Tag Archives: war on terror

Down (South)….But Not Out

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This is for all my well-wishers out there who’ve taken the time to poke this blog to see if it’s dead or merely comatose.

I’m  here. I’m alive. I just got tired of the off-line harassment  –  snooping on my private life through illegal surveillance of my home, my family and friends, private  conversations, and email correspondence…. that’s in addition to the online stuff.

I’ve talked about it before.

So that’s how the game is played in the US of A, in these early years of the 21st century.

Of course,  I have no interest in becoming a pawn sacrifice  nor in wasting my life keeping track of a chess-game I didn’t ask to play.

That’s the background.

The foreground is my personal life, which has kept me occupied quite well.

I’ve been traveling again. It helps with perspective.

The US is a mess of controlled media and staged terror. But other countries are as bad…. or much worse.

The whole globe is awash in the same inane, idiot-making advertising of the neo-liberal marketplace and the global war on terror.

Meanwhile, tectonic shifts are taking place, not just in Iran, China, or Pakistan (check out the spate of earthquakes in those regions), but in the economies and polities of any state so unwise as to join the Global War on Terror either as friend or foe.

In India, the so-called national paper, The Hindu, has been taken over in a kind of publishing coup and in flagrant violation of Indian law, by a US citizen, Siddharth Varadarajan. Siddharth is the left-leaning brother of the Wall Street Journal editor, Tunku Varadarajan, a right-leaning advocate of the War on Terror.

The paper today is one long hard-sell of overpriced property.

Whole pages are also devoted to gold ornaments, a known outlet for speculative profits.

Building colleges through trusts that enjoy favorable tax status is also a favorite way of laundering money in India (see also this article). The government-builder mafia is often behind the plethora of new institutions springing up everywhere.

Where I am, down in the sunny South, such unwisdom is poisoning not just the media, but just about everything…from the banking system to technology to transport ….

(more later)

Note: Links on some of these posts I’ve referenced have vanished. This keeps happening to certain posts, whether for technical reasons or for others…

Bear with me. I’ll add them back when I get a moment.

Johnny Cash: When The Man Comes Around

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When The Man Comes Around

– Johnny Cash

And I heard, as it were, the noise of thunder:
One of the four beasts saying: “Come and see.” And I saw.
And behold, a white horse.

There’s a man goin’ ’round takin’ names.
An’ he decides who to free and who to blame.
Everybody won’t be treated all the same.
There’ll be a golden ladder reaching down.
When the man comes around.

The hairs on your arm will stand up.
At the terror in each sip and in each sup.
For you partake of that last offered cup,
Or disappear into the potter’s ground.
When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin’.
Multitudes are marching to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin’, voices cryin’.
Some are born an’ some are dyin’.
It’s Alpha’s and Omega’s Kingdom come.

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks.
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

Till Armageddon, no Shalam, no Shalom.
Then the father hen will call his chickens home.
The wise men will bow down before the throne.
And at his feet they’ll cast their golden crown.
When the man comes around.

Whoever is unjust, let him be unjust still.
Whoever is righteous, let him be righteous still.
Whoever is filthy, let him be filthy still.
Listen to the words long written down, When the man comes around.

Hear the trumpets, hear the pipers.
One hundred million angels singin’.
Multitudes are marchin’ to the big kettle drum.
Voices callin’, voices cryin’.
Some are born an’ some are dyin’.
It’s Alpha’s and Omega’s Kingdom come.

And the whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
The virgins are all trimming their wicks.
The whirlwind is in the thorn tree.
It’s hard for thee to kick against the pricks.

In measured hundredweight and penny pound.
When the man comes around.

And I heard a voice in the midst of the four beasts,
And I looked and behold: a pale horse.
And his name, that sat on him, was Death.
And Hell followed with him.

Facebook page of Sam Bacile

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Policymic managed to capture the Facebook page of Sam Bacile, before it was deleted:

“There was until Wednesday a Facebook page (since deleted) belonging to a “Sam Bassel,” that described the account owner as a “movie-maker” in Hollywood, California. The first activity on the account is dated September 7, and is a comment in Arabic on a Facebook post about Terry Jones:

A crude Google Chrome translation of the text reads:

Several Facebook friends of “Bassel” appear to be figures within the Coptic Christian community, including Abba Seraphim El-Suriani, Head of the British Orthodox Church within the Coptic Orthodox Patriarchate of Alexandria.

