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Bill Maher isn't a 'politically incorrect' liberal, he's just a bigot

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bill-maher

– by Murtaza Hussain, The Intercept

Like many others, of late I’ve been sharing in the surreal experience of watching Bill Maher transform from a mildly interesting, “edgy,” talk show host into a crude, overbearing demagogue. It hasn’t been pleasant viewing, but Maher really does appear to be in rare form these days. Between him sharing his fears about the terrifying number of babies today being named Muhammad, to complaining about Muslims in America who “bring that desert stuff into our world” — the first question that comes to mind is: this guy is a liberal?

Watching his increasingly outlandish public performances, one gets the sincere impression that Maher believes that since he smokes weed and supports gay marriage it’s impossible for him to be a bigot. Needless to say, it’s become glaringly obvious that self-awareness is not really his strong suit.

Maher last week got into a rather heated argument on his show with Ben Affleck over the broadly defined subject of Islam and Muslims. Maher, who became visibly scandalized by Affleck’s suggestion that most Muslims are normal people, launched into an indignant tirade about the Muslim world, alleging, among other things, that Islam “acts like the Mafia” comprised of people who will “fucking kill you” for trying to leave.

Fox’s New Favorite Racist

The fact that this is both impossible and false was apparently no deterrent. Maher and his utterly hapless sidekick Sam Harris defended their position against allegations of racism by basically just repeating it over and over. At one point Harris simply stated that “Islam is the motherlode of bad ideas,” in response to which Maher blurted “that’s just a fact”.

Maher’s primary defense against Affleck’s charges was that “Islam is not a race” but an idea, a claim Harris has repeated. Strictly speaking of course this is true. Islam is certainly not a “race”, at least not in the way in which the term is popularly understood in America. But because many people buy into the myth that theocratic governments or even groups like Al Qaeda and ISIS speak for all Muslims, Muslims have become — undeniably — a racialized group after 9/11.

Aside from the near-daily instances of assault and harassment against Muslims as a result of anti-Islamic prejudice, there are countless Sikh and Hindu-Americans in America today being beaten up and even killed for the crime of “looking Muslim.” These acts aren’t being committed by people who have interrogated their victims innermost existential beliefs, they’re basic racism.

While it’s depressing that this apparently needs be repeated anew every generation, making incendiary and ignorant generalizations about vast groups of people is never a good idea. Moreover, anyone with a modicum of familiarity with the Muslim world that goes beyond American pop culture can also tell you that the characterizations Maher makes are broadly incorrect.

Insisting on framing problems like apostasy laws in certain Muslim countries simply as issues with “Muslims” — thus implicating ordinary people who in the majority of cases are largely aloof from said laws — is not activism but pure bigotry. Despite this, that’s exactly what Maher does, night after night. Incredibly enough, he also seems to think that his rhetoric in this context represents some kind of act of personal bravery.

If that’s true, then Fox News must be the bravest news organization in the country. Maher, for all his supposed liberalism, has in fact become the new poster-boy of the right-wing network. He’s even won the enthusiastic support of luminaries like Robert Spencer thanks to his zealous “liberal” chauvinism.

Maher’s Weird Unraveling

To anyone who has followed Maher’s career over the long-run, his bizarre unraveling over the past several years has been at times agonizing to watch. Maher’s favorite rhetorical targets now — women and minorities — are people who simply don’t have access to the same resources that he does to make their voices heard in society. This is how, improbably enough, Ben Affleck became an overnight hero to many Muslim people in America and around the world for using his voice to speak on their behalf during another one of Maher’s tirades. It was both a touching gesture and a sad reflection of what things have come to.

In a revealing interview a few weeks earlier on Charlie Rose, Maher had complained:

“In this country, if you just use the wrong word about women, they go nuts …in all these other countries…They’re doing things like making them wear burkas. They’ve been brainwashed.”

Here, if I may, is liberal celebrity Bill Maher in a nutshell. Talking down to people who don’t have the power or apparently even the agency to talk back, while shamelessly seeking more latitude to engage in his own preferred prejudices at home. Neither Muslims nor women have any say in his characterizations of them – and Muslim women in particular who may disagree with him are blithely written off as a brainwashed zombies. It’s pretty gross, and over time it’s just getting grosser.

Needless to say, I don’t really have high expectations for the “civil dialogue about Islam” Maher is planning on holding along with fellow Islamic scholar Glenn Beck.

China just overtook the U.S as the World's largest Economy

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Photo: Reuters

Photo: Reuters

– by Mike Bird, Business Insider

Sorry, America. China just overtook the US to become the world’s largest economy, according to the International Monetary Fund.

Chris Giles at the Financial Times flagged up the change. He’d also alerted us back in April this year that it was all about to happen.

Basically, the method used by the IMF adjusts for purchasing power parity, explained here. The simple logic is that prices aren’t the same in each country: a shirt will cost you less in Shanghai than San Francisco, so it’s not entirely reasonable to compare countries without taking this into account. Though a typical person in China earns a lot less than the typical person in the US, simply converting a Chinese salary into dollars underestimates how much purchasing power that individual, and therefore that country, might have. The Economist’s Big Mac Index is a great example of these disparities.

