Al-Qaeda's "Inspire" Magazine Targets US Commuter Trains With Homemade "Derailment Devices"

The magazine that helped the Tsarnaev brothers pull off the Boston Marathon bombing – while also purporting to teach wannabe jihadis how to “make a bomb in the kitchen of your mom” – is homing in on its next target: America’s crumbling transportation infrastructure.

“Inspire,” the Al Qaeda propaganda magazine, will dedicate its next issue to America’s passenger and commuter trains. The focus on rail transportation comes at a time of great anxiety over the scarcity of resources devoted to repairing America’s vulnerable trains, which is advantageous to a group aiming to reestablish maximum relevance.

Derailments in the Bronx, Philadelphia and New York City’s Penn Station have made commuters anxious. The effort to rescue New York City’s deteriorating subway system has been one of the most closely followed stories of the summer, according to the Washington Times.

“Issue No. 17 is headlined, “Train Derail Operations,” and will spell out ways to create rail disasters in a transportation system that lacks the stiff security procedures of airline travel.

It’s competing Sunni extremists group, the Islamic State, for more than a year has advocated using vehicles to mow down innocents. Its murderous followers have weaponized vehicles in Nice, Berlin and London, creating hundreds of deaths and injuries.

Adding trains to the terrorist’s priority list would put at risk virtually every mode of transportation and placed added pressure on the U.S. Department of Homeland Security.”

Furthermore, two of the deadliest terror attacks in European history were carried out on public commuter trains. The 7/7 London tube bombing, when four suicide bombers killed 52 people on the London Underground. And the Madrid train bombings, when a terrorist cell linked to Al Qaeda killed nearly 200 people on a Madrid Cercanias train. Now Al Qaeda wants to replicate those attacks in the US.

A “trailer” for the new issue was being shared on the social-media app Telegram, a popular venue for sharing extremist content that has often been used by terrorists for recruiting.

The Middle East Media Research Institute (MEMRI) put out a report on Friday saying al Qaeda has teased the Inspire articles with a trailer appearing on Telegram app channels operated by its fans.

“The trailer highlights that derailments are simple to design using easily available materials, that such a planned attack can be hard to detect, and that the outcome can substantially damage a country’s transportation sector and the Western economy in general,” MEMRI said.

The New York City subway is featured in the promotional video, which depicts derailment devices that the narrator says could easily be attached to tracks, causing a derailment.

“Simple to design,” the promo says in English script, mentioning “America” several times. “Made from readily available materials. Hard to be detached. Cause great destruction to the Western economy and transportation sector.”

The magazine’s push is part of a rebranding effort for Al Qaeda as the group seeks to regain the upper hand in recruiting from ISIS, which was recently driven out of Mosul, and has also suffered other setbacks like the death (and miraculous rebirth) of the group’s founder, Abu Bakr al-Baghdadi. Al Qaeda, which is trying to reassert itself by forging alliances with other jihadist groups outside its home in South Yemen, wants to revive its formerly fearsome reputation…and the most effective method would involve an attack.
 

Europe's Cities Absorb Sharia Law

Authored by Giulio Meotti via The Gatestone Institute,

• London Mayor Sadiq Khan banned advertisements that promote "unrealistic expectations of women"s body image and health". Now Berlin is planning to ban images in which women are portrayed as "beautiful but weak, hysterical, dumb, crazy, naive, or ruled by their emotions". Tagesspiegel"s Harald Martenstein said the policy "could have been adopted from the Taliban manifesto".


• The irony is that this wave of morality and "virtue" is coming from cities governed by uninhibited leftist politicians, who for years campaigned for sexual liberation. It is now a "feminist" talking point to advocate sharia policy.


• To paraphrase the American writer Daniel Greenfield, the irony of women celebrating their own suppression is both heartbreaking and stupefying.

Within days after the Islamic State conquered the city of Sirte in Libya two years ago, enormous billboards appeared in the Islamist stronghold warning women they must wear baggy robes that cover their entire bodies, and no perfume. These "sharia stipulations for hijab" included wearing dense material and a robe that does not "resemble the attire of unbelievers".

Two years later, Europe"s three most important cities - London, Paris and Berlin - are adopting the same sharia trend.

Paris has said au revoir to "sexist" ads on public billboards. The Paris city council announced its ban after the Socialist Mayor Anne Hidalgo said the move meant that Paris was "leading the way" in the fight against sexism. London Mayor Sadiq Khan also banned advertisements that promote "unrealistic expectations of women"s body image and health". Now Berlin is planning to ban images in which women are portrayed as "beautiful but weak, hysterical, dumb, crazy, naive, or ruled by their emotions". Der Tagesspiegel"s Harald Martenstein said the policy "could have been adopted from the Taliban manifesto".

The irony is that this wave of morality and "virtue" is coming from cities governed by uninhibited leftist politicians, who for years campaigned for sexual liberation.

There is a reason for this grotesque campaign banning these images. These cities host significant Muslim populations; and politicians -- the same who frantically are enacting mandatory multiculturalism -- want to please "Islam". It is now a "feminist" talking point to advocate sharia policy, as does Linda Sarsour. The result is that, today, few feminists dare to criticize Islam.

It is happening everywhere. Dutch municipalities are "advising" their employees to not wear mini-skirts. There are women-only hours at Swedish swimming pools. German schools are sending letters to parents asking children to avoid wearing "revealing clothes".

The first to suggest calling for a ban on posters or advertisements that "reduce women or men to sexual objects" was German Justice Minister Heiko Maas, a Social Democrat.

"To demand the veiling of women or taming of men," said Free Democratic Party leader Christian Lindner, "is something known among radical Islamic religious leaders, but not from the German minister of justice."

