Saman Mohammadi
The Excavator

President Barak Obama's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew
Brzezinski visiting 'his boy', Osama Bin Laden, in training with
the Pakistan Army, 1981. Photo originally scanned from the New
York Village Voice. Credited to the Sygma/Corbis Agency, Paris.

Al-Qaeda is a CIA creation. That sounds like a crazy assertion because for nine years we've heard from the establishment media and corrupt political leaders that Al-Qaeda is a transnational menace, and the Western world's biggest security threat in the 21st century. But, there is nothing crazy about restating the truth. What's crazy is to keep denying this simple fact as impossible, and continuing to blindly trust the voices of authority just because they are in authority.

In general, Islamic terrorist groups like Al-Qaeda and Hamas were created, funded, and trained by the CIA and Mossad to serve their own interests in the Middle East. By framing Palestinian resistance as terrorism to the world, Israel's leaders are able to carry out their objectives of creating a unified Israeli state, and destroying the Palestinian resistance. Likewise, under the umbrella of the war on terrorism, the Anglo-American establishment is in the position to secure large areas in the Middle East and Central Asia, providing them the military footing in a region of great geopolitical importance.

Reporter Richard Sale exposed Israel-Hamas connections in an article called "Hamas History Tied To Israel" that appeared in the United Press International back in June of 2002. Sale wrote:

Israel and Hamas may currently be locked in deadly combat, but, according to several current and former U.S. intelligence officials, beginning in the late 1970s, Tel Aviv gave direct and indirect financial aid to Hamas over a period of years. Israel "aided Hamas directly -- the Israelis wanted to use it as a counterbalance to the PLO (Palestinian Liberation Organization)," said Tony Cordesman, Middle East analyst for the Center for Strategic Studies. Israel's support for Hamas "was a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative," said a former senior CIA official.

It is dumbfounding to first learn that Israel gave financial support to Hamas, especially since Israeli leaders frequently accuse Iran of funding terrorism, and meddling in the Palestinian peace process. One expects the Iranian regime to be a supporter of terrorism because it is undoubtedly brutal, and anti-democratic, but to find out that Israel, a Western-style democracy, funds and trains terrorists, and not just any terrorists, but terrorists that recruit other unwitting terrorists who seek Israel harm, is a bewildering realization. What else are Israeli leaders capable of? What else are U.S. leaders capable of? If they arm and fund terrorists, then what is the depth of their evil crimes?

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Stephen Lendman

A man suffering from cholera symptoms lies on the floor of the hospital in
Marchand Dessalines, Haiti. (Photo: Associated Press)

On November 9, Haiti Libre said city authorities examined at least 120 suspected cases, mostly in Cite Soleil, the extremely impoverished, densely populated community home to around 400,000. More vulnerable from Hurricane Tomas flooding, Partners in Health (PIH) called crowded camps "a potential flashpoint for a cholera outbreak. There is growing concern" about reported cases, thousands that may spread to many more.

In recent days, cases "continued to expand geographically. More (appeared) in Haiti's Central Plateau," PIH reporting 111 people hospitalized. Reported deaths also keep rising, likely much higher than Haiti's Health Ministry 544 figure on November 8. On November 9, Al Jazeera reported 583 deaths, the numbers increasing daily. The report also said:

"At least 115 cases of cholera, including the death of (at least) one person, have been registered in Haiti's capital, the most significant warning sign yet that the epidemic has spread from outlying areas to threaten hundreds of thousands of people in the city's camps."

Reporter Sebastian Walker said hospitals were overwhelmed, adding:

"Given the sheer number of cases that hospitals are receiving, it is simply not possible to conduct laboratory tests in order to give 100 per cent overall confirmation that this is cholera."

Given the familiar symptoms, however, including severe diarrhea, vomiting and fever, there's little doubt about the cause. Over 9,000 cases so far have been identified, mostly in the Artibonite area, north of Port-au-Prince. Walker also said that "It is almost impossible to contain this disease in an environment like this. Port-au-Prince is a very overcrowded city with appalling sanitation infrastructure."

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Patrick Martin
WSWS

"There is no innocent explanation for the professed inability of myriad agencies—the North American Air Defense Command (NORAD), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the US Northern Command (NORTHCOM), and the Naval Air Warfare Weapons Division—to account for the incident. It is far more credible to suppose that one or more of these agencies not only detected, but actually organized and carried out some sort of secret test, with or without approval from the highest civilian authorities in Washington."

US military officials announced Wednesday that the Pentagon was “satisfied” that the giant contrail seen Monday evening off the Southern California coast was the product of an airplane flight, not a secret missile launch. Colonel David Lapan, a Pentagon spokesman, told reporters, “There’s no evidence to suggest that it was other than an aircraft.”

While admitting that there was no hard evidence that a plane caused the contrail—the military denies its planes were involved, and no commercial flight has been identified as the source—Lapan added, “this case is closed.”

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Bill Van Auken
WSWS

"Reactionary and unpopular measures already planned, but held back until after the election, are being put into motion, preparing an escalation of the carnage caused by American militarism. The Republicans winning control of the House of Representatives has only served to drive the administration’s policies, both foreign and domestic, even further to the right."

US Defense Secretary Robert Gates signaled Tuesday that the US is preparing to scrap a 2011 deadline for withdrawal of all US troops from Iraq, setting the stage for a permanent military occupation of the oil-rich country.

“We’ll stand by,” Gates told reporters. “We’re ready to have that discussion if and when they want to raise it with us.” The defense secretary, a holdover from the Bush administration, reiterated Washington’s formal position that while the “initiative clearly needs to come from the Iraqis; we are open to discussing it.”

The reality is that the Obama administration is presently exerting intense political pressure aimed at breaking an eight-month-old deadlock in the formation of a new Iraqi government so that it can have a US client regime capable of taking the “initiative” of asking American troops to stay.

US efforts have intensified in the aftermath of the midterm elections as part of a broad further turn to the right in both US foreign and domestic policies.

Last August, the Obama administration had celebrated the withdrawal of a single Stryker brigade from Iraq, proclaiming that its members were the last combat troops deployed in the country and that the US combat mission had ended.

The reality is that nearly 50,000 US troops remain in Iraq, the bulk of them with the same combat capabilities as the brigades that have been withdrawn. The US Air Force remains in control of Iraqi airspace and the US Navy controls its coastlines.

Obama sought to exploit the drawdown of US forces from their peak of 170,000—many of them redeployed to the “surge” in Afghanistan—for political purposes, claiming in the run-up to the elections that the Democratic president had fulfilled his campaign promise to end the war in Iraq.

This was a patent fraud. The timetable for the troop drawdown and the December 2011 final withdrawal was set not by Obama, but rather by a Status of Forces Agreement negotiated between the Bush administration and the US puppet government of Nouri al-Maliki in Baghdad. The Obama administration is now moving to abrogate this Bush era treaty in order to secure an indefinite US military grip over Iraq.

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