terrorism

Iran – Assets confiscated by US

Posted on by Helena

The US has confiscated $2billion of Iranian assets to compensate the victims or their families of terrorist attacks purportedly linked to Iran in the 1983 Marine Barracks attack in Beirut that killed 254 US servicemen, and the 1996 bombing of the Khobor Towers in Saudi Arabia.

Beirut: What happened? The barracks was unprotected given that the US servicemen were not their as military contingents, but as peacekeeping agents leaving a wide open gate and no sentries. A truck laden with 21,000lbs of TNT flattened the entire barracks and everyone inside. A formal report issued by the US indicated serious errors in judgment by officers on the ground with a military chain of command taking the heat. Reference was made to ‘jihadists’ and ‘militants’.

The problem? The group that claimed responsibility, Islamic Jihad, did not necessarily exist. While there is speculation that they were a front for Hezbollah, there is no definitive proof one way or the other. Robert Baer, former CIA, has some lucid analysis on the situation, but describes it as a mutual war of terrorism, almost a tit-for-tat, at the time between Iran and the US with Lebanon in the middle.

Khobor Towers: What happened? Nineteen people died when a truck loaded with a bomb blew up the dormitory in the Towers which housed US Air Force pilots and staff. It was ten years later that a US court and the Saudi’s decided that Iran was responsible and another nine years before the Saudi’s arrested the man they found was the mastermind, a Saudi Shiite, Mughassil, was arrested in 2015. Mughassil was a military commander of the Saudi branch of Hezbollah.

The problem? Timing. Timing is everything and the Sauds desperately hate the Iranians.

But a larger problem emerges, reparation for victims of terrorism.

The same logic that is currently being used to stifle and quash the release of documents that purportedly show the Saudi involvement in the 911 attacks – is being used against Iran. And the logic that opening that can of worms could create exponential financial repercussions on the US in various failed and successful coups that resulted in civilian “casualties” and could be classified as terrorism by courts in other countries.

It also sets up the potential for the International Criminal Court to be prescribed future cases involving terrorism and what constitutes terrorism. Current cases being judged by the ICC include war crimes in Sudan, Democratic Republic of Congo, Uganda, Kenya, Central African Republic, Libya, Mali, Cote D’Ivoire, and Georgia. All cases are investigating representative governments for crimes against humanity including attacks against ‘peacekeepers’.

So how is it that the US may make an international declaration against Iran without going through the ICC?

While the ICC, based in Hague The Netherlands, pats itself on the back for its astounding work, it’s true function would seem similar to NATO or the UN. Their budget is huge, their actual productivity sparse at best. As of 2014, 12 years of operation and $1billion later, the ICC had issued exactly two convictions, both against Congolese warlords. Not exactly a legal system that makes people tremble with fear.

And then there was the award the ICC admitted to Exxon Mobile and its subsidiaries against Venezuela after Exxon-Mobil restructured its Venezuelan business under the Netherlands–Venezuela bilateral investment treaty – OUCH!   No conflict of interest there.

So, did Iran commit these crimes?   I don’t know, and maybe that isn’t really the bigger issue. The bigger issue is implicating governments of countries that think they are immune. Ukraine has filed a claim under for the Maiden protests which caused civilian massacres. There is a preliminary case against the UK for crimes against Iraqi civilians.  What about the US involvement in Ukraine?  The US involvement in Cuba?  The US involvement in Brazil?  The list is long – and the reparations could bankrupt us…

How these will play out is up for grabs, but given the ICC history, we’ll have to wait ten to twenty years before we find out.

Yawn………………………

How much money is at stake for Iran? The figures are not available but estimates range from $10 to $100 billion that the US is attempting to appropriate. I wonder if that includes interest…

Brussels and Violent Crime – a statistic

Posted on by Helena

With all the protests and chaos and stampeding in the media , with all the support for criminals and terrorists – I got hit. And nothing changes an unbiased opinion as quickly as being the victim of a violent or heinous crime. In my case, it was my home, my house, I was defiled by burglars. Not only did they take items that were in my family for hundreds of years, they left a calling card – they peed on my carpet. A nice brazen, large, spreading stain.

Maybe they laughed and thought it was a nice calling card, a send off, a &^k you because I had more and they wanted – what I had. They were entitled to what I had. The new Socialist way of thinking … If you don’t have it, just steal it!

Little can express my feelings except that I find myself more angry than sad, more outraged than weepy, although the weeps do take hold. I’ve been robbed before, but then it was a stupid idiot robbing another poor person, and I just felt – what an idiot. This time, I had something to lose, and they emptied it all.

