War, Intelligence, & Terrorism

End the Lie | This appears to be on top of the 15,000 troops in Kuwait, three carrier strike groups to be in the region, arming of states surrounding Iran, and more, all of which has been heavily documented on End the Lie for some time now.

Gun IO | If you read this blog regularly, you'll know that one of my hobbies is sending out Freedom of Information Act Requests, hereafter abbreviated as 'FOIAs'. (I was the guy who FOIA'd Ol' Dirty Bastard's FBI File). Every month, I use the website MuckRock to send out a few requests about things which I want to know more about to various government agencies. Of all the agencies I've contacted, the least responsive but most interesting agency to deal with has been the Central Intelligence Agency.

The Independent | A court case against a translator who leaked US government secrets was conducted in secret because it centred on the revelation that the FBI had eavesdropped on Israeli embassy phone calls, it was revealed yesterday.

Haaretz | The owner and publisher of the Atlanta Jewish Times, Andrew Adler, has suggested that Israeli Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu consider ordering a Mossad hit team to assassinate U.S. President Barack Obama so that his successor will defend Israel against Iran.

Foreign Policy | Buried deep in the archives of America's intelligence services are a series of memos, written during the last years of President George W. Bush's administration, that describe how Israeli Mossad officers recruited operatives belonging to the terrorist group Jundallah by passing themselves off as American agents. According to two U.S. intelligence officials, the Israelis, flush with American dollars and toting U.S. passports, posed as CIA officers in recruiting Jundallah operatives -- what is commonly referred to as a "false flag" operation.

Haaretz | Last week, Dariush Rezaeinejad, a 35-year-old member of the Atomic Energy Organization of Iran, was shot dead by two gunmen firing from motorcycles. This is the fourth attack on an Iranian nuclear scientist in the past year. In the previous cases, Iranian media outlets and spokesmen accused the Mossad, the CIA and MI6 of being behind the strikes.

Washington Post, CNN, BBC | Iranian authorities allege that Amir Mirzaei Hekmati, a former U.S. Marine, received special training at U.S. bases in Iraq and Afghanistan before being dispatched on a spy mission in Iran. Hekmati, 28, was born in Arizona but holds dual citizenship.

Haaretz | President Obama signed a bill Friday that includes a provision to expand U.S. military assistance to Israel. The bill, which was introduced in May and approved by Congress this week, would have the U.S. provide additional support to the annual $3 billion for ten years that the U.S. is already committed to under the Memorandum of Understanding.

Huffington Post | According to a former aide, Republican presidential candidate Ron Paul has long been drawn toward conspiracy theories. Eric Dondero, who served Paul off and on from 1987 to 2003, wrote recently that the Texas Republican suspected that George W. Bush may have had advance knowledge of the 9/11 attacks and that Franklin Roosevelt knew in advance about Pearl Harbor.

Haaretz | U.S. President Barack Obama signed a sweeping defense funding bill on Saturday that includes new sanctions on financial institutions dealing with Iran's central bank, but cited concerns about sections that expand the U.S. military's authority over terrorism suspects and limit his powers in foreign affairs.

Tactical Knowledge for Strategic Development and Opinion Maker - By Wayne Madsen, Wayne Madesn Report | WMR has learned from an eastern European intelligence source that the CIA. Britain’s MI-6, and George Soros, who actually fronts for the Rothschild family, has been funneling money to Russian protest movements through the Republic of Georgia.

Center for Research on Globilization - By Russ Baker, WhoWhatWhy.com | If the public interest is defined as “seizing oil wherever it may be found,” then, well, that’s a conversation we need to have…and quick. There are severe consequences of this definition. Among them, the empowerment of those forces, both corporate and governmental, that profit most from the unbridled development of fossil fuels—and that have good reasons to block the development of renewable sources of energy. They’re known today as the One Percent, and they are destroying our world.

A Noble Lie | The 1995 bombing in Oklahoma City was a direct blow to the heart of America. 168 people were killed, including nineteen children. For those watching the nightly news, terrorism had come home. For years following the bombing, countless victims' family members, survivors, rescuers, and ordinary Americans, have questioned the official accounts about that fateful day.

PR Newswire | A federal district court in Manhattan yesterday entered a historic ruling that reveals new facts about Iran's support of al Qaeda in the 9/11 attacks.  U.S. District Judge George B. Daniels ruled yesterday that Iran and Hezbollah materially and directly supported al Qaeda in the September 11, 2001 attacks and are legally responsible for damages to hundreds of family members of 9/11 victims who are plaintiffs in the case. 

Antiwar.com | Seven days in, the preliminary hearing for Pfc. Bradley Manning came to an end, with the defense accusing the prosecution of dramatically overcharging Manning and reiterating that there is no evidence the leaks he is accused of ever harmed anybody.

MSNBC | Predator drones are being used in domestic law enforcement cases, raising concerns that the aircraft are being deployed beyond the missions that Congress originally authorized them for, the Los Angeles Times reported Saturday.

