Twelfth Bough

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Archive for category Afghanistan

fitting the facts around the new policy in Afghanistan: reconciliation with Taliban?

Feb 22

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Drug Trafficking, Military, NATO, The West | No Comments

1. Dutch govt falls apart over Afghanistan

THE HAGUE — Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende met Queen Beatrix on Monday to chart the way forward after his government collapsed over the Netherlands’s role in Afghanistan. Balkenende held 90 minutes of talks with the head of state at her working palace in The Hague early Monday, government spokeswoman Fridy van Hapert said.  Thereafter, the queen was to meet the leaders of the two Dutch houses of parliament, political party chiefs and the deputy president of the council of state advisory body.

…NATO had asked the Netherlands to extend its four-year-old mission, mainly in the southern Afghan province of Uruzgan, by a year to August 2011….The queen must now decide whether or not to accept the resignations and call early elections….If the queen accepts the resignations, as widely excepted, parliamentary elections will have to be brought forward. They had been scheduled for March next year.

more @ afp

2. Dutch troops to exit Afghanistan as planned — very small contingent of soldiers. the Dutch play some other role in the drama.

Following the collapse of his cabinet, Dutch Prime Minister Jan Peter Balkenende says he expects his country’s troops to leave Afghanistan as planned….Around 1,600 Dutch troops have been stationed in southern Afghanistan since 2006. According to their mandate they should have returned home in 2008, but their deployment was extended by two years since no other NATO member state offered replacements.

more @ press tv

3. last week: NATO (supposedly) flabbergasted, this will play into the hands of the Taliban. (wink wink?)

This is not the first time Nato is amazed and annoyed by the Dutch political approach to Afghanistan. At a time when practically all Nato members have committed to sending more troops, the Netherlands is trying to abandon its mission in Uruzgan. At a press conference in October, Rasmussen said the Netherlands would play into the hands of the Taliban if it left….But most worried about how to proceed if the Dutch cabinet does take a dive.

more here

4. earlier this month: Taliban will negotiate, but path fraught with risk. if only there were some way to get everyone to the table so we can be one big happy family again…..there must be so much drug money to make there that it outweighs the ongoing war profiteering.

LONDON (Reuters) - Unthinkable a year ago and still officially beyond the pale, the idea of a political role for Taliban leaders in Afghanistan is creeping onto the agenda as war-weary governments seek to bring an end to an unpopular war.

Some say this could open the door for negotiations if the Taliban think they can secure a better settlement through talks than by waiting for U.S.-led troops to leave and then fighting their way to power through a renewed civil war. “The Taliban know they can’t take over the country. They would be presiding over a country with persistent and perennial poverty and civil war. So they would like to negotiate,” said one diplomat involved in discussions about Afghanistan.

…Many analysts say talks would need to involve Taliban leader Mullah Mohammad Omar — condemned in the West for his refusal to hand over al Qaeda leaders after the September 11, 2001 attacks. ..And the price for a settlement could be high as far as the west is concerned — for example the rehabilitation of Mullah Omar as supreme leader of Afghanistan — even if not directly running the government.The Taliban for their part are expected to come under pressure from Pakistan to negotiate to try to end a war which has increasingly spilled over from Afghanistan. …Washington says many Taliban leaders including Mullah Omar are based in Pakistan. And while Pakistan has far less leverage over the Taliban than it had when it nurtured them in the 1990s, it could still make life hard for them if they refused to talk.Rather like the secret talks between then U.S. National Security Adviser Henry Kissinger and the North Vietnamese which tried, and ultimately failed, to secure an honorable exit from Vietnam, any negotiations would be long and easily derailed. They would also be fraught with risk for both the United States and the Taliban. Any hint of compromise could unleash a public backlash in the United States, as well as alienate the Taliban’s own fighters and supporters…. U.S. special envoy Richard Holbrooke said Sunday there had been no direct, secret contacts with the Taliban, but said Washington recognized the importance of reconciliation.

more @ reuters

5. oh ho HO, pakistan capture top Taliban with info provided by Mullah Omar’s second in command

Netting another big catch, Pakistan’s security agencies have captured a top Afghan Taliban leader following information provided by Mullah Abdul Ghani Baradar, Mullah Omar’s second in command.

Mulvi Kabir, former Taliban governor in Afghanistan’s Nangahar Province, and a key figure in the Taliban regime was recently captured in Pakistan, Fox News reported. The arrest is one of the few big catches after Baradar, who is Taliban’s number two leader. Considered to be among the top 10 most wanted Taliban leaders, Kabir was apprehended in Nawshera district of Pakistan’s Northwest Frontier Province by Pakistani police forces in recent days, the Fox news said.

A senior US military official called it a significant detention, it said, adding that the arrest of Kabir is based on the intelligence gathered from Baradar. Besides Kabir, two other top Taliban leaders have been arrested in recent days. Pakistani agencies arrested Mullah Salam of Afghanistan’s Kunduz province and Mullah Mohammad, who reportedly controlled the Baghlan province recently. The two are considered to be among the most important captures Pakistan has made in relation to the Taliban in Afghanistan since the war began in 2001.

mid-day

6. US supporting Afghan warlord

Kalagush—The United States is helping an Afghan warlord and former enemy to take control of a district bordering Pakistan, military officers and independent experts say. The strategy to back Mullah Sadiq as effective ruler of Kamdesh district in eastern Nuristan province is part of a wider attempt to bring stability to the country so international forces can leave. Sadiq is a former commander of the militant Hizb-e-Islami group, responsible for years of attacks on coalition and Afghan troops, as well as civilians. US support for Sadiq — who has said he wants to ally with President Hamid Karzai’s government against the Taliban — is causing friction between US foreign policy staff in Afghanistan and the military.

Senior officers said Sadiq could swing Nuristani people behind Karzai and provide a prototype breakthrough in the battle against the Taliban insurgency. But US state department officials and independent experts fear Sadiq wants a temporary alliance with US troops to defeat local Taliban factions before taking over the mountainous border province as a personal fiefdom.

Commander Russell McCormack, military head of Nuristan’s Provincial Reconstruction Team (PRT), said the US must work with Sadiq. “He is influential, intelligent and he uses diplomacy and true Islam — rather than the barbaric form that the Taliban professes,” McCormack told AFP at Kalagush, the only US base in Nuristan. …The plan is part of a new counter-insurgency strategy to instil public confidence in Karzai’s government and bring an end to the war.

…With the US withdrawal to begin in July 2011, Karzai last month launched a bid for “reconciliation” with mainstream insurgents. The tactic is also being tested further south in Helmand province where 15,000 US, NATO and Afghan troops are on the offensive in Marjah, a region controlled for years by Taliban and drug traffickers.

more @ pak observer

sociopaths at work

Feb 15

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Africa, Canada, Corruption & Crime, Germany, Latin America, Military, NWO, Oil, Psychopaths, UK | No Comments

1. R. Canup’s spectrum of evil personalities: excerpt:

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.

For example, I once worked for an evil person of above average intelligence who built up a company which did about twenty million dollars a year of business. He was only interested in his business as an instrument to his ends. He worked people long hours of overtime (without any extra pay) - he pushed people as hard as he could. What he was doing was setting up an environment as stressful as he could - secure in the knowledge that sooner or later - a death would be the result. Sure enough, a staff accountant driving home after a late night’s work was hit by a drunken driver and killed. The boss was stunned; his life’s goal had been accomplished - the guilt was obvious in his face the next day. He became very cheerful over the next several weeks, and lost interest in the company. Inside of a year and a half it was out of business.

Of course since he was cloaked in plausible deniability no criminal charges could ever be brought against him. But, he could see that the death had come as a direct result of his deliberately malicious behavior; he willed it, and it happened. Most industrial accidental deaths and injuries can be traced back to the malicious behavior of those who are evil and of above average intelligence.

That leaves us those who are evil and of high intelligence. Most good people are also familiar with these kind of people; we call them leaders - both of industry and of government. It is the goal of such people to get away with mass murder. An example will show how they work their agenda.

more here

2. Vancouver’s quick descent from high ground - excerpts:

There is also the problem that while the investigating British Columbia Coroners Service, the Royal Mounted Police and officials of the International Luge Federation agreed that the cause of the tragedy was not the dangers of the track but the errors and inexperience of its victim, it was still swiftly decided to change utterly the conditions of the competition. This included the building up of the wall, and the changing of the “ice profile” at the fatal curve and moving the start line to the women’s mark, nearly 200 yards down the track.

The inconsistency of the ruling screamed at the mourners of the luger who had just 26 practice runs down the course – as opposed to the 200 enjoyed by the Canadians.

…The head of the American luge team, Ron Rossi, has been especially cutting. He says: “The Canadians have to be answerable for their position on training. A track like this demanded the weaker athletes get more time. I’m going to propose some changes, more training for the athletes. It’s a terrible tragedy that has happened here but I hope that maybe in the end we can change some rules and never see anything like this ever happen again.”

Adding to the force of Rossi’s complaints is his belief that a member of his team, Meg Sweeney, could so easily have shared Kumaritashvili’s fate. The day before the Georgian died, Sweeney had a near identical crash after “double-looping” the 16th curve. “It was almost the exact same crash,” said Rossi, “but she didn’t go so high.”

Sweeney says she has tried to wipe away the incident but conceded: “There’s something missing up here, I’m not going to lie to you.”

Her boss says it is a failure to read the gravest warning signs. “They knew they had problems from day one. They had people hitting the wall and going airborne. If you were already concerned about it and you already raised the wall, why didn’t you keep going? And why didn’t you protect the [metal] posts at the chance that maybe something could happen? I’m not the one to answer but that’s the kind of question that needs to be asked.”

why indeed. more @ independent

3. organized crime may have caused Cologne archive collapse — organized crime meaning the people in government who issued permits for construction and the people who planned and carried out the construction — ie: officials and businesspeople

Suspicion that organised crime may have been behind the deadly collapse of Cologne’s city archive grew on Monday as more falsified building protocols emerged.

An additional 28 falsified records for underground metro construction at various sites across the city have been discovered, an investigation insider told daily Kölner Stadt-Anzeiger. “We assume that it could be significantly more,” the source said. “For us it looks like systematic falsification.”

Over the weekend the paper reported fresh claims that shoddy work practices caused the collapse of the archive building, including a report that construction firms were skimping on concrete. …The paper reported that too little concrete may have been used on the tunnel under the Waidmarkt area – a possible reason for collapse of the tunnel that led to the destruction of the city’s historical archive in March 2009 and two neighbouring buildings, killing two people and destroying countless historical documents.

more @ the local

4. march in Cuidad Juarez against Mexican army

CIUDAD JUAREZ, Mexico – Thousands of people belonging to civil organizations and residents of Ciudad Juarez marched peacefully Saturday through this city to commemorate the slaying of 15 youths last Jan. 31 and to repudiate the presence of the Mexican army in the town.
…The legislator Fernandez Noroña asked that the army leave the city, considered the most violent in Mexico, in the belief that the troops treat the people in an “undeserved, violent, arrogant, unconstitutional and abusive” way. “There is now more army in Juarez than ever, there are more federal police than ever…and today there is more crime than ever in Juarez,” the politician said.

more @ latin american herald tribune

5. new ‘ethical’ biofuel crop damages the poor people it was supposed to help

Five years ago jatropha was hailed by investors and scientists as a breakthrough in the battle to find a biofuel alternative to fossil fuels that would not further impoverish developing countries by diverting resources away from food production….

Millions of the plants have been grown in anticipation of rich returns, only for growers to be hit by poor yields, conflict over land and a lack of infrastructure to process the oil-rich seeds.

