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Secret is out: Americans murdered Liaquat Ali Khan! | Pakistan Today - 0 views

www.pakistantoday.com.pk/...cans-murdered-liaquat-ali-khan U.S.-foreign-policy assassinations Pakistan Ali-Khan
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Americans murdered the first elected prime minister of Pakistan through the Afghan government, declassified documents of US State Department disclosed. Like a number of other high-profile killings, the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, has also remained a mystery. Conspiracy theories abound, yet are difficult to substantiate. It was revealed in the documents declassified a few years ago that two people killed the murderer of Liaquat Ali Khan at the spot while crowd also massacred the two persons in order to leave no sign of the conspiracy. According to the documents, the United States wanted to get contracts of oil resources in Iran. Pakistan and Iran enjoyed cordial ties and Afghanistan used to be an enemy of Pakistan during 1950-51. The neighbouring Afghanistan was the only country that did not accept Pakistan at that time. The US demanded Pakistan use its influence in Tehran and persuade it to transfer control of its oil fields to the US. Liaquat Ali Khan declined to accede to the request, saying he would not use his friendship for dishonest purposes and not interfere in personal affairs of Iran.
  • On which, then US President Harry Truman had threatened to Liaquat Ali Khan. Not only that, Liaquat Ali Khan also demanded that the US vacate air bases in Pakistan, dropping a bombshell on Americans. Following the development, American started search of murderer for assassinating Khan. They did not find a suitable person in Pakistan and then turned to Afghanistan for this purpose, according to the documents. Washington contacted the US Embassy in Kabul, offering Zahir Shah to search an assassin for Khan and in return they will ensure Pashtoonistan’s freedom. Afghan government had found a man, Syed Akbar, to take the job and also made arrangements for him to be killed immediately after, so as to conceal the conspiracy. All three stayed at a local hotel in Rawalpindi one day before the meeting of party in Company Bagh. Akbar fired at Khan when he started his speech at dais and he fell on the stage, saying “Allah help Pakistan”. The cartridges recovered from Khan’s body were US made. The type of bullets used to kill the Pakistani prime minister was in use by high-ranking American officers and were not usually available in the market.
  • Some people claimed that Governor General Ghulam Muhammad was behind Khan’s murder while some blamed Mushtaq Ahmed Gormani. Different committees and commission were constituted but failed to conclude any results. After a span of over 60 years, the US State Department have disclosed all the secrets and a video of Dr Shabir about disclosures also appeared in which he gave reaction over the declassified documents. When Online contacted Muazzam Ali Khan, the grandson of Liaquat Ali Khan, he said they are aware about the report and it is true. He also said they also have supporting documents in this regard.
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Tomgram: Anand Gopal, How to Create an Afghan Blackwater | TomDispatch - 0 views

www.tomdispatch.com/...to_create_an_afghan_blackwater Anand-Gopal The-Real-Afghan-War
shared by Gary Edwards on 07 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • The Real Afghan War How an American Fantasy Conflict Created Disaster in Afghanistan By Anand Gopal [This essay is taken from chapter five of Anand Gopal’s No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes and appears at TomDispatch.com with the kind permission of Metropolitan Books.]
  • Gary Edwards on 07 Apr 15
     
    "The other day, as I was reading through the New York Times, I came upon this headline: "Powerful Afghan Police Chief Killed in Kabul." His name was Matiullah Khan.  He had once been "an illiterate highway patrol commander" in an obscure southern province of Afghanistan and was taken out in a "targeted suicide bombing" on the streets of the capital -- and I realized that I knew him!  Since I've never been within a few thousand miles of Kabul, I certainly didn't know him in the normal sense. I had, you might say, edited Matiullah Khan. He was one of a crop of new warlords who rose to wealth and power by hitching their ambitions to the American war and the U.S. military personnel sent to their country to fight it.  Khan, in particular, made staggering sums by essentially setting up an "Afghan Blackwater," a hire-a-gun -- in fact, so many guns -- protection agency for American convoys delivering supplies to far-flung U.S. bases and outposts in southern Afghanistan. He became the protector and benefactor of a remarkable Afghan woman who is a key character in Anand Gopal's No Good Men Among the Living: America, the Taliban, and the War Through Afghan Eyes, which I edited and published in the American Empire Project series I co-run for Metropolitan Books. I don't think it's an exaggeration to say that Gopal covered the Afghan War for years in a way no other Western journalist did. He spent time with crucial allies of Afghan President Hamid Karzai and with a Taliban commander, with warlords and American Special Ops guys, politicians and housewives. He traveled rural Afghanistan as few American reporters were capable of doing.  In the process, he made a discovery that was startling indeed and has yet to really sink in here. In a nutshell, in 2001, the invading Americans put al-Qaeda to flight and crushed the Taliban.  From most of its top leadership to its foot soldiers, the Talibs were almost uniformly prepared, even eager, to put down thei
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Declassified Papers Shed Light on US Role in Liaquat's Murder | Arab News - 0 views

www.arabnews.com/287940 U.S.-foreign-policy assassinations Pakistan Ali-Khan
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • 18 July 2006 — Oil, Iran and air bases, seem to be issues of recent times. Not indeed. It was some 55 years back that these issues were very much in play and a recently declassified document indicates that these were the reasons behind the assassination of Liaquat Ali Khan, Pakistan’s first prime minister on Oct. 16, 1951.
  • A recent declassified document from the US State Department brings to light some interesting facts. According to the document, a telegram was sent by the American Embassy in New Delhi on Oct. 30, 1951. “Is Liaquat Ali Khan’s assassination a result of a deep-laid American conspiracy?” The telegram from the US Embassy in New Delhi carried the summary of an article published in the Urdu daily of Bhopal, “Nadeem” on Oct. 24, 1951, charging the US with the responsibility of Khan’s death. The summary then points to the facts raised in the Nadeem article, “It was neither a local incident nor connected with the Pashtoonistan movement (as some may have believed then). It had behind it a deep-rooted conspiracy and recognizable hand.” The article then says that the then Afghan government “knew about the conspiracy and the assassin was an Afghan, yet, the plot was hatched neither in Kabul nor in Karachi (the then capital of Pakistan).”
  • The declassified document reveals that the day before assassination, the secretary to the American ambassador in Karachi absent-mindedly jotted down “holiday” for Oct. 19 in a table diary and then immediately struck it off. Following the secretary’s departure, Mohammad Hussain, a Pakistani employee at the American Embassy in Karachi asked the secretary’s British clerk about the holiday. The clerk described it as a possible slip. “Mistake meaningful,” however, because “the secretary knew the embassy would be closed (on) Oct. 17 (sic) although no American or Pakistani holiday was scheduled then to fall that day. The story in Nadeem then points to another fact, as given in the declassified document. The American ambassador (in Karachi) offered condolences to Liaquat’s wife (Raana Liaquat Ali Khan) on the phone, some three and a half minutes before even the Governor General of Pakistan Khawaja Nazimuddin managed to offer his condolences. This was despite the fact that the governor general was the first to be informed (of the killing) by the Rawalpindi authorities. Indeed with no mobile connection, no live transmissions, even no TV, those were different days and the flow of information was much slower than today. The question that the newspaper article thus tried to raise was how did the American ambassador come to know of the assassination before the governor general of Pakistan found out?
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  • The newspaper article, as summarized by the declassified US document, then discusses the possible reason for the disenchantment of the US and the UK governments with the Pakistan prime minister and his government. Liaquat was not ready to toe the US line, the newspaper pointed out and hence the US wanted him eliminated.
  • According to the article, Liaquat Ali Khan declined to accede to the request. “The US then threatened to annul the secret pact on Kashmir (between Pakistan and the US). Liaquat replied that Pakistan has annexed half of Kashmir without American support and would be able to take the other half too.” Not only that, Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan also demanded that the US vacate air bases in Pakistan. “Liaquat’s demand was a bombshell for Washington. Americans who had been dreaming of conquering Soviet Russia from Pakistan air bases were flabbergasted,” the article emphasized. And hence the plot to kill Liaquat was hatched, says the article. However, “the US wanted a Muslim assassin, so as to obviate international complications. The US could not find a traitor in Pakistan (apparently for the reason that the new country was then brimming with nationalistic pride and hope for future),” the article added. The US then turned to Kabul. “Washington contacted the US Embassy in Kabul. They in turn got in touch with Pashtoonistan leaders, pointing to Liaquat as their only hurdle and assuring them that if some of them could kill Liaquat, the US would undertake the task of establishing Pashtoonistan by 1952.”
  • At this the “Pashtoon leaders induced Akbar to take the job and also made arrangements for him to be killed immediately after so as to conceal the conspiracy. The Pakistani currency recovered from the assassin’s body also reveal that others were also involved. Due to already strained relations between Pakistan and Afghanistan no currency exchange was then taking place between the two countries. Hence only the “American Embassy (in Kabul) could have supplied the Pakistani currency notes to the assassin,” the summary argued. The article also mentioned that the cartridges recovered from the body of the assassinated Pakistani premier were US made. The type of bullet used to kill the Pakistani prime minister were in “use by high-ranking American officers”, and were “not usually available in the market”. The rest is for us to deduce. The article then summarized that all these facts prove that the real culprit behind the killing was the US, which had committed similar acts in the Middle East as well.
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Article: Pakistan's first Prime Minister Liaquat Ali Khan was assassinated by America |... - 0 views

