Paul Craig Roberts: A Government of Morons

April 15, 2017

(Paul Craig Roberts, Institute for Political Economy) - It has become embarrassing to be an American. Our country has had four war criminal presidents in succession. Clinton twice launched military attacks on Serbia, ordering NATO to bomb the former Yugoslavia twice, both in 1995 and in 1999, so that gives Bill two war crimes. George W. Bush invaded Afghanistan and Iraq and attacked provinces of Pakistan and Yemen from the air. That comes to four war crimes for Bush. Obama used NATO to destroy Libya and sent mercenaries to destroy Syria, thereby commiting two war crimes. Trump attacked Syria with US forces, thereby becoming a war criminal early in his regime.

To the extent that the UN participated in these war crimes along with Washington's European, Canadian and Australian vassals, all are guilty of war crimes. Perhaps the UN itself should be arraigned before the War Crimes Tribunal along with the EU, US, Australia and Canada.

Quite a record. Western Civilization, if civilization it is, is the greatest committer of war crimes in human history.

And there are other crimes—Somalia, and Obama's coups against Honduras and Ukraine and Washington's ongoing attempts to overthrow the governments of Venezuela, Ecuador, and Bolivia. Washington wants to overthrow Ecuador in order to grab and torture Julian Assange, the world's leading democrat.

These war crimes committed by four US presidents caused millions of civilian deaths and injuries and dispossessed and dislocated millions of peoples, who have now arrived as refugees in Europe, UK, US, Canada, and Australia, bringing their problems with them, some of which become problerms for Europeans, such as gang rapes.

What is the reason for all the death and destruction and the flooding of the West with refugees from the West's naked violence? We don't know. We are told lies: Saddam Hussein's "weapons of mass destruction," which the US government knew for an absolute fact did not exist. "Assad's use of chemical weapons," an obvious, blatant lie. "Iranian nukes," another blatant lie. The lies about Gaddafi in Libya are so absurd that it is pointless to repeat them.

What were the lies used to justify bombing tribesmen in Pakistan, to bomb a new government in Yemen? No American knows or cares. Why the US violence against Somalia? Again, no Americans knows or cares.

Or the morons saw a movie.

Violence for its own sake. That is what America has become.

Indeed, violence is what America is. There is nothing else there. Violence is the heart of America.

Consider not only the bombings and destruction of countries, but also the endless gratuitous, outrageous police violence against US citizens. If anyone should be disarmed, it is the US police. The police commit more "gun violence" than anyone else, and unlike drug gangs fighting one another for territory, police violence has no other reason than the love of committing violence against other humans. The American police even shoot down 12-year old American kids prior to asking any question, especially if they are black.

Violence is America. America is violence. The moronic liberals blame it on gun owners, but it is always the government that is the source of violence. That is the reason our Founding Fathers gave us the Second Amendment. It is not gun owners who have destroyed in whole or part eight countries. It is the armed-at-taxpayer-expense US government that commits the violence.

America's lust for violence is now bringing the Washington morons up against people who can commit violence back: the Russians and Chinese, Iran and North Korea.

Former DHS Employee Says Staff Was Ordered to Destroy Records of Possible Jihadists and Were Prohibited from Entering Pertinent Information into the Federal Database

"True revolutionaries do not flaunt their radicalism, Alinsky taught. They cut their hair, put on suits and infiltrate the system from within. Alinsky viewed revolution as a slow, patient process. The trick was to penetrate existing institutions such as churches, unions and political parties.... Many leftists view Hillary as a sell-out because she claims to hold moderate views on some issues. However, Hillary is simply following Saul Alinsky’s counsel to do and say whatever it takes to gain power. Obama is also an Alinskyite.... Obama spent years teaching workshops on the Alinsky method. In 1985 he began a four-year stint as a community organizer in Chicago, working for an Alinskyite group called the Developing Communities Project.... Camouflage is key to Alinsky-style organizing. While trying to build coalitions of black churches in Chicago, Obama caught flak for not attending church himself. He became an instant churchgoer." [Richard Poe, November 27, 2007]

DHS ordered me to scrub records of Muslims with terror ties

This makes perfect sense.
Allow terrorists in. They kill someone or blow something up.
Then the government cracks down on personal liberties and takes more control over our lives.
Create problem. Provide solution.

February 5, 2016

Philip Haney, The Hill - Amid the chaos of the 2009 holiday travel season, jihadists planned to slaughter 290 innocent travelers on a Christmas Day flight from the Netherlands to Detroit, Michigan. Twenty-three-year old Nigerian Muslim Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab intended to detonate Northwest Airlines Flight 253, but the explosives in his underwear malfunctioned and brave passengers subdued him until he could be arrested. The graphic and traumatic defeat they planned for the United States failed, that time.

Following the attempted attack, President Obama threw the intelligence community under the bus for its failure to “connect the dots.” He said, “this was not a failure to collect intelligence, it was a failure to integrate and understand the intelligence that we already had.”

Most Americans were unaware of the enormous damage to morale at the Department of Homeland Security, where I worked, his condemnation caused. His words infuriated many of us because we knew his administration had been engaged in a bureaucratic effort to destroy the raw material—the actual intelligence—we had collected for years, and erase those dots. The dots constitute the intelligence needed to keep Americans safe, and the Obama administration was ordering they be wiped away.

After leaving my 15-year career at DHS, I can no longer be silent about the dangerous state of America’s counter-terror strategy, our leaders’ willingness to compromise the security of citizens for the ideological rigidity of political correctness—and, consequently, our vulnerability to devastating, mass-casualty attack.

Just before that Christmas Day attack, in early November 2009, I was ordered by my superiors at the Department of Homeland Security to delete or modify several hundred records of individuals tied to designated Islamist terror groups like Hamas from the important federal database, the Treasury Enforcement Communications System (TECS). These types of records are the basis for any ability to “connect dots.”

Every day, DHS Customs and Border Protection officers watch entering and exiting many individuals associated with known terrorist affiliations, then look for patterns. Enforcing a political scrubbing of records of Muslims greatly affected our ability to do that. Even worse, going forward, my colleagues and I were prohibited from entering pertinent information into the database.

A few weeks later, in my office at the Port of Atlanta, the television hummed with the inevitable Congressional hearings that follow any terrorist attack. While members of Congress grilled Obama administration officials, demanding why their subordinates were still failing to understand the intelligence they had gathered, I was being forced to delete and scrub the records. And I was well aware that, as a result, it was going to be vastly more difficult to “connect the dots” in the future—especially before an attack occurs.

War Profiteers Who Helped Create ISIS Will Be Given $7.5 Billion More of Taxpayer Money to Help Fight It

War Profiteers: Halliburton/KBR, Raytheon, General Electric, IBM, McDonnell-Douglas, Xe/Blackwater, Caci, Titan/L3, Bell/Boeing, Lockheed Martin, Northrop Grumman, General Dynamics, United Technologies, Science Applications International Corporation, CSC/DynCorp, Exxon/Mobil, Unocal, Chevron/Texaco, Bechtel, The Carlyle Group, PNAC, Citigroup, Goldman/Sachs, Yum! Brands, Shell Oil, SOSi, Occidental Petroleum, British Petroleum, United Defense Industries, Military Professionals Resources Incorporated, etc.

Meet the 0.01 Percent: War Profiteers

Pentagon to Request $7.5 Billion, a 50% Hike, in Fight Against ISIS

February 2, 2016

ABC News - The Pentagon will request $7.5 billion in next year’s budget to cover the costs of its accelerating campaign against ISIS, Secretary of Defense Ash Carter said today.

Speaking before the Economic Club of Washington, D.C., Carter revealed the 50 percent increase for ISIS-related funds over its fiscal year 2016 budget.

“This will be critical as our updated coalition military campaign plan kicks in. For example, we’ve recently been hitting ISIL with so many GPS-guided smart bombs and laser-guided rockets that we’re starting to run low on the ones that we use against terrorists the most," Carter said.

ISIS is also known as ISIL or the Islamic State. 

"So we’re investing $1.8 billion in FY 2017 to buy over 45,000 more of them.” 

The budget request also will include a quadrupling of the funds to support NATO’s effort to counter Russian aggression in eastern Europe, raising the current amount of $789 million to $3.4 billion. This increase will allow for the rotation of more U.S. units in Europe, additional training, and the pre-positioning of gear.

“All of this together by the end of 2017 will let us rapidly form a highly-capable combined arms ground force that can respond theater-wide if necessary,” Carter said.

Fiscal year 2017 begins on Oct. 1, 2016.

Carter called Russia, along with China, “our most stressing competitors,” which “reflect a return to a great power competition.”

With Russia’s seizing of Crimea from the Ukraine and China’s claims on disputed islands in the South China Sea, Carter said “we cannot blind ourselves to the actions they appear to choose to pursue.”

Carter also outlined a series of innovations by the Strategic Capabilities Office: Placing micro-cameras and sensors one can find on smartphones on small diameter bombs; swarming micro-drones that can be launched from the back of a jet flying near the speed of sound; and self-driving boats.

In all, the Defense Department budget request will be nearly $583 billion and will shift in focus away from one potential enemy to multiple threats.

“We don’t have the luxury of just one opponent, or the choice between current fights and future fights -- we have to do both. And that’s what our budget is designed to do," Carter said.

