IRAN: COUNTDOWN TO WAR

Rense: Iran War Clouds On The Harvest Moon
by Webster Griffin Tarpley

The Bush-Cheney war drive continues unabated, despite hurricane Katrina. The US government continues to operate under Cheney's order to prepare in the short term for the nuclear bombing of Iran in the wake of a new 9/11 of state sponsored, false flag synthetic terrorism, as revealed in late July by Philip Giraldi in The American Conservative.

But Iran is not the only possible target in the wake of a new 9/11. Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez, speaking at the United Nations this past week, formally accused the US of preparing an unprovoked aggression against his country as well. Chavez promised a hundred years, war to beat back such an invasion.

IRAQ: RESISTANCE CONTROLS BAGHDAD

Juan Cole: Security Situation in Baghdad Sinking like the Titanic

"The situation has deteriorated in Baghdad dramatically today. Five neighborhoods (hay) in Baghdad are controlled by insurgents, and they are Amiraya, Ghazilya, Shurta, Yarmouk and Doura. It is very bad. My guys there report that cars have come into these neighborhoods and blocked off the streets. Masked gunmen with AKs and other weapons are roaming these areas, announcing that people should stay home. One of my drivers in Amiraya reports that his neighborhood is shut down totally, and even those who need food or provisions are warned not to go out.

The government will respond feebly. It will go into a contested neighborhood, and then just like Fallujah, Ramadi, Tel Afar, the insurgents will flee to take over another area on another day. Bit by bit they are taking over the main parts of Baghdad. The only place we are sure they cannot control is Sadr City, unless of course they want to take on Jaish Mahdy [Muqtada al-Sadr's Mahdi Army], and that would be bloody.

A few minutes ago Jaafari came on television to tell everyone in Baghdad to stay home. Can't wait for his next bold move.

There are flyers in public areas of Baghdad warning people not to gather in large numbers because they will thereby become targets. I am trying to get a copy of the flyer.

Notwithstanding Al-Hayat's claim that Zarqawi and the Sunni resistance are not together, my street listeners claim otherwise. My folks are convinced that the two groups, broadly defined, are together, "100 percent" is the claim of certainty. It is hard to get a handle on this because people in Baghdad tend to lump all resistance groups, except for Zarqawi, into one large category.

SYRIA

huffingtonpost: US Ambassador To Iraq Predicts US Will Go Into Syria…

Dr. Zalmay Khalilzad, the US Ambassador to Iraq, made the off the record prediction that the US will go into Syria to combat insurgents that have been using the country as a staging ground for terrorist activity in Iraq.

Ambassador Khalilzad’s comments were made at businessman Teddy Forstmann's annual off the record gathering in Aspen, Colorado this weekend.

IRAN

Haaretz: Iran calls on UN to probe how Israel acquired nuclear weapons


UNITED NATIONS - Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad said Saturday a UN committee should investigate how Israel acquired nuclear weapons.

In an unyielding speech to the General Assembly, Ahmadinejad said his country had the inalienable right to produce nuclear energy and accused the United States of violating a treaty banning the spread of atomic weapons.

Seeking to turn the tables of Western powers that suspect Tehran of developing nuclear weapons, Ahmadinejad offered to allow other countries and private companies to participate in his country's uranium enrichment program to prove that Tehran is not producing nuclear weapons.

Calling the charge that Iran is seeking to produce nuclear weapons "a pure propaganda ploy," Ahmadinejad said Iran has a right to a nuclear fuel program, but stressed that the country's "religious principles" prevent it from seeking atomic weapons.

USA: KATRINA

Rense: Unreported Deadly Force In Katrina Aftermath?
by Wayne Madsen

Pentagon covering up shooting incidents in New Orleans and environs? Reports are emanating out of New Orleans that National Guard, regular military, officers of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms, and private security personnel have shot to death homeless and needy survivors of Hurricane Katrina. One shooting incident is alleged to have occurred last week at Louis Armstrong International Airport where over a hundred people were subjected to lethal force after troops feared they were going to "riot." It is uncertain how many people have been killed by lethal force in New Orleans, but the numbers mentioned are in excess of 150.

USA: KATRINA

Xymaphora:The Danziger Bridge incidents

USA: KATRINA

Bella Ciao: The Great New Orleans Land Grab-The 17th Street Canal levee was breached on purpose

s the world watched the events unfolding, one could not help think that something was terribly afoot concerning the rescue by FEMA of the city’s poor and predominate Black population. It seems that a well laid out plan was put into effect to grab valuable real estate from well established but poverty stricken Black families of New Orleans? What is being implemented now is nothing less than a sophisticated scheme to purge and ethnically cleanse what Whites have termed "Black and ’welfare bloated’ New Orleans".

