Bombing in Afghanistan Kills at Least 32 at Peaceful Protest

[Abz2000]

Take note of why the people were protesting - and think about whether it was really a person giving his life for Allah's sake - or whether it was a bombing by those tied to the illegal American occupation of Afghanistan and was simply reported as a suicide bomb.... also notice how language and general associations are used to create a very different image from what the plain facts of the matter would conjure - i.e people were murdered during a gathering protesting the actions attributed to a police officer - although it is a fact that private contracting mercenaries and CIA have been caught multiple times running illegal private "prisons" and torturing people for information with the aim of finding targets on behalf of the american government who have put bounties on people's heads.

KABUL, Afghanistan, Sept. 15 - Three Americans were sentenced here on Wednesday to 8 to 10 years in prison for running a private jail and torturing prisoners, after a panel of three Afghan judges rejected their claim that they were working for a Pentagon counterterrorist group led by Lt. Gen. William G. Boykin, the deputy undersecretary of defense for intelligence.

Jonathan K. Idema, 48, a former member of the Special Forces, and Brent Bennett, 28, an Army-trained forward air controller, were sentenced to 10 years, and Edward Caraballo, 42, a journalist filming a documentary about them, was given 8 years.

Four Afghans working for the men were given sentences of one to five years. The Americans stood still as they heard the sentences relayed by an interpreter. Behind them, the youngest defendant, a 15-year-old Afghan translator, began to cry.

The Americans immediately said that they had had been abandoned by their American masters because they had become a political liability. "This can only have been staged by the U.S. government -- we were an embarrassment," said Mr. Caraballo, an award-winning cameraman who says he was filming Mr. Idema's counterterrorist operations.....


.....The aide responds: "I told General Boykin that you called. I gave him the information and to the D.I.A.," apparently referring to the Defense Intelligence Agency.

Mr. Idema says, "There are more bombs and more bombers, and we are hitting them in five hours."

The aide replies, "Five hours? Jack, I'm going to have someone from the D.I.A. contact you on your cell number, so give me a few minutes."

In another conversation, which the defense represented as having occurred days before the men were arrested by Afghan authorities, Mr. Idema is clearly asking for some help. General Boykin's aides explain that they had been trying to separate the general from Mr. Idema's activities to avoid any attention from the news media.

Mr. Idema says, "Someone's got to do something within 12 hours or I'm going to e-mail this [expletive] thing to Dan Rather. Do you think I would rot in prison if there's a problem?"

https://www.nytimes.com/2004/09/16/w...in-prison.html

Jonathan Keith "Jack" Idema (May 30, 1956 – January 21, 2012) was a former U.S. Army reserve special operations non-commissioned officer with a controversial history. In September 2004 he was found guilty of running a private prison in Afghanistan and torturing Afghan citizens. At the time, Idema had been portraying himself as a U.S. government-sponsored special forces operative on a mission to apprehend terrorists. However, the U.S. government has repeatedly denied most of such claims.[4].......

....... Illegal entry into Afghanistan was one of the charges leveled against Idema and two other Americans accompanying him – former soldier Brent Bennett and television journalist Edward Caraballo. That charge was eventually dropped.[citation needed]

Idema first traveled to Afghanistan in November 2001 to conduct what he said was "humanitarian relief" work.[35] It was at this time that he involved himself in the research Robin Moore was conducting for his book The Hunt for Bin Laden. He was actually working for National Geographic with Gary Scurka.

According to Gary Scurka, a reporter for CBS News, Idema contacted him a few weeks after the September 11 terror attacks and announced he was going to Afghanistan to do humanitarian-aid work, saying he was to work with Knightsbridge International and the Partners International Foundation, two aid groups run by former military personnel.[7] This led to Scurka and Idema presenting a film documentary project for National Geographic.[36]

Idema, Gary Scurka, and Greg Long traveled to Tashkent, Uzbekistan, where they were arrested for visa problems and held in a cell overnight. The three were freed after their captors received a letter from the US embassy in Uzbekistan, written by an officer in the US Defense Attache's Office, describing Idema and Scurka as "contracting officers from the Defense Department who arrived to the Republic of Uzbekistan for an official trip." The letter, which was verified as authentic by the director of the Department of State's press office, was dated November 2, 2001, and asks Uzbekistan's ministry of foreign affairs for help in issuing visas to Idema, Gary Scurka, and Greg Long.[37] .......


