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Saturday, December 16, 2006
Iran Has Nukes, CIA Post 911!
BRITISH TROOPS ATTACK TALIBAN STRONGHOLD, SINN FEIN REJECTS POLICING OFFER, EXCLUSIVE: WHAT THE CIA DID AFTER 911, WHY LITVINENKO HAD TO DIE!
During their meeting in Tehran, the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad informed Palestinian prime minister Ismael Haniyeh that the Palestinians should be patient as Iran will issue a dramatic statement about changes in the strategic balance in the region, according to reports published in the Israeli daily 'Maariv' on Friday .
Sinn Fein will not collude in any attempt to exclude republicans from a future justice ministry, the party's justice spokesman has said.
The DUP had suggested that a future minister should be elected by a weighted cross-community vote.
This method, however, is likely to exclude both Sinn Fein and the DUP.
Sinn Fein's Gerry Kelly told the BBC Inside Politics programme he "will not collude" in his own party's exclusion from office.
"What party could argue for its own exclusion in these circumstances?" Mr Kelly asked. http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/northern_ireland/6184907.stm
Northern Ireland punk legends Stiff Little Fingers are to return to Belfast for a show at the Ulster Hall on March 9, 2007, to mark 30 years in the music business.
http://u.tv/newsroom/indepth.asp?id=11541&pt=e
Sen. John McCain on Saturday urged the United States' reluctant NATO partners to allow their troops to engage in combat operations against the resurgent Taliban, especially in Afghanistan's rebellious south.
The Arizona Republican, a likely contender in the 2008 presidential race, also criticized Pakistan for tolerating sanctuaries for Taliban fighters and other Islamic militants in tribal regions along its borders with Afghanistan.
http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/A/AFGHAN_US?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2006-12-16-16-54-14
Hundreds of British troops in Afghanistan yesterday swept into Kandahar province as part of the biggest operation against the Taliban heartland in months.
A column of 200 vehicles containing 500 soldiers and Royal Marines advanced across the border under cover of darkness from neighbouring Helmand province, where UK forces have been concentrated up until now, with orders to help Canadian troops push back Taliban insurgents gathering for a fresh offensive against the allies.
News of the operation came amid warnings that Afghanistan could sound the "death knell" of Nato, due to the refusal of many of its members to supply desperately needed troops. http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/worldnews.html?in_article_id=423001&in_page_id=1811
IRAQ'S Shiite Prime Minister called today for the return of all officers of Saddam Hussein's disbanded army in an overture to disaffected Sunni Arabs aimed at reducing sectarian violence.
Nuri al-Maliki made the call at a national reconciliation conference of Shiites, Sunni Arab and Kurdish politicians convened to halt communal bloodshed that has raised the spectre of civil war and was a major reason for US President George W. Bush's decision to review his Iraq strategy.
“The new Iraqi army is opening the door to former Iraqi army officers. Those who do not come back will be given pensions,” Mr Maliki said, in remarks in which he also told leaders to embrace reconciliation as a “safety net from death and destruction”.
Shortly after the US invasion to topple Saddam, US administrator Paul Bremer dissolved the Iraqi army, a move experts said drove many Sunni Arab soldiers and officers into the Sunni-led insurgency. http://www.news.com.au/sundaymail/story/0,23739,20941415-401,00.html
Murdered Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko was killed because of an eight-page dossier he had compiled on a powerful Russian figure for a British company, a business associate told the BBC on Saturday.
Litvinenko died in London on November 23 after receiving a lethal dose of radioactive polonium 210. On his deathbed, he accused Russian President Vladimir Putin of ordering his killing. The Kremlin has denied involvement.
The BBC said it had obtained extracts of the dossier, which British detectives also have, from an unnamed source. The BBC said the report contained damaging personal details about a "very highly placed member of Putin's administration".
"Litvinenko obtained the report on September 20," Shvets told the BBC. "Within the next two weeks he gave the report to Andrei Lugovoy. I believe that triggered the entire assassination." http://investing.reuters.co.uk/news/articlenews.aspx?type=domesticNews&storyID=2006-12-16T141636Z_01_L16859096_RTRUKOC_0_UK-BRITAIN-POISONING.xml&WTmodLoc=HP-C2-Business-2
Hunters in India’s remote northeast are tracking a rogue elephant blamed for 14 deaths in the region and named after Osama bin Laden by fearful villagers.
The order came after the bull dubbed Laden, which has twice evaded attempts to kill him, was blamed for the death of a woman Wednesday near the thickly wooden evergreen jungle where it lives.
‘‘We have ordered a hunter to shoot and kill the 10-feet tall tuskless bull that is believed to have killed up to 14 people in the past two years,’’
http://www.gwinnettdailypost.com/index.php?s=&url_channel_id=34&url_article_id=22687&url_subchannel_id=&change_well_id=2
A special unit of the Russian secret service could have provided the polonium that killed the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, The Daily Telegraph has learned.
Sources in Russia have suggested that a secret unit called Department V could have obtained the radioactive substance that has left a trail across Europe.
Polonium 210 is only produced in a small number of state-controlled facilities and Department V, also known as Vympel, is charged with guarding Russia's nuclear installations. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml?xml=/news/2006/12/16/wrussia16.xml
A few days after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks, the CIA station chief in Rome paid a visit to the head of Italy's military intelligence agency, Adm. Gianfranco Battelli, to float a proposal: Would the Italian secret services help the CIA kidnap terrorism suspects and fly them out of the country?
The CIA man did not identify which targets he had in mind but was "expressly referring to the possibility of picking up a suspected terrorist in Italy, bringing him to an airport and sending him from there to a foreign country," Battelli, now retired, recalled in a deposition.
This initial secret contact and others that followed, disclosed in newly released documents, show the speed and breadth with which the CIA applied in post-9/11 Europe a tactic it had long reserved for the Third World — "extraordinary rendition," the extrajudicial abduction of Islamic radicals overseas for interrogation in friendly countries.
A year after the first contact, the CIA officer held another meeting with his Italian counterparts, this time sharing a list of more than 10 "dangerous people" the agency was tracking in Italy, Belgium, Austria and the Netherlands, according to a deposition from Gen. Gustavo Pignero, another high-ranking Italian military intelligence official. "It was clear that this was an aggressive search project, that their willingness to employ illicit means was clear," Pignero said, adding that the list was later destroyed and he could not recall the names.
U.S. spies drew up suspect lists with the help of European intelligence agencies and chased some of the men around the globe before putting a brake on the operations in early 2004, about a year after the invasion of Iraq, according to documents unearthed in criminal investigations, lawsuits and parliamentary inquiries.
All told, the U.S. agency took part in the seizure of at least 10 European citizens or legal immigrants, some of them from countries not cited in that list of "dangerous people" received by the Italian spies. Four renditions occurred on European soil: in Sweden, Macedonia and Italy. Six operations targeted people who were traveling abroad or who had been captured in Pakistan; European intelligence agencies provided direct assistance to the CIA in at least five of those cases, records show.
Each prisoner was then secretly handed over to intelligence services in the Middle East or Africa with histories of human rights abuses. Some remain imprisoned in those countries; others have been taken to the U.S. naval prison at Guantanamo Bay, Cuba. One man was later released after being taken from the Balkans to Afghanistan, the victim of an apparent case of mistaken identity.
In the early stages, the CIA had prepared even more ambitious plans, according to the depositions from the Italian intelligence officials, who testified last summer during a criminal investigation into a CIA-sponsored kidnapping of a radical Islamic cleric in Milan.
For example, Pignero said in his deposition that the CIA's Rome station chief had offered in 2002 to abduct a fugitive leader of the Red Brigades — a Marxist network blamed for dozens of assassinations in Italy — who had found refuge in South America. "The Americans would capture him and turn him over to us, and we in return would have to 'extradite' him to Italy without any legal proceedings," Pignero said.
In exchange, the CIA wanted help in abducting Islamic radicals living in the Italian cities of Turin, Vercelli and Naples, Pignero said. Italian intelligence officials rejected the offer, he added, because it was "contrary to international laws."
Reports of clandestine CIA operations have fueled deep public anger in Europe, where many people regard renditions as a blatant violation of national sovereignty and international law. Since last year, prosecutors have opened four separate criminal investigations into CIA activities in Europe. A dozen countries have conducted legislative inquiries into whether local spy agencies were involved.
