Twelfth Bough

i run my own damn think tank

Archive for category Afghanistan

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

western: you’re doing it wrong

Jan 7

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, CIA, Identities, Media, Mind-fucking, Pakistan, Terrorism, The West, Turkey | No Comments

Defne Bayrak…… and…..Defne Bayrak!

Defne Bayrak, the Turkish wife of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, told Turkish media she learned that her husband had blown himself up at a US base in Afghanistan on Dec 30 after receiving a phone call from one of his friends in Pakistan. — PHOTO: AFP (on the left) from Reuters story at Straits Times

Defne Bayrak, the Turkish wife of al-Balawi, said she was proud of her husband (on the right) from AlArabiya story

The story:

The wife of a double agent who killed seven CIA officers in a suicide attack in Afghanistan said on Thursday her husband regarded the United States as an enemy and she was proud of his mission. Defne Bayrak, the Turkish wife of Humam Khalil Abu-Mulal al-Balawi, said she doubted he was working for the CIA.

“I am proud of my husband. He has carried out a very important mission in such a war,” Bayrak, who now lives in Istanbul, told reporters. “I think it’s impossible that he was an American agent. He was too adversary to work for America. He only could have used America and Jordan to reach his goals.”

Bayrak, a journalist who has written books including one entitled “Osama bin Laden: Che Guevara of the East”, earlier told the newspaper Sabah she believed her husband was in Afghanistan to pursue his medical studies and she was shocked at news of his death.

Wearing a black chador, she said she learned in a phone call from one of her Jordanian husband’s friends in Pakistan that he had blown himself up at a U.S. base in Afghanistan on Dec. 30. The friend also told her he would send her husband’s will and last letter, she said.

“Our last phone call took place about four to six weeks ago and we made contact through the Internet 10 days ago. He told me he would come back to Turkey and would even apply for Turkish citizenship. He would continue his medical studies here.”

Balawi blew himself up inside Forward Operating Base Chapman, a well-fortified compound in Khost province near the southeastern border with Pakistan. Al-Qaeda’s Afghan wing has claimed responsibility for the suicide bombing, the second-most deadly attack in CIA history, saying it was revenge for the deaths of their leaders. “He’s a very strong character. If he did it, he must have done it on his own will. Nobody can make him do things,” Bayrak told Sabah.

Former intelligence officials have said Balawi, a doctor, was recruited by Jordanian intelligence to try to infiltrate al-Qaeda and the Taliban. Balawi had associated with Islamists in the past, but U.S. and Jordanian spy agencies believed he had been successfully “de-radicalized.” Bayrak said she met her husband while he was studying medicine at Istanbul University. They lived in Jordan, where they had two daughters, before moving back to Turkey in October 2009.

Why is it necessary to Westernize this woman with the flowing hair, the plump cheeks, the pixillated hairline, the broad shoulders, the Glamour-don’t choice of tops. ? ? ? ?

I’ve read some other interesting explanations about what happened, like this one.

The shorter being this: Allegedly those CIA people killed these schoolchildren, a heinous crime, which would prove exceedingly difficult to brush under the rug.

indefensible war

Jan 7

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Children, Germany, Politics | No Comments

1. Afghan war kills 3 children a day in useless war started on LIES LIES LIES

KABUL, Afghanistan—Children are the biggest victims of the war in Afghanistan, with more than 1,050 people under 18 years old killed last year alone, according to an Afghan human rights watchdog. Taliban-linked militants caused around 64 percent of all violent child deaths last year, the Afghanistan Rights Monitor (ARM) said in a report. Children were also press-ganged, sexually exploited, deprived of health and education, and illegally detained by all sides in a war that is dragging into its ninth year since the United States-led invasion toppled the Taliban regime.

…The United States and Nato are boosting their troop numbers in Afghanistan to 150,000 over the course of 2010, as part of a new strategy determined to clear and secure insurgent strongholds. US General Stanley McChrystal, commander of foreign forces in Afghanistan, has ordered civilian casualties be kept to a minimum, yet as more troops pour in, a higher death rate is inevitable, experts say.

read more @ inquirer

2. Holbrooke pressures Berlin on Afghanistan

US diplomat Richard Holbrooke on Wednesday called on Germany to honour its military commitments in Afghanistan, as German Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg said Berlin might disappoint Washington’s wish for more troops there.

