"Terrorism"
The word "Terrorism"derives from its classical Latin root "terror" meaning "alarm'" or "great fear". It's earliest use in English was to describe the mass intimidation of the French Revolution as "The reign of terror". Its first recorded written usage was in 1898 to describe the Irish rebellion of that year replacing the previously ubiquitous description of Irish rebellious violence - "dynamitism" [1]
In its modern - especially 21st century - usage, it has become ubiquitous as an enemy image word used to promote anger and fear against its designated targets. It is an increasingly common aspect of commercially-controlled media reports in the 21st century, particularly since 9/11. The stereotypical image, that of a Muslim suicide bomber, is exploited to try to scare lawmakers into passing Draconian and vaguely worded laws, and to scare the public into acquiescing. These laws often related to mass surveillance or otherwise infringe on civil liberties. Fox News reported in 2009 that the US Department of Defense was referring to protest activity as "low level terrorism"[2] and non-violent peace campaigners have been the victim of them.
“Terrorism is not really an '-ism'. There's no connection between the Sandinistas who fought the Contras and Al Qaida or Colombia's FARC and fisherman turned pirates in Africa and Asia, yet they are all called "terrorists". That's just a convenient way for your government to convince the world that there is another enemy '-ism' out there, like communism used to be. It diverts attention from the very real problems.
Our narrow-minded attitudes and the resultant policies foment violence, rebellion and wars. In the long run, almost noone benefits from attacking the people we label as "terrorists", with one, glaring exception:- the corporatocracy. Those who own and run the companies that build the ships, missiles and armoured vehicles, make guns, uniforms and bulletproof vests, distribute food, soft drinks and ammunition, provide insurance, medicines and toilet paper, constructions ports, airstrips and housing and reconstruct devastated villages, schools, factories and hospitals. They, and only they, are the big winners. The rest of us are hoodwinked by that one, loaded word "terrorist".
The current economic collapse has awakened us to the importance of regulating and reining in the people who control the businesses that benefit from the misuse of words like "terrorism" and who perpetrate other scams. We recognize today that white collar executives are not a special, incorruptible breed.”
Miguel d'Escoto Brockmann [3]
The United States legal definition of terrorism specifically excludes acts done by sovereign states.[4][5] According to U.S. law (22 U.S.C. 2656f(d)(2))[6] terrorism is defined as “premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents, usually intended to influence an audience".[7][8][9] There is no international consensus on a legal or academic definition of terrorism.[10] United Nations conventions have failed to reach consensus on a definition of terrorism and state terrorism.[11] Nevertheless, "terrorism" is used to describe incidents "facilitated" by agents provocateurs from the FBI's Joint Terrorism Task Force.
"Terrorism is the war of the poor. War is the terrorism of the rich." - Leon Uris
Contents
Official narrative
The official narrative of terrorism is that in the 21st century, modern technology and increased access to information (especially about WMD, "weapons of mass destruction") has brought about a grave threat which needs to be countered by exceptional measures. Collectively referred to as the "War on terror", governments need such measures to be able to protect their citizens from heightened threat posed by "extermist" terrorists.
The commercially-controlled media consistently promote the official narrative about terrorism, especially from Muslims.[12] In November 2014, the BBC headlined a story that "Terrorism threat is on the increase".[13] In January 2016, Ross Douthat wrote for the New York Times that immigration of Muslims into Germany "threatens not just a spike in terrorism but a rebirth of 1930s-style political violence."[14]
Problems
The most obvious weakness of the official narrative is that, as EU Counter-terrorism Coordinator, Gijs M. de Vries, noted in 2005 that "we still lack a global definition of terrorism."[15] Professor Mark Selden observes that "American politicians and most social scientists definitionally exclude actions and policies of the United States and its allies [as terrorism]".
Other major problems include its failure to mention (or sometimes, its explicit exclusion of[16]) state terrorism, false flag terrorism or the clear motivations of "counter-terrorist authorities" to exaggerate or deliberately increase "the terrorist threat". The prison-industrial-judidicial-intelligence agency enforcement complex has an obvious commercial incentive for increasing terrorism and fear of it.
The FBI, for example, has incited many terrorist plots in USA (according to Project Censored, the majority[17]) but commercially-controlled media are very reluctant to report on this. Since 2001 especially, the deep state has been rolling back civil liberties and building a police state under the pretext of the "War on terror".
Language
Wikispooks has a lot of material relating to both "terrorism" and "counter-terrorism". Since early 2017 it has followed the lead of other terrorsceptic internet commentators[18][19] and applying double quotes around the word "terrorism" to highlight its deceptive nature.
The hypocrisy of the word is illustrated by a now declassified 1978 CIA document which described Operation Condor — a project of mass murder, torture and terrorisation which killed perhaps 70,000 people and imprisoned hundreds of thousands more — as a "cooperative effort by the intelligence/security services of several South American countries to combat terrorism and subversion."[20]
History
Russian revolutionary violence from the middle of the nineteenth century through to the 1917 Bolshevik revolution was usually decribed as "terrorism". Stalin's 1930's purges became known as "The Great Terror". Zionist violence against the British authorities in UN Mandate Palestine from 1945 to 1948 was routinely described as "Jewish terrorism". Israel used the word "terrorism" in the 1960s and '70s to refer to attacks by Palestinians, whether against civil or military targets. In 1972, Richard Nixon, describing attacks on civil aviation, became the first US President to use the word "terrorism".[21] President Carter used the word "terrorism" about the hostage taking of the US embassy staff in Tehran, but the word remained very seldom used until the 1983 Beirut barracks bombings.[21] The most important conference in the establishment of the "war on terror" was the JCIT held in Jerusalem in 1979, which attributed a lot of "terrorism" - inaccurately - to the Soviet Union. Many speakers at this conference have close connections with the Military Industrial Congressional complex.
