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Friday the Thirteenth in Paris and the Ugly Truth of State Terror

By John Chuckman | Aletho News | November 19, 2015

Mass murder, as that which just occurred in Paris, is always distressing, but that does not mean we should stop thinking.

Isn’t it rather remarkable that President Hollande, immediately after the event, declared ISIS responsible? How did he know that? And if he was aware of a serious threat from ISIS, why did he not take serious measures in advance?

Within days of Friday 13, French forces assaulted an apartment with literally thousands of bullets being fired, killing a so-called mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud. Just how are you instantly elevated to the rank of “mastermind”? And if security people were previously aware of his exalted status, why did they wait until after a disaster to go after him?

Well, the ugly underlying truth is that, willy-nilly, France for years has been a supporter of ISIS, even while claiming to be fighting it. How do I know that? Because France’s foreign policy has virtually no independence from America’s. It could be described as a subset of American foreign policy. Hollande marches around with his head held stiffly up after getting off the phone at the Élysée Palace, having received the day’s expectations from Washington. He has been a rather pathetic figure.

So long as it is doing work the United States wishes done, ISIS remains an American protectorate, and regardless of Hollande’s past rhetoric, he has acted according to that reality. But something may just have changed now.

It is important to note the disproportionate attention in the West to events in Paris. I say disproportionate because there are equally ugly things going on in a number of places in the Middle East, but we do not see the coverage given to Paris. We have bombs in Lebanon and Iraq. We have daily bombings and shootings in Syria. We have cluster bombs and other horrors being used by Saudi Arabia in Yemen. And of course, there are the ongoing horrors of Israel against Palestinians.

We have endless interviews with ordinary people in Paris, people who know nothing factual to help our understanding, about their reaction to the terror, but when was the last time you saw personal reactions broadcast from Gaza City or Damascus? It just does not happen, and it does raise the suspicion that the press’s concern with Paris is deliberately out of proportion. After all, Israel killed about twenty times as many people in Gaza not very long ago, and the toll was heavily weighted with children, many hundreds of them. Events in Paris clearly are being exploited for highly emotional leverage.

Leverage against what? Arabs in general and Muslims in particular, just part of the continuing saga of deliberately-channeled hate we have experienced since a group of what proved (after their arrest) to be Israeli spies were reported on top of a truck, snapping pictures and high-fiving each other as the planes hit the World Trade Center in 2001. What those spies were doing has never been explained to the public. I’m not saying Israel is responsible for 9/11, but clearly some Israeli government interests were extremely happy about events, and we have been bombarded ever since with hate propaganda about Muslims, serving as a kind of constant noise covering the crimes Israel does commit against Palestinians and other neighbors.

It is impossible to know whether the attack in Paris was actually the work of ISIS or a covert operation by the secret service of an ISIS supporter. The point is a bit like arguing over angels on a pinhead. When you are dealing with this kind of warfare – thugs and lunatics of every description lured into service and given deadly toys and lots of encouragement to use them – things can and do go wrong. But even when nothing goes wrong in the eyes of sponsors for an outfit like ISIS, terrible things are still happening. It’s just that they’re happening where the sponsors want them to happen and in places from which our press carefully excludes itself. Terrible things, for example, have been happening in the beautiful land of Syria for four or five years, violence equivalent to about two hundred Paris attacks, causing immense damage, the entire point of which is to topple a popularly-supported president and turn Syria into the kind of rump states we see now in Iraq.

A covert operation in the name of ISIS is at least as likely as an attack by ISIS. The United States, Israel, Turkey, and France are none of them strangers to violent covert activities, and, yes, there have been instances before when a country’s own citizens were murdered by its secret services to achieve a goal. The CIA pushed Italian secret services into undertaking a series of murderous attacks on their own people during the 1960s in order to shake up Italy’s “threatening” left-wing politics. It was part of something called Operation Gladio. Operation Northwoods, in the early 1960s, was a CIA-planned series of terrorist acts on American civilians to be blamed on Cuba, providing an excuse for another invasion. It was not carried out, but that was not owing to any qualms in the CIA about murdering their own, otherwise no plan would have ever existed. The CIA was involved in many other operations inside the United States, from experiments with drugs to ones with disease, using innocent people as its subject-victims.

There have been no differences worth mentioning between Hollande’s France and America concerning the Middle East. Whatever America wants, America gets, unlike the days when Jacques Chirac opposed the invasion of Iraq, or earlier, when de Gaulle removed France’s armed forces from integration within NATO or bravely faced immense hostility, including a coup attempt undertaken by French military with CIA cooperation, when he abandoned colonialism in Algeria.

If anything, Hollande has been as cloyingly obsequious towards America’s chief interest in the Middle East, Israel, as a group of Republican Party hopefuls at a Texas barbecue fund-raiser sniffing out campaign contributions. After the Charlie Hebdo attack, Hollande honored four Jewish victims of the thugs who attacked a neighborhood grocery store with France’s highest honor, the Legion of Honor. I don’t recall the mere fact of being murdered by thugs ever before being regarded as a heroic distinction. After all, in the United States more than twenty thousand a year suffer that fate without recognition.

Israel’s Netanyahu at the time of the Charlie Hebdo attack actually outdid himself in manic behavior. He barged into France against a specific request that he stay home and pushed himself, uninvited, to the front row of the big parade down the Champs-Élysées which was supposed to honor free speech. He wanted those cameras to be on him for voters back home watching.

