Man Walks Into a Bar: A True Story
By Joe Scanlan – Sovereign Independent UK –
I know the story is true because the man who walked into the bar was me.
The following story is about a random meeting between myself and a British-born Asian-looking soldier in plain clothes recovering from Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder, PTSD (the current in-house name for shell shock) who will be referred heretofore as Reality as he does not wish to be named. Expletives have been deleted as we are a responsible media outlet. Those who want foul language and toilet humour can buy their own debasement and destabilisation from the BBC and Hollywood.
Having overheard a conversation I realised that Reality was awake to the world situation while those around him were apparently not so I let him know this. What follows is a reconstruction of the meeting which took place. Here is the gist of the conversation from memory.
Me:
You seem to be clued up to the world situation.
Reality:
I should be I’ve seen enough of it.
Me:
What have you seen?
Reality:
Plenty, I’ve been around.
Me:
How So?
Reality:
I’m with the British Forces. I’ve seen it all, screws up your head it does. I’m good at my job though, had the best of training. Nobody understands the loneliness of being in the world when you come back and try to live in the reality of everyday life, they just take you for granted – and themselves – but they have no idea about the slaughter they pay for with their taxes every time they buy themselves a drink. They all live on a different planet. I don’t want to be here but I want to go back into crime even less.
Reality then showed me several photos of himself in foreign lands carrying huge guns, sitting on tanks and armoured cars and dressed in full military camouflage. He was fully aware of the war we are all embroiled in in this part of the world. He showed me pictures on his laptop of a sky riddled with chemtrails, presumably taken over his house in the UK. He was aware of the GMO poisoning of the food, the fluoride poisoning of our water supply, the vaccine murders, the euthanasia in hospitals, the abortion factories and the entire eugenics programme financed by the money-Mafia. I was amazed!
Me:
These chemtrail air raids, why don’t the military organise a military coup – just go and blast the enemy silent-bombers out of the sky. Why don’t they go for the central brain of the Orwellian Surveillance State – and blast it to smithereens?
Reality:
Forget it! The military and police are by far the most brainwashed people on the planet. They are Manchurian Candidates, if someone in authority said shoot that child. They’d say “Sir, yes Sir” and put a bullet in the child’s head – following orders. The army is their family. They will never get the message. I’m just popping outside for a smoke.
Me:
I’ll join you this is interesting.
We stand outside the pub. I don’t smoke, never have, but am disgusted by the treatment of smokers – how they are isolated and turned into non-people – Hitler did this to smokers. I share this information with Reality. Attention then shifts to the crowds of shoppers milling around with shopping bags, talking about sport, TV programmes and trivia.
Me:
All these people here are like zombies they haven’t a clue about the real world. They get their reality downloaded into them from the media which has prepared a package for each age group, each race, each religious group. You’re not the only one that feels alone in the world. I have not seen first hand the horrors that you have seen, but I’ve nothing in common with any of these sheep. They are like drones and workers. They are oblivious even to the fact that they are being sprayed from the sky even though their own eyes cannot deny it. What has been done to them?
Reality:
They’re all in denial. Can’t face the horrors of reality. They think nobody would harm them, because they wouldn’t harm a flea. They have nothing to hide so they have nothing to fear. The genocidal maniacs don’t have to brainwash them. They brainwash themselves in everyday life, the media keeps them comfortably numb. They enjoy what they ought not to enjoy. They love their servitude.
Me:
Yes, but what do you think would happen if reality hit them. When reality hits, you stay hit, surely they’d have a total nervous breakdown.
Reality:
I’ll tell you one thing – and I’ve seen it in Kosovo and elsewhere. Listen, and listen good, when this thing goes down – and it could go down tomorrow, you want to get as far away from those zombies in denial as you possibly can. When their bellies have been emptied, when they can’t afford fuel or heating, when reality hits get away from them. They’ll be the most evil vicious monsters of all. They’ll run around like headless chickens in disbelief. They’ll take whatever kitchen or gardening utensils they can lay their hands on and hack each others heads off. I’ve seen severed heads impaled on railings by people exactly like those out there. When this thing goes down get away from those harmless complacent zombies – far, far away. They will eat you.
Here ends the true story.
Now you know why the pubs are being closed using cheaper supermarket booze, and why they are filled with huge screens pumping out sport, slot machines, loud music and TV trivia quizzes.
It’s a distraction to stop people talking about the horrors of the real world and the sadistic psychopaths that run it for us using our money.
Thursday, April 19, 2012
Tuesday, April 17, 2012
Child Paralyzed By Vaccinations And Stolen From Mother By State
DON'T DO IT PARENTS!!!
Pictures of little Emma at link.
The system is so desperate that the entire vaccine house of cards is about to crumble that they are demanding their partners in crime, big government, step in and kidnap children who could go to A FAIR COURT and PROVE that vaccines are killing people.
America and the UK are both a cesspool of corporate and big government corruption that is getting so out of control that they to, will fall just like the dinosaurs before them, one day soon.
SO YOU THOUGHT POLIO WAS CURED? YOU HAVE A WHOLE LOT TO LEARN. READ BELOW!
-------------------------------------
http://vactruth.com/2012/04/13/paralyzed-by-vaccinations/
By Christina England | April 13th, 2012 |
**Names have been changed to protect the identity of this family. All quotes are mother’s exact words and it must be noted that her first language is not English.
Emma is a six year old little girl who is suffering from severe vaccine damage which has been verified by several leading experts. Emma is totally paralyzed and unable to move any part of her body. She cannot speak and breaths with the aid of a small tube inserted through a tiny incision in her windpipe called a tracheotomy.
Instead of the help and compensation her family should be receiving, Emma has been stolen by the state and spends her days in what her mother describes as a ‘dreadful institution for the disabled’. Instead of the support Emma’s mother needs to come to terms with what has happened to her daughter she has been accused of trying too hard to find answers and get the professional help that she believes her daughter needs,
Ms X, Emma’s mother, is devastated and says that she did nothing wrong. She told me:
“I have a clean criminal record, I have no history of substance abuse of any kind, no rehab no nothing!! All I am guilty of is sometimes acting on fear my daughters time was running out.
I want her out of there NOW!!!
When I went to visit her, her skin stank, her stoma around her tracheotomy was bloody and dirty, she was in a tiny warm room with no fan or air conditioning, she is not allowed in a bath, she is not allowed to go out for walk, the staff don’t know a cough assist, which is terrible, as a cough assist is VITAL to her care, not knowing how to work this is unacceptable because if something happens and they don’t know, Emma could die!!!!! She has a cut on her neck after the nurses put a string on her skin with no sponge underneath resulting in this terrible cut!!!!!
It is really draconian how they have kidnapped her from me and now forbid me to see her.”
Sadly, Emma is just one out of a total of 10,000 children who have been taken into care in Great Britain since April 2011. Many of these children the Daily Mail (1) reported today, are part of the ever growing statistics in a worrying trend that is raising fears among professionals that large numbers of vulnerable children are being taken away from their families unnecessarily and left to languish in a care system that is failing them.
So how did a severely vaccine damaged child become part of these appalling statistics?
EMMA’S STORY UNFOLDS
Life was not always this bad for Emma and she did not start out her life disabled; in fact she used to be a normal, cheeky little girl who enjoyed toddling around and playing with her toys. Sadly however, despite being born a normal baby Emma was constantly ill, suffering from a weakened immune system resulting in persistent infections requiring antibiotics for weeks on end.
Ms X believes that Emma’s problems first began after she received her eight week routine vaccinations. Within hours of the vaccinations she became weak and feverish, refusing feeds. Worried, Ms X took Emma to the local hospital where doctors assured her that Emma had picked up a virus and would be fine. Not connecting the illness to the vaccinations, and blissfully unaware that this was only the beginning of her daughters problems, Ms X took her baby home.
As the months went by Ms X noticed that after each vaccination Emma became sick, however, convinced that by giving Emma her routine vaccinations she was doing the best that she could do for her child and on the advice given to her by her doctor, she continued to allow Emma to have the vaccinations. She said:
“It never occurred to me that her problems could be linked to the vaccinations. I had no one around to tell me about the possible side-effects of vaccines.”
Emma’s real problems only became apparent after she received the MMR vaccination at 13 months. Up until this age Emma had been developing normally, she was beginning to walk, talk, was alert and was reaching all her developmental milestones. After the MMR however, Emma became very sick indeed after an extremely bad reaction. By this time Ms X was beginning to connect the dots and was waking up to the realization that it was the vaccinations that were causing her daughters problems. Sadly it was too late for little Emma. The damage was done.
At 15 months Emma began to lose her balance and kept falling on her face. However, instead of putting her hands out to protect herself Emma just allowed herself to fall. Worried, Ms X took her daughter to see to a neurologist. He did standard tests which ALL came back normal.
Emma slowly began to lose control of her arms and upper torso and by June 2008 at the tender age of two she was unable to breathe on her own and was taken to the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit).
Ms X said:
“Shortly after that, the neurologist told me that he thought that Emma had a disease, but he had no proof for the diagnosis, so nothing further was done. I was devastated, fearing that my baby was going to die. I fell into the darkness of hopelessness and sorrow, so that I spent weeks as if in a daze. I don’t know what happened, but after two months something in my heart told me that Emma was not to die, not like this and not without knowing what was making her so sick. I felt I must carry on and that I was to get a second opinion. We took her to the best specialists in the UK. They did many tests, but still no answers!!”
Beginning to realize that the vaccinations were the problem, Ms X’s instincts told her to not allow Emma to have any further vaccinations. However, as we all know, doctors can be extremely persuasive and when you are alone and frightened and needing to trust doctors with your child’s life, it is easy to believe what they are telling you. Sadly against Ms X’s better judgment Emma was given the flu vaccine and she immediately became much worse.
Ms X relayed what happened next:
“Next day her eyes started to move rapidly from side to side like nystagmus and her body lost blood without any reason and she needed a blood transfusion of 500ml. She got very sick and my poor baby almost died, BUT then it was like an invisible voice and guidance that led me to the possibility that this illness of hers was very likely from the jabs, so I started to think back and everything became clear to me, namely that her symptoms were the serious side-effects of vaccinations!”
FOUR EXPERTS SAY EMMA’S CONDITION WAS CAUSED BY THE VACCINATIONS
Fearing the worst for Emma Ms X did everything possible to help her daughter. She traveled from one doctor to another to get help, advice and treatment. Each time the doctors explained to Ms X that Emma’s condition had been caused through VID or Vaccine Induced Disease.
Ms X managed to get reports from four leading experts from around the world stating that Emma had been damaged by vaccinations.
Here are the relevant extracts from those reports:
Expert 1.
23.01.2012:
My diagnosis of Emma ———— d.o.b. ——-.2006 condition is on clinical grounds but supported by some investigation as being that of motor sensory polyneuropathy and involving the brain stem nerves as well as the pheripheral ones. This has been accepted by others before my involvement in this case and Emma —— was subsequently given treatment with immunoglobulins and steroids. To me most likely autoimmune response following vaccination. Suggestive diagnosis of some form of spinal muscular atrophy was never confirmed and later rejected.
Expert 2
31.3.2010
Currently the patient is totally paralyzed with control only over her eyes and eyelids. Today she is on 24hr assistance with BiPAP breathing.
The patient was seen by various experts and her clinical condition does not fit any known classical neurological syndrome. However, careful anamnesis and the development of her symptoms following vaccination suggest a high probability that her current condition may be the consequence of vaccination induced damage syndrome (VIDS).
In view of a lack of any better suggestion for diagnosis it appears to me that the option of VIDS is very likely the cause of her unusual condition.
Expert 3
12.12.11
I enclose a copy of my report on Emma ——-. She is severely affected by what is most likely the result of motorsensory neuropathy following immunization. There is much weakness of the limbs and the body, but her brain stem nerves are also affected, and she requires direct gastric feeding and breathing assistance which is not sufficient for her now, and she requires tracheotomy as there is much swelling in her laryngeal region.
Expert 4 (has not met Emma but agreed with the findings in the reports)
28.02.12
Emma ——- I have been gratified to find that hospital and consulting physicians unanimously agreed that Emma —————-’ autoimmune illness was the result of routine childhood vaccines, with the MMR vaccine being the final agent of incapacitation.
Despite all this evidence and with Emma so desperately ill and disabled the authorities decided that Emma was not vaccine damaged at all. In their report they say that she is suffering from ‘spinal muscular atrophy’ a condition that had already been disregarded as pointed out in the first experts report.
In a bid to quieten one of the above experts who had became very vocal with his views and opinions on Emma’s condition, the authorities threatened him with the removal of his license if he did not keep quiet. Sadly this elderly and brave doctor died from a heart attack a short time later. Was his heart attack caused as a direct result of his treatment? Sadly that is a question that cannot be answered.
