Category Archives: Terrorism

It’s Official! Obama’s Endless War

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Amidst the various sporadic outbreaks of moronitude, people could be forgiven for missing this week’s top story. The Obama administration casually admitted that the US has been running a global, open-ended war since the 9/11 attacks, and it has no intention of stopping any time soon.

During a Senate hearing, Pentagon officials said that the “war against al-Qaeda and its affiliates” could last another 20 years; and claimed that the Authorization for Use of Military Force (AUMF) that was passed in order to allow the 2001 attack on Afghanistan was an open-ended authorisation to deploy violence anywhere on the planet. When an Independent Senator pointed out that the Pentagon has “…essentially rewritten the Constitution…”, this was met with a shrug, and “…I’m not a constitutional lawyer or a lawyer of any kind…” from one of the Pentagon officials. Now, I’m not a lawyer either, but I’m aware that “ignorance is no defence” when it comes to lawbreaking.

The Pentagon is apparently aware that it is breaking US law (not to mention international law), and seems to be 100% comfortable with that fact. US democracy is revealed to be a sham when most Democrats loyally line up behind the Obama administration; meanwhile, Republicans, rather than oppose Obama’s shredding of the constitution, would rather pursue three completely fabricated attacks on Obama instead. As we already know, the Republicans are even more enthusiastic about pursuing illegal wars than the Democrats.

The current phase in the “war on terror” involves firing missiles at various targets in Pakistan and Yemen, and in the process killing far more civilians than fighters. Pakistan has just achieved the first moderately democratic transfer of power in its history; the US, in pursuing an illegal war against Pakistani individuals, against the wishes of the Pakistani parliament, can fairly be described as a terrorist entity. Under international law, Pakistan is within its rights to retaliate – though it lacks the power to do so, and any retaliation would only strengthen the case for continued terrorism by the Americans.

Yemen is a very poor country which is experiencing a severe water crisis. For a fraction of what the US spends on bombing the place, work could begin on securing water supplies and addressing poverty. But helping fix Yemen’s problems wouldn’t serve the Pentagon’s interests: in order to pursue endless war, it requires a frightened American population; and that needs an enemy. If American morons were to discover that the “terrorist threat” consists of small, scattered groups of idiots driven by poverty more than anything else, support for the Pentagon’s terrorist campaign would weaken.

Those people who were paying attention at the beginning of the “war on terror” (in which the neo-cons blamed Afghanistan for the actions of a small group of Saudi dissidents), will remember predictions that the war may last a decade; now it’s clear that the strategy is to keep kicking the can down the road. 20 years is a meaningless number. The “enemy” barely exists, yet so long as people believe it does, the war will continue, and create the illusion of an enemy as it does so.

The fact that the entire “global terrorist threat” against America has managed to produce 19 men armed with knives, and two men armed with pressure cookers, over a period of twelve years, would make intelligent people stop and think; luckily for the war machine, there appears to be a great shortage of intelligent Americans (or alternatively the corporate-run media ensures they rarely get heard).

Since the Republicans are doing their best to cover up for Obama’s attacks on the constitution, it’s up to liberals to break ranks. Sure, it was good to have a Democratic president, and even better to have a black one, but any dreams that Obama was any kind of liberal must surely have been shattered by now.

Americans, you are bringing death and destruction to places most of you can’t find on a map, just as you did during the “Cold War”. Billionaire interests are leading your country to destruction, and like sheep, you blindly follow. The more foreign civilians you kill, the more likely that some person, sickened by the death and destruction in their own country, will try to take revenge on you. And it seems equally inevitable that you will crap your pants and allow unelected interests to take even more of your liberty in response.

As one of your great men, Benjamin Franklin, said:

They who can give up essential liberty to obtain a little temporary safety, deserve neither liberty nor safety.

