Philosophers have long noted the utility of fear to the state. Machiavelli notoriously
argued that a good leader should induce fear in the populace in order to control the rabble. Hobbes in “The
Leviathan” argued that fear effectively motivates the creation of a social contract in which citizens cede their
freedoms to the sovereign. The people understandably want to be safe from harm. The ruler imposes security and
order in exchange for the surrender of certain public freedoms. As Hobbes saw it, there was no other way:
Humans, left without a strong sovereign leader controlling their actions, would degenerate into mob rule. It is
the fear of this state of nature — not of the sovereign per se, but of a world without the order the sovereign
can impose — that leads us to form the social contract and surrender at least part of our freedom.
Al Qaeda's Dark Secret Exposed
Terrorism's Big Dirty Secret
In a special video address, Alex Jones
terms the al Qaeda intelligence operation a 'swiss army knife' for destabilization. Simply put, it is a tool to
foment crisis that allows the globalists to offer up a solution.The shadowy enemy supposedly run by Osama bin
Laden and top jihadists like Anwar al-Awlaki is really run out of U.S. foreign policy and the Pentagon. It is
perhaps government's greatest hoax... and one of the oldest tricks in the book.
For the average person who has lived through the phony 'War on Terror', a post-9/11 age of fear that has swirled
around the persona of bin Laden, it may be quite confusing to now read headlines like Libya: the West and al-Qaeda
on the same side. Indeed the rebel forces trying to topple Gaddafi admittedly include thousands of al Qaeda forces
while enjoying total backing-- weapons, planes, funding and forces-- from the U.S., Britain, NATO and other
allies.
HOW TERRORISM REALLY WORKS
(EVEN CHILDREN UNDERSTAND THE REAL GAME, WHAT ABOUT YOU?)
For More Information On False Flag Events Click Here: False
Flag Event
CIA And Pentagon Asset Anwar Al Awlaki Dined At
Pentagon Months After 9/11
Terrorist ANWAR
AL AWLAKI Invited To Pentagon By Secretary Of Defense Days After 9-11
9/11
Mastermind Invited to Pentagon! - Alex Jones Tv
Topic Starts @ 2:20
Al-Qaeda terror mastermind Anwar Al-Awlaki, the man who helped plot the
aborted Christmas Day bombing, the Fort Hood shooting, the Times Square bombing attempt, and who also
preached to the alleged September 11 hijackers, dined at the Pentagon just months after 9/11 documents
obtained by Fox News show.
American-born cleric Awlaki's role as a key figure in almost every recent terror plot targeting the United States
and Canada, coupled with his visit to the Pentagon, only confirms our long stated position that Awlaki is a chief
terrorist patsy-handler for the CIA -- he is the federal government's premier false flag agent.
"Documents exclusively obtained by Fox News, including an FBI interview conducted after the Fort Hood shooting in
November 2009, state that Awlaki was taken to the Pentagon as part of the military's outreach to the Muslim
community in the immediate aftermath of the attacks," states the report.
Awlaki was vetted before he was invited to attend a luncheon at the Pentagon in the secretary of the Army's Office
of Government Counsel. His appearance at the meeting was deliberately engineered despite Awlaki's ties to three of
the alleged 9/11 hijackers -- Nawaf al-Hazmi, Khalid al-Mihdhar and Hani Hanjour -- who were identified as the
suicide pilots that slammed Flight 77 into the Pentagon.
Following the Fort Hood shooting it was also revealed that shooter Major Nidal Malik Hasan had been in contact with
Awlaki before the rampage. Awlaki preached to both Hasan and the 9/11 hijackers at the Dar al-Hijrah mosque in
Falls Church, Virginia in 2001.
Awlaki also met with Christmas Day underwear bomber Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab and acted as "the middle-man between
the young Nigerian and the bombmaker." As we have thoroughly documented, the Delta Flight 253 incident was staged
from start to finish. The US State Department allowed Abdulmutallab to board the plane, aided by a well-dressed
Indian man, despite the fact that he was on a terror watch list and had no passport.
The Christmas Day incident was a boon for companies linked with the military-industrial complex, as it greased the
skids for the global introduction of naked body scanners in airports.
Times Square bomber Faisal Shahzad was also reported to have been directed by Awlaki before his failed attack on
May 1st
"The Pentagon has offered no explanation of how a man, now on the CIA kills or capture list, ended up at a special
lunch for Muslim outreach," states the Fox News report.
The explanation is quite simple -- Awlaki is the CIA's chief patsy handler for planning and staging false flag
terror attacks through the dupes that he radicalizes.
Fabled Enemies is required viewing for those who wish to understand the dark and murderous
modus operandi behind state sponsored false flag terror and how such operations are employed to instill fear
and politically manipulate the public into surrendering their liberty.
Seven years after 9/11, the supposed mastermind behind the attacks is still at large, and the nation is
entrenched in multiple wars in the Middle East. Is Bin Laden the evil behind the attack or a mere front man in
a larger picture, a Bogeyman?
American-born Al-Qaeda terror leader Anwar
Al-Awlaki, who met with Pentagon officials months after 9/11, is by no means the only patsy handler the Central
Intelligence Agency has used over the years to oversee false flag attacks in America and around the world. In
fact, just about every major terror attack has been run by an operative with direct ties to the US
military-industrial complex.
As we
reported this morning, Awlaki, the man who helped plot the aborted Christmas Day bombing, the Fort Hood
shooting, the Times Square bombing attempt, and who also preached to the alleged September 11 hijackers, dined
at the Pentagon just months after 9/11 documents obtained by Fox News show.
Awlaki is just the latest in a long list of Al-Qaeda double agents whose activity proves that the
terror organization is little more than a front for the Pentagon and the US war machine. Let’s take a look at
just a handful of dozens of examples of terror masterminds working for intelligence agencies.
Emad A. Salem
The feds used FBI informant Emad A. Salem to run the first World Trade Center bombing back in
1993.
