Straight-shootin' George Galloway
"I am utterly against the punishing of innocent people for the crimes of the guilty, whether it is done on the underground of London or the streets of Falluja by George Bush's air force". George Galloway MP
George Galloway is quite a guy.
His trip to the Middle East is causing a ruckus back in London, where his criticism of Bush and Blair is appearing like a spread-sheet on the front-page of the tabloids.
Congrats, George; those two deserve a good lambasting.
Yesterday he fired-off another barrage, landing a direct hit on Prime Minister Milquetoast and his Texas-twin. He said, "There's far more blood on the hands of George Bush and Tony Blair than there is on the hands of the murderers who killed those people in London."
Ka-boom! Right on target.
Galloway was stellar; praising the Iraqi resistance as "martyrs" and telling them that they "are not just defending Iraq, but defending the whole world against American hegemony."
Bulls-eye.
Galloway's comments drew attention to the young men who are swarming to Iraq to fight what he calls the "foreign invaders". They're normally disparaged by the pro-war crowd in the press like Tom Friedman who calls them a "jihadist death-cult"
What rubbish. Friedman should skip the name-calling and try to figure out who these guys really are. Men don't simply throw away their lives for no reason. It is the injustice of the American occupation that has the swollen the ranks of the Iraqi resistance.
Galloway knows that and so does Friedman when he's not shoveling manure into the "paper of record".
Full: informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 08.08.05 @ 08:15 AM CST [
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Coping With Adult Conflict in Gaza Can Be Child's Play
NEVE DEKALIM, Gaza Strip - When children in the Israeli settlements of Gaza play their newest game, "Cops and Jews," nobody volunteers to be the police officer.
Not far away, across barbed-wire fences and high walls, children in Palestinian towns and refugee camps take turns playing roles in a game called "Martyrs and Soldiers."
Rivka Kirshenzaft, 11, said the rules for "Cops and Jews" are simple.
"Everyone goes to his spot, which is considered his home, and then the police come in and yell 'Get out!' and take the Jews to jail," she said, tossing her bobbed, strawberry-blond hair. "The Jews say, 'What? Are we criminals?' Then it all ends and it's time to go back to school."
Suzan Qouta, 9, plays "Martyrs and Soldiers" with her friends in Gaza City.
"I explode myself and then I became a martyr," she said. "Then I come to life again and throw blocks, which I shoot as bullets toward the soldiers and Sharon," referring to Ariel Sharon, the Israeli prime minister.
Ahead of Israel's planned mid-August withdrawal of the nearly 9,000 settlers in Gaza, children caught in the cross-fire of warring adults are trying to make sense of the confusion and trauma with games.
For the Israeli children, the violence of drive-by shootings and mortar attacks has been joined by a new threat - that of a government-ordered eviction from their homes. Among their Palestinian counterparts, for whom tanks and attack helicopters are part of the landscape of childhood, there is a new enthusiasm for the departure of the settlers and the soldiers who protect them.
Ibrahim Nassar, 11, who lives with his mother and four younger siblings in the Deir el Balah refugee camp, has covered the walls of the living room in their two-room apartment with crayon drawings of rocket launchers and automatic rifles.
"This is what they fire at the Israelis in the settlements," he said matter-of-factly. Because of these attacks, he said, "The Israelis will leave."
His younger brothers, Ahmed, 5 and Ismail, 7, tend to stutter and do not like leaving the house. Their mother, Taghreed Nassar, said the two boys often wet their beds at night and cry out in the dark. Children are known for their resilience, even in the face of trauma, but when the threat of violence is continuing, as it often is in Gaza, it can be difficult for them to bounce back, say both Israeli and Palestinian child psychologists.
Full: nytimes.com
rootsie on 08.08.05 @ 08:11 AM CST [
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Black Man Is Attacked by Whites in Brooklyn, Police Say
...The attackers - as many as six teenagers or men in their early 20's who rode in a van or sport utility vehicle - sped away before police officers arrived.
No weapons were recovered at the scene. Mr. Moore was taken to Brookdale University Hospital and Medical Center with bruises of the head, chest, arms and hip caused by blunt trauma, and a severe ankle laceration. He was released late last night.
The assault - six weeks after a group of white men attacked three black men in Howard Beach, Queens, severely beating one with a baseball bat - sent tremors of shock through Flatlands, a quiet neighborhood of shops and one- and two-family homes near Brooklyn's south shore, where Jews, Italians, African-Americans and Caribbean immigrants share a generally peaceful, integrated life.
Full: nytimes.com
rootsie on 08.08.05 @ 08:06 AM CST [
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Of the Many Deaths in Iraq, One Mother's Loss Becomes a Problem for the President
CRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 7 - President Bush draws antiwar protesters just about wherever he goes, but few generate the kind of attention that Cindy Sheehan has since she drove down the winding road toward his ranch here this weekend and sought to tell him face to face that he must pull all Americans troops out of Iraq now.
Ms. Sheehan's son, Casey, was killed last year in Iraq, after which she became an antiwar activist. She says she and her family met with the president two months later at Fort Lewis in Washington State.
But when she was blocked by the police a few miles from Mr. Bush's 1,600-acre spread on Saturday, the 48-year-old Ms. Sheehan of Vacaville, Calif., was transformed into a news media phenomenon, the new face of opposition to the Iraq conflict at a moment when public opinion is in flux and the politics of the war have grown more complicated for the president and the Republican Party.
Ms. Sheehan has vowed to camp out on the spot until Mr. Bush agrees to meet with her, even if it means spending all of August under a broiling sun by the dusty road. Early on Sunday afternoon, 25 hours after she was turned back as she approached Mr. Bush's ranch, Prairie Chapel, Ms. Sheehan stood red-faced from the heat at the makeshift campsite that she says will be her home until the president relents or leaves to go back to Washington. A reporter from The Associated Press had just finished interviewing her. CBS was taping a segment on her. She had already appeared on CNN, and was scheduled to appear live on ABC on Monday morning. Reporters from across the country were calling her cellphone.
"It's just snowballed," Ms. Sheehan said beside a small stand of trees and a patch of shade that contained a sleeping bag, some candles, a jar of nuts and a few other supplies. "We have opened up a debate in the country."
Full: nytimes.com
rootsie on 08.08.05 @ 08:02 AM CST [
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Netanyahu quits over withdrawal from Gaza
Israel's finance minister, Binyamin Netanyahu, resigned from the government yesterday, claiming its plan to withdraw from settlements in the occupied territories would allow the creation of a base for "Islamic terrorism".
In what is widely seen as a prelude to a challenge to the leadership of the prime minister, Ariel Sharon, Mr Netanyahu submitted his letter of resignation as the cabinet met to rubber stamp the first phase of the evacuation of settlements in Gaza.
"I am not prepared to be a partner to a move which ignores reality, and proceeds blindly toward turning the Gaza Strip into a base for Islamic terrorism which will threaten the state," he wrote.
Full: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 08.08.05 @ 07:58 AM CST [
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War Plans Drafted To Counter Terror Attacks in U.S.
COLORADO SPRINGS -- The U.S. military has devised its first-ever war plans for guarding against and responding to terrorist attacks in the United States, envisioning 15 potential crisis scenarios and anticipating several simultaneous strikes around the country, according to officers who drafted the plans.
The classified plans, developed here at Northern Command headquarters, outline a variety of possible roles for quick-reaction forces estimated at as many as 3,000 ground troops per attack, a number that could easily grow depending on the extent of the damage and the abilities of civilian response teams.
...CONPLAN 2002 has passed a review by the Pentagon's Joint Staff and is due to go soon to Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and top aides for further study and approval, the officers said. CONPLAN 0500 is still undergoing final drafting here. (CONPLAN stands for "concept plan" and tends to be an abbreviated version of an OPLAN, or "operations plan," which specifies forces and timelines for movement into a combat zone.)
The plans, like much else about Northcom, mark a new venture by a U.S. military establishment still trying to find its comfort level with the idea of a greater homeland defense role after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks.
