[Peace-discuss] Fw: Is the Detroit Nigerian "Terrorist" A Patsy?

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Subject: Is the Detroit Nigerian "Terrorist" A Patsy?


  
Is the Detroit Nigerian "Terrorist" A Patsy?
http://blackagendareport.com/?q=content/detroit-nigerian-terrorist-patsy
Posted Wed, 12/30/2009 - 12:18 by Bruce A. Dixon

by BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
The bumbling Nigerian “terrorist” who set his lap on fire on board an airliner in Detroit Christmas day will provide days or weeks of conveniently hysterical headlines, along with excuses to target West Africa and Yemen for extra special attention from the American military, and the usual host of justifications for existing US policies in what used to be called 'the war on terror'. But the similarities between his case, and that of incompetent “terrorists” in Fort Dix New Jersey, in Miami's Liberty City and elsewhere raise serious questions about the whole incident. 


Is the Detroit Nigerian "Terrorist" Another Patsy?
By BAR managing editor Bruce A. Dixon
What does the hapless Nigerian mope yanked off a plane in Detroit Christmas Day for setting his lap on fire have in common with color-coded terror alerts, with the shoeless, homeless Miami Haitians convicted of trying to bring down the Sears Tower, or with the 2004 pre-election videos allegedly dropped by Osama Bin Laden? Easy. All have been useful in whipping up public fear of Muslim-inspired “terrorism” and each and every one plugs neatly and sweetly into the meta-narratives that justify increasing the power of US police and intelligence establishments and the further militarization of foreign policy. 
The guy is said to be an engineering student from Nigeria who received terrorist training in Yemen. Engineers are the practical souls whose profession is making things that actually work. Fortunately for the people on the plane, he seems to have been a very bad student who would have made a wretched engineer. He didn't know the difference between an explosive device, which might have done great harm to the plane and its passengers, and a small incendiary one which could do no more than set his own lap on fire, and maybe singe the hair of the passenger immediately next to him.
His Nigerian nationality is extremely useful, as it lets “terror experts” and talking heads on TV and radio to draw simplistic and misleading pictures for American audiences of Nigeria as a place besieged by Muslim fundamentalists linked with Al Qaeda and in need of more US military assistance. In the real world Nigeria is a major US oil supplier, and West Africa furnishes about a fifth of US oil imports, a portion expected to grow over the next decade. Nigeria has pumped trillions of dollars worth of oil for the West over the last fifty years without managing to give people in the oil-rich areas schools or electricity or hospitals. It has allowed foreign oil companies to make the region one of the most polluted in the world, where the rain eats metal roofs, health problems are endemic, and fishing and farming are nearly impossible. 
After decades of violent suppression by successive military and civilian governments, Nigerians in the oil-rich regions have organized resistance movements which have sometimes posed direct threats to the operations of Western oil companies. For US military planners, inserting themselves into Nigeria to bolster the regime is a major priority. That's what AFRICOM is for.
The Nigerian reportedly received his “terror training” in Yemen. Yemen is located at the southern end of the Arabian Penninsula directly opposite AFRICOM's Djibouti base and close to Somalia, where the US has waged a 14 year series of interventions and proxy wars to secure Somalia's oil and gas resources for the West, an project that has killed a million Somalis, and currently has made another million homeless.
Yemen, as veteran journalist Patrick Cockburn assures us in an indispensable December 29 Counterpunch article, is next in the US crosshairs. 
“It is the poorest Arab country, its government is weak, its people are armed, it already faces a serious rebellion, it is strongly tribal and its mountain ranges are a natural refuge for groups like al-Qa'ida...
“Yemen has been becoming increasingly unstable over the past two decades, ever since Saudi Arabia expelled a million Yemeni workers because Yemen refused to support the US-led war to expel Saddam Hussein's army from Kuwait in 1990.”
There is, Cockburn explains in the article which is well worth reading in its entirety, a civil war going on in Yemen, and the US needs excuses to beef up its intervention. Conveniently then, most terror suspects apprehended in the US will be found to have ties to the Yemeni insurgents.
Although the bumbling Nigerian had a multiple-entry US visa, he reportedly managed to board the Detroit-bound plane without showing it or his passport. Someone better dressed and better spoken intervened and got him on, according to published reports. Who? How? Why? He paid for his one-way ticket in Ghana in cash, and packed no more than a knapsack. People are profiled and searched for doing this all the time, all over the world, but he was not. And of course there's the matter of the incendiary device itself, which should have been easily detectable. It's not like they don't screen passengers at European airports boarding international flights. Why was he exempt from the normal search that passengers undergo, and if he was searched why did the normal procedures fail?
One possible answer to all these questions is that the guy is a patsy, a fool manipulated by people smarter and more resourceful than him for the purpose of creating the useful “terrorist” incident. That's what happened to the Haitians in Miami. They were disaffected and homeless, living in a Liberty City warehouse. They were contacted by a federal agent who said he could get weapons and explosives, shoes for the shoeless, rental cars (none of them had a bank account, let alone a credit card) and put them in touch with Al Qaeda. The federal agent helped them send fan mail to Osama Bin Laden and led them in taking a made-up jihadi oath, and delivered them fake weapons so they could be arrested. Journalist Webster Tarpley, in an early December Guns and Butter Radio interview (audio below – click the flash player or go to http://aud1.kpfa.org//data/20091216-Wed1300.mp3 ) 
with Bonnie Faulkner lays out a series of similar incidents in which apparent patsies have been used to create incidents like this. Although the interview was three weeks before the Christmas day incident, the similarities between the Liberty City case, the so-called Fort Dix 6, and other cases are numerous and startling.
Journalist I.F. Stone told us half a century ago that “Governments lie. All governments lie.” It would not be the first time our government lied to get us into or to keep us involved in an unjust war, or to create an atmosphere of crisis to support some otherwise unsupportable policy.  It wouldn't even be the fifty-first time.   If Stone were alive today he'd assure us that the Obama government will readily lie to us too, in the service of its policy objectives, and probably in better English than Bush ever could. Is the incompetent Nigerian “terrorist” a patsy, intended to generate hysterical headlines and reinforce the administration's policies at home and abroad? Time will tell. Maybe.
Bruce Dixon is managing editor at Black Agenda Report, based in Atlanta. He can be reached at bruce.dixon(at)blackagendareport.com.



