The truth at any cost lowers all other costs — curated by former US spy Robert David Steele.
This is a first empirical study on maritime terrorism based on a German piracy databank.
Schneider on Maritime Terrorism
Phi Beta Iota: Abstract is provided in English.
Admission of the failure of Intelligence, and yet nobody is asking why?
Does the CIA Even Know Who Its Drones Are Killing?
During the Bush era, the agency helped imprison scores of innocents. In the Obama era, it decides who to blow up.
The Atlantic, 7 November 2011
Then-Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld once said that the War on Terror detainees who made it to the prison at Guantanamo Bay were “the worst of the worst.” At the time, many Americans believed him. Hadn't the detainees been captured by the military or the CIA, or evaluated by experienced American interrogators before being transferred there? We now know that many of the 779 detainees who wound up at Gitmo were innocent.
“Of the 212 Afghans at the base, almost half were, in the assessments of the US forces, either entirely innocent, mere Taliban conscripts, or had been transferred to Guantánamo with no reason for doing so on file,” The Guardian reported earlier this year. Said the Telegraph, “Guantanamo Bay has been used to incarcerate dozens of terrorists who have admitted plotting terrifying attacks against the West — while imprisoning more than 150 totally innocent people, top-secret files disclose.”
President Obama doesn't send suspected terrorists to Guantanamo Bay. Instead, he kills them with drones.
The Small Wars Journal Blog has a post previewing a new book by Andrew Mackay and Steve Tatham. Behavioural Conflict: Why Understanding People and Their Motives Will Prove Decisive in Future Conflict considers how the West's Post Cold War conflicts have been fought amongst people rather than between armies. From publisher's description:
“These people, amongst others, have been Mendes, Kissis and Konos (and the 13 other tribes of Sierra Leone), they have been Serbo-Croats, Bosnians, Kosovars, Albanians, Unizzahs, al-Ribads, al-Zobaids, Kurds, al-Montifig (and the other tribal groups of the nearly 40 that make up Iraq), Pashtuns, Hazaras, Uzbecks (and the other 6 ethnic groupings that make up Afghanistan's rich tapestry of population), they have been Sunni, Shia, Orthodox, Agnostic, Christian, Catholic; they have been farmers, politicians, police, administrators, businessmen, narco khans, war lords, men, women and children. In fact you can divide them in any one of a hundred or so different ways but the only certainty is that all of these groups and people will exhibit behaviour, that may appear utterly irrational but for better or worse will have profound effects upon the manner in which military missions are conducted.”
The book is based on a paper written in 2009 for the Defence Academy of the United Kingdom. The tale of the lone Afghan farmer sowing seeds in a field near the Kajaki Dam should be a warning to those from the developed world who underestimate the intelligence of people just because they don't speak English or have grown up without electricity and running water.
This book will have utility for anyone working in military, peacekeeping, policing or any other other cross cultural situation.
Global Terrorism Research Project
Haverford College
Welcome to the Global Terrorism Research Project, a product of the Political Science department at Haverford College. Professor Barak Mendelsohn oversees the project supported by a team of student researchers. The site consists of two sections, resources and the al-Qaeda Statements Index. The resources section of our website contains a compilation of links to various other useful websites that provide information on terrorism and international security. This portion of the website contains links to books, primary sources, data sources, journal indexes, news, blogs, research sites, research portals and resources for students. The al-Qaeda Statements Index is a long term project that consists of a comprehensive collection of statements released by al-Qaeda since 1994. This section also includes biographical information on authors affiliated with al-Qaeda who have a significant number of statements indexed.
From the YouTube description:
Amazing testimony of ex CIA Asset Susan Lindauer. 5 years of legal troubles, 1 year in prison for daring to tell the truth. During the Bush era the top controllers of the governmental mechanics of Defense and national Security wanted to have a war with Iraq. They got their wish and anyone who got in the way were dealt with severely no matter if they violated a law or not. Not brought to trial she was jailed under the “Patriot Act” which amounted to summary punishment outside a Verdict in a court of law. She was punished in jail without a trial at all This is part of her story that is just unfolding now. She has waited 10 years to tell this story.
Extreme Prejudice – CIA Whistle Blower Susan Lindauer PDX 911Truth
Phi Beta Iota Summary of Presentation:
Using the extra-judicial liquidation of Anwar al-Awlaqi as a point of departure, Patrick Seale provides very useful and important survey of the strategic and grand strategic implications of the expanding U.S. conflict in what now might be called the Yemen Theater of Operations (YTO) in what is rapidly mutating into a U.S. Jihad against the Islamic world. The United States is now in involved militarily in wars encompassing at least six theaters of operations in the Islamic world, including Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Libya, and Somalia, with possible expansions into the Sahel and Nigeria, not to mention Iran and who knows where else.
Chuck Spinney
Badalona, Catalunya (part of Spain according to some)
Anwar al-Awlaqi, Yemen, and Obama’s War
by Patrick Seale
Agence Global, 4 Oct 2011
On Friday, 30 September, Yemen announced that a Hellfire missile fired from a CIA-operated drone had killed Shaykh Anwar al-Awlaqi, in the north of the country. His grief-stricken father, once a minister of agriculture in a Yemeni government, went to the scene to collect and bury the pieces of what remained of Anwar’s body. It was the seventh U.S. strike in Yemen this year.
Anwar al-Awlaqi was a virulent critic of American foreign policy in the Arab world, and a passionate advocate of al-Qaida’s form of Islamic jihad. He was also a U.S. citizen, born in New Mexico, with an engineering degree from Colorado State University. His internet sermons, delivered in fluent English, had a devoted following, especially among young Muslims in the West.
His killing inevitably aroused a storm of controversy in the United States about its legality. In an article in The National Interest, Paul R. Pillar, a former senior CIA officer now a university professor, described it as “essentially a long-range execution without judge, jury or publicly presented evidence.” This is a subject which must be left to the Americans to debate.
What are its probable consequences? The most obvious is that it is likely further to inflame some Muslims against the United States, drawing fresh recruits into the jihadist struggle. “Why kill him in this brutal, ugly way?” a member of his Awalik tribe was quoted as saying. “Killing him will not solve the Americans’ problem with al-Qaida. It will just increase its strength and sympathy in this region.”
A key question, therefore, is whether al-Qaida — including its Yemen-based offshoot, “Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula” — is an organisation or a cause.