Last month, a European Parliament committee investigating CIA operations in Europe condemned the practice of rendition "as an illegal and systematic instrument used by the United States" and called it "counterproductive in the fight against terrorism."
"I think that after the 11th of September, the CIA thought that all the ways useful to capture their enemies, the alleged terrorists, were now possible," Giovanni Claudio Fava, an Italian legislator who led the parliamentary probe, said in an interview in Brussels. "They wanted to clean Europe of all these dangerous, alleged terrorists. They didn't have faith in the quality and capacity of our own security controls and our justice system."
In the past year, U.S. officials have sought to repair the diplomatic damage. They have met repeatedly with their European counterparts to defuse opposition to renditions, the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo and the disclosure in November 2005 that the CIA had set up secret prisons for terrorism suspects in Eastern Europe.
John Bellinger, legal adviser to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, said U.S. diplomats have made some headway. But he added that ongoing political disputes have "undermined cooperation and intelligence activities."
"I'd say that many European government officials and academics acknowledge now that there is a legal murkiness that applies to international terrorism," he said in a telephone interview from Washington. "On the negative side of the ledger, we do continue to have these hysterical, inflated allegations denouncing the United States that unfortunately do fan the flames of suspicion and anti-Americanism."
The CIA declined to comment.
'He Was Too Loud'
The most detailed disclosures about the CIA's European rendition project have emerged from Milan, where Italian prosecutors have spent two years investigating the disappearance of Hassan Mustafa Osama Nasr, a militant Egyptian-born cleric known as Abu Omar.
When Nasr vanished in February 2003, police and prosecutors in Milan thought at first that he had slipped out of the country on his own, perhaps to join resistance forces in Iraq in advance of the U.S.-led invasion. The CIA lent credence to their suspicions a few months later, when it delivered an intelligence bulletin to Rome stating that Nasr had been seen in the Balkans.
In fact, prosecutors later discovered, Nasr had been grabbed on the street in Milan as he was walking to a mosque and stuffed into a white van, which sped to Aviano Air Base, a joint U.S.-Italian military installation. From there, he was put on a plane to Ramstein Air Base in Germany, and onward to Cairo, where Nasr claims he was tortured for months with electric shocks and sexually abused.
Prosecutors in Milan have since issued arrest warrants on kidnapping charges for 25 CIA operatives and a U.S. Air Force officer, alleging that they conspired with Italian secret service agents to abduct Nasr. Although none of the Americans is likely to be extradited to Italy, prosecutors have served notice that they intend to try them in absentia and asked a judge last month to formally indict the defendants.
Senior Italian intelligence officials have also been charged in the case, including Gen. Nicolo Pollari, director of the Italian military intelligence agency known as Sismi. Pignero, his former deputy, was arrested in June, shortly after he gave his deposition to prosecutors. He died of cancer three months later, on Sept. 11.
European investigators are still examining other mysterious cases of missing or detained people. Among them are the disappearance a few weeks before Nasr's kidnapping of another Egyptian-born Islamic fundamentalist.
Gamal al-Menshawi, a physician and occasional mosque preacher who knew Nasr personally, had left his home in Graz, Austria, bound for the Islamic holy city of Mecca, Saudi Arabia. His wife was waiting for him there, but he never arrived, according to Egyptian exiles in Austria and Italy who know him.
Menshawi's trail vanished after he arrived in Amman, Jordan, for a flight connection. He later surfaced in Egypt. European Parliament investigators have concluded he was detained there for two years without facing charges.
He was released in 2005 and is living in Alexandria, Egypt, according to Austrian journalists. He has severed contact with friends and colleagues in Europe, who strongly suspect he was subjected to a rendition, although they lack proof or direct evidence of U.S. involvement.
Arman Ahmed al-Hissini, imam of the Viale Jenner mosque in Milan and an acquaintance of Menshawi and Nasr, said both have been silenced by the Egyptian security services.
"The Arab secret services, they give names to the CIA of people who they want, people who are on the outside, such as Europe," said Hissini, an Egyptian native known locally as Abu Imad. "They give the names to the CIA, because the CIA can go to work in these countries."
There is also little doubt about Menshawi's fate among those who knew him in Austria's Islamic community.
"I see the American government as being primarily responsible," said Mohamed Mahmoud, chairman of a group called Islamic Group of Austria. "This is not the first time someone has disappeared."
"The Americans look around in Europe for who is being loud, who is speaking out, and then those people are kidnapped," he added. "He was very vocal; he was too loud for them. He talked openly about Egypt's government, about the U.S. government, about the Islamic community in Austria."
'They Needed Information'
About the same time, another Islamic militant from Austria disappeared during a stopover at the Amman airport.
Masaad Omer Behari, a Sudanese citizen who had lived in Austria for more than a decade, has said he was arrested by Jordanian secret service agents on Jan. 12, 2003, as he was traveling home to Vienna from a trip to Sudan.
Behari told European Parliament investigators in October that he was held for three months in a Jordanian prison, where he was interrogated about Islamic militants in Austria and elsewhere in Europe. "On the first day I was in prison, they told me they did not think I was a terrorist, but that they needed information about the Islamic scene in Vienna," he said.
Documents obtained by the investigators show that Behari had been under surveillance by Austria's domestic intelligence service since 1998, when he was interrogated about an alleged plot to blow up the U.S. Embassy in Vienna. Behari said he was innocent and never faced charges, but was pressured by Austrian secret service agents to leave the country after the Sept. 11 hijackings.
"I have experienced hard times because I did not cooperate with the security authorities in Europe and with the Americans," Behari said, according to a transcript of his testimony. The Austrians "threatened me that they would cause me problems. I thought it was only 'blah-blah,' but it was the truth."
Austrian authorities said they have not opened official inquiries into the disappearances of Menshawi or Behari, in part because neither is an Austrian citizen.
"Since the alleged abductions did not take place on Austrian soil, in an Austrian airplane or on an Austrian ship, we see no need for action," said Rudolf Gollia, spokesman for the Austrian Interior Ministry.
-- Special correspondent Shannon Smiley in Berlin contributed to this report.
http://www.dailytidings.com/2006/1216/stories/1216_cia.php Posted at 05:05 pm by Psychomike
Wednesday, December 13, 2006
Saudi's To Back Iraq Sunni!
RULES OF THE TALIBAN, ROCKETS HIT ISRAEL, PALESTINIANS CAN SUE ISRAEL, SOMALIA GIVES ETHIOPIA ONE WEEK TO LEAVE- OR FACE FULL WAR, GULF CALLS FOR SANCTIONS AGAINST ISRAEL, JAPAN WANTS N. KOREA TO EXPLAIN KIDNAP PROGRAM
An extraordinary little document is making the rounds among the Taliban of Afghanistan. As first reported in NEWSWEEK by Ron Moreau and Sami Yousafzai on Dec. 3, the stapled pamphlet called simply “Layeha,” or “Rule Book,” is only nine pages long. But it speaks volumes about the Taliban: their strategy, their following, their potential virtues and their persistent vices, and the full text is well worth reading.
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/16169421/site/newsweek/ See the last post today for an amazing article on religion and politics merger!
President Hamid Karzai directly accused Pakistan's government today of supporting the Taliban insurgency in his country, hours after a suicide attacker exploded himself in an Afghan governor's compound, killing eight.
Taliban militants have increasingly targeted government officials. Since September, they have killed one provincial governor, narrowly missed another, and killed several district-level police, intelligence and administrative chiefs.
"The problem is not Taliban. We don't see it that way. The problem is with Pakistan," Karzai told foreign journalists during a trip to Kandahar, the Taliban's former stronghold." http://www.baltimoresun.com/news/nationworld/bal-afghanistan1212,0,5315569.story?coll=bal-nationworld-headlines
Fiji's ousted prime minister said Tuesday the South Pacific country was sliding toward "the worst kind of dictatorship," and offered to hold talks with the military regime to find a way to restore democracy as quickly as possible. http://www.usatoday.com/news/world/2006-12-12-fiji-coup_x.htm
The head of the Gulf Cooperation Council Tuesday demanded the application of the UN charter’s Chapter Seven on Israel after its premier implied the Jewish state has nuclear weapons. “We call for application against Israel of Chapter VII, that is to say, the imposition of sanctions,” Secretary General Abderrahman al-Attiya said in Kuwait, on the sidelines of a conference on cooperation between the GCC and Nato.
