http://www.theaustralian.news.com.au/common/story_page/0%2C5744%2C16898139%255E29277%2C00.html
The Australian, 12 October 2005, reported:
INDONESIAN police or military officers may have played a role in the 2002 Bali bombing, the country's former president, Abdurrahman Wahid has said.
In an interview with SBS's Dateline program, aired 12 October 2005, Mr Wahid says he has grave concerns about links between Indonesian authorities and terrorist groups.
While he believed terrorists were involved in planting one of the Kuta night club bombs, the second, which destroyed Bali's Sari Club, had been organised by authorities.
Asked who he thought planted the second bomb, Mr Wahid said: "Maybe the police ... or the armed forces."
"The orders to do this or that came from within our armed forces, not from the fundamentalist people," he says.
The program also claims a key figure behind the formation of terror group Jemaah Islamiah was an Indonesian spy.
Former terrorist Umar Abduh, who is now a researcher and writer, told Dateline Indonesian authorities had a hand in many terror groups.
"There is not a single Islamic group either in the movement or the political groups that is not controlled by (Indonesian) intelligence," he said.
Abduh has written a book on Teungku Fauzi Hasbi, a key figure in Jemaah Islamiah (JI) who had close contact with JI operations chief Hambali and lived next door to Muslim cleric Abu Bakar Bashir.
He says Hasbi was a secret agent for Indonesia's military intelligence while at the same time a key player in creating JI.
Documents cited by SBS showed the Indonesian chief of military intelligence in 1990 authorised Hasbi to undertake a "special job".
A 1995 internal memo from the military intelligence headquarters in Jakarta included a request to use "Brother Fauzi Hasbi" to spy on Acehnese separatists in Indonesia, Malaysia and Sweden.
And a 2002 document assigned Hasbi the job of special agent for BIN, the Indonesian national intelligence agency.
Security analyst John Mempi told SBS that Hasbi, who was also known as Abu Jihad, had played a key role in JI in its early years.
"The first Jemaah Islamiah congress in Bogor was facilitated by Abu Jihad, after Abu Bakar Bashir returned from Malaysia," Mr Mempi said.
"We can see that Abu Jihad played an important role. He was later found to be an intelligence agent. So an intelligence agent has been facilitating the radical Islamic movement."
Hasbi was disembowelled in a mysterious murder in 2003 after he was exposed as a military agent and his son Lamkaruna Putra died in a plane crash last month.
Another convicted terrorist, Timsar Zubil, who set off three bombs in Sumatra in 1978, told the program intelligence agents had given his group a provocative name – Komando Jihad – and encouraged members to commit illegal acts.
"We may have deliberately been allowed to grow," he said.
Abduh also told the program his terrorist organisation, the Imron Movement, was incited to a range of violent action in the 1980s when the Indonesian military told the group that the assassination of several Muslim clerics was imminent.
Another terrorism expert, George Aditjondro, said a bombing in May this year that killed 23 people in the Christian village of Tentena, in central Sulawesi, had been organised by senior military and police officers.
"This is a strategy of depopulating an area and when an area has been depopulated – both becoming refugees or becoming paramilitary fighters – then that is the time when they can invest their money in major resource exploitation there," he said.
THE BALI BOMB AND THE MILITARY
Christian gangsters, the American-trained military and terror
MORE BOMBS IN BALI
Links between 'Moslem militants' and the security services.
Display of body parts
KOPASSUS terror in Indonesia
TERROR IN INDONESIA : THE CIA CONNECTION
Bombs Philippines Indonesia
~~
Tuesday, October 18, 2005
In 12 provinces 99% vote in favour of Iraq's new constitution? Vote fraud?
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/10/17/international/middleeast/17cnd-ballot.html?emc=eta1
The New York Times, 17 October 2005, reported that Iraqi election officials were investigating what they described as "unusually high" vote totals in 12 provinces, where as many 99 percent of the voters were reported to have cast ballots in favor of Iraq's new constitution.
In a statement released this evening, the Independent Election Commission of Iraq said the results of the Oct. 15 referendum would have to be delayed by "a few days," because the apparently high totals in favor of the constitution required that election workers "recheck, compare and audit" the results.
The Sunnis, who widely opposed the new constitution, fear the new charter will pave the way for a breakup of Iraq and deprive them of oil resources in the north and the south of the country. The constitution will fail if two-thirds of voters in at least three provinces block it; Sunnis dominate 4 of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Members of the Iraqi election commission declined to speak about the announcement of the investigation. But an official with knowledge of the ballot counting said that the 12 provinces where the "yes" votes exceeded 90 percent all had populations that were either majority Shiite or Kurdish. Leaders from those communities strongly endorsed the proposed constitution. More than one of those provinces, the official said, reported that 99 percent of the ballots counted had been cast in favor of the constitution.
None of the provinces cited for a closer look had Sunni majorities.
"When you find consistently very, very high numbers, then that is cause for further checking," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the information. "Anything over 90 percent either way usually leads to further investigation."
~
The New York Times, 17 October 2005, reported that Iraqi election officials were investigating what they described as "unusually high" vote totals in 12 provinces, where as many 99 percent of the voters were reported to have cast ballots in favor of Iraq's new constitution.
In a statement released this evening, the Independent Election Commission of Iraq said the results of the Oct. 15 referendum would have to be delayed by "a few days," because the apparently high totals in favor of the constitution required that election workers "recheck, compare and audit" the results.
The Sunnis, who widely opposed the new constitution, fear the new charter will pave the way for a breakup of Iraq and deprive them of oil resources in the north and the south of the country. The constitution will fail if two-thirds of voters in at least three provinces block it; Sunnis dominate 4 of Iraq's 18 provinces.
Members of the Iraqi election commission declined to speak about the announcement of the investigation. But an official with knowledge of the ballot counting said that the 12 provinces where the "yes" votes exceeded 90 percent all had populations that were either majority Shiite or Kurdish. Leaders from those communities strongly endorsed the proposed constitution. More than one of those provinces, the official said, reported that 99 percent of the ballots counted had been cast in favor of the constitution.
None of the provinces cited for a closer look had Sunni majorities.
"When you find consistently very, very high numbers, then that is cause for further checking," said the official, who spoke on the condition of anonymity, citing the sensitivity of the information. "Anything over 90 percent either way usually leads to further investigation."
~
The carve-up of the Middle East; the unleashing of ethnic and sectarian tensions; Syria in danger.
http://www.guardian.co.uk/Iraq/Story/0,2763,1594802,00.html
David Hirst, at The Guardian, 18 October 2005, predicts that the carve-up of Iraq is likely to 'unleash an ethnic and sectarian crisis across the region.'
Hirst makes the following points:
1. The deals done after World War I led to there being Kurds in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.
The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement was the secret Anglo-French deal that shaped the postwar settlement. It prevented the emergence of pan-Arab nationalism.
That nationalism was esentially Sunni.
Sykes-Picot 'drew arbitrary, colonial-style frontiers across pre-existing ethnic, sectarian, tribal or commercial links'.
2. Today, the Neocons favour "creative chaos" and "regime change".
The Arab world will be kept divided and weak.
Acording to Hirst: 'The adoption of a federal formula is seen by the Arab world not as a remedy for Iraq's inherent divisiveness, but, in conditions of rising intercommunal tensions and violence, as a stimulus to it.'
Prince Saud al-Faisal has said that if there is civil war in Iraq, then Iraq will be dismembered.
Hirst writes that Syria is in danger:
'Syrian Kurds now sense... weakness in their own, deeply troubled Ba'athist regime. If it collapses amid generalised chaos, many will push for secession and amalgamation with their brethren in north Iraq...
In Syria, 'a small minority, the Alawites, has in effect run the country for more than 40 years. It is a predominantly Sunni society, which, historically, represents an even greater anomaly than the Sunni minority rule, also in Ba'athist guise, that the majority Shias and Kurds dispensed with in Iraq. A Sunni majority restoration will become unstoppable if, with the eventual break-up of Iraq, its disempowered Sunnis turn to Syria, of which, but for Sykes-Picot, a great many would long have been citizens anyway.
'In the next most vulnerable region, the Gulf, historically persecuted Shia minorities (or majority in Bahrain), inspired by the triumph of their co-religionists in Iraq, will press their claims for equality with new vigour.
'But nervous Sunni regimes will be loath to cede too much, not least in Saudi Arabia where, like their terrorist alter ego in Iraq, the al-Qaida boss Abdul Musab al-Zarqawi, the more hidebound of the Wahhabi religious hierarchy still regard Shia Muslims as no better than heretics.'
David Hirst reported from the Middle East for the Guardian from 1963 to 2001
David Hirst, at The Guardian, 18 October 2005, predicts that the carve-up of Iraq is likely to 'unleash an ethnic and sectarian crisis across the region.'
Hirst makes the following points:
1. The deals done after World War I led to there being Kurds in Iran, Iraq, Turkey and Syria.
The 1916 Sykes-Picot agreement was the secret Anglo-French deal that shaped the postwar settlement. It prevented the emergence of pan-Arab nationalism.
That nationalism was esentially Sunni.
Sykes-Picot 'drew arbitrary, colonial-style frontiers across pre-existing ethnic, sectarian, tribal or commercial links'.
2. Today, the Neocons favour "creative chaos" and "regime change".
The Arab world will be kept divided and weak.
Acording to Hirst: 'The adoption of a federal formula is seen by the Arab world not as a remedy for Iraq's inherent divisiveness, but, in conditions of rising intercommunal tensions and violence, as a stimulus to it.'
Prince Saud al-Faisal has said that if there is civil war in Iraq, then Iraq will be dismembered.
Hirst writes that Syria is in danger:
'Syrian Kurds now sense... weakness in their own, deeply troubled Ba'athist regime. If it collapses amid generalised chaos, many will push for secession and amalgamation with their brethren in north Iraq...
In Syria, 'a small minority, the Alawites, has in effect run the country for more than 40 years. It is a predominantly Sunni society, which, historically, represents an even greater anomaly than the Sunni minority rule, also in Ba'athist guise, that the majority Shias and Kurds dispensed with in Iraq. A Sunni majority restoration will become unstoppable if, with the eventual break-up of Iraq, its disempowered Sunnis turn to Syria, of which, but for Sykes-Picot, a great many would long have been citizens anyway.
'In the next most vulnerable region, the Gulf, historically persecuted Shia minorities (or majority in Bahrain), inspired by the triumph of their co-religionists in Iraq, will press their claims for equality with new vigour.
'But nervous Sunni regimes will be loath to cede too much, not least in Saudi Arabia where, like their terrorist alter ego in Iraq, the al-Qaida boss Abdul Musab al-Zarqawi, the more hidebound of the Wahhabi religious hierarchy still regard Shia Muslims as no better than heretics.'
David Hirst reported from the Middle East for the Guardian from 1963 to 2001
Monday, October 17, 2005
Venezuela, Opus Dei, Bin Laden....
http://www.vheadline.com/readnews.asp?id=46388
According to VHeadline.com Reporters , 15 October 2005:
INTELLIGENCE REPORT:
US "private military contractors" are already in-country to "deal with" Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias...
Intelligence agencies are revealing that US private military contractors, active in Colombia "under various contract umbrellas, including counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency" are building up to yet another attempted coup d'etat against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
Carefully described as "private military contractors" (a.k.a. hired mercenary killers), the PMCs are known already to have conducted several incursions across the Colombia-Venezuela border to link up with rebel units of the Venezuelan military operating along the border badlands between the two countries.
Senior officials at the US Pentagon have authorized the intruder operation as part of a plan to make it appear that Chavez is militarily assisting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The US mercenaries have also established close links with right-wing Colombian paramilitaries (AUC) and their associated drug cartels to smuggle weapons into Venezuela.
Attached to the Pentagon's Joint Staff, a Colombian General is participating in a joint foreign military "interaction plan" sponsored by the US Defense Department in Washington D.C. to coordinate "force development" and "scenario simulation" invasive techniques at the behest of the US Joint Staff Command.
Intel sources also say that an Opus Dei (Roman Catholic) espionage and political assassination team operating in the United States is in the background of a case where a former Marine aide, Leandro Aragoncilla ... a US Vice Presidential staffer and FBI agent ... has been accused of espionage at the White House.
Aragoncilla was arrested recently on charges of illegally obtaining classified documents from US Vice President Dick Cheney's office and FBI computer which were passed to Philippine opposition figures linked to Opus Dei in the Philippines in preparation for a coup d'etat against that country's President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Opus Dei elements are known also to have played a major role in supporting the April 2002 coup d'etat against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias which continues a wider espionage and political black bag operation with support and logistics approved by highest levels within the Pentagon and the FBI.
A classified intelligence report leaked to this e-publication shows that the espionage ring has operating out of US Vice President Dick Cheney's office with the implicit approval from within the Bush administration.
Intel sources are also revealing more paper trails linking George H. W. Bush to the now defunct Al Taqwa ("Fear of God") bank operated on behalf of Osama Bin Laden, his family, and some of his closest business associates.
The network of Swiss-based terrorist financiers is also linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and prominent European fascist leaders. The Al Taqwa bank was headquartered in the Italian Swiss enclave Campione d'Italia and had offices in the Bahamas. It ceased operations after assets were blocked by a US Treasury Department order, its assets were frozen by the Swiss government, and its banking license was revoked by the Bahamas.
Al Taqwa subsequently changed its name to Nada Management Organization. Al Taqwa and a complex web of affiliate front companies and brass plates in Switzerland, the Bahamas, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Jersey, Isle of Man, Turkey, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, the United States (Delaware and Texas), Germany, Belgium, Albania, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Austria, Bahrain, Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Liechtenstein were reportedly involved in funding terrorist operations around the world, including the procurement of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union through Baltic intermediaries.
According to a EUROPOL diagram obtained by WMR, these companies included Iksir Holding, SA (Italy), Asat Trust (Liechtenstein), Iksir Ltd. (Bahamas), Gulf Center (Italy), NASCO (Turkey), Nasreddin International Group (Liechtenstein), Akida Bank (Bahamas), MIGA (Switzerland), and Nasreddin Foundation (Liechtenstein).
According to intelligence sources in the United States and Europe, the Al Taqwa network intersected with tranches in Geneva and the Isle of Man that involve front companies associated with George H. W. Bush and Enron: Topaz Liberty, Bluelake World, and Potomac Capital.
Iranian fraudster and neocon Pentagon contact Manucher Ghorbanifar, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and members of the Bin Laden family are reportedly linked to Geneva-based Potomac Capital ... a front company created by George H. W. Bush when he was CIA Director in 1976.
Interestingly, it was George W. Bush, who, in November 2001, cited Al Taqwa as part of Al Qaeda's money-laundering activities.
However, Bush's neocon allies at The Washington Times and World Net Daily quickly altered course and drew attention away from Al Taqwa's Saudi and Kuwaiti investors and began to erroneously link Al Taqwa to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Further criminal investigations of Al Taqwa's principals were also quickly dropped.
Potomac Capital appeared on the radar screen of Federal investigators during the Iran-Contra investigation conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Al Taqwa connection to weapons of mass destruction proliferation, Bin Laden, and George H. W. Bush and his business associates stands as another reason the George W. Bush administration leaked the CIA's Brewster Jennings & Associates counter-WMD network. The CIA counter-proliferation team was getting uncomfortably close to tying members of the Bush family and their business associates to the same financial networks that fund Osama Bin Laden and his "Al Qaeda" network.
Intel sources have also traced a possible second connection between the Swiss network connected to George H. W. Bush and other 9/11 hijackers.
The first connection concerned hijacker Fayyaz Ahmed and a US$50,000 check he received from a tranche connected to the Swiss network. The second is the listing of Ahmed Mesfer Ahmed Alghamdi as a shareholder of Al Taqwa on a Central Bank of the Bahamas document dated April 15, 2000. Ahmed Alghamdi and Hamza Alghamdi were two of the Saudi hijackers on board United Flight 175, which struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Saeed Alghamdi was one of the hijackers on board United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after being shot down by US military fighter planes (according to an NSA employee who was on duty in the National Security Operations Center on the morning of 9/11).
According to the FBI, the Alghamdi hijackers used a number of aliases. Ahmed Alghamdi used the names Ahmed Saeed Saleh Alghamdi, Ahmed Mohammed Alghamdi, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Saleh, and Juan Poncho Bennett. Hamza Alghamdi used Saleh Alghamdi Hamzah. Saeed Alghamdi used Mohsalih Alghamdi, Mokhlidmazid Almotairi, Saeedayed Alghamdi, and Saeed H. Alghamdi. Other Alghamdis wanted by the FBI for involvement with "Al Qaeda" include Nora Alghamdi, Ali A. Alghamdi, Abdulrahman Alghamdi, Othman Alghamdi, Sadda Alghamdi and Tareqsaeed Alghamdi.
Now, more information has been gleaned from knowledgeable intelligence sources about the secret UNOCAL, Enron, and Taliban negotiations over the Central Asian Gas pipeline (CentGas). The source of the $10 billion was the Saudi Royal family and the recipient was Enron's LJM1 off-the-books partnership, also known as LJM Cayman, LP. LJM1 was primarily set up to finance the CentGas pipeline deal. Convicted Enron Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Andrew J. Fastow was the managing member of the LJM1 partners. In addition to Barclays, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was also allegedly used to transfer the $10 billion to the Enron account.
Two criminal investigations in New York are getting close to exposing a major Bush family and associates' international money-laundering operation that has spanned more than a generation and has been used to illegally fund US elections since the Nixon era.
According to CIA sources, most Bush family assets are tied up in off-shore accounts that are masked from investigators through the use of pass through companies and secretive interlocking board directorships.
The investigations of the secret Bush money tranches are coming to the fore as New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer focuses in on the scandal involving Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and the inflation of the worth of American Insurance Group (AIG) through shady affiliates, including AIG reinsurer Coral Re of Barbados.
Greenberg was the CEO of AIG but was forced to step down amid the Spitzer probe. AIG was founded from Asia Life/CV Starr, a Shanghai-based international import/export and insurance firm founded in 1919 by Cornelius V. Starr, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative in Southeast Asia during World War II.
AIG's largest shareholder is Starr International Company (SICO), an off-shore corporation incorporated in Panama with headquarters in Bermuda.
Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who prosecuted President Clinton, is the nephew of Cornelius Starr.
Greenberg inherited the CEO job and Chairmanship from Starr as well as the $3.5 billion Starr Foundation.
