Manchester’s Known Wolf: Watched by MI5 with Ties to NATO-Backed Terror in Libya – What Does It All Mean?

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

By Shawn Helton, 21st Century Wire
Also crossposted with fraternal site Global Research

In-depth Report:

Another day, another conspiratorial crime. In this case, the public was witness to yet another known wolf  terror attack allegedly carried out by an ‘ISIS-inspired’ individual who, as with numerous other cases, was under the gaze of MI5. The man named in the Manchester attack, Salman Abedi, has also been tied to a terror group supported by NATO in Libya during the operation to oust Muammar Gaddafi in 2011.


QUESTION: Is the Manchester attack simply blowback from security operations gone awry – or is it more likely that this latest terror event provides further evidence of complicity on behalf of West in the ‘War On Terror’ era?

Though many are still unsettled in the wake of the Manchester arena bombing – key questions have emerged following this latest act of terror in the West.

NOTE: One cannot ignore the political circumstances and timing surrounding the apparent tragedy in Manchester, as it arrived on the heels of a monolithic arms deals with Saudi Arabia worth $110 billion dollars that will total $350 billion over the next 10 years. The questionable arms deal has also dovetailed US aspirations for an ‘Arab NATO‘ headquartered in Saudi Arabia, the largest state-sponsor of terror in the world.

Additionally, rather conveniently over the past week, al-Qaeda affiliate Jabhat al-Nusra aka al-Nusra Front, officially changed their operational name (now dubbed Hay’at Tahrir al-Sham or HTS) to secure its removal from terror watchlists within the US and Canada.

It’s also worth mentioning again, as previously outlined by 21WIRE, the Manchester Arena attack appeared to have been ‘uncannily timed’ as it coincided on the same day as the OSCE-wide Counter-Terrorism Conference 2017 in Vienna, Austria.

In what is a clear military ramp up following the Manchester attack, there have been US-led coalition airstrikes supposedly targeting ISIS in both Syria and Iraq that have killed 121 civilians in the process. The strikes have led to increasing tension that will also place external pressure the Russian-led Astana Peace Agreement in Syria, while continuing to benefit the strategic movements of ISIS in Syria, as recently described in detail by 21WIRE.

Considering the political backdrop outlined above, let’s examine some of the suspicious aspects linked to the recent Manchester arena explosion, while also providing historical context and comparative analysis to get a bigger picture of the events that have unfolded…


The Manchester Attack

On May 22nd at 10:50pm GMT, an apparent ‘explosion’ at US pop star Ariana Grande‘s concert at Manchester Arena cascaded across mainstream media and social media alike. Adding to the confusion, early reports state that there were two ‘loud bangs’ apparently heard as Grande’s concert was coming to an end after an encore.

By 11:15pm roads were closed around the area, while security shutdown and evacuated London’s Victoria train station. Keep in mind, all of this happened within 25 minutes of the initial terror event. This was followed at 12:43 pm where some 60 ambulances responded according to the North West Ambulance Service NHS Trust, transporting the injured to the Manchester’s Royal Infirmary Accident & Emergency Department.

This case has also seen its share of eyewitness testimony that conflicts with details from the official story, as one mother, Emma Johnson, was at the top of the foyer protected by glass waiting for her young daughters noticed a suspicious man with “risen bits” under his clothing and as the alleged perpetrator also wore a “bright red top in the crowd with a grey panel down the front,” according to her statement.

What transpired after the US leaks of the Manchester terror incident appeared to muddy the narrative, as the story quickly changed from lone wolf status to that of a ‘larger network’ while the bomber was seen on CCTV with dark clothing, not matching the description above. Also interestingly, like so many other major terror incidents, as pointed out recently by Prof Michel Chossudovsky, was the discoveryof the purported terrorist’s ID on his dead body. Since 9/11 this phenomenon has been going on with regularity, specifically with high-profile terror acts in the West. It’s as if terror criminals can’t leave home without a license or passport prior to committing an atrocity – a curiosity that only lends to questions of staging.

Another concern about the events surrounding Manchester, were the reports that the bomb was “…one the most sophisticated set off in Britain since attacks by the IRA.” In fact, it had a ‘remote detonator’ which is simply explained away as if the attacker was unaware of the feature. That may be, but a good point to make is that the bomber did not have to be at the scene upon detonation. This information for some is explained away because of an attacker’s radical religious views, however, as we’ve seen before during other events, some apparent terrorist’s are found not to strictly adhere to those views even around the time of an attack. This evident prior to 9/11 and after 2013’s Boston bombing.



‘ARENA AERIAL’ – The above image depicts the apparent crime scene at Manchester Arena. (Image Source: bbc)

The UK’s Independent provided the following details in the aftermath of the Manchester Arena attack:

“In total, our clinicians treated and took 59 patients to hospital – 9 to Manchester Royal Infirmary, 6 to Salford, 6 to Wythenshawe, 12 to Manchester Children’s, 6 to Stepping Hill, 8 to Royal Bolton, 7 to Royal Oldham and 5 to North Manchester.

“Approximately 60 ‘walking wounded’ were also treated by our crews but did not go to hospital.”

All told, 22 were said to have died with 116 injured, after the man named in the suicide bombing, 22 year-old Salman Abedi, allegedly detonated a bomb in the foyer of Manchester Arena.

Interestingly, UK’s Sun outlet stated “Firefighters’ frustrations were revealed on internal brigade website Save The UK Fire Service.” 

Continuing, in a message written by unnamed firefighters the report also claimed the following “…firefighters didn’t get to the scene till 60-90 mins after the explosion. They were at Manchester Central fire station watching the incident unfold on TV. This station is half a mile from the incident.”

COMMENT: If the above report is true, one should question the very nature of the attack itself, because it would be highly unlikely that fire rescue teams would be told hold back if there was a legitimate explosion in a building full of civilians. Not only would this be a ‘failure of leadership’ it would surely be an obstruction of public safety – would it not?

Almost immediately in the aftermath Manchester attack, UK Prime Minister Theresa May sought to raise the terror threat level from severe to critical, the first such instance since London’s 7/7 bombings. The controversial PM claimed that more attacks could be ‘imminent’ which led to the sudden announcement that thousands of soldiers would be patrolling the streets in an effort to quell a potential attack while also piggy-backing ‘Operation Temperer’ and its counter terror duties. This has subsequently also led growing concerns of what appeared to be a form of martial law in the UK.

