QUESTIONS ABOUT TERRORISM

"A people who's primary aims are driving, shopping, and television are subject to terrorism at any time."
~ Steven Deitz.

Okay, I have a question for you, but first let me set up the scenario.

A white supremacist opens fire with a .22 caliber rifle at the US Holocaust Museum in Washington DC. Is that terrorism, given that terrorims is defined by the US Code as:

(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;

Here's another scenario: A Christian jihadi kills an abortion doctor. The jihadi had connections to a white supremacist group and has threatened more attacks. Is that terrorism?

It sure looks like terrorism to me, if we go by the definition outlined by the US Code.

In April the Department of Homeland Security issued an report on the resurgence in rightwing extremism. "Extremism" here is a euphemism for "terrorism". And the FBI knew all about this Roeder guy hanging out around Dr. Tiller's clinic, yet they did nothing. All of this makes me wonder exactly who might be behind this sudden rise in the acting out of extreme right-wing fascists in the US, since the government obviously already knows that the fascists are going to act out. Why isn't it doing anything about its own terrorism?

Because, hell, it sure looks like terrorism to me.

And when is the US government going to send these guys to Guantanamo? Is it going to apply "enhanced interrogation techniques" on Roeder in order to find out where and when the next attacks will occur and by whom? Is it going to waterboard him? Why doesn't it waterboard von Brunn, the shooter at the Holocaust Museum, in order to find out who else in his social circle might be planning more terrorist attacks?

And if it doesn't do these things, why not?

Or, is "enhanced interrogation" just for brown people and other foreigners?

UPDATE: Liz Cheney, daughter of pro-torture Dick Cheney, thinks we should be careful with our words:

I do think people need to be a little bit careful about using words like terrorism before we know exactly -- you know, clearly, he [von Brunn] was psychotic. But we don't really know much yet about whether or not he was representing any sort of an organization. I think we need to be a little bit careful.

Not only does she think we should be careful about whom we call terrorists, but she's also trying to lay the groundwork for an insanity defense for the terrorist von Brunn.

Hypocrite!

WILLFUL AND DEDICATED IGNORANCE

"It is only in folk tales, children's stories, and the journals of intellectual opinion that power is used wisely and well to destroy evil. The real world teaches very different lessons, and it takes willful and dedicated ignorance to fail to perceive them."
~ Noam Chomsky.

I used to think IWPR was a fairly decent source of news, especially from such places as Iraq or Afghanistan, but I think I'll have to reasses my judgement.

IWPR has a piece up about the PKK and the KRG, in which it claims that the KRG is supposed to "end the fighting between it's neighbors and Kurdish rebels based inside its borders."

How is the KRG supposed to do that when those who need to sit downn to "end the fighting" are the Ankara regime and the Kurds of North Kurdistan, including the PKK?

Henri Barkey, author of a recent report on the region for a Washington-based think-tank the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, told IWPR the KRG could seek to persuade the rebels to agree to some form of deal “and ensure that a demilitarisation is done honourably”.

Now we have just seen where the PKK itself stands with regard to a political solution with the Ankara regime, in Hasan Cemal's series from Kandil (Part 1, Part 2, Part 3, and Part 4), all of which were available from the original source at Milliyet days before the IWPR piece was published. Later we had the piece from the London Times which included statements from Murat Karayılan that were the same as in the Hasan Cemal series.

So why didn't IWPR or Henri Barkey call attention to the position of the PKK as regards a cessation of hostilities? Why did they ignore PKK's position on the matter altogether?

And the same can be said of the jackass who passes for the "US embassy official in Ankara" who spoke to the author of the IWPR piece. Are we to believe that the diplomatic jackass had absolutely no clue about Hasan Cemal's series? I find that impossible to believe. The Americans know very well but have their own reasons for keeping the fighting going and those reasons are $$$$$.

The jackass continues:

Unlike the KRG, the United States endorses military action as part of a broader solution to the conflict. A US embassy official in Ankara told IWPR Washington’s strategy to end the fighting included supporting Turkey “with intelligence sharing and other operations”.

The Washington regime supports a losing strategy because its military-industrial complex benefits from it by the billions and, for this reason alone, the US has no reason to see an end to the fighting.

The US stepped up its engagement in the region in 2007 by classifying the PKK as a terrorist organisation – a move which effectively bars the group from any potential US-backed peace talks.

