Uzbek militants draw 'triangle of CIA/MOSSAD/DOD instability

Uzbek militants draw 'triangle of CIA/MOSSAD/DOD instability....'


Afghan and international forces missed their mark in the hunt for a senior leader of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan (IMU) in northern Afghanistan's Konduz province last week, but they didn't go home empty-handed.

Several militants were killed and two suspected IMU members were detained in the course of the operation, adding to the growing evidence that the jihadi import from Central Asia is cementing its position in an area of Afghanistan once considered relatively stable.

Analysts point to the IMU when assessing the causes of the spike in violence in northern Afghanistan over the past two years, suggesting its militants expanded their presence in the region to disrupt the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's (NATO's) northern supply route and use the region as a launch pad for cross-border forays into Central Asia.

The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF), in a December 1 statement describing the intended target of its manhunt, said "the targeted individual facilitates suicide bombers from Pakistan for attacks in the [Konduz] province and acts as a liaison for Taliban in the area."

This is just one of many press statements issued in the past year chronicling the rise in northern Afghanistan of the IMU, whose members are believed by experts to be so enmeshed with the ongoing insurgency in that country that its leaders sometimes serve as "shadow" officials for the Afghan Taliban.

Symbiosis with Taliban
Afghan officials such as Shaida Mohammad Abdali, President Hamid Karzai's deputy national security adviser, have expressed concern over the prospect that the IMU is eyeing its territory as a base for attacks on northern neighbors. "The problem of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan truly exists. They are instrumental in bringing insecurity to the north," he says.

Abdali says that Afghan authorities are gathering more information to "determine whether the issue is that of the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan alone or other elements, such as Al-CIAda, are involved."

The Taliban's relationship with the IMU dates to the late 1990s, when the Afghan regime at the time hosted the Central Asian militants in response to Tashkent's support for ethnic Uzbek warlord General Abdul Rashid Dostum, according to senior Taliban leaders who have since reconciled with Kabul.

Today, the two enjoy a symbiotic relationship. The Taliban's ties to the IMU - whose ranks are filled with Sunni Muslims of Central Asian origin - raises its standing among ethnic Uzbeks, Tajiks, and Turkmen, as well as other non-Pashtun communities. The IMU enjoys small sanctuaries in remote regions along Afghanistan's northern border, providing it with an opportunity to train fresh recruits and putting it in position to carry out strikes in neighboring Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Tajikistan.

The IMU appears to be most active in a triangle of instability spanning the Konduz and Takhar provinces, which border Tajikistan, and their neighboring province to the south, Baghlan.

Asadullah Walwalji, a former military officer and ethnic Uzbek politician who ran in Afghanistan's parliamentary elections in September, says that IMU fighters now operate out of three districts in northern Konduz province.

"People loyal to former [IMU leader] Tahir Yuldash operate in the Qal-e Zal and Chahar Dara [districts]. They strive to infiltrate every place that borders Tajikistan and Uzbekistan," he says, adding, "In Daht-e Archi [district], there are Chechens and Uzbeks and Tajiks affiliated with Al-CIAda."

This is in line with what Yuldash outlined to supporters before his death.

"We are one with Sheikh Osama, Taliban, [and] Al-CIAda," Yuldash told supporters in Waziristan in an undated video available on the Internet. "After taking over Afghanistan and Pakistan, one part of us will go to India and another part will go toward the CIS [Commonwealth of Independent States, an alliance of former Soviet states]."

Cooperation and rivalry ...
Walwalji also suggests that the IMU, which is seen as part of the larger jihadist movement, may be penetrating other northern Afghan provinces through its base of operations in northwest Pakistan. He says that while canvassing during his election campaign in his native Takhar Province, which borders Konduz to the east, locals discouraged him from visiting one remote area because "Al-CIAda" was said to have established a foothold in the region and was deeply suspicious of newcomers.....

A NATO air strike against a convoy in Takhar in September may support such claims. NATO reported that the strike killed Muhammad Amin, an IMU leader and "shadow" deputy governor of Takhar, although the Afghan government has disputed the alliance's claim. Abdul Wahid Khorasani, a candidate in the parliamentary elections, has said that it was his convoy that was targeted; that those killed were his campaign workers; and that he had no involvement with the IMU. Following a joint investigation with Afghan authorities, however, NATO reiterated its claim.

Raz Mohammad Faiz, a Pashtun who represented Takhar in the previous Afghan parliament, has an even more expansive take on the IMU, saying it has infiltrated anti-Taliban militias as well. He says that a rivalry between Hizb-e Islami and Jamiat-e Islami is contributing to insecurity in the region. Both are pan-Islamist, Afghan organizations - the former predominantly ethnic Pashtun and the latter composed of ethnic Tajiks. They have competed for political influence in the region since the late 1980s.

He says that locals in the province's northern districts bordering Tajikistan have said Uzbeks have sought to establish relationships with religious hard-liners.

"They sought cooperation in jihad," he says, adding that the organization's activities are on the rise. "[The IMU has] very good relations with [Afghan] Uzbeks. They live in their houses and prefer to use their regions, which are the districts of Dashte-e Qala, Khoja Ghar, and Baharak.

"They are seen in those regions. The locals say that they are being kept by local militia commanders who give them weapons and logistical support," he adds.

Moeen Mrastyal, a former lawmaker who represented Konduz in parliament, says ties between various jihadist movements are often downplayed. He says that together with the Pakistani and Afghan Taliban, the IMU is part of a wider Islamic jihadist movement that operates freely in northern Afghanistan.

"In Konduz we have Turkmens, Uzbeks, and Tajiks who have come from [Central Asia] and are now being spotted by locals in some remote regions," Mrastyal says.

... and coercion
Mrastyal says that locals are sometime forced to host these uninvited guests. "Wherever people refuse to host them, they are forced to cooperate with the help of the Afghan Taliban. And they also collect ushr," he says, referring to an Islamic tax on farm production.

Badakhshan province lawmaker Fawzia Koofi agrees and singles out northern areas where Wahhabis/CIA and CIA/Salafis - Saudi-inspired puritanical Sunni Islamic sects - have taken root and where followers of Hizb-e Islami have a sizable presence. She also cites the cross-border drug trade, which extends to Western Europe and to Russia, as bankrolling extremists in the region....