Attiya called on the United States not to apply a policy of “double standards” and to “work for the application (against Israel) of the resolutions of international legitimacy and of Chapter VII.” Chapter VII deals with action the UN Security Council might take regarding threats to the peace, breaches of the peace and acts of aggression.
As a first step, it says the council may call for member states to impose sanctions, including complete or partial interruption of economic relations and the severance of diplomatic relations. If those measures are deemed to have failed, military action can be called for. Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert sparked an uproar after an apparent slip of the tongue in which he for the first time listed Israel as a nuclear power.
http://www.thenews.com.pk/daily_detail.asp?id=35389
Spanish police arrested 11 suspected Islamic radicals Tuesday in the Spanish enclave of Ceuta on Morocco's north coast, an Interior Ministry spokesman told CNN.
The operation struck at "international terrorism" and the 11 suspects are linked to a cell of the terrorist Salafist Group for Call and Combat, Spain's Interior Ministry said in a statement.
The detainees are suspected of being in the initial phase of plotting a terrorist attack, CNN partner station CNN+ reported, citing Interior Ministry sources.
The suspects were involved in recruiting and indoctrination for Islamic terrorist activities to carry out attacks and had connections to terrorists in Britain and Morocco, the Interior Ministry statement said. http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/europe/12/12/spain.arrests/index.html?section=cnn_latest
Saudi Arabia has told the Bush administration that it might provide financial backing to Iraqi Sunnis in any war against Iraq's Shiites if the United States pulls its troops out of Iraq, according to American and Arab diplomats.
King Abdullah of Saudi Arabia conveyed that message to Vice President Dick Cheney two weeks ago during Cheney's whirlwind visit to Riyadh, the officials said. During the visit, King Abdullah also expressed strong opposition to diplomatic talks between the United States and Iran, and pushed for Washington to encourage the resumption of peace talks between Israel and the Palestinians, senior Bush administration officials said.
The Saudi warning reflects fears among America's Sunni Arab allies about Iran's rising influence in Iraq, coupled with Tehran's nuclear ambitions. King Abdullah II of Jordan has also expressed concern about rising Shiite influence, and about the prospect that the Shiite-dominated government would use Iraqi troops against the Sunni population.
A senior Bush administration official said Tuesday that part of the administration's review of Iraq policy involved the question of how to harness a coalition of moderate Iraqi Sunnis with centrist Shiites to back the Iraqi government led by Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki.
The Saudis have argued strenuously against an American pullout of Iraq, citing fears that Iraq's minority Sunni population would be massacred. Those fears, United States officials said, have become more pronounced as a growing chorus in Washington has advocated a draw-down of American troops in Iraq, coupled with diplomatic outreach to Iran, which is largely Shiite. http://www.iht.com/articles/2006/12/13/africa/web.1213saudi.php
Palestinian militants had fired three rockets into southern Israel on Tuesday afternoon, violating a fragile ceasefire, Israeli and Palestinian sources said.
Israeli sources said the rockets were fired from northern Gaza Strip which has been the scene of a large-scale Israeli offensive in November.
Today's home-made rocket attack was the fifth breach by the Palestinians of the ceasefire, they added.
There were no reports about casualties.
Saraya al-Quds, the military wing of the Islamic Jihad (Holy War) claimed responsibility for the attacks which targeted Sderot city in Israel.
In a statement faxed to the press, the brigades said that the attack came in response to the ongoing Israeli violations of the ceasefire and the aggression against the Palestinian people.
The statement noted that Israeli troops had arrested a senior Islamic Jihad militant in the West Bank city of Tulkarem.
The ceasefire, took effect in the beginning of this month, has prevented Israel from expanding Gaza military operations. But Israel insists that the ceasefire was only applied to the Gaza Strip despite the Palestinians' request for an extension of calm to the West Bank.
Source: Xinhua http://english.peopledaily.com.cn/200612/13/eng20061213_331789.html
The Israeli supreme court has overturned part of a 17-month-old blanket ban by the government on Palestinians seeking compensation for harm inflicted by the Israel Defence Forces.
The decision reopens the way for at least some law suits in the Israeli courts by Palestinians who suffer bereavement, injury or property damage at the hands of the Israeli military in Gaza or the West Bank, by cancelling a section of an amendment approved by the Knesset in July 2005.
The ruling, one of the last to be written by the recently retired court chairman Aharon Barak, was broadly welcomed by the left, and human rights groups. Adalah, one of the rights groups which had petitioned the court, said that the ruling, while "based on technicalities", would open the way for some claims through civil courts.
But right-wing Knesset members queued up to denounce the ruling and hinted at attempts to reintroduce the legislation through the Knesset. Attorney Yossi Fuchs, a member of the right-wing "Land of Israel Legal Forum" said: "The ruling is a parting gift from Aharon Barak to Palestinian Prime Minister Ismail Haniyeh, a gift that will buy Barak a respected status in the eyes of the international legal community at the expense of the security of Israel's citizens."
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article2070194.ece
Somalia's powerful Islamist movement has given neighboring Ethiopia a one-week deadline to withdraw its troops protecting the weak government or face major attacks.
The declaration appeared to push the country even closer to a full-scale conflict that many believe could engulf the Horn of Africa and drew a swift warning from the government at its seat in Baidoa.
"We are giving a deadline to the invading forces," said Yusuf Mohamed Siad, security chief for the Supreme Islamic Council of Somalia (SICS).
"If Ethiopian forces inside our territory do not withdraw after a week, we will not hesitate to launch full-scale attacks on them," he told reporters at a news conference in the Islamist-held capital of Mogadishu.
"From today on, all Ethiopians must start leaving Somalia, if they do not they will be responsible for the bloodshed that will follow," Siad said.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061212/wl_afp/somaliaunrestethiopia_061212162137
Key witnesses in the Alexander Litvinenko investigation are missing, with their families claiming that they fear for their lives.
The sudden disappearance of a number of leading figures linked to the affair will make it even harder for British detectives, whose inquiry has now spread across five countries. http://www.timesonline.co.uk/newspaper/0,,172-2501273,00.html
A key witness in the radiation death of former Russian security agent Alexander Litvinenko claimed the poisoning took place earlier than is widely believed, a newspaper reported Wednesday.
Andrei Lugovoi, a security agent-turned-businessman who met with Litvinenko at a London hotel on Nov. 1, the day Litvinenko suspected he was poisoned, said in an interview with the Moskovsky Komsomolets tabloid that he and Litvinenko were poisoned on Oct. 16.
"Who told you that the contamination took place on Nov. 1? It took place much earlier, on Oct. 16," Lugovoi was quoted as saying by the paper. Lugovoi is himself undergoing radiation checks in a Moscow clinic.
Litvinenko, 43, a former Russian agent and a Kremlin critic, died Nov. 23 of poisoning from polonium-210.
Lugovoi supported his claim by saying that he and Litvinenko visited a London-based security firm where traces of polonium were later found only in mid-October, but did not go there on Nov. 1, meaning that the contamination couldn't have taken place on that day.
http://dose.canada.com/news/story.html?id=1bae0593-c91e-428a-9f3d-ab63b69819b8
Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's conference questioning the Holocaust came to an end Tuesday, but not before hearing former KKK Imperial Wizard David Duke say that gas chambers were not used to kill Jews.
"The Zionists have used the Holocaust as a weapon to deny the rights of the Palestinians and cover up the crimes of Israel," Duke told a gathering of nearly 70 "researchers" in Tehran at Ahmadinejad's invitation.
"This conference has an incredible impact on Holocaust studies all over the world," said Duke, a former state representative in Louisiana who twice ran for president.
"The Holocaust is the device used as the pillar of Zionist imperialism, Zionist aggression, Zionist terror and Zionist murder," Duke told The Associated Press.
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,236014,00.html
The United Nations' specialist on North Korean human rights is calling for Pyongyang to provide full details about the fate of Japanese abducted by North Korean agents. The appeal came as a Japanese official indicated that the number of abductees is far higher than the 17 officially recognized so far. VOA's Steve Herman reports from Tokyo.
North Korean leader Kim Jong Il admitted in 2002 that his agents had abducted 13 Japanese during the 1970's and '80s. The abductees were used to teach North Korean agents about Japanese language and culture.