So the IMF measures both GDP in market exchange terms, and in terms of purchasing power. On the purchasing power basis, China is overtaking the US right about now and becoming the world’s biggest economy.

We’ve just gone past that cross-over on the chart below, according to the IMF. By the end of 2014, China will make up 16.48% of the world’s purchasing-power adjusted GDP (or $17.632 trillion), and the US will make up just 16.28% (or $17.416 trillion):

IMF, Google Public Data Explorer

It’s not all sore news for the US. It’ll be some time yet until the lines cross over in raw terms, not adjusted for purchasing power. By that measure, China still sits more than $6.5 trillion lower than the US, and isn’t likely to overtake for quite some time:

IMF, Google Public Data Explorter

But in terms of the raw market value of China’s currency, it still has a long way to go.

Contractors ready to cash in on ISIS war

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Obama pledged that the war against ISIS won’t be fought with U.S. ground troops. He didn’t say anything about contractors, who see this as “the next big meal ticket.”

ISIS

– by Eli Lake, The Daily Beast

America’s rapidly-expanding war against ISIS won’t involve large numbers of U.S. troops on the ground, President Obama is promising. And it’s clear that airstrikes alone won’t beat back the extremist group. Which means that if the President wants to have any hope of meeting his far-reaching goal of destroying ISIS, he’s going to have to rely on private military contractors.

At least, that’s what the contractors are hoping.

At the height of the Iraq war, these firms hired hundreds of thousands of people: guns-for-hire, IT geeks, logistics specialists, interrogators, and short order cooks to ladle out the slop at the military cafeteria. Over time, some of those contractors became the symbol for everything that was wrong with the Iraq war: hugely expensive, ineffective, and indifferent to Iraqi life. Contractors were at the middle of the war’s biggest scandals, from Abu Ghraib to Nissour Square. And it was the abductions and murder of Blackwater contractors that sparked one of Iraq’s biggest battles.

None of the five current and former contractors who spoke with The Daily Beast expected a replay of last decade’s Iraq war. But they all said a major opportunity was coming—both for them, and for Obama, who could use the private armies as a way to conceal just how many people will be fighting in this new conflict.

“Iraq this time around is not going to be as big as it was before,” said Roger Carstens, a former special operations officer who has served as a contracted military adviser in Somalia and Afghanistan. “That said, this new war will present an opportunity for the companies that have a resident train and advising capability to contribute to this new effort.”

President Obama has asked Congress to authorize $500 million to train a new Syrian opposition out of Saudi Arabia. That money would be part of a $5 billion fund Obama requested this spring from Congress to help train and equip U.S. allies to fight terrorists.

One U.S. military contractor working in Iraq who asked not to be named said, “I can tell you the contractor-expat community is abuzz thinking this will lead to more work. We expect a much larger footprint than he is showing right now.”

Those expectations were whet earlier this summer, as ISIS was gaining ground in northern Iraq and the first U.S. special operations teams were arriving in Iraq, when the Pentagon asked military contractors to participate in two important surveys.

The first one, issued in July, asked the industry to give a rough estimate of the costs associated with building a new network of ten ground based communications satellite stations, known as VSATs in military lingo. VSATs were used by the U.S. military in the last decade throughout Iraq to provide forward operating bases with secure internet and voice communications.

The second one was more specific. It asked for estimates of the cost for “Security Assistance Mentors and Advisers” for Iraq’s ministry of defense and the Iraqi Counterterrorism Service.

A Pentagon spokeswoman told the Daily Beast that the notice was not meant to be a request for proposal or the formal opening of the bidding process, but rather a chance to gauge the interest and capabilities of contractors down the road.

But contractors tell The Daily Beast that these bureaucratic notices—plus a pledge from Obama to wage a long war against ISIS and train up Syrian and Iraqi fighters—represent a business opportunity for an industry that has shrunk in recent years.

In 2008 there were 242,558 contractors working in the countries for U.S. Central Command, the area that includes Iraq and Afghanistan as well as Somalia, Pakistan and Yemen, three countries where the United States has helped train local forces and conducted air strikes, according to the Pentagon’s official estimate.

That was during the height of the last round of wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. By this July, that number had shrunk to 66,123, according to the Pentagon’s latest estimate of military contractors working in the countries covered by Central Command, with only 14,634 contractors operating outside of Afghanistan.

But that’s only a fraction of America’s privatized security apparatus operating overseas. The State Department also offers billions of dollars to conduct security for diplomats and other officials.  In 2011, the State Department awarded Triple Canopy a four year deal worth up to $1.5 billion to provide security for the airport in Baghdad, U.S. diplomats and other Americans in the country. A State Department audit of the contract (PDF) found that at a minimum the State Department overpaid for those services by millions.

“There has been consolidation after conflicts,” said Doug Brooks, the president emeritus of the International Stability Operations Association, a trade association for professional military contractors. “There is going to be business, you could say these are shoes instead of boots on the ground. But as in most cases these are going to be local faces who will be hired by these companies, who bring professionalism and training. They have been there already helping to build up the air force in Iraq. It won’t be like the past ten years, but there will be growth in services.”

