CAN    YOU     IMAGINE     THIS?      REPEATING   WWII  !!!    WE  HAVE ANOTHER NAZI GERMANY RIGHT HERE IN THE UNITED STATES!   EITHER YOU TAKE THE RED PILL OR THE BLUE PILL... IT'S YOUR CHOICE 

 Drums of war beat louder as Iran and Israel step up rhetoric

Evidence is mounting that Washington believes an Israeli attack on Iran is now only a matter of time.
Donald Macintyre

Saturday 04 February 2012
 

Iran's supreme leader threatened to attack Israel yesterday in retaliation for Western sanctions against the Islamic Republic, warning that "threatening Iran and attacking Iran will harm America". Ayatollah Ali Khamenei's declaration came as apprehension of possible conflict was intensified by a report suggesting that the US Defense Secretary, Leon Panetta, believes Israel could strike nuclear targets in Iran before the summer after concluding that military action might be needed before it was "too late" to stop Tehran's nuclear programme.

The Ayatollah used a televised sermon to warn that threats of war – which would be "ten times against the interests of the US itself" – would not deter Iran from its "nuclear course". And he declared the Tehran regime's backing for "any nation or group" that wants "to confront and fight" against Israel. He also said that Tehran was seeking to "extract a price" from Israel for the assassination of four nuclear scientists since November 2010.

The threat from Iran is apparently being taken seriously in Israel. Yoram Cohen, the head of the domestic intelligence agency Shin Bet, was reported as having told a closed meeting in Tel Aviv this week that Iran was seeking to strike Israeli targets around the world in an attempt to stem the assassinations of scientists.

Mr Cohen was quoted by the liberal newspaper Haaretz as having cited "three serious attacks" since last summer that had been thwarted as they were "on the verge of being carried out," against the Israeli consul general in Istanbul, in Baku, Azerbaijan, and two weeks ago in Thailand.

The Shin Bet head said that Iran believed Israel was behind the attacks on its scientists and added: "It doesn't matter if it's true or not that Israel took out the nuclear scientists. A major, serious country like Iran cannot let this go on. They want to deter Israel and extract a price so that decision makers in Israel think twice before they order an attack on an Iranian scientist."

The main media focus in Israel, however, were the fears attributed to Leon Panetta in a report in The Washington Post – which Mr Panetta has not denied – that Israel might launch a strike on Iran's nuclear plants in April, May or June before Iran enters what his Israeli counterpart, Ehud Barak, this week called the "immunity" zone.

Mr Barak has coined the term to describe the point from which Iran will have developed sufficient knowledge and material so successfully that an external attack would be unable derail any ambition it may have to attain a nuclear weapon.

The administration in Tehran have denied that its nuclear programme is for anything other than peaceful energy purposes. Speaking in Germany yesterday Mr Panetta said that "all options" remained on the table. But he said "the most important thing" was to maintain unified global support for tough economic sanctions.

The public statements followed a week of intense discussion about Iran's perceived nuclear threat at the annual conference of Israel's security establishment at the Inter-Disciplinary Centre in Herzilya. Despite unanimity among prominent intelligence, military and political leaders about the need to halt the threat, there were also strong signs of what Mr Barak in his keynote address openly acknowledged were "disagreements among us" about how to do it.

One of the emerging areas of disagreement appears to be the vulnerability of Iranian sites to bunker-buster bombing raids. The Vice Prime Minister, Moshe Yaalon, while saying that "one way or the other" the "messianic-apocalyptic" Iranian regime's "nuclear project" had to be stopped, went out of his way to reject claims that Iran's underground facilities might be invulnerable to "bunker-buster" bombs.

In remarks that appeared to run counter to Mr Barak's warning that it might soon become "too late" to attack Iran's nuclear facilities, Mr Yaalon added: "Any facility that is protected by humans can be penetrated by humans. Every military facility in Iran can be hit, and I say this from my experience as [military] chief of staff."

Equally, the current military chief of staff, Benny Gantz, did not refer to the "immunity zone", pointing instead to the strategy of "continuing to disrupt Iran's attempts to attain nuclear weapons" and adding that it was important "to continue to build strong, reliable, impressive military capabilities, and to be prepared to use them if and when the need arises".

 

Obama's New Military Strategy 
By Stephen Lendman
1-7-11

This was an article one year ago...be wide awake...this is coming to pass!!


Obama's January 5 Pentagon news conference reeked of duplicity like all his pronouncements. Surrounded by Joint Chiefs of Staff, hawkishness took center stage.

Stressing a leaner, more agile/flexible military, he said counterterrorism, intelligence and cyberwarfare will be emphasized without sacrificing America's superiority against global enemies.

So will subversion, destabilization, drone killings, other targeted assassinations, global state terrorism, and permanent war.

In other words, new and old tactics are featured. Strategies are unchanged. So are imperial aims. Permanent war remains policy. Merciless high-tech killing and destruction will be featured. Ravaging the world one country at a time is planned.

So is expanding the Bush Doctrine. Preemptive global wars define it. Addressing West Point cadets in June 2003, Dick Cheney said:

"If there is anyone in the world today who doubts the seriousness of the Bush Doctrine, I would urge that person to consider the fate of the Taliban in Afghanistan, and of Saddam Hussein's regime in Iraq."

Bush was more succinct, saying "You're either with us or against us." Neutrality's not an option. Neither are equity, justice, rule of law principles, democratic values and peace.

Supporters thought Obama was different. In fact, he exceeds the worst of Bush at home and abroad. He arrogated to America the right to confront independent regimes belligerently, replace them with client ones, and target homeland dissenters relentlessly.

In 2006, Bush's National Security Strategy reaffirmed America's preemptive right to counter alleged threats. Initially unveiled in September 2002, it asserted his "preemptive war" doctrine.

At the time, it justified war on Iraq. It said America doesn't "rule out the use of force before attacks occur, even if uncertainty remains as to the time and place of the enemy's attack."

"To forestall or prevent such hostile acts by our adversaries, the United States will, if necessary, act preemptively in exercising our inherent right of self-defense."

Unaddressed was inviolable international and US law. They require clear evidence of impending or planned attacks. Short of either, waring preemptively or otherwise against nonbelligerent states is illegal.

Bush attacked Afghanistan and Iraq. Obama's waging global wars overtly and covertly, including at home.

Abroad, Syria and Iran are prime targets. Bush's 2006 National Security Strategy highlighted Iran, saying:

Its "regime sponsors terrorism; threatens Israel, seeks to thwart Middle East peace; disrupts democracy in Iraq; and denies the aspirations of its people for freedom."

"The nuclear issue and our other concerns can ultimately be resolved only if the Iranian regime makes the strategic decision to change these policies, open up its political system, and afford freedom to its people. This is the ultimate goal of US policy."

In fact, at issue is regime change, controlling Iranian oil and gas, redrawing the Middle East, and pursuing regional hegemony to China and Russia's borders. Bush addressed "wars of the 21st century."

They continue under Obama. Tactics include creating an arc of instability, chaos and violence throughout the region to justify US intervention.

Addressing the 18th Direct Democracy conference in Feldkirch, Austria, Law Professor Francis Boyle warned against attacking Iran, especially with nuclear weapons.

America already committed "acts of aggression against Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan, Somalia, (and Libya) and has authorized armed, equipped, and supplied Israel (with destructive weapons and munitions) to commit outright genocide against Lebanon and Palestine."

Preemptive war is illegal. So is preventive war. Bush Doctrine policies featured them. They've "yet to be officially repealed by Obama...."

Nazi lawyers claimed these prerogatives at Nuremberg. They were rejected. Article 2 of the UN Charter requires settling international disputes peacefully, saying:

"All Members shall refrain in their international relations from the threat or use of force against the territorial integrity or political independence of any state, or in any other manner inconsistent with the Purposes of the United Nations."

Only legitimate self-defense is permitted. America's wars don't qualify. According to Boyle, they constitute "international criminal activity (for) planning, prepar(ing), solicit(ing), and conspiracy to commit Nuremberg crimes against peace, crimes against humanity, war crimes, and genocide."

In addition, "the design, research, testing, production, manufacture, fabrication, transportation, deployment, installation, storing, stockpil(ing), sale, and purchase and the threat to use nuclear weapons are criminal under well-recognized principles of international law."

Boyle stressed the urgent actions, saying:

Otherwise, "Obama and his people could very well set off a Third World War over Iran that has been already threatened publicly by Bush Jr."

He also accused NATO states "go(ing) along with US policies" of complicity with US crimes.

The New York Times: Cheerleading US Belligerence

On January 5, a New York Times editorial headlined, "A Leaner Pentagon," saying:

Obama's new defense strategy reflects "a generally pragmatic vision of how this country will organize and deploy its military in the 21st century. (It features) smarter and more restrained....use of force."

It means fewer ground troops, but "doesn't minimize the fact that the world is a very dangerous place and says the country must still be ready to fight a major land war...."

"It argues, persuasively (for greater use of) air power, intelligence, special operations or innovative technologies like drones."

Fact check

Rule of law issues weren't mentioned. Nor was America's responsibility for heightening world dangers. Obama's "pragmatic vision" is Timesspeak for illegal mass high-tech killing and destruction.

Obama wants more emphasis on "contain(ing) an increasingly assertive Iran, and in Asia, to moderate and counterbalance China's ambitions."

Fact check

Unlike America, Iran hasn't attacked another country in over 200 years and threatens none now. Neither does China. International law affirms the principle of sovereignty and self-determination.

All nations may freely choose their political systems. Others are prohibited from interfering in their internal affairs, whether democratic, authoritarian, or anything in between. America deems it a prerogative. Times editors are supportive.

"We understand the importance of sending a clear message that this country is not ceding anything to" Iran, China or any nation.

In other words, Times editors endorse strategically targeting any nation challenging US hegemony, including by preemptive war. Cheerleading all US wars, they ignore justification, rule of law, and other right and wrong issues.

A Final Comment

In November, Haaretz said Washington and Israel will hold their "largest" and "most significant" ever joint military exercise. Assistant Secretary of State Andrew Shapiro for Political-Military Affairs confirmed it.

Over 5,000 US and Israeli forces will be involved. Exercises will include "simulat(ing) Israel's ballistic missile defense." They'll also feature "urban warfare and counterterrorism."

Moreover, Israel will be granted expedited Congressional Notification to facilitate "faster trade of smaller, routine sales and purchases of arms...." In fact, whatever Israel wants, it gets.

In addition, Washington's multi-billion dollar annual commitment to Israel will continue, despite "challenging budgetary times."

US forces are being deployed to Israel for an indefinite period. Israeli military personnel will be assigned to EUCOM, America's Stuttgart, Germany-based European command.

The Jerusalem Post said sophisticated US THAAD (Terminal High Altitude Area Defense) and shipbased Aegis ballistic missile defense systems are involved.

They'll work together with Israel's Arrow, Patriot and Iron Dome. They'll also further heighten tensions already too high. Targeting Iran is involved. Confrontation ahead seems likely, no matter the potentially catastrophic risks.

In addition, Syria is threatened. Assistant Secretary of State for Near East Affairs Jeffrey Feltman's in Cairo to pressure Arab League officials to report back what Washington wants to hear.

At issue is observer mission head General Mohammed Ahmed Mustafa al-Dabi. Instead of reporting regime violence, he said conditions are reassuring as Assad's government is cooperating.

Washington wants a far different assessment to justify greater intervention. White House spokesman Jay Carney said "as sniper fire, torture, and murder in Syria continue, it is clear that the requirements of the Arab League protocol have not been met."

He wants the Security Council to act, but Russia and China will block outside intervention.

Syria's Foreign Ministry spokesman Jihad Makdisi rightfully accused Washington of "gross interference in the work of the Arab League," as well as attempting "unjustified internationalization of the situation in Syria."

Iranian and Syrian regime change plans are longstanding. So far, only timing issues weren't resolved. Perhaps 2012 will prove decisive.

Since last winter, externally generated insurgents ravaged and destabilized Syria violently. So-called Free Syria Army (FSA) extremists and other militants are Western proxy paramilitaries. Expect them to be involved in stepped up ground attacks ahead.

According to FSA commander Colonel Riad al-Assad, "We are preparing for big operations and have no faith in Arab League monitors or their useless mission."

In contrast, moderate opposition figures oppose outside intervention. They want Syria's sovereignty respected.

Washington, Israel, key NATO allies, and anti-Assad regional states have other ideas, and that's the key problem.

Stephen Lendman lives in Chicago and can be reached at lendmanstephen@sbcglobal.net.

Also visit his blog site at sjlendman.blogspot.com and listen to cutting-edge discussions with distinguished guests on the Progressive Radio News Hour on the Progressive Radio Network Thursdays at 10AM US Central time and Saturdays and Sundays at noon. All programs are archived for easy listening.

Chinese EMP Weapons Program Confirmed by Intelligence Agencies; Designed to Attack US Carrier Fleets, Taiwan

Mac Slavo
July 22nd, 2011
SHTFplan.com

Reports from organizations like the Center for Security Policy have confirmed that Electromagnetic Pulse, or EMP, weapons could potentially wipe out the entire infrastructure of the United States in a matter of seconds, the consequences of which may be the death of 9 out of 10 Americans within a period of one year after the blast. Many Senators, Congressman, and terrorism experts have said that EMP is the single biggest security threat the United States faces from foreign powers and terrorist organizations. Research by EMPact America indicates that a properly deployed EM pulse weapon, or weapons, has the capability of wiping out and disabling the power grid across the lower 48 states.

The threat is serious, and it just got a whole lot worse.

According to a declassified report obtained by The Washington Times the Chinese have been building and testing EMP weapons in an effort to offset their inferior technological capabilities, and are prepared to use those weapons in the event of conflict over the island of Taiwan (and likely other potential theaters of war):

China’s military is developing electromagnetic pulse weapons that Beijing plans to use against U.S. aircraft carriers in any future conflict over Taiwan, according to an intelligence report made public on Thursday.

Portions of a National Ground Intelligence Center study on the lethal effects of electromagnetic pulse (EMP) and high-powered microwave (HPM) weapons revealed that the arms are part of China’s so-called “assassin’s mace” arsenal – weapons that allow a technologically inferior China to defeat U.S. military forces.

…

The declassified intelligence report, obtained by the private National Security Archive, provides details on China’s EMP weapons and plans for their use. Annual Pentagon reports on China’s military in the past made only passing references to the arms.

“For use against Taiwan, China could detonate at a much lower altitude (30 to 40 kilometers) … to confine the EMP effects to Taiwan and its immediate vicinity and minimize damage to electronics on the mainland,” the report said.

The report, produced in 2005 and once labeled “secret,” stated that Chinese military writings have discussed building low-yield EMP warheads, but “it is not known whether [the Chinese] have actually done so.”

The report said that in addition to EMP weapons, “any low-yield strategic nuclear warhead (or tactical nuclear warheads) could be used with similar effects.”

…

“China’s [high-altitude] EMP capability could be used in two different ways: as a surprise measure after China’s initial strike against Taiwan and other U.S. [aircraft carrier strike group] assets have moved into a vulnerable position, and as a bluff intended to dissuade the United States from defending Taiwan with a CVBG,” the Pentagon acronym for carrier strike groups.

…

Peter Pry, a former congressional aide who helped direct a commission on EMP several years ago, said the commission found that China plans for nuclear EMP strikes against the United States, as well as Taiwan and carrier forces, are part of its military doctrine and exercises.

“There is also evidence that China is developing, or has already developed, super-EMP nuclear weapons that generate extraordinarily powerful EMP fields, based partly on design information stolen from the United States,” Mr. Pry, president of the group EMPact America, said in an email.

IIf the United States is ever embroiled in a military conflict with another large nation – say Russia or China – we can fully expect that the first strike would be EMP-based weapons.

Taking down the power grid would lead to almost immediate chaos on the streets of America, affecting everything from food transportation systems and gas pumps to phone communication and essential utility services like water.

Author: Mac Slavo
Date: July 22nd, 2011
Website: www.SHTFplan.com

The Destabilization of Syria and the Broader Middle East War

by Michel Chossudovsky

 

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Global Research, June 17, 2011





 

What is unfolding in Syria is an armed insurrection supported covertly by foreign powers including the US, Turkey and Israel.  

Armed insurgents belonging to Islamist organizations have crossed the border from Turkey, Lebanon and Jordan. The US State Department has confirmed that it is supporting the insurgency.

The United States is to expand contacts with Syrians who are counting on a regime change in the country.

This was stated by U.S. State Department official Victoria Nuland. "We started to expand contacts with the Syrians, those who are calling for change, both inside and outside the country," she said.

Nuland also repeated that Barack Obama had previously called on Syrian President Bashar Assad to initiate reforms or to step down from power." (Voice of Russia, June 17, 2011)

The destabilization of Syria and Lebanon as sovereign countries has been on the drawing board of the US-NATO-Israel military alliance for at least ten years.

Action against Syria is part of a "military roadmap", a sequencing of military operations. According to former NATO Commander General Wesley Clark--the Pentagon  had clearly identified Iraq, Libya, Syria and Lebanon as target countries of a US-NATO intervention:

"[The] Five-year campaign plan [included]... a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan" (Pentagon official quoted by General Wesley Clark)

In "Winning Modern Wars" (page 130) General Wesley Clark states the following:

"As I went back through the Pentagon in November 2001, one of the senior military staff officers had time for a chat. Yes, we were still on track for going against Iraq, he said. But there was more. This was being discussed as part of a five-year campaign plan, he said, and there were a total of seven countries, beginning with Iraq, then Syria, Lebanon, Libya, Iran, Somalia and Sudan.

...He said it with reproach--with disbelief, almost--at the breadth of the vision. I moved the conversation away, for this was not something I wanted to hear. And it was not something I wanted to see moving forward, either. ...I left the Pentagon that afternoon deeply concerned."

The objective is to destabilize the Syrian State and implement "regime change" through the covert support of an armed insurgency, integrated by Islamist militia. The reports on civilian deaths are used to provide a pretext and a justification for humanitarian intervention under the principle "Responsiblity to Protect".

Media Disinformation

Tacitly acknowledged , the significance of an armed insurrection is casually dismissed by the Western media. If it were to be recognized and analysed, our understanding of unfolding events would be entirely different.

What is mentioned profusely is that the armed forces and the police are involved in the indiscriminate killing of civilian protesters. Press reports confirm, however, from the outset of the protest movement an exchange of gunfire between armed insurgents and the police, with casualties reported on both sides.

The insurrection started in mid March in the border city of Daraa, which is 10 km from the Jordanian border. 

The Daraa "protest movement" on March 18 had all the appearances of a staged event involving, in all likelihood, covert support to Islamic terrorists by Mossad and/or Western intelligence. Government sources point to the role of radical Salafist groups (supported by Israel)

Other reports have pointed to the role of Saudi Arabia in financing the protest movement.

What has unfolded in Daraa in the weeks following the initial violent clashes on 17-18 March, is the confrontation between the police and the armed forces on the one hand and armed units of terrorists and snipers on the other which have infiltrated the protest movement.

....

What is clear from these initial reports is that many of the demonstrators were not demonstrators but terrorists involved in premeditated acts of killing and arson. The title of the Israeli news report summarizes what happened:  Syria: Seven Police Killed, Buildings Torched in Protests. 

(See Michel Chossudovsky, SYRIA: Who is Behind The Protest Movement? Fabricating a Pretext for a US-NATO "Humanitarian Intervention", http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=24591 Global Research,  May 3, 2011)

The Role of Turkey

The center of the insurrection has now shifted to the small border town of Jisr al-Shughour, 10 km from the Turkish border.

Jisr al-Shughour has a population of 44,000 inhabitants. Armed insurgents have crossed the border from Turkey.

Members of the Muslim Brotherhood are reported to have taken up arms in northwest Syria. 

There are indications that Turkish military and intelligence are supporting these incursions. 

There was no mass civilian protest movement in Jisr al-Shughour. The local population was caught in the crossfire. The fighting between armed rebels and government forces has contributed to triggering a refugee crisis, which is the center of media attention.

MB Rebels at Jisr al Choughour

Muslim Brotherhood Rebels at Jisr al Shughour Photos AFP June 16, 2011

In contrast, in the nation's capital Damascus, where the mainstay of social movements is located, there have been mass rallies in support rather than in opposition to the government.

President Bashir al Assad is casually compared to presidents Ben Ali of Tunisia and Hosni Mubarak of Egypt. What the mainstream media has failed to mention is that despite the authoritarian nature of the regime, president Al Assad is a popular figure who has widespread support of the Syrian population.  

The large rally in Damascus on March 29, "with tens of thousands of supporters" (Reuters) of President Al Assad was barely mentioned. Yet in an unusual twist, the images and video footage of several pro-government events were used by the Western media to convince international public opinion that the President was being confronted by mass anti-government rallies. 

 

Syrians display a giant national flag with a picture of Syria's President Bashar al-Assad during a 
pro-government rally at the central bank square in Damascus March 29, 2011. (Reuters Photo)

On June 15, thousands of people rallied over several kilometers on Damascus' main highway in a march holding up a 2.3 km Syrian flag. The rally was acknowledged by the media and casually dismissed as irrelevant.

Thousands of supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad carry a 2,300-metre-long Syrian flag in a demonstration in Damascus on Wednesday. The Syrian government is working to stop the spectacle of Syrians fleeing in terror from government troops trying to quell the three-month rebellion. Muzaffar Salman/Associated Press

AP. Thousands of supporters of Syrian President Bashar Assad carry a 2,300-metre-long Syrian flag in a demonstration in Damascus on Wednesday.

While the Syrian regime is by no means democratic, the objective of the US-NATO Israel military alliance is not to promote democracy. Quite the opposite. Washington's intent is to eventually install a puppet regime.

The objective through media disinformation is to demonize president Al Assad and more broadly to destabilize Syria as a secular state. The latter objective is implemented through covert support of  various Islamist organizations:

Syria is run by an authoritarian oligarchy which has used brute force in dealing with its citizens. The riots in Syria, however, are complex. They cannot be viewed as a straightforward quest for liberty and democracy. There has been an attempt by the U.S. and the E.U. to use the riots in Syria to pressure and intimidate the Syrian leadership. Saudi Arabia, Israel, Jordan, and the March 14 Alliance have all played a role in supporting an armed insurrection.

The violence in Syria has been supported from the outside with a view of taking advantage of the internal tensions... Aside from the violent reaction of the Syrian Army, media lies have been used and bogus footage has been aired. Money and weapons have also been funnelled to elements of the Syrian opposition by the U.S., the E.U....Funding has also been provided to ominous and unpopular foreign-based Syrian opposition figures, while weapons caches were smuggled from Jordan and Lebanon into Syria. (Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya, America's Next War Theater: Syria and Lebanon?http://globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=va&aid=25000, Global Research, June 10, 2011)

The joint Israel-Turkey military and intelligence agreement

The geopolitics of this process of destabilization are far-reaching. Turkey is involved in supporting the rebels.

The Turkish government has sanctioned Syrian opposition groups in exile which support an armed insurgency. Turkey is also pressuring Damascus to conform to Washington's demands for regime change.

Turkey is a member of NATO with a powerful military force. Moreover, Israel and Turkey have a longstanding joint military-intelligence agreement, which is explicitly directed against Syria.

...A 1993 Memorandum of Understanding led to the creation of (Israeli-Turkish) "joint committees" to handle so-called regional threats. Under the terms of the Memorandum, Turkey and Israel agreed "to cooperate in gathering intelligence on Syria, Iran, and Iraq and to meet regularly to share assessments pertaining to terrorism and these countries' military capabilities."

Turkey agreed to allow IDF and Israeli security forces to gather electronic intelligence on Syria and Iran from Turkey. In exchange, Israel assisted in the equipping and training of Turkish forces in anti-terror warfare along the Syrian, Iraqi, and Iranian borders."

...

Already during the Clinton Administration, a triangular military alliance between the US, Israel and Turkey had unfolded. This "triple alliance", which is dominated by the US Joint Chiefs of Staff, integrates and coordinates military command decisions between the three countries pertaining to the broader Middle East. It is based on the close military ties respectively of Israel and Turkey with the US, coupled with a strong bilateral military relationship between Tel Aviv and Ankara. ....

The triple alliance is also coupled with a 2005 NATO-Israeli military cooperation agreement which includes "many areas of common interest, such as the fight against terrorism and joint military exercises. These military cooperation ties with NATO are viewed by the Israeli military as a means to "enhance Israel's deterrence capability regarding potential enemies threatening it, mainly Iran and Syria." (See Michel Chossudovsky,"Triple Alliance": The US, Turkey, Israel and the War on Lebanon, August 6, 2006)

Covert  support to armed insurgents out of Turkey or Jordan would no doubt be coordinated under the joint Israel-Turkey military and intelligence agreement.

Prime Minister Recep Tayyip Erdogan with (former) Prime Minister Ariel Sharon (2004)

Dangerous Crossroads: The Broader Middle East War

Israel and NATO signed a far-reaching military cooperation agreement in 2005. Under this agreement, Israel is considered a de facto member of NATO. 

If a military operation were to be launched against Syria, Israel would in all likelihood be involved in military undertakings alongside NATO forces (under the NATO-Israel bilateral agreement).  Turkey would also play an active military role.  

A military intervention in Syria on fake humanitarian grounds would lead to an escalation of the US-NATO led war over a large area extending from North Africa and the Middle East to Central Asia, from the Eastern Mediterranean to China's Western frontier with Afghanistan and Pakistan.

It would also contribute to a process of political destabilization in Lebanon, Jordan and Palestine. It would also set the stage for a conflict with Iran.  


 Global Research Articles by Michel Chossudovsky

US, Pakistan Near Open War; Chinese Ultimatum Warns Washington Against Attack

[Translate]

Webster G. Tarpley, Ph.D.
TARPLEY.net
May 20, 2011

China has officially put the United States on notice that Washington’s planned attack on Pakistan will be interpreted as an act of aggression against Beijing. This blunt warning represents the first known strategic ultimatum received by the United States in half a century, going back to Soviet warnings during the Berlin crisis of 1958-1961, and indicates the grave danger of general war growing out of the US-Pakistan confrontation.

“Any Attack on Pakistan Would be Construed as an Attack on China”

Responding to reports that China has asked the US to respect Pakistan’s sovereignty in the aftermath of the Bin Laden operation, Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu used a May 19 press briefing to state Beijing’s categorical demand that the “sovereignty and territorial integrity of Pakistan must be respected.” According to Pakistani diplomatic sources cited by theTimes of India, China has “warned in unequivocal terms that any attack on Pakistan would be construed as an attack on China.” This ultimatum was reportedly delivered at the May 9 China-US strategic dialogue and economic talks in Washington, where the Chinese delegation was led by Vice Prime Minister Wang Qishan and State Councilor Dai Bingguo.1 Chinese warnings are implicitly backed up by that nation’s nuclear missiles, including an estimated 66 ICBMs, some capable of striking the United States, plus 118 intermediate-range missiles, 36 submarine-launched missiles, and numerous shorter-range systems.

Support from China is seen by regional observers as critically important for Pakistan, which is otherwise caught in a pincers between the US and India: “If US and Indian pressure continues, Pakistan can say ‘China is behind us. Don’t think we are isolated, we have a potential superpower with us,’” Talat Masood, a political analyst and retired Pakistani general, told AFP.2

The Chinese ultimatum came during the visit of Pakistani Prime Minister Gilani in Beijing, during which the host government announced the transfer of 50 state-of-the-art JF-17 fighter jets to Pakistan, immediately and without cost.3 Before his departure, Gilani had stressed the importance of the Pakistan-China alliance, proclaiming: “We are proud to have China as our best and most trusted friend. And China will always find Pakistan standing beside it at all times….When we speak of this friendship as being taller than the Himalayas and deeper than the oceans it truly captures the essence of our relationship.”4 These remarks were greeted by whining from US spokesmen, including Idaho Republican Senator Risch.

The simmering strategic crisis between the United States and Pakistan exploded with full force on May 1, with the unilateral and unauthorized US commando raid alleged to have killed the phantomatic Osama bin Laden in a compound at Abottabad, a flagrant violation of Pakistan’s national sovereignty. The timing of this military stunt designed to inflame tensions between the two countries had nothing to do with any alleged Global War on Terror, and everything to do with the late March visit to Pakistan of Prince Bandar, the Saudi Arabian National Security Council chief. This visit had resulted in a de facto alliance between Islamabad and Riyadh, with Pakistan promising troops to put down any US-backed color revolution in the kingdom, while extending nuclear protection to the Saudis, thus making them less vulnerable to US extortion threats to abandon the oil-rich monarchy to the tender mercies of Tehran. A joint move by Pakistan and Saudi Arabia to break out of the US empire, whatever one may think of these regimes, would represent a fatal blow for the fading US empire in South Asia.

As for the US claims concerning the supposed Bin Laden raid of May 1, they are a mass of hopeless contradictions which changes from day to day. An analysis of this story is best left to literary critics and writers of theatrical reviews. The only solid and uncontestable fact which emerges is that Pakistan is the leading US target — thus intensifying the anti-Pakistan US policy which has been in place since Obama’s infamous December 2009 West Point speech.

Gilani: Full Force Retaliation to Defend Pakistan’s Strategic Assets

The Chinese warning to Washington came on the heels of Gilani’s statement to the Pakistan Parliament declaring: “Let no one draw any wrong conclusions. Any attack against Pakistan’s strategic assets, whether overt or covert, will find a matching response…. Pakistan reserves the right to retaliate with full force. No one should underestimate the resolve and capability of our nation and armed forces to defend our sacred homeland.”5 A warning of full force retaliation from a nuclear power such as Pakistan needs to be taken seriously, even by the hardened aggressors of the Obama regime.

