violence around the world - updated

I will give you the pieces. You have to draw the picture in your mind.

In Uganda, bombs explode yesterday killing World Cup fans.

"The bombs went off in fully packed bars as people were watching the World Cup finals," police spokeswoman Judith Nabakooba said. There was no immediate indication of who launched the attack.

[BUT] Last year Somali rebel group Al Shabaab threatened to attack the Ugandan capital.

So it must be al shabab. See? Plus al shabab has been recruiting aggressively.

"Al-Shabab fighters kidnapped over 100 young men in Somalia on Saturday as the group begins implementing its new policy of forcibly recruiting people for its war." (Press TV, 7/11/10) 

Uganda

Why did the terrorists kill people watching the World Cup? Because it's random. To create an environment of terror. To let people know there's no place safe, and there's nothing you can do to protect yourself. That's what terrorism is all about: creating a culture of fear.

See: no mistake. The connection between terrorism and sports.

Who are these terrorists? They have connections to al qaeda. Africa is a waypoint for terrorists and criminal organizations (same thing) to move drugs and operatives from the sources (Afghanistan for instance) to markets in Europe and the US. 

Who is in Afghanistan? The US military. See: who moves the drugs out of Afghanistan.

Who launders the drug money? US banks like Wachovia and Bank of America.

“If you don’t see the correlation between the money laundering by banks and the 22,000 people killed in Mexico, you’re missing the point.” ~ Martin Woods, director of Wachovia’s anti-money-laundering unit in London from 2006 to 2009, who quit "in disgust after executives ignored his documentation that drug dealers were funneling money through Wachovia’s branch network."

See: run along and play. The US banks who launder the drug money....and the phony al qaeda.


Who is al shabab? Terrorists connected to al qaeda. Who is al qaeda?





Watch the narrative develop. Watch how the terrorist threat moves to the US, and watch how it becomes linked to Hezbollah and Iran in the corporate media, for the benefit of certain Americans. 



May 2010: Feds issue terror watch for Texas/Mexico border. Fox News. The al qaeda linked terrorists are coming from East Africa and South America to the US via the Texas/Mexico border. According to experts.


http://www.foxnews.com/us/2010/05/26/terror-alert-mexican-border/

The Department of Homeland Security is alerting Texas authorities to be on the lookout for a suspected member of the Somalia-based Al Shabaab terrorist group who might be attempting to travel to the U.S. through Mexico, a security expert who has seen the memo tells FOXNews.com.

...
The DHS alert was issued to police and sheriff’s deputies in Houston, asking them to keep their eyes open for a Somali man named Mohamed Ali who is believed to be in Mexico preparing to make the illegal crossing into Texas. Officials believe Ali has ties to Al Shabaab, a Somali terrorist organization aligned with Al Qaeda, said Joan Neuhaus Schaan, the homeland security and terrorism fellow at Rice University’s Baker Institute, who has seen the alert.
An indictment was unsealed in Texas federal court earlier this month that revealed that a Somali man, Ahmed Muhammed Dhakane, led a human smuggling ring that brought East Africans, including Somalis with ties to terror groups, from Brazil and across the Mexican border and into Texas.
In a separate case, Anthony Joseph Tracy, of Virginia, who admitted to having ties to Al Shabaab, is currently being prosecuted for his alleged role in an international ring that illegally brought more than 200 Somalis across the Mexican border. Prosecutors say Tracy used his Kenya-based travel business as a cover to fraudulently obtain Cuban travel documents for the Somalis. The smuggled Somalis are believed to have spread out across the United States and remain mostly at large, court records show.

Joan Neuhaus Schaan's bio: http://www.bakerinstitute.org/personnel/fellows-scholars/jneuhaus.

Joan also wrote in September 2009, very presciently:

The troubling aspect of United States v. Jamal Yousef is the collaboration between potent adversaries historically viewed as independent of one another. Buried in this indictment are daunting and very real implications:

• •  Hezbollah maintains sensitive operations in Mexico and is an active participant in Mexican weapons trafficking there;

• •  Hezbollah is willing to join forces with narco-terrorist organizations to destabilize host countries in the Americas, and;

• •  The weapons could easily be smuggled into the United States.