In predictable fashion, the military-style patrols ushered in following the Manchester attack, seemed to echo the response following the highly theatrical ‘three days of terror’ the public saw during the Paris attacks of 2015.

Western allied nations along with the GCC have all been culpable in the rise of ‘Islamic’ terrorist groups and incidents, as they are in fact engineers of them. One of the main architects prior to the War On Terror era, is the recently deceased former NSA head, Zbigniew Brzezinski who developed Osama bin Laden as a US intelligence asset and built the al Qaeda network alongside the CIA in Afghanistan against then Soviet Russia.

After reviewing the available evidence, the Manchester attack in scope, also looks similar to other controversial terror atrocities, including aspects of the Brussels airport bombing, the Istanbul airport bombing, the November 2015 Paris attacks and elements surrounding the highly suspicious London attack in March of 2017. 

QUESTION: Is the Manchester Arena bombing another questionable Western attack that will likely increase calls for a NATO-sponsored intervention in Syria? If so, ask yourself – who benefits the most from yet another terror attack on Western soil?



‘BLURRING THE LINES’ – One of a collection blurred, nondescript images of the MI5-watched bomber Salman Abedi presented by mainstream media. (Image Source: telegraph)


recently highlighted the significance of the Libyan links to that of the purported Manchester attacker Abedi, as well as the hazard posed by LIFG members in the UK:

“The Telegraph in its article, “Salman Abedi named as the Manchester suicide bomber – what we know about him,” would report:

Salman Abedi, 22, who was reportedly known to the security services, is thought to have returned from Libya as recently as this week.

While initial reports attempted to craft a narrative focused on a a “lone wolf” attacker who organized and executed the blast himself, the nature of the improvised explosive device used and the details of the attack revealed what was certainly an operation carried out by someone who either acquired militant experience through direct contact with a terrorist organization, or was directed by a terrorist organization with extensive experience.


A Thriving Terrorist Community in the Midst of Manchester 

The same Telegraph article would also admit (emphasis added):

A group of Gaddafi dissidents, who were members of the outlawed Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), lived within close proximity to Abedi in Whalley Range.

Among them was Abd al-Baset Azzouz, a father-of-four from Manchester, who left Britain to run a terrorist network in Libya overseen by Ayman al-Zawahiri, Osama bin Laden’s successor as leader of al-Qaeda.

Azzouz, 48, an expert bomb-maker, was accused of running an al-Qaeda network in eastern Libya. The Telegraph reported in 2014 that Azzouz had 200 to 300 militants under his control and was an expert in bomb-making. 

Another member of the Libyan community in Manchester, Salah Aboaoba told Channel 4 news in 2011 that he had been fund raising for LIFG while in the city. Aboaoba had claimed he had raised funds at Didsbury mosque, the same mosque attended by Abedi.

Thus, the required experience for the recent Manchester attack exists in abundance within the community’s Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) members.

LIFG is in fact a proscribed terrorist group listed as such by the United Kingdom’s government in 2005, and still appears upon its list of “Proscribed terrorist groups or organisations,” found on the government’s own website.

The accompanying government list (PDF) states explicitly regarding LIFG that:

The LIFG seeks to replace the current Libyan regime with a hard-line Islamic state. The group is also part of the wider global Islamist extremist movement, as inspired by Al Qa’ida. The group has mounted several operations inside Libya, including a 1996 attempt to assassinate Mu’ammar Qadhafi.”

Interestingly, the Land Destroyer report continued by detailing that “LIFG also appears on the US State Department’s list of Foreign Terrorist Organizations. Astoundingly, it appears under a section titled, “Delisted Foreign Terrorist Organizations,” and indicates that it was removed as recently as 2015.”

Libya’s militant governor of Tripoli, Abdel Hakim Belhadj, was also a part of the Mujahideen fighters closely linked to Bin Laden that became known as al-Qaeda, “returned to his home country [in 1995] as head of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, an underground paramilitary organisation dedicated to Gaddafi’s downfall.” Over the years, Belhadj was incarcerated and turned loose back into the field after being rendered by the CIA and British security services.

So naturally when it was revealed that Ramadan Abedi, the father of the purported Manchester suicide bomber was also a member of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG) and was believed to have been a part of LIFG during the NATO-backed regime change operation in Libya in 2011 – it only raised more questions.

Here’s RT discussing the matter…



The UK’s Metro reported the following details regarding the elder Abedi:

“The elder Abedi fled to Britain before returning to Libya in 2011 for the uprising that ended the Gaddafi regime, and later served in the Tripoli police department, a spokesman said.”

It’s important to remember the chain of events following various global and terror operations.

In a NY Times article from December of 2012 entitled,“U.S.-Approved Arms for Libya Rebels Fell Into Jihadis’ Hands,” we see the acknowledgement of an arms shipment at the behest of the Obama administration under the watchful eye of former Secretary of State Hillary Clinton. However, the mainstream media appears to have provided cover for the White House and State Department by blaming just Qatar for the weapons transfer to militants, even though the regime change operation in Libya was overseen by both US and UK intelligence:

“The Obama administration secretly gave its blessing to arms shipments to Libyan rebels from Qatar last year, but American officials later grew alarmed as evidence grew that Qatar was turning some of the weapons over to Islamic militants, according to United States officials and foreign diplomats.


"...Many political leaders and media operatives bang the drums of security over so-called terror ‘sleeper cells’ (see the the London Boyssleeper cell) hiding in a nation near you – none of them acknowledge the historical fact that they themselves have also helped to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through counter-terrorism operations for decades."


No evidence has emerged linking the weapons provided by the Qataris during the uprising against Col. Muammar el-Qaddafi to the attack that killed four Americans at the United States diplomatic compound in Benghazi, Libya, in September.

But in the months before, the Obama administration clearly was worried about the consequences of its hidden hand in helping arm Libyan militants, concerns that have not previously been reported. The weapons and money from Qatar strengthened militant groups in Libya, allowing them to become a destabilizing force since the fall of the Qaddafi government.”

Those with links to LIFG have often been found to have ties to various branches of al-Qaeda. This also proved to be the case with computer specialist Abu Anas al-libi to who has been allegedly tied MI6 British intelligence since the late 1990’s, having been indicted for his role in the 1998 United States embassy bombings. Other claims have also been reported regarding al-libi:

The British government suspects he is a high-level al-Qaeda operative, and Egypt tells Britain that he is wanted for an assassination attempt of Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. In 1996, he is involved in a plot with the British intelligence agency to assassinate Libyan leader.”

