Key Players – Page 121 – Public Intelligence Blog

Cannot help but remember the graphic on terrorism as a boil.

Haven't We Seen This Movie Before?

The Open-Ended Global War on Terrorism

PEPE ESCOBAR

Asia Times, 23 January 2013

And the winner of the Oscar for Best Sequel of 2013 goes to… The Global War on Terror (GWOT), a Pentagon production. Abandon all hope those who thought the whole thing was over with the cinematographic snuffing out of “Geronimo”, aka Osama bin Laden, further reduced to a fleeting cameo in the torture-enabling flick Zero Dark Thirty.

It’s now official – coming from the mouth of the lion, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Martin Dempsey, and duly posted at theAFRICOM site, the Pentagon’s weaponized African branch.

Exit “historical” al-Qaeda, holed up somewhere in the Waziristans, in the Pakistani tribal areas; enter al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM). In Dempsey’s words, AQIM “is a threat not only to the country of Mali, but the region, and if… left unaddressed, could in fact become a global threat.”

With Mali now elevated to the status of a “threat” to the whole world, GWOT is proven to be really open-ended. The Pentagon doesn’t do irony; when, in the early 2000s, armchair warriors coined the expression “The Long War”, they really meant it.

Even under President Obama 2.0′s “leading from behind” doctrine, the Pentagon is unmistakably gunning for war in Mali – and not only of the shadow variety. [1] General Carter Ham, AFRICOM’s commander, already operates under the assumption Islamists in Mali will “attack American interests”.

Thus, the first 100 US military “advisers” are being sent to Niger, Nigeria, Burkina Faso, Senegal, Togo and Ghana – the six member-nations of the Economic Community of West African States (ECOWAS) that will compose an African army tasked (by the United Nations) to reconquer (invade?) the parts of Mali under the Islamist sway of AQIM, its splinter group MUJAO and the Ansar ed-Dine militia. This African mini-army, of course, is paid for by the West.

Students of the Vietnam War will be the first to note that sending “advisers” was the first step of the subsequent quagmire. And on a definitely un-Pentagonese ironic aside, the US over these past few years did train Malian troops. A lot of them duly deserted. As for the lavishly, Fort Benning-trained Captain Amadou Haya Sanogo, not only did he lead a military coup against an elected Mali government but also created the conditions for the rise of the Islamists.

Continue reading “Penguin: Open-Ended Global War on “Terrorism””

2013/01/23

NIGHTWATCH: Weak Signal from Algeria – Anti-US Forces Up Their Game

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 07 Other Atrocities, 08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 09 Terrorism, 10 Security, 11 Society, Civil Society, Government, Military

Algeria-US: Update. A senior Algerian official said that one of the terrorists captured at the In Amenas gas plant said under interrogation that some of the dead Egyptian terrorists also participated in the attack on the US Consulate in Benghazi last year. Three terrorists are in custody.

The official said the terrorists staged in southern Libya with arms purchased in Tripoli, Libya. He also said, “This is the result of the Arab Spring…. I hope the Americans are conscious of this.”

Comment: There is no way to corroborate the detainee's statement. What is worth noting is that the Algerian official's statements help explain why the Algerians might have had few qualms about assaulting the terrorists, despite the risk to foreigners. The Algerian government expects more attacks and the outcome will probably not be much different for foreigners.

The government has opposed US policy in the Arab world, especially the overthrow of the Qadhafi government. Some officials are making it very clear they hold American policy ultimately responsible for the gas plant attack in Algeria, the invasion of northern Mali by Islamist fighters and future attacks to come.

Americans working in Algeria are at increased risk from terrorists. Moreover, their safety does not appear to be a major factor in government planning for rescue operations.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Weak Signal from Algeria – Anti-US Forces Up Their Game”

2013/01/20

Wayne Madsen: CIA Report on Pollard, Israel-South Africa Nuclear Proliferation, Israel Trading US Nuclear Secrets to Russia

08 Wild Cards, Corruption, Government, Law Enforcement, Military

CIA Report: Israel Guilty of Nuclear Proliferation

Israeli spy was central cog in nuclear weapons proliferation alliance

It is clear that during the middle of December of last year that the Obama White House had settled on former Nebraska Republican Senator Chuck Hagel to be the Secretary of Defense.

The U.S. Intelligence Community and defense establishment was told to come up with a strategy to combat the expected strong opposition to the nomination of the critical of Israel Hagel by that nation’s lobby in the United States.

The pro-Hagel circles needed a secret weapon to counteract the Israel supporters who would stress that Hagel was not supportive of the «special relationship» between the United States and Israel.

There was no better way to demonstrate that Israel was no special ally of the United States but a longtime hostile intelligence threat to America by declassifying a large part of the Central Intelligence Agency’s Damage Report arising from the intense espionage carried out by one-time U.S. Naval Intelligence spy Jonathan Jay Pollard on behalf of Israel.