In 1969, Germany was overwhelmed by a debate on introducing into schools the "Sexualkundeatlas", an "atlas" of sexual science. Now the effort is to desexualize German society. The newspaper Die Welt commented:

"Thanks to Justice Minister Heiko Maas we finally know why on New Year"s Eve, at Cologne Central Station, about a thousand women were victims of sexual violence: because of sexist advertising. Too many eroticized models, too much naked skin on our billboards, too many erotic mouths, too many miniskirts in fashion magazines, too many wiggling rear-ends and chubby breasts in television spots. It is another step in the direction of a "submission"".

Instead of nipples and buttocks, Die Welt concludes, "should we urge the use of burqa or veil, as Mrs. Erdogan does?"

The same German élites who suggest banning "sexist" billboards censored the crude details of the mass sexual assaults in Cologne. Meanwhile, a liberal Berlin mosque, which banned burqas and opened its door to gays and to unveiled women, is now under police protection after threats from Muslim supremacists.

Europe"s élites have adopted a double standard: they are proud to host an exhibit of a Christian crucifix submerged in urine, but quickly capitulate to Muslim demands to censor cartoons of the Islamic Prophet Mohammed. The Italian authorities went to great efforts to spare Iran"s President Hassan Rouhani a view of nudity on ancient sculptures in the Capitoline Museums of Rome.

The Western public appears fascinated by Islamic veils. Ismail Sacranie, a founder of Modestly Active, the manufacturer that designs burkinis, told the New York Times that 35% of their clients are non-Muslim. Aheda Zanetti, a Lebanese woman living in Australia who invented the burkini, claims that 40% of her sales are to non-Muslim women. The Western public, which has been romanticizing Islam, is apparently absorbing the pieties of Islamic law. The Spectator called it "a new puritanism" and "why some feminists make common cause with Islam".

To paraphrase the American writer Daniel Greenfield, the irony of women celebrating their own suppression is both heartbreaking and stupefying.

Europe might soon have to apologize to the Mayor of Cologne, Henriette Reker. She was criticized -- denounced -- for advising women to keep "at an arm"s length" from strangers to avoid sexual harassment.

If the West keeps on betraying the democratic value of individual freedom on which Western civilization is based, Islamic fundamentalists, like those who imposed burqas on Libyan women, will start imposing them on Western women. They may even begin with those feminist élites who first created the sexual revolution to emancipate women in the 1960s, and who are now infatuated with an obscurantist garment that hides women in a portable prison.

If the West keeps betraying the democratic value of individual freedom, Islamic fundamentalists, like those who imposed burqas on Libyan women, will do the same to Western women. (Photo by Alexander Hassenstein/Getty Images)

Germany: Muslim Biker Gang Vows To "Protect" Fellow Muslims

Authored by Soeren Kern via The Gatestone Institute,

• Muslim vigilantes enforcing Islamic justice have become increasingly common in Germany. The government"s inability or unwillingness to stop them has led to the rise of anti-Muslim counter-vigilantes. Germany"s BfV intelligence agency, in its latest annual report, warned that an escalating action-reaction cycle could result in open warfare on German streets.


• The self-appointed "Sharia Police" urged both Muslim and non-Muslim passersby to attend mosques and to refrain from alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, gambling, music, pornography and prostitution. In November 2016, the Wuppertal District Court ruled that the Islamists did not break German law and were simply exercising their right to free speech. The ruling, which effectively legitimized Sharia law in Germany, was one of a growing number of instances in which German courts are — wittingly or unwittingly — promoting the establishment of a parallel Islamic legal system in the country.


• "Even if we still refuse to believe it: Parts of Germany are ruled by Islamic law! Polygamy, child marriages, Sharia judges — for far too long the German rule of law has not been enforced. Many politicians dreamed of multiculturalism.... This is not a question of folklore or foreign customs and traditions. It is a question of law and order. If the rule of law fails to establish its authority and demand respect for itself, then it can immediately declare its bankruptcy." — Franz Solms-Laubach, parliamentary correspondent, Bild.

German Muslims have established a self-styled biker gang — modelled on the Hells Angels — aimed at protecting fellow Muslims from the "ever-growing hatred of Islam," according to Die Welt.

The emergence of the group, which aspires to open chapters in cities and towns across Germany, has alarmed German authorities, who have warned against the growing threat of vigilantism in the country.

Muslim vigilantes enforcing Islamic justice have become increasingly common in Germany. The government"s inability or unwillingness to stop them has led to the rise of anti-Muslim counter-vigilantes. Germany"s BfV intelligence agency, in its latest annual report, warned that an escalating action-reaction cycle could result in open warfare on German streets.

The gang, which calls itself "Germanys Muslims" (the possessive apostrophe is not used in German), is based in Mönchengladbach and now has offshoots in Münster and Stuttgart. It was founded by Marcel Kunst, a German convert to Islam who also uses the name Mahmud Salam.

The gang"s uniform consists of a black leather jacket with a logo depicting a one-fingered salute, the "Finger of Tawheed," which represents belief in the oneness of Allah. The logo also includes the number 1438, which represents the current year in the Muslim calendar, as well as the number 713, which stands for GM (Germanys Muslims), the seventh and thirteenth letters of the alphabet.

Police say they do not know how many people belong to the gang, which was established in May. The group"s Facebook page, which has more than a thousand followers, describes itself as a "citizens" initiative" which advocates for the "peaceful coexistence between Muslims and non-Muslims in Germany." A mission statement dated June 15 reads:

"Our organization has been founded for only one purpose: To protect and support our brothers and sisters from the ever-growing hatred of Islam!!! To all non-Muslims who read this post, pay attention. The following could change your perception of us!!! We respect every religion and, as dictated by the Quran, do not force our faith on anyone!!! We do not sympathize with the Islamic State and are against compulsion in faith and in marriage!!! ISLAM DOES NOT RECOGNIZE HONOR KILLINGS AS IS OFTEN SUPPOSED!!! The raised finger in our logo is not from the so-called Islamic State. In our faith it symbolizes that there is only one God!!! We have summarized 40 commandments from the Quran for you....IMPORTANT. Whoever gets into a fight on the road or elsewhere (except for self-defense) will be expelled from our group without further discussion!!!"

