Military history repeating itself; Vietnam revisited.

.
.
.
.

McChrystal’s (ball folly and) Myth.

by Jeff Huber at Antiwar.com

.

.

There is no such thing a “victory” in the kinds of wars we’re fighting in Iraq and Afghanistan. The best one can hope for in these types of conflicts – counterinsurgency efforts in far-flung corners of the globe with fuzzy objectives and vague necessity – is to not be seen as having “lost.” For that to happen, unfortunately, you have to stick around for so long and fade away so gradually that, by the time you leave, nobody notices you’re gone.

.

(1. The American military is in Afghanistan because of Afghan Opium/Heroin worth about $50 –$80 billion a year once it is sold in the streets of Europe and North America transported by American military planes…..”Opium wars” redux.The American taxpayer pays for the operation in Afghanistan, and fights these wars, whilst a few criminals in the Pentagon and civilians allied to them profit from the operation. In such a scenario obviously most people trying to justify such costly operations would be groping around with cock and bull BS excuses to be in Afghanistan……including the likes of McChrystal, which for rational Americans would not make sense.

2. Iraq was about the Israeli desire for historical revenge for the Jewish peoples enslavement by the Assyrians, and the elimination of a regional rival with potential nuclear programs, and WMD programs generally. Iraq by 1990 had 1.1 million men under arms, 6000 tanks, 4,000 artillery pieces, 550 jets and extensive WMD programs as a result of the Iran/Iraq war…..but Israel was scared/shitting in the pants about this Iraqi might and wanted it neutralised via America.

There are some indications that Saddam was an American installed agent, indicated by the fact that he sought American “permission” to invade Kuwait in 1990, amongst other information, which the American ambassador gave informally.)

The neoconservative apparatus that got us into Iraq for reasons we still haven’t decided on threatens to keep us in Afghanistan indefinitely for reasons yet to be determined. Everything we’re doing in Central and Southwest Asia supposedly has something to do with eradicating al-Qaeda, yet there is

no sign of al-Qaeda in Afghanistan. The argument for persisting in Afghanistan says that we have to make sure al-Qaeda doesn’t go back there, yet as former CIA officer Philip Giraldi recently noted, credible assessments suggest that “Osama bin Laden’s al-Qaeda has likely been reduced to a core group of eight to ten terrorists who are on the run more often than not.”

.

(al-Qaeda as an “organisation” with a coherent structure and a clear doctrine does not exist in the Vietcong sense, ANC sense, or Hizbollah sense, never did, but is an elaborate hologram to justify American military operations in certain countries. 12,000 mostly Arabs were trained by the Americans/Israelis/ Pakistanis during the 1980′s and into the 1990′s, initially fighting the Soviets in Afghanistan in a “Jehad”. Of these approximately 7,000 went back to their own countries settling down into civilian life, getting married etc….doing the 9—5….or causing problems for those Muslim countries…..Algeria, Yemen, Indonesia……and so on.

.

Of the remaining 5,000 in Afghanistan, courtesy of Iran/America were covertly shipped to the Balkans in the 1990′s to fight “infidels” in Bosnia and Kosovo, and act as the Taliban’s shock troops to consolidate the country .

.

It is these 5,000 men who were labelled as “al-Qaeda” from 2000/2001, but nearly all of them fought the Soviets in Afghanistan, and then in Bosnia, Kosovo NOT as al-Qaeda, and NOT linked to Osama Bin Laden, taking orders from him…….and NOT involved in any terrorist ops targetting Western assets or civilians. These men if they have been guided by anyone it is the ISI, which operates under the direction of American/Israeli intelligence.

.

Thus it is more exact and correct to say that “al-Qaeda” is Western/Israeli intelligence assisted critically by the ISI. Of these 5,000, many are now dead, a few captured and the rest either in Iran, Pakistan or have returned to their countries of origin.

.

9/11 2001 was a joint Israel/Israeli-American agents operation to justify the current open ended wars, and blamed on “al-Qaeda”.

.

SO, Osama was never the leader of these 5,000 men….used extensively by the USA in various theaters, and trained by America/Israel. Osama Bin Laden never sat down with all of them in Afghanistan, and said “lets attack America, so that the American’s can occupy several Muslim countries for Israel”…….Osama until he died in December 2001 in Pakistan was an American agent, performing their guided theater, surrounded as always by a dozen followers and no more)

.

For the sake of keeping fewer than a dozen evildoers out of Afghanistan, Gen. Stanley McChrystal and his legion of supporters in the Pentagon, Congress, and the media insist we need to bring increase U.S. troop levels to over 100,000, and the overall coalition force level to a half-million, the number of troops we had on the ground at one point in Vietnam.

.

(unless we are looking at a buildup invasion force against Pakistan in the future……..and more war)

The half-million figure comes from the counterinsurgency field manual (FM 3-24, Counterinsurgency [.pdf]), which calls for 20 to 25 counterinsurgent forces per every 1,000 locals, and Afghanistan contain a tad over 28 million locals. Your cat can do the math from there. What your cat can’t tell you is the thought process behind the conclusion that it makes sense to pit a half-million persons under arms against a force of eight or ten persons who aren’t in the vicinity of where you plan to place your half-million armed people.

.

(If you love war and think YOU are the center of the world, attacking wedding parties, attacking civilians, strutting around in uniform, feeling self important, giving media presentations to the world, heroin, opium……..bloated Pentagon security budgets which are untraceable in the trillions……..then of course any obvious cock and bull will be offered)

That’s because your cat’s thought process isn’t as short-circuited as the cognitive quagmire going on in the minds of McChrystal and the people backing him.

The short version of this loopy logic equation goes like this: you put McChrystal in charge and he’s asking for what an official doctrine manual says he should ask for, so you have to give it to him. This skips over a trail of false assumptions that, lined up end to end, would span the Khyber Pass.

The requirement for a half-million to ten superiority ratio should have been laughed out of the discussion the moment it was mentioned. The counterinsurgency manual’s dictum that we must “convince the people of the government’s legitimacy” contains two dismal flaws in the context of Afghanistan (and Iraq as well). There is no convincing the Afghan people of the legitimacy of the Hamad Karzai government or any other government we replace it with.

.

(He has been in power approaching 8 years with nothing to recommend him, his brother is the biggest narco dealer in the country after the American military, and his deputy is a notorious criminal war lord……..which ALL Afghans know about, guarded by American security overtly……….and we talk about “convincing” the Afghans of the legitimacy of their leader? Ordinary Afghans live in Afghanistan, they know the real score. A pentagon manual isn’t going to teach them otherwise)

The biggest flaw in the pro-McChrystal plan argument is that the counterinsurgency manual reflects tried-and-true tactics and strategy. There has never been such a thing as a triumphant counterinsurgency conflict. These types of wars have all been indecisive and draining quagmires; the sorts of conflicts that Sun Tzu warned us about over two thousand years ago when he said “No nation ever profited from a long war.”

Yet it is that the military-industrial-congressional complex has adopted the “long war” concept, a gem of tank thinkery straight out of Orwell designed to keep America on a permanent wartime economy and in an endless state of fear and loathing of enemies vaguely defined and overly demonized.

Lacking a peer military adversary since the end of the Cold War, the American war mafia, headed by Bill Kristol’s Israeli-centric neoconservative cabal, casts about desperately for a “new Pearl Harbor” to justify its existence. The 9/11 attacks gave them the “catalyst” they needed to justify the invasions in Iraq and Afghanistan. It remains to be seen if we’ll be able to pull out of the flat spin they have flown us into.

.

(We can add AIPAC, Israel, the American Jewish media……….I suppose this goes as far as posible in implicating Israel for 9/11…………”A Clean Break” document 1996, PNAC 2000)

The greatest fallacy in the counterinsurgency doctrine is the notion that we can partner with the host nation to establish order and security. As U.S. Army Col. Timothy Reese recently observed, our years of effort at establishing a competent and reliable government and security apparatus in Iraq have come to naught. The “ineffectiveness and corruption” of Iraq’s government, he wrote in a recent memorandum, “is the stuff of legend.” Of Iraq’s security forces, he wrote, “corruption among officers is widespread.”

