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Islamic State militants allegedly used chlorine gas against Iraqi security forces - The... - 0 views

www.washingtonpost.com/...0-a7ed-033218f15cbb_story.html war & peace ISIL al-Qaeda WMD chlorine
shared by Paul Merrell on 26 Oct 14 - No Cached
  • Dizzy, vomiting and struggling to breathe, 11 Iraqi police officers were rushed to a government hospital 50 miles north of the capital last month. The diagnosis: poisoning by chlorine gas. The perpetrators, according to the officers: Islamic State extremists. The chlorine attack appears to be the first confirmed use of chemical weapons by the Islamic State on the battlefield. An Iraqi Defense Ministry official corroborated the events, and doctors said survivors’ symptoms were consistent with chlorine poisoning. Iraqi forces say two other crude chlorine attacks have occurred since the extremists seized vast tracts of Iraqi territory this summer, but details on those incidents remain sketchy. The reported assaults all raise concerns that the militants are attempting to hone their chemical weapons capabilities as they push to control more ground
  • Chlorine, a common component in industry, is sold legally, but its use as a weapon violates the Chemical Weapons Convention. It was widely employed in trench warfare during World War I, including infamously at Ypres in Belgium, where German forces dispersed more than 160 tons of chlorine into the breeze, killing thousands of French and Allied soldiers.
  • One physician on the team, Hassanain Mohammed, had treated similar cases­ before. In 2006 and 2007, al-Qaeda in Iraq, a group that later morphed into the Islamic State, carried out a string of chlorine bombings in the country.
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  • An Iraqi Defense Ministry official confirmed this week that a bomb rigged with chlorine canisters was used in the Duluiyah attack. “They use it just to create terror,” said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity because he was not authorized to provide the information publicly. “But of course we are very concerned.” In a statement, the Defense Ministry confirmed that the Islamic State has used the gas in a “primitive and ineffective way” near water-treatment plants where it has gained access to chlorine, as well as in roadside bomb attacks. It did not specify the locations of the attacks, but there are several water plants near Duluiyah on territory controlled by the Islamic State.
  • Chlorine bombs are an easy-to-create but inexact weapon, experts say. All that is needed is a small explosive charge to rupture containers filled with the substance. “It’s difficult to deliver on target in combat situations,” said Jean Pascal Zanders, an independent researcher who specializes in chemical and biological weapons and disarmament. “Chlorine dissipates fast unless someone is able to concentrate it in a confined area.” Fighters in Duluiyah say it was not the only time chlorine has been used against them. Another attack this month caused minor injuries, and the fighters were treated locally, police officials said.
  • Soldiers who escaped an Islamic State rout of a besieged army base in Saqlawiyah, where hundreds of soldiers were killed last month, also said chlorine gas was used there — though reports of where and how the gas was delivered varied and could not be confirmed. While some officers said they believed artillery- or mortar-launched canisters fired by the attackers fell short of the base, others, who claimed to have remained in the installation for a longer period, said the canisters fell within its perimeter. Another claimed that the militants detonated chlorine-filled containers.
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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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With Ramadi encircled, Iraqi forces brace for urban warfare | Reuters - 0 views

www.reuters.com/...q-ramadi-idUSKCN0T01YM20151111 war & peace U.S.-foreign-policy Iraq Ramadi
shared by Paul Merrell on 16 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Iraqi forces appear better positioned than ever to launch an offensive against Islamic State militants controlling Ramadi, now that months-long efforts to cut off supply lines to the city are having an effect, but plenty of risks remain.The fall of Ramadi, the capital of Anbar province, to the group in May was the biggest defeat for Iraq's weak central government in nearly a year, dampening its hopes of routing the Sunni militants from the country's north and west.Retaking the city of 450,000 would provide a major psychological boost to Iraqi security forces, who have mostly collapsed in the face of advances by Islamic State, which last year seized a third of Iraq, a major OPEC oil producer and U.S ally.The ultimate goal for Iraqi forces is to break Islamic State's grip over its main stronghold Mosul, the biggest city in the north. Critical momentum is needed in order to achieve that.The Ramadi offensive has been impeded by heavy use of improvised explosive devices, inadequate troops and equipment due to government cash shortages, and stringent rules of engagement for U.S.-led air strikes, Iraqi army and federal police officers involved in the battle told Reuters.
  • Recent gains, however, have raised expectations that the military is set to strike, six months after vowing to quickly seize the city, 100 miles (60 km) west of Baghdad.Iraq's elite U.S.-trained counter-terrorism forces have led the campaign to put a cordon around the city. Backed by armored divisions of the federal police, they cut off the southern and western approaches to prevent reinforcements arriving from cities near the Syrian border.The forces have taken control of towns, villages and roads in those areas, including Anbar University and sprawling desert areas along the highway to Syria, the officers said.They also seized eastern outskirts such as Husaiba al-Sharqiya and Matheeq, significantly reducing Islamic State's ability to resupply from Falluja, a nearby city it controls.Earlier this month, counter-terrorism forces seized a large military camp on Ramadi's western outskirts and a handful of districts further north, reaching the western approach to the Palestine Bridge over the Euphrates.Two army divisions on the opposite side of the river, which runs north to south through Ramadi, are pushing slowly along a northern highway. Last week they reached the al-Jarayshi overpass, less than 2 km (1.25 miles) from the river.
  • Colonel Steve Warren, the spokesman for the U.S.-led coalition which has been bombing targets in Iraq and Syria for more than a year, said the insurgents were using the Euphrates as "a water-borne highway" to resupply the center of Ramadi.Taking the stretch of highway to the bridge would complete the cordon around Ramadi and enable the forces to begin clearing the city one neighborhood at a time.
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Belgium on "Red Alert": Gov Suspects Terrorist Attack including Chemical Weapon - nsnbc... - 0 views

nsnbc.me/...tack-including-chemical-weapon war & peace Belgium terrorism™ hysteria WMD
shared by Paul Merrell on 24 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • The Belgian OCAM Crisis Center and the government raised the country’s “terror alert” to the highest level, warning about the imminent risk for a terrorist attack. The measure comes one week after the attacks in Paris that claimed 129 lives and injured hundreds. Experts warn about the possible use of a chemical weapon.
  • The OCAM and the Belgian government announced a “red alert” for Brussels and the region around Brussels, warning that a serious terrorist attack may be imminent. The Belgian Interior Ministry issued a statement, saying: “The analysis shows a serious and imminent threat requiring specific security measures as well as detailed recommendations to the population.” The Belgian capital resembles a city under siege with police and military deployed while a large number of citizens have been scared into staying at home and avoiding public places as much as possible. The OCAM, in fact, called on residents in Brussels and the region around the city to avoid crowded places including transport hubs.
  • Several Belgian security analysts warned about the risk of the possible use of an improvised chemical weapon. Within this context it is noteworthy that chemical weapons attacks in Syria, especially that in the Damascus suburb East Ghouta, has been proven to have been carried out by the Saudi Arabian intelligence asset Liwa-al-Islam. The attack implicated the highest levels of Saudi and US governments, military and intelligence services. Belgium hosts the headquarters of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO / OTAN) as well as the European Union (EU). Belgian officials declined to provide additional information about the alleged imminent threat, stating that there was a need for time to allow for the ongoing police and judicial investigation to take its course. Hours before the announcement of the “red alert” authorities charged a third “unnamed” suspect who had been arrested the day before for involvement in the terrorist attacks in Paris on Friday, November 13.
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Erdogan Says Will Resign If Oil Purchases From ISIS Proven After Putin Says Has "More P... - 0 views

