Category: War on Terror

Physics challenge

A wave of 16 bombings ripped across Baghdad, Iraq on Dec. 22, 2011.  Here’s a scene from one of these.  The question is what kind of car bomb causes this damage?

See a close-up of the scene.

The answer for those who haven’t figured it out: http://www.majorityrights.com/uploads/crater.avi

Posted by R-news on Friday, December 23, 2011 at 01:50 AM in Science & Technology,  War on Terror,  World Affairs
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Bradley Manning, Julian Assange and Wikileaks

Many should know that wikileaks is a 100% kosher undertaking.  The leaks comprise of data that are easily falsified in part.  The leaks embarrass America or Arabs, not Israel.  The leaks are about relatively trivial matters but never serious issues such as central banks being private banks, not government banks.  The “whistleblowers” don’t just maintain official versions of major events such as 9/11 but ridicule dissent as nonsense that detracts from the “serious work” they’re doing with their exposes!  The U.S. ICE (Israeli Content Enforcement) agency of the Department of Homeland Security, which seizes domains willy nilly for copyright infringement, hasn’t bothered with wikileaks.  And so on… 

Some crucial leaks were said to have been provided by Private Bradley Manning to Julian Assange.  Both men look effeminate, and one would think they’re homos, which makes for bad PR.  So they put on a show where Assange was accused of raping two Swedish women, making him appear a macho man, and used the ruckus to attract attention to wiki leaks.  All this would be amusing if it weren’t for the plight of Bradley Manning, who’s been imprisoned in solitary confinement, cut off from friends and family.  Long-term incarceration in such circumstances is designed to break people down and make them confess to anything you want them to.

Manning’s trial is currently under way by Americans even though he is British, and there isn’t much that can be done to prevent him from being convicted of bogus charges, but you can help expose the sham to others and make it embarrassing for those working for the Israelis behind the wikileaks scam to be who they are. 

Useful links:

http://www.freebradley.org/english.html
http://blog.ukfriendsofbradleymanning.org/

Posted by R-news on Tuesday, December 20, 2011 at 10:50 PM in Activism,  Journalism,  Links,  Media,  Military Matters,  U.S. Politics,  War on Terror,  World Affairs
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9/11 Tenth Anniversary Special

9-11 is 10 years past. Liars and useful idiots still insist that 19 Arabs belonging to a terrorist group called Al-Qaeda, led by Osama bin Laden, did it, which has to be one of the most absurd conspiracies ever mass marketed to the public.

For MANY YEARS now we’ve had tons of evidence, including names and pictures, pointing to the Jews who planned, orchestrated, assisted with, benefited from, blocked a scientific investigation of and covered up their involvement in 9/11.

When the Muslim conspiracy started to unravel, Jews created a 9/11 truth movement, promoting, in the alternative media, the inside job conspiracy.

But 9/11 is clearly an outside job or an outside conspiracy, and I’ve just posted a review of the evidence to observe the tenth anniversary of 9/11.

This evidence can be found all over the internet and there’s nothing original in my compilation. All credits go to the original researchers.

I’d say the increasing chorus for a renewed investigation is misplaced as the chorus should be about hanging the Jews involved and dispatching them to Hell forthwith, but the useful idiots promoting the 19 Arabs conspiracy take the cake... now please get a clue.

My intent in reviewing the 9/11 evidence isn’t merely to reproduce it at MR, but to use it to address the treatment of 9/11 in nationalist circles. Here I’ll focus on the treatment of 911 on the occasion of its tenth anniversary.

Continued...

Posted by J Richards on Sunday, September 11, 2011 at 03:04 PM in 9/11,  European Nationalism,  That Question Again,  War on Terror,  White Nationalism
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Bin Laden is dead – who do we murder next?

by Alexander Baron

This morning, it was announced that Osama Bin Laden had been killed in Pakistan. Most world politicians seem to believe this is a good thing. But not Congressman Ron Paul.

The death of Osama Bin Laden was big news here in England, and even bigger in the USA, understandably. People, and especially Obama supporters, were outside the White House in the small hours calling for “Four more years”, which he will probably get. British Prime Minister David Cameron – Call Me Dave, as he is known – was among the first to congratulate Obama, along with former presidents Bill Clinton and George W. Bush.

Though the possibility or even the likelihood of Al-Qaeda striking back has not been overlooked, and we have all been put on alert, there is something else everybody seems to have overlooked in the euphoria; everybody except Congressman Ron Paul, who in a speech delivered February 24, 2010, Now It’s Assassinations, asked some embarrassing questions:

“What have we allowed ourselves to become? Are we no longer a nation of laws…have we decided that the writ of habeas corpus is not worth defending? Is torture now an acceptable tool for making us safe? Unfortunately the single answer to all of these questions from the leaders of our country and to many of our citizens appears to be yes. And now we’re told that assassination of foreigners as well as American citizens is legitimate and necessary to provide security for our people. It is my firm opinion that nothing could be further from the truth.”