.

(No honest Iraqi would work with the American/Israeli occupation force after what has transpired in Iraq under their control……1.2 million dead civilians and 4.5 million refugees….so you hire thiefs, murders, liars and pimps………..the only problem with hiring thiefs, liars, murderers and pimps to do your work it is that they are not very good at running countries for some strange reason, and $ billions disappear, and you ask why? Iraq, Afghanistan, Pakistan)

Laziness is “endemic,” Reese said, and “Lack of initiative is legion.” These and other compelling reasons are why Reese recommended that it’s time to “declare victory” in Iraq and go home.

.

(Reese sounds like a racist fucker………….between 1757–1947, the British starved to death around 30 million “surplus” Indians who were deemed “lazy”, including many Aryans amongst them……….the problem is not the natives, but the occupation by alien entities who don’t have the best of intentions for the hosts they occupy, and the use of local thiefs, liars, murderers and pimps of these colonial countries under foreign occupation.

.

Iraq is the “Cradle of Civilisation”……….the base of human civilisation from where humanity gets its basics of existence……….and then remarkably again under Muslim rule it became the center of Arab civilisation. Before the invasion of 2003, Iraq had the highest literacy rate in the Middle East, and universal free health care……with 70% of the population living in cities, despite having psycho Saddam as its leader…………”lazyiness” doesn’t come into the equation; the ONLY problem is the American occupation of a Muslim country, and the presence of many Israeli security advisors in the country)

To think we can do better than this in Afghanistan is the epitome of delusion. Saddam Hussein’s Iraq, which we backed in a long war against Iran during the 1980s, was a real country with a real army and real institutions and infrastructure. Afghanistan has always been a fourth-world wasteland. When it comes to Afghanistan, our counterinsurgency manual amounts to little more than a ream of latrine linen.

The only reason we’re still playing political patty-cake about what to do in Afghanistan – or anywhere else in that part of the world – is to determine who gets the blame for “losing.” A popular adage of war says it’s the losers who determine when they’re over. So, the logic goes, as long as we don’t quit, we can’t lose. Hence the “long war.”

It’s all about seeing who gets the blame for failing to do the impossible.

Preparing for the Real Pandemic

Kevin D. Annett, M.A., M.Div. – Hidden from History September 20, 2009

Last week, many of the aboriginal people in the remote west coast village of Ahousaht were innoculated with the tamiflu vaccine. Today, over a hundred of them are sick, and the sickness is spreading.

In the same week, body bags were sent to similarly remote native reserves in northern Manitoba that have also received the tamiflu vaccine.

On the face of things, it appears that flu vaccinations are causing a sickness that is being deliberately aimed at aboriginal people across Canada, and this sickness will be fatal: a fact acknowledged by the Canadian government by their “routine” sending of body bags to these Indian villages.

Before you express your shock and denial at the idea that people are being racially targeted and killed, remember that murdering Indians with vaccinations is not a new or abnormal thing in Canada. Indeed, it’s how we Europeans “won the land”, and it’s one of the ways we keep it.

In 1862, Anglican church missionaries Rev. John Sheepshanks and Robert Brown inoculated interior Salish Indians in B.C. with a live smallpox virus that wiped out entire native communities within a month, just prior to the settlement of this native land by gold prospectors associated with these missionaries and government officials.

In 1909, Dr. Peter Bryce of the Indian Affairs department in Ottawa claimed that Catholic and Protestant churches were deliberately exposing native children tosmallpox and tuberculosis in residential schools across Canada, and letting them die untreated. Thousands of children died as a result. (Globe and Mail, April 24, 2007)

In 1932, B.C. provincial police attempted to lay charges against Catholic missionaries who had sent smallpox-laden Indian children back among their families along the Fraser river near Mission, BC. The RCMP intervened and protected the church, even though whole villages were wiped out as a result of the church’s actions.

In 1969, native children who escaped from the Nanaimo Indian Hospital on Vancouver Island described being inoculated with shots that caused many of them to die “with bloated up bodies and scabs all over”, to quote one survivor.

Knowing this history, it’s not surprising when Indians on isolated Canadian reserves start sickening and dying en masse from sudden illnesses, after receiving flu shots. After all, it’s still the law in Canada, under the apartheid Indian Act, that no on-reserve Indian can refuse medical treatments or experimentation. So it’s small wonder that these reserves are the places being targeted first to be injected with untested, unsafe and potentially lethal flu vaccines.

As an entire race of involuntary test subjects, Indians in Canada are a weather vane for what will befall all of us, and very soon. For the very techniques and weapons of genocide perfected against aboriginal people are now being deployed against “mainstream” Canadians.

Under Bill C-6, which is about to pass third reading in Parliament and become the law, no Canadian will be allowed to refuse innoculations for the swine flu, despite the fact that it is relatively benign and mild, and has killed only people who are already immune-compromised. Indeed, it is astounding that such coercion and dictatorial laws are being employed to deal with what the chief Canadian Health Officer has called a “mild seasonal flu”.

Clearly, another agenda is at work; but the time to ascertain and challenge that agenda has all but run out. This coming month, forced innoculations and imprisonment of those who refuse them may be a reality across Canada. And for what reason? Clearly, not for public health, considering the sickness and death caused by previousswine flu vaccines.

I believe that the real pandemic is about to be unleashed through the very vaccines being pushed by governments and pharmaceutical giants like Novartis and Glaxo Smith Kline. The shots will be the cause, not the cure, of the pandemic. Of course, those in power can disprove this by simply being the first people to take the swine flu shot: an event about as likely as these companies forgoing the multi-billion dollar profits they will reap from the mass vaccinations.

It’s indeed ironic that, very soon, many “white” Canadians may be suffering the same fate that aboriginal people have for centuries. Perhaps it’s fitting. For if we are indeed being targeted for extermination, or at the least martial law and dictatorship, we finally can have the chance to shed our complicity in the genocide of other people, and get on the right side of humanity – simply by having to fight the system that is causing mass murder.

Rev. Kevin D. Annett

260 Kennedy St.

Nanaimo, BC Canada V9R 2H8

250-753-3345

Source: www.hiddenfromhistory.org/RecentUpdatesampArticles/Sept202009PreparingfortheRealPandemic/tabid/107/Default.aspx

The US viper

NOT for the first time, the US, through its ambassador, and the Pakistan military have differing perspectives. While the COAS, General Kayani has categorically ruled out US strikes in Balochistan, the US Ambassador has had the temerity to hold forth on what are internal matters of Pakistan and hint at possible US action in Balochistan. It is interesting to note the confusion that prevails in Patterson’s imperialist mind. On the one hand, she admits that the US has little solid intelligence on Quetta, with no human or predator intelligence. Yet, on the other, the US is convinced that Quetta is the stronghold of Mullah Omar and his Taliban – the so-called “Quetta Shura”. Now where did they get such strong and authentic intelligence on this count, given their own admission? After all, the Pakistan military spokesperson, Maj-General Abbas has declared that there are no Taliban in Quetta and the military’s intelligence would surely be more viable. But the US, it would seem, prefers to doubt the Pakistan army – such is the level of mistrust between the Pakistan military and its supposed ally, the US. Instead, the US believes its ill-informed media and some Pakistani commentators whose livelihood depends on saying and writing what the US wants to hear – statements that state the Taliban are in Quetta and are getting their logistical supplies and weapons from there, regardless of the veracity of such a claim.

