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The assassination of a Tunisian aviation engineer outside his home near Sfax on 15 December has drawn fierce condemnation from the public and rekindled old tensions with the state of Israel, which many suspect of being behind the attack.Thousands gathered in Sfax on 24 December to protest the man’s killing and what some considered to be a tepid response from their government.Mohamed Zouari, a 49-year-old Tunisian drone expert who is reported to have pioneered Hamas's drone programme, was gunned down earlier this month in an ambush plot that involved "foreign elements," Tunisian authorities have confirmed.Hamas’s military wing, the Qassam Brigades, acknowledged Zouari as a "Qassam leader" and accused Israel of perpetrating the attack in a statement shortly after his death.The Tunisian government, which did not release an official statement until days later, has received a barrage of criticism over their handling of the case. Many questioned how a foreign network could have infiltrated the country and carried out such a plot, and expressed frustration that officials did not issue a more stern and direct rebuke.

Finding themselves under scrutiny, Tunisian security officials scoured the scene of the crime, finding evidence of rental cars, handguns and silencers, and arrested eight Tunisian suspects in connection with the attack. At least two foreigners, thought to be the authors of the plot, are still behind sought, security sources said.Tunisian Minister of the Interior Hedi Mejdoub has rebuffed calls to resign in the wake of the incident, including by former Tunisian president Moncef Marzouki."The state must fully assume its responsibility in this matter," Marzouki said. 

Zouari, whose background as a Hamas operative is only beginning to emerge, was a key figure in the organisation's drone programme and had reportedly developed an unmanned naval submarine with military capabilities.

t’s no coincidence then that the White House advised London to establish a special unit within its military structure – the British Cyber Command, transferring up to 1500 officers under its command just “for starters”. One must note that Washington has already created its own special unit for cyberwarfare back in 2009. This unit goes under the name of United States Cyber Command, with its headquarters being located at Fort Meade (Maryland). According to The Guardian, the 77th brigade will formally come into being in April. The brigade will be carrying out covert operations on social networks exclusively, in an effort to spread disinformation and manipulate the population of certain countries, which should create “favorable conditions” for applying political pressure or the executing of regime change in strategically important regions of the world. Its headquarters will be located to the west of London in Newbury (Berkshire) while it’s official insignia will be the famous symbol of Chindits (a mythical god-like lion guarding temples in Myanmar and other countries in South-East Asia), that was used by a a British India ‘Special Force’ which participated in the suppression of guerrilla Japanese troops deep in the forests of Southeast Asia. The use of social networks to overthrow unwanted regimes has been Washington’s modus operandi for decades now. This led to the creation of a whole industry of disinformation and the manipulation of public opinion. The events surrounding the Arab Spring, countless other color revolutions and the latest events in Ukraine can serve as a perfect example of how an unstable sociopolitical and economic situation in a country can be exploited by Western intelligence agencies to a achieve a radical change in the sovereign governments of other states .First appeared: http://journal-neo.org/2015/02/11/rus-v-britanii-sozdayut-internetarmiyu/

ABU DHABI, United Arab Emirates, June 7 (UPI) -- Colombia's defense ministry is alarmed about an exodus of top soldiers to the United Arab Emirates to join a highly paid U.S.-led mercenary force organized by Erik Prince, billionaire founder of the security firm Blackwater. Prince, who sold Blackwater in 2010 after it was involved in killings and scandals in Iraq, went to Abu Dhabi, capital of the Persian Gulf federation, in 2011. He signed on to form an 800-man battalion of mercenaries for what emirati officials termed "anti-terrorism operations" inside and outside the country. But it's widely believed in Gulf security circles the force, being assembled under considerable secrecy by Prince's Reflex Responses registered in the emirates, will be used for undisclosed special operations for the seven desert emirates that make up the federation.

