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There is a new entrant in the already crowded field of Israeli Lobby funded groups opposed to an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program. It is the “wounded warriors” and their families denouncing the perfidious Persians. The first salvo was fired on August 4th in a letter to Rupert Murdoch’s New York Post from the daughter of an Army Lieutenant Colonel killed in Iraq by “Iranian weapons,” who concluded that “we are already at war with Iran.” After the letter ads began to appear in television markets where congressmen considered to be vulnerable to pressure from Israel’s friends were located. The ads were produced by a group called “Veterans Against an Iran Deal,” whose executive director is Michael Pregent, a former adviser to General David Petraeus who is also an “Expert” affiliated with the Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP), an American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) spin off. The group has a website which claims that “the Iranian regime murdered and maimed thousands of Americans” but there is no indication who exactly supports it and is providing funding or what kind of following it has. The group’s first ad featured as a spokesman a retired army Staff Sergeant named Robert Bartlett. In the video, Bartlett, whose face bears the scars resulting from being on the receiving end of an improvised explosive device in Iraq, claims he was “blown up by an Iranian bomb.” In addition to blaming Iran for providing Iraqi insurgents with the weapons that were used to maim him and kill his colleagues he also tells how Iranians would “kidnap kids” and kill them in front of their parents. Per Bartlett, those who deal with Iran will have “blood on their hands” and will be responsible for funding Iranian terror.

Bartlett’s anger is nevertheless understandable, but his claim that he was maimed by Iranian provided weapons should not go unchallenged. In actual fact, it is a lie. In 2005 the Bush Administration began to claim that Iran had been “interfering” in Iraq. The claim, rarely backed up by an substance, was based on suppositions about Tehran’s likely interests regarding its predominantly Shi’ite neighbor and it was little more than an excuse to explain the persistence and intensity of Iraqi resistance to the American invasion. Sophisticated roadside bombs using shaped charges, initially referred to as Improvised Explosive Devices (IEDs) and subsequently as Explosively Formed Penetrators (EFPs), first appeared in Iraq in the summer of 2004. Initial reports on the weapon in June 2005, stated that it was being used by Sunni insurgents and was likely produced by ordnance experts from the disbanded Iraqi Army. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq had a large army with a sophisticated if limited ability to produce some weapons in its own armories. When the army was foolishly disbanded by the Coalition Provisional Authority, skilled workers who had been employed in the weapons shops were made redundant and took with them the knowledge to make any number of improvised weapons using the materiel that remained in Iraq’s arms storage depots.

The indictment of Iran as the source of weapons being used by insurgents continued and intensified as the security situation in Iraq deteriorated. Some media coverage attributed the killing of hundreds of American soldiers to Iranian supplied weapons because any death by EFP was immediately attributed to Iran. In spite of the lack of any solid evidence, the largely neoconservative supporters of pre-emptive action against Iran stated specifically that Iran was “killing American soldiers” through its provision of sophisticated weaponry. A nearly hysterical progress report given to Congress by General David Petraeus and Ambassador Ryan Crocker on April 8, 2008 went even farther, claiming that Iran was responsible for most of the violence occurring in Iraq. But the argument about Iranian involvement in Iraq was itself logically inconsistent, something that Crocker and Petraeus should have understood. The Iraqi insurgency in the period 2004-2006 was largely Sunni and hostile to Iran. That the Iranians would be supplying the Sunnis or that the Sunnis would have sought such aid was implausible.

What operation of the ugly kind with which we have become familiar, which aims to take revenge against Arabs or deter the authorities from evacuating communities.

t turns out that in the past year, the Shin Bet – especially its Jewish Division – has been dealing with a new kind of cancer, violent and repulsive, which has surpassed its predecessor. We are talking about a group of young Jews which has adopted an ideological, anti-Zionist, fanatic and anarchistic common denominator, seeking to destroy the "state of the Zionists" (that's their terminology) and establish a holy kingdom instead of it. The Shin Bet sees them as a terror organization for all intents and purposes, which is violently undermining the foundations of the Israeli society.