www.opednews.com/...aquat-Ali-Khan-150419-741.html U.S.-foreign-policy assassinations Pakistan Ali-Khan Iran coup CIA MI6 pipelinestan-wars
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • Tellingly, till writing this story, the latest stories about the assassination of Pakistan's first Prime Minister were not denied by Washington.
  • Not surprisingly, August 1953 the CIA staged a coup against the Iranian nationalist Prime Minister Mohammad Mossadegh to safeguard the west's oil interests in the country. In April 1951 Iranians democratically elected the head of the National Front party, Dr. Mohammad Mossadegh, as prime minister. Mossadegh moved quickly to nationalize the assets in Iran of the Anglo-Iranian Oil Company (the forerunner of today's BP) a step that brought his government into confrontation with Britain and the US. Britain's MI6 military intelligence then teamed up with the CIA and carried out a coup that ousted Mossadegh in August 1953 and returned Shah Mohammad Reza Pahlavi to power. In August 2013, 60 years after the coup, the CIA admitted staging a coup against Mossadegh though at least two US Presidents, Bill Clinton and Barrack Obama, have publicly acknowledged the US role in the Iranian coup.
  • "The military coup that overthrew Mossadegh and his National Front cabinet was carried out under CIA direction as an act of US foreign policy, conceived and approved at the highest levels of government," reads a previously excised section of an internal CIA history titled The Battle for Iran. The declassified documents, under the US Freedom of Information Act, related to CIA's TPAJAX operation that sought regime change in Iran through the bribery of Iranian politicians, security and army high-ranking officials, and massive anti-Mossadegh propaganda that helped to instigate public revolt in 1953. Mossadegh was replaced with Iranian general Fazlollah Zahedi, who was handpicked by The CIA and M16. Mossaddegh was later sentenced to death, but the Shah never dared to carry out the sentence. Mossadegh died in his residence near Tehran in 1967. The Shah's pro-Western dictatorship continued for 27 years and ended with the Islamic Revolution of 1979, which paved the way for today's Iran, where anti-American sentiments remain strong. The 1953 coup still casts a long shadow over Iranian-US relations.
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Leaked Emails ot Save the Children confirms Pakistan full of CIA agents!! - 0 views

defence.pk/...stan-full-of-cia-agents.268832 war & peace Save-the-Children U.S.-spy-agency-fronts CIA Pakistan
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 14 - No Cached
  • Here are the emails. An article written by Umar Cheema is also on the Web, will post link once I am on my laptop. http://cirp.pk/e-mail.htm (edit: although some names have been blacked out, you can still view them by taking mouse over the links! e.g. First email is by Hassan Noor.. to Mike Novell, tkrift (??), Amanullah Khan.. CC is Afnan Aleem) These basically proves that everyone in the Abbotabad commission (except Mr Ashraf Qazi), including a very senior judge and general, were working under the influence of Save The Children NGO Retired General Nadeem was directly working under them! Afridi was NOT tortured by ISI. He did give ISI some false statements which the ISI didn't dig deeper because it suited them! (Example he was working for CIA since 2008, not 2009 as ISI was led to believe) Edit: Here is the article: http://www.thenews.com.pk/Todays-Ne...s-Abbottabad-Commission-was-penetrated-by-CIA -- All these NGOs should be banned and thrashed! ISI should publically hang foreign agents! (Even if they are Generals)
  • The NGO has neither denied the email record and the contents it carried (when shown by The News for seeking version) nor offered specific comments but that: “Our assistance to the Abbottabad Commission and its members including Gen Nadeem was within the legal parameters and Abbottabad Commission mandate to find facts.” Nadeem was not available for comments, however, his close aide termed the allegations as utterly “rubbish and non-sense” when comments were sought after showing the email record A transcript of internal wrangling: Muhammad Hassan Noor Saadi, deputy country director of Save the Children, met Gen (R) Nadeem on November 20, 2012 that followed his email to four senior colleagues. The report was primarily compiled by ‘our friend’, his email reads, and was endorsed by the Chairman but one of the members, Ashraf Qazi, was not in agreement with them. He wrote a dissenting note criticising Chairman Justice (R) Javed Iqbal and Gen (R) Nadeem ‘for being soft on certain institutions (including Save the Children).’
  • Another member, Abbas Khan, was neither willing to sign the report in its current shape, discloses email record, nor wanted to put a dissenting note hence decided to prolong his stay in the US where he went on the ‘pretext of medical ground’. More alarmingly, the NGO was granted access to the Commission’s report well before it was sent to the prime minister. Save the Children had uninterrupted access to the four drafts prepared in June 2012 by the members including the chairman, email record available with The News indicates. All favours granted to Save the Children on behalf of the Commission were in clear breach of public trust raising question marks about the integrity of the members. The chairman of the NGO, Save the Children, was contacted by The News. He initially agreed to meet but later stopped taking calls and did not respond to messages sent to him.Nadeem also felt confident, the email record shows, that he would be able to convince the panel with the answers given by the NGO and urge his colleagues to go by the facts presented by Save the Children instead of believing on the contents of Afridi’s statement. Gen (R) Nadeem also advised the NGO, an email of the country director reads, to fight the expulsion of our expatriate as otherwise the ISI would move quickly to close down the country programme before the Commission report comes out.
  • ...3 more annotations...
  • Record shows Abbottabad Commission was penetrated by CIA​ Umar Cheema Friday, August 02, 2013 From Print Edition ISLAMABAD: A mind-blowing detail has emerged from the internal correspondence of NGO Save the Children disclosing its infiltration into the Abbottabad Commission to save its skin following allegations of the CIA’s penetration into the NGO in a hunt for Osama bin Laden through Dr Shakil Afridi, now under arrest in Peshawar. “Some of us suspected that the khakis had access to the record and receive daily updates but never realised an NGO had infiltrated too,” said an official privy to the Commission’s working. The leaked communication indicates that Lt Gen (retd) Nadeem Ahmed, an unofficial representative of the Army and ISI in the Commission, was allegedly cultivated by Save the Children who would offer him ‘how-to-do’ bailout advice, even sharing details about the internal politics of the Commission and classified record, something in radical contradiction to his reputation as a thorough professional and a man of integrity. He briefed the deputy country director of Save the Children, according to the email, about the views of different members, staunch opposition from a panel colleague, Ashraf Jehangir Qazi, resulting in his dissenting note on the NGO and other institutions, and Gen (retd) Nadeem’s plan to effectively counter this note in collaboration with Justice (R) Javed Iqbal, the Chairman.
  • The Commission could not issue the report with that note and therefore now they are working on developing counter arguments on the note, read the email. The Commission needs to have a lot of comments removed from the note before it is in a shape that allows the report to be shared, the email continues, otherwise it can jeopardize the integrity of the members of the Commission. Justice (R) Javed Iqbal and Gen (R) Nadeem ‘have to work extra hard to factually prove a lot of things wrong that this third member is referring to,’ read the email of deputy country director. The email then explained the position of the fourth member, Abbas Ali Khan, absent from discussion. He is not willing to sign the report in the current shape, reads Hassan’s email, but also does not want to put in a note of dissent and therefore continues to prolong his stay in the US where he went on the pretext of treatment. As a way forward, the email continues, the two members will work with the third member (Ashraf Qazi) and try to come to a point where the note is significantly reduced and numbers of comments are taken out of the report. Gen (R) Nadeem’s advisory role of the NGO: The email also brings to light his role as adviser to the NGO. To a question that what Save the Children should do, Nadeem advised the deputy country director to build relationship and confidence with the Ministry of Interior and Economic Affairs Division. “It would take few months for you to be back to complete normalcy,” Gen (R) Nadeem advised.
  • In another email generated on August 29, 2012, David Wright, the country director, wrote that ‘on my instructions Hassan asked Gen (R) Nadeem to give an honest assessment as to what he thinks our chances are of surviving this.’ Gen (R) Nadeem replied that he felt confident regarding the answers we (NGO) will give to the questions proposed, ‘he could convince the other commission members to go with the fact rather than the content of Afridi’s statement.’ Gen (R) Nadeem also advised to fight the expulsion of our expatriates, Wrights email continued. “He felt if we did not do this and the expats left, the ISI would then move quickly to close down the country programme before the Commission report comes out.” Report draft shared with the NGO: Wright’s another email indicates that the draft was shared more than once with the NGO. Referring to a meeting of two senior officers of Save the Children with Gen (R) Nadeem, the country director said they were shown the report written by the Chairman of the Commission. The email said there were four versions of the report in June 2012 and these were reduced to two in August that year. However, they have reservations about the latest version shared in August as ‘the report which was originally thought to be our saviour, will be the tool for this expulsion.’ We will do our best, the email reads, to work ‘with our friends and try and get our responses in before the report is finalised.’ SOURCE: THE NEWS Record shows Abbottabad Commission was penetrated by CIA - thenews.com.pk
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Salman katrina to start shooting of "Tiger Zinda Hai" soon - 0 views