The strategic assets Gilani is talking about are the Pakistani nuclear forces, the key to the country’s deterrent strategy against possible aggression by India, egged on by Washington in the framework of the US-India nuclear cooperation accord. The US forces in Afghanistan have not been able to conceal their extensive planning for attempts to seize or destroy Pakistan’s nuclear bombs and warheads. According to a 2009 Fox News report, “The United States has a detailed plan for infiltrating Pakistan and securing its mobile arsenal of nuclear warheads if it appears the country is about to fall under the control of the Taliban, Al Qaeda or other Islamic extremists.” This plan was developed by General Stanley McChrystal when he headed the US Joint Special Operations Command at Fort Bragg, North Carolina. JSOC, the force reportedly involved in the Bin Laden operation. is composed of Army Delta Force, Navy SEALs and “a high-tech special intelligence unit known as Task Force Orange.” “Small units could seize [Pakistan’s nukes], disable them, and then centralize them in a secure location,” claimed a source quoted by Fox.6

Obama Has Already Approved Sneak Attack on Pakistan’s Nukes

According to the London Sunday Express, Obama has already approved an aggressive move along these lines: “US troops will be deployed in Pakistan if the nation’s nuclear installations come under threat from terrorists out to avenge the killing of Osama Bin Laden… The plan, which would be activated without President Zardari’s consent, provoked an angry reaction from Pakistan officials… Barack Obama would order troops to parachute in to protect key nuclear missile sites. These include the air force’s central Sargodha HQ, home base for nuclear-capable F-16 combat aircraft and at least 80 ballistic missiles.” According to a US official, “The plan is green lit and the President has already shown he is willing to deploy troops in Pakistan if he feels it is important for national security.”7

Extreme tension over this issue highlights the brinksmanship and incalculable folly of Obama’s May 1 unilateral raid, which might easily have been interpreted by the Pakistanis as the long-awaited attack on their nuclear forces. According to the New York Times, Obama knew very well he was courting immediate shooting war with Pakistan, and “insisted that the assault force hunting down Osama bin Laden last week be large enough to fight its way out of Pakistan if confronted by hostile local police officers and troops.”

The Shooting Has Already Started

The shooting between US and Pakistani forces escalated on Tuesday May 17, when a US NATO helicopter violated Pakistani airspace in Waziristan. Pakistani forces showed heightened alert status, and opened fire immediately, with the US helicopter shooting back. Two soldiers at a Pakistani check post on the border in the Datta Khel area were wounded.8

Possible Pakistani retaliation for this border incursion came in Peshawar on Friday, May 20, when a car bomb apparently targeted a 2-car US consulate convoy, but caused no American deaths or injuries. One Pakistani bystander was killed, and several wounded. In other intelligence warfare, Ary One television reported the name of the CIA station chief in Islamabad, the second top US resident spook there to have his cover blown in six months.

US Envoy Grossman Rejects Pakistani Calls To Stop Border Violations

US Special Representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan Marc Grossman, the replacement for the late Richard Holbrooke, on May 19 arrogantly rejected Pakistani calls for guarantees that no more Abottabad-style unilateral operations would be mounted in Pakistan.9 In refusing to offer such assurances, Grossman claimed that Pakistani officials had never demanded respect for their border in recent years.10

In the midst of this strategic crisis, India has gone ahead with inherently provocative scheduled military maneuvers targeting Pakistan. This is the “Vijayee Bhava” (Be Victorious) drill, held in the Thar desert of north Rajastan,. This atomic-biological-chemical Blitzkrieg drill involves the Second Armored Corps, “considered to be the most crucial of the Indian Army’s three principal strike formations tasked with virtually cutting Pakistan in two during a full-fledged war.”11

The Nation: A CIA-RAW-Mossad Pseudo-Taliban Countergang

One way to provide the provocation needed to justify a US-Indian attack on Pakistan would be through an increase in terrorist actions attributable to the so-called Taliban. According to the mainstream Pakistani media, the CIA, the Israeli Mossad, and the Indian RAW (Research and Analysis Wing) have created their own version of the Taliban in the form of a terrorist countergang which they control and direct. According to one account, “Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) operatives have infiltrated the Taliban and Al-Qaeda networks, and have created their own Tehrik-e-Taliban Pakistan (TTP) force in order to destabilize Pakistan.” The former Punjab Regional Commander of the Pakistani Inter-Service Intelligence (ISI), retired Brigadier General Aslam Ghuman, commented: “During my visit to the US, I learned that the Israeli spy agency Mossad, in connivance with Indian agency RAW, under the direct supervision of CIA, planned to destabilize Pakistan at any cost.”12 Was this countergang responsible for last week’s double bombing in Waziristan, which killed 80 paramilitary police?

According to the same account, Russian intelligence “disclosed that CIA contractor Raymond Davis and his network had provided Al-Qaeda operatives with chemical, nuclear and biological weapons, so that US installations may be targeted and Pakistan be blamed….” Davis, a JSOC veteran himself, was arrested for the murder of two ISI agents, but then released by the Pakistani government after a suspicious hue and cry by the State Department.

CIA Claims The New Al Qaeda Boss Lives in Waziristan

If the US needs a further pretext for additional raids, it will also be easy to cite the alleged presence in Waziristan of Saif al-Adel, now touted by the CIA as bin Laden’s likely successor as boss of al Qaeda.13 It is doubtless convenient for Obama’s aggressive intentions that Saif al-Adel can be claimed to reside so close to what is now the hottest border in the world, and not in Finsbury or Flatbush.

In the wake of the unauthorized May 1 US raid, the Pakistani military chief General Kayani had issued his own warning that similar “misadventures” could not be repeated, while announcing that US personnel inside Pakistan would be sharply reduced. In the estimate of one ISI source, there are currently about 7,000 CIA operatives in country, many of them unknown to the Pakistani government. US-Pakistan intelligence sharing has reportedly been downgraded. In response to Kayani’s moves, the CIA limited hangout operation known as Wikileaks once again showed its real nature by attempting to discredit the Pakistan commander with dubious US cable reports that he had demanded more Predator drone attacks, not fewer, in recent years.

Especially since Obama’s West Point speech, the CIA has used Predator drone attacks to slaughter civilians with the goal of fomenting civil war inside Pakistan, leading to a breakup of the country along the ethnic lines of Punjab, Sind, Baluchistan, and Pushtunistan. The geopolitical goal is to destroy Pakistan’s potential to be the energy corridor between Iran and China. Selig Harrison has emerged as a top US advocate for Baluchistan succession.

Since May 1, six reported US Predator drones attacks have slain some 42 Pakistani civilians, goading public opinion into a frenzy of anti-US hatred. In response, a joint session of the Pakistani parliament voted unanimously on May 14 to demand an end to American missile strikes, calling on the government to cut NATO’s supply line to Afghanistan if the attacks should continue.14 Since the Karachi to Khyber Pass supply line carries as much as two thirds of the supplies needed by the Afghanistan invaders, such a cutoff would cause chaos among the NATO forces. All of this points to the inherent insanity of provoking war with the country your supply line runs through.

US Wants to Use Taliban Boss Mullah Omar Against Pakistan

The State Department dropped all preconditions for negotiating with the Taliban back in February, and the US is now reported by the Washington Post to be talking with envoys of Mullah Omar, the legendary one-eyed leader of the Quetta Shura or Taliban ruling council. It is apparent that the US is offering the Taliban an alliance against Pakistan. US regional envoy Grossman is hostile to the Pakistanis, but when it comes to the Taliban he has been nicknamed “Mr. Reconciliation.”15 By contrast, the US is said to be determined to assassinate the head of the Haqqani network using a Bin Laden-type raid. The Pakistanis are equally determined to keep the Haqqani as an ally.

If China stands behind Pakistan, then Russia might be said to stand behind China. Looking forward to the upcoming June 15 meeting of the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, Chinese President Hu praised Sino-Russian relations as being “at an unprecedented high point,” with an “obvious strategic ingredient.” In a press conference this week, Russian President Medvedev was obliged indirectly to acknowledge that the much-hyped Obama “reset” with Russia had amounted to very little, since the US ABM missile program in Romania and the rest of eastern Europe, so obviously directed against Russia, means that the START treaty is of dubious value, thus raising the specter of a “new Cold War.” Given the NATO assault on Libya, there would be no UN resolution against Syria, said Medvedev. Putin has been right all along, and Medvedev is trying to imitate Putin to salvage some chance of remaining in power.

Are We in July 1914?

The crisis leading to World War I began with the Sarajevo assassinations of June 28, 1914, but the first major declaration of war did not occur until August 1. In the interim month of July 1914, large parts of European public opinion retreated into a dreamlike trance, an idyllic la-la land of elegiac illusion, even as the deadly crisis gathered momentum. Something similar can be seen today. Many Americans fondly imagine that the alleged death of Bin Laden marks the end of the war on terror and the Afghan War. Instead, the Bin Laden operation has clearly ushered in a new strategic emergency. Forces which had opposed the Iraq war, from MSNBC to many left liberals of the peace movement, are variously supporting Obama’s bloody aggression in Libya, or even celebrating him as a more effective warmonger than Bush-Cheney because of his supposed success at the expense of Bin Laden. In reality, if there were ever a time to mobilize to stop a new and wider war, this is it.

U.S. helicopter trades fire with Pakistani troops

  •  NEWS CONSORTIUM
  • 5/17/2011

Incident near border strains already fragile relationship between nations

A U.S. helicopter exchanged fire with Pakistani troops near the border between Afghanistan and Pakistan. Two Pakistani soldiers were injured in the incident, which has put further strain on the relationship between the two nations. 

LOS ANGELES, CA (Catholic Online) - The United States' relationship with ally Pakistan has been highly strained after the American unilateral military raid in Pakistani territory that killed Osama bin Laden May 1.

Stories differ about the latest incident by the border. The U.S.-led International Security Assistance Force said U.S. helicopters were in Afghanistan near Forward Operating Base Tillman when they responded to incoming direct and indirect fire from over the border in Pakistan, presumably from militants.

The helicopters initially did not return fire, but when a second round of firing began, they fired in response. Gen. John Campbell, East region commander for the ISAF, told ABC News that insurgents sometimes fire on NATO troops from near Pakistani outposts in hopes of drawing U.S. return fire.

"We know for sure the [Apache] helicopter was fired upon -- we got rounds inside the helicopter," Campbell said. "The helicopter returned fire and we are working through just exactly what happened... If [American soldiers] are taking effective fire, then by all means they have to take all measures to safeguard themselves and the other people around there."

In response, the Pakistani military says that two NATO helicopters caused the incident by violating Pakistani airspace before being fired upon by Pakistani troops. The Pakistanis said the army lodged a "strong protest" to the incursion and demanded a meeting with NATO officials.

The ISAF said it is investigating the incident further. One senior U.S. official said it is "likely" the helicopter accidentally did pass into Pakistan.

Campbell said that communication between the American and Pakistani militaries had suffered in the backlash following the bin Laden operation, which has increased chances of such incidents on the border.

"You just have to be talking back and forth... so if something comes from Pakistan and somebody has fired, we can pull up our Pakistani counterparts and say, 'Hey, we are getting fire from here. We need you guys to go take care of that,'" he said. "So it's very important to try to work that relationship."


Iran says Israeli jets preparing to strike

Published: May 2, 2011 at 11:22 AM


 May 2, 2011 (UPI) -- Israeli fighter jets are conducting drills at a military base in Iraq in preparation for a strike on Iran, the Islamic Republic's Press TV reported.

The report said the Israeli planes participating in the drills include F-15, F-16, F-18 and F-22 fighter jets. It said they have conducted weeklong exercises,flying mainly at night.

Press TV said its report was based on information received from a source close to Moqtada al-Sadr's group in Iraq.

Sadr is considered to be one of the most influential religious political figures in Iraq but holds no official title. He has repeatedly called for the immediate withdrawal of U.S.-led coalition troops and U.N. forces deployed in Iraq.

The air drills are being conducted in collaboration with the U.S. military, the report said. It said Iraq was not informed of the exercises.

The U.S. maintains a number of military bases in Iraq and the government in Baghdad is not involved in any military activities occurring there, the report said.

There was no official comment on the report by Israeli government or military officials.

Last month, Brig. Gen Mohammed Ali Safari, the commander of the Revolutionary Guards, declared Israeli and American military bases in the Middle East are within range of Iran's missiles.

"Although we are capable of increasing the range of our missiles, we don't think it would be necessary because today our extra-regional enemy -- the Zionist regime of [Israel] -- is within the range of our missiles," he told the Fars news agency.

"As for the American forces -- if they were to back Israeli threats -- they would be closer to us than them [Israel] and they would be within the range of our firepower as well," he said.



 http://www.upi.com/Top_News/World-News/2011/05/02/Iran-says-Israeli-jets-preparing-to-strike/UPI-68781304349754/#ixzz1LFJFYz1o

Saturday, April 30, 2011

Syria Intervention Inevitable - And The Greater World War

We are presented with what we are told are isolated crises.
In reality, from Desert Storm to the Eastern European color
revolutions, to the "War on Terror" to the current "Arab Spring,"
we are witnessing one linear campaign for world domination - 
the creation of what George Bush Sr. called "the New World Order."
Tony Cartalucci, Contributing Writer
Activist Post

Bangkok, Thailand April 30, 2011 - Regime change in Syria was a foregone conclusion as early as 1991. General Wesley Clark in a 2007 speech in California relayed a 1991 conversation between himself and then Under Secretary of Defense Paul Wolfowitz. Wolfowitz indicated that America had 5-10 years to clean up old Soviet "client regimes," namely Syria, Iran, and Iraq, before the next super power rose up to challenge western hegemony. The "next super power" includes ironically Russia, recovering from the treasonous attempted sellout by oligarchs like Mikhail Khodorkovsky, and of course a rising China.

Setting the Stage

The entire "Arab Spring" was a preplanned, meticulously engineered foreign-funded operation that began as early as 2008, with the West's imperial network of "civil society" and NGOs in place for decades. The New York Times has recently admitted as much in their article, "US Groups Helped Nurture Arab Uprising," implicating the International Republican Institute, the National Democratic Institute, the National Endowment for Democracy, Movements.org, and Freedom House for their roles in recruiting, training, and supporting the unrest.

As this plot unfolds, we see in hindsight that each destabilization was triggered and nurtured with a specific order in mind. Tunisia and Egypt were collapsed on either side of Libya while the tremors of destabilization shook the entire region in general, including in Saudi Arabia and Jordan. The newly "reordered" Middle East would be extorted into backing Western military intervention in Libya, which was targeted next. The vulnerable governments of Tunisia and Egypt began serving as conduits for weapons and supplies to reach US-backed rebels in their bid to oust Qaddafi. Likewise, the grand prize in the Middle East being Iran, Syria is being systematically picked apart first to further weaken and isolate Tehran.

Iran itself has been under siege for years by covert operations including US special forces and intelligence operating inside Iran, training, arming and supporting terrorist organizations in activity against the government of Iran, as well as assassinations and sabotage of Iranian infrastructure. All of this has been meticulously documented, planned, and prepared amongst the pages of Brookings Institution's "Which Path to Persia?" report.
The corporate-financier funded think-tanks have reached the general consensus that their unipolar world order of "international law," and "international institutions" have primacy over national sovereignty and the time has come to assert such primacy or lose it. This was stated quite clearly within the corporate-lined Brookings Institution report titled, " "Libya's Test of the New International Order" back in February 2011. In it they overtly state that intervening in Libya "is a test that the international community has to pass. Failure would shake further the faith of the people's region in the emerging international order and the primacy of international law."The globalist International Crisis Group, whose trustee Mohamed ElBaradei played a direct, hands-on role in overthrowing the government of Egypt on behalf of foreign interests, recently reiterated Brookings' sentiments in an article titled, "The Rise and Fall of International Human Rights," where once again "international law" and "international citizenship" is held above national sovereignty. The "responsibility to protect (R2P)" is cited as the impetus to assert such "international law." Considering that R2P is called on after foreign-funded sedition and violence is created within a target nation, we can see "international law" as the poorly dressed euphemism for imperial invasion that it is. The term "international" in fact describes the evolution of the Anglo-American empire as it absorbs and dismantles nation-states across the globe.

The Syrian port of Tartus (highlighted in orange) is set to
serve as a Russian naval base, upgraded this year and to
host Russian warships by 2012. This will allow Russia to
counteract NATO's aggressive encirclement of its borders.

The Build-up Against Syria

Syria is not only a defiant nation unwilling to participate in "globalization," it is also an integral part of both Iran's and Russia's growing counterbalance throughout the region, in direct contrast to Western hegemony. The Syrian port city of Tartus is being renovated and is set to host heavy Russian warships in a bid to establish a significant presence in the Mediterranean. This would counteract NATO's expansion along Russia's borders as well as keep in check Western fleets north of the Suez.

Syria has long served this purpose, with the Tartus facility having originally been opened in 1971 through an agreement with the Soviets. When Paul Wolfowitz was referring to Soviet "client regimes" in his 1991 conversation with Wesley Clark, this sort of challenge to Western hegemony was what he was referring to.

Following the September 11, 2001 attacks, Clark was again passed plans drawn to implement regime change throughout the Middle East, specifically to attack and destroy the governments of 7 countries; Iraq, Syria, Sudan, Somalia, Iran, Lebanon and Libya. In 2002, then US Under Secretary of State John Bolton, would add Syria to the growing "Axis of Evil."In a recent CNN article, acting State Department spokesman Mark Toner stated, "We're not working to undermine that [Syrian] government. What we are trying to do in Syria, through our civil society support, is to build the kind of democratic institutions, frankly, that we're trying to do in countries around the globe. What's different, I think, in this situation is that the Syrian government perceives this kind of assistance as a threat to its control over the Syrian people."


Toner's remarks come after the Washington Post released cables indicating the US has been funding Syrian opposition groups since at least 2005 under the Bush administration and was continued under Obama. As we can see, the campaign against Syria transcended presidential administrations for nearly two decades.

In a recent AFP report, Michael Posner, the assistant US Secretary of State for Human Rights and Labor, stated that the "US government has budgeted $50 million in the last two years to develop new technologies to help activists protect themselves from arrest and prosecution by authoritarian governments." The report went on to explain that the US "organized training sessions for 5,000 activists in different parts of the world. A session held in the Middle East about six weeks ago gathered activists from Tunisia, Egypt, Syria and Lebanon who returned to their countries with the aim of training their colleagues there." Posner would add, "They went back and there's a ripple effect."

Lieberman on Syrian intervention.

The ripple effect of course are the uprisings themselves, facilitated by yet more aid, equipment, and the complicity of the corporate owned media, disingenuously portraying the events as "spontaneous," "genuine," and "indigenous." Recent calls have been made by US Senators Mark Kirk and Richard Blumenthal for a "non-military intervention" in Syria, while warmongering puppetsNicolas Sarkozy of France and US Senator Joe Lieberman used Libya's bombardment as a warning aimed specifically at Assad of Syria.

The Intervention Is Beginning

Now, in calls that echo the build-up to Libya's bombardment, US Senators John McCain, Lindsey Graham, and Joe Lieberman have made a joint statement that Assad has "lost the legitimacy to remain in power in Syria." They continued by stating, "Rather than hedging our bets or making excuses for the Assad regime, it is time for the United States, together with our allies in Europe and around the world, to align ourselves unequivocally with the Syrian people in their peaceful demand for a democratic government."

The level of deception behind these comments is almost unimaginable, after the US State Department openly admitted to funding, training, organizing, and supporting this unrest to begin with. Compounding the intellectual dishonesty from which these three senators have made their treasonous comments from is the fact that each of them, in addition to their role as "elected representatives," are members of unelected, shadowy organizations that receive funding directly from US tax payers as well as corporate-financier interests to undermine and destroy foreign governments. McCain and Graham are both members of the International Republican Institute, openly implicated by the New York Times for their role in funding the "Arab Spring." Lieberman is a member of the Neo-Conservative war profiteering lobbying firm deceptively named, the "Foundation for Defense of Democracies (FDD)."FDD features many Project for a New American Century (PNAC) signatories including William Kristol, Richard Perle, James Woolsey, and Paula Dobriansky, as well as CFR members Newt Gingrich and Charles Krauthammer, along with the disingenuous "War on Terror" paid propagandist Bill Roggio of the "Long War Journal." Shockingly, this cabal of warmongering liars, many of whom are responsible for reckless and disingenuous war propaganda films such as "Iranium" openly admits to being funded in part by the US State Department. It is amongst unelected, unaccountable organizations like the IRI and FDD that US foreign policy reaches foregone conclusions, with propaganda like "Iranium" left to sell these conclusions to an unwitting, immensely ignorant public.


The chatter amongst the corporate funded think-tanks such as the Brookings Institution has reached a crescendo in their calls for Assad to step down. As in Libya, the calls are based on unverified, purposefully ambiguous reports of violence squarely blamed on the ruling regime. Regardless of reports of armed groups working amongst the protesters, the corporate owned media and the think-tanks that hand them their talking points maintain that the protests are peaceful and that crackdowns are "repressive."

In Brookings' latest piece, "In Syria, Assad Must Exit the Stage" the cycle of violence initiated by "mysterious gunmen" targeting funerals is cited as the line Assad had crossed which now requires his departure from power. The article states, "With the cycle of ever-increasing protests met by regime violence and then more funerals intensifying in all areas of the country, it is time for Assad, the "Hamlet" of the Arab world, to consider his future. It is time for him and those who influence him abroad to search for a swift and orderly exit." As evidence begins to trickle out confirming Assad's accusations of armed elements amongst the protesters, as well as possible foreign gunmen being employed to create broader unrest, just as in Libya, the West rushes forward to initiate irreversible intervention.

The Greater World War

With the broad level of openly engineered destabilization aimed not only at the Middle East but at Moscow, Beijing and their peripheries as well, there is little chance the West will call off their gambit now. There is no retreat or return to normalcy for a world now locked in increasingly aggressive confrontation between the Anglo-American empire and the remaining nation-states. It is an all or nothing gambit being executed by a financially and strategically precarious West rushing to complete an agenda at least 2 decades in the making. Syria and ultimately Iran will not escape this campaign without confronting and confounding the real force behind the destabilization.

This is not an isolated, regional conflict, this is the first step toward greater world war. The destabilization extends from Tunisia to Thailand, from Belarus to Beijing. There are rumblings of confrontation and the positioning of strategic pieces well beyond the current "Arab Spring."

The rest of the world, including the people of the West who will bear the brunt of the West's failure or success with equal destitution, must recognize and reject this megalomania-fueled self-serving campaign. We must begin generating a new consensus based on individual and national sovereignty, reclaim the responsibilities we have pawned off to these mega-corporate-financier interests along with the terrible power they now wield because of our continued complicity, apathy, and ignorance. After Syria and Iran, comes Moscow and Beijing. It is unlikely such conflicts will remain confined to far off regions of the world pictured on our TV screens - just as unlikely those that initiated this confrontation will pay with their own blood and treasure before we the people are all thrown into the crucible of war and consumed entirely.

For more on what we can do on a daily basis to undermine and defeat this nefarious global spanning agenda please read on: 

Destroying the Globalists
Self-Sufficiency 
Alternative Economics
The Lost Key to Real Revolution
Boycott the Globalists
Naming Names: Your Real Government
Tony Cartalucci's articles have appeared on many alternative media websites, including his own at 
Land Destroyer Report. 


Libya: Materiel and personnel in place

Posted on 02. Mar, 2011 by Editor in Hot Topics

[Translate]

Preparations for military intervention in full swing

By Julie Hyland 

The United States, Britain and the European powers are deepening their preparations for intervention in Libya, including military action. They hope to exploit the popular revolt against the regime of Muammar Gaddafi to take control of Libya’s oil fields and establish a crucial base for further operations in the region under conditions where dictatorships on which they have relied for years are under siege.

In testimony before the Foreign Affairs Committee of the US House of Representatives on Monday, Secretary of State Hillary Clinton warned, “The entire region is changing and a strong and strategic American response will be essential.”

Her statement came as the aircraft carrier USS Enterprise and two amphibious assault vessels complete with helicopters, the USS Kearsarge and USS Ponce, were taking up positions in the southwestern Mediterranean. A US military official said the aim was to “provide for flexibility once decisions are made” as to what action will be taken against Libya.

Britain is reported to have put in position a naval destroyer and a frigate off the coast of Libya. Echoing the statement of Susan Rice, US ambassador to the United Nations, that Gaddafi was “unfit to lead,” Prime Minister David Cameron stated that Gaddafi’s removal was Britain’s “highest priority.”

Britain’s chief of defence staff, Gen. Sir David Richards, is drawing up contingency plans for military operations, which sources state will include potential ground operations. The missions undertaken by various Western powers to rescue their nationals trapped in Libya will have also been used to drop reconnaissance forces into the country in advance of such a move.

As in the interventions in Iraq and the former Yugoslavia, “humanitarian” concerns are being advanced as a disguise for colonial invasion. Tens of thousands of immigrant workers fleeing from Libya have passed into Tunisia and thousands are currently trapped in a no-man’s land on the border. Without shelter and only meagre provisions, the workers—many from Bangladesh, Ghana and Egypt—have little support or means of returning home.

According to the Guardian, “Officials said that the support of US and British armed forces might also be required to protect corridors to channel humanitarian relief into Libya through Tunisia and Egypt, if further conflict brought about a mass displacement of the population and a collapse in the food supply.”

Such “corridors” could potentially be used to position Western troops in three of the nations currently at the centre of mass uprisings in North Africa and the Middle East.

On Tuesday, the UN General Assembly voted to suspend Libya from its Human Rights Council. It followed moves by the US, Britain, Germany and Austria to freeze the assets of Gaddafi, his family and closest associates and the imposition of sanctions by the European Union—the recipient of 85 percent of Libya’s oil exports.

Addressing the Human Rights Council meeting in Geneva, Clinton said she had discussed with European foreign ministers further measures flowing from the UN Security Council resolution passed at the weekend, which imposed an arms embargo and asset freeze on the Libyan leader and those close to him.

“Nothing is off the table,” Clinton said, after she met with the foreign ministers of France, Germany, the UK and Italy to discuss setting up a no-fly zone over Libyan airspace, ostensibly in order to stop Gaddafi’s forces from attacking civilians.

In recent days, Gaddafi has attempted to take back areas captured by opposition forces in Ajdabiya, Misrata and the strategic port town of Zawiyah, to the west of Tripoli. All efforts were apparently repelled. Gaddafi has lost control of much of Libya’s oil and gas fields to the opposition.

There are reports that Tripoli has sent an aid convoy as an olive branch to rebel-controlled Benghazi, including food and medical supplies. Gaddafi is also said to have appointed Bouzaid Dordah, the head of Libya’s foreign intelligence service, to speak to opposition leaders—an offer that has been rejected. Within Tripoli, hundreds demonstrated Monday in Tajoura, a working class suburb, following the funeral of a protester killed by the regime over the weekend.

“A no-fly zone is an option we are actively considering. I discussed it today with allies and partners,” Clinton said.

Germany and France have indicated their support for no-fly zones, while Italy—the former colonial power in Libya—is said to have agreed the use of its bases for possible action against the country.

France said the zones must be approved by the United Nations, while German Foreign Minister Guido Westerwelle said, “The impression that this is about military intervention must not emerge under any circumstances.” In reality, the no-fly zones are conceived of as the prelude to wider military intervention.

Addressing a Senate hearing Tuesday, General James Mattis, commander of US Central Command, said, “My military opinion is that it [no-fly zones] would be challenging. You would have to remove air defence capability in order to establish a no-fly zone, so no illusions here. It would be a military operation—it wouldn’t be just telling people not to fly airplanes.”

In other words, it would mean bombing Libyan airbases and planes.

The no-fly zone option has been attacked by Russia and China. Russian Foreign Minister Sergey Lavrov said that world powers needed to “avoid the superfluous” as regards the Libyan crisis, while the country’s NATO ambassador, Dmitry Rogozin, said, “If someone in Washington is seeking a blitzkrieg in Libya it is a serious mistake because any use of military force outside the NATO responsibility zone will be considered a violation of international law.

“A ban on the national air force or civil aviation to fly over their own territory is still a serious interference into the domestic affairs of another country, and, at any rate, it requires a resolution of the UN Security Council.”

Turkey’s prime minister, Recep Tayyip Erdogan, also denounced US and UK calls for military intervention as an “absurdity.” “The Middle East and Africa have been viewed by the West as sources of oil and used as pawns in oil wars for decades,” Erdogan said, warning that this was behind the mass uprisings.

But Al Jazeera stated, “It’s worth noting that UN Security Council resolution 1970, passed on Saturday, did authorise member states to ‘adopt all measures necessary’ to secure the prompt and safe delivery of humanitarian assistance to those in need” in Libya.

In a further indication that the US and Britain are once again preparing to flout international law, the Financial Times said, “Erdogan’s comments suggest it could be difficult for a Western military operation to be conducted under NATO auspices. NATO tends to take decisions on military action by consensus. If it is unable to reach this consensus, the US and UK may be forced to mount a no-fly zone using an informal coalition of willing states.”

The terminology is an echo of the run-up to the 2003 war against Iraq, which proceeded without UN authorisation.

The BBC reported former British Prime Minister John Major stating that “ideally, a UN resolution would be put in place for a no-fly zone, but this ‘isn't absolutely necessary’ in law and order, and a collection of nations could take the decision themselves.”

Julie Hyland, 42, has been a member of the International Committee since 1979, when she joined its youth organisation, the Young Socialists. She went on to become the YS National Secretary, in which position she led numerous campaigns in defence of the rights of the unemployed, students and young workers. Hyland stood as a parliamentary candidate for the Socialist Equality Party in the 1997 General Election. She is a member of the Editorial Board of the World Socialist Web Site and a full-time writer on political and social developments in Britain. Born in London, she is married with an adult son.

Courtesy WSWS.

Senior US Marine Says "Multiple Platoons" Are Headed To Egypt

Nicholas Carlson | Feb. 5, 2011, 11:42 PM | 48,796 | comment 186

marines11.jpg

See Also:

Iran Pakistan

Middle East Unraveling?