Before the attack, the FBI planted informant Salem within a radical Arab group in New York led by
Ramzi Yousef. Salem was ordered to encourage the group to carry out a bombing targeting the World Trade Center’s
twin towers. Under the illusion that the project was a sting operation, Salem asked the FBI for harmless dummy
explosives which he would use to assemble the bomb and then pass on to the group. At this point the FBI cut
Salem out of the loop and provided the group with real explosives, leading to the attack on February 26 that
killed six and injured over a thousand people. The FBI’s failure to prevent the bombing was reported on by the New York Times in
October 1993, as well as CBS News in the clip below.
In July 2005, terror expert John Loftus told Fox News, “…back in the late 1990s, the leaders all
worked for British intelligence in Kosovo. Believe it or not, British intelligence actually hired some Al-Qaeda
guys to help defend the Muslim rights in Albania and in Kosovo. That’s when Al-Muhajiroun got started.”
Loftus said that British MI6 colluded to hide Aswat after the 7/7 bombings. Watch the clip
below.
David Headley
The mastermind behind the Mumbai massacre was “an American secret agent who went rogue,” reported the London Times, referring
to Washington-born David Headley, who was caught smuggling heroin but then given a job by the Drug Enforcement
Agency and later went on to work for the CIA.
“The Indian media has raised the possibility that Mr Headley was being protected by his American
handlers — a theory that experts say is credible,” reported the Times.
Headley was allowed to fly in and out of India as he scouted targets for the attack despite being
“firmly on the radar of the US intelligence agencies.”
Prince Bandar “Bush”
Saudi Arabia’s former US envoy Prince Bandar bin Sultan bin Abdul Aziz, known as “Bandar Bush” for
his close relationship with former President George W. Bush and his father, is another terror mastermind on the
payroll of the US military-industrial complex. Bandar worked closely with CIA Director George Tenet, when he was
Saudi Ambassador in Washington.
Bandar disappeared two years ago after it emerged that he had become the
de facto leader of “Al-Qaeda in Iraq,” having been responsible for arming terrorist organizations in the
Middle East. The man who George W. Bush reportedly consulted before the 2003 invasion of Iraq has trained, funded
and equipped terrorists to kill US troops, providing the US government with the perfect justification to remain as
an occupying force in the country.
Bandar also threatened Britain
with “another 7/7″ and the loss of “British lives on British streets” if corruption investigations into
Saudi arms deals were allowed to proceed. Prime Minister Tony Blair complied and quashed the inquiry.
Terrorist mastermind Prince Bandar “Bush” with his close friend George H.W. Bush.
After this, Bin Laden led Al-Qaeda to Bosnia shortly after the outbreak of war in 1992 to fight
against Bosnian Serbs who were subsequently the target of NATO air strikes.
Shortly before the NATO bombing of Yugoslavia in 1999, Bin Laden and Al-Qaeda moved into Kosovo,
Serbia’s southern province, to aid the Kosovo Liberation Army, the Albanian terrorist faction that was being
supported by the U.S. and NATO in its terror campaign against Serbs in the region.
“The United States, which had originally trained the Afghan Arabs during the war in Afghanistan,
supported them in Bosnia and then in Kosovo,” reported the National Post.
With the help of Bin Laden’s terror network, backed up by the U.S. and NATO, no less than 90% of
Serbians were “ethnically cleansed” and forced to leave the region, while the international media played its
role dutifully in portraying the Albanians as the “victims” of Serbian aggression.
Barely weeks before 9/11, former
members of Al-Qaeda who had subsequently joined the Kosovo Liberation Army were airlifted out of
Macedonia by U.S. paratroopers.
While Homeland Security chief Janet Napolitano, FBI head Mueller and others ceaselessly
fearmonger about domestic terrorists being an imminent threat, the federal government has a reliable
menagerie of pocket Muslim radicals on which to call upon to radicalize followers into launching an attack on
‘the great satan’ whenever the political climate deems it necessary.
The fact that just about every major terror attack or aborted terror scare for decades has been run
by people with direct ties to US intelligence renders the entire war on terror a complete fraud, and once again
underscores the truth that the real terrorists reside a lot closer to home than caves in Central Asia or the
Middle East.
—
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Prison
Planet.com. He is the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a fill-in host for The Alex Jones Show.
Watson has been interviewed by many publications and radio shows, including Vanity Fair and Coast to Coast AM,
America’s most listened to late night talk show.
This article was posted: Friday, October 22, 2010 at 7:28 am
SEAL Team 6 Family Members, Bin Laden Raid Was Staged!! ...Seymour Hersh Calls Osama Bin
Laden Raid A Lie. Pulitzer-prize wining journalist slams “pathetic” US media for failing to challenge White House.
Hersh added that the Obama administration habitually lies but they continue to do so because the press allows them
to get away with it. “The republic’s in trouble, we lie about everything, lying has become the staple,” concluded
Hersh.
Pulitzer-prize wining journalist slams “pathetic” US media
for failing to challenge White House
Paul Joseph Watson
Infowars.com
September 27, 2013
Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Seymour
Hersh says that the raid which killed Osama Bin Laden in 2011 is “one big lie” and that “not one word” of the Obama
administration’s narrative on what happened is true.
In a wide-ranging interview published today by
the Guardian, Hersh savages the US media for failing to challenge the White House on a whole host of issues,
from NSA spying, to drone attacks, to aggression against Syria.
On the subject of the Navy Seal raid that supposedly resulted
in the death of the Al-Qaeda terror leader, Hersh remarked, “Nothing’s been done about that story, it’s one
big lie, not one word of it is true.”
Hersh added that the Obama administration habitually lies but they continue to do so
because the press allows them to get away with it.
“It’s pathetic, they are more than obsequious, they are afraid to pick on this guy [Obama],” Hersh
told the Guardian.
The raid that supposedly led to Bin Laden’s death has been shrouded in mystery for over two years.
Speculation that the Obama administration may have embellished or outright
lied about the true account of what happened has persisted, mainly because the White House has refused to
publicly release images of Bin Laden’s body.
Although the White House said the corpse was immediately “buried at sea” in line with Islamic
tradition, it quickly emerged that this was not standard practice.