Although "Germanys Muslims" claims to disavow violence, police say that several of its senior members are known to be Salafists, whose aim is to replace liberal democracy in Germany with Sharia law. One of its members, for instance, was detained as a security precaution during the Tour de France, which passed through Mönchengladbach on July 2.

German police describe the group"s founder, Kunst, as an "Islamist who moves in Salafist circles." In a video that is no longer available, Kunst called on the group"s members to protect mosques and Muslim women.

In a July 27 interview with Die Welt, Isabella Hannen, spokeswoman for the Mönchengladbach Police Department, revealed that police met with Kunst on July 5 and warned him that "vigilantism will not be tolerated." They also stressed that the monopoly on the legitimate use of physical force (Gewaltmonopol) is the exclusive domain of the state. On July 28, "Germanys Muslims" issued a statement saying that the group respects the authority of the state. "So far, we have no evidence that they are a danger, but we are keeping our eyes on them," Hannen said.

An illustrative photo of an "outlaw" motorcycle gang. (Image source: Roy Lister/Wikimedia Commons)

In its annual report released on July 4, Germany"s domestic intelligence agency, the Bundesamt für Verfassungsschutz (BfV), said that Salafism is the "fastest-growing Islamic movement in Germany." The report revealed that the number of Salafists in Germany jumped to 9,700 in 2016, up from 8,350 in 2015; 7,000 in 2014; 5,500 in 2013; 4,500 in 2012; and 3,800 in 2011. According to the BfV:

"Salafists are seeking to impose a theocracy based on their interpretation of the Sharia and in which the liberal democratic order no longer applies. Political and jihadist Salafists share the same basic ideology. They differ primarily in the means by which they wish to achieve their objectives.... Nevertheless, it should be noted that political Salafism has an ambivalent relationship to violence... it does not always prohibit religiously-sanctioned violence."

A previous BfV report stated:

"The absolutist nature of Salafism contradicts significant parts of the German constitutional order. Specifically, Salafism rejects the democratic principles of separation of state and religion, popular sovereignty, religious and sexual self-determination, gender equality and the fundamental right to physical integrity."

The BfV also warned of the danger of civil unrest:

"The potential threat posed by Salafist violence remains dangerously high. Salafist violence could create an additional dynamic through interactions with extremist groups from other "hostile" ideological camps, as already occurred in individual cases in the past."

The BfV was referring to an alliance between hooligans from rival football clubs who temporarily set aside their mutual hatred for each other in order to unite against a common enemy: radical Salafists. At one point, the grouping, known as Hooligans versus Salafists (HoGeSa), had more than 40,000 followers on its Facebook page before it was shut down by Facebook censors.

According to some commentators, the rise of HoGeSa was fueled in part by a growing sense of frustration that the German government is not doing enough to curb the spread of Islam in the country. Others said the group was incited by the Salafists" increasingly provocative support for replacing Germany"s democratic order with Islamic law.

In Wuppertal, for example, seven self-appointed "Sharia Police" sparked public outrage when they distributed yellow leaflets which established a "Sharia-controlled zone" in the Elberfeld district of the city. The vigilantes urged both Muslim and non-Muslim passersby to attend mosques and to refrain from alcohol, cigarettes, drugs, gambling, music, pornography and prostitution.

In November 2016, however, the Wuppertal District Court ruled that the Islamists did not break German law and were simply exercising their right to free speech. The ruling, which effectively legitimized Sharia law in Germany, was one of a growing number of instances in which German courts are — wittingly or unwittingly — promoting the establishment of a parallel Islamic legal system in the country.

In Berlin, a hundred Islamists are now openly enforcing Sharia law on city streets, according to local police who are investigating a recent string of violent assaults in the German capital. The self-appointed morality police involve Salafists from Chechnya, a predominantly Sunni Muslim region in Russia. The vigilantes are using threats of violence to discourage Chechen migrants from integrating into German society; they are also promoting the establishment of a parallel Islamic legal system in Germany. German authorities appear unable to stop them.

Bild, the largest-circulation newspaper in Germany, recently warned that the country was "capitulating to Islamic law." In a special "Sharia Report" it stated:

"The 2013 coalition agreement between the Christian Democrats and the Social Democrats promised: "We want to strengthen the state"s legal monopoly. We will not tolerate illegal parallel justice." But nothing has been done."

In a commentary, Franz Solms-Laubach, Bild"s parliamentary correspondent, wrote:

"Even if we still refuse to believe it: Parts of Germany are ruled by Islamic law! Polygamy, child marriages, Sharia judges — for far too long the German rule of law has not been enforced. Many politicians dreamed of multiculturalism.... This is not a question of folklore or foreign customs and traditions. It is a question of law and order. If the rule of law fails to establish its authority and demand respect for itself, then it can immediately declare its bankruptcy."

Meanwhile, German authorities have been fighting an uphill battle against an extremely violent "rocker" gang, the "Osmanen Germania" — "Ottoman Germania" — which consists mostly of Turkish Germans and, like the "Germanys Muslims" gang, is modeled on the Hells Angels.

The "Ottoman Germania" group, which claims to be a boxing club concerned about the welfare of young people, was founded after Hells Angels decided to allow non-Turkish migrants to join. Police say "Ottoman Germania" is an effort by former Turkish German members of the Hells Angels to protect their market share of organized crime.

The "Ottoman Germania" group is one of the fastest-growing gangs in Germany. Within months of its founding in April 2015, the group had established dozens of chapters across the country. Today the group, which profits from prostitution, extortion and the trafficking of weapons and drugs, operates across Europe, despite repeated police raids.

German authorities believe the "Ottoman Germania" is close to the Turkish government, which uses the group to fight Turkey"s internal political struggles in Germany. Police say the gang also cooperates with Germany"s Salafists.