What makes matters worse is the strange silence of Pakistan’s political government and leadership. Although the prevailing situation demands they support the military’s claims and insist there can be no US attacks on Quetta, they have chosen instead to maintain a silence that speaks volumes about covert deals and dubious intents. That is unfortunate for Pakistan because after the latest statements coming from Ambassador Patterson, it does not serve Pakistan’s interests to have her remain in Islamabad. She has declared openly that Pakistan had made clear that its priorities were different from those of the Americans. She has also asserted that “there are people who do not threaten Pakistan but who are extremely important to us.” Not only has she chosen to publicly challenge whether Pakistan really controls its territory – that, according to her, being a worry for the US – she has cast aspersions on the Pakistani leadership and nation as well. As she declared imperially, “You cannot tolerate vipers in your bosom without getting bitten.” It is time the Pakistani authorities understood clearly who the viper in our bosom is who keeps biting us at every turn. And this viper needs to be thrown out of Pakistan – according to diplomatic procedures of course – which would be the clearest message we could send to the US that there are certain red lines no diplomat or foreign government representative can cross.

Why Would Washington Bring Pakistan and Iran Together, At This Time?

Iranian foreign minister visits Pakistan

Embassy in Washington
WASHINGTON: Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki made a rare visit to Washington on Wednesday to visit Iran’s interests section at the Pakistani embassy, a US official said.

Mottaki’s visit, which was authorized by Washington, is highly unusual as the two countries have not held diplomatic ties for three decades and efforts by President Barack Obama’s administration to engage with Iran.

But Philip Crowley, the State Department’s assistant secretary of state for public affairs, played down any suggestion that the US decision to grant Mottaki’s request amounted to a gesture to Iran by the new administration.

“He wanted to visit the Iranian interests section at the Pakistani embassy and we granted that request,” Crowley told reporters. “I wouldn’t read too much into this. It was a straightforward request, and we granted it,” Crowley said. Crowley added US government officials had no plans to meet Mottaki during his visit to Washington.

Attack Quetta, Supply Convoys Stop.

‘Drone attacks to make Nato supply line insecure’

By Muhammad Ejaz Khan

QUETTA: Rejecting reports about the presence of Taliban in the provincial metropolis, Balochistan Chief Minister Nawab Muhammad Aslam Raisani has said the US would not commit the mistake of conducting drone attacks in Balochistan, as it would not only harm the US interests in the province but also disrupt the supply line for Nato forces to Afghanistan.

If the US conducted drone attacks in Balochistan, then its backlash would make the supply line highly insecure in the province, the chief minister said while talking to newsmen here on Wednesday.

Reports about the presence of Taliban in the city or its suburbs are baseless and just a rumour, he added. He said he had never heard about the Quetta Shura and even the Taliban spokesman had also contradicted the news about the presence of Taliban supreme commander Mullah Muhammad Omar in Quetta. “We would not allow anybody to use the soil of Balochistan against anyone,” he said.

Raisani said if the US conducted drone attacks in Balochistan, then it would generate a variety of problems for America as the US supply line to Kandahar goes through Balochistan. He said he held meetings with the Pashtun and Baloch tribal elders and was reassured that the Taliban would not be allowed to establish sanctuary in Balochistan, as strict vigilance is being maintained round-the-clock on all the border areas of the province.

Taliban film shows leader is dead

The video shows Baitullah Mehsud lying amid virtual silence

The Taliban in Pakistan have released a video confirming that their former leader Baitullah Mehsud is dead.

A video received by the BBC shows the body of the former head of Pakistan’s largest Taliban group lying in a room. It is not clear where it was taken.

Mr Mehsud was killed on 6 August in the tribal region of South Waziristan in a missile attack by a suspected US drone.

The video came as officials said at least six people had been killed in a fresh drone attack in North Waziristan.

See a map of the region

The strike near the town of Mir Ali was the third such attack in the past 24 hours against militant targets near the Afghan border, intelligence officials said.

Two missile attacks on Tuesday, one in South Waziristan and one in North Waziristan, left at least 12 suspected militants dead.

Covered

US and Pakistani officials were quick to claim Mr Mehsud’s death, but it took nearly three weeks for the Taliban to admit he had been hurt in the attack and had later died.

Hundreds have been killed in drone attacks in the past year

It is not clear why they have decided to release the video of their former leader now. They announced his death and named a successor, Hakimullah Mehsud, in late August.

The BBC’s Syed Shoaib Hasan in Islamabad says the video shows Baitullah Mehsud lying on a flat surface in a room, amid virtual silence.

His entire body is covered in a white funeral shroud, so it is difficult to tell how his body was injured in the attack.

There are no marks on his face, except for a few scratches near his nose.

A man is shown in the video crouching near the body clearly stricken with grief.

The video, which lasts nearly two minutes, has little audio. Two sentences are spoken.

A voice, apparently that of the video maker, says: “If there was a leader, there would have been some preparations.”

Later, the same voice says: “May Allah destroy these cruel people who do not use rifles and Allah knows what else, to kill us.”

Pakistan’s government publicly condemns drone attacks, arguing that they fuel anti-American feeling, but many observers say Islamabad secretly endorses the tactic.

Hundreds of militants and civilians have been killed in dozens of such attacks in the past year.

Pakistan discovers ‘village’ of white German al-Qaeda insurgents

Investigators have discovered a “Jihadi village” of white German al-Qaeda insurgents, including Muslim converts, in Pakistan’s tribal areas close to the Afghan border.

By Dean Nelson in New Delhi and Allan Hall in Berlin
Published: 11:44AM BST 25 Sep 2009

Taliban fighter in al-Qaeda video grab Photo: AFP/GETTY IMAGES

The village, in Taliban-controlled Waziristan, is run by the notorious al-Qaeda-affiliated Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which plots raids on Nato forces in Afghanistan.

A recruitment video presents life in the village as a desirable lifestyle choice with schools, hospitals, pharmacies and day care centres, all at a safe distance from the front.

In the video, the presenter, “Abu Adam”, the public face of the group in Germany, points his finger and asks: “Doesn’t it appeal to you? We warmly invite you to join us!”

According to German foreign ministry officials a growing number of German families, many of North African descent, have taken up the offer and travelled to Waziristan where supporters say converts make up some of the insurgents’ most dedicated fighters.

The Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan, which has a foothold in several German cities, has capitalised on growing concern over the rising profile of German forces in Afghanistan. Their role has become increasingly controversial in Germany in recent weeks after dozens of civilians were killed in an air strike ordered by German officers.

Last night a foreign ministry spokesman told The Daily Telegraph they were now negotiating with Pakistani authorities for the release of six Germans, including “Adrian M”, a white Muslim convert, his Eritrean wife and their four year old daughter, who were arrested as they were making their way to the “German village”. They are particularly concerned about the welfare of the child.

They are being held in custody in Peshawar after their arrest in May shortly when they crossed the border from Iran. They are understood to have left Germany in March this year.

The spokesman said negotiations were “under way” with Pakistani authorities “concerning a group of German citizens” and that it had been aware that the Islamic Movement of Uzbekistan had been recruiting in Germany “since the beginning of the year”.

Their recruitment drive has been led by “Abu Adam”, a 24-year-old German believed to be of Turkish or North African descent who was raised with fellow Jihadi, Abu Ibrahim, in the smart Bonn suburb of Kessenich.

Adam, whose real name is Mounir Chouka, received weapons training from the German army as part of his national service, and later spent three years training at the Federal Office of Statistics where colleagues described him as a “nice boy”.

He left in 2007, telling colleagues he was joining a trading firm in Saudi Arabia, but is believed to have joined a terrorist training camp in Yemen.

In another recruitment video released earlier this year he urged supporters to: “Die the death of honour.”

Khalid Khawaja, a former Pakistan intelligence officer, who describes himself as a friend of Osama bin Laden, said he was aware of a German contingent and that there were a number of Swedish converts too who had arrived in Pakistan “for Jihad”.

“The Europeans are there [in Waziristan]. The most dedicated people there are from Europe. They will do anything for Islam. They are not there because their fathers are Muslim, but by choice,” he said.

