When it comes to “terrorism” government deception is endemic. – Tim Veater
When it comes to “terrorism” government deception is endemic. – Tim Veater
The following Guardian report of a “Human Watch” document reveals the extent to which alleged domestic terrorism “plots” were actually the creation of the agencies set up to foil them!
It confirms what we have long believed was more than possible, corroborated by what we know of European “Gladio” terrorist events in the 1980’s, manufactured by the CIA to encourage anti-communist sentiment (see: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gladio_in_Italy), events of 9/11, Boston and London 7/7, to name but a few, of which the revelations regarding MH370 and MH17 are but the latest examples.
Somehow or other western democracies have allowed a situation to develop where it can no longer be confident that law enforcement, the judicial process and secret agencies have not been so corrupted, that they fail to fulfil their intended purpose and instead actually create the circumstances everyone thought they were there to prevent.
Significantly the report found the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Najibullah Zazi’s 2009 plot to bomb the New York subway; the attempted Times Square car-bombing of 2010; and the 2002 shooting at Los Angeles International Airport’s El Al counter were free of government involvement.
Given some of the specific circumstances in at least one of those incidents it is difficult to see how they could draw that conclusion. They appear to avoid 9/11 completely and limit their attention to the FBI, leaving the even more questionable activities of the CIA out of the picture completely.
The CIA alone consumes in the order of 70 BILLION dollars annually, that is virtually unchecked and uncheckable. The day before 9/11 Rumsfeld famously announced 2.3 TRILLION dollars had gone missing from the Pentagon’s accounts, thereafter never explained or investigated. (see: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IVpSBUgbxBU). Europe is not much better with no one prepared to sign off on 90 BILLION euros EC budget for the twentieth consecutive year because of irregularities. (see: http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/worldnews/europe/eu/9657673/Audit-seriously-undermines-credibility-of-EU-spending.html)
There is only one conclusion: western government is deeply corrupt and cannot be trusted. Its assertions and actions require constant and searching examination and challenge before they can be taken as true and genuine. In this context all attempts by western governments to either limit enshrined individual freedoms or protections, shackle free expression on the internet and the investigative power of the news media, engage in foreign adventures or pursue propaganda for whatever claimed necessity or benefit, needs to be resisted uncompromisingly.
A case in point was the story, presumably put out by the CIA itself, that it was sending a team of twenty to “interrogate” British MI5/6 officials regarding Muslim extremism and the relationship between Shias and Sunnis in this country.
“According to the Daily Mail, the Obama administration has become “increasingly anxious” about “strong links” between American and British radicals, and the potential for American Muslims to follow the lead of their UK counterparts in fighting alongside ISIS. The CIA feels British efforts to provide a reliable assessment of the threat posed by and identify the members of radicalized Western Muslims have been inadequate, sources from the American spy agency told the Daily Mail.” (see: http://www.eurasiareview.com/01072014-obama-snubs-mi5-sends-cia-investigate-threat-radical-islam-uk/)
Apart from the unusual nature of a deeply secretive organisation like the CIA putting out an open news release, with highly embarrassing consequence for an important ally, the whole thing appeared highly contrived and implausible.
If it had concerns more likely the visit would be carried out in secret. The public nature of the announcement is significant and highly suspicious beside the other obvious aspects that ISIS, the claimed threat, is itself largely a product of collaboration between America, Israel and Saudi Arabia. (see: http://rt.com/op-edge/168064-isis-terrorism-usa-cia-war/)
Is it not possible that this highly public reason for the trip was just cover for the real (covert) one? There surely could not be any connection between the visit on or about the 1st July 2014 and the subsequent crash of MH17 over Ukraine and invasion of Gaza on the same day (with all its potential consequences) a little over two weeks later on the 17th July 2014, could there?
Like the mythical many-headed Hydra, we appear unwittingly to have created a monster that is now so embedded and ubiquitous, so pervasive and invasive, so threatening and dangerous, it is almost impossible to control or neutralise.
(As an aside, interestingly “Hydra” is the name adopted for a recent repository solution used by institutions on both sides of the North Atlantic to provide access to their digital content. (see:http://projecthydra.org/) It may be the exception that proves the norm.)