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obama

The White House Still Refuses To Take Sides On Egypt


A senior member of the US Marine corps is telling people "multiple platoons" are deploying to Egypt, a source tells us.

There is a system within the US Marines that alerts the immediate families of high-ranking marines when their marine will soon be deployed to an emergency situation where they will not be able to talk to their spouses or families.

That alert just went out, says our source.

This senior Marine told our source that the Pentagon will deploy "multiple platoons" to Egypt over the next few days and that the official reason will be ‘to assist in the evacuation of US citizens."

Our source was told that "the chances they were going over there went from 70% yesterday to 100% today."

We're keeping these people anonymous because both would get in trouble for sharing this information with the press.

On Friday, the Pentagon announced it would move "U.S. warships and other military assets to make sure it is prepared in case evacuation of U.S. citizens from Egypt becomes necessary," according the the LA Times.



Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/senior-us-marine-says-multiple-platoons-are-headed-to-egypt-2011-2#ixzz1DR2fWXp0

American Warships Heading to Egypt

Posted on Pakalert on February 7, 2011 // Leave Your Comment
[Translate]

Washington’s Blog

Connecticut’s newspaper The Day noted on January 24th:

Connecticut National Guard Detachment 2, Company I, 185th Aviation Regiment of Groton has mobilized and will deploy to the Sinai Peninsula, Egypt, to support the Multinational Force and Observers.

The unit left Connecticut Jan. 15 for Fort Benning, Ga., for further training and validation. The unit operates C-23C Sherpa aircraft and has deployed three times in the last seven years in support of the conflicts in Iraq and Afghanistan.

The unit will provide an on-demand aviation asset to the Multinational Force and Observers commander to support its mission of supervising the security provisions of the Egypt/ Israel Peace Treaty.

Yesterday, the Los Angeles Times reported:

The Pentagon is moving U.S. warships and other military assets to make sure it is prepared in case evacuation of U.S. citizens from Egypt becomes necessary, officials said Friday.

The Kearsarge, an amphibious assault ship carrying 700 to 800 troops from the 26th Marine Expeditionary Unit, and the Ponce have arrived in the Red Sea, putting them off Egypt’s shores in case the situation worsens.

Pentagon officials emphasized that military intervention in Egypt was not being contemplated and that thewarships were being moved only for contingency purposes in case evacuations became necessary.

In addition to the Marines, the Kearsarge normally carries around four dozen helicopters and harrier jets that would permit evacuations and other humanitarian operations, the officials said. More than 1,000 Marines from the Kearsarge were sent to Afghanistan last month on a temporary deployment, leaving roughly one-third still aboard, officials said.

The Kearsarge is an attack vessel.

As Wikipedia notes:

In carrying out her mission, Kearsarge not only transports and lands ashore troops, but also tanks, trucks, artillery, and the complete logistic support needed to supply an assault.

The assault support system aboard ship coordinates horizontal and vertical movement of troops, cargo and vehicles. Monorail trains, moving at speeds up to 600 ft/min (3 m/s), transport cargo and supplies from storage and staging areas throughout the ship to a 13,600 square feet (1,260 m2) well deck which opens to the sea through huge gates in the ship’s stern. There, the cargo, troops and vehicles are loaded aboard landing craft for transit to the beach. The air cushion landing craft can “fly” out of the dry well deck, or the well deck can be flooded so conventional landing craft can float out on their way to the beach.

Simultaneously, helicopters are brought from the hangar deck to the flight deck by two deck-edge elevators and loaded with supplies from three massive cargo elevators.

Kearsarge’s armament suite includes the NATO RIM-7 Sea Sparrow point defense system for anti-aircraft support, RIM-116 Rolling Airframe Missiles, 25 mm chain guns and the Phalanx close-in weapon system to counter threats from low-flying aircraft and close-in small craft. Missile decoy launchers augment the anti-ship missile defenses.

However, the Kearsarge has also been used in missions to evacuate people stranded in war zones.Wikipedia describes this unique dual capability:

Kearsarge is fully capable of amphibious assault, advance force and special purpose operations, as well as non-combatant evacuation and other humanitarian missions. Since her commissioning, she has performed these missions the world over, including evacuating non-combatants from Freetown, Sierra Leone, on 31 May 1997 and rescuing Air Force Captain Scott O’Grady from Serb-controlled territory inBosnia on 8 June 1995. Additionally, Kearsarge is fully equipped with state of the art command and control (C&C) systems for flagship command duty, and her medical facilities are second in capability only to the Navy’s hospital ships, USNS Comfort (T-AH-20) and Mercy (T-AH-19). These facilities allowed Kearsarge to serve a dual role during the 1999 NATO bombing of the Federal Republic of Yugoslavia, as a platform for bombing missions against Serb forces in Operation Allied Force, and as a treatment facility for Albanian refugees in Operation Shining Hope.

The Los Angeles Times continues:

In addition, the aircraft carrier Enterprise is in the eastern Mediterranean. The Pentagon originally announced that the carrier was heading through the Suez Canal for the Arabian Gulf, but the crisis in Egypt appears to have prompted a decision to keep it in the Mediterranean at least temporarily.

Egypt borders the Mediterranean Sea (as well as the Red Sea):


The Enterprise is the longest naval vessel in the world, and is powered by eight nuclear reactors. The Enterprise does not appear to have any dual role for evacuations, but is simply an offensive aircraft carrier.

Therefore, I see no clear indication that the U.S. government has affirmatively decided to directly involve our military in Egypt. However, it is obvious that the government is at least planning for the possibility.

Update: Business Insider notes:

A “very senior” member of the US Marine corps is telling people “multiple platoons” are deploying to Egypt, a source tells us.There is a system within the US Marines that alerts the immediate families of high-ranking marines when their marine will soon be deployed to an emergency situation where they will not be able to talk to their spouses or families.

That alert just went out, says our source.

This senior Marine told our source that the Pentagon will deploy “multiple platoons” to Egypt over the next few days and that the official reason will be ‘to assist in the evacuation of US citizens.”

Our source was told that “the chances they were going over there went from 70% yesterday to 100% today.”

US increases defences around Hawaii in case of North Korea strike

The United States has positioned more missile defences around Hawaii as a precaution against a possible North Korean launch across the Pacific, Robert Gates, the defence secretary, has said.

A previous television broadcast of a North Korea launch missile at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea: North Korea launches seventh missile off east coast
A previous television broadcast of a North Korea launch missile at the Seoul Railway Station in Seoul, South Korea  Photo: AP
10:43PM BST 18 Jun 2009

"We do have some concerns if they were to launch a missile to the west in the direction of Hawaii," Mr Gates said.

Mr Gates told reporters at the Pentagon he has sent the military's ground-based mobile missile system to Hawaii, and positioned a radar system nearby. Together the systems theoretically could detect and shoot down a North Korean missile if it came to that.

"Without telegraphing what we will do, I would just say ... we are in a good position, should it become necessary, to protect Americans and American territory," Mr Gates said.A Japanese newspaper reported on Thursday that North Korea might fire its most advanced ballistic missile toward Hawaii around the July 4 Independence Day holiday in the US

A new missile launch – though not expected to reach US territory – would be a slap in the face of the international community, which punished North Korea with new UN sanctions for conducting a second nuclear test on May 25 in defiance of a UN ban.

North Korea spurned the UN Security Council resolution with threats of war and pledges to expand its nuclear bomb-making program.

The missile now being prepared in the North is believed to be a Taepodong-2 with a range of up to 4,000 miles and would be launched from North Korea's Dongchang-ni site on the northwestern coast sometime around July 4, the Yomiuri newspaper said.

It cited an analysis by Japan's Defense Ministry and intelligence gathered by US reconnaissance satellites.

US and Japan begin joint military exercise

Operation Keen Sword under way as Seoul warns provocation by North Korea will be met with force

Military aircraft aboard USS George Washington
Military aircraft on board the USS George Washington in the Korean peninsula. Photograph: David A Cox/AFP/Getty Images

Japan and the US began their biggest-ever joint military exercise today, as South Korea warned it would carry out air strikes against North Koreaif the regime repeated its attack on Yeonpyeong.

Kim Kwan-jin, expected to be named Seoul's new defence minister at the weekend, said any provocation from the North would be met with immediate retaliation. "In case the enemy attacks our territory and people again, we will thoroughly retaliate to ensure that the enemy cannot provoke again," he said.

In a move that may ease tensions, the South's defence ministry said live-fire drills due to take place near the island, which lies south of the countries' maritime border in the Yellow Sea, would be postponed until Kim takes office.

Yonhap news agency quoted a senior ministry official as saying the drills could be held "by the end of this year at the latest".

Codenamed Keen Sword, the operation between Japan and the US involves 60 ships, 500 aircraft and 44,000 troops. The drills, taking place in southern Japanese waters, are being held to mark the 50th anniversary of the countries' security alliance, but they also seen as demonstration of Washington's commitment to its ally and its ability to project military force in the region.

The eight days of manoeuvres began as the UN voiced "great concern" about North Korea's uranium enrichment programme, and warned that the regime may be hiding more nuclear facilities.

This week, North Korea boasted that it was operating thousands of centrifuges at a new uranium enrichment plant at its main nuclear complex in Yongbyon.

Last month, a leading US scientist said he had seen evidence of extraordinary advances in the regime's enrichment capabilities during a tour of the facility.

The news has heightened fears that the regime may be able to produce weapons-grade uranium, despite its claims that the material is intended solely for power generation.

Pyongyang is already believed to have enough fissile material to make a dozen nuclear weapons. Despite conducting two nuclear tests, in 2006 and 2009, North Korea has yet to prove that it had produced a viable weapon.

"These developments … are a clear manifestation of the risks posed by North Korea's defiance of its international obligations and commitments," the US envoy Glyn Davies told a meeting of the International Atomic Energy Agency [IAEA] in Vienna.

IAEA officials believe Pyongyang's enrichment activities had begun before April last year, when the UN body's inspectors were last permitted to visit the country.

"If so, there is a clear likelihood that [it] has built other uranium enrichment-related facilities in its territory," Davies said.

The IAEA's director-general, Yukiya Amano, voiced "great concern" over the reports, and called on Pyongyang to allow inspectors to return to verify the claims.

Japan, the US and South Korea have rejected Chinese calls for an emergency meeting of countries involved in multilateral talks to end North Korea's nuclear weapons programme.

Instead, the three countries will meet in Washington on Monday to discuss a unified response to the attack and the revelations about Pyongyang's nuclear programme.

China said it would keep a "close watch" on the meeting. "As the situation on the Korean peninsula is highly complicated and sensitive, we expect the meeting to ease tensions and promote dialogue, rather then heighten tensions and intensify confrontation," said Jiang Yu, a foreign ministry spokeswoman.

The US secretary of state, Hillary Clinton, who will meet her Japanese and South Korean counterparts in Washington, said efforts were being made to work with Russia and China to prevent the crisis from growing.

"North Korea poses an immediate threat to the region around it, particularly to South Korea and Japan, and a medium-term threat, should it collapse, to China," Clinton said.

North Korea bombardment: US to send nuclear aircraft carrier to South Korea


A US aircraft carrier is to deploy to the Yellow Sea off the coast of South Korea after the two countries agreed to conduct further war games in a show force against North Korea.

By Peter Foster in Beijing 8:00AM GMT 24 Nov 2010

The decision to send the nuclear-powered USS Washington comes less than 24 hours after North Korea shelled a South Korean island, killing two marines and attracting a wave of international condemnation for what the White House described as an “outrageous act” of provocation.

President Barack Obama and his South Korean counterpart Lee Myung-bak agreed to hold the joint military exercises on Sunday following a telephone conversation in which the US reiterated its security guarantees to Seoul.

The Yellow Sea exercises, which are controversial and have already been postponed once after objections from China last August, could raise the stakes further on an already-tense Korean peninsula.

A statement from US Forces Korea (USFK) said the exercise had been planned well before the North's "unprovoked artillery attack" but was designed to demonstrate the US' "commitment to regional stability through deterrence".

North Korea said it had carried out Tuesday’s bombardment in response to a South Korean live-fire exercise and has threatened further action if the South intrudes “even 0.001 millimetres” across the two countries’ disputed maritime border.

The news of the USS Washington’s deployment, reported by South Korea’s Yonhap news agency, is unlikely to please China which reacted furiously in August to a similar plan, with one Chinese general describing the move as “flagrant provocation.”

As North Korea’s only international ally and important economic donor, China has refused to issue an outright condemnation of Tuesday’s attack, but was coming under increasing pressure from the US and Japan to be more pro-active in helping deal with Pyongyang’s belligerence. Stephen Bosworth, the US special envoy on North Korea, left Beijing on Wednesday morning after further talks with his Chinese counterparts which he described as “useful”.

However in a statement before departing, Mr Bosworth made little attempt to hide US differences with China over how to handle North Korea, calling on Beijing to condemn Pyongyang’s actions.

“We call on all members of the international community to condemn the DPRK’s acts and to make clear that they expect the DPRK to cease all provocations and implement its denuclearization commitments,” said Mr Bosworth, using the acronym for North Korea's official name.

Japan also publicly echoed the US’s private calls for China to be more forceful in using its potential economic and political leverage to make North Korea adhere to the norms of international behavior.

“We should ask China, which has significant influence over North Korea, to make efforts to jointly restrain North Korean actions," said Japan's Prime Minister Naoto Kan at the opening session of a cabinet task force set up in response to Tuesday's attack.

The mood remained tense and angry in South Korea on Wednesday, although no further violence was reported overnight following South Korea’s threat to take “enormous retaliation”, including missile strikes, if North Korea made any further attacks.

South Korea’s media reacted furiously to the North Korea bombardment which was the first of its kind since the end of the Korean War hostilities in 1953, with pictures of the burning South Korean village on Yeonpyeong Island stirring painful memories.

“A club is the only medicine for a mad dog,” said Dong-A Ilbo, calling the shelling a “war crime” and demanding a strong military riposte against the rogue state, even though that appeared to have been ruled out by officials.

“North Korea is putting a dagger to our throat," added the Chosun Ilbo daily, “Let's retaliate against North Korea's illegal attacks immediately, sternly and precisely.”

South Korea financial markets, which have grown used to North Korean sabre-rattling, appeared to take a more sanguine view with officials saying they expected the impact on markets to be temporary.

Korean stocks opened down 2.3 percent in early trading and the Korean won sank 3.2 percent, but both later started to recover.

 

 IS THIS WHAT GOD CREATED? NO!!! GOD WANTS LOVE & PEACE

WHY DO WE HAVE TO HAVE A WORLD LIKE THIS?? 

GORDON DUFF: IN MOTION: THE PLOT TO DESTROY THE UNITED STATES

November 11, 2010 posted by Gordon Duff ·  

Synthetic Aperture

CAMOUFLAGED TANKS AS SEEN BY MILITARY SATELLITE

SEE IT COMING AND STOP IT, EVEN IF IT COSTS YOU EVERYTHING

By Gordon Duff STAFF WRITER/Senior Editor

“The 2010 election had one purpose, war with Iran, even if the risk is world conflict and the real loser, no matter what happens on the battlefield is the United States.”

Plans are in motion for a “false flag” attack on America.   Iran will be blamed, everyone knows that and Iran will be totally innocent.  This is the last thing Iran would ever want.  The most likely scenario is a nuclear attack.  Two bombs are missing, bombs built by Israel in South Africa and lost long ago.  These were supposedly Saddam’s bombs.  Now we are told Iran has them.  Israel has had them all along and the fear, they may be inside the United States already.

The Israeli game with these weapons is one of the worst kept secrets in the world and has already cost the deaths of many.  It will take nothing short of the detonation of one of this Hiroshima sized Israeli nukes to push America into Israel’s war with Iran, much as hunting for these nukes which Israel informed President Bush were in Iraq, led “the decider” to making one of the many blunders of his career.  Our next 9/11 will be nuclear.

The purpose will be to push America into a 20 year war that will destroy Iran and Pakistan, take oil to over $300 per barrel and collapse the dollar and Euro.  Iran isn’t Iraq of 2003, toothless and starving.  This will be America’s last military adventure, and the end of America’s place in the world as we know it.  We know the details of the proposed military campaign and the military and political leaders who support it are the worst imaginable incompetents and traitors.

Invading Iran is an impossible task for America.  Other than there be no reason whatsoever to engage in such folly, something that, of recent years, seems to concern fewer and fewer Americans.   Turn on the TV, if the “rodeo clown” says “wipe ‘em out” then we do it.

Invading Iran is an impossibility for America. Going to the moon was easier.  No matter how senseless, how impossible, the decision has been made, more in Tel Aviv than Washington, for sure, but one that will be obeyed.

There are only two scenarios that can fulfill the nightmare Israel and her shiny new congress have in store with us.  One is a preemptive nuclear attack on Iran and the other full scale total war with up to 500,000 Americans being drafted into the military.

FAILURE OF THE “VOLUNTEER ARMY”…..AS ISRAEL SEES IT

Forcing America to return to a draft and begin a major war, one America can never really win as with Iraq and Afghanistan and, let us not forget Vietnam, is something absolutely vital to hang around the neck of a Democrat,

America at its best, TEA PARTY ART

RACE HATRED, AMERICAN KRYPTONITE

especially one of African American ancestry.  Anyone who doesn’t think the real heart of American politics has always been racism is a liar.  Family values means “white” family values.  African Americans know shame at the relief they have felt seeing Muslims targeted for persecution.  Every political position in today’s America is derived from institutionalized racism, be it immigration, health care or “constitution.”

When a return to the “constitution” is brought up, by people who wouldn’t know the document from a Croatian take-out menu, the reality is always race, fear, hate and envy, the glue that holds American society prisoner.  Decades ago, and even more recently during our last presidential election, African Americans were represented as animals, “goyim” to the Jews.  Now we play “Kill the camel jockey.”  Is this why the Christianized army we sent to Afghanistan murders innocent civilians for sport?

An America in total economic collapse will require another “decider” and more “Patriot Acts,” even more totalitarian and vicious than the last, that and an end to the even farcical elections that are now inundated with drug money and cash from US based foreign corporations.

This is the plan and a criminal gang in America, some in government and the military but more behind the scenes, “banksters” and media moguls, many with ties to Israel, are working feverishly to bring it about.  However clever the planners may think they are, their mechanations can be tracked through the media, the army of “Wolf Blitzers” that “work” the American people with the subtlety of carny shills.

WHY DO THEY HATE US SO MUCH?

Why would anyone want to destroy America, kill millions, leave the nation that has been there to save the world over and over a virtual wasteland?  If you think America’s castrated government or the military, now relegated to acting as virtual mercenaries for drug lords, oil cartels and bizarre Zionist plots, have the will or ability to stop what has already begun, you have not been paying attention for some time.  While the “circus of deception” went on, the utterly phony “war on terror,” imaginary enemies, the 9/11 disaster, orchestrated by Israel and its puppets,

Israel has decided that America is going to war with Iran.  The new congress, the one Israel openly boasts is under their total control, will make it happen, it was why they were put there.  The upcoming war will leave the United States crippled, castrated, a “third world” nuclear power like the old Soviet Union.  The plot isn’t against Iran and Pakistan, that’s just an excuse.  The real enemy is what is left of a free and democratic America.

The real goal is to end America’s leadership role in the world.

Israel has plans for Russia, China and India, especially India, to rule the world with them pulling the strings.  America had been their “milk cow” for some time, now that cow is going to slaughter.

Iranian Patrol Boat

SCRATCH ONE SUPERTANKER OR DESTROYER

HOW IT BEGINS

This is how it is going to play out.  The news media has gotten their orders, Wikileaks is part of it.  From now on, key members of congress will, on cue, begin harping about the threat of Iran.  Governments in the Middle East that are under the total control of Israel and the American military will aid in every way possible.  Thus far, of all the Islamic nations in the world, only Syria and Afghanistan are not taking orders from Tel Aviv.

The next step will be to replace key military staff as was done prior to 9/11, with “Israel friendly” third stringers, “dominionists” and “Israeli firsters” who place “end times” religious mythology over the welfare, safety and sovereignty of the United States.  This group has been infiltrating the American military for years and has gained control of every service but the Marine Corps, starting with the United States Air Force.

The military pundits, with their laundered payoffs and free trips to Israel and the dozens of propaganda websites have already begun.  If you have a computer, you can check this easily.  Simply go into your email, it will be filled with warnings of Iran and nuclear terrorism.  An Israeli teenager paid dearly to bring you that message, spending a difficult night in a hotel with one of our political or military “pro-Zionists.”

Our newly elected “Tea Party’ gang will be visiting Israel soon, watch and see, there is a “Monica Lewinsky” in their future.  This is how it works, how it has worked for a long time and why we have sunk so low.

Anyone who talks about “liberal” media is part of it.  A cursory check of who owns the media, “liberal” or any other media is easy.  Israel owns our media, all of it.  The stories will start with tales of Iran controlling the Shiite government of Iraq.  Then you will hear of them controlling Karzai’s government in Afghanistan.

STEP ONE

Then the stories will start, Iran has to be tied to terrorist attacks on American troops.  Watch for this.  Americans will start dying and Iran will be blamed.  Wikileaks started this with their fanciful stories about Iranians training Iraq in making explosives.  A few years ago, we invaded Iraq because we believed they were building nuclear weapons, or so we were misinformed, now they can’t build pipe bombs without Iranian help?  Wikileaks is a clear demonstration at how childish, how outlandish the lies are going to be.  Wikileaks is prestaging terror attacks on Americans as much as if they made the bombs themselves, no question about that.

Every media outlet that, under specific directions, carries the “party line” on Wikileaks and the rest of it, no matter how absurd, carries these fabrications without question or embarrassment, should be considered a terrorist organization and their employees enemy combatants.

It will be Israel doing the killing just as with 9/11 and the USS Liberty and, frankly, so many other times Americans have died, like the Marines killed in Beirut, an attack Israel admitted knowing of in advance.  More and more, we are finding everything was “known” in advance, “known” because those who knew planned it.

Getting the scene set, all the assets in place, buying or blackmailing congress, keeping the president surrounded by Israeli advisors as he is today, silencing voices of reason in the military, all this is going on right now.

Years have been spent branding Iran and Pakistan as dangerous, the press continually ignoring reports that Iran has no nuclear program or endlessly repeating outrageous rumors that Pakistan’s nuclear weapons are almost in the hands approaching “Taliban” forces.  With Karzai’s government Afghanistan openly negotiating with the Taliban after American forces, 9 years of fighting, have only managed to secure 3% of the country, building a case for war tied to Iranian “interference” in that conflict is going to be unmarketable.

This leaves Pakistan.  Drone attacks in Pakistan have brought about considerable destabilization and an increase in terrorism in Pakistan.  They have, as seemingly planned, worked to harm American interests in the region while attempting to bring about the dissolution of Pakistan.  Continual reports of American contractors in Pakistan, working for the CIA and State Department, aiding terrorists, go unreported in the American media.  Even when caught with weapons and explosives inside Pakistan, such reports are suppressed.

Increasingly, evidence is showing that the Mumbai attack, the massive terror assault on India blamed on Pakistan, was orchestrated by one of these American groups.

THE MONEY ISN’T THERE, AND WE KNOW IT

However, considering the financial collapse engineered though Bush era deregulation frauds combined with unstable tax policies and massive increase in government spending, combined with cost of two failed wars, America’s options are limited.  There is simply no revenue to pay the current military without rollbacks or sustain moderate capabilities and readiness.  America is too broke, not just to fight a new war but to continue the two that are going or even maintain a fully peacetime force at near current levels.

In fact, our military expenditures need to be cut by 30% or more, as studies being reviewed by the Department of Defense and congress are showing.  We have the choice of cutting back now or dealing with consequences later, including, not only cuts in military and veterans health care but substantial cuts in pensions and disability compensation as well.

Another war, and there is no question that another war is planned, will push American debt to $20 trillion or more, half being military expenditures, always a combination of pork, payoffs and “misplaced” weaponry and the rest looted from the economy by the planned massive manipulation of oil prices made possible by the shutoff of world petroleum supplies.

HOW IRAN CONTROLS THE WORLD'S OIL SUPPLY, 8000 MISSILES

“IRAN WILL SHUT DOWN HORMUZ AND WORLD OIL IN ONE HOUR”

In March, 2010, a Chinese built missile factory opened in Iran.  The plant builds a variety of missiles, primarily anti-ship, with ranges from 100 to 300 miles or more.  These are advanced weapons that can be launched from hardened facilities along Iran’s rugged coastline, from aircraft, both fixed and rotary, from patrol boats, from nearly anything.  One of these missiles can sink a frigate, perhaps even a destroyer.  Several can disable an aircraft carrier.  Approaching Iran from sea is impossible.

Iran controls Hormuz, not just with missiles but patrol boats as well, and not just from their own shore but from the islands in the gulf, some of which were seized 30 years ago and are still held.

The government of the United Arab Emirates has discussed, from time to time, a canal bypassing the strait, through to Oman and into the Persian Gulf.  However, the cost would be outrageous as a ridge of hills would have to be crossed, something difficult to manage with a lock system capable of handing the largest ships in the world, oil supertankers.

The missiles, the torpedo boats and the almost impossible network of islands and swamps along the coast would make suppressing Iran’s capabilities impossible.  The strait would close, oil would stop, Iraq, Iran certainly, Kuwait and Saudi Arabia.  In days, currencies would collapse, stock markets shut down, gas lines would form and gas rationing would be required around the world.  All western economies would disappear overnight.

Iranian Facilities at Hormuz

WHY PAKISTAN HAS TO FALL

There is simply no way into Iran by land.  We can barely keep American troops in Afghanistan supplied with many routes being hundreds of miles long, narrow roads from the Port of Karachi in Pakistan.  Recently we found how easily this supply line could be cut off.  Agreements with Iran, not to mention religious affiliations between Shiites in Iraq, the majority there and the Shiite based government in Iran, make an approach through Iraq impossible.

We could also consider that our existing forces in Iraq and the entire Persian Gulf could be cut off by Iran with no resupply by sea possible for, not only Iraq but Qatar, Bahrain, Kuwait and Iraq.  These nations and the US forces there would be immediately isolated.  The only way in to Iran, restricted because of the topography, is through the province of Baluchistan, a remote area of Pakistan that borders Iran.

NEW YORK TO DENVER, ALL MOUNTAINS, NO ROADS

BALOCHISTAN

This isolated region has become the staging area for attacks against Iran, supposedly by Jundallah “rebels” but actually orchestrated by the Mossad and CIA.  There are two independence movements wanting to break Baluchistan from Pakistan.  One of the leaders I met in Islamabad while he was recovering from gunshot wounds.  The other lives in Israel, surprise-surprise.

Because of the topography of Iran, the only way to approach Tehran is over more than a thousand miles of valleys.  They can only be approached through Pakistan and there is only one port that serves that region.  The only way to resupply other than through this small Chinese built port, Gwadar, is to truck into Kandahar, hundreds of miles, then back down into Pakistan, following the 500,000 man army into Iran in something closely akin to Napoleon’s ill fated invasion of Russia, but even worse if that is possible.

Gwadar, Baluchistan, Pakistan

Tiny port, dirt roads, narrow gauge rail only

The military analogies are inescapable, Dien Bien Phu and Stalingrad are two that come to mind.  Though the government of Pakistan lacks strong civilian leadership and is largely dependent on US aid, the use of Pakistan’s territory for another aggressive war in the Middle East that will perceived by almost all the world’s population, not just Muslims, as a sign of Israel’s control of the United States and its ability to get America to commit any crime, will not be acceptable to the people of Pakistan.  It is also highly unlikely that even Karzai’s government in Afghanistan would abide such an action.

Thus, America could become beset, not just from Pakistan but by its own allies in Afghanistan and, quite possibly, the newly trained and surprisingly effective army in Iraq as well.

America would become a rogue state, even if purporting to respond to a devastating terrorist attack.  In the aftermath of 9/11, America lacks any credibility.  The second a disaster strikes inside America, the world will immediately assume the worst, Israel has deemed such an act necessary to push America to war.  No rational person could assume otherwise.

MISSION IMPOSSIBLE

In order to stabilize the situation with our allies, those likely to become enemies, it will likely necessitate the decapitation of several regimes, Afghanistan, Iraq and Pakistan initially.  Others will quickly fall into line though some will be directly under the control of Iran, Kuwait, Saudi Arabia and the UAE, in particular.  They will become indefensible except through massive airlift, resources that will be needed elsewhere.  Half the troops needed to secure America’s lines of supply left military service after multiple deployments in Afghanistan and Iraq for nearly a decade.  Many are sick, some are homeless and hundreds of thousands are simply “fed up.”

This leaves the new citizen army, the one America had to turn to because of a “9/11 – Pearl Harbor” disaster fewer and fewer believe the cover story on as days go by.  Even in America, despite what Israeli Prime Minister Netanyahu thinks, you can only fool people so many times.  The most glaring example of the lack of foresight some of our “War College” grads have can be seen in the Gwadar Port facilities, the only place American can use for supplies for the most difficult invasion in history, with, perhaps, the exception of Okinawa.

TWO CRANES, TWO CRANES, TWO CRANES...COUNT THEM AGAIN, IT WILL STILL ONLY BE TWO CRANES

ECONOMIC BELT TIGHTENING AT HOME

The 2010 election paid for a war, there is no question of that.  Many of the puppets in America’s government had to be replaced as there was fear some of them might object to something as obscene as what is in the planning.  Lies, fear mongering and childish rhetoric had never reached the levels seen in 2010.  Never had a nation, since Germany in 1932, gone over to the “darkside” as clearly as America has done, a rejection of decency and common sense.

When the bill becomes due, and it most certainly will, that “smaller government” so many thought they would get will most certainly come true.  What won’t happen is a return to constitutional rule, that will be gone forever.  Habeas Corpus won’t be missed so much in a country where those without the cash to buy their way out of military service, yes, that great American tradition, will be one step ahead of the press gangs working to keep the military training camps filled to capacity.  America may, quite likely, have bitten off a bit too much, a world war, and this time, no allies, none, not a chance.

