010.10.31
OTTAWA — The head of the Canadian Security Intelligence Service quietly told a crowd of insiders he's worried about North Korea and Iran surreptitiously trolling Canada for components to build an atomic bomb.
In a speech to academics and former intelligence officials, CSIS director Dick Fadden spoke of the spy service's "active investigations" of people trying to procure nuclear materials.
The threat of weapons of mass destruction is an "area where we have to worry far more than we did not too long ago," Fadden said.
"North Korea and Iran being people that we worry about the most."
Fadden made the unusually candid comments in a previously unreported -- and still partly secret -- address to a late May gathering in Ottawa of the International Association for Intelligence Education.
The CSIS director also elaborated on his concerns about foreign interference in Canadian politics, as well as the threat of cyberterrorism. In addition, Fadden mused aloud on whether simply jailing homegrown terrorists is a real solution to the problem of radicalization. And he told the audience India has more influence in Afghanistan than Canada and its major coalition partners combined.
Fadden said Canada seems to have "more than our fair share" of foreign interference.
"People who have an ethnic or cultural connection with another country, they are recruited by representatives of their governments and are sort of injected into our political system. It's a growing problem," he said.
"They start even at the municipal and the state or provincial level in the hopes that they will eventually make their way up to positions of importance."
The speech came two months after a Toronto appearance in which Fadden first expressed his worries about foreign influence over politicians, and took place less than a month before he reiterated those concerns in a television interview.
Fadden strongly hinted in the June interview that China was trying to manipulate provincial and municipal Canadian officials, triggering a wave of outrage from critics who said his remarks left a cloud of suspicion over an entire community.
It's surprising that Fadden has repeatedly stressed the perceived threat from foreign agents of influence, said Wesley Wark, a University of Toronto historian who specializes in intelligence. "I remain kind of dumbfounded by this idea that this is a priority problem for CSIS."
The Canadian Press recently obtained a transcript of Fadden's unpublicized May 26 remarks to the Ottawa conference under the Access to Information Act. CSIS withheld some portions considered too sensitive to disclose despite the fact several dozen people, including many teachers and intelligence contractors from Canada and the United States, were in attendance.
The CSIS director said he had to be careful about referring to specific countries.
"Are there any media in the room?" he asked. "OK, so it's no great big deal, but I prefer not seeing myself on the front page of the Globe and Mail if I can avoid it.
"My staff had prepared a couple of speeches which I decided, to their horror, that I would actually say what I thought, which is not always wise in my business," Fadden said, drawing laughter.
The cover page of the 44-minute speech is marked For Internal Information and Research Use Only.
One person who attended the speech declined to discuss details, saying the address was delivered under the Chatham House rule -- strictly on background, not for attribution to Fadden.
"We have ... active investigations of people who are trying to find precursor nuclear material in Canada," said Fadden, calling it "a very complicated undertaking."
"It's an area where some technical and scientific expertise is very useful," he said.
"I would hope that people could be encouraged, those with a scientific background, to go into intelligence and security, more than they have in the past."
In July, a Toronto man was convicted of trying to ship nuclear-related items to Iran after being charged in 2009.
Asked for an update on the probes mentioned by Fadden, service spokeswoman Isabelle Scott said, "CSIS does not discuss any specific operational issues or methodologies relating to its intelligence investigations."
The threat to North American computer systems from hackers bent on cyberterrorism is "much more worrisome than it was even five or 10 years ago," Fadden said.
He stressed the complex, global nature of extremism and argued for fresh approaches, saying newcomers are "not always happy with the way we organize our societies and we haven't come to grips with that."
"We'll keep finding people who want to do these nasty things and we'll prosecute them and put them in jail," Fadden said. "But this reinforces, to a considerable degree, the societal disconnect that causes them to go that route in the first place."
A predominant theme of the spy director's remarks was the need to ensure a better grasp of history as CSIS deals increasingly with unfamiliar cultures.
Fadden, who visited Afghanistan earlier this year, suggested to the audience that only recently did western allies collectively realize that India was a primary player in the war-torn country.
"They have more influence. They have more connections. They have more anything and everything with Afghanistan than any of the rest of us combined."
Mindful that many teachers were present, Fadden lamented that the people CSIS hires out of school "can't seem to write."
"The essence of what we do is to be able to communicate what we find, either because we want to inform government or we want some form of executive action taken. And if we can't communicate that clearly and unambiguously, we're not doing our jobs."
Re:An ill Meme is blowing again
« Reply #9 on: 2010-11-01 17:25:04 »
I had missed this explanation of the, again to day, terror alerts, but he claws it all back in the second part ... oh well. The link under the picture certainly goes further.