The latest reports on Emma state that she is suffering from a genetic fault that inhibits her ability to process vitamin B2 and other vitamins from her diet so she has been put on a vitamin B2 treatment.
This raises the question should Emma have been vaccinated in the first place?
The authorities agree that Emma has been well cared for and that Ms X has a great understanding of her daughter’s problems however, they feel that she would not be able to care for the child on a full time basis. They say that Ms X is a wonderful and dedicated mother but the stress of looking after a child like Emma will become too much for her and have suggested that she has mental health problems.
This is something that appears to be regularly suggested as a matter of course in the majority of cases where a vaccine injury has occurred. I have yet to come into contact with any family where this has not been used. As a consequence Ms X like many other parents has had to endure hours of psychiatric tests and assessments.
Social services have said that Ms X neglected Emma, endangering her life by traveling to different experts around the world for assessments, answers and treatments not available in the UK. However, Ms X says that the treatment that she was able to get for Emma abroad actually saved her life and all she is guilty of is trying too hard to find a cure for her dying child.
As a direct result of the accusations Ms X has been banned from photographing her child and is only allowed to visit her every 7-10 days with strict supervision.
Charles Pragnell is an independent social care management consultant, a Child/Family Advocate, and an Expert Defense Witness – Child Protection, and has given evidence to courts in cases in England, Scotland, and New Zealand.
Mr. Pragnell has over forty years of experience in working directly with children and young people as a social worker, a senior manager of social services, and Director of an independent organization providing services for children and families.
In his article ‘Mandatory Persecution of Children and Families’ (2) He explains:
What research is showing is that many hundreds of thousands of children and their families are being drawn into the Child Protection system for little or no reason, subjecting them to the fear-invoking processes of a child protection investigation and the accompanying stigma in their neighbourhood leading to their isolation. Many families report that such needless investigations have devastated and destroyed their lives and other research has shown that children suffer serious and long-lasting emotional harm from such investigations.
In another article (3) he explains how many children are suffering from severe reactions to vaccinations. He believes that many parents are being falsely accused of child abuse after a vaccine injury has occurred. He says that they are very often reported to the child protection agencies for neglect or for appearing to be over anxious parents. He says:
They are seen as over-anxious and if they seek a second medical opinion, they are accused of `Doctor-shopping’. In the UK they are then called to a Child Protection Conference with all the assembled professionals usually after being subjected to an extremely invasive child protection investigation. They are not allowed representation although they are being accused of a criminal offence of neglecting their child and they are summarily found guilty merely on the opinions and suppositions of the professionals present, many of whom they have never met before.
This is exactly what Ms X has been accused of. Mr. Pragnell’s views are in line with those expressed by Lisa Blakemore-Brown psychologist, author and an expert specializing in autism. In an article ‘The Independent Newspaper Measles Vaccine Scam’ (4) she says:
Professor Elizabeth Miller, Head of the Immunization Department in the UK who worked closely with Bob Chen at the CDC when the first Thimerosal studies were being “managed”, sat in the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation/Adverse Reactions Sub Committee, with Dr David Salisbury and none other than Professor Roy Meadow, of MBSP fame, when the MMR was being introduced.
In the Sally Clark case, Professor Meadow accused her of killing two children who had just been vaccinated, one just 5 hours earlier. To my certain knowledge, as a Psychologist specialising in Autism since 1993, and working as a generic Psychologist since 1984, many parents whose children reacted to a vaccine have been wrongly accused of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy (MSBP). Known side effects have been morphed into child abuse. Workers have been taught to view them this way and act accordingly. Some have had their children taken from them, some were sent to prison and Sally Clark lost her children and her life.
Lisa Blakemore-Brown and Charles Pragnell are spot on; it appears that once a vaccine injury has occurred the government and medical profession do their utmost to cover this up to protect the vaccination schedules. What could be easier than blaming parents for the injury? The parents of vaccine injured children are being automatically blamed for neglect or child abuse taking the focus off of the vaccinations and transferring it directly onto the parents.
This is what the UK laughingly calls ‘Child Protection’; I call it protecting the vaccine schedules and their bank balance.
References
Laura Clark Daily Mail ‘10,000 children taken into care: Numbers have doubled in the past four years’ Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2128465/10-000-children-taken-care-Numbers-doubled-past-years.html#ixzz1rpeFpIM9
Charles Pragnell – Mandatory Persecution of Children and Families http://www.fassit.co.uk/persecution_of_children.htm
Charles Pragnell – Vaccines and Child Abuse Accusations http://www.fassit.co.uk/vaccines_child_abuse.htm
Lisa Blakemore-Brown – The Independent Newspaper Measles Vaccine http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?id=2739#newspost
Pictures of little Emma at link.
The system is so desperate that the entire vaccine house of cards is about to crumble that they are demanding their partners in crime, big government, step in and kidnap children who could go to A FAIR COURT and PROVE that vaccines are killing people.
America and the UK are both a cesspool of corporate and big government corruption that is getting so out of control that they to, will fall just like the dinosaurs before them, one day soon.
SO YOU THOUGHT POLIO WAS CURED? YOU HAVE A WHOLE LOT TO LEARN. READ BELOW!
-------------------------------------
http://vactruth.com/2012/04/13/paralyzed-by-vaccinations/
By Christina England | April 13th, 2012 |
**Names have been changed to protect the identity of this family. All quotes are mother’s exact words and it must be noted that her first language is not English.
Emma is a six year old little girl who is suffering from severe vaccine damage which has been verified by several leading experts. Emma is totally paralyzed and unable to move any part of her body. She cannot speak and breaths with the aid of a small tube inserted through a tiny incision in her windpipe called a tracheotomy.
Instead of the help and compensation her family should be receiving, Emma has been stolen by the state and spends her days in what her mother describes as a ‘dreadful institution for the disabled’. Instead of the support Emma’s mother needs to come to terms with what has happened to her daughter she has been accused of trying too hard to find answers and get the professional help that she believes her daughter needs,
Ms X, Emma’s mother, is devastated and says that she did nothing wrong. She told me:
“I have a clean criminal record, I have no history of substance abuse of any kind, no rehab no nothing!! All I am guilty of is sometimes acting on fear my daughters time was running out.
I want her out of there NOW!!!
When I went to visit her, her skin stank, her stoma around her tracheotomy was bloody and dirty, she was in a tiny warm room with no fan or air conditioning, she is not allowed in a bath, she is not allowed to go out for walk, the staff don’t know a cough assist, which is terrible, as a cough assist is VITAL to her care, not knowing how to work this is unacceptable because if something happens and they don’t know, Emma could die!!!!! She has a cut on her neck after the nurses put a string on her skin with no sponge underneath resulting in this terrible cut!!!!!
It is really draconian how they have kidnapped her from me and now forbid me to see her.”
Sadly, Emma is just one out of a total of 10,000 children who have been taken into care in Great Britain since April 2011. Many of these children the Daily Mail (1) reported today, are part of the ever growing statistics in a worrying trend that is raising fears among professionals that large numbers of vulnerable children are being taken away from their families unnecessarily and left to languish in a care system that is failing them.
So how did a severely vaccine damaged child become part of these appalling statistics?
EMMA’S STORY UNFOLDS
Life was not always this bad for Emma and she did not start out her life disabled; in fact she used to be a normal, cheeky little girl who enjoyed toddling around and playing with her toys. Sadly however, despite being born a normal baby Emma was constantly ill, suffering from a weakened immune system resulting in persistent infections requiring antibiotics for weeks on end.
Ms X believes that Emma’s problems first began after she received her eight week routine vaccinations. Within hours of the vaccinations she became weak and feverish, refusing feeds. Worried, Ms X took Emma to the local hospital where doctors assured her that Emma had picked up a virus and would be fine. Not connecting the illness to the vaccinations, and blissfully unaware that this was only the beginning of her daughters problems, Ms X took her baby home.
As the months went by Ms X noticed that after each vaccination Emma became sick, however, convinced that by giving Emma her routine vaccinations she was doing the best that she could do for her child and on the advice given to her by her doctor, she continued to allow Emma to have the vaccinations. She said:
“It never occurred to me that her problems could be linked to the vaccinations. I had no one around to tell me about the possible side-effects of vaccines.”
Emma’s real problems only became apparent after she received the MMR vaccination at 13 months. Up until this age Emma had been developing normally, she was beginning to walk, talk, was alert and was reaching all her developmental milestones. After the MMR however, Emma became very sick indeed after an extremely bad reaction. By this time Ms X was beginning to connect the dots and was waking up to the realization that it was the vaccinations that were causing her daughters problems. Sadly it was too late for little Emma. The damage was done.
At 15 months Emma began to lose her balance and kept falling on her face. However, instead of putting her hands out to protect herself Emma just allowed herself to fall. Worried, Ms X took her daughter to see to a neurologist. He did standard tests which ALL came back normal.
Emma slowly began to lose control of her arms and upper torso and by June 2008 at the tender age of two she was unable to breathe on her own and was taken to the PICU (Pediatric Intensive Care Unit).
Ms X said:
“Shortly after that, the neurologist told me that he thought that Emma had a disease, but he had no proof for the diagnosis, so nothing further was done. I was devastated, fearing that my baby was going to die. I fell into the darkness of hopelessness and sorrow, so that I spent weeks as if in a daze. I don’t know what happened, but after two months something in my heart told me that Emma was not to die, not like this and not without knowing what was making her so sick. I felt I must carry on and that I was to get a second opinion. We took her to the best specialists in the UK. They did many tests, but still no answers!!”
Beginning to realize that the vaccinations were the problem, Ms X’s instincts told her to not allow Emma to have any further vaccinations. However, as we all know, doctors can be extremely persuasive and when you are alone and frightened and needing to trust doctors with your child’s life, it is easy to believe what they are telling you. Sadly against Ms X’s better judgment Emma was given the flu vaccine and she immediately became much worse.
Ms X relayed what happened next:
“Next day her eyes started to move rapidly from side to side like nystagmus and her body lost blood without any reason and she needed a blood transfusion of 500ml. She got very sick and my poor baby almost died, BUT then it was like an invisible voice and guidance that led me to the possibility that this illness of hers was very likely from the jabs, so I started to think back and everything became clear to me, namely that her symptoms were the serious side-effects of vaccinations!”
FOUR EXPERTS SAY EMMA’S CONDITION WAS CAUSED BY THE VACCINATIONS
Fearing the worst for Emma Ms X did everything possible to help her daughter. She traveled from one doctor to another to get help, advice and treatment. Each time the doctors explained to Ms X that Emma’s condition had been caused through VID or Vaccine Induced Disease.
Ms X managed to get reports from four leading experts from around the world stating that Emma had been damaged by vaccinations.
Here are the relevant extracts from those reports:
Expert 1.
23.01.2012:
My diagnosis of Emma ———— d.o.b. ——-.2006 condition is on clinical grounds but supported by some investigation as being that of motor sensory polyneuropathy and involving the brain stem nerves as well as the pheripheral ones. This has been accepted by others before my involvement in this case and Emma —— was subsequently given treatment with immunoglobulins and steroids. To me most likely autoimmune response following vaccination. Suggestive diagnosis of some form of spinal muscular atrophy was never confirmed and later rejected.
Expert 2
31.3.2010
Currently the patient is totally paralyzed with control only over her eyes and eyelids. Today she is on 24hr assistance with BiPAP breathing.
The patient was seen by various experts and her clinical condition does not fit any known classical neurological syndrome. However, careful anamnesis and the development of her symptoms following vaccination suggest a high probability that her current condition may be the consequence of vaccination induced damage syndrome (VIDS).
In view of a lack of any better suggestion for diagnosis it appears to me that the option of VIDS is very likely the cause of her unusual condition.
Expert 3
12.12.11
I enclose a copy of my report on Emma ——-. She is severely affected by what is most likely the result of motorsensory neuropathy following immunization. There is much weakness of the limbs and the body, but her brain stem nerves are also affected, and she requires direct gastric feeding and breathing assistance which is not sufficient for her now, and she requires tracheotomy as there is much swelling in her laryngeal region.
Expert 4 (has not met Emma but agreed with the findings in the reports)
28.02.12
Emma ——- I have been gratified to find that hospital and consulting physicians unanimously agreed that Emma —————-’ autoimmune illness was the result of routine childhood vaccines, with the MMR vaccine being the final agent of incapacitation.
Despite all this evidence and with Emma so desperately ill and disabled the authorities decided that Emma was not vaccine damaged at all. In their report they say that she is suffering from ‘spinal muscular atrophy’ a condition that had already been disregarded as pointed out in the first experts report.
In a bid to quieten one of the above experts who had became very vocal with his views and opinions on Emma’s condition, the authorities threatened him with the removal of his license if he did not keep quiet. Sadly this elderly and brave doctor died from a heart attack a short time later. Was his heart attack caused as a direct result of his treatment? Sadly that is a question that cannot be answered.