Bloomberg Businessweek | In October, a foreign national named Mike Fikri purchased a one-way plane ticket from Cairo to Miami, where he rented a condo. Over the previous few weeks, he’d made a number of large withdrawals from a Russian bank account and placed repeated calls to a few people in Syria. More recently, he rented a truck, drove to Orlando, and visited Walt Disney World by himself. As numerous security videos indicate, he did not frolic at the happiest place on earth. He spent his day taking pictures of crowded plazas and gate areas.

Reuters | Pakistan shut down NATO supply routes into Afghanistan - used for sending in nearly half of the alliance's land shipments - in retaliation for the worst such incident since Islamabad uneasily allied itself with Washington following the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.

Antiwar | Violence continued in Syria today, with a number of civilian protesters killed. The focus however was off the coast, where America’s newest aircraft carrier, the USS George H. W. Bush, has taken up a position just outside of Syrian territorial waters, after a deployment near the Straits of Hormuz.

Secrecy News | For two weeks in October 1969, the Nixon Administration secretly placed U.S. nuclear forces on alert.  At the time, the move was considered so sensitive that not even the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff was briefed on its purpose.  Still today, no conclusive explanation for the potentially destabilizing alert can be found.  Even with full access to the classified record, State Department historians said in a new volume of the Foreign Relations of the United States (FRUS) series that they were unable to provide a definitive account of the event.

LA TImes | On the evening of April 5, a pilot settled into a leather captain's chair at Creech Air Force Base in southern Nevada and took the controls of a Predator drone flying over one of the most violent areas of southwestern Afghanistan. Minutes later, his radio crackled.

ARS Technica | Anonymous members launched an effort called OpCartel last week after claiming a member had been kidnapped during a "Operation Paperstorm" protest in Veracruz. The group threatened to "dox" members of the cartel, releasing names and addresses of taxi drivers, journalists, and members of law enforcement associated with the group. To collect information to aid in their effort, the group posted a "plug-in" Web application to allow would-be informants to protect their identities while providing names and other information.

MSNBC | An Israeli official said Wednesday that Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu is trying to persuade his Cabinet to authorize a military strike against Iran's suspected nuclear weapons program — a discussion that comes as Israel successfully tests a missile believed capable of carrying a nuclear warhead to Iran.

The Guardian | Netanyahu is said to believe that the two, Meir Dagan and Yuval Diskin, wanted to torpedo plans being drawn up by him and Ehud Barak, the defence minister, to hit Iranian nuclear sites. Tzipi Livni, leader of the opposition Kadima party, is also said to have been persuaded to attack Netanyahu for "adventurism" and "gambling with Israel's national interest".

Salon.com | The principal reason so little attention is paid to the constant victims of American violence in the Muslim world is because the U.S. Government refuses to disclose anything about these attacks and media outlets virtually never report on those victims (MSNBC demoted and then firedits then-rising-star Ashleigh Banfield when she returned from Iraq and pointed out that fact in an April, 2003 speech denouncing the “one-sided” coverage of American wars: meaning, the invisibility in U.S. media of America’s civilian victims).

Global Post | Written proof of US terror plots will be released on Friday, November 4th, reported Iran's state-owned news channel Press TV.  The head of the Supreme National Security Council, Saeed Jalili, will detail the allegations during a ceremony to mark the anniversary of the 1979 US embassy hostage crisis in Tehran.

Anti-war | With Defense Ministry officials saying that they believe the US may soon “fast-forward” plans to attack Iran, Britain’s military is stepping up its own preparations for such an attack under the assumption that they will join in on the war.

Reuters | A member of the Saudi royal family has pledged $900,000 to a bounty offered by a prominent cleric to any Palestinian who kidnaps an Israeli soldier, according to comments aired on a private TV station Saturday.

Palestine Telegraph | Adham Abu Silmiya, medical emergency spokesman, said that the two victims identified as Sami Abu Sabet, 21, and Suleiman Abu Fatima, 25, were transferred to Abu Yousif al-Najjar hospital as dead bodies after being attacked by Israeli missiles.

Time | A wave of CIA drone strikes targeting al-Qaeda figures in Yemen is stoking widespread anger there that U.S. policy is cruel and misguided, prioritizing counterterrorism over a genuine solution to the country's raging political crisis.

The Houston Chronicle | An international group of online hackers is warning a Mexican drug cartel to release one of its members, kidnapped from a street protest, or it will publish the identities and addresses of the syndicate's associates, from corrupt police to taxi drivers, as well as reveal the syndicates' businesses.

The REAL Anti-war candidate: Ron Paul leads by almost twice than Obama in active military donations for Presidential Candidates

Portland Press Herald | Tents are arranged Tuesday at an encampment site for a group calling itself OccupyMaine in Lincoln Park in Portland. The group, which started as an offshoot of an Occupy Wall Street demonstration, has been holding signs and offering information on what they call corporate greed, political corruption and the need for change at Monument Square in Portland.

