rigorousintuition.ca

82_28 wrote:Raimondo nails it -- at least the official narrative and the truth of the decisions we are going to have to make esp as anti-war folk.

But let me say and go way out on an uncomfortable limb as truly I am not racist and prefer to get along at all times. I work around lots and lots of people and accept everybody equally, but I do happen to require it in return if I am to respect that certain person/persons.

However

I live in a building with a shit ton of Muslim students who are studying English at this school near me. And with heavy heart, I have to say there is an extreme nuisance factor I've never experienced before as I cannot help it. Let me enumerate the ways.

First off there is always chatter among us liberal Seattle folk about these "kids" -- actually adults, but young -- and about what they've been up to this time.

Things they've been up to?

Last week one of the kids took a shit in the hallway outside my door. Yes one of them just took a shit on the floor.

Say they have a sandwich wrapper or other piece of trash they just drop it on the stairs or hallways. There's always some strange new piece of trash laying around like this place is some kind of dump for them. It's not a dump of a building at all, btw.

Prostitutes. Almost every weekend. Prostitutes.

The building next to us has a roof that is below us. There is perpetually a huge amount of gin bottles (Bombay Sapphire) and other odds and ends thrown upon that roof that gets picked up from time to time.

A common door that got broken out.

They congregate and smoke and speak in hushed tones -- not that I would understand anyway. But there are signs up all over the place pleading with them to put their butts in ashtrays. They just throw them anywhere they want. The ashtrays have been taken away because they just dump them over. This was last week.

The men and the women live separate. I noted this when the guys were lined up along the hallway with plates to be let in to get food that the women had prepared in another apartment -- which happens to directly across from my door.

There are many, many things we put up with here those are but a few.

But as I was saying, we're all "Seattle liberals", but in some sense I am becoming prejudiced. Just being honest.

Here's the thing. Last week I caught one of them red-handed. I was coming home from a night shift. So it was about 3AM or so. I'm walking up the stairs and I hear all this commotion up on the next floor. Just running around and shit, stomping. Well, as I am coming up the stairs one of them wasn't expecting me and literally ran into me. I stopped him cold in his tracks and asked him "what the fuck are you doing, bro?" He replies, "Just going home." I was, "whatever." Then turns around and I went into my place and went to sleep. So that was that.

I was thinking of just taking a few dollar bills a day and just leaving the bills next to the trash they leave just anywhere they want as a kind of peaceful inoculation. Somebody else in the building told me they're all rich kids from Saudi Arabia and that men can just toss what they want and the women pick it up. Sometimes I just wonder if I live amidst some sleeper cell as Raimondo above seems to lament the truth of as well. Ugh. . .

End of day, these profiles on these kids who apparently did the bombing remind me a lot of these little fuckers who do this shit around here.

Letting Terrorism Fears Run Wild
April 22, 2013
Dzhokhar Tsarnaev’s arrest for the Boston Marathon bombing prompted calls from Sen. John McCain and three other Republican lawmakers to declare the 19-year-old naturalized U.S. citizen an enemy combatant, a reminder of how the politics of terrorism has distorted American principles, says ex-CIA analyst Paul R. Pillar.


By Paul R. Pillar

The seemingly scripted national response to the Boston Marathon bombing continues. Over the past few days that response has included expressions of patriotism and community spirit that have included ovations for law enforcement officers and special observances at baseball games.

This is the lemonade-out-of-a-lemon positive side of responding to a lethal event. It is a reaching back to the larger but otherwise similar communal expressions after the 9/11 terrorist attacks, with Americans now attempting to revive and relive the positive side of what they remember from the aftermath of that earlier tragedy.


Boston Marathon bombing suspect Dzhokhar Tsarnaev.
Defiance is one of the themes of the collective expressions. It was a theme of a rousing speech in which President Barack Obama talked about how the Boston Marathon would be held next year with people running harder than ever and cheering louder than ever. The message is that Americans will not let terrorists disrupt their lives.

But Americans have been letting terrorists, including the latest two, disrupt their lives a lot. Just think about the week-long saturation news coverage of this one story, and of all the work that wasn’t getting done and other matters not being tended to across the country as people followed the story.

Then late last week was the extraordinary happening of a major American city and several of its suburbs being locked down for a day. This greatly lengthened the tally sheet of the costs and consequences of one terrorist act and, more to the point, the response to it.

Possibly the lockdown offset some of the physical toll of the bombing in the form of fatal traffic accidents that did not occur and other violent crime that was not committed because the streets were empty. But the economic cost of shutting down a city full of businesses, though impossible to calculate with exactitude, was certainly very large.

All of this was done ostensibly for the purpose of tracking down a single, bleeding, 19-year-old fugitive suspect. It was a prudent assumption that this person would have had little compunction about killing again if he could have and thought he needed to kill to stay at large. But there also was little or no reason to believe that at the time he was being chased he posed more of a threat to public safety than the average garden-variety armed robber whom the Boston police probably deal with every week.

One can understand and even sympathize with public officials who order something like the lockdown. Given the enormous public attention to the case, if the suspect had evaded the dragnet there would have been a chorus of recriminations about how this was Tora Bora all over again. But note that we are talking here not about terrorism, or even about fear of terrorism, but instead about the politics of the fear of terrorism.

All of this brings to mind the observations of John Mueller, who has written most extensively about how American reactions or overreactions to terrorism have entailed costs that greatly exceed the costs of terrorism itself. Mueller has made many comparisons between terrorism and other sources of death and destruction to make his point about terrorism being an especially overblown threat.

It was if the fates wanted to punctuate that point that they also gave us last week an explosion at a Texas fertilizer plant that killed significantly more people than the marathon bombers but received much less attention in the news media.

Americans have inflicted on themselves, especially over the past 11 ½ years, costs from their responses to terrorism that go far beyond all that lost business in Boston. One of the biggest indirect costs came from Americans becoming so fearful and angry that they allowed themselves to be bamboozled into supporting a war against a country that had nothing to do with what had made them fearful and angry.

There also have been severe, disgraceful departures from what otherwise would have been thought of as important legal and moral principles associated with the United States, involving especially the treatment and rights of detained persons. It is as if once anyone utters the T-word, many American minds go haywire and suddenly forget legality, morality and longstanding American values and jurisprudence.

And so we have Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham and Kelly Ayotte and Representative Peter King arguing that the suspect now recovering in a Massachusetts hospital should be handled as an “enemy combatant” rather than face justice in a criminal court. Why? Because of his Chechen ancestry?

He is a U.S. citizen accused of committing a crime in the United States. Based on what we know at the moment, there is no more reason to treat the Boston Marathon bomber as an “enemy combatant” than to treat the Boston Strangler that way.

Americans do not have to respond like this; such behavior is not part of our DNA. We faced far more frequently perpetrated terrorism in the United States in the 1970s than we have ever since without responding this way.

Perhaps some of the reasons for how the nation acted in the 1970s (including post-Watergate views of certain federal agencies) provided no more of a lasting basis for sound national policy than some of the reasons (including post-9/11 Islamophobia) for the responses we see today. But Americans have a long, long way to go before we can honestly say we are not letting terrorism disrupt our way of life.

barracuda wrote:http://www.madcowprod.com/2013/04/22/wa ... h-the-cia/

Was Boston Bombers’ ‘Uncle Ruslan’ with the CIA?