The shrinking market for military contractors led some of them to seek new patrons. In 2010, for example, an African based military contractor named Saracen began training an anti-piracy force in Somalia with funding from the United Arab Emirates. When this reporter visited the base in 2012, it was a privately-run outpost in Puntland with its own electricity generator, barracks, armory with former South African military officers giving basic training to locals.

But that experience led to some instability. After one of the South African trainers was murdered in 2012 by one of the recruits, the United Arab Emirates pulled out of the project.

One reason why the new war on ISIS won’t be like the old one against al Qaeda is because for now Obama has promised not to send ground forces to Iraq or Syria. The presence of U.S. forces overseas presents a number of opportunities for military contractors in providing everything from the dining facilities to the logistical transport for U.S. soldiers at war.

Also the budgets to fight al Qaeda and other groups expanded dramatically after 9/11 when many government institutions did not know exactly how to fight the new war. Blackwater—the private military firm founded by former NAVY SEAL Erik Prince—became a virtual extension of the CIA’s special activities division working to develop the deadly capability to target and kill al Qaeda operatives all over the world.

It was also Blackwater contractors working in Iraq to protect diplomatic convoys that shot what the Iraqi government said were 17 innocent protestors in the heart of Baghdad at Nisour Square. (This summer, in the U.S. trial of the contractors, former employees of the company said they were responding to fire from the crowd.)

The legacy of Nisour square contributed to the decision of the Iraqi government in 2011 to decline to offer legal immunity to U.S. soldiers and military contractors. Carstens said that any new military contracts for Iraq that would involve training units of soldiers would have to include iron-clad guarantees that the contractors themselves would not be targeted by Iraqi courts. “The companies will need to know that their contractors in Iraq and other places will have legal protections in case anything happens,” he said.

Iraq recently promised immunity for U.S. troops—and it’s likely Baghdad will do the same for contractors too. After all, Iraq’s government has also formally requested U.S. assistance in fighting ISIS and that help was clearly going to include military contractors.

“They are looking for the next big meal ticket and this could be it,” said Sean McFate, a former military contractor for Dyncorp and the author of The Modern Mercenary: Private Armies and What They Mean for World Order. “The things they will provide are logistical support, training or retraining security forces.”

McFate said contractors gave Obama the opportunity to accomplish tasks normally associated with the U.S. military without sending boots on the ground. He said the training missions in particular “would look like Iraqi military boots on the ground and not the U.S. military.” But he said, “It’s a political disguise. This is an industry that is a proxy, it is creating the environment of security and protection without too many U.S. soldiers on the ground.”

Key Democrats, led by Hillary Clinton, leave no doubt that endless war is official U.S. doctrine

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Photo: Reuters

Photo: Reuters

– by Glenn Greenwald, The Intercept

Long before Americans were introduced to the new 9/11 era super-villains called ISIS and Khorasan, senior Obama officials were openly and explicitly stating that America’s “war on terror,” already 12 years old, would last at least another decade. At first, they injected these decrees only anonymously; in late 2012, The Washington Post – disclosing the administration’s secret creation of a “disposition matrix” to decide who should be killed, imprisoned without charges, or otherwise “disposed” of – reported these remarkable facts:

Among senior Obama administration officials, there is a broad consensus that such operations are likely to be extended at least another decade. Given the way al-Qaida continues to metastasize, some officials said no clear end is in sight. . . . That timeline suggests that the United States has reached only the midpoint of what was once known as the global war on terrorism.”

In May, 2013, the Senate Armed Services Committee held a hearing on whether it should revise the 2001 Authorization to Use Military Force (AUMF). A committee member asked a senior Pentagon official, Assistant Secretary Michael Sheehan, how long the war on terror would last; his reply: “At least 10 to 20 years.” At least. A Pentagon spokesperson confirmed afterward “that Sheehan meant the conflict is likely to last 10 to 20 more years from today — atop the 12 years that the conflict has already lasted.” As Spencer Ackerman put it: “Welcome to America’s Thirty Years War,” one which – by the Obama administration’s own reasoning – has “no geographic limit.”

Listening to all this, Maine’s independent Sen. Angus King said: “This is the most astounding and most astoundingly disturbing hearing that I’ve been to since I’ve been here. You guys have essentially rewritten the Constitution today.” Former Bush DOJ lawyer Jack Goldsmith – himself an ardent advocate of broad presidential powers – was at the hearing and noted that nobody even knows against whom this endless war is being waged: “Amazingly, there is a very large question even in the Armed Services Committee about who the United States is at war against and where, and how those determinations are made.”

All of that received remarkably little attention given its obvious significance. But any doubts about whether Endless War – literally – is official American doctrine should be permanently erased by this week’s comments from two leading Democrats, both former top national security officials in the Obama administration, one of whom is likely to be the next American president.

Leon Panetta, the long-time Democratic Party operative who served as Obama’s Defense Secretary and CIA Director, said this week of Obama’s new bombing campaign: “I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war.” Only in America are new 30-year wars spoken of so casually, the way other countries speak of weather changes. He added that the war “will have to extend beyond Islamic State to include emerging threats in Nigeria, Somalia, Yemen, Libya and elsewhere.” And elsewhere: not just a new decades-long war with no temporal limits, but no geographic ones either. He criticized Obama – who has bombed 7 predominantly Muslim countries plus the Muslim minority in the Phillipines (almost double the number of countries Bush bombed) – for being insufficiently militaristic, despite the fact that Obama officials themselves have already instructed the public to think of The New War “in terms of years.”

