Putin backtracks on EU-Russia free trade zone

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin toned down Friday his enthusiasm for a vast EU-Russia free trade zone after German Chancellor Angela Merkel gave his proposals a cool reception in Berlin.

"A free trade zone is a complex, very complicated issue requiring thorough consideration," Putin said after a visit to Germany that saw him meet Merkel as well as German business leaders.

A day earlier Putin had suggested in a guest article for a German newspaper a bold idea of a vast free-trade zone from Vladivostok on Russia’s eastern edge to Lisbon in Portugal on Europe’s western extremity.

"In essence, we will get a continental market with a volume of trillions of euros," Putin wrote in the Sueddeutsche Zeitung.

Merkel, however, quickly made clear she was unimpressed with the idea, citing Russian tariffs and Moscow’s creation of a customs union with former Soviet republics Kazakhstan and Belarus.

"Of course we support the idea of a free trade zone between the EU and Russia but I have to pour a bit of cold water on it. The steps that Russia has taken recently do not point in that direction," she said Thursday.

Merkel toned down her hostility after her talks with Putin, saying that such a zone would make sense, but stressing that it was something for the longer term.

"This is more of a question for the future. I basically share it (the aim). We are neighbours and just like in other areas we will intensify our partnership step by step," Merkel said.

Putin too sought to stress that his relations with Merkel were warm, noting that the two leaders had hugged and kissed at the meeting.

"We are good, old friends," he said. "We do not have contradictions here … Here I fully agree (with Merkel)."

But he said that closer commercial ties between Europe and Russia were essential and inevitable.

"I do not know what form our cooperation should take — will it be a common free market or will it be our associated membership in the EU," he said earlier.

Central Asia Warring Over Water

Vakhsh River

 

© RIA Novosti. Igor Mikhalev

This story by Alexander Shustov, political analyst and Central Asia expert, Strategic Culture Foundation expert, was published in International Affairs magazine.

The water dispute between Uzbekistan and Tajikistan stemming from the Rogun hydroelectric plant project and the related problem of water volumes availability intensified this fall. One of the causes behind the escalation is that Tajikistan is about to face the traditional seasonal electricity rationing, another – that Russia’s involvement in Tajikistan’s hydroelectric projects meant to lift the republic out of chronic energy poverty is going to be under the spotlight during prime minister V. Putin’s November 25 visit to Dushanbe.

Recently Secretary of Tajikistan’s High Dams National Commission Khalid Arifov charged Uzbekistan with building up to 75 water reservoirs in breach of international accords. Estimates do show that the reserves will not remedy Uzbekistan’s problem in case external water supply to the republic is cut off, but the construction enabled Dushanbe to demand an international audit of Uzbekistan’s water storage facilities.

Uzbek leader I. Karimov claimed on October 7 that Tajikistan’s planned 335-meter Rogun dam would for 8 years – the period of time needed to fill the Rogun water reservoir – expose Uzbekistan’s agricultural sector to severe water shortages and Uzbek farmers – to widespread unemployment. Tajik Minister of Land Reclamation and Water Resources Rakhmat Bobokalonov objected that the reservoir of the Rogun hydroelectric plant would be fed exclusively with Tajikistan’s internal water resources and therefore water supply to downstream countries would not be affected.

Uzbekistan argues that the launch of the Rogun hydroelectric plant is going to ruin agriculture across the region, cause economic hardship for millions of people, and exacerbate the ecological problems of the shrinking Aral Sea. Considering that the dam is being constructed in a zone of heightened seismic activity, there is a risk that its destruction by an earthquake would produce a wave with an amplitude of dozens of meters that would devastate the entire cascade of six Vakhsh hydroelectric plants and sweep over 700 towns and villages with the total population of some five million people in Uzbekistan, Turkmenistan, and Afghanistan.

Tajik experts maintain that Uzbekistan as the country located downstream Central Asia’s two great rivers – the Syr Darya and the Amu Darya – consumes 80% of the water resources in their basin while the republic’s territory contributes only 8% of the trans-border watercourse.

Uzbekistan’s anomalous water demand is due to the fact that the republic draws much of its budget from cotton export but relies on an extremely wasteful irrigation network. Uzbek irrigation facilities were built in the Soviet era and at that time bred the Aral Sea’s ecological disaster. Uzbekistan made no efforts to upgrade them upon gaining independence and the corresponding problems continued to build up. Tajik expert Khomidzhon Aripov says Tajikistan only intends to divert its unused quota of 2-2.5 cubic kilometers of water to the Rogun reservoir. Given that the reservoir volume is 13.3 cubic kilometers, the necessary volume of water can be accumulated over 10-15 years without adverse impact on downstream countries.

The Rogun Dam problem had repercussions for a wide range of aspects of the Uzbek-Tajik relations. Since December, 2009, Tashkent has been putting obstacles in the way of railway transit to Tajikistan citing technical problems and lack of railroad throughput capacity. The truth is that Uzbekistan attempts to prevent the delivery of construction materials to be absorbed by the Rogun project to Tajikistan which is otherwise isolated from the rest of the world. Tajikistan complained over the situation to the UN and the blockade was temporarily lifted. The presidents of Tajikistan and Uzbekistan agreed in July, 2010 that the latter would not obstruct transit unrelated to the Rogun project, but traffic delays resumed shortly after a brief reopening of the route in mid-October.

An article titled Uzbekistan: Enemy at the Doorstep? by Berkhuz Khimo published by www.avesta.tj on November 15 depicts vividly the current state of the relations between Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. Criticizing Uzbekistan over the rail transit problem, Khimo invoked a lengthy list of Tajikistan’s grievances such as the deployment of land mines along he Tajik-Uzbek border, Col. M. Hudoiberdyev’s November, 1998 coup, the July, the 2007 blasts near the Supreme Court building, the environment watchdogs’ orchestrated protests against the ecological damage caused by the Tajik Aluminum Co., and the failure to convene the meeting of the transportation ministers of China, Kyrgyzstan, Iran, Afghanistan, and Tajikistan in Dushanbe. Evidently, the two republics burdened with such legacy will have a hard time rebuilding their relations.

Tajikistan accepted Uzbekistan’s number one demand – having the Rogun project examined internationally – and at the moment the Dam construction is reportedly more or less limited to conservation. It was announced in mid-November that the Rogun feasibility study tender was won by a consortium comprising France’s Coyne et Bellier Consulting Engineers, Italy’s Electroconsult, and Great Britain’s IPA Energy Water Consulting. A tender to perform an ecological probe into the project is scheduled for the coming December. The World Bank which offered Tajikistan assistance in attracting investments (provided that the project’s economic prospects and ecological safety are proven) is instrumental in both tenders.

Tashkent will hardly be swayed by the World Bank’s involvement, though. Having long monopolized gas supplies to Kyrgyzstan and Tajikistan, the energy-rich Uzbekistan is fully aware of the benefits of the situation and therefore worried that its neighbors would use control over water resources to balance its current advantage. The Central Asian conflict over water factors into the already entangled web of tensions and territorial disputes within the Uzbekistan-Tajikistan-Kyrgyzstan triangle, leaving the overall situation prone to further destabilization.

Under the circumstances, Russia is confronted with a difficult choice. For Moscow, withdrawing from the Rogun project would mean losing grip on a significant lever to influence the situation in Central Asia plus missing tentative business opportunities linked to electric power export to Afghanistan and Pakistan. On the other hand, Russia’s joining in will likely antagonize Uzbekistan, Central Asia’s most populous republic with the region’s strongest army and economy second only to that of Kazakhstan. Charting a trajectory to optimally combine the interests of the parties locked in the Central Asian water dispute is a serious challenge, and Moscow does not have much time to make up its mind.

(Views expressed in this article reflect the author’s opinion and do not necessarily reflect those of RIA Novosti news agency. RIA Novosti does not  vouch for facts and quotes mentioned in the story)

Scale of Great Famine unfathomable

BY DAVID MARPLES

Ukrainians attend a memorial service commemorating those who died as a result of the Famine of 1932-33.

Photograph by: Alexander Khudoteply, AFP, Getty Images, Freelance

This week, Ukrainians worldwide have been commemorating the 78th anniversary of the Great Famine of 1932-33, known as the Holodomor (Death by Hunger).

In the period 2005-2009, when Viktor Yushchenko was president of Ukraine, several archival collections on the Famine-Holodomor of 1932-33 made available to researchers supplemented earlier information gathered mainly from eyewitness reports. Perhaps the most important of these were reports from the Soviet secret police files (then called the OGPU, from 1934, it was known as the NKVD).

With the demise of the Yushchenko government in the 2010 presidential elections, the authorities have done a U-turn on the famine question. The Security Service of Ukraine, which controls access to OGPU files, has a new leadership, files are no longer freely disseminated, and the new president Viktor Yanukovych has denied that the Famine was an act of genocide. On the contrary, Yanukovych appears to adhere to the Russian perspective that famines were a general phenomenon across the Soviet grain growing regions in 1932, including the Volga region, Ukraine, the North Caucasus, and even Belarus.

It is true that famine was widespread in the spring and summer of 1932, but many events that took place later in the year, and in the brutal year of 1933, were unique to Ukraine and the North Caucasus, particularly the Kuban region, which was composed of about 60 per cent Ukrainians. And this is evident from the OGPU documents released over the past two decades.

It is well known that the great upheaval of collectivization and the removal of richer ( "kulak") families had a devastating impact on Soviet farms. The subsequent imposition of grain quotas by Stalin’s regime was to ensure that deliveries were transported to the towns or the Far East before the families could feed themselves.

A widespread drought in 1931 exacerbated the situation, but it did not lead directly to famine. In theory, farms can feed themselves. But they were not allowed to. Not only grain was confiscated from Ukrainian villages, but also seed grain, and subsequently meat, potatoes, and other crops as a penalty for failing to meet grain deliveries.

Kaganovich devised the idea of a "blackboard" for those villages in North Caucasus that failed to meet quotas. They were then isolated, trading ended, and no one was allowed to enter or leave. The "blackboard" was soon extended to the Ukrainian SSR.

Stalin, together with his associates Molotov and Kaganovich, railed against Ukrainian party and government leaders (Stanislav Kosior and Vlas Chubar) for their weakness and failure to take more ruthless measures. Though Ukraine’s grain quota was twice reduced, it was still well beyond farmers’ capacity to meet. Therefore the Soviet leadership took several measures calculated to transform a severe situation into a catastrophe.

First, Ukrainian leaders were bypassed. Instead, in November 1932, Molotov led a Commission to Ukraine and Kaganovich to the North Caucasus to impose order. In January 1933, Stalin sent a personal emissary — Pavel Postyshev, with full authority in Ukraine — as well as Vsevolod Balytsky, who took over the republican OGPU. While Postyshev used the army and local activists to take "hidden" supplies from the villages, cordoning off and starving villages that failed to meet quotas, Balytsky instituted mass repressions from early 1933 onward because a mass uprising of Ukrainian nationalists had been planned for the spring of 1933 with the aid of outside forces from Poland.

The consequences were not merely mass starvation, but wholesale arrests, deportations, and executions that did not occur elsewhere in the USSR.

In January 1933, the OGPU reported 436 "terrorist acts" in Ukraine during the grain procurement campaign. About 38,000 arrests had been made, and 391 "anti-Soviet, kulak, counter-revolutionary groups" had been uncovered. More than 6,600 arrests had been made on collective farms, mostly comprised of the farms’ leadership. By this same month, more than 8,000 had been dispatched to concentration camps.

By mid-February, the situation had escalated. The OGPU set up a "shock-operational group" in 200 districts of Ukraine, at railway stations and border crossings. It sent word to Stalin that "we are clashing with a single, carefully elaborated plan for an organized armed uprising in Ukraine by the spring of 1933, with the goal of removing Soviet power" and setting up an independent, capitalist, Ukrainian state. Needless to say, these groups had to be eradicated, thousands subsequently deported.

No serious evidence of a planned uprising has ever emerged. Stalin was afraid of "losing Ukraine" as he wrote to Kaganovich, and saw plots and plotters everywhere. Balytsky fed his fertile imagination.

The repression of Ukraine’s villages led to a mass exodus of menfolk while those remaining behind simply starved. In February 1933 alone, about 85,000 peasants had fled the Ukrainian countryside. The vast majority were detained at the border and returned to their villages, or else arrested and sent to labour camps. Border crossings from North Caucasus to Ukraine, and from Ukraine into Belarus and Russia were closed. The OGPU noted that these had been escape routes in 1932 and were not about to make the same mistake again. It urged the rooting out of those peasants who had managed to get labouring jobs in the cities.

The OGPU documented the starvation in turgid accounts that nonetheless allow the reader some insights into the situation. Though some reports attribute starvation to failure to work sufficient hours or poor collective farm construction, others acknowledge that even those who had worked hard were starving.

One report from Kyiv region in late February 1933 — based on 40 per cent of the districts — noted that over 210,000 people were starving and an additional 12,800 had already died. In Dnipropetrovsk Oblast, the regional authorities proposed on February 28 to set up nurseries to feed 70,000 children, 50,000 pre-school-age children, and 300,000 adults.

The scale of the tragedy, in what had been the most productive grain-growing republic of both the Russian Empire and the 1920s USSR is hard to fathom. The Italian Consul in Kharkiv (which remained Ukraine’s capital until 1934) reported that some 40 to 50 per cent of peasants had died and estimated the death toll at around nine million.

But we do not know the death toll. No one was counting the bodies, many of which lay for days unburied or were dumped into mass graves.

Starvation and repressions achieved one of Stalin’s expressed goals: to bring the errant Ukrainian republic into the Soviet fold. The policy of developing Ukrainian culture and language — initiated in the 1920s — was ended and its chief proponent, Mykola Skrypnyk, committed suicide in July 1933.

The Purges of the 1930s later removed practically all the perpetrators of the Famine at the republican level. Postyshev, Stalin’s local plenipotentiary, was executed in February 1939. The entire leadership of the Ukrainian Communist Party was eliminated. Depopulated villages were refilled with families from other regions. The Famine was then systematically concealed from the public and the outside world for the next 54 years.

The late James E. Mace called Ukraine a "post-genocidal society." This is a pertinent epithet for "Eastern Ukraine," or Soviet Ukraine as it existed in 1932-33, which never fully recovered. Present-day residents still have problems coming to terms with the crimes committed in 1932-33, because essentially this heartland of Ukraine was systematically "denationalized" and eradicated by the Soviet regime.

David Marples is a professor of history in the U of A’s department of history and classics, and the author of several books on Ukraine and the former Soviet Union. This article first appeared in the Kyiv Post.

© Copyright (c) The Edmonton Journal

Read more:http://www.edmontonjournal.com/life/Scale+Great+Famine+unfathomable/3892300/story.html#ixzz16UeioY1l

America’s Economic Refugees Chasing the Work–Work Camper

[There are so many economic refugees here in Southern Ohio, where I live, that it is safe to say that practically every family here has been fragmented by the loss of sons, daughters and grandchildren who move across the country, in search of a paycheck. Personally, I followed construction work around the Eastern US for five years, looking to apply the only trade I knew.  But that was for good money, not ten bucks an hour.  What happens when there are too many unemployed to chase the few Amazon-type jobs that remain?]

Workers hopscotch across country for temporary paycheck

By Jere Downs, The (Louisville, Ky.) Courier-Journal

CAMPBELLSVILLE, Ky. — Amazon.com has what many migrant workers want for the holidays: a job.

