Showing posts with label False Flag Terror. Show all posts
Showing posts with label False Flag Terror. Show all posts

November 28, 2009

A key British official reminds us of the forgotten anthrax attack

November 27, 2009

Britain is currently engulfed by a probing, controversial investigation into how their Government came to support the invasion of Iraq, replete with evidence that much of what was said at the time by both British and American officials was knowingly false, particularly regarding the unequivocal intention of the Bush administration to attack Iraq for months when they were pretending otherwise. Yesterday, the British Ambassador to the U.S. in 2002 and 2003, Sir Christopher Meyer (who favored the war), testified before the investigative tribunal and said this:

Meyer said attitudes towards Iraq were influenced to an extent not appreciated by him at the time by the anthrax scare in the US soon after 9/11. US senators and others were sent anthrax spores in the post, a crime that led to the death of five people, prompting policymakers to claim links to Saddam Hussein. . . .

On 9/11 Condoleezza Rice, then the US national security adviser, told Meyer she was in "no doubt: it was an al-Qaida operation" . . . It seemed that Paul Wolfowitz, Rumsfeld's deputy, argued for retaliation to include Iraq, Meyer said. . . .

But the anthrax scare had "steamed up" policy makers in Bush's administration and helped swing attitudes against Saddam, who the administration believed had been the last person to use anthrax.

I've written many times before about how the anthrax attack played at least as large of a role as the 9/11 attack itself, if not larger, in creating the general climate of fear that prevailed for years in the U.S. and specifically how the anthrax episode was exploited by leading media and political figures to gin up intense hostility towards Iraq (a few others have argued the same). That's why it's so striking how we've collectively flushed this terrorist attack down the memory hole as though it doesn't exist. When Dana Perino boasted this week on Fox News that "we did not have a terrorist attack on our country during President Bush’s term," most of the resulting derision focused on the 9/11 attack while ignoring -- as always -- the anthrax attack.

What makes this particularly significant is that the anthrax attack is unresolved and uninvestigated. The FBI claimed last year that it had identified the sole perpetrator, Bruce Ivins, but because Ivins is dead, they never had the opportunity -- or the obligation -- to prove their accusations in any meaningful tribunal. The case against Ivins is so riddled with logical and evidentiary holes that it has generated extreme doubts not merely from typical government skeptics but from the most mainstream, establishment-revering, and ideologically disparate sources. Just consider some of the outlets and individuals who have stated unequivocally that the FBI's case against Ivinis is unpersausive and requires a meaningful investigation: The Washington Post Editorial Page; The New York Times Editorial Page; The Wall St. Journal Editorial Page; the science journal Nature; Senators Pat Leahy, Arlen Specter and Charles Grassley; physicist and Congressman Rush Holt, whose New Jersey district was where the anthrax letters were sent; Dr. Alan Pearson, Director of the Biological and Chemical Weapons Control Program at the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation; and a vast array of scientific and legal experts in the field.

Here we have one of the most consequential political events of the last decade at least -- a lethal biological terrorist attack aimed at key U.S. Senators and media figures, which even the FBI claims originated from a U.S. military lab. The then-British Ambassador to the U.S. is now testifying what has long been clear: that this episode played a huge role in enabling the attack on Iraq. Even our leading mainstream, establishment-serving media outlets -- and countless bio-weapons experts -- believe that we do not have real answers about who perpetrated this attack and how. And there is little apparent interest in investigating in order to find out. Evidently, this is just another one of those things that we'll relegate to "the irrelevant past," and therefore deem it unworthy of attention from our future-gazing, always-distracted minds.

UPDATE: Marcy Wheeler notes that the FBI has become increasingly defiant towards requests that its claims be reviewed by an independent panel; of course, that couldn't happen unless the White House and Congress permitted it to.

November 27, 2009

American suspect in Mumbai attack claimed CIA links

DAVID HEADLEY, MUMBAI SUSPECT, WORKED FOR THE DRUG ENFORCEMENT ADMINISTRATION

Aangarifan Reports - November 21, 2009

FBI officials have alleged that an American called David Coleman Headley was involved in the 26/11 hotel attacks in Mumbai in 2008.

David headley's mother is an American called Serril Headley. (David Coleman Headley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Serril was a well known night spot owner in Philadelphia.

Serril got custody of David in 1977.

In 1997 David headley was jailed for 15 months for heroin smuggling. (David Coleman Headley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

Later he went to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration.

Around this time he may have been taken over by the CIA?

David Headley is suspected of traveling to India to scout locations for the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

He reportedly posed as a Jew to scout the Nariman House synagogue.

He made multiple visits to India before and after the 2008 Mumbai attacks.

David Headley was born Daood Gilani.

His father was a prominent Pakistani diplomat.

David Headley is accused of reporting to Ilyas Kashmiri, a former Pakistani military officer associated with Al Qaeda (the CIA) (David Coleman Headley - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia)

David Headley is described by the New York Times as An Accused Plotter With Feet in East and West

According to the New York Times:

David Headley was born in Washington.

David Headley, at the age of 17, went to live with his American mother, a former socialite who ran a bar.

Today, David Headley's wife and children live in Chicago.


Mumbai - Indian Newspaper: American Suspect Eyed In Chabad House Attack, Might Be A CIA Double Agent

Voz Iz Neias
November 26, 2009
Excerpts

During his interactions in India, Headley frequently introduced himself as a CIA agent. [...]

