Terror / Fear

The Destabilization of Haiti

"Washington seeks to reinstate Haiti as a full-fledged US colony, with all the appearances of a functioning democracy. The objective is to impose a puppet regime in Port-au-Prince and establish a permanent US military presence in Haiti. 

Edit: On second thought, the song I embedded, No Woman No Cry is too upbeat for the tone of the post. It's a great song with a positive message, but that kind of gives an excuse to the immoral and gluttonous elites who've ravaged these people for centuries. At the same time, I think this section of the song is a subtle political statement against the colonialist economic overlords. I think at the time, Bob Marley knew he couldn't be overt in this message, but the people who knew -- knew what he was saying

Youtube - No Woman No cry

Said, said, said, I remember when we used to sit
In a government yard in Trenchtown,
Oba - obaserving the hypocrites as they would
Mingle with the good people we meet,
Good friends we have, oh, good friends we've lost
Along the way, In this bright future called life,
you can't forget your past

Below, is a devastating indictment by Chris Floyd on the economic elite's colonialist policies on the People of Haiti

Help Haiti: The Unforgiven Country Cries Out

(UPDATED BELOW)

There were a lot of warnings that were overlooked and a lot of strange things had to line up in order for the attempted bombing to take place and left a lot of questions begging to be answered ... for instance these ten. Then there was the unrelated (?) strange story that Police ‘forgot’ to take explosives off a flight to Dublin

More to come ...

The Yemen Hidden Agenda: Behind the Al-Qaeda Scenarios, A Strategic Oil Transit Chokepoint

On December 25 US authorities arrested a Nigerian named Abdulmutallab aboard a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit on charges of having tried to blow up the plane with smuggled explosives. Since then reports have been broadcast from CNN, the New York Times and other sources that he was “suspected” of having been trained in Yemen for his terror mission. What the world has been subjected to since is the emergence of a new target for the US ‘War on Terror,’ namely a desolate state on the Arabian Peninsula, Yemen. A closer look at the background suggests the Pentagon and US intelligence have a hidden agenda in Yemen.

From the last paragraph in this excellent summary

And so dear readers with are left to ponder the question, cui bono? Who would benefit politically from a major terrorist incident on American soil, ready, willing and able to step into the breach and exploit the catastrophic loss of human life that would follow in its wake?

The Strange Case of Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab

Despite some $40 billion dollars spent by the American people on airline security since 2001, allegedly to thwart attacks on the heimat, the botched attempt by Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab to bring down Northwest Airlines Flight 253 over Detroit on Christmas Day was foiled, not by a bloated counterterrorist bureaucracy, but by the passengers themselves.

Two articles. I keep hearing that Obama has a huge mess to clean up (and he does), and that we should just be patient and let him play his eleventy-dimensional chess and he'll teach those neo-cons the 'whatfor' ... Not me anymore, I'm now not looking at what he says, but what he does

Justin Raimondo

The idea that the U.S. must fight in Afghanistan is buttressed by an all-too-familiar theme, whether it be uttered on the Left (Obama) or the neocon Right (Bill Kristol): the former says we must fight to prevent al-Qaeda from reestablishing "safe havens" so they can’t plot another 9/11, while the latter echoes this nonsense in a column attacking George Will’s call for the U.S. to get out of Afghanistan by referencing "the area that was the staging ground for Sept. 11" and describing the Taliban as "the group that hosted the Sept. 11 attackers." It’s ironic – but typical of neoconservative Bizarro logic – that Kristol would dismiss Will’s call as based purely on "sentiment," yet so brazenly "wave the bloody shirt" (as he accuses Will of doing) in support of a losing, futile, and increasingly costly war. But that’s the Kristolian method, after all, and we ought to be used to it by now.

