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America’s Plan B: Supporting Terrorists Till the Bitter End

By Martin Berger – New Eastern Outlook – 25.02.2016

At a time when the international community is looking forward to the possibility of putting an end to the bloody conflict in Syria that has dragged on for years, while putting their hopes behind the agreement that was achieved between the US and Russia on February 22 regarding the cessation of all hostile activities in Syria, certain forces in the United States carry on banging the war drum.

As it has been pointed out by the The Wall Street Journal :

Defense Secretary Ash Carter; Marine Gen. Joseph Dunford, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff; and Central Intelligence Agency Director John Brennan have voiced increasingly hawkish views toward Moscow in recent White House meetings, calling for new measures to “inflict real pain on the Russians,” a senior administration official said.

Moreover, those gentlemen are somehow convinced that Moscow will break the ceasefire, so they have formulated a “Plan B,” that will imply the strengthening of their support  to extremists and the introduction of new sanctions against Russia.

Of course, one could only be amazed by such behavior from Washington’s “hawks” if one did not take into consideration the evidence exposing their direct involvement in the continuous aggravation of the situation in Syria, which makes them directly responsible for the deaths of thousands of civilians. Those actions would for sure  present the perfect subject for a careful investigation of an international tribunal.

In particular, according to the facts presented by Daveed Gartenstein-Ross and Nathaniel Barr in the Daily Beast, the CIA is now assisting the terrorist organizations that the United States has been allegedly fighting for 15 years. This program was launched in 2013 to further aggravate the armed conflict in Syria. According to this publication, at least one of these CIA-backed groups severed its ties with the CIA and joined a listed terrroist-led coalition, Later, Associated Press reported that CIA-backed groups are gaining ground in Syria, “fighting alongside more extremist factions.”

The article concludes:

Analysis of the geography of “moderate” rebels’ gains during this period and reports from the battlefield demonstrate that CIA-backed groups collaborated with Jaysh al-Fateh, an Islamist coalition in which Jabhat al-Nusra—al Qaeda’s official Syrian affiliate—is a leading player…

and

At this point it is impossible to argue that U.S. officials involved in the CIA’s program cannot discern that Nusra and other extremists have benefited. And despite this, the CIA decided to drastically increase lethal support to vetted rebel factions following the Russian intervention into Syria in late September.

The authors are convinced that now it’s more important than ever to organize a public debate in the US about the role that the CIA played in the Syrian conflict and the considerable strengthening of radical groups.

It would be no less interesting to take a look at yet another investigation of the criminal role American intelligence agencies played in the inciting of the Syrian conflict that was published in The New York Times.  The authors, Mark Mazzetti and Matt Apuzzo described in detail how the United States was using Saudi money to provide radical militants in Syria with lethal weapons. Yet, this is but an episode in the continuous and vicious cooperation between Saudi and American security agencies that lasted for decades. The alliance was in place during the Iran-Contra scandal, the hidden fight against Soviet troops in Afghanistan and countless proxy wars in Africa.

These forces are actively involved in the Ukrainian conflict, openly opposing any form of peaceful settlement, pushing all the blame on Russia while Turkey is pulling the strings behind the stage and sending radical mercenaries to Ukraine.

Therefore, one shouldn’t be surprised that this Plan B will be put into action regardless of the facts surrounding how the parties actually observe the agreements reached or even before it’s imposed. It would be safe to assume that the CIA will be put in charge of the operation, funded with the money provided by Saudi Arabia, therefore we can await provocations and misleading articles about how it is Russia who is continuing with provocations, not these forces hidden in plain view.

That is why today the international community is tasked with preventing the failure of the recent agreement between the leaders of the US and Russia by exposing those “hawks”, namely the CIA, the Pentagon, and Saudi intelligence services.

February 25, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , , , , | Leave a comment

War crimes or peace dividends – Do we have a choice?

We can bomb the world to pieces but we cant bomb the world to peace b1d6c

By Mark Taliano | American Herald Tribune | February 20, 2016

One of the most important books about post 9/11 war and peace will likely be one of the least read books published in recent times.

War sells; peace does not.

War has its own Public Relations (PR) agencies, its own state-subsidized industry, and its own mythology. Peace does not.

The cowboy stories of “good guys” versus “bad guys” has been promulgated and exploited by the West and its agencies (and blindly accepted by media “consumers”) to such a degree, that the truth has literally been inverted. White is Black, and Black is White.

Not only is Canada at least partly responsible for mass murder, the total destruction of foreign countries, waves of refugees, but we are paying a price at home in terms of lost freedoms, and increasing impoverishment. Today’s Illegal wars of aggression are a plague on humanity that, at best, enrich the transnational oligarch class, as they reduce target countries to ashes.

But the lies are smothering the truth.

For example, we live in a world where, on the one hand, we profess to be fighting ISIS, even as sustainable evidence has shouted for years that ISIS and all the terrorists invading Syria, including the “moderates”, are Western proxies.

Prof. Tim Anderson clearly explains in the Preface to his recent e-book, The Dirty War On Syria:

“Although every war makes ample use of lies and deception, the dirty war on Syria has relied on a level of mass disinformation not seen in living memory.”

Our repeated failures to diagnose the root causes of our current dystopia is the basis of our degeneracy. And the root causes include psychological operations (psy ops).

The age-old military strategy of false flag terrorism has triggered our expertly disguised degeneracy. False flag terrorism involves the false attribution of a crime to a designated enemy, and most, if not all wars, are triggered by false flag terrorism.

Thus the book, Another French False Flag?|Bloody Tracks From Paris To San Bernardino, Edited and Introduced by Kevin Barrett should be a “must read” for anyone attempting to understand, and act on, the current state of permanent war afflicting humanity.