Free Shaker Aamer

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Eleven years ago, a British resident, Shaker Aamer, was working in a school in Afghanistan when he was kidnapped. Since then, he has been illegally imprisoned and repeatedly tortured at the illegal US detention facility in Guantanamo Bay. The British government has requested his return, and he has been cleared for release – but is still there. He is reported to be one of the majority of Guantanamo detainees who are on hunger strike, and are being illegally and painfully force-fed.

Anyone who wonders why innocent people are being held and tortured by the US has not been paying attention for the past decade. Neo-cons wanted endless war, and in the absence of a real enemy, they had to create one: “Terrorism”. When they invaded Afghanistan in 2001, they offered generous bounties for “terrorists”, with the inevitable result that gangs of thugs kidnapped and sold people, at random, to US forces.

The people thrown into Guantanamo Bay, and other US “dark” prisons, were described by the Bush Administration as the most dangerous people on Earth. This helped frighten ordinary Americans, as well as whip up a climate of Islamophobia. It allowed both the Bush and Obama administrations to attack civil liberties in the US, and carry out a series of illegal wars and assassinations abroad. Shaker Aamer, and thousands of people like him, had their lives destroyed as a “necessary” part of this campaign. Almost all of these “most dangerous people on Earth” have been quietly released without charge; Shaker is the last remaining British victim of Guantanamo.

You can read more about Shaker Aamer here, or watch the video from his campaign below.

British Terrorists: the Dumbest of Them All?

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The Moron Six

The Moron Six

An old, racist stereotype, popular in Britain, slurs the Irish as unintelligent. Yet, over a period of three decades, Irish terrorist groups successfully planted bomb after bomb in Northern Ireland and the British mainland, running rings around British police and intelligence services.

It was the British response that truly made records for ineptitude: racist policing of the Irish migrant community, banning IRA spokesmen from speaking on TV, shooting civilians and making martyrs of IRA leaders; all of which helped bolster support for the IRA and other Republican groups.

Anyone who remembers the power of the IRA bombing campaign will smirk when the current “Islamist threat” is described as a global movement. Britain was never a target for Islamist extremists until our ludicrous invasion of Iraq in 2003, and in the decade since, there has only been a single serious attack, in London in 2005.

Other attacks by British would-be jihadis have been notable only for their ineptitude – my personal favourite being the Shoe Bomber, Richard Reid, who successfully boarded an aircraft with explosives in his shoes, but failed to ignite them because they had become damp.

In general, British Muslims who have become “radicalised” have tended to be small groups young Pakistani men with limited education, lacking detailed knowledge of either their own religion or the complex politics of the “war on terror”. They are more British than Pakistani, confused about their identities at a time of increased racism and police harassment, and – being nice about it – tend not to be the sharpest tools in the box.

These radicalised morons were beautifully portrayed in the Christopher Morris comedy film Four Lions, about four inept young British-Pakistani men and their attempt to commit a terrorist act.

In an example of life imitating art, six young British “jihadi” morons have pleaded guilty of trying to bomb an English Defence League rally in Dewsbury, West Yorkshire, last year. The story makes an even funnier plot than the Four Lions one: the six set out, with explosives, for the rally; fortunately, the EDL (also a group renowned for its low intelligence) had run out of speakers and adjourned to the pub. The moronic six arrived late, were pulled over by police and found to have no car insurance; this resulted in the detection of their plot and their arrest.

The British people can breath a sigh of relief at the stupidity of the would-be martyrs. No doubt, British Muslims are experiencing the greatest relief of all, knowing that an act like this would have resulted in bloodshed, blame being placed on all Muslims as a group, and a rise in EDL credibility. The EDL’s status is little above “laughing stock” – a bomb blast at an EDL rally would have changed that.

A Muslim community organisation issued a statement saying: ”The Muslim community in Birmingham wishes to make one thing absolutely clear: These acts are not carried out in our name.” Doubtless, Muslim groups are sick and tired of having to disown small groups of idiots, and more than happy to see the Moronic Six sent to prison for a long time.