Yet the notion of al-Qaeda’s apparent omnipresence in the mountains of the Hindu Kush is flatly contradicted by U.S. Afghan commander Gen. Stanley McChrystal’s top adviser, Stephen Biddle, who, in an essay for The American Interest, averred that this actually isn’t about Afghanistan: it’s really all about Pakistan, which would be in some danger of falling into terrorist hands if we don’t stay the course in Afghanistan. Yet even Biddle admits the danger of Pakistan falling into al-Qaeda’s hands is small, and that it would take a series of major destabilizing events – the downfall of the Karzai regime in Afghanistan, the collapse of Pakistan’s "democratic" government, the victory of an Islamist insurgency and its installation in Islamabad, and the seizure of Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal by al-Qaeda’s allies – before the worst-case scenario would occur. Oh, yeah, and by the way, even if we do manage to succeed in Afghanistan – defend the fragile Afghan government, hold off the Taliban, and engage is some pseudo-successful nation-building – according to Prof. Biddle there is "no guarantee" Pakistan won’t fall on its own, anyway.

We can’t get out of Afghanistan, because Pakistan will fall, and vice versa. But each may fall on its own. What kind of a shell game are war supporters playing? And what, by the way, are we fighting for? No one seems to know: or, more accurately, no one dares say what it’s really all about – revenge. It’s a war that has nothing to do with protecting America from another 9/11, and everything to do with institutionalizing an endless war of aggression the aim of which is slaughter for its own sake, as an end in itself.

[...]

Click Justin's name for more

Dismantling Pakistan, a Quagmire of Imperial Slavery

By Talha Mujaddidi in Pakistan. Axis of Logic

Axis of Logic

Thursday, Jul 16, 2009

Talha Mujaddidi analyzes the "Quagmire of Imperial Slavery" for Axis of Logic from inside Pakistan: In January, 2005, Wajid Shamsul Hasan, former Pakistan High Commissioner to the U.K. wrote the following alert and warning:

"When it was over, I realised that everything had happened 'according to the plan'. This brings out of me the apprehension: are our military rulers working on an a similar agenda or something that has been laid out for them in the various assessment reports over the years by the National Intelligence Council (NIC) in joint collaboration with CIA. It was poor Miraj Khalid who as interim prime minister in early 1997 had dared to confide to the Pakistanis that CIA had forecast Pakistan's denouement by the year 2015. ... the NIC report cast a dark shadow on Pakistan's future five years ago.

"It said that by the year 2015 Pakistan would be a failed state, ripe with civil war, bloodshed, inter-provincial rivalries and a struggle for control of its nuclear weapons and its complete Talibanization. It had predicted, 'Pakistan will not recover easily from decades of political and economic mismanagement, divisive policies, lawlessness, corruption and ethnic friction'. Nascent democratic reforms will produce little change in the face of opposition from an entrenched political elite and radical Islamic parties. Further domestic decline would benefit Islamic political activists, who may significantly increase their role in national politics and alter the makeup and cohesion of the military, once Pakistan's most capable institution. In a climate of continuing domestic turmoil, the central government's control probably will be reduced to the Punjabi heartland and the economic hub of Karachi."

A Few Thoughts on the Coup in Honduras

It is impossible to imagine that the US was not aware that the coup was in the works. At minimum, the US could have flexed its tremendous economic muscle before the coup and told the military coup plotters to stand down.

By Jeremy Scahill

There is a lot of great analysis circulating on the military coup against Manuel Zelaya in Honduras. I do not see a need to re-invent the wheel. (See here here here and here). However, a few key things jump out at me. First, we know that the coup was led by Gen. Romeo Vasquez, a graduate of the US Army School of the Americas. As we know very well from history, these “graduates” maintain ties to the US military as they climb the military career ladders in their respective countries. That is a major reason why the US trains these individuals.

Secondly, the US has a fairly significant military presence in Honduras. Joint Task Force-Bravo is located at Soto Cano Air Base, Honduras. The base is home to some 550 US military personnel and more than 650 US and Honduran civilians:

They work in six different areas including the Joint Staff, Air Force Forces (612th Air Base Squadron), Army Forces, Joint Security Forces and the Medical Element. 1st Battalion, 228th Aviation Regiment, a US Army South asset, is a tenant unit also based at Soto Cano. The J-Staff provides command and control for JTF-B.