The book is actually a compilation of essays from a host of prominent public intellectuals, all of whom, with the notable exception of two, elaborate upon the tactics of false flag deceptions that are herding masses of people to embrace both racism, and permanent war:

  • Gilad Atzmon
  • Rasheedal Hajj abu Mutahhar
  • Ajamu Baraka
  • Kevin Barrett
  • Ole Dammegard
  • A. K. Dewdney
  • Philip Giraldi
  • Anthony Hall
  • Zaid Hamid
  • Imran N. Hosein
  • Kujahid Kamran
  • Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei
  • Barry Kissin
  • Nick Kollerstrom
  • Stephen Lendman
  • Henry Makow
  • Brandon Martinez
  • Gearoid O Colmain
  • Ken O’Keefe
  • James Petras
  • Paul Craig Roberts
  • Catherine Shakdam
  • Alain Soral
  • Robert David Steele
  • James Tracey
  • Eric Walberg

Another French False Flag?|Bloody Tracks From Paris To San Bernardino analyzes the root causes of synthetic terror events (i.e. false flags) and puts the onus on state authorities to prove the theorists wrong – which they have yet to do – through judicial public inquiries. Straw man arguments and “conspiracy theory” smears are becoming increasingly stale.

If the masses want peace and a “peace dividend”, where tax dollars are actually spent to improve their lives, local economies, and a return to democracy, then Barrett’s book is a “must read”.

If, on the other hand, we want the status quo of domestic police-state legislation, ruined economies,  destroyed countries, and an overseas holocaust perpetrated by a globalized cabal of criminal warmongers, then the book would be best left unopened.

Let’s hope that humanity’s better nature prevails. A first step is the truth.

February 20, 2016 Posted by | Book Review, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Militarism | , | Leave a comment

ANKARA: Syrian Kurds Neglect 1st Rule of Terrorism – To Claim Responsibility…

The Burning Blogger of Bedlam | February 19, 2016

As Ankara has again been hit by deadly terrorism, Turkey’s Prime Minister, Ahmet Davutoğlu, has been very quick to assign blame for Wednesday evening’s car bomb in Ankara that killed 28 people.

All the evidence, he said, suggested that the Syrian Kurdish People’s Protection Units (YPG) were responsible.

Davutoğlu’s declarations should be viewed with suspicion for a number of reasons, particularly the speed with which he announced that Turkey’s security services had uncovered the identity, birthplace, personal history and affiliations of the alleged bomber – literally within hours of the attack. Verdicts that are reached and announced that quickly are often tell-tale indicators of a pre-planned narrative and false-flag operation.

For one thing, we should wonder why Salih Necer, the 24-year-old Syrian national blamed for the explosion, was someone the authorities had so much information on that they were able to declare him the perpetrator so immediately. If there was that much information on him, how was he able to carry out the attack in the first place?

Furthermore, both the Kurdish YPG and the PKK have denied any involvement in the attack. The PYD leader has also said his group was not involved.

That’s always a problem with these narratives; the first rule of terrorism is to claim responsibility. That’s the whole POINT of a terrorist attack – to claim responsibility. But all of the Kurdish groups – who may or may not be ‘terrorists’, depending on where you stand – have entirely denied involvement.

What this attack smells of is deep-state, false-flag terrorism to further an obvious agenda. Aside from the fact that the Turkish state has conducted false-flag terror attacks in the country before (including the nonsensical business of blaming Kurdish groups for attacks on Kurdish rallies), the Turkish government is currently trying to re-establish justifications for its attacks on Syrian Kurds across the border. It is also quite possibly trying to establish justifications for an invasion into Syria. Therefore a deadly terror attack by Syrian Kurds comes at the perfect time to both justify Turkey’s existing activities and to justify further activities that are likely imminent (see more on that here).

Turkish violations of Syria’s sovereignty have become so frequent and brazen that it has prompted Damascus to petition the UN to investigate the Turkish state’s actions. Further to Turkish military shelling of both Syrian Kurdish fighters and Syrian regime targets in recent days, Reuters reported that “the Syrian government says Turkish forces were believed to be among 100 gunmen it said entered Syria on Saturday accompanied by 12 pick-up trucks mounted with heavy machine guns, in an ongoing supply operation to insurgents fighting Damascus.”

And subsequent to that, it is reported that at least 500 more ‘rebels’ crossed the Turkish border into Syria on Wednesday – the same day as the Ankara bombing. They included rebels as well as Islamist fighters.

In its harsh campaign against both Syrian Kurds and the Kurds in southern Turkey, as well as against the government of Bashar Assad, the Turkish state needs ongoing justifications like this latest attack in Ankara – this is mostly in order to validate its behaviour, not so much domestically as to its international allies and critics.

Official talk also currently indicates Turkey wants to establish a “humanitarian zone” inside northern Syria. The stated reason for this is to protect refugees and prevent them from continuing the mass exodus; but it’s also worth noting that the desired establishment of these zones is entirely in keeping with the buffer zones or “safe zones” envisioned in the Brookings Insitution policy plan for Syria, the primary purpose of which is to create safe zones for armed rebels and anti-government fighters in Syria; which is perhaps all the more urgent now, as rebel groups in northern Syria are crumbling under the assaults from the Syrian Army and its Russian allies.

But the Turkish state’s problem, like that of Saudi Arabia, is that it appears to be hardheadedly committed to a singular outcome that it is unwilling to waver from or compromise on.

Warnings that Turkey, like its neighbour Syria, is in danger of sliding into its own civil war – one that could destabilise Europe even more than Syria has – should be of serious concern to the international community, the EU and Turkey’s allies.

