Fortress Britain
June 26, 2008
By Muhammad Idrees Ahmad, Variant, Issue 32, Summer 2008; Spinwatch, June 23, 2008; Scoop (New Zealand), June 25, 2008; UK Watch, June 25, 2008; Media Monitors Network, June 25, 2008; Dissident Voice, June 27, 2008
“The public has to be more alert”, warned one “international terrorism expert” in the Daily Mail late last year, because Scotland “is set to become another Israel within five years”. “[A]nti-terror measures will soon become a common feature of life”, he assured the audience, and called for “routine arming of police officers” and increasing children’s “awareness of the dangers of terrorism” and for them to be “encouraged” to report anything “out of the ordinary”.
The oracle of doom was one Amnon Maor, identified as the head instructor of counter-terrorism for the IDF and Israeli border police.[1] Maor is working with security firm 360 Defence, based near Glasgow, which is “training Scottish police, military and civilians in security techniques”. This wouldn’t be the first time the British police benefits form Israeli anti-terror expertise. The police squad that carried out the extrajudicial execution of the young Brazilian electrician Jean-Charles de Menezes in the London underground had received similar training.
In the post-September 11 world, Naomi Klein writes, Israel has pitched its “uprooting, occupation and containment of the Palestinian people as a half-century head start in the ‘global war on terror’”. Britain has since been furnished with its own unpopular occupation of Arab land – and the lessons from Israel are not lost on its architects. In disaster lies opportunity – and the only thing more useful than a thing to fear is fear itself. The give away line in Maor’s prescription above is his offer to increase children’s awareness of the dangers of terrorism – absent the real thing, fear should suffice. The Prime Minister may not have many achievements to his name, but he can claim patents to ‘Fortress Britain’, whose battlements sit on a foundation of fear.
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Has Israel Met Its Match?
April 12, 2008
Today’s guest editorial from friend and brother M. Shahid Alam is a superb analysis of Hizbullah’s successful defiance of Israel and the model it presents for effective resistance against the world’s most lavishly equipped military force.
On January 31, 2008, when the Winograd Commission submitted its final report on the Second Lebanese War of July 2006, this was a first in Israeli history: a report on why the Israeli military had failed in a war.
The Winograd Commission offers a quite honest appraisal of some aspects of the July 2006 War. [1] It acknowledges that it was “a serious missed opportunity.” Israel had “initiated a long war, which ended without its clear military victory (italics added).” The Commission notes that a militia “of a few thousand men resisted, for a few weeks, the strongest army in the Middle East, which enjoyed full air superiority and size and technology advantages.” Nothing could reverse Israel’s handicaps: not even a massive ground offensive launched in the last days of the war.
Mossad behind Mugniyah killing
February 21, 2008
The following from YNet could be part of a psyops campaign, but is nevertheless noteworthy. “Evidence in Damascus car bombing points to Israel, says Bruce Riedel, former advisor to three US presidents on Middle Eastern affairs. ‘This proves Israel has infiltrated Hizbullah,’ he notes, adding that Nasrallah has genuine reason for concern.”
WASHINGTON – While Israel has formally refuted allegations it was involved in the assassination of HizbullahImad Mugniyah in Damascus on Tuesday, former CIA official Bruce Riedel says all signs seem to indicate the Mossad was behind the killing.Riedel, who spent over 30 years with the CIA before serving as a senior advisor on South Asian and Middle East affairs under three US presidents, said Israel has already carried out similar operations in Syria.Currently a senior fellow with the Saban Center for Middle East Policy at the Brookings Institute, he says Mugniyah’s assassination proves Israel has successfully infiltrated Hizbullah and that even Secretary General Hassan Nasrallah knows he may also be in the crosshairs. ‘operations officer’
“Israeli intelligence services have motive and they have proven their ability to strike in Damascus in the past. This is a significant operation, whether or not the Israelis want to publicly admit to it. He (Mugniyah) has topped the US and Israel’s most-wanted list for a quarter of a century,” said Riedel.
National Security State
February 17, 2008
Today’s guest editorial on globalization and terror from my friend toni solo in Nicaragua.