That's plain bullshit. If the US wanted peace talks, the US would overlook its bogus "List" and start to force the issue of negotiations.

“The PKK has conducted more than enough violent acts to justify being labelled a terrorist organisation,” said the US official, when asked whether the move to proscribe the group may have weakened prospects for an eventual settlement by affirming Turkey’s military strategy.

We should acquiesce to this statement, shouldn't we, since it's uttered by a member of the world's biggest terrorist organization--the Washington regime--whose violent acts make even the Ankara regime's violent acts pale in comparison. Of course, if it had been Americans in the position of Kurds in Turkey there would have been no uprising against repression because Americans are sheep. On the other hand, if they had engaged in uprising, they, too, would be terrorists.

To rise up against severe repression and gross human rights abuses is not terrorism. It's a natural reaction.

More from the jackass:

The US official stressed that military operations alone would not solve the conflict. She said leaders in the region were working towards “a comprehensive solution that includes other aspects of the Kurdish issue”, such as economic and social development.

"Military operations alone would not solve the conflict," but that's the only option either the Washington or the Ankara regime considers. Again: $$$$$$. Let's also note that it was immediately after Obama's visit to Turkey that the Ankara regime engaged in terror operations against the DTP, arresting its members in the same way that it arrested members of every other pro-Kurdish political party in Turkey's atrocious history. Doesn't that make it look very much like the Americans gave the green light for the terror operations?

And I'd like to know which "leaders in the region" are working to solve the Kurdish issue? Does this mean the Turkish security forces who rounded up the DTP politicians and workers? Does this mean the AKP who went all over The Southeast in the days before the 29 March electcion, handing out washing machines, refrigerators and cash?

But Barkey says the US “has not been as energetic as it could have been” in pursuing a resolution of the conflict.

Oh but the US has been very energetic in pursuing a military resolution, particularly when it appointed Lockheed Martin board of directors' member Joseph Ralston as its "special envoy" to coordinate the PKK for Turkey. Again: $$$$$

However, the KRG has kept its forces out of the conflicts, claiming it does not have the means or the grounds to retaliate.

“The KRG can’t attack or oust PJAK and PKK because [Iran and Turkey’s] problem is not with the KRG,” said Jabbar Yawar, a top official in charge of Kurdish forces.

This isn't quite the truth, is it? The fact of the matter is that the pesmerge know they got their asses kicked by PKK when they teamed up with TSK in the 1990s to annihilate the guerrillas and they don't want to do that again. At the time, Turkey itself tucked its tail between its legs and ran back across the border dragging its body bags behind it.

Yawar said Kurdish troops can defend the borders “if there are any ground assaults, but not against bombardments and aerial strikes”.

Well, that's not quite true either. It was PKK who defended the border during TSK's February 2007 land invasion and not the peşmêrge.

The KRG has long ruled out military action against the rebels, as demanded by Turkey and Iran. It has also avoided retaliating against its neighbours, as demanded by the Kurdish street.

The KRG rules out military action because the peşmêrge remembered what happened to them the last time they went to get a piece of PKK. If the Americans are so gung-ho to settle this situation for Ankara, let them go to the mountains and give it a try! A word of warning, however: You have to leave your Bradley's behind. Whatever you need, you'll have to carry on your back. Good luck and thank you for giving your lives for Atatürk's descendents.

There's also mention of the "Kurdish" conference in this piece:

In March, Iraq’s president and the leader of one of its two major Kurdish parties, Jalal Talabani, announced plans for an international peace conference drawing together the region’s Kurdish political groups.

The conference could have seen the triumphant climax of the KRG’s careful diplomacy if, as many had hoped, it yielded a declaration demanding the PKK and PJAK disarm.

But the meeting, due to have been hosted in Iraqi Kurdistan, was postponed. The reasons behind the cancellation are unclear. However, the delay has highlighted the problems the KRG faces as it seeks to promote peace beyond its borders.

TSK's been demanding PKK's disarmament for decades; the KRG will have the same luck as TSK in doing the same. However, the reasons behind the cancellation of the "Kurdish" conference are crystal clear: DTP won massively over AKP on 29 March and that means that the "Kurdish" conference, demanded by AKP and the Americans, would not be the proper vehicle for a joint Turkish-American demand for disarmament if DTP were sitting at the same table wearing their victory laurels.