This group is made up of dozens of young people, some of them minors. The older ones are 22 or 23 years old. They come from all parts of the country and have no unique characteristics apart from the fact that they have all left their families and educational institutions and live in the Judea and Samaria hills. They don't have a permanent settlement point. Rather, they move from place to place on a daily basis.   Their operational doctrine can be found in a document authored by Moshe Orbach of Bnei Brak, who belongs to the group that torched the   They have marked five potential explosive points for themselves: Igniting a conflict at the Temple Mount, banishing gentiles (by torching Arab homes), eliminating idol worship (by torching churches and mosques), religious coercion and undermining the government system. They are not talking about armed activity like the Jewish Underground and are not using firearms for now. They create provocations and don't hesitate to kill – a step up from the "price tag" activity, which focused on property.   Their first known operation was in December 2014, when they tried to torch a house in South Mount Hebron. The Shin Bet detained the perpetrators, but they were released under administrative restrictions. In February 2015, they tried to torch a church in Bethlehem, and in July they torched the church at Tabgha. Five were detained, but only two were prosecuted. Moshe Orbach was indicted.

The war on terror, that campaign without end launched 14 years ago by George Bush, is tying itself up in ever more grotesque contortions. On Monday the trial in London of a Swedish man, Bherlin Gildo, accused of terrorism in Syria, collapsed after it became clear British intelligence had been arming the same rebel groups the defendant was charged with supporting. The prosecution abandoned the case, apparently to avoid embarrassing the intelligence services. The defence argued that going ahead withthe trial would have been an “affront to justice” when there was plenty of evidence the British state was itself providing “extensive support” to the armed Syrian opposition. That didn’t only include the “non-lethal assistance” boasted of by the government (including body armour and military vehicles), but training, logistical support and the secret supply of “arms on a massive scale”. Reports were cited that MI6 had cooperated with the CIA on a “rat line” of arms transfers from Libyan stockpiles to the Syrian rebels in 2012 after the fall of the Gaddafi regime. Clearly, the absurdity of sending someone to prison for doing what ministers and their security officials were up to themselves became too much. But it’s only the latest of a string of such cases. Less fortunate was a London cab driver Anis Sardar, who was given a life sentence a fortnight earlier for taking part in 2007 in resistance to the occupation of Iraq by US and British forces. Armed opposition to illegal invasion and occupation clearly doesn’t constitute terrorism or murder on most definitions, including the Geneva convention.

But terrorism is now squarely in the eye of the beholder. And nowhere is that more so than in the Middle East, where today’s terrorists are tomorrow’s fighters against tyranny – and allies are enemies – often at the bewildering whim of a western policymaker’s conference call.

A revealing light on how we got here has now been shone by a recently declassified secret US intelligence report, written in August 2012, which uncannily predicts – and effectively welcomes – the prospect of a “Salafist principality” in eastern Syria and an al-Qaida-controlled Islamic state in Syria and Iraq. In stark contrast to western claims at the time, the Defense Intelligence Agency document identifies al-Qaida in Iraq (which became Isis) and fellow Salafists as the “major forces driving the insurgency in Syria” – and states that “western countries, the Gulf states and Turkey” were supporting the opposition’s efforts to take control of eastern Syria. Raising the “possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality”, the Pentagon report goes on, “this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)”.

In protest of unelected dictator Thaksin Shinawatra and his proxy regime led by his own nepotist-appointed sister Yingluck Shinawatra, anti-regime protesters plan to shut down Thailand's capital of Bangkok starting on Monday, January 13, 2014.  The necessity of continued mass mobilizations is due in part to the current regime's immense foreign backing - including across the West's mass media who continue to claim Thaksin Shinawatra's rule is legitimate despite him being a convicted criminal hiding abroad and openly running the country through a series of nepotist proxies which have included both his brother-in-law and now sister. While unthinkable and unacceptable in any other country, news fronts such as the BBC, New York Times, CNN, Reuters, AP, AFP and others insist that this cartoonish, criminal arrangement is somehow representative of "democracy" in Thailand.  The New York Times, despite defending what is by all measures an absurd abuse of the principles of representative governance, would even report in its article titled, "In Thailand, Power Comes With Help From Skype," that:  For the past year and a half, by the party’s own admission, the most important political decisions in this country of 65 million people have been made from abroad, by a former prime minister who has been in self-imposed exile since 2008 to escape corruption charges. 

The country’s most famous fugitive,Thaksin Shinawatra, circles the globe in his private jet, chatting with ministers over his dozen cellphones, texting over various social media platforms and reading government documents e-mailed to him from civil servants, party officials say.  It might be described as rule by Skype. Or governance by instant messenger, a way for Mr. Thaksin to help run the country without having to face the warrant for his arrest in a case that many believe is politically motivated. There is no question that an accused mass murderer and convicted criminal hiding abroad from a 2 year jail sentence, multiple arrest warrants, and a long list of pending court cases, is illegally running Thailand by proxy.  Of course, just as a convicted criminal running America or England via Skype would be a laughable prospect entirely unacceptable by Americans or English, likewise, it is unacceptable in Thailand. The sham elections the regime is planning for February 2, 2014 which have Thaksin Shinawatra's sister and brother-in-law once again at the top of the candidate list, have already been boycotted by all opposition parties, leaving the regime alone posting campaign posters along Thailand's roads, reminiscent of scenes of sham elections carried out in North Korea. 