Here comes the con man...
rootsie on 08.08.05 @ 07:54 AM CST [link]
Big Oil's obscene profits
Exxon Mobil, the world's largest publicly traded oil company, announced a huge 32 percent boost in second-quarter profits, the third-largest increase in company history. The Big Oil bonanza came at a time when Americans are paying record-high prices at the gas pumps.
Washington's official reaction to that maddening news has been softer than silence. But before you search the skies for black helicopters, conspiracy theorists, do not rule out the possibility that sheer incompetence is also afoot. Blame here must be divided among the See-No-Evil Policymakers of this oil-friendly administration, the Snooze-and-Lose Democratic Minority-d'Perpetuity and Myopic Watchdogs who often function as Washington's de facto agenda-setters.
The news from Exxon Mobil established that the pattern was industry-wide. Royal Dutch Shell, the world's third-largest oil company, reported second-quarter profits up 34 percent. BP's (British Petroleum) were up 29 percent. ConocoPhillips, America's third-largest, reported profits that skyrocketed by 51 percent.
But this front-page-worthy news wound up buried by the news media. The Washington Post buried it four sections back, on page D2, under the headline: "Profit Soars at Exxon Mobil." The report from Bloomberg News didn't really link the fiscal ecstasy of Exxon, et al., with the fiscal misery of ordinary Americans who fill up at the pump. Over at the New York Times, editors not only buried the story at the bottom of page C6, but slapped on a headline ("Two Oil Companies Report Higher Earnings") so soporific it probably lulled even the hyper-caffeinated strategist James Carville to sleep.
What is more bizarre is that all of this news happened while Congress was enacting an energy bill that contains barrels of boondoggles - but which a wide range of experts agrees will do next to nothing to solve America's energy crisis. Not short term. Not long term.
Full:cincypost.com
rootsie on 08.08.05 @ 07:48 AM CST [
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Saturday, August 6th
Citizens in democracies will be held to account for what is done in their name
by Peter Wilby
08/05/06 "The Guardian" -- -- Shortly after September 11 2001, I was widely denounced for implying, in a New Statesman editorial, that by electing George Bush - who was known to be indifferent to anything but the interests of US capital - Americans had helped to bring the New York and Washington attacks on themselves. Now Omar Bakri Mohammed and other Muslim clerics blame Britons for the London bombings because they re-elected Tony Blair. Do I, as one who voted for Blair and travel regularly on the tube, agree with them?
Let me first explain what I was trying to say (perhaps clumsily) four years ago. When America goes to war - in Vietnam or the Middle East, for example - it kills many people who have had no chance to influence their rulers. Americans, however, claim their government is "of the people, by the people, for the people". America, on its own estimation, is a superpower which wishes to spread liberal capitalism.
The large majority of Americans (including migrants) have bought into this project and benefit from it - through cheap oil, for example, or through profits of US-based multinationals, which are often derived from expropriation of other countries' resources. Any president who fails to protect these benefits risks himself or his party losing office. So if they are serious about democracy, Americans should accept a share of responsibility for what is done in their name. And so should we, whose country is America's closest ally and accomplice.
None of this is to deny that indiscriminate murder is wrong or to support either the gang that attacked America in 2001 or the ones that attacked London last month. It is merely to observe that we should all take responsibility for our actions or inactions. This is what we now demand of Muslims. Is there something wrong with their religion? Have they given their young people the right values? Many Muslims are asking exactly these questions. For example, Bushra Nasir, head of a comprehensive and one of the Muslim delegation that met Tony Blair after the bombings, says that "now is the time for us Muslims to put our house in order" and "to look at what is going wrong with Muslim families and education". The least we can do is ask a few questions of ourselves.
...A section of the Islamic world believes the west is waging war on it, that this war has intensified with the invasion and occupation of Afghanistan and Iraq, and that it could intensify further with an invasion of Iran. It's no use saying the 2001 attack preceded those invasions. As far as many Muslims are concerned, it went on for most of the 20th century. Arabs were expelled from Israel in the 1940s; Israel occupied the West Bank from 1967; the first Gulf war took place in 1991 and, to Bin Laden's rage, led to US troops polluting sacred Saudi soil. The US has propped up corrupt, secular, pro-western tyrannies throughout the Islamic world - and then blamed and even bombed Muslims for their failure to embrace democracy.
...How do you prosecute a war against the US and Britain? Muslims fight us on their own soil, but why should they not carry the fight to our homelands as we carry it to theirs?
Full: informationclearinghouse.infoIf people are unable to entertain the idea that with 7-7 and 9-11 we are looking at state terrorism, the least they can do is understand arguments like this one...
rootsie on 08.06.05 @ 10:35 AM CST [
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The Hiroshima Cover-Up
by Amy Goodman and David Goodman
08/05/05 "Baltimore Sun" -- --- A STORY THAT the U.S. government hoped would never see the light of day finally has been published, 60 years after it was spiked by military censors. The discovery of reporter George Weller's firsthand account of conditions in post-nuclear Nagasaki sheds light on one of the great journalistic betrayals of the last century: the cover-up of the effects of the atomic bombing on Japan.
On Aug. 6, 1945, the U.S. dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima; three days later, Nagasaki was hit. Gen. Douglas MacArthur promptly declared southern Japan off-limits, barring the news media. More than 200,000 people died in the atomic bombings of the cities, but no Western journalist witnessed the aftermath and told the story. Instead, the world's media obediently crowded onto the battleship USS Missouri off the coast of Japan to cover the Japanese surrender.
A month after the bombings, two reporters defied General MacArthur and struck out on their own. Mr. Weller, of the Chicago Daily News, took row boats and trains to reach devastated Nagasaki. Independent journalist Wilfred Burchett rode a train for 30 hours and walked into the charred remains of Hiroshima.
Both men encountered nightmare worlds. Mr. Burchett sat down on a chunk of rubble with his Baby Hermes typewriter. His dispatch began: "In Hiroshima, 30 days after the first atomic bomb destroyed the city and shook the world, people are still dying, mysteriously and horribly - people who were uninjured in the cataclysm from an unknown something which I can only describe as the atomic plague."
He continued, tapping out the words that still haunt to this day: "Hiroshima does not look like a bombed city. It looks as if a monster steamroller has passed over it and squashed it out of existence. I write these facts as dispassionately as I can in the hope that they will act as a warning to the world."
Mr. Burchett's article, headlined "The Atomic Plague," was published Sept. 5, 1945, in the London Daily Express. The story caused a worldwide sensation and was a public relations fiasco for the U.S. military. The official U.S. narrative of the atomic bombings downplayed civilian casualties and categorically dismissed as "Japanese propaganda" reports of the deadly lingering effects of radiation.
So when Pulitzer Prize-winning reporter George Weller's 25,000-word story on the horror that he encountered in Nagasaki was submitted to military censors, General MacArthur ordered the story killed, and the manuscript was never returned. As Mr. Weller later summarized his experience with General MacArthur's censors, "They won."
Full: informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 08.06.05 @ 10:22 AM CST [
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Depleted Uranium: The Trojan Horse of Nuclear War
The fact is that the United States and its military partners have staged four nuclear wars, "slipping nukes under the wire" by using dirty bombs and dirty weapons in countries the US needs to control. Depleted uranium aerosols will permanently contaminate vast regions and slowly destroy the genetic future of populations living in those regions, where there are resources which the US must control, in order to establish and maintain American primacy.
Described as the Trojan Horse of nuclear war, depleted uranium is the weapon that keeps killing. The half-life of Uranium-238 is 4.5 billion years, the age of the earth. And, as Uranium-238 decays into daughter radioactive products, in four steps before turning into lead, it continues to release more radiation at each step. There is no way to turn it off, and there is no way to clean it up. It meets the US Government’s own definition of Weapons of Mass Destruction.
After forming microscopic and submicroscopic insoluble Uranium oxide particles on the battlefield, they remain suspended in air and travel around the earth as a radioactive component of atmospheric dust, contaminating the environment, indiscriminately killing, maiming and causing disease in all living things where rain, snow and moisture remove it from the atmosphere. Global radioactive contamination from atmospheric testing was the equivalent of 40,000 Hiroshima bombs, and still contaminates the atmosphere and lower orbital space today. The amount of low level radioactive pollution from depleted uranium released since 1991, is many times more (deposited internally in the body), than was released from atmospheric testing fallout.