Mr. Kim allowed five Japanese to return home, but said the other eight had died. Japan has so far identified 17 people as abductees, but activists maintain that the number is far higher - and the Japanese government might now be ready to agree. http://www.voanews.com/english/2006-12-13-voa12.cfm
The Islamic Courts Union has given Ethiopia a week to withdraw its troops from Somalia and says it will attack any that do not leave."Starting today, if the Ethiopians don't leave our land within seven days, we will attack them," Sheikh Yusuf Mohamed Siad, the Islamic courts defence spokesman, said in Mogadishu on Tuesday.
He was referring to the alleged thousands of troops that diplomats and other witnesses say have crossed over the border to protect the government of Abdullahi Yusuf, the Somali president, in Baidoa. http://english.aljazeera.net/NR/exeres/33C46686-5F0C-4662-94BE-9B174A7A6044.htm
Mad Prophets, Nazis, Bin Laden Rage in History of Religious War
By George Walden
Dec. 13 (Bloomberg) -- Whatever drove Michael Burleigh to begin work years ago on his history of politics and religion, his timing was inspired. ``Sacred Causes: Religion and Politics from the European Dictators to Al Qaeda'' offers us some historical and moral bearings as we flounder in the mire of Islamic terror.
The first part of this two-volume account, ``Earthly Powers,'' traced the clash of religion and politics from the Enlightenment to World War I. ``Sacred Causes'' brings the story up to the present.
Burleigh has held posts at Oxford, the London School of Economics and Cardiff University. An erudite writer, he seeds his account of religious and political entanglements with things not normally highlighted by more conventional academics.
Writing about Germany, for example, he discusses both established churches and the activities of semi-crazed prophets who were already contaminating German minds in the early 1920s. It wasn't just the country's currency that was being devalued, Burleigh suggests; it was its culture, too. The nihilism, pseudo- radicalism and sexual self-advertisement of many a creative artist helped pave the way for Hitler.
The most controversial aspect of Burleigh's latest book will be his defense of the Roman Catholic Church, and its record on the Holocaust especially. The author demonstrates in intricate detail how clerics did what they humanly could to stand up to a dictator who described Nazism as a Christian movement yet was ready to crush any priest who overstepped the line. He cites innumerable attempts to rescue Jews, including how Hungarian Catholic leaders issued them with certificates of conversion.
Soviet Onslaught
Burleigh concedes that Pope Pius XII could have been clearer and more forceful. Yet he argues that our moralizing age underestimates the stark dilemmas the church faced.
While Hitler played cat and mouse with clerics, Russian communists attacked religion with a savagery that German churches were largely spared. As well as murdering priests and believers who resisted the plundering of the Orthodox Church, atheist campaigners devised a particularly loathsome tactic: They disinterred and displayed the corpses of monks or nuns to prove they weren't immune to putrefaction.
Like Nazism, the Marxist-Leninist credo was a perversion of religion, and it's satisfying to learn that the embalmment of the bloodthirsty demigod Lenin was overseen by an ``Immortalization Commission.'' The credulous West was meanwhile debating a possible convergence between communism and Christianity.
`Sinister Cult'
Burleigh is comprehensive. In addition to Soviets and Germans, he explores Spain, France, Poland and Ireland. His honesty in describing the murkier interactions of politics and religion is so unusual that it can startle. Consider this caption on a photograph of Irish Republican Army women carrying a coffin:
``Ireland's matriarchal culture played a key role in keeping the sentimental flames of Republican nostalgia alive throughout the Troubles,'' it says. ``Funerals were one of the central features of this sinister cult.''
That, I would say, is a bald statement of fact, yet you won't hear many leftist academics agreeing. Their blood pressure will rise further when Burleigh gets to al-Qaeda and declines to join the anti-American chorus. Though Burleigh doesn't endorse President George W. Bush's entire response to 9/11, he warns Europeans against the notion that there's some easy, ``soft'' way of defeating terrorism or solving the problem of Iraq.
Cold Shower
Burleigh does more than catalog the horrifying things done both against religion and in its name. He makes you understand that the West today faces something without precedent. The current conflict isn't against pure evil; it's against pure irrationality, armed with weapons devised by Western scientific rationalism.
An extremist teacher of Osama bin Laden, Abdullah Azzam, described the drive to restore the Muslim caliphate this way: ``Jihad and the rifle alone: no negotiations, no conferences, no dialogue.'' Given the unlikelihood of dragging the world back to the 7th century, one can say al-Qaeda has no war aims but death.
A great cold shower of sense and intelligence on the central issue of our age, Burleigh's book will, I suspect, be misrepresented in all the usual quarters.
Published by HarperPress in the U.K., ``Sacred Causes'' (557 pages, 25 pounds) will be available from HarperCollins in the U.S. next year.
(George Walden is a critic for Bloomberg News and the author of ``Time to Emigrate?'' The opinions expressed are his own.)
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601088&sid=anQml736l2qE&refer=muse Posted at 06:53 am by Psychomike
Sunday, December 10, 2006
Kosovo On The Brink Of War!
CLINTON'S FOLLY: KOSOVO ON THE BRINK OF WAR!
I was talking to some college students at the local Irish pub and they were saying the usual propaganda, "Bush lied about the WMD, he had no plan for the region once the troops got there and he has no exit strategy" they proclaimed using the usual bumper sticker logic. After patiently listening I said, " I agree. Bush turning the war over to the State Department was a tragedy. Why he decided to use the Clinton foreign policy plan is beyond me".
Everyone got quiet. Real quiet.
One spoke up.
"What does Clinton have to do with this?", he asked me.
Well you see, Clinton claimed over 200,000 had been killed by the Serbs. After the war, we found out this was false. Just like the WMD!
I could tell they had never heard this before. Thank you U.S. media.
Then we had no plan what to do when we took control of Kosovo- and the Serbs actually ran out the people we claimed we were trying to protect- because we supported a terror group with ties to the Balkin mob and al Qaeda!
Dead quiet. Other folks at the bar started to listen. A girl in the group just stared at the floor.
And we are STILL in the region, which is about to explode again.
One guy looked up with a "gotcha" look on his face.
"We aren't still in the area, or it would be on the news". I explained the press in this country can only handle one war at a time, which is why you never hear about our advisers in Ethiopia leading the fighting in Somalia. I told them they should come to this website. We've been covering the war since day 1. Our media hasn't. There was no exit strategy, just a vague notion of bringing democracy to the region! Sound familiar?
I continued. "Well at least the left wasn't bamboozled! They had the ethics, morality and courage to stand up to Clinton's war and protest. Risking arrest, being spied on and- oh wait a second. I just remembered. THEY DID NOTHING.", I'm on a role at this point, "In fact they cheered the over 1000 carpet bombing missions we went on."
One guy asked me what was going to happen. I said war like we've never seen before in the region. 2007 is going to be bloody. Yep, Bush should never have followed the Clinton plan." Here is the latest news on the growing crisis, followed by the story the press does not want you to know, what really happened when Clinton launched what he called, the humanitarian war.
Carla Del Ponte, the chief U.N. war crimes prosecutor for former Yugoslavia, said Wednesday she was "surprised and disappointed" by the North Atlantic Treaty Organization's decision to invite Serbia to join a cooperation program that is a first step toward possible membership.
"The prosecutor is highly surprised because she was not consulted," Del Ponte's spokesman Anton Nikiforov told Serbia's B92 radio. "She is disappointed because it turns out that Serbia was rewarded for its noncooperation with the ( U.N. war crimes) tribunal."
http://www.paulding.net/bin/url.cgi/13492.17
Armed men in masks have been appearing in parts of Kosovo since Western powers said they will postpone a decision on the future of the breakaway Serbian province, residents said yesterday.
Kosovo's 2 million Albanians are growing increasingly impatient and some leaders in the UN-administered province have warned of unrest since Western powers said a decision on the Albanian majority demand for independence will be delayed.
Newspapers have reported a brief gunfight with police, residents said masked men have been stopping cars at night Western Kosovo and the police have confirmed at least one checkpoint was set up by men in black less than 100 km from the capital Pristina.
The men in black, who residents say claim to be part of the outlawed Albanian National Army (ANA) have appeared in the wake of last month's announcement from Western countries and Russia that they would allow an end-2006 deadline to pass. The ANA is a shadowy group labelled terrorists in 2003 by the UN mission running the breakaway Serbian province.
