Nagorno-Karabakh and the Passover Feast: Hollywood’s Glorification of the Arms Trade
David Packouz (L) and Efraim Diveroli
By Richard Edmondson | Fig Trees and Vineyards | April 7, 2016
From Ukraine to North Africa to the Middle East, and most recently in the Caucasus with the outbreak of hostilities between Azerbaijan and Armenia, death and destruction are on the prowl in multiple wars, while at the same time international laws governing armed conflict are rapidly being cast onto the rubbish heap.
Many of these wars have been instigated by powers outside the countries in which they are being fought, and the tide of violence threatening to engulf the world now is unprecedented in history. You would think that at such a time, Hollywood would have better taste than to make a movie glorifying the arms trade.
But of course, you would be wrong.
Scheduled for release in August, “War Dogs” is based on the real life story of Efraim Diveroli and David Packouz, two twenty-something Jews who got involved in the arms trade and ended up bidding on Pentagon contracts, in the process scoring deals to supply weapons, ammo, and other military equipment to forces the US was arming in both Iraq and Afghanistan.
Their story was told in a 2011 Rolling Stone article which detailed their passion for money-making, recreational drug use, and their predilection for shady business dealings. “Packouz and Diveroli met at Beth Israel Congregation, the largest Orthodox synagogue in Miami Beach,” the story informs us, and then goes on to describe how they landed some lucrative contracts, including one worth $300 million, all while operating a small company known as AEY, a shell company Diveroli’s father had set up. All of this was in the years 2005-2007.
For decades, weapons had been stockpiled in warehouses throughout the Balkans and Eastern Europe for the threat of war against the West, but now arms dealers were selling them off to the highest bidder. The Pentagon needed access to this new aftermarket to arm the militias it was creating in Iraq and Afghanistan. The trouble was, it couldn’t go into such a murky underworld on its own. It needed proxies to do its dirty work — companies like AEY. The result was a new era of lawlessness…
One evening, Diveroli picked Packouz up in his Mercedes, and the two headed to a party at a local rabbi’s house, lured by the promise of free booze and pretty girls. Diveroli was excited about a deal he had just completed, a $15 million contract to sell old Russian-manufactured rifles to the Pentagon to supply the Iraqi army. He regaled Packouz with the tale of how he had won the contract, how much money he was making and how much more there was to be made….
Diveroli, by the way, is the nephew of celebrity rabbi Shmuley Boteach, a staunch supporter of Israel and author of several books, including one entitled “Kosher Sex”–a book in which he “breaks down sexual taboos” while pioneering “a revolutionary approach to sex, marriage, and personal relationships, drawing on traditional Jewish wisdom.” Boteach has also run inflammatory ads in the New York Times defending Israel, and in 2012 was bankrolled by Las Vegas casino magnate Sheldon Adelson in an unsuccessful campaign for Congress.
So in other words, while Boteach was doing the TV talk show circuit advising Americans how to improve their sex lives, his nephew Diveroli was finding his niche in the “murkey underworld” of arms trafficking.
Above all, Diveroli cared about the bottom line. “Efraim was a Republican because they started more wars,” Packouz says. “When the United States invaded Iraq, he was thrilled. He said to me, ‘Do I think George Bush did the right thing for the country by invading Iraq? No. But am I happy about it? Absofuckinglutely.’ He hoped we would invade more countries because it was good for business.”
The big $300 million deal they landed found them purchasing stocks of Chinese-made ammunition in the Balkans and transporting them to Afghanistan, but a US embargo against Chinese weapons meant the whole thing had to be carried out clandestinely. The ammo was repackaged in cardboard boxes with no Chinese lettering. But some of the ammo was quite old, a number of the crates were infested with termites, and the two ended up being indicted for fraud and pleading guilty. And now we have a forthcoming Hollywood movie about their endogamic escapades.
It’s tempting to dismiss “War Dogs” as just another piece of Hollywood trash, but of course it comes as millions are coping with the destruction of homes and lives in the bogus war on terror and as whole nations are being torn apart. In Syria, the US has aligned itself with so-called “moderate” rebels, equipping them with vast stocks of weapons, many of which have ended up in the hands of ISIS, while in Yemen, we have assisted Saudi Arabia in an air campaign which, as of January 2016, had resulted in 2,795 killed and 5,324 wounded. At least 62 civilians were killed by coalition airstrikes in December alone, reports the UN, which was more than twice the number killed in the previous month. Many others have been left homeless.
A girl drinks from a leaking street pipe in Yemen, where millions now have no access to drinking water
But this hasn’t stopped the US from continuing to fuel the fire, so to speak. According to Defense News, the State Department has facilitated $33 billion worth of weapons sales to its Arab Gulf allies since May of 2015. The weapons–including anti-armor missiles, attack helicopters, and ballistic missile defense capabilities–have been sold to the six countries that make up the Gulf Cooperation Council, or GCC. These would of course be some of the same countries that have been supplying arms to ISIS while also carrying out war crimes in Yemen.
“In addition, the U.S. government and industry also delivered 4,500 precision-guided munitions to the GCC countries in 2015, including 1,500 taken directly from U.S. military stocks — a significant action given our military’s own needs,” said David McKeeby, a spokesman with the State Department’s Bureau of Political-Military Affairs.
How much of this ordnance may have ended up in the hands of not-so-moderate terrorists is unclear, but in December of 2015, Amnesty International published a report entitled “Taking Stock: The Arming of the Islamic State,” which found that the terrorist army “now deploys a substantial arsenal of arms and ammunition, designed or manufactured in more than 25 countries.”
A lot of this was looted or captured from poorly secured Iraqi military stocks, says the report, but illicit weapons transactions also seem to have played a considerable role in building up the ISIS arsenal–and some of the “chain of custody” evidence cited in the report, including a cache of weapons transferred from Croatia to the Free Syrian Army, sounds almost eerily similar to the sort of shady weapons trafficking operation run by Packouz and Diveroli.
Of course there is the old adage about art imitating life, and, on some level the fact that Hollywood would make a film about two Jews and then go on to entitle it “War Dogs” is perhaps not surprising. This, keep in mind, coming at a time when evidence of Israel’s support for terrorists in Syria is as clear as the hand in front of your face. And of course who could forget the lovable Victoria Nuland and her famous “f**k-the-EU” comment, mouthed off at a time when her State Department was busy engineering a coup in Ukraine?
In fact, efforts by Zionist Jews to create instability and instigate wars are getting to be about as common as fireflies on a summer night. They’re not always easy to spot, but you know they’re out there because they occasionally involuntarily light up, as when someone like Nuland gets caught in a taped phone conversation.
And now it looks like certain fireflies have moved into the Caucasus where they seem to be taking advantage of a long-simmering dispute between Azerbaijan and Armenia over the region of Nagorno-Karabakh. On April 2, intense fighting broke out followed by a series of charges, counter-charges, claims and counterclaims, made by both sides. According to the Armenians, it started with an offensive launched by Azerbaijani troops using tanks and artillery. Azerbaijan, on the other hand, insists it was responding to large-caliber weapons fire from inside the ethnic Armenian-controlled Nagorno-Karabakh area. So who is telling the truth? Or are both sides lying?
Hard to say for sure, but a couple of knowns are worth mentioning: A) Armenia is closely allied with Russia, and, B) Azerbaijan, too, has ties, including trade ties, with Russia, but it also is closely aligned with Turkey and maintains extensive trade relations with Israel. And the trade with Israel has been especially heavy in the area of military procurement.
