Terrorism and the Illuminati

Al Qaeda

Abdullah Azzam

The Muslim Brotherhood has acted as a clever technique to recruit agent-provocateurs for the Iluminati. The lowest ranks may sincerely believe they are defending Islam, and confronting “Western imperialism”. However, these various terrorist groups, through representing different factions, are part of a single network serving the same Illuminati cause. When we explore the political and financial connections of the terrorists, we find that these are not merely wayward fanatics, operating in isolation, but that their channels penetrate to the upper reaches of power, in the British and American governments, and outward into the nether regions of the occult and criminal underworlds.

According to Svali, a former member of the cult, the Illuminati “…. are truly an international group, and the group’s agenda supersedes any nationalistic feelings.”^[1] That members of this network could share a common goal, despite adhering to apparently conflicting ideologies and religious creeds, is explained by the fact that the Illuminati believe there is no truth. This reality, according to them, is too difficult to handle for all but the “elite”. As for the masses, however, they require religion. It is therefore perceived as necessary by the Illuminati to don the façade of religion to lead them. As Robert Dreyfuss clarifies:

The real Muslim Brothers are those whose hands are never dirtied with the business of killing and burning. They are the secretive bankers and financiers who stand behind the curtain, the members of the old Arab, Turkish, or Persian families whose genealogy places them in the oligarchical elite, with smooth business and intelligence associations to the European black nobility and, especially, to the British oligarchy.

And the Muslim Brotherhood is money. Together, the Brotherhood probably controls several tens of billions of dollars in immediate liquid assets, and controls billions more in day-to-day business operations in everything from oil trade and banking to drug-running, illegal arms merchandising, and gold and diamond smuggling. By allying with the Muslim Brotherhood, the Anglo-Americans are not merely buying into a terrorists-for-hire racket; they are partners in a powerful and worldwide financial empire that extends from numbered Swiss bank accounts to offshore havens in Dubai, Kuwait and Hong Kong.^[2]

Ronald Reagan

So, when Ronald Reagan was inaugurated President in January 1981, and the U.S. objective in Afghanistan shifted, because it was estimated that a Mujahideen fighting force of no less than 150,000 trained and well-equipped troops would have to be created, William Casey endorsed a worldwide recruitment effort, to be organized through the CIA. Exercised through the Muslim Brotherhood, it would reach to the Afghan exile communities in Europe, North Africa, other parts of the Islamic world, and America. The recruitment drive to attract Muslims from all parts of the world was of course a pretext. The Mujahideen were able to attract but a few thousand volunteers. In reality, the recruitment effort was aimed at indoctrinating an international pool of terrorists to serve beyond the war in Afghanistan, to be later used to instigate the phony War on Terror.

For the meantime, these would be regarded as “Freedom Fighters”, but the war in Afghanistan provided the Illuminati the opportunity to mobilize an international army of terrorist recruits, whose directives would later be changed to attack the US. The prime recruiting ground for these dupes, of course, was the bastion of that fanatical version of Islam created by the British in the eighteenth century, Saudi Arabia, a country now which, following the orchestration of the oil crisis, was in a financial position to fund these covert operations on behalf of their co-conspirators in London and Washingston.

To solicit Saudi Arabia’s support, Casey contacted Bandar, who arranged a meeting with King Fahd, as a result of which the Saudis, funneled through the BCCI, would match “America dollar for dollar supporting the Mujahideen,” according to Prince Turki al Faisal, longtime head of Saudi intelligence.^[3] Besides ridding themselves of an increasingly volatile section of the population, according to Craig Unger, the war in Afghanistan was:

…a mission that could be embraced by the gamut of Saudi society, from the wealthy merchant families and the House of Saud to the militant clerics and the fundamentalist masses. For the royal family, the war was not just part of the cornerstone of the burgeoning Saudi alliance with the United States, but served other purposes as well. Contributing to the war effort placated the militant clerics and helped accommodate the growing unrest and the more radical elements of society.^[4]

The ISI requested the presence of a Saudi prince to lead the “Jihad” in Afghanistan. While no volunteers were forthcoming, the Saudi leaders recommended the scion of a wealthy family that was close to the monarchy, Osama bin Laden. He was dispatched to the Pakistan border, arriving there just in time to hear Brzezinski, donning a turban, shout “Allah is on your side”.

Sayed Qutb

But, while Osama was responsible for the organization and training of new recruits, it was Sheikh Abdullah Azzam who formulated the ideological argument, according to Islamic law, in order to justify the war in Afghanistan as “Jihad”, by which recruits were to be motivated to serve American interests against the Soviets.

Barnett R Rubin, a Columbia University associate professor, and senior fellow at the C.F.R, says sources have told him that Abdullah Azzam was “enlisted” by the CIA.^[5] Unrelated to the Egyptian Azzams, Azzam was a Palestinian-born teacher of religion, and an active member of the Muslim Brotherhood in the West Bank. Later, he pursued an education in Jordan and Damascus before receiving his doctorate in Islamic jurisprudence from Cairo’s Al Azhar University in 1973. While in Cairo, Azzam met the family of Sayed Qutb.^[6] Thereafter, he moved to Saudi Arabia, after being invited to teach at King Abdul Aziz University, where he linked up with Sayed Qutb’s brother Mohammed.

Mohammed Qutb, like many in the Muslim Brotherhood, had emigrated under CIA sponsorship to Saudi Arabia during Nasser’s crackdown.^[7] He was given different official positions at Saudi universities to teach and to carry out the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood. While in Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Qutb conceived of the organization now known as the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which was established in 1972, thanks to large donations from the bin Laden family. Osama’s brother Omar was at one time its executive director, and another brother, Abdullah, who also served as a director, was being investigated as a source of terrorist funding until the Bush administration halted the FBI’s investigation at the beginning of his term in 2001.^[8]

Thereafter, Azzam moved to Saudi Arabia, after being invited to teach at King Abdul Aziz University, where he linked up with Sayed Qutb’s brother Mohammed. Mohammed Qutb, like many in the Muslim Brotherhood, had emigrated under CIA sponsorship to Saudi Arabia during Nasser’s crackdown. He was given different official positions at Saudi universities to teach and to carry out the mission of the Muslim Brotherhood. While in Saudi Arabia, Mohammed Qutb conceived of the organization now known as the World Assembly of Muslim Youth (WAMY), which was established in 1972, thanks to large donations from the bin Laden family. Osama’s brother Omar was at one time its executive director, and another brother, Abdullah, who also served as a director, was being investigated as a source of terrorist funding until the Bush administration halted the FBI’s investigation at the beginning of his term in 2001.

Like Abdul Wahhab, and typical of all Muslim Brotherhood ideology, Azzam depended on an interpretation of Islamic law derived from Ibn Taymiyyah. In Ibn Taymiyyah’s time, the Islamic world had come under the sway of the Mongols. Despite the fact that the Mongol invaders had accepted Islam, Ibn Taymiyyah insisted that their religion was tainted, and therefore that they were unbelievers. By categorizing the Mongol rulers as infidel invaders, Ibn Taymiyyah argued that it was obligatory for the Muslims to fight them. Azzam employed similar arguments, claiming that once a Muslim land is invaded, the Muslims of the world must unite the defend it. Ultimately, what Azzam did was to convince his Muslim brethren that, despite the rampant corruption in their own countries, it was incumbent upon them to fight the unholy infidels in Afghanistan, omitting the fact that it was not a Muslim country, but had already been subjected to Communism.

Azzam, however, was finally assassinated in a car bomb attack in late 1989. Some US intelligence officials believe bin Laden ordered the killing.^[9]

Osama Bin Laden

Osama bin Laden

Osama bin Laden’s father, Mohammed bin Awad bin Laden, emigrated from Yemen to Saudi Arabia as a bricklayer, and slowly built the largest Saudi construction firm. He established a close relationship with Ibn Saud, who asked him to rebuild the sacred city of Mecca. Ever since, the bin Ladens have been responsible for construction in Mecca and Medina.

After Mohammed’s death in a plane crash in 1967, his sons built the Saudi BinLaden Group into a multibillion-dollar enterprise. Recent ventures have included building a freeway around Riyadh, expanding King Khaled Airport, and constructing a base for U.S. troops. By the late 70s, Osama was running the business. As points out John K. Cooley, an ABC News correspondent, and Middle East specialist:

Through his own personal reputation as a pious Muslim who favoured the cause of Wahabi Islamism, and through involvement of the bin Laden companies in construction and renovation at the holy shrines of Mecca and Medina, he seemed to both Saudi Intelligence and the CIA an ideal choice for the leading role he began to play. Bin Laden began to pay, with his own company and funds, for recruitment, transportation and training of the Arab volunteers who flocked, first to Peshawar, and to Afghanistan… By 1895 bin Laden had collected enough millions from his family and company wealth… to orgnize al Qaida.^[10]

Bin Laden headquarters in Dubai

While attending King Abdul Aziz University in Jeddah, Osama bin Laden also became close to Mohammed Qutb, and was initiated into the Muslim Brotherhood.^[11] Osama had also attended Azzam’s classes and was caught up into his militant ideology. In 1979, Azzam left Saudi Arabia, being one of the first Arabs to join the Afghan jihad, and Osama, at just twenty-two years of age, followed soon after, leading them to found the MAK, or “Maktab al-Khidamat”, or the Mujahideen Services Bureau, based in Peshawar, Pakistan. According to John Loftus, however, it was George Bush Sr., as vice president, who was in charge of the covert operations that supported the MAK.^[12]The MAK was nurtured by Pakistan’s ISI, and linked up with Pakistan’s Muslim Brotherhood organization, the Jamaat-e Islami, founded by Abul Ala Maududi, to recruit fighters.

Ted Gunderson

Michael Riconosciuto

By the late 1980s, there were branches of the MAK in fifty countries around the world, by means of which unsuspecting dupes from around the globe poured in to fight “Jihad” in Afghanistan. Azzam and bin Laden then recognized that many of the prospective Mujahideen lacked training, and established the Bayt Al-Ansar in Peshawar, as a central training base, or Al Qaeda, founded with the assistance of the resident CIA chief in Peshawar.^[13] Bin Laden had made the first of many contacts with the CIA in 1979, after graduating from university in Jeddah, when he went to Istanbul, which the American intelligence center had chosen as a way station for the volunteers.^[14]

When the Americans decided to change the tide of the war, Osama was brought to the US under the false name of “Tim Osman”. Osama then met with three men in Sherman Oaks, California. Among them was Ted Gunderson, a retired FBI agent, who had been approached by a high-level official in the administration of President Ronald Reagan to provide, outside of government channels, assistance to the Afghan Mujahideen. In 1986, Gunderson then arranged a meeting between himself, Riconosciuto, and Ralph Olberg. Michael Riconosciuto was architect of the Promis software who was closely involved with Hubbell’s Park-on-Meter operation. Olberg covertly represented the State Department where he served on its Middle East desk.^[15]

Gunderson’s role was to put the key players in contact with Sir Dennis Kendall, a former member of the British parliament, and a double agent during World War II, who had worked for both the Germans and the British. After leaving Gunderson in California, Riconosciuto, bin Laden, Olberg and Kendall traveled to Boston, where they met with Abdullah Azzam, and details of the aid plan were further formulated. Interpol provided secure communications and kept the operation, formalized with a number of unnamed congressmen, from being compromised or discovered.^[16]

Mujahideen fighter aims US-made Stinger missle

The project ultimately provided the Afghani resistance with 600 stinger surface-to-air, shoulder-fired missiles, which had been modified so they could not be used against American aircraft if captured. Gunderson confirmed that these weapons turned the tide of battle in Afghanistan against the Soviets, whose aircraft, and particularly attack helicopters, fell victim to the missiles.^[17]

America’s support of the Mujahideen, even included, as revealed by John Cooley, a former journalist with the US ABC, and author of Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, America and International Terrorism, training inside the US. Training included rifle shooting at the High Rock gun club in Naugtuck, Connecticut. More technical training took place at the CIA’s Camp Peary, nicknamed “The Farm,” in Virginia. Among the topics that were covered were surveillance and counter surveillance, counter-terrorism, counter-narcotics and paramilitary operations.

Michael Springman, the head of the American visa bureau in Jeddah from 1987 to 1989, told the BBC:

In Saudi Arabia I was repeatedly ordered by high-level State Department officials to issue visas to unqualified applicants. People who had no ties either to Saudi Arabia or to their own country. I complained there. I complained here in Washington to Main Street, to the inspector general, and to Diplomatic Security, and I was ignored. What I was doing was giving visas to terrorists  recruited by the CIA and Osama bin Laden to come back to the United States for training to be used in the war in Afghanistan against the then Soviets.^[18]

Ali Mohammed

A former U.S. Army Sergeant, Ali Mohamed, testified in a New York court that he helped train members of Al Qaeda after he left the army in 1989. An Egyptian, Ali Mohamed rose to the rank of major his country’s Special Forces. In 1984, he was expelled from Egypt’s military as a religious extremist. He contacted the CIA, offering to act as a spy, but the CIA judged him unreliable. He was later placed on a U.S. government watch list, and yet was able to obtain a U.S. visa, marry an American woman, and become an American citizen. Until 1989, he was lecturing on the Middle East at the U.S. Army’s John F. Kennedy Special Warfare Center and School at Fort Bragg. In 2000, he admitted involvement in the bombing of the embassies in Africa.

Though his relationship with the FBI and the CIA remain shrouded in secrecy, a close friend of his, obstetrician Ali Zaki, stated, “everyone in the community knew he was working as a liaison between the CIA and the Afghan cause.”^[19]In 1988, while still on active duty, he visited Afghanistan on leave, where he fought the Soviets and made contact with Osama bin Laden, apparently with CIA sponsorship. After Mohamed was honorably discharged in 1989, he joined the Reserves for another five years. Documents from U.S. court cases demonstrate that while either on active duty or a member of the Reserves, he continued to travel abroad to meet with Osama bin Laden and his colleagues, as well as training al Qaeda members within the U.S. Retired Lt. Col. Robert Anderson, who was at Fort Bragg testified that, as nothing was done after he had advised his superiors of

Ayman al Zawahiri

Mohamed’s activities, he was forced to conclude that Mohamed was “sponsored” by U.S. intelligence.

^[20]

Mohamed Ali returned to California in the mid 1990s, where he helped Zawahiri raise money for the Egyptian Islamic Jihad.

^[21]

Finally, even Ayman al Zawahiri, the alleged “number two man” in Al Qaeda, was part of several dubious associagtions. Zawahiri is a member of another Muslim Brotherhood organization, Islamic Jihad, founded in 1977, which had been discovered responsible for the assassination of Sadat. Zawahiri was one of the men charged in the plot. Zawahiri is also related to the family of the Azzams. His grandmother was the sister of the renowned Abdul Rahman Azzam, while his uncle was Salem Azzam. After he fled Egypt, he based his operations in Geneva, working under the cover of the Muslim Brotherhood-controlled Islamic Center, led by Said Ramadan.

The Sudan, Bosnia and the Philipines

Hassan al-Turabi

At the end of 1989, Osama bin Laden returned to Saudi Arabia. Although, when the Gulf War broke out in 1990, he became an outspoken critic of the setting up of US bases in the country, which had been permitted by the Saudi family. Bin Laden decided to leave Saudi Arabia in 1991, going first to Pakistan and back to Afghanistan, before finally settling in Sudan, when General Omar Hassan al-Bashir took power in a military coup. Just a few months later, at the Muslim Brotherhood meeting in London in 1989, it was decided that Sudan would be a new base for the Islamist movement, and a Muslim Brotherhood leadership council of nineteen members was subsequently established in Khartoum under Turabi, who would emerge as the real power in the Sudanese regime.^[22]

Hassan al-Turabi, born in 1932, joined the Muslim Brotherhood while studying law at the British-run Gordon College in Khartoum. He received a master’s degree from the University of London, and then attended the Sorbonne University in France, receiving his doctorate in 1964. According to bin Laden biographer Roland Jacquard, Turabi visited London in 1992 and was a guest at the Royal Institute of International Affairs. In addition, Turabi seems to have Masonic connections. When their relationship had broken down, and after Turabi had foiled an attempted coup by he and his party, Bashir denounced him as being sponsored by “Zionists and freemasons”.^[23]

According to several authoritative sources, as the war was winding down in Afghanistan, leaders of the CIA in Peshawar held secret meetings with bin Laden, at the end of 1991, at Green’s Hotel, under the authority of Prince Turki al Faisal, the head of Saudi intelligence. It was agreed to maintain the valuable collaboration of the “Afghan” Mujahideen, though the exact substance of the meeting is not known.^[24] Consequently, many of the fighters who had trained and volunteered in Afghanistan were removed to Sudan. With support from his family, Osama extended large loans to the Islamic regime, in exchange for which the Binladen Group launched a great infrastructure construction project, including the building of highways, bridges, airports, and luxury residences.

Bin Laden also continued to finance training camps, for which he often returned to Afghanistan. On each of these visits he met with the CIA experts.^[25] Together with weapons shipments to Sudan, bin Laden also managed an opium supply chain that was established before he departed for Afghanistan with Hekmatyar.^[26] The DEA confirms having received multi-source information that Bin Laden has been involved in the financing and facilitation of heroin trafficking activities.^[27] Al Qaeda reportedly earns as much as six billion a year from drug-trafficking.^[28]

Edwin Angele, aka “Ibrahim Yakub”

fromIn Bosnia, where al Qaeda Mujahideen collaborated with the US, the militants established connections with Bosnian organized crime figures. The officials said al Qaeda and the Taliban found a route for the trafficking of heroin Afghanistan into Europe through the Balkans.

^[29]

Followers also have been tied to bank robberies, holdups, credit card fraud and other crimes.

^[30]

Bin Laden had also pushed early funding through the International Islamic Relief Organization (IIRO), as arranged in meetings between al Qaeda’s inner-circle and the charity’s directors. Al-Zawahiri was employed by the IIRO in Albania. The Philippine branch office was run by Osama’s brother-in-law, who made a hand-off of cash to the terrorist group Abu Sayyaf, an al Qaeda offshoot. The Abu Sayyaf Group (ASG), was co-founded by Edwin Angeles, who also went by the Muslim name of “Ibrahim Yakub”, an undercover agent for the Defense Intelligence Group, who, as the ASG’s operations officer and chief recruiter, was largely responsible for the spread and criminalization of the group. Filipina television news reporter, Arlyn de la Cruz, in her history of the ASG, wrote that Angeles/Yakub “holds the key to the deep intricacies of how some government agencies manipulated the rawness of the Abu Sayyaf during its early years.”^[31]

WTC Bombing

On November 5, 1990, in New York City, Meir Kahane, the founder of the terroristic Jewish Defense League (JDL), was assassinated by an Arab assailant. Kahane had been elected to the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, in 1884, by advocating the expulsion of all Arabs from Israel, but was subsequently barred from office after a new law banned parties that had racist platforms. Essentially, the history of the JDL and its founder indicates that the JDL functioned as an arm of the Mossad. Kahane’s biographer, Robert Friedman, revealed that “high-ranking members of Mossad” were directing Kahane, and that the “central player” was former Mossad operations chief, Yitzhak Shamir.^[32]

Meir Kahane

Kahane had also been an asset of the FBI and the CIA, including a stint for the CIA in Africa, as a “news correspondent.” In 1965, under the name “Michael King,” Kahane and Joseph Churba formed a group to mobilize campus support for the Vietnam War, as part of a CIA operation “working both sides” of the Vietnam War issue, simultaneously funding anti-war groups. In 1968, Michael King became Rabbi Meir Kahane. His colleague, Churba, also a rabbi, was a key liaison between the Likudnik right-wing in Israel and neo-conservatives in Washington.^[33] Churba became an influential asset for Israeli intelligence in U.S. foreign policy-making circles, having been promoted by the John Birch Society, and funded by CIA-backed Korean cult leader Sun Myung Moon.^[34]

The man accused of assassinating Kahane was El Sayed Nosair, one of dozens of Arabs who had spent time at the Al Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, where the CIA had once recruited prospects to join the Afghan Jihad in the eighties. According to the February 1993 issue of the newsletter, Inside Israel, Kahane’s son claimed that “both the FBI and Mossad had infiltrated the group to which Nosair belonged.” As reported by Jane Hunter, for the Middle East International, “Benyamin Kahane says he was told by an FBI informant he identifies as Mustafa Shalabi that Nosair’s brother worked for the FBI.”^[35] Shalabi, a former colleague of Sheik Omar Abdul Rahman, later turned up dead.

