Gaza and the threat of world war By John Pilger

Gaza and the threat of world war By John Pilger  "There is a taboo," said the visionary Edward Said, "on telling the truth about Palestine and the great destructive force behind Israel. Only when this truth is out can any of us be free."  For many people, the truth is out now. At last, they know. Those once intimidated into silence can't look away now. Staring at them from their TV, laptop, phone, is proof of the barbarism of the Israeli state and the great destructive force of its mentor and provider, the United States, the cowardice of European governments, and the collusion of others, such as Canada and Australian, in this epic crime.  The attack on Gaza was an attack on all of us. The siege of Gaza is a siege of all of us. The denial of justice to Palestinians is a symptom of much of humanity under siege and a warning that the threat of a new world war is growing by the day.  When Nelson Mandela called the struggle of Palestine "the greatest moral issue of our time", he spoke on behalf of true civilisation, not that which empires invent. In Latin America, the governments of Brazil, Chile, Venezuela, Bolivia, El Salvador, Peru and Ecuador have made their stand on Gaza. Each of these countries has known its own dark silence when immunity for mass murder was sponsored by the same godfather in Washington that answered the cries of children in Gaza with more ammunition to kill them.  Unlike Netanyahu and his killers, Washington's pet fascists in Latin America didn't concern themselves with moral window dressing. They simply murdered, and left the bodies on rubbish dumps. For Zionism, the goal is the same: to dispossess and ultimately destroy an entire human society: a truth that 225 Holocaust survivors and their descendants have compared with te genesis of genocide.  Nothing has changed since the Zionists' infamous "Plan D" in 1948 that ethnically cleansed an entire people. Recently, on the website of the Times of Israel were the words: "Genocide is Permissible". A deputy speaker of the Knesset, the Israeli parliament, Moshe Feiglin, demands a policy of mass expulsion into concentration camps. An MP, Ayelet Shaked, whose party is a member of the governing coalition, calls for the extermination of Palestinian mothers to prevent them giving birth to what she calls "little snakes".  For years, reporters have watched Israeli soldiers bait Palestinian children by abusing them through loud-speakers. Then they shoot them dead. For years, reporters have known about Palestinian women about to give birth and refused passage through a roadblock to a hospital; and the baby has died, and sometimes the mother.  For years, reporters have known about Palestinian doctors and ambulance crews given permission by Israeli commanders to attend the wounded or remove the dead, only to be shot through the head.  For years, reporters have known about stricken people prevented from getting life-saving treatment, or shot dead when they've tried to reach a clinic for chemotherapy treatment. One elderly lady with a walking stick was murdered in this way - a bullet in her back.  When I put the facts of this crime to Dori Gold, a senior adviser to the Israeli prime minister, he said, "Unfortunately in every kind of warfare there are cases of civilians who are accidentally killed. But the case you cite was not terrorism. Terrorism means putting the cross-hairs of the sniper's rifle on a civilian deliberately."  I replied, "That's exactly what happened."  "No," he said, "it did not happen."  Such a lie or delusion is repeated unerringly by Israel's apologists. As the former New York Times reporter Chris Hedges points out, the reporting of such an atrocity invariably ends up as "caught in the cross-fire". For as long as I have covered the Middle East, much if not most of the Western media has colluded in this way.  In one of my films, a Palestinian cameraman, Imad Ghanem, lies helpless while soldiers from the "most moral army in the world" blew both his legs off. This atrocity was given two lines on the BBC website. Thirteen journalists were killed by Israel in its latest bloodfest in Gaza. All were Palestinian. Who knows their names?  Something is different now. There is a huge revulsion across the world; and the voices of sensible liberalism are worried. Their hand wringing and specious choir of "equal blame" and "Israel's right to defend itself" will not wash any more; neither will the smear of anti-Semitism. Neither will their selective cry that "something must be done" about Islamic fanatics but nothing must be done about Zionist fanatics.  One sensible liberal voice, the novelist Ian McEwan, was being celebrated as a sage by the Guardian while the children of Gaza were blown to bits. This is the same Ian McEwan who ignored the pleading of Palestinians not to accept the Jerusalem Prize for literature. "If I only went to countries that I approve of, I probably would never get out of bed," said McEwan.  If they could speak, the dead of Gaza might say: Stay in bed, great novelist, for your very presence smoothes the bed of racism, apartheid, ethnic cleansing and murder - no matter the weasel words you uttered as you claimed your prize.  Understanding the sophistry and power of liberal propaganda is key to understanding why Israel's outrages endure; why the world looks on; why sanctions are never applied to Israel; and why nothing less than a total boycott of everything Israeli is now a measure of basic human decency.  The most incessant propaganda says Hamas is committed to the destruction of Israel. Khaled Hroub, the Cambridge University scholar considered a world leading authority on Hamas, says this phrase is "never used or adopted by Hamas, even in its most radical statements". The oft-quoted "anti-Jewish" 1988 Charter was the work of "one individual and made public without appropriate Hamas consensus ... The author was one of the 'old guard'"; the document is regarded as an embarrassment and never cited.  Hamas has repeatedly offered a 10-year truce with Israel and has long settled for a two-state solution. When Medea Benjamin, the fearless Jewish American activist, was in Gaza, she carried a letter from Hamas leaders to President Obama that made clear the government of Gaza wanted peace with Israel. It was ignored. I personally know of many such letters carried in good faith, ignored or dismissed.  The unforgivable crime of Hamas is a distinction almost never reported: it is the only Arab government to have been freely and democratically elected by its people. Worse, it has now formed a government of unity with the Palestinian Authority. A single, resolute Palestinian voice - in the General Assembly, the Human Rights Council and the International Criminal Court - is the most feared threat.  Since 2002, a pioneering media unit at Glasgow University has produced remarkable studies of reporting and propaganda in Israel/Palestine. Professor Greg Philo and his colleagues were shocked to find a public ignorance compounded by TV news reporting. The more people watched, the less they knew. Greg Philo says the problem is not "bias" as such. Reporters and producers are as moved as anyone by the suffering of Palestinians; but so imposing is the power structure of the media - as an extension of the state and its vested interests - that critical facts and historical context are routinely suppressed.  Incredibly, less than 9% of young viewers interviewed by Professor Philo's team were aware that Israel was the occupying power, and that the illegal settlers were Jewish; many believed them to be Palestinian. The term "Occupied Territories" was seldom explained. Words such as "murder", "atrocity", "cold-blooded killing" were used only to describe the deaths of Israelis.  Recently, a BBC reporter, David Loyn, was critical of another British journalist, Jon Snow of Channel 4 News. Snow was so moved by what he had seen in Gaza he went on YouTube to make a humanitarian appeal. What concerned the BBC man was that Snow had breached protocol and been emotional in his YouTube piece.  "Emotion," wrote Loyn, "is the stuff of propaganda and news is against propaganda". Did he write this with a straight face? In fact, Snow's delivery was calm. His crime was to have strayed outside the boundaries of fake impartiality. Unforgivably, he didn't censor himself.  In 1937, with Adolf Hitler in power, Geoffrey Dawson, editor of The Times in London, wrote the following in his diary: "I spend my nights in taking out anything which will hurt [German] susceptibilities and in dropping in little things which are intended to soothe them."  On July 30, the BBC offered viewers a masterclass in the Dawson Principle. The diplomatic correspondent of the program Newsnight, Mark Urban, gave five reasons why the Middle East was in turmoil. None included the historic or contemporary role of the British government. The Cameron government's dispatch of ?8 billion worth of arms and military equipment to Israel was airbrushed. Britain's massive arms shipment to Saudi Arabia was airbrushed. Britain's role in the destruction of Libya was airbrushed. Britain's support for the tyranny in Egypt was airbrushed.  As for the British invasions of Iraq and Afghanistan, they didn't happen, either.  The only expert witness on this BBC program was an academic called Toby Dodge from the London School of Economics. What viewers needed to know was that Dodge had been a special adviser to David Petraeus, the American general largely responsible for the disasters in Iraq and Afghanistan. But this, too, was airbrushed.  In matters of war and peace, BBC-style illusions of impartiality and credibility do more to limit and control public discussion than tabloid distortion. As Greg Philo pointed out, Jon Snow's moving commentary on YouTube was limited to whether the Israeli assault on Gaza was proportionate or reasonable. What was missing - and is almost always missing - was the essential truth of the longest military occupation in modern times: a criminal enterprise backed by western governments from Washington to London to Canberra.  As for the myth that "vulnerable" and "isolated" Israel is surrounded by enemies, Israel is actually surrounded by strategic allies. The Palestinian Authority, bankrolled, armed and directed by the US, has long colluded with Tel Aviv. Standing shoulder to shoulder with Netanyahu are the tyrannies in Egypt, Jordan, Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Bahrain, Qatar - if the World Cup ever gets to Qatar, count on Mossad to run the security.  Resistance is humanity at its bravest and most noble. The resistance in Gaza is rightly compared with the 1943 Jewish uprising in the Warsaw Ghetto - which also dug tunnels and deployed tactics of subterfuge and surprise against an overpowering military machine. The last surviving leader of the Warsaw uprising, Marek Edelman, wrote a letter of solidarity to the Palestinian resistance, comparing it with the ZOB, his ghetto fighters. The letter began: "Commanders of the Palestine military, paramilitary and partisan operations - and to all soldiers [of Palestine]."  Dr Mads Gilbert is a Norwegian doctor renowned for his heroic work in Gaza. On August 8, Dr Gilbert returned to his hometown, Tronso in Norway which, as he pointed out, the Nazis had occupied for seven years. He said, "Imagine being back in 1945 and we in Norway did not win the liberation struggle, did not throw out the occupier. Imagine the occupier remaining in our country, taking it piece by piece, for decades upon decades, and banishing us to the leanest areas, and taking the fish in the sea and the water beneath us, then bombing our hospitals, our ambulance workers, our schools, our homes.  "Would we have given up and waved the white flag? No, we would not! And this is the situation in Gaza. This is not a battle between terrorism and democracy. Hamas is not the enemy Israel is fighting. Israel is waging a war against the Palestinian people's will to resist. It is the Palestinian people's dignity that they will not accept this.  "In 1938, the Nazis called the Jews Untermenschen - subhuman. Today, Palestinians are treated as a subhuman people who can be slaughtered without any in power reacting.  "So I have returned to Norway, a free country, and this country is free because we had a resistance movement, because occupied nations have the right to resist, even with weapons - it's stated in international law. And the Palestinian people's resistance in Gaza is admirable: a struggle for us all."  There are dangers in telling this truth, in breaching what Edward Said called "the last taboo". My documentary, Palestine Is Still the Issue, was nominated for a Bafta, a British academy award, and praised by the Independent Television Commission for its "journalistic integrity" and the "care and thoroughness with which it was researched." Yet, within minutes of the film's broadcast on Britain's ITV Network, a shock wave struck - a deluge of emails described me as a "demonic psychopath", "a purveyor of hate and evil", "an anti-Semite of the most dangerous kind". Much of this was orchestrated by Zionists in the US who could not possibly have seen the film. Death threats arrived at a rate of one a day.  Something similar happened to the Australian commentator Mike Carlton last month. In his regular column in the Sydney Morning Herald, Carlton produced a rare piece of journalism about Israel and the Palestinians; he identified the oppressors and their victims. He was careful to limit his attack to "a new and brutal Israel dominated by the hard-line, right-wing Likud party of Netanyahu". Those who had previously run the Zionist state, he implied, belonged to "a proud liberal tradition".  On cue, the deluge struck. He was called "a bag of Nazi slime, a Jew-hating racist." He was threatened repeatedly, and he emailed his attackers to "get fucked".  The Herald demanded he apologise. When he refused, he was suspended, then he resigned. According to the Herald's publisher, Sean Aylmer, the company "expects much higher standards from its columnists."  The "problem" of Carlton's acerbic, often solitary liberal voice in a country in which Rupert Murdoch controls 70% of the capital city press - Australia is the world's first murdocracy - would be solved twice over. The Australian Human Rights Commission is to investigate complaints against Carlton under the Racial Discrimination Act, which outlaws any public act or utterance that is "reasonably likely … to offend, insult, humiliate another person or a group of people" on the basic of their race, colour or national or ethnic origin.  In contrast to safe, silent Australia - where the Carltons are made extinct - real journalism is alive in Gaza. I often speak on the phone with Mohammed Omer, an extraordinary young Palestinian journalist, to whom I presented, in 2008, the Martha Gellhorn Prize for Journalism. Whenever I called him during the assault on Gaza, I could hear the whine of drones, the explosion of missiles. He interrupted one call to attend to children huddled outside waiting for transport amidst the explosions. When I spoke to him on July 30, a single Israeli F-19 fighter had just slaughtered 19 children. On 20 August, he described how Israeli drones had effectively "rounded up" a village so that they could savagely gunned down.  Every day, at sunrise, Mohammed looks for families who have been bombed. He records their stories, standing in the rubble of their homes; he takes their pictures. He goes to the hospital. He goes to the morgue. He goes to the cemetery. He queues for hours for bread for his own family. And he watches the sky. He sends two, three, four dispatches a day. This is real journalism.  "They are trying to annihilate us," he told me. "But the more they bomb us, the stronger we are. They will never win."  The great crime committed in Gaza is a reminder of something wider and menacing to us all.  Since 2001, the United States and its allies have been on a rampage. In Iraq, at least 700,000 men, woman and children are dead as a result. The rise of jihadists - in a country where there was none - is the result. Known as al-Qaeda and now the Islamic State, modern jihadism was invented by US and Britain, assisted by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. The original aim was to use and develop an Islamic fundamentalism that had barely existed in much of the Arab world in order to undermine pan-Arab movements and secular governments. By the 1980s, this had become a weapon to destroy the Soviet Union in Afghanistan. The CIA called it Operation Cyclone; and a cyclone it turned out to be, with its unleashed fury blowing back in the faces of its creators. The attacks of 9/11 and in London in July, 2005 were the result of this blowback, as were the recent, gruesome murders of the American journalists James Foley and Steven Sotloff. For more than a year, the Obama administration armed the killers of these two young men - then known as ISIS in Syria - in order to destroy the secular government in Damascus.  The West's principal "ally" in this imperial mayhem is the medieval state where beheadings are routinely and judicially carried out - Saudi Arabia. Whenever a member of the British Royal Family is sent to this barbaric place, you can bet your bottom petrodollar that the British government wants to sell the sheiks more fighter planes, missiles, manacles. Most of the 9/11 hijackers came from Saudi Arabia, which bankrolls jihadists from Syria to Iraq.  Why must we live in this state of perpetual war?  The immediate answer lies in the United States, where a secret and unreported coup has taken place. A group known as the Project for a New American Century, the inspiration of Dick Cheney and others, came to power with the administration of George W Bush. Once known in Washington as the "crazies", this extreme sect believes in what the US Space Command calls "full spectrum dominance".  Under both Bush and Obama, a19th-century imperial mentality has infused all departments of state. Raw militarism is ascendant; diplomacy is redundant. Nations and governments are judged as useful or expendable: to be bribed or threatened or "sanctioned".  On July 31, the National Defense Panel in Washington published a remarkable document that called for the United States to prepare to fight six major wars simultaneously. At the top of the list were Russia and China - nuclear powers.  In one sense, a war against Russia has already begun. While the world watched horrified as Israel assaulted Gaza, similar atrocities in eastern Ukraine were barely news. At the time of writing, two Ukrainian cities of Russian-speaking people - Donetsk and Luhansk - are under siege: their people and hospitals and schools blitzed by a regime in Kiev that came to power in a putsch led by neo-Nazis backed and paid for by the United States. The coup was the climax of what the Russian political observer Sergei Glaziev describes as a 20-year "grooming of Ukrainian Nazis aimed at Russia". Actual fascism has risen again in Europe and not one European leader has spoken against it, perhaps because the rise of fascism across Europe is now a truth that dares not speak its name.  With its fascist past, and present, Ukraine is now a CIA theme park, a colony of NATO and the International Monetary Fund. The fascist coup in Kiev in February was the boast of US assistant secretary of state Victoria Nuland, whose "coup budget" ran to US$5 billion. But there was a setback. Moscow prevented the seizure of its legitimate Black Sea naval base in Russian-speaking Crimea. A referendum and annexation quickly followed. Represented in the West as the Kremlin's "aggression", this serves to turn truth on its head and cover Washington's goals: to drive a wedge between a "pariah" Russia and its principal trading partners in Europe and eventually to break up the Russian Federation. American missiles already surround Russia; Nato's military build-up in the former Soviet republics and eastern Europe is the biggest since the second world war.  During the cold war, this would have risked a nuclear holocaust. The risk has returned as anti-Russian misinformation reaches crescendos of hysteria in the US and Europe. A textbook case is the shooting down of a Malaysian airliner in July. Without a single piece of evidence, the US and its NATO allies and their media machines blamed ethnic Russian "separatists" in Ukraine and implied that Moscow was ultimately responsible. An editorial in The Economist accused Vladimir Putin of mass murder. The cover of Der Spiegel used faces of the victims and bold red type, "Stoppt Putin Jetzt!" (Stop Putin Now!) In the New York Times, Timothy Garton Ash substantiated his case for "Putin's deadly doctrine" with personal abuse of "a short, thickset man with a rather ratlike face".  The Guardian's role has been important. Renowned for its investigations, the newspaper has made no serious attempt to examine who shot the aeroplane down and why, even though a wealth of material from credible sources shows that Moscow was as shocked as the rest of the world, and the airliner may well have been brought down by the Ukrainian regime.  With the White House offering no verifiable evidence - even though US satellites would have observed the shooting-down - the Guardian's Moscow correspondent Shaun Walker stepped into the breach. "My audience with the Demon of Donetsk," was the front-page headline over Walker's breathless interview with one Igor Bezler. "With a walrus moustache, a fiery temper and a reputation for brutality," he wrote, "Igor Bezler is the most feared of all the rebel leaders in eastern Ukraine ... nicknamed The Demon ... If the Ukrainian security services, the SBU, are to be believed, the Demon and a group of his men were responsible for shooting down Malaysia Airlines flight MH17 … as well as allegedly bringing down MH17, the rebels have shot down 10 Ukrainian aircraft." Demon Journalism requires no further evidence.  Demon Journalism makes over a fascist-contaminated junta that seized power in Kiev as a respectable "interim government". Neo-Nazis become mere "nationalists". "News" sourced to the Kiev junta ensures the suppression of a US-run coup and the junta's systematic ethnic cleaning of the Russian-speaking population of eastern Ukraine. That this should happen in the borderland through which the original Nazis invaded Russia, extinguishing some 22 million Russian lives, is of no interest. What matters is a Russian "invasion" of Ukraine that seems difficult to prove beyond familiar satellite images that evoke Colin Powell's fictional presentation to the United Nations "proving" that Saddam Hussein had Weapons of Mass Destruction. "You need to know that accusations of a major Russian 'invasion' of Ukraine appear not to be supported by reliable intelligence," wrote a group of former senior US intelligence officials and analysts, the Veteran Intelligence Professionals for Sanity, to German Chancellor Angela Merkel. "Rather, the 'intelligence' seems to be of the same dubious, politically 'fixed' kind used 12 years ago to 'justify' the US-led attack on Iraq."  The jargon is "controlling the narrative". In his seminal Culture and Imperialism, Edward Said was more explicit: the Western media machine was now capable of penetrating deep into the consciousness of much of humanity with a "wiring" as influential as that of the imperial navies of the 19th century. Gunboat journalism, in other words. Or war by media.  Yet, a critical public intelligence and resistance to propaganda does exist; and a second superpower is emerging - the power of public opinion, fueled by the Internet and social media.  The false reality created by false news delivered by media gatekeepers may prevent some of us knowing that this new superpower is stirring in country after country: from the Americas to Europe, Asia to Africa. It is a moral insurrection, exemplified by the whistleblowers Edward Snowden, Chelsea Manning and Julian Assange. The question begs: will we break our silence while there is time?  When I was last in Gaza, driving back to the Israeli checkpoint, I caught sight of two Palestinian flags through the razor wire. Children had made flagpoles out of sticks tied together and they'd climbed on a wall and held the flag between them.  The children do this, I was told, whenever there are foreigners around, because they want to show the world they are there - alive, and brave, and undefeated.  This article is adapted from John Pilger's Edward Said Memorial Lecture, delivered in Adelaide, Australia, on September 11.  Posted with permission. www.johnpilger.com  (Copyright 2014 John Pilger)

