US vs China: Why the US Delisted Uyghur Terrorists

November 16, 2020 (Brian Berletic - LD) - The US recently delisted a Uyghur terrorist network, but not because it is no longer active or no longer dangerous - but precisely so the US can provide more support and do so more directly.

I explain what this means for China and its allies including Thailand. Link: "US De-Lists Uyghur Terrorist Organization Aimed at China" https://journal-neo.org/2020/11/11/us-de-lists-uyghur-terrorist-organization-aimed-at-china/

Is China Building a "Police State" or Countering Western-sponsored Terrorism?

February 1, 2019 (Joseph Thomas - NEO) - Recent headlines across American and European news agencies have focused on the rise of a so-called Chinese "police state," specifically in regards to security infrastructure put in place in China's western region of Xinjiang.

Articles like Bloomberg's "Inside the Vast Police State at the Heart of China’s Belt and Road" and the Economist's "China has turned Xinjiang into a police state like no other" depict Beijing's efforts as a "Muslim crackdown" and a "massive abuse of human rights."

While such articles allude to the very real violence that has taken place in Xinjiang and elsewhere targeted by an extremist minority among China's Uighur population, it is portrayed as "resistance" by Western sources rather than terrorism.

Bloomberg's article would claim:

...state-mandated drills are part of China’s suppression campaign against Uighurs, predominately Muslim ethnic groups whose members have periodically lashed out with riots, stabbings and other attacks in protest of a government controlled by the Han Chinese majority. 

In reality, Uighur extremists are terrorists pursuing unrealistic separatism encouraged by Washington, and doing so through extreme violence.

Uighur Separatism is US Sponsored  

The United State government via the National Endowment for Democracy dedicates a page to programmes it is funding in what is listed as "Xinjiang/East Turkistan," East Turkistan being the fictional name of the imaginary state separatists seek to carve out of Chinese territory.

The inclusion of "East Turkistan" is all but an admission to US support for Uighur separatism.

The "World Uyghur Congress" (WUC) is among the groups the US NED is funding. It openly promotes separatism.

WUC is omnipresent in Western news reports, promoting allegations against Beijing regarding Xinjiang, yet WUC is actually based in Munich, Germany and Washington D.C.

WUC representatives such as Dilxat Raxit and Rebiya Kadeer are cited, making various unsubstantiated claims regarding China's treatment of Uighurs with Western news agencies often failing to mention their WUC affiliation or that the WUC is funded by the US government in articles.

Stories like, "Chinese Police Order Xinjiang's Muslims to Hand in All Copies of The Quran," published by the US State Department-funded and directed Radio Free Asia network are based entirely on WUC claims.

Further investigation would reveal the Qurans being collected were published in Saudi Arabia and deliberately rewritten to promote extremism. Newer versions printed elsewhere were not being collected.

It is just one of many examples of the US intentionally undermining security in China, then intentionally misrepresenting China's attempts to respond to these growing threats.

Uighur Extremists are Carrying out Deadly Terrorism in China 

What Bloomberg describes as "periodically lashing out" has been more accurately presented even in the Western press, years before this latest disinformation campaign against Beijing began.

In a 2014 BBC article titled, "Why is there tension between China and the Uighurs?," a long and appalling list of Uighur terrorist attacks are presented:

In June 2012, six Uighurs reportedly tried to hijack a plane from Hotan to Urumqi before they were overpowered by passengers and crew. 

There was bloodshed in April 2013 and in June that year, 27 people died in Shanshan county after police opened fire on what state media described as a mob armed with knives attacking local government buildings

At least 31 people were killed and more than 90 suffered injuries in May 2014 when two cars crashed through an Urumqi market and explosives were tossed into the crowd. China called it a "violent terrorist incident". 

It followed a bomb and knife attack at Urumqi's south railway station in April, which killed three and injured 79 others. 

In July, authorities said a knife-wielding gang attacked a police station and government offices in Yarkant, leaving 96 dead. The imam of China's largest mosque, Jume Tahir, was stabbed to death days later. 

In September about 50 died in blasts in Luntai county outside police stations, a market and a shop. Details of both incidents are unclear and activists have contested some accounts of incidents in state media.

Some violence has also spilled out of Xinjiang. A March stabbing spree in Kunming in Yunnan province that killed 29 people was blamed on Xinjiang separatists, as was an October 2013 incident where a car ploughed into a crowd and burst into flames in Beijing's Tiananmen Square.

It can only be imagined what sort of security measures the United States or United Kingdom would put into place if such large scale and persist terrorism was taking place within their borders. It would also be curious to imagine what either nation would do if the separatism driving the violence was being openly promoted by a foreign state.

For China, draining the swamps of ideological extremism is their method of choice and is the impetus behind the so-called "reeducation camps" being operated in Xinjiang.

This systematic and brutal campaign of terrorism now being omitted from Western news sources is deliberate. Omitting this crucial context is meant to portray Beijing's reaction to years of deadly terrorism as irrational, oppressive and totalitarian.

And even as the US and other Western nations promote this campaign of disinformation, stories are still slipping through, admitting to the serious and growing security challenges Uighur terrorism presents not only China but the rest of the world.


The US State Department funded and directed Voice of America in an article titled, "Analysts: Uighur Jihadis in Syria Could Pose Threat," would admit:

Analysts are warning that the jihadi group Turkistan Islamic Party (TIP) in northwestern Syria could pose a danger to Syria’s volatile Idlib province, where efforts continue to keep a fragile Turkey-Russia-brokered cease-fire between Syrian regime forces and the various rebel groups. 

The TIP declared an Islamic emirate in Idlib in late November and has largely remained off the radar of authorities and the media thanks to its low profile. Founded in 2008 in the northwestern Chinese region of Xinjiang, the TIP has been one of the major extremist groups in Syria since the outbreak of the civil war in the country in 2011. 

The TIP is primarily made up of Uighur Muslims from China, but in recent years it also has included other jihadi fighters within its ranks. 

The article also discusses the threat of these terrorists transferring their experience back to western China.

The article demonstrates two important facts; that Uighur "separatists" in Xinjiang are actually highly organised and dangerous terrorists, and that they are involved in armed violence not only in China, but around the world.