Who is Thaksin Shinawatra and Why do People Detest Him?

The FBI is at it again. Creating fake terror plots to justify their existence. And this plot hits on all the themes one would expect from a good fake terror plot. The FBI initially found a patsy by trolling Twitter for support of ISIS. That's exciting because finding someone retarded enough to admit support for murderers is really difficult. Then they sent an in-house jihadist to team up with the patsy to plan a grand terror attack on the nation's Capitol. Heroically, the moment the 20-year-old patsy said he would "go forward with violent jihad" the FBI steps in and declares a victory in the war on terror. NBC News reports: Ohio man was arrested Wednesday and accused of planning to attack the U.S. Capitol, U.S. officials told NBC News. But the officials said the man, identified as Christopher Cornell, 20, was dealing with an undercover agent the entire time and was never in a position to carry out his plan. "There was never a danger to the public," an official told NBC News. The officials said that starting in August, Cornell began posting comments on Twitter in support of ISIS under an alias, Raheel Mahrus Ubaydah. Shortly after those posts began appearing, the FBI sent an undercover operative to meet with him.

During a meeting with the operative, court documents say, Cornell said he wanted "to go forward with violent jihad" and that Anwar al-Awlaki — the U.S.-born Muslim cleric who was killed by a U.S. drone in September 2011 and was the first U.S. citizen publicly known to have been added to the U.S. kill-or-capture list — and others had encouraged that kind of action. Seriously, Anwar al-Awlaki again? Hasn't his name become synonymous with "false flag"? He's a proven federal asset who also supposedly handled the Fort Hood Shooter, the Underwear Bomber and even the recent Paris Shooters - all incredibly shady events that served to advance the "war on terror" agenda. The FBI has incubated fake terror plots over and over: See this, this, this, this, this, this, this, and this. Surely they'd never let an event go live, would they? What would they have to gain? Well, the only reason this story exists at all is to make the public feel that there are genuine terror threats targeting the US Capitol. That is then used to justify spying on the Internet and funding the huge terrorism-industrial complex that has nothing better to do than make up the reasons to keep giving them money. The police state is a ruthless business, and false flag terror is its most effective marketing tool. UPDATE: Surprise, the salesmen are already using this fake story to push their agenda: John Boehner Credits Government Surveillance For Uncovering Capitol Bomb Threat

On January 5, 2015 the United Nations announced that offensive operations by its forces, known as MONUSCO, along with Congolese army elements, are being prepared against the Democratic Forces For the Liberation of Rwanda (FDLR) based in the east of the Republic of Congo (DRC). This follows a Security Council statement of October 3, 2014 calling for the neutralization of the FDLR if they did not surrender, which itself followed a demand by the International Conference of the Great Lakes Region, and the South African Development Community made on July 2nd last year that the FDLR demobilise.

The Security Council “rejected any call for political dialogue” and went on to call the FDLR a group of war criminals. This rejection of dialogue based on a false characterization of the FDLR and on a false history of the events in Rwanda and central Africa for the past twenty years is itself a violation of Chapter 1, Article 1 of the UN Charter that states that the purposes of the United Nations are to “maintain peace and security …and to bring about by peaceful means…settlement of international disputes or situations which might lead to a breach of the peace.” It is also surprising since the UN’s own Mapping Exercise Report of 2010 which examined crimes against humanity and war crimes committed against Hutu refugees in the DRC between 1996 and 2003 described countless mass atrocities and massacres of those refugees by Rwandan, Burundian, Ugandan and allied forces, amounting to genocide against the Hutus. Those massacres have not stopped since 2003 as several proxy forces of the Rwandans and Ugandans, using various names, and claiming to be Congolese rebels, have continued attacks on Hutus in the DRC as well as on Congolese who got in the way of their objective of looting the resources of the region.