The British plan to steal Scotland's independence referendum by Wayne Madsen

The British plan to steal Scotland's independence referendum

WMR's informed British sources have revealed that the British government, which includes the Conservative and Liberal Democratic parties, as well as the Labor opposition, have colluded with the British media to downplay in articles, news broadcasts, and published opinion polls the actual strength of the pro-independence "Yes" campaign in Scotland. On September 18, Scotland will vote in a referendum on whether or not to seek independence from the United Kingdom, thus ending its 307-year old union with England. The hyped news reports, including "news" about a looming terrorist threat and a new royal baby, as well as skewed polling numbers, according to our sources, is to prepare the country for a razor-thin loss for the pro-independence "Yes" vote in an election result for which Americans and others have become all-too-familiar.

WMR has learned that a few months ago, the British government instructed the British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC) in a confidential document to undermine at every opportunity the Yes vote, especially when interviewing Scottish voters. There is a strong belief that other British networks and newspapers, including Rupert Murdoch's Sky News and the Times of London, received the same instruction and obediently carried it out.

Our sources report that the actual "Yes" for independence vote is leading the "No" vote by a full 11 percentage points. That means the actual number of Scots who will be voting in Scotland and are already doing so from abroad via postal vote, is in the absolute majority range of 60 percent.

This wave of support for independence, which is being led by the Scottish National Party government First Minister of Scotland Alex Salmond, has sent shock waves through the City of London banking infrastructure, parliament, Number 10 Downing Street, the British intelligence agencies, and Buckingham Palace. 

In a classic "carrot and stick" strategy, British Prime Minister David Cameron and his ministers promised increased powers for the Scottish parliament, Holyrood, in return for continued union with the UK, while also using the fear factor to frighten Scotland into submission. Cameron raised the terrorist threat level to the second highest category in response to an alleged plot by the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL) to carry out attacks in Britain as a way to convince Scottish voters they were safer inside the UK. 

There is concern on both sides of the Scottish border that the British government might stage a terrorist incident a day or two before the September 18 referendum. Whatever would be planned is said to be designed to unite the entire UK in grieving just before the referendum, thus swinging Yes votes to the No column.

The alarm bells on Scotland actually voting to become independent were not sounded until polls showed the election tightening. In 2013, every media poll showed the Yes campaign losing by a double digit margin to the unionists. The always dubious polling numbers of American polling "expert" Nate Silver, a former DailyKos groupie, showing that the independence supporters had "no chance," were used to bolster the anti-independence campaign.

The No forces are now in such a quandary over polls showing the Yes campaign being slightly ahead of the pro-unionists that they have asked for Queen Elizabeth II to intervene and speak out against Scottish independence. However, Salmond has pointed out that Elizabeth II will remain as the Queen of Scots because Scottish voters are not being asked to dissolve the 1603 "Union of Crowns" but only the 1707 "Act of Union" between the English and Scottish parliaments. 

The City of London banking community, which is implanted with Rothschild family and George Soros financial manipulators, has warned, in concert with the British Chancellor of the Exchequer George Osborne, that an independent Scotland will be tossed out of the pound sterling currency union and face an economy without the pound. The pre-referendum drop in value of the British pound appears to be manipulated and there is no better person in the world of currency manipulation than Mr. Soros, who became a billionaire by shorting currencies. 

The British government's friends at the European Union headquarters in Brussels have warned Scotland that it will have to reapply for EU membership, something that will take a number of years and be subject to a veto of just one member, for example, the rump United Kingdom of England, Wales, and Northern Ireland, which will remain a member. 

Britain's intelligence and NATO allies have also been called upon to weigh in with comments about the dire problems if Scotland votes to break the union. Among the leaders who have abandoned neutrality and come to London's defense are U.S. President Barack Obama, Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper, and Australian Prime Minister Tony Abbott. Scotland has been told that it will be expelled from the FIVE EYES intelligence alliance of the U.S., UK, Canada, Australia, and New Zealand until it "proves" itself as a trustworthy intelligence ally. Never mind the fact that Scots make up a majority of the British MI-6 Secret Intelligence Service ranks and are among the best analysts and cryptographers within Britain's NSA counterpart, the Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ). By keeping "Releasable to GBR" within the FIVE EYES pact and refusing to consider a "Releasable to SCO" caveat, the FIVE EYES will effectively become "FOUR AND A HALF EYES."

India's External Affairs Minister Sushma Swaraj, a Zionist version of Indira Gandhi, when asked about the prospect of Scotland's independence, responded, "God forbid!"

Knowledgeable British sources say that massive election manipulation, including tampering with the absentee postal votes, is what is in store for Scotland on referendum day. There will be an attempt by London to manipulate the vote to show a razor-thin loss for the Yes vote in what could be a 50.1 percent vote for "No" to independence to a 49.9 percent vote to "Yes." Current polls that include the undecided voters show 51%-49% in favor of Yes to independence. The vote will be immediately declared by the media and British government to be "conclusive" as the "will of the Scottish people." Of course, any suggestion that the vote was rigged will be immediately be discounted as an unfounded "conspiracy theory."

Canada's Harper seemed to be peeling away at what the FIVE EYES have in store for Scotland when he said he expected the Scots to reject independence in the same manner as Quebecois rejected independence in a 1995 referendum by a very close and likely rigged 50.6 percent to 49.2 percent vote. What primarily killed Quebec independence was the influence of Montreal's influential anglophone Jewish community, coupled with the anti-independence media empire of Zionist media tycoon Izzy Asper, all of which actively campaigned against independence and were well-armed with their media ownership and money. Scotland has seen the same influences gathering steam from the City of London banks to the Murdoch-owned newspapers and networks and the Guy Zitter-ownedDaily Mail.

In 1974, this editor received a handwritten letter from a young and little-known Scottish independence student activist on Scottish National Party stationery bearing a blue combined Scottish saltire and thistle logo. The letter, which was an answer to an inquiry from this political science undergraduate about the chances of Scottish independence, spelled out why a free Scotland was not such a far-out idea at a time when most people would have scoffed at the notion. That letter was signed, "your friend, Alex Salmond." The author of that letter now stands to become the first Prime Minister of Scotland, but only in a free and fair referendum, which is now looking increasingly doubtful.


