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Wednesday, January 31, 2007
Hillary Video Shocks Fans! See It Here!
YOUTUBE HILLARY VIDEO SHOCKS SUPPORTERS, IRAN/IRAQ DOSSIER PUT ON HOLD, WAR ON THE INTERNET, BUSH MAKES GOVERNMENT EVEN BIGGER, FORMER CIA HEAD ON THE WAR ON TERROR
A plan by the Bush administration to release detailed and possibly damning specific evidence linking the Iranian government to efforts to destabilize Iraq have been put on hold, U.S. officials told FOX News.
Officials had said a "dossier" against Iran compiled by the U.S. likely would be made public at a press conference this week in Baghdad, and that the evidence would contain specifics including shipping documents, serial numbers, maps and other evidence which officials say would irrefutably link Iran to weapons shipments to Iraq.
Now, U.S. military officials say the decision to go public with the findings has been put on hold for several reasons, including concerns over the reaction from Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad — as well as inevitable follow-up questions that would be raised over what the U.S. should do about it.
U.S. reaction to continued Iranian meddling in Iraq also was the subject Tuesday of a Senate Foreign Relations Committee confirmation hearing for John Negroponte, in line to become the nation's No. 2 diplomat.
During pointed questioning, Sen. Barack Obama, D-Ill., told Negroponte, "What I think many of us are concerned about is that we stumble into active hostilities with Iran without having aggressively pursued diplomatic approaches, without the American people understanding exactly what's taking place."
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,248791,00.html
War in the past was usually "after the fact". Newspaper articles during World War 2 covered battles days or weeks after the fight. Films of battle were seen in newsreels weeks or even months after the fighting. During Vietnam 5 or 10 minutes on the TV news were devoted often to the war.
Even Vietnam had less scrutiny on the news- five or ten minutes in a hour broadcast. The reasons for war were created by the victor after the fact. ( No one on either side entered into the Civil War thinking the fight was over slavery- that reason came half way through the war. The world was shocked by the German concentration camps- no one expected the horror. Yet today most people think those camps are why we went to war. Today with all news channels on 24/7, the internet, blogs this is no longer the case. The victor no longer can write the history after the fight. War must become organic, the reasons must come at the same time today that action is taken. I don't think the military or government is ready for this new approach- but they better learn.
Investigators say they believe that attackers who used American-style uniforms and weapons to infiltrate a secure compound and kill five American soldiers in Karbala on Jan. 20 may have been trained and financed by Iranian agents, according to American and Iraqi officials knowledgeable about the inquiry.
The officials said the sophistication of the attack astonished investigators, who doubt that Iraqis could have carried it out on their own — one reason a connection to Iran is being closely examined. Officials cautioned that no firm conclusions had been drawn and did not reveal any direct evidence of a connection.
A senior Iraqi official said the attackers had carried forged American identity cards and American-style M-4 rifles and had thrown stun grenades of a kind used only by American forces here.
Tying Iran to the deadly attack could be helpful to the Bush administration, which has been engaged in an escalating war of words with Iran.
One American soldier was killed during the initial attack and four more were abducted and killed shortly afterward as the police pursued the sport utility vehicles used in the attack.
The attack was focused on a meeting at a joint security station, where American and Iraqi forces mesh their efforts in the new security plan.
An Iraqi knowledgeable about the investigation said four suspects had been detained and questioned. Based on those interviews, investigators have concluded that as they fled Karbala with the abducted Americans, the attackers used advanced devices to monitor police communications and avoid the roads where the police were searching. http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/nyt1_31_7.htm
Dozens of al-Qaeda suicide bombers from countries such as Saudi Arabia and Sudan are crossing into Iraq from Syria every month, a senior US official said on Tuesday.
Speaking to the Financial Times in London, the official said that, while sectarian conflict now represented the biggest threat to the country, the violence was being stoked up from abroad.
“This is the most difficult challenge,” he said. “How do you bring down sectarian violence in the face of this al-Qaeda campaign to prompt sectarian violence?”
But he added that the US’s new strategy for Iraq also depended on much greater co-operation from the Iraqi government.
The US says outside actors – chiefly Syria and Iran – are still one of the biggest factors determining the level of violence in Iraq. It also portrays its recent decision to pursue Iranian operatives in Iraq as an effort to “push back” against Tehran’s increased influence in the region.
The official alleged that the vast majority of suicide bombers came across the border from Syria, and that they received training for their task within Syria as well as inside Iraq itself. http://www.ft.com/cms/s/83bd20d8-b088-11db-8a62-0000779e2340.html
President George W. Bush has given his administration a boost in how the government regulates key issues such as civil rights and the environment, The New York Times will report on its Tuesday front page.
The President "signed a directive that gives the White House much greater control over the rules that the federal government develops to regulate public health, safety," privacy and other issues, writes Robert Pear for the Times.
Pear reports that "in an executive order published last week in the Federal Register, Bush said that each federal agency must have a regulatory policy office run by a political appointee" who will monitor the creation of process and procedures and the associated documentation.
"The White House will thus have a gatekeeper in each agency," Pear writes, "to analyze the costs and benefits of new rules and to make sure they carry out the president's priorities." http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/NY_Times_Bush_gives_White_House_0129.html
A newly declassified document gives a fascinating glimpse into the US military's plans for "information operations" - from psychological operations, to attacks on hostile computer networks.
Bloggers beware.
As the world turns networked, the Pentagon is calculating the military opportunities that computer networks, wireless technologies and the modern media offer.
From influencing public opinion through new media to designing "computer network attack" weapons, the US military is learning to fight an electronic war.
The declassified document is called "Information Operations Roadmap". It was obtained by the National Security Archive at George Washington University using the Freedom of Information Act.
Officials in the Pentagon wrote it in 2003. The Secretary of Defense, Donald Rumsfeld, signed it. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/americas/4655196.stm
This video has shocked many Hillary supporters: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pYATbsu2cP8
First of all, it shows up Hillary Clinton for what she truly is: an opportunist who is only tenuously acquainted with the truth. She now claims that if she had known then what she knows now, she would never have voted for the war: but in this video, in which she meets with members of Code Pink, the antiwar women’s group, she downplays the “weapons of mass destruction” rationale for war, and emphasizes, instead, the brutality of Saddam’s dictatorship.
Secondly, I would note the unctuousness of Code Pink leader Medea Benjamin, who shamelessly kisses up to Hillary in her introduction, and even declares that she “knows you secretly agree with us” about the war. The fun begins when Hillary sternly disabuses Ms. Benjamin of this illusion, lecturing her about the absolute evil represented by Saddam’s Iraq, and reminding her of the Clintonian war against the Serbs, which, as all good liberals know, was a righteous war. Poor Medea — talk about having the rug pulledout from under you!
The best part is when one of the Code Pink women approaches Hillary, at the end, and tries to hand her a “pink slip” — some pink underpants of a decidedly delicate character. This is when Hillary bares her fangs, and lashes out: “I am the Senator from New York,” she intones, wagging her finger at the woman like a schoolmarm, “and if you think I’m going to endanger the security of my constituents you are very much mistaken!”
Wow! How telling that, when cornered, Hillary resorts to the Bushian “we’re fighting them over there so we don’t have to fight them over here” argument — and so readily, almost instinctively.
Now that the war is unpopular, however, Hillary is trying to distance herself from her previous incarnation as a hawk. It won’t work — thanks to Youtube! http://www.antiwar.com/blog/2007/01/30/the-real-hillary/
This interview with the former Euro CIA head is revealing:
Drumheller: Every responsible chief in the CIA knows that the more covert the action, the greater the need for a clear policy and a defined target. I once had to brief Condoleezza Rice on a rendition operation, and her chief concern was not whether it was the right thing to do, but what the president would think about it. I would have expected a big meeting, a debate about whether to proceed with the plan, a couple of hours of consideration of the pros and cons. We should have been talking about the value of the target, whether the threat he presented warranted such a potentially controversial intervention. This is no way to run a covert policy. If the White House wants to take extraordinary measures to win, it can't just let things go through without any discussion about their value and morality.
SPIEGEL: Perhaps the White House wanted to gloss over its own responsibility.
Drumheller: Let me give you a general thought: From the perspective of the White House, it was smart to blur the lines about what was acceptable and what was not in the war on terrorism. It meant that whenever someone was overzealous in some dark interrogation cell, President (George W.) Bush and his entourage could blame someone else. The rendition teams are drawn from paramilitary officers who are brave and colorful. They are the men who went into Baghdad before the bombs and into Afghanistan before the army. If they didn't do paramilitary actions for a living, they would probably be robbing banks. Perhaps the Bush Administration deliberately created a gray area on renditions.
SPIEGEL: Investigations in the European Parliament and the German parliament, the Bundestag, are trying to ascertain the extent to which European governments cooperated with the CIA after the Sept. 11 terror attacks. How close is the relationship?
Drumheller: On terrorist issues very closely -- we did some very good things with the Europeans. Two weeks after Sept. 11, August Hanning (the head of the German foreign intelligence service, the BND) came with a delegation to discuss how we can make cooperation better. Elements of the Bush administration developed the view that European personal privacy laws were somehow to blame, that the Europeans are too slow. We can be very frustrating to work with. I always said, 'Stop preaching to them.' The Europeans have been dealing with terrorism for years, we can learn from their successes and failures. Its not a good spy story, but it's actually how you do this.
SPIEGEL: How important is Europe to the CIA?
Drumheller: The only way we will ever be able to protect ourselves properly is if we can get a handle on the threat in Europe, since that is the continent where fanatics can best learn their most crucial lesson: How to disappear in a Western crowd. Europe has become the first line of defense for the United States. It has become a training ground for terrorists, especially since the war in Iraq has heralded an underground railroad for militants to go and fight there. It is being used for young fanatics in Europe to be smuggled into Iraq to fight Americans and, assuming they survive, to return home, where they present a more potent threat than they did before they left. Since the odds against penetrating the top of al-Qaida are phenomenally high, we must pursue the foot soldiers.
SPIEGEL: But given the uproar in Germany and all over Europe, it looks highly unlikely that they will cooperate fully with the CIA.
Drumheller: The guys who attacked the World Trade Center didn't fly from Kabul to New York. They came from Hamburg. So the value in befriending the local intelligence services in Europe instead of alienating them is clear: We need to ensure that they are telling us everything they know.
SPIEGEL: But it was your agency that was coming up with all the wrong information concerning Saddam Hussein's alleged weapons of mass destruction. To what degree is the intelligence community responsible for the disaster?
Drumheller: The agency is not blameless and no president on my watch has had a spotless record when it comes to the CIA. But never before have I seen the manipulation of intelligence that has played out since Bush took office. As chief of Europe I had a front-row seat from which to observe the unprecedented drive for intelligence justifying the Iraq war.
SPIEGEL: One of the crucial bits of information the Bush administration used to justify the invasion was the supposed existence of mobile biological weapons laboratories. That came from a German BND source who was given the code-name "Curveball." An offical investigation in the United States concluded that of all of the false statements that were made, this was the most damaging of all.
Drumheller: I think it is, it was a centerpiece. Curveball was an Iraqi who claimed to be an engineer working on the biological weapons program. When he became an asylum-seeker in Germany, the BND questioned him and produced a large number of reports that were passed here through the Defense Intelligence Agency. Curveball was a sort of clever fellow who carried on about his story and kept everybody pretty well convinced for a long time.
SPIEGEL: There are more than a few critics in Washington who claim that the Germans, because of Curveball, bear a large part of the repsonsibility for the intelligence mess.
