ISIS

Already 45 Beheadings in 2015 – Saudi Arabia on Pace to Easily Beat 2014’s Decapitation Level

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Screen Shot 2015-03-16 at 3.44.13 PMOne of last year’s most popular posts was titled: Record Beheadings and the Mass Arrest of Christians – Is it ISIS? No it’s Saudi Arabia. Here’s an excerpt:

In the past month, a group of radical Islamic extremists based in the Middle East beheaded at least 23 people and enforced a ban on Christianity by arresting a group of people for practicing the faith in a private home.

No, I’m not talking about ISIS. The real culprit is the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, one of the America’s closest global allies.

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Benjamin Netanyahu in 2002 – “If You Take Out Saddam, I Guarantee, It Will Have Enormous Positive Reverberations on the Region”

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In 2002, Benjamin Netanyahu already harbored some extremely strong convictions on how to deal with both Iran and Iraq. Back then, his opinions on how to handle the particular challenges each presented were quite divergent. On the one hand, he suggested beaming “reruns of Melrose Place” into Tehran, as a way of inspiring a popular uprising. In contrast, he suggested such an approach could never work in Iraq, and instead advocated for his preferred solution:

Naturally, he believed that a violent overthrow of Saddam Hussein would be a great thing. Specifically predicting that:

If you take out Saddam’s Regime, I guarantee you, that it will have enormous positive reverberations on the region.

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Hillary Clinton Exposed Part 2 – Clinton Foundation Took Millions From Countries That Also Fund ISIS

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The Washington Post reported last week that foreign sources, including governments, made up a third of those who have given the foundation more than $1 million over time. The Post found that the foundation, begun by former president Bill Clinton, has raised nearly $2 billion since its creation in 2001.

Foreign governments and individuals are prohibited from giving money to U.S. political candidates, to prevent outside influence over national leaders. But the foundation has given donors a way to potentially gain favor with the Clintons outside the traditional political limits.

– From the Washington Post article: Foreign Governments Gave Millions to Foundation While Clinton Was at State Dept.

Of all the idiotic wars that the dangerously inept American politicians propagandize the public into accepting, the latest ISIS conflict is the most Orwellian and terrifying. Not only was the emergence of ISIS the direct consequence of the chaos left over by the Iraq war — which in itself was based on lies and inaccurate information — but the primary funders of the latest existential terrorist threat du jour are America’s Persian Gulf allies.

This is something I’ve covered before. For example, in last summer’s piece, America’s Disastrous Foreign Policy – My Thoughts on Iraq, I highlighted:

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The Forgotten War – Understanding the Incredible Debacle Left Behind by NATO in Libya

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In retrospect, Obama’s intervention in Libya was an abject failure, judged even by its own standards. Libya has not only failed to evolve into a democracy; it has devolved into a failed state. Violent deaths and other human rights abuses have increased severalfold. Rather than helping the United States combat terrorism, as Qaddafi did during his last decade in power, Libya now serves as a safe haven for militias affiliated with both al Qaeda and the Islamic State of Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS). The Libya intervention has harmed other U.S. interests as well: undermining nuclear nonproliferation, chilling Russian cooperation at the UN, and fueling Syria’s civil war.


As bad as Libya’s human rights situation was under Qaddafi, it has gotten worse since NATO ousted him. Immediately after taking power, the rebels perpetrated scores of reprisal killings, in addition to torturing, beating, and arbitrarily detaining thousands of suspected Qaddafi supporters. The rebels also expelled 30,000 mostly black residents from the town of Tawergha and burned or looted their homes and shops, on the grounds that some of them supposedly had been mercenaries. Six months after the war, Human Rights Watch declared that the abuses “appear to be so widespread and systematic that they may amount to crimes against humanity.”


As a consequence of such pervasive violence, the UN estimates that roughly 400,000 Libyans have fled their homes, a quarter of whom have left the country altogether. 