Hard-up retirees and unemployed workers with children have converged on this rural town in RVs and campers to spend a few months earning $10 an hour filling orders at an Amazon warehouse.

Amazon offers a free place to park and plug in. When work ends Christmas Eve, the campers pull out.

Many have lost their homes and live on the road, home schooling their children along the way. Others are retirees who had planned to see the country but now work along the way to supplement depleted investments. Those not old enough for Medicare typically lack insurance.

“We are among the economic refugees. We are lucky to earn enough to get our laundry done and eat macaroni and cheese,” said April McFail, 52. “I think it says America needs something different. This is supposed to be freedom and a good life. Now it is a sad note.”

McFail’s husband, Terry, lost his job last year at Dow Chemicalearning $18 hourly in southern Michigan. They lost their home to foreclosure in May. Pooling $8,000 in savings, they purchased a 1987 Winnebago and hit the road. They worked as campground hosts in South Dakota for the summer, arriving in September to begin work at Amazon.

A short time later, April McFail’s diabetes forced her to quit the Amazon job. She could not manage 10-hour shifts four days a week lifting packages up to 30 pounds each. Health care benefits left over from her husband’s job at Dow expire Tuesday.

‘Amazon Gypsies’

Lunchboxes in hand, “Amazon Gypsies” walk down the hill to work from the company camp built on a gravel parking lot next to an auto junkyard. A nearby state park extended its hours through Christmas at Amazon’s request.

Amazon pays campsite rental, water, sewer and electric. Some campers choose to save their propane and rely on electric blankets and heaters to stay warm at night.

Blankets cover the windows of the Wicklane family’s 1997 Fleetwood camper. An electric space heater whirrs on the worn linoleum floor. After losing an electrician’s job and a house in Florida last year, Kurt Wicklane found work unloading Amazon trucks in Kentucky to feed two daughters, ages 3 and 9, and a son, 5.

“My grandmother keeps calling me and asking me when are going to come back home” to Tampa, Heather Wicklane, 27, said while her children played outside their trailer at Green River Lake State Park. “I tell her we are home.”

Around the clock, an estimated 500 “work campers” from Florida, Texas, Michigan and elsewhere supplement 3,000 temporary Amazon staff covering three shifts sorting, wrapping, stacking and packing holiday orders. Year-round, Amazon employs 1,200 full time in Campbellsville, a 90-minute drive south of Louisville.

The world’s largest online retailer has long struggled to fill thousands of seasonal jobs in this town of just 11,000, said Ron McMahan, executive director of the Campbellsville Taylor County Economic Development Authority.

The state park would typically close Oct. 30. But it was upgraded with frost-proof utilities to accommodate the Amazonians, as the company calls its workers, with $48,000 in state funds, McMahan said. Amazon pays the state park $18 per night for each site occupied by workers, said Gil Lawson, spokesman for the Kentucky Tourism, Arts and Heritage Cabinet, which oversees state parks.

With the help of local landowners willing to open more new campgrounds, Amazon may expand its work camper ranks to 1,600 slots next year, McMahan added.

“We will need more people who are willing to do whatever it takes to pay the bills,” McMahan said of the work camper phenomenon. “This is economic development for us.”

Idea isn’t new

Nationwide, up to 500,000 people work while living in their RVs, said Steve Anderson, editor of Workamper News, a journal based in Heber Springs, Ark. The recession has added to their ranks, he said.

Meanwhile, baby boomers are retiring and taking to the road.

“Amazon realized this was something they need to pursue,” Anderson said. The company places ads in his journal for work camper jobs at warehouses in rural Nevada and Kansas, in addition to Kentucky.

Work campers have long worked as campground hosts — greeting guests and cleaning up for a free campsite and utilities — in state and national parks. As the recession has deepened, these migrant campers have becoming increasingly crucial.

In Idaho last summer, work campers kept the state’s 30 park campgrounds operational after budget cuts resulted in the layoff of 27 full-time state park employees, said Kathryn Hampton, volunteer services coordinator for the Idaho Department of Parks and Recreation.

Work campers said they also rely on amusement parks, Christmas tree lots and pumpkin patches for seasonal work. Near the Las Vegas strip, the Clark County Shooting Park is seeking 30 work campers who can park free in exchange for guiding police and tourists at the gun range.

“Less than half of all work campers consider themselves retired, with the median age being 53,” Anderson estimates.

Lifeboat on wheels

The RV that Joshua Lindsey, 35, his wife and three children call home is “their lifeboat,” said the former stockbroker and real estate investor. Before losing everything in St. Petersburg, Fla., in the market crash of 2008, Lindsey said he earned more than six figures annually.

Now, working the graveyard shift at Amazon for three months “will provide my kids Christmas this year and food for the table and a means to get through to the spring, when there are a lot more jobs available.”

More common among work campers are people like Bill and Dorothy Judge, longtime retirees and RVers working now because their investment incomes have declined.

They live in a $275,000 Winnebago Vectra, a gleaming, top-of-the-line, spacious RV that logs 7 miles to the gallon. Still, Bill Judge, 72, said he took a graveyard shift at Amazon in hopes of earning up to $9,000 in four months. That will buy new tires for the RV at $600 apiece and finance upcoming trips.

The Seattle-based couple has lived the RV lifestyle since 1994, living on pensions acquired from union jobs at Boeing and service in the U.S. Air Force. To cope with less investment income, the couple said they often stay for free overnight in Wal-Mart parking lots.

“I did not imagine I would be working in a warehouse job in my retirement. I have not worked since 1994,” Judge said.

Come Christmas Eve, demand online will wither for books, DVDs, kitchenware, toys, apparel, sporting goods, jewelry, watches, health and personal-care items. That is the last day work campers say they expect to have jobs at Amazon.

The Wicklanes, camped beside Green River Lake, don’t know where the next job will be. They plan to hunker down for Christmas.

“It would take a day to drive anywhere,” Kurt Wicklane said of family far away in Florida. “We may as well sit tight.”

Victims Of CIA And US Military Drones Should Sue Obama, Bush, Panetta

Victims Of CIA And US Military Drones Should Sue Obama, Bush, Panetta For Killing Thousands Of Innocent Pakistanis

http://www.ahmedquraishi.com/2010/11/27/victims-of-cia-and-us-military-drones-should-sue-obama-bush-panetta-for-killing-thousands-of-innocent-pakistanis/

… The FBI should also be sued by Pakistanis for recruiting American David Headley and planting him in Pakistan to execute Mumbai attacks, killing 166 innocent people there and bringing Pakistan and India to war.

 

 

DailyMailNews.com | Saturday | 27 November 2010

WWW.PAKNATIONALISTS.COM

 

 

ISLAMABAD, Pakistan—According to US media reports, a US court in Brooklyn has issued summons to senior Pakistani Inter-Services Intelligence officials, including its chief Lieutenant General Ahmed Shuja Pasha, as well as leaders of banned group Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) Hafiz Saeed and Zakiur Rahman Lakhvi, in response to a lawsuit filed by relatives of two American victims accusing them of providing material support for the 26/11/2008 attacks in Mumbai, India.

The veracity of the said lawsuit needs to be verified but The Daily Mail thinks that there may be likelihood of the relatives of those slain as collateral damage in the US drone attacks within Pakistan territory may be now prompted to file lawsuits against the former US President George W. Bush who initially authorized the unlawful and inhuman drone attacks and the current US President Barrack Obama who has not only accelerated the drone attacks multifold but is seeking to expand them to include targets in Quetta and other areas in Balochistan, which will definitely result in a very high rate of collateral damage.

A very dangerous precedence has been set unwittingly and more summonses may be in the offing against Leon Panetta, the current head of CIA and his predecessor, Michael Hayden, in whose tenure the Drone attacks controlled and executed by the CIA commenced. If David Headley is to be brought into consideration, then the US Drugs Enforcement Agency (DEA) as well as CIA should be questioned or brought on trial by the survivors of the Mumbai attack. David Coleman Headley was on the payroll of the DEA and his frequent coming and going into Pakistan, India and other parts of the world were definitely in the notice of both DEA as well as CIA; moreover, two of his ex-wives have stated on affidavits that they had informed the intelligence agencies much before 26/11 regarding David Headley’s alleged involvement in the plot. It is inconceivable that with such sensitive prior knowledge, no action was taken. Was it gross neglect or intentional omission? A lawsuit will determine the truth.

The 26-page lawsuit was filed before a New York court on November 19 against the ISI and LeT by the relatives of Rabbi Gavriel Noah Holtzberg and his wife Rivka, who were both gunned down by unknown militants at the Chhabad House in Mumbai.

Some US officials have said, on condition of anonymity, that it was a private complaint and does not have official backing of the US government.

The Pakistan Embassy officials refused to comment on it; however, insiders say that Pakistani officials were in touch with their US counterparts on this issue. It could not be confirmed whether the Pakistan Embassy received any such summons from any US court. The relatives of victims have alleged that the Mumbai terrorist attack was planned and carried out by members of the defendant, the LeT. Wherein, defendant ISI provided critical planning, material support, control and coordination of the attacks.

The current incumbent holding the office of Director General of ISI, Lieutenant General Pasha and his predecessor, Lieutenant General Nadeem Taj along with Majors Iqbal and Samir Ali have been named in the lawsuit and summoned to appear trial. The lawsuit also claims that prior to November 26, 2008, the defendants directed and engaged US-based individuals, including but not limited to David Headley and Tahawwur Rana, for raising funds, building a network of connections, recruiting participants and planning the operation of the Mumbai terror attack. The petitioners have also alleged that the LeT still operates training camps in Pakistan, Kashmir and Afghanistan and openly advocated violence against India, Israel and the United States. It names Muridke, Mansehra and Muzaffarabad as centres of training camps operated by the LeT. It also says that Pakistani American LeT operative David Headley, who has already pleaded guilty (while in US custody) for his role in the plotting of the attack, built a network of connections from Chicago to Pakistan, undertaking these efforts at the direction and with the material support of both LeT and the ISI.

© 2007-2010. All rights reserved. PakNationalists.com

Can Israel Defeat Hezbollah in The Coming War?

27/11/2010 Franklin Lamb
November 27, 2010
Exclusive to Al-Manar
Part II “Know thyself” Sun Tzu and Hassan Nasrallah
                “To those against whom war is made, permission is given (to fight back), because they are wronged; and verily, God is most powerful for their aid; (They are) those who have been expelled from their homes in defiance of right, (for no cause) except that they say, our Lord is God”. (22:39-40)
According to the Lebanese military, at 11 am and again at 1 p.m.  on 1l/24/10, a total of six Israeli warplanes crossed into Lebanese airspace, and violated for the 8256th time UNSC resolution 1701 that ended Israel’s 5th war against Lebanon, on August 14, 2006. Nearly, daily, and sometimes several times daily, warplanes and/or reconnaissance aircraft invade the skies over Lebanon to frighten, attempt to intimidate, and pressure the Lebanese population. They also to try to keep tabs on Lebanon’s resistance, led by Hezbollah.
As every Resistance defender  is aware, if a twice daily high flyover by a US supplied specially programmed satellite imaging camera detects a stone the size of golf ball out of place, since the previous photo, anywhere in an area thought to be visited by Hezbollah forces,  the photos are closely examined by Israel and American analysts. The moving of a stone or a tree branch or significantly more or fewer goats appearing in a herd, meandering, for example, in  Lebanon’s “nature preserves” is carefully analyzed. The reason, and perhaps encapsulating Israel’s increasing likelihood, according to UNIFIL — United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon and US sources,  of failing in its next war against Lebanon, is that Israel has never even been able to figure out  what became of the hundreds of tons of chipped rock and soil removed during the construction of hundreds of suspected deep Hezbollah bunkers, impenetrable to every weapon but nuclear.  Some bunkers are almost literally under the noses of where suspected  Israeli agents live or where UNIFIL forces patrol daily. “ Do they remove the debris by teaspoons full?”  a UNIFIL official wondered recently.
Also unsettling to the Israeli military and reportedly censored from viewing by Israeli forces  are a collection of Hezbollah training videos thought to have been photographed by US  high altitude  cameras. IDF psychologists reportedly have advised the Israeli Cabinet that seeing the Hezbollah videos may further erode Israeli forces confidence if they are ordered  again into Lebanon.
One such video shows the following:  A line of Hezbollah fighters on mountain bikes in a steep ravine south of the Litani river riding at high rates of speed. The rider must flip the bike  up onto only the back wheel so the soldier’s body is facing the sky and his back flat parallel with and about two feet off  the ground. The examinee must travel at close to 90 mph  holding a RPG in either hand, and a cell phone in the other waiting firing instructions from a subterranean command center. The fighter must then fire the rocket thru a swinging small tire approximately 120 meters away on a tree branch.  Achieving fewer than 11 bulls eyes out of 12 requires the arduous physical test repeated.  A commander in UNIFIl, who claims to be familiar with this particular Hezbollah training exercise commented that none of the UNIFIL soldiers from the 28 countries could even do the exercise, much less get one RPG through such a swinging tire.  “ I would doubt very much if any Israeli could do it either. Hezbollah fighters are probably the world’s best. I have never studied the Chinese up close but I’ve seen a whole lot of the others.”
It is these kinds of skills that Hezbollah fighters used to force repeated errors by Israeli forces during the July 2006 war, and although not widely reported, during its 18 years of occupation of Lebanon (1982-2000). Errors, that the Israeli Winograd commission called “ the worst kind of mistakes and failures of the ground forces.” Among the examples still discussed in Dahiyeh, and presumably in Tel Aviv and Washington, include the Hezbollah forces routing of the Israeli “elite” Golani, Egoz and Magland Brigades at Maron al Ras on the Lebanese-Palestine border between July 25-30, 2006.  Another was the Battle of Bint Jbeil which Dan Halutz  called Israel’s planned “Web of Steel’ which was expected to take less than 48 hours to defeat Hezbollah forces starting on July 24.  But by July 30, the much battered Golani forces withdrew and the Israeli air force renewed indiscriminate aerial bombardment.  Down the road from Bint Jbeil, at Aita al-Shaab, Israel lost 26 soldiers and more than 100 severely injured without gaining an inch of territory. Shortly before Israel agreed to a ceasefire,  its forces experienced the catastrophe at Wadi Slouqi, a ravine through which  a column of Israeli tanks were sent to link up with airlifted troops at Ghandouriyah village.  The Israeli plan, read by Hezbollah forces from the onset, was to move toward Tyre and head north.  “They (Hezbollah forces) jumped up out of the ground all around us” one Israeli at the scene testified later. Hezbollah hit more than a dozen tanks, quickly killing 17 Israelis and wounding more than fifty. It became known in Israeli military circles as “the Black Sabbath, the goddamned Sabbath”, as one Israeli war room officer commented.
Increasingly during the 33 day July 2006 War, Israeli forces refused orders to advance against Hezbollah fighters, happily opting for 14 day jail sentences for failure to obey orders.  Concerning IDF recruitment and  AWOL problems, according to IDF Captain Arye Shalicar of the IDF Recruitment Fraud unit, it is US taxpayers who  foot the bill  for eight companies of private investigators recently hired to track down Israeli draft dodgers.  The popular social networking site, Facebook,  is being used  to track down thousands who lied about being religiously observant and seeking to avoid facing Hezbollah.  Israelis not wanting to join the military often post a photograph on Facebook showing them eating at non-kosher restaurants or accepting invitations for fake Friday night (Sabbath) parties sent by the investigators.
It was against the backdrop of examining these kinds of IDF-Hezbollah confrontations, that  a US Senate Armed Services Committee staffer reports that, “seemingly counterintuitive given the past six decades of US coddling  Israel with all manner of  support and  political cover”, the White House has informed Israel that the days of ‘green lights’ for trampling and carpet bombing Lebanon are over.  Secretary of State  Clinton reportedly told PM Netanyahu during his recent visit to basically ‘forget about it’ when Israel’s Prime Minister repeated ad nausea the mantra that “Lebanon is now Hezbollah and Hezbollah is  now Lebanon” so Israel can exercise “blanket self defense.”  ( Ed: gets to bomb and obliterate at will)
During US Foreign Relations Committee Chairman, John Kerrey’s recent swing through the region he warned Lebanese and Syrian officials that Israel could attack at any time.  But he also carried the message to Israel that Washington does not want an Israeli attack on Lebanon or on Iran for precisely the same reasons.  Israel can’t win Washington increasingly believes and the risk of regional conflagration from either is too great.
It is in this context that Washington is  using the STL – Special Tribunal for Lebanon as a 6th war against Lebanon, following those 1978, 1982, 1993, 1996, and 2006. It is reported by Haaretz on 11/16/10 that  Israeli Foreign Minister  Lieberman reveal Israel has been helping the STL with its “investigation.”
“Hezbollah’s greatest advantage against Israel in the next war against Israel”, according to Pentagon sources, including a 22 year veteran who maintains an office in Beirut,   “is not seen in Washington as  being based on just Hezbollah’s  demonstrated ability to prevail on the battlefield against Israeli ground forces, withstanding potential days or weeks or months of carpet bombing and during hugely asymmetric conflicts. Rather, increasingly Hezbollah’s success against Israeli is being explained by its moral, political, popular, religious, psychological, culture that were enhanced by Hezbollah’s “Lebanonization” and growing acceptance by other sects while being dubbed by some at the Pentagon as now “the 8th greatest missile power in the World.”
There is also the factor of the environment that is embracing Hezbollah and the Resistance. These are  people who will no longer accept to yield to the dictates of  Israel,  the US, Lebanese Forces, Phalanges, or anyone else.  As far as the Resistance is concerned, no one can ask a people that was oppressed, occupied, and disdained by others for decades and centuries, yet managed to gain power to defend itself at a time when everyone abandoned it, to let go of its element of power and become again under the mercy of Israel’s threats as well as those of its local Israel’s allies. Hezbollah believes it has to win the next war for the sake of the whole country, because the army is poorly equipped and because Lebanon has hundreds, maybe thousands of Mossad agents in Lebanon compromising the country’s institutions. Hezbollah MP, Nawaf Moussawi has said on many occasions that the STL indictment accusing Hezbollah of the Hariri assassination will be dealt with as a US Israeli invasion, and to date Hezbollah has proven to have great skills in countering ‘invasions.’  The Party is not easily provoked or intimidated but when their existence is threatened it fights back.
Hezbollah, has  smashed the myth of Israel’s invincibility, broken the barrier of fear, increased the popular demand for resistance, exposed  the fake peace process and rejected  appeasement, acquiescence and surrender. Hezbollah forces taught the world that Arabs can and will liberate Palestine because  they possess the qualities  and acumen to do it. The kings and the presidents in the region, who for six decades chose their thrones over Jerusalem  quake as does Israel.
This observer is obviously not privy to any security information relating to Hezbollah, and it would be treasonous and unthinkable for anyone in Hezbollah to share any, but among the many scenarios that the Lebanese National Resistance is said to be preparing for includes a possible invasion from North Lebanon using troops from two Arab countries that for years having been trying to train Sunni and Lebanese Forces “Security minus” troops. The plan, if it exists, would try to force Hezbollah from Beirut back to the south, by using a blitzkrieg type of invasion using Arab, American and Israeli forces attacking south Beirut as north Lebanon Sunni and Christian forces close of roads heading out from Beirut. Phalange forces would try and capture Mt Lebanon, and Arab Special Forces would hunt Hassan Nasrallah and the Hezbollah leadership amidst “Dahiyeh option” ruins.  All to be made perfectly legal and respectable by the all but certain STL indictments and convictions.
This kind of scenario is reminiscent of when the French sent Moroccans and Algerians to fight for them last century against the Turks.  A French General on the scene was asked “you are sending Muslims to fight against Muslims” ?
The general reportedly laughed and replied, “if  our Arabs win we get the credit , if our Arabs or theirs die, who cares”.
Dr. Franklin Lamb is Director, Americans Concerned for Middle East Peace, Beirut-Washington DC, Board Member of The Sabra Shatila Foundation, and a volunteer with the Palestine Civil Rights Campaign, Lebanon. He is the author of The Price We Pay: A Quarter-Century of Israel’s Use of American Weapons Against Civilians in Lebanon and is doing research in Lebanon for his next book.
He can be reached at fplamb@gmail.com
Franklin Lamb: Part I – Will Hezbollah Defeat Israel (Again!) In The Coming War?
Due to technical difficulties, please copy this URL to open part I: 
http://www.almanar.com.lb/newssite/NewsDetails.aspx?id=156806&language=en