Drumheller: There was no effort by the Germans to influence anybody from the beginning. Very senior officials in the BND expressed their doubts, that there may be problems with this guy. They were very professional. I know that there are people at the CIA who think the Germans could have set stronger caveats. But nobody says: "Here's a great intel report, but we don't believe it." There were also questions inside the CIA's analytical section, but as it went forward, this information was seized without caveats. The administration wanted to make the case for war with Iraq. They needed a tangible thing, they needed the German stuff. They couldn't go to war based just on the fact that they wanted to change the Middle East. They needed to have something threatening to which they were reacting. http://www.spiegel.de/international/spiegel/0,1518,462782,00.html
Fifteen people have been killed in a clash between Islamist militants and Algerian security forces in the eastern region of Batna, local media report.
The militants carried out a rocket attack on an army post, killing five soldiers, while 10 Islamists reportedly died in an army counter-attack.
A BBC correspondent in Algeria says this is the most serious Islamist attack for several months.
They are thought to belong to a group now renamed "al-Qaeda in the Maghreb". http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6313343.stm
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is expected to be granted special powers to make sweeping changes to the country's national life.
Members of the National Assembly are due to finalise a law allowing Mr Chavez to rule by decree over the energy sector and 10 other broad areas.
Mr Chavez has said he wants to speed up his "maximum revolution" but critics say it will be an abuse of power.
The US has accused him of threatening democracies in Latin America.
The National Assembly is due to pass the enabling law later Wednesday in a special session held outdoors in central Caracas. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/americas/6315819.stm
Somalia's president agreed Tuesday to a national reconciliation conference in a bid to end 16 years of anarchy in the war-ravaged country, paving the way for the deployment of African peacekeepers.
After intense pressure from the U.S., EU and U.N. for all-inclusive political talks, President Abdullahi Yusuf said his government was willing to negotiate despite stiff opposition from within his own administration. The conference would include former political, religious and clan leaders, Yusuf said.
"There is now an opportunity for a breakthrough in political reconciliation in Somalia and for putting in place a genuinely viable government", he said in a speech to African leaders at the summit.
His call came as an unknown extremist group in Somalia warned it would try to kill any peacekeepers deployed to the country and amid fears that a delay in the force could see Somalia slide back into civil war. In a videotape posted on the official Web site of Somalia's routed Islamic movement, a hooded gunman read a statement saying any African peacekeepers would be seen as invaders. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/30/africa/AF-GEN-African-Union-Summit.php
Irish Minister for Justice, Michael McDowell, has said Sinn Fein's attitude towards the murder of Robert McCartney will be the "litmus test" of its support for the PSNI.
Mr McCartney was beaten and stabbed to death in Belfast two years ago today, allegedly by leading IRA members.
Sinn Fein suspended several activists and the IRA also expelled three members in response to the incident, but the republican movement was repeatedly accused of failing to co-operate with the investigation.
Speaking in Dublin today, Mr McDowell said the real test of the movement's recent commitment to policing would be a message urging everyone to co-operate with the Gardai and PSNI, even if it could affect republican perpetrators. http://www.belfasttelegraph.co.uk/news/local-national/article2201927.ece
ISRAEL is denying a report in The Sunday Times of London that it has drawn up secret plans, and is now training pilots, to launch a nuclear strike to destroy buried uranium enrichment plants in Iran, halting development of nuclear weapons.
A nuclear strike in the Middle East — source of oil, lifeblood of the world economy — is an alarming idea. Who knows where retaliation against Israel might lead, or how the world would be drawn into the conflict?
Despite Israel's denial, it seems likely the Jewish State does have such a scheme prepared. Indeed, it would be irresponsible if it did not have detailed plans to halt Iran — militarily, if need be — from joining the nuclear club.
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, after all, has been using deliberately provocative, even threatening, language about Israel for months, while rushing to develop nuclear weapons. He has called for the elimination of the Jewish state and hosted a conference of "scholars" denying the Holocaust ever occurred. http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/ci_5117382
Posted at 07:18 am by Psychomike
Monday, January 29, 2007
IRAN PROMISES EXPANDED ROLE IN IRAQ, LEBANON ON BRINK OF CIVIL WAR, MILITARY SLANG IN IRAQ, U.S. SPREAD URANIUM WORLDWIDE, U.S. AND SAUDI STRATEGY IN MID-EAST!
Iran’s ambassador to Baghdad outlined an ambitious plan on Sunday to greatly expand its economic and military ties with Iraq — including an Iranian national bank branch in the heart of the capital — that will almost certainly bring Iran into further conflict with American forces who have detained a number of Iranian operatives here in recent weeks.
The ambassador, Hassan Kazemi Qumi, said Iran was prepared to offer Iraqi forces training, equipment and advisers for what he called “the security fight.” In the economic area, Mr. Qumi said, Iran was ready to assume major responsibility for the reconstruction of Iraq, an area of notable failure on the part of the United States since American-led forces overthrew Saddam Hussein in the invasion nearly four years ago.
Mr. Qumi also acknowledged, for the first time, that two Iranians seized and later released by American forces last month were security officials, as the United States had claimed. But he said that they were engaged in legitimate discussions with the Iraqi government and should not have been detained.
Mr. Qumi’s remarks, in a 90-minute interview over tea and large Iranian pistachio nuts at the Iranian Embassy here, amounted to the most authoritative and substantive response the Iranians have made yet to increasingly belligerent accusations by the Bush administration that Iran is acting against American interests in Iraq. President Bush has said the American military is authorized to take whatever action necessary against Iranians in Iraq found to be engaged in actions deemed hostile.
The Iranian ambassador abruptly agreed to a longstanding request for the interview — made repeatedly after the first American seizure of Iranians here on Dec. 21 — and seemed eager to rebut the accusations and assert Iran’s legitimate interests in its neighbor. How much direction, if any, he was taking from his government was unclear. http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/nyt1_29_7.htm
Sinn Fein, the main Catholic republican party in Northern Ireland, voted Sunday to endorse the police force in the divided province, opening the way toward restoring local rule through a government shared by Protestants and Catholics.
Sinn Fein’s leaders, Gerry Adams and Martin McGuinness, won approval to support a police force that would move over the next 15 years from being a Protestant-dominated body to one where Catholics and Protestants are represented in proportion to the makeup of the province’s population.
An overwhelming majority of the 900 delegates who had gathered here voted to endorse the force after six hours of discussions.
The vote signals a shift in the thinking of the Irish republicans, who since 1922 have distrusted the police, courts and prisons in Northern Ireland as institutions of British rule.
Sinn Fein has long regarded the Northern Ireland police force as an armed force that had allied with British soldiers to maintain British rule in the province.
The vote on Sunday allows the British and Irish governments to move ahead in coming days with plans to persuade the Northern Ireland Protestants, led by the Rev. Ian Paisley’s Democratic Unionist Party, to share power with Sinn Fein Catholics in a Belfast-based government.
Tony Blair, the British prime minister, and Bertie Ahern, the Irish prime minister, praised the vote on Sunday. They are to meet Tuesday in London to discuss plans to restore local rule to the province.
Under the British-Irish plan to begin transferring power from Britain to local rule, known as the St. Andrews Agreement proposals, Sinn Fein’s pledge to endorse the Northern Ireland police force was necessary for the Democratic Unionists to consider giving their support to a shared government.
http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/nyt847.html
It was a dispute in a university cafeteria that erupted into the worst sectarian violence in Lebanon in 15 years. How it started and who is to blame depends on which side tells the story.
But even as young Shiite and Sunni men on both sides armed themselves for a bloody face-off last Thursday, their parents begged them to stop – horrific images of Lebanon's 1975-90 civil war rekindling in their minds.
The political standoff between the government and opposition, simmering for two months, has taken an increasingly violent and sectarian turn in the past week, exposing long-dormant divisions between Lebanon's Sunnis and Shiites, and rival Christian factions.
At stake in the spiraling conflict is who will define the identity of Lebanon, a colonial-era construct that includes 18 confessions, and in recent decades has served as the proxy battlefield for broader regional struggles by Israel, Syria, Palestinians, and today, the US and Iran.
http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0129/p01s04-wome.html?s=itmthumb
Tribune special report: How the U.S. spread bomb-grade fuel worldwide and failed to get it back.
The urgent call reached Armando Travelli in Vienna.
Get to Romania as soon as possible, the voice on the phone told Travelli, a U.S. scientist-turned-diplomat. Dictator Nicolae Ceausescu is considering returning the bomb-grade uranium America had given him.
Within days, Travelli stepped inside a sprawling nuclear research reactor in the southern Romanian city of Pitesti. There he saw firsthand the chilling consequences of using highly enriched uranium to cement alliances with backwater dictators.
He watched as one worker reached into a pipe and nonchalantly pulled out a spaghetti-like jumble of electrical wires. Later, he learned that other workers had wedged a hunk of wood between two uranium-filled rods to keep them from jostling in the reactor pool. The makeshift repair backfired when the wood swelled and couldn't be removed.
But Travelli, who shuttled back and forth to the facility from Chicago for several years in the 1980s, didn't know the worst of it. When his mission bogged down, the Romanians not only held on to the highly enriched uranium, they secretly used it and the reactor to help separate plutonium--the first step in building an atomic bomb.
Ceausescu has long since faced a firing squad, and his successors disclosed the secret effort. But a quarter-century after Travelli's first visit to the reactor, some of the dangerous material remains there. http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/trib1_28_7.htm
PRIESTS, PROSTITUTES, psychologists, cops, jazz musicians, poker players. Every trade has its jargon and "insider lingo."
Soldier slang, however, has a peculiar appeal. That's understandable. Waging war is a risky, all-encompassing endeavor — physically, emotionally and psychologically. War reveals humankind at its best and its worst, and war-fighter slang, reflects the bitter, terrifying, sometimes inspiring hell of it.
Every war adds something new — and often obscene — to the soldiers' vocabulary. World War II-era Hollywood dialogue glamorized (and often scrubbed) combat slang, but the warrior's rhetorical swagger, irony and biting humor predate film by several millenniums.
Often, new idioms and phrases describe old, difficult truths. Prussian strategist Carl von Clausewitz said that war is the realm of "friction." World War II veterans invoked Murphy's Law: "If something can go wrong, it will." As you'll see in the brief lexicon I've pulled together below, the New Greatest Generation (the generation fighting the war on terror) dubs it "the suck."
"Embrace the suck" isn't merely a wisecrack; it's an encyclopedic experience rendered as an epigram, gritty shorthand for "Face it, soldier. I've been there. War ain't easy. Now deal with the difficulty and let's get on with the mission."
That's sound advice for a nation at war.
Check out the new war slang here: http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/fairenough/latimes775.html
IRAQ'S Vice-President Abd al-Mahdi has noted that the US has two options in the war: either they stay or they withdraw.
But Mahdi pointed out that the Iraqis have no options.
"If we don't succeed in ending the violence with the present strategy, we just have to be patient and keep trying. Unlike the Americans, we don't have an exit strategy from Iraq."
The same was true, he said, of Iraq's neighbours -- Iran, Syria, Turkey and Saudi Arabia. This was why Iraqi politicians were urging US President George W.Bush to talk to these countries and warning the White House that any military attack on Iranian nuclear installations, whether by the US or Israel, could spill catastrophically into Iraq.
So why did Bush refuse to talk to Iran and Syria, as recommended by the Baker-Hamilton commission? Why instead did he seem to be increasing the military tensions with Tehran? Iraqi officials would not speculate on this beyond the obvious comment that "firmness from America could be a way of bringing Iran to the negotiating table".
But delving beneath the surface of this objective, three strands of a more interesting and hopeful strategy begin to emerge in conversations with Middle Eastern analysts and politicians.
Start with the premise that Washington is indeed being tough on Iran to strengthen the internal opposition to the confrontational policies of President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad. The purpose is not necessarily to trigger the removal of Ahmadinejad, but rather to shatter Tehran's grandiose delusions of regional hegemony and bring Iran into negotiations from a position of relative weakness, rather than its perceived strength.
