Wednesday, September 24, 2014

THE ROVING EYE Operation Tomahawk The Caliph By Pepe Escobar




THE ROVING EYE
Operation Tomahawk The Caliph
By Pepe Escobar

The Tomahawks are finally flying again - propelled by newspeak. 42 Tomahawks fired from a Sixth Fleet destroyer parked in Mare Nostrum, plus F-22s raising hell and Hellfires spouted by drones, that's a neat mini-Shock and Awe to honor Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al -Baghdadi, self-declared leader of Islamic State.

It's all so surgical. All targets - from "suspected" weapons depots to the mayor's mansion in Raqqah (the HQ of The Caliph's goons) and assorted checkpoints - were duly obliterated, along with "dozens of", perhaps 120, jihadis.

And praise those "over 40" (Samantha Power) or "over 50" (John Kerry) international allies in the coalition of the unwilling; America is never alone, although in this case mightily escorted, de facto, only by the usual Gulf petrodollar dictatorships and the realm of King Playstation, Jordan, all none too keen to engage in "kinetic activities".

Aseptic newspeak aside, no one has seen or heard a mighty Gulf Cooperation Council air force deployed to bomb Syria. After all the vassals are scared as hell to tell their own populations they are - once again - bombing a fellow Arab nation. As for Damascus, it meekly said it was "notified" by the Pentagon its own territory would be bombed. Nobody really knows what the Pentagon is exactly telling Damascus.

The Pentagon calls it just the beginning of a "sustained campaign" - code for Long War, which is one of the original denominations of the Global War on Terror (GWOT) anyway. And yes, for all practical purposes this is a coalition of one. Let's call it Operation Tomahawk The Caliph.

I am Khorasan
Hold your F-22s. Not really. The tomahawking had barely begun when an Israeli, made in USA Patriot missile shot a Syrian Su-24 which had allegedly "violated" Israeli air space over the Golan Heights. How about that in terms of sending a graphic message in close coordination with the Pentagon?

So this is not only about bombing The Caliph. It is a back-door preamble to bombing Bashar al-Assad and his forces. And also about bombing - with eight strikes west of Aleppo - a ghost; an al-Qaeda cell of the mysterious Khorasan group.

No wonder global fans of the Marvel Comics school of geopolitics are puzzled. Two simultaneous villains? Yep. And the other bad guy is even more evil than The Caliph.

Astonishing mediocrity Ben Rhodes, Obama's deputy national security adviser, has defined Khorasan as "a group of extremists that is comprised of a number of individuals who we've been tracking for a long time."

The Obama administration's unison newspeak is that Khorasan includes former al-Qaeda assets not only from across the Middle East - including al-Qaeda in Iraq and Jabhat al-Nusra - but also Pakistan, as in an ultra-hardcore extension of the Pakistani Taliban.

What a mess. Al-Qaeda in Iraq is the embryo of ISIS, which turned into IS. Jabhat al-Nusra is the al-Qaeda franchise in Syria, approved by CEO Ayman al-Zawahiri. Both despise each other, and yet Khorasan holds the merit of bundling Caliph's goons and al-Qaeda goons together. Additionally, for Washington Jabhat al-Nusra tend to qualify as "moderate" jihadis - almost like "our bastards". Too messy? No problem; when in doubt, bomb everybody.

The Caliph, then, is old news. Those ghostly Khorasan goons are the real deal - so evil that the Pentagon is convinced their "plotting was imminent" leading to a new 9/11.

The ghost in the GWOT machine
Khorasan is the perfect ghost in the GWOT machine; the target of a war within a war. Because Obama in fact launched two wars - as he sent two different notifications to Congress under the War Powers Resolution to cover both The Caliph and Khorasan.

And what's in a name? Well, a thinly disguised extra demonization of Iran, why not - as historic Khorasan, the previous Parthia, stretched from mainly Iran towards Afghanistan.

Khorasan is theoretically led by The Joker, sorry, al-Qaeda honcho Muhsin al-Fadhli, born in Kuwait in 1981, a "senior facilitator and financier" to Abu Musab al-Zarqawi in Iraq, in the priceless assessment of the State Department. Although Ayman al-Zawahiri, ever PR-conscious, has not claimed the credit, the Pentagon is convinced he sent al-Fadhli to the Syrian part of the Caliphate to attract Western jihadis with EU passports capable of evading airport security and plant bombs on commercial jets.

The Treasury Department is convinced al-Fadhli even led an al-Qaeda cell in Iran - demonization habits die hard -, "facilitating" jihadi travel to Afghanistan or Iraq.

