America’s Surveillance and Targeted Assassination Machine

No other power in the world divides sections of the globes into various coms–Africom, Centcom, Eucom, Pacificom and Southcom, among others~~ William C. Lewis

[RINF] Over 1000 military bases stationed, world-wide, nuclear weapons, a nuclear, first-strike posture by U.S. anti-ballistic missile systems and thousands of tanks, planes, bombers, armadas, special forces killer teams, hundreds of proxies and the Central Intelligence Agency that massacres civilians in Pakistan with drones on a routine basis.

Not because the missiles are missing their targets as claimed but because slaughtering civilians is a rapacious and depraved tool of the U.S. warmongers and their imperial war machine–that includes the civilian CIA-for resource control against Pakistan, Afghanistan, Somalia and any other nation the U.S. bombs to sustain its militarized war economy and claim to control the world’s most coveted petroleum resources in the Caspian Basin and Africa.

No other power in the world divides sections of the globes into various coms–Africom, Centcom, Eucom, Pacificom and Southcom, among others.



CIA uses the corporate war military complex tools of surveillance and an informant network to understand who it is slaughtering and the people who are hit by the missiles are seen as associated with the “target,” whoever this person is.

It is not an accident, but a tool of state terrorism that is used in all counter-guerilla or counter-terror wars run by CIA and military to target friends, associates and family of those who are an impediment to U.S. imperial control or a convenient enemy for the military industrial complex to ratchet up domestic armaments spending and perpetuate the standing armies in the Pentagon branches with hundreds of millions of dollars of tax-payer money.

That CIA funds the Pakistani ISI and ISI, in turn funds the Taliban doesn’t really matter in the make-believe-media world of War on Terror which permanently threatens civilian slaughter against innocent bystanders whose personal relations are somehow tied up in this internecine web of war and deception based upon racism, fear lies and conformity to sustain the fortunes of the Wall Street ruling class, the CIA, the military and armaments industry.

Nor does it matter that the CIA organized the airlifts for weapons transport via Saudi, Qatari and Jordanian military aircraft that put weapons into the hands of NATO backed Sunni-terrorist groups, including Al Qaeda to destabilize Assad. It also doesn’t matter that there are fewer than 50 Al Qaeda in Afghanistan according to former CIA director Leon Panetta and that the Taliban had nothing to do with the 911 attacks. The U.S. must occupy militarily, permanently to sustain the war industry and keep its finger on the tap of Caspian Basin oil.

Various authors are claiming that because the United States and Russia are coming to an agreement on the chemical weapons of Bashar Al Assad that this somehow represents progress. But this is a mere farce and at best unfounded optimism due to the current, media staged U.S. posturing. The armaments industry still controls the United States. COINTELPRO is currently in full operation against those who oppose the U.S. war machine.

This war, foreign and domestic doesn’t just end–and people shouldn’t attempt to fool themselves or others. Just because one slaughter/attack was temporarily eluded, and look at how it is done, through an international, disarmament-policing mechanism, a smaller power is compelled to agree to give up their weapons to a more dominant body, which in turn dominates every one and the people doing it are largely guilty of war crimes.

How does this represent progress? The United States doesn’t need to use violence everywhere anymore. It has become so powerful that merely threatening to do so achieves the same results. It has hundreds of thousands of military and private contractors, JSOC not to mention CIA in Afghanistan, CIA in Pakistan, troops stationed in Korea, Germany, special-forces killer teams in over 120 nations, a spy network that spans the entire domestic United States with over 800,000 employees in the secretive domestic national security state.

It records and monitors U.S. citizens phone calls and e-mails, people are employed in private prisons to warehouse the massive population of unemployed black male, many of whom are prisoners for non-violent crimes in the counter-insurgency style war on drugs that is a boon to the U.S. private prison industry and the U.S. uses cut-throat killer mercenaries in Syria who have murdered hundreds of thousands of innocent people.

It isn’t even proven that Assad used weapons against his people and so the U.S. and Russia now negotiate how Assad will disarm. Yet, the greatest purveyor of violence in the world–the United States government-remains armed to the teeth after it obliterated 3 million people in Vietnam, millions in Iraq and burned to death 300,000-400,000 civilians in Hiroshima and Nagasaki. It is now threatening Russia that it will back out of negotiations to include Syria within the Organization for the Prevention of Chemical Weapons (OPCW) if Russia doesn’t include Chapter 7 of the U.N. Charter into the U.S/Russia accords, essentially allowing a NATO/U.S. military attack against Syria if it is seen as “not complying,” according to the D.C. war criminals’ corrupt, hypocritical standards.

All of this when it is obvious that Assad’s use of weapons against civilians two days after UN inspectors arrived in Damascus would have been a completely irrational act and completely unlikely. Various left commentators want to continuously point out that Assad has committed crimes, including torture, but the instigator of the secret rendition program that snatched and locked away detainees in the imperialist police state war on terror was George W. Bush, not Assad.

Speaking about the crimes of the designated official enemy Assad, for past crimes committed with CIA collaboration when the U.S. war, surveillance assassination machine spans the globe and is not ruling out another massacre, when it already massacres and knocks off civilians and enemies of U.S. empire via drone hits designed to inflict terror and maintains a vast diplomatic, military and intelligence occupation world-wide and war criminals belonging to the capitalist ruling class, who used Assad as a torture proxy, reside free of punishment seems a bit hypocritical. This is no time for jubilation. No victory has been won.

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US false flag in Kenya to preserve “The Petro-Dollar”?

"Did you realize that this false flag attack in the mall in the African nation came less than 2 days after Kenya announced that it would host the 1st Yuan clearing house? This would allow African nations to circumvent dollar transaction! Now you can see the reason that the President of Kenya is telling his close advisers that America and Israel are to blame"~~ Hiram

[Real Liberty Media] Kenya wants to host a clearing house for China’s yuan currency – a bold African first that would deepen the continent’s ties with Beijing, already a big investor from The Cape to Cairo. Such a venture would not eclipse the dollar in Africa anytime soon, however, because the yuan is tightly managed and traders are wedded to the greenback’s flexibility. Africans can already get quotes for their currencies against the yuan . A clearing house would cut the need for dollar settlements, speed things up and reduce costs.