newsdoctrine.com/oting-for-tiger-zinda-hai-soon entertainenyt salman khan Katrina Kaif Bollywood
shared by sandy0988 on 08 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • sandy0988 on 08 Mar 17
     
    New Delhi: Bollywood biggie Salman Khan and Katrina Kaif will soon start the shooting of their upcoming film "Tiger Zinda Hai", a film which is a sequel to their hit "Ek Tha Tigar". If gossips are to be believed Salman has once again taken the responsibility to balance the drowned career of Katrina, who is struggling to make a hit for a long.
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Russia Reports Discovery of Rebel-Held Chemical Weapons at Site of Idlib Gas Attack - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...226633 war & peace Syria Idlib-gas-attack Russia opposition-sarin
shared by Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • In the aftermath of yesterday’s chemical gas attack in Syria’s Idlib Province, numerous governments – including those that have funded and armed rebels in an attempt to overthrow the Syrian government – have accused the Syrian army of being primarily responsible for the attack, despite no independent confirmation of their claim and no investigation into who was truly responsible for the tragedy. As MintPress recently reported, the only information available regarding the attack so far has come from only two sources: the White Helmets and the Syrian Observatory for Human Rights. Both groups have strong ties to pro-interventionist governments that have armed and funded rebel groups and even have ties to al-Qaeda.
  • However, pro-interventionist elements in foreign governments and within the Syrian opposition seem disinterested in obtaining valid information, jumping on initial accusations from dubious sources to support long-standing efforts to destabilize and overthrow the Syrian government. Wednesday morning, while media outlets throughout the West ran headlines calling for foreign intervention in Syria with headlines like “We Must Not Look Away,” the Russian Defense Ministry announced a surprising discovery in Khan Sheikhoun the very township where the gas attack took place. Maj. Gen. Igor Konashenkov publicly stated Wednesday morning that a warehouse in the vicinity of Khan Sheikhoun had been destroyed as part of a Syrian Air Force airstrike conducted midday Tuesday, several hours after the gas attack. According to Konashenkov, the facility produced and stored shells that contained toxic gas, many of which had been delivered to Iraq and repeatedly used there by Daesh militants and other extremists. He also pointed out that the same weapons had been used by foreign-funded rebels in Aleppo in 2016 – a conclusion derived by the analysis of samples taken by Russian military experts. He also stated that the victims of yesterday’s gas attack displayed identical symptoms to those shown by victims of the Aleppo attack. Rebels operating in the area – all of which are allied with the al-Nusra Front and Ahrar al-Sham, both al-Qaeda affiliates – have rejected Konashenkov’s claims. Hasan Haj Ali, commander of the al-Nusra affiliate Free Idlib Army rebel group, told Reuters: “all the civilians in the area know that there are no military positions there, or places for the manufacture [of weapons]. The various factions of the opposition are not capable of producing these substances.”
  • However, it was proven back in 2013 that not only were the rebels capable of producing chemical weapons, but they had used them repeatedly in both Syria and Iraq. For instance, UN officials have confirmed that anti-Assad rebels were responsible for the 2013 sarin gas attack in Ghouta, another attack that was prematurely blamed on the Assad regime. In addition, Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh established in his 2014 piece “The Red Line and the Rat Line” that rebels have long had the capacity to carry out chemical weapon attacks and that countries such as Turkey and Saudi Arabia have supplied them with such weapons. Sria’s government, by contrast, no longer has chemical weapons, a fact established by the Organization for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW). The organization confirmed in 2016 that all Syrian government chemical weapons had been destroyed under their supervision per Assad’s affirmation of the International Chemical Weapons Convention three years prior. OPCW’s fact-finding mission, a joint effort with the United Nations, is still active within Syria and has yet to report its findings regarding Tuesday’s attack, according to a statement released Wednesday. In addition, questions have been raised regarding the information that has come from opposition sources regarding the gas attack in Idlib, particularly the now widely-shared images purporting to show victims of yesterday’s attack.
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  • As Paul Antonopoulos of Al-Masdar News wrote: […] in the above picture, the White Helmets are handling the corpses of people without sufficient safety gear, most particularly with masks mostly used, as well as no gloves. […] Within seconds of exposure to sarin, the affects [sic] of the gas begin to target the muscle and nervous system. There is an almost immediate release of the bowels and the bladder, and vomiting is induced. When sarin is used in a concentrated area, it has the likelihood of killing thousands of people. Yet, such a dangerous gas, and the White Helmets are treating bodies with little concern to their exposed skin. This has to raise questions.” While Western governments and the corporate media have already assured themselves of Assad’s guilt, this latest discovery – along with other notable evidence – suggests that the basis for this assumption is faulty at best. The warehouse was discovered less than a day prior to a UN Security Council emergency meeting over Tuesday’s gas attack, leading many pro-interventionist governments to suggest that Russia is merely trying to protect its ally from international criticism and retaliation. Though the timing could be construed as suspect, Assad – on the verge of reclaiming nearly all Syrian cities from the opposition – stands little to gain from using internationally banned weapons, while the increasingly desperate NATO-armed and funded rebels are the greatest beneficiaries from the renewed calls for foreign intervention in Syria following Tuesday’s attack. At the very least, this latest discovery of a chemical weapons warehouse demands that world leaders, pro-intervention and otherwise, must wait for a complete investigation of the incident before taking drastic action. As Antonopoulos noted: “Before the war cries begin and the denouncement of the government from high officials in power positions begin, time must be given so that all evidence can emerge.”
  • Paul Merrell on 06 Apr 17
     
    As the U.S. prepares to go to war against Syria for its alleged gas attack in Idlib province ...
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Israel Carries Out Two Strikes Against Assad Regime, Hezbollah Targets in Syria | FDD's... - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...hezbollah-targets-in-syria.php war & peace Israel Syria airstrikes
shared by Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 17 - No Cached
  • In the wake of threats by Israeli Defense Minister Avigdor Liberman, the Israel Air Force (IAF) carried out two strikes against Assad regime and Hezbollah targets in Syria on Sunday and early Monday morning. These latest airstrikes come only two days after an IAF raid on Hezbollah weapons shipments in Palmyra, and seemingly as a response to an attempt by the Syrian Air Defense Forces (SADF) to shoot down the attacking Israeli jets. At approximately 3 PM local time, pro-regime news sources reported that the SADF’s Golan Regiment was engaging an Israeli UAV over the town of Khan Arnabeh, in the Syrian Golan’s Quneitra Governorate. Shortly after, Syrian army reports emerged claiming the Israelis targeted a vehicle traveling from the town on the road to Damascus, destroying the car and killing its driver, Yasser Hussein al-Sayyed, a SADF Golan Regiment commander. The second air strike reportedly occurred past midnight on Monday morning, with local sources claiming the Israelis targeted Hezbollah and SADF targets in the Qalamoun mountains, near the Syrian-Lebanese border. However, pro-regime sources were quick to deny that the strikes had occurred. The strikes came mere hours after Liberman threatened to destroy Syria’s air defenses “without any hesitation” the next time they fired on Israeli planes. He stressed that Israel was “neither for nor against [Syrian president Bashar] al-Assad,” and had no desire for friction with the Russians in Syria. Israel’s “main problem” he said, “is the transfer of game-changing weapons from Syria to Lebanon,” which would reach Hezbollah. “Therefore, every time we identify a such a transfer, we will act to destroy these equilibrium-breaking weapons. There will be no compromise.” Liberman’s comments were echoed by IDF Chief of Staff Lt. Gen. Gadi Eizenkot, with similar threats against the government of Lebanon.
  • Liberman’s threats, reinforced by the two strikes, were a response to the outcomes of the IAF’s Friday attack on Palmyra. The SADF’s attempt to down Israeli jets was an unprecedented escalation by the Assad regime. For Israel, this was an unacceptable interference with its now-routine attempts to deny the transfer of advanced weapons to Hezbollah, threatening to change the rules of the game between Jerusalem and Damascus. The Russian Foreign Ministry demanding an explanation of the strike from Israel’s ambassador also indicated a possible shift in Moscow’s policies on Israeli offensives in Syria. These developments likely left Hezbollah and its Iranian patrons confident that their weapons transfers would now be safe from Israeli strikes, as indicated by Hassan Nasrallah’s subsequent belligerent speech and Tehran’s threats against continued IAF assaults in Syria. Israel’s red lines in Syria were blurred by these changes, and Jerusalem felt they needed to be forcefully redrawn.
  • Paul Merrell on 21 Mar 17
     