That's expected to include putting down "internal unrest" that might challenge the ruling families, as happened in Egypt, Libya, Tunisia and Yemen, and which is growing in Kuwait and Bahrain. The Reflex Responses force, which is officially described in a contract leaked to the New York Times in 2011 as "independent of formal command and support structures throughout the United Arab Emirates," will have its own air wing, with fixed wing aircraft and helicopters, plus its own private navy. The naval wing's tasks will primarily be "small boat operations ... maritime interdiction operations and securing oil delivery platforms." The mercenaries have a custom-built high-security base in the desert where troops live and train.

But the over-riding security threat is widely perceived to be Iran, 100 miles across the gulf and which occupies several islands claimed by the Emirates. Prince's mercenary force is made up largely of Colombian soldiers, including senior officers and men with a Special Forces background There are also many veterans of Executive Outcomes, a South African security firm that became notorious in the 1990s for suppressing rebellions in mineral-rich African dictatorships and staging coups to gain control of such assets. EO personnel included many veterans of Britain's Special Air Service and special operations units in South Africa's apartheid-era military.

President Trump’s desire to fight Daesh and to put an end to international terrorism is going to be extremely difficult to implement. Indeed, it will cause damage to the states who organised it, and implies a reorientation of international politics. The new President of the United States does not seem ready to give his troops the order to attack until he has found and sealed new alliances.

he opposition against President Donald Trump is so strong that the plan to fight Daesh, which is scheduled to be presented on 22 March during a Coalition summit in Washington, is still not ready. Its political direction is still vague. Only the objective of eradicating jihadism has been agreed upon, but none of the implications of the plan have been resolved. General Joseph Votel, the head of CentCom, still has not presented the options on the ground. He should do so only at the beginning of April. On the ground, the plan is restricted to the exchange of information from the United States on one hand, and Russia and Iran on the other. In order to maintain the status quo, the three powers have agreed to prevent any confrontation between the Turks and the Kurds. And intensive bombing campaigns are being carried out against al-Qaïda in Yemen and against Daesh in Iraq. But nothing decisive. Orders are to hold. The weapon of international terrorism has been managed on behalf of London and Washington by the Muslim World League since 1962. It includes both the Muslim Brotherhood (composed of Arabs) and the Order of the Naqshbandis (mostly composed of Turko-Mongols and Caucasians).

Until the war in Yemen, the military budget of the League was greater than that of the Saudi army, which meant that the League was the biggest private army in the world, a long way ahead of Academi/Blackwater. Even if it was only a land army, it was all the more efficient in that its logistics came directly from the Pentagon, and because it also had many suicide combatants. It was the League – that is to say the Sauds – who furnished London and Washington with the personnel to organise the second «Great Arab Revolt», in 2011, on the model of the Revolt of 1916, but called this time the «Arab Spring». In both cases, the aim was to apply pressure on the Wahhabis in order to redefine the regional frontiers to the benefit of the Anglo-Saxons. The point is not simply to abandon the weapon of terrorism, but also: to shatter the alliance between London and Washington for the control of the Greater Middle East; to deprive Saudi Arabia and Turkey of the weapon they have been developing on behalf of London and Washington for half a century; to determine the future of Sudan, Tunisia and Libya.

Reporters Without Borders (RSF) released its annual “Enemies of the Internet” index this week—a ranking first launched in 2006 intended to track countries that repress online speech, intimidate and arrest bloggers, and conduct surveillance of their citizens.  Some countries have been mainstays on the annual index, while others have been able to work their way off the list.  Two countries particularly deserving of praise in this area are Tunisia and Myanmar (Burma), both of which have stopped censoring the Internet in recent years and are headed in the right direction toward Internet freedom. In the former category are some of the world’s worst offenders: Cuba, North Korea, China, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Vietnam, Belarus, Bahrain, Turkmenistan, Syria.  Nearly every one of these countries has amped up their online repression in recent years, from implementing sophisticated surveillance (Syria) to utilizing targeted surveillance tools (Vietnam) to increasing crackdowns on online speech (Saudi Arabia).  These are countries where, despite advocacy efforts by local and international groups, no progress has been made. The newcomers  A third, perhaps even more disheartening category, is the list of countries new to this year's index.  A motley crew, these nations have all taken new, harsh approaches to restricting speech or monitoring citizens:

United States: This is the first time the US has made it onto RSF’s list.  While the US government doesn’t censor online content, and pours money into promoting Internet freedom worldwide, the National Security Agency’s unapologetic dragnet surveillance and the government’s treatment of whistleblowers have earned it a spot on the index. United Kingdom: The European nation has been dubbed by RSF as the “world champion of surveillance” for its recently-revealed depraved strategies for spying on individuals worldwide.  The UK also joins countries like Ethiopia and Morocco in using terrorism laws to go after journalists.  Not noted by RSF, but also important, is the fact that the UK is also cracking down on legal pornography, forcing Internet users to opt-in with their ISP if they wish to view it and creating a slippery slope toward overblocking.  This is in addition to the government’s use of an opaque, shadowy NGO to identify child sexual abuse images, sometimes resulting instead in censorship of legitimate speech.

There's a new international survey on Internet security and trust, of "23,376 Internet users in 24 countries," including "Australia, Brazil, Canada, China, Egypt, France, Germany, Great Britain, Hong Kong, India, Indonesia, Italy, Japan, Kenya, Mexico, Nigeria, Pakistan, Poland, South Africa, South Korea, Sweden, Tunisia, Turkey and the United States." Amongst the findings, 60% of Internet users have heard of Edward Snowden, and 39% of those "have taken steps to protect their online privacy and security as a result of his revelations." The press is mostly spinning this as evidence that Snowden has not had an effect: "merely 39%," "only 39%," and so on. (Note that these articles are completely misunderstanding the data. It's not 39% of people who are taking steps to protect their privacy post-Snowden, it's 39% of the 60% of Internet users -- which is not everybody -- who have heard of him. So it's much less than 39%.)

Even so, I disagree with the "Edward Snowden Revelations Not Having Much Impact on Internet Users" headline. He's having an enormous impact. I ran the actual numbers country by country, combining "data on Internet penetration with data from this survey. Multiplying everything out, I calculate that *706 million people* have changed their behavior on the Internet because of what the NSA and GCHQ are doing. (For example, 17% of Indonesians use the Internet, 64% of them have heard of Snowden and 62% of them have taken steps to protect their privacy, which equals 17 million people out of its total 250-million population.)

Note that the countries in this survey only cover 4.7 billion out of a total 7 billion world population. Taking the conservative estimates that 20% of the remaining population uses the Internet, 40% of them have heard of Snowden, and 25% of those have done something about it, that's an additional 46 million people around the world. It's certainly true that most of those people took steps that didn't make any appreciable difference against an NSA level of surveillance, and probably not even against the even more pervasive corporate variety of surveillance. It's probably even true that some of those people didn't take steps at all, and just wish they did or wish they knew what to do. But it is absolutely extraordinary that *750 million people* are disturbed enough about their online privacy that they would represent to a survey taker that they did something about it.

The U.S. government is paying private contractors billions of dollars to support secretive military units with drones, surveillance technology, and “psychological operations,” according to new research. A detailed report, published last week by the London-based Remote Control Project, shines a light on the murky activities of the U.S. Special Operations Command by analyzing publicly available procurement contracts dated between 2009 and 2013. USSOCOM encompasses four commands – from the Army, Navy, Air Force, and Marine Corps – and plays a key role in orchestrating clandestine U.S. military missions overseas.

Researcher Crofton Black, who also works as an investigator for human rights group Reprieve, was able to dig through the troves of data and identify the beneficiaries of almost $13 billion worth of spending by USSOCOM over the five-year period. He found that more than 3,000 companies had provided services that included aiding remotely piloted drone operations in Afghanistan and the Philippines, helping to conduct surveillance of targets, interrogating prisoners, and launching apparent propaganda campaigns. “This report is distinctive in that it mines data from the generally classified world of U.S. special operations,” says Caroline Donnellan, manager of the Remote Control Project, a progressive thinktank focused on developments in military technology. “It reveals the extent to which remote control activity is expanding in all its facets, with corporations becoming more and more integrated into very sensitive elements of warfare. The report’s findings are of concern given the challenges remote warfare poses for effective investigation, transparency, accountability and oversight.”