– From Alan Kuperman’s excellent Foreign Affairs article: Obama’s Libya Debacle

Regular readers will be somewhat familiar with the total chaos NATO left behind in the wake of its so-called “humanitarian” intervention in Libya, but I doubt many of you are aware of just how enormous the disaster actually has become.

Alan J. Kuperman, an Associate Professor at the Lyndon B. Johnson School of Public Affairs at the University of Texas at Austin, wrote an incredible article in the latest issue of Foreign Affairs, which is an absolute must read. If the American public and politicians actually wanted to learn from their mistakes and avoid making them in the future, this piece could serve as a comprehensive warning about what not to do.

That said, after reading this article the unfortunate truth becomes apparent; that there are only two logical conclusions that can be reached about American foreign policy leadership in the 21st century.

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Jeb Bush Exposed Part 1 – His Top Advisors Will Be the Architects of His Brother’s Iraq War

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Screen Shot 2015-02-18 at 2.29.56 PMAccording to Reuters’ Steve Holland, Bush has tapped a “diverse” roster of former George W. Bush and George H. W. Bush officials to advise his burgeoning campaign on foreign policy, including key architects of the 2002 invasion of Iraq.

The list of advisers provided to Reuters by a campaign aid includes Paul Wolfowitz and Stephen Hadley, as well as former George W. Bush Homeland Security Secretaries Tom Ridge and Michael Chertoff, and Bush adviser Meghan O’Sullivan.

— From the Think Progress article: The Same People Who Lied To You About Iraq Are Now In Charge Of Jeb Bush’s Foreign Policy

It may be hard to believe, but either one of the two status quo choices for U.S. President currently being force-fed down the American public’s throat will be almost unquestionably more imperial and warlike than Barack Obama. The reason is simple. Any society that apathetically stands by as one President after the other tramples on the Constitution will be subject to a litany of increasingly tyrannical, and even insane, leaders. This is why the oligarchy isn’t even pretending that we live in a Republic or a Democracy anymore. They are shoving our pathetic servitude right in our face by putting up these two preposterous and dangerous candidates.

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The New York Times Admits – Despite Going to Congress, Obama is Still Defending Unlimited War Powers

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Screen Shot 2015-02-12 at 10.25.44 AMPresident Obama is going before Congress to request authorization for the limited use of military force in a battle of up to three years against the Islamic State. On the surface, this looks like a welcome recognition of Congress’s ultimate authority in matters of war and peace. But unless the resolution put forward by the White House is amended, it will have the opposite effect. Congressional support will amount to the ringing endorsement of unlimited presidential war making.

People who take the Constitution seriously, on both sides of the aisle, must not allow this to happen. They should insist on the repeal of the 2001 resolution and an explicit repudiation of the “associated forces” doctrine. Only then will the next president be required to return to Congress to gain its consent if he or she wants to continue the war past the 2018 deadline. If it fails to take a stand now, its sham debate will generate another destructive cycle of distrust that will further alienate Americans from their representatives.

– From Bruce Ackerman’s New York Times op-ed: Congress, Don’t Be Fooled; Obama Still Believes in Unlimited War

First off, I want to thank Bruce Ackerman for writing this op-ed in the New York Times yesterday. Although the Obama administration already claims unlimited war powers in practice, this claim is illegitimate, which is why he is going to Congress to solidify his ability to declare worldwide warfare against a terrorist group that is a direct result of U.S. foreign policy: ISIS.

I previously covered the shadiness with which Obama was justifying his clearly illegal and unconstitutional war against ISIS last year in the post: Obama’s ISIS War is Not Only Illegal, it Makes George W. Bush Look Like a Constitutional Scholar. Here’s an excerpt:

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Manufactured Terrorism – U.S. Officials Claim Credit for Stopping Another Terror Attack Created by the FBI

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Screen Shot 2015-01-16 at 12.12.36 PMNearly every major post-9/11 terrorism-related prosecution has involved a sting operation, at the center of which is a government informant. In these cases, the informants — who work for money or are seeking leniency on criminal charges of their own — have crossed the line from merely observing potential criminal behavior to encouraging and assisting people to participate in plots that are largely scripted by the FBI itself. Under the FBI’s guiding hand, the informants provide the weapons, suggest the targets and even initiate the inflammatory political rhetoric that later elevates the charges to the level of terrorism.

