WikiLeaks Docs Reveal London As Al-Qaeda Global Hub
At least 35 terrorists incarcerated at Guantánamo Bay were sent to fight against the West after being indoctrinated by extremist preachers in “Londonistan,” according to secret files obtained by the Telegraph via WikiLeaks:
Abu Qatada and Abu Hamza, two preachers who lived off state benefits after claiming asylum, are identified by the American authorities as the key recruiters responsible for sending dozens of extremists from throughout the world to Pakistan and Afghanistan via London mosques.
The leaked WikiLeaks documents, written by senior US military commanders at Guantánamo Bay, illustrate how, for two decades, Britain effectively became a crucible of terrorism, with dozens of extremists, home-grown and from abroad, radicalised here.
Finsbury Park mosque, in north London, is described as a “haven” for extremists. United States intelligence officials concluded the mosque served as “an attack planning and propaganda production base”.
The files will raise questions over why the Government and security services failed to take action…
Glenn Beck On Libya, Al Qaeda, and Middle East Destabilization
Now I know Glenn Beck can be quite “eccentric” and he isn’t very popular here. However, I still group him under “alternative” news media as he does stray from the standard governmental spiel. I am not implying that he is correct. All I ask is you listen to what he has to say with an unbiased ear as he makes some interesting connections and predictions.
Iraqi Christians Cancel Christmas
Arts & Crafts on the Victory Base Complex, Iraq Photo: Staff Sgt. Joy Pariante
Christmas isn’t always accompanied with holiday cheer, sometimes it comes with death threats. MSNBC reports:
Iraqi Christians on Wednesday called off Christmas festivities across the country as al-Qaida insurgents threatened more attacks on a beleaguered community still terrified from a bloody siege at a Baghdad church two months earlier.
A council representing Christian denominations across Iraq advised its followers to cancel public Christmas celebrations out of concern over new terror attacks and as a show of mourning for the victims of the church siege and other violence.
Church officials in the northern cities of Kirkuk and Mosul, the southern city of Basra and in the capital confirmed they will not put up Christmas decorations or hold evening Mass and have urged worshippers to refrain from decorating their homes.
Even an appearance by Santa Claus was called off.
“Nobody can ignore the threats…
Jon Stewart on the Questionable U.S.–Saudi Arabia Relationship (Video)
All due to WikiLeaks, at around 2:15 in this Daily Show clip. Finally, some more goddamn truth on television:
CIA Agents Escape Charges Of Destroying Torture Videotapes
Michael Mukasey
Agence France Presse reports via AlterNet:
In a statement, the department said that after an “exhaustive investigation” an official heading the probe decided that he “will not pursue criminal charges” for the destruction of the interrogation tapes filmed at secret prisons.
In January 2008, then-US attorney general Michael Mukasey opened the inquiry after the revelation that the CIA three years earlier had destroyed tapes showing harsh interrogations of two Al-Qaeda suspects.
Federal prosecutor John Durham was tapped to lead the FBI probe in possible crimes after the CIA acknowledged that it had destroyed 92 interrogation videos.
The probe was launched to examine whether intelligence officials broke the law by destroying the videos of the interrogations, which were conducted in the the months following the September 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.
At the time the probe was launched, then-CIA director Michael Hayden said the tapes had been destroyed to protect the identities…
Noam Chomsky Admits There’s No Evidence Al-Qaeda Carried Out 9/11
From PressTV:
Renowned scholar Noam Chomsky says US invasion of Afghanistan was illegal since to date there is no evidence that al-Qaeda has carried out the 9/11 attacks.
“The explicit and declared motive of the [Afghanistan] war was to compel the Taliban to turn over to the United States, the people who they accused of having been involved in World Trade Center and Pentagon terrorist acts. The Taliban…they requested evidence…and the Bush administration refused to provide any,” the 81-year-old senior academic made the remarks on Press TV’s program A Simple Question.