Yair Klein threatens to blow whistle on Colombian gov’t

http://www.jpost.com/Israel/Article.aspx?id=196194

By DAN IZENBERG

“What I have on these officials is fantastic,” Klein says; Justice Ministry says it does not plan to take any action in former IDF officer’s case.

A Justice Ministry spokesman said Sunday that the ministry does not anticipate having to take any action in the case of former IDF Lt.-Col. Yair Klein, who returned from Russia over the weekend after more than three years in prison.

In 2001, Klein was tried in absentia by the Supreme Tribunal of the Manzales district of Colombia and sentenced to 10 years and eight months in prison on charges of training illegal paramilitary groups. The Colombian government issued a warrant for his arrest with Interpol, and he was detained during a visit to Russia in August 2007.

The Colombian government asked Russia to extradite Klein. The government agreed to do so and the Russian courts, in a series of rulings, upheld the decision despite appeals by Klein’s lawyers, including his Israeli attorney, Mordechai Tzivin.

Tzivin appealed the final decision of the Russian Supreme Court in May 2008 to the European Court of Human Rights, arguing that Russia had not taken into account the poor state of human rights in Colombia at the time, as well as a threat by former Colombian vice president Francisco Santos, that Klein would “rot in jail” after his return to Colombia.

The human rights court, in April of this year, forbade Russia from extraditing Klein to Colombia. Russia appealed the decision, but the appeal was denied last month.

On Sunday, in a telephone conversation with The Jerusalem Post, Klein said his entire relationship with Colombia was approved by the Israeli and Colombian governments.

Klein said that in 1988 he was sent by the Israeli Defense Ministry to help protect the organization of banana growers in Colombia at the request of the Colombian government.

Before he had time to take action, he said, the organization was destroyed. He told thePost that in the meantime, however, he was asked by the Colombian government to help train FARC, the left-wing Revolutionary Armed Forces of Colombia.

Klein indicated that there was a conspiracy involving senior government officials who were cooperating with FARC. He also claimed that FARC fought against the drug cartels in Colombia.

Klein told the Post that if the Colombian government persisted in its efforts to force him to return to Columbia, he would blow the whistle on officials in the current and previous Columbian governments.

“What I have on these officials is fantastic,” he said.

Meanwhile, Tzivin said that for the past month, ever since the European Court of Human Rights prohibited Russia from extraditing Klein, the public, the media and the government in Colombia have been preoccupied with what illegal activities Klein might divulge about Colombian political and military leaders.

Presumably in an effort to persuade the Colombian government to drop the affair, Tzivin told the Post, “My client has information that could cause political shockwaves in the senior echelons of the current and previous Colombian governments.

If exposed, the information could lead to dismissals in the government and the arrest of past and present political and military figures.

“I recommended to my client not to publish the information so as not to cause chaos, since Colombia is now significantly improving the state of human rights in the country.”

In the Duma introduced a controversial bill to protect journalists

Impunity for perpetrators of attacks on journalists – one of the serious problems in Russia

State Duma deputies on Friday will consider a bill involving increased penalties for attacks on journalists – up to 15 years imprisonment.

"The current penalties for crimes against journalists are not sufficient" – quoted by Interfax one of the sponsors of the amendments to the bill Irina Yarovaya from the "United Russia".

A new bill introduced in 144 of the Penal Code (obstruction of lawful professional activities of journalists "), the third part, which stipulates that if the offense is committed with violence dangerous to life or health, or the threat of such violence, the perpetrator could face deprivation liberty from 6 to 15 years.

In addition, the document sets out the responsibility for the fact of the use of violence to obstruct the activities of a journalist.

Now, for violence against media workers, that will not cause harm, or caused minor injury, faces from 2 to 5 years Imprisonment. Under current rules now, this crime May Not result in Imprisonment.

The document was submitted to the Lower House on the initiative of Russian Union of Journalists (RUJ).

The reason for this Has Been a series of attacks on Russian Journalists. Among the latest Incidents – Brutal Beating of a Correspondent of the Newspaper "Businessman" and the well-known blogger Oleg Kashin on the Night of November 6.

The journalist Received a Concussion, He HAD a Broken Finger, Leg and Jaw. Kashin underwent Several Operations.

Opinions in the journalistic Community about the Bill is divided. Some Welcome the new Legislative Initiative, others Fear That Will Expose These amendments Journalists’ Relatives.

Expectations and fears

If perekosobochit legislation so that an attack on a journalist would be considered a felony, and assault on journalists’ children, parents, wife, his girlfriend would be considered disorderly conduct – this is where it all shut up

Valery Panyushkin,
journalist

"A journalist – he certainly must be counted among the public figures, and the attitude to him in the society should be, respectively, to create a normal environment around the work of journalists. If such a law is passed, the law enforcement services will be in a different way to relate to these crimes, "- said in an interview with BBC chairman of the Russian Journalists Union Vsevolod Bogdanov.

Glavred Kommersant’s Mikhail Mikhailin his part expressed his doubts about the need for additional legislation to protect journalists.

"I believe that the current law is enough for the state to protect its citizens, who are its taxpayers. The main thing is that the punishment was inevitable for their crimes against the person. Stronger or weaker than to punish … two or three years difference in a big role do not play "- he said in an interview with the BBC.

In addition, Glavred Kommersant noted with regret that the authors of the bill did not discuss the amendments with the professional community.

"Journalists’ Union did not consult with us. It is a strange organization that is taking some action without consulting with the department. At the publishing house" Kommersant "no one asked his position, Alexei Alekseevich Venediktova Nobody asked, but he is against. I do I do not know what the reaction would be in the society after this law is adopted and reviewed, "- said Mikhailin.

Journalist Valery Panyushkin criticized the initiative of deputies, which may, in his opinion, endanger the children of journalists.

"Stop mad! If perekosobochit legislation so that an attack on a journalist would be considered a felony, and assault on journalists’ children, parents, wife, his girlfriend would be considered disorderly conduct – here is everything and shut up" – wrote in his column Panyushkin on Radio Liberty.

Russian human rights activists call one of the main problems in Russia impunity for perpetrators of killings and attacks on journalists.

Taliban impostor — consequences and rebuttals

By Ali K Chishti

In what has been described as the biggest mishap of the century, which could potentially cost the US and NATO billions of dollars and thousands of lives, the chief negotiator of the Taliban that the US, Afghanistan and NATO were resting all their hopes on turned out to be a “hoax”. The US gave a man claiming to be Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur, Mullah Omar’s number two, “a lot of money” to engage in talks. He was also flown to Kabul to consult with Afghan President Hamid Karzai at the presidential palace. Karzai, terrified of looking like a laughingstock, denied the meeting.
Daily Times has obtained a version from the Quetta Shura, in which they denied any talks or links with NATO and denied having received any money from the alliance. The Quetta Shura, which is now based in Karachi, confirmed that Mullah Akhtar Muhammad Mansur “is in safety and had never negotiated with the Americans and the West. Only Mullah Muhammad Omar is entitled to sanction such negotiations. We will only talk after the full withdrawal of NATO and US troops from Afghanistan,” confirmed Zabiullah Majahid, the Taliban’s spokesman.
Mullah Mansur is a well-known Taliban leader and has a high profile job in the movement’s cabinet. It is not clear as to why officials would have had such a difficult time identifying him. There are a number of former Taliban in parliament and in the 70-member High Peace Council recently formed by Karzai to find a political solution to the insurgency. It was reported that the man was believed to be a shopkeeper in Quetta.
Although quite senior in the Quetta Shura, Mansur was not promoted to second-in-command of the shura following last February’s arrest of Abdul Ghani Baradar in Pakistan. The Afghan Taliban’s number two leader was arrested in a joint raid with the CIA. Mansur was passed over in favour for Maulvi Zakir Qayyum — a former Guantanamo detainee. Released into Afghan custody in 2007, Qayyum was freed four months later and rejoined the Taliban.
While different versions of the identity of the so-called ‘Taliban impostor’ are being discussed, Daily Times can confirm that some sections of the US military in Afghanistan knew about the real identity of the Taliban impostor from the start, but deliberately kept quiet. The idea was to ‘wait and watch’, while the real agenda was to prolong and sabotage the 2014 withdrawal date announced by US President Obama and recently decided in Lisbon at the NATO conference.
So who was the ‘Taliban impostor’?
“Someone the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) groomed to delay and counter check us,” a senior member of NATO in Afghanistan told Daily Times.
“We are on top of things. We know where the guy went to and deposited those briefcases,” he said.
On a different side on the border in Pakistan, the intelligence community and the ISI denies these claims, calling them “ridiculous”.
“Its there own failure, not ours”.
While it may be true that such an implant could be an intelligence asset of a rival intelligence community, it also reflects the nature of the US-Pak relationship of acute mistrust and conflicting strategic interest in Afghanistan.
The whole ‘Taliban imposter’ episode also brings to light the dubious role of the US and NATO in Afghanistan and especially that of General Petraeus.
Petraeus has been able to reap the political benefit from the fact that most journalists and the US political elite believe that it was Petraeus’ maneuvering, combined with the surge, that produced the Sunni turn towards cooperation against al Qaeda in Iraq. But the Petraeus success formula in Iraq had largely been mythical, where a lot of his critics believe that in Iraq, the Sunnis had begun shifting towards joining anti-al Qaeda militias before Petraeus took over command in February 2007.
In Pakistan last week, US President Barack Obama’s special representative to Afghanistan and Pakistan, Richard Holbrooke, played down reports that senior Taliban leaders were holding talks with the Afghan government.

Analysis: US Carrier Visit A Dilemma For China

Analysis: US Carrier Visit A Dilemma For China

CHRISTOPHER BODEEN, Associated Press

Posted: 7:31 am PST November 26, 2010Updated: 7:55 am PST November 26, 2010

BEIJING — This weekend’s arrival of a U.S. aircraft carrier in the Yellow Sea poses a dilemma for Beijing: Should it protest angrily and aggravate ties with Washington, or quietly accept the presence of a key symbol of American military pre-eminence off Chinese shores?

The USS George Washington, accompanied by escort ships, is to take part in military drills with South Korea following North Korea’s shelling of a South Korean island Tuesday that was one of the most serious confrontations since the Korean War a half-century ago.