Continued...

Posted by Guest Blogger on Monday, May 2, 2011 at 07:58 PM in War on Terror
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Afghanistan – Enough Is Enough

by Alexander Baron

One afternoon in July 1976, I swallowed four packets of over the counter painkillers in my Ladbroke Grove bedsit flat, and lay down to die. If I hadn’t washed down each packet with a pint mug of orange juice, I wouldn’t be writing these words now. At the time I was disgusted with myself, but in retrospect, waking up covered in vomit was better than not waking up at all.

A shade over seven years later, on August 26, 1983 to be precise, I stood on Richmond Bridge in South-West London, and tossed a coin. How I got there from Ladbroke Grove, via Manchester, Leeds, Bradford and - the day before – Margate, is a long, convoluted, and for me, painful, story. As the coin neared the ground I called audibly “Heads”. Fortunately for me it landed tails, and I didn’t jump in the river, which in view of the shin length steel toe-capped boots I was wearing would have meant certain death, even if I had been able to swim.

At the time of my first suicide attempt, I was just shy of my twentieth birthday; next month I will be fifty-four years old. Though not a great age, it is one I had never expected to see. Like most people of my age, I have regrets, more than most. One of my biggest regrets is that my genes will die with me. I didn’t have to die childless, I had my chance, a big chance, and like so many of my other chances, I blew it. In the first half of my life I achieved nothing. Well, as a junior I did win a county chess championship, although even that was only because all the really good players were playing in the national championships at Eastbourne.

Although my personal life – such as it is – has continued to be empty and lonely, I’ve grown used to solitude. I can’t really call my researching and writing my professional life because I’ve made precious little money out of it over the space of more than twenty years, but I can say without reservation that it is something of which I am immensely proud, because I have done many things others haven’t. Due to the current political situation and more particularly the stranglehold our enemies have over the Western mind, I have received little in the way of recognition, but fifty or a hundred years from now – if Man still exists - I will be judged far more kindly than by the creeps and liars who currently control our media.

Continued...

Posted by Guest Blogger on Thursday, July 1, 2010 at 08:21 PM in War on Terror
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Native U.S. white supremacist militia anthrax hate-bombers attack the entire galaxy

My thanks to Bo Sears for the link to this Washington Times piece, Al Qaeda eyes bio attack from Mexico.

Last October, Bo picked up on Joe Biden’s warning of a nation-shaking event.  Now we get one from “U.S. counterterrorism officials” who have:

authenticated a video by an al Qaeda recruiter threatening to smuggle a biological weapon into the United States via tunnels under the Mexico border, the latest sign of the terrorist group’s determination to stage another mass-casualty attack on the U.S. homeland.

The video aired earlier this year as a recruitment tool makes clear that al Qaeda is looking to exploit weaknesses in U.S. border security and also is willing to ally itself with white militia groups or other anti-government entities interested in carrying out an attack inside the United States, according to counterterrorism officials interviewed by The Washington Times.

The officials, who spoke only on the condition they not be named because of the sensitive nature of their work, stressed that there is no credible information that al Qaeda has acquired the capabilities to carry out a mass biological attack although its members have clearly sought the expertise.

The video first aired by the Arabic news network Al Jazeera in February and later posted to several Web sites shows Kuwaiti dissident Abdullah al-Nafisi telling a room full of supporters in Bahrain that al Qaeda is casing the U.S. border with Mexico to assess how to send terrorists and weapons into the U.S.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Thursday, June 4, 2009 at 06:52 PM in War on Terror
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The Jesuitical policeman of West Yorkshire

So the papers say you are that mysterious entity, an “anti-terrorist chief”.  It’s very gratifying, and sounds rather grand, too, doesn’t it?  Supercop meets M in the corridors of power, and all that.

But, actually, you are just a New Labour policeman.  That’s the sort of policeman who doesn’t have large feet, a drink habit and problems at home.  The sort who has a degree in sociology, who knows the rules of the political game, who networks.  Who, naturally enough, gets fast-tracked to the top.

Did I say “New Labour policeman”?  I meant stooge, of course.

But it’s not all working lunches with the Ministerial team and educational visits to Vancouver and Las Vegas.  Such plod-power and privilege as your undoubted ambition has brought you also brings the odd sticky wicket along.  None more sticky than when the Minister “tasked” you to dissuade your favourite Yorkshiremen - the ones who flop down in the direction of Mecca five times a day - from doing inconvenient things with rucksacks and gas canisters.  You know, blowing-up passengers in buses and trains ... planting car-bombs outside nightclubs ... driving them into airport terminals.  That sort of thing.