Another telling incident that points to a "nefarious plan" is what New Orleans Mayor Ray Nagin said at the height of the crisis. He said publicly, "I fear the CIA may take me out!" Mayor Nagin, a Black, said this twice. He told a reporter for the Associated Press: "If the CIA slips me something and next week you don’t see me, you’ll all know what happened." Later he told interviewers for CNN on a live broadcast that he feared the "CIA might take me out." What does Mayor Ray Nagin know and why does he fear the CIA?

ork that deployed throughout the hurricane ravished region reported that the airwaves were being "jammed" making it impossible to communicate emergency information. Churches, hospitals and other essential community groups reported that the first thing that the US military did, when they arrived, was to cut their telephone lines and confiscate communications devices.

IRAQ: RESISTANCE

Forbes: Al-Qaeda-linked group says it fired chemical arms in Baghdad

An Al-Qaeda linked Sunni group in Iraq said it used chemical weapons to attack targets in Baghdad today, according to their statement released on an Islamist website.

Jaish al-Taefa al-Mansura (Army of the Victorious Community) said its fighters fired shells filled with chemical agents at the interior ministry, foreign ministry, the 'green zone' and Baghdad's security academy.

In Baghdad, the interior ministry said five rounds of mortar fire exploded, including two in the heavily fortified green zone which houses the Iraqi government as well as the US and British embassies.

Two struck the heavily protected 'green zone' which is home to the government and to the US and British embassies, but it was not immediately known if there were casualties.

1984

Guardian: Access denied

This is the golden age of the internet, a time of glorious anarchy where information is free and anyone, rich or poor, can blog their views to the world. But government and big business are moving in - the clampdown has started.

IRAQ

Aljazeera: The Iran Trap by Scott Ritter

the complicated world of international diplomacy surrounding the issue of Iran's nuclear program, there is but one thing that the United States, the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA), the so-called EU-3 (Germany, France and Great Britain) and Iran can all agree uponIran has resumed operations of facilities designed to convert uranium into a product usable in enrichment processes. From that point forward consensus on just about anything begins to fall apart.

GUANTANAMO

Independent: Revealed: the diary of a British man on hunger strike in Guantanamo

More than 200 detainees are starving themselves to protest against conditions at the camp in Cuba where they are being held without trial. Here the Independent on Sunday publishes a shocking extract from the journal of Omar Deghayes, a British resident, who has been imprisoned there since September 2002

IRAQ

Reuters: Militants put price on Iraqi PM's head

DUBAI (Reuters) - An Iraqi militant group has offered up to $100,000 for killing the prime minister and top officials who launched an offensive on rebels in a northern town, according to an Internet statement posted on Monday.

The Islamic Army in Iraq, among several insurgent groups fighting U.S. troops and Iraqi forces, said Prime Minister Ibrahim Jaafari and the defense and interior ministers should die for the fighting in Tal Afar.

"The leadership of the army has issued orders to all the mujahideen to intensify their attacks... to avenge the mass extermination occuring in Tal Afar," said the statement which was not dated but bore the group's logo

IRAQ: TAL AFAR

Iraqwar.ru: Tal Afar Residents Send Out SOS

Residents of the northern Iraqi city of Tal Afar has sent out an SOS to the international community to interfere with the US occupation authorities to stop their continuing bombing of their devastated city, revealing a terrible humanitarian situation. "US and Iraqi forces are still besieging Tal Afar amid ongoing intensive bombing, ordering residents of Hassan Kawi and Sarray neighborhoods to evacuate immediately," a Tal Afar tribal leader told IOL over the phone Thursday, September 8.

"The Americans are seemingly bombing the city with chemical weapons," he said, adding Tal Afar residents are speaking of suffocations and other health problems upon exposure to any hit area.

USA: KATRINA

CNN: Judge Blocks Feds News Ban On Recovery Of N.O. Dead

At the request of CNN, a federal judge in Texas Friday night blocked emergency officials in New Orleans from preventing the media from covering the recovery of bodies from Hurricane Katrina.

Attorneys for the network argued that the ban was an unconstitutional prior restraint on news gathering.

U.S. District Judge Keith Ellison issued a temporary restraining order against a "zero access" policy announced earlier Friday by Army Lt. Gen. Russel Honore, who is overseeing the federal relief effort in the city, and Terry Ebbert, the city's homeland security director.

USA: KATRINA

Rense: Explosive Residue Found On Failed Levee Debris

Note - This story below is racing around the net and we present it *only* as something to be so noted. 'Well placed sources' and unnamed sources 'speaking on conditions of anonymity' have essentially no credibility from a journalistic standpoint. Unless one of the principals steps out of the shadows and comes forward with proof of the allegations below, this story must be considered as just another internet rumor

Divers inspecting the ruptured levee walls surrounding New Orleans found something that piqued their interest: Burn marks on underwater debris chunks from the broken levee wall!