As Turkish journalist Metin Munir correctly forecast back in August 2012, ‘Whichever way Syria goes, Turkey is in big trouble. Turkey’s active engagement in trying to depose Bashar al-Assad has been the country’s worst foreign-policy blunder since its independence’.

February 19, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , | Leave a comment

Visible thermite explosion – WTC2 – 9/11

February 18, 2016 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Turkey blames Syrian Kurds for Ankara blast, they deny responsibility, point to ISIS

RT | February 18, 2016

Turkish Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu has accused forces linked with the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia of the terrorist attack in Ankara on Wednesday. Ankara promised to continue to shell the YPG, with the Syrian Kurds denying all allegations and saying Islamic State is behind the attack.

In a live television speech, Prime Minister Davutoglu said Turkey has identified the perpetrator of the Ankara bombing attack as Salih Necer, born in northern Syria’s Amuda province in 1992. He added the suspect has links to the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia. Davutoglu added the alleged attacker received assistance from the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK), which is outlawed by Ankara.

Davutoglu said the attack showed the Syrian Kurdish YPG is a terrorist organization and that Turkey expects cooperation from its allies against the group.

“In light of information we have obtained, it has been clearly identified that this attack was carried out by the members of a terrorist organization inside Turkey, together with a YPG member individual who had crossed from Syria,” Davutoglu said, according to Reuters.

“Of the 28 people who lost their lives, 27 are members of the Turkish Armed Forces and one is a civilian,” the PM said, referring to Wednesday attack.

He added that nine people have been detained following the attack in Ankara.

Kurdish self-defense forces did not organize the attack in Ankara, Kurdish Democratic Union (PYD) chief Salih Muslim Muhammad told RIA Novosti.

“This is absolutely not true. Kurds have nothing to do with what happened in Ankara. What happened there is related to Turkey’s fight with Islamic State [IS formerly ISIS/ISIL], whose members live in Turkey.”

He also denied claims that the armed YPG wing was firing into Turkey.

“I can assure you that not even one bullet is fired by the YPG into Turkey,” Salih Muslim told Reuters. “They don’t consider Turkey as an enemy.”

Turkey has pledged to continue to shell positions of the Syrian Kurdish YPG militia, Prime Minister Ahmet Davutoglu stated on Thursday.

Davutoglu claimed Ankara had evidence revealing where the militants came from and how they organized themselves, and that this information would be soon shared with other countries.

He also warned other nations against throwing their weight behind “an enemy of Turkey,” saying that this would risk those countries’ status as allies.

“Just like Al-Qaeda or Daesh [Arabic pejorative for IS] do not have seats at the table, the YPG, which is a terrorist organization, cannot have one,” he reportedly noted.

He also mentioned that senior members of the Kurdistan Workers Party (PKK) had been killed overnight in Turkish airstrikes on their camps in northern Iraq. … Full article

February 18, 2016 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment

An Improbable Solution

Delusions on Syria prevail in official Washington

By Philip Giraldi • Unz Review • February 2, 2016

Tulsi Gabbard is one brave Congresswoman. She has challenged her party and the president saying that it’s time for Washington to halt its “illegal, counter-productive war to overthrow the Syrian government of Assad. I don’t think Assad should be removed. If Assad is removed and overthrown, ISIS, al Qaeda, Al Nustra, these Islamic extremist groups will walk straight in and take over all of Syria … they will be even stronger.”

Indeed, Washington’s senseless policy in Syria has been hanging out there like overripe fruit for quite some time with the mainstream media instead marching at lockstep to the tune being whistled by a large disengaged and unaccountable White House. Gabbard might go one step further to ask why Syria is the way it is in the first place since that would question Administration priorities under Democrats as well as Republicans, both of which have emphasized eliminating al-Assad for no conceivable reason that has anything to do with actual American interests.

Much has been made of Washington groupthink, which is the concept that when a meeting of senior staffers is held everyone will veer towards a point of view that is being espoused by whoever called the meeting, be they the president or one of the cabinet secretaries. It is also reflected in the output of foundations and think tanks, which rely on government access as well as funding from beneficiaries of the war economy. Current groupthink, rejected by Gabbard, is that removing al-Assad is somehow an essential precondition for any settlement of Syria’s torment.

Another prevalent groupthink that is sometimes linked to the Syria issue is that Russia’s Vladimir Putin is somehow a reincarnation of Josef Stalin and that today’s Russia is actually the Soviet Union, ready, willing and able to expand into Eastern Europe and the Middle East. Though considerable opposition to those two viewpoints can be noted in the alternative media it is not listened to in the White House.

Yet another kind of groupthink prevails within the government bureaucracies themselves, compounding the problem. From my own experience, analysts at CIA very often were scrupulous in their judgements on developments overseas but a funny thing would happen at Agency headquarters as information made its way from the ground floor up to the seventh floor where the political appointee mandarins would preside. It would become politicized and any viewpoints diametrically opposed to what prevailed at the consumer level in Congress and in the White House would be mitigated or even excised. Such is the nature of bureaucracy, which exists to support the status quo and inter alia requires a satisfied audience to prosper.

And the press fails to do its part to correct the listing ship. The rubbish that appears in the mainstream media under the rubric of “informed opinion” bears a large part of the blame because it continues to create a mythical magical kingdom in which Americans all wear white hats and go about slaying dragons because it is good for the whole wide world, even if those heathens don’t appreciate it. That is what Americans like to think about themselves apparently, all contrary evidence notwithstanding.