Israeli drones, anti-aircraft and missile defense systems have been supplied to Azerbaijan in the wake of a $1.6 billion agreement struck between the two countries in 2012. Israeli companies are also active in the Azerbaijani telecommunications, agriculture, water supply medical technology, and energy sectors. That makes for a lot of sayanim on the ground inside a relatively small country.
Perhaps no surprise, then, that Armenian forces shot down an Israeli drone on April 2–the very day hostilities broke out.
The ThunderB drone is known for its light weight, 62 pounds, and its long flying time–25.5 hours–on a single tank of fuel. It is made by an Israeli company known as BlueBird, which reportedly may be about to be purchased by Elbit Systems.
And then on Tuesday came news of yet another Israeli drone spotted over Nagorno-Karabakh–this one believed to be a Harop drone, made by Israeli Aerospace Industries. The Harop is also known as a “suicide drone” in that rather than firing a missile at a target it simply becomes the missile itself, ramming the target and destroying it.
According to Gordon Duff, senior editor at Veterans Today, the key to understanding the Armenian-Azerbaijani conflict is to recognize “that Azerbaijan is a client state of Israel and the CIA.” He adds that Azerbaijan has as well become “the regional operating center for Google Idea Groups,” which he refers to as the “shadow CIA.”
Google Ideas was formed in 2010. At that time Google CEO Eric Schmidt tapped the State Department’s Jared Cohen to direct the new venture, dubbed as a “think/do tank.” In late 2015, Google was reorganized under a parent company called Alphabet, Inc., and in February of this year Google Ideas was rebranded as “Jigsaw”–although it is still run by Cohen and still affiliated with Google.
Cohen, by the way, is also an adjunct senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, and during his years with the State Department (2006-2010) he worked closely with Condoleezza Rice and Hillary Clinton, and became a strategic advisor in US policy toward Iran. Jigsaw’s mission is to “use technology to tackle the toughest geopolitical challenges, from countering violent extremism to thwarting online censorship to mitigating the threats associated with digital attacks,” says Schmidt.
Sounds nice, but a purview of Jigsaw’s website–fittingly kind of creepy and dark-looking–suggests that virtually all of the “activists” it has provided support to seem to be from countries with governments the US seeks to overthrow. And indeed, in 2012 Wikileaks released a cache of emails concerning Cohen’s activities in the Middle East, including one, apparently written by Cohen himself, in which he discusses efforts to stir up trouble in Iran:
I wanted to follow-up and get a sense of your latest thinking on the proposed March trip to UAE, Azerbaijan, and Turkey. The purpose of this trip is to exclusively engage the Iranian community to better understand the challenges faced by Iranians as part of one of our Google Ideas groups on repressive societies. Here is what we are thinking: Drive to Azerbaijan/Iranian border and engage the Iranian communities closer to the border (this is important because we need the Azeri Iranian perspective).
So here, it seems, we have Cohen basically setting up shop on the Iran-Azerbaijan border. It should be noted that both Azerbaijan and Armenia border Iran, while Azerbaijan also shares a border with Russia. A conflict breaking out in this region could easily spill over into Russia or Iran–both of which have called for the two warring parties to adhere to a 1994 ceasefire agreement.
But of course, such a spillover would advance certain geopolitical interests. For one thing, it would pose a dilemma for Russia at a time when it is engaged in Syria. Sergei Zheleznyak, vice speaker of the Russian state Duma, has voiced the view that a “third force” is behind developments in Nagorno-Karabakh. According to the Russian News Agency Tass :
“It is clear that the force that continues to fan the flames of war in the Middle East, Central Asia and the Caucasus dissatisfied with the peacekeeping and counter-terror success of Russia and our allies in Syria is interested in the speedy exacerbation of the protracted conflict in the Nagorno-Karabakh region,” the parliamentarian wrote on his Facebook page on Saturday.
According to Zheleznyak, “neither Azerbaijan nor Armenia essentially need this exacerbation now.” He noted that “there is every likelihood that this provocation has been organized by a third force,” adding that “information on its presence is beginning to leak out.” In view of this, he drew attention to the fact that “at night in the mountains it is enough to have a few trained armed persons who know the opposing sides’ balance of forces to provoke them to open reciprocal ‘reprisal’ fire.”
Most people probably assumed Zheleznyak, in talking about a “third force,” was referring to Turkey–and certainly Turkey’s downing of a Russian jet in Syria factors into the equation. But another element that perhaps figures even more prominently is the “clash of civilizations” that hardcore Zionists have long salivated over the thought of.
We might theorize that ISIS was created with a two-fold objective: one was to break apart Syria and bring about the overthrow of Bashar Assad, while the other was to jockey into existence a clash of civilizations between Christians and Muslims. In both of these objectives it has failed. Assad is still standing, and while the rise of ISIS certainly inflamed anti-Muslim sentiments in the West, it has not resulted in the all-out war between Christianity and Islam that would have played so well into the hands of the Jewish state.
But where the ISIS plan failed, the conflict in the Caucasus could well succeed. Armenia is predominantly a Christian state, while Azerbaijan is mostly Muslim. A war between these two could galvanize public opinion in the region along religious lines. Regional political alignments and the history of the Armenian genocide are also to be considered. Turkey, though sharing a border with Armenia, has openly sided with Azerbaijan. Russia, on the other hand, has remained officially neutral. However, an RT report filed April 5 shows journalist Murad Gazdiev reporting from inside Armenian Karabakh trenches.
Armenian Genocide–young girls crucified on crosses
So where is Israel in all of this? Officially it doesn’t seem to be saying much about it, but in May of 2015, the Jewish Daily Forward published an article entitled, “Why Israel’s Alliance with Azerbaijan is so Shortsighted.” The writer, Christopher Atamian, takes the Jewish state to task over its refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide as well as for its lucrative arms contract with Azerbaijan, a country he refers to as an “authoritarian regime that is fueling regional conflict.”
“This is the same country that attempted to wipe out the entire Armenian population of Nagorno Karabakh in 1991 before losing a bloody war against the Armenians,” he adds.
What he leaves unspoken, of course, is that Israel’s refusal to recognize the Armenian genocide is tantamount to holocaust denial. More than 1.5 million Armenians were massacred from the years 1915 to 1922, and the Jewish state’s silence on the matter became a particularly hot-button issue last year on the genocide’s 100th anniversary.
Zheleznyak, the Duma vice speaker, seems for his own part to be offering sage advice to both parties in the current conflict, noting that Russia’s president as well as its government agencies “urge Armenia and Azerbaijan to cease fire and not to allow to draw them into someone else’s insidious game, as long as it is still possible.”
“As long as it’s still possible” is of course the key question. The more people die, the further recede the possibilities of the regional players not getting trapped or caught up in the “insidious game”–and the greater grow the chances of the conflict’s becoming the parabolic curve that ignites World War III.
Should that come to pass, maybe Diveroli and Packouz will vie for ringside seats–although it doesn’t appear they’ll especially want to sit next to each other. According to the article in Rolling Stone, the two had a major falling out.
“Listen, dude, if you f**k me, I’m going to f**k you,” one of them warned during an argument over money.
“Whatever,” replied the other.
One wonders why they didn’t name the movie “War Pigs” rather than “War Dogs.” Perhaps it wouldn’t have been kosher enough.
In the past year in Israel we’ve seen an arson attack on a Palestinian home which left a mother, father and their 18-month-old baby dead; we have seen a video of Jewish settlers dancing and celebrating the attack by stabbing a photo of the baby; we have observed continued expropriation of Palestinian land in the West Bank, including one of the biggest land grabs in recent years–579 acres near the Dead Sea; and more recently we have seen a second video showing an Israeli soldier executing a wounded Palestinian with a gunshot to the head.
