THEY HAD HIM AT THEIR MERCY. The burly man, hooded and helpless, sat on the ground as his two captors — a soldier dressed in black from helmet to boots, another clad in camouflage, both with rifles slung on their backs — grabbed him by his armpits and hauled him to his feet. A dark Mercedes minivan snaked up the dirt road toward them, as two other soldiers in full camouflage scanned the bare tree line with their automatic weapons at the ready. The van pulled up, its door slid open, and the men, captors and victim, were gone. It looked like a scene out of a thriller starring Liam Neeson or Jason Statham.
It was, indeed, something of a fiction.
In March, members of the U.S. Special Operations forces traveled to Bosnia and Herzegovina to train with local special police units. Carried out at Bosnia and Herzegovina’s national training center in Manjaca, the arrest demonstration, chronicled in an official video, was part of the first-of-its-kind Joint Combined Exchange Training (JCET) in the Balkan nation.
The training program was part of a shadowy and growing global engagement strategy involving America’s most secretive and least scrutinized troops. Since 9/11, Special Ops forces have expanded in almost every conceivable way — from budget to personnel to overseas missions — with JCETs playing a significant role. Special Operations Command keeps the size and scope of the program a well-guarded secret, refusing to release even basic figures about the number of missions or the countries involved, but documents obtained by The Intercept demonstrate that from 2012 to 2014 some of America’s most elite troops — including Navy SEALs and Army Green Berets — carried out 500 Joint Combined Exchange Training missions around the world.
That’s the official line, but the program appears to have an additional goal — transferring elite military skills from American operators to local forces. “Ultimately that is the overarching goal of these activities,” says Linda Robinson, a senior international policy analyst at the Rand Corp. and author of One Hundred Victories: Special Ops and the Future of American Warfare.
Just who is learning these “mission-critical skills” is often opaque since most JCETs — unlike this year’s mission in Bosnia and Herzegovina — are carried out in secret, far from the prying eyes of the press. The documents obtained by The Intercept show that many are conducted with “partner-nation” security forces that have been implicated in serious criminal acts.
While the U.S. military is barred by law from providing aid to foreign security forces that violate human rights, JCETs have been repeatedly conducted in Colombia, Saudi Arabia, Chad and many other nations regularly cited for abuses by the Department of State. Under the so-called “Leahy Law,” a vetting process is meant to weed out foreign troops or units implicated in “gross human rights violations” — including extrajudicial killing, forced disappearances, and cruel, inhuman, or degrading treatment. But the State Department office responsible for the vetting process receives only a tiny fraction of funding compared to the projects it oversees, and a spokesperson noted that “State does not track cases in a way that is easily quantifiable.” SOCOM, for its part, was evasive about whether the military command was aware of individuals or units disqualified by Leahy vetting. “If you have questions about who has been barred, I recommend you contact the State Department,” SOCOM’s McGraw wrote in an email.
REPORTS ON THE TRAINING of Special Operations forces, submitted to Congress and obtained through the Freedom of Information Act from the Office of the Assistant Secretary of Defense for Legislative Affairs, show that the U.S.’s most elite troops trained in 77 foreign nations alongside nearly 25,000 foreign troops under the JCET program in just 2012 and 2013. Both the number of planned missions and foreign nations involved in JCETs are forecast to rise next year, according to a separate set of documents publicly available from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller).
Four JCETs were conducted in Colombia in 2012, even though the State Department, in that same year, called attention to the country’s “extrajudicial killings, insubordinate military collaboration with members of illegal armed groups [and] forced disappearances,” among other abuses. In 2013, according to the OSD-LA documents, elite U.S. forces were back in Colombia for a month of JCET training, and in that same year, according to the State Department, “there were several reports that members of the security forces committed extrajudicial killings.”
Colombia is hardly an anomaly. Special operators, for example, carried out a JCET in Saudi Arabia in December 2011. The next month, Army Green Berets began a 60-day JCET while Saudi security forces clashed with demonstrators seeking an end to sectarian discrimination. The Saudi government said the demonstrators were armed but according to a State Department report, protesters claimed that “security forces responded to stone-throwing youths by firing indiscriminately” at them. In February 2012, elite U.S. troops kicked off a new JCET, practicing advanced marksmanship and close-quarter battle techniques while also focusing, according to the Pentagon documents, on “principles and procedures of human rights.” At the same time, however, Saudi security forces reportedly killed two activists and wounded as many as 50 people. Nevertheless, the JCETs continued. In 2013 the U.S. conducted four months of missions in the kingdom while the State Department held that there were, again, “some reports of human rights abuses by security forces,” including torture and violence directed at demonstrators.