Numerous
analysts have claimed that Bin Laden had in fact been dead for years and that the raid on his alleged
compound in Pakistan was little more than a stunt.
Other questions also persist, such as why the narrative and timeline of the raid has
changed multiple times, why the White House initially claimed that “situation room” photos showed Obama
watching the raid live when in fact there was a
blackout on the live feed, and why neighbors in the
immediate area surrounding the compound said with absolute certainty that they had never seen Bin Laden
and that they knew of no evidence whatsoever to suggest he lived there.
During the rest of the Guardian interview, which is well worth reading in its entirety, Hersh
lambastes the corporate press and particularly the New York Times, which he says spends “so much more time carrying
water for Obama than I ever thought they would.”
Paul Joseph Watson is the editor and writer for Infowars.com and Prison Planet.com. He is
the author of Order Out Of Chaos. Watson is also a host for Infowars Nightly News.
This article was posted: Friday, September 27, 2013 at 12:52 pm
Al Qaeda Now Controls More Territory
In The Arab World Than Ever Before
Remember this?
This was the neo-conservatives' victory lap
when they supposedly achieved one of their main stated goals: to discover and neutralize terrorist
organizations, primarily al Qaeda.
Well, things have changed.
In what can be described a truly ironic event and a major failure for America's
stated mission (because one can't help but wonder at all the support various Al Qaeda
cells have received from the US and/or CIA) of eradicating the Al Qaeda scourge from the face of the earth, we
learn today that al Qaeda appears to control more territory in the Arab world than it has done at any
time in its history. According to a CNN report "from around Aleppo in western Syria to small areas of
Falluja in central Iraq, al Qaeda now controls territory that stretches more than 400 miles across the
heart of the Middle East, according to English and Arab language news accounts as well as accounts on jihadist
websites."
The following recent map from Jane's shows just how extensive Al Qaeda's influence has grown in
recent years.
And nowhere is the surge of Al Qaeda more
visible than in recent events in Iraq. From CNN:
The focus of al Qaeda's leaders has always been regime change in the Arab world in order to install
Taliban-style regimes. Al Qaeda's leader Ayman al-Zawahiri acknowledged as much in his 2001 autobiography,
"Knights Under the Banner of the Prophet," when he explained that the most important strategic goal of al Qaeda
was to seize control of a state, or part of a state, somewhere in the Muslim world, explaining that, "without
achieving this goal our actions will mean nothing."
Now al-Zawahiri is closer to his goal than he has ever been. On Friday al-Qaeda's affiliate in Iraq
seized control of parts of the city of Falluja and parts of the city of Ramadi, both of which are located in
Iraq's restive Anbar Province.
Anbar is home to predominantly Sunni Muslims, who feel that that the Shiite-dominated Iraqi
government of Prime Minister Nuri al-Maliki treats the Sunnis as second-class citizens.
Sectarian tensions in Anbar recently burst into several all-out revolts against the government, and
the Islamic State of Iraq and Syria (ISIS), as the al-Qaeda affiliate there is known, quickly seized the
opportunity to notch some battlefield victories.
Government forces increased their presence around Falluja in response and on Tuesday tribal leaders
issued a statement urging people who had fled the city or stopped reporting to work to return.
America's escapade in Syria - where it was merely a puppet for Qatari nat gas oligarchs - has also
backfired.
ISIS is also operating in Syria, where it has established a presence in many areas of the Aleppo
and Idlib Governorates in the northwest. In August, ISIS launched a propaganda series on video highlighting
their activities in Syria, which includes interviews with fighters; the "graduation" of a group of mujahedin
"cubs" (aged about 7 to 10 years old) from training, and sermons at local mosques preaching al Qaeda's
interpretation of Islam.
The al-Nusra front has claimed to control parts of at least a dozen Syrian towns. Those include
sections of the ancient city of the Aleppo in the northwest, where fighters have been filmed running a community
fair and preaching al Qaeda's values to crowds of children. The group has also released videos on
jihadist websites claiming that it is providing services to the people of several towns in the governorate of
Idlib, which borders the Aleppo Governorate to the west. Al Nusra claims that it is a quasi-government and
service-provider in the towns of Binnish, Taum, and Saraqib.
Al-Nusra fighters allied to al Qaeda function like a government in areas they control in Syria. The
group provides daily deliveries of bread, free running water and electricity, a health clinic, and a strict
justice system based on Sharia law in the eastern Syrian city of Ash Shaddadi, where it also took control of the
city's wheat silos and oil wells. In September a CNN reporting team concluded, "Al Qaeda has swept to power with
the aim of imposing a strict Islamist ideology on Syrians across large swathes of Syria's rebel-held north."
In sum, al Qaeda affiliates now control much of northern and northwestern Syria as well as some
parts of eastern Syria, as well as much of Anbar province, which is around a third of Iraqi territory.
It wouldn't be a US diplomatic debacle without at least one soundbite from John Kerry. So here it
is:
Secretary of State John Kerry said on Sunday that the United States will "do everything that is
possible to help" the Iraqi government control al Qaeda's expansion in Anbar, but stressed that no American
troops would be sent back to the Middle Eastern nation . Last month, the United States quietly sent Hellfire
missiles and surveillance drones to the Iraqi government to support their fight against increasing al
Qaeda-related violence.
The question of how quickly the US "gift" was intercepted by Al Qaeda is rhetorical. The other
rhetorical question is how long until the now much better armed (with US weapons) jihadists will turn those same
weapons on the liberating Western powers. The US for now seems safe. Europe is a different matter.
For the United States the widening reach of al Qaeda in the Middle East doesn't necessarily
translate into an immediate threat at home. So far only a handful of Americans have fought in the Syrian
conflict alongside al Qaeda's affiliates there so concerns about some kind of "blowback" from the Syrian war in
the U.S. are, at this point, unfounded.
European countries are rightly concerned, however. Many European countries have seen their
citizens drawn to the Syrian war; more than a hundred from Britain and many dozens from countries like Norway,
Denmark and the Netherlands, according to multiple European officials we have spoken to. These
countries are concerned that the returning veterans of the Syrian conflict might launch terrorist
attacks in Europe.