A piece on Syria that appeared in the Washington Post before Christmas exemplifies precisely what is wrong with the punditry that shapes the narrative that appears to drive the national consensus on what to do about terrorism and related issues. It is “Obama and Kerry’s wishful thinking on Syria,” by Frederic C. Hof, currently a senior fellow at the Atlantic Council’s Rafik Hariri Center. Hof was an army officer who had extensive service in the Middle East. He is, somewhat uncharacteristically, an actual expert on the Arab world and speaks Arabic. He joined the State Department in 2009 after an interlude in the private sector as the President and CEO of AALC, limited company, an international business consulting and project finance firm formerly known as Armitage Associates LC. In 2012 Hof served as President Barack Obama’s Special Adviser for Transition in Syria.

Hof is a bright and highly competent guy whose professional life has been closely linked to the U.S. government version of reality, a reality in which Washington calls the shots and is empowered to “draw red lines.” Relative to the U.S., all other governments are either client states or adversaries who can be disregarded or bullied into compliance. In October he wrote: “With regard to ISIL, a professional ground combat component provided by regional powers is desperately needed to work with coalition aircraft to sweep this abomination from Syria and permit a governmental alternative to the Assad regime to take root inside Syria. With central and eastern Syria free of both the regime and ISIL, an all-Syrian national stabilization force can be built. Western desires for a negotiated end to the Syrian crisis would be based, under these circumstances, on more than a wish and a hope. The United States should neither seek nor shy away from confrontation with Russian forces in Syria. Moscow will not like it if its client’s ability to perform mass murder is impeded. Russia will not be pleased if ISIL, its false pretext for military intervention in Syria, is swept from the table. Ideally, Russia will not elect to escort regime aircraft on their mass homicide missions. And it would be difficult for even Russian President Vladimir Putin to articulate outrage if ISIL is crushed militarily. But if Russia seeks out armed confrontation with the United States in Syria, it would be a mistake for Washington to back down. People like Putin will push until they hit steel. And he will not stop in Syria.”

The op-ed is saying several things, which most likely reflect the Washington consensus on foreign policy. First, it advocates a U.S. leading role in Syria in support of a currently non-existent and unlikely to exist regional force to fight ISIS thereby creating an alternative government enabling the removal of al-Assad from power and winding up with a “Western desired” democracy. Second, it characterizes Russia as supporting “mass homicide” in Syria and urges the U.S. to confront it militarily if necessary as Moscow is intent on expansion. That means that Syria somehow has become a vital American interest, important enough to go to war with Russia.

Hof’s more recent foray in the Post makes a number of similar points. First, that the Syrian civil war cannot end as long as al-Assad remains in power is described as an “objective truth” that adversaries like Russia and Iran refuse to accept. Al-Assad is described as a “barrel bomber in chief.” Iran, in particular, should “grasp the chance to become a normal state.” Hof likens the Syrian, Iranian and Russian leadership to Hitler thirty years ago in that they are being given a pass by the West and avers that they “know that Assad is the single greatest obstacle to a united front against Islamic State.” Iran is motivated by propping up a client state while Russia is into the game desirous of “humiliating the United States by preserving Assad.” The op-ed goes on to claim that delaying action for thousands of Syrians will mean “people slaughtered, maimed, stampeded, starved, tortured and raped by Assad’s people” and reiterates the call for “professional ground forces… under U.S. command” to deal simultaneously with both al-Assad and ISIS.

Given all of the above, it is no wonder that many of us find American foreign and national security policy incomprehensible. First of all, by what Act of God does the United States have a Special Adviser for Transition in Syria? Why does that position even exist? How would the White House react if the Chinese or Russians were to create a similar bureaucracy tasked with subverting the manifestly corrupt U.S. institutions and even arming “rebels” to do the job?

One suspects that antagonism towards Damascus is rooted in the fact that the United States government have been working hard in a neoconservative driven effort supported by Israel to subvert the Syrian regime ever since President George W. Bush signed the Syria Accountability Act in 2004. Al-Assad’s alleged use of chemical weapons on his own people is frequently cited as a justification for armed intervention, but there is considerable controversy over the incident at Ghouta in 2013, with many observers believing that the attack was staged “false flag” by the rebels possibly aided by the Turkish intelligence service to implicate the Syrian government. And it is easy to forget that before Syria under al-Assad became an enemy it was considered friendly, having participated in the U.S. led coalition that ousted Saddam Hussein from Kuwait in 1991 and also having supported Washington’s counter-terrorism “rendition” program post-9/11.

It is simplistic to see everything as a problem created by the Syrian government, Russia and Iran, all of whom have been described as “adversaries” of the United States even though they are actively fighting ISIS. That label would be comforting if one were a reader of the Rupert Murdoch media but Tehran’s and Moscow’s desire to stabilize the Syrian government position as a prelude to negotiations for a settlement is not exactly wrongheaded, as Congresswoman Gabbard has noted. And any narrative’s thrust more-or-less depends on where one starts. To my mind the blame for the mess in Syria and Iraq coupled with the rise of ISIS should be put squarely where it belongs: at the White House under our two most recent presidents and their advisers. The rot began in 2003 when Iraq was invaded. At that time both Baghdad and Damascus were quiet, stable and terrorist free even if they were not democracies. Neither threatened the United States and neither threatens the U.S. to this day, which makes one wonder at why al-Assad has been elevated to enemy-in-chief status by the White House and media.

The inside the beltway dismissal of Iran and Russia is classic Washington groupthink. Iran may indeed not be a “normal” nation, but that just might be due to threats against it emanating from the United States and Israel since the foundation of the Islamic Republic in 1978. We are currently witnessing the U.S. Congress and Israel cranking up the pressure to defeat implementation of the nuclear program agreement recently signed with Tehran, an effort that suggests that no matter what it does or doesn’t do Iran will never be seen as normal or even acceptable by most of the power-brokers in Washington.