But the real prize for Kenya, or any other African host, would be the symbolism of being the continent’s business gateway with Asia’s economic emperor, even if business starts modestly. Such an exchange would also be the first outside Asia. Its prospect is a measure of China’s challenge to Africa’s traditional partners in Europe and the United States and reflects the increasing attractions of a continent with some of the world’s fastest growing economies.

“Even if the benefits to business have probably been slightly overblown by diplomats on both sides, I don’t think you can understate the symbolic aspect,” said Shilan Khan, Africa economist at London-based Capital Economics. China’s ties with Africa have expanded fast. In 2012, the total volume of China-Africa trade reached $198.49 billion, a rise of 19 percent over the previous year, Chinese government figures show.

China accounted for 18.1 percent of Africa’s total trade volume in 2012, up from 3.8 percent in 2000. “The proposal is basically to consider Kenya favourably given that the financial market is deep here,” Kenyan Finance Minister Henry Rotich told Reuters in August, citing rivals such as Nigeria, which already holds some reserves in yuan.

South Africa had a financial centre that dwarfs Kenya’s and has been mooted as a potential host, though officials there have not said they are pursuing such a plan. “We are sort of competing and at the end of the day, the Chinese government is the one to decide where this clearing house will be,” Rotich said, making his pitch for east Africa’s biggest economy which aims to become a financial hub.

Early signals look good for Kenya. “We are very positive about this clearing house and I think it is very important for Kenya to set up a financial hub here and to process the Chinese currency renminbi,” China’s ambassador to Kenya, Liu Guangyuan, told Reuters on the sidelines of a conference in Nairobi on Wednesday.

The value of potential business through such a clearing house was still a subject of discussion, he said. Kenya’s daily turnover of foreign exchange is $330 million to $370 million, sometimes rising to $500 million. Highlighting Nairobi’s enthusiasm for a clearing house based in Kenya’s central bank, President Uhuru Kenyatta made his bid for Beijing’s backing during a visit to China in August. Business between Kenya and China is growing, even if Europe is still a bigger trade partner.

Kenya’s Equity Bank, for example, has opened a branch in Nairobi for Chinese business executives, complete with Chinese tellers serving them. “Everyone is trying to clinch a deal to directly clear and settle yuan transaction with the People’s Bank of China,” said an official at a Chinese state think-tank that often advises Beijing on policy, speaking about Africa’s clearing house plans.

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The Kenya Mall Story: Agonizing deaths and eerie sufferings

"Eyes gouged out, bodies hanging from hooks, and fingers removed with pliers’: Horrific claims of torture emerge as soldiers reveal gory Kenyan mall massacre details"

[Kenya Today] Soldiers told of the horrific torture meted out by terrorists in the Nairobi mall massacre yesterday with claims hostages were dismembered, had their eyes gouged out and were left hanging from hooks in the ceiling.

Men were said to have been castrated and had fingers removed with pliers before being blinded and hanged.

Children were found dead in the food court fridges with knives still embedded in their bodies, it was claimed.

Most of the defeated terrorists, meanwhile, were reportedly discovered ‘burnt to ashes’, set alight by the last extremist standing to try to protect their identities.

The horrifying details came yesterday as the first pictures emerged from within the wreckage of the building, showing piles of bodies left strewn across the floor.

A third of the mall was destroyed in the battle between terrorists and Kenyan troops.

Lying in the rubble are feared to be the bodies of as many as 71 civilians who have been declared missing by the Kenyan Red Cross.

With detectives, including the FBI and the Metropolitan Police, still unable to reach the wrecked part of the mall for fear of setting off explosives, it could take up to a week to determine exactly who is still inside.

Yesterday, soldiers and doctors who were among the first people into the mall after it was reclaimed on Tuesday, spoke of the horrifying scenes inside.

‘You find people with hooks hanging from the roof,’ said one Kenyan doctor, who asked not to be named.

‘They removed eyes, ears, nose. They get your hand and sharpen it like a pencil then they tell you to write your name with the blood.

‘They drive knives inside a child’s body.

‘Actually if you look at all the bodies, unless those ones that were escaping, fingers are cut by pliers, the noses are ripped by pliers. Here it was pain.’

A soldier, who took pictures at a bread counter and at the ArtCaffe, said he was so traumatised by what he saw he has had to seek counselling.

Bomb disposal experts with sniffer dogs were yesterday painstakingly combing the part of the building still standing for explosives before clearing forensic officers, police and troops to search for bodies.

Images also emerged yesterday revealing the true extent of the destruction caused to the centre during the four-day battle between Kenyan forces and Islamic militants.

The first pictures taken inside the site show a gaping hole in the mall’s roof after three storeys collapsed when Kenyan soldiers fired rocket-propelled grenades inside the complex, knocking out a support column, a government official said.

Children’s buggies are left abandoned just metres from the yawning pit, as cars hang precariously over the edge. Beneath many more vehicles lie on top of each other, smashed to pieces.

The collapse happened on Monday when government troops launched a massive assault on the mall where up to 150 people are thought to have been killed.

During the firefight, hostages reportedly had their throats slashed from ear to ear and were thrown screaming from third-floor balconies as the siege came to a bloody end. Forensics teams, still sifting through the mountains of rubble, fear many more bodies are yet to be found.

Shell-shocked Kenyan troops said the inside of the Israeli-run mall resembled a ‘scene from a horror movie’ with blood spattered everywhere and dead bodies strewn across the floor.

One soldier told the Daily Mirror: ‘I have seen many bad things, but this will haunt me for the rest of my days.’

The main thrust of the operation began at 6am on Monday when troops and helicopters surrounded the building, but their efforts were hampered by an Al Shabaab sniper who managed to pin them back for nearly 24 hours.

As tear gas was used to try to flush him out, another terrorist reportedly blew himself up. It is believed the resulting fire may have killed dozens of shoppers in a supermarket.

The following day, the soldiers were ordered to adopt a ‘shoot to kill’ policy and launched their final attack on the terror group on the roof of the mall at 5pm.