Free speech, you might ask, from the leaders of Egypt, Turkey, the UAE, and Israel, who all marched in front? Well, after the free-speech parody parade, the Madman of Tel Aviv raced around someone else’s country making calls and speeches for Jewish Frenchmen to leave “dangerous” France and migrate “home” to Israel. It would in fact be illegal in Israel for someone to speak that way in Israel to Israelis, but illegality has never bothered Netanyahu. Was he in any way corrected for this world-class asinine behavior? No, Hollande just kept marching around with his head stiffly up. I guess he was trying to prove just how free “free speech” is in France.

But speech really isn’t all that free in France, and the marching about free speech was a fraud. Not only is Charlie Hebdo, the publication in whose honor all the tramping around was done, not an outlet for free speech, being highly selective in choosing targets for its obscene attacks, but many of the people marching at the head of the parade were hardly representatives of the general principle.

France itself has outlawed many kinds of free speech. Speech and peaceful demonstrations which advocate a boycott of Israel are illegal in France. So a French citizen today cannot advocate peacefully against a repressive state which regularly abuses, arrests, and kills some of the millions it holds in a form of bondage. And Hollande’s France enforces this repressive law with at least as much vigor as Israel does with its own version, in a kind of “Look, me too,” spirit. France also has a law which is exactly the equivalent of a law against anyone’s saying the earth is flat: a law against denying or questioning the Holocaust. France also is a country, quite disgracefully, which has banned the niqab.

Now, America’s policy in the Mideast is pretty straightforward: subsidize and protect its colony Israel and never criticize it even on the many occasions when it has committed genuine atrocities. American campaign finance laws being what the are, politics back home simply permits no other policy. The invasion of Iraq, which largely was intended to benefit Israel through the elimination of a major and implacable opponent, has like so many dark operations backfired. I call the invasion a dark operation because although the war was as public as could be, all of America’s, and Britain’s, supposed intelligence about Iraq was crudely manufactured and the reasons for undertaking an act which would kill a million people and cripple an entire country were complete lies.

America’s stupid invasion created new room for Iran to exert its influence in the region – hence, the endless noise in Israel and Saudi Arabia about Iran – and it led directly to the growth of armed rabble groups like ISIS. There were no terrorists of any description in Saddam’s Iraq, just as there were no terrorists in Gadhafi’s Libya, a place now so infested with them that even an American ambassador is not safe.

Some Americans assert that ISIS happened almost accidentally, popping out of the dessert when no one was looking, a bit like Athena from the head of Zeus, arising from the bitterness and discontents of a splintered society, but that view is fatuous. Nothing, absolutely nothing, happens by accident in this part of the world. Israel’s spies keep informed of every shadowy movement, and America always listens closely to what they say.

It is silly to believe ISIS just crept up on America, suddenly a huge and powerful force, because ISIS was easy for any military to stop at its early stages, as when it was a couple of thousand men waving AK-47s from the backs of Japanese pick-up trucks tearing around Iraq. Those pick-up trucks and those AK-47s and the gasoline and the ammunition and the food and the pay required for a bunch of goons came from somewhere, and it wasn’t from Allah.

A corollary to America’s first principle about protecting Israel is that nothing, absolutely nothing, happens in Israel’s neighborhood that is not approved, at least tacitly, by the United States. So whether,

in any given instance of supply and support for ISIS, it was Israel or Saudi Arabia or Turkey or America – all involved in this ugly business – is almost immaterial. It all had to happen with American approval. Quite simply, there would be hell to pay otherwise.

As usual in the region, Saudi Arabia’s role was to supply money, buying weapons from America and others and transshipping them to ISIS. Ever since 9/11, Saudi Arabia has been an almost pathetically loyal supporter of America, even to the extent now of often cooperating with Israel. That couldn’t happen before an event in which the majority of perpetrators proved to be Saudi citizens and which led to the discovery that large amounts of Saudi “go away” money had been paid to Osama bin Laden for years. But after 9/11, the Saudis feared for the continuation of their regime and now do what they are told. They are assisted in performing the banking function by Qatar, another wealthy, absolute state aligned with the United States and opposing the rise of any possibly threatening new forces in its region.

Of course, it wasn’t just the discoveries of 9/11 that motivated Saudi Arabia. It intensely dislikes the growing influence of Iran, and Iran’s Shia Muslim identity is regarded by Sunni sects in Saudi Arabia in much the way 17th century Protestantism was viewed by an ultramontane Catholic state like Spain. The mass of genuine jihadists fighting in Syria – those who are not just mercenaries and adventurers or agents of Israel or Turkey or the Saudis – are mentally-unbalanced Sunni who believe they are fighting godlessness. The fact that Assad keeps a secular state with religious freedom for all just adds to their motivation.

ISIS first achievement was toppling an Iraqi government which had been excessively friendly to Iran in the view of Israel, and thereby the United States. Iraq’s army could have stopped them easily early on but was bribed to run away, leaving weapons such as tanks behind. Just two heavy tanks could have crushed all the loons in pick-up trucks. That’s why there was all the grotesque propaganda about beheadings and extreme cruelty to cover the fact of modern soldiers running from a mob. ISIS gathered weapons, territory, and a fierce reputation in an operation which saw President al-Maliki – a man disliked by the United States for his associations with Iran and his criticism of American atrocities – hurriedly leave office.

From that base, ISIS was able to gain sufficient foothold to begin financing itself through, for example, stolen crude sold at a discount or stolen antiquities. The effective splitting up of Iraq meant that its Kurdish population in the north could sell, as it does today, large volumes of oil to Israel, an unheard of arrangement in Iraq’s past. ISIS then crossed into Syria in some force to go after Assad. The reasons for this attack were several: Assad runs a secular state and defends religious minorities but mainly because the paymasters of ISIS wanted Assad destroyed and Syria reduced in the fashion of Iraq.