And what a neat contrast to the Society of the Spectacle-addicted Caliph. Khorasan is pure darkness. Nobody knows how many; how long they've existed; what do they really want.

By contrast, there are about 190,000 live human beings left in bombed out Raqqa. Nobody is talking about collateral damage - although the body count is already on, and The Caliph's slick PR operation will be certainly advertising them on YouTube. As for The Caliph's goons, they will predictably use Mao tactics and dissolve like fish in the sea. The Pentagon will soon be bombing vast tracts of desert for nothing - if that's not the case already.

There is no "Free Syrian Army" - that Qatari myth - anymore. There are no "moderate" jihadis left in Syria. They are all fighting for The Caliph or for al-Zawahiri. And still the Obama administration extracted a Congressional OK to train and weaponize "moderate rebels".

US ambassador to the UN Samantha Power - Undisputed Queen of Batshit Craziness - at least got one thing right. Their "training" will "service these troops in the same struggle that they've been in since the beginning of this conflict against the Assad regime." So yes - this "sustained campaign" is the back door to "Assad must go" remixed.

People who are really capable of defeating The Caliph's goons don't tomahawk. They are the Syrian Arab Army (roughly 35,000 dead so far killed in action against ISIS/ISIL/IS and/or al-Qaeda); Hezbollah; Iranian Revolutionary Guards advisers/operatives; and Kurdish militias. It won't happen. This season's blockbuster is the Empire of Chaos bombing The Caliph and the ghost in the GWOT machine. Two tickets for the price of one. Because we protect you even from "unknown unknown" evil.

Pepe Escobar is the author of Globalistan: How the Globalized World is Dissolving into Liquid War (Nimble Books, 2007), Red Zone Blues: a snapshot of Baghdad during the surge (Nimble Books, 2007), and Obama does Globalistan (Nimble Books, 2009).

He may be reached at pepeasia@yahoo.com.
 

The propagandizing of Arabs as terrorists linked to Netanyahu institute by Wayne Madsen




The propagandizing of Arabs as terrorists linked to Netanyahu institute

The branding of Arab nations as supporting or harboring terrorists can be tracked to an institute established by Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu. The Jonathan Institute was named after Netanyahu's Israel Defense Force commando brother Jonathan, who was killed in the 1976 Israeli raid on Entebbe, Uganda to free hijacked Air France hostages.  The Israel raid, according to classified document prepared by British diplomat D. H. Colvin on June 30, 1976, three days after the hijacking, suggested that Israel conducted the hijacking by infiltrating Shin Bet agents into the ranks of the Popular Front for the Liberation of Palestine and using them as dupes in carrying out a hijacking arranged by the Israelis.  The goal of the "false flag" hijacking was to create an event designed to whip up support in France for Israel.

In a 2008 speech to the Jonathan Institute at Bar-Ilan University, Netanyahu claimed that the 9/11 attack on the United States had benefited Israel. According to Ma'ariv, Netanyahu said that the attacks on the World Trade Center and Pentagon "swung American public opinion in our favor." It was the second such utterance by Netanyahu. In an interview the day after the attack on September 12, 2001, Netanyahu said of the events, "It's very good." Netanyahu then tried to backtrack from his exuberance by saying, "'Well, not very good, but it will generate immediate sympathy." That sympathy was for Israel.

The Jonathan Institute found itself at the nexus of one aviation false flag event, the hijacking of Air France flight 139 from Tel Aviv to Paris, as well as another, the hijacking of four U.S. airlines on September 11, 2001 and the alteration of American democracy into a panopticon dystopia society. The treasurer of the Jonathan Institute in 2001 was Larry Silverstein, who leased the World Trade Center complex from the Port Authority of New York and New Jersey and was heard issuing the command to "pull down" World Trade Center Building 7 during the afternoon of September 11.

Bin Laden's death is bad news for Bibi, who called the 9-11 attacks "very good."  eyJf-wqrUjt-_-larry-silverstein-laughs-in-the-faces-of
Binyamin Netanyahu [left], his father Ben-Zion Netanyahu [center], Larry Silverstein [right]: the three Jonathan Institute perps of 9/11.

Netanyahu also told the 2008 Jonathan Institute gathering that his father, Ben-Zion Netanyahu, a noted Zionist and the personal assistant to Zionist leader Ze'ev Jabotinsky, told him in the 1990s that the Twin Towers would one day be brought down in the manner that they were on 9/11. Jabotinsky was a Benito Mussolini supporter and an Adolf Hitler enabler through the Zionist leader's support for the Transfer Agreement that was concluded between Jabotinsky and the Nazi German government that permitted a major influx of German Jews into the British mandate of Palestine in the 1930s.