In October for instance, British authorities arrested militants who were allegedly planning a
terrorist attack. Two British officials who work on counterterrorism issues told us that that the militants had
recently traveled to Syria.
Finally, none of this should come as a surprise to anyone. Ron Paul, for one, has long predicted
precisely this chain of events. In this context his latest commentary, posted
here over the weekend, bears repeating.
Iraq: The ‘Liberation’ Neocons Would Rather Forget
Remember Fallujah? Shortly after the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the US military fired on unarmed
protestors, killing as many as 20 and wounding dozens. In retaliation, local Iraqis attacked a convoy of US
military contractors, killing four. The US then launched a full attack on Fallujah to regain control, which left
perhaps 700 Iraqis dead and the city virtually destroyed.
According to press reports last weekend, Fallujah is now under the control of al-Qaeda affiliates.
The Anbar province, where Fallujah is located, is under siege by al-Qaeda. During the 2007 “surge,” more than
1,000 US troops were killed “pacifying” the Anbar province. Although al-Qaeda was not in Iraq before the US
invasion, it is now conducting its own surge in Anbar.
For Iraq, the US “liberation” is proving far worse than the authoritarianism of Saddam Hussein, and it keeps
getting worse. Last year was Iraq’s deadliest in five years. In 2013, fighting and bomb blasts claimed the lives of
7,818 civilians and 1,050 members of the security forces. In December alone nearly a thousand people were
killed.
I remember sitting through many hearings in the House International Relations Committee praising the “surge,” which
we were told secured a US victory in Iraq. They also praised the so-called “Awakening,” which was really an
agreement by insurgents to stop fighting in exchange for US dollars. I always wondered what would happen when those
dollars stopped coming.
Where are the surge and awakening cheerleaders now?
One of them, Richard Perle, was interviewed last year on NPR and asked whether the Iraq invasion that he pushed was
worth it. He replied:
I've got to say I think that is not a reasonable question. What we did at the time was done in the
belief that it was necessary to protect this nation. You can't a decade later go back and say, well, we
shouldn't have done that.
Many of us were saying all along that we shouldn’t have done that – before we did it. Unfortunately
the Bush Administration took the advice of the neocons pushing for war and promising it would be a “cakewalk.”
We continue to see the results of that terrible mistake, and it is only getting worse.
Last month the US shipped nearly a hundred air-to-ground missiles to the Iraqi air force to help combat the surging
al-Qaeda. Ironically, the same al-Qaeda groups the US is helping the Iraqis combat are benefiting from the US
covert and overt war to overthrow Assad next door in Syria. Why can’t the US government learn from its
mistakes?
The neocons may be on the run from their earlier positions on Iraq, but that does not mean they have given up. They
were the ones pushing for an attack on Syria this summer. Thankfully they were not successful. They are now making
every effort to derail President Obama’s efforts to negotiate with the Iranians. Just last week William Kristol
urged Israel to attack Iran with the hope we would then get involved. Neoconservative Senators from both parties
recently introduced the Nuclear Weapon Free Iran Act of 2013, which would also bring us back on war-footing with
Iran.
Next time the neocons tell us we must attack, just think “Iraq.”
REPORT: Al
Qaeda Stronger Than They Have Been In 8 Years
Despite claims that Al Qaeda is on the run, a new report shows that Al Qaeda is actually
stronger than they have been in 8 years. In this video, Ben takes a look at why that is and what it means for
America's foreign policy.
The Al-Qaeda flag has been
flying high over Libya and the governments of the western world that helped remove Gaddafi from power don’t seem to
mind at all. The flag, which contains the phrase “there is no God but Allah” with a full moon underneath, has been
photographed flying beside the new national flag of Libya at the courthouse in Benghazi.
The courthouse in Benghazi is where the
“rebels” established their provisional government, and it is where the “media center” for communication with
foreign journalists was located during the fight against Gaddafi. So it isn’t as if the al-Qaeda flag has been
flying over some insignificant building. But this should be no surprise. It has been known all along that al-Qaeda
was very heavily represented in the army of “the rebels” and among the leadership of “the rebels”. Now, thanks to
Obama, they have taken over Libya and they intend to impose a brutal form of Sharia law on the entire Libyan
population.
The following is video of the al-Qaeda flag flying over the courthouse in
Benghazi….
"So where is the uproar about this in the U.S. media?
The silence has been deafening."
I guess it would be hard to
explain to the American people why they should be sacrificing their sons and daughters to fight al-Qaeda when we
just spent billions of dollars helping them take over Libya.
Sadly, the flag of al-Qaeda is not just being flown at the Benghazi courthouse.
According to eyewitnesses, it is now being displayed all over Benghazi. The following is an
accountfrom an eyewitness that has seen the flag flying over the Benghazi courthouse for himself….
It was here at the courthouse in Benghazi where the first spark of the
Libyan revolution ignited. It’s the symbolic seat of the revolution; post-Gaddafi Libya’s equivalent of Egypt’s
Tahrir Square. And it was here, in the tumultuous months of civil war, that the ragtag rebel forces established
their provisional government and primitive, yet effective, media center from which to tell foreign journalists
about their “fight for freedom.”
But according to multiple eyewitnesses—myself included—one can now see
both the Libyan rebel flag and the flag of al Qaeda fluttering atop Benghazi’s courthouse.
According to one Benghazi resident, Islamists driving brand-new SUVs and
waving the black al Qaeda flag drive the city’s streets at night shouting, “Islamiya, Islamiya! No East, nor
West,” a reference to previous worries that the country would be bifurcated between Gaddafi opponents in the
east and the pro-Gaddafi elements in the west.
So what in the world are we supposed to think about all this?
We were told that we had to invade Afghanistan because they were harboring
“al-Qaeda” leaders.
We were told that it was necessary for us to stay in Iraq for so long so that
“al-Qaeda” would not take over.
But now we have helped al-Qaeda take over Libya.
It isn’t as if the governments of the western world did not know what was going on
in Libya.
According tothe Telegraph, the leader
of the Libyan rebels was very open about the fact that his “troops” included significant numbers of al-Qaeda
fighters that were firing bullets at U.S. soldiers in Iraq….
