A Nation of Pschopathic Terrorists

By: Kayhan Int’l 

A psychopath, despite his disorderly and often destructive behaviour, is not always a terrorist, but a terrorist is definitely a psychopath, even if such a person were to occupy a prominent post or try to act normally, since his words and actions are firm indicators of potential terrorism.
Friday’s cold-blooded killing of colleagues at the Virginia Beach Municipal Center in Virginia, the US, said to be by an engineer who for 15 long years was working on the said center’s projects, was without the least doubt a blatant act of terrorism, even though the terms "terrorist” and "terrorism” were not used by the American media for the ‘suspect’ DeWayne Craddock, who was also shot dead by a police officer.
If Craddock was really the crackpot killer who dispatched to the netherworld whomever he encountered on three floors of the building in which he used to work – five of his victims were lucky to survive with injuries – he deserved to die, but if he was not and is merely being framed up for the failure of the police to find the actual killer, then it is the same old story of yet another lapse of the American law enforcement officials and the legal system, which always murder the innocent only to admit a generation later when that particular case has been forgotten.
Anyway, what has happened in Virginia, and what will happen in other places in the US in the coming days, and what happens routinely all over the country almost every day, with either white skin police psychopaths shooting to death a hapless Afro-American or a lone wolf gunning down shoppers, passersby, students at schools and colleges, and workers, are all proof of the terrorist mentality of the US, from the lower wrung of the society to the topmost echelons of the administration, which is notorious for its policy of state terrorism around the world.
There is, however, a wide difference between everyday violence and deaths in the US, and the death and destruction the administration in Washington rains down on countries and peoples that do not follow American dictates. The ordinary killer – except for the murderous police personnel – is killed, caught, convicted and jailed, but the mass murderers who destroy entire nations like George Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld and others, are never brought to trial.
The same is the case with the present purveyors of state terrorism, barring Hispanics from entering the US, cruelly separating parents from children and leaving them to die, indulging in economic sanctions against world nations and itching for wars, such as Donald Trump and his team of terroristic thugs – e.g. John Bolton, Mike Pompeo.
They are criminals to the very core and psychopathic terrorists. The sooner they are impeached and removed from office, the better for the US, and the whole world.
It should, however, be borne in mind that the routine occurrences of terrorism in the US – even if the American media doesn’t call it as such and reserve the label of ‘terrorism’ for Muslims who do not bow to American demands – the recent killings in Virginia or the frequent gunning to death of Afro-Americans by white police officers, will not be eradicated from the society, with simply a regime change at the White House.
What the US and the West need, is a complete overhaul of the decadent system of liberal democracy, which is the real terrorist and cause of psychopathic diseases, and its replacement with religious, moral, ethical, and spiritual values.
If Christianity has failed to salvage the western society, the dynamism of Islam teachings is readily available as the remedy to all social, political, cultural, and economic maladies.
Otherwise, the US will continue to be called a nation of psychopathic terrorists, from its top to its bottom. 

Who Is Killing Whom in the Middle East? Blaming Iran Might be an Excuse for War

PHILIP M. GIRALDI

Newsweek is reporting a story regarding how Iran “was responsible for the deaths of at least 608 American troops in Iraq between 2003 and 2011.” The account is sourced to a newly revised estimate prepared by analysts at the Pentagon that was discussed by Special Representative for Iran Brian Hook at a State Department press briefing on April 2nd. According to Hook, Tehran is now being blamed for 17 per cent of all US military deaths because it supplied weapons to the several Shiite militias that were opposing the US invasion, occupation and subsequent presence in the country.

Hook also stated that the American casualties are in addition to the “thousands” of Iraqi troops and civilians that were killed in attacks initiated by what he referred to as the Iranian proxy forces. Hook noted that the new number is higher than the 2015 confirmed death total of 500 that was reported by then Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff General Joseph Dunford, who qualified his estimate by saying “We were not always able to attribute the casualties that we had to Iranian activity, although many times we suspected it was Iranian activity, even though we did not necessarily have the forensics to support that.”

