1979 Operation Cyclone: The Road To Armageddon - Alf Mendes

[TonyGosling]

THE ROAD TO ARMAGEDDON
by Alf Mendes

Author’s Foreword: The current global situation seethes with such expectation of oncoming turmoil that it is essential to examine it more closely, by focussing on America, whose governments have, for decades now, made no bones about the fact that they have been - and are still - calling-the-tune in order to gain political/financial control on a global scale (One has only to read their Project for the New American Century [PNAC] to confirm this). Hence the following events in brief, precised, more-or-less chronological form, and the fact that many of them are excerpts from previous articles written by this author, and others, is irrelevant inasmuch as they are of pertinence to the current global scenario - and need to be repeated.

1917: The Bolshevik revolution. NB: Germany, Britain, France, USA and Japan entered Russian territory in order to help the ‘White Army’ in its attempt to restore the Emperor. Forerunner of what would subsequently become known as the Cold War.
A group of imfluential , atheistic Ashkenazim Jews had formed the Zionist Organisation in 1896 with the intention of creating the State of Israel in Palestine. They reached an agreement with Britain at the Balfour Declaration in 1917.

Nov.1919: George Herbert Walker forms W.A.Harriman & Co. bank - with Walker as president & chief executive, & Averell Harriman as chairman (He was to become US Ambassador to the USSR [‘43 - ‘46]; US Secretary of Commerce [‘46 - ‘48]; & Governor of NY State [‘55 - ‘59]).

1920: Harriman & Walker of W.A.Harriman & C0. gain control of the German Hamburg-Amerika Line after negotiations with the latter’s chief executive, William Cuno, & Max Warburg of the shipping line’s bankers, M.M. Warburg. NB: Warburg’s two brothers went to New York, becoming partners in the Kuhn Loeb & Co. The older brother, Paul, drew up a plan to centralise the American banks, as a result of which, President Wilson signed an Act establishing the Federal Reserve Bank in December 1913. It was now self-evident that there was a close relationship between Corporate America and Jews! (see below)

.Prior to ‘24: W. Averell Harriman was in Europe sometime prior to 1924 & at that time became acquainted with Fritz Thyssen, the German industrialist who was financing Hitler (and was later to become a member of the Nazi Party)- and they agreed to set up a bank for Thyssen in New York.

1924: W.A.Harriman & Co invested $400,000 in setting up Union Banking Corp. (UBC) in New York to act in partnership with the Thyssen-owned Bank voor Handel en Scheepvart (Bank for Trade and Shipping, BHS) in Holland....

1926: Prescott S. Bush Snr.(son-in-law of George H Walker) appointed Vice-President of W. A. Harriman & Co.

1930: The Bank for International Settlements (BIS) the world's oldest international financial institution, is set up - ostensibly to cope with the German financial post-WW1 recession, but, in fact, was formed in order to counter communist Soviet Union, with not-a-little-help from one of its co-founders, Montagu Norman (Governor of the Bank of England) - and Corporate America. Suffice it to say that the first President of the BIS was Gates W. McGarrah (ex-Chase National Bank & Federal Reserve Bank).....The ‘Cold War' had begun, and its most blatant expression was the birth of fascism in the aftermath of the Bolshevik revolution - a birth both induced and nurtured by corporations such as I.G.Farben, SKF, Ford, ITT, Du Pont, W.A.Harriman & Co.- et al

Jan. 1933: Hitler assumes power in Germany - with not-a-little-help from Corporate America and the BIS.

Mar. 7th 1933: Prescott S. Bush Snr. notified Max Warburg (above) that he (Warburg) was to be the American Ship & Commerce Line official representative on the board of the Hamburg- Amerika Line. Warburg had been a long-time advisor to Hitler’s Economic Minister, Hjalmar Schacht , co-founder of the BIS, & a close friend of Montagu Norman.

May. 20. ‘33: As reported in the New York Times: on Hitler achieving power, an agreement to coordinate all trade between Germany & America was reached in Berlin after negotiations between Hitler’s Economics Minister, Hjalmar Schacht (above) & John Foster Dulles.The Dulles brothers’ corporate law firm Sullivan & Cromwell, had acted for many Nazi enterprises during & after this period, including I. G. Farben, developer of the nerve gas, Tabun. (J. F. Dulles became Secretary of State [‘53 - ‘59]; A. W. Dulles became CIA Deputy Director for Plans [‘51]; Deputy Director of Central Intelligence [‘51 - ‘53]; & Director of CIA [‘53 -’61]).
September 1938: Munich Agreement signed by Hitler, Chamberlain, Daladier & Mussolini. By concluding a pact with Hitler, Britain and France - in effect - gave him the green light to advance eastwards towards the USSR (ref. "Mein Kampf") - for which they paid a heavy price!

1939: WW 2 is declared by Britain and France against Nazi Germany. NB: with FDR as President, American public opinion is against joining the Allies (Britain & France).

August ‘41: UN is conceived at the mid-Atlantic meeting (the Atlantic Charter) between FDR and Churchill.

Dec. 7 ‘41: Japanese bomb Pearl Harbour - thus ensuring that the US would now be at war against the German alliance.

in May 1942: Contrary to FDR's assurance to the USSR in May 1942 that a ‘second front’ would be opened later that year, this, in fact, did not occur until June 1944 - when it became clear that the Soviets were advancing inexorably westwards. Keeping in mind (as noted above) that America was against joining the Allies at the start of WW 2, and keeping in mind the foregoing events covered in this article - America would now be in position to ensure that the advance of their real enemy, the USSR, would soon be halted.

1944: Arabian American Oil Co. (ARAMCO [ex CASOC]) formed by Exxon, Texaco, Socal & Mobil , was Saudi’s main source of wealth. As evidence of America’s subornation of Saudi Arabia, the following joint secret deals were made - subsequently - without the knowledge of the US Congress at the time: (1) re-the IranGate scandal - the Saudis gave the American-controlled Contras $8 million in exchange for 400 American Stinger missiles; (2) the Saudis financed the unsuccessful CIA assasination of the Hizbollah leader, Sheikh Fadlallah - then gave the money to the Sheikh! ; (3) The Saudis jointly assisted in financing covert arms supplies to the Afghan Mujahadeen in the latters struggle against the Soviet Union in ‘79/’80.

July ‘44: The Bretton Woods Conference, which led to the formation of the World Bank and the IMF.
Here, it is of pertinence to note that, at Bretton Woods, Resolution 5, calling for the dissolution of that most prestigious, and notorious banking organisation, the Bank fo International Security (BIS), was subsequently ignored and proven ineffective.The US corporate establishment had seen to that! NB: In its published “People of an International Organisation”, the BIS states clearly that its “predominant tasks are summed up most succintly in part of Article 3 of its original Statute. They are to promote the co-operation of central banks and to provide additional facilities for international financial operations” - and they meant it! Their subsequent conferences/summits, G7, G10, G12...etc.would confirm this.

Feb. ‘45: At the Yalta Conference the US & Britain persuaded the USSR to join them in the continuing war against Japan. Stalin promised to do so 3 months after the end of the war in Europe. On August 6th, America atom-bombed Japan (without informing its ‘allies’), and, as promised, on August 8th the USSR invaded Korea, which for the past 40 years had been occupied by Japan - defeating the Japanese....

May ‘45: The end of WW 2, which had decimated the economies & infrastructure of most of the worlds’ nations (particularly that of the USSR) - but greatly enriched the economy of the USA. Result? The USSR would now no longer be an ‘ally’ - and all American Lend-Lease Aid would be terminated on May 8th ‘45 without prior consultation with any of its (USA’s) allies.

June 1945: The US-financed San Francisco Conference of 50 nations resulted in the signing of the UN Charter ‘to promote international security & cooperation’, and incorporating both the World Bank and the IMF. NB: The USA (1) donated the land site for the UN Secretariat in New York City; (2) loaned the money to build the UN HQ buildings; (3) guaranteed the independence of the UN’s American staff who, understandably, accounted for two-thirds of the UN staff (a promise that would soon be reneged upon); & (4) supplied 40% of the UN’s running costs. Suffice it to add that future presidents of the World Bank would be appointed by America! Henceforth, all steps taken by the UN would be flaunting the banner of ‘The International Community’ - somewhat duplicitously. NB: America had refused to join the precursor to the UN - the League of Nations (formed, in Switzerland, in the immediate aftermath of WW 1).

Sept 2nd ‘45: The communist leader of Vietnam, Ho Chi Minh, declared independence from its French colonizers - which resulted in subsequent warfare between the two, the French relying heavily on American financial & military aid.

Sept. 6th ‘45: The liberated Koreans (see above), consisting mainly of anti-Japanese resistance groups of a left-wing bent, held an assembly and formed the ‘People’s Republic Government of Korea’..... Two days later, US troops entered Korea, ignoring this newly-formed government - and proposed the setting up of a ‘line of demarcation’ at the 38th parallel. This led to the Korean War of ‘50 - to ‘53. Korea was now a split-in-two nation, with America in control of South Korea. The UN General Assembly set up the ‘UN Temporary Commission on Korea’ to expedite its (Korea’s) unified independence. The USSR vetoed UN entry into North Korea - so the UN decided to hold the election in South Korea (only) thereby making a mockery of their declared aim towards unification! On July 27th ‘53 the Korean Armistice was signed.

1947: With the threat of the powerful communist Soviet Union and the Cold War looming, America recognized the need for a centralized intelligence system to replace its two forerunners - the Office of Strategic Services (OSS); and the Central Intelligence Group (CIG) - and thus forms the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) via the National Security Act. The CIA would subsequently play a very crucial role on the global scene.
June 48: Tito is expelled from the Cominform. The West's reaction to this was best spelt out by Pavlowitch in his book “Yugoslavia”: “The American and West European governments were faced with a dilemma. Should they help a now weak and isolated, but otherwise successful, instance of communism, while ’containing’ communism generally?”. On the one hand.. “if Yugoslavia were left to collapse, only the Soviet Union would benefit. But if Tito's regime were helped to survive economically, his rift with Moscow could be widened to the point where no reconciliation were possible any longer, and his independent position could then entice other East European regimes to follow his example. Thus, at the same time as the states of Western Europe and North America were grouping together to constitute the North Atlantic Alliance, it was decided, as a calculated risk for a long -term advantage, to assist Yugoslavia without asking its government to alter its domestic policies in any way”.

1948: Jews defeat Arabs in British protectorate of Palestine, resulting in the formation of the State of Israel by the secular group of Jews known as Zionists (established by Herzl & Weizmann in Basel in 1887). From America’s viewpoint, a subservient Israel would now act as a convenient foil vis-a-vis MidEast Arab countries with vast oil reserves (many of which would soon be American-owned). NB: Thereby satisfying American Jews who were a strong, influential lobbying force in the US.
1948: The Marshall Plan was passed by the US Congress in order to ensure that the US would benefit from the reconstruction of war-damaged Europe - with not-a-little-help from the US Congressionally-authorised European Cooperation Act (ECA) of 1948, implemented by its subsidiary, the European Payments Union (EPU) of 1950 - both under the aegis of the Marshall Plan. The BIS would handle much of the wheeling-and-dealing involved in this.