LESS GOVERNMENT, THE DREAM OF AMERICA’S “RIGHT”

  • SOCIAL SECURITY: Plans for less government have always been around, we have seen attempts to put these plans in place many times, starting with attempts to have Social Security declared unconstitutional back in the 1930s.  This will be first to go, Social Security.  Getting rid of Social Security has long been a dream of the GOP, either through outlawing it as “Socialism,” or “borrowing” the trust fund to cover war expenses or, more recently “privatization.”  Now, none of those will be needed.  The money will simply disappear overnight, not to pay war expenses, not hardly.  It will be split up and stashed in Swiss bank accounts the same place the “bail out” money went, the same place every 401k in America went, the same place the assets of our largest banks went.
  • MEDICARE/MEDIAID: They will be the next to go.  States will be asked to pay fund this themselves.  There won’t be any more questions about illegal aliens using our medical care, there won’t be any, not for them, not for the poor or not for the senior citizens who paid into medicare all their lives.  Just because it was paid for doesn’t mean the government can’t simply break its promise, there are loyalties more powerful and more important that our government has than to the people.  9/11 proved that to any rational person.
  • TAX INCREASES: The time for borrowing, counterfeit money, the “Federal Reserve System” and selling T -Bills will be over.  China and Iran are close.  China will be finished with us, India too and no more Arab money.  The dollar, the instrument we use to buy oil, fertilizer, metals and so many other things, will be worthless.  We are going to have to invent a new form of monopoly money or go on the barter system.  The dollar, as a world currency, will disappear.
  • SCHOOLS SHUT DOWN: One good thing, schools will shut down.  Thus, America’s inferior education system will no longer do the damage it once did.  Along with that, mothers will be home to take care of children, a “blast from the past.”  The downside, of course, the mothers will have lost their jobs, the homes will be unheated, some with no electricity, more with no water, all eventually repossessed and, unless the government starts giving out food as it had in the past, we will see starvation.  The money that financed Food Stamps will be long gone.
  • MILITARY AND VETERANS PENSIONS HALVED: Long seen as “freeloaders,” veterans and military retirees will be cut off.  Pensions once seen as a “promise” have long been referred to as “entitlements.”  Any entitlement can be “unentitled” and these will.
  • MILITARY PAY CUT: Troops in Vietnam were paid $30 dollars a week.  We are going to see that again.

THIS IS THE INEXORABLE FUTURE, BOUGHT AND PAID FOR

The draft, worthless money, gas lines, martial law, metal detectors in supermarkets, cameras everywhere, everything filmed, recorded, everyone every day, biometrics, face recognition, these things will be part of our lives from now on.  These are the plans and putting this machinery in place, much of it “designed” in Israel, is what Americans voted for, this and the invasion of Iran, part of a war where only Americans will fight and die.

No one cares about Iran.  No knowledgeable person ever thought they had nuclear weapons or wanted them.  It was never about them.  They were never a target, they were never a threat.  The threat, the target, was always the United States.  We were the danger, a free people.

Free people can’t be trusted, can’t be managed.

The plans are in place to bring that to an end.  How many Americans will continue to be a part of it?

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US to build £8bn super base on Pacific island of Guam

The US is building an £8 billion super military base on the Pacific island of Guam in an attempt to contain China's military build-up.

 

Praveen Swami, Diplomatic Editor 
Published: 9:00PM BST 25 Oct 2010

Andersen Air Force Base in Guam
A B-1B Lancer takes off from Andersen Air Force Base in Guam in 2003 Photo: GETTY

The expansion will include a dock for a nuclear-powered aircraft carrier, a missile defence system, live-fire training sites and the expansion of the island's airbase. It will be the largest investment in a military base in the western Pacific since the Second World War, and the biggest spend on naval infrastructure in decades.

However, Guam residents fear the build-up could hurt their ecosystem and tourism-dependent economy.

 

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Estimates suggest that the island's population will rise by almost 50 per cent from its current 173,000 at the peak of construction. It will eventually house 19,000 Marines who will be relocated from the Japanese island of Okinawa, where the US force has become unpopular.

The US's Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) has said that this could trigger serious water shortages. The EPA said that dredging the harbour to allow an aircraft carrier to berth would damage 71 acres of pristine coral reefs.

The EPA's report said the build-up would "exacerbate existing substandard environmental conditions on Guam".

Local residents' concerns, however, have been sidelined by the US-China strategic competition.China has significantly expanded its fleet during the past decade, seeking to deter the US from intervening militarily in any future conflict over Taiwan, which Beijing claims as its own, and to project power across disputed territories in the gas and oil-rich South China Sea.

Beijing's naval build-up is also intended secure the sea lanes from the Middle East, from where China will import an estimated 70-80 per cent of its oil needs by 2035 supplies it fears US could choke in the event of a conflict.

China has therefore invested in what are called its "string of pearls" a network of bases strung along the Indian Ocean rim, like Hambantota in Sri Lanka and Gwadar in Pakistan and in developing a navy which can operate far from home.

Experts agree China does not currently have the capability to challenge US supremacy in the Pacific and Indian Ocean. "China has a large appetite", says Carl Ungerer, an analyst at Australian Strategic Policy Institute, "but it hasn't got enough teeth".

But China clearly intends to add bite to its naval arsenal. The country has acquired several modern Russian-made submarines and destroyers. Its shipyards are building new nuclear-powered submarines, as well as an aircraft carrier. There have also been reports that China is planning to test a new type of ballistic missile, the Dong Feng 21D, which would effectively render US carriers defenceless.

"China's charm offensive is over", says Ian Storey, an expert at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore, "and its given way to what you might call an adolescent foreign policy. The country's flexing its muscles, letting us know it won't be pushed around".

The US is also investing another £126 million on upgrading infrastructure at the British-owned Indian Ocean atoll of Diego Garcia, 700 miles south of Sri Lanka.

Key among the upgrades at Diego Garcia, which are due for completion in 2013, will be the capability to repair a nuclear-powered guided-missile submarine which can carry up to 154 cruise missiles striking power equivalent to that of an entire US aircraft carrier battle group.

Diego Garcia, which has served as a launch-pad for air strikes on Iraq and Afghanistan, is already home to one third of what the US navy calls its Afloat Prepositioned Force equipment kept on standby to support military deployment anywhere in the world.

US deploys second air carrier in Persian Gulf with 60 warplanes 
DEBKAfile Special Report October 20, 2010, 5:15 PM (GMT+02:00)

Tags:  Iran   Persian Gulf   US carriers 
USS Abraham Lincoln now opposite Iran

The United States has posted a second aircraft carrier, the USS Abraham Lincoln, in the Persian Gulf and northern Arabian Sea. The announcement came from the Pentagon Tuesday, Oct. 19, two days after the vessel put into port at Fifth Fleet headquarters in Manama, Bahrain. DEBKAfile's sources note that this is the first time in two years that Washington had deployed two aircraft carriers at same time - not just one - in waters opposite Iran and Afghanistan.
Facing Iran at the moment therefore is the USS Harry S. Truman which has four squadrons of Hornet and Super Hornet fighter-bombers plus Squadron 116 of early warning, surveillance and command craft, Squadron 131 of electronic warfare craft, two more squadrons of helicopters and one of transports.

The Abraham Lincoln's arrival has raised the number of US fighter-bombers in Iran's neighborhood to 120.

The carrier was accompanied by the guided missile cruiser USS Cape St. George.

The Pentagon announcement was careful to avoid mentioning Iran: US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates approved the presence of a second carrier… to provide surge support for coalition forces in Afghanistan "and to support existing maritime security operations."
But the significance of two massive American naval-aerial strike forces opposite Iranian shores was not lost on Tehran, our sources report. Wednesday, Oct. 20, Brig. Gen. Hussein Salami, Deputy Commander of the Iranian Revolutionary Guards, came out with this statement: "The enemies of Iran should know the Islamic establishment's red lines and not trespass them."

Israeli cyber unit responsible for Iran computer worm – claim

An elite Israeli military unit responsible for cyberwarfare has been accused of creating a virus that has crippled Iran's computer systems and stopped work at its newest nuclear power station.

 

By Richard Spencer and Damien McElroy 
Published: 9:00PM BST 30 Sep 2010

99 Comments

Israel demonstrated its intent to conquer cyber warfare in the 1990s by presenting the country's legions of hackers with a choice between prison and working for the state.
Israel has led the way in combating cyber attacks Photo: ALAMY

Computer experts have discovered a biblical reference embedded in the code of the computer worm that has pointed to Israel as the origin of the cyber attack.

The code contains the word "myrtus", which is the Latin biological term for the myrtle tree. The Hebrew word for myrtle, Hadassah, was the birth name of Esther, the Jewish queen of Persia.pre-empted an attack on the country's Jewish population and then persuaded her husband to launch an attack before being attacked themselves.

Israel has threatened to launch a pre-emptive attack on Iran's facilities to ensure that the Islamic state does not gain the ability to threaten its existence.

Ralf Langner, a German researcher, claims that Unit 8200, the signals intelligence arm of the Israeli defence forces, perpetrated the computer virus attack by infiltrating the software into the Bushehr nuclear power station

Mr Langer said: "If you read the Bible you can make a guess."

 

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In the Bible, The Book of Esther tells how the queen

Computer experts have spent months tracing the origin of the Stuxnet worm, a sophisticated piece of malicious software, or malware, that has infected industrial operating systems made by the German firm Siemens across the globe.

Programmers following Stuxnet believe it was most likely introduced to Iran on a memory stick, possibly by one of the Russian firms helping to build Bushehr. The same firm has projects in Asia, including India and Indonesia which were also attacked. Iran is thought to have suffered 60 per cent of the attacks.

Mr Langner said: "It would be an absolute no-brainer to leave an infected USB stick near one of these guys and there would be more than a 50 per cent chance of him pick it up and infect his computer."

Cyber security experts said that Israel was the most likely perpetrator of the attack and had been targeting Iran but that it had not acknowledged a role to its allies.

"Nobody is willing to accept responsibility for this particular piece of malicious software which is a curious, complex and powerful weapon," said one Whitehall expert.

The Iranian authorities acknowledged the worm had struck Bushehr and a statement conceded that the plant would come into operation in January, two months later than planned.

Elizabeth Katina, a researcher at the Royal United Services Institute, said the possibility of a copycat attack on British or American electricity networks or water supplies had been elevated by the release of Stuxnet.

"Critical national infrastructure is at greater risk because this shows groups on the outside of governments how to do it," she said. "It's more likely now that the northeast of England power grid can be shut down until someone decides to start it up again."

ANOTHER 9/11: OBAMA WARNS AND THE NUKES ARE READY

Posted on Pakalert on September 26, 2010  Henk Ruyssenaars

Sept. 23d 2010 – ‘Front man’ Obama warns, and it should be overwhelmingly clear to anybody who can see it. Obama, in his role, ‘understands’ what’s going to happen. The enormous deception again.* And no doubt this umpteenth ‘false flag’ operation will be enough to rally people again around a pack of lies and start the next illegal invasion. Iran next time? The idiocy is without limits…

Connect the dots: the nukes at the ‘hot spots’ are ready, and the warning has been given many times. Poor innocent victims. Again and again! And all for power and profit. The financiers and other banksters hegemony-pipe-dream, of ruling the whole wold in this New World Order…

Quote: Obama’s political advisers are the “Politburo” and the “Mafia.”

FOX ‘news’ – September 22, 2010 – President Obama, after being warned repeatedly by his advisers about the threat of another terror attack on U.S. soil, said in an interview two months ago that the United States could “absorb” another strike.

The comment was included in the new book by journalist Bob Woodward, “Obama’s Wars,” excerpts of which were reported by The Washington Post and The New York Times. The book depicts the contentious debate the Obama administration endured to craft a new strategy in Afghanistan. According to the Post, Obama spent the bulk of the exhaustive sessions pressing for an exit strategy and resisting efforts to prolong and escalate the war.

Despite warnings of another attack, he suggested the United States could weather a new strike. “We can absorb a terrorist attack. We’ll do everything we can to prevent it, but even a 9/11, even the biggest attack ever . . . we absorbed it and we are stronger,” Obama reportedly said.” – [ ]

Quote: “Although the internal divisions described by Woodward have become public, the book suggests that they were even more intense than previously known and offers new details.

Gen. David Petraeus described White House senior adviser David Axelrod as a “complete spin doctor;” Biden called veteran diplomat Holbrooke “the most egotistical bastard I’ve ever met.”

A number of administration officials expressed scorn for national security adviser James Jones, the Times said. The Post said that Jones, in turn, described Obama’s political advisers as the “Politburo” and the “Mafia.”

Adm. Mike Mullen, chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, thought his vice chairman, Gen. James Cartwright, went behind his back, while Cartwright dismissed Mullen because he hadn’t fought in a war.

The book recounts incidents in which Adm. Dennis Blair, then the national intelligence director, fought with Rahm Emanuel, the White House chief of staff, and John Brennan, the counterterrorism adviser.” – [end quote] – More at FOX ‘news’ – Url.: http://www.foxnews.com/politics/2010/09/22/obama-divided-afghan-war-woodward-book/

And most of the comments on this article at FOX say it all….

So, here we go again? And keep in mind: this is not happening from one day to another. It’s long-term planning. Sometimes it may take decades, but the ‘Salami-tactic’ is still going forward. Everyday a small sliver or slice, and within some time the hegemonic psychopaths will have the whole sausage if we don’t stop them. This is one possibility how ‘tehy’ are gonna do it the next time. And which the U.S. according to Obama can absorb…

NUKES ON THE READY? ISRAELI EMBASSY IN NYC A RADIATION HOT SPOT.*

Quote – 2006: “One alleged radiation hot spot on Manhattan’s east side has the potential for becoming a political hot spot: A strong radiation spike from the area of the Israeli Embassy. Officials would not comment on why they thought that particular area allegedly showed such a stunning peak in radiation.

The aerial survey is designed to help local officials react more quickly in the event of terrorists detonating a “dirty bomb” that releases radioactive material into the air. With the survey, police may be able to pinpoint the exact source of radiation by comparing new readings to their pre-existing “radiation map” of the area.

NYPD spokesman Paul Browne said the department wanted a record of the city’s naturally occurring and other “radiological signatures” to compare with periodic readings it does to detect for dirty bombs or other nuclear devices.

“It gives us a baseline so we can pick up any anomalies,” he said.

New York City is the only major city to conduct a full-scale Aerial Background Radiation Survey to identify “hot spots,” though such work has been done in the nation’s capitol, according to the report.” – [end quote]

Google search: “ISRAELI EMBASSY IN NYC A RADIATION HOT SPOT” – Url.: http://tinyurl.com/32et554

‘PROFESSIONAL’ DISINFORMATION: THE MOSSAD/CIA’s DEBKAFILE.

Quote: “Tehran: If Iran is attacked, nuclear devices will go off in American cities.”

Debkafile – April 2010 – This warning, along with an announcement that Iran would join the world’s nuclear club within a month, raised the pitch of Iranian anti-US rhetoric to a new high Tuesday, April 13, as 47 world leaders gathered in Washington for President Barack Obama’s Nuclear Security Summit.

The statement published by Kayhan said: “If the US strikes Iran with nuclear weapons, there are elements which will respond with nuclear blasts in the centers of America’s main cities.” For the first time, debkafile’s military sources report, Tehran indicated the possibility of passing nuclear devices to terrorists capable of striking inside the United States.

Without specifying whether those elements would be Iranian or others, Tehran aimed at the heart of the Nuclear Security Summit by threatening US cities with nuclear terror.

Debkafile’s Iranians sources report that Tehran is playing brinkmanship to demonstrate that the Washington summit, from which Iran and North Korea were excluded, failed before it began, because terrorist elements capable of striking inside the US had already acquired nuclear devices for that purpose.

Although Iran has yet to attain operational nuclear arms, our military sources believe it does possess the makings of primitive nuclear devices or “dirty bombs.”

In an interview ahead of the summit, President Obama warned: “If there was ever a detonation in New York City, or London, or Johannesburg, the ramifications… would be devastating.”

In another shot at the summit, Behzad Soltani, deputy director of Iran’s Atomic Commission, announced Tuesday: “Iran will join the world nuclear club within a month in a bid to deter possible attacks on the country.” He added: “No country would even think about attacking Iran once it is in the club.”

The Iranian official’s boast was run by the Fars news agency, published by Iran’s Revolutionary Guards Corps. Behzadi further pointed to the construction of 360 MW nuclear power plant and a 40 MW research reactor in Iran’s central city of Arak, claiming the projects were 70 percent complete.

This plant is generally believed to have been built to enable Iran to produce weapons-grade plutonium as an alternative weapons fuel to highly-enriched uranium and material for radioactive weapons.

Sunday, April 11, [2010] debkafile reported that Iran is making much better progress than Western and Israeli intelligence estimates have held toward completing the Arak heavy water reactor.” – [END ITEM] – Source: Debkafile – Url.: http://www.debka.com/article/8713/

Quote: “I asked the Cutting Edge Webmaster to check out the source for this DEBKAfile story, above, and we discovered some interesting facts about the dissident group called “Foundation for Democracy in Iran”. Listen and weep for truth in this country:

* Registrant: Foundation for Democracy in Iran, 10400 Connecticut Ave., Kensington, MD 20895, USA

* Domain Name: IRAN.ORG

* IP Address: 205.178.145.65 (ARIN & RIPE IP search)
* IP Location: US(UNITED STATES)-KANSAS-FT. LEAVENWORTH
* Record Type: Domain Name
* Server Type: Apache 1

As you can see, the actual physical address for this “dissident group” is in Kensington, MD but the web server on which the site is hosted is the American military base at Ft. Leavenworth, Kansas! This entire DEBKAfile report is nothing more than a sophisticated “Psyops” campaign designed to deceive you , the American citizen. This story is intended to cause the average American to support a military attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities. It is highly likely that other “news” reporters will quote this DEBKAfile story as they write their own story for their own newspaper, and this bogus news story will spread across the entire nation.

This tactic is simple, and pure, disinformation. for a very long time, we have regarded DEBKAfile Intelligence with a skeptical mind, for we believe it is probably run and operated by Israel’s Mossad. However, remembering that even the best disinformation specialists provide 90-95% good information, we watch DEBKAfile closely. This Iranian situation is one of those areas in which the elite wants you to be misinformed.” – [end quote] – Url.: http://www.cuttingedge.org/news/n2106.cfm

ALERT! Obama Signs Martial Law Executive Order

Posted by EU Times on Jan 14th, 2010 // 63 Comments

One must read this one closely but when it dawns on you that the 10 Governors to be appointed by the President will perhaps soon correspond to the 10 FEMA REGIONS and effectively will be under the Secretary of Defense and hence the President in a system of Regional Military Governors over all States, not just the States they might be from, you might just experience a chill up your spine. Note that then all States in essence have been taken over at least on paper by the President and will be administered Militarily. Read carefully Section -2 Functions, of this Executive Order and you will clearly see how inclusive these functions can be……. especially Item e which has language sufficiently broad and loose that a Tank Battalion could be driven through it.

Americans had better understand that this Executive Order along with all of those previously signed ,and with Presidential Decision Directive 51 and others will be used to destroy the Constitution and Bill of Rights and to render each American effectively into nothing more than a member of a work gang subject to control of the Regional Military Governor who is under the Secdef who is under the President. Posse Comitatus then is dead, Habeas Corpus is dead, Bill of Rights is dead, and only the whims and subjective decisions of the Regional Military Governor, as directed by the President via the Secretary of Defense and executed by Northcom troopers who now include U.S. , Canadian, Mexican, and other Foreign troops as well as Mercenaries and the States’ National Guards, Militias, and Police agencies will be the Iron Fist Rule of the Land.

Is this what the Founding Fathers would be proud of or would they say we have come full circle and that now We the People should invoke the Declaration of Independence once again and be ready on Lexington Green and prepositioned at Concord Bridge ? I think I know what Thomas Jefferson, Patrick Henry, Sam Adams, and old “Swamp Fox” would say.

Here is the official White House document. Click on this link for the PDF of the Executive Order. Read it and weep for America.

Special army unit ready to be deployed on American soil just before Nov. elections (Update)

  • April 13th, 2010 7:16 pm ET

Note:  An update has been posted at the end of the article.

In October of this year, one month prior to the November midterm elections, a special army unit known as 'Consequence Management Response Force' will be ready for deployment on American soil if so ordered by the President.

(AP Photo/David Longstreath).

The special force, which is the new name being given to the 1st Brigade Combat Team of the 3rd Infantry, has been training at Fort Stewart, Georgia and is composed of 80,000 troops.

According to the Army Times,

They may be called upon to help with civil unrest and crowd control or to deal with potentially horrific scenarios such as massive poisoning and chaos in response to a chemical, biological, radiological, nuclear or high-yield explosive, or CBRNE, attack.

The key phrase is 'may be called upon to help with civil unrest.'

This afternoon a local radio talk show host reported that he had been in contact with a member of the military.  This military source stated that the armed forces have been alerted to the strong possibility that civil unrest may occur in the United States this summer, prior to the midterm elections of 2010.

The source described this as 'our long, hot summer of discontent' that could be eerily reminiscent of the summer of 1968 when riots broke out in many of our largest cities. 

However, the summer of 2010 could well be much worse due to the players involved.  In 1968 the major players were war protesters.  This time, the outrage simmering beneath the surface of American society involves a broad cross-section of the heartland, and most of them are heavily armed.

It is highly unlikely that these citizens would ever initiate armed conflict of any kind.  In their view, gun rights are for self-defense--and for defense against tyrannical government, which our Founders regarded as the most dangerous force on earth.

However, it has become clear that other groups may well initiate violence in order to start an 'incident' that would give Obama and a rogue Congress a reason to implement martial law, confiscate the citizens' guns, enforce curfews, and suspend all future elections until such time as it is deemed 'safe' to proceed with human liberty as encapsulated in the right to vote.

Tea Party members, for example, have been warned in recent days that members of Andy Stern's SEIU union and members of the organization formerly known as ACORN plan toinfiltrate Tea Party gatherings in order to incite some sort of incident that could result in armed conflict.

In addition, all indications point to a humiliating defeat for the Democrats and Obama in November.  Not only will the House in all likelihood transfer to Republican control, but it is increasingly possible for the Democrats to lose the Senate as well.

And there are Leftwing groups in this country that would use whatever means necessary to prevent that from happening.

ACORN has already gone underground, changing its name so as to fly beneath the radar screen.  How many people will  the group register to vote illegally?

And with Obama's plan to naturalize between 10 and 20 million illegal aliens, a brand new voter base for the Democrats will be in place prior to November.

Add to this the growing unrest over continued high unemployment, the coming spike in interest rates and inflation, and the still-boiling outrage over the manner in which Obama and the Democrats shoved ObamaCare down the throats of the citizens, and all of the ingredients are present for a major F-5 tornado to sweep across the heartland.

To what extent would soldiers use deadly force during such 'civil unrest' should the Consequence Management Response Team be utilized?  During the anti-war riots of the 1960s they killed student protesters.  What about now?

The military source cited by the radio host today was asked this very question.  He would merely say that the culture of the U.S. military is changing--half support Obama and the other half are dead-set against him.

His conclusion?  There is no way to know for sure if they would obey an order to open fire on ordinary citizens. 

Update:  The Cato Institute published this warning when the program was launched in its first phase in 2008 (the program has been updated and expanded since 2008).   The Founders insisted that standing armies were never to be used against American citizens on our own soil, no matter what violations of this principle have occurred in the years following.  In the spirit of the Patriots and of real journalists government must be questioned constantly and held to intense scrutiny in order to preserve liberty.

Obama Orders 1 Million US Troops to Prepare for Civil War

Posted by EU Times on Nov 28th, 2009 // 763 Comments

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Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin that US President Barack Obama has issued orders to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to “begin immediately” increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

According to these reports, Obama has had over these past weeks “numerous” meetings with his war council about how best to manage the expected implosion of his Nations banking system while at the same time attempting to keep the United States military hegemony over the World in what Russian Military Analysts state is a “last ditch gambit” whose success is “far from certain”.

And to Obama’s “last ditch gambit”, these reports continue, he is to announce in a nationwide address to his people this coming week that he is going to expand the level of US Military Forces in Afghanistan by tens of thousands of troops, while at the same time using the deployment of these soldiers as a “cover” for returning to the United States over 200,000 additional American soldiers from the over 800 bases in over 39 countries they have stationed around the Globe bringing the level of these forces in America to over 1 million, a number the USMilitary believes will be able to contain the “explosion of violence” expected to roil these peoples when they learn their economy has been bankrupted.
These reports further state that at the same time Obama will be attempting to keep his Nation from violent disintegration, the tens of thousands of additional troops he will send to Afghanistan are to be ordered to Kandahar where the Americans and their NATO allies will begin their final attempt to secure their TAPI (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) pipeline, which without the Western Nations, due to their grave lack of alternative energy resources, and being cut off from these vast Central Asian supplies (which both Russia and China are seeking to insure), are warned will totally collapse.
Making the American’s (and by extension the West’s) situation even worse are new reports coming from the International Energy Agency stating that “under pressure” from the US government they have been “deliberately underplaying” a looming Global oil shortage for fear of triggering panic buying and raising the Americans fear over the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to our World’s last remaining oil resources.
To the scariest “end game” maneuvers being made by Obama, in his attempt to protect Americas Global hegemony, is his record shattering move in plunging the United States $3.5 Trillion further into debt, and which raises the total amount owed by the United States, to its citizens and the World, to the unprecedented height of over $106 Trillion.
So alarming has Obama’s actions become (especially since they are being imitated by all of the Western powers) that the managing-director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warned this past week that the “stimulus actions” of the West (which in essence is nothing more than the printing of money with nothing to back it up) has now become a “threat to democracy” as millions of people are expected to erupt in violence against their governments over the theft of their money and their futures.
Most unfortunately for the American people though is that this IMF warning fell on “deaf ears” in the United States with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President, James Bullard, saying this week that the US would continue its “stimulus actions” because they “would give more flexibility to US policymakers”, a most absurd statement especially when viewed in the light of the unprecedented debt payments currently looming over the American economy they have no ability whatsoever to pay.
To the ability of the West’s banking giants to save their Nation’s economies, even worse news came this week with the US ratings giant Standards & Poors issuing a warning that “every single bank in Japan, the US, Germany, Spain, and Italy included in S&P’s list of 45 Global lenders remain unsafe”, a warning which then lead to one of Europe’s largest banks, Société Générale, warning its clients to prepare for a “total Global Economic Collapse”.
To the fears of Obama over the United States erupting into civil war once the full extent of the rape and pillaging of these peoples by their banks and government becomes known to them, grim evidence now shows the likelihood of this occurring much sooner than later, especially in new poll figures showing that Obama’s approval rating among white Americans has now fallen to 39%. A number made more significant when one realizes that the white population of the United States comprises 74% of their estimated 398 million citizens, or put more ominously in these reports as “over 220 million American people armed to the teeth and ready to explode”.
And so fearful has the white population of the United States become that upon the election of Obama to the Presidency he was named as the “Gun Salesman of the Year” by the Outdoor Wire, the US’s largest daily electronic news service for the outdoor industry, who report “panic buying” of weapons and ammunition by those fearful of the destruction of their country at the hands of man they believe is not even an American citizen and had been foisted upon them by their elite classes seeking to enslave them.
Though the coming civil war in the United States is being virtually ignored by their propaganda media, the same cannot be said of Russia, where leading Russian political analyst, Professor Igor Panarin has long warned that the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the US is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.
Professor Igor Panarin further stated in his warning that “the US Dollar is not secured by anything. The country’sforeign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse.”
What remains to be seen, and these reports do not speculate upon, is if the citizen-soldiers of the United States will fire upon and kill their fellow countrymen during the coming conflict, but if history is to be our guide clearly shows this will be the case as the once great American Nation continues its headlong plunge into the abyss of history. May God have mercy upon all of them.

Pentagon wants to deploy 380,000 troops in U.S. 
Americans will soon need permission to travel by plane 
August 22, 2009


Americas navigation has changed in a controlled police and military dictatorship. 
The Pentagon, the U.S. Congress formally requested Secretary of Defense Robert Gates to allow the approximately 380,000 troops to deploy on its soil. Granting this request would be a direct violation of the Posse Comitatus Act of 1878, in which the deployment of U.S. troops in the U.S. expressly prohibited. Presumably, the application also intends to mass deployment of the military in the upcoming (obligatory?) Vaccination program against the Mexican flu possible. 

The proposal has been made for sharp differences between the federal government and the governors of several states, who themselves want to keep control over the deployment of troops on their territory. The Posse Comitatus Act, the Army, Navy, Air Force and Marines on U.S. soil which is forbidden to arrest civilians, homes search, evidence gathering and other police-type activities in question. Only the Coast Guard and National Guard are excluded. 
Last June the U.S. Northern Command, however, presented a legislative proposal "in response to a disaster or national emergency" more than 379,000 soldiers in thousands of towns and cities across the U.S. to work. "Even CNN recently reported that the government is preparing to military to turn to the next influenza pandemic and related (probably mandatory) vaccination in 'good jobs' to lead. Already exercises are held for a possible rush of citizens to be vaccinated as soon as possible "to cope. 
If the request is approved by Congress, President Obama will get the full power of any given event such as pandemic influenza, "emergency" and thus be to designate nearly 400,000 U.S. troops on home soil in zetten.Dit goes far beyond the powers that the former President Bush himself attributed. 
Soon need permission to travel by plane 
Even this year, every American should receive permission from the government to travel by air. Both reservations and check all personal data will be checked by the passenger and must be approved by the Transportation Security Administration needed to the airplane in action. 
Such authorization is hardly self-evident: if your name to a 'no fly' list should say, even if this happened by accident, then you can place on board the aircraft forgotten. It is also possible that your name on a 'selected' list, so your possessions and yourself thoroughly investigated before you can check. 