The execution video showed Israeli soldier Elior Azaria pump a bullet into the head of 21-year-old Abdul Fattah Sharif, as he lay on the ground wounded and barely moving. The murder took place on Purim, the Jewish holiday which celebrates the massacre of thousands of Gentiles, as told of in the Book of Esther. The next holiday on the Jewish calendar is Passover, coming up on April 22-23. The significance of Passover is laid out in twelfth chapter of Exodus:
On that same night I will pass through Egypt and strike down every firstborn–both men and animals–and I will bring judgement on all the gods of Egypt. I am the Lord. The blood will be a sign for you on the houses where you are; and when I see the blood I will pass over you. No destructive plague will touch you when I strike Egypt.
This is a day you are to commemorate; for the generations to come you shall celebrate it as a festival to the Lord–a lasting ordinance… And when your children ask you, ‘What does this ceremony mean to you?’ then tell them, ‘It is the Passover sacrifice to the Lord, who passed over the houses of the Israelites in Egypt and spared our homes when he struck down the Egyptians.’
It seems that both Purim and Passover are in essence celebrations of the deaths of non-Jews. Suppose Gentiles observed holidays each year in which we celebrated Jewish deaths? What do you suppose would be said of it?
Whatever one’s views of Judaism may be (there are some admirable sentiments expressed in the Old Testament as well as some repellent ones), Zionism has morphed from the simple idea of a homeland for a specific group of people into a supremacist ideology that has had appalling consequences–not only for its victims but also even for its adherents, dehumanizing them to a degree never thought imaginable.
Zionism is the great Passover feast that has become a celebration of war.
British collusion with sectarian violence: Part one
By Dan Glazebrook | RT | April 3, 2016
In the first of a four-part series, Dan Glazebrook and Sukant Chandan look at the recent spate of revelations about the involvement of British security services in facilitating the flow of fighters into Syria.
Over 13 years ago, in March 2003, Britain and the US led an illegal and unprovoked war of aggression against Iraq, a fellow UN member state. Such a war is deemed to be, in the judgment of the Nuremberg trials that followed World War Two, “not only an international crime” but “the supreme international crime differing only from other war crimes in that it contains within itself the accumulated evil of the whole.”
The mainstream narrative surrounding this war, and the endless catastrophes it bequeathed to Iraq, is that it was the result of a series of unfortunate ‘intelligence failures’: the British government had been led to believe that Iraq posed what Tony Blair called a “clear and present danger” to international security by intelligence that subsequently turned out to be false.
Blair told us that the Iraqi government had an active nuclear weapons program, had acquired uranium from Niger, had mobile chemical weapons factories that could evade UN weapons inspectors, and had stocks of chemical weapons able to hit British troops in Cyprus within 45 minutes.
All of these claims were false, and all were blamed on ‘intelligence failings’, creating an image of an intelligence service totally incapable of distinguishing between credible information and the deluding ravings of crackpots and fantasists, such as the notorious Curveball, the source of many of the various made-up claims later repeated in such grave and reverent tones by the likes of Tony Blair and Colin Powell.
In fact, we now know that sources such as Curveball had already been written off as delusional, compulsive liars by multiple intelligence agencies long before Blair and co got their hands on their outpourings – and the British government was fully aware of this.
The truth is, there were no intelligence failings over the Iraq war. In fact, the intelligence services had been carrying out their job perfectly: on the one hand, making correct assessments of unreliable information, and on the other, providing the government with everything necessary to facilitate its war of aggression. The Iraq war, then, represented a supreme example not of intelligence failure, but intelligence success.
Fast forward to today, and we are again hearing talk of ‘intelligence failings’ and the supposed incompetence of the security services to explain a debilitating Western-sponsored war in the Middle East: this time in Syria.
Earlier this year, British Foreign Minister Philip Hammond admitted that 800 British citizens had gone to join the anti-government terrorist movement in Syria, with at least 50 known to have been killed fighting for Al-Qaeda or Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). The British security and intelligence community, we are to believe, were simply unable to stop them.
Opportunist political opponents blame such shocking statistics on incompetence, while the government and its supporters increasingly weave them into an argument for greater powers and resources for the security services. Both are wrong; and a closer look at some of these so-called ‘intelligence failings’ makes this very clear.
In December 2013, it emerged that MI5 had tried to recruit Michael Adebolajo, one of the killers of Fusilier Lee Rigby, just a few weeks before Rigby’s murder. Adebalajo had been on the radar of both MI5 and MI6 for over 10 years. He had been under surveillance in no less than five separate MI5 investigations, including one set up specifically to watch him. He was known to have been in contact with the senior leadership of Al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula, based in Yemen, and he had been arrested in Kenya on a speedboat on the way to Somalia with five other youths, where he was suspected of hoping to join Al Shabaab.
The Kenyans were furious when they handed him over to the Brits only for him to be turned loose, presumably to continue with his recruitment activities.
The following month, 17-year-old Aseel Muthana left his family home in Cardiff to join rebel fighters in Syria. His brother Nasser had left three months earlier, and his family were worried that Aseel would try to join him. So they confiscated his passport, and informed the police of their concerns. The police kept the family under close scrutiny. They even arrived at his house at 5pm the day he left for Syria, to be told he hadn’t been seen since the night before. He boarded a flight at 8.35pm that night, using alternative travel documents issued by the Foreign Office. His family were horrified that he had been allowed to travel, without a passport, despite all their warnings.
A similar case occurred in June 2015, when three sisters from Bradford traveled to Syria – it is thought to join IS – taking their nine young children with them. Again, the family had been under intense scrutiny from the police ever since their brother went to join IS in Syria earlier that year. And far from being unaware of the risk of their being recruited, counter-terrorist police were, it appears, deeply complicit in their recruitment.
A letter from the family’s lawyers said they were “alarmed” by the police allegedly having been actively promoting and encouraging contact with the brother believed to be fighting in Syria: “It would appear that there has been a reckless disregard as to the consequences of any such contact [with] the families of those whom we represent,” the lawyers said, and continued: “Plainly, by the NECTU [North East Counter Terrorism Unit] allowing this contact they have been complicit in the grooming and radicalizing of the women.”
October 2014 saw the trial of Moazzam Begg, for various terrorism-related offences. Begg had admitted to training British recruits in Syria – but in his defense, he made the incendiary claim that MI5 had explicitly given him the green light for his frequent visits in a meeting they had arranged with him. MI5 admitted it was true, and the trial collapsed.
Six months later, BBC Radio 4 broadcast an interview with Aimen Dean, a founding member of Al-Qaeda who was subsequently recruited by MI6 as a spy. Part of his work for MI6, he said, involved encouraging young impressionable Muslims to go and join the ranks of Al-Qaeda.
Then in June 2015, Abu Muntasir, known as the godfather of British jihadists, thought to have recruited “thousands” of British Muslims to fight in Afghanistan, Kashmir, Burma, Bosnia and Chechnya, gave an interview to the Guardian, repenting his actions. He explained that he came back from fighting in Afghanistan to “create the link and clear the paths. I came back [from war] and opened the door and the trickle turned to a flood. I inspired and recruited, I raised funds and bought weapons, not just a one-off but for 15 to 20 years. Why I have never been arrested I don’t know.”
That same month, a second trial collapsed, for much the same reasons as Begg’s. Bherlin Gildo was arrested in October 2014 on his way from Copenhagen to Manila. He was accused of attending a terrorist training camp and receiving weapons training as well as possessing information likely to be useful to a terrorist. The Guardian reported that the prosecution “collapsed at the Old Bailey after it became clear Britain’s security and intelligence agencies would have been deeply embarrassed had a trial gone ahead.”