1948: The Brussels Treaty was also the first step in the process leading to the signature of the American-controlled North Atlantic Treaty in 1949 (NATO). This ‘reconstruction’ understandably called for an intigrated Europe, in which NATO would play a crucial role (as confirmed in their ‘Handbook of 1999’: “The Brussels Treaty of 1948...was also the first step in the process leading to the signature of the North Atlantic Treaty in 1949 & the creation of the North Atlantic Alliance”). The Brussels Treaty would subsequently evolve into the Common Market/EEC/EU. This close relationship between NATO and the EU led to the fact that - in the future - any country wanting to join the EU would be vetted by NATO.

1949: As noted by Pavlowitch above: America relaxed export controls to Yugoslavia, and instigated a series of loans and grants to same (this totalled some $2- to $2.5 billion in the decade up to ‘59). Yugoslavia was now embarked on a debt-ridden course which would eventually lead to the dissolution of its Federation - helped in no small measure by Tito's setting up in 1984 of a New Constitution which, in effect, split the Republic of Serbia into three parts by giving its provinces of Kosovo and Vojvodina a higher degree of autonomy than they had previously held. American aid had ensured that Yugoslavia would become a country heavily in debt, and with an economy in turmoil.

1952: Iranian Prime Minister Mohammed Mossadegh plans to nationalise the Anglo-Iranian Oil Co. so Britain asks the US to join them in a plan to have him removed from his presidency. Result: Mossadegh is overthrown by a joint CIA/SIS operation in ‘53.

April 1954: The French were defeated by Ho Chi Minh (see above) at Dienbienphu - as a result of which a Geneva Convention was called, and an armistice agreed upon on July 21st whereby Vietnam would be divided between North & South at the 17th parallel - elections being held to reunify the two after 2 years -And in June 16 ‘54: America, via its Secretary of State, John Dulles (see above) installs Ngo Dinh Diem (a Catholic, who had been in America from ‘50 to ‘53) as President of South Vietnam - a country with a Buddhist majority!... The Geneva Convention had now become a hindrance and would have to be bypassed. This called for an up-dating of America’s political/military strategy, which would now be known as ‘The Counter Insurgency Strategy’. Simply put: this meant that America would now embark on the dangerous tactic of interfering, militarily if necessary, in the affairs of a foreign country. The ensuing Vietnam War between US-controlled Vietnam and North Vietnam resulted in many deaths on both sides - helped in no small degree by the CIA’s Phoenix Operation and much bombing by the Americans using Napalm incendiary bombs. The Americans were finally defeated by North Vietnam in 1975. Vietnam was now a united country once again.

1958 to 1963: Iraq was under the populist, reformist government of General Qasim, and its increasing involvement in oil development there, and the fast-rising influence of the Communist Party, therefore drew the attention of America. Result? In February 1963 Qasim was overthrown - and assassinated - by a Ba’athist Party coup, with the direct connivance of the CIA. The Ba’athist Saddam Hussein, who had fled the country to Egypt after his earlier abortive attempt to assassinate Qasim, returned and became Head of the Al-Jihaz al-Khas (more popularly known as Jihaz Haneen), the clandestine Ba’athist Intelligence organisation - and, as such, he was soon after involved in the killing of some five thousand communists. Saddam’s rise to power had, ironically, begun on the back of a CIA-engineered coup!

1961: Founded as the Association of Data Processing Services Organisation (ADAPSO), it subsequently evolved into the Information Technology Association of America (ITAA), a lobbying firm in California which specializes in getting special treatment for technology companies. It was to play a crucial role in the electronic voting system subsequently. (see below).

September 4, 1961: The Foreign Assistance Act (FAA) was passed by Congress, as a result of which: the US Agency for International Development (USAID) was established in November 1961. This was essentially a funding organisation whose main aim was on countering the spread of communism - and it would thenceforth play a crucial role. (see below)

August 1964: The assasination of Kennedy in 1963 resulted in the US corporate establishment setting up the News Election Service (NES), a consortium of the three major television networks: ABC, NBC and CBS, plus the Associated Press wire service, CNN, the New York Times, the Washington Post and other news-gathering organizations, their job being to compile computer-voting results at election time and feed them to the major media. Electronic voterigging - in the form of the Electronic Voting System (EVS) - would now be the order-of-the-day, superceding ‘the buying of votes’. (As later exposed publicly by the two Collier brothers in their book “Votescam:The Stealing of America”.

June 9th 1969: The Pemtagon asked for a sum of $10 million from the Congressional House Subcommittee on Appropriations to develop a new contagious micro-organsm capable of destroying the human immune system. It would therefore be necessary, first, to create such a virus! Such a 'virus' was discovered some ten years later in America which became known as 'acquired immune deficiency syndrome' (AIDS). In April 1974, Kissinger drew up a secret plan for population control called the ‘National Security Plan of Action 200’ (NSSM 200), which claimed that population growth in the less-developed countries was “..creating political or even national security problems for the US”. On October 2nd 1979, Robert McNamara (President of the World Bank) addressed a group of international bankers thus: “We can begin with the most critical problem of all, population growth”..concluding that “..either the current birth rates must come down more quickly, or the death rates must go up...There are, of course, many ways in which the death rates can go up. In a thermonuclear age, we can accomplish it very quickly and decisively”(as indeed they had done in Hiroshima and Nagasaki in1945).

Early 1970’s saw the collapse of the Bretton Woods system of exchange convertibility, thus exposing the irrelevance of the IMF and World Bank as agents for European reconstruction, the main reason being that, under the Bretton Woods agreement they were therefore hindered by being accountable statutorily-appointed agents of the UN, and were therefore - ostensibly - accountable to a much wider constituency than the BIS, and therefore politically less manageable by the corporate establishment
From 1973 to ‘93: The BIS Secretariat of the Committee of Governors also served the Board of Governors of the European Monetary Co-operation Fund (EMCF), and acted as EMCF agent. As such, they therefore provided the institutional framework for monetary co-operation in the European Community until January ‘94, when they were replaced by the European Monetary Institute (EMI) under the headship of Baron Alexandre Lamfalussy - ex-General Manager of the BIS! The EMI was to become

The European Central Bank.

1978: The World Computing Services Industry is founded.. It was later to become the World Information Technology & Services Alliance (WITSA) which would have a real impact on the global IT environment.
(see below)

July 1979: As revealed by Zbigniew Brzezinski, and unknown to the American public and Congress, President Jimmy Carter secretly authorized $500 million to create an international terrorist movement that would spread Islamic fundamentalism in Central Asia and ‘de-stabilise’ the Soviet Union... The CIA called this Operation Cyclone and in the following years poured $4 billion into setting up Islamic training schools in Pakistan. ..Young zealots were sent to the CIA's spy training camp in Virginia, where future members of al-Qaeda were taught ‘sabotage skills’ - terrorism.
December ‘79: well-aware of Ops. Cyclone, in December ‘79, the USSR invaded Afghanistan, and after a long and devastating war with guerrilla opposition forces (the mujahideen) the last of the Soviet troops left Afghanistan in February1989, their economy and rubles in tatters.

1980: With Saddam Hussein now in power, Iraq invades Iran - and (a) the US supplies Iraq with strategic information gleaned from its satellites during the Iran\Iraq War of 1980 to 1988. (b) Less well publicized was the substantial American aid brokered by such as: the US\Iraq Business Forum, set up in May 1985 with many top US corporations as members; the Kissinger Associates consulting firm, boasting such alumni as Brent Scowcroft, Lawrence Eagleburger and Lord Carrington; and the Bechtel Group, boasting such alumni as George Shultz and Caspar Weinberger. (Bechtel, it should be noted, won the contract to build the Iraqi PC-2 Complex near Al-Musaiyib for the production of gas precursors and ethyline oxide)
The UN’s response was to have Resolution 479 passed - which neither condemned Iraq nor demanded their withdrawal from Iran! Understandable when it is recalled that the UN had been suborned by the US since its formation. The build-up of the Iraqi military machine would not, of course, have been possible without considerable assistance from more technically advanced countries such as Germany, France, Britain, the USSR, America

June 1982: The secret arming of Iraq had been ordered by President Reagan in June 1982 as part of a National Security Decision Directive. Under it, CIA Director William Casey and his then-deputy, Robert Gates, "authorized, approved and assisted" delivery of cluster bombs to Iraq through Cardoen.

1983: The US Congress-funded National Endowment for Democracy (NED) had been set up by Congress“to try to do openly what the CIA used to do secretly”. It, in turn, controls the Center for International Private Enterprise (CIPE) which, in turn, funds the group of economists known as the G17, three of whose leading members are also staff members of both the IMF and World Bank. NED has been active in Yugoslavia since 1988.

1987: The notorious Guantanamo Bay detention camp/prison, operated by a Joint Task Force of the US, was set up.

1987: The Military Professional Resources Inc. (MPRI) was set up in Alexandria, Virginia with the specific aim of promoting America's anti-left strategy on the international military scene. (see below)

1988: As evidence of vote-rigging: as is well-known, the New Hampshire primary is a crucial forerunner for any presidential candidate, and in the election of ‘88, GHW Bush won unexpectedly aginst his fellow-Republican Robert Dole. It transpired that the Governor of New Hampshire, John Sununu, was a computer engineer, and the computer voting machine being used was a ‘Shouptronic’ Direct Recording Electronic (DRE) voting machine, supplied by Ransom Shoup, who “had been twice convicted of vote fraud in Philadelphia”! On becoming president, Bush appointed Sununu Chief of Staff in his administration.

1989: The economist-cum-G17 coordinator, Vaselin Vukotic was appointed Minister of Privatisation under the federal Yugoslav premier, Ante Markovic (a Croat). Vukotic implemented the World Bank-sponsored ‘bankruptcy program’ in Yugoslavia between ‘89 and ‘90, which led to the devastation of the Yugoslav economy, and set the stage for the breakup of the republic. Result?: 50% of Yugoslav industry was broken up, and over 1100 industrial firms wiped out between January 1989 and September 1990!

late 1989: the Director of the Kuwaiti State Security Department, Brigadier al-Fahd, had had a secret week-long meeting in Langley, Virginia, with the US Director of the CIA, William Webster. In his own words: “We agreed with the American side that it was important to take advantage of the deteriorating situation in Iraq in order to put pressure on that country’s government to delineate our common border. The CIA gave us its view of appropriate means of pressure, saying that broad co-operation should be initiated between us, on condition that such activities are co-ordinated at a high level”.

August 2nd 1990: Iraq invades Kuwait and takes control of the country, installing a puppet government.