One diver, a member of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers, saw the burn marks and knew immediately what caused them. He secreted a small chunk of the cement inside his diving suit and later arranged for it to be sent to trusted military friends at a The U.S. Army Forensic Laboratory at Fort Gillem, Georgia for testing.

According to well placed sources, a military forensic specialist determined the burn marks on the cement chunks did, in fact, come from high explosives. The source, speaking on condition of anonymity said "We found traces of boron-enhanced fluoronitramino explosives as well as PBXN-111. This would indicate at least two separate types of explosive devices."

ISRAEL

Uri Avnery: Who Murdered Arafat?

The day before yesterday the Haaretz headline screamed: "Doctors: Arafat died of AIDS or poisoning". Aids appeared in first place.

The key word is, of course, "AIDS". Throughout the long article there is no trace of proof for this allegation. The reporters quote "sources in the Israeli security establishment". They also quote Israeli doctors "who heard from French doctors" - an original method for medical diagnosis. A respected Israeli professor even found conclusive proof: it was not published that Arafat had undergone an Aids test. True, a Tunisian medical team did test him in Ramallah and the result was negative, but who would believe Arabs?

USA: KATRINA

Guardian: Mercenaries guard homes of the rich in New Orleans

Hundreds of mercenaries have descended on New Orleans to guard the property of the city's millionaires from looters.
The heavily armed men, employed by private military companies including Blackwater and ISI, are part of the militarisation of a city which had a reputation for being one of the most relaxed and easy-going in America.
After scenes of looting and lawlessness in the days immediately after Hurricane Katrina struck, New Orleans has turned into an armed camp, patrolled by thousands of local, state and federal law enforcement officers, as well as 70,000 national guard troops and active-duty soldiers now based in the region.

USA: KATRINA

Prison planet: Blackwater Mercenaries: Coming Soon to Your Town

It is now obvious how martial law (not officially declared as such) will work in America in the wake of the devastation of New Orleans. Instead of federal troops or an influx of National Guard troops sent to “restore order” (the latter mandated in our now anachronistic Constitution; see Article 1, Section 8) and empowered to “suppress Insurrections and repel Invasions,” in Louisiana the state and federal governments have brazenly violated the Constitution by sending in Blackwater Security and other private goon squads. “Heavily armed paramilitary mercenaries from the Blackwater private security firm, infamous for their work in Iraq, are openly patrolling the streets of New Orleans,” write Jeremy Scahill and Daniela Crespo.

“Some of the mercenaries say they have been ‘deputized’ by the Louisiana governor; indeed some are wearing gold Louisiana state law enforcement badges on their chests and Blackwater photo identification cards on their arms. They say they are on contract with the Department of Homeland Security and have been given the authority to use lethal force.”

USA: KATRINA

Online Journal: New Orleans: covert operations underway?

September 10, 2005—Wednesday's broadcast of KPFA's "Flashpoints" featured a telephone interview with Malik Rahim, who gave a gut-wrenching and shocking firsthand account of the staggering horror of still-neglected New Orleans that he and other survivors are facing.

In stark contrast to increasingly optimistic mainstream media coverage (cover-up) about "improving relief efforts" and "rebuilding," Rahim exposed the fact that there is no relief. No Red Cross, no food, no emergency medical care under a FEMA lockdown that has kept any relief from getting into New Orleans.

Meanwhile, as the Bush administration's combat operations ramp up, and troops prowl the streets, no help whatsoever has been offered to residents, according to Rahim. Rotting corpses litter the streets. People, heroically fending for themselves and their own, are being left in shocking conditions to suffer and die.

KATRINA

About.com: Dumb Quotes About Hurricane Katrina

"We finally cleaned up public housing in New Orleans. We couldn't do it, but God did." –Rep. Richard Baker (R-LA) to lobbyists, as quoted in the Wall Street Journal

"Brownie, you're doing a heck of a job." –President Bush, to FEMA director Michael Brown, while touring Hurricane-ravaged Mississippi, Sept. 2, 2005

"What I'm hearing which is sort of scary is that they all want to stay in Texas. Everybody is so overwhelmed by the hospitality. And so many of the people in the arena here, you know, were underprivileged anyway so this (chuckle) – this is working very well for them." –Former First Lady Barbara Bush, on the Hurricane flood evacuees in the Houston Astrodome, Sept. 5, 2005

"I have not heard a report of thousands of people in the convention center who don't have food and water." –Homeland Security Secretary Michael Chertoff, on NPR's "All Things Considered," Sept. 1, 2005