Twelfth Bough

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Archive for February 18th, 2010

the Bangkok of Latin America

Feb 18

Posted by A. Peasant in Banks, Brazil, CIA, Canada, Corruption & Crime, Drug Trafficking, Haiti, Human Trafficking, Israel, Paraguay, TBA, Terrorism, The West | No Comments

A lot of human trafficking passes through Texas on it’s way into the United States and onward. Some statistics:

  • 18,000 foreign nationals trafficked into the US each year
  • plus an estimated 200,000 American children at high risk for trafficking into the sex industry each year
  • major ports of entry are southern and central Texas, Southern California, parts of Arizona and New Mexico
  • emerging ports include Atlanta, Houston, Orlando and Washington DC
  • the I-10 corridor is a main route for human traffickers in the US
  • after drug dealing, human trafficking is tied with illegal arms as the second largest criminal industry in the world
  • human trafficking is the fastest growing criminal industry

^^^^^^^

On February 2, Penny brought to our attention Dave McGowan’s latest, Sleazefest in Seattle. (Penny has an extensive Dave McGowan collection at her place, please avail thyself.) Since Dave’s site may be experiencing some sort of technical difficulty at the moment, you can also read Sleazefest in Seattle over at SOTT.

In completely unrelated news, various concerned parties have recently reported that Vancouver is a major hub for trafficking in a most unsavory type of freight: humans. And much of that freight is said to come from the same place those alleged cherries were supposed to be shipped out to; as University of British Columbia law professor Benjamin Perrin recently noted, “Vancouver is considered to be a hub for Pacific human trafficking.” The British Columbia Human Rights Coalition concurred, reporting that, “Canada has been identified as both a transit and a destination point for human trafficking, and Vancouver has been singled out by the US state department as a port of major concern.”

Nice.

And it gets better. According to far more shocking allegations (http://www.galacticfriends.com/updates/galactic-friends/1784-galactic-federation.html), there is no shortage of other unsavory freight being shipped through Vancouver, including illegal drugs and weapons, and, perhaps inevitably, child pornography. According to witness statements taken from social workers, tribal elders and self-described victims, Vancouver is home to a protected network of pedophiles engaged in such pursuits as rape, torture, murder, child pornography, production of snuff films, and ethnic cleansing. Other then all that though, it seems like a great place to hold the Olympic games, especially since, as Perrin noted, “Traffickers will view the 2010 Olympics as the biggest business opportunity for them in decades.”

The network is said to be protected by virtually all levels of law enforcement and the judiciary, as well as by well-placed confederates in the church, the media, and other institutions of the state. If all of that sounds all too familiar, it is probably because you’ve spent time swimming in the sewers of the Franklin case in Omaha, Nebraska (http://franklinscandal.com/), or possibly the Marc Dutroux case in Belgium (http://www.illuminati-news.com/0/snuff2.htm).

Are you with me so far?

^^^^^^

Now we have Haiti, and Puello, and El Salvador to sort through. I was just following that line of thought back down into South America. There’s a place in South America called the Tri-Border Area (TBA), where Brazil, Paraguay and Argentina meet.

Back in 2002, CNN reported, from various unspecified “intelligence sources,” that al Qaeda terrorists were meeting in this area and plotting to attack US and Israeli interests, in conjunction with Hezbollah.

CNN has learned from coalition intelligence sources that several top terrorist operatives met recently in the area — where the borders of Argentina, Brazil and Paraguay intersect — to plan attacks against U.S. and Israeli targets in the Western hemisphere. Sources said the meetings, which took place in and around Ciudad del Este, were attended by representatives of Hezbollah and other groups sympathetic to Osama bin Laden’s al Qaeda terrorist network….Other indications of the threat came from intelligence sources in the Middle East, who told CNN of a new terrorist effort aimed at U.S. and Israeli interests and coordinated by a man named Imad Mugniyeh.

Argentine officials point to more evidence they say indicates terrorist activity in the tri-border area — thousands of U.S. dollars bearing stamps from Lebanese currency exchange banks, tens of thousands of dollars in phony bills, and receipts from wire transfers made between the tri-border area and the Middle East.

Oh dear.

In 2003, a paper titled Terrorist and Organized Crime Groups in the Tri-Border Area (TBA) of South America (pdf) described in detail the many criminal and Islamist elements from around the world operating in the TBA, an organized crime paradise. Chinese, Russian, Lebanese, etc. Eventually, the TBA came to the attention of the appropriate authorities.

The bombing of the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires on March 17, 1992, followed by the bombing of the Argentine-Israeli Mutual Association (Asociación Mutual Israeli-Argentina —AMIA), a Jewish community center, in Buenos Aires on July 18, 1994, focused the attention of the TBA countries, Israel, and the United States on the TBA because the investigation into both attacks led back to Hizballah operatives in the TBA.