Hezbollah is a terrorist organization supported by the Iranian government and is no stranger to open hostilities. One need only recall the thousands of missiles and rockets the organization fired upon Israel in the summer of 2006, the many operations carried out in Lebanon and the bombing of Jewish sites in Buenos Aires in 1992 and 1994.

...The question remains: Is the level of violence found in other areas where narco-terrorists and Islamic terrorists collaborate, such as Afghanistan, Colombia and Mexico, arriving at our doorstep?...While Iranian nuclear proliferation has garnered headlines and been debated by Congress, many are baffled that legislators are not more focused on the looming strategic threat to the homeland posed by terrorist organizations such as Iran-sponsored Hezbollah teaming with narco-terrorists, Mexican drug cartels and rogue nations in our hemisphere, such as Venezuela.

This all sounds remarkably similar to Rep. Sue Myrick's breathless letter to DHS.

Experts believe Iranian agents and members of Hezbollah are going to Venezuela to learn Spanish. When somewhat fluent, they obtain false documents in hopes of crossing the US border as a Hispanic. If stopped by border agents when trying to cross, they try to pass off as Mexican. Only well trained border agents can detect that their Spanish accent is Venezuelan, not Mexican.

Back to Africa for a moment, where the BBC reports that even though it is NOT KNOWN what caused the blast, EXPERTS BELIEVE that al-Shabab is behind the terrorism.

It is not known what caused the blasts, which police said went off at a rugby club and at a restaurant, as football fans watched the World Cup final. "These bombs were definitely targeting World Cup crowds," Inspector General of Police Kal Kayihura told AFP. Somali militants have in the past threatened to attack Kampala; Ugandan troops are deployed in Mogadishu. Mr Kayihura told AP news agency he believed Somalia's militant group al-Shabab could be behind the attack.

CNN: Uganda bombings: Why the world should care? (...about brown people being slaughtered while minding their own business watching the World Cup, as though that isn't reason enough to care...)...Well.... there's MONEY involved for one thing, and for another, it shows that al shabab has "capabilities" outside Somalia.

Analyst Alex Vines, from London-based think tank Chatham House, told CNN that if Al-Shabaab did carry out the attacks there could be global implications as countries and businesses vie for opportunities across Africa.

Vines: Historically it's been important for the export of coffee and fish out of Lake Victoria, but now oil has been found, Uganda could become a significant, if not major, oil exporter. So there's much international interest, and not just western. The deal that's been struck with Tullow Oil looks as if it'll be farmed out to the French company Total and the Chinese state oil company CNOOC. So these attacks in Uganda could have global implications for business, be they Chinese or Western.

...Vines: If radical Islamist group Al-Shabaab is involved, this will be its first attack outside Somalia. If this is true the bombings will show it has the capability against soft targets outside Somalia.

source

Another expert cited by Fox News: Dr. Walid Phares. Just two days ago Dr. Phares wrote:

Iran’s longest arm stretches into Latin America. As of the early 1990s, Hezbollah had established a presence in the tri-border area between Brazil, Argentina and Paraguay. This lawless zone enables the Khomeinist network to develop illegal financial activities and train and plan for terrorist attacks in the region. The 1992 bombing of the Israeli embassy in Buenos Aires and the 1994 bombing of a Jewish center there are prime examples of Tehran’s terrorist activities and global reach.

He wastes no time bringing up attacks on Jews as proof of Tehran's terrorist activities and global reach. However, the 1992 attack killed 29, only 4 of them Israelis. Most of the victims were Argentine civilians and children. And the inquiries into the Argentine attacks cited as proof were cursory and marred by accusations of serious mishandling. Such as, for instance, that investigators ascertained that in BOTH CASES the explosives were inside the Israeli-controlled buildings, and did not arrive via truck-driving-suicide-bombing-Hezbollahniks.