Oil giant BP, which planned to spend almost £32m on a joint venture to set up jatropha plantations, has now pulled out and the charity ActionAid today warns that jatropha needs to be cultivated on prime food-growing land to produce significant yields….ActionAid said its researchers found repeated cases of farmers being left with jatropha crops they could not sell and land previously used to grow food crops being taken over by sub-contractors who then employed locals on wages that could not compete with rises in the price of foodstuffs partially caused by biofuel production.

…A number of British companies are continuing to market jatropha as a “highly ethical and green” investment. One fund offers investors three packages for prices ranging from £7,500 to £15,600 in a brochure entitled “Money really does grow on trees”. That company says it has funded the planting of 32 million jatropha shrubs worldwide through a London-based provider called Carbon Credited Farming (CCF) Plc. Jeff Reeves, head of global operations for CCF, which estimates it will have 300 million jatropha shrubs planted on 120,000 acres worldwide by the end of 2010, admitted that there had been problems establishing the crop.

He told The Ecologist magazine: “In many cases it is government policy and people that are to blame, rather than jatropha itself. Well-managed, jatropha … can work. But there have been countries where poor management has meant this is not the case.”

more @ independent

6. Afghan civilian deaths a serious setback — first reports said the rockets were 1000 feet off course. seems like a very large error for our high-tech army.

Air Chief Marshal Sir Jock Stirrup said the incident had damaged efforts to win the support of local communities, but added that accidents were inevitable during conflict. The civilians died when two rockets from a high mobility artillery rocket system hit a house on the outskirts of the town of Marjah, in an area of Helmand province being targeted by a joint US and Afghan force.

more @ guardian

7. training/dehumanizing/debasing people before you give them deadly weapons: German Army ritual abuse scandal spreads

The hazing scandal in the German army, in which young recruits have reportedly been forced to eat raw animal liver until they vomited, has snowballed with more soldiers blowing the whistle on ugly rites of passage, reports said Sunday….The scandal began when a young soldier who trained at the camp in Mittenwald came forward to describe hazing that included recruits being forced to drink alcohol until they were sick, eat raw pig liver, and conduct climbing exercises in the nude before their fellow soldiers, daily Süddeutsche Zeitung reported last week.

more @ the local

8. man takes on corrupt UK police officer

THE brave informant who finally toppled Britain’s most corrupt cop today tells his own incredible story of monster Ali Dizaei’s chilling mafia-style regime. Humble website designer Waad Al Bagdhdadi, 24, refused to be bullied by the bent Scotland Yard commander. Now, with Dizaei jailed for four years, he reveals astonishing details of the shamed officer’s life of luxury funded by his grip on a terrified community.

…”He ate for free, he drank for free. In his world, he didn’t pay for anything. But I wasn’t going to let him get me for free.”

The two men fell out after Waad - who fled Iraq at 17 to escape the tyranny of Saddam Hussein - asked for payment for setting up Dizaei’s personal website. Instead of coughing up the swaggering cop tried to frame Waad for attacking him.

…”I’d heard about Dizaei before I met him. He was famous in the Middle Eastern community. They called him London’s top officer. They said he was f***ing the English, the only one they couldn’t take down, ‘untouchable’.

read more @ news of the world

9. Ivory Coast heads for major upheaval — and World Bank president Zoellick has just been there to visit,..

World Bank President Robert Zoellick (L) meets Ivory Coast’s Prime Minister Guillaume Soro in the capital Abidjan, January 28, 2010. Zoellick continued his visit to Ivory Coast, where progress in securing debt relief will likely top the agenda. (Reuters photo)

IVORYCOAST/

A few days after Ivory Coast President, Laurent Gbagbo, dissolved the country’s government and Independent Electoral Commission (CEI), a coalition of opposition parties is calling for a massive demonstration to ask him to step down. Mr. Gbagbo claims the peace process in Côte d’Ivoire has “stalled” while calling for a new government and CEI. The opposition argues that the decision is an impediment to progress. Meanwhile, reports indicate the PM cannot form a government within the time frame given by the President. Analysts have warned of a possible upheaval.

The Ivorian President, Laurent Gbagbo, announced the dissolution of the country’s government as well as its Independent Electoral Commission (CEI) Friday evening in a televised speech. Prime Minister Guillaume Soro, secretary general of the former rebel group, Forces Nouvelles, will stay on as prime minister. A position he has held since 2007 following the signing of the Ouagadougou accord.

…

The Prime Minister is to “nominate a new government from Monday, February 15, 2010″. Its “mission” will be to conduct “the final actions necessary to get the Ivory Coast out of crisis permanently”. In what concerns the electoral commission, Mr. Laurent Gbagbo wants Guillaume Soro “to put forward, by Monday, the format of a new, credible electoral commission who can organise” free and fair elections.

However, reports Sunday revealed a close aide to the Prime Minister saying that he does not “know when the prime minister will be ready (to form a new government), but it won’t be tomorrow (Monday) or Tuesday… It is too early and too complicated right now to take a quick decision.”…The election, already postponed on numerous occasions since 2005, is expected to end a political quagmire that has crippled the country following the failed September 2002 coup d’état. Laurent Gbagbo’s announcement, many say, seriously undermines presidential elections scheduled to take place in the coming weeks and not later than June, as per the recommendation of a UN calendar.

more @ afrik.com

not for nothing

Feb 10

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Angola, Greece, Iran, Israel, Military, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, NATO, NWO, Nuclear Weapons, Oil, Oligarchs, Russia, Saudi Arabia, UK | No Comments

1. heeeyy, good news….Russia’s top ten billionaires — TEH OLIGARCHS — doubled their wealth! turns out this crisis wasn’t so bad after all… PHEW! i dunno about you but i was really worried about those guys.

Russia’s top ten billionaires have almost doubled their aggregate wealth in 12 months to $139.3 billion, the Finans business magazine reported on Wednesday. The global economic crisis saw the combined fortunes of the top ten richest Russians fall from 221 billion to 75.9 billion in 2008, the magazine reported. Since then, however, massive state injections of funds into global financial markets and government support for companies owned by Russian oligarchs has seen the trend bucked.

The 2010 rating of Russian billionaires to be released by Finans next Monday includes 500 people with an estimated fortune of 3.3 billion rubles ($110 million) As many as 77 Russians have a wealth of over $1 billion each.

As before, tycoon and Chelsea football club owner Roman Abramovich is among Russia’s three richest people. His fortune will enable him to keep the club afloat for another 100 years, Finans reported.

The identities of the top two richest Russians will be revealed by the magazine on Monday.

MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti)

2. Saudi Arabia, Angola, Iran remain top 3 oil suppliers for China

Saudi Arabia, Angola and Iran remained the three largest oil sources for China in 2009, with the three supplying 47.7 percent of China’s total imports, according data released Wednesday by the General Administration of Customs (GAC).

GAC figures showed that China’s oil imports from the three nations last year stood at 41.86 million tonnes, 32.17 million tonnes and 23.15 million tonnes, respectively. They represented a year-on-year increase of 15.1 percent, 7.6 percent and 8.6 percent, respectively.

…Saudi Arabia, the largest oil supplier to China, accounted for 20.5 percent of China’s total imports in 2009. Angola supplied 15.8 percent while Iran contributed 11.3 percent, according to GAC data.

Other main oil suppliers to China included Russia, Oman and Sudan.

more @ people’s daily online

3. Greeks protest as government slashes public spending

Mervyn King, the governor of the Bank of England was asked about Greece at a press conference on the BoE’s latest inflation report. His second statement could be translated as - their problem, not mine.  “I don’t think you can compare UK with Greece. We have different policies. We have very good track record and most importantly, the maturity of UK debt is much longer.” “This is an issue they’ll deal with within the euro area. It should be for my colleagues in the euro area to decide.”

…For a “I told you so” piece, here is Andrew Alexander of the Daily Mail, no friend of anything to do with the EU. His argument will be familiar to eurosceptics.

A particular flaw in having a ‘one-size-fits-all’ currency covering the rich and the poor, the cautious and the feckless, is that no member nation has its own currency which it can devalue or revalue in an attempt to extricate themselves from this crisis.

more @ guardian, many links

EU fear Greek ’spillover’ - “serious and persistent internal and external imbalance ‘threatens stability’ in the country. This in turn presents a ’serious risk of spillover into other parts of the euro area,’”

Berlin eyes ‘firewall’ to contain Greece debt crisis — “We are thinking about what we should do if the crisis spills from Greece into other euro countries,” said the official. “So it’s more about finding firewalls, containing the problem, than principally about helping the Greeks.”

nice. the EU: one big happy family.

4. Danny Ayalon faces hostile crowd in UK

(VIDEO) LONDON – Despite securing a promise by the UK’s Foreign Office that he would not be arrested upon arrival there, Deputy Foreign Minister Daniel Ayalon was not exempt from the rage of pro-Palestinian demonstrators waiting for him both outside and inside a lecture hall in London. One protestor at the Oxford University hall, where Ayalon spoke Tuesday, waved the Palestinian flag and interrupted Ayalon’s lecture for several long minutes, during which he did not stop yelling at the Israeli minister and called him a “racist” and “a war criminal.”

more @ ynet

http://www.ynet.co.il/english/articles/0,7340,L-3846746,00.html

5. Marines gear up for assault - “hailed by officers as the biggest offensive in the eight-year-old war.” great. what could possibly go wrong?

Thousands of Afghan, US and Nato forces are expected to launch Operation Mushtarak (Together) in a bid to clear the Taleban out of Marjah, home to some 80,000 people, and expand the control of the Western-backed Afghan government. A US Marines officer said late on Tuesday that the operation, to be led jointly by Marines and the Afghan army had not yet begun. ‘The Marines have not started the operation in Marjah,’ he said, adding: ‘The operation will be led by the Marines and their Afghan partners.’  Officials and witnesses say families have fled, loading goats, furniture and clothes on to vehicles and heading to safety in Lashkar Gah, the capital of Helmand province around 20 kilometres to the north.

more @ straits times

6. bases in Afghanistan indicate permanent presence

Today, according to official sources, approximately 700 bases of every size dot the Afghan countryside, and more, like the one in Shinwar, are under construction or soon will be as part of a base-building boom that began last year.

Existing in the shadows, rarely reported on and little talked about, this base-building program is nonetheless staggering in size and scope, and heavily dependent on supplies imported from abroad, which means that it is also extraordinarily expensive. It has added significantly to the already long secret list of Pentagon property overseas and raises questions about just how long, after the planned beginning of a drawdown of American forces in 2011, the US will still be garrisoning Afghanistan.

…The Pentagon’s most recent inventory of bases lists a total of 716 overseas sites. These include facilities owned and leased all across the Middle East as well as a significant presence in Europe and Asia, especially Japan and South Korea. Perhaps even more notable than the Pentagon’s impressive public foreign property portfolio are the many sites left off the official inventory. While bases in the Persian Gulf countries of Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, and the United Arab Emirates are all listed, one conspicuously absent site is al-Udeid air base, a billion-dollar facility in nearby Qatar, where the US Air Force secretly oversees its ongoing unmanned drone wars.

The count also does not include any sites in Iraq where, as of August 2009, there were still nearly 300 American bases and outposts. Similarly, US bases in Afghanistan - a significant percentage of the 400 foreign sites scattered across the country - are noticeably absent from the Pentagon inventory.

more @ asia times

7. Russia: large-scale war less possible, but threats remain

MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti) - Russia’s military policies are aimed at avoiding an arms race and military conflicts, but they should also correspond to real threats which the country faces, Russia’s security chief Nikolai Patrushev said in an interview with the Russian government daily.

On February 5, Russian President Dmitry Medvedev announced that he has approved the country’s new military doctrine, which allows preventive nuclear strikes against potential aggressors.