Police confirmed that armed men in black set up a checkpoint this week near the town of Djakovica, 80km west of the capital Pristina, but that it was not clear who they were. "We just know they are armed people wearing masks", regional spokesman Avni Gjevukaj said. Prime Minister Agim Ceku, a former guerrilla leader, said such groups were "damaging the image and security of Kosovo." http://www.thepeninsulaqatar.com/Display_news.asp?section=World_News&subsection=Rest+of+the+World&month=December2006&file=World_News2006120975112.xml
A U.N. envoy scolded the Serbian government in Belgrade for preventing Serbs from integrating into Kosovo's mainly ethnic-Albanian institutions.
Joachim Rucker, chief of the U.N. civil administration mission in Kosovo, said the biggest problem is that Belgrade obstructs Kosovo Serbs from taking part in political and economic life in the province, the Serbian news agency Beta reported Friday.
In an interview with Radio Free Europe, Rucker said he believes a majority of 100,000 Serbs living in Kosovo would wish to be included in Kosovo's democratic and multinational future.
http://www.washtimes.com/upi/20061208-081028-9864r.htm
The Serbs in Macedonia support Belgrade in its policy to retain Kosovo within Serbia, the Macedonian Makfax informs, citing the Chair of the Democratic party of the Macedonian Serbs and an MP in the Macedonian Parliament Ivan Stojilkovic, who was received by Serbia’s PM Vojislav Kostunica in Belgrade. His party press release reads that “Stojilkovic expressed Macedonian Serbs’ support for the demand of consistent policy in retaining Serbia’s territorial integrity and sovereignty.”
http://www.focus-fen.net/?id=n101180
HOW DID WE GET HERE:
Kosovo and the rise of Slobodan Milošević (1986–1990)
In Kosovo growing Albanian nationalism and separatism in response to persecution led to growing ethnic tensions between Serbs and Albanians. An increasingly poisonous atmosphere led to wild rumours being traded and otherwise trivial incidents being blown out of proportion.
It was against this tense background that sixteen prominent members of the Serbian Academy of Sciences and Arts (SANU, from its Serbian initials) began work in June 1985 on a draft document that was leaked to the public in September 1986. The SANU Memorandum, as it has become known, was hugely controversial. It focused on the political difficulties facing Serbs in Yugoslavia, pointing to Tito's deliberate hobbling of Serbia's power and the difficulties faced by Serbs outside Serbia proper.
The Memorandum[5] (PDF) paid special attention to Kosovo, arguing, in obvious error, that the province's Serbs were being subjected to "physical, political, legal and cultural genocide" in an "open and total war" that had been ongoing since the spring of 1981. It claimed that Kosovo's status in 1986 was a worse historical defeat for the Serbs than any event since liberation from the Ottomans in 1804, thus ranking it above such catastrophes as the Nazi occupation or the First World War occupation of Serbia by the Austro-Hungarians. The Memorandum's authors claimed that 200,000 Serbs had moved out of the province over the previous twenty years and warned that there would soon be none left "unless things change radically." The remedy, according to the Memorandum, was for "genuine security and unambiguous equality for all peoples living in Kosovo and Metohija [to be] established" and "objective and permanent conditions for the return of the expelled [Serbian] nation [to be] created." It concluded that "Serbia must not be passive and wait and see what the others will say, as it has done so often in the past."
NATO's bombing campaign lasted from March 24 to June 11, 1999, involving up to 1,000 aircraft operating mainly from bases in Italy and aircraft carriers stationed in the Adriatic. Tomahawk cruise missiles were also extensively used, fired from aircraft, ships and submarines. The United States was, inevitably, the dominant member of the coalition against Serbia, although all of the NATO members were involved to some degree — even Greece, despite publicly opposing the war. Over the ten weeks of the conflict, NATO aircraft flew over 38,000 combat missions. For the German Air Force (Luftwaffe) it was the first time it had participated in a conflict since World War II. In addition to airpower, one battalion from the US Army's 82nd Airborne Division was deployed to help combat missions. The battalion secured Apache Attack helicopter refueling sites and a small team forward deployed to the Albania/Kosovo border to identify targets for Allied/NATO airstrikes.
The proclaimed goal of the NATO operation was summed up by its spokesman as "Serbs out, peacekeepers in, refugees back". That is, Serbian troops would have to leave Kosovo and be replaced by international peacekeepers in order to ensure that the Albanian refugees could return to their homes. However, the summary had an unfortunate double meaning which caused NATO considerable embarrassment after the war, when over 200,000 Serbs and other non-Albanian minorities fled or were expelled from the province. It was also suggested that a small victorious war would help give NATO a new role. Propaganda terms "humanitarian bombing" and "humanitarian war" were employed by the politicians.
At the start of May, a NATO aircraft attacked an Albanian refugee convoy, believing it was a Serbian military convoy, killing around 50 people. NATO admitted its mistake 5 days later, but the Serbs accused NATO of deliberately attacking the refugees. On May 7, NATO bombs hit the Chinese Embassy in Belgrade, killing three Chinese journalists and outraging Chinese public opinion. NATO claimed they were firing at Yugoslav positions. The United States and NATO later apologized for the bombing, saying that it occurred because of an outdated map provided by the CIA. This was challenged by a joint report from The Observer (UK) and Politiken (Denmark) newspapers [18] which claimed that NATO intentionally bombed the embassy because it was being used as a relay station for Yugoslav army radio signals. The bombing strained relations between China and NATO countries and provoked angry demonstrations outside Western embassies in Beijing. According to one news source, unnamed high ranking NATO sources confirmed in 2005 that the attack was in fact deliberate: "The NATO sources told Defense & Foreign Affairs that the attack was based on intelligence that then Serbian leader Slobodan Milosevic was to have been in the Embassy at the time of the attack. The attack, then, was deliberately planned as a "decapitation" attack, intended to kill Milosevic."
Many on the left of Western politics saw the NATO campaign as US aggression and imperialism, while critics on the right considered it irrelevant to their countries' national security interests. Veteran anti-war campaigners such as Noam Chomsky, Edward Said, Justin Raimondo, and Tariq Ali were prominent in opposing the campaign. However, in comparison with the anti-war protests against the 2003 invasion of Iraq, the campaign against the war in Kosovo aroused much less public support.
There was, however, criticism from all parts of the political spectrum for the way that NATO conducted the campaign. NATO officials sought to portray it as a "clean war" using precision weapons. The US Department of Defense claimed that, up to June 2, 99.6% of the 20,000 bombs and missiles used had hit their targets. However, the use of technologies such as depleted uranium ammunition and cluster bombs was highly controversial, as was the bombing of oil refineries and chemical plants, which led to accusations of "environmental warfare". The slow pace of progress during the war was also heavily criticised. Many believed that NATO should have mounted an all-out campaign from the start, rather than starting with a relatively small number of strikes and combat aircraft.
The choice of targets was highly controversial. The destruction of bridges over the Danube greatly disrupted shipping on the river for months afterwards, causing serious economic damage to countries along the length of the river. Industrial facilities were also attacked, damaging the economies of many towns. In fact, as the Serbian opposition later complained, the Serbian military was using civilian factories as weapons plants: the Sloboda vacuum cleaner factory in the town of Čačak also housed a tank repair facility, while the Zastava plant in Kragujevac made both cars and Kalashnikov rifles. In addition only state owned factories were targeted. No private or foreign owned industrial sites were bombed. Perhaps the most controversial deliberate attack of the war was that made against the headquarters of Serbian television on April 23, which killed at least fourteen people. NATO justified the attack on the grounds that the Serbian television headquarters was part of the Milošević regime's "propaganda machine".