El Sayed Nosair

Files found in Nosair’s possession gave details of a terrorist cell, mention al Qaeda, and discuss the destruction of tall US buildings, but were not translated until years later. Instead, within twelve hours of the assassination, New York police declared the assassination was the work of a “lone gunman”, and stuck with that story. At Nosair’s trial, to which Bin Laden contributed for the defense, prosecutors chose nevertheless not to introduce his incriminating possessions as evidence, nor was his confession even mentioned, and a supposedly “open-and-shut case” ended with an acquittal. However, Nosair was sentenced to twenty-two years on other lesser charges.^[36] Many of those involved in Kahane’s assassination later planned the 1993 WTC. As one FBI agent put it, “the fact is that in 1990, myself and my detectives, we had in our office in handcuffs, the people who blew up the World Trade Center in ‘93. We were told to release them.”^[37]

Omar Abdur Rahman
the “blind Sheikh”

Evidence found in Nosair’s apartment linked him to the “Blind Sheikh”, Omar Abdur Rahman. Curiously, despite Sheikh Omar’s link to Nosair, a formal investigation was not undertaken. During the war in Afghanistan, Abdur Rahman had made frequent trips to Peshawar in Pakistan, where he was a friend of Abdullah Azzam. Sheikh Omar was known to have befriended bin Laden while in Afghanistan, and bin Laden secretly paid Abdul-Rahman’s US living expenses.^[38] Though he had been tied to the assassination of Anwar Sadat, the CIA nevertheless regarded him as a valuable asset, because they saw his anti-Western polemics as successful in uniting the Mujahideen forces. According to Peter Bergen’s Holy War, Inc., even though the Blind Sheikh was known to be the leader of the Gamat al Islamiyya, the radical offshoot of the Muslim Brotherhood, he had been issued a visa in 1987 and 1990.^[39] As one FBI agent said in 1993, he is “hands-off…. It was no accident that the sheikh got a visa and that he’s still in the country. He’s here under the banner of national security, the State Department, the NSA, and the CIA.”^[40]

The charge that Sheik Omar Abdur Rahman operated with CIA sanction has come from a number of sources, including an anonymous government official, who leaked that it was a CIA officer assigned as a consular official that approved the Sheik’s visa from the Sudan after the consulate approved it, according to the New York Times on July 14, 1993. Egyptian President Mubarak suggested that the visa had been issued to Rahman as a payoff for “services” rendered. “The sheikh has been a CIA agent since his days in Afghanistan,” Mubarak told Egypt’s al-Gomhuria newspaper. “He still earns a salary.”^[41]

Specifically, according to Barnett R Rubin, a Columbia University associate professor, and senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations, Abdur Rahman received the visa for having gone to Peshawar on behalf of the CIA, soon after Azzam was killed, “to preach to the Afghans about the necessity of unity to overthrow the Kabul regime.”^[42] Also according to Rubin, not long after the sheikh was arrested, a source asked Robert Oakley, former U.S. Ambassador to Pakistan, how the U.S. would respond if the sheikh disclosed he had worked for the CIA. Oakley laughed, saying it would never happen, because the admission would ruin the sheikh’s credibility with his militant followers.^[43]

In the wake of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, thousands of suspected terrorists were rounded up and jailed, among them were Omar Abdul Rahman, who was eventually convicted of a conspiracy to blow up New York City landmarks. Emad Salem, the Egyptian bodyguard for Sheikh Rahman, and the key witness in the trial, was an FBI informant. It was eventually revealed under questioning that Mr. Salem had received a quarter million to one million dollars for his services as an FBI informant. Salem testified that the FBI knew about the attack beforehand and told him they would thwart it by substituting a harmless powder for the explosives. However, this plan was called off by an FBI supervisor, and the bombing was not stopped.^[44]Defense attorney William Kunstler investigated and discovered that not only was Salem a lieutenant colonel in the Egyptian army, he never stopped working for the Egyptian government. Apart from the FBI, Salem was also funded, according to Kunstler, by other sources linked to foreign governments, including money from an organization founded by Rabbi Meir Kahane.^[45]

Renegade Mossad agent, Victor Ostrovsky, who left Israel’s secret police agency and wrote his best-selling book, By Way of Deception, told the Village Voice that Israeli intelligence may have been behind the World Trade Center bombing. Mossad had motive and opportunity, says Ostrovsky, though he readily admits he doesn’t have “a shred of evidence” to support his theory. Ostrovsky says that the Mossad would have infiltrated the radical mosques in New Jersey and Brooklyn, where Abdul Rahman preached and disciples like El Sayyid Nosair prayed, and almost certainly recruited a close associate of the Blind Sheikh. The insider is recruited in what Ostrovsky calls a “false flag operation.” The Arab “thinks he is being recruited by an Iranian agent or a Libyan,” says Ostrovsky. He never suspects he is actually being “run” by Mossad.^[46]

Ostrovsky points out that in the past the Mossad has effectively used this modus operandi. In the early 1950s, Mossad recruited agents to bomb American buildings in Cairo, hoping to drive a wedge between the U.S. and Nasser. When the facts became known in Israel, the scandal brought down the government. According to Ostrovsky, in 1984 Mossad detonated bombs outside of the U.S. embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia’s capital city, claiming credit in the name of an unknown radical Saudi resistance group. A member of Mossad at the time, Ostrovsky says the purpose was to weaken U.S./Saudi relations, by demonstrating to the U.S. that the regime was fragile and about to fall.^[47]

As reported by Robert Friedman, Ahmad Ajaj, of the men accused of conspiring to bomb the World Trade Center, may have been a Mossad mole, according to Israeli intelligence sources. The FBI had identified Ajaj as a senior Intifada activist in the occupied territories, having close ties to both El Fatah, a constituent group of the PLO, and Hamas. According to federal sources and the Israeli National Police, the Israeli military expelled him to Jordan in 1991, for conspiring to smuggle weapons to El Fatah on the West Bank.

However, according to Kol Ha’ir, a highly regarded weekly in Jerusalem, Ajaj was never involved in Intifada activities, or with the PLO, or Hamas. Citing court papers and other sources, Kol Ha’ir related that Ajaj was actually a small-time crook, and that during his prison stay, after having been sentenced in 1988 for counterfeiting U.S. dollars, he was apparently recruited by Mossad. Curiously, following his release, only a year later, he had seemingly undergone a radical transformation, and became a devout Muslim.^[48]

It was soon after that when he was arrested for smuggling weapons into the West Bank, allegedly for El Fatah. However, Israeli intelligence sources say that the arrest for weapons smuggling, and Ajaj’s supposed torture and deportation, were staged by Mossad to establish his credentials as an intifada activist. Mossad allegedly “tasked” Ajaj to infiltrate radical Palestinian groups operating outside Israel. Israeli intelligence sources say that it is no unusual for Mossad to recruit from the ranks of common criminals.^[49]

Footnotes:

^[1] Svali. “The Illuminati: How the Cult Programs People“.
^[2] Dreyfuss, Hostage to Khomeini, p. 113. [pdf]
^[3] Craig Unger. House of Bush, House of Saud, p. 98.
^[4] ibid.
^[5] Friedman, Robert. “The CIA’s Jihad“. March 1995.
^[6] Hizmet Books, “Answer to an Enemy of Islam“.
^[7] Mark Erikson. “Islamism, fascism and terrorism (Part 3)”. Asia Times, Dec 4, 2002.
^[8] Joe Trento, “FBI Shut Down Bin Laden Investigation”.
^[9] Peter Lance. Thousand Years of Revenge. p. 40-41
^[10] Unholy Wars: Afghanistan, American and International Terrorism, p. 119.
^[11] Peter Goodgame. “Globalists and Islamists“.
^[12] Interview with John Loftus About the Muslim Brotherhood.
^[13] Labeviere, Richard. Dollars for Terror: The United States and Islam, p. 103.
^[14] ibid, p. 103.
^[15] Mike Blair. “U.S. Armed, Promoted Accused September 11 Terrorist Mastermind“.
^[16] ibid.
^[17] ibid.
^[18] Interview with Franck Anderson, quoted from Unger, House of Bush, House of Saud, p. 109-110
^[19] Ahmed, Nafeez Mossadeq. The War on Freedom: US Complicity in 9-11 and the New Imperialism, p. 199.
^[20] ibid.
^[21] Ton Hays and Sharon Theimer. “Egyptian Agent Worked with Green Berets, bin Laden”. Jerusalem Post, December 31, 2001.
^[22] Peter Goodgame. “Globalists and Islamists“.
^[23] “Darfur governor links Khartoum plot with rebels”, World News, Sep 27, 2004.
^[24] RichardcLabeviere. Dollars for Terror. p. 104.
^[25] ibid, p. 106.
^[26] ibid, p. 105.
^[27] Asa Hutchinson, DEA Administrator. “International Drug Trafficking and Terrorism”. Testimony Before the Senate Judiciary Committee Subcommittee on Technology, Terrorism, and Government Information. Washington, DC. March 13, 2002.
^[28] London Daily Telegraph, 9/15/01, 9/16/01; Montreal Gazette, 9/15/01; Le Monde, 9/14/01
^[29] New York Times, December 10, 2001.
^[30] Los Angeles Times, September, 15, 200.
^[31] Alex Constantine. “Adnan Khashoggi Linked to 911 Terrorists”. PART 7: The Brother-Bruder-Akh Axis.
^[32] Michael Collins Piper. “Was Irv Rubin Killed in 9-11 Mop Up?”. Exclusive to American Free Press.
^[33] Steinberg, Jeffrey. “LaRouche: Moonies Are Target Too Big To Be Missed”. EIR, November 1, 2002.
^[34] Michael Collins Piper. “Was Irv Rubin Killed in 9-11 Mop Up?”.
^[35] Jane Hunter, Middle East International, March 19, p. 6
^[36] Robert Friedman, “The CIA and the Sheikh”, The Village Voice. March 30, 1993.
^[37] ABC News, July 16, 2002.
^[38] Atlantic Monthly, May 1996, ABC News, July 16, 2002.
^[39] p. 67.
^[40] Freidman, “The CIA and the Sheikh”.
^[41] ibid.
^[42] Friedman. “The CIA’s Jihad“.
^[43] ibid.
^[44] Blumenthal, Ralph. “Tapes Depict Proposal to Thwart Bomb Used in Trade Center Blast”. The New York Times. October 28, 1993.
^[45] Transcript of Paul DeRienzo’s interview with William Kunstler, Broadcast on WBAI in New York on August 3, 1993.
^[46] Friedman, Robert. “By Way of Deception?”. The Village Voice, April 6, 1993.
^[47] ibid.
^[48] Robert I. Friedman, “Mossad Linked To WTC Bomb Suspect” The Village Voice, August 3, 1993.
^[49] ibid.

The Muslim Brotherhood

Interview with John Loftus about the Muslim Brotherhood FTR #514

REALAUDIO

The American Counterterrorist Myth–JULY/AUGUST 2001 ATLANTIC

The Counterterrorist Myth

JULY/AUGUST 2001 ATLANTIC

A former CIA operative explains why the terrorist Usama bin Ladin has little to fear from American intelligence

by Reuel Marc Gerecht

The United States has spent billions of dollars on counterterrorism since the U.S. embassy bombings in Tanzania and Kenya, in August of 1998. Tens of millions have been spent on covert operations specifically targeting Usama bin Ladin and his terrorist organization, al-Qa’ida. Senior U.S. officials boldly claim—even after the suicide attack last October on the USS Cole, in the port of Aden—that the Central Intelligence Agency and the Federal Bureau of Investigation are clandestinely “picking apart” bin Ladin’s organization “limb by limb.” But having worked for the CIA for nearly nine years on Middle Eastern matters (I left the Directorate of Operations because of frustration with the Agency’s many problems), I would argue that America’s counterterrorism program in the Middle East and its environs is a myth.

Peshawar, the capital of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier, is on the cultural periphery of the Middle East. It is just down the Grand Trunk Road from the legendary Khyber Pass, the gateway to Afghanistan. Peshawar is where bin Ladin cut his teeth in the Islamic jihad, when, in the mid-1980s, he became the financier and logistics man for the Maktab al-Khidamat, The Office of Services, an overt organization trying to recruit and aid Muslim, chiefly Arab, volunteers for the war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. The friendships and associations made in The Office of Services gave birth to the clandestine al-Qa’ida, The Base, whose explicit aim is to wage a jihad against the West, especially the United States.

According to Afghan contacts and Pakistani officials, bin Ladin’s men regularly move through Peshawar and use it as a hub for phone, fax, and modem communication with the outside world. Members of the embassy-bombing teams in Africa probably planned to flee back to Pakistan. Once there they would likely have made their way into bin Ladin’s open arms through al-Qa’ida’s numerous friends in Peshawar. Every tribe and region of Afghanistan is represented in this city, which is dominated by the Pathans, the pre-eminent tribe in the Northwest Frontier and southern Afghanistan. Peshawar is also a power base of the Taliban, Afghanistan’s fundamentalist rulers. Knowing the city’s ins and outs would be indispensable to any U.S. effort to capture or kill bin Ladin and his closest associates. Intelligence collection on al-Qa’ida can’t be of much real value unless the agent network covers Peshawar.

During a recent visit, at sunset, when the city’s cloistered alleys go black except for an occasional flashing neon sign, I would walk through Afghan neighborhoods. Even in the darkness I had a case officer’s worst sensation—eyes following me everywhere. To escape the crowds I would pop into carpet, copper, and jewelry shops and every cybercafé I could find. These were poorly lit one- or two-room walk-ups where young men surfed Western porn. No matter where I went, the feeling never left me. I couldn’t see how the CIA as it is today had any chance of running a successful counterterrorist operation against bin Ladin in Peshawar, the Dodge City of Central Asia.

Westerners cannot visit the cinder-block, mud-brick side of the Muslim world—whence bin Ladin’s foot soldiers mostly come—without announcing who they are. No case officer stationed in Pakistan can penetrate either the Afghan communities in Peshawar or the Northwest Frontier’s numerous religious schools, which feed manpower and ideas to bin Ladin and the Taliban, and seriously expect to gather useful information about radical Islamic terrorism—let alone recruit foreign agents.

Even a Muslim CIA officer with native-language abilities (and the Agency, according to several active-duty case officers, has very few operatives from Middle Eastern backgrounds) could do little more in this environment than a blond, blue-eyed all-American. Case officers cannot long escape the embassies and consulates in which they serve. A U.S. official overseas, photographed and registered with the local intelligence and security services, can’t travel much, particularly in a police-rich country like Pakistan, without the “host” services’ knowing about it. An officer who tries to go native, pretending to be a true-believing radical Muslim searching for brothers in the cause, will make a fool of himself quickly.

In Pakistan, where the government’s Inter-Services Intelligence Agency and the ruling army are competent and tough, the CIA can do little if these institutions are against it. And they are against it. Where the Taliban and Usama bin Ladin are concerned, Pakistan and the United States aren’t allies. Relations between the two countries have been poor for years, owing to American opposition to Pakistan’s successful nuclear-weapons program and, more recently, Islamabad’s backing of Muslim Kashmiri separatists. Bin Ladin’s presence in Afghanistan as a “guest” of the Pakistani-backed Taliban has injected even more distrust and suspicion into the relationship.

In other words, American intelligence has not gained and will not gain Pakistan’s assistance in its pursuit of bin Ladin. The only effective way to run offensive counterterrorist operations against Islamic radicals in more or less hostile territory is with “non-official-cover” officers—operatives who are in no way openly attached to the U.S. government. Imagine James Bond minus the gadgets, the women, the Walther PPK, and the Aston Martin. But as of late 1999 no program to insert NOCs into an Islamic fundamentalist organization abroad had been implemented, according to one such officer who has served in the Middle East. “NOCs haven’t really changed at all since the Cold War,” he told me recently. “We’re still a group of fake businessmen who live in big houses overseas. We don’t go to mosques and pray.”

A former senior Near East Division operative says, “The CIA probably doesn’t have a single truly qualified Arabic-speaking officer of Middle Eastern background who can play a believable Muslim fundamentalist who would volunteer to spend years of his life with shitty food and no women in the mountains of Afghanistan. For Christ’s sake, most case officers live in the suburbs of Virginia. We don’t do that kind of thing.” A younger case officer boils the problem down even further: “Operations that include diarrhea as a way of life don’t happen.”

Behind-the-lines counterterrorism operations are just too dangerous for CIA officers to participate in directly. When I was in the Directorate of Operations, the Agency would deploy a small army of officers for a meeting with a possibly dangerous foreigner if he couldn’t be met in the safety of a U.S. embassy or consulate. Officers still in the clandestine service say that the Agency’s risk-averse, bureaucratic nature—which mirrors, of course, the growing physical risk-aversion of American society—has only gotten worse.

Afew miles from Peshawar’s central bazaar, near the old Cantonment, where redcoats once drilled and where the U.S. consulate can be found, is the American Club, a traditional hangout for international-aid workers, diplomats, journalists, and spooks. Worn-out Western travelers often stop here on the way from Afghanistan to decompress; one can buy a drink, watch videos, order a steak. Security warnings from the American embassy are posted on the club’s hallway bulletin board.

The bulletins I saw last December advised U.S. officials and their families to stay away from crowds, mosques, and anyplace else devout Pakistanis and Afghans might gather. The U.S. embassy in Islamabad, a fortress surrounded by roadblocks, Pakistani soldiers, and walls topped with security cameras and razor wire, strongly recommended a low profile—essentially life within the Westernized, high-walled Cantonment area or other spots where diplomats are unlikely to bump into fundamentalists.

Such warnings accurately reflect the mentality inside both the Department of State and the CIA. Individual officers may venture out, but their curiosity isn’t encouraged or rewarded. Unless one of bin Ladin’s foot soldiers walks through the door of a U.S. consulate or embassy, the odds that a CIA counterterrorist officer will ever see one are extremely poor.

The Directorate of Operations’ history of success has done little to prepare the CIA for its confrontation with radical Islamic terrorism. Perhaps the DO’s most memorable victory was against militant Palestinian groups in the 1970s and 1980s. The CIA could find common ground with Palestinian militants, who often drink, womanize, and spend time in nice hotels in pleasant, comfortable countries. Still, its “penetrations” of the PLO—delightfully and kindly rendered in David Ignatius’s novel Agents of Innocence (1987)—were essentially emissaries from Yasir Arafat to the U.S. government.

Difficulties with fundamentalism and mud-brick neighborhoods aside, the CIA has stubbornly refused to develop cadres of operatives specializing in one or two countries. Throughout the Soviet-Afghan war (1979-1989) the DO never developed a team of Afghan experts. The first case officer in Afghanistan to have some proficiency in an Afghan language didn’t arrive until 1987, just a year and a half before the war’s end. Robert Baer, one of the most talented Middle East case officers of the past twenty years (and the only operative in the 1980s to collect consistently first-rate intelligence on the Lebanese Hizbollah and the Palestinian Islamic Jihad), suggested to headquarters in the early 1990s that the CIA might want to collect intelligence on Afghanistan from the neighboring Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union.

Headquarters’ reply: Too dangerous, and why bother? The Cold War there was over with the Soviet withdrawal in 1989. Afghanistan was too far away, internecine warfare was seen as endemic, and radical Islam was an abstract idea. Afghanistan has since become the brain center and training ground for Islamic terrorism against the United States, yet the CIA’s clandestine service still usually keeps officers on the Afghan account no more than two or three years.

Until October of 1999 no CIA official visited Ahmad Shah Mas’ud in Afghanistan. Mas’ud is the ruler of northeastern Afghanistan and the leader of the only force still fighting the Taliban. He was the most accomplished commander of the anti-Soviet mujahideen guerrillas; his army now daily confronts Arab military units that are under the banner of bin Ladin, yet no CIA case officer has yet debriefed Mas’ud’s soldiers on the front lines or the Pakistani, Afghan, Chinese-Turkoman, and Arab holy warriors they’ve captured.

The CIA’s Counterterrorism Center, which now has hundreds of employees from numerous government agencies, was the creation of Duane “Dewey” Clarridge, an extraordinarily energetic bureaucrat-spook. In less than a year in the mid-1980s Clarridge converted a three-man operation confined to one room with one TV set broadcasting CNN into a staff that rivaled the clandestine service’s Near East Division for primacy in counterterrorist operations. Yet the Counterterrorism Center didn’t alter the CIA’s methods overseas at all. “We didn’t really think about the details of operations—how we would penetrate this or that group,” a former senior counterterrorist official says. “Victory for us meant that we stopped [Thomas] Twetten [the chief of the clandestine service's Near East Division] from walking all over us.” In my years inside the CIA, I never once heard case officers overseas or back at headquarters discuss the ABCs of a recruitment operation against any Middle Eastern target that took a case officer far off the diplomatic and business-conference circuits. Long-term seeding operations simply didn’t occur.

George Tenet, who became the director of the CIA in 1997, has repeatedly described America’s counterterrorist program as “robust” and in most cases successful at keeping bin Ladin’s terrorists “off-balance” and anxious about their own security. The Clinton Administration’s senior director for counterterrorism on the National Security Council, Richard Clarke, who has continued as the counterterrorist czar in the Bush Administration, is sure that bin Ladin and his men stay awake at night “around the campfire” in Afghanistan, “worried stiff about who we’re going to get next.”

If we are going to defeat Usama bin Ladin, we need to openly side with Ahmad Shah Mas’ud, who still has a decent chance of fracturing the tribal coalition behind Taliban power. That, more effectively than any clandestine counterterrorist program in the Middle East, might eventually force al-Qa’ida’s leader to flee Afghanistan, where U.S. and allied intelligence and military forces cannot reach him.

Until then, I don’t think Usama bin Ladin and his allies will be losing much sleep around the campfire.

PELOSI–Fearless Leader of the Lunatic Center

PELOSI

Fearless Leader of the Lunatic Center

Predator Retribution–Hakeemullah Dead

Pakistan Taliban Chief Reportedly Killed in U.S. Drone Strike

Reuters

Pakistani Taliban chief Hakimullah Mehsud, left, is seen with CIA homicide bomber Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal Al-Balawi in a video released Jan. 9.

BREAKING NEWS —  The head of the Taliban in Pakistan, Hakimullah Mehsud, was killed in a U.S. drone attack, Pakistan state television reported Sunday.

The report stated Mehsud had been injured in a drone attack in the Shaktoi area January 14 and died three days later.

The Pakistani army said it was investigating the reports.

Pakistani army spokesman Gen. Athar Abbas says the army is using its agents in Pakistan’s northwest where the death is reported to have occurred to try to confirm or deny the reports.

Pakistani state TV reported earlier Sunday that Mehsud died in Orakzai tribal area, where he was reportedly being treated for his injuries. It cited “official sources.”

Pakistani intelligence officials have said that Mehsud was targeted in a U.S. drone strike in South Waziristan on Jan. 14, triggering rumors he had been injured or killed.

Mehsud issued two audio tapes after the strike denying the rumors.

The Associated Press contributed to this report

The New Great Game: Part-2; Global Islamic Jihad

[The New ‘Great Game’:Part 1-Birth of Radical Islamist Militancy]

A Strategic Asset Of The USA?

Hassan Rizvi , Lahore

Pakistan :

This is a rather lengthy article, and I was delaying publishing it on Instablog for this reason. Yet I see that terrorism is on the rise in India too. Unfortunately my frequent predictions that after Afghanistan and Pakistan, India because of it again getting involved in Afghanistan would soon itself become a hot bed of terrorism appear to be coming true. This article is therefore being published to give a bird eyes view of the issues to the general public who blame Islam and Pakistan for the rise of global terrorism. Unfortunately the subject is such that despite my best efforts I could not make it any shorter.

In Part-1 we studied the background to the US involvement in Afghanistan. Essentially Curzon’s great game of containment of Russia had been turned on its head by the India. It decided that it’s interests would best be served by allying with the Russian. The resulting rise in Afghan militancy against Pakistan supported both by Russia and India, invited the ire of the Shah of Iran as well as the Saudi’s who viewed Russian interference as an attempt to reach the warm waters and oilfields of the Persian gulf.

We also saw how Alexandre de Marenches head of French Intelligence exercised central influence on development of events in this region. His creations the Safari Club along with the BCCI, took on the load of containment of world wide Soviet penetration at a time when CIA was ‘castrated’ due to Congressional inquiries. He too was convinced Russia wanted access to the warm waters of the Gulf through Afghanistan. Just three weeks before the Russian Invasion of Afghanistan when Arnaud De Bochgrave of Newsweek asked for advise where to go to in order to get the best breaking news story he replied,” If I were you, I would go to Kabul’!

Finally we saw how building up on this Brzezinski conceived the idea of trapping and ‘bleeding’ the Russians in a Vietnam of their own – using Islamic militants. In this article we will see exactly how – after having drawn the USSR into Afghanistan – the USA went about achieving this objective.

It is important to note here that till the time of this US involvement suicide bomber was an unknown phenomena in Pakistan but had been discovered and first used by the Tamil rebels of Sri Lanka. Also the rest of the Muslim world, specially the Arabs had not been involved in Pakistan’s war with Afghanistan – hence global Radical Islamic Jehadi was an un invented commodity.

From ‘Cold War’ to ‘Détente’ to ‘Global Jihad’.

Even in the early stages of the cold war the US had realized that religion was the most potent foe of the atheistic communist doctrine; and that the dynamic and fast growing religion of Islam was much more anti-communistic then even Christianity. Since WW2 it sought to contain communism using Muslim allies.

Nevertheless the division of US ally Pakistan into two by Russian backed ally India in 1971 – made US helplessness apparent world wide. The perception gained ground – within US government itself as well as – around the world, that the USSR had achieved nuclear parity while the US had been seriously weaken by Vietnam. To counter this the US decided to use it’s relations with Pakistan as a bridge to improved relations with China and thus contain the USSR.

Following on the heels of a secret visit to China by Kissinger, in February 1972 Richard Nixon met with Mao Zedong and Chou En-Lai at Beijing to announce a stunning rapprochement. A fear of encirclement by adversaries lead the Soviets towards détente. Strategic Arms Limitation Talks started in May 1972, resulting in the signing of the SALT II treaty, on June 18, 1979. With this the ‘cold war’ came to an end.