So far there have been numerous arrests in the aftermath of the Manchester terror event, including Adedi’s brothers, Ismail Abedi and Hashem Abedi.



‘LIKE FATHER, LIKE SON?’ – Manchester attacker’s father Ramadan Abedi linked to the Libyan terror group LIFG. (Image Source: thesundaily)


Chasing Wolves: The ‘Known Wolf’ Epidemic

As we’ve mentioned at 21WIRE numerous times in recent years, many political leaders and media operatives bang the drums of security over so-called terror ‘sleeper cells’ (see the the London Boyssleeper cell) hiding in a nation near you – none of them acknowledge the historical fact that they themselves have also helped to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through counter-terrorism operations for decades.

Below is screen shot of a timeline of events provided by CNN illustrating that there was much more going on behind the scenes with the Abedi family while security agencies were watching…


Capture-CNN-misdirection


21 WIRE has documented over the years, many so-called shooting/terror/attacks that involve individuals being monitored by security services prior to an alleged act taking place. A place where a ‘lone wolf’ graduates into the ranks of a known wolf. In fact, very often those being watched by authorities exhibit all the tell-tale signs of a patsy or an informant, working either for a law enforcement or intelligence agency to potentially avoid jail time for previous criminal activity. Historically, government operators have often made use of low-life criminals, and mentally disturbed individuals to fulfill various role in entrapment stings or sometimes as bonafide actors in an actual attacks.

In any case, alleged attackers and security agencies have a dicey relationship, making any link between them highly suspect in nature.

To provide further background on the existence of state-sponsored terror using proxy agents, here’s a link to a 21WIRE post concerning a BBC documentary entitled, “Operation Gladio.” It describes how a secret army operated by the CIA and MI6 via NATO was used to carryout worldwide political objectives through a “strategy of tension.”

In January of 2015, a strategic security service think-tank known as The Soufan Group, reported that a larger national security threat resides with radicals who’ve had a lengthy criminal background with known ties to security agencies:

“The Soufan Group, a New York think tank, said a better term for “lone wolves” would be “known wolves“, given how many are already known to Western intelligence agencies before they strike.

“These individuals, acting alone or in small groups … have been on the radar of various agencies and organisations, highlighting the difficulty of effectively monitoring and managing people at the nexus of criminality and terrorism,” it said in a report this week…”

In keeping with our running report on ‘known wolf’ actors involved in many attacks Western soil, here’s another look at other suspicious intelligence ‘informant’ cases and other terror stooges that have been implicated over the years:


Tamerlan Tsarnaev (see his story here)
Buford Rogers
 (see his story here)
Jerad Miller (see his story here)
Naji Mansour (see his story here)
Quazi Mohammad Nafis (see his story here)
Mohamed Osman Mohamud (see his story here)
Timothy McVeigh (see his story here)
Salim Benghalem (see his story here)
Michael Adebolajo (see his story here)
Daba Deng (see his story here)
Elton Simpson (see his story here)
Man Haron Monis (see his story here)
Abu Hamza (see his story here)
Haroon Rashid Aswat (see his story here)
Glen Rodgers (see his story here)
Omar Mateen (see his story here)
Tashfeen Malik (see her story here)
Djamel Beghal  (see his story here)
Anjem Choudary (see his story here)
Cherif Kouachi (see his story here)
Said Kouachi (see his story here)
Amedy Coulibaly (see his story here)
Hayat Boumeddiene (see her story here)
Salah Abdeslam (see his story here)
Michael Zehaf-Bibeau (see his story here)
Nidal Malik Hassan (see his story here)
Abdelhakim Dekhar  (see his story here)
Abdelhamid Abaaoud (see his story here)
Samy Amimour (see his story here)
Ismaël Omar Mostefaï (see his story here)
Mohamed Lahouij Bouhlel (see his story here)
Anis Amri (see his story here)
Esteban Santiago-Ruiz (see his story here)
Abdulkadir Masharipov (see his story here)
Khalid Masood (see his story here)


Below is a section worth reviewing again in the wake of the Manchester attack which was also included in my analysis of the London attack back in March…


1 Choudary

‘Radical Hate Preacher’ and UK terror media mascot Anjem Choudary (Source: KeywordSuggest.co.uk)


The Terror Factory

In August of 2016, a hyper-propagandized war image of Omar Daqneesh went viral in the West, while the well-known radical preacher Anjem Choudary was ‘protected’ by MI5, despite being linked to major terror plots over the past decade. All in all, they were two narratives that reflected the ‘humanitarian’ and ‘radicalization’ guises of NATO’s international security syndicate that has masked the reality of the War On Terror era.

Here’s a portion of a 21WIRE article written in August of 2016 entitled COINTEL CHAOS: The MI5’s ‘Known Wolf’ Preacher, Aleppo Agitprop & NATO’s Mask.” The dense report further outlined the historical lens with which to view links between terror operators and counter-terror operations and how both have played a dramatic role in many major acts of terror over the past 16 years:

“It’s worth noting that the contemptible cleric Choudary, now facing jail time for supporting ISIS, crossed paths with Abu Hamza, another radical preacher who subsequently ran the Finsbury Park mosque in North London – a known limited hangout for spooks, criminals and other informants.

In 2015, 21WIRE discussed the dubious role of Hamza at Finsbury Park, as well as his long time connection to MI5, while under the gaze of MI6:

“Hamza’s role as a state instigator and secret custodian of the Finsbury Park’s radical ‘honey pot’, now appears obvious. In a typical honey pot operation, security chiefs will place an outrageously radical character into position in order to attract “the worst of the worst” and then inform on them to authorities. For years Hamza openly preached his overtly radical, over-the-top sermons at Finsbury Park, often praising Osama Bin Laden and glorifying the attacks of 9/11, all the while mocking the police.”


Abu Hamza

Continuing, the Special Report examined Abu Hamza (photo, left) and his meetings with British security services since the 1990’s:

“…the Daily Telegraph disclosed how Abu Hamza had at least 12 secret meetings with MI5 and police special branch over a six year period, starting in the late 1990’s. Other testimonies also exist that show both Abu Hamza and Abu Qatada – Britain’s two most celebrated radical Islamists, were both informants.”

