"UNDER EXTREME PRESSURE" : U.S.-Israeli state terrorist war, torture, genocide, psywar propaganda, and other forms of democratizing aid

Commentary: SAME ENEMY: CAPITALIST FASCISM'S FRIENDLIER FACE
As readers of the digest know, the crisis of capital, a deep structural crisis which the U.S. imperialist global state terror war was designed to alleviate by expanding and securing U.S. hegemony, is not a function of burst bubbles. Meticulously severing economic from political --which U.S. propaganda reduces to electoral politics --the state, via its mainstream media organs, finally just reported symptoms of the profound crisis when the effects could no longer be 'explained' away --- after the capitalist bipartisan ruling class had developed a strategy to turn this crisis to its advantage under a 'fresh new' electoral regime it trusted to keep the 'homeland' sheep pacified and cooperative ...

Now Obama must manage the anti-war left
The Return of the Democrats' Security Divide
Dan Gerstein
http://www.forbes.com/opinions/2008/12/02/obama-defense-appointments-ope...
Most of the world saw unity in the announcement of Barack Obama's fusion national security team on Monday. But I could not help but notice the first serious tear in the tenuous Democratic consensus on foreign policy that Obama had adeptly marshaled and surfed to his improbable victory [via electoral college selection]...
To much of the Democratic establishment, Obama's much-ballyhooed team of rivals came off more as a team of reasonables.... But to many liberals who rallied behind Obama's candidacy (largely because of his early outspoken opposition to the Iraq invasion), these appointments [national security team secretary of state Hillary Clinton, secretary of defense Robert Gates and national security adviser James Jones] were more Hindenberg than Vandenberg...this crew of out-sized resumes, all of whom have hawkish profiles, registered as a sellout of the anti-war principles Obama campaigned on. They reminded critics of the dark days of capitulation and triangulation in 2002 and 2003, when Democrats splintered over the vote to authorize force to topple Saddam Hussein....

Indeed, ever since Sept. 11, there has been a fundamental dispute within the party on how to win the war against al-Qaida and their terrorists-in-arms around the world, which Democrats tacitly agreed to table so they could focus on stopping Bush's destructive policies. In rough terms, the Democratic party's foreign policy establishment views this threat as grave, if not existential, and believes that the U.S. must be prepared to use military force and intelligence tools like domestic surveillance to counter it. This camp often differed with Bush in degree, not kind. The liberal grassroots base, on the other hand, views the threat of terrorism as over-hyped and believes diplomacy is the solution to most any problem. This camp often gave the impression that we had more to fear from Bush than Osama bin Laden....

What will these loyalists say when the new president and his team start making hard policy choices on withdrawal deadlines in Iraq and wiretapping guidelines here at home after they make good on their easy promises to close Guantanamo and the like? Here, we can anticipate one of the trickiest tests of Obama's presidency. While he tries to govern from the pragmatic center on national security, he must manage the high expectations and inevitable disappointments of his strongest supporters. His liberal activist base may be relatively small, but its members can be extremely distracting and often destructive. Witness the successful campaign the left-wing blogosphere waged to derail the nomination of John Brennan, who had been considered the leading candidate for Obama's CIA director. That squabble took place off-stage and was totally overshadowed by Clinton's appointment. But Obama won't have that luxury once he's in office. The commentariat will be closely watching and inflating every intra-party fight, the most potent catnip for pundits. At a minimum, these spats could suck up precious time and political capital as Obama works to defuse them. At worst, they could inflame the latent divisions in Congress and sidetrack key elements of Obama's agenda.

The genius of Obama's protean campaign was how it managed to sidestep these dormant disagreements and simultaneously embody the departure from Bush that both sides craved. The fierce doves, especially the boomers who still carried the political scars of the '60s anti-war movement, saw him as a champion of negotiation and defender of civil liberties. The moderate hawks saw him as the perfect 21st century inheritor of the muscular internationalism of Harry Truman and John F. Kennedy, with the smarts and strength to navigate the complex security challenges of the post-Cold War world. Regular Americans, meanwhile, largely saw him as a cool-tempered grown-up who could clean up Bush's messes....
How can Obama minimize the potential for major policy and political ruptures within the Democratic ranks? For starters, by treating his friends with the same respect he is now affording his skeptics. Obama showed quite a knack for this during the campaign, when he prevented a liberal mutiny from brewing after his controversial vote on the wireless wiretapping reform bill. He would be wise to do next year what he did then--engage with the anti-war forces and explain why the decisions they dislike are consistent with Democrat's values and in the national interest....
Dan Gerstein, a political communications consultant and commentator based in New York, is the founder and president of Gotham Ghostwriters. He formerly served as communications director to Sen. Joe Lieberman, D-Conn., and as a senior adviser on his vice presidential and presidential campaigns. He writes a weekly column for Forbes.com

Analysis: Obama Defense Agenda Resembles Gates'
By Robert Burns
http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20081206/ap_on_el_pr/obama_on_defense/print
December 07, 2008 -- "AP" Dec 6, ---WASHINGTON – For a Democrat whose opposition to the Iraq war was a campaign centerpiece, President-elect Barack Obama is remarkably in sync with Defense Secretary Robert Gates on many core defense and national security issues — even Iraq.
The list of similarities suggests the early focus of Obama's Pentagon may not change dramatically from President George W. Bush's....
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21399.htm.

Top Democrat Urges "Continuity" for CIA, DNI and Interrogation Policies
By Glenn Greenwald, Salon
The House Intelligence Committee's top Democrat [Rep. Silvestre Reyes of Texas] said Tuesday he has recommended that President-elect Barack Obama keep the country's current national intelligence director and CIA chief in place for some time to ensure continuity in U.S. intelligence programs during the transition to a new administration. . . .
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21436.htm

How many US Military Bases Worldwide?
By Sohbet Karbuz
http://www.inteldaily.com/news/178/ARTICLE/8942/2008-12-09.html
DoD’s reference of Base Structure Report does not tell the truth.
According to the DoD Base Structure Report[1] the US Department of Defense remains one of the world’s largest “landlords” with a physical plant consisting of more than 545,714 facilities (buildings, structures and utilities) located on more than 5,429 sites on 29.8 million acres, valued at over $706 billion. (761 sites are located in 39 foreign countries, excluding Iraq, Afghanistan and many others).
This makes 120,596 km2, which is almost equivalent to half of the UK, or N. Korea, or Mississippi or New York.
In fact, the DoD is the world’s largest landlord, much ahead of the US General Services Administration and General Electric as claimed by some. For example the US military bases in many countries including Afghanistan, Iraq, Hungary, Austria, Israel, Bulgaria, Qatar, etc. are not listed in Bases Structure Report.
The ones given in the Base Structure Report of the DoD list only military bases either owned or leased by the DoD. To be listed sites should meet a predetermined size and value criteria. To qualify for entry in the published report, a site located in the United States must be larger than 10 acres AND have a PRV (Total Plant Replacement Value) greater than $10 million. If the site is located in a foreign country, it must be larger than 10 acres OR have a PRV greater than $10 million to be shown as a separate entry. PRV for all facilities (buildings, structures, and utilities) is the cost to replace the current physical plant (facilities and supporting infrastructure) using today’s construction costs (labor and materials) and standards (methodologies and codes).
In June 2008, Brooking Institutions published a report entitled Unfinished Business: U.S. Overseas Military Presence in the 21st Century by Michael E. O'Hanlon. It contains some useful information but doesn’t answer the crucial question: How many US bases there are all around the world? It says that “Today, the United States has at least some military forces in about 150 countries around the world.” This is nothing new. The report outlines the three new definitions of military facilities [... ]

Prosecutor removed from Cheney case:
A judge removed a South Texas prosecutor from cases related to Vice President Dick Cheney, a state senator and a private prison group Wednesday, calling the district attorney biased and ordering Texas Rangers to escort him to his office so he could hand over case files.
http://www.chron.com/disp/story.mpl/ap/tx/6157833.html

note: WHY NORTHCOM TROOPS ARE DEPLOYED ON 'HOMELAND' SOIL: RECESSION BREEDS RESISTANCE...
ACTION SOLIDARITY WITH GREEK UPRISING ACROSS EUROPE: " LOOMING INSURRECTION"
Riots Spread From Greece Across Europe
http://news.aol.com/article/riots-spread-from-greece-across-europe/27471...
MADRID, Spain (Dec. 11) - The unrest that has gripped Greece is spilling over into the rest of Europe, raising concerns the clashes could be a trigger for opponents of globalization, disaffected youth and others outraged by the continent's economic turmoil and soaring unemployment.
Protesters in Spain, Denmark and Italy smashed shop windows, pelted police with bottles and attacked banks this week, while in France, cars were set ablaze Thursday outside the Greek consulate in Bordeaux, where protesters scrawled graffiti warning about a looming "insurrection." ...solidarity protests in nearly 20 countries. More demonstrations were set for Friday in Italy, France and Germany. In Spain, an anti-globalization Web site, Nodo50.org, greeted visitors with the headline "State Assassin, Police Executioners" and told them of hastily called rallies Wednesday in Barcelona and Madrid. "We stand in solidarity" with the Greek protesters, the site said.
Elsewhere in Europe, reports about the clashes in Greece were quickly picked up online by citizen journalists, some of whom posted details of confrontations on Twitter. At the Independent Media Center, photos and video of the demonstrations were uploaded and plans were listed for "upcoming solidarity actions" in London, Edinburgh and Berlin.
One writer on the site london.indymedia.org exhorted people to follow the Greek example and "reclaim the streets. Burn the banks that robbed you ... It is a great opportunity to expand the revolution in all europe."
"What's happening in Greece tends to prove that the extreme left exists, contrary to doubts of some over these past few weeks," French Interior Ministry spokesman Gerard Gachet told The Associated Press. But, he added, the coming days and weeks would determine whether "there's a danger of contagion of the Greek situation into France. In cities across Europe, protests flared in solidarity with the demonstrations in Greece.

Comment: Bailout: Taking capital's class war to the next level
Suicide: we're paying capitalism to expand its global war against the working class
Saving the system's bottom line to fund expanded terror war to rule the world, eliminate jobs, shred what's left of pensions, contracts, union gains to increase productivity/profits, trash health, education and social services in the 'homeland'.
Financial sector: Bank of America will cut more than 35,000 jobs, over 11% reduction of workforce -- BoA got $700bn allocation from TARP (Troubled Asset Relief Programme ) created by US Treasury to recapitalise banks' ... allegedly has received 15bn. to-date, plus $10bn from investors.
Citigroup planning 20% / 75,000 job reduction; JPMorgan Chase eliminating at least 10% plus 10,000 jobs from its newly acquired WAMU; Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley will slash jobs by at least 10%. Plus we'll be blamed for and pay for countless job losses from auto to airlines, manufacturing to service, education to health care...

..
U.A.W. at Center of Dispute Over Bailout
The sticking point was the union's refusal to agree to certain concessions.
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/13/business/13uaw.html?8au&emc=au

Bank of America: "You got bailed out, we got sold out."
Angry laid-off workers occupy factory in Chicago
Protest organizers said the company can't pay employees because its creditor, Charlotte, N.C.-based Bank of America, won't let them....Bank of America received $25 billion from the government's financial bailout package. "Across cultures, religions, union and nonunion, we all say this bailout was a shame," said Richard Berg, president of Teamsters Local 743. "If this bailout should go to anything, it should go to the workers of this country." Outside the plant, protesters wore stickers and carried signs that said, "You got bailed out, we got sold out." ...
...

capitalist in-fighting none of our business
Fed Refuses to Disclose Recipients of $2 Trillion
The Federal Reserve refused a request by Bloomberg News to disclose the recipients of more than $2 trillion of emergency loans from U.S. taxpayers and the assets the central bank is accepting as collateral. The Bloomberg lawsuit said the collateral lists “are central to understanding and assessing the government’s response to the most cataclysmic financial crisis in America since the Great Depression.” ...“If they told us what they held, we would know the potential losses that the government may take and that’s what they don’t want us to know,” said Carlos Mendez, a senior managing director at New York-based ICP Capital LLC, which oversees $22 billion in assets....
http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20670001&refer=&sid=aGvwttDayiiM

Giveaways, Bailouts, Earmarks and Pork
By Sam Husseini October 9, 2008
http://husseini.org/2008/10/of-giveaways-bailouts-earmarks.html
Many "progressives" -- echoing the mainstream -- talk about the Wall Street bailout as somehow separate from "pork" and "earmarks" that the likes of McCain pretend to deride. It's bs. The whole thing is pork. It's pork-covered pork with pork filling in a creamy pork sauce.