But the post Watergate functioning of the Safari Club awakened the Americans to the possibility of re-energizing their fading dreams for a Pax-Americana. The work already done by The Safari Club in Afghanistan; Pakistan’s visible determination to avenge their recent defeat in East Pakistan (1971) through a defeat of the Russo/Indian axis in Afghanistan; as well as Carters keenness to avoid the stigma of direct US involvement; enamored Brzezinski with plans of drowning the USSR in a flood of Jehadi fighters drawn from around and within the USSR.He started taking just enough interest to provoke a Soviet Invasion.

The successful enticement of Soviet troops into Afghanistan raised the love affair another notch into a marriage of convenience. US President Jimmy Carter withdrew the SALT II treaty from the Senate, describing the Soviet intervention in Afghanistan as “the most serious threat to the peace since the Second World War”. In 1980, Ronald Reagan went further vowing to increase military spending and confront the Soviets everywhere. After getting elected he revived the B-1 bomber program, installed US cruise missiles in Europe, and announced his experimental Strategic Defense Initiative, i.e. “Star Wars”. Also he dramatically increased support for Afghan War,while Richard Pipes the head of the NWG at the time, predicted that with the right encouragement Soviet Muslims will “explode into genocidal fury” against Moscow.

It would turn out to be a marriage in which the willing bride ‘Pakistan’ –as well as other Muslim in-laws – would be wooed with all sorts of enticing visions, heedless of the consequences! Meanwhile much had to be done before the marriage could be consummated-and so Brzezinski set about the task of arranging the party.

The guests would include China, Egypt, Saudi Arabia –and but for the fiasco of the Shah having been allowed permission for medical treatment in USA –even Khomeini’s Iran. The plan involved their co-operation with the west in assembling, training, equipping and raising against Russia; the largest, most efficient and most motivated guerilla force the world had ever seen.

The Outline Plan. Brzezinski came up with a plan to recruit Muslim fighters not only from Islamic countries around the globe, but also from Muslim minorities in other countries including the west. They would be motivated by the concept of Islamic Jihad; believing that God had ordered them to defeat the Godless Russians invaders. Their earthly reward would be glory, good pay and massive earnings through drug trade for the leaders; while in case of death they would be Shaheeds (mytrs) and would gain paradise!

The CIA would co-ordinate the global effort and provide special forces(green berets and SEALs/SAS) to train Islamic Jehadi leaders and instructors all over the globe; and along with Saudi and Egyptian help recruit and dispatch these Islamic fighters to Pakistan’s ISI .The USA and Saudi Arabia would also finance and equip the entire war effort. Pakistan’s ISI (along with its special forces SSG) would be responsible for the recruitment and training of local Jehadi fighters, as well as the training of those arriving from outside. More over Pakistan would serve as the sole pipeline for the operational control, re-supply and logistics including payments to all fighters within the theatre of operations.

It will be revealing at this stage to see which particular countries were relevant to this US plan; and why?

Egypt. Anwer Sadat a close ally of the Americans had been isolated in the Muslim world ever since he made his peace treaty with Israel. The Al Azhar University at Cairo was recognized through out the Muslim world as the fore most religious institution. The Muslim Brotherhood also had branches through out the world, and like Pakistan’s Jamat e Islami advocated the establishment of an ideal Islamic state based on the teachings of The Holy Quran.The support of Anwer Sadat was vital for gaining access to Egyptian bases as regional collection and dispatch points of arms and equipment to Mujahideen in Afghanistan; while the support of two above mentioned institutions was the key to raising a huge army of Egyptian fighters for the envisioned global Jihad. In addition it was hoped that Anwer Sadat’s identification with the Global Jihad might serve to end his isolation in the Muslim world.

Pakistan. It was the bride Brzezinski must woo at all costs if his global Jihad was to succeed. Already engaged in covert operations against Afghanistan for the last five years, it had the required intelligence already in place. Moreover being the country most jeopardized by the Russian invasion, it could be counted on to be the most zealous in the fight. The Jamat e Islami founded by Maulana Mahdoodi had a wide following in Pakistan –and also branches world wide. It also advocated the use of militancy for the achievements of its aims if necessary, and had prepared many of its followers to fight in Afghanistan as well as Kashmir. Enlisting its support would greatly facilitate the recruitment drive both in Pakistan as well as globally.

Saudi Arabia. We have already discussed the important role it played in the Safari Club both with regards to spreading of the teachings of Wahabi radicalism world wide, as well as the financing of covert operations. It enjoyed enormous respect as an ally amongst all sections of Pakistanis. More over as the custodians of the Holy Kaaba it commanded respect through out the Muslim world. Its importance both as financers as well as enablers of massive recruitment world wide, in support of global Jihad could never be under estimated.

China. Both as a regional power, as well as a country with which Pakistan had close ties, getting China on board for any major undertaking was unavoidable. More over its large Muslim population and Russian origin weaponry would be invaluable in provision of both recruits and equipment which could not be pinned on the Americans
.

But US relations with Pakistan were at low ebb because of a US anti-nuclear proliferation embargo. So Assistant secretary of State Warren Christopher was sent on a mission to woo the bride, soon Brzezinski would follow with the formal proposal. He would go first to Egypt then Pakistan; while US Defense secretary Harold Brown would go to China.

The Initial US Effort. Soon after Warren Christopher’s wooing mission to Pakistan; in January 1980 Brzezinski visited Egypt .From that date the airbase at Qena- already in US use for reconnaissance flights against Iran – was also made available for airlifting supplies to Pakistan. Later Aswan was also made available, and Egypt started sending it’s own out of date surplus Russian equipment for use by the Mujahideen.An old arms factory near Halwan was converted to produce copies of Russian weapons for dispatch. Later Representative Charlie Wilson would travel to Israel to meet w Zvi Rafiah; and Israel would also feed captured Egyptian, Syrian and PLO equipment-including T-55 tanks- into this supply route .Over time much useful equipment including artillery and mortar shells and even Strela missiles were sent. By summer of 1980 Cairo west airbase was also made available; and by end of 1980 US special warfare troops (SEALs) were based in Egypt to impart training to Egyptian instructors-including Al-Zawari- who in turn would train the Egyptian recruits.

From Egypt Brzezinski flew straight to Pakistan. Pakistan viewed the Russian invasion of Afghanistan as a God sent opportunity to strike a tough bargaining position. The ISI chief Akhtar A. Rehman was keenly in favor of using Afghanistan as a Vietnam for the Russians, yet Zia was determined to strike a tough deal. He asked for and got the US to turn a blind eye to Pakistan’s perusal of its nuclear ambitions. He also got the US to accept that all arms, supplies, finance and training must be provided through Pakistan and not directly by CIA.

Later when US coordinated aid started flowing Zia insisted on absolute adherence to this condition. He further specified that the countries supporting must maintain absolute secrecy and repeatedly deny if necessary any shipment. Second the arms were to start immediately and be sent to Pakistan by fastest means available, but not less then two plane loads per week. Third the remaining supplies must be regular, and could come overland (China and Iran) or via sea from others (USA, UK, France, Egypt, Israel, Saudi Arabia etc)

Henry Kissinger had already used the close ties between Pentagon and Pakistan military to build a link with China. Now after Brzezinski’s visit to Pakistan, US defense secretary Harold Brown flew to China where he secured Chinese assent and active help for the global Jihad.

Osama Bin Laden. It will be worthwhile at this stage to focus on the role of Osama bin Laden-the man who was to be painted post 9/11 as the maniacal leader of Al-Qaeda Islamic terrorist network.

In his book CIA’s Beardman claims that Osama bin Laden was never aware of the role he was playing on behalf of Washington. This is likely an attempt at distancing the CIA from Osama as a result of 9/11,for enough evidence is available to prove that not only was Osama aware of US effort in support of the Afghan war, but also that he was closely involved in routing it to the Arab fighters.

What is certain is that Osama Bin Laden appeared on the scene immediately after the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. Leaving Saudi Arabia together with a group of supporters and heavy engineering equipment he arrived in Pakistan in 1979. According to Prof. Michel Chossudovsky, Osama was 22 years old in 1979, when he was trained in an ISI sponsored guerilla training camp near Peshawar, Pakistan. It is said that the ISI wanted a Saudi prince to head the Saudi contingent as proof of the Saudi commitment for the anti-Soviet effort. They failed to get royalty, but a person from the influential bin Laden clan was considered good enough.

Richard Clarke, counter terrorism head during the Clinton and Bush administrations, believes Osama was handpicked for the job by the head of Saudi intelligence (Turki) .The Saudis deny he was ever their agent, but it is known that he regularly met with Prince Turki and Saudi Interior Minister Prince Naif. Turki’s chief of staff Ahmed Badeeb one of bin Laden’s teachers in high school even said: “I loved Osama and considered him a good citizen of Saudi Arabia.” Badeeb will later say bin Laden developed “strong relations with the Saudi intelligence and with our embassy in Pakistan. We were happy with him. He was our man”.

It seems clear therefore that Osama was hand picked soon after the Soviet invasion to play a middleman’s role between Saudi intelligence and ISI. More over the status of his relations with the CIA though cloudy, are also thus clearly established. The truth is that although Osama was neither recruited by the CIA, nor was their agent; once the US had decided to come in a big way; as the middleman between Saudi intelligence and ISI it was inevitable that he would get closely involved with the CIA too.

Numerous charities and foundations coordinated by Saudi intelligence in close liaison with Safari Club were already in existence and financing covert operations world wide. In addition as per Indian claims Pakistan had already set up 37 training camps in Pakistan ,49 in Azad Kashmir, and 22 camps in Afghanistan to supply fighters for Afghanistan and Kashmir. Now that the USA had also committed the CIA to globalization of the covert fight in a big way, it too would have to set up front organizations for undertaking the required financial and recruitment drive.

The CIA would be the main coordinator globally and the ISI would co-ordinate everything within Pakistan. Staying within this arrangement, Osama was possibly placed in charge of co-coordinating and marrying up the existing Arab global effort with the one to be set up by the CIA/ISI.

Soon after his training in Pakistan Osama left for a visit to the USA in 1980, and also reportedly was seen in the UK in 1981.Nothing is certain about the reasons for the visit. Barnett Rubin, a senior fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations claims that about this time in the USA, - a man “enlisted” by the CIA who had “close connections to the Muslim Brotherhood, Saudi intelligence, and the Muslim World League.” – was given the role of looking after the financing and recruitment of foreign Jehadi. Slate writes, “Azzam trotted the globe during the 1980s to promote the Afghan jihad against the Soviets”.

Now this Azzam also later became known as Osama’s mentor. Was Osama also trotting alongside him on the same mission? It would appear to be so, for in 1984 Azzam set up the Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK), also known as Al-Kifah in Peshawar, a Pakistani town bordering Afghanistan.Osama bin Laden soon took it over from him.Azzam moved back to the US to set up its first American branch in New York – known as the Al-Kifah Refugee Center. As we shall see in a later part of the article Azzam then enlarged the network to 30 branches! All US branches were CIA backed, and served both as financial as well as recruitment centers.

It becomes obvious that the office at Peshawar was a set up for tying in the CIA effort with the effort already in place in Pakistan. Thus the MAK center at Peshawar is in a position to receive –through Pakistan’s ISI- not only the money of private Arab charities, but also all CIA funds and equipment for Arab fighters. It would become the main center for funneling foreign funds and fighters from all over the globe into the Afghan war.

In fact back in 1982 the CIA had become unhappy with the ‘Afghan native’ fighters due to rivalry ridden infighting, and wants more Arab fighters as Arab were easier to ‘read’ and also ‘one-dimensionally anti-Soviet ’.CIA Director William Casey visited Pakistan to sign an agreement committing CIA’s support for recruitment of Muslim from around the world. In addition to the Gulf States, this would include Turkey, the Philippines, USA, UK and China.

Azzam and Osama were probably tasked after this by their respective handlers to set up a suitable funnel for the purpose. They came up with the MAK center at Peshawar. From here Osama could keep a tab on and control the financing and feeding of all foreign fighters into the Afghan Jihad. The entire initial data base was initially also held by him. Researcher Kurt Nimmo writes:” This database of Islamic fighters was labeled in Arabic, ‘Q eidat ilmu’ti’aat’, which is the exact translation of the English word database. But the Arabs commonly used the short word ‘Al Qaeda” which is the Arabic word for ‘base.’” Robin Cook, British Foreign Secretary from 1997 to 2003, also confirms this: “al-Qaeda was originally the computer file of the thousands of mujaheddin who were recruited and trained with help from the CIA to defeat the Russians.”

Thus starting soon after the Russian Invasion in 1979, US efforts had by 1984 laid the foundations for converting the discordant Pakistani covert war against the Soviets, into a global Jihad- code named ‘Operation Cyclone’. Even by end of 1982 the rate of flow of equipment would rise to 10,000 ton annually, and the flow of foreign fighters also increases.
Operation Cyclone-The US led Global Jihad Against Russia

Afghan Mujahideen Leaders Meet US president Regan in America
NSDD 166.In March 1985, President Reagan signed National Security Decision Directive 166, (NSDD 166). William Casey director of CIA described it as the largest covert operation in history. It authorized stepped-up covert military aid to the mujahideen, and laid down a new goal for the Afghan war: Total defeat of Soviet troops in Afghanistan through covert action leading to a Soviet withdrawal.

The new covert U.S. assistance began with a dramatic increase in arms supplies — a steady rise to 65,000 tons annually by 1987.”In addition to arms, it provided very specialized training, state of the art military equipment including surface to air missiles, military satellite maps and latest communications equipment
The U.S. supplied support package had three essential components-organization and logistics, military technology, and ideological support for sustaining and encouraging the Afghan resistance. The ISI increased its staff to over 150,000 military and intelligence officers, bureaucrats, undercover agents and informers. In the final stages U.S. counter insurgency experts worked closely with the Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) even in organizing Mujahideen groups and in planning operations inside Afghanistan.

Eventually the entire Afghan nation, supported by tens of thousands of PakistaniJihadis and some 35,000 Muslim radical Jehadis from 40 countries would join the fight. Most of the funding would be from the United States and Saudi Arabia with a significant part generated from the Golden Crescent drug trade.

MAK offices in the US in the late 1980s. [Source: National Geographic]
Recruitment. We have already seen how Abdullah Azzam ,a CIA agent mentored Osama in setting up his financial and recruitment fronts ;and also the main funnel at Peshawer.Azzam also followed this up by expanding the US net work to 30 branches. For this reason Slate calls him “the Lenin of international jihad.”

The war lords in Afghanistan recruited their own followers. These were reinforced by fighters from all over the world. In Pakistan the Jamat i Islami set up recruitment centers all over the country-including Kashmir. Recruitment centers were also opened in many other countries including the Middle East, Turkey, UK, Philippines and China. These were funded by MAK (through CIA and ISI) but operated and run through mosques and Islamic centers in respective countries.

Training. Initially key Pakistani officers and some Afghan mujaheddin leaders were trained by Navy Seals and Green Beret officers at Camp Peary, near Williamsburg, Virginia, which is said to be the CIA’s main location for training spies and assets. Other training took place at Fort Bragg, North Carolina, Harvey Point, North Carolina, and Fort A. P. Hill, Virginia. US consular official Michael Springmann reports fighters from many Middle Eastern nations getting US visas, apparently to train in the US for the Afghan war.

Training was imparted in how to detect explosives, surveillance, how to recruit new agents, how to run paramilitary operations, and more. They are taught to use different weapons, including rockets, mortars, missiles, remote-controlled mines and bombs, and sophisticated timers and explosives.

Guerrilla training was integrated with inspirational Jihad lectures, featuring CIA sponsored speakers. They could be CIA-trained Afghan fighters traveling on a CIA-issued visa; or clean-cut Arabic-speaking Green Beret lecturing on the glory of being ‘warriors of the Lord.’ People like Azzam, Abdul-Rahman, Ayman Al-Zawahiri, could often turn up as star guest speakers to deliver fiery sermons on themes like ‘Blood and martyrdom are the only way to create a Muslim society’ or ‘the world opposes our objectives, because it is the enemy of Muslims.’ Predominant themes were that Islam was a complete socio-political ideology, and that this was being violated by the atheistic Soviet invaders who must be killed, and that the Islamic people in Afghanistan are warriors of Allah through Jihad.

Instructor’s training centers staffed by Green Berets and SEALs were set up in 1980 both in Egypt and Pakistan. Fearing a diplomatic incident, US and British troops rarely ventured into Afghanistan, but up to 1982 the British SAS did provide weapons training even in Afghanistan. After Russian soldiers found the passports of two British instructors in a training camp this was discontinued; and UK enrolled mujaheddin were trained in secret camps in remote parts of Scotland.

The instructors thus trained were used in turn to train tens of thousands more in camps set up by ISI in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

Radical Indoctrination. Under NSDD 166, Washington also supported and financed the process of religious indoctrination. The CIA spent $ 51million to create and supply Afghan school children with textbooks filled with violent images and militant Islamic teachings, part of covert attempts to breed radicalism from the grass roots. Nebraska academic Thomas Gouttierre led the textbook project.

These were filled with talk of Jihad and featured drawings of guns, bullets, soldiers and mines, violent images and militant Wahabi teachings. Children are even taught to count with illustrations showing tanks, missiles, and land mines.Mathmatics involved posing the children with problems like how many second would it take for a bullet aimed by a Jehadi to crack open the head of an infidel Russian, given the velocity. The primers are so radical that even the Taliban regime would continue using these American-produced books!

Financing The Jihad Through Drug Trade. The history of the drug trade in Central Asia is closely connected to the CIA’s operations. Prior to the covert operations opium production in Afghanistan and Pakistan was small- and directed to regional markets. There was no local production of heroin, but within two years of the onslaught of the CIA operation in Afghanistan, “the Pakistan-Afghanistan borderlands became the world’s top heroin producer.” (Alfred McCoy, Drug Fallout: the CIA’s Forty Year Complicity in the Narcotics Trade. The Progressive, 1 August 1997).

CIA involvement started with a small suggestion in1981. Alexandre de Marenches head of the Safari Club met President Reagan at the White House. He proposed ‘Operation Mosquito’ a joint French-American-ISI operation to produce fake Russian newspapers with articles designed to demoralize Soviet troops. He also suggested US supply of drugs to Soviet soldiers. It is claimed that the idea was rejected, but soon after fake issues of the Soviet army newspaper did appear in Kabul; and also large qualities of cocaine, hashish, opium, and heroin become available to Soviet troops. At that time cocaine was only grown in South America!

In 1982, a secret memo will exempt the CIA from reporting on drug smuggling conducted by CIA officers or assets. Obviously the CIA wished to use the proceeds of the Afghan drug trade to finance its operations. Alfred McCoy’s study confirms that” Under CIA and ISI protection, Afghan resistance opened heroin labs on the Afghan and Pakistani border. Among the leading heroin manufacturers were Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, an Afghan leader who received about half of the covert arms that the CIA shipped to Pakistan. In 1995 the former CIA Director of this Afghan operation, Mr. Charles Cogan, admitted sacrificing the drug war to fight the Cold War. “Our main mission was to do as much damage to the Soviets. There was fallout in terms of drugs, yes, but the main objective was accomplished. The Soviets left Afghanistan.” (Alfred McCoy, Testimony before the Special Seminar focusing on allegations linking CIA secret operations and drug trafficking-convened February 13, 1997, by Rep. John Conyers, Dean of the Congressional Black Caucus)

The Pakistan backed Taliban government which came to power in 1996 virtually eliminated this trade, with opium production declining by more than 90 percent. But in the immediate wake of the US led invasion of Afghanistan, opium production has again increased 33 fold from 185 tons in 2001 under the Taliban to 6100 tons in 2006. In 2007, this was approximately 93% of the global supply of heroin, and valued in excess of 190 billion dollars a year. (Michel Chossudovsky, Global Research, 6 January 2006)

The Operational Structure Of Jehadi Groups.The entire Jehadi fighting force was united under the banner of Islamic Unity of Afghanistan Mujahideen which was an alliance of seven Afghan parties fighting against the Soviets : Islamic Party (Khalis), Islamic Party (Hekmatyar), Islamic Society (Rabbani), Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan (Sayyaf), National Islamic Front for Afghanistan (Gailani), Afghanistan National Liberation Front (Mojaddedi), and Revolutionary Islamic Movement (Mohammadi).Although the alliance took its formal shape in the 1985, it had de facto existed as a political bloc since May 1979, when the Pakistani government decided to limit the flow of foreign financial aid, mainly from USA and Saudi Arabia, to the said seven organizations, thus limiting infighting amongst numerous smaller groups-while simultaneously cutting of the flow to doubtful and undesirable groups.

The seven parties between themselves controlled a number of affliated commanders –the highest operational rank amongst the Jihadis. Significant commanders typically led 300 or more men,but there were many commanders with lesser number of fighters.Each commander controlled several bases to dominate a district or a sub-division of a province.Some of the legendary commanders of the Afghan war were:

Gulbuddin Hekmatyar the favored warlord of the ISI and CIA. Casey was said to be particularly fond of him as both shared a goal of extending the fighting beyond Afghanistan into the Soviet Union itself. He was a ruthless fighter, who also led several raids into USSR territory. He was also a major drug trafficker. Almost half of all the covert weapons directed at Afghanistan were sent to his group.

Another ISI and CIA favorite was Jalaluddin Haqqani. In the 1980s, he was cultivated as a “unilateral” asset of the CIA, helping to protect Osama bin Laden, who was building his own militia to fight the Soviet forces. Originally a member of the Hezb-i Islami ,he was the first resistance leader to capture a city, Khost, from the Najibullah government. After the fall of Kabul to the Mujahideen in 1992, he was appointed justice minister in the first Mujahideen government. He attracted generous support from prosperous Arab countries compared to other resistance leaders. Haqqani was not originally a member of the Taliban. In 1995, just prior to the Taliban’s occupation of Kabul, he switched his allegiance to them. In 1996-97, he served as a Taliban military commander north of Kabul, and was accused of ethnic cleansing against local Tajik populations. During the Taliban years in power, he served as the Minister of Borders and Tribal Affairs and governor of Paktia Province.

The GID’s (Saudi Intelligence Agency) favorite was Abdul Rasul Sayyaf a Pashtun warlord .He was a member of Akhwan-ul-Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood), founded in 1969 by Gulbuddin Hekmatyar and Dr. Syed Burhanuddin Rabbani, which had strong links to TheMuslim Brotherhood in Egypt. Fluent in Arabic. His tenure as an Ustad (Professor) at the Shariat in Kabul ended in 1973 when he fled to Pakistan after an unsuccessful plot to overthrow President Daoud Khan . Sayyaf then headed the Islamic Union for the Liberation of Afghanistan, and fought against Soviet occupying forces in Afghanistan during the 1980s, forming a close relationship with Osama bin Laden . Together in the Jalalabad area they established a training camp network, later used by Al-Qaeda personnel, with bunkers and emplacements. In 2001 he was the only Pashtun leader allied with the United Front (Northern Alliance) –and therefore the US – in its war against the governing Taliban prior to the fall of Kabul. In this period though wielding little clout as a military leader, he was able to maintain a small army paying men under his command with donations he received from his Arab benefactors. He is also the one who trained the dreaded Abu Sayyaf terrorist group of the Philippines.

Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Panjshir valley north of Kabul,one of the most independent,charismatic and effective of Mujahideen commanders.He was also the most well read and certainly the most militarily proficient amongst them all.His tragedy was that in a land over which all sorts of powers vied for control he dreamed of a democratic and free Afghanistan.With the result that he was always relatively poorly supplied.Opposed to both Russian as well as Pushtun domination,he is credited by some western writers of having caused over 60% of the Russian losses-but found little favour with the ISI or Saudis. By the end of the war he was leading at least 10,000 trained troops-the only semblence to an army amongst mujahideen commanders- and had expanded his political control of Tajik dominated areas to Afghanistan’s northeastern provinces.His Northern alliance later also provided the base for the US invasion of Afghanistan.After the Russian withdrawl he remained the lone obstacle preventing Taliban and Pakistani domination of the country.However in this final stage he was being supported by the Russians,the Iranians and the Indians-and perhaps covertly even by the US.

The fighters under the warlords operated through over 4000 bases spread all over Afghanistan.The bases served as sources of supply and control.

Hierarchies of organization above the base level were attempted,but the results varied depending on regional, ethnic and sectarian considerations. In the Pashtun areas of the east, south and southwest; tribal structure, with its many rival sub-divisions, provided the basis for military organization and leadership. Mobilization depended on the traditional fighting allegiances to quickly raise a tribal lashkar (fighting force). In favorable circumstances such formations could quickly reach more than 10,000. Normally they could be formed to besiege towns,but because of the independent nature of Pashtun ,the Lashkar durability was necessarily short-and most seiges ended in failures.Despite the proven ability to cause fearfully unacceptable attrition in hit and run missions,such troops were woefully inadequate for purposes of capturing or holding any major cities and bases in operations against trained troops.

Mujahideen mobilization in non-Pashtun regions was very different. The Persian and Turkish speaking regions of Afghanistan lacked strong political representation in a state dominated by Pashtuns. Prior to the invasion, non-Pashtuns possessed very few firearms and little military tradition upon which to build an armed resistance. Here the leadership for mobilization was found from amongst pious learned or charismatically revered pirs (saints).The military leadership being closely tied to Islam helped avoid the infighting common amongst the Pashtun and led to some of the most effective mobilization during the war.

Thus Ahmed Shah Massoud of the Panjshir valley north of Kabul,one of the most charismatic and effective commanders rose from within their ranks.By the end of the war he was leading at least 10,000 trained troops-the only semblence to an army amongst mujahideen commanders- and had expanded his political control of Tajik dominated areas to Afghanistan’s northeastern provinces.His Northern alliance later also provided the base for the US invasion of Afghanistan.

The mujahideen leaders were skilled at sabotage operations. They concentrated on both civilian and military targets, knocking out bridges, closing major roads, blowing up power lines, pipelines, radio stations, government office buildings, air terminals, hotels, cinemas,ambushing patrols, attacking convoys, disrupting the electric power system and industrial production, and attacking police stations and Soviet military installations and air bases. From 1985 through 1987, an average of over 600 “sabotage acts” a year were recorded. The mujahideen would often launch 800 rockets per day. Between April 1985 and January 1987, they carried out over 23,500 shelling attacks on government targets. They also made heavy use of land mines .

Mujahideen Attacks Within The USSR.In 1985, the CIA, MI6 (Britain’s intelligence agency), and the Pakistani ISI agreed to launch guerrilla attacks from Afghanistan into then Soviet-controlled Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, attacking military installations, factories, and storage depots within Soviet territory. The task was given to Gulbuddin Hekmatyar.According to, Mohammad Yousaf, a high-ranking ISI officer at the time the attacks on the Soviet Union actually began in 1985:“These cross-border strikes were at their peak in 1986. Scores of attacks were made across the Amu (River)… Sometimes Soviet citizens joined in these operations, or came back into Afghanistan to join the mujaheddin. That we were hitting a sore spot was confirmed by the ferocity of the Soviets’ reaction. Virtually every incursion provoked massive aerial bombing and gunship attacks on all villages south of the river in the vicinity of our strike.”

The Soviet Withdrawl.By 1987 the USSR decided it has had enough! Its Politburo decided that the Soviet-Afghan War must end “within a year”and by November 1987 both the CIA and the ISI are aware of this. As a result of an agreement signed in Geneva, between Afghanistan and Pakistan the Soviet Union pledged to withdraw all of its troops from Afghanistan by February15, 1989. On that exact date the last of its soldiers were out of Afghanistan.

But they left a Soviet backed Communist regime holding the fort at Kabul. None of the players – including the USSR – expected this regime to survive for more then three months. Yet even though it was acceptable to neither the mujahideen fighters or even their principle backers – it would survive for three years!

Conclusion. This article conclusively proves that ‘Global Islamic Jihad’ was forged as an instrument for the pursuit of US strategic interests ,and that it proved itself as a worthwhile CIA asset in Afghanistan. It’s very first operation – “Operation Cyclone” – the organizing and launching of the biggest covert operations the world had ever seen; proved a remarkable success; enabling the USA and it’s Jehadi allies to attain the stated goal of defeating and forcing the Soviet troops out of Afghanistan.

Yet as we have seen in some of the remarks of US officials it was an instrument forged to pursue goal stretching far beyond the immediate objective of defeating the Russian in Afghanistan. It is here that except for some success in Yugoslavia –Bosnia and Kosovo-and Chechnya; the idea back fired very badly.

In the first place the unexpected resistance of the Najeeb government upset US planning and forced the ISI as well as the CIA to continue funding the Mujaheddin for another three years. In the process the conflicting tactical and strategical compulsions of the many strange bed fellows in ‘Global Jihad’ started to surface. Leadership at all levels –US, Pakistani, Afghan as well as Arab – failed to rise to the occasion.Obsessed by their own objectives -now that the common enemy was removed- each group would fail to show any unity of purpose, or even the flexibility and accommodation required to attain the fruits of their massive effort. This in turn would propel the war uncontrollably into unexpected and unchartered territory!

To begin with –amongst the various Afghan mujahideen groups – the concept of ‘holy war’ seemed to give way immediately to an ethnic based struggle for leadership and control of the Afghan capital. Pakistan having a huge Pashtun population in it’s tribal area, and, also interested in retaining control over Afghanistan as a means of strategic depth as well as access to Central Asia; was increasingly drawn in on the side of Gulbadin Hikmatyar and the Pashtuns.

The USA aiming for quick stability in order to implement it’s greater game in Central Asian Republics and Yugoslavia – and also perhaps to lessen Pakistani and Pakhtun influence on Afghan issues – supported the concept of a more broad based government. This brought it in conflict with the issue of Pakhtuns domination- an issue the US never seemed to be inclined to support. Never the less because of Pakistani hold on Pakhtun commanders, the US had little choice but to appear to go along with what Pakistan was doing, while continuing to do what ever was needed to pursue its own objectives.

The death of General Zia in a mysterious plane crash tended to sabotage Pakistani influence on Pashtun commanders; how ever even if-as some say- engineered by CIA the crash proved counter productive, as for some time thereafter neither the US nor Pakistan had much control over the war lords in Afghanistan.

The uncontrolled mujahideen parties now committed enormous atrocities on their own citizens, and, destroyed whatever infrastructure was left as they battled each other for control of Kabul and the major cities. The country was politically divided with warlords holding sway on ethnic basis; ruthlessly suppressing their own citizens-and eliminating their opponents. The rise of the Pashtun Taliban in 1994 – a Pakistani attempt to re assert control – was therefore tolerated for a while even by the US, in the hope that this would bring the required peace and stability in Afghanistan.

Similar differences also developed between Bin Laden and his mentor Azzam. We have already noted that Azzam was a CIA man, while bin Laden was an ISI/GID man; Bin Laden sided with the “Islamic Party” lead by the Pashtun Hekmatyar, while Azzam tried to impose the US option of peace between the Mujahideen faction and the Jama’a Al Islamiya faction under the leadership of Rabani and Masuod. Azzam even issued a Fatwa forbidding Jehadi fighters from participating in the power struggle in Afghanistan. These differences thus appear to be an early reflection of the differences between the outlook of the US and pro Pashtun parties to the conflict.

One early effect of this on the set up of Arab fighters within Afghanistan was that Bin Laden disengaged from Azzam and was forced to move to Sudan to begin ‘independent’ operations. In November 1989 Azzam was murdered in New York under mysterious circumstances and Bin laden became the sole ideological leader of the organization of Arab fighters- Al-Qaeda. In 1990 Al-Zawahiri the leader of the Egyptian fighters in Afghanistan also moved to Sudan to join Bin Laden. But even at this stage both The ISI as well as Osama seems to have been part of the US operations involving the use of Al-Qaeda Jehadis in Chechnya and Yugoslavia.

Peace did not come even after the rise of the Taliban in Afghanistan; Osama would return to Afghanistan-and Hikmatyar the CIA and ISI’s blue eyed boy would flee to Iran! Ahmed Shah Masud would form the Northern alliance and continue battling the Taliban.Osama allied with Al-Zawahiri would announce that peace is not possible until Masud is killed. Musud in turn would speak to the EU parliament warning against terrorism and an imminent major terrorist attack in the near future. Soon Masud would be assassinated by men posing as press photographers. Two days later 9/11 would occur. The USA would embark on its invasion of Afghanistan using the deceased Masud’s Northern alliance as a base.

What are we to make of all this? Did the creation of an instrument of global Jihad have unforeseen and undesirable ramifications for the USA? Did Osama at some stage along the line develop major differences with the CIA – leading to 9/11 and his subsequent vilification as the leader of the terrorist organization al-Qaeda? Was the difference much deeper and involved a gradually widening chasm between the CIA and ISI itself?

In the next article God willing I propose to wind up the subject in the light of the events relating to the rise and fall of the Taliban – and culminating in 9/11 and the presence of US troops in Afghanistan.

TERRORISM: THEIRS AND OURS

By Eqbal Ahmad (A Presentation at the University of Colorado, Boulder, October 12, 1998)
		In the 1930s and 1940s, the Jewish underground in Palestine was described as “TERRORIST.”  Then new things happened. By 1942, the Holocaust was occurring, and a certain liberal sympathy with the Jewish people had built up in the Western world. At that point, the terrorists of Palestine, who were Zionists, suddenly started to be described, by 1944-45, as “freedom fighters.” At least two Israeli Prime Ministers, including Menachem Begin, have actually, you can find in the books and posters with their pictures, saying “Terrorists, Reward This Much.” The highest reward I have noted so far was 100,000 British pounds on the head of Menachem Begin, the terrorist. Then from 1969 to 1990 the PLO, the Palestine Liberation Organization, occupied the center stage as the terrorist organization. Yasir Arafat has been described repeatedly by the great sage of American journalism, William Safire of the New York Times, as the “Chief of Terrorism.” That’s Yasir Arafat. Now, on September 29, 1998, I was rather amused to notice a picture of Yasir Arafat to the right of President Bill Clinton. To his left is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netan yahu. Clinton is looking towards Arafat and Arafat is looking literally like a meek mouse. Just a few years earlier he used to appear with this very menacing look around him, with a gun appearing menacing from his belt. You remember those pictures, and you remember the next one. In 1985, President Ronald Reagan received a group of bearded men. These bearded men I was writing about in those days in The New Yorker, actually did. They were very ferocious-looking bearded men with turbans looking like they came from another century. President Reagan received them in the White House. After receiving them he spoke to the press. He pointed towards them, I’m sure some of you will recall that moment, and said, “These are the moral equivalent of America’s founding fathers”. These were the Afghan Mujahiddin. They were at the time, guns in hand, battling the Evil Empire. They were the moral equivalent of our founding fathers! In August 1998, another American President ordered missile strikes from the American navy based in the Indian Ocean to kill Osama Bin Laden and his men in the camps in Afghanistan. I do not wish to embarrass you with the reminder that Mr. Bin Laden, whom fifteen American missiles were fired to hit in Afghanistan, was only a few years ago the moral equivalent of George Washington and Thomas Jefferson! He got angry over the fact that he has been demoted from ‘Moral Equivalent’ of your ‘Founding Fathers’. So he is taking out his anger in different ways. I’ll come back to that subject more seriously in a moment. You see, why I have recalled all these stories is to point out to you that the matter of terrorism is rather complicated. Terrorists change. The terrorist of yesterday is the hero of today, and the hero of yesterday becomes the terrorist of today. This is a serious matter of the constantly changing world of images in which we have to keep our heads straight to know what is terrorism and what is not. But more importantly, to know what causes it, and how to stop it. The next point about our terrorism is that posture of inconsistency necessarily evades definition. If you are not going to be consistent, you’re not going to define. I have examined at least twenty official documents on terrorism. Not one defines the word. All of them explain it, express it emotively, polemically, to arouse our emotions rather than exercise our intelligence. I give you only one example, which is representative. October 25, 1984. George Shultz, then Secretary of State of the U.S., is speaking at the New York Park Avenue Synagogue. It’s a long speech on terrorism. In the State Department Bulletin of seven single-spaced pages, there is not a single definition of terrorism. What we get is the following: Definition number one: “Terrorism is a modern barbarism that we call terrorism.” Definition number two is even more brilliant: “Terrorism is a form of political violence.” Aren’t you surprised? It is a form of political violence, says George Shultz, Secretary of State of the U.S. Number three: “Terrorism is a threat to Western civilization.” Number four: “Terrorism is a menace to Western moral values.” Did you notice, does it tell you anything other than arouse your emotions? This is typical. They don’t define terrorism because definitions involve a commitment to analysis, comprehension and adherence to some norms of consistency. That’s the second characteristic of the official literature on terrorism. The third characteristic is that the absence of definition does not prevent officials from being globalistic. We may not define terrorism, but it is a menace to the moral values of Western civilization. It is a menace also to mankind. It’s a menace to good order. Therefore, you must stamp it out worldwide. Our reach has to be global. You need a global reach to kill it. Anti-terrorist policies therefore have to be global. Same speech of George Shultz: “There is no question about our ability to use force where and when it is needed to counter terrorism.” There is no geographical limit. On a single day the missiles hit Afghanistan and Sudan. Those two countries are 2,300 miles apart, and they were hit by missiles belonging to a country roughly 8,000 miles away. Reach is global. A fourth characteristic: claims of power are not only globalist they are also omniscient. We know where they are; therefore we know where to hit. We have the means to know. We have the instruments of knowledge. We are omniscient. Shultz: “We know the difference between terrorists and freedom fighters, and as we look around, we have no trouble telling one from the other.” Only Osama Bin Laden doesn’t know that he was an ally one day and an enemy another. That’s very confusing for Osama Bin Laden. I’ll come back to his story towards the end. It’s a real story. Five. The official approach eschews causation. You don’t look at causes of anybody becoming terrorist. Cause? What cause? They ask us to be looking, to be sympathetic to these people. Another example. The New York Times, December 18, 1985, reported that the foreign minister of Yugoslavia, you remember the days when there was a Yugoslavia, requested the Secretary of State of the U.S. to consider the causes of Palestinian terrorism. The Secretary of State, George Shultz, and I am quoting from the New York Times, “went a bit red in the face. He pounded the table and told the visiting foreign minister, there is no connection with any cause. Period.” Why look for causes? Number six. The moral revulsion that we must feel against terrorism is selective. We are to feel the terror of those groups, which are officially disapproved. We are to applaud the terror of those groups of whom officials do approve. Hence, President Reagan, “I am a contra.” He actually said that. We know the contras of Nicaragua were anything, by any definition, but terrorists. The media, to move away from the officials, heed the dominant view of terrorism. The dominant approach also excludes from consideration, more importantly to me, the terror of friendly governments. To that question I will return because it excused among others the terror of Pinochet (who killed one of my closest friends) and Orlando Letelier; and it excused the terror of Zia ul-Haq, who killed many of my friends in Pakistan. All I want to tell you is that according to my ignorant calculations, the ratio of people killed by the state terror of Zia ul-Haq, Pino chet, Argentinian, Brazilian, Indonesian type, versus the killing of the PLO and other terrorist types is literally, conservatively, one to one hundred thousand. That’s the ratio. History unfortunately recognizes and accords visibility to power and not to weakness. Therefore, visibility has been accorded historically to dominant groups. In our time, the time that began with this day, Columbus Day. The time that begins with Columbus Day is a time of extraordinary unrecorded holocausts. Great civilizations have been wiped out. The Mayas, the Incas, the Aztecs, the American Indians, the Canadian Indians were all wiped out. Their voices have not been heard, even to this day fully. Now they are beginning to be heard, but not fully. They are heard, yes, but only when the dominant power suffers, only when resistance has a semblance of costing, of exacting a price. When a Custer is killed or when a Gordon is besieged. That’s when you know that they were Indians fighting, Arabs fighting and dying. My last point of this section – U.S. policy in the Cold War period has sponsored terrorist regimes one after another. Somoza, Batista, all kinds of tyrants have been America’s friends. You know that. There was a reason for that. I or you are not guilty. Nicaragua, contra. Afghanistan, mujahiddin. El Salvador, etc. Now the second side. You’ve suffered enough. So suffer more. There ain’t much good on the other side either. You shouldn’t imagine that I have come to praise the other side. But keep the balance in mind. Keep the imbalance in mind and first ask ourselves, What is terrorism? Our first job should be to define the damn thing, name it, give it a description of some kind, other than “moral equivalent of founding fathers” or “a moral outrage to Western civilization”. I will stay with you with Webster’s Collegiate Dictionary: “Terror is an intense, overpowering fear.” He uses terrorizing, terrorism, “the use of terrorizing methods of governing or resisting a government.” This simple definition has one great virtue, that of fairness. It’s fair. It focuses on the use of coercive violence, violence that is used illegally, extra-constitutionally, to coerce. And this definition is correct because it treats terror for what it is, whether the government or private people commit it. Have you noticed something? Motivation is left out of it. We’re not talking about whether the cause is just or unjust. We’re talking about consensus, consent, absence of consent, legality, absence of legality, constitutionality, absence of constitutionality. Why do we keep motives out? Because motives differ. Motives differ and make no difference. I have identified in my work five types of terrorism. First, state terrorism. Second, religious terrorism; terrorism inspired by religion, Catholics killing Protestants, Sunnis killing Shiites, Shiites killing Sunnis, God, religion, sacred terror, you can call it if you wish. State, church. Crime. Mafia. All kinds of crimes commit terror. There is pathology. You’re pathological. You’re sick. You want the attention of the whole world. You’ve got to kill a president. You will. You terrorize. You hold up a bus. Fifth, there is political terror of the private group; be they Indian, Vietnamese, Algerian, Palestinian, Baader-Meinhof, the Red Brigade. Political terror of the private group. Oppositional terror. Keep these five in mind. Keep in mind one more thing. Sometimes these five can converge on each other. You start with protest terror. You go crazy. You become pathological. You continue. They converge. State terror can take the form of private terror. For example, we’re all familiar with the death squads in Latin America or in Pakistan. Government has employed private people to kill its opponents. It’s not quite official. It’s privatized. Convergence. Or the political terrorist who goes crazy and becomes pathological. Or the criminal who joins politics. In Afghanistan, in Central America, the CIA employed in its covert operations drug pushers. Drugs and guns often go together. Smuggling of all things often go together. Of the five types of terror, the focus is on only one, the least important in terms of cost to human lives and human property [Political Terror of those who want to be heard]. The highest cost is state terror. The second highest cost is religious terror, although in the twentieth century religious terror has, relatively speaking, declined. If you are looking historically, massive costs. The next highest cost is crime. Next highest, pathology. A Rand Corporation study by Brian Jenkins, for a ten-year period up to 1988, showed 50% of terror was committed without any political cause at all. No politics. Simply crime and pathology. So the focus is on only one, the political terrorist, the PLO, the Bin Laden, whoever you want to take. Why do they do it? What makes the terrorist tick? I would like to knock them out quickly to you. First, the need to be heard. Imagine, we are dealing with a minority group, the political, private terrorist. First, the need to be heard. Normally, and there are exceptions, there is an effort to be heard, to get your grievances heard by people. They’re not hearing it. A minority acts. The majority applauds. The Palestinians, for example, the superterrorists of our time, were dispossessed in 1948. From 1948 to 1968 they went to every court in the world. They knocked at every door in the world. They were told that they became dispossessed because some radio told them to go away – an Arab radio, which was a lie. Nobody was listening to the truth. Finally, they invented a new form of terror, literally their invention: the airplane hijacking. Between 1968 and 1975 they pulled the world up by its ears. They dragged us out and said, Listen, Listen. We listened. We still haven’t done them justice, but at least we all know. Even the Israelis acknowledge. Remember Golda Meir, Prime Minister of Israel, saying in 1970, ‘There are no Palestinians.’ They do not exist. They damn well exist now. We are cheating them at Oslo. At least there are some people to cheat now. We can’t just push them out. The need to be heard is essential. One motivation there. Mix of anger and helplessness produces an urge to strike out. You are angry. You are feeling helpless. You want retribution. You want to wreak retributive justice. The experience of violence by a stronger party has historically turned victims into terrorists. Battered children are known to become abusive parents and violent adults. You know that. That’s what happens to peoples and nations. When they are battered, they hit back. State terror very often breeds collective terror. Do you recall the fact that the Jews were never terrorists? By and large Jews were not known to commit terror except during and after the Holocaust. Most studies show that the majority of members of the worst terrorist groups in Israel or in Palestine, the Stern and the Irgun gangs, were people who were immigrants from the most anti-Semitic countries of Eastern Europe and Germany. Similarly, the young Shiites of Lebanon or the Palestinians from the refugee camps are battered people. They become very violent. The ghettos are violent internally. They become violent externally when there is a clear, identifiable external target, an enemy where you can say, ‘Yes, this one did it to me’. Then they can strike back. Example is a bad thing. Example spreads. There was a highly publicized Beirut hijacking of the TWA plane. After that hijacking, there were hijacking attempts at nine different American airports. Pathological groups or individuals modeling on the others. Even more serious are examples set by governments. When governments engage in terror, they set very large examples. When they engage in supporting terror, they engage in other sets of examples. Absence of revolutionary ideology is central to victim terrorism. Revolutionaries do not commit unthinking terror. Those of you who are familiar with revolutionary theory know the debates, the disputes, the quarrels, the fights within revolutionary groups of Europe, the fight between anarchists and Marxists, for example. But the Marxists have always argued that revolutionary terror, if ever engaged in, must be sociologically and psychologically selective. Don’t hijack a plane. Don’t hold hostages. Don’t kill children, for God’s sake. Have you recalled also that the great revolutions, the Chinese, the Vietnamese, the Algerian, the Cuban, never engaged in hijacking type of terrorism? They did engage in terrorism, but it was highly selective, highly sociological, still deplorable, but there was an organized, highly limited, selective character to it. So absence of revolutionary ideology that begins more or less in the post-World War II period has been central to this phenomenon. My final question is – These conditions have existed for a long time. But why then this flurry of private political terrorism? Why now so much of it and so visible? The answer is modern technology. You have a cause. You can communicate it through radio and television. They will all come swarming if you have taken an aircraft and are holding 150 Americans hostage. They will all hear your cause. You have a modern weapon through which you can shoot a mile away. They can’t reach you. And you have the modern means of communicating. When you put together the cause, the instrument of coercion and the instrument of communication, politics is made. A new kind of politics becomes possible. To this challenge rulers from one country after another have been responding with traditional methods. The traditional method of shooting it out, whether it’s missiles or some other means. The Israelis are very proud of it. The Americans are very proud of it. The French became very proud of it. Now the Pakistanis are very proud of it. The Pakistanis say, ‘Our commandos are the best.’ Frankly, it won’t work. A central problem of our time, political minds, rooted in the past, and modern times, producing new realities. Therefore in conclusion, what is my recommendation to America? Quickly. First, avoid extremes of double standards. If you’re going to practice double standards, you will be paid with double standards. Don’t use it. Don’t condone Israeli terror, Pakistani terror, Nicaraguan terror, El Salvadoran terror, on the one hand, and then complain about Afghan terror or Palestinian terror. It doesn’t work. Try to be even-handed. A superpower cannot promote terror in one place and reasonably expect to discourage terrorism in another place. It won’t work in this shrunken world. Do not condone the terror of your allies. Condemn them. Fight them. Punish them. Please eschew, avoid covert operations and low-intensity warfare. These are breeding grounds of terror and drugs. Violence and drugs are bred there. The structure of covert operations, I’ve made a film about it, which has been very popular in Europe, called Dealing with the Demon. I have shown that wherever covert operations have been, there has been the central drug problem. That has been also the center of the drug trade. Because the structure of covert operations, Afghanistan, Vietnam, Nicaragua, Central America, is very hospitable to drug trade. Avoid it. Give it up. It doesn’t help. Please focus on causes and help ameliorate causes. Try to look at causes and solve problems. Do not concentrate on military solutions. Do not seek military solutions. Terrorism is a political problem. Seek political solutions. Diplomacy works. Take the example of the last attack on Bin Laden. You don’t know what you’re attacking. They say they know, but they don’t know. They were trying to kill Qadaffi. They killed his four-year-old daughter. The poor baby hadn’t done anything. Qadaffi is still alive. They tried to kill Saddam Hussein. They killed Laila Bin Attar, a prominent artist, an innocent woman. They tried to kill Bin Laden and his men. Not one but twenty-five other people died. They tried to destroy a chemical factory in Sudan. Now they are admitting that they destroyed an innocent factory, one-half of the production of medicine in Sudan has been destroyed, not a chemical factory. You don’t know. You think you know. Four of your missiles fell in Pakistan. One was slightly damaged. Two were totally damaged. One was totally intact. For ten years the American government has kept an embargo on Pakistan because Pakistan is trying, stupidly, to build nuclear weapons and missiles. So we have a technology embargo on my country. One of the missiles was intact. What do you think a Pakistani official told the Washington Post? He said it was a gift from Allah. We wanted U.S. technology. Now we have got the technology, and our scientists are examining this missile very carefully. It fell into the wrong hands. So don’t do that. Look for political solutions. Do not look for military solutions. They cause more problems than they solve. Please help reinforce, strengthen the framework of international law. There was a criminal court in Rome. Why didn’t they go to it first to get their warrant against Bin Laden, if they have some evidence? Get a warrant, then go after him. Internationally. Enforce the U.N. Enforce the International Court of Justice, this unilateralism makes us look very stupid and them relatively smaller. Q&A The question here is that I mentioned that I would go somewhat into the story of Bin Laden, the Saudi in Afghanistan and didn’t do so, could I go into some detail? The point about Bin Laden would be roughly the same as the point between Sheikh Abdul Rahman, who was accused and convicted of encouraging the blowing up of the World Trade Center in New York City. The New Yorker did a long story on him. It’s the same as that of Aimal Kansi, the Pakistani Baluch who was also convicted of the murder of two CIA agents. Let me see if I can be very short on this. Jihad, which has been translated a thousand times as “holy war,” is not quite just that. Jihad is an Arabic word that means, “to struggle.” It could be struggle by violence or struggle by non-violent means. There are two forms, the smalljihad and the big jihad. The small jihad involves violence. The big jihad involves the struggles with self. Those are the concepts. The reason I mention it is that in Islamic history, jihad as an international violent phenomenon had disappeared in the last four hundred years, for all practical purposes. It was revived suddenly with American help in the 1980s. When the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Zia ul-Haq, the military dictator of Pakistan, which borders on Afghanistan, saw an opportunity and launched a jihad there against godless communism.  The U.S. saw a God-sent opportunity to mobilize one billion Muslims against what Reagan called the Evil Empire. Money started pouring in. CIA agents starting going all over the Muslim world recruiting people to fight in the great jihad. Bin Laden was one of the early prize recruits. He was not only an Arab. He was also a Saudi. He was not only a Saudi. He was also a multimillionaire, willing to put his own money into the matter. Bin Laden went around recruiting people for the jihad against communism. I first met him in 1986. He was recommended to me by an American official of whom I do not know whether he was or was not an agent. I was talking to him and said, ‘Who are the Arabs here who would be very interesting?’ By here I meant in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said, ‘You must meet Osama.’ I went to see Osama. There he was, rich, bringing in recruits from Algeria, from Sudan, from Egypt, just like Sheikh Abdul Rahman. This fellow was an ally. He remained an ally. He turns at a particular moment. In 1990 the U.S. goes into Saudi Arabia with forces. Saudi Arabia is the holy place of Muslims, Mecca and Medina. There had never been foreign troops there. In 1990, during the Gulf War, they went in, in the name of helping Saudi Arabia defeat Saddam Hussein. Osama Bin Laden remained quiet. Saddam was defeated, but the American troops stayed on in the land of the kaba (the sacred site of Islam in Mecca), foreign troops. He wrote letter after letter saying, Why are you here? Get out! You came to help but you have stayed on. Finally he started a jihad against the other occupiers. His mission is to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia. His earlier mission was to get Russian troops out of Afghanistan. See what I was saying earlier about covert operations? A second point to be made about him is these are tribal people, people who are really tribal. Being a millionaire doesn’t matter. Their code of ethics is tribal. The tribal code of ethics consists of two words: loyalty and revenge. You are my friend. You keep your word. I am loyal to you. You break your word, I go on my path of revenge. For him, America has broken its word. The loyal friend has betrayed. The one to whom you swore blood loyalty has betrayed you. They’re going to go for you. They’re going to do a lot more. These are the chickens of the Afghanistan war coming home to roost. This is why I said to stop covert operations. There is a price attached to those that the American people cannot calculate and Kissinger type of people do not know, don’t have the history to know.
		Eqbal Ahmad, Professor Emeritus of International Relations and Middle Eastern Studies at Hampshire College in Amherst, Massachusetts, also served as a managing editor of the quarterly Race and Class. A prolific writer, his articles and essays have been published in The Nation, Dawn (Pakistan), among several other journals throughout the world. He died in 1999.