Another probe by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is focused on long-time Bush backers Sam and Charles Wyly of Texas and a Bank of America off-shore account in the Isle of Man. According to intelligence sources, that probe is getting very close to an Isle of Man multi-billion dollar account controlled by the Bushes through an off-shore contrivance known as Five Star Trust.
Charles Wyly serves on the board of the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO). Critics have charged that hundreds of millions of dollars of UTIMCO's $11 billion in public funds have been steered to investment funds run by Bush family friends and supporters. A number of UTIMCO's past and current directors are members of George W. Bush's "$100,000 Club." These include, in addition to Wyly, former UTIMCO chairman Tom Hicks, a vice chairman of Clear Channel and head of Muse, Tate & Furst, Inc.; L. Lowry Mays, the chairman of Clear Channel; former Texas Representative and current lobbyist Tom Loeffler (who received illegal laundered campaign contributions from the failed Vernon Savings & Loan); A. W. Riter, a former chairman of NCNB Bank in Tyler, Texas; A. R. "Tony" Sanchez, Chairman of Sanchez-O'Brien Oil & Gas, owner of the Texas border-based International Bank of Commerce and the failed Tesoro Savings & Loan; and Woody Hunt, Chairman of Hunt Building Company. Some of UTIMCO's investments were directed to firms with close ties to Bush "Pioneer" contributors Lee Bass (Bass Brothers Enterprises), Henry Kravis (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), and Charles Wyly (Maverick Capital Fund), as well as George W. and H.W. Bush (The Carlyle Partners II Fund, managed by The Carlyle Group).
Texas money laundering is the tip of an Bush family financial iceberg that extends below the surface to shady financial deals around the globe. However, investigators who dare venture into Texas will have their jobs cut out for them. The Bushes have been major recipients of campaign cash from senior partners the largest law firms in Texas -- Vinson & Elkins, Baker Botts (law firm of James Baker III), Andrews Kurth (the law firm of contentious US District Judge Priscilla Owen), Jenkins & Gilchrist, Haynes Boone and Bracewell & Patterson -- that have also been involved in defending those Texas companies and principals who have benefited from massive illegal financial flows.
~~
According to VHeadline.com Reporters , 15 October 2005:
INTELLIGENCE REPORT:
US "private military contractors" are already in-country to "deal with" Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias...
Intelligence agencies are revealing that US private military contractors, active in Colombia "under various contract umbrellas, including counter-narcotics and counter-insurgency" are building up to yet another attempted coup d'etat against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez.
Carefully described as "private military contractors" (a.k.a. hired mercenary killers), the PMCs are known already to have conducted several incursions across the Colombia-Venezuela border to link up with rebel units of the Venezuelan military operating along the border badlands between the two countries.
Senior officials at the US Pentagon have authorized the intruder operation as part of a plan to make it appear that Chavez is militarily assisting the Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia (FARC).
The US mercenaries have also established close links with right-wing Colombian paramilitaries (AUC) and their associated drug cartels to smuggle weapons into Venezuela.
Attached to the Pentagon's Joint Staff, a Colombian General is participating in a joint foreign military "interaction plan" sponsored by the US Defense Department in Washington D.C. to coordinate "force development" and "scenario simulation" invasive techniques at the behest of the US Joint Staff Command.
Intel sources also say that an Opus Dei (Roman Catholic) espionage and political assassination team operating in the United States is in the background of a case where a former Marine aide, Leandro Aragoncilla ... a US Vice Presidential staffer and FBI agent ... has been accused of espionage at the White House.
Aragoncilla was arrested recently on charges of illegally obtaining classified documents from US Vice President Dick Cheney's office and FBI computer which were passed to Philippine opposition figures linked to Opus Dei in the Philippines in preparation for a coup d'etat against that country's President, Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo.
Opus Dei elements are known also to have played a major role in supporting the April 2002 coup d'etat against Venezuela's President Hugo Chavez Frias which continues a wider espionage and political black bag operation with support and logistics approved by highest levels within the Pentagon and the FBI.
A classified intelligence report leaked to this e-publication shows that the espionage ring has operating out of US Vice President Dick Cheney's office with the implicit approval from within the Bush administration.
Intel sources are also revealing more paper trails linking George H. W. Bush to the now defunct Al Taqwa ("Fear of God") bank operated on behalf of Osama Bin Laden, his family, and some of his closest business associates.
The network of Swiss-based terrorist financiers is also linked to the Muslim Brotherhood and prominent European fascist leaders. The Al Taqwa bank was headquartered in the Italian Swiss enclave Campione d'Italia and had offices in the Bahamas. It ceased operations after assets were blocked by a US Treasury Department order, its assets were frozen by the Swiss government, and its banking license was revoked by the Bahamas.
Al Taqwa subsequently changed its name to Nada Management Organization. Al Taqwa and a complex web of affiliate front companies and brass plates in Switzerland, the Bahamas, Italy, Saudi Arabia, Jersey, Isle of Man, Turkey, Kuwait, Afghanistan, Bosnia, Croatia, Slovenia, the United States (Delaware and Texas), Germany, Belgium, Albania, Ethiopia, Eritrea, Somalia, Sudan, Uganda, Kenya, Tanzania, Austria, Bahrain, Singapore, Thailand, Bangladesh, Pakistan, and Liechtenstein were reportedly involved in funding terrorist operations around the world, including the procurement of nuclear material from the former Soviet Union through Baltic intermediaries.
According to a EUROPOL diagram obtained by WMR, these companies included Iksir Holding, SA (Italy), Asat Trust (Liechtenstein), Iksir Ltd. (Bahamas), Gulf Center (Italy), NASCO (Turkey), Nasreddin International Group (Liechtenstein), Akida Bank (Bahamas), MIGA (Switzerland), and Nasreddin Foundation (Liechtenstein).
According to intelligence sources in the United States and Europe, the Al Taqwa network intersected with tranches in Geneva and the Isle of Man that involve front companies associated with George H. W. Bush and Enron: Topaz Liberty, Bluelake World, and Potomac Capital.
Iranian fraudster and neocon Pentagon contact Manucher Ghorbanifar, Saudi billionaire Adnan Khashoggi and members of the Bin Laden family are reportedly linked to Geneva-based Potomac Capital ... a front company created by George H. W. Bush when he was CIA Director in 1976.
Interestingly, it was George W. Bush, who, in November 2001, cited Al Taqwa as part of Al Qaeda's money-laundering activities.
However, Bush's neocon allies at The Washington Times and World Net Daily quickly altered course and drew attention away from Al Taqwa's Saudi and Kuwaiti investors and began to erroneously link Al Taqwa to Saddam Hussein's Iraq. Further criminal investigations of Al Taqwa's principals were also quickly dropped.
Potomac Capital appeared on the radar screen of Federal investigators during the Iran-Contra investigation conducted in the late 1980s and early 1990s. The Al Taqwa connection to weapons of mass destruction proliferation, Bin Laden, and George H. W. Bush and his business associates stands as another reason the George W. Bush administration leaked the CIA's Brewster Jennings & Associates counter-WMD network. The CIA counter-proliferation team was getting uncomfortably close to tying members of the Bush family and their business associates to the same financial networks that fund Osama Bin Laden and his "Al Qaeda" network.
Intel sources have also traced a possible second connection between the Swiss network connected to George H. W. Bush and other 9/11 hijackers.
The first connection concerned hijacker Fayyaz Ahmed and a US$50,000 check he received from a tranche connected to the Swiss network. The second is the listing of Ahmed Mesfer Ahmed Alghamdi as a shareholder of Al Taqwa on a Central Bank of the Bahamas document dated April 15, 2000. Ahmed Alghamdi and Hamza Alghamdi were two of the Saudi hijackers on board United Flight 175, which struck the South Tower of the World Trade Center. Saeed Alghamdi was one of the hijackers on board United Flight 93, which crashed in Pennsylvania after being shot down by US military fighter planes (according to an NSA employee who was on duty in the National Security Operations Center on the morning of 9/11).
According to the FBI, the Alghamdi hijackers used a number of aliases. Ahmed Alghamdi used the names Ahmed Saeed Saleh Alghamdi, Ahmed Mohammed Alghamdi, Saeed Alghamdi, Ahmed Saleh, and Juan Poncho Bennett. Hamza Alghamdi used Saleh Alghamdi Hamzah. Saeed Alghamdi used Mohsalih Alghamdi, Mokhlidmazid Almotairi, Saeedayed Alghamdi, and Saeed H. Alghamdi. Other Alghamdis wanted by the FBI for involvement with "Al Qaeda" include Nora Alghamdi, Ali A. Alghamdi, Abdulrahman Alghamdi, Othman Alghamdi, Sadda Alghamdi and Tareqsaeed Alghamdi.
Now, more information has been gleaned from knowledgeable intelligence sources about the secret UNOCAL, Enron, and Taliban negotiations over the Central Asian Gas pipeline (CentGas). The source of the $10 billion was the Saudi Royal family and the recipient was Enron's LJM1 off-the-books partnership, also known as LJM Cayman, LP. LJM1 was primarily set up to finance the CentGas pipeline deal. Convicted Enron Executive Vice President and Chief Financial Officer Andrew J. Fastow was the managing member of the LJM1 partners. In addition to Barclays, the Canadian Imperial Bank of Commerce was also allegedly used to transfer the $10 billion to the Enron account.
Two criminal investigations in New York are getting close to exposing a major Bush family and associates' international money-laundering operation that has spanned more than a generation and has been used to illegally fund US elections since the Nixon era.
According to CIA sources, most Bush family assets are tied up in off-shore accounts that are masked from investigators through the use of pass through companies and secretive interlocking board directorships.
The investigations of the secret Bush money tranches are coming to the fore as New York Attorney General Eliot Spitzer focuses in on the scandal involving Maurice "Hank" Greenberg and the inflation of the worth of American Insurance Group (AIG) through shady affiliates, including AIG reinsurer Coral Re of Barbados.
Greenberg was the CEO of AIG but was forced to step down amid the Spitzer probe. AIG was founded from Asia Life/CV Starr, a Shanghai-based international import/export and insurance firm founded in 1919 by Cornelius V. Starr, an Office of Strategic Services (OSS) operative in Southeast Asia during World War II.
AIG's largest shareholder is Starr International Company (SICO), an off-shore corporation incorporated in Panama with headquarters in Bermuda.
Kenneth Starr, the independent counsel who prosecuted President Clinton, is the nephew of Cornelius Starr.
Greenberg inherited the CEO job and Chairmanship from Starr as well as the $3.5 billion Starr Foundation.
Another probe by Manhattan District Attorney Robert Morgenthau is focused on long-time Bush backers Sam and Charles Wyly of Texas and a Bank of America off-shore account in the Isle of Man. According to intelligence sources, that probe is getting very close to an Isle of Man multi-billion dollar account controlled by the Bushes through an off-shore contrivance known as Five Star Trust.
Charles Wyly serves on the board of the University of Texas Investment Management Company (UTIMCO). Critics have charged that hundreds of millions of dollars of UTIMCO's $11 billion in public funds have been steered to investment funds run by Bush family friends and supporters. A number of UTIMCO's past and current directors are members of George W. Bush's "$100,000 Club." These include, in addition to Wyly, former UTIMCO chairman Tom Hicks, a vice chairman of Clear Channel and head of Muse, Tate & Furst, Inc.; L. Lowry Mays, the chairman of Clear Channel; former Texas Representative and current lobbyist Tom Loeffler (who received illegal laundered campaign contributions from the failed Vernon Savings & Loan); A. W. Riter, a former chairman of NCNB Bank in Tyler, Texas; A. R. "Tony" Sanchez, Chairman of Sanchez-O'Brien Oil & Gas, owner of the Texas border-based International Bank of Commerce and the failed Tesoro Savings & Loan; and Woody Hunt, Chairman of Hunt Building Company. Some of UTIMCO's investments were directed to firms with close ties to Bush "Pioneer" contributors Lee Bass (Bass Brothers Enterprises), Henry Kravis (Kohlberg Kravis Roberts), and Charles Wyly (Maverick Capital Fund), as well as George W. and H.W. Bush (The Carlyle Partners II Fund, managed by The Carlyle Group).
Texas money laundering is the tip of an Bush family financial iceberg that extends below the surface to shady financial deals around the globe. However, investigators who dare venture into Texas will have their jobs cut out for them. The Bushes have been major recipients of campaign cash from senior partners the largest law firms in Texas -- Vinson & Elkins, Baker Botts (law firm of James Baker III), Andrews Kurth (the law firm of contentious US District Judge Priscilla Owen), Jenkins & Gilchrist, Haynes Boone and Bracewell & Patterson -- that have also been involved in defending those Texas companies and principals who have benefited from massive illegal financial flows.
~~
The provinces of Anbar, Ninevah, Diyala, Salahuddin and Kirkuk all rejected the constitution?
http://www.mercurynews.com/mld/mercurynews/news/world/12920119.htm
According to Liz Sly at the Chicago Tribune, 16 October 2005, Sunni leaders are disputing reports of the constitution's likely passage.
In London, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters that early indications suggested that the constitution had "probably passed."
Sunni Arab leaders suspect the vote has been fixed.
"We think that this statement by Condoleezza Rice is astonishing because it is trying to mask the big rejection that this draft has faced all over Iraq," said a statement by the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni group that was a leading campaigner for a "no" vote.
Election officials said the official count of the ballots won't begin until Monday, and that an official result is still days away.
Addressing reporters in Baghdad, Saleh Mutlaq, a leader of the National Dialogue Council, said he suspected Rice's remarks were intended as a "signal" to Iraqi election officials to declare a favorable outcome of the voting, in which Iraqis voted "yes" or "no" on the question: Do you approve of the draft constitution?
"We would like to warn of the dangers of fixing these results and passing this constitution by force," he said. "This would create a backlash that cannot be contained, including civil disobedience."
For the constitution to fail, it would have to be rejected either by a simple majority of all voters or by a two-thirds majority in three provinces.
The National Dialogue Council issued what it claimed were figures showing that two-thirds of the voters had rejected the poll in five provinces, giving them the numbers they need to block the constitution. The provinces of Anbar, Ninevah, Diyala, Salahuddin and Kirkuk all rejected the constitution with more than 70 percent voting "no," the Council said.
Although there is still no official count of the ballots, political parties are entitled to post monitors in polling stations and they dispatch their own tally of the results to their party leaders. Ballots are first counted at the polling stations, the results are recorded, and then the boxes are dispatched to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone for an official tally, which will begin Monday.
In Anbar either the threat of violence or calls for a boycott by local leaders appeared to have kept voters away. More than 60 polling places did not open.
~~
According to Liz Sly at the Chicago Tribune, 16 October 2005, Sunni leaders are disputing reports of the constitution's likely passage.
In London, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters that early indications suggested that the constitution had "probably passed."
Sunni Arab leaders suspect the vote has been fixed.
"We think that this statement by Condoleezza Rice is astonishing because it is trying to mask the big rejection that this draft has faced all over Iraq," said a statement by the National Dialogue Council, a Sunni group that was a leading campaigner for a "no" vote.
Election officials said the official count of the ballots won't begin until Monday, and that an official result is still days away.
Addressing reporters in Baghdad, Saleh Mutlaq, a leader of the National Dialogue Council, said he suspected Rice's remarks were intended as a "signal" to Iraqi election officials to declare a favorable outcome of the voting, in which Iraqis voted "yes" or "no" on the question: Do you approve of the draft constitution?
"We would like to warn of the dangers of fixing these results and passing this constitution by force," he said. "This would create a backlash that cannot be contained, including civil disobedience."
For the constitution to fail, it would have to be rejected either by a simple majority of all voters or by a two-thirds majority in three provinces.
The National Dialogue Council issued what it claimed were figures showing that two-thirds of the voters had rejected the poll in five provinces, giving them the numbers they need to block the constitution. The provinces of Anbar, Ninevah, Diyala, Salahuddin and Kirkuk all rejected the constitution with more than 70 percent voting "no," the Council said.
Although there is still no official count of the ballots, political parties are entitled to post monitors in polling stations and they dispatch their own tally of the results to their party leaders. Ballots are first counted at the polling stations, the results are recorded, and then the boxes are dispatched to Baghdad's fortified Green Zone for an official tally, which will begin Monday.
In Anbar either the threat of violence or calls for a boycott by local leaders appeared to have kept voters away. More than 60 polling places did not open.
~~
Sunday, October 16, 2005
Poll on UK Tory party leadership
http://scotlandonsunday.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=2096992005
Poll in Scotland on Sunday
Who do you think should be leader of the Conservative Party?
David Davis
8.2%
Liam Fox
9.0%
Kenneth Clarke
48.6%
David Cameron
24.7%
Malcolm Rifkind
9.4%
477 votes
~~
Poll in Scotland on Sunday
Who do you think should be leader of the Conservative Party?
David Davis
8.2%
Liam Fox
9.0%
Kenneth Clarke
48.6%
David Cameron
24.7%
Malcolm Rifkind
9.4%
477 votes
~~
Friday, October 14, 2005
'Americans disguised as Arabs try to set off bomb'.
http://iraqwar.mirror-world.ru/article/66432
14 October 2005.
Quds Press reports:
Iraqis apprehend two Americans disguised as Arabs trying to detonate a car bomb in a residential neighborhood of western Baghdad’s al-Ghazaliyah district on Tuesday.
A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab dress as they tried to blow up a booby-trapped car in the middle of a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday.
Residents of western Baghdad’s al-Ghazaliyah district told Quds Press that the people had apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a residential neighborhood in al-Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon (11 October 2005).
Local people found they looked suspicious so they detained the men before they could get away. That was when they discovered that they were Americans and called the Iraqi puppet police. Five minutes after the arrival of the Iraqi puppet police on the scene a large force of US troops showed up and surrounded the area.
They put the two Americans in one of their Humvees and drove away at high speed to the astonishment of the residents of the area.
Quds Press spoke by telephone with a member of the al-Ghazaliyah puppet police who confirmed the incident, saying that the two men were non-Arab foreigners but declined to be more precise about their nationality.
Quds Press pointed out that about a month ago, the Iraqi puppet police in the southern Iraqi city of al-Basrah arrested two Britons whom they accused of attempting to cause an explosion in the city.
The Britons were taken into custody by the Iraqi puppet police only to be broken out of prison by an assault of British occupation troops. That incident has created a tense relationship between the British and the local puppet authorities in al-Basrah, Quds Press noted.