Cheers
Fritz
October Surprise: Terror Hysteria Recycled In Election Ploy
Source: Prison Planet Author: Paul Joseph Watson Date: 2010.10.04
Cynical stunt to frighten angry Americans into placing their trust back in government
The establishment media is giving full court press to announcements from US and European authorities that airport lobbies are being targeted for terror attacks in a recycled version of the laughable 2007 incident in which two mental deficients set fire to a jeep outside Glasgow airport, a non-event that authorities hyped beyond all recognition amidst a similar wave of hysteria to that which we’re witnessing now.
The October surprise has arrived, and it’s a contrived and cynical ploy to frighten Americans into putting their trust back in the government by waving the familiar boogeyman of the outside threat.
“Among the possible targets in the suspected European terror plot are pre-security areas in at least five major European airports, a law enforcement official told ABC News. Authorities believe terror teams are preparing to mount a commando like attack featuring small units and small firearms modeled after the Mumbai attack two years ago.”
Constant references to the Mumbai attack, transport hubs, airport lobbies and other “soft target” chatter provide a reasonably clear indication as to who is really behind the ceaseless intensity of terror fearmongering we’ve been subjected to over the last week.
Since it ultimately emerged that the mastermind behind the Mumbai massacre was CIA agent David Headley, warnings from the same intelligence agencies about similar attacks being planned should be treated as a direct threat. Throughout the 60’s, 70’s and 80’s, the Central Intelligence Agency played a key role in Operation Gladio, a program of false flag terror attacks on soft targets that were designed to demonize political opposition and “force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security,” according to the testimony of Gladio agent Vincenzo Vinciguerra.
In 2000, an Italian Senate investigation found that the 1980 Bologna train bombing, which killed 85 people, was carried out by “men inside Italian state institutions and … men linked to the structures of United States intelligence.”
In attempting to “force the public to turn to the state to ask for greater security,” the establishment hopes to derail the momentum of Tea Party candidates like Rand Paul and Sharron Angle, whose entire campaigns are built on the premise of turning away from the state and giving power back to the individual. Manipulating voters by threatening terror worked for the Republicans in 2004, but the Democrats might have to go a step further if they hope to use it as a deciding factor in 2010.
The threat of airport lobbies being targeted is another giveaway. The last time this occurred was in summer 2007, when two amateur mental deficients, described as “Krazy Klown jihadis” by bomb experts, set fire to some petrol outside Glasgow airport in a pathetic attempt to stage a terror attack.
Although people like former Scotland Yard detective John O’Connor described the botched attacks as “hopeless,” “incompetent” “almost laughable,” and amounting to nothing more than a bonfire, while others labeled the incident “slapstick idiocy,” the corporate media reacted in exactly the same way they’re behaving now, by ludicrously overhyping the incident as some kind of deadly Al-Qaeda wave of terror.
Never forget that the media and the government have been totally discredited over and over again by their complicity in issuing phony terror alerts designed to manipulate elections and frighten the public into slavish acquiescence. Just as former Homeland Security chief Tom Ridge admitted that DHS would issue fake terror alerts shortly before elections in a bid to influence the outcome during the Bush era, the Obama administration is mimicking the same tactic.
The reality is that accident causing deer, peanut allergies and swimming pools are all more likely to seal your fate than a terrorist attack.
As Ohio State University’s John Mueller concludes in a report entitled A False Sense Of Insecurity, “For all the attention it evokes, terrorism actually causes rather little damage and the likelihood that any individual will become a victim in most places is microscopic.”
But the sensationalist media, the power hungry government and the salivating “experts” who head up profitable anti-terror companies all need to feed the beast and they’ll exploit every morsel on offer.
Re:An ill Meme is blowing again
« Reply #10 on: 2010-11-27 20:18:56 »
Dropped by Lord Stirling's Euroblog and it took me here.
Cheers
Fritz
IRAN-KOREA NUCLEAR LIES
Source: Veterans Today Author: Gordon Duff Date: 2010.11.25
TWO IMAGINARY NUCLEAR PROGRAMS, ONE CRIMINAL CONSPIRACY
Former President George W. Bush planned to invade Iran in 2007, even though America’s military was exhausted and overstretched by two unsuccessful wars. His own popularity, at a real 8%, was the reason, that and the economic collapse that he was trying to push back until he left office. He believed a war would have saved his presidency, buried the $3 trillion dollars stolen by his friends and given him a legacy to be proud of, even if every family in America suffered.