The domestic air travel for Americans as common as traveling by train for a European. Before buying a ticket in America already require identification. Critics are concerned about the fact that the U.S. government through the 'Secure Flight' line becomes total control over who can and who can not travel by plane, and at any time the rules above may change or tighten. 

www.Xander.nl 
Sources: 
The Progressive 
Alex Jones' Infowars: There's a war on for your mind!

A Cakewalk Against Iran

by Philip Giraldi, August 05, 2010

Everyone who is concerned that yet another war in the Middle East could wreck what remains of the United States economy and probably strip away even more of our liberties should be troubled by the numerous calls for war against Iran.  No one believes that Iran is anything but a nation that is one small step away from becoming a complete religious dictatorship, but the country has a small economy, a tiny defense budget, and, as far as the world’s intelligence services can determine, neither nuclear weapons nor a program to develop them.  Labeling the Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad as a new Hitler and describing the regime as "Islamofascist" is convenient but hardly conveys the reality of the complex political interaction taking place inside today’s Iran.  Ironically, the animus directed against Tehran relates not so much to what it is doing as to what its government might do, hardly an adequate pretext for going to war and a standard of behavior that many countries in the world would fail.

A resolution (HR 1553) is making its way through Congress that that would endorse an Israeli attack on Iran, which would be going to war by proxy as the US would almost immediately be drawn into the conflict when Tehran retaliates.  The resolution provides explicit US backing for Israel to bomb Iran, stating that Congress supports Israel’s use of "all means necessary…including the use of military force." The resolution is non-binding, but it is dazzling in its disregard for the possible negative consequences that would ensue for the hundreds of thousands of US military and diplomatic personnel currently serving in the Near East region.  Even the Pentagon opposes any Israeli action against Iran, knowing that it would mean instant retaliation against US forces in Iraq and also in Afghanistan.  The resolution has appeared, not coincidentally, at the same time as major articles by leading neoconservatives Reuel Marc Gerecht and Bill Kristol calling for military action.  Both Gerecht and Kristol insist that action by Israel or the US would be better than doing nothing and both downplay the ability of Iran to counter-attack effectively.  One might note that both Kristol and Gerecht have been dramatically wrong in the past, most notably in their analyses of developments in Iraq.

Kristol is a poseur, a foreign policy wannabe, framing policy around his own Straussian beliefs.  Gerecht, who actually does know quite a bit about Iran and its internal politics, is the more dangerous of the two as he is able to use his knowledge, which he sprinkles throughout the article, to appear credible.  But as is so often the case with the neoconservatives, the thinking is based on false assumptions, optimistic assessments, and leaps of the imagination about what might occur.  One might recall neocon predictions of a "cakewalk" in Iraq, a war that still embroils tens of thousands of US troops and that kills Americans nearly every day.

In his article entitled "Should Israel Bomb Iran? – Better Safe than Sorry" Gerecht begins with three paragraphs outlining what might happen if Iran is attacked, to include attacks on US troops, shock oil prices, terrorist attacks worldwide, tumult in the Muslim world, and a rush by Iran to develop a nuclear weapon to defend itself.  He concludes, however, that "These fears are mostly overblown." 

Why Gerecht thinks that Iranian retaliation would be minimal is not completely clear, but he spends the next seven pages explaining why an attack on Iran might be a positive step.  He opines that bombing Iran "remains the only conceivable means of derailing or seriously delaying Iran’s nuclear program…" Bombing would also result in "traumatizing Tehran."  And he provides a second reason for staging an attack, his argument that "Iran has already embraced terrorism against Israel and the United States" and that its regime supports the "indiscriminate killing" of Jews.  He presumes that Iran is hell bent on acquiring a nuclear weapon and would use it against Israelis "who must live with the Middle East’s merciless power politics…" or give it to terrorist groups to accomplish the same end.  Gerecht recommends that Israel should attack Iran to "rock the system" to make the regime "lose face" and suffer a military defeat that could have fatal consequences for its survivability.  He returns to the theme, mentioning oddly that "American fear of Iranian capabilities in Iraq and Afghanistan has been exaggerated" and then excoriates "an ugly anti-Israeli reflex" on the part of many Europeans when Israel uses lethal force to defend itself.

Gerecht is doing two things.  First, he is ignoring any role that Israel might have had in creating its own predicament vis-à-vis Iran and its other neighbors.  Israel is, for him, always the victim and never the instigator meaning that whatever it does is always self-defense and justifiable.  Second, he assumes that Iran is manifestly evil and will always choose the most despicable option for its own behavior while he simultaneously only assumes the best motives and best possible outcome for any Israeli or American military action.  He ignores the fact that Iran has no nuclear weapons program and assumes that Tehran is willing to bear the enormous expense and risk to develop a nuclear device and use it on Israel or give it to a terrorist even though that would be national suicide.  He reflexively judges every group in the Middle East that is opposed to Israel as a terrorist and lumps them in as enemies of Washington as well as of Israel whether or not they have actually carried out attacks against the US.  If Iran reacts to being bombed, he notes that "It is entirely possible that Khamenei would use terrorism against the United States after an Israeli strike," an asymmetrical response using available resources that many might consider self-defense against an attacker but which Gerecht chooses to dismiss as terrorism.  Gerecht dismisses any legitimate criticism of the actions of the state of Israel as anti-Semitic or "ugly." 

The reality is that an Israeli attack on Iran will trigger an all-out war in the region, which will quickly include the United States.  It might or might not eliminate Iran’s technical ability to build a nuclear weapon and it would almost certainly accelerate that process.  It would not bring down the Iranian regime and usher in reformers who would embrace Israel and the United States while singing "Kumbaya" around the campfire.  It would be extremely nasty, would not solve any problems in the Middle East, and would kill tens of thousands of innocent people, if not more.  It could easily lead to the use of nuclear weapons by either the United States or Israel.  For the neoconservatives, it is easy to dismiss the possible downside while emphasizing the upside that they perceive, which is protecting Israel by damaging Iran’s nuclear program and possibly bringing about some version of regime change.  But we have seen too many times in the past how the neoconservatives can be wrong — think only of the "cakewalk" that has been Iraq now seven years on and still running.  A new war in the Middle East would be an unmitigated disaster for Iran, the United States, and even for Israel.  It must be avoided at all costs.

Rockets 'from Egypt' hit Eilat and Jordan

A suspected short-range rocket salvo from the Egyptian Sinai, an area where Islamist militants have operated in the past, have struck Red Sea ports in Israel and Jordan.

 

Published: 7:29AM BST 02 Aug 2010

Link to this video

Several rockets hit the Israeli holiday resort of Eilat, while four people were injured when further rockets hit the nearby Jordanian port of Aqaba.

There was no word of casualties in Eilat, District Port Commander Moshe Cohen said, adding that his forces were still trying to confirm that five explosions heard in the morning had been caused by shelling.

Mr Cohen told Israel Radio that two of the suspected rockets or mortar bombs appeared to have landed in the sea, while another struck the nearby Jordanian port of Aqaba.

Asked where the salvo was launched, Mr Cohen said: "It's a little early to say, but it is reasonable to assume that it came from the southern area."

He was referring to neighbouring Egypt and the Sinai desert which is known for Islamist militant acitivty.

At least one rocket struck Aqaba on April 22, causing no casualties. Amman said the rocket had been fired from outside Jordan and Israeli media spoke of the Sinai as a possible launch point.

In 2005, rockets were fired at US warships in Aqaba's port but missed their target and killed a Jordanian soldier on land. A group claiming links to al Qaeda said it was behind the attack.

Two years later, a Palestinian suicide bomber infiltrated through the Sinai and killed three people at an Eilat bakery.

Jordan and Egypt are the only Arab states to have full peace accords with Israel. Those ties were frayed by Israel's crackdown in 2000 on a Palestinian uprising in the West Bank and Gaza Strip.


ISRAEL 'PLOTS TEHRAN RAID'  

  Posted on » Saturday, June 26, 2010

Gulf Daily Post

MANAMA: Israel is massing warplanes in the Caucasus for an attack on Iran, it was revealed yesterday.

Preparations are underway to launch the military attack from Azerbaijan and Georgia, reports our sister paper Akhbar Al Khaleej, quoting military sources.

Israel was, in fact, training pilots in Turkey to launch the strike and was smuggling planes into Georgia using Turkish airspace, they said.

However, Turkey was unaware of Israel's intention of transferring the planes to Georgia, the sources said.

The unexpected crisis between Israel and Turkey following an Israeli commando raid on an aid flotilla bound for Gaza Strip hit Israeli calculations.

Azerbaijan-based intelligence units, working under the cover of technicians, trainers and consultants, have helped with the preparations, the sources said.

Military equipment, mostly supplied by the US, was transported to a Georgian port via the Black Sea.

Georgian coastguard and Israeli controllers are co-operating to hide the operations from Russian vessels, said the sources.

They point out that according to Israel, it will not be in a position to launch a strike on Iran without using bases in Georgia and Azerbaijan due to the limited capabilities of its nuclear submarines stationed near the Iranian coast.

Meanwhile, Iran's Press TV reported that a very large contingent of US ground forces had massed in Azerbaijan, near the Iranian border. The independent Azerbaijani news website Trend confirmed the report.

Those reports came just days after the Pentagon confirmed that an unusually large fleet of US warships had indeed passed through Egypt's Suez Canal en route to the Gulf. At least one Israeli warship reportedly joined the American armada.

Press TV also quoted Iranian Revolultionary Guard Brigadier General Mehdi Moini as saying that the country's forces are mobilised and ready to face Israelli and American "misadventures" near its borders.

* Iran last night said it has cancelled plans to send an aid ship to the Gaza Strip as Israel "had sent a letter to the UN saying that the presence of Iranian and Lebanese ships in the Gaza area will be considered a declaration of war on that regime and it will confront it," Irna said.

Iran says Gaza aid delegation to go on Lebanon ship

By Andrew Hammond, Reuters

Saturday, 26 June 2010

Iranian lawmakers protesting at Israel's blockade of Gaza are planning to travel on an aid ship that is to leave from Lebanon..

Lebanon said last week it would allow a Gaza-bound ship called the Julia to sail, via Cyprus, despite warnings from Israel that it reserved the right to use all necessary means to stop ships that tried to sail from Lebanon to Gaza.

Mahmoud Ahmadi-Beighash, a member of the Iranian parliament's national security and foreign policy committee, said Iranian parliament delegates could sail on the ship rather than attempt to enter Gaza via Egypt.

"A ship is going from Lebanon to Gaza in the course of the current week and the lawmakers are following up to go to Gaza via this ship," he said in comments carried by semi-official news agency ISNA.

Ahmadi-Beighash said the decision to use the ship in Lebanon rather than Egypt's land border with Gaza was taken in a meeting with parliament speaker Ali Larijani.

Ships with Iranian aid for Gaza left this month but it was not clear if they would unload in Egypt.

Earlier this year, Egypt refused permission to an Iranian aid boat to unload after an Israeli warship told the aid boat to leave as it approached the coastal enclave of Gaza.

Israel has announced steps to ease a land blockade of the Hamas-ruled Gaza Strip, after an international outcry over an Israeli commando raid in May on an aid flotilla that killed nine pro-Palestinian activists.

The Israeli blockade was conceived more than three years ago as a way suffocating popular support for Hamas, which refuses to recognise Israel and which seized control of Gaza in 2007.

Israel suspects Iran of supplying Hamas with weapons. Iran is under UN sanctions for its nuclear energy programme which the West suspects is a cover for developing nuclear weapons.  

 

US-led armada secretly drilled bombing Iranian targets, missile defense with Israel
DEBKAfile DEBKA-Net-Weekly June 21, 2010, 6:54 PM (GMT+02:00)
 
SuperHornets taking off from US carrier

The armada of 10 US warships plus an Israeli and German battle vessel each, which transited the Suez Canal Friday, June 18, has reached the Persian Gulf, debkafile's military sources report.


But first, from June 6 through June 10, the USS Harry S. Truman carrier Strike Group was deployed 50 miles of the shore of southwestern Israel, secretly drilling the interception of incoming Iranian, Syrian and Hizballah missiles and rockets against US and Israeli targets in the Middle East.
This was first revealed by DEBKA-Net-Weekly 449 on June 18.

The fleet let by the Truman then headed for the Persian Gulf through the Suez Canal accompanied by an Israeli missile ship (not identified) and the German missile frigate FGS Hessen F221.

For five days and night, the Truman's sixty F/A-18E/F Super Hornet fighter bombers took off on simulated bombing missions against targets set up by the Israeli Air Force at its firing range on the Nevatim Base-28, in the Negev desert southeast of Be'er Sheva - one of its three big air bases.
The exercise was prompted by rising tensions from Syria's deployment of advanced Scud missiles for Hizballah on its border with Lebanon. it took place not far from the spot where Israeli commandos subsequently raided the Turkish Mavi Marmara on May 31.

The Super Hornets flew simulated bombing missions night and day against targets set up by the Israeli Air Force at its firing range on the Nevatim Base-28, in the Negev desert southeast of Be'er Sheva - one of three big Israeli air facilities.


The exercise had 60 American F-16 fighter jets landing at Israeli Air Force facilities from bases in Germany and Romania, refueling and taking off with Israeli fighter bombers to practice long-range bombing missions over the Red Sea and the Mediterranean and drill air-to-air combat along the way

.
Both Washington and Jerusalem withheld public exposure of this US-Israeli aerial exercise, dubbed Juniper Stallion 2010. President Barack Obama ordered all US missile interceptors in the Middle East to go on war alert in the second week of June, including batteries aboard US Sixth Fleet vessels on the Mediterranean and the US Fifth Fleet in the Persian Gulf.

debkafile's military sources add that Israel's missile's shield, including Arrow anti-missile missiles, was similarly on standby.
It was decided at the White House to stage the Juniper Stallion exercise only eight months after Juniper Cobra 10, the biggest joint war maneuver the US and Israel had ever conducted against missile attack, after receiving new intelligence that Iran, Syria and Hizballah had almost doubled their operational armory of medium-range missiles.

Switching over to a tough line, US defense secretary Robert Gates warned a Senate panel on June 18 that Iran could fire "scores or hundreds" of short- and medium-range missiles against Europe - in salvoes rather than one or two at a time.
Four days later, Gates told a Fox interviewer: "I don't think we're prepared to even talk about containing a nuclear Iran. I think… our view still is we do not accept the idea of Iran having nuclear weapons." Asked whether a military strike was preferable, he said all options remain on the table although some time is left for working on problem."

What Do The Sears Tower; WTC, and Terror Drills Have In Common?






Shepard Ambellas and Alex Thomas
Intel Hub
June 10, 2010

Larry Silverstein, owner of Silverstein Properties, Inc. and the man who leased the World Trade Center Towers also happens to be the owner of the Sears Tower in Chicago. The complex was renamed the Willis Tower on July 16, 2009 and is insured by global insurance broker Willis Group Holdings. The insurer is very important in the grand scheme as can be seen with the WTC, whose insurance settlement amounted to a cool 4.68 billion dollars.

A company named Kroll is is the company tasked with providing security for the Sears Tower. After 9/11, Kroll purchased Convair, the very company that was responsible for recovering data from WTC hard drives. Kroll also managed the bunker in the WTC and is known to have had a hand in the London 7/7 bombings.

The Willis Tower just so happens to have an asbestos problem much like the one that plagued the World Trade Center. Contrary to what many claim, there is clear evidence that shows the asbestos problem within the Willis Tower.

Remember that on September 11, 2001, NORAD was conducting a war games drill that simulated  planes flying into towers. There is at the very least, a very eerie correlation with the upcoming terror drills that will be conducted in Chicago from June 13 through June 17.  This terror drill is slated to be  a full scale event carried out over a five day period and will include a simulated airplane crash, terror attack, and the release of a bio weapon.

Just a thought.

 

UK NEWS


SEA BATTLE FEAR AS IRAN SENDS FLOTILLA TO GAZA

Story Image


WARNING: Iran's president Ahmadinejad

Sunday June 13,2010








By Kirsty Buchanan

June 13, 2010


IRANIAN President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad has vowed to breach Israel’s blockade of Gaza, as two aid ships and a military escort prepare to set sail.

In a provocative move the ­Iranian Red Crescent was this weekend due to send two vessels packed with food and medical aid and 70 relief workers.

A third ship, carrying an operating theatre, could follow.

President Ahmadinejad raised the spectre of a sea battle as he warned the ships would be carrying an escort of “volunteer marines” ready to “teach Israelis a lesson”.

Ali Shirazi, the Revolutionary Guard’s spokesman for Supreme Leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei, said it was “Iran’s duty to defend the innocent people of Gaza”. Foreign Secretary William Hague described the intervention as “unhelpful”.

The blockade has been in place since Hamas took control of Gaza in 2006 despite inter­national concern about a humanitarian crisis.

That concern turned to condemnation on May 31 when, in a raid on a Turkish aid flotilla, nine people were killed by Israeli commandos.

Despite promises of an inquiry the affair has all but destroyed relations between Israel and its main ally in the Muslim world.

Abdolrauf Adibzadeh, the Red Crescent’s director of inter­national affairs, said the ships were being sent in co-ordination with the Turkish government.

Meeting Turkish leaders in Istanbul last week the Iranian president said the vessels would not shrink from a head-on clash with Israeli military.

The threat came ahead of a UN Security Council vote to strengthen sanctions on Iran over its uranium enrichment programme.

Turkey was one of the two nations to vote against the sanctions. The European Union will next week discuss tightening its own sanction regime amid fears Tehran is close to creating weapons-grade uranium. There are also concerns about human rights abuses in Iran, with opposition to the regime ruthlessly suppressed.

On yesterday’s anniversary of President Ahmadinejad’s re-election, opposition leaders advised demonstrators to stay away from Tehran as the Revolutionary Guards warned it would come down on any attempt to create a “security crisis”.

There was a heavy security presence on Tehran’s squares as the elite Guard prepared to clamp down. Senior commander Reza Farzaneh said: “Any revival of street protests is unlikely. But if the sedition movement creates a security crisis, we will confront them with full force.”

Last year’s post-election street protests, the worst unrest since the Islamic republic was founded in 1979, were put down violently by the Guards.

Mass detentions and trials followed. Two people were hanged while many others remain in jail.

 

Nuclear War Between Koreas: Brought To You By The U.S. Government


Paul Joseph Watson
Prison Planet.com
Tuesday, May 25, 2010

Nuclear War Between Koreas: Brought To You By The U.S. Government 250510top

Kim Jong-Il has put North Korean troops on combat alert and threatened military action if the South trespasses in its waters as global stock markets freak out at the prospect of a war which, if it occurs, can be blamed on the U.S. government’s history of arming the Stalinist dictator with nuclear weapons.

Korean markets plunged 3.3 per cent overnight as investors were spooked at escalating tensions between the two countries following South Korea’s allegation that the North was responsible for the March 26 torpedoing of one of its warships

Kim Jong-il responded to the charge by putting his military on combat alert, telling them to “prepare for war,” and threatening action if South Korea trespasses in its waters off the peninsula’s west coast.

On Monday, President Obama also told the U.S. military to prepare for conflict as it plans to carry out anti-submarine and other naval exercises with South Korea.

As we have documented, North Korea’s nuclear belligerency was almost exclusively a creation of the U.S. government in that they armed the Stalinist state both directly and indirectly through global arms dealers under their control, namely Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan. While labeling North Korea as part of the “axis of evil,” the U.S. government was enthusiastically funding its nuclear weapons program at every stage.

Both the Clinton and Bush administrations played a key role in helping Kim Jong-Il develop North Korea’s nuclear prowess from the mid 1990’s onwards.

Just as with Saddam Hussein’s chemical and biological weapons program, it was Donald Rumsfeld who played a key role in arming Kim-Jong-Il.

Rumsfeld was man who presided over a $200 million dollar contract to deliver equipment and services to build two light water reactor stations in North Korea in January 2000 when he was an executive director of ABB (Asea Brown Boveri). Wolfram Eberhardt, a spokesman for ABB confirmed that Rumsfeld was at nearly all the board meetings during his involvement with the company.

Rumsfeld was merely picking up the baton from the Clinton administration, who in 1994 agreed to replace North Korea’s domestically built nuclear reactors with light water nuclear reactors. So-called government-funded ‘experts’ claimed that light water reactors couldn’t be used to make bombs. Not so according to Henry Sokolski, head of the Non-proliferation Policy Education Center in Washington, who stated, “LWRs could be used to produce dozens of bombs’ worth of weapons-grade plutonium in both North Korea and Iran. This is true of all LWRs — a depressing fact U.S. policymakers have managed to block out.”

“These reactors are like all reactors, they have the potential to make weapons. So you might end up supplying the worst nuclear violator with the means to acquire the very weapons we’re trying to prevent it acquiring,” said Sokolski.

The U.S. State Department claimed that the light water reactors could not be used to produce bomb grade material and yet in 2002 urged Russia to end its nuclear co-operation with Iran for the reason that it didn’t want Iran armed with weapons of mass destruction. At the time, Russia was building light water reactors in Iran.  According to the State Department, light water reactors in Iran can produce nuclear material but somehow the same rule doesn’t apply in North Korea.

In April 2002, the Bush administration announced that it would release $95 million of American taxpayer’s dollars to begin construction of the ‘harmless’ light water reactors in North Korea. Bush argued that arming the megalomaniac dictator Kim Jong-Il with the potential to produce a hundred nukes a year was, “vital to the national security interests of the United States.” Bush released even more money in January 2003, as was reported by Bloomberg News.

Bush released the funds despite the startling revelation, reported by South Korean newspapers, that a North Korean missile warhead had been found in Alaska.

Construction of the reactors was eventually suspended, but North Korea had an alternative source through which they could obtain the nuclear secrets vital to building an atom bomb arsenal – CIA asset and international arms smuggler AQ Khan.

In 2004, Dr. Abdul Qadeer Khan, the father of Pakistan’s atom bomb program, admitted sharing nuclear technology via a worldwide smuggling network that included facilities in Malaysia that manufactured key parts for centrifuges.

Khan’s collaborator B.S.A. Tahir ran a front company out of Dubai that shipped centrifuge components to North Korea.

Despite Dutch authorities being deeply suspicious of Khan’s activities as far back as 1975, the CIA prevented them from arresting him on two occasions.

“The man was followed for almost ten years and obviously he was a serious problem. But again I was told that the secret services could handle it more effectively,” former Dutch Prime Minister Ruud Lubbers said. “The Hague did not have the final say in the matter. Washington did.”

Lubbers stated that Khan was allowed to slip in and out of the Netherlands with the blessing of the CIA, eventually allowing him to become the “primary salesman of an extensive international network for the proliferation of nuclear technology and know-how,” according to George W. Bush himself, and sell nuclear secrets that allowed North Korea to build nuclear bombs.

“Lubbers suspects that Washington allowed Khan’s activities because Pakistan was a key ally in the fight against the Soviets,” reports CFP. “At the time, the US government funded and armed mujahideen such as Osama bin Laden. They were trained by Pakistani intelligence to fight Soviet troops in Afghanistan. Anwar Iqbal, Washington correspondent for the Pakistani newspaper Dawn, told ISN Security Watch that Lubbers’ assertions may be correct. “This was part of a long-term foolish strategy. The US knew Pakistan was developing nuclear weapons but couldn’t care less because it was not going to be used against them. It was a deterrent against India and possibly the Soviets.”

In September 2005 it emerged that the Amsterdam court which sentenced Khan to four years imprisonment in 1983 had lost the legal files pertaining to the case. The court’s vice-president, Judge Anita Leeser, accused the CIA of stealing the files. “Something is not right, we just don’t lose things like that,” she told Dutch news show NOVA. “I find it bewildering that people lose files with a political goal, especially if it is on request of the CIA. It is unheard of.”

In 2005, Pakistani President Pervez Musharaf acknowledged that Khan had provided centrifuges and their designs to North Korea.

Through their policies in aiding North Korea to build light water reactors, and via the CIA asset AQ Khan who was protected at every step of the way while he helped provide North Korea with the means to build a nuclear arsenal, the U.S. government itself is directly complicit in providing North Korean dictator Kim Jong-Il with the nuclear weapons he now threatens to use against U.S. ally South Korea.

North Korea is controlled by a hereditary Stalinist dictatorship that has starved two million of its citizens to death in favor of building a million-man army. Some people put the figure at four million, one-quarter of the population. In the far north of the country there is a network of forced labor gulags where people who have ‘expressed a bland political opinion’ are, along with their entire families, tortured, raped and executed. Horrific bio-chemical experiments are performed on mass numbers of people. Babies are delivered and then stamped to death by the camp guards. If the mother screams while the guards are stamping on the baby’s neck, she is immediately assassinated by a firing squad. These guards are rewarded with bonuses and promotions for ripping out prisoners’ eyeballs.

The North Korean people are enslaved by a government that is using food as a weapon. Perhaps this is why the EU and the United States, via the UN World Food Program, resumed the shipment of hundreds of thousands of tons in food aid at the end of February 2003. This goes directly to the sitting dictatorship, which then decides who gets it by their level of allegiance to the state. Food aid only increases the power of Kim Jong-Il and yet it is veiled by the UN in bleeding heart humanitarian rhetoric. The money goes straight to enabling the North Korean leadership to live in the lap of westernized luxury with casinos and lavish new cars.

President Bush publicly claimed to loathe Kim Jong-Il and yet his administration, like Bill Clinton before him, set the policy to help North Korea obtain nuclear expertise. The U.S. intelligence network also protected AQ Khan and allowed him to provide the means with which North Korea acquired their nuclear capability.

If the tensions between the Koreas were to escalate into all out war, don’t expect the castrated American corporate media to mention how Kim Jong-Il grew to be such a threat in the first place – with the aid of nuclear weapons enthusiastically supplied by the U.S. government and its surrogates.


 

N Korea severs all ties with rival S Korea
 
May 25, 11:05 AM (ET)
By HYUNG-JIN KIM


SEOUL, South Korea (AP) - North Korea declared Tuesday that it would sever all communication and relations with Seoul as punishment for blaming it for the sinking of a South Korean warship.

The North also announced it would expel all South Koreans working at a joint factory park in the northern border town of Kaesong, the official Korean Central News Agency said in a dispatch monitored in Seoul late Tuesday.

Tensions were rising on the divided Korean peninsula in the wake of an investigation report blaming North Korea for a torpedo attack that sank the Cheonan warship on March 26, killing 46 South Korean sailors.

South Korea's military restarted psychological warfare operations - including blaring radio broadcasts into the North and placing loudspeakers at the border to blast out propaganda - to punish the North for the provocation. The South is also slashing trade and denying permission to North Korean cargo ships to pass through South Korean waters.

North Korea struck back by declaring it would cut all ties with the South until President Lee Myung-bak leaves office. South Korean ships and airliners will be banned from passing through its territory and the North will resume its own psychological warfare, KCNA said.

Earlier, one Seoul-based monitoring agency reported that North Korea's leader ordered its 1.2 million-member military to get ready for combat. South Korean officials could not immediately confirm the report.

The North flatly denies involvement in the sinking of the Cheonan, one of the South's worst military disasters since the 1950-53 Korean War ended with an armistice, and has warned that retaliation would mean war. It has threatened to destroy any propaganda facilities installed at the heavily militarized border.

A team of international investigators, however, concluded last week that a torpedo from a North Korean submarine tore apart the Cheonan.

North Korea is already subject to various U.N.-backed sanctions following earlier nuclear and missile tests, and the steps announced by Seoul were seen as among the strongest it could take short of military action.

The U.S. has thrown its full support behind South Korea's moves and they are planning two major military exercises off the Korean peninsula in a display of force intended to deter future aggression by North Korea, the White House said. The U.S. has 28,500 troops in South Korea.

South Korea also wants to bring North Korea before the U.N. Security Council over the sinking. U.N. Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon said Monday he expects the council to take action against North Korea, but China - North Korea's main ally and a veto-wielding council member - has so far done little but urge calm on all sides.

In Beijing, U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton said she had "very productive and very detailed" discussions with Chinese officials but could not say if any progress had been made in convincing the Chinese to back U.N. action.

"No one is more concerned about peace and stability in this region as the Chinese," she told reporters. "We know this is a shared responsibility, and in the days ahead we will work with the international community and our Chinese colleagues to fashion an effective, appropriate response."

Chinese State Counselor Dai Bingguo, speaking at a news conference with Clinton, called for "relevant parties" to "calmly and properly handle the issue and avoid escalation of tension."

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev talked with Lee on Tuesday and said he "understands well" about South Korea's moves and will try to give an "appropriate signal" to North Korea over the sinking, according to Lee's office.

As part of its propaganda offensive, South Korea's military resumed radio broadcasts airing Western music, news and comparisons between the South and North Korean political and economic situation late Monday, according to the Joint Chiefs of Staff. The military also planned to launch propaganda leaflets by balloon and other methods on Tuesday night to inform North Koreans about the ship sinking.

In coming weeks, South Korea also will install dozens of loudspeakers and towering electronic billboards along the heavily armed land border to send messages urging communist soldiers to defect to the South. The North warned Monday it would fire at any propaganda facilities installed in the Demilitarized Zone.

On Tuesday, North Korean state media cited the powerful National Defense Commission as saying the North's soldiers and reservists were bracing to launch a "sacred war" against South Korea.

North Korea often issues fiery rhetoric and regularly vows to wage war against South Korea and the U.S. It put its army on high alert following a November sea battle with South Korea near where the Cheonan went down in March. The Koreas also fought bloody maritime skirmishes in the disputed area in 1999 and 2002.

Seoul-based North Korea Intellectuals Solidarity said Tuesday that North Korean leader Kim Jong Il last week ordered his military to get ready for combat.

The group, citing unidentified sources in North Korea, said the order was read by Gen. O Kuk Ryol, a Kim confidant, and broadcast on speakers installed in each house and at major public sites throughout the country last Thursday, hours after the multinational report blaming North Korea for the sinking was issued in Seoul.