An Unholy Alliance

more about "An Unholy Alliance", posted with vodpod

China mulls setting up military base in Pakistan

Saibal Dasgupta, TNN

more about “China mulls setting up military base …“, posted with vodpod

BEIJING: China has signaled it wants to go the US way and set up military bases in overseas locations that would possibly include Pakistan.

The obvious purpose would be to exert pressure on India as well as counter US influence in Pakistan and Afghanistan.

“(So) it is baseless to say that we will not set up any military bases in future because we have never sent troops abroad,” an article published on Thursday at a Chinese government website said. “It is our right,” the article said and went on to suggest that it would be done in the neighborhood, possibly Pakistan.

“As for the military aspect, we should be able to conduct the retaliatory attack within the country or at the neighboring area of our potential enemies. We should also be able to put pressure on the potential enemies’ overseas interests,” it said.

A military base in Pakistan will also help China keep a check on Muslim Uighur separatists fighting for an independent nation in its western region of Xingjian, which borders the North West Frontier Province of Pakistan. Beijing recently signed an agreement with the local government of NWFP in order to keep a close watch on the movement of Uighur ultras.

“I have personally felt for sometime that China might one day build a military base in India’s neighborhood. China built the Gadwar port in Pakistan and is now broadening the Karokoram highway. These facilities can always be put to military use when the need arises,” Ramesh V Phadke, former Air Commodore and advisor to the Institute of Defense Studies told TNN. Phadke said the article in very significant. “The purpose may be to see how the international community reacts to it,” he said.

China, which has no military bases outside its territory, has often criticized the United States for operating such overseas bases. It has not just changed its standpoint but also wants to enter the lucrative protection business.

“With further development, China will be in great demand of the military protection,” the article said. Pakistan, which buys 70% of its military hardware from China, is likely to be an eager buyer for such protection. Beijing may also be able to pressurize Islamabad to accept its diktat using the threat of withholding military supplies.

A Pakistani expert on China-Pakistan relationship has a different view on the subject. “The Americans had a base in the past and it caused a political stink. I don’t think it would be politically possible for the Pakistani government to openly allow China to set up a military base,” he said while requesting anonymity. Pakistan might allow use of its military facilities without publicly announcing it, he said.

A Chinese military base can tackle several international relations issues, it said. One of them is “the relationship between the base troops and the countries neighboring to the host country.” This is another indication that Beijing is considering Pakistan as a possible base. China’s argument is that a foreign base would actually help regional stability.

“If the base troops can maintain the regional stability, it will be probably welcomed by all the countries in the region,” the article said. Beijing is conscious that the move might result in opposition from the US, UK and France which has overseas military bases.

“Thirdly, the relationship between the big countries in the world. The establishment of the troop bases is sensitive to those big countries which have already set up the bases abroad,” the article said.

Was Yesterday’s Chinese Quake a HAARP Shot Across the Bow?

[SEE: HAARP, Haiti, Brzezinski and the NWO]

[SEE: China to suspend military exchanges with U.S.: report]

Did An 8.6 Quake Hit China?

Something occurred in China yesterday, something
that may have been a magnitude 8.6 quake.
By Holly Deyo
1-28-10

We don’t know what happened yesterday, but two seismic monitoring stations  some 1300 miles apart  both reported an 8.6 earthquake in China. Maybe it was a weapons test. However, a large magnitude temblor struck in nearly this same location (36.50ºN, 105.70ºE) on December 12, 1920. The Haiyuan quake killed 200,000 people, caused landslides and collapsed thousands of homes. Various magnitudes were reported for this temblor ranging from 7.8 to 8.5. Aftershocks shook the country for three years following. Below are two screen snapshots from reporting stations that still show an earthquake occurred. The INSF is from Switzerland and Red Puma is from Romania.

The third screen shot of EMSC looks like they are claiming this event is a reporting error. A ‘reporting
error’ from three different seismic stations in three different countries? It’s funny, the USGS didn’t
report it. Whatever occurred, these seismic stations picked up something ‘interesting’.

http://standeyo.com/NEWS/10_Earth_Changes/100128.CH.8.6 event.html

CIA Payback for a Couple of Drones

[SEE: Gul Bahadur’s Forces Claim Another Drone Shot Down in N. Wazir]

N Waziristan drone attack toll reaches to 9

MIRANSHAH: The death toll of people killed in drone strike in North Waziristan has reached to nine.

According to sources, drone fired four missiles in bordering area of Dattakhel last night. The hideout of militants belonged to Jalaluddin Haqani group, a car and an anti-aircraft gun had been targeted in the attack. Nine people were killed in the strike. The anti-aircraft gun was installed to target drones. A drone was destroyed five days ago in the area.

Are Brits Too Nice To Muzzle a Monster?

[Both Blair and Bush should be behind bars.] Unbowed on Iraq, Blair Makes the Case for Targeting Iran

Catherine Meyer – Time Magazine January 29, 2010 Anyone who attended the Jan. 29 session of Britain’s Iraq inquiry to watch Tony Blair crumble went home disappointed. When the nation’s former Prime Minister returns to center stage, he seldom fails to remind even his sharpest critics of his prodigious political skills — the very same skills that had enabled him to cajole dubious colleagues and a skeptical Parliament into reluctantly supporting the 2003 invasion of Iraq. An inquiry panel of career diplomats and academics was never likely to dent his composure. (“They’re sitting there like chickens,” squawked an exasperated audience member during a break from proceedings.) Yet Blair’s light grilling still produced a major eye opener: as opponents of the Iraq conflict waited in vain for an apology or some gratifying symptom of inner regret, Blair instead used the platform to argue for opening a new battlefront — against Iran. The inquiry was established to learn the lessons of Iraq. Chief among these lessons is that dangerous regimes that may have weapons of mass destruction must be confronted, according to Blair, and he made sure the inquiry was in no doubt that Iran sits at the top of his personal axis of evil. “When I look at the way Iran today links up with terror groups … a large part of the destabilization of the Middle East … comes from Iran,” he said. As for taking action to curb Iran’s nuclear ambitions, that’s “for the leaders of today to decide. My judgment is you don’t take any risks with this issue,” Blair added. This was vintage Blair, linking his unpopular — and for many Britons, discredited — military adventure against a regime that proved as pathetic as it was pathological to the specter of a very different regime, one that is widely reviled by a substantial number of the human-rights activists and libertarians who most fiercely decry the Iraq war. And unlike Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, Iran does have a nuclear program, although no hard evidence has yet been produced that it is using that program to produce weapons. An interviewer for a BBC religious-affairs program broadcast last December asked Blair what he would have done if he had realized before the war that Saddam had no WMD. “I would still have thought it right to remove him,” Blair replied. He refined that response — which could have been legally risky, since WMD, not desire for regime change, provided the official justification for British action — during his Iraq-inquiry testimony. “Sometimes what is important is not to ask the March 2003 question but to ask the 2010 question,” he said. (Remember, the hallmark of a true politician is the ability to interview oneself.) “Supposing we had backed off this military action, supposing we had left Saddam and his sons, who were going to follow him, in charge of Iraq. He had used chemical weapons, caused the death of over a million people.” “What we now know is that he retained absolutely the intent and the intellectual know-how to restart a nuclear and a chemical-weapons program when the inspectors were out and the sanctions changed, which they were going to do,” he continued. “Now, I think that it is at least arguable that he was a threat, that had we taken that decision to leave him there, with an oil price not $25 but $100 a bbl., he would have had the intent, he would have had the financial means, and we would have lost our nerve.” That analysis, combined with Blair’s contention that the weapons inspectors had no chance of success no matter how much time they were given — not because there was nothing to find but because Saddam had no intention of cooperating with them, Blair argued in a piece of logic unlikely to assuage his critics — explains the former Prime Minister’s unshakable tranquillity. Blair harbors “not a regret for removing Saddam Hussein,” he told his inquisitors. “I believe he was a monster.” Of course, a monster is pretty much how protesters at the daylong hearing saw Blair himself. Besuited and wearing Blair masks smeared with stage blood, a trio of demonstrators held aloft a casket emblazoned with the motto “The Blood Price.” Relatives of military casualties who had failed to secure seats in the hearing kept a vigil outside its doors, alongside an array of protesters who still feel the need to publicly express their anger over Blair’s Iraq role. “I’m hoping he’s going to live in the U.S.A. after this. Him and Bush are … cronies, aren’t they?” asked pensioner John Howsam, who braved icy rain to make his point. The object of all this emotion isn’t unmoved by it. But out of office, as in power, he is irrepressible. “In the end, [the war] was divisive, and I’m sorry about that,” said Blair, in his single use of the S word during his testimony. But, he continued, “if I’m asked if we’re safer and more secure [another question he put to himself], I believe indeed that we are.” — With reporting by Meg Handley in London www.time.com/time/world/article/0,8599,1957769,00.html

Downloading the Human Mind

Why Cyberconsciousness Won’t Takes Aeons to Evolve

Martine Rothblatt

Martine Rothblatt

Mindfiles, Mindware and Mindclones

Posted: Jan 29, 2010

Humanity is devoting some of its best minds, from a wide diversity of fields, to helping software achieve consciousness. The quest is not especially difficult as it is a capability that can be intelligently designed; there is no need to wait for it to naturally evolve.

Compared with biology, vitological consciousness will arise in a heartbeat.  This is because the key elements of consciousness – autonomy and empathy – are amenable to software coding and thousands of software engineers are working on it.  By comparison, the neural substrate for autonomy and empathy had to arise in biology via thousands of chance mutations.  Furthermore, each such mutation had to materially advance the competitiveness of its recipient or else it had only a slight chance of becoming prevalent.

The differences between vitology and biology in the process of creating consciousness could not be starker.  It is intelligent design versus dumb luck.  In both cases Natural Selection is at play.  However, for conscious vitology, any signs of consciousness get instantly rewarded with lots of copies and intelligent designers swarm to make it better.  This is Darwinian Evolution at hyper-speed.  With conscious biology, any signs of consciousness get rewarded only to the extent they prove useful in the struggle for biosphere survival.  Any further improvements require patiently waiting through eons of gestation cycles for another lucky spin of genetic roulette.  This traditional form of Darwinian Evolution is so glacial that it took over three billion years to achieve what vitology is accomplishing in under a century.

The people working hard to give vitology consciousness have a wide variety of motives.  First, there are academicians who are deathly curious to see if it can be done.  They have programmed elements of autonomy and empathy into computers.  They even create artificial software worlds in which they attempt to mimic natural selection.  In these artificial worlds software structures compete for resources, undergo mutations and evolve.  The experimenters are hopeful that consciousness will evolve in their software as it did in biology, with vastly greater speed.

Another group of “human enzymes” aiming to catalyze software consciousness are gamesters.  These (mostly) guys are trying to create as exciting a game experience as possible.  Over the past several years the opponents at which a gamester aims have evolved from short lines (Pong; Space Invaders) to sophisticated human animations that modify their behavior based upon the attack.  The game character that can make up its own mind idiosyncratically (autonomy) and engage in caring communications (empathy) will attract all the attention.  Any other type of character will then appear as simplistic as Play Station 2.

Third and fourth groups focused on creating cyber-consciousness are medical and defense technologists.  For the military cyberconsciousness solves the problem of engaging the enemy while minimizing casualties.  By imbuing robot weapon systems with autonomy they can more effectively deal with the countless uncertainties that arise in a battlefield situation.  It is not possible to program into a mobile robot system a specific response to every contingency.  Nor is it very effective to control each robot system remotely based on video sent back to a distant headquarters.  The ideal situation provides the robot system with a wide range of sensory inputs (audio, video, infrared) and a set of algorithms for making independent judgments as to how to best carry out orders in the face of unknown terrain and hostile forces.  The work of one developer in this area has been described as follows:

“Ronald Arkin of the Georgia Institute of Technology, in Atlanta, is developing a set of rules of engagement for battlefield robots to ensure that their use of lethal force follows the rules of ethics.  In other words, he is trying to create an artificial conscience.  Dr. Arkin believes that there is another reason for putting robots into battle, which is that they have the potential to act more humanely than people.  Stress does not affect a robot’s judgment in the way it affects a soldier’s.”

The algorithms suitable for a military conscience will not be difficult to adapt to more prosaic civilian requirements.  Independent decision-making lies at the heart of Autonomy, one of the two touchstones of consciousness.

Meanwhile, medical cyber-consciousness is being pushed by the skyrocketing need to address Alzheimer’s and other diseases of aging.  Alzheimer’s robs a great many older people of their mind while leaving their body intact.  The Alzheimer patient could maintain their sense of self if they could off-load their mind onto a computer, while the biotech industry works on a cure.  This is analogous to how an artificial heart (such as a left-ventricular assistance device or LVAD) off-loads a patient’s heart until a heart transplant can be found.  Ultimately the Alzheimer’s patient will hope to download their mind back into a brain cleansed of amyloid plaques.

Indeed, using cyber-consciousness for mind transplants would be a way to provide any patient facing an end-stage disease a chance to avoid the Grim Reaper.  While the patients will surely miss their bodies, the alternative will be to never have a body.  At least with a medically provided cyber-conscious existence, the patient can continue to interact with their family, enjoy electronic media and hope for rapid advances in regenerative medicine and neuroscience.  

The field of regenerative medicine will ultimately permit ectogenesis, the rapid growth outside of a womb of a fresh, adult-size body in as little as twenty months.  This is the time it would take an embryo to grow to adult size if it continued to grow at the rate embryos develop during the first two trimesters.  Advances in neuroscience will enable a cyber-conscious mind to be written back into (or implanted and interfaced with) neuronal patterns in a freshly regenerated brain.

Biotechnology companies are well aware that over 90% of an average person’s lifetime medical expenditures are spent during the very last portion of their life.  Lives are priceless, and hence we deploy the best technology we can to mechanically keep people alive.  Medical cyber-conscious mind support is the next logic step in our efforts to keep end-stage patients alive.  The potential profits from such technology (health insurance would pay for it just like any other form of medically-necessary equipment) are an irresistible enticement for companies to allocate top people to the effort.

Health care needs for older people are also driving efforts to develop the empathetic branch of cyber-consciousness.  There are not enough people to provide caring attention to the growing legion of senior citizens.  As countries grow wealthy their people live longer, their birthrates decline below the replacement rate and, consequently, their senior citizens comprise an ever-larger percentage of the population.  Among the OECD group of advanced countries, the dependency ratio, which measures the number of people over 65 to those between 20 and 65, is projected to grow from .2 currently to .5 by 2050.  In other words, today there are five younger people to care for each older person, whereas in four decades there will be just two workers to care for each older person.  There is a huge health care industry motivation to develop empathetic robots because just a small minority of younger people actually wants to take care of older people.

The seniors won’t want to be manhandled, nor will their offspring want to be guilt-ridden.  Other than importing help from developing countries – which only postpones the issue briefly as those countries have gestating dependency ratio problems of their own – there is no solution but for the empathetic, autonomous robot.  Grannies need – and deserve – an attentive, caring, interesting person with whom to interact.  The only such persons that can be summoned into existence to meet this demand are manufactured software persons, i.e., empathetic, autonomous robots.  Not surprisingly, empathetic machines are a focus of software development in the health care industry.  Companies are putting expression-filled faces on their robots, and filling their code with the art of conversation.

Finally, the information technology (IT) industry itself is working on cyber-consciousness.  The mantra of IT is user-friendly, and there is nothing friendlier than a person.  A cyber-conscious house that we could speak to (prepare something I’d like for dinner, turn on a movie that I’d like) is a product for which people will pay a lot of money.  A personal digital assistant that was smart, self-aware and servile will out-compete in the marketplace PDAs that are deaf, dumb and demanding.  In short, IT companies have immense financial incentives to keep trying to make software as personable as possible.  They are responding to these incentives by allocating floors of programmers to the cyberconsciousness task.  Note how rapidly these programmers have arrogated into their programs the human pronoun “I”.  Until cyberconsciousness began emerging, no one but humans and fictional characters could call themselves “I”.  Suddenly, bits and building blocks of vitology are saying “how may I help you?,” “I’m sorry you’re having difficulty,” “I’ll transfer you to a human operator right away.”  The programmers will have succeeded in birthing cyberconsciousness when they figure out how to make the human operator totally unnecessary.  From their progress to date, this seems to be the goal.  Add to this self-replication code, and conscious vitology has arrived.

In summary, humanity is devoting some of its best minds, from a wide diversity of fields, to helping software achieve consciousness.  The quest is not especially difficult as it is a capability that can be intelligently designed; there is no need to wait for it to naturally evolve.  As a result, cyberconscious will appear immediately on the heels of life-like vitology.

Unnatural Selection is Still Natural Selection.