In January 2016, it was revealed that Siddhartha Dhar traveled to Syria in September 2014 while on police bail for terrorism offences – the sixth time he had been arrested for terror-related offences, and not long after MI5 had reportedly tried to recruit him. Police had demanded he hand in his passport, but did not follow it up; this was despite the fact that he had revealed – live on BBC morning television no less – that he would “love to live in the Islamic State.” He later posted pictures of himself posing with guns in Raqqa, and is suspected of being the so-called ‘new Jihadi John’, appearing in an IS video executing suspected spies. The original ‘Jihadi John’ – British-Kuwaiti Mohammed Emwazi – had also been well known to the British security services, having – just as Adebolajo and Dhar – apparently been offered a job by MI5.
Is this all just a ‘catalogue of blunders’, more ‘intelligence failings’ on a massive scale?
These cases demonstrate a couple of irrefutable points. Firstly, the claim that the security services would have needed more power and resources to have prevented the absconding is clearly not true.
Since 1995, the Home Office has operated what it calls a ‘Warnings Index’: a list of people ‘of interest’ to any branch of government, who will then be ‘flagged up’ should they attempt to leave the country. Given that every single one of these cases was well known to the authorities, the Home Office had, for whatever reason, decided either not to put them on the Warnings Index, or to ignore their attempts to leave the country when they were duly flagged up. That is, the government decided not to use the powers already at its disposal to prevent those at the most extreme risk of joining the Syrian insurgency from doing so.
Secondly, these cases show that British intelligence and security clearly prioritize recruitment of violent so-called Islamists over disruption of their activities. The question is – what exactly are they recruiting them for?
At his trial, Bherlin Gildo’s lawyers provided detailed evidence that the British government itself had been arming and training the very groups that Gildo was being prosecuted for supporting. Indeed, Britain has been one of the most active and vocal supporters of the anti-government insurgency in Syria since its inception, support which continued undiminished even after the sectarian leadership and direction of the insurgency was privately admitted by Western intelligence agencies in 2012. Even today, with IS clearly the main beneficiaries of the country’s destabilization, and Al-Qaeda increasingly hegemonic over the other anti-government forces, David Cameron continues to openly ally himself with the insurgency.
Is it really such a far-fetched idea that the British state, openly supporting a sectarian war against the Ba’athist government in Syria, might also be willfully facilitating the flow of British fighters to join this war? Britain’s history of collusion with sectarian paramilitaries as a tool of foreign policy certainly suggests this may be so. This history, in Ireland, Afghanistan and the Arab peninsula, and its role in shaping British policy today, will be the subject of the articles to follow.
Dan Glazebrook is a freelance political writer who has written for RT, Counterpunch, Z magazine, the Morning Star, the Guardian, the New Statesman, the Independent and Middle East Eye, amongst others. His first book “Divide and Ruin: The West’s Imperial Strategy in an Age of Crisis” was published by Liberation Media in October 2013. It featured a collection of articles written from 2009 onwards examining the links between economic collapse, the rise of the BRICS, war on Libya and Syria and ‘austerity’. He is currently researching a book on US-British use of sectarian death squads against independent states and movements from Northern Ireland and Central America in the 1970s and 80s to the Middle East and Africa today.
Turkey is key supplier of weapons, military hardware to ISIS – Russian envoy to UN
RT | April 1, 2016
Moscow has submitted data on Turkey’s illegal arms and military hardware supply to Islamic State in Syria to the UN Security Council. Supplies are supervised by the Turkish intelligence service, Russian UN envoy Vitaly Churkin said as cited by Russian media.
“The main supplier of weapons and military equipment to ISIL fighters is Turkey, which is doing so through non-governmental organizations. Work in this area is overseen by the National Intelligence Organization of Turkey,” Churkin wrote.
According to the envoy, transportation “mainly involves vehicles, including as part of humanitarian aid convoys.”
The letter mentioned several NGOs, which are funded from Turkish and foreign sources, which sent different cargo, including military equipment, to Syria last year.
“The Besar foundation (President — D. Şanlı) is most actively engaged in pursuing these objectives and, in 2015, formed around 50 convoys to the Turkmen areas of Bayırbucak and Kızıltepe (260 km north of Damascus),” Churkin stressed, adding that Iyilikder Foundation and The Foundation for Human Rights and Freedoms were also involved.
In total, the terrorists were delivered 2.5 thousand tons of ammonium nitrate (worth around $788,700), 456 tons of potassium nitrate ($468,700), 75 tons of aluminum powder ($496,500), sodium nitrate ($19,400), glycerin ($102,500) and nitric acid ($34,000 thousand) via Turkey in 2015, Churkin wrote.
The French Malaise: ”National security” but for which nation?
By Gearóid Ó Colmáin | American Herald tribune | March 31, 2016
Since the Belgian attacks on March 22nd, there has been much talk of Europe’s need to increase security and modernize methods of mass surveillance and control in all public transport, particularly airports and underground trains. One country in the world has received a considerable degree of publicity in this regard: Israel. The Jewish State is now being held up by the French media as a ‘model of security’ which should be emulated by the European Union.
Henceforth, Israeli security methods are to be employed in our Airports. Travelers parking their cars will be interrogated by police and secret service personnel; passengers will be questioned about their destination and further interrogations will ensue if they are perceived to be engaging in prevarication or showing signs of anxiety or stress. Passenger profiling is to become the norm rather than the exception. People’s travel records will be taken into consideration in assessing whether or not they pose a ‘threat’. This ultimately means that all citizens will be treated as though they were terrorists.
The French media have not been embarrassed about suggesting Israeli security methods be introduced throughout Europe, notwithstanding the fact that Israel is a racist and criminal entity which cruelly keeps over a million people locked up in an open air concentration camp, subjecting the native population of the occupied territory to constant state terror and torture. The pro-Israeli propaganda is being aggressively pushed through both national and regional newspapers throughout France.
An article appeared in Quest France on Sunday March 27 with the headline: L’aéroport de Tel-Aviv, modèlede sécurité- ‘Tel-Aviv Airport, model of security’.
The report describes the interrogation methods mentioned above which are routinely carried out in Tel -Aviv’s Ben Gourion airport. We are also informed that Israeli security experts from the EL AI airline visited Zaventem Airport in Bruxelles shortly after the terrorist attacks in order to assess the site’s security; they were apparently ‘outraged’ by the lax security at the airport. But the reader is not told who was in charge of surveillance at Zaventem Airport. Security at the airport is in fact provided by ICTS, an Israeli company which was set up by former operatives of Shin Bet, Israel’s domestic spy agency. So Israeli experts were ‘outraged’ by the lack of security provided by Israeli intelligence? http://www.ictseurope.com/global-locations/belgium
According to Sott.net :
‘ICTS uses the security system employed in Israel, whereby passengers are profiled to assess the degree to which they pose a potential threat on the basis of a number of indicators, including age, name, origin and behavior during questioning’.
ICTS provided security at Logan Airport in 2001 when the infamous ’19 hijackers’ allegedly boarded their flight to New York on their way to the World Trade Centre. A few months later in December 2001, Richard Reid, who had previously spent time in Israel, boarded a flight in Paris’ Charles De Gaulle airport heading for Miami. He was carrying explosives which he unsuccessfully attempted to detonate on the plane. ICTS, who were in charge of security at Charles De Gaulle airport, failed once again.