Strategy of Tension
- Full article: Strategy of Tension
- Full article: Strategy of Tension
The phrase "strategy of tension" is a long term policy of maintaining continual stress upon a population. It is derived from the Italian (strategia della tensione) which described the Years of Lead in which the country was terrorised by Operation Gladio.
“It is probably fair to say that of the roughly seven billion people who live on our planet today, far less than one percent has ever heard of the "strategy of tension." And only a very few of these could illustrate the strategy with specific historical examples. It is indeed a strategy of a shadow world, known only to a few military and intelligence officers (and some criminals) who have carried it out, a few police officers and judges who fought against it, and a handful of journalists and academics who have written about it.
In its essence, the strategy of tension targets the emotions of human beings and aims to spread maximum fear among the target group. “Tension” refers to emotional distress and psychological fear, whereas “strategy” refers to the technique of bringing about such distress and fear. A terrorist attack in a public place, such as a railway station, a market place, or a school bus, is the typical technique through which the strategy of tension is implemented. After the attack — and this is a crucial element — the secret agents who carried out the crime blame it on a political opponent by removing and planting evidence.
It must be noted that the targets of the strategy of tension are not the dead and the wounded of the terrorist attacks, as many might assume. The targets are the political opponents, who are discredited through the attack, and those who remain unharmed but learn of the attack, thereby coming to fear for their lives and those of their loved ones. Since the aims of the strategy are to discredit opponents and to create fear, the real targets are not the people who were killed, whether they number in the dozens or even thousands, but the millions of people who survive physically unharmed but emotionally distressed.”
Daniele Ganser (May 2014) [22]
After 9-11, the project was expanded by the "War on terror", as the pseudo-communists terror of Operation Gladio were replaced by the pseudo-Islamic menace of Operation Gladio/B.
False flag terror
- Full article:
False flag
- Full article:
Arguably, most large scale terrorist plots in the 21st century have been false flag attacks, i.e. designed to be blamed on people other than the real perpetrators. The extent this represents a new tendency is moot and likely to remain so (due to the difficulty of establishing the real perpetrators of acts of terrorism now long past), but can be surmised to include a more generalised concensus of world public opinion that terrorist attacks are wrong, whatever their details and motivations. In a world in which such an understanding is firmly established, there is little to gain and a lot to lose by carrying out acts of terror — while false flag attacks become correspondingly more attractive to those groups who believe that they can not only not only them out but also successfully pin the blame on some other group.
In 2014, Human Rights Watch issued a report that reported that almost all the highest-profile domestic terrorism plots in the United States since 9/11 featured the "direct involvement" of government agents or informants. It reported that "in some cases the FBI may have created terrorists out of law-abiding individuals by suggesting the idea of taking terrorist action or encouraging the target to act."[23]
Response
- Full article: “Terrorism/Response”
- Full article: “Terrorism/Response”
The response to "terrorism" has been remarkably uniform in nature, as governments around the world have used the fear (or acquiescence) of their populace to introduce additional "anti-terror" laws and other technologies that facilitate mass surveillance of the citizenry.
"Counter-terrorism"
- Full article: “Counter-terrorism”
- Full article:
Many governments have established "counter-terrorism" units, which have special training and are typically heavily armed. They often have a mandate not only to the prevent terror but to take immediate control of the investigation of such acts. The use of specialised groups facilitates the containment of evidence, to prevent details from becoming known to a wider audience.
Terrorism research
- Full article:
Terrorism research
- Full article:
"Terrorism research" institutions are a part of the efforts of "counter terrorists". Nafeez Ahmed describes a very large proportion of terrorism research as "bullshit", and observes that "among the most consistent findings is that the field is full of very serious, beard-stroking, speculative conjecture dressed up as ‘theory'."[24] These institutes employ "terror experts" who not only research but also shape public opinion by appearing on commercially-controlled media. Several have been set up by member of deep state milieux, particularly Le Cercle.
Post 9/11 developments
The 9-11 attacks were the seminal deep political event of the 21st century. They are recommended for study by anyone seeking to understand the rise of "terrorism".
"War on terror"
- Full article: War on terror
- Full article: War on terror
The "war on terror", although planned at events such as the 1979 JCIT, was not rolled out until September 2001. It shifted the enemy image of the communist for that of the "Islamic terrorist". The naive assumption that the purposes of the "war on terror" include the elimination of "terrorists" overlooks more cogent motivations such as self-enrichment, covering up of earlier crimes and in particular the introduction of a technological control grid including mass surveillance and the de facto elimination of civil liberties.
"Extremism"
- Full article: “Extremism”
- Full article:
The lack of a consistent legal definition of "terrorism" has encouraged the use of alternative vocabulary. The 7/7 bombings in London were described "violent extremism" by the commercially-controlled media, which launched the term in July 2005. The phrase "Non-violent extremism" was launched in January 2011, and "terror experts" have argued the (etymologically intuitive point) that these are "the distinction between “non-violent extremism” and “violent extremism” is not a valid one” (Alex Schmid). The word "radicalisation" is often used in connection with measures to censor the internet, amid claims that information has the power to change people into (usually religious, i.e. Muslim) "extremists".
"Domestic Terrorism"
- Full article: Domestic Terrorism
- Full article: Domestic Terrorism
After spreading the meme of "Islamic terrorism", and introducing laws with the implication that "this for for them, not us" the phrase "domestic terrorism" was gradually introduced, equating with terrorism many kinds of dissent which were legal and/or non-violent. Documents from the FBI and the Department of Homeland Security identify the non-violent Occupy movement as a “terrorist” activity.[25] The FBI however turned a blind eye (or worse) to the Dallas occupy plot, a "a long-term plan to kill local Occupy leaders via sniper fire".[26]
Cyberterrorism
- Full article: “Cyberterrorism”
- Full article: “Cyberterrorism”
The 21st century has seen the promotion of the word "cyberterrorism", which purports to be the threat posed by terrorists to computer based infrastructure. The commercially-controlled media are expansive about the threat, but the word is rarely defined, and the media's claims rarely if ever stand up to close scrutiny (indeed, they are rarely detailed enough to warrant it). Major practitioners of this would appear to be the NSA, whose extensive hacking capabilities have been demonstrated by the Edward Snowden Affair. Western commercially-controlled media never describes the NSA as cyberterrorists, although they have created malware intended to damage critical infrastructure, such as Stuxnet.