The Jonathan Institute held its first major conference in Jerusalem in 1979. Its second conference was held in 1984 in Washington, DC and it attracted many of the neo-cons serving in the Ronald Reagan administration, including Secretary of State George Schultz, UN ambassador Jeane Kirkpatrick, Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger, and Michael Ledeen. The Jonathan Institute rejected any role for the United Nations in fighting "international terrorism" because Communist nations were members and the Institute charged that they encouraged and supported terrorism. One of the Institute's supporters was writer Claire Sterling, whose charges of Soviet and Bulgarian complicity in the attempted assassination of Pope John Paul II have been totally debunked. Much of the Jonathan Institute's work in developing international terrorism as a bĂȘte noire for the Western military industrial complex was taken up by the American Enterprise Institute (AEI), a noted neocon hive in the nation's capital. One AEI scholar who was also active with the Jonathan Institute is University of Chicago alum Walter Berns, an understudy of neocon guru Leo Strauss.

The Jonathan Institute advocated "preemptive" and "punitive" measures against terrorism. This policy was spelled oout in a study commissioned by Netanyahu in 1996, "A Clean Break: A New Strategy for Securing the Realm," which was partly written by Jonathan Institute habituĂ© Richard Perle. The treatise called for the removal of Saddam Hussein from power in Iraq and the containment of Syria by fomenting proxy wars inside the country. Israel has been discovered to have provided material support and training to members of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) and Jabhat al-Nusra, Islamist guerrillas which have been battling the forces of Syrian President Bashar al-Assad. The bottom line of the Clean Break report is preemption, which was first advocated by the Jonathan Institute in 1979 and which involved carrying out false flag attacks.

Based on the Institute's involvement with previous false flag attacks involving at least five passenger planes: Air France 139, American Airlines 11, United Airlines 175, United Airlines 93, and American Airlines 77, it is obvious that its idea of preemptive measures against terrorism has, at its core base, the carrying out of false flag attacks in order to pin blame on Israel's opponents, whether they are Iraq, Uganda, Syria, Libya, Iran, or the Palestinians. Only one question remains. Who's next?

London playing Ottawa's card in reneging on Scotland power by Wayne Madsen




 London playing Ottawa's card in reneging on Scotland power

The London coalition government of the Conservatives and Liberal Democrats, as well as the opposition Labor Party, are playing the same game with Scotland that the Ottawa government played with Quebec after the French-speaking province voted to reject independence in a 1980 referendum. English politicians, after promising increased powers to Scotland if the country voted to reject independence, are already backtracking on "devolution max," meaning Scotland would basically have control over almost everything except foreign affairs, defense, and energy policy.

In 1980, Quebec held a referendum on independence from Canada. As the May 20 referendum date approached, polls showed the "Yes" side, those wanting independence, gaining ground. Frightened over the polls, Canadian Prime Minister Pierre Trudeau, a Liberal, promised that if Quebeckers voted "No," Quebec would gain new powers to determine their own affairs in a revised Canadian Constitution. Quebec's governing Parti Quebecois (PQ) government led by Quebec Prime Minister Rene Levesque warned Quebec voters that Trudeau was laying a trap. However, Quebec voters swallowed Trudeau's and his fellow Liberals' bait and voted 59.56% to 40.44% against independence. Scottish First Minister Alex Salmond similarly warned Scots against London's bribe of more powers for Scotland in return for a No vote on independence. The "Yes" side in Quebec was dejected by the landslide won by the "No" supporters, even though referendum eve polls indicated a much closer result. So far, this should all sound familiar to the people of Scotland.

The United States and NATO issued dire warnings about how an independent Quebec would make the West weaker against the "Soviet threat." Before the September 18 Scottish referendum, the words "Soviet threat" were merely replaced by "terrorist threat" by the unionists and status quo enthusiasts.

Ottawa's promise of increased powers for Quebec died when Canada elected a Conservative government led by Prime Minister Brian Mulroney in 1984. Mulroney's promises of support for increased Quebec powers led to a split in Quebec's PQ government. Levesque agreed to work with Mulroney on increased powers for Quebec but when it became apparent that Mulroney was being deceptive, Levesque resigned as Quebec prime minister and retired from politics. Without Levesque at the helm, Quebec independence was dead for the moment. Levesque's resignation was very similar to that of Salmond after Scotland's Yes campaign lost by 10% in a vote marred by charges of election irregularities and fraud. In 1985, Liberal leader Robert Bourassa, a unionist, became Quebec prime minister.

