Latvia’s Economic Disaster Heralded as a Neoliberal “Success Story”: A Model for Europe and the US?

By Jeffrey Sommers and Michael Hudson

Global Research

A generation ago the Chicago Boys and their financial supporters applauded General Pinochet’s anti-labor Chile as a success story, thanks mainly to its transformation of their Social Security into Employee Stock Ownership Plans (ESOPs) that almost universally were looted by the employer grupos by the end of the 1970s. In the last decade, the Bush Administration, seeking a Trojan Horse to privatize Social Security in the United States, applauded Chile’s disastrous privatization of pension accounts (turning many over to US financial institutions) even as that nation’s voters rejected the Pinochetistas largely out of anger at the vast pension rip-off by high finance.

Today’s most highly celebrated anti-labor success story is Latvia. Latvia is portrayed as the country where labor did not fight back, but simply emigrated politely and quietly. No general strikes, nor destruction of private property or violence, Latvia is presented as a country where labor had the good sense to not make a fuss when faced with austerity. Latvians gave up protest and simply began voting with their backsides (emigration) as the economy shrank, wage levels were scaled down, and where tax burdens remained decidedly on the backs of labor, even though recent token efforts have been made to increase taxes on real estate. The World Bank applauds Latvia and its Baltic neighbors by placing them high on its list of “business friendly” economies, even though at times scolding their social regimes as even too harsh for the Victorian tastes of the international financial institutions.

Can this really be a model for the United States or Europe’s remaining social democracies? Or is it simply a cruel experiment that cannot readily be emulated in larger countries un-traumatized by Soviet era memories of occupation? One can only dream ...

Yes, activism works: European Parliament votes down ACTA by wide margin

Madison Ruppert, Contributor
Activist Post

In a surprising and exciting move, the European Parliament refused to ratify the freedom-crushing Anti-Counterfeiting Trade Agreement (ACTA) anti-piracy treaty by a massive 478 to 39 vote with 165 abstentions. According to none other than the Associated Press, the move came “after concern that it would limit Internet freedom sparked street protests incities across Europe.”

This comes after the treaty was approved by every single one of the 27 EU heads of government in December 2011, but clearly the formal approval process wasn’t nearly as easy.

Unfortunately, the United States already signed ACTA in October 2011, which has already sparked claims from lobbyists that the rejection of the agreement make the EU “be weakened in free trade negotiations with the United States, Canada and emerging markets that are relative newcomers to intellectual property,” according to Reuters.
Essentially this means that other countries may continue to participate in ACTA even though the entire group of nations making up the EU is backing out of the same agreement they participated in negotiating.

Trouble for the Establishment in Europe, Protests Spread to France (Video)

We Are Change

Luke Rudkowski reports from the new protests in France.  He interviews a stunningly-aware crowd. They truly know the score and what the root problem of the system is: Banskter-Goverment collusion resulting in their enslavement.  Great on-the-ground reporting by Rudkowski.

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BANKER ON HOW TO SOLVE DEBT CRISIS: The Public Needs To Work Harder For Less Money And 50% Fewer Benefits

BUSINESS INSIDER-An investment banker from BarCap recently told the Forum of Economic News that he's got the solution to bring "competitiveness" back to the European Union.

Cut benefits by half, and make everyone work harder.

The comments from Hans-Jörg Rudloff, the head of the Management Board of investment bank Barclays Capital, will obviously infuriate the public, who will remember that BarCap paid out bonuses that were so good this year that bankers gathered at a bar immediately after work for a champagne toast to everyone receiving "at least a £600,000 bonus."

Here's a transcript of what he said:

"Europe is carrying a social rucksack, which makes us uncompetitive in this world. We have provided living standards for our populations which are unheard of, which no one ever thought would be possible, for the last 50 years."

"People do not want to give up these living standards."

"Populations are not ready to voluntarily discipline themselves in more work, less rewards, and less security. And it's only [natural] that the population would react like this and here, its a question of democratic leadership and a question of whether indeed we are able to reinvigorate ourselves and to state public ally in this world that that we want to be competitive."

This is what Rudloff says the EU has to do:

• Half of the social benefits have to go 
• People have to work more, longer hours, longer years.
• Otherwise, it is impossible to continue to fund the present system of today. 
• Promote communication and the free movement of people and the immigration from all European countries will push us to a much strong union.