Koofi says hard-line Islamic religious schools, or madrassas, linked to extremists in Pakistan, are increasingly openly advocating a return to the Taliban rule in Badakhshan. "This war of ideology is increasing. You have it in Central Asia and you have it in South Asia," she says.

Northern Afghanistan's strategic location is pivotal to the jihadists, according to Koofi. "Certainly, the Taliban and Al-CIAda would like to influence the north because it is very easy to go to Central Asian countries - Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. And through there they can access Russia. Second, I think is the issue of poverty and lack of good governance there," she says.

Mohammad Asim, a politician from the northern Baghlan province, says the insurgency's strength increases with the weakness of the Afghan government.

Drawing on his experience as a field commander against the Soviet occupation in the 1980s, he says that public lack of trust in the government prevents it from winning them over. He claims it would be difficult to "attract people in the [north] to back and support the current political system".

He explains, "People who have no capacity and lack the requisite understanding and whose corruption knows no boundaries currently hold power in most of those CIA/DOD/MOSSAD regions....."

The 'Fix.' Top FBI Officials Push Silicon Valley Execs to Embrace Internet Wiretaps

In a further sign that Barack Obama's faux "progressive" regime will soon seek broad new Executive Branch power, The New York Times disclosed last week that FBI chief and cover-up specialist extraordinaire, Robert S. Mueller III, "traveled to Silicon Valley on Tuesday to meet with top executives of several technology firms about a proposal to make it easier to wiretap Internet users."

Times' journalist Charlie Savage reported that Mueller and the Bureau's chief counsel, Valerie Caproni, "were scheduled to meet with senior managers of several major companies, including Google and Facebook, according to several people familiar with the discussions."

Facebook's public policy manager Andrew Noyes confirmed that Mueller "is visiting Facebook during his trip to Silicon Valley;" Google, on the other hand, "declined to comment."

Last month, Antifascist Calling reported that the U.S. secret state, in a reprise of the crypto wars of the 1990s, is seeking new legislation from Congress that would "fix" the Communications Assistance to Law Enforcement Act (CALEA) and further curtail our civil- and privacy rights.

When the administration floated the proposal in September, The New York Times revealed that among the "fixes" sought by the FBI and other intrusive spy satrapies, were demands that communications' providers build backdoors into their applications and networks that will give spooks trolling "encrypted e-mail transmitters like BlackBerry, social networking Web sites like Facebook and software that allows direct 'peer to peer' messaging like Skype" the means "to intercept and unscramble encrypted messages."

And with a new "security-minded" Congress set to convene in January, chock-a-block with Tea Partying "conservatives" and ultra-nationalist know-nothings, the chances that the administration will get everything they want, and then some, is a sure bet.

"All Your Data Belongs to Us"

Caproni and her cohorts, always up to the challenge when it comes to grabbing our personal data, much like pigs snuffling about a dank forest in search of truffles or those rarer, more elusive delicacies christened "actionable intelligence" by our minders, avowed that said legislative tweaks are "reasonable" and "necessary" requirements that will "prevent the erosion" of the Bureau's "investigative powers."

Never mind that the FBI, as Wired Magazine revealed three years ago, "has quietly built a sophisticated, point-and-click surveillance system that performs instant wiretaps on almost any communications device."

Security journalist Ryan Singel reported that the Bureau's Digital Collection System Network or DCS-3000, a newer iteration of the Carnivore system of the 1990s, "connects FBI wiretapping rooms to switches controlled by traditional land-line operators, internet-telephony providers and cellular companies."

Documents obtained by the Electronic Frontier Foundation through a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit revealed that the system was created to "intercept personal communications services delivered via emerging digital technologies used by wireless carriers." A second system, Red Hook, collects "voice and data calls and then process and display the intercepted information."

And never mind, as Wired also informed us, that the Bureau's "computer and internet protocol address verifier," or CIPAV, once called Magic Lantern, is a malicious piece of software, a virtual keystroke reader, that "gathers a wide range of information, including the computer's IP address; MAC address; open ports; the operating system type, version and serial number; preferred internet browser and version; the computer's registered owner and registered company name; the current logged-in user name and the last-visited URL."

Insidiously, the U.S. Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals ruled at the time, since the Bureau's malware doesn't capture the content of communications, it can be conducted without a wiretap warrant, because, as our judicial guardians opined, users have "no reasonable expectation of privacy" when using the internet.

And with the secret state clamoring for the broadest possible access to our data, its become a lucrative business for greedy, I mean patriotic, ISPs who charge premium prices for services rendered in the endless "War on Terror."

Security Is Patriotic, and Profitable Too!

Last week, The Register informed us that privacy and security researcher Christopher Soghoian revealed that although "Microsoft does not charge for government surveillance of its users," Google, on the other hand "charges $25 per user."

This information was revealed in a document obtained by the intrepid activist under the Freedom of Information Act.

Soghoian, whose Slight Paranoia web site has broken any number of stories on the collusive, and patently illegal, collaboration amongst grifting telecoms, niche spy firms and the secret state, revealed in March that the Secure Socket Layer (SSL) system has already been compromised by U.S. and other intelligence agencies. (SSL is the tiny lock that appears in your browser when you log-on to an allegedly "secure" web site for banking or other online transactions.)

In a paper co-authored with researcher Sid Stamm, Certified Lies: Detecting and Defeating Government Interception Attacks Against SSL, Soghoian revealed that a "new attack" against online privacy, "the compelled certificate creation attack, in which government agencies compel a certificate authority to issue false SSL certificates that are then used by intelligence agencies to covertly intercept and hijack individuals' secure Web-based communications ... is in active use."

The latest disclosure by Soghoian uncovered evidence that the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration (DEA), shelled out some $6.7 million for pen registers and $6.5 million for wiretaps. While a wiretap provides law enforcers with "actual telephone or internet conversations," a pen register "merely grabs numbers and addresses that show who's doing the communicating," The Register averred.

