Europe Европа

ꕤ europe Европа Assange Transnational Security Elite, Carving Up the World Using Your Tax Money London  OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011) Link  |  here After I abused ... Apple Ban Ki-moon Saudis Qatar & Jordan i had a ... 'Europe's Finished' freak-out i cried ... for Europe i don't usually cry ... so this was a single surprise tear now it's just a feeling ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- Assange Transnational Security Elite, Carving Up the World Using Your Tax Money  London  OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011) Link  |  here ꕤ

'NYT Erases CIA’s Efforts to Overthrow Syria’s Government' (Adam Johnson)

ꕤ Article SOURCE http://fair.org/home/down-the-memory-hole-nyt-erases-cias-efforts-to-overthrow-syrias-government/ Down the Memory Hole: NYT Erases CIA’s Efforts to Overthrow Syria’s Government  By Adam Johnson 20 September 2015 The New York Times depicts a sad Obama to accompany its story claiming that he trained Syrian rebels against his better judgment. (photo: Manuel Balce Ceneta/AP) FAIR has noted before how America’s well-documented clandestine activities in Syria have been routinely ignored when the corporate media discuss the Obama administration’s “hands-off” approach to the four-and-a-half-year-long conflict.  This past week, two pieces—one in the New York Times detailing the “finger pointing” over Obama’s “failed” Syria policy, and a Vox “explainer” of the Syrian civil war—did one better: They didn’t just omit the fact that the CIA has been arming, training and funding rebels since 2012, they heavily implied they had never done so. First, let’s establish what we do know. Based on multiple reports over the past three-and-a-half years, we know that the Central Intelligence Agency set up a secret program of arming, funding and training anti-Assad forces. This has been reported by major outlets, including the New York Times, The Guardian, Der Spiegel and, most recently, the Washington Post, which—partly thanks to the Snowden revelations—detailed a program that trained approximately 10,000 rebel fighters at a cost of $1 billion a year, or roughly 1/15th of the CIA’s official annual budget. In addition to the CIA’s efforts, there is a much more scrutinized and far more publicized program by the Department of Defense to train “moderate rebels,” of which only a few dozen actually saw battle. The Pentagon program, which began earlier this year and is charged with fighting ISIS (rather than Syrian government forces), is separate from the covert CIA operation. It has, by all accounts, been an abysmal failure. One thing the DoD’s rebel training program hasn’t been a failure at, however, is helping credulous reporters rewrite history by treating the Pentagon program as the only US effort to train Syrian rebels–now or in the past. As the US’s strategy in Syria is publicly debated, the CIA’s years-long program has vanished from many popular accounts, giving the average reader the impression the US has sat idly by while foreign actors, Iranian and Russian, have interfered in the internal matters of Syria. While the White House, Congress and the Pentagon can’t legally acknowledge the CIA training program, because it’s still technically classified, there’s little reason why our media need to entertain a similar charade. Let’s start with Peter Baker’s New York Times piece from September 17 and some of its improbable claims:     Finger-Pointing, but Few Answers, After a Syria Solution Fails     By any measure, President Obama’s effort to train a Syrian opposition army to fight the Islamic State on the ground has been an abysmal failure. The military acknowledged this week that just four or five American-trained fighters are actually fighting. Notice the sleight-of-hand. There may only be “four or five American-trained fighters…fighting” expressly against ISIS, but there is no doubt thousands more American-trained fighters are fighting in Syria. The DoD’s statement is manifestly false, but because the New York Times is simply quoting “the military”—which, again, cannot not legally acknowledge the CIA program—it is left entirely unchallenged. This is the worst type of “officials say” journalism. The premise, while ostensibly critical of US foreign policy, is actually helping advance its larger goal of rewriting US involvement in the Syrian civil war. A four-year-long deliberate strategy of backing anti-Assad forces–which has helped fuel the bloody civil war and paved the way for the rise of ISIS–is reduced to a cheesy “bumbling bureaucrat” narrative. Baker went on:     But the White House says it is not to blame. The finger, it says, should be pointed not at Mr. Obama but at those who pressed him to attempt training Syrian rebels in the first place — a group that, in addition to congressional Republicans, happened to include former Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton.     At briefings this week after the disclosure of the paltry results, Josh Earnest, the White House press secretary, repeatedly noted that Mr. Obama always had been a skeptic of training Syrian rebels. The military was correct in concluding that “this was a more difficult endeavor than we assumed and that we need to make some changes to that program,” Mr. Earnest said. “But I think it’s also time for our critics to ‘fess up in this regard as well. They were wrong.”     