The 10 companies profiting the most from war:

Armed Turkish Jets Infiltrate Greek Airspace, Adding to the More Than 1,300 Airspace Violations Last Year Around the Greek Islands in the Aegean Sea

Armed Turkish Jets Infiltrate Greek Territory As NATO Members Continue Old Feud

January 8, 2016

IBT - Greece accused Turkey of infiltrating its airspace late Thursday after four jets flew over disputed islands in the northeastern part of the Aegean Sea, according to the Greek Ministry of Defense, which also said that two of the aircraft were armed. The alleged flyover of the islands adds to the centuries-old feud between the two neighboring NATO nations in the Middle East.

“Ankara’s provocative actions are meant to tell the world that Turkey does not recognize the existing air and sea borders in the Eastern Mediterranean,” said Greece’s former deputy military chief of staff Frangoulis Frangos, according to a report Friday by Russian news outlet Sputnik.

The infiltration is the first of 2016 and adds to the more than 1,300 airspace violations that happened last year over a 10-mile airspace zone around the Greek islands in the Aegean Sea that Turkey refuses to recognize. More than 30 of those were directly inside the country's sovereign and non-disputed territory. In all, airspace violations from 2014 had doubled to more than 2,400 in 2015, according to the Sputnik report.

Turkish Military Expenditure Over Time | FindTheData

In November a Russian jet was shot down by a Turkish air force F-16 after it allegedly strayed into Turkey from Syria, adding to diplomatic strain between NATO and Russia over conflict in Syria and Ukraine.

U.S. Invasion of Iraq in 2003 Upended the Balance of Power in the Mideast; the Single Greatest Threat to America in the Middle East Comes from Radical Sunni Jihadists

Fareed Zakaria: U.S. Should Stay Out Of Islam's Civil War

January 7, 2016

Fareed Zakaria, Investor's Business Daily - Over the last two decades, the United States has approached the Middle East though its own conceptual frameworks — dictatorships vs. democracy, secularism versus religion, order versus chaos. But the most significant trend shaping the region today is something different — Sunnis vs. Shiites.

That sectarian struggle now infects almost every aspect of the region's politics. It has confounded U.S. foreign policy in the past and will continue to limit the ability of America, or any outside power, to stabilize the region.

In his prescient book, "The Shia Revival," Vali Nasr argues that the American invasion of Iraq in 2003 was the tipping point. The U.S. saw itself bringing democracy to Iraq, but people in the region saw something different — the upending of the balance of power.

Sunnis, who make up 85% of Muslims, had long dominated the Arab world, even in Shiite-majority countries like Iraq and Bahrain. But that changed. Iraq, a major Arab state, would now be ruled by Shiites. This rattled other Arab regimes, and their anxieties have only grown since then.

Though there always was tension, Sunnis and Shiites lived in peace, mostly, until recently. In the 1960s and '70s, the only Shiite power, Iran, was ruled by the shah, whose regime was neither religious nor sectarian.

In fact, when the shah was overthrown, the country that first gave him safe harbor was Egypt, the region's largest Sunni power, something unimaginable in today's sectarian atmosphere.

The pivotal shift took place in 1979. The Islamic Revolution in Iran brought to power an aggressively religious ruling class, determined to export its ideas and support Shiites in the region.

That same year, in Saudi Arabia, radicals took over the Grand Mosque in Mecca, proclaiming opposition to the royal family and its lax ways. This scared the Saudis, pushing the regime substantially to the religious right. And Saudi Arabia's governing ideology of Wahhabi Islam was always anti-Shiite. Around the time of its founding, Saudi Arabia demolished Shiite mosques and shrines and spread its view that Shiites are heretics.

As Iran has expanded its influence in Lebanon, Iraq and Syria, Saudi Arabia has responded by adopting an even more sectarian edge to its policies.

A decade ago, Saudi officials spoke of the need to include and empower the country's Shiite minority. Today Saudi Shiites are viewed with suspicion, seen by some as agents of Iran.

In Yemen, a civil war has become a sectarian one. In a report for the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, Farea Al-Muslimi points out that now the two sides in Yemen refer to each other as "Persians" and "Daeshites" (an Arabic term).

Al-Muslimi writes that "sectarian discourse has become more heated, reorganizing Yemeni society along sectarian lines and rearranging people's relationships to one another on a non-nationalist basis."

Saudi Arabia has real strategic concerns about Iran's influence, especially in Iraq. As Ali al Shihabi, a Saudi banker-turned-writer said to me,

"Southern Iraq is full of Iranian-backed militias. That's just a two-hour drive from Saudi Arabia's oil fields. The kingdom has to be worried."

But the policy of sectarian warfare may be about more than simply geopolitics. Saudi Arabia is facing a series of challenges, from the Islamic State to domestic extremists. The country's large and active social media is dominated by radical Islamists. And as oil prices plunge, government revenues have collapsed, and generous subsidies to people will be hard to sustain. The regime needs greater legitimacy.

Add up last weekend's execution of a prominent Shiite cleric, the break with Iran, the war in Yemen and Saudi policy toward Syria, and you see a more assertive, aggressive and sectarian foreign policy than Saudi Arabia has ever pursued.

The strategy is not without risks, external and internal. About 10% to 15% of Saudi Arabia is Shiite, and they live in the Eastern province, atop the kingdom's oil fields. Neighboring Bahrain and Yemen are now filled with resentful Shiites, who see Saudi Arabia as repressing them. And Iran will surely react to Saudi actions over time.

In general, the U.S. should support Saudi Arabia in resisting Iran's encroachments in the region, but it should not take sides in the broader sectarian struggle. This is someone else's civil war. After all, Washington's principal ally in the fight against the Islamic State is the Shiite dominated-government in Baghdad.

And besides, the single greatest threat to America in the Middle East comes from radical Sunni jihadists — many of whom have drawn inspiration, funding and doctrine from Saudi Arabia. There are very few good guys in this story.

CIA Knowingly Armed Militant Islamists in Syria

Top CIA strategist Graham Fuller is the “Godfather of Al Qaeda.” Fuller was also the key CIA figure in convincing the Reagan Administration to tip the balance in the eight-year-long Iran-Iraq war by using Israel to channel weapons to Iran in what became the Iran-Contra Affair. As well, in 1999, around the time his daughter Samantha and “Uncle” Ruslan Tsarni (aka Tsarnaev, uncle to the accused Boston Marathon bombers) lived at his home near Washington, DC., Fuller, former Deputy Director of the CIA’s National Council on Intelligence, then a senior figure at the Pentagon and CIA-linked neo-conservative RAND corporation, advocated using Muslim forces to further US interests in Central Asia. He stated:

“The policy of guiding the evolution of Islam and of helping them against our adversaries worked marvelously well in Afghanistan against [the Russians]. The same doctrines can still be used to destabilize what remains of Russian power, and especially to counter the Chinese influence in Central Asia.”

Russia’s main pipeline route out of the Caspian Sea basin transits through Chechnya and Dagestan. The 1994-1996 Chechen war, instigated by the main rebel movements against Moscow, served to undermine secular state institutions. The adoption of Islamic law in the largely secular Muslim societies of the former Soviet Union served US strategic interests in the region.

This is precisely what happened in Chechnya with hundreds of CIA-trained Jihadists and Al Qaeda fighters sent into Chechnya, Dagestan and other parts of the former Soviet Union, precisely where Uncle Ruslan and his two Tsarnaev nephews came to the USA from. Coincidence?  [Source]

Seymour Hersh report on Syria: White House knew US was arming Islamic State

December 27, 2015

UPI - Pulitzer-prize-winning journalist Seymour Hersh reports that the administration of President Barack Obama, in particular the CIA, has knowingly armed militant Islamists in Syria, including the Islamic State.

"Barack Obama's repeated insistence that Bashar al-Assad must leave office -- and that there are 'moderate' rebel groups in Syria capable of defeating him -- has in recent years provoked quiet dissent, and even overt opposition, among some of the most senior officers on the Pentagon's Joint Staff," Hersh writes in the London Review of Books.

"Their criticism has focused on what they see as the administration's fixation on Assad's primary ally, Vladimir Putin. In their view, Obama is captive to Cold War thinking about Russia and China, and hasn't adjusted his stance on Syria to the fact both countries share Washington's anxiety about the spread of terrorism in and beyond Syria; like Washington, they believe that Islamic State must be stopped."

Hersh writes that a highly classified 2013 Defense Intelligence Agency/Joint Chiefs of Staff report on Syria forecast that the fall of the Assad regime would lead to "chaos" and possibly to Islamist extremists taking over Syria.

Hersh reports that Lieutenant General Michael Flynn, director of the DIA between 2012 and 2014, told him that his agency sent a "constant stream" of warnings to the "civilian leadership" about the dire consequences of ousting Syrian President Bashar al-Assad.

The DIA's reporting "got enormous pushback" from the Obama administration, Hersh quotes Flynn as saying.

"I felt that they did not want to hear the truth."

The report, published in the Jan. 7, 2016 edition of the London Review of Books, relies heavily on an anonymous former senior adviser to the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Hersh writes that the adviser told him the DIA/Joint Chiefs report took a "dim view" of the Obama administration's insistence on continuing to finance and arm the so-called moderate rebel groups and found that the covert U.S. program to arm and support those "moderate" rebels fighting Assad had been co-opted by Turkey, which then morphed the program into an "across-the-board technical, arms and logistical program for all of the opposition, including Jabhat al-Nusra and Islamic State."