Of course, it’s no particular problem to set up a security solution.  Not these days with biometrics, electronic eavesdropping, MI5, C5 and the rest.  It’s just a matter of scaling up.

But, annoyingly, that’s not what the Minister wants.  No, it seems that your talents aren’t needed at all on the heavy stuff.  They are required for something altogether more familiar, more ... political.  And therein lay the sticky bit.  Somehow you have to:-

1. Make Muslims feel that the state is not targeting them when, in fact, it is.

2. Make them think it’s all about al-Qaeda instead.

3. At all costs don’t make the white punters jumpy about the MultiCult.

And how have you gone about this delicate little balancing act?  Well, you are not an “anti-terrorist chief” for nothing:-

Blond, white schoolboy is al-Qa’eda extremist, say police

A schoolboy aged 12 has been identified as an al-Qaeda inspired extremist after sending beheading videos to his classmates, police have disclosed.

Anti-terrorism chiefs have said the example revealed how violent extremism is spreading “like a virus infecting young minds”.

The blond, white schoolboy from West Yorkshire is among 120 people being dealt with by police in a new anti-terrorism scheme targeting al-Qa’eda inspired youths.

He has been identified only by the initials BC and was reported by his school after he was found circulating video clips of terrorists beheading Westerners.

Sir Norman Bettison, Chief Constable of West Yorkshire, said: “That was bad enough, but he also has an unnatural interest in guns and weapons.

“He spoke openly of his wish to be a sniper and spoke of his curiosity of what it would be like to kill someone.”

Sir Norman described him as an “angelic looking boy” whose police mugshot showed a fair-haired child so short that his head was barely in the frame of the camera.

“He is at risk of being a violent young man and a threat to society,” the chief constable said.

“He is not a Muslim. He is not driven by ideology – he is too young to spell the word.

“But he is being influenced and intoxicated by the imagery and appeal of Jihadist and other internet violence.”

Sir Norman, speaking at a conference of police chiefs in Liverpool, said that the internet helped to peddle the “virus”.

He added: “We know that there is a latent sense of grievance in the minds of many young people which, in the right conditions, can lead to the desire for violent expression.

“What happens if they learn how to build and deploy an explosive device that will cause mass casualties? Or if core al-Qa’eda can get their hands on these people to act as mules for a more sophisticated attack?”

The police chief urged every parent – particularly Muslims – to address the issue of extremism with their children.

“The al-Qa’eda brand of violent extremism continues to spread like a virus infecting young minds,” he said.

“Every young Muslim will be introduced to ideas around al-Qa’eda and a ‘global struggle’. I don’t see how you can avoid it in 2008.”

The 12-year-old boy arrived in Britain as an asylum seeker in July 2005, and at the age of eight allegedly assisted a nine-year-old and a 12-year-old boy in the forced rape of his sister, although he was never prosecuted, police revealed.

He is now being handled under a scheme known as the Channel Project, which has been running for the past nine months.

The number of suspects uncovered so far – 124 - was “higher than expected”, Sir Norman added.

They have been referred to the police and other agencies by schools, community leaders, mosques and others.

“We are trying to intervene early. We are trying to snuff out violent extremism,” said Sir Norman.

Sir Norman said none of the referrals had been prosecuted because officers were attempting to avoid using anti-terror laws against anyone identified by the scheme.

“Throwing the book at them in terms of the Prevention of Terrorism Act would be complete overkill,” the chief constable said.

“We are not talking about criminal actions. We are talking about vulnerable kids.”

Two other cases highlighted by the senior policeman were Muslim youths, known only as NH and YH, who were both 15 when they were reported by their communities because they were showing extremist and racist tendencies.

Posted by Guessedworker on Wednesday, June 25, 2008 at 07:34 PM in War on Terror
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World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism

Norman Podhoretz’s latest book, World War IV: The Long Struggle Against Islamofascism, is a mission in damage control for the neocons. I bought the book hoping for the neocons’ latest vision of how WWIV would unfold and how it would be fought and won, but there was very little about the future and a lot about the past.

He spends a great deal of time discussing past presidents’ doctrines with regards to foreign policy: realists, isolationists, internationalists, etc. He then tries to show that the Bush doctrine was new and different to fight a new and different type of enemy. Its pillars include democratization, regime change and preemptive warfare. Currently, Podhoretz is lamenting that the anti-war movement along with even some neocons, have given up the global war strategy because we are bogged down in Iraq. He takes it as a given that this war must be waged to protect America, even though we have lost more lives in Iraq than we did on 9/11—not to mention the thousands of Americans injured.

Continued...