Comments
The Racist Roaches and Gestapo are coming out of the woodwork 
by Enlightened Cynic - 12/31/2009 - 17:44
Racial profiling and detention camps coming soon to a community near you.  The White Supremacists and Zionists are unabashedly recommending we start rounding up all Muslims, soon "dissenters," anyone who is the "other" will be next.   Is there anymore clear evidence that a Gestapo mentally exists in Amerikka?  What a dangerous bunch of mendacious, unhinged looms we've become. 
Here's what the "serious journalistic" community will parse for the weeks, months, if not years to come:  How acceptable is open racism in the context of the phony WOT?"  Don't expect shock and outrage from the MSM at this evil idea.  Don't believe they can't pidgeon hole this one despite their belief in a "liberal" democracy.
 
It's a small wonder we haven't been blown to kingdom come...given the vitriol, hatred, and bile that spews from "the Halls of Congress," and our chattering classes.
 
Here's the Racist's er GOP's number one 2010 contender, the man who divorced his wife while she lay in a hospital suffering breast cancer is saying.  A complete bastard then, a complete, vile bastard now.
 
"It is time to know more about would-be terrorists, to profile for terrorists and to actively discriminate based on suspicious terrorist information," Gingrich wrote.
 
"We know our opponents are radical extremists of the irreconcilable wing of Islam (Islamists, some would call them)," he added.
 
In an unabashed endorsement of discrimination based on background, Gingrich posited that "[w]e know how to identify these enemies but our elites have refused to do so."
 
google_ad_client = "pub-5155643920455169";
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google_ad_width = 300;
google_ad_height = 250;The Washington Post reported Wednesday that the GOP views the foiled bombing as a "political opportunity" to score points and paint Democrats as unsatisfactory on national security -- a strategy they used successfully for years after 9/11.
 
Gingrich, who is considered a potential GOP presidential candidate for 2012, also said the incident calls for a larger counter-terrorism strategy that involves Yemen and should "end any thought of a civilian trial in New York" for admitted 9/11 mastermind Khalid Sheikh Mohammed.
 
A number of Republicans have attacked Obama since the plot but Gingrich took it a step further, explicitly saying that for the president, "protecting the rights of terrorists has been more important than protecting the lives of Americans."
 
Rep. Peter King (R-NY) voiced his support for religious profiling Sunday on CNN, saying "one hundred percent of the Islamic terrorists are Muslim, and that is our main enemy today."
 
