#state-sponsored terror

[disquietingtruths]

John Pilger: "There Is No War On Terror... There Is A War OF Terror." 

John Pilger speaks frankly about the "War on Terror," saying that no such thing exists. "There is a war OF terror," he says, and it is primarily state-sponsored terror, and most of the victims of terrorism in the world are Muslims. Please watch this and share. So profound. People need to understand this. As Martin Luther King Jr. said, "the greatest purveyor of violence today is by my own government."

[cavalierzee]

~ Britain's Secret Terror Force ~

"We Were Not There To Act Like An Army Unit, We Were There To Act Like A Terror Group" Soldiers from an undercover unit used by the British army in Northern Ireland killed unarmed civilians, former members have told BBC One's Panorama.

Speaking publicly for the first time, the ex-members of the Military Reaction Force (MRF), which was disbanded in 1973, said they had been tasked with "hunting down" IRA members in Belfast.

  Panorama has been told the MRF consisted of about 40 men handpicked from across the British army.

  Before it was disbanded 40 years ago, after 18 months, plain-clothes soldiers carried out round-the-clock patrols of west Belfast - the heartland of the IRA - in unmarked cars.

  Three former members of the unit, who agreed to be interviewed on condition their identities were disguised, said they had posed as Belfast City Council road sweepers, dustmen and even "meths drinkers", carrying out surveillance from street gutters.

But surveillance was just one part of their work.

  One of the soldiers said they had also fired on suspected IRA members.

  He described their mission as "to draw out the IRA and to minimise their activities... if they needed shooting, they'd be shot".

  Another former member of the unit said: "We never wore uniform - very few people knew what rank anyone was anyway.

  A third former MRF soldier said: "If you had a player who was a well-known shooter who carried out quite a lot of assassinations... then he had to be taken out.

  The MRF's operational records have been destroyed and its former members refused to incriminate themselves or their comrades in specific incidents when interviewed by Panorama.

  But they admitted shooting and killing unarmed civilians.

  When asked if on occasion the MRF would make an assumption that someone had a weapon, even if they could not see one, one of the former soldiers replied "occasionally".

  "We were going down there and finding, looking for our targets, finding them and taking them down." 

  "We may not have seen a weapon, but there more than likely would have been weapons there in a vigilante patrol."

  Panorama: Britain's Secret Terror Force, BBC One, Thursday 21 November at 21:00 GMT and then available in the UK on the BBC iPlayer.

[cavalierzee]

~ NATO's Secret Armies ~

In Italy, on 3 August 1990, then-prime minister Giulio Andreotti confirmed the existence of a secret army code-named “Gladio” – the Latin word for “sword” – within the state. His testimony before the Senate subcommittee investigating terrorism in Italy sent shockwaves through the Italian parliament and the public, as speculation arose that the secret army had possibly manipulated Italian politics through acts of terrorism.

Andreotti revealed that the secret Gladio army had been hidden within the Defense Ministry as a subsection of the military secret service, SISMI. General Vito Miceli, a former director of the Italian military secret service, could hardly believe that Andreotti had lifted the secret, and protested:

“I have gone to prison because I did not want to reveal the existence of this super secret organization. And now Andreotti comes along and tells it to parliament!” According to a document compiled by the Italian military secret service in 1959, the secret armies had a two-fold strategic purpose: firstly, to operate as a so-called “stay-behind” group in the case of a Soviet invasion and to carry out a guerrilla war in occupied territories; secondly, to carry out domestic operations in case of “emergency situations”.

The military secret services’ perceptions of what constituted an “emergency” was well defined in Cold War Italy and focused on the increasing strength of the Italian Communist and the Socialist parties, both of which were tasked with weakening NATO “from within”. Felice Casson, an Italian judge who during his investigations into right-wing terrorism had first discovered the secret Gladio army and had forced Andreotti to take a stand, found that the secret army had linked up with right-wing terrorists in order to confront “emergency situations”.

The terrorists, supplied by the secret army, carried out bomb attacks in public places, blamed them on the Italian left, and were thereafter protected from prosecution by the military secret service. “You had to attack civilians, the people, women, children, innocent people, unknown people far removed from any political game,” right-wing terrorist Vincezo Vinciguerra explained the so-called “strategy of tension” to Casson.

“The reason was quite simple. They were supposed to force these people, the Italian public, to turn to the state to ask for greater security. This is the political logic that lies behind all the massacres and the bombings which remain unpunished, because the state cannot convict itself or declare itself responsible for what happened.”

[Dr. Daniele Ganser]

[cavalierzee]

~ Terrorist ~

Just a Word

'Terrorist' is just a word, one I wish I'd never heard

When it's used to vilify, without the need to question why

Only fools would swift condemn, that which has not befallen them

Until you know what lies behind, the actions of a tortured mind

Thank your God for sparing you, the suffering others have lived through

Where are the cries of just demand, for Arabs driven from their land?

Blame the victim, turn the cheek, praise the bully, kick the weak!

Mock the man who truth does speak

Tinker, tailor, soldier, spy, greed, corruption, torture, lies!

Blair invasion, sly persuasion, annihilation, massacred nation

Keep on running, karma's coming!

Money talks, truth walks, oil spills, greed kills

Tide is turning, London's burning!

Bombs will fall and blood will flow, as sure as my own name I know

Until corrupt dictators go, brutal, rotten, to the core

Their day has come, they rule no more

Show me the man who will not fight, to save his child, his home, his right!

You can call him what you like, you're not in his sorry plight

Cowards stay and Martyrs go, I know not where, but this I know

Speak your truth and stand your ground, fight your corner

When all around, point the finger, purse the lips, pin the label, 'Terrorist'!