Posted by Matt Nuenke on Monday, September 24, 2007 at 06:38 PM in War on Terror
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On the AQ case with Admiral Sir Alan West

So far, then, Britain has been treated to 7/7, 21/7, Bluewater, the Barot offensive, the West End poets and the inflammatory Glasgow doctors.  And let us not forget Richard Reid, the Shoe Bomber.  But yesterday, our Prime Minister’s new head security guard informed us:-

We’re talking about such a big change in the way people behave that it’s inevitably going to take 10 to 15 years, and that’s if we’re lucky, and that’s what I hope we can achieve.

I think it would be wrong to pretend otherwise to the British nation.

He then went on to pretend that the Moslems currently domiciled in my homeland can be got to look beyond the palms of their hands and “snitch” on the AQ-intoxicated.  The real enemy, apparently, is a “disparate core” of “racist” people, often based abroad, who want power.  Elsewhere we learn that “these people are trying to destroy one’s entire way of life.”  And that life is, you know, “our” collective Moslem and non-Moslem MultiCult rainbow-dream thingy:-

Britishness does not normally involve snitching or talking about someone.  I’m afraid, in this situation, anyone who’s got any information should say something because the people we are talking about are trying to destroy our entire way of life.

“We’ll have to be a little bit unBritish, I think . . . and say something and tell something.

So let’s put the pieces together from a majority perspective.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, July 10, 2007 at 06:58 PM in War on Terror
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Tiger Tiger

The picture emerging tonight of the attempted double bombing in London’s West End looks very like both the Barot and the Bluewater gang plans of attack.  The leader of the Bluewater gang, it should be noted, was never caught.

In any event, I find it strange and interesting that these, of course, deeply religious young men should wish to dismember and incinerate “slags” in a London nighclub - Tiger Tiger, the club in The Haymarket, was running a ladies night when the car-bomb was parked thoughtfully outside and the occupant sprinted away into the night.  According to one BBC report:-

Islamist extremist literature sometimes singles out clubs as examples of the immoral hypocrisy of countries like the UK.

We’ve seen Islamic terrorist attacks on nightclubs before, most notably and unforgettably in 2002 in Bali.  But then it was possible to see this as an economic attack on the Indonesian government as well as a punishment for John Howard’s support of Bush’s War on Terror.  Certainly as regards the former, Islamic terrorists had bombed the Jakarta Stock Exchange attack a full year before 9/11.

The next landmark attack was the double hit in Istanbul in November 2003.  This time there was no question that the targets were political and economic: the British consulate and the HSBC bank headquarters in Istanbul.

Obviously, there is no shortage of potential political or economic targets in London.  There are American targets.  There are Israeli and Jewish diaspore targets.  One would think that the destruction of one or other of these would resonate well enough with the Ummah ... always assuming that the Ummah was moved by revenge attacks for the indignity of Iraq, Afghanistan or Palestine.  But here we have nothing of that sort but, apparently, a third large-scale attack on the decadence of the West.  Why?

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Friday, June 29, 2007 at 07:28 PM in War on Terror
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Target Tehran?

We now stand ten years past the midpoint of a century that has witnessed four major wars among great nations.  Three of these involved our own country.  Despite these holocausts America is today the strongest, the most influential and most productive nation in the world.  Understandably proud of this pre-eminence, we yet realize that America’s leadership and prestige depend, not merely upon our unmatched material progress, riches and military strength, but on how we use our power in the interests of world peace and human betterment.

Throughout America’s adventure in free government, such basic purposes have been to keep the peace; to foster progress in human achievement, and to enhance liberty, dignity and integrity among peoples and among nations.

... Until the latest of our world conflicts, the United States had no armaments industry.  American makers of plowshares could, with time and as required, make swords as well.  But now we can no longer risk emergency improvisation of national defense; we have been compelled to create a permanent armaments industry of vast proportions. Added to this, three and a half million men and women are directly engaged in the defense establishment.  We annually spend on military security more than the net income of all United States corporations.

This conjunction of an immense military establishment and a large arms industry is new in the American experience.  The total influence – economic, political, even spiritual – is felt in every city, every Statehouse, every office of the Federal government.  We recognize the imperative need for this development. Yet we must not fail to comprehend its grave implications.  Our toil, resources and livelihood are all involved; so is the very structure of our society.

In the councils of government, we must guard against the acquisition of unwarranted influence, whether sought or unsought, by the military-industrial complex.  The potential for the disastrous rise of misplaced power exists and will persist.

We must never let the weight of this combination endanger our liberties or democratic processes.  We should take nothing for granted.  Only an alert and knowledgeable citizenry can compel the proper meshing of the huge industrial and military machinery of defense with our peaceful methods and goals, so that security and liberty may prosper together.

The stark warning of Dwight D Eisenhower, contained in his farewell address of January 17, 1961.

You do have to follow the money.  If you follow the money here, it’s not so much that Halliburton wanted a war so they told Dick Cheney to go get one for them.  It wasn’t that.  But you do get a willingness to go to war.