But if there’s a silver lining, it’s that British jihadis appear to be very British indeed, in their half-arsed approach to terrorism. We British have a strange pride in doing things ineptly, from roadworks that take months to complete, to failed Mars missions. What could be more British than screwing up a terrorist attack with such style?

Who Bombed Boston?

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Something HUGE happened on Monday. A multiple bombing, resulting in fatalities and many injuries, which received saturation-level media coverage. The bombs in Nasariyah, Kirkuk and Baghdad killed at least 31 people and injured over 200.

Only joking. Monday was, of course, the date of the biggest bomb attack on US soil since 9/11. Some moron (or morons) planted home-made bombs, killing three innocent people and causing many serious injuries to others who were simply taking part in a marathon for charity. On Twitter, I was accused of a “lack of empathy” for even daring to raise deaths in Iraq or Pakistan, on the day that Americans were killed. Americans! Somebody doesn’t know the meaning of empathy, obviously.

We learned, again, that three is greater than 31. Or than 300. Or than 3000. There is huge empathy around the world for the people who were killed and injured on Monday in Boston, but also huge frustration at the total lack of empathy for the deaths occurring around the world – deaths for which Americans have blood on their hands. While Pakistanis have to suck up the fact that 50 civilians die for every “terrorist” killed in drone strikes - perhaps over 4,000 deaths so far.

Because Americans are real people, and Pakistanis… well, they’re not really, are they? Except they are. You have our empathy, America. Where is yours?

Now, of course, the predictable Muslim-baiting begins. The hate dollar is big, and Americans are the world’s greatest entrepreneurs. Hate sells in America. You may have killed hundreds of thousands of innocent people in the last decade, but playing the victim is way more fun than feeling, somewhere deep down, a little bit guilty. The usual suspects – those people and businesses who know how to play morons for the hate dollar – are out in force; and morons are buying.

So far, Fox News guest hater Erik Rush wins the top moron award for wanting to kill all Muslims in response to Boston. Generalising hate towards a quarter of the planet’s population at least means you avoid mistakes – like bombing Afghanistan, Iraq and Yemen when you are attacked by a small group of Saudi militants on 9/11.

But who bombed Boston? Fascists on both sides of the Atlantic think they know, and have wasted no time in telling us “it was Muslims”. Never mind that they have repeatedly called it wrong; they know that morons will forgive them getting it wrong repeatedly, if they only get right once. Who remembers now all the morons that blamed the Oslo bombing on Muslims? It was done, of course, by a right-wing “patriot”. Was there a witch-hunt of blond, right-wing patriots? No – acts of individuals are only blamed on groups when they’re brown-skinned.

I don’t know who bombed Boston, but I’ll stick my neck out – and unlike the fascists, I’ll use facts to make my best guess.

We know that from 1980 to 2005, 6% of terror attacks in America were carried out by Islamic extremists. We also know that extremism among far-right Christians is on the rise. The Oklahoma bombing was not a one-off: the Southern Poverty Law Center provides a long list of far-right and Christian plots that have taken place since. It’s easier to be scared of brown-skinned, Arabic- or Urdu-speaking foreigners than it is of the white “loner” who lives down the road, but statistically, the Boston bombing is far more likely to be the work of a Christian than a Muslim.

There’s a good chance that I’m wrong; there are Islamic terror groups that would no doubt like to target Americans (in fact, there are a lot more such groups than there were when the “war on terror” began in 2001). We’ll have to wait and see.

[UPDATE: as you probably noticed, the bombs were not planted by far-right Americans. I called it wrong. However, I called it less wrong than many media pundits are calling it, even now. The two Chechen murderers are variously described as anything from a "cell" to a full-blown Islamic plot to destroy humanity. The reaction has been breathtakingly moronic, even to a seasoned moron watcher. More to come shortly.]

