Chinese Terror Attack A Harbinger Of Much Worse To Come: Tarpley

The terrorist attack that killed at least 16 Chinese policemen yesterday appears to confirm the warning issued by Webster Tarpley last week. Tarpley's piece claims NATO (US/UK) intelligence is behind the “Turkestan Islamic Party,” which the Chinese have blamed for yesterday's attack.

US-UK INTELLIGENCE READIES TURKESTAN ISLAMIC PARTY TERROR GAMBIT FOR BEIJING OLYMPICS

Reliable Australian intelligence sources have issued a warning that US-UK intelligence is attempting to mount a false flag terror operation against China, quite possibly featuring a gaggle of patsies calling themselves the “Turkestan Islamic Party,” at the upcoming Beijing Olympics, where the eyes of the world will be concentrated next week. The goal of the operation will be to duplicate or surpass the bloodbaths the Mexico City 1968 and/or Munich 1972 summer games. Commandant Seyfullah of the Turkestan Islamic Party (TIP) claims in a video tirade displayed by a US company’s website to represent the Turkish Moslems of Sinkiang province or Chinese Turkestan, where the Anglo-Americans have long sponsored an abortive separatist movement. Patsy leader Seyfullah and his Turkestan Islamic Party have been indirectly mentioned twice over the past two years by Ayman Zawahiri, the veteran British agent who functions as the real leader of “al Qaeda,” in effect sheep-dipping the little known TIP in the vast pool of “al Qaeda” notoriety. If the planned operation actually takes place, the current Chinese leadership will – in the hopes of the plotters -- loose face and forfeit the mandate of heaven, the prerequisites for continued rule. This could then be the prelude to the installation of a new Chinese government far less committed to the Shanghai Cooperation Organization and to cooperation with Russia. It might be a first step towards splitting the SCO and turning Beijing against Moscow, which is the current goal of Anglo-American grand strategy.

Xinhua reports today:

Weapons in Xinjiang attack resemble those of East Turkistan terrorists'

The gun and explosives found at the site of the fatal attack on policemen in Kashi City were similar to those used by East Turkistan terrorists, Xinjiang public security authority said Tuesday.

Police found nine home-made explosive items and a home-made [gun at] the site of the suspected terrorist attack that left at least 16 border policemen dead and 16 others injured on Monday morning in Kashi City, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region in northwest China.

The explosives and the gun were similar to those found by Xinjiang police at a training base of the "East Turkistan Islamic Movement" in a crackdown in January, 2007, according to the autonomous regional public security bureau.

Two knives and some propaganda posters advocating the "holy war" were also discovered at the site of the attack, just 100 meters away from the Kashi border police division, the bureau said in a statement released on Tuesday.

The statement said the two suspects, who were arrested on the spot, lived in Kashi City.

One of the suspects is a taxi driver and the other a vegetable peddler, and the attack had been premeditated, the bureau said, citing initial investigation results.

One of the attackers drove a truck to ram into a team of more than 70 policemen who were jogging during a regular exercise at about 8:00 a.m.

The driver and the other attacker also threw explosives at the team and the gate of the station.

Road checks have been strengthened across Xinjiang and the local authorities in Kashi have ordered a full security alert in public places including government office buildings, schools and hospitals.

The Spanish government and the United States have expressed their strongest condemnation of the bloody attack.

The perpetrators always condemn the attack in the strongest terms. This is not how we identify the perps, but condemning the attack doesn't exactly exonerate anyone.

Meanwhile the Chinese authorities are busy clamping down:

China tightens security following deadly attack

China tightened security in its northwestern province of Xinjiang on Tuesday in the aftermath of an attack that killed 16 police officers just days before Beijing hosts the Summer Olympics.

Chinese authorities said Tuesday that the two men who carried out Monday's bomb attack in the city of Kashgar were carrying documents calling for a holy war.

An official in Xinjiang province said 18 "foreign agitators" have been arrested following the attack, which also injured 16 other officers, the Reuters news agency reported.

While the incident happened 4,000 kilometres from Beijing, officials insisted they were "confident" of holding a safe Olympics for athletes and spectators.

In the capital, more than 100,000 police and soldiers were on standby ahead of Friday's Olympics opening ceremony.