Holbrooke, who is the US special envoy to Afghanistan and former ambassador to Germany, told weekly newspaper Die Zeit the United States and its allies had to ensure their military engagement was successful in Afghanistan….Defence Minister Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg vowed on Wednesday Germany would decide by the end of the month whether to send more troops to Afghanistan, but he also warned the eventual outcome was likely to disappoint the United States. Guttenberg told the Leipziger Volkszeitung daily that Germany would use the international conference on Afghanistan, due to be held in London on January 28, as the time and place to announce its plans for the war-torn country’s future.

read more @ the local

3. Merkel holds crisis meeting

The heads of the three parties in Chancellor Angela Merkel’s centre-right coalition will hold what the German media had termed a “crisis meeting” after a shaky start marked by infighting, it emerged on Thursday….Further friction, most notably between the CSU and the FDP, the two smaller coalition parties, has stemmed from Germany’s Afghanistan mission and a long-running dispute over a museum on the post-war expulsion of ethnic Germans from Eastern Europe.

read more @ the local

where else might trouble pop up?

Jan 5

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, Africa | No Comments

1. Sweden’s crown princess visits troops - Northern Afghanistan

Sweden’s Crown Princess Victoria and her fiancé Daniel Westling on Sunday and Monday greeted Swedish soldiers stationed in Afghanistan….More than 500 Swedish troops are currently deployed in Afghanistan. They are stationed in the minority ethnic Uzbek, Tajik and Hazara-dominated north of the country along with Finnish troops.

read more @ the local

2. US to increase troops in German sector of Afghanistan — northern Afghanistan

The US military plans to increase its presence significantly in northern Afghanistan, where the Bundeswehr has long been the dominant NATO force, news magazine Der Spiegel reported Monday….According to the magazine, the Bundeswehr expects that the new US troops will not only expand training for Afghan forces, but intensify the offensive against Taliban fighters - and in doing so heavily influence the activities of German troops.

read more @ the local


3. December 31st: Moroccan, US military to strengthen cooperation

RABAT, Dec. 31 (Xinhua) — Commander of the United States African Command (AFRICOM) General William E. Ward visited Morocco, vowing to strengthen cooperation with the Moroccan army, local satellite channel Medi 1 Sat reported Thursday.   Ward met with Lieutenant General Abdelaziz Bennani, general inspector of the Moroccan Royal Armed Forces (FAR) and governor of the Southern Zone, and the two discussed bilateral military cooperation and opportunities to strengthen partnership between the Royal Armed Forces and the U.S. Army, the report said.

read more @ chinaview


4. big changes in Morocco as government moves toward regionalization

Two political events have accentuated the Moroccan political scene in the last two days: the launch of the Advisory Committee on Regionalisation on Sunday and the government reshuffle on Monday, both appointed by HM King Mohamed VI. The Advisory Committee on Regionalisation comes along to serve in the regionalisation policy that Morocco is up to implement and integrate in its political, economic, social, and cultural infrastructure.

read more @ newstime africa


5. December 20th: Dadis Camera under “arrest” in Moroccan hospital

The United States seems determined to exercise its influence in the region and just a few days ago, the US government expressed its determination to keep wounded Guinean Head of State, out of Guinea Completely. It seems the US government wants to install its own favourable regime in the country and is currently in secret talks with the caretaker leader Defence Minister Sekouba Konate while Camara is receiving treatment for gunshot wounds in Morocco. The US is keen on not allowing rogue regimes to have any say in African governance and see the crisis in the West African Country as a window of opportunity to effect its influence in the country. The US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State William Fitzgerald had said “We’re reaching out to try and talk to Konate,” He also said that the crisis in Guinea was a symptom of a dangerous slide in West Africa. “We’re deeply concerned that West Africa has fallen back from where it was,” which he said threatened broader instability in the resource-rich region. “The last thing we need is rogue militia running around West Africa again”.

read more @ newstime africa

dirty jobs are their niche

Sep 3

Posted by A. Peasant in Afghanistan, CIA, Corruption & Crime, Military | No Comments

So Mother Jones has a story by Daniel Schulman about Americans acting like assholes in Afghanistan. Lots of bad behavior, incriminating pictures. Go ahead and see. The company involved here is Wackenhut.

Wackenhut and the CIA go way back. This information comes from 1992, you know, Last Century stuff:

It is not possible to overstate the special relationship Wackenhut enjoys with the federal government. It is close. When it comes to security matters, Wackenhut in many respects “is” the government. In 1991, a third of the company’s $600- million in revenues came from the federal government, and another large chunk from companies that themselves work for the government, such as Westinghouse.

Wackenhut is the largest single company supplying security to U.S. embassies overseas; several of the 13 embassies it guards have been in important hotbeds of espionage, such as Chile, Greece and El Salvador.

It also guards nearly all the most strategic government facilities in the U.S., including the Alaskan oil pipeline, the Hanford nuclear-waste facility, the Savannah River plutonium plant and the Strategic Petroleum Reserve.

Wackenhut maintains an especially close relationship with the federal government in other ways as well.

