Recent Terror Threats

[Magda Hassan]

Al-Qaeda to the Rescue

By Pepe Escobar

August 05, 2013 "Information Clearing House - "Asia Times" - When the going gets tough, count on the Ministry of Truth to get going.

The end of Ramadan was imminent. The jihadi chattering classes of that fuzzy entity, al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula (AQAP), went on overdrive. It was jailbreak galore from Libya to Pakistan via Iraq. And all this in perfect synch with two successive fatwas issued by that perennial bogeyman, former Osama bin Laden sidekick Ayman "Doctor Evil" al-Zawahiri.

Imagine a rushed crisis meeting at the highest levels of the Orwellian/Panopticon complex:

"Gentlemen, we have a golden opportunity here. We are under siege by defector spy Edward Snowden - liberated by the Soviets - and that terrorist hack Greenwald. Snowden may be winning: even among US public opinion, there's a growing perception we may be more of a threat than al-Qaeda.

So we must show we are vigilantly protecting our freedoms. Yes; we're gonna scream Terra, Terra, Terra!"

Instantly, we have the closing, with much fanfare, of plenty of US embassies and consulates in the "Muslim world" and a State Department "worldwide" travel alert - soon expanded by Interpol. Confusion ensues - with many trying to figure out whether backpacking in Thailand or eating fresh caviar in Baku is a surefire way of not being blown up.

Instantly, we also have US and Western corporate media falling in love with the Terra Terra Terra meme all over again. And woe to those who think this has anything to do with Islamophobia. You thought that Terra was gone? No, Terra is omnipresent, omniscient, lurking everywhere. Terra Wants You. Trains and boats and planes - you're nowhere safe.

Yet the fabulous specific intel unearthed by the Ministry of Truth amounts to some lowlife jihadi boasting on the net that he and his buddies will be doing something nasty someday somewhere in multiple, unspecified locations all across Middle East-Northern Africa (MENA).

False flag approaching
A closer examination of these "thousands" of freed al-Qaeda ready to wreak havoc all over the world reveals most may be "our" friends after all.

The jailbreak in Benghazi (probably 1,000) - does not exactly concern the Friends of NATO of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group variety; their militias are already in power, busy dissolving Libya into perennial failed state status.

On the double jailbreak in Baghdad (could be as many as 1,400), their destination is across the desert to Syria, to engage in jihad alongside the Friends of Obama/Cameron/Hollande/House of Saud in the combo Jabhat al-Nusra/Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant. But wait a minute; if they are "our" friends in Libya and Syria, how come they are our enemies in Pakistan and Yemen?

In Pakistan (probably 500), they will disperse in the tribal areas and lay low - otherwise they will be droned according to Double O Bama with a license-to-kill list. No alert, by the way, applied to Pakistan (as in the embassy in Islamabad and the consulate in Peshawar, for instance), nor in Indonesia. So it's not the "Muslim world"; it's basically MENA. And specifically Yemen. But Obama last week told the Yemeni president that al-Qaeda was in retreat. So what is it then? AQAP has been de-retreated?

The bottom line is that the Bush-Obama continuum never ceases to reassure us - not to mention that old fox al-Zawahiri. Doctor Evil, as warped a strategist as he is, figured out a while ago that if the "al-Qaeda" global bogeyman myth is now "stronger than ever" it's thanks to the Obama administration and its poodles, European and Persian Gulf-based, with their Three Stooges strategy from Libya to Syria. Afghanistan is a completely different story; there's no "historical" al-Qaeda left, only a handful in the Pakistani tribal areas.

So al-Zawahiri knew the bogeyman would inevitably be resurrected, in total synch with his recent fatwas, because "long" - or "infinite" - war equals perpetual funding for the Orwellian/Panopticon complex. And a convenient foreign enemy is essential; no one in Washington could possibly admit on the record the real "enemy", as in strategic competitor, is the Chinese dragon.

Doctor Evil and the Orwellian/Panopticon complex are on the same side - and that explains why he'll be allowed to be a motor mouth fatwa machine for as long as he wants, and won't be nabbed like some patsy in the underwear bomber mould. The complex is back in offense. Reform the NSA? Interfere with our metadata? What for? We have just alerted the US government to "pre-9/11" levels of terrorist chatter!

