5,000 Baloch youth to be inducted in Pak Army in March, 2011

[The way things are, it makes you wonder how he will find 5,000 "volunteers" from Balochistan, if they are to be volunteers.  Does this mean that Baloch have been banned from the Pak Army until now?]

Quetta: A total of 5,000 youth from all over Balochistan Province will be inducted in Pakistan Army in March 2011, said Major General Tariq Javed on Monday.

Pakistan Army in collaboration with Balochistan government is committed to play its role in the development of the province, he said at concluding ceremony of ISSB classes at Quetta Cantt.

“In pursuance of Chief of Army Staff General Ashfaq Pervez Kayani’s directive, Army in collaboration with provincial government launched projects in education, health, and other sectors,” he added.

He said conversion of Sui cantt into military college, training classes in Balochistan Institute of Technical Education BITE, renovation, construction of damaged health and education structures in flood-stricken areas are some of major steps taken by Army for development in Balochistan.

Major General Tariq Javed lauded dedication of Baloch youth during training session and said Balochistan is rich in talent and efforts afoot to bring them on par with students of other provinces.

Stuxnet could have caused “new Chernobyl,” Russian ambassador says

Russian ambassador says NATO should be investigating the Stuxnet further.

By Ellen Messmer, Network World

The Stuxnet worm attack known to have struck computers at the Russian-built Iranian Bushehr nuclear plant in Iran has serious implications and could have caused “another Chernobyl,” a Russian ambassador is said to have advised NATO yesterday, according to a Reuters report.

The Reuters report says Dmitry Rogozin, Russia’s ambassador to NATO, called the Stuxnet virus “very toxic, very dangerous” and said it had caused centrifuges to spin out of control and was dangerous enough to have possibly caused “a new Chernobyl,” an allusion to the devastating nuclear-plant accident in the mid-1980s in Ukraine.

Is Stuxnet an Israeli-invented attack against Iran?

According to Reuters, Russian ambassador Rogozin said NATO should be investigating the Stuxnet matter.

Security experts have spent considerable time examining Stuxnetcode, with many regarding it as weaponized malware that was likely used by an enemy of Iran to slow down development of Iran’s nuclear program, with some believing that Israel or the U.S. or both having had a stealthy hand in Stuxnet’s creation as malware targeted Iran industrial control systems in the plant..

Fire in arms depot “strange”: Venezuelan president

English.news.cn

Fire burns at a Venezuelan army ammunition depot in Maracay, Venezuela, on Jan. 30, 2011. A fire set off a series of explosions at a military arms depot, killing at least one person and leading authorities to evacuate about 10,000 people from the area.(Xinhua/STR)

CARACAS, Jan. 30 (Xinhua) — Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez on Sunday said that the fire in the arms depot in central Venezuela, which killed one people and wounded some 40 others, was “strange.”

According to Chavez, the fire, which began on Sunday at 4:00 a.m. local time (0830 GMT)in Maracay city, Aragua state, was suspicious as it occurred during a night in a high and large storage without electrical system and where nobody should be there at that time.

However, “everything is possible, so we will launch a scientific investigation and will get the pertinent conclusions,” he said.

Chavez went to the scene of the fire to inspect the damage caused by the fire.

Chavez congratulated the Armed Forces for their work and congratulated the firemen in charge of controlling the fire.

“We must congratulate them, because they did a heroic action, putting on risk their lives due to the risk of explosions. Without their work, it could have turned into a bigger tragedy,” he said.

Chavez also expressed his sympathy to the relatives of the only fatal victim.

Editor: Fang Yang

 

Elite Desperation Over Failing Middle East Psyops

by  Anthony Wile

Once again, the power elite manipulates the Middle East for its own gain. It is a dangerous game, especially in Egypt, which controls the Suez Canal. Because of the violence, gold is up and oil, too. And just as I finish writing this article, the UK Telegraph has released an extraordinary story. It claims that the United States leadership not only secretly backed the current uprisings in Egypt, it was actively aiding and abetting the protestors. Hello rewrite!

“America’s secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising,” the article reads. It explains that The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York. “On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.”

What an expose! Unfortunately the story is developed from cables recently leaked by WikiLeaks. And here at the Bell, we don’t trust WikiLeaks. Julian Assange himself may be an asset of Western intel. Of course, from the perspective of Western intel, tying Egyptian yearnings for independence to WikiLeaks may have seemed a brilliant stroke. Perhaps they believe it provides both WikiLeaks and the American ruling establishment with enormous credibility: Each can be seen as supporting freedom.

But on a deeper level, it reveals the desperation and the unraveling of this entire operation. The Anglo-American power elite has apparently decided to destablize the Middle East in order to create regulatory democracies with an Islamic tinge (an arrogant assumption in my view). The ultimate goal is to butress the war on terror and deliver enhanced authoritarianism to the West – and the Western middle classes that are always the targets of the elite.

But as usual, the Internet has apparently upset elite plans. How does one run a “black ops” of this magnitude while being exposed in real time? In fact, WikiLeaks could have released these cables at any point. They did it yesterday, apparently. It is as if the collective hand of the elite has been forced.

Yes, it seems to me that with plans exposed, Western elites may have decided to take credit for the Middle Eastern uprisings. Why is it a desperate manuever? Because the averge youthful Egyptian or Tunisian is not going to look kindly on the idea that he and his world is being manipulated yet again by ruthless Western powers-that-be. This is the reason that such operations are usually kept quiet. Nobody likes to feel manipulated.

What now? We continually document the struggle between the truth-telling of the Internet and the fear-based promotions of the elite. The elite seems increasingly tortured by the Internet, which is a process not an episode. Usually elite promotions take decades to develop. The EU was 50 years in the making. Global warming nearly as long. But everything the elite is trying to do these days regarding its promotional methodologies has a rushed, error-prone feel about it.

It is not going to help relations with the Egyptian man-on-the-street to have the information broadcast that America was behind – and actively planning – the current disturbances. As of this writing, the Egyptian government has lodged a protest against American interference. US Foggy Bottom types have taken to the airwaves blathering about the “values” of American democracy, but after years of reports of American torture, Western rendition, endless drone attacks that kill women and children in Afghanistan, it’s certainly an open question as to whether America can effectively pose as a beacon of democratic values.

The ramifications are endless. Exposed endlessly on the Internet, the elite may have decided to take credit for the “democratization.” But do the Western powers-that-be really believe they control these uprisings now? A dozen powder kegs have been lit. Blowback – serious blowback – is on the way. In a sense, no matter how the elite’s involvement is portrayed, it would seem a botch. If you are going to destabilize some of the most ancient cultures in the world, you better be able to do it secretly. It’s not something you want to take credit for, or not while the operations are ongoing.