"Humanitarian Concern" as Geopolitical Handcuffs 

The schizophrenic nature of US media coverage regarding Uighur extremism, portraying them as innocent victims of Chinese "totalitarianism" on one hand, and as a heavily armed bloc fighting alongside Al Qaeda and the Islamic State terrorists in Syria on the other, betrays the former as a means of geopolitically handcuffing Beijing's ability to decisively respond to the latter.

By hindering Beijing's ability to react to a terrorist threat the US is actively encouraging, Washington hopes to give Uighur extremism the space it needs to take hold and undermine China's security indefinitely.

As to why, the Bloomberg article makes it very clear:

Xinjiang sits at the geographic heart of Xi’s signature Belt and Road Initiative. It’s a trillion-dollar plan to finance new highways, ports and other modern infrastructure projects in developing countries that will connect them to China’s markets—and, skeptics say, put them in China’s debt for decades to come.

The use of terrorism, shielded from security efforts by disingenuous humanitarian concerns to hinder China's One Belt, One Road initiative has become a common theme throughout Washington's strategy to contain China's rise upon the global stage.

Understanding the truth behind Beijing's security issues in Xinjiang points out that it is the United States, not China, not only to blame for any unnecessary suffering Uighurs now face, but also working to undermine global peace and prosperity, not contribute toward it.

Even if the wildest accusations made by the US against China in Xinjiang are true, considering what the scourge of foreign-funded terrorism has brought to nations like Syria, Libya and Iraq, would such measures be too extreme?

Joseph Thomas is chief editor of Thailand-based geopolitical journal, The New Atlas and contributor to the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

The Truth About Radical Islam

November 5, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - There are approximately 1.8 billion Muslims on Earth. That is approximately 24% of the world population. They live in regions spanning North Africa, the Middle East, Central Asia, and reaching as far as Southeast Asia. There are Muslim communities in virtually every nation - and in many - they have played a pivotal, constructive, and welcomed role in national development.

If even 1% of the world's Muslims were violent terrorists bent on conquering the world, that would constitute an army 18 million strong - or in other words - larger than the next 20 largest armies on Earth combined. Most critics of Islam infer that the number is actually much higher than 1% - many suggesting that the majority of Muslims either are engaged in or support terrorism. It is logical to conclude that if even 1% were dedicated to terrorism and the "conquest of infidels," the war would have ended in their favor long ago.

It is clear that there is not even 1% across Islam engaged in or supporting terrorism. Across the Arab World, the vast majority of Muslims, Christians, other sects, and the secular, stand united against terrorism. It is clear that a mountain of lies stands between many and the truth - a mountain built so tall that it leaves entire segments of targeted populations in the perpetual darkness of ignorance.

From Whence Terror Flows

The source of terrorism is not the Qu'ran - a book that few critics of Islam have even picked up let alone genuinely read - but rather a very easily traced money trail that leads to Washington and London.

It is indeed the Western World that has created, branded, and marketed "radical Islam," which is for all intents and purposes a strictly political tool designed to provoke direct Western military interventions where possible, and fight conflicts by proxy whenever direct military intervention is not possible.

In Syria and Iraq, the US has used its terrorist proxies to do both - first to fight the government of Damascus and its allies by proxy, and when that failed, to set a pretext for direct US military intervention.


It has also been used domestically, as one former analyst once put it, "to enlist our obedience for the construction of the prison planet." Indeed, under the pretext of "fighting terrorism," the United States and much of Europe has been transformed into an invasive police state and despite stripping away the freedom and liberty of the Western World for the promise of security - the peoples of the West find themselves with neither.

For those that have been sucked up into "radical Islam," it seems very real. Just as the US uses patriotism to convince young men and women to devote their lives to foreign invasions, wars, and occupations against scores of sovereign nations around the world - predicated on "freedom, democracy, and self-determination" even as US militarism strips all of the above away from the planet - that fraction of a fraction of 1% engaged in "radical Islam" truly believe in their cause - no matter how nonexistent and contradictory it is in reality.

And "radical Islam" does not exist in a vacuum. It requires a medium to interact with. That includes a equally extreme, but opposite "radical ignorance" and fear sown across the Western population. Together, the two feed each other creating a perpetual pretext for foreign war, a perpetual sense of injustice against Muslims to which US-armed and funded terrorists can rally around, and perpetual fear and hatred spread across the Western World.

It is the age-old political tool of empires - divide and conquer - honed to perfection and supercharged through information technology - particularly social media.

Wahhabism - The Key to Arab Conquest 

Part of "radical ignorance" includes a deep and profound ignorance of history. Understanding the actual inception of "radical Islam," more accurately known as Wahhabism, dispels many of the most virulent lies spread about Islam - that is has always been a barbaric, warlike ideology. Militant Islam is a relatively new phenomenon, invented by the House of Saud, then cultivated and exploited to its full potential by the British Empire and its American heirs.

Image: T. E. Lawrence played a pivotal role in building up, then betraying various Arab independence movements vis-a-vis the Ottoman Empire. It was during this period of time that the West began to co-opt and exploit Saudi Arabia's already well-developed political tool of Wahhabism.   

The Ottoman Empire and mastery over the Arab World was coveted and contested by the British Empire. The promise of Arab independence was dangled over the heads of the founders of many of the dynasties now ruling Arabia - dynasties that were carved out through cults of personality and a violent misinterpretation of Islam known as Wahhabism. The British, after betraying the Arabs, would harness this political tool to do what all empires do best - divide and conquer - and specifically so regarding the Middle East and North Africa (MENA).

Image: US-backed militants of the extremist Muslim Brotherhood attempted to overthrow Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's father, Hafex Al Assad in 1982 and failed. They would try again in beginning in 2011 using the Muslim Brotherhood again, as well as Al Qaeda, Al Nusra, and eventually the Islamic State (ISIS). 

As the British Empire unraveled, the Americans picked up where London left off. The Saudis and their neighboring Persian Gulf kingdoms have been propped up by the West since the end of World War 1. Since World War 2, many of the same dynasties have sat in power, armed, funded, protected, and invited into some of the most lucrative business deals and economic activity in human history.

It was with members of the Muslim Brotherhood that the US attempted to overthrow current Syrian President Bashar Al Assad's father, Hafez al-Assad with. It was the US with the Saudis and factions within Pakistan's military and government who oversaw the very creation of militant groups like Al Qaeda to fight the Soviets in Afghanistan.