Just a word, but one that sticks, even when the cap don't fit

But for the grace of God go I, remember that, before you cry

False accusation, names of shame, at those who may not be to blame,

Their crime, refused to play the game, of meek acceptance, dumbing down,

Your life, your choice; Warrior / Clown

The work of: Mhara Costello 

[thelibertarianclarion]

David Lory VanDerBeek US Senate TV Interview Fast and Furious, 911 Al-Qaeda, Cuban Missile Crisis II 

[theamericanbear]

I really feel disappointed that this crime is going to be forgotten. I think the American people ought to know what really happened and how the power of their government is being abused by this Administration. Americans should start asking why a boy was targeted for killing. In addition to my grandson's killing, the missile killed my brother's grandson, who was a 17-year-old kid, who was not an American citizen but is a human being, killed in cold blood. I cannot comprehend how my teenage grandson was killed by a Hellfire missile, how nothing was left of him except small pieces of flesh. Why? Is America safer now that a boy was killed? [The U.S.] killed my son Anwar without a trial for any crime he committed ... They killed him just for his freedom of speech. I urge the American people to bring the killers to justice. I urge them to expose the hypocrisy of the 2009 Nobel Prize laureate. To some, he may be that. To me and my family, he is nothing more than a child killer.

Nasser al_Awlaki, the father of Anwar al-Awlaki and the grandfather of Abdulrahman al-Awlaki quoted in an excellent piece by Tom Finn and Noah Browning.

"They" don't hate us for our freedom. "They" hate us because the policies of the United States are responsible for the deaths of sons and daughters and grandsons and granddaughters, and, conversely, mothers and fathers and grandmothers and grandfathers. And "they", seemingly, can't do anything about it. Ask yourself how "radical" you might become if this was your reality.

[theamericanbear]

Executions are not an extraordinary occurrence in the United States, [Troy] Davis was the 36th person to be executed this year and the 1267th since capital punishment was reinstated in 1976. It is an accepted part of the legal system that the state has the power of life and death over its citizens, and the exercise of that power is relatively regular and mundane. It is worth nothing that this power is exercised even more liberally over individuals whom the state does not [have] jurisdiction over, as hundreds of thousands of Iraqi and Afghan citizens have come to find out through no culpability of their own.

What was interesting in the outcry over Troy Davis’ execution was the reaction of many individuals to his death. Prospect of his innocence aside, there was a general revulsion and feeling that “something had changed” in the country that allowed such an act of devastating, methodical violence to occur. How could the government, that benevolent if sometimes confused entity which safeguards both freedom and order allow such an event to occur? How could they have had such a callous and relaxed attitude towards the taking of a life? It is good that people ask these questions (although sadly it seems as though the issue is already being drowned out in the hyperactive noise machine which is the popular media). The reality is that the manner in which Troy Davis’ life was taken, one which did not respect life by taking it only in the absence of doubt of innocence, is the modus operandi for the state in how it operates across the world.

“We think its worth it.” is how Madeleine Albright characterized the deaths of an estimated 500,000+ Iraqi children from sanctions when the question was posed to her. The destruction of huge amounts of life, undoubtedly innocent life; the life of children, justified and executed by government technocrats with the same clinical detachment as those who inserted the needle into Troy Davis’ right arm. His execution could only have been shocking to a person who is completely oblivious to how the government operates in their name, without their specific consent or often, knowledge. As much of a miscarriage of justice Davis’ case appeared to have been, he had still been granted the right to some sort of trial and hearing however flawed and inconclusive. On a daily basis people are killed by the state in a way not dissimilar to Mr. Davis, but without even the pretext of a judicial process respecting the sanctity of their life. “Suspected militants” are murdered every day in faraway places just as “suspected cop-killers” are murdered at home; just as much people, just as potentially innocent as Troy Davis may likely have been. Don’t forget about Troy Davis, remember who killed him and scrutinize his murderer as closely as you would scrutinize one who lives on your block. Nothing is new or innovative here; this is standard operating procedure. When you go off fighting monsters you inevitably become one, whether you are taking lives at home or abroad. If his death affected you in any way, please fight to honour his passing by circumscribing the ability of the state to destroy life; and stop it from creating millions more Troy Davis’ in every corner of the world.

[theamericanbear]

One popular way of determining the legitimacy of ... exercises of violence is to invoke democracy. Democratic governments, as opposed to authoritarian regimes, legitimately use violence because there has been an opportunity for citizens to freely form a social contract with the government. Turkey and Israel are democratic countries, and thus their use of force is legitimate. Ditto with NATO’s attack on Libyan targets. Democratic countries use violence in a self-limited way. As political philosopher John Keane writes in Violence and Democracy, “Ideally conceived, democracies understand themselves as systems of lawful power-sharing, whose actors are attuned to the dangers of violence – and to the mutual benefits of non-violence.” As such, Keane argues, democracies progressively “democratize violence” by subjecting it to rules, procedures, consent. When democracies use violence overseas, they only do so against undemocratic forces such as tyrants or terrorist groups. Democracies, according to one of the few postulates of international relations, don’t go to war with one another.

This is a common argument, and it surely makes democracies feel more comfortable about their use of violence. The problem with the argument is that it doesn’t square well with the historical record. After all, democratic states have committed gross acts of violence, whether against members of society not deemed full citizens (slaves, suspected terrorists) or against non-combatants that have inadvertently found themselves in a battleground (Hiroshima, Gaza, Afghanistan). Keane establishes an escape clause for his argument by suggesting that “mature democracies” do not commit such violations. Certainly when it comes to the death penalty, democracies have matured in their practice (each year since 1990, three countries on average have abolished the death penalty). But what about when it comes to the use of force overseas, say, the U.S. invasion of Iraq? Did the United States simply suffer a fit of immaturity?