One prediction that I’m sure of: morons always win from violence. Fear will grow; Obama will get more support for his attacks on US civil liberties; the military machine will thrive on the fear, get increased funding, and kill more brown people; the NRA will sell more guns; Glenn Beck and Pamela Geller will sell more of whatever they sell to morons. This cycle will keep on turning until Americans finally spot the pattern, and decide enough is enough. That’s all it needs.

Rand Paul: Civil Liberties Hero?

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Delivery from President Obama!

Delivery from President Obama!

As regular readers will know, my political roots lie on the left; but I feel very little affinity with the left today, largely because it has lost touch with its tradition of support for civil liberties. The right loves to throw around the F-word (Freedom, I mean) but has never, in practise, believed in it. “Freedom” meant, under Reagan, the right to destroy democracy worldwide in the name of “fighting communism”. Today, “Freedom” means the right to destroy democracy in the name of fighting terrorism. The right in Europe and the US has always been the greatest threat to liberty; today, much of the left has decided to join it.

This means that, if you care about civil liberties, there is increasingly little to choose between Conservative/Labour, Republican/Democrat. George W Bush and the Neocons, who concocted a “global war on terror” when the “threat” comprised of perhaps a few hundred extremists at most, had a clear strategy; recreate the cold war climate of fear, and thus erode support for civil liberties. The Bush Administration carried out war crimes on a global scale and unprecedented attacks on civil liberties at home. Obama’s Hope & Change message seemed to carry a promise of a return to truly progressive values – most of all, defence of free speech – but the Obama Administration has not only preserved the core of the Bush attacks on civil liberties, but extended them (and continues to do so).

Free speech is even more under threat today than it was when Obama came to power in 2008. At this point, the partisan nature of US politics becomes tiresome. The right had, as ever, abandoned its commitment to Freedom when freedom came under sustained attack by Dubya. Now, the left largely averts its gaze when Obama does the same thing. The US mass media has utterly failed to hold Obama to account, just as it ignored the crimes of Bush. Even Fox, constantly attacking Obama for things he hasn’t done, has barely bothered to attack him for the things he has done. Fox-viewing morons want Obama impeached for a variety of bogus “crimes”, but not for the actual attacks his administration has made against the US Constitution – largely because these attacks are supported by Republicans even more than by Democrats. The US news organisation that has best held Obama to account isn’t Fox, but the progressive Democracy Now!

The political news in America has been dominated for the past couple of days by a filibuster by the right-wing Senator Rand Paul. He spoke for 13 hours in an effort to delay the appointment of John Brennan as the director of the CIA. Brennan was the major architect of the drone assassination programme, in which at least 4,700 people, many of them innocent of any crime, have been killed with no due process (click for a photo gallery of drone strike victims).

Before we brand Paul a saviour of international law, let’s note that his concern isn’t over drone strikes in general, but primarily because the Obama administration claims the right to kill US citizens (apparently the other 95% of us are fair game). And we should also note that he appears to be using this event as a publicity-generator for a possible 2016 Presidential run. Yet, as Amy Goodman of Democracy Now! has written in today’s Guardian, it is shameful that only Paul has chosen to speak out on this issue (with some backing from only a small handful of Republicans and one Democratic Senator).

They say bipartisanship is dead in Washington; but when it comes to ignoring America’s global terrorism, torture and tyranny, under Presidents from both parties, the Republicans and Democrats are remarkably united. We can expect Republicans to excuse international law-breaking; we might hope that Democrats would know better. But they don’t.

Nobody on the left has any reason to like or trust Rand Paul; yet in this case, partisanship should be put aside. At a time when almost nobody is prepared to fly the flag of liberty, anyone who does so deserves qualified support. Obama has now won his second term. A Romney win would have been disastrous, and led to even more international criminality. But Obama – we should have noticed by now – is no progressive, and is happy to advance the military-corporate attacks on democracy.