The latest reports on Emma state that she is suffering from a genetic fault that inhibits her ability to process vitamin B2 and other vitamins from her diet so she has been put on a vitamin B2 treatment.
This raises the question should Emma have been vaccinated in the first place?
The authorities agree that Emma has been well cared for and that Ms X has a great understanding of her daughter’s problems however, they feel that she would not be able to care for the child on a full time basis. They say that Ms X is a wonderful and dedicated mother but the stress of looking after a child like Emma will become too much for her and have suggested that she has mental health problems.
This is something that appears to be regularly suggested as a matter of course in the majority of cases where a vaccine injury has occurred. I have yet to come into contact with any family where this has not been used. As a consequence Ms X like many other parents has had to endure hours of psychiatric tests and assessments.
Social services have said that Ms X neglected Emma, endangering her life by traveling to different experts around the world for assessments, answers and treatments not available in the UK. However, Ms X says that the treatment that she was able to get for Emma abroad actually saved her life and all she is guilty of is trying too hard to find a cure for her dying child.
As a direct result of the accusations Ms X has been banned from photographing her child and is only allowed to visit her every 7-10 days with strict supervision.
Charles Pragnell is an independent social care management consultant, a Child/Family Advocate, and an Expert Defense Witness – Child Protection, and has given evidence to courts in cases in England, Scotland, and New Zealand.
Mr. Pragnell has over forty years of experience in working directly with children and young people as a social worker, a senior manager of social services, and Director of an independent organization providing services for children and families.
In his article ‘Mandatory Persecution of Children and Families’ (2) He explains:
What research is showing is that many hundreds of thousands of children and their families are being drawn into the Child Protection system for little or no reason, subjecting them to the fear-invoking processes of a child protection investigation and the accompanying stigma in their neighbourhood leading to their isolation. Many families report that such needless investigations have devastated and destroyed their lives and other research has shown that children suffer serious and long-lasting emotional harm from such investigations.
In another article (3) he explains how many children are suffering from severe reactions to vaccinations. He believes that many parents are being falsely accused of child abuse after a vaccine injury has occurred. He says that they are very often reported to the child protection agencies for neglect or for appearing to be over anxious parents. He says:
They are seen as over-anxious and if they seek a second medical opinion, they are accused of `Doctor-shopping’. In the UK they are then called to a Child Protection Conference with all the assembled professionals usually after being subjected to an extremely invasive child protection investigation. They are not allowed representation although they are being accused of a criminal offence of neglecting their child and they are summarily found guilty merely on the opinions and suppositions of the professionals present, many of whom they have never met before.
This is exactly what Ms X has been accused of. Mr. Pragnell’s views are in line with those expressed by Lisa Blakemore-Brown psychologist, author and an expert specializing in autism. In an article ‘The Independent Newspaper Measles Vaccine Scam’ (4) she says:
Professor Elizabeth Miller, Head of the Immunization Department in the UK who worked closely with Bob Chen at the CDC when the first Thimerosal studies were being “managed”, sat in the Joint Committee for Vaccination and Immunisation/Adverse Reactions Sub Committee, with Dr David Salisbury and none other than Professor Roy Meadow, of MBSP fame, when the MMR was being introduced.
In the Sally Clark case, Professor Meadow accused her of killing two children who had just been vaccinated, one just 5 hours earlier. To my certain knowledge, as a Psychologist specialising in Autism since 1993, and working as a generic Psychologist since 1984, many parents whose children reacted to a vaccine have been wrongly accused of Munchausen Syndrome By Proxy (MSBP). Known side effects have been morphed into child abuse. Workers have been taught to view them this way and act accordingly. Some have had their children taken from them, some were sent to prison and Sally Clark lost her children and her life.
Lisa Blakemore-Brown and Charles Pragnell are spot on; it appears that once a vaccine injury has occurred the government and medical profession do their utmost to cover this up to protect the vaccination schedules. What could be easier than blaming parents for the injury? The parents of vaccine injured children are being automatically blamed for neglect or child abuse taking the focus off of the vaccinations and transferring it directly onto the parents.
This is what the UK laughingly calls ‘Child Protection’; I call it protecting the vaccine schedules and their bank balance.
References
Laura Clark Daily Mail ‘10,000 children taken into care: Numbers have doubled in the past four years’ Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2128465/10-000-children-taken-care-Numbers-doubled-past-years.html#ixzz1rpeFpIM9
Charles Pragnell – Mandatory Persecution of Children and Families http://www.fassit.co.uk/persecution_of_children.htm
Charles Pragnell – Vaccines and Child Abuse Accusations http://www.fassit.co.uk/vaccines_child_abuse.htm
Lisa Blakemore-Brown – The Independent Newspaper Measles Vaccine http://www.theoneclickgroup.co.uk/news.php?id=2739#newspost
Jon Stewart Exposes the Fraud of the Federal Reserve
A TV show segment is worth a million words. Stewart even mentions
hyperinflation as a result of creating money out of thin air. Perhaps
Stewart has finally gotten around to reading Murray Rothbard’s What Has Government Done to Our Money. (I…don’t think so—but I can dream, can’t I?)
[Thanks to Doug Oade via David Powell]
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-7-2010/the-big-bank-theory
[Thanks to Doug Oade via David Powell]
http://www.thedailyshow.com/watch/tue-december-7-2010/the-big-bank-theory
- IRS Insider Joe Banister Exposes Federal Reserve Coup and IRS Fraud
- Ron Paul Exposes CIA & Federal Reserve’s drug running business on Alex Jones TV
- The Federal Reserve Explains… The Federal Reserve In One Easy, Retard-Accessible Video
- Alex Jones Exposes “See Something, Say Something” as Patent Fraud
- Geithner Visited Jon Stewart in April, Though Not for Laughs
- Jon Stewart Scolds Media For Ignoring Rep. Ron Paul
- Dennis Kucinich Tells Occupy Wall Street to Nationalize the Federal Reserve
- Stewart Rhodes: Why Oath Keepers are Under Attack
- Goldman Sachs and Federal Fraud
- Stewart Rhodes: Sherrifs fed up with Federal Interference
- Kucinich: Federal Reserve No More “Federal” Than Federal Express
- San Francisco Federal Reserve Employee Admits Fed is a Private Corporation
25 Signs That America Is A Seething Cesspool Of Filth And Corruption
Do you believe that America is a seething cesspool of filth and
corruption? If not, you might change your mind after reading this
article. Sadly, the truth is that the United States is absolutely
corrupt to the core. This is true from the very top of our society all
the way to the very bottom. The current occupant of the White House
will likely go down in history as the most corrupt president in history,
and that is really saying something. Almost every single day he adds
something new to his list of corrupt deeds. He is a con man that
deserves to be impeached for a whole host of reasons,
but that will never happen because we have a Congress that is also
deeply corrupt. But it is not just our politicians that are corrupt.
Even the men that are supposed to be in charge of protecting the
president are corrupt. A whole bunch of them were recently discovered
sleeping with prostitutes in Colombia. We also find very deep and very
pervasive corruption in our financial institutions, in our judicial
system, in our police departments and in our religious institutions. It
is almost as if nearly the entire nation is saturated with filth and
depravity. It is becoming harder and harder to find men and women of
integrity, and our young people have very few positive role models to
look up to. How long is our society going to be able to continue to
function normally if all of this corruption gets even worse?
The following are 25 signs that America is a seething cesspool of filth and corruption….
#1 The men and women of the Secret Service are supposed to be the best of the best. Instead, they have become a national embarrassment. 11 members of the U.S. Secret Service are under investigation for consorting with prostitutesin Colombia. Reportedly, several of the Secret Service agents that hired prostitutes were married.
#2 Our financial institutions are filled with cheats and liars. 2011 and 2012 have been absolutely horrible years for natural disasters in the United States. At a time when homeowners need their insurance companies more than ever, many insurance companies are systematically trying to weasel out of payouts and are trying to shift as much liability over to homeowners as possible. The following is from a recent Reuters article….
#6 Some of the violent crimes committed recently in cities such as Chicago appear to be absolutely senseless. The following is one recent example from the Chicago Tribune….
#9 Thieves all over the nation are becoming incredibly bold. Up in New York, thieves recently stole brass plaques and bronze vases from a cemetery.
How desperate and corrupt do you have to be to desecrate the graves of the dead?
#10 These days thieves will steal anything that they can sell easily on the streets. For example, Tide detergent has become extremely popular to steal because it is being used as an alternative form of currency on the streets of many American cities. The following is from a recent article in The Daily….
#12 The number of Americans that are willing to become permanently dependent on the government is absolutely astounding. At this point, there are approximately 67 million Americans that get some form of financial assistance from the federal government.
#13 Government dependence is increasingly being glamorized in popular culture. For example, one nightclub down in Alabama recently held a “Food Stamp Friday” party.
#14 As I have written about previously, employees of the federal government are living the high life at the expense of hard working American taxpayers. In fact, one federal employee recently made an outrageous rap video about it.
#15 Recently, I reported on the “Obama flag” that was flying above a Democratic Party headquarters down in Florida. Well, now another one has been spotted flying above a home in New Jersey. During the 2012 election season will we see American flags that have had the stars replaced with the face of Barack Obama flying over homes and businesses from coast to coast?
#16 In the United States today, the use of sexual humiliation by security officials has become normalized. If you are not convinced of this yet, you should check out this video of a woman sobbing as the TSA touches her private areas as they pat her down.
#17 Sadly, TSA officials have shown over and over that they are deeply corrupt and cannot be trusted. For example, one TSA manager at Dulles International Airport was recently discovered to be running a prostitution ring out of a local hotel room.
#18 According to the U.S. Supreme Court, police in the United States can now strip search you any time that they want. All they need to do is to make up some reason to arrest you. Needless to say, police all over the country are now going to be looking for any reason that they can think of to arrest very attractive women.
#19 In the United States, it has become regular practice for young couples to “live together” before marriage. In fact, in America today more than half of all couples now move in together before they get married. Sadly, the divorce rate for couples that live together first is also significantly higher than for those that do not. At this point, America has thehighest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
#20 The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world by far. In fact, the United States has a teen pregnancy rate that is more than twice as high as Canada, more than three times as high as France and more than seven times as high as Japan.
#21 Unfortunately, there are dramatic consequences for all of the loose sexuality going on in America. The CDC says that there are approximately 19 million new cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia in America every single year.
#22 Most Americans have no idea this is happening, but the truth is that abortion clinics all over the country are sellingaborted baby parts to scientists for medical research. If we keep cheapening human life like this, eventually it will mean next to nothing to us.
#23 According to the results of one recent investigation, an astounding 30 percent of all Internet traffic goes to pornography websites. A different survey found that 25 percent of all employees that have Internet access in the United States visit pornography websites while they are at work.
#24 There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. This is especially true when it comes to notifying military wives that their husbands are dead. Sadly, some women are now being notified about the deaths of their husbands in the militarythrough Facebook.
#25 Our politicians are stealing 150 million dollars an hour from future generations so that we can live more comfortably right now. The American people participate in this theft by voting these politicians back into office over and over again. The crime that we are committing against future generations is almost too horrible for words.
The following are 25 signs that America is a seething cesspool of filth and corruption….
#1 The men and women of the Secret Service are supposed to be the best of the best. Instead, they have become a national embarrassment. 11 members of the U.S. Secret Service are under investigation for consorting with prostitutesin Colombia. Reportedly, several of the Secret Service agents that hired prostitutes were married.
#2 Our financial institutions are filled with cheats and liars. 2011 and 2012 have been absolutely horrible years for natural disasters in the United States. At a time when homeowners need their insurance companies more than ever, many insurance companies are systematically trying to weasel out of payouts and are trying to shift as much liability over to homeowners as possible. The following is from a recent Reuters article….
Insurance companies are raising rates, cutting coverage, balking at some payouts and generally shifting more expense and liability to homeowners, according to reports from the industry and its critics.#3 Identity theft for the purpose of stealing tax refunds has reached epidemic proportions in America. The following is one shocking example that made the news recently up in New York….
“Insurance companies have significantly and methodically decreased their financial responsibility for weather catastrophes like hurricanes, tornados and floods in recent years,” the Consumer Federation of America said in a statement after studying industry data.
The industry concedes that it is trying to avoid getting trounced by those same punishing weather patterns.
Authorities say a former manager at a nonprofit Long Island health agency stole the IDs of more than 50 brain injury patients to get their tax refunds.#4 The filth on television continues to get worse and worse. As WorldNetDaily recently reported, one new HBO series is going way over the line….