The New York Times reports that “The unit focuses on training Honduran military forces, counternarcotics operations, search and rescue, and disaster relief missions throughout Central America.”

Significantly, according to GlobalSecurity, “Soto Cano is a Honduran military installation and home of the Honduran Air Force.”

This connection to the Air Force is particularly significant given this report in NarcoNews:

The head of the Air Force, Gen. Luis Javier Prince Suazo, studied in the School of the Americas in 1996. The Air Force has been a central protagonist in the Honduran crisis. When the military refused to distribute the ballot boxes for the opinion poll, the ballot boxes were stored on an Air Force base until citizens accompanied by Zelaya rescued them. Zelaya reports that after soldiers kidnapped him, they took him to an Air Force base, where he was put on a plane and sent to Costa Rica.

FBI Blows It: Supposed Terror Plot Against NY Synagogues Is Bogus
By Robert Dreyfuss, The Nation
Posted on May 23, 2009, Printed on May 23, 2009
http://www.alternet.org/story/140209/

By the now, it's maddeningly familiar. A scary terrorist plot is announced. Then it's revealed that the suspects are a hapless bunch of ne'er-do-wells or run-of-the-mill thugs without the slightest connection to any terrorists at all, never mind to Al Qaeda. Finally, the last piece of the puzzle: the entire plot is revealed to have been cooked up by a scummy government agent-provocateur.

I've seen this movie before.

In this case, the alleged perps -- Onta Williams, James Cromitie, David Williams, and Laguerre Payen -- were losers, ex-cons, drug addicts. Al Qaeda they're not. Without the assistance of the agent who entrapped them, they would never have dreamed of committing political violence, nor would they have had the slightest idea about where to acquire plastic explosives or a Stinger missile. That didn't stop prosecutors from acting as if they'd captured Osama bin Laden himself. Noted the Los Angeles Times:

American Death Squad

Obama inherits Cheney's army of assassins – and promotes their commander

by Justin Raimondo, May 20, 2009

As the story of Bush administration’s war crimes comes out in fits and starts, it appears that torture is only one aspect – and not the worst, by any means – of this horrific history. In an interview in mid-March, Seymour Hersh let slip the following:

"After 9/11 – I haven’t written about this yet – but the Central Intelligence Agency was very deeply involved in domestic activities against people they thought to be enemies of the state. Without any legal authority for it. They haven’t been called on it yet. That does happen."

Well, yes, that’s hardly surprising. The PATRIOT Act and other legislation [.pdf] passed by Congress gives the government the legal "right" to spy on American citizens and, in the case of Jose Padilla, lock them up without a trial and throw away the key. But, as Hersh reveals, it gets worse. Much worse:

“Right now, today, there was a story in the New York Times that if you read it carefully mentioned something known as the Joint Special Operations Command – JSOC it’s called. It is a special wing of our special operations community that is set up independently. They do not report to anybody, except in the Bush-Cheney days, they reported directly to the Cheney office. They did not report to the chairman of the joint chiefs of staff or to Mr. [Robert] Gates, the secretary of defense. They reported directly to him. …

“Congress has no oversight of it.It’s an executive assassination ring essentially, and it’s been going on and on and on. … Under President Bush’s authority, they’ve been going into countries, not talking to the ambassador or the CIA station chief, and finding people on a list and executing them and leaving. That’s been going on, in the name of all of us."