And the denigration of Russia is another given, complete with the often heard but ridiculous claim that Moscow is out to “humiliate” the U.S., which often comes coupled with a reference to Hitler. Russia may have a government that is not to our liking but it has a serious and legitimate interest in preventing the spillover of Islamic insurgency into its own heavily Muslim southern federated states. Creating a cartoon image of Vladimir Putin as someone who has to be taught a lesson even though he has in fact been a largely realistic, restrained and rational player in his foreign policy, is not a serious argument. Stating that Russia is only interested in propping up a client and enabling mass murder is both sloppy and does not allow for other considerations that might actually be both sensible and legitimate while a willingness to confront major power Russia militarily over unimportant Syria is something closely akin to madness. And attributing all the mayhem in Syria to its government is similarly myopic in that it ignores the other players on the ground, to include groups supported by America’s nominal Arab and Turkish allies that the United States calls “terrorist.”

The apparent willingness among policy makers to put U.S. troops on the ground in Syria against both its government and ISIS flies against all reason given the poor track record of White House initiated military interventions over the past fifteen years. The creation of a “stabilization force” without any current Syrian government participation is laughable as even President Obama has conceded that the identification and deployment of “moderate rebels” is a bit of a fantasy. And Syria is not taking place in a vacuum. Afghanistan is rapidly sliding back under Taliban control, Iraq is chaotic and its closest friend is Iran while Libya is anarchical. Another intervention? No thanks.

February 2, 2016 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, Timeless or most popular | , , , | Leave a comment

9/11 In Perspective

None of these buildings collapsed into their own footprint at near-freefall acceleration, so why did the World Trade Center buildings?

January 31, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, Video | | Leave a comment

Paris airport workers protest after ‘fake’ bombs found in US embassy parcel

RT | January 28, 2016

FedEx staff at Charles de Gaulle Airport in Paris have complained about “irresponsible” security drills after finding explosives in a ripped package in transit from the US to Tunisia. After the bombs turned out to be fake, airport personnel were told they were part of US anti-terrorist exercises.

A pressure cooker with nuts and bolts was discovered by employees of FedEx, the American courier service, at the airport on January 22, French media reported Thursday, citing sources.

After further inspection, the company staff also found other packages with devices that resembled explosives and detonators, said Frederic Petit, FedEx employees’ representative for the CGT union.

The employees immediately called police, saying that there was “imminent danger” at the airport, Petit added. The officers arrived with dogs and X-ray machines to inspect the devices.

But a security source at the airport said the devices were decoys bound for the US embassy in Tunisia as a part of training exercise.

“This type of delivery is not common, but sometimes takes place,” the source told AFP. “This is just the first time that a package has been opened.”

However, this explanation didn’t satisfy FedEx employees in the wake of the recent deadly attacks in French capital in November.

“No one was aware of this cargo,” said Petit, adding that these drills are “irresponsible, especially in the very state of emergency” declared after the attacks in Paris when Islamic State terrorists killed 130 people.

FedEx workers have reportedly decided to call for a prohibition on sending such parcels without notice, due to the security situation in France.

January 28, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , | Leave a comment

‘Jihadi Jack’ denies joining ISIS, calls reports ‘awkward’

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Jack Letts © Amaze with our planet / YouTube
RT | January 26, 2016

A 20-year-old boy accused of being the first white Briton to join Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS) has distanced himself from allegations suggesting he is a terrorist, calling the claims “awkward.”

More than one year ago, Jack Letts – dubbed ‘Jihadi Jack’ – converted to Islam and traveled to Syria. He has since been accused of fighting for IS, but his family has dismissed these reports, insisting he is carrying out “humanitarian work.”

It is also claimed that Letts is now living under the name Abu Mohammed and has a wife and son.

‘Lies’

In private Facebook messages seen by the Independent, Letts denied the claims and said: “It’s sort of awkward when the media thinks your ISIS and you’re not.”

“Maybe they got bored worrying about what colour socks certain celebrities wear and took out the frustration on me? [sic]” he wrote on the social media site.

The suspected terrorist then went on to accuse the media of publishing lies about him because of his faith.

“The formula with the media is simple: English guy became Muslim + went to the Middle East + followed Islam = ISIS + eats babies x evil,” he said.

“It doesn’t help, admittedly, that bare [lots of] different people have used my fb account [some of whom are extreme etc.. and only got my password through one guy I stupidly trusted].”

Responding to allegations that he has been in contact with Omar Hussain, the former supermarket worker from High Wycombe who left Britain to fight for Isis in 2014, Letts said: “I just read that I met with some guy called umar in some article. First time I learn this amongst the other lies [sic].”

Mocking tabloid newspaper reports, he added: “One of the funniest articles was the one were the last sentence was ‘Jack Letts and ISIS have been contacted for comment. Like me and ISIS have like a shared office in which we receive requests for comment and were still thinking about whether to reply or not.”

‘Ridiculous’

Earlier this week, Letts’ mother Sally dismissed reports suggesting her son is a terrorist, saying they are “absolutely ridiculous.”

“He is not a member of ISIS, he is very probably not the first white convert that has gone out there. He does not have a son and is not known as Abu Mohammed,” she told the Evening Standard.

“We spoke to him yesterday and he said he had never had a weapon in his life. He went out there for humanitarian purposes to help kids in Syrian refugee camps.

“It is not as if he is hiding – he tells us what he has for breakfast. All this is absolutely ridiculous, it is shocking,” his mother continued.

‘Did talk passionately about ISIS’

However, according to the Mail Online, Letts is a frontline fighter for the terrorist group.