Abdel-Hakim al-Hasidi, the Libyan rebel leader, has said jihadists who
fought against allied troops in Iraq are on the front lines of the battle against Muammar Gaddafi’s
regime.
According to a recent article by Kurt Nimmofor Infowars.com,
al-Qaeda rebels had established an “Islamic emirate” in eastern Libya as early as February….
In February, it was reported that al-Qaeda had set-up
anIslamic emirate in Derna, in eastern Libya, headed by a former prisoner at Guantanamo Bay,
Abdelkarim al-Hasadi.
Now that they have won the war, the “rebels” have announced that they will be
imposing strict Sharia law all over Libya.
The head of the National Transitional Council in Libya, Moustafa Abdeljalil, has
already made this very clear. Just consider the following statements….
Shouldn’t the people of Libya have a say in all of this?
Sadly, one kind of tyranny has just been replaced with another.
In fact, some elements of Sharia law have already been implemented.
According to a recent articleposted on the Telegraph,
Mustafa Abdul-Jalil has already announced that the law banning polygamy has been repealed because it is not
compliant with Sharia law….
Mr Abdul-Jalil went further, specifically lifting immediately, by decree,
one law from Col. Gaddafi’s era that he said was in conflict with Sharia – that banning
polygamy.
The American people were told that the system of government established by the
Taliban in Afghanistan was so repressive that it needed to be overthrown, but now we are helping essentially the
exact same system of government be set up in Libya.
It makes no sense whatsoever.
Not only that, we have greatly destabilized the region and there will almost
certainly be very bloody internal conflicts within Libya for many years to come.
Gadhafi and the remnants of his regime are thought to have distributed
vast stockpiles of weapons and wealth so anti-revolutionary forces could wage what the despot promised would be
a long-lasting insurgency. Many of those fighters fled to the desert and are staging surprise attacks on
roaming bands of militiamen.
The ongoing battles have sparked widespread speculation that the bloody
conflicts will continue to rage far into the future.
In addition, as The New American notes, as a result of this conflict huge amounts
of very dangerous weapons have fallen into the handsof potential terrorists….
Advanced weaponry including anti-aircraft missiles has also fallen into
the hands of known terrorist organizations. The deadly stockpiles are turning up all over the region, but it
remains unclear how much firepower has been smuggled out of the country so far.
But does the Obama administration seem alarmed by any of this?
No, they just want us all to praise them for a “job well done” in
Libya.
Hopefully the American people will see right through this nonsense.
The flag of al-Qaeda has been flying over the headquarters of the provisional
government in Libya, and yet the American people are the ones that are being treated aspotential terrorists.
Our borders arewide open and anyone that wants to can
sneak into this country, and yet we are told that we must haveour private parts examined before we are allowed to get on to an airplane.
Something is very, very wrong. Somehow the focus of national security has gone
from protecting the American people to spying on the American people.
As I wrote aboutyesterday, the government has become
absolutely obsessed with watching us, listening to us, tracking us, recording us, compiling information on all of
us and getting us all to spy on one another.
Meanwhile, the U.S. government has been spending billions of dollars to help
al-Qaeda take power in Libya and is helping them enslave the entire Libyan population to a brutal form of Sharia
law.
Can anyone explain how this makes any sense at all?
Northwestern professor Peter Ludlow writes in the New York Times:
Philosophers have long noted the utility of fear to the state. Machiavelli notoriously argued that a
good leader should induce fear in the populace in order to control the rabble.
Hobbes in “The Leviathan” argued that fear effectively motivates the
creation of a social contract in which citizens cede their freedoms to the sovereign. The people
understandably want to be safe from harm. The ruler imposes security and order in exchange for the
surrender of certain public freedoms. As Hobbes saw it, there was no other way: Humans, left without a
strong sovereign leader controlling their actions, would degenerate into mob rule. It is the fear of this
state of nature — not of the sovereign per se, but of a world without the order the sovereign can impose —
that leads us to form the social contract and surrender at least part of our freedom.
In addition to Machiavelli and Hobbes, University of Chicago professor Leo Strauss and German philosopher Carl
Schmitt espoused
the same views:
Leo Strauss is the
father of the Neo-Conservative movement, including many leaders of recent American administrations. Indeed,
many of the main neocon players – including Paul Wolfowitz, Richard Perle, Stephen Cambone, Elliot Abrams, and
Adam Shulsky – were students of Strauss at the University of Chicago, where he taught for many
years.
Strauss believed that a stable political order required an external threat and that if an external
threat did not exist, one should be manufactured. Specifically, Straussthought that:
A political order can be stable only if it is united by an external threat . . . . Following
Machiavelli, he maintained that if no external threat exists then one has to be
manufactured.
Indeed, Stauss used the analogy of Gulliver’s Travels to show what a Neocon-run society would look like:
“When Lilliput [the town] was on fire, Gulliver urinated over the city, including the palace. In so
doing, he saved all of Lilliput from catastrophe, but the Lilliputians were outraged and appalled by such a
show of disrespect.” (this quote also from the same biographer)
Only a great fool would call the new political science diabolic . . .Nevertheless one may say of
it that it fiddles while Rome burns. It is excused by two facts: it does not know that it fiddles,
and it does not know that Rome burns.
So Strauss seems to have advocated governments letting terrorizing catastrophes happen on one’s own soil to
one’s own people — of “pissing” on one’s own people, to use his Gulliver’s travel analogy. And he advocated
that government’s should pretend that they did not know about such acts of mayhem: to intentionally “not know”
that Rome is burning. He advocated messing with one’s own people in order to save them from some artificial
“catastrophe”. In other words, he proposed using deceit in order to demonize
an adversary and artificially turn him into a dangerous enemy.
***
But to really understand Strauss – and thus the Neocons – one must understand his main influence: Carl
Schmitt. Schmitt was the leading Nazi legal scholar and philosopher who created the justification for “total
war” to destroy those labeled an “enemy” of the Nazi state.
Strauss was a life-long follower of Schmitt, and Schmitt helped Strauss get a scholarship which let him
escape from Germany and come to America.