Lalalalala.... whatever. Eleven years later Jews gathered to commemorate the 1992 terrorist attack, in which 4 Israelis died, and demand justice against Hezbollah and Iran.

Victims' relatives were far from the stage where a few Jewish leaders spoke. The relatives were seated in stone and iron banks, drinking mineral water that was placed on a nearby table. Their attention seemed to be far from the speeches, their curved backs reflecting fatigue from an 11-year wait without any resolution. (http://www.jewishfederations.org/page.aspx?id=40905)

Sad victims with their slumping shoulders waiting sadly for "justice." Waiting for Hezbollah and Iran to be held responsible when the evidence shows something entirely different. How tiresome. But I digress...


Then he brings up links to Venezuela.

With the rise of the Hugo Chavez regime, Iran’s Latin American presence expanded even further. The Venezuelan strongman has signed several agreements with Ahmadinejad’s regime, including an April 2009 defense treaty that provides for military and intelligence cooperation. Venezuela has granted Hezbollah operatives permission to organize their presence under the protection of Iran’s Pasdaran and local intelligence, and according to U.S. Department of Defense reports, the Venezuelans are providing Iranian units with Spanish language instruction with the aim of inserting them in a Latin American context. One of the most dangerous aspects of Iran’s presence in Venezuela is the increasing ability to install Iranian missiles aimed at the United States and other countries in the region.

Aha, the matter of the accents again. I think this detail may be important, because as Myrick points out, only certain "well trained border agents" can detect that the Iranian and Hezbollah terrorists (who are hell-bent on harming Americans and Israelis) learned Spanish-as-a-second-language in Venezuela, not Mexico, as their accent will prove as long as they are caught by the certain unspecified but well-trained border agents, probably the same sorts of experts who recognize how similar the Mexican border terrain in San Diego is to Israel's border terrain. Otherwise, being very wily, the Venezuelan-accented Hezbollahniks will slip right through the border, and that will surely be very regrettable, because they hate us for our freedoms.

As of now, Iran’s reach within the United States is principally—but not entirely—in the hands of Hezbollah’s networks, which have been trying to recruit new agents since they established their own foundations in Lebanon in the 1980s. Working naturally through Lebanese communities, beginning with its bases in the home country, Hezbollah established groups and cells inside the U.S. in states such as Michigan, New York and North Carolina.
The main activities detected by U.S. law enforcement organizations have centered on smuggling, fundraising, and providing material support to the mother organization in Lebanon. But Hezbollah has gained valuable experience in penetrating Lebanon, Egypt, Iraq, Yemen and the countries of northern Africa, which enables Iran to do considerable damage to the U.S. in case of open conflict. American authorities have also been monitoring Iran’s financial presence in the U.S., with recent discoveries showing Iranian front companies even holding assets in Manhattan.

Manhattan? Tip: look inside the banks for evidence of criminal activity like massive money laundering of drug profits. Hahaha, just kidding. But he goes on to blame Turkey and Qatar for "facilitating."

In any event, the important thing to understand is how long this narrative has been in play, and how relatively suddenly it comes into the spotlight. See: setting up the spotlight. See: the Bangkok of Latin America.

It looks like Iran and Hezbollah will need to be blamed for a terrorist attack on Americans. That will justify the US attacking Iran for Israel. So they rustle up this old narrative that has been kicking around since the 1990s.

The Washington Times, August 2001:

Paraguay has long been a home to Arabs linked to the Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad militias....Crime syndicates from Colombia, Brazil, China, Lebanon, Italy, Russia, Nigeria, Ivory Coast and Ghana are known to be operating in Paraguay. Many of these groups are believed to be associated with corrupt Paraguayan business executives, politicians and military officers tied to the ruling party, according to U.S. law enforcement and intelligence sources....In addition to the prevalence of international gangs, the Bush administration also has reason to be concerned about the longtime presence in Paraguay of Arabs linked to Hezbollah and Islamic Jihad. Last year, Paraguayan officials arrested a Lebanese national in Ciudad del Este who was subsequently linked to a Hezbollah cell believed to have bombed Israel's embassy and a Jewish community center in Argentina in 1992 and 1994. In April, the State Department warned that the governments of Paraguay, Brazil and Argentina are not capable of preventing Islamic terrorist actions that could originate from Ciudad del Este. If the Israeli-Palestinian conflict escalates into all-out war, these groups could start attacks against Israeli and U.S. targets in South America.