Some critics have accused the coalition of leading a war in Kosovo under the false pretense of genocide.[3] This was, in fact, no pretense at all. President Clinton of the United States, and his administration, were accused of inflating the number of Kosovar Albanians killed by Serbians.[4] Clinton's Secretary of Defense William Cohen, giving a speech, said, "The appalling accounts of mass killing in Kosovo and the pictures of refugees fleeing Serb oppression for their lives makes it clear that this is a fight for justice over genocide."[5] On CBS' Face the Nation Cohen claimed, "We've now seen about 100,000 military-aged men missing...They may have been murdered."[6] Clinton, citing the same figure, spoke of "at least 100,000 (Kosovar Albanians) missing".[7] Later, talking about Serbian elections, Clinton said, "they're going to have to come to grips with what Mr. Milošević ordered in Kosovo...They're going to have to decide whether they support his leadership or not; whether they think it's OK that all those tens of thousands of people were killed...".[8] Clinton also claimed, in the same press conference, that "NATO stopped deliberate, systematic efforts at ethnic cleansing and genocide."[9] Clinton compared the events of Kosovo to the Holocaust. CNN reported, "Accusing Serbia of 'ethnic cleansing' in Kosovo similar to the genocide of Jews in World War II, an impassioned President Clinton sought Tuesday to rally public support for his decision to send U.S. forces into combat against Yugoslavia, a prospect that seemed increasingly likely with the breakdown of a diplomatic peace effort."[10] Clinton's State Department also claimed Serbian troops had committed genocide. The New York Times reported, "the Administration said evidence of 'genocide' by Serbian forces was growing to include 'abhorrent and criminal action' on a vast scale. The language was the State Department's strongest yet in denouncing Yugoslav President Slobodan Milošević."[11] The State Department also gave the highest estimate of dead Albanians. The New York Times reported, "On April 19, the State Department said that up to 500,000 Kosovar Albanians were missing and feared dead."[12]
The Kosovo war had a number of important consequences in terms of the military and political outcome. The status of Kosovo remains unresolved — formally it is still part of Serbia, but in practice the Serbian government has no say or practical influence over the affairs of the province, which is run as a UN protectorate under a UN-appointed governor. It remains an issue of considerable controversy with Kosovo Albanians continuing to press for independence, a demand which is now widely expected to become a reality in the immediate future.
In January 2006, Contact Group (US, UK, France, Germany, Italy, Russia) foreign ministers met in London and issued a statement outlining their vision for Kosovo's future status. Their statement explicitly reiterated that the "Contact Group Guiding Principles of November 2005 make clear that there should be: no return of Kosovo to the pre-1999 situation, no partition of Kosovo, and no union of Kosovo with any or part of another country." The statement also clearly states that "the (status) settlement needs, inter alia, to be acceptable to the people of Kosovo." [26] (PDF) and set a target of achieving a negotiated settlement in the course of 2006.
Milošević survived the immediate aftermath of the war, but the effective loss of Kosovo was a major factor in provoking the popular revolt which overthrew him in 2000. He was subsequently arrested and taken to The Hague, where he died from natural causes in his cell, awaiting trial for crimes against humanity on 10 March 2006.
Despite the successful conclusion of the war, Kosovo exposed gaping weaknesses in NATO. It revealed how dependent the European members had become on the United States military — the vast majority of combat and non-combat operations were dependent on US involvement — and highlighted the lack of precision weapons in European armories. Some right-wing and military critics in the US also blamed the alliance's agreement-by-consensus arrangements for hobbling and slowing down the campaign.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kosovo_War Posted at 10:25 am by Psychomike
Sunday, December 03, 2006
Chavez Wins- Shuts Off TV!
CHAVEZ WINS- SHUTS DOWN INDEPENDENT TV CHANNELS!
CARACAS, Venezuela — Officials identifying themselves as members of a state regulatory agency forced the U.S.-based Spanish-language TV network Telemundo to halt transmission Sunday of its presidential election coverage.
"We're surprised by this," said Pablo Iacub, a member of Telemundo's eight-person team, which arrived last week. "We only want to do our work," he said by telephone.
At least six people who identified themselves as members of the National Commission of Telecommunications (CONATEL), which regulates electronic media in Venezuela, arrived Sunday afternoon at the hotel from which Telemundo had been transmitting since Friday, said Iacub.
The officials said the network needed permission to transmit and lacking such could not, he said. Iacub said he was unaware of such a requirement but that the Telemundo journalists were accredited with Venezuela's national elections council.
Iacub said the Telemundo team asked how they could obtain permission and, after an hour, were told that they would not be able to transmit.
Telephone calls to Conatel offices seeking comment on the incident went unanswered.
Telemundo Communications Group is owned by NBC Universal Inc., which is controlled by General Electric Co. It claims to reach about 93 percent of Hispanic households in the U.S. and also has viewers in Mexico.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/fn/4376202.html
Anti-U.S. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez claimed victory with a cry of "long live the revolution" as official results showed him heading for a landslide re-election win on Sunday.
Chavez won 61 percent, while Manuel Rosales, a governor of an oil-producing province who united the opposition, trailed with 38 percent after 78 percent of the vote had been counted, the National Electoral Council said.
If the trend continues, Chavez, 52, will have a strong mandate in his next six-year term to press his self-styled socialist revolution and forge an anti-U.S. front in Latin America to counter what he calls the superpower's "imperialism." http://snipurl.com/13zse
-- Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez backed the possibility of holding a national referendum, if he's re-elected, on whether to shut down private television stations that he has accused of subversive activities.
Chavez's comments late Thursday came amid rising tensions between the government and the country's largely opposition-aligned private media ahead of Sunday's vote.
Chavez was asked in a televised interview if he would consider asking the nation whether the government should block certain channels from renewing their broadcast licenses next year. (Watch Chavez land a nod as Time magazine's Person of the Year  )
"That is perfectly possible," Chavez said. "It's perfectly possible that the country gives its opinion, including for how long."
http://www.cnn.com/2006/WORLD/americas/12/01/chavez.venezuela.election.ap/index.html Posted at 09:06 pm by Psychomike
Rumsfeld Rejuvenates Dems!
One thing that resulted from this New York Times article was a change in tone from the now emboldened Democrats- even if it is from Rumsfeld!
Rumsfeld Memo on Iraq Proposed 'Major' Change
WASHINGTON, Dec. 2 — Two days before he resigned as defense secretary, Donald H. Rumsfeld submitted a classified memo to the White House that acknowledged that the Bush administration's strategy in Iraq was not working and called for a major course correction.
"In my view it is time for a major adjustment," wrote Mr. Rumsfeld, who has been a symbol of a dogged stay-the-course policy. "Clearly, what U.S. forces are currently doing in Iraq is not working well enough or fast enough."
Nor did Mr. Rumsfeld seem confident that the administration would readily develop an effective alternative. To limit the political fallout from shifting course, he suggested the administration consider a campaign to lower public expectations.
"Announce that whatever new approach the U.S. decides on, the U.S. is doing so on a trial basis," he wrote. "This will give us the ability to readjust and move to another course, if necessary, and therefore not 'lose.' "
"Recast the U.S. military mission and the U.S. goals (how we talk about them) — go minimalist," he added. The memo suggests frustration with the pace of turning over responsibility to the Iraqi authorities; in fact, the memo calls for examination of ideas that roughly parallel troop withdrawal proposals presented by some of the White House's sharpest Democratic critics. ( Text of the Memo)
One option Mr. Rumsfeld offered calls for modest troop withdrawals "so Iraqis know they have to pull up their socks, step up and take responsibility for their country."
Another option calls for redeploying American troops from "vulnerable positions" in Baghdad and other cities to safer areas in Iraq or Kuwait, where they would act as a "quick reaction force." That idea is similar to a plan suggested by Representative John P. Murtha, a Pennsylvania Democrat, a plan that the White House has soundly rebuffed.
Still another option calls for consolidating the number of American bases in Iraq to 5 from 55 by July 2007, a considerable shrinking of the American footprint. At the same time, Mr. Rumsfeld all but dismisses the idea of setting a firm date for removing forces from Iraq, listing it as one of the less palatable ideas.
One of the more provocative options would punish provinces that failed to cooperate with the Americans by withdrawing economic assistance and security. "Stop rewarding bad behavior, as was done in Falluja when they pushed in reconstruction funds, and start rewarding good behavior," the option reads. "No more reconstruction assistance in areas where there is violence."
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/12/03/world/middleeast/03military.html?ei=5090&en=d370be7c39600e08&ex=1322802000&partner=rssuserland&emc=rss&pagewanted=print Posted at 10:32 am by Psychomike
Friday, December 01, 2006
All Hell Breaks Out: Kosovo, Ethiopia!
CLINTON'S FOLLY: Kosovo Albanians attack UN; police fire teargas
U.N. police in Kosovo fired teargas on Tuesday to disperse ethnic Albanians who smashed the windows of parliament and stoned U.N. headquarters, angry at a delay to their demand for independence from Serbia.
Thousands of protesters converged on the main symbols of authority in the capital, Pristina, throwing red paint on the buildings of the U.N. mission and Kosovo's interim government.
They dispersed after U.N. police fired teargas from inside the U.N. compound, a fortified square on the site of a former Serb military headquarters.