Not only was Strauss heavily influenced by Schmitt, but Strauss and Schmitt were so close that – when
Strauss criticized Schmitt for being too soft and not going far enough – Schmitt agreed:
Schmitt himself recommended Strauss’s commentary [on Schmitt's writing] to his friends as one that he
believed saw right through him like an X-ray.
Schmitt’s philosophy argued that the sovereign was all-powerful in being able to to declare a state of
emergency. As Neil Levi explains:
The sovereign is the name of that person (legal or actual) who decides not only that the situation is a
state of exception but also what needs to be done to eliminate the state of exception and thus preserve the
state and restore order. Note the circularity of the definitions: the sovereign is the one who decides that
there is a state of exception; a state of exception is that which the sovereign deems to be so.
The sovereign eliminates the state of exception to restore order, but the content of this order is
historically contingent, because it is dependent on the sovereign’s will. All that matters to Schmitt is,
as Slavoj Žižek puts it, “the decision for the formal principle of order as such.” Similarly, Schmitt says
nothing, can say nothing, about what it is that makes a [principle] worth defending with one’s life, what
substance and concrete content could or should compel one to make such a commitment to preserve this
form.
Indeed, Schmitt says that “politics” is not the process of debate, making trade-offs, building
consensus or letting the best ideas win. Instead, the sovereign – through an act of will – makes a decision,
and then the political system should carry it out, and the military effectuate it.
George W. Bush’s statement that he was the “decider” fits in nicely with Schmitt’s theories. [Similarly, Obama
is
ignoring the will of the people. Indeed, Obama is
worse than Bush in favoring the super-elite, bailing out the big banks, protecting financial
criminals, targeting whistleblowers, keeping government secrets, trampling our liberties and starting military
conflicts in new countries. Obama is even
worse than Bush in redistributing wealth from the American people to a handful of fatcats and
spying on Americans. Obama is
also worse than Bush in appointing cronies to powerful government positions.]
Moreover, Schmitt argued that war against one’s enemy is total – lacking any legal constraints – but
the sovereign can use ever-shifting definitions of who the enemy is:
War is the existential negation of the enemy.
***
As with the state of exception, there are not rational criteria for distinguishing friend from enemy.
All conflict is situational conflict.
***
Indeed, Schmitt said that those who are like our “brothers”, who are as much the same as different
from us, must be demonized so that we don’t feel any compassion for them. They are either “with us or
against us”, regardless of whether or not they are good people, or how close to us they may be.
Schmitt denounces all “neutralizations and depoliticizations,” which for him are the hallmarks of
liberalism. There are no neutralizations: if you are not with us you are against us and we will destroy
you: “If a part of the population declares that it no longer recognizes enemies, then, depending on the
circumstance, it joins their side and aids them.”
Schmitt writes that if war became impossible, then “the distinction of friend and enemy would also
cease” and what remained would be “neither politics nor state, but culture, civilization,economics,
morality, law, art, entertainment, and so on”….
Current American Politicians Still Follow the Old Fear Playbook
Professor Ludlow continues in the New York Times:
Since 9/11 leaders of both political parties in the United States have sought to consolidate power by
leaning not just on the danger of a terrorist attack, but on the fact that the possible perpetrators are
frightening individuals who are not like us. As President George W. Bush put it before a joint session of
Congress in 2001: “They hate our freedoms: our freedom of religion, our freedom of speech, our freedom to vote
and assemble and disagree with each other.” Last year President Obama brought the enemy closer to home, arguing
in a speech at the National Defense University that “we face a real threat from radicalized individuals here in
the United States” — radicalized individuals who were “deranged or alienated individuals — often U.S. citizens
or legal residents.”
The Bush fear-peddling is usually considered the more extreme, but is it? The Obama formulation puts the
“radicalized individuals” in our midst. They could be American citizens or legal residents. And the subtext is
that if we want to catch them we need to start looking within. The other is among us. The pretext for the
surveillance state is thus established.
And let there be no mistake about the consolidation of power in the form of the new surveillance state.
Recent revelations by Edward Snowden have shown an unprecedented program of surveillance both worldwide and on
the American population. Even Erik Prince, the founder of the private military contractor Blackwater Worldwide
thinks the security state has gone too far:
America is way too quick to trade freedom for the illusion of security. Whether it’s allowing the N.S.A.
to go way too far in what it intercepts of our personal data, to our government monitoring of everything
domestically and spending way more than we should. I don’t know if I want to live in a country where lone
wolf and random terror attacks are impossible ‘cause that country would look more like North Korea than
America.
***
The interesting thing about the security measures that are taken today is that they provide, as Prince puts
it, the “illusion of security”; another way to put it is that they provide “security theater.” Or perhaps it is
actually a theater of fear.
During the George W. Bush administration we were treated to the color-coded terror threat meter. It was
presented as a way to keep us secure, but constantly wavering between orange and red, it was arguably a device
to remind us to be fearful. Similarly for the elaborate Transportation Security Administration screenings at
airports. Security experts are clear that these procedures are not making us safe, and that they are simply
theater. The only question is whether the theater is supposed to make us feel safer or whether it is actually
intended to remind us that we are somehow in danger. The security expert Bruce Schneier suggests it is the
latter:
By sowing mistrust, by stripping us of our privacy — and in many cases our dignity — by taking away our
rights, by subjecting us to arbitrary and irrational rules, and by constantly reminding us that this is the
only thing between us and death by the hands of terrorists, the T.S.A. and its ilk are sowing fear. And by
doing so, they are playing directly into the terrorists’ hands.
***
As the Norwegian philosopher Lars Svendsen notes in his book “A Philosophy of Fear,” Hobbes already
anticipated the need for the sovereign to manipulate our fears. The state, Svendsen writes, “has to convince
the people that certain things should be feared rather than others, since the people will not, just like that,
fear what is appropriate from the point of view of the state. Hobbes points out that this can necessitate a
certain amount ofstaging by the state, which magnifies certain phenomena and diminishes
others.”