Few people in the press seem to have noted that ISIS never attacks Israel or Israeli interests. Neither does it attack the wheezingly-corrupt rulers of Saudi Arabia, the Islamic equivalent of ancient Rome’s Emperor Nero. Yet those are the very targets a group of genuine, independent warrior-fundamentalists would attack. But ISIS is not genuine, being supplied and bankrolled by people who do not want to see attacks on Israel or Saudi Arabia, including, notably, Israel and Saudi Arabia. ISIS also is assisted, and in some cases led, by foreign covert operators and special forces.

There does seem to be a good deal of news around the idea of France becoming serious in fighting ISIS, but I think we must be cautious about accepting it at face value. Putin is reported as telling ship commanders in the Mediterranean to cooperate and help cover the French aircraft carrier approaching. Hollande keeps calling for American cooperation too, as Putin has done for a very long time, but America’s position remains deliberately ambiguous. A new American announcement of cooperation with Turkey in creating a “safe zone” across the border with northern Syria is a development with unclear intentions. Is this to stop the Kurds Erdogan so despises fighting in the north of Syria from establishing themselves and controlling the border or is it a method for continued support of ISIS along the that border? Only time will tell.

I do think it at least possible Hollande may have come around to Putin’s view of ISIS, but America has not, and the situation only grows more fraught with dangerous possibilities. I’ve long believed that likely America, in its typically cynical fashion, planned to destroy ISIS, along with others like al-Nusra, once they had finished the dirty work of destroying Syria’s government and Balkanizing the country. In any event, Israel – and therefore, automatically, America – wants Assad destroyed, so it would be surprising to see America at this point join honestly with Putin and Hollande.

America has until now refused Russia any real support, including such basic stuff as sharing intelligence. It cooperates only in the most essential matters such avoiding attacks on each other’s planes. It also has made some very belligerent statements about what Russia has been doing, some from the America’s Secretary of Defense sounding a lot like threats. Just the American establishment’s bully-boy attitude about doing anything which resembles joining a Russian initiative does not bode well.

After all, Putin has been portrayed as a kind of Slavic Satan by American propaganda cranking stuff out overtime in support of Ukraine’s incompetent coup-government and with the aim of terrifying Eastern Europe into accepting more American weapons and troops near Russia’s border, this last having nothing to do with any Russian threat and everything to do with America’s aggressive desire to shift the balance of power. How do you turn on a dime and admit Putin is right about Syria and follow his lead?

And there are still the daily unpleasant telephone calls from Israel about Assad. How do you manoeuvre around that when most independent observers today recognize Assad as the best alternative to any other possible government. He has the army’s trust, and in the end it is the Syrian army which is going to destroy ISIS and the other psychopaths. Air strikes alone can never do that. The same great difficulty for Hollande leaves much ambiguity around what he truly means by “going to war against ISIS.”

It is an extremely complicated world in which we live with great powers putting vast resources towards destroying the lives of others, almost killing thousands on a whim, while pretending not to be doing so. We live in an era shaped by former CIA Director Allen Dulles, a quiet psychopath who never saw an opportunity for chaos he did not embrace.

The only way to end terror is to stop playing with the lives of tens of millions in the Middle East, as America has done for so long, and stop supporting the behaviors of a repressive state which has killed far greater numbers than the madmen of ISIS could dream of doing, demanding instead that that state make peace and live within its borders. But, at least at this stage, that is all the stuff of dreams.

November 19, 2015 Posted by | False Flag Terrorism, Timeless or most popular, War Crimes, Wars for Israel | , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

University of Liverpool students vote for BDS

MEMO | November 19, 2015

Students at the University of Liverpool have voted to support the Boycott, Divestment and Sanctions (BDS) campaign, in a significant victory for Palestinian solidarity campaigners.

The motion commits the Liverpool Guild of Students to, among other things, advocate divestment from companies complicit in the Israeli occupation, and to lobby the university to similarly divest. The motion also mandates the Guild to stop stocking Israeli products.

latuff3-300x174The full BDS motion can be read here.

More than 1,000 students participated in the Liverpool Guild of Students preferendum, in which they were presented with three options: ‘Yes’, ‘No’, or an alternative solution that rejected BDS, but encouraged the union to “raise awareness of the issue.”

Under the preferendum system, students could choose their favourite option from the three choices, or “your top two or rank all three in order of preference.” Points were then assigned “to each option based on the order of preference.”

There were a total of 1,866 points in support of BDS, with 934 opposed to the motion and 1,479 points supporting the alternative solution.

In a press release responding to the victory, the University of Liverpool Friends of Palestine (ULFOP) hailed “a landslide victory” despite a voting system they claimed meant the odds were against them.

“The ballot had one option to pass the motion and two options not to pass the motion. If students didn’t rank all of these options, then their one chosen option was given less weight.”

Despite this and other challenges, ULFOP stated that “the scale of the victory for BDS clearly shows that a large majority of the student body is, or has been made, aware of Israel’s apartheid regime and oppression of the Palestinians, and is prepared to make a stand against it.”

Zohra, a ULFOP member quoted in the press release, described the result as “a genuine reflection of the mood on campus – where students from all faiths and backgrounds believe that the Israeli occupation of the Palestinian people and their territories is unjust, akin to an apartheid system and thus cannot be allowed to continue.”

In a reference to objections by Israel’s defenders, ULFOP said “they wholeheartedly reject any claims that BDS is divisive on campus, instead recognising that the BDS movement is a non-violent and effective means of applying pressure on the Israeli government and the companies benefitting from the occupation of Palestine.”

Meanwhile, the Union of Jewish Students, who sent an official to Liverpool to support the ‘No’ campaign, described the result as “disappointing”, vowing to work with the Liverpool Jewish Society to continue making “the case against BDS” on campus.