HBO’s irreverent mockumentary “Angry Boys” is under fire for combining child actors and phallic humor, including one scene in the series’ 12th episode, where a little girl drinks from a water bottle shaped like a giant, pink penis.#5 All over the country, violent crime is getting worse. For example, there were 60 percent more homicides in Chicago during the first three months of 2012 than there were during the first three months of 2011.
#6 Some of the violent crimes committed recently in cities such as Chicago appear to be absolutely senseless. The following is one recent example from the Chicago Tribune….
A woman was shot in the face while driving in the Gresham neighborhood on the Far South Side late Wednesday.#7 It isn’t just in the big cities where these kinds of senseless crimes are being committed either. One crime that happened in Tulsa, Oklahoma recently is almost too horrifying to describe. The following is from a recent Daily Mail report….
The woman, 38, was driving west in the 2000 block of West 84th Street about 11:30 p.m. when a light colored car pulled alongside her and someone inside fired shots, according to police News Affairs Officer Hector Alfaro.
An 85-year-old woman was sexually assaulted and battered to death by a home invader who also shot her 90-year-old husband in the face with a BB gun.#8 The flash mob epidemic that made headlines all over the nation last year is continuing in 2012. For example, several dozen young people recently stormed into a gas station in the Portland, Oregon area and took off with whatever they could carry.
Nancy and Bob Strait, who had celebrated their 65th wedding anniversary in December, were discovered by their daughter at their home in Tulsa, Oklahoma.
Both the pensioners were rushed to hospital where Mrs Strait, who was nearly blind, died from her injuries.
#9 Thieves all over the nation are becoming incredibly bold. Up in New York, thieves recently stole brass plaques and bronze vases from a cemetery.
How desperate and corrupt do you have to be to desecrate the graves of the dead?
#10 These days thieves will steal anything that they can sell easily on the streets. For example, Tide detergent has become extremely popular to steal because it is being used as an alternative form of currency on the streets of many American cities. The following is from a recent article in The Daily….
Theft of Tide detergent has become so rampant that authorities from New York to Oregon are keeping tabs on the soap spree, and some cities are setting up special task forces to stop it. And retailers like CVS are taking special security precautions to lock down the liquid.#11 In Baltimore, a man was recently knocked to the ground, stripped naked and had his car keys, watch, money and cell phone taken. In itself, that is not much of a story. But what made it a story was that instead of helping the man, the crowd of onlookers watching all of this happen laughed hysterically while recording the incident with their cell phone cameras for YouTube.
One Tide taker in West St. Paul, Minn., made off with $25,000 in the product over 15 months before he was busted last year.
“That was unique that he stole so much soap,” said West St. Paul Police Chief Bud Shaver. “The name brand is [all] Tide. Amazing, huh?”
Tide has become a form of currency on the streets. The retail price is steadily high — roughly $10 to $20 a bottle — and it’s a staple in households across socioeconomic classes.
#12 The number of Americans that are willing to become permanently dependent on the government is absolutely astounding. At this point, there are approximately 67 million Americans that get some form of financial assistance from the federal government.
#13 Government dependence is increasingly being glamorized in popular culture. For example, one nightclub down in Alabama recently held a “Food Stamp Friday” party.
#14 As I have written about previously, employees of the federal government are living the high life at the expense of hard working American taxpayers. In fact, one federal employee recently made an outrageous rap video about it.
#15 Recently, I reported on the “Obama flag” that was flying above a Democratic Party headquarters down in Florida. Well, now another one has been spotted flying above a home in New Jersey. During the 2012 election season will we see American flags that have had the stars replaced with the face of Barack Obama flying over homes and businesses from coast to coast?
#16 In the United States today, the use of sexual humiliation by security officials has become normalized. If you are not convinced of this yet, you should check out this video of a woman sobbing as the TSA touches her private areas as they pat her down.
#17 Sadly, TSA officials have shown over and over that they are deeply corrupt and cannot be trusted. For example, one TSA manager at Dulles International Airport was recently discovered to be running a prostitution ring out of a local hotel room.
#18 According to the U.S. Supreme Court, police in the United States can now strip search you any time that they want. All they need to do is to make up some reason to arrest you. Needless to say, police all over the country are now going to be looking for any reason that they can think of to arrest very attractive women.
#19 In the United States, it has become regular practice for young couples to “live together” before marriage. In fact, in America today more than half of all couples now move in together before they get married. Sadly, the divorce rate for couples that live together first is also significantly higher than for those that do not. At this point, America has thehighest divorce rate on the globe by a wide margin.
#20 The United States has the highest teen pregnancy rate in the world by far. In fact, the United States has a teen pregnancy rate that is more than twice as high as Canada, more than three times as high as France and more than seven times as high as Japan.
#21 Unfortunately, there are dramatic consequences for all of the loose sexuality going on in America. The CDC says that there are approximately 19 million new cases of syphilis, gonorrhea and chlamydia in America every single year.
#22 Most Americans have no idea this is happening, but the truth is that abortion clinics all over the country are sellingaborted baby parts to scientists for medical research. If we keep cheapening human life like this, eventually it will mean next to nothing to us.
#23 According to the results of one recent investigation, an astounding 30 percent of all Internet traffic goes to pornography websites. A different survey found that 25 percent of all employees that have Internet access in the United States visit pornography websites while they are at work.
#24 There is a right way and a wrong way to do things. This is especially true when it comes to notifying military wives that their husbands are dead. Sadly, some women are now being notified about the deaths of their husbands in the militarythrough Facebook.
#25 Our politicians are stealing 150 million dollars an hour from future generations so that we can live more comfortably right now. The American people participate in this theft by voting these politicians back into office over and over again. The crime that we are committing against future generations is almost too horrible for words.
Sunday, March 18, 2012
Consumers Ingesting Meat / Fish Treated with Poisonous Gas (vid)
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0ngiV5JR7YQ&feature=player_embedded#at=138
Consumers Ingesting Mystery Meat Treated with Poisonous Gas
http://naturalsociety.com/consumers-ingesting-mystery-meat-treated-with-poisonous-gas/#ixzz1pR0wtyBJ
As a method of passing off decayed meat as fresh, meat industries in many countries are treating meat with highly toxic gas. In fact, 70 percent of all beef and chicken within the United States and Canada are subject to the treatment of the poisonous gas known as carbon monoxide. Add this knowledge to the recently exposed ammonia-tainted ‘pink slime’ used in meat being served to millions of people and schoolchildren, and you may be reluctant to ever eat meat again.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a toxic colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas which essentially replaces oxygen in the blood. When individuals are exposed to higher levels of CO, it begins to cause detrimental effects after binding to a molecule in the blood that normally carries oxygen, known as hemoglobin. Lower levels of exposure results in headaches, confusion, fatigue, and nausea, while higher levels of exposure could result in unconsciousness, death, or long-term negative neurological effects.
In order for meat to stay fresh, it must be below a certain temperature before being consumed. Even a few degrees above the recommended temperature can result in bacterial growth and hastened spoilage. In addition, grocery retailers face a challenge in knowing the actual temperature of the meat since UV radiation from the display case penetrates the packaging. As a solution, the meat industry decided to use utilize carbon monoxide for atmospheric packaging to extend shelf life. It is also for this reason that meat exhibits a bright red color, even when it has spoiled.
“C. perfringens bacteria, the third-most-common cause of food-borne illness, has been proven to grow on what is considered fresh meat … about half of the fresh meat products [tested for these bacteria] are positive despite them being within the expiry period. 100% of … these cases come from packagers who adopted atmospheric packaging methods such as the use of carbon monoxide gas”.
Although meat itself has many beneficial properties, the processes in which most meat goes through is cause for alarm. Along with poisoning carbon monoxide being used to treat our meat, conventionally raised animals are injected with growth hormones, fed antibiotics, and given genetically modified grain – all of which are being passed along in the food chain to the consumers of these animals — humans. The use of antibiotics are creating drug-resistant superbugs, while growth hormones are causing various health problems due to hormone balance disruption. All the while, these animals are consuming life-threatening GM grain, which they would never naturally consume in the wild.
Being able to know of the many processes, treatments, and toxic ingredients added to meat and food as a whole is more important than ever. The labeling of genetically modified foods is an absolute must, as is the disclosure of the ingredients and processes food goes through before ending up in the hands of the consumer. However, until these changes come to pass, eating a well balanced organic variety of foods will cause avoidance of the numerous challenges which come with the consumption of conventional food.
Consumers Ingesting Mystery Meat Treated with Poisonous Gas
http://naturalsociety.com/consumers-ingesting-mystery-meat-treated-with-poisonous-gas/#ixzz1pR0wtyBJ
As a method of passing off decayed meat as fresh, meat industries in many countries are treating meat with highly toxic gas. In fact, 70 percent of all beef and chicken within the United States and Canada are subject to the treatment of the poisonous gas known as carbon monoxide. Add this knowledge to the recently exposed ammonia-tainted ‘pink slime’ used in meat being served to millions of people and schoolchildren, and you may be reluctant to ever eat meat again.
Carbon monoxide (CO) is a toxic colorless, odorless, and tasteless gas which essentially replaces oxygen in the blood. When individuals are exposed to higher levels of CO, it begins to cause detrimental effects after binding to a molecule in the blood that normally carries oxygen, known as hemoglobin. Lower levels of exposure results in headaches, confusion, fatigue, and nausea, while higher levels of exposure could result in unconsciousness, death, or long-term negative neurological effects.
In order for meat to stay fresh, it must be below a certain temperature before being consumed. Even a few degrees above the recommended temperature can result in bacterial growth and hastened spoilage. In addition, grocery retailers face a challenge in knowing the actual temperature of the meat since UV radiation from the display case penetrates the packaging. As a solution, the meat industry decided to use utilize carbon monoxide for atmospheric packaging to extend shelf life. It is also for this reason that meat exhibits a bright red color, even when it has spoiled.
“C. perfringens bacteria, the third-most-common cause of food-borne illness, has been proven to grow on what is considered fresh meat … about half of the fresh meat products [tested for these bacteria] are positive despite them being within the expiry period. 100% of … these cases come from packagers who adopted atmospheric packaging methods such as the use of carbon monoxide gas”.
Although meat itself has many beneficial properties, the processes in which most meat goes through is cause for alarm. Along with poisoning carbon monoxide being used to treat our meat, conventionally raised animals are injected with growth hormones, fed antibiotics, and given genetically modified grain – all of which are being passed along in the food chain to the consumers of these animals — humans. The use of antibiotics are creating drug-resistant superbugs, while growth hormones are causing various health problems due to hormone balance disruption. All the while, these animals are consuming life-threatening GM grain, which they would never naturally consume in the wild.
Being able to know of the many processes, treatments, and toxic ingredients added to meat and food as a whole is more important than ever. The labeling of genetically modified foods is an absolute must, as is the disclosure of the ingredients and processes food goes through before ending up in the hands of the consumer. However, until these changes come to pass, eating a well balanced organic variety of foods will cause avoidance of the numerous challenges which come with the consumption of conventional food.
AF Colonel says PRECISION STRIKE FALSE FLAGS is 100% legal & "self defense"
http://defense.aol.com/2012/03/12/cyber-command-lawyer-praises-stuxnet-disses-chinese-cyber-stanc/
"The Stuxnet computer worm that damaged Iranian nuclear facilities – widely suspected to be an Israeli or even U.S. covert action – was a model of a responsibly conducted cyber-attack, said the top lawyer for the U.S. military's Cyber Command, Air Force Col. Gary Brown. By contrast, the Chinese stance, which holds that the international law of armed conflict does not apply in cyberspace, opens the door for indiscriminate online actions launched with less concern for collateral damage than was evident in Stuxnet, he warned, while a joint Russo-Chinese proposal for international collaboration on cyber-security could potentially threaten free speech. Brown emphasized that his remarks represented his own opinion and that he was not speaking for the U.S. government, but they still open a window into the thinking of an influential official on the cutting edge of policymaking on cyber war.
At a small gathering of students and faculty at Georgetown University, hosted by former CIA lawyer Catherine Lotrionte, Col. Brown hastened to Stuxnet's defense when this reporter raised the possibility of the worm having damaged systems outside Iran. The way Stuxnet was designed, "it looked like lawyers had been involved, because it was set to do no damage until it saw a very precise set of circumstances that doesn't exist anywhere except in Iran," said Brown, who has written on the legal ramifications of Stuxnet. "Also," he added, "it was set to expire," erasing itself from every infected machine this coming June 24th. Both those attributes suggest a conscientious effort to limit the online equivalent of "collateral damage," a particularly crucial concern when releasing a worm or virus to replicate itself across the internet, whose omnipresent connectivity means an attack aimed at a legitimate military target in one country can easily spread out of control to innocent civilian systems around the world. "Your normal terrorist or criminal doesn't care about what collateral damage happens," Brown said.