In 2012, Special Ops forces also conducted three JCETs — focused on honing skills including close-quarter battle techniques and night operations — alongside Bahraini troops. That same year, the State Department called out the Persian Gulf nation for “a number of reports that government security forces committed arbitrary or unlawful killings” and the “arrest and detention of protesters on vague charges.” Three JCETs also took place in Cambodia in 2012, despite the State Department noting that “members of the security forces reportedly committed arbitrary killings.” In one instance, while Green Berets were conducting training in small unit tactics and human rights, Cambodian police and military forces clashed with lightly armed civilians during a land eviction operation. “Witnesses reported that government security forces stormed the village and opened fire with automatic weapons,” reads a State Department account of the incident, which left a 14-year-old girl dead.
In late 2011, elite U.S. forces traveled to Chad to train in desert warfare and long-range patrolling with indigenous troops, while the State Department’s annual human rights report noted that “the government or its agents committed arbitrary or unlawful killings.” The next year’s report drew attention to work by Amnesty International that found “Chadian officials and members of armed groups responsible for serious human rights violations, including unlawful killings, rape, and other torture, continued to act with impunity.” But that fall, special operators from the Navy, Air Force and Army were back in Chad practicing reconnaissance operations and tactical ground mobility. In 2013, while American troops were in the arid African nation rehearsing raids and training in “heavy weapons employment,” members of Chad’s security forces “shot and killed unarmed civilians and arrested and detained members of parliament, military officers, former rebels, and others,” according to the State Department.
In 2012, JCETs were also conducted in Algeria, where “impunity remained a problem,” and Tajikistan, where there was “torture and abuse of detainees and other persons by security forces,” according to reports by the State Department. Additionally, five JCETs were carried out in El Salvador (“isolated unlawful killings and cruel treatment by security forces); four in Lebanon (“torture and abuse by government and other security forces”); four in Romania (“police and gendarme mistreatment and harassment of detainees and Roma”); and two in Mexico (“police and military involvement in serious abuses, including unlawful killings, physical abuse, torture, and disappearances”); among other nations called out by the State Department.
In 2013, the story remained the same as Special Operations forces conducted multiple missions alongside local security forces in Bangladesh, Cambodia, Cameroon, El Salvador, Kenya, Romania, Indonesia, and Uganda, among other countries cited for abuses in the State Department’s human rights reports.
SPECIAL OPERATIONS FORCES CARRIED out 324 JCET missions from October 2011 through September 2013 (fiscal years 2012 and 2013), according to reports provided to Congress by OSD-LA. Documents from the Office of the Under Secretary of Defense (Comptroller) point to efforts at expansion since.
“Over the past 4 years, there has been a steady increase in the number of requests for SOF JCET participation,” reads an official report, issued earlier this year, on the proposed 2016 Pentagon budget. “The continued uptick in the number of training events and locations in FY 2016 is a testament to USSOCOM’s unwavering commitment to assure our allies and deter our aggressors in support of SOF’s global campaign.”
Of the six geographic combatant commands, Pacific Command saw, far and away, the most missions during 2012 and 2013. The Philippines, for its part, trumped all other nations in the number of JCETs in 2012 and tied Thailand for the top spot the following year.
Robinson, of Rand Corp., questions the value of these episodic missions, which last for weeks or a few months at most. Instead, she suggests an enduring approach, such as “the decade-long effort to build competent special operations forces and counternarcotics police in Colombia and assist the country’s counterinsurgency effort,” which she views as a success (though hardly an unqualified one) in helping to stabilize that country.