ICTS was in charge of London’s bus security system in 2005 during the terrorist attacks there and on Christmas Day 2009 at Schipol Airport, Amsterdam, the Israeli company failed to prevent ‘knicker-bomber, Nigerian ‘terrorist’ Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, the wealthy son of a former Nigerian MP, who boarded a flight from to Detroit without a passport, while carrying explosives. According to US attorney Kurk Haskel who was an eye-witness, Abdulmutallab was escorted on board the plane by a ‘well-dressed’ man of ‘Indian’ origin who told ticket officials that “the man was from Sudan and that it was typical (to let him on the plane without a passport).”
This strongly suggests the terrorists had security clearances.
So now we have a barrage of media sound bites about the effectiveness of Israeli security and the necessity of introducing further police-state measures in Europe, in spite of the fact that Israeli companies are already providing ‘security’ here and doing a spectacularly dismal job at preventing terrorism!
After the March 22nd attacks in Brussels, a video circulated on the Internet drawing attention to the suspicious behavior of an ”eyewitness’ on France 24 news station after the bombs in Zaventum airport. The ”eye-witness” named Alexandre claims to be a Belgian living in America but his accent is unusual. Alexandre, who is supposed to be in shock and trauma after a brutal terrorist attack, suggests that perhaps European authorities will be forced to adopt security measures similar to those in Israel. Although this ”eye witness” experienced a terrorist attack, he admits that he has ‘ no idea’ what the other victims in the Brussels metro bombs went through. The statements are odd and suspicious but there is no way of proving whether the character is a Mossad agent as the video caption implies.
Nonetheless, it is particularly surreal to find the mass media in France promoting the ‘Israeli security model’ when it is Israeli security companies who are responsible for ‘failing to prevent’ so many terrorist attacks. Of course, the Zionist entity is the only real and long term beneficiary of the War on Terror. As Benjamin Netanyahu himself put it in 2007: ” We are benefiting from one thing, and that is the attack on the Twin Towers and the Pentagon, and the American struggle in Iraq.”
There is no reason to suppose that this recent wave of terrorist attacks in Europe is not also ”benefiting” the Zionist entity.
Promoting emigration and multiculturalism in Europe, propping up Zionist regimes such as Saudi Arabia and Turkey who are Wahhabising Europe’s youth, while at the same time fomenting Islamophobia among European citizens, all these policies serve Israel’s imperial ambitions to rule over all the Arabs and Muslims of the Middle East, while maintaining support in Europe and America by reminding its people every time there is an ‘Islamist’ terrorist attack that this is what Israel is fighting every day.
In his new book Palestine, le malaise Français Franco-Camerounian investigative Journalist Charles Onana shows how the Jewish Lobby in France harassed and demonised President Francois Mitterand for insisting on Yasser Arafat’s visit to France in 1989.
Onana’s study of French government archives prove that the influence of the Jewish Lobby on French foreign policy is deeper and more far-reaching than commonly understood.
Mitterand’s defiance of the Jewish Lobby was continued to a certain extent by President Chirac when he refused to participate in the Zionist-orchestrated war on Iraq in 2003. Since the accession of Nicolas Sarkozy to the French presidency in 2007 and the current regime of François Hollande, Zionism has become almost inseparable from French ruling class ideology. From arch-Zionist Bernard-Henri Lévy’s war on Libya to the war on Syria and a whole series of artificially engineered destabilizations in Africa involving Takfiri Muslims murdering Christians, France has become the bellicose avant-garde of Zionism, carrying out a strategy of chaos which is making the world dangerous for the many but safe for the ‘chosen ones’ and their ever expanding Zionist entity.
Mitterand and Chirac were certainly no friends of French workers nor of the African nations writhing under the yoke of French neo-colonialism, but both leaders had, on the contrary, the merit of setting some limits to Zionist omnipotence. Mitterand’s haughty refusal to ‘apologise’ to Israel on behalf of the French people for the crimes of the Vichy regime, and Chirac’s imperious reprimand of Israeli troops during his visit to Palestine.
[This] contrasts poignantly with the craven, sycophancy of President Hollande’s abasement of the French nation before Israel, when at Netanyahu’s Israeli residence in November 2013 the French president, like a court jester, nauseatingly offered to ” sing a song of love for Israel”.
None of the articles in the French press, published since the Paris and Belgium terrorist attacks mention the criminal ‘negligence’ of ICTS. Instead, we are being told Israeli security is a model we should follow when in fact, we are already living under ‘Israeli security’, the same security agencies who have boasted about committing false flag terrorism against the French public.
In 1979, Israel bombed a factory in France making parts for a nuclear reactor in Iraq. The attack was blamed on ecologists. The Israeli Secret Intelligence Service ( ISIS or Mossad) then proceeded to issue death threats to French engineers working on the project, threatening to kill them and their families if they returned to Iraq. The death threats were issued in the name of an ‘Islamist’ group. All of this was admitted by the Mossad agents themselves in a documentary aired on French television entitled: ‘Droit d’Inventaire: quand le Mossad frappe en France’.
Israel is the only foreign state to have bombed France since the German occupation of the Second World War, a terror campaign admitted by the Zionist entity’s government, yet Israeli companies are providing ‘security’ for French citizens.
Israel’s global role as a pariah state operating outside the norms of international law, flouting all international conventions on human rights, repeatedly committing heinous war crimes and waging wars of aggression, while functioning as a veritable shadow government within the corridors of Western imperial states, this is a problem no nation can continue to ignore. But the few who refuse to ignore it risk their lives.
On March 26 French senator Natalie Goulet received death threats on social media after she wrote a letter to the secretary of state in charge of the budget, requesting clarification for the French government’s policy of giving a 60 percent tax deduction to families who make donations to the Israeli Defense Forces. Although banned in Israel, Betar, the Zionist terrorist militia, regularly issue death threats to their enemies with total impunity from the French state.
But perhaps we should feel ‘safer’ now that the ‘Israeli security model’ is being reinforced as the metropolitan world, our world, slowly metamorphoses into a vast, sprawling Gaza-zone.
Gearóid Ó Colmáin, AHT Paris correspondent, is a journalist and political analyst. His work focuses on globalization, geopolitics and class struggle. His articles have been translated into many languages. He is a regular contributor to Global Research, Russia Today International, Press TV, Sputnik Radio France, Sputnik English, Al Etijah TV, Sahar TV Englis, Sahar French and has also appeared on Al Jazeera. He writes in English, Irish Gaelic and French.
How US-Backed War on Syria Helped ISIS
By Daniel Lazare | Consortium News | March 31, 2016
Why are Islamic militants wreaking havoc from Brussels to Lahore? The best way to answer this question is by taking a close look at how The New York Times covered this weekend’s liberation of Palmyra from Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi’s Islamic State.
The article, entitled “Syrian Troops Said to Recapture Historic Palmyra From ISIS,” began on a snide note. While the victory may have netted Bashar al-Assad “a strategic prize,” reporters Hwaida Saad and Kareem Fahim wrote that it also provided the Syrian president with “something more rare: a measure of international praise.”
The article noted that “Mr. Assad’s contention that his government is a bulwark against the transnational extremist group” has been bolstered, but added that “his foes and some allies argue that he must leave power as part of a political settlement to end the war in Syria” – without, of course, specifying who those allies might be.
Then it offered a bit of background: “Lost in the celebrations was a discussion of how Palmyra had fallen in the first place. When the Islamic State captured the city in May [2015], the militants faced little resistance from Syrian troops. At the time, residents said officers and militiamen had fled into orchards outside the city, leaving conscripted soldiers and residents to face the militants alone.”
