When The S*** Hits the Fan

#Snowden: #Brussels Attack AND #Boston Bombing Could Have Been Stopped

March 28, 2016 by claire bernish

 

Claire Bernish
March 28, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Edward Snowden proffered a rather damning criticism of international intelligence during a lecture last week, arguing the terror attacks in Belgium were entirely preventable and could have been stopped. As Snowden explained:

“In all the talk of Brussels, there’s a story that just recently broke, which I’m not sure has gotten the same play as the others, which is that the attack was preventable; and it was preventable through traditional means, not mass surveillance. An allied intelligence service — in this case, in Turkey — warned Belgium that this individual was a criminal, that they were involved in terrorist activities, and this individual turned out to be one of the suicide bombers.”

As Snowden noted during the University of Arizona panel discussion, which also included Professor Noam Chomsky and journalist Glenn Greenwald, these reports surfaced almost immediately after the attacks claiming Belgian and other intelligence forces had been notified of the potential danger this individual posed. In fact, an exclusive, though unverified report by Haaretz claimed “The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the subway as well.”

But what stands as a matter of crucial importance is that we’ve witnessed, yet again, not only a failure by intel to act on credible information, but a further example of the uselessness of mass surveillance to thwart any attack. It wasn’t surveillance that gave Belgian intelligence its information, rather, it had been Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan sounding the alarm. Turkey had previously deported one of the attackers as a “foreign terrorist fighter” — and Turkish officials notified the Belgian embassy in Ankara they had done so.

“In the United States, we have the same thing, in the Boston Marathon bombings. We were explicitly warned by foreign intelligence services that one of the brothers [who] was involved in the bombings would be engaged in that kind of activity,” Snowden added.

In fact, it was Russian intelligence that alerted the FBI about about Tamerlan Tsarnaev’s links to militant Muslim terrorist groups; but the ostensibly inept U.S. intelligence community failed to do anything — due to a spelling error in his name. Whether that was actually the case or something darker might have been afoot remains unclear, but the point is the same: even when the appropriate governmental agencies have the information necessary to stop a terrorist attack, they fail to do so — every time.

Tsarnaev had been investigated, and in June 2011, the FBI concluded he had “no links to terrorism,” NBC News noted. In September, according to the Independent, “Russia’s FSB sent a cable to the CIA restating their initial warning, and a second note on Tsarnaev was entered on the TECS [U.S. Customs and Border Protection database] system, but his name was misspelled ‘Tsarnayev.’”

A few months later, he was in ‘terror training’ in Dagestan after passing through Moscow. When he returned to the U.S. via New York’s JFK Airport, his name triggered an alert but, due to the misspelling, he wasn’t considered a top priority among the “100 other names on a ‘Hot List’ of people traveling through JFK that day.”

It appears the same fumbling took place surrounding the Brussels attacks: two of the brothers involved, Khalid and Ibrahim El Bakraoui, “were listed as a potential terror threat in U.S. databases,” NBC News reported, citing unnamed and unverified U.S. officials. Congressional committees have now requested to know which databases, for how long, and “whether and how the information was shared.”

Despite these multiple intelligence blunders concerning individuals known to be dangerous, politicians immediately proposed even further truncations of civilian liberties, both in Europe and the United States. In an interview with Democracy Now, Glenn Greenwald discussed the implications:

“I think it’s really important to note a couple of things about Brussels. Number one is, the Brussels attack is now the fourth straight attack, after Boston, the Charlie Hebdo massacre, and then the Paris attacks, where siblings, brothers, were at the heart of the planning. And just like in those three previous attacks that I just referenced, the attacks were carried out by people who live in the same communities, who live very close to one another, and who almost certainly met in person in order to plan them. And yet, the exploitive mindset of Western politicians is to say, every time there’s a successful attack carried out, it means we need to wage war on encryption, we need greater surveillance, we need more police in these communities. But the reality is … none of that will actually help detect the attack.”

Indeed, it appears such crackdowns — including Cruz’ and Trump’s call for patrolling Muslim neighborhoods and Clinton’s insistence on increased surveillance and police forces — serve, instead, to fuel resentment, which ultimately breeds more terrorist activities. Greenwald explained the most facile solution to terrorism by noting what drives it. For “15 years,” he said, the United States “has been declaring itself at war and bombing multiple countries and then acts surprised when people want to come and attack us back.

“And so I think, more than saying we need more intelligence and more surveillance and wage war on encryption and more bombing campaigns, we need to be asking whether there are things that we can be doing that reduce the incentive for people to kill us … and especially the support infrastructure that they get because of the anti-American and anti-European sentiment that gets generated when we engage in all of this violence in the world.”

