Moscow reiterates its call that international organizations conduct an investigation into the events in the city of Bucha and reveal the names of the victims, the time and the reasons for their deaths, Russian Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Maria Zakharova said on Tuesday.
“Once again, we demand that international agencies stop covering up for the Kiev regime and ensure a thorough investigation that will finally reveal the names of the victims, the time and the cause of their death, the signs of the bodies having been moved from one place to another, and the individuals responsible for this terrifying crime by the Kiev authorities,” Zakharova said in a statement released by the Russian Foreign Ministry.
Russia has sent “multiple” requests to international organizations, including to UN Secretary-General Antonio Guterres and UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Volker Tuerk, but they remained unanswered, Zakharova said, adding that this shows that the “organisers of this heinous act have things to hide.”
“The propaganda-driven disinformation campaign in Bucha came as a response to our goodwill gesture to withdraw troops from the Kiev and Chernigov regions which was made in the wake of progress at the Russian-Ukrainian talks in Istanbul on March 28, 2022. Clearly, the goal of this campaign was to disrupt the dialogue between the parties and to launch a package of pre-arranged Western sanctions on Russia at the behest of London,” Zakharova also said.
She added that Kiev intended to distract the international community’s attention “from its own crimes and inconsistencies” of the Bucha “provocation” and to spread a “fake theory” about the civilians allegedly killed by the Russian military among the public in Western countries.
Immediately after the start of Moscow’s special military operation in February 2022, Russia took control of the territory of the Kiev Region, including Bucha, a small city located northwest of Kiev. Following the Russian military withdrawing from the region, Ukrainian authorities accused Russia of numerous killings of civilians in Bucha and surrounding areas.
Moscow has denied its role in the killings of civilians and insists that the footage of the murdered local residents, which was distributed in the Western media, is nothing more than a staged provocation on the part of Ukraine to put pressure on the Western ruling circles in order to achieve their goals in the conflict with Russia.
April 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism | Russia, Ukraine |
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Day by day, the Russian security officials are expanding upon their claims that Ukraine financed and directed the terror attack on the Crocus City Hall concert venue. Sunday evening’s edition of News of the Week hosted by Dmitry Kiselyov pointed to crypto currency payments and other financial channels which were used by the Ukrainians, as the latest results of interrogations and further arrests have revealed. A substantial success reward is said to have awaited the assailants upon arrival in Kiev.
Meanwhile various Western media outlets including Deutsche Welle tell us the Kremlin has demanded the hand-over of the head of Kiev’s Security Service (SSB), brigadier general Vasyl Malyuk on charges of directing terrorist attacks in Russia. To be sure, Malyuk himself has claimed responsibility for the 2022 bombing of the Kerch (Crimea) bridge. But we may now assume that the Russians have evidence to hold him to account for directing the Crocus City Hall atrocity.
There is speculation in social media that Kiev’s refusal to surrender its terror campaign leaders would allow Russia to declare Ukraine a terrorist state. This would open the possibility for ‘neutralizing’ top Ukrainian officials on justifiable grounds.
However, we need not speculate about what may come next. De facto, Russia’s current offensive against Ukraine has escalated to a new, vastly more threatening level. There are daily punishing aerial bombing and missile attacks on military command centers across Ukraine, on training centers, on concentrations of foreign mercenaries. And then there is a new dimension to the destruction of Ukraine’s electricity network.
In the winter of 2022-2023, all the Western media spoke of Russian attacks on the energy infrastructure, on how Russia was allegedly seeking to impose misery on the Ukrainian civilians by depriving them of heat and light in the midst of freezing cold. But back then the reality was that Russia only struck substations and other distribution points. Such destruction was meant to knock out power for tactical advantage over the Ukrainian armed forces. It was obvious that the substations and other gear could be replaced in a matter of weeks or months. By contrast what is now going on is Russian destruction of power generating stations. Replacing them will be a matter of years, not months.
Very much to the point, the mayor of Kharkiv yesterday remarked to the press that the city’s power supplies have been utterly destroyed. This development corresponds very nicely to the calls that were made on the Evening with Vladimir Solovyov talk show last week for Kharkiv’s inhabitants to be sent packing in their cars headed west ahead of the city being razed to the ground. The intent was to end once and for all the missiles and artillery shells that Kharkiv has been sending daily into the neighboring Belgorod region of Russia to kill civilians in the greatest numbers possible. Kharkiv may not yet be razed, but it certainly is on the way to becoming uninhabitable.
In the face of this massive and undeniable destruction by the Russians both on and off the battlefield, the bravado of Zelensky and his clique is fading. Indeed, the Ukrainian president has finally said publicly that it may be time for peace negotiations.
Let us hope that Russia’s post Crocus viciousness may bring the Ukrainians to their senses and end this awful war.
©Gilbert Doctorow, 2024
April 2, 2024
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | Russia, Ukraine |
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Ukrainian attacks against Russia’s Belgorod region are becoming increasingly serious. Missiles and drones hit civilian targets on the Russian border every day, causing casualties and spreading terror. In Western media, the incursions against Belgorod are commonly linked to alleged “Russian partisan” groups, but insiders in the region seem to disagree with this narrative, pointing to Kiev’s agents and foreign mercenaries as the true perpetrators.
On March 14, I was in Belgorod on an expedition by the BRICS Journalists Association to cover the border attacks. On that occasion, as reported here, I had the opportunity to visit the places affected by the bombings and interview some of the victims. It was also possible to talk to some members of the Belgorod military forces, from whom I obtained very interesting information about those responsible for the terrorist incursions in the region.
The military says that groups of “Russian dissidents”, such as the “RDK” (“Russian Volunteer Corps”) and the “Legion of Freedom”, so praised by the Western media – despite their open ties to neo-Nazism –, in fact are just fake organizations, whose leaders are actually Russian expatriates, but their staff is made up of disguised Ukrainian agents.
Sources claim that the Kiev regime uses the narrative that there are “Russian partisans” fighting on their side to spread the lie that there is “strong opposition to the Putin government,” with Russian citizens willing to go to war to defend Ukraine. For Western media, this narrative is important as it allows public opinion in NATO countries to believe that the Russian government is unpopular, thus legitimizing the anti-Russian agenda that allows weapons to be sent to Ukraine.