"The assessment was bleak: there was no viable 'moderate' opposition to Assad, and the U.S. was arming extremists," Hersh wrote.

In October, the Pentagon announced that it was discontinuing its program to train and equip moderate rebels in Syria, saying the program cost $500 million and only succeeded in training a "handful" of recruits.

In November, however, the CIA increased its shipments of arms to rebels in Syria, joining with U.S. allies in challenging Russia and Iran's involvement in Syria in support of the Assad regime.

ISIS Wants the United States and Its Allies to be Dragged into a Ground War in Syria; George W. Bush Bashes Obama for Not Sending Ground Forces to Syria

ISIS leaders are trying feverishly to draw the U.S. and the Western powers (“the forces of Rome”) into a bloody ground war in Syria. Why? In order to fulfill Islamic prophecies about an apocalyptic End Times battle in an obscure Syrian town called Dabiq and establish a global Islamic kingdom or caliphate.

ISIS did not just emerge out of nowhere, but has been festering for over a decade, taking root in the chaos that Iraq found itself in after the U.S. invasion in 2003. So why is it working for ISIS this time, starting around 2010-2011? Despite facing multiple challenges and disappointments, ISIS was able to use the continued lack of a cohesive state in Iraq to survive. The breakdown of central authority left a power vacuum filled by a variety of self-appointed Sunni militia groups, but these proved to be little more than armed thugs imposing protection taxes but providing no protection (nor trash collection, water and power supply, medical care or food). Next to them, ISIS was seen as a relief.

The second big break ISIS got was the civil war in Syria, a war that left the (largely Sunni) Syrian hinterland ungoverned. The disparate, disorganized and fractious rebel groups in that region were unable or unwilling to fight sustained battles against the central government forces under Bashar Al-Assad, which made it excruciatingly difficult for the West in general and the U.S. in particular to find reliable recipients of U.S. military aid. The only group that really pushed the battle forward was the Nusra Front, and they were allies of Al Qaeda. For his part, Al-Assad was (and is) only too happy to let ISIS do his Sunni-on-Sunni dirty work. Truly a foreign policy problem from hell from the U.S. standpoint.

The third big break ISIS got was the Arab Spring, a movement of popular revolutions that unhinged government after government but which led not to a birth of a new Arab freedom but chaos and further economic dislocation. Disaffected youth (and not just youth) hear a resonance in these End Time prophesies as their world has turned upside down. Utopianism has a strong appeal to the marginalized and disaffected, whether it’s the weird cult of a Jim Jones or a restoration of a more pure and primitive society as preached by Pol Pot. When the Utopians are heavily armed, the myth plays out exactly one way—the dubious peace of mass slaughter and unburied death. [Robert J. Hard]

U.S. Seeks to Avoid Ground War Welcomed by Islamic State

December 7, 2015

New York Times - As the debate on how best to contain the Islamic State continues to rage in Western capitals, the militants themselves have made one point patently clear: They want the United States and its allies to be dragged into a ground war.

In fact, when the United States first invaded Iraq, one of the most enthusiastic proponents of the move was the man who founded the terrorist cell that would one day become the Islamic State, Abu Musab al-Zarqawi. He excitedly called the Americans’ 2003 intervention “the Blessed Invasion.”

His reaction — ignored by some, and dismissed as rhetoric by others — points to one of the core beliefs motivating the terrorist group now holding large stretches of Iraq and Syria: The group bases its ideology on prophetic texts stating that Islam will be victorious after an apocalyptic battle to be set off once Western armies come to the region.

ISIS Sees Turkey as Its Ally; Draft Deal is Reached to Normalize Ties Between Israel and Turkey

Fethullah Gulen has been called the “most dangerous Islamist” in the world. He has amassed a fortune—thanks, in part, to the CIA—of $25 billion. The Turkish government remains controlled by Gulen, and Gulen has wielded political allegiances in Washington that have resulted in the placement of Turkish Muslims in the CIA, NSA, FBI, and other national security organizations. He has created well-heeled lobbies to promote the cause of Islam and to develop Islamic candidates for political office. He has formed close friendships with Bill and Hillary Clinton, former Secretaries of State James Baker and Madeleine Albright, and George W. Bush. Gulen has also established thousands of schools throughout the world, where students are indoctrinated in the tenets of political Islam. More than 100 of these schools, funded by American taxpayers, are located in the United States. He lives in his fortress in the Poconos of Pennsylvania. - Paul L. Williams, Ph.D., The Last Crusade, Mounting Crisis Between Turkey and Israel Created in Pennsylvania, June 1, 2010

1857 Mt. Eaton Road, Saylorsburg, PA (Gulen's Headquarters)

In November 2014, Newsweek interviewed a former ISIS member going by the pseudonym Sherko Omer. Sherko told Newsweek of how he left his native Iraq hoping to join the fight against Assad in Syria, but soon found himself caught up in a horrifying sectarian war, unable to escape: "My parents are practicing ­Muslims and prior to leaving for Syria I regularly went to the mosque for Friday prayers. I never joined a political party or organisation but I had friends who were members of Kurdistan Islamic Group (KIG) – and it was KIG who gave us the contacts in Turkey to go to Syria. When the three of us went to ­Turkey in October 2013 most of those who crossed into Syria ended up at ISIS border camps. This is what happened to us. Others were jihadists who knew what was going on and believed that if they died fighting for Allah they would go to heaven; and there were some who had come to join organisations such as the al-Qaida branch in Syria, the Jabhat Al-Nusra. While with ISIS, I noticed that the field captains and commanders spoke fluent Turkish. I rarely heard them speak in Arabic. ISIS commanders in Raqqa openly talked about the best foreign jihadists crossing into Syria from Turkey. Once, I heard that some ISIS foreign jihadists had been stopped by the Turkish border guards and police, but such were the ISIS connections that they were soon freed and safely on their way to Syria."

In September 2014, Rozh Ahmad of YourMiddleEast.com was the first to interview Sherko Omer. Sherko told Ahmad: "In October 2013 we got contacts from several people close to the Kurdistan Islamic Group (Komal) in my hometown, Halabja [Iraq]. We were told that the contacts were members of the Free Syria Army (FSA). We met the contacts in Turkey and they took us to a hotel for few days. Afterward, they took us to a training camp on the Turkey-Syria border and we found ourselves at an ISIS (or IS) camp instead of FSA. They had no beards, dressed in modern clothes and even took us to a hotel in the Turkish city of Kilis. We therefore assumed that they were FSA not IS, as did many others who came to Turkey to join the Syrian opposition but joined us at the IS camp... My commander said Kurdish YPG was an infidel secularist army and impure, arguing that each jihadist has the duty to first purify his own people and if we were all pure then infidels would not exit. The commander and others too gave me examples of Palestine and Israel as well as Kosovo and Serbs. They told me jihadists should first fight impure Muslims of Palestine and Kosovo to purify them and this way Israelis and Serbs would not exist. This was argued against my Kurdish people too. I joined a new battalion; we went back to Turkey and crossed the Turkish border to enter Serekaniye. [The Turkish soldiers at the Ceylanpinar Turkish border post] just turned a blind eye. We were initially told by the IS field commander to fear nothing because there was cooperation with the Turks at the border. The watchtower light caught us and our commander said everybody should stop but do not look at the light. He talked on the radio, then the watchtower light began to move after 8-10 minutes and that was the signal saying we could safely cross the border."

Reconciliation pact struck with Turkey: Israeli official

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdogan has signaled a possible warming of relations with Israel, saying that the entire region would benefit from the normalization of ties. Last year, Erdogan spoke out strongly against Israel's operations in Gaza, accusing it of committing genocide and "barbarism surpassing Hitler."

 December 17, 2015

AFP/AP - Israel and Turkey have reached "understandings" to normalise ties, at a low since the Israel naval raid on a Turkish flotilla headed for the Gaza Strip, an Israeli official said Thursday.

In 2010, Israeli commandos stormed the Turkish-flagged Mavi Marmara, the largest ship in an aid flotilla for the besieged Gaza Strip. One Turkish-American and seven Turkish citizens died in the raid and one more, who was in a coma, died in 2014. . 
 
In the aftermath of the raid, Turkey became one of the strongest critics of Israeli actions in Gaza.
 

Russia Conducts Nuclear Strike Drills from Its Kaliningrad Exclave, Prompting Concern That Moscow is Preparing for War with the U.S. and Its NATO Allies

Russia Could Block Access to Baltic Sea, US General Says

Moscow’s recent wargames in its Kaliningrad exclave have included mock nuclear strikes, the top U.S. Army general in Europe said.

December 9, 2015

Defense One - Russia has moved ballistic missiles to and conducted nuclear strike drills from its Kaliningrad exclave, prompting Pentagon fears that Moscow could block access to the Baltic Sea.

There is a “significant amount of capability” in Kaliningrad, including anti-ship weapons, air defenses, and electronic warfare equipment, Lt. Gen. Ben Hodges, commander of U.S. Army Europe, said Wednesday.

“They could make it very difficult for any of us to get up into the Baltic Sea if we needed to in a contingency,” Hodges said in a briefing at the Pentagon.

Russia has conducted what NATO commanders call “snap exercises”: large-scale drills that are not announced and use sophisticated arms. When NATO holds drills of similar size, Russian observers are invited and typically attend. But NATO officials are not invited to Russian’s snap exercises held in Kaliningrad and nearby Belarus.