AQAP might well decide not to participate in this worldwide "pre-9/11" script. Real jihadis, after all, are not foolish enough to be caught by XKeystroke. So here's a Dylanesque riddle for you. All along the watchtower, a false flag is approaching - said the joker to the thief. There's too much Terra confusion, and we won't get no relief.

[Peter Lemkin]

Great piece above! We all are in serious trouble. The madmen [and a few madwomen] are running the World to ruin. The 'war of terror' is the shortest distance to a totalitarian neo-fascist World police state.....and we are well on that road, IMO.

[Magda Hassan]

This Year's Yemen Leak Isn't Angering Congress as Much as Last Year's

AP

Philip Bump Aug 6, 2013
Someone in the government told the press confidential details of a terror operation centered on Yemen. In 2012, that meant broad outcry, with members of Congress calling for investigations and criminal charges. In 2013: crickets.
The Guardian's Spencer Ackerman raised that point indirectly in a tweet this morning.

Not even going to bother asking why no one's mad about official leaks re "ingenious" al-Qaida liquid explosive & intercepting Zawahiri calls
Spencer Ackerman (@attackerman) August 6, 2013

We covered the liquid explosive revelation on Monday. But it's the al Zawahiri interception that's more telling.
The McClatchy news service broke the story on how the United States got the intelligence that prompted it to close embassies in the Mideast, including in Yemen. It reported on Sunday:

An official who'd been briefed on the matter in Sanaa, the Yemeni capital, told McClatchy that the embassy closings and travel advisory were the result of an intercepted communication between Nasir al-Wuhayshi, the head of the Yemen-based Al Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, and al Qaida leader Ayman al Zawahiri in which Zawahiri gave "clear orders" to al-Wuhaysi, who was recently named al Qaida's general manager, to carry out an attack.

Other media outlets, including The New York Times withheld the identity of the participants at the request of the government.
In May of 2012, the Associated Press was similarly responsive to the government's request when it learned about a bombing plot thwarted by the CIA.

The AP learned about the thwarted plot last week but agreed to White House and CIA requests not to publish it immediately because the sensitive intelligence operation was still under way. Once officials said those concerns were allayed, the AP decided to disclose the plot Monday despite requests from the Obama administration to wait for an official announcement Tuesday.

U.S. officials, who were briefed on the operation, insisted on anonymity to discuss the case, which the U.S. has never officially acknowledged.

Less than a year later, the AP learned that the leak that prompted that story resulted in a Justice Department subpoena of the organization's phone records, in an attempt to identify the story's source one of those officials in the last sentence above.
Justice's reaction unquestionably stemmed in part from the response on Capitol Hill. Less than a week after the AP ran its story, members of Congress were calling for criminal investigations of the leak, as reported by Bloomberg.

"The FBI has to do a full and complete investigation, because this really is criminal in the literal sense of the word to leak out this type of sensitive, classified information on really almost unparalleled penetration of the enemy," Representative Peter King, a New York Republican who is chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, said in an interview today on CNN's "State of the Union" television program.

King wasn't alone in that call. Bloomberg also quotes similar sentiment from Rep. Mike Rogers of Michigan and Sen. Dianne Feinstein of California, the latter of whom stated that "it gives a tip off [to al Qaeda] to be more careful about who they use as their couriers, as their bombers."
In the aftermath of the leak detailing how the United States learned about the current threat, the response has been very different. Neither Rogers or Feinstein has made public comment about the revelations that it involved al Zawahiri. King, however, all but confirmed that detail to CNN.

King said that the information had been developing for a while, but remained tight-lipped about any possible sources and other details, mostly reiterating known information.

"[Al Qaeda] would be, I would say, the main driving force here, that's pretty much what's been confirmed by the government, that it is coming out of Yemen and it is Al Qaeda in the Arabian peninsula…where most of these threats do come from."

What might account for the differing response? A few things.

• The nature of the threats. That the government was calling for embassy closures couldn't be kept secret. In the light of the recent attention paid to NSA surveillance, it was natural that reporters should try and determine how and why the action was taken. The 2012 event, however, was not public.
  
• The politics of the moment. In 2012, Washington was preparing for the presidential election. Charges that the Obama administration selectively leaked information date back to well before the campaign. Raising the issue in the months leading up to it served a political purpose; Feinstein's concurrence allowed the Democrats to reinforce their commitment to cracking down.
  

For an example of this last point, take the critique of one Congressman, responding to the Benghazi attack only weeks before the election as reported by Fox News.