...On November 29, with US & coalition forces massing in Saudi Arabia and Iraq showing no signs of retreat, the UN Security Council passed a resolution to allow member states to "use all necessary means" to force Iraq from Kuwait if Iraq remained in the country after January 15, 1991. On January 17, 1991, coalition forces began a massive air attack on Iraqi targets. After five and a half weeks of intense bombing, Iraq’s forces were severely damaged. On February 24 the coalition launched its long-anticipated land offensive, attacking southwestern Iraq, then turned east toward the Iraqi port of Al Basrah, thereby surroundeing Kuwait, encircling the Iraqi forces there and in southern Iraq, and allowed coalition forces (mainly Arab) to move up the coast and take Kuwait city. On February 28, with the collapse of Iraqi resistance and the recapture of Kuwait—thereby fulfilling the coalition’s stated goals—the coalition declared a cease-fire. UN sanctions against Iraq were now enforced. The UN continued to maintain most of the economic embargo on Iraq after the war, and several coalition countries enforced other sanctions, such as the no-fly zones. The following September, Clinton authorises bombing of Iraq.

May 1991: George H.W. Bush nominated Robert Gates to be Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). Gates had played his part in effectively manipulating the circumstances surrounding the Iraq\Kuwait confrontation - thus ensuring the inevitability of the invasion that followed in August 1990. (Gates had served as a director of the well-known vote-rigging company, Votehere!)

1991: The collapse of the USSR was probably the most significant post-WW 2 event. America’s role in destabilising the USSR (as noted above) therefore calls for closer scrutiny, and from the vantage point of hindsight, the fact that in the aftermath of the collapse of the USSR the American oil companies (with others) quickly bought their way into the vast reserves of Russian oil and gas is surely proof enough that this was one of the crucial aims of America’s strategy. This ‘destabilisation’ was implemented, primarily, by money-laundering. Two Americans, Leo Wanta and the notorious Marc (Reich) Rich, were the main players in this, and, - in Wanta’s own words: while working under Bill Casey’s Special Operations Branch, Black Ops. “he had dealt with both the fusion bomb and the destabilisation of the ruble” - in conjunction with Kok Howie Kwong of the Chinese Secret Service! Casey was then Reagan’s Director of Central Intelligence (DCI). As for Rich - he had fled to Switzerland in ‘83 to evade prosecution in a US Federal Court, and had been operating on Soviet territory since 1983. By 1993, his yearly turnover on ex-Soviet territory was $3 billion.
Here it should be noted that George Kennan, who had been Head of Planning when NATO had been formed, revealed, at a BBC Reith Lecture, that NATO had not been set up solely to resist Soviet expansion - its true role had been to act as a counter-revolutionary, counter-reformist arm of the Corporate West. In plain English: NATO had been formed to deal with the internal political problems of Western society. Furthermore, as noted by Eric Hobsbawn, the reforms known as Glasnost, introduced by Gorbachev in the late ‘80’s, led to the economic collapse within the Soviet Union.

Dec. 1 1991 : The people of the Ukraine, the so-called breadbasket of the Soviet Union, voted overwhelmingly in favour of independence from the USSR - sunsequently endorsed by the Ukraine parliament on Dec. 5th. (here it is of pertinence to note that Hitler’s invasion of the USSR in June 1941 was aided in no small measure by fascist Ukrainian paramilitaries - this author can vouch for that).

December 1991: Germany recognises Croatian & Slovenian independence - which ensured that the conflict would spread to neighbouring Bosnia-Herzogovnia with its potentially explosive mixture of three ethno-religious groups. NB: 2 Germans held important posts in NATO at that time! That well-known ‘Balkan Problem’ would now, once again, rear its ugly head.

1992: As Stephen Dorril reported “The CIA launched Operation Maseraagh (‘laundry’) which flooded Iraq with forged dinars to undermine the economy” - adding that “At the beginning of 1992, CIA Director Robert Gates travelled round the Middle East states to drum up support for renewed covert action”.

From June 1992: NATO's involvement in the Balkan crisis was a gradual process - from its avowed readiness to support peace-keeping under the authority of the Conference on Security & Cooperation in Europe (subsequently re-named the Organisation for Security & Cooperation in Europe [OCSE]). In October ‘92, it had inaugurated a plan to create an Allied Command Europe Rapid Reaction Corps (ARRC) of some 250,000 troops to be deployed whenever NATO deemed it necessary to intervene in order to ‘keep the peace’ - but, as originally foreseen, the ARRC would not be ready until 1995.

1992 to 1993: Belgrade-born cyclist, Milan Panic, who had defected to America in 1955 (where he had subsequently adopted American citizenship and founded a large, successful chemical corporation), returned to the country of his birth and served as its Prime Minister from 1992 to 1993...Panic“took his new job very seriously and employed a weighty team of Serb and American advisers”.

1993: The HagueTribunal (International Criminal Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia [ICTY]) - call-it-what-you-will was not legitimately set up by the UN Security Council via its Resolutions 808 and 827 - with not-a-little arm-twisting by then US Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, who, when asked whether the deaths of half a million Iraqi children (during the sanctions against Iraq ,1992-1998) was 'a price worth paying for removing Saddam', curtly replied 'we think it was worth it' !! The political character of the Tribunal was stressed by Antonio Cassese when he told Boutros-boutros Ghali (UN General-Secretary) that "Our tribunal will not be simply ‘window dressing" but a decisive step in the construction of a new world order." In violation of Article 32 of its Charter, in 1994/95, the United States provided $700,000 in cash and $2,300,000 worth of equipment; George Soros’ Open Society Foundation contributed $150,000; the Rockefeller Foundation, contributed $50,000; - et al.... (NB: Soros also funds the main KLA newspaper in Pristina, the Tribunal.) In its own words: "The tribunal does not need to shackle itself with restrictive rules which have developed out of the ancient trial-by-jury system." In plain english - this is a kangaroo court! (best described by Christopher Black, who helped to create the International Committee to Defend Slobodan Milosˇevic´ (ICDSM), and is a vice-chair of that committee). (see below)

1994: Leonid Kuchma replaced Kravchuk as Ukrainian president in the 1994 election, and during his candidature, Kuchma had visited Soros in the US. In 1994, the American-Ukrainian Advisory Committee (AUAC), was formed, under Zbigniew Brzezinski with such prestigiously notorious members as Henry Kissinger, General Gavin (ex-head of NATO), Frank Carlucci, George Soros et al... Kuchma would later send 1650 Ukrainian troops as allies to the Americans after the latter’s invasion of Iraq in 2003.
Moreover, the Soros foundation would supply $363,100 to support the independent television stations’ coverage of this election - all of it used within 3 months!.

1994: In 1994, a contract - titled Democracy Transition Assistance Program (DTAP) - was agreed between the Croat defence minister and the US Deputy Secretary of Defense, John Deutch (who subsequently became Director of CIA from '95 until he was forced to resign the following year because he had improperly stored classified information on his personal computer disc!). As a result, the MPRI had signed a contract with the Croatian Ministry of Defence under which the former would act as military advisors to the Croat army at the Petar Zrinski military school in Zagreb - the MPRI officer in charge being retired General Richard Griffiths who had once been assistant to the US Commander in Europe for Intelligence, in Frankfurt. MPRI’s Chief of Operations was Lieut. General Harry Soyster, ex-Head of the US Defense Intelligence Agency. While head of the DIA, Soyster had dealt out a number of contracts to the notorious German arms dealer, Ernst Werner Glatt, for the procurement of Soviet weapons which were then shipped to the USA from whence they would be sent to America's proxy troops in Latin America, Asia and Africa. In Soyster’s own words: "Glatt was the favorite arms merchant of the CIA, which chose him to move arms to the contras in Nicaragua and the mujahedeen in Afghanistan".He had also supplied weapons to Croatia, and had bought a country estate in Virginia, which he named the 'Black Eagle', a symbol of Nazi Germany!

August 1995: the training of the Croat army came to fruition and their attack on the Serbs of Western Krajina was so well and effectively planned that, within a matter of days, 150,000 Serbs had fled the region where, four centuries before, they had been settled to act as a buffer between Catholic and Muslim. The CIA had sent pilotless reconnaissance flights over Krajina from a base on the island of Brac (in the Adriatic) to assist in the attack. The Americans had now adopted a blatantly anti-Serb stance which embraced both Cetnik Serbian leadership in Bosnia (Karadic was a self-avowed royalist Cetnik) and the rump Socialist Federal Republic of Yugoslavia under Milosevic - conveniently disregarding the schism between these two groups, a schism born in WW 2 and now re-activated in this crisis. It was now self-evident that, in the eyes of the Americans, the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia (FRY) - still tainted with ‘communism’ - was now the ultimate target.

September 1995: with the ARRC now ready, NATO announced its readiness to deploy a large force to implement a Bosnian peace settlement.

December 1995: as a result of a conference convened in London to discuss the implementation of the coming Dayton accord, a Peace Implementation Council - with no UN representatives onboard - was set up in Brussels. The resulting Implementation Force (IFOR), a force of 60,000 American, British and French troops - under the command of the ARRC - was then deployed throughout Bosnia into three zones of operation.

14th of December 1995: The Dayton peace talks took place in the intimidating atmosphere of the Wright-Patterson Air Force base near Dayton, Ohio. The embargo against Yugoslavia was lifted in November - and the peace accord signed in Paris.

1996: The Trade & Development Agency (TDA - now known as the USTDA) was given the task of overseeing the South Balkan Development Initiative (SBDI) of 1996 - as a result of which, TDA gave the Albanian Macedonian Bulgarian Oil Corporation (AMBO) the exclusive right to run the Corridor 8 pipeline, a 900 kilometre trans-Balkan pipeline from Burgas - via Skopje in Macedonia - to the Albanian port of Vlore on the Adriatic Sea. In the words of the Director of TDA, J. Joseph Grandmaison, this project was “..a significant step forward for this policy and for US business interests in the Caspian region”. The feasibility study for this pipeline project was contracted out - by the TDA - to the prestigious oil/construction company Brown & Root (the CEO of whose parent company, Halliburton, had been Dick Cheney - now Vice-President under Bush jnr.) Now - in 2009 -the project is still not completed!
December 1996: IFOR was augmented by the Stabilisation Force (SFOR) of 30.000 troops. The cease-fire could now be ensured by this display of military might.

1997: saw the formation of the Central Asia Gas Pipeline consortium (Centgas) with the intention of running a 790-mile-long pipeline from the gas fields of Turkmenistan through neighbouring Afghanistan to Multan, in Pakistan (at a cost of $1.9 billion) - with a possible future extension to New Delhi, in India (cost: $600 million). all under the control of the California oil company, UNOCAL, but, due to the ever-worsening instability in Afghanistan, UNOCAL aborted the project in December 1998. it is reasonable to assume that these considerations would have been in the forefront of the minds of the US government officials, and would thus have played a crucial role in determining America’s response to Afghanistan in the aftermath of the WTC bombing

1997: The Project for the New American Century (PNAC) was a very influential lobby group set up to promote American global leadership.
January 26th 1998: eighteen members of the PNAC, including such as: John Bolton, Zalmay Khalilzad, , Richard Perle, Donald Rumsfeld, Paul Wolfowitz, James Woolsey, and Robert Zoellich (to name the more recognisable ones) sent a letter to the then President, Clinton, advising him that he “should aim, above all, at the removal of Saddam Hussein’s regime from power”, adding that “American policy cannot continue to be crippled by a misguided insistence on unanimity in the UN Security Council”. (shades of what was to come later!). On cue, in December of that same year, Clinton launched Operation Desert Fox, whereby the American air force heavily bombed Iraq - but did not occupy it, much to the chagrin of the PNAC. NB: In its 90-page long article published in 2000, the PNAC repeatedly stressed the need for “American global leadership..by maintaining the pre-eminence of US military forces”, and proudly stating that “The United States is the world’s only superpower”, et al.... ( as proof of their influential status politically : August 1st 2005, Bush appoints Bolton as US Ambassador to the UN - replacing him by the Afghan/American Ambassador to Iraq, Khalilzad, in February 2007; and in 2007, Bush appoints Robert Zoellich to replace Paul Wolfowitz as Governor of the World Bank - two cases of one PNAC member replacing another!)