The South Korean military said they had no indication of unusual activity by North Korea's military.

On Tuesday, the presidential Blue House said officials were reviewing whether South Korea should resume calling North Korea its "main enemy" in formal defense documents for the first time in six years.

In downtown Seoul, about 30 conservative activists burned North Korean flags and ripped up photos of Kim Jong Il.

---

Associated Press writers Sangwon Yoon in Seoul and Matthew Lee in Beijing, and AP photographer Jin-man Lee in Seoul contributed to this report.


 

 SKorean naval ship sinks near NKorea; 46 missing

S Korean naval ship sinks near N Korea; 46 missing

(AP) A South Korean naval ship, the Cheonan, sinks as a coast guard vessel sails near the ship in an...
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BAENGNYEONG ISLAND, South Korea (AP) - Military divers plunged into the waters near South Korea's tense maritime border with North Korea on Saturday to search for 46 missing marines from a naval ship that exploded and sank, officials said.

Families voiced their anger as hopes faded for the missing crew after the ship sank in one of South Korea's worst naval disasters. Divers tried twice to get to the wreckage, Rear Adm. Lee Ki-sik of the Joint Chiefs of Staff told lawmakers.

The explosion at the rear of the Cheonan shut down its engine, wiped out power and caused the ship to sink a little over three hours later, the Joint Chiefs said. The exact cause was unclear, but North Korea did not appear to be to blame, officials said.

A survivor, Staff Sgt. Shin Eun-chong, 24, told relatives he was on night duty when he heard a huge boom behind him that split the ship apart. The vessel started tilting, and his glasses fell off his face as he hit the deck, relatives at a naval base in Pyeongtaek told The Associated Press.

(AP) A South Korean naval ship, the Cheonan, sinks near South Korea's Baeknyeong Island, close to North...
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Military planes and boats were searching the waters near South Korea's Baengnyeong Island where the 1,200-ton Cheonan had been on a routine patrol mission. Rescue efforts Saturday were hampered by fierce waves and high winds.

"Yells and screams filled the air," witness Kim Jin-ho, a seaman who was on a passenger ship bound for Baengnyeong, told cable news channel YTN. "Marines on deck were desperately shouting: 'Save me!'"

Despite early fears of an attack, there was no immediate indication that North Korea - which lies within sight about 10 miles (17 kilometers) from Baengnyeong - was to blame, the Joint Chiefs said. Still, troops were maintaining "solid military readiness," Vice Defense Minister Jang Soo-man said.

Earlier, North Korea's military threatened "unpredictable strikes" against the U.S. and South Korea in anger over a report the two countries plan to prepare for possible instability in the totalitarian country.

The ship went down near a disputed maritime border that has been the site of three bloody skirmishes between the two Koreas, which remain in a state of war because their three-year conflict ended in a truce, not a peace treaty, in 1953.

(AP) South Korean Marines return from their vacation upon their arriving at a port on South Korea's...
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President Lee Myung-bak ordered officials to make all efforts to rescue the crew, spokeswoman Kim Eun-hye said.

"I can only imagine how much shock and pain the missing marines' families must be in," he said late Saturday, according to Kim.

Authorities have not confirmed any deaths, but Rear Adm. Lee told lawmakers he presumed most of the missing sailors were trapped inside, the Yonhap news agency said. A coast guard official said humans can survive in winter waters if they are rescued within two hours.

Fifty-eight of the crew of 104 were rescued, with some treated for burns, broken bones and abrasions.

Joint Chiefs spokesman Park Seong-woo said the military will determine the cause of the accident after salvaging the vessel.

(AP) A South Korean coast guard ship, second from left, and Naval ships patrol to rescue possible...
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That could take weeks. In 2002, it took 17 days to salvage a 130-ton vessel struck in a surprise attack by North Korea, the Joint Chiefs said.

In Pyeongtaek, south of Seoul, wails filled the air as relatives checked a list of missing marines.

"Where are you? Where can you be?" one mother screamed.

Many relatives waited for news, their faces buried in tissues and handkerchiefs. However, about 150 people - fed up with the lack of information - pushed their way past armed security guards to confront military officials. They accused authorities of a cover-up, saying survivors told them the Cheonan was leaky and in need of repair.

"Liars!" some screamed, jumping up on the car of the Cheonan's rescued captain as he tried to drive away.

The sinking is one of South Korea's worst naval disasters. In 1974, a ship sank off the southeast coast in stormy weather, killing 159 sailors and coast guard personnel. In 1967, 39 sailors were killed by North Korean artillery.

---

Associated Press writers Kwang-ta Kim, Sangwon Yoon and Jean H. Lee in Seoul, and Esther Hong in Pyeongtaek contributed to this report.

Report: Saudi Arabia Seeks Strike on Iran

 
by Maayana Miskin


(IsraelNN.com) The German news magazine Der Spiegel has reported that Saudi Arabia is hoping Israel will strike Iran's nuclear facilities, and is even prepared to open its skies to Israeli warplanes to allow such an operation to take place. Similar reports were published in 2009, and denied by both Israel and Saudi Arabia.

The Der Spiegel report stated that officials in Riyadh had spoken to United States Secretary of State Hillary Clinton about the importance of stopping Iran's nuclear program, even if doing so requires the use of military force.

The London Sunday Times claimed in 2009 that Saudi Arabia would allow Israel to use its airspace to attack Iran. The paper quoted a former Israeli intelligence officer as saying, “The Saudis are very concerned about an Iranian nuclear bomb, even more than the Israelis.”

Der Spiegel writer Bernhard Zand stated this week, “These days, the Arabs fear the terrorists of al-Qaeda and Iran's leadership, with its rabid rhetoric and nuclear program, as much as the Israelis do. Never before since the time of Israel's creation were Jews and Arabs as united as they are in the face of the Iranian threat.”

Zand accused Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu of failing to take advantage of Israel's newfound common ground with the Arab world.

Iranian media dismissed the Der Spiegal report. “Der Spiegel is greatly influenced by the Israeli regime and has previously published reports that were meant to serve as an Israeli propaganda campaign or psychological warfare against the Islamic Republic,” accused Iran's Press TV. 

The fear of terrorist takeovers of their governments and of Iran's weaponization is the reason several Arab regimes, such as Saudi Arabia and Egypt, do not protest with U.S. military offensives against al-Kaeda and other terrorist groups in Afghanistan and Iraq, even though they are not part of the CENTCOM coalition that fights alongside the U.S.. These regimes are worried that the U.S. response to Iran will be too little and too late, according to a JINSA (the American based Jewish Institute for National Security Affairs) analysis of the issue this week.

 

 

Bomb Iran Drumbeat Picks Up Pace

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
February 20, 2010

It looks like years of incessant propaganda about Iran seem to have paid off. According to a recent Gallup poll, Americans consider Iran to be the “least liked” nation on the planet. “Canada retained its top position in Gallup’s annual country ratings, with 90% of Americans viewing it favorably, unchanged from 2009. Iran continues to rank last, with 10% this year,” Gallup reports. Even the reclusive totalitarian state of North Korea fared better than Iran.

Is there a rational reason for Americans to rate Iran unfavorably? Most Americans know little to nothing about Iran beyond what they are fed by the corporate media. I bet most of them would be unable to find the country on a map.

Fox News reports that time is running out for Iran and military action is on the horizon.

In addition, according to a recent CNN poll, an astounding 71 percent of Americans believe Iran currently has nuclear weapons, a belief that is seriously at odds with the facts. The poll is testament to the effectiveness of unrelenting propaganda pushed by the corporate media.

The corporate media has increasingly called for bombing Iran. For instance, on February 9, the supposed liberal New York Times ran an editorial calling for crippling economic sanctions on the Iranian people and hinted at the prospect of attacking the country. “Enough is enough. Iran needs to understand that its nuclear ambition comes with a very high cost,” the newspaper opined.

The New York Times, with the neocon operative Judith Miller on-board, ran a number of propaganda pieces making the case that Iraq had WMDs when in fact it did not. Miller resigned from the newspaper and now appears as a regular on Fox News.

Our rulers hate Iran because it refuses to take orders from the bankers and their international organizations such as the United Nations and the loan sharking operations known as the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund. Saddam Hussein found out what happens when Muslims are too proud and refuse to take orders from Wall Street and the City of London.

The leader of Iran’s Islamic Revolution, Ayatollah Seyyed Ali Khamenei, said recently that “the Iranian nation’s resistance to the West set an example for the generation to come of how to confront pressure by reliance on its own capability and a divine source,” reports Press TV.

Khamenei said Iran’s resistance will “awaken the spirit of dignity in the whole Islamic Umma as our nation’s efforts have led to the Islamic vigilance” among other Muslim nations.

The United States and its junior partner Israel have pushed the specter of an Iranian nuclear weapon and the supposed threat this would pose to the world for several years now. During the Bush years, this insane notion was primarily confined to the neocons, but since the election of Obama it has spread to liberals and Democrats. The bomb Iran chant is now becoming a nearly universal mantra within the political establishment.

Liberals and Democrats quite naturally oppose war and illegal mass murder campaigns when they are proposed by neocons and Republicans. But as Clinton’s invasion of Yugoslavia revealed, Democrats are all for serial murder when the call is made by the leader of their party.

A new regime at the UN’s International Atomic Energy Agency has produced a report saying Iran is working toward a nuclear weapon. In the recent past, the IAEA said there was no evidence Iran was attempting to build a nuclear weapon. This conclusion was backed up by a 2007 National Intelligence Estimate from the U.S. intelligence community that said Iran abandoned its nuclear weapons program years ago. “When asked if the White House believes the IAEA report or the 2007 NIE estimate, officials had no comment except to suggest that they were looking forward to the new NIE on Iran, which they said was in the works,” reports The Washington Post.

In other words, the next NIE estimate will probably agree with the IAEA. Critics of NIE estimates complain that the reports are subject to political polarization. Case in point: the October, 2002, NIE argued that Iraq had an active WMD program. Assertions that Iraq had chemical and biological weapons were essentially the same conclusions reached by the United Nations and numerous intelligence services.

It turned out Iraq did not have WMDs. It was all propaganda designed as a pretext to invade and occupy a country decimated by more than a decade of sanctions that resulted in the death of more than a million Iraqis, 500,000 of them children.

The United States is now pushing for crippling sanctions against Iran. “The White House has begun circulating sanctions against Iran as part of its pursuit of United Nations-backed punishment for Iran’s secretive pursuit of nuclear weapons,” Fox News reported on Friday. “We are internally and with partners beginning the process of thinking through what are the appropriate elements of pressure,” said Susan Rice, Obama’s foreign policy adviser and United States Ambassador to the United Nations. “And that will be a process that will continue over a period of time and I think we should be realistic about the pace.”

The U.S. cranked up the pace on sanctions after Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said Iran is sliding into a military dictatorship. Two days later, on February 16, Clinton said Iran is working toward the development of a nuclear weapon. Clinton made her remarks after Iranian president Mahmoud Ahmadinejad reiterated that Iran was ready to suspend enrichment if it could exchange its low-enriched uranium stockpile for processed fuel rods from abroad.

On February 9, Obama declared that he’s “bent over backwards” to engage Iran in “constructive” dialogue and the U.S. will push in the United Nations to sanction the country. Bush era leftover Robert Gates at the Pentagon added White House has gone further than any administration to reach out to Iran.

Mohammad Nahavandian, an Iranian businessman, said today that sanctions will not cripple the country’s economy. “It has been proven that the Iranian economy is not sanctionable… the stated goal of sanctions is political, which has never been achieved,” Nahavandian told Reuters in an interview.

Nahavandian said Iran was increasingly dealing with non-western countries, including Asian and regional countries. China, a veto-wielding member of the U.N. Security Council, is reluctant to approve further sanctions on Iran. Trade between Iran and China is now over $28 billion. “With indirect trade, it may be about $31 billion, which is above the trade with the European Union,” Nahavandian noted.

Bush era neocons are pushing hard for a mass murder campaign against Iran. “America’s central focus must be to prevent Iran from obtaining nuclear weapons in the first place,” Bush era UN ambassador John Bolton wrote for The Wall Street Journal on February 9. “Doing so requires decisive, and likely military, action now, since there is essentially no likelihood that an Obama-inspired ‘regime of sanctions’ will achieve that objective. The U.S. must rigorously avoid ’sanctions’ or ‘pro-democracy’ rhetoric becoming excuses for American nonaction.”

John Bolton peddles the bomb Iran mantra on Fox News.

It remains to be seen if the U.S. will attack Iran or simply muddle along with ineffectual economic sanctions. If the U.S. does attack Iran, however, the consequences will be great, as Russia’s General of the Army Nikolay Makarov, Chief of the General Staff of the Armed Forces of the Russian Federation, said recently. Makarov warned that an American attack on Iran now, when the US is bogged down in two wars, might lead to the collapse of the United States.

Makarov made the remarks in Vzglyad on Friday, February 19, 2010, and they were translated or paraphrased by the USG Open Source Center:

Makarov also commented on the recent rumors about the possibility of an attack upon Iran by the United States. In his opinion, this would be complete madness on the part of the American military. He said: “Admiral Michael McMullen, Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, recently said that, in the United States, there is a plan for carrying out strikes against Iran but the United States clearly understands that now, when it is conducting two military campaigns, one in Iraq and the other in Afghanistan, a third campaign against Iran would simply lead to a collapse. It would not be able to withstand the strain.”

Nevertheless, in proportion to the winding down of the campaigns in Iraq and Afghanistan, (the plan for) a war with the Islamic Republic of Iran, in the opinion of General Makarov, may again come out to the foreground.

General Makarov, Chief of the General Staff, said: “The consequences of such an attack will be terrible not only for the region but also for us. Iran is our neighbor and we are very carefully following this situation. The leadership of our country is undertaking all measures in order not to allow such a (military) development of events.”

A collapse of the United States? Now that would put a definitive end to the murderous insanity that prevails in this country regardless of the regime in power.

It would also play into the hands of the global elite. They are determined to reduce the once great United States into just another third world backwater where poverty and immiseration reign supreme. Such an economic and military collapse of the world’s last remaining super power would set the stage for a world government long dreamed of by the globalist bankster cartel.

 

Dutch government falls over Afghanistan mission

English.news.cn   2010-02-20 11:50:32 FeedbackPrintRSS

BRUSSELS, Feb. 20 (Xinhua) -- The Dutch government coalition collapsed early Saturday over a NATO request to extend the country’s military mission to Afghanistan, Radio Nethelands Worldwide reported.

In a statement announcing his cabinet’s fall，Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende said he would visit Queen Beatrice later in the day to offer the resignation of the Labour Party members of his government.

"As chairman of this government, I was forced to establish there is no fruitful road for this cabinet to continue,” said Mr. Balkenende after a 16-hour marathon meeting failed to save the three-party coalition.

The stand-off came after Deputy Prime Minister Wouter Bos, leader of the Labour Party, drew a line in the sand over extending the Dutch mission in the southern Afghan province of Uruzghan. Bos resolutely rejected a NATO request to remain in Afghanistan.

He added that remarks by Labour, demanding a rejection of NATO’s request to remain active in the Afghan province of Uruzghan, “placed a political mortgage” on the coalition’s cooperation and blocked a well-balanced debate about the extension of the mission in the Asian country.

The leading coalition party, Balkenende’s Christian Democrats supported extending the military mission, which is due to end in August. The Dutch were asked to maintain a smaller mission of 500 to 700 soldiers for training afghan security forces.

The current government is Balkenende's fourth cabinet. It was also the fourth time that he failed to carry a coalition to the end of a full four-year term.

During three years of government, many decisions were made only after long disagreement inside the cabinet. These included plans to raise the government pension age, how long to try to keep government expenditures up in the wake of the economic downturn, and whether or not to keep investing in the development of a new fighter plane, the Joint Strike Fighter.

Recent opinion polls in the Netherlands have shown many neither support nor understand the continued troop deployment in Afghanistan, especially in the wake of controversial Dutch government support for the invasion of Iraq.

The fall of the government may help the Netherlands. The Dutch pulling out of Uruzghan is a source of irritation in NATO and Washington, but a cabinet crisis is seen as a reasonable excuse, even if the result - pulling out of Uruzghan - remains the same.

Related:

NATO allies rally to Obama request with 7,000 more troops for Afghanistan

BRUSSELS, Dec. 4 (Xinhua) -- NATO allies and partner nations rallied Friday to U.S. President Barrack Obama's call for an international military surge in Afghanistan, by adding at least 7,000 troops to the 30,000 fresh U.S. soldiers due to deploy next year in what could be the last chance to stem the rising tide of Taliban violence.

"Despite all the challenges, all the uncertainties and all the casualties, they remain absolutely united about this mission," said NATO Secretary General Anders Fogh Rasmussen after talks with foreign ministers from the 44 nations contributing to the mission in Afghanistan.

Brown confirms Britain to deploy extra 500 troops to Afghanistan

LONDON, Nov. 30 (Xinhua) -- British Prime Minister Gordon Brown announced on Monday that Britain will deploy extra 500 troops to Afghanistan in a statement to the House of Commons.

Last month, Brown agreed "in principle" to increase British troops in Afghanistan to 9,500 so long as troops are fully equipped for their tasks; the Afghan government is in place, ready to provide more troops for training and all coalition partners bear their fair share of burden.

Obama to "accelerate" war efforts in Afghanistan

WASHINGTON, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) -- U.S. President Barack will announce "an acceleration" of war efforts in Afghanistan to defeat terrorism when he addresses the nation on his new strategy in that country, his spokesman said Tuesday.

That means both the deployment of 30,000 to 35,000 additional troops to Afghanistan and the transfer of security responsibility from U.S. forces to Afghan forces will be accelerated, White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said on NBC.

 

Iran moves closer to nuke warhead capacity

AP - Monday, February 08, 2010 4:05:39 PM By GEORGE JAHN
Iran moves closer to nuke warhead capacity Photo By AP



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Iran pressed ahead Monday with plans that will increase its ability to make nuclear weapons as it formally informed the U.N. nuclear agency of its intention to enrich uranium to higher levels.

Alarmed world powers questioned the rationale behind the move and warned the country it could face more U.N. sanctions if it made good on its intentions.

Iran maintains its nuclear activities are peaceful, and an envoy insisted the move was meant only to provide fuel for Tehran's research reactor. But world powers fearing that Iran's enrichment program might be a cover for a weapons program were critical.

Britain said the Islamic Republic's reason for further enrichment made no sense because it is not technically advanced enough to turn the resulting material into the fuel rods needed for the reactor.

France and the U.S. said the latest Iranian move left no choice but to push harder for a fourth set of U.N. Security Council sanctions to punish Iran's nuclear defiance.

Even a senior parliamentarian from Russia, which traditionally opposes Western ambitions for new U.N. sanctions, suggested the time had now come for such additional punishment

Konstantin Kosachev, head of the international affairs committee of the State Duma -- the lower house of parliament -- told the Interfax news agency that the international community should "react to this step with serious measures, including making the regime of economic sanctions more severe."

Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad had already announced Sunday that his country would significantly enrich at least some of the country's stockpile of uranium to 20 percent. Still, Monday's formal notification was significant, particularly because of Iran's waffling in recent months on the issue.

Western powers blame Iran for rejecting an internationally endorsed plan to take Iranian low enriched uranium, further enriching it and return it in the form of fuel rods for the reactor -- and in broader terms for turning down other overtures meant to diminish concerns about its nuclear agenda.

Telling The Associated Press that his country now had formally told the International Atomic Energy Agency of its intentions, Iranian envoy Ali Asghar Soltanieh said that IAEA inspectors now overseeing enrichment to low levels would be able to stay on site to monitor the process.

He suggested world powers had pushed Iran into the decision, asserting that it was their fault that the plan that foresaw Russian and French involvement in supplying fuel from enriched uranium for the Tehran research reactor had failed.

 

Iraq orders former Blackwater security 

FILE - In this April 4, 2004 file photo, plainclothes contractors working for AP – FILE - In this April 4, 2004 file photo, plainclothes contractors working for Blackwater USA take part …

By QASSIM ABDUL-ZAHRA, Associated Press Writer Qassim Abdul-zahra, Associated Press Writer

BAGHDAD – Iraq has ordered hundreds of private security guards linked to Blackwater Worldwide to leave the country within seven days or face possible arrest on visa violations, the interior minister said Wednesday.

The order comes in the wake of a U.S. judge's dismissal of criminal charges against five Blackwater guards who were accused in the September 2007 shooting deaths of 17 Iraqis in Baghdad.

It applies to about 250 security contractors who worked for Blackwater in Iraq at the time of the incident, Interior Minister Jawad al-Bolani told The Associated Press.

Some of the guards now work for other security firms in Iraq, while others work for a Blackwater subsidiary, al-Bolani said. He said all "concerned parties" were notified of the order three days ago and now have four days left before they must leave. He did not name the companies.

Blackwater security contractors were protecting U.S. diplomats when the guards opened fire in Nisoor Square, a busy Baghdad intersection, on Sept. 16, 2007. Seventeen people were killed, including women and children, in a shooting that inflamed anti-American sentiment in Iraq.

"We want to turn the page," al-Bolani said. "It was a painful experience, and we would like to go forward."

Backlash from the Blackwater shooting has been felt hardest by private security contractors, who typically provide protection for diplomats, journalists and aid workers. Iraqi security forces have routinely stopped security details at checkpoints to conduct searches and question guards.

Security guards will be required within the next 10 days to register their weapons with the Ministry of Interior, al-Bolani said. Failure to do so could result in arrest, he added.

Based in Moyock, North Carolina, Blackwater is now known as Xe Services, a name change that happened after six of the security firm's guards were charged in the Nisoor Square shooting. At the time, Blackwater was the largest of the State Department's three security contractors working in Iraq.

Xe Services said the company had no employees currently in Iraq, including with its subsidiary, Presidential Airways.

"Xe does not have one, single person in Iraq," said Xe spokeswoman Stacy DeLuke.

The U.S. Embassy in Baghdad declined comment. The State Department in Washington did not immediately respond to requests seeking comment.

The Blackwater guards involved in the incident said they were ambushed, but U.S. prosecutors and many Iraqis said they let loose an unprovoked attack on civilians using machine guns and grenades.

One of the accused guards pleaded guilty in the case, but a federal judge in Washington threw out charges against the other five in December, ruling that the Justice Department for mishandling the evidence.

The legal ruling infuriated Iraqis and Prime Minister Nouri al-Maliki vowed to seek punishment for the guards.

Last month, U.S. Vice President Joe Biden flew to Baghdad to assure Iraqis the Obama administration to appeal the case and bring the guards back to trial.

The shooting further strained relations between the United States and Iraq, leading the parliament in Baghdad to seek new laws that would clear the way for foreign contractors to be prosecuted in Iraqi courts. The U.S. government rejected those demands in the Blackwater case.

In January 2009, the State Department informed Blackwater that it would not renew its contracts to provide security for U.S. diplomats in Iraq because of the Iraqi government's refusal to grant it an operating license.

But last September, the State Department said it temporarily extended a contract with Blackwater subsidiary Presidential Airways to provide air support for U.S. diplomats. The State Department has since ended its contracts with Xe, and DynCorp International has taken over air support.

The Justice Department now is investigating whether Blackwater tried to bribe Iraqi officials with $1 million to allow the company to keep working there after the Baghdad shooting, according to U.S. officials close to the probe.

Elsewhere in Iraq, attackers bombed an oil pipeline north of Baghdad, cutting production in half at a refinery in the capital, the Oil Ministry said Wednesday.

There were no injuries in Tuesday night's bombing in Rashidiya, just north of Baghdad.

Production at the Baghdad refinery was cut from 140,000 barrels per day to 70,000, said Oil Ministry spokesman Assem Jihad.

The pipeline runs from oil fields in northern Kirkuk province to Baghdad. It has been the target of attacks for years, and has been bombed multiple times since 2004.

___

Associated Press Writers Lara Jakes, Mazin Yahya and Chelsea J. Carter in Baghdad; Meg Kinnard in Columbia, South Carolina; and Matthew Lee in Washington contributed to this report.

 

Obama Orders 1 Million US Troops To “Prepare For Civil War”

2009 November 3

Russian Military Analysts are reporting to Prime Minister Putin today that US President Barack Obama has issued orders to his Northern Command’s (USNORTHCOM) top leader, US Air Force General Gene Renuart, to “begin immediately” increasing his military forces to 1 million troops by January 30, 2010, in what these reports warn is an expected outbreak of civil war within the United States before the end of winter.

According to these reports, Obama has had over these past weeks “numerous” meetings with his war council about how best to manage the expected implosion of his Nations banking system while at the same time attempting to keep the United States military hegemony over the World in what Russian Military Analysts state is a “last ditch gambit” whose success is “far from certain”.

And to Obama’s “last ditch gambit”, these reports continue, he is to announce in a nationwide address to his people this coming week that he is going to expand the level of US Military Forces in Afghanistan by tens of thousands of troops, while at the same time using the deployment of these soldiers as a “cover” for returning to the United States over 200,000 additional American soldiers from the over 800 bases in over 39 countries they have stationed around the Globe bringing the level of these forces in America to over 1 million, a number the US Military believes will be able to contain the “explosion of violence” expected to roil these peoples when they learn their economy has been bankrupted.

These reports further state that at the same time Obama will be attempting to keep his Nation from violent disintegration, the tens of thousands of additional troops he will send to Afghanistan are to be ordered to Kandahar where the Americans and their NATO allies will begin their final attempt to secure their TAPI (Turkmenistan, Afghanistan, Pakistan and India) pipeline, which without the Western Nations, due to their grave lack of alternative energy resources, and being cut off from these vast Central Asian supplies (which both Russia and China are seeking to insure), are warned will totally collapse.

Making the American’s (and by extension the West’s) situation even worse are new reports coming from the International Energy Agency stating that “under pressure” from the US government they have been “deliberately underplaying” a looming Global oil shortage for fear of triggering panic buying and raising the Americans fear over the end of oil supremacy because it would threaten their power over access to our World’s last remaining oil resources.

To the scariest “end game” maneuvers being made by Obama, in his attempt to protect Americas Global hegemony, is his record shattering move in plunging the United States $3.5 Trillion further into debt, and which raises the total amount owed by the United States, to its citizens and the World, to the unprecedented height of over $106 Trillion.

So alarming has Obama’s actions become (especially since they are being imitated by all of the Western powers) that the  managing-director of the International Monetary Fund (IMF), Dominique Strauss-Kahn, warned this past week that the “stimulus actions” of the West (which in essence is nothing more than the printing of money with nothing to back it up) has now become a “threat to democracy” as millions of people are expected to erupt in violence against their governments over the theft of their money and their futures.

Most unfortunately for the American people though is that this IMF warning fell on “deaf ears” in the United States with the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis President, James Ballard, saying this week that the US would continue its “stimulus actions” because they “would give more flexibility to US policymakers”, a most absurd statement especially when viewed in the light of the unprecedented debt payments currently looming over the American economy they have no ability whatsoever to pay.

To the ability of the West’s banking giants to save their Nation’s economies, even worse news came this week with the US ratings giant Standards & Poors issuing a warning that “every single bank in Japan, the US, Germany, Spain, and Italy included in S&P’s list of 45 Global lenders remain unsafe”, a warning which then lead to one of Europe’s largest banks, Société Générale,  warning its clients to prepare for a “total Global Economic Collapse”.

http://justgetthere.us/blog/uploads/martial_law_indianapolis-cptn.jpg

To the fears of Obama over the United States erupting into civil war once the full extent of the rape and pillaging of these peoples by their banks and government becomes known to them, grim evidence now shows the likelihood of this occurring much sooner than later, especially in new poll figures showing that Obama’s approval rating among white Americans has now fallen to 39%. A number made more significant when one realizes that the white population of the United States comprises 74% of their estimated 398 million citizens, or put more ominously in these reports as “over 220 million American people armed to the teeth and ready to explode”.

And so fearful has the white population of the United States become that upon the election of Obama to the Presidency he was named as the “Gun Salesman of the Year” by the Outdoor Wire, the US’s largest daily electronic news service for the outdoor industry, who report “panic buying” of weapons and ammunition by those fearful of the destruction of their country at the hands of man they believe is not even an American citizen and had been foisted upon them by their elite classes seeking to enslave them.

Though the coming civil war in the United States is being virtually ignored by their propaganda media, the same cannot be said of Russia, where leading Russian political analyst, Professor Igor Panarin has long warned that the economic turmoil in the United States has confirmed his long-held view that the US is heading for collapse, and will divide into separate parts.

Professor Igor Panarin further stated in his warning that “the US Dollar is not secured by anything. The country’s foreign debt has grown like an avalanche, even though in the early 1980s there was no debt. By 1998, when I first made my prediction, it had exceeded $2 trillion. Now it is more than 11 trillion. This is a pyramid that can only collapse.”

What remains to be seen, and these reports do not speculate upon, is if the citizen-soldiers of the United States will fire upon and kill their fellow countrymen during the coming conflict, but if history is to be our guide clearly shows this will be the case as the once great American Nation continues its headlong plunge into the abyss of history. May God have mercy upon all of them. 

Obama Orders US Government To Begin Preparing For Biological Attack

Posted by Europe on Jan 02, 2010 | 10 Comments

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The US Post Office could play a key role in distributing medical aid in the event of a biological attack, according to an executive order released by the White House.

The order signed by President Barack Obama directs government agencies, local law enforcement and the US Post Office to work on a model for distribution of medical countermeasures in the wake of a biological attack.

“This policy would seek to: (1) mitigate illness and prevent death; (2) sustain critical infrastructure; and (3) complement and supplement State, local, territorial, and tribal government medical countermeasure distribution capacity,” the order said.

“The US Postal Service has the capacity for rapid residential delivery of medical countermeasures for self administration across all communities in the United States,” the order added.

The US Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano were instructed to work with the post office to develop a “dispensing model for US cities to respond to a large-scale biological attack, with anthrax as the primary threat consideration.”