Rogers alleges that selective leaks over the weekend, including a report in the Washington Post, are part of an orchestrated effort by the administration to legitimize early statements by U.S. Ambassador to the U.N. Susan Rice and others about the genesis of the attack.

Yes, that's the same Mike Rogers who hasn't had public comment on the al Zawahiri leak.
Which is the most obvious reason for the differing response. The current leak serves the needs of those defending the NSA's surveillance, including Rogers, which is what Ackerman was getting at. Feinstein isn't likely to complain about a leak that bolsters her side in the uphill fight in which she's engaged. NSA advocates were quick to champion the revelations as a point in their favor. It's unlikely, then, that the administration, which holds that view, was unaware or unhappy with the information getting out.
This could change. It took a week in 2012 before there were calls for an investigation. If by this point next week King, Rogers, and Feinstein aren't calling for an investigation into who revealed that detail to McClatchy (and the other news outlets), any cynicism you may have felt about the government's even-handedness on intelligence revelations might be proved to be warranted.
http://www.theatlanticwire.com/politics/...ZI.twitter

[Peter Lemkin]

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Washington Thinks You Are Stupid

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There's the old saying that if the government fears the people, there is liberty, but if the people fear the government there is tyranny. The criminals in Washington not only do not fear us, they do not respect us. Washington looks upon Americans as stupid sheeple.


Washington believes that it can tell the population anything and the people will believe it. For example, the official line is that the recession that began in December 2007 ended in June 2009. Many Americans believe this even though they have not personally experienced economic recovery. Indeed, they are sinking further into poverty and near poverty.


And don't forget those nonexistent weapons of mass destruction that Saddam Hussein was alleged by Washington to possess. Or the Gulf of Tonkin fake event when Washington claimed that its warship was attacked by North Vietnam. Really, the list of official lies is very long. Anyone who believes anything that Washington says is too naive to be let out of the house alone. But Americans believe the lies, because that is what they think patriotism requires.


Relying on the proven gullibility of the bulk of the US population, Washington claims to have uncovered an al Qaeda plot to attack US embassies across North Africa and the Middle East. To foil the plot, Washington closed 19 embassies for the past week-end and for this week also.


Washington has not explained how closing the embassies foils the plot. If al Qaeda wants to blow up the embassies, it can blow them up whether they are open or closed.


If al Qaeda wants to kill the embassy personnel, they can kill them at home or on the way to work or later in the embassies when the alert passes.


I only check in with the presstitute media in order to ascertain whether my current estimate of their prostitution for Washington is accurate. Possibly I missed some expression of skepticism about the latest terrorist threat. But I did hear NPR's account. Back in the Reagan years, NPR was an independent voice. Today it is part of the presstitute media. NPR lies for Washington with the best of them.


The US media has ignored the obvious fact that as soon as the American population, Congress, and Washington's puppet allies, such as Germany, made an issue over the NSA's clearly unconstitutional and totally illegal universal spying, the Obama regime pushed the Fear Button and hyped a new terror plot in order to shut up critics and bring Congress and Germany back in line.


Washington proclaimed that a "threat" was discovered that al Qaeda -- an organization that Washington is using in Washington's effort to overthrow the Assad government in Syria and one that is enriched by US military contracts to affiliated groups in Afghanistan -- was going to blow up US embassies in the Middle East and North Africa. Washington did not explain why al Qaeda, a recipient of Washington's largess, was going to turn off the money spigot by attacking US embassies.


I am surprised that bombs haven't been set off in the embassies in order to prove the value of the National Stasi Agency's spying, thereby shaming those in Congress and among the puppet states in Europe who object to the spying.


Once you give a moment's thought to Washington's claim, you see that Washington is proving its impotence by hyping such non-existent threats. Officially, the US has been at war with al Qaeda since October 7, 2001. The "superpower" has been battling a few thousand lightly armed al Qaeda for almost 12 years, and what is the result?


Despite Washington's claims to have killed al Qaeda's top leaders, including Osama bin Laden himself, Washington has lost the war. Al Qaeda has grown so powerful that it not only fights in Syria, with Washington's help, against Assad, but also has prevented the US military from occupying Afghanistan. Moreover, in addition to al Qaeda's military success against the "superpower" and the chaos that al Qaeda continues to produce in Iraq, al Qaeda now is so powerful that it can shut down US embassies all across the Middle East and North Africa. The "threat" which was supposed to boost the NSA's position actually proves Washington's powerlessness.