There’s actually a very well-developed narrative about this area being connected to Hezbollah, Hamas, Lebanon, Iran and al Qaeda, among others. (Terrorist threat in the Tri-Border Area: myth or reality? 2004; Organized Crime: From Trafficking to Terrorism, Volume 2, pp. 159-161)

The narrative does not mention human trafficking, however. And the other thing conspicuously missing: Jews in any context other than victim of the organized criminals in the TBA.

The criminals from the TBA used some US banks to launder their money.

One of the most well known money laundering scandals involved Banestado, the bank of Brazil’s Parana state. In 1995, five banks in the tri-border region, including Banestado, were authorized to open currency exchange accounts, known as CC-5 accounts. CC-5 accounts quickly became popular in money laundering, and brokers opened hundreds of fake CC-5 accounts, into which criminals deposited millions of reals. The money was then wired in dollars to the Banestado branch in New York City and from there to other banks, usually in countries considered to be tax havens. Money changers and complicit Banestado officials took cuts from each transaction. More than 250 phony CC-5 accounts have since been identified, and it is suspected that as much as $30 billion passed through Banestado accounts in the U.S. between 1996 and 1999, a portion of which was likely laundered. The case is still being investigated. (6/10/08)

^^^^^^^

But human trafficking does, of course, take place, and it is a huge and fast-growing organized crime industry. And it takes place in the TBA.

Sit by the swimming pool of the exclusive Iguazú Jungle hotel and you can watch the “contrabandistas” emerging from the undergrowth. All day, an army of smugglers can be seen passing along the mountainous path that separates Argentina from Brazil. … Everything from fake branded clothing to Class A drugs are ferried back and forth along these clandestine routes. The list of contraband goods now also extends to human beings.

…Many of those trafficked through the triple frontier are destined for the illegal labour market in Brazil or Argentina. The trade in babies for adoption is also widely reported. But a large proportion end up as sex workers. Many end up in brothels across the region, although a high number are destined for the triple frontier’s own thriving sex industry.

Children are particularly vulnerable to human traffickers. Charities working with at-risk children in the border region estimate that as many as 3,500 young people could be involved. “Many girls are trafficked via the pique. It’s all highly organised”, explains Marcelina Antunez, director of Luz de Infancia, a children’s care centre in the Argentine town of Puerto Iguazú.

Driving the trade is the flood of foreign tourists who come to visit the world famous Iguazú waterfalls. Much of the demand for prostitution is casual. Yet the region also attracts a hardened group of sex tourists.

…”The triple frontera is the Bangkok of Latin America…after the tsunami, many sex tourists started coming here instead of Asia,” notes Cynthia Bendlin, director of the International Organisation for Migration (IOM) for the triple frontier area. IOM runs a number of awareness programmes to highlight the dangers of the trafficking trade. But it is an uphill struggle. Many of the children most at risk either live on the street or come from very impoverished families, Ms Bendlin explains. (2007)

A tourist destination, with beautiful hotels. Many tourists come to see the Igauzu falls. But hey, there’s really nothing to worry about because the place is crawling with feds and agency people, including CIA, on account of all the Arab terrorists there, so relax! Who would dare do any illegal trafficking with all these law enforcement people around?

Immigration officer Emilio Osses, who oversees one of the Argentine checkpoints in the area, said that contrary to popular belief, this is not the worst trafficking hotspot on Argentina’s border. He says that this tri-border area is heavily controlled — saturated with officers from at least eight local, federal and international agencies, including lots of CIA agents.
And it’s largely because of the intelligence community that there’s a lot of hype around the tri-border, he said. There is a large and important Arab population here, and it’s believed that the terrorist cells that bombed the Israeli Embassy in Buenos Aires had support in this area.

“That’s why it has this stigma of terrorism, corruption, and illegal trafficking,” Osses said. “In reality, the tri-border area suffers from propaganda.” But Osses goes on to admit that there’s a lot of room for illegal trafficking here. In the high season, 30,000 people per day cross the triple border — and that’s just at the official checkpoints. Like any border, much more of it is uncontrolled.

Jesus God, Mr. Osses. Do you think there’s a connection between all those agency people and the trafficking?

We’ll know our disinformation program is complete
when everything the American public believes is false.
– William Casey, CIA Director (from first staff meeting in 1981)

^^^^^^^

So, anyway, it must be time to change the subject. New York Times, July 17, 2009: Inquiry on 1994 Blast at Argentina Jewish Center Gets New Life. Oh PHEW!!!!!!!!!!!

Despite all the international attention, despite investigative help from Israel and the United States, no one has been convicted for the July 18, 1994, bombing of the community center, in which 85 people died and more than 300 were injured….But suddenly, an investigation that former President Néstor Kirchner called a national disgrace has received new urgency and is again raising hopes among Jewish groups, though significant concerns about the inquiry remain.