“Being in 70 countries, in and of itself, may not be the best use of SOF,” she says. “If there are fewer countries where a more persistent presence could have an effect like Colombia or the Philippines, it might be better. … Let’s focus on where we think we can actually have an effect.” She is quick to add, however, that even these two success stories haven’t been entirely successful, drawing attention to the problematic nature of dealing with troubled regimes. “The Philippine government, as a whole, has a terrible problem with corruption,” Robinson points out. “Obviously, Colombia’s military has had its problems, some of that is resurfacing now.”
The 2012 and 2013 JCETs in Colombia focused in part on advanced light infantry tactics, close-quarters combat, and small unit tactics — skills useful for an elite military force but also prized by sophisticated criminal syndicates. In fact, the State Department’s human rights reports not only implicate Colombia’s security forces in collaborating with illegal armed groups and criminal gangs, but in many ways acting like them, with significant human rights abuses that include disappearances and extrajudicial killings.
Under the Leahy Law — named after Vermont Sen. Patrick Leahy — the U.S. is barred from providing assistance to specific individuals or units “of the security forces of a foreign country if the Secretary of State has credible information that such unit has committed a gross violation of human rights.” While the official purpose of the JCETs is enhancing the skills of U.S. troops, the program — as with many other assistance efforts — is subject to State Department review.
While the law has prevented some aid from reaching Pakistan and Indonesia, the effectiveness of the Leahy vetting process has been criticized on a number of fronts — from insufficient funding to loopholes that allow it to be circumvented. As Lora Lumpe, a senior policy analyst at the Open Society Foundations observed, the State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor, which carries out the vetting, operated on a budget of just $2.75 million in 2014, while the security assistance projects it oversaw — including JCETs — were worth $15 billion.
Critics have also noted that not only can the White House ignore or evade the law — and the secretary of defense waive the prohibitions for “extraordinary circumstances” — but the structure of foreign militaries, the shifting of personnel, and the difficulties of tracking aid overseas, allows the law to be manipulated and makes it difficult to ensure that no funds reach problem units. Additionally, gaps in vetting procedures can potentially result in State Department researchers overlooking significant evidence of wrongdoing.
Very few foreign military units fail to pass the State Department’s litmus test. In 2012, 90 percent of the 162,491 cases vetted were reportedly approved, 1 percent were rejected, and 9 percent were suspended. The percentages were similar in 2013. And last year, of the roughly 160,000 units and individuals that were vetted, only 15,000 — just 9 percent — were denied, suspended or cancelled, a State Department spokesperson told The Intercept. Training requests are not tracked by program, so there’s no easy way to tabulate how many, if any, foreign units or individuals have been denied from taking part in JCETs, according to a State Department spokesperson.
SOCOM’s McGraw stated that Special Operations Command “has not turned down any requests to provide forces to a GCC [geographic combatant command] based on concerns over human rights violations because the human rights vetting process takes place before USSOCOM receives the request…Training requests go through the Leahy Law human rights vetting process before the requests are sent to USSOCOM.” According to McGraw, “USSOCOM fully supports and has complete confidence in the State Department’s Human Rights vetting process.”
http://www.tomdispatch.com/post/176042/tomgram%3A_nick_turse%2C_nothing_succeeds_like_failure/
Thank you, Mr. Nick, as always.
I have this evolving theory about empire’s pivot to Africa. It involves Yellowstone…
What about the recently developed DIKSOC, COCSOC and SOCUBIS operations? Based on Kabul-driven urban anti-terrorism operations, they’re far more outlandish.
This is indicative of our worldwide pandemic of militarization. And I can’t help but wonder–could part of the problem be that the world is run almost entirely by men? A cursory review of articles on line reveals that in the U.S.
• Male psychopaths outnumber female psychopaths by as many as 10 to 1.
• Men are responsible for about 86% of violent crime.
• Men are responsible for almost all rapes.
• Serial killers are almost always men.
• Male prisoners outnumber female prisoners by nearly 14 to 1.
• Although both men and women kill their own young children at about the same rate, men are responsible for about 80% of the murders of other people’s young children.
• About 99.9% of mass shootings have been committed by men.
• All genocides and mass killings have been incited by male leaders (Hitler, Pol Pot, Mao Zedong, Stalin, and on and on).
• Around 91% of hunters are men.
I think it’s fair to assume that men have been responsible for pretty much every war that has ever occurred in human history.
How often does a female police officer kill an unarmed citizen?