Three strands of policy are now being directed to achieving this internal shift in Iranian politics. The first is the US effort to reduce the fighting in Iraq -- or failing that, at least to mount a show of strength against the Iranian-backed Shia militias and to remind Tehran that Washington retains its capacity to deploy overwhelming military force.
The second is the US sabre-rattling over Iran's nuclear program, especially the semi-public threats of Israeli bombing, perhaps even with tactical nuclear weapons. The White House's announcement that two aircraft carrier battle groups will move to the Gulf within a month or so are clearly a reminder that Washington still has plenty of firepower to attack Iran directly or to back Israeli bombing -- and also to protect international oil shipments through the Gulf against Iranian retaliation.
These deployments and public warnings do not necessarily suggest an attack on Iran is likely but rather that the US wants Iran to realise it is playing for very high stakes in its confrontation with the West.
The third strand of Washington's Iranian policy is less visible, but may well turn out to be more important. The idea is to thwart Iran's threatened hegemony with an economic pincer movement consisting of financial diplomacy on one side and energy policy on the other.
The main responsibility for this strand of policy rests not with the US or Israel but with the third member of the unlikely new anti-Iranian alliance: Saudi Arabia.
The financial diplomacy consists not just of the sanctions against Iran agreed to by the UN Security Council last month but also in the donors' conference for Lebanon in Paris last week. The toughened UN sanctions are beginning to have some impact on Iran's domestic economy and on its ability to do business and raise money internationally.
Meanwhile, the Lebanon conference is demonstrating that the US-Saudi coalition can easily match and exceed the financial subsidies channelled by Iran to Hezbollah, Hamas and its other regional proxies. In doing this the Saudis' involvement is crucial because of their ability to spend large sums of money without the budgetary and political oversight faced by Washington. http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/story/0,20867,21131719-601,00.html
Before Osama bin Laden, there was Imad Mughniyeh. The Lebanese terrorist from Hizbullah was considered the most dangerous in the world. Now the White House worries that he's back, after years of lying low. Four serving U.S. intel and counterterrorism officials, anonymous when discussing sensitive material, said Mughniyeh is prominent in recent reporting from the field about Hizbullah activity. Bruce Riedel, a veteran Mideast expert recently retired from the CIA, told NEWSWEEK there is "no question he is heavily involved in [formulating] terrorist contingency plans in case of a U.S.-Iran confrontation." http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16841987/site/newsweek/ Posted at 10:58 am by Psychomike
Sunday, January 28, 2007
PROTESTS SWEEP MAJOR CITIES, THE RETURN OF JANE FONDA, HILLARY DEFENDS IRAQ VOTES, TURKEY WARNS OF CIVIL WAR
WHEN Barack Obama, America’s newest presidential hopeful, was hit by allegations that he had attended a radical Islamic madrasah school as a boy in Indonesia, the claims spread like a virus through the media and internet.
It was a lie — the school was barely more religious than British church schools — but it was also a sign that Obama’s chances of winning the presidency depend to an unusual degree on his life story and character.
The race is on to define the gifted but little-known senator for Illinois and The Sunday Times can reveal that his heritage is far more diverse and astonishing than anything American voters have heard so far.
Obama, 45, has two half- sisters, one living in Britain, and five surviving half-brothers, the eldest of whom converted to Islam, and whose stories span the globe.
Nobody was more surprised to hear that Obama had reportedly been educated in a madrasah than Julia Suryakusuma, a close friend of his mother until her death from ovarian cancer in 1995.
Suryakusuma, 53, one of Indonesia’s most outspoken feminist writers, has fearlessly taken on extremist Muslim clerics in print. Last week she described Ann Dunham, Obama’s mother, “as a liberal and a humanist”, who learnt to speak fluent Indonesian and adored the culture.
“She was interested in religions but didn’t follow one. She was a free-thinker,” Suryakusuma said. “She was a pioneer and when she came to Indonesia she was ensnared and enchanted.”
On the coffee table in her cool modern house in Jakarta, full of the beautiful Indonesian fabrics and carvings which captivated her friend, lies an album of photographs which record the happy times.
There is Dunham, pale-skinned, jolly and frizzy-haired, celebrating with her friends at an art gallery opening or a drinks party, wearing the baggy, free-flowing clothes often favoured by bohemian western women in Asia. She always seemed to be laughing.
“You know Ann was really, really white,” smiled Suryakusuma, looking through the album, “even though she told me she had some Cherokee blood in her. I think she just loved people of a different skin colour, brown people.”
Dunham was from Wichita, Kansas, but her parents moved to Hawaii in search of a better life. According to Obama, a distant ancestor was a “full-blooded Cherokee”. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2089-2569704,00.html
Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said he would demand an explanation from the United States over its military build-up in the Middle East and criticised Washington for "hardline" policies against Iran. http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20070127/wl_mideast_afp/russiausiranmideast
The American public and the US Congress are getting their backs up about the Bush Regime's determination to escalate the war in Iraq. A massive protest demonstration is occurring in Washington DC today, and Congress is expressing its disagreement with Bush's decision to intensify the war in Iraq.
This is all to the good. However, it misses the real issue – the Bush Regime's looming attack on Iran.
Rather than winding down one war, Bush is starting another. The entire world knows this and is discussing Bush's planned attack on Iran in many forums. It is only Americans who haven't caught on. A few senators have said that Bush must not attack Iran without the approval of Congress, and postings on the Internet demonstrate world wide awareness that Iran is in the Bush Regime's cross hairs. But Congress and the Media – and the demonstration in Washington – are focused on Iraq.
What can be done to bring American awareness up to the standard of the rest of the world?
In Davos, Switzerland, the meeting of the World Economic Forum, a conference where economic globalism issues are discussed, opened January 24 with a discussion of Bush's planned attack on Iran. The Secretary General of the League of Arab States and bankers and businessmen from such US allies as Bahrain and the United Arab Emirates all warned of the coming attack and its catastrophic consequences for the Middle East and the world.
Writing for Global Research, General Leonid Ivashov, vice president of the Academy on Geopolitical Affairs and former Joint Chief of Staff of the Russian Armies, forecasted an American nuclear attack on Iran by the end of April. General Ivashov presented the neoconservative reasoning that is the basis for the attack and concluded that the world's protests cannot stop the US attack on Iran.
There will be shock and indignation, General Ivashov concludes, but the US will get away with it. He writes:
"Within weeks from now, we will see the informational warfare machine start working. The public opinion is already under pressure. There will be a growing anti-Iranian militaristic hysteria, new information leaks, disinformation, etc.... The probability of a US aggression against Iran is extremely high. It does remain unclear, though, whether the US Congress is going to authorize the war. It may take a provocation to eliminate this obstacle (an attack on Israel or the US targets including military bases). The scale of the provocation may be comparable to the 9/11 attack in NY. Then the Congress will certainly say 'Yes' to the US president." http://www.antiwar.com/roberts/?articleid=10411
Turkey warned Saturday against integrating the multiethnic city of Kirkuk, northern Iraq, into an autonomous Kurdish region.
'I fear that it could come to a very big civil war,' said Turkish Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Ergodan in a television interview.
'Kirkuk belongs to all Iraqis,' he said. 'It would be wrong to give the city to only one ethnic group.'
Turkey fears that Kurdish control of the oil-rich city could lead to the creation of a Kurdish state in northern Iraq and one which is capable of surviving economically. http://news.monstersandcritics.com/middleeast/news/printer_1252487.php
U.S. military officials here said Somalia could return to chaos in four months if international peacekeepers don't quickly replace departing Ethiopian troops now propping up the country's weak government.
A Somali government spokesman echoed the warning on Sunday, saying Islamic fighters were regrouping and the U.S.-backed transitional government lacked troops, training and weapons to deal with them.
"We need the support of the international community to deploy forces and assist us in securing the country," said Abdirahman Dinari by telephone from Mogadishu. Dinari said fighters from the deposed Council of Islamic Courts were counterattacking just as the invading Ethiopians have begun pulling out.
Islamic fighters "are coming back to Mogadishu," Dinari said. "They're destabilizing sections of the city. They're killing innocent civilians. They're attacking police stations." http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/28/africa/AF-GEN-Somalia-Chaos-Comeback.php
Three days of sectarian violence has once again brought this troubled country to breaking point.
A mini-civil war has played out throughout Lebanon this week as Government and Opposition factions push their power struggle to the brink.
The "peaceful" general strike called by Hezbollah and its Christian allies has turned into a three-day violent sprawl that has left 10 dead and over 100 wounded. The latest four casualties being students caught up in Sunni-Shi'ite clashes at the Beirut Arab University.
The overflow of violence comes amid two months of persistent Iranian and Syrian-backed Opposition attempts to depose the pro-American Siniora Government.
The clashes have reignited deep sectarian and factional divisions that have lingered since the previous civil war ended in 1990.
Much like the previous civil war, which destroyed the country between 1975 to 1990, the current fragile political landscape in Lebanon has its roots in regional quarrels. http://www.antiwar.com/orig/issa.php?articleid=10407
Carrying dozens of mock coffins covered with American flags, thousands of people took to the streets in downtown Los Angeles Saturday, as part of the anti-war protests across the United State demanding the withdrawal of troops in Iraq.
Among the participants in the peace march were Iraq veterans, activists and vocal anti-war protester Cindy Sheehan, who became famous for her extended demonstration at a peace camp outside U.S. President George W. Bush's Texas ranch after her son Casey was killed during his service in Iraq.
Led by a group of Iraq war veterans, about 3,000 anti-war protestors chanted slogans like "bring them home," demanding an end to the war in Iraq and more action from the incoming Democrat-controlled Congress as Bush seeks to send more troops there.
"The people of this country are frustrated, from both the Republicans and the Democrats," said rally organizer Muna Coobte. " All we are hearing are just different versions of the same way to stem the Iraq war." http://news.xinhuanet.com/english/2007-01/28/content_5662842.htm
Thousands of protesters took to the streets of downtown San Francisco this afternoon in a show of escalating discontent over President Bush's planned troop buildup in Iraq.
Some 3,000 to 5,000 protesters marched through city streets in a passionate condemnation of the administration's handling of the war effort. Though the protest was smaller than what organizers had hoped, the march was one of several anti-war rallies held around the country to bolster a larger event in Washington, D.C. today with tens of thousands of marchers.
In San Francisco, protesters included a drum corps, a marching band, a crew of anarchists, Gray Panthers and plenty of families. They began around noon at Powell and Market streets, then walked down Market toward the Bay and north along the Embarcadero to Pier 31.
There they gathered in the late afternoon and listened to speeches against the war -- and had plenty to say themselves.
"This is the wrong war. It's a war for bogus reasons. It's an illegal war," said Korean War veteran John Shively, 79, of Oakland.
http://sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2007/01/27/BAG6GNQBK75.DTL
For her next act, Jane Fonda has entered the war against the Iraq war. At the tail-end of yesterday's on-the-Mall rally, organized by United for Peace and Justice, Fonda stood onstage with the Capitol behind her and addressed the sun-drenched thousands. "I haven't spoken at an antiwar rally in 34 years," she said. But, "Silence is no longer an option."
The first time Fonda, 69, spoke out for peace, the country was soul-deep in the Vietnam War. In the ensuing decades, as the nation has gone through a slew of changes, so has Fonda.
As a young woman, the daughter of actor Henry Fonda was an actress, a feminist and anti-Vietnam War activist. She morphed into a workout maven, post-feminist arm candy for billionaire media magnate Ted Turner, a vocal Christian and an autobiographer. With 2005's "Monster-in-Law," she defibrillated her movie career.
Yesterday, with her daughter, Vanessa Vadim, and two grandchildren nearby, she was again front and center as actress, feminist and opponent of war.
Her life has come full circle.