Breaking English colonial chains is an uphill battle even for a movement that has majority support in Scotland.

Scotland needs a miracle to save it from the continued clutches of a devious colonial infrastructure in London. Even in a Celtic land of enchantment like Scotland, that sort of miracle may be a long shot.

ISIL/ISIS: Another contrivance brought to you by Mossad, MI6, and the CIA - Part I by Wayne Madsen

ISIL/ISIS: Another contrivance brought to you by Mossad, MI6, and the CIA - Part I

First of a Two-Part Series

From AQI to ISIL
As President Barack Obama prepares to announce what could be a long and drawn-out U.S. military strategy to defeat the Islamic State jihadists who have seized control of large portions of Syria and Iraq, it is important to highlight the roots of this organization. The insurgents, who are considered more dangerous than Al Qaeda by many Pentagon and U.S. intelligence specialists, have disturbing links to intelligence services of the United States, Israel, and Britain.

The deeper one digs into the operations surrounding the "Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant" (ISIL), or, as it is variably called, "Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham" (ISIS), "Al Dawlah" (the State), or "Da'ish" (a concatenation of"al-Dawla al-Islamiya fi Iraq wa al-Sham", the more the Islamist insurgent group's links to Western and Israeli intelligence are revealed. ISIL is  an outgrowth of the Organization of Jihad's Base in the Country of the Two Rivers or Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) led by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. As with the current leader of ISIL, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, questions surrounded the background of Zarqawi.

Zarqawi's real name was Ahmed Fadeel Nazal al-Khalayleh. He was born in the Jordanian town of Zarqa. Abu Musab al-Zarqawi was an alias as much as Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi is an alias today for the leader of ISIL. Al Baghdadi, a native of Samarra, Iraq, is actually Ibrahim ibn Awwad ibn Ibrahim ibn Ali ibn Muhammad al-Badri al-Samarrai. Before he joined the mujaheddin war against the Soviets, Zarqawi was known as a drunk and drug abuser, hardly material for the fundamentalist Islamists bankrolled by Saudi Arabia and the Gulf emirates.

Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, claimed by some Middle East sources to be a Mossad agent, with beard [left] and with unidentified woman [right]. Some reports claim that al-Baghdadi is an Israeli Jewish Mossad agent named Elliot Shimon. If true, it goes a long way to explain why John McCain and his staff, which is thoroughly penetrated by agents-of-influence for Israel, felt secure in arranging a meeting between the Arizona senator and, reputedly, the head of a group deemed more radical and "anti-American" than Al Qaeda.

Zarqawi proclaimed himself the "Emir of Al Qaeda in the Country of the Two Rivers" and he quickly became public enemy number one for U.S. occupation forces. Zarqawi was recruited in Jordan by "The Base" or "Al Qaeda" to serve in the ranks of Arab legions fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan. As the late British Foreign Secretary Robin Cook pointed out, "The Base" or "Al Qaeda" was a Central Intelligence Agency database containing the names of various CIA recruiters, financiers, exporters, and other personnel required to maintain the flow of mercenaries, weapons, and money to Afghanistan and Pakistan to sustain the campaign against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden was also known to the CIA by his agency cover name "Tim Osman," and by his Arab Afghani volunteers as "the Hero of Jaji," a battle in which Bin Laden was victorious against the Soviets. Bin Laden ran the Maktab al-Khidamar - the MAK - for the CIA and Saudis. MAK ensured the flow of fighters, money, and weapons to the Afghan insurgency on behalf of the CIA's Al Qaeda base.

After the Soviets withdrew from Afghanistan, Zarqawi, who befriended Bin Laden, returned to Jordan but was jailed by the authorities for setting upJund al-Sham, a "caliphate" liberation movement with the goal of establishing an Islamist state in Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, Palestine, Cyprus, and southern Turkey. It turned out that Junda al-Sham was thoroughly infiltrated by Jordanian intelligence, which informed the CIA about all the group's members. Zarqawi was released by Jordan in 2001. He traveled to Afghanistan to battle against the U.S. occupation forces there and he eventually found his way into Iraq where he organized jihadists for the forthcoming U.S. invasion. CIA "evidence" that Zarqawi was in Iraq was used to justify the 2003 U.S. invasion of the country. Jordanian intelligence and the CIA also had evidence that Zarqawi was involved in the 2005 bombings in Amman of the Radisson SAS Hotel, the Grand Hyatt, and the Days Inn. The attacks were used by Jordan and the U.S. to beef up America's military presence in the country.

Beginning in 2003, Zarqawi was accused of carrying out a number of terrorist attacks against Western interests inside Iraq, as well as in Casablanca, Madrid, and Istanbul. Zarqawi's base of operations in Iraq was in the northern Kurdistan region, in the area now claimed by ISIL and Baghdadi. In May 2004, AQI released a video in which American Nick Berg was claimed by the CIA to have been beheaded by a masked Zarqawi. The video allegedly posted by AQI was "found" on the Internet by the Washington, DC-based Search for International Terrorist Entities Institute or "SITE," run by Rita Katz, an individual with close ties to Israel's Mossad. The Berg beheading was the only video said to have been made by Zarqawi. Zarqawi's other media releases in which he issued threats against the West were audio recordings. Although the CIA stated that it confirmed Zarqawi's voice on the Berg beheading video there were no independent verifications of Zarqawi's voice being on either the videotape or the various audio recordings.

Zarqawi's exploits in Iraq were hyped further after he was said to have personally beheaded in September 2004 American contractor Owen Eugene Armstrong, an employee of Gulf Supplies Commercial Services of the United Arab Emirates and the beheading of British engineer Ken Bigley in October 2004; ordered the 2002 assassination of U.S. diplomat Lawrence Foley in Jordan and the bombing in August 2003 of the Canal Hotel in Baghdad, the headquarters of the United Nations, which killed the UN Secretary General's special envoy Sergio Vieira de Mello and 21 other people. Zarqawi became the name the U.S. associated with almost every Sunni terrorist attack in Iraq, including the 2006 bombing of the Shi'a al-Askari Mosque in Samarra, Shi'a shrines in Karbala and Najaf, and thousands of killings of Iraqi civilians. A document later found in one of Zarqawi's Iraq safe houses revealed plans for him to goad the U.S. into attacking Iran. Such a plan would have fit in nicely with Israel's long range goals.

In his February 5, 2003 address to the UN Security Council, Secretary of State Colin Powell, who lied about Iraq possessing biological weapons of mass destruction and mobile bio-warfare laboratories, also stated that Saddam Hussein was linked to Zarqawi. Iraq's intelligence service later stated that it could not even locate Zarqawi in Iraq. If Saddam had captured Zarqawi he would have, at the very least, offered him up to Jordanian intelligence, which Powell indicated the U.S. had contacted in order to see Zarqawi extradited by Iraq to the United States. However, Zarqawi was as much a threat to Saddam as he was to the U.S. or Jordan, so had Saddam captured the jihadist leader, he would have likely been tortured for information and then executed on the spot and on Saddam's personal orders.

In the 2006 Senate Report on Prewar Intelligence, the Senate Intelligence Committee concluded: "Postwar information indicates that Saddam Hussein attempted, unsuccessfully, to locate and capture al-Zarqawi and that the regime did not have a relationship with, harbor, or turn a blind eye toward Zarqawi." It turned out that the "intelligence" linking Zarqawi to Saddam had emanated from the Pentagon's notorious Mossad mole, Undersecretary of Defense for Policy and Plans Douglas Feith, who leaked the information in a classified memorandum to Stephen Hayes, the columnist for the neo-conservative Weekly Standard.

Zarqawi: The man and the myth

Some U.S. intelligence sources claimed that Zarqawi was a "myth" invented by the neocons to justify continued U.S. military operations in Iraq. Iraqi Sunni and Shi'a leaders rarely agree, however, a Sunni insurgent leader told The Daily Telegraph that he believed that Zarqawi was an American or Israeli agent and Iraqi Shi'a leader Muqtada al Sadr claimed that Zarqawi was a fake takfir (a Muslim who declares that other Muslims, such as the Shia's, are heretics) in the employment of the United States. Shi'a imamSheikh Jawad Al-Khalessi repeated that accusation that Zarqawi was a myth in 2005. According to The Washington Post, General Mark Kimmitt, the U.S. Central Command's chief public affairs officer in Iraq stated in a 2004 internal CENTCOM briefing that "The Zarqawi PSYOP program is the most successful information campaign to date."

The Afghan Northern Alliance claimed that Zarqawi was killed in a 2002 missile attack in Afghanistan. There were a number of reports of Zarqawi having been killed by either U.S. missiles or bombs in 2003. Some reports claimed that Zarqawi had lost a leg in Afghan combat operations. Other reports said he had both of his legs. The "Zarqawi" in the Berg beheading video had both legs and an autopsy X-ray of the person said to have been Zarqawi and who was reportedly killed in a 2006 U.S. air strike showed a fracture to the lower right leg said to have been lost in Afghanistan.