The destruction of the Hydra was one of the 12 Labours of Heracles, eventually only accomplished when he and his side-kick Iolaus, burned out the roots with firebrands. (see: http://www.britannica.com/EBchecked/topic/278114/Hydra) The moral in that story is not hard to see. END
GUARDIAN ARTICLE:
Government agents ‘directly involved’ in most high-profile US terror plots
• Human Rights Watch documents ‘sting’ operations
• Report raises questions about post-9/11 civil rights
• Human Rights Watch documents ‘sting’ operations
• Report raises questions about post-9/11 civil rights
Spencer Ackerman in New York
The Guardian, Monday 21 July 2014 14.30 BST
The Guardian, Monday 21 July 2014 14.30 BST
FBI
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies attempt to stop terrorist plots before they occur. Photograph: Michael Sohn/AP
Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the “direct involvement” of government agents or informants, a new report says.
Some of the controversial “sting” operations “were proposed or led by informants”, bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist.
The FBI and other law enforcement agencies attempt to stop terrorist plots before they occur. Photograph: Michael Sohn/AP
Nearly all of the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the “direct involvement” of government agents or informants, a new report says.
Some of the controversial “sting” operations “were proposed or led by informants”, bordering on entrapment by law enforcement. Yet the courtroom obstacles to proving entrapment are significant, one of the reasons the stings persist.
The lengthy report, released on Monday by Human Rights Watch, raises questions about the US criminal justice system’s ability to respect civil rights and due process in post-9/11 terrorism cases. It portrays a system that features not just the sting operations but secret evidence, anonymous juries, extensive pretrial detentions and convictions significantly removed from actual plots.
“In some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act,” the report alleges.
Out of the 494 cases related to terrorism the US has tried since 9/11, the plurality of convictions – 18% overall – are not for thwarted plots but for “material support” charges, a broad category expanded further by the 2001 Patriot Act that permits prosecutors to pursue charges with tenuous connections to a terrorist act or group.
In one such incident, the initial basis for a material-support case alleging a man provided “military gear” to al-Qaida turned out to be waterproof socks in his luggage.
Several cases featured years-long solitary confinement for accused terrorists before their trials. Some defendants displayed signs of mental incapacity. Jurors for the 2007 plot to attack the Fort Dix army base, itself influenced by government informants, were anonymous, limiting defense counsel’s ability to screen out bias.
Human Rights Watch’s findings call into question the post-9/11 shift taken by the FBI and other law enforcement agencies toward stopping terrorist plots before they occur. While the vast majority of counterterrorism tactics involved are legally authorized, particularly after Congress and successive administrations relaxed restrictions on law enforcement and intelligence agencies for counterterrorism, they suggest that the government’s zeal to protect Americans has in some cases morphed into manufacturing threats.
The report focuses primarily on 27 cases and accordingly stops short of drawing systemic conclusions. It also finds several trials and convictions for “deliberate attempts at terrorism or terrorism financing” that it does not challenge.
The four high-profile domestic plots it found free of government involvement were the 2013 Boston Marathon bombing; Najibullah Zazi’s 2009 plot to bomb the New York subway; the attempted Times Square carbombing of 2010; and the 2002 shooting at Los Angeles International Airport’s El Al counter.
But the report is a rare attempt at a critical overview of a system often touted by the Obama administration and civil libertarian groups as a rigorous, capable and just alternative to the military tribunals and indefinite detention advocated by conservative critics. It comes as new pressure mounts on a variety of counterterrorism practices, from the courtroom use of warrantless surveillance to the no-fly list and law enforcement’s “suspicious activity reports” database.
In particular, Human Rights Watch examines the extent and impact of law enforcement’s use of terrorism informants, who can both steer people into attempted acts of violence and chill religious or civic behaviour in the communities they penetrate.
Linda Sarsour, the executive director of the Arab American Association of New York, a social services agency, told the Guardian she almost has a “radar for informants” sent to infiltrate her Brooklyn community.
While the FBI has long relied on confidential informants to alert them to criminal activity, for terrorism cases informants insert themselves into Muslim mosques, businesses and community gatherings and can cajole people toward a plot “who perhaps would never have participated in a terrorist act on their own initiative”, the study found.
Many trade information for cash. The FBI in 2008 estimated it had 15,000 paid informants. About 30% of post-9/11 terrorism cases are considered sting operations in which informants played an “active role” in incubating plots leading to arrest, according to studies cited in the Human Rights Watch report. Among those roles are making comments “that appeared designed to inflame the targets” on “politically sensitive” subjects, and pushing operations forward if a target’s “opinions were deemed sufficiently troubling”.