“…there has always been, and is today, a profound conflict of interest between the government and the people of the United States. This thought startles most people, because it goes against everything we have been taught.” Howard Zinn (1)
If anyone were wondering what might lie at the end of the infernal Bush regime darkness visible rainbow, a good part of the answer was given on February 7th by unlikely leprechaun Mike McConnell when he presented his crock of fearmongering, special pleading and false witness (2) for Congressional unscrutiny . It is impossible to forget that McConnell and his colleagues represent an intelligence community that comprehensively failed the US people prior to September 11th 2001. Likewise these sinister insecurity specialists — along with their colleagues in the corporate news media — have consistently colluded to mislead the US people as regards both the motives of the US government and its perennial corporate owners, about the global political, economic and commercial environment and about the place of the United States in that world context.
Washington’s Creatures
January 18, 2008
‘Pakistan has paid dearly for America’s most generous and tragic patronage’, writes Roger Morris.
Benazir Bhutto was a precocious 23-year-old in 1976 when she noticed Army Chief of Staff Mohammed Zia ul-Haq come and go at the office of her father, Pakistani prime minister Zulfikar Ali Bhutto. “A short, nervous, ineffectual-looking man,” she remembered the general, “whose pomaded hair was parted in the middle and lacquered to his head.” Along with the hair, Gen. Zia’s thick mustache and diffident manner seemed to Islamabad politicians a Punjabi version of English comedian Terry Thomas. “Bhutto’s butler” they called him.
Then, suddenly, in July 1977, Gen. Zia was no longer amusing when his junta arrested Mr. Bhutto and his cabinet, and imposed martial law. There followed more than a decade of military tyranny as Pakistan became, in Salman Rushdie’s phrase, “a nightmarish land.” That era and its sequels would be the setting of Benazir Bhutto’s political career, climaxing in her assassination Dec. 27. She was emblematic of her country’s nightmare, and of the tortuous role the United States played in it. It is a history – forgotten, denied – that haunts us all.
Philip Agee (1935-2008) R.I.P
January 10, 2008
Al Burke of the on CIA whistleblower and rebel Philip Agee.
Let Us Now Praise an (In)famous Man
10 January 2008 (NNN) — Philip Agee, former agent of the CIA, died in Havana, Cuba, on 8 January 2008 at the age of 72. He was the first agent to leave “The Company” and reveal its dirty secrets, having become disillusioned with its appalling practices in Latin America.
I had the pleasure and privilege of meeting Philip on three occasions in Stockholm, and he once confided that he was a distant relation of author James Agee,whose best-known work is probably Let Us Now Praise Famous Men– a book-length reportage on the desperately grim lives of dirt-poor farmers in the U.S. South during the 1930s’ Great Depression. It is an apt reference, as it was Philip’s eye-opening encounter with the desperate conditions of South America’s impoverished masses– and his growing insight into the central role played by U.S. foreign policy in perpetuating their misery– which led to his resignation from the CIA and the disclosure of its criminal activities in the political and literary bombshell, Inside the Company: CIA Diary.
How’s al-Qaeda doing?
December 27, 2007
Former CIA head of counter terrorism Michael Scheuer presents the facts. You decide.
If an analyst in al-Qaeda’s intelligence services or a journalist friendly to al-Qaeda were asked to compile a roundup of news stories from 2007 that supported his sympathies, here is what he would write. It would be a reasonably effective and sophisticated bit of open-source reporting (or what some might even call disinformation) that would be carefully slanted to the author’s agenda, and al-Qaeda might itself publish or distribute the article as evidence of the decay of the West.
Leaving aside the claims and rhetoric of al-Qaeda and their sympathizers, this analyst or journalist might gather together the following facts available in the media to forward to his friends and colleagues. So, let us assume, for the moment, that our imagined author has completed his task and has forwarded the data below to his editors or al-Qaeda superiors. We invite the readers to peruse the following information and then form their own assessment of al-Qaeda’s end-of-2007 viability and accomplishments.