…last month, a federal judge here, Rodolfo Canicoba Corral, ordered the international capture of Samuel Salman El Reda, a 43-year-old Colombian citizen whom prosecutors here had accused of helping coordinate the local Hezbollah cell that Argentine investigators said had carried out the bombing.

Investigators here believe that they have solved the case in principle, having accused the Iranian government of planning and financing the attack, and Hezbollah of executing those plans.

But some experts, including a former American F.B.I. agent who assisted the Argentines in their investigation, are skeptical about the claims of direct Iranian involvement. “The guilt field was painted with a bit too broad a brush,” said the former agent, James Bernazzani, who led the F.B.I.’s Hezbollah operations unit in the late 1990s.

…Previous inquiries were riddled with incompetence, witnesses who were threatened and bribed, stolen evidence and accusations of a cover-up involving the former Argentine president Carlos Menem. The Argentines, nevertheless, maintain that Iran was behind the attack, and have had limited relations with Tehran partly because of the investigation’s importance to the nation’s 230,000 Jews, the largest Jewish community in Latin America. The 1994 bombing came two years after the Israeli Embassy here was bombed, killing 29 people, a case that also remains unsolved.

…Alberto Nisman, the prosecutor who took over the investigation in 2005, has intensified a line of inquiry that Mr. Galeano had played down: the involvement of Iran.

In 2006, Mr. Nisman formally accused several members of Iran’s government of planning and financing the bombing, including former President Ali Akbar Hashemi Rafsanjani. Central to the indictments was an Iranian defector, Abdolghassem Meshabi, who said that the plot had been hatched in Tehran and that Iranian officials had paid Mr. Menem about $10 million to help cover up Iran’s involvement.

And guess what? Yes, it all comes back to the TBA. Mr. Nisman has it all figured out. I mean, just look what he says.

Mr. Nisman, meanwhile, is pressing on with his investigation of Mr. El Reda. In the weeks before the bombing, Mr. El Reda shuttled between “safe houses” in Buenos Aires and a red brick house in Foz do Iguaçu, a Brazilian town in the Triple Frontier area where Argentina meets Brazil and Paraguay, investigators said.

From millions of phone call records and the help of an unidentified Hezbollah operative, investigators say they were able to piece together evidence of a terrorist cell involving Mr. El Reda that kept in close contact with Beirut leading up to the bombing.

On the morning of July 1, 1994, Mr. Nisman said, Mr. El Reda made a call from the international airport here to a cellphone registered in Foz do Iguaçu, a call that may have set off the final phase of the attack.

Other calls to the cellphone were made from public phone centers near the Jewish community center and near a mosque in Buenos Aires where the cultural attaché at the Iranian Embassy, one of the people charged in 2006, spent a great deal of time, Mr. Nisman wrote in court papers. Mr. El Reda had forged close ties with the Iranian attaché, Mr. Nisman said.

Calls were often made from those same locations to the communications center of Hezbollah in Beirut and to known militants in the Triple Frontier, Mr. Nisman said.

Mr. Bernazzani warned that that “doesn’t prove anything,” because what had been said on the calls was not known. “Telephones don’t get indicted, people do,” he said.

Mr. Nisman, nevertheless, said that at 7:41 a.m. on the day of the bombing a final call was made from Aeroparque airport in Buenos Aires. Forty minutes later, a flight bound for Puerto Iguazú in the Triple Frontier took off. Mr. Nisman said he believed that Mr. El Reda made the call before boarding the plane.

Then, at 9:53 a.m., a van loaded with about 600 pounds of ammonium nitrate fertilizer and fuel oil exploded in front of the community center. A few days later Mr. El Reda left South America for Lebanon, where he still lives with his family, Mr. Nisman said.

Boy it makes a person wonder if Alberto NISMAN belongs to the largest Jewish community in Latin America, given the alacrity of his beliefs.

Not that it matters. Perish the thought.

^^^^^^^

In closing, I would just like to remind you that the 2016 Olympics will be held in Rio de Janeiro.

So happy.
“Traffickers will view the 2010 2016 Olympics as the biggest business opportunity for them in decades.”

UK colluding with Israel?

Feb 18

Posted by A. Peasant in Corruption & Crime, Identities, Israel, Mossad, The West, UK | No Comments

by Robert Fisk

Collusion. That’s what it’s all about. The United Arab Emirates suspect – only suspect, mark you – that Europe’s “security collaboration” with Israel has crossed a line into illegality, where British passports (and those of other other EU nations) can now be used to send Israeli agents into the Gulf to kill Israel’s enemies. At 3.49pm yesterday afternoon (Beirut time, 1.49pm in London), my Lebanese phone rang. It was a source – impeccable, I know him, he spoke with the authority I know he has in Abu Dhabi – to say that “the British passports are real. They are hologram pictures with the biometric stamp. They are not forged or fake. The names were really there. If you can fake a hologram or biometric stamp, what does this mean?”