Bush brazenly admits prettymuch exactly these things in his ghost written autobiography, an incoherent rant, that rambles between blithering and megalomaniac delusion . The only thing that stopped this disaster was the National Intelligence Assessment, (NIE) that proved categorically, that Iran had no nuclear weapons program whatsoever. Even then, Bush tried to hide this report and demanded that falsified intelligence be created as he had done for 9/11, Afghanistan and Iran. However, as a lame duck and failed president, nobody listened.
Integrity won out over insanity, greed and corruption this time. It wouldn’t last.
THREE YEARS LATER, NEW PRESIDENT, MORE OF THE SAME
Talk of war helps everyone, It takes focus off the fact that both Russia and China dropped the dollar as a trade currency today. Pushing that out of the news is important as it is real news. Real news points fingers at real problems. Instead, everyone is having fun with North Korea and Iran but 90% of the abuse isn’t toward the countries themselves. No, its against the English language.
Joseph Schuman of “AOL News” call the centrifuges in North Korea “ultra-modern.” Do they have fins? Are the deco? Is there a post impressionist aspect about them? We also read the glowing description, “astonishingly modern.” Did Picasso design them? Is there a touch of Matisse?
More words are bandied about, “potential” and vague reference to, perhaps another facility, with even more “ultra-modern” or, perhaps “spectacular” or even “fabulous” centrifuges. Schuman even describes them in the most fearful terminology of all, as resembling those from “Iran.”
All of the talk about uranium enrichment and “weapons grade” is purposefully vague. The most dangerous possible materials either nation is capable of producing would be unable to duplicate the nuclear carnage America has wrought on Iraq and Afghanistan. Oh, you don’t know that, someone told you that DU, Depleted Uranium, another abuse of language, is harmless?
Worse yet, Depleted Uranium, which is “partially” depleted like being “partially” dead or “partially” pregnant, is one of dozens of radioactive compounds used in every American weapon system from penetrator rounds for the ancient M-2 .50 cal. machinegun to the bombs we drop every hour, many carrying “potentially” lethal doses of “murderous” uranium oxide.
In reality, there is no real danger from Iran using its “depleted uranium” as it has promised to turn over all its dangerous waste to Brazil. Radiation is a death dealing problem unless, of course, you are at an American airport or living in Fallujah, where radiation levels from “harmless” American weapons are now 38 times those of Hiroshima after the 1945 nuclear attack.
Isn’t language fun?
THE STRANGE CASE OF NORTH KOREA
North Korea is backward and dirt poor. South Korea has an economy 300 times larger, if you don’t get that number correctly, picture one car in a restaurant parking lot and 300 cars in another. One lot says long lines and great food, the other….food poisoning and no staff.
That’s North Korea, “food poisoning and no staff.” We could carve a more dangerous “evildoer” out of a banana.
They also have no money, no exports, no foreign currency, no economy, no technology to export, no money to buy technology but they have missiles, fancy new German built submarines and, supposedly have exploded two nuclear weapons so far, two vastly different weapons, two extremely strange weapons but certainly not two “ultra-modern” nuclear weapons. If you hadn’t wondered where North Korea “found” two nuclear weapons, perhaps it’s time for you to start.
Back in 2006, North Korea created a nuclear “fizzler.” This is an explosion that has a nuclear signature but no fission or fusion reaction has occurred, no “chain reaction” like with a nuclear weapon. Even stranger, the explosion itself, actually thousands of tons of ammonium nitrate fertilizer, enough to stimulate food production in North Korea and end their eternal famine. Instead, North Korea put a plutonium “pit” from an unserviced and aged hydrogen bomb on a ship load of fertilizer and blew the whole thing up.
The United States had “misplaced” 3 or more hydrogen bombs back in 1991 off the coast of Somalia, weapons that were recovered by arms dealers that were part of a South African, Rhodesian, Israeli nexus that helped fuel, not only “Iran/Contra” but armed both sides of the Iraq/Iran war. Anyone worried about “suitcase nukes” needn’t bother. These weren’t 40 ton mini-nukes but rather 200,000 ton two stage thermonuclear weapons. The B-52 that crashed attempting an emergency landing at Diego Garcia had at least 3 of these and maybe 8.
Attempts to find these weapons sent American troops into Somalia and across East Africa. These operations were top secret, some were under cover of counter-terrorism tied to Al Qaeda, in fact, Al Qaeda was very likely invented for this reason.