The uncle of the two men who set off bombs at the Boston Marathon, who struck the only grace note in an otherwise horrific week, worked as a “consultant” for the Agency for International Development (USAID) a U.S. Government Agency often used for cover by agents of the CIA, in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan during the “Wild West” days of the early 1990’s, when anything that wasn’t nailed down in that country was up for grabs.

“From 1994 to 1996, Mr. Tsarni served as a consultant contracted by USAID for projects aimed to develop securities markets in Central Asia, where he trained corporate governance and corporate finance principals in state and private companies.”

According to a source who worked for many years as a journalist at Platts Oilgram News, a respected oil industry trade publication, good corporate governance was not a Big Sky priority.

“Nelson, Big Sky, Ablyazov, Kulibayev and the rest were all on my watch list for intelligence connections and pay-offs of various kinds at Platts,” stated the source, who requested anonymity.

Tsarnaev aunt reveals further details about visit to Dagestan

Reports that Boston suspect went to Dagestan for 6 months in 2012 to visit his father have been dismissed by aunt

As attention focuses on Tamerlan Tsarnaev's 6-month visit to Russia's restive Caucasus region, an aunt said that – contrary to previous reports – he did not come to Dagestan in order to visit his father.

Tsarnaev left the United States in January 2012 and arrived in Dagestan around March, Patimat Suleimanova said. His father, Anzor Tsarnaev, only arrived in the republic in May.

"He came to become acquainted with [Dagestan]," Suleimanova said. "He would sit at home and pray. He was learning to read the Koran. He saw relatives, friends."

US officials are investigating whether Tsarnaev built links with Dagestani rebels, who are fighting a heavy police state in order to build an Islamist caliphate along Russia's southern flank, during his time in the republic. Dagestan's main rebel group denied any links with the attack. Unnamed Russian security officials have told Russian media that they found mention of the Tsarnaevs.

Yet the FBI questioned Tsarnaev in 2011, on request from a foreign government, now revealed to have been Russia. He was denied a request for US citizenship submitted in September 2012 because of the questioning.

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2013/ap ... t-dagestan

Bleak outlook for maternal and child health in the Russian North Caucasus

Tue, 5 Apr 2011 00:57 GMT

Source: member // World Vision Middle East/Eastern Europe/ CA office

Maternal and infant mortality rates in Chechnya, Ingushetia, and other republics of the North Caucasus are up to three times higher than the Russian Federation average, according to medical experts* working in the region.

Inadequate primary health care and community health in Ingushetia and Dagestan in the North Caucasus, coupled with the ongoing political and socio-economic instability in the region all contribute to this bleak outlook for mothers and their infants.

snip

In response to this situation, World Vision, in cooperation with the Ministry of Health and financial support of USAID, recently launched the two-year 'Healthy Mothers for Healthy Children' project in Ingushetia and Dagestan to help improve maternal and child health care.

snip

This is the only project that is currently addressing maternal and infant healthcare in Ingushetia and Dagestan. World Vision is the sole international agency working in Ingushetia and one of the few international agencies in Dagestan.

http://www.trust.org/alertnet/news/blea ... h-caucasus

Friday, February 18, 2011

Why I'm really upset that Watson the supercomputer won $1 million on Jeopardy

Part of my contradictory nature is that when it comes to unwinding at the end of the day with my ass superglued to the sofa, I can't be satisfied with completely mindless entertainment. So a game show like Jeopardy fits the bill nicely. This week, I was excited to see former champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter compete against Watson, a supercomputer from IBM. But it was upsetting to see Watson win the $1 million first prize. Not so much because this is the beginning of computers overtaking humans on the road to complete social servitude, as Ken Jennings astutely observed. Rather, I'm upset at who is actually getting the one million dollars.


IBM Watson Wins Jeopardy, Humans Rally Back

By Ian Paul, PCWorld Feb 17, 2011 5:13 AM

IBM super computer Watson came away victorious during Jeopardy Wednesday, but not before the game show's former champions Ken Jennings and Brad Rutter rallied a formidable defense. In the end, however, the humans were no match for Watson, which won with a commanding lead of $77,147 after three days of Jeopardy play. Jennings took second place at $24,000 and Rutter was third with $21,600. "I for one welcome our new computer overlords," Jennings jokingly wrote in his answer during Final Jeopardy on Wednesday's broadcast. The three-night Jeopardy challenge was taped in January at IBM's T. J. Watson Research Laboratory in Yorktown Heights, New York.

As victor, Watson takes home a $1 million prize, which IBM plans to donate to World Vision and World Community Grid. Jennings and Rutter will also donate 50 percent of their winnings to separate charities.

more...

http://www.pcworld.com/article/219900/i ... _back.html


A shiver went down my spine when I heard that World Vision would be one of the "charity" organizations receiving the prize. I had to grit my teeth listening to the IBM rep tug on the heartstrings about all the wonderful humanitarian work they do all over the globe, most recently in Haiti. Haiti, where even a dictator from a genocidal family like "Baby Doc" Duvalier can get a chance to come home. Now maybe it's just a coincidence that after World Vision brought their "help" there, Baby Doc came back. But when you take their Deep Political history into account, anything is possible. Look who used to be the President of World Vision:

World Vision International
From SourceWatch
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World Vision International "is a Christian relief and development organisation working for the well being of all people, especially children. Through emergency relief, education, health care, economic development and promotion of justice, World Vision helps communities help themselves.

"Established in 1950 to care for orphans in Asia, World Vision has grown to embrace the larger issues of community development and advocacy for the poor in its mission to help children and their families build sustainable futures.

"Working on six continents, World Vision is one of the largest Christian relief and development organisations in the world." [1]

"In 2005,World Vision:

Served more than 100 million people
Worked in 96 nations
Directly benefited 2.7 million children through child sponsorship
Raised $1.97 billion (US) in cash and goods for its work
Employed 23,000 staff members" [2]


Kevin Jenkins, president and chief executive officer
Dean Hirsch, former president and chief executive officer (1996-2009)

Member of InterAction.

Victor W. C. Hsu is the National Director of the DPRK Program at World Vision International.

From 1993 to 1998, Andrew Natsios was vice president of World Vision U.S. [3] "Richard E. Stearns became President of World Vision U.S. in June 1998." [4]

Dean R. Hirsch was president of World Vision International in 2002 and he still is in 2007.[5]

snip
Related SourceWatch Resources

Bryant L. Myers - Vice President for Development and Food Resources
Tim Dearborn - Director of Faith and Development Programmes
Richard Stearns
W. Stanley Mooneyham, Former President (1969 to 1982)
World Vision Australia
World Vision United States
Ellsworth Culver - executive vice president of World Vision International (1958-1961)
Rory Anderson
President's Emergency Fund for AIDS Relief
Edward P. Reed
John W. Hinckley, Sr. - Former President
Torund Diane Bryhn - former staff
Mary Ann Arnado - 2009 peace prize [7]
Kleo-Thong Hetrakul - board member
Ximena Pacheco
David Knibbe - former vice president
John Githongo

http://www.sourcewatch.org/index.php?ti ... ernational


That's John W. Hinckley, Sr., as in the father of the man who attempted an assassination of President Reagan on March 30, 1981. Just a tangential coincidence? Well, here's another one: he was also President of the Vanderbilt Energy Corporation, one of the larger contributors to the George H. W. Bush Presidential campaign in 1980:

Bush Son Had Dinner Plans With Hinckley Brother Before Shooting
The Associated Press Domestic News
March 31, 1981, Tuesday, PM cycle

HOUSTON
The family of the man charged with trying to assassinate President Reagan is acquainted with the family of Vice President George Bush and had made large contributions to his political campaign, the Houston Post reported today.