The voice – I know the man and his origins well – wants to talk. “There are 18 people involved in the killing of Mahmoud al-Mabhouh. Besides the 11 already named, there are two Palestinians who are being interrogated and five others, including a woman. She was part of the team that staked out the hotel lobby.” Two hours later, an SMS arrives on my Beirut phone from Abu Dhabi, the capital of the United Arab Emirates. It is the same source.

“ONE MORE THING,” it says in capital letters, then continues in lower case. “The command room of the operation was in Austria (sic, in fact, all things are “sic” in this report)… meaning the suspects when here did not talk to each other but thru the command room on separate lines to avoid detection or linking themselves to one another… but it was detected and identified OK??” OK? I ask myself.

My source is both angry and insistent. “We have sent out details of the 11 named people to Interpol. Interpol has circulated them to 188 countries – but why hasn’t Britain warned foreign nations that these people are using passports in these names?” There was more to come.

“We have identified five credit cards belonging to these people, all issued in the United States.” The man will not give the EU nationalities of the extra five – this would make two women involved in Mr Mabhouh’s murder. He said that EU countries were cooperating with the UAE, including the UK. But “not one of the countries we have been speaking to has notified Interpol of the passports used in their name. Why not?”

The source insisted that one of the names on a passport – the name of a man who denies any knowledge of its use – has travelled on it in Asia (probably Indonesia) and EU countries over the past year. The Emirates have proof that an American entered their country in June 2006 on a British passport issued in the name of a UK citizen who was already in prison in the Emirates. The Emirates claim that the passport of an Israeli agent sent to kill a Hamas leader in Jordan was a genuine Canadian passport issued to a dual national of Israel.

Intelligence agencies – who in the view of this correspondent are often very unintelligent – have long used false passports. Oliver North and Robert McFarlane travelled to Iran to seek the release of US hostages in Lebanon on passports that were previously stolen from the Irish embassy in Athens. But the Emirates’ new information may make some European governments draw in their breath – and they had better have good replies to the questions. Intelligence services – Arab, Israeli, European or American – often adopt an arrogant attitude towards those from whom they wish to hide. How could the Arabs pick up on a Mossad killing, if that is what it was? Well, we shall see.

Collusion is a word the Arabs understand. It speaks of the 1956 Suez War, when Britain and France cooperated with Israel to invade Egypt. Both London and Paris denied the plot. They were lying. But for an Arab Gulf country which suspects its former masters (the UK, by name) may have connived in the murder of a visiting Hamas official, this is apparently now too much. There is much more to come out of this story. We will wait to see if there are any replies in Europe.

independent

sickening

Feb 18

Posted by A. Peasant in Haiti, Human Trafficking, Israel, Mossad, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Organ Trafficking, UK | No Comments

1. Dubai 99% sure Mossad killed Mabhouh — Israeli response… SO?

Dubai police chief said he was 99 percent certain that the Mossad was responsible for the assassination of top Hamas official Mahmoud al-Mabhouh , Gulf News reported on Thursday. “Our investigations reveal that Mossad is involved in the murder. It is 99 percent, if not 100 percent, that Mossad is standing behind the murder,” police chief Dahi Khalfan Tamim told The National newspaper.

Earlier, a confidant of Mossad chief Meir Dagan told the Reuters News Agency that there was no reason to resign over the scandal-fraught assassination in Dubai, adding that Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu is unlikely to ask him to. Resignation would be tantamount to taking responsibility, the confidant said. Dagan’s success in other and ongoing operations against Hamas, Hizbullah, Syria and Iran would outweigh any desire by Netanyahu to have him fall on his sword, said the confidant, who also hails from Israel’s intelligence community. “There are national priorities here,” the confidant added.

Dubai police this week released names, photos and passport numbers of 11 members of an alleged hit squad that killed Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh last month in Dubai. Dubai police said that all 11 carried European passports. But most of the identities appeared to be stolen, and a number matched up with real people in Israel who have claimed they were victims of identity theft. Only the British passports, however, were believed to have involved stolen identities.

The confidant anticipated that Mossad would quietly lobby counterpart agencies of the countries whose passports were used for the Dubai mission to mellow their governments’ scrutiny on Israel.

“This may not work, given the anger that some of these foreign ministries are signaling,” the confidant said. “But even if there’s only a process of internal deliberation, that might be enough to take the sting out of the recrimination,” said the confidant. On Wednesday, Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman said there was no reason to assume the Mossad was behind the operation simply because Dubai had released the information about the passports. “I don’t know why we are assuming that Israel, or the Mossad, used those passports,” Lieberman told Army Radio in Israel’s first official comments on the affair. But Lieberman did not deny involvement outright, saying Israel rightly maintained a policy of ambiguity where security operations were concerned.

“Israel never responds, never confirms and never denies,” he said. “There is no reason for Israel to change this policy.”

jpost: http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=169012

maybe israel can fuck off.

