Category Archives: Terrorism

Al-Qaeda, Finance, Terrorism, U.S. Congress, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy

What Terrorism: Waffen-SS, USA?………..

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“Fargo treasures its placid lifestyle, seldom pierced by the mayhem and violence common in other urban communities. North Dakota’s largest city has averaged fewer than two homicides a year since 2005, and there’s not been a single international terrorism prosecution in the last decade. But that hasn’t stopped authorities in Fargo and its surrounding county from going on an $8 million buying spree to arm police officers with the sort of gear once reserved only for soldiers fighting foreign wars. Every city squad car is equipped today with a military-style assault rifle, and officers can don Kevlar helmets able to withstand incoming fire from battlefield-grade ammunition. And for that epic confrontation—if it ever occurs—officers can now summon a new $256,643 armored truck, complete with a rotating turret. For now, though, the menacing truck is used mostly for training and appearances at the annual city picnic, where it’s been parked near the children’s bounce house. “Most people are so fascinated by it, because nothing happens here,” says Carol Archbold, a Fargo resident and criminal justice professor at North Dakota State University. “There’s no terrorism here.”………………”

I don’t think they are all worried about some Texan used car dealer of Iranian origin coming to town with the mexican drug cartel in tow, hellbent on blowing up a Saudi minion in Fargo, ND (I loved that film). Do you?

It is all about the money, honey. A lot of money is being spent on expensive weapons that are not, will not, be needed in most townships. Weapons manufacturers, and their lobbyists, and some lawmakers, are doing quite well, thank you very much. Meanwhile American police forces are going around playing the Waffen-SS, practically raiding the equivalent of shoplifters with assault weapons.
National security my eyes.
Cheers
mhg


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Espionage, Iran, Israel, Terrorism

Prisoners in Foreign Lands: Alireza Asgari and Tony Blair……

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“The director of the armed forces’ Bureau for Strategic Studies says that former Iranian deputy defense minister Alireza Asgari is still alive in a Mossad prison in Israel and strongly enduring its appalling conditions. In fact, after the Zionists kidnapped the Iranian official, they tried to create the impression that figures like Asgari, who are ready to die for Islam, are not loyal to the Islamic Revolution any longer, but the truth is entirely different, Shamkhani told reporters on Thursday. Shamkhani, defense minister during the Khatami administration, said Asgari will never seek asylum in Israel because he is not such a personality, and if anyone doubts the fact, his is somehow linked with Mossad. He went on to say that Asgari, who was definitely kidnapped by the Zionist regime with the help of arrogant powers, is strongly resisting against the pressure and will not succumb because he is not a person to betray his country……..”

Mr. Asgari very likely has caused the Israelis some grief in the past, or so they think. Or maybe they are just trying to milk him for all the information he has, about Iran and Lebanon.


Interesting terms the Iranians use: “arrogant powers”. But they may be right in this case, the term may apply. There have been reports from within Israel corroborating that Ali Asgari has been held a prisoner without charges or conviction. Almost certainly the former Iranian deputy minister is being held in Israel against his will. Otherwise why not show him in public? If there has been no international case against Asgari and no international warrant for him, holding him is an act of piracy and against international law. It is the same as holding, say, Tony Blair a prisoner (there are no warrants for his arrest either, although I am not sure why).

No doubt in my mind that if the Iranians were holding a former high Israeli official, the UN Security Council would have met to take action against Iran.

Cheers
mhg


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Arab Politics, Iraq, Terrorism

As the Last American Soldiers Leave, Iraqis are at it Again………

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“An arrest warrant has been issued against the Iraqi Vice President Tariq al-Hashimi late Saturday for being the mastermind behind the recent bombing targeting the parliament, spokesman of Baghdad police operations said. The car bombing which took place on November 28, was an attempt to assassinate one of the members of the parliament, he added. According to the Iraqi government, evidence pointed at al-Hashimi’s embroilment in the parliament blast incident after deriving confessions from four arrested Islamic Party members……… Hashimi was the head of the Islamic Party, a political party representative of the Muslim Brotherhood in Iraq, in 2004, but in 2009 he announced that he is no longer a member of the party. Instead, he created the Tajdeed movement, which is considered to be one of the political parties component of the secular Iraqiya block. Meanwhile, the allegations against Hashimi came hours after the Iraqiya bloc which won most of the votes of Iraq’s disenchanted Sunni Arab minority Walked out of parliament………..”

A serious charge: Tareq al-Hashimi doesn’t look like a master terrorist. Lucky for Iraqis, they have three vice presidents.