Lt.Col Karen Kwiatkowski, US Dept of Defense (ret) and noted critic of the war in Iraq, quoted in the BBC documentary Why We Fight, broadcast on 23rd March, 2005.

The United States is moving closer to war with Iran by accusing the “highest levels” of the Iranian government of supplying sophisticated roadside bombs that have killed 170 US troops and wounded 620.

The allegations against Iran are similar in tone and credibility to those made four years ago by the US government about Iraq possessing weapons of mass destruction in order to justify the invasion of 2003.

The Indy’s front page lead today.

Below the fold is that BBC documentary in four parts, as it is packaged for YouTube.  Certainly it is beautifully produced, and duly received its professional encomia from Robert Redford’s friends.  But the BBC is a wholly left-leaning organisation and it shows.  By way of a health warning, be aware that the programme opens with a carefully cut and edited version of Ike’s farewell speech (in the opening quote to this post I have re-contextualised his words).  Of the integrity of the rest of the programme I won’t comment in any detail, save to say that the conclusions broadly agree with my understanding of how this wicked world works.

Bear in mind also that the saving grace of the programme-makers is their discontent.  As they make clear in their criticism of Congress they are from a tradition that is not at all the same as the political left.  On this we may find common cause.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, February 12, 2007 at 10:09 AM in War on Terror
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Whoops ... back to Iraq and the Glasgow Herald

A reposting is required, I’m afraid.  My facts were wrong last time and the NYT article was from exactly a year ago.  I’m done cussing at myself, so you’ll just have to imagine that part as vividly as possible.  The question remains, however, as to why this story is still so very elusive, ie avoided by the usual suspects.  Ian Bruce, the journalist, has posted it at the Glasgow Herald, as mentioned below, and at Mathaba.net - and that’s it, it seems.  Where is the mysterious Pentagon report?  Is it merely Bruce’s treatment of the report that is out of the ordinary and unrepeated elsewhere?

Anyway, here goes a second time ...

Bo Sears sent me a link to this article from the Glasgow Herald.  It’s a week old now - and was, therefore, published one day after the 3,000th American casualty in Iraq.  It draws on an apparently secret Pentagon study.

As its headline indicates, the article reveals that the bulk of the casualties are young, white soldiers from “rural, farming communities scattered from backwoods Louisiana to Ohio and the Great Plains states of Dakota and Wyoming.” Since the main killer is the perfectly indiscriminate roadside bomb it is fair to assume that the victims are a representative sample of American forces in Iraq, and fair also to extrapolate from that a picture of the kind of young man who believes in the myth of America enough to take up arms.  It is equally fair to conclude that other ethnicities are, in the round, correspondingly less patriotic.

Let it be said, they are less susceptible to their President’s betrayal, too - no bad thing.  But the ethnicity of American patriotism revealed so starkly by a newspaper published, of all places, in Scotland is obviously significant and obviously sensitive.

Posted by Guessedworker on Tuesday, January 9, 2007 at 04:29 PM in War on Terror
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Thirteen crucial milestones on the road to democracy in Iraq

Via Auster, the Million Milestones March:

1.Remember when the fall of Saddam’s statue was an important milestone?

2.Remember when the death of Saddam’s sons was an important milestone?

3.Remember when the capture of Saddam’s “Deck of Cards” was an important milestone?

4.Remember when the capture of Saddam himself was an important milestone?

5.Remember when the discovery of the weapons of mass destruction was an important milestone? (Whoops, scratch that.)

6.Remember when elections and purple thumbs was an important milestone?

7.Remember when the democratic revolution in Lebanon was an important milestone?

8.Remember when the election in Egypt was an important milestone?

9.Remember when the battle of Fallujah was an important milestone?

10.Remember when the approval of the constitution was an important milestone?

11.Remember when the forming of a government was an important milestone?

12.Remember when the killing of Zarqawi was an important milestone?

13.And now we can remember the death of Saddam as an important milestone according to George Bush.

So many milestones, so little progress. Does this remind anyone else of those Soviet Five Year Plans that kept on being touted and then tacitly swept under the red rug?

Posted by Alex Zeka on Sunday, December 31, 2006 at 03:18 PM in War on Terror
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No peace on Earth, No goodwill to neocons

That masterpiece of blundering, the war in Iraq, has finally achieved its first success. Saddam Hussein is set to be executed within thirty days. Quite how little this is, and how late it has come, can be divined from the fact that even Michael “Creative Destruction” Ledeen, Jonah “Creative Destruction” Goldberg and the rest of the chicken hawk crowd at the NRO Corner have chosen to keep quiet about it.