2. Milliband: israel must cooperate fully. !!!. i’m *serious* this time. we’ll see.

British Foreign Secretary David Miliband on Thursday demanded Israel’s full cooperation in investigating of the fraudulent use of U.K. passport by the killers of a Hamas official in Dubai.

Israel’s ambassador to Britain, Ron Prosor, met with Sir Peter Ricketts, head of the British diplomatic sevice, on Thursday after London asked him to clarify what it called an “identity theft” in which the passports of six British Israelis were used by assassins.

“The permanent secretary (Ricketts) said we wanted to give Israel every opportunity to share with us what it knows about this incident,” Miliband told British television. “We hope and expect they will cooperate fully with the investigation that has been launched by the prime minister [Gordon Brown],” he said.

He said he hoped to discuss the issue further with Israeli Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman when both men were in Brussels on Monday.

…Although Jerusalem has not taken responsibility for the January 20 hit on Mabhouh, the incident seems to have spawned a serious diplomatic rift between Israel and the United Kingdom.

more @ haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1150675.html

authentic-drama-queen13. let’s see if Livni does her arrest experiment

Opposition leader Tzipi Livni reportedly indicated on Sunday that she would be willing to travel to the U.K. in order to provoke her own arrest, hoping thus to move London into changing a controversial law enabling the arrest of visiting politicians, the London Times reported on Monday.

“Britain has obligated itself to me personally that this subject will be taken care of and fixed,” she said. “Now is the time.”

Livni reportedly added that getting herself arrested was the only way to “shame” the British government into changing the law giving judges the power to arrest visiting Israeli politicians and generals.

Israel’s government confirmed late last year that Livni canceled a planned London trip after her office received news of a secretly issued arrest warrant awaiting her arrival.

Foreign Secretary David Miliband later announced that Britain would no longer tolerate legal harassment of Israeli officials in this fashion.

more @ haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1149895.html

MEANWHILE:

4. focus on Israel: harvesting Haitian organs

By Stephen Lendman


On January 15, Haaretz reported that:

“The Israel Defense Forces’ aid mission to Haiti left Israel overnight (January 14) with equipment for setting up an emergency field hospital. Around 220 soldiers and officers (were) in the delegation, including 120 medical staff (to) operate the hospital in the Haitian capital, Port-au-Prince.”

According to Israel’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, it includes “40 doctors, 25 nurses, paramedics, a pharmacy, a children’s ward, a radiology department, an intensive care unit, an internal department and a maternity ward (able to) treat approximately 500 patients each day,” including in two surgery rooms.

On January 20, Lebanon’s Al-Manar TV reported on the mission, citing a damning You Tube video posted by an American named T. West from a group called AfriSynergy Productions.

“The video presents something to think about while exploiting the horrible tragedy that has befallen Haiti where Israeli occupation soldiers are engaged in organ trafficking.”

Israel faced these charges before. In November 2009, Alison Weir’s article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs headlined, “Israeli Organ Trafficking and Theft: From Moldova to Palestine.” She cited an August Donald Bostrom article in Sweden’s Aftonbladet suggesting that Israel illicitly removes body parts, including from Palestinians.

She stated:

“….Israeli organ harvesting - sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli ministries - have been documented for many years. Among the victims have been Palestinians.”

“Israel is at the top,” she states. “It has tentacles reaching out worldwide. (It has) a pyramid system at work that’s awesome….they have brokers everywhere, bank accounts everywhere; they’ve got recruiters, they’ve got translators, they’ve got travel agents who set up the visas.”

They pay “the poor and the hungry to slowly dismantle their bodies” or simply take what they want from fresh corpses. Body parts are commodities, to be harvested and sold to the rich, even though organ sales are prohibited in most countries, but not in international law.

read more @ after downing street


5. aangirfan: Israelis in Haiti for organ trafficking and child sex trafficking?

Jorge Puello, who has recently been in Haiti, is the Jewish gentleman who allegedly leads a child sex abuse network that recruited children for prostitution in Nicaragua, the Dominican Republic and El Salvador. (Jorge Anibal Torres Puello) ‘He served in the U.S. Army in a military intelligence unit. He worked undercover with the U.S. Drug Enforcement Administration and the Department of Homeland Security.’ (Legal adviser for Americans in Haiti facing his own charges)

How did the Israelis get to Haiti so quickly?

In the days befor the Haiti quake, the Israelis, in Tel Aviv, were carrying out a conference and drill about ‘emergencies and disasters’

(First Emergency Response Conference opens in Israel 11-Jan-2010 / Drill Draws International Crowd / Twelfth Bough: the annals of logistical achievements)

Are the Israelis in Haiti to harvest the organs of children?

In November 2009, Alison Weir had an article in the Washington Report on Middle East Affairs headlined, “Israeli Organ Trafficking and Theft: From Moldova to Palestine.”