More than that, the Belgorod military also believes that claiming responsibility for the attacks by these fake groups guaranteed the Kiev regime and its Western sponsors a certain “immunity” when it comes to terrorism. Attacks against Belgorod are absolutely illegal, as there are no military targets in the region. Kiev bombs residential buildings, common streets and civilian infrastructure in the city, making its acts illegal under international law.
To escape responsibility for their crimes, Ukrainians use these fake organizations as proxies. In practice, “Russian dissidents” – whose combat personnel are anonymous – function as scapegoats, claiming responsibility for attacks against civilians that could create problems for Kiev. In addition to the attacks on Belgorod, these same groups claimed to be behind several individual assassinations and attempted assassinations against Russian public figures, preventing the Kiev regime from being held accountable for the acts.
It is important to remember that Belgorod became a target of Kiev in May 2023, when troops commanded by Kiev invaded the Russian region and killed civilians during hostilities that were called the “Battle of Belgorod” by the media. Russian defense forces quickly neutralized the invaders, but since then attacks against the region have become frequent – even more so on dates relevant to the Russian Federation, such as patriotic and religious holidays, or presidential elections. At the time, “Russian partisans” claimed to be responsible for the incursion, which was immediately covered by all Western media.
In March 2024, the Ukrainian offensive on Belgorod reached its peak, with brutal shelling killing many civilians. The local military says that the so-called “Russian partisans”, who are just anonymous Ukrainian and foreign agents, are working in this operation together with members of the ultranationalist “Kraken” battalion, which is subordinate to Kiev’s military intelligence – commanded by Kirill Budanov.
As well known, Budanov has already admitted being behind the murder of Russian civilians and promised to “continue killing” Russian citizens until the end of the conflict. Budanov ‘s soldiers commonly disguise themselves as members of the RDK to try to deceive Russians and public opinion. They also say that, instead of “Russian expatriates”, the RDK has among its members not only members of Ukrainian intelligence, but also Western mercenaries trained in Poland – which shows the criminals’ deep ties to NATO.
It increasingly appears clear that the Kiev regime is directly responsible for every Russian civilian death in terrorist attacks. And, as we know, the neo-Nazi regime does not act alone, which means that its Western sponsors are co-responsible for these deaths. The Belgorod case is an example of how the enemies of the Russian Federation are trying to disguise their guilt for these crimes.
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April 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | Russia, Ukraine |
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The Russian Investigative Committee has launched a probe into allegations that Ukraine and its Western backers are involved in terrorist activities on Russian soil; these were supported by some MPs and public figures last week.
The law enforcement body announced on Monday that it was moving forward with the procedural investigation after reviewing the claims. The initial complaint, which the Committee confirmed receiving last Wednesday, identified the US and its allies as allegedly driving a string of attacks on Russian soil. The agency is looking into the purported “organization, financing and conduct of terrorist acts” by those nations.
Nikolay Kharitonov of the Communist Party, one of the MPs who filed the complaint, insisted that Western nations “benefited” from the terrorist attack on the Crocus City Hall outside Moscow earlier this month. He reasoned that the geopolitical opponents of Russia stood to gain from the tragedy on Russian soil, and counted “on their inaccessibility and impunity.”
A total of 12 people – including the four gunmen, believed to be radical Islamists – have so far been arrested in connection to one of the deadliest terrorist attacks in the country’s history.
Over 140 people were killed in the shooting spree and arson attack just outside of Moscow. The Afghanistan-based offshoot of Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) has claimed credit for the strike. However, Russian officials claim to have uncovered evidence of possible Ukrainian involvement, contrary to US assurances that Kiev could not have been behind the attack.
“The US and its allies are today conducting terrorist acts on Russian territories with the hands of ISIS and Ukrainian special services,” Kharitonov claimed on Telegram last week. “We demand that the political leadership of the US and Ukraine, as well as the intelligence services of these countries, be held criminally liable for organizing, financing, and conducting terrorist operations directed against Russia and the entire modern world.”
The complaint was signed by three Russian lawmakers as well as some public figures, including the philosopher Aleksandr Dugin. His daughter Darya was killed by a car bomb in August 2022 in what is widely believed to have been a targeted assassination attempt aimed at her father, a prominent nationalist.
Russian investigators accused Kiev of organizing the bomb attack. Reports in the Western media said officials in the US likewise believe that Ukrainian covert operatives were behind the murder.
The Ukrainian government has publicly claimed credit for some of the attacks against Russian targets, such as the bombings of the Crimean Bridge. Last week, Head of the Security Service of Ukraine (SBU) Vasily Malyuk all but bragged about a string of assassinations of people he described as enemies of his country.
When asked about several such killings during an interview, the official said the question was “directed to the right address, but we will not acknowledge that in any way.” Malyuk proceeded to give some details about the crimes.
Malyuk is among the senior Ukrainian officials wanted for terrorism by Moscow. The Russian Foreign Ministry said on Sunday it had sent a demand to Ukraine to hand such suspects over, under the UN-backed international treaties on fighting terrorism, to which Kiev is a signatory.
April 1, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | ISIS, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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Malaysian police have apprehended a heavily armed Israeli national who investigators believe might be a Mossad hitman and a member of a larger spy ring. The suspect recently arrived in the country on a French passport and claims he had come to murder a fellow Israeli in a family dispute.
The arrest was announced by Inspector-General of Police Razarudin Husain during a press conference on Friday. The 36-year-old suspect entered Malaysia on March 12, and was staying at a hotel in the country’s capital of Kuala Lumpur at the time of his arrest.
“During questioning, the suspect produced another passport which was issued by Israel. The six guns were found in a bag in his hotel room,” Husain said.
The suspect reportedly told police he had come to the country to find and kill a fellow Israeli national, citing a “family issue” as his motive. However, Husain noted that the man refused to divulge information about his job, and said investigators could not rule out that the suspect was linked to Israel’s Mossad intelligence agency.