The FDLR is the only force trying to protect Hutu refugees in the DRC from being totally exterminated by the Rwandan and Ugandan forces, the same forces that attacked and pillaged Rwanda between 1990 and 1994 and that have slaughtered several million more Hutus and Congolese since. Because the FDLR is the only effective armed political opposition to the military dictatorship of Paul Kagame and his Rwandan Patriotic Front (RPF), it is a clear threat to the countries that have mining and resource interests in the DRC and who have been using Uganda and Rwanda as local enforcers to carry out their effective division of the country that makes it easier to control and exploit those resources. All the countries in the pan-African groups that called for the demobilisation of the FDLR have interests in the resources of the Congo region. All have an interest in continued war in the DRC, its continued division and weakness, and the destruction of any effective opposition to the forces assigned the role of carrying out that policy. This includes the DRC itself whose President, Joseph Kabila, is known to be a partner and agent of Kagame and rules the DRC not in the interests of the Congolese but in the interests of Kagame, Musuveni and their western masters.

The Board of Immigration Appeals (BIA) ruled last week that General Carlos Eugenio Vides-Casanova could be removed to El Salvador on account of his participation in human rights abuses in the 1980s when he was head of the National Guard (1979–1983) and then Minister of Defense (1983–1989). (The judgment is here.) In so ruling, the BIA affirmed a February 2012 opinion by an Immigration Judge, which — apparently for privacy reasons — was not released by the Justice Department until April 2013 after The New York Times filed a request under the Freedom of Information Act. Vides-Casanova has been found deportable under the Intelligence Reform and Terrorism Prevention Act, 8 U.S.C. § 1127(a)(4)(D) (passed in 2004 but rendered retroactive), which is intended to bar individuals who participated in genocide, Nazi persecution, torture, or summary execution from enjoying safe haven in the United States.

The Vides-Casanova decision reiterated D-R-’s determination that: inadmissibility under … the Act is established where it is shown that an alien with command responsibility knew or should have known that his subordinates committed unlawful acts covered by the statute and failed to prove that he took reasonable measures to prevent or stop such acts or investigate in a genuine effort to punish the perpetrators. The BIA’s opinion constitutes precedent and is binding upon all Immigration Judges. In reaching these results, both sets of adjudicators rejected Vides-Casanova’s claims that:  the human rights violations were the result of “rogue units” acting autonomously and his conduct was “consistent with the ‘official policy’ of the United States” such that it would be unfair under principles of equitable estoppel to remove him.

The incident for which the men were tried was the single largest known massacre of Iraqi civilians at the hands of private U.S. security contractors. Known as “Baghdad’s bloody Sunday,” operatives from Blackwater gunned down 17 Iraqi civilians at a crowded intersection at Nisour Square on September 16, 2007. The company, founded by secretive right-wing Christian supremacist Erik Prince, pictured above, had deep ties to the Bush Administration and served as a sort of neoconservative Praetorian Guard for a borderless war launched in the immediate aftermath of 9/11. While Barack Obama pledged to reign in mercenary forces when he was a senator, once he became president he continued to employ a massive shadow army of private contractors. Blackwater — despite numerous scandals, congressional investigations, FBI probes and documented killings of civilians in both Iraq and Afghanistan — remained a central part of the Obama administration’s global war machine throughout his first term in office.

Just as with the systematic torture at Abu Ghraib, it is only the low level foot-soldiers of Blackwater that are being held accountable. Prince and other top Blackwater executives continue to reap profits from the mercenary and private intelligence industries. Prince now has a new company, Frontier Services Group, which he founded with substantial investment from Chinese enterprises and which focuses on opportunities in Africa. Prince recently suggested that his forces at Blackwater could have confronted Ebola and ISIS. “If the administration cannot rally the political nerve or funding to send adequate active duty ground forces to answer the call, let the private sector finish the job,” he wrote. None of the U.S. officials from the Bush and Obama administrations who unleashed Blackwater and other mercenary forces across the globe are being forced to answer for their role in creating the conditions for the Nisour Square shootings and other deadly incidents involving private contractors. Just as the main architect of the CIA interrogation program, Jose Rodriguez, is on a book tour for his propagandistic love letter to torture, Hard Measures: How Aggressive CIA Actions After 9/11 Saved American Lives, so too is Erik Prince pushing his own revisionist memoir, Civilian Warriors: The Inside Story of Blackwater and the Unsung Heroes of the War on Terror.

While the Blackwater verdict is an important and rare moment of accountability in an overwhelmingly unaccountable private war industry, it does not erase the fact that those in power—the CEOs, the senior officials, the war profiteers—walk freely and will likely do so for the rest of their lives.