Well, yes, that’s not too surprising, either, actually. It’s so – what’s the word? – Cheneyesque. Those Rethuglicans! Well, we’re past all that now. The Dear Leader’s in the White House, and it’s time to move on, right? Oh wait…

It turns out the commander of this international order of assassins has just been appointed by Defense Secretary Robert Gates to head of U.S. forces in Afghanistan. As part of the "fresh thinking" in the Obama administration, epitomized by the COIN crowd, Lt. Gen. Stanley McChrystal replaces Gen. David McKiernan. So who is McChrystal? A 2006 profile in Newsweek put it this way:

"JSOC is part of what Vice President Dick Cheney was referring to when he said America would have to ‘work the dark side’ after 9/11. To many critics, the veep’s remark back in 2001 fostered his rep as the Darth Vader of the war on terror and presaged bad things to come, like the interrogation abuses at Abu Ghraib and Guantánamo Bay. But America also has its share of Jedi Knights who are fighting in what Cheney calls ‘the shadows.’ And McChrystal, an affable but tough Army Ranger, and the Delta Force and other elite teams he commands are among them."

The dark side includes McChrystal’s overseeing of Camp Nama, a detainee center outside of Baghdad (since renamed and relocated) notorious for its brutality. The very same administration that is up on its high horse about forbidding torture has just elevated one of the chief torturers to direct Obama’s war in Afghanistan. It is hardly inconceivable that what we saw at Camp Nama – beatings, degradation of prisoners, and outright, cold-blooded murder – is going to be replicated on a nationwide scale.

That’s what they call "fresh thinking" over at Obama’s Pentagon.

UPDATE Related to the last article: U.S. Contractors (Xe, aka Blackwater) Fired at Kabul Car

This began as a blog on the contracting surge, but halfway through I realized context would be needed, which is that Obama's surge has a long term goal of world domination.

It's funny - not haha, but strange - that everywhere that there seems to be an ism, whether it's communism or socialism or terrorism that that is exactly the place where there are mines that need to be dug, pipelines installed, or plantations to be farmed. I feel the need to start naming off all the places in the last 60 years that the US was involved in some way in coup d'états, Cuba - 1952; Iran - 1953; Guatemala - 1954; Paraguay - 1954; Brazil - 1955; Columbia - 1957; Venezuela - 1958; Pakistan - 1958; Iraq - 1958; and that's only the 1950's. My bringing that up is not to say that the Communist Block was any better, they were horrible, vicious dictatorships, but who are we to impose dictatorships in our interests, and our will on other nations?

In order to know why it's important look at this picture

The southern half of that pipeline, which is one of many planned, is in Balochistan. Now read the three articles below

Balochistan is the ultimate prize

PART 1: Obama does his Bush impression

It's a classic case of calm before the storm. The AfPak chapter of Obama's brand new OCO ("Overseas Contingency Operations"), formerly GWOT ("global war on terror") does not imply only a surge in the Pashtun Federally Administered Tribal Areas (FATA). A surge in Balochistan as well may be virtually inevitable.

Balochistan is totally under the radar of Western corporate media. But not the Pentagon's. An immense desert comprising almost 48% of Pakistan's area, rich in uranium and copper, potentially very rich in oil, and producing more than one-third of Pakistan's natural gas, it accounts for less than 4% of Pakistan's 173 million citizens. Balochs are the majority, followed by Pashtuns. Quetta, the provincial capital, is considered Taliban Central by the Pentagon, which for all its high-tech wizardry mysteriously has not been able to locate Quetta resident "The Shadow", historic Taliban emir Mullah Omar himself.

Strategically, Balochistan is mouth-watering: east of Iran, south of Afghanistan, and boasting three Arabian sea ports, including Gwadar, practically at the mouth of the Strait of Hormuz.

Gwadar - a port built by China - is the absolute key. It is the essential node in the crucial, ongoing, and still virtual Pipelineistan war between IPI and TAPI. IPI is the Iran-Pakistan-India pipeline, also known as the "peace pipeline", which is planned to cross from Iranian to Pakistani Balochistan - an anathema to Washington. TAPI is the perennially troubled, US-backed Turkmenistan-Afghanistan-Pakistan-India pipeline, which is planned to cross western Afghanistan via Herat and branch out to Kandahar and Gwadar.