Conservative radio host Mike Gallagher advocated full-fledged profiling of Muslims at airports, saying Sunday on Fox News that "there should be a separate line to scrutinize anybody with the name 'Abdul' or 'Ahmed' or 'Mohammad.'"
 
Princeton political scientist Melissa Harris-Lacewell said Monday on MSNBC's Rachel Maddow Show that Republicans view the Christmas plot as a "holiday gift."
 
What a pathetic country we've become, I look to the new decade with unmitigated foreboding.  Will the next phase be Peter King and President Gingrich advocating vigilantes to round up and shoot Muslims (or their "sympathizers" ) on sight from the hallowed halls and lecturns of Congress?  From the Jefferson Memorial?  Stay tuned, shit's gonna get real, real ugly, real soon.
 
As my co-worker would say, "keep your powder dry."
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@ EC 
by Cynical Negro - 12/31/2009 - 18:58
You are now an official anti semite if you're for a non-intervention foreign policy...
Click on both links...
Ron Paul telling the truth (like always) on CNN, CBC member agrees with Ron but coddles Obama while blaming Bush, Ben Stein comes from left field and unfairly calls Paul an Anti Semite:
Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yaOXSakh8pA 
Http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=AIQf3u56PK8
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Ditto C.N. 
by Enlightened Cynic - 12/31/2009 - 23:52
it's become fashionable to actually crimininalize anti-Zionist free speech in Europe, how soon before will it be here also?   Look what they did to Professors Juan Cole and Norman Finkelstein.  Hell, a Jew, non-Zionist, is accused of anti-semitism for attacking neo-cons, Israel, and militarism these days.  (How many know that our COIN strategies are infested with the Israeli experience in Palestine? Israeli advisors are training "our boys," hoo rah!)   It saddens and angers me that Zionists act like the Gestapo.
 
The irony is that before the phony war on terror, Muslim Americans were practically invisible, all 5+ million of them.  But the ignorant, racist, scary-ass American is now convinced that all Muslims want us dead.  I guarantee you the murder rate among Muslims in America pales in comparison to most.
 
Sure there some crazy M.F.rs who want to do harm, but are they any more dangerous than Cheney, Bush, Obama, King and Gingrich?
 
Al Qadea is nothing more than a CIA and parallel CIA controlled data base.  If they tracked Will Smith's ass, (and that no doubt was old school technology, the real shit is "black box,") then why the f**k can't they find bin Laden or monitor 23 yr old Nigerians?   If Al Qaeda can supposedly strike us from Yemem then what the f***k are we in Afghanistan for?  The irony is that it undercuts the bloodthirsty Zionists, Neo-con, Liberal Interventionist bullshit argument for escalation in Af-Pak, turning it on it's head.
 
The biggest threat from Al Qaeda might be some rich-ass, N. African/Arab who snorts cocaine in Nice while chasing white girls.  Al Qaeda, Al Qadea, it's everywhere!  LOL
 
It's a f**ked up world we live in, one ruled by psychopaths, devils, and monsters, this flotsam constitutes our heavenly "elite," the elites Newt rails about, of which he is one.  Notice how Newt says, in so many words, we have the shit to do it (profile, domestic spy) now, but the Libs won't let us.  Chew on that for a while.  M.Frs been spying and detaining Muslims/Arabs of American citizenry since 9/11, they just ain't got jiggly with it.
 
The Newt, Cong. King angle is like another Palin-like mind-fu**k, similar to an Obama mind-f**k, where Right Wing facist policies are associated with Liberalism and Gestapo policies are paraded as sensible conservatism. The  plan is to push Ameriikka Right, right off the f***king cliff that is, into a Gestapo-like nation.  The Plan, aided and abetted by our lovely 4th Estate, is to frame Right Wing Obama as Liberal Sissy Obama, so that Obama's adoption of Bushism's seems unreal.  The media will mesmerize us with the "debate" while the sheeple will ignore the facts of Obama's larger military and covert ops footprint.  Soon the NY Times article about Obama expanding special ops will get lost in a debate about WWII detention, racism masquerading as "security."  Gingrich, Cheney, Palin, Obama, all ruses for the master plan.
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Everybody click on the links 
by Cynical Negro - 12/31/2009 - 06:30
Alex Jones Interviews Kurt Haskell, Flight 253 Survivor - Part 1 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-GCRHZJ87-0
Alex Jones Interviews Kurt Haskell, Flight 253 Survivor - Part 2 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BLPNQ9jJAbI
Alex Jones Interviews Kurt Haskell, Flight 253 Survivor - Part 3 :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RgGuAJ35RAo
Kurt Haskell Flight 253 Survivor interview [Fox News] :
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Mj-BthNcvBw
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CIA Reality T.V. and Amerikka's "Wild, Wild West" 
by Enlightened Cynic - 12/31/2009 - 11:30
Thanks for the links C.N.  Convinces me even more of this poorly executed "false flag operation." 
 