“We find out about them when they’re happening,” Hodges said.

For exercises in Kaliningrad, Moscow has deployed the mobile, short-range Iskander ballistic missile, Hodges said.

“We have seen them do exercises where … there’s a nuclear strike,” Hodges said. “They don’t [say] gray land, and silver land, or red land, or stuff like that. They say ‘NATO is the adversary’ when they do their exercises. I mean, they’re pretty blunt about that.”

Hodges said Russia has not conducted a full-scale drill to specifically block access to the Baltic Sea.

“I haven’t seen one exercise that looked like a complete rehearsal for that,” he said, but “they’ve done lots of the components that would be required to do those various things in terms of air, maritime, [and] land forces.”

Earlier this year, Russia warned Denmark that Danish ships could become nuclear targets if its government took part in a NATO missile defense project. Hodges called those threats an “irresponsible use of the ‘nuclear’ word.”

“You can understand why our allies on the eastern flank of NATO, particularly in the Baltic region are nervous, are uneasy,” he said.

Tucked between Poland and Lithuania, Kaliningrad is a strategic outpost for the Russian navy. The Russian air force also has a presence there. By blocking access into the Baltic Sea, Russia could prevent NATO forces from reaching its Baltic allies of Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania.

Since Russia’s invasion of Ukraine nearly two years ago, American forces have spent more time in Eastern Europe training with NATO allies. Those exercises are expected to continue in coming years, Hodges said.

Former U.S. Army Officer Says U.S. Wants War With Russia

U.S. Wants War With Russia: Former U.S. Army Officer

December 9, 2015 

 

ValueWalk - Amid hot tensions between the U.S. and Russia, there are indications that Washington is seeking to wage World War 3 against Moscow, according to a former U.S. Army officer.

U.S. Vice President Joe Biden’s visit to Ukraine suggests that Washington is seeking a war with Russia by stirring up tensions in Ukraine, says Joachim Hagopian, a former U.S. Army officer and an analyst. Biden arrived in Ukraine on Sunday to reassure the Ukrainian government that the U.S. still remembers its eastern European ally even though it cooperates with Moscow on fighting ISIS – a.k.a. Daesh – terrorists in Syria.

Biden arrived in Ukraine to “kind of reassure the Kiev puppet ally government that the United States is standing behind them, ready for World War 3 against Russia,” Hagopian told Press TV on Sunday.

“I think that we are seeing polarization and a movement towards more confrontation, unfortunately, and I think that this Biden visit to Ukraine is the same [as] ‘you know, we are going to be there for you when World War III starts, we are going to be fighting right alongside you’,” the analyst said.

Russia has a winning card over U.S. allies

Hagopian also said that Russia’s enormous natural energy resources are Russian President Vladimir Putin’s winning card against America’s constant push for military confrontation. Countries like Turkey and Ukraine, both of which have been on the brink of unleashing a military conflict with Russia, are having difficulties over the future of their energy ties with Moscow, their main supplier, according the analyst.

Moscow recently introduced economic sanctions against Turkey, which will cost the country approximately $9 billion. Moreover, Ankara is on the verge of losing Russia as its main energy resources supplier after the Turkish military last week shot down a Russian jet in its airspace.

Describing the situation with Russia using energy resources as a very effective deterrent against Washington’s influence, Hagopian said that Turkey and Ukraine “shot themselves in the foot” and have become “puppets” of the U.S. in exchange for energy supplies.

Is This the Beginning of a Major Military Confrontation Between Russia and NATO with the Involvement of the U.S.?

Turkey Threatens To Respond To Russia’s Rocket Launcher Provocation

December 8, 2015

ValueWalk - Amid reports of an imminent war between Turkey and Russia, Turkey has summoned the Russian ambassador after a serviceman on the deck of a Russian naval ship allegedly held a rocket launcher while the vessel passed through Istanbul this weekend.

Turkey accuses Moscow of “provocations” after the serviceman was spotted holding a rocket launcher on his shoulder while the naval ship was passing through the territory of Turkey, according to The Sydney Morning Herald.

Relations between Ankara and Moscow have sharply escalated since the Turkish military last week shot down a Russia jet in its airspace.

Russia’s NTV news channel broadcasted a footage with a serviceman brandishing a rocket launcher on the deck of a naval ship Caesar Kunikov as it passed through the Bosphorus Strait in Istanbul on Saturday. The ship was allegedly en route to Syria.

“For a Russian soldier to display a rocket launcher or something similar while passing on a Russian warship is a provocation,” Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu? told reporters, according to The Sydney Morning Herald citing the Hurriyet news site. “If we perceive a threatening situation, we will give the necessary response.”

With the Bosphorus providing the only naval passage to the world’s oceans for the Russian Black Sea fleet, a post-war treaty obliges Turkey to allow all naval ships to pass the region during peacetime.

Ever since the Turkish military brought down the Russian warplane, the Kremlin has introduced economic sanctions, which will cost Turkey approximately nine billion dollars, according to AFP. NTV also said that as the Caesar Kunikov was passing through, three NATO frigates with Canadian, Spanish and Portuguese flags had been moored.

Tensions getting hot: Turkey summons Russian ambassador

As a response to the incident with the Russian serviceman allegedly holding a rocket launcher, Turkey has summoned the Russian ambassador. Turkey has formally expressed its outrage over the incident, with Foreign Minister Mevlut Cavusoglu calling it a “provocation.”

The incident with Turkey – a NATO member state – shooting down the Russian warplane has already been called the most alarming military encounter between NATO and Russia’s armed forces in over 50 years. It has already triggered quite an uproar in geopolitics with many analysts wondering if this is the beginning of a major military confrontation between Russia and NATO with the involvement of the U.S.

“The worse case being a conflict between the United States and fellow nuclear armed state, Russia,” according to Zachary Yost of The Canal.

U.S. Says NATO Enlargement is Not a Threat to Russia; Kremlin Says NATO Expansion to East Will Lead to Retaliation from Russia

On December 2, 2015, the NATO military alliance invited Montenegro to join its ranks. Moscow opposes any NATO extension to former communist areas of eastern and southeastern Europe, part of an east-west struggle for influence over former Soviet satellites that is at the centre of the crisis in Ukraine. Kremlin spokesman Dmitry Peskov said on Wednesday that the continuing expansion of the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation to the east would lead to retaliatory measures from Russia. Speaking to journalists, Peskov added that the sanctions that Russia had imposed on Turkey over a downed Russian plane were different from the ones the West had imposed on Russia over the Ukraine crisis, since Russia's sanctions on Turkey were preventative and concerned the threat of terrorism. U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry told a news conference: "NATO is a defensive alliance and its decision to enlarge into the Balkans is not directed at Russia or any other nation. NATO is not a threat to anyone ... it is a defensive alliance. It is simply meant to provide security. It is not focused on Russia or anyone else." [Reuters]

NATO invites Montenegro to join alliance, defying Russia

December 2, 2015

Reuters - NATO invited tiny Montenegro on Wednesday to join the military alliance in its first expansion since 2009, defying Russian warnings that enlargement of the U.S.-led bloc further into the Balkans is "irresponsible" action that undermines trust.

In a scripted session at NATO's headquarters in Brussels, Montenegro's Foreign Minister Igor Luksic strode into the imposing conference hall to loud applause from his peers as NATO chief Jens Stoltenberg declared:

"This is the beginning of a very beautiful alliance."

U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry said the decision to invite Montenegro was not directed at Russia.

"NATO is not a threat to anyone ... it is a defensive alliance, it is simply meant to provide security," Kerry told a news conference. "It is not focussed on Russia or anyone else."

NATO diplomats said the decision sends a message to Moscow that it does not have a veto on the alliance's eastwards expansion, even if Georgia's membership bid has been complicated by its 2008 war with Russia.

Moscow opposes any NATO extension to former communist areas of eastern and southeastern Europe, part of an east-west struggle for influence over former Soviet satellites that is at the centre of the crisis in Ukraine.

Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said in September that any expansion of NATO was "a mistake, even a provocation". In comments to Russian media then, he said NATO's so-called open door policy was "an irresponsible policy that undermines the determination to build a system of equal and shared security in Europe."

RIA news agency cited a Russian senator as saying on Wednesday that Russia will end joint projects with Montenegro if the ex-Communist country joins the North Atlantic Treaty Organisation. The Adriatic state of 650,000 people is expected to become a member formally next year.

U.S. Supported Radical Islamist Groups in Syria and Iraq That Eventually Morphed Into ISIS

In 2012, the major forces driving the insurgency in Syria were the Muslim Brotherhood, Al Qaeda in Iraq (AQI) and the Salafists, an ultra-conservative, orthodox movement within Sunni Islam, taking a fundamentalist approach toward Islam, from which ISIS draws is radical, violent, merciless beliefs. According to a 2012 DoD document, "if the situation unravels, there is a possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria, and this is exactly what the opposition [rebels backed by the U.S. and its allies] want in order to isolate the Syria's Shia regime, which is considered a strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran)." It was a plan by the U.S. to use the Salafist movement to overthrow Syrian President Assad.