Military Review, March-April 2002:

Paraguay is landlocked, poor, a long way from everywhere, and seldom appears in the drama of international events but is nevertheless emblematic of our global security challenge.... Now we are entering an age of uncivilized behavior in which we must focus on the lost geographies, the fertile ground for piracy and terror. Ciudad del Este, a boomtown on Paraguay's eastern border facing Brazil and Argentina, is an appropriate target for new concerns. Regional security scholars have aptly called it a nest of spies and thieves. Local security specialists assert that Ciudad del Este is not only a den of low-technology criminality but also a haven for international money laundering, with much of the money coming from the Middle East.

...Ciudad del Este provides the kind of uncontrolled environment that can sustain criminal organizations-and terrorists. The 1992 Israeli Embassy bombing and the 1994 Argentine-Israeli Community Center bombing cast a spotlight on the Arab community in Ciudad del Este that it has since been unable to avoid. 

...Indeed, the U.S. State Department clearly advises that there are individuals and organizations with ties to extremist groups operating in Ciudad de Este and along the triborder area between Paraguay, Brazil, and Argentina.¹⁵ Brazilian Judge Walter Fanganiello Maierovitch, former National Drug Enforcement Secretary and now with the Giovanni Falconi Brazilian Criminal Sciences Institute, reports that Osama bin Laden is setting up an al-Qaeda unit near Ciudad del Este under the Arab community's cover. The U.S. Government cannot confirm an al-Qaeda presence in the triborder area. However, other radical Islamic extremists use illegal activities, such as drug and arms trafficking, to help fund terrorist activities throughout the world.

Amazing, no? The problems go on for years and years on end, even when they are known to authorities. But the authorities are always so helpless. And the terrorists are always so wily and Arab.

But you should believe this old thing is new, and it looks damn good too.

And can you believe how much use
they get out of those Argentina bombings against Israelis in 1992 and 1994?

Talk about recycling.

^^^^^^^

And whether any of this has any relation to Costa Rica allowing 46 US warships and 7,000 troops in to help with drug trafficking, I don't know.

“Neither the Costa Rican government nor the US government through the ambassador or embassy has really told us what this is all about and what the mission is or what the deployment is. Ultimately it just smacks of something that we don’t know, it’s the unknown and that’s the unknown that is causing a great deal of confusion in anger here in Costa Rica,” said John Holtz in Costa Rica, who is the executive director of the Center for the Studies of Modern Management.

Central America

February 8, 2010: Costa Rica elects Jewish VP (http://lubavitch.com/news/article/2028306/Costa-Rica-Elects-Jewish-VP.html)

(lubavitch.com) Along with their country’s first female President elect, Costa Ricans will now have a Jewish VP as well. Luis Lieberman, a former banker and well known financier, is to become the country’s VP. He ran with Laura Chinchilla, a social conservative, who won the elections on Sunday. The son of Polish immigrants and grandson of Costa Rica’s first mohel, Lieberman is a close friend of Chabad’s Rabbi Hershel Spalter of San Jose. “He was our very first supporter,” Rabbi Spalter, in Costa Rica since 1989, told Lubavitch.com. Spalter maintains a warm friendship with Lieberman, a traditional Jew, who in fact, “celebrated his own grandson’s bris on election day.” Spalter is confident that Lieberman will be a credit to his country’s Jewish community (population 3,000). “I hope to make the Jewish community proud,” Lieberman told Rabbi Spalter when he was nominated for VP.

