There was an International conference in Moscow about fighting terrorism... Of course the usual culprits in the Western press have indulged in adding the Crimea Russian "grab" as a state sponsored terrorism while avoiding the fact that 95 per cent of this peninsula's population is RUSSIAN, and that the area had been "gifted" in good will to Ukraine by Russia about 60 years ago...

But the Russians are blaming the West for the spread of terror in the world. By this read the Russians are blaming US support terrorism by supporting the Saudis, who are fighting hard not to be involved in the 9/11 saga when 19 of the terrorists out of 21 came from Saudi Arabia. 

But we get a lot of other crap coming from this grand old lady of small conservative politics, The Guardian — as well as the usual constant barrage of skewed idealism coming from the merde-och media. 

A conference often has an official theme or issue that features in all the panel discussions and debates.

At this year's Moscow International Security Conference, the official theme is fighting terrorism.

But there is an unofficial theme, too - blaming the West.

A string of Russian military figures and experts have accused the US and Nato of causing global insecurity and waging an "information war" against Moscow.

"Terrorism has become the number one problem for all of us," said Russia's Defence Minister, Sergey Shoygu.

He promptly went on to accuse the US and Nato of "building up military infrastructure close to Russia's borders and carrying out dangerous plans for missile defence".

Speaking at the conference, the Chief of Staff of the Russian Armed Forces, Valery Gerasimov, said the rise of terrorism was partly the result of "attempts to transfer the values of Western democracy to countries with their own mentality, spiritual values and traditions... this had exploded North Africa and the Middle East".

read more: http://www.bbc.com/news/world-europe-36158695

The Guardian comes up with its own drop the dacks and bendover to the empire dick, as explained by the Off Guardian:

Too often, according to Jonathan Freedland, the term “self-appointed global policeman”, when applied to America, is used in derogatory fashion because:

…it serves as shorthand for the arrogance of American power, invading countries and imposing regime change, charging about the world heedless of everyone’s needs but its own.

A war here or there, a fascist coup every now and then, these are just little foibles. The geo-political equivalent of putting the milk back empty, or clicking your knuckles. After all:

People are right to complain of the long history of US aggression and intervention in the lives of other sovereign nations…

“People” may be right to complain about it…but I don’t remember Jonathan Freedland, or his paper, complaining about it. Do you? In fact I thought he said the Iraq war had a “silver lining”?

Yup. He did.

And I’m pretty sure he was pro-intervention in Libya, “despite the risks”, right?

Oh yeah. He was.

And I thought America SHOULD intervene in Syria, right Jonathan?

Yup. You said that too.

So people MAY be right to complain…but actually they would be wrong. In fact all of America’s interventions in the Middle East were correct on either a practical or moral level, before or after the fact. How fortunate.

But as I said…let’s put a pin in that. This column isn’t about Jonathan Freedland’s pathetic attempt to rebrand himself as a non-interventionist, it isn’t about geo-politics (where good old America should probably intervene more), this is about corruption and respect for law and order…where good old America does all the hard work for our benefit.

Now, the cynically minded might say that America being anti-corruption is rather like a hospital being anti-medicine, and that they pick and choose legalities like courses at a buffet…but that is just reflex anti-Americanism.

America is anti-corruption.

Just because America, a country with 5% of the global population and 25% of the incarcarated adults, relies on its massive prison population to subsidise its industry, and just because these prisons are being increasingly privatised doesn’t mean they aren’t anti-corruption.

And just because America has the greatest wealth-gap of all developed nations, a wealth gap which is growing all the time and has (according to Princeton) turned the USA from a democracy into an oligarchy, doesn’t mean they aren’t anti-corruption.

And just because, in response to a financial crisis, the USA government took $700 billion dollars of tax payer money and handed it over to private banks, via a bill that was basically forced through the senate with a gun to the nation’s headdoesn’t mean they aren’t anti-corruption.

Washington lobbyists spending billions. Fixed elections to get the son of a former head of the CIA into the Whitehouse. Presidential candidates breaking election laws all over the country. None of that matters. Think of all the good they do!