Zarqawi was captured in Iraq by coalition forces in 2004 but released. The explanation given at the time was that the Iraqis and Americans failed to recognize America's public enemy number one in Iraq. Zarqawi's eventual successor as the head of AQI, al-Baghdadi, was also captured by U.S.  forces in in Iraq in 2004 and held at Camp Bucca from February to December 2004 before being released. Al-Baghdadi took over the AQI operation in May 2010 after his predecessor Abu Omar al-Qurashi al-Baghdadi, actual name Hamid Dawud Mohamed Khalil al Zawi, was killed in a U.S.-Iraqi rocket attack. In 2007, Bin Laden intermediary Khaled al-Mashhadani claimed Abu Omar al-Baghdadi, the predecessor to the current ISIL chief, was a fictional character designed by the West and Iraq's government to give an Iraqi face to a foreign-led insurgency. Mashhadani said audio statements attributed to Abu Omar were being read by an Iraqi actor. The Abu Omar recordings were all released by the SITE Institute.

U.S. forces claimed they killed Zarqawi near Baqubah, Iraq in a June 7, 2006 targeted killing by two precision-guided bombs.

Enter Al-Baghdadi II

While Zarqawi was hyped as one of America's most dangerous enemies, the man who eventually succeeded him as the head of ISIL in Syria, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, became one of America's trusted allies. Al-Baghdadi, along with the leaders of the Al Nusra Front, initially placed their forces under the umbrella of the Free Syrian Army. In May 2013, U.S. Senator John McCain, a chief water carrier for the neocon interventionists and Israeli interests, covertly met with Syrian rebel leaders after crossing into rebel-held Syrian territory from Turkey. McCain was accompanied by General Salem Idris, the head of the Free Syrian Army's Supreme Military Council, as he met with the commanders of a number of Syrian rebel units. One of these rebel commanders was none other than Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, the current head of ISIL. McCain's office has denied that Al-Baghdadi was present at the meetings but photographic evidence of the ISIL chief's meeting with McCain and the U.S.-supported Free Syrian Army officials is overwhelming.
  
Senator McCain with America's "allies" Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi [circled in photo at left, seated, and in photo at right, standing behind McCain's right shoulder], the head of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant (ISIL), and Mohammed Nour [circled, photo at right, standing far right], the head of the Northern Storm Brigade of the Al-Nusra Front. Suggestions by Western intelligence of a break between ISIL and Al-Nusra are false. After achieving its battlefield success, Al Nusra swore allegiance to Al-Baghdadi and ISIL. Israel has a working relationship with the combined insurgent forces in the Golan area and in other parts of Syria, as well as in Lebanon where ISIL and Mossad jointly target Hezbollah forces.
America's response to ISIL's threat to turn Iraq, Syria, Lebanon, Jordan, and other countries into an Islamic Caliphate are as perplexing as American indifference over proclaimed caliphates by initially U.S.-supported Islamist radicals in Libya and by Boko Haram in Nigeria and Ansar Dine in Mali. The lackadaisical attitude by the CIA and the White House over these groups, which kidnap, rape, torture, burn, bomb, and behead their way into international headlines is exactly what would be expected from a scenario in which radical Islamist groups were created by the CIA, Mossad, and MI-6 to create permanent conflict situations between the West and Islam and between Muslims themselves.



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In Part II, the ISIL's links to the CIA, Mossad, and MI-6 are examined.

Will NATO liberate Jihadistan? By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE

Will NATO liberate Jihadistan?

By Pepe Escobar 

Drive your cart and your plow
Over the bones of the dead … 
- William Blake, The Marriage of Heaven and Hell

Caliph Ibrahim, aka Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi, self-declared leader of Islamic State, formerly the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria, really sports a mean PR vein. When the show seemed scheduled for the North Atlantic Treaty Organization to save Ukraine and Western Civilization - at least rhetorically - from that Evil Empire remixed, Russia, The Caliph, accessing his expensive watch wisdom, intervened with - what else - yet another "off with their heads" special. 

Eyebrows were properly raised until the United States' intel alphabet soup solemnly concluded that Islamic State (IS) really beheaded yet another American journalist on video (US President Barack Obama: "An horrific act of violence"). 

And then, out of the blue, The Caliph doubled down, proclaiming to the whole world his next target is none other than Russian President Vladimir Putin. Was he channeling the recently ostracized Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan, aka Bandar Bush? 

In thesis, everything would be settled. The Caliph becomes a contractor to NATO (well, he’s been on to it, sort of). The Caliph beheads Putin. The Caliph liberates Chechnya - fast; not the usual, deeply embarrassing NATO quagmire in Afghanistan. The Caliph, on a roll, attacks the BRICS - Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa. The Caliph becomes NATO’s shadow secretary-general. And Obama finally stops complaining that his calls to Putin always end up on voicemail. 

Ah, if geopolitics was as simple as a Marvel Comics blockbuster.

Instead, The Caliph should know - even as he is largely a Made-in-the-West product, with substantial input from Gulf Cooperation Council petrodollar cash - that NATO never promised him a rose garden. 

So, predictably, those ungrateful Obama and David Cameron, the British Prime Minister - oh yes, because the "special relationship" is all that matters in NATO, the others are mere extras - have vowed to go after him with a broad (well, not that broad) "coalition of the willing" with the usual GCC suspects plus Turkey and Jordan, bombing Iraqi Kurdistan, parts of Sunni Iraq and even Syria. 

After all, Syrian President "Bashar al-Assad must go", rather "Assad brutality" in Cameron’s formulation, is the real culprit for The Caliph’s actions. 

And all in the name of the Enduring Freedom Forever-style Global War on Terror. 

Now get me that Slavic Caliph 
NATO’s outgoing secretary-general Anders "Fogh of War" Rasmussen was somehow rattled. After all, this was supposed to be the "crucial moment", at the NATO summit in Wales, when NATO would be at its Cold War 2.0 best, rescuing "the allies", all 28 of them, from the dark gloom of insecurity. 

One just had to look at the replica of a glorious Eurofighter Typhoon deployed in front of the NATO summit hotel in the southern Welsh town of Newport. 

To round it all off, that evil Slavic Caliph, Vlad Putin himself, designed a seven-point peace plan to solve the Ukrainian quagmire - just as Kiev’s appalling army has been reduced to strogonoff by the federalists and/or separatists in the Donbass. Ukrainian President Petro Poroshenko - who until virtually yesterday was screaming "Invasion!" at the top of his lungs - breathed long sighs of relief. And as an aside, he disclosed Kiev was receiving high-precision weapons from an unnamed country that could only be the US, the UK or Poland. 

The whole thing posed a problem, though. What is NATO to defend Western Civilization from when all that threat embodied by "Russian aggression" dissolves into a road map to peace? 

No wonder the 60 heads of state and government with their Ministers of Defense and Foreign Relations who performed a soft invasion/breaching of the "ring of steel" protecting Newport from protesting hordes were also somehow dazed an confused. 

Over 11 years after Shock and Awe, we are still living in a Rumsfeldian world. It was the former Pentagon head David Rumsfeld under George "Dubya" Bush who conceptualized "Old Europe" and "New Europe". "Old" were Venusian sissies; "New" were vigorous Martians. 

"New" totally supported Shock and Awe, and the subsequent invasion/occupation of Iraq. Now they support, in fact beg, for NATO to stare down Russia. 

"Old", for its part, was trying at least to save a negotiating space with Putin. And in the end dear prudence, especially by Berlin, was rewarded with the Putin peace plan. 

Just in case, not to rattle the Empire of Chaos too much, Paris announced it won’t deliver the first of two Mistral helicopter carrier battleships to Moscow according to schedule. And of course NATO strongly condemned Russia on Ukraine, and the European Union followed up with yet more sanctions. 

As for Fogh of War, predictably, he kept juggling his "Mars Attacks!" rhetoric (see Asia Times Online, September 3, 2014). It was all Moscow’s fault. NATO is nothing but an innocent force of appeasement - powerful and solid. At the same time, NATO would not be foolish to start depicting Russia as an enemy outright. 

So, as Asia Times Online reported, NATO at best will help train Kiev’s forces; the Donbass performance showed they badly need it. But there will be no Ukraine "integration" - for all the hysteria deployed by Kiev and well as Poland and the Baltic states calling for permanent bases. The new element will be the remixed NATO Response Force (NRF) which, by the way, was never used before. 

NRF even comes with a catchy slogan: "Travel light and strike hard". An 800-strong battalion will be able to strike in two days, and a 5,000-strong brigade between five and seven days. Well, by those "travel light" standards it would hardly be enough to prevent The Caliph from annexing larger parts of Jihadistan with his gleaming white Toyota combo. As for "strike hard", ask Pashtuns in the Hindu Kush for an informed opinion. 