Then we have Hillary Clinton (whom Panetta gushed would make a “great” president). At an event in Ottawa yesterday, she proclaimed that the fight against these “militants” will “be a long-term struggle” that should entail an “information war” as “well as an air war.” The new war, she said, is “essential” and the U.S. shies away from fighting it “at our peril.” Like Panetta (and most establishment Republicans), Clinton made clear in her book that virtually all of her disagreements with Obama’s foreign policy were the by-product of her view of Obama as insufficiently hawkish, militaristic and confrontational.

At this point, it is literally inconceivable to imagine the U.S. not at war. It would be shocking if that happened in our lifetime. U.S. officials are now all but openly saying this. “Endless War” is not dramatic rhetorical license but a precise description of America’s foreign policy.

It’s not hard to see why. A state of endless war justifies ever-increasing state power and secrecy and a further erosion of rights. It also entails a massive transfer of public wealth to the “homeland security” and weapons industry (which the US media deceptively calls the “defense sector”).

Just yesterday, Bloomberg reported: “Led by Lockheed Martin Group (LTM), the biggest U.S. defense companies are trading at record prices as shareholders reap rewards from escalating military conflicts around the world.” Particularly exciting is that “investors see rising sales for makers of missiles, drones and other weapons as the U.S. hits Islamic State fighters in Syria and Iraq”; moreover, “the U.S. also is the biggest foreign military supplier to Israel, which waged a 50-day offensive against the Hamas Islamic movement in the Gaza Strip.” ISIS is using U.S.-made ammunition and weapons, which means U.S. weapons companies get to supply all sides of The New Endless War; can you blame investors for being so giddy?

I vividly recall how, in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s killing, Obama partisans triumphantly declared that this would finally usher in the winding down of the War on Terror. On one superficial level, that view was understandable: it made sense if one assumes that the U.S. has been waging this war for its stated reasons and that it hopes to vanquish The Enemy and end the war.

But that is not, and never was, the purpose of the War on Terror. It was designed from the start to be endless. Both Bush and Obama officials have explicitly said that the war will last at least a generation. The nature of the “war,” and the theories that have accompanied it, is that it has no discernible enemy and no identifiable limits. More significantly, this “war” fuels itself, provides its own inexhaustible purpose, as it is precisely the policies justified in the name of Stopping Terrorism that actually ensure its spread (note how Panetta said the new U.S. war would have to include Libya, presumably to fight against those empowered by the last U.S. war there just 3 years ago).

This war – in all its ever-changing permutations – thus enables an endless supply of power and profit to flow to those political and economic factions that control the government regardless of election outcomes. And that’s all independent of the vicarious sense of joy, purpose and fulfillment which the sociopathic Washington class derives from waging risk-free wars, as Adam Smith so perfectly described in Wealth of Nations 235 years ago:

In great empires the people who live in the capital, and in the provinces remote from the scene of action, feel, many of them, scarce any inconveniency from the war; but enjoy, at their ease, the amusement of reading in the newspapers the exploits of their own fleets and armies. To them this amusement compensates the small difference between the taxes which they pay on account of the war, and those which they had been accustomed to pay in time of peace.They are commonly dissatisfied with the return of peace, which puts an end to their amusement, and to a thousand visionary hopes of conquest and national glory from a longer continuance of the war. 

The last thing the Washington political class and the economic elites who control it want is for this war to end. Anyone who doubts that should just look at the express statements from these leading Democrats, who wasted no time at all seizing on the latest Bad Guys to justify literally decades more of this profiteering and war-making.

Ex-Pentagon chief predicts 30-year ISIS war

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Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to 'repair the damage' by showing leadership after having 'lost his way' in the fight against ISIS. (File Photo: AFP)

Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to ‘repair the damage’ by showing leadership after having ‘lost his way’ in the fight against ISIS. (File Photo: AFP)

– by Al Arabiya News

The war against the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS) could go on for decades because of poor decision-making on the part of the U.S. administration, the former chief of the Pentagon Leon Panetta said in an interview published Monday.

In the interview with USA Today, Panetta also criticized Obama for a deciding not the arm the moderate Syrian rebels in the early stages of the conflict in Syria.

“I think we’re looking at kind of a 30-year war” that could extend to threats in Libya, Nigeria, Somalia and Yemen, Panetta told the newspaper.

Panetta, a respected policymaker who served under Obama, blamed the challenges on decisions the president made over the past three years.

Among those decisions, he cited Obama’s failure to push the Iraqi government hard enough to allow a residual U.S. force to stay in the country after troops withdrew in 2011, saying that created a security “vacuum.”

The former defense secretary also pointed to Obama’s rejection of advice in 2012 from Panetta and then-secretary of state Hillary Clinton to begin arming Syrian rebels fighting against President Bashar al-Assad.

“I do think we would be in a better position to kind of know whether or not there is some moderate element in the rebel forces that are confronting Assad,” Panetta said.