The newspaper said in a copyright story, Scott Hinckley, brother of John W. Hinckley Jr., who allegedly shot Reagan, was to have dined tonight in Denver at the home of Neil Bush, one of the vice president's sons.

The newspaper said it was unable to reach Scott Hinckley, vice president of his father's Denver-based firm, Vanderbilt Energy Corp., for comment. Neil Bush lives in Denver, where he works for Standard Oil Co. of Indiana.

In 1978, Neil served as campaign manager for his brother, George W. Bush, the vice president's oldest son, who made an unsuccessful bid for Congress. Neil lived in Lubbock throughout much of 1978, where John Hinckley lived from 1974 through 1980.

On Monday, Neil Bush said he did not know if he had ever met 25-year-old John Hinckley.
"I have no idea," he said. "I don't recognize any pictures of him. I just wish I could see a better picture of him.

Sharon Bush, Neil's wife, said Scott Hinckley was coming to their house as a date of a girl friend of hers. "I don't even know the brother. From what I know and I've heard, they (the Hinckleys) are a very nice family and have given a lot of money to the Bush campaign. I understand he was just the renegade brother in the family. They must feel awful," she said.

The dinner was canceled, she added.

George W. Bush said he was unsure whether he had met John W. Hinckley.

http://hereinreality.com/hinckley.html

The connections that World Vision has with the milieu of intelligence covert operations and assassination are more than tangential. Political researcher John Judge documented many of these connections:

The international operations of World Vision and the related evangelical groups continue unabashed. World Vision official John W. Hinckley, Sr. was on his way to a Guatemalan water project run by the organization on the day his son shot at president Reagan.[280] A mysterious "double" of Hinckley, Jr., a man named Richardson, followed Hinckley's path from Colorado to Connecticut, and even wrote love letters to Jody Foster. Richardson was a follower of Carl McIntyre's International Council of Christian Churches, and attended their Bible School in Florida. He was arrested shortly after the assassination attempt in New York's Port Authority with a weapon, and claimed he intended to kill Reagan.[281]

Another World Vision employee, Mark David Chapman, worked at their Haitian refugee camp in Ft. Chaffee, Arkansas. He was later to gain infamy as the assassin of John Lennon in New York City.[282] World Vision works with refugees worldwide. At the Honduran border, they are present in camps used by American CIA to recruit mercenaries against Nicaragua. They were at Sabra and Shatilla, Camps in Lebanon where fascist Phalange massacred the Palestinians.[283] Their representatives in the Cuban refugee camps on the east coast included members of the Bay of Pigs operation, CIA-financed mercenaries from Omega 7 and Alpha 66.[284] Are they being used as a worldwide cover for the recruitment and training of these killers? They are, as mentioned earlier, working to repopulate Jonestown with Laotians who served as mercenaries for our CIA.[285]

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Joh ... stown.html

This is just a small snip from an extensively researched article titled "The Black Hole of Guyana: The Untold Story of the Jonestown Massacre" that Judge wrote in 1985. In addition to the connections between World Vision and the Bay of Pigs, John Lennon's assassination, the 1982 Palestinian massacre and 80's contra recruiting, the focus of the research regards how Jim Jones, cult leader of The People's Temple, had extensive connections with the CIA. There was also a link with World Vision early in his "ministry" mentioned in the article:

With his new wealth, Jones was able to travel to California and establish the first People's Temple in Ukiah, California, in 1965. Guarded by dogs, electric fences and guard towers, he set up Happy Havens Rest Home.[98] Despite a lack of trained personnel, or proper licensing, Jones drew in many people at the camp. He had elderly, prisoners, people from psychiatric institutions, and 150 foster children, often transferred to care at Happy Havens by court orders.[99] He was contacted there by Christian missionaries from World Vision, an international evangelical order that had done espionage work for the CIA in Southeast Asia.[100] He met "influential" members of the community and was befriended by Walter Heady, the head of the local chapter of the John Birch Society.[101] He used the members of his "church" to organize local voting drives for Richard Nixon's election, and worked closely with the republican party.[102] He was even appointed chairman of the county grand jury.[103]

Why would an organization ostensibly created to be Christian missionary organization be involved in so many horrific events? Judge laid out the reason in an interview in 2000:

The father in that family, John W. Hinkley Sr., was also the president of the board for World Vision. World Vision is a far-right evangelical missionary operation that does missionary and "good work" operations in countries where there is a political purpose for it to be there. From it's inception, it was rabidly anti-Communist and it focused on refugee populations of people running from countries that had been taken over by Communism. This was from the fifties on.

World Vision had a hand in the movement of the Cubans into the United States and other refugees of revolutionary regimes. When you're a refugee you're cut loose, basically, and pretty much fair game to be manipulated by whoever is willing to give you a hand because you don't have a home or any place to stay and somebody has got to accept you.

World Vision was able to recruit out of these mercenary populations, people who could be politically turned to their intelligence purposes. World Vision served as a penetration force -- not as visible as the military actually going in or the CIA going in -- going in as missionaries and working among the people.

This link between missionary and intelligence for capitalistic infiltration operations goes way back. It was part of the internationalism with the Rockefellers. It's talked about in a book called Thy Will Be Done[4] about Rockefeller, Venezuela, and Latin American Oil, the Summer Linguistic Institute, World Vision and others. But they operated in this way for a long time.

They were paid by the CIA for a long time during the Vietnam war and went into SE Asia -- Cambodia and Laos. Throughout Vietnam they were given U.S. military equipment to use. They still maintain a budget under USAID, which was just (Agency for International Development), which was just a pass-over in order to give the CIA more cover. They ran operations through USAID. The current cover replacing that is the NED (National Endowment for Democracy), which is supposed to be how we're exporting democracy around the world.

But of course, we're exporting exactly the kind of corrupt democracy we have here, which is rigged and manipulated elections and press manipulation in order to keep in power or put in power the people that we want to be in those countries for the purpose of having our investments protected and milking what we can out of the resources and the labor available in any of those countries.

http://www.ratical.org/ratville/JFK/Joh ... 12600.html

Is this where we can expect the $1 million Jeopardy prize to be invested? Elementary, my dear Watson.

The footage, first aired on Thursday, also shows Abu Hafsa al-Masri, al-Qaeda’s then military leader, and Ramzi bin al-Shaiba, co-ordinator of the 9/11 attacks, meeting in al-Qaeda’s training camps in Taliban controlled Afghanistan. The tape also says that a previous unknown Arab Islamist, Abu al-Turab al-Urduni, supervised the training for the attacks.