According to the report, USSOCOM tendered a $1.5 billion contract that required support with “Psychological Operations related to intelligence and information operations.” Prospective contractors were told they would have to provide “military and civilian persuasive communications planning, produce commercial quality products for unlimited foreign public broadcast, and develop lines of persuasion, themes, and designs for multi-media products.” The contract suggested that aim of these “persuasion” operations was to “engage local populations and counter nefarious influences” in parts of Europe and Africa.

Islamist militias in Libya took control of nearly a dozen commercial jetliners last month, and western intelligence agencies recently issued a warning that the jets could be used in terrorist attacks across North Africa. Intelligence reports of the stolen jetliners were distributed within the U.S. government over the past two weeks and included a warning that one or more of the aircraft could be used in an attack later this month on the date marking the anniversary of the Sept. 11, 2001, terrorist attacks against New York and Washington, said U.S. officials familiar with the reports. “There are a number of commercial airliners in Libya that are missing,” said one official. “We found out on September 11 what can happen with hijacked planes.”

A senior State Department counterterrorism official declined to comment on reports of the stolen jetliners.  A second State department official sought to downplay the reports. “We can’t confirm that,” he said.

The officials said U.S. intelligence agencies have not confirmed the aircraft theft following the takeover of Tripoli International Airport in late August, and are attempting to locate all aircraft owned by two Libyan state-owned airline companies, as security in the country continued to deteriorate amid fighting between Islamists and anti-Islamist militias.

The Obama Administration has been pursuing a policy of covert support for the Muslim Brotherhood and other insurgent movements in the Middle East since 2010.  MEB has obtained a just-released U.S. State Department document through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit that confirms the Obama Administration’s pro-active campaign for regime change throughout the Middle East and North Africa region. The October 22, 2010 document, titled “Middle East Partnership Initiative: Overview,” spells out an elaborate structure of State Department programs aimed at directly building “civil society” organizations, particularly non-governmental organizations (NGOs), to alter the internal politics of the targeted countries in favor of U.S. foreign policy and national security objectives. The five-page document, while using diplomatic language, makes clear that the goal is promoting and steering political change in the targeted countries:  “The Middle East Partnership Initiative (MEPI) is a regional program that empowers citizens in the Middle East and North Africa to develop more pluralistic, participatory, and prosperous societies.  As the figures in this overview illustrate, MEPI has evolved from its origins in 2002 into a flexible, region-wide tool for direct support to indigenous civil society that mainstreams that support into the daily business of USG diplomacy in the region.  MEPI engages all the countries of the NEA region except Iran.  In the seven of NEA’s eighteen countries and territories with USAID missions, country-level discussions and communication between MEPI and USAID in Washington ensure that programming efforts are integrated and complementary.”

According to the October 2010 document, the Deputy Chief of Mission (DCM) at every U.S. embassy in the MENA (Middle East/North Africa) is in charge of the MEPI program, giving it a clear high priority.  The document makes clear that the Middle East Partnership Initiative is not coordinated with host governments:  “MEPI works primarily with civil society, through NGO implementers based in the United States and in the region.  MEPI does not provide funds to foreign governments, and does not negotiate bilateral assistance agreements.  As a regional program, MEPI can shift funds across countries and to new issue-areas as needed.” The document makes clear that special priority, as early as 2010, was given to Yemen, Saudi Arabia, Tunisia, Egypt and Bahrain, and that project headquarters in Abu Dhabi and Tunis were overall coordinating centers for the entire regional program.  Within a year of its inception, Libya and Syria were added to the list of countries on the priority list for civil society intervention.