Earmark helps businesses, not troops
http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/home/index.html
Seattle Times special report: After being lobbied by companies, powerful senators forced the military to buy what it considers inferior chemical-warfare protection.
Lawmakers put earmarks into bills to make federal agencies buy things the agencies didn't request, often circumventing the normal process of evaluation and competitive bidding....Clinton, poised to become secretary of state, received nearly $7,000 in campaign donations from the beneficiaries of these earmarks in recent years. Specter got more than $47,000... Clinton, Schumer and others added a $2 million earmark to the 2007 defense bill, instructing the military to buy M291 kits.... Canada used a similar powder, but in the late 1980s government researchers there were worried about it. The powder was messy, difficult to apply and fouled gas masks. Worst of all, researchers feared that any deadly agents absorbed by the powder would release toxic gases inside a soldier's mask, said Garfield Purdon, a lead scientist on the research. So Purdon's team at Canada's defense department developed a new product called Reactive Skin Decontamination Lotion, or RSDL. The lotion, wiped on the skin with pads, not only absorbs the chemical agents but neutralizes them as well, offering soldiers greater protection.Canada issued the new lotion to soldiers fighting in the 1991 Gulf War. Its military later licensed the lotion to E-Z-EM, a New York company, on the condition that it make the product in Canada. Shortly after the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks, the U.S. Defense Department said it was evaluating RSDL for use. At the urging of the Army Surgeon General, the Food and Drug Administration in 2003 approved the lotion. "If used in time, this lotion can help prevent the serious burns and deaths that result from exposure to chemical-warfare agents," FDA Commissioner Dr. Mark McClellan announced. "FDA worked with the U.S. Army to expedite review of this product to make it available to our men and women in uniform as quickly as possible."
Scientists conducted more tests, comparing the effectiveness of the lotion with the M291 kit. They found the lotion to be as much as seven times more effective at protecting soldiers, depending on the chemical agent, the Defense Department told The Seattle Times.

The Pentagon told Congress in 2005 that it expected to replace the M291 kit with the RSDL. At the same time, Rohm and Haas, the Philadelphia company making the M291 resin, turned to Congress to keep its product alive through an earmark. The company spent $830,000 lobbying Congress and the military on the decontamination kits and other issues in 2005, public records show. Since then, the company has spent another $2.3 million lobbying Congress. The Defense Department bought huge stockpiles of Rohm and Haas' resin in 2005 and 2006, enough to last through 2012, said Douglas Bryce, second in command of the DOD's joint chemical- and biological-defense office. The M291 earmarks reveal how lawmakers can micromanage military purchases to suit the needs of companies, constituents or campaign donors...
Rohm and Haas went back to Congress and got another $5.6 million earmark in the 2008 defense bill.
This time the list of 10 sponsors included Sen. Specter of Pennsylvania, who has received $38,000 in campaign donations from Rohm and Haas' employees and its political-action committee since 2004. Clinton has received $5,600 in campaign donations in the past two years from Rohm and Haas' chief executive officer and his wife. The lawmakers scolded the Defense Department for not buying any resin the year before... As a result of the second earmark, Bryce said, the military bought $1 million of resin from Rohm and Haas and spent $4.4 million for decontamination kits. The military now has 2.2 million powder kits in stock....Clinton and Schumer did not respond to requests for comment.... E-Z-EM, the New York maker of the lotion with the military's blessing, decided to get its own earmark, and lobbied Congress. Result: a $3.2 million earmark for the lotion in the 2009 defense bill.

Multi-million dollar 'the right note' will cost millions -- and maybe visions of imperialist masters doing 'communty service' in BO's 'union labor' tuxedo as they manage the death, destruction, and dehumanization of hundreds of millions under U.S. global terror
Hitting the Right Note for the Inauguration
Plans for Mr. Obama’s inauguration on Jan. 20 are slowly taking shape. But how do you achieve the right tone, without appearing insensitive, at a time of deepening unemployment and financial crisis? ... inaugural planners are considering having Mr. Obama and Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden Jr. take part in some community service in Washington. If Mr. Obama and Mr. Biden pitch in, they would probably call upon people around the country to do the same in their own towns, which could help mitigate any criticism of the inaugural celebrations.... Washington is expecting at least 1.5 million people to attend, which would make it the biggest inauguration ever. In a break with past practice, the full length of the National Mall will be opened to accommodate the crowd. But with increasing numbers of people out of work and American soldiers enmeshed in two wars, inaugural planners face the task of balancing respect for the mood of the country while still celebrating Mr. Obama’s achievement...
There will be inaugural balls, but it is not clear how many will be official. That number had been rising in recent decades, with Bill Clinton topping out at 14 in 1997; George W. Bush scaled back to nine in 2005... dozens of unofficial balls and parties being planned all over town beyond the control of the Obama team are likely to be less restrained, especially since the District of Columbia is allowing its bars to remain open until 5 a.m. for four nights... galas where the words lavish and raucous will almost certainly apply. One, given by the Creative Coalition seeking corporate sponsorships of up to $150,000, will feature Elvis Costello. Another, given by the Impact Film Fund at the Fur nightclub seeking sponsorships of $100,000, is headlined by Kanye West.... As for atmospherics, some in the Obama camp view the election-night celebration in Grant Park as a model. The set was simple, draped in blue cloth and lined with American flags. There were no fireworks. The music — “The Patriot,” by John Williams — was majestic in tone....
Perhaps the most austere inauguration was in 1945, when the nation was still at war and Franklin D. Roosevelt, beginning his fourth term, was in failing health. There was no parade; he took the oath on the South Portico of the White House in a ceremony that lasted just 14 minutes... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/us/politics/09inaug.html?8au&emc=au

New unemployment claims surge unexpectedly
http://finance.yahoo.com/news/New-unemployment-claims-surge-apf-13806958...

NO Safety net for US unemployed
As a rising number of Americans sign up for unemployment benefits, many of the state-funded trusts that pay them are on the decline. At least 12 are on the brink of insolvency. In 20 other states, the funds lost value even before the big job losses of the past two months.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/csm/20081211/ts_csm/asafetynet

Fears of a million layoffs a month in corporate America by spring
Heather Stewart and Ruth Sunderland
http://www.guardian.co.uk/business/2008/dec/07/recession-job-losses
November was the worst month in the US labour market since the oil crisis of 1974, as more than 500,000 US workers were laid off... Graham Turner, of consultancy GFC Economics, says the rising cost of corporate debt is now flashing a warning signal far worse is to come over the next few months... job losses are heading for levels seen in the 1930s Great Depression.

AMERIKAN TRADITIONS
The tale of the slaughter at Wounded Knee in South Dakota is [an] example too well known to require detailed repeating here, but what is less well known about that massacre is that, a week and a half before it happened, the editor of the South Dakota's Aberdeen Saturday Pioneer -- a gentle soul named L. Frank Baum, who later became famous as the author of The Wizard of Oz -- urged the wholesale extermination of all America's native peoples: "The nobility of the Redskin is extinguished, and what few are left are a pack of whining curs who lick the hand that smites them. The Whites, by law of conquest, by justice of civilization, are masters of the American continent, and the best safety of the frontier settlements will be secured by the total annihilation of the few remaining Indians. Why not annihilation? Their glory has fled, their spirit broken, their manhood effaced; better that they should die than live the miserable wretches that they are."
David E. Stannard http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/

" an expansive definition of self-defense that provides a legal rationale for strikes on militant targets in sovereign nations without those countries’ consent..."
Secret Order Lets U.S. Raid Al Qaeda Anywhere in the World
A 2004 classified order [“Al Qaeda Network Exord,” or execute order] allowing the U.S.... typically Special Operations forces... to attack the Qaeda terrorist network anywhere in the world and a more sweeping mandate to conduct operations in countries not at war with the United States was used to authorize nearly a dozen undisclosed attacks. ... The 2004 order identifies 15 to 20 countries, including Syria, Pakistan, Yemen, Saudi Arabia and several other Persian Gulf states, where Qaeda militants were believed to be operating or to have sought sanctuary, a senior administration official said.... Some of the military missions have been conducted in close coordination with the C.I.A., according to senior American officials, who said that in others, like the Special Operations raid in Syria on Oct. 26 of this year, the military commandos acted in support of C.I.A.-directed operations.... American officials refused to describe in detail what they said had been nearly a dozen previously undisclosed attacks, except to say they had been carried out in Syria, Pakistan and other countries. They made clear that there had been no raids into Iran using that authority, but they suggested that American forces had carried out reconnaissance missions in Iran using other classified directives.... The 2004 order ...was issued after the Bush administration had already granted America’s intelligence agencies sweeping power to secretly detain and interrogate terrorism suspects in overseas prisons and to conduct warrantless eavesdropping on telephone and electronic communications....

Even with the order, each specific mission requires high-level government approval. Targets in Somalia, for instance, need at least the approval of the defense secretary, the administration official said, while targets in a handful of countries, including Pakistan and Syria, require presidential approval. The Pentagon has exercised its authority frequently, dispatching commandos to countries including Pakistan and Somalia. Details of a few of these strikes have previously been reported. For example, shortly after Ethiopian troops crossed into Somalia in late 2006 to dislodge an Islamist regime in Mogadishu, the Pentagon’s Joint Special Operations Command quietly sent operatives and AC-130 gunships to an airstrip near the Ethiopian town of Dire Dawa. From there, members of a classified unit called Task Force 88 crossed repeatedly into Somalia to hunt senior members of a Qaeda cell believed to be responsible for the 1998 American Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania. At the time, American officials said Special Operations troops were operating under a classified directive authorizing the military to kill or capture Qaeda operatives if failure to act quickly would mean the United States had lost a “fleeting opportunity” to neutralize the enemy. Occasionally, the officials said, Special Operations troops would land in Somalia to assess the strikes’ results. On Jan. 7, 2007, an AC-130 struck an isolated fishing village near the Kenyan border, and within hours, American commandos and Ethiopian troops were examining the rubble to determine whether any Qaeda operatives had been killed....
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/10/washington/10military.html?th&emc=th

U.S. PROXY & STATE TERROR PARTNER
Who Originated Obama's 'Nuclear Umbrella for Israel' Proposal?
By National Review Online
That would be Charles Krauthammer. When he proposed it, liberals declared this idea was evidence that Krauthammer is insane. When Hillary Clinton echoed the proposal, Keith Olbermann said it was "far further to the right than John McCain. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21439.htm

Obama's atomic umbrella: U.S. nuclear strike if Iran nukes Israel
The source, who is close to the new administration, said the U.S. will declare that an attack on Israel by Tehran would result in a devastating U.S. nuclear response against Iran. Secretary of state-designate Hillary Clinton had raised the idea of a nuclear guarantee to Israel during her campaign for the Democratic Party's nomination for the presidency. During a debate with Obama in April, Clinton said that Israel and Arab countries must be given "deterrent backing." She added, "Iran must know that an attack on Israel will draw a massive response." Clinton also proposed that the American nuclear umbrella be extended to other countries in the region, like Saudi Arabia and the Gulf States, if they agree to relinquish their own nuclear ambitions. According to the same source, the nuclear guarantee would be backed by a new and improved Israeli anti-ballistic missile system. The Bush administration took the first step by deploying an early-warning radar system in the Negev, which hones the ability to detect Iranian ballistic missiles. Obama said this week that he would negotiate with Iran and would offer economic incentives for Tehran to relinquish its nuclear program. He warned that if Iran refused the deal, he would act to intensify sanctions against the Islamic Republic.
http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1045687.html http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21431.htm

Obama Warns Iran Over Nuke Policy:
US President-elect Barack Obama says he is prepared to offer Iran economic incentives to stop its nuclear programme, but he also warned that sanctions could be toughened if it refuses.
http://news.sky.com/skynews/Home/World-News/Barack-Obama-Tells-Meet-The-...