www.zerohedge.com/...rkey-after-erdogan-slams-claim war & peace Syria oil-smuggling ISIL Erdogan Turkey Russia
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • “I’ve shown photos taken from space and from aircraft which clearly demonstrate the scale of the illegal trade in oil and petroleum products,” Vladimir Putin told reporters earlier this month on the sidelines of the G-20 summit in Antalya. Putin was of course referencing Islamic State’s illicit and highly lucrative oil trade, the ins and outs of which we’ve documented extensively over the past two weeks: The Most Important Question About ISIS That Nobody Is Asking Meet The Man Who Funds ISIS: Bilal Erdogan, The Son Of Turkey's President How Turkey Exports ISIS Oil To The World: The Scientific Evidence ISIS Oil Trade Full Frontal: "Raqqa's Rockefellers", Bilal Erdogan, KRG Crude, And The Israel Connection Turkey’s move to shoot down a Russian Su-24 warplane near the Syrian border afforded the Russian President all the motivation and PR cover he needed to expose Ankara’s alleged role in the trafficking of illegal crude from Iraq and Syria and in the aftermath of last Tuesday’s “incident,” Putin lambasted Erdogan. “Oil from Islamic State is being shipped to Turkey,” Putin said while in Jordan for a meeting with King Abdullah. In case that wasn’t clear enough, Putin added this: “Islamic State gets cash by selling oil to Turkey.”
  • To be sure, it’s impossible to track the path ISIS oil takes from extraction to market with any degree of precision. That said, it seems that Islamic State takes advantage of the same network of smugglers, traders, and shipping companies that the KRG uses to transport Kurdish crude from Kurdistan to the Turkish port of Ceyhan. From there, the oil makes its way to Israel and other markets (depending on which story you believe) and if anyone needs to be thrown off the trail along the way, there’s a ship-to-ship transfer trick that can be executed off the coast of Malta. The maneuver allegedly makes the cargoes more difficult to track.  Some believe Erdogan’s son Bilal - who owns a marine transport company called BMZ Group - is heavily involved in the trafficking of Kurdish and ISIS crude. Most of the ships BMZ owns are Malta-flagged.  In light of the above, some have speculated that Turkey shot down the Su-24 in retaliation for Russia’s bombing campaign that recently has destroyed over 1,000 ISIS oil trucks. Here’s what Syrian Information Minister Omran al-Zoub said on Friday:
  • “All of the oil was delivered to a company that belongs to the son of Recep [Tayyip] Erdogan. This is why Turkey became anxious when Russia began delivering airstrikes against the IS infrastructure and destroyed more than 500 trucks with oil already. This really got on Erdogan and his company’s nerves. They’re importing not only oil, but wheat and historic artefacts as well." Al-Zoub isn’t alone in his suspicions. In an interview with RT, Iraqi MP and former national security adviser, Mowaffak al Rubaie - who personally led Saddam to the gallows - said ISIS is selling around $100 million of stolen crude each month in Turkey. Here are some excerpts:  “In the last eight months ISIS has managed to sell ... $800 million dollars worth of oil on the black market of Turkey. This is Iraqi oil and Syrian oil, carried by trucks from Iraq, from Syria through the borders to Turkey and sold ...[at] less than 50 percent of the international oil price."   "Now this either get consumed inside, the crude is refined on Turkish territory by the Turkish refineries, and sold in the Turkish market. Or it goes to Jihan and then in the pipelines from Jihan to the Mediterranean and sold to the international market.”
  • ...4 more annotations...
  • Hilariously, the man who just finished starting a civil war just so he could regain a few lost seats in Parliament and who would just as soon throw you in jail as look at you if he thinks you might be a threat to his government, now says he will resign if Putin (or anyone else) can present "proof": “We are not that dishonest as to buy oil from terrorists. If it is proven that we have, in fact, done so, I will leave office. If there is any evidence, let them present it, we’ll consider [it]."  Hold your breath on that. And so, the Turkey connection has been exposed and in dramatic fashion. Unfortunately for Ankara, Erdogan can't arrest Vladimir Putin like he can award winning journalists and honest police officers who, like Moscow, want to see the flow of money and weapons to Sunni militants in Syria cut off.  The real question is how NATO will react now that Turkey is quickly becoming a liability. Furthermore, you can be sure that the US, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar (who are all heavily invested in the Sunni extremist cause in Syria), are getting nervous. No one wants to see this blown wide open as that would mean the Western public getting wise to the fact that it is indeed anti-ISIS coalition governments that are funding and arming not only ISIS, but also al-Nusra and every other rebel group fighting to wrest control of the country from Assad. Worse, if it gets out that the reason the US has refrained from bombing ISIS oil trucks until now is due to the fact that Ankara and Washington had an understanding when it comes to the flow of illicit crude to Cehyan, the American public may just insist on indicting "some folks." 
  • On Monday, Putin was back at it, saying that Russia has obtained new information that further implicates Turkey in the Islamic State oil trade. “At the moment we have received additional information confirming that that oil from the deposits controlled by Islamic State militants enters Turkish territory on industrial scale," Putin said on the sidelines of the climate change summit in Paris. "We have traced some located on the territory of the Turkish Republic and living in regions guarded by special security services and police that have used the visa-free regime to return to our territory, where we continue to fight them." "We have every reason to believe that the decision to down our plane was guided by a desire to ensure security of this oil’s delivery routes to ports where they are shipped in tankers," he added, taking it up another notch still.  As for Erdogan, well, he "can't accept" the accusations which he calls "not moral": ERDOGAN: TURKEY CAN'T ACCEPT RUSSIA CLAIMS THAT IT BUYS IS OIL LATEST - Erdo?an: Russia’s claim that Turkey bought oil from Daesh is not ‘moral’, such claims have to be proved pic.twitter.com/PZka8MwzpL — DAILY SABAH (@DailySabah) November 30, 2015
  • lars generated by selling Iraqi and Syrian oil on the Turkish black market  is like the oxygen supply to ISIS and it’s operation,” he added. “Once you cut the oxygen then ISIS will suffocate.”   "There isn't a shadow of a doubt that the Turkish government knows about the oil smuggling operations. The merchants, the businessmen [are buying oil] in the black market in Turkey under the noses – under the auspices if you like – of the Turkish intelligence agency and the Turkish security apparatus."   “There are security officers who are sympathizing with ISIS in Turkey. They are allowing them to go from Istanbul to the borders and infiltrate ... Syria and Iraq.”   “There is no terrorist organization which can stand alone, without a neighboring country helping it – in this case Turkey.”
  • Remember, when it comes to criminal conspiracies, the guy who gets caught first usually ends up getting cut loose. It will be interesing to see if Erdogan starts to get the cold shoulder from Ankara's "allies" going forward.
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A Secret Catalogue of Government Gear for Spying on Your Cellphone - 0 views