In May of 2015, the UK’s Independent discussed the almost two dozen terror attacks linked to the group known as “Al-Muhajiroun,”a banned terror-linked organization with ties to British intelligence, specifically MI5. In the passage below, many of the international attacks connected to Al-Muhajiroun had been ‘foiled’ by police prior to happening:

“The 7/7 attacks, the murder of fusilier Lee Rigby, the plot to blow up planes with liquid bombs and the plot to blow up the Ministry of Sound nightclub are among the 23 planned terrorist attacks that have been linked to one single radical group operating in the UK over the past two decades: al Muhajiroun.

According to a new book by terrorism expert Raffaello Pantucci, al Muhajiroun, a banned network in the UK, has been linked to a number of plots and attacks carried out both in Britain and abroad since 2000.

The book, entitled We love death as you love life – which Pantucci said is a “catchphrase” used by many of the attackers in their propaganda – claims that 23 out of 51 of these terror plots either carried out or foiled by police in the UK and abroad have been linked to al-Muhajiroun.”

Shortly before London’s 7/7 bombings in 2005,  Al-Muhajiroun’s Omar Bakri Mohammed (Anjem Choudary’s co-founder) was outed as an informant for MI5 after the Pulitzer Prize winning investigative reporter Ron Suskind spoke to a senior MI5 official. Bakri later ‘conceded’ the connection during an interview in Beirut, which was featured in Suskind’s controversial book, The Way of the World.

In an article written by Nafeez Ahmed entitled,“The circus: How British intelligence primed both sides of the ‘terror war’,” the larger role of Bakri and Choudary is revealed:

“Bakri was regularly in touch with his deputy, Anjem Choudary, over the internet and even delivered online speeches to his followers in Britain instructing them to join IS and murder civilians. He has now been detained and charged by Lebanese authorities for establishing terror cells in the country.

Bakri was also deeply involved “with training the mujahideen [fighters] in camps on the Syrian borders and also on the Palestine side.” The trainees included four British Islamists “with professional backgrounds” who would go on to join the war in Syria. Bakri also claimed to have trained “many fighters,” including people from Germany and France, since arriving in Lebanon. Was Mohammed Emwazi among them? Last year, Bakri disciple Mizanur Rahman confirmedthat at least five European Muslims who had died fighting under IS in Syria had been Bakri acolytes.”

Interestingly, a UK think-tank called the Quilliam Foundation, that focuses on counter-extremism, has functioned alongside the MI5’s counter insurgent programs. Many critics of  Quilliam have suggested the foundation has some controversial bedfellows, in addition to their close affiliation with the Council on Foreign Relations and their connection to the Henry Jackson Society which has been associated with other neoconservative think-tanks.

In the US, many neoconservative republicans have been in favor of escalating the conflict in Syria and Quilliam’s involvement could be seen as another group behind the scenes designing a particular outcome for Western interests.”


Manchester: Big Questions Remain

Here’s a couple of UK Column shows over the past week that pose a number of questions while providing a detailed analysis in order to breakdown the Manchester attack…


Casting Crisis: History of Manufacturing Terror

There has been an uncanny number of attacks preceded by anti-terror/multi-agency fusion drills that theatrically act out violence before an attack. This was something that happened prior to the Brussels attacks of 2016 , as well as London’s 7/7 bombings in 2005.

Watch this ITV interview with Peter Power that reveals the 7/7 rehearsal drills…


Incredibly, Power also predicted the 7/7 attacks a year earlier on BBC Panorama on May 16th 2004…


Here are two YouTube videos by IllusiveExposureRadio that raise a number of interesting questions, including a Manchester drill that we reported on here at 21WIRE a year ago that involved hundreds of civilian actors…

Truth is often stranger than fiction when looking at the bizarre phenomena surrounding many mass casualty incidents – and the Orlando Pulse nightclub shooting was no exception, as have been many others. Below is a another look at a report logged at 21WIRE last year that uncovered multiple links to the mass casualty staging company Crisis Cast. It was revealed that the world’s largest security firm G4S, who had employed the man named in the Orlando pulse nightclub shooting, Omar Mateen – was a client of the mass casualty staging company called CrisisCast. Here’s that passage:

CrisisCast-Capture-2


‘STAGING REALITY’ – CrisisCast specializes in replicating mass casualty events. (Screen Capture from Crisis Cast)

Training for Disaster

The heavily-stylized company CrisisCast, appears to be a revamped version of the Visionbox Crisis Actors project (a crisis actor production emerging after Sandy Hook), with a professional team of actors, elaborate film crews, expert producers and theatrical effects makeup squads mimicking real-life injuries (additional prosthetics) – all focused to deliver a simulated crisis-like reality to the public, later to be managed accordingly through their public relations division via various forms of social media.

RELATED: (VIDEO) ‘Active Shooter’ and ‘Terror’ Drills: The Truth WILL Shock You

In CrisisCast‘s ‘about’ section we see a sophisticated amalgam of emergency protocol disaster training combined with “internationally credited film crews,” that bring their high-end stagecraft to life, through a collection of “role players, stunts, medical simulations and combat flashpoints,” cloaked in visual tricky, with film techniques out of the UK and Australia, so says the group’s website.

Below is a road traffic collusion demo created by lead CrisisCast producer/founder Brian Mitchell (has worked on Hollywood studios and holds National security clearance) featured on Vimeo. The scenario is filmed from multiple angles, with quick cut editing that disorients, as we see an individual (crisis actor) in the aftermath of a crash – struck by the emotional weight of the scene – screaming out to a gaggle of onlookers after witnessing the staged carnage. The strange episode leaves one with a feeling of phantom trauma that continues to lurk.


When Security Breeds Terror

In an article published at Global Research written by Andrew Gavin Marshall, entitled State-Sponsored Terror: British and American Black Ops in Iraq,” we see the historical outline and correlation between security agencies and the terror that’s never too far behind:

In January of 2002, the Washington Post ran a story detailing a CIA plan put forward to President Bush shortly after 9/11 by CIA Director George Tenet titled, “Worldwide Attack Matrix,” which was “outlining a clandestine anti-terror campaign in 80 countries around the world. What he was ready to propose represented a striking and risky departure for U.S. policy and would give the CIA the broadest and most lethal authority in its history.”

As the article continues, we see the growing power of clandestine intelligence agencies and their direct involvement in so-called ‘terrorist’ incidents, most notably with the CIA since 9/11:the creation of a super-Intelligence Support Activity, an organization it dubs the Proactive, Preemptive Operations Group (P2OG), to bring together CIA and military covert action, information warfare, intelligence and cover and deception.