The declassification of the long-classified Pollard report was made on December 16, 2012. However, the first substantial media reports on the report began around December 26.

The Jewish media, including Yeshiva World, Tablet Magazine, and Jewish Week, contended the report only showed that Pollard disclosed classified information on Arab and Soviet military capabilities, ignoring the fact that Pollard’s disclosures revealed the nature of U.S. intelligence sources and methods in obtaining such information, thereby putting U.S. civilian and military assets in extreme jeopardy.

The one major explosive revelation in the declassified report is Pollards’ involvement in a highly-classified Israeli-South African program to test a nuclear weapon in the South Atlantic/South Indian Ocean region in September 1979.

The Pollard Damage Assessment was prepared by the Director of Central Intelligence’s Foreign Denial and Deception Analysis Committee and issued on October 30, 1987.

The report reveals for the first time that Pollard began working as a U.S. naval intelligence watch officer the same month that Israel and South Africa, possibly with the financial support of Taiwan, detonated a nuclear device in the South Atlantic/South Indian Ocean near South Africa’s Prince Edward Islands.

Read full article.

Continue reading “Wayne Madsen: CIA Report on Pollard, Israel-South Africa Nuclear Proliferation, Israel Trading US Nuclear Secrets to Russia”

2013/01/182013/01/18

Yoda: China — A Focal Point

02 China, 03 Economy, 03 Environmental Degradation, 07 Health, 11 Society, Earth Intelligence

To be Jedi is to face the truth, and choose. Give off light, or darkness, Padawan. Be a candle, or the night.

–YODA, Dark Rendezvous

China's Urban Air Kills Rural Plants

As people in Beijing and northern China struggle with severe air pollution this winter, the toxic air is also making life hard for plants and even food crops of China, say researchers who have been looking at how China's plants are affected by air pollution.

Beijing's extreme smog event this week has made headlines, with the American Embassy calling the pollution levels “hazardous” and Beijing writer Zheng Yuanjie blogging that “the air smells like sulfur perfume, as the capital city currently looks like a poisonous huge gas can,” according to a report on Al Jazeera.
BLOG: 7 of 10 Most Air-Polluted Cities Are in China

“In the last 50 years there has been a 16-fold increase in ozone pollution” in the Beijing area, said Hanqin Tian of Auburn University in Alabama, who studies the effects of China's pollution and climate change on plants. He said the soup of pollutants, including harmful sulfur and nitrogen compounds “is definitely expanding into new areas; into the countryside.”

Read full article.

Continue reading “Yoda: China — A Focal Point”

2013/01/17

Owl: Tuareg Independence — Does This Scare the French More than Algerian Terrorists Armed by the USA?

08 Wild Cards

Tuareg Independence, not Al Quada Terrorists, is the the Real Target of the French and West

Justin Raimondo's analysis and debunking of what is really going on in Mali has it right, I believe: it is not about expunging Al Queda or terrorist affiliates, but rather about reasserting French imperialism at a time when the French government needs a way to distract its people from economic woes.

“News accounts refer to the rebels as “Islamists,” an easy label to affix to groups very few know anything about. The reality, however, is quite different: the rebels are Tuaregs of Northwest Africa, a nomadic group whose historic homeland crosses the boundaries of Mali, Algeria, Libya, Niger, and Burkina Faso. They are herders and smugglers, whose caravans once provided the only source of commercial contact between the empires of central Africa and the Arab lands to the north. Their fight for independence precedes the existence of Al Qaeda by a hundred and fifty years. In the Great Scramble for European colonies that began at the end of the 19th century, French colonialists invaded, seized the land, and subjected the locals to a program of forced “assimilation” into “French civilization.” The Tuaregs have been fighting to regain their independence ever since. Today, however, that struggle has been reinterpreted as yet another example of “Islamic terrorism.” This is outright false. The Tuareg independence movement is led by the National. Movement for the Liberation of Awazad (MNLA), a secular organization that only wants autonomy for the Tuareg areas of Mali. There are active Islamists in Mali, affiliated with Ansar Dine, which has no known affiliation with Al Qaeda in the Mahgreb other than the fact that Ansar Dine’s leader, Ag Ghaly, is a cousin of AQIM commander Hamada Ag Hamada. “It is true that Ansar Dine have the black flags, but they are not Al Qaeda,” said MNLA spokesman Ag Assarid. “They want stability on the streets,” which the “government” of Mali is unable to provide, and “they are against Al Qaeda too.” North African specialist Salma Belaala concurs: “We can’t make a systematic link between the AQIM and Tuareg. It’s completely false.”

As Raimondo shows, the government of Mali is deeply corrupt:

Continue reading “Owl: Tuareg Independence — Does This Scare the French More than Algerian Terrorists Armed by the USA?”