The Rossiyskaya Gazeta published on Wednesday the full text of the doctrine.

“The unleashing of a large-scale war is becoming less possible… At the same time, regions, where conflicts are possible, remain,” Patrushev told the paper, adding “these conflicts could lead to a war with the use of both ordinary and nuclear weapons.”

Among the threats which could destabilize the situation in the world, the Russian security chief named the expansion of NATO, the Iranian nuclear program, and the Israeli-Palestinian conflict.

more @ ria novosti

a resurrected post from december

Feb 7

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Censorship, China, Iran, Israel, Kazakhstan, Minerals, Mr. Bibi N. & Friends, Oil, Putin, Russia, Terrorism, The West | No Comments

here are some links i had gathered together on 12/13/09, and posted at my news blog, which has since been quarantined as a spam blog by google. somebody in india reviews it about once a week and puts it back in quarantine. this particular page has also been erased from the google cache, for some unknown reason.

1. Kazakh uranium boss trial to proceed - 12/10/09

Prosecutor’s office spokesman Nurdaulet Suindikov commented, “The investigation charges former Kazatomprom president Mukhtar Dzhakishev with theft by way of embezzling a state company’s property.” Suindikov added that Dzhakishev would be charged with embezzling 100 million tenge ($600,000) from Kazatomprom.

Dzhakishev, who was earlier credited with making Kazakhstan a top global uranium producer while overseeing Kazatomprom, has denied all charges against him.

Kazakhstan contains the world’s second-largest uranium reserves, estimated at 1.5 million tons. The country in 2006 produced 5,279 tons of uranium, but as part of its plans to increase output boosted uranium output in January-September to 9,535 tons.

upi asia

2. Chinese president to visit Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan - 12/9/09

BEIJING, Dec. 9 (Xinhua) — Chinese President Hu Jintao will pay a working visit to Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan from Dec. 12 to14 at the invitation of President Nursultan Nazarbayev and President Gurbanguly Berdymukhamedov, Foreign Ministry spokesperson Jiang Yu said here Wednesday.

chinaview

3. Kazakhstan urged to lift visa requirement for Iranian traders - 12/8/09

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran called on Kazakhstan to lift visa requirements for those Iranian businessmen willing to run trade activities in the Central Asian country.

“…if lifting visa requirements comes on both countries’ agenda, then visits by traders and businessmen will be facilitated and the ground will be prepared for the expansion of cooperation,” Iranian Foreign Ministry Spokesman Ramin Mehman Parast said at a round table dubbed as ‘Trade Opportunities of Iran and Kazakhstan’ here in Tehran on Tuesday.

Mehman Parast reiterated that the Iranian foreign ministry is striving to prepare the necessary grounds and conditions for those traders interested in making investments in target markets.

Noting that the trade volume between Iran and Kazakhstan has increased in recent years, he stressed that in case existing problems are resolved, the two countries can boost the volume of annual trade to $10 bln.

Mehman Parast also referred to the strategic situation of Iran and Kazakhstan in the region, and said today the world supplies its needs through importing either the goods and products manufactured by Iran and Kazakhstan or the other countries’ products which should again pass through Iran or Kazakhstan.

fars

4. International Space Station astronauts land safely on Kazakhstan steppes - 12/1/09

BEIJING, Dec. 1 (Xinhuanet) — Three astronauts landed safely on the Kazakhstan steppes Tuesday after spending six months on the International Space Station.

The Russian Soyuz TMA-15 capsule landed as planned at 10:17 a.m. Moscow time (07:17 GMT) about 85 km north of the town of Arkalyk in Kazakhstan.

chinaview

5. Yunnan Copper mulls buy in Kazakhstan - 12/1/09

BEIJING, Dec. 1 (Xinhua) — Yunnan Copper Co., China’s third-largest copper producer, is thinking of acquiring a copper mine in Kazakhstan next year, China Daily reported Tuesday.

The company is also considering investing in Southeast and South Asian countries including Laos and Indonesia, the newspaper said, quoting the company’s general manager Yang Chao.

Besides investment in the overseas market, the copper producer is also scouting for more copper reserves in the Inner Mongolia and Tibet autonomous regions. The company’s copper reserves would touch 9 million tonnes by 2012, according to Yang.

He predicted that copper prices might even surpass 70,000 yuan (10,294 U.S. dollars) per tonne in 2010, although prices are likely to remain volatile over the next year, and copper demand will increase next year

Copper is widely used in home appliances, wires and cables; it can also be used in water pipes, largely increasing the need for copper in the future, Yang said.

chinaview

6. Kazakhstan: Israel’s Partner in Eurasia by Ariel Cohen in Jerusalem Viewpoints Sept-Oct 2009

http://tinyurl.com/yfw6d8h

The June 2009 visit by Israeli President Shimon Peres to Kazakhstan once again focused Israel’s attention on energy-rich, secular Muslim states of the Caspian and Central Asia: Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan, Turkmenistan and Uzbekistan. This was not Peres’ first visit to the steppe country in the heart of Eurasia: he visited Kazakhstan several times before as foreign minister and deputy prime minister. This was a good long-term investment:

Kazakhstan is as large as the entirety of Western Europe, but with a population only 1.5 times larger than the population of the city of Moscow. It is one of the most sparsely populated countries on Earth.

7. 11/16/09 - Germans ID convert, 27, as terrorist suspect

BERLIN — Authorities have identified a 27-year-old German convert to Islam as an al-Qaida associate suspected of traveling to Afghanistan and planning to attack German targets. The report could fuel concerns about European converts being recruited by Islamist terrorist groups for attacks. The Federal Criminal Police Office confirmed a Spiegel Online report Sunday that it had posted notices across Afghanistan warning that Jan Schneider, a Kazakhstan-born ethnic German, may plan attacks on German military or civilian institutions in Afghanistan.

…Schneider, who is also known as Hamza, has recently traveled to the border region between Afghanistan and Pakistan, Spiegel reported. He left Germany in 2004 to study Arabic in Saudi Arabia. He was seen in his hometown of Saarbruecken several times after his departure from Germany.

…Spiegel also wrote that the criminal office has warned of several other German extremists who supposedly have traveled to Afghanistan in recent months. More than five million ethnic Germans have immigrated to the country from the former Soviet Union, Poland, Romania and other Eastern European countries since the 1950s under a special migration law for persons who can prove German ancestry.

DEFUNCT LINK: http://www.google.com/hostednews/ap/article/ALeqM5gRbmVOhddpRWJo-KpO06aa6sHQRwD9C03L2O1

alternate link (cache): http://74.125.47.132/search?q=cache:hJxPAOZqPHsJ:www.msnbc.msn.com/id/33949307/ns/world_news-europe/+BERLIN+%E2%80%94+Authorities+have+identified+a+27-year-old+German+convert+to+Islam+as+an+al-Qaida+associate&cd=1&hl=en&ct=clnk&gl=us&client=firefox-a

8. 10/12/09 - Avigdor Lieberman visits Kazakhstan among other countries to discuss Iran

By Roni SoferY Net NewsOctober 12, 2009

Foreign Minister Avigdor Lieberman is set to leave for a round of visits abroad this week, after recently returning from Africa, South America, and the Balkans. This time Lieberman will visit Austria, Kazakhstan, Holland, and Denmark, mainly in order to discuss the topic of Iran.

Lieberman says he wants to “invest effort in nations that have not received attention from Israel until now”….The foreign minister is also scheduled to meet with his French counterpart, Bernard Kouchner, following the latter’s request. Lieberman has clarified that the object of this meeting, as well as those in Holland and Denmark, is “to bolster Israel’s status by widening the wingspan of its foreign policy”.

Lieberman will also meet with Israeli ambassadors to Britain, France, Germany, Italy, and Spain, as well as the ambassador to the EU.

via aletho news - LINK DEFUNCT


9. 9/10/09 - Caspian sea states shut Iran out of summit

Iran is peeved at its northern neighbors over a decision to exclude the Islamic Republic from a meeting ofCaspian Sea states on Thursday.
Iran’s top diplomat, Manouchehr Mottaki, said today he was outraged that Russia, Azerbaijan, Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan plan to meet in the Kazakh city of Aktau without Iran, according to the website of Iran’s state-owned English-language Press TV satellite news channel.
“In our view the meeting runs contrary to Iran’s national interests,” Mottaki said.
Iran has stewed for years as Russia and its former Soviet satellite states gobble up more and more of the Caspian Sea’s resources.
The four countries attending the Aktau meeting, described as an “informal” summit to discuss “subregional cooperation,” say they don’t plan to make any decisions on the status of the sea or the division of the seabed, an official representative of the Kazakh Foreign Ministry told Azerbaijan’s Trend news agency.

there are no sunglasses

10. 12/2008: Michael Parenti

“While claiming to be fighting terrorism, US leaders have found other compelling but less advertised reasons for plunging deeper into Afghanistan. The Central Asian region is rich in oil and gas reserves. A decade before 9/11, Time magazine (18 March 1991) reported that US policy elites were contemplating a military presence in Central Asia. The discovery of vast oil and gas reserves in Kazakhstan and Turkmenistan provided the lure, while the dissolution of the USSR removed the one major barrier against pursuing an aggressive interventionist policy in that part of the world. US oil companies acquired the rights to some 75 percent of these new reserves. A major problem was how to transport the oil and gas from the landlocked region. US officials opposed using the Russian pipeline or the most direct route across Iran to the Persian Gulf. Instead, they and the corporate oil contractors explored a number of alternative pipeline routes, across Azerbaijan and Turkey to the Mediterranean or across China to the Pacific.”

11. 11/3/08 - Putin: we must end monopoly in world finance

The Russian Prime Minister, Vladimir Putin, has called for a complete overhaul of the world’s financial system in order to guarantee stability and ensure progress. He was speaking in Astana in Kazakhstan, where the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation is meeting to in discuss the global financial crisis.
The organisation, which comprises Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, China, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan, is widely seen as a counter-weight to NATO’s influence in Eurasia. It is primarily concerned with security issues. This time, however, the sides are discussing how to develop social and economic cooperation.
At the beginning of his speech at the SCO Council of Prime Ministers, Vladimir Putin stressed the role the SCO countries should play in the changing world political and economic landscape.
“We now clearly see the defectiveness of the monopoly in world finance and the policy of economic selfishness. To solve the current problem Russia will to take part in changing the global financial structure so that it will be able to guarantee stability and prosperity in the world and to ensure progress,” he said.
He also named projects in transportation, telecommunications and modern technology as priorities of the SCO and spoke in favour of mutual space programmes.
While in Kasakhstan, the Russian prime minister is also expected to discuss the formation of a customs union between Russia, Belarus and Kazakhstan with Kazakh leader Nursultan Nazarbayev.

russia today

12. 11/13/08 - Kazakhstan and the financial crisis

The financial crisis that began in the United States has made its presence felt around the globe and Central Asia is no exception. How is Central Asia’s greatest economic power, Kazakhstan, handling this economic crisis and how is the economic downturn effecting the stability, security, and development of the region. These were the main topics of a conference between many regional experts in Astana last month called “New Challenges and Kazakhstan’s Contribution to Stability and Security.” [link defunct]
Muriel Mirak-Weissbach, a scholar of the region’s economic and strategic outlook attended the conference and not only summarizes the major issues and policies discussed, but also provides a historical perspective of past economic crisis’s in Kazakhstan. Here is an excerpt of what Nurbakh Rustemov, the keynotespeaker and Chairman of the hosting parliamentary committee, had to say of the economic downturn and its consequences:

“He bluntly stated that the world financial crisis was leading to a “misunderstanding” among geopolitical forces, and carried the danger of a direct threat to humanity, through hunger and poverty.(1) He called for uniting forces internationally, to overcome the financial-economic crisis, which he dubbed the “number one priority.” Rustemov mentioned the Shanghai Cooperation Organization, of which Kazakhstan is a founding member, as well as the OSCE, which Kazakhstan will chair beginning 2010, as bodies his government would like to utilize to find solutions to the crisis. Two concrete means that his country could use to impact the crisis, would be in securing energy resources, and providing grain and meat exports to alleviate food shortages.”
Rustemov is correct in stating that this economic crisis may lead to following and connected geopolitical disruptions and he’s also right in arguing that regional and multilateral groups, such as the SCO and OSCE, will be crucial in helping the world get through this mess in one stable piece. Another important aspect of his comments is the positive role Kazakhstan can play in impacting the crisis in a productive way and that is in securing energy resources and in providing food stuffs to alleviate shortages in other countries, specifically in harder hit CA states, such as Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan, and Afghanistan.
Kazakhstan’s abundance of energy supplies, combined with President Nazarbayev’s prudent planning, have left the nation in good condition despite the tough times. Nazarbayev announced last month that the government would spend $2 billion to stimulate the economy, mainly targeting banks and the construction industry, funds drawn from the nation’s oil fund. Unfortunately, not all CA or world states have an oil fund to fall back on.
What the whole of Central Asia can hope for is sturdy economic stewardship by its regional leader,Kazakhstan, and help from regional bodies, both from the East and West to weather what will most likely be a lengthy recession. During this time, it will be vital to keep the region from falling into disrepair as poverty and extremism would both be on the rise and this may lead to conflict. The US, Russia, China, and the EU all have roles to play in mitigating negative ramifications of this crisis in the region, but a strong and active Kazakhstan is crucial. As Muriel Mirak-Weissbach concludes:
“Kazakhstan has become the foremost interlocutor in Central Asia, not only for Eurasian giants Russia and China, but also for the two major economies of western Europe, Germany and France. If the current world crisis can be overcome through participation of major Eurasian nations, Kazakhstan can become the linchpin in the region for stability and security.”
In addition, the US State Department announced a nuclear safety cooperation with Kazakhstan. Read Below. [link defunct]
The United States and the Republic of Kazakhstan reached a new milestone in a multiyear joint project to irreversibly decommission the Soviet-era BN-350 fast breeder reactor located at the Kazakhstani port of Aktau on the Caspian Sea. The participating governments completed a sodium processing facility that will be used to dispose of coolant from the reactor core. This action demonstrates and reinforces the strength of the U.S.-Kazakhstani strategic relationship, and our joint commitment to preventing the proliferation of nuclear materials.

source: foreign policy blogs

http://centralasia.foreignpolicyblogs.com/2008/11/13/kazakhstan-and-the-financial-crisis/

pakistan is being totally screwed

Jan 21

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Corruption & Crime, India, Iran, Israel, Mind-fucking, Minerals, Nuclear Weapons, Oil, Pakistan, Psychopaths, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism | No Comments

1. CHABAD vows not to bow to terror, wants to open 3 more houses in Mumbai, queen’s cousin Michael of Kent visits Nariman House, pledges his support

Three more Chabad Houses to come up in city, says director of Chabad relief fund

To prove that their morale is not defeated yet, the Chabad Lubavitch community, owners of the 26/11-hit Nariman House, have decided to construct more Chabads in the city. “We have decided to build three more Chabads in different parts of the city, and that will be our message to terrorists — that we won’t bow to them,” said Rabbi Avraham Berkowitz, director of Chabad relief fund, the society led by the community members determined to reconstruct Nariman House.

However, Avraham didn’t disclose any locations,”We are in the process of restructuring the existing Chabad House, and have decided to raise $1.5 million (approx Rs 7 crore) for the same.”

Since the massacre at Nariman House, no new Rabbi has taken over the charge. “We are expecting the new Rabbi to come in February with his wife. They will live in a rented accommodation till the Chabad gets its new look,” added Avraham.

UK royal’s visit

Queen Elizabeth II’s first cousin, Prince Michael of Kent visited the Chabad last afternoon and pledged his support. “I pledge to support the community in every manner,” said the Prince.

source: mid-day

2. Gates knows where the militants are: Pakistan and Afghanistan. puts pressure on Pakistan to straighten this out before something bad happens and it will be all Pakistan’s fault. oh and don’t bother “making distinctions” either - - just get them all. ok? yes of course we support you kiss kiss hug hug. good luck run along now we’re having lunch with india. tata!

ISLAMABAD - US DEFENSE Secretary Robert Gates warned on Thursday that Taleban safe havens along the Pakistan-Afghanistan border must be tackled or both nations would suffer ‘more lethal and more brazen’ attacks. Writing in Pakistan’s The News at the start of a two-day visit to Islamabad, Gates stressed Washington’s commitment to Pakistan and praised military offensives launched against the Pakistani Taleban in recent months. But US officials have made clear that Washington is anxious to see Islamabad also target the Afghan Taleban within its borders and Al-Qaeda-linked militants using the northwest tribal region to plot and launch attacks into Afghanistan.

‘It is important to remember that the Pakistani Taliban operates in collusion with both the Taleban in Afghanistan and Al-Qaeda, so it is impossible to separate those groups,’ Mr Gates wrote. ‘If history is any indication, safe havens for either Taleban, on either side of the border, will in the long run lead to more lethal and more brazen attacks in both nations,’ he added in the editorial. Mr Gates wrote that making distinctions between the different extremist groups was ‘counterproductive’. ‘Only by pressuring all of these groups on both sides of the border will Afghanistan and Pakistan be able to rid themselves of this scourge for good - to destroy those who promote the use of terror here and abroad,’ he said. — AFP

source: straits times

3. Pak army tells Gates where to stick the pressure. it can’t launch any new offenses for 6 months at least to stabilize gains already made. Gates totally understands. totally supportive. of course this will make it much easier to blame Pak when something goes wrong.

The Pakistani army said Thursday during a visit by U.S. Defense Secretary Robert Gates that it can’t launch any new offensives against militants for six months to a year to give it time to stabilize existing gains. The announcement probably comes as a disappointment to the U.S., which has pushed Pakistan to expand its military operations to target militants staging cross-border attacks against coalition troops in Afghanistan. Washington believes such action is critical to success in Afghanistan as it prepares to send an additional 30,000 troops to the country this year.

But the comments by army spokesman Maj. Gen. Athar Abbas clearly indicate Pakistan will not be pressured in the near term to expand its fight beyond militants waging war against the Pakistani state. Whether it can be convinced in the long term is still an open question. “We are not talking years,” Abbas told reporters traveling with Gates. “Six months to a year” would be needed before Pakistan could stabilize existing gains and expand any operations, he said.

…Referring to intense political pressure in Washington to lean harder on Pakistan, Gates sounded sanguine. “As I try to remind Congress from time to time, and frankly some of the folks in the administration, it’s the Pakistanis who have their foot on the accelerator, not us,” Gates told reporters at the start of his two-day visit to Pakistan. The political pressure goes two ways. Suspicion of U.S. motives runs high in Pakistan, and many Pakistanis bristle as the notion that Washington could dictate the country’s priorities even with a recent promise of an unprecedented $1.5 billion in annual aid. “We have to do this in a way that is comfortable for them, and at a pace that they can accommodate and is tolerable for them,” Gates said. “Frankly, I’m comfortable doing that. I think having them set that pace as to what they think the political situation will bear is almost certainly the right thing to do.”

He also said his talks with Pakistan’s leaders were intended to explain the U.S. war strategy in Afghanistan and reassure Pakistan that the United States is “in this for the long haul.”

more @ naharnet

4. oh by the way, Tehran, Islamabad finalize gas pipeline deal, against the advice of Richard Holbrooke, and something that India wanted to do but dropped out of after 13 years. that should all blow over like a lead balloon.

TEHRAN (FNA)- Iran and Pakistan finalized an agreement to build a gas pipeline which is due to take Iran’s rich gas reserves to his energy hungry nation, a Pakistani official announced.

The two countries will sign an accord on the pipeline next week, Pakistani Federal Minister for Petroleum Naveed Qamar said.  Qamar also said the federal government is taking serious measures to combat the current energy crisis in the country, Pakistani daily Dawn reported.  The Pakistani minister’s remarks came as the US special envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke had earlier urged Islamabad to avoid the deal with Iran.

Holbrooke said the US would help Pakistan secure liquefied natural gas supplies, should it abandon the planned gas deal with Iran.

The 2,775 km Iran-Pakistan-India (IPI) pipeline, nicknamed Peace Pipeline, was initially planned to take natural gas from Iran to India. However, due to rising tensions between India and Pakistan, New Delhi stepped back from the later stages of negotiations, although it has never formally withdrawn from the scheme. The IPI pipeline was proposed in 1995, and, after almost 13 years of negotiations, India decided to step back last year. Indian officials have many times cited security issues and the viability of the pipeline that would pass through the territory of rival Pakistan, where a near-civil war is raging between government forces and pro-Taliban militants.

In a major breakthrough on March 20, the Pakistani government approved Iran’s proposed pricing formula for gas supplies to the South Asian nation and the two sides eventually signed a bilateral agreement just a few months ago.

source: fars

5. Gates directing the narrative in India: opens the umbrella for LeT, al qaeda syndicate present, tells India that it must be running out of patience (wink wink wink!)

Warning that India may not show restraint in the event of another Mumbai-style attack, US Defence Secretary Robert Gates today said a “syndicate” of terror groups, including the Lashkar-e-Toiba, were “operating under the umbrella of al-Qaeda” and trying to destabilise the region, even attempting to provoke a war between India and Pakistan.

Gates, who met Prime Minister Manmohan Singh and Defence Minister A K Antony, called for a “high level of cooperation” from all countries to defeat the “syndicate” of terror which had “home and safe haven” in the border areas of Afghanistan and Pakistan.

“While al-Qaeda is operating in Afghanistan along with the Taliban, the Tehreek-e-Taliban is focusing on Pakistan. The LeT is focusing on Pakistan as also India,” Gates told reporters. “The success of any one of them is success for all… Victory for one is victory for all. These groups operate under the umbrella of al-Qaeda from NWFP and Waziristan.”

“Under the umbrella, they intend to destabilise not only Pakistan, but the entire region by provoking confrontation between India and Pakistan through terror attacks. This is very dangerous for the entire region as a whole,” he said.

source: indian express

6. so India decides to crackdown on….. Maoists! watch out poor people.

Thousands of paramilitary personnel have launched a crackdown to target some 50 Maoist leaders across the country in a bid to crush what is described as India’s biggest internal security challenge.

“We would be breaking the neck (of the Maoist movement) by arresting all their senior leaders like Kishenji,” a highly placed official in the security establishment said in an interview. “We believe there could be around 50 such leaders scattered all over. We are targeting them to make the entire movement headless and make a serious dent,” the official told IANS. “With this it would be relatively easy to take on the rest of Maoist guerrillas,” the official added, providing for the first time operational details of the coordinated and sweeping security drive.

As of now, operations are under way in Chhattisgarh, Jharkhand, Orissa, West Bengal and Maharashtra — five states where the outlawed Communist Party of India-Maoist (CPI-Maoist) is most active, mainly among tribals living in remote interiors who are among the poorest of the poor. The operational methods would, however, differ from the way Sri Lanka’s military crushed the Liberation Tigers of Tamil Eelam (LTTE) last year, it was pointed out.