The intelligence treasure trove outlined by Marshall, also included a Telegraph news release from February 5, 2007: “Deep inside the heart of the “Green Zone” [in Iraq], the heavily fortified administrative compound in Baghdad, lies one of the most carefully guarded secrets of the war in Iraq. It is a cell from a small and anonymous British Army unit that goes by the deliberately meaningless name of the Joint Support Group (JSG).”

It turns out that the JSG, also operated under the cover moniker, Force Research Unit (FRU) which between the early 1980s and the late 1990s managed to penetrate the very heart of the IRA.” The FRU turned and blackmailed members of the IRA to work for the paramilitary organization as double agents. All told, the FRU/JSG was able to establish control at the highest levels of the IRA. The unit was renamed in the aftermath of Stevens Inquiry, which investigated allegations of a collusion between the security forces and protestant paramilitary groups:

“The Stevens Inquiry’s report “contains devastating confirmation that intelligence officers of the British police and the military actively helped Protestant guerillas to identify and kill Catholic activists in Northern Ireland during the 1980s.”

Former British intelligence agent, Kevin Fulton, who also worked with the FRU, stated that knowledge of the orchestrated unit was known by high level officials, claiming they had been ‘sanctioned’ by former PM Margaret Thatcher.

According to a former British Army mole, the MI5 organized a “weapons-buying trip to America in which he obtained detonators, later used by terrorists to murder soldiers and police officers.”

“The technology he obtained has been used in Northern Ireland and copied by terrorists in Iraq in roadside bombs that have killed British troops.”

When examining the shocking claims of CIA operations, along with stories of British intelligence operatives colluding with the IRA in deep cover terrorist acts in Northern Ireland via the FRU, your reminded of the heavily orchestrated attacks that now occur globally.


In Summary

The Manchester attack appears to be similar to other high profile incidents which have all been used to distort public opinion in the wake of media styled mass-tragedies.

Over the past 24-48 hours, authorities have released a CCTV imagery depicting the apparent Manchester attacker Abedi, which marks a ramp up of emotionally charged imagery used by media to dramatize the bombing, while continuing to obscure other facts and connections observed in the aftermath of the attack itself.

Here at 21WIRE, we’ve discussed the recent political fallout concerning the latest WMD allegations out of Syria, as well as the heavily propagandized imagery brought to us by the US-UK and Gulf state backed White Helmets group that has been parroted by Western media without question. Just like the White Helmets western-oriented war propaganda imagery, whatever the public thinks of the Manchester terror event, it may serve as a sharp catalyst to initiate a more direct NATO intervention into the Syrian conflict sometime in the future.


Featured image: Your News Wire


About the Author
 Author Shawn Helton is Associate Editor of 21st Century Wire, as well as an independent media forensic analyst specializing in criminal investigations and analyzing media coverage of terrorist events and theatres of war. 


horiz-long grey

uza2-zombienationAs we’ve mentioned at 21WIRE numerous times in recent years, many political leaders and media operatives bang the drums of security over so-called terror ‘sleeper cells’ (see the the London Boyssleeper cell) hiding in a nation near you – none of them acknowledge the historical fact that they themselves have also helped to harbor, grow, foment and radicalize individuals through counter-terrorism operations for decades.


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Echoed by its handmaiden the mainstream press, the US government has claimed for years that if only Russia were willing to cooperate, the world would move serenely forward under its benevolent hegemony. In his last month in office, President Obama warned: ‘If we don’t lead, no one else will,’ implying that the rest of the world is either lazy or incompetent.


Macron and Putin shake hands at Versailles: more than just empty symbolism, an earthquake may be coming.

Unintentionally, that remark may have been the straw that broke the back of the seventy year old European camel diligently carrying America’s load. In a little-noted coincidence on Memorial Day weekend, the much longed for death of America’s Russia-Hater in chief, Zbigniew Brzezinski was immediately followed by two equally longed-for statements and gestures by Europe’s acknowledged leaders, France and Germany: newly elected conservative President Emanuel Macron welcomed Vladimir Putin to Versailles to mark the 300th anniversary of Peter the Great’s visit to Louis XIVth’s mega-palace, while following upon the latest NATO security meeting, German Chancellor Angela Merkel stated unequivocally that Germany and Europe can no longer rely on the US under Donald Trump.  His reluctance to recognize the human causes of climate change may be the proximate reason for Mrs Merkel’s up-front declaration, but it marks a sea-change:  After seventy years as obedient junior partner to the Empire’s follies, Europe is hearing a definitive statement from a German leader often accused by her voters of tergiversations: “We Europeans need to know we must take our destiny as Europeans into our own hands.”

Chancellor Merkel: Her obedient kow-towing to the US line against Russia may be in for review.

Expect the corporate media to play this as ‘Russia’s Current Tsar catches up with an illustrious predecessor’s visit to the Palace of Versailles, spelling out the new threat to Europe from the East’. In fact, the reports on RT and France 24 of the Macron/Putin Press Conference could not have been more amusingly different: France’s state media, still following the old script, forced itself to conjure up negatives after every other correctly reported positive change in France’s relationship with Russia, after seventy years of obediently transmitting the American gospel of Russia-as-mortal-enemy.

How ironic that these two ‘passion plays’ should be presented on the United States’ most solemn military holiday: “Memorial Day” in honor of the hundreds of thousands of Americans fallen while dutifully trying to remake the world.


ABOUT THE AUTHOR

DEENA STRYKER, Associate Editor Born in Philadelphia, Stryker spent most of her adolescent and adult years in Europe, resulting over time in several unique books, her latest being 

CUBA: Diary of a Revolution, Inside the Cuban Revolution with Fidel, Raul, Che, and Celia Sanchez

ALSO: Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel: An Illustrated Personal Journey from the Cold War to the Arab Spring

America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World

A Taoist Politics: The Case For Sacredness

She began her journalistic career at the French News Agency in Rome, spent two years in Cuba finding out whether the Barbados were Communists before they made the revolution (‘Cuba 1964: When the Revolution was Young’). After spending half a decade in Eastern Europe, and a decade in the U.S., studying Global Survival and writing speeches in the Carter State Department, she wrote the only book that foresaw the fall of the Berlin Wall AND the dissolution of the Soviet Union (“Une autre Europe, un autre Monde’). Her memoir, ‘Lunch with Fellini, Dinner with Fidel’, tells it all. ‘A Taoist Politics: The Case for Sacredness’, which examines the similarities between ancient wisdom and modern science and what this implies for political activism; and ‘America Revealed to a Honey-Colored World” is a pamphlet about how the U.S. came down from the City on a Hill’. 