~~
14 October 2005.
Quds Press reports:
Iraqis apprehend two Americans disguised as Arabs trying to detonate a car bomb in a residential neighborhood of western Baghdad’s al-Ghazaliyah district on Tuesday.
A number of Iraqis apprehended two Americans disguised in Arab dress as they tried to blow up a booby-trapped car in the middle of a residential area in western Baghdad on Tuesday.
Residents of western Baghdad’s al-Ghazaliyah district told Quds Press that the people had apprehended the Americans as they left their Caprice car near a residential neighborhood in al-Ghazaliyah on Tuesday afternoon (11 October 2005).
Local people found they looked suspicious so they detained the men before they could get away. That was when they discovered that they were Americans and called the Iraqi puppet police. Five minutes after the arrival of the Iraqi puppet police on the scene a large force of US troops showed up and surrounded the area.
They put the two Americans in one of their Humvees and drove away at high speed to the astonishment of the residents of the area.
Quds Press spoke by telephone with a member of the al-Ghazaliyah puppet police who confirmed the incident, saying that the two men were non-Arab foreigners but declined to be more precise about their nationality.
Quds Press pointed out that about a month ago, the Iraqi puppet police in the southern Iraqi city of al-Basrah arrested two Britons whom they accused of attempting to cause an explosion in the city.
The Britons were taken into custody by the Iraqi puppet police only to be broken out of prison by an assault of British occupation troops. That incident has created a tense relationship between the British and the local puppet authorities in al-Basrah, Quds Press noted.
~~
UK judge's Railtrack ruling 'a whitewash'.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/pages/live/articles/news/news.html?in_article_id=365360&in_page_id=1770
The Daily Mail, 14th October 2005, reports:
1. Railtrack private shareholders have lost their High Court battle with the Government over what they saw as the "killing off" of the company by former Transport Secretary Stephen Byers.
2. The judge in the High Court was Mr Justice Lindsay.
3. The Railtrack shareholders' main claimant Geoffrey Weir described the judgement as "a complete whitewash" which gave the Government "carte blanche to act as they please in future".
4. The shareholders had claimed at least £157 million.
5. In evidence, Mr Byers had said he had given wrong evidence to a House of Commons select committee as to the timing of discussions to put Railtrack into administration.
6. On Friday, the judge said: "I cannot proceed on the basis that he (Mr Byers) is a proven liar".
~~~
The biggest terrorist attack in Britain was the Lockerbie bomb, which many people suspect was the work of elements of the CIA.
The 1989 incident killed 270 people.
It seems that the judges in the Lockerbie bomb trial were either
1. tricked
2. or intimidated
3. or bribed.
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
According to the newspaper 'Scotland on Sunday' , 28 August 2005, a Scottish Police chief has revealed that the Lockerbie evidence was faked.
The former police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated.
The officer has testified that the CIA planted the fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting Al Megrahi.
The Sunday Herald 08/04/2001 : "THE United Nations has savaged the Crown Office's handling of the Lockerbie trial claiming the outcome was rigged through the unfair suppression of evidence; it was politically influenced by the USA; and the court had no grounds to return a guilty verdict. Dr Hans Kochler, who was handpicked by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to act as the international observer during the trial in Holland, hinted that the trial was rigged, claimed the guilty verdict handed down in February to Abdelbasset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi was "arbitrary" and "irrational" and gave his tacit support for an acquittal at the planned appeal."
~
http://jakartass.blogspot.com/
Thursday, October 13, 2005
The following comes from jakartass.blogspot:
Bagir has been suspended...
Bagir Manan, 64, is the country's Chief Justice.
In April 2003, ex-dictator Suharto's half brother, Probosutedjo, now 75, was sentenced to four years imprisonment for embezzlement of reforestation funds, which cost the state some Rp.100 billion in losses.
Naturally, given the status of the convicted man, the case has gone to appeal.
Where this all gets interesting is that Harini R. Wiyoso, one of his lawyers, has admitted that she gave US$500,000 to Supreme Court staff to pass on to Bagir, and another $100,000 for other officials and judges...
~~
The Daily Mail, 14th October 2005, reports:
1. Railtrack private shareholders have lost their High Court battle with the Government over what they saw as the "killing off" of the company by former Transport Secretary Stephen Byers.
2. The judge in the High Court was Mr Justice Lindsay.
3. The Railtrack shareholders' main claimant Geoffrey Weir described the judgement as "a complete whitewash" which gave the Government "carte blanche to act as they please in future".
4. The shareholders had claimed at least £157 million.
5. In evidence, Mr Byers had said he had given wrong evidence to a House of Commons select committee as to the timing of discussions to put Railtrack into administration.
6. On Friday, the judge said: "I cannot proceed on the basis that he (Mr Byers) is a proven liar".
~~~
The biggest terrorist attack in Britain was the Lockerbie bomb, which many people suspect was the work of elements of the CIA.
The 1989 incident killed 270 people.
It seems that the judges in the Lockerbie bomb trial were either
1. tricked
2. or intimidated
3. or bribed.
Police chief- Lockerbie evidence was faked
According to the newspaper 'Scotland on Sunday' , 28 August 2005, a Scottish Police chief has revealed that the Lockerbie evidence was faked.
The former police chief has given lawyers a signed statement claiming that evidence in the Lockerbie bombing trial was fabricated.
The officer has testified that the CIA planted the fragment of circuit board crucial in convicting Al Megrahi.
The Sunday Herald 08/04/2001 : "THE United Nations has savaged the Crown Office's handling of the Lockerbie trial claiming the outcome was rigged through the unfair suppression of evidence; it was politically influenced by the USA; and the court had no grounds to return a guilty verdict. Dr Hans Kochler, who was handpicked by UN Secretary General Kofi Annan to act as the international observer during the trial in Holland, hinted that the trial was rigged, claimed the guilty verdict handed down in February to Abdelbasset Ali Mohamed Al Megrahi was "arbitrary" and "irrational" and gave his tacit support for an acquittal at the planned appeal."
~
http://jakartass.blogspot.com/
Thursday, October 13, 2005
The following comes from jakartass.blogspot:
Bagir has been suspended...
Bagir Manan, 64, is the country's Chief Justice.
In April 2003, ex-dictator Suharto's half brother, Probosutedjo, now 75, was sentenced to four years imprisonment for embezzlement of reforestation funds, which cost the state some Rp.100 billion in losses.
Naturally, given the status of the convicted man, the case has gone to appeal.
Where this all gets interesting is that Harini R. Wiyoso, one of his lawyers, has admitted that she gave US$500,000 to Supreme Court staff to pass on to Bagir, and another $100,000 for other officials and judges...
~~
Much of the Iraqi government exists only on paper.
http://news.independent.co.uk/world/middle_east/article319606.ece
Extract from an article by The Independent's Patrick Cockburn, 14 October 2005:
The only part of Iraq that is prospering is Kurdistan, because it has security. Even prostitutes from Baghdad have migrated to Sulaymaniyah on the grounds that the capital is too dangerous to work in. For all the billions of dollars supposedly spent on reconstruction in the rest of Iraq there are very few building sites to be seen outside the three Kurdish provinces where businessmen throng the hotels...
"The Iraqis are suffering from corruption, terrorism and occupation," says the veteran opposition leader Mahmoud Othman. "Every year it is getting worse."
...Insurgents are tightening their grip in Sunni-dominated districts in south and west Baghdad.
...In theory Iraqi army and security forces are being built up towards the 200,000 level but when Kurdish intelligence counted a unit entering Kirkuk they found most of the soldiers were not there. Its men stayed home or never existed while commanders pocketed the salaries of these "ghost battalions".
Much of the Iraqi government exists only on paper. It is more of a racket than an administration. Its officials turn up only on pay day.
Elaborate bureaucratic procedures exist simply so a bribe has to be paid to avoid them...
A set of milestones were devised - the turning over of sovereignty to Iraq, the elections, the constitution - whose primary purpose was to give a spurious sense of progress to American voters. Not surprisingly they show increasing anger at being duped.
~~~
Extract from an article by The Independent's Patrick Cockburn, 14 October 2005:
The only part of Iraq that is prospering is Kurdistan, because it has security. Even prostitutes from Baghdad have migrated to Sulaymaniyah on the grounds that the capital is too dangerous to work in. For all the billions of dollars supposedly spent on reconstruction in the rest of Iraq there are very few building sites to be seen outside the three Kurdish provinces where businessmen throng the hotels...
"The Iraqis are suffering from corruption, terrorism and occupation," says the veteran opposition leader Mahmoud Othman. "Every year it is getting worse."
...Insurgents are tightening their grip in Sunni-dominated districts in south and west Baghdad.
...In theory Iraqi army and security forces are being built up towards the 200,000 level but when Kurdish intelligence counted a unit entering Kirkuk they found most of the soldiers were not there. Its men stayed home or never existed while commanders pocketed the salaries of these "ghost battalions".
Much of the Iraqi government exists only on paper. It is more of a racket than an administration. Its officials turn up only on pay day.
Elaborate bureaucratic procedures exist simply so a bribe has to be paid to avoid them...
A set of milestones were devised - the turning over of sovereignty to Iraq, the elections, the constitution - whose primary purpose was to give a spurious sense of progress to American voters. Not surprisingly they show increasing anger at being duped.
~~~
Boycott Botswana
http://www.survival-international.org/news.php?id=1076&PHPSESSID=54ce13ed5de81bf0c5bcc2fc2796bc3a
Bushman child and two adults shot by police.
6 Oct 2005
The shots that killed democracy.
• Bushman child and two adults shot by Botswana police.
• Family walk for days across desert to bring news to outside world.
• Bushmen told that the government does not care if they starve to death.
Three Bushmen, including one child, have been shot and wounded in recent days by Botswana police during incidents designed to intimidate the Bushmen still surviving inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and force them out once and for all.
Kekailwe (aged 7) was shot in the stomach as the police arrested his father when he refused to let them search his hut without a warrant.
In a separate incident, Kesodilo Ntwayamoga was shot from behind in each leg as he stood with both hands raised.
Witnesses confirmed that police were trying to force him to admit to hunting.
In the third incident, Mokgakalaga Gaoberekwe was shot in the jaw on 24 September as he and others attempted to enter the Game Reserve to take water and food to their families. He is badly wounded and still recovering in hospital.
The Bushman party, including several babies and children, was attacked by heavily armed police and soldiers under the personal command of Sydney Pilane, the attorney acting for the government in the high court case in which the Bushmen are claiming rights to their ancestral land.
The police fired teargas and bullets at the unarmed Bushmen. Many were beaten and imprisoned for several days.
The group included the 2005 alternative Nobel prize-winner, Roy Sesana, who was unaware that he and his Bushman organization had won the award.
The Bushmen have now been charged with 'unlawful assembly'.
Police have been trying to prevent Bushmen returning to their reserve.
The Bushmen already in the reserve are forbidden to hunt and gather, have had their water supply cut off, and are now threatened with starvation after the government claimed their goats were diseased (a claim rubbished by a group of eminent international vets).
Officials forcibly removed all goats from the reserve earlier this week.
Today, a small group of Bushmen emerged after evading the police who had surrounded their huts and walking for three days through the drought-stricken desert.
Kangotla Kanyo said today, ‘The others and I came out of the reserve to tell the outside world that we are really suffering with thirst and hunger.
The police are camped at our settlement and we are not allowed to gather or dig anything to eat.
The policeman called Dibuile told us, ‘If you die, the government doesn't care. This is the time to show you that you are nothing.
The police said that 'we have to suffer thirst and hunger so that we will leave the reserve.'
Officials told the Bushmen in 2002 that they had to abandon their land because diamonds had been discovered there.
All Botswana's diamond mines are run by De Beers, which retains rights to a large deposit in the reserve.
Stephen Corry, Survival's director, said today, 'Botswana's President Mogae has drawn a veil across the great sand-face of the Kalahari so that his henchmen can bully the Bushmen in secrecy. But the veil has not muffled the shots which spilled the blood of a child and two unarmed men guilty of wanting to live in peace on their ancient land. These shots - ordered by a lawyer - have killed all pretence of a democratic Botswana. People who care about the Bushmen should not support this regime by buying De Beers's diamonds or by holidaying there. These diamonds are bought with the blood of the Bushmen.'
http://www.survival-international.org/news.php?id=1083
~~
Bushman child and two adults shot by police.
6 Oct 2005
The shots that killed democracy.
• Bushman child and two adults shot by Botswana police.
• Family walk for days across desert to bring news to outside world.
• Bushmen told that the government does not care if they starve to death.
Three Bushmen, including one child, have been shot and wounded in recent days by Botswana police during incidents designed to intimidate the Bushmen still surviving inside the Central Kalahari Game Reserve and force them out once and for all.
Kekailwe (aged 7) was shot in the stomach as the police arrested his father when he refused to let them search his hut without a warrant.
In a separate incident, Kesodilo Ntwayamoga was shot from behind in each leg as he stood with both hands raised.
Witnesses confirmed that police were trying to force him to admit to hunting.
In the third incident, Mokgakalaga Gaoberekwe was shot in the jaw on 24 September as he and others attempted to enter the Game Reserve to take water and food to their families. He is badly wounded and still recovering in hospital.
The Bushman party, including several babies and children, was attacked by heavily armed police and soldiers under the personal command of Sydney Pilane, the attorney acting for the government in the high court case in which the Bushmen are claiming rights to their ancestral land.
The police fired teargas and bullets at the unarmed Bushmen. Many were beaten and imprisoned for several days.
The group included the 2005 alternative Nobel prize-winner, Roy Sesana, who was unaware that he and his Bushman organization had won the award.
The Bushmen have now been charged with 'unlawful assembly'.
Police have been trying to prevent Bushmen returning to their reserve.
The Bushmen already in the reserve are forbidden to hunt and gather, have had their water supply cut off, and are now threatened with starvation after the government claimed their goats were diseased (a claim rubbished by a group of eminent international vets).
Officials forcibly removed all goats from the reserve earlier this week.
Today, a small group of Bushmen emerged after evading the police who had surrounded their huts and walking for three days through the drought-stricken desert.
Kangotla Kanyo said today, ‘The others and I came out of the reserve to tell the outside world that we are really suffering with thirst and hunger.
The police are camped at our settlement and we are not allowed to gather or dig anything to eat.
The policeman called Dibuile told us, ‘If you die, the government doesn't care. This is the time to show you that you are nothing.
The police said that 'we have to suffer thirst and hunger so that we will leave the reserve.'
Officials told the Bushmen in 2002 that they had to abandon their land because diamonds had been discovered there.
All Botswana's diamond mines are run by De Beers, which retains rights to a large deposit in the reserve.
Stephen Corry, Survival's director, said today, 'Botswana's President Mogae has drawn a veil across the great sand-face of the Kalahari so that his henchmen can bully the Bushmen in secrecy. But the veil has not muffled the shots which spilled the blood of a child and two unarmed men guilty of wanting to live in peace on their ancient land. These shots - ordered by a lawyer - have killed all pretence of a democratic Botswana. People who care about the Bushmen should not support this regime by buying De Beers's diamonds or by holidaying there. These diamonds are bought with the blood of the Bushmen.'
http://www.survival-international.org/news.php?id=1083
~~
UK: Clarke opposes Iraq war. Cameron supports Iraq war.
~
In the UK there is a leadership contest in the opposition Conservative (Tory) Party.
Opposing the Iraq war - Ken Clarke
Supporting the Iraq war - David Cameron, David Davis, Liam Fox.
The media have tended to promote David Cameron or David Davis or Liam Fox.
~
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1877682005
In the first speech of his leadership campaign, Kenneth Clarke said the "disastrous" decision to invade Iraq was a catastrophic error that has made Britain a foremost target for Islamic extremists.
Clarke made it clear that he did not believe the Iraq war was just, and that "the reasons given to parliament for joining the invasion were bogus".
He said new anti-terror laws risk radicalising British Muslims.
Mr Clarke made caustic references to George Bush, the US president. "I share the late Robin Cook's suspicions that the Bush administration hope to pull out most of their troops in whatever way they can before next year's US mid-term elections," he said.
He warned that "US military tactics are alienating moderate Iraqi opinion", adding that Mr Blair should be a "candid friend" to the United States.
David Cameron said that he did support the war in Iraq.
Clarke's campaign was focused on positive issues, such as the need for better quality of life.
He gave a speech calling for tax breaks for childcare.
David Davis and Liam Fox are both pro-war, and will fight as centre-right candidates.
~
In the UK there is a leadership contest in the opposition Conservative (Tory) Party.
Opposing the Iraq war - Ken Clarke
Supporting the Iraq war - David Cameron, David Davis, Liam Fox.
The media have tended to promote David Cameron or David Davis or Liam Fox.
~
http://thescotsman.scotsman.com/index.cfm?id=1877682005
In the first speech of his leadership campaign, Kenneth Clarke said the "disastrous" decision to invade Iraq was a catastrophic error that has made Britain a foremost target for Islamic extremists.
Clarke made it clear that he did not believe the Iraq war was just, and that "the reasons given to parliament for joining the invasion were bogus".
He said new anti-terror laws risk radicalising British Muslims.
Mr Clarke made caustic references to George Bush, the US president. "I share the late Robin Cook's suspicions that the Bush administration hope to pull out most of their troops in whatever way they can before next year's US mid-term elections," he said.
He warned that "US military tactics are alienating moderate Iraqi opinion", adding that Mr Blair should be a "candid friend" to the United States.
David Cameron said that he did support the war in Iraq.
Clarke's campaign was focused on positive issues, such as the need for better quality of life.
He gave a speech calling for tax breaks for childcare.
David Davis and Liam Fox are both pro-war, and will fight as centre-right candidates.
~
Refco: World's hedge funds face crisis as Refco suspends trading
http://www.guardian.co.uk/frontpage/story/0,16518,1592055,00.html
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/10/14/cnrefco14.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2005/10/14/ixcitytop.html
14 October 2004.
The World's hedge funds face a crisis.
The leading global broker Refco has suspended trading. It admits 'liquidity problem'.
It is said to be on the brink of collapse after running out of money in a key division.
Accounts irregularities at the firm have been discovered.
Fraud charges have been issued against its former chief executive Phillip Bennett.
Mr Bennett has been charged with defrauding investors by using a hedge fund to hide $430m (£250m) of debts owed to the firm.