The video said the preparation for the attacks included not only flight training but also lessons in street-fighting and how to forge official documents.

The video also showed two of the 19 Islamists who took part in the attacks, Saudi nationals Hamza al-Ramdi and Wael el-Shemari. The men said that their actions were inspired by an urge to avenge the suffering of Muslims in Bosnia and Chechnya.

8bitagent wrote:We're a lot of the alleged 9/11 hijackers being trained specifically to wage "jihad" in Chechnya?

stillrobertpaulsen wrote:

8bitagent wrote:We're a lot of the alleged 9/11 hijackers being trained specifically to wage "jihad" in Chechnya?

Yes. I believe one of seemslikeadream's links talks about how Mohammed Atta originally was begging to be sent to fight in Chechnya. Being the lead hijacker on 9/11 was his #2 fallback job.

8bitagent wrote:It occurred to me that the carrot/stick to radicalizing young Muslims as well as older extremists in Islam was 80's retroism. Now I'm an 80's retro lover music, style and film wise. But the "mujahadeen" glory days
seems to long be the recruitment tool. For people too young to have fought the commies in Afghanistan, there was the Bosnian conflict and Chechnya against the Russians. Im actually surprised more 'truthers' dont know
more about jihad in the Balkans and the Caucusus as they seem like a big underpinning.

That said, unlike my deep research brethren, I have nothing but disgust toward the 90's Serb government and Russia...so a part of me doesnt care if the jihadists were secretly Western backed.
Im against attrocities be they committed by Serbs, Russians, Syria, Israel or even the US.

Boston bombers ‘Uncle Ruslan’ was Halliburton contractor
Posted on April 24, 2013 by Daniel Hopsicker

Out on the ragged bleeding edge of the former Soviet Union, Ruslan Tsarni had a decade-long business relationship with Halliburton, the multinational juggernaut run by Dick Cheney before he became Vice President of the United States.

Delving into the business connections of “Uncle Ruslan” Tsarni, as he became known after his well-received condemnation of the atrocities allegedly committed by his nephews Dzhokhar and Tamerlan at the Boston Marathon has led to the discovery of the Rosetta Stone of the Boston Marathon bombing.




Like the elaborately carved stone unearthed almost 200 years ago which led to deciphering ancient Egyptian hieroglyphs, digging through Ruslan Tsarni’s curiculum vitae has yielded clues to unlocking the puzzling riddles left behind after last week’s attack.

Two oil fields with a side of natural gas, please

Reported first here two days ago, there has already been a big surprise in Ruslan Tsarni’s background: Tsarni did a two-year stint, beginning in 1992, as a “consultant” for the U.S. Agency for International Development (USAID), in the former Soviet Republic of Kazakhstan.

At a time when vast natural resources and enormous fortunes were ‘in play’ during the economic free-for-all after the collapse of the Soviet Union, the 24-year old Tsarni was already a ‘player.’

Its long been an open secret that USAID is often used overseas to house CIA and other US intelligence operatives.

Oddly enough, just six months ago the country competing with the US for influence in the region, Vladimir Putin’s Russia, unceremoniously kicked USAID out of Russia for, Putin spokesmen alleged, encouraging his political opposition.

However Ruslan’s involvement with USAID, while suggestive, might still be irrelevant, were it not for the discovery of his decade-long involvement with companies in the orbit of the Sun God, Halliburton, which stands accused in numerous and increasingly-credible accounts as "lead dog" in an invading force of “non-state actors.”

All of this, mind, was in support of a noble cause. We were fighting communism. No, wait? We weren't anymore.

Still, we must have been fighting something. Wait. It'll come to me…Maybe it was a push to weaken Russia’s grip over former Soviet Republics. That sounds like an admirable goal. Alas, the means chosen to achieve it involved providing covert U.S. support, in Chechnya, to Islamic terrorists.

Haven't we all already see that movie? No one with a functioning heart could be anxious to see it again. But, wait! Does Dick have a functioning heart?

Friends Dick never got around to shooting

All was in readiness for the launch of a deniable covert op (the best kind). In April 2005, Ruslan Tsarni was named an officer in an oil company in Kazakhstan, being run at the time by a man named S.A. (Al) Sehsuvaroglu.

Sehsuvaroglu had somewhat inexplicably left behind a 25-year career as a top executive at Dick Cheney’s Halliburton—his last job was as Senior Account Manager, Caspian Region; and Country Director, Kazakhstan—and had, just three months before 'Uncle Ruslan' was hired, taken over a penny stock oil play called Big Sky Energy Corp (OTCBB:BSKO.OB).

Big Al and Uncle Ruslan already knew each other. Both men did time at Nelsen Resources, yet-another Halliburton-connected oilfield company active in Kazakhstan.

Even before that, Tsarni had landed, between 1999 and 2001, at Golden Eagle Partners LLC in Kazakhstan. Golden Eagle worked so closely with Halliburton, reported London’s Financial Times, that both firms were convicted of collusion to breach confidentiality agreements.

For Uncle Ruslan, who was Golden Eagle's Head of Legal Affairs, it would have been, bery much, a case of "my bad."

In a story headlined “Halliburton ethics called into question,” on Jun 22, 2004, London’s Financial Times reported that both companies had been convicted in Federal Court and fined a total of $70 million.

“At a time when Halliburton is being charged with immoral and even illegal business practices in countries ranging from Iraq to Nigeria,” the paper reported, “a close reading of the court documents provides a disturbing backdrop.”

Moreover the questionable business practices for which Halliburton was convicted took place under Dick Cheney, who court documents revealed had been very aware of what his minions like Ruslan Tsarni at Golden Eagle had been doing on his behalf.

These were not, to put it kindly, self-made men

Still, while militant Chechen groups have been blamed for terror attacks in the past, their targets have usually been Russia, their bitter foe in the aucasus wars.

So why is this line of inquiry crucially relevent to the Boston Marathon bombings?

Consider: In the last several months, Tamerlan Tsarnaev had posted videos to YouTube indicating his interest in radical Muslim ideologies.

Moreover the Tsarnaev brothers are of Chechen heritage, born into the cauldron of the Caucasus; into a war which quickly boiled over until it had engulfed Chechen separatists, Russian security forces, Islamic extremists, and organized crime.

Last Friday, U.S. authorities said they had no proof that anybody beyond the two Tsarnaev brothers was involved in the marathon attacks. But they were not done looking.

Then yesterday two law enforcement officials stated that they believe there is a “Chechen connection” to the bombings.

Ruslan Tsarni’s personal and business background are in the same troubled region—Chechnya and the former Soviet Republics collectively known as the Stans—that is crucial to piecing together the narrative of his two nephews in the Boston Marathon bombing.

And as an officer with decades of experience working with companies doing business in a highly-volatile region, it is fair to question how much of Ruslan Tsarni’s impassioned rant against his nephews owed to shame for his family’s disgrace, and how much to rage at having his past revealed—as he had to have known it would be—in an unflattering light.