And Panetta said Obama lost credibility when he warned Assad not to use chemical weapons against his own people and then failed to act when the Syrian leader crossed that “red line” last year.

Panetta says Obama now has an opportunity to “repair the damage” by showing leadership after having “lost his way” in the fight against the extremist group that has seized chunks of territory in Iraq and Syria.

The former Pentagon chief was speaking ahead of the release of his new book, “Worthy Fights: A Memoir of Leadership in War and Peace,” set for Tuesday by Penguin Press.

USA Today said that Panetta is explicitly critical Obama in his book, writing that his “most conspicuous weakness” was “a frustrating reticence to engage his opponents and rally support for his cause.”

The president too often “relies on the logic of a law professor rather than the passion of a leader,” the former defense chief added, saying that approach means Obama “avoids the battle, complains and misses opportunities.”

At times, Obama “gets so discouraged by the process” that he sometimes stops fighting, Panetta told USA Today.

But Panetta also expressed hope Obama would change course during his last two years in office and recover from his mistakes.

“My hope is that the president, recognizing that we are at a kind of critical point in his administration, will take the bit in his teeth and will say, ‘We have got to solve these problems,’” Panetta said.

(With AFP)

'US won’t decide our policies' – Sweden on Palestinian state recognition

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palestine-resist

– by RT

Washington will not be the one to decide Sweden’s policies, Swedish Foreign Minister Margot Wallström said after the US criticized Stockholm’s plans to officially recognize Palestine as a sovereign state.

“It’s not the US that decides our politics,” Wallström said, adding that the new Swedish authorities expected to “get criticism” after their announcement on Palestinian statehood.

However, the minister stressed that Stockholm “will continue the constructive dialogue with the US to explain our motives and reasons for this,” Aftonbladet newspaper reported.

In his first speech before the country’s parliament on Friday, Prime Minister Stefan Lofven promised that Sweden will “recognize the states of Palestine.”

Margot Wallström, the Swedish foreign minister (Reuters/Srdjan Zivulovic)

READ MORE: Sweden to become first EU country to officially recognize State of Palestine

He added that the conflict with Israel “can only be solved with a two-state solution, negotiated in accordance with international law.”

If the initiative is approved by parliament, Sweden will become the first EU member to recognize Palestine as an independent state.

But Sweden’s plans were not welcomed by the US, Israel’s top ally, which warned the Scandinavians against rushing into things.

“We believe international recognition of a Palestinian state is premature,” US State Department spokesperson Jen Psaki said. “We certainly support Palestinian statehood, but it can only come through a negotiated outcome, a resolution of final status issues and mutual recognitions by both parties.”

She added that Israel and Palestine must be the ones “to agree on the terms on how they live in the future two states, living side-by-side.”

The Social Democrats gained power in Sweden during the general election in September, following eight years of conservative rule.

Prime Minister Lofven also promised to adjust Sweden’s foreign policy, which would include the country giving up on its aspirations to join NATO.

The Palestinian Authority is aiming to establish an independent state in the territories of the Gaza Strip and the West Bank, with East Jerusalem serving as the capital.

Israel captured both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip during the Six Day War in 1967.

East Jerusalem was later annexed as part of Israel’s indivisible capital, though this move has never been recognized internationally. Israel is also actively building settlements in the West Bank which are considered illegal by the UN.

Israel launched a 50-day military operation in the densely populated Gaza area this summer, which saw over 2,100 Palestinians – mainly civilians – killed and some 18,000 homes destroyed.

The Anglo-American Empire’s war of conquest. The war on the Islamic State (ISIL) is a lie

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There is no reasoning with an empire waging a world war of deception

cameron_obama

– by Larry Chin

On September 24, 2014, the United Nations passed a resolution paving the way to open-ended “anti-terror” warfare against the Islamic State (IS), the “network of death”, promising a war that will “last for years”.  

The “war on the Islamic State” is a lie. It is the same fetid Big Lie that is the “war on terrorism”, reheated and updated with new, bloodier special effects, new propaganda, a familiar but revised cast of demonic villains and a new military attack calendar.  

Three thousand lives were sacrificed on 9/11 for the fabricated “war on terrorism” against “Al-Qaeda” and Osama bin Laden.  Now, thirteen years of continuous imperial onslaught and tens of thousands of deaths and atrocities later,  the “Islamic State” escalation will topple Syria, Iran, transform Iraq, and provide yet another pretext to wreak havoc anywhere else the empire wishes.

But it is the same lie, built on the same propaganda cornerstones: the myth of the “outside enemy”, the threat of “Islamic terror”, eternal pretexts to galvanize public opinion behind an Anglo-American agenda of conquest and war that will never end.

It is the same lie, founded upon the idea that “Islamic terrorists” are enemies of the West, when, in amply documented fact, these terrorists are the West’s finest foot soldiers and military-intelligence assets.