Perhaps the disclosure was planned all along to give WikiLeaks additional credibility (which it sorely needs). But the trouble is that on the ‘Net anyway there has been enormous speculation that neither Assange nor WikiLeaks are exactly what they seem. Thus, WikiLeak’s release of documents about American involvement may be viewed as manipulative itself … artificial and even unconvincing. Here are some previous Bell articles on the subject:

http://www.thedailybell.com/1717/Fall-of-Saudi-Arabia-to-End-Dollar-Reserve-System.html

http://www.thedailybell.com/1714/Tunisia-Promotion-Now-Failing.html

http://www.thedailybell.com/1711/As-Predicted-Tunisian-Islamists-Emerge.html

http://www.thedailybell.com/1691/Western-Elites-Secretly-Still-Building-Islam.html

Credit where credit is due. The above articles have benefited from the insights of reporter and author William Engdahl who understands well the essential manipulation of the late 20th century world by the powers that be. In his book Full Spectrum Domination, he pointed out that the various color revolutions that occurred after the fall of the Soviet Union were essentially manipulated affairs.

He tells us that the leading actors in these revolutions were essentially coached by the CIA and other Western intelligence agencies. The end result was essentially a series of bloodless coup d’etats that left leaders sympathetic to Western style regulatory democracy in charge of the affected countries. What is going on in the Middle East is no different.

But Engdahl, as bright and sophisticated as he is, seems to see the world through a quasi-socialist prism. For him, it is governments orchestrating events and large, evil corporations coming up with the ideas that governments and fatcat politicians then orchestrate. That is why he mentions that it is the Rand Corporation that he claims came up with the idea for the current crop of “bloodless” revolutions. Our point of view is different. We ask who stands BEHIND corporations and governments. You can see a Bell article on Engdahl here:

http://www.thedailybell.com/1272/Western-Wars-Are-Preplanned.html

It seems fairly obvious that a Western power elite stands behind much of what goes on in the world today. There are central banks around the world, and they didn’t happen by accident. The world’s entire financial infrastructure was created by certain elite individuals after the Second World War, although the plans were drafted well in advance. To claim the world is run by “governments” is to miss the point. It is run by powerful banking families and their allies – mostly out of London – using the levers of power that governments provide to the truly wealthy. The mechanism of this governance is called mercantilism.

Elites are always at war with their middle classes, and the preferred techniques, in this epoch anyway, are the fear-based dominant social themes that the Bell tries to cover every day. By using these fear-based promotions, the elite attempts to stampede the middle class into surrendering both wealth and power. There is pressure for constant convergence of power; the preferred governance is regulatory democracy. In the Middle East, no doubt, the evolution of these revolutions will bring to power moderate Islamic entities that will provide a boon to yet another elite promotion: the so-called war on terror. All these promotions are interlinked.

There are other sorts of promotions that the elite uses as well, mostly to piggyback onto existing trends. WikiLeaks and Julian Assange would seem to be one of them. Aljazeera would seem to be another. Aljazeera was initially staffed by the BBC; Assange has released few leaks that harm Western powers in any significant way. By promoting Assange and Aljazeera, the elite is able to control the larger dialogue. It is a version of the Hegelian dialectic that the elite loves to use. Control both sides of the argument and the results are bound to further one’s agenda, whatever it may be.

In this case, the goal is creating much closer and better-coordinated world government run by the Anglosphere. That’s why we’ve suggested at the Bell that one of the outcomes of the Middle East unrest will likely be Islamic governments of a sort that will polarize public opinion in the West and add credibility to the current war on terror – which definitely needs a pick-me-up. If the West is to continue down the path of authoritarianism, it certainly needs to create a larger Islamic bogeyman.

It also seems to me that these revolutions could be used to destabilize a strong American ally, Saudi Arabia – and thus destabilize the dollar-reserve currency as well. (We’ve written about that.) Again, this benefits an Anglo-American power elite that is determined to transition from national currencies to one global currency – reason enough for the destruction of the dollar. The wealthiest sheiks won’t be damaged were this to occur. They’ll simply seek asylum in Britain, (or perhaps France) as so many of the West’s wealthiest allies seem to do when they are toppled.

We live in the age (era) of the Internet. The manipulations of the elite have withstood the test of time, but I would suggest that in the 21st century there is a greater perception of the manipulations than ever before. The Internet was not foreseen by the elite. So many of elite promotions are compromised now; when the elite releases a new one, it would seem that the law of unintended consequences almost immediately takes hold.

In the 20th century, the elite controlled the message and thus much of the world. In the 21st century, the power of the Internet has exposed many of these promotions and given us real insight into the current matrix of control. I have this to say about the current color revolutions: Be careful what you wish for!

No Need for a Draft When the Brightest Young Men Are Eager To Kill for a Job–Literally

[The Beast- Masters learned a great lesson from the Vietnam War--shanghai men out of their own lives and force them to fight against their wills, and they won't fight.  After that, they learned that an "all volunteer Army" cannot function in a thriving economy.  So this time, they got it right--first they killed the economy, then they started their war, so that suddenly, a million jobs became available when there were no other jobs.  If college graduates face a choice between flipping burgers forever, with zero chance of ever paying back all those college loans, or selling their souls to the devil for a chance to "be somebody," even though the job description includes committing murder, how many of them will be moral enough to resist the devil/recruiter's seductive appeals?

There will never be an end to all of these little "piss-ant wars" that plague mankind until normally sane young men wise-up and  stop volunteering to be "hitmen" for the "godfathers" of American crime.]

More college grads signing up for military

BY JEB PHILLIPS

THE COLUMBUS DISPATCH

FRED SQUILLANTE | DISPATCH

Ben Harris volunteered as a tour guide at the Ohio Statehouse to bolster his resume, to no avail. Now he plans to join the military.

|

More than two years out of college, Ben Harris finds himself working in a chicken-finger place and living with his parents in Hilliard.

This is not what he expected as a double major in political science and communications at Ohio State University. He would like to be an educational ranger in the National Park Service, or possibly a political journalist.

He’s gone so far as to volunteer as a Statehouse tour guide to juice his resume, but no job he wants has come through.

So he’s turning to a place that does have jobs to fit his interests. He is joining the military.

“Now, it seems like a viable option,” said Harris, 25, who is still deciding between the Army and the Air Force. “I’ll get more skills and more education.”

In this tough job market, an increasing number of college graduates agree. The number of military recruits with bachelor’s degrees jumped from 2008 to 2009, then again in 2010. The only service branch without noticeable gains in that category is the Marine Corps.

The number of recruits with college degrees and no military service remains a small part of the whole.

The Army brought in 5,725 new active-duty and reserve soldiers with bachelor’s degrees out of about 83,000 recruits in 2010, said S. Douglas Smith, a public-affairs officer for the Army Recruiting Command. But that college-educated recruit class is up by about 200 from 2009 and by more than 2,000 compared with 2008.