Image: US National Security Adviser Zbigniew Brzezinski with Pakistani military personnel during the US-backed proxy war in Afghanistan against the Soviet Union. The militant groups created, armed, and funded by the US in the 1980's would eventually evolve into Al Qaeda and ISIS today. 

And it is to this very day still very much a US-European enterprise perpetuating the Saudi regime in Riyadh, arming it to the tune of hundreds of billions of dollars in weapons and military support, and using Riyadh admittedly as an intermediary through which Washington, London, and Brussels arm and fund the worst, most virulent terrorist organizations on Earth.

Even current US President Donald Trump - who regularly cites "radical Islam" as an enduring threat to America's national security, has signed off on immense weapon deals to the very nations the US uses to cultivate and perpetuate global terrorism.

The US and Europe Drive Terrorism, Not Islam 

Each and every terrorist attack that unfolds across North America or Europe is followed by a tidal wave of propaganda aimed at further bolstering a "clash of civilizations." The fearful public either cowers or lashes out against Muslims - led by establishment voices including the newly christened "alt-right."

Image: A wrecked Home Depot rental truck, used in the recent terror attack in Manhattan, New York. The attacker apparently pledged allegiance to the Islamic State (ISIS). But who in turn created and perpetuates ISIS? 

Muslims and Islam are blamed and the same collection of elementary talking points are rolled out to fan the flames of hatred and hysteria. Points of logic including the number of Muslims on Earth versus the actual number of terrorists are never discussed.

Also never discussed is the fact that terrorists - particularly those either members of the self-titled "Islamic State" (ISIS) and Al Qaeda, or those inspired by such groups - are indoctrinated, radicalized, armed, funded, and supported by Washington, London, Brussels, and a collection of the West's closest allies in the Middle East - namely Saudi Arabia, Qatar, Turkey, Jordan, and Israel.

It was in a leaked 2012 US Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo that revealed the US and its allies' intent to create what it called a "Salafist principality" in eastern Syria. The memo would explicitly state that (emphasis added):

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran). 

On clarifying who these supporting powers were, the DIA memo would state:

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

The "Salafist" (Islamic) "principality" (State) would indeed be created precisely in eastern Syria as US policymakers and their allies had set out to do. It would be branded as the "Islamic State" and be used first to wage a more muscular proxy war against Damascus, and when that failed, to invite US military forces to intervene in the conflict directly. 

In 2014, in an e-mail between US Counselor to the President John Podesta and former US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, it would be admitted that two of America's closest regional allies - Saudi Arabia and Qatar - were providing financial and logistical support to ISIS.

Image: It doesn't matter who your favorite US President is or who their staff were - Republican or Democrat - they all took turns coddling and using the Saudi regime. 

The e-mail, leaked to the public through Wikileaks, stated:

...we need to use our diplomatic and more traditional intelligence assets to bring pressure on the governments of Qatar and Saudi Arabia, which are providing clandestine financial and logistic support to [ISIS] and other radical Sunni groups in the region.

Despite admissions from the United States military and high-level politicians that ISIS was literally a creation of its own intentional foreign policy and perpetuated through state-sponsorship by America's closest regional allies, both the administrations of President Barack Obama and President Trump would continue signing weapon deals, maintaining diplomatic ties, and strengthening military and economic cooperation with these state-sponsors of terror.

Simultaneously, the US and Europe also continue encouraging and protecting Saudi Arabia's global network of faux-madrases - centers of indoctrination often under the watch and even co-management of Western intelligence agencies ensuring a constant, fresh supply of potential patsies for local terrorist attacks and recruits for the West's proxy armies fighting abroad.

Image: The Syrian Arab Army and its Iranian, Russian, and Hezbollah allies are fighting the true "War on Terror," not alongside the West, but against terrorist proxies sponsored by the West. 

In other words, the problem of "radical Islam" is manufactured and perpetuated by the West. Without the money, weapons, and support provided by the US and Europe to nations like Saudi Arabia, their toxic political tools would quickly dull and be swept into the dustbin of human history. As seen in Syria itself, where hundreds of trucks per day from NATO territory are no longer able to supply ISIS positions within the country, ISIS is unable to sustain itself. It lacks genuine popular support in a region where the vast majority of Muslims, Christians, and the secular remain united against it and has no means of sustaining itself without immense and constant state sponsorship.

"Radical Islam," or Wahhabism is no different. Both continue to exist through the intentional and malicious foreign and domestic policy of Western governments and the special interests that influence them.

Know Yourself and Know Your (Real) Enemy 

For those that believe that "radical Islam" is real and an enduring threat to "Western civilization," they would be wise to heed the words of ancient warlord Sun Tzu who said, "know yourself, and know your enemy and you will never be defeated." 

This means identifying the true source of "radical Islam's" power by tracing weapons, money, and leadership to their sources. For those that believe "Islam" is the fundamental problem, indulging in cherry picked Qu'ran verses is monumentally irresponsible. A true enemy must be honestly studied which means cherry-picked versus must be put into context, the Qu'ran as a whole, must be read, and deep and objective study must be undertaken to truly "know one's enemy."

Meeting and talking with Muslims, observing their communities, and learning their ways - if one truly believes Islam is a threat - is also fundamental in order to "know one's enemy."

Yet it is likely that many who blindly hate Islam do so as a spectator sport. They are disinterested in the truth because picking a side and rooting is the extent of their intellectual, physical, and moral depth. For others, it is a means of profiting. Finding a niche in the West's massive propaganda machine and picking up crumbs for one's bank account and ego has become a viable business model for many.

But for those with the moral integrity to do so, a genuine look into "radical Islam" will reveal a much more troubling and real enemy. One that does not menace us with a foreign culture, religion, or ideology from abroad, but one that lies right in our midst, cloaked in patriotism, humanitarianism, and all that passes for "Western civilization" today.

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine“New Eastern Outlook”.   

How a Real War on Terrorism Would Look and Why the US Isn't Fighting One

February 19, 2017 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - Since 2001, when then US President George Bush announced his "War on Terror," presidents and politicians both in the United States and among America's allies, have repeated this phrase and have done their utmost to convince the public that indeed, the West was fighting a "War on Terror."

Yet there is something disturbingly ambiguous about what exactly the "War on Terror" consists of, who it's being waged against and how it could ever possibly be brought to a successful conclusion.