She thanked the tens of thousands of protesters for standing up to a "mean-spirited, vengeful administration" and she said she was glad to discover that the soul of America "is alive and well." One huge difference between protests then and now, she told the crowd, is military families and active service people in the present-day movement.
Children in tie-dyed shirts, grandmothers in flowered hats, kids with frizzy hair and muddy jeans danced and hoisted signs and chanted against the war and for impeachment. Despite her showbiz elegance -- blond hair, sunglasses, camel's hair coat and dark over-the-knee boots -- Fonda seemed to fit right in.
She was first known for campy movies such as "Barbarella," which was directed by first husband Roger Vadim, then for higher-shelf films such as "Klute" and "Coming Home," for which she won Best Actress Oscars. She became involved in the political world in the late 1960s, an involvement that continued with her second husband, activist Tom Hayden.
As a vocal opponent of the Vietnam War, she cut a controversial figure. She spoke at protest rallies and, in 1972, posed for a photograph with a North Vietnamese antiaircraft gun. The act was viewed by many as unpatriotic, even treasonous, and some called her "Hanoi Jane."
She has since apologized.
"Those people who would try to undermine her credibility will fail. We welcome her back to the peace community," said Rep. Maxine Waters (D-Calif.), chairman of the Out of Iraq congressional caucus.
"She's a high-profile, outspoken American," said actor Sean Penn, while smoking a cigarette before the rally. What she means to the antiwar movement "is the same thing any of the rest of us mean to it. She's one more voting American with a conscience who is against this war."
Getting her to speak at the massive rally was a breeze, organizers said. Leslie Cagan, who works for United for Peace and Justice and is a longtime friend, e-mailed an invitation. Fonda said yes. Fonda has spoken out against the Iraq war at smaller events such as a Canadian lecture series, book signings and the recent National Conference for Media Reform in Memphis. United for Peace spokesman Hany Khalil said yesterday's rally was "one of the first times she has appeared on the national stage."
Kathy Engel, another United for Peace and Justice spokeswoman, said Fonda is important to the cause because through the years, she has been on the wave-crest of women's rights "and a myriad of issues concerning the health of our country. She's a long-distance runner."
Before the march, Fonda spoke briefly to a few hundred people at the Navy Memorial. The event was sponsored by Code Pink, an antiwar group started by women. On the other side of Pennsylvania Avenue, three dozen protesters organized by the conservative Web site Free Republic held up signs calling protesters traitors and terrorist sympathizers. http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2007/01/27/AR2007012701486_pf.html
Democratic frontrunner Hillary Clinton brought her bid to be the first female president of the United States to Iowa this weekend where she was asked to defend her past support of the war in Iraq.
The New York senator blasted the policies of the administration of President George W. Bush, but stopped short of calling the war a mistake and said she has "taken responsibility" for her vote in 2002, ahead of the March 2003 invasion of Iraq.
Clinton, wife of the former president Bill Clinton, told a gathering at the Democratic Party offices on Saturday that there never would have been a war if Congress had known then what it knows now and blamed Bush for misusing his authority.
"I said this was not a vote for pre-emptive war. The president took my vote, and others' votes, and basically misused the authority we gave him," Clinton said in Des Moines, Iowa. http://www.channelnewsasia.com/stories/afp_world/view/255257/1/.html
Posted at 01:50 pm by Psychomike
Friday, January 26, 2007
The Atomic Teapot: Spy Killer
THE ATOMIC TEAPOT: THE MURDER WEAPON USED ON LITVINENKO, RANGEL MOVES TO END CUBA EMBARGO, HOW THE TWO PARTIES VIEW THE TERROR THREAT, HOW POLICE AIDED KILLERS IN N IRELAND STUNS INVESTIGATORS!
British officials say police have cracked the murder-by-poison case of former spy Alexander Litvinenko, including the discovery of a "hot" teapot at London's Millennium Hotel with an off-the-charts reading for Polonium-210, the radioactive material used in the killing.
A senior official tells ABC News the "hot" teapot remained in use at the hotel for several weeks after Litvinenko's death before being tested in the second week of December. The official said investigators were embarrassed at the oversight.
The official says investigators have concluded, based on forensic evidence and intelligence reports, that the murder was a "state-sponsored" assassination orchestrated by Russian security services.
Sources say police intend to seek charges against a former Russian spy, Andrei Lugovoi, who met with Litvinenko on Nov. 1, the day officials believe the lethal dose was administered in the Millennium Hotel teapot.
Lugovoi steadfastly denied any involvement in the murder at a Moscow news conference and at a session with Scotland Yard detectives. Russian security police were present when the British questioned Lugovoi, and British officials do not think they received honest answers from him.
British health officials say some 128 people were discovered to have had "probable contact" with Polonium-210, including at least eight hotel staff members and one guest. http://blogs.abcnews.com/theblotter/2007/01/it_was_in_the_t.html So the first case of nuclear terrorism, was state sponsored!
The US today raised the stakes with Iran as the White House confirmed that George Bush had authorised US forces to take whatever actions were needed against Iranian agents in Iraq.
Both the US and Britain have accused Iran of supplying training, intelligence and equipment to insurgents in Iraq, particularly for making roadside bombs that have taken an increasing toll on American troops.
"The president and his national security team over the last several months have continued to receive information that Iranians were supplying IED (improvised explosive devices) equipment and/or training that was being used to harm American soldiers," National Security Council spokesman Gordon Johndroe said. http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,,1999698,00.html?gusrc=rss&feed=1
A special team has been set up to re-investigate murders the Police Ombudsman said were committed by UVF men who were also police informers.
Nuala O'Loan said there was collusion between officers and a north Belfast UVF gang which killed up to 16 people.
The Historical Enquiries Team, set up to investigate 3,000 Troubles deaths, has established a special team.
It will re-examine the deaths of 10 people named in the report and other complex cases.
The commander of the team, Dave Cox, said he hopes they will be able to convict the killers.
"We are reinvestigating the cases - the actual murder incidents," he said. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6303963.stm
It looked at the activities of one police informant in particular, referred to in the report as Informant 1, and his associates, many of whom were also police informants and members of a UVF unit in the Mount Vernon area of north Belfast.
Nuala O'Loan has said police officers colluded in several murders |
The man referred to as Informant 1 is Mark Haddock, who was named in the Irish parliament 15 months ago as a UVF killer.
He is currently serving a 10 year sentence for his part in an assault.
Nuala O'Loan has upheld the complaint from Raymond McCord's father "that over a number of years police acted in such a way as to protect informants from being fully accountable to the law."
But she went much, much further. Her report is a damning indictment of Special Branch, revealing a network of informers who were allowed to act with impunity.
The report said investigators had identified intelligence, graded by the police as "reliable and probably true", and corroborated by other sources, to link the UVF informants to multiple murders and other crimes.
It says they were responsible for: the murders of 10 people; 10 attempted murders; 10 punishment shootings and 13 punishment attacks; a bomb attack in Monaghan; 72 instances of other crime, including 17 instances of drug dealing, criminal damage, extortion, and intimidation.
Investigators also identified "less significant and reliable intelligence" linking Informant 1 and his associates to five other murders.
During this time, Mark Haddock was paid almost £80,000 for his work as an informer.
Raymond McCord Jnr was beaten to death in 1997 |
The Police Ombudsman also claims that some of the Special Branch handlers working with the UVF informers in the area helped protect them from other police officers trying to solve the crimes they were involved in.
The report says this included:
Informants being reportedly "babysat" through interviews by their Special Branch handlers to help avoid incriminating themselves, false interview notes being created and searches of houses to locate UVF arms and a UVF arms dump being blocked for no valid reason.
In addition, misleading information was prepared for the Director of Public Prosecutions and vital intelligence likely to have assisted in the investigation of serious crime, including murders, was withheld from police investigation teams.
The report gives examples of incidents when Special Branch officers protected members of the gang.
This includes the investigation into the murders of Catholics Eamon Fox, a 44-year-old father of six, and Gary Convie, a 24 year-old father of one, shot dead while eating their lunch in a car in the Tiger's Bay area of Belfast on May 17, 1994.
The report states: "The gunman who carried out the murders was said to have a 'goatee' beard.
Informant 1 when arrested had a 'goatee' beard but was allowed to shave it off while in custody. No identity parade was held."
Not only are the Special Branch officers accused of helping killers escape justice, they are also accused of deliberately destroying files and documents to protect themselves from prosecution.
And it doesn't stop there.
The report also says that these junior officers "could not have operated as they did without the knowledge and support at the highest levels of the RUC and the PSNI."
Ethiopia said its phased troop withdrawal from Somalia would not create a security vacuum as has been suggested by some. Bereket Simon, an advisor to Ethiopian Prime Minister Meles Zenawi, said Ethiopia has also achieved almost all of its goals for going into Somalia.
“Absolutely! In fact, we have achieved a lot more by sending our troops to Somalia. Our first goal was to ensure that the threat that was posed to Ethiopia was overcome, and with the defeat of the extremes in the Islamic Courts, we have succeeded in achieving our goal. In addition to this, we have been able to bring about peace and stability in most parts of Somalia, including Mogadishu. We have been able also to disarm the warlords and incorporate their militias with the federal army,” he said.
Simon dismissed suggestions by some that a quick Ethiopian withdrawal from Somalia may create a security vacuum there.
“That is not correct. As the prime minister has said time and again, the responsibility of ensuring a lasting peace is basically that of the Somali people and the transitional federal government. And they have really taken matters into their own hands, and they have shown that they can deliver on their promises. Secondly, we are withdrawing in a phased manner. We have only withdrawn troops that are meant to withdraw in the first phase. So we are doing this withdrawal in a responsible manner. We are not getting out of Somalia in such a situation that will create a vacuum,” Simon said.
He said Ethiopia was convinced the African Union would deliver on its current plan to send about eight thousand peacekeepers to Somalia. http://www.voanews.com/english/Africa/2007-01-26-voa7.cfm
Italian foreign minister Massimo D'Alema, in Brussels for a Nato foreign ministers' meeting Friday, renewed calls for holding an international conference on Afghanistan, an idea unopposed by the US.
"There is a need for a renewable strategy for Afghanistan that focuses on political, cultural, economic and humanitarian elements," D'Alema, also deputy premier, told Italian reporters on sidelines of the Brussels' meeting.
He said Italy, which decided to renewed mandate of its forces in Afghanistan, proposed holding an international conference in the next months to discuss a new strategy amidst growing violence between the international forces and insurgents in Afghanistan.
D'Alema said he met with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice and noted that Washington did not show "negative answer" on the Italian proposal. http://www.kuna.net.kw/home/Story.aspx?Language=en&DSNO=946221
Charles Rangel, the chairman of the powerful House Ways and Means Committee, is betting that with Cuban leader Fidel Castro in failing health and Democrats in control of Congress, lawmakers will scale back trade and travel embargoes on the communist island.
Rangel, a New York Democrat, introduced a measure Jan. 24 to end the U.S. ban on travel to Cuba. He and others say they will offer measures to relax limits on sending money to Cuba and payment restrictions on the sale of farm goods.
``Being in the majority, I think we can be successful this year,'' Rangel said in an interview. Speaker Nancy Pelosi of California, Majority Leader Steny Hoyer of Maryland, and all but one of the new House committee chairmen voted in the past for easing the embargo, according to the U.S.-Cuba Trade Association.
An end to the almost 50-year-old trade barriers may open a $1 billion-a-year export market for U.S. goods and revive Havana as an attraction for U.S. tourists about 100 miles off the Florida coast. President George W. Bush opposes lifting the embargo. Commerce Secretary Carlos Gutierrez says Cuba first must free political prisoners and allow free enterprise and opposition political parties.
Because of the embargo companies such as San Antonio-based Valero Energy Corp. can't refine oil from Cuban offshore oil tracts. Wayzata, Minnesota-based Cargill Inc. currently faces restrictions on grain sales and Pernod Ricard SA can't sell its Havana Club rum in the U.S.