A 2003 independent report for the European Parliament by the European Committee on Radiation Risk (ECRR), reports that based on Chernobyl studies, low level radiation risk is 100 to 1000 times greater than the International Committee for Radiation Protection models estimate which are based on the flawed Atomic and Hydrogen Bomb Studies conducted by the US Government. Referring to the extreme killing effects of radiation on biological systems, Dr. Rosalie Bertell, one of the 46 international radiation expert authors of the ECRR report, describes it as:
"The concept of species annihilation means a relatively swift, deliberately induced end to history, culture, science, biological reproduction and memory. It is the ultimate human rejection of the gift of life, an act which requires a new word to describe it: omnicide."
1943 MANHATTAN PROJECT BLUEPRINT FOR DEPLETED URANIUM
In a declassified memo to General Leslie R. Groves, dated October 30, 1943, three of the top physicists in the Manhattan Project, Dr James B Conant, A H Compton, and H C Urey, made their recommendation, as members of the Subcommittee of the S-1 Executive Committee, on the ‘Use of Radioactive Materials as a Military Weapon’:
"As a gas warfare instrument the material would be ground into particles of microscopic size to form dust and smoke and distributed by a ground-fired projectile, land vehicles, or aerial bombs. In this form it would be inhaled by personnel. The amount necessary to cause death to a person inhaling the material is extremely small … There are no known methods of treatment for such a casualty … it will permeate a standard gas mask filter in quantities large enough to be extremely damaging."
As a Terrain Contaminant:
"To be used in this manner, the radioactive materials would be spread on the ground either from the air or from the ground if in enemy controlled territory. In order to deny terrain to either side except at the expense of exposing personnel to harmful radiations … Areas so contaminated by radioactive material would be dangerous until the slow natural decay of the material took place … for average terrain no decontaminating methods are known. No effective protective clothing for personnel seems possible of development. … Reservoirs or wells would be contaminated or food poisoned with an effect similar to that resulting from inhalation of dust or smoke."
Internal Exposure:
"… Particles smaller than 1µ [micron] are more likely to be deposited in the alveoli where they will either remain indefinitely or be absorbed into the lymphatics or blood. … could get into the gastro-intestinal tract from polluted water, or food, or air. … may be absorbed from the lungs or G-I tract into the blood and so distributed throughout the body."
Full: globalresearch.ca
rootsie on 08.06.05 @ 10:18 AM CST [
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Transforming the Nuclear Bomb into a "Legitimate Weapon" for Waging War
Under the cloak of secrecy imparted by use of military code names, the American administration has been taking a big - and dangerous - step that will lead to the transformation of the nuclear bomb into a legitimate weapon for waging war.
Ever since the terror attack of September 11, 2001, the Bush administration has gradually done away with all the nuclear brakes that characterized American policy during the Cold War. No longer are nuclear bombs considered "the weapon of last resort." No longer is the nuclear bomb the ultimate means of deterrence against nuclear powers, which the United States would never be the first to employ.
In the era of a single, ruthless superpower, whose leadership intends to shape the world according to its own forceful world view, nuclear weapons have become a attractive instrument for waging wars, even against enemies that do not possess nuclear arms.
Remember the code name "CONPLAN 8022." Last week, the Washington Post reported that this unintelligible nickname masks a military program whose implementation could drag the world into nuclear war.
CONPLAN 8022 is a series of operational plans prepared by Startcom, the U.S. Army's Strategic Command, which calls for preemptive nuclear strikes against Iran and North Korea. One of the plan's major components is the use of nuclear weapons to destroy the underground facilities where North Korea and Iran are developing their nuclear weapons. The standard ordnance deployed by the Americans is not capable of destroying these facilities.
After the war in Afghanistan, it became clear that despite the widespread use of huge conventional bombs, "bunker-busters," some of the bunkers dug by Al-Qaida remained untouched. This discovery soon led to a decision to develop nuclear weapons that would be able to penetrate and destroy the underground shelters in which the two member states of the "axis of evil" are developing weapons of mass destruction.
The explanation given by administration experts calls these "small" bombs, which would have a moderate effect on the environment. The effect of the bomb would not be discernible above ground, the radioactive fallout would be negligible, and the "collateral damage" caused to civilians would be minimal.
Accordingly, America's deterrent credibility against the "rogue states" would grow, because it is clear that the U.S. would allow itself to make use of these "small bombs" - as they would destroy the weapon sites but not cause the death of many civilians.
The war in Iraq, whose purpose was the destruction of Saddam Hussein's development facilities and stockpiles of weapons of mass destruction, but which led to America's miring in the Iraqi swamp, has increased the attraction of nuclear weapons. After all, it would have been much simpler and more logical to destroy Saddam's facilities with a few "small bombs," which would not have caused any real damage to the civilian population, than to become entangled in a ground war that has resulted in 150,000 American soldiers treading water in the Iraqi swamp.
The problem with this argument is that it is hopeless. To understand this, one may analyze the effect of a nuclear attack of the sort posited by American military strategists in CONPLAN 8022. Obviously, the U.S. would not use less than five to ten "small bombs" were it to attack Iran or North Korea, since, considering the number of relevant targets in the two countries, anything less would fail to achieve the goal of deterrence and prevention. According to the plan, each bomb would have a 10-kiloton yield - about two-thirds of that of the bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
Each detonation of a bomb a few meters underground would destroy most of the buildings on the surface to a range of two kilometers. After the explosion, there would be a need to quickly evacuate civilians from an area of 100 square kilometers, to avoid the deadly effects of the radioactive fallout; buildings, agricultural crops and livestock would be affected in an area of thousands of square kilometers, and depending on wind direction and velocity, there could be a need to evacuate more people from thousands of additional square kilometers.
None of this takes into account the political and psychological repercussions of using nuclear weapons for the first time in more than 60 years. The Bush administration regards all this as "limited collateral damage."
Full: globalresearch.caHalliburton Secretly Doing Business with Key Member of Iran’s Nuclear Team
rootsie on 08.06.05 @ 10:09 AM CST [
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From Baghdad to Bishkek, the Caliphate's time has come
Uzbekistan's unending tragedy - 15 years of unremitting repression of its Muslims (well, make that a century) - has reached a critical impasse. With the massacre of up to 1,000 innocents in Andijan, the mood in the country is set against Karimov: there is no graceful exit for this once wily balancer of clan greed, untempered by any basis in Islamic principles of social justice and public service.
But K and Uz are not alone. A recent analysis of Tunisia (see Le Monde 6/5) describes the poverty and anomy of life under its repressive, secular, pro-US dictator Ben Ali, with his playtime democracy, prohibition of all Islamic parties and general discouragement of Islam, and above all the fear to make even the mildest public criticisms. We can say ‘ditto’ more or less for Egypt, Algeria, Morocco, Jordan, Syria, Saudi Arabia. Then there are such embarrassments as Dubai, which is building a high tech Disney-style archipelago replica of the world for the super-rich, or the Emirates, which imports Russian and Uzbek women as sex slaves. It is very hard to find a Muslim country which reflects the austere social justice of the Koran. But then, it is hard to find a Muslim country which is not a US-client state. Malaysia and Iran come to mind, and in their own very different ways, they offer some hope.
In his July 4th speech this year, President George Bush hailed the new era of democracy, the result of US battles "from Bunker Hill to Baghdad". Leaving aside Bunker Hill and what's left of the American Revolution, we can already see the democracy that the US is bringing to Baghdad and Kabul - the kind where the living envy the dead, of whom there are hundreds more with each passing day. No. The call should be: 'From Bishkek to Baghdad, the Caliphate's time has come.' And ironically, though Karimov loudly proclaims himself its greatest enemy, he is unwittingly one of its greatest assets, constantly raising its spectre in justification of his persecution of Uzbek Muslims. Irony: never has the Muslim world been so enslaved to kufr (anti-Islamic) countries and leaders, and yet never has it been so demonized and despised by them. While western media construct fantasies to the contrary, this is the sad, tragic reality.