November 19, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Illegal Occupation, Solidarity and Activism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Barbara Lee Interestingly Declines to Address U.S. Arms to Saudi Arabia

Sam Husseini | November 18, 2015

I generally feel that the questioning by Amy Goodman on Democracy Now could be a lot stronger, but today, she did ask a good question of Rep. Barbara Lee: “The U.S. has just sealed, the Obama administration, yet another arms deal with Saudi Arabia, in the last year signed the biggest arms deals in the history of the world with Saudi Arabia, Saudi Arabia behind a lot of the militant activism from al-Qaeda to ISIS. Do you condemn these sales?”

This is Lee’s full response: “Well, first, we need to reduce the sale of arms throughout the world. Also, I think when you look at the—for example, trying to rid Iran of the ability to develop nuclear weapons, we engaged in a strong, robust diplomatic effort. Many years ago, I introduced the first resolution calling for the end of no contact policy, for a special envoy and for us to begin to negotiate with Iran the elimination of their program of developing nuclear weapons. So far, those negotiations and that Iranian deal has worked. And so I think that we need to move in that direction in terms of diplomacy, in terms of trying to seek global peace and security without selling arms to all countries, because what you will have is an arms buildup throughout the world, and then weapons will be pointed at—each country will have weapons—of course, a nuclear weapon is the ultimate weapon—pointed in all directions. And so, we need to determine ways, as the president has done with regard to Iran, ways in which to engage to reduce the threats and to reduce the sale and the use of force and armaments and military weapons, because these can only make the world more dangerous.”

Notice Lee does not condemn the weapons sales to Saudi Arabia. Indeed, she doesn’t utter the word “Saudi”. Instead, she talks about alleged Iranian nuclear weapons designs — a total staple of officialdom — and speaks generally against arms sales.

Nor do the hosts highlight this. Juan Gonzalez, who I think often asks more probing questions that Goodman, immediately proceeded to ask a somewhat fawning question: “And I’m wondering what advice you might have to parliamentarians in France now, as France is going through the same kind of crisis that this country went through after the attacks of 2001. The president is now seeking authorization from the French Parliament for extraordinary measures in his country. What advice might you give to the parliamentarians of France?”

We’re not going to get very far if we’re looking to politicos for leadership who can’t condemn policies like the U.S. government has to the Saudis. And we’re not going to get very far if presumably tough, independent programs like “Democracy Now” can’t keep officials accountable about that.

November 18, 2015 Posted by | Deception, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Some Questions for Obama and His Gang

By Christopher Black – New Eastern Outlook – 16.11.2015

434534544Mr. Obama, Mr. Cameron. Mr. Hollande, Madame Merkel, Mr. Erdogan and all the other members of the criminal conspiracy to dominate the world, I ask you, do you intend to test our patience to its limit? How much longer will your killing frenzy madden us? At what point do you stop your reckless push to the very brink of world war. Have the Nuremberg trials, the UN Charter, international law, have the fears and protests of the people, have your continual defeats in one war after another, your crimes against mankind revealed to the light time and time again, had no effect on you at all? Do you not know that your plans have been exposed, that the conspiracy and the conspirators have been identified? Which of us does not know what you were up to yesterday evening, what you were up to last night and this morning, who you talked with, what plan of action you decided on? For the plan is always the same, and never changes, to dominate, to control or to destroy.

Many think they are lucky if they can just stay out of your way but we know better. We know that no one is safe from your criminality and depravity. Not even children returning from Sharm El Sheihk, from their holiday, are safe from the blade of death you hold in your hands, nor the citizens of Paris enjoying a night out on the town. You proved that when Metrojet Flight 9268 was destroyed in mid-air. No official cause has yet been determined but circumstances indicate the possibility of a bomb on board is a strong one. You proved it again when attackers murdered scores of people in Paris on Friday November 13th. ISIS is reported to have claimed responsibility but the claim that a Syrian passport was found on the body of one attacker, an Egyptian passport on another and a French one on another forces the question as to why anyone conducting such an attack would walk around with identification especially passports and more why would a French national carry his passport in France? The Paris attack and the Russian airliner attack both smell of false flag operations and when we ask the first question in any criminal investigation, who benefits from these attacks on civilians, then it is you who fall in line, one after the other, as the prime and usual suspects.

There has been a lot of speculation that the attack on the Russian plane was made by you or your allies in ISIS to “punish” Russia for its assistance to Syria and to try to affect public opinion in Russia against that assistance. But that never made sense since Russians know the high stakes for Russia in this struggle. The real reason for the attack is made clear by you every day in your mass controlled media. Your thinking, your plans, your crimes are exposed in the very propaganda you use to manipulate the minds of your own peoples and what you have told us is that the Russian plane was destroyed, all those innocent people trying to enjoy a small holiday were murdered, in order to justify your calls for an invasion of Syria. It is as clear as the deaths heads etched into your souls that those Russian men, those Russian women and those Russian children were sacrificed, used, as means of justifying a great war in the middle east. And now the citizens of France are sacrificed as well.

On CNN the other day your prime time king of war propaganda, Wolf Blitzer, showed an interview between the CNN queen of war propaganda, Christiane Anampour, and the Turkish Prime Minister. I use it because he says what you, Obama, Merkel, Hollande, and Cameron have all said in complete synchronicity, that the “plane attack is a call to action.” Prime Minister Davutoglu said,

“This is not an attack against a Russian airplane, but it is an attack against all of us. So therefore it shows that if the crisis is not solved in any particular country or region, then it is going to affect us all.” The same is now claimed by western leaders about the Paris attack.