The mall was retaken about half an hour later.

Between 10 and 15 terrorists are thought to have stormed the mall on Saturday, according to Kenyan officials.

The police said five insurgents were killed in the battle and at least 10 taken into custody.

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Al-Shabaab terrorists at Kenyan Mall may have escaped through sewage tunnel

The Kenyan Daily Post is reporting that detectives have discovered a huge tunnel that serves as a sewage, through which the Al-Shabaab terrorists who seized the Westgate Mall for almost a week may have escaped. The tunnel is said to run for several metres from the Westgate Mall to the Nakummat Ukay Mall and on to the centre of Nairobi.

One of tunnel's exit
The report states that Kenyan detectives suggest the terrorists may have escaped through this conduit while leaving their explosives behind at the Westgate Mall. The report also indicates that explosions have continued to be heard even after the Kenyan Defence Forces (KDF) claimed to have secured the shopping mall.

The Daily Post asserts that information relayed through impeccable sources, within the intelligence community, insist the KDF did not kill a single terrorist during the attack and not a single body belonging to these terrorists was recovered from the debris after combing through the rubble for days.

This assertion is contrary to KDF’s claim through the Interior Cabinet Secretary, Joseph Ole Lenku, that they killed five terrorists which claim to date has not been substantiated.


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Report: US military to hit targets in Kenya, other African states

[PressTv] The United States is reportedly preparing a list of targets for possible military strikes in Kenya and some other African countries.

Former US general Army Vice Chief of Staff Gen. Peter Chiarelli said the strikes are aimed at targeting militants involved in Sunday's deadly attack on a shopping mall in the Kenyan capital city of Nairobi.

Somalia’s Al-Shabab fighters have reportedly claimed responsibility for the attack, saying it is in retaliation for Kenya’s military actions inside Somalia.

"They're developing targets . . . and refining target lists, trying to fill in any gaps that we possibly have," the former four-star general said during an interview with ABC's This Week on Sunday.

"Intelligence has been gathered and will continue to be gathered to fill in any holes that we have about what happened in this particular attack and what could happen in the future," Gen. Chiarelli added.

Chiarelli described the situation as “very chaotic” and added that US military officials are doing everything they can to gather information.

He, however, refused to elaborate how and with what means the US forces or their allies will target the group’s hideouts in Kenya.

This as Kenyan security sources in Nairobi revealed that Israel has sent its special forces to Kenya to fight with the militants at Nairobi’s Westgate shopping mall, according to an AFP report.

The report added that Israeli commandoes were airlifted to the east African country just after the start of the attack.

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Obama & Rouhani: The historic handshake that never happened

"Only a historic détente on an equal footing can rescue Obama’s disastrous foreign policy approach and his crumbling presidency.

Only when Obama feels the warmth of Iranian hospitality will he fully realize the extent of his foolish and unethical policies toward the Islamic Republic."~~ Nile Bowie

by Nile Bowie

[RT.com] As political leaders in Washington and Tehran signal they are in favor of diplomacy, is a genuine rapprochement between the two powers actually possible?

The speeches at this week’s UN General Assembly by the leaders of Iran and the US, although each striking conciliatory tones, both envisage a vastly different international order. Recently-elected President Hassan Rouhani, in his first speech to the assembly, reiterated that the Iranian nuclear issue is essentially a red herring, while eloquently addressing the moral deficiencies of the international order as it exists today. He spoke of the human cost of sanctions that devastate communities and the most vulnerable members of society, the illogicality of militaristic pursuits of hegemony, and the need for an international order that rests upon nations existing on an equal footing and the primacy of international law. Rouhani called upon nations to form a peacemaking coalition that rejects extremism and warmonger coalitions. Rouhani’s words were not bellicose, but grounded in moderation and compassionate sensibilities that reflect a growing consensus of global opinion in favor of a truly multipolar world.

The Iranian president’s speech reflects a world view that Iranians themselves overwhelmingly favor, and those who voted him into office are the victors, as Rouhani has taken to the world stage and emerged as a true statesmen and a representative of his people. Unfortunately, this is the point where optimism turns into pessimism.

President Barack Obama’s speech, although conciliatory in some respects, was spoken through the lens of unilateralism and the mythology of exceptionalism that has dominated decision-making in the US for decades. Substantial elements of his speech were attempts to justify existing US policy, which is viewed as increasingly unsustainable and narrow throughout many corners of the world. In his 40-minute speech, Obama’s words reverberated in an Orwellian echo chamber, as the orator attempted to dress reactionary positions in the clothing of morality.

The undertones of the message signified an unwillingness to acknowledge evidence that is contrary to the White House’s stance (on Syria, for example), and a stubborn insistence that the forces of “progress” have a responsibility to protect people around the world from those leaders considered “tyrants” or “dictators” by a select few in Washington – a philosophy that is scantly more sophisticated than Bush’s “Us vs. Them” doctrine.

The American president transparently attempted to defend inherently intransigent policies and self-serving positions, and he made clear that criticisms – the idea of an American empire – were to be brushed off as “propaganda.” American diplomats say that the Iranian delegation turned down an opportunity for an “encounter” between the two leaders, citing that the Iranian side faced too many domestic complications to go ahead with the meeting. Other accounts say Rouhani didn’t turn up to the luncheon where such a handshake could have taken place because alcohol was served.

The Iranian side has yet to address why the encounter failed to take place, but even so, the magnitude of problems between the two countries will require more than an informal greeting and a symbolic handshake between US and Iranian leaders – and no side should really be blamed for the meeting not materializing. The substance of the issue is that the fundamental positions between the two leaders are so palpably disparate, so undeniably grounded in divergent visions of an international polity, that the idea of a historic and meaningful détente is nearly impossible to surmise. I can’t express enough to readers how much I would like to see a historic rapprochement, one that would be mutually beneficial to the two peoples if they were given the chance to stand as equals.

My visit to Iran last year took me to the elegant mosques of Esfahan, the majestic deserts of Yazd, and rustic mountainous landscapes of Abyaneh. During my stay, the rial plummeted by 40 percent, prompting a public protest from venders in the Tehran bazaar, and a rush to buy gold and US dollars. From car manufacturers and energy exporters, to carpet weavers and pistachio cultivators, everyone was feeling the burn of the unethical and unyielding international sanctions regime spearheaded by the Obama administration.