Syria is overwhelmingly Sunni Islam. That in and of itself is no big deal, as 85% of all the Muslims in the world are of the Sunni persuasion. The other 15% of Muslims in the world are of the Shi’a/Shi’ite variety.  So Syria is mostly Sunni. BUT Syrian President Bashar al-Assad, like his entire family and the ruling/military elite of Syria, is an Alawite. Alawites are a prominent minority religious group who describe themselves as a sect of Shi’a Islam. Some conservative Sunnis do not even recognize Alawis as Muslims at all, especially in places like ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia [a U.S. ally]. Of course, the ultra-conservative Sunni Saudis also don’t much like the straight-up Shi’as either…speaking of which… Do you know any other places that are Shi’a Islam? If you said Iran, then give yourself a hit off the hookah! And now you know why some other Arab states also hate Syria: the Syrian leadership has deep and entrenched ties with Shi’a Iran, a country that most other Arab states totally despise. Iran is not Sunni but Shi’a; they are also not Arab, but Persian. So Arab countries see increasingly powerful Iran as a regional threat.  And Syria has for decades allowed itself to be a conduit for the movement of weapons and money from Shi’a Iran thru Shi’a-led Syria over to Shi’a-inspired Hezbollah…which is a terrorist/political group located in Lebanon that fights against Israel. [Source]

Proof U.S. Government Wanted ISIS To Emerge In Syria (video)

November 20, 2015

Vigilant Citizen - In my article entitled ISIS : A CIA Creation to Justify War Abroad and Repression at Home, I list the numerous reasons why ISIS is actually serving the interests of the world elite. The following video adds another important piece of the puzzle by explaining leaked Department of Defense documents dating from 2012 – before ISIS even existed. They prove that the U.S. actually supported the radical Islamist groups in Syria and Iraq that eventually morphed into the monster that is ISIS.

This series of event lead to the creation of a (larger) quagmire in the Middle East, the migration of millions of Syrians towards the West and the generation of fear and panic around the world – perfect conditions for rushing new oppressive laws.



Here is the full PDF of the document obtained by Judicial Watch in a Freedom of Information action.

The relevant passage relating to the 'salafist principality', i.e. ISIS, is point 8C on page 5.

The explanation of who the 'supporting powers' are, i.e. 'The West' (= US, Israel, France, UK, Australia), Turkey, Saudi Arabia, Qatar, is point 2C on page 3.

https://www.judicialwatch.org/wp-content/uploads/2015/05/Pg.-291-Pgs.-287-293-JW-v-DOD-and-State-14-812-DOD-Release-2015-04-10-final-version11.pdf

Syria war widens rift between Shia clergy in Iraq, Iran

Although Iraqi Al-Sistani refuses to sanction fighting in Syria war, influential Shia parties and militias are following Iran's direction and sending fighters

July 20, 2013

Reuters - The civil war in Syria is widening a rift between top Shia Muslim clergy in Iraq and Iran who have taken opposing stands on whether or not to send followers into combat on President Bashar Al-Assad's side.

Competition for leadership of the Shia community has intensified since the US-led invasion of 2003 toppled Saddam Hussein, empowering majority Shias through the ballot box and restoring the Iraqi holy city of Najaf to prominence.

In Iran's holy city of Qom, senior Shia clerics, or Marjiiya, have issued fatwas (edicts) enjoining their followers to fight in Syria, where mainly Sunni rebels are fighting to overthrow Assad, whose Alawite sect derives from Shia Islam.

Shia militant leaders fighting in Syria and those in charge of recruitment in Iraq say the number of volunteers has increased significantly since the fatwas were pronounced.

Tehran, Assad's staunchest defender in the region, has drawn on other Shia allies, including Lebanese militia Hezbollah.

Hezbollah's open intervention earlier this year hardened the sectarian tone of a conflict that grew out of a peaceful street uprising against four decades of Assad family rule, and shifted the battlefield tide in the Syrian government's favour.

The Syrian war has polarised Sunnis and Shias across the Middle East – but has also spotlighted divisions within each of Islam's two main denominations, putting Qom and Najaf at odds and complicating intra-Shia relations in Iraq.

In Najaf, Grand Ayatollah Ali Al-Sistani, who commands unswerving loyalty from most Iraqi Shias and many more worldwide, has refused to sanction fighting in a war he views as political rather than religious.

Despite Sistani's stance, some of Iraq's most influential Shia political parties and militia, who swear allegiance to Iranian Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, have answered his call to arms and sent their disciples into battle in Syria.

"Those who went to fight in Syria are disobedient," said a senior Shia cleric who runs the office of one of the top four Marjiya in Najaf.

"Shia crescent"

The split is rooted in a fundamental difference of opinion over the nature and scope of clerical authority.

Najaf Marjiiya see the role of the cleric in public affairs as limited, whereas in Iran, the cleric is the Supreme Leader and holds ultimate spiritual and political authority in the "Velayet e-Faqih" system ("guardianship of the jurist").

"The tension between the two Marjiiya already existed a long time ago, but now it has an impact on the Iraqi position towards the Syria crisis," a senior Shia cleric with links to Marjiiya in Najaf said on condition of anonymity.

"If both Marjiiya had a unified position (toward Syria), we would witness a position of (Iraqi) government support for the Syrian regime".

The Shia-led government in Baghdad says it takes no sides in the civil war, but the flow of Iraqi militiamen across the border into Syria has compromised that official position.

Khamenei and his faithful in Iraq and Iran regard Syria as an important link in a "Shia Crescent" stretching from Tehran to Beirut through Baghdad and Damascus, according to senior clerics and politicians.

Answering a question posted on his website by one of his followers regarding the legitimacy of fighting in Syria, senior Iraq Shia cleric Kadhim Al-Haeari, who is based in Iran, described fighting in Syria as a "duty" to defend Islam.

Militants say that around 50 Iraqi Shias fly to Damascus every week to fight, often alongside Assad's troops, or to protect the Sayyida Zeinab shrine on the outskirts of the capital, an especially sacred place for Shias.

"I am following my Marjiiya. My spiritual leader has said fighting in Syria is a legitimate duty. I do not pay attention to what others say," said Ali, a former Mehdi army militant who was packing his bag to travel from Iraq to Syria.

"No one has the right to stop me. I am defending my religion, my Imam's daughter Sayyida Zeinab's shrine."

A high-ranking Shia cleric who runs the office of one of the four top Marjiiya in Najaf said the protection of Shia shrines in Syria was used as a pretext by Iran to galvanise Shias into action.

"Shia project"

In the 10 years since Saddam's fall, Iran's influence in Iraq has grown and it has sought to gain a foothold in Najaf in particular.

Senior Iranian clerics have opened offices in Najaf, as well as non-governmental organisations, charities and cultural institutions, most of which are funded directly by Marjiiya in Iran, or the Iranian Embassy in Baghdad, local officials said.

The Iranian flag flies over a two-storey building in an upscale neighbourhood of Najaf, which houses the "Imam Khomeini Institution," named after the Islamic Republic's founder, Ayatollah Ruhollah Khomeini.

The Imam Khomeini Institution is one of many Iranian entities that have engaged in social activities in Iraq, focusing on young men, helping them get married, and paying regular stipends to widows, orphans and students of religion.

Some institutions also support young clerics and fund free trips for university students to visit Shia shrines in Iran, including a formal visit to Khamenei's office in Tehran, Shia politicians with knowledge of the activities say.

"We have a big project in Iraq aimed at spreading the principles of Velayet e-Faqih and the young are our target," a high-ranking Shia leader who works under Khamenei's auspices said on condition of anonymity.

"We are not looking to establish an Islamic State in Iraq, but at least we want to create revolutionary entities that would be ready to fight to save the Shia project".

Comment About the Salafis from Vigilant Citizen

If you studied Quranic Arabic under a qualified scholar you would know its true meaning.

There are several branches and sub-branches in the sciences of Quran Exegesis. Unlike many other languages, an Arabic word is interpreted according to its root meaning and context and NOT necessarily literally. Many verses in the Quran are Mejaz, allegorical and metaphorically interpreted. A word can have several different meanings and connotations.

The verses most commonly misinterpreted are cherry picked ones used by Western non-Muslim detractors to make a moot point. There are quoted completely out of context! What are the verses before "SLAY the UNBELIEVERS wherever you find them!" and after it?

You must know the difference between Ahle-Kitab, Kaffir, Mushrik, Munafiq etc...

"Surely those who believe, and those who are Jews, and the Christians, and the Sabians - whoever believes in God and the Last Day and does good, they shall have their reward from their Lord. And there will be no fear for them, nor shall they grieve" (2:62, 5:69, and many other verses).

Muslims follow the Quran according to the Sunnah (example and practice in sayings and actions) of the Prophet (PBUH), a mercy for mankind. He was the living Quran. Even during wars for defensive measures, a strict code of conduct was made not to harm any innocent non-combatants, including women, children, the old, the infirm and ill, animals and even trees.

ISIS breaks every rule of the Quran and Sunnah. The core group cannot be Muslims.

Yes, of course there are Muslims that interpret the Quran literally and are usually known as Wahaabis and Salafis. These are the creation of the British during the 18th century.

The overwhelming majority of Muslims worldwide are NOT Wahaabis and Salafis.

Every terrorist in the West can be traced back to the intelligences services. FBI admits to setting up Muslim patsies.

How many million Muslims are there in the USA? What percentage of them are involved in terrorist activities? Even if a fraction of the 'practicing' Muslims followed the Quran literally, you would find chaos and mayhem in every major city, life as we know it would be disrupted.