She stated: “….Israeli organ harvesting - sometimes with Israeli governmental funding and the participation of high Israeli officials, prominent Israeli physicians, and Israeli ministries - have been documented for many years.” (Focus on Israel: Harvesting Haitian Organs AfterDowningStreet.org)

The UK’s Liberal Democrat leader, Nick Clegg, has sacked Jenny Tonge, his health spokeswoman in the House of Lords, after comments she made about alleged organ trafficking in Haiti.

Jenny Tonge told the Jewish Chronicle there should be an inquiry into claims that Israeli troops sent there after the earthquake were trafficking organs.

read more @ aangirfan

active narratives round-up

Feb 18

Posted by A. Peasant in Africa, Banks, Corruption & Crime, Drug Trafficking, Economy, Greece, India, Lebanon, Minerals, Nigeria, Palestinians, Russia, Terrorism | No Comments

1. world government: our masters in Brussels will use the Greek crisis to try to impose a single government across Europe

Now the Greeks cannot afford to stay in the euro and the Germans and French (and indeed to a lesser extent we British) cannot afford to see the Greek economy collapse.

For our masters in Brussels, this is a moment of great danger and of great opportunity. Their solution is simple. Not just a single currency and a single central bank, but a single finance minister administering a single tax and spending system, and a single government across the EU. Without that, either the Eurozone will shrink to a hard core of states around Germany and the Deutschmark will be reborn under the name of the euro, or the euro will cease to be.

more @ telegraph

2. justifying the need to control the internet: malicious software infects corporate computers

A malicious software program has infected the computers of more than 2,500 corporations around the world, according to NetWitness, a computer network security firm.

The malicious program, or botnet, can commandeer the operating systems of both residential and corporate computing systems via the Internet. Such botnets are used by computer criminals for a range of illicit activities, including sending e-mail spam, and stealing digital documents and passwords from infected computers. In many cases they install so-called “keystroke loggers” to capture personal information.

…“These large-scale compromises of enterprise networks have reached epidemic levels,” said Amit Yoran, chief executive of NetWitness and former director of the National Cyber Security Division of the Department of Homeland Security. “Cyber criminal elements, like the Kneber crew, quietly and diligently target and compromise thousands of government and commercial organizations across the globe.”

The company, which is based in Herndon, Va., noted that the new botnet makes sophisticated use of a well-known Trojan Horse - a backdoor entryway to attack - that the computer security community had previously identified as ZeuS.

more @ nyt

3. al qaeda in the palestinian camps in lebanon: 11 aq suspects charged with spying


A Lebanese military judge charged 11 suspected members of an al-Qaida inspired group with forming an armed gang and spying on the army and U.N. peacekeepers, a judicial source said. “Judge Samih al-Hajj charged 11 suspected members of Fatah al-Islam with forming an armed gang, spying on the army and UNIFIL troops (in southern Lebanon), and forging ID papers,” the source said, requesting anonymity.

If convicted, they could face the death penalty. Among those charged — several of them in absentia — are Abdul Rahman Awad and Abdul Ghani Jawhar, two Fatah al-Islam members accused of a deadly 2008 bus bombing in the northern city of Tripoli.

Fatah al-Islam, an obscure al-Qaida inspired group, fought deadly battles against the Lebanese army in the summer of 2007 in the Palestinian refugee camp of Nahr al-Bared near Tripoli. …There have been widespread fears since the Nahr al-Bared battle that the group has switched its base to the highly volatile Palestinian camp of Ain el-Hilweh in southern Lebanon.

Lebanese officials suspect that Awad, who is dubbed the “prince of Fatah al-Islam,” is holed up in Ain el-Hilweh, the largest of Lebanon’s 12 Palestinian camps. By longstanding convention, the Lebanese army does not enter the camps, leaving security inside to Palestinian factions.(AFP)

more @ naharnet

4. escalating drug lords in Mexico: Russia ready to sell weapons to Mexico

MEXICO CITY – Russian Foreign Minister Sergei Lavrov said that Mexico is interested in buying equipment and weapons from his country to combat drug trafficking and organized crime. At a joint press conference with Mexican counterpart Patricia Espinosa, Lavrov said that his country is expanding its weapons sales abroad and has increased the number of supply contracts it has in all regions of the world, a move that is “a purely economic question, not political.”

Regarding the volume of its arms sales, Russia is still “behind the United States, but we’re seeing certain rather serious progress,” Lavrov said. The Mexican government is interested in acquiring different types of weapons, “including helicopters for coastal monitoring,” and other equipment “to fight drug trafficking and organized crime, that I hope will help our Mexican friends to combat this scourge,” the Russian official said.

The United States is already supplying Mexico with arms and equipment for the drug war.

more @ la herald tribune

5. get the minerals in Africa, especially West Africa: African Minerals on track in Sierra Leone as 9.7 billion tonnes of iron ore discovered — largest deposit in the world. shorter: how lucky is Frank Timis?