A recent profile in the New York Times said that in 1998, Headley (then known as Daood Gilani) was convicted of conspiring to smuggle heroin into US from Pakistan. ``Court records show that after his arrest, he provided so much information about his own involvement with drug trafficking which stretched back more than a decade and about his Pakistani suppliers that he was sentenced to less than two years in jail and later went to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA)," the NYT report said.

This suggests that Headley had a deal with authorities in the US who allowed him to get away with mild punishment in exchange for a promise of cooperation.

To many here, that also implies that he was a known entity to the counter-terror and drug enforcement authorities in the US. After 9/11, the walls between these agencies had come down because of the links between drugs and terrorism, particularly in the context of Pakistan-Afghanistan where there is a huge overlap between the functions of the DEA and CIA. Surprisingly, the FBI affidavit against Headley doesn't mention his tryst with the DEA.

[...]

Headley, by his own confession, joined Lashkar-e-Taiba in 2006 and received training in one of the terror camps run by the jihadi outfit.

... US agencies were perhaps aware that last year, Headley was in India to recce [sic] targets for a Lashkar attack that it had originally planned for September -- as confirmed by Ajbal Kasab in his testimony -- and which was finally carried out on 26/11. Rather, they also suspect that Headley might have been the source of information that helped Americans warn of the attack planned for September last year.

In their warning, which was passed on to Maharashtra government by Intelligence Bureau, the Americans had said that prominent installations in Mumbai were on the jihadis' target. As a matter of fact, the FBI alert made a specific mention of Taj and other hotels -- Marriott, Land's End and Sea Rock.

[...]

Suspicions are getting stronger as Americans delay giving Indian investigators access to Headley.

... during interactions on the issue, FBI has been unusually cagey about discussing Headley in detail ...

November 25, 2009

Israel police arrest Mossad agent planting car bomb in Tel Aviv

BBC News
November 24, 2009 23:29 CST

A trainee spy for Israel's secret service agency Mossad was arrested by Tel Aviv police while taking part in a training operation, media reports say.

The young trainee was spotted by a female passer-by as he planted a fake bomb under a vehicle in the city.

He was only able to persuade police he was a spy after being taken in by an officer for questioning on Monday.

The authorities have refused to comment on the story although Israeli media outlets have expressed their surprise.

'Just a drill'

Mossad does not tell local uniformed police about its training exercises.

The country's commercial Channel 10 said it hoped the agency's operatives were "more effective abroad", AFP news agency reported.

Niva Ben-Harush, the woman who reported the novice's suspicious behaviour to police, told Ynet News that 15 minutes after she made the call, Tel Aviv's port was closed and people evacuated.

She said police initially asked her to come with them and identify the suspect.

"But after a few minutes, they told me it was just a drill," she said..

Up to three agency employees were believed to have been suspended following the incident, Ynet reported.

It quoted the prime minister's office as saying it did "not respond to information about such activities undertaken by security agencies or attributed to them".

Source

November 22, 2009

Secret files show UK courts were misled over 9/11 suspect Lotfi Raissi

By Paul Lewis
The Guardian
November 22, 2009

Lotfi Raissi

Lotfi Raissi, the Algerian wrongly accused of training pilots involved in the 9/11 terrorist attacks in New York. Photograph: Martin Argles/The Guardian

British prosecutors failed to disclose crucial evidence to the courts in the aftermath of the September 11 terrorist attacks in a case that resulted in an innocent pilot being jailed for five months, previously unseen documents reveal.

Lotfi Raissi, an Algerian living in the UK, was the first person in the world to be arrested after the 2001 attacks in New York and Washington DC. Accused of being the "lead" instructor of the 9/11 hijackers, Raissi, 27, was held in Belmarsh high security prison awaiting extradition to the United States.

In a landmark announcement, Jack Straw, the justice secretary, is shortly expected to reveal whether the UK government will accept responsibility for the miscarriage of justice and pay Raissi compensation.

The Guardian has obtained classified documents produced by the FBI and anti-terrorist officials in the UK after the 9/11 attacks which shed new light on how the courts were misled. They include:

• A report by the Crown Prosecution Service (CPS) into the way its staff handled the case, revealing prosecutors made unfounded allegations about Raissi's involvement in 9/11 on the basis of an oral briefing from two FBI agents outside court.

• A confidential letter from Scotland Yard's anti-terrorist branch to the CPS two months before Raissi was released, back-tracking on the key allegation that was being used in court to link Raissi to a senior al-Qaida suspect linked to Osama bin Laden.

• Memorandums from the FBI to anti-terrorist officials in the UK, revealing 9/11 investigators never wanted Raissi to be arrested and were informed about the unreliability of the evidence against him months before the courts were told.

Ministers were forced to consider Raissi's claim for damages after a ruling by the court of appeal last year that found there was evidence that Scotland Yard and the CPS had circumvented "the rule of English law" in what judges believed would amount to a serious abuse of process.

Now 35, Raissi still lives in the UK but says he has been unable to rebuild his life. He has been forced to abandon his promising career as a commercial pilot.

The FBI became interested in Raissi days after the attacks because he trained at the same Arizona flight school as Hani Hanjour, the hijacker who piloted the plane that crashed into the Pentagon.

Despite a specific plea from the FBI not to arrest Raissi but to gather information about him discreetly, anti-terrorist officers from the Metropolitan police stormed his house in Berkshire on September 21 on suspicion of the terrorist attacks 10 days earlier.

Rather than release Raissi when it emerged there was insufficient evidence to charge him, law enforcement officials in the UK colluded with the FBI to obtain a warrant for his extradition. There was no evidence to justify a warrant for terrorism, so Raissi was requested on charges relating to an allegation that he failed to disclose his knee surgery in a pilot application.