One anonymous source, believed to be a friend of Letts, claimed he started to “talk passionately about ISIS” after he befriended a group of Muslim boys at school.

“He started befriending a group of Muslim boys at the school and that exposed him to Islam. I noticed he started becoming very preachy and was using Arabic, which was strange because I only ever saw him as a typical Oxford boy,” the source told the paper.

“He did talk passionately about ISIS, but I always assumed he meant he opposed them, not that he would join them.”

Some 800 British citizens are thought to have traveled to Iraq and Syria and there are growing fears about them returning to the UK to plot terror attacks in Britain.

Earlier this month, Home Secretary Theresa May announced nearly 400 of the 800 Britons who traveled to Syria since the start of the civil war have returned.

“Since the start of the conflict in Syria, more than 800 people from the UK who are of national security concern are thought to have travelled to the region, and we believe that around half of those have returned. Those who have travelled include young women and families,” May told the House of Commons.

‘Great need to strengthen EU’s response to terror’

In a report published on Monday, International police agency Europol warned that IS is preparing to bring mayhem to the streets of Europe, similar to the suicide bombings and shootings which left 130 people dead in Paris in November.

Apart from the jihadist group’s main bases in Syria, it has “smaller-scale training camps in the EU and Balkan [region],” Europol found.

The report says there is “every reason” to expect another IS-led terror attack in the coming months, as the group has a new “combat style capability.”

“There is every reason to expect that IS, IS-inspired terrorists or another religiously inspired terrorist group will undertake a terrorist attack somewhere in Europe again, intended to cause mass casualties amongst the civilian population,” Europol said in the report.

In a statement, Europol stressed that the threat of further terror attacks in Europe remains high, but added that there is a “great need” within the EU to “strengthen our response to terror.”

The publication of Europol’s report comes after the release of IS’ new propaganda video, showing the alleged Paris attackers participating in murders in a desert.

January 26, 2016 Posted by | Civil Liberties, Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Islamophobia | , , , , , | Leave a comment

Phony Global ISIS Threat

By Stephen Lendman | January 26, 2016

ISIS and similar terrorist groups are US creations, used as imperial foot soldiers in Syria, Iraq, Libya and elsewhere.

A video attributed to ISIS warned of attacks on US and European cities, saying “revenge has started… blood will flow. There will be no safety in this world from our guns and bullets and explosives.”

Nothing suggests it’s credible. Any nation, organization or individuals can produce videos saying anything.

ISIS claimed responsibility for last November’s Paris attacks. Evidence strongly indicates state-sponsored false flag responsibility – Western fear-mongering to enlist support for endless wars and homeland crackdowns on fundamental freedoms, a sinister US-led plot.

No evidence points to ISIS’ involvement in what happened. Current threats attributed to the group, claiming intended expanded global attacks, focusing on Europe, reflect state-sponsored deception.

Western officials and echo-chamber media are responsible for willful deceit, including Europol (European police) director Rob Wainwright.

On Monday, he claimed ISIS “developed a new combat style capability to carry out a campaign of large-scale terrorist attacks on a global stage” – no credible evidence supporting his claim.

State-sponsored fear-mongering substitutes for hard facts. Claiming ISIS intends going “global” is propaganda rubbish. Endless repetition gets most people to believe it.

Wainwright’s claim appeared strategically timed to coincide with an alleged ISIS video, again claiming responsibility for last November’s Paris attacks – showing them participating in murders at an undisclosed location, allegedly before entering Europe ahead of the Paris false flag, CIA operatives and their French counterparts likely sharing joint responsibility.

Europol’s report was willful deception, fear-mongering, claims without independently verifiable evidence, saying: “IS is preparing more terrorist attacks, including more ‘Mumbai-style’ attacks (an earlier false flag) to be executed in member states of the EU, and in France in particular, (mainly aimed at) soft targets” – for greater fear-mongering impact.

ISIS’ strength depends entirely on US-led NATO, Saudi-led rogue Arab states and Israeli support.

Europol claiming it developed an “external action command,” able to conduct “special forces-style attacks” has no credibility given its dependence on nations indicated as targets for support.

Headline-making “terrorist” attacks invariably are state-sponsored, groups or individuals named as perpetrators having nothing to do with them, patsy victims of Western imperialism.

Most ordinary people in allegedly targeted countries are out-of-touch, uninformed, indifferent, and easily duped by state-sponsored propaganda – raging to support imperial lawlessness.

Stephen Lendman can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

His new book as editor and contributor is titled “Flashpoint in Ukraine: US Drive for Hegemony Risks WW III.”

January 26, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism | , , , | Leave a comment

Visas for Al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts That Rocked the World

By Nikolai Gorshkov – Sputnik – 26.01.2016

The New York Times has exposed a long-standing CIA partnership with Saudi Arabia, whose latest endeavor is a program to arm Syrian rebels authorized by President Obama in early 2013. Under the “Timber Sycamore” program the Saudis provide funding and purchase weapons for Syrian rebels, while the CIA trains them in secret camps in Jordan.

The Saudi-CIA partnership dates back many years, and involves the British secret service. During the years when Ronald Reagan was president of the United States, the Saudis poured money into the Afghan mujahedeen as it fought Soviet forces, matching U.S. funding dollar for dollar. The mujahedeen funding was run through CIA-managed bank accounts in Switzerland. Those accounts were said to be part of the “Al Yamamah” program, dating to 1985, in which the British and the Saudis used an oil-for-arms barter deal to create massive offshore “black” accounts, including in the Cayman Islands, to bankroll and arm a wide array of global insurgencies. These accounts provided a major source of funds in the Afghan war against the Soviets.