"Jewish life in Costa Rica today is very vibrant and caters to the 2,500 Jews in the country." The Virtual Jewish History Tour - Costa Rica. 

Costa Rica, another place with longstanding problems known to authorities.


April 2000: Sordid Child Sex Trade Booms in Costa Rica, by Glenn Garvin Toronto Star

Meet Stephanie, 12, and Ivette, 13, two members of a fast-growing Costa Rican work force: child prostitutes. The country that prides itself as Latin America's most stable democracy and the inventor of ecotourism is becoming the hemisphere's best-known playground for pedophiles.

Every night, as many as 2,000 underage prostitutes walk the streets of San Jose or cater to more affluent clients behind the walls of stately homes converted into brothels in the city's best neighbourhoods, according to an organization that deals with the problem at an international level.

April 2010: Costa Rica: (In)human Trafficking, by Daniel Zueras, IPS News

Costa Rica is a transit point as well as a destination and point of origin for people caught up in trafficking rings, said Ana Hidalgo, head of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) regional counter-trafficking unit for Central America and Mexico.

The victims are not only taken to "traditional" destinations like Canada, the United States and Europe, but are also transported within Central America for the purposes of sexual exploitation, she told IPS. 

...In the last few months, trafficking networks that send people to Europe, sometimes through Costa Rica, have also been uncovered in Nicaragua and Guatemala.

Human trafficking generates an estimated 32 billion dollars a year in illicit profits, making it the world’s third most lucrative illegal activity after drugs and arms trafficking, according to the United Nations. 

...Police collusion with trafficking rings facilitates such crimes. "The worse enemy of organised crime is an honest police force," Minister of Public Security Janina del Vecchio remarked to IPS.

For that reason, her work has focused on purging the police in Costa Rica, she said.

Drug trafficking organisations have "diversified their activities," branching out into human trafficking, because similar routes and mechanisms are used for both, said the IOM's Hidalgo.

^^^^^^^

Central America and the Caribbean play a vital role in organized crime trafficking rings. Routes and mechanisms are shared.

Caribbean (source)

The US warships are now off the coast of Costa Rica.

Nearby in Haiti, six months after the earthquake, the suffering continues. The trafficking continues.

Exactly six months after the tragedy which killed 230,000, the capital of Haiti is plagued by gang violence, kidnappings and mothers so desperate to feed their families they sell their bodies for a pittance. Families are surviving on scrapes of rice and mud cakes if there is not room for them at official camps set up by aid agencies.

There are even stories some of the 1.5 million living in tents sell their children to traffickers for £150 so the rest of their family can survive. Just 50ft from the gates of the National Palace, 15,000 survivors live under makeshift canvas. These shelters have no floor which leaves them sleeping in wet mud during the rainy season.

...The camp is plagued by local gang Red Terror at night, as well as gangsters from the Cite de Soleil slum. Carlos Jean Charles, 19, lost his mum and 11-year-old sister in the quake. Three weeks ago his dad Manigat was shot dead by Soleil 19 gangsters. His headless corpse was found on a rubbish dump, the flesh on a rubbish dump, the flesh on one side of his body eaten away by dogs.

..."Gangs come at night to terrorise us. They even live here with us with guns at night and rape and kill anyone who gets in their way. My brother and father were butchered by them. There's no law and the police do nothing. Girls of 10 have have sex for money just so their families don't starve."

Michel Mirack, 13, was shot three times last week by a child-trafficking gang who tried to snatch his five-year-old sister Semetie. He was shot once in the shoulder and twice in the legs but doctors were only able to remove two bullets. His eyes filled with fear, Michel says: "They tried to take my sister but I shielded her and tried to fight them off. But one pulled a gun and shot at me as I ran.

^^^^^^^

The difference between state-sponsored violence and gang-related violence, as seen in Guatemala:

Gang-related violence has certain characteristics.