I sprained my ankle and spent a few days in my hotel room in Tehran keeping off my foot. The hotel cleaning women, a mother in her late 40s, upon discovering that I was traveling on a US passport, asked me why Obama was adopting a position that is so destructive to Iranian civilians. The woman was nearly in tears explaining how her savings had been substantially eaten into by the free fall of the rial and how hyperinflation was punishing average people. I didn’t know what to say, other than what I felt to be the truth.

The truth is that Washington is unwilling to recognize the Islamic Republic as a legitimate political entity, but as a regime that exists only to be changed by the reactionary US political establishment through overt and covert measures.

The values of Iran’s indigenous theocratic democracy are intolerable to Washington, and though Tehran has tangible shortcomings if one views their political landscape through the frame of Western liberal democracy, high public participation in elections and the ascension and massive popularity of President Rouhani suggest that the ruling political establishment is indeed viewed as legitimate in the eyes of the biggest stakeholders – Iran’s people.

Rouhani succinctly stated in his speech that the best way to overcome the Iranian nuclear hurdle is to simply allow Tehran to pursue its nuclear energy and research policies within the framework of the Nuclear non-Proliferation Treaty, to which it is the signatory. The solution couldn’t be any more straightforward; it entails all parties to transparently abide by international law.

Rouhani’s rise to power was the result of democratic elections that were treated as a public referendum on the nuclear issue. Iran’s people endorsed a slogan of moderation and constructive interaction with the world. I interviewed prominent Iranian journalist Kourosh Ziabari shortly before Rouhani’s inauguration, and he told me that he knew the Iranian people would “not find our president being left with an empty hall while addressing the UN General Assembly, we will not find our president being booed in Columbia University and we will not find our president being called a hawk by those who are the real hawks of our world today.”

Just as Rouhani assumed his position as president, the US simultaneously issued a new round of sanctions on Iran – consider it a token of goodwill from Washington. As political prisoners are pardoned, and Supreme Leader Ali Khamenei calls for “heroic flexibility,” Washington would truly be foolish to pass up this opportunity to mend fences.

Iran has indicated its willingness to operate and usher in a new diplomatic era with Washington on several occasions through cooperation over Afghanistan and other areas – all of which have been met with scant interest or outright hostility. It’s time for Obama to put down the reactionary talking points and visit Tehran. He should visit the humble quarters of the late Iman Khomeini; he should share dates and black tea with President Rouhani and bridge the differences.

Obama should stop the weapons flow to Syria’s opposition and work with Tehran and Moscow in promoting the Geneva-2 peace conference with no preconditions, resulting in internationally monitored elections in Damascus at a later date. Only a historic détente on an equal footing can rescue Obama’s disastrous foreign policy approach and his crumbling presidency.

Only when Obama feels the warmth of Iranian hospitality will he fully realize the extent of his foolish and unethical policies toward the Islamic Republic.

Nile Bowie is a Malaysia-based political analyst and a columnist with Russia Today. He also contributes to PressTV, Global Research, and CounterPunch. He can be reached at nilebowie@gmail.com.

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Kenyan Bloodbath: State-Sponsored Sophistication & Motivation

"That Kenya's new president was elected in what could be easily interpreted as a major slight against the already teetering legitimacy of the ICC and the corporate-financier interests that contrived and currently perpetuate the institution, appears to be the most compelling motive behind the recent attack in Nairobi."~~ Tony Cartalucci

by Tony Cartalucci

[Land Destroyer Report] What are the chances that family members of Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta just so happened to be visiting Nairobi's Westgate Mall in the midst of an unprecedented cross-border attack by Al Qaeda Al Shabaab terrorists - and that these family members were successfully singled out and murdered? The BBC reported in its article, "Nairobi Westgate attack: The victims," that:

President Uhuru Kenyatta's nephew Mbugua Mwangi and his fiancee Rosemary Wahito are among the many Kenyans killed in the attack on the Westgate shopping centre.

What are the chances that Al Qaeda is armed and funded by the US from Afghanistan in the 1980's, to Libya in 2011, and now Syria to undermine enemies of Wall Street and London, but not in Somalia to undermine neighboring Kenya whose new president won partly due to a popular backlash against the West's discredited International Criminal Court (ICC)?

Indeed, Kenyan President Uhuru Kenyatta was charged by the ICC for "crimes against humanity" even as he ran for president. The Kenyan newspaper, the Standard, published "Is history repeating itself as Uhuru Kenyatta, like father, faces trial?," where current President Kenyatta's persecution by the ICC is seen as a parallel to the persecution of his father, Jomo Kenyatta, by British colonial rule. It stated:

In April 2011, Ngengi Muigai, a close relative of Uhuru drew parallels between his charges at the ICC and the trial, jailing and unlawful detention of his father by the British colonial government.

How much can a wife and a mother bear? Her husband's tribulations from the British colonialists and now her son from the neo-colonialists said Ngengi.

Mama Ngina had said at the same venue: I'm sure Uhuru, Ruto and the rest will go to The Hague and come back so that we can proceed with nation building.

She said this on the day she laid hands on both her son and Ruto as she prayed for their safe return from The Hague.

She said the charges facing her son and his co-suspects were the work of neo-colonialists and urged Kenyans to stand by Uhuru and resist just like they had resisted the British colonial rule.
The colonialists gave us problems and it is now clear they have never relented, said the former First Lady.

The former first lady is not alone in viewing the ICC as the modern day successor of old European subjugation and colonization. President Kenyatta's persecution by the ICC is a tell-tale sign that he has made enemies in the West. The ICC itself is a discredited institution openly collaborating alongside NATO and in particular, the US, UK, and France to target political enemies around the world.

This would be made abundantly clear in Libya in 2011, where the ICC played a crucial role in NATO's propaganda campaign against Tripoli when ICC prosecutor Luis Moreno-Ocampo "confirmed" that Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi's son Saif Al-Islam was "captured" by Libyan militants and en route to the Hague. Saif Al-Islam would turn up the next day, very much free and still leading the defense of Tripoli - meaning the ICC lied as part of a wider NATO psychological operation to portray Libya's capital as overwhelmed and captured.