Watch a video of his speech by clicking here

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Great Valley of Ancient Pyramids Discovered in Bosnia

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Powerful EU Nations May Reform “Mission Impossible” Treaty in Secret

Eric Blair
Activist Post

The AFP reported today that the European Union members agreed to make "landmark" and "tricky" reforms to the current Lisbon Treaty designed to "fend off another financial crisis."  To clarify, they did not all agree on final reforms, yet they all agreed changes must be made.

However, a top EU diplomat warned that getting all member nations to agree on the actual reforms may be a "mission impossible."  So, reportedly, the final deal may be hashed out in secret without any input from the European parliament or "wish-list" political requests from representatives of member states.  According to AFP:

The EU 27 are hoping a rewrite can be concluded via a quick and easy procedure that bypasses the European parliament and closes the door on member states who come knocking with wish-lists of their own to re-open chapters of the treaty.

EU President Herman Van Rompuy claimed that reforms are essential to shore up the euro and "to make the European economies more crisis proof."  The biggest reform to the treaty has been demanded by Europe's powerhouse economies, Germany and France, who want the creation of a permanent rescue fund to help fiscally challenged nations in the union.


Under the Lisbon Treaty it is currently not allowed for members to bail out other members who are in need of financial assistance, which is in direct contrast to the structure of the temporary European Financial Stability Fund created in May to "save" Greece. Merkel and others, claiming that the EFSF brought financial stability and saved the euro, demand that it is made a permanent rescue mechanism.  However, the fund only seems to provide a crisis cushion and does little to fundamentally fix the underlying issues of sovereign debt.

While David Cameron agrees in principle to the rescue fund, he came bearing a message that the EU spending is costing the UK too much money.  At the European Parliament one week before, UK's Nigel Farage forcefully called any increased funding to the EU without a voice in the reforms "Taxation without Representation."

With more talks planned for December, Van Rompuy belittles the member states' individual concerns as petty "shopping lists" and declared, "We don't want to reopen the treaty."  And in typical dictatorial form, the economically powerful nations also attempted to squash the voting rights of fiscally weaker members, as they sought the "suspension of voting rights for repeated debt and deficit offenders."  This demand by Germany and France that seems to erode national sovereignty even more than the current treaty does, has been "essentially buried" for now.

Some members also felt slighted by France and Germany making joint public demands prior to the meeting.  It demonstrates that the Union has a hierarchy that intends to bully other less-affluent members.  However, "Several Franco-German proposals failed to be carried . . . so you can't say everyone succumbed and fell into line with France and Germany," claimed the head of eurozone finance ministers, Jean-Claude Juncker.

With clear disagreements emerging, the euro may face another round of weakening against other currencies because of the uncertainty.  In order to prevent these disagreements from blossoming in the media, it would seem that the EU must act quickly, which essentially means they'll have to "bypass the European parliament and close the door on member states," who have real concerns over sovereignty.

In turn, the weaker nations who may squeak too loudly would likely be the ones most hurt by a devalued euro.  Thus, such institutions claiming to be unions like the EU, but that are invariably based on hierarchy, always seem to manifest in calculated fashion to provide no voice for the individual parts -- especially when they are weak or small.

RECENT ARTICLES by Eric Blair:
Baby Boomers: Get Out of The Stock Market Now
US Debt Woes Expose Hidden Austerity and Looting
The After-the-Fed Debate Begins: Greenbackers Vs. Goldbugs


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Mumbai Terror Suspect Worked for U.S. Government

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 18, 2020

Last week U.S. officialdom declared there was still a threat from unsubstantiated terrorists in Europe while New York City police conducted a drill simulating a Mumbai-style attack on civilians in Manhattan’s financial district. The State Department’s counterterror chief told reporters in London that a travel alert issued on October 3 that advised travelers in Europe that a “Mumbai-style assault” on civilian targets might be imminent, or maybe not.

On Saturday, federal officials acknowledged that U.S. businessman David Coleman Headley, who supposedly confessed to being a terrorist scout in the 2008 Mumbai attacks, was working as a DEA informant while training with terrorists in Pakistan. “Federal officials, who spoke only only on background because of the sensitivity of the Headley case, also said they suspect a link between Headley and the al Qaeda figures whose activities have sparked recent terror threats against Europe,” reports Pro Publica, an independent, non-profit newsroom that produces investigative journalism.