In court, the CPS said the pilot application allegations were mere "holding charges", and said he was in fact wanted for his alleged role in a conspiracy to commit mass murder during the 9/11 attacks.

However, as their case for keeping Raissi in Belmarsh began to unravel, prosecutors introduced a new piece of evidence. They relied in successive hearings on an address book which they claimed belonged to Abu Doha, an Algerian terror suspect said to have had personal contact with Bin Laden in Afghanistan.

The address book contained a number linked to an apartment used by Raissi in Arizona, and supposedly connected him to a global terrorist conspiracy. However, two months into his incarceration at Belmarsh, anti-terrorist officers informed the CPS that they no longer believed the address book belonged to Doha, and said it was more likely to be the property of a man called Adam Kermani, who lived in Islington, north London.

Kermani, an ex-boxer, was of so little concern to police that he had never been arrested or interviewed. Kermani's name and Home Office number were written on the front of the address book, which was found in a locked briefcase at his house.

Judges were not informed of this development until February 2002, after which Raissi was released.

The FBI however had been fully briefed months earlier, writing to Scotland Yard to confirm the owner of the address book was "not Abu Doha as originally thought".

Full article

November 17, 2009

Pakistan Taliban airs video denial

Aljazeera English

November 16, 2009


Attacks that have continued across Pakistani towns and cities are being blamed on Tehreek e-Taliban, Pakistan's Taliban.

However, the group has issued its first video statement denying involvement in targeting civilians and has blamed external forces for at least two recent blasts.

Azam Tariq, a spokesman of the Tehreek e-Taliban, posted the video statement on YouTube on Monday.

The message refers to a bombing at the Islamic University in Islamabad, which the spokesman said was orchestrated to prepare the ground for a military operation in South Waziristan, a stronghold for Pakistan's Taliban fighters.

He also said his group had no role in the bomb blast in a Peshawar market that killed at least 100 people as well as an attack in Charsada, a town located in Pakistan's North West Frontier Province.

Tariq said Taliban attacks never aimed to target civilians, but that the explosions were linked to Blackwater activities in the country.

November 14, 2009

Israel Builds Monument to 9/11


US-Israel identity crisis


November 13, 2009

A friend seizes on an aside in a piece in Haaretz:

"Speaking near Jerusalem during the unveiling of a memorial for the victims of
the 9/11 terror attack in the United States, Olmert added that there was a
clear difference between terrorists and the countries that fight them."

One of those puzzling background noises that make you stop, rewind, and replay to make sure. So a memorial for the victims of the September 11 bombings is now a public monument in Jerusalem. What is it doing there? Why should this surprise us less than, say, a Pearl Harbor Monument in Sydney, a Fort Sumter Remembrance Tabernacle in Paris, or a Coventry Blitz Museum in Culver City?

Source

November 12, 2009

Goa bombers tried to leave Muslim imprint

By Prashant Rangnekar
Indian Express
November 8, 2009

Investigators believe that the Sanatan Sanstha men who were killed while allegedly planting bombs in Goa during Diwali celebrations last month were hoping to fan communal tensions by misleading the police through items they wanted to leave behind at the site: a shopping bag from a shop in ‘Khan Market’, Delhi, a bottle of traditional perfume popular among Muslims and an empty bag of branded Basmati rice on which all the words were in Urdu.

The items were recovered by police from the site of the crude bomb blast in Margao on October 16 in which two Sanatan members, Malgounda Patil and Yogesh Naik, were killed. It was found after investigations and the subsequent arrest of two men suspected to be linked to Patil and Naik that they were allegedly carrying these items to leave them behind at the blast site and signal a Muslim hand.

“The material was enough to spark communal trouble in Margao and extremist elements from outside would have found it easy to aggravate it,” said an officer who spoke on the condition of anonymity.

Margao, Goa’s main commercial city, is represented by Chief Minister Digambar Kamat in the state Assembly and has a large Muslim population. Kamat, incidentally, was near the site of the blast, taking part in the Diwali celebrations but was not hurt.

The alleged plan to indicate the bomb blast to be the handiwork of Muslim groups had echoes of the Malegaon bomb blast last year, the officer said. Members of Hindu extremist group Abhinav Bharat, who have been accused for that blast, had parked the motorbike packed with the bomb below the defunct first-floor office of the outlawed Students Islamic Movement of India (SIMI).

Patil and Naik are accused of planting three bombs at the crowded Diwali celebrations in Margao and another at a celebration in Sancaole town 20 km away. Of these, only one of the bombs in Margao exploded, prematurely police say. While Patil died within hours, Naik succumbed to his injuries in hospital days later.

Patil worked as an administrator at the Ramnathi headquarters of Sanatan while Naik, a teacher at a school for mentally challenged students, supplied milk to the organisation and circulated its mouthpiece Sanatan Prabhat.

Subsequently, the Special Investigating Team constituted by the Goa police to probe the blast arrested Vinay Talekar and Vinayak Patil, alleging that they were linked to the conspiracy. Sanatan has denied it had anything to do with the blast.

October 30, 2009

Taliban in Pakistan blame U.S. Blackwater for deadly blast

2009-10-29 22:24:06

ISLAMABAD - (Xinhua) - Chief of Taliban movement in Pakistan Hakimullah Mehsud has blamed the controversial American private firm Blackwater for the bomb blast in Peshawar which killed 108 people, local news agency NNI reported Thursday.

The bomb exploded at a crowded market at Chowk Yadgar on Wednesday, also injured 150 people.

Hakimullah Mehsud told media that if Taliban can carry out attacks in Islamabad and target Pakistan army's headquarters, then why they should target general public.