I wonder how many ordinary Iraqis, unschooled in the finer points of democratic theory and unaware of how their only hope of peace is to adopt that system, are now fondly nostalgic of Hussein’s despotic reign. After all, the chief accusation levelled against him is that he had, during his four decade long presidency, put to the firing squad 148 Shi’ites after an assassination attempt on him. That figure is as nothing compared to the casualties inflicted on the Iraqi population by their American occupiers in just two years. Moreover, life under Saddam did not include the constant hazard of destruction to property which is a daily part of life in Liberated Iraq.

Continued...

Posted by Alex Zeka on Wednesday, December 27, 2006 at 11:04 AM in War on Terror
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War on Terror on film

Mel Gibson’s latest

Sacrificing American boys on the altar of the great modern god, Global Democracy:

In describing its portrait of a civilization in decline, Gibson said, “The precursors to a civilization that’s going under are the same, time and time again,” drawing parallels between the Mayan civilization on the brink of collapse and America’s present situation. “What’s human sacrifice,” he asked, “if not sending guys off to Iraq for no reason?”

Fidel and his Hollywood enablers

Does liberal self-hatred get any more hilarious than this:

Chavez might have taken a cue from the Cuban Maestro’s own visit in 1995 to New York (a city he twice tried to incinerate. See full documentation in Fidel; Hollywood’s Favorite Tyrant) for the U.N.‘s 50th anniversary festivities. “The Toast of Manhattan!” crowed Time magazine about Castro’s reception by the General Assembly and later by Manhattan’s Beautiful People.

Speaking of Hollywood…

...they don’t seem to mind if you’re Cuban or American. Just provided you’re a mass murderer:

In Operation Hollywood, filmmaker Emilio Pacull follows up an investigative study by film industry journalist Dave Robb on the help producers have sought from the military over the years. Robb, who worked for Variety and The Hollywood Reporter, says he found himself obsessed with the minutiae of these negotiations with the boys with ships, tanks, materiel, information, bases, access to land, troops and some very real-looking fireworks.

Mel, oh, Mel. Shame on you, you awful anti-semite who probably fantasize about committing genocide. How dare you try to conceal it by refusing to kowtow to warmongers the way everyone else does, darlink’? Don’t you know that a shrivelled skull is the fashion accessory to have?

PS: It might be thought that the expected roles in the above are reversed. Mel Gibson, the archetypical tough guy, is filming anti-war polemics, whilst the ‘sensitive’ Hollywood types are siddling up to all sorts of military-industrial complexes. There’s nothing odd about this however: eunuchs, and their modern equivalents homo/metrosexuals, have always been used as executioners and the most ruthless soldiers, as their inability to start a family leaves them more likely to not much care if millions of young men are sent of to die. At the same time, their short-termism also comes in useful for many despots, who too prefer not to think about the conseqeunces their actions will have after their death. Hollywood fashionistas are just the modern equivalents of Ottoman janissaries, both racially different from those they command and without any of the paternal compassion which comes from knowing that one day your own children might be sent to fight under just such circumstances.

Posted by Alex Zeka on Wednesday, September 27, 2006 at 04:34 PM in Popular Culture,  War on Terror
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Giving up (our) liberty for (Islamic) security

We have grown accustomed to living under the constant threat of a terror attack. This news would have shocked us a decade ago, but not anymore:

Homes and businesses across England are being searched and 21 people questioned after police say a plot to blow up planes from the UK to US was disrupted.

They say they are convinced they have the key players in custody, but a wider investigation is only just beginning.

Peter Clarke, the head of Scotland Yard’s anti-terrorist branch, said the network involved was large and global.

The response to this attack has been equally predictable, with the Home Office raising the security alert to its highest level and banning taking any liquids onto airplanes. We can further expect more calls for ID cards, a heightened level of surveillance and more funding for the government’s security agencies. In short, what can be summed up as giving up more of our long-treasured liberties, as one radio commentator alluded.

Such a course of action will be foolhardy and fruitless; it will not make us significantly safer. The government could scrap the entirety of the Magna Carta, ignore every single international treaty it has ever signed (that’ll be the day…), put a surveillance camera onto every single street corner and increase security spending to unimaginable levels. It could abolish Parliament (which, judging by recent legislation, is its fondest desire), institute a semi-totalitarian order, but we could still expect another successful terrorist attack.

Continued...

Posted by Alex Zeka on Thursday, August 10, 2006 at 04:20 PM in British Politics,  Islam & Islamification,  Law & Order,  Marxism & Culture War,  War on Terror
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Blood and poppies

This weekend saw much commemoration of the Battle of the Somme.  It is ninety years since the artillery fell silent, that first whistle blew and, bayonets fixed, the men went over the top.

I can’t deny that military action holds a fascination for me.  I would be surprised if any man of my generation has not wondered whether he had it in him to do what his grandfather and, twenty-five years later, his father did.

Some of our sons are answering that question for us today.  This weekend also saw the latest deaths of British servicemen fighting the War on Terror - in a fire-fight at Sangin in Afghanistan.