The ICC, is wholly rejected by the African Union (AU), as noted by the Economist's piece, "Shooting your own feet," where it states:

Heads of state from across the continent gathered in Addis Ababa, the Ethiopian capital, on May 27th to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the African Union and its forerunner, the Organisation of African Unity. They congratulated themselves on how well they had supposedly co-operated in decades past, then spiced things up a little by firing off broadsides at the International Criminal Court in The Hague. Led by the Ethiopian prime minister, Hailemariam Desalegn, who chairs the union at the moment, they variously accused the court of racism and “hunting” Africans.

The Economist, with its usual neo-imperialist hubris, maintained that respecting the ICC would be essential for the continued rise of Africa, as it was part of the "international rules" Africa must follow in order to continue attracting foreign investment.

When an arrest warrant was issued for Libyan leader Muammar Qaddafi by the Western institution, the AU rejected it as well. AP reported in their article, "African Union disregards Gaddafi arrest warrant," that:

The body representing African nations has called on its members to disregard the arrest warrant issued for Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, in a move that will seriously weaken the International Criminal Court's ability to bring him to justice.

The crumbling of the West's "international institutions" represents a decline in their global influence and their ability to empty the third world of its resources for their own benefit. Those on the African continent and elsewhere that challenge the West's international order, pay for it with swift reprisals be they crippling economic sanctions, covert military operations, or in Libya's case, full scale military aggression.

That Kenya's new president was elected in what could be easily interpreted as a major slight against the already teetering legitimacy of the ICC and the corporate-financier interests that contrived and currently perpetuate the institution, appears to be the most compelling motive behind the recent attack in Nairobi. If nations are allowed to openly defy and erode the West's status as self-proclaimed international arbiter, the very large house of geopolitical socioeconomic cards built upon this shaky table will fall with it.

Indeed, just as the West used listed terror organization, the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) in Libya, and now the Al Nusra front in Syria, to target and overthrow governments of their disliking, Al Shabaab who maintains direct ties to both of these terror organizations appears to have been turned loose on Kenya.

The attack in Nairobi represents a scale and level of sophistication that requires state-sponsorship and intelligence on par with at least that inside Kenya in order to target and murder the president's family members. That state sponsorship most certainly is not somewhere in Kenya's northern neighbor of Somalia, but more likely in Washington, London, Paris, Tel Aviv, Doha and/or Riyadh.

Attacking a mall full of civilians, at face value, represents very low-level short-sighted strategic thinking, however the scale of the operation, and considering that the president's family members were present and singled out, indicates a much higher level of sophistication - a level of sophistication that would easily determine that such an attack would serve to galvanize the Kenyan public behind US AFRICOM's military adventurism across Africa in pursuit of "Al Qaeda," Kony, and others, not against it.

As the facts continue to emerge, and with Western leaders calling on the world to once again quickly and collectively react based on emotions of rage, hatred, and fear, the basic questions of "qui bono?" and who actually possessed the operational capacity to carry out or at least steer such an attack, must be asked and answered. If indeed Al Shabaab carried out this attack, were they armed, funded, and steered by Western special interests as their associates within the ranks of LIFG and Al Nusra are in Libya and Syria? What pressure will Kenya be put under in the wake of this attack by the West to act out across its borders in tandem with ongoing AFRICOM campaigns?

For Kenya's future, reason and facts must prevail - not emotions and propaganda.

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Bombshell: Iran Contra Whistleblower blows the lid off Benghazi



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Obama and the Usual American ‘DAM’ Exceptionalism at the UN General Assembly

"All in all, Obama’s performance at the UN was another triumph of arrogance and delusion in the face of outrageous American lawlessness – a lawlessness that has become chronic and incorrigible, infused with even more exceptionalism.

The ultimate exception is that the US leaders obviously view their country as above and beyond the law..."~~ Finian Cunnigham

by Finian Cunningham

[Veterans News Now] President Barack Obama addressed the opening of the 68th General Assembly of the United Nations with his usual oratorical formula. Admittedly, the man is a good speaker with flawless technical delivery. But by now this has become a tiresome act of grandiloquence and lofty idealism with no substance. What makes the bottom fall out of the Obama act is the cloying disconnect in his words with harsh reality. It is like listening to a conman whose initially charming words begin to grate on your sense of reason, truth and forbearance as he fumbles in your pockets.

This is the Commander-in-Chief who has vowed to launch unilateral military strikes against Syria without a mandate from the UN Security Council, in contravention of the UN Charter and international law. In other words, he is willing and self-justified to commit the crime of aggression and possibly plunge a volatile region into a conflagration. And yet this reckless politician has the brass neck to stand in front of the world’s nations in New York to lecture on the founding principles of the UN.

Obama made the usual preposterous claims about the beneficence of American leadership in the world, denying that it had any imperialist ambitions.

To listen to him, one would think that the US is the world’s largest charitable organization, bringing human rights, democracy and freedom to the oppressed. No wonder Americans can be so confused about the state of the real world when they espouse such arrant nonsense and vain notions of exceptionalism, as Russian President Vladimir Putin discreetly pointed out earlier this month in a column for the New York Times. Unbowed by that reality check, Obama persisted with the conceited American belief in its supposed virtuous exceptionalism as he addressed the UN General Assembly.

What amazes is that his performance received a resounding applause and not one delegate walked out of the assembly. Perhaps this was due to normal human politeness shared by most nations to listen to others even when they don’t agree.

American exceptionalism has in the past seen its own delegates storming out of the assembly whenever their ears cannot bear the sound of some other world leader who has a differing, critical point of view.

And there was plenty to find disagreeable about Obama’s speech to the UN this week. With regard to US-led wars in Afghanistan and Iraq, he glibly claimed with a congratulatory tone “those wars are at an end”. It is a deeply troubling measure of arrogance that an American leader can stand in front of the world and talk tritely about wars coming to an end when over one million people have been killed in those American aggressions, which were based on flagrant lies and baseless pretexts.