For G-20, Pittsburgh became a police state

JACQUELINE LARMA / Associated Press

Pittsburgh police in riot gear redeployed after confrontations with protesters on Thursday.

Massive force routed cherished constitutional values.

By Steve Hallock

The world economy may or may not have emerged stronger from last week’s G-20 summit in Pittsburgh. And the first non-capital city to host the summit enjoyed the public-relations boon of showcasing its Phoenix-like rise from the ashes of the steel industry. But the Constitution took a hit.

Government officials decided a massive, preemptive police presence was necessary to avoid the raucous demonstrations that marred past economic summits. They established a virtual police state that quickly extinguished any spark of dissent, and a federal court ruling gave them free rein to do so.

To begin with, there was an oxymoronic requirement that groups get permits to march and demonstrate during the summit. Requiring citizens to obtain permission to gather, let alone speak, violates the spirit of the First Amendment.

But even demonstrators who had permission faced zealous intimidation. It started during the first demonstrations of the week, before the summit commenced. Police delayed one properly credentialed march and denied another group access to a public bypass.

Without a warrant or show of probable cause, police also interfered with the activist group Seeds of Peace’s attempts to serve free meals to demonstrators from a converted bus, which was parked legally on private property. Police cited the group for silly traffic and vehicle-code violations, and they detained members on loitering charges while they were walking to a residence where they were staying.

Two days before the summit began, U.S. District Judge Gary L. Lancaster offered legal justification for the police activities to come. Noting the extraordinary security needs of an important international gathering, he refused to grant a restraining order sought by Seeds of Peace and another organization.

“I will not enjoin the city from enforcing these laws against anyone,” the judge said, according to the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. He added that Seeds of Peace’s good intentions and free-speech rights did not give the group “immunity from local traffic and zoning laws.”

Responding to the judge’s ruling, Witold Walczak, director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Pennsylvania, told the paper, “It’s hard to imagine a situation where a peaceful group that makes food … could attract this much firepower and police attention and not be [a target of] harassment.” It was also hard to understand the judge’s comment that the parties were “not here to determine if constitutional violations have occurred.”

Judge Lancaster’s logic was quite a stretch. Police had ordered the Seeds of Peace bus to stop 20 yards from its destination and then detained it for two hours for a safety inspection by the city’s commercial-vehicle enforcement unit. This was hardly routine enforcement of a city’s traffic and zoning regulations.

Upholding the city’s right to employ such tactics in this early legal challenge set an unfortunate tone for the summit. While the judge’s ruling may not have been the final word on possible constitutional violations, it gave the police a pass to do as they pleased in handling the larger planned and unplanned demonstrations later in the week.

The police did just that, arresting, gassing, jailing, and dispersing protesters at will. Thousands of riot-gear-clad police and National Guard troops employed an arsenal of ear-piercing sound effects, rubber bullets, clubs, and chemicals to herd and corral marchers. Protesters and their messages were penned safely into nooks far away from the eyes and ears of the summit participants.

Supporters of such tactics cite the dangers of terrorism, the threat of violence, and the inconvenient disruption of political proceedings as justifications for limiting free assembly and speech. But the First Amendment does not apply only during periods of safety and calm. Indeed, it is during perilous times that constitutional guarantees of speech and assembly are most necessary – and most endangered.

Because any subsequent rulings on police tactics during the summit would come far too late to have any legal or tactical use, Judge Lancaster’s early ruling inflicted real and lasting damage. It gave the police unrestrained power, leaving the messy matter of constitutionality to be determined at a later – and meaningless – date.

---

Steve Hallock is an assistant professor of journalism at Point Park University in Pittsburgh. He can be contacted at shallock@pointpark.edu.

Pakistan Claims That Predator Attacks in Quetta is “Red Line”

Pakistan warns United States against drone attacks

Pakistan has warned the United States that it will not allow drone attacks on suspected Taliban bases in its troubled Balochistan province, military sources have said.

By Dean Nelson, South Asia Editor
Published: 5:00AM BST 01 Oct 2009

Drone attacks have been successful in Waziristan Photo: REUTERS

The army chief’s warning was disclosed amid growing tension over American claims that Islamabad was refusing to target the Taliban’s ‘Quetta Shura’ – the leadership council of former Afghan ruler Mullah Omar.

Washington believes the ‘shura’ is plotting attacks on Nato forces in Afghanistan from ‘safe havens’ in South-West Pakistan.

American State Department and intelligence officials are believed to have warned Pakistan President Asif Zardari that they will launch their own drone attacks on the shura if the Pakistan Army fails to target its bases.

Tensions between Washington and Islamabad increased earlier this week after American Ambassador Anne Patterson said the ‘Quetta Shura’ was now high on its list of priority targets.

“In the past, we focused on al Qaeda because they were a threat to us. The Quetta Shura mattered less to us because we had no troops in the region,” she said. “Now our troops are there on the other side of the border, and the Quetta Shura is high on Washington’s list,” she said in an interview with the Washington Post.

She had earlier told The Daily Telegraph that Pakistan however has “different priorities.” Her comments and the threat of drone attacks on what Pakistanis call a ‘settled area’ – a part of Pakistan proper rather than the tribal areas it has never fully controlled – has caused alarm throughout its military establishment.

Lieutenant-General Talat Masood, a retired senior Army officer and influential strategic analyst, said drone attacks in Balochistan would be a serious breach of Pakistan’s sovereignty and a threat to the alliance between the two countries.

“It would be really dangerous and would rupture the relationship. Pakistan’s tolerance levels would cross the threshold and it would be taken very seriously. It would mean the U.S does not respect our sovereignty and does whatever it wants. It would fuel anti-Americanism. Across the spectrum, the government and the army would not be able to swallow it,” he said.

Drone attacks have been successful in Waziristan, where American controllers in Afghanistan have collaborated with Pakistan Army officers on targets, and there is growing support within the Central Intelligence Agency for Predator strikes to be intensified. Eight militants were killed near Miranshah, North Waziristan on Wednesday when a drone struck a Taliban meeting.

Is Ahmadinejad a ‘Gift’ for Israel?

[SEE: Ahmadinejad]

Is Ahmadinejad a ‘Gift’ for Israel?

By Robert Mackey

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Reasonable, concise and measured, the Palestinian leader Mahmoud Abbas demonstrated how not to get attention during an address to the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Friday.

On Friday, just three days after basking in the spotlight of international attention — meeting with President Obama and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel in New York to talk about reviving the Middle East peace process — Mahmoud Abbas, the Palestinian president, gave an address to the United Nations General Assembly devoid of histrionics that was almost completely ignored.

To a certain extent Mr. Abbas was simply unlucky to have been scheduled to speak on the same day that the dispute over Iran’s nuclear program flared up and dominated the news cycle. But even before President Obama accused Iran of building a uranium enrichment facility in secret, the Palestinian leader and the concerns of his people were marginalized when the Mr. Netanyahu chose to focus, in his address to the General Assembly on Thursday, on the threat from Iran and the fact that its president, Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, expressed doubts about the Holocaust last week.

Daniel Acker/Bloomberg Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel showed a Nazi document on plans for the Holocaust at the United Nations.

Despite the fact that Mr. Ahmadinejad defied expectations by not mentioning the Holocaust at all during his address to the United Nations General Assembly on Wednesday — five days after he reportedly called the killing of six million Jews by Nazi Germany “a lie based on an unprovable and mythical claim” — Mr. Netanyahu began his address on Thursday in New York with an outraged rebuttal of Mr. Ahmadinejad’s repeated questioning of the historical record.

Near the start of his address, Mr. Netanyahu said:

Yesterday the President of Iran stood at this very podium, spewing his latest anti-Semitic rants. Just a few days earlier, he again claimed that the Holocaust is a lie.