Salon.com | That description from CNN of the cable’s contents is, unsurprisingly, diluted to the point of obfuscation. That cable was released by WikiLeaks in May, 2011, and, as McClatchy put it at the time, “provides evidence that U.S. troops executed at least 10 Iraqi civilians, including a woman in her 70s and a 5-month-old infant, then called in an airstrike to destroy the evidence, during a controversial 2006 incident in the central Iraqi town of Ishaqi.”

ABC News | Working inside the New York Police Department is one of the CIA's most experienced clandestine operatives. He arrived in July as the special assistant to the deputy commissioner of intelligence. While his title is clear, his job responsibilities are not.

Wired | The virus, first detected nearly two weeks ago by the military’s Host-Based Security System, has not prevented pilots at Creech Air Force Base in Nevada from flying their missions overseas. Nor have there been any confirmed incidents of classified information being lost or sent to an outside source. But the virus has resisted multiple efforts to remove it from Creech’s computers, network security specialists say. And the infection underscores the ongoing security risks in what has become the U.S. military’s most important weapons system.

CNN | The Russian army has ceased ordering the famed Kalashnikov rifle for its arsenal and is waiting on a newer model its manufacturer is developing.  The army already has more of the weapons than it requires, Chief of General Staff of the Armed Forces of Russia Nikolai Makarov told Russian media.

Daily Kos | Former Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld has been stripped of legal immunity for acts of torture against US citizens authorized while he was in office.   The 7th Circuit made the ruling in the case of two American contractors who were tortured by the US military in Iraq after uncovering a smuggling ring within an Iraqi security company.

End the Lie | The relationship between the global drug trade and the government of the United States of America is a long, complicated and irrefutable one. Some of the most infamous dealings that have come to light have involved the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and various drug trafficking rings throughout the world.

The Guardian | The heavy syllables of the victims' names boomed out along the streets around Ground Zero. The public were patted down, then allowed up a cramped side road to peer at a distant video screen of the memorial. They filmed the video screen on their mobile phones, filmed each other filming, and film crews filmed them filming.

Boiling Frongs | On Thursday, September 8, 2011, the CIA issued legal threats against producers Ray Nowosielski and John Duffy on their discovery of the identities of the two key CIA analysts who executed the Tenet-Black-Blee cover-up in the case of two key 9/11 hijackers. The analysts were referred to only by first names initially, but were going to be fully named in a follow up segment.

Al Jazeera | Most of the victims of America's wars that are supposedly "against terror" have been civilians, and torture has also been deployed as a weapon. Civilians in Pakistan are killed on average every week in drone strikes, according to a recent report from the Bureau of Investigative Journalism, and also regularly in Afghanistan in "night raids."

A List of 10 reasons to suspect the terrorists we are all familiar with in the news of being called "masterminds"

The Independent | He was one of 10 innocent men rounded up as suspected insurgents after weapons were found in the hotel at which seven of them worked. In addition to the assaults and humiliation, which began almost immediately upon arrest, soldiers from the 1st Battalion Queen's Lancashire Regiment subjected the men to painful and inhumane interrogation techniques that had been banned for more than 30 years.

Tru TV | September 11, 2001 was unquestionably a tragic day for America and the world.  While the 3,000-plus deaths on American soil elicited support and tears from around the world, now many international citizens resent or even despise the country that ratcheted up the War on Terror.

BBC | Eliza Manningham-Buller: Torture is "wrong and never justified"  The use of torture is "wrong and never justified", the former head of the security service MI5 has insisted.  Eliza Manningham-Buller said it should be "utterly rejected even when it may offer the prospect of saving lives".

New York Magazine | The authors of the Patriot Act always intended that its provisions would be permanent. The politically expedient thing to do would have been to include a sunset provision, to acknowledge a temporary moment of crisis that required special measures for prosecutors to pursue terrorists. But the lawyers wanted no sunsets; some of them had been working Al Qaeda cases since the first World Trade Center bombing and imagined a long-term struggle that could last a generation.

New York Magazine | The authors of the Patriot Act always intended that its provisions would be permanent. The politically expedient thing to do would have been to include a sunset provision, to acknowledge a temporary moment of crisis that required special measures for prosecutors to pursue terrorists. But the lawyers wanted no sunsets; some of them had been working Al Qaeda cases since the first World Trade Center bombing and imagined a long-term struggle that could last a generation.

LA Times | Ahmad Omaid Khpalwak, 24 years old and the married father of an infant daughter, was cut down by a hail of bullets this summer during a Taliban attack in Tarin Kowt, the capital of Oruzgan province. The bereaved family of Khpalwak, who was working for an Afghan news agency and the British Broadcasting Corp., believes that Western troops fired the fatal shots.

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