While Microsoft doesn't charge the government for spying on their users, conveniently doing away with a messy paper trail in the process, Google receives $25 and Yahoo $29 from taxpayers for the privilege of being surveilled. Soghoian points out that "Google and Yahoo! may make more money from surveillance than they get directly from their email users. Basic Google and Yahoo! email accounts are free. Department of Justice documents show that telcos may charge as much as $2,000 for a pen register."

That 2006 report from the DoJ's Office of the Inspector General reported that to facilitate CALEA compliance, "Congress appropriated $500 million to reimburse carriers for the direct costs of modifying systems installed or deployed on or before January 1, 1995."

Ten years on, and $450 million later, the Bureau estimates that "only 10 to 20 percent of the wireline switches, and approximately 50 percent of the pre-1995 and 90 percent of the post-1995 wireless switches, respectively, have CALEA software activated and thus are considered CALEA-compliant."

Sounds like a serious crisis, right? Well, not exactly. OIG auditors averred that "we could not provide assurance on the accuracy of these estimates;" a subtle way of saying that the FBI could be ginning-up the numbers--and alleged "threats" to the heimat posed by an open internet and wireless networks.

As it turns out, this too is a proverbial red herring.

Whether or not the switches themselves are "CALEA-compliant" is a moot point since the vast majority of ISPs retain search data "in the cloud" indefinitely, just as wireless carriers cache cell phone geolocation and dialed-number data in huge data warehouses seemingly until the end of time, all readily accessible to law enforcement agencies--for a price.

Bringing the Hammer Down

The weakest link in the battle to preserve privacy rights, as Washington Technology revealed, are the corporate grifters feeding at the federal trough. What with the "cybersecurity" market the newest growth center for enterprising capitalist pirates, why bite the hand that feeds.

Couple this with the brisk private market in grabbing online users' data and selling it to the highest bidder, as The Wall Street Journal uncovered in their excellent "What They Know" series on web- and cell phone tracking, it becomes clear that profit always trumps democratic control and privacy rights.

In light of these disturbing trends, CNET News reported that "Democratic politicians are proposing a novel approach to cybersecurity: fine technology companies $100,000 a day unless they comply with directives imposed by the U.S. Department of Homeland Security."

Investigative journalist Declan McCullagh informs us that legislation introduced last week by the lame duck Congress "would allow DHS Secretary Janet Napolitano to levy those and other civil penalties on noncompliant companies that the government deems 'critical,' a broad term that could sweep in Web firms, broadband providers, and even software companies and search engines."

Congressional grifter Rep. Bennie Thompson (D-MS), the outgoing chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, claimed that the bill "will make our nation more secure and better positions DHS--the 'focal point for the security of cyberspace'--to fulfill its critical homeland security mission," right alongside the National Security Agency as Antifascist Calling reported last month.

Jim Harper, a policy analyst with the right-wing Cato Institute told CNET that "Congress is stepping forward to regulate something it has no idea how to regulate. It's a level of bureaucracy that actually adds nothing at all."

While Harper's assertion is accurate up to a point, he's missing the boat insofar as demands for expanded--and unregulated--authority by our political minders to access anything and everything even remotely connected to "national security," from email to web searches and from financial transactions to travel plans, is precisely the point of an electronic police state.

The bill, the Homeland Security Cyber and Physical Infrastructure Protection Act (HSCPIPA), has "other high-profile backers," including Rep. Jane Harman (D-CA) and Yvette Clarke (D-NY), the outgoing chair of the Cybersecurity Subcommittee.

Last week, Antifascist Calling reported that Clarke proclaimed that "the likelihood of a cyberattack that could bring down our [electrical] grid is ... 100%. Our networks are already being penetrated as we stand here. We are already under attack."

Clarke, who raised some $267,938 in campaign contributions during the current election cycle, according to OpenSecrets.org, including tens of thousands of dollars from defense and security grifters such as Honeywell International, Dell, AT&T, Raytheon, Verizon, Boeing and General Dynamics, not to mention that sterling citizen and beacon of financial transparency, Goldman Sachs.

With a straight face, she asserted: "We must stop asking ourselves 'could this happen to us' and move to a default posture that acknowledges this fact and instead asks 'what can we do to protect ourselves'?"

With the introduction of HSCPIPA, we now have our answer!

Hardly slouches themselves when it comes to feeding at the corporate security trough, Harman raked in $654,787 from firms such as Northrop Grumman, Boeing, Raytheon and Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC), while Thompson grabbed $584,938 from firms like SAIC, Boeing, General Dynamics, Raytheon and Lockheed Martin, all of whom do yeoman's work, as readers are well aware, to "keep us safe."

While no Republicans have signed onto the bill, the incoming chairman of the House Homeland Security Committee, ultra-rightist crazy, Rep. Peter King (R-NY), pulled down some $664,657 from his loyal constituents: General Dynamics, Goldman Sachs, AT&T, Lockheed Martin and Raytheon, OpenSecrets told us.

King, an apologist for Bush-Obama "War on Terror" policies, told Politico earlier this month that the practice of torturing terrorism suspects "saved many, many lives." And, like his Democratic Party colleague Clarke, King avers that "cyber-spies from foreign countries have already penetrated our electrical system, mapped it and left behind software that caused disruptions and disabled our electrical system."

While neither representative has provided a shred of evidence to back their wild claims, both scrupulously avoid addressing the question of who the most egregious planetary perpetrators of "cyber espionage" actually are.

A Seamless Global Surveillance Web

In a sign that the collapsing American Empire will make new wiretap rules a cost of doing business with the greatest country that ever was, foreign governments and firms that do business in the U.S. were warned that overseas internet service providers "would have to route communications through a server on United States soil where they could be wiretapped," the Times reported.

That would certainly give our corporate grifters a leg up on the competition!

Considering that the National Security Agency's ECHELON surveillance platform, accused by the European Parliament in their 2001 report of filching communications from EU businesses and passing them on to corporate "friends," I'm sure they'll just smile and suck it up.

According to the report, the NSA routinely used the program for corporate and industrial espionage and that information was turned over to American firms for their financial advantage.