Last month, I went to a villa in a suburb of Berlin called Wannsee. There, on January 20, 1942, after a hearty meal, senior Nazi officials met and decided how to exterminate the Jewish people. The detailed minutes of that meeting have been preserved by successive German governments. Here is a copy of those minutes, in which the Nazis issued precise instructions on how to carry out the extermination of the Jews.

Is this a lie?

A day before I was in Wannsee, I was given in Berlin the original construction plans for the Auschwitz-Birkenau concentration camp. Those plans are signed by Hitler’s deputy, Heinrich Himmler, himself. Here is a copy of the plans for Auschwitz-Birkenau, where one million Jews were murdered. Is this too a lie?

Mr. Netanyahu went on to call the moral legitimacy of the United Nations into question for letting Mr. Ahmadinejad speak at all, and chastised delegates who sat through the Iranian president’s speech, in which he called Israel “racist” and said its treatment of the Palestinians amounted to “genocide.” As can be seen in this video report from Al Jazeera, Mr. Netanyau also said: “The most urgent challenge facing this body is to prevent the tyrants of Tehran from acquiring nuclear weapons.”

There is no doubt that Mr. Netanyahu is outraged by Mr. Ahmadinejad’s claims about the Holocaust, but his decision to engage so passionately with Iran’s president, while all but ignoring the conflict at home, also helped to change the subject from a conversation that presents difficulties for Israel’s leader — how to make peace with Palestinians without alienating his supporters — to one that allows him to seize the moral high ground.

The arc of the conversation this week in New York — moving from discussions of Middle East peace on Tuesday, to the protests against Mr. Ahmadinejad on Wednesday, to Mr. Netanyahu’s presentation of documentary evidence of the Holocaust on Thursday and to the full-blown international argument on Friday about Iran’s nuclear weapons — was undoubtedly more favorable to Israel’s prime minister than if Iran had been removed from the equation and the world had spent four days talking about Israel’s refusal to stop expanding its settlements on the West Bank.

The way the week played out instead recalls an observation made last year by a former head of the Israeli intelligence service, the Mossad, who told an Arab-language satellite channel that Iran’s current president is, paradoxically, very good for Israel.

As a reader of The Lede pointed out, last year, the Israeli newspaper Haaretz reported that the former intelligence chief, Ephraim Halevy, called Mr. Ahmadinejad a “gift,” since his inflammatory anti-Israel rhetoric “unites the entire world against Iran.”

In remarks Haaretz said were made in an interview with Al Hurra, an American-financed Arabic channel, Mr. Halevy claimed that Iran’s president served a vital Israeli interest by helping to make the case that Iran’s current government is “impossible to live with.” He added: “We couldn’t carry out a better operation at the Mossad than to put a guy like Ahmadinejad in power in Iran.”

In the same article, Haaretz noted that another former senior Mossad officer, who served under Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, told Time magazine that Israeli hardliners were wrong to say that Iran posed an “existential threat” to Israel. “Iran’s achievement,” the former intelligence official said, “is creating an image of itself as a scary superpower when it’s really a paper tiger.”

Earlier this week, The Lede noted that some analysts were asking if Iran’s president was trying to change the subject, from questions about the legitimacy of his election to his defiant stands on Iran’s nuclear program and Israel’s legitimacy as a state. As the week ends, the conversation has certainly shifted, but perhaps in a way that Mr. Ahmadinejad will be less than happy about.

Finally, we should note that in an interview with Akiva Elder published Haaretz in 2003, Mr. Abbas denied that he had denied the Holocaust in a book based on his doctoral dissertation:

The question about whether he denied the Holocaust in his Ph.D. angers Abbas. “I wrote in detail about the Holocaust and said I did not want to discuss numbers. I quoted an argument between historians in which various numbers of casualties were mentioned. One wrote there were 12 million victims and another wrote there were 800,000. I have no desire to argue with the figures. The Holocaust was a terrible, unforgiveable crime against the Jewish nation, a crime against humanity that cannot be accepted by humankind. The Holocaust was a terrible thing and nobody can claim I denied it.”

Ahmadinejad

["Ahmadinejad" is an assumed name for an "Islamic" leader with secret Jewish DNA, who turns-out to be the Zionist state's greatest PR blessing.  If it were not for Ahmadinejad's big mouth and constant ramblings about the Holocaust, then there would be no easy way for Israeli propagandists to alarm the world about Iran's nuclear program.  He gives the Israelis every excuse they need to grab the world's attention.  The following report on Ahmadinejad's roots is from 2005, when the little creep first surfaced.]

A humble beginning helped to form Iran’s new hard man

Robert Tait in Aradan

The Guardian,  2 July 2005

Ahmadinejad has tasted the poverty he wants to eradicate

The early childhood home of young Mahmoud Saborjhian sits derelict and uninhabitable; the garden in which he once toddled is overgrown with weeds and used for roosting chickens. The well where his parents used to store the drinking water they collected from local channels is dry, long-since rendered obsolete by the economic progress that delivered running water to a parched region.It is a scene redolent of Iran’s past. But for Iranians, these humble surroundings – in the town of Aradan, about 80 miles south-east of Tehran and directly on the path of the ancient Silk route – have acquired a contemporary significance.

This is where the country’s newly elected president, better known as Mahmoud hmadinejad,was born, the fourth of seven children.

The Saborjhian family rented the two-storey house before leaving their impoverished environment in the late 1950s in search of prosperity in Tehran. Mr Ahmadinejad was little more than one year old when they went to the city.

It was a move that coincided with changing the family name, a step taken for a mixture of religious and economic reasons, relatives say.

The name change provides an insight into the devoutly Islamic working-class roots of Mr Ahmadinejad’s brand of populist politics.

The name Saborjhian derives from thread painter – sabor in Farsi -a once common and humble occupation in the carpet industry in Semnan province, where Aradan is situated.

Ahmad, by contrast, is a name also used for the prophet Muhammad and means virtuous; nejad means race in Farsi, so Ahmadinejad can mean Muhammad’s race or virtuous race.

“Moving from a village to big cities was so common and widespread at that time that perhaps people, not wanting to show their roots, would change their names,” said Mehdi Shahhosseini, 31, son of one of Mr Ahmadinejad’s cousins, still living in Aradan.

“Some people were more religious and chose names to reflect that.

” If the concealment of the family’s origins has diminished local pride in Mr Ahmadinejad, it does not show. This week, residents of Aradan – a town of 7,000 people sitting in the shadow of the Alborz mountains – had a a street festival to celebrate his landslide victory in last week’s presidential election. It was an occasion born of surprise as much as joy.

“We never expected him to be president,” Mr Shahhosseini said. “We could see he was mproving and making progress but we thought he would stay in his area of expertise [the Islamist mayor of Tehran has a PhD in traffic management and engineering].”

About 98% of local voters are believed to have backed Mr Ahmadinejad in the run-off contest against Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani, a former president.

Mr Ahmadinejad, 49 – who will takeoffice next month – still makes visits his birthplace to pay respect to the memory of a late uncle buried in the local cemetery. He keeps in close contact with cousins, who visit him in Tehran.

Relatives say his professed concern for the poor and Iran’s growing wealth gap stems from his familiarity with the local area, which has a fragile economy based on sheep and cattle farming.

“He has tasted poverty himself. He and his family have had a lot of problems,” said Mehran Mohseni, 32, the son of another cousin. “The family was not poor but they were living very simple lives. He had to struggle to get his BSc and his PhD. His life is not luxurious at all. There are no sofas in his house in Tehran, only cushions and rugs.”

The president-elect’s solidarity with the worse off is also believed to have been influenced by his father, Ahmad, who became a blacksmith in Tehran after running a grocery store and then a barber’s shop in Aradan.

Mr Ahmadinejad, it is said, refuses to eat at the table of any host who does not pay zakat, the portion of their annual income which Muslims are required to give to the poor.

Relatives talk approvingly of how Mr Ahmadinejad’s father, who now works in a revolutionary guards’ shop, sold his Tehran house for £37,000 and bought a smaller home for half the price, giving the proceeds to a poor people’s charity.