It was the first sign of a violent backlash since Western powers and Russia this month decided to delay a U.N. decision on the Albanian majority's demand for independence until next year. http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L28197557.htm Hey, someone ask Clinton what the exit strategy was......the sad thing is because liberal don't understand military strategy, they don't know that all Bush has done by taking the running of the war away from Rumsfeld and turning it over to the State Department, we are now following the Clinton doctrine! They will tell you the Serbian leaders were bad men, but wasn't Saddam too?
al-Qaida Said to Be Operating in Somalia
Al-Qaida militants are operating with "great comfort" in Somalia, providing training and assistance to a radical military element loyal to the Islamic group that controls most of southern Somalia, a senior State Department official said Wednesday. http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/n/a/2006/11/29/national/w142348S51.DTL
U.S. CALLS FOR U.N. TO SOMALIA!
U.S. officials are expected to submit a resolution to the United Nations this week calling for the deployment of international peacekeepers to war-torn Somalia, a move that has divided experts on its effectiveness in creating peace and stability in the country and greater region.
http://news.monstersandcritics.com/africa/article_1228031.php/U.S._wants_Somalia_peacekeepers
Ethiopia authorizes action against Somali Islamists
Ethiopia's parliament has authorized "any legal action" against "the clear and present danger" posed by powerful Islamists in neighboring Somalia, ratcheting up fears for war.
Lawmakers adopted a resolution Thursday that calls the Islamists, now on the brink of war with the weak Somali government, a "clear and present danger" to Ethiopia, which is supporting Somalia's transitional administration.
The vote came just hours after the Islamists claimed a new attack on Ethiopian troops outside the seat of the government and a day after the Islamists accused Ethiopia of shelling a Muslim-held town near the border.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/afp/20061130/ts_afp/somaliaunrestethiopia_061130105022
An Ethiopian military convoy in Somalia has been ambushed by fighters loyal to the powerful Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), witnesses said on Thursday.
It happened on Tuesday 35km south-west of Baidoa, seat of the weak interim government, who deny it took place.
Eyewitness said a truck was blown up and there was an exchange of fire. The UIC claim about 20 Ethiopians died.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6159059.stm
A car bomb has exploded in Baidoa, where Somalia's fragile interim government is based, leaving at least six people dead.
A policeman told the BBC that a female suicide bomber wearing a veil blew herself up at a check-point.
The explosion also destroyed two other cars. "There were flames everywhere," an eye-witness said.
President Abdullahi Yusuf survived a suicide car bomb attack in Baidoa two months ago, which killed his brother.
He blamed that attack on his Islamist rivals, who denied responsibility.
There are fears of widespread conflict breaking out in Somalia between the government and the Union of Islamic Courts (UIC), which controls most of the south of the country, including the capital, Mogadishu. http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/africa/6160603.stm
Angola, the largest sub-Saharan oil producer in Africa after Nigeria, said it will apply to join OPEC next month, while the oil cartel's secretary general said Sudan also was poised to join.
OPEC Secretary General Mohammed Barkindo, speaking to Dow Jones Newswires on Thursday on the sidelines of a producers' meeting in Egypt, gave no timetable for Angola or Sudan to join the group, which has not welcomed a new member since 1975. http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15965843/ Posted at 02:52 pm by Psychomike
Rumsfeld: Threat, Menace Or.....
RUMSFELD: WAS HE A THREAT, MENACE OR VISIONARY?
Some folks have asked me to prove that Rumsfeld, the single man in the White House who wanted us to leave Iraq within 1 year of the invasion, had been bumped by the State Department long ago. Sent out as a sacrificial lamb to the left and libs, he was the only person arguing for us not staying in Iraq, and someday I believe history will beat the rhetoric. Here Juiceman provides me with ammo:
10/6/2003
Rice will manage Iraq's 'new phase'
By Judy Keen, USA TODAY
WASHINGTON — President Bush is giving his national security adviser, Condoleezza Rice, the authority to manage postwar Iraq and the rebuilding of Afghanistan.
Look at this- this is from the first entry and is dated from December 2005:
President George W. Bush on Wednesday announced that the State Department would lead all US post-conflict reconstruction, a move that supersedes the controversial decision to give that task to the Pentagon in Iraq following the 2003 invasion.
...but look at the other entries here, they're all dated from 2003 and say the same thing:
She already had authority, Bush waited 2 years to make it official.
Bush shafted Rumsfeld. Thanks Juiceman!
Rumsfeld found out he was replaced by the State Department, when he read it in a newspaper!
Liberals never understood what he was saying, and preferred to paint him as a Goebbels to Bush's Hitler. They lied. Or are fools. You don't force out the one guy who agrees with you- unless your hatred is so strong you really have no idea what is going on.
I also get asked if I really believe Rangel wanted to waste hundreds of thousands on a study of the military makeup, millions to reman draft boards, hundreds of millions to clothe, arm new troops and billions to send overseas more men. Read the next article, and weep: (By the way, Bush has made a terrible error, one of many, by saying he would send 20,000 new troops in. He should have let the Dems continue to argue for more troops so that over these two years people understood the Dems would want to escalate the crisis by throwing money and troops into the region. Now the issue is grey. I have had so many liberals write me and tell me a few hundred thousand troops more would end the civil war that I fear Bush is now re-inforcing this rubbish in people's minds. Rumsfeld wanted troops on ships to guard the area and off the ground, a smaller and sleeker military force to respond to terror, more reliance on corporations than government in National Security and if a civil war happened, at least it would keep the various factions away from us. I believe history will prove he was right.)
Rangel Adopts the Logic of Kerry's 'Joke'
Rep. Charles Rangel has adopted Senator Kerry's "botched joke" about unsuccessful young people ending up in the military — only Mr. Rangel is not joking.
"If a young fellow has an option of having a decent career, or joining the Army to fight in Iraq, you can bet your life that he would not be in Iraq," Mr. Rangel, a Democrat representing Manhattan and Queens, said on "Fox News Sunday."
"If there's anyone who believes these youngsters want to fight, as the Pentagon and some generals have said, you can just forget about it. No bright young individual wants to fight just because of a bonus and just because of educational benefits. And most all of them come from communities of very, very high unemployment," the congressman said.
Mr. Rangel was responding to a question about a study by a conservative think tank, the Heritage Foundation, which found that those enlisting in the military tend to be better educated than the general public and that military recruiting seems to be more successful in middle-class and wealthy neighborhoods than in poor ones.
"He's really, indirectly, insulting the troops," the study's author, Timothy Kane, told The New York Sun. "He doesn't want to admit the fact that thousands and tens of thousands of young men and women are willing to make these sacrifices. More and more troops are saying duty and honor are motivating them, not college money."
Mr. Kane, a former Air Force intelligence officer, said his study found that 97% of military enlistees were high school graduates, as compared with about 80% of Americans in general, and that the average reading level of military personnel is a full grade level higher than that of the general populace.
Mr. Kane acknowledged that in 2005 the Army, which was falling short of recruitment goals, began accepting more high school dropouts and more recruits with lower scores on intelligence tests. "It's not a huge surge," he said, noting that the increase amounted to a few percent at most.
Mr. Rangel is a long-standing advocate of reinstating the draft, but Mr. Kane said conscription would wreak havoc by drawing more undereducated and unintelligent people into the force. "A draft would almost certainly be a disaster," the analyst said.
Mr. Rangel has said that his draft proposal has little chance of becoming law. However, he rejected the Heritage findings and insisted yesterday that a formal Congressional examination of the military's demographics will prove him right.
"Once we are able to get hearings on this, everyone will see what they already know, and that is that those who have the least opportunities at this age find themselves in the military, as I did when I was 18 years old," the congressman said. http://www.nysun.com/pf.php?id=44138
People have asked why I am so concerned about the spy poisining case - I have a feeling we should start checking Russian planes that arrive here as the UK is. My fear? They have been using the planes to transport and sell nuclear materials! FOR YEARS NOW.
Posted at 04:55 am by Psychomike
Thursday, November 30, 2006
33,000 Under Radiation Alert!
Thousands of British Airways passengers were caught in a radiation scare last night after traces of a substance, thought to be the same that killed the former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko, were found on two planes.
Around 33,000 passengers are believed to have flown on 221 flights across Europe since the traces were found earlier in the month.
The Government grounded one plane on Tuesday and another yesterday. A third is in Moscow awaiting tests.
Police are focusing on flights from Moscow to Heathrow Airport on Oct 25 and 31 and in the other direction on Oct 28 and Nov 3. Since then, the planes, all Boeing 767s, have flown to Barcelona, Dusseldorf, Athens, Larnaka, Madrid, Vienna, Istanbul, Frankfurt and Stockholm.