    Israel's airstrikes in Syria are beyond question war crimes.
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Sarin used in two Syria chemical attacks point to military stockpiles - UN - RT News - 0 views

rt.com/...-syria-military-stockpiles-038 war & peace Syria WMD sarin whodunnit
shared by Paul Merrell on 07 Mar 14 - No Cached
  • Two incidents where chemical weapons were used in Syria last year appear to have come from Syrian army stockpiles, United Nations investigators said on Wednesday in a new report that goes beyond previous conclusions. The team of experts led by Paulo Pinheiro concluded that sarin – a deadly nerve agent – was used in total in three incidents: in the Damascus suburb of Al-Ghouta on August 21, in Khan al-Assal near Aleppo on March 19, and in Saraqeb near the northern town of Idlib in April 2013, Reuters reported. "The evidence available concerning the nature, quality and quantity of the agents used on 21 August indicated that the perpetrators likely had access to the chemical weapons stockpile of the Syrian military, as well as the expertise and equipment necessary to manipulate safely large amount of chemical agents," the UN investigators said in the report. They also concluded that the attack in Khan al-Assal in March used the same chemical agents and bore exactly the same hallmarks as the Al-Ghouta attack in August.
  • But Pinheiro’s report did not give any reliable casualty figures from the attacks and was only able to determine “that at least several hundred people were affected.” Ake Sellstrom, who was in charge of the inspection team that was on the ground in Syria, concluded in an earlier report in December that while chemical weapons had most likely been used in five out of seven alleged attacks, the team did not assign any blame. Both the Syrian government and the opposition have blamed each other for the attacks, which they have also both denied. The Al-Ghouta attack was the world’s deadliest in 25 years and provoked threats of retaliatory military attacks by the US. Under a diplomatic initiative suggested and largely brokered by the Russians, Syrian President Bashar Assad agreed to help the international community to destroy his chemical weapons arsenal. On Tuesday, the Organisation for the Prohibition of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) – the global chemical weapons watchdog – said that Syria has so far managed to ship out about one-third of its stockpile, including mustard gas, for destruction abroad or on vessels in international waters.
  • The Pinheiro team has been investigating up to 20 incidents where chemical weapons have allegedly been used. He said they were building on Sellstrom’s findings while also trying to dig deeper. Pinheiro told a news conference on Thursday that his team had interviewed a wide group of people, including doctors, victims, defectors, and journalists. “We made other investigations [to Sellstrom] in terms of interviews of experts, interviews with functionaries involved. We conducted our own investigation including specialized expertise and of course we have been in close contact with the members of this Sellstrom mission,” he said. Selltsrom’s December report visited only seven sites and cited poor security conditions as the primary reason.
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Multiple Polls: Americans Are More Afraid of the GOVERNMENT than TERRORISTS Washington'... - 0 views

www.washingtonsblog.com/...overnment-than-terrorists.html war & peace war on terror™ polls liberty security
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 May 15 - No Cached
  • According to a pair of recent polls, for the first time since the 9/11 terrorist hijackings, Americans are more fearful their government will abuse constitutional liberties than fail to keep its citizens safe. Even in the wake of the April 15 Boston Marathon bombing – in which a pair of Islamic radicals are accused of planting explosives that took the lives of 3 and wounded over 280 – the polls suggest Americans are hesitant to give up any further freedoms in exchange for increased “security.” A Fox News survey polling a random national sample of 619 registered voters the day after the bombing found despite the tragic event, those interviewed responded very differently than following 9/11. For the first time since a similar question was asked in May 2001, more Americans answered “no” to the question, “Would you be willing to give up some of your personal freedom in order to reduce the threat of terrorism?”
  • Of those surveyed on April 16, 2013, 45 percent answered no to the question, compared to 43 percent answering yes. In May 2001, before 9/11, the balance was similar, with 40 percent answering no to 33 percent answering yes. But following the terrorist attacks of 9/11, the numbers flipped dramatically, to 71 percent agreeing to sacrifice personal freedom to reduce the threat of terrorism. Subsequent polls asking the same question in 2002, 2005 and 2006 found Americans consistently willing to give up freedom in exchange for security. Yet the numbers were declining from 71 percent following 9/11 to only 54 percent by May 2006. Now, it would seem, the famous quote widely attributed to Benjamin Franklin – “They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety” – is holding more sway with Americans than it has in over a dozen years.
  • A similar poll sampling 588 adults, conducted on April 17 and 18 for the Washington Post, also discovered the change in attitude. “Which worries you more,” the Post asked, “that the government will not go far enough to investigate terrorism because of concerns about constitutional rights, or that it will go too far in compromising constitutional rights in order to investigate terrorism?” The poll found 48 percent of respondents worry the government will go too far, compared to 41 percent who worry it won’t go far enough. And similar to the Fox News poll, the Post found the worry to be a fresh development, as only 44 percent worried the government would go too far in January 2006 and only 27 percent worried the government would go too far in January 2010.
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  • The Fox News poll found that a bare majority of Democrats (51%) would give up more personal freedom to reduce the threat of terror, while only 47% of Republicans – and a mere 29% of independents – would do so. This is not entirely surprising. As we noted in February: For years, “conservative” pollsters have said that Americans are furious at the government: Rasmussen noted in 2010 that only a small minority of the American people think that the government has the consent of the governed, and that the sentiment was “pre-revolutionary” Gallup noted in 2011 that a higher percentage of American liked King George during the colonial days than currently like Congress
  • And last year, Gallup noted that trust was plummeting in virtually all institutions Liberals may be tempted to think that this is a slanted perspective. But non-partisan and liberal pollsters are saying the same thing: An NBC News/Wall Street Journal poll from 2011 found that 76% of Americans believe that the country’s current financial and political structures favor the rich over the rest of the country The Washington Post reported in 2011 that Congress was less popular than communism, BP during the Gulf oil spill or Nixon during Watergate
  • Public Policy Polling added last month that Congress is also less popular than cockroaches, lice, root canals, colonoscopies, traffic jams, used car salesman and Genghis Khan And the liberal Pew Charitable Trusts noted last week that – for the first time – a majority of the public says that the federal government threatens their personal rights and freedoms: The latest national survey by the Pew Research Center for the People & the Press, conducted Jan. 9-13 among 1,502 adults, finds that 53% think that the federal government threatens their own personal rights and freedoms while 43% disagree. In March 2010, opinions were divided over whether the government represented a threat to personal freedom; 47% said it did while 50% disagreed. In surveys between 1995 and 2003, majorities rejected the idea that the government threatened people’s rights and freedoms.
  • *** The survey finds continued widespread distrust in government. About a quarter of Americans (26%) trust the government in Washington to do the right thing just about always or most of the time; 73% say they can trust the government only some of the time or volunteer that they can never trust the government. *** Majorities across all partisan and demographic groups express little or no trust in government. Obviously, Democrats are currently more trusting in government than Republicans. For example: The Pew Research Center’s 2010 study of attitudes toward government found that, since the 1950s, the party in control of the White House has expressed more trust in government than the so-called “out party.”
  • But given that even a growing percentage of Dems believe that government is a threat to their freedom, things are indeed getting interesting … It doesn’t help that the government claims the power to assassinate American citizens living on U.S. soil, indefinitely detain Americans without trial, spy on everyone and otherwise intrude into every aspect of our lives. Postscript: What are the actual risks coming from government versus terrorism?  That’s an interesting question.
  • Paul Merrell on 26 May 15
     