If only the CIA had spent more time with Hollywood Producers, or perhaps the "hero" of the flight, video producer from Amsterdam, Jasper Schuringa.   I'm sure old Jasper could have spiced up the "script" a bit.
 
Perhaps they could have done a Will Smith, "Enemy of the State" surveillance on the poor Nigerian kid, now that would have provided some compelling pics in real time and technicolor no less. (Maybe we could have caught "handlers" feeding the kid narcotics or downers, he seemed kinda passive and dazed for a "terrorists?")  Or perhaps we should just settle for surveillance tape from the airport check-in?
 
The only upside, if any, to the Rethugs making political hay out of this is that the Obama Administration will be compelled to lay out the evidence, of course as little as possible (heaven forbid we ignore "states secrets"), but nevertheless pressured to explain the "narrative."   On the flip side, I wouldn't be shocked at all if this was an "off the books" job by some of Dick Cheney's "Left Behind."  The parallel spy agencies created for decades from illicit activities, culminating with Cheney.  As Sibel Edmonds has documented, anything goes, it's all fair game in the kleptocratic, morally adrift, Wild Wild West empire formerly known as the U.S. of A.
 
http://thinkprogress.org/2009/03/31/hersh-cheney-behind/
 
Courtesy of Brad Blog:
"Thanks to a subpoena issued by the campaign of Ohio's 2nd District Democratic U.S. Congressional candidate David Krikorian, her remarkable allegations of blackmail, bribery, espionage, infiltration, and criminal conspiracy by current and former members of the U.S. Congress, high-ranking State and Defense Department officials, and agents of the government of Turkey are seen and heard here, in full, for the first time, in her under-oath deposition. Both the complete video tape and transcript of the deposition follow below."
http://www.bradblog.com/?p=7374
 
When will we see Ms. Edmonds on the tee vee?  Or Mr. Haskell? Certainly the "Today Show," could squeeze her in between White guys and tough talking Congressman battling for child custody against the evil Brazilians, Rethugs using the false flag op to score political points, more "good news" on the economy, mayhem, murder, and mystery regarding White women, and Tiger's "redemption."
 
I wonder if the top Banking CEO in your community called the cops or local sheriff to warm them that their troubled teen was coming to school with pipe bombs or a loaded gun, would that be considered "actionable intelligence?" 
 
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Hmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm 
by Cynical Negro - 12/31/2009 - 06:53
Umaru Yar'Adua's government reportedly proposes to transfer 10 percent of it's oil and gas wealth to the residents of the Niger Delta, in an attempt to get the brothers to put the guns down and unite. All of a sudden Umaru Yar'Adua comes up sick and is subsequently shipped over to the US backed Saudi Arabian dictatorship for "advanced treatment." The local media quotes the Saudi Hospital as saying that the president would have to stay in the hospital for the next three months. This is the opposite of a Nigerian press release days earlier saying that President Yar'Adua was responding well to treatment and was watching football games. 
Now the Saudi's are talking about he's in a coma and needs to be transferred to Germany or the US for MORE "advanced treatment." 
The president's opposition party is currently trying to illegally take Yar'Adua's place, and deny the vice presidents succession. And now the MEND brothers are talking about hitting pipelines again.
Where are you CBC ??? Is anybody going to check on the Nigerian president ??? This looks like a another Aristide moment, and Obama has repeatedly told us in every sideways comment he could think of, that we can't depend on him.
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Are U.S Government officials and leaders "paties?" 
by Enlightened Cynic - 12/31/2009 - 00:06
What is there to think of a society, a government, a so-called republic that in decades time has outspent the entire world hundreds of times over over hundreds of years span, and yet have this "security breach?"  Didn't we just budget $300B for next fiscal year's wars?  How many billions more to "contracting," "data mining," spy satellites, to the alphabet agencies like the DoD, CIA, NSA, and the myriad others under Homeland Security? How many billiions spent "off the books" in black ops, from drug smuggling, human trafficking, prostitution, assassination for hire, black mail and other "clandestine activities?"  And yet the sorry M.Frs. couldn't preempt the "terror attempt" by a confused 23 yr old Nigerian, dimed on by his prominent father, to no less than the CIA, months before his attempt!!  A bright, engineering student who somehow couldn't trigger a detonator. 
 