This revelation by NYT adds additional weight to the allegations made in a book by Mike Springmann, former head of the US visa section in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, from1987-1989. In Visas for al-Qaeda: CIA Handouts that Rocked the World, Springmann details how, “during the 1980s, the CIA recruited and trained Muslim operatives to fight the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Later, the CIA would move those operatives from Afghanistan to the Balkans, and then to Iraq, Libya, and Syria, traveling on illegal US visas. These US-backed and trained fighters would morph into an organization that is synonymous with jihadist terrorism: al-Qaeda.”

In an exclusive interview with Sputnik News, Springmann shared his first-hand experience of issuing US visas to would-be terrorists, a flagrant violation of US law.

“I know. I was there. I issued the visas,” Springmann told Sputnik News.

Upon his arrival at Jeddah, Springmann found that, as a visa officer, he was expected to winnow over a hundred applications a day, separating them into “issuances,” “refusals,” and what he later termed, “free passes for CIA agents.”

“One day,” Springmann recalls, “Eric Qualkenbush, the [then] CIA Base Chief, stopped me while I was walking on the consulate’s huge compound. He had a request. Could I issue a visa to one of his agents, an Iranian whose family owned an Oriental rug store? Eric said, ‘Mike, make it look good (wink, wink). We want him in Washington for consultations.’”

Springmann told Sputnik News he had almost daily battles with Jay Freres, the Consul General, along with several other CIA officials, who would consistently demand visas for people that law and regulation would ordinarily require him to refuse. He also had running fights with applicants who told him to approve their visas or they would complain to Freres, and have him overruled.

Most of these that Springmann now considers ‘unsavory types’ did, in fact, receive visas to go to the USA for training, debriefing, and other purposes. In enabling their passage, American government officials violated the Immigration and Nationality Act, as well as many regulations codified in the State Department’s Foreign Affairs Manual, says Springmann. As a purported guardian of US immigration principles, he objected to the blatant violations of law and regulation. His objections fell on deaf ears.

Springmann details that eventually he came to realize that his Consular Section job duty in Jeddah was primarily to secure visas for CIA agents, i.e., foreigners recruited by American case officers.

“As I later learned to my dismay, the visa applicants were recruits for the war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union’s armed forces. Further, as time went by, the fighters, trained in the United States, went on to other battlefields: Yugoslavia, Iraq, Libya, and Syria.”

But why would the CIA rely on a “genuine” state department visa employee when they could have easily planted one of their own into the Consular Section? According to Springmann, “at Jeddah, to the best of my knowledge, out of some twenty US citizens assigned to the consulate, only three people, including myself, worked for the Department of State. The rest were CIA or NSA officials or their spouses.”

Ignorant Pawns

The explanation to the above question was simple if cynical, Springmann told Sputnik News : it had to be an arms-length operation, to avoid exposure of the CIA program and to blame visa violations, if they became known, on “incompetent” office clerks, including himself.

The Department of State and the Central Intelligence Agency collaborated in sending innocent workers like Springmann to Jeddah, a location that handled some forty-five-thousand visa applications annually. If a visa officer processed the paperwork and didn’t ask awkward questions about the applicants, that officer would keep his job. If the visa officer strictly followed the law, resisting illegal pressure to overlook those who did not have a legitimate reason for traveling to the United States, that employee “wasn’t with the program” and could be exposed to dismissal as an incompetent, an occurrence that eventually happened to the author.

“My name was on the visa plate that stamped applications to enter the United States, making me personally responsible for my actions,” he said. “In our spook-ridden Jeddah consulate, I sometimes found it was a daily battle to do my job,” he remarked, offering examples of two such battles.

“Two Pakistanis came to me for a visa. According to their story, they were traveling on a Commerce Department– organized trade mission to an automotive parts exhibition in the United States. However, they couldn’t name the trade show or identify the city in which it would be held. I denied their visa request. Within sixty minutes, Paul Arvid Tveit called and demanded visas for these same Pakistanis. I explained the reasons for my refusal, citing § 214(b) of the Immigration and Nationality Act and the Foreign Affairs Manual. Ignoring the law and regulation, Tveit went to Justice Stevens and the visas were issued.”

“Then, a political officer demanded a visa for a Sudanese who was a refugee from his own country and unemployed in Saudi Arabia. Following the letter and the spirit of the law, I refused. She immediately went to Justice, and a visa was issued. When I later asked Justice why he authorized a visa to someone with no ties to the Sudan or the kingdom, he replied simply ‘national security,’ a phrase without legal definition.”

The dubious games played by the CIA in the name of “national security” are common in many Foreign Service posts, Springmann contends. “In a subsequent conversation with Celerino Castillo, a former Drug Enforcement Agency official, I learned that the CIA’s involvement in the visa process was a successful program of long-standing in Latin America, he stated, adding that, it was also “I presume, a model for Saudi Arabia. South of the border the Agency would slip passports and applications from its contacts into packages sent to the local US consulate or embassy by travel agents. Sandwiched between legitimate applications, ‘Agency assets’ would not be carefully examined by consular officers and would thus get a free ride to the United States.”

A Visa for the Blind Sheikh

Likewise, Springmann says, it was a CIA “consular officer” at Khartoum in Sudan who issued a tourist visa to Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, later linked to the World Trade Center bombing in 1993. The “blind” Sheikh had been on a State Department terrorist watch list when he was issued the visa, entering the United States by way of Saudi Arabia, Pakistan, and Sudan in 1990.

Springmann believes the sheikh attempted to obtain a US visa from him via a proxy. The author states that he turned the application down.