Entrapment, the subject of much FBI criticism over the years, is difficult to prove in court. The burden is on a defendant to show he or she was not “predisposed” to commit a violent act, even if induced by a government agent. Human Rights Watch observes that standard focuses attention “not on the crime, but on the nature of the subject”, often against a backdrop where “inflammatory stereotypes and highly charged characterizations of Islam and foreigners often prevail”.
Among the informants themselves there is less ambiguity. “It is all about entrapment,” Craig Monteilh, one such former FBI informant tasked with mosque infiltration, told the Guardian in 2012.
Informants, the study found, sometimes overcome their targets’ stated objections to engage in terrorism. A man convicted in 2006 of attempting to bomb the Herald Square subway station in Manhattan told an informant who concocted the plot he would have to check with his mother and was uncomfortable planting the bombs himself. One member of the “Newburgh Four” plot to attack synagogues and military planes – whose case is the subject of an HBO documentary airing on Monday – told his informant “maybe my mission hasn’t come yet”.
Once in court, terrorism cases receive evidentiary and pre-trial leeway rarely afforded to non-terrorism cases. A federal judge in Virginia permitted into evidence statements made by a defendant while in a Saudi jail in which the defendant, Amed Omar Abu Ali, alleged torture, a longstanding practice in Saudi Arabia. The evidence formed the basis for a conviction, and eventually a life sentence, for conspiracy to assassinate George W Bush. Mohammed Warsame, who pleaded guilty to conspiracy to provide material support to a foreign terrorist organization, was held in solitary confinement for five years before his trial.
Another implication of the law-enforcement tactics cited the report is a deepening alienation of American Muslims from a government that publicly insists it needs their support to head off extremism but secretly deploys informants to infiltrate mosques and community centers.
“The best way to prevent violent extremism inspired by violent jihadists is to work with the Muslim American community – which has consistently rejected terrorism – to identify signs of radicalization and partner with law enforcement when an individual is drifting towards violence. And these partnerships can only work when we recognize that Muslims are a fundamental part of the American family,” Obama said in a high-profile 2013 speech.
Yet the Obama administration has needed to purge Islamophobic training materials from FBI counterterrorism, which sparked deep suspicion in US Muslim communities. It is now conducting a review of similar material in the intelligence community after a document leaked by Edward Snowden used the slur “Mohammed Raghead” as a placeholder for Muslims.
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly-involved-us-terror-plots-report?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly-involved-us-terror-plots-report?CMP=EMCNEWEML6619I2
From: https://www.upr.fr/actualite/france/article-danalyse-traduit-lupr-lunion-europeenne-a-toujours-ete-projet-de-cia-partisans-brexit-decouvrent
ReplyDeleten analysis article translated by UPR | The European Union has always been a CIA project, as the Brexit supporters have discovered.
Download PDFReading: 12 min
Published on April 29, 2017 in News , Features , France / Permalink
An article by the journalist Ambrose Evans Pritchard appeared in the Daily Telegraph on April 27, 2016 • 20:18. We translate and publish it in its entirety.
The European Union has always been a CIA project, as Brexit's supporters discover.
US President Barack Obama summoned Britain to stay in the EU. (CREDIT: AFP / GETTY)
The Brexit supporters should have been prepared for the overwhelming intervention of the United States. The European Union has always been an American project.
It was Washington that led European integration in the late 1940s, and secretly financed implementation under the Truman, Eisenhower, Kennedy, Johnson and Nixon administrations.
The United States, although sometimes annoyed, has since relied on the EU as an anchor of US regional interests alongside NATO.
There has never been a "divide and conquer" strategy.
The Eurosceptic camp has been surprisingly blind to this fact, presumably assuming that powerful forces on the other side of the Atlantic are encouraging British secession, which they will then salute as liberators.
The anti-Brussels movement in France (to a lesser extent in Italy and Germany, as well as among the Nordic Left) starts from the opposite principle, namely that the EU is essentially an instrument of power and wild capitalism [in French in The text] Anglo-Saxon.
The French Marine Le Pen is vigorously anti-American. It defies the supremacy of the dollar. Its National Front relies on the financing of Russian banks linked to Vladimir Putin.
Whether we like it or not, it is at least strategically coherent.
The Schuman Declaration which set the tone for the Franco-German reconciliation and led in stages to the European Community, was concocted by the US Secretary of State Dean Acheson at a meeting in Foggy Bottom. "It all started in Washington," said Robert Schuman's chief of staff.
It was the Truman administration which, in the years immediately following the war, put pressure on the French to arrive at a modus vivendi with Germany, even threatening, during a furious meeting with The recalcitrant French leaders whom they opposed in September 1950, to suppress the aid of the Marshall Plan .