A bleeding edge that really is…a bleeding edge

You can look for clues out on the ragged bleeding edge of the Russian Federation in troubled Dagestan, and prowl the back alleys of Makhachkala on the Caspian Sea.

Or you can look in Almaty, out on the wind-swept steppes of Kazakhstan.

Or poke around tiny Bishkek, capital of the little “Stan” that could, the one no one’s ever heard of, Kyrgyzstan.

Or trek to Tokmok, home to a large ethnic Chechen community, where you can seek out the former home of Anzor Tsarnaev, sitting right next door to that country’s top Mob Boss, a man named Aziz Batukaev, who to the surprise of no one locally, just secured his early release from prison.

And you can marvel that it truly is a small world after all, when a train of events set in motion 6200 miles east of Boston came to shut down a major American city and transfix an entire nation for an week.

But if you’re the type that prefers to get your travel fix watching Michael Palin trekking across a wall-mounted 60’ TV screen, you can turn your eyes to a man standing at the top of the driveway of a smart-looking $600,000 Federalist-style home in an upper-middle class planned community outside of Washington D.C.

Wearing blue jeans, flip-flops and a blue polo shirt, “Uncle Ruslan” Tsarni’s vehement denunciation of his nephews won him thumbs up from everyone from Keith Olbermann on the left, who called him the "definition of a great American," to John Podhoretz on the right, who said “Ruslan Tsarni was the only good news of the week.”

It seemed too good to be true. And it was.

Aiding Dzhokhar’s Syrian Comrades
Jihadists attack Boston, US moves closer to aiding Syrian jhadists

by Justin Raimondo, April 26, 2013

Even as the nation recovers from the shock of the Boston Marathon bombing, the US government is under pressure to intervene in Syria on behalf of the Tsarnaev brothers’ jihadist compatriots.

The drumbeat for intervention in Syria has been going on for many months, with the same neoconservatives who authored the Iraq war joining with “humanitarian” liberals to demand we “do something.” The latest claims of the use of sarin gas by the Assad regime are the occasion for a raising of the decibel level.

Under attack from Al Qaeda-affiliated jihadists for the last year, with car bomb attacks on both civilian and military targets and the rebels in control of a third of the country, Syria’s authoritarian government has responded with lethal force – much like any government that found itself in a similar position would, including our own. Yet there is reason to doubt this latest claim: the “rebels” have staged a number of alleged “atrocities” committed by the secular authoritarian regime of Bashar al-Assad, but these have been consistently debunked – and the increasing dominance of jihadists in the Syrian opposition has made the Obama administration reluctant to get involved.

Now, however, we have a new accusation leveled not only by the rebels and their American amen corner, but also by the British and Israeli governments: in answer to an inquiry from Senator John “Boots On the Ground” McCain, the administration accuses the Syrian regime of using sarin gas “on a small scale,” an assessment they make “with varying degrees of confidence.”

Varying from what to what?

The letter is rife with equivocation and conjecture:

“Our standard of evidence must build on these intelligence assessments as we seek to establish credible and corroborated facts. For example, the chain of custody is not clear, so we cannot confirm how the exposure occurred and in what conditions.”

Translation: no facts have been established. But that doesn’t stop the Obama administration from making assumptions about who used sarin:

“We do believe that any use of chemical weapons in Syria would very likely have originated with the Assad regime. Thus far, we believe that the Assad regime maintains custody of these weapons, and has demonstrated a willingness to escalate its horrific use of violence against the Syrian people.”

Yet there is no reason to assume any such “belief” about the Syrian government’s possible use of sarin gas. That regime is deteriorating by the day, as fast as their control over vast swathes of Syrian territory is disappearing. It is just as reasonable (i.e. not very) to assume the rebels are responsible: after all, they have plenty of state-backed sponsors (the dictatorships of Saudi Arabia and Qatar) who would be more than ready to provide it. And, of course, the jihadists who are the backbone of the rebel army, wouldn’t hesitate to deploy it.

US intervention in Syria’s civil war – which pits Bad Guys against Even Badder Guys – will be justified by the alleged use of “weapons of mass destruction” by Damascus, and the cry will go up: “He’s killing his own people!” If all this has a familiar ring to it, then you’ll recall the same accusations, including allegations of poison gas deployment, were made against Iraq: this was the justification for the invasion, conquest, and subsequent occupation of that country, a project that cost trillions and is now regarded as one of the worst military disasters in our history. (Never mind that Saddam’s use of poison gas on the Kurds occurred when we were his ally.) That the War Party is running this one up the flagpole defies belief – but, hey, in Bizarro World, where up is down and unwarranted assumptions are “very likely,” anything is possible.

What’s really going on here? After all, the “arguments” made by the interventionists just don’t add up. Take Jamie Kirchick, who works for an outfit called the Foundation for the Defense of the Democracies (formerly known as “Emet“), writing in the New York Daily News:

“Of all the regimes that have experienced turmoil as a result of the Arab Spring, Syria’s is the only one that has been consistently opposed to American interests. It is the only Arab ally of Iran, a major supplier of weapons to Hamas and Hezbollah, a perpetual violator of Lebanese sovereignty and a transit hub for jihadists on their way to Iraq.”

In the wake of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, Syria proactively offered to aid – and did aid – in the round up of Al Qaeda cadre, and, indeed, we renditioned several to Assad’s torture chambers for the kind of interrogation not even our water-boarding CIA was prepared to conduct. As per usual with Kirchick, he confuses American interests with Israeli interests, citing Syrian support of Hamas and Hezbollah as further proof of Assad’s crimes. While both organizations are indeed terrorist groups which target civilians – as were their Israeli counterparts, the Irgun and Haganah – their target is Israel, not the United States.

The kicker is when Kirchick kvetches that Syria is “a transit hub for jihadists on their way to Iraq.” He can’t be unaware that these very same jihadists stand at the head of the Syrian rebel army. The sheer sloppiness is breathtaking: war-mongering hacks like Kirchick – who once proposed setting up a “gay brigade” to go fight in Iraq (without saying whether he’d join up himself!) – are feeling so confident they aren’t even bothering to make a credible case.

Similarly, one would think the numerous hoaxes – such as trying to pass off photos of atrocities occurring in Iraq as “evidence” of mass killings by the Syrian government – attempted by Syrian rebel propagandists would induce skepticism at these new accusations. But no – not in Bizarro World, where a history of outright lies naturally causes one to trust the pronouncements coming out of Washington and its allies even more.

Britain and France were demanding a UN investigation even before this latest release of “intelligence” by an Israeli general at a security conference, who claims to have “proof” of the sarin gas charge. Now the Israelis have added their two cents: however, in a phone conversation with Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, John Kerry was unable to get him to confirm this latest revelation.

The British also claim to have definitive evidence, but the Wall Street Journal reports some officials are skeptical: the Brits tout their test results, but US intelligence sources are saying “the samples may have been tainted by rebels who want to draw the West into the conflict on their side. Likewise, they said the detection of chemical agents doesn’t necessarily mean they were used in an attack by the Syrian regime.”

How many times do we have to be lied into war by some murky “rebel” group – and their foreign backers – looking for us to do their fighting for them?

If Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, laying there in the hospital, could only hear the war cries of our pundit-shrikes grow louder and more insistent, he would crack a smile. After all, one of his causes is the Syrian rebel movement: as this Yahoo article points out, on his Vokontakte page (the Russian Facebook), Dzhokhar “expresses sympathy for rebel fighters in Syria and elsewhere:

“One video bears the Russian title ‘For those who have a heart,’ showing people being brutalized by uniformed men in a country the video identifies as Syria. ‘They are killing your brothers and sisters without any reason,’ the Russian subtitles of the video read. ‘Simply because they say our Lord is Allah.’”

Indeed, if we do intervene, Dzhokhar could even imagine his horrific crime is a great success – because, after all, isn’t the Great Satan on the verge of taking up the cause of jihad in Syria? One might even conjecture that, from a certain vantage point, this development is a response to the Boston bombing, a message to jihadists both here and abroad: Don’t bomb us – because we’re here to help!

Boston bombers’ uncle married daughter of top CIA official

The uncle of the two suspected Boston bombers in last week’s attack, Ruslan Tsarni, was married to the daughter of former top CIA official Graham Fuller

The discovery that Uncle Ruslan Tsarni had spy connections that go far deeper than had been previously known is ironic, especially since the mainstrean media's focus yesterday was on a feverish search to find who might have recruited the Tsarnaev brothers.

The chief suspect was a red-haired Armenian exorcist. They were fingering a suspect who may not, in fact, even exist.

It was like blaming one-armed hippies on acid for killing your wife.

Ruslan Tsarni married the daughter of former top CIA Graham Fuller, who spent 20 years as operations officer in Turkey, Lebanon, Saudi Arabia, Yemen, Afghanistan, and Hong Kong. In 1982 Fuller was appointed the National Intelligence Officer for Near East and South Asia at the CIA, and in 1986, under Ronald Reagan, he became the Vice-Chairman of the National Intelligence Council, with overall responsibility for national level strategic forecasting.

At the time of their marriage, Ruslan Tsarni was known as Ruslan Tsarnaev, the same last name as his nephews Tamerlan and Dzhokhar Tsarnaev, the alleged bombers.

It is unknown when he changed his last name to Tsarni.

What is known is that sometime in the early 1990’s, while she was a graduate student in North Carolina, and he was in law school at Duke, Ruslan Tsarnaev met and married Samantha Ankara Fuller, the daughter of Graham and Prudence Fuller of Rockville Maryland. Her middle name suggests a reference to one of her father’s CIA postings.

The couple divorced sometime before 2004.

Today Ms. Fuller lives abroad, and is a director of several companies pursuing strategies to increase energy production from clean-burning and renewable resources.

On a more ominous note, Graham Fuller was listed as one of the American Deep State rogues on Sibel Edmonds' State Secrets Privilege Gallery,. Edmonds explained it featured subjects of FBI investigations she became aware of during her time as an FBI translator.

Criminal activities were being protected by claims of State Secrets, she asserted. After Attorney General John Ashcroft went all the way to the Supreme Court to muzzle her under a little-used doctrine of State Secrets, she put up twenty-one photos, with no names.

One of them was Graham Fuller.

"Congress of Chechen International" c/o Graham Fuller

The Chechen uncle of the Boston Marathon bombing suspects, paired up with a top CIA official, who once served as CIA Station Chief in Kabul, may sound like a pitch for a bad movie:

"Get Smart Meets the Odd Couple."

But they may have been in business together.

In 1995, Tsarnaev incorporated the Congress of Chechen International Organizations in Maryland, using as the address listed on incorporation documents 11114 Whisperwood Ln, in Rockville Maryland, the home address of his then-father-in-law.

It is just eight miles up the Washington National Pike from the Montgomery Village home where “Uncle Ruslan” met—and apparently wowed, the press after the attack in Boston.

The Washington Post yesterday called him a "media maven," while nationally syndicated Washington Post columnist Ester Cepeda , in a piece with the headline “The Wise Words of Uncle Ruslan” opined that he was her choice for "an award for bravery in the face of adversity.”

Success through indirection, mis-direction, redirection, and protection

Uncle Ruslan’s spy connections go far deeper than was already known, which was that he spent two years working in Kazakhstan for USAID.

But the mainstream media was lookng the other way.

Under the headline “Did 'Misha' influence Tsarnaevs? In Watertown, doubts,” USA Today reported: “Misha. A new name has emerged in the Boston Marathon bombing case—one familiar to the family of the two young men accused of the atrocity and apparently of interest to the Russian and American security services as well.”

Ruslan Tsarni was the first to bring up the supposed man's supposed name. Or rather, he brought up a first name: Misha. But it was enough. We were off to the races…

Attention all cars: Be on lookout for chubby Armenian exorcist

Tsarni described Misha to CNN as being "chubby, a big guy, big mouth presenting himself with some kind of abilities as exorcist . . . having some part-time job in one of the stores, not married. All of the qualifications of a loser, just another big mouth.”

According to Uncle Ruslan, Misha was the man who over a considerable period of time had radicalized Tamerlan.

It seemed strange, then, that in contrast to his “you are there” verbal picture of the man, even with all his supposed concerns, and given his high level of education and abundant resources (Big Sky Energy was paying him in excess of $200,00 a year, according to documents filed with the SEC) Ruslan had somehow never found out just who the bad guy was.

He never got a name, something that in spook-dom is considered something of a faux pas. Then again, no one else had either.

Worse, Tsarni's vivid description seemed to be taken from personal observation, from, in other words…real life. But that isn’t possible. Tsarni had stated he hadn’t been physically in the presence of his Boston relatives since December 2005. And Misha, if he existed, didn’t show up on the scene until 2008 at the earliest.

Still, just a few days later, the entire family began chiming in. Misha anecdotes were flying fast & furious, and the nation’s scribblers were busy uncritically scribbling down their every word.

Maybe their Twitter account got hacked again?

No performance was nearly as masterful, however, as that of the Associated Press.

“Bomb suspect influenced by mysterious radical,” reported the Associated Press.

"Tamerlan's relationship with Misha could be a clue in understanding the motives behind his religious transformation and, ultimately, the attack itself," reported the Associate Press. Only to take it all back in the very next line.

"Two U.S. officials say he had no tie to terrorist groups."

The AP’s “story” about the mysterious “Misha” was 1145 words, long enough for an editor to squeeze in a caveat.

“It was not immediately clear whether the FBI has spoken to Misha or was attempting to,” the national wire service reported. “Efforts over several days by The Associated Press to identify and interview Misha have been unsuccessful.”

The big difference: when you do it, its conspiracy theory. When we do it, its informed speculation.
In any other context, this might be seen as the rankest kind of “conspiracy theory.” But, apparently, when the Associated Press does it, its news.

Then Uncle Ruslan made a clear mis-step.

“An uncle of the alleged bombers claims that Misha, an Armenian convert to Islam, had a huge influence on the elder brother, Tamerlan Tsarnaev. Describing him as an "Armenia exorcist, Tsarni said, “Somehow he just took his brain.”

Armenians are a deeply-rooted Christian community, which is proud of the fact that their country was the first in the world to adopt Christianity as state religion in 301 AD.