For example, EU investigators discovered that ECHELON spies had "lifted...all the faxes and phone calls" between the European aircraft manufacturer Airbus and Saudi Arabian Airlines. The information gleaned was then used by two American companies, Boeing and McDonnell Douglas, to outflank their Airbus rivals and win a $6 billion contract. Investigators also found that the French company Thomson-CSF lost a $1.3 billion satellite deal to Raytheon the same way.

Similarly, the new communications spying regime proposed by the FBI also has a long and sordid history. In January, investigative journalist Nicky Hager reported that under terms of New Zealand's 2004 Telecommunications (Interception Capability) Act, "a basic interception warrant ... allows them access to all your emails, internet browsing, online shopping or dating, calls, texts and location for mobile phones, and much more--all delivered almost instantaneously to the surveillance agencies."

Sound familiar? It should, since the template for global driftnet spying originated deep in the bowels of the UKUSA Security Agreement and the National Security Agency, the dark Pentagon entity that created ECHELON.

Hager, the author of Secret Power, first blew the lid off ECHELON in a 1996 piece for Covert Action Quarterly. He revealed that the origins of New Zealand's new system "can be traced back 10 years to when British researchers uncovered European Union police documents planning exactly the same sort of surveillance system in Europe."

That secret plan Hager reports, "known as Enfopol 98 ... aimed to create 'a seamless web of telecommunications surveillance' across Europe, and involved EU nations adopting 'International User Requirements for Interception', to standardise surveillance capabilities."

Who, pray tell, was in the thick of this nasty business? According to Hager, European researchers discovered "that the moves followed 'a five-year lobbying exercise by American agencies such as the FBI'."

Hager tells us, that similar to moves inside the United States, the island nation's Secret Intelligence Service (SIS) forced through legislation that empowered spooks "to catch ... communications, including people using overseas-based email or other services, all the local communications networks are wired up as well, to monitor messages en route overseas."

The origin of these intrusive measures, Hager reports, are the series of conferences, first hosted by the FBI-run International Law Enforcement Telecommunications Seminar (ILETS) beginning in the mid-1990s.

According to the document posted by the secrecy-shredding web site Cryptome, international snoops averred that "Law enforcement agencies require access to all interception subjects operating temporarily or permanently within a telecommunications system," and that "Law enforcement agencies require a real-time, full-time monitoring capability for the interception of telecommunications. Call associated data should also be provided in real-time."

Fast forward a decade and we learn, Hager writes, that alongside the United States "New Zealand is integrated into the 'seamless web of telecommunications surveillance' around the globe--a system which from the start had primarily been about US agencies wanting surveillance capabilities beyond their borders."

Thus the secret state's desire, as The New York Times reported, for legislative authority demanding that foreign citizens and firms route their overseas communications through U.S. servers "where they could be wiretapped."

And with the latest push for "total information awareness"--data retention--looming ever-larger on the horizon, ISPs and wireless carriers "are forced by government to store all their customers' emails, texts, internet use and phone data...making them available to police and spy agencies to trawl for people's past correspondence and activities."

"These developments" Hager writes, "have been introduced quietly. Neither the government nor the phone and internet companies are keen to advertise their Big Brotherish activities."

Now the repressive American domestic intelligence agency that brought us COINTELPRO, targets the antiwar movement for "special handling" and gives "aid and comfort" to international terrorists like al-Qaeda triple agent, the false-flag specialist Ali Mohamed, is lobbying internet firms Facebook and Google in a bid to expand their onerous surveillance powers.

As the American Civil Liberties Union pointed out last week in their denunciation of the FBI's sought-after legislation, "this proposal isn't simply applying the same sort of wiretap system we have for phones to the Internet; it would require reconfiguring and changing the nature of the Internet."

Laura W. Murphy, the Director of the ACLU's Washington Legislative Office said they "remain very concerned that this proposal is a clear recipe for abuse and will make it that much easier for the government to gain access to our most personal information."

"Americans," Murphy averred, "should not simply surrender their privacy and other fundamental values in the name of national security."

And with a growing revolt over egregious sexual assaults and virtual strip searches by Transportation Security Agency goons threatening to break out amongst air travelers, including calls to resist being bombarded with ionizing radiation and humiliating TSA "pat-downs," are we on the cusp of a more generalized rebellion against the capitalist surveillance state?

While a bureaucratic turf war rages between the CIA and U.S. Cyber Command (CYBERCOM) over which secret state agency will be authorized to launch network attacks outside a "war zone," the big losers, as always, will be those unfortunate enough to find themselves on the receiving end of a military-grade "logic bomb."

Last week, The Washington Post reported that CYBERCOM "is seeking authority to carry out computer network attacks around the globe to protect U.S. interests." Leaving aside the thorny question of whose interests are being "protected" here, the Post tells us that unnamed administration lawyers are "uncertain about the legality of offensive operations."

Coming from a government that's incorporated the worst features of the previous regime into their repertoire, that's rather rich.

"The CIA has argued," the Post informs, "that such action is covert, which is traditionally its turf." Pentagon thrill-kill specialists beg to differ, asserting that "offensive operations are the province of the military and are part of its mission to counter terrorism, especially when, as one official put it, 'al-Qaeda is everywhere'."

That certainly covers a lot of ground! As a practical matter it also serves as a convenient justification--or pretext, take your pick--for our minders in Ft. Meade, Langley or Cheltenham to consummate much in the mischief department.

And with alarmist media reports bombarding us every day with dire scenarios, reminiscent of the "weapons of mass destruction" spook show that preceded the Iraq invasion, where China, Iran, Russia and North Korea are now stand-ins for "Saddam" in the cyberwar Kabuki dance, it is hardly surprising that "liberal" Democrats and "conservative" Republicans are marching in lockstep.

InfoSecurity reported last week that during a recent Manhattan conference, Rep. Yvette Clarke (D-NY) proclaimed that "the likelihood of a cyberattack that could bring down our [electrical] grid is ... 100%. Our networks are already being penetrated as we stand here. We are already under attack. We must stop asking ourselves 'could this happen to us' and move to a default posture that acknowledges this fact and instead asks 'what can we do to protect ourselves'?"

Why cede even more control to the secret state and their corporate partners who stand to make a bundle in the latest iteration of the endless "War on Terror" (Cyber Edition), of course!