Natural Selection is the name Darwin gave to Nature’s heartless process of dooming some species and variants of species to extinction, while favoring for a while others.  The principal tool of Natural Selection is competition within a niche for scarce food.  Losers don’t get enough food to reproduce, and hence they die out.  Winners get the food, make the babies and pass on their traits, including the ones that make them superior competitors.  

When environmental change eliminates much of the food, such as during an ice age, previously useful traits may become meaningless and former Natural Selection champions may quickly join the mountain of extinct losers.  During such times Nature selects for traits that enable food gathering and reproduction in changing, or changed, environments.  The cockroach has these traits.

Alternatively a new species may enter a niche, as when hominids entered the environment of the mammoth.  In cases like this Nature might simply select the better killer, since it was not the mammoth’s food that interested Man, but the mammoth as food.  Plants and animals will not only extinguish other species through starvation, they will also do so through direct extermination.  All the while, Nature will carpet bomb all manner of species via environmental changes brought about by geophysics (e.g., volcanism) or astrophysics (e.g., asteroids).

Natural Selection is now acting upon software forms of life.  In this case Nature’s tool is neither food nor violence.  Instead, ey is using man as a tool, relying upon eir differential favoring of some self-replicating codes over others.  Just as Nature started off with viruses in the biological world, ey is also flooding the vitological world with them.  This is no doubt because viruses are the simplest types of self-replicating structures – they do nothing but self-replicate and plug themselves in somewhere (sometimes to great harm; other times to significant benefit).  Molecular viruses spontaneously self-assembled out of inanimate molecules before anything more complicated did, and hence Natural Selection played with them first.  Similarly, software viruses spontaneously man-assembled out of inanimate code before anything more complicated, and hence Natural Selection is playing with them first.  As viruses randomly or with man’s help cobble together more functionality, then Natural Selection will play with the resultant complex entities.

Natural Selection is simply a kind of arithmetic for self-replicating entities.  It is a tallying up of the results of what happens to self-replicating things in the natural world.  Those that self-replicate more successfully are represented by a larger slice of the pie of life.  There are many ways to self-replicate more successfully – grab resources better than others, kill others better than they can kill you, adapt to changes better than others.  Nature doesn’t really care how one self-replicates more successfully.  Ey just keeps track, via Natural Selection, by awarding the winners larger shares of the pie of life.

Since math is math, whether done by people or bees, Nature surely does not care if the agent of selection is human popularity rather than nutritional scarcity.  Natural Selection is no less natural for humans being in the middle.  Indeed, we have human intermediation to thank for thousands of recombinant DNA sub-species, hundreds of plant types and dozens of animal species.  Thank Man for the household dog! 

Man is now hard-at-work naturally selecting for the traits that make software more conscious.  Humanity cannot resist an overwhelming urge to create unnatural life in the image of natural life.  But this effort at Unnatural Selection is still Natural Selection.  The end result will still be an arithmetic reordering of pie shapes and pie slices.  The overall pie of life will be much larger, for it will now include vitology as well as biology.  And within that larger pie, there will be slices accorded to each of the types of vitological life and biological life that successfully self-replicate in a changing environment.  Mindclone consciousness will arrive vastly faster than its biological predecessor because Unnatural Selection is Natural Selection at the speed of intentionality.

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Martine Rothblatt serves on the IEET Board of Trustees and is author of several books on satellite communications technology, gender freedom, genomics, and xenotransplantation.

Indian Minister B.S. Claim That Afghans Train to Fight In India

India softens stand on negotiating with Taliban

Sat Jan 30, 2010 2:54am EST

(For more stories on Afghanistan and India click [ID:nAFPAK]

NEW DELHI, Jan 30 (Reuters) – India is willing to back efforts to seek peace with Taliban to stabilise Afghanistan, foreign minister S.M. Krishna said, indicating a softening of stand towards a group known to be close to rival Pakistan.

“We are willing to give it a try,” Krishna told the Times of India in an interview published on Saturday.

“If the Taliban meets the three conditions put forward — acceptance of the Afghan constitution, severing connections with al Qaeda and other terrorist groups and renunciation of violence, and are accepted in the mainstream of Afghan politics and society, we could do business.”

India has sought to retain influence in Afghanistan to deter anti-India militant training camps there — which it accuses rival Pakistan of backing – and to more generally try and counter a militant Islamic surge threatening regional security.  [TOTAL B.S.  Afghans are fighting an occupation, not Indian assholes over two hundred miles away.  Mr. Krishna is proffering a ludicrous excuse.]

It seeks to do so in part with a $1.2 billion aid spent on building roads and power lines that has won popular support.

Pakistan, which considers Afghanistan as a fall back position in the event of a war with India, says New Delhi is expanding its presence there to stir discontent inside Pakistan.

Krishna’s comments come after ministers from 60 countries met in London on Thursday to endorse a plan to win over Taliban foot soldiers with cash and jobs in a renewed effort to turn the tide in the eight-year-old war. [ID:nLDE60ROMM].

While accepting the reality of the new plan on the Taliban, Krishna made clear the Indian discomfort with the group, saying its fundamental assessment of the Taliban remained unchanged.

“We consider them to be terrorists who have close links with the al-Qaida and other terrorist groups,” he told the daily.

“We are next door and our experiences make it difficult for us to differentiate between good or bad Taliban,” he said, adding the West saw the group “from far away”.

Besides trying to lure away Taliban fighters from the insurgency, Afghan President Hamid Karzai has also offered to hold talks with the top leaders of the Taliban. The Taliban have not yet responded to his latest appeal. (Reporting by Krittivas Mukherjee; Editing bySanjeev Miglani)

Chinese Reaction to Arms Transfers Immediate and Harsh

[SEE: China warns US on planned arms sales to Taiwan]

China to suspend military exchanges with U.S.: report

BEIJING

Sat Jan 30, 2010 4:11am EST

BEIJING (Reuters) – China will suspend mutual military exchanges with the United States over its arms sales to Taiwan, state news agency Xinhua said on Saturday.

“Considering the severe harm and disgusting effect of U.S. arms sales to Taiwan, the Chinese side has decided to suspend planned mutual military visits,” Xinhua quoted the Defense Ministry as saying.

China warns US on planned arms sales to Taiwan

[The Obama team is really playing with fire by pushing these front-line anti-missile missiles to Taiwan.  It's not as if we don't need China to either keep buying our worthless Treasury paper or at least cash it in slowly, to prevent this sham of an economic "recovery" from being exposed to the world.]

FILE – In this July 20, 2006 photo, a U.S.-made Patriot missile is launched during the annual Han Kuang No. 22 exercises in Ilan County, 80 kilometers (49 miles) west of Taipei, Taiwan. The United States is planning to sell US$6.4 billion in arms, including Black Hawk helicopters, Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, mine hunter ships and information technology, to Taiwan, a move that will infuriate China and test whether President Barack Obama’s efforts to improve trust with Beijing will carry the countries through a tense time. (AP Photo/File) (AP)

By CARA ANNA

The Associated Press
Saturday, January 30, 2010; 4:22 AM

BEIJING – China angrily summoned the U.S. ambassador on Saturday and warned that a plan to sell $6.4 billion in arms to Taiwan would harm already strained ties. One Chinese expert said the sale would give Beijing a “fair and proper reason” to accelerate weapons testing.

The planned sale, posted Friday on a Pentagon Web site, is likely to complicate the cooperation the U.S. seeks from China on issues ranging from Iran’s nuclear program to the loosening of Internet controls, including a Google-China standoff over censorship.

Cutoffs of military ties top the list of possible punishments that Chinese state media and academics have publicly discussed in recent weeks as Beijing repeatedly warned the U.S. against the arms sale.

The U.S. is “obstinately making the wrong decision,” China’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement Saturday after Vice Foreign Minister He Yafei warned Ambassador Jon Huntsman that the sale would “cause

consequences that both sides are unwilling to see.” The vice minister urged that the sale be immediately canceled, it said.

A spokeswoman for the U.S. Embassy, Susan Stevenson, confirmed that China expressed its views, and said the embassy had no comment.

The notification on the Pentagon Web site said the sale would include 60 UH-60M Black Hawk helicopters, 114 Patriot Advanced Capability-3 missiles, mine-hunting ships and information technology. U.S. lawmakers have 30 days to comment on the proposed sale. Without objections, it would proceed.

Taiwan is the most sensitive issue in U.S.-China relations. China claims the self-governing island as its own, while the United States is Taiwan’s most important ally and largest arms supplier.

Though Taiwan’s ties with China have warmed considerably since Taiwanese President Ma Ying-jeou took office 20 months ago, Beijing has threatened to invade if the island ever formalizes its de facto independence.

Ma told reporters Saturday that the deal should not anger the mainland because the weapons are defensive, not offensive.

“The weapons sale decision will … allow us to have more confidence and sense of security in developing cross-Strait relations,” he said.

The United States, which informed China of the planned sale only hours before the announcement, acknowledged that Beijing may retaliate by temporarily cutting off military talks with Washington, which happened after the former Bush administration announced a multibillion-dollar arms sale to Taiwan in 2008.

Both sides have said they want to improve military ties, which have been frosty.

Experts warned that China could take further steps to underscore its newfound power and confidence in world affairs.

“Maybe the People’s Liberation Army will accelerate weapons testing, because this time we have a fair and proper reason to do so,” said Jin Canrong, a professor of international studies at China’s Renmin University.

Beijing has test-fired rockets in recent weeks for an anti-missile defense system in what security experts said was a display of anger at the pending arms sale.

“The U.S. will pay a price for this. Starting now, China will make some substantial retaliation, such as reducing cooperation on the North Korea and Iran nuclear issues and anti-terrorism work,” Jin added.

The arms package, however, dodges a thorny issue: more advanced F-16 fighter jets that Taiwan covets are not included.

The Pentagon’s decision not to include the fighters and a design plan for diesel submarines – two items Taiwan wants most – “shows that the Obama administration is deeply concerned about China’s response,” said Wang Kao-cheng, a defense expert at Taipei’s Tamkang University.

China has more than 1,000 ballistic missiles aimed at Taiwan. The U.S. government is bound by law to ensure the island is able to respond to Chinese threats.

Other possible targets for punishments from China over the planned arms sale include a dialogue on human rights that President Barack Obama and President Hu Jintao had agreed to reconvene by late February.

Some Chinese scholars have suggested that China should flex its economic muscle by blacklisting U.S. defense firms involved in the arms package.

“China has more bargaining chips now than before,” said Shuai Hua-ming, a ruling Nationalist Party lawmaker in Taiwan.

—

Associated Press writers Foster Klug and Robert Burns in Washington, Charles Hutzler in Beijing and Annie Huang in Taipei contributed to this report.

Taliban Trash British/Indian Claims About “Quetta-Shura” Talks

Taliban deny meeting UN envoy to talk peace in Afghanistan

AFP/File – United Nations special envoy to Afghanistan Kai Eide at a press conference in Kabul in November 2009. …

by Lynne O’Donnell – 1 hr 1 min ago

KABUL (AFP) – The Taliban denied Saturday that leaders of the Islamist group fighting to overthrow the Afghan government had met with UN representatives to discuss bringing peace to Afghanistan.

The Taliban issued a statement branding reports of a meeting with the UN’s outgoing special representative to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, in Dubaithis month as “rumours” and “propaganda”.

Referring to itself as “the leading council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan” — as it did during its 1996-2001 rule of the war-torn nation — the group said the reports were “propaganda by the invading forces against the jihad and mujahideen”.

“The leading council of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan strongly denies the rumours reported by some international media about talks between Kai Eide and representatives of the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,” the Taliban said.

“To defuse this (propaganda) we insist on continuing our holy Islamic jihad against the enemy,” it said in a statement, referring to the US and NATO forces fighting the Taliban insurgency.

The statement said the Taliban’s refusal to negotiate peace had ensured that an international conference in London on Thursday, attended by around 70 countries, was a failure.

“Now in an effort to recover their military and political prestige, the enemies are resorting to a propaganda conspiracy,” it said.

The reports that Eide had met with Taliban figures emerged after the conference, which aimed to thrash out a roadmap for Afghanistan’s future with one of the main themes being the social reintegration of Taliban fighters.

A UN official revealed that “active members of the insurgency” had met Eide this month, at their request, to discuss peace talks.

Kai Eide met the men in Dubai, reportedly on January 8, and details were shared with the Afghan government, the official said on condition of anonymity.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband, who hosted the conference, declined Friday to comment on the reported meeting, calling it an “allegation”.

Asked to comment while attending the annual World Economic Forum meeting in the Swiss Alps, Miliband said tersely: “You’ll have to talk to the UN about that, because that’s an allegation that’s been run in the newspapers.”

The Taliban had already dismissed the London conference as a propaganda ploy, calling US President Barack Obama and British Prime Minister Gordon Brown ”war-mongering rulers” who wanted “to deceive the people of the world… that people still support them”.

The statement also dismissed a plan by Afghan President Hamid Karzai to woo what he and Western leaders refer to as Taliban “moderates” — essentially unemployed and poor men who fighting for cash rather than ideology — with offers of money and jobs.

“They announce that they will provide money, employment and opportunity to have a comfortable life abroad for those mujahedeen who agree to part ways with jihad,” the Taliban said in an earlier statement.

“This is baseless and futile,” it said. “Had the aim of the mujahedeen of the Islamic Emirate been obtainment of material goals, they would accept dominance of the invaders in the first place.”

And it criticised the Afghan government as corrupt, describing as fraudulent the recent presidential election, after which Karzai, linked to a high proportion of bogus ballots, was declared victor.

“Traffickers of intoxicating items, human rights violators, corrupt persons, national traitors and usurpers of people’s private property grabbed power,” it said.

Karzai’s government is backed by 113,000 troops US and NATO troops, with another 40,000 being deployed this year, bringing the fight to the Taliban, who many military officials say are starting to show signs of battlefield fatigue.

Nevertheless, the usual winter slowdown in fighting has failed to materialise, with foreign troop deaths at 44 for this month, compared to 25 for January 2009.

The latest deaths came on Friday, according to NATO’s International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), which released a brief statement saying that two US soldiers and a US civilian were killed in eastern Afghanistan.

An ISAF spokesman confirmed to AFP the “employee” was an American civilian but said no further information was available on what happened or where.

Firefight Between NATO Troops and Afghan Army Ends In Airstrike

NATO troops clash with Afghan army

GHAZNI (Reuters) – NATO troops clashed with their Afghan army allies and called in air strikes, killing four Afghan soldiers and wounding six, Afghan provincial officials said Saturday.

Shahedullah Shahed, spokesman for the governor of Wardak province southwest of Kabul, said foreign forces and Afghan troops were both conducting operations Friday night in the province when they started shooting at each other.

“Four army soldiers were killed and six wounded when a foreign forces air strike hit their post,” he said. “We don’t know why it happened, but it is deeply regrettable.”

He said the strike had targeted an Afghan Army outpost in the area that had been newly established.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force confirmed that an “incident” had taken place between Western and Afghan security forces, but declined to give further details.

“We are working with the Ministry of Defense to determine the facts of the incident,” said U.S. Army Lieutenant Nico Melendez, a spokesman for the force.

‘Gorilla Baby’ Born In Gaza

by Earl Morningstarr

The births of deformed babies in Gaza has increased since the Israeli offensive which took place last year, Palestinian doctors claim.

Most recently a woman gave birth to a child at the Shifa Hospital in the Gaza Strip which was severely deformed, the baby boy’s face was malformed, his nose is flattened, there is reddish-brownish skin discoloration and the limbs are short with the feet curling in, a similar shape to a gorilla’s.

The child, unsurprisingly nicknamed ‘Gorilla Baby’ was abandoned by his parents. The mother and father of the little boy have left the hospital and refuse to go back and claim the baby, so he will remain under the hospital’s custody until other arrangements can be made.

Doctors at the hospital say that Gorilla Baby and a host of other mutated children are not the result of genetic conditions, they point the finger squarely at the use of white phosphorus by the Israeli armed forces.

Terrorism and the Illuminati – A Three Thousand Year History

David Livingstone

View this document on Scribd

Bin Laden, eco warrior

[The absurdity of the moronic mind-benders behind the dead bin Laden tapes.  SEE: 'Bin Laden' blames US for global warming]

The global fight against climate change needs all the advocates it can find. Well, maybe not all

Marcus Brigstocke

guardian.co.uk

Climate camper: al-Jazeera footage of Osama bin Laden, 2001, broadcasting from his low-emissions dwelling, somewhere near the Afghan-Pakistani border. Photograph: Maher Attar/Corbis

Well that’s just what the green movement needs: an endorsement from al-Qaida’s murderer in chief, Osama bin Laden. Don’t tell me al-Qaida do “grow your own” in the Tora Bora mountains. Quick, alert the Pakistani military – we’re looking for six allotment beds and a recent cave-side delivery of locally sourced organic vegetables. If AQ operatives share bath water I just don’t want to know. You try getting the picture of Osama and one of his generals going top to toe in a tub out of your head.

“Please, Osama – I went at the tap end yesterday.” “Whose organisation is this? Uh-uh! Which one of you left this rocket propelled grenade launcher on standby? What have I told you? Now, budge up, you’re sitting on my flannel.”

I’ll grant you that living in a cave probably has a very low carbon footprint, as long as they’ve draught-proofed the door; and it is possible that his barbaric acts of violence have put one or two people off flying, but I just don’t want Bin Laden to come out on our side.

It’s bad enough when greenies in hairshirts treat climate change as an excuse to discuss compulsory veganism. I shudder when semi-retired socialists use it as the latest wheeze to bring down capitalism. Anyone who’s been outgreened by a point-scoring eco bore will know how ugly it can get. But al-Qaida? Any attempt to claim green credentials on their part would be as laughable as oil companies putting pretty mountain-scapes in their adverts. Over population may be the elephant in the room when it comes to talking about sustainability, but no one wants to see Dumbo flown into a building as a solution.

In his latest recording Bin Laden reportedly says: “This is a message to the whole world about those responsible for climate change and its repercussions – whether intentionally or unintentionally – and about the action we must take.” Action? What’s he going to suggest? Rechargeable terror cells? Compostable suicide belts? “When buying weapons at an arms fair – do please remember to bring your own bags.” It’s only a matter of time before he claims that large-scale atrocities such as 9/11 present great opportunities to recycle.

In the “new” recording he mentions the Kyoto protocol and Bush junior’s failure to act. Catch up, beardy – it’s Obama and Copenhagen now. To be honest the whole statement’s a bit dated and makes me think that this tape may have been made some time ago. Perhaps he’s got the wrong wattage of eco bulbs in the cave and can’t read the latest stuff. I wonder if he even knows about the East Anglia email scandal. That seems to be reason enough to get otherwise logical people to doubt years of peer-reviewed work from thousands of scientists, so imagine what it might do to a loose cannon like him.

The main thrust of his proposals is to bring “the wheels of the American economy” to a halt. He obviously hasn’t heard that hubris, greed and massive bonuses have already taken care of that, and the US is still polluting faster than a grass-eating Clarkson. “Stop consuming American products” and “refrain from using the dollar”. With the exception of Apple stuff (praise be upon them) I wasn’t aware that anyone was still consuming anything much from the US. What about China? Why hasn’t he stuck it to them? From what I heard it was China that slowed the Copenhagen talks down to the pace of a glacier. It’s all only half thought through and I fear that his “bring down the mighty US Satan” rhetoric might be the only card in his deck. Lost the remote control? Destroy America. Kids won’t eat their vegetables? Bring down the Stars and Stripes. Overweight? OK, bad example. But taped from an underground layer or not the issues around climate change and solutions to it are nuanced (which is why so few of the papers ever discuss it properly).

I wait with bated breath for the weekend columns in the Mail, Express and Telegraph claiming that George Monbiot and Bin Laden are one and the same person. I’ve suspected it for years. Osama bin Laden: cave-bound eco warrior, saving the world, one atrocity at a time.

Fighting for US objectives

[This article from an Indian blog pretty much gets it right.  Washington is playing a very dangerous game, goading nuclear-armed mortal enemies into a violent confrontation will not solve America's problems, unless destabilization and depopulation of the subcontinent is the solution.  Washington doesn't care what the human toll of such a conflict would be, in fact, the more dead the better.  Remember the Kissinger depopulation plans, before you judge this harsh assessment wrong.]

by Ajai Shukla

Business Standard

Does anyone recall a top American official publicly declaring that India would be justified in attacking Pakistan if terrorists struck Indian targets again?

I don’t. Which is why I believe more attention must be paid to what US Defence Secretary Robert Gates said last week in India, when asked whether he had counselled restraint to New Delhi in the event of another terror strike.

Gates’ reply: “I told all of the Indian leaders that I met with that I thought that India had responded with great restraint and statesmanship after the first Mumbai attack. The ability of any state to continue that, were it to be attacked again, I think is in question…”

That was more of a threat against Pakistan than Washington has made before. Underlining that, Gates emphasised, “…it’s not unreasonable to assume that Indian patience would be limited, were there to be further (terrorist) attacks.”

At that point (in New Delhi, on January 20), it could legitimately be argued that Gates was double-dealing, as America frequently does, sweet-talking India in India before heading off to Pakistan to repudiate his statement. But, this time, in Islamabad the next day, Gates repeated to Pakistan TV almost exactly what he had said in New Delhi. His words: “I believe that after the tragic attack on Mumbai that India was restrained in its response. But no country, including the United States, is going to stand idly by if it’s being attacked by somebody.”

Interesting, especially the similar phraseology, pointing to a pre-formulated response! Was Washington merely waving the India stick to nudge Islamabad towards greater cooperation in the Af-Pak war? Or, is the US starting to believe that Islamabad is a lost cause, and that India can be used — not just politically and diplomatically, but its hard power as well — to deal with Pakistan.

Unthinkable? Remember that a government’s public positions usually lag, in both time and emphasis, what policymakers agree to behind closed doors. It would be reasonable to assume that Robert Gates, while meeting Dr Manmohan Singh, was even more forthright in signalling America’s tolerance for the use of Indian force.

America’s dwindling patience is evident from more than just Gates’ warning. At the same time that Gates visited Delhi, two former US officials — General Richard Myers, former chairman of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, and William Schneider, until recently the Pentagon’s head of technology — were in India, sounding out key opinion-makers and policy-makers about the possibility of a growing military role for India in Afghanistan.

The question at the heart of their discussions was: how best can Indian police organisations, e.g. the BSF, CRPF and CISF, take on a major role in training the Afghan National Police to look after security? Neither Myers nor Schneider seemed even slightly constrained by Pakistan’s entreaties to Washington to curb India’s role in Afghanistan.

Myers and Schneider, some might argue, are not from the US government; they merely represent an academic viewpoint! That distinction, however, is far less relevant in America. Washington works closely with its think-tanks, even outsourcing research that underpins key decisions: e.g. how best can the India card be played to ratchet up pressure on Pakistan? New Delhi’s mandarins must surely wonder if America — losing patience with Pakistan and calculating that US military action against Pakistan would be expensive, bloody, and the end of all influence in Islamabad — was signalling that if India wanted to do the dirty work, Washington would look away.

For Islamabad, though, Gates’ words will be nothing other than a stark threat. Superimposing the India stick on the traditional carrots of aid, weaponry and undying friendship, is a measure of Washington’s desperation in dealing with Pakistan’s reluctance to crack down on jihadi terrorism. Gates’ new stance will also highlight America’s shrinking interest in cultivating a benign image in Pakistan. Draining the abscess of radicalism is now a greater imperative.