Snowden, Greenwald, and myriad experts continue to warn of how this cycle not only creates more terrorists, but, almost by design, seems meant to make pliable the populace for increasing infringements on privacy rights. Ultimately — and perhaps because — these attacks were preventable by traditional means, and yet still were allowed to happen, we must be more suspicious than ever of programs initiated under the pretense of increasing security.


This article (Snowden: Brussels Attack AND Boston Bombing Could Have Been Stopped) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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Filed Under: Uncategorized Tagged With: Boston, brussels, brussels attacks, brussels terror attacks, Erdoğan, Government Accountability, greenwald, News, Snowden, Tsarnaev, turkey, World

CLAIM: Governments Had Prior Knowledge of #Brussels Attack, Did Nothing

March 24, 2016 by claire bernish

 

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Claire Bernish
March 24, 2016

(ANTIMEDIA) Brussels, Belgium — A startling allegation concerning Brussels emerged on Wednesday: according to Haaretz, Belgian and Western intelligence agencies had “advance and precise” knowledge about the attacks, which claimed at least 31 lives. Haaretz reported:
“The security services knew, with a high degree of certainty, that attacks were planned in the very near future for the airport and, apparently, for the subway as well.”

Though the news outlet does not reveal its sources’ names, the allegation mirrors similar reports that authorities knew attacks were imminent.

Turkish President Recep Tayyip Erdoğan had warned on Friday that terror attacks in Europe would likely be forthcoming, specifically naming Brussels as a possible location.

“There is no reason why the bomb that exploded in Ankara cannot explode in Brussels, in any other European city,” Erdoğan stated during a speech to commemorate a famous World War I battle in Canakkale. It should be noted it’s possible he mentioned Brussels to make an analogy, as Ankara is Turkey’s capital city and Brussels is the de facto capital of the E.U.

Regardless, mounting reports indicate a number of strange coincidences surrounding the Brussels attacks.

“One of the attackers in Brussels is an individual we detained in Gaziantep in June 2015 and deported,” stated Erdoğan, who did not name the specific attacker in question. “We reported the deportation to the Belgian Embassy in Ankara on July 14, 2015, but he was later set free.”

He added, “Despite our warnings that this person was a foreign terrorist fighter, Belgium could not establish any links with terrorism.”
An unnamed official from the Turkish president’s office later claimed the deported attacker was Ibrahim El Bakraoui.

Ibrahim and his brother Khalid El Bakraoui have been named by Belgian authorities for carrying out the airport attack with a third attacker, Najim Laachraoui, who remains the subject of an extensive manhunt. Laachraoui could be seen accompanying the two brothers in airport surveillance footage, but managed to flee the scene after the bombs went off. According to Haaretz, Laachraoui “created the explosives vests used by the bombers” — and thus bears particular concern for authorities.

Erdoğan has waged an aggressive, relentless, and often controversial battle with the Kurds, who are seeking to establish an independent state. After the attacks in Brussels, Erdoğan — who has been accused of working in concert with Daesh (ISIL) — attempted to appear sympathetic with the victims in a written statement:

“The heinous attacks in Brussels have reiterated that terror cannot be a method of struggle for freedom, and once again underlined the need for the common struggle against all types of terror.”


This article (Governments Had Prior Knowledge of Brussels Attack, Did Nothing) is free and open source. You have permission to republish this article under a Creative Commons license with attribution to Claire Bernish and theAntiMedia.org. Anti-Media Radio airs weeknights at 11pm Eastern/8pm Pacific. If you spot a typo, email edits@theantimedia.org.

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Filed Under: ISIS Tagged With: attack, belgium, brussels, Erdoğan, ISIS, News, terror, turkey, World

Putin to Withdraw Russian Forces in Syria: “Objectives Achieved… Terrorists Have Been Forced Out”

March 15, 2016 by mac slavo

putin-mission-accomplished

Now it is Putin’s “Mission Accomplished” moment in the Middle East.

Who can say what Putin’s long term objectives are, but regardless, he has won this round.

His decision to bring Russian troops into Syria has weakened ISIS, secured Assad’s regime (for now) and put American aggression into check.

Perhaps the ceasefire in Syria means that WWIII has also been averted, or at least delayed.

RT reports:

Russian President Vladimir Putin has ordered Defense Minister Sergey Shoigu to start the withdrawal of forces from Syria starting Tuesday. Russia will however keep a military presence at the port of Tartus and at the Khmeimim airbase to observe ceasefire agreements.

