Group items tagged

The alliance consists of a number of mostly Islamist factions, including the Nusra Front, al Qaeda’s Syrian affiliate; Ahrar al-Sham, another large group; and more moderate rebel factions that have received covert arms support from the intelligence services of the United States and its allies. The Telegraph, in an early October article complaining that Russia was bombing “non-ISIL rebels,” similarly noted that the Army of Conquest (bombed by Russia) “includes a number of Islamist groups, most powerful among them Ahrar al-Sham and Jabhat al-Nusra. Jabhat al-Nusra is the local affiliate of al-Qaeda.” Even the Voice of America noted that “Russia’s main target has been the Army of Conquest, an alliance of insurgent groups that includes the al-Nusra Front, al-Qaida’s affiliate in Syria, and the hard-line Islamist group Ahrar al-Sham, as well as some less extreme Islamist groups.”

In other words, the claim from the anonymous Saudi official that the BBC uncritically regurgitated — that the Saudis are only arming the Army of Conquest but no groups that “include” the Nusra Front — is self-negating. A BBC reader, Ricardo Vaz, brought this contradiction to the BBC’s attention. As he told The Intercept: “The problem is that the Nusra Front is the most important faction inside the Army of Conquest. So either the Saudi official expected the BBC journalist not to know this, or he expects us to believe they can deliver weapons to factions fighting side by side with an al Qaeda affiliate and that those weapons will not make their way into Nusra’s hands. In any case, this is very close to an official admission that the Saudis (along with Qataris and Turkish) are supplying weapons to an al Qaeda affiliate. This of course is not a secret to anyone who’s paying attention.” In response to Vaz’s complaint, the BBC did not tell its readers about this vital admission. Instead, it simply edited that Saudi admission out of its article. In doing so, it made the already-misleading article so much worse, as the BBC went even further out of its way to protect the Saudis. This is what that passage now states on the current version of the article on the BBC’s site (emphasis added): He said those groups being supplied did not include either Islamic State (IS) or al-Nusra Front, both of which are proscribed terrorist organizations. Instead, he said the weapons would go to the Free Syrian Army and other small rebel groups.

So originally, the BBC stated that the “Saudi official” announced that the regime was arming the Army of Conquest. Once it was brought to the BBC’s attention that the Army of Conquest includes the al Qaeda affiliate Nusra Front — a direct contradiction of the Saudi official’s other claim that the Saudis are not arming Nusra — the BBC literally changed the Saudi official’s own statement, whitewashed it, to eliminate his admission that they were arming Army of Conquest. Instead, the BBC now states that the Saudis are arming “the Free Syrian Army and other small rebel groups.” The BBC simply deleted the key admission that the Saudis are arming al Qaeda.

But what this does highlight is just how ludicrous — how beyond parody — the 14-year-old war on terror has become, how little it has to do with its original ostensible justification. The regime with the greatest plausible proximity to the 9/11 attack — Saudi Arabia — is the closest U.S. ally in the region next to Israel. The country that had absolutely nothing to do with that attack, and which is at least as threatened as the U.S. by the religious ideology that spurred it — Iran — is the U.S.’s greatest war-on-terror adversary. Now we have a virtual admission from the Saudis that they are arming a group that centrally includes al Qaeda, while the U.S. itself has at least indirectly done the same (just as was true in Libya). And we’re actually at the point where western media outlets are vehemently denouncing Russia for bombing al Qaeda elements, which those outlets are  manipulatively referring to as “non-ISIS groups.” It’s not a stretch to say that the faction that provides the greatest material support to al Qaeda at this point is the U.S. and its closest allies. That is true even as al Qaeda continues to be paraded around as the prime need for the ongoing war. But whatever one’s views are on Syria, it’s telling indeed to watch the BBC desperately protect Saudi officials, not only by granting them anonymity to spout official propaganda, but worse, by using blatant editing games to whitewash the Saudis’ own damaging admissions, ones the BBC unwittingly published. There are many adjectives one can apply to the BBC’s behavior here: “Objective” and “neutral” are most assuredly not among them.

The other data that came out from Guccifer 2.0, a download from the DNC, has been a charade.  It was a download and not a transfer across the Web.  The Web won’t manage such a high speed.  It could not have gotten across the Atlantic at that high speed.  You would have to have high capacity lines dedicated to that in order to do it. They have been playing games with us.  There is no factual evidence to back up any charge of hacking here. Bernstein: So was this a leak by somebody at Democratic headquarters? Binney: We don’t know that for sure, either.  All we know was that it was a local download.  We can likely attribute it to a USB device that was physically passed along.

Right now, our government is violating the first, fourth and fifth amendments in various ways.  Mueller did it, Comey did it, they were all involved in violating the Constitution.

Bernstein:  There seems to be a new McCarthyite operation around the Russia-gate investigation.  It appears that it is an attempt to justify the idea that Clinton lost because the Russians undermined the election. Binney: I have seen no evidence at all from anybody, including the intelligence community.  If you look at the Intelligence Community Assessment (ICA) report, they state on the first page that “We have high confidence that the Russians did this.”  But when you get toward the end of the report, they basically confess that “our judgment does not imply that we have evidence to back it up.” Bernstein:  It was initially put out that seventeen intelligence agencies found compelling evidence that the Russians hacked into our election.  You’re saying it was actually selected individuals from just three agencies.  Is there anything to the revelations that FBI agents talked about taking action to prevent Trump from becoming president? Binney: It certainly does seem that it is leaning that way, that is was all a frame-up.  It is a sad time in our history, to see the government working against itself internally. Bernstein:  I take it you are not a big supporter of Trump. Binney:  Well, I voted for him.  I couldn’t vote for a warmonger like Clinton.  She wanted to see our planes shooting down Russian planes in Syria.  She advocated for destabilizing Libya, for getting rid of Assad in Syria, she was a strong backer of the war in Iraq.