Examples
| Page name | Date | Attributed to | Perpetrator(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| "Cyberterrorism" | The use of computers by "terrorists" to cause disruption. This is an arena in which the determination of responsibility is particularly difficult, and therefore false flag attacks are that much more easy. | |||
| "Islamic terrorism" | A trenchant enemy image, reinforced by the clandestine arming and training of groups under Operation Gladio/B | |||
| 2004 Madrid train bombings | Al-Qaeda | A Spanish equivalent of 7/7, targetting civilians and blamed on Al Qaeda | ||
| 2005 London bombings | Hasib Hussain Mohammad Sidique Khan Germaine Lindsay Shehzad Tanweer | A series of coordinated attacks on London's public transport system during the morning rush hour, allegedly carried out by four Muslim suicide bombers. | ||
| 2011 Norway attacks | Anders Breivik | A car bomb in Oslo and subsequent mass shooting at a summer camp in Norway on 22 July 2011, claiming a total of 77 lives. | ||
| 2014 Kunming Attack | Xinjiang Muslims | A possible deep event in where assailants pulled out knifes at a train station and stabbed random passengers. Although no group claimed responsibility, Muslim Xinjiang "terrorists" were blamed. As official reaction, the Chinese government ramped up their efforts to mass incarcerate at least 1 million Muslims in Xinjiang. | ||
| 2016 Istanbul airport attack | Islamic State | Shootings and suicide bombings at Atatürk Airport in Istanbul, | ||
| 2021 Kabul Airport attacks | ISIS-K | ISIS-K | Suicide bombings in the middle of the Afghanistan/2021 withdraw | |
| 2021 Washington D.C. Riots | Donald Trump "Alt-right" | One of the most fortified positions in the US gets violently overrun by a group of Trump Supporters after a demonstration... without a single shot fired by the mob. Official narrative soon blamed Trump and extremists. Official opposition narrative soon blamed the democratic party trying to fraud Joe Biden into the White House. Several other governments were briefed by intelligence services that the incident seemingly "was being allowed" to happen. | ||
| 2024 Crocus City Hall attack | A mass shooting and multiple explosions on the edge of Moscow | |||
| 2024 Lebanon pager explosions | Indiscriminate mass murder | |||
| 9-11 | Al-Qaeda "9-11/The 19 Hijackers" Khalid Sheikh Mohammed Zacarias Moussaoui Walid bin Attash Mustafa al-Hawsawi Ramzi bin al-Shibh Ammar al-Baluchi | Mossad US/Deep state SDS | A complex and spectacular set of events in New York and Washington. The US government was quick to blame Al Qaeda, though no evidence of guilt was presented and there is much suspicion about what Al Qaeda really is. In the USA 9-11 assisted the Patriot Act's roll back of civil liberties, the stepping up of domestic surveillance and the financial advancement of the military industrial complex. Abroad 9-11 helped launched wars on Iraq and Afghanistan that had been planned long before. | |
| Al-Qassam Brigades | ||||
| Ansarallah | Islamist political and military organisation from Yemen. | |||
| Canadian church attacks | Unknown | A coordinated string of vandalism and arson attacks on churches across Canada. The Canadian version of the George Floyd protests? (Ongoing) | ||
| Car bomb | Bombs in cars, called the deadliest weapon in the 20th century. | |||
| Charlie Hebdo shooting | Chérif Kouachi Saïd Kouachi | January prelude to the November 2015 mass murder in Paris when 139 were killed and 352 injured | ||
| Gretchen Whitmer/Kidnapping plot | "Alt-right" | Unknown | The "unsuccessful plot" in 2020 to overthrow the Michigan government arranged by the FBI. | |
| Harrods bombing | Provisional Irish Republican Army | A car bomb by the IRA outside Harrods that killed 6 people in 1983 | ||
| Hindawi affair | Failed attempt to smuggle a time bomb onto a plane | |||
| Irgun | ||||
| July 2021 Gulf of Oman incident | Iran | Israel Iran | Incident in July 2021 | |
| La Belle discotheque bombing | Libya | A bombing in West Berlin, blamed by the US on Libya. | ||
| Liverpool Women's Hospital bombing | Emad al-Swealmeen | Emad al-Swealmeen | Mysterious suicide bombing in Liverpool. | |
| Nashville explosion | Anthony Quinn Warner | A mysterious explosion that has been memory holed since the US Capitol riots. | ||
| San Bernardino shooting | Tashfeen Malik Syed Rizwan Farook | US mass shooting in 2015, soon after the similar spree of mass murder in Paris | ||
| State terrorism | ||||
| Unite the Right rally | "Alt-right" | Unknown | An deep event in 2017 | |
| Wakefield standoff | "Extremism" | US/Police | A standoff between an anti-government militia and the police, in July 2021 in Wakefield, Massachusetts. |
Related Quotations
| Page | Quote | Author | Date |
|---|---|---|---|
| "Islamophobia" | “"terrorism" in the post-9/11 American vernacular has become shorthand for "Islamic terrorism."” | Gregory Krieg | 2 April 2017 |
| "Terrorism/Response" | “It is critical to understand that the threat from groups historically seen as direct sponsors of terrorism such as ISIS/Daesh and the coordinated state efforts from Russia in recent years are linked.” | Anonymous | 6 August 2018 |
| "War on Terror" | “The surest defense against terrorism is to refuse to be terrorized.” | Bruce Schneier | August 2006 |
| 9-11/Official narrative | “It turns out, 45 years later, that those who truly hate us for our freedoms are not the array of dehumanised enemies cooked up by the war machine — the Vietnamese, Cambodians, Afghans, Iraqis, Iranians, even the Taliban, Al-Qaeda or ISIS. They are the financiers, bankers, politicians, public intellectuals and pundits, lawyers, journalists and business people, cultivated in the elite universities and business schools who sold us the Utopian dream of neoliberalism. We are entering the twilight phase of capitalism. Capitalists unable to generate profits by expanding markets have, as Karl Marx predicted, begun to cannibalise the state like ravenous parasites.” | Chris Hedges | 2017 |
