The Economist: The Middle East. Algeria's Hostage Crisis

is a murky mess! Details of what happened at the remote but massive natural gas complex of In Amenas, in the Algerian Sahara, remain scanty. What is known, is that an armed band of jihadist fighters, believed to be from a group that calls itself the Signed in Blood Battalion, emerged out of the desert to raid the heavily guarded facility, which is jointly operated by BP, Norway's Statoil, and the Algerian state hydrocarbons giant, Sonatrach. Taking dozens of workers hostage, the raiders claimed to be acting in response to France's intervention in neighboring Mali, where fellow jihadists had threatened an advance on the capital, Bamako. Several workers were killed and wounded in the initial attack, but hundreds escaped. A rescue attempt of the captives by Algerian ground troops, backed by helicopters, released more hostages, but appears to have left an unknown number dead. Rebel sources claimed that 34 foreign workers had been killed. Algerian government spokesmen put the numbers at seven, with a dozen of their captors killed, too. Amid the confusion, some facts do stand out. This was, oddly enough considering that Algeria's regime has fought a life and death struggle against Islamist extremists for two decades, the first ever such attack on the energy infrastructure that keeps the country solvent. This suggests either a lapse in stringent security, or an emboldening of Islamist insurgents, whose reach has diminished markedly in the coastal regions, where 90% of Algerians live. In Amenas lies only 35km from the Libyan border. The rebel group, which is known to profit from the smuggling of Moroccan hashish and cigarettes, and whose one eyed leader is sometimes called Mr Marlboro, may have found still lawless Libya a useful refuge, as well as a source of arms and cash. The bad news is, that their ability to strike so boldly, is likely to spook the Western oil operators, who run facilities across the region. Governments are also likely to see this as a sign of the of the Sahel region's jihadists, loosely linked under the umbrella of Al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM), growing both stronger and better coordinated.       

The Economist: Political crisis in Pakistan. Sermon on the container.

From a base in converted shipping containers, placed on Islamabad's main thoroughfare, Tahir ul Qadri, a populist cleric who has been demanding changes to Pakistan's electoral system, delivered thunderous addresses all this week. Many saw the troubling influence of of Pakistan's powerful armed forces behind him. That may be why he felt able to make extraordinary demands on the government. Mr Qadri's demand for reforms reached far beyond the constitution, in the name of creating a "real democracy", and kicking out corrupt politicians. He led some 50,000 followers to Islamabad, including many women, who camped out in the capital, close to the parliament building. It was not so much a protest, as an occupation of Islamabad. They vowed not to move until their demands were met. The white bearded religious cleric, who heads a cult like but moderate Islamic organization, seemed to have unlimited funds available to him. He had been delivering deadlines for weeks to the government. On January 14th he had also declared that the government and its ministers were no longer in office, as they had been "dismissed" by him. On January 17th, he gave the government just 90 minutes to come to him and start negotiations. Ministers and other senior officials from the ruling coalition, which is led by the Pakistan Peoples Party, went rushing to his shipping container, which was kept raised above the crowd. After some five hours of talks there, a written agreement emerged that in its language and substance was Mr Qadri's agenda. There will now be a one month pre clearance of election candidates by the Election Commission, which is to probe their honesty, before they are allowed to stand. The agreement also gives Mr Qadri's organization a say in the appointment of the caretaker prime minister, who is required by the constitution to oversee the election period. Mr Qadri had also called for the Election Commission to be reconstituted. This too is to be considered at further negotiations, which will be held at the headquarters of Mr Qadri's outfit. No date has been announced for the election, but there is an undertaking now from the government to wind itself up before its five year term ends, on March 16th. In all, this hardly shortens the government's period in office.   