The former state department employee pointed out to his superiors that, according to US law, passport and visa crimes are federal offenses, punishable by up to 10 years in prison and a fine of $250,000. The maximum prison sentence is increased to 15 years if the offense is connected to drug trafficking, and to 20 years if connected to terrorism.

In a chance meeting, Joe Trento, a journalist at the Public Education Center in Washington, DC, put into perspective for Sprigmann what had been really going on with the CIA in Jeddah.

“It wasn’t a garden variety visa fraud as I had once thought, but something much more serious: it was a ‘visas for terrorists program,’ set up to recruit and train (in the United States) murderers, war criminals, and human rights violators for combat in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. These men became the founding members of al-Qaeda, the Arab-Afghan Legion.”

“Former President Jimmy Carter and his National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Kazimierz Brzezinski, began the campaign to assemble these goons to engage in blowing things up and shooting things down, preferably with Soviet soldiers inside.”

But the Saudis and other regional players in the “jihad” did not want those “saddle-tramps” on their soil, fearing that they would eventually use their newly acquired skills to promote “regime change” at home. That explains the reason many of these recruits were sent to the US, Springmann says, where there were up to 52 induction and training centers, the primary one in Brooklyn, New York City.

During his two years in Jeddah, Springmann says, he wrangled daily with intelligence officers who staffed and ran the US consulate.

“These were the people who arranged for recruiting and training what were then the mujahedeen, who later became al-Qaeda, who then transformed themselves into ISIS. I saw, but didn’t recognize, their start at Jeddah. We’ve all seen their later development and what happens when the intelligence services control foreign policy and diplomacy: the people they assembled aided the breakup of Yugoslavia, the destruction of Iraq, the collapse of Libya, and the savaging of Syria.”

Springmann attempted to protest the illegal visa practices at the highest levels of government for over 20 years, but was repeatedly stonewalled. During that time, he says, the Arab-Afghan Legion, created by the CIA to undermine the Soviet Union, has been marching from strength to strength.

January 26, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

IRA terrorist behind 1993 Belfast bombing was ‘MI5 informant’ – leaked documents

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Aftermath of the Shankill Road Bombing © Wikipedia
RT | January 26, 2016

Northern Ireland’s police watchdog is investigating allegations that the IRA operative who planned the 1993 Shankhill Road bombing was an MI5 informant who gave intelligence that could have helped security forces stop the atrocity.

Nine civilians, including two children, were killed in the attack on a fish shop in Belfast’s loyalist heartland in 1993. The bombing became one of the most notorious atrocities of The Troubles, prompting a wave of sectarian revenge murders in its wake.

Inside job?

Some 23 years after the attack, allegations have surfaced that sensitive documents stolen by the Irish Republican Army in a 2002 raid on the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) headquarters in Castlereagh show that the terrorist who planned the bombing was a British intelligence agent codenamed “AA.”

Excerpts of the stolen files indicate that AA had extensively briefed his Special Branch or MI5 handlers on the objective and timing of the bombing, which had been designed to stoke sectarian anger by murdering the leader of loyalist terror group the Ulster Defense Association (UDA).

UDA chiefs had planned to meet above the fish shop on the day of the attack, but postponed at short notice. Although they escaped the blast unharmed, it killed Protestant shoppers and one of the bombers, IRA member Thomas Begley.

The initial plan had been to light a fuse just long enough for civilians to be evacuated from the site and for the bombers, who were disguised as delivery men, to flee. But the bomb exploded as Begley approached the shop’s counter amid a group of customers.

Establishing a motive

The allegations concerning AA, which were first reported by the Belfast-based newspaper Irish News, raise the question of precisely what British intelligence officers knew in the run-up to the atrocity.

Observers suggest UK intelligence officers either allowed a botched bombing of civilians to play out or failed to intervene quickly enough to stop the atrocity.

The police ombudsman for Northern Ireland, Dr Michael Maguire, has confirmed he is examining the allegation.

“We have received a complaint. It centers on two concerns: Did the RUC have information which would have allowed them to prevent the bombing and was the subsequent investigation compromised; [and] did the police ‘fail to deliver justice to the families of those who lost their lives in the bombing?’” he said.

“We will seek to establish if this is something we should investigate, and if so, when we could begin this work.”

History of collusion

The police ombudsman’s inquiry began after relative of one of the Shankill Road bombing’s victims approached the watchdog, asking about AA.

The Castlereagh documents are believed to reveal that AA was passing information back to his handlers on details of the IRA plot to target senior UDA members, including the location and date of the bombing.

The documents stolen by the IRA in its raid on the RUC Castlereagh offices gave the codenames of British agents inside Republican terrorist groups, and a year later the IRA “stood down” one of its operatives, which it identified as AA after comparing the RUC documents with its own intelligence.

Investigators examining the case will look to ascertain whether information from the British agent could have been given to the UDA leadership to make sure their meeting was rescheduled and whether there is evidence to show British intelligence operatives allowed the attack to go ahead to protect AA as their source.

Relatives of the bombing’s victims have called for a full investigation.

Charlie Butler, who lost three relatives in the Shankill Road bombing, said he and other families would be “devastated” if the allegations are accurate.

“Collusion is not a nice word for anyone but when it is collusion with innocent people losing their lives to protect someone else there has to be a line drawn to say that is wrong,” he told BBC News.

“[The security forces] were there to do a job, to protect people. If they knew about [the bombing] then they should pay.”

The claims are the latest in a long line of allegations of collusion between terror groups and security forces on both sides of The Troubles.

In addition to the case involving AA, Northern Ireland’s police watchdog is investigating murders in the 1980s and 1990s of at least 20 alleged IRA informers whose family members believe they were used as scapegoats to cover the tracks of the security forces’ prominent IRA agents.

January 26, 2016 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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