theintercept.com/...r-for-spying-on-your-cellphone surveillance state surveillance-devices catalog
shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Dec 15 - No Cached
  • HE INTERCEPT HAS OBTAINED a secret, internal U.S. government catalogue of dozens of cellphone surveillance devices used by the military and by intelligence agencies. The document, thick with previously undisclosed information, also offers rare insight into the spying capabilities of federal law enforcement and local police inside the United States. The catalogue includes details on the Stingray, a well-known brand of surveillance gear, as well as Boeing “dirt boxes” and dozens of more obscure devices that can be mounted on vehicles, drones, and piloted aircraft. Some are designed to be used at static locations, while others can be discreetly carried by an individual. They have names like Cyberhawk, Yellowstone, Blackfin, Maximus, Cyclone, and Spartacus. Within the catalogue, the NSA is listed as the vendor of one device, while another was developed for use by the CIA, and another was developed for a special forces requirement. Nearly a third of the entries focus on equipment that seems to have never been described in public before.
  • The Intercept obtained the catalogue from a source within the intelligence community concerned about the militarization of domestic law enforcement. (The original is here.) A few of the devices can house a “target list” of as many as 10,000 unique phone identifiers. Most can be used to geolocate people, but the documents indicate that some have more advanced capabilities, like eavesdropping on calls and spying on SMS messages. Two systems, apparently designed for use on captured phones, are touted as having the ability to extract media files, address books, and notes, and one can retrieve deleted text messages. Above all, the catalogue represents a trove of details on surveillance devices developed for military and intelligence purposes but increasingly used by law enforcement agencies to spy on people and convict them of crimes. The mass shooting earlier this month in San Bernardino, California, which President Barack Obama has called “an act of terrorism,” prompted calls for state and local police forces to beef up their counterterrorism capabilities, a process that has historically involved adapting military technologies to civilian use. Meanwhile, civil liberties advocates and others are increasingly alarmed about how cellphone surveillance devices are used domestically and have called for a more open and informed debate about the trade-off between security and privacy — despite a virtual blackout by the federal government on any information about the specific capabilities of the gear.
  • ANY OF THE DEVICES in the catalogue, including the Stingrays and dirt boxes, are cell-site simulators, which operate by mimicking the towers of major telecom companies like Verizon, AT&T, and T-Mobile. When someone’s phone connects to the spoofed network, it transmits a unique identification code and, through the characteristics of its radio signals when they reach the receiver, information about the phone’s location. There are also indications that cell-site simulators may be able to monitor calls and text messages. In the catalogue, each device is listed with guidelines about how its use must be approved; the answer is usually via the “Ground Force Commander” or under one of two titles in the U.S. code governing military and intelligence operations, including covert action.
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  • “We’ve seen a trend in the years since 9/11 to bring sophisticated surveillance technologies that were originally designed for military use — like Stingrays or drones or biometrics — back home to the United States,” said Jennifer Lynch, a senior staff attorney at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, which has waged a legal battle challenging the use of cellphone surveillance devices domestically. “But using these technologies for domestic law enforcement purposes raises a host of issues that are different from a military context.”
  • But domestically the devices have been used in a way that violates the constitutional rights of citizens, including the Fourth Amendment prohibition on illegal search and seizure, critics like Lynch say. They have regularly been used without warrants, or with warrants that critics call overly broad. Judges and civil liberties groups alike have complained that the devices are used without full disclosure of how they work, even within court proceedings.
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Chicago students get death threat over Palestine protest | The Electronic Intifada - 0 views

electronicintifada.net/...-threat-over-palestine-protest war & peace Israel BDS anti-BDS student-faculty-retaliation
shared by Paul Merrell on 31 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • Students in Chicago received a death threat after taking part in a Palestine solidarity protest. Another student activist in Santa Barbara, California, was physically assaulted during an argument with an Israel supporter. These are just two of dozens of on-campus incidents reported across the United States over the last four weeks, according to Palestine Legal.
  • Five days later, one of the students received a threatening email message directed at Students for Justice in Palestine. The message stated: “If there is one more demonstration in the quad from your petty organization, consider it to be your real bodies falling next time. What you did was downright anti-Semitism. Don’t underestimate the Jewish presence on campus. #jewhater.”
  • Meanwhile, a member of SJP at the University of California at Santa Barbara was physically assaulted during a peaceful protest as part of the international day of action. Daniel Mogtaderi said he was filming the demonstration on his phone as a matter of protocol, so that SJP can document any harassment or violence it might encounter. A young man who appeared to be another student began arguing with Mogtaderi about the 13-year-old Palestinian boy who was accused of a stabbing attack and critically injured and taunted by Israeli settlers as he lay bleeding on the ground two weeks ago. The assailant became aggressive when he realized Mogtaderi was recording the encounter. “At that point he forcibly took hold of the phone, held on to the phone for some time, and shoved Mogtaderi two times before returning the phone and leaving the scene,” SJP stated. Mogtaderi’s video recording of the argument between himself and the assailant can be viewed here.
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  • University spokesperson Bill Burton told The Electronic Intifada that the matter is under investigation and had no further comment. Saadeh said that although the death threat is frightening and is being taken seriously, SJP members will not stop organizing. “They’re not going to shut us up with this,” she said. She said that students have created ways to protect each other on campus, such as making sure members of SJP do not have to walk alone to class, or sit alone at the library.
  • Mogtaderi told The Electronic Intifada that when he filed a report, campus police blamed him for “escalating the situation” and claimed that he could have avoided being assaulted if he hadn’t argued with the assailant. He added that campus police insist they cannot find the assailant and have not contacted Mogtaderi for additional information. UC Santa Barbara told The Electronic Intifada that the matter is being investigated. “There are so many stories around the country [of attempts] to try and silence people as much as possible,” Mogtaderi said. “My voice won’t be silenced, nor will the voices of other SJPers.”
  • Palestine Legal stated last week that it has responded to more than 35 campus incidents over the last month. “The pattern persists: with a rise in activism comes a rise in suppression,” the group said. Flush with new injections of cash, Israel-aligned organizations are stepping up their efforts to smear and intimidate students involved in Palestine activism. Palestine Legal says it has responded to more than 300 incidents of “censorship, punishment, or other burdening of advocacy” reported by Palestine solidarity activists on more than 65 US campuses in the last 18 months. The legal group calls on university administrations to protect the speech rights and physical safety of students who speak out in favor of Palestinian rights.
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Paris: Made in Libya, not Syria? | Asia Times - 0 views