It is also often referred to as the "Long War," and for good reason. America's ongoing occupation of Afghanistan is the longest armed conflict in US history. Additionally, US troops still find themselves in Iraq, some 14 years after the initial invasion and occupation of the state in 2003.

Because of the ambiguous nature of the "War on Terror," politicians have been given much room to maneuver their rhetoric, explaining why more wars must be waged, more liberties curtailed at home and more wealth and power channeled into fewer and fewer hands.

What's Really Behind Terrorism? 

The fanatics, weapons, supplies, vehicles and finances that grease the wheels of global terror do not merely spring forth from the pages of the Qu'ran, as bigots across the West insist.

Just like any national army, the army raised and wielded in the name of terrorism has several basic components. Examining these components reveals a very uncomfortable but somewhat poorly hidden truth.

In reality, fanatics must be indoctrinated. And they are, in Saudi-funded madras and mosque networks wrapping around the globe. In the United States and across Europe, these madrases and mosques often serve as both indoctrination centers and recruiting stations. They operate as such with the explicit knowledge, even cooperation of US and European security and intelligence agencies.

One such center can be found in Denmark at Grimhøjvej Mosque in Aarhus which openly serves as a recruiting station for militants meant to fight abroad in US-European backed wars in Libya, Syria, Iraq and Yemen. The government of Denmark openly collaborates with the mosque to integrate these individuals back into Danish society when they return.

The mosque in Aarhus is hardly an isolated example. Such mosques backed and protected by US-European-Saudi money and political influence dot the globe, feeding recruits into a global mercenary army carrying out proxy war and staging terrorist attacks whenever and wherever politically convenient.

Both Wikileaks and even the US' own Defense Intelligence Agency has released documents exposing the role both the West and Gulf states such as Saudi Arabia and Qatar have played in the arming and funding of actual militants once they reach the battlefield.

Additionally, militants that have been indoctrinated, trained, armed, funded and battle-hardened by Western and Gulf sponsorship, return back to their respective nations where they are then cultivated for domestic operations. Terror attacks like those in Paris and Brussels, Berlin and elsewhere are carried out almost exclusively by militants US-European security and intelligence agencies have known about and even arrested but inexplicably released, allowing them to carry out their attacks.


What a Real War on Terrorism Requires 

It is often said that states like Russia, Syria and Iran exist as natural allies to the United States and Europe in the fight against terrorism. And that would be true if not for the fact that said terrorism is actually a deliberate product of US-European foreign policy. Were the West to truly wage a war on terrorism, it would already be deeply cooperating with these  nations on the front line against groups like Al Qaeda and the self-proclaimed Islamic State.

However, terrorism is waged as a means of fighting the West's proxy wars abroad, and to create divisive, paralyzing hatred, fear and hysteria at home.

Travel bans are created to intentionally stoke controversy and distract the public from the aforementioned reality driving  terrorism. As is evident in virtually all terror attacks carried out across the West, suspects are already know to security and intelligence agencies beforehand. These agencies simply need to stop them. Instead, they allow the attacks to take place, granting their respective governments political capital to channel more power into centralized hands.

While the US and Europe use terrorism as a function of foreign policy, they could not do it without their intermediaries in the Persian Gulf. Without the Saudis and Qataris serving as "handlers" for the West's terrorist legions, it is unlikely such legions could be raised to begin with.

Targeting, rather than embracing, even protecting these state sponsors of all aspects of terrorism, from indoctrination and recruitment, to training, arming and financing terrorism on the battlefield, would be another essential step in a real "War on Terror."

Yet from President Bush to President Obama and now during the administration of US President Donald Trump, the US and its European allies continue to coddle the regimes in Riyadh and Doha, rather than taking any measures whatsoever to disrupt this terror pipeline.

While the US remains in Afghanistan allegedly to "fight terrorism," it refuses to take even the most basic steps to dismantle the ideological, political and financial structures in the Persian Gulf fueling that terrorism.

A final means of combating and defeating "terrorism" would be to educate the public of just how small a minority is actually involved in it, isolating those groups exploiting and perverting ideologies from the vast majority who practice these ideologies constructively.

Instead, US and European demagogues work ceaselessly to lump all of Islam into the "terror" basket, creating tension and hostility on both sides of an essentially manufactured strategy of tension. Instead of draining emotional and political resources from those seeking to recruit disillusioned individuals, the West is ensuring them an endless supply.

A real "War on Terror" is clearly not being waged. Nothing presented by President Trump before or after his campaign victory in 2016 indicates a real war is about to be waged. In fact, much of what has been done thus far, has simply been the placing of additional bricks on a very predictable path toward the infinite horizon of this "Long War."

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Gladio Again: Germany Could've But Didn't Stop Berlin Attacker. Why?

January 22, 2017 (Tony Cartalucci - NEO) - According to German broadcaster Deutsche Welle (DW), German security and intelligence agencies were particularly familiar with the Berlin attacker, Anis Amri, long before he plowed a large truck into a Christmas market, killing 12 and injuring many more.

In an article titled, "All the cracks that Berlin suspect Amri slipped through," a now familiar litany of excuses are peddled before audiences in a bid to explain why the suspect wasn't stopped, weeks, months, even years before he carried out his attack, as soon as it became apparent he was both violent and a danger to society.

DW's article admits:

The suspect first caught authorities' attention in November 2015, when he unwittingly told an informant for the investigative police unit (BKA) in the state of North-Rhine Westphalia that he wanted to "do something in Germany," according to a document obtained by the daily Süddeutsche Zeitung. He also claimed that he could get an AK-47 for an attack.

The article claims that from that point onward, Amri was "watched" by German agencies. DW also admits:

Further, he was apparently aggressively seeking an opportunity to undertake an attack in Germany. Information pointing to his dangerous potential became so overwhelming that authorities designated him a threat last February. 

DW then reports:

All information was then handed over to the Berlin public prosecutor's office. The suspect was observed from March on. He raised no suspicion in the months that followed, and authorities stopped surveilling him in September.

In December, Amri would carry out his deadly attack, just as attackers in France and Belgium did after being surveilled - in some cases  for years - before being allowed to drop off security and intelligence agencies' radars just ahead of their respective, deadly attacks.

Germany's weak excuses for not apprehending a man who openly admitted he sought to acquire weapons and take human lives echo similarly convenient excuses provided by the French government following a string of fatal attacks across its territory.