A lawsuit in the United States has been filed against former Israeli Prime Minister and Defense Minister Ehud Barak for his role in the 2010 Israeli commando attack upon the Gaza Freedom Flotilla in which 8 Turkish citizens and one American citizen were executed by Israeli forces and over fifty Turkish passengers were wounded.  The trial will be the first time a former Israeli Prime Minister will be put on trial for reasons of international terrorism. The family of Furkan Doğan, the American citizen who was assassinated in the attack, filed the lawsuit in the Central District Court of California and notice of the trial was handed to Barak last night, October 20, in Los Angeles when he spoke in the Distinguished Speaker series of Southern California  (http://speakersla.com/speakers/ehud-barak/).  According to a press release (http://mavi-marmara.ihh.org.tr/en/main/news/0/case-opened-against-former-israeli-pm-ehud-ba/2969) from the Turkish International Humanitarian organization that sponsored the Mavi Marmara ship,  charges against Barak include his planning and leadership in the murder of Furkan Doğan and others in international waters, Willful killing, attempted willful killing, intentionally causing serious injury to body or health, international terrorism, plundering, intentionally causing damage to property, restriction of people's freedom and instigating violent crimes. 

American attorneys Hydee Dijsktal and Dan Stormer, the British law firm, Stoke & White, British Professor Dr. Geoffrey Nice and UK attorney Rodney Dixon are the legal team for the Dogan family. Ehud Barak was almost arrested in France in 2010 when he went to a weapons expo. by hopping off the plane last minute with the trial opened against him by the wives of martyrs in France. Other legal proceedings against Barak and other senior members of the Israeli government are in the works.  In 2010 in France, the widows of Cevdet Kılıçlar and Necdet Yıldırım, two others executed by Israeli commandos, brought a lawsuit against Barak which he evaded when he was informed of the French lawsuit as he was about to deplane in Paris to attend a weapons expo in France. In the case brought in the International Criminal Court (ICC), the ICC prosecutor has ruled that the attack by Israeli commandos upon the Mavi Marmara in the Gaza Freedom Flotilla was a war crime. Additionally, the 7th High Criminal Court in Istanbul, Turkey has issued a “red notice” for the arrest of four senior Israeli government officials in a lawsuit filed in Turkey http://www.incanews.net/en/turkey/313/turkish-court-orders-arrest-of-4-israeli-officials . The Israeli officials named by the court are Israel's former Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi, former navy chief Eliezer Marom, former military intelligence head Amos Yadlin and former air force intelligence chief Avishai Levy.

Due to political considerations dealing with the State of Israel, the Ministry of Justice of Turkey has delayed sending to Interpol the “red notice” much to the consternation of those seeking justice.

Palestinians from the Gaza Strip have criticized an Israeli report on the country’s 2014 military operation against the besieged coastal enclave. The report was released by Israeli state comptroller Yosef Shapira on Tuesday. “I understand from the report that Gaza was merely the setting for an Israeli war game, with no objective but to destroy and murder indiscriminately,” said Basman Alashi, executive director of the El-Wafa Medical Rehabilitation and Specialized Surgery Hospital. The hospital, formerly located in the Shujaya neighborhood by the separation barrier with Israel east of Gaza City, was repeatedly shelled by Israeli forces during the 51-day offensive before it was evacuated under fire on July 17, 2014.

“The overall impression it leaves is this: ‘Netanyahu, You didn’t do a good job of destroying Gaza, do it better next time,’” Alashi said of the report. Others said the document contained useful information about Israel’s behavior during the offensive, even if its conclusions remained incomplete. “The report shows that Israel follows a systematic policy of humiliating Palestinians, especially through careless targeting of civilians,” said Ramy Abdu, founder and chairman of the Euro-Mediterranean Human Rights Monitor. Abdu’s Geneva-based agency has conducted investigations of Israel’s military conduct, including an Oct. 30, 2014 report stating that its forces had “deliberately targeted locations with concentrations of civilians” during operations earlier that year. “What the report has failed to cover is to cite careless targeting of civilians as a consistent failure of the Israeli forces, with almost no serious actions to do something about it,” Abdu said in regard to the Israeli comptroller’s findings.

It also claimed the cabinet had not only failed to consider diplomatic alternatives to military action, but also to set any clear strategy concerning Gaza. Once the operation began, it said, Israeli forces largely failed to meet their objective of thwarting tunnels dug by Palestinian resistance groups, destroying only half of them over weeks of a bloody ground invasion that produced many casualties. The comptroller did not appear to consider the goals of an earlier military operation, launched by Israel in the West Bank on June 13, 2014. These goals were to weaken Hamas, obstruct an agreement by Hamas and Fatah to form a unity government across the West Bank and Gaza Strip and recover three young settlers captured by Palestinians.