…According to rough estimates, over 60,000 paramilitary forces would be in action against 6,000-7,000 Maoists armed with heavy weapons as well as light machine guns, AK-47s, AK-56s and Insas rifles….Another official said the security forces, especially the CRPF, have got six trained dogs each for the “special sector” (Chhattisgarh and Maharashtra), “eastern sector” (Orissa and West Bengal) and the “Bihar sector” (Bihar and Jharkhand) to help take on the Maoists.

more @ mid-day

7. Soren govt calls off -anti-Naxal ops, has cops livid

At a time when states are teaming up to crack down on Naxalites, the Shibu Soren-led government in Jharkhand, one of the states worst affected by Naxal violence, has quietly halted operations, including long range patrols and raids directed at the extremists. And in one of the first fallouts, eight policemen were killed in a landmine blast triggered by Naxals in Gumla last Friday.

Central paramilitary forces, including 28 CRPF companies, are being made to wait by the state government while the Special Task Force, comprising personnel of the Jharkhand Armed Police who have been trained in jungle warfare and anti-landmine techniques, are back in the barracks. The securitymen were deployed in the districts of Ranchi, Palamau, Lohardaga and Gumla.

…The Soren government’s move to put the brakes on anti-Naxal operations, within days of taking charge of the state, has set off alarm bells in the security establishment. An Intelligence official told The Indian Express that “Jharkhand is set to become a safe haven” for Naxalites who are beginning to feel the heat in the other states that make up the Red Corridor.

more @ indian express

8. November 2009: exploring connections between Naxalism, Chabad, India, Israel, mining

9. Hyderabad STF catch was in-charge of terror recruitments, including one who was planning something against Western tourists in Goa

Mohammed Abdul Khwaja (30), a commander of the militant group Huji for South India who was caught by the Hyderabad Special Task Force recently, was in-charge of recruiting youth from the region and training them to be terrorists, say the police. It is believed he was  responsible for making Raziuddin Nasir, who was planning serial blasts in Goa, a suicide bomber. Nasir, son of Hyderabad-based cleric Moulana Naseeruddin, has been arrested by the state police on charges of plotting a series of bomb attacks on western tourists in Goa.

…Khwaja, who was working in Saudi Arabia, invited Nasir to Riyadh, from there he was sent to Pakistan with a duplicate passport for training.
Nasir returned to India after the training and was in regular touch with Khwaja while taking shelter in North Karnataka.  He was acting as handler to Nasir giving instructions to Nasir and passing out information to his bosses in Pakistan and Bangladesh, said police officials.

more @ mid-day

10. Holbrooke — we won’t broker talks, you  kids work it out amongst yourselves

The United States has once again clarified that it would not broker talks between India and Pakistan, and said pending issues should be resolved by them amicably. Interacting with editors and columnists here, US Special Envoy to Afghanistan and Pakistan Richard Holbrooke said Washington would support any initiative taken by both countries to improve their ties. “It is for Pakistan and India to engage in a process of dialogue, and we support it,” The Daily Times quoted Holbrooke, as saying.

Responding to Indian Army Chief General Deepak Kapoor’s recent statement that the Indian Armed forces were capable enough of taking on both Pakistan and China simultaneously, Holbrooke said it was his (General Kapoor’s) personal opinion and that it did not reflect New Delhi’s policy. “What General Kapoor said does not reflect the Indian national policy,” Holbrooke said.

source: indian express

11. India’s “massive” arms build up will jeopardize regional balance: Pak

Expressing concern over the alleged ‘massive’ arms build up by India, Pakistan’s National Command Authority (NCA) has said that New Delhi could jeopardise the regional balance by such moves. The NCA blamed India for rejecting Pakistan’s proposal for maintaining a strategic restraint regime in South Asia.

A press release issued after the meeting said that India’s massive inductions of advanced weapon systems, build up of nuclear arsenal and delivery systems could to destabilise regional balance. “This relentless pursuit of military preponderance will have severe consequences for peace and security in South Asia, as well as for the Indian Ocean region. Pakistan cannot be oblivious to these developments,” The News quoted the statement, as saying. The NCA also took note of remarks made in India that it was cable of conducting conventional military operations under a nuclear umbrella terming it as an ‘irresponsible’ statement.

“Such irresponsible statements reflected a hegemonic mindset, oblivious of dangerous implications of adventurism in a nuclearised context,” the statement said.

source: indian express

foreshadowing

Jan 20

Posted by A. Peasant in 9-11, Afghanistan, CIA, Clinton, Corruption & Crime, Diplomats, India, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Pakistan, Philippines, Southeast Asia, Terrorism | No Comments

Robert Gates, Secretary of Defense, warns that South Asian militant groups threaten to destabilize the entire region and could trigger a war between “nuclear armed Pakistan and India.”

(Just for the record, India is also “nuclear armed.“)

Watch Mr. Gates reflect anxiety, set expectations, and proactively absolve India for whatever it might do in response to “some provocative act:”

Reflecting anxiety in the region about New Delhi’s reaction if it were attacked by a militant group with roots in Pakistan, Mr Gates said restraint by India could not be counted on. He added that militants under Al-Qaeda’s ’syndicate’ - which includes the Taleban in Pakistan and Afghanistan, as well as Pakistan-based Islamist group Lashkar-e-Taiba - posed a danger to the region as a whole.

They are trying ‘to destabilise not just Afghanistan, not just Pakistan, but potentially the whole region by provoking a conflict perhaps between India and Pakistan through some provocative act,’ Mr Gates said during a visit to New Delhi. ‘It’s important to recognise the magnitude of the threat that the entire region faces,’ he said following talks with his Indian counterpart, A.K. Antony.

…’I think it’s not unreasonable to assume India’s patience would be limited were there to be further attacks,’ Mr Gates warned.

New Delhi suspects the Pakistani intelligence service of supporting terror groups that target India and has consistently called on Islamabad to crack down on militants operating on its soil. Mr Gates described India as a vital partner in the struggle against extremist threats, expressed appreciation for its economic aid to Afghanistan and said that he had discussed how to bolster US-India military cooperation.

It appears that whatever happens, Pakistan will be blamed. If India retaliates — even out of proportion — it sounds like that will be overlooked by the US, given that it’s not “unreasonable to assume India’s patience would be limited were there to be further attacks.”

Interesting. Which country has suffered more from terrorism in recent memory? India, or Pakistan?

India had the Mumbai attack in 2008 (173 deaths). India blames Pakistan for Mumbai.

Meanwhile, in 2009 alone, over 3,500 people have died from terrorist attacks in Pakistan.

And who is responsible for all the terrorism in Pakistan? Good question.

The Pakistan government has been provided a variety of proofs of involvement of Indian government and especially the Indian intelligence agency behind the continuous chaos in various parts of Pakistan, particularly NWFP province’s Malakand division and tribal agencies of North and South Waziristan where Pakistan army is fighting a war against terrorists.

…These investigations indicate that the Pakistani law enforcing agencies found highly credible evidence proving that the Indians were not only giving comprehensive financial support to terrorists in Balochistan but were also providing them with huge caches of all sorts of weapons and other military equipment.

…The Daily Mail’s [of Pakistan -- ed.] findings indicate that not only this but the Pakistani security forces also seized a large amount of Indian currency and Indian medicines from the deserted or conquered hideouts of militants in different operations in Swat and Waziristan.

… In addition, the security forces also seized huge amount of currency bills of Indian currency either from the arrested militants or from the captured hideouts. The investigations reveal that trade in Indian currency in all parts of Afghanistan is quite open and normal and one can buy anything at anywhere with Indian currency in any part of Afghanistan. According to some reports, the Indian currency is more acceptable than the US Dollar in Afghani business markets.

^^^^^^^

Over the last several weeks the contrived Clash of Civilizations has flared up in Malaysia over the use of the word Allah in Christian churches. After a week or two of that, the US Embassy in Malaysia warned that tourists to the Sabah state were at risk of attack by criminal and terrorist groups.

This warning precipitated a prompt response. The Malaysian government tightened security and quickly dismissed the warning. The Malaysian government then summoned the US envoy for an explanation of the misleading advisory.

This is the explanation:

The US advisory did not give details of the possible threat, but noted that Al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf militants based in the southern Philippines - a short boat ride from Sabah - have kidnapped foreigners from Sabah’s secluded resort areas in the past.

^^^^^^^

Abu Sayyaf has an outstanding terrorist pedigree. It can be linked back to Osama bin Laden, al Qaeda, 911, the CIA, ISI, etc.

In particular, for the purposes of this thread, the Abu Sayyaf can be linked back to Pakistan.

[Privilege speech of Sen. Aquilino Pimentel at the Senate, July 31, 2000]

In the early 1980s, the CIA actively recruited, “armed and supported” moujahideens or volunteer Muslim warriors to fight the CIA sponsored-US proxy war in Afghanistan against the Russians who had invaded the country in 1979 and had put up a puppet regime there. Chalmers Johnson, Blowback, p. 13 et

Thousands of Muslim fighters from many parts of the world, including many young men from the Muslim-dominated areas in Mindanao, enlisted to fight in Afghanistan. After all, the dollar-denominated monthly pay plus incentives of $100 to $300 a month was certainly attractive enough for the jobless and impoverished Muslim youths. John K. Cooley, Unholy Wars, p. 107

These young warriors were, then, trained to – and many did - fight in Afghanistan supported with funds and equipment by the CIA and its network of friendly foreign funders which at that time included Osama bin Ladin, a highly successful Arab business man in the construction industry. Bin Ladin subsequently fell out of grace with the CIA which has since been trying to get him either literally or extradited to the US for his complicity in the bombing of the World Trade Center in New York in 1993.

…In the case of the Filipino Muslim Moujahideens, most came back to various parts of Mindanao from their base in Peshawar, Pakistan.

In the words of John K. Cooley in his book, Unholy Wars, “This group (of Filipino Muslim Moujahideens) was the core of an armed guerilla band of several hundred men who xxx moved from its Peshawar, Pakistan base to the southern Philippine Islands after the end of the Afghan war. Under the name of the Abu Sayyaf group, it operated on the fringe of the Moros Muslim insurgency.”

Thus was the Abu Sayyaf born.

The Abu Sayyaf took its name from Professor Abdul Rasul Sayyaf, an Afghan intellectual, who had preached an ultra-conservative Islamic ideology called Wahabi.

Cooley calls the Abu Sayyaf in the 1990s as “the most violent and radical Islamist group in the Far East, using its CIA and ISI (Pakistan’s intra-military directorate for intelligence services) training to harass, attack and murder Christian priests, wealthy non-Muslim plantation-owners and merchants and local government in the southern Philippine island of Mindanao.” [p. 63]

Thus we can see that the CIA and ISI created this problem, the Abu Sayyaf, with an assist from Saudi Arabia, which spawned Wahhabism.

According to Senator Aquilino Pimentel, military and police personnel then cultivated informers within the Abu Sayyaf, and some members received military intelligence services IDs, safe-houses, safe-conduct passes, firearms, cell phones and financial support. In his speech, he demanded that these traitors to the Philippines be held accountable for their corruption.

Since that speech in 2000, the Abu Sayyaf has certainly not been contained. They operate from the island of Jolo. It appears they stepped up their attacks in 2009.

In 2000, Abu Sayyaf took about 20 people – most of them Western tourists – captive from an island resort across the Malaysian border. They were all released within three months after the Libyan government paid a ransom of around $10 million, media reports said at the time.

…Last year [2008], Muslim rebels generated more than 22 million pesos (SFr528,000) in ransom payments from at least six kidnappings, including the high-profile abduction of three members of a local television network, according to the Philippines military.

…About two dozen people have been kidnapped in 12 incidents on two restive southern islands since January [2009], authorities say.

In September 2009, two US Navy men and one Filipino Marine were killed in a roadside bomb.