On Friday, Pro Publica reported that the FBI had been warned about Headley’s terrorist ties three years before the Mumbai attacks. Headley, however, wasn’t arrested until 11 months after the attack. “After Headley was arrested in a 2005 domestic dispute in New York City, his wife told federal investigators about his long involvement with the terrorist group Lashkar-i-Taiba and his extensive training in its Pakistani camps,” writes Sebastian Rotella . “She also told them he had bragged about being a paid U.S. informant while undergoing terrorist training.”

Lashkar-i-Taiba was designed for black ops. It is a creation of Pakistan’s Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, and “receives considerable financial, material and other forms of assistance from the Pakistan government, routed primarily through the ISI. The ISI is the main source of LeT’s funding. Saudi Arabia also provides funds,” according to the South Asia Terrorism Portal. Lashkar-e-Taiba also played a part in the ISI organized Bosnian campaign against the Serbs, which was directed by the CIA and British intelligence.

Lashkar is the military wing of the Markaz Dawat wal Irshad, connected to the Pakistani Ahl-e Hadith, a group with close affiliations to the Saudi Wahhabis. Markaz was established in 1986 by two Pakistani university professors assisted by Abdullah Azzam, a close aide of Osama bin Laden. Azzam was “enlisted” by the CIA to run Islamic groups in Peshawar and later as a go-between for the Afghan Mujahideen.

News of Headley’s connection to intelligence is nothing new. In 2009, it was reported that he may “have been a US undercover agent who turned rogue,” according to the Times of India.

During his interactions in India, Headley frequently introduced himself as a CIA agent.

David Headley was mentioned in a report on domestic terrorism issued by Tom Kean, Lee Hamilton, and the Washington-based Bipartisan Policy Center’s National Security Preparedness Group. Kean and Hamilton led the effort to blame cave-dwelling Muslims for the attacks of September 11, 2001. “The leadership of radical Islamist groups, including al Qaeda, have become Americanized through such figures as the radical cleric Anwar al-Awlaki, who grew up in New Mexico, and Chicagoan David Headley, who helped plan the 2008 terror attacks in Mumbai,” the New York Post reported on the ninth anniversary of September 11.

Indeed, terrorism has become “Americanized,” in fact most Islamic terrorism is a creation of U.S., British and Israeli intelligence with the help of junior partners such as Germany.

In 1997, Headley, aka Daood Sayed Gilani, a convicted drug dealer, was plucked out of prison by the DEA and sent to Pakistan to conduct undercover surveillance operations for the Drug Enforcement Administration. In 2002 and three times in 2003, he attended ISI created and Saudi funded Lashkar-e-Taiba training camps in Pakistan.

The FBI was well aware of this. According to the Pro Publica report, Headley’s wife not only told the FBI that her husband was an active Lashkar-e-Taiba militant, but also that had trained extensively in their Pakistani camps and had also shopped for night vision goggles and other equipment.

Once again, we will be told all of this was an “intelligence failure” and Headley wandered off the reservation to become radicalized by Pakistani terrorists.

At this point, however, we are not being told much of anything. The corporate media, with the notable exception of the New York Times and the Associated Press, is not reporting this story. It is a blip on the corporate media radar screen. The obviously contrived European terror threat has received far more coverage, even though there is absolutely no evidence terrorists plan to do anything in Europe or anywhere else, least of all in the United States.

How much more evidence do we need? David Headley was obviously working for the U.S. government and was “radicalized” and trained by a documented CIA-ISI group with connections to the Saudis and Wahhabism.

The CIA no longer even attempts to cover its tracks as it manufactures fake terror and terrorist groups. Five minutes with an internet search engine will produce enough information to demonstrate the fact governments engineer terror and terrorists.

Governments routinely use manufactured terror to push their agendas. It is out in the open and in our faces. But don’t expect the New York Times or CNN to connect the dots. Pointing out the obvious is the job for conspiracy theorists.