Mulroney engaged in negotiations with Bourassa about increased Quebec sovereignty. These negotiations, held in concert with other Canadian provincial premiers, were held in Meech Lake in 1987 and Charlottetown in 1992. Proposed constitutional changes were rejected in a nationwide referendum marked by anti-Quebec and anti-French xenophobia from pro-unionist governments in western and maritime Canada, especially Alberta and Newfoundland.

Eventually, PQ leader Jacques Parizeau was elected Quebec prime minister and he ensured another independence referendum in 1995. Stung once by Ottawa's false promises, the 1995 vote was closer, but 50.58% voted No and 49.42% voted Yes. There were charges that the "Unity" campaign, the "Yes" side, engaged in massive election fraud and illegal campaign spending. Parizeau claimed that what narrowly defeated the Yes vote was"money and the ethnic vote." It was believed by many that Parizeau was referring to Montreal's powerful Jewish community, which rallied against independence and ensured that the Jewish-dominated Canadian media echoed their opposition to Quebec independence. The same dynamics played out in the Scottish referendum, with the Zionist media represented by Rupert Murdoch's British papers and networks and Guy Zitter's Daily Mail taking aim at Salmond and his Scottish National Party (SNP) in the same manner that Zionists Conrad Black and Israel (Izzy) Asper launched a coordinated attack by their Canadian media operations against Parizeau and the PQ in 1995. Asper died in 2003, but the anti-Quebec cause has been assumed by his two sons Leonard and David Asper, especially via the pages of the neocon National Post.

Now, as Tory British Prime Minister David Cameron and his Liberal Democratic partners face an uphill re-election battle against Labor, promises to Scotland for Devolution Max have been placed on the back-burner. Many Scots who voted No now feel betrayed by English political leaders just as Quebeckers felt betrayed after increased sovereignty promises made by Trudeau in 1980 turned out to be clever campaign lies. The lies by Canadian unionists in 1980 eventually led to the second Quebec referendum in 1995.

The defeat of the PQ government of Prime Minister Pauline Marois in April after a party-wide split and major "engineered" defections, as well as an election fraught with voting irregularities, led to a Liberal unionist government. The Quebec Liberal Party government led by Philippe Couillard has since made nice with Canada's neo-conservative Prime Minister Stephen Harper and talk of Quebec sovereignty is dead for now. The British unionist parties are hoping for a similar fate for the SNP government now ruling Scotland, especially after Salmond's resignation as First Minister.
 Former Quebec premier Jacques Parizeau has something to say, as usual. 
From Rene Levesque [left] to Jacques Parizeau [center] and Alex Salmond [right], Quebec and Scottish nationalists have been smeared by an all-too-familiar brush but all one needs to do is "follow the money" as Salmond's campaign poster advises.

The Zionist interests were convinced that the SNP's support for Palestinian rights would spell a consistent vote against Israel in the United Nations. That ensured the flow of Zionist money to the No campaign's coffers. Similar pronouncements by the PQ led to Montreal's wealthiest of Jews opening up their check books to Quebec's No campaign in 1995. The idea of an independent Quebec sitting alongside Qatar in the UN and casting anti-Israel votes was too much for Montreal's Zionist clique. Because nationalist movements often side with Palestine, Zionists have cleverly linked nationalist causes to "anti-Semitism," the old familiar canard that always seems to work for the Zionists. Except in cases that are beneficial to Israeli interests, such as Kurdistan and South Sudan, nationalist movements from Northern Ireland and eastern Ukraine (Novorossiya) to Catalonia and Flanders have been painted with the anti-Semitism brush by the Zionists and their controlled media.

However, as the people of Quebec and Scotland begin to compare notes on how their movements for independence have been stymied by false promises, outright lies, Zionist money interests, and brazen election theft, future votes for independence are almost guaranteed. Salmond recently warned that if London reneged on promises of independence, Scotland could unilaterally declare its independence without a referendum. The PQ, after two referenda marked by dishonesty from Ottawa, could do the same. And that is what the elites and the Zionist moneyed interests fear the most: having to shift their wars of chicanery from the sands of the Middle East and steppes of Ukraine to the streets of Edinburgh, Glasgow, Montreal, and Quebec City.