| Arms for Libya | “Libya is the principal sponsor of terrorism. It finances terrorist acts, it trains terrorist groups, it supplies arms, ammunition, passports and other documents to terrorists, and it uses its embassies, so-called peoples' bureaus, as weapons store-houses and sanctuaries for terrorists. Recently, Libya has been escalating its involvement in terrorism.” | 1986 | |
| George Carlin | “Smug, greedy, well-fed white people have invented a language to conceal their sins. It's as simple as that. The CIA doesn't kill anybody anymore, they neutralize people, or they depopulate the area. The government doesn't lie, it engages in disinformation. The Pentagon actually measures nuclear radiation in something they call sunshine units. Israeli murderers are called commandos, Arab commandos are called terrorists. Contra killers are called freedom fighters. Well, if crime fighters fight crime, and firefighters fight fires, what do freedom fighters fight?” | George Carlin | |
| Robin Cook | “So long as the struggle against terrorism is perceived as a war that can be won by military means, it is doomed to fail. The more the West emphasises confrontation, the more it silences moderate voices in the Muslim world who want to speak up for cooperation.” | Robin Cook | 8 July 2005 |
| Tom Cotton | “Waterboarding isn’t torture. We do waterboarding on our own soldiers in the military.” | Tom Cotton | |
| Tom Cotton | ““It has come to our attention while observing your nuclear negotiations with our government that you may not fully understand our constitutional system. Thus, we are writing to bring to your attention two features of our Constitution—the power to make binding international agreements and the different character of federal offices—which you should seriously consider as negotiations progress.
First, under our Constitution, while the president negotiates international agreements, Congress plays the significant role of ratifying them. In the case of a treaty, the Senate must ratify it by a two-thirds vote. A so-called congressional-executive agreement requires a majority vote in both the House and the Senate (which, because of procedural rules, effectively means a three-fifths vote in the Senate). Anything not approved by Congress is a mere executive agreement. Second, the offices of our Constitution have different characteristics. For example, the president may serve only two 4-year terms, whereas senators may serve an unlimited number of 6-year terms. As applied today, for instance, President Obama will leave office in January 2017, while most of us will remain in office well beyond then—perhaps decades. What these two constitutional provisions mean is that we will consider any agreement regarding your nuclear-weapons program that is not approved by Congress as nothing more than an executive agreement between President Obama and Ayatollah Khamenei. The next president could revoke such an executive agreement with the stroke of a pen and future Congresses could modify the terms of the agreement at any time."” | Tom Cotton | |
| Meir Dagan | “In my opinion, no terrorist should feel immune, anywhere. I think that a person's life is forfeit the moment he decides to adopt terrorist tactics.” | Meir Dagan | 1998 |
| Peter Daszak | “We don’t think twice about the cost of protecting against terrorism... We need to start thinking about pandemics the same way.” | Peter Daszak | 21 April 2020 |
| Peter Daszak | “Pandemics are like terrorist attacks: We know roughly where they originate and what’s responsible for them, but we don’t know exactly when the next one will happen. They need to be handled the same way — by identifying all possible sources and dismantling those before the next pandemic strikes.” | Peter Daszak | 27 February 2020 |
| Document:Sins of Statecraft - The War on Terror Exposed | “a group of powerful elites from various countries gathered at an international conference in Jerusalem to promote and exploit the idea of ‘international terrorism.’ The (Jerusalem) conference (on International Terrorism, or JCIT) established the ideological foundations for the ‘war on terror.’ JCIT’s defining theme was that international terrorism constituted an organized political movement whose ultimate origin was in the Soviet Union. All terrorist groups were ultimately products of, and could be traced back to, this single source, which - according to the JCIT - provided financial, military, and logistical assistance to disparate terrorist movements around the globe. The mortal danger to Western security and democracy posed by the worldwide scope of this international terrorist movement required an appropriate worldwide anti-terrorism offensive, consisting of the mutual coordination of Western military intelligence services.” | Nafeez Mosaddeq Ahmed | 2005 |
| Document:The First 9-11 Sceptic | “We are going to see a great number of articles in the future from so-called experts and public officials. They will warn about more violence, more kidnappings, and more terrorists. Mass media, the armed forces, and intelligence agencies will saturate our lives with fascist scare tactics and 'predictions' that have already been planned to come true.” | Mae Brussell | 1974 |
| Earthquake | “Others are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes, volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves.” | William Cohen | 28 April 1997 |
| Harry Ferguson | “Sadly, my advice today to any aspiring recruit who values the defence of human rights would be to stay away and do something better with their lives. The intelligence services are not what they were. Above all, they have forgotten the lessons that we learned during the struggle against Irish terrorism: that brutality and injustice are not the answer, they simply fuel the next generation of terrorists.” | Harry Ferguson | |