The US left needs a reality-check. When the right-wing, corporate-backed Rand Paul is saying what Democrats should be saying, he deserves at least one round of applause.

Genocide in Mali

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map_of_maliAs the so-called “war on terror” grinds into its 12th year, it’s the duty of every intelligent person to occasionally take a step back and remind ourselves that the “terrorist threat” today is vastly bigger than it was on September 11 2001. The Neocon “war on terror” turned a small group of fanatics into a global threat, firstly, in the minds of a gullible public, and then (via the Iraq War, kidnap, illegal imprisonment, torture and drone strikes) in reality.

Now, we’re told (by salivating warmongers), that a “new front” has opened in the Sahara. Mali has collapsed into civil war. The average war-loving moron hasn’t heard of Mali, let alone could find it on a map; they tell us that this is about the expansion of militant Islamism. Yet, they don’t seem to understand that Mali has seen Tuareg rebellions before, in the early 90s, and in the 60s.

I visited Mali four years ago, to attend a music festival, and see/photograph some of the country. It is perhaps the most dreamily beautiful place I’ve visited, and I’ve wanted to go back ever since. The map is key to understanding what is happening there. Like most African countries, its borders are a colonial creation. Most of the population is black, and lives in the bottom-left part of the map. The largest part of the country, in the top-right, is in the Sahara desert. The Sahara is sparsely populated by nomads from the Tuareg and others tribes. Most desert-dwellers are of “white” North African origin.

When the European powers carved Africa into nations, they ensured that in states like Mali, the Tuaregs would become a small racial minority, governed by very different people and cultures located hundreds of kilometers away. To the Malian government in the South-West, the Sahara is only of interest for its mineral wealth. To the Malian Tuaregs, they are people of the Sahara, with kin spread across Mauritania, Algeria and Niger. The outcome is obvious: who can be surprised that the Tuaregs, seeing little in common with Mali, have repeatedly tried to gain independence?

When I was in the country, it was largely peaceful, although tourists had occasionally been kidnapped, usually for financial gain. In the unofficial Tuareg capital, Timbuktu, I visited a peace monument made of destroyed guns from the 90s uprising, set into concrete. It was clear to me, even as an outsider, that Tuaregs and other Malians weren’t always on the best of terms – centuries of history between the groups, including slave-taking, have left them still uneasy with each other. Yet these problems are in the distant past – Tuaregs have become increasingly assimilated into urban Malian society. But as we know by looking at other societies with old racial divides (USA, anyone?) a calm surface can hide division and bitterness.

During my trip, I made friends with a Tuareg man, who I’ll call M, a middle-class university graduate. We kept in touch since then, mostly exchanging small-talk about London, Bamako and Timbuktu. Then early last year, Mali’s peace collapsed. A coup in Bamako, the capital, triggered the current problems, and as had happened before, some Tuaregs used the chaos to restart their war of independence. The Malian nationalists united with Islamists. The response was vicious – Tuaregs were attacked from the air. From the very start of the current problems, the Malian army made little distinction between any Tuareg, whether civilian, nationalist rebel or Islamist. Murder and rape of Tuaregs became widespread, and my friend M fled into a neighbouring country, where he slept rough and looked for work, then eventually managed to reach Europe – where he now faces a new set of challenges, new forms of racism.

The rebels quickly stalled Mali’s army. Islamists seized control of the North and East; tragically, in Timbuktu, once a Western outpost of the Arabic Empire, many ancient treasures were damaged or destroyed by Islamist hard-liners (West Africa’s version of Islam differs from the Arab version, and fundamentalists reject the African modifications).

Mali’s troubles give weight to “war on terror” propagandists who claim Islamism is a global “threat” to the West – without pointing out that the rise in hardline Islamist groups such as those fighting in Mali can be linked to the “war on terror” itself; their roots are in the US war in Afghanistan/Pakistan in the 80s, in the Iraq War, in missile strikes on Yemen and Somalia, in the overthrow of Gaddafi in Libya.

