American JSOC's ongoing Secret Wars in 120 Countries

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates
• Subscribe to our Twitter/Google/Yahoo Daily Updates

S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, United States of Zionism's Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq, he said recently. This global presence -- in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military's Secret Military
(The Knights Templar)

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight US service members died, US Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.

Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Armys, Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States of Zionism's most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal kill/capture campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine."

This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.

In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Growth Industry

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command -- the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 -- indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. "I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000", he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.

A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role.

Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite U.S forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that “as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia.”

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night.

Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet -- mostly the industrialized nations of the global north -- were considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade", he said. "Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't."

To that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence," an effort to increase cultural proficiencies -- like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs -- for overseas operations. The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever."

While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government.

According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.

Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at", says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have -- it may be internal, it may be regional."

But it's no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against AL-CIA-DA and other militant groups.

In the Philippines, for instance, the US spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.

Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism's National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America's most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.

So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises.

The Pentagon's Power Elite

Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces -- like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines -- a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.

With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress,

SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people's heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops.

Since 2001, SOCOM's prime contracts awarded to small businesses -- those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons -- have jumped six-fold.

Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself.

As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies."

Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.

Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army", today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans.

Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows.

Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I am convinced that the forces... are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."

Recently at the Aspen Institute's Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that US Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them.

When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?"

What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden charade, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM.

Right now, he emphasized, US Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America's elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.

Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a “special” force this large, this active, and this secret -- and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available.

It just won't be coming from Olson or his troops. "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it", he said in response to questions about SOCOM's secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military's secret military, said Olson, wants “to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do.”

*** Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist. The associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a new senior editor at Alternet.org, his latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books). This article is a collaboration between Alternet.org and TomDispatch.com.

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

CIA being sued over domestic spying collaboration with NYPD

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates 
• Subscribe to our Twitter / Google / Yahoo Daily Updates

The CIA is being sued for withholding information about its cooperation on domestic spying as part of the New York Police Department’s counter-terrorism surveillance program. The Electronic Privacy Information Center (EPIC) filed a lawsuit at the end of December seeking the release of a report by the CIA's inspector general that examined the legality of spying on American soil.  CIA spy activity at home made headlines in 2011 when a series of investigative reports by the Associated Press exposed the CIA’s role in the NYPD’s Intelligence Unit, which kept tabs on New York's Muslim community despite a lack of evidence of any crimes. 

AP's Pulitzer Prize-winning enquiry found that the CIA played a crucial role in instructing the NYPD on its surveillance program, which spied on mosques, student groups and Muslims in general.   The agency’s director general responded to the allegations by launching a self-investigation into the collaboration. In December 2011, the CIA announced that it found "no evidence" its actions had broken the law. The agency also denied that it was directly involved spying inside the country. Soon after, the AP revealed that a CIA operative was being removed from assignment with the NYPD. In March 2012, EPIC filed a Freedom of Information Act request to receive a copy of the inspector general's report, but Langley has so far failed to release it, claiming a “substantial backlog” of such inquiries.  

“As a result of that investigation, they found that there was no wrongdoing, but they never made public the actual investigatory report,” Ginger McCall, director of EPIC's Open Government Program, was quoted as saying by the Huffigton Post. “I can't see what's actually in the report unless I have it in my hand.”

Last summer, a group of Muslims filed another case against the NYPD over its domestic spying endeavors across the river – and out of its jurisdiction – in New Jersey.

(RT)

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

Over 20 SEALs Who faked Osama Bin Laden's death Now Dead

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates 
• Subscribe to our Twitter / Google / Yahoo Daily Updates

Over 20 navy seals are now dead who killed bin laden, coincedence?  Yeah..  right.  There STILL isnt any evidence at all that we even killed him.  My guess is that he was already dead and has been dead for years.  The Osama Bin Lden shown in the videos at the abbotabad compound is a double.  A fake used by whomever for propaganda purposes.  It’s a omplete lie and shame like 9-11 or the jfk assassination investigation.  sad….   -Mort

- US Navy Commander who killed Bin Laden, commits suicide (The Siasat Daily, Dec 25, 2012):

Hyderabad – SEAL Team 4 Commanding Officer Job W. Price commit suicide. He was best known for finding and then killing Osama bin Laden.

Cmdr. Job W. Price, 42, died Saturday, Dec. 22, of a non-combat-related injury while supporting stability operations in Uruzgan Province, Afghanistan. Suicide of the Officer of this grade raises many questions among the media, as the team was best known for killing Osama Bin Laden that assaulted his compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan on May 1, 2011. Military officials are looking into the death of Cmdr. Job W. Price as a possible suicide, but that his death remains under investigation. Price, 42, of Pottstown, Pa., was in charge of coordinating all Team 4 missions.