The order calls for the model to be drawn up within 180 days, but gives no details as to whether the idea of using the US postal system to assist Americans in the wake of a biological attack is a new one.

The United States has sought to bolster its capacity to respond to biological attacks since 2001, when anthrax-laced letters mailed to people across the United States led to five deaths.

The order came amid heightened security concerns here following an attempt to bring down a US-bound jetliner on Christmas Day. A 23-year-old Nigerian has been charged in the case.

 

 

The Next False Flag: An Attack On the U.S. Embassy in Yemen

Kurt Nimmo
Infowars.com
January 4, 2010

Earlier today, the Daily Telegraph reported that a truck of explosives and weapons managed to slip past a surveillance operation in Sana’a, Yemen.

“The revelations came as western diplomatic missions in Sana’a went into lockdown following threats from al-Qaeda’s Yemeni affiliate, which has taken responsibility for a failed attempt to blow up an airliner over Detroit on Christmas Day,” the newspaper reported. “The identity of those who smuggled the weapons contingent into Sana’a has not been disclosed, and it is unclear if its disappearance is linked to al-Qaeda’s increasingly powerful Yemeni branch, al-Qaeda in the Arab Peninsula.”

featured stories The Next False Flag: An Attack On the U.S. Embassy in Yemen
miller featured stories The Next False Flag: An Attack On the U.S. Embassy in Yemen


Yemeni guards stand outside the US embassy in Sanaa, one day after an attack on the embassy killed 19 people in September 2008.


“Diplomats dismissed speculation that the vanishing convoy could presage an imminent attack on Western interests in the city.”

An attack on “Western interests” or an embassy or two would play right into the hands of the U.S. and Britain.

Gordon Brown has said he will convene a summit of world leaders on the Yemen problem at the end of this month.

In the United States the corporate media continues to beat the war drums and spread absurd hysteria about a supposed al-Qaeda faction in Yemen. We are expected to believe a rag-tag gang of terrorists in one of the world’s poorest countries pose a threat to freedom-loving Americans the same way a sanctions-ravaged Iraq posed a threat after Saddam ganged up with Osama and al-Qaeda — one of the more colorful lies spun by the warmongering and Muslim-hating neocons.

Last October authorities in Yemen busted a terrorist cell accused of attacking the U.S. embassy the previous month. According to a reported filed with the state-run Saba news agency, the group had links to Israeli intelligence. “The report, quoting an unnamed source, said investigations and data retrieved from a computer seized from the cell, showed there was correspondence between the Islamic Jihad group’s deputy leader Bassam Abdullah Fadhel Al-Haidari and an Israeli intelligence agency,” the Indo-Asian News Service said.

The Islamic Jihad, reported to have links with the Al Qaeda, had claimed responsibility for the attack on the US embassy in Sana’a Sep 17, which had claimed 18 lives, including that of an Indian woman.

Saba quoted the source as saying that the correspondence between the two sides included a request from the Israeli side to implement terrorist attacks inside Yemen.

“An Israeli foreign ministry spokesman said the Yemeni president’s statement was without foundation,” the BBC reported. “To believe that Israel would create Islamist cells in Yemen is really far-fetched. This is yet another victory for the proponents of conspiracy theories,” said Igal Palmor.

In fact, Israel has a long and sordid history of false flag attacks.

In 1950, a series of deadly attacks in Iraq were attributed to Israeli intelligence.

Four years later, Israeli false flag operatives exploded bombs in the British and American cultural centers and libraries in Cairo and blamed it on the Muslim Brotherhood.

Following the Six-Day War in 1967, Israel supported and encouraged Sheikh Ahmed Yassin and Hamas in order to counter the influence of a secular PLO. “Israel started Hamas. It was a project of Shin Bet, which had a feeling that they could use it to hem in the PLO,” said Charles Freeman, a former US ambassador to Saudi Arabia. A former senior CIA official speaking to UPI described Israel’s support for Hamas as “a direct attempt to divide and dilute support for a strong, secular PLO by using a competing religious alternative.”

During the Six Day War, Israel attacked the USS Liberty and attempted to blame it on Egypt.

In the early 1970s, Israel teamed up with Jordan to support Muslim Brotherhood terrorism against Syria.

In the 1980s, Israel conducted a bombing campaign in Europe to counter A. Q. Khan’s nuclear proliferation network, which helped Pakistan build a nuclear weapon.

Oded Yinon’s paper, “A Strategy for Israel in the Nineteen Eighties,” published in the winter of 1982 issue of Kivunim, suggested Arab States should be destroyed from within by exploiting their internal religious and ethnic tensions.

In September of 2000, India’s largest news weekly reported that a Mossad attempt to infiltrate al-Qaeda failed when undercover agents were stopped on their way to Bangladesh by Indian customs officials.

A year later, the Army School of Advanced Military Studies in the United States said the following about Israeli intelligence: “Wildcard. Ruthless and cunning. Has capability to target US forces and make it look like a Palestinian/Arab act.”

In 2005, US Intelligence officers reported that insurgents in Iraq used Beretta 02 pistols minus serial numbers. “Analysts suggest the lack of serial numbers indicates that the weapons were intended for intelligence operations or terrorist cells with substantial government backing. Analysts speculate that these guns are probably from either Mossad or the CIA. Analysts speculate that agent provocateurs may be using the untraceable weapons even as US authorities use insurgent attacks against civilians as evidence of the illegitimacy of the resistance,” the UPI reported.

In 2002, officials from the Palestinian Authority accused Mossad of setting up a fake al-Qaeda terrorist cell in Gaza. Then Palestinian leader Yasser Arafat said that Israel had set up the mock cell in order to justify attacks in Palestinian areas, according to the BBC.

“Not one big success of the Mossad has ever been made public,” Ephraim Halevy, head of the Mossad from 1998 to 2002, told 60 Minutes in 2003.

The U.S. also has a record of using and planning false flag attacks, most notably Operation Northwoods.

Andreas von Bülow, former German Minister for Research and Technology and a long-time member of German parliament, said in 2002 the attacks on September 11, 2001, were a false flag attack. “Whoever wants to understand the CIA’s methods, has to deal with its main task of covert operations: Below the level of war, and outside international law, foreign states are to be influenced by inciting insurrections or terrorist attacks, usually combined with drugs and weapons trade, and money laundering,” he told Tagesspiegal.

In addition to its long history of covertly overthrowing governments around the world, the CIA plotted false flag attacks in Europe to drive a wedge between Syria and Iran (according to CIA agent Robert Baer).

CIA operatives and patsies are legendary, as Webster Tarpley documents in his book,  9/11 Synthetic Terrorism: Made in USA. (Tarpley told Russia Today that the failed attack on a US passenger jet traveling from Amsterdam to Detroit was a set-up provocation controlled by US intelligence.)

If an embassy or other Western interests are bombed in the next few days in Yemen, a finger should be pointed at the CIA, Mossad, or both, not the rag-tag supposed al-Qaeda franchise operating in the country.

Steve Watson
Prisonplanet.com
Monday, Jan 4, 2010

Retired U.S. General Promises An Airliner Will Be Downed Within 100 Days 040110feature3A retired U.S. General has called for strip searches of all muslim men at airports and “threat-based” profiling, declaring that “in the next 30-100 days,” there is “very high probability a US airliner will come down.”

Retired Lt. Gen. Thomas McInerney made the comments on a Fox News broadcast over the weekend.

“We’ve got to go to more than just the normal process that they’re talking about now,” he said on Saturday.

“We have got to go to very, very strict screening and we’ve got to use profiling. And I mean, be very, very serious about the profiling. If you are an 18-28-year-old Muslim man, then you should be strip searched. If we don’t do that, there’s a very high probability that we’re gonna lose an airliner.”

As the Fox host pointed out that racial profiling would likely not be well received in the United States, McInerney replied, “I agree, that’s the problem.”

“It is not racial profiling,” he added. “It is profiling just like the Israelis do. Let’s use the same procedures that the Israelis do.”

“If you lose 300 Americans, and then people are gonna say ‘Why didn’t we do this?’” the General turned military analyst stated.

McInerney is currently chairman of the Iran Policy Committee’s advisory council and co-author of the interestingly titled book “Endgame: The Blueprint for Victory in the War on Terror”.

In the book,the general calls for invasions of North Korea and Saudi Arabia, as well as Syria, where he claims Saddam Hussein hid weapons of mass destruction.

The General’s comments proceeded the Transportation Security Administration announcement of “enhanced screening” procedures at U.S. airports, with foreign travelers from “terror prone” countries.

 


US, UK close Yemen embassies over al-Qaida threats
FILE - A Yemeni security armored vehicle patrol in the capital San'a, Yemen, in AP – FILE - A Yemeni security armored vehicle patrol in the capital San'a, Yemen, in this June 15, 2009 file …
By AHMED AL-HAJ and LEE KEATH, Associated Press Writers Ahmed Al-haj And Lee Keath, Associated Press Writers – 1 hr 31 mins ago

SAN'A, Yemen – The U.S. and Britain closed their embassies in Yemen on Sunday in the face of al-Qaida threats, after both countries announced an increase in aid to the government to fight the terror group linked to the failed attempt to bomb a U.S. airliner on Christmas.

The confrontation with al-Qaida's offshoot in Yemen has gained new urgency since the 23-year-old Nigerian accused in the attack, Umar Farouk Abdulmutallab, told American investigators he received training and instructions from the group's operatives in Yemen. President Barack Obama said Saturday that the al-Qaida offshoot was behind the attempt.

White House counterterrorism chief John Brennan said the American Embassy, which was attacked twice in 2008, was shut Sunday because of "indications al-Qaida is planning to carry out an attack against a target inside of San'a, possibly our embassy."

"We're not going to take any chances" with the lives of embassy personnel, Brennan said. A statement on the embassy's Web site announcing the closure did not say how long it would remain closed.

In London, Britain's Foreign Office said its embassy was closed for security reasons. It said officials would decide later whether to reopen it on Monday.

The closure comes as Washington is dramatically stepping up aid to Yemen to fight al-Qaida, which has built up strongholds in remote parts of the impoverished, mountainous nation where government control outside the capital is weak.

Over the weekend, Gen. David Petraeus, the U.S. general who oversees the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, announced that Washington this year will more than double the $67 million in counterterrorism aid that it provided Yemen in 2009. On Saturday, Petraeus met with Yemeni President Ali Abdullah Saleh to discuss coordination in the fight against al-Qaida.

Britain announced Sunday that Washington and London will fund a counterterrorism police unit in Yemen. Britain will also host a high-level international conference Jan. 28 to come up with an international strategy to counter radicalization in Yemen.

The U.S. also provided intelligence and other help to back two Yemeni air and ground assaults on al-Qaida hide-outs last month, reported to have killed more than 60 people. Yemeni authorities said more than 30 suspected militants were among the dead.

The U.S. has increasingly provided intelligence, surveillance and training to Yemeni forces during the past year, and has provided some firepower, a senior U.S. defense official has said. Some of that assistance may be through the expanded use of unmanned drones, and the U.S. is providing funding to Yemen for helicopters and other equipment. Officials, however, say there are no U.S. ground forces or fighter aircraft in Yemen.

On Thursday, the embassy sent a notice to Americans in Yemen urging them to be vigilant about security.

Yemeni security officials said over the weekend that the country had deployed several hundred extra troops to Marib and Jouf, two mountainous eastern provinces that are al-Qaida's main strongholds in the country and where Abdulmutallab may have visited. U.S. and Yemeni investigators have been trying to track Abdulmutallab's steps in Yemen, which he visited from August until Dec. 7. He was there ostensibly to study Arabic in San'a, but he disappeared for much of that time.

Yemeni media also reported that the coast guard was increasing patrols to stop any incoming militants after an al-Qaida-linked insurgent group in Somalia, al-Shabab, claimed last week that it would send its fighters to help the terror group's offshoot there.

Al-Qaida fighters have dramatically increased their presence in Yemen over the past year, taking advantage of the San'a government's weak control over much of the country. Tribes hold sway over large areas, and many of them are discontented with the central government and have given refuge to al-Qaida fighters, both Yemenis and other Arabs coming from Saudi Arabia or war zones in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Yemen, the ancestral homeland of Osama bin Laden, was the scene of the 2000 bombing of the USS Cole, and in the years after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks in the United States, the Yemeni government worked with Washington to crack down on al-Qaida figures on its soil.

But the terror group has rallied, announcing in January 2009 the creation of Al-Qaida in the Arabian Peninsula, grouping fighters from Yemen and neighboring Saudi Arabia. The leader of the group, Naser Abdel Karim al-Wahishi, is a Yemeni who was once close to bin Laden, and two Saudis who were released from the U.S. military prison at Guantanamo Bay in 2007 and 2006 have taken up senior roles — Said al-Shihri, the group's deputy leader, and Ibrahim Suleiman al-Rubaish, seen as its theological adviser.

The Yemeni government, meanwhile, has been tied down battling two separate internal rebellions in the north and south. The various conflicts and the country's poverty and lack of resources have raised fears that instability could deepen.

Located at the tip of the Arabian peninsula, Yemen straddles a strategic maritime crossroads at the Red Sea and Gulf of Aden, the access point to the Suez Canal. Across the Gulf is Somalia, an even more tumultuous nation where the U.S. has said al-Qaida militants have been increasing their activity. Yemen also borders Saudi Arabia, the world's leading oil producer.

There have been a spate of assaults on the U.S. Embassy in Yemen.

In an attack in September 2008, gunmen and two vehicles packed with explosives attacked the U.S. Embassy, killing 19 people, including an 18-year-old American woman and six militants. None of those killed or wounded were U.S. diplomats or embassy employees. Al-Qaida in Yemen claimed responsibility.

In March 2008, three mortars missed the U.S. Embassy and crashed into a high school for girls nearby, killing a security guard. In March 2003, two people were shot dead and dozens more were wounded as police clashed with demonstrators trying to storm the embassy.

Last January, gunmen in a car exchanged fire with police at a checkpoint near the embassy, hours after the embassy received threats of a possible attack by al-Qaida. Nobody was injured. In April, embassy personnel were put on a one-week lockdown, barred from leaving their homes or the embassy after al-Qaida suicide bombings that targeted South Korean visitors.

As recently as July, security was upgraded in San'a after intelligence reports warned of attacks planned against the U.S. Embassy.

___

Associated Press writers Meera Selva in London and Anne Gearan in Washington contributed to this report.

 

 

War bonds proposed to pay for Iraq, Afghan conflicts

US lawmaker unveils 'war bonds' plan for Afghanistan AFP/Getty Images/File – US Representative Kendrick Meek, seen here in November 2009, introduced a bill that would empower the …
By Lesley Clark, McClatchy Newspapers Lesley Clark, Mcclatchy Newspapers – Wed Dec 16, 1:14 pm ET

WASHINGTON — Lawmakers in both houses of Congress have introduced legislation to pay for the wars in Afghanistan and Iraq by using a method that's a throwback to prior U.S. conflicts: war bonds.

Saying that it would "promote national shared sacrifice and responsibility," Rep. Kendrick Meek , D- Fla. , introduced a bill Wednesday in the House of Representatives that would authorize the treasury secretary to issue and sell war bonds to Americans to fund the wars. Sen. Ben Nelson , D- Neb. , filed companion legislation in the Senate earlier this week.

"At a time of tremendous sacrifice for our military families, we need to promote shared sacrifice and shoulder collective responsibility as a nation as we fight two wars halfway across the globe," Meek said, calling war bonds a "cost-effective way" to reduce dependence on foreign creditors.

He also said the bonds would "create an outlet for Americans to express their patriotism and support for our service members as well as the security mission for which they are deployed."

The legislation comes as Congress debates ways to pay for the wars, including a tax on the wealthy. Critics note that the bonds must be repaid eventually, merely postponing the debt.

The United States last issued war bonds during World War II.

The proposal comes as Meek's support for President Barack Obama's recent decision to escalate the war in Afghanistan has drawn criticism. Maurice Ferre , Meek's rival in the 2010 Democratic primary for a U.S. Senate seat, said last week that the congressman was "putting party before sound judgment."

Meek said Wednesday that the plan put the military "on a course for success in Afghanistan that was missing for many years."

He said his legislation came on the heels of estimates that the cost of supporting an American service member in Afghanistan — including housing, food, equipment, training and transportation — approached $1 million a year.

DO THEY THINK THAT WE THE PEOPLE ARE THAT STUPID?????

 

 

US air raids kill 63 civilians in Yemen

Press TV
Sunday, Dec 20th, 2009

Yemen’s Houthi fighters say scores of civilians, including many children, have been killed in US air-raids in the southeast of the war-stricken Arab country.

The Shia fighters on Friday reported the deaths of 63 people, including some 28 children, in the southeastern province of Abyan.

Almost 90 people were also injured in the attacks by US warplanes in the village of Bakazam, they added.

Yemen’s southern provinces have recently been the scene of US air strikes which Washington claims to be aimed at uprooting an al-Qaeda cell operative in the Persian Gulf state.

But the residents of the area dismiss the claims that al-Qaeda members are being targeted in the US attacks, while a Yemeni lawmaker has also called for an investigation into the raids.

The US operation in southern Yemen comes on top of a joint Saudi-Yemeni military campaign in the country’s war-weary north where Sana’a and Riyadh forces are engaged in a fierce fighting against the Houthi fighters.

The Houthis, who accuse the Sunni-dominated Sana’s government of discrimination and repression against Yemen’s Shia minority, were the target of the army’s off and on attacks before the central government launched an all-out fighting against them in early August.

Saudi Arabia joined the operation later following alleged clashes between its border guards and the Houthis, carrying out regular airstrikes and ground incursions against the fighters.

On Friday, the Houthis said over 160 missiles hit regions along the border with the neighboring kingdom, which they accuse of pounding civilians in villages within the Yemeni territory

The Saudis have conducted more than 70 air raids in 24 hours.

All Part Of The Plan, Monkey Boy…

Divide & Conquer…Murder & Destroy…Create Instability Where There Is Little, And Fuel The Fire Until It Burns Out-Of-Control…

This Is The Way Of The 33rd Degree…

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=p0i4sJqHPUk (”ENDGAME” PART 1/13)

 

 

Ukraine Strikes $2.4-bln Arms Deal With Iraq

Global Research, December 11, 2009
Russian Information Agency Novosti - 2009-12-10
 

Moscow: Ukraine will deliver a variety of military equipment to Iraq under a recent deal worth an estimated $2.4 billion, a Russian newspaper reported.

According to the Nezavisimaya Gazeta daily, the deal between the state arms exporter UkrSpetsExport and the Iraqi defense ministry is the largest in Ukraine's history and could lift the ex-Soviet republic to the 4th or 5th place among the top arms dealers in the world from the current 14th.

The new contract will ensure orders for over 80 Ukrainian firms, including the state-run Progress machine-building plant in Berdichev, which produced T-80UD tanks for Pakistan in the 1990s, the paper said in an article published on Wednesday.

Nezavisimaya Gazeta cited Sergei Zgurets, head of research at the Kiev-based Center for Army, Conversion and Disarmament Studies (CACDS) as saying the deal could have been influenced by Washington as the U.S. has allocated up to $3 billion in military aid to ready the Iraqi police and armed forces for the task of policing the country after the withdrawal of U.S. troops from Iraq.

Sources close to the Ukrainian Defense Ministry told the newspaper that the deal included the delivery of an unspecified number of armored vehicles, transport planes and high-precision weaponry.

Ukraine will also provide repair and maintenance services for the sold equipment.

Although the Ukrainian sources refused to comment on the political aspect of the deal, the newspaper suggested it could have a negative impact on the relations between Ukrainian and Russian arms manufacturers because Russia was actively seeking arms contracts with Iraq.

"This deal will certainly cause concern in Russia as Ukraine, which has always been one of Russia's main competitors on global arms markets, is now reestablishing its positions in this sphere," Nezavisimaya Gazeta cited a source in the Ukrainian military.

 

Nuclear row: Tehran threatens to target Israel

Three missiles rise into the air as a forth remains in the launcher on the ground during a test-firing in an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert

Three missiles rise into the air as a forth remains in the launcher on the ground during a test-firing in an undisclosed location in the Iranian desert. Photograph: AFP/Getty images

Iran's defence minister has threatened to target Israeli nuclear and other "unconventional" sites if it comes under attack.

Ahmad Vahidi's warning came after Iran accused western-backed Saudi Arabia of handing over a missing Iranian nuclear scientist to the US and claiming that Washington is holding 10 more of its officials.

"Iran's armed forces are fully prepared," Vahidi told reporters on a visit to Syria yesterday. "The Zionists know they are not able to carry out any of their threats against Iran and they are aware of Iran's firm response," he was quoted as saying by the semi-official Mehr news agency. "They are worried about carrying out a pre-emptive first strike and terrified about the repercussions of their act."

Iranian-Israeli exchanges are invariably hostile, but in recent weeks talks between Iran and the international community over its nuclear programme appear to have hit a dead end. The US says Iran has until the end of the year to resume negotiations or face sanctions. Iran insists its programme is peaceful. Israel is widely believed to have a large nuclear arsenal.

Tensions between Tehran and Washington have also been fuelled by the allegation that Saudi Arabia sent an Iranian nuclear scientist to the US. Iran said Shahram Amiri disappeared during a pilgrimage to Saudi Arabia in June and accused the US of acting like a "terrorist".

 


WHAT A CROCK OF SH*T!! 

Obama aide cites al-Qaida leader in Afghanistan

Behind Enemy Lines in Afghanistan Play Video ABC News  – Behind Enemy Lines in Afghanistan
FILE - Osama bin Laden is seen at an undisclosed location in this television AP – FILE - Osama bin Laden is seen at an undisclosed location in this television image broadcast in this … By ROBERT BURNS, AP National Security Writer Robert Burns, AP National Security Writer – 1 hr 19 mins ago WASHINGTON – Osama bin Laden may be slipping back and forth from Pakistan to Afghanistan. Or the U.S. might not have a clue, more than eight years after the al-Qaida leader masterminded the terrorist attacks on America.  Given a chance Sunday to clear away some of the mystery surrounding the whereabouts of the world's most wanted terrorist, Obama administration officials seemed to add to it with what appeared to be conflicting assessments.
 
President Barack Obama's national security adviser, James Jones, said that bin Laden, believed hiding mainly in a rugged area of western Pakistan, may be periodically slipping back into Afghanistan. But Obama's Pentagon chief, Robert Gates, said the U.S. has lacked good intelligence on bin Laden for a long time — "I think it has been years" — and did not confirm that he'd slipped into Afghanistan.
 
The failed hunt for bin Laden has been one of the signature frustrations of the global war on terrorism that former President George W. Bush launched after the Sept. 11 attacks. The main explanation given by both the Bush and Obama administrations for not getting bin Laden is that they simply don't know where he is. "If we did, we'd go get him," Gates said.
Jones, a retired Marine general, stressed the urgency of targeting bin Laden, and spoke of a renewed campaign to capture or kill him. Bin Laden had been sheltered in Afghanistan by Taliban allies while plotting the Sept. 11 attacks. When U.S. forces ousted the Taliban in late 2001, bin Laden fled into Pakistan from his mountain redoubt.Asked on CNN's "State of the Union" whether the administration has reliable intelligence on bin Laden's whereabouts, Jones replied, "The best estimate is that he is somewhere in North Waziristan, sometimes on the Pakistani side of the border, sometimes on the Afghan side of the border." He did not comment on the intelligence behind that estimate, nor did he cite a time period or describe more specifically bin Laden's apparent border crossings.
 
Gates told ABC's "This Week" that "we don't know for a fact where Osama bin Laden is," although he agreed that his likely location is North Waziristan.
That's part of the loosely governed Federally Administered Tribal Areas of northwest Pakistan where the border with Afghanistan is largely unrecognized and unmarked. There is little Pakistani government or military control in this remote region, and militants affiliated with al-Qaida can move freely across the frontier into Afghanistan.
 
The U.S. has targeted North Waziristan and other areas on the Pakistan side of the border with drone-launched missile strikes, killing substantial numbers of militants as well as Pakistani civilians. The Pakistani army has undertaken an offensive against Taliban militants in South Waziristan but it has not expanded the effort into North Waziristan.
Obama administration officials have often asserted, as did the Bush administration, that they believe bin Laden is being sheltered on the Pakistani side of the border, along with other senior al-Qaida leaders. But Jones broke new ground by saying publicly that the al-Qaida chief may have slipped back into Afghanistan.
 
Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., made a somewhat similar, if less specific, remark Sunday about bin Laden's movements. He told NBC's "Meet the Press" that knowledgeable people have told him that bin Laden "moves back and forth."
McCain did not elaborate, except to say that although bin Laden is not currently able to establish bases for training and equipping terrorists who would attack the United States, "I think it's important to get him."Gates said he does not blame a lack of Pakistani cooperation for the absence of intelligence on bin Laden.
 
"No, I think it's because if, as we suspect, he is in North Waziristan, it is an area that the Pakistani government has not had a presence in, in quite some time," Gates said, adding that although the Pakistani government has its own priorities, any pressure it brings on the Taliban is helpful because it is in league with al-Qaida.
 
During a visit to Pakistan in late October, Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton caused a stir by chiding Pakistani officials for failing to press the hunt for al-Qaida inside their borders. She said she found it "hard to believe" that no one in Islamabad knows where the al-Qaida leaders are hiding and couldn't get them "if they really wanted to."
 
Gates said he could not confirm recent news reports that bin Laden had been seen in Afghanistan earlier this year. BBC News reported last week that a Taliban detainee in Pakistan claimed to have met in January or February with an unidentified associate who said he had seen bin Laden just days earlier in Afghanistan, possibly in Ghazni province.
A recent Senate report said that bin Laden was unquestionably within reach of U.S. troops in the mountains of Tora Bora in eastern Afghanistan only three months after the attacks of Sept. 11, 2001, when American military leaders made the crucial decision not to pursue him with massive force.

The report asserted that bin Laden's escape at his most vulnerable in December 2001 laid the foundation for today's reinvigorated Afghan insurgency and inflamed the internal strife now endangering Pakistan. Staff members for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee's Democratic majority prepared the report at the request of the chairman, Sen. John Kerry of Massachusetts.

Tommy Franks, the retired Army general who ran the initial war effort in Afghanistan and chief of U.S. Central Command, wrote in his book, "American Soldier," in 2004 that he was confident in late 2001 that al-Qaida could not escape the Afghan forces leading the battle around Tora Bora, supported by heavy air strike from American warplanes.

 

Obama to lay out long-awaited Afghan plan

Tue Dec 1, 2009 9:05am EST
 
(BEEN IN AFGHANISTAN FOR 8 YEARS AND WE ARE STILL GOING AFTER AL QAIDA AND TRYING TO DEFEAT THE TALIBAN??  SOMETHING IS WRONG WITH THIS PICTURE! DON'T YOU THINK? OPEN YOUR EYES!!!!!)
 
 

By Steve Holland and Yara Bayoumy

WASHINGTON/KABUL (Reuters) - President Barack Obama plans to announce on Tuesday that he will send about 30,000 more U.S. troops to Afghanistan in a long-awaited war strategy shift that he hopes will defeat the Taliban and allow for a U.S. exit.

After three months of deliberations that some critics called dithering, Obama is to lay out his plan in a speech to cadets at the U.S. Military Academy at West Point, New York.

The high-stakes televised address will take place at 8 p.m. local (0100 GMT Wednesday). The White House says he has already given orders for the troops increase to his commanders.

Before the speech, Obama spoke for an hour by video phone to Afghan President Hamid Karzai, Karzai's office said.

Washington has had a fraught relationship with Karzai since Obama took office, which worsened over the past three months because of a fraud-tainted Afghan presidential election.

The troop increase represents a major gamble by Obama. He came to office vowing a greater focus on Afghanistan but has faced skepticism from some key advisers about the wisdom of putting more American lives and money on the line for a government in Kabul widely seen as corrupt and inept.

Obama plans to stress in his speech that the United States does not have an "open-ended commitment" in Afghanistan, but rather wants to hand over power to freshly trained Afghan forces and start withdrawing as soon as is practicable.

His challenge is to reverse what U.S. military commanders call a deteriorating situation due to a resurgent Taliban.

He also aims to persuade Karzai, who is due to name his new cabinet in coming days, to crack down on corruption and improve governance in return for U.S. support.

Both sides played down their differences at the Afghan leader's inauguration last month, Karzai vowing to fight graft and U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Clinton praising his steps.

Obama is also expected to stress the need for Pakistan to do more to fight militants who have crossed into Afghanistan. The administration has said getting the policy right in Islamabad is just as important as in Kabul.

U.S. officials said Obama would announce he has authorized sending about 30,000 more troops to Afghanistan. Currently there are roughly 68,000 U.S. troops and 42,000 allied forces there.

Obama is not expected to set a specific pullout date. The strategy envisages a phased troop buildup over the next 12 to 18 months followed by a gradual drawdown and handover to Afghan forces over three to five years, officials said.

A TOUGH SELL

The president may face a tough sell at home with many Americans weary of the war begun after the September 11 attacks in 2001 and wanting more focus on the weak U.S. economy. 

James Monaghan of Watertown, New York, reflected this mood in talking about his 20-year-old daughter based at nearby Fort Drum and currently deployed in Iraq.

"She's got kids. She's got a husband ... in the military as well," he said. "It's time for family to come home. Bring the kids home. You know, bring the kids home," he said.

Many Afghans, too, are wary. In Kandahar, the southern city where the largest share of reinforcement are likely to be sent, money changer Agha Lala said new troops would only bring "more suicide attacks and roadside bombs and loss of civilian lives."

Obama's announcement could set off a battle in congress over funding, since his own majority Democrats oppose a big troop surge. The added cost could reach $20-40 billion. Some Democrats have talked of imposing a "war surtax" to pay for it.

The new strategy will emphasize securing Afghan population centers and accelerating the training of Afghan security forces to gradually assume control.