He claimed that American security agency Blackwater and Pakistani agencies are involved in attacks in public places to blame the militants.

When asked that the people also think that the militants are involved in such attacks, the Taliban leader was quoted as saying, "Our war is against the government and the security forces and not against the people. We are not involved in blasts."

Azam Tariq, the Taliban spokesman, who was accompanying Hakimullah, warned that those media organizations could be targeted which are defaming Taliban.

Information Minister in Northwest Frontier Province Mian Iftikhar Hussain and the Pakistani army spokesman Major General Athar Abbas had blamed militants for the Peshawar blast, saying that the militants are facing defeat in South Waziristan tribal region and are now targeting the people.

October 26, 2009

Leader: Foreigners behind regional terror attacks

Press TV - October 26, 2009 11:16:25 GMT

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei

Leader of the Islamic Revolution Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei says terrorist attacks in Muslim countries like Iran, Iraq and Pakistan are carried out by foreign agents.

"Bloody measures in some Muslim countries such as Iraq and Pakistan and certain parts of Iran are aimed at creating discord and difference among Shia and Sunni Muslims," said Ayatollah Khamenei in a meeting with Iranian officials in charge of organizing Hajj ceremonies on Monday.

"This is why Muslims should pay great attention to the issue of their unity," added the Leader.

"Perpetrators of terrorist and bloody moves are directly or indirectly linked to foreign agents," the Leader said.

Ayatollah Khamenei said that the Hajj pilgrims cannot remain indifferent to events happening in the Muslim world particularly in Iraq, Afghanistan, Palestine and parts of Pakistan.

"During Hajj ceremonies, [the pilgrims] should be sensitive about moves against the Islamic unity or efforts which aim to offense the flag of the Muslim world which has been hoisted in Iran," added the Leader.

The Leader's remarks came after at least 41 people, including seven senior commanders of the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC), were killed in a bombing on October 18 during a unity gathering of Shia and Sunni tribal leaders in the town of Pishin on the Iran-Pakistan border.

The Pakistan-based Jundallah, closely affiliated with the notorious al-Qaeda [CIA] organization, accepted responsibility for the deadly attack.

The Jundallah terrorist group, led by Abdolmalek Rigi, has staged a torrent of terrorist attacks in Iran.

In a recent interview with Press TV, Rigi's brother, Abdulhamid, confirmed that the Jundallah leader had established links with US agents.

Abdulhamid said that at just one of his meetings with the US operatives, Rigi had received $100,000 to foment sectarian strife in Iran.

Meanwhile, synchronized car bombings in Baghdad on Sunday killed more than 160 people and injured over 700 others.

The bombings, detonated within a minute of each other, also damaged the Justice Ministry and Provincial Council complexes.

October 25, 2009

Another 147 people dead in Baghdad, cui bono?

October 25, 2009 by Notsilvia Night

Once again, in one of the bloodiest attacks ever, two bombings killed and injured over 800 people. (update:In the first reports those were called suicide bombings, now we hear about car-bombs of cars parked in a parking garage.) Nearly a whole street was flattened. This surely is not the kind of destruction which can be caused by a home-made bomb, put together in some basement.

The people behind the attacks, we are told, are supposedly former supporters of the late Saddam Hussein or maybe members of AlQaida or other Sunni radical groups, supported by Syria (What interest would Syria have in destabilizing Iraq, while Syria´s ally Iran is supporting the Shiite dominated government?).

While the attacks were supposedly directed at government buildings, the people killed or maimed were mainly civilians on the street.

What kind of support could Saddam´s supporters possibly gain from the civilian population with this kind of brutal attacks against them. Do they actually think that anyone would vote for them after having lost family or friends in such an attack or being afraid the next attack might kill a loved one?

Saddam Hussein was mainly a secular politician, who opposed the Shiite religious opposition for political, not for religious reasons (the Shiite authorities were close to Iran, while Saddam on the behest of his US-supporters was fighting Iran)

During the early years of the American occupation, while some of the Shiite establishment allied themselves with the Americans, the more radical leaders of both Sunnis and Shiites called for resistance and at the same time national unity across sectarian borders.

It made no sense that Iraqis of either side would attack the civilian population of the other side while they saw the Americans still as their main enemy.
It made no sense at all that a short time into the American occupation supposedly religiously motivated attacks against mosques and public places started.

Iraqi blogger Riverbend wrote:

“Iraqis have intermarried and mixed as Sunnis and Shia for centuries. Many of the larger Iraqi tribes are a complex and intricate weave of Sunnis and Shia. We don’t sit around pointing fingers at each other and trying to prove who is a Muslim and who isn’t and who deserves compassion and who deserves brutalization.”

But they were suicide attacks, were are told, they must be real.
Really?

Here is an article by SOTT Focus on the issue:
Suicide Bombings – A Favourite US Counter-Insurgency Tactic

Roger Trinquier, an immensely influential French counter-insurgency expert, suggested in his book Modern Warfare: A French View of Counterinsurgency (1961) (Available online here) three simple principles of Counter Insurgency:

1. separate the guerrilla from the population that supports him;
2. occupy the zones that the guerrillas previously operated from, making them dangerous for him and turning the people against the guerrilla movement;
3. coordinate actions over a wide area and for a long enough time that the guerrilla is denied access to the population centres that could support him.