Washington's "Good Terrorists, Bad Terrorists" Policy In The Middle East

Authored by Nauman Sadiq vis OrientalReview.org,

Karl Marx famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. The only difference between the Afghan jihad back in the ‘80s that spawned Islamic jihadists like the Taliban and al Qaeda for the first time in history and the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, 2011-onward, is that the Afghan jihad was an overt jihad: back then, the Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, used to openly brag that the CIA provides all those AK-47s, RPGs and stingers to the Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” to combat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

A page of British The Independent newspaper, issued Dec 6, 1993

After the 9/11 tragedy, however, the Western political establishments and corporate media have become a lot more circumspect, therefore this time around, they have waged covert jihads against the Arab-nationalist Gaddafi regime in Libya and Assad regime in Syria, in which Islamic jihadists (aka terrorists) have been sold as “moderate rebels” with secular and nationalist ambitions to the Western audience.

Since the regime change objective in those hapless countries went against the mainstream narrative of ostensibly fighting a war against terrorism, therefore the Western political establishments and the corporate media are now trying to muddle the reality by offering color-coded schemes to identify myriads of militant and terrorist outfits that are operating in Syria: such as the red militants of the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front, which the Western powers want to eliminate; the yellow Islamic jihadists, like Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, with whom the Western powers can collaborate under desperate circumstances; and the green militants of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and a few other inconsequential outfits, which together comprise the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition.

If we were to draw parallels between the Soviet-Afghan jihad of the ‘80s and the Syrian civil war of today, the Western powers used the training camps located in the Af-Pak border regions to train and arm Afghan “Mujahideen” against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Similarly, the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan are being used to provide training and weapons to Sunni Arab militants to battle the Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime with the collaboration of Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies.

During the Afghan jihad, it is a known historical fact that the bulk of so-called “freedom fighters” was comprised of Pashtun Islamic jihadists, such as the factions of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf and scores of others, some of which later coalesced together to form the Taliban Movement.

Similarly, in Syria, the majority of so-called “moderate rebels” is comprised of Sunni Arab jihadists, such as Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State and myriads of other militant groups, including a small portion of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army (FSA).

Moreover, apart from Pashtun Islamic jihadists, various factions of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks constituted the relatively “moderate” segment of the Afghan rebellion, though those “moderate” warlords, like Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abul Rashid Dostum, were more ethnic and tribal in character than secular or nationalist, as such.

Similarly, the Kurds of the so-called “Syrian Democratic Forces” can be compared with the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan. The socialist PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria, however, were allied with the Baathist regime against the Sunni Arab jihadists for the first three years of the Syrian civil war, i.e. from August 2011 to August 2014.

At the behest of American stooge in Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, the Syrian Kurds have switched sides in the last couple of years after the United States policy reversal and declaration of war against one faction of the Syrian opposition, the Islamic State, when the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in June 2014, from where, the US troops had withdrawn only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

Regarding the Western powers’ modus operandi of waging proxy wars in the Middle East, since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of the master strategists at NATO to raise money from the oil-rich emirates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the victim country by using the intelligence agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya or Syria, the same playbook has been executed to the letter.

More to the point, raising funds for proxy wars from the Gulf Arab States allows the Western executives the freedom to evade congressional scrutiny; and the benefit of buying weapons from the unregulated arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe is that such weapons cannot be traced back to the Western capitals; and using jihadist proxies to achieve strategic objectives has the advantage of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” if the strategy backfires, which it often does. Remember that al-Qaeda and Taliban were the by-products of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, and the Islamic State and its global network of terrorists are the blowback of the proxy war in Syria.

On the subject of the supposed “powerlessness” of the US in the global affairs, the Western think tanks and the corporate media’s spin-doctors generally claim that Pakistan deceived the US in Afghanistan by not “doing more” to rein in the Taliban; Turkey hoodwinked the US in Syria by using the war against Islamic State as a pretext for cracking down on Kurds; Saudi Arabia and UAE betrayed the US in Yemen by mounting airstrikes against the Houthis and Saleh’s loyalists; and once again Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt went against the ostensible policy of the US in Libya by destabilizing the Tripoli-based government, even though the renegade general in eastern Libya, Khalifa Haftar, is an American stooge who had lived for two decades in the US right next to the CIA’s headquarter in Langley, Virginia.

If the US policymakers are so naïve then how come they still control the global political and economic order? This perennially whining attitude of the Western corporate media that such and such regional actors had betrayed them otherwise they were on the top of their game is actually a clever stratagem that has been deliberately designed by the spin-doctors of the Western mainstream media and foreign policy think tanks to cast the Western powers in a positive light and to vilify adversaries, even if the latter are their tactical allies in some of the regional conflicts.

Fighting wars through proxies allows the international power brokers the luxury of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” in their defense and at the same time they can shift all the blame for wrongdoing on the minor regional players. The Western powers’ culpability lies in the fact that because of them a system of international justice based on sound principles of morality and justice cannot be constructed in which the violators can be punished for their wrongdoing and the victims of injustice, tyranny and violence can be protected.

Leaving the funding, training and arming aspects of insurgencies aside, but especially pertaining to conferring international legitimacy to an armed insurgency, like the Afghan so-called “freedom struggle” of the Cold War, or the supposedly “moderate and democratic” Libyan and Syrian insurgencies of today, it is simply beyond the power of minor regional players and their nascent media, which has a geographically and linguistically limited audience, to cast such heavily armed and brutal insurrections in a positive light in order to internationally legitimize them; only the Western mainstream media that has a global audience and which serves as the mouthpiece of the Western political establishments has perfected this game of legitimizing the absurd and selling Satans as saviors.