Gordon Duff: Europe Criminalizes Freedom of Speech

Israeli Witch Hunt cripples Freedom of speech and ICC. Israel had already moved yo have their "hasbara assets" silence Press TV in Europe and elsewhere, all attempts of damage control after their defeat in Gaza and, of course, their ties to Sandy Hook. Since the nearly unanimous United Nations vote to recognize Palestine as a free state, Israel has marshaled its political resources in Europe and elsewhere to criminalize moves against Israel, particularly in the International Criminal Court. Recent frightening revelations that occupants of a Mossad "safe house" in the exclusive Greenwich Village neighborhood of New York were involved, not just in the Sandy Hook terrorist attack, but in trying to avert blame to neo Nazi groups, has become a disaster for Israel. This is only the most recent bombshell. With Palestine now able to seek redress for war crimes by Israel in the International Criminal Court at The Hague, Israel is seeking to silence all dissent, Palestinian and otherwise, that would aid in their prosecution. Israel had already moved to have their "hasbara assets" silence Press TV in Europe and elsewhere, all attempts at damage control after their defeat in Gaza and, of course, their ties to Sandy Hook. Direct moves within most EU nations, particularly Germany, Austria, France, the Netherlands along with pressure in Switzerland and Canada, aided by attempts to pass new "silencing" laws in the United States, are intended to end future moves against Israel. For instance, Germany is now ready to prosecute anyone, lawyers, diplomats, journalists or professors, anyone who speaks or publishes any information critical of Israel. It is now a crime in Germany to edit documents, even those presented to the United Nations or the International Criminal Court, if those documents contain evidence of Israeli crimes. Lawyers representing the Palestinian Authority, who have been tasked with preparing criminal charges against Israel for recent violations of Palestinian sovereignty tied to Netanyahu's new "settlements" in now recognized Palestine, face imprisonment. We have evidence that editors, translators and even computer technicians face prosecution, including, but not limited to employees of both the United Nations and the International Criminal Court. There is a long history of persecution of those who have challenged the historical narrative of the Holocaust. Hundreds of scholars, their attorneys, and even journalists have been jailed for as long as fifteen years for failing to follow the letter of what has become "victimization dogma." Thousands more have been removed from teaching positions, fired from newspapers and other media outlets, or have been subjected to travel restrictions and police state surveillance. More still have been harassed, subjected to detention, eve torture, for supporting "historical revisionism." 

Gordon Duff: Israeli Witch Hunt cripples Freedom of Speech

Tom Dispatch: Jonathan Schell. Seeing the Reality of the Vietnam War

50 Years Late. Forty six years ago, in January 1966, Jonathan Schell, a 23 year old not quite journalist, found himself at the farming village of Ben Suc, 30 miles from the South Vietnamese capital of Saigon. It had long been supportive of the Vietcong. Now, in what was dubbed Operation Cedar Falls, the US military, with Schell in tow, launched an operation to solve that problem. The "solution" was typical of how Americans fought the Vietnam War. All the village's 3,500 inhabitants were to be removed to a squalid refugee camp, and Ben Suc itself simply obliterated, every trace of the place for all time. Shell's remarkable and remarkably blunt observations on this grim operation were, no less remarkably, published in the New Yorker magazine, and then as a book, causing a stir in a country where anti war sentiment was growing fast. In 1967, Schell returned to Vietnam, and spent weeks in the northern part of the country watching from the backseats of tiny US forward air control planes as parts of two provinces were quite literally blown away, house by house, village by village, an experience he recalls in today's Tom Dispatch post. From that came another New Yorker piece, and then a book, The Military Half, which offered an unmatched journalistic vision of what the Vietnam War looked like. It was a moment well captured in a mocking song one of the American pilots sang for him after an operation in which he had called in bombs on two Vietnamese churches, but somehow missed the white flag in front of them. Once upon a time, I was also in Vietnam, as an adviser to a military unit north of Kontum, and finally in Trung Lap, in the heart of the so-called Iron Triangle, just a few kilometers from Saigon, and my book is now available from Trafford, and I had it published there, to persuade more Americans to end all of our ridiculous wars, for the sake of our people. It opens with one of my poems: About war much has been written. More must yet be said by those who saw them die, so that the dead may rest, and sight be gained, to see war for what it was, and is. War is not fighting, though fighting's what we see, nor is it death, for death is but it's end. It is the rancor of disunited hearts, the death of love, the end of hope. The war around us echoes in our hearts and grants it life. Once, mortals dared to tame this ancient beast, and yet it thrives. Each age must fight this force again, or pay its price.     