I’ve seen men at a military museum run their hands over weapons like they were lovers. What is it about men and violence?
This is not a plug for Hilary Clinton; I don’t plan on voting for her. But I have to wonder—what if women ran the world? What if women “manned” the armories? What if women controlled the military? Would our world be this militarized? Could part of the problem be… simply… men??
A female US President visiting their good friends in Saudi Arabia (who treat women like garbage) would be interesting to observe.
You need to learn statistics. :)
Although women might seem to be less violent & aggressive on average, that doesn’t say a thing about any particular man or woman. And which women do you think would try hardest to make it into powerful leadership positions? (Hint: the same type that does so as men.)
Sounds familiar. “The School of the Americas” who taught para-military groups how to torture and dehumanize the citizens of many a South and Central American country and overthrow (even assassinate) democratically elected leaders.
This redefining definition and renaming groups with a bad name is becoming quite the habit.
wait… this is news how?
we supported Pinochet and his jack-booted goose-stepping torture trolls…
we renditioned folks to Jordan, Saudia Arabia, various places in ‘eastern europe’ (read: poland) and (gasp!) Syria (pays to be a friend of Rome, hey Assad?)
we’ve re-written and published the various new editions of the book on how to abuse people…
Repeating an earlier comment:
For a little insight into abuses that are taking place on U.S. soil, please take a look at the site FightGangStalking dot com. Ignore the term “gang stalking”, but do pay attention to the tactics being employed in what is clearly a domestic counterintelligence program of stalking and harassment — one that is obviously designed to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, neutralize or otherwise eliminate” targets of said program, in the fashion of COINTELPRO, albeit with some new and modern twists.
Thanks for this article, as well as your books. Everyone should read “The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (American Empire Project)”, as well as “Kill Anything that Moves.” The military is clearly involved in domestic counterintelligence stalking and harassment, but there’s not any hard evidence. Yet.
Expose what’s transpiring domestically and our overseas operations will be dramatically altered, IMO.
We have Stasi-like apparatus — a bunch of thugs, terrorizing many who are law-abiding. It’s operational from coast to coast and no one seems to give a damn. Anyone who tries to get it to the fore is called “delusional.”
Naively, I never could have imagined it. What a country.
And now for some feedback. I am sympathetic but for some reason when I encounter these posts of yours and others like them I hear Who Could it be Now? Men at Work. Not to offend anyone who likes that song or band or your posts, or you but it doesn’t exactly flow with the thread or topic.
I am wondering if you or others choose to comment about this again if you wouldn’t mind trying to convey something more oh say.. lets go with a mix of Discipline, King Crimson and something with some urgency.
Thanks.
Mash-up, “Down With The Sickness” and “We’re Not Gonna Take It”?
The copy/paste sorta bothers me but at the same time I find it easier to gloss past it, myself. He’s doing his best, I think.
Ah, yes. Those who fancy themselves clever and bright, ridiculing those who are only telling the truth.
Thank you for such great work. I’ve followed you, Jeremy, for years on Amy Goodman’s show via FSTV…
Human Rights advocacy by the U.S. consists of nothing more than lip service and window dressing.
Window dressing… Heh. I don’t think I’ve been seeing much in the way of cosmetic attempts lately these days. We may need to knock that one off the list. Sigh. No offense America. I still want to believe in your principles. I think a lot of people do.
The final table in this piece indicates just how far the “pivot” to bringing down China has gone. Perhaps Nick will do a followup on the fine structure of that.
(From the table it also looks to me as though Russia is a close second as the target of these operations.)
Great article.
Great work Nick Turse! I think I missed the memo on you joining the Intercept?
It is though the description of the black clad training participants were members of any one of our domestic police department personnel. Especially the agents of a foriegn power on US proper, the NY police.
It must have happened quietly because we had no idea? We were invaded! We don’t live in America anymore.
These training missions better stop. This kinda shit isn’t what we are about. Just because our government is allowing this to take place doesn’t make it legal and those who decided to move forward with it immune from criminal prosecution…………..
Let’s see,
the secretary of state
of a nation which ignores the Geneva Conventions (of which, it is a part)
and has promoted numerous illegal vicious assaults on innocent people
around the planet
will determine if someone
“has committed a gross violation of human rights.”