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FBI was warned of Mumbai plotter's terrorism ties

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The Neoliberal Experiment and Europe's anti-Austerity Strikes: Governments must Lower Wages or Suffer Financial Blackmail

By Michael Hudson

Global Research, September 30, 2010

While Labor Unions celebrate Anti-Austerity Day in Europe, the European Neoliberals raise the ante: Most of the press has described Wednesday's European-wide labor demonstrations and strikes across in terms of the familiar exercise by transport workers irritating travelers with work slowdowns, and large throngs letting off steam by setting fires. But the story goes much deeper than merely a reaction against unemployment and economic recession conditions. At issue are proposals to drastically change the laws and structures of how European society will function for the next generation. If the anti-labor forces succeed, they will break up Europe, destroy the internal market, and render that continent a backwater. This is how serious the financial coup d'etat has become. And it is going to get much worse - quickly. As John Monks, head of the European Trade Union Confederation, put it: "This is the start of the fight, not the end." Spain has received most of the attention, thanks to its ten-million strong turnout (reportedly half the entire labor force). Holding its first general strike since 2002, Spanish labor protested against its socialist government using the bank crisis (stemming from bad real estate loans and negative mortgage equity, not high labor costs) as an opportunity to change the laws to enable companies and government bodies to fire workers at will, and to scale back their pensions and public social spending in order to pay the banks more. Portugal is doing the same, and it looks like Ireland will follow suit - all this in the countries whose banks have been the most irresponsible lenders. The bankers are demanding that they rebuild their loan reserves at labor's expense, just as in President Obama's program here in the United States but without the sanctimonious pretenses. The problem is Europe-wide and indeed centered in the European Union capital in Brussels. This is why the major protests were staged there. On the same day that the strikers demonstrated, the neoliberal European Commission (EC) outlined a full-fledged war against labor. Fifty to a hundred thousand workers gathered to protest the proposed transformation of social rules by the most anti-labor campaign since the 1930s - even more extreme than the Third World austerity plans imposed by the IMF and World Bank in times past. The neoliberals are fully in control of the bureaucracy, and they are reviving Margaret Thatcher's slogan, TINA: There Is No Alternative. But there is, of course. In the small Baltic economies, pro-labor parties have made it clear that the alternative to government shrinkage is to simply repeal the debts, withdraw from the Euro and break the banks. It is either the banks or labor - and Europe has just realized that this is truly a fight to the economic death. And the first test will come this Saturday, when Latvia holds its national parliamentary elections. The EC is using the mortgage banking crisis - and the needless prohibition against central banks monetizing the government budget deficit - as an opportunity to fine governments and even drive them bankrupt if they do not agree roll back public-sector salaries. Governments are told to borrow at interest from the banks, rather than raising revenue by taxing them as they have done for half-a century following the end of World War II. And if governments are unable to raise the money to pay the interest, they must close down their social programs. And if this close-down shrinks the economy - and hence, government tax revenues - even more, then the government must shut down even more social spending. From Brussels to Latvia, neoliberal planners have expressed the hope is that lower public salaries will spread to the private sector as well. The aim is to shrink their economies to roll back wage levels by 30 percent or more - depression-style levels - in the belief that this will "leave more surplus" available to pay in debt service. Governments are to tax labor - not finance, insurance or real estate (FIRE), but to impose new employment and sales taxes while cutting back public pensions and public spending. Europe is to be turned into a banana republic. This requires dictatorship, and the European Central Bank (ECB) has assumed this power from elected government. It is "independent" of political control - celebrated as the "hallmark of democracy" by today's new financial oligarchy. But as Plato's dialogues explained it, what is oligarchy but the political stage following democracy. We can now await the new power elite making itself hereditary - by abolishing estate taxes, for starters - and turning itself into an outright aristocracy. "Join the fight against labor, or we will destroy you," the EC is telling governments. One can therefore forget the economics of Adam Smith, John Stuart Mill and the Progressive Era, forget Keynes and forget the early 20th-century social democratic traditions. Europe is entering an era either of totalitarian neoliberal rule. This was inevitable since the Chilean dress rehearsal after 1973. After all, one cannot have "free markets" neoliberal style without totalitarian control. This is what Wednesday's strikes and demonstrations were about, after all. Europe's class war is back in business - with a vengeance! This is economic suicide, but the EU is sticking to its demand that Euro-zone governments keep their budget deficits below 3% of GDP - and their total debt below 60% of GDP. They must not raise taxes on the wealthy, but only on labor and what it buys (via sales taxes). Yet at the same time they must slash wages and pensions, cut back public spending and employment, and shrink the economy. When an economic problem is as economically destructive as this, it can only be imposed by economic blackmail. On Wednesday the EU passed a law to fine governments up to 0.2% of GDP for not "fixing" their budget deficits by imposing fiscal austerity. Nations that borrow to engage in countercyclical "Keynesian-style" spending that raises their public debt level 60% of GDP will have to reduce the excess by 5% each year - or else suffer harsh punishment. And unlike central banks elsewhere in the world, Europe's central bank is forbidden from monetizing public-sector governments. These governments must borrow from banks, letting these institutions create their own interest-bearing debt on their own keyboards rather than having their own central bank do it without the cost. The financial privatization and monopoly in credit creation that governments have relinquished to banks is now being made to pay off - at the price of breaking up Europe. The unelected members of the European Central Bank (ECB, independent from democratic politics, not from control by its commercial bank members) has taken over planning power from elected government. Beholden to its constituency, the financial sector, the ECB has had little trouble in convincing the EU commission to back the new oligarchic power grab. It threatens to fine