Somewhere in London, deliberating on his success and probably a glass of ice-rock vodka in his hands, Frank Timis must be filled with excitement and accomplishment as his venture in Sierra Leone has started to yield results. Timis has invested faith and trust in his sense of discernment and has allowed his instinct which has proven time and again to be right, to take on a venture in a small West African country rich in minerals, that has become a second home for him. Timis has employed right judgement and his confidence in the mineral wealth of Sierra Leone may have finally paid off.  It is also a vindication for the country’s President Ernest Bai Koroma whose unwavering belief in African Minerals’ potential has not been disappointing.  I wonder what is going through Frank Timis’ mind as he reflects back on how risk can sometimes become your best financial asset.  But it all comes down to how risk is managed through effective implementation of business acumen that has been tried and trusted. Frank Timis must be a master in risk management that ensures successful outcome. The success of African Minerals in Sierra Leone can only go to open new frontiers for the company in other mineral resource potential areas across Africa. And his success in Sierra Leone will  also provide a model for other African Governments to use in order to open their doors to a man whose name has become synonymous with prosperity and mineral wealth.

more @ newstime africa

6. Niger & Nigeria, falling apart or being dismantled: gunfire erupts in Niger capital

NIAMEY (Niger) - MACHINE gun and heavy weapons fire erupted in Niger’s capital, Niamey, on Thursday and smoke was seen rising from the presidential palace, witnesses said, in what appeared to be an attempted coup.

There was no indication of who was involved, the witnesses said, though political tensions have risen in the uranium exporting nation in recent months over President Mamadou Tandja’s extension of his rule. An intelligence officer, who asked not to be named, said the violence was a coup attempt that the presidential guard was trying to put down. A member of Tandja’s entourage in the palace said that ‘for now everything is alright.’

The shooting started around 1200 GMT, witnesses said. A Reuters witness said soldiers were blocking the road near the Prime Minister’s office. Tandja drew widespread criticism and international sanctions after dissolving parliament and orchestrating a constitutional reform that gave him added powers and extended his term beyond his second five-year mandate, which expired in December.

Despite political turmoil and occasional Tuareg rebellions, Niger has attracted billions of dollars in investment from major international firms seeking to tap its vast mineral wealth, including France’s Areva and Canada’s Cameco. — REUTERS

straits times

7. terrorism and sports: police confirm terror threat to India-SA Jaipur stadium match


JAIPUR: Police have confirmed a terror threat to the first ODI match between India and South Africa to be played at the Sawai Mansingh stadium in Jaipur on February 21, following which security has been tightened. B.L. Soni, inspector general of Rajasthan police, said his force had intelligence inputs of the threat.  “We have terror inputs of the threat and beefed up security at Sawai Mansingh Stadium (the match venue),” he said.

Intelligence agencies had earlier warned about terror strikes during various sporting events to be held in the country this year including the Hockey World Cup and the Commonwealth Games. However, Home Minister P Chidambaram has assured all the visiting countries of foolproof security for the upcoming sporting events.

source

teaching moment

Feb 18

Posted by A. Peasant in Canada, Corruption & Crime, Georgia, Psychopaths | No Comments

wall street journal stories about the luge track death:

1. the luge organizers gloss over safety considerations to make a super fast track which is financially viable for the future — after the event.

2. they know the track is super fast and USE that fact as a marketing gimmick.

3. they fail to put in adequate safety features. people express concern.

4. the athlete dies. BUT WHO COULD HAVE PREDICTED?????

5. they blame the athlete.

6. nobody can be sued for various reasons, all of which have been arranged in advance, including compartmentalizing the liability.

HOW IS THAT DIFFERENT FROM MURDERING SOMEONE AND GETTING AWAY WITH IT?

for context see sociopaths at work

Next up the ladder is the evil person of above average intelligence. These people have a similar goal to evil people of average intelligence; the production of human misery. However these people see the opportunity to do something that evil people of normal intelligence don’t see how to do; murder someone and get away with it. They understand that the way to murder someone and get away with it is to not care who they kill, how they kill them, or when they kill them. Such people set up conditions where someone will be ‘accidentally’ killed and wait for the circumstances to occur.

1. speed and commerce skewed luge track’s design

Years before a young luge racer from the Republic of Georgia flew to his death at the Olympics last week, officials made a series of decisions designed to make the icy track a commercial success after the Games but that left it faster, and ultimately more dangerous, than any competitive track before.

…According to 2008 engineering documents and letters reviewed by The Wall Street Journal, officials signed off on the course’s speeds. By last year, some of these officials said such speeds are unsafe and recommended that courses built in the future be slower. Following the death of Nodar Kumaritashvili, the Vancouver organizing committee, Vanoc, and the international federation that governs luge racing said the track was safe. The racer, they say, failed to control his sled.