1998: ITAA does not confine its activities to America only - it is active on the international scene. As evidence of this was an ITAA-sponsored conference held in Fairfax, Virginia in 1998, at which there were 1686 attendees (of whom, 429 were not American) - including such 'noted speakers' as Margaret Thatcher and Mikhail Gorbachev.

End of 1998: After months of internal strife in Kosovo, NATO prevailed upon the Yugoslavs to allow its (NATO’s) affiliate, the Organisation for Security and Cooperation in Europe (OSCE) to monitor the situation in situ. Result: the Kosovo Verification Mission (KVM) entered Kosovo under the leadership of a US diplomat, William Walker, who, as US Ambassador to El Salvador, had administered support for that State's reign of terror - with its politically motivated killings!

18th of March 1999: the representatives of the FRY, Serbia , and seven of the Kosovan ethnic minorities submitted - for discussion - an Agreement for Self-Government in Kosovo & Metohija (a document conforming to democratic principles), - only to have it rejected out-of-hand by the (American) Contact Group and the KLA. On the 23rd March ‘99, peace talks convened by the Americans at Rambouillet, just west of Paris, - without Yugoslavia - reached an ‘agreement’ - Appendix B of which stated “Status of Multi-National Military Implementation Force ( NATO personnel shall enjoy, together with their vehicles, vessels, aircraft, and equipment free and unrestricted passage and unimpeded access throughout the FRY including associated airspace and territorial waters”. (Agreement - or Ultimatum?!). NATO launched its bombing campaign the following day, at the end of which, the UN Security Council approved Resolution 1244, which gave the UN Mission the responsibility to administer Kosovo. .In the aftermath of NATO's bombing of Kosovo in 1999, the KLA (once rightly considered by the Western Powers as 'terrorist') was transformed into the Kosovo Protection Corps (KPC) and the MPRI was awarded the contract to 'train & equip' same. Intriguingly, the commander of this newly-formed KPC was one Brigadier General Agim Ceku, an Albanian Kosovan who had been serving in the Croatian army when he had masterminded the successful HV (Croatian army) offensive at Medak in September '93; and had also played an important role in the Croat's routing of the Serbs in Western Krajina (covered above).

2000: John Bolton (see above) had served as assistant attorney general under Reagan , and assistant secretary of state under George H.W. Bush. During Bush Jnr’s Presidential election quagmire in Florida, his campaign strategist James Baker dispatched Bolton to Palm Beach to halt the recount, which he did, thus ensuring Bush’s electoral victory. In 2001, Bolton was appointed Undersecretary of State under Colin Powell. As stated by Jesse Helms:"John Bolton is the kind of man with whom I would want to stand at Armageddon”

April 1st 2001: Milosevic is arrested (with not-a-little-help from Ahthony Monckton, chief MI6 officer in Serbia) - and is sent to face trial by the Hague Tribunal - and dies of heartfailure there in March ‘06, the case against him not proven.

September 11 2001: 4 US planes are highjacked, 2 0f which crash into the NY World Trade Center twin towers, thereby destroying them, another crashing into the Pentagon, and a fourth re-captured by passengers and crew, thus aborting its attack (presumably on Washington). The Bush administration blame al Queda, and the following month bomb Afghanistan and NATO invades the country. At this point, it is of pertinence to add the following: In his ‘Talk’ in September 2006, the Canadian Dr. Peter Dale Scott exposed - comprehensively - that the FBI, CIA & US Special Forces had foreknowledge of the 9/11 attacks! Of particular interest was the fact that Abu Mohamed al Amriki (better known as Ali Mohammed), had had strong connections to al Queda, and from 1994 until his arrest in 1998, had lived as an American citizen in California - and had been used by the three US agencies noted above. Dr. Scott goes on to give detailed accounts of Mohammed’s key role in training al Queda trainees in sabotage skills in America itself - as well as abroad - ending his ‘talk’ by saying: “It’s time to confront the reality that these agencies themselves, and their own sponsorship and protection of terrorist activities, have aggravated the greatest threats to our national security.” (It must not be forgotten that in the Afghan/USSR war, America had played a role in creating al Queda, as noted above).

13 - 19th September: Menbers of the Bin Laden family - with important Saudis - are flown out of the US, under supervision of the FBI.

22 December 2001: Bush Jnr. appointed Hamid Karzi - who had previously been a paid consultant for the oil company UNOCAL (and Deputy Foreign Minister of the Taliban) - Prime Minister of Aghanistan.

31 Dec. ‘01: Bush appointed Zalmay Khalilzad (PNAC) as Special Residental Envoy to Afghanistan - under Karzi.

1st January 2002: Khalilzad (also a former employee of UNOCAL - & a member of the PNAC) - is appointed special emvoy to Afghanistan.

14 February 2002: Quote from Israeli Newspaper, Ma’ariv: “If one looks at the map of the big American bases created in the Afghan war, one is struck by the fac that they are completely identical to the route of the projected oil pipeline to the Indian Ocean”.(see Central Asia Gas Pipeline [CENTGAS] above).

March 2002: To quote Robert Parsons: “The US loudly & proudly boasted this month of its new bomb currently being used against al-Qaida hold-outs in Afghanistan; it sucks the air from underground installations, suffocating those within. The US has also admitted that it had used depleted uranium weaponry over the last decade against bunkers inIraq, Kosovo, and now Afghanistan.”

August 2002: the Dutch-sponsored Netherlands Institute for War Documentation (NIOD) report revealed that the supply of arms/weapons (most of which came from Iran and Turkey) to the infighting factions in the war in Yugoslavia were all done with the connivance of NATO. More shockingly, it revealed that Turkish, Malaysian, Bangladeshi and Maltese troops serving in UNPROFOR (UN protective force) had been selling ammunition on a large scale to the Bosnian army (ABiH)!

October 2002: Bush Jnr’s administration passed the Help America Vote Act (HAVA) which authorised the funding of $4 billion for states to use the Direct Recording Election system (DRE) equipment which would have to meet certain standards (set by the Act ) by the year 2006, at which point, they (the states) will be under obligation to have purchased said new equipment. As of December 2003, 36 states agreed to these obligations. [1] Note that in DRE, votes are stored electronically, and, as such, therefore under proprietary ownership of the equipment companies: the voter is therefore denied access! (NB: Bush Jnr. had set up NorthCom in 2002 to counter any ‘terrorist’ attacks on American homeland territory - thus ircumventing the Posse Comitatus Act (PCA) which had been passed in 1878 in order to prohibit any “future President or Congress from directing by military order of federal legislation the re-imposition of the US Army”

October 2002: Unknown to Congress, a very secretive group , The Office of Special Plans (OSP), under the leadership of its architect, Paul Wolfowitz (PNAC), was created by Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld to help create a case to invade Iraq.

February 2003: The Pentagon established the Iraqi Reconstruction and Development Council (IRDC), made up of Iraqis who would be part of a temporary government after the ousting of the Ba'ath regime..its leading members were transported to Baghdad in late April 2003 - their official task being to rebuild the structures of a government that would then be handed over to the new Iraqi authority. The team is headed by Imad Dhia, the top Iraqi adviser to ex-general Jay Garner

13 July 2003: the Governing Council of Iraq was inaugurated, its members having been appointed by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Under its civilian administrator, Paul Bremer (who had been Ronald Reagan’s adviser on counter- terrorism) would oversee the Pentagon's man in Baghdad, the retired general Jay Garne, who is.a personal friend of the defence secretary, Donald Rumsfeld.

2004: The election of Victor Yuschenko as President of Ukraine was helped in no small measure by the AUAC (see above) - and Soros. This was an election, known as the Orange Revolution, entitled PORA (its Time!), organised by the same Serbian-trained group (overseen by America) which had set up the previous similarly-manipulated elections in Serbia (OTPOR), in October 2000 - and Georgia (K-MART), in 2004.
The fact that all three elections were immediately denounced as ‘rigged’; but most importantly that they had all three been manipulated by America - with not a little help from the Soros foundation - gave substance to the allegation that the Orange Revolution was imported from the United States via Serbia and Georgia.

2005: Bolton was named as America's Ambassador to the United Nations.NB: in a 1994 speech he had said, "There's no such thing as the United Nations....There is only the international community, which can only be led by the only remaining superpower, which is the United States" On December 4, 2006, Bolton resigned as U.S. Ambassador to the UN. Hardly surprising!

2007: ITAA currently acts as the Secretariat for the World Information Technology & Services Alliance (WITSA), which was then a consortium of 69 IT associations around the world (from Algeria to Zimbabwe - or 90% of the world's IT market!).The clonal relationship between these two organisations is confirmed by the fact that (a) Harris N. Miller is President of both; and (b) ITAA Director, Robert B. Laurence, is Chairman Emeritus of WITSA. Little wonder that the vote-rigging EVS’s are today used worldwide!

2007: The great financial crisis began when a loss of confidence by investors in the value of securitized mortgages in the United States resulted in a liquidity crisis that prompted a substantial injection of capital into financial markets by the United States Federal Reserve, Bank of England and the European Central Bank - and deepened increasingly throughout 2008 and 2009, leading to the G 20. (see below)

Feb. 2008: US officially recognised Kosovo as an independent state.
September ‘08: after 3 years service in Iraq, the army’s1st Brigade Combat Team (BCT) was sent back to America to serve under Northern Command (NorthCom), where, for the next year, it would train/act “as an on-call federal response force for natural or manmade emergencies and disasters, including terrorist attacks”(As noted above, this would bypass the PCA). Intriguingly, “Army Times” reported that “another, as yet unnnamed, active-duty brigade will take over and that mission will be a permanent one”, and Col. Louis Vogler, chief of NorthCom’s future operations, notes “Right now, the response force requirement will be an enduring mission.” - adding that “Now, the plan is to assign a force every year”.
This will not worry Obama unduly, inasmuch as he is keen on following Bush Jnr’s mid-east strategy, resulting in the construction of the Central Asia Gas pipeline through Afghanistan. That is the goal (see above).

5th November ‘08; Obama wins election as president, and his subsequent administration includes the following two of pertinence to this article: Hillary Clinton (US Secretary of State); Robert Gates (US Secretary of Defense). Remember, Hillary had been a partner of the Rose Law Firm in1979 which was to play a role in helping G.W. Bush out of the financial hole he had dug for himself as Director/Consultant of the small oil drilling company, Harken Energy - to say nothing of the fact that her husband had played a key role in the break-up of Yugoslavia. And as for Gates - just refer to the foregoing in this atricle.