It’s a scenario China has sought to prevent. Only four months ago, Chinese officials and military officers shrilly warned Washington against sending a carrier into the Yellow Sea for an earlier set of exercises. Some said it would escalate tensions after the sinking of a South Korean navy ship blamed on North Korea. Others went further, calling the carrier deployment a threat to Chinese security.

Beijing believes its objections worked. Although Washington never said why, no aircraft carrier sailed into the strategic Yellow Sea, which laps at several Chinese provinces and the Korean peninsula.

This time around, with outrage high over the shelling, the U.S. raising pressure on China to rein in wayward ally North Korea, and a Chinese-American summit in the works, the warship is coming, and Beijing is muffling any criticisms.

"One of the results of North Korea’s most recent belligerence has been to make it more difficult for China to condemn U.S. naval deployments in the East China Sea," said Michael Richardson, a visiting research fellow at Singapore’s Institute of Southeast Asian Studies. "I think China must be quietly cursing North Korea under their breath."

China’s response has so far been limited to expressing mild concern over the exercises. A Foreign Ministry spokesman on Friday reiterated Beijing’s long-standing insistence that foreign navies obtain its permission before undertaking military operations inside China’s exclusive economic zone, which extends 230 miles (370 kilometers) from its coast.

It wasn’t clear where the drills were being held or if they would cross into the Chinese zone.

The statement also reiterated calls for calm and restraint but did not directly mention the Yellow Sea or the planned exercises.

State media have been virtually silent. An editorial in the nationalistic tabloid Global Times worried that a U.S. carrier would upset the delicate balance in the Yellow Sea, ignoring the fact that the George Washington has taken part in drills in those waters numerous times before.

North Korea, by contrast, warned Friday that the U.S.-South Korean military drills were pushing the peninsula to the "brink of war."

A more passive approach this time helps Beijing raise its credibility with Washington and trading partner South Korea, and puts North Korea on notice that its actions are wearing China’s patience thin.

"The Chinese government is trying to send Pyongyang a signal that if they continue to be so provocative, China will just leave the North Koreans to themselves," said Zhu Feng, director of Peking University’s Center for International and Strategic Studies.

Sending signals is likely to be as far as Beijing goes, however. China fears that tougher action – say cutting the food and fuel assistance Beijing supplies – would destabilize the isolated North Korean dictatorship, possibly leading to its collapse. That could send floods of refugees into northeastern China and result in a pro-U.S. government taking over in the North.

"What China should do is make the North Koreans feel that they have got to stop messing around," Zhu said.

China may also be mindful of its relations with key trading partner Seoul, strained by Beijing’s reluctance to condemn Pyongyang over the March ship sinking. Raising a clamor over upcoming drills in the wake of a national tragedy would only further alienate South Korea.

Beijing’s mild tone also shows its reluctance to spoil the atmosphere ahead of renewed exchanges with Washington. President Hu Jintao is scheduled to make a state visit to Washington in January hosted by President Barack Obama – replete with a state dinner and other formal trappings that President George W. Bush never gave the Chinese leader.

Before that Gen. Ma Xiaotian, one of the commanders who objected to the George Washington’s deployment earlier this year, is due in Washington for defense consultations. Those talks are another step in restoring tattered defense ties, a key goal of the Obama administration.

Chinese fixations about aircraft carriers verge on the visceral. U.S. carriers often figure in Chinese media as a symbol of the American government’s ability to project power around the world. The Chinese navy is building a carrier, and keeping U.S. ones out of China’s waters is seen as rightful deference to its growing power.

The U.S. is worried about a key principle: the U.S. Navy’s right to operate in international waters.

While China doesn’t claim sovereignty over the entire Yellow Sea, it has become assertive about its maritime territorial claims and sensitive to U.S. Navy operations in surrounding waters. In the South China Sea, which China claims in its entirety, China has seized foreign fishing boats and harassed U.S. Navy surveillance ships.

In light of such trends, China’s protests of the September drills virtually compelled the U.S. Navy to send the George Washington this time, said Alan Romberg of the Stimson Center think tank in Washington, who met with Chinese military commanders in the summer.

"The People’s Liberation Army thinks it achieved an initial victory in keeping the U.S. from deploying the George Washington in that first exercise. That guarantees that the George Washington will go there at some point, probably sooner rather than later," Romberg said in an interview in September.

Even if China’s reticence holds this time, Beijing is not likely to cede the U.S. Navy carte blanche to range throughout the Yellow Sea.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Hong Lei has stated that China’s stance on U.S. naval action in the Yellow Sea remains unchanged. The politically influential and increasingly vocal military is also likely to keep the pressure on the leadership to take a firm stand.

Any affront to Beijing’s authority or intrusion into Chinese territorial waters would inflame the Chinese public and require a government response, said Fang Xiuyu, an analyst on Korean issues at Fudan University’s Institute of International Studies in Shanghai.

"We hope that the U.S. can exert restraint and not cross that line," Fang said.

___

EDITOR’S NOTE – Christopher Bodeen has covered Chinese foreign policy in Beijing and Shanghai since 2000.

Copyright 2010 by The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

China issues warning ahead of U.S.-South Korea drills

People look as smoke rises from South Korean Yeonpyeong Island after being hit by dozens of artillery shells fired by North Korea November 23, 2010 in this picture taken by a South Korean tourist.
REUTERS/Yonhap

 

By Ju-min Park and Miyoung Kim

SEOUL | Fri Nov 26, 2010 9:50am EST

(Reuters) – China warned on Friday against military acts near its coastline ahead of U.S.-South Korean naval exercises that North Korea, days after shelling a South Korean island, said risked pushing the region toward war.

Beijing’s warning came as the Seoul government named a career soldier as its new defense minister amid mounting criticism of the response to Tuesday’s attack by North Korea, its heaviest bombardment since the 1950-53 Korean War.

North Korean artillery shells rained down on the small South Korean island of Yeonpyeong on Tuesday, killing four people and destroying dozens of houses.

"The situation on the Korean peninsula is inching closer to the brink of war due to the reckless plan of those trigger-happy elements to stage again war exercises targeted against the (North)," the North’s official KCNA news agency said.

The aggressive language is typical of North Korean state-owned media, but the heightened tension was enough to depress the won as much as 2.2 percent. The stock market closed 1.3 percent down, in line with the wider region.

The United States is sending in an aircraft carrier group led by the nuclear-powered USS George Washington to the Yellow Sea for military exercises with South Korea starting on Sunday.

Planned before this week’s attack, the four-day maneuvers are a show of strength which, besides enraging North Korea, have unsettled China, its neighbor and only real ally.

"We oppose any military act by any party conducted in China’s exclusive economic zone without approval," China’s Foreign Ministry said in an online response to a question regarding China’s position on the George Washington participating in joint naval exercises.

The exclusive economic zone is a maritime zone up to 200 nautical miles from a country’s coast.

Washington is pressing China to use its influence to rein in Pyongyang to help ease tension in the world’s fastest-growing economic region.

GOVERNMENT CRITICISED

South Korea’s presidential Blue House appointed Kim Kwan-jin, 61, former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff, to replace Kim Tae-young, who had tried to resign the defense portfolio in May following criticism of the government’s response to a torpedo attack on a South Korean warship blamed on the North.

"(We) think nominee Kim, well-respected for professionalism and conviction, is the right person for the post in order to restore trust from people and boost morale in the entire military," presidential secretary Hong Sang-pyo told a news briefing.

There was brief panic in the capital Seoul in the afternoon when television reported sounds of artillery fire near Yeonpyeong. But the military said the artillery fire was distant and no shells landed in South Korea.

"Investors are growing more jittery ahead of the joint military exercise," said Kim Hyoung-ryoul, a market analyst at NH Investment & Securities. "The key concern is, whether North Korea will again take unforeseen, rash actions."

Reclusive and unpredictable North Korea has defied international efforts to halt its nuclear ambitions. But Tuesday’s artillery barrage was a major ramping-up of tension between to two Koreas, who remain technically still at war.

South Korean troops fired back 13 minutes later, causing unknown damage. Members of Lee’s own party and opposition lawmakers accused the military of responding too slowly.

Hundreds of former South Korean soldiers held a protest rally in the border town of Paju on Friday, accusing the government of being too weak. A small anti-North Korea protest was held in Seoul.

"The lazy government’s policies toward North Korea are too soft," said Kim Byeong-su, president of the association of ex-marines, in Paju. "It needs to take revenge on a bunch of mad dogs."

(Additional reporting by Yoo Choonsik, Jack Kim and Jeremy Laurence; Editing by Nick Macfie and Alex Richardson)

The Perfect Division of Pakistani Society

Peter Chamberlin

“When asked what he aspires to become in the future, Wasifullah replies ‘God willing, I will join the Taliban.’

In what some ways represents the burgeoning civil war within Pakistan, Wasifullah’s best friend Abdurrahman believes it’s the Taliban who are responsible for the destruction.”

This quote, from two boys from the Kachegori IDP (internally displaced persons) Camp in Peshawar reveals perfectly the awesome split, running down the middle of Pakistani society, much more clearly than any attempted explanation that could be given. The Pakistani people are of two minds, both of them extremely patriotic, one school of thought blames the local terrorists for all their grief, the other side insists that it is the military which has killed their loved ones. Outside forces, which are hostile to Pakistan’s survival, have every intention of aggravating those divisions to the point of civil war.

The Christian Bible has a teaching: “A house divided against itself shall not stand.” This is the reality that the people of Pakistan today; in order to avoid the bottomless pit of civil war they must find ways to work through those differences of opinion.

The greatest threat to Pakistan’s survival is not the Taliban, or the Americans, or even those sneaky Indians—the most deadly force you face is your willingness to see everything in black and white. In an environment where so many people seem so certain about the source of their common misery, even though half of the country disagrees with them, there is no such thing as “benefit of the doubt.” You are right and the other guy is absolutely wrong. Something has to give—there has to be room for another possible explanation to be discussed. Until then, you face grave danger from certain dark quarters. Someone has to tear-down the barricades which divide the two camps.

From our experience in our own Civil War, Americans can tell you the truth about the power of differences of opinions, differences so great, that one side feels compelled to take-up arms to force submission from the other side over the primary issues, while the other side is eager to do the same. Soon, you too, will hear the tanks and jackboots marching through your streets, pretending that they are defending your free Republic from subversion. Americans will soon hear the same sounds in our own streets, as the avoidable issue of martial law becomes an inevitable consequence of our reactionary avoidance of the dark forces rising amongst us.

Like you, we too, have to gird ourselves for our own patriotic battlefield of opinions, as we, who refuse to submit to the omniscient State, must defend American ideals from those who believe in the lies of he State, and stand ready to fight against our own ideas as a form of subversion. The world is caught between those who believe that war is the answer to everything and those like myself who believe that war is the answer to nothing.

The schizophrenic nature of Pakistani public discourse (or public discourse in any of the frontline countries) is quickly revealed by a quick perusal of articles and comments to them in Pakistani papers. Comments from the people are sharply divided by a line of false “patriotism,” with people on one side clearly defending the Army as Pakistan’s great patriotic hope against either the terrorists or the Americans, and folks on the other side see the Army violating the basic human rights of thousands of Pakistani citizens instead of protecting them, making the Army the greatest threat to the Nation.

With the Army in virtual control of all of society, it is no small thing to publicly accuse the Army of killing Pakistanis. To do so will quickly get you “disappeared.” The same can be said about publicly speaking-out against the Taliban—it will also get you killed. Why look to blame either America or India for the killing of ordinary Pakistanis, when you can stand in the middle of the street and slander both India and the United States at the top of your lungs and no bullets will fly at you—but you might just get a few handshakes or hugs.

While it is certainly true that both India and the United States have been hiring lots of people to wage war inside Pakistan, those people were all Pakistanis—Pakistanis waging war against their fellow Pakistanis. The point is, hundreds, or thousands of Pakistanis have been willing to kill their countrymen for a few bucks, all for a cause that most of them probably felt no kinship for. How easy would it then be for the Imperial powers to pay these mercenaries just a little bit more to ignite open civil war?

The greatest danger to Pakistan’s pressure-cooker national scenario is not so much from the dangerous differences in opinion, the real, impending danger is from those who would pay enormous sums to push a few provocateurs across that dangerous dividing line.

It is against this great provocative danger that the real patriots of Pakistan must organize and find ways to heal the great rifts which have been created and amplified. Take away the magnifying glass which the great powers use to amplify the natural divisions occurring among you. Stop the fight over who is to blame for the terrorism afflicting the Pakistani people, whether it is the Army or the Taliban and recognize the American influence in each organization. Stop teaching your children your own prejudices. Learn to see beyond the divisive labels. You need to organize to stop the violence—all of the violence, all kinds of political or religious violence.

The war on terrorism must take a new turn in Pakistan, onto a road of peace. You must fight the spirit of war with the desire to wage peace. Waging peace isn’t just an old hippie phrase dusted-off for our era; it is a meaningful life change. Waging peace has nothing to do with armaments; it is a struggle to change human behavior itself. It is a concept found in the Christian Bible, just as it is in the life-altering teachings of the Quran. It is the personal jihad, “the ijtihad,” or struggle against the self. It is our selfless better nature waging war against the primal reactions of the primitive “self.”

We must fight the urge against violent reactions to our own opinions that are so alien to our own that they drive us to madness. Everyone understands this urge, to silence those “ignorant” fools who encourage opinions that we consider to be harmful to our own causes. In any election season, we are all certain to encounter loud, obnoxious, ”talking-heads,” who we would like to shut-up. It is the urge to react in the face of obvious, even dangerous, ignorance, that we all must struggle against.

We must follow the civilizing urge, instead of the emotions of the inner cave man. Only in this way can we wage peace against those who have their rifles ready at hand. What Pakistan needs is a peaceful agitation, an arousal of the patriotic urge to defend Pakistan against all adversaries, even from the State itself.

In a normal article or essay of this type, it would be unavoidable, at this point, to go off in a tangent, producing a stream of facts to support my position, but that is not what is needed here.

Those who find themselves caught-up in the argument to either defend the Pak Army, or to castigate it, must break free from the swift currents of national debate over this, a very large side issue. The real issue here, the ONLY issue here, is the survival of Pakistan as a cohesive state. The Army is NOT the issue, unless it surrenders Pakistan itself to the tender mercies of the controlling, interfering powers. If Kayani has surrendered to an American invasion, then he will have made himself the greatest obstacle to your self-preservation as a free people. In which case, the people would be correct to turn against the Army.

Whether or not the normally inscrutable general has surrendered to Petraeus’ demands and opened a new war front in North Waziristan and accepted widening the NATO offensive into the Tribal Regions, remains to be seen. That is your problem to figure-out, only you must do it before it actually plays-out. Such is the nature of subversive patriotism—Who really defends the homeland and who works for the Empire?

“How do we save the Islamic Republic from the war against Islam?” This is the vital issue that all sides must begin to see in the stark light of blinding reality. If you activate the citizen democracy over saving the state, then you can attend to first issues first, followed later by efforts to resolve the many side issues which are now being used by the hostile powers to blind you. Democratic action will have given birth to a flowering Islamic democracy—an impossible contradiction, according to many knowledgeable experts.

