Tuesday, February 15, 2005

LEBANON

ICH: Israel and/or America Implicated in Killing of Rafik Harriri:

"This is the work of an intelligence service, not a small group," said Rime Allaf, Middle East analyst at London's Royal Institute of International Affairs.

We must do as they do in other criminal cases, look at who had the most to gain from the assassination of Prime Minister Harriri. The Lebanese had a lot to lose, as did the Syrians (he was close to Bashir Al Assad, the leader of Syria), as did the other Arab countries in the region who saw him as a strong leader and a stabilizing force in Lebanese politics. On the other hand, Israel has wanted chaos in Lebanon, as has America, and both countries have been agitating to get Hezbollah outlawed and both America and Israel have wanted the Lebanese to oust Syria. In both cases, the Lebanese government has said, “NO,” that Hezbollah is a respected part of Lebanese life and that Syria is there to protect Lebanon from Israeli aggression.

IRAQ

Asia Times: US fights back against ' rule by clerics'

Asia Times Online has learned that in a highly clandestine operation, the US has procured Pakistan-manufactured weapons, including rifles, rocket-propelled grenade launchers, ammunition, rockets and other light weaponry. Consignments have been loaded in bulk onto US military cargo aircraft at Chaklala airbase in the past few weeks. The aircraft arrived from and departed for Iraq. The US-armed and supported militias in the south will comprise former members of the Ba'ath Party, which has already split into three factions, only one of which is pro-Saddam Hussein. They would be expected to receive assistance from pro-US interim Prime Minister Iyad Allawi's Iraqi National Accord. A military analyst familiar with strategic and proxy operations commented that there is a specific reason behind procuring arms from Pakistan, rather than acquiring US-made ones. "A similar strategy was adopted in Afghanistan during the initial few years of the anti-USSR resistance [the early 1980s] movement where guerrillas were supplied with Chinese-made AK-47 rifles [which were procured by Pakistan with US money], Egyptian and German-made G-3 rifles. Similarly, other arms, like anti-aircraft guns, short-range missiles and mortars, were also procured by the US from different countries and supplied to Pakistan, which handed them over to the guerrillas," the analyst maintained. The obvious reason for this tactic is to give the impression that the resistance acquired its arms and ammunition from different channels and from different countries - and anywhere other than the United States.

Monday, February 14, 2005

STATE TERROR: GLADIO

Common Dreams: The Pentagon's 'NATO Option'

At the end of last month, Frank Cass in London released a new book by Dr. Daniele Ganser of the Center for Security Studies at the Federal Institute of Technology, Zurich called, “NATO’s Secret Armies. Operation Gladio and Terrorism in Western Europe,” which offers plenty of evidence that there was also a “Salvador Option” in post-war Europe. It turns out that during the Cold War, European governments and secret services conspired with a NATO-backed operation to engineer attacks in their own countries in order to manipulate the population to reject socialism and communism.
It was called “the strategy of tension” and it was carried out by members of secret stay-behind armies organized by NATO and funded by the CIA in Italy, Portugal, Germany, Spain, and other European countries. The strategy apparently involved supplying right-wing terrorists with explosives to carry out terrorist acts which were then blamed on left-wing groups to keep them out of power.

Only three countries, Italy, Belgium, and Switzerland, have had a parliamentary investigation into NATO’s role and a public report. The US and UK, the two nations most centrally involved, are refusing to disclose details, so crucial pieces of the story are missing. Still, Ganser’s book offers some disturbing insights into a hidden aspect of the Cold War.

As one of Gladio’s operatives said, “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game. The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security.”

ETH Zürich: Secret Warfare: Operation Gladio and NATO’s Stay-Behind Armies
by Daniele Ganser

"Prudent Precaution or Source of Terror?" With this headline the press (Reuters) reacted to the discovery in 1990 of CIA- and NATO-linked anticommunist secret stay-behind armies in Italy and other Western European countries. Did the stay-behind armies enhance or threaten national security?

MEDIA WATCH

Truthout: The News Is Broken By William Rivers Pitt

Something like that might have once existed, but it is almost completely gone now. The sad and sordid tale of Jeff "Don't Call Me Guckert" Gannon" is a final nail in the coffin, as far as I am concerned. This story went from irritating to outrageous to appalling to downright nauseating and scary in rapid succession.

I went into great detail on the "Gannon" phenomenon in my blog, but this is it in a nutshell: An avowed conservative partisan managed to boll-weevil his way into the White House Briefing Room, where he was the go-to guy for administration spokesman Scott McLellan whenever the questions from the press corps got too hot for comfort. His final exposure came in exactly this fashion, when he manufactured quotes by Senators Clinton and Reid in order to score points off Democrats while hauling McLellan's chestnuts out of the fire during a press briefing on Bush's hare-brained Social Security plan. He managed to do this without even using his real name, which is actually James Guckert.

This is journalism today, and "Gannon" isn't alone in disgrace. Conservative columnist Armstrong Williams got paid more than a quarter of a million dollars by the Bush administration to peddle No Child Left Behind. Conservative columnist Maggie Gallagher got $21,500 to peddle Bush's ideas on marriage. Conservative columnist Mike McManus got $10,000 to pitch the same policy as Gallagher.

ZARQAWI

Bowles: The BBC: premier propagandist for the imperium

Washington, DC, Feb. 8 (UPI) — If the serial decapitator Abu Musab al-Zarqawi did not exist, then the Bush administration, the Atlantic Alliance and the rest of the civilized world might have to invent him.

IRAQ: RESISTANCE

JUS: US Baghdad Base PoundedBy Resistance Rockets

Baghdad remains a hotbed of resistance activities as does Mosul, Samaara and Tikrit, and US pillaged oil installations, with several attack reported yesterday that indicate post election Iraq remains a significant problem for the American agenda

ZNET: American Defeat in Iraq

However, news of Zarqawi since 2001 is obscure. Following the Gulf War in 1991, because of the Anglo-American enforced no-fly zone, Northern Iraq could not be controlled by the Hussein government. Instead, the Kurds governed themselves with some help from America and Israel. So if the U.S. authorities had wished to crush Ansar al-Islam, they could have done so at any time; they did not because at that time the U.S. intended to use Ansar al-Islam as an anti-Hussein terrorist organisation. If Zarqawi was leading Ansar al-Islam, he was a terrorist to be used by America, not by Hussein

Guardian: Given You The Purple Finger by Naomi Klein

The Party Likely To Win Election Opposes US Presence & Policies