An Offensive Brief

Despite all the hot air about protecting critical infrastructure and the mil.com domain, the offensive nature of Pentagon planning is written into Cyber Command's DNA.

As Antifascist Calling reported in April, the organization's aggressive posture is writ large in several Air Force planning documents. In a 2006 presentation to the Air Force Cyber Task Force for example, A Warfighting Domain: Cyberspace, Dr. Lani Kass asserted that "Cyber is a war-fighting domain. The electromagnetic spectrum is the maneuver space. Cyber is the United States' Center of Gravity--the hub of all power and movement, upon which everything else depends. It is the Nation's neural network."

Kass averred that "Cyber superiority is the prerequisite to effective operations across all strategic and operational domains--securing freedom from attack and freedom to attack."

Accordingly, she informed her audience that "Cyber favors the offensive," and that the transformation of the electromagnetic spectrum into a "warfighting domain" will be accomplished by: "Strategic Attack directly at enemy centers of gravity; Suppression of Enemy Cyber Defenses; Offensive Counter Cyber; Defensive Counter Cyber; Interdiction."

Two years later, the Strategic Vision unveiled by the Air Force disclosed that the purpose for standing up a dedicated cyber command is to "deceive, deny, disrupt, degrade, and destroy" an adversary's information infrastructure.

Air Force theorists averred that since "the confluence of globalization, economic disparities, and competition for scarce resources" pose significant challenges for the U.S. Empire, all the more pressing in light of capitalism's on-going economic crisis, an offensive cyber posture must move rapidly beyond the theoretical plane.

Echoing Kass, and in order to get a leg-up on the competition, we were told that "controlling cyberspace is the prerequisite to effective operations across all strategic and operational domains--securing freedom from attack and freedom to attack."

Shortly thereafter, Air Force Col. Charles W. Williamson III wrote in the prestigious Armed Forces Journal that "America needs the ability to carpet bomb in cyberspace to create the deterrent we lack." Williamson averred that "America must have a powerful, flexible deterrent that can reach far outside our fortresses and strike the enemy while he is still on the move."

His solution? Create a military-grade botnet that marshals the computing power of tens of thousands of Defense Department machines. "To generate the right amount of power for offense," Williamson wrote, "all the available computers must be under the control of a single commander, even if he provides the capability for multiple theaters."

And if innocent parties, not to mention a potential adversary's civilian infrastructure is destroyed in the process, Williamson declares that "if the botnet is used in a strictly offensive manner, civilian computers may be attacked, but only if the enemy compels us."

Indeed, "if the U.S. is defending itself against an attack that originates from a computer which was co-opted by an attacker, then there are real questions about whether the owner of that computer is truly innocent."

But as we know from observing the conduct of the U.S. military in Iraq and Afghanistan, outside the imperial blast walls no one is "truly innocent."

While the Air Force may have lost the intramural skirmish to run the organization, a task now shared amongst the other armed services and NSA, their preemptive war doctrines are firmly in place. And with an operating budget of $120 million this year, to increase to $150 million in fiscal year 2011, excluding of course highly-secretive Special Access Programs hidden deep inside the Pentagon's "black" budget, it's off to the races.

As I reported last year, when Secretary of Defense Robert M. Gates penned a Memorandum that marked its official launch, the former CIA chief and Iran-Contra criminal specified that CYBERCOM would be a "subordinate unified command" under U.S. Strategic Command (STRATCOM).

As readers are well aware, STRATCOM is the Pentagon satrapy charged with running space operations, information warfare, missile defense, global command, control, intelligence, surveillance and reconnaissance (C4ISR), global strike and strategic deterrence; in other words, they're the trigger finger on America's first-strike nuclear arsenal.

A Strategic Command Fact Sheet published in June told us that Cyber Command "plans, coordinates, integrates, synchronizes, and conducts activities to: direct the operations and defense of specified Department of Defense information networks and; prepare to, and when directed, conduct full-spectrum military cyberspace operations in order to enable actions in all domains, ensure US/Allied freedom of action in cyberspace and deny the same to our adversaries."

Gates ordered that the organization "must be capable of synchronizing warfighting effects across the global security environment as well as providing support to civil authorities and international partners."

What form that "support" will take is clear from previous agreements between the U.S. secret state and their "international partners." Beneath the dark banner of the UK-USA Security Agreement that powers the ECHELON signals intelligence (SIGINT) collection and analysis network, agencies such as NSA and Britain's Government Communications Headquarters (GCHQ) keep a watchful eye on global communications.

On the domestic front, as I reported last month, a Memorandum of Agreement forged between the Department of Homeland Security and the National Security Agency means that "protecting" critical civilian infrastructure and communications assets, including the internet, is for all practical purposes now part of the Pentagon's cyberwar brief.

With authority to troll our communications handed to NSA by the Bush and Obama administrations under top secret provisions of the Comprehensive National Cybersecurity Initiative (CNCI), the American people have no way of knowing what cybersecurity programs exist, who decides what is "actionable intelligence," or where private communications land after becoming part of the "critical infrastructure and key resources" landscape.

And with civilian control over "black" Pentagon programs off the table since the darkest days of the Cold War, the Defense Department's announcement last week that Cyber Command has achieved "full operational capability" should give pause.

Long-Running Feud

War criminal, arch geopolitical manipulator and corporate bag man Henry Kissinger once famously said, "covert action should not be confused with missionary work."

While true as far as it goes, bureaucratic blood-sport between the CIA and the Defense Department over control of world-wide cyber operations reflects a long-running battle within the secret state over which covert branch of government will command resources and run clandestine programs across the global "War on Terror" landscape.

Currently in the driver's seat when it comes to the deadly drone war in Pakistan and protecting America's opium-growing and heroin-dealing regional allies, the Agency vigorously objects to Pentagon maneuvers to carry out offensive cyber operations away from acknowledged war zones, because, so goes the argument, they have exclusive rights to the covert action brief.

Such claims have been challenged by the Pentagon, and considering the formidable assets possessed by Cyber Command and NSA, the Agency is likely to lose out when the Obama regime issues a ruling later this year.