There is a 15-day trading moratorium on Refco's subsidiary, Refco Capital Markets.
Refco, which has debts of $642m, 'is preventing a possible mass exodus of funds which could further jeopardise its trading position'.
Refco has lost three quarters of its stock market value in less than a week.
Kevin Starke, an analyst at Weeden & Co, said: "This company is in serious jeopardy. The fact that the bonds are trading at just above 52.25 cents on the dollar suggests that bankruptcy is at least a 50-50 possibility. It's very possible they have have to sell a unit or at least renegotiate their bank loans."
Investors may take legal action against the investment banks which brought the company to market - Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Credit Suisse First Boston.
On August 16, Refco announced the completion of its flotation in New York. At an issue price of $22 a share (£12.50), the company was valued at $3.4bn. Refco announced this year that in the three months to the end of February, Refco's volume in the foreign exchange market alone was $111bn.
~~
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/money/main.jhtml?xml=/money/2005/10/14/cnrefco14.xml&menuId=242&sSheet=/money/2005/10/14/ixcitytop.html
14 October 2004.
The World's hedge funds face a crisis.
The leading global broker Refco has suspended trading. It admits 'liquidity problem'.
It is said to be on the brink of collapse after running out of money in a key division.
Accounts irregularities at the firm have been discovered.
Fraud charges have been issued against its former chief executive Phillip Bennett.
Mr Bennett has been charged with defrauding investors by using a hedge fund to hide $430m (£250m) of debts owed to the firm.
There is a 15-day trading moratorium on Refco's subsidiary, Refco Capital Markets.
Refco, which has debts of $642m, 'is preventing a possible mass exodus of funds which could further jeopardise its trading position'.
Refco has lost three quarters of its stock market value in less than a week.
Kevin Starke, an analyst at Weeden & Co, said: "This company is in serious jeopardy. The fact that the bonds are trading at just above 52.25 cents on the dollar suggests that bankruptcy is at least a 50-50 possibility. It's very possible they have have to sell a unit or at least renegotiate their bank loans."
Investors may take legal action against the investment banks which brought the company to market - Goldman Sachs, Bank of America and Credit Suisse First Boston.
On August 16, Refco announced the completion of its flotation in New York. At an issue price of $22 a share (£12.50), the company was valued at $3.4bn. Refco announced this year that in the three months to the end of February, Refco's volume in the foreign exchange market alone was $111bn.
~~
Thursday, October 13, 2005
Letter on Lockerbie by Dr Jim Swire
http://www.theherald.co.uk/features/48825.html
Extracts from a letter to The Herald, by Dr Jim Swire, 13 October 2005:
...Unfortunately, careful attention to the evidence heard at Zeist led me, as a layman, to the conclusion that the (self-confessedly) "circumstantial" prosecution case met neither the dictates of common sense, nor, more importantly, reasonable doubt.
Many others who have studied these events since, share my doubts.
The same evidence laid bare a host of reasons as to why involved goverments might want particular outcomes from the trial.
The evidence patently depended heavily upon the output of the relevant intelligence services (UK and US in particular) who presumably first serve the perceived interests of their host governments.
These services appeared to have an extensive role in deciding which witnesses would actually appear, what forensic material was presented and how it was assessed pre-trial...
Our group has always sought truth and justice over this tragedy and equally continually been refused an independent inquiry.
The SCCRC (Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) must be given the opportunity to decide whether further appeal is warranted.
They must have the time to do this convincingly, while being aware that the longer the detention of an individual, who may or may not be guilty, continues, without full resolution, the greater the risk of damage to the name of the Scottish legal system.
Any change to the conditions of sentence introduced by the involved governments at this time will be interpreted as undermining the independence of the judicial system.
If Mr Megrahi were to be transferred to Libya he would be something of a hero and might lose his keenness for further appeal.
Should that happen, as one of many deeply involved parties I will not be alone in demanding of the SCCRC that they continue their decision-making process.
It remains our right both to know why our loved ones were not protected and to see the Scottish judicial process completed without governmental interference of any kind.
Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora, murdered at Lockerbie; member, "UK Families-Flight 103".
drjim swire@aol.com
~
Extracts from a letter to The Herald, by Dr Jim Swire, 13 October 2005:
...Unfortunately, careful attention to the evidence heard at Zeist led me, as a layman, to the conclusion that the (self-confessedly) "circumstantial" prosecution case met neither the dictates of common sense, nor, more importantly, reasonable doubt.
Many others who have studied these events since, share my doubts.
The same evidence laid bare a host of reasons as to why involved goverments might want particular outcomes from the trial.
The evidence patently depended heavily upon the output of the relevant intelligence services (UK and US in particular) who presumably first serve the perceived interests of their host governments.
These services appeared to have an extensive role in deciding which witnesses would actually appear, what forensic material was presented and how it was assessed pre-trial...
Our group has always sought truth and justice over this tragedy and equally continually been refused an independent inquiry.
The SCCRC (Scottish Criminal Cases Review Commission) must be given the opportunity to decide whether further appeal is warranted.
They must have the time to do this convincingly, while being aware that the longer the detention of an individual, who may or may not be guilty, continues, without full resolution, the greater the risk of damage to the name of the Scottish legal system.
Any change to the conditions of sentence introduced by the involved governments at this time will be interpreted as undermining the independence of the judicial system.
If Mr Megrahi were to be transferred to Libya he would be something of a hero and might lose his keenness for further appeal.
Should that happen, as one of many deeply involved parties I will not be alone in demanding of the SCCRC that they continue their decision-making process.
It remains our right both to know why our loved ones were not protected and to see the Scottish judicial process completed without governmental interference of any kind.
Dr Jim Swire, father of Flora, murdered at Lockerbie; member, "UK Families-Flight 103".
drjim swire@aol.com
~
USA causing earthquakes?
"Military scientists believe it is possible to direct powerful energy beams into vulnerable fault zones, causing the Earth's plates to shift, creating a massive earthquake.
"Along fault lines beneath the oceans, the same technology could be used to launch devastating tsunamis."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=THE20051008&articleId=1061
According to the Daily Express, 16 July 2005, new evidence suggests the US & Russia are embroiled in an illegal race to harness the power of hurricanes & earthquakes.
... The experienced pilot had the presence of mind to record that the cloud measured an estimated 200 miles in diameter and was tipped by an eerie light, like nothing he had seen before...
Far below, a fleet of fishing boats trawling the sea between Japan and the Soviet Union was drenched by a violent but short-lived downpour before the weather suddenly cleared.
...More than two decades later suspicion still exists that the stunned airline crew and fishermen in 1973 were witnessing a sinister Cold War experiment, in which water from the Sea of Japan was blown into the air to create clouds and rain.
British government papers, just released by the National Archives, show that throughout the Seventies there was deep mistrust between the two superpowers over environmental warfare. The documents reveal that both the US, which led the field, and the Soviet Union had secret military programmes with the goal of controlling the world's climate. "By the year 2025 the United States will own the weather, " one scientist is said to have boasted.
Since then, a United Nations treaty has been signed which bans environmental warfare, such as causing earthquakes, melting the polar ice caps and altering climate. But some experts believe that clandestine work to create the ultimate weapon of mass destruction continues...
The Americans now admit that they invested L12million over five years during the Vietnam war on "cloud seeding" - deliberately creating heavy rainfall to wash away enemy crops and destroy supply routes on the Ho Chi Minh trail, in an operation codenamed Project Popeye.
It is claimed that rainfall was increased by a third in targeted areas, making the weather-manipulation weapon a success. At the time, government officials said the region was prone to heavy rain.
However this sort of rain-making experiment was nothing new. In Britain, it has been alleged that before the devastating Lynmouth floods in Devon in 1952, the RAF had been conducting secret rain-making tests.
Aircraft showered clouds with silver iodide, on which water droplets formed, became heavy and eventually fell to the ground as rain. In the next 12 hours nine inches of rain fell - 250 times the normal amount for August - and 35 people were killed.
Former North Devon MP Tony Speller, then a 22-year-old soldier who helped in the relief effort, sought answers from the MoD.
"I have no doubt they were seeding in the area because there were RAF log books to prove it, " he says now.
"Of course the MoD denied any knowledge but that is not to say it did not happen."
Speller, now 76, adds: "I doubt we will ever know the truth."
Early work on climate control was crude and unpredictable but it is claimed that both the Americans and Russians continued to experiment behind closed doors even after the UN ban in the mid-Eighties, and both now possess sophisticated systems which are capable of controlling the weather - with potentially devastating results.
In the US, the technology was developed under the high-frequency active auroral research programme ( HAARP) - originally part of Ronald Reagan's controversial Star Wars defence system.
Based in Gokoma, Alaska, the weapon operates by beaming powerful radio waves into the upper atmosphere to alter weather patterns.
Some experts claim the system is already up and running...
Michel Chossudovsky, professor of economics at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who has studied official military documents about HAARP, is in no doubt that the weapon is ready.
"There are very clear statements by the US Air Force to the effect that weather modification technology is available. HAARP will be fully operational by next year and could be used in actual military situations, " he says.(See http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20040927&articleId=319)
"To claim this system has any nonmilitary purposes is twisting the truth.
I don't think there are any peaceful applications - it is a weapon of mass destruction, capable of major climatic disturbance. Part of the beauty is that the enemy might never know that a weapon had been used. I believe the UN agreement is certainly being violated."
He claims that at least one British firm has been involved in its development.
"It is time people began focusing on these weapons instead of concentrating solely on global warming, " Chossudovsky adds. "Both are a serious threat."
The Russians are thought to have their own "weather steering" system, called Woodpecker, involving the transmission of low-frequency waves which are capable of disrupting the atmosphere and altering the path of the jet stream. It is claimed that a prolonged drought in California in the Eighties was caused by the blocking of warm, moist air for many weeks.
According to Damian Wilson, a physicist with the Met Office, controlling climate is a reality but not a precise science. "Clearing fog by dropping dry ice into clouds is a proven technique which has been around for decades, " he says.
"Large amounts of research have been invested in seeding clouds to generate rain and it is done in countries where there are water shortages. The problem is that it is unpredictable and you need clouds to start with. The technology does not exist to make rain fall from clear blue skies so it cannot be used in the desert to end droughts and famines."
WILSON believes it is possible to alter the course of a hurricane, which could have enormous life-saving potential. The current mayhem in the Caribbean and America's Eastern seaboard also shows what a destructive weapon a well-targeted storm could prove.
The Americans used cloud seeding to try to control a hurricane in 1947 but the tactic backfired when it picked up strength and hit Savannah, Georgia.
It is known that the US carried out further hurricane-manipulation experiments between 1962 and 1983, under the codename Project Stormfury, after it was calculated that a single hurricane contained as much energy as all the world's power stations combined. More recent projects have involved pouring tens of thousands of gallons of vegetable oil on to the sea.
"Hurricanes gather their strength from the warm sea surface, " says Wilson. "By spreading a large film of oil on the sea it would reduce the intensity by cooling the surface. In theory it is possible to change the path of the hurricane this way. It would not surprise me if military research into controlling the weather goes on. As we suffer more summer droughts in the south-east of England I would also expect to see pressure for cloud seeding to be introduced in this country."
It is not just the weather that has attracted the attention of the military.
Scientists have also researched ways of triggering earthquakes. By setting off small quakes, pressure could be released and a disaster averted. But military scientists believe it is also possible to direct powerful energy beams into vulnerable fault zones, causing the Earth's plates to shift, creating a massive earthquake. Along fault lines beneath the oceans, the same technology could be used to launch devastating tsunamis.
Part of the problem in banning experiments involves agreeing a definition of what environmental warfare is. It has been argued that the famous Dambusters mission during the Second World War, when bouncing bombs were used to flood the German industrial heartland, were a form of environmental warfare.
Half a century later, the threat is still being taken sufficiently seriously.
Former US defence secretary William Cohen warns: "Terrorists are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes and volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts."
Owen Greene, director of research at Bradford University's department of Peace Studies, believes efforts are continuing in secret to develop weapons that harness nature.
"There is so much money within the Pentagon that it would surprise me if they were not looking into it, " he says. "I suspect it is going on in both the US and Russia. You can't stop people researching the weather. As for earthquakes, you don't even need to spend money on active military programmes because there is so much other work going on which could easily be adapted. Some of the ideas are quite credible."
Another defence source says: "The risk is that by fooling around with nature, we may unleash irreversible damage and change our entire planet's atmosphere."
Despite these stark warnings, such is the immense power of nature, it seems inevitable that Man will continue to play God.
~~
"Along fault lines beneath the oceans, the same technology could be used to launch devastating tsunamis."
http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=THE20051008&articleId=1061
According to the Daily Express, 16 July 2005, new evidence suggests the US & Russia are embroiled in an illegal race to harness the power of hurricanes & earthquakes.
... The experienced pilot had the presence of mind to record that the cloud measured an estimated 200 miles in diameter and was tipped by an eerie light, like nothing he had seen before...
Far below, a fleet of fishing boats trawling the sea between Japan and the Soviet Union was drenched by a violent but short-lived downpour before the weather suddenly cleared.
...More than two decades later suspicion still exists that the stunned airline crew and fishermen in 1973 were witnessing a sinister Cold War experiment, in which water from the Sea of Japan was blown into the air to create clouds and rain.
British government papers, just released by the National Archives, show that throughout the Seventies there was deep mistrust between the two superpowers over environmental warfare. The documents reveal that both the US, which led the field, and the Soviet Union had secret military programmes with the goal of controlling the world's climate. "By the year 2025 the United States will own the weather, " one scientist is said to have boasted.
Since then, a United Nations treaty has been signed which bans environmental warfare, such as causing earthquakes, melting the polar ice caps and altering climate. But some experts believe that clandestine work to create the ultimate weapon of mass destruction continues...
The Americans now admit that they invested L12million over five years during the Vietnam war on "cloud seeding" - deliberately creating heavy rainfall to wash away enemy crops and destroy supply routes on the Ho Chi Minh trail, in an operation codenamed Project Popeye.
It is claimed that rainfall was increased by a third in targeted areas, making the weather-manipulation weapon a success. At the time, government officials said the region was prone to heavy rain.
However this sort of rain-making experiment was nothing new. In Britain, it has been alleged that before the devastating Lynmouth floods in Devon in 1952, the RAF had been conducting secret rain-making tests.
Aircraft showered clouds with silver iodide, on which water droplets formed, became heavy and eventually fell to the ground as rain. In the next 12 hours nine inches of rain fell - 250 times the normal amount for August - and 35 people were killed.
Former North Devon MP Tony Speller, then a 22-year-old soldier who helped in the relief effort, sought answers from the MoD.
"I have no doubt they were seeding in the area because there were RAF log books to prove it, " he says now.
"Of course the MoD denied any knowledge but that is not to say it did not happen."
Speller, now 76, adds: "I doubt we will ever know the truth."
Early work on climate control was crude and unpredictable but it is claimed that both the Americans and Russians continued to experiment behind closed doors even after the UN ban in the mid-Eighties, and both now possess sophisticated systems which are capable of controlling the weather - with potentially devastating results.
In the US, the technology was developed under the high-frequency active auroral research programme ( HAARP) - originally part of Ronald Reagan's controversial Star Wars defence system.
Based in Gokoma, Alaska, the weapon operates by beaming powerful radio waves into the upper atmosphere to alter weather patterns.
Some experts claim the system is already up and running...
Michel Chossudovsky, professor of economics at the University of Ottawa in Canada, who has studied official military documents about HAARP, is in no doubt that the weapon is ready.
"There are very clear statements by the US Air Force to the effect that weather modification technology is available. HAARP will be fully operational by next year and could be used in actual military situations, " he says.(See http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=CHO20040927&articleId=319)
"To claim this system has any nonmilitary purposes is twisting the truth.
I don't think there are any peaceful applications - it is a weapon of mass destruction, capable of major climatic disturbance. Part of the beauty is that the enemy might never know that a weapon had been used. I believe the UN agreement is certainly being violated."
He claims that at least one British firm has been involved in its development.
"It is time people began focusing on these weapons instead of concentrating solely on global warming, " Chossudovsky adds. "Both are a serious threat."
The Russians are thought to have their own "weather steering" system, called Woodpecker, involving the transmission of low-frequency waves which are capable of disrupting the atmosphere and altering the path of the jet stream. It is claimed that a prolonged drought in California in the Eighties was caused by the blocking of warm, moist air for many weeks.
According to Damian Wilson, a physicist with the Met Office, controlling climate is a reality but not a precise science. "Clearing fog by dropping dry ice into clouds is a proven technique which has been around for decades, " he says.
"Large amounts of research have been invested in seeding clouds to generate rain and it is done in countries where there are water shortages. The problem is that it is unpredictable and you need clouds to start with. The technology does not exist to make rain fall from clear blue skies so it cannot be used in the desert to end droughts and famines."
WILSON believes it is possible to alter the course of a hurricane, which could have enormous life-saving potential. The current mayhem in the Caribbean and America's Eastern seaboard also shows what a destructive weapon a well-targeted storm could prove.
The Americans used cloud seeding to try to control a hurricane in 1947 but the tactic backfired when it picked up strength and hit Savannah, Georgia.
It is known that the US carried out further hurricane-manipulation experiments between 1962 and 1983, under the codename Project Stormfury, after it was calculated that a single hurricane contained as much energy as all the world's power stations combined. More recent projects have involved pouring tens of thousands of gallons of vegetable oil on to the sea.
"Hurricanes gather their strength from the warm sea surface, " says Wilson. "By spreading a large film of oil on the sea it would reduce the intensity by cooling the surface. In theory it is possible to change the path of the hurricane this way. It would not surprise me if military research into controlling the weather goes on. As we suffer more summer droughts in the south-east of England I would also expect to see pressure for cloud seeding to be introduced in this country."
It is not just the weather that has attracted the attention of the military.
Scientists have also researched ways of triggering earthquakes. By setting off small quakes, pressure could be released and a disaster averted. But military scientists believe it is also possible to direct powerful energy beams into vulnerable fault zones, causing the Earth's plates to shift, creating a massive earthquake. Along fault lines beneath the oceans, the same technology could be used to launch devastating tsunamis.
Part of the problem in banning experiments involves agreeing a definition of what environmental warfare is. It has been argued that the famous Dambusters mission during the Second World War, when bouncing bombs were used to flood the German industrial heartland, were a form of environmental warfare.