Another post on the page of “Bassel” leads to an essay supposedly written by Mohamed Yousry, the former translator for Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, the blind Egpytian cleric serving a life sentence in the U.S. after being convited in 1996 of plotting terrorist attacks. Yousry himself was later convicted in 2006 of providing material support to terrorism and served prison time. He was released in April 2011. “

Anti-Islamic movie made by convicted Californian fraudster

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Update: The Daily Bell is running with this story today, a little late in the day.

( We wrote about Gladio in 2005…..)

Meanwhile, it was  the mainstream media that actually did the best job of putting together the story yesterday.

The alternatives mostly swallowed the “Israeli Jews did it” red herring.

Fortunately, I took my own advice and waited for more reports…

In other words, it’s not a psyop by “Jews”….it might not even be a psyop by “Muslim Brothers” made to look like a psyop by “Jews”.

It could be a psyop by the “Jews” or the “Christians” made to look like a psyop by “Muslim Brothers” made to look like a psyop by “Jews.”

Or even deeper.

I’ve figured out a bit more than this, but I won’t be putting that research on the net. ….

ORIGINAL POST

The hunt for the man behind the offensive anti-Muslim film gets weirder by the hour.

Jeffrey Goldberg at “The Atlantic Wire” writes:

“I asked him who he thought Sam Bacile was. He said that there are about 15 people associated with the making of the film, “Nobody is anything but an active American citizen. They’re from Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, they’re some that are from Egypt. Some are Copts but the vast majority are Evangelical.”

What are we to make of Steve Klein’s assertions? I’m taking everything about this strange and horrible episode with a grain of salt, though I will say that I haven’t seen any proof yet that Sam Bacile is an actual Israeli Jew, or that the name is anything other than a pseudonym. More to come, undoubtedly.”

Just yesterday I posted a piece advising people to take everything in the major media as a psyop.

It turned out to be good advice.

The first reports (see this Guardian piece) said that the  horrible and tragic murder of the American ambassador in Libya, Christopher Stevens, had been triggered by a video made by an Israeli Jew.

Other reports claimed that Bacile was a Coptic Christian Israeli, not a Jew.

But the latest reports tell a different story.

It seems that all the 15 people involved in the making of the inflammatory anti-Islamic movie (“The Innocence of Muslims”) were American citizens and most were Evangelical Christians. Some were Coptics.

It seems that the $5 million that allegedly went into the making of the film produced an amateurish work of questionable values shown for a day at L.A.’s Vine theater.

It seems that Hollywood is a bit puzzled about who Sam Bacile is. He isn’t a known name.

One of the consultants on the film, Steve Klein, turns out to be  a counter-terrorism expert in California, who belongs to an ultra-conservative Christian group. He published a strongly anti-Islamic tract last year.

The Guardian:

Bacile has virtually no footprint in the Hollywood community. The writer-director-producer has no agent listed on the IMDBPro website and no credits on any film or TV production.

Steve Klein, a “consultant” on the film, describes himself as a Vietnam veteran, counter-terrorism expert and board member of an ultra-conservative group, Courageous Christians United. In 2010, he self-published a book, Is Islam compatible with the Constitution?, which assails Islam’s treatment of women.

Bacile was also linked to Morris Sadik, an Egyptian Coptic Christian based in California who runs a small virulently Islamophobic group called the National American Coptic Assembly. He promoted a clip of the film last week.”

Daily Kos has lots more about consultant Steve Klein and his extremist belief that California is dotted with Muslim Brotherhood cells (or Al Qaeda cells, in another version of the story) waiting to explode; who led a hunter-killer team as a Marine in Vietnam, has minuteman ties, and engages in armed confrontations near abortion clinics and Mormon churches.

Another weird twist is that the film was apparently altered unknown to the original actors and writers to convey insults to Islam:

In an even stranger twist, NPR’s Sarah Abdurrahman noticed that every specific reference to Muhammad or Islam in the movie’s trailer appears to be dubbed over what the actors actually said. Without the lines that insult Islam, the trailer “reads like some cheesy Arabian Nights story,” Abdurrahman writes. In a statement given to CNN, the cast and crew of the film said they were “grossly misled” about the movie’s purpose and said they feel “taken advantage of.” One of the film’s actors told Gawker that the cast was told they were acting in a movie called “Dessert Warriors,” and had no idea it would be altered to have an anti-Islam message. She said the film’s director, whom she now plans to sue, said he was Egyptian.

In the latest news, reported at NPR, it turns out that Bacile has been convicted for financial fraud.

“Nakoula Basseley Nakoula, 55, told The Associated Press in an interview outside Los Angeles that he was manager for the company that produced “Innocence of Muslims,” which mocked Muslims and the prophet Mohammed and was implicated in inflaming mobs that attacked U.S. missions in Egypt and Libya. He provided the first details about a shadowy production group behind the film.