They stormed FIFA. They fined HSBC for laundering drug money. They are investigating the Panama Papers. These are all good things, apparently. So says Jonathan, the master apologist. We should appreciate the benign arm of American law, reaching out over the oceans, swatting aside pesky ideas of sovereignty or jurisdictional limits, and bringing us all safety. After all, the idea that America is, as Jonathan put it…

charging about the world heedless of everyone’s needs but its own

…only applies to war. Obviously. They would never extend that policy to economics or the courts, would they?

They storm the offices of FIFA, not because Sepp Blatter refused to strip Russia of the 2018 World Cup, not to wrestle control of global soccer back to the Western powers, but because they hate corruption.

They start an investigation into the Panama Papers – which were leaked thanks to funding from various American foundations – not to implicate geopolitical enemies in China and Russia, but because they love peace and freedom and stuff. International tax evasion is a problem, domestic tax evasion using Delaware and Nevada less so.

They are the friendly Empire, the better than the alternative, the big smiling face of happy hegemony, and we should all be grateful to live under their sphere of influence….because to live outside it is much, much worse.

They make sure of that.

Meanwhile The US state sponsored terrorism is well organised:

Forget “false flag” labels when encountering military or terrorist events that look contrived or staged by those who stand to gain from them. The presumed motive to false-flag events is to provoke an adversary into doing what it would not otherwise do, or to provide a pretext for the covert party to openly attack that adversary. At the very least, “false-flag” usually alerts us to deficiencies in official explanation of military (including terrorist) events. I want to suggest, however, that it is an outdated metaphor of limited usefulness because it does not go far enough. Learn about Military Deception (MILDEC) instead.

“False-flag” is but an accusation which can (and routinely is) easily ignored or dismissed as “conspiracy theory”, because it infers the result (“what” happened) from a presumed motive (“why” it happened) based on a calculation of the suspect’s real interests (hence “who gains”?). In other words, false-flaggers reason forward from an assumed and contestable motive. Real detective work always reasons-in-reverse from the concrete facts on the ground. Without an explanation of the “how” we are asked to accept false-flag charges on faith and—crucially—the “who” go unpunished.

To understand the “how” of false-flag operations learn about the concepts and techniques of Military Deception (or MILDEC) as practiced covertly by conventional armed forces from the beginning of warfare. MILDEC works in conjunction with Intelligence (Information Operations) and Psychological Operations (PSYOP). Today’s tax-paying public trusts that this triad exists to protect them from an external enemy such as an antagonistic nation-state. A trail of evidence, from 9/11 to Islamic State, however, suggests to students of MILDEC that this assumption needs reviewing. Contemplate this instead: that we the Western public are now the target of Military Deception techniques employed by a shadowy, yet to be unmasked, ideologically-driven cabal secreted within and between our own friendly nation states.

Like a disease, Military Deception is seldom directly observed, but we can infer its presence and discover how it is sustained, by whom and to what end—provided (a) we know what to look for and (b) we have the capacity for dogged detective work. This short paper is limited to (a). To alert readers to what to look for I present a brief summary of some of MILDEC’s main concepts. In doing so I draw on Chapter 4 “Military Deception” of the US Army’s Field Manual No. 3-13 Information Operations: Doctrine, Tactics, Techniques, and Procedures. Department of the Army, Washington, DC, 28 November 2003. All references are to this chapter of this manual.

At the core of Military Deception is this self-evident truth: Deception works only if it is not perceived as such.  To prevent MILDEC operations being revealed, their secrecy is paramount.  Only staff and subordinate commanders who “need to know” (the “witting”) are informed of a MILDEC operation (4-8).  Adversaries must be denied knowledge of the MILDEC operation’s existence (4-28).  The secrecy of the mission is ring-fenced by enforcing a cordon sanitaire called Operations Security (OPSEC) (4-29).  By its very nature, then, MILDEC is a conspiracy and one that is always denied.

A corollary of MILDEC’s need for secrecy is that those outside this select group, i.e., those who make the deception work, do so unwittingly.  It is because they themselves are deceived that they behave with sincerity and authenticity and this is key to the success of the mission.  Most of the actors in Military Deception—including those who kill and are killed—are likely to be unwitting, i.e., they believe the truth of the deception.  For example, most of the Americans who invaded and occupied Iraq did so in the mistaken (and manufactured) belief that they were somehow avenging the dead of 9/11.