Take some time to read this account of an otherwise unreported firefight that took place at the precise same moment.  Forty-eight soldiers of C Company of the 3rd Battalion of the Parachute Regiment - with an attachment of airborne troops from the Royal Irish Rangers – fought off a very determined “bunch of Afghans in rubber sandals.”

Excitement aside, the account made me wonder whether the lightly-equipped, friendship-toting British Army has any utility in Helmand.  If it isn’t there to occupy the area in the conventional, lock-down sense, and if it can’t possibly win the goodwill of the people, what is its mission?  The Times’ correspondent, Christina Lamb, doesn’t venture much on the matter, but gives us this:-

I thought about John Reid, the former defence secretary, glibly saying he hoped to complete the three-year British mission to Helmand without a shot being fired.  If this wasn’t a fourth Anglo-Afghan war, it felt very much like it.

Why were we there?  Why had we thought the Afghans wouldn’t fight - they defeated the Russians after all.  And why did everyone in Kabul and London keep insisting that nobody in Helmand really wanted to support the Taliban but were being forced to?

What if they were wrong?  After all, almost everyone in the province now depends on growing poppies.  Whatever the British commanders might say, villagers must see the presence of British troops as threatening the opium trade.

Of course, the operation in Helmand is not at all concerned with poppy cultivation.  It studiously avoids all such inflamatory considerations.  It is a peacekeeping initiative under NATO control (NATO having taken over strategic coordination of the International Security Assistance Force in Afghanistan in the summer of 2003).  NATO’s brief is to facilitate the Afghan government’s “ownership of and, eventually, full control and responsibility for” the country.  So, is order imposed from Kabul an objective which the villagers of Helmand would welcome, surviving as they are principally off the narcotics trade?  We would be living in a very strange logical universe if it was.

In a sense wider than just utility, then, I find myself brought back to Christina Lamb’s existential bastardisation, “Why were we there?”  On what basis does NATO, an agent of the elevated and far-distant “international community”, justify its intervention?  And does it lend any real moral legitimacy?

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Monday, July 3, 2006 at 05:42 AM in War on Terror
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Responsibility is often collective responsibility.

In his 2005 book, Beyond Chutzpah: On the Misuse of Anti-Semitism and the Abuse of History, Norman Finkelstein takes Allen Dershowitz to task for Dershowitz’s attempt to use “collective responsibility” as justification for Israel’s policy of retaliation against Palestinian civilians. Excerpts from Beyond Chutzpah are available here as it relates to the Palestinian–Israeli conflict per Finkelstein. I would like to take the concept and expand it to other historical conflicts.

In a nutshell, Dershowitz claims that the whole collective is responsible, and that one group has a right to attack any other group depending on a continuum of responsibility in the members support of the actions of the group’s representatives, armies, etc. He states, “[I]t was right for the entire German people to suffer for what their elected leader had unleashed on the world…. [T]he vast majority of Germans should have been held accountable for their complicity with evil. . . . That is part of what it means to be a nation or a people. Those who start wars and lose them often bring suffering to their people. That is rough justice.” This of course has been historically true. For two million years or more our species has fought wars where the victor, if it is in his power,  destroys entirely all members of the other tribe. This is simply group evolutionary strategy, and it undoubtedly has a selective outcome if the two warring groups differ in any way genetically, no matter how slight.

Continued...

Posted by Matt Nuenke on Sunday, June 11, 2006 at 06:42 PM in War on Terror
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Congress to hold hearings into OKC bombing

Congress to hold hearings into OKC bombing

In what some on Capitol Hill are calling a surprising decision, Rep. Henry Hyde, R-Ill., has given the nod for hearings into the long-debated question of whether those responsible for the bombing of the Oklahoma City federal building had help from any foreign source.

Continued...

Posted by Svyatoslav Igorevich on Friday, June 9, 2006 at 04:18 PM in War on Terror
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The sons of Martha

Imagine a group of young men, many still in their teens. They are far, far from home. They are fighting a war the purpose of which they -and indeed their betters- cannot understand. Their old friends, safe back home, are only too likely to regard them with distaste, just as American soldiers in Vietnam were once regarded. What they obviously need is to be told how wonderful their alleged enemies are:

Iraq troops to get ethics training. US soldiers in Iraq to undergo ‘values’ training in wake of massacre claims.

A MEMBER of the US Marines unit accused of murdering 24 unarmed Iraqis said yesterday that his colleagues “were blinded by hate” and lost control before the massacre.

Interesting. I wonder when and if the leaders of the Iraqi Muslim communities will conduct an investigation into the atrocities perpetrated on Coalition soldiers -or indeed the torture inflicted on Western Aid workers. I’m not holding my breath.