“We later discovered one of the reasons why they did not bring evidence: they did not have any.”
The political analyst also said that nonexistence of such evidence was confirmed by FBI eight months later.
“The head of FBI, after the most intense international investigation in history, informed the press that the FBI believed that the plot may have been hatched in Afghanistan, but was probably…
November 6, 2010: False Flag Attack Possible Predictive Programming?
QUESTION: When in U.S. history has a sitting president taken off on an overseas trip for an extended period of time, with 65 airplanes, 34 warships and 3,000 people, reportedly including his friends and cohorts, at the pinnacle of an economic and political upheaval?
ANSWER: Never!
Anwar Al Awlaki – Invited To Pentagon After 9/11 – Terrorist? Or Pentagon / CIA Asset?
Anwar Al Awlaki – Terrorist? Pentagon/CIA Employee? Same Thing!
Al-Qaeda terror mastermind Anwar Al-Awlaki, the man who helped plot the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the Fort Hood shooting, the Times Square bombing attempt, and who also preached to the alleged September 11 hijackers, dined at the Pentagon just months after 9/11 documents obtained by Fox News show. Thursday, October 21, 2010
American-born cleric Awlaki’s role as a key figure in almost every recent terror plot targeting the United States and Canada, coupled with his visit to the Pentagon, only confirms our long stated position that Awlaki is a chief terrorist patsy-handler for the CIA: he is the federal government’s premier false flag agent.
“Documents exclusively obtained by Fox News, including an FBI interview conducted after the Fort Hood shooting in November 2009, state that Awlaki was taken to the Pentagon as part of the military’s outreach to the Muslim community in the immediate aftermath…
Expert Points to Strong Evidence of Raising the Dead: Bin Laden Presence in Yemen
An Al Qaida expert tells Gulf News he has no doubts that wanted Al Qaida leader Osama Bin Laden either visited Yemen or is actually based there…
Osama bin Laden is dead. The news first came from sources in Afghanistan and Pakistan almost six months ago: the fugitive died in December [2001] and was buried in the mountains of southeast Afghanistan. Pakistan’s president, Pervez Musharraf, echoed the information. The remnants of Osama’s gang, however, have mostly stayed silent, either to keep Osama’s ghost alive or because they have no means of communication.
With an ego the size of Mount Everest, Osama bin Laden would not have, could not have, remained silent for so long if he were still alive. He always liked to take credit even for things he had nothing to do with. Would he remain silent for nine months and not trumpet his own survival? [New York Times, July 11, 2002]
“I have no doubts that Osama either visited Yemen or is actually…
Osama bin Laden Living Comfortably in Pakistan
It’s no great surprise to learn that bin Laden isn’t hiding in a mountain cave, considering that he’s probably been receiving kidney dialysis and other medical treatment for years. Barbara Starr reports for CNN:
Kabul, Afghanistan (CNN) — Osama bin Laden and his deputy Ayman al-Zawahiri are believed to be hiding close to each other in houses in northwest Pakistan, but are not together, a senior NATO official said. “Nobody in al Qaeda is living in a cave,” said the official, who declined to be named because of the sensitivity of the intelligence matters involved.
Rather, al Qaeda’s top leadership is believed to be living in relative comfort, protected by locals and some members of the Pakistani intelligence services, the official said…
Barack Obama Accused of Exaggerating Terror Threat for Political Gain
Looks like President Obama has taken another page out of President Bush’s playbook. From the Guardian:
UK Current threat level
A US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information, senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials have told the Guardian.
The non-specific US warning, which despite its vagueness led Britain, France and other countries to raise their overseas terror alert levels, was an attempt to justify a recent escalation in US drone and helicopter attacks inside Pakistan that have “set the country on fire”, said Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the high commissioner to Britain.
Hasan, a veteran diplomat who is close to Pakistan’s president, suggested the Obama administration was playing politics with the terror threat before next month’s mid-term congressional elections, in which the Republicans are expected to make big gains.