"Currently all security measures relating to the Olympic Games have been implemented in a comprehensive manner, and we are prepared to respond to all kinds of security threats," China's official Xinhua news agency quoted Sun Weide, a media official for the Games organizing committee, as saying Tuesday.

Authorities have reinforced police checkpoints at roads leading into Kashgar, with police boarding buses to search passengers' bags, Xinhua reported.

A full security alert has been issued in public places, including government office buildings, schools and hospitals, Xinhua said.

It's interesting to watch the official story changing:

Police confirmed the two men who killed the officers were Uyghurs, members of a significant Muslim minority in the northwestern province.

The minority group has waged a sporadically violent rebellion against Chinese rule.

Police clarified that rather than attacking a police station, as initially alleged, the two suspects targeted a group of about 70 police officers who were out jogging.

Police also said the two men used homemade explosives, rather than grenades as originally thought.

One attacker's arms were blown off shortly after he lit a fuse.

After subduing the attackers, police found the documents calling for a holy war, as well as a firearm and 10 more bombs, authorities said.

The Holy War documents are a nice touch, don't you think? Just in case anybody needed help putting two and two together.

What? It worked on 9/11, didn't it?

The original descriptions of the attack were quite different:

Grenade attack kills 16 policemen on Chinese border

Suspected terrorists today killed 16 policemen and injured 16 more in north-west China's restive region of Xinjiang, the state media have reported.

The attack appears to be the most serious incident in the area for several years.

Two assailants used a dump truck to target a paramilitary border police station in Kashgar, running down and then stabbing a team of policemen on their morning drills before exploding grenades, the state news agency Xinhua said.

Are we getting used to seeing news stories change? That would be a bad sign.

The New York Times is playing the usual tune; yet another refrain of "Oh, al-Qaeda!"

China Blames Attack on Muslim Separatists

A day after two men attacked a military police unit in the country’s far northwest, killing 16 and wounding 16 others, the Chinese authorities sought to portray the ambush as an act of terrorism and said the men were members of an outlawed organization they contend has links to Al Qaeda.

Unsurprisingly, the Chinese authorities are playing this drama to the hilt:

Chinese separatists 'planning year-long terror campaign'

Islamic separatists in western China are executing a carefully laid plan to sabotage the Beijing Olympics and make 2008 a “year of mourning”, a senior Chinese official claimed today — a day after a devastating attack that killed 16 policemen in the desert city of Kashgar.

In the first official response to the attacks, Shi Dagang, a senior Communist Party official in Kashgar, said that China faced a long struggle against terrorism perpetrated by local and foreign separatists seeking to establish an independent state of East Turkestan in the Muslim-dominated Xinjiang province.

“Since last year, East Turkestan forces have tried to launch sabotage and violence against the Beijing Games,” Mr Shi said. “They are trying to turn 2008 into a year of mourning for China.

“I admit that we face a severe campaign because I know that these people will not lose their momentum, but we are confident that we can control the broader environment.”

A "year of mourning"? Why not a decade? Why not a century?

Does the script sound familiar? The authorities have all the suspects under arrest but still claim that "these people will not lose their momentum" ... because it's always handy -- some would say "indispensable" to have a determined, implacable, eternal foe.

That part of the script sounds familiar too, doesn't it?

Tarpley expects more violence, and more kinds of violence:

The threatened Olympic terror event may have a second phase, designed to prevent a wave of world sympathy for the Chinese and other victims of whatever happens. An attempt to disrupt the world-wide operations of the internet may ensue, presented as the retaliation or riposte by the Chinese for what has been done to them by the foreign devils. Logic bombs or more sophisticated means could be used to disrupt the world-wide internet, shutting it down in whole or in part for days or weeks. International financial transactions might also become chaotic. Someone might begin dumping US Treasury paper, with the controlled western media blaming the Chinese government, even though the prospect of any direct or immediate Chinese government retaliation is remote. The massive hardships that can be inflicted by computer and cyber-based disruption would be used to whip up resentment and hatred in the west against the Chinese, changing the world strategic climate dramatically. Some patsy group calling itself a Chinese secret society might announce that it had finally become fed up with the arrogance, the interference, and the aggression of the Anglo-Americans, and that it had decided to strike back on its own. This would allow the US and UK to demanded that the Chinese government hand over these malefactors in a humiliating gesture, leading to an escalating diplomatic and strategic crisis. These are but a few crude hypotheses drawn from the immense pool of possibilities. In many of these we see that the scope of terror could suddenly become much larger, due to the immense strategic potential on the Anglo-American and Chinese sides.