The Navy enlisted 1,425 college graduates in 2010, up from 1,011 in 2008. The Air Force enlisted 920 college graduates into its active-duty force in 2010, up from 553 in 2008.

Like Harris, other new recruits from central Ohio say they might have joined the military even in a booming economy, with desirable jobs available. College graduates can more easily become officers, because a degree is required, and they receive paychecks while the military pays down their college debt.

“I’ve always had in the back of my head that it was either law school or working for the government,” said Josh Gibson, 23, of Plain City, a 2009 graduate of Otterbein University in Westerville. “I know the economy kind of pushed (my decision).”

So did the need to serve his country, he said. He turned down a job in deciding to join the Army.

“I always tell people when they come in, if you are joining for money, you need to walk away,” said Army Staff Sgt. Andrew Thatcher, who commands a Sawmill Road recruiting station that covers the Ohio State campus area and Dublin.

“I try to tell them it’s a lifestyle, not a job,” said Staff Sgt. Brandon Ross, a recruiter at the same station.

Still, Thatcher said, recruiters don’t have to go out and look for people as much as they used to. College graduates and others are walking into the office on their own. The average age of a recruit at the Sawmill Road station is about 26, he said.

The Marines did see a rise between 2008 and 2010 in the number of new college-graduate recruits, but that’s because 2008 was a little down from previous years. The numbers don’t fluctuate much over the long haul because of the culture of the Marines, said Maj. John Caldwell, a spokesman for the Marine Corps Recruiting Command.

“Young men and women join our ranks to become a United States Marine,” Caldwell wrote in an e-mail. “They do not see the Marine Corps as a path to something else but rather as a destination unto itself.”

Some college graduates feel exactly that way about their decisions. Kevin Saarie, 26, of Dublin has bachelor’s and master’s degrees from Ohio University in Athens. He has a job he has enjoyed with the Ohio Rehabilitation Services Commission and no school debts.

He leaves for Army basic training in May. He plans to then attend officer-candidate school and begin a career as an active-duty Army officer.

Both of his parents were in the Air Force. He has decided a military career fits with his values and what he believes is important.

“I think it’s a great honor and privilege to serve my country,” he said.

jeb.phillips@dispatch.com

Two Key Bush Policies Have Broken the US Job Market

J.E. Robertson

There is little doubt that the United States is experiencing a long-term crisis in the scarcity of gainful employment. It is, in fact, persistently difficult for many laid off workers to find jobs even at a steep pay cut. The American Recovery and Reinvestment Act did a great deal to staunch the bleeding, and has helped move the economy toward a grudging reversal in job trends, but we are still saddled with two major Bush-era policy shifts that are hampering job creation almost across the board.

The first is the unprecedented giveaway of nearly $2 trillion in tax revenues, during the years 2001-2010, to mostly the wealthiest Americans. The Bush tax cuts of 2001 and 2003 were in fact the largest single transfer of wealth in American history, a giveaway of needed government revenues to those who least required a handout. The Bush team’s thinking was trickle-down economics to the extreme: if we give more than a trillion dollars to the wealthiest Americans, they will have to pass on that wealth by “creating jobs”.

The flaw in this reasoning was that the real impact, the real incentive of the Bush handout was: if the wealthiest interests in our society can earn more than a trillion dollars without lifting a finger, why should they waste money creating jobs? This latter logic has proven to be much closer to the economic shift we experienced in the wake of those tax cuts. American businesses began moving jobs overseas at record pace, and even pressed for the further relaxation of labor laws, so job creation wouldn’t be “so costly”.

The transfer of wealth was further exaggerated when the Bush administration persuaded Congress to overhaul bankruptcy laws, making it much harder for individuals to escape crippling debt through bankruptcy protection, while making it easier for corporations to do so. Banks whose balance sheets were riddled with bad debt resulting from mathematically unsustainable and predatory lending practices could hide their exposure by taking advantage of both sides of that bankruptcy reform.

The second major economic policy shift that took place under George W. Bush was the near total deregulation of the banking sector. Pres. Clinton had signed major bank deregulation legislation in the late ’90s, but the intention was not to give major banks carte blanche to set up a fictional trading regime which no human being could track and in which the private wealth of most Americans could be made vulnerable to systemic fraud. The Bush years, however, saw a shift in regulatory infrastructure which invited (and brought) such abuse.

Allowing major banks to not only hold deposits and make loans, but to sell stock, to convert loans into securities, to gamble with pension plans, to sell insurance, some of which was designed to insure against the collapse of their other financial products, was a calamitous miscalculation. It is what invited and brought about the worst financial abuses in generations and led to the worldwide financial collapse of 2007-2008.

If banks are not accountable for the truthfulness of their wealth claims, they have every incentive to first begin, then expand, the very risky fictionalization of wealth that we saw in the years 2001-2008. With unprecedented amounts of free cash floating around in the bank accounts of the wealthiest of the wealthy, the financial sector experienced an incredible boom in dollars invested. The comprehensive deregulation of the financial sector then allowed them to use this new economic reality to vastly inflate the value of that private wealth, by investing not in productive business opportunities, but spurious and ill-designed financial “instruments”, the true value of which was simply the point-blank multiplication of wealth.

To say that wealth is fictionalized is a specific charge: the entire financial services sector embarked on a complicated re-engineering of the meaning of investment. No longer was the smartest gamble the investment of hard cash into real businesses producing actual products and services with corresponding measurable market value; now, the focus shifted to investments in securitized investments, pools of wealth claims not corresponding to any measurable, grounded economic activity.

Building “instruments” designed to expand the financial holdings of clients was the new game. Bad loans were bundled into “mortgage-backed securities”. One could buy one-tenth of 1% of a bundle of 1,000 home loans, the total cash value of which can never exceed the contracted amount plus interest over time, in hopes that other investors will throw so much money at the same security that its financial value (wholly detached from its real economic value) will escalate wildly.

If this sounds risky, your bank could secure its other holdings against the risks of mortgage-backed securities by engaging in “credit default swaps”. The simplest way to explain these is to say that two or more banks agree to shore each other up against massive credit losses, to provide baseline security to the already improbable investment values tied to the pooling of mostly risky mortgages.

These two policy shifts saw the United States government give away $2 trillion, at the beginning of a decade which would cost nearly $2 trillion in war spending, only to throw in another $1 trillion at the tail end, to pay for the clean-up, leaving major financial institutions not only intact, despite systematic abuses, but far wealthier with respect to the average American business or household than ever before. This policy shift was undertaken deliberately by the Bush administration, and to some extent, the policy goal of putting more power into the hands of a concentrated minority of the wealthiest interests was achieved.