....... Idema led a group he called "Task Force Saber 7" consisting of two other Americans and several Afghans. The group may have been operating in Afghanistan with independent financial backing or with funds from two lawsuit settlements Idema had won a few years earlier, one of which was for $1.8 million.[33][32] He frequently interacted with reporters, often going to great lengths in his interviews to stress connections with the CIA and Special Forces. Some supporters suggest that he was a former member of an unspecified covert operations unit, reactivated and positioned in Afghanistan to hunt for Osama Bin Laden under operation Alec Station. Relationship to the Northern Alliance was denied by their official representative in the United States. ......


...... Idema was known to have a volatile temper that seemed to be particularly directed against news correspondents assigned to Kabul. On several occasions, Idema threatened journalists with bodily harm or death, and in one particular instance, at a dinner in December 2001 he threatened to kill a reporter from Stars and Stripes because the reporter had disclosed Idema's fraud conviction.[42]

It has been recorded that Idema did frequently contact the Defense Department through the front office of General William G. Boykin in the Pentagon, and that his information was duly acknowledged. However, all of those contacts were outside the US Military operating channels, and were all one-sided calls from Afghanistan via his Idemas personal Satellite Phone. Boykins office repeatedly asked Idema to stop making these unsolicited phone calls, because they were disruptive; time consuming; and Boykin could not be of assistance. Idema continued calling Boykins office to establish some sort of self-serving relationship, until his arrest. While the US government was aware of Idema's activities in Afghanistan, they stated there was unequivocally no relationship between them.

The United States Central Command stated that Coalition forces received one detainee from Idema on May 3, 2004. Idema claimed that the individual was associated with the Taliban. Once in US custody, however, the detainee was determined not to be who Idema claimed, and was released in the first week of July.[43]

The United States was not the only government that had contact with Idema in Afghanistan; On three occasions, Idema tricked the Canadian led NATO mission into providing explosives experts and bomb sniffing dogs.[44] According to a spokesman for the ISAF, Idema called for and received technical support after his vigilante team raided compounds on June 20, 22, and 24 of 2004. ISAF personnel believed they were "providing legitimate support to a legitimate security agency."[44]

Idema also received assistance from Yunus Qanooni; former minister, senior Afghan government security advisor, and influential member of the Northern Alliance.[45] In one video tape presented at Idema's trial, Yunus Qanooni thanked Idema for uncovering an assassination plot against him. In the same tape Qanooni volunteered his personal security troops to help Idema with arrests.[46] Another tape appeared to show Qanooni's forces assisting Idema in a house raid.[45] .......




....... He tried further to prove his official status when he claimed to be working for the US Counter Terrorism group, the same group that some sources say he founded.[50] He claimed his group had prevented assassination attempts on Education Minister Yunus Qanooni and Defense Minister Marshal Mohammad Qasim Fahim. He also claimed the FBI interrogated several militants captured by his group and that after his arrest, the FBI removed from his premises hundreds of videos, photos and documents. Some of the pieces were later returned to Idema and his defense team. One of the videotapes shows Afghanistan's former education minister Yunus Qanooni thanking Idema for the arrest of two people, and offering his full cooperation in future raids......

....... In December 2001, Edward Artis, director of Knightsbridge, wrote to U.S. Army Special Operations Command warning them of Idema's activities, stating:

[Idema] is a very dangerous person by virtue of his carelessness and stupidity, and before he gets someone killed... he needs to be removed from the area. I feel that given the amount of time that he has been allowed to run around telling people he has been working for the U.S. Embassy, Pentagon, Special Ops under cover or the CIA, that he has garnered or bought enough contacts to pose a real threat to not only me and those near me but the over all mission of the United States and the Coalition that is fighting there.[9]

Idema later filed suit against Artis and Knightsbridge but the case was dismissed and a monetary judgement was in turn placed against him. .......


.......Idema was not without his supporters, usually found among blogs sympathetic to his situation. The contributors to these blogs believe that he is being unjustly punished for actions condoned, if not officially sanctioned, by the U.S. military. However, there has been little support for Idema's claims in general media outlets. Indeed, many members of the media who encountered Idema while they were on assignment in Afghanistan regard him as a fraud.[20][65]

Bombing in Afghanistan Kills at Least 32 at Peaceful Protest

By Zabihullah Ghazi and Fahim Abed
Sept. 11, 2018

New York



JALALABAD, Afghanistan — Extremists in eastern Afghanistan bombed a peaceful protest on Tuesday, killing at least 32 people, officials said, the deadliest in a series of attacks in Nangarhar Province over the day.