Full: axisoflogic.com
rootsie on 08.06.05 @ 10:05 AM CST [
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Some Bombs Used in Iraq Are Made in Iran, U.S. Says
WASHINGTON, Aug. 5 - Many of the new, more sophisticated roadside bombs used to attack American and government forces in Iraq have been designed in Iran and shipped in from there, United States military and intelligence officials said Friday, raising the prospect of increased foreign help for Iraqi insurgents.
American commanders say the deadlier bombs could become more common as insurgent bomb makers learn the techniques to make the weapons themselves in Iraq.
But just as troubling is that the spread of the new weapons seems to suggest
a new and unusual area of cooperation between Iranian Shiites and Iraqi Sunnis to drive American forces out - a possibility that the commanders said they could make little sense of given the increasing violence between the sects in Iraq.
Unlike the improvised explosive devices devised from Iraq's vast stockpiles of missiles, artillery shells and other arms, the new weapons are specially designed to destroy armored vehicles, military bomb experts say. The bombs feature shaped charges, which penetrate armor by focusing explosive power in a single direction and by firing a metal projectile embedded in the device into the target at high speed. The design is crude but effective if the vehicle's armor plating is struck at the correct angle, the experts said.
Since they first began appearing about two months ago, some of these devices have been seized, including one large shipment that was captured last week in northeast Iraq coming from Iran. But one senior military officer said "tens" of the devices had been smuggled in and used against allied forces, killing or wounding several Americans throughout Iraq in the past several weeks.
"These are among the most sophisticated and most lethal devices we've seen," said the senior officer, who spoke on condition of anonymity because of the delicate intelligence reports describing the bombs. "It's very serious."
Pentagon and intelligence officials say that some shipments of the new explosives have contained both components and fully manufactured devices, and may have been spirited into Iraq along the porous Iranian border by the Iranian-backed, anti-Israeli terrorist group Hezbollah, or by Iran's Revolutionary Guard. American commanders say these bombs closely matched those that Hezbollah has used against Israel.
...American officials say they have no evidence that the Iranian government is involved. But Defense Secretary Donald H. Rumsfeld and the new United States ambassador in Baghdad, Zalmay Khalilzad, complained publicly this week about the Tehran government's harmful meddling in Iraqi affairs.
"There is movement across its borders of people and matériel used in violent acts against Iraq," Mr. Khalilzad said Monday.
But some Middle East specialists discount any involvement by the Iranian government or Hezbollah, saying it would be counter to their interests to support Iraq's Sunni Arab insurgents, who have stepped up their attacks against Iraqi Shiites. These specialists suggest that the arms shipments are more likely the work of criminals, arms traffickers or splinter insurgent groups.
"Iran's protégés are in control in Iraq right now, yet these weapons are going to people fighting Iran's protégés," said Kenneth Katzman, a Persian Gulf expert at the Congressional Research Service and a former Middle East analyst at the Central Intelligence Agency. "That makes little sense to me."
Full: nytimes.comIt doesn't take great sophistication to come up with armor-penetrating missiles, all you do is change their shape. Whatever crap this article is trying to put forth, the important piece is that Shi'ites and Sunnis are working together, as Iraqis, to force the US out.
rootsie on 08.06.05 @ 10:01 AM CST [
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Bird flu spreads in Russia, maybe in Kazakhstan
ALMATY/MOSCOW, Aug 5 (Reuters) - Bird flu has been officially confirmed in two more Russian regions, and the disease may also be spreading in Northern Kazakhstan, officials said on Friday.
Health officials fear that a subtype of bird flu dangerous to humans may mutate into a lethal strain that could rival or exceed the Spanish flu pandemic that killed 20-40 million people worldwide at the end of World War One.
Full: cnn.netscape.cnn.com
rootsie on 08.06.05 @ 09:46 AM CST [
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Thursday, August 4th
The "Consolation" of Conspiracy
"The dust hadn’t even settled after the terrorist atrocities in London and already the conspiracy theories...had begun," writes Cinnamon Stillwell in "The London Conspiracy Theories: Here We Go Again." Nevermind that settled dust also covers tracks, as unpolished first reports get squeegee'd from the record. And disregard the fact that every reconstruction of the events must posit a conspiracy of some sort, and that they are not even theories, but hypotheses.
Nevermind all that, as here they go again, baiting the genuine skeptics in the Aeon of Bizarro.
Most irksome are Stillwell's patronizing conclusions:
"It never ceases to amaze me how many well-educated, otherwise rational people insist on pushing these fantasies. Unable to cope with the nihilistic and horrifying threat of Islamic terrorism, they instead turn to familiar demons.... How long these people can continue their delusions is unknown, but something tells me that a great number of them will simply have to be written off as functionally insane while the rest of us attend to the business of fighting Islamic terrorism.
In some ways I understand this need to find more comforting answers. There’s been many a day since 9/11 that I’ve wished this threat wasn’t real. But it is. At some point, all of us will have to shake off the conspiracy theories and face that truth."
I don't mind so much being dismissed as mad, so long as I'm not locked up in a psychiatric hospital for the politically insane. Though since that day came for Soviet dissidents, and the Western calender is running just a little behind, we shouldn't be surprised if our questions will eventually be addressed with a pharmacological magic bullet. Rather, what I find most disagreeable about this popular refutation of "conspiracy theory" is that such thinking is somehow comforting.
Tell me what I say is crazy, without bothering to hear what I'm saying. I'm fine with that. Hell, I listen to what I'm saying and sometimes I wonder myself. As a fellow "conspiracy theorist" recently told me, "I feel like the guy in A Beautiful Mind, minus the genius part." Adding things up which are not to be added can do that to you. It's a crazy-making world out there, once you start paying attention to it. Just don't presume to tell me how I feel about it.
And I won't presume to tell you, so you tell me: how did you feel when the floor first fell away from beneath you? When the comforting assumptions of consensus reality folded up upon themselves, and you saw the lone gunmen as cardbard figures, and you glimpsed the grinning skulls beneath the smooth skin of the killers, what did that do to your insides? When you felt the vertiginous drop, did you throw up your hands and let out a "Wheeeeee!"?
Full: rigorousintuition.com
rootsie on 08.04.05 @ 07:44 AM CST [
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Black Men Can't Run
...I'm London-born to Jamaican parents, and like most people I want to stay alive while travelling around my home city. Easier said than done now that terrorists are blowing up buses and tubes, and police have killed a dark-skinned man they thought was on the verge of an atrocity.
Up until Jean Charles de Menezes was shot in Stockwell, I was scared of the explosions. Now there's a double whammy. Do I worry about the Asian with the backpack or the nonchalant white guy?
"De Menezes acted suspiciously by running" is one line that's wheeled out to abrogate responsibility for a catastrophe. But if you're in an ethnic minority the errors seem to hit you thick and fast throughout your life. It really doesn't take that much for a police officer to be suspicious.
I remember Doreen Lawrence telling me that police initially treated her and her husband Neville like they were the criminals after their aspiring architect of a son had been stabbed to death by white racists at a bus stop in south-east London. In 1993 she had to grieve through the bigotry, but the bungled investigation into Stephen's murder forced the Macpherson report, which among other things highlighted the institutional racism within police forces. And to their credit the police have moved to eradicate that blight.
So far I've evaded the racist thugs at the bus stops, but I haven't eluded the institutionalised stupidity. Like countless other law-abiding black men in the capital, I've been stopped, questioned and searched by police professing to be doing their utmost to protect the community. When I owned a Golf convertible I'd be tailed or pulled over for driving what they suspected to be a stolen car.
While trying to catch the last bus home from the City a few years back I was stopped by an officer who told me that I was acting suspiciously by running through a high-risk burglary area with a holdall. He looked through the bag, asked me whether the shoes and clothes were mine, and then wanted to know where I'd come from. When I told him the Guardian in Farringdon Road, he asked if I could prove it. I showed him my press card and I thought that would be the end of it.
Wrong. He asked where I lived, and even though the address tallied with the bus that I'd been running to catch, he still radioed my details through. When these were confirmed, the officer's explanation was that he had a job to do, and was sure I'd understand. I was livid because I had understood.