On the same programme Blitzer hosted Senator Lindsay Graham, one of the most rabid of the American dogs of war who stated, “I believe you have to have boots on the ground to destroy ISIL, ….you need Turkey and the Arabs coming together with us, and you need 90 per cent them and 10 per cent us. 5,000 to 10,000 of Americans to be part of a regional force to go on the ground to destroy ISIL in Syria, or they will never be destroyed and they will hit us here at home.” And now Paris has been struck.

We have seen the same calls made from all the NATO capitals in recent days and all made just after the NATO leaders, with one notable exception, expressed their insincere condolences to the families of the victims of the airliner disaster but not to Russia or its government. The exception was President Obama who kept a sinister silence.

CNN stated on November 5th that the possibility that ISIS is behind the plane crash raises the spectre of a new potential for devastating attacks on Americans. “If another Islamist group has acquired the motivation and the capacity to attack civilian airliners, a future target could be U.S. jets.’ said a man named Aaron David Miller a “former middle east peace negotiator” with the Wilson Center in Washington who also said ‘It’s a long war and you, we have just seen maybe a very significant turn and escalation in that war…. and this will increase pressure … to forestall similar strikes against a US target.” But Paris was hit first.

I could cite many other similar statements in which your propagandists claim ISIS to be the new Al Qaeda. You and your fellow conspirators plan to amplify this propaganda to hysterical levels to generate overwhelming fear in your domestic populations in order to justify a large scale war against Syria where your proxy forces are being defeated by the combined arms of Russian air power and the fighting spirit and skills of the Syrian Arab Army. This has been achieved with the attack in Paris. The sudden flow of refugees into Europe is being used for the same purpose.

No doubt we can expect similar attacks in other NATO capitals. It does not matter to you if you use the misery of millions fleeing war and poverty to justify your plans for war or Russian children returning from happy days on the beach, or people enjoying a concert or football match in Paris. All deaths are the same to you. And so, when we ask who murdered those children, who murdered those Parisians, are you surprised if we turn our heads your way?

We owe a great debt of gratitude to those who defeated fascism in the Second Word War, and we cannot permit those forces of reaction and tyranny to torment us again for now you are not threatening this country or that, this leader or that, you are threatening the existence of civilization itself. Is this not madness? Is there anything that gives you pleasure except death and more death? Is there a single person on the planet that does not fear you, not a single person who does not hate you? Is there any mark of disgrace with which you have not been branded, any dishonour that does not stain your reputation? From what crime have you ever abstained?

There is no need to answer. We all know the answers to these questions.

Christopher Black is an international criminal lawyer based in Toronto, he is a member of the Law Society of Upper Canada and he is known for a number of high-profile cases involving human rights and war crimes.

November 17, 2015 Posted by | Deception, False Flag Terrorism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Russia Confirms A321 Brought Down by Terrorist Explosive Device

Sputnik – 17.11.2015

An explosion of the homemade bomb of up to 1kg of TNT equivalent was the cause of the A321 crash in Sinai, Russian Security Service (FSB) head Alexander Bortnikov said.

“According to our specialists’ assessment, a homemade explosive device with an equivalent of 1 kilogram of TNT on board the aircraft exploded, which lead to the plane ‘breaking up’ in midair, which would explain the scattering of the plane’s fuselage across a wide area,” Bortnikov said during a meeting.

Russian Special Forces have determined the A321 passenger jet that crashed over Egypt’s Sinai Peninsula on October 31 killing all 224 on board was a terrorist act.

“We can definitely say this was a terrorist act,” Russian Federal Security Service head Alexander Bortnikov said during a meeting with Russian President Vladimir Putin.

An investigation into A321 crash shows traces of an explosive material in personal items and parts of the plane, Bortnikov added.

“Investigations have been completed on the personal belongings, baggage, and parts of the plane that crashed in Egypt on October 31. As a result of expertise conducted on all of the items, of which I mentioned, traces of foreign explosive material were exposed,” Bortnikov told the Russian president during a meeting on the official conclusion that the aircraft was exploded in mid-air by a homemade explosive device.

He also said that Russia offers $50mln for the information on those who might have been involved in the terrorist attack on the A321.

A Russian Airbus A321 with 224 people on board crashed on October 31 while en route from Egypt’s resort city of Sharm el-Sheikh to St. Petersburg, leaving no survivors. Various possible causes of the tragedy have been set out by aviation experts, ranging from a terrorist act to a technical glitch.

November 17, 2015 Posted by | War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US Approves $1.3bn Smart Bombs Deal with Saudi Arabia

Al-Manar | November 17, 2015

The US State Department has signed off on the deal to sell $1.29 billion worth of smart bombs to Saudi Arabia, according to the Pentagon. The 22,000 bombs are to be used in the Saudis’ military campaigns in Yemen and Syria.

The Pentagon’s Defense Security Cooperation Agency, in charge of overseeing foreign arms sales, said in a statement that deal with the Saudis has been approved. The US Congress still has 30 days to block the deal, but is unlikely to do so.

The agency said that the sale would keep the Royal Saudi Air Force from running out of weapons, as well as provide sufficient weapons stocks for its military campaign in Yemen and Syria.

“This acquisition will help sustain strong military-to-military relations between the United States and Saudi Arabia, improve [the ability of Saudi forces to work] with the United States, and enable Saudi Arabia to meet regional threats and safeguard the world’s largest oil reserves,” the statement said.

According to RT website, the $1.29 billion deal consists of 22,000 smart and general purpose bombs, which include 1,000 GBU-10 Paveway II laser guided bombs, as well as over 5,000 Joint Direct Attack Munitions kits, which convert older bombs into precision-guided weapons via GPS.

The sale comes after President Barack Obama promised in May to work with Persian Gulf Arab States on increased security cooperation, particularly “on fast-tracking arms transfers… counter terrorism, maritime security, cybersecurity and ballistic missile defense.”