“We don’t fully believe what this suspect is telling us, maybe he has another agenda because he has been here since March 12. We found that the weapons were bought using cryptocurrency,” the official said.
Police are now investigating how exactly the arsenal, which included various types of pistols, had been smuggled into the country. The police also seized some 200 rounds of ammunition, while three of the guns were loaded, the official noted.
The investigation also believes the suspected hitman likely had accomplices in the country and presumably was a member of a larger group. “We have not identified the others. We will also check the authenticity of his passport with the French embassy,” the inspector-general said.
Thus far, neither France nor Israel has made any public remarks on the affair.
March 29, 2024
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | France, Israel, Malaysia |
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Over the past two years, Moscow has collected evidence of Western involvement in training and arming jihadi terrorists to weaponize them on the Ukrainian battlefield and Russia’s rear.
The Crocus City Hall terror attack has raised questions about the West’s repeated use of jihadist elements, starting from arming Mujahideen in Afghanistan during the Cold War era to most recent reports of Islamists fighting on the side of the Kiev regime.
Russia’s Foreign Intelligence Service (SVR) stated on February 13, 2023, that it obtained intelligence indicating that the US military was actively recruiting militants from jihadist groups affiliated with ISIS and al-Qaeda to carry out terrorist attacks in Russia and the CIS countries. According to the SVR, particular attention is paid to attracting people from the Russian North Caucasus and Central Asia to cooperate.
The Russian intelligence service revealed that in January 2023, 60 terrorists with experience of participating in hostilities in the Middle East were recruited by the West, adding that they were undergoing training at the American base in Al-Tanf, Syria, to conduct terrorist and subversive attacks.
The SVR noted at the time that the militants would be dispatched in small groups to the territory of Russia and the CIS countries in cooperation with underground cells of international terrorist groups, including Hizb ut-Tahrir, Jamaat Ansarullah and the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan.
“We see the final loss of any moral principles in the US security forces,” the SVR summarized in its official statement, lambasting Washington’s obsession with inflicting a strategic defeat on Russia by any means possible. “Such actions put Washington on a par with the largest international terrorist groups.”
Intel data confirming the plans described by the SVR started to emerge later in the year. Russian Security Service (FSB) Director Alexander Bortnikov stated at the October 2023 meeting of heads of Russian security agencies and special services that ISIS and other terrorist groups were fighting against Russia as part of the Ichkerian and Crimean Tatar mercenary units in Ukraine. ISIS is also part of sabotage and reconnaissance groups sent to Russian territory to carry out attacks and terrorist attacks, Bortnikov emphasized.
The FSB director pointed out that Western governments were “actively facilitating the movement of militants into the Ukrainian conflict zone.” As of October 2023, the FSB had registered the participation of employees of 13 Western private military companies (PMCs) and members of nine foreign paramilitary proxy forces in the Ukraine conflict on the side of the Kiev regime.
According to Bortnikov, the US and its NATO allies have turned Ukraine into nothing short of a terrorist hotbed.
The FSB chief likewise drew special attention to the US and British intelligence services’ efforts to create a “belt of instability” in Afghanistan near the southern borders of the CIS, where al-Qaeda and the ISIS groups are becoming stronger. To that end, the Western intelligence services were recruiting militants from international terrorist organizations operating in Iraq, Syria, and a number of other Asian and African countries, and transferring them to northern Afghanistan.
“We note the increased role of al-Qaeda, which, in alliance with the IS branch Vilayat Khorasan, takes an active part in the preparation, indoctrination and logistical support of controlled groups,” Bortnikov stressed last October.
Islamic Terror Groups Flocking to Ukraine
From the very beginning of the Russian special operation in Ukraine, reports started to emerge in international media outlets and blogs, shedding light on jihadists of all stripes flocking to the combat zone in Ukraine.
In early March 2022, the BBC quoted Syria-based terrorist group Hayat Tahrir al-Sham (HTS) explicitly expressing solidarity with the Kiev regime. High-profile HTS member al-Shamali al-Hurr took to Telegram to cheer Ukrainian victories by sharing footage and graphic images of damaged Russian military hardware and dead soldiers.
In April 2022, reports emerged claiming that the White Helmets, a Western-backed so-called “humanitarian” Syrian group, had arrived in Ukraine. Prior to this, the group, officially known as the Syrian Civil Defense, pledged to provide “tutorials” to the Ukrainian forces. The group was accused by Syrians of being connected to al-Qaeda offshoots operating in the Middle Eastern country and staging chemical attacks.
What’s more, initial training and financial support to the White Helmets was provided by the Mayday Rescue Foundation, a non-governmental organization established by ex-British Army officer James Le Mesurier. Le Mesurier’s group was instrumental in the West’s long-standing effort to topple the government of President Bashar al-Assad in Syria, according to Grayzone investigative journalists’ account of events in 2016.
The SVR announced in May 2022, citing obtained evidence, that about 60 ISIS terrorists were released from prisons controlled by the US-backed Syrian Kurds a month earlier with the aim of dispatching them to Ukraine as sabotage units. The SVR highlighted that the US Al-Tanf base in Syria’s Homs province was turned into a terrorist hub where militants were trained to be deployed to Ukraine.
“Priority is given to natives of the states of Transcaucasia and Central Asia. The training ‘course’ in Al-Tanf includes training in the use of available types of anti-tank missile systems, reconnaissance and strike drones MQ-1C, advanced communications and surveillance equipment,” the SVR stated.
On October 22, 2022, Al-Monitor reported that it had learned that members of Ajnad al-Kavkaz, a Chechen-led Islamist group, left the Syrian province of Idlib and headed to Ukraine to fight against the Russian military.
Who Masterminded the Crocus City Hall Attack?
The Crocus City Hall terror attack was carried out by the hands of radical Islamists, but it is necessary to find the masterminds and those who benefitted from the hideous crime, Russian President Vladimir Putin stated on Monday.
“The horrific crime committed on March 22 in the capital of Russia is an act of intimidation … and the question immediately arises: who benefits?” Putin said. “This atrocity can only be an element in a whole series of attempts by those who have been fighting our country since 2014 with the hands of the neo-Nazi Kiev regime.”