IAEA Chief Describes Iran's N. Program as "Legal":
"Iranians are working under a legal framework. They have permitted the international (atomic energy) agency to monitor their imported materials," ElBaradei said in a telephone interview with the London-based Al Hayat newspaper on Wednesday. http://english.farsnews.net/newstext.php?nn=8709210721

Israel: Livni tells Arab Israelis' to look somewhere else
Israeli Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni says her country's Arab citizens will only be able to fulfill their national aspirations outside of Israel....that for Israel to remain a Jewish and democratic state, it must be one of two distinct national entities... [over one million] Israeli Arabs must find their national solution "elsewhere."

Israel's Netanyahu upbeat on Iran plans
The man many tip to be Israel's next leader said he saw Barack Obama as serious about denying Iran nuclear arms, even though the US president-elect made no mention of a military option in a weekend interview. Benjamin Netanyahu, whose right-wing party leads in polls before a February 10 election, was responding to concerns raised by Israeli analysts that Obama did not explicitly say in televised remarks on Sunday that he could resort to force against Tehran if it did not bow to US demands over its nuclear programme. "President-elect Obama spoke to me about his view that Iran's acquisition of nuclear weapons is unacceptable," Netanyahu told Reuters ... Despite speculation over an Israeli go-it-alone strike, many analysts believe that only the U.S. military has the clout to finish such a job and that any independent action by Israel would require at least tacit approval from Washington. ...
http://tvnz.co.nz/view/page/2367673

Israel risks hurting U.S. ties by pushing for Iran strike, says Brzezinski
Natasha Mozgovaya, Haaretz U.S. Correspondent
www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1044635.html
www.uruknet.info?p=49408
"I don't know if Iran believes the military option is real, but I think it's not a real option for the U.S., and it is not a real option for Israel, because Israel doesn't have a capability to destroy Iranian nuclear facilities," Brzezinski said. "It can damage them, so it can only delay the process, while intensifying Iranian extremism and wielding together Iranian nationalism and Iranian fundamentalism, which I don't think is in anyone?s interest. Last, but not least, Israel really cannot execute effective strike without our permission... if you look at the map, you can see the reason why it is so." ...
Brzezinki said public opinion in Israel and the Palestinian territories is more accomodating to an agreement, but it is the political leadership's hesitance to make fateful concessions that necessitates active U.S. mediation.... it's necessary that the U.S. takes initiative and breaks the lock jam, and that initiative requires particularly clear American view but also the international community's view that this initiative has to be based on four fundamental principles." They include a Palestinian renunciation of the right of return; an Israeli commitment to genuinely share Jerusalem; a final border based on the '67 lines with minor alterations to allow for annexation of settlement blocs; and a demilitarized Palestinian state.
Brezinski also says the two sides should consider an international peacekeeping force led by NATO to assuage security concerns."The possible involvement of NATO is not a question of war on terror, but ensuring that the Palestinian state is not a military threat, but at the same time stable and secure, and NATO presence could bring this double benefit," he said. "[P]erhaps a NATO presence [could] ensure a peace agreement, or maybe even an American presence along the Jordan River, to give the Israelis sense of geographical security."

the social networking face of imperialist-zionist war for the net
YouTube Partners with MOSSAD - ADL
Haitham Sabbah
boycott-youtube.gif
December 12, 2008
www.uruknet.info?p=49540
sabbah.biz/mt/archives/2008/12/12/youtube-partners-with-mossad-adl/
It seems that the days of using YouTube as #1 media to distribute documentaries, videos and presentations about the truth of Israel and Zionist and their horrific war-crimes history and terrorism profile, has come to END. Yesterday, it was announced that YouTube officially connected to the infamous ADL as partner to "Fight Against Hate."
NEW YORK, Dec. 11 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ — YouTube has reached out to the Anti-Defamation League (ADL) for its expertise in dealing with hate on the Internet. In one outgrowth of that partnership, the League is now a contributor to YouTube's newly launched Abuse & Safety Center, where users are empowered to identify and confront hate, and to report abuses.
The YouTube Abuse & Safety Center features information and links to resources developed by ADL to help Internet users respond to and report offensive material and extremist content that violates YouTube's Community Guidelines on hate speech. … The YouTube Abuse & Safety Center was unveiled on December 11 at the annual conference of the Family Online Safety Institute in Washington D.C. and can be found at http://help.youtube.com/support/youtube/bin/request.py?contact_type=abus....

YouTube now has on-board one of the US’s domestic branches of Israel's intelligence service, the Mossad. The ADL, the Mossad’s most "professional" organizations whose "speciality is spreading hate", are recruited as a professionals in the just struggle of "fighting against hate"? This partnership has many dimensions and should not be taken lightly.

As YouTube is one of the most viewed websites worldwide, controlling it means controlling the minds of hundreds of millions of its viewers. This is significant if we look at last year's YouTube report in which Harris Interactive said, about 32 percent of frequent YouTube users are watching less TV as a result of the time they spend online. Of the frequent YouTube users, 66 percent claim they are sacrificing other activities when on YouTube, including other websites (36 percent), time spent watching TV (32 percent),… It is also significant if we know that about 700,000 people do watch the YouTube concert at its peak. Imagine you are in control and show one pro-Zionist and anti-Arab/anti-Islam ad during the show. A couple of days ago, in continuing its dominance of online video, Comscore announced these astonishing figures:
YouTube reached a record 99.5 million visitors in October, according to comScore. How dominant is that? The report indicates that, in total, 147 million people watched video online in the US during the month, meaning better than 2 in 3 watched it using a Google property. Overall, growth in online video remains robust, increasing 45 percent from last year to 13.5 billion total monthly views.
Knowing all the above facts and knowing what ADL stands for makes one 'feel sick to one’s stomach'. It means that hundreds of millions of Americans and others around the world are now going to be officially brainwashed by the Mossad and under censorship for everything they say, upload, document and view on YouTube.

TIP, The Israeli Project
http://www.theisraelproject.org/site/c.hsJPK0PIJpH/b.1189643/#background
TIP Fellows have the opportunity to develop what can become a long-term career building relationships with reporters and sources who are experts on the Middle East.
Since the media is the number ONE source of information on Israel this program can help reduce anti-Israel sentiment and enable people to understand Israel's current and future challenges more fully. The Israel Project Media Fellowship trains students on techniques designed to increase accurate and fair coverage of Israel and Jews in the news media. Our fellows learn about media coverage of Israel and the region, meet with top-level journalists and utilize what they learn practically in hands on writing assignments which will be published over the course of the fellowship. Media Fellows in Jerusalem and Washington will be involved in staffing and planning TIP speaking events in regions across the United States. In Israel, the Media Fellows will undertake in-depth research projects pertaining to current events in Israel and the Palestinian Authority.... Fellows build relationships with journalists (print, radio, television) based in Washington, DC and Jerusalem. Past speakers who have addressed the TIP Media Fellows include Wolfe Blitzer of CNN, Alan Elsner of Reuters, Bill Kristol of The Weekly Standard, Eleanor Clift of Newsweek and the McLaughlin Group, Clarence Page of the Chicago Tribune, Tony Blankly of the Washington Times, as well as strategic communications experts, Stan Greenberg PhD and Neil Newhouse....

AP’s Self-contradicting Settler-editors:
Staffed almost exclusively by Israeli nationals and Jewish immigrants living illegally as settlers in the Palestinian West Bank, The Associated Press’ West Jerusalem bureau is the global central hub for Israeli apologetics. http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/08/aps-self-contradicting-settler-edi...

Fighting Racism, U.N.-Style
Wall Street Journal
http://online.wsj.com/article/SB122878151578089711.html
Obama's team should follow Powell's lead on U.N. 'racism' forum.... One of Colin Powell's best moves as Secretary of State was to pull out of the United Nations' 2001 conference in Durban against racism once it became an anti-Semitic rant. One of the best moves the new U.S. Administration and Europe could make is to stay away from the follow-up meeting altogether."Durban II," planned for April in Geneva, promises to be an encore of the same old Israel-bashing. The draft declaration says Israel's policy toward the Palestinians amounts to no less than "a new kind of apartheid, a crime against humanity, a form of genocide and a serious threat to international peace and security." We'll spare you the rest...

Israel will be the main obsession, but it's not the only target. The draft declaration also goes after the West's freedom of speech and antiterror laws under the guise of protecting religion (read: Islam) from "defamation." The entire West will be in the dock for allegedly persecuting Muslims. "The most serious manifestations of defamation of religions are the increase in Islamophobia and the worsening of the situation of Muslim minorities around the world," the draft reads. "Islamophobia" is a term used to brand any criticism of Islam as a hate crime.
Israel said last month it will stay away from Geneva. Canada's Prime Minister Stephen Harper deserves kudos for having made that call in January. "We will not be party to an anti-Semitic and anti-Western hate-fest dressed up as antiracism," he said. The decision about whether to send a delegation to Durban II will be an early test of Secretary of State-designate Hillary Clinton and the new Obama Administration.

The Historical Meaning of the Palestinian Flag
Written for The Daily Californian by Matthew Taylor
Political Zionism-the quest to establish and hold a Jewish-majority state within historic Palestine-has largely been predicated on the belief that Palestinians should not have the right to live on their ancestral lands. In 1948, Israel's founders carried this philosophy to its logical conclusion and used military force to drive more than 700,000 Palestinians out of their homes in a carefully planned campaign of ethnic cleansing. In 1967, Israel conquered and occupied the West Bank and Gaza Strip, and then proceeded to build hundreds of colonies in violation of international law while abusing the human rights of the indigenous Palestinian population... http://palestinethinktank.com/2008/12/07/the-historical-meaning-of-the-p...
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=49399

"Leaving Iraq": Think U.S. will entrust this to its puppets?!
Pentagon approves Iraq sales worth up to $6 billion
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20081211/bs_nm/us_iraq_usa_weapons
The largest of the agreements, valued at up to $2.16 billion, is for 140 M1A1 Abrams tanks, 8 M88A2 tank recovery vehicles, 64 armored Humvees, shelter carriers and other military vehicles. The prime contractors for the vehicle sales would be General Dynamics Corp (GD.N), Honeywell International (HON.N), and General Motors Corp (GM.N).
The Iraqi government also requested the sale of 400 M1126 Stryker infantry carrier vehicles and associated equipment valued at up to $1.11 billion, the agency said. General Dynamics is the main contractor for that deal as well. Another big-ticket arms sale involves 20 30-35-meter coastal patrol boats and 3 55-60 meter offshore support vessels, a deal valued at up to $1.01 billion, if all options are exercised, the Pentagon agency said. It said no principal contractor had been identified yet for the patrol boats and support vessels, but the acquisition would be subject to U.S. defense sourcing requirements. Iraq also asked to buy 26 Bell Armed 407 Helicopters with engines built by Rolls-Royce (RR.L). DSCA said the principal contractors also had not been identified. The helicopters are built by Bell Helicopter, a unit of Textron Inc (TXT.N).
The arms sales also include up to $148 million in rifles, carbines and grenade launchers; and up to $210 million in 20 T-6A Texan training aircraft built by privately held Hawker Beechcraft, but including other equipment built by Pratt & Whitney, a unit of United Technologies Corp (UTX.N) and a unit of L-3 Communications Holdings Inc (LLL.N).
Iraq had also requested the sale of 36 AT-6B Texan II aircraft and associated equipment, a deal valued at up to $520 million. Hawker Beechcraft, Pratt & Whitney and L-3 would be the prime contractors for that deal as well. The Pentagon also said it had approved the 64 deployable rapid assembly shelters and a wide array of military radio equipment under an agreement valued at up to $485 million, and for which the primary contractors would be ITT Corp (ITT.N) and Harris Corp (HRS.N).