In effect, Mr. Obama is arguing that he reluctantly went along with those who said it was the way to combat the Islamic State, but that he never wanted to do it and has now has been vindicated in his original judgment. The I-told-you-so argument, of course, assumes that the idea of training rebels itself was flawed and not that it was started too late and executed ineffectively, as critics maintain. The sleight-of-hand continues: The article presents the training of rebels as a “way to combat the Islamic State,” but repeatedly speaks in general of training Syrian rebels as something “Obama always had been a skeptic of”–which flies in the face of the fact that he did so, to the tune of $1 billion a year over four years, with 10,000 rebels trained. But the piece goes on to make clear that when it’s talking about “training Syrian rebels,” it’s referring not only to the anti-ISIS program but to efforts to overthrow Syria’s government as well:     The idea of bolstering Syrian rebels was debated from the early days of the civil war, which started in 2011. Mrs. Clinton, along with David H. Petraeus, then the CIA director, and Leon E. Panetta, then the Defense secretary, supported arming opposition forces, but the president worried about deep entanglement in someone else’s war after the bloody experience in Iraq.     In 2014, however, after the Islamic State had swept through parts of Syria and Iraq, Mr. Obama reversed course and initiated a $500 million program to train and arm rebels who had been vetted and were told to fight the Islamic State, not Mr. Assad’s government. This is outright false. These two paragraphs, while cleverly parsed, give the reader the impression Obama parted with the CIA and Mrs. Clinton on arming opposition forces, only to “reverse course” in 2014. But the president never “reversed course,” because he did exactly what the Panetta, Petraeus and Clinton urged him to do: He armed the opposition. Once again, the Pentagon’s Keystone Kop plan is being passed off by journalists who who should know better as the beginning and end of American involvement in the Syrian rebellion. Nowhere in this report is the CIA’s plan mentioned at all. The whitewashing would get even worse:     Some Syrian rebels who asked for American arms in 2011 and 2012 eventually gave up and allied themselves with more radical groups, analysts said, leaving fewer fighters who were friendly to the United States. But the US did get arms to Syrian rebels in 2012. In fact, Baker’s own publication reported this fact in 2012 (6/21/12):     CIA Said to Aid in Steering Arms to Syrian Opposition Indeed, according to a rather detailed New York Times infographic from 2013 (3/23/13), shipments began, at the latest, in January 2012: An Arms Pipeline to the Syrian Rebels: New York Times [graphic] Note that this map accompanied an article headlined “Arms Airlift to Syria Rebels Expands, With Aid From CIA.” The CIA’s program, when discussing a fraught foreign policy issue like Syria, is simply thrown down the memory hole. How can the public have an honest conversation about what the US should or shouldn’t do in Syria next when the most respected newspaper in the US can’t honestly acknowledge what we have done thus far? Vox depicts Free Syrian Army fighters–without acknowledging that the CIA helped to arm the rebels. (photo: STR/AFP/Getty Images) The New York Times wouldn’t be alone. Comcast-funded Vox would also ignore the CIA rebel training program in its almost 4,000-word overview of the Syrian civil war. Again, the Pentagon’s program would be the sole focus in regards to funding rebels, along with reports of Gulf states doing so as well. But the CIA funding, training and arming thousands of rebels since at least 2012? Nowhere to be found. Not mentioned or alluded to once. Reuters and the Washington Post’s reports on the US’s Syrian strategy revamp, while they didn’t fudge history as bad as the Times and Vox, also ignored any attempts by the CIA to back Syrian opposition rebels. This crucial piece of history is routinely omitted from mainstream public discourse. As the military build-up and posturing in Syria between Russia and the United States escalates, policy makers and influencers on this side of the Atlantic are urgently trying to portray the West’s involvement in Syria as either nonexistent or marked by good-faith incompetence. By whitewashing the West’s clandestine involvement in Syria, the media not only portrays Russia as the sole contributor to hostilities, it absolves Europe and the United States of their own guilt in helping create a refugee crisis and fuel a civil war that has devastated so many for so long. Adam Johnson is an associate editor at AlterNet and writes frequently for FAIR.org. http://fair.org/home/down-the-memory-hole-nyt-erases-cias-efforts-to-overthrow-syrias-government/ Assange Transnational Security Elite, Carving Up the World Using Your Tax Money London  OCT8 Antiwar Mass Assembly (2011) Link  |  here ---------------------- ꕤ ---------------------- COMMENT Another good article. It's like watching a train wreck about to happen, in a nightmare where you're screaming but you can't be heard. ꕤ