The current administration is dealing with the aftermath of this decade of decadence; Pres. Obama has the unenviable task of wrestling with the resulting wave of unemployment, challenging deeply held assumptions about the American genius for creating wealth and reminding citizens and politicians that free as we are, most individuals have little control over their economic circumstances. Should he raise taxes? Fine the banks? Institute wage controls on investment bankers? Ban irrationally huge executive bonuses?

His critics allege he is desperate to do each of these, and yet he has never attempted even one of them, as a response to the financial crisis. The only area where taxes have been increased during Obama’s presidency, is on the wealthiest recipients of the most expensive health insurance policies. Economists of every stripe agree this will help to bring down costs and insure more people.

Pres. Obama’s approach to the financial collapse, the government’s fiscal crisis and persistent unemployment, has been to seek solutions that will allow private markets to deal better with the challenges of the day. The bluster and character assassination from his critics has been relentless, but the fact is, he has not proposed socialist fixes to the converging crises in American markets; he has, instead, sought to make it possible for individuals and businesses to fare better, while aiming to defictionalize the investment markets without prompting a sudden collapse of values in any sector of the economy.

In this sense, Obama has been largely successful. Most economic trend lines appear to be moving in the right direction, including job-creation. In 2009 and 2010, the US economy created far more jobs than during the Bush years, 2001-2008. But employment is lagging desperately behind other economic indicators. The weakness in the US jobs market can be traced directly to these two vitally ill-conceived economic policy shifts: the massive transfer of wealth the wealthy (an incentive large enough to remove all incentives) and near total free rein to the financial sector (allowing the wealthy to isolate their wealth without losing it, undermining the capitalist-democratic model whereby wealth flows throughout the society).

Financial regulatory reform, passed by the Democratic Congress and signed into law by Pres. Obama, was a significant step in the right direction, banning some of the worst abuses, targeting crucial conflicts of interest, and instituting a Consumer Financial Protection Bureau, which will, for the first time in US history, give ordinary Americans a regulatory watchdog specifically designed to protect against systemic fraud and abuse in the financial sector.

But we are still dealing with the bulk of the costs of these two key Bush-era policies, and the extension of the tax cuts for the wealthiest Americans may serve to stabilize the slow jobs recovery, but it is unlikely to accelerate it. We have to examine whether, as a democratic republic, we have any reason for giving such massive new wealth and such unconstrained privilege, to the already wealthy and privileged, without even asking anything in return.

In a free society, the rule of law should grant each of us the core democratic liberties that make us whole people, able to act freely in the public sphere, but the system should not be so easily redesigned to serve the personal or corporate interests of a limited few or to impede the flow of capital (as a percentage of overall investment) to ordinary people and small businesses. The folly of the Bush years was to pretend that an economy planned for the select few would work for everyone. An economy aligned to privilege market dynamics that elevate working families, citizens and communities, will enrich the wealthy, but not at the expense of everyone else.

The narcissism of the neo-cons, Egypt edition

by Jay

“It seems that a democratic revolution is sweeping the Middle East — spurred, I am sure, by American and allied actions in Iraq. (Our chattering classes will never admit this.)
– Jay Nordlinger, National Review

At last count, at least 50 Egyptians have been killed, more than a thousand injured and probably thousands arrested and imprisoned under what must be extremely frightening conditions. They have made those sacrifices and taken those risks for reasons that are very much their own, reasons born out of decades, centuries, even millenia of cruel repression and corruption.

To claim that they are instead taking such risks because they were inspired by the U.S. invasion of Iraq nine years ago is to attempt to rob them of credit for their own bravery. It is an act of theft by people who sit thousands of miles away in perfect safety, trying to boost their own self-regard by wrapping themselves in the courage of others.

– Jay Bookman

Egyptian Armored Vehicles Shelter Crowd from Police

This video from Daily News Egypt shows a street leading to Tahrir Square, where early Saturday morning, demonstrators were confronted by armed police. The police fired shots into the air, apparently a warning to go no further. Three armored military personnel carriers are seen moving into position between the protesters and the police, apparently in an effort to prevent injury to demonstrators and/or to prevent an attack by police.http://www.casavaria.com/cafesentido/

Military Prevents Confrontation between Protest…, posted with vodpod

How Far Will a Catapault Fling a Bale of Weed?

Another ‘Pot’apult Found Near U.S.-Mexico Border

Mexico’s defense department announced that they have confiscated another catapult on Friday near the U.S. border in the town of Agua Prieta, Mexico used to fling pot across the U.S.-Mexico border.

This ‘pot’apult was discovered when U.S. National Guard were reviewing surveillance video and saw several men on the Mexican side of the border flinging packages over the border.  Border patrol notified Mexican officials immediately who investigated.

When they arrived on the scene they discovered 45 pounds of marijuana and the ‘pot’apult but none of the operators of the device.  Last week the first such catapult was found in Naco, which is near Tucson, and it was also detected by U.S. surveillance video.

Venezuela Arms Depot Fire, Explosions Kill One

Venezuela Arms Depot Fire, Explosions Kill One …, posted with vodpod

TNK-BP Partners File Suit To Stop BP/Rosneft Share Swap

TNK-BP Partners Said to Weigh Dividend Halt as Dispute Worsens

By Torrey Clark and Will Kennedy

BP Plc’s billionaire partners in the TNK-BP oil venture may stop $1.8 billion in dividend payments as a dispute about the U.K. explorer’s alliance with Russia’s state oil company worsens, a person with knowledge of the matter said.

The partners, who act through the AAR group, last week asked a London court to halt BP and OAO Rosneft’s share swap and Arctic drilling agreement because it may erode the competitive advantage of their venture.

AAR’s board will meet tomorrow to discuss vetoing the fourth-quarter dividend and having TNK-BP start hoarding cash, the person said, declining to be identified before the meeting. The board comprises Mikhail Fridman, Viktor Vekselberg, German Khan, and Len Blavatnik.

Robert Wine, a spokesman for London-based BP, said dividend payments were a matter for the TNK-BP board and not just the Russian shareholders. AAR spokesman Mikhail Loskutov declined to comment.

The worsening dispute threatens a second breakdown in relations between TNK-BP’s shareholders. In 2008, current BP Chief Executive Officer Robert Dudley was ousted as head of TNK- BP as the billionaires and BP argued over strategy. The 50 percent holding in TNK accounts for about a quarter of BP’s output and a fifth of reserves.

BP agreed on Jan. 14 to swap a $7.8 billion stake in the company for 9.5 percent of Rosneft. The two also agreed to explore an area of Russia’s Arctic waters about the size of the U.K. North Sea.London’s High Court will consider AAR’s application for an injunction on Feb. 1.

To contact the reporters on this story: Torrey Clark in Moscow at tclark8@bloomberg.net; Will Kennedy in London at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net.