Here's the official government organ on the subject, the NY Times:
 
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/12/31/us/31terror.html
 
The father, a wealthy Nigerian businessman named Alhaji Umaru Mutallab, had urgently sought help from American and Nigerian security officials when cellphone text messages from his son revealed that he was in Yemen and had become a fervent radical.
 
A family cousin quoted the father as warning officials from the State Department and the Central Intelligence Agency in Nigeria: “Look at the texts he’s sending. He’s a security threat.” (Maybe we should consider hiring the kid's dad as our CIA Chief?)
 
The cousin said: “They promised to look into it. They didn’t take him seriously.”
 
The new details help fill in the portrait of an intelligence breakdown in the months before Mr. Abdulmutallab boarded a plane in Amsterdam with the intent of blowing it up before landing in Detroit.
 
In some ways, the portrait bears a striking resemblance to the failures before the Sept. 11 attacks, despite the billions of dollars spent over the last eight years to improve the intelligence flow and secret communications across the United States’ national security apparatus."
 
My oh my... if this shit ain't a false flag operation, a poorly thought out one at that, than I don't know what is.
 
What is even more appalling, a sign of the US's failed nation status, is that the politicians, our "leaders," aided and abetted by our 4th Estate and our "intellectual establishment" has now deemed "terrorism" a political football to score points with.  Fu**k our security, there are elections out there to win.
 
Why is the media channeling Dick Cheney, of all people?  Here's what the esteemed one had to say about Obama, who has mightily "out-Bushed" GWB in less than 1 yr. in office, not only keeping Bush's "tool chest" in place (torture, rendition, no habeus, targeted assasinations, covert ops) but has escalated conflicts Bush started and migrated conflicts into other nations:
 
http://www.cnn.com/2009/POLITICS/12/30/cheney.obama.war/
 
Cheney also said Obama outwardly "pretends we aren't [at war]," and the former vice president repeated his months-long criticism that the new president has made America "less safe."
 
Let's get this straight, "Obama pretends we aren't at war."  You could have damn sure fooled me on that one.  Isn't Obama's war footprint larger than GWB's and Cheney's by all measurable accounts?  Troops, $$, number of conflicts, drone attacks, covert ops?  Where the f***k have I been this past year, or perhaps I've been in a f****n dungeon like Dick Cheney?  I don't know anymore.  Maybe the dungeon is in Cheney's mind and soul, like millions of other Americans?
 
And the rotten media and intelligentsia in this country will carry on this debate ad nauseum.  The Rethugs could give a shit about national security as long as there are elections to win and poll numbers that could use a bump.  These politicians are playing games with our lives, and watch the sheeple fall in line.  "We were safer under Bush/Cheney, the Dems are "weak," blah blah blah.  What a nation of morons, idiots, cowards, and degenerates.  The Rethugs no longer hide their glee and thirst for torturing, rendition, secret prisons, targeted killings, and inhumanity towards Muslims.  These, the same shitholes who bellow on and on about "spreading democracy." The hubris is beyond laughable, it is cancerous and psychotic, the clear sign of a deranged population.
 
Is the United States, like Israel, a failed state?  Does our government actually function better than the Yemeni's?  That's a question that bears consideration. 
 
Perhaps I should rephrase the question.  "Are US citizens "patsies?"  It should be absolutely clear by now that your elected officials and leaders are.  Don't be shocked if a dirty bomb goes off next or an attempt at one, might be all the Empire needs to push you, "us" over the brink.   Better to be prepared than surprised, for all we know the Nigerian student could have stuck a vial of uranium up his ass.   Should have tuned the satellite on has ass like they did Will Smith, ya think? "Actionable Intelligence" what an oxymoron.   Welcome to Bizarro World, the age of the apocalypse, not aquarius.
 