VIDEO - 'Secret Leaked Video of Petraeus outburst'

'Secret Leaked Video of Petraeus outburst' SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=pMALsxxL6mI Funny promo.  Liked that.

Power Drunk Hillary Clinton - Wreaked Destruction on the Middle East

JUSTIN RAIMONDO ARTICLE Hillary’s War The Pentagon tried to stop her – unfortunately, to no avail by Justin Raimondo, February 02, 2015 What’s happening in Libya today is a crime: murder, rape, looting, chaos, a war of all against all. The perpetrator, the one key person who made all this possible, is a well known personage in American politics, a former Secretary of State and the frontrunner for the Democratic presidential nomination. What Hillary Clinton did to Libya is a crime on a scale rivaled only by the crimes of the Bush administration in Iraq – and there is a definite parallel in the methodology of the criminals. Libya has been pretty much off the public’s radar screen ever since the US intervention that led to Muammar Qaddafi’s downfall – and the ugly aftermath in which the US ambassador was murdered by the very people Washington was intent on "liberating." Now the aftermath is getting even uglier. The country is imploding, with two rival governments claiming suzerainty, but describing Libya’s situation as a state of "civil war" is a bit of an understatement. If ever there was such an entity as a "failed state" – that is, a state that has simply collapsed, and is dragging the rest of society down along with it – then Libya fits the definition to a tee. If we liken a society to the human body, then we can say Libya’s immune system is down, allowing a deadly infection to invade and take root – in this case, the "Islamic State," or "caliphate," known as ISIS, which first reared its head in Syria and is now spreading into Libya. [Suzerainty =  a power that controls the foreign affairs of a tributary vassal state, while allowing the subservient nation internal autonomy.] Last week ISIS gunmen stormed Tripoli’s five-star Corinithia Hotel and opened fire at everyone in sight: ten people were killed, five of them foreigners, including one American. A communiqué from the "Tripoli province" of ISIS took responsibility for the attack, which they said was in retaliation for the death of captured Al Qaeda operative Abu Anas al-Liby, who died of liver cancer in a US hospital after being captured by US Special Forces. Both Libya and Syria have been test cases in the experimental laboratory of America’s "regime-change" mad scientists – and both have given birth to Islamist Frankenstein monsters, turning on their creators with a vengeance. But who created them? Who are the Dr. Frankensteins who brought these monsters to life? The administration of George W. Bush lied us into war in Iraq, ignoring the warnings of war critics who presciently predicted the dissolution of the Iraqi state and the chaos we see there today. America’s alliance with "moderate" Sunni Islamists in Anbar province, credited with supposedly driving out Al Qaeda during the much-vaunted "surge," armed and trained the ISIS-led fanatics who have conquered that same region today. And yet while Team Bush can fairly be given some of the blame – by setting the general context of the disaster – the Obama administration is hardly innocent. Hillary Clinton, as Secretary of State, took up a longstanding goal of the previous administration in pushing for a regime change campaign aimed at Syrian strongman Bashar al-Assad: together with General David Petraeus, former CIA chief, she argued for arming the Syrian rebels, in concert with John Kerry and Republican allies like Sen. John McCain. This was part of a general strategy taken up during her tenure at Foggy Bottom, which sought to get ahead of the so-called Arab Spring and ally the US with "moderate" Islamists. The old secular-socialist despots, such as Assad and Libya’s Qaddafi, were finished, went the theory, and so the US should ally itself with this Wave of the Future so as not to be caught flatfooted by the rush of events. In Libya, this meant backing a motley collection of Islamist radicals with, at most, a few degrees of separation from al-Qaeda. This move was championed by Secretary Clinton, along with national security advisor Susan Rice and Samantha Power, then Special Assistant to the President for Human Rights – but not without pushback from the Pentagon. The generals didn’t want to get involved in what they viewed as a dubious adventure with unpredictable results. Who were these rebels we were supporting? The whole operation was "intelligence-lite," as a recent series of articles in the Washington Times puts it. The Times reports a full-scale Pentagon effort to avert US intervention: "Top Pentagon officials and a senior Democrat in Congress so distrusted Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s 2011 march to war in Libya that they opened their own diplomatic channels with the Gadhafi regime in an effort to halt the escalating crisis, according to secret audio recordings recovered from Tripoli. "The tapes, reviewed by The Washington Times and authenticated by the participants, chronicle U.S. officials’ unfiltered conversations with Col. Moammar Gadhafi’s son and a top Libyan leader, including criticisms that Mrs. Clinton had developed tunnel vision and led the U.S. into an unnecessary war without adequately weighing the intelligence community’s concerns." Just as neoconservatives in key positions in the Bush administration manipulated the intelligence in order to shape the debate over the Iraq war, deceiving Congress and the American people, so the Hillaryites in the Obama administration did the same in the brief debate over the Libyan intervention.  As the Times relates: “‘You should see these internal State Department reports that are produced in the State Department that go out to the Congress. They’re just full of stupid, stupid facts,’ an American intermediary specifically dispatched by the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Gadhafi regime in July 2011, saying the State Department was controlling what intelligence would be reported to U.S. officials." Secretary Clinton, National Security Advisor Rice, and "humanitarian interventionist" Power argued that Qaddafi’s speech in which he called Libyan rebels "rats" toward whom he would show "no mercy" indicated a "genocide" was imminent in the eastern city of Benghazi. The media blindly accepted this assertion, as is their wont when it comes to government claims, but as the Times reports: "[D]efense intelligence officials could not corroborate those concerns and in fact assessed that Gadhafi was unlikely to risk world outrage by inflicting mass casualties, officials told The Times. As a result, Defense Secretary Robert M. Gates and Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, strongly opposed Mrs. Clinton’s recommendation to use force." The generals feared they