To contact the editor responsible for this story: Will Kennedy at wkennedy3@bloomberg.net

Blasts, fire at Venezuela arms depot, 1 killed

[It would be nice to find-out if these are some of the Russian weapons that Chavez has been stockpiling the last few years as part of a national civilian-based civil defense system, embarked upon as a reaction to Bush threats.  There is little chance of that ever happening.  If we knew whether this was terrorism and not accidental, it would tell us that Obama has opened-up another front in his war for global dominance.]

http://static.eluniversal.com/2011/01/30/g_fire.jpg.520.360.thumb

By IAN JAMES

CARACAS, Venezuela — A fire set off a series of explosions at a military arms depot in the Venezuelan city of Maracay on Sunday, killing one person and leading authorities to evacuate around 10,000 people from the area, an official said.

Residents were being evacuated from areas within six kilometers (about four miles) surrounding the arms depot, Aragua state Gov. Rafael Isea told state television.

“This is a preventive measure because the ammunitions that were detonating are ammunitions that have a powerful impact,” Isea said.

State radio reported that firefighters were beginning to extinguish the fires after a series of smaller explosions. Earlier, Isea said that smaller explosions were continuing and firefighters were waiting for them to subside.

A woman nearby the depot was killed, probably by the explosions, he said. The cause of the fire was unclear. Three people were injured in traffic accidents amid the chaos that ensued the blasts, he said.

Cavim, Venezuela’s military arms manufacturer, said in a statement that authorities had surrounded the arms depot “to control the situation.” The company said the explosion took place at 4:45 a.m. local time (4:15 a.m. EST; 0915 GMT).

Information Minister Andres Izarra went on state television calling for calm and saying that authorities were tending to the situation.

Hyrbyair Marri Wins Asylum In British Court

Hyrbyair Marri wins his asylum appeal; I will meet the Diaspora to unite them for Baloch cause: Marri

LONDON: Britain has granted political asylum to Baluch leader Nawabzada Hyrbyair Marri, tacitly acknowledging that the life of fiery Baluch nationalist leader was at risk if returned to Pakistan. Hyrbyair Marri, one of six sons of veteran Baloch leader Nawab Khair Baksh Marri, had applied for political asylum in Britain four months ago. He had entered Britain in 2000 after sneaking out of Pakistan where he was being sought by Pakistani spy agencies on various charges. Initially Mr Marri’s asylum claim was turned down by the Home Office and stated in the refusal letter that Hyrbyair’s life will be safe in Pakistan as his father still lived in Karachi and didn’t face harassment from the state authorities. Hyrbyair took his case to the asylum and immigration tribunal where his lawyer successfully argued that not only Hyrbyair’s elder brother Balach Marri was assassinated by Pakistani secret services but also Mr Marri himself has not stepped inside Balochistan in 10 years. The immigration judge was told that from former president Pervez Musharraf to the interior minister Rehman Malik had personally threatened and warned Hyrbyair of the repercussions for his ‘what they called’ anti-Pakistan activities. The defence argued that the continuing heavy-handed military operation in areas populated by the Bugtis and Marris, coupled with the ever-deteriorating law and situation in the country rendered Hyrbyair at the potential risk and law enforcement agencies could easily take him out. Sources confirmed that, senior PPP government officials, including the foreign office, contacted the Home Office (in the UK) and assured them that Hyrbyair will be provided safety and security if returned and further assured the former Baluchistan assembly lawmaker-turned-rebel was only exaggerating threat to his life. Hyrbyair’s lawyers were successful in convincing the judge that the current civilian government was not only helpless in matters related to Baluchistan but it was also impotent in security matters concerning rest of the country as its writ was absent in even urban areas. In his evidence before the judge, Hyrbyair also criticised the British government for deliberately creating problems for him and his family on behest of the Pakistani government. The judge acknowledged that Hyrbyair Marri was a high profile figure who had annoyed the establishment by taking a stance on Baluchistan issue not sanctioned by the security establishment. Hyrbyair was arrested alongside a young Baluch rights campaigner Faiz Baluch on December, 4, 2007. They were charged on charges of inciting others to commit murder abroad. Mr Marri spent 4 months in jail whereas Faiz Baluch was detained for 8 months. After a lengthy trail of over 40 days the duo were acquitted by an ordinary British Jury of 12 men and women. Faiz Baluch, who applied for political asylum in 2002, his case, is still in a limbo and the young campaigner remains clueless about his fate in Britain. Speaking to media sources, Hyrbyair referred to his first exoneration on terrorism charges, brought on the special request of Pervez Musharraf, said that being granted asylum was nothing to be celebrated about. “It pains me more that I am not with my people who are standing steadfast against the state onslaught. I am glad though that I have been exonerated for the second time, not by the British government but by the British courts. The British government knows there are serious problems in Balochistan but doesn’t have the courage to stand up to Pakistan. The neutral immigration court has given its verdict in my favour by acknowledging the fact the meltdown in Baluchistan is for real and that life has been made difficult for those who seek independence. I knew that British justice system will not let me and the people of Baluchistan down. These are independent courts, free of political influence.” He said that now when he is able to travel, he will meet the Baluch Diaspora across the world and will galvanise and unite them for the Baluch struggle for justice and Independence. Peter Tatchell has been at the forefront of campaigning for the release of Hyrbyair Marri from the detention in Belmarsh prison. He expressed his joy that Mr Marri was granted asylum in Britain, albeit with a lot of delay. “This decision to grant Hyrbyair asylum is very significant. It is an acknowledgement by the British government that human rights abuses in Baluchistan are so widespread and grave that Mr Marri cannot return their safely. This ruling is a damning indictment of the severe political repression that exists in Pakistan. The human rights advocate added: “It is further evidence that Baluch people who want the right of self determination are at risk of imprisonment torture and assassination by the Pakistani military and intelligence agencies.

Uncertain World: Terrorism’s local roots

Weekly column by Fyodor Lukyanov

International terrorism was at the forefront of global politics in the first decade of this young century. The concept is actually relatively new.

© RIA Novosti.

Fyodor Lukyanov

After the September 11 attacks shook America to its core, the Bush administration declared war on “international terrorism” and sought to enlist others in the cause. This was initially intended to serve as the organizing principle for a new international system. But really it was the same good-versus-evil dichotomy, with international terrorism taking the place once occupied by the Soviet threat.

It seemed at first that they might succeed. The broad coalition in the “war on terror” overthrew the Taliban in Afghanistan and drove them out of Kabul. But this was the high watermark for the coalition.

There was a design flaw in the war on terror. A global counterterrorism campaign must be comprehensive and rooted in cooperation, but the United States ended up using it as a tool to maintain global dominance. That drive toward dominance included exerting pressure – hard and soft – on other countries to follow America’s lead. But no one likes to be pressured.

Washington’s dubious motivation was only part of the problem. Many began to doubt that “international terrorism” really existed as a distinct phenomenon.