No, there is nothing at all mysterious about the indefinite postponement of the "Kurdish" conference. Nor is there anything mysterious about this piece in IWPR; it's propaganda for the status quo.

To read more on how the media promotes the status quo, take a look at an analysis by Sibel Edmonds on how Newsweek deliberately screwed up reporting her case, in order to make her look less credible than she actually is. You'll find it at the first in her series on Project Expose MSM.

FALSE FLAG OPERATION PLANNED FOR 2009

"I personally think that everyone - journalists, professors, politicians - must think about the implications of the strategy if tension and the false flag. Here we are, indeed, in presence of phenomena that escape from every kind of agreement. That is why, every time that there are terrorist attacks, we must ask questions and try to understand what that implies."
~ Daniele Ganser.

It sounds to me like the Washington regime is planning another, major, false flag operation like it did seven years ago to initiate the corporate-friendly "Global War on Terror, Inc."

From 20 October:

"Mark my words," the Democratic vice presidential nominee warned at the second of his two Seattle fundraisers Sunday. "It will not be six months before the world tests Barack Obama like they did John Kennedy. The world is looking. We're about to elect a brilliant 47-year-old senator president of the United States of America. Remember I said it standing here if you don't remember anything else I said. Watch, we're gonna have an international crisis, a generated crisis, to test the mettle of this guy."

"I can give you at least four or five scenarios from where it might originate," Biden said to Emerald City supporters, mentioning the Middle East and Russia as possibilities. "And he's gonna need help. And the kind of help he's gonna need is, he's gonna need you - not financially to help him - we're gonna need you to use your influence, your influence within the community, to stand with him. Because it's not gonna be apparent initially, it's not gonna be apparent that we're right."

From Colin "Saddam-Has-Weapons-of-Mass-Destruction" Powell:

From Madeleine "One-Million-Dead-Iraqi-Kids-Are-Definitely-Worth-It" Allbright:

Coincidentally, or not, the Pentagon and its consultants are all ready to act:

Veteran Pentagon consultant Michael Bayer, chairman of the Defense Business Board, told his fellow panelists that the new president's inner circle should "set aside time in transition to identify the planning, gravitas and interagency process necessary to respond to a likely first-270-day crisis."

Because the PATRIOT Act and the Military Commissions Act weren't enough, Congress is looking into creating a domestic "intelligence" agency:

The United Kingdom has MI-5, which roots out spies and terrorists in the British Isles.

Canada has CSIS -- the Canadian Security Intelligence Service.

Now Congress is asking: Should the U.S. have its own domestic intelligence agency?

On Monday, at the request of Congress, the RAND Corporation outlined the pros and cons of establishing a domestic intelligence agency. It also discussed different ways to organize a new entity, either as part of an existing department or as a new agency.

Also--again because the PATRIOT Act and Military Commissions Act weren't enough--NORTHCOM became operational on 1 October:

On October 1, the Pentagon, for the first time ever, dedicated an Army force specifically to NorthCom, which is in charge of securing not some foreign region but the United States of America.

The unit it assigned is the 3rd Infantry, First Brigade Combat Team, which has spent three of the last five years in Iraq. It was one of the first units to get to Baghdad, and it was active in retaking and patrolling Fallujah. One of its specialties is counterinsurgency.

This marks a change for NorthCom, which was established on October 1, 2002. Its website still says it “has few permanently assigned forces,” and that “the command is assigned forces whenever necessary to execute missions, as ordered by the President and the Secretary of Defense.”

Leahy “asked for a briefing from his staff” on this development and “wants to monitor the situation,” an aide to Leahy said.

Leahy was instrumental in getting Congress to repeal the “Insurrection Act Rider” in the 2006 defense appropriations bill. That rider had given the President sweeping power to use military troops in ways contrary to the Insurrection Act and Posse Comitatus Act. The rider authorized the President to have troops patrol our streets in response to disasters, epidemics, and any “condition” he might cite.

Meanwhile, can it be that the US Joint Chiefs of Staff have already been coordinating the upcoming false flag operation with the general staffs of other nations?

Will that upcoming false flag operation have anything to do with biowarfare? Were the recent anthrax-wannabe mailings a dry-run for all of this?