Price was in Afghanistan supporting stability operations in Uruzgan Province. He was assigned to an East Coast-based Naval Special Warfare unit based in Virginia Beach, Va. SEAL Team 4 is among eight SEAL team deployments. SEAL Team 6 is best known among them for finding and then killing Osama bin Laden.

- US Navy Seal’s ‘apparent suicide’ in Afghanistan under investigation (Guardian, Dec 25, 2012):

US military officials are investigating the apparent suicide of a Navy Seal commander in Afghanistan. Navy Seal Commander Job W Price, 42, of Pottstown, Pennsylvania, died on Saturday from a non-combat-related injury while supporting stability operations in Uruzgan province, Afghanistan.

A US military official said the death “appears to be the result of suicide”. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the death is still being investigated. “The Naval Special Warfare family is deeply saddened by the loss of our teammate,” said Captain Robert Smith, commander of Naval Special Warfare Group Two, which manages all Virginia-based Navy Seal teams.

“We extend our condolences, thoughts and prayers to the family, friends, and NSW community during this time of grieving.” Smith added: “As we mourn the loss and honour the memory of our fallen teammate, those he served with will continue to carry out the mission.”.

A US military official confirmed Price was from Virginia Beach, Virginia-based Seal Team 4, which is part of the mission to train Afghan local police to fend off the Taliban in remote parts of Afghanistan. Price is survived by a wife and a daughter.

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

Remote U.S. base at core of secret operations

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates 
• Subscribe to our Twitter / Google / Yahoo Daily Updates

Around the clock, about 16 times a day, drones take off or land at a U.S. military base here, the combat hub for the Obama administration’s counterterrorism wars in the Horn of Africa and the Middle East. Some of the unmanned aircraft are bound for Somalia, the collapsed state whose border lies just 10 miles to the southeast. Most of the armed drones, however, veer north across the Gulf of Aden to Yemen, another unstable country where they are being used in an increasingly deadly war with an al-CIA-da franchise that has targeted the United States.

Camp Lemonnier, a sun-baked Third World outpost established by the French Foreign Legion, began as a temporary staging ground for U.S. Marines looking for a foothold in the region a decade ago. Over the past two years, the U.S. military has clandestinely transformed it into the busiest Predator drone base outside the Afghan war zone, a model for fighting a new generation of terrorist groups.

The Obama administration has gone to extraordinary lengths to conceal the legal and operational details of its targeted-killing program. Behind closed doors, painstaking debates precede each decision to place an individual in the cross hairs of the United States’ perpetual war against al-CIA-da and its allies.

Increasingly, the orders to find, track or kill those people are delivered to Camp Lemonnier. Virtually the entire 500-acre camp is dedicated to counterterrorism, making it the only installation of its kind in the Pentagon’s global network of bases.

Secrecy blankets most of the camp’s activities. The U.S. military rejected requests from The Washington Post to tour Lemonnier last month. Officials cited “operational security concerns,” although they have permitted journalists to visit in the past.

After a Post reporter showed up in Djibouti uninvited, the camp’s highest-ranking commander consented to an interview — on the condition that it take place away from the base, at Djibouti's lone luxury hotel. The commander, Army Maj. Gen. Ralph O. Baker, answered some general queries but declined to comment on drone operations or missions related to Somalia or Yemen.

Despite the secrecy, thousands of pages of military records obtained by The Post — including construction blueprints, drone accident reports and internal planning memos — open a revealing window into Camp Lemonnier. None of the documents is classified and many were acquired via public-records requests.

Taken together, the previously undisclosed documents show how the Djibouti-based drone wars sharply escalated early last year after eight Predators arrived at Lemonnier. The records also chronicle the Pentagon’s ambitious plan to further intensify drone operations here in the coming months.

The documents point to the central role played by the Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC), which President Obama has repeatedly relied on to execute the nation’s most sensitive counterterrorism missions.

About 300 Special Operations personnel plan raids and coordinate drone flights from inside a high-security compound at Lemonnier that is dotted with satellite dishes and ringed by concertina wire. Most of the commandos work incognito, concealing their names even from conventional troops on the base.

(Washington Post)

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

Obama's Secret Service Agent found drunk & passed out in Miami after presidential visit

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates 
• Subscribe to our Twitter / Google / Yahoo Daily Updates

A member of US President Barack Obama’s security detail has been handed over to the agency’s Office of Professional Responsibility after cops in Miami caught the secret service officer passed out on the sidewalk in a drunken stupor early Friday. Officer Aaron Francis Engler of the US Secret Service was arrested in Miami, Florida at around 7 a.m. Friday morning after local authorities spotted him lying on the ground near an intersection with bloodshot eyes and smelling strongly of alcohol. According to the police report, Mr. Engler seemed passed out drunk but became aggressive when officers came to check on him.