14/15 November 2008: The current global financial depression has now entered a crucially important phase, resulting in America - that quintessential capitalist State - holding a G-20 summit in Washington to discuss this matter. The first draft of thisWashington Action Plan had been drawn up previously by the ECB, IMF, and the Bank for International Settlements (BIS) - NB: under the supervision of the BIS,
The participants were (a) leaders of the G-20 nations; (b) Chairman of the World Bank, Robert Zoellick (see above); (c) President Dominique Strauss-Kahn of the International Monetary Fund; (d) Secretary of the UN; and (e) Chairman of the Financial Stability Forum, Mario Graghi. The Americans strongly recommended that it be adopted at two subsequent summits that would be held in Britain

4 Mar 2009: US president has written to Moscow to stress that the contentious US missile defence system in Europe is focused on Iran. (believe that - you believe anything!)

14/15 March ‘09: The first G-20 is held in Horsham, Sussex - and, as with all cases of documents written in legalese, the Action Plan is a document written in convenient double-speak, as exemplified by the fact that Germany and France, in particular, were in favour of reforming the international financial system - whereas Robert Zoellick of the World Bank (see above), and Timothy Geithner, the US Treasury Secretary (who, in 2007, had served as Director on the board of the BIS!), were strongly in favour of stimulating the global economy by the injection of more money.

April 2nd. ‘09: The final G-2 summit is held in London, and Germany & France, having been ‘persuaded’ to follow the American way, an ‘agreement’ is reached.(t is worthy of note that the foregoing ignores the fact that it is Capitalism which is responsible for this current financial debacle. What are capitalists if they are not profiteers swamped in greed?)

18 May 2009: Binyamin Netanyahu, met President Obama today for talks expected to shape the direction of one of the toughest political challenges either leader will face in the coming years - with the Israeli prime minister trying to shift the primary focus away from the Palestinians toward confronting Iran over its nuclear programme while mapping out a long term strategy to build Palestinian self government. But Obama's principal challenge is to get Netanyahu to put “an end to Israel's well practised tactics of prevarication and obstruction over the creation of an independent Palestine while continuing to gobble up land that would be part of that state.” (to quote the Guardian of 18th May ‘09). Obama has a problem indeed.

20 May 2009: Iran test fires surface-to-surface missile capable of reaching Israel or US bases in the Middle East

**************************

Two important conclusions from the foregoing:

(a) Over the past century, there is little, if any difference between the Republican and Democratic parties (not unlike the situation in Britain, where, since Thatcher, there has been little difference between Conservative and New Labour).

(b) The reason for this being that US administrations have (and are still) under the control of its Corporate Establishment with its fascist strategy of acheiving global control.

PS: And if you readers disagree
My only answer would be
- Just wait and see

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

Steve Bell. Another milestone in British art?


http://www.guardian.co.uk/commentisfree/cartoon/2010/may/12/gordon-bro wn-david-cameron-queen

[TonyGosling]

BCfm 'Arabian Nights' presenter Mohamed Makawi describes attempts by MI5 to intimidate and recruit him in the late 1990s and passes on advice for others they approach. Interview with Mohammed Makawi who presents BCfm's Arabian Nights show – MI5 tried to recruit him years ago as he was part of the Muslim community – NATO, Operation Cyclone, CIA.
https://politicsthisweek.wordpress.com/2015/03/20/bcfm-politics-show-w ith-tony-gosling-12/
http://www.radio4all.net/index.php/program/79856

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

The core guys were the same already in Afghanistan - and later on in the Balkans.

The core guys were the same already in Afghanistan - and later on in the Balkans. https://t.co/dJp25Mej5t

— Bernd Neuner (@Bernd__Neuner) April 2, 2018

Jürgen Elsässer: “The CIA recruited and trained the jihadists”
by Silvia Cattori
http://www.voltairenet.org/article143050.html

In his latest book, “How the Jihad Came to Europe”, German journalist Jürgen Elsässer unravels the Jihadist thread. Muslim fighters recruited by the CIA to fight against the Soviets in Afghanistan were used successively in Yugoslavia and Chechnya, still supported by the CIA, but perhaps sometimes out of its control. Basing himself on diverse sources, mainly Yugoslavian, Dutch, and German, he reconstructed the development of Osama bin Laden and his lieutenants at the side of NATO in Bosnia-Herzegovinia.

VOLTAIRE NETWORK | 14 AUGUST 2006

Jürgen Elsässer
Silvia Cattori: Your investigation into the actions of the secret services makes a frightening report. We discover that since the 80’s the United States has invested billions of dollars to finance criminal activities and that by means of the CIA they are directly implicated in the attacks attributed to the Moslems. What is the contribution of your book?

Jurgen Elsässer: It is the only work that establishes the tie between wars in the Balkan of the 90’s and the attack of September 11, 2001. All the large attacks, in New York, in London, in Madrid, would never have taken place without the recruitment by the American and British secret services of these jihadists who have been blamed for the attacks. I bring a new light on the manipulations of the intelligence agencies. Other books than mine have noted the presence of Ossama Ben Laden in the Balkans. But their authors presented the Moslem fighters in the Balkan as enemies of the west. The information that I collected from multiple sources, demonstrate that these jihadists are puppets in the hands of the west and are not, as one pretends, enemies.

Silvia Cattori: In the case of the war in the Balkan, the manipulations of various States are clearly designated in your book. The United States supported Ben Laden whose work was to form the Mujahidines. How can anyone continue to ignore that these attempts that horrify public opinion would never have existed if these «terrorists» had not been driven and financed by the western intelligence services?

Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, indeed, it is the result of facts that one can observe. But one cannot say that the western intervention in ex - Yugoslavia had for objective to prepare attack of September 11. To be precise: these attacks are a consequence of western politics of the 90’s because NATO put these jihadists in place in the Balkans and collaborated with them. The Moslem militants who have been designated the persons responsible for the attacks of September 11 were part of this network.

Silvia Cattori: According to you, what was the interest of the United States and Germany to set the people of the Balkans one against the other?

Jürgen Elsässer: The west had a common interest to destroy Yugoslavia, to dismember it, because, after the end of the soviet bloc, it would have been a model of the intelligent combination of capitalist and socialist elements. But the west wanted to impose the neoliberal model on all countries.

Silvia Cattori: Is not Europe itself imprudently committed to a war manipulated by the neoconservatives?

Jürgen Elsässer: It is difficult to say. I believe that in the 90’s, the politics of the United States was inspired by their victory against Soviets in Afghanistan. It was the model that they wanted to apply in Balkans. If, during those years, the economy of the United States had not fallen into depression, maybe the more realistic politicians, such as Kissinger, could have kept control of American politics. I think that the coincidence between the economic depression and the aggressiveness of the neoconservative school determined what happened.

Silvia Cattori: Do you think that a leader like Blair, for example, once embarked in the neoconservative project, has become a hostage to a certain point?

Jürgen Elsässer: I don’t know the position of Blair enough well. It is easier to see what goes on in the United States. One can see that Bush is the hostage of those around him. And, as he is not very intelligent, he is not able to take decisions and must follow ideas of his entourage. It is clear that his father was against the attack on Iraq in 2003.

Silvia Cattori: Wasn’t the first Gulf war part of a plan aiming to trigger other wars thereafter?

Jürgen Elsässer: No, there was no tie with the war in Iraq in 1991. There were two phases. Until the end of the Clinton period, the politics of the United States were imperialistic, but at the same time, pragmatic. They chased the Soviets out of Afghanistan. They defeated Iraq in 1991. Their war stopped once Kuwait was free. Then they attacked Bosnia and Yugoslavia; but it occurred stage by stage. Everything went out of control after September 11.

Silvia Cattori: The neoconservatives don’t count for anything?

Jürgen Elsässer: The neoconservatives, grouped around Pearl, had written a document one year before September 11, according to which America had need of a catalyzing event similar to the attack on Pearl Harbor. September 11 was this catalyzing event. I believe that people around Pearl wished for the attacks of September 11.

Silvia Cattori: What was the objective pursued by the United States in attacking Serbia? Was it merely about, as is indicated in your book, the US getting itself installed in a strategic region situated on a transit line for the oil and the gas of central Asia? Or did the alliance of the United States with the Moslem fighters directed by Izetbegovic have a second objective: to create a Moslem extremism at the doors of Europe in order to make use of it in the setting of terrorist manipulations? And, if yes, towards what goal?

Jürgen Elsässer: The United States wanted, as did Austria at the end of the 19th century in Bosnia, to create a “European” Islam to weaken the Islamic states in the Middle East, meaning, at that time, the Ottoman empire, and today, Iran and the Arab states. The neoconservatives had other plans again: to construct a clandestine network of “fundamentalist” puppets to do the dirty work against “old” Europe.

Silvia Cattori: The result, a terrifying civil war. How could Europe have participated in the destruction of Yugoslavia, which appeared as an example of the perfectly successful cohabitation between ethnic groups? By making the Serbians the guilty party, didn’t Europe destroy a country that was one of the major constructions of the postwar era? On what legitimacy did Europe base its intervention?

Jürgen Elsässer: First, in the beginning of the 90’s, Germany led the attack based upon the principles of the self-determination of ethnic groups: in other words, Hitler’s old ruse against Czechoslovakia and Poland in 1938/39. Then, the United States took the relay and praised “human rights”, an obvious swindle.

Silvia Cattori: In your investigation Israel is never mentioned. Have you not minimized the importance of pro-Israeli neoconservatives inside the Pentagon, who serve interests of Israel more that those of the United States?

Jürgen Elsässer: There are Israelis who collaborated with the neoconservatives; it is a fact. But I am not sure of the role played by Israel in this business. Sharon was against NATO support for the Albanians of Kosovo. And, in 1998, he expressed his worry over the idea that NATO support the setting up of pro-Islamic elements in the Balkan. I also believe that he was not favorable to this war the following year.

Silvia Cattori: Don’t you see ties between the Israeli secret services and the attacks of September 11, 2001?

Jürgen Elsässer: There are ties, but I didn’t analyze the character of these ties. For example, immediately after September 11, a certain number of Israeli agents were arrested in the United States. They were present in places where the attacks were prepared. There are analysts who say this is proof that Israel was directly implicated in these attacks. But it could also mean something else. It could be that these agents were watching what happened, that they were aware that the American secret services supported these “terrorists” in the preparation of these attacks, but that they kept their knowledge to use it at the appropriate moment, and to be able to use it as blackmail when the moment came: “If you don’t increase your support for Israel, we are going to hand over this information to the media”. There is even a third possibility: that these Israeli spies wanted to warn about the attacks but failed. At the moment, we only know that these types were there and that they were arrested. Supplementary investigations are necessary.

Silvia Cattori: Do these ties put in evidence that the attacks of September 11, 2001 were part of a plan conceived a long time before?

Jürgen Elsässer: I am not certain that a plan had been established for a long time. It could be that people such as Richard Perle improvise a lot and use criminal elements that they put in place but that they don’t permanently control. As, at the time of Kennedy’s murder, it is clear that the CIA was implicated, but one doesn’t know if it had been planned at the top, at Langley [the headquarters of the CIA], or if it was conceived among the most violent Cuban exiles working for the CIA, the headquarters of the CIA limiting themselves to tolerating it.