Moreover this is the week every year when they remember the Armenian Holocaust, when as many as 1,000,000 Armenians were slaughtered by Turkish Muslims.

In the large and close-knit Boston Armenian community, a red-bearded Armenian named Misha becoming a radicalized Muslim would stand out.

"I've never heard of him, nor has anyone that I know," Hilda Avedissian, executive director at the Armenian Cultural & Educational Centre.

So what if the guy was involved with biggest bank fraud in history?
"For an Armenian to convert to Islam is like finding a unicorn in a field," Nerses Zurabyan, 32, an information technology director who lives in nearby Cambridge told USA Today.

The report reveals that the bomber’s Uncle, made famous for his outspoken condemnation of his nephew’s which aired repeatedly on international news networks, is a well-connected oil executive who at one point worked for a Halliburton shell company used as a front to obtain oil contracts from the Kazakh State.

Ruslon Tsarni was implicated in an investigation involving the laundering and theft of $6 billion. But everybody loves Uncle Ruslon. At least most of America’s mainstream media does.

There has, to date, been no speculation at all about whether an uncle of the men suspected of the bombing who had been involved in international intrigue at the hightest levels, and who married the daughter of a top CIA official, might warrant a closer look.

It’s enough, isn’t it, to turn even reasonably rational adults into—gasp!—conspiracy theorists.

“News,” someone once wrote, “is selection. And selection is always based on an ideology and agenda, which is something to remember next time you watch, listen or read the ‘news.’”

Too true.

Obama's Policies Making Situation Worse in Afghanistan and Pakistan

For all the talk of "smart power," President Obama is pressing down the same path of failure in Pakistan marked out by George Bush. The realities suggest need for drastic revision of U.S. strategic thinking.

-- Military force will not win the day in either Afghanistan or Pakistan; crises have only grown worse under the U.S. military footprint.

-- The Taliban represent zealous and largely ignorant mountain Islamists. They are also all ethnic Pashtuns. Most Pashtuns see the Taliban -- like them or not -- as the primary vehicle for restoration of Pashtun power in Afghanistan, lost in 2001. Pashtuns are also among the most fiercely nationalist, tribalized and xenophobic peoples of the world, united only against the foreign invader. In the end, the Taliban are probably more Pashtun than they are Islamist.

-- It is a fantasy to think of ever sealing the Pakistan-Afghanistan border. The "Durand Line" is an arbitrary imperial line drawn through Pashtun tribes on both sides of the border. And there are twice as many Pashtuns in Pakistan as there are in Afghanistan. The struggle of 13 million Afghan Pashtuns has already inflamed Pakistan's 28 million Pashtuns.

-- India is the primary geopolitical threat to Pakistan, not Afghanistan. Pakistan must therefore always maintain Afghanistan as a friendly state. India furthermore is intent upon gaining a serious foothold in Afghanistan -- in the intelligence, economic and political arenas -- that chills Islamabad.

-- Pakistan will therefore never rupture ties or abandon the Pashtuns, in either country, whether radical Islamist or not. Pakistan can never afford to have Pashtuns hostile to Islamabad in control of Kabul, or at home.

-- Occupation everywhere creates hatred, as the U.S. is learning. Yet Pashtuns remarkably have not been part of the jihadi movement at the international level, although many are indeed quick to ally themselves at home with al-Qaida against the U.S. military.

-- The U.S. had every reason to strike back at the al-Qaida presence in Afghanistan after the outrage of 9/11. The Taliban were furthermore poster children for an incompetent and harsh regime. But the Taliban retreated from, rather than lost, the war in 2001, in order to fight another day. Indeed, one can debate whether it might have been possible -- with sustained pressure from Pakistan, Iran, Saudi Arabia and almost all other Muslim countries that viewed the Taliban as primitives -- to force the Taliban to yield up al-Qaida over time without war. That debate is in any case now moot. But the consequences of that war are baleful, debilitating and still spreading.

-- The situation in Pakistan has gone from bad to worse as a direct consequence of the U.S. war raging on the Afghan border. U.S. policy has now carried the Afghan war over the border into Pakistan with its incursions, drone bombings and assassinations -- the classic response to a failure to deal with insurgency in one country. Remember the invasion of Cambodia to save Vietnam?

-- The deeply entrenched Islamic and tribal character of Pashtun rule in the Northwest Frontier Province in Pakistan will not be transformed by invasion or war. The task requires probably several generations to start to change the deeply embedded social and psychological character of the area. War induces visceral and atavistic response.

-- Pakistan is indeed now beginning to crack under the relentless pressure directly exerted by the U.S. Anti-American impulses in Pakistan are at high pitch, strengthening Islamic radicalism and forcing reluctant acquiescence to it even by non-Islamists.

Only the withdrawal of American and NATO boots on the ground will begin to allow the process of near-frantic emotions to subside within Pakistan, and for the region to start to cool down. Pakistan is experienced in governance and is well able to deal with its own Islamists and tribalists under normal circumstances; until recently, Pakistani Islamists had one of the lowest rates of electoral success in the Muslim world.

But U.S. policies have now driven local nationalism, xenophobia and Islamism to combined fever pitch. As Washington demands that Pakistan redeem failed American policies in Afghanistan, Islamabad can no longer manage its domestic crisis.

The Pakistani army is more than capable of maintaining state power against tribal militias and to defend its own nukes. Only a convulsive nationalist revolutionary spirit could change that -- something most Pakistanis do not want. But Washington can still succeed in destabilizing Pakistan if it perpetuates its present hard-line strategies. A new chapter of military rule -- not what Pakistan needs -- will be the likely result, and even then Islamabad's basic policies will not change, except at the cosmetic level.

In the end, only moderate Islamists themselves can prevail over the radicals whose main source of legitimacy comes from inciting popular resistance against the external invader. Sadly, U.S. forces and Islamist radicals are now approaching a state of co-dependency.

It would be heartening to see a solid working democracy established in Afghanistan. Or widespread female rights and education -- areas where Soviet occupation ironically did rather well. But these changes are not going to happen even within one generation, given the history of social and economic devastation of the country over 30 years.

Al-Qaida's threat no longer emanates from the caves of the borderlands, but from its symbolism that has long since metastasized to other activists of the Muslim world. Meanwhile, the Pashtuns will fight on for a major national voice in Afghanistan. But few Pashtuns on either side of the border will long maintain a radical and international jihadi perspective once the incitement of the U.S. presence is gone. Nobody on either side of the border really wants it.

What can be done must be consonant with the political culture. Let non-military and neutral international organizations, free of geopolitical taint, take over the binding of Afghan wounds and the building of state structures.

If the past eight years had shown ongoing success, perhaps an alternative case for U.S. policies could be made. But the evidence on the ground demonstrates only continued deterioration and darkening of the prognosis. Will we have more of the same? Or will there be a U.S. recognition that the American presence has now become more the problem than the solution? We do not hear that debate.

(C) 2009 GLOBAL VIEWPOINT NETWORK; (TM) TRIBUNE MEDIA SERVICES, INC.

