The Good News about Terrorism

"Since my speciality is international security, I attend many conferences with and about the military-industrial establishment. With a few exceptions, I hear the same view with monotonous regularity — the world is more dangerous than ever before, the threat from Islamist terrorism is unlike anything we have ever known, our way of life and our very existence are menaced. Challenge this accepted wisdom and everybody looks at you as if you are an idiot. What is it they know that I don’t?

Not a lot, as it turns out. Vested interests are involved. Ever since the collapse of the Warsaw Pact eliminated the need for 90 per cent of our armed forces, the defence establishment has been working overtime to justify its continued existence. Similarly, ever since the disintegration of the USSR ended the threats from Soviet subversion and KGB espionage and put most of MI5 out of a job, the security service has brilliantly re-invented itself as an anti-terrorist agency."

I would like to read the whole editorial.

http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8421.htm

From "The Spectator", of Britain.

...only in this case it's Three Military Branches in Search of An Enemy. There is a lot at stake as we learned with the new budget for 2006 which throws over $600billion collectively at the military in some form or another.

<1> Six Characters in Search of an Author,(Sei personaggi in cerca d'autore),A COMEDY IN THE MAKING By Luigi Pirandello

<link> http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/lp/six.htm

again, isn't it Fred?

Interesting and well-written, nonetheless. Even if you wrote it, share some more with us.

I haven't seen a single, really good prank today. However, this comes real close. Possibly. It would be even better if it were for real -- I'd like to congratulate the author for his singular honesty.

B-)

but I didn't write it, unfortunately. It's a real story, from Britain's "The Spectator", and it's dated 04/02 ;):
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article8421.htm

Fredrick -

The link works just fine. Read the Spectator article reposted at Information Clearinghouse. I'm struck by it's extraordinary conclusion, even if I don't agree that its premises quite add up. This deserves a wider audience.

I went backwards and tried to find out why I had so much trouble finding it the first time. A second effort included the title, "The Good News About Terrorism" and the first few words you quoted. Nothing on Google. Very peculiar.

Then, I added the author's pseudonym, "Paul Robinson". I was beginning to think this is a real cypher, when I saw it half way down the first page.

I have to tell you, The Spectator is a major UK publication. Either no one read this in its original incarnation (highly unlikely) and its reposting, or Google is not a neutral search engine.

So much for the idea of the God who loves all within its domain equally. Somehow, I'm not surprised.

Thank you for sharing this.

from the same author: http://www.antiwar.com/spectator/spec279.html

"Despite Tony Blair’s bizarre rantings, terrorism does not pose an ‘existential’ threat to our society, as Simon Jenkins rightly pointed out in these pages a few weeks ago. Our civilisation is under threat, but not from terrorists, whose power is extremely limited. Only we ourselves can destroy the values that we cherish and which make us great."

including this, so it's not that surprising that Google doesn't index it - there's a link to it from the Spectator's front page, which asks you to register (it's free).

And a bio of the author: http://www.hull.ac.uk/pas/paul_robinson.htm

the extraordinary Dr. Robinson. Finally, a thoroughly credible skeptic of CT orthoddoxy.

pro-corporation. They did that for a while (1990s). Then later on they figured out that Terrorism was an issue (meanwhile everyone in Europe and Canada knew that tribalists were getting with terrorism).

That is what I read. So the military was cut out for a bit. Now that they are back in... yes - they are not going to let this one go. Though they could probably spend as much money on solving the human rights issue globally (and solve the terrorism issue as a result). But then terrorism sounds worse that 'protecting human rights' and it is all about brand and being able to coerce and scare the electorate.

This article is spot on. The war on terrorism is pure propaganda.

911 was a covert intelligence psychological warfare operation trying to save the defense contractors and other heavily capitalized American corporations (the energy industry, and their shareholding elites) of the old line.