In the wake of the attack four alleged perpetrators – Dalerdzhon Mirzoyev, Shamsidina Fariduni, Saidakrami Rachabalizoda and Muhammadsobir Fayzov – were caught in the Russian Bryansk region on the way to the Ukrainian border. According to the FSB, the jihadists had connections in Ukraine and sought to hide in the Eastern European country after committing the crime. The fifth suspect, Dilovar Islomov, was detained on March 25.
“We also need to answer the question of why the terrorists tried to leave for Ukraine after committing the crime and who was waiting for them there,” Putin underlined during the conversation with Russian authorities on security measures taken after the terrorist attack.
The Russian president specifically referred to the Biden administration’s effort to divert public attention from Ukraine’s possible involvement immediately after the tragedy.
“We see how the US is taking to various channels to convince its satellites and other countries that according to the data from its intelligence, there is allegedly no Ukrainian trace in the Moscow terrorist attack (…) We already know by whose hands this atrocity against Russia and its people had been carried out. Now we want to know who the mastermind is,” the Russian president emphasized.
March 26, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular | al-Qaeda, ISIS, Middle East, Russia, Ukraine, United States |
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Ranked second only to Osama bin Laden, the US’s most notorious declared enemy during the so-called War on Terror was Jordanian jihadist Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, the founder of Al-Qaeda in Iraq (AQI).
But a closer examination of Zarqawi’s life and his impact on events in Iraq shows that he was likely a product and tool of US intelligence.
Neoconservative strategists within the administration of George W. Bush utilized Zarqawi as a pawn to justify the illegal US invasion of Iraq in 2003 to the American public.
Moreover, he was instrumental in fomenting internal discord within Iraqi resistance groups opposing the US occupation, ultimately instigating a sectarian civil war between Iraq’s Sunni and Shia communities.
Israel’s plan unfolds in Iraq
This deliberate strategy of tension in Iraq advanced Tel Aviv’s goal of perpetuating the country’s vulnerabilities, dividing populations along sectarian lines, and weakening its army’s ability to challenge Israel in the region.
It has long been known that the CIA created Al-Qaeda as part of its covert war on the Soviet Red Army in Afghanistan in the 1980s and supported Al-Qaeda elements in various wars, including in Bosnia, Kosovo, and Chechnya in the 1990s.
Additionally, evidence points to CIA support for Al-Qaeda-affiliated groups during the clandestine war in Syria launched in 2011 amid the so-called Arab Spring.
Despite this history, western journalists, analysts, and historians still take at face value that Zarqawi and AQI were sworn enemies of the US.
Without understanding Zarqawi’s role as a US intelligence asset, it is impossible to understand the destructive role the US (and Israel) played in the bloodshed inflicted on Iraq, not only during the initial 2003 invasion but in launching the subsequent sectarian strife as well.
It is also essential to understand the importance of current Iraqi efforts to expel US forces and rid the country of US influence moving forward.
Who was Zarqawi?
Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was born Ahmed Fadhil Nazar al-Khalaylah but later changed his name to reflect his birthplace, Zarqa, an industrial area near Amman, Jordan. In and out of prison in his youth, he would become radicalized during his time behind bars.
Zarqawi traveled to Afghanistan to fight with the CIA-backed mujahideen against the Soviets in Afghanistan in the late 1980s. Upon his return to Jordan, he helped start a local Islamic militant group called Jund al-Sham and was imprisoned in 1992.
After his release from prison following a general amnesty, Zarqawi returned to Afghanistan in 1999. The Atlantic notes that he first met Osama bin Laden at this time, who suspected that Zarqawi’s group had been infiltrated by Jordanian intelligence while in prison, which accounted for his early release.
Zarqawi then fled Afghanistan to the pro-US Kurdistan region of northern Iraq and established a training camp for his fighters in the fateful year of 2001.
The missing link
Eager to implicate Iraq in the 9/11 attacks, it wasn’t long before the Bush administration officials soon used Zarqawi’s presence to shroud Washington’s geopolitical agendas there.
In February 2003, at the UN Security Council, US Secretary of State Colin Powell claimed that Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq proved Saddam was harboring a terrorist network, necessitating a US invasion.
According to the Council on Foreign Relations, “This assertion was later disproved, but it irreversibly thrust Zarqawi’s name into the international spotlight.”
Powell made the claim even though the Kurdish region of Iraq, where Zarqawi established his base, was effectively under US control. The US air force imposed a no-fly zone on the region after the 1991 Gulf War. Israel’s foreign intelligence agency, the Mossad, was also known to have a presence there, a reality that Iran actively acknowledges and remains vigilant about.
Curiously, despite Zarqawi’s base being nestled within the confines of Iraqi Kurdistan, the Bush administration opted for inaction when presented with a golden opportunity to neutralize him.
The Wall Street Journal reported that the Pentagon drew up detailed plans in June 2002 to strike Zarqawi’s training camp but that “the raid on Mr Zarqawi didn’t take place. Months passed with no approval of the plan from the White House.”
Lawrence Di Rita, the Pentagon’s chief spokesman, justified the inaction by claiming “the camp was of interest only because it was believed to be producing chemical weapons,” even though the threat of chemical and biological weapons falling into the hands of terrorists was supposedly the most important reason for toppling Saddam Hussein’s government.
In contrast, General John M. Keane, the US Army’s vice chief of staff at the time, explained that the intelligence on Zarqawi’s presence in the camp was “sound,” the risk of collateral damage was low, and that the camp was “one of the best targets we ever had.”
The Bush administration firmly refused to approve the strikes, despite US General Tommy Franks pointing to Zarqawi’s camp as among the “examples of the terrorist ‘harbors’ that President Bush had vowed to crush.”
As soon as Zarqawi’s presence in Iraq had accomplished its initial purpose of selling the war on Iraq to the US public, and after the March 2003 invasion was already underway, the White House finally approved targeting his camp with airstrikes. But by then, the Wall Street Journal adds, Zarqawi had already fled the area.