He also claimed President Obama was reacting to…
Osama Bin Laden: Climate Change Is Worse Than War
In a just-released audio recording, Osama bin Laden expands on his crunchy-environmentalist sentiments from earlier this year, arguing that climate change, not war, is the biggest West-produced threat to the world’s Muslim population. Will al-Qaeda join forces with Greenpeace? I bet their street canvassers are going to be really pushy.
My Trip to Al-Qaeda: Q & A with Journalist Lawrence Wright
I didn’t see the theatrical adaption of Lawrence Wright’s The Looming Tower (which is the most informative book I have ever read about 9/11) so I am looking forward to checking about this documentary. From the Economist’s Prospero column:
Lawrence Wright spent five years conducting hundreds of interviews in at least ten countries in order to write “The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11”. The book, a best-selling history about Islamic fundamentalism, weaves the stories of terrorists, intelligence officers and government officials in a remarkable narrative that helps to explain both the cult of Osama bin Laden and the flaws in American intelligence that let him get away with murder.
“When I finished my book,” Mr Wright said in an interview with Prospero, “I had countless people asking me ‘What were they like?’ and ‘How did it affect you?’” He ultimately answered these questions in his one-man play, “My Trip to al-Qaeda”, a gripping personal account of the people he met and what it all felt like. On September 7th HBO will premiere Alex Gibney’s elegant screen adaptation, which mixes theatrical footage with more photographs and videos to help tell Mr Wright’s story about the lure of radicalism in the Islamic world.
During War There Are No Civilians
Rachel Corrie in front of Israeli bulldozers
Was every human being on the face of the Earth just drafted?
According to Al Jazeera there’s been an unseemly instance of honesty:
“During war there are no civilians,” that’s what “Yossi,” an Israeli military (IDF) training unit leader simply stated during a round of questioning on day two of the Rachel Corrie trials, held in Haifa’s District Court earlier this week. “When you write a [protocol] manual, that manual is for war,” he added.
For the human rights activists and friends and family of Rachel Corrie sitting in the courtroom, this open admission of an Israeli policy of indiscrimination towards civilians — Palestinian or foreign — created an audible gasp.
Yet, put into context, this policy comes as no surprise. The Israeli military’s track record of insouciance towards the killings of Palestinians, from the 1948 massacre of Deir Yassin in Jerusalem to the 2008-2009 attacks on Gaza that…
Official (From Castro): Osama Bin Laden Was CIA Spy
Former Cuban president Fidel Castro meets Lithuanian author and conspiracy theorist Daniel Estulin in Havana. Photograph: Alex Castro/EPA
Why should it take Castro for this to make headlines? It’s not exactly new news after all… Good publicity for Daniel Estulin though! From the Guardian:
Fidel Castro has more reason than most to believe conspiracy theories involving dark forces in Washington. After all, the CIA tried to blow his head off with an exploding cigar.
But the ageing Cuban revolutionary may have gone too far for all but the most ardent believer in the reach and competence of America’s intelligence agency. He has claimed that Osama bin Laden is in the pay of the CIA and that President George Bush summoned up the al-Qaida leader whenever he needed to increase the fear quotient. The former Cuban president said he knows it because he has read WikiLeaks.
Castro told a visiting Lithuanian writer, who is known…
CIA Finds Secret Tapes ‘Under Desk’
Ramzi Binalshibh at Guantanamo
So what else has the CIA got under its desks? Exclusive report from AP via LA Times:
The CIA has tapes of 9/11 plotter Ramzi Binalshibh being interrogated in a secret overseas prison. Discovered under a desk, the recordings could provide an unparalleled look at how foreign governments aided the U.S. in holding and questioning suspected terrorists.
The two videotapes and one audiotape are believed to be the only remaining recordings made within the clandestine prison system.
The tapes depict Binalshibh’s interrogation sessions at a Moroccan-run facility the CIA used near Rabat in 2002, several current and former U.S. officials told The Associated Press. They spoke on the condition of anonymity because the recordings remain a closely guarded secret.