Now what frightens me is that, unlike the Lawrences, the grief of the De Menezes family seems not to be yielding anything positive. The Met commissioner apologises but says police may have to shoot other innocent people to protect the community. And their colour will be ... ?
Full: countercurrents.org
rootsie on 08.04.05 @ 07:39 AM CST [
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Gangs threaten revival of civil war in Sudan
...The crash, which came just three weeks after Mr Garang was sworn in as Sudan's vice-president under the peace settlement, has aroused suspicions, particularly among his supporters in the south.
Yesterday, the southern town of Juba also saw violence, as Arab northerners were hounded out of town by rampaging locals. Aid workers said at least 18 people had been killed in the area during the past two days. A further 84 have died in the Khartoum violence.
"Peace is being jeopardised in the short run," said the top UN envoy in Sudan, Jan Pronk.
Full: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 08.04.05 @ 07:35 AM CST [
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A View Of Iraq From A Soldier
Speech to the "Out of Iraq" Congressional Caucus on July 19, 2005
...At that moment I knew it was going to be a very long deployment. I realized that I was not being greeted as a liberator. I became overwhelmed with fear because I felt I never would be viewed that way by the Iraqi people. As a soldier this concerned me. Because if they did not view me as a liberator, then what did they view me as? I felt that they viewed me as foreign occupier of their land. That led me to believe very early on that I was going to have a fight on my hands.
During my year in Iraq I had many altercations with the so-called "insurgency." I found the insurgency I saw to be quite different from the insurgency described to the American people by the Bush Administration, the media, and other supporters of the war. There is no doubt in my mind there are foreigners from other surrounding countries in Iraq. Anyone in the Middle East who hates America now has the opportunity to kill Americans because there are roughly 140,000 US troops in Iraq. But the bulk of the insurgency I faced was primarily the people of Iraq who were attacking us as a reaction to what they felt was an occupation of their country.
I was engaged actively in urban combat in the Abu Ghraib area west of Baghdad. Many of the people who were attacking me were the poor people of Iraq. They were definitely not members of Al Qaeda, left over Baath Party members, and they were not former members of Saddam's regime. They were just your average Iraqi civilian who wanted us out of their country.
...we were being told that in order for us to get out of Iraq completely the Iraqi military would have to be able to take over all security operations. The training of the Iraqi Army became a huge concern of mine. During the time I trained! them, their basic training was only one week long. We showed them some basic drill and ceremony such as marching and saluting. When it came time for weapons training, we gave each Iraqi recruit an AK-47 and just let them shoot it. They did not even have to qualify by hitting a target. All they had to do was pull the trigger. I was instructed by my superiors to stand directly behind them with caution while they were shooting just in case they tried to turn the weapon on us so we could stop them.
Once they graduated from basic training, the Iraqi soldiers in a way became part of our battalion and we would take them on missions with us. But we never let them know where we were going, because we were afraid some of them might tip off the insurgency that we were coming and we would walk directly into an ambush. When they would get into formation prior to the missions we made them a part of, they would cover their faces so the people of their communities did not identify them as being affiliated with the American troops.
Not that long ago President Bush made a statement at Fort Bragg when he addressed the nation about the war in Iraq. He said we would "stand down" when the Iraqi military is ready to "stand up." My experience with the new Iraqi military tells me we won't be coming home for a long time if that's the case.
Full: informationclearinghouse.info
rootsie on 08.04.05 @ 07:31 AM CST [
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NYPD Reveals Details of London Attack
NEW YORK (AP) - The suicide bombers cooked up their explosives using mundane items like hydrogen peroxide. They stored them in a fancy commercial refrigerator that was out of place in their grimy apartment. And cell phones were likely used to set the bombs off.
Those details from the July 7 London bombing emerged Wednesday at an unusually wide-ranging briefing given by the New York Police Department to city business leaders.
The briefing - based partly on information obtained by NYPD detectives who were dispatched to London to monitor the investigation - was part of a program designed to encourage more vigilance by private security at large hotels, Wall Street firms, storage facilities and other companies.
Police Commissioner Raymond Kelly warned the materials and methods used in the London attack were easily adaptable to New York.
``Initially it was thought that perhaps the materials were high-end military explosives that were smuggled, but it turns out not to be the case,'' Kelly said. ``It's more like these terrorists went to a hardware store or some beauty supply store.''
The NYPD officials said investigators believe the bombers used a peroxide-based explosive called HMDT, or hexamethylene triperoxide diamine. HMDT can be made using ordinary ingredients like hydrogen peroxide (hair bleach), citric acid (a common food preservative) and heat tablets (sometimes used by the military for cooking).
Full: guardian.co.ukYou'd think one of the simplest things to determine would be what the bombs were made of. This is the third change of story. And the fact that it's the NYPD saying this...weird.
rootsie on 08.04.05 @ 07:25 AM CST [
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Wednesday, August 3rd
Fortunes made on bombing
THOUSANDS of investors joined sharp institutions in making millions of pounds from the short-lived collapse in share prices that followed the terrorist strikes in London last week.
It was the busiest day of trading for over two years. The London Stock Exchange said 4.75 billion shares were traded on Thursday compared with the recent daily average of about 3.1 billion.
BP and Vodafone were among Britain's largest companies that took advantage of the volatile markets to improve their balance sheets.
Financial spread-betting firm City Index said more than 8000 retail investors had dived into the market on Thursday, correctly backing their hunch that share prices would quickly bounce back.
Some will find profiteering from horror distasteful. But many in the City applauded the resilience of capitalism.
Full: finance.news.com
rootsie on 08.03.05 @ 08:23 PM CST [
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The Faulty Logic of "Terrorist" Profiling
by Tim Wise
Growing up in the South, I often heard folks criticize others for being "common." To be called common was to be vilified as trashy and unworthy of respect. Putting aside the elitist implications of such a slur, the pejorative nature of the term has always stuck with me, so much so that when I hear something described as "common sense," I instinctively assume that while it may indeed be the former, it is rarely ever the latter.
There is no better example of this truism than with the desire of so many to endorse racial and religious profiling of Arabs and Muslims so as to thwart terrorist attacks. In the wake of the London subway bombings, the call for profiling is being heard once again (as it was after 9/11), and once again those proposing such measures are cloaking their demands in the garb of "common sense," while mocking as politically correct fools, anyone who dares criticize the idea.
Full: counterpunch.orgAs Tim Wise points out, 'dedicated terrorists' will always find a way, profiling or not. But the other weird angle of this is the obssession with 'safety.' The only way a government can provide some measure of safety to its people is to pursue humane policies. The same people who are making it unsafe for everybody are in charge of 'homeland security.'
Ha.Right now, the least 'safe' people in the Western world are young men with dark skin.Safe
rootsie on 08.03.05 @ 07:48 AM CST [
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Deep Background
In Washington it is hardly a secret that the same people in and around the administration who brought you Iraq are preparing to do the same for Iran. The Pentagon, acting under instructions from Vice President Dick Cheney’s office, has tasked the United States Strategic Command (STRATCOM) with drawing up a contingency plan to be employed in response to another 9/11-type terrorist attack on the United States. The plan includes a large-scale air assault on Iran employing both conventional and tactical nuclear weapons. Within Iran there are more than 450 major strategic targets, including numerous suspected nuclear-weapons-program development sites. Many of the targets are hardened or are deep underground and could not be taken out by conventional weapons, hence the nuclear option. As in the case of Iraq, the response is not conditional on Iran actually being involved in the act of terrorism directed against the United States. Several senior Air Force officers involved in the planning are reportedly appalled at the implications of what they are doing—that Iran is being set up for an unprovoked nuclear attack—but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections.
* * *
There is increasing evidence that the Iraqi police forces, now under Shi’ite control, are carrying out systematic revenge killings against Sunnis in Baghdad. The bodies now showing up at the morgue have obvious signs of handcuffing and blindfolding and evidence of being tortured before death. U.S. sources indicate that the suspicious killings have reached the rate of almost 700 per month. The police are supervised by the Shi’ite-run Ministry of Interior, which claims that the killings are being carried out by insurgents wearing stolen police uniforms. But American intelligence sources disagree, noting that many of the killers appear to be actual policemen carrying the expensive standard-issue Glock automatics and driving official Toyota Land Cruisers.