False-flaggers are often ridiculed on the grounds that for their arguments to hold there would have to be a vast conspiracy of silence and someone somewhere would eventually break ranks and the conspiracy would unravel.  Ordinarily this is true, but the distinction between the witting and the unwitting in MILDEC invalidates this criticism.  The group of core conspirators (the witting) is relatively small, limited to those who need to know.  No one talks for they are selected precisely because they are loyal to the mission and OPSEC means that revealing all would be costly to their health.  The sincerity of the unwitting makes the deception appear authentic.  The distinction between the witting and the unwitting is helpful when sifting through the evidence of suspected deceptions.  For example, did US Secretary of State Colin Powell lie in his now infamous presentation to the UN Security Council, on 5 February, 2003, so as to secure its backing for the invasion of Iraq?  Or was he an unwitting participant in this deception?  The same question can be asked of Blair and Bush.  While some or all of these individuals may well have done, no one has to lie for Military Deception to work.

The point of Military Deception is to influence “adversary decision makers”. They are the Deception Target. One might assume that this adversary would be another country’s military; however, “not all adversaries are military, and commanders may also want to deceive others who are not adversary host-nation civilians” (4-2, my emphasis).  This allows architects of Military Deception much latitude.  Military manuals are written in technical language.  They do not seethe with animosity and hatred towards an enemy.  They embody Weber’s formal means-end rationality.  They are silent on the likely identity of any Deception Target.  It could be Russia, the UN Security Council or a lemonade stand.  “Host-nation civilians” certainly falls within the scope of “Deception Target”.  The “military” in Military Deception refers to the origins of the deception, not its target.

A Deception Objective of any MILDEC operation is to influence the Deception Target, i.e., what “the adversary is to do or not to do at the critical time and/or location” (4-15, my emphasis). This covers a lot of situations. It may be to confuse an adversary and thereby disguise the commander’s real intentions. For example, via Operation Fortitude, Allied forces deceived Nazi-occupied France into believing that the impending invasion would be at Pas de Calais, rather than the actual location, Normandy. The deception means included controlled leaks of misinformation through diplomatic channels, simulated wireless traffic, and British controlled German double-agents.

Or the Deception Objective may be to change domestic public opinion so that it supports military action.  For example, the moral outrage and desire for revenge at the videos of the staged executions of two American and two British hostages by “Jihadi John” brought about what was previously unthinkable—the return of American and British forces to Iraq.  Their nationalities were not accidental.  Nor was the reversal of public opinion unanticipated.  It was the specific objective of these “Jihadi John” deception videos.

A means to the Deception Objective is the Deception Event. To illustrate this point, I juxtapose examples of state vs. state deception with terrorist contenders for this designation.

• Hannibal’s use of the double-envelopment tactic or pincer movement against the Romans, at the Battle of Cannae, in 216 BC, was a Deception Event.

• Schwarzkopf’s 1991 prewar amphibious exercises, to convince Iraqis that the Americans were planning to mount a major seaborne assault was a Deception Event.

• The 1964 Gulf of Tonkin incident was a Deception Event, intended to justify US escalation of its war against the Vietnamese.

• The Joint Chiefs of Staff’s Operation Northwoods, in 1962, which envisaged CIA initiated terrorist attacks on fellow Americans, was a Deception Event. They were to be blamed on Cuba, to justify US military involvement.

• The August, 1980, Bologna bombing, which killed 85 people and wounded more than 200, was a Deception Event.  It was caused by fascist paramilitaries, the Nuclei Armati Revoluzionari (NAR), part of Operation Gladio, but blamed on the left. Its aim?  To drive frightened people into the arms of the State.

• The September 11, 2001, attacks on the Pentagon, Virginia, and the World Trade Centre towers in New York was a Deception Event. A quite brilliant one. Its objective was to provide the US government with an emotional license to kill, to galvanise the nation in support of this and to delegitimise resistance to it. It is the most grotesque—and successful—exercise in emotional blackmail in human history.