Iraqis couldn’t seem to wait for the last departing American soldier to cross the Kuwait border before they started at each other again. All this may give senator John McCain and Lieberman (Joe not Avigdor), and Gingrich and Romney, the excuse they need to re-invade Iraq and restore a Republican order.

It is interesting how roles have shifted in post-2003 Iraq. Early on the southern provinces were talking about ‘federalism’ while the likes of al-Anbar tribals and former Ba’athists were against it, claiming that it would lead to fragmentation. Most neighboring Arab despots were also against it: the usual Arab obsession with centralized authority. Now it is the likes of al-Anbar tribals and former Ba’athists who are calling for “federalism” with some of the neighboring Arab media cheering on.
Cheers
mhg


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Afghanistan, Al-Qaeda, Arab Counterrevoltion, Espionage, Finance, Hezbollah, Iraq, Latin America, Lebanon, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, U.S. Politics, US Foreign Policy, WTF

Mel Brooks and Oliver Stone of Persia: a Taliban-Hezbollah-Colombian-Iranian-alQaeda-Mexican-Texan-African Network………

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“The court action, filed in Manhattan federal court, seeks nearly half a billion dollars in penalties from three Lebanese financial organizations — the now-defunct Lebanese Canadian Bank and two Beirut-based money exchange houses — and 30 auto dealers in the United States. The $480 million in penalties is the sum of the drug proceeds that are alleged to have been laundered; the government is also seeking to freeze and seize assets traceable to those companies………… Thursday’s complaint offers fresh details about the workings of what it says was a scheme to launder South American cocaine cash and Hezbollah’s own money, naming the American-based auto dealers and people it says were Hezbollah operatives. For example, the action charges that Oussama Salhab was a Hezbollah operative in Togo who ran a network that transported cash from cars sold in Benin on flights to Beirut. Prosecutors say he worked with Maroun Saade — suspected of being a member of the Free Patriotic Movement, a Lebanese Christian political party allied with Hezbollah — who has been charged in a separate case with aiding the Taliban………”

I wonder what Mel Brooks is up to these days? Is he teaming up with Oliver Stone? Could those two be working on something like this, this topic of my piece here?
Is it just the holiday season or is the world going crazy around me? At least from my current perspective in the Pacific Northwest it seems like many heretofore otherwise sensible people are going mad. Look at all this:

  • Hezbollah alliance with the Taliban (across fourteen centuries of separation, across five nations of separation)?
  • Iranian alliance with al-Qaeda which is the mortal Wahhabi enemy of the Shi’as (including Iranians and Iraqis and Lebanese and Bahrainis and Pakistanis and all others)?
  • Iranian and al-Qaeda alliance allegedly but ridiculously improbably going way back to the 1990s, mostly via the good offices and miraculous guesswork of Judge John D. Bates of the U.S. District Court of the District of Columbia?
  • Iranian-Mexican Drug Cartel-Texan Nutcase alliance to blow up a restaurant in Georgetown and its famous clients just because it serves mediocre food to smug bureaucrats and charges too much? This last one allegedly courtesy of the DEA and the U.S. Department of Justice, and possibly Mujahideen-e-Khalq, among others.
  • Iraqi-Iranian-Syrian (wtf?)-Lebanese alliance to conquer Bahrain as a prelude to conquering the rest of the world and forcing Rick Santorum and Rick Perry to become Muslims and make the Hajj to Mecca?
  • Lebanese-Columbian-Taliban-Hezbollah-Maronite Christian plot to make money from a new triangular trade but without the rum and the African slaves.
  • Hezbollah-IRGC-Wehrmacht-Goldman Sachs…….. oh zut, sorry. Got carried away.


WTF is going on here? Is everyone going paranoid or are all of these plots real? Should we start looking under our beds each night for Iranian mullahs and Lebanese Shi’as? Are the Wahhabi princes now financing the hated Shi’a militants as well? Or is it just that the ‘plots’ are thickening?
Cheers
mhg


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Arab Counterrevoltion, Arab Media, Bahrain, GCC, Hezbollah, Iran, Kuwait, Media, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism

GCC Breaking News: Plots in Bahrain, Plots in Kuwait, Hezbollah under Every Bed, Shi’as Occupying Mecca……….