The Empire wants your minds. It is on that mental battlefield where your greatest struggles await.

peterchamberlin@naharnet.com

The “Adiala 11” Disappeared Were Suspects in GHQ Bombing and Musharraf Assassination Attempt

[This means that this Lashkar e-Jhangvi, “Amjad Farooqi Cell has once again been brought back from the point of certain doom by shadowy government agents.  One would think that the Pakistani people would grow weary from this constant reviving of “dead” terrorists, over and over, to take the state terrorism in Pakistan to the next level.  Rest assured, the men who were taken from that Rawalpindi jail are perfectly safe and warm, nestled in the bosom of the protective ISI.]

‘Weak’ state and ‘disappeared’ people

Both the ISI and Military Intelligence (MI) have denied that they took away the acquitted men.

The attorney general of Pakistan has told the Supreme Court that the country’s intelligence agencies “could not be made respondents in any case.” He was speaking in connection with the ‘disappearance’, from Adiala jail in Rawalpindi, of 11 men acquitted by an anti-terrorism court (ATC) before they could be released. There was some evidence that they were handed over to the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI). Both the ISI and Military Intelligence (MI) have denied that they took away the acquitted men.

Significantly, the men had been arrested and tried on the charge of an attack on the GHQ earlier this year, as well as an attempt on the life of former president General (retd) Pervez Musharraf. Now it is a case of habeas corpus, similar to the case of the ‘disappeared’ people that the honourable Court is pursuing, given the fact that habeas corpus is the foundation of criminal law and ensures legal process. If there is no habeas corpus, the state allowing people to be arrested without being presented before a court of law is often called fascist.

In Pakistan, ‘disappearance’ is said to be of two kinds. The first is the incompetence of the prosecuting agencies — the 11 men of Adiala jail were improperly ‘sued’ according to the attorney general — which has caused the release of known terrorists who have been killed after being released. The courts are not to blame: they must apply the principle of guilty beyond a shadow of doubt to all comers. And that applies to ATCs as well. The second reason is that terrorists are able to intimidate the legal and executive bureaucracy in letting them go. There are numberless cases where known killers were let off because the witnesses either mysteriously died or were cowed into reneging. There have been, no doubt, cases where the magistrate, unsure of state protection, saved his life by acquitting the killer.

The Supreme Court’s effort at putting the country back on the rails of habeas corpus is meritorious, but is increasingly coming up against the state’s much weakened writ in the face of terrorism. It has particularly faced a tough situation in Balochistan where the ‘disappeared’ people have belonged to all kinds of categories — members of private armies involved in acts of terrorism; people scared into escaping into Afghanistan during the insurgency; and those picked up by the security agencies — backed not so much by the legal community as by sub-nationalism in the province. Wherever in the world there has been uprising against the state, disappearances have been experienced.

The largest disappearances in per capita terms have been in Sri Lanka: 3,000. In Indian Punjab, thousands of secret cremations of individuals killed in police custody throughout the 1980s have been uncovered in just a single district. This is true of Andhra Pradesh and Chhattisgarh too. In Kashmir, in 1989 alone, some 7,000 people disappeared at the hands of Indian security forces. The United States organised the Guantanamo Bay camp to avoid habeas corpus. Aafia Siddiqi was not charged as an abettor of al Qaeda because that would have obliged the American government to produce 9/11 plotter Khalid Sheikh Muhammad — currently at Guantanamo — in a New York court. Cases proliferate in Afghanistan, Bhutan and in the Chittagong Hills in Bangladesh.

Letting terrorists go can be lethal. Abdullah Mehsud, let off from Guantanamo Bay, went on a killing spree in Pakistan, abducting and killing Chinese engineers working in Tribal Areas. Shia leader Hasan Turabi was killed in Karachi in 2006 after he warned that terrorists let off recently by the Sindh High Court will kill him.Speaking to Newsweek Pakistan (November 15), Punjab governor Salmaan Taseer complained that “the people suspected of involvement in the murder of the surgeon-general of Pakistan, the attempts on Musharraf, the attack on the GHQ and the attack on the Danish embassy have all been released”. There is the quaint example of Lashkar-e-Jhangvi killer Malik Ishaq whom the Punjab government keeps in custody but pays his family for it because he has been released by the court!

Demanding habeas corpus is the court’s effort to bring the country back to normal. But the process of bringing this ‘weak’ state back to normalcy requires fighting the armed terrorist who thrives on the basis of intimidation. There are two kinds of states in the ‘weak’ category: the ones that belong to the Third World roll call of disorganisation; and those that have lost their writ to embedded terrorists. Pakistan’s writ is lowest among the Third World category of disorganised states, and that too after counting Afghanistan and its warlords. There is practically no writ outside a couple of cities in Balochistan; there is no writ in most of Tribal Areas, federal and provincial; there is partial writ or ‘shared writ’ in such settled areas as Kohat and Hangu in Khyber-Pakhtunkhwa.

There are alarming comparisons here, and they outmatch other states in South Asia. Cities like Peshawar and Karachi are at the mercy of terrorists and criminals who have adopted the modus operandi of the terrorists. They have no-go areas where security agencies too are attacked. There are no-go areas in a part of interior Sindh where tribal wars take place while the police stand aside and watch. There is a 75-kilometre long stretch of River Indus before it falls into the Indian Ocean where only dacoits rule and make people disappear in Karachi for money. The dacoits from this no-man’s land actually own entire communities in Karachi where some of the ‘goths’ they established have been regularised as towns by the government.

Yet the Supreme Court’s campaign to make state agencies answerable for the people they pick up is praiseworthy and the support it has in this regard from the entire world is justified. There are additional matters pertaining to the competence of state authorities, hardened by past immunity, that are also coming to the fore. Intelligence agencies have agreed to talk to the Supreme Court to explain their position. That is the right way to go. No one is above the law.

Published in The Express Tribune, November 26^th, 2010.

Pak intelligence agencies “cloaked in veil of impunity”

Pak intelligence agencies “cloaked in veil of impunity”: Pak editorial

From ANI

Islamabad, Nov 26: Referring to the case of eleven missing prisoners of Adiala Jail, allegedly abducted by Pakistani intelligence agencies, a newspaper editorial has stated that these spy agencies of have once again "cleverly cloaked themselves in a veil of impunity".

"Pakistan’s intelligence agencies seem to think they are above the law. This could not have been more obvious in the case of the 11 missing prisoners who were allegedly picked up by our agencies from the Adiala Jail," said the Daily Times editorial.
It quoted Attorney General Maulvi Anwarul Haq’s written reply to the Supreme Court (SC) on behalf of the Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI) and Military Intelligence (MI), as saying: "It is stated stance of answering respondents that the alleged detained prisoners are not in their custody."
In a separate reply, the Intelligence Bureau (IB) claimed the same. However, Chief Justice of Pakistan, Iftikhar Chaudhry, taking a tough stance, took umbrage at the ISI and MI’s reply that "an office cannot be sued. The proper party is the Federation of Pakistan through the secretary of relevant ministries".
On being prodded by the Chief Justice, Haq revealed there was no specific law under which the secret agencies were functioning, and that under Section 29 of the Civil Procedure Court, notices could be issued to the federation.
At this, the Chief Justice said the Civil Procedure Court was a subordinate legislation, while the apex court had wider jurisdiction and could issue notices to anyone, adding that no one was above the law.
"Prima facie you know about the evidence in the case, and being a high law officer, it’s your responsibility to assist the court and resolve the matter amicably," Chaudhry said.
Taking note of killings in Balochistan, the editorial said: "When extra-judicial killings are being carried out by these agencies, there is sufficient suspicion to believe that the Adiala Jail inmates are in their custody as well. It will be a real test for the judiciary to prove its mettle if it can take the security agencies to task."
It recalled that the last time the Chief Justice had threatened to bring the intelligence chiefs to court for questioning in the missing persons’ cases, he was unceremoniously removed by former President Pervez Musharraf.
"But this should not deter CJ Chaudhry who is known for taking bold steps to establish the judiciary’s independence. It is time to put an end to this culture of impunity and the intelligence agencies made accountable for their alleged crimes against humanity," the editorial added.
Copyright Asian News International/DailyIndia.com

Russian Parliament: Stalin Ordered Katyn Massacres

Russian Prime Minister Vladimir Putin (right) and Polish Prime Minister Donald Tusk visited the Polish part of the Katyn memorial on April 7.

November 26, 2010

Russia’s lower house of parliament, the State Duma, has passed a statement saying the World War II Katyn massacres were committed on the direct order of Soviet dictator Josef Stalin.
The 1940 massacre of some 20,000 Polish officers and other prominent citizens in western Russia by Soviet secret police has long soured relations between the two countries.
The Soviet Union initially blamed the massacre on the Nazis.
The statement, passed today despite opposition from the Communist Party, also stressed that Soviet citizens were also victimized by Stalin’s repressions.
"I am troubled that over the past few decades the Russians have been put on their knees and forced to apologize for everything, including things they have never done," said Viktor Ilyukhin, a Communist deputy.

compiled from agency reports

The Inside Poop On the First Israeli Weapons Shipments to the Contras

Spilled out into the open

http://www.haaretz.com/weekend/week-s-end/spilled-out-into-the-open-1.326987Recently declassified Pentagon documents reveal a strange, not to say illicit, 1980s operation called ‘Tipped Kettle,’ in which weapons stolen by Israel from the PLO in Lebanon were transferred to the Contras and to anti-American elements in Iran

By Amir Oren

The collection of declassified documents published two weeks ago by the Pentagon reveals infighting among branches of the U.S. administration and intrigues in foreign countries – including 1980s’ Israel. The impression one gets is not especially positive. The Americans are publishing the documents now not because they are trying somehow to suggest to Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu how he should behave, but because the law obligates them to reveal records in due course following a review, unless there is a genuine reason to keep them secret. In the aforesaid period Netanyahu served as deputy to Moshe Arens, when he was Israel’s ambassador to Washington, D.C. (1982-83 ). Arens’ staff then also included Gen. Menachem Meron, the military attache in Washington, and spokesman Nachman Shai. Arens and his aides constituted an island of sanity in their relations with the administration of U.S. President Ronald Reagan, at a time of hostility in the U.S. capital toward the government of Prime Minister Menachem Begin and Defense Minister Ariel Sharon.

	IDF soldiers with weapons captured during the first day of the Lebanon war.
	Photo by: IDF Spokesman’s Office

The recently revealed documents deal with an operation dubbed “Tipped Kettle,” involving weapons the Israel Defense Forces looted from the Palestine Liberation Organization during Operation Peace for Galilee in Lebanon, and their transfer to the Contras – opponents of the socialistic Sandinista regime in Nicaragua. That was the first episode, of rather questionable legality according to U.S. law, in a more complex story whose second installment, in 1985-1986, became known as the Iran-Contra scandal. Part II was patently illegal – a blatant effort by the White House to violate a Congressional order and to cook up a strange deal involving the sale of American weapons (originally supplied to the IDF ) to anti-American Iran, for use in its war with Iraq; the release of Western hostages being held in Lebanon by Iranian-controlled Hezbollah; and the financing of Contras’ activities thanks to the difference between the sum paid by the Iranians and the true value of the weapons – minus a profit for those engaged in the deal.

By the end of that decade, during the trial of U.S. Marine Col. Oliver North and other officials in the Reagan administration, charged with deceiving Congress and providing false testimony to a special prosecutor, Operation Tipped Kettle was also briefly mentioned in the court proceedings. Now, however, the whole picture has come into view, with its emphasis on the behavior on the Israeli side.

In the fall of 1982, Reagan’s secretary of defense, Caspar Weinberger, was trying to implement a policy intended to combat pro-Soviet elements in Latin America, including the Sandinistas. Even more belligerent than he was CIA director William Casey. The CIA had direct intelligence connections with the Mossad, but in the affair of the captured weapons the American agency preferred to hide behind the Pentagon. The system of communication between the CIA and the Pentagon was called Focal Point; it had been used to facilitate connections between them since the mid-1950s. Officially, Israel was unaware then that the weapons taken from the PLO would be used not by the U.S. Army in its training bases, but rather to arm the Contras.

Though the Republicans controlled the White House at the time, the Democrats controlled Congress. The chairman of the House Intelligence Committee, Edward Boland, achieved a majority for a series of bills named for him, which limited the administration’s ability to help the Contras. In one of the bills, passed in the fall of 1984, all U.S. intelligence agencies were prohibited from any such activity. (North tried to outsmart the law, claiming, after he came under investigation, that the National Security Council, which coordinated the operations, was not an intelligence agency. )

The legislation meant, in effect, that without the specific approval of Congress, no money could be formally budgeted in this case. Therefore, Casey, North and their colleagues had to use subterfuge to supply the arms, for example, by way of “donations” from foreign countries – Saudi Arabia, the Sultanate of Brunei – or circuitous deals with South Korea, Taiwan, China and especially Israel. The loot captured from the PLO during the war, at a cost of hundreds of Israeli dead, was particularly suitable for use by the Contras. And if Kalashnikov rifles fell into the hands of the Sandinistas, there would have been fewer questions about its source.

‘No policy problem’The first of the Pentagon documents concerning Operation Tipped Kettle was sent by Weinberger to Casey on November 17, 1982. The subject: rifles, machine guns and light mortars for infantry fighters “captured by Israeli forces in Lebanon.” The Pentagon’s Defense Intelligence Agency “can offer assistance in helping to acquire significant amounts of these types of weapons presently available in Lebanon.” The letter didn’t say from whom exactly the weapons would be purchased – from the Christian Phalange forces, from other organizations or from Palestinians in areas outside IDF control. The State Department, added Weinberger, had “no policy problem with this effort as long as it is not publicized.”

“In a separate action, our efforts to obtain captured weapons directly from the Israeli government have been delayed while their military attache, MG Meron, is out of the Washington area. He should return within the next few days and the subject will be raised at that time … We are prepared to meet your request through the Focal Point System,” wrote Weinberger.

In March 1983, four months later, Weinberger sent Casey a second letter, declaring, “I am glad to report significant progress.” In February, back in Israel, the Kahan Commission of inquiry report on the massacres in the Sabra and Chatila refugee camps in Beirut was submitted, as a consequence of which Ariel Sharon was dismissed as defense minister. At that point, staff from the embassy in Washington took over at the ministry in Tel Aviv: Arens was at the top, Meron became director general, and Shai was media adviser.

Weinberger reported that “a joint DoD/CIA survey team visited Israel and was shown about 300 metric tons of captured weapons and ammunition suitable for your purposes. Shortly after Ambassador Arens became the new Israeli MOD, the DoD was informed that these weapons would be provided to the U.S. at a small percentage of their market value. This charge, which I understand will be agency funded, would only be for packing and handling and is anticipated to be in the neighborhood of $100,000. My staff is in the process of setting up the movement of these weapons to the U.S. Due to the weight and bulk of these items they will have to be moved by surface transport and thereby will not be available until the May/June timeframe.”

That same day, the U.S. Navy was instructed to provide transport for “military items … that will be shipped from the Israeli port of Ashdod … to the East Coast of the United States.”

Weinberger updated Casey: “The shipment will be available for CIA pickup” and “can remain packed in the 34 Land/Sea containers until reaching their destination. The Land/Sea containers are the property of the Government of Israel and will need to be … returned to Israel.”

The shipment included 20,000 rifles and submachine guns, 1,000 machine guns, 90 recoil-less rifles, 110 mortars, 1,000 hand grenades and a large amount of ammunition. “The then newly appointed Israeli minister of defense, Moshe Arens, made the final decision that these weapons were to be provided on a gratis basis to DoD. This was one of MOD Arens’ first actions … and was clearly a signal of his desire to improve U.S./Israel relations,” according to the Pentagon documents.