So Wales yielded NRF; permanent "rotation" and permanent forward bases to "protect" Central and Eastern Europe; and everybody shelling out more cash (no less than 2% of their GDP each, for all 28 members, from here to 2025). All this in the middle of the third European recession in five years. 

Now compare the astonishing combined NATO military budget of US$900 billion (75% of all expenses monopolized by the US) with only $80 billion for Russia. Yet Moscow is the "threat". 

Needless to add, even under so much sound and fury, Wales did not yield NATO sitting on a Freudian divan - analyzing in an endless monologue its abject failure in both Afghanistan and Libya. 

In Afghanistan, the Taliban basically run rings around NATO’s bases and "strike hard" movements, demoralizing them to oblivion. That was NATO in GWOT mode. 

And in Libya, NATO created a failed state ravaged by militias and called it "peace". That was NATO in "Responsibility To Protect" mode. 

NATO liberating Jihadistan? The Pentagon couldn’t care less. The Pentagon wants eternal GWOT. US Think Tankland is ecstatic at NATO finding a "renewed purpose" and its long-term survival now assured by a "unifying threat". Translation: Russia. 

So The Caliph is not exactly quaking in his Made-in-USA desert boots. He’s even dreaming of taking on the Slavic Caliph himself. How come Marvel Comics never thought about that? 

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. 

Hillary carried out Libyan operation started by Kissinger and Reagan by wayne Madsen

 Hillary carried out Libyan operation started by Kissinger and Reagan
As Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, carried out a policy started in earnest during the Ronald Reagan administration and implemented by the Central Intelligence Agency and State Department Counselor Robert C. McFarlane in 1981 to overthrow Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi and bring about the fracture of the Libyan state. This plan is revealed in a November 17, 1981 memorandum written by McFarlane to a CIA official named "Chuck." The memo was discovered in the CIA's archives. McFarlane would later become National Security Adviser under Reagan and become immersed in the Iran-contra scandal. The memo discusses several policy options brought to McFarlane's attention by Henry Schuler, who is described as a "former foreign service officer now in business." In fact, Schuler, who had been assigned as a U.S. diplomat in Libya prior to the 1969 Libyan coup, served as the W. R. Grace and Company representative in Libya during the coup, had been a naval intelligence officer in North Africa in the 1950s, was the director for Energy Planning and Development for Deloitte Haskins and Sells in Washington, DC. He was also the former representative for Hunt Oil Company in Libya after Qaddafi's coup. Schuler's background appears to have been the perfect resume for a CIA officer and his easy entry into McFarlane's office at State would suggest that the Libya expert was no mere ex-diplomat and businessman.

Schuler, in succeeding years, became the point person who the press, including the always-dubious Washington Post, would interview every time there was a need to falsely link Qaddafi to some terrorist incident, kidnapping, plane hijacking, or other crime. Eventually, Schuler found a nest at the Henry Kissinger-initiated Center for Strategic and International Studies, an outfit that is separated from the CIA by only the Potomac River.

Today, Libya is governed by a least two rival governments. One Islamist rebel faction called Libya Dawn, which sounds very much like Odyssey Dawn, the name of the U.S.-led military intervention in Libya that toppled Qaddafi, is now in control of the capital Tripoli. The group, which ransacked the abandoned U.S. embassy compound in Tripoli, receives its spiritual guidance from the Grand Mufti of Libya, Sheikh Sadik al-Ghariani, who broadcasts radio messages to Libya with the support of the Britain's MI-6 intelligence service. Meanwhile, the Libyan government, including acting Prime Minister Abdullah Al-Thinni and the Libyan Parliament, have fled to exile in the eastern Libyan city of Tobruk, near the Egyptian border. Egyptian and United Arab Emirates war planes recently bombed Islamist rebel-held areas of Tripoli, earning a stern warning from the U.S., British, French, and Italian governments.


Hillary Clinton's puff piece article in Newsweek, under the headline "The Liberation of Timbuktu." It was Clinton's transformation of Libya from a moderate Sufi society to rule by radical Salafi Wahhabists that saw half of Mali, including Timbuktu, fall to Islamist radicals spurred on by their benefactors in Libya. Clinton "came, saw, and the Islamists conquered."

In 1981, Schuler successfully convinced McFarlane that Qaddafi was linked to the Islamic Jihad group that assassinated Egyptian President Anwar Sadat. The information, of course, was false but there was always an attempt by the CIA to link Qaddafi to Islamist extremists. Qaddafi, a pan-Arab socialist, was anathema to Islamists and the Libyan leader's support for the Soviet Union and other Communist states was considered heretical by Islamists. The Egyptian Islamists who killed Sadat would become a major recruiting ground for the CIA in hiring Arab mujaheddin to travel to Afghanistan to fight the Soviets. Out of their ranks came Al Qaeda's number two man, Dr. Ayman al-Zawahiri, and the man convicted of planning the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, Omar Abdel Rahman, otherwise known as the "Blind Shaikh." Both Zawahiri and Rahman assisted the CIA in identifying Egyptians who, after fighting in Afghanistan, would swear allegiance to Saudi millionaire Osama Bin Laden. Qaddafi, on the other hand, would issue the very first Red Notice, or international arrest warrant, for INTERPOL to apprehend Bin Laden. As usual, the CIA blamed the wrong person, in this case Qaddafi, for supporting Islamic Jihad, which would later morph into Al Qaeda. The chief promoter of Qaddafi as a supporter of Jihadists was none other than Schuler, who was also working for Western oil companies that had production facilities in Libya.

In the Memo sent by McFarlane to the CIA, Schuler warns of years of vacillation by preceding administrations emboldening Qaddafi's moves in Africa and the Middle East. This was clearly an attempt to demonize Qaddafi as a threat to what Schuler referred to as the "energy heartland."

Schuler does provide one fascinating rationale for the hostility of the Saudi Arabians and their Western allies toward Qaddafi. In the memo, he states that "although the bedouin tribes which dominate Cyrenaica and Tripolitania are the purest Arabs outside the Arabian Peninsula, Libya does not fall into the domain of experts who study the Mashriq of Arab East because they are physically separated by non-Arab Egypt with its totally distinct culture and history." Essentially, the Saudis and other Gulf Arabs despised Qaddafi because only he, a member of one of the "pure Arab" bedouin tribes, was as much an Arab as any Saudi king or prince or Gulf emir and was in a position to claim leadership over the pan-Arab "nation." The threat posed by Qaddafi's "Arabness" to the House of Saud and al-Thani family in Qatar was a major reason why the Saudis and Qataris financed and armed the Libyan Islamists who would eventually take over Libya and assassinate Qaddafi while he was being held their prisoner. Clinton laid the ground for the assassination of Qaddafi and then boasted of it when she said, "We came, we saw, he died."

Schuler and his State Department and CIA friends were wrong when they painted Qaddafi as an Islamic fundamentalist. Libyan Islam rests on the Sanussian Sufi tradition established by the Algerian-born cleric Mohammed Ibn Ali al-Sanussi in the 1830s. Sanussi, also known as the Grand Sanussi, founded the Sanussian religious order in the Hejaz of Arabia and it became a counterweight to the extremely radical Wahhabist order of the Nejd. Sanussi moved his headquarters to Cyrenaica. Eventually, Libyan Islam would be based on the trans-border Sufi Islamist philosophy of Sanussi while the Saudi Arabians established the extreme Wahhabism as the state religion of Saudi Arabia. The Grand Sanussi's grandson would become King Idris I of Libya. Although Qaddafi ousted Idris in a 1969 coup that ended the monarchy, the charismatic Libyan colonel was an adherent of the Sufi Sanussi tradition, and, therefore, a sworn enemy of the Wahhabism practiced by the Saudis and the Arab Gulf potentates.

The Islamist groups that ousted Qaddafi with Saudi, Qatari, and NATO support are Salafists who practice Wahhabism. At the outset of the Libyan rebellion that started in Cyrenaica, Qaddafi told the world that "Al Qaeda" was behind the revolt. The world laughed. But Qaddafi was right.

From the very moment Reagan was sworn into office, the CIA and interlocutors in the oil business like Schuler, began to criticize the policies of Jimmy Carter toward Qaddafi. Singled out was Secretary of State Cyrus Vance for telling Libya's UN representative that the U.S. desired better relations with Qaddafi and Carter, himself, for offering to receive a Libyan representative in the Oval Office. Of course, the lobbying deal that Libya had with Carter's brother, Billy Carter, gave the Reaganites all the ammunition they needed to deep-six the Carter olive branches to Qaddafi. Schuler, McFarlane, and their ilk convinced the Reagan administration that the "radical" Qaddafi was a threat to the "moderate" regimes of the Arabian Peninsula. The definition of "moderate" was what set the United States off on the dangerous path that has now seen Libya fall prey to the radical Islamists supported by those "moderate" regimes of the Arabian Peninsula. The fact remains that within Islam, Qaddafi and his Sufi Sanussian brand of Islam was far more moderate than the Saudi Wahhabist variety. But the Reagan administration then, as with the Obama administration now, was spoon fed daily does of misinformation and disinformation on the Middle East, courtesy of another fanatic religious sect, Zionist Judaism, and its myriad of well-funded think tanks and policy institutes in Washington, DC.