were being handed yet another foreign policy hot potato by the politicians, and in this they were indubitably correct: the Times says Hillary "repeatedly dismissed the warnings offered by career military and intelligence officials" – and prevented any of those warnings from reaching the President or members of Congress. Readers with long memories will recall similar suppressed (albeit leaked) warnings from dissident members of the intelligence community as George W. Bush and his neocon-controlled national security bureaucracy marched us to war in Iraq. The intelligence, they warned, was bogus; there were no "weapons of mass destruction," and the "evidence" for their existence was ginned up out of whole cloth. Surreptitious recordings of a US agent on assignment for the Pentagon reveal the President referring to the Libyan adventure as "all Secretary Clinton’s matter" – in effect washing his hands of it. According to the tapes, the Pentagon’s man in Libya told a top Libyan official – who was trying to negotiate a peaceful end to the crisis – that Army Gen. Charles H. Jacoby, Jr., a top aide to Adm. Mullen, "does not trust the reports that are coming out of the State Department and CIA, but there’s nothing he can do about it." At one point, the Pentagon liaison tells his Libyan contacts "I can tell you that the President is not getting accurate information." Sound familiar? As in the case of the Iraq war, intelligence made public was cherry-picked in order to support a preordained conclusion, and the facts didn’t matter all that much anyway. The Times cites a senior Pentagon official who says: "The decision to invade [Libya] had already been made, so everything coming out of the State Department at that time was to reinforce that decision.” The paper also quotes a senior intelligence official familiar with the administration’s internal deliberations as saying: “Neither the intervention decision nor the regime change decision was an intelligence-heavy decision. People weren’t on the edge of their seats, intelligence wasn’t driving the decision one way or another." Facts? Who needs them? Hillary was determined to have her war, and not even the efforts by the Qaddafi family to effectively surrender were going to stop her: "On the day the U.N. resolution was passed, Mrs. Clinton ordered a general within the Pentagon to refuse to take a call with Gadhafi’s son Seif and other high-level members within the regime, to help negotiate a resolution, the secret recordings reveal. A day later, on March 18, Gadhafi called for a cease-fire, another action the administration dismissed." But the anti-interventionist generals in the Pentagon didn’t give up even then. The Times reveals that General Carter Ham, who headed up the US African Command (Africom), tried to negotiate a 72-hour ceasefire with the Libyan regime. The possibility presented itself through the person of retired Navy Rear Admiral Charles Kubic, who was a business representative in Libya: Kubic says he was approached by top Libyan officials who were ready to negotiate a truce. Kubic relayed the proposal to Lt. Col. Brian Linvill, who was Africom’s Libya specialist, who informed Gen. Ham. The Africom chief agreed it was a good idea. According to Kubic: “The Libyans would stop all combat operations and withdraw all military forces to the outskirts of the cities and assume a defensive posture. Then to insure the credibility with the international community, the Libyans would accept recipients from the African Union to make sure the truce was honored. “[Gadhafi] came back and said he was willing to step down and permit a transition government, but he had two conditions. First was to insure there was a military force left over after he left Libya capable to go after al Qaeda. Secondly, he wanted to have the sanctions against him and his family and those loyal to him lifted and free passage. At that point in time, everybody thought that was reasonable.” The problem was that reasonableness had nothing to do with it: Obama having handed her the authority, Hillary was on her dry run as commander-in-chief and she wasn’t about to let the Pentagon stand in her way. She ordered Ham to "stand down two days after the negotiations began," reports the Times. Kubic says: "If their goal was to get Gadhafi out of power, then why not give a 72-hour truce a try? It wasn’t enough to get him out of power; they wanted him dead." They got what they wanted. They also got a failed state that has become a terrorist haven – and a dead US ambassador, along with several other Americans murdered in the same Benghazi attack. All under Secretary Clinton’s watch. Against the available intelligence, which proffered no evidence of an "imminent genocide," Hillary took her cues from Donald Rumsfeld, whose infamous disquisition on "unknown unknowns" represented the merger of foreign policy and speculative fiction. Citing Rwanda and the early stages of the Balkan conflicts, Clinton averred that inaction would be the equivalent of standing by while a "humanitarian disaster" unfolded. Evidence to the contrary was therefore not admissible because, after all, it might happen. Even as intelligence and military officials were warning that the aftermath of NATO’s Libyan campaign would be highly problematic, Secretary Clinton ignored them and instead pursued her politically-driven agenda – at a cost of thousands of lives, and a terrorist implantation in Libya. Senator Rand Paul (R-Kentucky) put it well: "I think there was a rush headlong toward war in Libya and [the State Department and the administration] weren’t listening to anyone saying anything otherwise, including the Defense Department and intelligence communities, who were saying, ‘Hold on a minute. This may not be a good idea.’ "Hillary’s judgment has to be questioned. Her eagerness for war in Libya should preclude her from being considered the next commander in chief." Amen, brother! http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2015/02/01/hillarys-war/ COMMENT LOL ... thought this guy's spell-check had gone haywire. Nope.  I just haven't come across the term 'suzerainty' before: Suzerainty:   a power that controls the foreign affairs of a tributary vassal state, while allowing the subservient nation internal autonomy. What I got out of this is that Hillary Clinton is a disgusting person and so is anyone associated with her, even if it's just for a book launch photo op. It's just mind-blowing that peoples lives are destroyed and that entire regions are drawn into mayhem created by these power-drunk idiots. ..................................................................................   PS  The 'power drunk' conclusion is probably a bit too simplistic.  Hillary Clinton and other US political figures that banded together to cause the mayhem in Libya did so on behalf of whoever they really represent (ie their political donors and backers).