Pentagon officials hope other NATO members will supplement the U.S. surge with up to 10,000 more troops, pushing the total number of reinforcements close to the 40,000 sought by the U.S. and NATO commander in Afghanistan, General Stanley McChrystal.

Britain has said it expects countries to pledge only a further 5,000 troops. The president on Monday talked to the leaders of Britain, France, Russia, Denmark and others.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband said Obama would make clear the withdrawal of U.S. troops would depend on building up Afghan forces to defend themselves.

"...their ability to prevent Afghanistan becoming a badland for al Qaida is very important indeed," Miliband told BBC radio.

The U.N. special envoy to Afghanistan, Kai Eide, said there must be more to the new strategy besides just sending reinforcements.

"The increase in troop level has to be accompanied by a continued effort on avoiding civilian casualties, respecting cultural ... sensitivities of the Afghan people, these two have to go hand in hand for this to succeed," he said in Kabul.

(Additional reporting by Patricia Zengerle, Phil Stewart, Adam Entous and Sue Pleming in WASHINGTON; Katharine Jackson in WATERTOWN; Ismail Sameem in KANDAHAR and Stefano Ambrogi in LONDON)


Rocket from Lebanon hits Israel; Israel fires back

Tue Oct 27, 2009 2:46pm EDT

 

JERUSALEM (Reuters) - A rocket fired from Lebanon struck inside northern Israel Tuesday causing no damage or injury, and Israel responded with artillery fire at Lebanon, the Israeli military and a Lebanese security source said.

An Israeli military spokeswoman said Israel was treating the shooting along the normally quiet though tense border "very seriously" and that it held the Lebanese government responsible.

There were no reports of casualties from the rocket that security sources said slammed into an open area near the northern Israeli border town of Kiryat Shmone, or from Israel's subsequent artillery fire at Lebanon.

A Lebanese security source confirmed a rocket had been fired from southern Lebanon from the village of Houla, and another Lebanese security source said Israel fired at least eight artillery shells afterwards toward that area.

The rocket was fired from an area near where the United Nations has investigated Lebanese charges that Israel planted spy devices then subsequently exploded them last week.

There were no immediate claims of responsibility for the shooting.

Both Israel and Lebanon accuse each other of violating a U.N.-brokered ceasefire from 2006 that ended a month-long war between Israel and the Hezbollah guerrilla group.

Lebanon says that if confirmed, the listening devices it says Israel planted and blew up would be a violation of that truce, in addition to the overflight of unmanned drone surveillance aircraft over southern Lebanon.

Israel has complained about two recent blasts involving weapons storage depots in southern Lebanon, and two rockets fired from Lebanon at northern Israel last month. A militant group claiming links to al Qaeda said it was responsible for the rocket attack.

(Additional reporting by Yara Bayoumy in Beirut; Writing by Allyn Fisher-Ilan; Editing by Jon Boyle)

 

 

A Wave of Russian Military Maneuvers

First reported by The New York Times, the incident is another sign of the Russian military's increased activity in the Western Hemisphere. Last year, Russia resumed flights by Tu-95 "Bear" bombers in international airspace near Alaska. Also, last December the Russian navy sent three ships to participate in joint exercises with Venezuela, the first such deployment to the region since the end of the Cold War.

One of the Defense officials said it's unclear what the Russian navy's intent is other than freedom of navigation. He added there is no intelligence that suggests the vessels have any upcoming ports of call in the Western Hemsiphere.

Morrell said the United States did not know specifically what the vessels were doing, but said it appeared to be part of an effort on Russia's part "to project force around the world, or at least to take excursions around the world."

"So we don't look at this action and automatically see threatening motives," Morrell said. "We view this, we are mindful of it, we watch it, but we do not assign motives that we don't believe are there."

Russian submarine activity off the American coastline was a common occurrence during the Cold War, but became rare as a Russian navy depleted by budget cuts hardly strayed far from Russia's coastline.

Comments by Russian navy officials suggested nothing out of the ordinary by the ships' presence off the U.S. coastline. The Russian state-run news service RIA Novosti quoted a senior Naval officer as saying, "Russian submarines have never stopped patrolling the world's oceans, but their movements are of a secret nature and are never commented on by representatives of the Navy."

 


Why Are Russian Subs Patrolling Off East Coast of U.S.?

Pentagon Says They Are Not Concerned About Russia's Recent Submarine Patrols


By LUIS MARTINEZ
Aug. 5, 2009

The Pentagon has detected two Russian-attack submarines patrolling several hundred miles off the East coast of the United States, but it's not clear if this is a sign that Russia is trying to reassert military capabilities severely weakened since the end of the Cold War.

Russian subs patroling off Eastern Seaboard
A new Russian nuclear submarine, the Yuri Dolgoruky, off the northern city of Arkhangelsk in July.... Expand
(AFP/Getty Images)

Two Defense Department officials confirm to ABC News that the submarines have been detected in international waters more than 200 miles from the U.S. coastline for the past two weeks, and that their actions have been determined to not be provocative.

Both Defense officials said one of the Russian submarines remained in international waters about 200 miles off the southeastern coast of the United States, and that the other submarine was operating off Greenland. American territorial waters begin 12 miles out to sea.

A statement by U.S. Northern Command confirmed the American military's tracking of the Russian submarines. "We have been monitoring them during transit and recognize the right of all nations to exercise freedom of navigation in international waters according to international law," said the statement.

At a Pentagon briefing on today, press secretary Geoff Morrell told reporters that the submarine patrol had not raised red flags because the Russian navy is free to operate in international waters as much as the U.S. Navy does.



 

Monday, 26 October 2009 18:18 Added by PT Editor Sarah Price

THE POPPI!!!!

Tora_Bora_1Afghanistan, October 26, 2009, (Pal Telegraph) - If we listen to our leaders we are led to believe that when the Afghanistan war first started the main area of activity was in the Nangarhar Province in the north-eastern region of Afghanistan.

Extensive carpet bombing was carried out in the vicinity of the Tora Bora Mountains.

Could this be Al Qaeda watching Tora Bora?

The entire border area between the Khyber Pass to the North and the Pakistani Federally Admininistered Tribal Area (FATA) to the south became a major area of operations. This series of bombing operations were clumsy to say the least. The bombing covering an extremely broad area and by the time operations had been completed they had killed over two hundred innocent civilians and just a couple of Taliban.

It was during the early stages of the war that we were told that this region was the stronghold of the Taliban and Al Qaeda with Osama bin Laden having his headquarter somewhere in this mountainous area. After some time we were again told that these key Taliban and Al Queda bases had been weakened and that most of these militants had now fled over the border into Pakistan.

The US blamed Al Qaeda for the 9/11 attack and this was why this particular area became their first priority. What President Bush didn't tell you is that he had already made plans to attack Afghanistan almost six months prior to 9/11 when he realized that the US backed Turkmenistan - Afghanistan - Pakistan - India (TAPI) could be in jeopardy. The US at the time were big friends of the Taliban and why not? When it comes to oil they would sell their soul! They had previously helped in training the Taliban during the Russian occupation and later realized that they would make good partner for a Joint Venture pipeline. As usual the US drove home a hard bargain and the Taliban rejected the deal. This immediately put the US on a war footing in order to secure this extremely lucrative deal that would bring trillions of dollars to the US economy over a long period of time when complete.

Once the US had pushed the militia over the border into Pakistan they then re-focused their activity to secure the route for the proposed TAPI pipeline much further south and in doing so neglected the area they had secured in the north-east. This was not the first time we were to hear that Al-Qaida were now pushed over the border and firmly embedded in northwest Pakistan. The British PM Gordon Brown also said on camera that the main threat now comes from Pakistan.

Afghanistan_Update

 

 

 

 

 

 

I continue to ask the question "Why are we still in Afghanistan? Why are there so many troops and more required? If the main terrorist activity is in the region indicated why are NATO troop's fighter such a long distance away from those they have been tracking down for such a long period of time? Ironically we have since heard that only around 100 Al Qaida now exist in Afghanistan so why remain? Is there some other hidden agenda such as the TAPI pipeline? Lets just take a brief look at the map above to show where the main problems area are in regard to these so called terrorist and also see where all our troops are dying and for what?

One can see that there is significant activity along the pipeline route with the highest death rate. The main enemy (according to the US, UK and NATO forces) are those that were driven over the border, but this factor doesn't appear to cause any concern. How many times have we seen a surge in certain areas to then see them pull out and watch the Taliban return to the area that so many people died for? If it was so important to remove the enemy from the area why wouldn't you stand your ground, defend and protect it?

As we can now see the Pakistan Government were harassed by the US to do something about terrorism in the northwest but for what purpose, to again attack the militia and have them cross back over the border into Afghanistan and if so who will stop them re grouping and killing more soldiers?

There are so many things that really do not make sense so let's look at the current action by Pakistan and see what the NATO forces are doing.
I once read that someone called this operation. "Operation Enduring Pipeline" I have always believed that this was all about oil (just like the Iraq war) and therefore this title really does fit the reality of what's going on in Afghanistan.

Pakistan sent in around 30,000 soldiers into the insurgent stronghold of South Waziristan, a tribal region bordering Afghanistan (as marked on the map). It was estimated that around 10,000 militants and foreign fighters exist in the region. The Pakistan Army stated that this was a full-scale ground offensive against Taliban and al-Qaida insurgents.

The headlines after day two of this operation read as follows:

"Pakistan hits Taliban, urges NATO to seal border" the article went on to say that the remote and rugged South Waziristan is a global hub for militants. It's ironic that the US forces have only returned to the adjacent Afghanistan province for a two day operation this month after an absence of over three years. One can see the frustration by Pakistan in being pushed by the US to resolve terrorism in their country which was as a direct result of US forces pushing the problem over the border. Now we see Pakistan troops have the potential to push them back into Afghanistan and no one will be on the other side to deal with the return of the problem.

Is the US really after Al Qaeda or is this all about prolonging the war effort to retain troops in Afghanistan for a much longer period and at the same time give them the opportunity to secure the proposed pipeline route that has been delayed so many times before. The US has applied much pressure on this TAPI pipeline and has now declared that construction will start in 2010, hence the urgent surge in troop requirements to secure the route.

HighwayIt was also interesting to note that a brand new highway was constructed between Herat and Kandahar which the Afghans thought served no purpose but of course it does serve a purpose because the pipeline will run alongside the highway. We now see the US Commander Gen. McChrystal asking for up to another 80,000 troops in Afghanistan if they are going to win this war. I find it absolutely unacceptable to send so many young men to meet their maker. If the Taliban doesn't get them then their own uranium based weapons will. As Doug Rokke once said if you go war you will die.

This is a classic rerun of the Vietnam War whereby the US with their huge army and extremely sophisticated weapons cannot defeat tribal foot soldiers who only use RPG's, small arms and roadside devices. Again I ask the question, when this next surge takes place where will the center of focus be? Will it be where it should be, on the border of Pakistan adjacent to the existing Pakistani Army surge or will it be along the pipeline route?

War_LimblessI am sure we all know the answer to this question. How many more young lives are going to be taken? How many more 18-25 year old men are going to return minus their limbs? During the Iraq war we never manage to find the statistics for those severely injured or who have become limbless. In Iraq it was thousands and in Afghanistan the number is steadily rising because of roadside bombs etc.

What shocked me today was to hear the start of a huge appeal for funds to support those returning that are badly injured. I find it unacceptable that such victims have to ask for charity money when they have served their country. All this in the name of economic greed and control of the worlds oil and gas supplies. The despicable actions by all those implicated in this false facade of lies and cover-ups are beyond imagination. Their arrogance and blasé approach to the risks associated with sending troops into a war zone that is totally contaminated by their own weapons is beyond words.

I remember an interview this week with the Afghan Ambassador to the US in Washington. He was asked what he thought about the war effort and why many thousands of troops are still required? He answered that we must remember that this is to protect the streets of America and Europe and therefore it is to our advantage to finish the job. It is interesting to note that the Taliban have never carried out any acts of terrorism in the US or EU to date. Obviously now that the US has labeled them as terrorists this will induce retaliatory acts of terrorism at a later date. I again repeat that Imperialism leading to the occupation of any Islamic country leads to self induced terrorism which then leads to suffering and extremes of poverty.

We have time and time again heard the denials from almost every official source and yet within their own organizations we see instructions being handed out to staff advising them of the dangers associated with uranium based weapons. I again name and shame all those implicated in the DU/EU cover-up and the true reason behind the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan namely: The United Nations(UN) - United Nations Environment Program (UNEP) - The United Nations Development Program (UNDP World Health Organization (WHO) - The International Commission on Radiological Protection (ICRP) - International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA) - The Governments of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) - The respective Departments of Defense/ Military - The Nuclear Industry - The Pharmaceutical Industry and all those Medical Experts and Institutions who accepted that DU was safe. I guess one must also add the World Bank (WB) and the International Monetary Fund (IMF) to this list, not because it is has any connection to Weapons of Mass Destruction (WMD) but because of the suffering they have caused around the world by Weapons of Mass Deception and Weapons of Mass Dependency. Shame on you all.

In 1996 Bin Laden gave some pre warning of the troubles ahead after feeling frustrated at the US Foreign Policy. As one would expect it fell on deaf ears. Here is what he had to say:

"The people of Islam have been afflicted with oppression, hostility and injustice by the Judio-Christian alliance and its supporter" "This shows our enemies "belief that Muslims" blood is the cheapest and that their property and wealth is merely loot." "Your blood has been split in Palestine and Iraq and the horrific image of the massacre in Qana in Lebanon are still fresh in people's minds."

He went on to say "The massacres that have taken place in Tajikistan, Burma, Kashmir, Assam, the Philippines, Fatani, Ogaden, Somalia, Eritrea, Chechnya and Bosnia-Herzegovina send shivers down our spines and stir up our passions" All this has happened before the eyes and ears of the world, but the blatant imperialism of America, under the cover of the immoral United Nations, has prevented the dispossessed from arming themselves."

Finally he said: "The latest and most serious" "is the occupation of Saudi Arabia, which is the corner stone of the Islamic world, place of revelation."

In closing I would also like to quote some words used by the World Islamic Front on the 23rd February 1998 which further revealed their anger and frustration at America:

"Ever since God made the Arabian Peninsula flat created a desert in it and surrounded it with the sea, it has never suffered such a calamity as these crusader hordes that have spread through it like locusts, consuming its wealth and destroying its fertility" "Firstly, for over seven years America has occupied the holiest parts of the Islamic lands, the Arabian peninsula, plundering its wealth, dictating to its leaders, humiliating its people, terrorizing its neighbors and turning its bases there into a spearhead with which to fight the neighboring Muslim peoples."

GhandiMohandas Gandhi once said "What difference does it make to the dead, the orphans, and the homeless, whether the mad destruction is wrought under the name of totalitarianism or the holy name of liberty and democracy"

This last paragraph sums it all up in relation to my own beliefs that "What goes around comes around" when he used these powerful words:

"When I despair, I remember that all through history the way of truth and love has always won. There have been tyrants and murderers and for a time they seem invincible but in the end, they always fall -- think of it, ALWAYS."
Mohandas Gandhi

- Peter Eyre, Middle East Consultant

 

 

United States to send 'up to 45,000 more troops to Afghanistan'

The US is expected to announce a significant surge of up to 45,000 extra troops for Afghanistan after Gordon Brown said that 500 more British troops would be sent to the country.

 

By James Kirkup and Andrew Hough
Published: 11:29PM BST 14 Oct 2009

President Barack Obama's administration is understood to have told the British government that it could announce, as early as next week, the substantial increase to its 65,000 troops already serving there.

The decision from Mr Obama comes after he considered a request from General Stanley McChrystal, the US commander in Afghanistan, to send tens of thousands of extra American troops to the country.

 

 

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup, the Chief of the Defence Staff, said: "I don't want to put words in the mouths of the Americans but I am fairly confident of the way it is going to come out."

An announcement next week could coincide with a meeting of NATO defence ministers in Bratislava, Slovakia, due next Thursday and Friday.

White House press secretary Robert Gibbs dismissed the claims, after President Obama met with his war council for the fifth time to map out a new strategy in Afghanistan.

"I would not put any weight behind the fact that a decision has been made, when the President has yet to make a decision," he told reporters in Washington.

"I've seen the report. It's not true, either generally or specifically. The president has not made a decision."

But Ministry of Defence sources indicated that the British Government had been told to expect a substantial increase in the number of of American troops.

Earlier Gordon Brown announced the British force in Afghanistan would increase to 9,500 but was told by former defence secretary John Hutton that he should have sent more troops to Afghanistan six months ago.

Mr Hutton said it would have been “much more helpful” to the British mission if the Prime Minister had listened to military calls for a larger force earlier this year.

Mr Brown previously blocked a military request for almost 2,000 extra troops for Afghanistan.

Gen Sir Richard Dannatt, the former Army chief who is now advising the Conservatives, said that decision left the force fighting with “part of one arm tied behind its back”.

Mr Hutton was defence secretary at the time of the earlier troop request. He resigned from the Cabinet in June.

He made it clear that he wanted the earlier deployment plan to go ahead and suggested that blocking it had undermined the British mission. The Prime Minister “should follow the military advice”, Mr Hutton said. “I think it would have been much more helpful had we had the additional troops there six months ago.”

Defence sources disputed this view, insisting that there were not enough trained troops to deploy at the time.

But Mr Hutton’s words overshadowed Mr Brown’s announcement in the Commons that he would increase the force in Afghanistan, taking British numbers there to 9,500.

As The Daily Telegraph reported last week, a total of 1,000 more British soldiers will go to Helmand province. Five hundred will be new troops from Britain. The remainder is a British battle group currently deployed in Kandahar province under international command.

The Prime Minister said the Kandahar battle group was being redeployed “to meet the changing demands of the campaign, which require greater concentration of our forces in central Helmand”.

He said he supported the new deployments “in principle”, saying that before the troops could be sent, certain conditions must be met. Those terms were that soldiers were properly equipped, that the Afghan government promised more forces to Helmand and that Nato allies bore more of the burden in Afghanistan.

David Cameron, the Conservative leader, mocked Mr Brown’s “condition”.

He said: “Won’t many people think: isn’t it the Government’s responsibility to make sure they have that necessary equipment? And might they also ask: why is it that after eight years we are still playing catch-up on equipment?” 

 

THE LYING GAME: HOW WE ARE PREPARED

FOR ANOTHER WAR OF AGRESSION

John Pilger
October 15, 2009
In his latest column for the New Statesman, John Pilger compares the current drum-beating for war against Iran, based on a fake "nuclear threat", with the manufacture of a sense of false crisis that led to invasion of Iraq and the deaths of 1.3 million people.

In 2001, the Observer in London published a series of reports that claimed an “Iraqi connection” to al-Qaeda, even describing the base in Iraq where the training of terrorists took place and a facility where anthrax was being manufactured as a weapon of mass destruction. It was all false. Supplied by US intelligence and Iraqi exiles, planted stories in the British and US media helped George Bush and Tony Blair to launch an illegal invasion which caused, according to the most recent study, 1.3 million deaths.

Something similar is happening over Iran: the same syncopation of government and media “revelations”, the same manufacture of a sense of crisis. “Showdown looms with Iran over secret nuclear plant”, declared the Guardian on 26 September. “Showdown” is the theme. High noon. The clock ticking. Good versus evil. Add a smooth new US president who has “put paid to the Bush years”. An immediate echo is the notorious Guardian front page of 22 May 2007: “Iran’s secret plan for summer offensive to force US out of Iraq”. Based on unsubstantiated claims by the Pentagon, the writer Simon Tisdall presented as fact an Iranian “plan” to wage war on, and defeat, US forces in Iraq by September of that year – a demonstrable falsehood for which there has been no retraction.

The official jargon for this kind of propaganda is “psy-ops”, the military term for psychological operations. In the Pentagon and Whitehall, it has become a critical component of a diplomatic and military campaign to blockade, isolate and weaken Iran by hyping its “nuclear threat”: a phrase now used incessantly by Barack Obama and Gordon Brown, and parroted by the BBC and other broadcasters as objective news. And it is fake.

On 16 September, Newsweek disclosed that the major US intelligence agencies had reported to the White House that Iran’s “nuclear status” had not changed since the National Intelligence Estimate of November 2007, which stated with “high confidence” that Iran had halted in 2003 the programme it was alleged to have developed. The International Atomic Energy Agency has backed this, time and again.

The current propaganda-as-news derives from Obama’s announcement that the US is scrapping missiles stationed on Russia’s border. This serves to cover the fact that the number of US missile sites is actually expanding in Europe and the “redundant” missiles are being redeployed on ships. The game is to mollify Russia into joining, or not obstructing, the US campaign against Iran. “President Bush was right,” said Obama, “that Iran’s ballistic missile programme poses a significant threat [to Europe and the US].” That Iran would contemplate a suicidal attack on the US is preposterous. The threat, as ever, is one-way, with the world’s superpower virtually ensconced on Iran’s borders.

Iran’s crime is its independence. Having thrown out America’s favourite tyrant, Shah Reza Pahlavi, Iran remains the only resource-rich Muslim state beyond US control. As only Israel has a “right to exist”in the Middle East, the US goal is to cripple the Islamic Republic. This will allow Israel to divide and dominate the region on Washington’s behalf, undeterred by a confident neighbour. If any country in the world has been handed urgent cause to develop a nuclear “deterrence”, it is Iran.

As one of the original signatories of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, Iran has been a consistent advocate of a nuclear-free zone in the Middle East. In contrast, Israel has never agreed to an IAEA inspection, and its nuclear weapons plant at Dimona remains an open secret. Armed with as many as 200 active nuclear warheads, Israel “deplores” UN resolutions calling on it to sign the NPT, just as it deplored the recent UN report charging it with crimes against humanity in Gaza, just as it maintains a world record for violations of international law. It gets away with this because great power grants it immunity.

Obama’s “showdown” with Iran has another agenda. On both sides of the Atlantic the media have been tasked with preparing the public for endless war. The US/Nato commander General Stanley McChrystal says 500,000 troops will be required in Afghanistan over five years, according to America’s NBC. The goal is control of the “strategic prize” of the gas and oilfields of the Caspian Sea, central Asia, the Gulf and Iran – in other words, Eurasia. But the war is opposed by 69 per cent of the British public, 57 per cent of the US public and almost every other human being. Convincing “us” that Iran is the new demon will not be easy. McChrystal’s spurious claim that Iran “is reportedly training fighters for certain Taliban groups” is as desperate as Brown’s pathetic echo of “a line in the sand”.

During the Bush years, according to the great whistleblower Daniel Ellsberg, a military coup took place in the US, and the Pentagon is now ascendant in every area of American foreign policy. A measure of its control is the number of wars of aggression being waged simultaneously and the adoption of a “first-strike” doctrine that has lowered the threshold on nuclear weapons, together with the blurring of the distinction between nuclear and conventional weapons.

All this mocks Obama’s media rhetoric about “a world without nuclear weapons”. In fact, he is the Pentagon’s most important acquisition. His acquiescence with its demand that he keep on Bush’s secretary of “defence” and arch war-maker, Robert Gates, is unique in US history. He has proved his worth with escalated wars from south Asia to the Horn of Africa. Like Bush's America, Obama's America is run by some very dangerous people. We have a right to be warned. When will those paid to keep the record straight do their job?


Israel urges West to stand firm against Iran



Israel's prime minister began an intensive round of telephone diplomacy to urge Western governments to stand firm against Iran in response to the latest revelations of its secret nuclear program

 

By Richard Spencer
Published: 6:27PM BST 27 Sep 2009

Israel calls on West to stand firm against Iran
Benjamin Netanyahu called Nancy Pelosi to urge tougher sanctions Photo: EPA

Benjamin Netanyahu telephoned Nancy Pelosi, Speaker of the United States House of Representatives, and other senators and congressmen to urge tougher sanctions.

"Action must be taken in all areas to increase pressure on Iran and impose crippling sanctions on it," he said, according to the Israeli newspaper, Haaretz. "If not now, then when?" The report suggests that Israel, which has been considering air strikes against Iran, is for now still pursuing diplomatic routes to preventing Terhan's development of nuclear missiles.

 

Related Articles

Mr Netanyahu is also trying to show he is mindful of the approach being taken to Iran by Barack Obama, US president. The prime minister knows that Iran is part of a broader geopolitical set of issues and that in the long run, should he wish to order a strike against Iran, it will be hard, if not impossible, to do so without American approval.

Mr Netanyahu was backed by a diplomatic barrage from other senior Israeli figures. Avigdor Lieberman, the hard line foreign minister, called on the international community to overthrow "the mad regime of Tehran". General Gabi Ashkenazi, chief of staff of the Israeli army, said there was still time to allow sanctions to work.

He said that Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, Iran's president, had "to know that he can end his days like Saddam Hussein or Gaddafi" – implying that he had the choice to renounce nuclear weapons in the manner of Colonel Muammar Gaddafi of Libya or be ousted like Saddam Hussein in Iraq.

There was a reverberating silence from most of the Arab world over the weekend. Saudi Arabia has refused to confirm or deny reports that it had given approval to an Israeli air strike, which would most easily be achieved by flying over Saudi airspace.

But an article in the London-based Asharq al-Awsat, a prominent newspaper backed by the Saudi royal family, made clear the unease felt by Iran's principal rivals for political dominance of the Gulf region.

It warned that Mr Ahmadinejad, weakened by this summer's post-election protests in Iran and the exposure of his secret nuclear plant, might lash out, perhaps using proxies such as the Iranian-backed Hezbollah movement in Lebanon.

"Iran may not hesitate to use the region in an attempt to counter the internal and external pressures that it is facing," Tariq Alhomayed, the newspaper's editor, said.

 

Iran test-fires long-range Shahab-3, Sejil missiles
Mon, 28 Sep 2009 07:07:11 GMT

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The Islamic Republic of Iran has successfully tested long range Shahab-3 and Sejil missiles in the third stage of a defense drill in a bid to bolster its defense capabilities, Press TV has learned.

The missiles were launched on Monday as part of an advanced military exercise named The Great Prophet IV which was carried out by the Islamic Revolution Guards Corps (IRGC).

The optimized Shahab-3 has a range of 1,300 to 2,000 kilometers.

The Sejil is a two-stage missile powered by solid fuel which was tested by the IRGC for the first time in the maneuver.

Both of the projectiles accurately hit their designated targets.

The IRGC successfully test-fired several models of medium-range Shahab-1 and Shahab-2 missiles during the first and second stages of military drill in central Iran Sunday night.

A number of missiles including Iranian-made Fateh-110, a short-range ground-to-ground missile and Tondar-69, a short-range naval missile, were also launched consecutively at mock targets across the country in the first stage of the military drill on Sunday morning.

According to the IRGC Air Force Commander Brigadier General Hossein Salami, the Shahab-2 missiles would hit targets at least 300 kilometers and at the most 700 kilometers away.

"The Great Prophet IV" maneuver is a sequel to "The Great Prophet III" which was carried out last year by the IRGC naval and ground forces in the Persian Gulf and the Strait of Hormuz region.

 



UK NEWS

SAUDIS WILL LET ISRAEL BOMB IRAN NUCLEAR SITE

Story Image


Mossad chief Meir Dagan

Sunday September 27,2009

By Gordon Thomas and Camilla Tominey

Sunday September 27, 2009

INTELLIGENCE chief Sir John Scarlett has been told that Saudi Arabia is ready to allow Israel to bomb Iran’s new nuclear site.

The head of MI6 discussed the issue in London with Mossad chief Meir Dagan and Saudi officials after British intelligence officers helped to uncover the plant, in the side of a mountain near the ancient city of Qom.

The site is seen as a major threat by Tel Aviv and Riyadh. Details of the talks emerged after John Bolton, America’s former UN ambassador, told a meeting of intelligence analysts that “Riyadh certainly approves” of Israel’s use of Saudi airspace.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband acknowledged that the danger of a nuclear arms race in the Middle East was “particularly potent” and refused to rule out military action altogether but he insisted: “We are 100 per cent focused on a diplomatic solution.”

Gordon Brown, US President Barack Obama and French President Nicolas Sarkozy have warned Iran’s leader Mahmoud Ahmadinejad that he must allow in weapons inspectors or face more sanctions.

The scene is set for a showdown next Thursday when Iranian officials meet representatives of the E3+3 group of Britain, France, Germany, the US, Russia and China in Geneva.

Significantly, Russia, which has previously resisted pressure for sanctions, said it also found the latest disclosures “disturbing”.

The site near Qom was detected three years ago by British, US and French intelligence agencies.

Diplomatic sources said it could hold 3,000 centrifuges, capable of making enough enriched uranium to build a nuclear bomb each year.

 

 

U.S. calls Iran missile tests "provocative"

Mon Sep 28, 2009 1:47pm EDT
 
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WASHINGTON (Reuters) - The White House on Monday called Iran's latest missile test-firings "provocative" and urged it to agree to allow immediate, unfettered access to its newly disclosed nuclear fuel plant at talks with world powers.

Iran test-fired a new round of missiles on Monday, flexing its muscle before a rare meeting in Geneva on Thursday between Iran and six countries, including the United States, after last week's disclosure that Tehran is building a second uranium enrichment plant.

"Obviously these were pre-planned military exercises," White House spokesman Robert Gibbs told reporters when asked about the missile tests. "I would lump any of these into the provocative nature in which Iran has operated on the world stage for a number of years."

Gibbs reiterated demands by President Barack Obama at the Group of 20 summit in Pittsburgh last Friday that Iran must come clean on its disputed nuclear program. Western powers accuse Iran of trying to develop atomic weapons, while Iran says it is only seeking peaceful electricity generation.

"They can agree to immediate unfettered access (of the nuclear fuel facility)," Gibbs said when asked what Washington wants from the much-anticipated talks. "That would be the least that they could do."

"There has never been a stronger international consensus to address Iran and its nuclear program than there is right now," he said.

(Reporting by Matt Spetalnick; editing by Paul Simao)

 

 

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