In the era of globalization, we are more interconnected and interdependent than ever before. The “martyrs” are no longer confined to the Middle East. They are found on the Moscow subway system and at Russian airports. However, the recent attacks in Moscow and Nalchik were not committed by the abstract international terrorists we are called on to fight. These attacks were carried out by specific Islamic groups from the Caucasus.

Terrorism today can have a global impact while still being rooted in local problems. International terrorism is, in fact, a collection of various separatist and nationalist movements. Each of these groups – in Russia, Indonesia, Sudan, Palestinian Territories, Afghanistan, China, India, Turkey or Yemen – is opposed to its respective government and calls for self-determination or the overthrow of the current regime.

Even the unprecedented attacks of September 11 were a specific extremist group’s response to U.S. ambitions in the world, which successive administrations have been pursuing since the end of the Cold War. They see America as a global empire controlling vast territories, either directly or indirectly.

As such, George W. Bush’s attempt to make international terrorism the focus of global politics was doomed from the start. First of all, the concept was overly broad and subject to various interpretations by different political leaders. Most governments tried to use the perceived terrorist threat to expand their power. U.S. intelligence agencies were granted greater authority, while Russia put an end to the direct election of regional governors.

Second, because international terrorism is a manufactured concept, it could not bring countries together to work toward a common goal. Each new country joining the coalition against international terrorism brought its own interpretation of the concept. Again, this was to be expected, as there was no common threat in actuality. Terrorists are not a monolith, even if they do share some motives and means. As a result, the war on international terrorism is at best an empty slogan and at worst a source of irritation between countries caused by the inevitable double standards.

Third, there can be no one-size-fits-all solution to terrorism, because terrorism is rooted in local grievances specific to each country.

The purpose of a major terrorist attack is to undermine a specific government, to make it look weak and ineffectual. Therefore, the initial reaction of the government is always to prove its strength by striking back with sanctioned violence.

If a quasi-state is involved, such as the self-proclaimed Chechen Republic of the late 1990s or the Taliban regime, it becomes the target of revenge. Both Russia and the United States sent in troops that ultimately succeeded in destroying the basic terrorist infrastructure in Chechnya and Afghanistan, respectively. But neither knew what to do next, when the surviving enemies fled and became ghosts in the hills, posing even greater danger.

No government has found the answer yet. The illusion of stability brought by the use of overwhelming force fades very quickly, and it becomes clear that the new, unconventional war may drag on forever. Each new act of retribution swells the ranks of the enemy.

Eliminating the roots of terrorism is a long and complex process with no guarantee of success. The United States learned this lesson in the deserts of Iraq and Afghanistan. Russia learned it in the mountains of the Caucasus. America can at least leave these foreign lands when the situation becomes unbearable, although the terrorists could strike again on U.S. soil. Russia is not so fortunate. Russia cannot leave the Caucasus, and so it will have to keep trying to find a balance between suppression and development in its fight against terrorism.

Medvedev Peddling Russia To Davos Investors

[This is the genius moment in the complicated conspiracy to merge East and West, papering over the great divide with money.  We have reached our goals by buying our way with the world, if American capital can safely gain a certain degree of control over Kremlin reactions.  Putin and friends know who is behind this wave of "Islamist" terrorism--the same people who have been behind all the "Islamist" terrorism in Russia.  They know that it was us, yet they do not reveal the proof that their investigators must have, to the world.    If American money can ensure that American military moves are not exposed by Moscow, for fear that it will cause a rupture in the flow of vital modernization investments, then limited warfare tactics (terrorism) can safely be applied with less chance of accidentally tripping the nuclear trigger.  That is the whole idea behind the "irregular warfare" concept, conduct low-level military operations (terrorism), in order to advance the agenda without crossing the nuclear threshold.  Fear of what the covert forces (both military and economic) will do next paralyzes the will to react--the essence of terrorist theory.  Self-censorship, to avoid more unpleasantness.  This is where Medvedev is most valuable to the plotters, giving Russia the means to build on a national scale, while giving America a free pass to push its weight around in the former Soviet countries.  If it is safe to buy into Russia, then it is safe to buy into any of Russia's former satellite countries in Eastern Europe or Asia.

World Government is just a few clicks away.]

Medvedev pitches Russian modernization to investors at Davos

Dmitry Medvedev

© RIA Novosti. Dmitri Astakhov

RIA Novosti economic commentator Maria Selivanova

President Dmitry Medvedev identified key priorities of his ambitious plan to modernize Russia in a speech Wednesday at the World Economic Forum in the Swiss resort town of Davos.

Initially, the Russian leader was expected to deliver a keynote speech at Davos and to then attend several panel discussions on the forum’s sidelines. But he decided to cut short his stay owing to the suicide bombing at Moscow’s Domodedovo airport on Monday. He took a flight back home just a few hours after his arrival in Switzerland.

Dmitry Medvedev made Russia’s modernization plan the centerpiece of his speech at Davos to reassure the world’s largest gathering of business leaders that the investment climate in Russia is improving.

“Russia still faces quite a few difficulties in establishing rule of law and building a modern, efficient economy,” he said. “But we are undergoing dramatic changes and we are moving forward.”

Government stakes up for grabs

Medvedev’s message to his audience in Davos was that Russia’s bid to modernize will create new opportunities for doing business in the country.

One of the key priorities will be to privatize large government-owned companies in the financial and energy sectors, as well as some infrastructure assets. Toward this end, the Russian government’s list of strategic enterprises, protected against foreign ownership, has been slashed by 80 percent.

“Minority stakes will be sold off and new portfolio investors will come on board, but the companies will continue to be managed the same way as before,” argues Natalia Orlova, chief economist of Russia’s Alfa Bank. “In other words, this privatization doesn’t involve any major transformations in the structure of the economy or in the behavior of its key players.”

This means that Russia’s government will retain its key role in the national economy even after the planned selloff of some of its assets.

A special fund will be set up in Russia to help reduce risks posed by foreign investors, notably by introducing co-investment schemes. Under such schemes, intended for up to 10 years, corporate projects will be co-financed by private investors and the government, the Russian business daily Vedomosti reports. At least 20 billion roubles should be raised for the fund to begin with, says the paper, adding that over time the proportion of private investment should considerably surpass that of treasury allocations.

Russian authorities are not going to introduce any additional taxes on the financial sector in an effort to make Moscow a world financial center.

The abolition on January 1, 2011, of the tax on the sale of shares (or the capital gains tax) is expected to give a jolt to foreign investment in Russia. The Russian economy does need foreign capital. Admittedly, though, along with encouraging heavier direct investment (notably, in industrial production), a favorable taxation system may also draw more speculative capital onto the country’s stock exchange.

Investment plus technological expertise

According to Dmitry Medvedev, investors should be excited about the idea of creating a common Eurasian market, spanning the continent from the Atlantic coast to the Pacific, and operating under uniform, clear-cut rules. Russia’s prospective accession to the World Trade Organization and to the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development will help translate this idea into reality, he said.