The State Department document was released as part of an FOIA suit focused on Presidential Study Directive 11, which remains classified “secret” and has not yet been released to the public.  According to MEB sources, PSD-11 spelled out the Obama Administration’s plans to support the Muslim Brotherhood and other allied “political Islam” movements believed at the time to be compatible with U.S. foreign policy objectives in the region.

Hundreds of anti-Israeli demonstrators brought traffic to a standstill in London today after turning out in their droves to call for an end to military strikes on Gaza. Protesters crowded the streets outside the Israeli Embassy in Kensington High Street, west London, and some took it even further by standing on one of the city’s iconic double-decker buses. Waving placards which read ‘Gaza: End the Siege’ and ‘Freedom for Palestine’, demonstrators chanted and blocked the road as they protested against ‘Israeli aggression’ in the Middle East.

At least 17 people climbed on top of a London bus during the protest, with one holding a banner which read: ‘Judaism rejects the Zionist state and condemns its criminal siege and occupation’.Others lined the main road in Kensington High Street, preventing any vehicles from using the road for a short period.

However, despite the traffic jams and large crowds, police said the protest was largely peaceful as a whole.The demonstration came after the Palestine Solidarity Campaign, which staged protests around the world today, called on people to ‘oppose Israeli aggression’. In a statement earlier this week, the group said: ‘This isn’t about rockets from Gaza. It’s about Israel fighting to maintain its control over Palestinian lives, and Palestinian land.

The United Arab Emirates designated a large number of organizations, topped by the Muslim Brotherhood. The list includes a large number of other organizations who have been implicated in US/NATO subversion worldwide, such as CAIR and CANVAS. On November 15 that Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) adopted a list that designates eighty-three organizations as terrorist organizations. The UAE’s government notes that the list is not final, implying others could be added but noting that those organizations who find themselves on the list have the possibility to apply for being removed from the list. The UAE stressed that it saw it necessary to designate the included organizations as terrorist organizations to protect the security of the emirates.

The United Arab Emirates designated a large number of organizations, topped by the Muslim Brotherhood. The list includes a large number of other organizations who have been implicated in US/NATO subversion worldwide, such as CAIR and CANVAS. On November 15 that Cabinet of the United Arab Emirates (UAE) adopted a list that designates eighty-three organizations as terrorist organizations. The UAE’s government notes that the list is not final, implying others could be added but noting that those organizations who find themselves on the list have the possibility to apply for being removed from the list. The UAE stressed that it saw it necessary to designate the included organizations as terrorist organizations to protect the security of the emirates.

The list includes organizations which are currently legally operating in at lest seven European countries and at least two organizations which are legally operating in the United States. Among those operating in the United States are the Council on American-Islamic Relations, CAIR and the Muslim American Society. CAIR is commonly perceived as the successor organization of the Muslim Brotherhood and Hamas associated organizations such as WAMY and the Institute of Islamic Thought whose leadership had direct links to the White House but who were outlawed when their involvement in terrorism became too much part of the public record.

This week marks the three-year anniversary of the Western-backed assassination of Libya’s former president, Muammar Gaddafi, and the fall of one of Africa’s greatest nations. In 1967 Colonel Gaddafi inherited one of the poorest nations in Africa; however, by the time he was assassinated, Gaddafi had turned Libya into Africa’s wealthiest nation. Libya had the highest GDP per capita and life expectancy on the continent. Less people lived below the poverty line than in the Netherlands. After NATO’s intervention in 2011, Libya is now a failed state and its economy is in shambles. As the government’s control slips through their fingers and into to the militia fighters’ hands, oil production has all but stopped. The militias variously local, tribal, regional, Islamist or criminal, that have plagued Libya since NATO’s intervention, have recently lined up into two warring factions. Libya now has two governments, both with their own Prime Minister, parliament and army.