There is little doubt that Tehran provided weapons to Shiite militias in Iraq after the invasion of the country by American forces in April 2003 and the defeat and replacement of the Saddam Hussein regime. The US was occupying the country at the time and Shiites were a repressed majority of the population given the fact that Saddam ruled through his Sunni minority.

The most controversial and lethal weapons used by the Shiite and Sunni resistance to the United States were the Improvised Explosive Devices or IEDs, subsequently also referred to as Explosively Formed Penetrators or EFPs which were capable of penetrating the armor on US military vehicles. They first appeared in Iraq in the summer of 2004, but they were initially mostly used by Sunni insurgents, not by the Shiites.

Now that the US occupation has ended, Iran and Iraq enjoy a close relationship that is based on their common Shiite religion. The former militiamen are now referred to as Popular Mobilization Forces, which were key to the eventual defeat of ISIS. The United States, which retains a major military base inside Iraq, continues to rail against Iran. During the briefing, Hook said “We are imposing costs on the [Iranian] regime for behaving as an outlaw expansionist regime. The regime is weaker today than when we took office two years ago. Its proxies are also weaker. Unless the regime demonstrates a change in policy and behavior, the financial challenges facing Tehran will mount.”

There are several problems with the Hook analysis, if that is actually what it was. The United States government has been arguing since 2005 that Iran is “interfering” in neighboring Iraq, combined with allegations about “they are killing our soldiers” to make sure that Tehran continues to be everyone recognizable regional enemy. Specific claims by generals and US politicians were made between 2005 and 2007 regarding Iranian involvement in the production of the shaped charges, which were increasingly exacting a bloody toll of US and allied military personnel.

But the claims being made by the Bush Administration, by Congress, and by the media regarding Iranian support of militants in Iraq had a number of things in common: they were generic and lacking in specificity, they were based on possibly unwarranted assumptions about Iranian interactions with other players in the region, they played fast and loose with statistics, and they seldom provided actual verifiable evidence to back up the assertions being made. One might also point out that nearly all the reports were derivative in that they build on each other to develop credibility, much like the reports about Iraq in 2002.

It has also been noted that the arguments about Iranian involvement are logically inconsistent. The Iraqi insurgency in the period 2004-2006 was largely Sunni. That the Iranians would be supplying the Sunnis or that the Sunnis would even seek such assistance does not appear probable. In an April 2007 briefing Major General William Caldwell explained, “We have, in fact, found some cases recently where Iranian intelligence services have provided to some Sunni insurgent groups some support.” Three uses of “some” in one sentence suggest a degree of uncertainty. Even the relatively tame media at the briefing were skeptical, asking “Do the Iranians support all the militias in Iraq?”

The fact that the EFP is very simple to make also argues against a largely Iranian provenance. The EFP or variations thereof has been around for a long time. It was reportedly used under its old name “shaped charge” by the French resistance against the Germans and by the Irish Republican Army against British armored vehicles and it has been used extensively by both Hezbollah and Hamas against the Israelis.

The case against Iran basically relies on a basic argument that the EFP is actually a sophisticated weapon that has to have its copper disk machined in a weapons shop that is accustomed to milling metal to the finest tolerances. According to those who believe in an Iranian hand in EFP attacks, it is not possible that the weapons are being produced by Iraqis without Iranian assistance but the fact is that the Iraqis are more than capable of making the weapon. Iraq had a large and relatively sophisticated military prior to 2003. It had its own weapons shops and ordnance experts, many of whom were Sunnis and many of whom became unemployed in the spring of 2003 when the army was disbanded.