Charlie Hebdo Massacre, France - War on Terrorism - Free Press & Mass Surveillance & Fascism

#Assange and #Snowden are not to blame for Paris bloodbath. Sat Jan 10 18:19:36 UTC 2015 In today’s Daily Mail, “Sir” Max “I have always loved Israel” Hastings claimed that me and Mr. Snowden are responsible for the bloodbath in Paris: “Traitors… Assange and Snowden have damaged the security of each and every one of us, by alerting the jihadis and Al Qaeda, our mortal enemies, to the scale and reach of electronic eavesdropping”. That a state security vampire like Hastings has pounced on the still warm corpses strewn about Paris is as grotesque as it is predictable. Secrecy breeds corruption, but it also breeds incompetence and the French secret services are no exception to this rule. Currently the French security state has tried to present the killers as super villains in order to hide its own incompetence — something the media has been only too willing to aid and abet. The reality is the Charlie Hebdo killers were bumbling Keystone terrorists, no-hopers, who crashed their car, left their ID, co-ordinated over the phone and swiftly died. To lose nearly two dozen people to them is unforgivable. That double digits were killed is no mark of super powers. A single idiot can do it. In Australia’s Port Arthur massacre, a man with the IQ of 66, literally an idiot, shot 58 people over the course of several hours—because he was armed with an AR-10 semi-automatic and his victims were not. The tragedy in Paris is another example of where competent targeted surveillance, not mass surveillance, was needed. The attackers were well known jihadis. This is not a case of needing to collect a global interception haystack in order to find a needle. The alleged needle in question, Cherif Kouachi, had already been convicted of terrorism offences and served 18 months in prison for it. Both brothers were already on terrorism lists. Far from hiding messages under rocks or using encryption, the alleged conspirators communicated hundreds of times before and during the attacks — on regular phones. The offices of Charlie Hebdo had received many death threats and had been firebombed in 2011 a week after publishing cartoons of the prophet Muhammad. The French mass surveillance system is already one of the most pervasive; its primary purpose, like all such systems, is geopolitics. Mass surveillance addiction doesn’t come for free. In France it thieved skilled human and financial resources from targeted monitoring of obvious—the front of the Charlie Hebdo building and people walking out of prison with a terrorism conviction in one hand and numerous jihadi contacts in the other. Yesterday French Prime Minister Manuel Valls said “There was a failing, of course” on French television, “That’s why we have to analyse what happened.”. Valls is right, Hastings is not. So conspicuous is the failure in the Charlie Hebdo killings that serious questions must be asked. Cherif Kouachi had previously been involved in furthering the Sunni insurgency in the Levant. Were the brothers protected by the French services as part of French adventurism in Syria, Libya and elsewhere—as a conduit to funnel money, guns and militants into Africa and the Middle East? Were the brothers protected because they were witting or unwitting informers? Were the brothers protected in order to conduct a mediagenic, budget-boosting arrest seconds before the attack began — but the attack was moved forward? Why was the security architecture of the Charlie Hebdo building so poor? How is it that semi-automatic weapons found their way into France and into the hands of known jihadis? And most of all why has France’s crazed Sunni adventurism in Syria, Libya and other parts of Africa been tolerated despite the inevitable destabalization, radicalization and blowback? https://wikileaks.org/gifiles/docs/16/1671459_insight-military-intervention-in-syria-post-withdrawal.html ASSANGE SOURCE - Twitter. Couldn't resist copying this over.  Nice response to Max Hastings' assertion in Daily Mail, which (in my opinion) could also serve as a notice to others trying to shift blame away from the issue of long-standing Western & European government policies and practices -- including imperialism, colonialism and interventions in the Middle East (and elsewhere) --  which I believe are some of the factors at the root of the Islamic extremist violence that Europe is experiencing. Disturbances caused in the Middle East and elsewhere are responsible for large movements of people from their homelands, which leads to issues associated with identity, religion and culture, resistance to assimilation versus assimilation, and difficulty integrating a clash of cultures, identity and values, which is exploited by nationalists, fundamentalists and extremists in host countries and elsewhere, for political and other gain. This is just my overall impression at the moment, based on my limited knowledge at this time. In an article in Haaretz, I found it interesting that the 'free press' as a whole, are clubbed together as Assange and Snowden supporters. The Haaretz article starts off with a statement posing as question.  It questions: (a) whether 'closer state surveillance' could have prevented the Charlie Hebdo massacre and, if so, it asks: (b) would the 'free press', who have supported Snowden and Assange (presumably the free press as a whole, because the author is not referring to specific publications or journalists), feel like crap (implication), if 'closer state surveillance' could have prevented the massacre (which is contentious, given that experts in that field argue that mass surveillance is *not* the answer, that it is a hindrance and that targeted surveillance is required).  Article Haaretz strikes me as casting very subtle aspersion on free press, as well as Assange and Snowden,  as figures supporting or representing freedom of press (Assange) and freedom from mass surveillance (Snowden & Assange). The Haaretz article also characterises Charlie Hebdo publication as follows: The target can, in Charlie Hebdo, be seen as a kind of marker of the ideology of secular France. That's quite sweeping statement to make about a satirical magazine, even if it is couched in 'can ... be seen' terms. So satire has become a representation or symbol of 'ideology' and this 'ideology' is depicted as a prevailing one in secular France, so presumably the target of Islamist extremist violence is the 'ideology' of  'secular France', is the gist of that sentence? Difficult for me to come to grips with the statement because I don't see the content of a satirical magazine as being a representation of secular cultural 'ideology'; rather, it is (in my view) social or political comment made by the originators of the material, who are entitled to a voice in society that values freedom of expression. The article continues: The big question in the wake of the massacre at Charlie Hebdo is whether the slaughter will bring France out of its corner in the war on Islamist terror. France has seen some appalling crimes – including attacks against Jews – that could be linked, broadly, to the global war against Islamist terror. ... the Internet appears to capture gunmen shouting "Allahu Akbar"("God is greatest" in Arabic) – all eyes will be on France to see what happens next. It’s not that France has been entirely out of the fight on Islamist terror. A few hours before the attack on Charlie Hebdo, Agence France Press reported that the Charles de Gaulle, the aircraft carrier that is the flagship of the French fleet, would be deployed to the Gulf to take part in operations against the Islamist State. France, though, has always seemed to hang back a bit. Gurfinkiel calls this a “tradition,” with the French authorities “hoping to know more” by leaving hostile elements at large in France while keeping an eye on them. That starts to look like a risky strategy in an era of so-called “lone wolf” terrorist attacks. [Gurfinkiel, referred to above, is "Michel Gurfinkiel, a Paris-based pro-Israel journalist"] The focal point seems to be the "global war against Islamist terror" but there are a number of factors beyond that which are not discussed (eg corporate imperialism in the