Yet in Obama’s view of the world, we can move swiftly on, and somehow believe that what America is proposing to do in Syria is a completely different prospect, where it has learnt from past mistakes. In Syria, Obama claimed, the US would be using its military might to protect citizens from a tyrant. He denied that US motives were about regime change and vowed that America sought to help the people of Syria choose their own government.

This is what Obama, and American presidents do best, excel in rhetoric over reality. Bereft from his speech was an acknowledgement of the fact that Washington has been harboring plans for regime change in Syria since at least 2001, as disclosed by former US General Wesley Clark. Bereft from Obama’s fine words were details of American weapons and logistics being funneled into Syria for the past two years to drive a campaign of terrorism to destabilize a sovereign government.

Provocatively, the American president reiterated unfounded allegations that the Syrian government of Bashar al-Assad was guilty of massacring its citizens and in particular in the use of chemical weapons on 21 August. Obama mendaciously claimed that the recent UN chemical weapons report, led by Ake Sellstrom, proved his allegations. The UN report does nothing of the sort, and a range of evidence elsewhere contends much more convincingly that the perpetrators of the chemical attacks were the Western-backed mercenaries.

Again this attitude of apparent certitude and sanctimony by the US president testifies to the arrogant belief of American exceptionalism. Evidently, American presidents presume to know everything and the rest of the world must accept their viewpoint, even though that viewpoint has on countless occasions been shown to be barefaced deception. Never chastened or shamed, American leaders feel entitled to just keep regurgitating the same self-important rhetoric.

On Iran, Obama, again glibly, acknowledged that the US had engaged in a coup against a democratically elected government (in 1953) and then quickly went on to say that since the founding of the Islamic Republic in 1979 that Iranians have viewed America as an enemy. The rhetorical inference was that Iranians have “an attitude problem” in their view of America, not a humble admission of guilt from criminal interference in the affairs of Iran by the US.

Obama did allude to a possible dialogue to resolve the nuclear issue, especially in the light of Iran’s election of President Hassan Rouhani. But he repeated the tired calumny of the US seeking to prevent Iran developing nuclear weapons, even though all American intelligence agencies have consistently said that Iran does not have or is near obtaining such a weapon, and in spite of the fact that Iranian leaders – most recently Ayatollah Sayyed Ali Khamanei – have decreed such armaments to be immoral and unwanted.

There was not a word or hint from Obama that the decades-old economic sanctions that Washington and its Western allies have imposed on Iran were in any way immoral or illegal and must be rescinded. As usual, Obama assumed that such draconian impediments to a country’s humane development were America’s God-given right to impose. Indeed, as Obama lectured, it was up to Iran to show signs of sincerity and transparency if it wanted avail of a successful dialogue with the US.

On other matters, there was more cant rhetoric about how the US was supporting the creation of “a Palestinian sovereign state” predicated on a “secure Israel”. In other words, as long as the US-backed Israeli regime continues waging war on neighboring states and stealing other people’s land – and thus always feeling insecure as a result of such criminality – then the Palestinians can forget about their rights.

All in all, Obama’s performance at the UN was another triumph of arrogance and delusion in the face of outrageous American lawlessness – a lawlessness that has become chronic and incorrigible, infused with even more exceptionalism.

The ultimate exception is that the US leaders obviously view their country as above and beyond the law…

Obama had the cheek to call US predatory relations with other countries as “engagement with the world” and he warned that international relations would deteriorate if the US were to become less engaged.

It may come as something of a shock to such people, but somebody needs to tell Obama and the Washington elite that that is exactly what the world wants and needs for the sake of peace and balanced development – for the US to disengage from imperialist warmongering. And instead to engage much more in its own internal affairs, like rolling back record levels of poverty, unemployment, hunger, homelessness and social decay. Now that would be a welcome American exception.

Finian Cunningham is a columnist with Veteran News Now.

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Terror raid 'led by white widow': Gang mastermind in veil barked orders at gunmen in mall massacre that left three Britons dead

The White Widow, Samantha Lewthwaite

[The Mail On Line] The terror attack on a Kenyan shopping centre that has left 68 dead was being led by the white English widow of a 7/7 bomber, it was claimed last night.

Soldiers said a white woman wearing a veil was shouting orders to gunmen in Arabic during the bloody massacre inside the Westgate shopping mall in Nairobi.

Islamist terror group Al Shabaab claimed it carried out the atrocity in which three Britons were killed and 175 people were left injured.

It said last night on Twitter that Samantha Lewthwaite, the ‘white widow’ of London 7/7 bomber Jermaine Lindsay, was ‘in their ranks’ and a ‘brave lady’.

Fifteen hostages were still trapped inside the shopping centre after more than 24 hours of carnage.

The attack saw men, women and children slaughtered if they could not recite the Koran or name the mother of the Prophet Mohammed.

As well as boasting Lewthwaite was with them, Al Shabaab claimed two British men from London, Liban Adam, 23, and Ahmed Nasir Shirdoon, 24, were among the ‘holy warriors’ in the attack.

The group is said to be highly organised, with huge amounts of ammunition as well as night vision equipment.

Writing on Twitter, the terrorists said: ‘Sherafiyah lewthwaite aka samantha is a vrave [brave] lady! were [we are] happier to have her in our ranks!’

Sherafiyah is the Muslim name now used by Lewthwaite.

Another tweet read: ‘our mujahideen are prepared to die for our cause!’

Last night the terrorists were closed into the second and third floors of a storage warehouse in the mall.

Soldiers claimed to have taken control of the ground and first floors.

One said: ‘It is all being controlled by this muzungu [Swahili for white] woman. She is ordering them what to do. We are getting closer to them.’

The massacre began on Saturday shortly before midday local time.

Witnesses told how terrorists, their faces hidden with Islamic scarves, stormed the shopping mall and started tossing grenades and spraying shoppers with AK-47s.

The gunmen ordered all Muslims to leave before carrying out rudimentary tests to see if hostages could recite the Koran and name the mother of the Prophet Mohammed.