Abu Sayyaf is believed to have about 400 fighters, to have received funds from al-Qaida and is suspected of sheltering militants from the larger Southeast Asian terror group Jemaah Islamiyah. An estimated 600 U.S. troops are currently stationed in the Philippines, mostly in the southern front lines of the Philippine military’s operations against the Abu Sayyaf group and Jemaah Islamiyah.

In November 2009, the group beheaded a teacher.

In December 2009, they burst through a jail wall and freed 31 inmates.

^^^^^^^

In July of 2009, the Philippine government deployed hundreds of troops on Jolo and Basilan islands to finish off the 400 member Abu Sayyaf.

Defense Secretary Gilbert Teodoro ordered the military last week to launch new assaults against the militants on Jolo and Basilan islands after the militants freed Italian hostage Eugenio Vagni — the last of three Red Cross aid workers who were kidnapped on Jolo in January. Without any hostages to worry about, government forces can now carry out more offensives, regional military commander Maj. Gen. Benjamin Dolorfino said.

…The government has opened peace talks with a bigger Muslim separatist group, the Moro Islamic Liberation Front (MILF), but the Abu Sayyaf is not covered by the talks. A report by the US Pacific Command describes the Abu Sayyaf as “a cross between a chilling gang of bandits and a franchise operation of al-Qaida.” “Since the early 1990s, it has terrorized the southern Philippines with kidnappings, bombs and outright massacres; it has also been linked to several international terrorist plots and militants,” the report noted. More recent reports said the Abu Sayyaf, under new leadership, has been able to link up with the Indonesian Jemaah Islamiyah, said to be behind a regional Islamist terror campaign, including two recent bombings in Jakarta.

By November, after the beheaded school-teacher incident, hopes faded. The Abu Sayyaf would (miraculously) defy the sustained US-backed campaign to finish them off.

The beheading of a kidnap victim is the latest proof that a small number of Islamic militants in the Philippines are defying a sustained US-backed military campaign to extinguish them, observers said. The grisly development this week came just ahead of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton’s visit to the Southeast Asian nation, throwing the spotlight on joint efforts by Filipino and American forces to crush the Abu Sayyaf.

It’s always very helpful when they “throw the spotlight on.” In any case, regrettable.

And then Hillary Clinton arrived, and the kidnapped priest from Ireland, Michael Sinnot, was released by the MILF. MILF is another long-standing and much larger terrorist group in the Philippines, originally accused of abducting the priest, but later cleared and thanked for securing his release.

The release of the 79-year-old missionary coincided with the arrival in Manila of US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton, prompting speculation that it was timed to coincide with her visit, the way the release of a kidnapped Red Cross worker was made on the day US Central Intelligence Agency head Leon Edward Panetta flew to Manila.

Although the Asia Times reported that the US Embassy held clandestine meetings with MILF a month earlier, at their camp. Evidently the US Embassy personnel do not fear the MILF. In fact, they have warm and friendly relations. Everyone wants peace, evidently.

Despite the row over Sinnot’s kidnapping, senior US Embassy officials in Manila have held clandestine meetings with MILF leaders in their Maguindanao camp. The US Embassy has kept mum on the meetings, but on its website, the MILF confirmed in a statement that it had held talks with a visiting group of American diplomats led by the US Embassy charge d’affaires, Leslie Basset, on October 16.

Lasting for two hours, the meeting “was warm and forthright”, the MILF said and quoted Basset as saying that the US was willing to play a role in the peace talks. “Helping attain and sustain peace, security and development in Mindanao is a priority concern of our government,” the MILF quoted Bassett as saying.

^^^^^^^

In August 2009, GMANews.TV reported the statements of Lt. Senior Grade Nancy Gadian at a press conference held before an inquiry by the Senate oversight committee on the Visiting Forces Agreement (VFA) into the activities of US troops in the Philippines.

Gadian, a whistleblower, was invited to the hearing.

Gadian earlier this year exposed the alleged misuse of the P42-million fund allotted for the joint military exercises between the Philippines and the US by high ranking military officials.

Gadian made the following statements:

  • US soldiers have joined Philippine troops in actual combat against Muslim rebels.
  • The American soldiers were embedded in local units.
  • About 500 US soldiers were assigned in Mindanao as “the first line of defense against the enemy.”
  • US troops usually engaged in operations in Mindanao without informing heads of the Philippine military in the area.
  • Philippine forces are fighting the al-Qaeda-linked Abu Sayyaf terrorist group and other armed groups in Sulu.
  • American troops are stationed in Mindanao even without any Balikatan exercises going on.
  • The Philippine government does not monitor the deployment and movement of these troops in the country’s southern region.
  • Americans in Mindanao usually have programs or projects which they do not tell the leadership of the Southern Command. They just go to areas where they want to go.

Gadian’s affadavit also states:

  • The US military of building permanent structures in different military camps in the country. She said US forces have established “permanent” and “continuous” presence in Zamboanga, Sulu and Tawi-Tawi in the south.
  • The Philippine military has no access to the camps built by the US soldiers in these areas since they are “fenced off by barbed wires and guarded by US Marines.”
  • These structures are indications the US troops had no intention of leaving the country, which is a violation of the Philippine Constitution.
  • The “arrogant” behavior of many US military officers toward Filipinos.
  • Some US military men bringing Filipino women prostitutes to different areas in the camp.
  • “On the whole, their assertions of power and authority appear like they rule over us and the country.”

^^^^^^^

Given that the CIA helped create Abu Sayyaf; and given the US military’s unrestrained access to the very areas of the Philippines where Abu Sayyaf allegedly operates from; and given the history of connections between Abu Sayyaf militants and their military handlers; and given the warm and friendly relations between US Embassy personnel and MILF leaders…

Can we not imagine that Robert Gates’ foreshadowing remarks about provocative actions might, perhaps, have something to do with Abu Sayyaf?

note that it’s called the PERSIAN Gulf

Jan 19

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Iran, Israel, Libya, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, Yemen | 4 Comments

1. Iran will retaliate on Western warships if Gulf attacked

Iran’s Defense Minister Ahmad Vahidi said Tuesday that Western warships stationed in the Gulf are “best targets” for the Islamic republic if its nuclear sites are attacked, Fars news agency reported. Iranian officials have repeatedly threatened to deliver a “crushing response” and hit U.S. targets, including its bases in the Gulf and neighboring Iraq and Afghanistan, if Iran’s nuclear sites are attacked. “Why are there so many warships there? The Westerners know that these warships are the best target for operation by Iran if they do anything against (us),” Vahidi told a conference entitled “Persian Gulf” in Tehran. He also criticized the building of U.S. bases in the region and Washington’s “unofficial presence in Yemen.”(AFP)

source: naharnet

2. Iran’s FM visits Libya

Tripoli - Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki arrived in Tripoli Thursday at the start of a three-day visit to Libya. Mottaki was accompanied by a large political and economic delegation. Immediately upon his arrival in Tripoli, Mottaki held talks with Mr. Moussa Koussa, Secretary of Foreign Liaison in Libya where they reviewed bilateral relations and the means of strengthening them as to serve common interests, Jana reported….”Iran and Libya’s position in the Middle East and North Africa, [as well as the] unity and cooperation of Islamic countries will be discussed during the visit,” said Mottaki. He added that the two oil-rich counties could work together on oil and gas projects.
The two parties discussed political cooperation between the General People’s Congress and the Iranian Parliament.  Cooperation in the field of railroads and other economic activities was also discussed.

more @ tripoli post

3. in Libya, Mottaki stresses need for restructuring UN security council

Iran’s Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki stressed the need for establishment of more logical and fair international bodies and the restructuring of the United Nations Security Council. He made the remark on Friday when conferring with his Libyan counterpart Musa Kusa in Libya….He further stressed the need for more collective measures to establish security and stability in the world and confront the interventionist and oppressive policies of big powers which have resulted in nothing but extremism, terrorism and insecurity.

Pointing to the oppressive policies of the big powers to safeguard and secure the illegitimate regime of Zionists in Palestine, Mottaki said the last three invasions of the Zionists to Lebanon and Gaza just discredited the usurper regime and its backers. Kusa described as great and excellent the ties between the two nations throughout history and said his country specially revered the supreme nation of Iran. He said Iran has supported and backed the Arab countries in the region and pointed out that the two countries enjoyed many shared stances. He criticized the double-standard policies and biased political policies against Iran and said these pressures were despite the fact that the Zionist regime was equipped with nuclear arms but was still backed by big powers.

more @ isria

4. Islamic Games axed over “Persian Gulf”

RIYADH: The Riyadh-based Islamic Solidarity Sports Federation yesterday called off the athletic games planned for Tehran in April because of Iran’s use of the term “Persian Gulf” on winners’ medals. The ISSF, headed by Saudi Olympic Federation president Prince Sultan bin Fahd, said after an emergency board meeting that Iran’s local organising committee “unilaterally took some decisions without asking the federation by writing some slogans on the medals and pamphlets of the games”.

…Swine flu worries and the dispute over Tehran’s insistence on using “Persian Gulf” for the waters between Iran and the Arabian peninsula had already caused the games to be postponed since an initial planned date of last October. The Arab countries of the oil-rich region insist on the term “Arabian Gulf” or simply the “Gulf”. It would have been the second time the games were held after a first tournament was held in the Saudi Red Sea city of Jeddah in 2005.

The cancellation comes amid a rise in tensions between Riyadh and Tehran, as Saudi Arabia has been seeking to unite Arab countries and isolate its regional rival. Both have traded accusations of interfering in the conflict in Yemen between government forces and Shiite rebels. And an Iranian official confirmed yesterday that Tehran has suspended Muslim pilgrimages to the holy cities of Makkah and Madinah in Saudi Arabia until Saudi religious police end their “appalling behaviour” towards Iranian Shiite pilg
rims.

more @ kuwait times

5. Iran warns of artificial islands’ environmental impact on Persian Gulf
TEHRAN - Iranian Foreign Minister Manouchehr Mottaki has criticized the construction of artificial islands in the Persian Gulf.

“The construction of artificial islands has environmental impacts on the Persian Gulf region,” Mottaki said in an address to the 19th International Conference on the Persian Gulf, which opened in Tehran on Monday.

Experts from Kuwait, Oman, Lebanon, Egypt, Romania, France, Germany, China, India, Russia, and five other foreign countries are participating in the two-day event, which is being sponsored by the Iranian Foreign Ministry.

Mottaki said the Persian Gulf is important because it is an international shipping route and because the region possesses vast energy resources.

Foreign forces trying to create insecurity in Persian Gulf

Mottaki also said that extra-regional powers are greedily eyeing the region and are attempting to create insecurity and to encourage regional countries to distrust each other in order to gain control of the region’s resources.

The Iranian foreign minister stated that the instability and problems in the region are caused by a number of factors, namely the presence and interference of foreign forces in the region, the massive arms sales, the support for extremist groups, and the efforts to sow discord between regional ethnic groups.
He pointed to the expansionist policies Israel is pursuing in the Persian Gulf region, saying, “The presence of the Zionist regime has been interconnected with insecurity and instability in the region, and U.S. officials are pursuing their foreign policy based on the (Zionist) regime’s security.”

He also attributed the extremism and terrorism in the Middle East to the discriminatory policies foreign countries are implementing in the region.

Regional cooperation necessary to solve Persian Gulf’s problems

The Iranian foreign minister insisted that the problems of the Persian Gulf region must be resolved through regional cooperation.

Iran has presented its proposal for a regional security treaty to regional nations, he said, adding that Tehran believes that there are two approaches for resolving the problems facing the region.

One approach was devised by extra-regional countries that seek to create discord between regional nations, and the other approach envisages regional cooperation, he observed.

Iran is also ready to cooperate with neighboring countries to create a secure environment for economic activities in the region, he added.