atimes.com/...paris-made-in-libya-not-syria war & peace ISIL Paris-attacks Libyan-mercenaries
shared by Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 15 - No Cached
  • Using the criterion cui bono (who benefits?) to the Paris outrage, one notes an apparent shortage of “bono” to ISIL, unless the thinking of the leadership runs to: “It would be an excellent idea to focus the fury of the West upon us here in Iraq instead of laying low and letting the West go along with the GCC/Turkish plan of quagmiring Russia in Syria.” Doesn’t make too much sense.  Which is why, in my opinion, is why you see a lot of metaphysical hand waving that the real motive for the attacks was to erase the Muslim “grey zone,” provoke a fatal over-reaction from the West, contribute to the agonies of the Syrian refugees in Europe, rend the time-space continuum and thereby bring the Crusaders to their knees, etc.
  • Media and analyst coverage appears determined to overlay a profitable traffic-building and mission-enhancing narrative of “Western civilization under attack by ISIL,” and ignore the factors that point to the attack as a murderous local initiative, not by ISIL or the mythical immigrant threat, but by alienated Muslim citizens of the EU.  The rhetoric of righteous, united fury against a monstrosity committed by the external “other,” perhaps, is easier to digest than the awkward theme of national minorities committing extreme acts of violence against societies they believe oppress and marginalize them. So we get lots about the horrors of ISIL and relatively little about the, to me, rather eye-opening statistic that while 8% of the population of France is Muslim, it is estimated that 70% of the prison population is.  I suppose it would be churlish to explore the issue of blowback from French penal and social policies at this juncture.  But there is some interesting data that places the alleged and now apparently deceased mastermind, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, in context concerning the degree of his allegiance to ISIL.
  • Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, in other words, was formed as a rather bloody piece of outreach by Libyan Islamists to share Libya experience in insurrection and revolution with Syria.  After IS arose and became a dominant military and financial force, the “KBL” threw in their lot with ISIS, and members of the brigade subsequently returned to Libya to establish an IS beachhead. A July 2015 study by Small Arms Survey confirms the autonomous character of Katibat al-Battar al-Libi. While the uncertain relationship between JAN and IS was being clarified, Libyans stayed ‘outside’ the fray, remaining in their own units and not integrating into other IS hierarchies or command structures. In Latakia for instance, Libyans kept their own separate battalion (The Daily Star, 2013). As the split between JAN and IS deepened, Libyans chose IS but remained apart, forming the Katibat al-Battar al-Libiya (KBL) (The Libyan al-Battar Brigade), under the auspices of IS. Since its formation, the KBL has been active in eastern Syria, notably in Al Hasakah and Deir az-Zor. The battalion maintained links with Ansar al-Sharia in Libya, an early and prominent supporter of IS. Ansar al-Sharia proved to be an excellent recruiting tool and played a role in the arrival of many Libyans in Syria prior to 2014. And who is Ansar al-Sharia in Libya?  Via The Telegraph:
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  • Abaaoud, a citizen of Belgium of Moroccan descent, was well known as a violent radical miscreant linked to an Islamic cell in Verviers, Belgium, that did all sorts of mean, murderous crap.  As far as Belgian and French authorities were concerned, he had been an item long before Paris.
  • Washington believes the group is responsible for the 2012 attack on the US consulate in Benghazi that killed the ambassador and three other Americans.  In November, the United Nations blacklisted Ansar al-Sharia Benghazi and its sister group, Ansar al-Sharia Derna, over links to Al-Qaeda and for running camps for the Islamist State group.  So there you have your soundbite.  The Paris outrage: Made in Libya.  Not Syria.  And brought to us by the people who killed Christopher Stevens in Benghazi. I am sure that Hillary Clinton is grateful to the French police for botching the raid to capture Abaaoud and pumping 5000 rounds into his apartment instead of capturing him; otherwise, he might have become a lively topic of interest and curiosity and the right wing could have cooked off the Benghazi! munitions through election day.  For that matter, it seems unlikely that the governments of the West, or the media cheerleaders thirsting for a rousing good vs. evil narrative, are very interested in exploring the morally fraught issue of blow back from the spectacular Libyan disaster, either. To sum up: the alleged and now reportedly deceased architect of the Paris attacks, Abdelhamid Abaaoud, did not fight “for IS.”  He fought “with” Katibat al-Battar al-Libi, a Libyan outfit whose presence in Syria predates that of ISIS.  Even after Katibat al-Battar al-Libi decided to pledge allegiance to ISIS, it retained its independent identity.  And it would appear unlikely that Abaaoud, as a European of Moroccan descent, would be a central figure in the brigade, whose personnel, funding, and mission seem to have largely emanated from Libya.
  • Despite his seemingly junior status in an autonomous militia, it is possible that Abaaoud was recruited by al-Baghdadi to commit the Paris outrage.  But foreign fighters flock to Syria not only to accumulate general jihadi merit, but also to acquire skills they could apply in their own struggles.  And Abaaoud may have gone to the Syrian war zone to hook up with an extremely capable Libyan outfit and acquire the experience and connections to fulfill his own ambitions for mayhem in Europe, and not necessarily to support the global or even local objectives of the IS caliphate.  So it is by no means axiomatic that Abaaoud returned to Europe with the mission to execute a high-level ISIS strategy. Instead, Abaaoud might have been an angry guy with the skills, resources, and inclination to commit mass murder on his own kick.  The police were already after him big time after the Verviers raid in January (we are now told that Abaaoud was “on” or a “candidate for” a spot on the drone assassination assignment list, but I wonder if this is post-hoc ass-covering).  So maybe he and his friends decided to pull the pin, and go out in a big way. I doubt we’ll ever get the full story.  But “Paris: Made in Libya” is an honest hook.
  • Paul Merrell on 25 Nov 15
     
    So the "mastermind" of the Paris attacks was a product of the U.S. war on Libya, not of ISIL. Why am I not surprised? 
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Korematsu's Demise? | Just Security - 0 views

www.justsecurity.org/...korematsus-demise surveillance state NYPD-intelligence litigation Korematsu
shared by Paul Merrell on 20 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • There’s a lot that’s remarkable about last Tuesday’s Third Circuit decision in Hassan v. City of New York, which Faiza Patel cogently summarized in her post last week. In a nutshell, Hassan involves a challenge to secret intelligence operations carried out by the New York Police Department (NYPD) over the years since September 11 that allegedly targets Muslim communities “based on the false and stigmatizing premise that Muslim religious identity ‘is a permissible proxy for criminality, and that Muslim individuals, businesses, and institutions can therefore be subject to pervasive surveillance not visited upon individuals, businesses, and institutions of any other religious faith or the public at large.'” The district court had tersely granted the City’s motion to dismiss both because it concluded the plaintiffs lacked standing and because, in the alternative, it held that the plaintiffs had failed to overcome the pleading burden articulated by the Supreme Court in Iqbal. But the Third Circuit reversed on both fronts, holding that the plaintiffs’ allegations, if true, were more than enough to establish both that they had suffered an injury in fact sufficient to satisfy Article III standing, and that their equal protection and First Amendment claims were sufficiently plausible to satisfy Iqbal. To be sure, the Third Circuit’s decision is interlocutory — coming at a very preliminary stage in the litigation. But what I want to suggest in the post that follows is that, as much as any other post-September 11 judicial decision, Hassan represents the full-throated repudiation of the Supreme Court’s infamous World War II-era ruling in Korematsu v. United States that has been so long in coming — and so thoroughly overdue.
  • As I’ve written about before, Korematsu reflects two separate — but equally important — constitutional failures. The first failure was the internment policy itself, which we now know (and which the US government knew at the time) to have been a completely unnecessary — if not hysterical — overreaction to hyperbolic and (after Midway, at least) categorically overstated fears of a Japanese invasion of the West Coast. By itself, the camps were a dark stain on the history of civil liberties in the United States — albeit one of many, alas. But the second failure was, historically, the far more significant and unique one — the Supreme Court’s conscious constitutional rationalization of the internment policy, based upon a combination of naïveté on the Justices’ part and the affirmatively misleading (if not downright disingenuous) briefing by the federal government. As Justice Robert H. Jackson understood — and forcefully articulated — in his Korematsu dissent, the real violence to the “rule of law” resulting from the camps was thus not the underlying policy, but rather its validation by the Supreme Court. In his words, “a military commander may overstep the bounds of constitutionality, and it is an incident. But if we review and approve, that passing incident becomes the doctrine of the Constitution.”
  • But we’ve struggled somewhat with the second constitutional failure. The courts have repudiated Korematsu’s conviction; the Office of the Solicitor General has confessed error for its role in perpetuating the government’s misleading case before the Supreme Court; and scholars have suggested that Korematsu itself has become part of the “anti-canon” — the class of Supreme Court decisions so reviled that they are cited, if at all, in support of the wrongness of their holdings. But Korematsu itself remains on the books, as do broader concerns that courts are still vulnerable to Korematsu — style reasoning, i.e., that the need to protect national security might provide legal justification for government conduct that would otherwise be unjustifiable. Indeed, one need look no further than the ongoing debate over the SSCI’s torture report for evidence of the Korematsu mentality being alive and well.
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  • That’s why I find the Third Circuit’s analysis in Hassan so significant — not because it allows this particular civil suit to go forward, but because it does so based upon an explicit (and conscious) rejection of Korematsu — style legal reasoning. As Judge Ambro explains, “No matter how tempting it might be to do otherwise, we must apply the same rigorous standards even where national security is at stake. We have learned from experience that it is often where the asserted interest appears most compelling that we must be most vigilant in protecting constitutional rights.” And applying the strict judicial scrutiny that is triggered by government action deemed to be intentionally discriminatory on the basis of religious affiliation, the court proceeds to hold that the NYPD lacked a sufficiently compelling justification for such discriminatory treatment, because even if abstract claims of security necessity could be a compelling government interest, the NYPD’s alleged policy was far too overbroad to survive the narrow tailoring required by strict scrutiny. Thus, quoting directly from Justice Jackson’s Korematsu dissent, Judge Ambro closed his opinion by noting that “Our job is judicial. We ‘can apply only law, and must abide by the Constitution, or [we] cease to be civil courts and become instruments of [police] policy.'”
  • Faiza’s post provides far more detail on the specifics of the Third Circuit’s analysis, and the opinion itself is worth a read. For present purposes, though, it’s this mentality that I find so refreshing — that even when the government invokes the specter of September 11 and the need to prevent future acts of terrorism, courts will not abdicate their responsibility to scrutinize the government’s justifications with care, and to be especially wary of overbroad government programs carried out under the broad guise of “necessity.” Hassan certainly isn’t the first example of this kind of principled judicial decisionmaking in a post-September 11 counterterrorism suit, but it is the one that, at least in my view, most directly confronts — and rejects — the kind of deferential judicial review that was responsible for the second constitutional failure in Korematsu, and all of the pain that followed.
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JFK Assassination Plot Mirrored in France: Part 2 - WhoWhatWhy - 0 views