The other reason why Qaddafi was considered a threat was his advising the Palestinians not to trust negotiated peace agreements with Israel involving the Saudis. The 1981 peace proposal tabled by Saudi Prince Fahd, which would provide for Arab and Palestinian recognition of Israel in return for the establishment of a Palestinian state with its capital in east Jerusalem was rejected by Qaddafi as a trap. It turns out that Israel never intended to abide by any of its agreements with the Palestinians, including the Madrid and Oslo agreements, which means Qaddafi was right on the money again. However, Qaddafi was pilloried by Schuler and his friends at the State Department and CIA as the leader of the Arab "rejectionist" camp. Considering the secret military and intelligence agreements between Israel and Saudi Arabia, information that Qaddafi must have certainly been briefed on by his own intelligence service, any peace plan from Saudi Arabia would be a raw deal for the Palestinians.

What Schuler and his oil industry friends eventually sold the Reagan administration was a policy of "American-sponsored subversion" of Qaddafi. In fact, a number of Libyan exiles who originally were funded by the CIA to overthrow Qaddafi ended up as leaders of the Salafist forces who took over Libya. One of these was a former Qaddafi general, Khalifa Hifter, who defected to the CIA and lived in northern Virginia near his CIA benefactors and was used by Langley to launch a number of revolts against Qaddafi inside Libya. In 2011, he returned to Libya to lead the rebel armed forces.

The Reagan administration was also sold on punishing technology and equipment sanctions against Libya. Also on the table was an embargo on Libyan oil exports; withdrawal of all U.S. citizens from Libya, particularly those working in the oil industry; and severing all commercial and financial links to Libya.

What Texas oil men George H. W. Bush and George W. Bush could not or did not want to accomplish with Qaddafi and what Bill Clinton did not view as a priority, was finally carried out by Hillary Clinton and her "Responsibility to Protect" groupies at the State Department. Her legacy is 11 commercial airliners now in the hands of radical Islamist terrorists and a Libya wracked by civil war. Mrs. Clinton managed to drive out a moderate Sufi Sanussian Islamic tradition from Libya and replace it with a radical Salafi Wahhabist brand. It was Reagan's plan that Hillary fulfilled and the Saudis and Qataris still applaud and a legacy that Democratic voters should be reminded of time and time again as Mrs. Clinton, the "Madame Defarge" of Libya, seeks another presidential "coronation."

Beheading videos, SITE, and journalist "freedom fighters" by Wayne Madsen

Beheading videos, SITE, and journalist "freedom fighters"

For the second time in a little over two weeks, a video of the beheading by a British-accented Islamic State jihadist of a U.S. journalist captured in Syria was distributed by the same organization. The most recent video images of orange jump suit-clad U.S. journalist Steven Sotloff being beheaded were released by the Search for International Terrorist Entities or "SITE," which also initially discovered and released the video beheading of U.S. journalist James Foley of GlobalPost.com.

As with the Foley video, U.S. intelligence initially refrained from validating the authenticity of the Sotloff video until it completed an examination of the Sotloff video. Obviously, the CIA and other U.S. intelligence agencies are well-versed on SITE's Israeli pedigree. As previously revealed by WMR, SITE is a Washington, DC-based research institute with links to Israeli right-wing Likud elements and Mossad. SITE is operated by Israeli intelligence asset Rita Katz and was also the source for a number of dubious videos of Osama Bin Laden, including one that only showed the Al Qaeda's lips moving but the rest of his body inanimate. In 2008, SITE released a video purportedly of Al Qaeda's number two, Ayman al Zawahiri. A number of experts determined the video was a fake.

WMR reported on September 9, 2007 that Katz is "an Iraq-born Jew who moved to Israel after her father was executed by Saddam Hussein's government for spying for the Mossad. She emigrated to the United States from Israel in 1997. Katz worked for the U.S. Treasury Department in its pursuit of Muslim charity funds in the United States in Operation Green Quest and as a consultant for the FBI. The main coordinator for Green Quest was the then-head of the Justice Department's Criminal Division, Michael Chertoff."

In addition, WMR reported: "Katz once served as Research Director of the Investigative Project, another neocon outfit run by noted Arab and Muslim demonizer Steven Emerson, who was one of the first past the post to blame the 1995 Murrah Federal Building bombing on Arab terrorists."

Our report from 2007 continued: "[The latest 30-minute Bin Laden video] was obtained by the SITE Institute, a Washington-based group that monitors terrorist messages, and provided to the Associated Press."

The Israeli Foreign Ministry revealed that Sotloff was an Israeli citizen after his death. Moreover, Israel admitted going to great lengths to remove from the Internet any references to Sotloff's Israeli citizenship. However, after Sotloff's death was confirmed, an Israeli Foreign Ministry official sent out the following Twitter message: "Cleared for publication: Steven Sotloff was Israel citizen RIP." The Jerusalem Post reported that Sotloff worked for the Temple Beth Am in Florida. The synagogue is a Reformed Judaism day school in Pinecrest, south Miami-Dade County. Sotloff also worked for theJerusalem Report, a publication of the pro-Netanyahu governmentJerusalem Post, and which was formerly owned by arch-neocon Conrad Black's Hollinger Corporation and funded by multi-billionaire Zionism supporter Charles Bronfman. Sotloff also worked for Media Line and briefly lived in Israel in 2008. While there, Sotloff studied international relations at the Interdisciplinary Center in Herzilya.

Herzilya is also the headquarters of Israel's Mossad. Media Line is a non-profit Israeli news website whose advisory board members include Marvin Kalb, formerly of CBS News; PBS's Judy Woodruff; Dean Patrick, former newsman for Pat Robertson's Christian Broadcasting Network and current Regent University Dean of the School of Communications; former CBS News reporter Murray Fromson; and Columbia Journalism School professor Ari Goldman.

Questions still surround what Foley and Sotloff were actually doing in Syria. Moreover, Foley had been embedded with jihadist guerrillas fighting against Muammar Qaddafi's government in Libya prior to his embedded status with Syrian Jabhat al Nusra-linked Islamist guerrillas fighting against Bashar Assad's government in Syria. In both cases, the CIA was training, arming, and funding the Libyan and Syrian guerrilla forces. Sotloff also was embedded with CIA-supported Islamist guerrillas in Libya and Syria. He also reported as a freelancer from Yemen and Egypt. Foley was embedded with U.S. military units in Afghanistan and Iraq. A photograph of Sotloff shows him embedded with Libyan Islamist fighters at the Al Dafniya front line on June 2, 2011. Getty Images copyright restrictions prevent WMR from including the photograph.
Concerns previously raised by WMR about the CIA's renewed use of journalists as spies were not assuaged after an American "film maker" friend of Foley and Sotloff appeared on various news programs to eulogize Foley and Sotloff after their beheading. The film maker, Matthew VanDyke told Al Jazeera on September 2 that he fought on the side of the Libyan rebels against Qaddafi as an armed combatant and was taken prisoner and held by the Libyan government forces for six months, as was Foley, before being released and given a one-year suspended sentence for illegally entering Libya. In VanDyke's case, he used his claim of being a journalist to enter Libya to fight as a combatant for the anti-Qaddafi guerrillas. It is exactly the type of situation, which puts every foreign correspondent in danger, that led to the CIA's ban on the use of journalists as spies. VanDyke also visited Iraq where he was reportedly "helping Christians," as was the U.S. military and CIA, against the Islamic State. VanDyke is said to be a resident of Baltimore and a native of Fenwick Island, Delaware. VanDyke describes himself not only as a "film maker" but also a "revolutionary."

According to Syrian State Television, VanDyke also fought with Free Syrian Army, which included the Jabhat al Nusra guerrillas affiliated with Al Qaeda. Most Jabhat al Nusra forces have now sworn allegiance to the Islamic State. Syrian TV described VanDyke as a terrorist who was fighting the Syrian government on behalf of the jihadist forces. VanDyke was, according to Syrian state TV, fighting alongside Islamist guerrillas in Aleppo. VanDyke calls himself an "Arab Spring freedom fighter" on his personal website. In August 2012, VanDyke announced he was going to join the Syrian uprising against Assad and "capture it all on film." After VanDyke began raising thousands of dollars on the Kickstarter on-line donation website, the company kicked him off. There were reports at the time that Kickstarter was being used by anti-Assad Syrian terrorist groups to also raise funds. Syrian state TV apparently nailed VanDyke in its description.


Matthew VanDyke's [above] association with Foley and Sotloff in Libya and Syria tarnishes the "journalism" credentials of both executed Americans.