Washington's dream scenario is Gwadar as the new Dubai - while China would need Gwadar as a port and also as a base for pumping gas via a long pipeline to China. One way or another, it will all depend on local grievances being taken very seriously. Islamabad pays a pittance in royalties for the Balochis, and development aid is negligible; Balochistan is treated as a backwater. Gwadar as the new Dubai would not necessarily mean local Balochis benefiting from the boom; in many cases they could even be stripped of their local land.

They Tell Me There Are a Lot of Cockroaches in New York, Now We Have Proof, New York’s Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg and Senator Charles E. Schumer Proud Members of the Plutocracy
by Andrew H. Dral

Mayor Michael R. Bloomberg of New York showed his support for Israel during the 23 days, January 3, 2009 – January 26, 2009, of hell on earth for Palestinian civilians in Gaza by flying to Israel, on January 5, 2009. The mayor uplifted the citizens in the southern Israeli towns of Sderot and Ashkelon with his presence of solidarity. His trip was a pure propaganda play for the consumption of New York’s rabid supporters of Israel.

Senator Charles E. Schumer gave a speech on Saturday, January 10, in front of the Israeli embassy in New York, during the Israeli onslaught. He praised the Israeli Defense Forces (IDF) for texting messages to Palestinian families before blowing up their homes, “what country does that, what country,” exclaimed the Senator. Mayor Bloomberg and Senator Schumer display the lowest form of unethical and immoral parasitic behavior. They are a disgrace to the state of New York, our country, and all of humanity. They support and are loyal to an international outlaw state, the fanatical theocratic state of Israel. Israel was not provoked, it attacked Gaza for no other reason other than to exert collective punishment on a people – to teach them a lesson – a war crime.

Why was the government unable to prevent 9/11? According to James Bamford, incompetence and in-fighting among the NSA, FBI, and CIA, resulted in the 9/11 tragedies. Find out what NSA been doing since.



James Bamford is an American bestselling author and journalist who writes about United States intelligence agencies. He was raised in Massachusetts, spent three years in the United States Navy as an intelligence analyst during the Vietnam War, and used the GI Bill to earn his law degree from Suffolk University Law School in Boston.


Scott Horton Interviews James Bamford


Click here to download or listen to mp3 Duration about 50 min.

Justice, of a Sort, for Blackwater
By Jeremy Scahill

For more than five years, the Bush administration's mercenary force of choice, Blackwater Worldwide, has operated on a US government contract in Iraq in a climate that has wed immunity with impunity. Today the Justice Department took the first concrete step to hold accountable the individuals responsible for the single greatest massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of an armed private force deployed in Iraq by the US government.

Five Blackwater operatives turned themselves in to federal authorities in Salt Lake City on Monday morning after being officially notified that they had each been indicted on fourteen manslaughter charges and allegations they used automatic weapons in the commission of a crime. A sixth Blackwater operative has already pleaded guilty to two charges as part of an agreement to testify against his colleagues. The thirty-five-count indictment was unsealed today in Washington, DC. It stems from the operatives' alleged role in the Nisour Square shootings in Baghdad in September 2007 that left seventeen Iraqi civilians dead and more than twenty wounded. Today's indictments represent the first time in more than five years of the Iraq occupation that the Justice Department has brought criminal charges against armed private contractors for crimes committed against Iraqis.

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From Anti-War Radio, Scott Horton Interviews Robert Pape.


Robert A. Pape is an American political scientist known for his work on international security affairs, especially strategic air power and suicide terrorism. He is currently a professor of Political Science at the University of Chicago.



He is the author of "Dying to Win: The Strategic Logic of Suicide Terrorism" which has earned praise from Peter Bergen, who conducted the first television interview with Osama Bin Laden in 1997. The book earned praise from Congressman Ron Paul (R-Texas). The book earned praise from Michael Scheuer, former CIA Chief of the ben Laden unit. The book earned praise from Noam Chomsky, who is an American linguist, philosopher, cognitive scientist, political activist, author, and lecturer. Duration about 52 minutes.

Click here to download or listen to mp3 Total Duration 1:46:39.