So Iran’s EFP weapon of choice that, according to the Pentagon, has killed 608 Americans turns out to be not that hard to make and not uniquely Iranian. But the real argument against Brian Hook’s numbers is the assumption made by the government analysts that supplying weapons, even if and when the end user can be demonstrated, makes one responsible for who gets killed as a result. Since the US is the world’s leading arms manufacturer, that argument leads down a slippery slope as “Made in USA.” weapons are likely featured in every conflict.

Also bear in mind that the United States in Iraq was an invading army in what became a guerrilla war in which that country’s civilians ultimately constituted most of the victims. By one estimate, 460,000 Iraqis died, many by US-made ordnance. To cite one other more recent example of what that measure of accountability might mean, the United States could be considered responsible for the deaths of tens of thousands civilians in Yemen, 5,000 in 2018 alone, as the Saudis are using US supplied weapons. And there are a lot of other instances of American made weapons winding up in all kinds of places, including the arsenals of ISIS and al-Qaeda. Al-Qaeda in its war against the Russians in Afghanistan relied largely on American weaponry. Some of those weapons are still being used to kill American rather than Russian soldiers.

Since the United States government is selectively charging Iran with offenses that might well be exploited by neoconservatives named Bolton and Pompeo to initiate a war it should be more careful in how it attempts to frame its arguments. Iran did not kill those 4,424 American soldiers who died in Iraq. President George W. Bush, Vice President Dick Cheney and the band of psychopaths at the Pentagon and National Security Council did that when they initiated a chain of events that began with attacking a country that they knew posed no threat against the United States. The bloody consequences of that action continue to this day.

PHILIP M. GIRALDI

Ph.D., Executive Director of the Council for the National Interest.

Terrorism: Retail and Industrial

What is the reality of terrorism in the world? The figures speak for themselves!

By Waseem Shehzad

While the US (and the West) makes so much noise about the threat of terrorism, the fact is the number of people killed in gun violence is nearly 1000 times more than those killed in terrorist acts yet hardly anyone talks about gun control.

What is the reality of terrorism in the world? Based on the statements of Western politicians (Donald Trump, and before him George W. Bush, Dick Cheney, Donald Rumsfeld et al), repeated ad nauseam, Muslims pose the greatest threat to peace and security in the world, especially the US. The Western corporate media reinforces this perception by the manner of its coverage.

While there is no clear definition of terrorism—even the United Nations has not provided one despite much debate on the topic—what has emerged through years of incessant propaganda is that any act of violence perpetrated by a Muslim is immediately branded as terrorism. If a non-Muslim perpetrates the same crime or worse, then that is not terrorism. On June 4, 2014, for instance, one Justin Bourque shot and killed three RCMP officers in Moncton, New Brunswick (Canada). Two other officers were injured. When it was discovered that he was not a Muslim, Canada’s Justice Minister at the time, Peter MacKay declared that it was not a terrorist act because there was “no cultural component to it”!

In Trump’s first address to a joint session of US Congress on February 28 that most observers described as sophomoric (nothing unusual except that he did not go off the script causing many to heave a collective sigh of relief!), he again raised the specter of “radical Islamic terrorism.” Raising fear of the “other”—in this case Muslims—is a time-tested formula that is sure to rile up people and surrender to the whimsical policies of the establishment. Like his predecessors, Trump also wants more money for America’s war machine. He announced an increase of $54 billion in the US military budget that will now exceed $650 billion.

How serious is the so-called Muslim threat and whether Muslims alone are responsible for terrorism in the world? One is reminded of St Augustine’s narration of an interesting encounter between the emperor, Alexander (aka Alexander the great) and a pirate.

“How dare you molest the seas?” asked Alexander of the pirate. “How dare you molest the world?” said the pirate in response. “Just because I do it with a small boat, I am called a pirate while you do it with a big ship, you are called an emperor.”

Notwithstanding the self-serving definition coined by Western politicians and media outlets, three researchers at the Georgia State University in their fascinating report for Monkey Cage (reproduced in the Washington Post) have exposed the reality behind such propaganda.