Note the lengths NYT propaganda goes pretending Obama admin. is Bush 'opposition': Shineski criticism was that Iraq deployment was too small...which anti-Iraq war Obama agrees with
Obama Picks General Critical of Iraq War for V.A. Chief
CHICAGO — President-elect Barack Obama has chosen retired Gen. Eric K. Shinseki to be secretary of the Veterans Affairs Department, elevating the former Army chief of staff, who was vilified by the Bush administration on the eve of the Iraq war for his warning that far more troops would be needed than the Pentagon had committed...
asked about General Shinseki’s early troop estimates...Mr. Obama said, “He was right.” http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/07/us/politics/07shinseki.html?th&emc=th

The Iraqis are not charged with crimes, permitted to see the evidence against them or provided lawyers...
"...using detainee operations to teach the Iraqis here and improve their perception of Americans."...

A look inside Iraqi prison camps
The process has improved prisoner conditions since the abuses committed by U.S. soldiers in Abu Ghraib but has not created a system to determine the guilt or innocence of thousands of Iraqi detainees... "I'm not looking at whether they are guilty or innocent," said Air Force Maj. Jeff Ghiglieri, the president of the review board that convened in May. "We're trying to determine, as best we can, whether they will do bad things if we release them." ... This proceeding is what has amounted to due process for many of the 100,000 prisoners who have passed through the American-run detention system in Iraq. Although the legal controversy over detainees at the U.S. military prison at Guantánamo Bay, Cuba, has attracted far more attention, 100 times as many prisoners have been held at Camp Bucca and other Iraqi sites with far fewer legal rights and no oversight by the U.S. court system.

The Iraqis are not charged with crimes, permitted to see the evidence against them or provided lawyers.

But the Iraqi captives are now offered religious, academic and vocational classes. They are permitted to meet with relatives in person or long distance via videoconferencing equipment. The detainees at Camp Bucca, many of whom like to read Agatha Christie mysteries and watch Jackie Chan movies, have their own choir, intramural soccer league and a workshop to produce stuffed animals called Bucca Bears... As Haider fashioned his stuffed animals, an imam at a nearby compound preached a moderate version of Islam and a former politician taught a civics class, part of the detention system's focus on engaging moderates. As 20 detainees gathered around Sheik Abdul Sattar Abdul Jibar on prayer mats, he told them to avoid sectarian violence and peer pressure.

"This used to be a jihadi university that was just breeding more terrorists," said Maj. Gen. Douglas Stone, who ran the detention system until this summer. "Now we are engaging the detainees and using detainee operations to teach the Iraqis here and improve their perception of Americans."...
Ali Sabri Abood, 31, a private in the Iraqi military who was released from Bucca this summer after being detained for a year [said] "Even if they turn the place into a paradise," he said, "it is still a prison full of innocent men." http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/cgi-bin/PrintStory.pl?document_id=20084...

.
Alleged 9/11 Plotters Offer to Confess at Guantánamo
All five of the Guantánamo detainees charged with planning and coordinating the Sept. 11 attacks have asked a military judge to accept their confessions in full...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/us/09gitmo.html?8au&emc=au

real reason: divide & conquer isn't working, defendants insist on standing together..."I want to postpone pleas until decision is made about the other brothers," Mohammed said....
Proposal Is Pulled Over Death Penalty Issue
Henley asked three of the defendants representing themselves -- Mohammed, Attash and Baluchi -- whether they were willing to enter guilty pleas. All said Monday morning that they were ready to do so. Henley said he would not be able to accept pleas from Binalshibh and Hawsawi because the court has yet to hold hearings on whether they are mentally competent to represent themselves. An attorney for Binalshibh, Navy Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier, objected to filing the Nov. 4 document on behalf of her client, saying he had "been permitted to go to this meeting" and others "without notice to me....Mohammed, joined by Attash and Baluchi, changed tack and said he would not enter a plea until a decision was made on Binalshibh and Hawsawi. Lawyers had told them during the break that a plea could mean that they might not receive the death sentence and that it could cut off their two co-conspirators, according to a source familiar with the conversation. "I want to postpone pleas until decision is made about the other brothers," Mohammed said....
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/12/08/AR200812...
The military court was told in an earlier hearing that Binalshibh, an alleged liaison between the hijackers and al-Qaeda's leadership, is being administered psychotropic drugs. And an attorney for Hawsawi, a Saudi and alleged financier of the attacks, said Monday that he had requested a mental competency hearing for his client. Mohammed, Attash and Baluchi -- whether they were willing to enter guilty pleas. All said Monday morning that they were ready to do so. Henley said he would not be able to accept pleas from Binalshibh and Hawsawi because the court has yet to hold hearings on whether they are mentally competent to represent themselves. An attorney for Binalshibh, Navy Cmdr. Suzanne Lachelier, objected to filing the Nov. 4 document on behalf of her client, saying he had "been permitted to go to this meeting" and others "without notice to me."
When the court resumed after a late-morning break, Mohammed, joined by Attash and Baluchi, changed tack and said he would not enter a plea until a decision was made on Binalshibh and Hawsawi. Lawyers had told them during the break that a plea could mean that they might not receive the death sentence and that it could cut off their two co-conspirators, according to a source familiar with the conversation.

"I want to postpone pleas until decision is made about the other brothers," Mohammed said.

The military court was told in an earlier hearing that Binalshibh, an alleged liaison between the hijackers and al-Qaeda's leadership, is being administered psychotropic drugs. And an attorney for Hawsawi, a Saudi and alleged financier of the attacks, said Monday that he had requested a mental competency hearing for his client.
Prosecutors rejected any suggestion that there was a politically motivated rush to justice....
The prospect of a guilty plea and a possible death sentence would represent a major victory for the Bush administration, which had given up on bringing Mohammed and the others to trial before leaving office Jan. 20. In the seven years since the Guantanamo Bay detention camp opened, only three people have been convicted, one as a result of a plea agreement. Two of those found guilty have been returned home. None of the "high-value" detainees transferred from CIA custody to Guantanamo in 2006 has gone to trial....

The willingness of the defendants to "announce our confessions and plea in full," according to a document they sent to the judge in the case, Army Col. Stephen Henley, potentially bestows some hard decisions on the incoming administration. President-elect Barack Obama has vowed to close the Guantanamo Bay detention facility, but he has not indicated whether he will retain the military commissions that may be close to securing the death penalty for suspects in the worst terrorist attacks in U.S. history...
If the judge ultimately accepts guilty pleas, the ability of the Obama administration to transfer the case to federal court -- a desire expressed by some Obama advisers -- might be constrained, said Anthony D. Romero, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union. That could mean the new administration may have to oversee an execution resulting from a process that many Obama supporters and legal advisers regard as deeply flawed. A guilty plea, however, could shield the Obama administration from what some legal experts view as potentially hazardous proceedings in federal court, where evidence obtained by torture or coercive interrogation would not be admitted. CIA Director Michael V. Hayden has acknowledged that Mohammed was subjected to waterboarding..."It is absurd to accept a guilty plea from people who were tortured and waterboarded," said Romero, who is observing the proceedings. He said in an interview that the Obama administration should clearly signal that it intends to abolish the military commissions as well as the detention system, so the judge and other Pentagon officials will not move forward with the proceeding. The Obama team declined to comment....

The Problem with the Blackwater Indictments
Laurence Vance
...The government criticizing Blackwater diverts people’s attention from the criminality of the war. The most ardent supporters of the war can condemn Blackwater guards while at the same time lauding U.S. soldiers as defenders of our freedoms even though they have unleashed a genocide in Iraq....
http://www.uruknet.de/?p=49470

Cultural domination has been an underappreciated facet of American global power.... As the imitation of American ways gradually pervades the world, it creates a more congenial setting for the exercise of the indirect and seemingly consensual American hegemony. And as in the case of the domestic American system, that hegemony involves a complex structure of interlocking institutions and procedures, designed to generate consensus and obscure asymmetries in power and influence.
Zbigniew Brzezinski

...depopulation should be the highest priority of U.S. foreign policy towards the Third World...
Henry Kissinger, National Security Memo 200, dated April 24, 1974

For truth about U.S. imperialism's devastation of Africa read Keith Harmon Snow's reports:
http://www.allthingspass.com/journalism.php
All Things Pass: the investigations, journalism and photography of keith harmon snow.

MERCHANTS OF DEATH: EXPOSING THE CORPORATE-FINANCIAL HOLOCAUST IN AFRICA
Published 4 December 2008 by Black Star News. (War in Congo has again been splashed across world headlines and the same old clichés about violence and suffering are repackaged and rebroadcast as “news”. Meanwhile, indications out of America are that President-elect Barack Obama will assemble a foreign policy-team primed for business as usual.
see also: http://www.blackstarnews.com/?c=135&a=5176)

DEPOPULATION AND TERROR IN EAST AFRICA
Multinational Corporations, Mercenaries and U.S. Client Regimes
KPFK Radio: Freedom Now: June 8, 2008. Dedon Kamathi interviews journalist and former UN Genocide investigator keith harmon snow. (The ravaging of Somalia, US Client states in the region, and the ongoing depopulation of vast tracts of Africa to serve the agendas of multinational corporations. The role of whiteness in perpetuating injustice and structural violence is also discussed. See FREEDOM NOW archives for June 8, 2008
see also: http://64.27.15.184/parchive/mp3/kpfk_080708_200100freedomnow.mp3)

THE US SPONSORED 'RWANDA GENOCIDE' AND ITS AFTERMATH: Psychological Warfare, Embedded Reporters and the Hunting of Refugees
Published 12 April 2008 by Global Research. (An investigation has uncovered an asylum system scandal where bogus Rwandan “refugees” infiltrate the U.S. and U.K. and work as undercover agents to hunt down critics of the Rwandan dictatorship and legitimate refugees and drag them back to Rwanda. This is yet the latest revelation on how the dictatorship in Rwanda manufactures and exports terrorism using an ideology of genocide and how the West supports terrorism by backing its Rwanda proxy. Meanwhile, business in Rwanda is booming and the criminal networks of the Kagame military machine continue to plunder the blood-drenched Congo. -
see also: http://www.globalresearch.ca/index.php?context=viewArticle&code=SNO20080...)

GERTLER'S BLING BANG TORAH GANG
Israel and the Holocaust in Central Africa
Published 9 February 2008 by Dissident Voice. (Maurice Tempelsman is one of the top funders of the Democratic Party who has funded Barrack Obama and Hillary Clinton. Templesman was the unofficial ambassador to the Congo (Zaire) for years, but a new Israeli-American tycoon has replaced him. In the world of bling bling and bling bang, some things change, some stay the same. The CIA, the MOSSAD, the big mining companies, the offshore accounts and weapons deals—all hidden by the Western media. The holocaust in Central Africa has claimed some six to ten million people in Congo since 1996, with 1500 people dying daily. - see also: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/gertlers-bling-bang-torah-gang/)

FORMER TEACHER ARRESTED FOR BURNING US FLAGS
Civic Responsibility and Consciousness of War
Published 6 February 2008 by Dissident Voice. (Kiss the flag? Burn the flag? Support the troops? Stop the war? If you want to know why former school teacher and fitness coach Doug Wight went on a flag burning spree just before Christmas, maybe you should ask him. It seems that few people have done that. Newspaper articles that appeared presented few details. - see also: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/former-teacher-arrested-for-burnin...)

OVER FIVE MILLION DEAD IN CONGO? FIFTEEN HUNDRED PEOPLE DAILY?: Behind the Numbers Redux: Truth is Hidden Even When it Seems to be Told
Published 4 February 2008 by Dissident Voice. (The International Rescue Committee in late January 2008 released a new report on the mortality in the war-torn Democratic Republic of Congo. The report caught the eye of some news agencies, who quickly whipped up trite little articles as supposed expressions of horror. Over and over it has been declared “the world’s forgotten crises.” There are reasons why Darfur is in the crises of the day, the poster crises, and why Congo is hardly mentioned.The entire exercise in counting the dead is another way to do little to stop it. The IRC is about profits, but that is not all. - see also: http://www.dissidentvoice.org/2008/02/over-five-million-dead-in-congo-fi...)