Remote controlled bombings masquerading as “suicide bombings” that are carried out by the US, British and Israeli occupation forces fit these principles very neatly. By detonating bombs on a daily basis across Iraq and Afghanistan and via the propaganda organs touting them as being the work of Iraqi/Afghani “suicide bombers” belonging to the insurgency, the occupying military hopes to achieve several goals:
-cut off the widespread support base that the insurgency have amongst the Iraqis
-create tensions between religious lines, especially by ascribing the faked “suicide attacks” to either Shias or Sunnis.
In other words divide and conquer.

Here is a collection of some of the reports of fake attempted “suicide attacks” coming out of Iraq:

In May 2005, former Iraqi exile Imad Khadduri, reported how a driver whose license had been confiscated in Baghdad was questioned for half an hour at an American military camp, informed that there were no charges against him, and then directed to the al-Khadimiya police station to retrieve his license.
“The driver did leave in a hurry, but was soon alarmed with a feeling that his car was…carrying a heavy load, and he also became suspicious of a low flying helicopter that kept hovering overhead, as if trailing him. He stopped the car and … found nearly 100 kilograms of explosives hidden in the back seat…the only feasible explanation for this incident is that the car was indeed booby trapped by the Americans and intended for the al-Khadimiya Shiite district of Baghdad. The helicopter was monitoring his movement and witnessing the anticipated ‘hideous attack by foreign elements’”.

(According to Khadurri, the scenario was repeated again in Mosul, when a driver’s car broke down on the way to the police station where he was sent to reclaim his license. The mechanic he then turned to discovered the spare tire to be laden with explosives.)

In the same month, 64-year-old farmer Haj Haidar, who was taking his tomato load from Hilla to Baghdad, was stopped at an American checkpoint and had his pick-up thoroughly searched. Allowed to go on his way, his 11 year-old grandson then told him he saw one of the American soldiers placing a gray melon-sized object amidst the tomato containers. Realizing the vehicle was his only means of work, Haidar fought his initial impulse to run and removed the object from his truck, placing it in a nearby ditch. He later learned that it had in fact exploded, killing part of a passing shepherd’s flock of sheep.

At this point, legendary Iraqi blogger ‘Riverbend’ reported that many of the supposed suicide bombings were in fact remotely detonated car bombs or time bombs. She related how a man was arrested for allegedly having shot at a National Guardsman after huge blasts struck in west Baghdad. But according the man’s neighbours, far from having shot anyone, he had seen “an American patrol passing through the area and pausing at the bomb site minutes before the explosion. Soon after they drove away, the bomb went off and chaos ensued. He ran out of his house screaming to the neighbors and bystanders that the Americans had either planted the bomb or seen the bomb and done nothing about it. He was promptly taken away.”

In Basra on September 19th 2005, suspicious Iraqi police stopped undercover British soldiers in a Toyota Cressida. The two men then opened fire, killing one policeman and wounding another. Eventually captured, they were identified by the BBC as members of the SAS elite special forces. The soldiers were in wigs and dressed as Arabs and their car was packed with explosives and towing equipment.
Fattah al-Shaykh, a member of the Iraqi National Assembly, told Al-Jazeera TV that the car was meant to explode in the centre of Basra’s popular market. Before his thesis could be confirmed, however, the British army’s tanks flattened the local prison cell and freed their sinister operatives.

In 2005 American and British troops were still very much engaged in fighting the Iraqi insurgency. British and American military planners probably saw it in their interest to make the resistance look bad in the eyes of the Iraqi people.

Today, however, a divided and chaotic Iraq would no longer be in the American interest, since America is busy fighting In Afghanistan and Pakistan two other endless wars.

So in who´s interest would it be?
The “militants”, we are told by Reuters about the bomb attacks on July 31, 2009 against five Shiite mosques,

al Qaeda and other Sunni insurgent groups, most active in ethnically mixed areas north of Baghdad, are trying to reignite the sectarian conflict that brought Iraq to the brink of all-out civil war in 2006 and 2007

Ask yourself who would gain from such a civil war and a divided Iraq?

Who has written policy papers proposing the need for an Iraq divided in 3 parts?

In February 1982 the Israeli policy planner and intellectual Oded Yinon wrote:
A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties

The late human rights activist Israel Shahak, who translated this policy-paper, commented:

The following essay represents, in my opinion, the accurate and detailed plan of the present Zionist regime (of Sharon and Eitan) for the Middle East which is based on the division of the whole area into small states, and the dissolution of all the existing Arab states. I will comment on the military aspect of this plan in a concluding note. Here I want to draw the attention of the readers to several important points:

1. The idea that all the Arab states should be broken down, by Israel, into small units, occurs again and again in Israeli strategic thinking. For example, Ze’ev Schiff, the military correspondent of Ha’aretz (and probably the most knowledgeable in Israel, on this topic) writes about the “best” that can happen for Israeli interests in Iraq: “The dissolution of Iraq into a Shi’ite state, a Sunni state and the separation of the Kurdish part” (Ha’aretz 6/2/1982). Actually, this aspect of the plan is very old.

2. The strong connection with Neo-Conservative thought in the USA is very prominent, especially in the author’s notes. But, while lip service is paid to the idea of the “defense of the West” from Soviet power, the real aim of the author, and of the present Israeli establishment is clear: To make an Imperial Israel into a world power. In other words, the aim of Sharon is to deceive the Americans after he has deceived all the rest.

Some of the above mentioned American Neo-Conservatives then wrote another just as revealing policy-paper for the Israeli Netanyahu government in 1996

“A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm”

5 years before 9/11, this report is calling for an invasion of Iraq.

With contributions from: Richard Perle, Douglas Feith, and David Wurmser all members of the “Study Group on a New Israeli Strategy,” and all key Iraq-war players in Bush administration.