Talking with adulation bordering on reverence, relatives try to depict the president-elect – contrary to his image as a dour Islamist – as a man of sharp humour. His favourite pastimes, they say, are football and mountaineering, a recreation favoured by Iran’s rugged terrain.

But hand in hand with the attempts at smoothing the hard edges go expressions of pride in his revolutionary credentials. That background is now under fierce scrutiny from the Bush administration after several former US diplomats held captive in the 1979-81 Tehran embassy takeover alleged that Mr Ahmadinejad was a ringleader. Aides to Mr Ahmadinejad, as well as other hostage-takers, deny the charges.

Nevertheless, it is clear from family accounts that he was a committed activist. Before the 1979 revolution he visited Lebanon during the country’s civil war and is said to have been active with Shia groups there.

During the reign of the last shah, he kept a printing press at home, which he used to print leaflets denouncing the monarch. On the eve of the revolution his activities forced the entire Ahmadinejad family to flee Tehran and go into hiding in the north-eastern province of Golestan to avoid arrest by the savak, the shah’s secret police.

Mr Ahmadinejad’s strong religious beliefs surfaced early. “He had an interest in and talent for the Qur’an as a very small child,” said a cousin, Maasoumeh Saborjhian, 60, to whom he remains close.”

He liked to go to classes but they threw him out because he was too young. He was only 10 or 11. But he would insist, saying, no, no, I know how to read the Qur’an.”

His mother, addressed by friends and relatives as Seiyed Khanom (literally, Madam Descendent of the Prophet),dresses in an all-embracing black chador and insists on the rigid separation of the sexes. “She is very religious,” Mrs Saborjhian said. “She will never sit beside a man who is not a close relative. If she is hosting any ceremonies, she separates men and women with a curtain.”

It is an aspect of Mr Ahmadinejad’s background that will ring alarm bells for Iran’s mostly affluent secular population. This is the group who supported the modest social liberalisation that unfolded during the reformist presidency of Mohammed Khatami, now about to leave office. They fear a return to the early days of the revolution, which Mr Ahmadinejad admires, when Islamist dresscodes were stringently enforced and mingling of the sexes strictly forbidden.

The president-elect’s aides say that is not his intention. It certainly would not meet with the approval of some of his relatives.

“Poverty is the real problem,” said Mr Mohseni, the son of Mrs Saborjhian, and Mr Ahmadinejad’s campaign manager in Aradan.

“I don’t think he will stop freedom. During Khatami’s period, liberalisation was OK. It was good.”

Charge: Ahmadinejad Rants to Hide His Jewish Roots

by Hillel Fendel

(IsraelNN.com) The son of a leading Iranian authority accuses the Iranian President of changing his Jewish name.

Several Iranian media sources are quoting Mahdi Khazali – the son of a leading supporter of Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad – as having written in a blog that the president has Jewish roots. So reports the Hebrew-language Omedia website and Radio Free Europe.

Khazali, son of Ayatollah Abu Al-Kassam Khazali, says that Ahmadinejad changed his Jewish name on his ID card in order to hide his roots. Khazali the son says that the president hides his Jewish roots by attacking Israel and the Jews, and by expressing strong Muslim religious beliefs.

A record of the name change still appears on the president’s ID card, however, says Khazali. His old name was Saburjian, and he hails from the Aradan region of Iran. The accusations appear in an article Khazali wrote entitled, “The Jews in Iran.” He says the time has come to “reveal the truth” about the Jews’ role in Iran.

Ahmadinejad’s relatives once told the British paper “The Guardian” that the family had changed its name for “a mixture of religious and economic reasons.”

Ahmadinejad will be running for re-election five months from now.

The Only Weapon a “Lone Wolf” Needs Is Truth

 

Homegrown terrorists a concern, agencies say

Meredith Simons, Hearst Washington Bureau

FBI Director Robert Mueller and Homeland Security Secretary Janet Napolitano told lawmakers today that eight years after the Sept. 11 attacks, they are as worried about "homegrown" terrorism as they are about threats from overseas.

---

 

---

Less than two weeks after three different terrorist plots involving longtime U.S. residents were broken up, Mueller said al Qaeda is recruiting Westerners to carry out terror attacks in the United States, and the Internet is allowing even people who are unaffiliated with organized terror groups to "self-radicalize."

He and Napolitano, testifying before the Senate Committee on Homeland Security and Governmental Affairs, stressed that terrorism is a threat throughout the country, not just in landmark cities like New York and Washington, and that people of any background might be involved.

"These events can happen anywhere in our country at any time," Napolitano said. "We cannot limit our efforts to a few urban areas."

Since 10 mostly Saudi Arabian men flew planes into the World Trade Center and the Pentagon on Sept. 11, 2001, most Americans envision terrorism as the work of foreign-born al Qaeda-linked operatives.

But at today’s hearing, Mueller said the U.S. has succeeded in significantly disrupting al Qaeda’s overseas operations. Military action has destabilized what used to be their stronghold in Pakistan, and the death or capture of many al Qaeda leaders has interrupted the terrorist planning process.

Mueller said that while al Qaeda is still determined to attack the United States and the FBI is still carefully monitoring that threat, it is devoting increased attention to the specter of "homegrown" terrorism perpetrated by American natives or legal permanent residents.

"Several FBI terrorism subjects with no known connections to overseas groups have taken steps to move from violent rhetoric to action," Mueller said.

He said these "lone wolves" are more difficult to detect than terrorist groups because they operate quietly and independently. Often they get their inspiration and training online, rather than in person. But should they decide to travel to Pakistan, Yemen, or Somalia for further training, their status as U.S. citizens or legal residents makes it easier for them to travel in and out of the country.

Lawmakers emphasized that so far, even these elusive "lone wolves," have been caught before they were close to actually harming Americans.

But Sen. Joe Lieberman independent-Conn., the chairman of the Homeland Security committee, said that unlike a Denver-based man’s recent plot against New York City’s transportation system, attempted attacks in Dallas and Springfield, Ill., were "quite haunting" because they involved independent individuals working outside the big, coastal cities "that we assumed were the primary target areas for terrorists."

Many cities that aren’t considered prime terrorism targets by lawmakers have considered themselves terrorism targets for years, and have been beefing up law enforcement efforts in an attempt to combat the possibility of an attack.

Joint terrorism task forces across the country combine the work of local, state and national agencies in preventing terrorism. They know that their local law enforcement agencies will often be in the best position to identify and apprehend potential terrorists before they can actually harm people.

"Too many local law enforcement people think the only way they can address homeland security is by being concerned about what’s going on in foreign countries or what’s coming to us from foreign countries," said Bob Doguim, the chief of homeland security and emergency management at the Harris County Sheriff’s Department in Houston. "But we address our homeland security from a different perspective."

Doguim believes that "if you fight crime, you’ll fight terrorism." Many future terrorists come into contact with the criminal justice system before they actually engage in acts of terror, often committing crimes in an attempt to fund their terrorist projects, he said.

"They must commit some level of criminal activity in order to keep themselves financed," Doguim said. "I doubt they have office jobs from 9 to 5 and they’re putting 10 percent away in savings and that’s what they’re using to buy bomb-making material."

National leaders say one of the most important aspects of security is information-sharing between different agencies at all levels of government.

Napolitano said the Department of Homeland Security is going to direct more money to "fusion centers," locations across the U.S. where members of different security agencies share space and information as they work together on security issues. There are currently 72 fusion centers in 24 states and Washington.

Georgia clashes with Abkazia in border after EU releases report

www.chinaview.cn 2009-10-01 17:25:10

Print

TBILISI, Oct. 1 (Xinhua) — Georgia clashed with its breakaway republic of Abkhazia in the border area on Wednesday night shortly after an EU report said Georgia started the war with Russia in last August, the Caucasus press news agency reported on Thursday.