The bombings, which also struck three schools, followed a pattern of recent attacks by the Islamic State in Afghanistan, which has publicly vowed to target educational institutions and which staged a seven-hour assault on a school for midwives in the provincial capital, Jalalabad, in July.

The attack on protesters gathered in Momand Dara District, in a rural part of Nangarhar, also left at least 128 wounded, according to Attaullah Khogyani, the spokesman for the governor of Nangarhar.

Obaidullah Shinwari, deputy chief of the provincial council, said the casualty figures were most likely much higher. “Fifty people were killed and 150 others were wounded in today’s suicide attack in Momand Dara district,” he said.

In the case of the three schools, two high schools for girls and one for boys, bombs were hidden near the school buildings. One 14-year-old boy was killed, and four people were wounded.

The protesters in Momand Dara had gathered to demand the dismissal of a police commander, Bilal Pacha, whom they accuse of involvement in arbitrary killings, robberies and maintaining a private prison.

A suicide bomber approached the crowded tent where the protesters had gathered and detonated his explosive vest, Mr. Khogyani said.

“The suicide attacker got out of a white car and ran toward the protesters’ tent,” said Sayed Qayoom, a witness reached by phone. “He shouted ‘God is great’ and then blew himself up.”
There was no immediate claim of responsibility for any of the four attacks, but the Afghan affiliate of the Islamic State has claimed responsibility for similar strikes on government institutions, international aid groups, sporting events and other targets in the province in recent months. Taliban insurgents, also active in the area, denied any role in the bombings on Tuesday.

The Islamic State’s last remaining stronghold in Afghanistan is in the southern part of Nangarhar, where American and Afghan forces have carried out many operations against the group and reduced the area it controls. The militants have responded by carrying out attacks in urban centers and against lightly defended targets.


The attacks on Tuesday brought to six the number of schools attacked in the province in recent months. The Islamic State claimed responsibility for previous episodes.

On Wednesday, the Islamic State targeted a wrestling gym in the Afghan capital, killing more than 30 people, including two Afghan journalists, and wounding 91 others, according to the Health Ministry. The assailant had arrived at the gym on foot and detonated explosives hidden in a vest. An hour later, there was a blast from a vehicle packed with explosives close to the gym, which killed emergency service workers, journalists and civilians at the scene of the first bombing.

Taliban insurgents are responsible for most of the growing number of casualties across Afghanistan. In addition to fighting on the front lines against Afghan national forces and trying to capture territory, the group often carries out deadly attacks in big cities. But a Taliban spokesman, Zabihullah Mujahid, denied in a WhatsApp message that the group had played any role in the attacks on Tuesday.

The Islamic State has vowed to attack schools in the province in retaliation for American bombing campaigns against their forces.


Zabihullah Ghazi reported from Jalalabad, and Fahim Abed from Kabul, Afghanistan. Rod Nordland contributed reporting from Kabul.



https://www.nytimes.com/2018/09/11/w...g-attacks.html

9/11. This is the key usage that has reverberated down the years around which the others revolve. It is an anomalous numerical designation applied to an historical event, and obviously also the emergency telephone number. Try to think of another numerical appellation for an important event in American history. It’s impossible. But if you have a good historical sense, you will remember that the cornerstone for the Pentagon was lain on September 11, 1941, three months before the attack on Pearl Harbor, and that the CIA engineered a coup against the Allende government in Chile on Sept 11, 1973. Just strange coincidences? The future editor of The New York Times and Iraq war promoter, Bill Keller, introduced the emergency phone connection on the morning of September 12th in a NY Times op-ed piece, “America’s Emergency Line: 911.” The linkage of the attacks to a permanent national emergency was thus subliminally introduced, as Keller mentioned Israel nine times and seven times compared the U.S. situation to that of Israel as a target for terrorists. His first sentence reads: “An Israeli response to America’s aptly dated wake-up call might well be, ‘Now you know.’” By referring to September 11 as 9/11, an endless national emergency fear became wedded to an endless war on terror aimed at preventing Hitler-like terrorists from obliterating us with nuclear weapons that could create another ground zero or holocaust. Mentioning Israel (“America is proud to be Israel’s closest ally and best friend in the world,” George W. Bush would tell the Israeli Knesset) so many times, Keller was not very subtly performing an act of legerdemain with multiple meanings. By comparing the victims of the 11 September attacks to Israeli “victims,” he was implying, among other things, that the Israelis are innocent victims who are not involved in terrorism, but are terrorized by Palestinians, as Americans are terrorized by fanatical Muslims. Palestinians/Al-Qaeda. Israel/U.S. Explicit and implicit parallels of the guilty and the innocent. Keller tells us who the real killers are. His use of the term 9/11 is a term that pushes all the right buttons, evoking unending social fear and anxiety. It is language as sorcery. It is propaganda at its best. Even well-respected critics of the U.S. government’s explanation use the term that has become a fixture of public consciousness through endless repetition. As George W. Bush would later put it, as he connected Saddam Hussein to “9/11” and pushed for the Iraq war, “We don’t want the smoking gun to be a mushroom cloud.” All the ingredients for a linguistic mind-control smoothie had been blended.