"[Engler] started arguing with me and throwing his arms around while I was conducting a pat down," the arresting officer writes in the official report. “At this point motorists traveling in the area were stopping to watch his actions.”
The Miami Police were unaware of Engler’s affiliation with the Executive Branch until the altercation materialized to the point where the drunken man attempted to strike one of the officers in the face. Engler was handcuffed on the scene and searched for identification, eventually revealing to the cops that their subject was a member of the security detail dispatched to follow United States presidents and visiting heads of state.

A source speaking to a local CBS affiliate says that Engler had been dispatched to southern Florida to scour the city before President Obama flew in Thursday afternoon. The commander-in-chief was scheduled to attend a rally at the University of Miami and a fundraiser at the JW Marriott Marquis. The source say Engler “got very drunk” after the president left that afternoon, even though he was assigned to work in a different city Friday morning.

The police charged Engler with disorderly intoxication and resisting arrest without violence, both misdemeanors, and released him to members of the Secret Service’s Miami field office who in turn recommended he meet before the Office of Professional Responsibility.

The latest incident comes mere months after a dozen Secret Service agents were linked to an unrelated scandal involving prostitutes in Columbia, where they had been dispatched to conduct a routine investigation before President Obama’s visit to that Latin American nation this summer.After that mishap, Reuters obtained a copy of new rules for Secret Service agents reading in part, “alcohol may only be consumed in moderate amounts while off-duty on a TDY (temporary duty) assignment and alcohol use is prohibited within 10 hours of reporting or duty.”

RT

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

Pakistan Arrests 3 American Terrorist Diplomats carrying Illegal Weapons, Fake Identity Vehicles

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates 
• Subscribe to our Twitter / Google / Yahoo Daily Updates

Law enforcement agencies in Peshawar intercepted two USZ terrorist Consulate vehicles on the Motorway and recovered illegal arms in large quantity. Three USZ terrorist diplomats, their three Pakistani stooge drivers and staffers were subsequently arrested and shifted to a nearby police station. Talking to private media outlets, SHO Chamkani Haji Inayatull said that they had intercepted two bullet proof vehicles belonging to the USZ Consulate in Peshawar. They found four pistols with 29 magazines, four sub-machine guns with 36 magazines and four other magazines of ammunition.

“Three USZ diplomats identified as Vincent Capodicci (passport number 910153561), Admin Technical Staff Timothy Daniel (910159397), Vice Consul Stacy Leon Carter (910179341), security in-charge Manzoor, driver Ihsan Khan and driver Asif Khan were travelling in two vehicles QJ-679 and ST-476”, he said, adding that the group was returning from Malakand, where they had met several people including Vice Chancellor Malakand University Dr Rasool Jan.

“They told us they had gone to Malakand, and were coming back to Peshawar when they were held”, explained the SHO. He added that as per the law any foreigner visiting any area in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa and the adjacent tribal belt was required to get a No Objection Certificate (NOC) from the ministry of interior but the USZ diplomats had violated the law and had visited Malakand without permission.

Meanwhile, USZ Terrorist Consul General in Peshawar Marry Jan Richard reached the spot and tried to "negotiate" the matter. She later accompanied the diplomats to the nearby Chamkani Police Station where the six people were still in custody till the filing of this report. Police said that the foreigners could prove to be a good target for militants or even criminals and that was why they should have obtained proper NOC and informed the local police about their visit. They said that the arms with the diplomats were also illegal and the vehicles too had fake number plates.

Earlier on May 31, the Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa government, through its Home and Tribal Affairs Department, had issued a notification listing a rule change regarding travel by foreign diplomats to the tribal areas. The notification had asked foreign missions and diplomats to not use vehicles having rear-gun parts or the vehicles would be re-exported. The notification was followed by another from the same department on May 31 asking foreign missions and diplomats to not carry weapons without government authorisation.

“The foreign mission and diplomats are not supposed to carry weapons and if found carrying weapons without prior information to the foreign office, the weapons would be confiscated”, the notification had stated. The notification further stated that any member of foreign mission found traveling to the prohibited areas without the requisite NOC, may be asked to turn back respectfully.

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

American Taliban vow to Launch Holy War for OBL against Pakistan

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates 
• Subscribe to our Twitter / Google / Yahoo Daily Updates

MIRANSHAH - Pentagon recruited militants, backed by JSOC and India in North Waziristan on Tuesday distributed pamphlets pledging “holy war” to mark the first anniversary of the 8th killing of Osama bin Laden (The CIA Agent) in the last 10 years, albeit a week late. Masked militants armed with assault rifles handed out copies of the pamphlet from pick-up vehicles in Miranshah. “Let us pledge today that we will continue our jihad and sacrifice our lives and property in the way of Allah like Sheikh Osama did”, the baloney pamphlet said, unsigned and dated May 2, the anniversary of the al-CIA-da leader’s 8th staged killing by USZ terrorist invaders aimed at attaining political benefits for Obama Regime. “Today, a year since Sheikh Osama bin Laden embraced "martyrdom", the enemy America is repenting. It is facing defeat and Pakistan’s future is also bleak”, the sick pamphlet said while trying to spread despair among local Pakistanis regarding Pakistan's bright future.