In the wake of the death, Vanoc and the governing bodies for luge and bobsledding, which use the same track, added a large wooden wall on the outside of the turn where the Georgian flew off the track. They padded the steel posts that bore the brunt of the collision. They also made moves to slow top speeds, including starting all luge athletes from lower points on the course to slow them down by as much as five miles an hour.

…A reconstruction of the events leading up to Mr. Kumaritashvili’s death shows that the track was the result of decisions that weren’t entirely related to sport.

…Tim Gayda, the vice president of sport for the Vancouver organizing committee, told the Vancouver Sun in October 2002 that the decision would make the track financially viable after the Games. “In order to make this thing financially sustainable, we want it someplace where people will pay top dollar to go whipping down this thing in both summer and winter,” Mr. Gayda told the newspaper.

…Bob Storey, the bobsled federation’s president and a former bobsledder, said it would be jumping to conclusions to blame the Mr. Kumaritashvili’s crash on speed. “The Royal Canadian Mounted Police did not attribute it to design flaws and did not attribute it to speed,” he said. “The reason they call it an accident is that nobody can define the cause.”

…The course’s dangers became part of its marketing.

“Vivid, violent and rough— the Whistler Sliding Centre is not for the faint of heart,” the Web site of the center, operated by Vanoc, said in promotional material that remained on the site this week. “The track has a rhythm that every slider must try to capture. Sliders must find it early in their run. If they lose it, it will be hard to get back on the beat.”

Soon after the track opened for testing in March 2008, it became apparent that it was faster than expected.

…According to the letter, the federation conditioned its approval on the construction of safety walls and guidelines that require inexperienced riders to start lower down the course.

Lugers themselves were beginning to express concerns.

“ The error wasn’t in designing a difficult, fast course - the error was in failing to ensure that, at any given point on the course, a crash would NOT result in a head-on collision with a solid piece of metal. That error made the difference between injury and instantaneous death.” - comment at article

…As often happens during Olympic controversies, it is unclear who bears ultimate responsibility among numerous committees and federations. The IOC and Vanoc have both said they aren’t responsible for the tracks because they essentially subcontract technical specifications out to the luge and bobsleigh federations.

It’s unclear whether anyone can be held legally liable. All athletes involved in the games must sign a legal liability waiver with the IOC, which says that they participate at their own risk.

Some legal experts say that any potential lawsuit filed against the IOC, the luge federations or the designers by Mr. Kumaritashvili’s family—which has said it doesn’t want to sue—would face significant hurdles. The law in Canada, the U.S. and many other countries provides that people participating in potentially dangerous sports “assume” the risks inherent in them and therefore are often barred from suing, unless lawyers could show organizers’ negligence.

That authorities made changes to the track after the accident might seem to indicate an acknowledgment of fault. But Ryan Rodenberg, a lawyer who teaches sports law at Indiana University, says that for public-policy reasons, such evidence would likely not be admissible in court as proof of such acknowledgment. “You don’t want people shying away from corrections or improvements because they fear they’ll be used against them in court,” said Mr. Rodenberg.

One potential issue may have been the division of labor in laying out the course. Mr. Gurgel said that at other tracks, he has been the general contractor, in charge of building the safety walls and other equipment. This time, he was limited to designing the sheet of concrete that became the track, with the Vancouver organizers contracting out the safety features and the roof, which required the supporting column that Mr. Kumaritashvili hit. Officials from the luge and bobsled federations say the safety walls weren’t the problem.

full story here

2. as for blaming the athlete — that’s so wrong. even tie-eating Mikheil Saakashvili gets it!

BAKURIANI, Georgia—The Georgian luger who died in a horrific training accident hours before the opening of the Vancouver Winter Olympics on Friday told his father he was terrified of the track before doing the run that killed him. “He called me before the Olympics, three days ago, and he said, ‘Dad, I’m scared of one of the turns,’ ” David Kumaritashvili said in an interview at his house in the small mountain town of Bakuriani on Sunday.

…The International Luge Federation has blamed the crash on the luger and not on any “deficiencies in the track,” saying that Mr. Kumaritashvili “did not compensate properly to make the correct entrance” into the curve where he slid off the track at the Whistler Sliding Centre.

Despite those assertions, Olympic officials took unusual measures on Saturday to shorten the course by 190 yards to slow the speeds, and they altered the run to keep lugers on the track should they crash.

Josef Fendt, president of the luge federation, said on Saturday that the track is safe, but that it had turned out to be far faster than designers ever intended it to be….“We did not expect these speeds on this track, but after a while we determined that the track was safe,” Mr. Fendt said. He reiterated comments from last year that luge organizers need to consider a speed limit in the design of future tracks.

…Georgian President Mikheil Saakashvili expressed annoyance at the International Luge Federation Saturday for saying Mr. Kumaritashvili died because of human error and said a new luge track would be built in Bakuriani and named in his honor. “I don’t claim to know all the technical details,” Mr. Saakashvili said, “but one thing I know for sure: No sports mistake is supposed to lead to a death.”

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