You can read the rest of Tarpley's analysis here.

Government Propaganda? Not Here, Surely -- Must Be Chinese!

William Blum:

The Washington Post recently ran a story about how the Chinese people largely support the government suppression of the Tibetan protesters. The heading was: "Beijing's Crackdown Gets Strong Domestic Support. Ethnic Pride Stoked by Government Propaganda."

He's not kidding: here's the link.

Blum writes:

The article spoke of how Beijing officials have "educated" the public about Tibet "through propaganda".

Indeed. Here's Edward Cody in the Washington Post:

In the West, the name Tibet has long evoked unspoiled Himalayan landscapes, cinnamon-robed monks spinning prayer wheels and a peace-loving Dalai Lama seeking freedom for his repressed Buddhist followers.

Here in China, people have embraced a different view; they regard Tibet as a historical part of the nation and see its sympathizers in the West as easily fooled romantics. Thanks to government propaganda, but also to ethnic pride, most Chinese see the Dalai Lama and his monks as obscurantist reactionaries trying to split the country and reverse the economic and social progress that China has brought to a backward and isolated land over the past 58 years.

The violent protests by Buddhist monks and other Tibetans that exploded in Lhasa on Friday, therefore, have generated widespread condemnation among the country's majority Han Chinese. In street conversations, Internet discussions and academic forums, most Chinese have readily embraced the government's contention that the violence resulted from a plot mounted by the Dalai Lama from his exile headquarters in India.

Blum again:

Imagine the Post or any other American mainstream media saying that those Americans who support the war in Iraq do so because they've been educated by government propaganda. ... Ditto those who support the war in Afghanistan. ... Ditto those who supported the bombing of Yugoslavia. ... Ditto scores of other US invasions, bombings, overthrows, and miscellaneous war crimes spanning more than half a century.

Can you imagine? Internet discussions where people speak out in favor of war crimes? Street conversations? Academic forums?

Cody says the people are even urging the government to be more vicious:

Against that background, the Communist Party has met with broad popular approval in vowing to crack down on the rioters -- most of whose victims were Han Chinese -- and in qualifying the "impudent" Dalai Lama as a "master terror maker" who has hoodwinked the West with his appeals for peace. While the rest of the world invokes the Beijing Olympics and advises restraint, Chinese specialists and the public have urged the government to move decisively...

And it all seems so familiar ... Are we sure we don't have any propaganda here?

Blum again:

A recurring theme of Hillary Clinton's campaign for the presidency has been that she has more of the right kind of experience needed to deal with national security and foreign policy issues than Barack Obama. The latest play on this is her advertisement telling you: It's three a.m. and your children are safe and asleep; but there's a phone in the White House and it's ringing; something really bad is happening somewhere; and voters are asked who they want answering the phone. Of course they should want Hillary and her marvelous experience. (If she's actually explained what that marvelous experience is, I missed it. Perhaps her near-death experience in Bosnia?)

Typical of Clinton's growing corps of conservative followers, the Washington Times recently lent support to this theme. The right-wing newspaper interviewed a group of "mostly conservative retired [military] officers, industry executives and current defense officials", who cite Mr. Obama's lack of experience in national security.

And so it goes. And so it has gone for many years. What is it with this experience thing for public office? It was not invented by Hillary Clinton. If I need to have my car repaired I look for a mechanic with experience with my particular car. If I needed an operation I'd seek out a surgeon with lots of experience performing that particular operation. But when it comes to choosing a person for political office, the sine qua non consideration is what their politics are. Who would you choose between two candidates -- one who was strongly against everything you passionately supported but who had decades of holding high government positions, or one who shared your passion on every important issue but had never held any public office? Is there any doubt about which person almost everyone would go for? So why does this "experience" thing keep coming up in so many elections?