The US enemy
US deficit-spending on defense and homeland security continues to increase, with spending in Iraq alone now approaching US$12 billion per month. A former senior Ronald Reagan administration official, who is now vice chairman of Goldman Sachs (International), has said, “The US government is in a weakened financial position to respond to another major terrorist attack …” Polls in 2007 showed that 26% of US Muslims under 30 years of age believe that suicide attacks are sometimes necessary in defense of Islam. In addition, 15,000 US Muslims are attending this year’s pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina in Saudi Arabia, a large proportion of whom are young professionals; this is the demographic cohort that is al-Qaeda’s most important recruitment pool. US public opinion continues to run heavily against continuing the war in Iraq and most of the 2008 presidential candidates favor ending the war; none talk of victory. Eighteen of the 19 US presidential candidates support maintaining the status quo in US foreign policy toward the Muslim world, especially regarding Saudi Arabia and Israel. One of the leading candidates has surrounded himself with neo-conservative advisers who lobbied for the US invasion of Iraq. Both US parties and most US media are attacking and trying to limit or end the rendition program run by the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA), which has captured numerous senior al-Qaeda leaders and has, according to CIA chief General Michael Hayden, saved American lives. US Director of National Intelligence Mike McConnell said in July that al-Qaeda had successfully regrouped and was capable of attacking in the United States. He added that al-Qaeda has a network of supporters there, and that the threat from homegrown terrorists is growing. The US-led coalitions in Iraq and Afghanistan continued to shrink in 2007, with, for example, South Korea and Japan withdrawing from Afghanistan, and Poland and Australia announcing they would withdraw their combat forces from Iraq in 2008. Prime ministers who supported the US invasion and occupation of Iraq were replaced or defeated for reelection in Britain, Poland and Australia.The European enemy The July 2007 attacks by Muslim doctors in Britain were not militarily effective, but both successfully defeated the British intelligence services’ multi-layered detection capabilities. The Danish and German governments broke up al-Qaeda-related cells in 2007 and claim that those arrested had ties to the main al-Qaeda organization in South Asia. In addition, the European Union’s counterterrorism coordinator said in November that al-Qaeda is now the biggest security threat to Europe. In November, the chief of Britain’s MI-5 security service said his officers knew of 2,000 al-Qaeda-linked individuals who are operating in the United Kingdom. That total is 400 more than the number provided by the MI-5 chief’s predecessor one year earlier. Europeans continue to denigrate Islam, publishing caricatures of the Prophet Mohammad depicted as a dog and honoring the books of Salman Rushdie, an author whose work blasphemes the Prophet Mohammad.
Affairs in the Muslim world
In Iraq, al-Qaeda continues to suffer from manpower losses and even more from the lingering negative impact of Abu Musab al-Zarqawi’s religious excesses and indiscriminate violence. Some US generals claim that al-Qaeda has been permanently defeated in al-Anbar province; other US generals say al-Qaeda has moved its forces from Anbar to Diyala province and northern Iraq. US officials believe if al-Qaeda can be defeated in Iraq, they can establish stability in the country. There is still no functioning central government in Baghdad and Shi’ite-Sunni tensions continue to simmer. In Egypt and Jordan, the governments have cracked down on Islamist political groups and leaders - jailing hundreds - and have passed measures limiting the Islamists’ participation in elections and government. The US government has not sought to moderate or stop these actions. In Pakistan, President Pervez Musharraf is trying to hold his country together. He is being threatened on the one side by rising Islamist militancy and on the other by the West’s insistence that he permit elections and a return to democracy, practices which have in the past paved the way for civilian politicians to loot the country’s economy. In Afghanistan, the Taliban gained control of more territory in 2007. The success of their insurgent campaign - US forces suffered more killed in 2007 than in any year since 2001 - forced US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates in December to urge North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) countries to deploy more combat forces in Afghanistan. The number of non-Afghan Islamist fighters entering Afghanistan was steadily increasing at the end of 2007, as was the number of suicide attacks in the country. The strength of the Taliban insurgency has also moved some NATO leaders to suggest that Afghan Prime Minister Hamid Karzai’s government consider dealing with elements of the Taliban for peace. Afghan heroin production set new records in 2007 and the drug is now entering the United States in unprecedented amounts. Polls in the summer of 2007 showed that 76% of Muslims worldwide agree with al-Qaeda’s claim that US foreign policy is meant to undermine or destroy Islam.
The affairs of al-Qaeda and its allies
Al-Qaeda’s senior leadership suffered no serious losses in 2007 and Osama bin Laden, Ayman al-Zawahiri, Abu Yahya al-Libi and other senior leaders published an increasing number of timely audio and video tapes. By mid-December, al-Qaeda’s as-Sahab Productions had disseminated 92 videos, as compared to 58 releases in 2006. Al-Qaeda’s insurgent training camps in South Asia have been re-established and are now sending trained fighters to Afghanistan, Iraq, the Levant and Europe. In 2007, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group publicly joined al-Qaeda and pledged its loyalty to bin Laden. In addition, al-Qaeda-in-Lebanon actively engaged the Lebanese army in battle during 2007, and al-Qaeda of the Islamic Maghreb carried out a series of successful attacks during the year. Israel’s government claims al-Qaeda is now well established in Gaza.