| Hypocrisy | “let me formulate a thesis. The thesis is that we are all total hypocrites on any issue relating to terrorism. Now, let me clarify the notion "we." By "we," I mean people like us — people who have enough high degree of privilege, of training, resources, access to information — for whom it is pretty easy to find out the truth about things if we want to. If we decide that that is our vocation, and in the case in question, you don't really have to dig very deep, it's all right on the surface. So when I say "we," I mean that category. And I definitely mean to include myself in "we" because I have never proposed that our leaders be subjected to the kinds of punishment that I have recommended for enemies. So that is hypocrisy. So if there are people who escape it I really don't know them and have not come across them. It's a very powerful culture. It's hard to escape its grasp. So that's thesis number one, we are all total hypocrites, in the sense of the gospels, on the matter of terrorism. The second thesis is stronger, namely, that the first thesis is so obvious that it takes real effort to miss it. In fact, I should go home right now because it is obvious [...] Well, from all of this an obvious conclusion follows: there is an operational definition of terrorism, the one that is actually used — it means terror that they carry out against us — that's terrorism, and nothing else passes through the filter.” | Noam Chomsky | 2002 |
| Fred C. Iklé | “Approximate military parity between the superpowers enhances the importance of PSYOP and POLWAR [Political Warfare]. Major adversaries equally armed and equally capable of destroying each other must turn away from shooting wars to settle their genuine conflicts. POLWAR and PSYOP pose a lower risk of escalation. Our era has become the age of terrorism, insurgency, and limited war because each of these is an essentially political method of struggle. In this era of superpower confrontation, it is no longer facetious to set Clausewitz' dictum, "War is the continuation of politics by other means," on its head. In our modern world, international politics is the continuation of war by other means.” | Fred C. Iklé | 1986 |
| McCarthyism | “Just as the Palmer Raids turned up no actual bombers and the McCarthy era tactics identified few spies or saboteurs, so also the government's yield of actual terrorists from its current preventive detention program has been staggeringly small. According to Ashcroft, all of the detainees were "suspected terrorists." Yet of the approximately two thousand persons, only four have been charged with any crime relating to terrorism. None has been charged with involvement in the September 11 crimes, and the vast majority have been affirmatively cleared of any criminal charges by the FBI. As noted above, the government's policy has been to release and/or deport detainees only after the FBI has cleared them. Yet as of October 2002, Attorney General Ashcroft announced that the INS had deported 431 detainees, and in July 2002, the Justice Department reported that only eighty-one individuals remained in immigration detention. Thus, by the government's own account, virtually none of those detained as "suspected terrorists" turned out to be terrorists.” | David Cole | 2003 |
| William Odom | “By any measure the US has long used terrorism. In ‘78-79 the Senate was trying to pass a law against international terrorism – in every version they produced, the lawyers said the US would be in violation.” | William Odom | April 2006 |
| Polarising perspective | “Either you are with us or you are with the terrorists. From this day forward, any nation that continues to harbor or support terrorism will be regarded by the United States as a hostile regime.” | George W. Bush | 20 September 2001 |
| Colin Powell | “[Terrorism] is the cost of doing business and it's not just something that can happen overseas but, as this community knows better than anyone, it can happen here... I think there are limits to what you can do in a free society.” | Colin Powell | 11 August 1998 |
| RAND/Terrorism Chronology Database | “Since the RAND-St Andrews chronology only records those incidents that are ‘international’, the database is orientated towards the recording of attacks on foreign visitors to, and military occupiers of, relatively poor countries. By definition those victims are normally business representatives and military personnel from economically strong, normally Western, nations. The second observation, which reinforces this latter point, is that the Chronology explicitly excludes acts of state terror committed by any government against its own citizens, and acts of violence occurring in war or in war-like situations. Incidents involving Western armies of occupation and businesses are included in the Chronology only where they are victims rather than the perpetrators of violence. Third, some of the methodological inconsistencies in the use of data in the Chronology database are reminiscent of the counter-insurgency position. It is possible to find non-violent activities and protests against state violence recorded in the database as "terrorism."” | Jonny Burnett Dave Whyte | |
| Michael Rivero | “Once a government resorts to terror against its own population to get what it wants, it must keep using terror against its own population to get what it wants. A government that terrorizes its own people can never stop. If such a government ever lets the fear subside and rational thought return to the populace, that government is finished.” | Michael Rivero | |
| Saudi Arabia | “Saudi Arabia is the Arab world’s leading state sponsor of terror. It backs ISIS, al-Qaeda, its al-Nusra offshoot and other terrorist groups – supplying them with weapons (including CWs), munitions, funding and other material support.” | Stephen Lendman | 27 November 2017 |
| Strategy of tension | “It is probably fair to say that of the roughly seven billion people who live on our planet today, far less than one percent has ever heard of the "strategy of tension." And only a very few of these could illustrate the strategy with specific historical examples. It is indeed a strategy of a shadow world, known only to a few military and intelligence officers (and some criminals) who have carried it out, a few police officers and judges who fought against it, and a handful of journalists and academics who have written about it.