Terrified shoppers fled and hid in storerooms, restaurants and a cinema, with the wounded being carried out in shopping trolleys.

Shoppers who were able to prove they were Muslim were among the 1,000 who escaped unharmed, while those who failed were shot for being ‘kafir’, a derogatory term for non-Muslims.

One man, who hid in a box of cartons, said: ‘If they had found me... I’m white and so I’m dead. They hate your skin colour.’

Those killed so far vary in age from two to 78.

A spokesman for Al Shabaab, the East African arm of Al-Qaeda, said all Britons in Kenya are ‘legitimate’ targets because the UK has supported the African country’s military intervention in neighbouring Somalia.

The Twitter account purporting to belong to the terrorist organisation also said ‘there would be no negotiations whatsoever’.

The siege of the Israeli-owned mall bears all the hallmarks of Muslim-convert Lewthwaite, 29, who is on the run in East Africa after Kenyan police foiled her plot to blow up a shopping centre and two hotels in Mombasa two years ago.

The Home Counties mother-of-four is now one of the main financiers and bomb-making tutors for Al Shabaab.

Some claimed hostages were ‘shot and thrown out of the window’ of the building’s fourth floor.

Other attackers identified on the Twitter account were from Finland, Kenya, Somalia, Canada and America.

Last night, Al Shabaab spokesman Mukhtaar Robow told Channel 4: ‘The English know Somalis will not give up the fight.’

Read more...

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Saudi Arabia Threatens to “End Career” of AP Reporter Over Chemical Weapons Story

Bandar and Putin

"The fact that Saudi Arabia is so desperate for Gavlak to distance herself from the story that it has resorted to underhanded threats, instead of openly denying the veracity of the report, suggests that the original article is indeed accurate and that Saudi Arabia is arming the Syrian rebels with chemical weapons".~~ Paul Joseph Watson

Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
September 23, 2013

Associated Press reporter Dale Gavlak has been threatened over her involvement in a story which exposed how Syrian rebels were responsible for the August 21st chemical weapons attack after being handed the weapons by Saudi intelligence agents.

Image: Saudi Prince Bandar bin Sultan

On August 29th, Mint Press News published an article co-authored by Gavlak which detailed how FSA militants in Ghouta admitted to reporter Yahya Ababneh that they were behind the August 21st chemical weapons incident, which the United States blamed on President Bashar Al-Assad, having mishandled chemical weapons provided to them by Saudi Arabia.

Although Gavlak did not collaborate on the story in her capacity as an AP correspondent, according to Mint Press News executive director Mnar Muhawesh, within 48 hours Gavlak received threats to “end her career” if she didn’t disassociate herself from the article.

The threats came from a third party who was most likely acting on behalf of Saudi Intelligence chief Prince Bandar bin Sultan, according to Gavlak. Bandar is named in the article as having ordered the transfer of chemical weapons to Syrian rebels in Ghouta.

Gavlak has now been “indefinitely suspended” by the Associated Press with no public explanation from the news agency. It appears that the Saudi threats to “end her career” worked.

Gavlak also “confirmed with several colleagues and Jordanian government officials that the Saudis have been supplying rebels with chemical weapons,” according to Muhawesh.

Note that Gavlak was not threatened with a defamation lawsuit on the basis that her story was inaccurate, she was told that her career would be finished. The story’s entire credibility rests on Gavlak being an accredited AP journalist who has also worked for NPR and the BBC, which is why the people behind the threats were so insistent that Gavlak distance herself from the report.

The original Mint Press News article was published just two days before the United States was widely expected to launch cruise missile attacks on Syria, until the White House backed out at the last minute and President Obama announced he would seek congressional authorization.

“On August 30th, Dale asked MintPress to remove her name completely from the byline because she stated that her career and reputation was at risk. She continued to say that these third parties were demanding her to disassociate herself from the article or these parties would end her career,” writes Muhawesh, adding that despite the threats, he decided to keep her name attached to the report.

Gavlak’s colleague Yahya Ababneh, who personally interviewed the rebels in Ghouta, was also threatened.

“Yahya has recently notified me that the Saudi embassy contacted him and threatened to end his career if he did a follow up story on who carried out the most recent chemical weapons attack and demanded that he stop doing media interviews in regards to the subject,” writes Muhawesh.

Dale Gavlak, Yahya Ababneh, and Mint Press News should be applauded for their ethical stance in upholding journalistic integrity by refusing to back down in the face of apparent threats from the habitually corrupt Saudi government.

In revealing the threats, Gavlak and Ababneh have not only thrown a fresh spotlight on the thuggish behavior of governments like Saudi Arabia who are arming Al-Qaeda led rebels in Syria, but have also bolstered the credibility of their original story, which could very well have helped prevent an attack on Syria.

The fact that Saudi Arabia is so desperate for Gavlak to distance herself from the story that it has resorted to underhanded threats, instead of openly denying the veracity of the report, suggests that the original article is indeed accurate and that Saudi Arabia is arming the Syrian rebels with chemical weapons.

It also strongly indicates that the entire basis for US aggression towards Syria, currently playing out in the form of demands for Syria to relinquish its chemical weapons arsenal, is based on the completely fraudulent pretext that Assad ordered the August 21st chemical weapons attack, a premise that has already been discredited by German intelligence findings.

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Bandar bin Sultan: Prince of Terrorists

Bandar bin Sultan

Evidence suggests that Prince Bandar has been the operations chief of al-Qaeda, the CIA data-base of its Arab legion of mujahideen fighters, ever since the Afghan war of the 1980s. It is these CIA-supported, Mossad-supported al-Qaeda fighters that Bandar commands today in Syria.

In short, it is Bandar Bush, Prince of Terrorists – not the well-meaning dupe Osama Bin Laden, or the shrill ideologue al-Zawahiri – who has always been the real commander of the Western intelligence operation known as “al-Qaeda.” ~~ Kevin Barrett

by Kevin Barrett

[Veterans Today, September 21st 2013] Bandar bin Sultan is the director general of the Saudi Intelligence Agency. In that capacity, he has earned a well-deserved reputation as the “Prince of Terrorists.”