Persian Gulf States have shown increased interest in US weaponry following the nuclear agreement reached with Iran in July.

In October, the US government approved an $11 billion sale to Saudi Arabia for up to four Lockheed Martin Corp.’s warships, along with weapons, training and logistics support. In September, Washington approved a $5.4 billion sale of 600 advanced Patriot missiles to Riyadh.

Saudi Arabia has been striking Yemen for 236 days now to restore power to fugitive President Abed Rabbu Mansour Hadi. The Saudi-US aggression has so far killed at least 6,579 Yemenis, including hundreds of women and children.

Despite Riyadh’s claims that it is bombing the positions of the Yemeni national military, Saudi warplanes are flattening residential areas and civilian infrastructures.

November 17, 2015 Posted by | Corruption, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

Will British MPs vote to bomb Syria? Cameron, Corbyn diverge on Paris attack response

RT | November 16, 2015

Prime Minister David Cameron says he wants Britain to take part in airstrikes against Islamic State in Syria, but still needs to convince MPs to back an intervention. Labour leader Jeremy Corbyn meanwhile has warned bombing will not defeat the jihadists.

Cameron said he won’t hold a vote in Parliament on extending UK airstrikes from Iraq into Syria until he can be sure MPs will back it.

The PM told BBC radio if a vote on airstrikes against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) is defeated in the house it could damage Britain’s reputation on the global stage.

France has launched a series of “massive” strikes against IS in its stronghold of Raqqa in northern Syria following Friday’s terror attacks in Paris.

The UK is currently involved in bombing raids against IS targets in Iraq, but Parliament rejected a vote to extend airstrikes to Syria in 2013.

Speaking to the BBC, Cameron said he wants Britain to join a bombing campaign in Syria.

“I have always said I think that it is sensible that we should. ISIL don’t recognize a border between Iraq and Syria and neither should we, but I need to build the argument, I need to take it to Parliament, I need to convince more people,” Cameron said.

“We won’t hold that vote unless we can see that parliament would endorse action because to fail on this would be damaging, it is not a question of damaging the government it is a question of not damaging our country and its reputation in the world.”

The PM said he would take immediate direct action if British interests were at stake, citing RAF drone attacks launched in August against British citizens fighting for IS.

However Conservative MP Crispin Blunt has expressed doubts about military action in Syria without a wider international plan.

He told BBC Pienaar’s Politics the international community must redouble its efforts to reach a consensus on Syria and progress to a transitional arrangement had been made at talks in Vienna.

Jeremy Corbyn has warned airstrikes against IS will cause “more mayhem and more loss” in the region.

The Labour leader said the only way to deal with the threat posed by IS is to achieve a political settlement to Syria’s ongoing civil war.

“Does the bombing change it? Probably not. The idea has to be surely a political settlement in Syria,” he told ITV1’s Lorraine program.

“We have to be careful. One war doesn’t necessarily bring about peace – it often can bring yet more conflicts, more mayhem and more loss.

“I am not saying ‘sit round the table with ISIS,’ I am saying bring about a political settlement in Syria which will help then to bring some kind of unity government – technical government – in Syria,” he said.

Corbyn said it is important to ask “very big questions” about how IS has become so powerful in the region.

“Who is funding ISIS? Who is arming ISIS? Who is providing safe havens for ISIS? You have to ask questions about the arms that everyone has sold in the region, the role of Saudi Arabia in this. I think there are some very big questions,” he said.

Corbyn’s comments appear to contradict remarks by Labour’s Shadow Justice Secretary Lord Falconer on Sunday indicating Labour could back military action against IS in Syria without a UN resolution.

Labour’s current policy, established at party conference, is to only support extending airstrikes into Syria with a UN mandate.

Lord Falconer suggested the party could ease this position, as Russia has so far blocked moves for a UN resolution on military action in Syria.

“ISIS can only be defeated by the international community as a whole, if possible through a UN sponsored process, but if not that, then nations come together,” he told the BBC’s Andrew Marr Show.

“I think NATO will be a part of it. It is much too early to say whether it is appropriate or possible to evoke article five, but NATO will be part of the group of nations that have got to come together to look at it.”

Article Five states that an attack on one NATO member is an attack on all.

Falconer made clear any move to intervene in Syria must come with a strategy to deal with the civil war.

“You need a plan, and that plan has got to deal with the Syrian issue. I’m not urging troops on the ground, but ultimately ISIS have to be defeated. It can’t just be from the air.”

November 16, 2015 Posted by | Illegal Occupation, Militarism, War Crimes | , , , , , | Leave a comment

One civilian dead, four injured in southeast Turkey clashes

Press TV – November 16, 2015

At least one civilian has been killed and four others have been injured in new clashes between Turkish security forces and members of the Kurdistan Workers’ Party (PKK) in Turkey’s southeastern province of Mardin.

Police sources, speaking on condition of anonymity, said the clashes broke out in the city of Nusaybin, situated 792 kilometers (492 miles) east of the capital, Anakara, on Sunday.

A 44-year-old woman was killed during the exchange of gunfire. Her daughter and son along with two men were also wounded.

On Sunday, 10 PKK members surrendered to security forces elsewhere in southeast Turkey.

The Turkish military announced that the Kurdish militants turned themselves in to police in the town of Silopi, in the province of Sirnak.

Turkey has been engaged in a large-scale military campaign against the PKK in its southern border region in the recent past. The Turkish military has also been conducting offensives against the positions of the PKK in northern Iraq.

The operations began in the wake of a deadly July 20 bombing in the southern Turkish town of Suruc, an ethnically Kurdish town located close to border with Syria. Over 30 people died in the Suruc attack, which the Turkish government blamed on Takfiri Daesh terrorists.