Silvia Cattori: If tomorrow these characters grouped around Pearl were removed, would that stop the anti-Muslim war strategy of the United States and the manipulations that justify it?

Jürgen Elsässer: It stops when they lose a war.

Silvia Cattori: The war, didn’t they lose it in Iraq?

Jürgen Elsässer: The war will only be lost when they leave the country, as in Vietnam.

Silvia Cattori: These Moslems who, like Mohammed Atta, were just ordinary citizens before being enlisted by the CIA, how could they be driven to such terrifying actions, without knowing that they were being manipulated by intelligence agents of the opposite camp?

Jürgen Elsässer: There are some youth that can be turned into fanatics and manipulated very easily by intelligence services. High-placed characters are not unaware of what happens and know by who they are hired.

Silvia Cattori: Ben Laden, for example, did he know that he served the interests of the United States?

Jürgen Elsässer: I didn’t study his case. I studied the case of Al Zawahiri, Ben Laden’s right arm, who was the chief of operations in the Balkans. In the beginning of the 90’s, he traveled all through the United States with an agent of the US Special Command to collect money for the Jihad; this man knew that he participated in this collection of money as an activity that was supported by the United States.

Silvia Cattori: All of this is very troubling. You bring the proof that that attacks that have occurred since 1996 (attacks in the subway of Paris), would never have been possible if the war in the Balkan had not taken place. And you impute these attacks, that left thousands of victims, to western intelligence services. Has opinion in West therefore been deceived by governments that have embarked on terrorist actions?

Jürgen Elsässer: The terrorist network that the American and British secret services formed during the civil war in Bosnia and later in Kosovo provided a reservoir of militants that we find implicated later in the attacks in New York, Madrid, London.

Silvia Cattori: How did this happen concretely?

Jürgen Elsässer: Once the war was finished in Afghanistan, Osama Ben Laden recruited these jihadist militants. It was his work. It was he that trained them, partially with the support of the CIA, and put them in place in Bosnia. The Americans tolerated the connection between the President Izetbegovic and Ben Laden. Two years later, in 1994, the Americans began to send weapons, in a common clandestine operation with Iran. After the treaty of Dayton, in November 1995, the CIA and the Pentagon recruited best of the jihadists that had fought in Bosnia.

Silvia Cattori: How does it happen that these Moslems got into the hands of services that served ideological interests opposed to theirs?

Jürgen Elsässer: I analyzed testimonies given by some jihadists interrogated by the German judges. They said that after the treaty of Dayton, which stipulated that all foreign ex-fighters had to leave the country, they didn’t have any more money and had nowhere to go. As for those that could remain in Bosnia, because they had been provided with Bosnian passports, they were without work and without money. The day when the recruiters came and rang at their doors and proposed to pay them 3000 dollars a month to serve in the Bosnian army, they didn’t know that they were recruited and paid by emissaries of the CIA to serve the United States.

Silvia Cattori: After, when they were sent to prepare the attacks in London in July 2005, for example, did they not become aware that they were in the hands of western intelligence agents who manipulated them?

Jürgen Elsässer: It is not clear that it was really the young Moslems from the suburbs of London that committed the attacks, as the police claim. There are other indications according to which the bombs were fixed under the trains. It is possible the bombs were attached under the trains without these young men knowing about it. In that case it is not sure that the young Moslems, incriminated by the investigation, committed these attempts.

Silvia Cattori: It is hard to understand the goal that the western States pursue when they engage their services in criminal manipulations?

Jürgen Elsässer: This is not easy to say. Remember Kennedy’s murder. Who did it? It is certain that it was people from the CIA that supported the second killer, it is certain that Oswald was murdered by a man who had been mandated by the CIA. What is not clear is if these men recruited by the CIA acted on order of Johnson or Dulles, or if they were link to the milieu of extremist Cuban exiles, which means affiliated to the mafia. I don’t believe that Bush or Blairs are chiefs. I don’t believe in the theory of the big conspiracy. I believe that the secret services hire men who are ordered to carry out the dirty business; these agents act as they want. Perhaps you know that on September 11, 2001, someone tried to kill Bush. What does it mean? It is difficult to explain.

Silvia Cattori: Do you mean that Bush is, for example, himself hostage of the people who, inside the Pentagon, form a State within the state, one that also escapes the command of the American army?

Jürgen Elsässer: Yes. Bush is stupid. He is a tool in the hands of other people.

Silvia Cattori: Are you thinking about people that are under the direct influence of characters such as Pearl, Wolfowitz, Feith? Do you think that it is they who, after the war of the Balkan, would have been the real backers of these attacks and that these attacks are not separate from each other, that there is a link between Madrid and London? Does it mean that the Americans are ready to ally with the devil to sow chaos everywhere under the pretext of this anti-Muslim, anti - Arabic war waged under the banner of terrorism? A fabricated terrorism?

Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, there is a duplicate government that escapes Bush’s control. It is the neoconservatives, such as Cheney, Rumsfeld, Wolfowitz, Pearl, the people tied into the oil and the military industries,. The global chaos is in the interest of the military industry: when there is the chaos all over the world, one can sell weapons and oil for a bigger price.

Silvia Cattori: Youssef Asckar described this State within in the state very well, to which you give credit [1]. Isn’t Israel the first country interested by this strategy of chaos, therefore by the manipulation of terrorist attacks? Doesn’t the propaganda of the pro-Israeli lobby have the tendency to make us believe that Israel is threatened by Arabs fanatics?

Jürgen Elsässer: It is not certain that this strategy can serve the interests of Israel because, if things continue this way, the whole Middle East will be in flames, including Israel. They used the same process during the war in Bosnia. In order to demonize the Serbs, the western media invented stories of concentration camps and made photo montages that compared the Serbs to the Nazis. This propaganda aimed to win opinion over to the war against Serbia, but, with regard to the United States, it was not nourished necessarily by the Jewish lobby, but by the Christian and atheist strategists. These strategists play the “Jewish” card. That is my thesis. One sees it currently with the propaganda against Iran; strategists of the war play the “Jewish” card to impress people that have more morals than intelligence.

Silvia Cattori: The recent manipulations confirm, in part, your thesis: at the same moment where the United States wanted the Security Council to pass sanctions against Iran, a Canadian newspaper wrote that Iran wanted to force Iranian Jews to wear the equivalent of a yellow star [2]]]. But I refer to these openly pro-Israeli personalities that, in France for example, play an important role in the formation of opinion because they occupy some strategic positions in the media, and whose community allegiance psuyhes them to support the policies of Israel and the United States, even if it is criminal. Remember the active support brought to Izetbegovic in Bosnia by Bernard-Henri Lévy and Bernard Kouchner. As soon as Serbia was on the knees, they immediately turned their propaganda against Arabs and Moslems; this time it was to mobilize opinion in favor of the so-called “war of civilizations”. When they spoke of “concentration camps” to associate the Serbs with Hitler, didn’t they participate in manipulations of NATO?

Jürgen Elsässer: We watched the same phenomenon in Germany. The Jewish journalists that supported the war against Yugoslavia had access to the televised studios. But the journalists that were against, whether they were Jewish or not, were excluded from the debate. I think that the media and politicians use the Jewish voices for geostrategic stakes.

Silvia Cattori: So, as you see it, what happened in the Balkan was only the repetition of what had happened in Afghanistan, what followed was part of the same process. Do you think that our authorities know risks of the wars provoked by their intelligence agencies?

Jürgen Elsässer: My hope is that there is a reaction on behalf of the military in the United States. There are among them people who know very well that all these wars are not intelligent. They know that the United States is going to lose this war. In the American army, they are imperialistic but they are not crazy, they don’t agree with what is happening. But the neoconservatives are crazy, they want to wage the Third World War against all Arabs and all Moslems, just like Hitler who wanted to kill all Jews and to attack all other countries; the German generals had warned Hitler of all that he risked.

Silvia Cattori: Is your hope that a change occurs unexpectedly?

Jürgen Elsässer: To stop this madness I see possibility of change only among those forces that remained rational. The high command of the American army wrote a letter to Bush to say that it doesn’t want to participate in an attack against Iran with nuclear weapons. Maybe Bush will attack; but the consequences would be more serious than in the case of Iraq. The same thing happened with the Nazis: they attacked, they attacked, and one day there was Stalingrad and the beginning of the defeat. But this adventure cost the lives of 60 million human beings.

Silvia Cattori: Is that what motivated your effort while writing this book: to alert people’s consciences in order to avoid new disasters and new suffering? Moreover, that after Iraq it would be Iran’s turn?

Jürgen Elsässer: Yes. But characters like Bush don’t care about all of that. I am not completely pessimistic on Iran: one could see a repetition of the Paris, Berlin, Moscow axis. Our chancellor, who is normally a puppet of the United States, offered strategic cooperation with Russia, because Germany depends entirely on Russian oil and gas. It is a strong argument. Germans are imperialists, but they are not crazy.

Silvia Cattori: In the Balkans, was it not Germany that opened the door to the war?

Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, it is true. But, today, you see that Joschka Fischer and Madeleine Albright have sent an open letter to Bush to tell him not to attack Iran. Mrs. Albright specified that one cannot attack all the people that one doesn’t like. It is rational.

Silvia Cattori: Were you able to collect these elements that illustrate the actions of the intelligence agencies because, today, people, worried of the evolution of international politics, are beginning to speak?

Jürgen Elsässer: Yes. I depended a great deal on information from people that work in the belly of “the beast”.

Silvia Cattori: Everywhere in the world?

Jürgen Elsässer: I can only tell you that it is people from Western Europe. It is people that haven’t stopped using their heads.

Silvia Cattori: To obtain the proof of the manipulations surroundeding the “Gulf of Tonkin Incident”, the incident that permitted the United States to unleash the war against the Vietnamese people, it was necessary to wait a long time. Have things therefore changed today, permitting a response in time?

Jürgen Elsässer: There is a big difference between the situation in the 60’s and the one today. In the Federal Republic of Germany, they were, for example, at that time in favor of the war against Communists in Vietnam. The official version that said our republic was in danger of being attacked by Communists was shared by a big part of public opinion. What has changed is that, today, the majority of the population is against the war, without discussion.

Silvia Cattori: You rightly underline the extremist religious character of Bosnia-Herzegovina under Izetbegovic, but, whereas you doubt the support of Israel to this sort of draft of the emirate of the Talibans, don’t you overvalue the role of Iran and Saudi Arabia? Richard Perle was the principal political advisor to Izetbegovic. Didn’t the Iranians and the Saudis raise the ante on the question of Islam hoping to take the control of a Moslem regime that only took its orders from Tel Aviv and Washington? In fact, was Izetbegovic not an agent of Israel?

Jürgen Elsässer: The Mossad helped the Bosnian Serbians, they even provided them weapons. There is nothing that indicates that the Israeli government helped Izetbegovic. It was supported by Americans, and Clinton depended upon the Zionist lobby in the United States, but this lobby didn’t have the support of the Israeli government during the war of Bosnia.