• bodies are not usually mutilated or tortured
• perpetrators almost always use guns
• bodies are most often left in the place where the homicide occurred
• gang members flee the crime scene quickly to avoid being apprehended
• perpetrators usually lack the resources to move bodies without being seen or caught
• motives are usually self-defense or revenge

Social cleansing and state-sponsored violence has different characteristics.

• bodies are often heavily mutilated and tortured, strangled, cut up, beaten, bound
• bodies are left in relatively public spaces, showing a high level of premeditation
• the perpetrators have the money and protection to transport the body to a public place
• motives are exterminating a specific social group, creating and/or reinforcing a culture of terror
• terror is amplified and compounded by retelling and news reports
• gangs are named as perpetrators, the culture of fear reinforced

Social cleansing and state-sponsored violence does not get investigated.

What may arguably be the strongest indication of the state’s role in the current violence is an absolute void of effective homicide investigations. Null or non-existent forensic investigations are a textbook indication of social cleansing. They allow for complete impunity, a heightened culture of terror, and increased powerlessness of victims’ family members, and more widely, civil society.

^^^^^^^
Remember Col. Russ Williams? See: a bad apple.

July 10, 2010: Canada pulls top commander out of Haiti 

Canadian military officials say the country's top commander in Haiti has been relieved of duty and is under investigation over allegations of an inappropriate relationship.

Officials made the announcement Friday, in the case of Colonel Bernard Ouellette, who was also chief of staff to the United Nations mission in Haiti.  Ouellette is alleged to have had an inappropriate relationship with a civilian member of the U.N. team.  A report on the case is expected in a few weeks....This is the second time in recent months that the head of a Canadian military mission has been removed.  In May, the commander of Canada's troops in Afghanistan, Brigadier General Daniel Menard, was stripped of his duties because of allegations of an inappropriate personal relationship. 

See: one ring to rule them all.

See: when criminal = asset.

See: the love affair with the military must continue.

UPDATE: Two relevant bits.

1) Peter Chamberlin weighs in on social engineering and the probability that war on Iran is a contingency, should other more preferable plans fail (via Kenny's Sideshow):

The proof of intent is not in the words these killers say, but in their actions. Evidence of prolonging our wars, just to keep them going, is circumstantial evidence that limiting wars is the goal. Proof that Iran has not been attacked, (even when preparations for that attack were at their highest under Bush and Cheney) is proof that a massive war against Iran is not the plan, but it is a contingency, in case other plans for destabilization fail. Global war is not imminent, but it could happen by mistake, as the great powers scheme to merge the dictatorships under one unified command.

What are the other more preferable plans?

2) Damian Lataan reviews Israel's many options in the Middle East, along with the preference that the US be involved from the get-go in dealing with Israel's enemies. The situation in Central / South America is an extension of this policy of many options. It would be much easier to rope the US into attacking Israel's enemies if those enemies just so happened to attack the US. Then we would have our own reasons, the infamous Self-Defense, for attacking Israel's enemies.

Because Israel has created many enemies, it has, in turn, created many options with which it can begin the final confrontation that will lead to the destruction of all its enemies. Israel has now adopted a tactic whereby it is attempting to create an environment via the use of provocation that will unite its enemies so that when the appropriate moment to start the final confrontation arrives it can then deal with all of its enemies at once with the help of the US and some of its other Western allies.

...Over the last few years the US and Israel in its rhetoric has conjoined Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran as a single enemy. It has done this by continually referring in news, opinion and commentary, particularly in the mainstream and right-wing press, that Hamas and Hezbollah are both Iranian ‘proxies’ by virtue of being financed and supplied by Iran both directly and indirectly. In the Western imagination, or, at least, as the US and Israel would have us believe, Hamas, Hezbollah and Iran have morphed into one enemy and, just to reinforce the notion that they are ‘terrorists’, they are occasionally linked via the rhetoric, at least the neoconservative rhetoric, with the ultimate bogeymen; al Qaeda.

These linkages provide Israel and the US with a whole range of scenario opportunities which Israel can use to kick off its final confrontation.

Exactly.