    From 2013, not long after the Boston Bombing. I never had much respect for those willing to surrender my liberties so they could feel a bit more secure. "Security is mostly a superstition. It does not exist in nature, nor do the children of men as a whole experience it. Avoiding danger is no safer in the long run than outright exposure. Life is either a daring adventure, or nothing." Helen Keller, The Open Door (1957).
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Pakistan Charges CIA Officials Over Drone Deaths | Al Jazeera America - 0 views

america.aljazeera.com/...-lawyer-over-drone-deaths.html war & peace drone attacks Pakistan murder-charges CIA U.S.-foreign-policy
shared by Paul Merrell on 08 Apr 15 - No Cached
  • A Pakistani judge on Tuesday ordered criminal charges to be filed against a former CIA lawyer who oversaw the agency’s drone program and a former station chief in Islamabad over a 2009 strike that killed two people. Former acting general counsel John A. Rizzo and former station chief Jonathan Bank must face charges of murder, conspiracy, waging war against Pakistan and terrorism, ruled Justice Shaukat Aziz Siddiqui of the Islamabad High Court. A court clerk and a lawyer involved in the case, Mirza Shahzad Akbar, confirmed details of the ruling. Rizzo and Bank could not be immediately reached for comment. The CIA declined to comment when contacted by Al Jazeera America. Bank’s cover was blown in late 2010 when a Pakistani man, Kareem Khan, threatened to sue the CIA and others for $500 million over the deaths of his sons Zaenullah Khan and Asif Iqbal in a Dec. 31, 2009, strike in the North Waziristan tribal region.
  • As the outrage over the deaths grew, protesters in Islamabad began carrying placards bearing Bank's name, as listed in the lawsuit, and urging him to leave the country. The CIA pulled Bank from the country on Dec. 16, 2010, when he began receiving death threats. His outing spurred questions at the time of whether Pakistan's spy service might have leaked the information, something Islamabad denied. The disclosure didn't prevent Bank from landing another sensitive job. He became chief of the Iran operations division at CIA headquarters in Virginia. He was removed from that post after CIA officials concluded that he created a hostile work environment in the division. He has since been detailed to the Pentagon's intelligence arm.   Rizzo was the CIA's acting general counsel overseeing its drone program. He later left the agency and wrote a book about his experiences at the CIA.  
  • It is estimated that since 2004, the U.S. has carried out over 400 drone strikes in the country, killing anywhere from 421 to 960 civilians, according to the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, which tracks the U.S. campaign. The foundation says the last U.S. drone strike in Pakistan was on Jan. 29 and killed at least six suspected fighters. It is not clear how the judge's ruling will affect relations between Pakistan and the U.S., especially over the drone program. While Pakistan's government often decries the strikes, many believe it allows them to target the insurgents who threaten it. Massive protests against the drone program previously blocked a land route used by NATO forces to resupply troops in neighboring Afghanistan.   Any legal action stands no chance of success unless U.S. officials cooperate with the court, something highly unlikely, given the secretive nature of the drone program, which the CIA rarely publicly discusses.
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  • Under the judge's order, Pakistan's federal police force must file the charges against Rizzo and Bank, though the police have so far refused, reportedly out of a reluctance to upset the country's diplomatic relations with the U.S.
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Discord dissolves Pakistani Taliban coalition - The Long War Journal - 0 views

www.longwarjournal.org/...discord_dissolves_pa.php war & peace Taliban ISIL Pakistan
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  • Ever since the head of the Movement of the Taliban in Pakistan, Hakeemullah Mehsud, was killed in a US drone strike in late 2013, the al Qaeda-linked group has been plagued by leadership disputes, infighting, and defections. Mullah Fazlullah, Mehsud's successor, has proven to be incapable of holding the coalition of jihadists together. The latest members to leave the group are its spokesman, Shahidullah Shahid, and five regional emirs: Hafiz Dolat Khan from Kurram, Hafiz Saeed Khan from Arakzai, Maulana Gul Zaman from Khyber, Mufti Hassan Swati from Peshawar, and Khalid Mansoor from Hangu. Shahid announced their defection in a video (seen above) that was released online earlier this week. The Pakistani Taliban figures are now loyal to Abu Bakr al Baghdadi, the head of the Islamic State, which has been attempting to woo al Qaeda and Taliban leaders for months.
  • "I pledge allegiance to the Commander of the Faithful and the Caliph of Muslims Abu Bakr al Baghdadi al Qurashi al Husayni, to obey him when we are enthusiastic and when we are halfhearted, as well as in difficulty and relief," Shahid says in the video, according to a translation obtained by The Long War Journal. Shahid stresses that his pledge of allegiance (bayat) is not on behalf of the "entire movement," nor has Mullah Fazlullah himself sworn an oath of fealty to Baghdadi. Instead, Shahid says, the oath is "pledged by myself as well as five other Pakistani Taliban emirs, who are the emirs of Orakzai, Kuram, Khaybar, Hangu, and Peshawar regions." Shahid goes on to claim that this is the fourth time he has pledged allegiance to the Islamic State. His claim is curious, to say the least. The video above was disseminated online on Oct. 13. But less just one week earlier, on Oct. 6, Shahid was quoted as denying that the Pakistani Taliban had sworn allegiance to Baghdadi's group. Shahid was quoted in an account by Reuters, and there is nothing in that report about Shahid or the five other Pakistani Taliban leaders switching their allegiance to Baghdadi. On the contrary, Shahid was quoted as saying, "We are not supporting any specific group in Syria or Iraq; all groups there are noble and they are our brothers." Shahid continued, "Mullah Omar is our head and we are following him."
  • In just one week, therefore, the Pakistani Taliban spokesman went from claiming that the group was entirely loyal to Mullah Omar to announcing that he and five commanders now counted themselves among the Islamic State's ranks. Interestingly, Shahid claims in his defection notice that on a prior occasion in early July he privately swore his allegiance to Baghdadi through Abu Huda al Sudani. This has a ring of truth to it, as al Sudani is a disgruntled al Qaeda veteran who leads a faction in Afghanistan that has sided with the Islamic State. Al Sudani leads a faction that is now loyal to Baghdadi. It is not clear how many former Pakistani Taliban fighters the defectors command. The emirs of the five regions did have forces under their direction, but it is not publicly known how many jihadists they direct, or if all of their fighters have followed suit. In reality, Shahid's announced defection to the Islamic State is just the latest blow to Fazlullah's group. It is clear that Fazlullah has not been able to fill Hakeemullah Mehsud's shoes. Indeed, well before the six Pakistani Taliban leaders announced their decision to side with Baghdadi this past week most of the group had already defected. The majority of the Pakistani Taliban's leaders and fighters had already left its ranks, forming new groups. And the most prominent of these organizations are still loyal to Mullah Omar.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Oct 14
     
    This is still a highly murky situation. Read the rest of the article for more detail and caveats.
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Russia and Iran warn US they will 'respond with force' if red lines crossed in Syria ag... - 0 views

www.independent.co.uk/...rikes-war-latest-a7675031.html war & peace Syria Russia Iran red-lines
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  • Russia and Iran have warned the US they will “respond with force” if their own “red lines” are crossed in Syria. Following Friday’s cruise missile strike on a Syrian airbase, in retaliation for the chemical attack on Khan Sheikhoun earlier in the week, the alliance supporting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad made a joint statement threatening action in response to “any breach of red lines from whoever it is”. “What America waged in an aggression on Syria is a crossing of red lines. From now on we will respond with force to any aggressor or any breach of red lines from whoever it is and America knows our ability to respond well,” the group’s joint command centre said.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Apr 17
     
    Thanks to Trump and the necon/liberal alliaance that pushed him into war, World War III is now set to ignite in Syria.
  • Paul Merrell on 17 Apr 17
     