Silvia Cattori: With regard to some of your sources, can one grant credit to the assertions of Yossef Bodanski, director of the Working Group on Terrorism and Non-Conventional war close to the American Senate?

Jürgen Elsässer: I don’t trust anybody. They claim that Bodansky has ties with sources in Mossad and it renders a number of his findings suspect. On the other hand, he brings to our knowledge a lot of interesting facts that contradict the official propaganda. In my book I show the contradictions within the dominant elites of the United States, and, in this respect, Bodansky, is very interesting.

Silvia Cattori: It says in your book: “Terrorism exists in Kosovo and Macedonia, but in its majority it is not controled by Ben Laden but by US intelligence”. Do you doubt the existence of Al Qaeda?

Jürgen Elsässer: Yes, as I wrote it in my book, it is propaganda manufactured by the west.

Silvia Cattori: One has a bit the impression that, to go to the end of its logic, your investigation is not finished. Certainly, Yugoslavia was a laboratory for the manufacture of the Islamic networks, and your book shows well that these networks serve the interests of the United States. However, you seem to believe in the existence of international Islamic networks who would have a popular base in the Moslem world, whereas at the same time your research demonstrates that these networks are only mercenaries of the United States and that they have never done anything for the Moslems?

Jürgen Elsässer: Look at the example of Hamas: in the beginning of the 80’s, it was fomented by Mossad to counter the influence of the PLO. But thereafter, Hamas developed its own popular base and, now, it is part of the resistance. But I bet that there are still foreign agents inside Hamas.

Silvia Cattori: You mentioned that the inspectors of the United Nations are infiltrated by spies from the United States. Could we have some precisions?

Jürgen Elsässer: Some blue helmets of the UNPROFOR in Bosnia transported weapons to destinations of the Mujahidines.

Silvia Cattori: When Peter Handke affirms that Serbs are not the only guilty party, that they are victims of the war of the Balkans, one banish it. Who is right in this business?

Jürgen Elsässer: On all sides - Serbs, Croatians, Moslems - the ordinary people have all lost. Moslems won the war in Bosnia with the help of Ben Laden and Clinton but, now, their country is occupied by NATO. They have less independence today than at the time of Yugoslavia.

Silvia Cattori: How does your research relate to that of Andreas Von Bülow and Thierry Meyssan?

Jurgen Elsässer: We share the same opinion on the events of September 11, 2001: we think that the official version is not true. All this combined research is very useful to be able to continue to deepen the reality of the facts. My specialty is to have made the link between wars of the Balkans and September 11, while Thierry Meyssan analyzed the attack on the Pentagon to demonstrate that it was due to a missile and not to a plane, and Von Bülow arrived at the conclusion that planes were guided by a beacon.

Silvia Cattori: To having put into question the official truth, Thierry Meyssan was discredited and blocked by the media. Are you going to escape that?

Jürgen Elsässer: There is also a blockage against my book. It is not possible for one author alone to break this blockage. However, it can’t prevent our theses from making their path. The public is not in agreement with what the media says: in spite of their blockage 35 to 40% of people don’t believe what media tells them. There is the example of Kennedy’s assassination: today, 90% of people don’t believe in the official version and think that Kennedy’s murder was an action of the CIA.

Silvia Cattori: Isn’t it dangerous to uncover the manipulations of States that use their intelligence services in criminal ways?

Jürgen Elsässer: I believe that the danger only comes when one sells more than 100 000 books. In Germany, in eleven months, my book has only sold 6 000 copies.

Silvia Cattori
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Translated by Signs of the Times.

[1] Read « La guerre contre le terrorisme » est une guerre contre les peuples» by Youssef Aschkar, Voltaire, March 16th,2006.

[2] «Read Iran : les gouvernements anglo-saxons fabriquent de fausses nouvelles», Voltaire, May 24th, 2006.

Silvia Cattori
Silvia Cattori Swiss journalist. After having extensively written about diplomacy in South-East Asia and the Indian Ocean, she was witness to operation « Protective shield », launched by the Tsahal against the Palestinians. Ever since, she has devoted her work to raising global awareness of the conditions endured by the Palestinian people under Israeli occupation.


Mordechai Vanunu: "Iran poses no threat"

[TonyGosling]

We created Islamic extremism: Those blaming Islam for ISIS would have supported Osama bin Laden in the ’80s
Jingoists conveniently forget the West’s Cold War strategy was to arm the Islamic extremists that became al-Qaida
https://www.salon.com/2015/11/17/we_created_islamic_extremism_those_bl aming_islam_for_isis_would_have_supported_osama_bin_laden_in_the_80s/

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BEN NORTON

NOVEMBER 17, 2015 8:48PM (UTC)

History takes no prisoners. It shows, with absolute lucidity, that the Islamic extremism ravaging the world today was borne out of the Western foreign policy of yesteryear.

Gore Vidal famously referred to the USA as the United States of Amnesia. The late Chinese Premier Zhou Enlai put it a little more delicately, quipping, "One of the delightful things about Americans is that they have absolutely no historical memory."

In order to understand the rise of militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida; in order to wrap our minds around their heinous, abominable attacks on civilians in the U.S., France, Syria, Iraq, Lebanon, Nigeria, Turkey, Yemen, Afghanistan and many, many more countries, we must rekindle this historical memory.

Where did violent Islamic extremism come from? In the wake of the horrific Paris attacks on Friday, November the 13, this is the question no one is asking -- yet it is the most important one of all. If one doesn't know why a problem emerged, if one cannot find its root, one will never be able to solve and uproot it.

Where did militant Salafi groups like ISIS and al-Qaida come from? The answer is not as complicated as many make it out to be -- but, to understand, we must delve into the history of the Cold War, the historical period lied about in the West perhaps more than any other.

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How the West cultivated Osama bin Laden
We needn't reach back far into history, just a few decades.

A much-circulated photo of an article published in British newspaper the Independent in 1993 exemplifies the West's twisted hypocrisy. Titled "Anti-Soviet warrior puts his army on the road to peace," it features a large photo of Osama bin Laden, who, at the time, was a Western ally.

Osama bin Laden, reported on favorably in the U.K.'s The Independent in 1993 (Credit: Imgur)
Osama bin Laden, reported on favorably in the U.K.'s The Independent in 1993 (Credit: Imgur)

The newspaper noted that bin Laden organized a militia of thousands of foreign fighters from throughout the Middle East and North Africa, and "supported them with weapons and his own construction equipment" in their fight against the USSR in the 1980s. "We beat the Soviet Union," bin Laden boasted.

The mujahedin, the Islamic militias bankrolled by bin Laden, along with Maktab al-Khidamat -- the organization bin Laden created to recruit and fund foreign Islamist fighters -- are what eventually morphed into both al-Qaida and the Taliban.

"When the history of the Afghan resistance movement is written," the Independent wrote, "Mr Bin Laden's own contribution to the mujahedin... may turn out to be a turning point in the recent history of militant fundamentalism."

Portraying bin Laden in a positive light, less than eight years before he would help mastermind the largest terrorist attack on American soil in decades, the British publication claimed that the "Saudi businessman who recruited mujahedin now uses them for large-scale building projects in Sudan." In reality, bin Laden was setting the stages for what would be become al-Qaida.

Unheeded warnings
In Greek mythology, Cassandra was blessed with the power of prophecy, but cursed in that no one would ever heed her warnings. Eqbal Ahmad, the late political scientist, historian and expert in the study of terrorism, was a modern-day Cassandra.

In a speech at the University of Colorado, Boulder in October 1998, Ahmad warned that the U.S. policy in Afghanistan would backfire:

"In Islamic history, jihad as an international violent phenomenon had disappeared in the last 400 years, for all practical purposes. It was revived suddenly with American help in the 1980s. When the Soviet Union intervened in Afghanistan, Zia ul-Haq, the [U.S.-backed] military dictator of Pakistan, which borders on Afghanistan, saw an opportunity and launched a jihad there against godless communism. The U.S. saw a God-sent opportunity to mobilize one billion Muslims against what Reagan called the 'Evil Empire.'

"Money started pouring in. CIA agents starting going all over the Muslim world recruiting people to fight in the great jihad. Bin Laden was one of the early prize recruits. He was not only an Arab. He was also a Saudi. He was not only a Saudi. He was also a multimillionaire, willing to put his own money into the matter. Bin Laden went around recruiting people for the jihad against communism.

"I first met him in 1986. He was recommended to me by an American official of whom I do not know whether he was or was not an agent. I was talking to him and said, ‘Who are the Arabs here who would be very interesting?’ By here I meant in Afghanistan and Pakistan. He said, ‘You must meet Osama.’ I went to see Osama. There he was, rich, bringing in recruits from Algeria, from Sudan, from Egypt, just like Sheikh Abdul Rahman. This fellow was an ally. He remained an ally.

"He turns at a particular moment. In 1990, the U.S. goes into Saudi Arabia with forces. Saudi Arabia is the holy place of Muslims, Mecca, and Medina. There had never been foreign troops there. In 1990, during the Gulf War, they went in, in the name of helping Saudi Arabia defeat Saddam Hussein. Osama Bin Laden remained quiet.

"Saddam was defeated, but the American troops stayed on in the land of the Ka'aba [the most sacred site of Islam, in Mecca], foreign troops. He wrote letter after letter saying, 'Why are you here? Get out! You came to help but you have stayed on.' Finally he started a jihad against the other occupiers. His mission is to get American troops out of Saudi Arabia. His earlier mission was to get Russian troops out of Afghanistan."

For bin Laden, Ahmad added, "America has broken its word. The loyal friend has betrayed. The one to whom you swore blood loyalty has betrayed you."

"They’re going to go for you. They’re going to do a lot more," Ahmad warned, three years before the 9/11 attacks. "These are the chickens of the Afghanistan war coming home to roost."

We now know that Ahmad was right. But, like Cassandra, the powerful ignored his sagacious admonition, and suffered the horrific consequences.

Extremist "freedom fighters"
In the 1950s and '60s, Afghanistan was a somewhat secular country in which women were granted relatively equal rights. What turned Afghanistan into the hotbed for extremism it is today? Decades of Western meddling.

Throughout the 1980s, the CIA, through the Pakistani government -- more specifically Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) -- supported and armed the mujahedin in Afghanistan in their fight against the Soviet Union, in what was dubbed Operation Cyclone. President Ronald Reagan famously met with the mujahedin in the Oval Office in 1983. "To watch the courageous Afghan freedom fighters battle modern arsenals with simple hand-held weapons is an inspiration to those who love freedom," Reagan declared.

President Reagan meeting with the Afghan Mujahideen in the Oval Office in 1983 (Credit: U.S. government)
President Reagan meeting with the Afghan Mujahideen in the Oval Office in 1983 (Credit: U.S. government)

Those "freedom fighters" are the forefathers of ISIS and al-Qaida. When the last Soviet troops were withdrawn in 1989, the mujahedin did not simply leave; a civil war of sorts followed, with various Islamist militant groups fighting for control in the power vacuum. The Taliban came out on top, and established a medieval theocratic regime to replace the former "godless" socialist government.