U.S. "Helpful" African puppets vs. "unhelpful" anti- U.S. AFRICOM control
Calls grow for Mugabe to step down
Gordon Brown, the British prime minister, who said Mugabe's regime was "blood-stained" and Condoleezza Rice, the US secretary of state, who said that it is well past the time for Mugabe to quit. EU foreign ministers are expected to adopt a draft text tightening sanctions against Zimbabwe on Monday, due to fears over the worsening humanitarian situation and political deadlock in the country. Mugabe and his wife Grace, as well as 166 other members of the governing Zanu-PF, are already banned from entering EU nations and their European assets have been frozen... Cholera is thought to have claimed nearly 600 lives in Zimbabwe in the past few months [AFP]. Raila Odinga, Kenya's prime minister, has added his voice to the growing wave of calls by world leaders for Robert Mugabe, the Zimbabwean president, to step down....
Mugabe accused Zimbabwe's former colonial ruler Britain of using the epidemic to draw together support against his government. An editorial in the state-run Sunday Mail newspaper also said the outbreak was due to EU sanctions. "The people who are suffering most are not politicians they claim they want to punish, but poor people," it said. "All the victims [of cholera] are a result of the freezing of balance of payments support, depriving the country of foreign currency required to buy chemicals to treat our drinking water."...
EU foreign ministers are expected to adopt a draft text tightening sanctions against Zimbabwe on Monday, due to fears over the worsening humanitarian situation and political deadlock in the country. http://english.aljazeera.net/news/africa/2008/12/200812719205659219.html

US wants U.N. authority for countries pursuing pirates off the coast of Somalia to hunt them down on land, according to a draft resolution circulated at the United Nations Wednesday.
http://africa.reuters.com/top/news/usnJOE4BA00K.html

The 13th Circle: Somalia's Hell and the Triumph of Militarism
Chris Floyd
As you might expect, the New York Times buries the lede in its latest story about Somalia, but surprisingly, the general outlines of the truth of the rapidly collapsing situation on this third front in the "War on Terror" can be gleaned from the piece.... give or take some details -- such as the extent of Washington's direct involvement in the ongoing destruction of Somalia, which as we have often noted here, involved not only arming, training and funding the Ethiopian invaders, but also dropping US bombs on fleeing refugees, lobbing US missiles into Somali villages, renditioning refugees -- including American citizens -- into captivity in Ethiopia's notorious dungeons, and running U.S. death squads in Somalia to "clean up" after covert operations. (The latter is no deep dark secret, by the way; U.S. officials openly boasted of it to Esquire Magazine.) ... the real thrust of the Times story is not outrage at the living hell engendered by the Terror War's third "regime change" operation. No, the Times' "analysis" is clearly aimed at one goal: continuing the brutal occupation of the Ethiopian invaders.... the Lords of the West... realize that, as in Iraq, the only thing holding up their local clients is the armed might of a foreign invader.... are shocked -- shocked! -- to find that the warlords they installed in power (some of them openly in the pay of the CIA) have no popular support in the country, and, as Gettleman notes, now "controls only a few city blocks of the entire country." The only preventing the complete collapse of Washington's clients, he warns, is presence of the Ethiopians.
Gettleman trots out some heavy Establishment lumber for the requisite fearmongering: The International Crisis Group, which he tells us is "a research institute that tracks conflicts worldwide." No doubt it does; for the group is chock-a-block with the great and good of the bipartisan foreign policy establishment, whose raison d'etre is "conflicts worldwide."The ICG board is packed with such luminaries as Thomas Pickering, who served as the Reagan-Bush man in El Salvador when the US-backed government there was slaughtering civilians by the thousands to maintain its elitist-militarist rule. Pickering was a simpering apologist for the blood-letting, declaring that the dead civilians were all sympathizers with the insurgency... ICG Co-Chair Pickering is joined by other such worthies as hardcore neocon Ken Adelman (who presciently -- and no doubt profitably -- jumped ship to endorse Barack Obama before the election); Zbigniew Brzezinski, who helped create the armed global jihad movement in order to hotfoot the Soviets in Afghanistan; Wesley Clark, brave bombardier of civilians in Serbia; Prince Turki al-Faisal, who directed the sinister, extremist-promoting Saudi intelligence apparat for decades; Richard Armitage, a PNAC vet and one of the key players in the operation of the imperial war-and-domination machine for years, who, like his former boss Colin Powell, has acquired a wholly unearned reputation as a "moderate"; Yegor Gaidar, who as Yeltsin's prime minister rammed through the "shock doctrine" economic extremist that gutted Russian society and ruined the lives of millions; and Lawrence Summers, one of the architects of the global economic meltdown, now serving as a top adviser to Barack Obama.

This group sent out analyst Rashid Abdi to use the NY Times as a megaphone to warn against the risks of ending savage, bloody foreign interventions into other countries: "It will be bloody," predicted Rashid Abdi, a Somalia analyst at the International Crisis Group, a research institute that tracks conflicts worldwide. "The Ethiopians have decided to let the transitional government sink. The chaos will spread from the south to the north. Warlordism will be back.... Those men will eventually go home, spreading the killer ethos. Somalia has now reached a very dangerous phase," he said. "The whole region is in for more chaos, I’m afraid."...

Militarism -- in its overt, unashamed form as espoused by the neo-cons and their outriders, or in the more subtly packaged, sugar-coated (and often self-deluding) version of the "humanitarian interventionists" ...comes in different shadings, different emphases, different factions, and so on, but the national power structure is firmly committed across the board to the use of violence -- and the ever-present threat of violence -- to advance a bipartisan agenda of American hegemony ... Some factions take great pains to present this hegemony as benevolent and altruistic; other factions don't care how it comes across ("Let them hate us as long as they fear us," was a sentiment frequently voiced in high circles at the beginning of the Terror War). But all factions are willing to kill people -- either directly or by proxy -- to maintain that hegemony....
www.chris-floyd.com/component/content/article/3/1656-the-13th-circle-som... ll-and-the-triumph-of-militarism.html

Admiral Michael Mullen: US concerned about terror safe haven in Somalia
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=29154
Ethiopia redeploys troops across border into Somalia, reoccupies former military positions in Mogadishu.
http://www.middle-east-online.com/english/?id=29138

note: still dreaming...
Somalia Ought To Be Obama's Litmus Test
by Sadia Ali Aden
http://www.blackagendareport.com/index.php?option=com_content&task=view&...
Washington has secretly been involved with a third war in addition to Iraq and Afghanistan. This one is fought by proxy on its behalf by Ethiopia which invaded Somalia on Christmas Eve of 2006. Salim Lone, a former spokesman for the UN mission in Iraq in 2003, and a columnist for The Daily Nation in Kenya, says this about the United States' proxy war in the Horn of Africa. "The U.S. instigation of war between Ethiopia and Somalia, two of world's poorest countries already struggling with massive humanitarian disasters, is reckless in the extreme."
Before launching its military joint venture with Ethiopia two years ago, Washington secretly made a deal with some of Somalia's most vicious warlords who styled themselves as a counter-terrorism coalition...The "world's worst humanitarian disaster" about which Obama has not uttered a single word, is the product of America's "proxy war in the Horn of Africa" in partnership with Washington's client, Ethiopia. Obama must take responsibility for "over one million internally displaced persons and nearly 3.5 million on the verge of starvation" in Somalia....

Mumbai in the making...
MADE-IN-U.S.A. PRETEXTS TO SERVE ITS GEOSTRATEGIC GLOBAL DOMINATION AGENDA

29 Aug 2008 Top U.S., Pakistani brass have secret strategy session
In a meeting cloaked in secrecy, an unusually high-level roster of U.S. military officials huddled with senior Pakistani military officers this week aboard an aircraft carrier in the Indian Ocean to discuss the increasing violence along the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. The U.S. commanders—including Joint Chiefs Chairman Adm. Mike Mullen and Army Gen. David Petraeus—met with Pakistan’s army chief, Gen. Ashfaq Kayani, aboard the USS Abraham Lincoln on Tuesday in the first meeting of senior U.S. and Pakistani military leaders since former Gen. Pervez Musharraf stepped down as Pakistan’s president last week. The meeting also occurred amid concerns about the increasingly deadly Taliban-led insurgency in Afghanistan and lingering questions about the effort of Pakistan’s military and new government to help contain it.
Petraeus is winding down his tour as the top commander in Iraq and will soon take over as the head of U.S. Central Command, which helps oversee the war in Afghanistan.
The timing of the meeting and the high rank of the U.S. commanders involved underscore the Pentagon's desire to strengthen ties to Pakistan's military leaders during a tumultuous period on Pakistan's political scene. Musharraf was widely considered the Pentagon's and Bush administration's closest ally in Pakistan, and it remains uncertain whether Pakistan's new government will continue to cooperate as closely with the U.S... it is unclear whether any of the candidates—the front-runner is former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto's widower, Asif Ali Zardari—would have the political will or authority to take on the growing militant problem. Mullen said he was encouraged that Kayani has taken action to improve the security situation along the border areas but he said more needs to be done. "There are areas that we can do better ...There are areas that the Pakistan military can do better.
http://www.chicagotribune.com/news/chi-joint-chiefs_madhaniaug29,0,78278...

Mumbai: A Battle in the War for Pakistan
Author: Daniel Markey, CFR Senior Fellow for India, Pakistan, and South Asia
http://www.cfr.org/publication/17981/mumbai.html
Working with and through Pakistan to advance the U.S. counterinsurgency/terror agenda in Afghanistan and to facilitate India's emergence as a rising, democratic power in Asia is bound to be slow, costly, and frequently frustrating, but there are no other realistic options... In the coming months and years, an enhanced U.S. commitment to economic development, education, and health care could target areas now under the influence of JuD and other extremist operations. Vice President-elect Joseph R. Biden, Jr. has long championed a plan to ramp up nonmilitary assistance to Pakistan, and Obama's national security team would be well-advised to follow through on that commitment. At present, however, the United States lacks the institutional capacity to implement sophisticated, targeted development programs in Pakistan. Any increased levels of assistance programming must be complemented by a significant expansion of USAID and State Department officers based in Pakistan and supported by additional staff in Washington. The Pakistan mission is difficult, owing to poor security conditions throughout the country, so incoming U.S. officials will require an unusual degree of flexibility and logistical support in order to formulate and monitor programming. New procedures, training, and personnel suited to the operating environment will be needed....

Mumbai serves as a timely reminder that Pakistan's terrorism problem is not confined to the Pashtun badlands bordering Afghanistan. Over decades, extremism and militancy has seeped into the institutions, political culture, and society of the entire country, from its Punjabi heartland to its coastal megacity of Karachi. Winning the war for Pakistan will require an urgent, massive, and sustained effort by the United States in coordination with other international partners and allies in Pakistan.

Middle East Strategy proposal for the Obama Administration
In Restoring the Balance: A Middle East Strategy for the Next President, experts from the Council on Foreign Relations and the Saban Center at the Brookings Institution propose a new, nonpartisan Middle East strategy drawing on the lessons of past failures to address both the short-term and long-term challenges to U.S. interests.
http://www.cfr.org/publication/17886/from_cfr_and_saban_center_at_brooki...