    Thanks to Trump and the necon/liberal alliaance that pushed him into war, World War III is now set to ignite in Syria.
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DailyTech - Pakistani Court Accuses U.S. of War Crimes for Drone Strikes - 0 views

www.dailytech.com/...article31537.htm war & peace Pakistan drone attacks war crimes
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  • In response four petitions by tribal leaders complaining that U.S. drone strikes were killing civilians, Chief Justice Dost Muhammad Khan and the junior judge on Pakistan two-judge Peshawar High Court panel decided that the drone were war crimes as they killed innocent civilians. The panel says that the drone strikes were inhumane and violated the UN Charter on Human Rights.  The court is asking the government of Pakistan to push a UN resolution to condemn the strikes and declare them a war crimes, writing [according to translation by The Press Trust of India, "The government of Pakistan must ensure that no drone strike takes place in the future.  If the US vetoes the resolution, then the country should think about breaking diplomatic ties with the US."
  • Shahzad Akbar, lawyer for victims in the case, is quoted as saying, "This is a landmark judgment. Drone victims in Waziristan will now get some justice after a long wait. This judgment will also prove to be a test for the new government: if drone strikes continue and the government fails to act, it will run the risk of contempt of court."
  • The administration also does have a policy of paying the family of civilians it kills in the Middle East "grief payments" of a few thousand dollars per body. While the current administration may be hesistant to take action in the UN against the U.S. elections are fast approaching.  This Saturday's election sees the Pakistan Muslim League (PML-N) party leading in current polls.  Former Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif, the party's leader, promises a zero-tolerance policy on drone strike civilian deaths.  He comments, "Drone attacks are against the national sovereignty and a challenge for the country's autonomy and independence." The U.S. has often accused hostile regimes like the governments of Syria, Sudan, Iran, and North Korea of war crimes in recent years.  However, it has seldom been on the receiving end of such accusations, despite an aggressive (and expensive) overseas military program.
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Turkey finds sarin gas in homes of suspected Syrian Islamists - reports - RT News - 0 views

rt.com/...sarin-gas-turkey-al-nusra-021 war & peace Syria WMD
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  • Turkish security forces found a 2kg cylinder with sarin gas after searching the homes of Syrian militants from the Al-Qaeda linked Al-Nusra Front who were previously detained, Turkish media reports. The gas was reportedly going to be used in a bomb.
  • In March, the Syrian government invited the United Nations to investigate possible chemical weapons use in the Khan al-Assal area of rural Aleppo. Military experts and officials said a chemical agent, most likely sarin, was used in the attack which killed 26 people, including government forces. Damascus claimed Al-Qaeda linked fighters were behind the attack, further alleging Turkey had a hand in the incident. “The rocket came from a placed controlled by the terrorist and which is located close to the Turkish territory. One can assume that the weapon came from Turkey,” Zoabi said in an interview with Interfax news agency.
  • US President Barack Obama has warned any confirmed use of chemical weapons by Damascus would cross a "red line" which would prompt further action. Both Washington and London claimed there was growing evidence that such chemical agents had been used. Less clear perhaps is whether a similar red line would apply to Syrian opposition groups such as Al-Nusra by the US and NATO allies.
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  • This case being similar to an earlier one, with the findings of UN chemical weapons expert Carla Del Ponte  - who had found evidence of their use by the rebels – some think the fallout will be what it was then as well. Journalist and RT contributor, Afshin Rattansi believes that the same fate will befall this story, as far as media coverage goes. All possible doubts will either be hushed or directed elsewhere, as they were toward Del Ponte’s findings. “Carla Del Ponte – one of the greatest experts on this from the United Nations – did do an in-depth investigation only a few weeks ago, and of course, the mainstream media tried their best to ignore it and to character-assassinate Del Ponte… she did masses of work on this, and [found] It was the rebels and not the government.”
  • A day before the Reyhanlı bombing, Erdogan released a statement claiming he had evidence the Syrian government had had used chemical weapons, crossing the red line set by President Obama.The accusation contradicted a statement made at the time by a leading UN investigator.Carla Del Ponte, who heads The Independent International Commission of Inquiry on Syria, said there were “concrete suspicions but not yet incontrovertible proof of the use of sarin gas” in Syria. "This was use on the part of the opposition, the rebels, not by the government authorities," Del Ponte continued.
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EXCLUSIVE: Justice Department memo reveals legal case for drone strikes on Americans - ... - 0 views

openchannel.nbcnews.com/...for-drone-strikes-on-americans obama assassinations drones war & peace war crimes
shared by Paul Merrell on 05 Feb 13 - No Cached
  • A confidential Justice Department memo concludes that the U.S. government can order the killing of American citizens if they are believed to be “senior operational leaders” of al-Qaida or “an associated force” -- even if there is no intelligence indicating they are engaged in an active plot to attack the U.S.The 16-page memo, a copy of which was obtained by NBC News, provides new details about the legal reasoning behind one of the Obama administration’s most secretive and controversial polices: its dramatically increased use of drone strikes against al-Qaida suspects, including those aimed at American citizens, such as the  September 2011 strike in Yemen that killed alleged al-Qaida operatives Anwar al-Awlaki and Samir Khan. Both were U.S. citizens who had never been indicted by the U.S. government nor charged with any crimes.  
  • The secrecy surrounding such strikes is fast emerging as a central issue in this week’s hearing of White House counterterrorism adviser John Brennan, a key architect of the drone campaign, to be CIA director.  Brennan was the first administration official to publicly acknowledge drone strikes in a speech last year, calling them “consistent with the inherent right of self-defense.” In a separate talk at the Northwestern University Law School in March, Attorney General Eric Holder specifically endorsed the constitutionality of targeted killings of Americans, saying they could be justified if government officials determine the target poses  “an imminent threat of violent attack.” But the confidential Justice Department “white paper” introduces a more expansive definition of self-defense or imminent attack than described  by Brennan or Holder in their public speeches.  It refers, for example, to what it calls a “broader concept of imminence” than actual intelligence about any ongoing plot against the U.S. homeland.  
  • “The condition that an operational  leader present an ‘imminent’ threat of violent attack against the United States does not require the United States to have clear evidence that a specific attack on U.S. persons and interests will take place in the immediate future,” the memo states.Read the entire 'white paper' on drone strikes on Americans
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  • Although not an official legal memo, the white paper was represented by administration  officials as a policy document that closely mirrors the arguments of classified memos on targeted killings by the Justice Department’s  Office of Legal Counsel, which provides authoritative legal advice to the president and all executive branch agencies. The administration has refused to turn over to Congress or release those memos publicly -- or even publicly confirm their existence. A source with access to the white paper, which is not classified, provided a copy to NBC News. 
  • Pressure for turning over the Justice Department memos on targeted killings of Americans appears to be building on Capitol Hill amid signs that Brennan will be grilled on the subject at his confirmation hearing before the Senate Intelligence Committee on Thursday.  Advertise | AdChoices On Monday, a bipartisan group of 11 senators -- led by Democrat Ron Wyden of Oregon — wrote  a letter to President Barack Obama asking him to release all Justice Department memos on the subject. While accepting that “there will clearly be circumstances in which the president has the authority to use lethal force” against Americans who take up arms against the country,  it said, “It is vitally important ... for Congress and the American public to have a full understanding of how  the executive branch interprets the limits and boundaries of this authority.”
  • Paul Merrell on 05 Feb 13
     
    Finally, the lid begins to come off the secret legal memoranda claiming to justify assassinations of U.S. citizens by the Obama regime.
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Putin: Russia Has Learned More 'False Flag' Chemical Attacks In Syria Are Coming - 0 views

www.mintpressnews.com/...226735 war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Syria WMD Trump false-flag attacks
shared by Paul Merrell on 11 Apr 17 - No Cached
  • With Rex Tillerson on his way to Russia, moments ago Russian president Vladimir Putin shocked reporters when he said that Russia has received intelligence from “trusted sources” that more attacks using chemical weapons are being prepared on the Damascus region, meant to pin the blame on the Assad government. “We have information from various sources that such provocations — and I cannot call them anything else — are being prepared in other regions of Syria, including in the southern suburbs of Damascus, where they intend to plant some substance and blame the official Syrian authorities for its use,” Putin told a briefing. Russian President Putin announced that Russia will officially turn to the UN in the Hague for an investigation of the chemical weapons’ use in Idlib.  Moscow has dismissed suggestions that the Syrian government that it backs could be behind the attack in Idlib province.
  • “All incidents reminiscent of the ‘chemical attacks’ that took place in Idlib must be thoroughly investigated,” Putin said. Putin also pointed out that the latest US missile strikes in Syria bring to mind the United States’ UN Security Council address in 2003 that led to the invasion of Iraq, an address which has now been thoroughly debunked as using flawed information to garner global support for an invasion. “We discussed the situation with President [ of Italy Sergio Mattarella] and I told him that these events strongly resemble the events of 2003,” Putin said at a briefing, outlining the prelude to the US intervention in Iraq. The Russian president also slammed the Idlib attack, officially denouncing it as a “false flag” attack. Putin also said that there is no meeting with Tillerson currently on his schedule. Following Putin’s presser, Russian General Staff released a statement announcing that it has information of militants bringing poisonous substances to areas of Khan Shaykhun, West of Aleppo and Eastern Guta in Syria. Chief of the Russian General Staff Main Operational Directorate Col. Gen. Sergei Rudskoy said that the militants are trying to provoke new accusations targeted at Syrian government for alleged use of chemical weapons. The militants aim to incite the US to conduct new strikes, Rudskoy warned, adding that such measures are impermissible. He said that according to the Russian general staff new US airstrikes in Syria are unacceptable and that the Syrian forces posses no chemical weapons.
  • Paul Merrell on 11 Apr 17
     