Yemen can solve its own problems

Mottaki said the interference of foreign countries in the Yemen conflict has only increased insecurity in the region.

Tehran believes that Sanaa is able to resolve the current crisis through negotiations without the interference of other countries, he added.

The conflict between the Yemeni government and Houthi fighters in northern Yemen began in 2004. It intensified in August 2009 when the Yemeni army launched Operation Scorched Earth in an attempt to crush Shia Houthi fighters in the northern province of Saada.

Regional meeting on dust pollution being organized

Mottaki also announced that a regional meeting will be held in the near future to discuss ways to tackle the region’s dust pollution problem.

He called Saudi Arabia the major source of regional dust pollution and said Iraq, Syria, Egypt, and Jordan are other sources of dust pollution.

Tehran to host trilateral meeting on Afghanistan crisis

Mottaki said that Iran, Pakistan, and Afghanistan plan to hold another trilateral meeting on the crisis in Afghanistan in Tehran in the near future.

Tehran is devising some regional approaches to deal with the crisis in Afghanistan, he stated.

He also asked certain countries, which claim they are helping Afghanistan resolve its problems, to support Tehran’s approaches.

Major powers pursuing double-standard policy toward Iran

Elsewhere in his remarks, Mottaki criticized the major powers for adopting double-standard policies toward Iran’s nuclear program.

He cited the fact that nothing is done about Israel’s hundreds of nuclear warheads and the nuclear cooperation between the U.S. and the Zionist regime, while illegal restrictions on the use of nuclear energy are imposed on Iran, which is a signatory to the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

source: tehran times

using drugs and planes, al qaeda will show up wherever needed. you watch.

Jan 15

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Canada, Corruption & Crime, Drug Trafficking, Lebanon, Southeast Asia, Terrorism, UK | No Comments

1. terror warning on Borneo, Malaysia

KUALA LUMPUR - THE United States embassy in Malaysia issued a warning on Friday that criminal and terrorist groups are planning attacks against foreigners in Sabah state on Borneo island. The embassy said there was ‘present concern’ over resorts in isolated areas in eastern Sabah including the diving island of Sipadan where foreign hostages were snatched in 2000. ‘There are indications that both criminal and terrorist groups are planning or intend acts of violence against foreigners in eastern Sabah,’ the embassy said in a warden notice posted on its website. ‘The Abu Sayyaf group, based in the southern Philippines, has kidnapped foreigners in eastern Sabah in the past,’ it said. The advisory identified the destinations of Semporna, Mabul and Sipadan and called on citizens to ‘please avoid or use extreme caution in connection with any travel in these areas or locations.’ The US travel advisory on Malaysia already warns of the threat of criminal and terrorist attacks in Sabah but the information in Friday’s statement was more specific on the areas being targeted. — AFP

source: straits times

2. lawyer’s office in Malaysia ‘Allah’ case ransacked

Burglars ransacked the offices of lawyers representing Christians fighting for the right to use the word “Allah” to refer to God in this Muslim-majority country, officials said Thursday. Lawyer S. Selvarajah said that staff arrived at work in the morning to find several locks and steel grill doors to enter the 2nd and 3rd floor offices cut, drawers ransacked and papers strewn on the floor. He said his partner’s laptop was missing. A mobile phone service provider’s shop and tuition center on the first floor were not broken into, he said. “Only our office has been targeted,” he said. “It looks like it is an intimidation tactic … We anticipated something will happen. We are definitely upset about this,” he told The Associated Press. The incident adds to the tension building up since attacks since Friday night on nine churches, one of which was partially gutted….Petaling Jaya police chief Arjunaidi Mohamed confirmed the break-in, saying police were investigating. He said it should not immediately be linked to recent church attacks. “It has nothing to do with the churches,” he said.

more @ taiwan news

3. $500 tip leads police to $66 million in fake bills

Malaysian police have arrested a Lebanese man allegedly carrying fake currency with a face value of $66 million after he tipped a hotel staff with a $500 note, news reports said Friday. The largest U.S. note currently in circulation is a $100 bill. But police found bundles of $1 million, $100,000 and $500 notes in the man’s hotel room in Kuala Lumpur, the New Straits Times and The Star newspapers reported….This is not the first time the man has been in trouble with the law in Malaysia, the reports said. A Malaysian court charged him last week with cheating over the sale of office supplies in 2005 in a separate case. Cheating, or fraud, carries a maximum penalty of five years.

more @ taiwan news

4. the drug link to al qaeda — planes, West Africa, South America, Europe….. Lebanon?? SE Asia??

TIMBUKTU (MALI) - A FLEET of rogue jet aircraft has been regularly criss-crossing the Atlantic Ocean between cocaine producing areas in the Andes and some of West Africa’s most unstable countries, according to a report submitted by a US Homeland Security official. But that 2008 report, a copy of which was recently obtained by Reuters, was ignored, [INCOMPETENCE MEME] and the problem has since escalated into what security officials in several countries describe as a global security threat. [NATURALLY] The clandestine fleet, which has since grown, is believed to be flying cocaine and possibly weapons to an area in Africa where factions of Al-Qaeda are allegedly facilitating European drug smuggling. [AND FROM EUROPE TO WHERE???]

Al-Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) has been held responsible for car and suicide bombings in Algeria and Mauritania. Gunmen and bandits with links to AQIM have also stepped up kidnappings of Europeans, who are then passed on to AQIM factions seeking ransom payments. The aircraft hopscotch across South American countries, picking up tonnes of cocaine and jet fuel, officials say. They then soar across the Atlantic to West Africa and the Sahel, where the drugs are funnelled across the Sahara Desert and into Europe. Officials in the United States and three West African nations say that at least 10 aircraft have been discovered using this air route since 2006, though they say the real number could be considerably higher.

source: straits times

5. Jordan jails Lebanese man for cocaine smuggling — linking South America and Lebanon now with drugs. this stuff happened last year, and these things happen all the time — small time stuff — and these stories help shape the narrative when discussed at the appropriate time.

A Jordanian military tribunal on Wednesday sentenced three people, including a 42-year-old Lebanese, to 15 years’ hard labor for smuggling 11 kilos of cocaine into the country. “Two men, a Jordanian, 25, and a 42-year-old Lebanese, as well as a Brazilian woman, 27, brought 11 kilos of cocaine from Brazil to Jordan in order to take it to Lebanon,” a court official told AFP. “They were arrested at Amman’s international airport in January last year.” The state security court acquitted another 25-year-old Brazilian woman because of lack of evidence, the official said. He gave no further details, but estimated the value of the drugs at around 11 million dinars (15.5 million dollars). The verdict can be appealed within 30 days. Last year, the same court jailed two Peruvian women for smuggling hundreds of cocaine capsules into Jordan in their stomachs.(Naharnet-AFP)

source: naharnet

6. because they distract from stuff like this: Oh OOPSIE! who is that helping to traffic drugs? GASP: the US, UK and Canada! but since an Iranian says so, this can be safely ignored by The West, even though the UN praises Iran’s work fighting drug trafficking

A senior Iranian anti-drug official has accused the US, Britain and Canada of playing a major role in Afghanistan’s lucrative drug trade.  On the sidelines of an anti-drug conference in Tehran, deputy head of Iran’s Drug Control Headquarters Taha Taheri said that Western powers are aiding the drug trade in Afghanistan.  “According to our indisputable information, the presence of the United States, Britain and Canada has not reduced the dug trade and the three countries have had major roles in the distribution of drugs,” IRIB quoted Taheri as saying on Thursday.  Iranian officials have always criticized Western countries over their policies towards Afghanistan, where poppy cultivation has drastically increased since the US-led military occupation of the country in 2001.  Taheri added that drug catalysts are being smuggled into Afghanistan through borders that are controlled by US, British and Canadian troops. Some 13,000 tones of drug catalysts are brought into Afghanistan every year as the war-torn country is the producer of 90 percent of the world’s opium. The UN office on drugs and crime said last month that the 2009 potential gross export value of opium from Afghanistan stood at $2.8 billion. Iranian police officials maintain that drug production in Afghanistan has had a 40-fold increase since the US-led invasion of the country in 2001. “More than 340 tones of drugs have been seized all over Iran in the past nine months,” IRNA quoted the commander of the drug squad, General Hamid Reza Hossein-Abadi, as saying earlier this month. The UN has praised Tehran for its commitment to the fight against drug trafficking.

source: press tv

7. NATO forces discover weapons caches in South Afghanistan and drugs in Kandahar

KABUL, Jan. 15 (Xinhua) — The NATO-led International Security Assistance Force (ISAF) discovered six weapons caches in an operation in southern Afghanistan’s Helmand province, an ISAF press release said Friday.    The weapons caches, discovered on Thursday, contained a large amount of weapons and IED making materials, including 340 pounds of home-made explosives, 17 hand grenades, an RPG launcher, and numerous small arms and ammunition, the press release added.    Most of the materials were destroyed on site, it further said.

In another operation in of southern Kandahar province, Afghan National Police and ISAF forces seized 1,000 pounds of hashishm when searching a building in the province’s Arghandab district, ISAF press release said. The drugs were destroyed on site.    The southern Helmand and Kandahar provinces, the stronghold of Taliban militants, have been the scene of skirmishes and Taliban-led insurgency over the past several years.

source: chinaview

isn’t that convenient

Jan 13

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, CIA, Canada, Corruption & Crime, Iran, Israel, Lebanon, Palestinians, Terrorism, Think Tanks, Venezuela | 2 Comments

1. (random) terrorist group (conveniently) claims responsibility for Iranian scientist attack

TEHRAN, Jan. 13 (Xinhua) — A terrorist group named “Iran Royal Association” took responsibility for Tuesday’s fatal bombing attack on an Iranian nuclear physicist, local Iran Daily reported Wednesday.  The Iran Royal Association, a group seeking to reestablish the Pahlavi reign in Iran, announced Tuesday in a statement that its ” Tondar Commandos” were behind the assassination of Massoud Ali-Mohammadi, a particle physics professor in Tehran University, according to the report.   The website of the group said it had previously threatened Ali-Mohammadi with death.  The Iran Royal Association, headed by Foroud Fouladvand, was also responsible for a deadly bombing in the tourist city of Shiraz in April 2008, during which 13 people were killed and hundreds wounded.

more @ chinaview

2. Iran: we had information Israel, US intended to attack — US says that’s absurd, Israel has no comment

Iran received information days ago that Israeli and U.S. intelligence intended to carry out terrorist acts in Tehran, the country’s parliament speaker said on Wednesday, one day after the assassination of a university scientist.  Washington has rejected Iran’s allegations of U.S. involvement in Tuesday’s bombing that killed professor Massoud Ali Mohammadi near his home in the Iranian capital as absurd. Israel has not commented on the incident.

…Iran’s influential parliament speaker, Ali Larijani, said a U.S.-based pro-monarchy group had claimed responsibility for the attack, adding it was controlled by the CIA. Iran’s Fars News Agency on Tuesday said such an exile group had claimed the bombing in a statement, without saying how it obtained it. “An American-based monarchy group…claimed responsibility for this terrorist act,” Larijani said, the state broadcaster reported. “Maybe the CIA and the Zionist regime [Israel] thought they can mislead us with such an absurd statement.” “We had clear information several days ago that the intelligence apparatus of the Zionist regime and the CIA wanted to implement terrorist acts in Tehran,” he said.  Using such a “rootless group” as a cover was a new “disgrace” for U.S. President Barack Obama, Larijani said. “Why do you host this terrorist group in America?” he asked. Israel refused Tuesday to react to Iranian accusations that it or the United States was behind a mysterious explosion that killed an Iranian nuclear physicist in Tehran Tuesday.