whowhatwhy.org/...plot-mirrored-in-france-part-2 war & peace CIA JFK France coup-attempts
shared by Paul Merrell on 22 Oct 15 - No Cached
  • What the colonial powers have done in Muslim countries is well known. Less well known are the machinations of Allen Dulles and the CIA in one of these colonial powers, France.Without the knowledge or consent of President John F. Kennedy, Allen Dulles orchestrated the efforts of retired French generals, rightwing French, Nazi sympathizers, and at least one White Russian, to overthrow Charles de Gaulle, who wanted to give Algeria its independence. Dulles et al feared an independent Algeria would go Communist, giving the Soviets a base in Africa.And there was another reason to hang onto Algeria: its natural resources. According to the US Energy Information Administration, it is “the leading natural gas producer in Africa, the second-largest natural gas supplier to Europe outside of the region, and is among the top three oil producers in Africa.”We note with great interest that the plot to bring down Charles De Gaulle — the kind of people involved, the role of Allen Dulles, the motive behind it — all bear an eerie similarity to the circumstances surrounding the assassination of John F. Kennedy. But that is another story.
  • As we have said earlier, Dulles’s job, simply put, was to hijack the US government to benefit the wealthy. And in this fascinating series of excerpts from David Talbot’s new biography on Dulles, we see how his reach extended deeply into the government of France.WhoWhatWhy Introduction by Milicent CranorThis is the second of a three-part series of excerpts from Chapter 15 (“Contempt”) of The Devil’s Chessboard: Allen Dulles, the CIA, and the Rise of the American Secret Government. HarperCollins Publishers, 2015. Go here to see Part 1. Previously, we presented excerpts from Chapter 20, and to see them, go here, here, and here.
  • When the coup against de Gaulle began three months later, Kennedy was still in the dark. It was a tumultuous time for the young administration. As he continued to wrestle with fallout from the Bay of Pigs crisis, JFK was suddenly besieged with howls of outrage from a major ally, accusing his own security services of seditious activity.
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  • It was a stinging embarrassment for the new American president, who was scheduled to fly to Paris for a state visit the following month. To add to the insult, the coup had been triggered by de Gaulle’s efforts to bring French colonial rule in Algeria to an end — a goal that JFK himself had ardently championed.The CIA’s support for the coup was one more defiant display of contempt — a back of the hand aimed not only at de Gaulle but at Kennedy.JFK took pains to assure Paris that he strongly supported de Gaulle’s presidency, phoning Hervé Alphand, the French ambassador in Washington, to directly communicate these assurances. But, according to Alphand, Kennedy’s disavowal of official US involvement in the coup came with a disturbing addendum — the American president could not vouch for his own intelligence agency. Kennedy told Alphand that “the CIA is such a vast and poorly controlled machine that the most unlikely maneuvers might be true.”
  • But at eight o’clock that evening, a defiant de Gaulle went on the air, as nearly all of France gathered around the TV, and rallied his nation with the most inspiring address of his long public career. He looked exhausted, with dark circles under his eyes. But he had put on his soldier’s uniform for the occasion, and his voice was full of passion.De Gaulle began by denouncing the rebellious generals. The nation had been betrayed “by men whose duty, honor and raison d’être it was to serve and to obey.” Now it was the duty of every French citizen to protect the nation from these military traitors. “In the name of France,” de Gaulle shouted, thumping the table in front of him, “I order that all means — I repeat all means — be employed to block the road everywhere to those men!”De Gaulle’s final words were a battle cry. “Françaises, Français! Aidez moi!” And all over France, millions of people did rush to the aid of their nation. The following day, a general strike was organized to protest the putsch. Led primarily by the left, including labor unions and the Communist Party, the mass protest won broad political support.Over ten million people joined the nationwide demonstrations, with hundreds of thousands marching in the streets of Paris, carrying banners proclaiming “Peace in Algeria” and shouting, “Fascism will not pass!” Even police officers associations expressed “complete solidarity” with the protests, as did the Roman Catholic Confederation, which denounced the “criminal acts” of the coup leaders, warning that they “threaten to plunge the country into civil war.”
  • In the wake of the crises in Cuba and France provoked by his own security officials, Kennedy began to display a new boldness. JFK’s assertiveness surprised CIA officials, who had apparently counted on Kennedy to be sidelined during the French coup.Agency officials assured coup leaders that the president would be too “absorbed in the Cuban affair” to act decisively against the plot. But JFK did react quickly to the French crisis, putting on high alert Ambassador Gavin, a decorated paratrooper commander in World War II who could be counted on to keep NATO forces in line. The president also dispatched his French speaking press spokesman, Pierre Salinger, to Paris to communicate directly with Élysée Palace officials.As Paris officials knew, the new American president already had something of a prickly relationship with de Gaulle, but he had strong feelings for France — and they made sure to absolve JFK of personal responsibility for the coup in their leaks to the press. French press accounts referred to the CIA as a “reactionary state within a state” that operated outside of Kennedy’s control.
  • But it was de Gaulle himself, and the French people, who turned the tide against the coup. By Sunday, the second day of the coup, a dark foreboding had settled over Paris. “I am surprised that you are still alive,” the president of France’s National Assembly bluntly told de Gaulle that morning. “If I were Challe, I would have already swooped down on Paris; the army here will move out of the way rather than shoot…. If I were in the position Challe put himself in, as soon as I burst in, I would have you executed with a bullet in the back, here in the stairwell, and say you were trying to flee.” De Gaulle himself realized that if Challe did airlift his troops from Algiers to France, “there was not much to stop them.”
  • This admission of presidential impotence, which Alphand reported to Paris, was a startling moment in US foreign relations, though it remains largely unknown today. Kennedy then underlined how deeply estranged he was from his own security machinery by taking the extraordinary step of asking Alphand for the French government’s help to track down the US officials behind the coup, promising to fully punish them.“[Kennedy] would be quite ready to take all necessary measures in the interest of good Franco-American relations, whatever the rank or functions of [the] incriminated people,” Alphand cabled French foreign minister Maurice Couve de Murville.
  • Hundreds of people rushed to the nation’s airfields and prepared to block the runways with their vehicles if Challe’s planes tried to land. Others gathered outside government ministries in Paris to guard them against attack. André Malraux, the great novelist turned minister of culture, threaded his way through one such crowd, handing out helmets and uniforms. Meanwhile, at the huge Renault factory on the outskirts of Paris, workers took control of the sprawling complex and formed militias, demanding weapons from the government so that they could fend off rebel assaults.“In many ways, France, and particularly Paris, relived its great revolutionary past Sunday night and Monday — the past of the revolutionary barricades, of vigilance committees and of workers’ councils,” reported The New York Times.
  • De Gaulle’s ringing address to the nation and the massive public response had a sobering effect on the French military. Challe’s support quickly began melting away, even — humiliatingly — within the ranks of his own military branch, the air force. Pilots flew their planes out of Algeria, and others feigned mechanical troubles, depriving Challe’s troops of the air transport they needed to descend on Paris.Meanwhile, de Gaulle moved quickly to arrest military officers in France who were involved in the coup. Police swooped down on the Paris apartment of an army captain who was plotting pro-putsch street riots, and de Gaulle’s minister of the interior seized the general in charge of the rebel forces that were gathered in the forests outside Paris. Deprived of their leader, the insurrectionary units sheepishly began to disperse.By Tuesday night, Challe knew that the coup had failed. The next day, he surrendered and was flown to Paris. Challe emerged from the plane “carrying his own suitcase, looking crumpled and insignificant in civilian clothes,” according to Time. “He stumbled at the foot of the landing steps, [falling] heavily on his hands and knees.” It was an ignominious homecoming for the man who had fully believed that, with US support, he was to replace the great de Gaulle.
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Iraqi troops run into Islamic State chemicals reservoir in Mosul - Iraqi News - 0 views