Unfortunately, it’s not like television or novels where the police and sheriff are all over the case and spend wakeful hours upon hours researching who could be the culprit, the MO, the footprints, the case! In reality, they spend diligent hours taking notes and yet in their heart they know it’s gone – it’s all gone. And there is no way it will ever be recovered. In reality, you lose and life moves on for everyone else – including the burglars. Because the police have literally thousands upon thousands of cases to cover. And you are just a pin-prick in the miles of paperwork.

In my case, what they left is almost as interesting as what they took, not that I protest what they left behind! But the entire agenda converted a few around me, they suddenly took it all personally and they switched – on a dime – and saw that anger is the impetuous that is driving the bandwagon around Trump. But this time – this time – it isn’t black anger or illegal immigrant anger, or Islam anger, or poor me anger – it is I AM DONE anger. As in, enough. As in we have been the scapegoat punching bag for everything for way too long and I am done.  Anger.

As in – I didn’t do anything wrong and am paying for some bizarre prejudicial anger that has nothing to do with my everyday life. As in the hypocrisy is just over the top ridiculous, anger, and I’m not your punching bag! Anger.

The crime statistics are REAL anger. Terrorism is real. Hate and pain are real! And it wasn’t coming from ME! Anger.

My abode has been violated. They crashed through a steal entry, and a heavy wood and metal door – bolted and secured spent exactly 17 minutes ransacking the entire house and left through the front door – arrogant –  angry. After – someone thought it might be fun to pee in the middle of the living room – angry.

SO, once again, we see that our leaders are either living in a hazy fog of a netherworld, or they are doing it on purpose to bring down a global destabilization – angry. Depends if you believe they are stupid are simply conniving. Because there is really nothing in-between.

Responses to Brussels terrorist attacks:

Cameron – he is ‘concerned’ … really?  Now you are ‘concerned’?

Merkel – she says ‘free societies are stronger than ISIS…’ – really?  Because that doesn’t seem to be the case.

Hollande – he’s calling for us to all be ‘calm’ and ‘lucid’.

Obama – he just thinks that we all need to ‘unite’ to be friends and brethren – while in Cuba.

Gee guys, I just don’t think your attitude makes me feel all warm and cozy. Doesn’t make me feel safe. Makes me feel like I wish you could feel the violation like they do, like I did, like so many others have!  Makes me think – you haven’t a clue!

The boundaries have all been crossed. The values have spiraled into a “see it” version of soft porn on every media site. And nude selfies for the world to see are a yawn that put Playboy out of business.

So – all you mainstream – if you want to know why people don’t want a stereotypical politician – THIS is why. Get over it.

Footnote: they did not steal our guns…

Sunni Shi’a Riff – Next World War?

Posted on by Helena

An unprecedented influx of Muslim refugees precedes a widening rift between Shi’a and Sunni states in the Middle East.

It’s hard not to think the timing was orchestrated.  What did the Sauds think the reaction would be after they brutally executed-beheaded a Shi’a holy man? Did they really think there would be no repercussion? I don’t think anyone is that stupid… and the only viable alternative to stupid is – ‘orchestrated’.

What would be the purpose if it was orchestrated?

Certainly it puts all of Europe on a very high alert as their Muslim population of both sects has risen exponentially. While the last actual population census was done in 2010 and estimated the total European contingent to be in excess of 44 million, the last five years we have seen unprecedented exodus from the Middle East and Africa into Europe. But more surprising is that upwards of 62% of all Muslims reside in Asia, the Middle East only accounts for about 20%, and Africa about 15%.

Pakistan and Indonesia account for the largest Shi’a populations. How they will respond to this division will determine whether this riff explodes.

That being said, if the Middle East were to implode into an all out sectarian war, what side would we take? What would happen to the ‘other’ side’s civilian population in foreign countries? Would the violence extend worldwide as Shunnis took to fighting Shi’a – everywhere?

Worldwide, the Sunni population is approximately 80% and the Shi’a about 20%. However, in the US, the Sunni population is 56%, a large disproportionate percentage despite our brackish affiliation with Saudi Arabia and Sunnis.

Iran in a Nutshell: The last time Iran was a world power was in the early 18th century.  Prior to that their empire reigned in the 7th century when they were ruled by the Sasanians whose language was Aramaic and religion was a mixture of Babylonian, Christian, Jewish, Hindu and Buddhist. This Empire was defeated by Islam in a war that began in 633 and eventually ended in about 651 AD.  The surviving Sasonian’s converted to Islam or fled to other countries, but were always considered inferior, of a lesser quality. Conquered by the Mongols and later the Tamirs, it was not until the fifteen hundreds that Safavids rose to form the Safavid Empire of Iran before being defeated in 1722.

They were later conquered by Russia, the Ottoman Empire and finally the British in the early 1900’s who sought their oil. In 1941 the Soviets, British and Commonwealth nations invaded Iran for the purpose of confiscating their oil. In 1946, the Soviets were expelled by the British and Commonwealthers who then revoked their portion of the oil and continued their reign over the country.