Both sides are girding for battle, increasing campaign contributions, hiring lobbyists and accompanying lawmakers on visits to the island. Backers of change say they are trying to lay the groundwork for ending the embargo in 2009, after Bush leaves office and Castro, 80, likely will be out of power.
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601087&sid=aqSR8RPvtsxk&refer=worldwide
For McCain, a Republican presidential hopeful, the struggle against the Islamists is the paramount issue of the day. His campaign web site, while spare, highlights a recent speech in which McCain called stopping radical Islam "our most important moral obligation." He described the jihadists as "moral monsters but ... also a disciplined, dedicated movement driven by an apocalyptic religious zeal, which celebrates martyrdom and murder."
Sounding nearly as resolute is former governor Mitt Romney, whose campaign web site puts "Defeating the Jihadists" first in its list of key campaign issues. "The jihadists are waging a global war against the United States and its allies," Romney is quoted as saying, "with the ambition of replacing legitimate governments with a caliphate — a theocracy." Speaking in Israel Tuesday, Romney asserted that "a central purpose of NATO should be to defeat radical Islam," through means both military and ideological.
The Democratic candidates, by contrast, are virtually silent on the subject.
Barack Obama launched his exploratory committee with an online video that mentioned the economy, health care, vanishing pensions, college costs and the fractiousness of partisan politics. His only nod to national security was a passing reference to the war in Iraq, which he opposes. But 9/11 and its aftermath? The worldwide jihad? The global conflict between democratic freedom and Taliban-style repression? Not a word.
Hillary Clinton's highly praised kickoff video likewise included nothing about the overriding threat of our time. Her web site does contain a speech she gave at the Council on Foreign Relations last October, but it is filled with vague rhetoric about diplomacy and international conferences and how we must address the "troubled conditions terrorists seek out." New Yorkers don't need to be told "that we are in a war against terrorists who seek to do us harm," Clinton says.
But if she recognizes that the future of the civilized world depends on winning that war, she shows little sign of it.
What is true of Obama and Clinton is more or less true of Edwards, Richardson, and the others. The Democrats seem prepared to emulate John Kerry, who insisted in 2004 that "we have to get back to the place we were" before 9/11. Back, that is, to treating Islamist terrorism not as "the focus of our lives," but merely as "a nuisance" that we need "to reduce" — like gambling, he said, or prostitution.
Heading into the 2008 campaign, our political universe is still divided. On one side are those who see the Islamists as a nuisance to be controlled. On the other: those who regard them as an existential enemy to be destroyed. On the relative strength of those two camps, the next election may well depend. http://www.insidebayarea.com/opinion/sanmateo/ci_5092400 Posted at 12:49 pm by Psychomike
Wednesday, January 24, 2007
US Attacks Iran in April, Bulgaria Involved, Ecstacy Found Effective With Israeli Terror Victims, Lebanon Riots Close City
The United States plans a hard-power attack on Iran's nuclear and oil industries, the Arab Times reported, citing un-named sources.
The timing has been fixed to suit George Bush's major ally, UK Prime Minister Tony Blair, who is to step down from his office at Number Ten Downing Street this May. The White House hopes that a military attack against Iranian targets will weaken the regime and lead to the toppling of the government of Syria, as well, The Arab Times comments. "As one of the last steps before a strike, we'll see USAF tankers moved to unusual places, like Bulgaria," respected US security expert, Col. Sam Gardiner, predicts. According to him these will be used to refuel the US-based B-2 bombers on their strike missions into Iran. "When that happens, we'll only be days away from a strike," he said. Bulgaria's Foreign Minister Ivaylo Kalfin and Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice signed at the end of April last year the agreement for the location of US military bases on the territory of the Black Sea country. Bulgaria and the US reached an agreement on the defence cooperation accord, including the conditions of the shared use of several military facilities on Bulgarian territory, at the end of March. As many as 3,000 soldiers can be deployed on short rotation in Bulgaria, which at some point may overlap and reach 5,000. The first US troops will arrive in 2007 and 2008. http://www.novinite.com/view_news.php?id=75712
Gulf Cooperation Council states would support a U.S. strike to destroy Iran's nuclear weapons program.
A report by the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center asserted that the six Gulf Arab states would not tolerate a nuclear Iran. The report said the GCC regards Iran as a bully that seeks to dominate the region.
"Teheran has to finally realize that if push comes to shove, if the choice is between an Iranian nuclear bomb and a U.S. military strike, then the Arab Gulf states have no choice but to quietly support the U.S.," the report, authored by international studies director Christian Koch, said.
GRC, which on Tuesday held a roundtable that included U.S. Undersecretary of State Nicholas Burns, said Iran has rejection negotiations with the Gulf Arab states. The report cited Iran's military buildup in the Gulf and its refusal to negotiate the seizure of two islets from the United Arab Emirates. http://www.menewsline.com/stories/2007/january/01_24_1.html
Iran and North Korea, two of the countries named in US President George W Bush's "axis of evil" State of the Union address in 2002, have formed an unlikely alliance in an attempt to escape their growing isolation from the outside world.
Although the Stalinist dictatorship in Pyongyang has little in common with the Islamic fundamentalists who govern Iran, their status as two of the world's leading pariah states has seen a growing level of military and technical co-operation between the two regimes, with both countries sending high level delegations on visits aimed at strengthening ties between the two countries.
This unlikely marriage of convenience is fuelled by North Korea's dire need for Iranian oil and Iran's desperate search for sophisticated weapons technology. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/24/wiran124.xml
A blog item at the magazine Harpers yesterday indicates that the Central Intelligence Agency has failed to complete an intelligence assessment on Iraq demanded by senators.
Ken Silverstein wrote at his "Washington Babylon" blog that the CIA continues to be late in producing a "national intelligence estimate" on Iraq. NIE's are the most significant intelligence finding produced within the intelligence community, and have often been a major political football during the years of the Bush White House. Portions of an incomplete NIE on Iraq were leaked to news media organizations last fall, prompting the White House to declassify the key judgments and executive summary of the document.
Silverstein said that senators were angered at a closed door meeting last week of the Senate Select Committee on Intelligence where they expected to be briefed by the National Intelligence Council on the findings of an Iraq NIE. But the official said that the CIA could not finish the assessment due to "the many demands placed upon it by the Bush Administration to help prepare the new military strategy on Iraq," and also because "not all of the relevant agencies had contributed to the NIE, which has made it impossible to put together a finished product."
The Harpers' editor says some senators believe the intelligence community's representatives "are stalling because an NIE will be bleak enough to present a significant political liability" as President Bush makes his case for an escalation of troops in Iraq.
The full blog post at Harpers can be accessed at this link. http://www.rawstory.com/news/2007/CIA_fails_to_finish_new_intelligence_0122.html
Protesters bent on toppling Lebanon's cabinet blocked highways and roads with blazing tires on Tuesday, sparking clashes with government loyalists in which three people were killed and 133 people hurt, police said.
The violence raised the stakes in a campaign by Iranian- and Syrian-backed Hezbollah and its Shi'ite and Christian allies to oust Prime Minister Fouad Siniora's Western-supported government. Siniora, a Sunni Muslim, vowed to stand firm.
"We will stay together against intimidation. We will stand together against strife," he said in a televised speech.
"Today's general strike turned into actions and harassment that overstepped all limits and rekindled memories of times of strife, war and hegemony," Siniora said.
He hinted that the government might take stronger measures.
"The duty of the army and security forces does not allow any flexibility or compromise regarding the public interest, order and civic peace," Siniora declared.
The street trouble prompted him to delay his departure for an international conference on aid for Lebanon to be held in Paris on Thursday. He did not say if he still planned to go.
Lebanese troops tried to keep rival groups apart, but police said a member of the Christian, pro-government Lebanese Forces party was shot dead in the town of Batroun, north of Beirut.
Two people were shot and killed in the mainly Sunni Muslim northern port of Tripoli. Police said gunfire wounded around 50 people, many of them in the Christian towns.
Police said 133 people were hurt in a day of skirmishes around the country. Stone-throwing crowds fought in Beirut and Christian areas to the north, even though troops caught in the middle fired in the air to deter them. http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20070123/wl_nm/lebanon_government_dc_22
The African Union (AU) has confirmed that Sudan's military bombed two villages in North Darfur, violating cease-fire agreements and jeopardizing efforts to revive a stalled peace process, days ahead of the expected arrival of a team of investigators from the International Criminal Court (ICC) to probe genocide allegations.
Separately, the United Nations reported an assault on aid workers, saying that about 20 AU, united Nations and private-aid agency staff were arrested at a social gathering and five were beaten by police in Darfur, with some sustaining serious injuries.
In the first independent confirmation of rebel reports that the government bombarded their positions in Anka and Korma on January 16 and 19, the AU condemned the attacks.
"The [AU] cease-fire commission is once again calling on all parties to refrain from any activities that will jeopardize the peace process," a statement sent late on Monday said.
Rebels are trying to hold a conference in Darfur to unify their position ahead of a renewed push for peace talks. They want government guarantees that the conference will not be attacked, but the military has bombed rebel positions three times in the past two months, the AU says.
Sudan's armed forces spokesman denied all reports of bombing in the past two months.
Experts estimate some 200,000 people have been killed and 2.5 million forced from their homes in four years of rape, pillage and murder in Darfur, in violence that Washington calls genocide. http://www.dailystar.com.lb/article.asp?edition_id=10&categ_id=2&article_id=78878
This year, the drug MDMA, otherwise known as ecstasy, could take a step toward medical respectability. Researchers in South Carolina have begun experimenting with MDMA for patients with post-traumatic stress disorder. At Harvard, a long-awaited pilot study will begin on whether the drug can help relieve anxiety and pain in terminal cancer patients in connection with psychotherapy. And studies will also start in Switzerland and Israel, where a former chief psychiatrist of the Israel Defense Forces will oversee work with people whose PTSD stems from terrorism or war.
Ecstasy gained notoriety as a party drug in the 1980s and 1990s. (Recall teenagers at raves with sparkly eyes and pacifiers rolling and dancing all night; a revival appears to be under way in England.) Enthusiasts say the drug makes them feel relaxed, energetic, and mentally clear. One likened it to a six-hour orgasm. In rare cases, however, users died after dancing for hours and overheating, or after taking mixtures of ecstasy and other drugs. Animal studies have shown that long-term, heavy ecstasy use can be risky for the brain. Human studies have found some ill effects in chronic users, as well. The government classifies MDMA (or 3,4-methylenedioxymethamphetamine) along with heroin, LSD, and marijuana as a Schedule 1 drug, which means that it's illegal and has no recognized medical uses.
But research has not proved that moderate or low doses of ecstasy are particularly dangerous. And avant-garde psychiatrists have long argued that in a controlled clinical setting, low amounts can play a role by reducing fear, without sedation, and so encourage openness and emotional insight. "There is nothing else like this in psychiatry—a fast-acting anti-anxiety medication that makes people alert and talkative," says Julie Holland, a psychiatrist at NYU Medical Center. If available to treat patients, "It would be incredibly useful." Some mental-health professionals interested in exploring MDMA's therapeutic uses protested when the government made it illegal 20 years ago. Stories of the drug's power to combat the psychological effects of terminal illness have continued to surface over the years. But proponents have had little but anecdote to go on. The current wave of studies should bring new rigor to answering an old question: whether MDMA deserves to be a prescription drug.
http://www.slate.com/id/2158144?nav=wp Posted at 02:21 pm by Psychomike
Tuesday, January 23, 2007
Crisis:N Korea, Iran Unite!
N Korea helping Iran with nuclear testing!, U.S. warns Iran to back down, Second carrier strikegroup on way to region, How the attack will happen, Rwanda on the brink!