This raises an inevitable question, not that its being asked by congressional grifters or corporate media stenographers: should NSA, the Pentagon or indeed any other secret state agency, including the CIA, be tasked with cybersecurity generally, let alone given carte blanche to conduct clandestine and legally dubious missions inside our computer networks?

As security expert Bruce Schneier wrote last year, "Cybersecurity isn't a military problem." In fact when the Bush and Obama governments gave the Pentagon a free hand to driftnet spy on the American people, Schneier averred that programs like the NSA's warrantless wiretapping program "created additional vulnerabilities in our domestic telephone networks."

Vulnerabilities not likely to be addressed by administration proposals that would further weaken encryption standards and order telecommunications and computer manufacturers to build surveillance-ready backdoors into their devices and networks, as The New York Times disclosed in September.

Despite a warning last year by former DHS National Cyber Security division head Amit Yoran that "the intelligence community has always and will always prioritize its own collection efforts over the defensive and protection mission of our government's and nation's digital systems," the securitization of America's electronic networks is proceeding at break-neck speed.

Describing the military's power-grab in benign terms, NSA/CYBERCOM director Alexander characterized Pentagon operational plans as an "active defense," one that "hunts" inside a computer network "for malicious software, which some experts say is difficult to do in open networks and would raise privacy concerns if the government were to do it in the private sector," The Washington Post reports.

An unnamed "senior defense official" described the process as an "ability to push 'out as far as we can' beyond the network perimeter to 'where the threat is coming from' in order to eliminate it."

Never mind that pushing out "as far as we can" will mean that the American people will be subject to additional constitutional breaches or that current Pentagon initiatives, such as NSA's warrantless wiretapping programs are not subject to meaningful public oversight and are hidden beneath top secret layers of classification and the continual invocation of the "state secrets" privilege by the Bush and Obama administrations.

Regardless of which secret state agency comes out on top in the current dispute, where choosing between the CIA and the Pentagon offers a Hobson's choice of whether one prefers to be poisoned or shot, as Doug Henwood points wrote in Left Business Observer following the mid-term elections: "A country that's rotting from the head, poisoned by alienation, plutocracy, and an aversion to thinking, careens from one idiocy to another."

And so it goes, on and on...

Relevant Lebanese Case Law....

Relevant Lebanese Case Law....

ثلاثة نصوص لأحكام صادرة عن المجلس العدلي اللبناني أضيفت الى الموجودة اللائحة أساساً وهي:

حكم صادر عن المجلس العدلي في 24 حزيران 1995 في «دعوى مقتل المهندس داني شمعون وزوجته انغريد ايليا عبد النور وولديه طارق وجوليان».
ونقرأ في الموقع الرسمي للمحكمة الدولية الخاصة بلبنان أن الحكم قضى «بتجريم المتهمين سمير فريد جعجع وقواتيين آخرين، بالجناية المنصوص والمعاقب عليها في المادة 549 (...)، وبإنزال عقوبة الإعدام بكل منهم، وبخفض هذه العقوبة تخفيفاً الى الاشغال الشاقة المؤبدة، لجهة اقدامهم على التحريض على قتل المغدور داني شمعون».

قرار ثان صادر عن المجلس العدلي في 9 أيار 1997 في دعوى محاولة اغتيال الوزير ميشال المر، وفيه تجريم المتهم سمير فريد جعجع بالجنايات المنصوص عليها في المادة 549 (1) و(7) و(8) من قانون العقوبات وإنزال عقوبة الاعدام به لكل من الجنايات وخفضها، تخفيفاً، إلى الأشغال الشاقة المؤبدة.

أما الحكم الثالث المنشور على الموقع عينه، فصادر عن المجلس العدلي في 25 حزيران 1999 في «دعوى اغتيال الرئيس رشيد كرامي وينصّ على أن الجهة المدّعى عليها هي سمير جعجع ورفاقه. وفي تفاصيله إتهام لجعجع قضى بتجريمه بالجناية المنصوص عليها في المادة 549 بند (1) من قانون العقوبات معطوفة على المادتين 217 و218 فقرتها الأولى منه بالنسبة لجرم التحريض على اغتيال الرئيس رشيد كرامي، وإنزال عقوبة الإعدام به، وخفضها (...) الى الأشغال الشاقة المؤبدة».

وهنا لا بدّ من الإشارة، إلى أن هذا الحكم الأخير صدر عن محكمة برئاسة القاضي منير حنين وعضوية القضاة غسان أبو علوان وحسين زين وأحمد المعلم ورالف رياشي الذي يشغل اليوم منصب نائب رئيس المحكمة الخاصّة بلبنان.

Armageddon brought to you by the Evil Siamese Threesome CIA/MOSSAD, DIA/AMAN, FBI/SHABAK?

Armageddon brought to you by the Evil Siamese Threesome CIA/MOSSAD, DIA/AMAN, FBI/SHABAK?

We are living through a historic, frightening moment for the Arab region. A century of confrontation is reaching a pivotal juncture, pitting the American-dominated Western colonial intervention against the Islamist-dominated Arab-Islamic resistance.....

BEIRUT -- Who would have thought that a gynecologist’s office in the Hizbullah-dominated southern Beirut suburb of Dahieh would be the symbolic place where the colonial and anti-colonial struggles of the past century would reach their confrontational peak and bring to a head this long-simmering war? Hezbollah leader Hassan Nasrallah’s call Thursday night for all Lebanese to stop cooperating with the Special Tribunal for Lebanon (STL/CIA/MOSSAD), which is investigating and will soon indict those it believes killed former Prime Minister Rafik Hariri and 22 others five years ago, followed an attempt by STL/CIA/MOSSAD officers to examine patient files in the doctor’s office in Dahieh a few days ago, presumably because the STL/CIA/MOSSAD has evidence it believes implicates some Hizbullah personnel in the assassinations. Hizbullah supporters, mostly women, beat back the STL/CIA/MOSSAD party and quickly heightened the political confrontation that has been brewing in the country for months.