None of this means Stuxnet didn't constitute a "cyber attack," Col. Brown said, although he noted as a lawyer that that's a notoriously ill-defined term. The worm "destroyed maybe a thousand pieces of pretty sophisticated equipment being used by the Iranian government," he noted. "That physical damage is something that most people who study international law would say rises to a 'use of force,'" he said. From a common-sense perspective, he added, "it's really hard for me to get my head around the idea that something that breaks things isn't 'an attack.'"
But, Brown hastened to add, "it might be justified," for example as an act of self-defense under international law. (Another government official at the event went even further, suggesting taking such action against the Iranian nuclear program is positively required under international law, since the United Nations has identified the program as a potential threat to peace). What is critical is to apply the same tests of just cause, proportional response, and so on to a cyber-attack as to a conventional military strike, emphasized Brown, who in 2008-2009 served as the chief lawyer for the Combined Air Operations Center that runs air operations over Afghanistan and Iraq. "Before we would take action in cyberspace we would look at everything that's connected to that system," he said, "I think the activities we contemplate taking on the internet are very thought out and very precise."
By contrast, when China and other countries argue that the "law of armed conflict" does not apply to cyberspace, they implicitly set aside the legal obligation to do due diligence on collateral damage – among many other restrictions. "They could be looking to insure that actions that are currently considered to be 'espionage' aren't pushed under the law of armed conflict," Brown speculated. "Espionage has no rules, so it's a lawless regime....That's not true under the law of armed conflict, although the enforcement mechanism is somewhat lacking."
Meanwhile, the rules that China and Russia have jointly proposed for cyberspace raise serious concerns for the United States, Brown said, echoing comments by other U.S. officials. The proposed "International Code of Conduct for Information Security," also sponsored by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, was put before the United Nations last fall. "Mostly, when you read through it, you'll think it sounds pretty good," said Brown. "The thing that makes me uncomfortable with the proposal [is that] essentially they treat 'information' as a separate category, as an area of national sovereignty.... [For example,] if Google wanted to go to China and make ways for Chinese folks to get around the firewall, the 'Great Firewall,' so they could communicate freely with the rest of the world, they would consider this an aggressive action [under the proposed pact] because 'information' is part of national sovereignty."
That's not where the United States wants to go, Brown said. As much as America wants to build defenses against online threats, its priority has to be "first, do no harm" to freedom of speech."
______________________
^ Riiiight--as if he really believes that or if he does, how laughably ignorant he is to what his Club of Rome/Bilderberg masters are doing anyways.
But they're not "evil" like those fake 9/11 terrorists, because the New World Order terrorists use "precision strike terrorism" which is "perfectly fine and 100% legal", AND is "self defense", AND is "required" under International law.
This is their rationale with the 2012 NDAA, because it entails "precision strike assassination of American citizens at will, while "minimizing collateral damage" to other American citizens."
"The Stuxnet computer worm that damaged Iranian nuclear facilities – widely suspected to be an Israeli or even U.S. covert action – was a model of a responsibly conducted cyber-attack, said the top lawyer for the U.S. military's Cyber Command, Air Force Col. Gary Brown. By contrast, the Chinese stance, which holds that the international law of armed conflict does not apply in cyberspace, opens the door for indiscriminate online actions launched with less concern for collateral damage than was evident in Stuxnet, he warned, while a joint Russo-Chinese proposal for international collaboration on cyber-security could potentially threaten free speech. Brown emphasized that his remarks represented his own opinion and that he was not speaking for the U.S. government, but they still open a window into the thinking of an influential official on the cutting edge of policymaking on cyber war.
At a small gathering of students and faculty at Georgetown University, hosted by former CIA lawyer Catherine Lotrionte, Col. Brown hastened to Stuxnet's defense when this reporter raised the possibility of the worm having damaged systems outside Iran. The way Stuxnet was designed, "it looked like lawyers had been involved, because it was set to do no damage until it saw a very precise set of circumstances that doesn't exist anywhere except in Iran," said Brown, who has written on the legal ramifications of Stuxnet. "Also," he added, "it was set to expire," erasing itself from every infected machine this coming June 24th. Both those attributes suggest a conscientious effort to limit the online equivalent of "collateral damage," a particularly crucial concern when releasing a worm or virus to replicate itself across the internet, whose omnipresent connectivity means an attack aimed at a legitimate military target in one country can easily spread out of control to innocent civilian systems around the world. "Your normal terrorist or criminal doesn't care about what collateral damage happens," Brown said.
None of this means Stuxnet didn't constitute a "cyber attack," Col. Brown said, although he noted as a lawyer that that's a notoriously ill-defined term. The worm "destroyed maybe a thousand pieces of pretty sophisticated equipment being used by the Iranian government," he noted. "That physical damage is something that most people who study international law would say rises to a 'use of force,'" he said. From a common-sense perspective, he added, "it's really hard for me to get my head around the idea that something that breaks things isn't 'an attack.'"
But, Brown hastened to add, "it might be justified," for example as an act of self-defense under international law. (Another government official at the event went even further, suggesting taking such action against the Iranian nuclear program is positively required under international law, since the United Nations has identified the program as a potential threat to peace). What is critical is to apply the same tests of just cause, proportional response, and so on to a cyber-attack as to a conventional military strike, emphasized Brown, who in 2008-2009 served as the chief lawyer for the Combined Air Operations Center that runs air operations over Afghanistan and Iraq. "Before we would take action in cyberspace we would look at everything that's connected to that system," he said, "I think the activities we contemplate taking on the internet are very thought out and very precise."
By contrast, when China and other countries argue that the "law of armed conflict" does not apply to cyberspace, they implicitly set aside the legal obligation to do due diligence on collateral damage – among many other restrictions. "They could be looking to insure that actions that are currently considered to be 'espionage' aren't pushed under the law of armed conflict," Brown speculated. "Espionage has no rules, so it's a lawless regime....That's not true under the law of armed conflict, although the enforcement mechanism is somewhat lacking."
Meanwhile, the rules that China and Russia have jointly proposed for cyberspace raise serious concerns for the United States, Brown said, echoing comments by other U.S. officials. The proposed "International Code of Conduct for Information Security," also sponsored by Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, was put before the United Nations last fall. "Mostly, when you read through it, you'll think it sounds pretty good," said Brown. "The thing that makes me uncomfortable with the proposal [is that] essentially they treat 'information' as a separate category, as an area of national sovereignty.... [For example,] if Google wanted to go to China and make ways for Chinese folks to get around the firewall, the 'Great Firewall,' so they could communicate freely with the rest of the world, they would consider this an aggressive action [under the proposed pact] because 'information' is part of national sovereignty."
That's not where the United States wants to go, Brown said. As much as America wants to build defenses against online threats, its priority has to be "first, do no harm" to freedom of speech."
______________________
^ Riiiight--as if he really believes that or if he does, how laughably ignorant he is to what his Club of Rome/Bilderberg masters are doing anyways.
But they're not "evil" like those fake 9/11 terrorists, because the New World Order terrorists use "precision strike terrorism" which is "perfectly fine and 100% legal", AND is "self defense", AND is "required" under International law.
This is their rationale with the 2012 NDAA, because it entails "precision strike assassination of American citizens at will, while "minimizing collateral damage" to other American citizens."
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DARPA switches to cyber offense
http://www.federalnewsradio.com/241/2789660/DARPA-switches-to-cyber-offense Friday - 3/16/2012, 4:31pm ET The Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency is switching to offense on the cyber field. DARPA Director Regina Dugan said new research will address military-specific ways to actually create cyber threats, not just develop ways to defend against them. An Infosecurity magazine report said DARPA considers a good offense one of the best ways to handle an evolving cybersecurity challenge. The cutting-edge agency has seen is cyber budget increasing of late — from $120 million in fiscal-year 2011 to $208 million in FY 2012. _________________ http://www.infosecurity-magazine.com/view/24507/best-defense-is-a-good-offense-darpa-expands-offensive-cyber-research/ Best defense is a good offense: DARPA expands offensive cyber research 13 March 2012 The US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency (DARPA) is expanding its research into offensive cyber capabilities, DARPA Director Regina Dugan told a conference this week. DARPA is expanding its cyber research budget by $88 million, from $120 million in FY 2011 to $208 million in FY 2012. Over the next five years, DARPA plans to increase its cyber research investment from 8% to 12% of its topline budget. Much of that expansion will focus on developing offensive cyber capabilities. “Malicious cyber attacks are not merely an existential threat to our bits and bytes. They are a real threat to our physical systems, including our military systems. To this end, in the coming years we will focus an increasing portion of our cyber research on the investigation of offensive capabilities to address military-specific needs”, Dugan told the DARPA Cyber Colloquium. Dugan explained that her agency has developed a cyber analytical framework intended to quantify the cyber threat and to explain why the US appears to be losing ground in the cybersecurity arena. “This analysis, completed over months through original research and detailed investigation, concluded that the US approach to cyber security is dominated by a strategy that layers security on to a uniform architecture. We do this to create tactical breathing space, but it is not convergent with an evolving threat. We discovered that we are losing ground because we are inherently divergent with the threat. Importantly, such divergences are the seeds of strategic surprise”, she said. “Our assessment argues that we are capability limited, both offensively and defensively. We need to fix that”, she concluded.
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Every "war" has been a battle-laboratory to develop ways to overthrow the West
There are so many things that are exposed (exposed in the sense of your
own discernment will expose them because you can see through all of the
propaganda and understand what they are REALLY saying) in this article,
it is unreal:
http://www.cfr.org/philippines/treading-softly-philippines/p18079
Treading Softly in the Philippines
Authors: Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies and Richard Bennet
Volume 014, Issue 16
Weekly Standard
Zamboanga City, Philippines
The war on terror that the Obama administration is inheriting comes with a decidedly mixed record. Stopping attacks on the American homeland since 2001 has been the Bush administration's biggest accomplishment. Turning around the war effort in Iraq, which was on the verge of failure in 2006, has been another signal success. But, as the Mumbai attacks remind us, the threat of Islamist terrorism has hardly been extinguished. Al Qaeda and other extremists have found in Pakistan the haven they lost in Afghanistan after 2001. Since then they have waged an insurgency, with growing success, against governments in both Kabul and Islamabad. Meanwhile, Iran continues to be an active sponsor of terrorism as well as a seeker of nuclear weapons. Its proxies may have been routed in Iraq, but they remain as powerful as ever in Lebanon, and their tentacles spread as far as South America.
Almost forgotten amid these major developments is a tiny success story in Southeast Asia that may offer a more apt template than either Iraq or Afghanistan for fighting extremists in many corners of the world. The southern islands of the Philippines, inhabited by Muslims known as Moros (Spanish for "Moor"), have been in almost perpetual rebellion against the Christian majority ruling in Manila. They fought the Spaniards when they arrived 500 years ago, and they fought the Americans when they arrived more than 100 years ago. The latest rebellion broke out in the early 1970s and has killed well over 120,000 people. It was led initially by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which challenged a martial-law regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. That group began to reach accommodation with Manila in 1975--a process completed by a democratic government in 1996. The MNLF demobilized its fighters, and most of its members melted back into the populace. Some even took positions in the local government or the security forces. But along the way several dangerous splinter factions broke off.
The largest and most moderate of these is the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which, as the name would indicate, has a more religious emphasis than its socialist-nationalist forerunner. It, too, has been in negotiations with the government, but the peace process broke down in August after the Philippine Supreme Court, much to the consternation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, ruled unconstitutional a plan to grant the Muslim region a large degree of autonomy. (Judicial activism, it seems, is one of many American exports that have taken root here.) While most of the MILF, 8,000-10,000 strong, remained at peace, several of its "base commands," numbering a few thousand fighters, declared war on the Philippine government and the non-Muslim inhabitants of the island of Mindanao, burning Christian villages and slaughtering their inhabitants. An estimated 200 people were killed, and tens of thousands turned into refugees.
The more extremist of these base commands have established a symbiotic relationship with Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian terrorist group that carried out the infamous bombing in Bali that killed over 200 people in 2002, and Abu Sayyaf, a homegrown Filipino jihadist group launched by veterans of the 1980s war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Those groups, in turn, developed close ties in the 1990s with al Qaeda. Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, moved to Manila to provide financing and organizational assistance to local radicals. Training camps were set up in the poorly policed hinterland in the Muslim south, and ambitious plots were hatched. These included plans to blow up 11 airliners in midair, crash a hijacked airliner into the CIA's headquarters, and assassinate Pope John Paul II while he was visiting the Philippines in 1995. Among the chief plotters present in the Philippines were Ramzi Yousef, coordinator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would go on to mastermind the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The attacks on New York and Washington finally awakened the U.S. government to the need to do something about the Philippine branch of the global jihad. Military exercises were conducted with the Philippines, and Special Forces and CIA teams were dispatched to provide training and intelligence support for local security forces. An early, largely successful example of Philippine-American cooperation came in the search for an Abu Sayyaf squad that in 2001 abducted 20 people, including three Americans, from a beach resort in the southern Philippines. Eventually the kidnappers were hunted down and captured or killed, although two of the Americans died as well--one executed by the kidnappers, the other killed in a bungled rescue attempt by the Philippine Army.