For those of you who don’t know, a hydrogen bomb has a Plutonium “pit,” small in size that is stimulated by a Uranium 235 “sparkplug,” essentially two separate weapons that, when used together, produce a fusion reaction, many times larger than that of a simply atomic bomb. Oh, I forgot, there is a canister of tritium gas that helps fuel the reaction, an extremely rare gas that needs to be replaced often. Old hydrogen bombs don’t work.
Thus, someone who bought such a weapon somewhere would need to have it serviced by a super-power or buy a “trigger.” During the 1990s, the CIA led by Valerie Plame, and aided by Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan, offered such “triggers” for sale in order to locate and recover these missing weapons.
You now know a big secret. You also know that, if one of these weapons harms someone, former Vice President Dick Cheney, the man who undermined this vital CIA mission, is responsible, not “Scooter” Libby, the “fall guy.” With all the leaks around, you might wonder how all this was kept out of the papers? Who owns “the papers?” Who owns the news?
The signature of the Plutonium was odd. The cover story is that North Korea got Plutonium, not by producing it, but “found” it inside centrifuges they bought from Pakistan. This is the rough equivalent of finding enough spare change under the cushions of your couch to buy a new Ferrari.
North Korea does not have the technology to create, mold or machine Plutonium, almost no one has. Breeder reactors create Plutonium but it is impossible to machine or mold without using special alloys which, of course, are traceable during any nuclear explosion. North Korea has had two “nuclear” explosions and both have been traced.
Not one ounce of “North Korean” material was ever involved.
The 2006 explosion did have a nuclear signature, a North Korean explosion but an American nuclear signature. That there wasn’t something worse, an implosion based explosion or, worse, a thermonuclear device demonstrates a partially successful CIA operation with Pakistan’s A.Q. Khan and Valerie Plame to thank, heroes the Bush administration tried to hound to death. Why?
THEN A REAL NUKE WENT OFF IN NORTH KOREA, DID THEY FORGET THE RECIPE?
Then it happened, or did it? North Korea built a nuclear weapon and exploded it, an 18.2 kiloton “Hiroshima” type “gun” weapon they built themselves? This was May 25, 2009 when a country incapable of enriching uranium to “weapons grade” exploded the impossible nuke, or did they?
Yes, there was an explosion, North Korea theoretically became a nuclear state but, funny thing, the world never treated them as such. Why is that? What was the secret? Why was this so quickly forgotten?
The answer is simple, North Korea bought a nuclear weapon, one identical to one exploded in 1979 by Israel and South Africa, one with a history. Identifying the weapon was easy, the size and design said “Arms Core” and “Pelandaba.” The technology was American, the designers and builders Israeli but the uranium signature was South African.
South Africa built 10, no, not the 6 spoken of, but 10 nuclear weapons. The rogue regime in South Africa was aided by Israel in building nuclear weapons, an arrangement that begun in 1975, one violating every international law, perhaps the single most serious crime of its type in our century. South Africa had used germ warfare in Africa, chemical weapons, spread anthrax, plague, small pox and now, with the help of Israel, had nuclear weapons.
But, South Africa was collapsing and was going to be forced to release Nelson Mandela from prison and turn the government over to him. They weren’t going to give Mandela 10 nuclear weapons, though. Britain and the United Nations were approached to dismantle the program in 1990. Specialized equipment was designed to hold the weapons in 20 foot containers and the 9 remaining weapons, after one was tested on September 22, 1979, were to be shipped to the United States to be dismantled. 6 came to America. 3 were sidetracked by Margaret Thatcher in 1991, purchased for 55 million pounds and shipped to Oman to be kept as “blackmail” to frighten Saddam, or so it was explained. In reality, Britain hired the same arms dealers that were responsible for Iran/Contra to move the weapons.
Dr. David Kelly, once considered a suicide, now known to be a murder victim, oversaw the project. The bombs were stolen, Kelly knew and kept his mouth shut, for awhile at least, and then threatened to go public, not just about the bombs but about a 17,8 million pound “kickback” (backhander) paid by the bomb thieves to certain prominent British politicians. Kelly was murdered, “they” tried to cover it up and now someone in Britain is going to jail over it, probably a “patsy.”
One of these weapons exploded in North Korea, an Israeli built nuclear weapon. It passed through the hands of South African and Saudi arms merchants, one notorious Rhodesian and, we are told, into the open arms of those who built the weapons originally, the bomb designers from Dimona. Two of these bombs remain, “out there.”