euro-area states up to 0.1% of their GDP for failure to obey its neoliberal recommendations - ostensibly to "correct" these imbalances. But the reality, of course, is that every neoliberal "cure" only makes matters worse. Rather than seeing rising wage levels and living standards as a precondition for higher labor productivity, the EU commission will "monitor" labor costs on the assumption that rising wages impair competitiveness rather than raise it. The broad spectrum of neoliberal junk economics is being brought to bear. If members of the euro cannot depreciate their currencies, then they must fight labor - but not tax real estate, finance or other rentier sectors, not regulate monopolies, and not provide public services that can be privatized at much higher costs. Privatization is not deemed to impair competitiveness - only rising wages, regardless of productivity considerations. This economically destructive policy has been tested above all in the Baltics, using countries such as Latvia as guinea pigs to see how far labor can be depressed before it reacts politically. Latvia gave free reign to neoliberal policies by imposing flat taxes of 51% on employees, while real estate is taxed at only 1%. Public-sector wages have been reduced by 30%. Labor of working age (20 to 35 year-olds) are emigrating in droves. Lifespans are shortening. Disease rates are rising. The internal market is shrinking, and so is Europe's population - as it did in the 1930s, when the "population problem" was a plunge in fertility and birth rates (above all in France). That is what happens in economic depressions. Iceland's looting by its bankers came first, but the big news was Greece. When that nation entered its current fiscal crisis, European Union officials recommended that it emulate Latvia, which stands as the poster child for neoliberal economic devastation. The basic theory is that inasmuch as members of the euro cannot devalue their currency, they must resort to "internal devaluation": slashing wages, pensions and social spending. So while Europe enters recession it is following precisely the opposite of Keynesian policy. It is reducing wages, ostensibly to "free" more income available to pay the enormous debts that Europeans have taken on to buy their homes, to pay for schooling (hitherto provided freely in many countries such as Latvia's Stockholm School of Economics), transportation and other public services that have been privatized (at sharply, drastically increased rates - which the privatizers justify by pointing to the enormously bloated financial fees they had to pay their bankers and underwriters to buy the infrastructure being sold off by governments that the neoliberals blocked from taxing the wealthy). The result is economic shrinkage. Europe is creating economic suicide - and demographic and fiscal suicide too. Every attempt to "solve" the problem of this shrinkage, neoliberal style, only makes things worse. Latvia's public-sector workers have seen their wages cut by 30 percent over the past year, and its central bankers have told me that they are seeking further cuts, in the hope that this will lower wages in the private sector as well. What these cuts are doing, hardly by surprise, is spurring emigration - and also is destroying the real estate market, leading to defaults, foreclosures and a flight of debtors from the country. The emigration is headed by younger workers seeking employment in the shrinking economy. Indeed, Latvia's working conditions also happen to be Europe's most neoliberalized, that is, dangerous, unpleasant and almost neofeudal. For starters in yesterday's Action Day, there was the usual stoppage of transportation and an accompanying honk concert in Latvia's capital city of Riga for 10 minutes at 1 PM to let the public know that something was indeed happening. What is happening most importantly is the national parliamentary elections this Saturday (October 2), where the leading coalition, Harmony Center, is pledged to enact an alternative tax system and economic policy to the neoliberal policies that have reduced labor's wages and workplace standards so sharply - along with public infrastructure - over the past decade. Altogether about 10,000 Latvians attended protest meetings, from the capital in Riga to smaller cities as part of the "Journey into the Crisis." Six independent trade unions and the Harmony Center organized a protest meeting in Riga's Esplanade Park that drew 700 to 800 demonstrators, relatively large for so small a city. Another union protest saw about half that number gather at the Cabinet of Ministers where Latvia's austerity program has been planned and carried out. To highlight the economic issue, a bus tour drove journalists to the victims - schools and hospitals that had been closed down, government buildings whose employees had seen their salaries slashed and the workforce downsized. Crowds were reported to gather, re-igniting the anger expressed early last year in the cold of mid-January when Latvians had demonstrated to protest the start of these cuts. These demonstrations seem to have gained voter sympathy for the more militant unions, headed by the hundred individual unions belonging to the Independent Trade Union Association. The other union group - the Free Trade Unions (LBAS) lost face by acquiescing in June 2009 to the government's proposed 10% pension cuts (and indeed, 70% for working pensioners). Latvia's constitutional court was sufficiently independent to overrule these drastic cuts last December. And if the government does indeed change this Saturday, the conflict between the Neoliberal Revolution and the past few centuries of classical progressive reform will be made clear. The Neoliberal Revolution seeks to achieve in Europe what has been achieved in the United States since 1979, when real wages stopped rising. The aim is to double the relative share of wealth enjoyed by the richest 1%. This involves reduce the population to poverty, breaking union power, and destroying the internal market as a precondition for blaming all this on "Mr. Market," presumably inexorable forces beyond politics, purely "objective" rather than a political power grab. It is not really "the market" that is promoting this destructive economic austerity, of course. Latvia's Harmony Center shows that there is a much easier way to cut the cost of labor in half than by reducing its wages: Simply shift the tax burden off labor onto real estate and monopolies (especially privatized infrastructure). This will leave less of the economic surplus to be capitalized into bank loans, lowering the price of housing accordingly (the major factor in labor's cost of living), as well as the price of public services (by having owners take their returns as a return on equity rather than factoring interest charges into their cost of doing business). The tax deductibility of interest will be repealed - there is nothing intrinsically "market dictated" by this fiscal subsidy for debt leveraging. No doubt many post-Soviet economies will find themselves obliged to withdraw from the euro area rather than see a flight of labor and capital. They remain the most extreme example of the Neoliberal Experiment to see how far a population can have its living standards slashed before it rebels.