Since then, the United States has set up a Joint Special Operations Task Force to direct Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines. We recently spent a couple of weeks meeting and traveling with task force members to get an overview of their operations. With only 600 or so personnel, the task force operates throughout the sprawling southern Philippines--a region known to earlier generations of American soldiers as Moroland. There are only 5 million Muslims in the entire Philippine population of 90 million; 80 percent of Filipinos are Roman Catholics, making this the only Christian country in Asia. The Philippines has a smaller Muslim minority than France, but it is overwhelmingly concentrated in a few places. The largest island in the Muslim region is Mindanao, with a population of 18 million, 30 percent of them Muslims. (The percentage was considerably higher a century ago, back when young Captain Jack Pershing was fighting Moro rebels, but in the 20th century the Philippine government resettled millions of Christians from other islands here.) There is also a string of smaller, heavily Muslim islands in the Sulu archipelago stretching through azure-blue waters to the borders of Malaysia and Indonesia.
What all these areas share, in addition to their Muslim populations, is inaccessible terrain, with lots of triple-canopy jungles, treacherous swamps, and soaring mountains that provide ideal hideouts for outlaws. The surrounding waters are plied by countless small boats that operate with little scrutiny from the Philippines' tiny navy, which has only 62 patrol boats to cover thousands of miles of coastline. Smuggling terrorist operatives, arms, and drugs in and out is all too easy.
The rebels have another advantage. They can tap into a widespread sense of alienation among some of the Philippines' poorest inhabitants. Before we traveled south in a tiny C-12 passenger aircraft, officials at the stately U.S. embassy in Manila told us that in the Philippines as a whole life expectancy is over 70 years, but in Mindanao it's only 52 years. Nominal GDP per capita in the entire country is $1,600; in Mindanao it's less than $700. More than 55 percent of families in the Muslim region are living below the poverty line, double the share nationwide.
We could see the difference for ourselves. Manila has its slums, but it also has soaring skyscrapers and gleaming malls that would look right at home in Dubai or Singapore. In Mindanao's second-largest city, Zamboanga, by contrast, there is not a high-rise in sight. Instead there are lots of tin-roofed shacks that serve as mom-and-pop stores and living quarters, often at the same time. In the countryside, even that seems luxurious. Here you enter a world of thatched-roof huts, often without windows, electricity, or indoor plumbing. Many Muslims blame their lack of economic development on discrimination and lack of sympathy on the part of the overwhelmingly Catholic authorities in faraway Manila. The more radical among them think that Muslims should rule as far north as the national capital, as they did before the Spaniards arrived in 1521. It is little wonder that jihadist propaganda, spread by Saudi-funded mosques, literature, and charities, has found a receptive audience among people with such a long history of grievance (even if the easy-going Filipinos, like most tropical peoples, are hardly the most receptive audience for the fundamentalist dictates of an austere Wahhabism born in the deserts of Arabia).
To counter the influence of religious fanaticism, Colonel Bill Coultrup directs a multifaceted counterinsurgency from the Joint Special Operations Task Force's headquarters in a small, sealed compound on Camp Navarro, a Philippine military base nestled next ato Zamboanga airport. A self-effacing man with a ready smile and a puckish sense of humor, Coultrup is not one to boast of his achievements, but he spent more than a decade with one of the military's legendary counterterrorism units. During that time he scored some notable successes that are much-discussed in military circles but remain classified. In the Philippines, he has had to master a very different way of war. In sharp contrast to Iraq, where American commandos have had virtual free rein to kill and capture "high value targets," here they are forbidden by the Philippine government from engaging in any direct combat operations. Their role is to bolster the Philippine armed forces; their oft-repeated mantra is "through, by, and with." That sometimes rankles some of these seasoned special operators. The leader of one Special Forces A-Team told us, "If I had the ability to do here what I did in Iraq last year, this fight would have been over in two days."
But that isn't an option because of Filipino nationalist sensitivities, and in the best Special Forces tradition Coultrup and his troops have made the necessary adjustments from a "Direct Action" mission to one of "Foreign Internal Defense." Their weapons include bounties for information leading to the capture of wanted terrorists as part of the U.S. "Rewards for Justice" program; training, support, and intelligence-sharing for the Philippine armed forces; and a combination of "information operations" and "civil affairs operations" to wean the populace away from the insurgents. "The goal," Coultrup says, "is to set conditions for good governance, and you do that by removing the safe havens of these terrorist groups and addressing the specific conditions that contribute to those safe havens."
We were briefed on each aspect of the task force's operations while spending time in and around the cities of Zamboanga and Cotabato on Mindanao and Jolo on Sulu island--all areas that host substantial Special Operations detachments, mainly Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, backed by support forces from all the services.
An important component of their work is providing "information operations support" to the Philippine armed forces. Psychological operations specialists showed us two initiatives designed to counter the terrorists' propaganda. One is a text messaging campaign (texting is the preferred medium of communication here) that encourages recipients to participate in peace-promotion programs and report information to Philippine authorities on terrorist activities. The other is a slickly produced comic book series aimed at 18-to-24-year-old males, the prime recruits for all extremist groups, featuring a Jack Bauer-style hero battling villainous terrorists. All of the products have to be translated into multiple languages because of the multiplicity of regional tongues spoken in these polyglot islands.
Even more than psy-ops, civil affairs is a prime "line of operations" for the U.S. forces. A U.S. Army captain, head of a four-man civil affairs team, drove us for hours around rural Mindanao to show us projects that he is funding, including a new high school in a remote region and a new building for an existing elementary school. He also showed off a huge pile of coconut lumber, bamboo, and corrugated tin--materials that will be used to rebuild 81 homes destroyed by rogue elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the fighting back in August. The goal, he explained, is "persistent engagement," creating projects that require him and his Filipino counterparts to make multiple visits to check on progress. Those visits engender trust with the locals and can lead them to provide vital intelligence on insurgents.
Such considerations were also very much on the mind of a Green Beret master sergeant a few days later while he was directing, alongside his Filipino partners, a "Medcap" (Medical Civil Action Project) in a small village on Sulu Island. Working with a Philippine Marine battalion, the Special Forces soldiers had set up a one-day clinic where residents could come in for free medical and dental treatment. Cartoons were provided to entertain kids, and free medicines were handed out to all. "It's important that they don't leave empty handed," said one Philippine soldier. "We treat those who need medical attention, and give vitamins and toothbrushes to those who don't. Everyone receives something." In return, all residents have to do is provide their names and dates of birth, which helps security forces build a better picture of the populace.
Such enterprises build goodwill with the locals and encourage them to chat freely with both Philippine and American soldiers. "I'm trying to determine their feelings toward us," the rail-thin master sergeant explained, while enthusiastic villagers swirled around him. "You can't ask directly. You have to probe around to find out if they want us here. If so, that means they're open to us, which will make it easy to push the bad guys out. But if they don't want us here after we've given them all this, that means they're heavily influenced by the bad guys, so we have our work cut out for us."
He added that the Abu Sayyaf Group, which has redoubts in nearby mountains, will try to do "negative information operations" to counter the Medcaps, telling residents they can't trust the Americans because they won't stick around. To stymie the insurgents, the master sergeant added, his A-Team will work with Filipino authorities to repaint a local school or undertake some other project. While there is nothing covert about the American role (the master sergeant is wearing his uniform), he and other Americans are careful to deflect most of the credit to their Philippine counterparts. "We want to show what the AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines] have done for the people," the sergeant explained, "and we want the people to ask what has ASG [the Abu Sayyaf Group] ever done for us?"
The sergeant works for a larger Special Operations force on Sulu. Its commander, Major Joe Mouer, ticked off how many such civil affairs projects his troops have undertaken in cooperation with the Philippine Marines: They have completed 80 miles of road, 34 wells, 40 schools. At their headquarters in Jolo City, the American troops even host a weekly movie night for hundreds of local kids. We attended one such event, finding hordes of happy kids sitting on the floor of a large hall, watching an animated feature while munching free popcorn. Soldiers act as ushers, but they are dressed in civilian clothes and don't carry weapons so as to create a nonthreatening environment. To counter enemy propaganda that such events are used for Christian proselytizing, Mouer has invited a local Muslim cleric to give a blessing before the start of each movie.
The Joint Special Operations Task Force is hardly alone in trying to improve life for Philippine Muslims. The U.S. Agency for International Development is also active in Mindanao, with $130 million worth of projects planned over the next five years. Completed projects include retraining former Moro National Liberation Front fighters in farming skills and installing computer labs in hundreds of high schools. The U.S. Navy has contributed by having the hospital ship Mercy pay regular visits to the Philippines to treat tens of thousands of patients.
These examples might give the impression that Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines is solely a "hearts and minds" endeavor. While "nonkinetic" operations do constitute a large part of the mission, U.S. forces also help Filipino troops to capture and kill insurgents more efficiently. At a "team house" located on a Philippine military base in rural Mindanao, a Special Forces captain ran down for us all the training missions his 12-man A-Team has undertaken since arriving in the area in May. They have shared their knowledge of mortars, long-range marksmanship, and even digital cameras. Using an array of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles they have also provided real-time intelligence that has allowed Philippine forces to track and target elusive insurgents. Just as important, their world-class medics have provided critical care to Philippine soldiers who have been injured in battle. In some cases they have even arranged for "medevac" to distant hospitals. Knowing that they will be taken care of should they be wounded encourages Philippine soldiers to fight harder.
We found out how much Philippine troops appreciate such assistance when we went to visit the hilltop command post where Colonel Marlou Salazar, a Philippine brigade commander, briefed us on the progress of his operations against renegade Moro Islamic Liberation Front commanders. On one side of his map there is a piece of paper that states his objective: "Get Kato dead or alive." Ameril Umbra Kato is a Saudi-educated MILF commander who went on the warpath in August. Salazar has not achieved his goal yet, but he has managed to put Kato on the run and capture or kill many of his men with an effective offensive that received crucial support from the U.S. A-Team. "We boxed the area, maneuvered, and attacked," Salazar says proudly, pointing out where the battles occurred in the swampy valley below. He then shows off a hoard of captured weapons, including a mortar whose serial number indicates it was made in Pakistan.
At the request of the Philippine government, which wants to negotiate with it, the MILF has not formally been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State, but some of its "lawless" elements are closely intertwined with Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf, providing these groups sanctuary in territory they control. U.S. forces are therefore allowed to support the Philippine military in their operations to reduce those safe havens. By contrast, U.S. troops are prohibited from helping the Filipinos battle another major insurgent group, the communist New People's Army, which sometimes cooperates with MILF but which is deemed by Washington of purely local interest--not part of the global war on terror.
Traditional "kinetic" operations in which bullets are fired and bombs dropped are still part of the Philippine strategy against their numerous guerrilla foes, but they have become less important over the years, thanks partly to the advice Philippine forces have received from the U.S. Special Forces. At the officers' club of the Philippine Marine headquarters in Manila, we sat down with Major General Juancho Sabban, a bullet-headed, brown-skinned, bull-necked Filipino who has spent much of the past 30 years battling various insurgent groups. Today he commands Task Force Comet, two marine brigades charged with pacifying Sulu island.
"For three decades we were using a strategy of force," he says. "It turned out to be a vicious cycle. We would have body count syndrome. Commanders would become popular because they were warrior-like. But I saw the more we destroyed, the more the number of the enemy increased. There were so many instances of collateral damage and innocent lives being sacrificed. Just by passing through fields with so many battalions we were already stomping on crops and that makes people resent the military. In the course of a firefight school buildings would get burned, houses would be razed to the ground, civilians caught in the crossfire. Everything was blamed on the military."
Now, General Sabban says, the Philippine armed forces and their American allies have "shifted strategy": "I have told my commanders that all military operations should be intelligence-driven and surgical. How do we do this? Through intelligence enhanced by civil-military operations. We do civil-military operations to get people onto our side. More people on your side will produce more and better intelligence, and if you have better intelligence you'll have more successful operations that are precise and surgical and that don't hurt innocent civilians. Thus we will get more support from the people and you will be denying the enemy resources and space to operate. People will drive them from their own areas. So now their space is getting smaller and smaller, until we can pinpoint them with information coming from the people themselves."