The Russian president promised a favorable climate for innovative, high-tech entrepreneurship and venture capital in the country. He pushed his country’s Skolkovo project as the most ambitious international high-tech project. “I’m sure we can expect new global brands to arrive in Russia in the years to come.”

Dmitry Medvedev also stressed the importance of attracting technological expertise. Projects to develop energy efficient technologies and to enhance energy security should become the driving force of Russia’s high-tech sector, he said, inviting foreign partners to contribute.

One striking example of such partnership is a recent deal between the British oil giant BP and Russia’s Rosneft.

“Owing to a high degree of uncertainty and to the constant redistribution of property in the 1990s, Russian petroleum companies now lag some ten years behind in oil recovery technology,” explains Valery Mironov, deputy director of the Russian School of Economics’ Development Center. “Which is why they have to collaborate with foreign companies in offshore recovery and deepwater drilling.”

Expanding broadband Internet across Russia will create greater opportunities for doing business in Russia, Medvedev said. Improved Internet connectivity will also make it easier for the business community to have direct contact with Russian government agencies, thus cutting down on corruption.

Improvements to infrastructure are crucial to modernization and attracting foreign investment, Medvedev said. Russia should make sure its infrastructure is accessible both to the business community and the public at large. Preparations for large-scale international sporting events, such as the Sochi Olympics in 2014 and the FIFA World Cup in 2018, are expected to give an additional boost to infrastructure development in Russia, he said.

Human resources

A competent workforce is extremely importance to investors. Russia has already relaxed its migration laws to encourage qualified foreign professionals to come and work in Russia, and is willing to unilaterally validate foreign university diplomas and academic degrees.

On the other hand, the government expressed willingness to sponsor study-abroad programs for Russians aspiring to become civil servants, scientists and engineers.

Mironov warns, however, that additional investment in personnel training programs may fail to produce the desired effect, speeding up the country’s brain drain instead.

“In order to encourage intellectuals to start their businesses here, in Russia, rather than leave upon completing a free study program, we will need to reduce existing bureaucratic barriers,” he says.

Indeed, the risk of brain drain from Russia is still quite high.

“Developed countries seek to boost exports of industrial products, and demand for qualified engineers is constantly increasing. There’re a lot of surveys indicating that developed countries will have to attract engineers from Russia, India and China in the next fifteen years, until they manage to readjust their own education systems.”

The how and the what

Observers say the modernization priorities outlined by President Medvedev at Davos are all potential steps in the right direction, but that there is nothing new about them.

“These points migrate from one speech to the next, but it remains unclear just how they’ll be executed and how the nation’s leadership see the structure of this process as a whole as well as the order in which the unveiled plans should be implemented,” Mironov says.

He holds that in order to dispel foreign investors’ doubts about Russia, it is crucial to understand where this country should be heading. And that any modernization program should come with a clear-cut strategy.

As for Medvedev’s program, in its current form it looks chaotic and disorderly, Mironov claims.

“All the points sound good enough, but it’s unclear if they can be effectively implemented in Russia’s present-day investment climate,” says Natalia Orlova. In her view, the program does not envisage any measures to make the country more competitive. And “without enhancing its competitiveness, it’d be hard to see all the proposed mechanisms functioning properly,” she believes.

Yelena Matrosova, director of the Center for Macroeconomic Studies at the company BDO, suggests that Russia should turn for advice to countries that have successfully modernized their economies. Modernization, according to her, it is not a Russian invention, and all the relevant “recipes” have already been “spelled out.”

After WWII, modernization reforms were pursued in Japan, Germany, the UK, the United States, and China. Russia would be wise to draw on their expertise as it gets down to the task of charting a roadmap for its own modernization.

The views expressed in this article are the author’s and do not necessarily represent those of RIA Novosti.

Police defuse two powerful bombs in Dagestan

Special operation in Dagestan. Archive

© Photo NewsTeam

Police have defused two powerful bombs in Russia’s volatile North Caucasus republic of Dagestan, the National Anti-Terrorism Committee said on Sunday.

The bombs were found on Sunday in the town of Izberbash, some 60 km (37 miles) to the south of the republic’s capital, Makhachkala, the committee said.

“Both explosive devices have been defused. The power of the first explosive was about 10 kg in TNT equivalent and the second about 15 kg in TNT equivalent. Both bombs were filled with metal elements,” the committee said.

The terrorist acts were prevented in Izberbash after the police checked information obtained from the interrogation of persons involved in a December 31 blast at a hotel room in southeast Moscow. The suspects were detained on January 29.

Reports say the blast at the hotel room killed a would-be suicide bomber who was assembling an explosive device.

MAKHACHKALA, January 30 (RIA Novosti)

The American and Israeli Governments secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising

The Libyan foreign security agency accused Mossad and Morocco of attempting to break Algeria

ennahar

For the first time, and officially, the Libyan External Security Agency has accused the Israeli Mossad of being behind what she described as “attempts to break the territorial unity of Algeria, Libya and Tunisia. 

• According to the agency, the Amazigh movement activists, backed by foreign intelligence services (Mossad) are leading a plan to break the Maghreb after succeeding in Iraq, Lebanon, Sudan and Yemen.In a communiqué of the Libyan agency, published yesterday, of which Ennahar obtained a copy, four people were arrested three days ago, two Libyan national and two Moroccans entered into Libyan territory under supposedly academic, historical, archaeological, cultural research, a cover for their activities.
  The two Moroccan nationals were released, the agency said, “in respect for the Moroccan official figures.
  The arrest occurred after a surveillance operation, to which four people arrested, Amazigh movement activists, had been submitted.
  The Libyan External Security agency directly involves an official Moroccan institution, of being behind the four spies, the twin Libyan brothers Mazigh and Maghris Bouzahar, while the names of the two Moroccans were not cited, nor for whom they work (the Moroccan Royal Institute). These re Asemhar Mahfoud and Ramou Hacen, two researchers from the centre of studies on the history and environment of the Royal Institute of Amazigh culture.
  According to data of Ennahar, the two Moroccans spies are part of a destructive project conducted by the Mossad.

  Ennahar / Ismail Fellah

Egypt protests: America’s secret backing for rebel leaders behind uprising

The American government secretly backed leading figures behind the Egyptian uprising who have been planning “regime change” for the past three years, The Daily Telegraph has learned.

Link to this video

By Tim Ross, Matthew Moore and Steven Swinford

The American Embassy in Cairo helped a young dissident attend a US-sponsored summit for activists in New York, while working to keep his identity secret from Egyptian state police.

On his return to Cairo in December 2008, the activist told US diplomats that an alliance of opposition groups had drawn up a plan to overthrow President Hosni Mubarak and install a democratic government in 2011.