Half a century later, the threat is still being taken sufficiently seriously.
Former US defence secretary William Cohen warns: "Terrorists are engaging even in an eco-type of terrorism whereby they can alter the climate, set off earthquakes and volcanoes remotely through the use of electromagnetic waves. It's real, and that's the reason why we have to intensify our efforts."
Owen Greene, director of research at Bradford University's department of Peace Studies, believes efforts are continuing in secret to develop weapons that harness nature.
"There is so much money within the Pentagon that it would surprise me if they were not looking into it, " he says. "I suspect it is going on in both the US and Russia. You can't stop people researching the weather. As for earthquakes, you don't even need to spend money on active military programmes because there is so much other work going on which could easily be adapted. Some of the ideas are quite credible."
Another defence source says: "The risk is that by fooling around with nature, we may unleash irreversible damage and change our entire planet's atmosphere."
Despite these stark warnings, such is the immense power of nature, it seems inevitable that Man will continue to play God.
~~
CIA assets executed in order to silence them?
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
Extract from Wayne Madsen Report, 12 October 2005 :
"There are indications that the CIA's Counter Proliferation efforts in Iraq prior to the war may have ... been compromised by the outing by the White House of Valerie Plame Wilson and Brewster Jennings & Associates.
"Iraqi assets in a position to know about the destruction of Iraqi WMDs by 1995 may have been executed by remnants of Iraq's security services and other paramilitaries working for the U.S. in order to silence them as witnesses to Iraq's WMD disarmament eight years prior to the U.S. invasion."
~~
Extract from Wayne Madsen Report, 12 October 2005 :
"There are indications that the CIA's Counter Proliferation efforts in Iraq prior to the war may have ... been compromised by the outing by the White House of Valerie Plame Wilson and Brewster Jennings & Associates.
"Iraqi assets in a position to know about the destruction of Iraqi WMDs by 1995 may have been executed by remnants of Iraq's security services and other paramilitaries working for the U.S. in order to silence them as witnesses to Iraq's WMD disarmament eight years prior to the U.S. invasion."
~~
Cabinda, Aceh, Southern Cameroons, Western Sahara, Igboland, Ogonoland, Somaliland, Turkoman, Assyrians...
http://www.waynemadsenreport.com/
Extracts from Wayne Madsen Report, 9 October 2005:
The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) is a Hague-based international organization of ethnic minorities who are repressed by the New World Order triad of corporate, military, and neo-con totalitarianism...
On June 24, 2005, UNPO held its Eighth General Assembly in The Hague. Antonio Bento Bembe came to The Hague from the Angolan-occupied enclave of Cabinda, which has been fighting for independence against an unholy alliance of Angola, U.S. oil companies like Chevron Texaco, and U.S. mercenaries paid by the oil companies.
Bembe was arrested by Dutch police near The Hague's "Peace Palace," where the General Assembly was convening. The Bush administration quickly asked the Netherlands to extradite Bembe to the United States to stand trial.
The Dutch Foreign and Development ministries both expressed opposition to the arrest and suspected collusion between the Dutch Justice Ministry and the U.S. Justice Department, as well as the Department of State, headed by Condoleezza Rice, a former board director for Chevron and an opponent of self-determination for minority groups around the world where such support threatens the interests of oil and gas companies:
Aceh in Indonesia,
Southern Cameroons,
Western Sahara,
Igboland and Ogoniland in Nigeria,
and Somaliland.
The proposed Iraqi constitution, up for a referendum on October 15 that is widely expected to to be rigged by the neo-con occupation commissars, is being rejected by two ethnic minorities represented in UNPO -- the Turkoman and the Assyrians -- because it does not guarantee ethnic minority rights for their peoples.
All these regions, plus Cabinda, are experiencing civil wars being waged between poor, disenfranchised minorities and pillaging U.S. and British oil companies and their paid guns for hire.
Displaying the fact that the Bush administration is nothing more than a wholly-owned subsidiary of the U.S. oil industry, Bembe, a Cabindan peace negotiator, was arrested by the Dutch on the request of the Americans for his alleged role in the kidnapping of a Chevron employee in Cabinda in 1990.
Chevron and a network of shadowy mercenary firms, employing former members of the US Special Forces from Vietnam and the contra wars in Central America, have militarily supported the Angolan occupation of oil-rich Cabinda since 1975...
This editor pointed out in the 2003 article: "Just a brief overview of UNPO membership illustrates the battle lines: Muslims in Aceh province in northwest Sumatra are battling Indonesian army forcesfronting for Exxon Mobil, which has extensive installations in the province. The United States is considering resuming military aid to Indonesia to put down that rebellion and another involving UNPO member West Papua, an illegally annexed province fighting Indonesia and the U.S. mining company Freeport McMoran for control of its copper and other natural resources. UNPO member Cabinda, an Angolan enclave fighting for independence against Angola, is now being attacked by U.S. mercenaries in the pay of oil companies like Chevron, on whose board Condoleezza Rice once sat.
"Even native Americans are no longer safe from renewed Federal subjugation. One of the members of UNPO is the Sioux Lakota Nation, the scene of past bloody battles between encroaching Federal troops and FBI agent and the Sioux. With a mere stroke of a pen, the State Department can label the Lakota Sioux or native Hawaiians as linked to 'terrorists' in East Turkestan, Chechnya, or Burma (Myanmar) - and they can have their assets frozen and their leadership tossed into jails or large capacity 'detention centers' now being advanced by two Bush appointees on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission."
Recently, FBI agents murdered in cold blood a Puerto Rican independence leader. The Bush regime's lack of response to Hurricane Katrina has resulted in the depopulation of unique ethnic mixture of African Americans, Acadians ("Cajuns"), and Native Americans in Louisiana (see article directly below). The neo-cons have shown, just as did their Nazi co-ideologists sixty years ago, that they are avid supporters and facilitators of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
~~
Extracts from Wayne Madsen Report, 9 October 2005:
The Unrepresented Nations and Peoples Organization (UNPO) is a Hague-based international organization of ethnic minorities who are repressed by the New World Order triad of corporate, military, and neo-con totalitarianism...
On June 24, 2005, UNPO held its Eighth General Assembly in The Hague. Antonio Bento Bembe came to The Hague from the Angolan-occupied enclave of Cabinda, which has been fighting for independence against an unholy alliance of Angola, U.S. oil companies like Chevron Texaco, and U.S. mercenaries paid by the oil companies.
Bembe was arrested by Dutch police near The Hague's "Peace Palace," where the General Assembly was convening. The Bush administration quickly asked the Netherlands to extradite Bembe to the United States to stand trial.
The Dutch Foreign and Development ministries both expressed opposition to the arrest and suspected collusion between the Dutch Justice Ministry and the U.S. Justice Department, as well as the Department of State, headed by Condoleezza Rice, a former board director for Chevron and an opponent of self-determination for minority groups around the world where such support threatens the interests of oil and gas companies:
Aceh in Indonesia,
Southern Cameroons,
Western Sahara,
Igboland and Ogoniland in Nigeria,
and Somaliland.
The proposed Iraqi constitution, up for a referendum on October 15 that is widely expected to to be rigged by the neo-con occupation commissars, is being rejected by two ethnic minorities represented in UNPO -- the Turkoman and the Assyrians -- because it does not guarantee ethnic minority rights for their peoples.
All these regions, plus Cabinda, are experiencing civil wars being waged between poor, disenfranchised minorities and pillaging U.S. and British oil companies and their paid guns for hire.
Displaying the fact that the Bush administration is nothing more than a wholly-owned subsidiary of the U.S. oil industry, Bembe, a Cabindan peace negotiator, was arrested by the Dutch on the request of the Americans for his alleged role in the kidnapping of a Chevron employee in Cabinda in 1990.
Chevron and a network of shadowy mercenary firms, employing former members of the US Special Forces from Vietnam and the contra wars in Central America, have militarily supported the Angolan occupation of oil-rich Cabinda since 1975...
This editor pointed out in the 2003 article: "Just a brief overview of UNPO membership illustrates the battle lines: Muslims in Aceh province in northwest Sumatra are battling Indonesian army forcesfronting for Exxon Mobil, which has extensive installations in the province. The United States is considering resuming military aid to Indonesia to put down that rebellion and another involving UNPO member West Papua, an illegally annexed province fighting Indonesia and the U.S. mining company Freeport McMoran for control of its copper and other natural resources. UNPO member Cabinda, an Angolan enclave fighting for independence against Angola, is now being attacked by U.S. mercenaries in the pay of oil companies like Chevron, on whose board Condoleezza Rice once sat.
"Even native Americans are no longer safe from renewed Federal subjugation. One of the members of UNPO is the Sioux Lakota Nation, the scene of past bloody battles between encroaching Federal troops and FBI agent and the Sioux. With a mere stroke of a pen, the State Department can label the Lakota Sioux or native Hawaiians as linked to 'terrorists' in East Turkestan, Chechnya, or Burma (Myanmar) - and they can have their assets frozen and their leadership tossed into jails or large capacity 'detention centers' now being advanced by two Bush appointees on the U.S. Civil Rights Commission."
Recently, FBI agents murdered in cold blood a Puerto Rican independence leader. The Bush regime's lack of response to Hurricane Katrina has resulted in the depopulation of unique ethnic mixture of African Americans, Acadians ("Cajuns"), and Native Americans in Louisiana (see article directly below). The neo-cons have shown, just as did their Nazi co-ideologists sixty years ago, that they are avid supporters and facilitators of genocide and ethnic cleansing.
~~
Tuesday, October 11, 2005
Almost half of UK children are leaving primary school without the basic skills
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2-1819188,00.html
According to The Times, 10 October 2005, almost half of UK children are leaving primary school without the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.
Official unpublished figures obtained by The Times reveal that, after six years of schooling, 44 per cent of 11-year-olds have not achieved Level 4, the expected standard set by the Government, for the combined “three Rs”.
Ministers repeatedly emphasise that meeting this grade is critical for pupils to cope with the secondary school curriculum.
In an e-mail shown to The Times, a member of the Department for Education and Skills, responsible for compiling the data, wrote: “We have not in the past provided an analysis of those pupils achieving Level 4 and above in the [sic] all of the above subjects, but have done so for English, mathematics and science. This figure will be released in the final 2004 KS2 publication, scheduled for June 2005.”
Last week Ofsted, the schools watchdog, said that thousands of children were starting secondary school unable to read and write properly because of poor teaching in one in three English lessons.
In December David Bell, the chief inspector of England’s schools, said urgent Government intervention was required to rescue pupils from illiteracy. His endorsement of the traditional phonics methods of teaching English was backed by Nick Gibb, the Shadow Schools Minister.
Ed Davey, education spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, accused the Government of taking “their eye off the ball of the basic skills in primary education”. “This is hugely embarrassing for Ministers boasting of improvements and proves there are questions regarding how they are running the education policy,” he said.
~~
According to The Times, 10 October 2005, almost half of UK children are leaving primary school without the basic skills of reading, writing and arithmetic.
Official unpublished figures obtained by The Times reveal that, after six years of schooling, 44 per cent of 11-year-olds have not achieved Level 4, the expected standard set by the Government, for the combined “three Rs”.
Ministers repeatedly emphasise that meeting this grade is critical for pupils to cope with the secondary school curriculum.
In an e-mail shown to The Times, a member of the Department for Education and Skills, responsible for compiling the data, wrote: “We have not in the past provided an analysis of those pupils achieving Level 4 and above in the [sic] all of the above subjects, but have done so for English, mathematics and science. This figure will be released in the final 2004 KS2 publication, scheduled for June 2005.”
Last week Ofsted, the schools watchdog, said that thousands of children were starting secondary school unable to read and write properly because of poor teaching in one in three English lessons.
In December David Bell, the chief inspector of England’s schools, said urgent Government intervention was required to rescue pupils from illiteracy. His endorsement of the traditional phonics methods of teaching English was backed by Nick Gibb, the Shadow Schools Minister.
Ed Davey, education spokesman for the Liberal Democrats, accused the Government of taking “their eye off the ball of the basic skills in primary education”. “This is hugely embarrassing for Ministers boasting of improvements and proves there are questions regarding how they are running the education policy,” he said.
~~
Monday, October 10, 2005
Big trouble in China
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1588521,00.html
Benjamin Joffe-Walt, 10 October 2005, in the Guardian, wrote about Lu Banglie:
"He lay there - his eye out of its socket, his tongue cut, a stream of blood dropping from his mouth, his body limp, twisted. The ligaments in his neck were broken, so his head lay sideways as if connected to the rest of his body by a rubber band....
"Mr Lu spent his adult life working to empower villagers and to get the attention of Beijing and the world. He was beaten up many times, had scars all over his body. This, he thought, was part of his work...
"What I can tell you is that what's going on in Taishi is perhaps the most significant grassroots social movement China has seen since the Cultural Revolution, a rural revolt against corruption, against deterioration of healthcare, against the illegal sale of farmland, and broadly against urban capitalism that has reaped no benefits for these farmers."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1588510,00.html
Jonathan Watts, on 10 October 2005, in The Guardian:
"One of China's leading democracy activists has been beaten, possibly to death, in front of a Guardian journalist. Lu Banglie was last seen lying unconscious on the side of the road on Saturday night after an assault by a mob which had joined forces with police to stop a car containing him, the Guardian's Shanghai correspondent, Benjamin Joffe-Walt, and two other people.
"They were on their way to Taishi, a village in the southern province of Guangdong which has become the latest flashpoint in a growing wave of rural unrest that is proving the greatest threat to the rule of the Communist party since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989...
"Mr Lu, one of a new breed of peasant leaders elected without the support of the party, had been in the area on the outskirts of Guangzhou city since August, encouraging residents to vote out officials accused of corruption.
"With Taishi seen as a symbol of the movement for peasant rights, this was an increasingly dangerous activity. Several academics, lawyers and human rights campaigners have been arrested by police and threatened by a mob that villagers say has been hired to keep visitors away. Several journalists who have entered the area have been detained or beaten, most recently last Friday, when correspondents for Radio France and the South China Morning Post were assaulted."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1588726,00.html
Jonathan Watts, 10 October 2005, in The Guardian:
"Lu Banglie... was one of the first popularly elected village chiefs in China. In contrast to the students from elite universities who were at the centre of the demonstrations 16 years ago, he spent most of his life - like the vast majority of the 1.3 billion population - as an ordinary farmer.
"But growing social inequality, rising awareness of legal rights and the advent of the internet prompted the 34-year-old and many others to campaign in a way that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Taishi, the scene of the beating that appears to have cost Mr Lu his life, has become a symbol of this movement. The protests seek to capitalise on the democratic rights granted to villages at the end of the 1980s, but which have been widely ignored by officials.
"Little more than two decades ago, this community on Guangzhou's outskirts was filled with farmers and paddyfields; now many of its 2,000 residents work in the industrial park. But lifestyle changes have failed to keep up with rising expectations. As is the case for most of the tens of thousands of protests each year, frustrations have focused on a land dispute and suspicions of corruption among local cadres. The Taishi saga started on July 28 when 400 villagers petitioned to remove the village chief, Chen Jinsheng, whom they accused of embezzling collective funds from land sales and factory rentals.
"Rural unrest throughout China is on the increase. The government says 3.6 million people took part in 74,000 'mass incidents' last year, up from 58,000 in 2003. In April, villagers in Huankantou, in Zhejiang province, beat off 1,000 riot police in a dispute over pollution from chemical factories built on disputed property. In June, six residents of Shengyou village, in Hebei province, 125 miles south of Beijing, were killed by 300 government-hired men seeking to seize farmland from villagers. Last month, hundreds of farmers in Meishan county in Zhejiang staged a demonstration against a battery factory. Hundreds of smaller incidents are thought to go unreported every week."
~~~
Benjamin Joffe-Walt, 10 October 2005, in the Guardian, wrote about Lu Banglie:
"He lay there - his eye out of its socket, his tongue cut, a stream of blood dropping from his mouth, his body limp, twisted. The ligaments in his neck were broken, so his head lay sideways as if connected to the rest of his body by a rubber band....
"Mr Lu spent his adult life working to empower villagers and to get the attention of Beijing and the world. He was beaten up many times, had scars all over his body. This, he thought, was part of his work...
"What I can tell you is that what's going on in Taishi is perhaps the most significant grassroots social movement China has seen since the Cultural Revolution, a rural revolt against corruption, against deterioration of healthcare, against the illegal sale of farmland, and broadly against urban capitalism that has reaped no benefits for these farmers."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1588510,00.html
Jonathan Watts, on 10 October 2005, in The Guardian:
"One of China's leading democracy activists has been beaten, possibly to death, in front of a Guardian journalist. Lu Banglie was last seen lying unconscious on the side of the road on Saturday night after an assault by a mob which had joined forces with police to stop a car containing him, the Guardian's Shanghai correspondent, Benjamin Joffe-Walt, and two other people.
"They were on their way to Taishi, a village in the southern province of Guangdong which has become the latest flashpoint in a growing wave of rural unrest that is proving the greatest threat to the rule of the Communist party since the Tiananmen Square protests in 1989...
"Mr Lu, one of a new breed of peasant leaders elected without the support of the party, had been in the area on the outskirts of Guangzhou city since August, encouraging residents to vote out officials accused of corruption.
"With Taishi seen as a symbol of the movement for peasant rights, this was an increasingly dangerous activity. Several academics, lawyers and human rights campaigners have been arrested by police and threatened by a mob that villagers say has been hired to keep visitors away. Several journalists who have entered the area have been detained or beaten, most recently last Friday, when correspondents for Radio France and the South China Morning Post were assaulted."
http://www.guardian.co.uk/international/story/0,3604,1588726,00.html
Jonathan Watts, 10 October 2005, in The Guardian:
"Lu Banglie... was one of the first popularly elected village chiefs in China. In contrast to the students from elite universities who were at the centre of the demonstrations 16 years ago, he spent most of his life - like the vast majority of the 1.3 billion population - as an ordinary farmer.
"But growing social inequality, rising awareness of legal rights and the advent of the internet prompted the 34-year-old and many others to campaign in a way that would have been unthinkable a few years ago. Taishi, the scene of the beating that appears to have cost Mr Lu his life, has become a symbol of this movement. The protests seek to capitalise on the democratic rights granted to villages at the end of the 1980s, but which have been widely ignored by officials.