    Here comes World War III if Trump retaliates because of the new attacks.
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Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens - Tea Party - 0 views

www.teaparty.org/ssassination-us-citizens-34330
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  • Chilling legal memo from Obama DOJ justifies assassination of US citizens
  • The president’s partisan lawyers purport to vest him with the most extreme power a political leader can seize (The Guardian) – The most extremist power any political leader can assert is the power to target his own citizens for execution without any charges or due process, far from any battlefield. The Obama administration has not only asserted exactly that power in theory, but has exercised it in practice. In September 2011, it killed US citizen Anwar Awlaki in a drone strike inYemen, along with US citizen Samir Khan, and then, in circumstances that are still unexplained, two weeks later killed Awlaki’s 16-year-old American son Abdulrahman with a separate drone strike in Yemen.
  • a Washington Post article from October reported that the administration is formally institutionalizing this president’s power to decide who dies under the Orwellian title “disposition matrix”.
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  • What has made these actions all the more radical is the absolute secrecy with which Obama has draped all of this. Not only is the entire process carried out solely within the Executive branch - with no checks or oversight of any kind – but there is zero transparency and zero accountability. The president’s underlings compile their proposed lists of who should be executed, and the president – at a charming weekly event dubbed by White House aides as “Terror Tuesday” – then chooses from “baseball cards” and decrees in total secrecy who should die. The power of accuser, prosecutor, judge, jury, and executioner are all consolidated in this one man, and those powers are exercised in the dark.
  • The Most Transparent Administration Ever™ has been so fixated on secrecy that they have refused even to disclose the legal memoranda prepared by Obama lawyers setting forth their legal rationale for why the president has this power.
  • During the Bush years, when Bush refused to disclose the memoranda from his Office of Legal Counsel (OLC) that legally authorized torture, rendition, warrantless eavesdropping and the like, leading Democratic lawyers such as Dawn Johnsen (Obama’s first choice to lead the OLC) vehemently denounced this practice as a grave threat, warning that “the Bush Administration’s excessive reliance on ‘secret law’ threatens the effective functioning of American democracy” and “the withholding from Congress and the public of legal interpretations by the [OLC] upsets the system of checks and balances between the executive and legislative branches of government.”
  • But when it comes to Obama’s assassination power, this is exactly what his administration has done. It has repeatedly refused to disclose the principal legal memoranda prepared by Obama OLC lawyers that justified his kill list. It is, right now, vigorously resisting lawsuits from the New York Times and the ACLU to obtain that OLC memorandum. In sum, Obama not only claims he has the power to order US citizens killed with no transparency, but that even the documents explaining the legal rationale for this power are to be concealed. He’s maintaining secret law on the most extremist power he can assert.
  • Last night, NBC News’ Michael Isikoff released a 16-page “white paper”prepared by the Obama DOJ that purports to justify Obama’s power to target even Americans for assassination without due process (the memo is embedded in full below). This is not the primary OLC memo justifying Obama’s kill list – that is still concealed – but it appears to track the reasoning of that memo as anonymously described to the New York Times in October 2011.
  • there are numerous points that should be emphasized about the fundamentally misleading nature of this new memo:
  • 2. Creating a ceiling, not a floor
  • 1. Equating government accusations with guilt
  • 3. Relies on the core Bush/Cheney theory of a global battlefield
  • 4. Expanding the concept of “imminence” beyond recognition
  • The memo is authorizing assassinations against citizens in circumstances far beyond this understanding of “imminence”. Indeed, the memo expressly states that it is inventing “a broader concept of imminence” than is typically used in domestic law. Specifically, the president’s assassination power “does not require that the US have clear evidence that a specific attack . . . will take place in the immediate future”. The US routinely assassinates its targets not when they are engaged in or plotting attacks but when they are at home, with family members, riding in a car, at work, at funerals, rescuing other drone victims, etc.
  • “This is a chilling document” because “it argues that the government has the right to carry out the extrajudicial killing of an American citizen” and the purported limits “are elastic and vaguely defined, and it’s easy to see how they could be manipulated.”
  • 6. Making a mockery of “due process”
  • Stephen Colbert perfectly mocked this theory when Eric Holder first unveiled it to defend the president’s assassination program. At the time, Holder actually said: “due process and judicial process are not one and the same.” Colbert interpreted that claim as follows: “Trial by jury, trial by fire, rock, paper scissors, who cares?Due process just means that there is a process that you do. The current process is apparently, first the president meets with his advisers and decides who he can kill. Then he kills them.”
  • here we are almost a full decade later. And we have the current president asserting the power not merely to imprison or eavesdrop on US citizens without charges or trial, but to order them executed – and to do so in total secrecy, with no checks or oversight.
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LAPD scopes out Israeli drones, 'Big Data' solutions | Nation | Jewish Journal - 0 views

www.jewishjournal.com/...eli_drones_big_data_solutions1 surveillance state LAPD Israel Verint surveillance-technology Big-Data-Intelligence-Conference Unit-8200
shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Feb 14 - No Cached
  • For the first nine days of February, eight of the Los Angeles Police Department’s top brass were 7,500 miles away from home, being shuttled around Israel in a minibus.
  • LAPD Deputy Chief Jose Perez, a good-natured 30-year veteran of the department who oversees its central bureau, tweeted updates at nearly every stop. On Feb. 2, he shared a group photo of the Los Angeles delegation visiting the corporate headquarters of Nice Systems, an Israeli security and cyber intelligence company that can intercept and instantly analyze video, audio and text-based communications. (A seemingly tongue-in-cheek inspirational poster on the wall behind them reads: “Every voice deserves to be heard.”)
  • The group visited private security firms and drone manufacturers, as well as the terror-prone Ashdod Port, a museum in Sderot full of old rockets shot from nearby Gaza (the same one United States President Barack Obama visited on his 2008 campaign trip to Israel), and a “safe city” underground control center in the large suburb of Rishon LeZion, which receives live streams from more than 1,000 cameras with license plate recognition installed throughout the city.
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  • Frank was joined by seven of his fellow command staff at the Big Data Intelligence Conference hosted by i-HLS in the beach town of Herzliya, Israel, on Feb. 6. “On behalf of my chief of police, Chief Charlie Beck, and the 13,000-plus sworn and non-sworn members of the Los Angeles Police Department, a very heartfelt thanks to all of you for having me here,” Frank said in an opening statement for the conference, which brought together some of Israel’s — and the world’s — top cyber security and intelligence experts.
  • Frank said he was especially impressed by what he saw while visiting Israeli companies Nice Systems (as tweeted by Perez) and Verint, one of the companies whose services the National Security Administration (NSA) reportedly used in the infamous United States wiretapping scandal. Both companies already count the LAPD as a client. But, Frank said, “we’re looking at some of their additional solutions … They have a lot of new technologies that we are very much interested in.” Nice System’s  president of security, Yaron Tchwella, spoke at the conference about the company’s ability to help government agencies capture and store the billions of calls, emails, messages and social media posts that their populations generate each day, then analyze it in real time to detect potential threats.
  • Perez said he hoped the LAPD, too, would eventually be able to “use technology to incorporate all the systems that we have. That’s the wave of the future. We’re definitely looking at the ability to get that information out to the officers on the beat with a handheld. Something happens, and you’re looking at the handheld — almost like ‘The Bourne Supremacy’ — here’s a picture of the guy you’re looking for.”
  • Also in Khan’s crosshairs is Special Order 1, an LAPD policy that allows officers to document any otherwise lawful activity that they, or other members of the community, deem suspicious. (Including, for example, the photographing of certain government sites.) And new LAPD intel collection methods or surveillance drones, said Khan, would only be “adding more to their toolbox of being highly militarized in counterinsurgency forces” against protesters and movements such as Occupy. “Yet it is wrapped in this whole language of community policing.” Two separate L.A. Weekly investigations in 2012 found that the LAPD uses expensive StingRay devices, which can locate cellphones (and their users) by acting like cellphone towers, and license-plate recognition cameras that track millions of drivers. Although both devices technically require a warrant to be used in a police investigation, there is little way to know whether police are always complying with the rules.
  • Surveillance drones manufactured by Israel Aerospace Industries (IAI) and Sky Sapience were also hot items on the LAPD tour. Both Frank and Perez lit up when talking about the HoverMast, a new tethered drone from Sky Sapience that was just released to the IDF late last year. “There are several things on the wish list, but we did like Sky Sapience — that was incredible,” Perez said. “For me personally, just for my command, which is five stations, and all the special events that I have, crowd control and being able to see everything would be some technology that is needed immediately.” However, Frank added, the HoverMast “has its challenges: from a political standpoint, convincing our political leaders, and from a community standpoint, convincing the community that it’s not Big Brother watching over you.”
  • A spokeswoman for Sky Sapience said the HoverMast can intercept wireless communications, and its cameras are capable of facial recognition. A spokeswoman for IAI said that while showing LAPD officers their drones, the company “wanted to emphasize the fact that drones can be very helpful in giving intelligence in urban scenarios… you need it now, you need it quick, you need to see what’s inside a window, and what’s behind this building.”
  • Many of the companies attracting LAPD interest have one thing in common: They were formed by veterans of the IDF’s elite, top-secret 8200 Unit, better known as Israel’s version of the NSA.
  • Perez emphasized that as a local police agency, the LAPD has much tighter legal constraints than federal agencies to adhere to when adopting army-born surveillance and “big data” technologies.
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U.S. military confirms rebels had sarin - 1 views