Middle East, the arming of 'moderate'-designated 'rebels', the regime changes in the Middle East that the West is responsible for (eg Libya and, now, pushing for a regime change in Syria), which can be viewed as actually fostering Islamist terror organisations in the region (and, by extension, extremism in regions beyond). The article states: The press has sought largely to stay neutral in the global war on terrorism or has tilted against the hawkish camp. and that view of the supposedly 'neutral' (and/or anti 'war on terrorism') press, is then linked to the original question/statement regarding the position of the press (in light of what amounts to the earlier Assange and Snowden negative association), tied in with the supposed antidote that 'could' have prevented the massacre:  'closer state surveillance'. So the agenda here is to accuse the press of not supporting 'war on terrorism' by (a) not supporting mass surveillance (and by extension, a police or a totalitarian state solution, and therefore large-scale violation of civil liberties) and, presumably, (b) accuse the press of not putting 'war on terrorism' promotional spin on the news; as well as pointing out how lax France tends to be, before committing to military intervention in regions beyond its borders, in addition to dragging its feet implementing law enforcement type controls within its borders.  Therefore, it could be seen as an article perhaps lobbying for pro totalitarian and interventionalist action by (a) France and (b) the press (who is expected to support this). I think that's a reasonable inference to make, but this is just my impression of what I read in Haaretz and I am new to looking at politics, so this is an amateur point of view.  Someone else may see the article and this whole scenario entirely differently.  Here's the Haaretz article headline and link: Will the Charlie Hebdo attack bring France out of its corner in the war on Islamist terror? And how will the free press feel, after it supported Edward Snowden or Julian Assange, if it discovers that closer state surveillance could have foreseen the Paris massacre? By Seth Lipsky | Jan. 7, 2015 | 7:58 PM | 5 Final word on the conclusion (below): But what position will the newspapers take after having expressed support for Julian Assange or Edward Snowden, if it turns out that this attack could have been foreseen by more aggressive collection and mining of the metadata? Thought it was clever to raise a 'question' (but really make a statement) at the beginning of an article and reinforced at the end, kind of 'tarnishing' Snowden and Assange (and the press freedom and freedom from surveillance push), without getting one's hands dirty by bothering to construct an argument that aggressive collection of metadata (mass surveillance) is a proven extremist violence preventative measure (see William Binney, who argues otherwise). Getting back to the Assange post, I'm going to have to pass on the attack 'moved forward' proposition, because I simply cannot believe that this happened.  Way too hard to believe that whoever is running intelligence in France would protect these these guys and, effectively, become a co-conspirator plotting a staged media event that went wrong. On the other hand, CIA were involved in bombing attacks in Italy (Operation Gladio), so anything's possible, and the idea can't be totally ruled out, I suppose. Not sure why there's no mention of the rocket launcher (unless it was a false initial report).  The report that these guys had a rocket launcher blew me away.  Anyway, I thought this might be of interest.  Too bad I can't articulate my impressions clearly. ......................................................................................... LINKS *  Sir Max Hastings Journalist, foreign correspondent, editor. Cousin:  war hero, MI6 operative (Stephen Hastings) August 2014: Hastings one of 200 public figures / signatories to a letter to The Guardian opposing Scottish independence. *  Plan Vigipirate France's national security alert system.  Created in 1978. Regularly gets updated whenever there's 'terror bombing campaigns' in France. The fact that this alert system was introduced in the late 70s, gets updated and continues to be required in France, surely poses some questions related to French foreign policy.  * Daily Mail Article:   "MAX HASTINGS: Why the liberals who defended traitors like Snowden and Assange should look at this photo and admit: We were deluded fools" DAILY MAIL EXTRACTS: The price of living in an open society, with the precious freedoms we take for granted, is that all of us, great and small, are vulnerable to attackers consumed by hatred for our culture, its values, and manifest superiority to those from which they come. Globalisation places a disturbing number of such people in our midst, rather than far away in Somalia or Iran. Ummm, I somehow don't think that those who take to enacting terrorist activities merely do so because they hate our manifest cultural superiority.  While 'globalism' did get a mention, what's missing is corporate imperialism combined with geopolitical imperialist ambition. Jihadism, he says, represents a response to ‘the challenge of a secular, urban civilisation that threatens to destroy their traditional values and beliefs’ Yes, but does this pertain to all fundamentalist extremists in all circumstances, or is this just a facet of the fundamentalist extremism?  Also, why is the West arming extremists -- eg currently arming and training Syrian 'moderate rebels', and the West is known to have armed and supported the Mujahadeen. Our principal weapons against terrorists are not tanks, Typhoon fighter jets or warships, but instead intelligence officers using electronic surveillance. Much cant has been peddled recently about the supposed threat to liberty posed by government eavesdropping on our lives. Here we go again.  Another pusher of mass surveillance, which has been given a legal nod in Britain, anyway. I'm starting to get the impression that those who argue for mass surveillance are just closet fascists demanding a totalitarian state -- not because totalitarian mass surveillance is going to prevent terrorist attacks, but because it serves the purposes of those in power. In truth, Assange and Snowden have damaged the security of each and every one of us, by alerting the jihadis and Al Qaeda, our mortal enemies, to the scale and reach of electronic eavesdropping. Don't know why Assange has been dragged into the 'electronic eavesdropping' alerting of mortal enemies argument; it was Snowden who released the NSA mass surveillance information rather than Assange (although Assange is opposed to mass surveillance). Seeing that mass surveillance didn't even prevent the Boston bombing (which the Russians warned the Americans about), we can give the mass surveillance cheering routine a rest:  mass surveillance is not effective.  But its a great tool when it comes to political assassination:  see General Petraeus. Public safety demands a perpetual balancing act between collective security and the rights of the individual. And it is terrific for surveilling members of the 'free press'.  Also, you'll hear a lot about 'safety' and 'national security' when it comes to government trying to erode civil liberties. Old Max goes on to talk about WWII situation (has anyone declared WWIII yet?), and plays a accompanying violin, romantically depicting brutal wartime assault on civil liberties as:  50 million British people against Hitler.  Yeah, Max, all well and good in WWII Britain, but there's been no declaration of WWIII to justify the gross violations perpetrated by Western totalitarianism. This is the most disgusting war-drums propaganda piece ever. What this guy wants is a totalitarian state and, quite possibly, seeing he would have insider knowledge, that state is perhaps really preparing for outright war (rather than 'war on terrorism'). Here's a reminder of pre-WWII Britain: British Union of Fascists Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976. Sir Oswald Ernald Mosley, 6th Baronet Leader of British Union of Fascists Copyright Disclaimer Under Section 107 of the Copyright Act 1976. Looks like fascism tends to precede war.