"Little more than two decades ago, this community on Guangzhou's outskirts was filled with farmers and paddyfields; now many of its 2,000 residents work in the industrial park. But lifestyle changes have failed to keep up with rising expectations. As is the case for most of the tens of thousands of protests each year, frustrations have focused on a land dispute and suspicions of corruption among local cadres. The Taishi saga started on July 28 when 400 villagers petitioned to remove the village chief, Chen Jinsheng, whom they accused of embezzling collective funds from land sales and factory rentals.
"Rural unrest throughout China is on the increase. The government says 3.6 million people took part in 74,000 'mass incidents' last year, up from 58,000 in 2003. In April, villagers in Huankantou, in Zhejiang province, beat off 1,000 riot police in a dispute over pollution from chemical factories built on disputed property. In June, six residents of Shengyou village, in Hebei province, 125 miles south of Beijing, were killed by 300 government-hired men seeking to seize farmland from villagers. Last month, hundreds of farmers in Meishan county in Zhejiang staged a demonstration against a battery factory. Hundreds of smaller incidents are thought to go unreported every week."
~~~
Sunday, October 09, 2005
Calvi trial
http://www.sundayherald.com/52182
Philip Willan, in The Sunday Herald 9 October 2005, reminds us that the Calvi trial is opening in Rome, although nothing much will happen for a few weeks.
Five people are on trial for Calvi's murder.
The main question is - who were the puppet masters?
Prosecutors allege that Calvi was killed by members of the Mafia and the Neapolitan Camorra because he had lost and embezzled their money.
The murder may be linked to the secrets that Calvi was threatening to reveal as he tried 'to plug an £800 million hole in the books of his Banco Ambrosiano'.
Calvi’s had links to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the American head of the Vatican bank.
The Banco Ambrosiano had been secretly and illegally funding political parties and its chairman was a member of the P2 Masonic lodge, 'a shadowy right-wing group accused of plotting subversion.'
“Among the reasons for which we believe Calvi was killed was the fear that he might start telling all he knew,” said Luca Tescaroli, the lead prosecutor in the case. “He was in a position to blackmail the Vatican bank, the leaders of the P2 lodge and his associates in government institutions. There are certainly scabrous epi sodes involved, which we will attempt to explore during the course of the trial.”
Chief among the defendants is Carboni, a Sardinian businessman and former real estate partner of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who helped to organise Calvi’s final journey and accompanied him to London.
~~
Philip Willan, in The Sunday Herald 9 October 2005, reminds us that the Calvi trial is opening in Rome, although nothing much will happen for a few weeks.
Five people are on trial for Calvi's murder.
The main question is - who were the puppet masters?
Prosecutors allege that Calvi was killed by members of the Mafia and the Neapolitan Camorra because he had lost and embezzled their money.
The murder may be linked to the secrets that Calvi was threatening to reveal as he tried 'to plug an £800 million hole in the books of his Banco Ambrosiano'.
Calvi’s had links to Archbishop Paul Marcinkus, the American head of the Vatican bank.
The Banco Ambrosiano had been secretly and illegally funding political parties and its chairman was a member of the P2 Masonic lodge, 'a shadowy right-wing group accused of plotting subversion.'
“Among the reasons for which we believe Calvi was killed was the fear that he might start telling all he knew,” said Luca Tescaroli, the lead prosecutor in the case. “He was in a position to blackmail the Vatican bank, the leaders of the P2 lodge and his associates in government institutions. There are certainly scabrous epi sodes involved, which we will attempt to explore during the course of the trial.”
Chief among the defendants is Carboni, a Sardinian businessman and former real estate partner of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi, who helped to organise Calvi’s final journey and accompanied him to London.
~~
David Cameron is as undesirable as Tory Blair?
~
David Cameron:
1. Pro-war in Iraq
2. Educated at Eton and Oxford
3. Has a baronet for a father-in-law
4. Reportedly backed by Michael Howard and the right-wing media.
http://www.sundayherald.com/52152
James Cusick, in the Sunday Herald, 9 October 2005, wrote about David Cameron in an article entitled 'Here comes Tory Blair'.
Some points made by Cusick:
Cameron was a special adviser to Michael Howard when he was home secretary.
Cameron was a central member of the campaign team that helped Michael Howard become party leader.
Cameron and George Osborne became Howard’s most senior advisers.
They spoke to Howard before his weekly Prime Minister’s Questions battle with Blair.
A Clarke supporter said: “You could never say Michael was well equipped to deal with Blair. He wasn’t. It was often painful: you expected much and you got little. And Cameron has to take part of the blame. Even on Hutton [a reference to the report into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly] it was painful.
“David Cameron was charged by Michael to become his Hutton expert. And what did Michael say on the day the Hutton report was delivered? He said: “We accept his conclusions”. We should have scored, it looked like we were bleeding.”
Howard appears to want Cameron as Tory leader.
~
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1817287_1,00.html
In the Sunday Times, 9 October 2005, Michael Portillo wrote:
"Howard ... virtually passed the torch to David Cameron. So why, when he was calling the shots, did Howard fight such a mean-spirited and reactionary general election campaign?
"...Cameron has George Osborne and Michael Gove. If he became leader he would have Oliver Letwin and Maude too...
"Maybe Cameron is, despite appearances, the least nice among them. He can be abrasive with underlings. There are signs of prima donna-like behaviour. Of course, those are symptoms of immaturity...
"If the Tory members elect Cameron it will again be because he is the fresh face, in other words because they hardly know him. Last week the best speech of all was Hague’s. It goes to show that you can be good at oratory but bad at leading...
"If the Tories choose Cameron, and if because of inexperience he then crashes and burns, hopes of modernising the party will also disappear in flames. A fourth annihilation at the polls might prove terminal for the Conservative party."
~
David Cameron:
1. Pro-war in Iraq
2. Educated at Eton and Oxford
3. Has a baronet for a father-in-law
4. Reportedly backed by Michael Howard and the right-wing media.
http://www.sundayherald.com/52152
James Cusick, in the Sunday Herald, 9 October 2005, wrote about David Cameron in an article entitled 'Here comes Tory Blair'.
Some points made by Cusick:
Cameron was a special adviser to Michael Howard when he was home secretary.
Cameron was a central member of the campaign team that helped Michael Howard become party leader.
Cameron and George Osborne became Howard’s most senior advisers.
They spoke to Howard before his weekly Prime Minister’s Questions battle with Blair.
A Clarke supporter said: “You could never say Michael was well equipped to deal with Blair. He wasn’t. It was often painful: you expected much and you got little. And Cameron has to take part of the blame. Even on Hutton [a reference to the report into the death of weapons expert Dr David Kelly] it was painful.
“David Cameron was charged by Michael to become his Hutton expert. And what did Michael say on the day the Hutton report was delivered? He said: “We accept his conclusions”. We should have scored, it looked like we were bleeding.”
Howard appears to want Cameron as Tory leader.
~
http://www.timesonline.co.uk/article/0,,2088-1817287_1,00.html
In the Sunday Times, 9 October 2005, Michael Portillo wrote:
"Howard ... virtually passed the torch to David Cameron. So why, when he was calling the shots, did Howard fight such a mean-spirited and reactionary general election campaign?
"...Cameron has George Osborne and Michael Gove. If he became leader he would have Oliver Letwin and Maude too...
"Maybe Cameron is, despite appearances, the least nice among them. He can be abrasive with underlings. There are signs of prima donna-like behaviour. Of course, those are symptoms of immaturity...
"If the Tory members elect Cameron it will again be because he is the fresh face, in other words because they hardly know him. Last week the best speech of all was Hague’s. It goes to show that you can be good at oratory but bad at leading...
"If the Tories choose Cameron, and if because of inexperience he then crashes and burns, hopes of modernising the party will also disappear in flames. A fourth annihilation at the polls might prove terminal for the Conservative party."
~
Saturday, October 08, 2005
Breaking up the Arab world
Xymphora directs our attention to:
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ07Ak01.html
"Lebanese lawyer Bushra al-Khalil... told al-Jazeera that 'Hariri's death is part of the plan to divide the region into tiny helpless sectarian states.
"This plan has started in Iraq and it will continue to hit all other Arab countries.'It's clearly understood in vast swathes of the Middle East that the crucial trait of Bush's Greater Middle East implies a coup de grace against Arab nationalism - wherever it is manifested. It's always important to remember that most borders in the Arab world are totally artificial, imposed above all by British colonialism.
"For Washington, the real enemy is not Islamic fundamentalism: it's Arab nationalism. For decades the ultimate target of Israeli foreign policy has been to sow disunion among Arabs. Secular Arab nationalism is the ultimate threat to Israel, thus to the US, in neo-con thinking. The crux is not religious: it's political."
and:
"Progressive, secular Arab intellectuals stress that Washington-Jerusalem will never tolerate united Arab lands. They stress that the Greater Middle East package is pure 'strategic intimidation' designed to 'eliminate any form of Arab or Muslim unity considered as a threat to the US strategy, and that of its strategic ally, Israel', as Mahua Daoudi, a Syrian intellectual and scholar at the CNRS think tank in Geneva, put it."
and:
"... in the Arab world, as Asia Times Online has learned, the fear is that the death of Iraq will mean in fact the death of Arab nationalism. That's the view, among others, of Abdullah al-Ashaal, a former planner at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: he sustains that de-Ba'athification is being instrumentalized to blow up the foundation of the Iraqi state; Iraq's Arab identity is being threatened so three statelets based on ethnic-religious differences may be created.
"The same analysis is shared by Paris-based Lebanese Antoine Basbous, director of the Observatory of the Arab Countries. He confirms that pan-Arabism is a key target of Bush's Greater Middle East and is convinced Iraq's break up is inevitable, not so much because it was an initial American objective, but because now, with extremism being unleashed on all fronts, Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds are ready to go to battle to preserve their interests. More worringly, Basbous predicts that this pattern will be repeated all over the Middle East.
"The neo-con allegation that democracy is incompatible with Islam is rubbish: Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Turkey, all Muslim countries, are democracies. The specific - and crucial - problem of Arab lands is that the US cannot possibly promote democracy beyond mere rhetoric; otherwise its satraps and client states are in danger of being taken over by Islamist-leaning and certainly anti-US regimes. That would certainly be the case in Egypt and Saudi Arabia."
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/10/war-on-pan-arab-nationalism.html
Xymphora, on 7 October 2005, explained what is going on in the Middle East.
It is correct to see many of the current scandals in Washington (Plame, Franklin/AIPAC, Abramoff, and DeLay) as the reaction by patriotic Americans to the wholesale capture of American foreign policy by Israeli interests.
However, it is also important to remember that American fear of pan-Arab nationalism predates its current unhealthy relationship with Israel by decades.
The CIA started to covertly sponsor the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1950's, in reaction to Nasser and the perception of his ability to forge a pan-Arab alliance.
The whole thing starts to make sense when you realize that al Qaeda is just an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Terrorism destabilizes Arab countries and simultaneously provides the excuse, via the 'war on terror', for American military intervention.
The ultimate goal is to prevent pan-Arab alliances, and ultimately to break up any states which could be threatening to Israel into unimportant statelets (the strategy described by Yinon, discussed here many times).
The current neo-con/Zionist trick has been to piggy-back Israeli interests on the long-standing fear of the Washington establishment of any pan-Arab alliance, based on a perception of the loss of power inherent in loss of total control of the oil fields (imagine what would happen if the oil wealth was controled for the benefit of all the Arab peoples, rather than just for those elites installed by the colonialists).
Iraq is the first example of the long-term American-Israeli strategy, with Syria - the only remaining state sponsor of socialist, pan-Arab nationalism - to follow (it is becoming obvious that the plan is to partition Syria by giving its eastern portions to the new destabilizing statelet of Kurdistan).
The only response of the Arab peoples, if they are to avoid total annihilation, is to work even more quickly towards the goal which Israel and the United States are trying to destroy, Arab nationalism. Stop taking the bait and fighting amongst yourselves!
~~
http://www.atimes.com/atimes/Middle_East/GJ07Ak01.html
"Lebanese lawyer Bushra al-Khalil... told al-Jazeera that 'Hariri's death is part of the plan to divide the region into tiny helpless sectarian states.
"This plan has started in Iraq and it will continue to hit all other Arab countries.'It's clearly understood in vast swathes of the Middle East that the crucial trait of Bush's Greater Middle East implies a coup de grace against Arab nationalism - wherever it is manifested. It's always important to remember that most borders in the Arab world are totally artificial, imposed above all by British colonialism.
"For Washington, the real enemy is not Islamic fundamentalism: it's Arab nationalism. For decades the ultimate target of Israeli foreign policy has been to sow disunion among Arabs. Secular Arab nationalism is the ultimate threat to Israel, thus to the US, in neo-con thinking. The crux is not religious: it's political."
and:
"Progressive, secular Arab intellectuals stress that Washington-Jerusalem will never tolerate united Arab lands. They stress that the Greater Middle East package is pure 'strategic intimidation' designed to 'eliminate any form of Arab or Muslim unity considered as a threat to the US strategy, and that of its strategic ally, Israel', as Mahua Daoudi, a Syrian intellectual and scholar at the CNRS think tank in Geneva, put it."
and:
"... in the Arab world, as Asia Times Online has learned, the fear is that the death of Iraq will mean in fact the death of Arab nationalism. That's the view, among others, of Abdullah al-Ashaal, a former planner at the Egyptian Ministry of Foreign Affairs: he sustains that de-Ba'athification is being instrumentalized to blow up the foundation of the Iraqi state; Iraq's Arab identity is being threatened so three statelets based on ethnic-religious differences may be created.
"The same analysis is shared by Paris-based Lebanese Antoine Basbous, director of the Observatory of the Arab Countries. He confirms that pan-Arabism is a key target of Bush's Greater Middle East and is convinced Iraq's break up is inevitable, not so much because it was an initial American objective, but because now, with extremism being unleashed on all fronts, Sunnis, Shi'ites and Kurds are ready to go to battle to preserve their interests. More worringly, Basbous predicts that this pattern will be repeated all over the Middle East.
"The neo-con allegation that democracy is incompatible with Islam is rubbish: Indonesia, Malaysia, Bangladesh, Turkey, all Muslim countries, are democracies. The specific - and crucial - problem of Arab lands is that the US cannot possibly promote democracy beyond mere rhetoric; otherwise its satraps and client states are in danger of being taken over by Islamist-leaning and certainly anti-US regimes. That would certainly be the case in Egypt and Saudi Arabia."
http://xymphora.blogspot.com/2005/10/war-on-pan-arab-nationalism.html
Xymphora, on 7 October 2005, explained what is going on in the Middle East.
It is correct to see many of the current scandals in Washington (Plame, Franklin/AIPAC, Abramoff, and DeLay) as the reaction by patriotic Americans to the wholesale capture of American foreign policy by Israeli interests.
However, it is also important to remember that American fear of pan-Arab nationalism predates its current unhealthy relationship with Israel by decades.
The CIA started to covertly sponsor the Muslim Brotherhood in Egypt in the 1950's, in reaction to Nasser and the perception of his ability to forge a pan-Arab alliance.
The whole thing starts to make sense when you realize that al Qaeda is just an arm of the Muslim Brotherhood.
Terrorism destabilizes Arab countries and simultaneously provides the excuse, via the 'war on terror', for American military intervention.
The ultimate goal is to prevent pan-Arab alliances, and ultimately to break up any states which could be threatening to Israel into unimportant statelets (the strategy described by Yinon, discussed here many times).
The current neo-con/Zionist trick has been to piggy-back Israeli interests on the long-standing fear of the Washington establishment of any pan-Arab alliance, based on a perception of the loss of power inherent in loss of total control of the oil fields (imagine what would happen if the oil wealth was controled for the benefit of all the Arab peoples, rather than just for those elites installed by the colonialists).
Iraq is the first example of the long-term American-Israeli strategy, with Syria - the only remaining state sponsor of socialist, pan-Arab nationalism - to follow (it is becoming obvious that the plan is to partition Syria by giving its eastern portions to the new destabilizing statelet of Kurdistan).
The only response of the Arab peoples, if they are to avoid total annihilation, is to work even more quickly towards the goal which Israel and the United States are trying to destroy, Arab nationalism. Stop taking the bait and fighting amongst yourselves!
~~
Friday, October 07, 2005
Scotland's oil wealth and the BBC
http://www.theherald.co.uk/politics/48387.html
Douglas Fraser, in The Herald, 6 October 2005, reported on Scotland's oil wealth and the BBC.
According to The Herald, back in the 1970s, UK Labour government ministers worked with Conservative leaders and civil servants to intimidate the BBC.
They intimidated the BBC into blocking a series of programmes that were seen as encouraging support for the SNP.
This is according to secret government files.
Civil servants were ordered to find out the political leanings of academics taking part in the programmes, so that the BBC could be accused of bias towards the SNP.
The 1977 campaign to intimidate the BBC involved Michael Foot and John Smith, both of whom would go on to lead the Labour party, as well as Francis Pym, who was Conservative shadow leader of the Commons.
He was first to alert his opposite number, Mr Foot, to the programmes.
The civil servants involved in the campaign included a press officer in 10 Downing Street, and Jacqui Lait, who would go on to become a Tory MP and shadow Scottish secretary.
Helen Liddell, who became Scottish secretary and is now high commissioner in Australia, was involved in the operation as well. In 1977, she had just left the BBC and become general secretary of the Labour party in Scotland.
The five programmes were made by the corporation in 1977 to examine how Scotland might look by 1980 if it became independent.
At the time, the SNP had 11 MPs at Westminster, and the district council elections threatened Labour and Conservatives with a continued Nationalist surge.
The pressure on the BBC was successful in having the programmes postponed, though they were broadcast after the council elections.
Information released under the freedom of information legislation has shown how a Labour minister in the Scottish Office, Harry Ewing, now Lord Ewing, feared the implications of the broadcast were "serious enough to warrant intervention by the government at the most senior level".
~
Douglas Fraser, in The Herald, 6 October 2005, reported on Scotland's oil wealth and the BBC.
According to The Herald, back in the 1970s, UK Labour government ministers worked with Conservative leaders and civil servants to intimidate the BBC.
They intimidated the BBC into blocking a series of programmes that were seen as encouraging support for the SNP.
This is according to secret government files.
Civil servants were ordered to find out the political leanings of academics taking part in the programmes, so that the BBC could be accused of bias towards the SNP.