THAT must be what they mean when they talk about “exceptional” americans!
If a chain is only as good as its weakest link,
the corporatized democrat/republican/libertarian machine of the USA
has little use for any chains of conscience.
They prefer killing their way into their delusions of heaven.
Summary: instead of just training the death squads of Latin American countries, now we do it globally.
Yep. Even here at home where we quietly stalk and harass people to death.
You take the allies you can get, not necessarily the allies you’d like to have. That the US is not being judgmental is very much to its credit.
Then again, the US does not have a spotless record itself. In the last few years, preaching about respect for human rights was often met with eye rolls and mutterings of words like Abu Ghraib and Guantanamo from the back of the classroom. So now everyone just gets down to business, practicing counterinsurgency techniques and ways of subduing civilian populations. It is much more businesslike and morale has improved enormously now that all the nagging has stopped.
Businesses usually have incomes.
Have you seen LMT’s stock price lately?
I wasn’t referring to Lockheed. Lockheed is technically a supplier to a warfighter — actual warfighters aren’t profiting. And I am not sure war is a ‘black’ in the accounting department of any nation.
Not every department within a business is a profit center. JCE training is for foreign soldiers to learn how to use American equipment. Those countries then buy that equipment from American businesses. The profits of military equipment manufacturers would be much lower if they had to pay their own sales people and trainers. So JCETs are a nice little hidden subsidy to business, but can be sold to the general public as spending necessary for American defense. So I’m not sure on what basis anyone could object. (Except for the minor detail of those allies’ human rights record – but I dispensed with that objection in my original comment).
Ah. Sort of like vendor-provided “free” software training then? Product lock-in for continued sales/growth?
I actually came back to say, after some thought, I was wrong about warfighters. Private ones seem to do pretty well, and that’s also a lock-in.
I think it was another article where a different commenter stated that capitalism isn’t a political system… But I actually think it may be more of a political system than a monetary system. Cogitating. At a minimum it is heavily wedded to whatever you want to call the current system (and I don’t believe it is an oligarchy either). Is it intellectually cowardly to just believe that trying to come up with a label is a waste of time? It is very clear that something is broken if war is one of the main exports, but I also don’t think the goal is war so much as power and control. People are afterthoughts. Pull back on any scene and I suppose it is easy to see anything as insignificant if you are piloting the camera.
But I am a bit all over the place. Apologies.
My point is (probably?) that whatever it is that this is is a perfect way to make sure that there can never be peace. If one were so inclined to take such a viewpoint one might even call it a brilliant business strategy. The problem being it is also utterly sociopathic. Then again we do have a dreadful overpopulation problem (take with the sarcasm intended, please).
(Since I know some people out there like to look for hidden meanings, and this site has its share of puppetry, there are none.)
That the US does not have a spotless record itself is an understatement, and it was long before the so-called war on terror [sic] that the US military has been advising the military forces of other nations. When I saw the headline for this article, my first thought was, How fitting! For as we learned at age four, birds of a feather flock together, and so do pigs and swine.
They like to destroy honest livelihoods, prevent innocent people from supporting themselves, and burn down villages leaving them utterly desolate, without permitting them to rebuild them or allowing them any form of habitat. I never understood that. That seems to create monsters… which I guess pays better.
Monsters are absolutely essential to justify DoD and CIA funding.
Probably true. I guess the surprising part to me is that I am not sure they have any need to create them anymore; our country seems to be doing well at making enemies overseas and at home as well. I am not sure if it is restraint or fear that holds most people back more. I don’t think the US is getting the kind of results it wants considering how few (non-police-instigated) terror plots have even been attempted in the US? I don’t know. I am less surprised than I suspect they are. Most people, I think, don’t want to be monsters.
Are insincere offers and false olive branches the rule of the land, now? Such a pity. One expects war-makers to engage in wars, but why start them against innocent civilians who are already oppressed and stateless? No wonder the world is going to hell. Victims who have had everything taken away tend to bristle at it when they have done nothing to deserve harsh treatment.
War is our business Our only business.
Disagree. Last I recall, the US is the number one exporter of culture and entertainment. I believe it is also the number one exporter of large-scale online services and software too? Less sure on that last one at this point.