Washington's "Good Terrorists, Bad Terrorists" Policy In Middle East

Submitted by Nauman Sadiq,

Karl Marx famously said that history repeats itself, first as tragedy, second as farce. The only difference between the Afghan jihad back in the ‘80s that spawned Islamic jihadists like the Taliban and al Qaeda for the first time in history and the Libyan and Syrian civil wars, 2011-onward, is that the Afghan jihad was an overt jihad: back then, the Western political establishments and their mouthpiece, the mainstream media, used to openly brag that the CIA provides all those AK-47s, RPGs and stingers to the Afghan so-called “freedom fighters” to combat the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

After the 9/11 tragedy, however, the Western political establishments and corporate media have become a lot more circumspect, therefore this time around, they have waged covert jihads against the Arab-nationalist Gaddafi regime in Libya and the anti-Zionist Assad regime in Syria, in which Islamic jihadists (aka terrorists) have been sold as “moderate rebels” with secular and nationalist ambitions to the Western audience.

Since the regime change objective in those hapless countries went against the mainstream narrative of ostensibly fighting a war against terrorism, therefore the Western political establishments and the corporate media are now trying to muddle the reality by offering color-coded schemes to identify myriads of militant and terrorist outfits that are operating in Syria: such as the red militants of the Islamic State and al-Nusra Front, which the Western powers want to eliminate; the yellow Islamic jihadists, like Jaysh al-Islam and Ahrar al-Sham, with whom the Western powers can collaborate under desperate circumstances; and the green militants of the Free Syria Army (FSA) and a few other inconsequential outfits, which together comprise the so-called “moderate” Syrian opposition.

If we were to draw parallels between the Soviet-Afghan jihad of the ‘80s and the Syrian civil war of today, the Western powers used the training camps located in the Af-Pak border regions to train and arm Afghan “Mujahideen” against the Soviet troops in Afghanistan.

Similarly, the training camps located in the border regions of Turkey and Jordan are being used to provide training and weapons to Sunni Arab militants to battle the Shi’a-dominated Syrian regime with the collaboration of Turkish, Jordanian and Saudi intelligence agencies.

During the Afghan jihad, it is a known historical fact that the bulk of so-called “freedom fighters” was comprised of Pashtun Islamic jihadists, such as the factions of Jalaluddin Haqqani, Gulbuddin Hekmatyar, Abdul Rab Rasul Sayyaf and scores of others, some of which later coalesced together to form the Taliban Movement.

Similarly, in Syria, the majority of so-called “moderate rebels” is comprised of Sunni Arab jihadists, such as Jaysh al-Islam, Ahrar al-Sham, al-Nusra Front, the Islamic State and myriads of other militant groups, including a small portion of defected Syrian soldiers who go by the name of Free Syria Army (FSA).

Moreover, apart from Pashtun Islamic jihadists, various factions of the Northern Alliance of Tajiks and Uzbeks constituted the relatively “moderate” segment of the Afghan rebellion, though those “moderate” warlords, like Ahmad Shah Massoud and Abul Rashid Dostum, were more ethnic and tribal in character than secular or nationalist, as such.

Similarly, the Kurds of the so-called “Syrian Democratic Forces” can be compared with the Northern Alliance of Afghanistan. The socialist PYD/YPG Kurds of Syria, however, were allied with the Baathist regime against the Sunni Arab jihadists for the first three years of the Syrian civil war, i.e. from August 2011 to August 2014.

At the behest of American stooge in Iraqi Kurdistan, Massoud Barzani, the Syrian Kurds have switched sides in the last couple of years after the United States policy reversal and declaration of war against one faction of the Syrian opposition, the Islamic State, when the latter overstepped its mandate in Syria and overran Mosul and Anbar in Iraq in June 2014, from where, the US troops had withdrawn only a couple of years ago in December 2011.

Regarding the Western powers’ modus operandi of waging proxy wars in the Middle East, since the times of the Soviet-Afghan jihad during the eighties, it has been the fail-safe game plan of the master strategists at NATO to raise money from the oil-rich emirates of Saudi Arabia, Qatar, UAE and Kuwait; then buy billions of dollars’ worth of weapons from the arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe; and then provide those weapons and guerilla warfare training to the disaffected population of the victim country by using the intelligence agencies of the latter’s regional adversaries. Whether it’s Afghanistan, Chechnya, Libya or Syria, the same playbook has been executed to the letter.

More to the point, raising funds for proxy wars from the Gulf Arab States allows the Western executives the freedom to evade congressional scrutiny; and the benefit of buying weapons from the unregulated arms’ markets of the Eastern Europe is that such weapons cannot be traced back to the Western capitals; and using jihadist proxies to achieve strategic objectives has the advantage of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” if the strategy backfires, which it often does. Remember that al-Qaeda and Taliban were the by-products of the Soviet-Afghan jihad, and the Islamic State and its global network of terrorists are the blowback of the proxy war in Syria.

On the subject of the supposed “powerlessness” of the US in the global affairs, the Western think tanks and the corporate media’s spin-doctors generally claim that Pakistan deceived the US in Afghanistan by not “doing more” to rein in the Taliban; Turkey hoodwinked the US in Syria by using the war against Islamic State as a pretext for cracking down on Kurds; Saudi Arabia and UAE betrayed the US in Yemen by mounting airstrikes against the Houthis and Saleh’s loyalists; and once again Saudi Arabia, UAE and Egypt went against the ostensible policy of the US in Libya by destabilizing the Tripoli-based government, even though the renegade general in eastern Libya, Khalifa Haftar, is an American stooge who had lived for two decades in the US right next to the CIA’s headquarter in Langley, Virginia.

If the US policymakers are so naïve then how come they still control the global political and economic order? This perennially whining attitude of the Western corporate media that such and such regional actors had betrayed them otherwise they were on the top of their game is actually a clever stratagem that has been deliberately designed by the spin-doctors of the Western mainstream media and foreign policy think tanks to cast the Western powers in a positive light and to vilify adversaries, even if the latter are their tactical allies in some of the regional conflicts.