"Pakistan is a failed state"
Condemning the Mumbai carnage, senior US Congressman Frank Pallone has said the terrorists involved in the attack tried to give the impression that they were local Indian Muslims...
“The US has sent both the secretary of state as well as military leaders to both India and Pakistan. I know that the new Obama administration and the new Secretary of State, Hillary Clinton, want to do whatever they can to shore up India’s security,”... He said the Pakistani government had to play a role in its unorganised territories and make sure that they were not being used to launch another attack by al-Qaeda or the Taliban. “If not, then the US has to go there itself”.http://www.thenews.com.pk/top_story_detail.asp?Id=18895

Pak on track to being named terrorist state
7 Dec 2008
http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/articleshow/msid-3803272,prtpage-1.cm...
WASHINGTON: The United States is dusting off a long-discarded proposal to declare Pakistan a state sponsor of terrorism...a decision in this regard is being left to the incoming Obama government, sources said, contingent on corrective actions taken in the meantime by Islamabad to the satisfaction of India, US and other countries affected by Pakistan's toxic export of death.
A few months later a US commander, Lieutenant Colonel Chris Nash, who worked with the Afghan police, made a widely discussed slide presentation on his return to Washington, saying "ISI involved in direct support to many enemy operations ... classification prevents further discussion of this point." The support included "training, funding, [and] logistics," he added. But the most damning, and most recent, piece of evidence came after the bombing of the Indian Embassy in Kabul when US intercepted communications between Pakistani intelligence officers and militants who carried out the attack. The messages, US officials said later, indicated that the ISI officers involved in the bombings were not "renegades," or "stateless actors," and "their actions might have been authorized by superiors."
Washington now believes that is also the case with Mumbai, which is why, notwithstanding a soft public stance, Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice has conveyed to President Zardari what her predecessor Baker told Nawaz Sharif: Pakistan is on track to being declared a state sponsor of terrorism if it does not act.
It was because of this long history of Pakistan's corrosive terrorist record that an outraged Rice dismissed Islamabad's request for evidence this time, saying, there is a "lot of information about what happened here, a lot of information... And so this isn't an issue of sharing evidence."

Pakistan forces takes over Lashkar camp: Witnesses
http://ibnlive.in.com/printpage.php?id=80010&section_id=2
Reuters
UNDER PRESSURE: File photo of a Pakistani military vehicle moving down a road in a tribal region.
Islamabad: Pakistani security forces took over a camp used by Lashkar-e-Toiba militants in Pakistani Kashmir on Sunday ...India says the only gunman captured alive during the attacks on Mumbai told investigators he underwent months of training in guerrilla warfare organised by Lashkar-e-Toiba in Pakistan.

McCain warns Pakistan of Indian air strikes:
Pakistani Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani (right) with U.S. Senator John McCain (second left) and Senator Joe Lieberman during a meeting in Islamabad on Saturday.
ISLAMABAD: United States Senator John McCain has said there is enough evidence of the involvement of former Inter-Services Intelligence officers in the planning and execution of the Mumbai attacks. If Pakistan did not act swiftly to arrest the people involved, the Senator said, India would be left with no option but to conduct aerial operations against select targets in Pakistan... Ejaz Haider, a senior editor at the Daily Times, who was at the lunch said Mr. McCain told the group that Washington would not be able to do much to stop India, as the Mumbai attacks were its “9/11.”...

within 48 hrs. according to some reports
U.S. will act: Rice IANS reports:
A report quoting the Dawn newspaper said U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice was understood to have told Pakistan that there was “irrefutable evidence” of involvement of elements in the country in the Mumbai attacks and that it needed to act urgently and effectively to avert a strong international response.
Contrary to the formal statements issued by Pakistani authorities and her own statement at the Chaklala Airbase before her departure, sources said she “pushed the Pakistani leaders to take care of perpetrators, otherwise the U.S. will act.” http://www.hindu.com/2008/12/07/stories/2008120757500100.htm

note what a good boy...his message directed to u.s. masters, fellow colonialists & imperialists and to the vast majority of Pakistanis sick fighting u.s. terror war
OP-ED
The Terrorists Want to Destroy Pakistan, Too
By ASIF ALI ZARDARI, U.S.' President Select of Pakistan
The Mumbai attacks were directed not only at India but also at Pakistan’s new democratic government and the peace process with India that we have initiated. Supporters of authoritarianism in Pakistan and non-state actors with a vested interest in perpetuating conflict do not want change in Pakistan to take root... As was demonstrated in Sunday’s raids, which resulted in the arrest of militants, Pakistan will take action against the non-state actors found within our territory, treating them as criminals, terrorists and murderers. Not only are the terrorists not linked to the government of Pakistan in any way, we are their targets and we continue to be their victims.... Pakistan’s fledgling democracy needs help from the rest of the world. We are on the frontlines of the war on terrorism. We have 150,000 soldiers fighting Al Qaeda, the Taliban and their extremist allies along the border with Afghanistan — far more troops than NATO has in Afghanistan.
To foil the designs of the terrorists, the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process... For India, Pakistan and the United States, the best response to the Mumbai carnage is to coordinate in counteracting the scourge of terrorism. The world must act to strengthen Pakistan’s economy and democracy, help us build civil society and provide us with the law enforcement and counterterrorism capacities that will enable us to fight the terrorists effectively.... http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/opinion/09zardari.html?_r=2&ref=opinio...

http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/09/opinion/09zardari.html?_r=2&ref=opinio...
Pakistan president Asif Ali Zardari, says, in an op-ed, that to foil the designs of the terrorists, the two great nations of Pakistan and India, born together from the same revolution and mandate in 1947, must continue to move forward with the peace process.

NOTE no evidence never gets in the way of U.S. plans
Pakistan’s Spies Aided Group Tied to Mumbai Siege
...American officials say there is no hard evidence to link the spy service, the Directorate for Inter-Services Intelligence, or ISI, to the Mumbai attacks. But the ISI has shared intelligence with Lashkar and provided protection for it, the officials said, and investigators are focusing on one Lashkar leader they believe is a main liaison with the spy service and a mastermind of the attacks. As a result of the assault on Mumbai, India’s financial hub, American counterterrorism and military officials say they are reassessing their view of Lashkar and believe it to be more capable and a greater threat than they had previously recognized. ... officials in Washington said they had yet to unearth any direct link between the Pakistan spy agency and the Mumbai attacks. “I don’t think that there is compelling evidence of involvement of Pakistani officials,” Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice said on CNN’s “Late Edition With Wolf Blitzer” on Sunday. “But I do think that Pakistan has a responsibility to act.” She said evidence showed “that the terrorists did use territory in Pakistan.” An American counterterrorism official said: “It’s one thing to say the ISI is tied to Lashkar and quite another to say the ISI was behind the Mumbai attacks. The evidence at this point doesn’t get you there.” ...
http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/world/asia/08terror.html?_r=3&partner=...

'Mumbai attacks mastermind arrested'
Zaki-ur-Rehman Lakhvi, a Lashkar-e-Taiba (LeT) operation chief, was arrested during a secret crackdown on the LeT members and its sister organization Jamaat-ud-Dawah (JuD) in Muzaffarabad, the capital of Pakistani-administered Kashmir. Lakhvi was among some 20 LeT members arrested during the operation late Sunday. According to Indian officials, the lone survivor of the assailants --captured by India-- has named Lakhvi as a ringleader in the Mumbai plot. The US and Indian intelligence reports had earlier suggested that the Mumbai attacks were carried out by the militant group. The arrests came after US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice pressured Islamabad to take action following the deadly attacks, saying there was evidence Pakistan had been used by 'non-state actors' to mount the Mumbai attacks. http://www.presstv.com/detail.aspx?id=77839&sectionid=351020401

Former ISI Chief: Mumbai And 9/11 Both “Inside Jobs”
Video And Transcript
An exclusive interview with General Hamid Gul, the former head of the ISI.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21410.htm

The US, Pakistan and the “Terrorist” Hamid Gul
While making no secret of his hostility to the US, Gul flatly rejected allegations that he supported terrorism as "fictitious". Speaking to the press on Monday, he declared that he would call on the UN to set up an international commission in Pakistan at which he would "present myself for inquisition". Referring to Washington's accusations, he declared: "I was quite a darling of theirs at one time. I don't know what this is about. It looks like they have a habit of betraying their friends."
Gul's comment highlights an inconvenient fact barely referred to in the commentary about the Mumbai attacks in particular and the "war on terrorism" in general. The nexus between the Pakistani establishment, the army and the ISI, and various Islamist organisations was forged in the CIA-backed jihad in the 1980s against the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. It was not only Gul who was Washington's "darling" but the ISI as a whole as well as the Afghan "freedom fighters" that now form the backbone of the Taliban, Al Qaeda and various Islamist terrorist organisations around the world....

Washington continued to rely on Pakistan as its key ally on the Indian subcontinent well into the 1990s. As Afghanistan descended into a chaos of conflicting militias following the Soviet withdrawal, the US tacitly supported the formation of the Taliban movement by Pakistan and the ISI in 1993. American oil interests were seeking a stable Afghanistan as a route for planned oil and gas pipelines out of Central Asia. It was only in the late 1990s in response to Al Qaeda attacks on US targets that Washington turned sharply against its former allies—attacking alleged Al Qaeda camps in Afghanistan in 1998.
Subsequent US demands that Pakistan take action to pull the Taliban regime into line were bound up with a broader strategic shift toward India that was rapidly emerging as an important economic power. In 1999, President Clinton pressured Pakistani Prime Minister Nawaz Sharif to order the military to end its support for armed Kashmiri separatists who had seized the Kargil heights in Indian-controlled Kashmir. Sharif's backdown produced seething resentment inside the Pakistani army, leading to the seizure of power by General Pervez Musharraf just months later.
Having helped transform the Pakistani military into a bastion of Islamist reaction, the US demanded an abrupt about-face in the aftermath of the September 11 attacks. As Musharraf later explained in his autobiography, the Bush administration made an offer that Pakistan could not refuse. US Assistant Secretary of State Richard Armitage bluntly told Musharraf that the country would be bombed back to "the Stone Age" if he did not immediately end all support for the Taliban regime and assist the US invasion of Afghanistan.

The US invasion of Afghanistan has only compounded the crisis in that country and neighbouring Pakistan. The anger fuelled by seven years of US occupation is providing a steady stream of recruits to various Islamist militias operating inside Afghanistan and the neighbouring border areas of Pakistan. It is hardly surprising that a section of the Pakistani military and ISI remains resentful toward Washington and supportive of the Taliban as well as the Kashmiri militants. Gul, now retired, speaks for this layer.
The transformation of Gul from Washington's "darling" into candidate for the UN terrorist list is the product of shifting US policies. By making an example of him, the White House is seeking to discipline the Pakistani establishment as a whole as it recklessly pursues US economic and strategic interests throughout the region.
http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21429.htm

Lakhvi promoted to “mastermind”: Role of Alleged CIA Asset in Mumbai Attacks Downplayed
Recent press reports on developments with regard to last month’s attacks in Mumbai, India indicate the role of Dawood Ibrahim, a wanted crime boss, terrorist, and drug trafficker, is being downplayed, possibly the result of a deal taking place behind the scenes between the governments of the US, Pakistan, and India, to have others involved in the Mumbai attacks turned over while quietly diverting attention from a man who some say could reveal embarrassing secrets about the CIA’s involvement in criminal enterprises.
December 10, 2008
by Jeremy R. Hammond
http://tinyurl.com/567o32
...A known drug trafficker, Dawood Ibrahim is naturally also involved in money laundering, which is perhaps where the role of gambling operations in Nepal comes into the picture. Yoichi Shimatsu, former editor of the Japan Times, wrote last month after the Mumbai attacks that Ibrahim had worked with the US to help finance the mujahedeen during the 1980s and that because he knows too much about the US’s “darker secrets” in the region, he could never be allowed to be turned over to India. The recent promotion of Lakhvi to “mastermind” of the attacks while Ibrahim’s name disappears from media reports would seem to lend credence to Shimatsu’s assertion.
Investigative journalist Wayne Madsen similarly reported that according to intelligence sources, Dawood Ibrahim is a CIA asset, both as a veteran of the mujahedeen war and in a continuing connection with his casino and drug trade operations in Kathmandu, Nepal. A deal had been made earlier this year to have Pakistan hand Ibrahim over to India, but the CIA was fearful that this would lead to too many of its dirty secrets coming to light, including the criminal activities of high level personnel within the agency....

Although designated as a major international terrorist by the US, media reports in India have characterized the US’s past interest in seeing Ibrahim handed over as less than enthusiastic. Former Indian Deputy Prime Minister L K Advani wrote in his memoir, “My Country My Life”, that he made a great effort to get Pakistan to hand over Ibrahim, and met with then US Secretary of State Colin Powell and National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice (now Secretary of State) to pressure Pakistan to do so. But he was informed by Powell that Pakistan would hand over Ibrahim only “with some strings attached” and that then Pakistani President Pervez Musharraf would need more time before doing so. The handover, needless to say, never occurred. The Pakistan government has also publicly denied that Ibrahim is even in the country; a denial that was repeated following the recent Mumbai attacks. Others suspected of involvement in the attacks and named among the 20 individuals India wants Pakistan to turn over also have possible connections to the CIA, including Hafiz Mohammad Saeed, the founder of LeT, and Maulana Masood Azhar, both veterans of the CIA-backed mujahedeen effort. Both LeT and JeM have links to the ISI, which has used the groups as proxies in the conflict with India over the territory of Kashmir.