Paris has claimed a lack of resources to process the large number of potential terrorists returning from battlefields France itself has helped send arms, fighters, and other forms of material support to on behalf of terrorist organizations and their allies.

Germany's excuses might seem plausible if not for the fact that virtually every terror attack that has unfolded  not only in Germany, but across all of Europe follows a similar pattern where suspects are surveilled, questioned, entrapped, even arrested and released multiple times, before ultimately carrying out spectacular, politically convenient attacks across Europe.

Another "Gladio"

Such purposeful negligence matches another chapter in Europe's more recent history - that during the Cold War in which NATO security and intelligence agencies maintained a myriad of pan-European terrorist organizations of every imaginable variety, used to assassinate political opponents, carry out deadly and spectacular terror attacks, and otherwise use violence, fear, and intimidation to manipulate both public perception and political outcomes during elections in respective states.

Called "Operation Gladio," it would be described by the New York Times in a 1990 article titled, "EVOLUTION IN EUROPE; Italy Discloses Its Web Of Cold War Guerrillas," as:

In Europe's new order, they are the spies who never quite came in from the cold, foot soldiers in an underground guerrilla network with one stated mission: To fight an enemy that most Europeans believe no longer exists. Theirs is a tale of secret arms caches and exotic code names, of military stratagems and political intrigues. At best, their tale is no more than a curious footnote to the cold war. The question is if, at worst, it could be the key to unsolved terrorism dating back two decades.

The New York Times would also reveal:

The focus of the inquiry is a clandestine operation code-named Gladio, created decades ago to arm and train resistance fighters in case the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies invaded. All this week, there have been disclosures of similar organizations in virtually all Western European countries, including those that do not belong to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization. 

The New York Times would also describe how Gladio was used to manipulate public perception, use the specter of fear regarding communism after staged terror attacks to coerce populations to vote in governments of Washington's liking, and essentially frame opposition groups for violence the US and NATO were carrying out with their own terror cells.


The real question is - are there similar networks being created and perpetuated by Western intelligence agencies today, to fill both the ranks of foreign mercenary armies everywhere from Libya and Yemen, to Syria and the borders of Iran - as well as manipulate and impose fear upon the populations of Western states at home?

Spectacular terrorist attacks like those in Paris, Brussels, and Berlin have certainly proven themselves potent events for swaying public opinion regarding political support of particular parties and candidates, as well as fomenting support for wars abroad against "Muslim" nations. There is also the inescapable fact that the very terrorists the West poses as fighting at home are armed, funded, and backed either directly by the West abroad, or through the West's closest allies in the Middle East - namely Saudi Arabia and Qatar.

While it is tempting for people to fall into the false debate crafted in this newly forming "Cold War," the lessons of history should teach us that not all is what it appears to be. And when absolutely every terror attack is carried out by suspects deeply intimate with Western security and intelligence agencies, both at home and in Western-sponsored wars abroad, tempting "clashes of civilization" narratives should be replaced with the prospect of Gladio's inglorious return to Western political calculus.

Additionally, the next time agencies are told to "stop watching" a suspect, perhaps it would be in their best interest to watch them twice as closely, as well as those telling them to "stop watching."

Tony Cartalucci, Bangkok-based geopolitical researcher and writer, especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.    

Ohio Attacker: What They Really Mean by "Influenced by Islam"

November 29, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - Somali immigrant Abdul Razak Ali Artan is alleged to have carried out an attack, injuring 11 until he was eventually shot dead by police.

Alleged alternative media platform, Breitbart News, immediately set to work to link the attack to "Islam" and "refugees" in articles like, "Ohio State Attacker Posted Anti-US Screed to Facebook Movements Before Attack."

It mirrors similar, cherry-picked journalism Breitbart used to cover another attack carried out by a Somali-American in Minnesota earlier this year, in a wider campaign both Breitbart, and a larger segment of the establishment's right cover are engaged in to reintroduce the Bush-era "clash of civilizations" narrative into the alternative media.

Yet neither Abdul Razak Ali Artan's status as an alleged "Muslim" nor his being a Somali refugee had anything to do with his alleged radicalization.

The US and its Allies Radicalized Abdul Razak Ali Artan 

"Radical Islam" is a synonym for the legions of armed terrorists and ideological extremists cultivated by the United States and its Saudi and Qatari allies since the 1980s. Forming up organizations including Al Qaeda itself and its offshoots including Jabhat Al Nusra in Syria and the self-proclaimed "Islamic State" (ISIS), these terrorists and ideological extremists have fought the proxy wars of the West and their allies from the mountains of Afghanistan to the shores of Libya, and everywhere in between.

These legions of terrorists and ideological extremists have also played an integral part in justifying the construction of an unprecedented, Western-wide domestic police state that , while predicated on "fighting terrorism," has been utilized to wage war on all enemies, foreign and domestic, of Western special interests.


Regarding domestic terrorism in particular, it has been revealed that many "foiled" terrorist attacks have simply been Western security services entrapping and leading along suspects toward the execution of terrorist attacks. Often, at the last minute, firing pins are removed from weapons, and inert substances swapped with real explosives to avert successful attacks before dramatically arresting the suspects.

In other incidents, successful attacks are carried out by suspects long-known to security agencies, some of whom have known ties to terrorist organizations and are known to be involved in terrorist activity, but are otherwise inexplicably allowed to operate freely until carrying out their attacks.

Whether a "foiled" attack or a successful bloodbath, increased powers are transferred to Western governments while populations are further distracted and divided along religion, race, and politics, and indifference toward wars fought abroad grows.

The US Sought the Rise of ISIS 

And while Breitbart attempts to insinuate ISIS may have influenced Abdul Razak Ali Artan, it should be remembered who cultivated and ultimately created ISIS as a strategic asset in the first place.

 A Department of Intelligence Agency (DIA) memo first published in 2012 (PDF) admitted:

If the situation unravels there is the possibility of establishing a declared or undeclared Salafist principality in eastern Syria (Hasaka and Der Zor), and this is exactly what the supporting powers to the opposition want, in order to isolate the Syrian regime, which is considered the strategic depth of the Shia expansion (Iraq and Iran). 

The DIA memo then explains exactly who this "Salafist principality's" supporters are (and who its true enemies are):

The West, Gulf countries, and Turkey support the opposition; while Russia, China, and Iran support the regime.