 Expect the corporate media to play this as ‘Russia’s Current Tsar catches up with an illustrious predecessor’s visit to the Palace of Versailles, spelling out the new threat to Europe from the East’. In fact, the reports on RT and France 24 of the Macron/Putin Press Conference could not have been more amusingly different: France’s state media, still following the old script, forced itself to conjure up negatives after every other correctly reported positive change in France’s relationship with Russia, after seventy years of obediently transmitting the American gospel of Russia-as-mortal-enemy.



Manchester Bombings – Are We Seeing A Pattern Here?

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

Caleb Maupin  reporting


About the Author
Caleb Maupin is an independent progressive journalist and social activist based in new York.

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uza2-zombienationThe Manchester bombing has all the features of a state-sponsored false flag operation. The corporate media, of course, will trumpet the notion that this was another instance of ISIS terrorism.


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Hypocrisy and Condescension: Trump’s Speech to the Middle East

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.

by


Trump being given—literally—the royal treatment by the Saudi mafia. Aah, the world is his oyster. The man without self-consciousness, the great turncoat, has arrived.


So after inventing “fake news”, (1) America’s crazed President on Sunday gave the world’s Muslims a fake speech. Donald Trump said he was not in Saudi Arabia to “lecture” – but then told the world’s Islamic preachers what to say, condemned “Islamist terrorism” as if violence was a solely Muslim phenomenon and then announced like an Old Testament prophet that he was in “a battle between good and evil”. There were no words of compassion, none of mercy, absolutely not a word of apology for his racist, anti-Muslim speeches of last year.

Even more incredibly, he blamed Iran – rather than Isis – for “fuelling sectarian violence”, pitied the Iranian people for their “despair” a day after they had freely elected a liberal reformer as their president, and demanded the further isolation of the largest Shiite country in the Middle East. The regime responsible for “so much instability” is Iran. The Shiite Hezbollah were condemned. So were the Shiite Yemenis. Trump’s Sunni Saudi hosts glowed with warmth at such wisdom.

And this was billed by CNN as a “reset” speech with the Muslim world. For “reset”, read “repair”, but Trump’s Sunday diatribe in Riyadh was in fact neither a “reset” nor a “repair”. It was the lecture he claimed he would not give.

“Every time a terrorist murders an innocent person, and falsely invokes the name of God, it should be an insult to every person of faith,” he announced, utterly ignoring – as he had to – the fact that Saudi Arabia, not Iran, is the fountainhead of the very Wahhabi Salafist extremism whose “terrorists” murder “innocent people”.

He tried to avoid his old racist “radical Islamic extremist” mantra and tried to replace it with “Islamist extremism” but he apparently fluffed his words and said “Islamic” as well. The subtle difference he was trying to make in English was thus for Muslims no more than a variation on a theme: terrorists are Muslims.

All this, let us remember, came after Trump had sewn up yet another outrageous arms deal with the Saudis ($110bn or £84.4bn) and the proposed purchase by Qatar of what Trump obscenely referred to as “a lot of beautiful military equipment”. It seems almost fantastical that he should make such a remark only two days before meeting the Pope who in Cairo two weeks ago railed along with the Muslim Sheikh of Al Azhar against the evil of arms dealers.

“We are adopting a principled realism, rooted in common values and shared interests,” Trump told the Saudis and the leaders of another fifty Muslim nations on Sunday. But what on earth are those values? What values do the Americans share with the head-chopping, misogynist, undemocratic, dictatorial Saudis other than arms sales and oil?

And when Trump said that “our friends will never question our support, and our enemies will never doubt our determination,” were his friends supposed to be the Saudis? Or the “Islamic world” – which should surely include Iran and Syria and Yemen – and the warring militias of Libya? As for “enemies”, was he talking about Isis? Or Russia? Or Syria? Or Iran, whose newly elected president surely wants peace with America? Or was he – as part of the Muslim world will conclude with good reason – declaring his friendship with the Sunni Muslims of the world and his enmity towards the Shia Muslims?

For that, ultimately, was what the Riyadh speech-fest was all about. Take this little quotation: “We will make decisions based on real-world outcomes – not inflexible ideology. We will be guided by the lessons of experience, not the confines of rigid thinking. And, wherever possible, we will seek gradual reforms – not sudden intervention.” Now let’s parse this little horror. “Decisions based on real-world outcomes” means brutal pragmatism. “Gradual reforms” indicates that the US will do nothing for human rights and take no steps to prevent crimes against humanity – unless they are committed by Iran, Syria, Iraqi Shiites, the Lebanese Shiite Hezbollah or Yemeni Shiite Houthis.

 

It was all about “partnership”, we were supposed to believe. It was about a “coalition”. You bet it would be. For America is not going to bleed as it did in Iraq and Afghanistan. It is the Arabs who must bleed as they fight each other, encouraged by the biggest arms supplier of them all. Thus Trump lectured them on their need to share “their part of the burden”. The Arabs will be “united and strong” as “the forces of good”. If the battle is between “decent people of all religions” and “barbaric criminals” – “between good and evil” – as Trump inferred, it was significant, was it not, that this battle was to start in the “sacred land” of Sunni Saudi Arabia?

By the time Trump reached the bit in which he threatened the bad guys – “if you choose the path of terror, your life will be empty, your life will be brief, and your soul will be condemned” – he sounded like a speech-writer for Isis. Apparently – and unsurprisingly, perhaps – Trump’s actual speech was partly the work of the very man who wrote out his much ridiculed (and failed) legal attempt to ban Muslims of seven nations from the United States. All in all, quite a “reset”. Trump talked of peace but was preparing the Arabs for a Sunni-Shia war. The fawning leaders of the Muslim world, needless to say, clapped away when the mad president of America had finished speaking. But did they understand what his words really portended?  


About the Author
 Robert Fisk writes for the Independent, where this column originally appeared. 



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uza2-zombienationEven more incredibly, Trump blamed Iran – rather than Isis – for “fueling sectarian violence”, pitied the Iranian people for their “despair” a day after they had freely elected a liberal reformer as their president, and demanded the further isolation of the largest Shiite country in the Middle East. The regime responsible for “so much instability” is Iran. The Shiite Hezbollah were condemned. So were the Shiite Yemenis. Trump’s Sunni Saudi hosts glowed with warmth at such wisdom.