Fighting wars through proxies allows the international power brokers the luxury of taking the plea of “plausible deniability” in their defense and at the same time they can shift all the blame for wrongdoing on the minor regional players. The Western powers’ culpability lies in the fact that because of them a system of international justice based on sound principles of morality and justice cannot be constructed in which the violators can be punished for their wrongdoing and the victims of injustice, tyranny and violence can be protected.

Leaving the funding, training and arming aspects of insurgencies aside, but especially pertaining to conferring international legitimacy to an armed insurgency, like the Afghan so-called “freedom struggle” of the Cold War, or the supposedly “moderate and democratic” Libyan and Syrian insurgencies of today, it is simply beyond the power of minor regional players and their nascent media, which has a geographically and linguistically limited audience, to cast such heavily armed and brutal insurrections in a positive light in order to internationally legitimize them; only the Western mainstream media that has a global audience and which serves as the mouthpiece of the Western political establishments has perfected this game of legitimizing the absurd and selling Satans as saviors.

We Know What Inspired The Manchester Attack, We Just Won't Admit It

Authored by Patrick Cockburn via The Strategic Culture Foundation,

In the wake of the massacre in Manchester, people rightly warn against blaming the entire Muslim community in Britain and the world. Certainly one of the aims of those who carry out such atrocities is to provoke the communal punishment of all Muslims, thereby alienating a portion of them who will then become open to recruitment by Isis and al-Qaeda clones.

This approach of not blaming Muslims in general but targeting “radicalisation” or simply “evil” may appear sensible and moderate, but in practice it makes the motivation of the killers in Manchester or the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015 appear vaguer and less identifiable than it really is. Such generalities have the unfortunate effect of preventing people pointing an accusing finger at the variant of Islam which certainly is responsible for preparing the soil for the beliefs and actions likely to have inspired the suicide bomber Salman Abedi.

The ultimate inspiration for such people is Wahhabism, the puritanical, fanatical and regressive type of Islam dominant in Saudi Arabia, whose ideology is close to that of al-Qaeda and Isis. This is an exclusive creed, intolerant of all who disagree with it such as secular liberals, members of other Muslim communities such as the Shia or women resisting their chattel-like status.

What has been termed Salafi jihadism, the core beliefs of Isis and al-Qaeda, developed out of Wahhabism, and has carried out its prejudices to what it sees as a logical and violent conclusion. Shia and Yazidis were not just heretics in the eyes of this movement, which was a sort of Islamic Khmer Rouge, but sub-humans who should be massacred or enslaved. Any woman who transgressed against repressive social mores should be savagely punished. Faith should be demonstrated by a public death of the believer, slaughtering the unbelievers, be they the 86 Shia children being evacuated by bus from their homes in Syria on 15 April or the butchery of young fans at a pop concert in Manchester on Monday night.

The real causes of “radicalisation” have long been known, but the government, the media and others seldom if ever refer to it because they do not want to offend the Saudis or be accused of anti-Islamic bias. It is much easier to say, piously but quite inaccurately, that Isis and al-Qaeda and their murderous foot soldiers “have nothing to do with Islam”. This has been the track record of US and UK governments since 9/11. They will look in any direction except Saudi Arabia when seeking the causes of terrorism. President Trump has been justly denounced and derided in the US for last Sunday accusing Iran and, in effect, the Shia community of responsibility for the wave of terrorism that has engulfed the region when it ultimately emanates from one small but immensely influential Sunni sect. One of the great cultural changes in the world over the last 50 years is the way in which Wahhabism, once an isolated splinter group, has become an increasingly dominant influence over mainstream Sunni Islam, thanks to Saudi financial support.

A further sign of the Salafi-jihadi impact is the choice of targets: the attacks on the Bataclan theatre in Paris in 2015, a gay night club in Florida in 2016 and the Manchester Arena this week have one thing in common. They were all frequented by young people enjoying entertainment and a lifestyle which made them an Isis or al-Qaeda target. But these are also events where the mixing of men and women or the very presence of gay people is denounced by puritan Wahhabis and Salafi jihadis alike. They both live in a cultural environment in which the demonisation of such people and activities is the norm, though their response may differ.

The culpability of Western governments for terrorist attacks on their own citizens is glaring but is seldom even referred to. Leaders want to have a political and commercial alliance with Saudi Arabia and the Gulf oil states. They have never held them to account for supporting a repressive and sectarian ideology which is likely to have inspired Salman Abedi. Details of his motivation may be lacking, but the target of his attack and the method of his death is classic al-Qaeda and Isis in its mode of operating.

The reason these two demonic organisations were able to survive and expand despite the billions – perhaps trillions – of dollars spent on “the war on terror” after 9/11 is that those responsible for stopping them deliberately missed the target and have gone on doing so. After 9/11, President Bush portrayed Iraq not Saudi Arabia as the enemy; in a re-run of history President Trump is ludicrously accusing Iran of being the source of most terrorism in the Middle East. This is the real 9/11 conspiracy, beloved of crackpots worldwide, but there is nothing secret about the deliberate blindness of British and American governments to the source of the beliefs that has inspired the massacres of which Manchester is only the latest – and certainly not the last – horrible example.

Israeli PM Netanyahu Slams CNN, NYT: "Ever Wonder What Fake News Is?"

Clearly upset with reporting by CNN and The New York Times, about a new political document from the Palestinian group Hamas, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu echoed President Trump in a social media posting on Sunday... “Ever wonder what fake news is?” Netanyahu asked...

As The Hill reports, Netanyahu rages...

“Last week, headlines in CNN, Al Jazeera and The Guardian said Hamas now accepts a Palestinian state along the 1967 lines. The New York Times headline called this ‘moderation.’”

“The intimation is that Hamas now accepts the state of Israel,” Netanyahu continued. “Great news, right? Well except for one small detail: This is a complete distortion of the truth.”

CNN’s headline on the new Hamas document reads: “Hamas says it accepts "67 borders, but doesn"t recognize Israel.”  The New York Times in a May 1 front-page headline wrote: “Hamas Tempers Extreme Stances In Bid For Power."