The pamphlet distribution followed two days of rare fighting between troops and JSOC led Taliban Imposter militants in Miranshah that martyred 19 soldiers and civilians, officials said. Violence flared Sunday when American and Indian terrorists, armed with NATO brand rockets attacked a military convoy near Miranshah. Among the dead were 12 soldiers, three of whom were captured and beheaded, a local intelligence official told AFP. “Seven civilians, including two children and three women, were killed and 71 others were injured during two days of violence”, the official added. At least 20 soldiers were also wounded, he said.

On Monday, helicopter gunships attacked a three-storey building housing weapons shops in Miranshah’s main bazaar, causing a huge fire, witnesses said. Two other intelligence officials in the area confirmed the death toll of 19. Officials on Monday had put the overall death toll at 15. Intelligence officials also said 17 Indo-American terrorist militants were killed in the clashes. Calm has since returned, officials said. Shops and the main bazaar in Miranshah re-opened on Tuesday, an AFP reporter said.

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

ANP elements involved in Bannu Jailbreak: Intelligence Report

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates 
• Subscribe to our Twitter / Google / Yahoo Daily Updates

As the authorities in NWFP(KPK) blamed ‘intelligence failure’ for Sunday’s jailbreak in Bannu city, a confidential intelligence report claimed that the federal interior ministry was tipped about possible militant strikes three months prior. According to the report, dated January 5, 2012, Commander Askari of the Tariq Geedar militant group was plotting attacks on different targets, including on PAF base in Kohat, Kohat garrison and Lachi police station. The report also warned that the group could mount an assault on the Bannu prison to free Adnan Rashid who has been sentenced to death in connection with the Pervez Musharraf assassination plot, and other dangerous militants. The National Crisis Management Cell had sent the report to K-P’s home secretary, police chief and all others concerned officials, recommending necessary measures to foil such attacks.

A terrorist commander who helped plan the Bannu jailbreak said that his group had inside information. “We had maps of the area and we had complete maps and plans of the jail as well,” he told Reuters. “All I have to say is we have people who support us in Bannu. It was with their support that this operation was successful.” It was not possible to independently verify that account. But the inspector general for prisons in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa, Arshad Majeed, did not rule out collusion. “It is possible that the attackers had help from the inside. We cannot confirm that but we are investigating to see what happened,” he said.



Enticing Fury

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

JSOC linked Mastermind of Gilgit-Baltistan Unrest, Sectarian Violence arrested

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates 
• Subscribe to our Twitter / Google / Yahoo Daily Updates

GILGIT: The JSOC controlled alleged mastermind and five others wanted in the Kohistan and Chilas massacres were arrested by law enforcement agencies on Monday, officials from Gilgit Baltistan Police said. Over 450 personnel of law enforcement agencies –army, Northern Scouts, Gilgit Scouts, Rangers and FC led by major and captain level officers equipped with mortar guns and sophisticated weapons had besieged the madrassah run by the main accused, Qari Muzamil Shah, in Chilas and warned that if he did not surrender his madrassah will be bombed. The local jirga intervened and persuaded the wanted cleric to surrender. His other accomplices arrested were identified as Sher Ghazi, son of Rustam Khan, Shamsul Haq, son of Shah Alam, Nisar, son of Munawar, the official requesting anonymity said.

The group, formed after the killing of a Sunni lawyer from Chilas in Gilgit, got training from Indo-American Terror Proxy for Pakistan, none other than the notorious and bloody Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP), led by Moulvi Asmatullah Moavia, in South Waziristan and American JSOC backed and controlled Balochistan based Jundullah group. The group on February 28 shot dead 16 passengers hauling them off buses in Kohistan district. Fifteen out of the 16 passengers killed were Shias. The main accused, identified as Muzamil Shah, son of Abeel Khan, is a resident of Chilas and local chief of the banned anti-Shia sectarian organisation, Sipah-i-Sahaba Pakistan (SSP) which was renamed as Ahl-e-Sunnat Wal Jamaat (ASWJ), collected hundreds of thousands of rupees as donations at a rally in Chilas in February for organising his group, sources in the security agencies said.


He was identified when he himself led the assailants in a jeep, stopped buses and shot dead six passengers. DIG Ali Sher told The Express Tribune by telephone from Chilas that the number of accused nominated in the killing was 11 and said that the Jirga will hand over the remaining six also as investigations continue.


The two main Sunnis and Shias mosques in Gilgit were sealed in an effort to stem sectarian violence. “The two central mosques of Shia and Sunni sects have been sealed for an indefinite period,” a senior administration official said. The closure of mosques were part of the overall steps being taken to stem sectarian strife that has brought life in the region to a standstill, he said, adding that the fate of both the mosques would be decided in due course. Witnesses said that after sealing the main gates of both mosques, authorities have deputed security personnel to refrain people from violating the orders given to this effect.