There are extremists in every religion, but they tend to be few in number, weak and isolated. Salafism, in its modern militarized form, has its origins in the 1920s, and even before. For decades, this movement remained weak and isolated. Yet, in the 1970s and '80s, Western capitalist governments, particularly the U.S., came up with a new Cold War strategy: supporting these fringe Islamic extremist groups as a bulwark against socialism.

The U.S. was by no means the only one to pursue such a strategy. Echoing the U.S. policy in Afghanistan, Israel in fact supported Hamas -- now its sworn arch-enemy -- when the Islamist group was first forming in the 1980s. Israel backed Hamas' militant founder Sheikh Ahmed Yassin in order to undermine the secular socialist resistance of the Palestine Liberation Organization (PLO).

"Hamas, to my great regret, is Israel's creation," a former Israeli government official told the Wall Street Journal in a 2009 article titled "How Israel Helped to Spawn Hamas."

This Cold War strategy ended up being successful: After the fall of the USSR, the secular socialist groups that dominated the resistance movements of the Middle East were replaced by Islamic extremists ones that had previously been supported by the West.

It is not a coincidence that most of the secular countries in the history of the Middle East have been socialist of some sort. In contrast, the most reactionary countries -- the countries where women are not granted equal rights and where the rule of law is based on Sharia -- have frequently tended to be close Western allies. Why? The West was much, much more interested in preserving capitalism than it was in allowing secularism, gender equality and relative economic equality to flourish under socialism.

Orientalist posturing
Many pundits, including liberals, have argued that the Middle East, North Africa and Muslim-majority parts of South Asia are presently going through their parallel to the West's Dark Age, a bloody period of religious extremism. They blame the rise of extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaida on Islam itself, or on the Middle East's supposedly "backward" culture, yet conveniently gloss over their own countries' sordid histories and policies.

There is much more than a tinge of racism in this orientalist idea that, for some reason, Muslims in the Middle East are centuries behind the englightened Christian West. This ludicrous claim does not stand up to even the most superficial historical scrutiny.

For one, never mentioned is the fact that, only decades ago, most Middle Eastern countries were Western colonies. Their civilian populations were terrorized and brutalized by Western colonial powers.

And, again, what were the most secular and modern governments in the history of the Middle East? It was almost always the Soviet-aligned or non-aligned leftist governments that were either enemies of the West or non-allies in the Cold War.

Regardless of the critiques of these governments' many problems, which is a separate issue, the reality is the Middle East was significantly more progressive and secular during the height of the Cold War than it is today. That's not a coincidence. The U.S. and its allies destroyed secularism as part of their larger Cold War strategy.

The Cold War bites back
This Cold War strategy continues to bite back today, and hard. Because of this policy, we have now ended up with capitalist dystopias like those in Saudi Arabia, Qatar or the UAE -- filthy rich oil states where businessmen are drowning in money while the migrant modern-day slaves upon which their economies are built die in droves, and theocratic monarchies imprison or even behead anyone who challenges the regime.

The Gulf states remain some of the most reactionary and extremist countries on the planet, and they happen to be close Western allies. Saudi Arabia, in particular, is the fountainhead of militant Sunni Islamism -- and yet the Obama administration has done more than $100 billion in arms deals with the Saudi monarchy in just five years. In fact, less than three days after the Paris attacks, the U.S. sold another $1.3 billion of bombs to Saudi Arabia -- bombs it will likely use to drop on Yemen, where human rights organizations say it is committing egregious war crimes, and where the chaos created by the Saudi-led coalition is helping al-Qaida and ISIS expand into Yemen.

Former U.S. Sen. Bob Graham has observed that modern Sunni extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaida are "a product of Saudi ideals, Saudi money, and Saudi organizational support." Government cables leaked by WikiLeaks demonstrate that the U.S. is well aware that al-Qaida and other Salafi groups are supported by rich Saudis.

Let us not forget that Osama bin Laden was a millionaire businessman from a fabulously wealthy and prominent Saudi family with close ties to the kingdom's royalty. He used that wealth to finance an international network of Islamic extremists that coalesced into al-Qaida.

This doesn't mean that the Saudi monarchy is pulling the strings above ISIS -- which is now its enemy -- but rather that its global proselytizing and funding of Wahhabi groups and institutions made these once fringe extremist groups much stronger and more mainstream.

Ideologies are not devoid from material reality. Yes, there are extremists in every religion, but why do they not have the same power in other faiths? There is no such thing as an ideology independent of the material conditions and social forces that assert that ideology materially -- that is to say, politically -- in reality. Islamic extremism was violently imposed upon the Middle East through a mixture of imperial machinations and individual radicalization under tyranny and extreme poverty.

Creating your enemies
Western imperialism has a tendency to create its own enemies.

Up until the 1990 Gulf War, throughout the Iran-Iraq War that consumed the 1980s, the U.S. supported Saddam Hussein -- the very same dictator it would violently depose in 2003. Declassified CIA files show how the U.S. government helped Hussein when he was unleashing chemical weapons on Iranian civilians. The U.K. government allowed Hussein's regime to create chemical weapons using agents that were sold to Iraq by British corporations. These Western-provided weapons were also used in Hussein's campaign of genocide against the Kurds.

Fast-forwarding two decades later, it is now widely acknowledged that the illegal U.S.-led war in Iraq -- a catastrophic occupation that led to the deaths of at least 1 million people -- destabilized the entire Middle East, creating the extreme conditions in which militant groups like al-Qaida spread like wildfire, eventually leading to the emergence of ISIS. The former head of intelligence for the U.S. Central Command and Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), retired Army Lt. Gen. Michael T. Flynn, agrees. U.S. policies in Iraq "absolutely" strengthened Salafi militant groups like al-Qaida, Lt. Gen. Flynn conceded. "We definitely put fuel on a fire," he lamented.

New York Rep. Chuck Schumer remarked in 1991 that Saddam Hussein was "created in the White House laboratory with a collection of government programs, banks, and private companies."

Saddam Hussein was the first Frankenstein's monster U.S. policy created in Iraq, al-Qaida was the second, and now ISIS is the third.

Blaming Islam is projection
The pundits in the West blaming Islam for the rise of extremism are projecting their own countries' crimes onto the world's 1.6 billion Muslims.

The kinds of people who blame Islam and Muslims for the spread of extremism are the kinds of people who have utmost faith in Western empire. Even if they admit that it "sometimes" engages in problematic behavior, they, deep-down, believe Western empire to be fundamentally rooted in good will, in humanitarianism, in progress, in the proselytizing of civilization.

This is the same logic that justified genocidal European colonialism, Western expansionism and Manifest Destiny, and the White Man's Burden. And it is this same logic that promotes militarist policies and anti-Muslim and anti-refugee bigotries in response to Islamist militants' attacks -- only serving to further fuel the fire of extremism.

These same pundits, the ones who blame Islam for the rise of ISIS and who have utmost faith in the putative good will of Western empire, would have wholeheartedly supported Osama bin Laden in the 1980s; these same pundits would have dubbed the father of al-Qaida a "freedom fighter" in his heroic battle against the evil Soviet Union.

In the aforementioned speech, Ahmad articulated five kinds of terrorism. He lamented, however, that of these types, the focus in the media and the political system is almost always on just one: "political terror of the private group, oppositional terror" -- which he points out is "the least important in terms of cost to human lives and human property." "The highest cost is state terror," Ahmad explained. He roughly estimated that the ratio of people killed by state terror versus those killed by individual acts of terror is, conservatively, 100,000 to one.

If we truly want to end the abominable acts of violence perpetrated by extremist groups like ISIS and al-Qaida, we should take to heart the simple yet profound counsel of Noam Chomsky, another modern-day Cassandra: "Everybody's worried about stopping terrorism. Well, there's a really easy way: stop participating in it."

Watch Muslims around the world react to the portrayal of Muslims in the media:
We created Islamic extremism: Those blaming Islam for ISIS would have supported Osama bin Laden in the '80s

[Whitehall_Bin_Men]

The American Imam!

As a supporter and admirer of the RT news for its accurate news and informative programs, I am very disappointed and sorry to see that Rt seems to have fallen to the same level as the western corporate propaganda MSM by interviews like this with likes of the fake Imam Mohamad Tawhidi.

Perhaps someone in RT's management departments should make sure that the CIA has not infiltrated in their US RT branch since this is nowhere close to the RT's standard; it is more like the kind of propaganda that one aspect of seeing on likes of CNN, FOX NEWS, BBC or MSNBC!

Likes of Mohamad Tawhidi and the western back ISIS/Al-Qaeda Wahhabi terrorist are the two sides of the same coin. One chop off heads and the other attempts to chops your brains if you are not aware what these kind of varmints are up to.

Tawhidi is neither a Shia or a Sunni Muslim nor an Imam, and He is another created Imam of MI6, CIA and Mossad.

When it comes to creating the future members of the fifth columns inside other governments, they could get their men or women inside any organisation including any of the Islamic organisation, which they could study Islam and put on a clergy uniform on and a grow a long beard and call themselves Imams and follow their mission. Of course, there are always village idiots that could also be of good use for the very same propose.

The British secret services have a long history of using the sold out clergies all over the Muslim world to penetrate the Islamic organisations for their long term hegemonic interests.

And they have always been the ardent supporters and promoters of divisions among the Muslims and other religions when and if that served their colonial interests.
They have done that in Shia Iran by supporting the Bahais for example and in many Sunni Muslim nations by supporting the Wahhabis/Salafi sects. Both Bahaism and Wahhabism started their active existence in the mid 18 century at the height of the British empire's influence in the region.

Mohamad Tawhidi who calls himself Imam is the mouthpiece and one of the many members of the fifth column who repeats exactly the views and the agenda of the western corporate capitalist regimes in the name of a moderate Imam!

This fake created Imam is doing the bidding of the old western colonial practice for them just as we witness how the CIA, MI6 and Mossad with the help of their petrodollar stooge sheikdoms did and are still at it right now by using the Al-Qaeda terrorist.
In the last 40 years since the 1979 Iranian revolution, we have seen what they have done in Iran, Iraq, Afganistan, Libya, Egypt, Syria, Yemen by using the Isis terrorist to do their dirty jobs for them, murdering innocent human beings, which majority of them are the Muslims and the destruction of Muslim countries. This is while they have been strengthening the western colonial outpost in occupied Palestine under the tump of the criminal Zionist.

These heinous crimes were done all in the name of the Islamic faith, just as the Zionist commit their crimes and occupation of Palestine in the name of the Jewish faith.

The old practice of divide and rule of the western colonisers never have and never will stop till the people wake up and unite.
The fact is that the primary mission of likes of Mohamad Tawhidi is mainly against the Iranian 1979 anti-imperialist and anti-Zionist revolution that did once again give the Iranian the full control of their own country and cut the hands of the US and the British regimes from Iran.

Tawhidi mission is to promote what the late Imam Khomeini correctly pointed out as American Islam, which serves the US hegemonic interests and not the Muslim world.

This servant of western imperialism the fake Imam is also doing some extra works for his masters by attacking likes of the brave Congresswoman Ilhan Omar (D-Minnesota) and Tlaib (D-Michigan) and praising the criminal Zionists and Donald Trump!


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