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Barack Obama accused of exaggerating terror threat for political gain

• Pakistani diplomat launches scathing attack on White House
• European intelligence claims raised terror alerts 'nonsensical'

Heightened Terror Threat France - Franck Prevel/Getty

Simon Tisdall and Richard Norton-Taylor
Guardian

A US terror alert issued this week about al-Qaida plots to attack targets in western Europe was politically motivated and not based on credible new information, senior Pakistani diplomats and European intelligence officials have told the Guardian.

The non-specific US warning, which despite its vagueness led Britain, France and other countries to raise their overseas terror alert levels, was an attempt to justify a recent escalation in US drone and helicopter attacks inside Pakistan that have "set the country on fire", said Wajid Shamsul Hasan, the high commissioner to Britain.

Hasan, a veteran diplomat who is close to Pakistan's president, suggested the Obama administration was playing politics with the terror threat before next month's midterm congressional elections, in which the Republicans are expected to make big gains.


He also claimed President Obama was reacting to pressure to demonstrate that his Afghan war strategy and this year's troop surge, which are unpopular with the American public, were necessary.

"I will not deny the fact that there may be internal political dynamics, including the forthcoming midterm American elections. If the Americans have definite information about terrorists and al-Qaida people, we should be provided [with] that and we could go after them ourselves," Hasan said.

"Such reports are a mixture of frustrations, ineptitude and lack of appreciation of ground realities. Any attempt to infringe the sovereignty of Pakistan would not bring about stability in Afghanistan, which is presumably the primary objective of the American and Nato forces."

Dismissing claims of a developed, co-ordinated plot aimed at Britain, France and Germany, European intelligence officials also pointed the finger at the US, and specifically at the White House. "To stitch together [the terror plot claims] in a seamless narrative is nonsensical," said one well-placed official.

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Absurd Terror Threat Arises in Mid-term Home Stretch

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
October 2, 2010

Intelligence agencies — legendary for staging numerous false flag attacks — are warning that Osama bin Laden has issued instructions for Mumbai-style attack on three European targets.

Earlier in the week U.S. officials issued a warning that Osama and crew would strike once again. The new plot, emerging suspiciously close to U.S. mid-term elections and coinciding with the Pentagon’s illegal murder campaign in Pakistan, is said to “credible but non-specific.” The new plot was supposedly revealed by a suspect undergoing “interrogation” at the Bagram torture facility in Afghanistan.