While early boards of directors included such prominent personalities of the political right as Captain Eddie Rickenbacker; General Mark Clark and Ralph E. Davis, a John Birch Society leader, current and recent members of the board have included much of the country’s recent national-security directorate:

  • former FBI director Clarence Kelley

  • former Defense secretary and former CIA deputy director Frank Carlucci

  • former Defense Intelligence Agency director General Joseph Carroll

  • former U.S. Secret Service director James J. Rowley

  • former Marine commandant P. X. Kelley

  • acting chairman of President Bush’s foreign- intelligence advisory board and former CIA deputy director Admiral Bobby Ray Inman

Before his appointment as Reagan’s CIA director, the late William Casey was Wackenhut’s outside legal counsel.

The company has 30,000 armed employees on its payroll. We wanted to know more about this special relationship; but the government was not forthcoming. Repeated requests to the Department of Energy for an explanation of how one company got the security contracts for nearly all of America’s most strategic installations have gone unanswered.

Similarly, efforts to get the State Department to explain whether embassy contracts were awarded arbitrarily or through competitive bidding were fruitless; essentially, the State Department said, “Some of both.”

Wackenhut’s competitors - who, understandably, asked not to be quoted by name - have their own version.

“All those contracts;” said one security-firm executive, “are just another way to pay Wackenhut for their clandestine help.”

And what is the nature of that help?

“It is known throughout the industry,” said retired FBI special agent William Hinshaw, “that if you want a dirty job done, call Wackenhut.”

OK, fine, good enough. It took me about thirty seconds to find this information. It does not surprise me that a company like Wackenhut would use techniques that result in a working environment of fear and coercion:

Multiple guards say this deviant hazing has created a climate of fear and coercion, with those who declined to participate often ridiculed, humiliated, demoted, or even fired. The result is an environment that is dangerous and volatile. Some guards have reported barricading themselves in their rooms for fear that those carrying out the hazing will harm them physically. Others have reported that AGNA management has begun to conduct a witch hunt to identify employees who have provided information about this atmosphere to POGO.

That would be standard operating procedure, advanced mind-fucking, for a CIA-affiliated organization, as anyone paying attention knows.

Not that it shouldn’t be exposed. Yes, by all means, let’s have it. But why now, when this has been going on for a long long time?

I mean, it’s a little distracting all of a sudden, with these pictures and everything. Kinda like a limited hangout or something….

[ding]

UPDATE: There are more DOD defense contractors in Afghanistan than uniformed US military personnel.

Contractors provide essential logistical, translation and other services, while offering increased flexibility. But they also pose management challenges in monitoring performance and preventing fraud. In the worst cases, “abuses and crimes committed by armed private security contractors and interrogators against local nationals may have undermined U.S. efforts in Iraq and Afghanistan,” the CRS report noted.

Um, yeah. Guess so.

Are we ever going to wake up and die right in this country?

Dec 16

Posted by A. Peasant in 9-11, Afghanistan, Mind-fucking | 3 Comments

More information comes out all the time about the real crimes being committed in our names as Americans. I know people know, but do we really know? Do we really appreciate the horror of pain and suffering inflicted on innocent people in our names? This morning was one of those mornings when I just can’t take it reading things like this:

“We were walking, I was holding my grandson’s hand, then there was a loud noise and everything went white. When I opened my eyes, everybody was screaming. I was lying metres from where I had been, I was still holding my grandson’s hand but the rest of him was gone. I looked around and saw pieces of bodies everywhere. I couldn’t make out which part was which.”

How can any human being go on? Think about some of the petty things people turn into tragedies in this country, and yet our weapons routinely inflict this unspeakable suffering on innocent people. We’re fighting wars and killing people because of 9/11, a crime premeditated and carried out by the intelligence world. It’s beyond sick what’s going on and how long it has been going on, and how many innocent people have suffered grievously because of it. All this ridiculous nonsense about trials for the “masterminds” and the “terrorists” behind these attacks. Spare us. The intelligence world plans these attacks. They are the masterminds and the terrorists. Everything else is an elaborate show for the benefit of people who refuse to get real.

When it is going to end? I just want to know before I lose my mind.

But then, I refuse to lose my mind. What good would that do? Sanity means devotion to reality at all costs. So I can’t lose my mind. I must preserve it and guard it as I lay my heart on the altar instead. I must suffer the agony of knowing, of understanding, that our country is doing these horrible things to innocent people, and especially to children, as I try to imagine their agony. In a runaway corrupt world, can we make that sacrifice? Can we stop telling ourselves lies that make us feel good? Can we stop offering our minds to evil men who wish to control our thoughts? Can we more jealously guard our minds from liars while sacrificing our hearts freely to God instead?

There is a destiny that makes us brothers: None goes his way alone.
All that we send into the lives of others, comes back into our own. - Edwin Markham

‘Their arrogance is beyond comprehension.’