How many names do you know of the many Muslims who also perished in the Twin towers on 911? Did you know Muslim cab drivers in NY ferried the injured to hospitals without charging them, putting considerable risk to themselves? Did you know among the doctors and surgeons who treated the injured were Muslims too?

There is a verse in the Quran that states '...he who saves the life of one human being, is like one who saves entire mankind, and he who takes one innocent life is as if he has taken the life of every human being on this planet." There is no distinction between a non-Muslim and a Muslim.

I practice natural medicine and chose this field to heal ANY individual without compensation because it brings me great joy to help others. I have received much goodness from non-Muslims throughout my life and I am playing my part in returning some of the goodness back to them. Call it Karma if you like.

I'll leave you with this, an American soldier who converted to Islam after returning from the first Gulf war where 20,000 servicemen and women converted to Islam, said this to a Muslim cleric, 'we had to invade YOUR country to really learn about Islam." Youtube "American soldier converts to Islam."

Some of staunchest defenders of the Islamic faith are NOT Muslims, they are actually Christians, Jews, Hindus etc...

"....I became more than ever convinced that it was not the sword that won a place for Islam in those days in the scheme of life. It was the rigid simplicity, the utter sel-effacement of the prophet, the scrupulous regard for his pledges, his intense devotion to his friends and followers, his intrepidity, his fearlessness, his absolute trust in God and in his own mission. These, and NOT the sword carried everything before them and surmounted every trouble." - Mahatama Ghandi - [Young India (periodical), 1928, Volume X

This site (Vigilant Citizen) documents the various symbolism that I have been aware of for over thirty years. The Prophet Muhammad (PBUH) stated, "I shall tell you one thing of the Anti-Christ (Dajaal) that no other Prophet before me has mentioned, that he (Dajaal) is one-eyed and your Lord is NOT one-eyed."

From Vigilant Citizen

Through terrifying headlines and shocking videos, ISIS is being used as a tool to justify war in the Middle East and to cause fear and panic worldwide. No, this is not a “crazy conspiracy theory”, it is simply the oldest trick in the book. ISIS was created by the very forces that are fighting it.

Ever since the creation of democratic nations – where public opinion somewhat matters – the political class is faced with a dilemma: War is needed to gain power, riches, and control, but the general public has a tendency to be against it. What to do? The answer was found decades ago and is still used successfully today: Create an enemy so terrifying that the masses will beg their government to go to war.

This is why ISIS exists. This is why the beheading videos are so “well-produced” and publicized worldwide through mainstream media. This is why news sources regularly come up with alarmist headlines about ISIS. They are used to serve the best interests of the world elite.

The current objectives are: Sway public opinion to favor the invasion of countries in the Middle East, provide a pretext for “coalition” intervention across the world, and manufacture a domestic threat that will be used to take away rights and increase surveillance. In short, ISIS is yet another instance of the age-old tactic of creating a terrifying enemy to scare the masses.

Basically, in the span of a few months, a terrorist group literally popped out of nowhere, causing mayhem in the very regions the US and its allies have been looking to attack for years. Its name: Islamic State in Syria, or ISIS.

The idea of the CIA funding an Islamic group to further its political interests isn’t exactly “far-fetched”. In fact, there are several obvious instances in recent history where the US openly supported extremist Islamist groups (dubbed “freedom fighters” in mass media). The most flagrant and well-documented example is the creation of the Mujaheddin in Afghanistan, a group that was created by the CIA to lure the USSR in an “Afghan trap”. The term Mujaheddin describes “Muslims who struggle in the path of Allah” and comes from the root word “jihad”. The “great enemy” of today was the friend of the past. A few decades later, these “freedom fighters” turned into the Taliban terrorists, among them Osama bin-Laden, who turned from a CIA agent to public enemy No. 1. The group was then used to justify war in Afghanistan. It is one of numerous examples where an Islamic group was created, funded and used to advance U.S. interests. The U.S. also backed the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt, Sarekat Islam in Indonesia, Jamaat-e-Islami in Pakistan, and the Islamic regime of Saudi-Arabia to counter Russia.

As the ISIS threat spreads to neighboring countries, it will allow unprovoked military strikes against various nations. It is only a matter of time before airstrikes will be deemed ineffective and ground troops become necessary. In the end, these operations will complete a long-term plan of re-organizing the Middle East, eliminating any threats to Israel and significantly increasing pressure on Iran, the region’s remaining Islamic force.

Disgusted by the beheading videos, most Westerners now favor the violent annihilation of ISIS.  Of course, they do not realize that this same fervor will lead them to become victims of their own governments. ISIS has been issuing various threats to specific countries, causing panic in every one of them, prompting governments to “take action”. Unfortunately, “taking action” means reducing free speech and increasing illegal searches and surveillance.

The most important question one can ask is this: Who benefits from the existence of ISIS and the terror it generates? What does ISIS gain by creating videos taunting the most powerful armies in the world? Air strikes? On the other hand, what does the ruling class in the Western world have to gain? Continuing to make money through war and weapons, taking control of the Middle East while supporting Israel, increasing oppression and surveillance on domestic populations and, finally, keeping the masses constantly terrified and under control. In short, stoking panic around the world by provoking a state of chaos in the Middle East has been deemed necessary to implement a new world order.

The Rise of Persian Salafism

Mehdi Khalaji, senior fellow at The Washington Institute
October 3, 2013

More Iranians are turning to Salafism out of disenchantment with the Islamic Republic's Shiite creeds, creating a clear threat to the regime's rule.

Iran consistently accuses the United States and its allies in the Middle East of provoking tension between Shiite and Sunni Muslims. Among these accusations is the notion that the West funds Persian-language satellite television networks whose sole goal is to ignite sectarian conflict. Tehran's paranoid claims aside, many Persian broadcasters inside and outside the Islamic Republic are in fact engaged in a satellite war, and their various propaganda salvos point to a new phenomenon in Iran: the rise of Persian Salafism. The fact that a unique, puritanical interpretation of Sunni Islam is taking root in Shiite-ruled Iran has raised worries among the regime's elite and the traditional Shiite establishment. 

IRANIANS DISCOVER SALAFISM

Since the early twentieth century, Salafism has been spreading throughout Muslim communities from Europe to Indonesia. Yet few expected it to gain much traction in Iran given the innate antagonism between Sunni and Shia Islam. Traces of it entered the country before the 1979 revolution, but the sect did not gain popularity until fairly recently, after more than three decades of Shiite governance and regime propaganda. Today, it commands numerous active followers in Sunni areas such as Kurdistan and Baluchistan and in large, predominantly Shiite cities such as Tehran and Isfahan.

The Iranian regime views religious pluralism in general as a security threat, but the rise of Salafism -- a sect that regards the state's official religion as heresy -- presents more serious problems. For example, the Bahai faith is also viewed as a threat to Iranian Shiism, but its structure makes it more containable than Salafism. Bahai adherents in Iran are well organized, highly centralized, and apolitical, making them easier to track and less of a direct threat. Yet Salafis are scattered throughout the country and represented by multiple organizations with theological and ideological variations. More important, they are becoming politically active in some Sunni areas, at least in terms of publicly criticizing the government, questioning its religious legitimacy, and accusing it of discrimination against Sunnis. 

PREREVOLUTIONARY ROOTS

Since the 1950s, Salafi thought -- in its general sense, which includes Muslim Brotherhood ideology -- has entered Iran from the east and west. Following World War II, Sayyid Gholam Reza Saeedi (1895-1990), an Iranian religious author and translator, traveled to India and acquired extensive knowledge about the international Muslim community and elite. When he returned home, he began to translate works by Abul Ala Maududi -- the main ideologue of Pakistani group Jamaat al-Islamiyah and a prominent Salafi -- as well as other Muslim thinkers (e.g., Muhammad Iqbal). A prolific author, Saeedi played a significant role in introducing Persian readers to Indian Muslim concerns and the challenges of founding a new country, Pakistan. His works opened a new window to Iran's religious world, influencing younger readers who were seeking new ideas on Islam in order to ease their frustration with the religious establishment and confront ideological threats (especially the communist wave that was taking over Iran's intellectual environment at the time).

Meanwhile, other prerevolutionary Iranian thinkers introduced the country to the Salafist ideas of Egypt's Muslim Brotherhood. In the late 1940s, cleric Navab Safavi formed Fadayan-e Islam, the first Iranian Islamist group to establish relations with the Brotherhood and produce Persian translations of its writings, including the works of theoretician Sayyed Qutb. Another prominent cleric, Sayyid Hadi Khosrow Shahi (b. 1938), translated writings from Algerian, Tunisian, and Palestinian Islamists in addition to Brotherhood works. These and other translators were essentially political activists who sought to raise their countrymen's awareness of Muslim issues outside Iran. For example, the Islamist works they reproduced eventually created a new political question in Iran: the Palestine question.

While these translations were mostly received as ideological efforts to mobilize Iranians against Muhammad Reza Shah Pahlavi's regime and Western imperialism, Salafi thought also spurred some religious thinkers to fight "superstitions" in Shiism. Haidar Ali Qalamdaran (1913-1989) was heavily influenced by such writings and sought to purify Shiism of various prayers, rituals (e.g., pilgrimages to the shrines of the Shiite Imams of old and their descendants), and beliefs (e.g., the notion that the Shiite Imams had supernatural power and knowledge). He escaped an assassination attempt ostensibly motivated by traditional clerics in Qom and spent his whole life in isolation and poverty. Although he was not a political activist, his views had political implications in later years, such as refuting the legitimacy of the type of religious governance instituted by the Islamic Republic. He and others who criticized Shiite "superstitions" -- such as Muhammad Hassan Shariat Sanglaji (1855-1943) and Sayyid Abul Fazl Borqei (1909-1992) -- were also influenced by the Salafi conception of Islamic dogmas, especially the sect's interpretation of the unity of God. 