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/main.jhtml;jsessionid=WV43222W314OLQFIQMFCFGGAVCBQYIV0?xml=/news/2006/11/30/npoison30.xml Posted at 02:17 am by Psychomike
Wednesday, November 29, 2006
Iraq Panel Calls For "Fallback"
GERRY ADAMS THREATENED, UN TROOPS ENGAGING IN CHILD PROSTITUTION, CHAVEZ PREPARES FOR CIVIL WAR!
Passengers have been asked to come forward for possible testing, after radiation traces were found on two BA planes linked to the death of former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko.
The BA 767 planes operate on routes within Europe and up to 800 passengers on four flights may have been affected.
A statement from the airline said: "BA has been advised that three of its Boeing 767 short haul aircraft have been identified by the UK Government as part of the investigation into the death of Alexander Litvinenko.
"The airline was contacted last night by the Government. It has taken the three B767s out of service to enable forensic examination to be carried out.
"The initial results of the forensic tests, which was confirmed late this afternoon, has shown very low traces of a radioactive substance onboard two of the three aircraft.
"British Airways has been advised that this investigation is confined solely to these three B767 aircraft, which will remain out of service until further notice.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=419497&in_page_id=1770&ct=5
Iraq Panel to Recommend Pullback of Combat Troops
WASHINGTON, Nov. 29 — The bipartisan Iraq Study Group reached a consensus on Wednesday on a final report that will call for a gradual pullback of the 15 American combat brigades now in Iraq but stop short of setting a firm timetable for their withdrawal, according to people familiar with the panel’s deliberations.
The report, unanimously approved by the 10-member panel, led by James A. Baker III and Lee H. Hamilton, is to be delivered to President Bush next week. It is a compromise between distinct paths that the group has debated since March, avoiding a specific timetable, which has been opposed by Mr. Bush, but making it clear that the American troop commitment should not be open-ended. The recommendations of the group, formed at the request of members of Congress, are nonbinding.
A person who participated in the commission’s debate said that unless the government of Prime Minister Nuri Kamal al-Maliki believed that Mr. Bush was under pressure to pull back troops in the near future, “there will be zero sense of urgency to reach the political settlement that needs to be reached.”
The report recommends that Mr. Bush make it clear that he intends to start the withdrawal relatively soon, and people familiar with the debate over the final language said the implicit message was that the process should begin sometime next year.
http://www.nytimes.com/2006/11/30/world/middleeast/30policy.html?ei=5094&en=1b8f934bb873891b&hp=&ex=1164862800&partner=homepage&pagewanted=print
Thousands of armed Venezuelans are preparing to ensure that President Hugo Chavez is re-elected on Sunday and will "shed their blood" for the cause if necessary.
Paranoid about the prospect of a coup or losing the presidential election fair and square, the firebrand leader of anti-American sentiment in Latin America has spent his eight years in office filling government jobs with acting and retired army officers.
With Mr Chavez hoping to win another six years in power, the opposition fears that even if it wins at the ballot box it will never be able to take power.
After purging the armed forces of elements opposed to his populist Left-wing rule, Mr Chavez has ensured that a new reserve force is outside the normal military command chain, answering only to him.
The former paratrooper colonel, who led a failed coup in 1992, has military men in most ministries, in politics, and even on the Supreme Court.
"What we have now is a form of Praetorian government," said Domingo Irwin, a defence analyst at the Pedagogical University in Caracas, the Venezuelan capital.
One proud member of Venezuela's new military reserve is Edgar Fajardo. He does not know much about handling guns, but he does know who he will vote for in the election: Hugo Chavez.
"I was unemployed until 'El Comandante' [Mr Chavez] gave me this chance to serve my country," said Mr Fajardo 54, who irons his uniform every morning before acting as a sentry at government installations in the capital's poor neighbourhood of Catia.
He said: "Now I am ready to shed my blood for him and the Bolivarian Revolution."
That socio-economic "revolution", as Mr Chavez likes to call it, is inspired by his hero Simón Bolívar, the 19th century Venezuelan and Latin American revolutionary leader. For it to continue, Mr Chavez, 52, will have to defeat the veteran politician Manuel Rosales to secure another term.
By distributing his oil-rich country's wealth, Mr Chavez has made many friends who should help him to achieve his goal. He has doubled the number of state sector jobs to more than two million in a population of 26 million.
The United States and alarmed neighbours have accused Mr Chavez of using his oil windfall to spark an arms race in the region.
He has acquired 100,000 Russian Kalashnikov rifles, SU30 fighter jets and more than 50 helicopters.
But it is more about political control than national defence.
For Alberto Garrido, a leading political analyst in Caracas, the president is building up and arming his support base, should he lose elections or be removed from power by other means.
"He believes in the revolutionary principle of a people in arms, and he believes that he can never be beaten should his people be armed," said Mr Garrido.
Disembowelled, then torn apart: The price of daring to teach girls
The gunmen came at night to drag Mohammed Halim away from his home, in front of his crying children and his wife begging for mercy.
The 46-year-old schoolteacher tried to reassure his family that he would return safely. But his life was over, he was part-disembowelled and then torn apart with his arms and legs tied to motorbikes, the remains put on display as a warning to others against defying Taliban orders to stop educating girls.
Mr Halim was one of four teachers killed in rapid succession by the Islamists at Ghazni, a strategic point on the routes from Kabul to the south and east which has become the scene of fierce clashes between the Taliban and US and Afghan forces.
Sinn Fein President Gerry Adams has revealed he was warned by police of another threat to his life.
The party said members would "take precautions to minimise risks" but would continue to do the work they "were elected to do".
Earlier this month, Mr Adams said dissident republicans were behind threats to him and other party members.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/6195510.stm
UN Troops Face Child Abuse, Prostitution Charges
(RTTNews) - An investigation by a leading news organization has revealed that children have been subjected to rape and prostitution for food or money by United Nations troops in Haiti and Liberia. Girls have told of regular encounters with soldiers where sex is demanded in return for food or money, a BBC investigation has found.
The UN has faced several scandals involving its troops in recent years, including a DR Congo pedophile ring and prostitute trafficking in Kosovo.
Meanwhile the assistant secretary-general for peacekeeping operations acknowledges that sexual abuse is widespread.
"We've had a problem probably since the inception of peacekeeping - problems of this kind of exploitation of vulnerable populations," Jane Holl Lute told the BBC.
"My operating presumption is that this is either a problem or a potential problem in every single one of our missions." (RTTNews)
Posted at 11:15 pm by Psychomike
Litvinenko Smuggled Nuclear Materials!
Alexander Litvinenko, the poisoned former Russian agent, told the Italian academic he met on the day he fell ill that he had organised the smuggling of nuclear material out of Russia for his security service employers.
Mario Scaramella, who flew into London yesterday to be interviewed by Scotland Yard officers investigating Mr Litvinenko's death, said Mr Litvinenko told him about the operation for the FSB security service, the successor to the KGB.
Police said that Mr Scaramella, who met Mr Litvinenko at a sushi bar in London on 1 November to discuss a death threat aimed at both of them, was a potential witness. He was being interviewed at a "secure location" in London but was not in custody.
In an interview with The Independent shortly after the poisoning became public, Mr Scaramella said that Mr Litvinenko, a friend and professional contact since 2001, told him he had masterminded the smuggling of radioactive material to Zurich in 2000. There have long been concerns that turmoil in Russia and other former Soviet states after the fall of Communism created an international black market in radioactive substances.
The operation would have been one of the last carried out by Mr Litvinenko while still an FSB officer, in a unit tackling organised crime and smuggling. He fled Russia for London that year after the FSB began investigating him for corruption - charges which he claimed were invented as revenge for his decision to expose an FSB plot to assassinate the Russian oligarch Boris Berezovsky.
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/crime/article2023856.ece
An Italian academic who met former Russian spy Alexander Litvinenko the day he became ill from radiation poisoning is under police protection in London and undergoing medical tests, a legal source said on Tuesday.
Mario Scaramella, who has advised an Italian parliamentary commission on Soviet-era
espionage, is being checked to find out if he too has been contaminated. Litvinenko
died on Thursday.
"He went to London and is under British protection. He is undergoing medical tests to
determine his possible contamination," said the Rome-based source, who asked
Posted at 12:44 pm by Psychomike
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