May 22

Posted by Marlena in Afghanistan, Bush/Cheney, Citizenship, Corruption & Crime, Injustice, Iraq, Media, Military, Nuclear Weapons, Psychology, Sustainability, Unreality | No Comments

Winter Patriot has a couple of really good posts up that you should go read, here and here. Regarding the second post about Depleted Uranium, this horror show will be touring the USA. Thanks to our useless and complicit corporate media, Americans will realize much too late the consequences and implications of this crime against humanity known as the War on Terror.

As Moret testified, depleted uranium turns into an infinitesimally fine dust after it explodes; individual particles are smaller than a virus or bacteria. And, “It is estimated that one millionth of a gram accumulating in a person’s body would be fatal. There are no known methods of treatment.”

And DU dust is everywhere. A minimum of 500 or 600 tons now litter Afghanistan, and several times that amount are spread across Iraq. In terms of global atmospheric pollution, we’ve already released the equivalent of 400,000 Nagasaki bombs, Moret said.

The numbers are overwhelming, but the potential horrors only get worse. DU dust does more than wreak havoc on the immune systems of those who breathe or touch it; the substance also alters one’s genetic code.

This is from a Global Research article written in May 2006:

PFC Stuart Grainger of 23 Army Division, 34th Platoon. (Names and numbers have been changed) was diagnosed with cancer several after returning from Iraq. Seven other men in the Platoon also have malignancies.

Doug Rokke, U.S. Army contractor who headed a clean-up of depleted uranium after the first Gulf War states:,

“Depleted uranium is a crime against God and humanity.”

Rokke’s own crew, a hundred employees, was devastated by exposure to the fine dust. He stated:

“When we went to the Gulf, we were all really healthy,”

After performing clean-up operations in the desert (mistakenly without protective gear), 30 members of his staff died, and most others”including Rokke himself”developed serious health problems. Rokke now has reactive airway disease, neurological damage, cataracts, and kidney problems.

“We warned the Department of Defense in 1991 after the Gulf War. Their arrogance is beyond comprehension.

Yet the D.O.D still insists such ingestion is “not sufficient to make troops seriously ill in most cases.”

Then why did it make the clean up crew seriously or terminally ill in nearly all cases?

Marion Falk, a retired chemical physicist who built nuclear bombs for more than 20 years at Lawrence Livermore Lab, was asked if he thought that DU weapons operate in a similar manner as a dirty bomb.

“That’s exactly what they are. They fit the description of a dirty bomb in every way.”

According to Falk, more than 30 percent of the DU fired from the cannons of U.S. tanks is reduced to particles one-tenth of a micron (one millionth of a meter) in size or smaller on impact. “The larger the bang” the greater the amount of DU that is dispersed into the atmosphere, Falk said. With the larger missiles and bombs, nearly 100 percent of the DU is reduced to radioactive dust particles of the “micron size” or smaller, he said.

When asked if the main purpose for using it was for destroying things and killing people, Falk was more specific:

“I would say that it is the perfect weapon for killing lots of people.”

You can find photographs of the hideously deformed babies born in Afghanistan and Iraq on the web. I realize people don’t like to look at things like this, but they had better get over their delicate sensibilities. This is your tax dollars at work. Here’s just one picture in an article posted at Uruknet, and there are many more. Many of the infants die at birth, and this has been going on for years.

I repeat, our government knows about this and has known about it for years.

Question: Why does the US military use these weapons, which are polluting the earth and killing indiscriminately? Are these the actions of a just and moral nation, or does this reflect a purely psychopathic mentality, a mentality firmly arrayed against life itself - whether foreign or domestic, young or old, human or plant or animal? In truth, a cult of death.

Answer: ‘Their arrogance is beyond comprehension.’

It’s time for human beings to comprehend this arrogance because nothing will get better until normal people can wrap their minds around the reality of psychopaths. The psychopaths will continue to terrorize all the inhabitants of the earth as long as we remain dazed and confused. Understanding this reality is the most important knowledge any human being can possess right now.

Question: Are we a nation of psychopaths, or are we merely controlled by psychopaths, and what, if anything, are we planning to do about this problem? And when, pray tell, might we begin? I’m just asking.

Answer: You tell me.

Extra Credit: You might note the comment to the Uruknet story.

Please search for “CAMP FALCON What really happened”

A MAJOR DU fire just covered up and lost in the pile of lies.

But not for me. No i can fathom the event and it’s importance.

Have a look for your own self.

I saw this fire on CNN live that night and i can tell you they instantly EDITED the footage after the first 1:30 second clip of this event (That was never seen by me again without color temperature editing) And the whole event is long since down the memory hole.

I did the search. Here’s one link. Nine huge transport planes of American casualties. You’d think Camp Falcon, Baghdad, October 10, 2006 would be an infamous day in Official Iraq War History. But no. I never heard of it before yesterday.

Please, people. We can’t flunk this test.