We an only pray that soon al Qaeda shuts down Washington itself. Imagine the sense of American liberation if Washington simply was shut down, or even better if Washington could be put under Punjab's magic blanket and disappeared. For the 99 percent, and the rest of the world, Washington is nothing but an oppressor.

[Magda Hassan]

Even Yemeni Government Spokesman Finds Foiled Plot Hard to Believe

Posted By J. Dana Stuster Wednesday, August 7, 2013 - 5:59 PM Share

Even the spokesman for the Yemeni embassy in Washington, D.C. is having a hard time believing a plot by al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula that the Yemeni government says it foiled.
Several news agencies -- including the BBC, the New York Times, and Bloomberg, among others -- reported this morning that the Yemeni government claimed it had stopped a large AQAP attack in Yemen's Hadhramaut province. As the BBC reported:

Yemeni government spokesman Rajeh Badi said the plot involved blowing up oil pipelines and taking control of certain cities -- including two ports in the south, one of which accounts for the bulk of Yemen's oil exports and is where a number of foreign workers are employed.
"There were attempts to control key cities in Yemen like Mukala and Bawzeer," said Mr Badi.
"This would be co-ordinated with attacks by al-Qaeda members on the gas facilities in Shebwa city and the blowing up of the gas pipe in Belhaf city."

That didn't sound right to Mohammed Albasha, a spokesman for the Yemeni embassy, and he said so on his personal Twitter account:

For the record: #AQAP doesn't have the man power nor the capabilities to capture a city the size of Mukkala in Hadramout #Yemen #CommonSense
Mohammed Albasha (@Yemen411) August 7, 2013

@BaFana3 @gregorydjohnsen I second that
Mohammed Albasha (@Yemen411) August 7, 2013

AQAP notably tried to seize Yemeni towns in 2011 and 2012, as the country's popular uprising drew the military's attention to the capital, Sanaa. And it was a strategic blunder for the organization. AQAP and its political arm, Ansar al-Sharia, alienated the towns they occupied and were ousted by the Yemeni military and "popular committees" -- militias formed by local sheikhs to retake the area. Since being pushed out in mid-2012, AQAP has remained in hiding.
The New York Times was more measured in its appraisal of the threat, reporting that the target was not whole cities, but rather a specific Canadian-operated oil installation in the Hadhramaut port capital of Mukallah. But even this seemed strange to some Yemen experts.
"[Yemeni authorities are] claiming that this plot that they've foiled includes attacks planned against oil pipelines here, specifically to take control of several ports in Yemen," Iona Craig, a correspondent for the Times of London, told BBC World Service from Sanaa. "Now, the oil pipelines get attacked on a regular basis -- in fact, they've been blown up twice in the last two weeks -- so that's not unusual, and it's not always related to al Qaeda." In fact, oil pipelines are frequently targeted by Yemeni tribal groups as a means of forcing concessions from the central government.
Adding to the dubious nature of the report: The Yemeni government did not specify how it thwarted the supposed attack. The United States conducted an airstrike in neighboring Shabwa province on Wednesday, killing seven, but that hardly seems sufficient to stop what was, by the Yemeni government's account, to be a large-scale attack.
The Yemeni government has a history of making outsized claims about its counterterrorism successes; on at least two occasions, officials claimed to have killed AQAP's deputy emir, Said al-Shihri, only for Shihri to release statements demonstrating that he was still very much alive. But there's little wonder why the Yemeni government would claim a victory now. With the U.S. diplomatic community in lockdown in response to a terror threat emanating from Yemen -- Craig, speaking to the BBC, describes the persistent hum of P-3 Orion electronic surveillance planes circling Sanaa today -- the government has every reason to try and demonstrate that it's doing its part in combating AQAP. As for what precisely that part has consisted of -- well, Yemeni officials have been more tight-lipped on that front.
http://blog.foreignpolicy.com/posts/2013...to_believe

[David Guyatt]

There's the old saying that if the government fears the people, there is liberty, but if the people fear the government there is tyranny.

Let me adjust that quote for the 21st century:

There's an old saying that if the government fears the people, it will work tirelessly until it has the proper tyrannical protocols in place to repress them, as liberty is not to be permitted.

Ah, that's better...

[Malcolm Pryce]

Magda thanks for posting that, it's a very welcome dose of reality to set against the fantasy mutterings of BBC security parrot, Frank Gardner.