Israel and the United States will soon be destroyed, Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Tuesday during a meeting with Syria's foreign minister, the Islamic Republic of Iran Broadcasting (IRIB) website said in a report. "Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad… assured that the United States and the Zionist regime of Israel will soon come to the end of their lives," the Iranian president was quoted as saying. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3356154,00.html
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N Korea helping Iran with nuclear testing By Con Coughlin
Last Updated: 1:57am GMT 24/01/2007
| A second U.S. aircraft carrier strike group now steaming toward the Middle East is Washington's way of warning Iran to back down in its attempts to dominate the region, a top U.S. diplomat said here Tuesday.
Nicholas Burns, U.S. undersecretary of state for political affairs, ruled out direct negotiations with Iran and said a rapprochement between Washington and Tehran was "not possible" until Iran halts uranium enrichment.
"The Middle East isn't a region to be dominated by Iran. The Gulf isn't a body of water to be controlled by Iran. That's why we've seen the United States station two carrier battle groups in the region," Burns said in an address to the Dubai-based Gulf Research Center, an influential think-tank.
"Iran is going to have to understand that the United States will protect its interests if Iran seeks to confront us," Burns continued.
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20070124/D8MRAKV01.html
Is there anything that might alter the course of events and affect the war picture by 2008? Indeed: a preemptive strike on Iran.
Should it occur, writes Wayne White, an intelligence officer at the State Department until 2005, "such action would likely involve not only taking out widely dispersed nuclear-related targets and nearby anti-aircraft defenses, but also portions of the Iranian air force assigned to defend these targets. And that's just for starters."
"In order to reduce Iran's ability to retaliate in the Persian Gulf, such a plan probably would also include taking out Iran's array of anti-ship missiles along the northern coast of the Gulf, its Kilo-class submarines, other naval assets, and even some targets related to Iran's long-range missile capacity."
Is such an attack being considered? Nick Burns, No. 3 at State, was at the Herzileah Conference this weekend. "Iran is seeking a nuclear weapon – there's no doubt about it," Burns told the Israelis. "The policy of the U.S. government is that we cannot allow Iran to become a nuclear weapons state."
Burns was cheered and echoed by ex-Defense Minister Shaul Mofaz: "The year of 2007 is the year of decisiveness. … The free world doesn't have the privilege to drag its feet on Iran and hope for best."
Democrats failed to stop this war. Can they stop the next one? Or do they suspect and support what they think is coming?
http://www.antiwar.com/pat/?articleid=10378
A top leader of Somalia's ousted Islamic movement seen by the U.S. as a potential key to preventing a widespread insurgency there surrendered to authorities and is under protection in Nairobi, officials said Monday. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-01-22-somalia-islamic-leader_x.htm
The Rwandan authorities must deal with the killings of survivors of the 1994 genocide, says Human Rights Watch.
A significant number of witnesses in the traditional judicial process, known as gacaca, have been killed in recent years, says the US-based lobby group.
Prompt and effective law enforcement is needed, or the deaths could trigger a new cycle of violence, HRW warns. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6286181.stm
Pakistan believes that Taliban chief Mulla Omar is operating from Kandahar in Afghanistan and hinted that torture has been used to extract fabricated information from those captured and portrayed as Taliban spokesmen.
Responding to the continuing torrent of allegations against Pakistan by Afghan President Hamid Karzai, the Foreign Office spokesperson told a weekly briefing on Monday: “We have repeatedly clarified Pakistan’s position (on these issues). We have to look at the statements (from Kabul) in the perspective of the situation inside Afghanistan. As for the assertion of the (captured) Taliban spokesmen we do know what methods have been used to extract this information. These methods are well known.”
In this regard she said the Taliban themselves had later clarified that the captured “Taliban” did not have information of the whereabouts of Mulla Omar. “We have regular meetings and intelligence sharing with the Afghans. No one has any information about Mulla Omar but the likely scenario is that he is in Kandahar,” she added. http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=5389
The police ombudsman for Northern Ireland's report into links between loyalist paramilitary organisations and the RUC's special branch has provided the first semi-official confirmation of what many of us have suspected for a long time (RUC colluded with loyalist murderers, January 23). I would also bet that the 15 murders committed by the Ulster Volunteer Force with apparent RUC sanction are only the tip of the iceberg.
What makes this revelation particularly striking is that it was not the apparent work of a few underlings in the organisation, but was conducted with the apparent knowledge and complicity of senior officers right up the chain of command. http://www.guardian.co.uk/letters/story/0,,1997259,00.html
Posted at 08:48 pm by Psychomike
Sunday, January 21, 2007
Russian Spy Killer- Identified!
THE POLICE AND PROTESTANT GROUPS KILLED HUNDREDS OF CATHOLICS IN N. IRELAND, KKK GROWS IN- ULSTER!
UK police have made a breakthrough and identified the man they believe poisoned Alexander Litvinenko, a friend of the murdered former Russian spy told
Saturday's edition of The Times newspaper.
Police tracked down the man, who was introduced to Litvinenko and his associates as 'Vladislav', using details that the ex-agent recounted on his deathbed, The Times said.
The suspected killer travelled to London on a forged EU passport and slipped the radioactive isotope polonium-210 into Litvinenko's tea, according to Oleg Gordievsky, a friend of the defector to the UK who has worked closely with detectives on the murder investigation.
Litvinenko's death in London on November 23 caused a storm of media speculation and strained ties between Britain and Russia.
The Times reported that the suspected assassin was spotted on security camera footage at London Heathrow airport as he flew into the British capital from Hamburg in Germany on November 1, the day Litvinenko fell ill.
He reportedly travelled on the same flight as Russian businessman Dimitri Kovtun, who later met Litvinenko.
'This man is believed to have used a Lithuanian or Slovak passport,' Gordievsky, a former KGB Soviet agent, told The Times.
'He did not check into any hotel in London using the name or that passport and he left the country using another EU passport.'
Police sources told The Times it had not previously been revealed that Litvinenko visited a fourth-floor room at the Millennium Hotel in London to discuss a business deal.
He went to the room with Kovtun and Andrei Lugovoy, another former Russian agent.
The trio were joined in the room by a mystery man who was introduced as 'Vladislav'.
'Vladislav was described as someone who could help Mr Litvinenko win a lucrative contract with a Moscow-based private security company,' Gordievsky said.
'Sasha (Litvinenko) remembered the man making him a cup of tea.
'His belief is that the water from the kettle was only lukewarm and that the polonium-210 was added, which heated the drink through radiation so he had a hot cup of tea. The poison would have showed up in a cold drink.'
The Times said police have decided not to release a picture of the man.
He is described as being in his early 30s, tall, strong, with short black hair and Central Asian features.
London's Metropolitan Police refused to comment on the report. http://www.forbes.com/business/feeds/afx/2007/01/21/afx3346746.html
For the UVF (Ulster Volunteer Force), it was a routine operation.
A small-time criminal owed them some drugs money and he was going to pay up or be killed. Three of the group took Raymond McCord Jr to a disused quarry and beat him to death with iron bars and hammers. The chief murderer was on weekend parole and, with his handlers in Special Branch aware of his paramilitary activities, he thought little about the murder.
Tomorrow, just over nine years since McCord’s murder took place, then a Police Ombudsman’s report into that killing and at least a dozen others is expected to be the most damning ever written about the police in the North.
It points to a trail of collusion between the Royal Ulster Constabulary (RUC) and loyalist paramilitaries in murder, and in extortion, corruption and threats that led to the deaths of 18 people in Belfast until 2003.The report will be a body-blow to the North’s policing legacy.
The Ombudsman’s report comes just a week before Sinn Fein holds its extraordinary ard fheis to decide whether to endorse the Police Service of Northern Ireland (PSNI).
The report’s findings graphically illustrate one of the principal reasons why many republicans and nationalists find accepting and endorsing policing so difficult - the police colluded with loyalist paramilitaries, which they believe resulted in the deaths of hundreds of Catholics during the Troubles.
http://www.thepost.ie/post/pages/p/story.aspx-qqqt=NEWS+FEATURES-qqqm=nav-qqqid=20385-qqqx=1.asp
An ultra-racist group linked to the Ku Klux Klan is using immigration to gain a foothold in Ulster.
The Knights of the Invisible Empire want to see all migrant workers and asylum seekers booted out.
And it is also demanding an end to "gypsy races" in the province.
The white supremacist organisation has recently set up a number of internet websitesas part of its sick race hate war.
It is capitalising on concerns over the increasing number of foreign workers to these shores in order to attract support in areas like Ballymena and Craigavon.
In recent years, there has been a steady rise in activity in the province by supporters of far-right groups.
Fascist cabals - including Combat 18, the White Nationalist Party and the National Front - have previously forged strong links with loyalist extremists.
The Knights of the Invisible Empire has long abandoned the Klan's infamous white hood and robe trademark. http://www.sundaylife.co.uk/news/article2172730.ece Posted at 12:38 pm by Psychomike
CIA AND FBI IN PHILIPPINES, CANCER TREATMENT BREAKTHROUGH, PIECES SOON IN PLACE FOR IRAN ATTACK, IRANIAN STUDENT LEADER- IF ATTACKED IRAN WILL FALL, THE WAR ON CHRISTIANS IN BURMA, FBI BATTLES- A MOVIE?!?
Several American and Australian intelligence agents are in Mindanao to monitor terrorist activities, military sources here claimed yesterday.
"Mindanao is crawling with CIA (Central Intelligence Agency), FBI (Federal Bureau of Investigation) and even Australian federal agents," a source told The STAR.
The source, who asked not to be named, said aside from the US Special Forces deployed in Zamboanga and assisting in Sulu, foreign intelligence agents are also helping track down Abu Sayyaf and Jemaah Islamiyah militants. The foreign agents pose as tourists, businessmen, consultants or even treasure hunters.
Meanwhile, in Washington, the director of the CIA praised the Philippines on Thursday for its fight against terrorists, saying the country’s government and military have worked closely with the United States to decrease the threat from extremists.
http://www.philstar.com/philstar/News200701200401.htm
It sounds almost too good to be true: a cheap and simple drug that kills almost all cancers by switching off their “immortality”. The drug, dichloroacetate (DCA), has already been used for years to treat rare metabolic disorders and so is known to be relatively safe.
It also has no patent, meaning it could be manufactured for a fraction of the cost of newly developed drugs.
Evangelos Michelakis of the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, and his colleagues tested DCA on human cells cultured outside the body and found that it killed lung, breast and brain cancer cells, but not healthy cells. Tumours in rats deliberately infected with human cancer also shrank drastically when they were fed DCA-laced water for several weeks.
DCA attacks a unique feature of cancer cells: the fact that they make their energy throughout the main body of the cell, rather than in distinct organelles called mitochondria. This process, called glycolysis, is inefficient and uses up vast amounts of sugar.
Until now it had been assumed that cancer cells used glycolysis because their mitochondria were irreparably damaged. However, Michelakis’s experiments prove this is not the case, because DCA reawakened the mitochondria in cancer cells. The cells then withered and died (Cancer Cell, DOI: 10.1016/j.ccr.2006.10.020). http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn10971&feedId=online-news_rss20
The video starts with a young American soldier patrolling an Iraqi street. His head is obscured by leaves, so a red target is digitally inserted to draw the viewer’s eye. A split second later, the soldier collapses, shot. Martial music kicks in, a jihadi answer to John Philip Sousa. The time and place of the attack scrolls at the bottom of the screen.
Such tapes, along with images of victims of Shiite militias and unflattering coverage of Shiite leaders, are beaming across Iraq and much of the Middle East 24 hours a day, broadcast by a banned Iraqi satellite television station that has become a major information center for the Sunni insurgency — and the focus of a cat-and-mouse hunt that has exasperated and infuriated American and Iraqi forces.