Monday, September 22, 2014

Three secret domestic CIA bases with ties to 9/11 by Wayne Madsen




Three secret domestic CIA bases with ties to 9/11
Anyone driving from Norfolk, Virginia to North Carolina's Outer Banks would normally not notice that when driving south on Caritoke Highway through the one-horse town of Moyock, North Carolina they would be passing a country road leading to one of the largest "private" paramilitary training centers in the world. If one were to take a right turn on Moyock's Pudding Ridge Road, after a few miles they would come up on the gate of the Academi "Elite Training and Trusted Protection" facility. Formerly known as Blackwater and Xe, Academi is nothing more than a privatized arm of the Central Intelligence Agency, which provided the company, throughout all of its incarnations, with sweetheart and lucrative contracts to engage in operations that the CIA wanted to keep free of its fingerprints.

One thing that stands out in Moyock is the lack of motels and long-term hotels that are commonplace around other military installations. Academi claims it trains U.S. and foreign security personnel at its Moyock facility but the lack of off-facility accommodations indicates that trainees are housed, fed, and provided all other creature comforts on the Academi facility. Keeping its trainees as a captive audience ensures that there is not as problem with students hanging around local establishments, getting drunk, and "spilling the beans" about what they are doing inside the Academi facility. In terms of operational security, Academi and its predecessor Blackwater, could ensure that "loose lips did not sink ships," especially during the planning for top secret operations.


Academi facility (formerly Blackwater), in Moyock, North Carolina. Photo by WMR.

Some 36 miles from Moyock -- closer if one were to avail himself or herself of unpaved roads -- sits what is officially known as the Harvey Point Defense Testing Activity. In reality, this base belongs to the CIA and is shrouded in mystery. Local residents of nearby Hertford often complain of loud explosions from the base but local officials, relying on the patriotism card but also keenly aware of the money pumped into the local economy by the CIA, slough off concerns about the explosions as being merely "the sounds of freedom."

 

Highly-secure Harvey Point CIA base. Photo by WMR.


Oddly, Google Earth shows that in the middle of the base sits a commercial airplane fuselage with part of its wings lopped off. Local residents have witnessed the remains of bombed automobiles, including limousines, being removed from the facility on flatbed trucks. Special operations forces including those from Israel, have received unspecified training at the Harvey Point base.
 
Aircraft fuselage with clipped wings at Harvey Point [left].  Commercial aircraft fuselage being towed on to Harvey Point facility by truck [right].
One June 28, 2013, WMR reported on another CIA base, the 
Pinal Air Park/Marana Airfield outside of Tucson, Arizona. It was this facility that drew the interest of retired Boeing 757 and 767 pilot, Iran-contra CIA contractor pilot, and 9/11 author Phil Marshall. In January 2013, the Calaveras County Sheriff's Department concluded, after a botched investigation, that Marshall shot himself to death after having shot and killed his two teen-age children and the family dog. Pinal is the home to America's "boneyard" of retired civilian aircraft, including Boeing passenger aircraft. Nearby Davis-Monthan Air Force Base is the home to the boneyard of retired military aircraft. In addition, the CIA and U.S. Special Forces maintain operations at Pinal, the CIA through its contractor, Evergreen International. A former CIA official who was involved in the CIA's planning of the Iran-contra "arms-for-hostages; Iranian profits for the contras" operation confirmed that Evergreen had a close working relationship with the firm PTech, a firm with connections to the Saudi royal family and Israel's Mossad and which had contracts to provide computer software support to the Department of Defense, Federal Aviation Administration, Department of Justice, FBI, and the Secret Service from 1997 until 9/11. The firm continues to provide software support for classified U.S. military projects.


A portion of the commercial aircraft "boneyard" co-located with the CIA's Evergreen International facility at the Pinal Air Park in Arizona. The late pilot and author Phil Marshall suspected that the commercial aircraft used on 9/11 had been "drone-enabled." Whatever proof Marshall received from two former Iran-contra CIA colleagues likely cost him his life as well as the lives of his two children.

WMR has learned from a number of sources who are familiar with the operations of Moyock, Harvey Point, and Pinal that the three secret installations played a part in the planning and carrying out of the 9/11 attacks. Pinal provided the Boeing 757 and 767 aircraft that were retrofitted to be flown remotely into the World Trade Center's North and South Towers. WMR has not confirmed whether the Boeing 757 that crashed in Shanksville, Pennsylvania was remotely-flown but there were no bodies spotted or recovered by the Somerset County coroner after the crash.

  
As with Harvey Point, the CIA operates the Pinal, Arizona facility under Defense Department cover.
WMR has recently been informed of further links between retired U.S. military and intelligence personnel who were associated with the Iran-contra scandal and the planning of 9/11. These include retired Navy, Marine Corps, and Army personnel, some of whom were at the very top echelons of the Reagan administration scandal.

This story is continuing to develop . . .