• “Al-Zarqawi-in-Iraq” was a series of Deception Events. The actual Abu Musab al-Zarqawi, a Bedouin from the Bani Hassan tribe, was killed by American bombs at an Ansar al-Islam camp in the Sulaimaniyah mountains of northern Iraq, most likely during April, 2003. His identity was appropriated, converted into a caricature of a monster and used to provide a pretext for invading Iraq, vilifying and dividing the resistance and legitimizing their own brutal occupation. “Al-Zarqawi” was central to Colin Powell’s now discredited testimony to the UN Security Council in February, 2003.

• Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab’s (the “underpant” bomber) attempt to detonate a bomb on board North West Airlines Flight 253, some 20 minutes from the end of its flight from Amsterdam to Detroit, on December 25, 2009—this too was a Deception Event. Responsibility was claimed by the then little known “al-Qaeda-in-the-Arabian-Peninsula”. The objective of this Deception Event was to provide a casus belli for American military adventures in Yemen in pursuit of the alleged perpetrators of this attack on the “Homeland”.

• The Times Square bombing attempt by Faisal Shahzad, early evening, Saturday, 1 May, 2010, was a Deception Event. Tehrik-i-Taliban Pakistan claimed Shahzad as their agent and yet his confession does not withstand critical scrutiny. This Deception Event provided a casus belli for American military presence in Pakistan, which shrugged off its covert nature and gathered pace after this incident.

• The “Jihadi John” suite of videos, the authenticity of which have never been established, was a series of Deception Events. Their objective was to manipulate collective emotions, especially in Britain and the US, in support of the operation’s aims. The dubious “death” of ‘Jihadi John’ marked the end of this mission. It had acccomplished its objectives.

These are just a few of the dozens of Deception Events since 9/11.

It is not the Deception Event in itself that deceives. It is the combination of the event and the explanation to which it is attached, i.e., the Deception Story: “a plausible, but false, view of the situation, which will lead the deception target into acting in a manner that will accomplish the commander’s goal” (4-60).

The Deception Story is aimed at the Deception Target.  Although ultimately false, “the deception story must be believable, verifiable, and consistent” (4-78).  Deception stories are consciously designed to be this way by military experts on narrative and rhetoric.  They know that such stories do not have to be true to be accepted.  They just have to seem plausible, to possess verisimilitude or “truthiness”.

The Deception Story does not arrive fully-formed and remain static.  Rather, it is dynamic, developed piecemeal in response to feed-back events and analysis.

“The key to success is knowing precisely when to take the next step in conveying the deception story. The MD plan identifies feedback events and indicators for intelligence collection and analysis to provide these cues” (4-109).

The Deception Story is developed by means of Deception Indicators, items of information, some true, some false, designed to influence the Deception Target’s intention or capability to adopt or reject a course of action.  The Deception Story must have the capacity to change so as to accommodate contradictory information.  The most effective way to convince the Deception Target of the Deception Story’s truth is to provide Indicators in several ways, each supported by different elements of truth.

“Wherever the target turns, there must be information that confirms his preconceptions, that makes any questionable parts of the deception story seem believable” (4-28).

Because we more readily accept information that conforms to our beliefs, Deception Indicators are tailored to the Target’s prejudices and preconceptions.

“A good [deception] story conforms to the target’s beliefs about reality. It is much simpler to have the deception conform to the target’s beliefs than to attempt to change them” (4-42).

The invasion of Iraq, for example, was sold using the demonization of Saddam Hussein as an Arab Hitler and the idealization of Western motives as “bringing democracy” to Iraq.  It worked a treat.

The Deception Story is developed by allowing Indicators to “fall” into adversary hands. Since adversaries tend to suspect Indicators that are too easily obtained, they are presented so that the circumstances of their discovery appear believable.  They were careless.  We got lucky.  They got unlucky.