The Soviet tanks penetrate into Prague by whirring.
For the British Eurosceptics, Jean Monnet, a gray eminence of supranational infamy, hovers high in the federalist pantheon. Few people are aware of the fact that he spent much of his life in America and was, during the war, the eyes and ears of Franklin Roosevelt.
ReplyDeleteGeneral Charles de Gaulle has always been deeply suspicious of the American plans. (CREDIT: ALAMY)
General Charles de Gaulle regarded him as an American agent, as he was in fact in the broad sense. Éric Roussel's biography of Monnet reveals how he worked hand in hand with successive administrations.
It is curious that this masterful study of 1,000 pages has never been translated into English, because it is the best work ever written on the origins of the EU.
Few also are aware of the declassified documents of the US Department of State's Department of State Archives, which show that American intelligence has secretly funded the European movement for decades and has worked behind the scenes to involve Great Britain in the project.
As this journal first established when this treasure was made available, a memorandum dated 26 July 1950 refers to a campaign to promote a genuine European Parliament. It is signed by General William J. Donovan, head of the US Bureau of Strategic Affairs in Wartime, a forerunner of the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) .
The head of the CIA was the American Committee for a United Europe (ACUE) , chaired by Donovan. Another document shows that in 1958 this organization provided 53.5% of the funds of the European movement. The board included Walter Bedell Smith and Allen Dulles, the CIA directors in the 1950s, and a caste of former agents of the OSS [Office of Strategic Services, or "Office of Strategic Services'] who turn Turn, took up positions within the CIA.
Bill Donovan, the legendary leader of the OSS in wartime, was then assigned to orchestrate the European project.
Documents show that he treated some of the EU's "founding fathers" as servile employees and resolutely prevented them from finding another source of funding that would have broken their dependence on Washington.
There's nothing particularly nasty about it. The United States acted with cunning in the context of the Cold War. The political reconstruction of Europe was a tremendous success.
Of course, horrible errors of judgment occurred along the way. A memorandum dated 11 June 1965 instructs the Vice-President of the European Community to pursue the monetary union in a surreptitious manner by removing the debate until such time as the adoption of such proposals becomes practically inevitable. It was extremely smart, as we see today with the deflationary trap caused by debt and mass unemployment throughout southern Europe.
ReplyDeleteIn a sense, these documents are of ancient history. What they show is that the American "deep state" was soaked up to the neck. One wonders if Boris Johnson crossed the line last week by exhuming "the partially Kenyan ancestry" of President Barack Obama, but the fundamental mistake was to assume that the commercial threat of Mr. Obama had anything To see with the ordeal of his grandfather in a camp of prisoners Mau Mau. It was the perfect cliché of American foreign policy.
Indeed, Mr. Obama could quite have a feeling of resentment after the recently abused abuses of the Mau Mau revolt. This was the infamous failure of the colonial police discipline, to the great disgust of the veterans who had served in other parts of Africa. But the message of his extraordinary book, The Dreams of My Father , is that he has striven to rise beyond the rancor of history.
Brexit supporters are optimistic that Republican optimist Ted Cruz would like a post-Brexit United Kingdom ready to jump on foot in a "free trade agreement," but he is deluding himself. M. Cruz will comply with the requirements palmerstoniens Washington [Lord Palmerston, British Foreign Minister of the XIX th century, famous for its imperialism] whatsoever at that time, if he enters the White House.
President Obama's grandfather was imprisoned during the repression of the Mau Mau revolt in Kenya, a shameful episode in British colonial history.
It is true that America wondered about the EU, when European ideological fanatics gained influence in the late 1980s, shifting the union into a rival superpower, with ambitions to challenge and To exceed the United States.
John Kornblum, chief of staff of European affairs in the 1990s, said it was a nightmare to deal with Brussels. "I ended up totally frustrated. In the military, security and defense fields, it is totally dysfunctional. "
Kornblum argues that the EU "has psychologically left NATO" when it tried to put its own military command structure in place, and that it did so with its usual attitude and incompetence. "Great Britain and the West would be in much better shape if it was not part of the EU," he said.
It is interesting, but it is only a minority point of view in American political circles. The frustration with the EU came when Poland and the first wave of Eastern European states joined the EU in 2004, introducing a group of Atlantist governments.