www.iraqinews.com/...tate-chemicals-reservoir-mosul war & peace Iraq U.S.-foreign-policy UK-foreign-policy gas-weapons terrorism™
shared by Paul Merrell on 18 Aug 17 - No Cached
  • Mosul (IraqiNews.com) Iraqi government forces seized on Thursday a cache of chemical substances belonging to Islamic State militants in central Mosul, the police service said. Federal police chief, Lt. Gen. Shaker Jawdat, said in a statement that the reservoir, found in Mekkawi street in Mosul’s Old City, included c4 and ammonia among other substances. Iraqi government forces regained control over the city of Mosul early July after a nine-month campaign seeking to bring down the self-styled “caliphate” declared by the militants from  Mosul’s Old City in 2014. Occasional reports had told of attacks by IS against civilians and security forces in which militants used improvised chemical weapons since an inventory of chemical arms was discovered by Iraqi forces inside laboratories of Mosul University in the eastern side of Mosul, which government troops took over from IS in January. Security personnel had seized a number of chemical stashes belonging to the extremist group during and after the end of the military campaign.The United Nations had previously confirmed cases of civilians being treated for symptoms of what seemed to be chemical agents.
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Interpol votes to admit Palestine as full member | World news | The Guardian - 0 views

www.theguardian.com/...admit-palestine-as-full-member war & peace Palestine INTERPOL
shared by Paul Merrell on 30 Sep 17 - No Cached
  • Interpol has voted to admit Palestine as a full member, dealing a significant diplomatic blow to Israel, which has strenuously lobbied against Palestinian admission. In a secret vote of representatives of the international police organisation’s members in China, Palestinian membership was approved by 75 to 24 votes, with 34 abstentions – exceeding the two-thirds requirement of yes to no votes. “The State of Palestine and the Solomon Islands are now Interpol member countries,” the organisation tweeted after the ballot. Set up almost a century ago, Interpol was designed to help countries share police intelligence and cooperate against crime that crosses international borders, including terrorism and human trafficking,. It now has 192 international members. It is perhaps best known to the wider public for its “red notice” system, which issues requests to locate and provisionally arrest individuals pending extradition. The Palestinian bid was part of a series of efforts to push for membership of international institutions and thereby advance the goal of statehood.
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Fars News Agency :: Iraqi PM Rejects Biden's Offer for Deployment of US Troops in Kirkuk - 0 views

english.farsnews.com/newstext.php Obama war & peace Iraq
shared by Paul Merrell on 19 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Iraqi Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki rejected a proposal by US Vice-President Joe Biden for the deployment of the US forces in Iraq's Northern province of Kirkuk. Biden in a telephone conversation with Iraqi prime minister Saturday night asked for Maliki's consent to the deployment of the US troops in Kirkuk, but the premier rejected the US vice-president's offer, an informed source told FNA in Baghdad on Sunday. The source, who asked to remain unnamed due to the sensitivity of his information, said during the phone talk, Biden voiced concern about a recent clash between the Pishmerga forces of the Iraqi Kurdistan region - who are the local law enforcement troops of the Kurdistan Regional Government (KRG) - and Iraq's Federal Police troops, and said the US troops should be deployment in the oil rich Kirkuk province in a bid to prevent the outbreak of a civil war. "But the Iraqi Prime Minister strongly rejected Biden's proposal," the source added.
  • Paul Merrell on 19 Nov 12
     
    Obama wants to send U.S. combat troops back to Iraq, according to this Iranian news agency report. 
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'We have no future!' EU anger unites millions in protest (PHOTOS, VIDEO) - RT - 0 views

rt.com/...ity-protests-eu-solidarity-727 financial-collapse EU anti-austerity protests
shared by Paul Merrell on 15 Nov 12 - No Cached
  • Massive anti-austerity strikes and protests swept across Europe as millions took to the streets to express their frustration over rising unemployment and dire economic prospects. Many rallies ended with violent clashes with police. Workers marched in 23 countries across Europe to mark the European Day of Action and Solidarity.General strikes had been called in Spain and Portugal, paralyzing public services and international flights, in Belgium and France transport links were partially disrupted by strikes and demonstrations, in Italy and Greece thousands of workers and students marched through the streets.
  • The Europe-wide strike action, the largest in a series of protests against the austerity policies, was coordinated by the European Trade Union Confederation (ETUC)
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Erdogan rejects 'dictator' claims - 0 views

qctimes.com/...0c-5149-8383-f50642d6ecd1.html war & peace Arab Spring Turkey social media Twitter
shared by Paul Merrell on 02 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Paul Merrell on 02 Jun 13
     
    Quote of the day: "social media is the worst menace to society."
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Unions join forces with Turkish protesters - CNN.com - 0 views

edition.cnn.com/...index.html war & peace Turkey Arab Spring
shared by Paul Merrell on 04 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Istanbul (CNN) -- Trade unions claiming 240,000 members are throwing their weight behind anti-government demonstrations across Turkey. The KESK confederation of public sector workers was calling a two-day strike starting Tuesday to protest what it called the "fascism" of the governing party of Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan, who has become one of the focal points of demonstrators' anger. They have united demonstrators from across the political spectrum against a common foe: security forces who unleashed tear gas and water cannon on them in response to what had been largely peaceful protests against Erdogan's government.
  • Turkish Deputy Prime Minister Bulent Arinc on Tuesday apologized "for the police aggression against our citizens who were involved in the initial protests and acted with environmental concern," Turkey's semiofficial Anadolu news agency reported. But, Arinc said, "I don't think we owe an apology to those who caused destruction on the streets and who interfered with people's freedom." The Turkish Medical Association said that at least 3,195 people were injured in clashes Sunday and Monday. Of them, 26 were in serious or critical condition, it said. One protester, Mehmet Ayvalitas, died of his injuries, the association said. And the governor of Hatay in southeastern Turkey said that a 22-year-old man, Abdulah Comert, was killed with a firearm by unknown people during demonstrations late Monday, Anadolu reported.
  • The protests have spread to 67 of Turkey's 81 provinces, according to Anadolu.
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NSA Snooping Was Only the Beginning. Meet the Spy Chief Leading Us Into Cyberwar | Thre... - 0 views