Israel, with one-time and well-calculated generosity, did not lose much money here: In the 1980s, private arms dealers sold similar Kalashnikov rifles, made in Yugoslavia, for $210 each. The market value of all the Kalashnikovs in the shipment in question was only about $4 million; 60-mm. mortars were sold for about $1,500 and 81-mm. mortars for about $5,000.

Added costsA year later, the CIA’s appetite was whetted again; now there were additional factors in the equation. Weinberger’s new undersecretary for international security, Richard Armitage, became a close friend and regular visitor of the new military attache, Gen. Uri Simhoni; the same was true of Weinberger’s senior military assistant, Gen. Colin Powell.

In June 1984, Weinberger received a memo from Armitage describing the process by which the looted weapons had been transferred a year earlier. Armitage mentioned that the mission was accomplished as a result of talks between Maj. Gen. Richard Secord and Meron, and a decision by Arens. In February 1984 the Pentagon was asked to find out whether there were additional weapons available in Israel “under the same financial terms” – i.e., “available for operational use at little or no cost.” In contacts with the Israeli government a few months earlier, in March, it turned out that there were additional weapons stolen from the PLO caches, including Katyushas and anti-aircraft weapons, but that they were “for sale.” A joint Pentagon-CIA survey delegation, headed by the liaison officer with Israel (whose name is erased, apparently a Col. Forster ), went to Israel to examine the items.

“Contacts with the GOI,” noted Armitage dryly, “revealed that they had placed a value of over $77M on these weapons, while DoD sources estimated the cost of the weapons at around $27M.” Or, according to another estimate, $35 million. The head of the U.S. Army Museum, an expert on Soviet weapons, estimated the value at only $17 million.

Armitage’s deputy, U.S. Air Force Lt. Gen. Edward Tixier, Secord’s successor, was traveling to Israel to discuss a different matter and said he would speak privately to director general Meron to discuss transferring the second collection of captured weapons to the Pentagon at little or no cost. If Tixier succeeded, the weapons could arrive in the U.S. at the end of July and be sent immediately to the CIA.

Prior to the Armitage-Simhoni meeting on May 24, Armitage wrote to a liaison officer subordinate to him that “the chances of the U.S. ever obtaining these weapons is poor if they are not in our possession by July 23, 1984 (the date of the upcoming Israeli election ). Our contacts in the Israel MOD (to include both Mr. Arens and Gen. Meron ) could be gone the following day, and establishing relations with new players could be time-consuming.”

According to the recently declassified documents, Israeli activity was frozen at the time, because of “the confusion in the GOI over what direction U.S. policy in Central America is heading and the role that Israel can and should play in relation to the topic. If you feel that timing is right you may which to discuss the issue of payment for these weapons. Because Israeli funds would have to be found to cover specific project related costs (packing, crating, shipping ), we should offer to pay these line items. We should not offer to pay anything for the weapons for two reasons: the weapons will be used to further Western interests, and in the grand scheme of U.S./Israeli relations, a good will gesture on the part of Israel (at a low dollar cost for them ) would be most helpful with the GOI is requesting U.S. assistance on major projects such as funding for the new SAAR-5 missile-attack boat, the Lavi, the F-4 upgrade, the upgrading of the Merkava tank, and the usage of FMS funds off-shore, to mention a few.

“Prior to moving any of this equipment, there needs to be a lead time of several weeks, so that our EOD [explosive ordnance disposal] and logistics people can do the planning required to make this operation work. There is no time to spare if we are to complete this effort prior to Israeli elections.”

In order to save time, Meron suggested that packing of the weaponry begin – this time, over 100 containers were needed – while internal consultation in Israel continued.

The Arens-Meron camp, the Americans reported to their dispatchers, had two problems: IDF Chief of Staff Moshe Levi, eager to speed up the withdrawal of the IDF from Lebanon, gave top priority to establishing a security zone and therefore also arming of the forces of Saad Hadad – which became the South Lebanon Army – with the weapons in question. The IDF’s security assistance unit, headed by Col. (res. ) Zvi Reuter, and foreign relations department, demanded monetary compensation. Above all, the clock was ticking: Soon there would be a new Knesset and perhaps a new defense minister, who would bring in a new director general.

In the last telegram from Tel Aviv, bearing the censored signature of the liaison officer, there is an hour-by-hour description of the consultations, maneuvering and bargaining: hints that the price could be reduced if a way could be found to increase the aid; anger in the Pentagon at the Israeli chutzpah; examination of alternatives; encrypted telegrams from the embassy; bridging proposals; a “gentlemen’s agreement” without signatures.

The elections came and went and the race between Labor, headed by Shimon Peres, and Likud, headed by Yitzhak Shamir, ended in a tie. A week later, before the Peres-Shamir government was formed, Arens signed an approval of the transaction: Weapons worth $30 million to $40 million in exchange for the expectation of an increase in military assistance. Arens was forced to vacate the ministry in favor of Yitzhak Rabin, who like him was pro-American, but Meron remained in the post of director general for two more years.

The Tipped Kettle papers end with an internal memo, with no addressees or signatories, which was written on the day the Iran-Contra affair was exposed, in November 1986. It reports that Reuter, the head of security assistance , complained that the debt for the second transaction had yet to be paid. The complaint was examined in the Pentagon and it revealed an astonishing finding. The Israeli military attache’s office in Washington and the international branch of the Defense Department had reached a secret arrangement: In return for Israel waiving the payment, the U.S. defense contractor Numax was to retain its security clearance and government contracts after being purchased by Israel.

What the officers and ministers, the officials and ambassadors are doing in secret today will be revealed, thanks to the Americans in another 25 years.

First Fake “Taliban,” Then Fake “Al Qaida”

[The question that we must all now ask is: "Were the British military/spooks  trying to deceive the Americans or were they  performing a service for the military/CIA?"   Since there is "O" probability that the British govt. is anything more than an American "lap dog," dedicated to keeping us happy, then it becomes obvious that this latest fake "Taliban" is another American fake Taliban (SEE:      The “Legitimate Press” Almost Gets It On Afghanistan ).  They knew that it would eventually be  exposed for the idiocy that it was, but was it more than just a stalling tactic?  Was it more than just a diversion, to buy the American generals and diplomats time to open their back door into Russia's back yard?  The brilliant morons over at CIA also know that one day America's dirty hands in creating the terror war would be exposed as brutal stage-acting, even though the actors that they have chosen to do the stage-managing have mostly been Pakistanis, Brits, Turks or Israelis.  Gambits, like all the fake Taliban episodes, are often employed to just get to the next gambit or ruse, and to put-off the day when people would forget all about exposing the fake "Taliban," and begin to expose the mother of all lies, fake "al Qaida."  Our government, with the help of all its foreign collaborators, has created the "al Qaida" terrorists and the war intended to eliminate them out of "whole cloth."  The leaders of American government are so immoral and vicious, that they would do this to their fellow man, in order to gain temporary advantage.

Whenever the truth comes out about our government's role as the greatest creator of political terrorism in all human history, and the perpetrators of the reign of agency-contracted terror which began on Sept. 11, 2001 stand exposed before the people of the world...Then the American people will be forced to act and physically remove our own fake "government," before the angry frenzied mobs of the world forcibly carry-out that task for us.]

Karzai’s office blames British for Taliban impostor

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/world-south-asia-11845217

By Paul Wood BBC News, Kabul

A man described as Mullah Mansour, a senior Taliban commander.

Most Afghan or US officials have never set eyes on Taliban leaders, such as Mullah Omar

President Hamid Karzai’s chief of staff has said British authorities brought a fake Taliban commander into sensitive meetings with the Afghan authorities.

The British embassy refused to confirm or deny the remarks, made in an interview with the Washington Post.

A man described as Mullah Mansour, a senior Taliban commander, was reportedly taken to Kabul for a meeting with President Karzai himself.

Now it is claimed he was really a Pakistani shopkeeper from Quetta.

The impersonator is said to have disappeared after hundreds of thousands of dollars were paid to him for his co-operation in the process of Taliban reconciliation.

President Karzai’s office is blaming the British authorities for this debacle – telling the Washington Post the man was brought to the meeting by British diplomats.

A spokesman for the British embassy in Kabul said they did not comment on operational matters.

The Afghan government’s meetings with the Taliban – fake or otherwise – have been described as contacts rather than negotiations.

If there was indeed British involvement, the question is whether this was logistical support or something more active.

“If we are desperate to talk to the Taliban, the Taliban will think, ‘we are winning’,” said one Western official.

Full negotiations to end this conflict still seem a long way off – and the case of the Taliban impostor will not have helped matters.

“Al Qaida” Master Terrorists Apprehended

Their brilliant disguises kept authorities baffled.

“You can credit this bust to good old fashioned police work.  Detectives logged thousands of man-hours in their dogged pursuit of these bad guys.  Manhattan can sleep a little easier tonight,” according to an anonymous police official at the scene of the tense stand-off.

 

 

Rio Slums Armored Police Battle Drug Gangs–30 dead

Rio Slums Armored Police Battle Drug Gangs–30 …, posted with vodpod

Brain Implants

Welcome University of California, Berkeley, Neuroelectric Research Group,
University of California, Berkeley, Introduction to Cyberpunk students,
University of Maine Homeland Security Lab and Electrictal & Computer Engineering students,
The Neuroscience Think-Tank at the University of Sussex,
New York University, Tisch School of the Arts, Interactive Telecommunications Program,
National University of Singapore Integrated Virtual Learning Environment,
Kansas’s Fort Hays State University students,
Michigan’s Wayne State University ISM 7500,
University of Massachusetts psychology students,
Pennsylvania’s Muhlenberg College students,
Tasmania’s ICT Mindtools Robotics students!

Direct neural control of complex machines is a long-term U.S. military goal. DARPA has a brain-machine interface program aimed at creating next-generation wireless interfaces between neural systems and, initially, prosthetics and other biomedical devices.
— Rodney Brooks, “Toward a Brain-Internet Link,” WirelessNewsFactor, 10 Dec 2003.

In a Kurzweillian future, the world would become a very strange place, where converging advances in nanotechnology, biotechnology and computer science combine to propel humanity to its next stage of evolution. “By the end of this century, I don’t think there will be a clear distinction between human and machine,” Kurzweil told the Foresight Institute’sEighth Conference on Molecular Nanotechnology.¹

[By 1969,] the miracle of giving light to the blind ^{i, ii, iii, iv} or sound to the deaf ha[d] been made possible by implantation of electrodes, demonstrating the technical possibility of circumventing damaged sensory receptors by direct electrical stimulation of the nervous system.² Computers that become part of our bodies are not so far-fetched.… Surgeons have performed [more than 50,000 ³] cochlear implants on patients with hearing loss.^v “These people are already walking around with chips in their heads,” [Peter Cochrane, head of research at British Telecommunications PLC,] says.⁴

Giving completely paralyzed patients full mental control of robotic limbs or communication devices has long been a dream of those working to free such individuals from their locked-in state.⁵ There is little doubt that direct brain-machine interfaces will be available in the very near future.⁶

Researchers at the University School of Medicine in Philadelphia demonstrated that signals from neuron groupings in rats brains can be used to control a physical device without the rats carrying out a physical action themselves.⁷ “This study breaks new ground in several areas,” said Dr. Eberhard Fetz, Department of Physiology and Biophysics, University of Washington School of Medicine, who authored a commentary on the research in the “News and Views” section of Nature Neuroscience. “Unlike comparable studies, this is the first demonstration to prove that simultaneous recordings from large ensembles of neurons can be converted in real time and online to control an external device. Extracting signals directly from the brain to control robotic devices has been a science fiction theme that seems destined to become fact.” ⁸

[Miguel Nicolelis and colleagues] at Duke University in North Carolina wired monkey brains to control robotic armsthat mimicked the motions of their real arms (another search; see also another similar study).⁹ “It was an amazing sight to see the robot in my lab move, knowing that it was being driven by signals from a monkey brain at Duke,” said [Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s] Touch Lab director and co-researcher Mandayam Srinivasan. “It was as if the monkey had a 600-mile- (950-km-) long virtual arm.”¹⁰

John P. Donoghue, a neuroscientist at Brown University developing a similar system, said paralyzed patients would be the first to benefit by gaining an ability to type and communicate on the Web, but the list of potential applications is endless, he said. The devices may even allow quadriplegics to move their own limbs again by sending signals from the brain to various muscles, leaping over the severed nerves that caused their paralysis.…

Both he and Nicolelis hope to get permission from the Food and Drug Administration to begin experiments in people [in 2004]. Nicolelis also is developing a system that would transmit signals from each of the hundreds of brain electrodes to a portable receiver, so his monkeys — or human subjects — could be free of external wires and move around while they turn their thoughts into mechanical actions.¹¹

Scientists say they have developed a technology that enables a monkey to move a cursor on a computer screensimply by thinking about it.… Using high-tech brain scans, the researchers determined that [a] small clump[] of cells…were active in the formation of the desire to carry out specific body movements. Armed with this knowledge, [researchers at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena] implanted sensitive electrodes in the posterior parietal cortex of a rhesus monkey trained to play a simple video game.… A computer program, hooked up to the implanted electrodes,…then moved a cursor on the computer screen in accordance with the monkey’s desires — left or right, up or down, wherever “the electrical (brain) patterns tells us the monkey is planning to reach,” according to [researcher Daniella] Meeker.¹² [Dr. William Heetderks, director of the neural prosthesis program at the National Institute of Neurological Disorders and Stroke,] believes that the path to long-lasting implants in people would involve the recording of data from many electrodes. “To get a rich signal that allows you to move a limb in three-dimensional space or move a cursor around on a screen will require the ability to record from at least 30 neurons,” he said.¹³

Dr. Philip R. Kennedy, an [sic] clinical assistant professor of neurology at Emory University in Georgia, reported that a paralyzed man was able to control a cursor with a cone-shaped, glass implant (See also another similar study).¹⁴ Each [neurotrophic electrode] consists of a hollow glass cone about the size of a ball-point pen tip.¹⁵ The implants…contain an electrode that picks up impulses from the nerve endings. Before they are implanted, the cones are coated with chemicals — taken from tissue inside the patients’ own knees — to encourage nerve growth. The implants are then placed in the brain’s motor cortex — which controls body movement — and over the course of the next few months the chemicals encourage nerve cells to grow and attach to the electrodes. A transmitter just inside the skull picks up signals from the cones and translates these into cursor commands on the computer.¹⁶

Scientists at Northwestern University crafted a two-wheeled robot that operated partly on the electrical signals of adisplaced lamprey’s brain (pic, video).¹⁷ The part of the brain used in the experiment normally keeps the lamprey upright in the water. When connected up correctly, the organ can guide the robot towards a light source.¹⁸

Scientists at the University of Tokyo are exploring ways that la cucaracha can become more socially redeeming. Using hardy American roaches, scientists remove their wings, insert electrodes in their antennae (more pics, schematics) and affix a tiny backpack of electric circuits and batteries to their carapace. The electrodes prod them to turn left and right, go backward and forward. The plan is to equip them with minicameras or other sensory devices.^{19, vi} [Later that same year, the motion pictureThe Fifth Element (1997) featured a remote-controlled cockroach equipped with a camera.]