We know that this is far from being a love story. Two years ago, during the Ukrainian crisis, during the interception of a telephone conversation, a senior US official was caught in Brussels with these lapidary words: "Let the EU go fuck! "
ReplyDeleteYet the pervasive idea is that the Western liberal order undergoes a triple assault and that the EU should be supported, like Britain and France have backed the XIX th century the Ottoman Empire tottering, and just Title, given that its slow collapse directly led to the First World War.
Today, the combined threats come from Jihadist terrorism and a series of failed states in the Maghreb and the Levant; Of a highly militarized pariah regime in Moscow that will soon run out of money but has a window of opportunity before Europe re-arms; And an extremely dangerous crisis in the South China Sea which intensifies every day as Beijing tests the structure of the American alliance.
The dangers of Russia and China are obviously interdependent. It is probable - the pessimists say certain - that Vladimir Putin would profit from a serious aggravation in the Pacific to try his luck in Europe. According to Washington, Ottawa, Canberra and capitals around the world who consider the Pax Americana widely as a benefit, it is not time for Britain to launch a stick of dynamite into the staggering European edifice.
The frightful truth for the "yes" campaign to the Brexit is that the power in place throughout the Western world considers it a strategic vandalism. Proponents of the Brexit must respond to this reproach, whether right or wrong. Some, like Lord Owen, grasp the magnitude of the problem. Most were blithely unconscious until Mr. Obama had a word out last week.
In my opinion, the Brexit camp should include plans to increase UK military spending by half to 3% of GDP, committing to propel Britain to the top, such as military power Uncontested. They should aim to bring this country closer to France in an even closer military alliance. This type of action would ground at least one of the most important arguments of Project Fear .
Brexit supporters should silence any suggestion that withdrawal from the EU would mean escaping global responsibility or tearing up the European Convention (the "Great Charter" of freedom, drafted by the British, not by the EU) , Or turn their backs on the COP21 climate agreements or any other febrile embartade of the movement.
It is perhaps too much to expect a coherent plan from a disparate group artificially united by events. Yet many of us who have sympathies for the Brexit camp, who also want to regain our autonomy and sovereignty and escape the artificial and usurped supremacy of the European Court of Justice, are still waiting to hear how supporters of the Brexit conceived that this discharge could be effected without considerable collateral damage and in a manner compatible with the honor of that country.
You may quarrel with Europe, or with the United States, but it is playing with fate to quarrel with the entire democratic world at the same time.
Http://www.telegraph.co.uk/business/2016/04/27/the-european-union-always-was-a-cia-project-as-brexiteers-discov/
Frants Gundelach I am assuming this is a reply to me. If so I have to point out a basic error in your assertion, "your allegation." It is clearly NOT my allegation. It is made in an article by Alex Christoforou, I republished a few years ago. If you go on the attack, you should be more careful to ensure you have the right target. It is a sloppiness that you have, it appears, picked up from the Americans! Having said that, I would not necessarily disagree with Christoforou's assertion that the EU is majorly compromised both on the democracy and probity fronts. First the so-called 'Parliament' is virtually powerless. It is at best an amending and ratifying chamber. In fact a glorified and very expensive talking shop. In practice, although elected, MEPs have very little domestic profile or connection with their constituencies, are remote and hardly accountable, yet are rewarded from the public chest, disproportionately. Power to formulate and adopt legislation undoubtedly rests with unelected Commision and Council. You may argue there is an indirect relationship between voter and post holder, via the domestic set-up, but for all intents and purposes, this is so remote as to be non-existent. Then there is the the not insignificant matter of the accounts that have not been signed off for twenty years because no one can be sure where all the money has gone - much it is claimed to fraud and crime syndicates! This alone would be good reason to question the organisations integrity and rationale. However it is still an open question in matters of government whether democratic or bureaucratic systems are in the end the best for the welfare and prosperity of the people thus affected; nor indeed to what extent 'sovereignty' has to be pooled, to be truly effective. Perhaps we must fall back on the iconic and paradoxical figure of Churchill who said in 1947, apparently plagiarising an earlier one, "Many forms of Government have been tried, and will be tried in this world of sin and woe. No one pretends that democracy is perfect or all-wise. Indeed it has been said that democracy is the worst form of Government except for all those other forms that have been tried from time to time.…"
ReplyDeleteAbove in reply to this: Frances Gundelach I will only grab one of your allegations - calling Martin Schultz "unlected". What nonsense! Schultz was elected chairman of the European Parliament by a majority in Parliament. Exactly the same procedure as in most of the members states. Mario Draghi is appointed, as every other head of a central bank. And the claim that the CIA was created and funded by the European Commission.
ReplyDelete