Georgian border guards said Abkhazia launched the clashes by shooting at Georgian villages. The EU observer group and other international organizations in Georgia have been informed of the shooting event.

The Abkhaz authorities and Russian troops deployed in the region have so far given no comments on the shootout.

A report released by an international fact-finding mission on Wednesday said Georgia staged the military conflict in August 2008with Russia, but as a result of Russian provocation. The mission, based in Geneva, was backed by the European Union.

Abkhazia, along with another rebel Georgian region of South Ossetia, broke away from Tbilisi’s rule during a war in the 1990s after the collapse of the Soviet Union.

Russia and Georgia fought a five-day war last summer, when Georgia attacked South Ossetia to retake the renegade region bordering Russia. In response, Moscow sent in troops to drive Georgian forces out of the region.

Russia recognized South Ossetia and Abkhazia as independent states two weeks after the conflict ended.

Italian Prosecutor Urges Prison for Americans in CIA Case

By VOA News 30 September 2009

An Italian prosecutor has urged a court in Milan to convict and sentence 26 U.S. intelligence operatives to prison terms of up to 13 years for their suspected roles in the 2003 kidnapping of a Muslim cleric.

Prosec. Armando Spataro at trial of 26 Americans, 7 Italians accused of planning CIA-led kidnapping of Egyptian terror suspect in Milan, 23 Sep 2009

The prosecutor, Armando Spataro, also asked the court to convict and sentence the head of Italy’s military intelligence agency, Nicolo Pollari, to the same prison term for his alleged role in the abduction. Pollari has denied involvement, and says evidence proving his innocence is contained in classified documents excluded from the case.

The trial is focusing on the case of Osama Mustafa Hassan Nasr (also known as Abu Omar), the Egyptian cleric and suspected terrorist authorities say was abducted in Milan and transferred to Egypt, where he says he was imprisoned, interrogated and tortured.

Defense arguments have yet to be heard. A verdict is expected later this year.

The trial is the first in any country to scrutinize the CIA’s extraordinary renditions program, under which U.S. agents transferred terror suspects to third countries where they say they were interrogated and, in some cases, tortured.

The American defendants include 25 CIA agents and a military officer, all of whom are being tried in absentia. The Italian government has declined to seek their extradition and earlier tried to have the case dismissed on national security grounds.

The CIA has refused comment on the trial.

China—Sanction Party Pooper?

Why China is unlikely to back Iran sanctions

Beijing is against sanctions as a matter of principle – and because of recent multi-billion dollar energy deals with Iran.

By Peter Ford | Staff writer of The Christian Science Monitor

 

Beijing – China is showing no appetite for the tougher sanctions that Western leaders have been threatening against Iran over its nuclear program, and would likely veto any United Nations effort to impose a stiffer embargo even if Thursday’s talks between US Security Council members and Iran go badly.

"We support the … proper solution to the Iranian nuclear issue through negotiation," Chinese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Jiang Yu insisted Tuesday, following her statement last week that "China always believes that sanctions and pressure should not be an option."

"China won’t go along" predicts Willem van Kemenade, a fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations and author of a forthcoming book on Chinese-Iranian ties. "It’s a matter of both energy inter-dependence and of principle for Beijing."

"There are still diplomatic ways to resolve this question" adds Tao Wenjiao, a foreign affairs expert at the government-run Chinese Academy for Social Sciences. "We still have time to take non-sanctions ways to solve it."

This attitude bodes ill for Western hopes of imposing biting sanctions on Tehran if it does not agree to discuss the suspension of its nuclear program, accused of being designed to build nuclear weapons.

Iran has shown no signs of abandoning that program, insisting it is for peaceful nuclear energy purposes only. Tehran last week revealed the existence of a second, previously undeclared uranium enrichment facility near the city of Qom.

Beijing’s reasons for opposing sanctions

Beijing has both political and economic reasons for its reluctance to see any further tightening of the screws on Iran.

Although it voted for UN sanctions against Iran in 2006 and 2007, China worked hard to water them down, partly because it has always been opposed to sanctions as a diplomatic weapon. Beijing itself has been subject to a Western arms embargo for the past 20 years and it "reflexively and automatically opposes sanctions" says Mr. van Kemenade.

At the same time, China imports nearly 15 percent of its crude oil from Iran, and has recently started selling refined gasoline to Iran, which has few refineries of its own.

Suggestions that if China agreed to an oil embargo, Saudi Arabia could supply crude oil to replace Iranian supplies, are unlikely to meet Chinese objections.

Multi-billion dollar oil and gas deals

Chinese state-owned oil companies have signed three multi-billion dollar deals with Iran this year to develop oil and gas fields there, in a bid to establish a strategic hold over resources not under the control of Western oil firms.

"Iran has bountiful energy resources, its natural gas reserves are the second largest in the world, and all are basically under its own control," former Chinese ambassador to Tehran Sun Bigan wrote in the latest issue of "Asia and Africa Review," published by a prominent government think tank.

China also became a partner this year in a proposed pipeline carrying gas from Iran to Pakistan. Since India dropped out of the project, the pipe is now due to carry gas north from Pakistan into China, indicating Beijing’s strategic vision of its future energy supplies.

Until now, China has enjoyed the support of UN Security Council fellow member Russia in opposing heavy sanctions, both against Iran and against North Korea. Russian president Dmitri Medvedev’s comment last week that sanctions are "sometimes inevitable" hinted that Moscow might be changing its stance.

That would leave China isolated on the Security Council, but Russian officials have appeared to row back from Mr. Medvedev’s statement in recent days.

Anyway, says Dr. Tao, "China would not necessarily follow the Russian position. There is still no hard evidence that Iran’s program is aimed at nuclear weapons, and until there is, China will not back heavy sanctions."

“President Bush was right,” said Obama

The Lying Game

By John Pilger

September 30, 2009 “Information Clearing House” — 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?

www.johnpilger.com

Obama Ready to Serve at Netanyahu’s Feet

White House to Go After Iran’s Oil Income

Obama Administration to Push for Tough New Economic Sanctions if Iran Doesn’t Come Clean on Nuclear Plans

Tensions have increased between the U.S. and Iran over nuclear ambitions, as CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports a new missile test has caused further political divides.

The Obama administration is planning to push for new sanctions against Iran, targeting its energy, financial and telecommunications sectors if it does not comply with international demands to come clean about its nuclear program, according to U.S. officials.

The officials said the U.S. would expand its own penalties against Iranian companies and press for greater international sanctions against foreign firms, largely European, that do business in the country unless Iran can prove that its nuclear activities are not aimed at developing an atomic weapon.

Among the ideas being considered are asset freezes and travel bans against Iranian and foreign businesses and individuals who do business in those areas, the officials said. The officials spoke Monday on condition of anonymity because the measures were still under review.

As the White House mulls its next move, Iran continued Tuesday to defiantly tout its most recent play in the diplomatic chess game over its weapons program.

Iran tested its longest-range missiles Monday and warned on Tuesday that they can reach any place that threatens the country, including Israel, parts of Europe and U.S. military bases in the Mideast. The launch capped two days of war games and was condemned as a provocation by Western powers, which are demanding Tehran come clean about a newly revealed nuclear facility it has been secretly building.

White House Press Secretary Robert Gibbs said there has never been a stronger international consensus to get tough on Iran’s nuclear program, reports CBS News correspondent Bob Fuss.

Western nations accuse Iran of trying to develop nuclear weapons, while Iran says it only seeks to create fuel for nuclear power plants.

Diplomats from the five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council – Britain, China, France, Russia and the United States – as well as Germany meet with Iran’s top nuclear negotiator on Thursday to press once again an offer of incentives for Iran to halt suspect activity.

Of the Thursday meeting in Geneva, Gibbs said Iran must provide full transparency about its nuclear activities and ensure that it will only pursue peaceful nuclear energy uses.