In 1953, the US and UK organized a coup to depose the Prime Minister of Iran, Musaddeq, executed the Foreign Minister, and propped up the Shah. The 1979 Revolution returned Iran to its Shi’a roots, nationalized the oil from the British and US, and returned the country to it’s fundamental religious societal economy.

And while the media continues to pummel us with the ‘threat of Iran terrorism’, let’s not forget that al-Qaeda, ISIS, al-Nusra, Hamas, The Muslim Brotherhood, and al-Shabaab are all Sunni… The terrorist organization that is Shi’a is the militant group known as Hezbollah.

Formed by Iran clerics in 1982, Hezbollah was created to battle the Israeli occupation of south Lebanon. Since then, their military aggression has grown, and their warring targets include Israel and the Saudi Arabia.  Their main focus is feeling oppressed as a minority.  The European Union, New Zealand and the UK do not classify Hezbollah as a terrorist organization. Their ideology desires the end of Israel as they see Zionism as a conspiracy for a One World Order and supreme domination.

So what would a complete implosion of war between Shi’as and Sunnis look like? Given the mass amounts of weapons sold over the course of the last decade by the US, Europe, and Russia – the countries most prolific include; Turkey, UAE, India, Afghanistan, China and of course – Saudi Arabia which took the world’s lead in 2014. Iran is not even making the list.

Paying attention to the details instead of the media propaganda is now a necessity. Who are friends? Who are foes? And who can we Trust?

The Children of War: One M&M in Ten Thousand

Posted on by Helena

Can you even imagine your son hating you so much that he tries to kill you? How much hate would have to live inside a person to want this?

Fathers – you can be so much with so little…

Imagine hating a person that you’ve never met, and have no knowledge of, but hating them so much you want them dead and are willing to be – the perpetrator?

Imagine a society that is so hell-bent in lying and deception, that they will tell you a staged story of why you have crossed that moral and ethical line knowing it is false and pretending it to be true?  I can’t imagine such a mind that rationalizes such lies,  I can’t imagine the mind of such a person. I can’t imagine the emptiness of care. I can’t imagine such absolute hatred that it consumes.  I can’t imagine they sleep…

And yet, I have siblings and a father and grandfather and great, and great great and so on – that have all experienced this absolute absorbing hate. In war. Can a person that is so carnaged in that cavernous gulf of emotion and life ever really ‘get better’? At what point does the mind change to the point that it can’t be ‘fixed’?

Sometimes I think that there is just a switch some place in the brains of these terrorists and others consumed with hate, a switch that if God wanted, he could flip and these people would no longer be evil.  They would lay down their swords, their AK-47’s, their deboning fillet knives and say – enough.  What’s the point?

Perhaps the idea comes from the most simple of examples – down syndrome. A part of the brain is clustered and emphasized, while another part is clouded and gray. The clouded and gray matter house the hatred and lying and deception genetic, while the cluster emphasizes a simplistically full heart that overflows, brimming with nothing but purity and goodness! Amazing! So, of course, there is a switch somewhere that causes a person to lop heads, blow up crowds of innocent children, and maim thousands upon thousands – for a self, a narcissistic self that cares for nothing but – self.  While there is another switch that allows a person to be engulfed in an aura of glorified sweetness.

So what makes two people go opposite directions? One evil – one good?

Is it really possible that it is a brain anomaly that makes one more evil? Could there be a dyke, a switch, a trigger that could be set into the ‘on’ position, allowing them to be good people? And if something happens to flip the switch off, the brain spirals into an evil place.

The Fix: It wouldn’t be a lobotomy. It would be a restoration of a switch that was triggered by events beyond your control during childhood. The switch would ‘reset’ like the red button in your kitchen that resets rooms of power overload and failure.

Imagine the children coming out of Syria? Imagine what is in their dreams? Where do their thoughts reside? What is their suppressed emotional level? How do they view – life? You can’t ignore them. You can’t pretend they are just fine. They are not. And a new generation will grow that is rooted in terror and a disregard for life. Has their ‘switch’ been turned off? Did the overload of destruction and devastation cause the switch to simply flip to the off position? Probably.

This is the generation we support in Syria – in the Middle East – in Africa… Are we really so immune? So disconnected? So absorbed in self? We can’t see?

Because, while there may be ten poisoned M&M’s in the bowl amongst ten thousand, there may be a child M&M, a girl, 4, standing in the midst of bombs, her hair splayed with dirt, her face splattered with tears and terror, and all around the world is fire, noise, and chaos. And I think there are a fair number of firemen, policemen, and military that would risk the ten amongst the ten thousand – for the one.