Despite India’s satisfaction, Gates’ understanding is not an unalloyed blessing. Whenever the next major terrorist strike takes place — and Pakistan’s prime minister has declared that he cannot stop one — New Delhi will find its options dangerously narrowed. An inflamed public and a rampant media will challenge Indian policy-makers with the question: what now holds back India from retaliating against Pakistan? With international restraints loosened, Indian strikes on Pakistan’s territory would be a real option, and war not just an academic question.

But how ready for that challenge is the military? After the terrorist strikes on Parliament on December 13, 2001, and in Mumbai on November 26, 2008, the subcontinent stood poised on the brink of war. Despite General Padmanabhan’s brave statement, after the Parliament attack, that India would wage war with whatever equipment it possessed, the army asked the government for more time to prepare. With military modernisation remaining stalled for a quarter of a century, Mr Antony and his predecessors have set the scene for potential embarrassment.

India has done the diplomatic heavy-lifting for coercing Pakistan on terrorism. The military preparation, however, remains sadly lacking.

Families of Iraq war dead voice anger at ‘smirking’ Blair

more about “ Families of Iraq war dead voice an…“, posted with vodpod

Former prime minister accused of ‘not facing up to facts’ as he gives evidence to Chilcot inquiry

• Paul Lewis and Vikram Dodd
• guardian.co.uk

Highlights from Tony Blair’s evidence to the Iraq inquiry Link to this videoThe families of British military personnel killed in Iraq condemned Tony Blair‘s performance before the Chilcot inquiry today, accusing him of being disrespectful.

One, Theresea Evans, asked the former prime minister to look her in the eye and say sorry for the loss of her son.

Evans, from Llandudno, North Wales – whose 24-year-old son, Llywelyn, died in a Chinook helicopter crash in 2003 – said: “I would simply like Tony Blair to look me in the eye and say he was sorry. Instead, he is in there smirking.”

Anne Donnachie, from Reading, Berkshire, whose 18-year-old son, Paul, was killed by a sniper in 2006, said she blamed Blair for his death.

“From what I have heard this morning, he is just denying everything,” she said. “He will just not face up to the facts. I believe he made a massive mistake when he sent my son to Iraq.”

Sarah Chapman, from Cambridge, whose brother, Sergeant Bob O’Connor, died five years ago, said it would be better if Blair was facing the families rather than sitting with his back to them as witnesses are required to do.

“He is being very adamant about his views, as we expected, but it is clear he did not share all the papers before the invasion with the rest of his cabinet,” she said.

“I am disgusted by that. It is obvious he acted alone.”

Anti-war protesters outside the inquiry were denied a chance to direct their chants at the former prime minister in person when he used a side entrance to make his way into the inquiry.

When he began giving evidence inside the QEII Centre in Westminster, a building fortified with steel barriers and lines of police, campaigners stopped their chants of “war criminal”, turned their backs and began listening as the names of civilians and military personnel killed in the conflict were read out.

The crowds dissipated at the end of the morning, but numbers were expected to build again towards the end of the afternoon when the session ends and Blair leaves the inquiry.

For many, today will be the last in a line of protests against the Iraq war which began when up to two million people took to the streets to march against the invasion almost seven years ago.

“He [Blair] does not have the integrity to come and face the people,” Lindsey German, the convener of the Stop the War Coalition, said. “Sliding in by a back door entrance is typical of his lies, deceit and evasion.”

Andrew Murray, the chairman of the anti-war group, added: “This cowardly and deceitful entrance is typical of how the former prime minister sold the war to the country – behind the backs of the public.”

Scotland Yard said there were at least 250 protestors and reported that officers had made no arrests.

By 9am, around 300 mainly older activists had gathered by the building in the cold and rain.

One of the first to arrive, at 7am, was Noel Hamel, the 67-year-old chair of the Kingston Peace Council. He had woken in the early hours in order to get to central London by bus and tube.

A disenfranchised former Labour party member who campaigned for Blair in 1997, he said: “I was out there knocking on doors, proposing motions.

“I just couldn’t have imagined a Labour government taking us to a war of this kind while being so deceitful about it.”

As word spread that Blair had already entered the centre, chants of “Tony Blair, to the Hague” began.

Ruby Lescott, another ex-Labour supporter in her 60s, said her “deep-rooted, immovable rage” was not only directed at Blair but also at his closest ministers.

“The cabinet – most of them – were reluctant about [the war],” she added. “The Labour government has eroded the virtues of our parliamentary system.”

Among the few younger faces in the crowd, Lois Clifton, 19, and Emma Clewer, an 18-year-old fellow LSE university student, admitted their attempts to leaflet for the protest had been disappointing.

“We needed more people here,” Clewer said. “It’s a chance for people to show their anger.”

During the start of the invasion, both were in their early teens and recalled the marches.

“There were a lot of walkouts at school,” Clifton said. “I wasn’t as aware as I am now … but I knew what was happening was wrong.”

A heavy police presence, including officers from the Metropolitan police’s specialist Territorial Support Group, watched from behind barricades surrounding the centre.

As is common at protests, Forward Intelligence Team surveillance officers jotted down notes of what speakers were saying.

A Sign of Empire Pathology

More US military personnel have taken their OWN lives than have died in action by Finian Cunningham Global Research

Gulf Daily News

Here is a shocking statistic that you won’t hear in most western news media: over the past nine years, more US military personnel have taken their own lives than have died in action in either the wars in Iraq or Afghanistan. These are official figures from the US Department of Defence, yet somehow they have not been deemed newsworthy to report. Last year alone, more than 330 serving members of the US armed forces committed suicide – more than the 320 killed in Afghanistan and the 150 who fell in Iraq (see wsws.org).

Since 2001, when Washington launched its so-called war on terror, there has been a dramatic year-on-year increase in US military suicides, particularly in the army, which has borne the brunt of fighting abroad. Last year saw the highest total number since such records began in 1980. Prior to 2001, the suicide rate in the US military was lower than that for the general US population; now, it is nearly double the national average.

A growing number of these victims have been deployed in Iraq or Afghanistan. What these figures should tell us is that there is something fundamentally deranged about Washington’s “war on terror” – which is probably why western news media prefer to ignore the issue. How damning is it about such military campaigns that the number of US soldiers who take their own lives outnumber those killed by enemy combatants.

What is even more disturbing is that the official figures only count victims of suicide among serving personnel. Not included are the many more veterans – officially classed a civilians – who take their own lives.

Most likely, these deaths are reported in some small-town newspaper in “a brief” news item with no context or background as to what drove these individuals to take their own lives. It is estimated that the suicide rate among veterans demobbed from fighting in Afghanistan and Iraq is as high as four times the national average. The US Department of Veteran Affairs calculates that over 6,000 former service personnel commit suicide every year.

Many of these men have come home to a country they have fought for only to find no jobs, their homes repossessed by banks that have enjoyed trillion-dollar bailouts and broken relationships.

Meanwhile, President Obama – the erstwhile peace candidate – has taken on the role of Commander in Chief with gusto, telling his countrymen and women that they are fighting a “just war” to “defend American lives”. Only a year ago, he was campaigning for the presidency on a ticket to end such wars. Now, more than his predecessor, George W Bush, Obama is committing to wars without end. How soul-destroying is that for a grunt holed up in a bunker, with his young family back home probably telling him that they have just signed up for food stamps? In their guts, these US soldiers must know – as many other ordinary people around the world do – that these wars are nothing but a desperate, pathological bid by a dying power to salvage its crumbling empire – an empire that enriches a tiny elite and impoverishes the majority. Is it any wonder that many of them simply lose the will to live?

The Foundations of the U.S. Economy have been Destroyed

by The Economic Collapse

The vast majority of the talking heads on television are still speaking of the current economic collapse as if it is a temporary “recession” that will soon be over.  So far, the vast majority of the American people seem to believe this as well, although for many Americans there is a very deep gnawing in the pit of their stomachs that is telling them that there is something very, very wrong this time around.  The truth is that the foundations of the U.S. economy have been destroyed by an orgy of government, corporate and individual debt that has gone on for decades.  It was the greatest party in the history of the world, but now the party is over.

The following are 11 signs from just this past month that show that the U.S. economy is headed into the toilet and will not be recovering….

#1) When even Wal-Mart is closing stores you know things are bad.  Wal-Mart announced on Monday that it will close 10 money-losing Sam’s Club stores and will cut 1,500 jobs in order to reduce costs.  So if even Wal-Mart has to shut down stores, what chance do other retailers have?

#2) Americans are going broke at a staggering pace.  1.41 million Americans filed for personal bankruptcy in 2009 – a 32 percent increase over 2008.

#3) American workers are working harder than ever and yet making less.  After adjusting for inflation, pay for production and non-supervisory workers (80 percent of the private workforce) is 9% lower than it was in 1973.  But those Americans who do still have jobs are the fortunate ones.

#4) Unemployment is absolutely exploding all over the United States.  Minority groups have been hit particularly hard.  For example, unemployment on many U.S. Indian reservations is over 80 percent.

#5) Unfortunately the employment situation is showing no signs of turning around.  December was actually the worst month for U.S. unemploymentsince the so-called ”Great Recession” began.

#6) So just how bad are things when compared to past recessions?  During the 2001 recession, the U.S. economy lost 2% of its jobs and it took four years to get them back. This time the U.S. economy has lost more than 5% of its jobs and there is no sign that the bleeding of jobs will stop any time soon.

#7) Can you imagine trying to get your first job in this economic climate?  Our young men and women either can’t get work or have given up on work altogether.  The percentage of Americans 16 to 24 who have jobs is 13 percent lower than ten years ago.

#8) So where did all the jobs go?  Over the past few decades we have allowed the corporate giants to ship mountains of American jobs overseas, and there are signs that this trend is only going to get worse.  In fact, Princeton University economist Alan S. Blinder estimates that 22% to 29% of all current U.S. jobs will be offshorable within two decades.  So get ready for even more of our jobs to be shipped off to Mexico, China and India.

#9) All of these job losses are leading to defaults on mortgages.  Over the past couple of years we have seen the American Dream in reverse.  According to a report that was just released, delinquent home loans at government-controlled mortgage finance giants Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac surged 20 percent from July through September.

#10) But that is nothing compared to what is coming.  A massive “second wave” of mortgage defaults is getting ready to hit the U.S. economy starting in 2010.  In fact, this “second wave” is so frightening  that even 60 Minutes is reporting on it.

#11) Meanwhile, the Federal Reserve has announced that it made a record profit of $46.1 billion in 2009.  Apparently during this economic crisis it is a very good time to be a bankster.

more about “Second Wave Of Mortgage Defaults Part 1“, posted with vodpod

Obama’s Fake of the Union Address

Dr. Rec, The Rec Report

Michael D. Rectenwald, Ph.D.

Few doubt that Barack Obama is a masterful speaker. But too often his speaking ability is considered a national asset, especially as it is supposed to inspire the American public, persuade his political opponents, and favorably represent the national interests to the world. Yet Obama’s rhetorical mastery is the most dangerous weapon that his financial masters have used against the majority of late. Rather than persuading Congress or the American public to support policies and politics that benefit the majority, Obama has used his oratorical gifts to delude the people, representing his allegiance to the corporate oligarchy as a boon to the American public.

The State of the Union Address was an occasion for Obama to reboot his presidency by reinstalling and rerunning his campaign rhetoric. At the same time, he would have to reconcile the same with a yearlong record of betrayals. Thus, his support and enactment of massive corporate bailouts, his health care cuts crafted behind closed doors and presented as “reform,” his extension of imperialist wars, his proposed cuts in social spending, his proposed deepened tax cuts and incentives for business (as opposed to direct spending on millions losing their homes and jobs)-were all presented as a gift to a singular “American people.”

Despite a Democratic majority in both houses and a presidency with a massive mandate for “change,” the abject failures of his first year were blamed on his political “opponents.” Obama blamed the Republicans for the failure to enact health care reform. The proffered bill promises to penalize workers by taxing “Cadillac” plans and levying fines or imprisonment on those who fail to buy “coverage” from corporate insurers. Thanks to their defeat of the Democrat in the special senatorial election in Massachusetts, the Republicans are now expected to filibuster the unpopular health care bill. The choice of a Republican over Obama’s proxy in an overwhelmingly Democratic state indicates the extent to which Obama’s policies are generally opposed. Yet the Republicans were the whipping boys of the night. If the Republicans didn’t exist, one isn’t far off in saying, the Democrats would be sure to invent them. So great is the Democrats’ need for an alibi.

One of Obama’s most remarkable talents is his ability to feign righteous indignation. The grimaces of Supreme Court members tongue-lashed by the candidate of record Wall Street bundled funding were discomfiting to all but the most hypocritical Democratic sympathizers. Meanwhile, the ruling gives the green light to Obama’s paymasters to reward his party for its faithful service.

While acknowledging an election won on the basis of antiwar sentiment, the wars in Afghanistan and Pakistan barely merited mention. Obama promised the removal of troops from Iraq, but said nothing about the fact that the time-table was set during his predecessor’s tenure, or that his military and intelligence policies mirror his predecessor’s to the letter. These policies include the Patriot Act, the secret renditions, the funding of renegade mercenaries, the killing and maiming of innocent civilians. He said nothing of the record number of troops killed in Afghanistan in 2009. And of course no mention was made of unmanned drones that repeatedly bomb and kill civilians in Pakistan. And Obama slid seamlessly over the fact that the gargantuan military budget will grow unchecked.

These facts do not accord well with the rhetoric of “change you can believe in.” Rather, given the Obama effect of silencing the so-called antiwar “left,” they speak volumes about the Democratic antiwar belief you can change.

Watching the speech and its reportage from the “left-right” angles of the U.S. corporate media, one might be led to believe that the divisions between the rival parties are real and deep. The grudge-match is treated like an epic battle between bitter enemies. Sean Hannity, of Fox ‘News,’ is an overpaid party hack who functions to obscure the fact that his real opponents are not even on the field of play.

The real battle is fought off-screen. The opponents are the corporate oligarchy and their political managers in Washington, lined up against a public faced with job losses, housing foreclosures, runaway debt, and extortion. Obama, the front man, was commissioned precisely because his allegiance to the corporate oligarchy seemed unlikely. He posed as a plausible candidate of change because his identity and oratorical style fit the bill for many. But after only a year, the majority has been disabused of this fiction. Most see him for the fraud that he is. His most valuable asset is fast becoming recognized as the face of deceit.
Permanent URL for this article:
http://www.legitgov.org/comment/rec_report_290110.html

Indo-Pak tension worst in 20 yrs

Indo-Pak tension worst in 20 yrs: Zahid Hussain

TNN

In his book `Frontline Pakistan’, Zahid Hussain highlighted the challenges Pakistan faced from jihadi extremism. In India as part of the `Aman ki Asha’ literary series, Hussain spoke to TOI about how the reality in Pakistan had changed but that without better ties with India, there would always be some support for jihadi groups.
Q: To what extent does rhetoric between India and Pakistan threaten or affect the reality?
A: Rhetoric certainly does affect reality. But reality changes so fast, as we have seen in the past few years that relations between the two countries had become cordial. In 2002, the two countries put a million men eyeball-to-eyeball and the atmosphere was tense. We were close to war. In 2004, Vajpayee came to Islamabad and suddenly everything changed. But the tension was not reflected in the media, though we had no relations. It was significant. After 2004, the atmosphere changed. This time, the tension is greater on both sides, after Mumbai attack. Perhaps because of the magnitude of the attack and the number of people killed.
Initially, in Pakistan, the general sentiment was one of sympathy. Then suddenly, the rhetoric became more aggressive there. Then the media group (Geo TV) which was most aggressive did an investigative report about Kasab’s village, they went there. The tension is not generated or whipped up by the media in Pakistan. But one cannot take refuge in the media or public opinion regarding dialogue. Generally, there is a feeling both countries need to normalise relations.
The tension I have seen in the past year is the worst I’ve seen in 20 years. At this point, nobody is talking. Even in 2002, when we were close to war, there was some activity in the background to normalise or end the standoff. In the past one-and-a-half years, the atmosphere has changed and that is quite alarming.
Q: But diplomatic relations continue now…
A: In Pakistan, there has been a significant development. Pakistan has admitted for the first time that the people who had done the attack had gone from Pakistan and people have been arrested. Maybe there should be more. I have seen the investigative report myself in Pakistan. They have gone beyond what the Indians have provided. They have given details of how those people were trained.
Q: Was this what was given to the anti-terror court on Wednesday?
A: Yes, that’s right. I’ve written about it. While the media can whip up sentiment, there is also the other side. Media has also played a big role in bringing the two sides together and minimise tension. In Pakistan, the political parties have a general consensus on policy to India.
Q: What is that policy?
A: The government is conciliatory. If you consider the overall statements… even Nawaz Sharif has taken a conciliatory position. The mainstream parties — PPP, PML(N), MQM and ANP — say that Pak-India relations should improve. So that is a positive development. When it comes to foreign and defence policies, Pakistan media is very open. If you have been following it, you will see Pakistan media is actually critical of many things. You must realise Pakistan media has grown up as a resistance media. Under long periods of military rule, most of Pakistan media has been in chains, not like in India, which has been a democratic set-up and Press has been free. We have fought for these rights.
Q: Wasn’t growth of the Pakistan media greatest during the Musharraf years?
A: Exactly. We fought during Zia’s period. The criticism of Pakistan’s policies — be it regarding India, Afghanistan or anything else — is most by the Pakistan media. And openly. If you see the literature in Pakistan over the past few years… Ahmed Rashid, Ayesha Siddiqua, Amir Rana and others. This is an examination and analysis of why we are where we are, more in-depth discussion, etc.
Q: In the context of today’s Pakistan, independent of India, where is Pakistan going and where should it go?
A: There is a lot of gloom about Pakistan, it is the main centre of terrorism. From the outside, it seems Pakistan is falling apart under the weight of jihadi extremism. But I see it differently. The clash has come to the surface. Militancy has been growing in Pakistan for many years, but there was no clash with society or the state. That I feel is more dangerous.
Q: Like a creeping acceptance…
A: Exactly. There was deniability, a feeling that they are fighting for us, not against us. But now, this has come to a head. The violence has increased, certainly, but it also means the war has come to a head. I call it the battle for the soul of Pakistan. At one point, people thought the jihadis were about to take over the country. But no more. They are on the defensive, they have been defeated in many places. For the first time, public opinion has turned hugely against militancy and extremism.
Q: Does that reflect in government action?
A: Swat was a turning point. There is no acceptability of jihadi extremism. There are no two views on the fact that extremism poses the biggest threat to Pakistani society. That is the realisation, even among many right-wing Islamist parties.
Q: You have written that the jihadis are a powerful force in Pakistan. Who do you think is more powerful now? Jihadi generals, militancy over the years, how officers have changed over the years…
A: That was what was happening in Pakistan. But 2007 was the turning point in Pakistan. That’s the theme of my next book. Lal Masjid was a complete rupture between jihadis and the state. The separation had started after Musharraf turned around after 9/11, but there was no divorce. 2007 was a complete break. Because Islamic militants declared war on the Pakistani state.
Earlier, only two individuals had been attacked by jihadis — Musharraf in 2003 and a corps commander of Karachi — otherwise there was no violence. Lal Masjid was different. More than 200 bomb attacks have taken place in Pakistan after July 2007. Almost all in the big cities, targeting Pakistan security installations. More Pakistani soldiers have been killed in these attacks, including 56 ISI officers. More than a dozen attacks have been against ISI buildings — Lahore, Peshawar and Rawalpindi.
There’s war. This was also the period when they developed a Pakistani agenda. Al Qaida was part of it and it was no more fighting in Afghanistan. The Tehreek-e-Taliban Pakistan was formed in December 2007, with a clear agenda of taking over these areas. A sporadic Taliban movement had started, but Baitullah Mehsud was made chief of a formal organisation three weeks before Benazir died.
Q: When should Pakistan take on Al Qaida in Quetta Shura?
A: Quetta Shura is not Al Qaida and Al Qaida is not in Balochistan. Al Qaida is in eastern Afghanistan, the areas around Waziristan, Khost, Paktia and Paktika. South Afghanistan is not Al Qaida. Al Qaida is concentrated in northwestern Pakistan.
Quetta Shura is Taliban. Taliban fighting in southern Afghanistan has nothing to do with Al Qaida. The linkages with Al Qaida are greater with Pakistani Taliban and Taliban in eastern Afghanistan, like Sirajuddin Haqqani. In Balochistan, there is no Pakistani Taliban. Personally, I feel Quetta Shura doesn’t exist. They’re more hype.
In Afghanistan, the war has gone wrong. After eight years, the situation is worse there. US generals also see it as worse than Iraq now. For 4-5 years, Americans did not understand what was happening and they had no presence in southern Afghanistan.
Insurgency cannot take root if the leadership is outside. They’re saying Mullah Omar is in Quetta. I’ve worked on this, and I don’t believe this is correct. Mullah Omar is the kind of leader who has never left Afghanistan. Even during the Soviet days, he was there, he came only once when his eye needed treatment. When his government was in Kabul, he did not go to Kabul.
It may happen that they go and come, also the refugee camps in Balochistan have become a hub of recruitment, as well as the madrasa. The real centre of insurgency is in Afghanistan. The Americans had 1,300 troops when they went to Tora Bora. They gave the contract to Afghan warlords, who were taking money from both sides.
Q: Indian public opinion has hardened after 26/11. We feel Pakistan may be targeting the people against Pakistan, but not the groups affecting India. Do you think this ambivalence continues, and if it does, how can Pakistan fight different wars?
A: There was ambivalence earlier. There were grounds for that ambivalence. Things started to change after the attack on Musharraf in December 2003. He realised these guys were a threat to Pakistan, but he also believed he could not take them on fully until relations with India improved. That was the reason why in 2004, after Vajpayee’s visit, everything changed, and Musharraf actually went after these groups.
Back channel diplomacy progressed very fast. Musharraf showed a lot of flexibility and I don’t think there will be another leader who will do the same in the near future. He also thought of out-of-the-box solutions. At a speech that I attended, Musharraf said India will never accept changing of the boundary, and we see it as a problem. So let’s meet midway. Soften the borders, regional autonomy, and demilitarisation. It was the biggest concession Pakistan could have given. Infiltration had also come down. Unless the relationship with India improves, some kind of ambivalence will always be there.
Q: Manmohan Singh says he has no one to talk to. Who should India talk to?
A: To the civilian government. When you refuse to talk, whom are you strengthening? Can’t you pick up the thread where it was left off? This may be a weak government, but if India could have done Sir Creek or Siachen, this government would have been strengthened. Even Nawaz Sharif, leader of Punjab, is for better relations with India. If these two countries want to fight terrorism, they need to move forward in their relationship. There are some elements that don’t want better relations.
If another attack happens in India, then what? My view is nobody can guarantee that there will not be another attack. The same people who are attacking Pakistan are also attacking India.
The Mumbai story is not yet complete. More will come out. It was a syndicated attack. There is a huge global network involved. The support was everywhere. There was an Al Qaida imprint. When they were banned, they splintered into many cells. Twenty-two cells became autonomous and linked up with Al Qaida. If India-Pakistan tensions continue, there is another danger. There is a global aspect of jihadis. Inside Pakistan, some of the planners are middle-class, educated, who are influenced by global issues. It’s a whole different game.
Q: What about Lashkar-e-Toiba?
A: Look at Lashkar-e-Toiba. It’s not that Pakistan is not alarmed by them. LeT has not joined the Taliban, they have not attacked Pakistan. But also the state is incapable of taking them on and opening another front. If they join the insurgents, the militancy Pakistan is facing will become much greater.
I know India says Pakistan is not taking these fellows on. I know Robert Gates said there was a threat from Al Qaida-linked militant groups, but I don’t agree with that at all. He is lumping all the groups together but that is not correct.
Q: Hasn’t LeT become linked with Al Qaida?
A: No. LeT was more influenced by Saudi Wahhabism. It’s the only rigid Wahhabi organisation, with a huge connection with the Saudi establishment. Sure, even Osama is pitted against the Saudi establishment. LeT certainly has a global role, though their basic target is India and Kashmir. The groups involved in 26/11 were a part of LeT but Al Qaida used it, there’s no doubt about that. Much has come out after Headley’s arrest (but he was also a double agent). But more will come out.
Q: If this is the battle for Pakistan’s soul, and these groups are recruiting from Punjab, is Punjab in danger from jihadism? And how will the state tackle this?
A: Punjab is in no danger. There was no resistance against this recruitment, so yes, they were recruited from Punjab. The militant organisations in Pakistan never had much support among the masses, despite the recruitment from these areas. But no political roots.
Radical Islamic parties in the Middle East have deep roots in the people. Here they are recruited for certain purposes. In the frontier, the recruitment is directly linked to Afghanistan. But in Punjab, the most popular political party is the PPP. There is also no Taliban movement there. There are militant organisations and they are recruiting, but many of these organisations are sitting in Waziristan. The major commanders are in Waziristan.
Q: Musharraf made the first break with the jihadis?
A: The January 12, 2002 speech by Musharraf was a huge shift. For any Pakistan leader, a complete break from militant groups is difficult. Because of India. But after 2001, the support by Pakistan’s establishment for these groups had begun to wane. But there was ambivalence. But in 2007, the same military raided a mosque to flush them out. They are now branded as enemies of Pakistan. The environment has changed. They have declared jihad. The international and regional environments have changed. The reality of Pakistan has changed. Three-four hundred soldiers were killed in Swat, and they were beheaded. How can the army go back to shake their hands now?