Just in case, the Department of Homeland Security will be opening a new bio-"defense" lab in Maryland.

Inquiring minds want to know.

WHO ARE THE REAL TERRORISTS?

"May the prisoners' families not worry. If the prisoners are in the hands of HPG, which they are, they are in good hands."
~ Murat Karayılan, KCK Executive Council Chairman.

In case you missed it, here's the HBO documentary titled "Ghosts of Abu Ghraib". But it's not really torture, right? It's just torture lite; No need to lose any sleep over any of this. Forget what Anthony Taguba found as a result of his investigation.

Compare the treatment meted out by the Washington regime at Abu Ghraib to PKK's treatment of its prisoners of war. Check the video on that, too. Compare it to the one below and then you tell me who are civilized and who are the terrorists.

Run time 78 minutes. Full screen version here.

THE HUDSON INSTITUTE, ERGENEKON, AND THE ISLAMIST COUP IN TURKEY

"Our boys did it!"
~ Paul Henze, former CIA station chief, Ankara, referring to the 12 September coup.

Info-Turk posted a very interesting article about Ergenekon roots in DC. The original article is in French, but with a little help from Google, we have access to a fairly good translation, which is provided below.

One of the main characters in the article is Zeyno Baran of the Hudson Institute. Regular readers of Rastî will remember that back in June 2007, just before the last Turkish elections, there was a scandal from the Hudson Institute about various "war games" about Turkey that were under discussion there. If you need some background on that scandal, Hevallo also wrote some items on it, so do a search at his place for more info.

That should set you up nicely to understand all that's going on in the article from Info-Turk. I tried to straighten up a bit of the English below, but refer to the original French, at the link in the first paragraph, if something seems wildly off the mark.

Some rear bases network Ergenekon are in Washington

The investigation into the puppeteers behind the destabilization of Turkey revealed the involvement of a number of "temples" of the neo-conservative thought the USA, including the Hudson Institute, the American Enterprise Institute (AEI) and the Center for Security Policy of Frank Gaffney.

These think tanks have played a key role in the campaign to denigrate the party in power in Turkey since 2002, the Party of Justice and Development (AKP or Adalet ve Kalkinma Partisi).

They served as a rear base for the network Ergenekon, a network of the extreme right involving the "Grey Wolves" currently being dismantled by Turkish authorities as suspected of plotting a military coup, according to a new "strategy of tension "in the wake of well-known stay-behind network, Gladio.

At the centre of this operation is a certain Zeyno Baran, American citizen of Turkish origin at the Hudson Institute, where there is also David Wurmser and neo-con "frenchy" Laurent Murawiec.

On 2 August, Ms. Baran has almost openly defended Ergenekon in an article published by the Wall Street Journal under the title "Turkish Islamists inspire a new climate of fear".

Disappointed that the USA and the EU have welcomed the decision of the Constitutional Court not to declare the AKP anti-constitutional, it describes the investigation by the Justice Turkish campaign of harassment against opposition.

It is not surprising that she was outraged that the name of U.S. Vice President Dick Cheney has been mentioned in this context.

"The most important newspaper of the opposition Turkish Cumhuyiyet seems to be a key target. The telephone lines of those editors were placed under listening, and some conversations supposedly against the AKP party were revealed by the press" (this is a lie, because the press discovered them in a report on the investigation made public.) -- Including a transcript of a private conversation between the American newspaper correspondent of a Turkish journal and members of Dick Cheney's staff."

Ms. Baran then complains that Ilhan Selcuk, a major newspaper columnist, has been indicted as a suspect in the Ergenekon case.

Ms. Baran is the wife of Matthew J. Bryza, Deputy U.S. Secretary of State for European and Eurasian Affairs since June 2005. A career diplomat, Bryza spent his life between Turkey, the Caucasus and Central Asia, and dealing with hot spots like South Ossetia, Abkhazia and gas pipelines that have caused so much tension since the collapse of the USSR. It will not be surprised that Mr. Bryza is frequently invited as a speaker at the Hudson Institute.

It should be noted here that General Suka Tanyeri, director general of the Strategic Research and Study Center [SAREM, the Turkish General Staff's Strategic Research and Study Center] of the American major state, has been retired.