According to the Wall Street Journal, Bandar is leading the rebel forces trying to overthrow the Syrian government. Many analysts consider Bandar a prime suspect in the apparent false-flag chemical weapons attack in al-Ghouta.

Adam Entous of the Wall Street Journal says that Prince Bandar and his Saudi Intelligence Agency manufactured “evidence” that the Syrian government had used sarin gas prior to the al-Ghouta attack.

Entous stated during a Democracy Now interview: “Bandar’s intelligence agency concluded that chemical weapons were being used on a small scale by the regime. Followed by that, the Brits and the French were convinced of the same conclusion. It took US intelligence agencies really until June to reach that conclusion.”

In other words, Bandar used his money, clout, and connections to make sure that “the intelligence would be fixed around the policy” – just like Bush did with the alleged Iraqi WMDs in 2003.

How did Bandar convince Western intelligence agencies to accept his extremely dubious claims that Assad was using sarin gas? Bandar found a Syrian who had been exposed to sarin and flew him to Britain to be tested. When the Syrian victim tested positive for sarin, Bandar pushed his Western intelligence colleagues to accept the far-from-obvious conclusion that Assad must have been responsible.

According to Entous: “What the British found when they did the testing was that this Syrian was exposed to sarin gas, which the US and British and French intelligence believe is only in the possession of the Syrian regime.”

But do the US and British and French intelligence really believe that Bandar – who commands hundreds of billions of dollars and a sophisticated network of covert operators and killers – could not have poisoned the Syrian victim himself? Obviously, they are not that naïve. Western intelligence is complicit in Bandar’s attempt to frame Assad for the use of sarin. They were looking for an excuse to attack Syria, and Bandar gave it to them.

Then when the huge sarin attack struck al-Ghouta on August 21st, knowledgeable observers immediately suspected a false-flag attack by Bandar’s forces. According to Associated Press Mideast correspondent Dale Gavlak and Yahya Ababneh: “… from numerous interviews with doctors, Ghouta residents, rebel fighters and their families, a different picture (from the Western mainstream media narrative) emerges. Many believe that certain rebels received chemical weapons via the Saudi intelligence chief, Prince Bandar bin Sultan, and were responsible for carrying out the deadly gas attack.”

More evidence that the terrorist prince orchestrated the attack on al-Ghouta emerged when it was revealed that the photos of dead children were not what they appeared. According to VoltaireNet.org:

“Following the broadcasting of the images of the massacre in Ghouta, distributed by the Free Syrian Army and relayed by US and French services, Alawite families from Latakia have filed a complaint for murder.”
“Some of these videos were filmed and posted on Youtube before the events they picture.”

“They show children suffocating from a chemical intoxication that can’t possibly be sarin gas (the latter provokes yellow drool, not white drool).”

“The children do not correspond to a sample of the population: they are all almost of the same age and have light hair. They are not accompanied by their grieving families.”

“They are in fact children who were abducted by jihadists (i.e. mercenaries of Prince Bandar) two weeks before in Alawite villages in the surroundings of Latakia, 200km away from Ghouta.”

“Contrary to the claims of the Free Syrian Army and the Western services, the only identified victims of the Ghouta massacre are those belonging to families that support the Syrian government. In the videos, the individuals that show outrage against the ‘crimes of Bashar el-Assad’ are in reality their killers.”

Is terrorist prince Bandar really shameless enough to kidnap children, murder them, and then present the dead children as alleged victims of his enemies? In a word: Yes.

Bandar’s shamelessness knows no bounds. The dissolute chief of “radical Islamic terrorists” actually had the audacity to threaten Russian President Putin with a terrorist attack on the Winter Olympics if Putin didn’t stop supporting the Syrian government! Bandar claimed that he had the full support of the American government in delivering his bribe offers and terrorist threats to President Putin.

Bandar, an intimate of the Bush crime family who is affectionately known as “Bandar Bush,” also appears to have been involved in the 9/11 false-flag attacks. Let’s look at some of the evidence – admittedly circumstantial – that links Bandar to 9/11.

Of the alleged 19 hijackers, 15 were Saudis. CIA sources have confirmed testimony from Michael Springman, the former head of the US Visa Bureau in Jeddah, about the Saudi “muscle hijackers”: They were CIA agents, presumably with a background in Saudi intelligence, who came to America on CIA “snitch visas.” These were special visas that the CIA offered as a reward to Saudis who spied for the US. (Saudi Intelligence is so closely connected to the CIA that it is hard to tell where one ends and the other begins.)

While living in the US, the future alleged 9/11 hijackers lived charmed lives. They trained at secure US military facilities, including Pensacola Naval Air Station, where Mohamed Atta was a regular partier at the officers’ club, and Maxwell Air Force Base in Alabama. Two of the alleged hijackers received regular checks totaling tens of thousands of dollars from Prince Bandar and his wife, funneled through US-Saudi intelligence asset Omar al-Bayoumi.

Immediately after 9/11, all air traffic in the US was grounded. The only planes allowed to fly were special private jets that Bush and Cheney arranged to fly Bandar, along with Bin Laden family members and other Saudi suspects, out of the country before they could be interrogated by the FBI.

Evidence suggests that Prince Bandar has been the operations chief of al-Qaeda, the CIA data-base of its Arab legion of mujahideen fighters, ever since the Afghan war of the 1980s. It is these CIA-supported, Mossad-supported al-Qaeda fighters that Bandar commands today in Syria.

In short, it is Bandar Bush, Prince of Terrorists – not the well-meaning dupe Osama Bin Laden, or the shrill ideologue al-Zawahiri – who has always been the real commander of the Western intelligence operation known as “al-Qaeda.”

Dr. Kevin Barrett, a Ph.D. Arabist-Islamologist, is one of America’s best-known critics of the War on Terror.

Dr. Barrett has appeared many times on Fox, CNN, PBS and other broadcast outlets, and has inspired feature stories and op-eds in the New York Times, the Christian Science Monitor, the Chicago Tribune, and other leading publications.

Dr. Barrett has taught at colleges and universities in San Francisco, Paris, and Wisconsin, where he ran for Congress in 2008. He currently works as a nonprofit organizer, author, and talk radio host.

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