Singling out Shiites
Then, in January 2004, the key pillar of the Bush administration’s justification for war unraveled. David Kay, the weapons inspector tasked with finding Iraq’s WMDs, publicly declared, “I don’t think they exist,” after nine months of searching.
The Guardian reported that the failure to locate any WMDs was such a devastating blow to the rationale for invading Iraq that now “even Bush was rewriting the reasons for going to war.”
On 9 February, as the WMD embarrassment mounted, Secretary of State Powell again claimed that before the invasion, Zarqawi “was active in Iraq and doing things that should have been known to the Iraqis. And we’re still looking for those connections and to prove those connections.”
Two weeks before, US intelligence had conveniently made public a 17-page letter it claimed Zarqawi had written. Its author claimed responsibility for multiple terror attacks, argued that fighting Iraq’s Shia was more important than fighting the occupying US army, and vowed to spark a civil war between the country’s Sunni and Shia communities.
In subsequent months, US officials attributed a series of brutal bombings targeting Iraq’s Shia to Zarqawi without providing evidence of his involvement.
In March 2004, suicide attacks on Shia shrines in Karbala and the Kadhimiya district of Baghdad killed 200 worshippers commemorating Ashura. In April, car bombings in the Shia-majority city of Basra in southern Iraq killed at least 50.
Regarding the Karbala and Kadhimiya attacks, Al-Qaeda issued a statement through Al-Jazeera strongly denying any involvement, but Coalition Provisional Authority (CPA) head Paul Bremer insisted Zarqawi was involved.
Zarqawi’s alleged attacks on Iraq’s Shia helped drive a wedge between the Sunni and Shia resistance to the US occupation and sowed the seeds of a future sectarian war.
This proved helpful to the US army, which was trying to prevent Sunni and Shia factions from joining forces in resistance to the occupation.
‘Dividing our enemies’
In April 2004, President Bush ordered a full-scale invasion to take control of Fallujah, a city in Anbar province that had become the epicenter of the Sunni resistance.
Vowing to “pacify” the city, Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt launched the attack using helicopter gunships, unmanned surveillance drones, and F-15 warplanes.
The attack became controversial as the Marines killed many civilians, destroyed large numbers of homes and buildings, and displaced the majority of the city’s residents.
Eventually, due to widespread public pressure, President Bush was forced to call off the assault, and Fallujah became a ‘no-go’ zone for US forces.
The failure to maintain troops on the ground in Fallujah had US planners turning back to their Zarqawi card to weaken the Sunni resistance from within. In June, a senior Pentagon official claimed that “fresh information” had come to light showing Zarqawi “may be hiding in the Sunni stronghold city of Fallujah.”
The Pentagon official “cautioned, however, that the information is not specific enough to allow a military operation to be launched to try to find al-Zarqawi.”
The sudden appearance of Zarqawi and other Jihadists in Fallujah at this time was not an accident.
In a report written for the US Special Operations Command (USSOCOM) entitled “Dividing our enemies,” Thomas Henriksen explained that the US military used Zarqawi to exploit differences among its enemies in Fallujah and elsewhere.
He writes that the US military maintained the goal of “fomenting enemy-on-enemy deadly encounters” so that America’s “enemies eliminate each other,” adding that “When divisions were absent, American operators instigated them.”
The Fallujah Case Study
Henriksen then cites events in Fallujah in the fall of 2004 as “a case study” that “showcased the clever machinations required to set insurgents battling insurgents.”
He explained that the takfiri–Salafi views of Zarqawi and his fellow jihadis caused tension with local insurgents who were nationalists and embraced a Sufi religious outlook. Local insurgents also opposed Zarqawi’s tactics, which included kidnapping foreign journalists, killing civilians through indiscriminate bombings, and sabotaging the country’s oil and electricity infrastructure.
Henriksen further explained that US psychological operations, which took “advantage of and deepened the intra-insurgent forces” in Fallujah, led to “nightly gun battles not involving coalition forces.”
These divisions soon extended to the other Sunni resistance strongholds of Ramadi in Anbar province and the Adhamiya district of Baghdad.
The divisions instigated by US intelligence through Zarqawi in Fallujah paved the way for another US invasion of the restive city in November 2004, days after Bush secured re-election.
BBC journalist Mark Urban reported that 2,000 bodies were recovered after the battle, including hundreds of civilians.
Conveniently, “Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was not among the dead,” having slipped through the US cordon around the city before the assault began, Urban added.
Domestic consumption
US military intelligence later acknowledged using psychological operations to promote Zarqawi’s role in the Sunni insurgency fighting against the US occupation.
The Washington Post reported in April 2006 that “The US military is conducting a propaganda campaign to magnify the role of the leader of Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” which helped “the Bush administration tie the war to the organization responsible for the 11 September 2001 attacks.”
The Post quotes US Colonel Derek Harvey as explaining, “Our own focus on Zarqawi has enlarged his caricature, if you will – made him more important than he really is.”
As the Post reports further, the internal documents detailing the psychological operation campaign “explicitly list the ‘US Home Audience’ as one of the targets of a broader propaganda campaign.”
The campaign to promote Zarqawi also proved helpful to President Bush during his re-election campaign in October 2004. When Democratic challenger John Kerry called the war in Iraq a diversion from the so-called War on Terror in Afghanistan, President Bush responded by claiming:
“The case of one terrorist shows how wrong [Kerry’s] thinking is. The terrorist leader we face in Iraq today, the one responsible for planting car bombs and beheading Americans, is a man named Zarqawi.”
Who killed Nick Berg?
Nick Berg, a US contractor in Iraq, was allegedly beheaded by Zarqawi. In May 2004, western news outlets published a video showing Berg, dressed in an orange Guantanamo-style jumpsuit, being beheaded by a group of masked men.
A masked man claiming to be Zarqawi stated in the video that Berg’s killing was in response to the US torture of detainees in the notorious Abu Ghraib prison.
Berg was in Iraq trying to win reconstruction contracts and disappeared just days after he spent a month in US detention in Mosul, where he was interrogated multiple times by the FBI.