The Islamic State, like Al-Qaeda and all entities that comprise the “Islamic Jihad” is a creation of the CIA and Anglo-American intelligence (Pakistan’s ISI, Saudi intelligence, British MI6, the Israeli Mossad, etc.). The various jihadist militias and military-intelligence assets and fronts—IS, Al-Qaeda, Al-Nusrah, etc. are  “American made”,  openly supported and utilized by the United States and its allies, as they have been continuously from the Cold War to this very second. These forces are carefully manipulated and guided weapons for US-NATO. Terrorists are instrumental to the ongoing US-led covert and overt operations in Syria.  Terrorists run by the US and CIA destabilized and toppled Libya, are integral to coming regime changes.  Under both direct and indirect orders of US-NATO sponsors and handlers, these “demon hordes” are, and will continue to be, the leading military-intelligence assets behind every major geostrategic action in the region.

The IS joins Al-Qaeda as today’s favorite “boogeyman” target. The war masks the true intent, which is the toppling of Syria and Iran, and onward.

The “terrorists” are depicted in propaganda as either villains or “freedom fighters”, depending on the day and the military theater. The horrific acts of the death squads, including beheadings and other atrocities, are standard operating procedure in CIA black operations, terror techniques going back to the Vietnam War and the Phoenix Program, and are done upon orders of US and US-allied military-intelligence. Decapitations of Syrian civilians have been ongoing for years, to media silence. The recent spate of beheadings of Americans and British have been selectively carried out (and in some cases staged) for propaganda purposes. Political theater designed to galvanize the dimwitted, ignorant masses to support massive retaliatory war.

According to recent polls, four out of five registered American voters overwhelmingly support military attacks against the Islamic State. The acquiescent, ignorant American masses, still irretrievably pacified by the propaganda “shock and fear” effect of 9/11, enthusiastically back any “retaliation” against “bad guys who cut off heads” and “threaten America”, and have no problem sending American youth to the front lines to be cannon fodder. They are “defending freedom”. The American sheeple believe—even love to believe—the Big Lie.  Whereas the citizens of Hong Kong and in other countries take passionately to the streets to fight for their democracy,  the average American has long abdicated his and her duty as an informed, vigilant citizen.  Far too busy shooting nude selfies on handheld gadgets—their brains addled by inane entertainment, and Hollywood celebrations of the national security apparatus—to care.

So-called liberals and progressives also back action against the Islamic State. The few who have any inkling that Islamic terror is a product of the US war machine wind up wringing their sweaty hands over the red herring of “blowback”: the tired idea that the US created but lost control of a Jihadist force that it now must contain. It is bogus. These militias are the American empire’s key foot soldiers and operatives, the leading force behind plans to topple Syria, just as they were in Libya. This is not blowback, but a well orchestrated military-intelligence operation, cloaked beneath a criminal conspiracy that is maintained by an ironclad elite consensus.

Islamic terrorism “stops” the minute that its sponsors at CIA, MI, ISI, etc. stop using it. The war itself stops when the elites who have planned this Final Solution to seize control of the last remaining oil supplies on the planet—the very life blood of the Anglo-American empire—stop, and give up their war of conquest and greed.  The entire apparatus collapses. But this will not happen in this lifetime. Not even in the event of planetary calamity.

To threaten humanity, to pretend to wage war against boogeyman that they themselves created, and continue to support and use: only those of world class evil could conceive of and carry out this horror.

The American network of death goose-steps to the abyss

With each passing day, more of the Anglo-American empire’s veneer falls away, revealing the violence at its core.

Leading the charge in front of the United Nations, the mendacious President Barack Obama thundered:

“No God condones this terror. There can be no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil. The only language understood by killers like this is the language of force.”

Here was a performance directly out of the playbook of the Third Reich and Bush/Cheney, brimming with threats, false morality, pseudo-religious claptrap, and invective directed against the perceived enemies. Here was Obama being who he really is, a war criminal.  The ghost of Hitler has to be envious.

No God condones deceit. No God condones the terror of the Anglo-American empire’s war of conquest. No God condones the extermination of tens of thousands of lives in more than a decade of imperial conquest for oil.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation—with the criminal leadership of an empire that will thrash and kill to the brink of extinction. There is no reasoning—no negotiation—warmongers who have wiped out entire swaths of humanity.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation— with an empire so desperate and out of answers that gangsterism replaces the rule of law, and false flag operations constitute foreign policy.There is no reasoning with those who could, in the span of just a few months, set off false flag destabilizations in Syria, false flag operations in support of a neo-Nazi cabal in Ukraine, plan and cover up the false flag shootdown of Flight MH-17 (blamed on Russia), support the bombing and conquest of Gaza by Israel (blamed on Hamas, in the wake of the murder of Israeli teenagers by ISIL terrorists), and set off the “sudden” rise of the Islamic State.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation— with an empire that must and will stop at nothing to control every inch of the Eurasian subcontinent, and destroy all opposition along the way, including potential nuclear confrontations with Russia and China.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation— with the functionaries and enablers of this empire—in governments, in media, everywhere. There is also no reasoning—no negotiation— with the cognitively impaired sheeple.

There is no reasoning—no negotiation— with the killers, the world planning orchestrators speaking the “language of force”; these “great men and women” who hold humanity in contempt.

There is, indeed, no reasoning—no negotiation—with this brand of evil.