US, NATO & DESTRUCTION OF LIBYA

US, NATO And The Destruction Of Libya: The Western Front Of A Widening War – OpEd August 16, 2014 By Pambazuka News By Horace G. Campbell NATO claimed that its intervention in Libya was a historic success. But three years later, Libya is in complete chaos. Some 1700 militias have a combined total of 250,000 men under arms. Another external intervention seems necessary to stabilize the country. But the US and NATO must never be involved INTRODUCTION Most western embassies evacuated their personnel from Tripoli over the past few weeks as the fighting between rival armed militias creates a nightmare of violence, insecurity and death for millions of Libyans. The United States used its military presence in the Mediterranean to escort its embassy personnel and Marine guards to travel by road over the last weekend to Tunisia. The evacuation of western diplomats leaving the millions of Libyans to an uncertain fate has brought to the fore the Libyan dimensions of a wider theater of warfare from Tripoli through Benghazi to Cairo, Alexandria and Gaza and from Aleppo in Syria to Mosul in Iraq. The former allies of NATO such as Qatar, Turkey and Saudi Arabia are now connected to differing factions of the Libyan civil war. In Libya, the war and bloodletting between the US supported General Khalifah Hifter (sometimes spelt Haftar) and the militias supported by Qatar is one indication of former allies falling out. Citizens of the West have little understanding of the depth of the sufferings unleashed on the peoples of North Africa, Palestine, Syria and Iraq since the United States and NATO launched wars against the peoples of this region. The battles in Libya are merging with the criminal war against the people of Palestine, especially the peoples of Gaza. [...] EXTRACT - FULL ARTICLE @ SOURCE http://www.eurasiareview.com/16082014-us-nato-destruction-libya-western-front-widening-war-oped/

Good article for anyone interested in Libya.

I'm a bit slow so I've been reading and re-reading, trying to get the hang of what's happening.

I'm heading back the article for another read about US military and CIA involvement ... a sneaky NATO intervention ... incessant bombing  ... US investment firms ... oil money and more.  Oh, and the US involvement with Jihadists.

............................................................

PS

No matter how much I re-read, there's only so much info I can take in.  This is about all I can absorb:

Since 2011 NATO destruction Libya = 50,000 dead.

General Khalifah Hifter (aka Haftar) was a Gadaffi general who defected and at one stage lived in Washington.

Hifter went back to Libyawhen the NATO bombings began in 2011.

Hifter heads 1,700 militias (yep, that many), which is about 250,000 armed men.

(I think) the article indicates the problem in Libya is that the anti-Gadaffi fighters are now not prepared to subordinate themselves to Hifter.  

Hifter's the US-backed man ... he's the Libyan 'wonder'.  But that's not necessarily a positive.

CIA under Petraeus recruited Islamists from Eastern Libya to fight in Syria (see Broadwell biography).

War against Syria:  Qatar, Saudi Arabia & Turkey backed (money & weapons) ISIS.

Now Saudi Arabia & Qatar fallen out over military takeover of Egypt by Grl SISI (and something to do with the Brotherhood).

Article says US Africa Command and CIA recruited previously designated terrorists.

There was a Hifter and Jihadist alliance.

Sounds like Hifter wants to be the main man.  

His main rival was bumped off (General Abdul Fattah Younis).

Wikipedia on Younis - here - says he was #2 in Gadaffi govt before he resigned and joined the rebels.

Shot & body burnt (along with x1 other).  Said to have been killed by rebels on suspicion he was double agent (for Gadaffi).

The Libyan stuff is supposed to affect North Africa, Gaza, Syria and maybe some other areas, but I don't understand how and this is pretty much all I can kind of get a handle on at the moment.  LOL.

Great article for anyone who knows more about the region than I do.  Worth a read.

Who is Joe Biden?

JOE BIDEN

Joseph Robinette Biden (Junior)

Vice President of the United States
Democratic Party

US Senator from Delaware 1973-2009
A former chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, dealing with issues related to drug policy, crime prevention, and civil liberties:

• Violent Crime Control
• Law Enforcement Act
• Violence Against Women Act

Biden has been heavily involved in Obama's decision-making process.

Biden’s ‘ability to negotiate with Congressional Republicans played a key role in bringing about the bipartisan deals ...

”Biden attended the University of Delaware in Newark, where he was more interested in sports and socializing than in studying, although his classmates were impressed by his cramming abilities.”

.... “Syracuse University College of Law ... receiving a half scholarship based on financial need with some additional assistance based in part upon academics.”

”Biden received five student draft deferments during this period, with the first coming in late 1963 and the last in early 1968 at the peak of the Vietnam War.”

“In April 1968, he was reclassified by the Selective Service System as not available for service due to having had asthma as a teenager.”