– From Glenn Greenwald’s latest piece: Latest FBI Claim of Disrupted Terror Plot Deserves Much Scrutiny and Skepticism

The “war on terror” is the best thing to happen to power hungry politicians since a fire of questionable origin destroyed the Reichstag building in Berlin on February 27, 1933. Not only does the “war on terror” represent big business for shady crony capitalists, it gives politicians, i.e., professional authoritarians, an excuse to destroy civil liberties and implement a total surveillance system to ensure the plebs don’t get out of line. This is not just an unfortunate trend that has developed organically due to a dangerous world, these are the goals of the oligarch class and they will do whatever it takes to achieve them.

This is where the “war on terror” and constant fear-mongering comes into play. There’s only one small problem. In the absence of real terror attacks in the U.S., it’s difficult to keep the stupid serfs shivering in a corner in the fetal position. Enter fake terrorist attacks; funded, created and planned by the FBI.

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Peak Stupidity – Oxford University Press Bans Use of Words “Pig” and “Sausage” to Avoid Offending Muslims and Jews

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Screen Shot 2015-01-14 at 2.47.53 PMThere appears to be a direct correlation between terror attacks and stupidity in the Western world. The more attacks, the more idiotic the response. Just when you thought the bar couldn’t move any lower, it has. From the International Business Times:

One of the biggest education publishers in the world has warned its authors not to mention pigs or sausages in their books to avoid causing offense.

Oxford University Press (OUP) said all books must take into consideration other cultures if they hope to sell copies in countries across the world.

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For Sale to the Highest Bidder – How Middle Eastern Governments Are Buying Off the U.S. Political Process

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Screen Shot 2015-01-13 at 2.28.10 PMThe quaint notion that the U.S. political system remotely resembles either a Republic or a Democracy should have been abandoned long ago. Any lingering illusions were surely extinguished last year, when an academic study empirically proved that the USA is nothing more than a corrupt oligarchy. I highlighted this groundbreaking piece of research in the post: New Report from Princeton and Northwestern Proves It: The U.S. is an Oligarchy. Here’s an excerpt from the study itself:

Despite the seemingly strong empirical support in previous studies for theories of majoritarian democracy, our analyses suggest that majorities of the American public actually have little influence over the policies our government adopts. Americans do enjoy many features central to democratic governance, such as regular elections, freedom of speech and association, and a widespread (if still contested) franchise. But we believe that if policymaking is dominated by powerful business organizations and a small number of affluent Americans, then America’s claims to being a democratic society are seriously threatened.

While having super rich and powerful American oligarchs running the show is one thing, the reality of the situation is actually far worse. Thanks to a recent article in Vice, we now know that foreign governments are aggressively employing their extraordinary wealth to advance their interests here on American soil. In many cases, these are autocratic regimes, which not only do not care about the best interests of the nation, they are often caught actively funding ISIS and even perpetuating 9/11 itself. Here are some excerpts from the piece:

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Paralyzed Iraq War Veteran Tomas Young Has Died – Here’s His Final Letter to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney

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Screen Shot 2014-11-13 at 11.18.25 AMLast March, I came across a letter written to George W. Bush and Dick Cheney from a paralyzed and dying Iraq war vet named Tomas Young. It touched me to such an extent, that I highlighted it on Liberty Blitzkrieg at the time. He died on Monday, the day before Veterans Day. If you really want to honor our nation’s soldiers, you should read the following and share it.

RIP Tomas Young.

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