While the Hamas document states a willingness for a Palestinian state along the 1967 borders, the group continues to back terrorism, Netanyahu argued, and has no interest in peace with Israel.

“It"s bad enough Hamas lies to the world. We don"t also have to lie to ourselves,” Netanyahu said.

“Hamas murders women and children. It [has] launched thousands of missile attacks at our homes. It brainwashes Palestinian kids in suicide kindergarten camps."

“So, where does this hate-filled document belong?” he concludes with a question.

Netanyahu is then seen crumbling up the document and placing it into a garbage can.

U.S. Insurers Sue Saudis For $4.2 Billion Over 9/11

Authored by Jason Ditz via TheAntiMedia.org,

Last year’s Justice Against Sponsors of Terrorism Act (JASTA), a bill which allowed Americans to sue Saudi Arabia in US court over their involvement in 9/11, has yielded another major lawsuit yesterday, a $4.2 billion suit filed by over two dozen US insurers related to losses sustained because of the 2001 attack.

The lawsuit is targeting a pair of Saudi banks, and a number of Saudi companies with ties to the bin Laden family, accusing them of various activities in support of al-Qaeda in the years ahead of 9/11, and subsequently having “aided and abetted” the attack.

"But for the assistance provided by defendants," the lawsuit said, "al Qaeda could not have successfully planned, coordinated, and carried out the September 11th attacks, which were a foreseeable and intended result of their material support and sponsorship of al Qaeda."

The 10 defendants in the lawsuit include Al Rajhi Bank, aviation contractor Dallah Avco, the Mohamed Binladin Co, the Muslim World League, and other charities, but the biggest target is the Saudi National Commercial Bank, which is majority state-owned. The Saudi government heavily pressured the Obama Administration to block the JASTA last year, threatening to crash the US treasury market if it led to lawsuits, but overwhelming Congressional support still got it passed into law.

While there were more than a few lawsuits already filed in the past several weeks related to JASTA, this is by far the biggest, and most previous lawsuits are still in limbo as the court and lawyers try to combine them into various class action groups.

Historically, US sovereign immunity laws have prevented suits against the Saudi government related to overseas terrorism. With the release of the Saudi-related portions of the 9/11 Report last year, however, such suits were inevitable, and the federal government could no longer protect the Saudis from litigation.

U.S. Special Forces Deployed To 70% Of The World In 2016

U.S. Special Operations Command launched a raid in Yemen’s Baida Province on Jan 29, targeting Qassim al-Rimi, the leader of Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula. The first high-profile special forces operation of Trump’s presidency, the raid resulted in the deaths of at least 14 Al Qaeda fighters, 20 civilians and Navy SEAL William “Ryan” Owens. Three other Americans were reportedly wounded and an Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft was destroyed by U.S. forces after it was heavily damaged in a forced landing. Over the past few days, it has emerged that al-Rimi survived the raid and he has subsequently released an audio message taunting President Trump.

As The Burning Platform"s Jim Quinn notes, special forces operations like the one in Yemen are nothing new. America’s elite troops have found themselves on the frontlines constantly since 9/11, conducting operations everywhere from the dusty back alleys of North Africa to the snow-capped mountains of Afghanistan. Even though they have made headlines for high-profile operations like the prison break near Hawija in Iraq or the raid on Bin Laden’s Abbottabad compound in Afghanistan, the vast majority of special forces missions across the world involve training friendly soldiers to fight, mainly so Americans don’t have to.

You will find more statistics at Statista

Although US elite troops typically only appear in the media when an event of particular relevance (such as the capture and murder of Osama bin Laden in 2011), this does not mean that they are not active. As this infographic above shows, elaborated by Statista, these forces were present in 138 States last year or 70% of the world’s countries according to official Special Operations Command data published by TomDispatch. 55.29% of deployments were in the Middle East, a 35% decease since 2006. In Africa, deployments of elite U.S. forces skyrocketed 1,600 percent during the same timeframe.

In New Executive Order, Trump Plans To Send ISIS Detainees To Guantanamo

The Trump Administration is preparing an executive order that would direct the Pentagon to bring future Islamic State detainees to Guantánamo Bay prison, despite warnings from national security officials and legal scholars that doing so risks undermining what increasinly appears as an "illegal" war launched by Obama to combat the terrorist organization (which many have accused of being directly and indirectly created by Saudi Arabia and the US itself).

According to the NYT which obtained a draft of the order (see below), White House officials "have spelled out their thinking about a new detainee policy in an evolving series of drafts of an executive order being circulated among national security officials for comment.

While previous versions have shown that the draft has undergone many changes – including dropping language about reviving C.I.A. prisons – the plan to add Islamic State detainees to the Guantánamo population has remained constant.  The latest version of the draft, which circulated this week, would direct Defense Secretary Jim Mattis to use Guantánamo to detain suspected members of “Al Qaeda, the Taliban, and associated forces, including individuals and networks associated with the Islamic State.”

The White House has kept similar language in the draft order despite warnings from career government national security officials that carrying out its plan would give federal judges an opportunity to reject the executive branch’s theory that the war against the Islamic State is legal, even though Congress never explicitly authorized it. The issue could arise when reviewing an inevitable habeas corpus lawsuit filed by an ISIS detainee.

The Obama administration first argued in late summer 2014 that the Islamic State was part of the existing armed conflict that Congress authorized in 2001 against Al Qaeda and the Taliban. But while the Islamic State got its start as Al Qaeda’s affiliate in Iraq a decade ago, that theory is disputed because the two groups later split and went to war with each other. By pushing forward with the ISIS detention provision, legal experts challenge that Trump could undo the very basis of the unwritten US war against ISIS:

“It raises huge legal risks,” said Jack Goldsmith, a Harvard Law School professor and former senior Justice Department official in the Bush administration. “If a judge says the Sept. 11 authorization does not cover such a detention, it would not only make that detention unlawful, it would weaken the legal basis for the entire war against the Islamic State.”