“Biden was generally supportive of the war during much of this time and never became part of the anti-Vietnam War movement; he would later say that at the time he was preoccupied with marriage and law school, and that he "wore sports coats ... not tie-dyed".”

”Regarding foreign policy, during his first decade in the Senate, Biden focused on arms control issues.”

Biden ... long-time member and former chairman of the Foreign Relations Committee.


BOSNIAN WAR

Lobbied for U.S. military  intervention during the Bosnian War.

”Biden was among the first to call for the "lift and strike" policy of lifting the arms embargo, training Bosnian Muslims and supporting them with NATO air strikes, and investigating war crimes.”

“Both the George H. W. Bush administration and Clinton administration were reluctant to implement the policy, fearing Balkan entanglement.” [AS IF ... LOL]

“Biden wrote an amendment in 1992 to compel the Bush administration to arm the Bosnians...”

“... deferred in 1994 to a somewhat softer stance preferred by the Clinton administration, before signing on the following year to a stronger measure sponsored by Bob Dole and Joe Lieberman.
 
SAY HELLO TO:

1995 NATO bombing campaign in Bosnia and Herzegovina

FOLLOWED BY:  Dayton Agreement.

“Biden has called his role in affecting Balkans policy in the mid-1990s his "proudest moment in public life" that related to foreign policy.”

“In 1999, during the Kosovo War, Biden supported the NATO bombing campaign against Serbia and Montenegro...

“... co-sponsored with his friend John McCain the McCain-Biden Kosovo Resolution, which called on President Clinton to use all necessary force, including ground troops, to confront Milosevic over Serbian actions in Kosovo.”

Biden ...

“NATO enlargement and the successful passage of bills to streamline foreign affairs agencies and punish religious persecution overseas.”

1991 – GULF WAR

Biden had voted against authorization for the Gulf War in 1991...said the U.S. was bearing almost all the burden in the anti-Iraq coalition.

2001 -  AFGHANISTAN WAR

Biden pro 2001 war in Afghanistan, saying:

"Whatever it takes, we should do it."

2002 - IRAQ

“Biden stated in 2002 that Saddam Hussein was a threat to national security, and that there was no option but to eliminate that threat.”

“The Bush administration rejected an effort Biden undertook with Senator Richard Lugar to pass a resolution authorizing military action only after the exhaustion of diplomatic efforts.”

“2002, Biden voted in favor of the Authorization for Use of Military Force Against Iraq, justifying the Iraq War.”

“While he soon became a critic of the war and viewed his vote as a "mistake", he did not push to require a U.S. withdrawal.”

“He supported the appropriations to pay for the occupation...”

“... argued repeatedly that the war should be internationalized, that more soldiers were needed, and that the Bush administration should "level with the American people" about the cost and length of the conflict.”

”By late 2006, Biden's stance had shifted, and he opposed the troop surge of 2007, saying General David Petraeus was "dead, flat wrong" in believing the surge could work.”

“Biden was instead a leading advocate for dividing Iraq into a loose federation of three ethnic states.”

“... 2006, Biden and Leslie H. Gelb, President Emeritus of the Council on Foreign Relations, released a comprehensive strategy to end sectarian violence in Iraq.”

“Rather than continuing the present approach or withdrawing, the plan called for "a third way":  federalizing Iraq and giving Kurds, Shiites, and Sunnis "breathing room" in their own regions.“

“2007 ..  a non-binding resolution passed the Senate endorsing such a scheme.

However, the idea was unfamiliar, had no political constituency, and failed to gain traction.”

“Iraq's political leadership united in denouncing the resolution as a de facto partitioning of the country, and the U.S. Embassy in Baghdad issued a statement distancing itself.”

LIBYA

'2004 - Biden secured the brief release of Libyan democracy activist and political prisoner Fathi Eljahmi, after meeting with leader Muammar Gaddafi in Tripoli.

2008 -  “Biden sharply criticized President George W. Bush for his speech to Israel's Knesset in which he suggested that some Democrats were acting in the same way some Western leaders did when they appeased Hitler in the runup to World War II.

Biden stated: "This is bullshit. This is malarkey. This is outrageous.

Outrageous for the president of the United States to go to a foreign country, sit in the Knesset ... and make this kind of ridiculous statement."

Biden later apologized for using the expletive. Biden further stated, "Since when does this administration think that if you sit down, you have to eliminate the word 'no' from your vocabulary?" '

[Source:  wikipedia]
-----------------------------------------------

COMMENT



Council on Foreign Relations sounds like the US 'war house'.


Joe Biden sounds like a jock.

And he hasn't personally seen active military service -- or any military service.

But, hey, he's happy to make war -- and is proud of making war on foreign soil.



Some NGO turned charity ought to do a worldwide survey, asking:

Is Joe Biden the most hated man on the planet? 

If he can do deals with Republicans to get things done and if that's why he's so handy, he's got to be slime.

Not sure what the Israel-Knesset stuff even means.


Did notice that former General David Petraeus got a mention.

So Biden reckons he knows more than a general.

Must read the General David Petraeus Rolling Stone interview with Hastings.

Remember not thinking much about it at the time.  Not interested in politics or politics of war at the time.

However, I did feeling sorry for Petraeus ... I thought he let his guard down and it seemed like this 'intimacy' or whatever it was, was perhaps exploited.

The above isn't some statement about war sides or anything; I don't know about that.  It is just my initial impressions back then.

Anyway, no wonder Biden's got his snout stuck in Ukraine.  It's right down his alley.  LOL!