 
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Terrorists...please already 
by raymundo - 12/30/2009 - 23:03
Color coded alerts, WMDs, underpants weapons. Enough. Are Americans this stupid? Really, because I don't want my intelligence judged by this crowd.
http://www.circusgiganticus.com/how-stupid-are-americans/
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"I've got Yemen on my mind" 
by Enlightened Cynic - 12/30/2009 - 18:04


The long planned war on Yemen
I notice the recent news contains much shouting that Yemen is the "new front" for the war on terror. All thanks to the latest alleged AlQuaeda recruited underwear bomber!
Sigh, First the shoe bomber, now the undie bomber, perhaps next the hat bomber?
Anyway.... getting back to the alleged 'new front' in the war on terror?
This claim is about as realistic as the lies many parents told their children this past week about Santa coming to the house. Ho, Ho, Ho it just ain't so!
Yemen has been a new front for war for this entire past year. All covertly. Up until about two weeks back. But even that didn't appear to brightly on the radar.
The timely underwear bomber made it all possible to speak aloud, that which the US and it's allies have been doing for nearly a year.
Therefore- looking at all the facts. The intent has always been to attack Yemen. The underwear bomber was the propaganda coup needed to justify, to the public, the reason for the already planned attack
 
 
http://pennyforyourthoughts2.blogspot.com/2009/12/long-planned-war-on-yemen.html
 
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More spoon-fed Hype 
by Cool Breeze - 12/30/2009 - 17:32
I think that anyone who is up to date with real and accurate reporting with regards to US Foreign policy, including its history and this itellectually insulting nonesense of War On Terror it is quite clear as to what the answer to your concluding question is Mr. Dixon; if not for the simple fact that times have told and the few examples you supply reveal as much.
 
Nicely written and I really enjoy the Irony of this recent stuntman being an Engineering student who happens to be clueless as to what device he has in his lap. I've even read reports in European papers that his Father contacted the CIA and US embassy in London to share his concerns with them over his suspicion that his son was running with the wrong crowd as it were. My first question was that; unless his father new what the exact target of Jr's possible fatal intent was, what reason would he have to inform the US embassy?
The young man lives in London.
I'm convinced that he's just another spoon used to stir the pot with.
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"Patsy" or "Proxy"?? 
by Enlightened Cynic - 12/30/2009 - 14:00
The War On Terror is premised on "divide and conquer," toadies, proxies, straw men for straw arguments, perpetual war produced by perpectual non-ending conflicts, unchecked arm sales, and profiteering, of which the US and Israel lead the way.  The "humanitarian-interventionists's" "failed-states," concept is yet another pretext for military conflict and hegemony.
 
If the COO or CFO of Bank of American or Goldman Sachs, or the Assistant Sec. of the Treasury contacted M-15 and Scotland Yard to dime on his kid, how does he get on a plane?  If the CIA knew 2 weeks that this kid was a loose cannon, how did he get on the plane?
 
In a world of predator drones, operated from comfy suburbs, spy satellites that outstrip anything we see tracking down Will Smith,-- if billions of dollars on data bases, body "prints," and "covert operations," can't stop this kid, then (1) explain why, and (2) what are we spending/fighting for? What are we getting for our $$? I want even mention what we're giving up in terms of freedoms.
 
Obama and the latest string of domestic terrorists arrests is starting to appear like GWB's "color-coded" alert system and his own arrests of ner do wells, has-beens, wannabees, and the unstable, AIDED AND ABETTED, TOO OFTEN ENTRAPPED by our "security officials."  As Chris Floyd has written, these "incidents" all too often come at opportune times, opportunity that is, if you are a bloodthirsty warmonger.
 
Instant Karma: New US War Target Gets Its Own Terror Icon



Written by Chris Floyd   
Sunday, 27 December 2009 01:29

Raimondo breaks down what's happening in Yemen, yet another civil war where American comes to the rescue to save the population from themselves by killing and bombing them.  Obama is as or more reckless than Bush!  Does anyone one to debate that?
 
Next Stop: Yemen
The panty-bomber and US foreign policy
by Justin Raimondo, December 30, 2009
 
 
Senator Joe Lieberman is calling for "preemptive" military action, averring:
"Somebody in our government said to me in Sana’a, the capital of Yemen, ‘Iraq was yesterday’s war, Afghanistan is today’s war. If we don’t act preemptively, Yemen will be tomorrow’s war.’ That’s the danger we face."
 