It has been through a torrent of billions of dollars worth of weapons, supplies, and US-NATO trained terrorists that have sustained ISIS' fighting capacity over the last several years. When a Syrian-Russian-Iranian coalition began shutting down the Turkish-Syrian border over which the summation of ISIS' supplies crossed, Turkey organized and implemented a US-backed invasion of a "buffer zone" within Syrian territory to ensure the last supply corridor remained opened.

Image: ISIS terrorist wielding a US-made TOW anti-tank missile near Palmyra, eastern Syria.

Saudi Arabia and neighboring Qatar's state sponsorship of not only armed terrorist organizations, but also indoctrination centers established around the world is the other variable unmentioned by the likes of Breitbart in the "radicalization" equation.

These centers, which could easily be differentiated from legitimate mosques by honest journalism and investigations by local law enforcement, their funding traced, and their facilities closed down, are instead used as recruiting centers - often right in the center of Western nations - to fill the ranks of Al Qaeda and ISIS, as well as manage and exploit extremists when they eventually return home. In addition to operating physical centers, they also produce an immense amount of propaganda used online, over radio waves, and on TV to attract and "radicalize" recruits.

If Abdul Razak Ali Artan was influenced by ISIS and Saudi-Qatari propaganda, or inspired by the deadly exploits of terrorists waging war abroad, who is to blame but the state sponsors of ISIS and those nations who prop up the Saudi-Qatari regimes - a terrorist organization and two nations that would not even exist without the immense and constant supply of political support, cash, and weaponry provided to them both from abroad?

Image: Shoulder-to-shoulder, literally, with Saudi state sponsors of terrorism, America's "right" attend a rally in support of armed terrorist front, Mujahedeen-e-Khalq (MEK) which kidnapped and killed US military officers, US civilian contractors, and hundreds of Iranian civilians. Many of these characters are regularly interviewed and their views promoted by Breitbart.

It is not "Islam" or "being Somali," that allegedly incited Abdul Razak Ali Artan - if "ISIS" played a role in his "radicalization" - it was a toxic, geopolitically-motivated ideology created for the sole purpose of filling the ranks of a global mercenary force - not to achieve "Islamic hegemony," but to augment America's existing hegemony and threaten the influence, even the existence of America's global competitors.

Perhaps the most tragic irony of the establishment's attempt to retrench its talking points within the alternative media through cognitive infiltrators like Breitbart is that the majority of the Islamic World is victim to, not benefiting from such extremism. It is the sons and daughters of  Muslims serving on the front lines fighting extremists in cities like Aleppo, the edge of Damascus, and across Libya and Iraq.

Meanwhile, Breitbart's editors sit comfortably at home, fulfilling US communication strategist Cass Sunstein's dream of infiltrating and disrupting the alternative media - diverting attention away from the real money and power driving terrorism, and instead implicating Islam - as if US-made TOW anti-tank missiles were summoned from the pages of the Qu'ran, and not delivered from an armory in Saudi Arabia, stocked by their American allies - including those Americans who regularly appear in Breitbart interviews.

Incoming US National Security Adviser to Fuel, not Fight Terrorism

November 21, 2016 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - The incoming administration of President-elect Donald Trump already includes a long and growing list of controversial characters, controversial not because they represent a major departure from the policies of US President Barack Obama, but precisely because they represent uninterrupted continuity of agenda instead.

Other reports have mentioned the inclusion of highly problematic figures from among Washington's Neo-Conservative establishment, but President-elect Trump's national security adviser, retired US Army general, Michael Flynn is perhaps the most symbolic of all in signaling a continuity of agenda regarding US foreign policy.

Flynn was appointed in April of 2012 by US President Barack Obama as director of the Defense Intelligence Agency (DIA). It was during this time the US was already deeply involved in semi-covert intervention in the Syrian conflict, after having decimated Libya in 2011 with direct US military intervention.

It was also during Flynn's time at the DIA, August 2012 in fact, that a now notorious memo was circulated (PDF) regarding the anticipated rise of what it called a "Salafist principality" in eastern Syria, and how it could be used as a strategic asset against what it called the "Syrian regime."  The DIA's anticipated "Salafist principality" would later be named the "Islamic State" (IS) and did indeed seize territory in eastern Syria where it remains dug-in to this day.

Flynn's Plan on Terror Resembles the Perpetual War Bush and Obama Fought 

It is indeed troubling that incoming President-elect Trump has chosen an Obama-era DIA director to serve in a more senior position still, and that this DIA director presided over the organization when it not only knew of IS' impending arrival on the geopolitical stage, but sought to encourage its arrival and use it as a strategic asset with which to fight the secular government in Damascus.

Flynn either didn't know just how literal US policymakers were in using IS as a strategic asset, or was complicit in the US' doing so.

What's perhaps more troubling is Flynn's alleged plans to fight and defeat terrorism.

In a recent Business Insider article titled, "Trump's new national security adviser outlines his controversial plan to defeat terrorism," it states:

President-elect Donald Trump's newly appointed national security adviser, retired Lt. Gen. Mike Flynn, has outlined his plan to defeat terrorism extensively in recent months.

Business Insider continues, reporting:

"If we cannot criticize the radical Muslims in our own country, we cannot fight them either in America or overseas," Flynn wrote in the book's conclusion. "Unless we can wage an effective ideological campaign in the United States, we will not be able to defeat the jihadis on foreign battlefields, because we will not understand the true nature of our enemy."

The article also reports:

Flynn has also emphasized the need for looser rules of engagement for US soldiers in the Middle East and for a new intelligence-driven strategy. He wrote about "attacking the enemy alliance" — Russia and Iran — and strengthening the US' own alliances.

Flynn fails to make any mention of state sponsors of terrorism, namely Turkey, Saudi Arabia, and Qatar, which might in fact fall under Flynn's plans for "strengthening the US' own alliances." Indeed, Flynn's new plan to defeat terrorism, is neither new, nor an actual plan to defeat terrorism.

Instead, it is a plan to further perpetuate an artificial clash of civilizations between the West and what is called "radical Islam," but which is actually ideological indoctrination sponsored by America's closet Persian Gulf allies as a means of building an almost inexhaustible army of militants deployed against governments the US itself seeks to overthrow and replace.