I wish more people would realize that there is something (well, a lot of things) "funny" about the 9/11 attacks, and that the Kean Commission is far from the last word on the subject. Even at DU, people are going to say that you are "in denial" if you suggest that. It's relegated to the realm of "conspiracy theories", which is kind of funny - the story that has been fed us by the media is most certainly one. The world-wide, shadowy, super-powerful, pure evil Al-Qaeda and their "sleeper cells", you never know who's a member etc - it's almost like the "Illuminati", isn't it (imagine Bush saying, "we know there's a connection between Saddam and the Illuminati"...).

Al-Qaeda does exist, or did at least, but they're mercenaries more than anything else. For instance, they showed up in Kosovo at the time when the West started arming the KLA, around 1997. KLA fighters were trained by British SAS and Bin Laden's Al Qaeda, a joint venture... The Qaeda men were paid by people in Saudi Arabia and the UAE, according to intelligence analysts (additonally, in 1996, according to French intelligence, Saudi princes met with Al Qaeda representatives in Paris to discuss "payment" - for what?). Now: why would oil sheikhs in those two countries pay Al Qaeda to train the KLA in Kosovo at the same time that western intelligence agencies and special forces started doing the same?

I hate to "jump to conclusions", or to be a "tin foil-hatter", but the covert psy-op interpretation of 9/11 in many ways makes more sense, and fits the data better, than the highly suspicious "Al Qaeda sleeper cells" story. There's plenty of at least circumstantial evidence for it, certainly more than there is for any involvement of Mr Bin Laden. And if true, Pakistan's ISI, itself closely connected to al-Qaeda as well as to the CIA, probably played a central role.

According to Indian intelligence, of course, ISI chief Mahmood Ahmed (or Ahmad), who was having breakfast with Porter Goss and Bob Graham on 9/11, was the paymaster of the attacks. He was fired the same day this became known (oct 7, 2001 I think) but only punished with a house arrest. The FBI have apparently not requested to speak with him... This very mild punishment mirrors that of AQ Khan, who ran a global nuclear wal-mart. If I didn't know better, I'd say that America was attacked by Pakistan. But then, the sale of advanced F-16s to them, announced last week, is an odd way to punish Pakistan for that attack, isn't it?

It was certainly interesting to read that former nr. two in the KGB, Leonid Shebarshin, who was stationed in Tehran and Karachi, claims that Bin Laden not only was a CIA asset back in the days of the Afghan war, but that he still is. Of course, according to French intelligence, Bin Laden met with the CIA sation chief in Dubai in the summer of 2001. I don't think that Bin Laden had much or anything to do with the attacks, but he served as bogeyman and blame-taker for as long as he was needed to (that is, until Afghanistan had been invaded and occupied and he was replaced with Saddam Hussein). It is also interesting that the French journalist Eric Laurent (highly respected foreign affairs TV/newspaper journalist) got to see the FBI's file on Osama last year and found there was nothing on him concerning 9/11.

There are a thousand other indications that the official story is false of course - most damning, perhaps, to the official story being the curious person or persona that was/is Mohammed Atta and his curious drug connections and curious (for a supposed islamist) party habits - but I guess that belongs in the 9/11 forum. The point is that if you look a little closer at the Kean commission story it easily falls apart.

I wish more people would actually apply a little rational thought to the outrageous official conspiracy theory about 9/11.

That was my sermon for today.

Your analysis is spot on. There is so much more that supports your interpretation of the evidence.

which gave the a lot of phony credence to be dinking around in South America... they have the cocaine connection all sewed up...so the Afghan poppy fields and the hash were next...Oh, the oil and the drugs. If you are boss of the drugs...you are boss of money and power. I don't think it makes it an any cleaner game if you have control of the dirty money. Oh, yeah, the child pornography and child sex slavery...got to keep the CIA, involved it that, got to be boss of that, too. Oh, maybe, mercenaries or private contractors can be boss of that nasty crap...we want to keep our hands clean :)