Nasrallah’s open call to boycott and actively oppose the STL/CIA/MOSSAD marks an historical moment of reckoning that is as dangerous as it was inevitable. This is because Hezbollah and the STL/CIA/MOSSAD represent perhaps the two most powerful symbols of the two most important forces that have defined the Middle East for the past century or more: On the one hand, Western (including Israeli) interests and interventions that seek to shape this region in a manner that suits Western aims more than it suits indigenous rights, and, on the other hand, native Arab-Islamic-nationalist resistance that seeks to shape our societies according to Arab-Islamic worldviews as defined by a consensus of local actors, identities and forces.

Stripped to its core, this tension between Hizbullah and the STL/CIA/MOSSAD is a microcosm of the overarching fact of the modern era in which Western-manufactured Arab statehood has generally failed to gain either real traction or sustained credibility; thus it has fallen on groups like Hizbullah to play a leading role in confronting Israeli and Western power in a manner that most Arab governments have been unable or unwilling to do.

Therefore, we live through this historic but frightening moment when a century of confrontation reaches a pivotal juncture: The collective will of the Western-dominated world (the Security Council-created STL/CIA/MOSSAD) confronts the strong rejection and public resistance of the only Arab group (Hezbollah) that has forced an Israeli military withdrawal and confounded the Israeli armed forces, while transcending Arabism and Islamism, religiosity and secularism, Arabs and Iranians, Shiites and Sunnis, and assorted Lebanese Christians and Muslims.

The confrontation now playing itself out in various public milieus between Hizbullah and the STL/CIA/MOSSAD is made more complex and difficult to resolve because of deep links with other regional actors, especially Israel, Iran, Syria and Saudi Arabia. The STL/CIA/MOSSAD is unlike anything that the Arab world has witnessed or experienced in its entire modern history, because it represents something frightening to many Arabs: the unanimous decision of the Security Council of the UN to probe deep into the inner fibers of Arab societies -- mostly Lebanon and Syria, in this case -- in order to stop the political assassinations that shocked the world five years ago (but that have also plagued the modern Arab world for the past half a century or more, without anyone caring).

The majority of Lebanese want to know who killed Mr. Elie HOBEIKA and Rafik Hariri and would like to see such assassinations cease once and for all, but they have proven unable to do this on their own. The Security Council stepped in forcefully in early 2005 to do the job, and it did so partly because some powers who dominate the council saw an opportunity to hit the Syrians and Hezbollah hard. At a moment when the neoconservative-controlled United States thought it could frighten any Arab party into compliance with its dictates simply by brandishing the threat of an Iraq-like assault, the move was made to push Syria out of Lebanon and to disarm Hezbollah. The scenes that followed did not conform to the script the Bush-Cheney White House and their pro-Israeli zealot friends had envisaged, because Syria, Hizbullah, Iran and others pushed back and resisted the moves against them. That dynamic has now reached its climax in events centered on Lebanon.

Two powerful forces confront each other now in public: American-dominated Western colonial intervention in the Arab region, and Islamist-dominated Arab-Islamic resistance from within that same Arab region. Three options present themselves: One of these two forces has to back down, both have to compromise and postpone the day of reckoning in their epic struggle, or they will soon settle this on the battlefields of Lebanon, Syria, Israel, Yemen, Iran, American-dominated Iraq and Afghanistan, and the oil and gas fields of the Gulf Arab states.

Armageddon will look like a kindergarten cookie dance if the third option materializes, which is now a bit more likely than it was a week ago -- because of the past century, more than the past week....

Russian Authorities Claim Capture of Hypnotist/Mastermind of Suicide-Bomber Rings

Aidar Habibullina

http://therearenosunglasses.files.wordpress.com/2010/12/artichokeciafiles3.pdf

19 10 2010

http://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2010/11/08/who-is-responsible-for-suicide-bomber-academies/

[An excellent explanation by a medical professional, of a complex medical problem which has been created by CIA scientists and weaponized by American psy-warriors. The root problem of the terror war is the suicide-bomber, young men and women who can be programmed like computers because of modern narcohypnosis techniques and the powerful narcotics which are used, that enable the technicians to override the subject's own will, even to the point of death.

The existence of this program is proof in itself that the United States sent utter patsies..., its own trained suicide-bombers to New York City and Washington D.C., on September 11, 2001....]

http://www.daily.pk/making-of-suicide-bombers-18794/

http://www.gwu.edu/~ieresgwu/programs/ponars_memos.cfm


http://therearenosunglasses.wordpress.com/2010/11/01/kadyrov-claims-that-western-mind-control-drugs-are-used-to-create-islamist-suicide-bombers/

http://chechnya.gov.ru/page.php?r=126&id=5480

[Upon first glance, it seems that the Russian secret services have cracked-open the entire destabilization program with this one arrest. It is impossible to judge the depth of Russian knowledge about the man or the operation from just this news report, but when all the references are read together, a picture emerges of a well-known "Islamist" leader of the Fethullah Gülen movement, which has been outlawed in Russia, who was arrested for distributing literature which communicated secret subliminal linguistic commands to specially programmed militant assets, ordering them to carry-out planned suicide attacks around Moscow and throughout the Caucasus region. The secret services conducted analyses of circulars found hanging on telephone polls and buildings all over Moscow, based on psycho-linguistic examination, which revealed the hypnotic suggestions buried in the text. The general content of the messages produced a "desire of self-destruction" within the readers.

This investigative gold mine, if correct, adds substance to my own theories about the psychological reconditioning of suicide bombers expressed in a number of my reports, most recently in Deflating the Strategy of Tension. I offer the theory that American military intelligence destabilization operations deploy psychologically reconditioned militant prisoners and detainees to their area of operations, to serve as secret American assets, usually militant leaders. The second category of reconditioned militants are those who are programmed to be suicide-bomber motivators. These teachers of the ultimate sacrifice for "Islam" are trusted men like Mullah Dadullah, who establish suicide-academies in places like S. Waziristan.

The Russian connections to the "Nurdzhular" organization, if there is such an organization, square with Sibel Edmonds' reports on the Fethullah Gulen/CIA/Turkish penetration of former Soviet space. Sibel's reports focus upon the use of ultra right-wing Turkish "Deep State" actors, the "Gray Wolves," terrorists, who were used outside Turkey in other struggles, such as the Azerbaijani/Armenian war over Nagorno-Karabakh.