The three Georgia State University researchers—Erin M. Kearns, Alison Betus and Anthony Lemieux—wrote: “In a recent study, we found that the news media do not cover all terrorist attacks the same way. Rather, they give drastically more coverage to attacks by Muslims, particularly foreign-born Muslims—even though those are far less common than other kinds of terrorist attacks.” The researchers then explained how they define terrorism and how they measured the coverage of such events.

“We first looked at all attacks in the United States between 2011 and 2015, as listed in the Global Terrorism Database. The GTD defines terrorism as ‘the threatened or actual use of illegal force and violence by a non-state actor to attain a political, economic, religious, or social goal through fear, coercion, or intimidation’.” Then they examined media coverage of each event.

Going by official pronouncements and media coverage of terrorist attacks, one gets the impression that these are daily occurrences and that people in the West are more likely to be the victims of terrorism than any other kind of violence. In fact, terrorist attacks are presented as an existential threat to the West’s way of life. Perhaps there may be an element truth to this but not in the way most people envisage. Here is why.

In 2015, there were 21 incidents of terrorism claiming 246 lives in Western countries. On average, for each of these incidents, approximately 12 people were killed and 7,788 articles were written, which corresponds to approximately 665 articles/person who died in a Western terrorist incident. But in non-Western countries, where approximately 22 individuals were killed in each terror incident, there were, on average, only 1,305 articles/incident. Hence, there were about six times fewer articles written about incidents of terrorism in non-Western countries. In addition, there were 11 times fewer articles written about each non-Western death. The number of articles by fatality varies even more wildly, and disfavors non-Western countries aggressively. When individuals fall victim to terrorism in Africa, South Asia, the Balkans, the Muslim East, and Southeast Asia, it appears the media don’t deem their deaths as worthy of report as when individuals die in Eastern Europe, Western Europe, Australia, North America, and East Asia. Such a bias in coverage robs media consumers of opportunities to care about these terror incidents and to pressure governments to keep people everywhere safe from terrorism.

Following a string of deadly terrorist attacks in the US, euphemistically referred to as ‘deadly shootings’ or merely ‘violence’, especially after a white non-Muslim terrorist opened fire at Oregon’s Umpqua Community College in October 2015 that killed nine people and injured seven, a visibly upset President Barack Obama said the shootings were becoming all too routine. He then called upon media outlets to compare the number of Americans killed in terrorist attacks in the last decade with those that have died as a result of gun violence.

Interestingly, CNN took up the challenge and came up with some startling results. In a report published on the CNN website on October 3, 2016, Eve Bower wrote: “For every one American killed by an act of terror in the United States or abroad in 2014, more than 1,049 died because of guns.” This means the ratio of deaths from terrorism to those of gun violence was 1:1049.

Is there anything like the media coverage or hysteria about gun violence as there is about so-called terrorism? In fact, more Americans die as a result of falling furniture at home than they do of acts of terror. Trump has announced a ban on citizen of six Muslim majority countries because he wants to prevent acts of terror in the US but is there anybody for banning home furniture that poses a far greater risk to American lives?

Ms Bower of CNN found some other startling statistics.

“Using numbers from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, we found that from 2001 to 2014, 440,095 people died by firearms on US soil. (2014 is the most recent year for which the CDC has data for deaths by firearms.) This data covered all manners of death, including homicide, accident and suicide.”

She went on: “According to the US State Department, the number of US citizens killed overseas as a result of incidents of terrorism from 2001 to 2014 was 369.” When the number of those killed as a result of terrorist acts inside the US, the numbers are still miniscule compared to those killed in gun violence. Ms Bower wrote: “In addition, we compiled all terrorism incidents inside the United States and found that between 2001 and 2014, there were 3,043 people killed in domestic acts of terrorism. This brings the total to 3,412.”