I you look at it relative to GDP/capita, and/or percentage of the total national economy, Jamaica is probably the biggest exporter of “culture & entertainment” in the world.
And my guess is that the biggest exporter of large-scale online services is some tax-haven island somewhere. ;-)
One wonders what their vetting process entails…
In the days prior to the white man invading it was customary to partake of certain intoxicants to communicate with those higher up in an open space and a communal setting… how much has changed?
Any administration, any people within that administration, and any armed forces of the country where that administration resides, who support the beheading jackholes and religious extremists of Saudi Arabia, are American traitor swine — no ifs, ands or buts!
And any American with a minuscule portion of a brain should, by this late date, realize that the reason those 28 pages of the 9/11 Commission Report remain redacted is because they show that 9/11 was a joint US-Saudi operation.
They can easily prove me wrong by releasing that, just as they can prove me wrong by releasing the CIA torture report.
But they won’t . . . .
Its hardly new – even in Vietnam Green Berets trained brutal local soldiers.
I dont believe we should be making brutal regimes excellent in covert war and counter-insurgency – but it has been going on a long time.
This sounds similar to the School of the Americas, except global. Its purpose is to provide military training to government forces in allied countries. Students are no doubt taught to “serve and protect” the local populations, and the reason the US invests in this is for humanitarian reasons, I’m sure.
I once served in Special Forces decades ago when we were very few. Special Operations are now general operations worldwide. The spear so sharp, shiny and bright where just looking at it can bring blood. Such serious medicine should not to be prescribed by the foolish or imprudent, too lightly or widely administered and demands now lacking serious oversight. Passing this training out like candy in a world where today’s friend might be tomorrow’s enemy, or even where some of your friends are each other’s enemy, want could possibly go wrong? Is it just because it is another product in demand, it sells? Special Operator Soldiers do their mission but our leaders pick the policy and missions for good or ill. It is a sad day to have to louse the dogs of war. It is an evil day to do it unwisely.
I’m sure there’s an academic paper out there on the depiction of neoliberalism in Catch 22– applying market-based principles in places where there should not be market-based practices and how it all goes to hell, though of course as the story goes, Milo Minderbinder and his syndicate (and Halliburton) achieve great power and wealth in the midst of total disaster. I think Jeremy Scahill references the book in Dirty Wars.
Thanks Scahill is on my see list.
Fred
Nick, Nick, Nick — JCETs… (Nicholson: “Easy Rider”)
Sorry.
Now why do I suspect cowardly middle of the night sneak attacks is 101?
That’s a very interesting article. I fail to be surprised with the gap between U.S. rhetoric and behavior anymore.
Editorial suggestion; When using acronyms, please place the acronym next to the first use of the full phrase. It makes it easier if the reader does not have to backtrack to find the meaning of the acronym.
Yes please! “please place the acronym next to the first use of the full phrase” Such good work, unnecessarily difficult to read without the acronym clearly defined. Thank you.
For a little insight into abuses that are taking place on U.S. soil, please take a look at the site FightGangStalking dot com. Ignore the term “gang stalking”, but do pay attention to the tactics being employed in what is clearly a domestic counterintelligence program of stalking and harassment — one that is obviously designed to “expose, disrupt, misdirect, discredit, neutralize or otherwise eliminate” targets of said program, in the fashion of COINTELPRO, albeit with some new and modern twists.
Thanks for this article, as well as your books. Everyone should read “The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives (American Empire Project)”, as well as “Kill Anything that Moves.” The military is clearly involved in domestic counterintelligence stalking and harassment, but there’s not any hard evidence. Yet.
Expose what’s transpiring domestically and our overseas operations will be dramatically altered, IMO.
There are everywhere now.There are countries like Pakistan, Turkey,U.A.E,USA,UK,Puerto Rico where they have students in universities,workplaces who work as part of gang stalking teams to harass targets but issue is people need to understand they use mix of “mind control” and “real people”.They can convert a brilliant student to total failure by bombarding minds with EMF.Technically, only 10% people work with them which give death threat,blackmail, harass,gangstalk targets in unis,workplaces rest 90% is only mind control under MKULTRA program.The coopreation between US government,NGOs,governments across globe is wide spread for black operations like human experimentations,gang stalking and such.Your one comment online can get you on this “gang stalking, electronic harassment” list because you critized a war or talked about illegal works.Anything controversial can land you on no-touch torture list.The reason why so many people here are not commenting on intercept articles is because they are all scared of being added to this no-touch torture list.