SALAFISM AS A POLITICAL REACTION

Under the Islamic Republic -- a regime that legitimizes the exclusive rule of the ayatollahs, makes Islamic law the main basis for legislation, and imposes it on all aspects of daily life -- many youths and other Iranians have turned away from Shiite convictions and embraced atheism, skepticism, Sufism, Sunni Islam, the Bahai faith, evangelical Christianity, Zoroastrianism, Buddhism, and New Age and Latin American mystical trends. Various regime organizations, including the Bureau of Religions and Sects in the Ministry of Intelligence, monitor these religious minorities and work against their proselytization efforts. Even Sufi circles -- which are officially Shiite -- face frequent repression.

In this environment, Salafism has rapidly spread all over the country through the internet, social media, and satellite television. In addition, various underground organizations offer training courses for young volunteers and run exchange programs to introduce Iranian Salafis to Arab Salafis in Saudi Arabia and elsewhere. This is one of the reasons why the regime does not allow Sunnis to build mosques in Tehran or other large cities -- it is deeply concerned about Salafis using them to recruit young Shiites who are frustrated with the Islamic Republic's ideology. 

SATELLITE WAR

There are two major Shiite trends in Iran: the official regime creed, and an extremist version that defines itself largely in opposition to Sunni Islam. While the regime usually dismisses Sunni-Shiite tensions and advocates pan-Islamic approaches to foreign policy and other matters, the extremist Shiites (called gholat or velais) refuse to hide their animosity toward the first three Sunni caliphs (i.e., the Prophet Muhammad's successors, whom Shiites believe usurped Imam Ali's right to rule). These extremists are backed by clerical authorities, and their explicit anti-Sunni propaganda has caused trouble for the regime both inside the country and throughout the wider Muslim world.

In recent years, the gholat have relied in large part on satellite television to disseminate their propaganda, sparking an escalating virtual war between Salafis and Shiites. Today, Salafis use Persian-language satellite outlets such as the Global Kalemeh Network (based in Medina and Dubai and probably funded by Saudis) and Wesal Farsi (based in London and the Persian Gulf) to fight the "Safavid government," as they call the Islamic Republic and its Shiite ideology. They broadcast religious programs, take calls from Iran, and engage in debates with Shiite satellite networks such as al-Kawthar TV, the Global Ahl-e Bait Network (whose programs are hosted by an Afghan cleric), Imam Hussein TV, and Salaam TV (based in Virginia and supported by the Shirazis, a clerical family with significant influence among Gulf Shiites).

Salafis and the Muslim Brotherhood also use various websites to fight the propaganda battle, some affiliated with organizations such as Jamaat-e Dawat va Islah-e Iran (the Society of Mission and Reform in Iran). On the other side, extremist Shiites run dozens of their own websites to confront the Salafis. Both sides are very active in social media as well. 

CONCLUSION

Many Iranian youths are disappointed in the Shiism professed by the regime and traditional clergy but wish to maintain their Islamic faith, leading them to convert to Salafism. The Muslim Brotherhood and other Salafi trends tend to focus on the unity of god and the desacralization of all human beings and worldly things -- a unique way of secularizing and rationalizing Islam in order to attract young students, especially those who study science. Unlike traditional Sunnis in Iran and Salafis elsewhere in the world, Iranian Salafis tend to question the Islamic Republic's religious legitimacy and purposefully exacerbate Sunni-Shiite tensions. To be sure, they do not share the global Salafist aspiration of taking over political power, knowing that any Islamic government in predominantly Shiite Iran would be a Shiite government. Yet Iranian Salafis are organizationally connected to potent groups in Saudi Arabia and other countries, and most of their ideology and funding comes from outside the Islamic Republic. Given these factors and the increasing resentment among Iran's Arab, Kurdish, and Baluch population, the growth of Salafism is a clear security threat to the regime.

Syria's Bashar al-Assad Facts and Information

Official Stats

• Official Title: President
• Government: One-Party State...with authoritarian tendencies
• Years Left in Office: Indefinite; no term limits
• Political Classification: Right
• Education: Dr. of Opthamology
• Age: 50 (born November 11, 1965)

Important Points

• Bashar al-Assad is the President of Syria, having taken over from his father's 3 decade rule
• Bashar al-Assad is a younger, more moderate, more progressive Arab voice
• Bashar al-Assad has strong ties to Iran and Hezbollah, which pisses off the US, Israel, and some Arab states
• Bashar al-Assad is strengthening ties with France, the EU, Russia, and China
• Bashar al-Assad may soon recognize Israel, which would radically change Middle Eastern politics and policies

The Rundown

Okay let’s get serious about the Syrians…the leader of Syria to be succinct: President Bashar al-Assad. And this is a dude to know, as his youth combined with his unique outlook may possibly make him a serious mover, shaker, and peace-maker in the mangled mess we call the Middle East. And he has a wickedly wondrous wife to boot! She is one hot piece of Assad! Combined with Bashar’s 6’2 frame, dreamy steel-blue eyes and extended cranium, they may be the sexiest first family on the planet….but I digress as usual, let’s get back to the main man of Syria and why he is important to know…

Thrust into the presidency of Syria, the genial, unassuming, and gangly Bashar al-Asad has held his own in the rough-and-tumble arena of Middle Eastern politics. He is the second oldest son of regional heavyweight and former Syrian strongman President Hafiz al-Assad, a dude that held the leadership position for 30 years and stabilized the state while consolidating power to his person.  Originally, Bashar wanted nothing to do with any of that political poppycock! He was schooled in Syria and the UK to be an eye doctor and surgeon, and was doing quite well and living the good life as an ophthalmologist in London.  His older brother, Basil, had been groomed for the presidency but following Basil’s death in a single-car accident in 1994, Bashar (arguably a better driver) was yanked from his post abroad and prepared for his inevitable coming to power.

During his six-year political apprenticeship, Bashar learned the government ropes, met important Arab leaders, and got to know the movers and shakers in Syrian politics. He also completed some “hurry-up offense” military training, in order to secure the nominal backing of the important Syrian military ranks. When Daddy al-Assad died in 2000, Bashar easily secured his succession in a 2001 referendum, which isn’t really too hard to pull off in Syria—it’s not what we would call a real example of democracy in action, since the cards are all stacked in the Assad family’s favor. Example: A referendum in 2007 overwhelmingly endorsed him as president for a second seven-year term….oh, and he was the only candidate on the ballot. Nonetheless, Bashar was seen as the last great hope amongst domestic reformers due to his young age and technocratic savvy.

Okay let’s get serious about the Syrians…the leader of Syria to be succinct: President Bashar al-Assad. And this is a dude to know, as his youth combined with his unique outlook may possibly make him a serious mover, shaker, and peace-maker in the mangled mess we call the Middle East. And he has a wickedly wondrous wife to boot! She is one hot piece of Assad! Combined with Bashar’s 6’2 frame, dreamy steel-blue eyes and extended cranium, they may be the sexiest first family on the planet….but I digress as usual, let’s get back to the main man of Syria and why he is important to know…

Thrust into the presidency of Syria, the genial, unassuming, and gangly Bashar al-Asad has held his own in the rough-and-tumble arena of Middle Eastern politics. He is the second oldest son of regional heavyweight and former Syrian strongman President Hafiz al-Assad, a dude that held the leadership position for 30 years and stabilized the state while consolidating power to his person.  Originally, Bashar wanted nothing to do with any of that political poppycock! He was schooled in Syria and the UK to be an eye doctor and surgeon, and was doing quite well and living the good life as an ophthalmologist in London.  His older brother, Basil, had been groomed for the presidency but following Basil’s death in a single-car accident in 1994, Bashar (arguably a better driver) was yanked from his post abroad and prepared for his inevitable coming to power.

During his six-year political apprenticeship, Bashar learned the government ropes, met important Arab leaders, and got to know the movers and shakers in Syrian politics. He also completed some “hurry-up offense” military training, in order to secure the nominal backing of the important Syrian military ranks. When Daddy al-Assad died in 2000, Bashar easily secured his succession in a 2001 referendum, which isn’t really too hard to pull off in Syria—it’s not what we would call a real example of democracy in action, since the cards are all stacked in the Assad family’s favor. Example: A referendum in 2007 overwhelmingly endorsed him as president for a second seven-year term….oh, and he was the only candidate on the ballot. Nonetheless, Bashar was seen as the last great hope amongst domestic reformers due to his young age and technocratic savvy.

Before his “election”, Bashar’s sole claim to Syrian fame was as one of the founders and heads of the Syrian Computer Society, an organization which he spearheaded to bring the Internet to Syria. Lame as this may sound, this laid the foundation for Bashar’s cultivation of a new crop of government leaders culled from the technocrats he associated with during this time, a younger bunch of political figures savvy in international finance and technology. A true “21st century man”, Bashar is also apparently quite the video game nut, X-Box in particular. During the Israeli raid on a purported nuclear plant in northern Syria in 2007, Bashar was enraged to have a 6-hour run on “Grand Theft Auto” interrupted by the bombing. Don’t mess with the man when he’s in his zone!