2013/01/172013/01/18

NIGHTWATCH: Mali Out of Algeria — French Fighting Algerians Not Displaced Libyans + Mali RECAP

04 Inter-State Conflict, 05 Civil War, 08 Wild Cards, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Ineptitude, Military

Algeria: Islamist militants, apparently affiliated with al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb, seized a natural gas facility in east-central Algeria early Wednesday. The 20 or so attackers took as hostages up to 41 foreign supervisors, technicians and workers. They include at least 13 Norwegians and seven Americans, plus one Irishman, and a number of Japanese and British citizens. Two workers died in the attack.

The group announced that this attack was in retaliation for the French use of Algerian airspace to mount their attack against Islamist rebels in Mali. The attack group reportedly is led by a militant named Mokhtar Belmokhtar, an Algerian. He claimed that his group would release the hostages if the French stopped their operations in Mali.

During this Watch, Algerian forces have surrounded the plant and the situation is in a standoff.

Comment: Despite French warnings about retaliation, this plant in eastern Algeria undertook no increased security measures. The salient features of the Islamists in Mali to date are their organization and discipline. Today's action adds to their military repertoire communications connectivity with sympathetic groups in Algeria. The Islamists threatened retaliation over the weekend and they have been as good as their word.

Today's attack and hostage-taking occurred a long way from Mali. The al-Qaida franchise in the Saharan region is far more sophisticated and coordinated than the Pashtun and Uzbek tribal fighters in Afghanistan or the tribal Arabs in Yemen. Southern Algeria appears to be their base of operations, not LIbya.

Mali: Malian and French ground troops clashed with Islamic rebels in Diabaly on 16 January. The French-Malian force has not yet recaptured the village.

Mauritania reportedly has increased its border patrols, reducing the rebel ability to operate with impunity from Mauritanian territory.

Comment: A prominent narrative in the English language press is that the jihadists and Islamist rebels who seized northern Mali, plus their weapons, came from Libya. In fact, the information in the public domain indicates they came from Algeria and maintain connectivity with other Algerian Islamist groups. The attack at the gas facility at In Amenas, Algeria, tends to reinforce that judgment.

The significance is that the Islamist takeover of northern Mali was not a ripple effect from the inept NATO management of the Libyan uprising. It is a more sinister and well planned expansion of the Algerian Islamist rebels, who form the core of al Qaida in the Islamic Maghreb. These are tough guys.

The French are not fighting Libyan terrorists in Mali. They are fighting Algerians [armed by Americans] …again. Apparently several thousand of them.

Continue reading “NIGHTWATCH: Mali Out of Algeria — French Fighting Algerians Not Displaced Libyans + Mali RECAP”

2013/01/122013/01/12

Berto Jongman: Who Owns the Gun Business in the USA? To What End? What Happens If All Gun Factories and Ammunition Factories Are Shut Down?

08 Wild Cards, 09 Justice, 10 Security, 11 Society, Commerce, Cultural Intelligence, Government, Law Enforcement, Officers Call

Sorcha Faal is a known fabricator with a gift for connecting sources that are worth studying.

Obama Drug Cartel Moves To Destroy Jewish Gun Empire In US

A shocking new Federal Security Services (FSB) report on the Obama regimes accelerated plan to disarm his countries citizens, claims that the US President is being supported in his efforts by the Mexican Sinaloa Cartel, both of whose “main target” is the powerful and feared Jewish-American billionaire Steve Feinberg [photo 2^nd left], who controls nearly 85% of all private weapons manufacturing in the United States.

According to this report, Obama, shortly after taking office in 2009, signed a secret agreement with the Sinaloa Cartel, and which is described by the United States Intelligence Community as “the most powerful drug trafficking organization in the world.”

This sinister organization is a drug-trafficking and organized crime syndicate based in the city of Culiacán, Sinaloa, with operations in the Mexican states of Baja California, Durango, Sonora and Chihuahua, and with thousands of guns provided to them by the Obama regime, in an operation called “Fast and Furious,” unleashed a war upon rival gangs that, to date, has killed over 60,000.

Even worse, this report continues, under both the Bush and Obama regimes, the Sinaloa Cartel was allowed to transport tonnes of drugs to Chicago for distribution throughout the United States, while at the same time being protected by both the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA).

This astounding FSB allegation was confirmed this past summer when a high-ranking Mexican drug cartel operative named Jesus Vicente Zambada-Niebla [photo 3^rd left], known as the Sinaloa Cartel’s “logistics coordinator,” stated in US Federal Court that the Obama regimes “Fast and Furious” operation “wasn’t about tracking guns, it was about supplying them — all part of an elaborate agreement between the US government and Mexico’s powerful Sinaloa Cartel to take down rival cartels.”

Continue reading “Berto Jongman: Who Owns the Gun Business in the USA? To What End? What Happens If All Gun Factories and Ammunition Factories Are Shut Down?”