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Sweden to become first EU country to officially recognize State of Palestine

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palestine-resist

Sweden’s newly-formed center-left government is set to recognize Palestine as a sovereign state, said Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. If Stockholm proceeds with the move it will be the first EU-member to officially endorse Palestinian statehood.

“The conflict between Israel can only be solved with a two-state solution, negotiated in accordance with international law,” Lofven said in the parliament as he made his first speech as PM on Friday.

The Social democrat leader added that the “two-state solution requires mutual recognition and a will to peaceful co-existence.”

“Sweden will therefore recognize the state of Palestine,” he concluded.

If Stockholm officially proceeds with the motion, it will be the first member of the European Union to recognize Palestinian statehood. Some European countries have already recognized the state of Palestine, however they did so before entering the 28-member bloc.

Ireland and Cyprus have upgraded Palestinian representation in Dublin to full embassy status in recent years joining other European countries such as Bulgaria, the Czech Republic, Hungary, Malta, Poland, Romania, and Slovakia.

Sweden’s Prime Minister Stefan Lofven. (Reuters/laudio Bresciani)

In November 2012, the UN General Assembly voted 138 to nine, with 41 abstentions, to change Palestine’s ‘entity’ status to ‘non-member observer state’. Palestinian statehood is mainly opposed by Israel and its key ally the US.

Sweden’s conservative government abstained from vote in the 2012 General Assembly, for which it was criticized by the opposition parties.

In September, Sweden held government elections which resulted in a shift to the left after eight years of conservative rule.

On Friday, Lofven announced his new cabinet, with Green Party spokesperson Asa Romson as his Deputy and Social Democrat Margot Wallström as Foreign Minister.

The new PM promised to change Sweden’s foreign policy adding that Sweden won’t seek membership of NATO, but won’t abstain from action if another country is attacked.

The Palestinian authority is aiming to establish an independent state in the territories of the Gaza strip the West Bank, with the capital in East Jerusalem. However the boundaries of the latter two are not clearly identified.

Israel captured both the West Bank and the Gaza Strip as a result of the Six-Day War in the Middle East in 1967. Captured East Jerusalem was later annexed as part of Israel’s indivisible capital, though this move has never been recognized internationally.

Israel has been building settlements in the West Bank, East Jerusalem, Gaza and the Golan Heights, which the international community has acknowledged to be illegal and hampering the peaceful resolution of the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

The Israeli settlement issue was among the reasons that led to the derailment of the peace talks between the conflicting sides in April. In September, Palestinian President Mahmoud Abbas said he would seek a UN Security Council resolution to demand a “firm timetable” to stop Israeli occupation.

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U.S praises Australia for air strike move against Islamic State

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Barack Obama, Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

Barack Obama, Oslo, Norway Photo: Sandy Young/Getty Images

Washington: The White House has praised Australia over its decision to join air strikes in Iraq and to send special forces military trainers to the country.

“With these deployments, Australia demonstrates its continued leadership and resolve in addressing the urgent and critical security challenges that threaten Australia, its people, and the broader international community,” White House spokesman Josh Earnest told reporters on Air Force One.

“Australians and Americans have fought alongside each other in every major conflict over the past century, and we are grateful for Australia’s further contribution,” Earnest said on Friday.

Australia’s cabinet earlier approved Super Hornets to start bombing raids against Islamic State extremists in coming days, supported by 400 RAAF personnel.

The RAAF will deploy six Super Hornets, a Wedgetail surveillance aircraft and a refueller.

About 200 special forces members will train and advise Iraqi forces, but are awaiting final legal approval before deploying.

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Moazzam Begg freed after terrorism case against him collapses

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Secret intelligence material handed to prosecutors demolished case against former Guantánamo Bay detainee

Moazzam Begg leaves Belmarsh prison in south London after his release. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

Moazzam Begg leaves Belmarsh prison in south London after his release. Photograph: Lefteris Pitarakis/AP

– by Ian Cobain

The prosecution of the former Guantánamo inmate Moazzam Begg has dramatically collapsed after the police and crown prosecutors were handed secret intelligence material that undermined the terrorism case against him.

Five days before Begg was due to go on trial on a string of terrorism charges, which carried prison terms of up to 15 years, prosecutors announced at the Old Bailey that they had “recently become aware of relevant material” that obliged them to offer no evidence.

He was released from Belmarsh high-security prison in south London after the judge entered a formal verdict of not guilty. Speaking to reporters at the gates of the prison, Begg said he had wanted his “day in court” but was happy to be a free man.

“I need to reconnect with my family again,” he said. “I need to understand what it’s like to be a free man and I think that it’s important to point out some of the government’s failures in its foreign policy and its internal policy: its clear demonising of the Muslim community.”

Police sources said the decision to halt the prosecution was taken following the receipt of intelligence material two months ago, while the Crown Prosecution Service said in a statement: “If we had been made aware of all of this information at the time of charging, we would not have charged.”

Asked whether the information had been handed over by MI5 and, if so, how long the agency had possessed the material, the Home Office said it would be inappropriate to comment, on the grounds that the decision to halt the prosecution had been taken by the police and CPS.

There was speculation that the newly disclosed material detailed the way in which Begg had informed British authorities of his plans to travel to Syria.