For over 40 years, Gaddafi promoted economic democracy and used the nationalized oil wealth to sustain progressive social welfare programs for all Libyans. Under Gaddafi’s rule, Libyans enjoyed not only free health-care and free education, but also free electricity and interest-free loans. Now thanks to NATO’s intervention the health-care sector is on the verge of collapse as thousands of Filipino health workers flee the country, institutions of higher education across the East of the country are shut down, and black outs are a common occurrence in once thriving Tripoli. One group that has suffered immensely from NATO’s bombing campaign is the nation’s women. Unlike many other Arab nations, women in Gaddafi’s Libya had the right to education, hold jobs, divorce, hold property and have an income. The United Nations Human Rights Council praised Gaddafi for his promotion of women’s rights. When the colonel seized power in 1969, few women went to university. Today, more than half of Libya’s university students are women. One of the first laws Gaddafi passed in 1970 was an equal pay for equal work law. Nowadays, the new “democratic” Libyan regime is clamping down on women’s rights. The new ruling tribes are tied to traditions that are strongly patriarchal. Also, the chaotic nature of post-intervention Libyan politics has allowed free reign to extremist Islamic forces that see gender equality as a Western perversion.

Hifter’s forces are currently vying with the Al Qaeda group Ansar al-Sharia for control of Libya’s second largest city, Benghazi. Ansar al-Sharia was armed by America during the NATO campaign against Colonel Gaddafi. In yet another example of the U.S. backing terrorists backfiring, Ansar al-Sharia has recently been blamed by America for the brutal assassination of U.S. Ambassador Stevens. Hifter is currently receiving logistical and air support from the U.S. because his faction envision a mostly secular Libya open to Western financiers, speculators, and capital. Perhaps, Gaddafi’s greatest crime, in the eyes of NATO, was his desire to put the interests of local labour above foreign capital and his quest for a strong and truly United States of Africa. In fact, in August 2011, President Obama confiscated $30 billion from Libya’s Central Bank, which Gaddafi had earmarked for the establishment of the African IMF and African Central Bank. In 2011, the West’s objective was clearly not to help the Libyan people, who already had the highest standard of living in Africa, but to oust Gaddafi, install a puppet regime, and gain control of Libya’s natural resources.

“We have mobilized 65 countries to go after ISIL,” Mr. Obama told reporters while on a trip to Turkey, using an acronym for the group. “The United States has built and led a broad coalition against ISIL of some 65 nations,” he said several days later.“The United States, France and our coalition of some 65 nations have been united in one mission — to destroy these ISIL terrorists,” he added a few days after that.The president has sought to evoke the sort of grand coalition the United States led in World War II. But when it comes to the war part of the war against the Islamic State, the 65-member coalition begins to shrink rapidly down to a coalition of just a handful.

As of Nov. 19, the United States had conducted 6,471 of the 8,289 airstrikes against the Islamic State, according to the Pentagon. American warplanes carried out about two-thirds of the strikes on Iraqi territory and 95 percent of those on Syrian territory. Australia, Canada, France and Jordan have conducted strikes in both countries. Belgium, Denmark, the Netherlands and Britain have participated just in Iraq, while Bahrain, Saudi Arabia, Turkey and the United Arab Emirates have participated just in Syria.That leaves more than 50 other coalition members that have never been directly involved in the air campaign. Some early participants, like Saudi Arabia, Bahrain, Jordan and the U.A.E., have not conducted a strike in months. While France has stepped up its strikes since the Paris attacks, Canada’s new prime minister is sticking to his vow to pull its six CF-18 fighter jets out of the bombing campaign, although Canadian surveillance and refueling aircraft may stay with the mission.

The Obama administration considers just 24 of the countries to be part of the core group that meets quarterly. The Italians are training Iraqi police officers, the Germans and Emiratis are working with 20 countries to stabilize war-torn areas, and 18 countries are training Iraqi and Kurdish military.But many others seem included in the membership rolls because they have adopted policies protecting their own security. Countries like Kuwait and Tunisia have broken up Islamist cells. Sweden is speeding up legislation to curb the abuse of Swedish passports and to criminalize foreign fighters. Albania approved a national strategy to combat violent extremism. Other members include Luxembourg, Montenegro, Iceland, Taiwan, Singapore, Bosnia and Herzegovina, Latvia, and Kosovo.