Perhaps the only thing that will change with President-elect Trump's arrival in the White House is the narrative used to explain why the United States continues to ignore Saudi Arabia and Qatar's role in perpetuating terrorism, completely side-step the role the US plays in exploiting militant organizations as strategic assets and why the Trump administration fully plans to continue wars designed and initiated under both Bush and Obama's administrations.

With Flynn's inclusion in a suspiciously familiar-looking administration congealing around Trump, it appears that the American people didn't truly vote for a new executive in the White House, but rather a new narrative used to sell the same old policy as before, a policy merely emanating from the White House but clearly devised and dictated from well beyond it.

Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.

Confirmed: "Draw Mohammed" Contest Attackers Were Managed by FBI

UPDATE: Readers should backtrack to CNN's 2015 coverage of the Garland, Texas shooting to see just how badly they are being deceived. As readers watch CNN's video coverage and read the article, they must keep in mind that the FBI had been in contact with the suspects for years, and encouraged them to carry out the attack.

August 7, 2016 (Tony Cartalucci - LD) - To some the 2015 shooting in Garland Texas at a "Draw Mohammed" contest organized by state-sponsored agitators seemed all too convenient.

The protest was meant to prove Muslims were irrational and violent, and amid the protest two armed men did indeed attack, both killed by police who were already on the scene.

The event was meant to reinforce the narrative that Islam is an irrational and dangerous ideology, that Muslims pose a danger to America and the West in general, and that both Islam and Muslims should be actively resisted culturally, politically, and militarily.

It was the culmination of years of agitation through networks maintained by Washington politicians and policymakers, particularly those who have - ironically - not only engineered America's various and unending wars begun during the so-called "War on Terror," but who have also armed and funded some of the most dangerous terrorist organizations on Earth via America's Persian Gulf allies.

Now it is revealed that not only was the protest organized by politicians and organizations associated with Washington, but the shooting was as well.

The two suspects were being directed by undercover FBI agents, one of which reportedly told one of the shooters shortly before the attack to "tear up Texas."

The Daily Beast in its article, "FBI Agent Apparently Egged on ‘Draw Muhammad’ Shooter," would report that:

Days before an ISIS sympathizer attacked a cartoon contest in Garland, Texas, he received a text from an undercover FBI agent. 

“Tear up Texas,” the agent messaged Elton Simpson days before he opened fire at the Draw Muhammad event, according to an affidavit (pdf) filed in federal court Thursday.

The Daily Beast would also report:

That revelation comes amidst a national debate about the use of undercover officers and human sources in terrorism cases. Undercover sources are used in more than half of ISIS-related terror cases, according to statistics kept by the George Washington University Program on Extremism, and civil liberties advocates say some of those charged might not have escalated their behavior without those interventions. 

This latest development regarding the 2015 incident reveals how the entire event and attack were organized by the state for the expressed purpose of creating fear, hysteria, and division within American society. It is very likely that similar attacks both in the United States and across Europe are also the work of concerted efforts by Western governments to manipulate public perception.

Image: Islamophobe Pam Geller with pro-war Neo-Con John Bolton.

The toxic climate created by a phenomenon known as "Islamophobia" is helping the West justify an increased police state at home and wider wars abroad. It is also playing a role in helping to radicalize Muslims sorely needed to fill the ranks of the West's militant fronts in nations like Syria where they are being used to target and overthrow governments obstructing American special interests.

Despite the rhetoric, there are approximately 1.6 billion Muslims on Earth today, meaning that if even 1% were truly as they are characterized by state-sponsored propaganda - as violent fanatics bent on global conquest - that would constitute an army of some 16 million strong - or in other words - an army larger than all of the military forces of the industrialized world combined.

In reality, the number of extremists is extremely low - a fraction of 1% of the total global Muslim population - and the vast majority of these extremists are indoctrinated by US-Saudi funded and facilitated "madrases," trained, funded, and armed by US and its Persian Gulf allies, and "coincidentally" waging war on all of the West's enemies - ranging from the now toppled government of Libya to the current governments of Syria and Iraq, as well as even Russia and China.

Those feeding into Islamophobia - then - are in fact aiding and abetting the cycle of violence, ignorance, and fear that keeps viable the West's use of terrorism as a geopolitical tool both at home and abroad. It is particularly ironic that the "radical Islam" many Westerners are now paralyzed in fear over, is in fact a creation of the modern Western state, springing out of Washington-based policy papers, not the pages of the Qu'ran.

America's Drone Wars: Uprooting Terrorism? Or Trimming Its Branches?

July 4, 2016 (Ulson Gunnar - NEO) - The Washington Post in its recent article, "How Obama went from reluctant warrior to drone champion," attempts to address the White House's recent claims regarding civilian casualties resulting from US drone strikes since 2009.

The article points out that while the US officially claims "between 64 and 116" civilians have been killed, it also includes estimates from various think-tanks and pro-war propaganda outlets admitting to at least 200-300 civilian deaths.

However, even these numbers are conservatively low, and in the Washington Post's attempt to "check" White House numbers, it itself appears to be attempting to downplay the full scale of America's global drone operations, portraying it as a perhaps ill-fated but honest attempt to target and eliminate dangerous terrorists. However, it is anything but, and the "numbers game" is merely a distraction from this fact.

Leaked US Documents Reveal Drones Seek to Create, Not Stop Terror 

It was revealed by the Intercept through leaked US government documents that civilians may account for as much as 90% of all casualties from drone strikes. In its first article in a long series detailing America's drone operations titled, "The Assassination Complex," it reports:

...documents detailing a special operations campaign in northeastern Afghanistan, Operation Haymaker, show that between January 2012 and February 2013, U.S. special operations airstrikes killed more than 200 people. Of those, only 35 were the intended targets. During one five-month period of the operation, according to the documents, nearly 90 percent of the people killed in airstrikes were not the intended targets. In Yemen and Somalia, where the U.S. has far more limited intelligence capabilities to confirm the people killed are the intended targets, the equivalent ratios may well be much worse.

And upon viewing the leaked Operation Haymaker documents, it becomes clear that America's drone operations in Afghanistan have admittedly very little tactical value in eliminating specific "terrorists," and the actual "benefits" noted amid these operations is instead the perpetuation of terror, fear and sociopolitical division in targeted areas, including among civilian populations.

Considering these noted "benefits," high civilian casualty rates of up to 90% makes sense. If the goal is to simply instill fear, it doesn't matter who dies, just as long as someone does. 