Scientists at the Max Planck Institute have…demonstrated electronic-based neuron transistors that can control the movement of a live leech from a computer. They can detect the firing of a nearby neuron, cause it to fire, or suppress a neuron from firing — all of which amounts to two-way communication between neurons and neuron transistors.²⁰

Rats steered by a computer…could soon help find buried earthquake victims or dispose of bombs, scientists said [1 May 2002]. The remote-controlled “roborats” (more pics, audio, video) can be made to run, climb, jump or turn left and right through electrical probes, the width of a hair, implanted in their brains. Movement signals are transmitted from a computer to the rat’s brain via a radio receiver strapped to its back. One electrode stimulates the “feelgood” center of the rat’s brain, while two other electrodes activate the cerebral regions which process signals from its left and right whiskers.²¹

“They work for pleasure,” says Sanjiv Talwar, the bioengineer at the State University of New York who led the research team.… “The rat feels nirvana.” ²² Asked to speculate on potential military uses for robotic animals, Dr Talwar agreed they could, in theory, be put to some unpleasant uses, such as assassination.²³

[In February 2007, scientists at the Robot Engineering Technology Research Centre at Shandong University of Science and Technology in China announced they had created remote-controlled pigeons (pic) after having had similar success implanting mice in 2005. Their next step is to improve the technology for practical use.]

A team of US scientists have wired a computer to a cat’s brain and created videos of what the animal was seeing. By recording the electrical activity of nerve cells in the thalamus, a region of the brain that receives signals from the eyes, researchers from the University of California at Berkeley were able to view these shapes.… They recorded the output from 177 brain cells that responded to light and dark in the cat’s field of view. In total, the 177 cells were sensitive to a field of view of 6.4 by 6.4 degrees.… In the cat’s brain, as in ours, the signals from the thalamus cells undergo considerable signal processing in the higher regions of the brain that improve the quality of the image that is perceived. Taking an image from a region of the brain before this image enhancement has taken place will result in a poorer image than the cat is able to see.… Given time, it will be possible to record what one person sees and “play it back” to someone else either as it is happening or at a later date.^{24, vii}

In 1870, two German researchers named [Eduard] Hitzig and [Gustav] Fritsch electrically stimulated the brains of dogs, demonstrating that certain portions of the brain were the centers of motor function. The American Dr. Robert Bartholow, within four years, demonstrated that the same was true of human beings. By the turn of the [twentieth] century in Germany Fedor Krause was able to do a systematic electrical mapping of the human brain, using conscious patients undergoing brain surgery [Morgan, James P., “The First Reported Case of Electrical Stimulation of the Human Brain,” Journal of History of Medicine at http://www3.oup.co.uk/jalsci/scope/; Zimmerman, M., “Electrical Stimulation of the Human Brain,” Human Neurobiology, 1982].

Another early researcher into electrical stimulation of the brain was Walter Rudolf Hess, who began research intoESB in the 1930s, jolting patients’ brains with shocks administered through tiny needles that pierced the skull.²⁵ His experiments [also] included the insertion of fine electrically conductive wires into the brains of anaesthetized cats. To noone’s great surprise, given mild electrical stimulation the cats went beserk [Vance Packard, The People Shapers (New York: Bantam Books, 1977); “Hess, Walter Rudolf,” Encyclopedia Americana (New York: Harper & Row, 1969); “Hess, Walter Rudolph,” Funk & Wagnalls New Encyclopedia (New York: Funk & Wagnalls Inc., 1973)].²⁶

During the decades of the 1940s and 1950s, [Canadian pioneer] Wilder Penfield…experimented with electrical brain stimulation on patients undergoing surgery. One of Penfield’s discoveries was that the application of electricity on alert patients could stimulate the memory of past events [Project Open Mind] (full pic, "I smell burnt toast" reenactment surgery video).

Since 1949, the Tulane University Department of Psychiatry and Neurology has done experimentation in the implantation of electrodes into patients’ brains. According to one of their staff-generated reports, “By implantation of electrodes into various predetermined specific brain sites of patients capable of reporting thoughts and feelings, we have been able to make invaluable long-term observations…” [“Stereotaxic Implantation of Electrodes in the Human Brain: A Method for Long-Term Study and Treatment,” Heath, John, Fontana, Department of Psychiatry and Neurology, Tulane University School of Medicine].

Other early researchers into direct brain stimulation were Robert G. Heath…and his associate, Dr. Russell Monroe. Beginning in 1950, with funding from the CIA and the military, among other sources, they implanted as many as 125 electrodes into subjects’ brains, and also experimented by injecting a wide variety of drugs directly into the brain tissue through small tubes; these drugs included LSD, psilocybin, and mescaline. One of Heath’s memorable suggestions was that lobotomy should be used on subjects, not as a therapeutic measure, but for the convenience of the staff [Heath, Robert G. Undated interview in Omni; Cannon, Martin, “Mind Control and the American Government,” Prevailing Winds, 1994; Human Rights Law Journal, “Freedom of the Mind as an International Human Rights Issue,” Vol. 3, No. 1-4; Ross, M.D., Dr. Colin, “The CIA and Military Mind Control Research: Building the Manchurian Candidate,” lecture given at Ninth Annual Western Clinical Conference on Trauma and Dissociation, April 18, 1996].²⁷ Heath of Tulane University, who pioneered the electrical stimulation of human brains, has equipped dangerously aggressive mental patients with self-stimulators. A film shows a patient working himself out of a violent mood by pushing his stimulator button.²⁸

In 1956, James Olds (pic) reported on research in which he had electrically stimulated the brains of rats. Implanting electrodes in rats’ pleasure center of the brain, he attached a device that allowed the rats to activate the electrical impulse. He found that the rats would become so obsessed with self-stimulation that they would literally starve themselves to death.²⁹ Very similar results have since been achieved replacing rats with monkeys [and humans as well].³⁰

Jose Delgado, funded by Yale University, the Office of Naval Intelligence, the U.S. Air Force 6571st Aeromedical Research Laboratory, and other institutions, and linked to Spanish fascist groups by researcher John Judge,³¹…is the man who perfected the stimoceiver [or ‘transdermal stimulator’], a tiny electronic device that is implanted into the brains of humans and animals, and is used to transmit electrical impulses directly to the brain [Delgado, Jose, Physical Control of the Mind (New York: Harper & Row, 1969); and Judge, John, “The Secret Government,” Dharma Combat number 10].³²

Delgado, in a series of experiments terrifying in their human potential, implanted electrodes in the skull of a bull. Waving a red cape, Delgado provoked the animal to charge. Then, with a signal emitted from a tiny hand-held radio transmitter, he made the beast turn aside in mid-lunge and trot docilely away.³³ He has [also] been able to “play” monkeys and cats like “little electronic toys” that yawn, hide, fight, play, mate and go to sleep^viii on command.³⁴ The individual is defenseless against direct manipulation of the brain [Delgado, Physical Control].³⁵

The open publication of Delgado’s bookPhysical Control of the Mind met with a decidedly cool reaction from the public, and this may have warned other researchers in the field to keep quiet about the subject. To this day, Delgado’s is the only popular book on the subject of implants and electrical stimulation of the brain.³⁶

During the latter days of MKULTRA research, a CIA memorandum, dated 22 November, 1961, announced, “Initial biological work on techniques and brain locations essential to providing conditioning and control of animals has been completed. The feasibility of remote control of activities in several species of animals has been demonstrated.… The ultimate objective of this research is to provide an understanding of the mechanisms involved in the directional control of animals and to provide practical systems suitable for human application.” ³⁷

Later breakthroughs in technology were documented in “Two-Way Transdermal Communication with the Brain,” published in 1975. By this time Delgado had linked his brain implants with computers. The monograph records,

“The most interesting aspect of the transdermal stimoceivers is the ability to perform simultaneous recording and stimulation of brain functions, thereby permitting the establishment of feedbacks and ‘on-demand’ programs of excitation with the aid of the computer. With the increasing sophistication and miniaturization of electronics, it may be possible to compress the necessary circuitry for a small computer into a chip that is implantable subcutaneously. In this way, a new self-contained instrument could be devised, capable of receiving, analyzing, and sending back information to the brain, establishing artificial links between unrelated cerebral areas, functional feedbacks, and programs of stimulation contingent on the appearance of pre-determined patterns” [Delgado, Lipponen, Weiss, del Pozo, Monteagudo, and McMahon, “Two-Way Transdermal Communication with the Brain,” a co-operative publication of the Medical University of Madrid, Spain, and Yale University Medical School, 1975].³⁸

Many popular articles on Delgado intend us to think that his primary purpose was the rehabilitation of the mentally and physically sick. This does not happen to be the case. Delgado was a blatant control freak. An example is Delgado’s experimentation on changing the social orientation of animals. One staging area for this experimentation was an island in the Bermudas, where Delgado maintained a free-roving population of gibbons with electronic implants, using electrical brain boosts to build and destroy social orders among those primates as if he was knocking down a row of dominoes [Packard, People Shapers].³⁹

Although well cited, Delgado’s practical results on humans were extremely limited,^ix as most of his research was either merely stated without a results base, or has been reported on second hand.… Reports have been made on his work on the ‘Pandora Project’, which involved modulating electromagnetic fields to a soldier’s head so that the soldier would lose self-control on the battle field. Reports also include how work was carried out to induce schizophrenia artificially through electrical stimulation of the septal zone in the human brain.⁴⁰

Always a visionary in the Orwellian mold, Delgado said, “Looking into the future, it may be predicted that telerecording and telestimulation of the brain will be widely used” [Delgado, Jose, “Radio Stimulation of the Brain in Primates and Man,” New Haven, Connecticut: Department of Psychiatry, Yale University School of Medicine, 1969].⁴¹ He has urged the U.S. government to make “control of the mind” a national goal.⁴²

Another researcher who specialized in brain implants is Dr. Stuart Mackay, who in 1968 penned a textbook titledBio-Medical Telemetry. Mackay reported, “Among the many telemetry instruments being used today are miniature radio transmitters that can be swallowed, carried externally, or surgically implanted in man or animal. They permit the simultaneous study of behaviour and physiological functioning. The scope of observations is too broad to more than hint at a few examples. The possibilities are limited only by the imagination of the investigator” [Dr. Stuart Mackay, cited in Glenn Krawcyzyk, “Mind Control Techniques and Tactics of the New World Order,” Nexus, Dec-Jan 1993].⁴³

By 1994, the London Times estimated that in the previous decade there had been 15,000 cases of persons being implanted with electronic brain devices. It is impossible to know if the Times estimate is at all accurate, since it is unlikely that they would be privy to statistics of secret testing. Certainly, most anti-mind control activists would say that the figure was a gross underestimate.⁴⁴

In July 1996, information was released on research currently taking place into creation of a computer chip called the “Soul Catcher 2025.” Dr. Chris Winter and a team of scientists at British Telecom’s Martlesham Heath Laboratories, near Ipswich, are developing a chip that, when placed into the skull behind the eye, will record all visual and physical sensations, as well as thoughts. According to Winter, “This is the end of death… By combining this information with a record of the person’s genes, we could recreate a person physically, emotionally, and spiritually.” ⁴⁵

“The brain is so complex that one wouldn’t at the outset think that replacing any of its parts is doable,” said Dr. Howard Eichenbaum, a professor of psychology at Boston University and director of the Laboratory of Cognitive Neurobiology there. But advances in neuroscience and computer engineering have made it possible to develop implanted circuits that mimic neural activities, he said. “At least in principle, it looks as though a chip imitating some functions of the hippocampus could be implanted in the future,” he said (pic). “It’s a huge, huge advance in simply duplicating the functions of the hippocampus, which in many ways Dr. [Theodore W.] Berger, [a professor of biomedical engineering at the University of Southern California and the director of the Center for Neural Engineeringthere,] has done.” ⁴⁶

Electrical devices called deep brain stimulators, essentially a pacemaker for the brain, have been used for some years to ease the symptoms of Parkinson’s disease. Now, they’ve just been approved for another degenerative brain disease called dystonia.… The brain stimulators don’t cure dystonia but…they can give patients a better quality of life. The beneficial effect has lasted for almost a decade so far in Parkinson’s patients, and it’s expected the dystonia effect will also be long lasting.⁴⁷

Cyberkinetics Inc. of Foxboro, Mass., has received Food and Drug Administration approval [in 2004] to begin a clinical trial in which four-square-millimeter chips will be placed beneath the skulls of paralyzed patients⁴⁸ that would enable [them] to control computers directly with their brains or possibly help them move their limbs.… “Testing these implants in humans is the next step,” said Eberhard E. Fetz, professor at the Department of Physiology and Biophysics at the University of Washington, who has been experimenting with brain-signal devices since the late 1960s. “Within a decade, we’ll see these being used regularly to control prosthetic devices or activate a patient’s own muscles.” ⁴⁹ At least two other research teams are planning similar brain-machine experiments in people.⁵⁰

For the first time in humans [2004], a team headed by University researchers has placed an electronic grid atop patients’ brains to gather motor signals that enable the patients to play a computer game using only the signals from their brains. The use of a grid atop the brain to record the organ’s surface signals is a brain-machine interface technique that uses electrocorticographic (ECoG) activity — data taken invasively directly from the brain surface.… Eric C. Leuthardt, M.D., a WUSTL neurosurgeon at Barnes-Jewish Hospital, and Daniel Moran, Ph.D., assistant professor of biomedical engineering in the School of Engineering & Applied Science, performed their research on four adult epilepsy patients who had the grids implanted so that neurologists could find the area in the brain serving as the focus for an epileptic seizure, with hopes of removing it to avoid future seizures.… “To put this in perspective,” Leuthardt said, “the previous EEG-based ^x systems are equivalent to a 1908 Wright brothers airplane in regards to speed of learning to achieve control. Right now, with our results, we’re flying around in an F-16 jet.” ⁵¹

Probes implanted in the brain for diagnosis and treatment could be improved with nanoscale carbon fibers. Biomedical engineer Thomas Webster from Purdue University in West Lafayette, Indiana and colleagues developed a carbon nanofiber-reinforced plastic composite to determine whether it could improve neural and orthopedic prosthetics.

Neural prosthetics, usually made of silicon, can become covered in scar tissue. Orthopedic implants, usually made of titanium or titanium alloys, often become covered in soft tissue.

Knowing that carbon nanofibers and nanotubes have electrical and mechanical properties that might make them suitable for prosthesis, the researchers tested composites of 60-odd nanometer carbon nanofibers in polycarbonate urethane. Polycarbonate urethane is already approved for human use.

They found that neurons cultured on the nanofiber composite developed neurite extensions, which are the first step towards axons and a sign that the materials could encourage interactions essential to neural probes. Additionally, the material had less adhesion to astrocytes, which can impede neural function by producing scar tissue.

For orthopedic applications, the researchers found that bone-forming cells adhered better to composites with a high volume of nanofibers but cells that produce soft fibrous tissue stuck less readily.

The research is reported in the journal Nanotechnology (read abstract).⁵²

[Related to brain implants are implants that are connected to nerves from different parts of the body. Professor Kevin Warwick, for example, had implants inserted into his and his wife’s arms allowing two-way communication. The results were published in his book, I, Cyborg.]