In its essence, the strategy of tension targets the emotions of human beings and aims to spread maximum fear among the target group. “Tension” refers to emotional distress and psychological fear, whereas “strategy” refers to the technique of bringing about such distress and fear. A terrorist attack in a public place, such as a railway station, a market place, or a school bus, is the typical technique through which the strategy of tension is implemented. After the attack — and this is a crucial element — the secret agents who carried out the crime blame it on a political opponent by removing and planting evidence. It must be noted that the targets of the strategy of tension are not the dead and the wounded of the terrorist attacks, as many might assume. The targets are the political opponents, who are discredited through the attack, and those who remain unharmed but learn of the attack, thereby coming to fear for their lives and those of their loved ones. Since the aims of the strategy are to discredit opponents and to create fear, the real targets are not the people who were killed, whether they number in the dozens or even thousands, but the millions of people who survive physically unharmed but emotionally distressed.” | Daniele Ganser | May 2014 |
| Donald Trump | “Islamic terrorism is eating up large portions of the Middle East. They've become rich. I'm in competition with them. They just built a hotel in Syria. Can you believe this? They built a hotel. When I have to build a hotel, I pay interest. They don't have to pay interest, because they took the oil that, when we left Iraq, I said we should've taken” | Donald Trump | June 2015 |
| Washington Conference on International Terrorism | “Given terrorism's unique dependence on publicity and amplification, the media have a crucial role in either facilitating or obstructing the spread of terrorism against the West... manipulation of public opinion is in fact, central to the terrorist strategy. For this purpose, access to the media, indeed their domination, is indispensable.” | ||
| Whitney Webb | “Bitcoiners should pay close attention to these developments as the DOJ in particular has attempted to paint bitcoin as the payment of choice for well-known terror groups like ISIS and al-Qaida, signaling that the working group proposed by this bill will likely seek to specifically target bitcoin. Adding to this concern is the fact that a slew of recent mainstream media reports — which cite Treasury and FinCEN officials, DOJ officials and CIA analysts — have claimed specifically that “terrorists are turning to bitcoin, and they’re learning fast”, that bitcoin is the “new frontier in terror financing”, and that “bitcoin is helping terrorists secretly fund their deadly attacks”. Even the prominent military think tank RAND Corporation has argued that “bitcoin and the dark web” are the newest terrorist threat.” | Whitney Webb | September 2023 |
Event Planned
| Event | Start | End | Location(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Liverpool Women's Hospital bombing | 14 November 2021 | 14 November 2021 | Liverpool United Kingdom | Mysterious suicide bombing in Liverpool. |
Related Documents
| Title | Type | Publication date | Author(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Document:A Long History of America's Dark Side | article | 7 October 2010 | Peter Dale Scott Robert Parry | Americans are encouraged to unquestioningly view their country and its soldiers as the "good guys" spreading “democracy” and “liberty” around the world. When the US inflicts death and destruction, it’s viewed as a mistake or an aberration. This article reviews the long history of these acts of brutality, a record that suggests they are neither a “mistake” nor an “aberration” but a conscious counterinsurgency doctrine on the "dark side". |
| Document:A lesson from Brussels we refuse to learn | article | 24 March 2016 | Jonathan Cook | Commentary on the shortcomings of a Simon Jenkins article on the Mass murder in Brussels |
| Document:Bangkok Blast - Who the Liars Say Did It, Says it All | article | 18 August 2015 | 'Tony Cartalucci' | Analysis of the 18 August terrorist bombing in Bangkok illustrating western media (especially the BBC) bias by omission of major salient points |
| Document:Jewish terrorism in UN-mandate Palestine 1945-48 | report | 1 October 1948 | Various contributors | Timeline-type list of Jewish violence in 'UN-Mandate Palestine' from 1945 to 1948 inclusive. |
| Document:Mrs. May & MI5 In Disarray | webpage | 11 June 2017 | Matthew Jamison | |
| Document:Paul Wilkinson, extract from The "Terrorism" Industry | book extract | 12 May 1990 | Edward S. Herman | |
| Document:Radicalisation - UK.gov gets itself in cluster-muddle over 'terrorism' | article | 25 August 2016 | Alexander J Martin | |
| Document:Sins of Statecraft - The War on Terror Exposed | paper | 29 July 2006 | Brian Bogart | |
| Document:Someone said they wanted to see me trapped in a burning car and watch flames melt my flesh | Article | 22 October 2021 | Nadine Dorries | After the murder of MP David Amess, a crackdown on "internet trolls" is being demanded by most politicians. The UK's new Culture Minister Nadine Dorries is pursuing new overreaching legislation regulating Big Tech. The "Online Safety Bill" will abolish online anonymity and empower internet censorship. There are fears that it will be the end for freedom of expression in the UK. |
| Document:Starmer’s purges of Labour have mutated into the arrest of Palestine supporters | blog post | 30 August 2024 | Jonathan Cook | Britain’s authoritarian new prime minister is expanding the scope of already draconian laws to redefine his critics as ‘supporters’ of terrorism. Starmer wants to be judge, jury and executioner. We must not let him get away with it. |
| Document:Terrorism as Seen From Washington | article | 5 May 2014 | Thierry Meyssan | A brief expose of the US Annual Report on Terrorism in the world as the propaganda. |
| Document:Terrorism, Transit and Public Safety - Evaluating the Risks | paper | 16 January 2012 | Todd Litman | "It is important for individuals and public officials to take all risks into account and avoid overreacting to transit terrorism risks in ways that increase overall danger." An investigation into the real rather than the perceived risks of public and private transport. Contains some basic points that reveal the purported "terrorist threat" to be vastly exaggerated. |
| Document:The Experts extract from The "Terrorism" Industry | book extract | 1989 | Edward S. Herman Gerry O'Sullivan | |
| Document:The Politics of Terror | article | 31 August 2010 | Douglas Valentine | |