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How Russia Became “Our Adversary” Again

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HELP ENLIGHTEN YOUR FELLOWS. BE SURE TO PASS THIS ON. SURVIVAL DEPENDS ON IT.
Note: We deeply value and respect the author's contributions to the clarification of the political fog that envelops most of humanity these days, but differ with him in his characterization of the Soviet Union, especially his argument that it was a brutal tyranny controlling with iron fist all of Eastern Europe.  The reality of the situation between the two blocs was and remains a lot more complex, and such expressions almost literally borrowed from the canons of viciously hostile Western propaganda, do little to dismantle the misguided pent-up animosity that many Americans still feel toward Russia.


by


United States-of-Americans are routinely told by politicians and corporate media pundits and talking heads that Russia is their enemy – an “adversary state.”  The assertion has been normalized.  It passes without challenge or justification.

Russia's achievements in aerospace and strategic weapons—like ICBMs— have maintained her independence and quite possibly physical integrity in the face of constant machinations by the West to reduce her to second rate power status.

Forget for now the question of whether and how “our adversary Russia” intervened significantly on Donald Trump’s behalf in the 2016 U.S. presidential election.  Put aside the glaring absence of any smoking gun evidence to back that charge up and contemplate the fundamental matter of how and why Vladimir Putin’s Russia became “our enemy” in the first place.

For those of us old enough to remember the long Cold War era, the designation of Russia as a leading global U.S. foe carries no small irony. From the Bolshevik Revolution of 1917 until the collapse of the officially Marxist-Leninist Soviet Union and its Eastern European satellites in the early 1990s, Russia was an ideological and political enemy of the Western capitalist “elite.”

The USSR was no workers’ paradise.  For all its formal allegiance to Marx and Engels, it was a militantly hierarchical class society ruled by a tyrannical state. After World War Two, it held brutal military power over Eastern Europe and East Germany. Still, Soviet-era Russia created an urban and industrialized society with real civilizational accomplishments (including cradle-to-grave health-care, housing, and food security and an impressive educational system and cultural apparatus) outside capitalism.  It pursued an independent path to modernity without a capitalist class, devoid of a bourgeoisie, in the name of socialism. It therefore posed a political and ideological challenge to U.S-led Western capitalism – and to Washington’s related plans for the Third World periphery, which was supposed to subordinate its developmental path to the needs of the rich nations (the U.S., Western Europe, and honorarily white Japan) of the world-capitalist core.


One of the many dirty little secrets of the U.S. Cold War was that anti-communism functioned as a pretext and cover for Washington’s Wall Street-fueled ambition to force open and run the entire world system in accord with its multinational corporate elite’s globalist- “Open Door” political-economic needs.  From this imperial perspective, the real Cold War enemy was not so much “communism” as other peoples’ struggles for national, local, and regional autonomy and independence. The enemy remains long after the statues of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin have come down.


What is a well-printed and professionally designed protest sign doing in Russia, written in English? Cui bono? Obligingly found and disseminated by the Guardian (UK). The demonization of Putin has reached grotesque dimensions.

Honest U.S. Cold Warriors knew that it was the political threat of “communism” – its appeal to poor nations and people (including the lower and working classes within rich/core states) – and not any serious military danger that constituted the true “Soviet menace.”  Contrary to U.S. “containment” doctrine after World War II, the ruling Soviet bureaucracy was concerned above all with keeping an iron grip on its internal and regional empire, not global expansion and “world revolution.” It did, however “deter…the worst of Western violence” (Noam Chomsky) by providing military and other assistance to Third World targets of U.S. and Western attack (including China, Korea, Indonesia, Egypt, Syria, Cuba, Vietnam, and Laos).  Along the way, it provided an example of independent development outside and against the capitalist world system advanced by the superpower headquartered in Washington.

To make matters worse from Washington’s “Open Door” perspective, the Soviet Empire kept a vast swath of the world’s natural and human resources walled off from profitable exploitation by global capital.

All of this was more than enough to mark the Soviet Union as global public enemy number one for the post-WWII U.S. power elite, which had truly planet-wide imperial ambitions, unlike Moscow.

The Soviet deterrent and alternative to U.S.-led capitalism-imperialism collapsed once and for all in the early 1990s.  Washington celebrated with unchallenged invasions of Panama and Iraq. The blood-drenched U.S. President George H.W. Bush exulted that “what we say goes” in a newly unipolar, post-Soviet world. Russia reverted to not-so “free market” capitalism under U.S.-led Western financial supervision and in accord with the savage austerity and inequality imposed by the neoliberal “Washington consensus.” Chomsky got it right in 1991.  “With the collapse of Soviet tyranny,” he wrote, “much of the region can be expected to return to its traditional [subordinate] status, with the former high echelons of the bureaucracy playing the role of the Third World elites that enrich themselves while serving the interests of foreign investors.” The consequences were disastrous for many millions of ordinary Russians.

The West said, “welcome to the machine” and “enjoy your new freedom to starve and die young.” The Soviet tyranny was turned into an oligarchs’ wonderland, a neoliberal wasteland combining untold new opulence for the fortunate Few with a stark decline in social and living standards for the Many.  Russia remains a capitalist nightmare and plutocrats’ playground.

So, what happened?  How did “our” Cold War super-enemy become “our” brand new top “adversary” all over again, more than a quarter century after the tearing down of the Berlin Wall? The bottom line is that proud, post-Cold War Russia finally experienced too much brazen humiliation and betrayal at the hands of the U.S.-led West. It got up off the canvass under national/nationalist strongman Putin (a former KGB Lieutenant-Colonel wise in the ways of the West) and marshalled enough of still-intact natural and military resources and patriotic to challenge the American Empire’s hubristic claim to the right to rule Eurasia with impunity. “What we say goes” hit a new wall of Russian dignity and power.

One of the many dirty little secrets of the U.S. Cold War was that anti-communism functioned as a pretext and cover for Washington’s Wall Street-fueled ambition to force open and run the entire world system in accord with its multinational corporate elite’s globalist- “Open Door” political-economic needs.  From this imperial perspective, the real Cold War enemy was not so much “communism” as other peoples’ struggles for national, local, and regional autonomy and independence. The enemy remains long after the statues of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin have come down.