“Investigators believe al Qaeda leader Osama bin Laden signed off on a European attack plan, a separate law enforcement source said. But U.S. and international officials say they have seen no sign of an imminent attack,” CNN reported on September 29.

Osama bin Laden: CIA Asset

Osama bin Laden ran MAK (Maktab al-Khidamat), an organization created by Pakistan’s ISI at the behest of the CIA. It funneled money, weapons, and internationally recruited fighters into the war created in part by Jimmy Carter’s National Security Adviser, Zbigniew Brezinski. Osama was closely tied to the Afghan warlord and ISI stooge Gulbuddin Hekmatyar who ran drugs for the CIA. In the 1980s, emissaries from the United States met with Osama. The CIA paid Osama to train the militant group Abu Sayyaf and others at his CIA-built camps in Afghanistan. In New York, Osama’s MAK operated the CIA-connected al-Kifah Refugee Center that was involved in the 1993 WTC bombing. The U.S. government would later call the al-Kifah charity the “precursor organization to al-Qaeda.”

MSNBC, the New Yorker, Le Monde, and other corporate media sources reported on these connections, but after September 11, 2001, the evidence was relegated to the memory hole and a new narrative was established.

Bin Laden Died in December, 2001

Osama bin Laden “died a peaceful death due to an untreated lung complication” in December, 2001, according to a report carried by none other than Fox News. The FBI, former Pakistan dictator Musharraf, Afghan puppet leader Hamid Karzai, Israeli intelligence, the late Benazir Bhutto, and many others have said Osama bin Laden is dead.

In a purported will published in a London-based Arab news magazine, al-Majalla, Osama allegedly instructed “mujahedeen everywhere” to “devote your efforts to purifying your groups from the agents and the cowards and those impostors who claim to be scholars amongst you,” in other words operatives working for the CIA, Mossad, and British intelligence.

CNN carried a report on the will on October 26, 2002, but the fact Osama is dead and buried is never mentioned when CNN publishes stories warning that the CIA created terror leader has issued a tape or warnings of attacks that never seem to occur.

Bin Laden: A Boogieman Designed to Perpetuate a Phony War on Terror

As David Ray Griffin notes, the phantom Osama is perpetually recycled to justify a war on terror designed to encompass a perpetually expanding array of targets. “Obama has appealed regularly to… intelligence estimates, which have invariably claimed that bin Laden is hiding in Pakistan, somewhere along its border with Pakistan. This claim has been used to justify the extension of US military activity into Pakistan,” Griffin wrote last October. The “fake bin Laden tapes appear to be simply one part of an extensive propaganda operation, in which the US military intelligence is using tax dollars – illegally – to propagandize the American public, with the aim of furthering the militarization of America and its foreign policy.”

Earlier this year, the CIA admitted “creating a fake video in which intelligence officers dressed up as Osama Bin Laden and his cronies in an effort to defame the terrorist leader,” Paul Jospeh Watson wrote on May 25. “This latest revelation bolsters evidence that the intelligence agencies, and perhaps more significantly, the military have been engaged in creating fake Bin Laden videos in the past.”

It is said Osama no longer produces video tapes because they may reveal his whereabouts. “Over recent years, bin Laden has issued audio tapes but no videos, after it emerged that the CIA was trying to identify where he was hiding by looking at the vegetation in videos he had released. In more than 30 audio and video tapes, he has warned European countries and the US about attacks and praised previous ones, although he has never talked of a preferred method,” reports the Telegraph.

Establishment Creates Fake Terror Threats for Political Gain

In July, a former senior adviser to Bill Clinton said that the only thing will rescue Obama’s presidency as his approval figures continue to plunge is a terror attack on the scale of Oklahoma City or 9/11. As Prison Planet noted July 14, Clinton was able to extinguish an anti-incumbent rebellion which was brewing in the mid 1990s by exploiting the OKC bombing to demonize his political enemies.

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Former Secretary of Homeland Security Tom Ridge wrote in his memoir last year that the neocon-infested Bush administration had raised the nation’s terror alert level in the days before the 2004 presidential election.

“An election-eve drama was being played out at the highest levels of our government” after Osama bin Laden released a pre-election message critical of Bush, Ridge writes. Attorney General John Ashcroft and Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld strongly advocated raising the security threat level to “orange,” even though Ridge believed a threatening message “should not be the sole reason to elevate the threat level,” CNN reported.

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