On 8 May, a month after his disappearance, the US military claimed they found his decapitated body on the side of a road near Baghdad.
But US claims that Zarqawi killed Berg are not credible. As the Sydney Morning Herald reported at the time, there is evidence the beheading video was staged and included footage from Berg’s FBI interrogation. It was uploaded to the internet not from Iraq but from London and remained online just long enough for CNN and Fox News to download it.
Brigadier General Mark Kimmitt also lied about Berg having been in US military custody, claiming instead he had only been held by the Iraqi police in Mosul.
But the video cemented in the minds of the American public that Zarqawi and Al-Qaeda were major terror threats.
Such was the impact in the US, that following the video’s release, the terms ‘Nick Berg’ and ‘Iraq war’ temporarily replaced pornography and celebrities Paris Hilton and Britney Spears as the internet’s main searches.
Sectarianism, a key US–Israeli goal
Large-scale sectarian war erupted following the February 2006 bombing of the Shia Al-Askari Shrine in the Sunni city of Samarra in central Iraq, although the full extent was mitigated thanks to religious guidance issued by the highest and most influential Shia authority in the land, Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani.
Al-Qaeda did not take credit for the attack, but President Bush later claimed that “the bombing of the shrine was an Al-Qaeda plot, all intending to create sectarian violence.”
Zarqawi was finally killed in a US airstrike a few months later, on 7 June 2006. An Iraqi legislator, Wael Abdul-Latif, said Zarqawi had the phone numbers of senior Iraqi officials stored in his cell phone at the time of his death, further showing Zarqawi was being used by elements within the US-backed Iraqi government.
By the time of Zarqawi’s death, the neoconservative agenda to divide and weaken Iraq through instigating chaos and sectarian conflict had reached its pinnacle. This goal was further exacerbated by the emergence of a successor group to AQI – ISIS – which played an outsized role a few years later in destabilizing neighboring Syria, igniting sectarian tensions there, and providing the justification for the renewal of a US military mandate in Iraq.
March 26, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Timeless or most popular, Wars for Israel | al-Qaeda, CIA, Iraq, ISIS, Israel, Middle East, United States, Zionism |
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I am originally from Syria and have watched hundreds of ISIS footage, closely monitoring their attacking patterns. After analyzing the available footage of the Moscow terrorist attack, I have drawn the following observation:
1 – The attackers were trained in shooting, but they were not professional killers. They (thankfully) failed to hit some easy targets in the mall.
2 – The assault was carefully orchestrated, complete with an exit strategy. It appears to be more than just a solo attack, possibly connected to foreign intelligence.
3 – Although the individuals responsible for the attack may be Muslims, it is important to note that they are not necessarily affiliated with ISIS. I have observed numerous attacks conducted by ISIS in Syria, and typically, the terrorists strive for “martyrdom” and often resort to wearing suicide vests when facing capture. This particular type of suicide mission is referred to as “إنغماسي” in Arabic.
4 – On March 7, 2024, the US embassy in Moscow released a security advisory, stating that it “is monitoring reports that extremists have imminent plans to target large gatherings in Moscow, to include concerts, and U.S. citizens should be advised to avoid large gatherings over the next 48 hours.”
The security alert reveals that US intelligence was aware of the plot and anticipated the imminent terrorist attack. The US Embassy refrained from making speculations and instead referred to the plans as “imminent.”
Who is responsible for the attack?
Jake Sullivan, President Joe Biden’s top foreign policy adviser, travelled to Kiev on 20 March 2024 and reportedly urged Ukraine against targeting Russian oil refineries and energy infrastructure.
Did Jake Sullivan caution Ukraine about potential attacks similar to the recent one in Moscow?
Over the past few months, Ukrainian intelligence orchestrated two successful assassination attempts in Russia. One of these attempts targeted Alexander Dugin, but tragically, his daughter lost her life due to a bomb planted beneath their car.
Ukraine may not be responsible for the attack, but if Kiev authorities are indeed behind it, it would be a very foolish decision. The fact that major Western media outlets keep blaming ISIS without any concrete evidence from detained terrorists only adds to the suspicion.
In my personal experience, I have yet to encounter a captured ISIS terrorist who doesn’t openly admit their affiliation with the terror organization. This situation could potentially set a new standard. However, it’s also possible that it may not.
March 24, 2024
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism | Russia, Ukraine |
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Eleven people have been detained over the terrorist attack on the Crocus Crocus City Hall concert venue outside Moscow, Russia’s Federal Security Service (FSB) has said in a statement.
The arrested suspects include “four terrorists who were directly involved in the terrorist attack on Crocus,” the statement read. Investigative work to track down other accomplices are ongoing, it added.
After carrying out the attack on Friday night, “the perpetrators tried to escape by car, fleeing towards the Russian-Ukrainian border,” the FSB said on Saturday. “The criminals intended to cross the Russia-Ukraine border and had relevant contacts on the Ukrainian side,” it added.
According to the agency, “all four terrorists” were arrested in Russia’s Bryansk Region within several hours as a result of well-coordinated actions by the security services and the police. The detainees are now being transferred to Moscow, it added.
The attack on Crocus Crocus City Hall was “carefully planned,” with the perpetrators using weapons that had been placed in a stash in advance, the FSB said.
Russia’s Investigative Committee also confirmed that four suspects, who “committed the terrorist attack” on Crocus City Hall, were detained in Bryansk Region, “not far from the border with Ukraine.”
Crocus City Hall, in the town of Krasnogorsk in Moscow’s western outskirts, was attacked by gunmen on Friday night. It happened before a concert by Russian rock band Picnic, when the venue, which has an estimated capacity of 7,500, was nearly at capacity.
The attackers shot at the crowd indiscriminately then set the building on fire. They managed to flee the scene in what was said to be a white Renault Symbol/Clio car, prompting a large-scale manhunt.
According to Russia’s Investigative Committee, the death toll in the attack has reached at least 115. The Moscow Region Health Ministry said that at least 121 people were also wounded, with 107 requiring hospitalization.