After the bombing in Suruc, the PKK militants, who accuse the government in Ankara of supporting Daesh, engaged in a series of supposedly reprisal attacks against Turkish police and security forces, in turn prompting the Turkish military operations.

November 16, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, Subjugation - Torture, War Crimes | , , , , | Leave a comment

Putin: ISIS financed from 40 countries, including G20 members

RT | November 16, 2015

President Vladimir Putin says he’s shared Russian intelligence data on Islamic State financing with his G20 colleagues: the terrorists appear to be financed from 40 countries, including some G20 member states.

During the summit, “I provided examples based on our data on the financing of different Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) units by private individuals. This money, as we have established, comes from 40 countries and, there are some of the G20 members among them,” Putin told the journalists.

Putin also spoke of the urgent need to curb the illegal oil trade by IS.

“I’ve shown our colleagues photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” he said.

“The motorcade of refueling vehicles stretched for dozens of kilometers, so that from a height of 4,000 to 5,000 meters they stretch beyond the horizon,” Putin added, comparing the convoy to gas and oil pipeline systems.

It’s not the right time to try and figure out which country is more and which is less effective in the battle with Islamic State, as now a united international effort is needed against the terrorist group, Putin said.

Putin reiterated Russia’s readiness to support armed opposition in Syria in its efforts to fight Islamic State.

“Some armed opposition groups consider it possible to begin active operations against IS with Russia’s support. And we are ready to provide such support from the air. If it happens it could become a good basis for the subsequent work on a political settlement,” he said.

“We really need support from the US, European nations, Saudi Arabia, Turkey, Iran,” the president added.

Putin pointed out the change in Washington’s stance on cooperation with Moscow in the fight against the terrorists.

“We need to organize work specifically concentrated on the prevention of terrorist attacks and tackling terrorism on a global scale. We offered to cooperate [with the US] in anti-IS efforts. Unfortunately, our American partners refused. They just sent a written note and it says: ‘we reject your offer’,” Putin said.

“But life is always evolving and at a very fast pace, often teaching us lessons. And I think that now the realization that an effective fight [against terror] can only be staged together is coming to everybody,” the Russian leader said.

According to Putin, first of all it should be decided which groups in Syria can be considered terrorist organizations and which can be attributed to an armed, but still legitimate part of the Syrian opposition.

“Our efforts must be concentrated on the battle with terrorist organizations.”

Putin also disagreed with Western criticism of Russia’s actions in Syria, where the country has been carrying out a large-scale air campaign against Islamic State and other terror groups since September 30.

“It’s really difficult to criticize us,” he said, adding that Russia has repeatedly asked its foreign partners to provide data on terrorist targets in Syria.

“They’re afraid to inform us on the territories which we shouldn’t strike, fearing that it is precisely where we’ll strike; that we are going to cheat everybody,” the president said.

“Apparently, their opinion of us is based on their own concept of human decency,” he added.

Putin told the media that Russia has already established contact with the Syrian opposition, which has asked Moscow not carry out airstrikes in the territories it controls.

November 16, 2015 Posted by | War Crimes | , , , , , , , , | Leave a comment

Terrorism and the Question of Humanity

By Brenda Heard | Aletho News | November 16, 2015

On 15 November, The New York Times published an article entitled “Beirut, Also the Site of Deadly Attacks, Feels Forgotten.” It highlights the disparity between the global solidarity expressed for Paris following the deadly 13 November attacks and the lack thereof expressed for Beirut after it too was attacked the day prior. But the headline suggests a petulant attitude from Lebanese who “feel forgotten,” as though they were a bratty child or a sniveling spouse.

Granted The Times expresses a degree of compassion for Beirut’s victims, who like those in Paris “were killed at random, in a bustling urban area, while going about their normal evening business.” But The Times also seems to be trying to wiggle out of appearing heartless in a previous Times article’s headline–“Deadly Blasts Hit Hezbollah Stronghold in Southern Beirut”—a headline that it now explains was “changed to be more precise.” The Times withdrew the headline’s phraseology “Hezbollah Stronghold,” which it admitted, “risks portraying a busy civilian, residential and commercial district as a justifiable military target.”

With images of civilian victims in circulation, the casual sneer of “Hezbollah stronghold,” quickly trumpeted by Reuters and the Associated Press, did seem rather. . . misleading. Yet despite even The Times’ own characterization of the stricken Bourj el-Barajneh municipality as typical “working-class Beirut, where Palestinians, Christians and Syrian refugees (mostly Sunnis) live, work and shop,” these descriptions are colored with an overriding exemption: “Hezbollah maintains tight security control” of the area. Only Reuters gives slight mention to the contradiction of this so-called “Hezbollah Bastion” hosting numerous Lebanese Army checkpoints.

So with a curious twist, The Times manages to undo the cliché “innocent civilian” as victim of a terror attack. The Beirut victims may have been civilian, the article concedes, but how dare they consider themselves innocent and thus worthy of solidarity. After all, the article tells us, Hezbollah is highly popular there. So why change and half-apologise for the phrase “Hezbollah stronghold”? Because The Times asserts that a Hezbollah stronghold would be a “justifiable military target.” And that assertion comes dangerously close to approving of this ISIS bombing, dangerously close to the sentiment expressed by a commenter on one of the initial UK reports: “So one bunch of barbaric Islamist terrorists has declared war on another bunch of barbaric Islamist terrorists. We should be celebrating. A win-win for the West and the civilized world.”