No-Touch Torture is very active domestically. In addition to those mentioned, chemical-tools are used.
COINTELPRO / MKULTRA
Covert STASI are scum.
Really? I thought it was the “No-Fly List” but woe be it of me to challenge someone possessing of such distinctive grammatical structure and constipational punctuation. Here, have some space: ” “.
Is it reminding NSA shills of angels which guided Snowden?
Not sure. Seems to me that most people wouldn’t like to be accused of anything they aren’t to the point where their lives are ruined – on the topic of EITHER of those accusations.
I’ve been thinking about the migrants being trapped in various Central European countries lately. They can’t reach family or friends because none of them are anything but trapped either. Pretty easy to spread lies that way, though, I bet. Make up stories. Spread lies and disinformation. I’d heavily advise against believing anything anyone says about war or politics anymore.
Not sure why people have such an interest in fomenting wars except out of spite and a lack of access to the target countries they’re really trying to get to – so pick another target, make em stuck, watch em pile on top of each other at train stations, destitute. We both know war isn’t only in the physical realm.
It’s almost like they have the audacity to NOT accept being a tool. Lots of people die every day over bullshit. What good does any of it do?
I bet false flags are one of the first things they’re teaching these countries now. Need to make sure someone’s always capable of looking like an enemy even though they’re loyal to a fault!
Some people prefer peace or just to sit in a quiet corner trying to mind their own business, but for whatever reason other people just want war profits, and to hell with the costs. They’ll make anything up.
Next they’ll call the Hungarians terrorists no doubt. I know they want to. And those Hungarians will resist those labels too, if only because they have no other choice and nowhere to go, and to hell with anyone trying to impugn their integrity, honour, and values.
I am happy to see some countries are finally accepting some of the Syrian migrants. But I am deeply bothered other countries are trying to block aid. Mostly it confuses the heck out of me and makes me think the entire world has gone insane.
Free speech, liberty, justice for all…. That was a good one while it lasted, I guess.
There are a lot of sock puppets on these places, but that doesn’t mean everyone’s a frigging spy or sock puppet.
You sound like one.
According to McGraw, “USSOCOM fully supports and has complete confidence in the State Department’s Human Rights vetting process.”
LOL. Of course it does. Just like the NSA has complete confidence in the FISC.
The Leahy Law is a nice idea. But if the “State Department’s Bureau for Democracy, Human Rights, and Labor,” (pretty Orwellian name if there ever was one) doesn’t have the will and the resources to enforce it, then it’s mostly meaningless or cover to say the “American government cares about others human rights” (of course most know it doesn’t, it cares about its “interests” first and human rights down the list if at all).
Unfortunately this is precisely how nuns end up getting thrown out of helicopters and terrorists gain the knowledge and skills to do really bad shit.
None of this will change without a revolution in America that ends with its populace deciding it no-longer wants to be in the MIC empire game. It can only begin by slashing the Pentagon and Intelligence agency budgets in half, and passing strict laws that prohibit America and America’s arms manufacturers (and creation of an enforceable international regime of laws addressing same issue) from profiting off the sales of weapons to other nations, and strict laws on exporting military skills, training and knowledge to foreign nationals.
Until the “profit” is taken out of America’s military endeavors nothing will change. Some would argue, Maj. Gen. Smedley Butler and many others, that “profit” is the entire “business” of the US global military presence. It certainly isn’t “defense.” Given our geographic isolation and nuclear arms capability there is no actual existential threat to our lands and people presented by any nation or group of nations, that a strictly cabined US territory based military presence couldn’t deal with into perpetuity. But obviously that isn’t what our military is built for, it is built for empire expansion and preservation.
First, the US Gov’t main business is war and war materials manufacture. Second, as stated above this has been going on for a long time. Precisely the reason that US citizens are slowly catching on that we are being robbed of our resources and morality and soon will rebel. History proves this time and again. There are no walls high enough…..