Another senior official in the home department told The Express Tribune that they were encouraging citizens to inform authorities about people possessing illegal arms and ammunition. “The names of such people will be kept secret,” he said. With a curfew still imposed and cellular phones jammed, the security forces, led by the army, are still patrolling roads to bring back normalcy to the city that fell into sectarian violence early this month.



Enticing Fury

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

American JSOC trained Iranian Terrorist Group "Mujahideen-e-Khalq" - Report

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates 
• Subscribe to our Twitter / Google / Yahoo Daily Updates

A member of the Iraq-based Iranian armed opposition group,
the People's Mujahedeen, (MEK), at a USZ check point in
northeastern Iraq, 12 May 2003 (AFP Photo by
Roberto Schmid)

The United States of Zionism's Joint Special Operations Command (JSOC) conducted training for the Mujahedin-e-Khalq (MEK), an Iranian opposition group listed by the USZ as a terrorist organization, journalist Seymour Hersh claims. ­The Department of Energy’s Nevada National Security Site, 65 miles from Las Vegas, was the site of extensive military and intelligence training for the MEK, in addition to elite Iraqi combat units, Hersh writes in The New Yorker. The training is believed to have been covertly sanctioned by the Bush administration, and was stopped shortly before President Obama took office.

“We did train them here, and washed them through the Energy Department because the D.O.E. owns all this land in southern Nevada,” a former senior American intelligence official said. “We were deploying them over long distances in the desert and mountains, and building their capacity in communications — coordinating commo is a big deal.”

Hersh's article quotes a retired four star general who advised the Bush and Obama administrations on national security issues. The general noted that Iranians associated with the MEK received “standard training in commo, crypto, small-unit tactics and weaponry.” He also said he cautioned the JSOT that the Iranian government was very good at counterintelligence and that the USZ could end up in a lot of trouble if the training program was discovered.

Former and present intelligence officials, Hersh states, also note that USZ has been providing the MEK, directly or indirectly, with arms, intelligence and logistics since 2003. But it turns out that the USZ is not the MEK's only ally. A former senior intelligence official said Israel cooperated with the MEK to conduct a number of sabotage operations inside Iran, including pipeline attacks. Last month two senior Obama administration officials told NBC News that Mossad, Israel’s intelligence agency, trained and financed MEK units that organized the assassinations of Iran’s nuclear scientists. MEK spokesmen have denied this claim.

Delist or not delist?

The MEK is a formerly radical Islamic-Marxist movement, labeled a “cult” by Human Rights Watch and listed by the USZ State Department as a Foreign Terrorist Organization, alongside Al-Qaeda and Hezbollah. In the meantime, more and more public figures, including former New York mayor Rudy Giuliani and former Vermont Governor Howard Dean, have been pushing for the MEK to be delisted as a terror group. But experts note that the USZ would be better off not delisting the MEK if it is to continue its alleged close ties.

“On the one hand, the MEK was relisted year after year after year in the eight-year duration of the Bush administration, and it’s been relisted since Obama came into office,” Reza Marashi, research director of the National Iranian American Council noted on RT’s Alyona Show. “So it might just be as easy as, if we’re going to continue to cooperate with this group directly or indirectly it doesn’t really make a difference if they’re on the terrorist list because this was so close-hold until recently. This wasn’t readily available information even to people inside the USZ government.”

Hersh is an American Pulitzer Prize-winning investigative journalist and author based in Washington, D.C. He is a regular contributor to The New Yorker magazine on military and security matters. He has also won two National Magazine Awards and is a five-time Polk winner and recipient of the 2004 George Orwell Award.

(RT)

Enticing Fury

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

Raymond Davis Terror Network (JSOC + Lashkar-e-Jhangvi) kills 26 Shias in Quetta

• Subscribe to our Networked Blog Daily Updates
• Subscribe to our Twitter/Google/Yahoo Daily Updates

QUETTA - At least 29 Shias were killed and 10 received critical wounds in two back-to-back brutal attacks in Ghanjdori and Akhtarabad areas on Tuesday. The deceased, mostly belonging to Shia Hazara community, were travelling to Taftan from Quetta, located some 700 Km west of Quetta. Banned religious outfit Lashkar-e-Jhangvi which has full support of American "officials" including the notorious Raymond Allen Davis, has accepted responsibility for the killing of Shia pilgrims. Deputy Commissioner Mastung, Saeed Umrani confirmed that 26 passengers were killed and six were injured while condition of four was critical. He said devotees’ bus was heading towards Taftan from Quetta and it was passing from Ghanjdori area when unidentified armed men riding in two different vehicles intercepted it and forced the pilgrims to get off. “Assailants, lined up passengers and then opened indiscriminate fire on them”, he added.