Much of the available evidence supports General Sabban's belief that the new strategy has been successful. Abu Sayyaf hasn't managed a high-profile terrorist attack since Valentine's Day 2005, when it set off a series of bombs in Manila and Mindanao that killed 11 people and injured 93. Smaller attacks continue, but there has been nothing on the scale of the bombing that devastated the passenger ship SuperFerry 14 in Manila Bay in 2004, killing 116 people. The group has splintered in recent years, with its remnants focusing increasingly on kidnapping-for-ransom, which is hardly different from ordinary criminal activity and signals the dire financial straits the group faces. Abu Sayyaf has also made common cause with marijuana and amphetamine producers who find shelter in guerrilla-controlled areas. Its estimated strength has fallen from more than 1,200 in 2002 to fewer than 500 today. Jemaah Islamiyah has fewer than 100 members left in the Philippines. The links between the Philippines and al Qaeda largely have been severed.
Of crucial importance, many of the top leaders of both Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf have been eliminated. Only nine or ten "high value targets" are still on the loose, but getting them has been a study in frustration. The rugged terrain allows the kingpins to slip away into the jungle before ground troops can reach them. And the Philippine armed forces are sorely restricted in their capacity for precision bombing. Several Philippine and American soldiers we spoke with expressed frustration that the Philippine armed forces lack armed Predator drones, AC-130 gunships, satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and other high-tech U.S. weapons that could more quickly finish off terrorist leaders. But the Philippine government isn't willing to pay for this fancy gear, and the U.S. government hasn't been willing to donate it. (Apparently some at the State Department fear that such weapons could be turned against the New People's Army, though why that should be a cause for concern is not clear, since the NPA is classified as a terrorist organization by the State Department.)
Even without this high-tech equipment, however, the counterinsurgency campaign has been enjoying impressive success. We could see it for ourselves as we drove around areas that had once been infested with insurgents. In central Mindanao, the roads we traveled were deemed so safe that neither we nor our military escorts wore body armor, and we moved in unarmored SUVs.
The question now being debated about the Philippines at U.S. Pacific Command is similar to the one being debated about Iraq at U.S. Central Command: When can we leave without jeopardizing the gains that have been made? In both cases, soldiers on the ground are saying "not yet." Colonel Coultrup points out that in 2002 U.S. troops supported the Philippine armed forces as they chased terrorists off Basilan Island, but then U.S. forces left and the Philippine forces drew down. This allowed the terrorists to stage a resurgence culminating in an attack in June 2007 in which 14 Philippine Marines were killed, 10 of them decapitated. In early December, another clash on Basilan killed 5 soldiers and injured 24. "I'm trying to work myself out of a job, but drawing down before conditions are stable creates a vacuum allowing Abu Sayyaf to return," Coultrup warns. He estimates that his operation is at the "70 percent to 75 percent level," but that more work needs to be done to eliminate the final insurgent lairs deep in the jungles and mountains. Lieutenant General Nelson Allaga, head of the Western Mindanao Command, confirms: "For now, we really need the Americans' support."
One of the beauties of this low-intensity approach is that it can be continued indefinitely without much public opposition or even notice. The reason why Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines gets so much less attention than the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is not hard to see. In Iraq there are 140,000 troops. In Afghanistan 35,000. In the Philippines 600. The Iraq war costs over $100 billion a year, Afghanistan over $30 billion. The Philippines costs $52 million a year.
Even more important is the human cost. While thousands of Americans have been killed or maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the Philippines only one American soldier has died as a result of enemy action--Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Jackson, who was killed in 2002 by a bomb in Zamboanga City. Three soldiers have been wounded in action, the most serious injuries being sustained by Captain Mike Hummel in the same bombing. Ten more soldiers died in 2002 in an accident when their MH-47 helicopter crashed. Every death is a tragedy, but with the number of tragedies in the Philippines minuscule, there is scant opposition to the mission either in the Philippines or in the United States. That's important, because when battling an insurgency the degree of success is often closely correlated to the duration of operations.
The successes of the Philippines cannot be replicated everywhere. To make this approach work requires having capable partners in the local security forces, which wasn't the case in either Iraq or Afghanistan immediately after the overthrow of the old regimes. It helps that the Filipino population is generally pro-American and thus receptive to the presence of some American troops. As Major General Salvatore Cambria, commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces in the Pacific, says, "This is a model, not the model." But this "soft and light" approach--a "soft" counterinsurgency strategy, a light American footprint--is a model that has obvious application to many countries around the world where we cannot or will not send large numbers of troops to stamp out affiliates of the global jihadist network.
http://www.cfr.org/philippines/treading-softly-philippines/p18079
Treading Softly in the Philippines
Authors: Max Boot, Jeane J. Kirkpatrick Senior Fellow for National Security Studies and Richard Bennet
Volume 014, Issue 16
Weekly Standard
Zamboanga City, Philippines
The war on terror that the Obama administration is inheriting comes with a decidedly mixed record. Stopping attacks on the American homeland since 2001 has been the Bush administration's biggest accomplishment. Turning around the war effort in Iraq, which was on the verge of failure in 2006, has been another signal success. But, as the Mumbai attacks remind us, the threat of Islamist terrorism has hardly been extinguished. Al Qaeda and other extremists have found in Pakistan the haven they lost in Afghanistan after 2001. Since then they have waged an insurgency, with growing success, against governments in both Kabul and Islamabad. Meanwhile, Iran continues to be an active sponsor of terrorism as well as a seeker of nuclear weapons. Its proxies may have been routed in Iraq, but they remain as powerful as ever in Lebanon, and their tentacles spread as far as South America.
Almost forgotten amid these major developments is a tiny success story in Southeast Asia that may offer a more apt template than either Iraq or Afghanistan for fighting extremists in many corners of the world. The southern islands of the Philippines, inhabited by Muslims known as Moros (Spanish for "Moor"), have been in almost perpetual rebellion against the Christian majority ruling in Manila. They fought the Spaniards when they arrived 500 years ago, and they fought the Americans when they arrived more than 100 years ago. The latest rebellion broke out in the early 1970s and has killed well over 120,000 people. It was led initially by the Moro National Liberation Front (MNLF), which challenged a martial-law regime of dictator Ferdinand Marcos. That group began to reach accommodation with Manila in 1975--a process completed by a democratic government in 1996. The MNLF demobilized its fighters, and most of its members melted back into the populace. Some even took positions in the local government or the security forces. But along the way several dangerous splinter factions broke off.
The largest and most moderate of these is the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), which, as the name would indicate, has a more religious emphasis than its socialist-nationalist forerunner. It, too, has been in negotiations with the government, but the peace process broke down in August after the Philippine Supreme Court, much to the consternation of President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo, ruled unconstitutional a plan to grant the Muslim region a large degree of autonomy. (Judicial activism, it seems, is one of many American exports that have taken root here.) While most of the MILF, 8,000-10,000 strong, remained at peace, several of its "base commands," numbering a few thousand fighters, declared war on the Philippine government and the non-Muslim inhabitants of the island of Mindanao, burning Christian villages and slaughtering their inhabitants. An estimated 200 people were killed, and tens of thousands turned into refugees.
The more extremist of these base commands have established a symbiotic relationship with Jemaah Islamiyah, the Indonesian terrorist group that carried out the infamous bombing in Bali that killed over 200 people in 2002, and Abu Sayyaf, a homegrown Filipino jihadist group launched by veterans of the 1980s war against the Soviets in Afghanistan. Those groups, in turn, developed close ties in the 1990s with al Qaeda. Muhammad Jamal Khalifa, Osama bin Laden's brother-in-law, moved to Manila to provide financing and organizational assistance to local radicals. Training camps were set up in the poorly policed hinterland in the Muslim south, and ambitious plots were hatched. These included plans to blow up 11 airliners in midair, crash a hijacked airliner into the CIA's headquarters, and assassinate Pope John Paul II while he was visiting the Philippines in 1995. Among the chief plotters present in the Philippines were Ramzi Yousef, coordinator of the 1993 World Trade Center bombing, and his uncle, Khalid Sheikh Mohammed, who would go on to mastermind the September 11, 2001, attacks.
The attacks on New York and Washington finally awakened the U.S. government to the need to do something about the Philippine branch of the global jihad. Military exercises were conducted with the Philippines, and Special Forces and CIA teams were dispatched to provide training and intelligence support for local security forces. An early, largely successful example of Philippine-American cooperation came in the search for an Abu Sayyaf squad that in 2001 abducted 20 people, including three Americans, from a beach resort in the southern Philippines. Eventually the kidnappers were hunted down and captured or killed, although two of the Americans died as well--one executed by the kidnappers, the other killed in a bungled rescue attempt by the Philippine Army.
Since then, the United States has set up a Joint Special Operations Task Force to direct Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines. We recently spent a couple of weeks meeting and traveling with task force members to get an overview of their operations. With only 600 or so personnel, the task force operates throughout the sprawling southern Philippines--a region known to earlier generations of American soldiers as Moroland. There are only 5 million Muslims in the entire Philippine population of 90 million; 80 percent of Filipinos are Roman Catholics, making this the only Christian country in Asia. The Philippines has a smaller Muslim minority than France, but it is overwhelmingly concentrated in a few places. The largest island in the Muslim region is Mindanao, with a population of 18 million, 30 percent of them Muslims. (The percentage was considerably higher a century ago, back when young Captain Jack Pershing was fighting Moro rebels, but in the 20th century the Philippine government resettled millions of Christians from other islands here.) There is also a string of smaller, heavily Muslim islands in the Sulu archipelago stretching through azure-blue waters to the borders of Malaysia and Indonesia.
What all these areas share, in addition to their Muslim populations, is inaccessible terrain, with lots of triple-canopy jungles, treacherous swamps, and soaring mountains that provide ideal hideouts for outlaws. The surrounding waters are plied by countless small boats that operate with little scrutiny from the Philippines' tiny navy, which has only 62 patrol boats to cover thousands of miles of coastline. Smuggling terrorist operatives, arms, and drugs in and out is all too easy.
The rebels have another advantage. They can tap into a widespread sense of alienation among some of the Philippines' poorest inhabitants. Before we traveled south in a tiny C-12 passenger aircraft, officials at the stately U.S. embassy in Manila told us that in the Philippines as a whole life expectancy is over 70 years, but in Mindanao it's only 52 years. Nominal GDP per capita in the entire country is $1,600; in Mindanao it's less than $700. More than 55 percent of families in the Muslim region are living below the poverty line, double the share nationwide.
We could see the difference for ourselves. Manila has its slums, but it also has soaring skyscrapers and gleaming malls that would look right at home in Dubai or Singapore. In Mindanao's second-largest city, Zamboanga, by contrast, there is not a high-rise in sight. Instead there are lots of tin-roofed shacks that serve as mom-and-pop stores and living quarters, often at the same time. In the countryside, even that seems luxurious. Here you enter a world of thatched-roof huts, often without windows, electricity, or indoor plumbing. Many Muslims blame their lack of economic development on discrimination and lack of sympathy on the part of the overwhelmingly Catholic authorities in faraway Manila. The more radical among them think that Muslims should rule as far north as the national capital, as they did before the Spaniards arrived in 1521. It is little wonder that jihadist propaganda, spread by Saudi-funded mosques, literature, and charities, has found a receptive audience among people with such a long history of grievance (even if the easy-going Filipinos, like most tropical peoples, are hardly the most receptive audience for the fundamentalist dictates of an austere Wahhabism born in the deserts of Arabia).
To counter the influence of religious fanaticism, Colonel Bill Coultrup directs a multifaceted counterinsurgency from the Joint Special Operations Task Force's headquarters in a small, sealed compound on Camp Navarro, a Philippine military base nestled next ato Zamboanga airport. A self-effacing man with a ready smile and a puckish sense of humor, Coultrup is not one to boast of his achievements, but he spent more than a decade with one of the military's legendary counterterrorism units. During that time he scored some notable successes that are much-discussed in military circles but remain classified. In the Philippines, he has had to master a very different way of war. In sharp contrast to Iraq, where American commandos have had virtual free rein to kill and capture "high value targets," here they are forbidden by the Philippine government from engaging in any direct combat operations. Their role is to bolster the Philippine armed forces; their oft-repeated mantra is "through, by, and with." That sometimes rankles some of these seasoned special operators. The leader of one Special Forces A-Team told us, "If I had the ability to do here what I did in Iraq last year, this fight would have been over in two days."
But that isn't an option because of Filipino nationalist sensitivities, and in the best Special Forces tradition Coultrup and his troops have made the necessary adjustments from a "Direct Action" mission to one of "Foreign Internal Defense." Their weapons include bounties for information leading to the capture of wanted terrorists as part of the U.S. "Rewards for Justice" program; training, support, and intelligence-sharing for the Philippine armed forces; and a combination of "information operations" and "civil affairs operations" to wean the populace away from the insurgents. "The goal," Coultrup says, "is to set conditions for good governance, and you do that by removing the safe havens of these terrorist groups and addressing the specific conditions that contribute to those safe havens."
