Paul Craig Roberts, saying what so many others have been saying for 7 years...
This seems intended to reframe the Taliban as an 'Afghan national liberation movement,' which it isn't; a more accurate description might be that it's a Pashtun nationalist-expansionist movement with pan-Islamist influences and connections. Recall that the Taliban purged Uzbek, Tajik, Hazara and other ethnic-minority officials and replaced them with Pashtun during their "unification" of Afghanistan, and also that they engaged in large-scale unprovoked massacres of non-Pashtun civilians (especially Hazara) on multiple occasions. Furthermore, they've always been active in both the Afghan and Pakistani zones of 'Pashtunistan'--though with relatively little trouble for Islamabad, until it sharply curtailed its support for them following the 9/11 attacks--and have always had significant operational connections to Kashmiri Islamist militants, as well as much looser connections with Chechen Islamists...and with al-Qaeda, whom Roberts notably avoids identifying as a pan-Islamist group, even though that's exactly what they are. I suspect because he'd rather not acknowledge that pan-Islamist militancy really does exist; it makes these groups sound much more 'reasonable' to reframe them as national liberation fighters acting only in defense of their own nation--exactly the same sort of obfuscation the "war on terror" label threatens to facilitate.The Taliban is not a terrorist organization, but a movement attempting to unify Afghanistan under Muslim law.
A shaky characterization at best. Israel did maintain a small occupying force in southern Lebanon following the 1982 war through to 2000 (in violation of UN resolutions), but they never established settlements in the area nor officially annexed it. Unless he specifically means Shebaa Farms--but Lebanon's claim to that (as opposed to Syria's) isn't recognized outside the Arab world, and in any case, equating an 8-sq.-mi. strip with "southern Lebanon" would be quite a stretch. Frankly, you could make a better case that Syria seeks all of Lebanon for "territorial expansion," not that that's ever likely to happen either. But it's unsurprising that Roberts, being a "Jews control the media" proponent and a 9/11 skeptic, would treat a speculative conspiracy argument as if it were established fact here as well.Hezbollah represents the Shi’ites of southern Lebanon, another area in the Middle East that Israel seeks for its territorial expansion.
CIA to Obama: British Pakistani terrorists biggest threat to the US
by Tim Shipman
Telegraph (UK), 07 Feb 2009
American spy chiefs have told the President that the CIA has launched a vast spying operation in the UK to prevent a repeat of the 9/11 attacks being launched from Britain. They believe that a British-born Pakistani extremist entering the US under the visa waiver programme is the most likely source of another terrorist spectacular on American soil. Intelligence briefings for Mr Obama have detailed a dramatic escalation in American espionage in Britain, where the CIA has recruited record numbers of informants in the Pakistani community to monitor the 2000 terrorist suspects identified by MI5, the British security service.
A British intelligence source revealed that a staggering 4 out of 10 CIA operations designed to thwart direct attacks on the US are now conducted against targets in Britain. ...The British official said: "The Americans run their own assets in the Pakistani community; they get their own intelligence. There's close cooperation with MI5 but they don't tell us the names of all their sources. Around 40% of CIA activity on homeland threats is now in the UK. This is quite unprecedented." Explaining the increase in CIA activity over the past month, [former CIA officer Bruce] Riedel added: "In the aftermath of the Mumbai attack the US and the UK intelligence services now have to regard Lashkar-e-Taiba as just as serious a threat to both of our countries as al-Qaeda. They have a much more extensive base among Pakistani Diaspora communities in the UK than al–Qaeda."
Information gleaned by CIA spies in Britain has already helped thwart several terrorist attacks in the UK and was instrumental in locating Rashid Rauf, a British-born al-Qaeda operative implicated in a plot to explode airliners over the Atlantic, who was tracked down and killed in a US missile strike in November.
...Jonathan Evans, the director general of MI5, admitted in January that the Security Service alone does not have the resources to maintain surveillance on all its targets. "We don't have anything approaching comprehensive coverage," he said. The dramatic escalation in CIA activity in the UK followed the exposure in August 2006 of Operation Overt, the alleged airline bomb plot.
...For their part, some British officials are queasy that information obtained by the CIA from British Pakistanis was used to help target Mr Rauf, a British citizen, whom they would have preferred to capture and bring to trial. Sensitivities over the intelligence arrangement formed a key part of briefings given to Mr Obama, since they are central to what is often called "the most special part of the special relationship" and could complicate his dealings with Gordon Brown.
Tensions in transatlantic intelligence relations which were laid bare last week during the High Court battle over Binyam Mohamed, the British resident held in Guanatanamo Bay. British judges wanted to publish details of the torture administered to Mr Mohamed, an Ethiopian national, in US custody. But key paragraphs were blacked out after American officials threatened it could damage intelligence sharing between the two countries. Intelligence experts said that a trusting intelligence relationship, in which one country does not publish intelligence data obtained by the other, is vital to both countries' national security.
Well the 'war' on terror is a hoax, right enough.
Terrorism itself is a method not an entity. That should be mere commonsense.
America may well be under threat from terrorists, but they belong mainly to the nativist Right. They'll come from under the same rock as Timothy McVeigh or the Aryan Nations, and all the homeland security in the world won't stop them. In extremis, I'd say they are a symptom of an undeclared civil war, although in no way do the nuts represent a majority of the nation.
If America were infected with terrorists, we would not need the government to tell us. We would know it from events. As there are no events, the US government substitutes warnings in order to keep alive the fear that causes the public to accept pointless wars, the infringement of civil liberty, national ID cards, and inconveniences and harassments when they fly.
if the war on terror is a hoax, then charles manson should be remembered as a crusader.
My take on the article is.....how much Americans were actually "brainwashed" into a state of high anxiety and unrelenting fear.
Try explaining to this man's family that the War on Terror is a hoax..
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what is this comparing to what American soldiers do to Arab prisoners. .
we put panties on their heads.
they decapitate us.
is that the same thing to you?
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it wasn't brainwashing at all. or, maybe it was brainwashing, but i view much of the American population as innocent victims of the Bush administration and large swaths of the Republican Party.
the US in 2002 was rightly terrified, and our leaders at the timemurderouslycynically utilized this for their own goals. very powerful men used fear to frighten a populace into acquiescing -- for a short while -- to their reactionary agenda which included, but was not limited to, a remaking of the Middle East, a reduction of civil liberties, and a wild expansion of the powers of the executive.
by 2004, almost half of us had caught on and did our best to boot the criminals from office. by 2006, we had mostly succeeded. and now, in 2009, we're all left to pick up the pieces.
I've been saying for years now that the war on terror was a hoax. Bush started it to cover up the problems in his own country. There was also no room for human rights. Now the whole world is in a financial crisis, because of the debts the US made. We, in the Netherlands also have to pay for it, as usual. Thank you mr. Bush! And a big thank you to the idiots who have always voted republican.
2002: 8 completed incidents; 1 prevented incident; 2 deaths
--7 arson attacks either by ELF alone, or by ELF & ALF acting jointly
2003: 6 completed incidents; 5 prevented incidents; 0 deaths
--3 ELF arson attacks
--3 ALF arson attacks
2004: 5 completed incidents; 5 prevented incidents; 0 deaths
--3 ELF arson attacks
--1 ALF arson attack
2005: 5 completed incidents; 3 prevented incidents; 0 deaths
--3 ELF arson attacks
--2 ALF arson attacks