Making the situation even more galling for the authorities, American and Iraqi officials say that money stolen from the United States probably helps pay for the station.
“They do not have programs but buffoonery, blaspheming and support for terrorism,” said Jalal al-Din al-Sagheer, a senior member of the Supreme Council for the Islamic Revolution in Iraq, a Shiite party. “The source of funding for the channel is theft.”
The channel’s founder, Meshaan al-Juburi, is a former Sunni member of Parliament who was indicted last February on charges of embezzling millions of American dollars meant to pay for a vast pipeline protection force he had been assigned to help build with recruits from Salahuddin Province. He was accused of collecting salaries for thousands of soldiers who did not exist. http://fairuse.100webcustomers.com/sf/nyt1_21_7_4.htm
The pieces are moving. They’ll be in place by the end of
February. The United States will be able to escalate military operations against Iran.
The second carrier strike group leaves the U.S. west coast on January 16. It will be joined by naval mine clearing assets from both the United States and the UK. Patriot missile defense systems have also been ordered to deploy to the Gulf.
Maybe as a guard against North Korea seeing operations focused on Iran as a chance to be aggressive, a squadron of F-117 stealth fighters has just been deployed to Korea.
This has to be called escalation. We have to remind ourselves, just as Iran is supporting groups inside Iraq, the United States is supporting groups inside Iran. Just as Iran has special operations troops operating inside Iraq, we’ve read the United States has special operations troops operating inside Iran.
Just as Iran is supporting Hamas, two weeks ago we found out the United States is supporting arms for Abbas. Just as Iran and Syria are supporting Hezbollah in Lebanon we’re now learning the White House has approved a finding to allow the CIA to support opposition groups inside Lebanon. Just as Iran is supporting Syria, we’ve learned recently that the United States is going to fund Syrian opposition groups.
We learned this week the President authorized an attack on the Iranian liaison office in Irbil.
The White House keeps saying there are no plans to attack Iran. Obviously, the facts suggest otherwise. Equally as clear, the Iranians will read what the Administrations is doing not what it is
saying. http://www.counterpunch.org/gardiner01162007.html
An effort by the FBI and federal prosecutors to remove a short fictional film about a military takeover of New York City from the Internet may have violated the First Amendment, a federal appeals court said Friday.
But the 2nd U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals in Manhattan said a lower court was still correct to toss out a lawsuit brought against an FBI agent and a federal prosecutor by a web hosting service operator and Michael Zieper, who wrote, directed and produced the film.
http://www.signonsandiego.com/news/nation/20070119-1617-film-fbi.html
While United States Minister of Defense Robert Gates, along with many specialists on the matter, warn against a military attack on Iran, which in their view will entrap the Iranian people behind the Ayatollah regime, Iranian student leader Amir Abbas Fakhr-Avar believes an attack will have the reverse result. In an exclusive interview with Ynet, Fakhr-Avar describes his blueprint for how to topple the regime. If the West launches a military attack on Iran , “The top brass will flee immediately. People will come out onto the streets protesting, why are we being bombed? Many of the regime’s mid-level officials will shave their beards, don ties and join the (civilians) on the streets.”
Fakhr-Avar exudes experience and wisdom far beyond his 31 years, after serving years of jail time, solitary confinement, torture and broken bones. Fakhr-Avar, one of Iran’s student leaders, heads an organization numbering 12,000 students. According to a deal reached between Iran’s students and its regime, he was temporarily released from prison for academic testing, after serving half of an eight year sentence. He did not return. In May 2006 Fakhr-Avar managed to escape Iran and reach the United States. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3354536,00.html
President Bush's policies, including the Iraq war, have left the country in a "disastrous" state, according to several prominent conservatives.
The leaders, including current and former presidential candidates, outlined their objectives for a revival of conservatism during a panel discussion yesterday hosted by the Free Congress Foundation, a conservative Washington-based advocacy group. The leaders' recommendations, covering economic, military and social policy, would be largely different from those implemented by the Bush administration.
"We disagree on a lot of things," Rep. Duncan Hunter, California Republican, said of Mr. Bush. Mr. Hunter is seeking his party's 2008 presidential nomination on a platform of military expertise and a desire to confront China on economic and trade issues.
"We have a competition which is not free trade, it's not fair trade, it's rigged trade," he said of the China's trade tariffs, which many critics argue have hurt American businesses.
"The state of the union is disastrous," said William Lind, president of the foundation's Center for Cultural Conservatism. "We are fighting and losing two wars, in Iraq and Afghanistan."
Using language that at times mirrored that of liberal critics of Mr. Bush's foreign policy, Mr. Lind said an interventionist U.S. foreign policy is creating, "a hostile relationship with the growing world."
Former presidential candidate Gary Bauer was critical of Mr. Bush for what he described as the president's failure to more deeply inspire Americans after September 11.
"The president made a colossal mistake after 9/11 by simply asking people to shop," said Mr. Bauer, president of the conservative group American Values.
http://washtimes.com/national/20070119-110926-3240r.htm
Members of the Hells Angels, including an Army lieutenant colonel from Illinois, have served the U.S. military in Iraq. Another Iraq war veteran, a Marine who belongs to the Maniac Latin Disciples street gang, is charged with shooting three teens in Aurora.
They are examples of growing gang activity in the military, which "poses a threat to law enforcement officials and national security," according to a new FBI report obtained by the Sun-Times.
"The military enlistment of gang members could ultimately lead to the worldwide expansion of U.S.-based gangs," the report warned.
The report by the FBI's National Gang Intelligence Center said gang members sneak into the military by failing to report criminal convictions or using fake documents. Some have sealed juvenile records unavailable to recruiters. And most of the recruiters are not properly trained to recognize gang affiliation, the report said. http://www.suntimes.com/news/metro/220821,CST-NWS-gang20.article
The military regime in Burma is intent on wiping out Christianity in the country, according to claims in a secret document believed to have been leaked from a government ministry. Entitled "Programme to destroy the Christian religion in Burma", the incendiary memo contains point by point instructions on how to drive Christians out of the state.
The text, which opens with the line "There shall be no home where the Christian religion is practised", calls for anyone caught evangelising to be imprisoned. It advises: "The Christian religion is very gentle – identify and utilise its weakness."
Its discovery follows widespread reports of religious persecution, with churches burnt to the ground, Christians forced to convert to the state religion, Buddhism, and their children barred from school. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2007/01/21/wburma21.xml
Fighters loyal to Laurent Nkunda, a renegade general being sought for war crimes, have begun integrating with government forces in Democratic Republic of Congo, U.N. and army officials said on Saturday.
Nkunda's forces have repeatedly stymied efforts to establish government authority in the east of the vast country, where an array of ethnic militias have murdered, robbed and raped civilians since the end of a 1998-2003 war.
"More or less 1,300 troops have so far gone through the process," said Colonel Delphin Kahimbi, the Congolese army's deputy commander in North Kivu province, where the reintegration is taking place. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L20569590.htm
Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez said yesterday that Fidel Castro is "battling for his life" and said he spoke with the Cuban leader for nearly half an hour several days ago. http://washtimes.com/world/20070119-102016-2358r.htm
Posted at 02:47 am by Psychomike
Thursday, January 18, 2007
Why Soccer Hasn't Caught On In U.S.
MULAH OMAR PROTECTED BY PAKISTANI INTEL, IRAQ COUP COUNTDOWN: RICE SAYS ARABS DON'T LIKE IRAQ PM, WAZIRISTAN: NEW OUTPOST OF AL QAEDA, WILL BECKHAM BRING SOCCER TO U.S.? WHY SOCCER HASN'T CAUGHT ON IN U.S.
Arab governments are skeptical about the ability of Iraqi Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki to improve the security situation in his country, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said yesterday after a series of meetings with leaders in the Middle East.
Arab officials support the goals of President Bush's new Iraq policy -- quelling the violence and stabilizing the country -- but are not prepared to fully back the proposal because of its reliance on Mr. al-Maliki's performance, she said. "There is skepticism about whether or not the Iraqi government is going to do the things it has said it's going to do," Miss Rice told a group of reporters in Kuwait, the last stop on her tour in the region. Miss Rice has met principally with Sunni leaders in Saudi Arabia, Egypt and the Persian Gulf, most of whom share concern about the rising power of Mr. al-Maliki and his fellow Shi'ite leaders in Iran and southern Lebanon. "There are concerns about whether the Maliki government is prepared to take an evenhanded, nonsectarian path. There is no doubt about that," Miss Rice said. http://washtimes.com/world/20070116-114710-5757r.htm
David Beckham is being touted by some as the man who will elevate soccer to iconic status on the U.S. sports landscape, but sceptics wonder how the football star can succeed when even all-time great Pele failed.
Beckham has signed a five-year, $250 million (127 million pound) deal to play from this summer with the Los Angeles Galaxy, one of 13 teams in the U.S. professional league, Major League Soccer. http://today.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=reutersEdge&storyID=2007-01-17T105508Z_01_NOA739128_RTRUKOC_0_BECKHAM-USA.xml&src=011807_1411_ARTICLE_PROMO_also_on_reuters
The reason Soccer has not caught on in the U.S. has to do with the scoring and gambling. Football "cheats" by giving 6 points to a score, instead of soccers one. With no way to calculate a point spread the only bet that could be made would be a straight up win/ lose bet. No bookie wants that. Every week in football and basketball season, over 1 billion dollars a week is gambled on sports. And that isn't done in Vegas. It's your office pool, the guy at the bar, etc. Without a change in the scoring, don't expect soccer to catch on here. How powerful is gambling? When people ask me what is the favorite sport in America, baseball, football or basketball I tell them gambling is. If football were scored the way soccer is, and bookies stopped taking bets, you wouldn't see much football on TV! And when was the last time the feds busted a major mob group for gambling? Over 15 years ago! Gambling- the vice all Americans think is nice!
The pickup truck on which a pipe bomb was found and later detonated by authorities over the weekend belonged to a key witness in the federal case against jailed Cuban militant Luis Posada Carriles, law enforcement officials said Wednesday.
The FBI had publicly identified the owner of the truck only as a witness in a federal criminal case. But two federal law enforcement officials, speaking on condition of anonymity because the case is under investigation, said Wednesday the witness was Gilberto Abascal, whose testimony is key to the U.S. case charging Posada with lying during immigration naturalization proceedings.
Posada is accused by Cuba and Venezuela of masterminding the 1976 bombing of a Cuban jetliner that killed 73 people. Posada, a longtime opponent of Cuban leader Fidel Castro, worked for the CIA for years and trained for the failed 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion.
Posada has been held by immigration officials in Texas since his 2005 arrest in Miami, but a judge ruled he could not be deported to either Cuba or Venezuela. The new criminal case ensures he will not be released soon.
"The US has opened a fourth front in the war on terrorism" the Pentagon announced last week, as if the US did not have enough failing wars on its hands with al-Qaida, Afghanistan, and Iraq.
In a striking irony, F-18 fighter-bombers from the carrier "USS Eisenhower," deadly AC-130 gunships from the US base at Djibouti, and Special Forces units attacked Somalia from sea, air and land. Other US units and FBI agents deployed on the Kenya-Somalia border. As America’s latest foreign war began with air strikes from the giant carrier that bears this great president’s name, no one seemed to recall President Dwight Eisenhower’s magnificent farewell address in 1961 to Americans in which he warned against foreign entanglements and the growing political influence of the military-industrial complex.
Very few Americans understood their nation had just invaded another in an act worthy of the late, unlamented Chairman Leonid Brezhnev.
Much of Somalia has already been occupied by Ethiopia’s powerful, US-financed army which invaded that defenseless nation, with Washington’s blessing, under cover of the Christmas holiday.