The paper b.t.w. also calls for “engaging” Hizbollah (the tactical defense force of southern Lebanon) as well as Syria and Iran militarily.

Source

October 11, 2009

NYCCAN Ballot Access Blocked

NYCCAN communique:

October 9, 2009

Yesterday afternoon, Justice Edward Lehner of the State Supreme Court rubberstamped Referee Louis Crespo’s recommendation that the decision to establish a local commission to investigate the events of September 11th not be put before the voters on November 3rd.

After showing interest in weighing both sides’ arguments in the hearing, the Judge’s short decision gives no indication of having considered the arguments put forth in the Petitioners’ memorandum of law, nor any acknowledgement of the need for a new investigation, which the City of New York callously dismissed as “irrelevant”.

On a dark day for democracy, the patriotic call for answers by hundreds of 9/11 families, first responders and survivors has been stifled, and the will of the people of New York City once again denied.

Judge Lehner ruled that modifying the petition to make it “legally permissible” would result in it being “inconsistent with the law sought by the signatories of the Petition” despite the fact that all 80,000 signatories agreed by signing the Petition that “If any provision of this law is held to be unconstitutional or invalid for any reason, the remaining provisions shall be in no manner affected thereby but shall remain in full force and effect.”

The deadline for inclusion on the ballot falls just before the election, making it possible to appeal Judge Lehner’s decision. NYC CAN is weighing all options and will make an announcement early next week on this issue, as well as on how it will be moving forward on other fronts. Regardless of the outcome in court, the quest for answers continues full throttle. This fight is only the beginning.

October 03, 2009

The Lockerbie Bombing Seen as an Expression of a “Strenuous Disagreement”


September 1, 2009

In light of compelling information available on the Internet about the Israeli attack on the USS Liberty in 1967 as well as the destruction of three World Trade Center buildings with micro-thermite during the course of a well-planned Israeli linked false flag operation in 2001, the issue of Zionist false flag terrorism against the American people to achieve militarist aims is now widely understood. Less well known and further in the past the Lavon affair is another documented case of Israel framing Arabs in an attempt to generate Western reaction. The planned attack of the Lavon affair was foiled by Egyptian security, more recent attacks have been outside of Arab jurisdictions. Revelations about the details of these particular acts of terror, notwithstanding subsequent efforts by the US government to cover them up by preventing public inquiries, along with ongoing mass media disinformation regarding the facts, have confirmed a disturbing pattern of control that is leading toward mass revulsion amidst the population.

Recently, newspapers reported that a Libyan, Ali Mohmed al Megrahi, accused of being the “Lockerbie bomber”, was released from imprisonment in Scotland. It is truly remarkable that his incarceration dragged on for so long, for it was already evident during the course of the trial, that no credible evidence linking him to the crime existed. In the meantime, mainstream media in Britain have reported that he was framed, through false testimony and the intentional withholding of exculpatory information by the court. His appeal was likely to be granted, and attention would inevitably have focused on the question of who actually did carry out the bombing. The calculation appears to have been, that one might circumvent such a situation by releasing him on “humanitarian” grounds, in exchange for dropping the appeal. No later than two years ago, it must have become clear to anyone following the case, that al Megrahi would have to be released, because the head of a Swiss company Mebo, Edwin Bollier, admitted, after the statute of limitations for such a crime had expired, that key evidence used in the trial had actually been faked. Also, in June 2007 the Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission, upon a three year investigation, reported that there may have been a miscarriage of justice.

Fingering the perpetrators of this act of terror that occurred more than two decades ago is inconvenient because the plausible outcome of an analysis of the situation, back then, while taking into account motive, means, and opportunity, could surely point to a group of known terrorists, enjoying strong support in the United States among influential supporters of Israel, as the primary suspects. These Zionist terrorists and their Jewish supremacist supporters have become so successful through their campaigns of mass murder that they have actually formed and developed a state with a huge military and propaganda apparatus. Indeed, as people have begun to realize, they have effectively taken over the United States government through corruption, coercion and blackmail. Some of their staunchest supporters are in control of financial, media, and academic institutions, thus wielding undue power. Though many have been aware of the facts for a long time, controllers need to present a different story for public consumption, hoping to induce a distorted perception among the masses.

The time elapsed since that fateful bombing over Scotland is half of the time elapsed since the occupation of the West Bank and Gaza. With the benefit of hindsight and an improved realization of the nature of Zionist inspired terrorism, both historically and currently, a review of the political circumstances during the two final months in 1988 sheds light on what could have been a primary motive for the bombing. On November 1, 1988, elections for the twelfth Knesset took place in Israel, with an outcome that made the formation of a stable government difficult. Exactly one week later, American elections took place, in which Vice President George Herbert Walker Bush beat Governor Michael Dukakis of Massachusetts. During the transition phase of the ensuing weeks, certain political developments could take place that might have seemed too risky to push through if Congress had been in session.

One week after the American elections, the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO), operating from Tunis, attempted to regain control of events in Palestine, where a popular uprising, the Intifada, had been going on for months. Thus, on November 15, in Algiers, the Palestinian National Council (PNC) formally proclaimed a Palestinian state, with Jerusalem as its capital, and Yasser Arafat as its president. Additionally, the PNC voted to revise the PLO charter and recognized the UN resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis of an international peace conference. This announcement was an important milestone in the Palestinian struggle against the ongoing, forceful, and illegal occupation of their land by an oppressive Israeli regime, and the lame-duck administration of Ronald Reagan would have to address the issue somehow.