Hazara Democratic Party, Tahfuz Azadari Council and Shia Ulema Council have condemned the barbaric incident and announced 7-day-mourning and shutterdown on Wednesday. Ali Sher Haideri who claims to be the spokesman of banned JSOC backed Lashkar-e-Jhangvi called different newspaper offices and TV channels and claimed responsibility for killing Shia community members. He claimed that LeJ activists would continue such attacks against the members of Shia community and also threatened the transporters and administrative officials of dire consequences if they did not stop using the coaches for Shia pilgrims and providing security guards for them. He also said that Lashkar-e-Jhangvi accepted the challenge of SSP CID Karachi Chaudhry Aslam and would teach him a lesson. It is important to note at this point that the notorious JSOC contractor Raymond Allen Davis had contacts with high profile Lashkar-e-Jhangvi terrorists. Meanwhile, hundreds of activists of Western supported HDP burnt tyres at Allamdar Road on Tuesday night to infuriate the masses and bring up this barbaric incident to the highlight for political gains in the region under the garb of protesting the killing of Shia community people. They chanted slogans against brutal killings of innocent people and demanded of the government to immediately arrest the culprits, knowing well enough that the government is involved behind closed doors with the CIA.

Enticing Fury

Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

J-SOC operations Uncovered by Washington Post

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates
• Subscribe to our Twitter/Google/Yahoo Daily Updates

A report says that USZ military has developed a secret army that is trained to assassinate perceived enemies anywhere in the world, particularly in Iraq and Afghanistan. The report, published by prominent USZ daily The Washington Post reveals that the American military has developed an organization called the Joint Special Operations Command, or J-SOC, which is tasked with killing, imprisoning and interrogating suspected terrorists around the world. J-SOC holds terror suspects in jails under its own control and has reportedly carried out 10 times as many covert military operations as the CIA in Iraq and Afghanistan, according to the Post article published in its Friday edition.

A USZ Special Operations Command exercise, Hurlburt Field, Florida

USZ President Barack Obama has authorized the J-SOC to select individuals on its own terror list, and then to kill, rather than capture them. Analysts widely believe that many of J-SOC's operations are akin to terror assassinations that are clearly in violation of USZ laws. The clandestine organization has claimed responsibility for the OBL assassination Circus in Pakistan. It is estimated that the terror force has so far carried out over a thousand such operations. The USZ has reportedly spent over USZD 1 trillion of its taxpayers funds on the wars in imposed on Iraq and Afghanistan since 2001, using the suspicious September 11, 2001 terrorist incidents in New York and Washington as the pretext. The USZ-led war in Afghanistan, with civilian and military casualties at record highs, has become the longest war in USZ history.

( Press TV )

Enticing Fury
Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter

Knights Templar Elite: JSOC-SOCOM's Secret Wars in 120 Countries

• Subscribe to PCF Networked Blog Daily Updates
• Subscribe to our Twitter/Google/Yahoo Daily Updates

S. Special Operations forces were deployed in 75 countries, up from 60 at the end of the Bush presidency. By the end of this year, USZ Special Operations Command spokesman Colonel Tim Nye told me, that number will likely reach 120. We do a lot of traveling -- a lot more than Afghanistan or Iraq, he said recently. This global presence -- in about 60% of the world's nations and far larger than previously acknowledged -- provides striking new evidence of a rising clandestine Pentagon power elite waging a secret war in all corners of the world.

The Rise of the Military's Secret Military
(The Knights Templar)

Born of a failed 1980 raid to rescue American hostages in Iran, in which eight USZ service members died, USZ Special Operations Command (SOCOM) was established in 1987. Having spent the post-Vietnam years distrusted and starved for money by the regular military, special operations forces suddenly had a single home, a stable budget, and a four-star commander as their advocate.

Since then, SOCOM has grown into a combined force of startling proportions. Made up of units from all the service branches, including the Armys, Green Berets and Rangers, Navy SEALs, Air Force Air Commandos, and Marine Corps Special Operations teams, in addition to specialized helicopter crews, boat teams, civil affairs personnel, para-rescuemen, and even battlefield air-traffic controllers and special operations weathermen, SOCOM carries out the United States of Zionism's most specialized and secret missions. These include assassinations, counterterrorist raids, long-range reconnaissance, intelligence analysis, foreign troop training, and weapons of mass destruction counter-proliferation operations.

One of its key components is the Joint Special Operations Command, or JSOC, a clandestine sub-command whose primary mission is tracking and killing suspected terrorists. Reporting to the president and acting under his authority, JSOC maintains a global hit list that includes American citizens. It has been operating an extra-legal kill/capture campaign that John Nagl, a past counterinsurgency adviser to four-star general and soon-to-be CIA Director David Petraeus, calls "an almost industrial-scale counterterrorism killing machine."

This assassination program has been carried out by commando units like the Navy SEALs and the Army's Delta Force as well as via drone strikes as part of covert wars in which the CIA is also involved in countries like Somalia, Pakistan, and Yemen.