It is an open secret in Washington that the Somalia operation is to be the Bush/Cheney Administration’s new model for war against recalcitrant Muslims. The White House failed to convince India or Pakistan to rent their troops for occupation duty in Iraq, but it has succeeded in using Ethiopia’s army in Somalia. Ethiopia’s repressive regime was only too happy to invade Somalia and received large infusions of aid from Washington. The Administration is duplicating the British Empire’s wide scale use of native troops ("sepoys" in India; "askaris" in East Africa) in colonial wars. http://www.lewrockwell.com/margolis/margolis64.html
A top al-Qaeda-linked militant accused of masterminding the kidnapping of three Americans who was long wanted by U.S. and Philippine authorities has been killed, the military said Wednesday.
Jainal Antel Sali Jr., popularly known as Abu Sulaiman — a top leader of the Abu Sayyaf rebel group — was fatally shot in a fierce gunbattle Tuesday in a clash with army special forces, military chief Gen. Hermogenes Esperon said.
Sulaiman is the highest-ranking Abu Sayyaf commander killed by U.S.-backed troops. Washington had offered up to $5 million for his capture. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2007-01-17-phillippines-al-qaeda_x.htm
The Democratic Republic of Congo's military has announced a peace deal with dissident army general Laurent Nkunda, wanted for war crimes.
He confirmed his militia will be integrated into the national army but denied he was seeking asylum elsewhere.
Gen Nkunda, who has been leading a rebellion in the east, said he wanted his arrest warrant be repealed.
The agreement comes three months after Joseph Kabila was elected as DR Congo's first president in 40 years.
About 17,000 United Nations peacekeepers operate in the country, overseeing the peace process after the end of a bloody five-year war in 2002. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/africa/6271943.stm
Chadian rebels captured the small town of Ade on the border with Sudan on Wednesday, the latest in a series of raids in the lawless east of the central African country.
The rebel Union Forces for Democracy and Development (UFDD) entered the town early on Wednesday. It lies on the road to the main regional town Goz Beida, a hub for Western aid agencies.
"We took the town without any fighting," UFDD spokesman Ali Moussa Izzo told Reuters by satellite phone. "We are still here in Ade." http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldnews&storyID=2007-01-17T162636Z_01_L17788556_RTRUKOC_0_US-CHAD-REBELS.xml
China and Russia are developing space weapons and are among several nations working on systems to threaten U.S. satellites with lasers or missiles, says the director of the Defense Intelligence Agency.
In Senate testimony last week, Army Lt. Gen. Michael Maples for the first time raised Pentagon concerns about secret Chinese and Russian space weapons programs.
"Russia and China continue to be the primary states of concern regarding military space and counterspace programs," Gen. Maples said at the annual threat briefing of the Senate intelligence committee.
Gen. Maples said that "several countries continue to develop capabilities that have the potential to threaten U.S. space assets, and some have already deployed systems with inherent anti-satellite capabilities, such as satellite-tracking laser range-finding devices and nuclear-armed ballistic missiles." http://washtimes.com/national/20070116-101320-7600r.htm
Prices for vegetables have tripled in the past month, housing prices have doubled since last summer — and as costs have gone up, so has Iranians' discontent with hard-line President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and his focus on confrontation with the West.
Ahmadinejad was elected last year on a populist agenda promising to bring oil revenues to every family, eradicate poverty and tackle unemployment. Now he is facing increasingly fierce criticism for his failure to meet those promises.
He is being challenged not only by reformers but by the conservatives who paved the way for his stunning victory in 2005 presidential elections. Even conservatives say Ahmadinejad has concentrated too much on fiery, anti-U.S. speeches and not enough on the economy — and they have become more aggressive in calling him to account. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?file=/n/a/2007/01/17/international/i114353S68.DTL&type=printable
Iran's President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad believes neither Israel nor the United States would dare attack the Islamic Republic over its nuclear programme, a Spanish newspaper quoted him on Wednesday as saying.
Iran's Defence Minister was also later quoted as saying any such move by Israel would be "suicide" but said suggestions the Jewish state might attack were a bluff to gauge the Islamic Republic's reaction.
The comments followed an article in Britain's Sunday Times on Jan. 7 that said Israel had secret plans to destroy Iran's uranium enrichment facilities with tactical nuclear weapons.
"They well know the power of the Iranian people. I don't think they would ever dare to attack us, neither them nor their masters. They won't do such a stupid thing," Ahmadinejad told El Mundo during a visit to Nicaragua, referring to Israel. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/BLA751383.htm
Taleban leader Mullah Omar is living in Pakistan under the protection of its ISI intelligence agency, a captured Taleban spokesman has said.
The spokesman, Muhammad Hanif, made the apparent confession to Afghan agents who videotaped the questioning.
Mr Hanif is seen sitting in a dimly-lit room telling agents that Mullah Omar is in the city of Quetta. Correspondents confirm the voice is his. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/south_asia/6272359.stm
A Pakistani airstrike killed ten suspected Taleban and al-Qaeda militants in the border region of Waziristan on Tuesday. Nato commanders in neighbouring Afghanistan are alarmed by cross-border attacks on their forces. In this first extract from his new book The Times Pakistan correspondent, looks at the roots of conflict in the tribal lands at the heart of the War on Terror http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,173-2552738,00.html
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams has offered to meet other republican groups, including dissidents, to discuss his party's peace strategy.
His offer comes ahead of a series of public meetings before Sinn Fein's conference to debate policing.
He said he wanted to impress upon the INLA, CIRA and RIRA that the current Sinn Fein strategy was the way forward.
Mr Adams said a peaceful and democratic alternative to violence now existed for achieving a free and united Ireland.
He said the conditions, which in the past had led to republican armed actions, had fundamentally changed. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6273189.stm
Posted at 09:56 am by Psychomike
Wednesday, January 17, 2007
Exclusive: Jimmy Carter Interceded on Behalf of Nazi SS Guard; Countdown to Coup: Pack a Suitcase, Maliki; Castro Government in charge
A former U.S. Justice Department official disclosed to Arutz-7 that former U.S. President Jimmy Carter’s advocacy extended beyond the Palestinians, when he interceded on behalf of a Nazi SS man.
Neil Sher, a veteran of the U.S. Justice Department’s Office of Special Investigation, described a letter he received from Carter in 1987 in an interview with Israel National Radio’s Tovia Singer. The letter, written and signed by Carter, asked that Sher show “special consideration” for a man proven to have murdered Jews in the Mauthausen death camp in Austria.
“In 1987, Carter had been out of office for seven years or so,” Sher recalled. “It was a very active period for my office. We had just barred Kurt Waldheim – he was then president of Austria and former head of the United Nations – from entering the U.S. because of his Nazi past and his involvement in the persecution of civilians during the war. We had just deported an Estonian Nazi Commandant back to the Soviet Union after a bruising battle after which we were attacked by Reagan White House Communications Director Patrick Buchanan.
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“It always bothered me, but I didn’t go public with it until recently, when he wrote this book and let it spill out where his sentiments really lie,” Sher said. “Here was Jimmy Carter jumping in on behalf of someone who did not deserve in any way, shape or form special consideration. And the things he has now said about the Jewish lobby really exposes where his heart really lies.”
Click here to listen to Tovia Singer’s interview with Shur on Israel National Radio.
http://www.israelnationalnews.com/news.php3?id=119732
Whether or not Cuban leader Fidel Castro is terminally ill, the provisional government he designated under his brother Raul has kept Cuba on a stable track in his absence, Cuba watchers said on Wednesday.
Even U.S. officials who suspect the 80-year-old revolutionary has only months to live admit the hemisphere's only Communist-run nation is not about to implode without its supreme "comandante."
There has been no rioting nor a repeat of the 1994 exodus when thousands of Cubans took to the sea in precarious craft to seek a better life in the United States as the Cuban economy slumped following the collapse of the former Soviet Union. http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=worldNews&storyID=2007-01-17T201508Z_01_N17343530_RTRUKOC_0_US-CUBA-CASTRO-STABILITY.xml&WTmodLoc=IntNewsHome_C1_%5bFeed%5d-2
The families of two Irish Republican Army men killed by British security forces in Northern Ireland filed a lawsuit at the House of Lords on Wednesday, seeking to shed light on whether they were killed illegally.
Martin McCaughey and Pearse Jordan, both 23, were shot dead in bitterly disputed circumstances. Their families say both were unarmed and should have been arrested, not killed.
In both cases, the Belfast lawyer acting for both families, Peter Madden, is seeking to overturn lower court rulings that have restricted access to police records of the shootings and have barred coroner's inquests in Northern Ireland from declaring a verdict of unlawful killing.
The Lords, the upper house of Parliament, includes senior judges who serve as Britain's ultimate court of appeal. No date for hearing the case was set.
McCaughey was a one-time Sinn Fein politician who had been on the run after surviving a previous shoot-out with British troops. British special forces ambushed McCaughey on Oct. 9, 1990, as he and a more senior IRA figure, Seamus Grew, approached a mushroom shed containing IRA firearms. http://www.iht.com/articles/ap/2007/01/17/europe/EU-GEN-Britain-IRA-Lawsuit.php
The operator of the famed nuclear "Doomsday Clock" on Wednesday will set the "time" closer to midnight due to increasing nuclear threats to the world. http://www.japantoday.com/jp/news/396352
FORMER US ambassador to the UN John Bolton said today that six-way talks on North Korea's nuclear arms had failed and a breakthrough would only come after the collapse of Kim Jong-Il's regime.
"Six-party talks have not worked. They are not likely to work," said the blunt-talking former diplomat, who relinquished his UN post in December in the face of strong opposition to his nomination by opposition Democrats.
Speaking in Tokyo, he said North Korea was unlikely to voluntarily give up nuclear arms.
World powers "need to do something different in order to prevent North Korea from becoming an even greater threat to the region and around the world than it already is," said Mr Bolton, now a senior fellow at the American Enterprise Institute, a conservative think tank. http://www.news.com.au/story/0,23599,21076103-38196,00.html
The International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) has suspended some technical aid projects in Iran to comply with new UN sanctions slapped on Tehran over suspicions it may be trying to build nuclear bombs, diplomats say.
Western powers want an IAEA review of aid for Iran's civilian nuclear energy programme to cut most of the 65 projects. http://www.gulfnews.com/region/Iran/10097685.html
Just back from a trip to Iraq, Afghanistan and Pakistan, Senator Hillary Rodham Clinton (D-NY), tells NPR News' Steve Inskeep that she came away "with a strong opposition to President's plan for escalation" and that instead she "would like to see us cap the number of American troops in Iraq" and "condition further assistance to the Iraqis on their meeting the political milestones that have been called for more than two years." When asked if the U.S. would step up with more assistance if the Iraqis were to meet these milestones, Senator Clinton said, "No, no, I believe we have to tell them we are not going to continue to fund their army and security for their leadership and reconstruction for their country unless they take steps necessary to have the political solution that everyone knows has to be reached."
And on the day after Senator Barack Obama's step closer to running for President, Senator Clinton said "I am not influenced by anybody else's timeline," when asked if there's a reason why she hasn't announced her own candidacy. "There is a timeline that I have had in mind, and I'm going to stick with that," she said.
To pay for World War II, Americans bought savings bonds and put extra notches in their belts. President Harry Truman raised taxes and cut nonmilitary spending to pay for the Korean conflict. During Vietnam, the US raised taxes but still watched deficits soar.
But to pay for the ongoing wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, the US has used its credit card, counting on the Chinese and other foreign buyers of its debt to pay the bills. http://www.csmonitor.com/2007/0116/p01s01-usfp.html?s=t5
Bush isn’t very happy with Nuri Kamal al-Maliki right now:
“It reinforced doubts in people’s minds that the Maliki government and the unity government of Iraq is a serious government,” Mr. Bush said, “which makes it harder for me to make the case to the American people that this is a government that does want to unify the country and move forward.”
Posted at 02:45 pm by Psychomike
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