Hafiz Saeed travelled to Peshawar to join the mujahedeen cause during the Soviet-Afghan war. Peshawar served as the base of operations for the CIA, which worked closely with the ISI to finance, arm, and train the mujahedeen. It was in Peshawar that Saeed became the protégé of Abdullah Azzam, who founded an organization called Maktab al-Khidamat (MAK) along with a Saudi individual named Osama bin Laden.MAK worked alongside the CIA-ISI operations to recruit Arabs to the ranks of the mujahedeen. The ISI, acting as proxy for the CIA, chose mainly to channel its support to Afghans, such as Gulbaddin Hekmatyar. The U.S. claims the CIA had no relationship with MAK, but bin Laden’s operation, which later evolved into “al-Qaeda”, must certainly have been known to, and approved by, the CIA.

But there are indications that the CIA’s relationship with MAK and al-Qaeda go well beyond having shared a common enemy and mutual interests in the Soviet-Afghan war. A number of al-Qaeda associates appear to have been protected individuals. Branches of MAK existed elsewhere, including in the United States. The US Treasury Department lists one of MAK’s aliases as Al-Kifah. The Al-Kifah Refugee Center in Brooklyn, New York, served as a recruitment center during the 1980s, but its operations did not end after the end of the Soviet occupation of Afghanistan. Al-Kifah was also a recruitment center for efforts by extremist groups in the Balkans. Just as in Afghanistan, the US also had mutual interests with Bosnian Muslims and extremist groups acting in the Balkans. MAK had since evolved into al-Qaeda under Osama bin Laden, which had links to groups operating in Bosnia. Despite an arms embargo against such groups, they managed to obtain weapons and supply shipments in which the US at best looked the other way and at worst played an active role.

The operations to arm al-Qaeda linked groups in Bosnia were carried under the watch of then director of the US European Command Intelligence Directorate Gen. Michael V. Hayden. Hayden subsequently served as the director of the National Security Agency from 1999 to 2005 and is currently the Director of Central Intelligence, or DCI, which is the head of the CIA.

A brief digest interruption...
President-Elect Obama May Keep Mike Hayden as Director of the CIA
http://www.usnews.com/blogs/washington-whispers/2008/12/5/president-elec...

A former official at the US consular office in Jeddah, Saudi Arabia, Michael Springman went public after 9/11 to explain how his office was used by the CIA to bring recruits to the US for training during the 1980s. The Jeddah office is where most of the 9/11 hijackers obtained their visas to enter the US. Two other of the hijackers, Nawaf al-Hazmi and Khalid al-Mihdhar, were known to the CIA and were being monitored. Despite being known al-Qaeda operatives, they were allowed to enter the US under their real names and neither the FBI nor the State Department were notified....
Upon arriving in the US, al-Hazmi and al-Mihdhar were assisted by an individual under FBI surveillance for his possible connections to terrorist groups and, furthermore, even lived in a house rented from an FBI informant. But the FBI claims that it didn’t know anything about the men, despite them using their real names and being listed in the phone book, because the CIA hadn’t informed them the two were in the country. The Joint Inquiry report described this as perhaps the single greatest missed opportunity to break up the 9/11 operation and prevent the attacks.
Additionally, it was the CIA who not once, but at least on six separate occasions, approved a visa, including from the office in Jeddah, for or the entry of Sheikh Omar Abdel Rahman, a.k.a. “the Blind Sheikh”, into the US, despite his known connection to terrorist acts in Egypt, including the assassination of Anwar Sadat, and despite having been on the State Department’s terrorist watchlist. This, too, was described as a series of “mistakes” after the government was forced to admit that it had occurred – an explanation that the New York Times, which reported this information in a series of articles, seemed to find perfectly satisfactory...

The Blind Sheikh had also traveled to Peshawar during the mujahedeen effort, and was good friends with Gulbaddin Hekmatyar, the CIA’s top asset during the Soviet-Afghan war. He later became the spiritual head of the terrorist group that carried out the 1993 bombing of the World Trade Center, a plot which the FBI had known about in advance through two or more informants. One of the informants served as a bodyguard for the Blind Sheikh and was made responsible for obtaining materials to make the bomb with. Tape recordings he secretly made of conversations with his FBI handlers reveal that the original sting operation involved a plan to replace a chemical used in making the bomb with an inert simulant that would render it inoperative. But this plan was withdrawn by a supervisor at the FBI and the terrorist cell was allowed to go ahead and make a real bomb – which was then used to blow up the World Trade Center.

Another notable character connected to Al-Kifah training and recruitment efforts for al-Qaeda is Ali Mohammed. He also happened to be an in FBI informant, a CIA asset, and a member of the special forces in the US Army. It is Ali Mohammed whom some suspect of actually being the mastermind of the 1993 WTC bombing. He was later charged in connection to the 1998 bombings of the US embassies in Kenya and Tanzania, but has since seemingly disappeared off the map.

After the 9/11 attacks, the investigation into the financing of the attacks led to Omar Saeed Sheikh, a British national of Pakistani origin. According to Indian officials, a joint investigation with the FBI revealed evidence that it was at the direction of the head of the ISI, Lt. Gen. Mahmud Ahmed, that Omar Sheikh transferred $100,000 to lead hijacker Mohammed Atta in Florida. Omar Sheikh, a known associate of Osama bin Laden, was captured and imprisoned in India for his role in the kidnapping of American and British nationals in 1994. He was released in 1999 along with Maulana Massod Azhar in exchange for the hostages from Flight 814. According to former Pakistan president Pervez Musharraf, Omar Sheikh was also an agent of Britain’s spy agency, MI6, for whom he served in operations in the Balkans. Omar Sheikh’s role in the 9/11 attacks has also been downplayed. Mention of him in the media instead focus on his role as the man responsible for the murder of Wall Street Journal reporter Daniel Pearl. He is currently being held in Pakistan on charges relating to Pearl’s murder.

After Mahmud Ahmed’s alleged role in the 9/11 attacks became known publicly, Musharraf quietly replaced him and the whole affair was hushed up in the US. When a reporter from a foreign news agency asked then National Security Advisor Condoleezza Rice whether she was aware of the reports that the ISI chief had financed the hijackers and was in Washington meeting with high level officials at the time of the attacks, she denied having seen “that report” and protested that, “he was certainly not meeting with me.” Interestingly, the White House website transcript of the press briefing censored the words “ISI chief” from the reporter’s question, despite the words clearly being audible in the video of the briefing...

Another former head of the ISI is now being privately accused by the US of involvement with the group responsible for the Mumbai attacks, according to reports citing a document listing former ISI chief Lt. Gen. Hamid Gul and four other former heads of Pakistan’s intelligence agency as being involved in supporting terrorist networks. The individuals named have been recommended to the UN Security Council to be named as international terrorists, according to Pakistan’s The News. The document has been provided to the Pakistan government and also accuses Gul, who was head of the ISI from 1987-1989, of providing assistance to criminal groups in Kabul, as well as to groups responsible for recruiting and training militants to attack US-led forces in Afghanistan, including the Taliban. Hamid Gul responded to the reports by calling the allegations hilarious....

Resolution in UNSC against Hamid Gul blocked, say Pakistan PM:
The Pakistan government has blocked a resolution moved in the UN Security Council for imposing sanctions against former Inter-Services-Intelligence chief retired Lieutenant General Hamid Gul over his alleged links with al-Qaeda and Taliban, Prime Minister Yousuf Raza Gilani said on Wednesday.http://tinyurl.com/6bfml4

If you aren't with US, you're with the terrorists, GWB
so remember: violence is terrorist resistance to U.S. peacemakers
In Afghanistan, Gates Talks of Rapid Troop Increase
Defense secretary Robert M. Gates called for the increases as part of an effort to combat growing violence
.http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/12/world/middleeast/12gates.html?8au&emc=au

Taliban leader said the increase in troops means that battles would “flare up” everywhere. “
Taliban’s fugitive leader, Mullah Omar, promised more violence over the next year as the US plans to deploy thousands more troops in hopes of turning around the deteriorating situation in Afghanistan. Omar said the increase in troops means that battles would “flare up” everywhere. “The current armed clashes, which now number into tens, will spiral up to hundred of armed clashes. Your current casualties of hundreds will jack up to thousand casualties of dead and injured,”... Karzai last month offered protection for Omar — who is wanted by the United States and is blacklisted by the United Nations — if he accepts Afghanistan’s constitution and joins peace talks. Omar dismissed that call in his latest message. “Do not ever presume that in the presence of the occupation forces, the followers of the path of Islamic resistance will ever abandon their legitimate struggle merely on your empty and farcical pledges, material privileges and personal immunity,” Omar said. Omar also called on his fighters to administer “Islamic punishment” on anyone who kidnaps people for ransom. He said that the protection of people’s lives is a major goal of jihad, or holy war. Kidnappings of Westerners have increased over the last couple of months, but not all the kidnappings are carried out by Taliban-aligned fighters....
Former Republican presidential candidate John McCain warned on Sunday during a visit to Afghanistan that the situation “is going to get harder before it gets easier.” The rising violence in Afghanistan appears to be coordinated closely with the spike in militant attacks in neighboring Pakistan, and officials increasingly view both countries as part of the same battlefront. Early Monday, militants in Pakistan’s northwestern city of Peshawar attacked a truck terminal, torching more than 100 military vehicles loaded with supplies for American and coalition forces in Afghanistan, a witness and an Associated Press reporter said. The attack was the second in as many days on the supply line in the city, showing its vulnerability to militants that control large swaths Pakistan’s lawless regions close to Afghanistan.... http://www.thefrontierpost.com/News.aspx?ncat=ts&nid=3483

NEVER FORGET, NEVER FORGIVE...
FLASHBACK: Video: Afghan Massacre - The Convoy of Death
Jamie Doran
Produced and directed by Irish filmmaker and former BBC producer Jamie Doran, the film tells the story of thousands of prisoners who surrendered to the US military's Afghan allies after the siege of Kunduz. According to the film, some three thousand of the prisoners were forced into sealed containers and loaded onto trucks for transport to Sheberghan prison. When the prisoners began shouting for air, U.S.-allied Afghan soldiers fired directly into the tr uck, killing many of them. The rest suffered through an appalling road trip lasting up to four days, so thirsty they clawed at the skin of their fellow prisoners as they licked perspiration and even drank blood from open wounds. Witnesses say that when the trucks arrived and soldiers opened the containers, most of the people inside were dead. They also say US Special Forces re-directed the containers carrying the living and dead into the desert and stood by as survivors were shot and buried. Now, up to three thousand bodies lie buried in a mass grave...http://www.uruknet.de/?p=4951

According to eyewitnesses, U.S. Special Forces supervised--some say orchestrated--the systematic murder of more than 3,000 captured Taliban soldiers in November 2001. That charge is the centerpiece of a documentary film, "Afghan Massacre: The Convoy of Death," expected to be released in the U.S. within the next few weeks. "There has been a cover-up by the Pentagon," says Scottish director Jamie Doran, former producer for BBC. "They're hiding behind a wall of secrecy, hoping this story will go away--but it won't."... http://www.uruknet.de/?p=49518

"The Taliban are now dictating terms in Afghanistan, both politically and militarily ... a danger that Afghanistan will be lost for at least another generation."
Taliban insurgents have established a permanent presence in almost three-quarters of the territory of Afghanistan and are "closing a noose" around the capital Kabul, according to a report published today. The independent thinktank International Council on Security and Development [ICOS] was critical of the international community's "failure" to address the security situation, which it argued in its report had brought Afghanistan "to a precipice". The 50,000-strong Nato-ISAF international military force would have to be increased by tens of thousands of troops to make any real difference, said the report. "At the national level, talk of reconciliation and power-sharing between undefined moderate elements of the movement and elected government officials is commonplace. At a local level, the Taliban are manoeuvring skilfully to fill the governance void, frequently offering a mellower version of localised leadership than characterised their last stint in power." The "agility" and "unity of purpose" of insurgent forces, compared with Nato's "ill-equipped, lumbering military machine" meant that genuine security could not be established in any of the 72 per cent of Afghan territory where the Taliban had a permanent presence, said the report. "It will take more than a military defeat of the Taliban to build trust, especially in the southern provinces. "The insurgency continues to turn Nato's weaknesses into its own strengths. Until external factors expand focus beyond the military dimensions, by targeting needs at a grassroots level and thus restoring its previous levels of support, there is a danger that Afghanistan will be lost for at least another generation."
http://www.independent.co.uk/news/world/asia/report-warns-of-taliban-noo...