When the CIA destroyed its cache of 92 videos of two other al-Qaida operatives, Abu Zubaydah and Abd al-Nashiri, being waterboarded in 2005, officials believed they had wiped away all of the…
Obama’s Secret War On Terrorism
Flag of Al-Qaeda in Iraq
The New York Times launches a new series of reports entitled “The Shadow War: Chasing The Enemy” with this report on the United States’ focus on Al-Qaeda in Yemen:
At first, the news from Yemen on May 25 sounded like a modest victory in the campaign against terrorists: an airstrike had hit a group suspected of being operatives for Al Qaeda in the remote desert of Marib Province, birthplace of the legendary queen of Sheba.
But the strike, it turned out, had also killed the province’s deputy governor, a respected local leader who Yemeni officials said had been trying to talk Qaeda members into giving up their fight. Yemen’s president, Ali Abdullah Saleh, accepted responsibility for the death and paid blood money to the offended tribes.
The strike, though, was not the work of Mr. Saleh’s decrepit Soviet-era air force. It was a secret mission by the United States military, according…
Al-Qaeda’s New Leader
AP is reporting that Al-Qaeda has a new leader, per the FBI:
A suspected al-Qaida operative who lived for more than 15 years in the U.S. has become chief of the terror network’s global operations, the FBI says, marking the first time a leader so intimately familiar with American society has been placed in charge of planning attacks.
Adnan Shukrijumah, 35, has taken over a position once held by 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who was captured in 2003, Miami-based FBI counterterrorism agent Brian LeBlanc told The Associated Press in an exclusive interview. That puts him in regular contact with al-Qaida’s senior leadership, including Osama bin Laden, LeBlanc said.
Shukrijumah (SHOOK’-ree joohm-HAH’) and two other leaders were part of an “external operations council” that designed and approved terrorism plots and recruits, but his two counterparts were killed in U.S. drone attacks, leaving Shukrijumah as the de facto chief and successor to Mohammed – his…
Who’s A Racist Now?
Deb Nicklay/Globe Gazette, via Associated Press. The North Iowa Tea Party’s short-lived billboard in Mason City, Iowa.
Commentary by Tobin Harshaw in the New York Times:
On Tuesday, the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People released this statement: “Over 2,000 N.A.A.C.P. delegates today unanimously passed a resolution—as amended—called ‘The Tea Party Movement,’ asking for the repudiation of racist Tea Party leaders.”
That same day, a White House official told ABC News’s Jake Tapper that “al Qaeda is a racist organization that treats black Africans like cannon fodder and does not value human life.” (It was a followup to President Obama’s statement that “these terrorist organizations … do not regard African life as valuable in and of itself.”)
A day later, an Iowa Tea Party group “replaced a billboard comparing President Barack Obama to Adolf Hitler and Vladimir Lenin, calling the sign a bad decision that reflected poorly on the organization.”
For some observers,…
Everybody Draw Muhammad Day! Threat
"Everybody Draw Muhammad Day!" cartoon by Molly Norris
“Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” is a satirical cartoon that Molly Norris had drawn in response to the censorship of South Park’s episode featuring Muhammad.
With constant threats sent to artists who have depicted images of Muhammad, Norris is no exception. Anwar al-Awlaki ranted in Inspire, an English-language Al Queda magazine, about the potentially fatal results if such artists continue to draw blasphemous caricatures.
He has most recently added Norris to hit list. The NY Daily News details:
A CHARISMATIC terror leader linked to the botched Times Square car bomb has placed the Seattle cartoonist who launched “Everybody Draw Muhammad Day” on an execution hit list.
Yemeni-American cleric Anwar al-Awlaki — the radical who has also been cited as inspiring the Fort Hood, Texas, massacre and the plot by two New Jersey men to kill US soldiers — singled out artist Molly Norris as a “prime target,” saying her…