More noteworthy is VanDyke's Master's degree in Security Studies fromGeorgetown University's Walsh School of Foreign Service. Georgetown is and always has been a prime recruiting center for the CIA. VanDyke, like Foley, was embedded with U.S. military forces in Afghanistan and Iraq. Unusually, he traveled by motorcycle through Morocco, Mauritania, Tunisia, Libya, Egypt, Jordan, Syria, Iraq (where he lived from 2008 to 2009), Iran, and Afghanistan, countries not normally associated with motorcycle treks.

VanDyke has laughingly been described as a modern-day Che Guevara or a member of Spain's anti-fascist International Brigade. However, neither Guevara nor any self-respecting member of the International Brigade would ever have fought for CIA-sponsored guerrillas. In fact, VanDyke more resembles an off-beat Blackwater mercenary or a CIA provocateur like David Atlee Phillips or Frank Carlucci.

VanDyke's friendship with Foley and Sotloff on U.S.-sponsored battlefields embedded with CIA-enabled Islamist guerrilla groups raises the specter that one or more of these so-called "journalists" were performing missions not in keeping with the Journalist's Creed, particularly the following proviso:

"I believe that bribery by one’s own pocketbook is as much to be avoided as bribery by the pocketbook of another; that individual responsibility may not be escaped by pleading another’s instructions or another’s dividends."

VanDyke has been honored with all sorts of journalist awards, many from "concern" groups funded by global hedge fund tycoon and troublemaker George Soros. However, there is but one problem with giving awards for journalism to someone like VanDyke. He's not a journalist. At worst, he is a CIA operative using journalist credentials for covert purposes. At best, he is an agent provocateur who has put every legitimate journalist in the gravest of danger. As the case may be with VanDyke's friends Foley and Sotloff, such provocation of using journalists as U.S. intelligence agents likely cost both of them their lives.

NATO attacks! By Pepe Escobar

THE ROVING EYE NATO attacks! By Pepe Escobar  First thing we do, let's kill all the myths. The North Atlantic Treaty Organization is nothing but the Security Council of the Empire of Chaos.  You don't need to be a neo-Foucault hooked on Orwellian/Panopticon practices to admire the hyper-democratic"ring of steel" crossing average roads, parks and even ringing castle walls to "protect" dozens of NATO heads of state and ministers, 10,000 supporting characters and 2,000 journalists from the real world in Newport, Wales - and beyond.  NATO's summit in Wales also provides outgoing secretary-general Anders "Fogh of War" Rasmussen the chance to display his full attack dog repertoire. It's as if he's auditioning for a starring role in a remake of Tim Burton's epic Mars Attacks!  Fogh of War is all over the place, talking "pre-positioning of supplies, equipment" - euphemism for weapons; boosting bases and headquarters in host countries; and touting a 10,000-strong, rapid reaction "spearhead" force to respond to Russian "aggression" and deployable in a maximum of five days.  Meanwhile, in a bad cop-bad cop routine, outgoing president of the European Commission, outstanding mediocrity Jose Manuel Barroso, leaked that Russian President Vladimir Putin told him over the phone later last week he could take Kiev in a fortnight if he wanted.  Well, Putin could. If he wanted. But he doesn't want it. What matters is what he told Rossiya state TV; that Kiev should promote inclusive talks about the future statute of Eastern Ukraine. Once again, the Western spin was that he was advocating the birth of a Novorossiya state. Here, The Saker analyzes in detail the implications of what Russia really wants, and what the Novorossiya forces really want.  With Lithuanian president Dalia Grybauskaite predictably spinning that Russia is "at war with Europe", and British Prime Minister David Cameron evoking - what else - Munich 1938 (Chamberlain appeasing Hitler), Fogh of War has had all the ammo he needs to sell his Einsatzgruppen. Cynics are excused to believe NATO's spearhead force is actually The Caliph's IS goons raising hell in "Syraq".  Warmongering, though, is not an easy sell in a crisis-hit EU these days. Not only Germany, but also France, Italy, Spain, Romania, Hungary and even Poland have expressed "reluctance" one way or another to back NATO's strategy of a more "robust" presence in Eastern Europe and the Baltic. Moreover, the Empire of Chaos and its Brit junior partner in the "special relationship" want everyone to shell out more cash (a minimum of 2% of GDP). Even as the EU is facing no less than its third recession in five years.  The bottom line is there will be no more rotation on NATO's Eastern front. Legally, the set up cannot be defined as "permanent", because it will go against a 1997 NATO-Russia pact. But it will be permanent. That applies to Szczecin, in Poland, near the Baltic, and the so-called multinational Corps Northeast - land, air and sea. Estonia and Latvia for all practical purposes are being touted as "Putin's next targets". And defending them from "Russian aggression" is NATO's new red line.  Additionally, Finland and Sweden may sign NATO Host Nation agreements. This implies NATO forces may use Swedish and Finnish territory in the future on the way to what's hazily referred to as "operations". At least deployment of foreign troops still needs parliamentary approval - and Swedes and Finns are bound to raise eyebrows.  No R2P for you, buddy  Even with all this Mars Attacks! hysteria, NATO in thesis won't discuss Ukraine in depth in Wales - or an imminent R2P ("responsibility to protect") Ukraine from the remixed "Evil Empire" (copyright Ronnie Reagan). But there will be "military consultations" and a bit of cash shelled out to the Kiev military - who are having their (bankrupt) collective behind solemnly kicked by the federalist/separatist forces in Eastern Ukraine as much as NATO had theirs kicked by a bunch of Pashtuns with Kalashnikovs in Afghanistan.  By the way, the latest US$1.4 billion the International Monetary Fund shelled out to Ukraine - the Mobster-style interest will hit much later - will be used by an already bankrupt Kiev mostly to pay for a bunch of T-72 tanks it bought from Hungary. Money for nothing, tanks for free.  Ukraine, it must be stressed, is not a NATO member. Technically, every NATO bureaucrat in Brussels admits that a candidate country must request membership. And countries with regions mired in an international dispute are not accepted. So Ukraine would only be considered if Kiev gave up Crimea. It's not going to happen.  Still, Washington's obsessive play to annex Ukraine to NATO will keep marching on (in the matter of accession, by the way, the European Union would issue a firm "no"). Outgoing Prime Minister Arseniy “Yats” Yatsenyuk as well as President Poroshenko, are desperate for a NATO intervention, or at least Ukraine being accepted as some form of privileged ally. Yats expects "monumental decisions from our Western partners at the summit". In vain.  NATO somehow is already in Ukraine. A NATO cyber center group has been in Kiev since March, operating in the building of the Council of National Security and Defense. So it is a bunch of NATO bureaucrats who actually determine the news agenda in Ukraine - and the non-stop demonization of all things Russia.  Ukraine is all about Germany now. Berlin wants a political solution. Fast. Berlin wants Russian gas flowing via Ukraine again. Fast. Berlin does not want US missile defense in Eastern Europe - no matter what the Baltic states scream. That's why Poroshenko's latest "Invasion! Invasion! Invasion!" craze is nothing but pure desperation by a lowly, bankrupt vassal of the Empire of Chaos. Of course that does not prevent Fogh of War - who got the NATO job because he was an enthusiastic cheerleader of the rape of Iraq - to keep crying "Invasion!" till all Danish retrievers come home.  Real deal And then there's NATO's recent record. An ignominious defeat in Afghanistan. A "humanitarian" bombing that reduced once-stable Libya to a miserable failed state immersed in total anarchy and ravaged by rabid militias. Not exactly fabulous PR for NATO's future as a coalition assembly line with global "vocation", capable of pulling off expeditionary wars all around the world by creating the appearance of a military and political consensus unified by - what else - an Empire of Chaos doctrine: NATO's "strategic concept" approved at the 2010 Lisbon summit. (See US a kid in a NATO candy store, Asia Times Online, November 25, 2010.)  Since those go-go "Bubba" Clinton years; through the "pre-emptive" Dubya era; and now under the R2P dementia of Obama's warring Medusas (Rice, Power, Hillary), the Pentagon dreams of NATO as global Robocop, dominating all the roles embodied by the UN and the EU in terms of security. This has absolutely nothing to do with the original collective defense of NATO signatories against possible territorial attacks. Oh, sorry; we forgot the attacks by those (non-existent) nuclear missiles deployed by evil Iran.  The Ukraine battleground at least has the merit of showing the alliance is naked. For the Full Spectrum Dominance Pentagon, what really matters above all is something that's been actually happening since the fall of the Soviet Union; unlimited NATO expansion to the westernmost borders of Russia.  The real deal this September is not NATO. It's the SCO's summit. Expect the proverbial tectonic shifts of geopolitical plaques in the upcoming meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization - a shift as far-reaching as when the Ottoman empire failed at the gates of Vienna in 1683. On the initiative of Russia and China, at the SCO summit, India, Pakistan, Iran and Mongolia will be invited to become permanent members. Once again, the battle lines are drawn. NATO vs SCO. NATO vs BRICS. NATO vs Global South. Therefore, NATO attacks!  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.