Michael Scheuer served in the CIA for 22 years before resigning in 2004. He served as the chief of the bin Laden Unit at the Counterterrorist Center from 1996 to 1999. He is the once anonymous author of Imperial Hubris: Why the West is Losing the War on Terror and Through Our Enemies’ Eyes: Osama bin Laden, Radical Islam, and the Future of America. Dr Scheuer is a senior fellow with The Jamestown Foundation.
When Generals and Spies Do More for Peace
December 20, 2007
Glen Ford comments on the irony ‘When Generals and Spies Do More for Peace than Democrats‘, however he makes no mention of the reason for the Democratic Party’s pusillanimity — the Israel Lobby.
When the CIA and elements of the Pentagon do more - much more - than the Democrats to restrain the Bush gang from plunging the planet into an even wider spasm of war, it is time to recognize the absolute irrelevance of the Democratic Party - certainly, under present leadership.
Jaws dropped in capitals all around the globe when the combined intelligence agencies of the United States yanked the rationale for war with Iran, like a rug, from under George Bush’s feet. It was a mutiny, centered in the CIA and in the Pentagon’s nine separate intelligence agencies, designed to prevent Bush and Dick Cheney from expanding, against all military and political logic, their failed jihad in the Persian Gulf. Visibly startled, Bush behaved like he’d been knee-capped by his own men - which he had. The Pentagon-CIA revolt - witnessed by the entire planet - is unprecedented in modern times. Anyone who tells you differently is too blinded by imagined spy-novel schemes to recognize a mutiny when he sees it.
Is Bush Stopped in His Tracks on Iran?
December 17, 2007
Chris Hedges suggests there is reason to fear otherwise.
The release of the National Intelligence Estimate concerning Iran’s nuclear status marks the latest in a series of assaults by the Pentagon and the intelligence community against the war posturing of the Bush administration.
President Bush, seven years after assuming power, may finally be halted in his tracks—not by a resurgent Democratic opposition, sagging opinion polls, or an organized antiwar movement, but by the entrenched power structure in Washington he set out to emasculate. The tug of war between those within the administration who advocate as many as 1,000 air strikes on suspected Iranian nuclear facilities and those who oppose an attack will be the most dramatic battle of the final Bush years.
Iran Hawks Down?
December 6, 2007
Scott Ritter doesn’t seem to think so. Bush is clearly unhappy, and insists that evidence of absence is not…evidence of absence. Laura Rozen has a report in Mother Jones, where the general relief in the US political establishment is contrasted with the disapproval of Patrick Clawson from the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (Clawson makes frequent appearances in the otherwise excellent reports from Seymour Hersh). Following the general trend, Rozen does not mention the fact that WINEP is a spinoff from AIPAC, the powerful organization at the centre of the Israel Lobby. Tom Engelhart’s anlysis, like Robert Scheers’s, is typical of US left in side-stepping the role of the lobby on congress, or the neocon’s Israel-centric views.
In an interview on Demcoracy Now, Gareth Porter of IPS reveals how Bush’s warmongering has carried on in spite of the intelligence community’s admonitions. He also reveals how Cheney’s office delayed publication of the NIE in order to try to influence its conclusions. Jim Lobe, IPS’s Washington Bureau Chief and one of the world’s finest investigative journalists, sees this as a revenge of the foreign policy Realists who have been trying for some time to check the disastrous neoconservative trajectory. While in his view the Realist tendency is in the ascendant at present, he ends on a cautionary note.
the fact that the main conclusions of the report were known in top policy circles since at least last summer, if not well before then, helps explain why the administration’s hawks (and their neo-con allies) — culminating in Cheney’s late October speech to the Washington Institute on Near East Policy (WINEP) — started hyping Iran’s alleged direction of attacks on U.S. soldiers and marines in Iraq in August. It was clear by then that the nuclear pretext for war would suffer a serious setback whenever the NIE would be published, so that a new pretext needed to be pressed hard. Of course, the senior ranks of the Pentagon, including Gates, have since pushed back pretty hard against Cheney’s allegations, as I pointed out in this space most recently one month ago, although that particular pretext — and the opportunity for an “incident” in Iraq that could quickly escalate into a major U.S. attack — remains a distinct possibility. (Al Qaeda has probably been trying to figure out how to arrange such an incident for some time.)