I agree that the Coalition’s conduct in invading and destabilising a non-aggressing country is appalling. But surely, it’s the politicians who ordered this who should be reviled as haters and racists, not the ordinary soldiers on the ground, many of whom only joined because other career were denied to them by the flight of American jobs. After all, we blame the filthy rich pimp, not the impoverished prostitute.

Truly, it’s a thankless task to be a son of Martha -as Kipling once wrote.

In entirely unrelated news, one soldier claims that his service in the American army has made him unable to bear legal responsibility for rape. In other words, he has regressed to the level of a child. Poor lad.

Posted by Alex Zeka on Thursday, June 1, 2006 at 01:44 PM in Military Matters,  War on Terror,  World Affairs
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Neocons fiddling while Rome is burning

It’s Iraqi Liberation Day today, as the website of the “conservative” “American” journal National Review informs its readers. I am sure that my readers will forgive me for neglecting to crack open the champagne, and some may even join me in my gross apathy. It’s largely a religious difference: I am a Christian and so celebrate Christmas. The editors of NR are true believers in Global Democracy, and so celebrate Iraqi Liberation Day, but not Christmas.

Both faiths require some suspension of disbelief. Christians must simply believe that Christ was born, proof or no proof. Similarly, Global Democratists must believe that there’s been a Liberation somehow related to Iraq, even if proof isn’t precisely easy to find.

Continued...

Posted by Alex Zeka on Sunday, April 9, 2006 at 01:10 PM in Media,  War on Terror
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Just four lads who blew themselves up

The official inquiry into the 7 July London bombings will say the attack was planned on a shoestring budget from information on the internet, that there was no ‘fifth-bomber’ and no direct support from al-Qaeda, although two of the bombers had visited Pakistan.

The first forensic account of the atrocity that claimed the lives of 52 people, which will be published in the next few weeks, will say that attacks were the product of a ‘simple and inexpensive’ plot hatched by four British suicide bombers bent on martyrdom.

Far from being the work of an international terror network, as originally suspected, the attack was carried out by four men who had scoured terror sites on the internet. Their knapsack bombs cost only a few hundred pounds, according to the first completed draft of the government’s definitive report into the blasts.

Mark Towsnend, writing in The Observer today.

So these well-adjusted, Westernised young men, all born in Britain and led by a married thirty-year old special-needs teacher, were entirely self-motivated and self-trained.  There was no AQ hand at work.  There was no international flow of funds.  There was no connection to the wider world of Islamic terror at all other than via a few “How To” websites and a rant by Ayman al-Zawahiri, which someone tacked on to Mohammad Sidique Khan’s video broadcast by Al-Jazeera.

Continued...

Posted by Guessedworker on Sunday, April 9, 2006 at 03:26 AM in War on Terror
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Wrong ideology, wrong assumptions, wrong middle name

It seems that the recent religious and ethnic killings in the wonderful quagmire of Iraq have proven too much even for the Revolutionary People’s Tribunal of Washington, DC. Head Revolutionary Tribunary Michael Ledeen has said of it “Wrong war, wrong time, wrong way, wrong place.” This is quite a change from his last pearl of political wisdom, when he said (sounding like a cross between a particularly sincere anarchist and a stand up comedian) that “creative destruction is our middle name”.

Continued...

Posted by Alex Zeka on Saturday, April 1, 2006 at 04:03 PM in War on Terror
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Why there will be war with Iran (and Syria, etc, etc.)

(Same caveat as below)

I am not a big fan of war, in the same way that most anybody normal (i.e. not Bush) isn’t. It involves casualties; it disrupts the orderly progress of day to day life; and it is also hugely expensive. Of course, it is occasionally necessary to defend yourselves against aggressors, but the threat of Sierra Leone (a tiny African basket case, which Blair decided to invade, god alone knows why, nine years ago) and Iraq to Britain can, not to put too fine a point on it, be overestimated. So, it is fair enough to say that I am anti-war in the current context.

Continued...

Posted by Alex Zeka on Tuesday, March 28, 2006 at 06:01 PM in Activism,  Liberalism & the Left,  War on Terror
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The British government protects Muslim killers of its own troops

Diplomats stalled the hunt for the killers of six Red Caps in Iraq because they wanted to be politically correct and save the savages from the gallows.  They blocked Army cops from handing Iraqi authorities vital case files that identified the culprits - so there would be no arrests.

Foreign Office bosses insisted the 18-month delay was necessary to prevent the barbaric tribesmen from facing the death penalty as that would breach THEIR human rights.  A deal done behind closed doors last year means the killers can now only face life in jail. The files on them were handed over at that time.

The delay in the investigation into the massacre almost three years ago now means families may never see justice.  It has given key suspects for the horrendous crime time to flee and made it far harder to secure any convictions in court as witnesses’ recall of events will have diminished.

Continued...

Posted by jonjayray on Saturday, March 18, 2006 at 01:54 AM in War on Terror
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