| Document:The new alliance between anti-vaxxers and the far right is a deadly threat | Article | 1 August 2021 | Paul Mason | "Though they claim to be “peaceful”......by setting themselves up as the victims of genocide, the anti-vaxxers give themselves permission to threaten violence.....Those behind the “crime” are said to include governments and the World Economic Forum (WEF)" because the real fascists are the ones that oppose oppressive government mandates and forced injections. |
| Document:The scariest thing about Brussels is our reaction to it | article | 24 March 2016 | Simon Jenkins | Absurd over-reaction to terrorist attacks in the west in general and the Mass murder in Brussels in particular, is EXACTLY what the those responsible for the attacks want and expect. |
| Document:Weekend Clashes Emblematic of Political Violence Around the Country | Article | 16 October 2018 | Anti-Defamation League | This ADL blog post from 2018 outlines instances of "terrorism", blamed mainly on the Proud Boys during first two years of the Presidency of Donald Trump. Since then, they were revealed to have links to FBI informants. |
| Document:Who is Bombing European Civilians? | article | 22 March 2016 | Sott.net | Sharp questioning of precisely who is responsible for attacks on civilians in Europe |
| File:A Global Chronology of Incidents of Chemical, Biological, Radioactive and Nuclear Attacks 1950-2005.pdf | report | 7 July 2006 | Hamid Mohtadi Antu Murshid | A summary of Chemical, Biological, Radioactive and Nuclear Attacks, from 1950 - 2005, giving the number of injuries and fatalities, and other information (if known) on the perpetrators and motives. |
| File:FBI Report - Terrorism 1980-2005.pdf | report | 2005 | FBI | Non-Muslims responsible for over 90% of all terrorist attacks in America |
| File:Jewish Terrorism under the British Mandate.pdf | factsheet | 2006 | CJPME | Information about specifically Jewish acts of terrorism against British military, police and civilian personnel in the years between the end of World War II and the establishment of the state of Israel |
| File:Report on Terrorism 2014.pdf | report | 30 April 2014 | US State Department | A summary of global "terrorism" in 2014. |
| File:Security Terrorism and the UK.pdf | briefing paper | 1 July 2005 | Chatham House Lloyds of London | A quintessentially UK Establishment view on Security and Terrorism in the UK. |
| File:Targetedandentrapped.pdf | report | May 2011 | Various faculty members | |
| File:Terrorism & Relative Justice.pdf | paper | 2007 | Mark Findlay | |
| The "Terrorism" Industry | book | 12 May 1990 | Edward S. Herman Gerry O'Sullivan | A look at the reality of terrorism, and how the institutional forces shape it to their ends. |
Official examples
| Name | Attributed to | Perpetrator(s) | Description |
|---|---|---|---|
| 1983 Beirut barracks bombings | |||
| 2001 Anthrax attacks | Bruce Ivins | The cabal | A week after 9/11, weaponised anthrax spores was sent from a US lab to media offices and to two U.S. Senators who were obstructing the rollback of civil liberties. A $100M FBI investigation concluded that posthumously blamed a "lone nut" researcher. In 2015, the FBI head of the investigation sued the US Attorney General alleging that exculpating evidence had been withheld. |
| 2001 Mexican legislative assembly attack | Saar Noam Ben Zvi Salvador Guersson | Two Israelis caught with false passports grenades, explosives and guns in the Mexican parliament a month after 9-11. Later released without charge. Western corporate media aware but uninterested. | |
| 2004 Madrid train bombings | Al-Qaeda | A Spanish equivalent of 7/7, targetting civilians and blamed on Al Qaeda | |
| 2005 London bombings | Hasib Hussain Mohammad Sidique Khan Germaine Lindsay Shehzad Tanweer | A series of coordinated attacks on London's public transport system during the morning rush hour, allegedly carried out by four Muslim suicide bombers. | |
| 2008 Mumbai attacks | Hafiz Saeed Sayeed Zabiuddin Ansari | An incident of "terrorism" used to introduce the Indian National Investigation Agency. The perpetrators may have connections to the CIA and deep state. | |
| 2010 Times Square car bombing attempt | Faisal Shahzad Taliban | Amateurish terrorist attack stated to be by Faisal Shahzad. Judging from from track history, FBI agent provocateur involvement always worth keeping in mind. | |
| 2011 Norway attacks | Anders Breivik | A car bomb in Oslo and subsequent mass shooting at a summer camp in Norway on 22 July 2011, claiming a total of 77 lives. | |
| 2014 Kunming Attack | Xinjiang Muslims | A possible deep event in where assailants pulled out knifes at a train station and stabbed random passengers. Although no group claimed responsibility, Muslim Xinjiang "terrorists" were blamed. As official reaction, the Chinese government ramped up their efforts to mass incarcerate at least 1 million Muslims in Xinjiang. | |
| 2015 Sousse attacks | Seifeddine Rezgui Yacoubi | A mass shooting at the tourist resort of Port El Kantaoui, Sousse, Tunisia. | |
| 2016 Magnanville stabbing | President Hollande called it “incontestably a terrorist act” and said France was facing a terror threat “of a very large scale” | ||
| 2016 Orlando nightclub shooting | Omar Mateen | 2016 mass shooting at gay nightclub in Florida | |
| 2017 Barcelona attacks | National Intelligence Center | Attackers were police informants and under intense surveillance. Happened at a convenient time for the Spanish government. | |
| 2021 Kabul Airport attacks | ISIS-K | ISIS-K | Suicide bombings in the middle of the Afghanistan/2021 withdraw |
| 2021 Liverpool bombing | Emad al-Swealmeen | An IED that detonated in a taxi outside Liverpool Women's Hospital at 10:59am on Remembrance Sunday, killing the alleged perpetrator | |
| 2021 Washington D.C. Riots | Donald Trump "Alt-right" | One of the most fortified positions in the US gets violently overrun by a group of Trump Supporters after a demonstration... without a single shot fired by the mob. Official narrative soon blamed Trump and extremists. Official opposition narrative soon blamed the democratic party trying to fraud Joe Biden into the White House. Several other governments were briefed by intelligence services that the incident seemingly "was being allowed" to happen. | |
| 2022 Freedom Convoy | A Canadian protest against the COVID-19/Vaccine/Mandation for truckers which acted as a focal point for opposition to government overreach. | ||