The 1977 campaign to intimidate the BBC involved Michael Foot and John Smith, both of whom would go on to lead the Labour party, as well as Francis Pym, who was Conservative shadow leader of the Commons.
He was first to alert his opposite number, Mr Foot, to the programmes.
The civil servants involved in the campaign included a press officer in 10 Downing Street, and Jacqui Lait, who would go on to become a Tory MP and shadow Scottish secretary.
Helen Liddell, who became Scottish secretary and is now high commissioner in Australia, was involved in the operation as well. In 1977, she had just left the BBC and become general secretary of the Labour party in Scotland.
The five programmes were made by the corporation in 1977 to examine how Scotland might look by 1980 if it became independent.
At the time, the SNP had 11 MPs at Westminster, and the district council elections threatened Labour and Conservatives with a continued Nationalist surge.
The pressure on the BBC was successful in having the programmes postponed, though they were broadcast after the council elections.
Information released under the freedom of information legislation has shown how a Labour minister in the Scottish Office, Harry Ewing, now Lord Ewing, feared the implications of the broadcast were "serious enough to warrant intervention by the government at the most senior level".
~
Scotland: average earnings would stand at £11,779 higher per person
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2049312005
'The Scotsman', 7 October 2005, reports on Scotland's oil wealth.
The Scottish National Party has said that Scotland's economy would have been £46 billion better off if Scotland been independent for the past 30 years and in control of the oil reserves.
SNP economy spokesman Jim Mather has said that, based on research into the Norwegian oil fund, Scotland's GDP would have been 59% higher than the current level and average earnings would stand at £11,779 higher per person.
Mr Mather told the Scottish Parliament: "When you look at that £46 billion, that would have generated an extra £18 million of income per annum and it's therefore easier to see we could have accumulated over those 30 years the £100 million that the Norwegians have in their oil find for future generations.
"In addition, that climate would have created greater life expectancy, a higher population level and a quality of service and infrastructure that would have boosted our economy."
Mr Mather said Scotland now had a second chance, with the current state of the world economy suiting small countries.
"The poor people in Scotland who are struggling to make ends meet, struggling to get a job, struggling to move forward, blaming themselves, suffering low self-esteem, need to look at this government and this failed system," he said.
~
'The Scotsman', 7 October 2005, reports on Scotland's oil wealth.
The Scottish National Party has said that Scotland's economy would have been £46 billion better off if Scotland been independent for the past 30 years and in control of the oil reserves.
SNP economy spokesman Jim Mather has said that, based on research into the Norwegian oil fund, Scotland's GDP would have been 59% higher than the current level and average earnings would stand at £11,779 higher per person.
Mr Mather told the Scottish Parliament: "When you look at that £46 billion, that would have generated an extra £18 million of income per annum and it's therefore easier to see we could have accumulated over those 30 years the £100 million that the Norwegians have in their oil find for future generations.
"In addition, that climate would have created greater life expectancy, a higher population level and a quality of service and infrastructure that would have boosted our economy."
Mr Mather said Scotland now had a second chance, with the current state of the world economy suiting small countries.
"The poor people in Scotland who are struggling to make ends meet, struggling to get a job, struggling to move forward, blaming themselves, suffering low self-esteem, need to look at this government and this failed system," he said.
~
Websites blocked?
http://www.prisonplanet.com/articles/october2005/051005timewarnercensors.htm
From Prisonplanet:
AOL Time-Warner Censors Alex Jones WebsitesNationwide blackout a clear attempt to shut down free speech or just an error?
Prison Planet October 5 2005
Has Time Warner's ISP, Road Runner, blocked access to all of Alex Jones' flagship websites across the entire United States or is this a wider Internet blackout issue?
We were first alerted to this problem early this morning when several locals in Austin reported that they were unable to access Infowars.com, PrisonPlanet.com or Prison Planet.tv.
Austin Time Warner had previously shut down access to our websites on a whim, claiming they were 'hate material' but in all cases had quickly restored them after receiving complaints.
However, this latest attack on free speech is occurring nationwide, with Time Warner subscribers from New York to California reporting that their access to the websites is being blocked. Is this deliberate or an Internet-wide issue? Only time will tell.
The last attempt to shut us down came shortly after the London Bombings, which saw our traffic go through the roof after we released a plethora of articles exposing government involvement.
The consequence of this is that Prison Planet.com alone on some days gets more hits than the Britney Spears website or Rush Limbaugh.
Previously we reported that UK ISPs like Tiscali were blocking their subscribers from accessing the website after the 7/7 bombings.
It is obvious that those in high places are showing their disapproval. This only vindicates all the information we have been putting out.
How can a website that merely reports and comments on mainstream media articles be described as 'hate' unless there's a different agenda afoot? How can Bill O'Reilly get on Fox News and call for assassinating Prime Ministers and Pat Robertson on the 700 Club do the same and yet we get censored for being hateful? We have never called for violence against anyone and actively encourage peaceful exchange of information.
This is part of a growing trend of authoritarian censorship of the Internet in preparation for the emergence of Internet 2, where only government approved websites will be allowed to exist and the old Internet will be shut down.
Monolithic corporations in lock-step with government are following the Chinese model, where any website mildly anti-establishment is immediately shut down and its owners arrested. The vast majority of Internet cafes in China were shut down in 2002 after the government started a fire in one Beijing cafe and then demanded all the rest be shut down for 'safety reasons'.
Under anti-terrorism laws in Italy, Internet cafe owners are forced to take photo ID's of all their customers and install key-logging and filter software which blocks any websites the government chooses.
Today's actions by Time Warner may fall into the same category. The First Amendment is continuously under siege by jack-booted totalitarians in suits that graciously lick the boots and follow the orders of the establishment lackeys.
In 2002 Dell Computers cancelled an order placed by Weigand Combat Handguns because the company name triggered a security alert. The word 'combat' was not accepted by Dell's post-9/11 security alert system. This is an example of the inane and sweeping nature of these filtrations systems and the blanket idiocy applied to these cases.
We are urging all our readers to boycott any Time Warner/Road Runner ISP service and cancel your subscription with them. They have proven themselves time and time again to be an anti-American freedom hating tool of the establishment. Even if this latest incident turns out to be a technical error, their past history of censorship should concern everyone.
We urge you to double your efforts in spreading the truth. Copy and distribute our articles more than ever. We are under a direct assault, the only response needs to be a massive and powerful counter-offensive. To all alternative media websites, please post this article as we are all in the same boat, we are all under enemy fire.
Time Warner are already receiving a deluge of complaints and according to some are now claiming that this is an 'error' that they are looking into and citing other websites that have also been affected, even though these websites are having no problems.
We will update this article as and when Time Warner restores access to Alex Jones' websites. If they fail to do so we will carry telephone numbers and e mail addresses for people to make their complaints. If this is a technical error it should be solved ASAP, if it is something more then we will continue to pursue it.
~
From Prisonplanet:
AOL Time-Warner Censors Alex Jones WebsitesNationwide blackout a clear attempt to shut down free speech or just an error?
Prison Planet October 5 2005
Has Time Warner's ISP, Road Runner, blocked access to all of Alex Jones' flagship websites across the entire United States or is this a wider Internet blackout issue?
We were first alerted to this problem early this morning when several locals in Austin reported that they were unable to access Infowars.com, PrisonPlanet.com or Prison Planet.tv.
Austin Time Warner had previously shut down access to our websites on a whim, claiming they were 'hate material' but in all cases had quickly restored them after receiving complaints.
However, this latest attack on free speech is occurring nationwide, with Time Warner subscribers from New York to California reporting that their access to the websites is being blocked. Is this deliberate or an Internet-wide issue? Only time will tell.
The last attempt to shut us down came shortly after the London Bombings, which saw our traffic go through the roof after we released a plethora of articles exposing government involvement.
The consequence of this is that Prison Planet.com alone on some days gets more hits than the Britney Spears website or Rush Limbaugh.
Previously we reported that UK ISPs like Tiscali were blocking their subscribers from accessing the website after the 7/7 bombings.
It is obvious that those in high places are showing their disapproval. This only vindicates all the information we have been putting out.
How can a website that merely reports and comments on mainstream media articles be described as 'hate' unless there's a different agenda afoot? How can Bill O'Reilly get on Fox News and call for assassinating Prime Ministers and Pat Robertson on the 700 Club do the same and yet we get censored for being hateful? We have never called for violence against anyone and actively encourage peaceful exchange of information.
This is part of a growing trend of authoritarian censorship of the Internet in preparation for the emergence of Internet 2, where only government approved websites will be allowed to exist and the old Internet will be shut down.
Monolithic corporations in lock-step with government are following the Chinese model, where any website mildly anti-establishment is immediately shut down and its owners arrested. The vast majority of Internet cafes in China were shut down in 2002 after the government started a fire in one Beijing cafe and then demanded all the rest be shut down for 'safety reasons'.
Under anti-terrorism laws in Italy, Internet cafe owners are forced to take photo ID's of all their customers and install key-logging and filter software which blocks any websites the government chooses.
Today's actions by Time Warner may fall into the same category. The First Amendment is continuously under siege by jack-booted totalitarians in suits that graciously lick the boots and follow the orders of the establishment lackeys.
In 2002 Dell Computers cancelled an order placed by Weigand Combat Handguns because the company name triggered a security alert. The word 'combat' was not accepted by Dell's post-9/11 security alert system. This is an example of the inane and sweeping nature of these filtrations systems and the blanket idiocy applied to these cases.
We are urging all our readers to boycott any Time Warner/Road Runner ISP service and cancel your subscription with them. They have proven themselves time and time again to be an anti-American freedom hating tool of the establishment. Even if this latest incident turns out to be a technical error, their past history of censorship should concern everyone.
We urge you to double your efforts in spreading the truth. Copy and distribute our articles more than ever. We are under a direct assault, the only response needs to be a massive and powerful counter-offensive. To all alternative media websites, please post this article as we are all in the same boat, we are all under enemy fire.
Time Warner are already receiving a deluge of complaints and according to some are now claiming that this is an 'error' that they are looking into and citing other websites that have also been affected, even though these websites are having no problems.
We will update this article as and when Time Warner restores access to Alex Jones' websites. If they fail to do so we will carry telephone numbers and e mail addresses for people to make their complaints. If this is a technical error it should be solved ASAP, if it is something more then we will continue to pursue it.
~
Iran not interfering in Iraq-Iraqi prime minister
http://www.alertnet.org/thenews/newsdesk/L06105261.htm
Oct 6 (Reuters) - Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari on Thursday rejected accusations that Shi'ite Muslim Iran was interfering in Iraq's internal affairs.
Asked about accusations that Iran was interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq, Jaafari told Iranian state television: "Such accusations are baseless and we do not agree with them at all."
"Relations between Iran and Iraq are currently very friendly and strong and expanding. We are proud of the situation," he said. "Some people want to harm our existing friendly relations with Iran. But we will not let them do so. We are determined to expand our relations every day."
~
Oct 6 (Reuters) - Iraq's Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari on Thursday rejected accusations that Shi'ite Muslim Iran was interfering in Iraq's internal affairs.
Asked about accusations that Iran was interfering in the internal affairs of Iraq, Jaafari told Iranian state television: "Such accusations are baseless and we do not agree with them at all."
"Relations between Iran and Iraq are currently very friendly and strong and expanding. We are proud of the situation," he said. "Some people want to harm our existing friendly relations with Iran. But we will not let them do so. We are determined to expand our relations every day."
~
Wednesday, October 05, 2005
Britain carries out terrorist bombings in Iran?
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=3867
Iran Focus, 30 Sep 2005, refers to a possible act of UK terrorism which killed 7 people.
"The Chief Prosecutor of Iran’s south-western province of Khuzestan accused Canada and the United Kingdom on Friday of supporting and training individuals that carried out a spate of bombings in the provincial capital of Ahwaz in June.
"Seyyed Khalil Akbar al-Sadat, speaking at a gathering of the chief prosecutors of the country’s 30 provinces, said, 'The Khuzestan bombers were in contact with Britain and Canada and were being backed by them'.
"'The primary individuals responsible for the bombings were Iranian and were supported by foreign forces. They had received training in Britain and Canada and were in contact with these countries via the internet and mail”, the chief prosecutor announced.
"On June 12, seven people were killed and another 75 injured as a result of four bomb blasts in the oil-rich city of Ahwaz."
~~
Iran Focus, 30 Sep 2005, refers to a possible act of UK terrorism which killed 7 people.
"The Chief Prosecutor of Iran’s south-western province of Khuzestan accused Canada and the United Kingdom on Friday of supporting and training individuals that carried out a spate of bombings in the provincial capital of Ahwaz in June.
"Seyyed Khalil Akbar al-Sadat, speaking at a gathering of the chief prosecutors of the country’s 30 provinces, said, 'The Khuzestan bombers were in contact with Britain and Canada and were being backed by them'.
"'The primary individuals responsible for the bombings were Iranian and were supported by foreign forces. They had received training in Britain and Canada and were in contact with these countries via the internet and mail”, the chief prosecutor announced.
"On June 12, seven people were killed and another 75 injured as a result of four bomb blasts in the oil-rich city of Ahwaz."
~~
Thatcher, DeLay, Abramoff.
http://www.mirror.co.uk/news/tm_objectid=16201986&method=full&siteid=94762&headline=keep-it-sealed-keep-it-secret--name_page.html
Bob Roberts, Deputy Political Editor, in The Mirror, 3 October 2005, writes about Thatcher and a corruption probe involving Tom DeLay.
The Mirror claims that there is a document linking Margaret Thatcher to a US corruption probe and that 'is so explosive that civil servants have been asked to ensure it remains "sealed"'.
According to the Mirror:
Margaret Thatcher is said to have met Congressman Tom DeLay in Britain 'while he was on a suspected favours-for-freebies scam'.
'In return for his free holiday', DeLay 'allegedly backed legislation favourable to lobby groups'.
Disclosing that US authorities were seeking aid from UK counterparts, a secret Home Office briefing says: "One visit to the UK involved a meeting with Mrs Margaret Thatcher.
"Evidence is sought from her about that meeting and her involvement in the alleged deception and violation of US criminal laws."
Police will "sensitively" investigate the meeting, which took place in May 2000.
In the dossier headed "Secret...wider circulation strictly forbidden", civil servants then warn ministers: "There would be considerable press interest in this case if it were to become public knowledge.
"We have been asked by the US to keep this request 'sealed', which we take to mean as confidential as possible. This has been relayed to the Crown Office and Metropolitan Police.
"Our normal line is that we neither confirm nor deny the existence of any request until it is in the public domain and there is no reason to change that course of action here."
...Thatcher's... spokesman confirmed police had been in contact about the DeLay meeting. But he insisted there was no question of wrongdoing.
The document, leaked to the Mirror, informs ministers there has been an official request for "mutual legal assistance" from the US Department of Justice in Washington.
It said the request was part of a deception investigation "involving high-profile American and UK-based individuals, including a leading Congressman and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher". At the centre of the probe is high-profile lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is already under investigation in the US.
The document says: "US officials are investigating whether Abramoff was involved in obtaining legislative assistance from public officials in exchange for arranging and underwriting trips to the UK."
Investigators are also probing whether the public officials filed false reports relating to the trips.
The holidays involved playing golf at St Andrews in Scotland, dinner with unnamed members of the Scottish Parliament, theatre trips in London and luxury hotel accommodation.
Mr DeLay's staff also scheduled a meeting with Lady Thatcher.
The briefing adds that police investigating the meeting "have been asked to handle these inquiries sensitively given the nature of the individual concerned and the background to the request". Members of the Scottish Parliament will be questioned concerning any contacts they may have had with Abramoff, DeLay or members of their party.
Scottish police will collect hotel record, bills, invoices, and statements.
Lady Thatcher's spokesman said last night: "An approach was made to her office to confirm the bare details of the particular meeting. At this stage we are expecting nothing further.
"Lady Thatcher met Mr DeLay as as one politician meeting another. It was in no way a business meeting."
Thatcher's son Mark, 52, was fined £265,000 last year for helping to organise an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea...
Congressman DeLay, nicknamed The Hammer because of his tough-guy reputation, denies criminal conspiracy relating to party funds.
Abramoff insists he is innocent of any wrongdoing concerning millions of dollars in funding he received for helping Indian tribes set up casinos in their tribal homelands.
~~
Bob Roberts, Deputy Political Editor, in The Mirror, 3 October 2005, writes about Thatcher and a corruption probe involving Tom DeLay.
The Mirror claims that there is a document linking Margaret Thatcher to a US corruption probe and that 'is so explosive that civil servants have been asked to ensure it remains "sealed"'.
According to the Mirror:
Margaret Thatcher is said to have met Congressman Tom DeLay in Britain 'while he was on a suspected favours-for-freebies scam'.
'In return for his free holiday', DeLay 'allegedly backed legislation favourable to lobby groups'.
Disclosing that US authorities were seeking aid from UK counterparts, a secret Home Office briefing says: "One visit to the UK involved a meeting with Mrs Margaret Thatcher.
"Evidence is sought from her about that meeting and her involvement in the alleged deception and violation of US criminal laws."
Police will "sensitively" investigate the meeting, which took place in May 2000.
In the dossier headed "Secret...wider circulation strictly forbidden", civil servants then warn ministers: "There would be considerable press interest in this case if it were to become public knowledge.
"We have been asked by the US to keep this request 'sealed', which we take to mean as confidential as possible. This has been relayed to the Crown Office and Metropolitan Police.
"Our normal line is that we neither confirm nor deny the existence of any request until it is in the public domain and there is no reason to change that course of action here."
...Thatcher's... spokesman confirmed police had been in contact about the DeLay meeting. But he insisted there was no question of wrongdoing.
The document, leaked to the Mirror, informs ministers there has been an official request for "mutual legal assistance" from the US Department of Justice in Washington.
It said the request was part of a deception investigation "involving high-profile American and UK-based individuals, including a leading Congressman and former Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher". At the centre of the probe is high-profile lobbyist Jack Abramoff, who is already under investigation in the US.
The document says: "US officials are investigating whether Abramoff was involved in obtaining legislative assistance from public officials in exchange for arranging and underwriting trips to the UK."
Investigators are also probing whether the public officials filed false reports relating to the trips.
The holidays involved playing golf at St Andrews in Scotland, dinner with unnamed members of the Scottish Parliament, theatre trips in London and luxury hotel accommodation.
Mr DeLay's staff also scheduled a meeting with Lady Thatcher.