March 23, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, War Crimes | Russia, Ukraine |
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Ukraine and the West have resorted to false flag operations to persuade everyone that ISIS was behind the terror attack in the Crocus City Hall concert venue near Moscow, said Margarita Simonyan, the editor-in-chief of Sputnik’s parent media group Rossiya Segodnya.
The head of the media group stressed that the names and faces of the perpetrators are already known to authorities and that the terrorists gave everything away during interrogation.
“It immediately became obvious why US media were claiming in unison that it was ISIS,” she said.
Simonyan explained that the perpetrators were chosen to carry out the attack in a manner that would allow the West to persuade the international community that ISIS was behind the attack.
“Basic sleight of hand. The level of a railway thimble-rigger,” she added.” It has nothing to do with ISIS. It’s Ukrainians.”
She added that the enthusiasm displayed by Western media when they tried to persuade everyone that ISIS was responsible even before arrests were made gave them away completely.
“This is not ISIS. This is a well-coordinated team of several other, also widely known, abbreviations,” Simonyan concluded.
The shooting occurred on Friday evening in the Crocus City Hall concert venue just outside Moscow and was followed by a massive fire, claiming at least 143 lives.
In the hours following the attack, Western media insisted that radical jihadist organization ISIS was behind it, while Ukrainian officials also said that they had nothing to do with the tragedy.
However, suspects were detained in Russia’s Bryansk region near Ukrainian border. According to the data provided by law enforcing agencies, they had a support base on the other side of the border.
Moreover, while Kiev rushed to deny its involvement into the shooting, Ukrainian secret services have a long track record of terror attacks on Russian territory, from shelling in the Belgorod region to assassinations of political scientist Daria Dugina and journalist Vladlen Tatarsky.
March 23, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Fake News, False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering | Russia, Ukraine |
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As the pre-trial hearings in the case of Khalid Shaikh Mohammed and others who are charged with masterminding the 9/11 attacks proceed at the Guantanamo Bay Naval Base in Cuba, the government continues to stumble with its own witnesses. In hearings last week, government lawyers tried to demonstrate that statements the defendants made to CIA and FBI agents were voluntary.
When the government’s principal torturer, a now retired psychologist, had difficulty recalling that during a torture session he threatened one of his victims by offering to slit the throat of the victim’s young son and that he had recounted that threat under oath in previous testimony, it became apparent to all in the courtroom and to those of us who monitor these awful proceedings that the government was encountering a strange and unexpected difficulty in defending the behavior of its torturers.
Here is the backstory.
Mohammed and others were violently tortured at various so-called CIA black sites outside the U.S. for about three years. They were raped, hanged by their wrists for weeks inside large refrigerators, beaten with fists and wooden boards, and waterboarded whereby water was forced into their nasal cavities so as to create the perception of suffocation and drowning. Many of the records of all this were destroyed by CIA officials, a crime for which no one has been prosecuted.
During these horrific events, the torturer in chief, who was conducting his grisly business in Thailand, called a CIA lawyer in Langley, Virginia, and obtained permission to threaten his victim with slitting the throat of the victim’s young son. The torturer admitted this in testimony he gave in court at Gitmo in 2020.
Why was the torture conducted in Thailand? Because CIA lawyers had erroneously told their bosses that the U.S. Constitution and federal law do not apply in foreign lands.
This has never been American law. The common law of England and in America has always been that when government personnel leave the country for the purpose of doing something that is clearly unlawful in the country they have left, they can be held accountable for their criminal behavior when they return. The U.S. Supreme Court made this clear in one of its five major rulings against the George W. Bush administration over its behavior at Gitmo.
Bush’s own White House counsel advised the president that because Gitmo is physically located in Cuba, the Constitution doesn’t apply, federal laws don’t apply and federal courts lack jurisdiction. All of this erroneous advice was tailored to tell Bush and Vice President Dick Cheney who, according to former CIA personnel, had a particular fondness for torture, just what they wanted to hear.
This terrible legal advice became the stated legal basis for the torture regime and the proposed but never implemented kangaroo courts at Gitmo, until the FBI entered the scene and put a stop to the torture and the Supreme Court entered the picture and required real trials.
However, in protecting the rights of these defendants — the Constitution protects all persons who have contact with the government, not just citizens — the courts have overlooked the right to a speedy trial. It is this salient failure that was manifested last week when the chief torturer “forgot” that he had already admitted under oath to threatening to slit the throat of his victim’s young son.
The lack of a speedy trial and the government’s cavalier attitude about it also were made known last week when the lead FBI investigator involved in the post-torture interrogations at Gitmo asserted 199 times in one day under oath that she could not recall what she saw and heard 20 years ago during interrogations in which she participated.
Here is the government’s problem: When the government plans to use the defendant’s own words as evidence against him and the defense counters that the words were extracted under or due to torture, the government must prove beyond a reasonable doubt and to a moral certainty — the highest standard of proof in American law, the same standard for proof of guilt in criminal cases — that the words were uttered voluntarily.
The court is addressing two categories of words — those articulated during torture, and those articulated afterward. Defense and government psychiatrists agree that victims of prolonged torture will say what they think the questioner wants to hear long after the torture has ended, just as victims during torture will say what they think the torturer wants to hear.
Yet, when the torturers have forgotten what they heard or said, when they have intentionally or negligently destroyed records of the torture, they have made it nearly impossible for the government to prove voluntariness beyond a reasonable doubt.
Evidence extracted during or from torture is inadmissible in all American courts, civilian and military. Torture is criminal under federal law and all 50 states’ laws, no matter its purpose or its location. Government lawyers are not permitted to whitewash torture without confronting serious ethical consequences.
The Bush/Cheney torture regime and its Devil’s Island at Gitmo are among the darkest events perpetrated by a modern American presidency. Far from preserving, protecting and defending the Constitution — as Bush and Cheney both swore to do — by destroying the free will and personhood of their victims, they have undermined the values upon which the Constitution is based.