Nakoula denied he directed the film and said he knew the self-described filmmaker, Sam Bacile. But the cellphone number that AP contacted Tuesday to reach the filmmaker who identified himself as Sam Bacile traced to the same address near Los Angeles where AP found Nakoula. Federal court papers said Nakoula’s aliases included Nicola Bacily, Erwin Salameh and others.

Nakoula told the AP that he was a Coptic Christian and said the film’s director supported the concerns of Christian Copts about their treatment by Muslims.

Nakoula denied he had posed as Bacile. During a conversation outside his home, he offered his driver’s license to show his identity but kept his thumb over his middle name, Basseley. Records checks by the AP subsequently found it and other connections to the Bacile persona.”

Nakoula isn’t some petty wrong-doer either:

“Nakoula, who talked guardedly about his role, pleaded no contest in 2010 to federal bank fraud charges in California and was ordered to pay more than $790,000 in restitution. He was also sentenced to 21 months in federal prison and ordered not to use computers or the Internet for five years without approval from his probation officer.”

And this:

“Nobody is anything but an active American citizen,” Klein told the Atlantic. “They’re from Syria, Turkey, Pakistan, there are some that are from Egypt. Some are Copts but the vast majority are evangelical.”

Klein told the AP that he vowed to help make the movie but warned the filmmaker that “you’re going to be the next Theo van Gogh.” Van Gogh was a Dutch filmmaker killed by a Muslim extremist in 2004 after making a film that was perceived as insulting to Islam.

Question: If you make a film with the foreknowledge that it might result in someone being killed, is that an act of incitation?

The NPR piece (above) also tells us that after first considering the killing of the American ambassador to Libya, Chris Stevens, as an act of mob violence,  US authorities are now looking into whether it was a terrorist attack intended to coincide with 9-11.

I would advise them first to check if this was a staged US-Israeli false-flag intended to justify war and end foreign aid to Muslim countries ( an issue coming up next week).

Note: I think the government should not be aiding any country,  Arab or anything else.

Check out my previous posts on false-flags:

The involvement of the CIA in the Mumbai bombing;

Mossad links to the killing of Bassam Trache, a Syrian doctor in Hungary;

CIA/Mossad involvement in plans to Balkanize India.

Suspected Israeli targeting of Kochi naval base in India

US/Isreli involvement in Stuxnet virus attack on Iran

Mossad killing of a Hamas operative in Dubai using forged passports from other countries

The killing of the Polish prime minister and his entourage

Obama: Dining On Whatever The Pentagon Feeds Him

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Andrew Bacevich reports that in his latest opus, Bob Woodward, the McDonald’s of court-historians, is better at recording the trivia of Washington in-fighting that make it to the Sunday headlines than understanding the constitutional significance of a shift in decision-making at the highest level:

“Obama’s Wars also affirms what we already suspected about the decision-making process that led up to the president’s announcement at West Point in December 2009 to prolong and escalate the war.  Bluntly put, the Pentagon gamed the process to exclude any possibility of Obama rendering a decision not to its liking.

Pick your surge: 20,000 troops? Or 30,000 troops?  Or 40,000 troops?  Only the most powerful man in the world — or Goldilocks contemplating three bowls of porridge — could handle a decision like that.  Even as Obama opted for the middle course, the real decision had already been made elsewhere by others: the war in Afghanistan would expand and continue.

And then there’s this from the estimable General David Petraeus: ”I don’t think you win this war,” Woodward quotes the field commander as saying. “I think you keep fighting… This is the kind of fight we’re in for the rest of our lives and probably our kids’ lives.”

Here we confront a series of questions to which Woodward (not to mention the rest of Washington) remains steadfastly oblivious.  Why fight a war that even the general in charge says can’t be won?  What will the perpetuation of this conflict cost?  Who will it benefit?  Does the ostensibly most powerful nation in the world have no choice but to wage permanent war?  Are there no alternatives?  Can Obama shut down an unwinnable war now about to enter its tenth year?  Or is he — along with the rest of us — a prisoner of war?”

Ex-CIA Station Chief Admits Drugging & Molesting Algerian Woman

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And all in the name of “intelligence” the tax-payer has to support this huge bureaucracy of underemployed, over-sexed meddlers..