According to a 1975 memorandum agreement with Israel, arranged by Henry Kissinger, the United States agreed to not recognize or negotiate with the PLO unless the organization formally recognized Israel and accepted UN resolutions 242 and 338 as the basis for peace in the Middle East. Even engaging in curt small talk with a PLO representative at a party in Amman during the summer of 1979 was taboo. One may recall that Ambassador Andrew Young was forced into resignation from his position as U.S. ambassador to the U.N. during the Carter Administration. Zionist leaders had somehow convinced themselves, that these conditions were too onerous for the PLO to adhere to, and were thus complacent in believing that the US government would continue to refuse any dealings with the PLO. They felt much assured when Secretary of State George Schultz refused a visa to PLO Chairman Arafat a day after he had requested one at the American Embassy in Tunis, so that he could address the UN General Assembly in New York in December. This decision, by Schultz, based on the PLO’s alleged association with terrorism, surprised the diplomatic community.

In early December of 1988, at the invitation of the Swedish government, Arafat met in Stockholm with a group of five American Jews, including Stanley Sheinbaum, one of the Regents of the University of California at the time, to discuss the Middle East situation. After a couple of days of talks, on December 7 Arafat announced the existence of Israel and denounced all forms of terrorism. However, George Schultz proclaimed that the PLO “still has a considerable distance to go” before the United States would deal with it. Israel’s expectations were thus upheld again. During this time, Israel had still not formed a government. However, a week later, on December 14, Arafat gave a press conference in Geneva and clarified the points he had given in a speech at the UN there the previous day. Though the language he used was barely different from that of previous statements rejected by Schultz as being insufficient, this time Schultz accepted the formula and promptly announced that the US State Department would begin discussions with the PLO.

News of this development was greeted with great shock and dismay at the time by Israeli politicians and the public. The PLO was their archenemy, regarded as a group of terrorists bent on destroying them. Extremist Zionists in particular perceived the announcement to recognize the PLO as the end of their dreams for a greater Israel, a genuine existential threat to their future survival. They had just been publicly stabbed in the back by the American administration. This decision could not stand, a strong message, would have to be sent, in response. The Americans could not get away with this, how “dare they” act independently.

With this pace of development, what might the new American regime do upon Bush’s inauguration? This was indeed a most serious development, and Israeli politicians gathered to engage in crisis discussions and expedited negotiating sessions in order to form a new government and deal with this unexpected threat. The possibility of events occurring beyond their control seemed real, and it became an imperative to forestall the U.S. engaging with the PLO.

Exactly one week after the formal American recognition of the PLO, Pan Am Flight 103, exploded in the air on its journey from London to New York on December 21, 1988. Only a few hours after news of this event became public, the reporter for a local television station in California interviewed an “expert on terrorism” live from his location at the RAND Corporation in Santa Monica. Interestingly, when asked which group might have engaged in such an act of terrorism, the expert from RAND, upon citing the usual Arab suspects, cautioned that one should not exclude the possibility that a rogue group inside the Israeli military might have felt compelled to carry this out. This was truly unfiltered commentary, as the initial news came trickling in. Afterward, once the mainstream television media had regained their grip, explicit suggestions like this were presumably not heard again. (In contrast, with the benefit of months of operative planning, on September 11, 2001, the media worked from a prepared script; Osama bin Laden was declared the suspect within minutes of the demolition of the second World Trade Center tower, and the collapse of WTC Building 7 was announced at least twenty minutes before it actually occurred.)

Initially, one angle of speculation had been, that the attack was meant to target South Africa because a high level delegation of officials from its government, most notably foreign minister Pik Botha, were said to have been on that flight. Yet later the media reported that Botha had changed his scheduled flight to an earlier one that day and was indeed to arrive in New York. Ad hoc, raw news items like this, with the connotation of a possible advance tip-off, naturally arouses suspicion, especially since the South African government had few close political allies at the time, and so the media did not dwell on this message either. As it turned out, the South African government officials had been booked for Flight 103 but wound up flying to New York on an earlier plane. The next day they were present at UN headquarters to sign the Tripartite Agreement with representatives from Cuba and Angola. Years later, it was revealed that other people mysteriously chose not to take that flight at the last moment. Students from Syracuse University consequently got last minute seats which earlier were said to have been full. Which group of possible perpetrators could have had the technical means to both access the passenger list of a future flight and forewarn selected people? One cannot but help recall what seems to have been an analogous situation, many years later on September 11, 2001, when a select group of individuals received advance warning about the impending operation through an Israeli-based text messaging service, Odigo.

According to a former American ambassador to Qatar, Andrew I. Killgore, who has written articles about the Lockerbie bombing in the Washington Report for Middle East Affairs, there are other interesting facts surrounding the Lockerbie bombing that are not widely known. For instance, in 2002 (but presumably also earlier during investigations) a retired security guard, Ray Manly, revealed that the Pan Am baggage area at Heathrow Airport had been broken into 17 hours before Flight 103 took off. Certainly, planting a bomb directly onto an intended plane is a surer method of targeting that flight than sending an unattended piece of luggage laden with a bomb from Malta to Frankfurt, and then from there to London, which is the narrative that prosecutors concocted to frame al Megrahi. In the case of the latter method, there is no way of being sure that the suitcase will actually be on the target flight, but alternatively there is a slight chance, due to general sloppiness, that it could wind up on a flight one definitely would not want to target.

Killgore refers to reports that Pan Am had commissioned a team to handle the baggage security at 25 branches around the world. One member of that team was Isaac Yeffet, who headed a company by the name of Alert Management Inc. Employees of Yeffet’s company had full access to the Pan Am facility at Heathrow Airport and thus might have been expected to detect an unattended bag coming from Malta, or prevent the introduction of a bomb at Heathrow.