Lieberman never met an Islamic nation that he didn’t want to invade and subjugate, but in the case of Yemen, the misdirection such "preemption" would represent for US policy in the region couldn’t be more deceptive. For the real source of irritation to the US, and its Saudi Arabian ally, isn’t al-Qaeda, but Iran.
 
Yemen has been embroiled in a civil war since the mid-1990s, one that has little to do with al-Qaeda and everything to do with the historical and religious currents that have swept over this poverty-stricken nation of some 20 million since the end of World War I. The Ottoman empire once claimed suzerainty over the region, but never succeeded in subduing the northern tribes who maintained their independence through all the days of British domination of the south, and then the imposition of Marxist one-party rule in the name of the southern-dominated "Democratic Republic of Yemen," which was a Soviet ally during the cold war era.
 
The ferociously independent northerners are religiously and ethnically distinct from their fellow countrymen, adhering to a version of Shi’ite Islam, unlike the Sunni majority in the more settled southern provinces. For years the northerners have waged a battle against the central government, under the general rubric of the "Houthi," named after their former leader, Hussein Badreddin al-Houthi, killed by the regime in 2004. For its part, the central government has been dominated by a central figure, Field Marshal Ali Abdullah Saleh, who has ruled since 1978, when the President of the Yemeni Arab Republic (YAR) was assassinated (some say at the instigation of Saleh). Since that time, Saleh has systematically jailed, killed, or otherwise eliminated any who would oppose him.
 
The Yemeni central government has been none too subtle in its tactics, launching what they themselves called "Operation Scorched Earth" in an effort to defeat the northern rebels. This campaign provoked a refugee exodus from the battlefield in which tens of thousands of displaced persons fled to the south, where they were housed in sprawling camps. Meanwhile, the Saudis were drawn into the conflict, using their air force to bomb and strafe rebel villages, and sending their troops into direct skirmishes with the Houthi. Fearful that the spreading influence of the Houthi Shi’ites would infect their own minority Shi’ite population, particularly in al-Hasa and other oil-producing provinces of the Kingdom, the Saudis are determined to crush the Yemeni insurgency, and have doubtless encouraged their American patrons to get more directly involved.
 
The Saudis and the Yemeni central government have portrayed the Houthis as Iranian pawns, and the conflict has been defined as a proxy war between Tehran and Riyadh – yet the real roots of the civil war are buried in Yemen’s storied past, where the religious and political divisions that currently bedevil the regime in Sana’a, the capital city, have their origin.
 
In addition to the Houthi rebellion in the north, the central government faces a secessionist movement in the south, which has, up until now, largely confined its activities to peaceful protests and demonstrations. Yet the government has treated them in the same way it has confronted the Houthis: with violent repression. Recent demonstrations held by the separatists were met with brute force: eight newspapers were closed by the government for daring to report on the secessionists’ activities.
 
Naturally, the Yemeni government has every interest in portraying the southern secessionists as a conspiracy hatched by al-Qaeda, and the northern rebels as proxies for Iran – and the US is buying into it, big time, with $70 million in US military and "development" aid this year alone, and much more in the pipeline. Now that President Obama has pledged to "use every element of our national power to disrupt, to dismantle and defeat the violent extremists who threaten us, whether they are from Afghanistan or Pakistan, Yemen or Somalia, or anywhere where they are plotting attacks against the U.S. homeland," the road is opened to a deepening US presence in that war-torn country, up to and including the large-scale presence of American troops.
 
Change? Far from reversing the policies of the Bush era, President Obama – swept into office by war-weary voters who mistook his opposition to the Iraq war as a general tendency towards non-interventionism – is not only continuing but expanding the American offensive, which is now engulfing Pakistan and spilling over into the Arabian peninsula. As for "al-Qaeda on the Arabian peninsula," this fits right into their plans for a general conflagration in the region, which will set Sunni against Shia, Saudis against Yemenis, and everyone against the United States.
 
Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan, Yemen, Somalia – nothing is beyond the scope of American ambitions to dominate the region, and apparently nothing short of a voter rebellion at home will deter Obama from this suicidal course. The war begun by Bush, and continued by Obama, is widening. As the showdown over Iran’s nonexistent nuclear weapons program proceeds – from draconian sanctions and American sponsorship of terrorist groups in Iranian Balochistan, to a proxy war in Yemen – the stage is being set for a new world war. Al Qaeda is the pretext – but Iran is the target."
 
http://original.antiwar.com/justin/2009/12/29/next-stop-yemen/

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