Begg spent more than seven months in custody after being arrested and questioned over a number of trips he had made to Syria a year earlier. His friends say that the experience had been deeply traumatic.

The 46-year-old from Birmingham was facing seven charges of possessing a document for the purposes of terrorism funding and training, and attending a terrorism training camp. He denied all the charges.

Christopher Hehir, prosecuting, told the Old Bailey that the CPS had previously been satisfied that they possessed sufficient evidence to secure Begg’s prosecution. He added, however: “The prosecution have recently become aware of relevant material, in the light of which, after careful and anxious consideration, the conclusion has been reached that there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction in this case. The prosecution therefore offers no evidence.”

Begg’s solicitor, Gareth Peirce, said he should never have been charged as his activities did not amount to terrorism. “This is a good man trying to do the right thing in a very difficult world,” she said.

“He is a rare individual who will talk to everyone and listen to everyone, even those with whom he profoundly disagrees. He has spent the near decade since he was released from the torture of Bagram and Guantánamo in attempting to wake the world up to injustice and to comprehend its causes and effects. There is nothing new that can have been discovered now that was not always crystal clear – that this is an innocent man.”

Begg had made no secret of trips he had made to Syria, at one point writing about his experiences in an internet post. He was taken aback by his arrest, protesting that he had not been engaged in terrorism.

On appearing in court, he denied attending a terrorist training camp “knowing or believing instruction or training was provided there for the purposes of terrorism” between 9 October 2012 and 9 April 2013.

He had also denied five charges of possessing articles for purposes connected with terrorism between 31 December 2012 and 26 February 2014. Those counts related to electronic documents found on a laptop computer in his possession.

Begg had further denied being involved in a funding arrangement between 14 July 2013 and 26 February 2014 by making available a Honda generator.

Had the case gone to trial, Begg was planning to argue before the jury that his actions – several months before the British government tried, and failed, to persuade parliament to sanction air strikes against Syrian government forces – were not the actions of a terrorist.

At an earlier hearing, his counsel, Ben Emmerson QC, told the court that his client’s stance on Syria was not at odds with the British government’s position. He said: “Mr Begg did not train anyone for the purposes of terrorism as defined in the 2001 [Terrorism] Act. Mr Begg says he was involved in training young men to defend civilians against war crimes by the Assad regime.

“This is not some sort of political defence. This is a serious point about the lethal and physical limits of the definition of terrorism because if the defence says the occasions concerned were defensive actions, in much the same way the UK was itself providing non-lethal aid, then we submit that would not be defined as an act of terrorism.”

Emmerson also said Begg had “never made any secret of his visits to Syria and on two occasions informed authorities of his travel plans in advance”.

Begg spent three years detained without charge after the al-Qaida attacks of 2001. In February 2002 he was arrested in Pakistan, handed over to US forces, and detained first at Bagram prison, north of Kabul, and then Guantánamo Bay. During his detention he was interrogated by British as well as US intelligence officers.

He was eventually released in January 2005. Working with the London-based rights group Cage, he became a prominent campaigner on behalf of terrorism suspects who were being denied basic legal rights.

Asim Qureshi, Cage’s research director, said on the collapse of Begg’s prosecution: “This has been a testing time for Moazzam, his family and the Muslim community. The criminalisation of virtually any Muslim who has been to Syria has only increased in intensity, while Cage has been attacked from every angle by a host of government agencies.

“We hope that Moazzam’s release is a sign that the government are now willing to adopt a more measured strategy in relation to anti-terrorism policy and avoid the attempt to criminalise all dissent and crush any organisation like Cage that stands up for the rule of law and justice.”

The Islamic Human Rights Commission chairman, Massoud Shadjareh, added: “As was widely suspected there seems to have been no basis for his arrest and it does seem that as a high-profile member of the Muslim community, Mr Begg was being made an example of in order to silence activists campaigning against draconian anti-terrorism laws.”

While West Midlands police and the CPS were not disclosing the exact nature of the new information, detectives and prosecutors were dismayed that it had not been made available to them earlier.

A CPS spokesperson said: “At the time that the charges against Mr Begg were authorised the CPS was satisfied, in accordance with the code for crown prosecutors, that there was sufficient evidence available to provide a realistic prospect of a conviction and that it was in the public interest to prosecute. However, in accordance with our continuing duty to review and working closely with the West Midlands counter-terrorism unit, we have been made aware of material previously not known to the police investigation that means that there is no longer a realistic prospect of conviction. If we had been made aware of all of this information at the time of charging, we would not have charged.”

West Midlands Assistant Chief Constable Marcus Beale said: “New material has recently been disclosed to police and CPS, which has a significant impact on key pieces of evidence that underpinned the prosecution’s case. Our criminal justice system – quite rightly – demands a very high standard of proof.

“I understand this is going to raise many questions. However, explaining what this newly revealed information is would mean discussing other aspects of the case which would be unfair and inappropriate as they are no longer going to be tested in court.

“From the beginning this case has challenged the relationship between West Midlands police and some of the communities we serve. I would like to reassure them and Mr Begg that at every stage of this investigation my officers acted in the best interests of the public and of justice.”

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