First Priority: Smashing Resistance, Not Stopping Terrorists 

It should be remembered that nations like Afghanistan, Yemen, Somalia, and Pakistan are home to fiercely independent networks of localized tribes.

These tribes, particularly in Yemen or Afghanistan, refuse to recognize the authority of US-installed client governments and their existence not only undermines central government authority, they pose a direct threat to its continued existence.

This helps explain another aspect of America's drone operations that have left the general public occasionally outraged but mostly confused. That is, the propensity of drones striking weddings. 

In Western culture, weddings are generally a family affair with little to do with the actual community they take place in. In traditional cultures like Yemen and Afghanistan, weddings are a central community affair. Beyond just friends and family, everyone from the community participates, with various local religious, educational, political and even military leaders attending or even presiding over the event. 

It is difficult to believe that drone operators would target a wedding even if a specific, high value terrorist target was present, understanding the full scope of collateral damage that would occur. In fact, in a 2013 speech at the National Defense University, US President Barack Obama would explicitly claim:

And before any strike is taken, there must be near-certainty that no civilians will be killed or injured -- the highest standard we can set. 

Considering this, it is likely such operations, certain to incur civilian deaths, are instead approved of for the specific purpose of obliterating the very source of a targeted community's strength and independence, leaving local people reeling, leaderless and at the mercy of the central government Washington has installed into power.

In other words, the US is not necessarily "hunting terrorists," it is eliminating resistance to the political order it is attempting to reach into targeted nations with.

Uprooting Terrorism, or Merely Trimming Its Branches? 

Nevertheless, the US is also undoubtedly conducting targeted assassinations as well. It can identify and eliminate specific individuals with high precision when it desires to do so, lending further credence to theories that high civilian casualties are likely a matter of intentional policy rather than merely inevitable "collateral damage."

However, for many geopolitical analysts, drone-borne assassinations should immediately raise questions revolving around the face-value wisdom of targeting individuals who have proven easily replaced over the years by a seemingly endless supply of terrorists and terrorist leaders.

The targets the US is eliminating have no impact on terrorist finance, logistics or military capabilities. In fact, throughout the Intercepts reports, citing US government documents, it is noted over and over again that America's drone operations have done little to degrade the capabilities of terrorist organizations.

This is particularly suspicious considering the US has created what is essentially the global industrialization of drone-borne assassinations with drone bases dotting Africa, the Middle East and Central Asia along with huge networks of both conventional and covert military force to both facilitate and augment drone strikes. But a lack of any discernible impact on terror despite this industrialized killing-machine is only suspicious if one assumes that the US actually endeavors to stop terrorism with it.

So what is the US actually doing and why isn't the US instead attempting to identify and target the very source of the terrorism it claims to be fighting globally?

If Terrorism is a Garden, America is the Gardener... 

If we liken terrorism to a large weed, we can compare America's drone wars to merely trimming its branches rather than digging it up by the root to completely destroy it. This would indicate that the US' goal is not to destroy terrorism, but rather guide its growth along a specific, desired path.

The self-titled "Islamic State" (IS) and Al Qaeda before it, operate a global network and are currently waging war on multiple fronts. What amount of weapons, money, political support and transnational logistical arrangements must exist to support warfare stretching across North Africa, engulfing the Levant, creeping across Afghanistan and even attempting to take root in Southeast Asia?

In Afghanistan during the 1980s it is now common knowledge that Al Qaeda waged war with explicit US and Saudi support. Evidence reveals Al Qaeda likewise participated in US-NATO backed hostilities in Serbia during the 1990s. And today, it is clear that Al Qaeda and IS are both the recipients of immense state sponsorship in Iraq, Syria, Libya, Afghanistan and beyond. There is no other explanation as to how either organization has sustained full-scale war against the combined armed forces of Lebanon, Syria, Iraq, Iran and Russia in the Levant alone, saying nothing of IS' military operations in Libya or Afghanistan.

The US and its allies claim to be arming, funding and training only "moderates" but it is clear that these "moderates" do not exist in any significant capacity upon the battlefield. And in the rare instances they are apparent, they are quite literally fighting within the ranks of Al Qaeda and IS.

To truly stop terrorism, the US would need to strike at the very source of their arms, cash and political support. Since it is clear that this source resides in Riyadh, Amman, Ankara, Doha and even Washington itself, it is obvious why the scourge of terrorism appears "unstoppable."  

It has been and still clearly is the policy of the United States and its allies to use terrorism as a geopolitical tool. It serves the duel purpose of serving as a pretext for Western military intervention, as well as a mercenary force with inexhaustible ranks used to fight the West's enemies where Western armies cannot intervene.

The Purpose of Trimming Branches... 

But a massive global network comprised of heavily armed, deeply indoctrinated and incredibly dangerous men and subsidiary organizations are bound to need "trimming." Groups may take their US-Saudi-funded madras programming and training too far, operating beyond the mandates set forth by their state-sponsors and thus require liquidation.

The Washington Post, if nothing else, rightly concludes in its above-mentioned article that:

As president, [Barack Obama] promised to end America’s wars in Iraq and Afghanistan. Since taking office, he has cut the number of U.S. troops deployed to war zones around the world from 180,000 to fewer than 15,000. 

The wars, however, have not ended. Instead, Obama, through a reliance on drones and special operators, has succeeded in making them nearly invisible.

It is clear that not only have the wars not ended, they have expanded, if not in terms of US troops involved, in terms of where the US is involved through this army of "irregular troops" it cultivates. The wars are not meant to end, but to perpetuate themselves, devouring one nation and leading to a pretext to begin undermining, dividing and destroying the next. The US has created for itself an open-ended pretext to remain "engaged" globally across multiple continents militarily and geopolitically.

Washington could not do so without the threat of terror ever-looming, the ranks of terrorist organizations seemingly bottomless and its ability to surgically "remove" elements from this weed of terrorism it is cultivating in order to get it to creep in the direction US policymakers and special interests desire.

The world is beginning to realize that if a drone could ever truly end terrorism, it would need to fly above Washington or Riyadh, and until it does, the US will never "uproot" terrorism, but merely trim its branches as it carefully cultivates its growth toward strangling the planet.

 Ulson Gunnar, a New York-based geopolitical analyst and writer especially for the online magazine “New Eastern Outlook”.