Full: amconmag.comStrange days indeed when Pat Buchanan's mag is the voice of truth and reason in the U.S. True conservatives are as appalled by fascistic policies at home and abroad as the rest of us are.
rootsie on 08.03.05 @ 07:36 AM CST [
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When Armageddon Gets No Press
by Paul Craig Roberts
...Now that we really need them, the watchdog media has hired out as public relations and propaganda shills for the Bush administration and the neocon network.
The entire Bush administration-not merely the president-is involved in the most extraordinary lies and fabrication of false intelligence claims in order to lead
America into an unwarranted and illegal invasion of Iraq, an invasion that has cost the US taxpayers $300 billion and resulted in the deaths and maiming of tens of thousands of people.
The sordid affair has been revealed in leaked top secret Downing Street memos, which were prepared for UK prime minister Tony Blair and his cabinet. Unlike the Nixon episode, there is no need to search for a "smoking gun." Smoking guns have been printed all over the pages of the London Times. Yet hardly a peep from the watchdog media.
The August 1 issue of The American Conservative reports that Vice President Cheney has instructed the US Strategic Command to prepare a plan to spread the war by attacking Iran with tactical nuclear weapons in the event of another terrorist attack on the US. Appalled US Air Force officers have leaked the story, but you have not learned of it from the tamed media.
A federal prosecutor seems to be closing in on Karl Rove, president Bush's righthand man, and on Scooter Libby, vice president Cheney's righthand man. The two are suspected of leaking the identity of a covert CIA agent, a felony. Both have had to hire lawyers. But there is no demand for accountability from the US media.
American civil liberties have been trounced by the "Patriot" Act. Torture of detainees is now a routine practice of the US government and defended by the attorney general. Senators and military officers who try to place constraints on the inhumane treatment of detainees are stonewalled by the White House.
The mainstream media has been co-opted as propaganda organ for the Bush administration. How did this come about?
Full: counterpunch.org
rootsie on 08.03.05 @ 07:29 AM CST [
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Tuesday, August 2nd
The Iraq Infection
NEW YORK - Military doctors are fighting to contain an outbreak of a potentially deadly drug-resistant bacteria that apparently originated in the Iraqi soil. So far at least 280 people, mostly soldiers returning from the battlefield, have been infected, a number of whom contracted the illness while in U.S. military hospitals.
Most of the victims are relatively young troops who were injured by the land mines, mortars and suicide bombs that have permeated the Iraq conflict. No active-duty soldiers have died from the infections, but five extremely sick patients who were in the same hospitals as the injured soldiers have died after being infected with the bacteria, Acinetobacter baumannii.
"This a very large outbreak," says Arjun Srinivasan, a lieutenant commander in the U.S. public health service and a medical epidemiologist at the Centers for Disease Control.
Acinetobacter was the second most prevalent infection for soldiers in Vietnam, but the military did not expect to see it as part of Operation Iraqi Freedom. Researchers are still working to understand where it came from and how patients were infected. (See: "Military Chases Mystery Infection.")
Doctors worry not only about soldiers who are already infected but also those who are carrying Acinetobacter on their skin even though they themselves are not infected. Lt. Cmdr. Kyle Petersen, an infectious disease specialist at National Naval Medical Center (NNMC) in Bethesda, Md.,says his hospital treated 396 patients who had been wounded in Iraq between May 2003 and February 2005. About 10% were infected and another 20% were found to have Acinetobacter bacteria on their skin but were not infected. The rate of appearance of the bacteria has "been flat-out steady," says Petersen.
Full: forbes.com
rootsie on 08.02.05 @ 09:58 PM CST [
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Americans Are Warned About Travel Overseas
The State Department issued an updated worldwide caution on terrorism yesterday, warning Americans about the threat of extremist violence against U.S. citizens and interests abroad.
The warning did not list countries, nor did department officials offer any additional specifics about threats. The statement said "current information" indicates that al Qaeda and affiliated terrorist groups are planning attacks against U.S. interests in "multiple regions, including Europe, Asia, Africa and the Middle East."
The department's official caution, which supersedes an alert issued in March, said attacks against private and official targets could come in the form of assassinations, kidnappings, hijackings or bombings.
The targets could include places where Americans meet or visit, such as residential areas, hotels and restaurants, as well as places of worship, schools, clubs, business offices and public areas, the caution said. It also noted that "demonstrations and rioting" can occur with little or no warning.
Full: washingtonpost.comWell it's real helpful not to name specific countries, just be afraid of ever 'foreign' person, place, or thing. Just to be on the safe side, don't move at all, and breathe as little as possible. Aiight?
rootsie on 08.02.05 @ 09:53 PM CST [
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Not “Conspiracy Theories” They Are, in Fact, “Discoveries”
Those to whom information is presented must deal with their personal unwillingness to hear new facts.
We have to make a serious effort to distinguish between the expression of an unfounded theory and the disclosure of verifiable information and facts.
They absolutely refuse to accept even the most convincing proof because they dare not admit to themselves that they have been lied to by officials in whom the placed their trust.
It is currently standard practice in America to simply dismiss any piece of information that punches a hole in any widely accepted explanation of a disturbing event. In many cases, especially when a serious crime is in question, the "conspiracy theory" tag is immediately attached to any new discovery about the event. Information related to such important topics such as 9/11, election fraud, the new world order, secret societies, or globalization is too often ignored as part of a baseless conspiracy theory even before any of it is ever presented, discussed, or evaluated.
There seems to be no set criteria for dismissing information as a foolish conspiracy theory. The only prerequisite for information to be so categorized seems to be the desire to reject it. The reason for the rejection does not seem to matter. It appears that anything people do not want to believe is simply set aside as not believable. It almost seems that if you set some people of fire they would dismiss the flames as non-existent, simply because they did not want to believe what was happening. The pain and damage done by the fire, no matter how devastating, would not be evidence enough to convince these people that the fire was real. Their need to believe otherwise would win out. In the same vein, people dismiss information and apply the conspiracy theory tag to anything they chose to disbelieve at their own discretion, regardless of any hard evidence that accompanies the "theory."
It's time to put an end to this nonsense once and for all. It's also time dispense with the name calling and understand the dynamics of what is happening when new information is rejected. We have to deal with the resistance to any tampering with accepted "truths." And we have to find ways to convince people to seriously consider the new information, new discoveries if you will - that so many refuse, under any circumstances, to acknowledge.
Full: spiritualsoldier.comI think most of what calls itself 'alternative media' has been exposed by their failure to deal with the official London Bombing story with the least bit of scepticism. Who benefits? What the heck is 'al Qaeda' and who's paying to support it? Maybe it's a good time to remember that the term 'terrorism' originates from the French Revolution in reference to STATE terrorism, the terror states inflict upon their own peoples. Until people have the courage to look at the Beast which confronts them there is no solution to any of this. It doesn't take some apocalyptic prophet to see how much worse this situation is going to get. On Helen Caldicott's nuclear clock, I'd say it's about one minute to midnight.
rootsie on 08.02.05 @ 09:33 PM CST [
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Femi Kuti - the Man Behind the Music
Is there a particular concept/message behind this U.S. tour?
Everything - first and foremost is the music and playing the music. The lyrics say what I'm talking about, which is what I see politically, socially, or whatever. Because at the end of the day, it'll hopefully give people energy to be able to deal with their life: went to see a good concert, go home and just be happy, "Whoa, I saw a great show." Hopefully it will stay in their memories, to help them deal.
Full: allafrica.comExcellent interview. And a musician and human being of substance and stature.
rootsie on 08.02.05 @ 09:30 PM CST [
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Former CIA Officer - US Plans Nuclear Attack On Iran
The United States is developing a nuclear plan to attack military bases in Iran, said Philip Giraldi, a former CIA intelligence officer.