Ryan Goodman, a New York University law professor who worked at the Pentagon during the Obama administration, also chimed in and said there were other reasons bringing an Islamic State detainee to Guantánamo for indefinite detention, as opposed to prosecuting him in civilian court, might raise problems: Foreign allies, he said, might refuse to turn over prisoners or assist in detention operations if that was the administration’s goal.

But even if that turns out not to be the case, he said, the legal risks of bringing a suspected member of the Islamic State, sometimes referred to as ISIL, are “very serious.”

“If I were in the administration, I would advise that bringing ISIL fighters to Guantánamo raises too many legal risks,” he said. “If a court finds the 2001 statute does not apply to ISIL because of the extraordinarily remote links between ISIL and the original Al Qaeda, then it would put into legal jeopardy the executive branch’s basis for lethal operations as well as detention operations.”

Ironically, if Goldsmith and Goodman are right, it would be yet another case of Trump getting blamed and punished for errors accumulated during the Obama administration. Here is a brief timeline why, from the NYT:

In the 2012 version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act, Congress bolstered the government’s power to imprison suspected members of Al Qaeda, the Taliban and associated forces by authorizing such detentions without reference to the Sept. 11 attacks. But while it has provided funds for military operations against the Islamic State, it has never explicitly authorized combat or detention operations against it.

In summer 2014, when the group swept out of Syria and began rapidly conquering swaths of Iraq, Mr. Obama launched a bombing campaign to curtail its advances. At the time, he put forth the theory that the group’s early ties to Al Qaeda were sufficient to bring it under the Sept. 11 war authorization without new action from Congress.

Nevertheless, in 2015, the Obama administration asked Congress to enact an authorization for use of military force against the Islamic State. Lawmakers disagreed about whether it should place limits on the use of ground forces or impose an expiration date, and Congress never acted on the proposal. Congress has continued to give no sign that it has the will or the consensus to explicitly authorize war on the Islamic State.

Last year, an army captain sued Mr. Obama, arguing that the war was illegal because Congress had not authorized it. A Federal District Court judge dismissed the lawsuit without ruling on the legal merits, saying the plaintiff lacked standing to bring the case.

Ultimately, the risk is that any Islamic State detainee at Guantánamo would have legal standing to get a court to rule on the question of whether the group is legitimately part of the war against Al Qaeda, thus collapsing Obama"s nearly three year old war against ISIS which was never legally sanctioned.

The full order as released by the NYT is below:

The Bigger Picture of Trump’s Muslim Ban

Whether you love or hate Trump’s “Muslim ban” (it’s actually a temporary 3-month ban, except for Syrians), there’s a bigger picture …

CNN notes:

The seven Muslim-majority countries targeted in President Trump’s executive order on immigration were initially identified as “countries of concern” under the Obama administration.

White House Press Secretary Sean Spicer on Sunday pointed to the Obama administration’s actions as the basis for their selection of the seven countries. Trump’s order bars citizens from Iraq, Syria, Iran, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Yemen from entering the U.S. for the next 90 days.

“There were further travel restrictions already in place from those seven countries,” Spicer said on ABC’s “This Week.”

6 out of the 7 countries on the list – Iran, Iraq, Libya, Somalia, Sudan and Syria – were targeted for regime change by the U.S. 25 years ago. Specifically,   (Indeed, the U.S. previously carried out coups to implement regime change in these countries numerous times in the past.)

The 7th country – Lebanon – dodged a bullet, and Yemen replaced it.

But the world’s leading sponsors of terror are not on the list …

CNN notes:

In the hours after its release, many questioned why the list omitted other countries with direct links to those terror attacks. The 9/11 hijackers were from Saudi Arabia, Egypt, the United Arab Emirates and Lebanon.

In fact, British intelligence officer, British ambassador to Uzbekistan, and chancellor of the University of Dundee Craig Murray points out (based on numbers from the Cato Institute) that the dangerous countries are not on the list … while those who haven’t attacked Americans in the United States are on the list:

Saudi Arabia – which is not on the list – is the world’s largest sponsor of radical Islamic terrorists. The Saudis have backed ISIS and many other brutal terrorist groups. And the most pro-ISIS tweets allegedly come from Saudi Arabia.

Saudi Arabia is the hotbed of the most radical Muslim terrorists in the world: the Salafis (both ISIS and Al Qaeda are Salafis). And top American terrorism experts say that U.S. support for brutal and tyrannical countries in the Middle east – like Saudi Arabia – is one of the top motivators for Arab terrorists.

So whether you love or hate the idea of banning radical Islamic jihadis from the U.S. , the fact is that Trump – using a list compiled by Obama (in turn largely compiled by Neoconservatives pushing regime change 25 years ago) – is banning people from the wrong countries.

Postscript: Admittedly, there are ISIS jihadis in Syria, Libya and Iraq. But they are only there because the U.S. and our allies created the conditions that allowed them to form and then metastasize. Neither ISIS nor Al Qaeda were in those countries before the Iraq and Libyan wars and the U.S. and its allies started supporting Syrian “rebels“.

In all 3 countries, the governments hate the jihadis because the jihadis are fighting – and trying to bring down – the governments.  This is the opposite of governments like Saudi Arabia which actively back terrorists.

As for Iran, the CIA admits that the U.S. overthrew the moderate, suit-and-tie-wearing, Democratically-elected prime minister of Iran in 1953. He was overthrown because he had nationalized Iran’s oil, which had previously been controlled by BP and other Western oil companies. As part of that action, the CIA admits that it hired Iranians to pose as Communists and stage bombings in Iran in order to turn the country against its prime minister. If the U.S. hadn’t overthrown the moderate Iranian government, the fundamentalist Mullahs would have never taken over.

And we"re busy creating a lot of new terrorists in Yemen.