***
Even democracies founded in the principles of liberty and the common good often take the path of more
authoritarian states. They don’t work to minimize fear, but use it to exert control over the populace
and serve the government’s principle aim: consolidating power.
***
Fear is even used to prevent us from questioning the decisions supposedly being made for our safety. The
foundation of this approach in our government can be traced back to burning rubble of the World Trade Center,
exemplified by this statement by John Ashcroft, then the attorney general of the United States, in
December 2001: “To those who scare peace-loving people with phantoms of lost liberty, my message is this. Your
tactics only aid terrorists, for they erode our national unity and diminish our resolve. They give ammunition
to America’s enemies, and pause to America’s friends.”
As Svendsen points out, Ashcroft’s reasoning is straight out of the playbook of the German legal
philosopher Carl Schmitt, who was notorious for defending Hitler’s extrajudicial killings of his
political enemies. Schmitt too felt that national unity was critical and that liberty should be subjugated to
safety.
Ludlow points out that the government has steered us away from addressing the threats which actually threaten
our safety … and whipped up an disproportionate fear of a terrorist hiding behind every bush. In reality, you’re
more likely to be killed by
lightning, toddlers,
or brain-eating
parasites than by terrorists.
A continuous “state of emergency” is required for the type of leadership advocated by Schmitt and Strauss.
In 2002, Slavoj Žižek pointed out how this continuous state of emergency works:
A notable precursor in this field of para-legal ‘biopolitics’, in which administrative measures are
gradually replacing the rule of law, was Alfredo Stroessner’s regime in Paraguay in the 1960s and 1970s,
which took the logic of the state of exception to an absurd, still unsurpassed extreme. Under Stroessner,
Paraguay was – with regard to its Constitutional order – a ‘normal’ parliamentary democracy with all
freedoms guaranteed; however, since, as Stroessner claimed, we were all living in a state of emergency
because of the worldwide struggle between freedom and Communism, the full implementation of the
Constitution was forever postponed and a permanent state of emergency obtained. This state of emergency was
suspended every four years for one day only, election day, to legitimise the rule of Stroessner’s Colorado
Party with a 90 per cent majority worthy of his Communist opponents. The paradox is that the state of
emergency was the normal state, while ‘normal’ democratic freedom was the briefly enacted exception. This
weird regime anticipated some clearly perceptible trends in our liberal-democratic societies in the
aftermath of 11 September. Is today’s rhetoric not that of a global emergency in the fight against
terrorism, legitimising more and more suspensions of legal and other rights? The ominous aspect of John
Ashcroft’s recent claim that ‘terrorists use America’s freedom as a weapon against us’ carries the obvious
implication that we should limit our freedom in order to defend ourselves. Such statements from top
American officials, especially Rumsfeld and Ashcroft, together with the explosive display of ‘American
patriotism’ after 11 September, create the climate for what amounts to a state of emergency, with the
occasion it supplies for a potential suspension of rule of law, and the state’s assertion of its
sovereignty without ‘excessive’ legal constraints. America is, after all, as President Bush said
immediately after 11 September, in a state of war. The problem is that America is, precisely, not in a
state of war, at least not in the conventional sense of the term (for the large majority, daily life goes
on, and war remains the exclusive business of state agencies). With the distinction between a state of war
and a state of peace thus effectively blurred, we are entering a time in which a state of peace can at the
same time be a state of emergency.
Columbia Law School professor Scott Horton notes that Schmitt’s philosophy formed the basis of the famous torture memos:
Where exactly did [Department of Justice torture memo author John] Yoo come up with the analysis that
led to the purported conclusions that the Executive was not restrained by the Geneva Conventions and
similar international instruments in its conduct of the war in Iraq? Yoo’s public arguments and statements
suggest the strong influence of one thinker: Carl Schmitt.
***
Perhaps the most significant German international law scholar of the era between the wars, Schmitt was
obsessed with what he viewed as the inherent weakness of liberal democracy. He considered liberalism,
particularly as manifested in the Weimar Constitution, to be inadequate to the task of protecting state and
society menaced by the great evil of Communism. This led him to ridicule international humanitarian law in
a tone and with words almost identical to those recently employed by Yoo and several of his colleagues.
Beyond this, Yoo’s prescription for solving the “dilemma” is also taken straight from the Schmittian
playbook. According to Schmitt, the norms of international law respecting armed conflict reflect the
romantic illusions of an age of chivalry. They are “unrealistic” as applied to modern ideological warfare
against an enemy not constrained by notions of a nation-state, adopting terrorist methods and fighting with
irregular formations that hardly equate to traditional armies. (Schmitt is, of course, concerned with the
Soviet Union here; he appears prepared to accept that the Geneva and Hague rules would apply on the Western
Front in dealing with countries such as Britain and the United States). For Schmitt, the key to
successful prosecution of warfare against such a foe is demonization. The enemy must be seen as absolute.
He must be stripped of all legal rights, of whatever nature. The Executive must be free to
use whatever tools he can find to fight and vanquish this foe. And conversely, the power to prosecute the
war must be vested without reservation in the Executive – in the words of Reich Ministerial Director Franz
Schlegelberger (eerily echoed in a brief submission by Bush Administration Solicitor General Paul D.
Clement), “in time of war, the Executive is constituted the sole leader, sole legislator, sole
judge.” (I take the liberty of substituting Yoo’s word, Executive; for Schmitt or
Schlegelberger, the word would, of course, have been Führer). In Schmitt’s classic
formulation: “a total war calls for a total enemy.” This is not to say that in Schmitt’s view the enemy was
somehow “morally evil or aesthetically unpleasing;” it sufficed that he was “the other, the outsider,
something different and alien.” These thoughts are developed throughout Schmitt’s work, but particularly in
Der Begriff des Politischen (1927), Frieden oder Pazifismus (1933) and Totaler Feind, totaler Krieg,
totaler Staat (1937).
***
A careful review of the original materials shows that the following rationales were advanced for
decisions not to apply or to restrict the application of the Geneva Conventions of 1929 and the Hague
Convention of 1907 during the Second World War:
(1) Particularly on the Eastern Front, the conflict was a nonconventional sort of warfare being
waged against a “barbaric” enemy which engaged in “terrorist” practices, and which
itself did not observe the law of armed conflict.