The secret document in full

He has already been arrested by Egyptian security in connection with the demonstrations and his identity is being protected by The Daily Telegraph.

The crisis in Egypt follows the toppling of Tunisian president Zine al-Abedine Ben Ali, who fled the country after widespread protests forced him from office.

The disclosures, contained in previously secret US diplomatic dispatches released by the WikiLeaks website, show American officials pressed the Egyptian government to release other dissidents who had been detained by the police.

Mr Mubarak, facing the biggest challenge to his authority in his 31 years in power, ordered the army on to the streets of Cairo yesterday as rioting erupted across Egypt.

Tens of thousands of anti-government protesters took to the streets in open defiance of a curfew. An explosion rocked the centre of Cairo as thousands defied orders to return to their homes. As the violence escalated, flames could be seen near the headquarters of the governing National Democratic Party.

Police fired rubber bullets and used tear gas and water cannon in an attempt to disperse the crowds.

At least five people were killed in Cairo alone yesterday and 870 injured, several with bullet wounds. Mohamed ElBaradei, the pro-reform leader and Nobel Peace Prize winner, was placed under house arrest after returning to Egypt to join the dissidents. Riots also took place in Suez, Alexandria and other major cities across the country.

William Hague, the Foreign Secretary, urged the Egyptian government to heed the “legitimate demands of protesters”. Hillary Clinton, the US Secretary of State, said she was “deeply concerned about the use of force” to quell the protests.

In an interview for the American news channel CNN, to be broadcast tomorrow, David Cameron said: “I think what we need is reform in Egypt. I mean, we support reform and progress in the greater strengthening of the democracy and civil rights and the rule of law.”

The US government has previously been a supporter of Mr Mubarak’s regime. But the leaked documents show the extent to which America was offering support to pro-democracy activists in Egypt while publicly praising Mr Mubarak as an important ally in the Middle East.

In a secret diplomatic dispatch, sent on December 30 2008, Margaret Scobey, the US Ambassador to Cairo, recorded that opposition groups had allegedly drawn up secret plans for “regime change” to take place before elections, scheduled for September this year.

The memo, which Ambassador Scobey sent to the US Secretary of State in Washington DC, was marked “confidential” and headed: “April 6 activist on his US visit and regime change in Egypt.”

It said the activist claimed “several opposition forces” had “agreed to support an unwritten plan for a transition to a parliamentary democracy, involving a weakened presidency and an empowered prime minister and parliament, before the scheduled 2011 presidential elections”. The embassy’s source said the plan was “so sensitive it cannot be written down”.

Ambassador Scobey questioned whether such an “unrealistic” plot could work, or ever even existed. However, the documents showed that the activist had been approached by US diplomats and received extensive support for his pro-democracy campaign from officials in Washington. The embassy helped the campaigner attend a “summit” for youth activists in New York, which was organised by the US State Department.

Cairo embassy officials warned Washington that the activist’s identity must be kept secret because he could face “retribution” when he returned to Egypt. He had already allegedly been tortured for three days by Egyptian state security after he was arrested for taking part in a protest some years earlier.

The protests in Egypt are being driven by the April 6 youth movement, a group on Facebook that has attracted mainly young and educated members opposed to Mr Mubarak. The group has about 70,000 members and uses social networking sites to orchestrate protests and report on their activities.

The documents released by WikiLeaks reveal US Embassy officials were in regular contact with the activist throughout 2008 and 2009, considering him one of their most reliable sources for information about human rights abuses.

Cairo Museum Vandalism Crime Against All Humanity

Looters break into Cairo museum, trash historic treasures.

Looters break into Cairo museum, posted with vodpod

“NATO expansion creates divisions”

Source: Dnevnik

NOVI SAD – Russian Ambassador to Serbia Aleksandr Konuzin has stated that there is no reason for NATO’s further expansion because it will create new divisions. Aleksandr Konuzin (FoNet, file) “Expansion policy of NATO, which represents not only a political but also a military alliance, creates new lines of division and it’s a question of security for us,” he told Novi Sad-based daily Dnevnik. The Russian ambassador repeated that this was the reason why Russian President Dmitry Medvedev had proposed construction of a new security system. He stressed that such system would enable equal security for everybody, both for the NATO countries and those that chose to be neutral, such as Serbia. Konuzin said that it was up to Belgrade, not Moscow, to determine who it would cooperate with. “Serbia obviously sees some advantages in taking part in the Partnership for Peace program,” he pointed out.

Washington Gives Encouragement To Anti-Mubarak Forces

Hundreds at anti-Mubarak protest in Washington

People demonstrate in support of the Egyptian people’s protests against the regime of President Hosni Mubarak in front of the Egyptian embassy in Washington

WASHINGTON: Hundreds of opponents of Egyptian leader Hosni Mubarak called at a rally in Washington Saturday for his overthrow and urged Washington to “stand on the right side of history” and cut off aid to his regime.

Amid a sea of Egyptian and American flags and protest placards in English and Arabic with slogans including “Pharaoh no more” and “Overthrow Mubarak,” the crowd, estimated at between 900 and 1,000, took turns leading chants in front of the Egyptian embassy.

“Mubarak has to go,” shouted Ayman Hodhod, standing atop snow-covered security barriers.

“America should get on the right side of history and stop giving financial aid to Mubarak because he uses it to abuse his own people,” said Hodhod, who had traveled from the midwestern state of Minnesota for the rally.

Mohammed Eid grabbed a megaphone, pointed it toward the embassy and led the protesters in chants in Arabic of “Down, down Mubarak” and “Seven million jobless in Egypt.”

As that round of noise stopped, an emotional Amal el Bahi took up a new mantra of “Mubarak must go,” shouting to the edge of hoarseness as the crowd joined in.

“It’s our country, not theirs,” el Bahi told AFP, gesturing toward the embassy, where slight movement could be seen behind a tinted glass entrance door, set back several meters (yards) from the high steel barriers and three US police officers that separated the diplomatic building from protesters.

On the brink of tears, el Bahi told AFP she has lost contact with her son in Egypt since massive street protests began there earlier this week.

Reports from Egypt have said nearly 100 people have died in the protests in Egypt against Mubarak, who on Friday sacked his cabinet and promised reforms in an effort to stem the popular uprising.

But as the violence continued in Egypt, the protesters in Washington said Mubarak’s actions and promises rang hollow, and insisted that the only thing they wanted was for him to go.

“I don’t think anyone should accept the same president for 30 years,” said a middle-aged woman who gave her name only as Nabila B.

“I want for my country the same as we have in America. I want freedom — free speech, free elections — and I don’t want the same face,” she said.

The demonstration in Washington was one of dozens across the United States, called to show solidarity with the masses who have taken to the streets in Egypt to demand Mubarak step down after 30 years of iron-fisted rule.

- AFP/fa