…The Washington Post reported on Tuesday that Ali Mohammadi was involved in a regional research project that also involved Israeli scientists. The project, called Synchrotron-light for Experimental Science and Applications in the Middle East, or SESAME, is based in Jordan and operates under United Nations auspices. Iranian and foreign scientists told the Washington Post the project has applications in industry, medicine, nanotechnology and other fields unrelated to nuclear power. Palestinians also participate in the project, whose last meeting was held in November in Jordan. An Israeli scientist present at the meeting told the Washington Post that he talked to Ali Mohammadi during an informal group meeting. “We did not discuss politics or nuclear issues, as our project is not connected to nuclear physics,” Rabinovici told the paper. An Iranian scientist involved in the project denied that there had been any direct meetings between his delegation and the Israelis. “They are present in the same room, but there are no direct meetings,” Javad Rahighi, a nuclear researcher, told the Washington Post. “We are all shocked,” he said. “I couldn’t imagine anybody wanting to kill him. He was a scientist, nothing more.”

haaretz: http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142366.html

3. now that he’s dead (convenient)…hey didn’t that CIA bomber also have something to do with the Madrid bombs???

MADRID - WESTERN intelligence services are investigating whether a Jordanian who blew himself up in Afghanistan, killing seven CIA agents, had a role in the deadly 2004 Madrid train bombings, a Spanish news report said on Tuesday. ‘Western secret services are investigating whether this terrorist is the author of the claim of responsibility that arrived at the Spanish newspaper ABC a few days after these attacks,’ news radio Cadena Ser reported. In several letters posted on jihadist websites, Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, writing under the pseudonym Abu Dujana Al Khorasani, hailed the Madrid bombings, as well as the Sept 11, 2001 attacks in the United States and those on July 7, 2005 in London, it said. A total of 192 people were killed and more than 1,800 injured in the March 11, 2004 bombings of commuter trains in the Spanish capital. Responsibility was claimed by Islamic militants who said they acted on behalf of Al-Qaeda to avenge the presence of Spanish troops in Iraq, sent by then Spanish prime minister Jose Maria Aznar in support of the US invasion. Three days after the attacks, Aznar’s conservative Popular Party was defeated in a general election by Socialist Jose Luis Rodriguez Zapatero, who made good on a campaign pledge to withdraw the Spanish contingent.

Cadena Ser said ‘various data’ lead Western intelligence services to believe Balawi was behind the letter to ABC. These include the fact that it was signed by Abu Dujana, Balawi’s pseudonym, and that the Al-Qaeda claim of responsibility for his suicide attack had the ’same characteristics’ and was signed by ‘by the same suicide group’. — AFP

source: straits times

4. terrorists seek to enter the US via Canada, conveniently the government is on extended holiday there

OTTAWA - PRIME Minister Stephen Harper held talks with national security advisers after reports surfaced that would-be attackers were seeking to enter the United States via Canada, broadcaster CTV said on Tuesday.  Mr Harper’s office said he was briefed overnight by Public Safety Minister Peter Van Loan, Foreign Affairs Minister Lawrence Cannon, Defence Minister Peter MacKay and Justice Minister Rob Nicholson. According to CTV, the government asked Canadian airlines and airports on Saturday to remain vigilant and adhere to tough new passenger screening rules adopted after a failed Christmas Day attack on a US jet. Transport Minister John Baird said on Tuesday the government had received ‘two or three pieces’ of threat information since a young Nigerian tried to set off a bomb on a Northwest Airlines flight from Amsterdam to Detroit last month. CTV said British and US intelligence reports suggested 20 Yemeni-trained ‘terrorists’ were trying to get into Canada and then travel to the United States. Separately, Canadian intelligence officials had evidence that another group was also trying to enter Canada, the broadcaster said. — AFP

source: straits times

also see: PM holds meeting after potential terror threat

and Leaderless Canada, Israeli security services, and the Olympics

The questions many Canadian’s have asked: Why did Prime Minister Harper prorogue the government, until after the 2010 Vancouver Olympics? I had some question myself about this mysterious move on the PM’s part in this post Dec 30/09. One possible concern, and there were so many of them, is the potential for a false flag.

5. up next: al qaeda in Palestine — according to WINEP!! (super convenient) — hey i bet first al qaeda will penetrate the palestinian camps in lebanon…yeah that’s the ticket…those camps are a “time bomb”

Militant Islamist groups in Gaza seeking an alliance with Al Qaeda may be planning to carry out a large-scale attack in order to boost their credentials, warns a report released today by the pro-Israel Washington Institute for Near East Policy (WINEP). “Al Qaeda-inspired groups in Gaza ‘think big’ and are regularly plotting large-scale attacks,” says the report, coauthored by a former deputy director of Israel’s Shin Bet intelligence service. It also quotes an anonymous member of one of these groups as saying his operatives are “waiting to carry out a big jihadist operation dedicated to Sheikh Osama Bin Laden.”

read more @ mother jones

6. Iraqi security forces do a sweep of the city, clear out a lot of explosives. will that prevent the next blast however? you have to wonder, if they clean up the place and another blast occurs, well where the fuck do the explosives come from???? those terrorists are always so wily (convenient) it’s like they have an inside track ya know?

BAGHDAD, Jan. 12 (Xinhua) — Iraqi security forces detained 25 insurgent suspects and seized explosives and mortar bombs during massive operations in Baghdad early on Tuesday, a military spokesman said.    Qassim Atta, spokesman for Baghdad Operations Command, said in a statement that his troops confiscated 200 kg of C4 explosives, 200 kg of TNT, 60 mortar rounds and some 250 litre of ammonium nitrate which is used for making bombs during the search operations conducted early Tuesday morning.    The troops also arrested 25 people suspected of plotting terrorist attacks in Baghdad, Atta said….The source could not give the reason behind such sudden and wide-ranging operations, but said they are possibly based on tip-off on bomb attacks in the capital.

more @ chinaview

7. Chavez is crazy, man, i mean come on. nobody listens to that guy he’s a total whack-job. i mean just because they have problems in venezuela (convenient!) that doesn’t mean we would take advantage of the situation, come on… (wink wink wink wink)

WASHINGTON: Venezuelan President Hugo Chavez is making “baseless” accusations of a US military plot to distract Venezuelans from real troubles at home, such as a currency devaluation, a top Pentagon official told Reuters. Chavez, who on Friday announced a devaluation that could fan inflation, said the same day he had scrambled two F-16 jets to intercept a US military plane that twice entered Venezuelan skies. Frank Mora, deputy assistant secretary of defense for Western Hemisphere Affairs, said the “baseless” and “unfounded” accusations — which the United States had immediately denied — were part of a pattern by Chavez.

“The more that President Chavez is confronted with domestic challenges, the more his rhetoric heats up,” Mora said in an interview from his Pentagon office on Monday. Mora said he found it “interesting that he made this unfounded accusation … at the same time he was announcing a major currency devaluation,” adding repeated devaluations can lead to a potential scarcity of goods. “It is, in my view, a diversion of attention away from a particularly domestic challenge — and trying to scapegoat the issue by once again accusing the United States government.”

read more @ arab news


developments in the “war on terror”

Jan 12

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Africa, Canada, India, Israel, Kazakhstan, Nigeria, North Korea, Pakistan, Philippines, Saudi Arabia, Terrorism, Thailand | No Comments

1. Nigerian president reportedly brain-damaged in Saudi Arabia

President Umaru Yar’Adua is seriously brain damaged, is not able to recognise anyone, including his wife Turai, and can no longer perform the functions of the office of the president, according to multiple sources who have spoken to NEXT on Sunday.  But this fact, which has left a nation of 150 million people rudderless and its government in disarray, is being concealed from the public through an elaborate scam orchestrated directly and energetically by the First Lady.

read more @ NEXT

2. SITE says qaeda threatens to execute French hostage in Mali (three Saudis recently killed near Mali border recently, that was “al qaeda” too)

The north African branch of al-Qaida said it will execute a French hostage unless four of its militants are freed from jail in Mali in 20 days, the U.S. monitoring group SITE said on Monday.

source: naharnet

3. crew of seized plane turns to Kazakh president in Thai court

The four Kazakh crew members of an arms-laden cargo plane seized in Bangkok in mid-December have asked the president of Kazakhstan to defend them as they face major charges for illegal transportation of weapons….”We were making a flight ordered by the Air West Georgia company and the plane’s lessee, AirTech company, from Ukraine. In line with a contract, we should have transported a 35-ton civil cargo from Pyongyang to Kiev. The flight to Pyongyang was made on schedule… After landing in Pyongyang on December 10, 2009, in the evening, we went to a hotel,” the crew, which is now being held in the Bangkok Remand prison, said in the statement. According to the statement, the next morning, when the crew arrived at the airport, they found the cargo packed in wooden and iron boxes and sealed. “We were not allowed to inspect the cargo,” the crew said, adding “according to documents, the cargo consisted of ‘mechanical parts,’ and looked similar to oil drilling equipment.”

more @ ria novosti

4. Thailand: suspects in 20 year old Saudi case indicted

The case has received much attention from the public. Saudi charge d’affaires to Thailand Nabil Ashri, who on Monday voiced his concern over the handling of the case by Thai authorities to Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, described the indictment of the five suspects as “good news” which Saudi Arabia has long been waiting for. He said Saudi Arabia waited for nearly 20 years to see the first case being brought into the judicial process.  The two other cases are the murder of three Saudi diplomats, also in 1990, and the jewellery theft in 1989.

more @ bangkok post

5. Saudi teen poses as pilot in Manila airport

A 19-year-old Saudi Arabian man dressed as a pilot was arrested Tuesday after he illegally entered a restricted area in the main airport in the Philippines, an airport official said. “He was able to elude our security by misrepresenting himself as a pilot of Saudi,” said airport general manager Alfonso Cusi, referring to the Saudi Arabian flag carrier. …The detained Saudi, identified by the local authorities as Hani Abdulelah Bukhari, told airport police he was there to meet his father, a retired Saudi pilot who later arrived on a flight from Saudi Arabia. He was wearing a pilot’s uniform from Saudi Airlines when airport security personnel noticed him lining up at the immigration section of the passenger terminal, Cusi told ABS-CBN television.

more @ naharnet

6. Canadian faces terror charges

OTTAWA - A TORONTO man who earned a six-figure salary as a computer programmer appeared in court on Monday for the first day of his trial on charges of plotting to attack Canada’s main stock exchange and other targets. Shareef Abdelhaleem, 34, is accused of conspiring to bomb Canada’s main stock exchange, spy agency offices and a military base in order to try to provoke Canada’s withdrawal from Afghanistan.

more @ straits times

7. FBI and Shin Bet tracked Teitel a year before his arrest — it was all just police work you understand

A year prior to Yakov “Jack” Teitel’s arrest, the Shin Bet and the FBI were in close contact as part of an investigation into bombings targeting homosexuals, messianic Christians and left-wing figures, Haaretz has learned.  Teitel was arrested on October 7. However, the initial exchanges on the case between the two security services on the case began in October 2008, when a Shin Bet officer, code-named Ariel, contacted the FBI with a request for assistance in the investigation. Eventually, the authorities would come to suspect Teitel as the person behind the bombings.

more @ haaretz  http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1142043.html

8. Houston TX consulate reportedly issued questionable passports

Three Indian citizens, including a man linked to the 1993 serial bomb blasts in Mumbai, were issued Pakistani passports by the country’s consulate in the U.S. city of Houston, an anti-corruption court has been told by a senior diplomat. Pakistan’s Consul General in Houston, Aqil Nadeem, appeared as a witness in the accountability court in Rawalpindi on Monday and confirmed that Pakistani passports were issued by the consulate to Indian nationals Aziz Moosa, Saleem Ali and Abdul Sadiq.

more @ the hindu