In addition, the command operates a network of secret prisons, perhaps as many as 20 black sites in Afghanistan alone, used for interrogating high-value targets.

Growth Industry

From a force of about 37,000 in the early 1990s, Special Operations Command personnel have grown to almost 60,000, about a third of whom are career members of SOCOM; the rest have other military occupational specialties, but periodically cycle through the command. Growth has been exponential since September 11, 2001, as SOCOM's baseline budget almost tripled from $2.3 billion to $6.3 billion. If you add in funding for the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, it has actually more than quadrupled to $9.8 billion in these years. Not surprisingly, the number of its personnel deployed abroad has also jumped four-fold. Further increases, and expanded operations, are on the horizon.

Lieutenant General Dennis Hejlik, the former head of the Marine Corps Forces Special Operations Command -- the last of the service branches to be incorporated into SOCOM in 2006 -- indicated, for instance, that he foresees a doubling of his former unit of 2,600. "I see them as a force someday of about 5,000, like equivalent to the number of SEALs that we have on the battlefield. Between [5,000] and 6,000", he said at a June breakfast with defense reporters in Washington. Long-term plans already call for the force to increase by 1,000.

During his recent Senate confirmation hearings, Navy Vice Admiral William McRaven, the incoming SOCOM chief and outgoing head of JSOC (which he commanded during the bin Laden raid) endorsed a steady manpower growth rate of 3% to 5% a year, while also making a pitch for even more resources, including additional drones and the construction of new special operations facilities.

A former SEAL who still sometimes accompanies troops into the field, McRaven expressed a belief that, as conventional forces are drawn down in Afghanistan, special ops troops will take on an ever greater role.

Iraq, he added, would benefit if elite U.S forces continued to conduct missions there past the December 2011 deadline for a total American troop withdrawal. He also assured the Senate Armed Services Committee that “as a former JSOC commander, I can tell you we were looking very hard at Yemen and at Somalia.”

During a speech at the National Defense Industrial Association's annual Special Operations and Low-intensity Conflict Symposium earlier this year, Navy Admiral Eric Olson, the outgoing chief of Special Operations Command, pointed to a composite satellite image of the world at night.

Before September 11, 2001, the lit portions of the planet -- mostly the industrialized nations of the global north -- were considered the key areas. "But the world changed over the last decade", he said. "Our strategic focus has shifted largely to the south... certainly within the special operations community, as we deal with the emerging threats from the places where the lights aren't."

To that end, Olson launched "Project Lawrence," an effort to increase cultural proficiencies -- like advanced language training and better knowledge of local history and customs -- for overseas operations. The program is, of course, named after the British officer, Thomas Edward Lawrence (better known as "Lawrence of Arabia"), who teamed up with Arab fighters to wage a guerrilla war in the Middle East during World War I. Mentioning Afghanistan, Pakistan, Mali, and Indonesia, Olson added that SOCOM now needed "Lawrences of Wherever."

While Olson made reference to only 51 countries of top concern to SOCOM, Col. Nye told me that on any given day, Special Operations forces are deployed in approximately 70 nations around the world. All of them, he hastened to add, at the request of the host government.

According to testimony by Olson before the House Armed Services Committee earlier this year, approximately 85% of special operations troops deployed overseas are in 20 countries in the CENTCOM area of operations in the Greater Middle East: Afghanistan, Bahrain, Egypt, Iran, Iraq, Jordan, Kazakhstan, Kuwait, Kyrgyzstan, Lebanon, Oman, Pakistan, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, Syria, Tajikistan, Turkmenistan, United Arab Emirates, Uzbekistan, and Yemen. The others are scattered across the globe from South America to Southeast Asia, some in small numbers, others as larger contingents.

Special Operations Command won't disclose exactly which countries its forces operate in. "We're obviously going to have some places where it's not advantageous for us to list where we're at", says Nye. "Not all host nations want it known, for whatever reasons they have -- it may be internal, it may be regional."

But it's no secret (or at least a poorly kept one) that so-called black special operations troops, like the SEALs and Delta Force, are conducting kill/capture missions in Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, and Yemen, while "white" forces like the Green Berets and Rangers are training indigenous partners as part of a worldwide secret war against AL-CIA-DA and other militant groups.

In the Philippines, for instance, the USZ spends $50 million a year on a 600-person contingent of Army Special Operations forces, Navy Seals, Air Force special operators, and others that carries out counterterrorist operations with Filipino allies against insurgent groups like Jemaah Islamiyah and Abu Sayyaf.

Last year, as an analysis of SOCOM documents, open-source Pentagon information, and a database of Special Operations missions compiled by investigative journalist Tara McKelvey (for the Medill School of Journalism's National Security Journalism Initiative) reveals, America's most elite troops carried out joint-training exercises in Belize, Brazil, Bulgaria, Burkina Faso, Germany, Indonesia, Mali, Norway, Panama, and Poland.