| 2023-2024 Israel-Hamas War/October 7 | Iran Hamas | Hamas attacks Israeli settlements in Southern Israel, mass raping and abducting, which get called an Israeli "9-11" by CCM. The NYT and Al Jazeera claimed the Israeli government knew of the impending attack, ignored warnings, shot some of their own civilians, made up several stories and used the resulting increased death toll to go on a revenge killing spree in the 2023 Israeli invasion of Gaza. | |
| Bologna bombing | Communism | Operation Gladio | A murderous attack on the Italian public, carried out by the MI6/CIA led Operation Gladio, blamed on communists, as part of a wider program to prevent their electoral success in Italy. |
| Canadian church attacks | Unknown | A coordinated string of vandalism and arson attacks on churches across Canada. The Canadian version of the George Floyd protests? (Ongoing) | |
| Cubana de Aviación Flight 455 | CIA Orlando Bosch | ||
| Gretchen Whitmer/Kidnapping plot | "Alt-right" | Unknown | The "unsuccessful plot" in 2020 to overthrow the Michigan government arranged by the FBI. |
| Hamas | "Terrorists" according to the West, largely founded, financed and brought to power by Israel, Hamas has led Palestine into becoming an enemy image to the western world since 2006. | ||
| He Will Not Divide Us | Celebrity | Hollywood endorsed "artistic exhibition", set up in opposition to the presidency of Donald Trump. which was trolled. An infamous event in internet history. | |
| Hezbollah | Political Islamic party, and army fighting many wars in the Middle East, linked to possible CIA drug trafficking. | ||
| Kenosha riots | Black Lives Matter Antifa | 2020 saw a lot of violence across the USA, but the Kenosha riots were probably the most spooky. | |
| Lehi | |||
| Liverpool Women's Hospital bombing | Emad al-Swealmeen | Emad al-Swealmeen | Mysterious suicide bombing in Liverpool. |
| Mukden Incident | China | Japan | A particularly feeble excuse of a false flag used by the Japanese to try to justify their 1931 invasion of Manchuria |
| Nashville explosion | Anthony Quinn Warner | A mysterious explosion that has been memory holed since the US Capitol riots. | |
| Nord Stream/Sabotage | Unknown | Ukraine? NATO? US deep state? | Destruction of Europe's energy supply, under different circumstances it would be considered a declaration of war. |
| Oath Keepers | "American far-right anti-government militia whose leaders have been convicted of violently opposing the government of the United States" | ||
| Oklahoma City bombing | Timothy McVeigh Terry Nichols | The cabal | A highly suspicious terrorist bombing that was initially blamed on "Muslims", then on lone nuts Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols. Many questions remain answered about the official narrative. |
| Oktoberfest Bombing | Gundolf Köhler | Operation Gladio | A bomb in Munich attributed to a "lone nut" neo-nazi, Gundolf Köhler. |
| Reichstag Fire | Marinus van der Lubbe | Generally reckoned at the time to be a false flag attack, Hitler quickly seized upon the fire at the Reichstag to pass an "enabling act", ushering in full on totalitarian rule. In retrospect it may indeed have been the work of an isolated individual. | |
| San Bernardino shooting | Tashfeen Malik Syed Rizwan Farook | US mass shooting in 2015, soon after the similar spree of mass murder in Paris | |
| Unite the Right rally | "Alt-right" | Unknown | An deep event in 2017 |
References
- ↑ Terrorism - Online etymology Dictionary
- ↑ http://www.foxnews.com/story/2009/06/17/pentagon-exam-calls-protests-low-level-terrorism-angering-activists.html
- ↑ Hoodwinked
- ↑ Gupta, Dipak K. (2008). Understanding terrorism and political violence: the life cycle of birth, growth, transformation, and demise. Taylor & Francis. p. 8. ISBN 978-0-415-77164-1.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ Sinai, Joshua (2008). "How to Define Terrorism". Perspectives on Terrorism. Terrorism Research Institute. 2 (4).Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ U.S. Department of State (February 1, 2010). "Title 22 > Chapter 38 > § 2656f - Annual country reports on terrorism". Cornell University Law School, Legal Information Institute.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ Gupta, p. 8
- ↑ Sinai, Joshua (2008). [httSpecial:RecentChangesp://www.terrorismanalysts.com/pt/index.php/pot/article/view/33/html "How to Define Terrorism"] Check
|url=value (help). Perspectives on Terrorism. Terrorism Research Institute. 2 (4).Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto"). - ↑ "Country Reports on Terrorism - Office of the Coordinator for Counterterrorism". National Counterterrorism Center: Annex of Statistical Information. U.S. State Department. April 30, 2007.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ Williamson, Myra (2009). Terrorism, war and international law: the legality of the use of force against Afghanistan in 2001. Ashgate Publishing. p. 38. ISBN 978-0-7546-7403-0.Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ Rupérez, Javier (6 September 2006). "The UN's fight against terrorism: five years after 9/11". U.N. Action to Counter Terrorism (in Tr. from Spanish). Real Instituto Elcano of Spain.CS1 maint: unrecognized language (link)Page Module:Citation/CS1/styles.css must have content model "Sanitized CSS" for TemplateStyles (current model is "Scribunto").
- ↑ http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/672
- ↑ http://www.standard.co.uk/news/crime/terrorism-threat-is-on-the-increase-met-chief-tells-bbcs-andrew-marr-show-9878141.html
- ↑ http://www.nytimes.com/2016/01/10/opinion/sunday/germany-on-the-brink.html?_r=1
- ↑ https://www.nato.int/docu/review/2005/Combating-Terrorism/Gijs-de-Vries-counter-terrorism/EN/index.htm
- ↑ https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_terrorist_incidents_in_2001
- ↑ http://www.projectcensored.org/4-fbi-agents-responsible-for-majority-of-terrorist-plots-in-the-united-states/
- ↑ https://www.techdirt.com/articles/20160812/15531535228/did-fbi-get-confused-arrest-own-informant-for-helping-create-fbi-plot.shtml
- ↑ http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/747
- ↑ http://archive.fo/kiO1D
- ↑ a b http://www.unwelcomeguests.net/747
- ↑ Journal of 9/11 Studies
- ↑ http://www.theguardian.com/world/2014/jul/21/government-agents-directly-involved-us-terror-plots-report
- ↑ https://medium.com/insurge-intelligence/the-astonishingly-crap-science-of-counter-extremism-65810f8ac8e6?source=latest---------6
- ↑ http://www.projectcensored.org/7-fbi-dismisses-murder-plot-occupy-leaders-nsa-big-business-cracks-dissent/
- ↑ http://web.archive.org/web/20141018093606/http://whowhatwhy.com/2013/06/27/fbi-document-deleted-plots-to-kill-occupy-leaders-if-deemed-necessary/