www.wnd.com/...tary-confirms-rebels-had-sarin war & peace WMD Syria Iraq Russia al-Qaeda al-Nusra NGIC
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  • As part of the Obama administration’s repeated insistence – though without offering proof – that the recent sarin gas attack near Damascus was the work of the Assad regime, the administration has downplayed or denied the possibility that al-Qaida-linked Syrian rebels could produce deadly chemical weapons. However, in a classified document just obtained by WND, the U.S. military confirms that sarin was confiscated earlier this year from members of the Jabhat al-Nusra Front, the most influential of the rebel Islamists fighting in Syria. The document says sarin from al-Qaida in Iraq made its way into Turkey and that while some was seized, more could have been used in an attack last March on civilians and Syrian military soldiers in Aleppo.
  • The document, classified Secret/Noforn – “Not for foreign distribution” – came from the U.S. intelligence community’s National Ground Intelligence Center, or NGIC, and was made available to WND Tuesday. It revealed that AQI had produced a “bench-scale” form of sarin in Iraq and then transferred it to Turkey. A U.S. military source said there were a number of interrogations as well as some clan reports as part of what the document said were “50 general indicators to monitor progress and characterize the state of the ANF/AQI-associated Sarin chemical warfare agent developing effort.” “This (document) depicts our assessment of the status of effort at its peak – primarily research and procurement activities – when disrupted in late May 2013 with the arrest of several key individuals in Iraq and Turkey,” the document said. “Future reporting of indicators not previously observed would suggest that the effort continues to advance despite the arrests,” the NGIC document said.
  • This seizure followed a chemical weapons attack in March on the Khan al-Assal area of rural Aleppo, Syria. In that attack, some 26 people and Syrian government forces were killed by what was determined to be sarin gas, delivered by a rocket attack. The Syrian government called for an investigation by the United Nations. Damascus claimed al-Qaida fighters were behind the attack, also alleging that Turkey was involved. “The rocket came from a place controlled by the terrorists and which is located close to the Turkish territory,” according to a statement from Damascus. “One can assume that the weapon came from Turkey.” The report of the U.S. intelligence community’s NGIC reinforces a preliminary U.N. investigation of the attack in Aleppo which said the evidence pointed to Syrian rebels. It also appears to bolster allegations in a 100-page report on an investigation turned over to the U.N. by Russia. The report concluded the Syrian rebels – not the Syrian government – had used the nerve agent sarin in the March chemical weapons attack in Aleppo.
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  • The May 2013 seizure occurred when Turkish security forces discovered a two-kilogram cylinder with sarin gas while searching homes of Syrian militants from the al-Qaida-linked Jabhat al-Nusra Front following their initial detention. The sarin gas was found in the homes of suspected Syrian Islamic radicals detained in the southern provinces of Adana and Mersia. Some 12 suspected members of the al-Nusra Front were arrested. At the time, they were described by Turkish special anti-terror forces as the “most aggressive and successful arm” of the Syrian rebels. In the seizure, Turkish anti-terror police also found a cache of weapons, documents and digital data. At the time of the arrest, the Russians called for a thorough investigation of the detained Syrian militants found in possession of sarin gas.
  • While the contents of the report have yet to be released, sources tell WND the documentation indicates that deadly sarin poison gas was manufactured in a Sunni-controlled region of Iraq and then transported to Turkey for use by the Syrian opposition, whose ranks have swelled with members of al-Qaida and affiliated groups. The documentation that the U.N. received from the Russians indicated specifically that the sarin gas was supplied to Sunni foreign fighters by a Saddam-era general working under the outlawed Iraqi Baath party leader, Izzat Ibrahim al-Douri. Al-Douri was a top aide to Saddam Hussein before he was deposed as Iraqi president. The sarin nerve gas used in the Allepo attack, sources say, had been prepared by former Iraqi Military Industries Brig. Gen. Adnan al-Dulaimi. It then was supplied to Baath-affiliated foreign fighters of the Sunni and Saudi Arabian-backed al-Nusra Front in Aleppo, with Turkey’s cooperation, through the Turkish town of Antakya in Hatay Province. The source who brought out the documentation now in the hands of the U.N. is said to have been an aide to al-Douri. Al-Dulaimi was a major player in Saddam’s chemical weapons production projects, the former aide said. Moreover, Al-Dulaimi has been working in the Sunni-controlled region of northwestern Iraq where the outlawed Baath party now is located and produces the sarin.
  • The NGIC depiction of the variety of sarin as “bench-scale” reinforces an analysis by terrorism expert Yossef Bodansky, who said the recent findings on the chemical weapons attack of Aug. 21 on the outskirts of Damascus, Syria, was “indeed a self-inflicted attack” by the Syrian opposition to provoke U.S. and military intervention in Syria.
  • The terrorism expert said that the jihadist movement has technologies which have been confirmed in captured jihadist labs in both Turkey and Iraq, as well as from the wealth of data recovered from al-Qaida in Afghanistan in 2001 and 2002. He added that the projectiles shown by the opposition, which were tested by U.N. inspectors, are not standard weapons of the Syrian army.
  • Now, a former analyst for the Central Intelligence Agency, Ray McGovern, similarly backs the claim that the Syrian rebels perpetrated the poison gas attack on Aug. 21 McGovern was one of a number of veteran intelligence professionals who recently signed a letter to Obama saying that Damascus wasn’t behind the Aug. 21 chemical attack. As WND recently reported, former U.S. intelligence analysts claim current intelligence analysts have told them Assad was not responsible for the Aug. 21 poison gas attack, saying there was a “growing body of evidence” that reveals the incident was a pre-planned provocation by the Syrian opposition.
  • “Initial meetings between senior opposition military commanders and Qatari, Turkish and U.S. intelligence officials took place at the converted Turkish military garrison in Antakya, Hatay Province, now used as the command center and headquarters of the Free Syrian Army and their foreign sponsors,” the analysts said.
  • The VIPS memo to Obama reinforces separate videos, which show foreign fighters associated with the Syrian opposition firing artillery canisters of poison gas. One video shows Nadee Baloosh, a member of an al-Qaida-affiliated group Rioyadh al-Abdeen, admitting to the use of chemical weapons. In the video clip, al-Abdeen, who is in the Latakia area of Syria, said his forces used “chemicals which produce lethal and deadly gases that I possess.”
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