Giraldi said that the U.S. nuclear strike against Iran would take place after a 9/11-style attack on the United States, and that the planned attack would be analogous to the unprovoked invasion of Iraq.
The former CIA officer also said that an attack on the U.S. would serve as the pretext for putting the plan into action.
He noted that some Air Force officers are opposed to the nuclear strike plan "but no one is prepared to damage his career by posing any objections."
Several U.S. officials have indicated that Washington has developed contingency plans to use nuclear arms to attack military targets in Iran and North Korea.
One recent study, released before the election of former Taliban mayor Mahmoud Ahmadinejad to the presidency on June 23, asserts that the U.S. assault on Iran has already started.
The analysis, prepared by former United Nations nuclear arms inspector Scott Ritter, reveals that the CIA aids Iranian opposition groups.
It also said that the Washington plans to stage military attacks against the Islamic republic with U.S. forces from the neighboring Republic of Azerbaijan.
Analysts say that although the Bush administration intensified its war of words against Iran, the propaganda offensive didn't reach the intensity achieved during the 2002-2003 build-up for the invasion of Iraq.
They say that the U.S. failure in Iraq and the American public's declining support for the invasion have made such a propaganda offensive less viable at this moment.
However, a new attack on the U.S. soil could provoke a large sector of the American public and encourage the Bush administration to launch an attack on Iran.
Full: prisonplanet.com/aljazeera.net
rootsie on 08.02.05 @ 08:01 AM CST [
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WAS "777 MASTERMIND" ASWAT "WORKING FOR BRITISH INTELLIGENCE" ??
John Loftus and Mansoor Ijaz came up with "surprising informations" about the mastermind - allegedly Haroon Rashid Aswat as I reported about the case - behind the London bombings. See this transcript from Dayside/FOX with Linda Vester, July 29 2005 and be sure to read my analysis at the end:
MIKE JERRICK [FOX NEWS]: John Loftus is a terrorism expert and a former prosecutor for the Justice Department. John, good to see you again. So real quickly here, have you heard anything about this Osman Hussain who was just picked up in Rome? You know that name at all?
JOHN LOFTUS: Yeah, all these guys should be going back to an organization called Al-Muhajiroun, which means The Emigrants. It was the recruiting arm of Al-Qaeda in London; they specialized in recruiting kids whose families had emigrated to Britain but who had British passports. And they would use them for terrorist work.
JERRICK: So a couple of them now have Somali connections?
LOFTUS: Yeah, it was not unusual. Somalia, Eritrea, the first group of course were primarily Pakistani. But what they had in common was they were all emigrant groups in Britain, recruited by this Al-Muhajiroun group. They were headed by the, Captain Hook, the imam in London the Finsbury Mosque, without the arm. He was the head of that organization. Now his assistant was a guy named Aswat, Haroon Rashid Aswat.
JERRICK: Aswat, who they picked up.
LOFTUS: Right, Aswat is believed to be the mastermind of all the bombings in London.
JERRICK: On 7/7 and 7/21, this is the guy we think.
LOFTUS: This is the guy, and what's really embarrassing is that the entire British police are out chasing him, and one wing of the British government, MI6 or the British Secret Service, has been hiding him. And this has been a real source of contention between the CIA, the Justice Department, and Britain.
JERRICK: MI6 has been hiding him. Are you saying that he has been working for them?
LOFTUS: Oh I'm not saying it. This is what the Muslim sheik said in an interview in a British newspaper back in 2001.
JERRICK: So he's a double agent, or was?
LOFTUS: He's a double agent.
JERRICK: So he's working for the Brits to try to give them information about Al-Qaeda, but in reality he's still an Al-Qaeda operative.
LOFTUS: Yeah. The CIA and the Israelis all accused MI 6 of letting all these terrorists live in London not because they're getting Al-Qaeda information, but for appeasement. It was one of those you leave us alone, we leave you alone kind of things.
Full: rumormillnews.comWell where is 'Aswat'? We have been told by mainstream media that whoever it is they arrested saying he was 'Aswat' is a case of mistaken identity.7.19.05
Pakistan questions Briton on 'key role' in bombings Suspect reportedly caught with explosives, British passport and cash
7.21.05
"Bomb 'mastermind' was victim of name confusion" ...The Independent has learnt that the man had no role in the attacks. Inquiries in the past week have discovered that the man was an innocent Pakistani traveller who had a similar name to an al-Qa'ida terrorist who was on a watch list of several foreign security agencies.
rootsie on 08.02.05 @ 07:57 AM CST [
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Arrests over Parliament demo ban
Five anti-war activists demonstrating against a ban on unauthorised protests near Parliament have been arrested.
A ban on protests within half-a-mile of Westminster which have not been cleared by police came into force at midnight.
However, about 50 people wearing black gags to symbolise the "infringement" of their right to protest have gathered in Parliament Square in defiance.
Ministers say planned protests can be held but the rights of protesters and workers in the area must be balanced.
But campaigners say the move restricts an established right to protest.
More than a dozen police officers were at the scene, and arrests were made around an hour after the protest begun.
Lindsey German, convener of the Stop the War Coalition, said the ruling meant police could now decide who was allowed to demonstrate, which was "totally unacceptable".
"Anyone speaking through a megaphone will be arrested under this draconian new law. Parliament should be doing more important things than stopping people staging legitimate protests," she said.
Anyone organising or taking part in a demonstration within the zone must apply in writing and have police authorisation.
Use of loudspeakers and megaphones may be restricted, and are banned in and around Parliament Square, subject to exemptions
Time limits may be placed on approved demonstrations.
Lauren Booth, sister of Tony Blair's wife Cherie, joined the protest and said the law should be "overturned".
"This is all about silencing critics of the war in Iraq and ID cards and denying people the right to free speech," she said.
"If you heard on television that someone in another country were banned from gathering near a government building to stage a legitimate protest you would probably think thank goodness that kind of thing doesn't happen in this country."
Full: bbc.co.uk
rootsie on 08.02.05 @ 07:51 AM CST [
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Iran Is Judged 10 Years From Nuclear Bomb
A major U.S. intelligence review has projected that Iran is about a decade away from manufacturing the key ingredient for a nuclear weapon, roughly doubling the previous estimate of five years, according to government sources with firsthand knowledge of the new analysis.
The carefully hedged assessments, which represent consensus among U.S. intelligence agencies, contrast with forceful public statements by the White House. Administration officials have asserted, but have not offered proof, that Tehran is moving determinedly toward a nuclear arsenal. The new estimate could provide more time for diplomacy with Iran over its nuclear ambitions. President Bush has said that he wants the crisis resolved diplomatically but that "all options are on the table."
The new National Intelligence Estimate includes what the intelligence community views as credible indicators that Iran's military is conducting clandestine work. But the sources said there is no information linking those projects directly to a nuclear weapons program. What is clear is that Iran, mostly through its energy program, is acquiring and mastering technologies that could be diverted to bombmaking.
The estimate expresses uncertainty about whether Iran's ruling clerics have made a decision to build a nuclear arsenal, three U.S. sources said.
Full: washingtonpost.com
rootsie on 08.02.05 @ 07:46 AM CST [
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Suspect's tale of travel and torture
A former London schoolboy accused of being a dedicated al-Qaida terrorist has given the first full account of the interrogation and alleged torture endured by so-called ghost detainees held at secret prisons around the world.
For two and a half years US authorities moved Benyam Mohammed around a series of prisons in Pakistan, Morocco and Afghanistan, before he was sent to Guantánamo Bay in September last year.
Mohammed, 26, who grew up in Notting Hill in west London, is alleged to be a key figure in terrorist plots intended to cause far greater loss of life than the suicide bombers of 7/7. One allegation, which he denies, is of planning to detonate a "dirty bomb" in a US city; another is that he and an accomplice planned to collapse a number of apartment blocks by renting ground-floor flats to seal, fill with gas from cooking appliances, and blow up with timed detonators.
In an statement given to his newly appointed lawyer, Mohammed has given an account of how he was tortured for more than two years after being questioned by US and British officials who he believes were from the FBI and MI6. As well as being beaten and subjected to loud music for long periods, he claims his genitals were sliced with scalpels.