“I consider the objectives that have been set for the Defense Ministry to be generally accomplished. That is why I order to start withdrawal of the main part of our military group from the territory of the Syrian Arab Republic starting from tomorrow,” Putin said on Monday during a meeting with Shoigu and Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov.

“In a short period of time Russia has created a small but very effective military group [in Syria]… the effective work of our military allowed the peace process to begin,” Putin said, adding that with the assistance of the Russian Air Force “Syrian government troops and patriotic forces have changed the situation in the fight with international terrorism and have ceased the initiative.”

The global chess game is hardly over, but President Putin managed to time his moves with the precision of a master. For all its heightened rhetoric, the other side blinked on the supposed “red line” in Syria.

After Vladimir Putin spent considerable effort politely calling out the hoax behind the ISIS crisis in Iraq and Syria – which has been covertly supported by the U.S. and 40 other countries, many of whom belong to NATO – the White House eventually seemed reticent to even go on pretending that it has a case against Assad, or a moral position in the rise of ISIS.

Seemingly, the entire broiling situation has been defused… for the moment anyway.

Erdogan, not Putin, has been caught engaging in a charade, pretending to fight against ISIS while in actuality funding and fueling their rise in the Middle East. It was Turkey who lost all legitimacy as a result of shooting down Russian planes, not the other way around.

The double game was revealed, and Assad is clearly relieved at the “save” on Putin’s part. For Assad, it can’t take much imagination to watch Saddam Hussein and Gaddafi go down, and know that they had plans for him next.

[During a] phone conversation between Vladimir Putin and Syria’s President Bashar Assad … [t]he two leaders agreed that the actions of Russia’s Air Force in Syria have allowed them to “profoundly reverse the situation” in connection to fighting terrorists in the region, having “disorganized militants’ infrastructure and inflicted fundamental damage upon them.”

[…]

Moscow launched its anti-terror campaign in Syria on September 30 last year. Russia’s participation in the operation, according to a previous statement by Putin, has its basis in international law and has been conducted “in accordance with an official request from the president of the Syrian Arab Republic [Bashar Assad].”

The Russian Air Force has been carrying out airstrikes against Islamic State (IS, formerly ISIS/ISIL) and other terrorist targets in the region, eliminating military equipment, communication centers, vehicles, arms and fuel depots.

As many recall, Putin’s war on terrorism quickly made a mockery out of Obama and Bush’s War on Terror, which has raged on for 15 years only to face setbacks and blowback that has created many fold more terrorists than the region started with.

As RT reported, Putin’s air forces have essentially liberated Syria from terrorist domination, destroyed ISIS petroleum routes to Turkey and ousted them from 400 populated areas… while the U.S. hyped up the threat of ISIS but did little to nothing to stop them:

“Backed by our aviation, Syrian forces have freed 400 populated areas and over 10,000 square kilometers [3,860 square miles] of territories,” Shoigu said during a Kremlin meeting with Russia’s President Vladimir Putin on Monday.

Terrorists have been forced out from Latakia and Aleppo, and Palmyra has been “blocked,” the military official reported to Putin, saying that military actions to free the UNESCO heritage site from militants continue. Hama and Homs Provinces in central Syria have been largely mopped up, and Kuweires airbase that had been besieged by terrorists for over three years was retaken.

Saying that Russia’s Air Force in Syria has conducted more than 9,000 sorties starting from September 30, 2015 […] “As a result of airstrikes, terrorists’ resources’ provision has been largely cut,” Shoigu told Putin, saying that petroleum trade routes with Turkey, as well as main routes of weapons provisions to terrorists have been blocked.

Nevertheless, the world is hardly peaceful, and with so much angst over the sour deal with Iran and the rise of Trump-lican politics, people would be best to stay on watch for nasty tricks and devilish surprises.

Read more:

Putin Asks U.S. to Help “Wipe ISIS from Face of the Earth”

US Complains As Putin Bombs its Terrorists: “ISIS Is An Intentional Creation of U.S.”

Watch Putin Hammer Obama: “Not Grounded In The Real World… Absolutely Unprofessional Politics”

New Patch for U.S. Troops Fighting ISIS… Looks Like ISIS Logo

SHTFplan and Mac Slavo www.shtfplan.com

Filed Under: ISIS Tagged With: Conspiracy Fact and Theory, crisis, Emergency Preparedness, Headline News, ISIS, jet, Middle East, NATO, proxy war, putin, russia, saudi arabia, syria, turkey, war, WWIII

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