(2) Individual combatants who engaged in “terrorist” practices, or who fought in military
formations engaged in such practices, were not entitled to protections under international humanitarian
law, and the adjudicatory provisions of the Geneva Conventions could therefore be avoided together with
the substantive protections.
(3) The Geneva and Hague Conventions were “obsolete” and ill-suited to the
sort of ideologically driven warfare in which the Nazis were engaged on the Eastern Front, though they
might have limited application with respect to the Western Allies.
(4) Application of the Geneva Conventions was not in the enlightened self-interest of Germany
because its enemies would not reciprocate such conduct by treating German prisoners in a humane
fashion.
(5) Construction of international law should be driven in the first instance by a clear
understanding of the national interest as determined by the executive. To this end niggling,
hypertechnical interpretations of the Conventions that disregarded the plain text, international
practice and even Germany’s prior practice in order to justify their nonapplication were entirely
appropriate.
(6) In any event, the rules of international law were subordinated to the military
interests of the German state and to the law as determined and stated by the German
Führer.
The similarity between these rationalizations and those offered by John Yoo in his hitherto
published Justice Department memoranda and books and articles is staggering.
The Terrorists Lose If We Refuse to Be Terrorized
Ludlow ends on a hopeful note:
Fear is a primal human state. From childhood on, we fear the monsters of our imaginations, lurking in dark
closets, under beds, in deserted alleyways, but we also now fear monsters in the deserts of Yemen and the
mountains of Pakistan. But perhaps it is possible to pause and subdue our fears by carefully observing reality
— just as we might advise for trying to calm and comfort a fear-stricken child. We might find that, in reality,
the more immediate danger to our democratic society comes from those who lurk in the halls of power in
Washington and other national capitols and manipulate our fears to their own ends.
What are these ends? They are typically the protection of moneyed interests. In 1990, the Secretary of State
James Baker tried to make the case for the first Gulf War on economic grounds. “The economic lifeline of the
industrial world,” he said, “runs from the gulf and we cannot permit a dictator such as this to sit astride
that economic lifeline.”
That rationale, although honest, did not resonate with the American people — it hardly seemed to justify
war. The George W. Bush administration abandoned the economic justification and turned to fear as a
motivator.
***
Ultimately we are not powerless. We can resist the impulse to be afraid. We may not at the moment have
answers to the very real dangers that we face in this world, but we can begin to identify those dangers and
seek solutions once we overcome our fear. Or as Bertrand Russell rather more elegantly put it, as World War II
was drawing to a close, “to conquer fear is the beginning of wisdom.”
The damage from terrorism is primarily emotional. To the extent this terrorist attack succeeds has very
little do with the attack itself. It’s all about our reaction. We must refuse to be terrorized. Imagine if the
bombs were found and moved at the last second, and no one died, but everyone was just as scared. The terrorists
would have succeeded anyway. If you are scared, they win. If you refuse to be scared, they lose, no matter how
much carnage they commit.
Already, security measures—pervasive ID checkpoints, metal detectors, and phalanxes of security
guards—increasingly clot the pathways of our public lives. It’s easy to overreact when an atrocity takes
place—to heed those who promise safety if only we will give the authorities the “tools” they want by
surrendering to them some of our liberty. As President Franklin Roosevelt in his first inaugural speech
said, “The only thing we have to fear is fear itself— nameless, unreasoning, unjustified
terror which paralyzes needed efforts to convert retreat into advance.” However, with risks this low there
is no reason for us not to continue to live our lives as though terrorism doesn’t matter—because it doesn’t
really matter. We ultimately vanquish terrorism when we refuse to be terrorized.
Imagine a country in which the government pays convicted
con artists and criminals to scour minority religious communities for disgruntled, financially desperate, or
mentally ill patsies who can be talked into joining fake terror plots, even if only for money. Imagine that the
country’s government then busts its patsies with great fanfare to justify ever-increasing authority and
ever-increasing funding. According to journalist Trevor Aaronson’s The Terror Factory, this isn’t the premise for a
Kafka novel; it’s reality in the post-9/11 United States.
The Terror Factory is a well-researched and fast-paced exposé of the dubious tactics the FBI has used in
targeting Muslim Americans with sting operations since 2001. The book updates and expands upon Aaronson’s
award-winning 2011 Mother Jones cover story, “The Informants.” Most readers have likely heard about several alleged
conspiracies to attack skyscrapers, synagogues, or subway stations, involving either individuals that the FBI calls
“lone wolves” or small cells a credulous press tagged with such sinister appellations as the “Newburgh 4″ or the
“Liberty City 7.” Many of these frightening plots were almost entirely concocted and engineered by the FBI itself,
using corrupt agents provocateurs who often posed a far more serious criminal threat than the dim-witted saps the
investigations targeted.
“A real eye-opener that questions how well the country’s security is being
protected.”
—Kirkus Reviews
“The Terror Factory is a damning exposé of how the government’s front line against terrorism has
become a network of snitches at the end of their ropes, and FBI agents desperate to thwart a terrorist plot even if
it means creating one.”
—Will Potter, Green is the New Red: An Insider’s Account of a Social Movement Under Siege
“A disturbing window into America’s war on terror. In story after story, Aaronson reveals in detail how the
FBI and its informants are creating crime rather than solving it. This is an important piece of
journalism.”
—Alexandra Natapoff, Snitching: Criminal Informants and the Erosion of American Justice
“Aaronson explains just how misguided and often deceptive FBI terrorism sting operations have become.”
—James J. Wedick, former FBI Supervisory Agent
Are We Catching Terrorists or Creating Them?
Trevor Aaronson discusses his book, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI’s Manufactured War on
Terrorism, at Columbia Law Jan. 31, 2013.
Trevor Aaronson discusses his book, The Terror Factory: Inside the FBI's Manufactured War on
Terrorism, at Columbia Law Jan. 31, 2013. http://amzn.to/J1c6DD
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“Compelling, shocking, and gritty with intrigue.”