It doesn’t matter than Russia is no longer “socialist.” Nationalist and regional push-back against Uncle “We Own the World” Sam has been more than sufficient to get Putin designated as the next official Hitler and Russia targeted as a malevolent opponent by the U.S. elite political class and media. Mike Whitney puts it very well in a recent CounterPunch essay:

“What has Russia done to deserve all the negative press and unsupported claims of criminal meddling?…Just look at a map. For the last 16 years, the US has been rampaging across North Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia. Washington intends to control critical oil and natural gas reserves in the ME, establish military bases across Central Asia, and remain the dominant player in an area of that is set to become the most populous and prosperous region of the world…”

“But one country has upset that plan, blocked that plan, derailed that plan. Russia. Russia has stopped Washington’s murderous marauding and genocidal depredations in Ukraine and Syria, which is why the US foreign policy establishment is so pissed-off.  US elites aren’t used to obstacles.”

“For the last quarter of a century – since the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution of the Soviet Union – the world had been Washington’s oyster. If the president of the United States wanted to invade a country in the Middle East, kill a million people, and leave the place in a smoldering pile of rubble, then who could stop him? …Nobody.  Because Washington owns this fu**ing planet and everyone else is just a visitor…Capisce?.”

“But now all that’s changed. Now evil Putin has thrown up a roadblock to US hegemony in Syria and Ukraine. Now Washington’s land-bridge to Central Asia has been split in two, and its plan to control vital pipeline corridors from Qatar to the EU is no longer viable. Russia has stopped Washington dead-in-its tracks and Washington is furious.”

“The anti-Russia hysteria in the western media is equal to the pain the US foreign policy establishment is currently experiencing. And the reason the foreign policy establishment is in so much pain, is because they are not getting their way.  It’s that simple. Their global strategy is in a shamble because Russia will not let them topple the Syrian government, install their own puppet regime, redraw the map of the Middle East, run roughshod over international law, and tighten their grip on another battered war-torn part of the world.”

“So now… Putin must be demonized and derided. The American people must be taught to hate Russia and all-things Russian…Russia must be blamed for anything and everything under the sun…”

Forget the charges of Trump-Russia collusion.  Trump’s main Russia problem is that he came into the White House from outside the elite Council on Foreign Relations (CFR) ruling class establishment.  Unlike the plugged-in U.S. power and imperial elite, the orange-haired brute never got the Zbigniew Brzezinski-crafted, David Rockefeller-endorsed CFR memo on the grave peril Moscow still poses to “the international system sponsored by the United States.”  (True, it’s unlikely that Trump could have followed the memo). Candidate Trump showed his lack of ruling class credentials by admiring Putin’s authoritarian manliness and calling for a stand-down from Obama and Hillary Clinton’s reckless, Brzezinski-esque provocation of the Kremlin in Eastern Europe and Syria. He foolishly called for normalized relations with the vodka-swilling Eurasian power that arose from the grave to once again become Washington’s “all-purpose [global] punching bag” (Whitney).


From obsessively russophobic political commentators like Rachel Maddow to liberaloid comics like Stephen Colbert, almost the totality of the Democratic-party shills in the media and Hollywood have joined the lynching mob against Trump, which naturally also happens to offer them a juicy target.

After Herr Donald was ironically installed in the White House by leading Russophobe and  “lying neoliberal warmonger” (LNW) Hillary Clinton, Russia-hating took on a new and seductive political meaning for Democrats and their many U.S. media allies. The Russiagate narrative has proved irresistible to these actors for three basic reasons. First, they have naturally wanted to delegitimize the early Trump administration for standard partisan reasons. They’ve seen tarring Trump as a treasonous friend of a leading “foreign adversary” as useful for that purpose.

Second, highly placed NATO-expansionist New Cold Warriors in both major parties (e.g., John McCain) and the media have wanted to keep the heat on Moscow. The baseless Russia election-hacking and collusion charges have been tools for the New Cold War camp to hedge in Trump’s promises of rapprochement with Russia. The Russiagate scam is part of why Clockwork Orangutan found it necessary to absurdly tell Russia to “give Crimea back” to Ukraine and why he theatrically launched 59 cruise missiles onto a Syrian airbase.

Third, the Russian interference allegation has been made in part to help the DNC and the neoliberal Democratic Party establishment avoid responsibility for blowing the 2016 election. The Democrats ran a wooden, Wall Street-captive, and corruption-tainted candidate (the aforementioned LNW) and a vapid and elitist campaign that couldn’t mobilize enough working- and lower-class voters to defeat the epically noxious and unpopular Trump in key states like Pennsylvania, Wisconsin, Florida, Michigan and Ohio. The “Moscow stole it” narrative is a fancy version of “The dog [bear?] ate my homework” for a dismal dollar-drenched Democratic Party that abandoned the working class and the causes of peace, social justice and environmental sustainability long ago.

The “inauthentic opposition” party (as the late Sheldon Wolin aptly described the neoliberal Democratic Party) would rather not take a long, hard and honest look at what it has become. It does not want to concede anything to those who dream (naively) of turning it into an authentic peoples’ and opposition party with a bold progressive vision and agenda. The “Russia did it” charge works for establishment Democrats hoping to stave off demands from leftish-progressive-populist types in their own party [1].

This perverse political logic works to sustain the strange new neo-McCarthyite anti-Russian madness, which is rooted in the U.S. imperial agenda, not any relevant Russian influence on U.S. life and politics.


Endnote

1/ True to form, de facto Democrat Bernie “sheep-dog” Sanders (“I”-VT) has played along with the Russiagate scam even as it undercuts progressive impulses within and beyond the Democratic Party. Surprised?  You shouldn’t be.  “Bernie the Bomber” (as he was nicknamed by peace activists in his home town of Burlington, Vermont) was a fierce advocate of Bill Clinton’s criminal New Cold War attack on Serbia – and action that was a great provocation of Russia.  Sanders has been a great supporter of the scandal-ridden F-35, scheduled for sale to Germany and other NATO-aligned forces. He has also provocatively called for U.S.- and Western-led regime in Russia-allied Syria. 


About the Author
 Paul Street’s latest book is They Rule: The 1% v. Democracy (Paradigm, 2014) 


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uza2-zombienationOne of the many dirty little secrets of the U.S. Cold War was that anti-communism functioned as a pretext and cover for Washington’s Wall Street-fueled ambition to force open and run the entire world system in accord with its multinational corporate elite’s globalist- “Open Door” political-economic needs.  From this imperial perspective, the real Cold War enemy was not so much “communism” as other peoples’ struggles for national, local, and regional autonomy and independence. The enemy remains long after the statues of Marx, Engels, Lenin, and Stalin have come down.


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