Since the Times claims to have “several hundred” surreptitious contacts inside Syria, the charge that Assad’s troops fled without a fight may conceivably be correct. But it’s hard to square with reports that the Islamic State (also known as ISIS, ISIL and Daesh) had to battle for seven or eight days before entering the city and then had to deal with a counter-offensive on the city’s outskirts. But even if true, it’s only part of the story and a small one at that.
The real story began two months earlier when Syrian rebels launched a major offensive in Syria’s northern Idlib province with heavy backing from Turkey and Saudi Arabia. Led by Al Nusra, the local Al Qaeda affiliate, but with the full participation of U.S.-backed rebel forces, the assault proved highly successful because of the large numbers of U.S.-made optically guided TOW missiles supplied by the Saudis. [See Consortiumnews.com’s “Climbing into Bed with Al-Qaeda.”]
The missiles gave the rebels the edge they needed to destroy dozens of government tanks and other vehicles according to videos posted on social media websites. Indeed, one pro-U.S. commander told The Wall Street Journal that the TOWs completely “flipped the balance of power,” enabling the rebels to dislodge the Syrian army’s heavily dug-in forces and drive them out of town. Although the government soon counter-attacked, Al Nusra and its allies continued to advance to the point where they posed a direct threat to the Damascus regime’s stronghold in Latakia province 50 or 60 miles to the west.
Official Washington was jubilant. “The trend lines for Assad are bad and getting worse,” a senior official crowed a month after the offensive began. The Times happily observed that “[t]he Syrian Army has suffered a string of defeats from re-energized insurgents … [which] raise newly urgent questions about the durability of President Bashar al-Assad’s rule.”
Assad was on the ropes, or so everyone said. Indeed, ISIS thought so as well, according to the Associated Press, which is why it decided that the opportunity was ripe to launch an offensive of its own 200 miles or so to the southeast. Worn-out and depleted after four years of civil war, the Syrian Arab Army retreated before the onslaught.
But considering the billions of dollars that the U.S. and Saudis were pouring into the rebel forces, blaming Damascus for not putting up a stiffer fight is a little like beating up a 12-year-old girl and then blaming her for not having a better right hook.
So the U.S. and its allies helped Islamic State by tying down Assad’s forces in the north so that it could punch through in the center. But that’s not all the U.S. did. It also helped by suspending bombing as the Islamic State neared Palmyra.
As the Times put it at the time: “Any airstrikes against Islamic State militants in and around Palmyra would probably benefit the forces of President Bashar al-Assad. So far, United States-led airstrikes in Syria have largely focused on areas far outside government control, to avoid the perception of aiding a leader whose ouster President Obama has called for.”
The upshot was a clear message to ISIS to the effect that it had nothing to worry about from U.S. jet bombers as long as it engaged Assad’s troops in close combat. The U.S. thus incentivized ISIS to press forward with the assault. Although residents later wondered why the U.S. had not bombed ISIS forces “while they were traversing miles of open desert roads,” the answer, simply, is that Washington had other things on its mind. Rather than defeating ISIS, it preferred to use it to accomplish its primary goal, which was driving out Assad.
The Blowback
But what does this have to do with Brussels and Lahore? Simply that America’s fundamental ambivalence toward ISIS, Al Qaeda, and similar groups — its policy of battling them on one hand and seeking to make use of them on the other — is what allows Sunni terrorism to fester and grow.
The administration is shocked, SHOCKED, when Islamists kill innocent people in Belgium but not when they kill innocent people in Syria. This is why the White House long regarded ISIS as a lesser threat: because it thought its violence would remain safely contained.
“Where Al Qaeda’s principal ambition is to launch attacks against the West and U.S. homeland,” Deputy National Security Adviser Ben Rhodes explained in August 2014, “ISIL’s primary focus is consolidating territory in the Middle East region to establish their own Islamic State.”
Since the only people in harm’s way were Syrians, there was no cause for alarm. The rest of the world could relax.
Hence the confusion when ISIS did the unexpected by striking out at Western targets after all. As the Times observed in a major takeout this week on Islamic State’s Western operations, officials were slow to connect the dots because Euro-terrorism was not supposed to be ISIS’s thing: “Even as the group began aggressively recruiting foreigners, especially Europeans, policymakers in the United States and Europe continued to see it as a lower-profile branch of Al Qaeda that was mostly interested in gaining and governing territory.”
Turkish officials made essentially the same point last week in response to widespread complaints that they have done little to prevent Sunni terrorists from making their way to Syria. Not so, they countered. When they tried to return the jihadis from whence they came, they found that members of the European Union were none too eager to have them.
“We were suspicious that the reason they want these people to come is because they don’t want them in their own countries,” a senior Turkish security official told the London Guardian. Instead, they preferred to see them continue on their way. And why not? At home, they would only cause trouble, whereas in Syria they would advance Western interests by waging war against Assad’s Baathist government.
Thus, Brussels was unresponsive when Turkish officials informed it that they had detained a Belgian citizen named Ibrahim el-Bakraoui in the border town of Gaziantep on suspicion of traveling to Syria to join the jihad. The Turks deported him anyway, but the Belgians remained unconcerned until El-Bakraoui turned up among the suicide bombers at Zaventem airport.
The same thing happened when the Turks intercepted a Syria-bound French national named Omar Ismail Mostefai. Paris was also unresponsive until Mostefai wound up among the ISIS militants who stormed the Bataclan concert hall last November, at which point its attitude turned distinctly less blasé.
In June 2014, Turkish security officers in Istanbul intercepted a Norwegian citizen traveling to Syria with a camouflage outfit, a first-aid kit, knives, a gun magazine and parts of an AK-47, all of which E.U. customs officials had somehow overlooked.
Two months later, they intercepted a German citizen with a suitcase containing a bulletproof vest, military camouflage and binoculars that customs had also failed to notice. When they apprehended a Danish-Turkish dual citizen on his way to Syria, they sent him back to Copenhagen. But the Danes gave him another passport regardless so he could continue on his way. Everyone figured that what happens in Syria stays in Syria, so why worry?
Now, of course, everyone is worried big time. With the AP reporting that Islamic State has armed and trained 400 to 600 fighters for its European operations, talk of ISIS sleeper cells is ubiquitous. Referring to the Brussels district where the March 22 bombing plot was hatched, Patrick Kanner, the French social-democratic minister of youth, warned ominously: “There are today, as is well known, hundreds of neighborhoods in France that present potential similarities to what happened in Molenbeek.”
The implication was that the state of emergency should not only continue but deepen. As hundreds of neo-Nazis descended on Brussels chanting anti-immigrant slogans, paranoia took a giant leap forward as did its handmaidens racism and Islamophobia.
But as much everyone would like to blame it all on Donald Trump, Marine Le Pen and others of that ilk, none of this is really their fault. To the contrary, the West’s disastrous Syria policy is entirely the creation of nice-guy liberals like Barack Obama. Desperate to appease both Israel and the Sunni oil sheiks, all of whom for various reasons wanted Assad to go, he signed on to a massive Sunni jihad that has turned Syria into a charnel house.
With death estimates now running as high as 470,000, which is to say one person in nine, the idea that massive violence like this could remain confined to a single country was absurd to begin with. Yet Obama went along regardless.
Indeed, the administration is still unwilling to back down despite all that has happened since. When a reporter asked point-blank at a State Department press briefing, “Do you want to see the [Damascus] regime retake Palmyra or would you prefer that it stays in Daesh’s hands,” spokesman Mark Toner hemmed and hawed before finally admitting that a takeover was preferable because “we think Daesh is probably the greater evil in this case.” (Exchange starts at 1:05.)
