Tag: ISIS

A Most Convenient Massacre

Of course we should grieve for the victims, but there is something far more important at stake than mere human lives, which are, deplorably, becoming cheaper with each passing year. We should grieve for the truth.

Can Obama Level with the People?

Another terrorist outrage – this one in Paris – is spreading fear and fury across Europe. Which makes this a key moment for President Obama to finally level with the American people about how U.S. “allies” — such as Saudi Arabia, Turkey and Qatar — have been aiding and abetting extremists, reports Robert Parry.

Paris: You Don’t Want to Read This

Since 2001 the U.S. has expended enormous efforts to kill a handful of men — bin Laden, al-Zarqawi, al-Awlaki, and this weekend, Jihadi John. Others, many without names, were killed outside of media attention, or were tortured to death, or are still rotting in the offshore penal colony of Guantanamo, or the dark hell of the Salt Pit in Afghanistan.

And it has not worked, and Paris this weekend, and the next one somewhere else sometime soon, are the proof.

We #PrayForParis, but #CheerForBombs dropped on Syrian children.

We know why, and it isn’t an epic struggle of liberal democracies against extremist Islam. Rather, it the battle of state-sanctioned sociopathic violence versus radical groups such ISIL and al-Qaida and their particular brand of sociopathic violence. We are simply viewing different sides of the same fucked up coin. As always, the tragic casualties of the power struggle are innocent civilians, both in Europe and the Middle East.

CONFIRMED: French Government Knew Extremists BEFORE Attack

If the people of France want to strike hard at those responsible for repeated terrorist attacks within their borders, they can start with those who knew of the attacks and did nothing to stop them, who are also, coincidentally, the same people who helped give rise to ISIS and help perpetuate it to this very day.

French Security Left Blind During Paris Attacks

Among other things, the attack took down the French mobile data network and blinded police surveillance The attack was not a straightforward DDOS attack but a sophisticated attack that targeted a weakness in infrastructure hardware.

Such an attack is beyond the capability of most organizations and requires capability that is unlikely to be in ISIL’s arsenal. An attack on this scale is difficult to pull off without authorities getting wind of it. The coordination required suggests state involvement.

Reaping the Whirlwind of Western Support for Extremist Violence

I write in despair. Despair of course at the depravity displayed by the murderers of innocents in Paris tonight; but an even deeper despair at the depravity of the egregious murderers who have brought us to this ghastly place in human history: those gilded figures who have strode the halls of power for decades in the high chambers of the West, killing innocent people by the hundreds of thousands, crushing secular opposition to their favored dictators — and again, again and again — supporting, funding and arming some of the most virulent sectarians on earth.

US-Turkey Invasion Derailed by Syrian Army Triumph at Kuweires

Now that Kuweires has been liberated, Davutoğlu will have to reconsider his offer taking into consideration the fact that Russian warplanes will now be within striking distance of the border while troops and artillery will be positioned in a way that makes crossing into Syria as difficult as possible. The window for Turkish troops to enter Syria unopposed has closed. Any attempt to invade the country now will result in stiff resistance and heavy casualties.

Russia’s Syria Campaign – A Reality-Based Evaluation

In my opinion, there is a limited timeframe for the Syrian military to achieve an operational victory against Daesh, after that I see no other option left but an Iranian ground intervention (which, by itself, would be a very complex matter and which would trigger a massive anti-Iranian hysteria in the US-controlled part of our planet).

From ‘sexed up’ in Iraq to silenced in Afghanistan, cowing of the BBC continues

Of course, the BBC has always been an instrument of the British state, established by statute in 1928 and run by a governor appointed by the Prime Minister. As Seumas Milne has pointed out: “There is no point in romanticizing a BBC golden age. The corporation was always an establishment institution, deeply embedded in the security state and subject to direct government control in an emergency…[with] around 40 percent of the staff… vetted by MI5.”