According to media reports, Isaac Yeffet is the former chief of security for El Al and an ex-director of Israel's Mossad intelligence agency, and now runs a security company based in New Jersey. In this context, the reader might recall, that responsibility for security at all three airports of alleged hijackings on September 11, 2001 also lay with an Israeli owned company.

One feature of grand scale terrorist events, such as airplane bombings, is that perpetrators tend not to reveal themselves to the public, so the question of culpability becomes a mystery. One method of following up is for the perpetrators to attempt to make it appear as if though an enemy was actually responsible. Israeli operatives have repeatedly deployed this trick for at least half a century, at least since the incident in Cairo that led to the Lavon Affair. However, it is impossible to fool the entire population. After the Lockerbie bombing, the predominately Jewish controlled media in America planted several accusations against various groups or governments, Ahmed Jabril of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine, Abu Nidal, Syria, Iran, and of course Libya. Yet none of these groups really had the means or opportunity to carry out such an operation. Palestinians certainly didn’t have a motive in light of the breakthrough for their cause a week earlier, which didn’t preclude hypotheses of some rival Palestinian group committing the act out of sheer jealousy or disagreement from being presented.

As if these accusations and hypotheses in the media were not enough to distract and saturate the public with psychological propaganda, the New York Times Magazine, on Sunday March 18, 1990 (which coincided with the date of the only parliamentary elections in East Germany) proffered yet another malicious insinuation. Appearing as a bold headline on its cover, above a photo of the front of the jumbo jet lying on its side in Lockerbie, one could read the following words: “The German Connection”. This was likely part of the New York Times' conspicuous “hate campaign” against Germany in general, but also against the impending German reunification in particular, which during early 1990, during the time of the negotiations leading to the so-called “Two Plus Four Agreement”, had reached a feverish pitch, spearheaded by former executive editor A. M. Rosenthal in various vitriolic editorials.

Another noteworthy piece of information relates to the disappointment of some British family members of persons who had been on that flight, with the way the case was developing. Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher was said to have blocked a full judicial inquiry into the issue. This raises the question, which group in Britain would have had sufficient influence to prevail upon the highest governmental official? An alternate explanation is, that President George H. W. Bush had prevailed upon her to tone down the investigation, which merely shifts the same question of complicity or cover-up toward power circumstances in the United States.

However, it was reported in 1993 that according to Minister of Parliament Tam Dalyell, Thatcher, who also had the role of being the head of intelligence services, stated unequivocally, that Libya did not carry out the bombing. It would seem that there was pressure to hide certain facts.

The violent destruction of an airplane with innocent people is also a highly political statement directed toward an élite group of decision makers in order to affect a particular policy. Therefore, it is fair to surmise that the perpetrators, who had to have had the motive, means, and opportunity to carry out the heinous crime, intended to signal their involvement, without stating it explicitly. If the intended recipients of such hints of involvement were themselves top-level criminals or terrorists, with blood on their hands, they would tend to acknowledge the hints in a different manner than the public inevitably would and, unlike the public, not get emotional about the situation. This can be viewed as part of a political game engaged in by psychopaths. Therefore, one should monitor official statements or communiqués for clues. During the Cold War there were American specialists called Kremlinologists, who would notice subtle and innocuous messages or announcements with important meaning. This is the diplomatic language of polite understatement.

On December 23, 1988, within two days after the Lockerbie bombing Israeli politicians agreed to form a coalition or unity government, headed by Yitzhak Shamir, who had gone to high school in Bialystok and became a terrorist in Palestine before World War II, after Hebraizing his surname from Jeziernicky. On that day, Shamir addressed the newly formed twelfth Knesset, in which he made multiple references to the PLO and the implications of its international recognition (which on the following day, Christmas Eve, included a meeting between Chairman Arafat and Pope John Paul in the Vatican). Below are key passages, translated into English by the Israeli Ministry of Foreign Affairs:
It is regrettable that we were forced to strenuously disagree with the recent U.S. decision regarding a dialogue with the PLO which, as far as we see and know, has not changed its character or ways, its malicious covenant and the terrorism that it perpetrates. We know this from the statements of its central figures, and from its actions in the field, and the government of Israel, in accordance with its guidelines, will not negotiate with it. We still hope that the U.S. will reconsider its decision vis-a-vis the PLO. We have paid close attention to the statements made by administration spokesmen regarding their approach to the issue of terrorism; we hope that after due consideration, they will draw the necessary conclusions regarding the PLO.

The developments in the international arena and the challenges that we will face oblige us to overcome our differences in order to confront the problems together, and to overcome the obstacles and dangers that have been placed in our way. I am referring chiefly to the large-scale propaganda and diplomatic offensive being conducted now against Israel in the international diplomatic arena by the terrorist organizations and their friends and supporters, an offensive which is based on deception and on misleading. Its obvious objective is to gain international support for the establishment of a PLO-Palestinian state within Eretz Israel. In addition, we see special preparations being made to exert great pressure on us to cause us to make a complete withdrawal to the suffocating borders of 1967.
At that time there was no Internet, so only a few of the people who do not understand Hebrew were actually privy to the text at the time. Adopting a Talmudic perspective and the aggressive mindset that prevails among militant Zionists in Israel, one could certainly rationalize the Lockerbie bombing as an act of self-defense, a means to prevent suffocation and encirclement before such efforts can attain momentum. Shamir’s violent life had been filled with acts of terror. In this light the Lockerbie bombing can be viewed as an irate expression of “strenuous disagreement”.

- by reader submission