[Another man, whose arms needed to be amputated,] underwent surgery to graft existing nerve endings from his shoulder onto the pectoral muscle on his chest. Those nerves grew into the muscle after about six months. Electrodes on the graft can now pick up any thought-generated nerve impulses to the now-absent limb and transmit those to [a] mechanical prosthesis, controlling the movements of the [“bionic”] arm.⁵³

[The television series Ripley’s Believe it or Not that aired on 5 June 2004 included a segment about French doctors who implanted a computer chip in a paralyzed man’s abdomin connected to implants in his legs that allowed him to stand and walk with a walker by means of computer control.]

We are Borg.
You will be assimilated.
Resistance is futile.⁵⁴

Not everyone is thrilled at the prospect of a post-human future populated by cyborgs, designer children, conscious computers,^xi immortals and disembodied minds roaming the Internet.… [Critics] think this could be the worst calamity to befall us, both as individuals and as a species.^xii And they argue we should be taking steps to prevent it.⁵⁵

If cyborgs are created with superhuman capabilities from a normal human start point, then it certainly brings about a threat to humanity itself. Perhaps the development of direct, military-style cyborgs might be possible to avoid. After all, when cyborgs exhibiting an intelligence that far surpasses that of humans are brought about, it will surely be the cyborgs themselves that make any decisions about how they treat humans.⁵⁶

[Marvin Minsky, a Massachusetts Institute of Technology professor and pioneer in the field of artificial intelligence,] celebrates a future when humans will be able to “upload” the contents of their brains into computers or robotbrains.… [Ray Kurzweil] recently called for replacing the body’s often imperfect molecular blueprint, DNA, withsoftware.… “Transhumanists want to use technology to enhance and fulfill human potential,” [James Hughes, executive director of the World Transhumanist Association based in Willington, Conn.,] said. “That’s very hard to do if you die after only 70 years.” ⁵⁷

“Humanity’s ability to alter its own brain function might well shape history as powerfully as the development of metallurgy in the Iron Age,” cognitive neuroscientist Martha Farah and eight co-authors write in a[n]…issue ofNature Reviews Neuroscience.⁵⁸

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ⁱ A handful of researchers are plumbing the potential of the bionic eye, including Wheaton, Ill.-based Optobionics Corp., led by Dr. Alan Chow, a pediatric ophthalmologist whose artificial silicon retinas have slight [sic] improved the vision of the six patients who’ve received them.
— Jim Krane (The Associated Press) “Bionic Eye Follows Bionic Ear,” Yahoo! News, 27 May 2002.

ⁱⁱ A small, precise dose of electricity can restore sight to some of the million or so Americans considered legally blind. For the past few months, two patients have made out doctors in white lab coats, among other things, thanks to a complex apparatus…made by Second Sight, a privately held firm in Santa Clarita, Calif. The device includes a tiny antenna inside the eye and a retinal implant with pencil-tip-size electrodes that fire electrical signals directly onto the optic nerves and brain. The resolution is extremely crude because there are only 16 electrodes, not enough to recognize faces. Second Sight and a consortium of research laboratories recently received a $9 million federal grant to find a way to squeeze 1,000 electrodes onto the array to make the picture sharper. Powered by an external battery, a mini video camera screwed into a pair of eyeglasses will wirelessly beam images to the array (pic) — all for an estimated cost, including surgery, of $25,000. Scientists concede facial recognition may be five to ten years away. So far, Second Sight has reported no negative side effects in the two patients undergoing clinical trials.
— Aliya Sternstein, “Seeing-Eye Chip,” Forbes, 14 Oct 2002.

ⁱⁱⁱ A pea-sized miniature telescope inserted into the eye is showing promise in improving vision for people with macular degeneration.… Once the telescope is implanted, the eyes no longer work together because the brain cannot merge the magnified image in one eye with the normal image in the other eye. The one-hour surgery involves removing the eye lens and placing the telescope into the patient’s eye with the poorest vision. The eye telescope is one of the newest developments in a bionic revolution, in which plastic, metal and polymers are used to create artificial muscles, ears and other organs that researchers hope will improve the quality of life. “There’s no question there will be a tremendous number of advances in the future that will include devices, whether electrical or mechanical, which will enhance the function of our organs,” said Steve Goldstein, a University of Michigan Henry Ruppenthal family professor of orthopedic surgery and bioengineering.
— The Associated Press, “Miniature ‘bionic’ eye implant rescues vision,” USA Today, 8 Dec 2003.

^iv An implantable chip that can serve as both a prosthetic retina and a drug delivery system has been developed to treat age-related blindness and conditions such as Parkinson’s disease. Created by researchers at the Stanford University School of Medicine in California, the chip communicates chemically rather than electrically, using neurotransmitters to stimulate cells.… Because the chip can draw droplets of fluid in as well as out, it could also enable researchers to take samples in real time, giving them a chemical picture of what goes on in living tissues during certain processes.
— Gabe Romain, “‘Wet’ Eye Chip Becomes Reality; Uses chemicals to work as artificial retina and drug delivery system,” BetterHumans, 23 June 2004.

^v Physicians of the House Ear Clinic have successfully implanted the first two patients with a Penetrating Electrode Auditory Brainstem Implant (PABI), a revolutionary prosthetic device that is currently in clinical trials. The PABI is based on cochlear implant technology, but extends the utility to stimulating the hearing portions of the brain to restore some degree of hearing function to people deafened by bilateral tumors on their hearing and balance nerves (vestibular schwannomas). The PABI is a modified version of the existing Auditory Brainstem Implant (ABI) with the addition of an assembly of microelectrodes, designed to penetrate into the auditory portion of the brainstem (cochlear nucleus) and send sound signals to the brain.
— “First Successful Use of Penetrating Microelectrodes in Human Brainstem Restores Some Hearing to Deaf Patient,” Business Wire, 16 Jan 2004.

^vi Be on guard next time you step into the shower. It might not be a regular cockroach watching you on the ceiling. It could be a well-heeled voyeur’s spy filming you!
— Ron Henderson, trans., “Cockroaches on a secret mission,” Sydsvenska Dagbladet, 18 Jan 1997, athttp://magazine.magnus.se/artikele.asp?artikel=kackerla.

^vii The idea that advance in neurotechnology will one day allow us to video our whole lives from somewhere inside our brains throws up all kinds of issues about privacy, about the world being a stage, about how we edit and censor our own memories and about how one day someone else may do this job for us.
— Lee Marshall, Screen review “The Final Cut,” at http://www.screendaily.com/story.asp?storyid=16330&r=true.

^viii Sleep induced by electrical stimulation of the brain is similar to spontaneous sleep.
— José M. R. Delgado, M.D., Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 158.

^ix In 1950 the Agency [CIA] tooled up for a battery of mind control experiments on human guinea pigs, underwritten by a network of scientific foundations and academic fronts. Neuropsychiatrists at Tulane, McGill, Yale, UCLA and Harvard, some of them laboring beside Nazi imports, researched the use of brain implants to control behavior.… A monograph written in the 1960s by Dr. Jose Delgado, a Yale psychiatrist hailing from Franco’s Spain, detailed his experiments on an 11-year-old boy with electrodes implanted in his brain. Dr. Delgado stimulated his young subject’s synapses with a radio transmitter at a range of 100 feet. The boy was immediately stripped of his sexual identity, reporting that he wasn’t sure if he was a boy or a girl.
— Alex Constantine, “Journal Preview; 12/95: The Constantine Report,” athttp://www.mindcontrolforums.com/cnst-nws.htm.

^x [Operant conditioning is used in the science of electroencephalograph (EEG)-based cursor control brain-computer interface (BCI) technologies. By successive training of mu (and beta) brainwaves, a cursor can be moved on a computer screen just by thinking about it.]

^xi According to Moore’s Law, computer power doubles every 18 months, meaning that computers will be a million times more powerful by 2034. According to Nielsen’s Law of Internet bandwidth, connectivity to the home grows by 50 percent per year; by 2034, we’ll have 200,000 times more bandwidth. That same year, I’ll own a computer that runs at 3PHz CPU speed, has a petabyte (a thousand terabytes) of memory, half an exabyte (a billion gigabytes) of hard disk-equivalent storage and connects to the Internet with a bandwidth of a quarter terabit (a trillion binary digits) per second. The specifics may vary: Instead of following current Moore’s Law trajectories to speed up a single CPU, it’s likely that we’ll see multiprocessors, smart dust and other ways of getting the equivalent power through a more advanced computer architecture.… By 2034, we’ll finally get decent computer displays, with a resolution of about 20,000 pixels by 10,000 pixels (as opposed to the miserly 2048 pixels by 1536 pixels on my current monitor). Although welcomed, my predicted improvement factor of 200 here is relatively small; history shows that display technology has the most dismal improvement curve of any computer technology, except possibly batteries.
— Jakob Nielsen, “Thirty years with computers,” News.com, 27 May 2004.

^xii [Ethicist Joel Anderson at Washington University in St Louis, Missouri,] points out that it will take time for people to accept the technology. “Initially people thought heart transplants were an abomination because they assumed that having the heart you were born with was an important part of who you are.”
— “World’s first brain prosthesis revealed,” NewScientist.com, 12 March 2003.

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Endnotes

¹ Declan McCullagh, “Kurzweil: Rooting for the Machine,” Wired News, 3 Nov 2000.

² José M. R. Delgado, M.D., Physical Control of the Mind: Toward a Psychocivilized Society (New York: Harper & Row, 1969), p. 201.

³ Cochlear Hearing Implants, “New to Cochlear? Start Here,” athttp://www.cochlearamericas.com/NewToCochlear/new_to_cochlear_index.asp.

⁴ Neil Gross, “Into the wild frontier,” Business Week, 23 June 1997, p. 74.

⁵ E. J. Mundell (Reuters Health), “Monkey Moves Computer Cursor by Thoughts Alone,” Yahoo! News, 30 Jan 2002.

⁶ Peter Passaro, “Is it Possible to Download Knowledge into the Brain? Mind-machine interfaces will be available in the near future, and several methods hold promise for implanting information,” Better Humans, 16 Jan 2004.

⁷ Amanda Onion, “Rat Robots: Scientists Develop Remote-Controlled Rats,” ABCNEWS.com, 2 May 2002.

⁸ “Rats Operate Robotic Arm Via Brain Activity,” Science Daily, 23 June 1999.

⁹ “Monkey brain operates machine,” BBC, 15 Nov 2000.

¹⁰ Rick Weiss, “Monkeys Control Robotic Arm With Brain Implants,” washingtonpost.com, 13 Oct 2003.

¹¹ Mundell, “Monkey Moves Computer Cursor.”

¹² Anne Eisenberg, “Don’t Point, Just Think: The Brain Wave as Joystick,” The New York Times, 28 March 2002.

¹³ Paul Eng, “Moving Thoughts: Scientists Study Brain Implants to Control PCs, Artificial Limbs,” ABCNEWS.com, 13 March 2002.

¹⁴ “Communicating with ‘thought power’,” BBC, 15 Oct 1998.

¹⁵ Jane Wakefield, “BodyTechnic: New funding for brain implants,” ZDNet UK News, 3 Dec 1998.

¹⁶ Eng, “Moving Thoughts.”

¹⁷ Onion, “Rat Robots.”

¹⁸ “Fish-brained robot at Science Museum,” BBC, 27 Nov 2000.

¹⁹ “Peepers creepers; Research at the University of Tokyo is investigating ways in which cockroaches with the mini-cameras can be used to locate vermin or perhaps even survivors of earthquakes,” Time, 27 Jan 1997, 149(4), p. 17.

²⁰ Raymond Kurzweil, “Accelerated Living,” KurzweilAI.net, 24 Sep 2001; See also Ray Kurzweil, “Accelerated Living,” PC Magazine, 4 Sep 2001.

²¹ Reuters, “Remote-Controlled Rats May Hunt Bombs and Bodies,” Yahoo! News, 2 May 2002.

²² Tom Clarke, “Here come the Ratbots; Desire drives remote-controlled rodents,” Nature, 2 May 2002.

²³ James Meek, “Live rats driven by remote control,” The Guardian, 2 May 2002.

²⁴ Dr David Whitehouse, “Looking through cats’ eyes,” BBC News, 11 Oct 1999; See also Garrett B. Stanley, Fei F. Li, and Yang Dan, “Reconstruction of Natural Scenes from Ensemble Responses in the Lateral Geniculate Nucleus,” The Journal of Neuroscience, 15 Sep 1999, 19(18):8036-8042.

²⁵ Jim Keith, Mass Control: Engineering Human Consciousness (Lilburn, GA: IllumiNet Press, 1999), p. 94.

²⁶ Jim Keith, Mind Control, World Control (Kempton, IL: Adventures Unlimited Press, 1998), p. 127.

²⁷ Keith, Mass Control, pp. 94-95.

²⁸ Vance Packard, The People Shapers (Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1977), p. 45.

²⁹ “Brain, Mind, and Altered States of Consciousness,” New Enlightenment.

³⁰ Professor Kevin Warwick, I, Cyborg (London: Century, 2002), p. 110.

³¹ Keith, Mind Control, p. 127.

³² Keith, Mass Control, p. 97.

³³ Alvin Toffler, Future Shock (Toronto: Bantam Books, 1988, 1970), p. 194.

³⁴ John A. Osmundsen, “‘Matador’ With a Radio Stops Wired Bull,” The New York Times, 17 May 1965, CXIV(39,195), p. 20.

³⁵ Jose Delgado, cited in Keith, Mind Control, p. 128.

³⁶ Ibidem, pp. 129-130.

³⁷ Ibidem, p. 130.

³⁸ Keith, Mass Control, p. 99.

³⁹ Ibidem, p. 100.

⁴⁰ Ibidem, p. 101.

⁴¹ Warwick, I, Cyborg, p. 112.

⁴² Packard, People Shapers, p. 4.

⁴³ Keith, Mass Control, p. 101.

⁴⁴ Keith, Mind Control, p. 138.

⁴⁵ Ibidem, p. 302.

⁴⁶ Anne Eisenberg, “What’s Next; A Chip That Mimics Neurons, Firing Up the Memory,” The New York Times, 20 June 2002; See also USC Engineering News at http://www.usc.edu/dept/engineering/bergerNYT.

⁴⁷ “Brain ‘Pacemaker’ Helps Alleviate Symptoms Of Dystonia; Disease Makes Patients Stiffen Up So Much They Lose Mobility,” wnbc.com, 21 July 2003.

⁴⁸ Justin Pope (The Associated Press), “FDA Approves Human Brain Implant Devices,” Yahoo! News, 14 April 2004.

⁴⁹ Jeffrey Krasner, “Approval sought to test brain implant; Neuron-fired device would aid paralyzed people, state firm says,” boston.com, 6 Nov 2003.

⁵⁰ Ronald Kotulak, “I, CYBORG,” Chicago Tribune, 1 Aug 2004.

⁵¹ Tony Fitzpatrick, “Thought control: Human subjects play real mind games,” Record, 25 June 2004.

⁵² “Nanoscale Fibers Could Improve Neural Implants,” BetterHumans, 11 Dec 2003.

⁵³ “Brain waves drive man’s bionic arm,” CNN.com, 25 Sep 2003.

⁵⁴ Star Trek, television series.

⁵⁵ Margie Wylie (Religion News Service), “Transhumanists put their faith in technology,” Chicago Tribune, 28 May 2004.

⁵⁶ Warwick, I, Cyborg, p. 239.

⁵⁷ Wylie, “Transhumanists.”

⁵⁸ Tom Siegfried, “Creating brain boosters demands smart approach,” DallasNews.com, 6 June 2004.