www.wired.com/...all surveillance state NSA secret-government
shared by Paul Merrell on 14 Jun 13 - No Cached
  • Inside Fort Meade, Maryland, a top-secret city bustles. Tens of thousands of people move through more than 50 buildings—the city has its own post office, fire department, and police force. But as if designed by Kafka, it sits among a forest of trees, surrounded by electrified fences and heavily armed guards, protected by antitank barriers, monitored by sensitive motion detectors, and watched by rotating cameras. To block any telltale electromagnetic signals from escaping, the inner walls of the buildings are wrapped in protective copper shielding and the one-way windows are embedded with a fine copper mesh.
  • This is the undisputed domain of General Keith Alexander, a man few even in Washington would likely recognize. Never before has anyone in America’s intelligence sphere come close to his degree of power, the number of people under his command, the expanse of his rule, the length of his reign, or the depth of his secrecy. A four-star Army general, his authority extends across three domains: He is director of the world’s largest intelligence service, the National Security Agency; chief of the Central Security Service; and commander of the US Cyber Command. As such, he has his own secret military, presiding over the Navy’s 10th Fleet, the 24th Air Force, and the Second Army.
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MoD pays out millions to Iraqi torture victims | Law | The Guardian - 0 views

www.guardian.co.uk/...mod-iraqi-torture-victims war crimes torture rendition human rights
shared by Paul Merrell on 23 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • The Ministry of Defence has paid out £14m in compensation and costs to hundreds of Iraqis who complained that they were illegally detained and tortured by British forces during the five-year occupation of the south-east of the country.Hundreds more claims are in the pipeline as Iraqis become aware that they are able to bring proceedings against the UK authorities in the London courts.
  • Lawyers representing former prisoners of the British military say that more than 700 further individuals are likely to make claims next year.Most of those compensated were male civilians who said they had been beaten, deprived of sleep and threatened before being interrogated by British servicemen and women who had detained them on suspicion of involvement in the violent insurgency against the occupation. Others said that they suffered sexual humiliation and were forced into stress positions for prolonged periods.
  • Many of the complaints arise out of the actions of a shadowy military intelligence unit called the Joint Forward Interrogation Team (Jfit) which operated an interrogation centre throughout the five-year occupation. Officials of the International Committee of the Red Cross complained about the mistreatment of detainees at Jfit not long after it was first established.Despite this, the interrogators shot hundreds of video films in which they captured themselves threatening and abusing men who can be seen to be bruised, disoriented, complaining of starvation and sleep deprivation and, in some cases, too exhausted to stand unaided.
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  • During proceedings brought before the high court in London, lawyers representing the former Jfit prisoners suggested the interrogation centre could be regarded as "Britain's Abu Ghraib".
  • Next month, the high court will hear a judicial review of the MoD's refusal to hold a public inquiry into the abuses. Human rights groups and lawyers for the former prisoners say the UK government is obliged to hold an inquiry to meet its obligations under the European convention on human rights – and particularly under article three of the convention, which protects individuals from torture.After a hearing, the high court highlighted matters supporting the allegations of systemic abuse. These included:• The same techniques being used at the same places for the same purpose: to assist interrogation.• The facilities being under the command of an officer.• Military doctors examining each prisoner at various stages in their detention.• Investigations by the Royal Military police that were concluded without anyone being held to account.
  • Paul Merrell on 23 Dec 12
     
    The Brits at least have the decency to attempt to make amends for its soldiers who tortured prisoners. Not so in the U.S. *Every* "war on terror" detainee who has filed a case for damages in the U.S. has been thrown out of court at the government's request, usually on grounds of the State Secrets privilege. It is a sad situation that our courts allow government secrecy about unlawful conduct to trump individual rights to redress for injury. 
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International Media Regurgitating Syrian Rebel Propaganda - 0 views

www.informationclearinghouse.info/article33476.htm Syria Syrian war Iran U.S. U.K. Russia saudis Israel Kuwait war & peace war crimes
shared by Paul Merrell on 01 Jan 13 - No Cached
  • Outside Syria there have been repeated media and diplomatic forecasts of imminent victory for the rebels and defeat for Bashar al-Assad. Ignored in this speculation is the important point that Assad's forces still hold, wholly or in large part, all the main cities and towns of Syria. The difference in perceptions inside and outside Damascus is explained partly by the way the international and regional media describes the war. There are few foreign journalists in the Syrian capital because it is difficult to get visas. By way of contrast, the rebels have a highly sophisticated media operation – often also foreign-based – proffering immediate details of every incident, often backed up by compelling, if selective, YouTube footage. Understandably, the rebel version of events is heavily biased towards their own side and demonises the Syrian government. More surprising is the willingness of the international media, based often in Beirut but also in London and New York, to regurgitate with so little scepticism what is essentially good-quality propaganda. It is as if, prior to the US presidential election in November, foreign journalists had been unable to obtain visas to enter the US and had instead decided to rely on Republican Party militants for their information on the campaign – moreover, Republican activists based in Mexico and Canada.
  • The revolution has turned into a civil war. The uprising of Syrians against a cruel police state that started in March 2011 increasingly looks to Alawites, Christians, Druze and other minorities like a sectarian campaign aimed at their elimination. They watch YouTube pictures of Alawite officers being ritually decapitated and wonder what fate awaits them if Assad is defeated.
  • The policy of the US and its allies is increasingly bizarre: on the one hand, they recognise the opposition National Coalition as the legitimate government of Syria but, on the other, they label its most effective fighting force, the al-Nusra Front, as "a terrorist organisation" linked to al-Qa'ida. Just as in Iraq after 2003, Syria has become a magnet for jihadi fighters across the Muslim world. Washington is showing ever-decreasing enthusiasm for an outright rebel military victory that would strengthen jihadi militants and dissolve the governing machinery of the Syrian state.
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  • The Syrian crisis is further complicated and exacerbated by being at the centre of two long-running regional struggles. These are the growing confrontation between Sunni and Shia across the Muslim world and, secondly, the conflict that pits the US, Israel, Saudi Arabia and their allies against Iran and its few friends. It is difficult to see how the present stalemate is going to be broken.
  • Barring full-scale foreign intervention, a negotiated settlement is becoming inevitable though it may be a long time coming.
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Jan 13
     
    From my ongoing monitoring of news in the Mid-East, this article accurately summarizes the situation in Syria, except for involvement of the Russians on the side of Syria's established government. A fairly large portion of the Russian Navy is now positioned within Syrian ports and Russian ground to air missile systems are positioned around the country, serving as a strong deterrent to Libya-style U.S.-British air support for the "rebel" forces that largely consist of Jihadi foreigners. But U.S. mainstream media continues to falsely paint the situation in Syria as one in which the established Syrian government stands on the precipice of a just military defeat by oppressed native Syrian rebels. For the most part, one must go to foreign news sources to arrive at something closer to the truth, an invasion of Syria instigated and supplied by the U.S., the U.K., Turkey, the Sunni Arab states of Saudi Arabia and Kuwait, and Israel. Syria, a member of a small bloc of nations supportive of Iran, is being used in a surrogate war against Iran, which dares to require payment for its oil exports in gold, silver, or currencies more stable that the U.S. dollar.   
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I Am a Peaceful AR-15 Assault Rifle Owner by Marc J. Victor - 0 views