Reuters reports:

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A former CIA station chief in Algeria pleaded guilty on Monday to sex abuse stemming from a 2008 incident in Algiers and to cocaine use, the U.S. Justice Department said. Continue reading →

Morocco Tortures Sahrawi Activists

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Morocco Uses Torture To Silence Sahrawi Activists:

“The Saharawi hunger strikers

Six of the Salé-imprisoned ‘Casablanca 7’ began their hunger strikes from 18 March 2010 in protest of their indefinite imprisonment and lack of clear charges. These are Ali Salem Tamek, Brahim Dahane, Yehdih Ettarrouzi, Ahmed Naciri, Saleh Labaihi and Rachid Sghayer.

The hunger strikers issued this statement on 18 March:

‘Our detention has been condemned by governments and parliaments around the world as well as human rights organisations, trade unions and civil society groups. We are being persecuted for exercising our right to express political opinion and engage in legitimate activities to protect the human the rights of our people. In protest at our detention we are today beginning an open hunger strike in order to expedite our claim to a fair trial and our release without condition. We call on democratic forces in the world to support our fight for our release and that of all Saharawi political prisoners held in Moroccan jails.’

Another 19 hunger strikers are in Tiznit prison and their hungerstrikes started from 20 March. These are Moustapha Abd-Dayem, Hreish Hassan, Mohamed Berkaoui, Bachir Isamïli, Mohamed Taghioullah Fekallah, Brahim Khalil Meghimiah, Khalihenna Abouhassan, Moulay Ali Bouamoud, Fadli Binhau, Mahmud Aboughassem, Sheiahu Hamza, Fathi Sid Ahmed, Daihani Abdallah, Mohamed Salami, Sawakh Djamal, Mahdjub Ailal, Hassan Mohamed Lehassen, Nourdinne Taher, Lehmam Salama.

And there are a further 3 hunger strikers in Boulmharez prison in Marrakech (El Waaban Said, Brahim Bariaz, Ali Salem Ablag), 3 in Layouune prison4 (Bachri Bentaleb, Ameidan Chej and Mohamed Berkan), 2 in Taroudant prison (Louali Amaidan and Jalad Hasan), 2 in Kenitra prison (Laaseiri Salec and Amaidan Saleh) and 1 in Bensliman prison (Hasan Abdelahi).5

Detailed medical information from the hunger strike monitoring groups draw attention to the dangerous symptoms the prisoners are experiencing at this stage of 29 days. These are listed variously among the prisoners as loss of consciousness, fatigue, migraines, asthma, acute cardiac and intestinal pain, asthma, vomiting and diarrhoea. Blood pressure and sugar levels are reported as decreasing alarmingly, with growing kidney, liver and gallbladder complications.6

The Saharawi Lawyers Association has also reported cases of neglect by Moroccan prison administrations, lack of proper medical assistance from prison clinics and staff, and Saharawi prisoner Hassan Abdullah in Bin Sliman is said to have been severely beaten by Moroccan prisoners at the incitement of prison staff.”

More here at Free Sahara.

Headley Spy Case Raises Questions In India About CIA Role

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Asia Times columnist M. K. Bhadrakumar writes that US citizen David Headley, a key player (Indian sources say, the mastermind), in the November 2008 Mumbai  terrorist attack that killed 166  people* has reached a plea bargain with the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) that allows the US Government to hold back from producing evidence against him in a court of law that would have revealed details of his ties to US intelligence. [*163, according to the NY Times, March 26, 2010; 165, according to the Wash Po, March 27, 2010]

Headley will be protected from cross-examination by the prosecutor, and the 166 victims will not be represented by a lawyer at the Chicago trial that’s now commencing.

Nor can he be extradited to India or questioned by Indian agencies about his links to US and Pakistani intelligence.

(Note: He will be accessible to India through video conferencing, deposition, and Letters Rogatory)

Headley, the son of a former Pakistani diplomat and an American socialite from Philadelphia (according to the NY Times piece), was a drug-pusher in the 1990s who then went on to work for the Drug Enforcement Agency.

He’s said to have prepared for the attack with five visits to India between 2006 and 2008, each time returning via Pakistan and meeting with several handlers, some of whom included members of the terrorist group Lakshar-e-Toiba (LeT), which has close ties to Pakistan’s intelligence agency, ISI (Inter-Services Intelligence)

Headley has reportedly named five-six serving officers of the Pakistan army as among the leaders of the Karachi Project, which organizes attacks on India through fugitive Indian jihadis being sheltered in Karachi by the ISI and the LeT.

The Asia Times article goes on to ask some questions about the CIA’s possible involvement that are likely to strain US-Indian relations:

“How much did the CIA know?
The plea bargain details that while working as an American agent Headley attended at least five “training courses” conducted by the LeT in Pakistan, including sessions in the use of weapons and grenades, close-combat tactics and counter-surveillance techniques, from February 2002 until December 2003.

