SFgate: Bush Waives Saudi Trafficking Sanctions
President Bush decided Wednesday to waive any financial sanctions on Saudi Arabia, Washington's closest Arab ally in the war on terrorism, for failing to do enough to stop the modern-day slave trade in prostitutes, child sex workers and forced laborers.
Friday, September 23, 2005
IRAN: COUNTDOWN TO WAR
Aljazeera: EU drops bid to refer Iran case to UN
The European Union has backed off from its attempt to have Iran immediately called before the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme, due to fierce opposition from Russia and China, diplomats said.
The European Union has backed off from its attempt to have Iran immediately called before the UN Security Council over its nuclear programme, due to fierce opposition from Russia and China, diplomats said.
IRAQ: RESISTANCE
Guardian: Bush: Troops will not withdraw on my watch
Meanwhile, the governor of Basra, Mohammed al-Waili, today threatened to halt cooperation with British forces until Tony Blair apologised for the storming of a prison in the southern Iraqi city.
Mr al-Waili also demanded compensation for the damage caused when British forces destroyed part of the prison compound on Monday following the detention of two undercover SAS soldiers.
The Iraqi national security adviser, Mowaffak al-Rubaie, called the attack by British forces "a flagrant violation of Iraqi sovereignty".
FREE SPEECH
Guardian: This attack on free speech will fuel Muslim hostility
If Britain's proposed laws on inciting terrorism were applied fairly, those who incite wars of aggression would also be in the dock
If Britain's proposed laws on inciting terrorism were applied fairly, those who incite wars of aggression would also be in the dock
Thursday, September 22, 2005
BIRD FLU
Rense: Massive H5N1 Infections At Ragunan Zoo In Jakarta
Apriantono told the ElShinta private radio that 19 out of 27 samples taken from various birds at the zoo, including pigmy chickens and eagles, contained the bird flu virus.
Xinhua: 6 With H5N1 Symptoms Admitted To Jakarta Hospital
6 Indonesian residents, including 4 children, have been admitted to a hospital with avian influenza symptoms, spreading fears of a major outbreak of the deadly disease in the world's fourth most populous nation.
Apriantono told the ElShinta private radio that 19 out of 27 samples taken from various birds at the zoo, including pigmy chickens and eagles, contained the bird flu virus.
Xinhua: 6 With H5N1 Symptoms Admitted To Jakarta Hospital
6 Indonesian residents, including 4 children, have been admitted to a hospital with avian influenza symptoms, spreading fears of a major outbreak of the deadly disease in the world's fourth most populous nation.
PRIVATE PROPAGANDA
SLATE: You Can't Handle the Truth
LONDON—Over the past 24 hours, seven people have checked into hospitals here with telltale symptoms. Rashes, vomiting, high temperature, and cramps: the classic signs of smallpox. Once thought wiped out, the disease is back and threatening a pandemic of epic proportions.
LONDON—Over the past 24 hours, seven people have checked into hospitals here with telltale symptoms. Rashes, vomiting, high temperature, and cramps: the classic signs of smallpox. Once thought wiped out, the disease is back and threatening a pandemic of epic proportions.
The government faces a dilemma: It needs people to stay home, but if the news breaks, mass panic might ensue as people flee the city, carrying the virus with them.
A shadowy media firm steps in to help orchestrate a sophisticated campaign of mass deception. Rather than alert the public to the smallpox threat, the company sets up a high-tech "ops center" to convince the public that an accident at a chemical plant threatens London. As the fictitious toxic cloud approaches the city, TV news outlets are provided graphic visuals charting the path of the invisible toxins. Londoners stay indoors, glued to the telly, convinced that even a short walk into the streets could be fatal.
This scenario may sound like a rejected plot twist from a mediocre Bond flick, but one company is dead set on making this fantasy come to life.
Strategic Communication Laboratories, a small U.K. firm specializing in "influence operations" made a very public debut this week with a glitzy exhibit occupying prime real estate at Defense Systems & Equipment International, or DSEi, the United Kingdom's largest showcase for military technology. The main attraction was a full-scale mock-up of its ops center, running simulations ranging from natural disasters to political coups.
Tuesday, September 20, 2005
IRAN: COUNTDOWN TO WAR
Rense: Iran War Clouds On The Harvest Moon
by Webster Griffin Tarpley
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.
Monday, September 19, 2005
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.
"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.
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.
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
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.
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.
Wednesday, September 14, 2005
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.
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.
Tuesday, September 13, 2005
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.
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
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
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.
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.
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.
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