www.lewrockwell.com/...victor7.1.1.html Libertarian Guns Culture-of-Violence
shared by Gary Edwards on 31 Dec 12 - No Cached
  • "Firearms stand next in importance to the constitution itself. They are the American people's liberty teeth and keystone under independence … from the hour the Pilgrims landed to the present day, events, occurances and tendencies prove that to ensure peace security and happiness, the rifle and pistol are equally indispensable … the very atmosphere of firearms anywhere restrains evil interference – they deserve a place of honor with all that's good." ~ George Washington
  • I am an American. As such, none of my rights depend on a showing of need. I am a free man who has the right to define and pursue my happiness in any peaceful way I see fit. The government does not grant me rights. I was born free. The legitimate role of government is to act as my agent to protect my rights; which exist independent of government. Americans do not beg the government for rights nor are they required to demonstrate a "need" for rights.
  • Government never has a more tempting opportunity to increase its size, power and scope, and to curtail the liberties of free people, than during or immediately after a crisis. Indeed, crisis is so tempting an opportunity for government that governments invent crisis whenever possible. This is why "emergency acts" and "wars" on anyone and anything are so popular for governments. Nothing entices people to stop thinking, act impulsively, and to relinquish liberties so easily as a "crisis" or a "tragedy" or an "emergency." We need to be smarter if liberty is to survive.
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  • Banning Guns is Un-American and Immoral "And that the said Constitution be never construed to authorize Congress to infringe the just liberty of the Press, or the rights of Conscience; or to prevent the people of the United States, who are peaceable citizens, from keeping their own arms; …" ~ Samuel Adams
  • The Idea of Banning Guns is Foolishness "They that give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety deserve neither liberty nor safety." ~ Ben Franklin
  • The single biggest contributing factor to our culture of violence is that our society no longer adheres to the once basic notion that initiating force against non-aggressors is wrong
  • Although President Obama appears excited about the notion of banning guns, I have not heard him order a ban on the very guns used to protect him. Apparently, when it comes to his protection, President Obama prefers to be protected by people armed with guns. Indeed, I suspect none of these gun ban advocates would hesitate to call 911 and request help from people armed with guns if they were faced with an intruder in their homes in the middle of the night. I fail to understand why we can’t all agree that guns save lives.
  • Our Culture of Violence
  • "Democracy is two wolves and a lamb voting on what to have for lunch. Liberty is a well-armed lamb contesting the vote!" ~ Benjamin Franklin
  • Gun Regulations Never Reduce Gun Violence and Usually Increase Violent Crime "The constitutions of most of our States assert that all power is inherent in the people; that … it is their right and duty to be at all times armed; … " ~ Thomas Jefferson
  • Our laws are replete with instances of legal trespass against peaceful people.
  • I prefer that my children are no longer unprotected sitting ducks at a federally mandated gun free zone in school.
  • We no longer recognize the sovereignty of the individual.
  • democracy is akin to mob rule.
  • Our spending on the drug war will soon be approaching 100 billion dollars per year.
  • Not only do guns remain widely available in Mexico, but their gun related homicide rate outpaces ours. The same can be said of all these drug war countries.
  • Mexico has some of the strictest gun control laws in the world. Its laws effectively prohibit gun ownership.
  • Rather than living in a democratic republic where most decisions are left to the property owner, we now have an unfettered democracy where anything goes so long as the majority of voters agree
  • "To preserve liberty, it is essential that the whole body of the people always possess arms and be taught alike, especially when young, how to use them." ~ Richard Henry Lee
  • Indeed, this law may have encouraged Mr. Lanza to work his horrific violence at the Sandy Hook Elementary School knowing federal law provides that nobody could have the capacity to stop him.
  • One unintended consequence of this federal law has been to create a guaranteed victim zone, comprised of children, who are unprotected sitting ducks for any deranged lunatic such as Mr. Lanza.
  • Our culture of violence is more directly attributable to anti-freedom government policies which diminish and disrespect the rights of the individual.
  • Here is a short list of some notable examples compiled by the Libertarian Party:
  • A 1997 high school shooting in Pearl, Mississippi was halted by the school's vice principal after he retrieved the Colt .45 he kept in his truck. A 1998 middle school shooting ended when a man living next door heard gunfire and apprehended the shooter with his shotgun. A 2002 terrorist attack at an Israeli school was quickly stopped by an armed teacher and a school guard. A 2002 law school shooting in Grundy, Virginia came to an abrupt conclusion when students carrying firearms confronted the shooter. A 2007 mall shooting in Ogden, Utah ended when an armed off-duty police officer intervened. A 2009 workplace shooting in Houston, Texas was halted by two co-workers who carried concealed handguns. A 2012 church shooting in Aurora, Colorado was stopped by a member of the congregation carrying a gun. At the recent mall shooting in Portland, Oregon the gunman took his own life minutes after being confronted by a shopper carrying a concealed weapon.
  • Three Reasons Americans Have a Right to Own Guns "Are we at last brought to such humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense? Where is the difference between having our arms in possession and under our direction and having them under the management of Congress? If our defense be the real object of having those arms, in whose hands can they be trusted with more propriety, or equal safety to us, as in our own hands?" ~ Patrick Henry
  • First, free people have a right to self defense.
  • The second reason for a right to keep and bear arms is to deter possible foreign invasions.
  • The founders of our nation believed people must always preserve their right to resistance and revolution against their own government. "And what country can preserve its liberties, if its rulers are not warned from time to time that their people preserve the spirit of resistance? Let them take arms....The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time, with the blood of patriots and tyrants." ~ Thomas Jefferson.
  • Japanese Admiral Isoroku Yamamoto
  • The third reason for a right to keep and bear arms is, as Thomas Jefferson stated, "The strongest reason for people to retain the right to keep and bear arms is, as a last resort, to protect themselves against tyranny in government."
  • "When the people fear the government, there is tyranny. When the government fears the people, there is liberty."
  • "You cannot invade the mainland United States. There would be a rifle behind every blade of grass"
  • In the 20th century alone, the death toll resulting from governments murdering their own disarmed citizens after guns were legally banned is estimated at 56 million.
  • "If ye love wealth greater than liberty, the tranquility of servitude greater than the animating contest for freedom, go home from us in peace. We seek not your counsel, nor your arms. Crouch down and lick the hand that feeds you; and may posterity forget that ye were our countrymen." ~ Samuel Adams
  • Gary Edwards on 31 Dec 12
     
    Excellent article on the importance of gun ownership in America.  The author is a defense attorney practicing law in Arizona.  He's also a war veteran and well versed libertarian.   Excerpts: "I am an American. As such, none of my rights depend on a showing of need. I am a free man who has the right to define and pursue my happiness in any peaceful way I see fit. The government does not grant me rights. I was born free. The legitimate role of government is to act as my agent to protect my rights; which exist independent of government. Americans do not beg the government for rights nor are they required to demonstrate a "need" for rights." "Government never has a more tempting opportunity to increase its size, power and scope, and to curtail the liberties of free people, than during or immediately after a crisis. Indeed, crisis is so tempting an opportunity for government that governments invent crisis whenever possible. This is why "emergency acts" and "wars" on anyone and anything are so popular for governments. Nothing entices people to stop thinking, act impulsively, and to relinquish liberties so easily as a "crisis" or a "tragedy" or an "emergency." We need to be smarter if liberty is to survive." "Although President Obama appears excited about the notion of banning guns, I have not heard him order a ban on the very guns used to protect him. Apparently, when it comes to his protection, President Obama prefers to be protected by people armed with guns. "
  • Paul Merrell on 01 Jan 13
     
    Excellent article other than the fact that the author erred in referring to the AR-15 as an "assault rifle." It is not. It is an "assault weapon," a semi-automatic rifle with only a cosmetic resemblance to the M-16 fully automatic "assault rifle." "Assault rifles" have been outlawed in the U.S. for decades. The U.S. had a complete ban on "assault weapon" rifles from 1994 to 2004. It did not affect gun violence rates at all, because semi-automatic rifles that lacked the cosmetic resemblance to "assault rifles" remained on the market. The distinction between the two terms is critical to understanding the current gun debate. Those who propose a ban on "assault weapons" are offering only a cosmetic sop to the anti-gun crowd, banning a sub-set of semi-automatic rifles whilst leaving equally capable semi-autos on the market. The correct question to ask is "why bother?" One might as well ban toy guns that bear a resemblance to assault weapons; other toy guns remain unaffected. For a more in depth discussion of "assault weapon" vs. "assault rifle" with references see http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Assault_weapon
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