I have concluded – and this is impossible to prove definitively because of the nature of such propagandistic techniques – that the use of all these words/numbers is part of a highly sophisticated linguistic mind-control campaign waged to create a narrative that has lodged in the minds of hundreds of millions of people and is very hard to dislodge.

It is why I don’t speak of “9/11” any more. I refer to those events as the attacks of September 11, 2001, which is a mouth-full and not easily digested in the age of Twitter and texting. But I am not sure how to be more succinct or how to undo the damage, except by writing what I have written here.

Lance deHaven-Smith puts it well in Conspiracy Theory in America.

The rapidity with which the new language of the war on terror appeared and took hold; the synergy between terms and their mutual connections to WW II nomenclatures; and above all the connections between many terms and the emergency motif of “9/11” and “9-1-1” – any one of these factors alone, but certainly all of them together – raise the possibility that work on this linguistic construct began long before 9/11….It turns out that elite political crime, even treason, may actually be official policy.

Needless to say, his use of the words “possibility” and “may” are in order when one sticks to strict empiricism. However, when one reads his full text, it is apparent to me that he considers these “coincidences” part of a conspiracy. I have also reached that conclusion. As Thoreau put in his underappreciated humorous way, “Some circumstantial evidence is very strong, as when you find a trout in the milk.”

The evidence for linguistic mind control, while the subject of this essay, does not stand alone, of course. It underpins the actual attacks of September 11 and the subsequent anthrax attacks that are linked. The official explanations for these events by themselves do not stand up to elementary logic and are patently false, as proven by thousands of well-respected professional researchers from all walks of life – i.e. engineers, pilots, scientists, architects, and scholars from many disciplines (see the upcoming 9/11 Unmasked: An International Review Panel Investigation by David Ray Griffin and Elizabeth Woodworth, to be released September 11, 2018). To paraphrase the prescient Vince Salandria, who said it long ago concerning the government’s assassination of President Kennedy, the attacks of 2001 are “a false mystery concealing state crimes.” If one objectively studies the 2001 attacks together with the language adopted to explain and preserve them in social memory, the “mystery” emerges from the realm of the unthinkable and becomes utterable. “There is no mystery.” The truth becomes obvious.

How to communicate this when the corporate mainstream media serve the function of the government’s mockingbird (as in Operation Mockingbird), repeating and repeating and repeating the same narrative in the same language; that is the difficult task we are faced with, but there are signs today that breakthroughs are occurring, as growing numbers of international academic scholars are pushing to incorporate the analysis of the official propaganda surrounding 11 September 2001 into their work within the academy, a turnabout from years of general silence. And more and more people are coming to realize that the official lies about 11 September are the biggest example of fake news in this century. Fake news used to justify endless wars and the slaughter of so many innocents around the world.

Words have a power to enchant and mesmerize. Linguistic mind-control, especially when linked to traumatic events such as the September 11 and the anthrax attacks, can strike people dumb and blind. It often makes some subjects “unthinkable” and “unspeakable” (to quote Jim Douglass quoting Thomas Merton in JFK and the Unspeakable: the unspeakable “is the void that contradicts everything that is spoken even before the words are said.”).

We need a new vocabulary to speak of these terrible things. Let us learn, as Chief Joseph said, to speak with a straight tongue, and in language that doesn’t do the enemies work of mind control, but snaps the world awake to the truth of the mass murders of September 11, 2001 that have been used to massacre millions across the world.

https://www.globalresearch.ca/why-i-...nymore/5653524