A recent national poll questioned registered voters about the candidates' "approach to foreign policy and national security". 43% thought that Obama would be "not tough enough" (probably a reflection of the "experience" factor), while only 3% thought he'd be "too tough". For Clinton the figures were 37% and 9%. The evidence is overwhelming that decades of very tough -- nay, brutal -- US policies toward the Middle East has provoked extensive anti-American terrorism; the same in Latin America in earlier decades, yet this remains an alien concept to most American voters, who think that toughness works (even though they know it doesn't work on Americans -- witness the reaction to 9/11).

John McCain, who is proud to have dropped countless bombs on the people of Vietnam, who had never done him or his country any harm until he and his country invaded them, who now (literally) sings in public about bombing the people of Iran, and who tells us he's prepared to remain in Iraq for 100 years, is still regarded as "not tough enough" by 16% and "too tough" by only 25%. What does it take to convince Americans that one of their leaders is a bloody psychopath? Like the two psychos he may replace. How has 225 years of our grand experiment in democracy wound up like this? And why is McCain regularly referred to as a "war hero"? He was shot down and captured and held prisoner for more than five years. What's heroic about that? In most other kinds of work, such a record would be called a failure.

Winston Churchill said that "The best argument against democracy is a five-minute conversation with the average voter." And if that doesn't do it for you, try a five-minute conversation with almost any American politician. This thing called democracy continues to be used as a substitute for human liberation.

One parting thought about Obama: Is he prepared to distance himself from Rev. Martin Luther King as he has from his own minister, Rev. Jeremiah Wright? King vehemently denounced the Vietnam War and called the United States "the most violent nation in the world". Like Wright, he was strongly condemned for his remarks. As T.S. Eliot famously observed: "Humankind can not bear very much reality."

Blum gives his readers quite a few things to think about. Here's a sampling:

Expressing elementary truths about the oppression of the poor by the rich in the United States runs the risk of being accused of "advocating class warfare"; because the trick of class war is to not let the victims know the war is being waged.

What do the CEOs do all day that they should earn a thousand times more than schoolteachers, nurses, firefighters, street cleaners, and social workers? Re-read some medieval history, about feudal lords and serfs.

The campaigns of the anti-regulationists imply that pure food and drugs will be ours as soon as we abolish the pure food and drug laws. ...

The more you care about others, the more you're at a disadvantage competing in the capitalist system.

To say that 1% of the population owns 35% of the resources and wealth, is deceptive. If you own 35% you can control much more than that.

How could the current distribution of property and wealth have emerged from any sort of democratic process? ...

Capitalism is the theory that the worst people, acting from their worst motives, will somehow produce the most good. ...

Communist governments take over companies. Under capitalism, the companies take over the government. ...

How much reality can you bear?

Read the rest here.

One Way Of Dealing With A Corrupt Politician

Shocking news! from the New Straits Times Online:

China's former food-and-drug chief executed

The former head of China’s food and drug watchdog was executed today, state media reported, following a sensational downfall that saw him become a symbol of the nation’s endemic graft.

Sensational!!

Zheng Xiaoyu, 62, the former director of China’s State Food and Drug Administration that had a ministry-level ranking, was executed this morning following the approval of China’s Supreme People’s Court, Xinhua said.

Zheng was sentenced to death in late May after being found guilty of accepting 6.5 million yuan (850,000 dollars) in bribes in exchange for granting approvals for hundreds of medicines, some of which proved dangerous.

His execution comes ahead of the Communist Party’s five-yearly Congress expected to be held in or around October. The showpiece political event is typically preceded by official campaigns against corruption within party ranks.

Whoa! Ritual human sacrifice politics! How sensational can you get?

Political observers said previously that Zheng’s downfall had also marked a major step in reining in the country’s chaotic food and drug industries.

China’s consumer product quality-control systems have come under fierce scrutiny recently both at home and abroad due to a spate of incidents ranging from fake drugs to chemical-tainted food.

Zheng is believed to be the highest-ranking Chinese official put to death since 2000, when Cheng Kejie, the vice chairman of the National People’s Congress, was executed.
...

The report did not say how Zheng was executed but the typical method in China is a bullet to the head or lethal injection.

What?

What??

I haven't said a word!