So far in 2011, similar training missions have been conducted in the Dominican Republic, Jordan, Romania, Senegal, South Korea, and Thailand, among other nations. In reality, Nye told me, training actually went on in almost every nation where Special Operations forces are deployed. Of the 120 countries we visit by the end of the year, I would say the vast majority are training exercises in one fashion or another. They would be classified as training exercises.

The Pentagon's Power Elite

Once the neglected stepchildren of the military establishment, Special Operations forces have been growing exponentially not just in size and budget, but also in power and influence. Since 2002, SOCOM has been authorized to create its own Joint Task Forces -- like Joint Special Operations Task Force-Philippines -- a prerogative normally limited to larger combatant commands like CENTCOM. This year, without much fanfare, SOCOM also established its own Joint Acquisition Task Force, a cadre of equipment designers and acquisition specialists.

With control over budgeting, training, and equipping its force, powers usually reserved for departments (like the Department of the Army or the Department of the Navy), dedicated dollars in every Defense Department budget, and influential advocates in Congress,

SOCOM is by now an exceptionally powerful player at the Pentagon. With real clout, it can win bureaucratic battles, purchase cutting-edge technology, and pursue fringe research like electronically beaming messages into people's heads or developing stealth-like cloaking technologies for ground troops.

Since 2001, SOCOM's prime contracts awarded to small businesses -- those that generally produce specialty equipment and weapons -- have jumped six-fold.

Headquartered at MacDill Air Force Base in Florida, but operating out of theater commands spread out around the globe, including Hawaii, Germany, and South Korea, and active in the majority of countries on the planet, Special Operations Command is now a force unto itself.

As outgoing SOCOM chief Olson put it earlier this year, SOCOM "is a microcosm of the Department of Defense, with ground, air, and maritime components, a global presence, and authorities and responsibilities that mirror the Military Departments, Military Services, and Defense Agencies."

Tasked to coordinate all Pentagon planning against global terrorism networks and, as a result, closely connected to other government agencies, foreign militaries, and intelligence services, and armed with a vast inventory of stealthy helicopters, manned fixed-wing aircraft, heavily-armed drones, high-tech guns-a-go-go speedboats, specialized Humvees and Mine Resistant Ambush Protected vehicles, or MRAPs, as well as other state-of-the-art gear (with more on the way), SOCOM represents something new in the military.

Whereas the late scholar of militarism Chalmers Johnson used to refer to the CIA as "the president's private army", today JSOC performs that role, acting as the chief executive's private assassination squad, and its parent, SOCOM, functions as a new Pentagon power-elite, a secret military within the military possessing domestic power and global reach.

In 120 countries across the globe, troops from Special Operations Command carry out their secret war of high-profile assassinations, low-level targeted killings, capture/kidnap operations, kick-down-the-door night raids, joint operations with foreign forces, and training missions with indigenous partners as part of a shadowy conflict unknown to most Americans.

Once "special" for being small, lean, outsider outfits, today they are special for their power, access, influence, and aura.

That aura now benefits from a well-honed public relations campaign which helps them project a superhuman image at home and abroad, even while many of their actual activities remain in the ever-widening shadows.

Typical of the vision they are pushing was this statement from Admiral Olson: "I am convinced that the forces... are the most culturally attuned partners, the most lethal hunter-killers, and most responsive, agile, innovative, and efficiently effective advisors, trainers, problem-solvers, and warriors that any nation has to offer."

Recently at the Aspen Institute's Security Forum, Olson offered up similarly gilded comments and some misleading information, too, claiming that USZ Special Operations forces were operating in just 65 countries and engaged in combat in only two of them.

When asked about drone strikes in Pakistan, he reportedly replied, "Are you talking about unattributed explosions?"

What he did let slip, however, was telling. He noted, for instance, that black operations like the bin Laden charade, with commandos conducting heliborne night raids, were now exceptionally common. A dozen or so are conducted every night, he said. Perhaps most illuminating, however, was an offhand remark about the size of SOCOM.

Right now, he emphasized, USZ Special Operations forces were approximately as large as Canada's entire active duty military. In fact, the force is larger than the active duty militaries of many of the nations where America's elite troops now operate each year, and it's only set to grow larger.

Americans have yet to grapple with what it means to have a “special” force this large, this active, and this secret -- and they are unlikely to begin to do so until more information is available.

It just won't be coming from Olson or his troops. "Our access [to foreign countries] depends on our ability to not talk about it", he said in response to questions about SOCOM's secrecy. When missions are subject to scrutiny like the bin Laden raid, he said, the elite troops object. The military's secret military, said Olson, wants “to get back into the shadows and do what they came in to do.”

*** Nick Turse is a historian, essayist, and investigative journalist. The associate editor of TomDispatch.com and a new senior editor at Alternet.org, his latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books). This article is a collaboration between Alternet.org and TomDispatch.com.

Enticing Fury
Pakistan Cyber Force

Follow PCF on Facebook

Follow PCF on Twitter