The briefing adds that police investigating the meeting "have been asked to handle these inquiries sensitively given the nature of the individual concerned and the background to the request". Members of the Scottish Parliament will be questioned concerning any contacts they may have had with Abramoff, DeLay or members of their party.
Scottish police will collect hotel record, bills, invoices, and statements.
Lady Thatcher's spokesman said last night: "An approach was made to her office to confirm the bare details of the particular meeting. At this stage we are expecting nothing further.
"Lady Thatcher met Mr DeLay as as one politician meeting another. It was in no way a business meeting."
Thatcher's son Mark, 52, was fined £265,000 last year for helping to organise an attempted coup in Equatorial Guinea...
Congressman DeLay, nicknamed The Hammer because of his tough-guy reputation, denies criminal conspiracy relating to party funds.
Abramoff insists he is innocent of any wrongdoing concerning millions of dollars in funding he received for helping Indian tribes set up casinos in their tribal homelands.
~~
Sunday, October 02, 2005
Details of tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are released.
http://www.nzherald.co.nz/section/story.cfm?c_id=1&objectid=14727
Eugene Bingham, at the New Zealand Herald, 25 September 1999, reports on the 'Tsunami bomb - NZ's devastating war secret.'
Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal.
An Auckland University professor seconded to the Army set off a series of underwater explosions triggering mini-tidal waves at Whangaparaoa in 1944 and 1945.
Professor Thomas Leech's work was considered so significant that United States defence chiefs said that if the project had been completed before the end of the war it could have played a role as effective as that of the atom bomb.
Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Papers stamped "top secret" show the US and British military were eager for Seal to be developed in the post-war years too.
They even considered sending Professor Leech to Bikini Atoll to view the US nuclear tests and see if they had any application to his work.
He did not make the visit, although a member of the US board of assessors of atomic tests, Dr Karl Compton, was sent to New Zealand.
"Dr Compton is impressed with Professor Leech's deductions on the Seal project and is prepared to recommend to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that all technical data from the test relevant to the Seal project should be made available to the New Zealand Government for further study by Professor Leech," said a July 1946 letter from Washington to Wellington.
Professor Leech, who died in his native Australia in 1973, was the university's dean of engineering from 1940 to 1950.
News of his being awarded a CBE in 1947 for research on a weapon led to speculation in newspapers around the world about what was being developed.
Though high-ranking New Zealand and US officers spoke out in support of the research, no details of it were released because the work was on-going.
A former colleague of Professor Leech, Neil Kirton, told the Weekend Herald that the experiments involved laying a pattern of explosives underwater to create a tsunami.
Small-scale explosions were carried out in the Pacific and off Whangaparaoa, which at the time was controlled by the Army.
It is unclear what happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded to Wellington Defence Headquarters late in the 1940s.
The bomb was never tested on a full scale, and Mr Kirton doubts that Aucklanders would have noticed the trials.
"Whether it could ever be resurrected ... Under some circumstances I think it could be devastating."
~~
Eugene Bingham, at the New Zealand Herald, 25 September 1999, reports on the 'Tsunami bomb - NZ's devastating war secret.'
Top-secret wartime experiments were conducted off the coast of Auckland to perfect a tidal wave bomb, declassified files reveal.
An Auckland University professor seconded to the Army set off a series of underwater explosions triggering mini-tidal waves at Whangaparaoa in 1944 and 1945.
Professor Thomas Leech's work was considered so significant that United States defence chiefs said that if the project had been completed before the end of the war it could have played a role as effective as that of the atom bomb.
Details of the tsunami bomb, known as Project Seal, are contained in 53-year-old documents released by the Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade.
Papers stamped "top secret" show the US and British military were eager for Seal to be developed in the post-war years too.
They even considered sending Professor Leech to Bikini Atoll to view the US nuclear tests and see if they had any application to his work.
He did not make the visit, although a member of the US board of assessors of atomic tests, Dr Karl Compton, was sent to New Zealand.
"Dr Compton is impressed with Professor Leech's deductions on the Seal project and is prepared to recommend to the Joint Chiefs of Staff that all technical data from the test relevant to the Seal project should be made available to the New Zealand Government for further study by Professor Leech," said a July 1946 letter from Washington to Wellington.
Professor Leech, who died in his native Australia in 1973, was the university's dean of engineering from 1940 to 1950.
News of his being awarded a CBE in 1947 for research on a weapon led to speculation in newspapers around the world about what was being developed.
Though high-ranking New Zealand and US officers spoke out in support of the research, no details of it were released because the work was on-going.
A former colleague of Professor Leech, Neil Kirton, told the Weekend Herald that the experiments involved laying a pattern of explosives underwater to create a tsunami.
Small-scale explosions were carried out in the Pacific and off Whangaparaoa, which at the time was controlled by the Army.
It is unclear what happened to Project Seal once the final report was forwarded to Wellington Defence Headquarters late in the 1940s.
The bomb was never tested on a full scale, and Mr Kirton doubts that Aucklanders would have noticed the trials.
"Whether it could ever be resurrected ... Under some circumstances I think it could be devastating."
~~
Labour secretly attack Lib Dems in Scotland; problems over nuclear plants.
http://www.sundayherald.com/52110
Paul Hucheon, in The Sunday Herald, 2 October 2005, has a news story entitled:
'Blair adviser: attack LibDems by building a new nuclear power station at Dounreay'
According to the Herald:
"A senior adviser to the Prime Minister told Labour officials at a secret meeting at the Scottish Executive headquarters that building a new nuclear power station at Dounreay would be the ideal way of undermining their Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues.
"John McTernan – Tony Blair’s director of political operations – suggested the move as part of an orchestrated Labour attack on the LibDems in the run-up to the 2007 Holyrood elections.
He said the plan would boost the chances of First Minister Jack McConnell’s party winning Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, the seat that is home to Dounreay and which is held by the LibDems.
The proposal is part of a Labour strategy – personally approved by Blair – to attack the LibDems in the run up to the poll....
"The Sunday Herald understands that the Edinburgh meeting was part of a series of similar discussions . Blair chaired a meeting of Scottish MPs in the Cabinet room during the summer on the same subject. It was agreed that Scottish MPs would be “let off their leash” in the next two years, during which time they would dispute LibDem achievements in the Executive and attack their policies."
NUCLEAR WASTE
Dounreay's clean-up programme will cost the taxpayer at least £2.7 billion.
"This crazy plan just shows that the Labour Government can’t be trusted,’" said SNP leader Alex Salmond. "On Trident and energy, it seems that Scotland is the home of the Prime Minister’s nuclear ambitions."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/article316607.ece
Geoffrey Lean, in The Independent on Sunday, 2 October 2005, writes that a secret report has revealed a catalogue of blunders at Sellafield.
A devastating "catalogue of dubious practices", including sabotage and safety measures based on "guesswork", at the Sellafield plant treating Britain's most dangerous nuclear waste is revealed in an internal report seen by The Independent on Sunday.
The whistleblowing document says that the plant - hitherto thought to be one of the better-run ones at the controversial Cumbrian complex - is "potentially dangerous" and is "becoming difficult to operate properly". One of its section headings reads: "Homer Simpson works at Sellafield".
~
Paul Hucheon, in The Sunday Herald, 2 October 2005, has a news story entitled:
'Blair adviser: attack LibDems by building a new nuclear power station at Dounreay'
According to the Herald:
"A senior adviser to the Prime Minister told Labour officials at a secret meeting at the Scottish Executive headquarters that building a new nuclear power station at Dounreay would be the ideal way of undermining their Liberal Democrat coalition colleagues.
"John McTernan – Tony Blair’s director of political operations – suggested the move as part of an orchestrated Labour attack on the LibDems in the run-up to the 2007 Holyrood elections.
He said the plan would boost the chances of First Minister Jack McConnell’s party winning Caithness, Sutherland and Easter Ross, the seat that is home to Dounreay and which is held by the LibDems.
The proposal is part of a Labour strategy – personally approved by Blair – to attack the LibDems in the run up to the poll....
"The Sunday Herald understands that the Edinburgh meeting was part of a series of similar discussions . Blair chaired a meeting of Scottish MPs in the Cabinet room during the summer on the same subject. It was agreed that Scottish MPs would be “let off their leash” in the next two years, during which time they would dispute LibDem achievements in the Executive and attack their policies."
NUCLEAR WASTE
Dounreay's clean-up programme will cost the taxpayer at least £2.7 billion.
"This crazy plan just shows that the Labour Government can’t be trusted,’" said SNP leader Alex Salmond. "On Trident and energy, it seems that Scotland is the home of the Prime Minister’s nuclear ambitions."
http://news.independent.co.uk/uk/environment/article316607.ece
Geoffrey Lean, in The Independent on Sunday, 2 October 2005, writes that a secret report has revealed a catalogue of blunders at Sellafield.
A devastating "catalogue of dubious practices", including sabotage and safety measures based on "guesswork", at the Sellafield plant treating Britain's most dangerous nuclear waste is revealed in an internal report seen by The Independent on Sunday.
The whistleblowing document says that the plant - hitherto thought to be one of the better-run ones at the controversial Cumbrian complex - is "potentially dangerous" and is "becoming difficult to operate properly". One of its section headings reads: "Homer Simpson works at Sellafield".
~
Saturday, October 01, 2005
Scottish fishing and Scottish oil.
http://www.buchanie.co.uk/archived/2005/Week_39/news/salcol.asp
Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, writes in the Buchan Observer about 'Lies, damned lies, and statistics!'
Salmond points out:
1. Documents released under the "thirty years rule" revealed that, in the view of a civil servant, the Tory Government of the early 1970s regarded the Scottish fishing industry as being "expendable"..... a price worth paying for European entry.
2. Secret documents show that the real information on the economic significance of North Sea Oil was very different from the version being peddled to the Scottish people.
First the Tories under Ted Heath, and then Labour under Harold Wilson were busy saying that the oil resources weren't worth all that much, that they would soon run out, and that they couldn't be used to transform Scotland's economic prospects as the Scottish National Party were purporting.
The economic adviser to the then Scottish Office was Dr Gavin McCrone.
He wrote: "all that is wrong now with the SNP estimate is that it is far too low".
When the Government was proclaiming to the people that much of the oil was actually in English waters, he was informing Ministers that, in fact, "99 percent of it would accrue to an independent Scotland."
When the Labour and Tory parties were running down the prospects of an independent Scotland, he was telling Ministers "the advent of North Sea Oil has completely overturned the traditional economic arguments used against Scottish nationalism."
And when the Government was telling Scots that the rest of the EEC wouldn't want an independent Scotland, McCrone was telling Ministers that oil would make Scotland "a highly desirable member of the EEC with a strong bargaining position."
"The country would tend to be in chronic surplus to a quite embarrassing degree and its currency would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Norwegian kroner.".
3. Oil is now at $65 a barrel.
4. Half of the reserves in the waters around Scotland remain to be exploited.
5. This year's government revenues are heading towards a massive £12 billion. There is still more than enough time to transform Scotland's economic prospects.
~
Alex Salmond, leader of the Scottish National Party, writes in the Buchan Observer about 'Lies, damned lies, and statistics!'
Salmond points out:
1. Documents released under the "thirty years rule" revealed that, in the view of a civil servant, the Tory Government of the early 1970s regarded the Scottish fishing industry as being "expendable"..... a price worth paying for European entry.
2. Secret documents show that the real information on the economic significance of North Sea Oil was very different from the version being peddled to the Scottish people.
First the Tories under Ted Heath, and then Labour under Harold Wilson were busy saying that the oil resources weren't worth all that much, that they would soon run out, and that they couldn't be used to transform Scotland's economic prospects as the Scottish National Party were purporting.
The economic adviser to the then Scottish Office was Dr Gavin McCrone.
He wrote: "all that is wrong now with the SNP estimate is that it is far too low".
When the Government was proclaiming to the people that much of the oil was actually in English waters, he was informing Ministers that, in fact, "99 percent of it would accrue to an independent Scotland."
When the Labour and Tory parties were running down the prospects of an independent Scotland, he was telling Ministers "the advent of North Sea Oil has completely overturned the traditional economic arguments used against Scottish nationalism."
And when the Government was telling Scots that the rest of the EEC wouldn't want an independent Scotland, McCrone was telling Ministers that oil would make Scotland "a highly desirable member of the EEC with a strong bargaining position."
"The country would tend to be in chronic surplus to a quite embarrassing degree and its currency would become the hardest in Europe, with the exception perhaps of the Norwegian kroner.".
3. Oil is now at $65 a barrel.
4. Half of the reserves in the waters around Scotland remain to be exploited.
5. This year's government revenues are heading towards a massive £12 billion. There is still more than enough time to transform Scotland's economic prospects.
~
Norway, Germany, France, Italy and Poland; a rejection of neo-con policies.
http://www.berkeleydaily.org/text/article.cfm?issue=09-30-05&storyID=22426
Conn Hallinan, in The Berkeley Daily Planet, 30 September 2005, reports:
1. In Norway’s 12 September elections, a green-red coalition defeated a pro-business, anti-immigrant center-right government.
2. The same sort of thing is likely to be repeated in Italy and France next spring.
3. The figures in the recent German elections show a solid victory for the Left, and a defeat for neo-liberalism.
The Right took 45 percent of the vote and 286 seats.
The Left won 51.1 percent and 327 seats in the 613 seat Bundestag.
Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union/ Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) party won just 35.2 percent, losing 23 seats.
The real winner was the Left Party, a coalition of the eastern-based Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the former Communist Party, and the western-based Election Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG). The latter is an alliance of left Social Democrats, trade unionists, young people, and environmentalists turned off by the Green Party leadership’s turn to the right.
The Left Party won 8.7 percent of the vote and 54 seats, vaulting it past the Greens to become Germany’s third largest party. It also took 25 percent of the vote in the east, and close to 5 percent in the west. In four western states it reached 5 percent, the point that makes it possible to serve in the Bundestag. If it does well in upcoming state parliamentary elections, it will fundamentally alter the political balance of power in Germany.
There was widespread disenchantment with the SDP/Green coalition’s Agenda 2010, which favored business while cutting jobless benefits and social services. However, the Left Party’s platform of raising minimum wages, restoring benefit cuts, and questioning the presence of U.S. bases in Germany drove the campaign to the left. It was clearly what the voters wanted, and they responded by tanking the right, spanking the SDP and the Greens, and rewarding the new Left Party.
4. France’s right-wing Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy latched on to Merkel’s brand of neo-liberalism as the salvation of France and the European Union. Her defeat will certainly put a crimp in his drive for the French presidency, giving the inside track to the more moderate candidacy of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
But, more importantly, the outcome of the German elections may further bolster the French Left that was recently energized by its successful “no” campaign to torpedo the European Union constitution.
5. Next spring’s Italian elections will most likely see a united Left coalition, L’Unione, drive the right-wing, pro-American coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from power.
L’Unione candidates took 12 out of 14 regional elections last spring, and the parties that comprise it have been at the core of street demonstrations and social actions around everything from globalization, to ending poverty and homelessness, to opposing the Iraq War.
The most recent poll shows L’Unione at 49.7 percent and the right at 45.2 percent.
6. Whoever wins in Poland, the Poles will probably withdraw their 1,500 troops from Iraq.
~
Conn Hallinan is a journalist and an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.
~
Conn Hallinan, in The Berkeley Daily Planet, 30 September 2005, reports:
1. In Norway’s 12 September elections, a green-red coalition defeated a pro-business, anti-immigrant center-right government.
2. The same sort of thing is likely to be repeated in Italy and France next spring.
3. The figures in the recent German elections show a solid victory for the Left, and a defeat for neo-liberalism.
The Right took 45 percent of the vote and 286 seats.
The Left won 51.1 percent and 327 seats in the 613 seat Bundestag.
Angela Merkel’s Christian Democratic Union/ Christian Social Union (CDU/CSU) party won just 35.2 percent, losing 23 seats.
The real winner was the Left Party, a coalition of the eastern-based Party of Democratic Socialism (PDS), the former Communist Party, and the western-based Election Alternative for Labor and Social Justice (WASG). The latter is an alliance of left Social Democrats, trade unionists, young people, and environmentalists turned off by the Green Party leadership’s turn to the right.
The Left Party won 8.7 percent of the vote and 54 seats, vaulting it past the Greens to become Germany’s third largest party. It also took 25 percent of the vote in the east, and close to 5 percent in the west. In four western states it reached 5 percent, the point that makes it possible to serve in the Bundestag. If it does well in upcoming state parliamentary elections, it will fundamentally alter the political balance of power in Germany.
There was widespread disenchantment with the SDP/Green coalition’s Agenda 2010, which favored business while cutting jobless benefits and social services. However, the Left Party’s platform of raising minimum wages, restoring benefit cuts, and questioning the presence of U.S. bases in Germany drove the campaign to the left. It was clearly what the voters wanted, and they responded by tanking the right, spanking the SDP and the Greens, and rewarding the new Left Party.
4. France’s right-wing Interior Minister Nicholas Sarkozy latched on to Merkel’s brand of neo-liberalism as the salvation of France and the European Union. Her defeat will certainly put a crimp in his drive for the French presidency, giving the inside track to the more moderate candidacy of Prime Minister Dominique de Villepin.
But, more importantly, the outcome of the German elections may further bolster the French Left that was recently energized by its successful “no” campaign to torpedo the European Union constitution.
5. Next spring’s Italian elections will most likely see a united Left coalition, L’Unione, drive the right-wing, pro-American coalition of Prime Minister Silvio Berlusconi from power.
L’Unione candidates took 12 out of 14 regional elections last spring, and the parties that comprise it have been at the core of street demonstrations and social actions around everything from globalization, to ending poverty and homelessness, to opposing the Iraq War.
The most recent poll shows L’Unione at 49.7 percent and the right at 45.2 percent.
6. Whoever wins in Poland, the Poles will probably withdraw their 1,500 troops from Iraq.
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Conn Hallinan is a journalist and an analyst for Foreign Policy in Focus.
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UK troops leave Basra
http://news.scotsman.com/latest.cfm?id=2014112005
According to The Scotsman/Associated Press, 29 September 2005, British forces have handed over control of Basra to the Iraqi military.
British troops have moved to a base 18 miles outside Basra.
Press Association
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According to The Scotsman/Associated Press, 29 September 2005, British forces have handed over control of Basra to the Iraqi military.
British troops have moved to a base 18 miles outside Basra.
Press Association
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