Gordon Duff: Obama Gun Address Misses Real Terrorism Threat!

Military Sources Confirm Sandy Hook Suspected Foreign Terrorist Attack. Despite attempts to blame a seemingly endless group of lunatic mass murderers for the equally endless number of devastating mass killings now plaguing the United States, out government, our "protectors" and, most damnably, our president, are failing to react to real terror attacks that are becoming an almost daily occurrence. Ambassador Susan Rice was "sacrificed" for failing to cite the Benghazi attack as terrorism. However, when something worse, when a dozen "somethings worse" happens, not in North Africa, but here at home, our schools, movie theaters, military bases, college campuses, the use of the term "terrorism" is forbidden. Why? The answer is simple, the answer is painful, the answer challenges our oligarchical criminal elite, the masters of our masters, as it were. America has a real war on terror, one that we are losing, one based, not on Islam or politics, but rather economics and fear. Terrorism is about fear, as Frank Herbert, author of "Dune" had told us decades ago: "Fear is the mind killer." When we are afraid, and our minds are dead. Thus, we have allowed very real foreign death squads to murder our children, and we play our parts like dogs lapping up vomit. Discussions with members of the senior military community, operations and intelligence personnel, regarding Sandy Hook, and other recent "lone gunman events" has led to startling revelations. Fear can totally immobilize you, yet using it as a weapon is not a crime. The US Army has recognized a pattern of terrorist activity in several of the recent mass shootings, based on timing, type of target, control of media, lost evidence, poor investigations, a pattern that shows signs of the involvement of a military type operation against "soft targets" in the US. Sandy Hook, we are told, is a total failure as an "false flag" terror attack, having left too many "loose threads." Some are listed in the video below. In truth, there are hundreds: Initial suspicions led investigators to extremist groups in the US, the National Socialist Movement, the US Border Patrol and the Hutarees. However, investigations found these groups to be both almost entirely inactive or with a majority of members FBI informants.        

Colonel Eugene Khrushchev: Between Bullocks & Chickenhawks!

Despite the monumental snow job by the White House to carefully craft and spin the image of the US president as cerebral & aloof 'no drama Obama', his modus operandi has generated a pileup of smoldering snafus in domestic & foreign policy. The dolorous drama for Obama was, that 'hiding from behind', he outsourced his presidential prerogatives in word affairs to Clinton clan consiglieres and bushwhacking Tampa centric generals. But that was then, and it's never again! The three musketeers. The White House nominations of John Kerry followed by John Brennan and Chuck Hagel to man the State Department, CIA & DOD, if they survive piranha pack PR attack and sail unharmed through Congress crucible, would be nifty tour de force to install US foreign policy tight triumvirate. In the ensuing fracas around the candidates for top posts at Langley and the Pentagon, the question - who pulled it off, POTUS or Veep, is not as obvious as it might seem to be. The king and the cardinal. Yes, Barak Obama brought Joe Biden on board, but it was The Bidenator who had the prescience and cojones to fight an uphill battle against the surge malarkey in favor of counter terrorism light footprint in Pakistan & Afghanistan. Back then it was a forlorn solo mission: Ol' Joe was ridiculed by Coindinistas, and sidelined by the rookie Appeaser in chief who, after 3 months of sit on the pants 'analysis', caved in and, to avoid the accusations of being soft on defense, tripled US boots on the ground in the 'war of necessity' in Afghanistan. Obama's aversion to military escalation was palpable even before he moved to 1600 Pennsylvania Avenue, but that decision, contrary to his instincts could be explained if not justified on 2 grounds: It grated the top brass the last chance to play & prove the COIN remake. The evolving Commander in chief got enough breathing space and political clout to come up with his Plan B for tactical or even strategic adjustment of US power projection.