But the next day he walked back even that mealy-mouthed statement. Refusing to endorse Palmyra’s fall at all, he declared: “I’m not going to laud it because it’s important to remember that one of the reasons Daesh is in Syria is because Assad’s brutal crackdown on his own people created the kind of vacuum, if you will, that has allowed a group like ISIL or Daesh to flourish. Just because he’s now, given the cessation of hostilities, willing and-or able to divert his forces to take on Daesh doesn’t exonerate him or his regime from the gross abuses that they’ve carried out against the Syrian people.”
Since Assad is the only one to blame, the U.S. doesn’t have to ponder its own contribution to the problem. Instead, it gives itself a clean bill of health and moves on. Rather, it would like to move on if only ISIS would let it.
But the more aid the U.S. and its allies funnel into the hands of Sunni terrorists, the more groups like ISIS and Al Qaeda will grow and the farther their reach will extend. The upshot will be more bombings and shootings in Paris, Brussels, and who knows where else. Racism and Islamophobia will continue to surge regardless of what bien-pensant liberals do to talk it down.
The liberal center is engineering its own demise.
Daniel Lazare is the author of several books including The Frozen Republic: How the Constitution Is Paralyzing Democracy (Harcourt Brace).
The Myth of America’s War on Terrorism
By Stephen Lendman | March 31, 2016
It’s a complete hoax – a phony pretext for waging endless imperial wars, wanting whole continents carved up for profit and dominance.
Fictitious enemies are created. Premeditated wars of aggression follow. Rules of engagement are changed from rule of law observance to anything goes.
America declared war on humanity, the greatest threat to life on earth, using terrorist groups to do much of its dirty work.
Their names don’t matter. Earlier US supported anti-Soviet Afghan mujahadeen forces became opposition Taliban fighters.
ISIS, Al Qaeda, Jabhat al-Nusra and likeminded groups are similar. Names and faces change, not methods of operation other than access to more modern weapons and new funding sources.
Obama’s vow to degrade and destroy ISIS (and by implication likeminded terrorist groups) is a complete fabrication, the public willfully deceived to believe otherwise.
Washington backs the scourge it claims to oppose – along with rogue allies providing ISIS and other terrorist groups with arms, munitions, training, funding, direction and other material support. They couldn’t exist without it.
Media scoundrels front for power and privilege, perpetuating the Big Lie about America combating terrorism instead of explaining what news consumers need to know – The New York Times as willfully deceptive as Fox News.
Its editors say “America needs frank talk on ISIS,” never explaining it created and supports the group.
They lied, claiming “Obama authorized…airstrikes in Iraq and Syria in 2014 to curb the rise of the Islamic State.”
Syrian intervention was and continues to be flagrantly illegal without Security Council or Damascus authorization. Baghdad was pressured to let Washington to maintain the fiction of combatting ISIS.
In both countries, infrastructure and government sites are struck, ISIS and other terrorists aided. Thousands of US combat forces are in Iraq, likely more coming, limited numbers in Syria.
Russia alone along with Syrian ground forces achieved significant victories against ISIS and likeminded groups.
The Obama administration lied, claiming US warplanes cut ISIS revenues by striking its oil trucks and other targets. It says “intensif(ied) airstrikes and raids” are coming.
America’s air campaign in Iraq and Syria have been ongoing for over 18 months. ISIS advanced steadily until Russia intervened in Syria.
Instead of exposing Obama’s phony war on terror, his lawless aggression, using ISIS and other terrorist groups as imperial foot soldiers, The Times perpetuates the myth of combating a scourge America supports.
Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago. He 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.”
“Suicide Bombers” Known to, Imprisoned by Security Agencies BEFORE Brussels Attack
By Tony Cartalucci | New Eastern Outlook | March 25, 2016
It is now revealed that not only were at least three bombers involved in the March 22 Brussels attack well-known to Western security agencies, two – brothers Brahim and Khalid El Bakraoui – were both arrested, charged, and imprisoned for violent crimes in 2010 and 2011, the elder brother for shooting at police with an AK-47s automatic rifle during a holdup, and the younger brother for carjacking and possession of several AK-47s, respectively.
It is also now confirmed that the elder brother, Brahim El Bakraoui, was arrested and deported from Turkey last year for suspected terrorist activity, but not before Ankara attempted to notify Brussels in order for El Bakraoui to be detained upon his arrival back in the EU. Brussels, however, failed categorically to act on the alert, allowing El Bakraoui to return home without consequence.
The third suspect, Najim Laachraoui, had traveled to Syria between 2012-2013 and has had an international warrant out for his arrest since 2014 for allegedly aiding in the recruitment of Europeans for the so-called “Islamic State” (ISIS).
Germany’s largest press agency, Deutsche Presse-Agentur, reported in their article, “Reports: Brothers known to police were among Brussels suicide bombers,” that:
Two Brussels brothers who were known to police are among the suicide bombers who carried out deadly terrorist attacks on the international airport and subway in the Belgian capital, local media reported Wednesday.
And that:
[Khalid El Bakraoui] had been sentenced in early 2011 to five years in prison for carjackings, after having been arrested in possession of Kalashnikov rifles, according to the Belga news agency.
His brother, 30-year-old Brahim, had been sentenced in 2010 to nine years in prison for having shot at police with a Kalashnikov rifle during a hold-up, Belga said.
The New York Times, in their article, “Brussels Attack Lapses Acknowledged by Belgian Officials,” would report regarding Brahim El Bakraoui’s arrest and deportation from Turkey that:
The Belgian justice and interior ministers acknowledged that their departments should have acted on a Turkish alert about a convicted Belgian criminal briefly arrested in Turkey last year on suspicion of terrorist activity, who turned out to be one of the suicide bombers. And the Belgian prosecutor’s office said that person’s brother — another suicide bomber — had been wanted since December in connection with the Paris attacks.
Apparently in Belgium, you can possess a small military arsenal, even use it against police, and still get out of jail early enough to travel to Syria to join a known terrorist organization before being deported without consequence, then join a terrorist network back home lined by equally known criminals to Belgium security agencies, before carrying out a deadly high profile terrorist attack.
And unlike most ISIS suicide attacks, featuring suicide belts or vests, the bombers involved in the Brussels attack appear to have been pushing carts that contained bombs. It is more than possible that the brothers were unaware of the “one-way” nature of their attack, as a third bomber – Laachraoui, the suspected “bomb maker” – managed to escape, and several reports indicate at least one of the brothers may have possibly dropped off a device at the airport which was remotely detonated before moving onward to the Brussels metro to carry out a second bombing.
Suspects “Escaped” Police Raid a Week Before the Attacks
In addition to the El Bakraoui brothers’ previous arrests in 2010 and 2011, as well as the eldest brother’s arrest and deportation from Turkey last year for suspected terrorist activity, they were also allegedly involved in a police raid just one week before the Brussels attack. During the raid, at least one suspect was killed while two others escaped, the El Bakraoui brothers.
The London Telegraph in their article, “Brussels shootout: Four arrested as Islamic State flag found near the body of gunman,” reported that (emphasis added):
According to Dernière Heure, the two suspects at large are thought to be Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, respectively 26 and 30. Known for gangster-related crimes, the name of one has cropped up in anti-terror investigations, according to Le Monde.
After the standoff, police and special forces expanded their search and homed in on a neighbouring street, rue de l’Eau, after finding two gun cartridges and dark clothing in the area. During a raid on a house, they picked up another Kalashnikov.
The Belgium police and the Western media have categorically failed to foster understanding and help form a clear picture of the terrorists they are allegedly attempting to apprehend. At least four suspects were arrested after the raid, but then released without charges. The identity of the suspects and the circumstances of their release have not been reported.