We were briefed on each aspect of the task force's operations while spending time in and around the cities of Zamboanga and Cotabato on Mindanao and Jolo on Sulu island--all areas that host substantial Special Operations detachments, mainly Army Green Berets and Navy SEALs, backed by support forces from all the services.
An important component of their work is providing "information operations support" to the Philippine armed forces. Psychological operations specialists showed us two initiatives designed to counter the terrorists' propaganda. One is a text messaging campaign (texting is the preferred medium of communication here) that encourages recipients to participate in peace-promotion programs and report information to Philippine authorities on terrorist activities. The other is a slickly produced comic book series aimed at 18-to-24-year-old males, the prime recruits for all extremist groups, featuring a Jack Bauer-style hero battling villainous terrorists. All of the products have to be translated into multiple languages because of the multiplicity of regional tongues spoken in these polyglot islands.
Even more than psy-ops, civil affairs is a prime "line of operations" for the U.S. forces. A U.S. Army captain, head of a four-man civil affairs team, drove us for hours around rural Mindanao to show us projects that he is funding, including a new high school in a remote region and a new building for an existing elementary school. He also showed off a huge pile of coconut lumber, bamboo, and corrugated tin--materials that will be used to rebuild 81 homes destroyed by rogue elements of the Moro Islamic Liberation Front in the fighting back in August. The goal, he explained, is "persistent engagement," creating projects that require him and his Filipino counterparts to make multiple visits to check on progress. Those visits engender trust with the locals and can lead them to provide vital intelligence on insurgents.
Such considerations were also very much on the mind of a Green Beret master sergeant a few days later while he was directing, alongside his Filipino partners, a "Medcap" (Medical Civil Action Project) in a small village on Sulu Island. Working with a Philippine Marine battalion, the Special Forces soldiers had set up a one-day clinic where residents could come in for free medical and dental treatment. Cartoons were provided to entertain kids, and free medicines were handed out to all. "It's important that they don't leave empty handed," said one Philippine soldier. "We treat those who need medical attention, and give vitamins and toothbrushes to those who don't. Everyone receives something." In return, all residents have to do is provide their names and dates of birth, which helps security forces build a better picture of the populace.
Such enterprises build goodwill with the locals and encourage them to chat freely with both Philippine and American soldiers. "I'm trying to determine their feelings toward us," the rail-thin master sergeant explained, while enthusiastic villagers swirled around him. "You can't ask directly. You have to probe around to find out if they want us here. If so, that means they're open to us, which will make it easy to push the bad guys out. But if they don't want us here after we've given them all this, that means they're heavily influenced by the bad guys, so we have our work cut out for us."
He added that the Abu Sayyaf Group, which has redoubts in nearby mountains, will try to do "negative information operations" to counter the Medcaps, telling residents they can't trust the Americans because they won't stick around. To stymie the insurgents, the master sergeant added, his A-Team will work with Filipino authorities to repaint a local school or undertake some other project. While there is nothing covert about the American role (the master sergeant is wearing his uniform), he and other Americans are careful to deflect most of the credit to their Philippine counterparts. "We want to show what the AFP [Armed Forces of the Philippines] have done for the people," the sergeant explained, "and we want the people to ask what has ASG [the Abu Sayyaf Group] ever done for us?"
The sergeant works for a larger Special Operations force on Sulu. Its commander, Major Joe Mouer, ticked off how many such civil affairs projects his troops have undertaken in cooperation with the Philippine Marines: They have completed 80 miles of road, 34 wells, 40 schools. At their headquarters in Jolo City, the American troops even host a weekly movie night for hundreds of local kids. We attended one such event, finding hordes of happy kids sitting on the floor of a large hall, watching an animated feature while munching free popcorn. Soldiers act as ushers, but they are dressed in civilian clothes and don't carry weapons so as to create a nonthreatening environment. To counter enemy propaganda that such events are used for Christian proselytizing, Mouer has invited a local Muslim cleric to give a blessing before the start of each movie.
The Joint Special Operations Task Force is hardly alone in trying to improve life for Philippine Muslims. The U.S. Agency for International Development is also active in Mindanao, with $130 million worth of projects planned over the next five years. Completed projects include retraining former Moro National Liberation Front fighters in farming skills and installing computer labs in hundreds of high schools. The U.S. Navy has contributed by having the hospital ship Mercy pay regular visits to the Philippines to treat tens of thousands of patients.
These examples might give the impression that Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines is solely a "hearts and minds" endeavor. While "nonkinetic" operations do constitute a large part of the mission, U.S. forces also help Filipino troops to capture and kill insurgents more efficiently. At a "team house" located on a Philippine military base in rural Mindanao, a Special Forces captain ran down for us all the training missions his 12-man A-Team has undertaken since arriving in the area in May. They have shared their knowledge of mortars, long-range marksmanship, and even digital cameras. Using an array of manned and unmanned aerial vehicles they have also provided real-time intelligence that has allowed Philippine forces to track and target elusive insurgents. Just as important, their world-class medics have provided critical care to Philippine soldiers who have been injured in battle. In some cases they have even arranged for "medevac" to distant hospitals. Knowing that they will be taken care of should they be wounded encourages Philippine soldiers to fight harder.
We found out how much Philippine troops appreciate such assistance when we went to visit the hilltop command post where Colonel Marlou Salazar, a Philippine brigade commander, briefed us on the progress of his operations against renegade Moro Islamic Liberation Front commanders. On one side of his map there is a piece of paper that states his objective: "Get Kato dead or alive." Ameril Umbra Kato is a Saudi-educated MILF commander who went on the warpath in August. Salazar has not achieved his goal yet, but he has managed to put Kato on the run and capture or kill many of his men with an effective offensive that received crucial support from the U.S. A-Team. "We boxed the area, maneuvered, and attacked," Salazar says proudly, pointing out where the battles occurred in the swampy valley below. He then shows off a hoard of captured weapons, including a mortar whose serial number indicates it was made in Pakistan.
At the request of the Philippine government, which wants to negotiate with it, the MILF has not formally been designated a terrorist organization by the U.S. Department of State, but some of its "lawless" elements are closely intertwined with Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf, providing these groups sanctuary in territory they control. U.S. forces are therefore allowed to support the Philippine military in their operations to reduce those safe havens. By contrast, U.S. troops are prohibited from helping the Filipinos battle another major insurgent group, the communist New People's Army, which sometimes cooperates with MILF but which is deemed by Washington of purely local interest--not part of the global war on terror.
Traditional "kinetic" operations in which bullets are fired and bombs dropped are still part of the Philippine strategy against their numerous guerrilla foes, but they have become less important over the years, thanks partly to the advice Philippine forces have received from the U.S. Special Forces. At the officers' club of the Philippine Marine headquarters in Manila, we sat down with Major General Juancho Sabban, a bullet-headed, brown-skinned, bull-necked Filipino who has spent much of the past 30 years battling various insurgent groups. Today he commands Task Force Comet, two marine brigades charged with pacifying Sulu island.
"For three decades we were using a strategy of force," he says. "It turned out to be a vicious cycle. We would have body count syndrome. Commanders would become popular because they were warrior-like. But I saw the more we destroyed, the more the number of the enemy increased. There were so many instances of collateral damage and innocent lives being sacrificed. Just by passing through fields with so many battalions we were already stomping on crops and that makes people resent the military. In the course of a firefight school buildings would get burned, houses would be razed to the ground, civilians caught in the crossfire. Everything was blamed on the military."
Now, General Sabban says, the Philippine armed forces and their American allies have "shifted strategy": "I have told my commanders that all military operations should be intelligence-driven and surgical. How do we do this? Through intelligence enhanced by civil-military operations. We do civil-military operations to get people onto our side. More people on your side will produce more and better intelligence, and if you have better intelligence you'll have more successful operations that are precise and surgical and that don't hurt innocent civilians. Thus we will get more support from the people and you will be denying the enemy resources and space to operate. People will drive them from their own areas. So now their space is getting smaller and smaller, until we can pinpoint them with information coming from the people themselves."
Much of the available evidence supports General Sabban's belief that the new strategy has been successful. Abu Sayyaf hasn't managed a high-profile terrorist attack since Valentine's Day 2005, when it set off a series of bombs in Manila and Mindanao that killed 11 people and injured 93. Smaller attacks continue, but there has been nothing on the scale of the bombing that devastated the passenger ship SuperFerry 14 in Manila Bay in 2004, killing 116 people. The group has splintered in recent years, with its remnants focusing increasingly on kidnapping-for-ransom, which is hardly different from ordinary criminal activity and signals the dire financial straits the group faces. Abu Sayyaf has also made common cause with marijuana and amphetamine producers who find shelter in guerrilla-controlled areas. Its estimated strength has fallen from more than 1,200 in 2002 to fewer than 500 today. Jemaah Islamiyah has fewer than 100 members left in the Philippines. The links between the Philippines and al Qaeda largely have been severed.
Of crucial importance, many of the top leaders of both Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf have been eliminated. Only nine or ten "high value targets" are still on the loose, but getting them has been a study in frustration. The rugged terrain allows the kingpins to slip away into the jungle before ground troops can reach them. And the Philippine armed forces are sorely restricted in their capacity for precision bombing. Several Philippine and American soldiers we spoke with expressed frustration that the Philippine armed forces lack armed Predator drones, AC-130 gunships, satellite-guided Joint Direct Attack Munitions, and other high-tech U.S. weapons that could more quickly finish off terrorist leaders. But the Philippine government isn't willing to pay for this fancy gear, and the U.S. government hasn't been willing to donate it. (Apparently some at the State Department fear that such weapons could be turned against the New People's Army, though why that should be a cause for concern is not clear, since the NPA is classified as a terrorist organization by the State Department.)
Even without this high-tech equipment, however, the counterinsurgency campaign has been enjoying impressive success. We could see it for ourselves as we drove around areas that had once been infested with insurgents. In central Mindanao, the roads we traveled were deemed so safe that neither we nor our military escorts wore body armor, and we moved in unarmored SUVs.
The question now being debated about the Philippines at U.S. Pacific Command is similar to the one being debated about Iraq at U.S. Central Command: When can we leave without jeopardizing the gains that have been made? In both cases, soldiers on the ground are saying "not yet." Colonel Coultrup points out that in 2002 U.S. troops supported the Philippine armed forces as they chased terrorists off Basilan Island, but then U.S. forces left and the Philippine forces drew down. This allowed the terrorists to stage a resurgence culminating in an attack in June 2007 in which 14 Philippine Marines were killed, 10 of them decapitated. In early December, another clash on Basilan killed 5 soldiers and injured 24. "I'm trying to work myself out of a job, but drawing down before conditions are stable creates a vacuum allowing Abu Sayyaf to return," Coultrup warns. He estimates that his operation is at the "70 percent to 75 percent level," but that more work needs to be done to eliminate the final insurgent lairs deep in the jungles and mountains. Lieutenant General Nelson Allaga, head of the Western Mindanao Command, confirms: "For now, we really need the Americans' support."
One of the beauties of this low-intensity approach is that it can be continued indefinitely without much public opposition or even notice. The reason why Operation Enduring Freedom-Philippines gets so much less attention than the operations in Iraq and Afghanistan is not hard to see. In Iraq there are 140,000 troops. In Afghanistan 35,000. In the Philippines 600. The Iraq war costs over $100 billion a year, Afghanistan over $30 billion. The Philippines costs $52 million a year.
Even more important is the human cost. While thousands of Americans have been killed or maimed in Afghanistan and Iraq, in the Philippines only one American soldier has died as a result of enemy action--Special Forces Sergeant First Class Mark Jackson, who was killed in 2002 by a bomb in Zamboanga City. Three soldiers have been wounded in action, the most serious injuries being sustained by Captain Mike Hummel in the same bombing. Ten more soldiers died in 2002 in an accident when their MH-47 helicopter crashed. Every death is a tragedy, but with the number of tragedies in the Philippines minuscule, there is scant opposition to the mission either in the Philippines or in the United States. That's important, because when battling an insurgency the degree of success is often closely correlated to the duration of operations.
The successes of the Philippines cannot be replicated everywhere. To make this approach work requires having capable partners in the local security forces, which wasn't the case in either Iraq or Afghanistan immediately after the overthrow of the old regimes. It helps that the Filipino population is generally pro-American and thus receptive to the presence of some American troops. As Major General Salvatore Cambria, commander of U.S. Special Operations Forces in the Pacific, says, "This is a model, not the model." But this "soft and light" approach--a "soft" counterinsurgency strategy, a light American footprint--is a model that has obvious application to many countries around the world where we cannot or will not send large numbers of troops to stamp out affiliates of the global jihadist network.
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