In Syria, Bashar’s record has been mixed since taking office. He originally ushered in a brief period of openness and cautious reform, wanting to perhaps push for economic and political liberalization in this ‘Damascus Spring.’ Some political prisoners were released, restrictions on the media were eased, and political debate was tolerated…all of which was a stark contrast to his father’s oppressive policies.  However, the pace of change alarmed the entrenched bureaucratic establishment and powerful military elite who collectively pushed to slow this change if not stymie it altogether. Like the “Mace of Blizzards” that he wields so adroitly in “World of Warcraft”, Bashar had to put a chill-pill on political dissent, arguing that the process needed to be gradual and free of external pressures. On the other hand, he did force out some old farts from the Ba’ath Party (the only political party with power, which Bashar also heads) and government ranks, lowering the mandatory retirement age and replacing these fogies with some of his cooler, Corona-sipping, computer-geek buddies from the old days.

Economically, the situation is shaky also. The Syrian economy would be described as weak at best, and with the fastest growing birth rate in the world, things are looking dire for the next couple of decades for the country. To open up the economy, Bashar has been pushing for Syrian membership in a Euro-Mediterranean partnership group: a ‘Mediterranean Union’, so coined by French President Nicolas Sarkozy, which would be modeled after the EU (European Union). In fact, Bashar’s blossoming love affair with Sarkozy, has been moving this idea along quickly, much to the chagrin of the United States. What? Why would the US care about European/Syrian economic ties? Oh yeah! Because the US hates Syria!

A-ha! Now we get to the real important stuff you need to know to understand this guy’s particular importance in world affairs. See, Israel has classically hated Syria, which translates to the US hating Syria, but even many other Arab states hate Syria too…and Bashar got to deal with all of this hate. So why the hate?

For starters, Syria is overwhelmingly Arab ethnicity and is part of the real ‘core’ of Arab thought and political power.  In this regard, Syria has participated in most of the declared wars upon the state of Israel, and has still not officially ‘recognized’ the existence of the state at all. Syria lost a part of its own territory, an area named the Golan Heights, to Israel the Six-Days War of 1967….an issue of much contention right on up to this day.  So Israel and Syria have issues.

But it gets even more complicated: Syria is also overwhelmingly Sunni Islam. That in and of itself is no big deal, as 85% of all the Muslims in the world are of the Sunni persuasion. The other 15% of Muslims in the world are of the Shi’a/Shi’ite variety.  So Syria is mostly Sunni. BUT Bashar al-Assad, like his entire family and the ruling/military elite of Syria, is an Alawite. Alawites are a prominent minority religious group who describe themselves as a sect of Shi’a Islam. Some conservative Sunnis do not even recognize Alawis as Muslims at all, especially in places like ultra-conservative Saudi Arabia. Of course, the ultra-conservative Sunni Saudis also don’t much like the straight-up Shi’as either…speaking of which…

Do you know any other places that are Shi’a Islam? Oh hell yes! If you said Iran, then give yourself a hit off the hookah! And now you know why some other Arab states also hate Syria: the Syrian leadership has deep and entrenched ties with Shi’a Iran, a country that most other Arab states totally despise. Iran is not Sunni but Shi’a; they are also not Arab, but Persian. So Arab countries see increasingly powerful Iran as a regional threat.  And Syria has for decades allowed itself to be a conduit for the movement of weapons and money from Shi’a Iran thru Shi’a-led Syria over to Shi’a-inspired Hezbollah…which is a terrorist/political group located in Lebanon that fights against Israel. Got all this mess so far?

So Israel hates them because Syria has fought wars against them and also helps arm Hezbollah. The US hates Syria for much the same reasons, especially since the US labels Hezbollah a terrorist group, and, well, the US is fighting terrorism. The Bush administration really hated Syria, and perpetually pressured them to stop their Shi’a support….and came close to putting them into the infamous ‘Axis of Evil’ many times. The US and Israel also hate Syria since they are buddies with problem-child Iran. And that’s also why many Arab states don’t dig Syria, as they see them as sell-outs who are helping spread Iranian influence throughout the region. But back to Bashar….

Here’s why it’s good to know this dude: things may be a-changing in this regional stew of strained ties and strategic shenanigans because Bashar is mixing things up! In the region, Bashar has managed to tiptoe through a minefield of issues. His ascension to the presidency was initially seen by the Israelis as being a positive step after the constipated years of his father’s reign. And how! Despite the public and media-driven howling about Syrian-Israeli tensions, peace between the two would be most easily achieved. Secret negotiations between businessmen and low-level diplomats from both sides has been occurring since Bashar took power.  Even hard-line, hawkish Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, during his first tenure as PM, tasked an American citizen with opening secret negotiations with the Syrians!

All Bashar wants back is the Golan Heights, which would make him wildly popular and effectively secure his presidency-for-life. And he may get it! In return, he will have to give recognition of the right for Israel to exist, and perhaps to stop funneling weapons to Hezbollah. But if Bashar does this (which seems increasingly likely), it will open a whole new chapter on Middle Eastern affairs. He already has made huge strides on softening the Syrian image in the world by pulling his troops out of Lebanon in 2005…after decades of Syrian domination of the Lebanese political scene, which pissed off the Lebanese, the Israelis, the US, and others. (Look up ‘Cedar Revolution’ if you want more details.) Syria has now essentially conceded Lebanese independence, embassies are to be opened, and diplomatic credentials are to be exchanged.

Bashar is playing the great game of Middle East shenanigans adroitly. Not only is he resisting US pressure on his relationships with Iran and Hezbollah, he is, at the same time wisely leaving the Israeli-reconciliation option open. On top of that, Bashar has been working hard in strengthening economic and political ties with the EU, Russia and even China…perhaps at the expense of his Arab neighborhood, particularly Saudi Arabia. No love lost between those two. In other words, Bashar is trying to become more of an internationalist, relying less on ties to standard Arab alliances, and increasingly less concerned with opinions of the US as well.

As one of the self-styled, “next generation” of Middle East leaders, like King Abdullah of Jordan, Bashar, with his technological X-Box savvy and love of Phil Collins, has managed to weather the domestic and regional storms thus far.  One of the youngest Middle Eastern leaders in power, he is likely to be around for a long time, and he along with his smokin’ hot wife is certainly going to be changing the landscape of the region.

January 2012 Update: Bashar al-Ass-wad?

How fares Syria in the Arab Spring? Weeeeell, Bashie’s reform minded agenda, though hesitant and wishy-washy has gone the way of the majestic Syrian Oryx. The regional upheavals may have well presented Bashie with an opportunity to make good on his promises of reform, side-stepping the potential backlash from hardliners in his regime by citing the wave of change in the surrounding states as an “excuse” to reform. But, well, if the ever-growing pile of corpses in Syria’s urban centers are any indication, this option has gone bye-bye.

First, a look back at 2011 in Syria. Domestic tensions have always been around: Kurdish dissatisfaction with the state of their civil rights and what-not in Syria; muted Sunni disaffection for the Shia-rule-by-minority in Syria (the Assads follow a sub-sect of Shia Islam, thus their Iranian ties); and general youth apprehension about the lack of change during Bashie’s decade in power and the continuing oppressive policies of censorship and detention. This coupled with a horribly high unemployment rate (25%!), a fall in living standards, and the Arab Spring events toppling dictators all around led to a testy situation.

By January 2011, people were setting themselves on fire a la Tunisian reflexive-arsonist Mohammed Bouazzizi. Protests started breaking out in the Kurdish northwest of the country, were brutally put down, sparked protests elsewhere, these were brutally put down, etc. You get the picture. Spreading to the southern border with Jordan, protests broke out in Dera’ also and soon spread to other cities, though Damascus, until recently, was pretty quiet. As the summer wore on, the regime reaction became more and more violent, with tanks and troops being sent into urban centers. Shit got even more complicated once army defectors started coalescing into the Free Syrian Army which began moving against regime troops. The non-existent domestic opposition forces also began taking steps to form a Syrian National Council and began begging for international assistance. The international community stepped in eventually, with the Arab League itself, bastion of inaction and lameness, sanctioning Syria and threatening to suspend its membership for its killing of civilians and crushing of protests. By December, some 5000 people have been killed in Syria.

What happened? Is Bashie pulling the strings? In the first months, his government did make some tentative steps towards reform allowing greater political participation (via allowing new political parties), better status for Kurds in the country, and dismantling that pesky emergency law. However, this didn’t do much to stop the government forces from killing thousands of people. Is Bashie the puppet master? In an ABC interview, Bashie denied responsibility for the bloody reaction against the opposition protests. Is he just trying to cover his ass? It’s hard to tell at this point. Given his earlier reform attempts which were slapped down by vested hard-line interests in his government, his hands may very well be tied. Who exactly controls the armed forces or the police in Syria is murky.

This may very well not matter at all. The vehemence and violence of his regime’s reaction has led to across-the-board international criticism of al-Asad. The issue of what he knew and when he knew it is moot. Heaps of sanctions, Arab League criticism, and increasing calls for some sort of Libya-like military intervention do not bode well for Bashie. At this point there seems to be little that he could do to retain any sort of legitimacy in the eyes of the Syrian people. His resignation or removal from power involuntarily is the most likely outcome.