The CIA's Intervention in Afghanistan
Interview with Zbigniew Brzezinski, President Jimmy Carter's National Security Adviser
Le Nouvel Observateur, Paris, 15-21 January 1998
Question: The former director of the CIA, Robert Gates, stated in his memoirs ["From the Shadows"], that American intelligence services began to aid the Mujahadeen in Afghanistan 6 months before the Soviet intervention. In this period you were the national security adviser to President Carter. You therefore played a role in this affair. Is that correct?
Brzezinski: Yes. According to the official version of history, CIA aid to the Mujahadeen began during 1980, that is to say, after the Soviet army invaded Afghanistan, 24 Dec 1979. But the reality, secretly guarded until now, is completely otherwise Indeed, it was July 3, 1979 that President Carter signed the first directive for secret aid to the opponents of the pro-Soviet regime in Kabul. And that very day, I wrote a note to the president in which I explained to him that in my opinion this aid was going to induce a Soviet military intervention.
Q: Despite this risk, you were an advocate of this covert action. But perhaps you yourself desired this Soviet entry into war and looked to provoke it?
B: It isn't quite that. We didn't push the Russians to intervene, but we knowingly increased the probability that they would.
Q: When the Soviets justified their intervention by asserting that they intended to fight against a secret involvement of the United States in Afghanistan, people didn't believe them. However, there was a basis of truth. You don't regret anything today?
B: Regret what? That secret operation was an excellent idea. It had the effect of drawing the Russians into the Afghan trap and you want me to regret it? The day that the Soviets officially crossed the border, I wrote to President Carter. We now have the opportunity of giving to the USSR its Vietnam war. Indeed, for almost 10 years, Moscow had to carry on a war unsupportable by the government, a conflict that brought about the demoralization and finally the breakup of the Soviet empire.
Q: And neither do you regret having supported the Islamic fundamentalism, having given arms and advice to future terrorists?
B: What is most important to the history of the world? The Taliban or the collapse of the Soviet empire? Some stirred-up Moslems or the liberation of Central Europe and the end of the cold war? [...] http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article5304.htm

CIA: Drugs & Thugs International
BND, CIA and Kosovo's Deep State
By Tom Burghardt
http://www.inteldaily.com/news/172/ARTICLE/8940/2008-12-09.html
...Kosovo: A European Narco State
When Kosovo proclaimed its "independence" in February, the Western media hailed the provocative dismemberment of Serbia, a move that completed the destruction of Yugoslavia by the United States, the European Union and NATO, as an exemplary means to bring "peace and stability" to the region. If by "peace" one means impunity for rampaging crime syndicates or by "stability," the freedom of action with no questions asked by U.S. and NATO military and intelligence agencies, not to mention economic looting on a grand scale by freewheeling multinational corporations, then Kosovo has it all! From its inception, the breakaway Serb province has served as a militarized outpost for Western capitalist powers intent on spreading their tentacles East, encircling Russia and penetrating the former spheres of influence of the ex-Soviet Union. As a template for contemporary CIA destabilization operations in Georgia and Ukraine, prospective EU members and NATO "partners," Kosovo should serve as a warning for those foolish enough to believe American clichés about "freedom" or the dubious benefits of "globalization."...
In Deep Politics and the Death of JFK, Peter Dale Scott describes how the deep state can be characterized by "the symbiosis between governments (and in particular their intelligence agencies) and criminal associations, particularly drug traffickers, in the stabilization of right-wing terror in Vietnam, Italy, Bolivia, Afghanistan, Nicaragua, and other parts of the world." Indeed, "revelations in the 1970s and 1980s about the 'strategy of tension,' whereby government intelligence agencies, working in international conjunction, strengthened the case for their survival by actually fomenting violence, recurringly in alliance with drug-trafficking elements."
Scott's analysis is perhaps even more relevant today as "failed states" such as Kosovo, characterized by economic looting on an industrial scale, the absence of the rule of law, reliance on far-right terrorists (of both the "religious" and "secular" varieties) to achieve policy goals, organized crime syndicates, as both assets and executors of Western policy, and comprador elites are Washington's preferred international partners.
Kosovo is a veritable goldmine. Situated in the heart of the Balkans, Kosovo's government is deeply tied to organized crime structures: narcotrafficking, arms smuggling, car theft rings and human trafficking that feeds the sex slave "industry." These operations are intimately linked to American destabilization campaigns and their cosy ties to on-again, off-again intelligence assets that include al-Qaeda and other far-right terror gangs. As investigative journalist Peter Klebnikov documented in 2000:

"Heroin Heroes", By Peter Klebnikov, Mother Jones, January/February 2000, http://www.motherjones.com/news/feature/2000/01/heroin.html
The U.S. propped up the KLA in the Kosovo conflict. With Milosevic gone and no one in control, the former freedom fighters are transforming the province into a major conduit for global drug trafficking...
According to Balkan Analysis, the International Crisis Group (ICG) funded by billionaire George Soros' Open Society Institute (OSI) and closely aligned with "liberal interventionists" in the United States, were instrumental in arguing that the United States and Germany, should guarantee "future stability," by building up the Kosovo Protection Corps (TMK), the KLA's successor organization, into a well-equipped army. Towards this end, the U.S. and Germany, in addition to arming the organized crime-linked statelet, have provided funds and equipment for a sophisticated military communications center in the capital.

The CIA: Drugs & Thugs International
U.S. destabilization programs and covert operations rely on far-flung networks of far-right provocateurs and drug lords (often interchangeable players) to facilitate the dirty work for U.S. policy elites and American multinational corporations. Throughout its Balkan adventure the CIA made liberal use of these preexisting narcotics networks to arm the KLA and provide them with targets.... as former DEA investigator and whistleblower Michael Levine, author of The Big White Lie, told B92, one of the wings of the Kosovo Liberation Army (KLA) was "linked with every known narco-cartel in the Middle East and the Far East", and that almost every European intelligence service and police has files on "connections between ethnic Albanian rebels and drug trafficking"...and by extension, the CIA itself...
As researcher and analyst Michel Chossudovsky wrote back in 2001, among the "inconvenient truths" unexplored by Western media is the close proximity of far-right Islamist terror gangs and planetary U.S. destabilization operations. Since the Soviet-Afghan war, recruiting Mujahedin ("holy warriors") to fight covert wars on Washington's behest has become an integral part of US foreign policy. A report of the US Congress has revealed how the US administration--under advice from the National Security Council headed by Anthony Lake--had "helped turn Bosnia into a militant Islamic base" leading to the recruitment through the so-called "Militant Islamic Network," of thousands of Mujahedin from the Muslim world.
The "Bosnian pattern" has since been replicated in Kosovo, Southern Serbia and Macedonia. Among the foreign mercenaries now fighting with the KLA-NLA are Mujahedin from the Middle East and the Central Asian republics of the former Soviet Union as well as "soldiers of fortune" from several NATO countries including Britain, Holland and Germany. Some of these Western mercenaries had previously fought with the KLA and the Bosnian Muslim Army. (Michel Chossudovsky, "Washington Behind Terrorist Assaults in Macedonia," Global Research, September 10, 2001)

beyond irony...
Kremlin Rules In Hard Times, Russia Moves to Reclaim Industries
The Kremlin seems to be exploiting the economic crisis to establish more control over financially weakened industries it has long coveted... Developments in the overall economy might also give the Kremlin pause. A growing recognition of its outsize influence over business appears to have helped sour the investment climate here, and suggests in part why the Russian stock market has been among the worst performers in the world this year... With the financial crisis jolting economies around the world, Russia is hardly alone in taking ownership stakes in corporations these days. But many governments seem to view this as an uncomfortable role that has been thrust upon them. Russia’s rulers, however, appear to perceive the crisis as a chance to further expand their control over the economy, concentrating ever more power and wealth in the Kremlin. “We will put capital directly into major companies, in cases when it would be beneficial to the state and eventually to the taxpayer, and in those enterprises that are the basis of the economy of the Russian Federation,” Mr. Putin said in a television appearance on Thursday. “We do not exclude that these tools may be used in a large-scale way.”...Russians undoubtedly have ambivalent feelings about oligarchs...tend to resent the oligarchs’ wealth, believing that it was accumulated through underhanded means.. But they also worry that government officials want to seize these assets for their own venal purposes, and that they will end up mismanaging them, just as in Soviet times. http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/08/world/europe/08kremlin.html?th&emc=th

ISN'T IT TIME TO END
The Curse of Global Capitalism
By Jon Ronnquist
Any parasite which draws more from its host than the host can sustain, will eventually kill it, and so we have what we have today. Continuing this analogy of disease, we can see something of considerable interest with regard to our current situation. Any disease could be said to be parasitic, in so far as it can only live and grow within the infected host. And all disease is ultimately terminated in one of two ways. Either the host, through its own agents or with the help of medicine or surgery, is expelled or killed. Or when such efforts fail, the host dies and the disease with it. In this case the host is the working man [sic] upon whom the burden of debt has been allowed to grow beyond his ability to manage, thus forcing a collapse at the very base of the pyramid... Bankrupt people are primarily useful in that they tend to introvert and feel voiceless and powerless. When it comes to gaining control, the thing to bankrupt is governments. And what do we see now? Just about every country in the developed world is being plunged into a whole new level of debt, as they borrow to save the very institutions that have colluded in the systemic strangulation of our economies, an act of propitiation and cowardice that should leave even the sceptics asking questions about who is really calling the shots.
The real problem is that those who have been riding the wave and now see the party ending, will instinctively want to keep the music on and the champagne flowing. If the average consumer was savy enough to see the folly of this, we wouldn't be in this mess in the first place. I wholeheartedly believe we should let the system die, hook line and sinker. Those who have bought into the false economy with the most reckless abandon will undoubtedly suffer. Many of the victims will be fundamentally innocent, guilty only of ignorance and perhaps turning a blind eye to that itch of the conscience which over indulgent consumers and borrowers do so well, myself very much included. But is misery really too high a price to pay for a chance at a future, if not for ourselves, than at least for our children and theirs? Or should we stake the entire future on a chance for a few more years of easy credit and false optimism? And let's not forget that our fear of letting go of this daydream we have been living may be no more justified than our naïve belief that it was taking us somewhere worthwhile in the first place. The things upon which this society is built, the factories, the roads, the working man and woman, the minds that dreamed it all up, are not going anywhere. The technology to pull man out of whatever dark age a total collapse of the current system might create, exists and has existed for years, heavily suppressed by the vested interests which have fought so hard to maintain the status quo. Truth be told, much of what makes us happy, including technology, could be as easily, if not more so, available if it is removed from under the shadow of profiteering powers. The idea that financial profit is the catalyst of human advance is probably one of the most sardonic myths of the modern world. The creators of this world are not driven, only curtailed, by considerations of money. The great minds of these times, and others, were almost unanimously driven by higher and more honourably motives. Our current dependence on the system we have is such that any radical departure from it will almost inevitably lead to temporary chaos of one kind or another. Some cancers are too far spread to be removed at no cost. And yet to continue living with it is a guarantee of a slow and painful death, from which no recovery will be possible. http://www.informationclearinghouse.info/article21414.htm