Graham E. Fuller is a former CIA station chief in Kabul and a former vice-chair of the CIA's National Intelligence Council. He is author of numerous books on the Middle East, including The Future of Political Islam.

A World Without Islam
What if Islam had never existed? To some, it's a comforting thought: No clash of civilizations, no holy wars, no terrorists. Would Christianity have taken over the world? Would the Middle East be a peaceful beacon of democracy? Would 9/11 have happened? In fact, remove Islam from the path of history, and the world ends up exactly where it is today.
BY GRAHAM E. FULLER | JANUARY 1, 2008

Imagine, if you will, a world without Islam -- admittedly an almost inconceivable state of affairs given its charged centrality in our daily news headlines. Islam seems to lie behind a broad range of international disorders: suicide attacks, car bombings, military occupations, resistance struggles, riots, fatwas, jihads, guerrilla warfare, threatening videos, and 9/11 itself. Why are these things taking place? "Islam" seems to offer an instant and uncomplicated analytical touchstone, enabling us to make sense of today's convulsive world. Indeed, for some neoconservatives, "Islamofascism" is now our sworn foe in a looming "World War III."

But indulge me for a moment. What if there were no such thing as Islam? What if there had never been a Prophet Mohammed, no saga of the spread of Islam across vast parts of the Middle East, Asia, and Africa?

Given our intense current focus on terrorism, war, and rampant anti-Americanism -- some of the most emotional international issues of the day -- it's vital to understand the true sources of these crises. Is Islam, in fact, the source of the problem, or does it tend to lie with other less obvious and deeper factors? For the sake of argument, in an act of historical imagination, picture a Middle East in which Islam had never appeared. Would we then be spared many of the current challenges before us? Would the Middle East be more peaceful? How different might the character of East-West relations be? Without Islam, surely the international order would present a very different picture than it does today. Or would it?

IF NOT ISLAM, THEN WHAT?

From the earliest days of a broader Middle East, Islam has seemingly shaped the cultural norms and even political preferences of its followers. How can we then separate Islam from the Middle East? As it turns out, it's not so hard to imagine.

Let's start with ethnicity. Without Islam, the face of the region still remains complex and conflicted. The dominant ethnic groups of the Middle East -- Arabs, Persians, Turks, Kurds, Jews, even Berbers and Pashtuns -- would still dominate politics. Take the Persians: Long before Islam, successive great Persian empires pushed to the doors of Athens and were the perpetual rivals of whoever inhabited Anatolia. Contesting Semitic peoples, too, fought the Persians across the Fertile Crescent and into Iraq. And then there are the powerful forces of diverse Arab tribes and traders expanding and migrating into other Semitic areas of the Middle East before Islam. Mongols would still have overrun and destroyed the civilizations of Central Asia and much of the Middle East in the 13th century. Turks still would have conquered Anatolia, the Balkans up to Vienna, and most of the Middle East. These struggles -- over power, territory, influence, and trade -- existed long before Islam arrived.

Still, it's too arbitrary to exclude religion entirely from the equation. If, in fact, Islam had never emerged, most of the Middle East would have remained predominantly Christian, in its various sects, just as it had been at the dawn of Islam. Apart from some Zoroastrians and small numbers of Jews, no other major religions were present.

But would harmony with the West really have reigned if the whole Middle East had remained Christian? That is a far reach. We would have to assume that a restless and expansive medieval European world would not have projected its power and hegemony into the neighboring East in search of economic and geopolitical footholds. After all, what were the Crusades if not a Western adventure driven primarily by political, social, and economic needs? The banner of Christianity was little more than a potent symbol, a rallying cry to bless the more secular urges of powerful Europeans. In fact, the particular religion of the natives never figured highly in the West's imperial push across the globe. Europe may have spoken upliftingly about bringing "Christian values to the natives," but the patent goal was to establish colonial outposts as sources of wealth for the metropole and bases for Western power projection.

And so it's unlikely that Christian inhabitants of the Middle East would have welcomed the stream of European fleets and their merchants backed by Western guns. Imperialism would have prospered in the region's complex ethnic mosaic -- the raw materials for the old game of divide and rule. And Europeans still would have installed the same pliable local rulers to accommodate their needs.

Move the clock forward to the age of oil in the Middle East. Would Middle Eastern states, even if Christian, have welcomed the establishment of European protectorates over their region? Hardly. The West still would have built and controlled the same choke points, such as the Suez Canal. It wasn't Islam that made Middle Eastern states powerfully resist the colonial project, with its drastic redrawing of borders in accordance with European geopolitical preferences. Nor would Middle Eastern Christians have welcomed imperial Western oil companies, backed by their European viceregents, diplomats, intelligence agents, and armies, any more than Muslims did. Look at the long history of Latin American reactions to American domination of their oil, economics, and politics. The Middle East would have been equally keen to create nationalist anticolonial movements to wrest control over their own soil, markets, sovereignty, and destiny from foreign grips -- just like anti-colonial struggles in Hindu India, Confucian China, Buddhist Vietnam, and a Christian and animist Africa.

US Officials Refuted Turkish ex-intelligence officer's slander against the Gulen Movement


Graham Fuller on Gulen MovementA Turkish ex-intelligence officer's recent defamation campaign claiming that the Gulen Movement has been providing cover for the CIA since the mid-1990s is refuted by former US officials. Jeff Stein of the Washington Post has devoted his column, Spy Talk, this week to a hot debate going on in Turkey. What sparked the debate was a memoir by a former Turkish Intelligence Officer, Nuri Gundes. In his memoir, Gundes alleged that the movement sheltered 130 CIA agents at its schools in Central Asia. Post's Stein talked to former CIA officers about the accusations and asked them about their take on the issue. Stein says "Two ex-CIA officials with long ties to Central Asia cast doubt on Gundes’s charges.

Especially one of them, Mr. Graham Fuller, a former CIA station chief in Kabul and author of “The Future of Political Islam,” threw cold water on Gundes’s allegations: “I think the story of 130 CIA agents in Gulen schools in Central Asia is pretty wild,” Fuller said. “I cannot even imagine trying to credibly sell such a scheme with a straight face within the agency. As for Nuri Gundes, I am not aware of who he is or what he has written. But there is a lot of wild stuff floating around in Turkey on these issues and Gulen is a real hot button issue.” added the ex-CIA official. Stein also asked Fuller about the accusations arguing he has backed Gulen's visa issues and recommended him a green card. "I did not recommend him for a residence permit or anything else" said Fuller. "What I did do,” he explained, “was write a letter to the FBI in early 2006 …at a time when Gulen's enemies were pressing for his extradition to Turkey from the U.S. In the post 9/11 environment, they began spreading the word that he was a dangerous radical. In my statement to the FBI I offered my views…that I did not believe he posed a security threat of any kind to the U.S. I still believe that today, as do a large body of scholars on contemporary Islam. “I do not at all consider Gulen a radical or dangerous.” Fuller continued. “Indeed in my view--and I have studied a lot of Islamist movements worldwide--his movement is perhaps one of the most encouraging in terms of the evolution of contemporary Islamic political and social thinking…”

All in all, this time The Washington Post and a couple of former US officials busted claims and slanders against the Gulen Movement.