“They have decisions to make. They have one of two paths that they can take. They can continue the path that they’ve been on, even while the world has shown conclusive intelligence about a facility in Qom, or it can make a decision to step away from its nuclear weapons program and build confidence in the world and … enter into a meaningful relationship with the world based on their own security, but not based on nuclear weapons,” Gibbs said.

The proposed sanctions would largely focus on investment in Iran’s energy infrastructure and development, the officials said. Until now, the sanctions have dealt mainly with companies and people suspected of buying or selling weapons of mass destruction or their components.

The Washington Post reported Tuesday that the Obama administration said they plan to target Iran’s shipping industry if Thursday’s talks in Geneva prove unproductive. Proposed sanctions would focus on insurance and reinsurance companies, which are crucial to shipping business, and would make exporting goods – namely, oil – more difficult and more expensive. The administration would also tighten existing, UN-backed sanctions and track down companies that ship with Iran through third-party traders.

CBS News national security correspondent David Martin reports that going after Iran’s ability to profit from its vast energy reserves is the key aspect to the expected new sanctions – as Iran “is not yet a nuclear power, but an oil power”.

“To really have an impact on Iran you have to have an impact on its ability to export oil at substantial leveles,” Ray Takeyh of the Council on Foreign Relations told Martin. “

For those sanctions to be effective, adds Takeyh, they must have full backing from Russia and China.

Russian President Dmitry Medvedev indicated a willingness to consider sanctions against Tehran for the first time during the United Nations General Assembly in New York last week, but China may prove a more difficult ally to bring onboard.

“The Chinese are actually investors in Iran – Iran’s petroleum sector, and also consumers of Iran’s petroleum products,” Takeyh explained to CBS News. “So they might have some hesitation in terms of really imposing rigorous sanctions.”

“Hear our cry, Obama”

more about "“Hear our cry, Obama”", posted with vodpod

US Recruiting Retired Pakistani Military Officers

US Recruiting Retired Pakistani Military

Officers

Who Protected Ali Zaidi, A Frontman For American Mercenaries In Pakistan?

Despite denials by the US Embassy in Islamabad, this incident exposes the presence of American private security operations similar to Blackwater in Pakistan.  The embassy and US citizens working for either the US government or the US military are recruiting retired and well connected Pakistani military officers in order to build a network of informants and special operations agents inside Pakistan.  This is tantamount to creating a US military presence in Pakistani cities without sending the US army into Pakistan.  To counter reports the growing reports of how the US is raising private security militias armed with heavy weapons to supplement the existing information-gathering network and the coming expansion in the US diplomatic presence in Pakistan; the mainstream US media is churning out stories that seek to discredit these reports as ‘conspiracy theories’.

A secret military training facility where US defense contractor imparted training to Pakistani recruits on the outskirts of Pakistani capital. In March, US ambassador personally sought the help of the prime minister and interior minister to license DynCorp activities in Pakistan under the pretext of providing security to US diplomats.  In September, Pakistani authorities canceled the license.

A AHMEDQURAISHI.COM Report

Monday, 28 September 2009.

WWW.AHMEDQIURAISHI.COM

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—Washington is invading Pakistan without the need to order the US military in Afghanistan to invade Pakistani territory.

Some influential lobbies within the US government, military and intelligence have been advocating a direct invasion of Pakistan for quite some time.  It was impossible to achieve because of Washington would not prefer a direct confrontation with a nuclear-armed Pakistan.

But the Americans have achieved several breakthroughs in Pakistan recently without putting a single boot on the ground.

CIA-manned drones have so far killed less than 20 al-Qaeda terrorists at the cost of murdering more than 700 innocent men, women and children, Pakistani citizens, who have unfortunately been abandoned by the power elite in Islamabad.

Now evidence confirms that the United States has launched a massive program of recruitment of retired Pakistani military officers to create information-gathering networks and private militias tasked with special operations inside Pakistan.

Part of this expansion is the introduction of private American security firms, or American mercenaries, contracted by the US military and working on their behalf.  The US embassy is being used as a cover.  US diplomats often tell Pakistani authorities that the private security militias are tasked with the protection of US diplomats and five diplomatic missions in five major Pakistani cities. This is correct in many cases but not in all cases.  The US program of recruitment of retired Pakistani military officers and bolstering the presence of private security firms is far larger than just the task of protection of US buildings in Pakistan.

Since the Pakistani military and Pakistan’s intelligence agencies remain on Washington’s target list, retired military officers can provide a valuable insight and access into the inner side of the Pakistani military.  US diplomats and others directly seeking this type of insight would alert Pakistani security authorities. But not if the same is done using retired Pakistani officers.

The case of a former Pakistani special operations officer Captain Ali Zaidi must send alarm bells ringing within the Pakistani national security community.

Capt. Zaidi’s Inter-Risk security firm was the Pakistani face for US defense contractor DynCorp, which provides defense-related maintenance and supply services to US military bases worldwide. But in Pakistan, as in Iraq and Afghanistan, DynCorp was helping Washington create private security militias, or mercenaries in real terms, with proper military training and access to advanced weapons.

This is tantamount to creating an indirect US military presence inside Pakistani cities.  The alarming part is the Zaidi and DynCorp had created an elaborate physical setup right in the heart of Pakistan to train recruited Pakistanis.  Using his connections within the Pakistani civilian and military bureaucracy, Mr. Zaidi is suspected of smuggling advanced weapons into the country to be used by the Americans and their hired recruits.  As a legal, cover, the US Embassy in Islamabad told Pakistani authorities that Zaidi/DynCorp were providing security services to US diplomats.

Pakistani newspaper The Nation broke the story on Sept. 29, with hard evidence, including photographs of an elaborate building on the outskirts of the Pakistani federal capital that was acting as a military training facility for the Pakistani recruits.  The facility was camouflaged as a car repair workshop.

The activities of Mr. Zaidi and the US defense contractor DynCorp were obviously being protected by individuals at high levels of the Pakistani government. In fact, US Ambassador Anne Patterson personally intervened earlier this year with Prime Minister Yousaf Raza Gilani and Interior Minister Rehman Malik seeking licenses for Mr. Zaidi and DynCorp to operate in entire territory of Pakistan. This is why Mr. Zaidi managed to stay away from Pakistani investigators thanks to a bail. But The Nation reports today that the court has cancelled his bail and that he has been arrested yesterday, which is an indication of how seriously Pakistani authorities are taking this case. [continued below]

[On Sept. 30, Mr. Ansar Abbasi of The News published the full content of a letter written by Ambassador Patterson to Interior Minister Rehman Malik, dated March 30, seeking his "intervention" to grant Inter-Risk and DynCorp "the requisite prohibited bore arms licenses to operate in the territorial limits of Pakistan and as soon as possible."

The letter creates a new dent in the US embassy's counteroffensive that seeks to downplay the presence of private US security firms in the country.  A Web news portal, PakNationalists/AhmedQuraishi.com released fresh evidence this month showing the infamous US security firm formerly known as Blackwater recruiting military-trained agents fluent in Urdu and Punjabi.]

[The Americans are looking for ambitious risk-takers such as Mr. Zaidi.  For more information on how this retired officer describes himself, see his own brief biography posted at a Pakistani news website that introduces him as an 'investigative editor'.]

HIRING ACADEMICS/MEDIA COMMENTATORS

Retired Pakistani military officers are not the only people being hired by the Americans in Pakistan to spy on their own country. Washington’s military and intelligence has also hired the services of a handful of Pakistani academics and media commentators. These civilian recruits are longtime critics of their own country and its national interest.  The Americans are using them to present a Pakistani face to what essentially are American plans for Pakistan.  These academics/commentators also provide occasional input into US plans and Washington uses them to sell these ideas and plans to the US public as something that the Pakistanis people themselves are demanding.

© 2007-2009. All rights reserved. AhmedQuraishi.com & PakNationalists