Terrorists Under Security’s Noses, in their Clutches, Yet Still Carrying Out Attacks
Virtually every single terror suspect involved in the Charlie Hebo massacre and Paris attacks last year in France, and the Brussels attack this week, have been long-known to Western security agencies.
Many have even been detained, convicted, and even imprisoned for violent crimes, with at least one Charlie Hebo massacre suspect having had been previously arrested in 2005 specifically for terror-related charges.
Slate Magazine would report in their article, “The Details of Paris Suspect Cherif Kouachi’s 2008 Terrorism Conviction,” that:
Kouachi was arrested in January 2005, accused of planning to join jihadists in Iraq. He was said to have fallen under the sway of Farid Benyettou, a young “self-taught preacher” who advocated violence, but had not actually yet traveled to Iraq or committed any acts of terror. Lawyers at the time said he had not received weapons training and “had begun having second thoughts,” going so far as to express “relief” that he’d been apprehended.
Kouachi would be later released before travelling to the Middle East to train and fight alongside Al Qaeda. CNN would report in an article titled, “France tells U.S. Paris suspect trained with al Qaeda in Yemen,” that:
Western intelligence officials are scrambling to learn more about possible travel of the two Paris terror attack suspects, brothers Said and Cherif Kouachi, with new information suggesting one of the brothers recently spent time in Yemen associating with al Qaeda in that country, U.S. officials briefed on the matter told CNN. Additional information from a French source close to the French security services puts one of the brothers in Syria.
Many of the other suspects have also been on terror watch lists for their travels to Syria where they have fought alongside ISIS before inexplicably being allowed to return to Europe and rejoin society without consequence, including at least one of the suspects involved in the recent Brussels attack.
Considering that the US itself admitted in a 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) report that it and its allies, including “the West, Gulf countries, and Turkey,” sought the creation of a “Salafist” (Islamic) “principality” (State) in eastern Syria precisely where ISIS now resides, it should not be surprising to find what appears to be an intentionally ineffective security policy put in place, allowing known, violent criminals, with obvious ties to terrorist organizations to operate freely both overseas in open combat against the West’s enemies, and at home to carry out a constant procession of attacks that foster fear, hatred, hysteria, and above all obedience to Western special interests at home.
Just as with the Charlie Hebo massacre, where the backstories of the suspects raised questions as to why they were not already long-ago jailed, the multiplying indicators that Western security agencies knew about, but inexplicably failed to stop known terrorists before this week’s attack will likely conjure up familiar excuses of “incompetence” or “overtaxed” security organizations.
And just like the terrorists security agencies have repeatedly failed to stop despite tracking and even capturing and detaining them multiple times, those among Western security agencies and governments responsible for negligence ahead of this most recent attack are very likely never to see the inside of a jail cell.
All that’s left is for the public to reconcile the West’s alleged claims it is fighting ISIS versus its actions which appear to be aiding, abetting, and perpetuating this global menace, at home and abroad.
Turkey orders closed trial for Cumhuriyet editor threatening to expose Erdogan in court
RT | March 25, 2016
The editor of the opposition Cumhuriyet newspaper, Can Dundar, has been punished with a trial behind closed doors, after threatening to put President Erdogan on the defensive with renewed allegations.
Many media trials in Turkey of late have gripped national and international attention, as President Recep Tayyip Erdogan continues his relentless pursuit of alleged enemies of the state.
Dundar has been sentenced to life on the charge of espionage – and has vowed to do his utmost to make the wrongdoings of the Turkish government the focus of his Friday trial, effectively turning the tables.
Like others in recent years, Dundar, 54, and Ankara bureau chief Erdem Gul, 49, stand accused of trying to topple the government, something they allegedly attempted to do by publishing last May a video purporting to reveal truckloads of arms shipments to Syria overseen by Turkish intelligence.
Erdogan did admit to the trucks belonging to the Turkish National Intelligence Organization (MIT), but said they were carrying weapons for the Turkmens – the group fighting both Syrian President Bashar Assad’s forces and Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL). He added that the prosecution had no right to peer into the trucks, and that the whole thing was set up to discredit his administration.
Dundar threatened to show the tape in court, knowing the risks involved. It did not pan out according to plan, and has resulted in the punishment he received Friday morning – that he will not see an open trial. In addition, the courts decided that Erdogan will act as a co-plaintiff in the trials, Reuters learned from a witness.
“We are not defendants, we are witnesses,” he told Reuters in an interview hours before the trial. “We will lay out all of the illegalities and make this a political prosecution … The state was caught in a criminal act, and it is doing all that it can to cover it up.
“We were arrested for two reasons: to punish us and to frighten others. And we see the intimidation has been effective. Fear dominates,” he added.
Dundar and Gul made an appearance before the courthouse on Friday morning, emphasizing that “journalism is not a crime” and once again calling publicly for their acquittal.
Both journalists were arrested in November and released following three months in detention after a constitutional court ruled on their release before trial – something Erdogan was not happy about.
“This institution, with the involvement of its president and some members, did not refrain from taking a decision that is against the country and its people, on a subject that is a concrete example of one of the biggest attacks against Turkey recently,” the state leader said at a rally in early March.
Just after the journalists’ release, Erdogan said he didn’t “obey or respect the [court’s] decision.” Their case “has nothing to do with press freedom,” he said, accusing them of “spying.”
He has also been heard saying Dundar would “pay a heavy price” for his crimes.
Numerous rights groups and press associations have voiced grave concern for press freedom in Turkey, all issuing calls to free Dundar and Gul. The International Press Institute called the trial “politically motivated.” Reporters Without Borders went a step further, calling Erdogan “increasingly despotic.”
The development follows several others in recent months, all involving the media being charged with similar crimes for similar offenses. This month authorities seized control of Zaman – the country’s top-selling newspaper, for allegedly aiding Fethullah Gulen – a religious scholar in exile whom Erdogan accused of leading a “terrorist” movement.
Since Erdogan came to power in 2014, a little under 2,000 such cases have been started, the majority for “insulting” the president.
Read more:
Almost 2,000 court cases opened in 18-months for ‘insulting’ Turkish President Erdogan
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Biden’s Closed Circle on Russia
An excerpt from ‘The Great Betrayal’
By James W. Carden | The Realist Review | June 14, 2026
Joe Biden’s presidency may ultimately come to be seen as a cautionary tale. Here was a president who showed little interest in entertaining arguments that might have contradicted his most deeply held assumptions.[1] And there were precious few within the upper ranks of the administration who might have attempted to do so, after all, only policy hands and political operatives who had come up through the ranks of the Clinton and Obama administrations or had longstanding ties to the citadels of the foreign policy community were invited into the fold. … continue
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- Climate Alarmists Now Using Natural Phenomena To Support Their Claims
- New Study: Significant CO2 Fluxes From Non-Volcanic Sources Are Largely Neglected In Carbon Budgets
- Women Climate Scientists Being Harassed, Insulted By Skeptics, Claims Berkeley Earth Researcher
- Germany’s Longterm Spring Climate Data Show “No Climate Trend”
- New Study: Solar Photovoltaic, Wind Power Fail To Meet Annual Energy Demands 62% Of The Time
- Germany’s Die Welt: “Too Much Is Too Much” … Green Energies Are Cannabalizing Each Other!
- Germany’s Ecological Holocaust… Once Fairy Tale Forests Getting Cleared For Wind Turbines
- A Grand Solar Minimum Has Arrived…Global Cooling Of At Least 1°C Is Expected By The 2030s, 2040s
- European “Expert Commission” Urges COVID-19-Like Global Climate State Of Energency!
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