Training courses in April and in December 2003 were each of three months’ duration and in such close proximity to the 9/11 attacks that it stretches credulity to believe the CIA didn’t care to know what their agent was doing in the LeT training camps.

Today, the heart of the matter is how much did the CIA know in advance about the Mumbai terrorist strike and whether the Obama administration shared all “actionable intelligence” with Delhi?

A senior Indian editor wrote on Sunday, “Headley … was convicted on drug charges and sent to jail in the US. We know also that he was subsequently released from jail and handed over to the Drug Enforcement Administration, which said that it wanted to send him to Pakistan as an undercover agent. All this is a matter of public record. What happened between the time the US sent Headley into Pakistan and his arrest at Chicago airport a few months ago? How did an American agent turn into a terrorist? The US will not say.”

Yet, cooperation in the fight against terrorism lies within the first circle of US-India strategic cooperation. The Mumbai attacks led to unprecedented counter-terrorism cooperation between India and the US – “breaking down walls and bureaucratic obstacles between the two countries’ intelligence and investigating agencies”, as a prominent American security expert, Lisa Curtis, underscored in US congressional testimony on March 11 regarding the Mumbai attacks and Headley.

To quote Curtis, “Most troubling about the Headley case is what it has revealed about the proximity of the Pakistani military to the LeT.”

Curtis put her finger spot on the US government’s deliberate policy to view the LeT through the prism of India-Pakistan adversarial ties. This is despite all evidence of the LeT’s significant role since 2006 as a facilitator of the Taliban’s operations in Afghanistan by providing a constant stream of fighters – recruiting, training and infiltrating insurgents across the border from the Pakistani tribal areas.

The US policy is impeccably logical. It prioritizes the securing of Islamabad’s cooperation on what directly affects American interests rather than squandering away Pakistani goodwill by Washington covering for the Indians.

This political chicanery lies at the core of the unfolding Headley drama. What emerges, even if one were to give the benefit of the doubt to the CIA, is that Headley was its agent but he possibly got involved with Pakistan-based terrorist organizations and became a double agent

No doubt, the US administration is behaving very strangely. It has something extremely explosive to hide from the Indians and what better way to do that than by placing Headley in safe custody and not risk exposing him to Indian intelligence?”

Hitler’s National Security Courts…and Ours..

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Jacob Hornberger of the Future of Freedom Foundation notes that when people ask for a national security court in the US, they are unwittingly following in the footsteps of Adolf Hitler:

“Hitler established the People’s Court after the terrorist bombing of the German parliament building, the Reichstag. After a trial in a regularly constituted German court, many of the people charged with that terrorist act were acquitted, which, needless to say, outraged Hitler as much as it would have outraged current U.S. proponents of a national security court. After all, Hitler argued, those people who were acquitted were terrorists — otherwise they wouldn’t have been charged and prosecuted — and, therefore, they deserved to be convicted and punished, not acquitted and released.

To ensure that terrorists and other criminals were never again acquitted, Hitler established the People’s Court. Like the national security court that some Americans are now advocating for the United States, the purpose of the court was to create the appearance of justice while ensuring that terrorists and other criminals were convicted and punished.

Proceedings before the People’s Court would easily serve as a model for U.S. advocates of a national security. The trial of Hans and Sophie Scholl was over in less than an hour. Criminal defense lawyers were expected to remain silent during the proceedings, and did so. Defendants were presumed guilty and treated as such. Hearsay was permitted, as was evidence acquired by torture. There was no due process of law. Confessions could be coerced out of defendants. The judges on the tribunal would berate, humiliate, convict, and then swiftly issue sentences, including the death penalty.”

Hornberger points out that Hitler’s regime also included all those kinds of welfare programs that are admired today in America (public schooling, social security, national health care, public-private partnerships, the military industrial complex, the Interstate highway).

Hornberger doesn’t make the point explicitly, but the two things –  popular acceptance of gross violations of law and morality and the rapid expansion of the welfare state – go together. Bluntly, people “sell” their consciences because of the advantages dangled before them.

In “Hitler’s Beneficiaries: Plunder, Racial War, and the Nazi Welfare State,” respected historian of the Third Reich, Goetz Aly of the Fritz Bauer Institut in Frankfurt, suggests that the Nazis had German popular support all through their “final solution” – not because of wide-spread terror or wide-spread anti-Semitism, but because they’d bribed the population with a generous welfare state and “bennies.”