WMD hyperbole and a reckless disregard for human life in Iraq

The Guardian

the familiar but false claim that Saddam had, and had used, weapons of mass destruction (Thanks to this ‘illegal’ war, Iraqis at last have real hope for the future, 27 January). What Saddam had and used – including, despicably, against Kurdish civilians at Halabja – were battlefield chemical weapons. As Robin Cook pointed out in his resignation speech in 2003, battlefield chemical weapons are not weapons of mass destruction (even if Saddam had still possessed them, which he no longer did). A weapon of mass destruction, properly so called, is one that can kill a hundred thousand or a million people in a single strike, which fortunately Saddam never possessed. It is debasing the language to use this hyperbolic term to refer to battlefield munitions, however unpleasant.

Professor David Turner

Canterbury, Kent

• William Shawcross states that after resolution 1441, weapons inspectors were still denied unfettered access in Iraq. This is contradictory to Hans Blix’s account (Blair sold Iraq on WMD, but only regime change adds up, 15 December 2009), which says "Iraq became more co-operative and showed no defiance that could prompt the authorising of armed force".

Bernard Duggan

Chatham, Kent

• It is disingenuous to blame Iraqi deaths on "other Muslims". In the first days of occupation the Coalition Provisional Authority systematically dismantled all forms of order and administration in the country. The Iraqi national guard was disbanded. Weapon dumps were left unguarded. The oil ministry was secured. It showed nothing less than a reckless disregard for human life.

Laurence Rowe

Manchester

• As Andy Beckett says in his fascinating article on the Chilcot inquiry (Called to account, G2, 28 January), "around 8am, a tiny, polite queue begins to form in the icy gloom outside the conference centre". But why outside? The conference centre is easily large enough to accommodate the queue in the warmth inside. On the cold day we queued, the doors remained closed until an hour before the session started. Why is the public punished in this way for taking an interest?

Chris and Betty Birch

London

• One of the most dispiriting things about Lord Goldsmith receiving ­taxpayer-funded legal advice to "help" him prepare his testimony to the Chilcot inquiry (Report, 27 January) is that it comes from a government which has systematically slashed legal aid. Any ordinary member of the public, before getting legal aid, would have to show that it was is in the interest of justice for the award to be made, and the applicant would then be means-tested. Goldsmith would be unlikely to qualify on either count.

Greg Foxsmith

Solicitor, Shearman Bowen and Co

Indian Propaganda–Magnifying Your Enemies to Scare the Sheep

[The following article from India-Defense is two years old, but it is highly relevant to the game being played today.  Like so many other articles I have read on that particular forum, it is highly belligerent, and laughable to the extreme.  The author is completely "ate-up" with his own paranoia, imagining all of India's real and imaginary enemies joined together encircling India in a deadly ring of nuclear fire, armed to the teeth with long range missiles and a common will to risk global thermonuclear war to eliminate the Hindu state.  The analyst even suggests the type of imaginary nuclear warhead the Saudis possess in his feverish imagination.

All of this is to scare the starving, toilet-less, suffering locals so badly that they will allow the Indian government to waste billions of rupees more on an unnecessary military build-up, instead of fixing the grave inequality-based human suffering in the Indian heartland. It should be a war crime to sell weaponry or nuclear reactors to a state that maintains such class or religion-based discrimination as does India and Israel. You see, Indian leaders, like American and Israeli leaders are without either conscience or compassion and have a hunger to dominate entire regions of the world.  It is a disgrace to all life and to the Great Creator of it all, that such people lead the nations today.

It's time to get rid of them all.]

5000 Pakistani Islamic Jehadis Ready To Infiltrate Into Kashmir

NewsBlaze reports according to the India Army perhaps as many as 5,000 well trained Islamic militants in Pakistan or in the part of Kashmir controlled by Pakistan are ready to attempt infiltration into India.

If successful, it would definitely turn the low level fourth war between the two governments (since 1947) into a full scale conflict. The current Islamic uprising began in November 1989 and is supported by Tehran-Islamabad. Two other governments, Beijing-Riyadh are also ready to enter. During the mid-1980s the House of Saud purchased from China 50-60 intermediate range CSS-2 ballistic missiles that have a range of 2,500 miles (4,000 km), the purchase was mentioned by Reuters on Feb. 15, 2004 and several years previously by Proceedings magazine of the U.S. Naval Institute.

Beijing-Riyadh have said the warheads are conventional, but Riyadh has refused Washington permission to have the missiles inspected. There is a small nuclear warhead, I believe designated W-88, that could be on the missile. November last year China’s Ambassador to India stated publicly northeast India-Arunachal Pradesh is Chinese territory. Delhi rejected his statement but in December China-Pakistan had joint maneuvers west of Kashmir.

This past February Pakistan President General Pervez Musharraf presented Tehran his offensive “Action Plan” and it was Musharraf in 1999 who planned and led the Kargil Probe that caught Delhi by surprise. Tehran held offensive maneuvers all over Iran nearly all of last year signaling their readiness to enter the war against the second most important enemy of the Jihad, the most important being the West, the Islamic world’s main international rival. China played a leading role in arming Islamic countries with nuclear – ballistic missile technology, or sent it though Pyongyang, because Beijing knew if Iran and the Jihad are successful then three of China’s rivals will become weaker, the West-India-Russia. September is the best month for war to begin in South Asia due to the end of the monsoon season.

India’s General Officer Commanding in Chief, Northern Army Command Lieutenant-General H S Panag stated the militants will attempt to attack Indian army and police forces. “The strength of soldiers at sensitive positions along the frontiers with Pakistan has been increased to thwart any bid by militants to infiltrate into Kashmir.”

He added, “…infiltration bids have registered a slight increase during the last eight months of this year as compared to the corresponding period last year.” I suspect some of the Central Asia warlords in Uzbekistan-Afghanistan may also invade India through their historical invasion route the Khyber Pass. There are also Islamic Jihad units in Bangladesh who are waiting to join the war.

Israel is NOT and Never was a Democracy

eileen fleming “President Barack Obama, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton and the U.S. are fully committed to a comprehensive peace in the Middle East,” US special envoy to the Middle East George Mitchell told reporters following his latest meeting with Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas while in the Jordanian capital of Amman.Mitchell’s remarks come just a few days after President Obama said the U.S. administration had “overestimated” their ability to persuade the Israelis and Palestinians to resume “meaningful” peace talks. On January 24, 2010, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, persisted in Israel’s policy of laying claim by establishing “facts on the ground” in the West Bank during a tree planting ceremony in the Gush Etzion colony/settlement bloc, ”Our message is clear: We are planting here, we will stay here, we will build here, this place will be an inseparable part of the State of Israel for eternity.”[1] In 1973, Ariel Sharon predicted, “We’ll make a pastrami sandwich of them. We’ll insert a strip of Jewish settlement, right across the West Bank, so that in 25 years time, neither the United Nations, nor the United States, nobody, will be able to tear it apart.” The 2003 peace “road map” obliged Israel to freeze “all settlement activity” and the World Court ruled that Israeli settlements in the West Bank and East Jerusalem are all illegal. Jewish settlers claim a God-given right to the West Bank, which they call by the biblical names Judea and Samaria but they ignore what their Torah commands: “From Moses to Jeremiah and Isaiah, the Prophets taught…that the Jewish claim on the land of Israel was totally contingent on the moral and spiritual life of the Jews who lived there, and that the land would, as the Torah tells us, ‘vomit you out’ if people did not live according to the highest moral vision of Torah. Over and over again, the Torah repeated its most frequently stated mitzvah [command]: “When you enter your land, do not oppress the stranger; the other, the one who is an outsider of your society, the powerless one and then not only ‘you shall love your neighbor as yourself’ but also ‘you shall love the other.’” [2] On January 22, 2010, Stephen M. Walt, esteemed Professor of international relations at Harvard University affirmed that Mideast special envoy George Mitchell, maybe the only politician in recent memory “to be universally admired in the United States” but warned if he wants to keep “his reputation intact, it is time for him to resign because he is wasting his time” vis a vie reaching a resolution to the six decades of conflict in Israel Palestine. Walt sited,Joe Klein’s report in the Times, that President Obama’s commitment to achieving a two states solution has failed and “this is as intractable a problem as you get.” [3] On January 24, 2010, James M. Wall, a Contributing Editor of The Christian Century magazine, wrote, “My dictionary says an intractable problem is that which is not easily governed, managed, directed, manipulated, relieved or cured. It does not say the problem is impossible to solve. What would make this particular problem impossible to solve is for the President to continue down the road he has followed in his first year in office. It is time for some serious policy overhauling. It is time to face the ghosts of the past. When it is time for some serious ghost busting, who you gonna call? I suggest Mitchell try a new perspective. Call Henry Siegman.” [4] In the January 7, 2010 edition of The Nation, Seigman noted, ”Israel has crossed the threshold from ‘the only democracy in the Middle East’ to the only apartheid regime in the Western world. “In short, Middle East peacemaking efforts will continue to fail, and the possibility of a two-state solution will disappear, if US policy continues to ignore developments on the ground in the occupied territories and within Israel, which now can be reversed only through outside intervention. President Obama is uniquely positioned to help Israel reclaim Jewish and democratic ideals on which the state was founded–if he does not continue ‘politics as usual.’” [5] Israel is not-and never has been a Democracy! In the May 28, 1993 edition of Yedioth Ahronoth, Ariel Sharon explained: “The terms ‘democracy’ or ‘democratic’ are totally absent from the Declaration of Independence. This is not an accident. The intention of Zionism was not to bring democracy, needless to say. It was solely motivated by the creation in Eretz-Isrel of a Jewish state belonging to all the Jewish people and to the Jewish people alone. This is why any Jew of the Diaspora has the right to immigrate to Israel and to become a citizen of Israel.” Jeff Halper, American Israeli, co-founder and coordinator of Israeli Committee Against House Demolitions and Professor of Anthropology, explains: “An ethnocracy is the opposite of a democracy, although it might incorporate some elements of democracy such as universal citizenship and elections. It arises when one particular group-the Jews in Israel, the Russians in Russia, the Protestants in pre-1972 Northern Ireland, the whites in apartheid South Africa, the Shi’ite Muslims in Iran, the Malay in Malaysia and, if they had their way, the white Christian fundamentalists in the US-seize control of the government and armed forces in order to enforce a regime of exclusive privilege over other groups in what is in fact a multi-ethnic or multi-religious society. Ethnocracy, or ethno-nationalism, privileges ethnos over demos, whereby one’s ethnic affiliation, be it defined by race, descent, religion, language or national origin, takes precedence over citizenship in determining to whom a county actually ‘belongs.’”[6] The Declaration of the Establishment of the State of Israel was signed May 14, 1948 the day the British Mandate over Palestine expired and which affirms that the state of Israel: “Will be based on freedom, justice, and peace as envisioned by the prophets of Israel: it will ensure complete equality of social and political rights to all its inhabitants irrespective of religion…and will guarantee freedom of religion, conscience, education and culture: it will safeguard the Holy places of all religions, and it will be faithful to the principals of the Charter of the United Nations.” In a 2005 interview with Jeff Halper, he informed this reporter: “Israel has no constitution but has a Declaration of Independence which promised that Israel would abide by conditions and UN resolutions. They have not fulfilled the agreement which was the basis of their independence.” The Constitution of the United States of America is the supreme law and very foundation and source of legal authority that underlies the very existence of these United States and the federal government. The US Constitution provides the framework for the organization of the federal government and under pins the relationship of the federal government to the states and all its citizens/people within these United States. Jeff Halper hit another nail on the head when he wrote that the ”entire conflict with the Palestinians has been reduced to one consideration: personal security…Israeli Jews prefer peace and compromise, but only if they are convinced that their prime preoccupation-security- has been credibly addressed.” [7] So, let’s address it! The brutal truth is that only if we truly love our friends will we always be honest with them and we call them on their bad behavior! There will never be security for Israeli Jews without justice for the indigenous people of the so called holy land which has been disseminated into Bantustans-disconnected enclaves populated by human beings who have been justice: equal and inalienable human rights due to colonialism, imperialism, military might and Zionism, which have been aided and abetted by American Government foreign policy and billions of USA Taxpayers bucks! “Since the October War in 1973, Washington has provided Israel with a level of support dwarfing the amounts provided to any other state. It has been the largest annual recipient of direct U.S. economic and military assistance since 1976 and the largest total recipient since World War ll. Total direct U.S. aid to Israel amounts to well over $140 billion in 2003 dollars. Israel receives about $3 billion in direct foreign assistance each year, which is roughly one-fifth of America’s entire foreign aid budget. In per capita terms, the United States gives each Israeli a direct subsidy worth about $500 per year. This largesse is especially striking when one realizes that Israel is now a wealthy industrial state with a per capita income roughly equal to South Korea or Spain.”[8] Just before Christmas 2010, President Obama, signed into law the biggest aid pledge of the year. NOT for struggling countries on the World Bank’s list, not for we the people without health care, but another $3 billion for Israel in 2010 and an extra $30 billion over the next decade! It is past time for the US to comprehend that the Israeli-Palestinian affects the entire world and is at the very root of Anti-Semitic and Anti-American sentiment and this conflict is not and never has been between equals! In 2005, Jeff Halper  also informed this reporter: “Tony Blair said 70% of all the conflicts in the world can be traced back to the Israeli Palestinian conflict. What gives us hope is that as this conflict worsens maybe Europe will figure out that American policies are against their interests and intervene…This conflict impacts the global community and especially everyone in the USA. “If we do fix this conflict it would be a tremendous step forward in global reconciliation…This whole issue is based on Human Rights and it is a global issue requiring global intervention. “It has been said that the Israelis do not love this land, they just want to possess it. There have been three stages to make this occupation permanent. The first was to establish the facts on the ground; the settlements. There are ½ million Israeli’s and four million Palestinians here. They have been forced into Bantustan; truncated mini states; prison states. It is apartheid and Bush and Hillary are both willing collaborators. “In 1977, Sharon came in with a mandate, money and resources to make the Israeli presence in the West Bank irreversible. The second stage began in April 2004 when America approved the Apartheid/Convergence/Realignment Plan and eight settlement blocs. This is just like South Africa! The Bush Sharon letter exchange guaranteed that the USA considers the settlements non-negotiable. The Convergence Plan and The Wall create the borders and that is what defines Bantustans. Congress ratified the Bush plan and only Senator Byrd of West Virginia voted no and nine House Representatives. “Israel has set up a matrix of control; a thick web of settlements guaranteed to make the occupation permanent by establishing facts on the ground. Israel denies there is an occupation, so everything is reduced to terrorism. It is our job to insist upon the human rights issue, for occupied people have International Law on their side. “Israel is not a democracy, it is an ethnocracy: full rights to Jews, but not Palestinians.” [9] In my video interview with the Whistle blower of Israel’s WMD Program, Mordechai Vanunu, taped a few weeks after his Freedom of Speech Trial began in Jerusalem, he stated: “It’s very sad that Hilary Clinton went to the Jewish Wailing Wall and forgot the real crying wall is the Palestinian wall; the apartheid wall, the wall is not for defense, but to keep this conflict permanent. “The Israelis have 200 atomic weapons and they accuse the Palestinians and Muslims of terrorism. “Israel is only a democracy if you are a Jew.” [10] On November 8, 2006, Dr. Ilan Pappe, spoke in East Jerusalem, during Sabeel’s [www.sabeel.org] 6th International Conference: The Forgotten Faithful: AKA Palestinian Christians. Dr. Pappe spoke about the “Dynamics of Forgetting” and it is past time to remember that in Tel Aviv ”on March 10, 1948, eleven men had a meeting in the Red House headed by Ben Gurion. The eleven decided to expel one million Palestinians from historical Palestine. No minutes were taken, but many memoirs were written about that fateful meeting. A systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns. “The Red House in Tel Aviv is gone now. It was a typical building in Tel Aviv that had all the characteristics of Mediterranean homes but with the local Palestinian architecture of the ’20′s. Today a USA Sheraton Hotel stands in its place. The Red House was the home of the Hagganah; a Jewish underground organization but before 1948 it was the home of a socialist movement, from which it received its name.” Haganah is Hebrew for “The Defense” and was a Jewish paramilitary organization formed in what was then the British Mandate for Palestine from 1920 to 1948. In the period between 1920 and 1929, the Haganah lacked a strong central authority or coordination; Haganah “units” were very localized and poorly armed and consisted mainly of Jewish farmers who took turns guarding their farms or their kibbutzim. Following the Arab 1929 Hebron massacre that led to the ethnic cleansing by the British authorities of all Jews from the city of Hebron, the Haganah’s role changed dramatically. It became a much larger organization encompassing nearly all the youth and adults in the Jewish settlements, as well as thousands of members from the cities. It also acquired foreign arms and began to develop workshops to create hand grenades and simple military equipment. It went from being an untrained militia to a capable army. The British did not officially recognize the Haganah, but British security forces cooperated with them and by 1931, the most right-wing elements of Haganah branched off and formed the Irgun Tsva’i-Leumi: The National Military Organization. The Irgun were discontented with the policy of restraint when faced with British and Arab pressure and were “terrorists” in their own right. The Irgun later split in 1940, and their offshoot became known as the “Lehi” a Hebrew acronym of Lochamei Herut Israel, known as the Freedom Fighters of Israel and also the “Stern Gang” after its leader, Abraham Stern. The groups had different functions, but all served to move the British out of Palestine and to make Palestine a Jewish state rather than create a Jewish home in Palestine. Menachem Begin, an Irgun commander, stated in a 1944 meeting: “In fact, there is a division of roles; One organization advocates individual terrorism (the Lehi), the other conducts sporadic military operations (the Irgun) and there is a third organization which prepares itself to throw its final weight in the decisive war.” Dr. Pappe explained that in 1948, the ”systematic ethnic cleansing of Palestine began and within seven months the Zionists managed to expel one half of all the Palestinian people from their villages and towns. “The New York Times followed Israeli troops and reported the truth of the expulsion and separation of men and women, and of the many massacres. The world was well informed in 1948, but a year later not a trace was reported in the USA press or books. It was as if nothing ever happened. “From March to October 1948 the USA State Department stated what was happening was a CRIME against humanity and ethnic cleansing. When ever one ethnic group expels another group they should be treated as War Criminals and the victims should be allowed to return. “This is never mentioned in the USA about Palestine. “Israel is so successful in their ethnic cleansing because the world doesn’t care! The ethnic cleansing continues via the apartheid policies of the Israeli government and because of the denial of the truth by the USA media. “To claim Israel is the only democracy in the Middle East is bullshit! The Six Day War of 1967 escalated the ethnic cleansing and today in Jerusalem every Palestinian who fails to pay taxes, or has a minor infraction will loose their citizenship. “In 1948 the mechanism of denial and ethnic cleansing as an IDEOLOGY, not a policy but a formula began. When Zionism began in the 19th century it was meant to be a safe haven for Jews and to help redefine Judaism as a national movement, not just a religion. Nothing wrong with either of those goals! “But by the late 19th Century it was decided the only way these goals could be achieved was by ridding the indigenous population and it became an evil ideology. “Israeli Jewish life will never be simple, good, or worth living while this ideology of domination, exclusiveness and superiority is allowed to continue. The mind set today is that unless Israel is an exclusive Jewish State, Palestinians will continue to be obstacles. However, there has always been a small vocal minority challenging this. “The only thing that can save Palestinians is for the world to say ENOUGH is ENOUGH!” In his book, “Later Years” Albert Einstein wrote: “This is a time when there seems to be a particular need for men of philosophical persuasion—that is to say, friends of wisdom and truth—to join together…We Jews should be, and remain, the carriers and patrons of spiritual values. But we should also always be aware of the fact that these spiritual values are and always have been the common goal of mankind.” [Page 268] The truth is often brutal, but if the US truly desires Israel to be secure and also be known as an honest broker for peace in the Middle East, we must first know the truth and then always speak our mind, for as William Blake penned: “Opposition is True Friendship” and enough has become more than enough! 1. http://haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1144702.html 2. Rabbi Lerner, TIKKUN Magazine, page 35, Sept./Oct. 2007 3. http://walt.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2010/01/22/time_for_george_mitchell_to_resign 4. http://wallwritings.wordpress.com/2010/01/24/mitchell-and-the-intractable-time-to-call-in-henry-siegman/ 5. http://www.thenation.com/doc/20100125/siegman 6. Jeff Halper, An Israeli in Palestine: Resisting Dispossession, Redeeming Israel, Page 74 7. An Israeli in Palestine, Pages 65-66. Pluto Press, 2008 8. John J. Mearsheimer and Stephen M. Walt “The Israel Lobby and U.S. Foreign Policy” 9. Eileen Fleming, Memoirs of a Nice Irish-American ‘Girl’s’ Life in Occupied Territory 10. “30 Minutes with Vanunu” streaming @ http://wearewideawake.org/ Only in Solidarity do “we have it in our power to begin the world again.”-Tom Paine Eileen Fleming, Founder of WeAreWideAwake.org