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Breaking News: the government of Bahrain has not announced the discovery of any new Iranian or Hezbollah terrorist plots today. They have not identified any installations or individuals who may have been targets of today’s uncovered plot. This is an unusual development for Bahrain.The regime and its imported mercenarise are slowing down
On the other hand, the Kuwaiti-Saudi daily rag alseyassah is taking up the slack. (I find alseyassah entertaining, although not as humorous as, say, The Onion). It reports that Hezbollah has put its sources on alert around the region, and that there was in fact a terror plot in Bahrain and added an extra-credit bonus: that the latest Bahrain plotters got financing from some Kuwaitis, meaning Shi’as in Kuwait (apparently the Iranians and Hezbollah ran out of money!).
Alseyassah, like a couple of other rags in my hometown, fits well into its Saudi patrons’ propaganda drive to divide the Gulf region along sectarian lines.
It also dropped a bombshell that only our overfed “faithful” would believe: it reported that Iranian and Syrian agents were plotting to assassinate three Gulf GCC foreign ministers, no less! Alseyassah has not yet report that Hezbollah and Iran are planning an invasion of Mecca to take over the Kaaba, after blowing up the Vatican. Not yet, but stay tuned.
Saudi media are not as dumb as their Gulf surrogates. They have become smarter, more subtle, with the exception of Alarabiya which is openly sectarian on its Arabic website.
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Iraq, MEK, Mossad, Mujahideen Khalq, Rajavi, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy, War on Iran

The Other Iran War: MEK, Mossad, Western Intelligence…….

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“Ynet raises the possibility that it was a deliberate act of sabotage on not just a missile base, but an intelligence facility. Teheran Bureau says the IRG is telling the Iranian media that the incident was not an act of terror, but purely an industrial accident. An Iranian who worked at the base for several months and was interviewed by Iranian media discounted the likelihood of an act of sabotage since security at the base was extremely strict. However, an Israeli source with extensive senior political and military experience provides an exclusive report that it was the work of the Mossad in collaboration with the MEK. Israeli media is humming with similar reports and Channel 10′s intelligence correspondent went so far as to say, a bit coyly perhaps: If it was the work of western intelligence it was a high successful and impressive achievement. It is widely known within intelligence circles that the Israelis use the MEK for varied acts of espionage and terror ranging from fraudulent Iranian memos alleging work on nuclear trigger devices to assassinations of nuclear scientists and bombings of sensitive military installations……….”

MEK has a history of siding with anyone who is against the Iranian regime (since 1981). In the process, it has also sided with some who are enemies of the Iranian people. Siding with Saddam Hussein and the Ba’ath Party during the 1980-88 war is one example. Siding with Saddam during the Persian Gulf War (Desert Storm 1990-91) is another example. There have been reports that they participated in the suppression of rebellious Iraqis in the south after Desert Storm in the Spring of 1991.
Mujahideen Khalq, still on the U.S. list of terrorist organizations, has deep pockets and pays generously to top former and current American officials to speak at its conferences in France and other places. Among them has been Rudy Giuliani, Bill Richardson, Ed Randell, James Woolsey (briefly CIA director under Clinton). It is not clear where the money comes from, but I strongly suspect it originates from “somewhere” on the shores of my Gulf. These days the MEK are popular with many Gulf potentates (and their media) who were their friends during the 1980s before they became their enemies during the 1990s, only to become their friends again after the first Iraqi elections of 2005.
I am not sure how much support it has inside Iran, but my educated guess is that it has little popular support. It has degenerated into a marginal cult group over the past three decades. But if this report is true, it must have enough operatives inside Iran to help the Israeli and Western acts of sabotage and assassination against Iranian targets and scientists. Yet these “incidents” are sporadic and not effective for the goals of either regime change or derailing the nuclear program.
Cheers
mhg


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cyber war, Espionage, Iran, Israel, MEK, Mujahideen Khalq, nuclear Iran, Terrorism

Duqu Hits Iran: Virus Du Jour beats a Shooting War……….

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“Iran has developed a software program that can “control” the newly discovered Duqu spyware, the director of Iran’s Passive Defense Organization has announced. “The software, capable of controlling this virus (Duqu), has been provided to organizations and institutions,” IRNA quoted Brigadier General Gholamreza Jalali as saying on Sunday. Duqu, discovered on September 1, 2011, is a sophisticated Trojan which acts as a backdoor into a system and facilitates the theft of private intelligence. Security software manufacturer Symantec says parts of the Duqu code base are nearly identical to the infamous Stuxnet worm, “but with a completely different purpose.” The Duqu malware has reportedly infected a number of systems in Iran. “All of the centers and apparatuses suspected of being infected with the virus are under control,” Jalali said, adding that countering and cleansing processes have been carried out at the infected institutions. Stuxnet, first indentified by Iranian officials in June 2010, is a malware designed to infect computers using supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems made by the German company Siemens …………..”