Those values are articulated in the Declaration of Independence and in the Constitution’s Ninth Amendment. Taken together they reflect the unanimous public understanding of the revolutionary generation — those who fought the war for independence and those who crafted the founding documents — that our rights are natural to our humanity, they are indefeasible, and they are permanent. And the sole purpose of the rule of law is to protect our rights.
Why do we repose the safekeeping of our rights into the hands of those who destroy them?
To learn more about Judge Andrew Napolitano, visit https://JudgeNap.com.
COPYRIGHT 2024 ANDREW P. NAPOLITANO
March 3, 2024
Posted by aletho |
Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Subjugation - Torture, Timeless or most popular | United States |
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All breadline massacres are equal, Orwell might have written, whilst adding that some breadline massacres are more equal than others. Such a thought comes to mind after February 4, 2024, when a Ukrainian armed forces projectile killed 28 residents in the city of Lysychansk, Lugansk region, and wounded several dozen. The civilian victims were standing in line in front of a local bakery, intending to buy bread.
Those with a memory that goes back longer than fifteen minutes (unfortunately neither the majority nor even a significant minority nowadays) may recall that a similar incident took place in Sarajevo, during the war in Bosnia, on May 27, 1992. The victims of that incident were also waiting in line to buy bread when a projectile landed nearby and killed several dozen of them.
There is a huge difference in the way the self-styled “international community” reacted to these two similar and equally lethal events. The status and identity of the victims and of the suspected perpetrators may have shaped that unequal response. In Lysychansk the victims were residents of Donbass, former citizens of Ukraine who in a referendum voted overwhelmingly to join Russia. From the standpoint of the Kiev regime and its foreign sponsors that act of disobedience made them fair game for retribution. The fact that since 2014 they have been indiscriminate targets of bombardment by the Armed Forces of Ukraine, which so far has cost at least 14,000 civilian lives, does not count as an extenuating circumstance in their favour.
The perceived human worth and political status of the preferred Sarajevo victims in May of 1992 is defined by the fact that technically they were the cannon fodder of the Sarajevo regime, the side in the Bosnian civil war that was supported by NATO and the collective West, exactly as today the same actors are supporting, and systematically exculpating, the Kiev regime.
In consequence, and in complete contrast to the treatment of Lysychansk victims in 2024, the Sarajevo 1992 victims were copiously mourned by the collective West’s politicians and media machine, whilst the designated perpetrators were indignantly vilified. Threats were made to exact harsh retribution on the perpetrators, even before any investigation to establish the facts had been conducted. Those threats were promptly carried out by inducing the UN Security Council to pass Resolution 757, inflicting punishment on the neighbouring Federal Republic of Yugoslavia by imposing a total trade embargo, followed by what the New York Times called “the most sweeping sanctions in history.” Yugoslavia was selected for such punishment because of its support for the Bosnian Serbs, who were accused, although firm evidence was not presented, of maliciously firing the mortar shell which resulted in the fatalities.
The killings in Lysychansk, by marked contrast, have passed virtually without comment in the Western media. No indignation was displayed and the sparse mention of the tragedy was peppered with qualifiers such as “alleged,” inserted to put in doubt the incident’s veracity. No urgent sessions of the UN Security Council were convened to assess what had happened in Lysychansk nor were furious calls heard to impose punitive sanctions either on the direct perpetrators or their foreign sponsors, on the latter for having supplied the lethal devices that caused the death of civilians in that particular breadline. This time, Russia did not even bother to try to convene a Security Council session, obviously realising there was no point following the recent downing of its airplane that was transporting Ukrainian prisoners of war to be exchanged, after its request for a Security Council meeting was flatly denied by the French rotating president of that body.
Nor is the 2024 Lysychansk massacre likely to have any other repercussions comparable to what followed the similar incident which took place in Sarajevo in 1992. To this day there is no conclusive proof of where the mortar shell that struck the Sarajevo breadline originated, but circumstantial evidence strongly suggests that it may have been staged by Sarajevo authorities to provide a rationale for punishing their adversaries. Nevertheless, the massacre was featured in the Hague Tribunal indictment of Bosnian Serb President Radovan Karadžić. The embarrassing inadequacy of the evidence subsequently presented by the Prosecution caused that charge to be quietly passed over in the final verdict. There is no indication that the International Court of Justice, also in the Hague, is entertaining the thought of similarly calling the political and military leadership in Kiev to account for committing a strikingly analogous crime in Lysychansk, or even of undertaking a pro forma investigation to sort out what happened.
In reacting selectively to lethal wartime incidents the collective West has displayed a hypocrisy breath-taking in scope as it shamelessly and publicly adheres to double standards motivated entirely by utilitarian considerations and political favouritism. Even-handed respect for human life or international humanitarian law does not seem to play any role. Western policy and the stance of the media have followed exactly the analytical paradigm elaborated by Edward Herman and David Peterson in their seminal study The Politics of Genocide for the classification of atrocities and the distinction between “worthy and unworthy victims“:
“When we ourselves commit mass-atrocity crimes, the atrocities are Constructive, our victims are unworthy of our attention and indignation, and never suffer ‘genocide’ at our hands… But when the perpetrator of mass-atrocity crimes is our enemy or a state targeted by us for destabilization and attack, the converse is true. Then the atrocities are Nefarious and their victims worthy of our focus, sympathy, public displays of solidarity, and calls for inquiry and punishment.“ [P. 103]
The characteristic of Constructive atrocities (and presumably the mass killing of civilians in Lysychansk and more broadly in the Donbass fits that description) is that “the victims were rarely acknowledged, the crimes against them rarely punished (with only low-level personnel brought to book in well-publicised cases like My Lai)“ [p. 19] because “demonization of the real victims and atrocities management remain as important as ever and keeps the citizens of the imperial powers properly misinformed and supportive of bigtime atrocities.“ [P. 22]
“… [W]ith civilian killings largely kept off the official books,“ the authors continue, “and, even when acknowledged, treated tolerantly for these unworthy victims, such killings and bloodbaths … have been thoroughly normalized. “ [P. 37]
That, in sum, is the moral bookkeeping of the contemporary West.
February 10, 2024
Posted by aletho |
False Flag Terrorism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | NATO, Ukraine |
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