The scary part, of course, is that these weapons are “unattributed.” Whoever controls them, and that is Israel according to reliable sources, is now capable much “evil doing” with these weapons:
* One could be sold to a nation such as Iran or, as we have learned, North Korea, in order to foster international instability and peddle arms to both sides. Today, Israel is one of America’s largest arms suppliers and the not so secret supplier for all armaments North Korea currently has in its arsenal, from American cluster bombs to German built submarines. Israel’s primary business has always been selling weapons to rogue nations and North Korea is now customer #1. * With “secret” missing nuclear weapons, Israeli intelligence can tell America:
1. Saddam has them and is “prepared to use them in 45 minutes” or ship them to Syria “by ambulance.” Israel told the Bush administration both stories. They believed the “Saddam” story but rejected the “ambulance” tale. 5000 Americans died learning that Israel lied. 2. Iran has them and has put them in shipping containers for a false flag attack on the United States. Israel has informed the United States of exactly this. 3. These weapons were shipped to Syria then to Lebanon where they were kept in a hospital X-ray room and that Hizbollah is planning to move them to Gaza where they can be smuggled by tunnels into Israel and used against the port of Haifa. America would be forced to send in the Army Corps of Engineers to build a wall around Gaza and to support Israeli military incursions as being justified as searches for these weapons that Israel has had all along, one of which Israel sold to North Korea.
* One of these weapons could mysteriously explode in an American city unless Israel, not only received the cash payoffs it normally gets but billions of dollars of munitions, shipped to Israel by the Pentagon, which Israel is allowed to sell, according to a highly illegal secret protocol, to, well, North Korea or anyone else. These shipments are made regularly and if the weapons stores were actually kept as the public is told, Israel would be a bomb warehouse from one end to the other.
CLEANING HOUSE
America is now, officially, two camps. Fox News viewers, America’s most conservative and typically, most volatile “news junkies” are now being told that the 9/11 investigation was a coverup and the Building 7 demolition is proof of a massive conspiracy. For America’s #1 news source to go this far, not on one show but two of their top rated journalists, Judge Napolitano and Geraldo Rivera, has been a serious blow for all those who supported the Bush administration and believed in the “war on terror.”
No other network, no newspaper is touching this story, this “third rail” which debunks two wars, debunks “Osama bin Laden” and makes the case for America being a nation of dupes. It doesn’t just stop at America. Most of the world got “sucked in” on 9/11, buying in on an even that now has gone from historical milestone as a disaster to the greatest scam in world history.
Bush admissions, though it is doubtful he understand the nature of such admissions and the criminal implications, over Iran and his willingness to send Americans to a hopeless war for his personal aggrandizement are only part of a pattern of which 9/11 itself was a part. If, as Fox News claims, Building 7 was a controlled demolition, then all of 9/11 was staged. Any other assumption is insane. The only questions are whether to leap to blaming Israel as so many are willing or to see Bush himself as a prime mover. Neither choice is likely to be promoted by either a government in bed with the Israel lobby, AIPAC, or still led by those who likely to be prosecuted.
THE NUCLEAR SHAM
The media has started in, on Iran and North Korea. Again, Iran is “5 minutes away from being a nuclear power” and North Korea is ready to invade the South, armies on the move, donkeys fueled up, starving troops armed to the teeth.
Both nations, friendless, easy targets for American military technology, easy targets for the carefully orchestrated world press, serve one real purpose, to deflect attention from the thieves, the torturers, the drug barons, the ethnic cleansing in Gaza, from a dozen stories, especially from the ticking time bomb of 9/11.
With the world coming down around America, Afghanistan a hopeless quagmire, even by “Vietnam” standards, the dollar in free fall, AIPAC spying openly revealed in civil proceedings and Americans, by the million, abandoning traditional news media, the “nuclear option,” an attack on an American city by, well, Americans themselves, with or without Israel, becomes more likely.
The mechanisms are there, spy organizations, controlled press, a quick and dirty “whitewash” investigation such as with 9/11 “in the can.”
“Black ops” and intelligence groups, now little more than criminal fronts, psychopaths, misfits and degenerates of every kind, exist by the dozen, funded with billions in taxpayer revenue, defense, intelligence and, of course, the flood of drug money pouring in from Afghanistan.
What is believed by those Americans that other Americans should revile and fear? It is believed that the only way of “moving forward” is the extreme path, totalitarianism, more government, fewer rights, gun seizures and, perhaps even those FEMA camps that “internet nutcases” and “conspiracy theory” types talk about.
The remainder of the Bush/Cheney gang are slowly becoming hunted animals. They see it even if many Americans don’t. Hunted animals are capable of anything.
Author
Logged
nine people arrested in Marseille were being investigated for suspected links to a 'terrorist enterprise', police said [AFP]