This Duqu in a new one. Duqu, Stuxnet, Stars, WTF, why not? Let them come: that is a clean war, better than the bloody alternative that some regional absolute potentates are hoping to goad the West into. Anything beats a shooting destructive war, or a war of terror street assassinations that kills civilians, or any war on behalf of absolute kleptocratic tribal princes.
Cheers
mhg


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Arabian Peninsula, Iran, Middle East Nuclear, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

Starry-Eyed Maureen Dowd of Wry Absolute Arabia: PR and “Keeping America Safe” …………

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”I asked if he thought he was targeted because of his tough position on Iran, underscored in a 2008 diplomatic cable released by WikiLeaks quoting him reiterating that King Abdullah wanted the United States to “cut off the head of the snake.” “You should ask the perpetrators, not me,” he said wryly. “We do what we have to do, and we can’t let issues like this deter us.”……… Some worry that America spends too much time hoping Iran will become more reasonable when, in reality, it’s trying to get nuclear weapons so it can become less reasonable. News of the plot, denounced by the kingdom as “sinful and abhorrent,” has made Saudi Arabia more sympathetic in an enemy-of-my-enemy sort of way…………” Maureen Dowd (allegedly in the New York Times)

Not one of her best columns; Maureen Dowd is too starry-eyed here toward an absolute tribal monarchy where sorcerers and witches and Asian housemaids are beheaded almost every week. Not her usual witty style, it reads more like something from Liz Cheney’s “Keep America Safe”, but almost a wittier style. Not that Liz Cheney ever seems starry-eyed about anything (not even about the dangers of building more mosques). This also reads suspiciously more like something another lobbyist or Public Relations person would write, as part of a PR campaign.
“He was targeted because of his tough position on Iran” yet he was “reiterating that King Abdullah wanted the United States to……..” So whose position is it that was the “tough” one, urging war: his or the absolute king’s (and the thousands of princes who loot the Arabian Peninsula each and every day)?
(At least now we learn from Dowd that the ambassador does not frequent Georgetown fast food joints like Cafe Milano as Peter Bergen had claimed. Bergen also dined with Bin Laden once, but most likely outside Georgetown).
Cheers
mhg


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Iran, Libya, NATO, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

Clinton, Ahmadinejad, al-Migrahi, More Hypocrisy…….

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I watched Hillary Clinton with Amanpour on ABC. She was asked about al-Migrahi, of the Lockerbie bombing, now that Qaddafi, the recent friend of the West has been killed and mutilated by the new rulers of Libya. She said the al-Migrahi should be returned, that “We want him back“as well. Yet the U.S. and British and possibly other governments were in on the deal to release him. After all, not only British petroleum interests were involved, but also American business interests. Tony Blair was an adviser to JP Morgan which wanted a deal to invest for the Qaddafi regime. Then there was the “settlement” for a lot of Libyan money. Now Mrs Clinton has a sudden case of selective amnesia, she who shook hands with that regime. Regardless of the merits of the case against al-Migrahi, how can a person agree to a deal then renege on it?

I also watched Fareed Zakaria (CNN) with Ahmadinejad in Tehran (well, switched between that and an NFL game). He asked the Iranian president about political prisoners in Iran. He practically denied that there are political prisoners in Iran, but was not convincing (very hard to convince people of something when they know one is lying, no?). That is almost as bad a lie as saying there are no political prisoners in Saudi Arabia or Bahrain.
Cheers
mhg


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Hezbollah, Iran, Media, Middle East Nuclear, nuclear Iran, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, US Foreign Policy

Unreliable Sources: on Ignatius, Saudi Intelligence, Pakistani ISI, Arab Spring……….

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Update on the David Ignatius-Saudi Intelligence-Pakistani ISI joint effort which I posted on here. Looks like quite a racket going on between Ignatius and the Saudi officials and media. He quotes an anonymous “Saudi official” about the Washington plot and ties it to the Bahrain uprising and Hezbollah and the drug trade and global warming and Fukushima. The Saudi media in turn publicizes his column with fanfare, quoting him in turn, claiming the Washington Post has reported that all these are connected. Of course, the Saudis do not say that they were the original source of the Ignatius allegations (along with some Pakistani ISI person). Not bad, but not new or original either. CNN and others reported on this without noting the Saudi-Pakistani source.
Cheers
mhg


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