Full: guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 08.02.05 @ 07:43 AM CST [
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Monday, August 1st
Why the U.S. and France hate Haiti
Let’s begin with 1492. Since that year, when it was “discovered,” no country in the Caribbean has suffered more pain per capita than Haiti.
In the 15th century, according to Columbus, Haiti was an island paradise. Now it is an ecological disaster. In the 18th century, Haiti was the richest colony in the New World. Now it is the poorest nation in the Western Hemisphere.
In the early 1500s, Haiti’s indigenous people, the Taino, were rendered extinct. Alien disease took its inevitable toll. But it was the Spanish obsession with gold and Columbus’ brutal ways of extracting and extorting what little gold there was that sealed their fate.
Soon thousands of West Africans were imported every year to fill the labor vacuum. Africans, under the lash, were put to work raising indigo and then cane sugar.
So savage was the slave regime, at first under the Spanish and then under the French, that a slave’s life expectancy upon reaching Haiti was only several years. Slaves didn’t live long enough to assimilate “Western civilization.” To this day, Haiti remains essentially an African country.
In the 1790s, the Afro-Haitians revolted. In 1804, led by the slave Toussaint L’Ouverture, the Africans succeeded in whupping Napolean’s army and driving it off the island.
This was the world’s first successful slave revolt. Ignored in our history books, it was an accomplishment as significant and as liberating as the French or U.S. revolutions.
Western civilization – France and the other white colonial slave-holding powers – has yet to forgive the Afro-Haitians. Like Sandinista Nicaragua and Castro’s Cuba, liberating itself was Haiti’s original sin. Two centuries later, the forces of counter-liberation are still relentlessly applied against it.
Full: sfbayview.com
rootsie on 08.01.05 @ 07:37 AM CST [
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Death of Sudanese vice-president threatens peace
Rioting was reported in Khartoum today after the former Sudanese rebel leader who signed a peace deal ending his country's 20-year civil war was announced dead in a helicopter crash.
John Garang, who became the vice-president of Sudan with the end of the conflict, died at the weekend with six of his companions when the Ugandan presidential helicopter they were travelling in crashed.
The announcement of his death has raised concerns about the future of the peace deal, signed in January this year, between the predominantly Muslim north and the mainly animist and Christian south.
The northern government agreed to a power-sharing constitution with the south that made Mr Garang vice president and the administrative head of an autonomous southern region for six years before a possible referendum on secession.
Reuters reported that in Khartoum, where 1 million people last month greeted Mr Garang as a hero at his swearing in, thousands of his southern supporters took to the streets, attacking northerners and looting shops.
"They are beating anybody they see who looks like they are Arab," Swayd Abdullah, a student, told the news agency. Witnesses reported rioting in Juba, one of the main cities in the south.
Full: guardian.co.ukWho believes in 'accidents' anymore?
rootsie on 08.01.05 @ 07:34 AM CST [
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London faces lockdown to thwart third terror strike
THOUSANDS of police marksmen will be on London’s streets and rooftops again today after warnings that another team of suicide bombers is plotting a third attack on the capital.
The new group is believed to be made up of British Muslims who were understood to be close to staging an attack on the Underground network last week. According to security sources the men are thought to be of Pakistani origin but born and brought up in this country. They have links with the Leeds-based terrorist cell that staged the July 7 attacks, in which 52 innocent people died.
Even with the transport system so heavily guarded, police and intelligence sources believe that the bombers are intent on once more attacking London’s bus and Underground network. Another multiple suicide strike is also intended to demonstrate how the network can call on more recruits. The men are said to have access to explosives.
US security sources said yesterday that this third group of would-be bombers met at Finsbury Park mosque in North London, where some of the July 7 terrorists are also known to have stayed. There are reports that this team originally planned to strike last Thursday, which is why more than 6,000 police, half of them armed, were present at Underground stations. Scotland Yard said at the time that this exercise, the biggest since the Second World War, was to test their resources and reassure a nervous public.
As commuters return to work today police chiefs say that the arrest of five suspected bombers in house raids in Birmingham, London and Rome has not ended this threat. Deputy Assistant Commissioner Peter Clarke, head of the anti-terrorist branch, said: “The threat remains and is very real.”
There is concern among ministers and police at how long officers can continue such an intensive operation to “lock down” London while a threat remains. Although reinforcements have been brought in and leave has been cancelled, resources are stretched to keep up the guard on the capital, which is costing £500,000 a day.
Full: timesonline.co.ukGood day to rob a bank...
rootsie on 08.01.05 @ 07:29 AM CST [
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Finger points to British intelligence as al-Qaeda websites are wiped out
Over the past fortnight Israeli intelligence agents have noticed something distinctly odd happening on the internet. One by one, Al-Qaeda’s affiliated websites have vanished until only a handful remain, write Uzi Mahnaimi and Alex Pell.
Someone has cut the line of communication between the spiritual leaders of international terrorism and their supporters. Since 9/11 the websites have been the main links to disseminate propaganda and information.
The Israelis detect the hand of British intelligence, determined to torpedo the websites after the London attacks of July 7.
The web has become the new battleground of terrorism, permitting a freedom of communication denied to such organisations as the IRA a couple of decades ago.
One global jihad site terminated recently was an inflammatory Pakistani site, www.mojihedun.com, in which a section entitled How to Strike a European City gave full technical instructions. Tens of similar sites, some offering detailed information on how to build and use biological weapons, have also been shut down. However, Islamic sites believed to be “moderate”, remain.
Full: timeslonline.co.uk
rootsie on 08.01.05 @ 07:26 AM CST [
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Israel to Use Sand Bullets During Riots
JERUSALEM (AP) - The Israeli military said it is changing riot control methods, replacing its sometimes-lethal rubber-coated steel pellets with compressed sand bullets.
Rubber bullets have killed dozens of Palestinians in the past two decades. The new sand bullets were originally developed for close-quarter hostage rescue situations.
An Israeli human rights groups praised the decision but said it was surprising the army had taken so long to find non-lethal means of dispersing Palestinian demonstrators.
...The military has denied the new weapons were acquired in the face of possible confrontations with thousands of Jewish protesters in next month's Gaza Strip withdrawal.
Full:guardian.co.uk
rootsie on 08.01.05 @ 07:18 AM CST [
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‘Israeli terror is worse’
TEL AVIV – Israel is a racist state that commits war crimes and resorts to terrorism worse than that employed by the Palestinians, former Education Minister Shulamit Aloni charged in an unusually scathing interview with Nazareth-based Arab-Israeli newspaper Kul al-Arab.
Other highlights from the interview include “(Prime Minister) Sharon should face justice,” “Israel is following Mussolini’s way,” and “some soldiers behave like animals.”
When asked how she characterizes the prime minister, Aloni responded: “Sharon is a big, arrogant nationalist. He suffers from megalomania and doesn’t mind sacrificing the lives of others, as happened in the invasion of Lebanon.”
“Sharon and the Israeli leadership always try to make Israelis believe the lie that the Palestinians want to throw us to the sea,” the former minister charged. “In fact, we are the ones who commit war crimes against humanity, and I hope Sharon will face justice.”
‘Government, settlers coordinate anti-pullout campaign’
Turning her attention to the disengagement plan, Aloni leveled more charges, saying she fears the evacuation from Gaza will turn Palestinian life in the West Bank “into hell.”
“I want to note that National Union Knesset Member Benny Elon recently said that settlers intend to embitter the lives of Palestinians in the West Bank, until they emigrate from here,” she said. “I see testament to that in the existence of an IDF unit comprising radical religious soldiers, who are no different than animals in their daily behavior.”
Aloni also expressed her surprise that Israelis continue to play the “role of victims” and the American President accepts that image while declaring that “Israel has the right to defend itself, while ignoring the fact we have one of the most powerful armies in the Middle East.”
The former minister also resorted to apparent conspiracy theories, claiming the government and settlers were “secretly coordinating” anti-pullout resistance in order to create a “national shock” and convince the world of the difficulties inherent in withdrawing from the West Bank.
Full: ynetnews.com
rootsie on 08.01.05 @ 07:14 AM CST [
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