From 9/11 to Islamic State, so much of the war-on-terror narrative has been developed on discoveries of just this kind.  There are hundreds of these “fortuitous finds”. A passport miraculously survives an inferno to be discovered in a Manhattan street.  A suitcase containing all manner of incriminating information is discovered when it mysteriously fails to make a connecting flight.  A veritable trail of indicators presents itself and leads to a preordained conclusion.  A video of Osama bin Laden’s “confession” is chanced upon in a house in Jalalabad.  And then there are the “intercepted” letters and laptops which reveal the innermost workings of the terrorist group in question.  And so on, ad infinitum.  So much of what we think we know about al-Qaeda and Islamic State is constructed upon fragments of information of just this kind.  An intercepted communique, audio- or video-tape from the terrorist-of-the day is another popular form of Deception Indicator.

One by one, such fortuitous finds attract little suspicion because unintentional mistakes and bad luck do happen and most of us have got better things to do than track these things.  But their frequency, substance and timing form a pattern that defies belief.  If terrorists were this unlucky they would have destroyed themselves long ago, but these terrorists go from strength-to-strength.  Hardly ever, if at all, are Deception Indicators of this kind discovered by MI6, GCHQ, the CIA or any of the other agencies that claim the need to know our innermost thoughts to discover just this kind of information.  Curiously, most of them have been “intercepted” by either IntelCenter or the Search for International Terrorist Entities (SITE).   was SITE, for example, who discovered the communiqué from Islamic State claiming responsibility for the attacks in Paris, November 13, 2015.

Having monitored SITE and IntelCenter for more than ten years, I can report that the similarities between the discovery of their “fortuitous finds” and the planting of Deception Indicators are too striking for any responsible investigator to ignore.  For some reason, our intelligence agencies are silent on IntelCenter and SITE.  Perhaps this indicates their tacit endorsement of their work.  Contemplate instead that these Holmesian watch-dogs have never barked a warning because they are complicit in the deception and their silence is a strategy to sustain the illusion of plausible deniability.  If so, they are well advised to keep silent for their safety depends on it.  Such a betrayal of public trust looks very much like treason.

“Intelligence” is another way of conveying Deception Indicators.  We normally defer to intelligence because we think of it as a neutral process of gathering data to guide rational decision-making.  However, this is not how MILDEC professionals think of intelligence. For them, intelligence is also about providing information—in this case about terrorists—to those they wish to deceive.  Invariably it is provided anonymously, usually to “trusted” journalists, who, in good faith or not, convey this information to their readers and viewers.  Other news agencies cannibalize these scoops and add their own interpretations and assumptions.  In pursuit of the story, a terrorist’s past is ransacked for clues of present behaviour.  A photograph is chanced upon, or a school yearbook; conversations and encounters are remembered; emails and travel documents are discovered.  All manner of commentators and pundits on “counter-terrorism” and “radicalization” connect these fragments of a life by speculation as to their motives and actions and weave them into a back-story on the basis of precious little.  All this is not to determine their guilt or innocence—for when evidence defers to intelligence, innocence defers to guilt—but to reveal an inherent purpose to all that they did, culminating in the terrorist incident in question.  As with witches, now with terrorists: the proof follows the guilt and legal process is dispensed with in favour of political theatre in which we are passive spectators.

Conclusion

MILDEC techniques, which we assume are directed at external enemies now target us, Western citizens.  With one difference. Whereas MILDEC traditionally deceives an external enemy by providing misleading information, from 9/11 on the focus of deception has been the manipulation of our collective emotions.  It is militarized emotion-marketing or branding.

As every MILDEC professional knows, humans are notoriously bad at detecting deception. And yet, to paraphrase Sherlock Holmes, what one person can invent, another can discover.  As with most heinous crimes, discerning military deception and discovering how it is sustained, to what end and—crucially—by whom, takes dogged and scrupulous detective work.  Put simply, this entails reasoning-in-reverse from ‘some curious concrete phenomena’, via imagined experiments, to a presumptive cause.  If evidence of MILDEC is discovered, the task is to marshal it into a compelling legal case to be answered in a court of law.  This is no scholastic exercise.  The damaged and the dead of this ‘war-on-terror’ make this a moral imperative.  This war is not over yet.

Dr. Richard Marsden is a professor at Athabasca University, Canada’s open university specializing in distance learning.