Saturday, October 30, 2010

A load of Qap



AQAP (A load of Qap), officially read: Al-Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula, apparently concerned with the printing requirements of Synagogues in Chicago, accordingly (reportedly), have attempted to FedEx urgent ink supplies from Yemen via the UK.

But the US alleges this gesture of good will was a "credible terrorist threat."

Authorities say “a suspicious parcel, a potentially sinister object thought to be an ink cartridge,” was found on a plane at East Midlands airport (UK), en route to Chicago.

President Obama is quoted saying:

"Our intelligence and law enforcement professionals working with our friends and allies identified two suspicious packages bound for the United States, Specifically, two places of Jewish worship in Chicago."

Reportedly Obama expressed suspicions that Al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula is behind the incident.

To support the idea of a "credible terrorist threat", US officials made the non-event seem very, very scary indeed, something every American should be greatly concerned with, by pretending there was a “parcel” of Yemen origins onboard a plane from Dubai to New York’s JFK, which was subsequently escorted on approach by US fighter jets, (the escort made it much less likely the plane would explode).

The EAU (United Arab Emirates) civil aviation body said that the flight had been given the all clear and that it did not contain any packages from Yemen.

I wonder what the master plan was for detonating those “potentially sinister” ink cartridges at the intended destination. Presumably the detonators would not have been wired with a timer, you never know with FedEx if your post will arrive tomorrow or next month.

No doubt the usual story about a mobile (cell) phone SIM card, planted in the ink will be offered.

I also ponder; if I was a Rabbi in Chicago, and I received post from an Arabic friend in Yemen, would I not be slightly apprehensive.

It would appear AQAP still have room for improvement when constructing dastardly plots.

To be fair though, the plan to ink Synagogues was better thought out than the “underpants bomber” mission.

Allegedly, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, attempted to detonate a bomb on Christmas day while landing in Detroit onboard Delta Northwest Flight 253, despite not being equipped with the type of detonator required for the type of explosives he had packed in his undies.

US officials claim Abdulmutallab was trained for the attack in Yemen by AQAP. They also maintain he had contact in Yemen with “radical cleric” Anwar al-Awlaki, a US citizen.

President Obama, clairvoyantly foreseeing this unfortunate misadventure, responded by ordering cruise missile attacks against targets in Yemen, one week prior. US agents failed on Christmas Eve however, in an attempt to assassinate Anwar al-Awlaki, but he remains on the official list of people for the CIA to kill.

Reportedly, the missile attacks killed 120 innocent civilians, and depending on who you believe (Yemen eyewitnesses or US authorities), killed between 0 and 34 Al-Qaeda insurgents.

The American ABC reported that one of the missile targets was:
"A location where officials said ‘an imminent attack against a U.S. asset was being planned"

It was not mentioned which “US asset” in Yemen, but some of note are the natural resources licensed to Kuwait Energy, who were given a $50 million loan by the World Bank (read: owned by World Bank).

In recent years the World Bank has also assisted the nation of Yemen with around $200 million (read: owned by World Bank). Coincidentally, 4 major oil and gas exploration blocks in Yemen, were designated to Kuwait Energy (World Bank owned), under conditions set out by the World Bank and the IMF in exchange for that aid (the $200m).

Surely these minor details have little to do with bombing the crap out of Yemen though, it’s all about the “war on terror” right?

In August of this year, a CIA assessment implicated AQAP as a “more urgent threat” than al-Qaeda itself. Consequently, it was reported that, the Obama Administration was considering the deployment of CIA Predator drones to Yemen for launching strikes against AQAP.

These aptly named indiscriminately killing, flying robots, may incidentally themselves be terminated pending a lawsuit, after it was revealed the company supplying their software to the CIA, had pirated it from another source. It wasn’t even stolen properly, the plaintiffs claim it’s a hacked version with incomplete targeting functionality, and as a result Predator drones could be missing their targets by as much as 40 feet.

If you don’t really believe in imaginary characters (AQAP), starring in a global fairytale (war on terror), and are wondering why Yemen is the recipient of so much favouritism lately, apart from aforementioned limited oil and gas reserves, it is a location of significant geopolitical importance.

Yemen is home to a world class deep sea shipping port. Besides neighbouring Saudi Arabia, Yemen is the only country from which most of the Middle East’s oil can potentially reach the open seas without passing through either the Strait of Hormuz or the Suez Canal.

But instabilities which can threaten this supply route do sometimes flare from opposing tribal factions fighting a civil war in Yemen. A situation the US takes quite a dim view of, even though, as usual, they had more than an influence in bring this to pass.

The obvious solution to this dilemma, hindering the US in controlling access to most of the world’s energy supplies; brand one side of those warring combatants with the Al-Qaeda trademark and blast them to hell.

Ali Jawad of countercurrents.org writes:
“Should Yemen fall within the orbit of direct US influence, it will ominously reduce the geo-strategic importance of the Strait of Hormuz in formulating calculations surrounding any future ‘shock and awe’-type strikes on Iran.”

Perhaps a note worthy observation. At present there are massive expansions in US and allied military naval and air power underway in the Arabian Sea. It has also been disclosed that Washington plans to sell $123 billion worth of weapons to allied countries that encircle Iran - Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, Oman and the United Arab Emirates.




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