We know—the entire world knows—about the attacks of 911. It is also known as to how many people died in that attack: nearly 2900 (the exact figure given out by the US was 2893, of which nearly 600 were not American citizens). If we exclude the number of deaths in the 911 attacks because it was a one-time act, the total number of deaths related to terrorist acts inside the US would stand at 519.

Even this figure of 519 needs qualification. Muslims were not the perpetrators of all these acts as the CNN report explained. In addition to the 911 attacks, CNN included the following domestic acts of terrorism including attacks on churches and abortion clinics. Ordinarily, such attacks are not described as acts of terrorism; they are called ‘lone wolf attacks’; or attacks by ‘nutcases’, of which there is no shortage in North America and Europe! Yet, for the purpose of this list, they are now included in the overall total. Here is CNN’s list:

September 11 attacks (NY, DC, PA) September 11, 2001;
2001 Anthrax attacks (DC, NY, CT, FL) Oct., Nov. 2001;
El Al counter shooting (California) July 4, 2002;
Beltway sniper attacks (DC, Mid-Atlantic) Oct. 2002;
Knoxville church shooting (Tennessee) July 27, 2008;
Pittsburgh police officers killed (Pennsylvania) April 4, 2009;
Tiller abortion clinic (Kansas) May 31, 2009;
Holocaust Museum shooting (DC) June 10, 2009;
Fort Hood shooting (Texas) November 5, 2009;
Plane crash into Austin IRS building (Texas) Feb. 18, 2010;
Fort Stewart Army base killing (Georgia) December 10, 2011;
Sikh Temple Shooting (Wisconsin) August 7, 2012;
St. John's Parish police ambush (Louisiana) August 16, 2012;
Boston Marathon Bombing (Massachusetts) April 15, 2013;
LAX Shooting (California) November 05, 2013.

2014 additions:

Overland Park Jewish community center (Kansas) April 13, 2014;
Isla Vista shooting (California) May 23, 2014;
Las Vegas shooting (Nevada) June 8, 2014;
Killing of state trooper in Blooming Grove (Pennsylvania) September 12, 2014.

Given this reality, why is such a strong impression created in the minds of most people that Muslims are responsible for all acts of terrorism? There is now even a saying that “All Muslims are not terrorists but all terrorists are Muslims.” While this has been repeatedly refuted in academic studies, it is the corporate media and politicians that push this line to target Muslims.

This graphic says it all: the whole, highly agendized, narrative on terrorism has more to do with stealing the resources of the victims and not allowing them to represent themselves for their own needs.

Let us return to the report by the three Georgia State University researchers.

“In total, there were 89 attacks committed by different perpetrators in the United States during the five-year period we examined. Between 2011 and 2015 in the United States, Muslims perpetrated 12.4 percent of those attacks. We then searched for media coverage of each attack from US-based print sources in LexisNexis Academic. Since many Americans get their news online, we supplemented the print media with coverage from CNN.com. Each article we counted had focused primarily on the act of terrorism, its perpetrators or the victims, and it had to appear in a US-based media source between the attack date and the end of 2016. We found 2,413 news articles that met our criteria.”

In their examination of media sources and coverage, they came up with some interesting findings: “Of the 89 attacks, 24 did not receive any media coverage from the sources we examined. The small proportion of attacks that were by Muslims — remember, only 12 percent — received 44 percent of the news coverage. In only 5 percent of all the terrorist attacks, the perpetrator was both Muslim and foreign-born—but those four attacks got 32 percent of all the media coverage.

“In real numbers, the average attack with a Muslim perpetrator is covered in 90.8 articles. Attacks with a Muslim, foreign-born perpetrator are covered in 192.8 articles on average. Compare this with other attacks, which received an average of 18.1 articles.”

From 2001 to 2014, number of Americans killed:

Gun-deaths: 440,095
Terror attacks abroad: 369
Terror attacks at home: 3,412
Minus 911 attacks: 519*

(*These include attacks by non-Muslims as well).