I didn’t support the attacks on the oil states Libya or Iraq – these were both functioning, if repressive, states. Mali is a different issue – the state was weak, even in peacetime. The case for intervention is stronger – to restore rule to Bamako and to free northern and eastern Malian towns from the control of Islamist hardliners.

The Malian army, too weak to react, had been stalled, but with French support in recent weeks, has quickly regained the initiative. However, sections of the Malian army have used their new advantage to declare war on the Tuareg civilian population – the French and their European/American supporters appear to be turning a blind eye. Under the mythical “war on terror” banner, an apparent genocide is being perpetrated. Unless the French now use their presence to prevent it, the support for extreme Islamist groups, far from shrinking back, can only grow. Very few modern military interventions achieve their objective – let’s hope this French action doesn’t end up the way of Iraq or Libya.

The following is a brief Facebook conversation I had with M yesterday

M: In Mali very bad

MW: Do you think the French army will help?
Will the French make it better or worse?

M: So many touareg has been killed by malian army in the last days
Now France are making tuareg situation worse
Now malian army are just killing tuareg people
so many
We don’t understand why france don’t say for malian army to stop killing civilans

MW: Do you have contact with people in Mali?

M: Yes in Timbuktu erea
my small brother

Toulouse Shootings: a Win for Nazis and Zionists

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Aftermatch of Jewish School Shooting in Touolouse

Aftermath of Jewish School Shooting

The fallout continues from the recent Toulouse shootings; at the time of writing, a French man of Algerian origin, Mohammed Merah, is under siege by police at his home. Regardless of the motivations behind the attacks, the outcome will be broadly predictable: a strengthening of the racist, moronic right in France and mainland Europe in general, and a win for Zionists. Why? Let’s look at France first.

France, as I’ve reported, is probably the most racist country in Western Europe. Worryingly, this is no recent blip, but seems consistent throughout recent French history. While constitutionally, all citizens are equal, and France has consistently rejected a multicultural approach, in practice, black, Jewish and North African citizens have always found integration difficult, and tend to share the same ghettos. An attack by a North African, one of the most persecuted French groups, would quickly be linked to immigration, boosting the racist right’s claim that there “too many foreigners in France“.

The far-right in France, represented by the National Front, is going through a brand detoxification under its new leader, Marine Le Pen. The National Front regularly polls in the 20% range; additionally a strong racist vote goes to Sarkozy’s right-of-centre UMP, as indicated by Sarkozy’s pandering to racism. Contrast to the UK, where the far-right struggles to gain 5% of the vote, and the strength of race hate in France becomes clear. Anecdotal stories from French friends, both white and brown, strengthen this picture. The French have recovered from any shame they may have felt over their enthusiastic implementation of Nazi anti-Jewish policies, and open racism is again prevalent in the French street.

In summary, the French situation is simple: any race-related attack by anyone will serve to strengthen French fascists.

But Israeli Zionists too will be heartened. The Israeli right has long focused on the anti-Semitism experienced by France’s large Jewish community. While broader Jewish interests would be served by the preservation of what remains of non-Israeli Jewish communities, the Zionist goal is clear: to maximise Israel’s Jewish population in order to strengthen and accelerate the ongoing theft of Palestinian land.

To the Zionist right, the existence of half a million Jews in France is a waste of Jews. Indeed, rather than strengthen and support France’s Jewish community, Zionists (including late PM Ariel Sharon) have often been caught trying to frighten French Jews into migrating to Israel.

As in the 1930s, France has become one of the European strongholds of the racist right. The coming election thus becomes a litmus test of French views: can the National Front increase its vote? Can it again make it through to the second round of voting? If it does, Sarkozy and his previously mainstream UMP will likely strengthen its immigrant-bashing rhetoric in order to shore up its share of the racist vote. France threatens to fall to fascism as it did once before.