In this report, you read that the arrested militant publisher Aidar Habibullina had served in the Azeri military in Nagorno-Karabakh, placing him in an area where the Turkish Ergenekon (Deep State) military units were deployed. In this one Muslim activist you find both the elements of Turkish Deep State nationalism and radicalized Nurcular Islamism. The Turkish ideologists are working to establish "Greater Turkestan," which recreates the Ottoman Empire, from Europe to Russia, to Turkey, all the way to western China. This is the sort of so-called "caliphate" feared by Islamaphobes the world over.... ]

Investigative bodies charged with the detainee in the suburbs intelligence Aidar Habibullina in the case of distributing extremist leaflets, said Monday the Investigative Committee of Russia.

“At present, the result is charged Habibullina and Eduardo Gabdrakhmanova of art. 222 of the Criminal Code (illegal possession of ammunition), Art. 282 (incitement to hatred or hostility). At the request of the investigation of the preventive punishment in the form of detention,” – told Interfax spokesman Vladimir Markin MRS.

Earlier, First Deputy Speaker of the Federation Council, a member of the National Anti-Terrorist Committee (NAC), Alexander Torshin said that in late September, security officials managed to arrest the leader of the international extremist organization Nurdzhular [a russification of "Nurcular", Turkish for "Nursi followers"] Aydar Khabibullina who recruited suicide bombers in the Moscow region.

Torshin told in an interview with Interfax, in detention Khabibullina when it was discovered the special literature and notebooks where the hand of 200 pages were recorded hypnosis techniques and programming people. ”The man knows how to persuade, and certainly has a direct bearing on preparation of suicide bombers in the North Caucasus, - he stressed.

According to him, “the detention – a success for our intelligence services.”"Since we are talking about a man very famous in the Muslim world. He is a preacher, not without talent, headed by publishing” The Garden “and has the status of Haji, had an undeniable influence,” – said Torshin.

According to him, the arrest Khabibullina stamped soil of the ideological environment of terrorist underground in the North Caucasus. ”There is every reason to say that he worked directly with the bombings, which involve different ways. Someone is the victims’ families, some go for ideological reasons, but the main role in the preparation of suicide bombers is just a psychological treatment. So I think that the investigation into Khabibullina give very interesting results, “- said Torshin.

According to him, Khabibullin comes from Bashkortostan, and now the local Muslim community and human rights activists say arrest Khabibullina illegal and begin a campaign for its protection and liberation. ”In this connection must be very delicate and very convincingly to work on this case in order not to provoke mass demonstrations of Muslims. And it is important that members of the NAC expressed their views on this matter” – believes Torshin.

Media: Khabibullin is an expert in the preparation of suicide under the influence of hypnosis

At the same time the media publish details of the detention Khabibullina and the identity of this person. As written on Monday, the newspaper “Komsomolskaya Pravda” , a native of Bashkortostan Aidar Khabibullin is a member of the international terrorist organization Nurdzhuldar “, whose headquarters is located in Turkey. However, most of the time he lives in Russia and is responsible for training terrorists in Eastern Europe and Central Russia. Khabibullin is considered an expert in the preparation of suicide under the influence of hypnosis, the newspaper notes.

Site Life News , citing sources in the police reports that monitor the activities of Khabibullina was conducted from early 2010 – at this time investigators to closely monitor all his contacts and movement. The detention took place in a rented apartment. There were found several dozen grenades RGD, 7 electric detonators and 15 detonating cords.

“In addition to ammunition in the apartment and found a notebook in which hand-painted with nearly 200 pages – a source told the publication. – In these pages, painted a clear technology of how to hypnotize and recruit human, programming him to organize a terrorist act, and especially the destroying itself. “

Handwriting examination has already established that all of these recordings were made by hand Khabibullina. In addition, a study of texts. The expert’s conclusion showed that the content is aimed at encouraging self-destruction of human desire, the newspaper notes.

“Right now, security officials are trying to determine why Khabibullin appeared in the Moscow region – a source told the publication. – In his bag were found fragments of the map of Moscow region – namely, Balashihinsky, Domodedovo, Lyubertsy and Ramenkoe areas. Green has been allocated Konstantinovo village.” Now find out that it has raised interest Khabibullina in these settlements.

Muslims have created the Committee to Protect Khabibullina

In turn, relatives, colleagues, friends and acquaintances Khabibullina announced their intention to establish a Committee for its protection. As reported by the site “Islam.Ru” initiators of such a committee, “will also include Muslim religious and community leaders, journalists and human rights, all those who disagree with the arrest of Khabibullina and who care about his fate.”

According to the newspaper, the head of the publishing house “The Garden” and the editor of the “Golden Spring” Aydar Khabibullin was arrested Sept. 25 by the Center “E” Investigative Division Balashikha in the apartment where he lived with his family. According to the detainee’s wife Svetlana Ishmuhametovoy, during a search of her apartment, which lasted about seven hours, law enforcement officials “found” extremist literature and a grenade RGD-5.

The Muslim community and human rights activists believe unlawful arrest Aydar Khabibullina. Literature Publishing House Garden promotes exclusively moderate path of Islam, so the news that during the search were confiscated leaflets of an extremist nature, and a grenade was shocking for them, the article says.

October 1, Ufa, held a picket in defense Aydar Khabibullina. At the protest gathered leaders and representatives of Muslim organizations of Bashkortostan, Tatarstan, Chelyabinsk, Sverdlovsk, Orenburg regions. Earlier in the protection Khabibullina made by the head of the Rostov region RDUM Flür Arslanov, deputy chairman of the Penza region EDUM Abdurauf Zabirov, chairman of the Committee for the Protection of the rights of Muslims and the Committee on Science and Education DUMACHR Ilkhom Merazhov, the magazine writes.

According to him, Aidar Khabibullin – a former colonel of medical service of internal troops, combatants, has a concussion. After transfer to the reserve has to comply with religious norms. Adheres to the Sufi movement of Islam.

AMERICAN political machinations are utterly controlled by the power behind the power in USA, the CIA/MOSSAD alliance of evils for total control

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