The American press suggests that one reason for this decision may come from his presence at special sessions, held behind closed doors by the Hudson Institute in June 2007, where delirious scenarios on a possible destabilization of Turkey were discussed.

At the time, this conference, which Baran had attended, had created some noise because it took place during the elections. One of the scenarios studied considering the explosion of two bombs, including one in the greatest city in the country Istanbul, killing some fifty people who would be assigned to the actions of extremist Kurdish PKK and serve to justify an invasion of Iraq.

Is it not surprising that today, [when there is] a full judicial inquiry into Ergenekon, and just when the Constitutional Court examined the legality of the AKP, two bombs have exploded? A bomb exploded in Istanbul and the other the next day in Kirkuk, a city in northern Iraq. Experts see it as a manipulation designed to poison relations which had recently improved.

(LPAC - http://www.solidariteetprogres.org/article4398.html, 7 August 2008)

Well, here's a newsflash for Zeyno Baran and everyone else: there has been another coup in Turkey, and it took place when the Constitutional Court, with a vote that was short only by one to close AKP, decided merely to fine AKP for its anti-secularism. The authors of the French article didn't bother to note how the votes in the court fell. Seven votes were needed for closure but there were only six votes out of eleven in that direction. There were ten votes out of eleven to charge AKP as a source of anti-secularism. Doesn't seem there was too much debate about that fact.

The reality is that now the regime in Ankara is truly Islamist and secularism was sold out by George W. Bush when he put R. Tayyip Erdoğan into power. The paşas, thus abandoned, had no choice but to cut a deal in Dolmabahçe in May 2007.

UNTOUCHABLE? NOT.

"I'm telling you that these people are untouchable. They are the untouchables because you see this with many, many people, and it's not raising any flags, the mainstream media is not reporting on it, the congress is not doing anything about it, so what does Marc Grossman have to worry about?"
~ Sibel Edmonds.

While I was away, quite a bit of information surfaced on Sibel Edmonds' case. Apparently ABC News discussed former congressman Dennis Hastert's new jobat the DC law-and-lobby firme of Dickstein Shapiro. Dennis Hastert was named in FBI tapes that Sibel Edmonds translated as taking drug/bribe money from Turkish agents in the US. Not surprisingly, the TC and Turkish companies are clients of Dickstein Shapiro.

For more information and commentary on the Hastert story, see what Luke had to say at Let Sibel Edmonds Speak. There you'll find, among other things, that the Clinton administration had appointed a special prosecutor from the Injustice Department to investigate congressman--not only Hastert--who were on the Turkish take. The Bush administration killed the investigation as soon as it was took over.

The other news has to do with the nuclear black market that Turkey, Marc Grossman, and A.Q. Khan--among others--were involved with. In this case, the CIA ordered the Swiss government to destroy evidence of a family that supplied the A.Q. Khan network with "supplies". The members of the family involved were also CIA assets.

Tens of thousands of documents relating to the case were destroyed by the Swiss government, working for the CIA. The IAEA was also present with the CIA at the destruction of the documents, which means that it is also in on the game and cannot be trusted.

As Luke summarizes:

The US government has done just about everything it can to ensure that Sibel Edmonds is prohibited from spilling the beans on what she knows about the nuclear black market, among other things. Now we see the hand of the US government apparently reaching into a foreign democracy [???--Mizgîn's question marks], exporting the concept of the 'unitary executive' and upsetting the balance of powers, to destroy evidence which was to be used to prosecute crimes involving the spread of nuclear weapons to rogue regimes.

The US government had previously demonstrated that it didn't wanted to prosecute these crimes, therefore their flimsy ex-poste rationales for destroying the evidence, in secret, need to be held up for extra scrutiny.

You can listen to Scott Horton's interview with Sibel and Luke on these matters, here.

There's a wrap-up, and information on the Injustice Departments redacted IG report on Sibel at Luke's. As Sibel mentions in the radio interview:

It is the fact that there is this nuclear black market, and we have many, many players, and some of these players happen to be our allies, some of these players happen to be U.S. persons, and yet, we only get partial stories, and whenever it is convenient for our government to say "Oh, okay if it is Syria, or if it is Iran…" and yet looking the other way when it happens to be people who we call our allies.

If that's not the very definition of hypocrisy, I don't know what is; but I do know that the "untouchables" are very touchable.