Sadly, this comment is mild in comparison to many across the web. They laugh and they rage with a brute callousness that is diametrically opposed to the compassion and solidarity expressed toward the French. When The Times article discussed how the Lebanese felt “forgotten,” it missed the point. It quoted Lebanese blogger Dr Elie Fares saying that “When my people died, no country bothered to light up its landmarks in the colors of their flag.” But if you read his article in its entirety, you will see that he was not bemoaning a lack of attention. Equally disturbed by the lack of concern from his fellow Lebanese, Fares was lamenting a lack of shared humanity. As he stated in a previous article, “The politics maybe change, but with so many victims dying for so little, petty politics become irrelevant.”

As Westerners, of course we are sickened by the violence inflicted upon our neighbors in Paris. We rightfully feel sad and scared. But the challenge is to be able to feel the pain of non-Western societies as well. How many times do we scroll right past headlines of a bombing in an Iraqi marketplace? a mass shooting in Latin America? a typhoon in Asia? Their skin may be brown or black, they make speak what sounds like noise to us, they may even eat with their hands. But they are parents and children, friends and lovers, brothers and sisters. They enjoy a cup of tea and laugh at a funny television show. But even if they view god or government differently than we do, their falling victim to indiscriminate killing should be neither accepted, nor applauded. Unless we want to live forever in fear, we need to condemn brutality and to nurture the notion of live and let live—consistently.

Brenda Heard is the founder and director of Friends of Lebanon, London. She is the author of Hezbollah: An Outsider’s Inside View (2015). She can be contacted at: brenda.heard@friendsoflebanon.org.

November 16, 2015 Posted by | Ethnic Cleansing, Racism, Zionism, Mainstream Media, Warmongering, War Crimes | , , , | Leave a comment

France FUNDED Syrian Rebels, AKA Radical ISIS Terrorists, To Overthrow Assad

By Stuart Hooper | 21st Century Wire | November 15, 2015

How many times will history have to repeat itself before something changes?

Watch a video of this report here:


Take a moment to read this short extract from The Guardian’s 2012 article, entitled ‘France funding Syrian rebels in new push to oust Assad‘, where we have highlighted the points of most concern in bold font:

“France has emerged as the most prominent backer of Syria’s armed opposition and is now directly funding rebel groups around Aleppo as part of a new push to oust the embattled Assad regime.

Large sums of cash have been delivered by French government proxies across the Turkish border to rebel commanders in the past month, diplomatic sources have confirmed. The money has been used to buy weapons inside Syria and to fund armed operations against loyalist forces.

The French moves have stopped short of direct supply of weapons – a bridge that no western state has yet been willing to cross in Syria. But, according to western and Turkish officials as well as rebel leaders, the influx of money has made a difference in recent weeks as momentum on the battlefields of the north steadily shifts towards the opposition.

Some of the French cash has reached Islamist groups who were desperately short of ammunition and who had increasingly turned for help towards al-Qaida aligned jihadist groups in and around Aleppo.”

Let that sink in for a moment.

Now to summarise, France sent ‘large sums of cash’ to fund an ‘armed opposition’ that was trying to overthrow the internationally recognised government of a sovereign country.

Moreover, those funds meant for a shift in momentum ‘towards the opposition’, ‘on the battlefields of the north’; northern battlefields that ISIS now calls home to their ‘caliphate’.

Finally, ‘some of the French cash’ reached ‘Islamists’ that were openly working with ‘al-Qaida aligned jihadist groups’.

Bottom line: France was funding terrorism.

Despite some of the inconsistencies and issues with the official story of the most recent Paris attacks, the thesis that suggests funding the destruction of nation states leads to the growth of instability and terrorism is absolutely valid.

Instead of standing behind French President Francois Hollande, perhaps the French people should demand his immediate impeachment and arrest? Anyone with the slightest modicum of common sense can clearly see that Western support for these ‘rebels’ allowed for the growth of ISIS.

The growth of ISIS has, in turn, facilitated the growth of international terrorism. Did any of the terrorists responsible for the devastating attack in France ever get their hands on this French cash? Was it used to buy the explosives and weapons?

Those questions are, unfortunately, far from ridiculous, they are incredibly plausible.

How do we think France might react if Syria decided to start funding rebel groups to overthrow what it might call ‘the Hollande regime’?

For more in-depth analysis on the Paris Attacks, listen to this special 5 hr omnibus episode of the Sunday Wire here:

https://www.spreaker.com/embed/player/standard?episode_id=7169226&autoplay=true

November 16, 2015 Posted by | Timeless or most popular, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

US sends more weapons to militants in Syria: Report

Press TV – November 16, 2015

The US military has reportedly delivered a new consignment of weapons and ammunition to a group of militants fighting against the Syrian government.

The weapons were delivered by land to the so-called Syrian Arab Coalition which Washington regards as a “moderate rebel group,” a US official, speaking on condition of anonymity, told the Reuters news agency on Sunday.

The official did not say who transported the ammunition into Syria but added that US troops did not drive them into Syria.

The first delivery to the group was carried out by an air drop back in October. US Central Command spokesman Colonel Patrick Ryder said the ammunition was for those “moderate” militant groups whose leaders were “appropriately vetted by the United States and have been fighting to remove ISIL from northern Syria.”

Since the Syria conflict started in 2011, the US and its allies have been providing military and financial aid to the militants who are accused of widespread war crimes and crimes against civilians.

The US has on several occasions airdropped weapons for anti-Damascus militants, which ended up in the hands of the Daesh terrorists.

The years-long crisis in Syria has claimed the lives of more than 250,000 people and displaced millions of others.

The United States and its regional allies, including Turkey and Saudi Arabia, have been backing militants fighting against the Syrian government and people.

November 16, 2015 Posted by | Militarism, Progressive Hypocrite, War Crimes | , | Leave a comment

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