Archive for category France

plane crash plot thickens: a possible new explanation for all these delays

1. good collection of stories about this crash, with this note from the editor, Zeina Karam

Editor’s note - From day one, Lebanese officials have rushed to blame Ethiopian Airlines for the crash, even though they have never had any evidence whatsoever. The box - and not the crucial cockpit voice recorder (CVR) - was recovered today, which means nothing, but the Lebanese government has already made up its mind that ‘pilot error’ was behind the crash. Ethiopian Airlines has clearly an impending battle with Beirut so much even today’s story is wrongly headlined: “2nd black box found,” while the crucial CVR which records pilot communication with the air traffic controllers at Beirut Airport is still missing.

see the rest here

2. Ethiopia: sabotage not ruled out

ADDIS ABABA - ETHIOPIAN Airlines said on Wednesday it still believed sabotage may have caused the crash of one of its aircraft off Lebanon last month which killed all 90 people on board….The Lebanese Army said the plane had broken up in the air before plummeting into the sea. Witnesses described it as crashing in a ball of flame. The airline said only the data recorder had been found. ‘The cockpit voice recorder and the aircraft wreckage are not yet retrieved for analysis. It is therefore too early to conclude the cause of the accident,’ the company said. — REUTERS

source: straits times

diagrams of black boxes here, here, and here

3. Lebanon: no sabotage. !!! also no time limits. also the black box is missing the voice recorder piece.

Lebanon hit back at Ethiopian Airlines, saying there is no evidence at all of any sabotage act behind the plane disaster as claims mounted after sources said that a pilot error caused the crash. Meanwhile, the coastal strip of Naameh south of Beirut was declared “off-limits” for search teams.

“There is no time limit on search operations,” a ministerial source said in remarks published Thursday by the daily As-Safir.

Prime Minister Saad Hariri was keen during a Cabinet meeting on Wednesday not to politicize the plane disaster.

…Information Minister Tareq Mitri, however, said Wednesday that Lebanon has not received any official information about contents of the first black box. One of the plane’s two black boxes recovered on Sunday has been sent to France for analysis. Results, however, will not come out before five or six months. Search teams on Wednesday pulled the second black box but an essential piece was missing.

“The base of the second black box from the ill-fated Ethiopian jet has been recovered; however, it appeared that the part containing the memory device of the cockpit voice recorder was separated from the base,” said a statement by the Lebanese army.

more @ naharnet

4. Ocean Alert and gold

Do the Lebanese officials know that the owner company of the Ocean Alert vessel, which is taking part in the search for the crashed plane, has already worked in the Lebanese territorial waters prospecting for gold, which is believed to have sunken in 1957?

Do the Lebanese know that the Odyssey Explorer vessel was involved in “piracy operations in Lebanese waters” and that the two ships were grounded in Spain in 2007 on suspicion of damaging Spain’s “heritage”?

The orange-colored “black box” has been shipped to France at 5 a.m. yesterday aboard a private plane provided by PM Saad Hariri. The plane also carried members of the investigation committee.

The victims’ families staged their first protest yesterday 15 days after the tragedy. They mainly protested against “the slow recovery of the bodies” and called for allowing civilian divers to assist the Lebanese Armed Forces (LAF) Marine Commando units.

source

5. History of the Ocean Alert, from the brokers that last sold the ship : date unknown but later than 2002

http://www.yachtingbrokers.com/research_and_survey_vessel_for_sale.html

HISTORY

This ship has had a colourful history beginning life as the Canadian Coast Guard vessel CS Alert. Refitted with a 10 tonne A Frame capable of operating two mini manned submarines, Ocean Alert was chartered by a civilian company for numerous tasks including filming, several surveys and research projects worldwide. While underway towards Papua New Guinea to undertake research into Dolphin behaviour, her Charterers ran into financial trouble and she became stuck in Malta and was eventually sold.

It was soon realised that Ocean Alert provided the platform needed to extend any business and offer a low cost responsive and flexible option to their customers at the same time. After taking specialist advice, her new owners decided that an extensive refit and reclassification was required and decided to keep the vessel in Malta.

Lloyds were contracted to guide the reclassification and documentation through in Malta. The surveyor in charge and the new owners in Malta were both meticulous and thorough so the new owners now had a new regard for Lloyds 100A1 vessels and an understanding what standards ships have to be to gain this classification.

The vessel now fully complies with all major legal requirements and legislative standards and is ready for charter. The new owners were very fortunate firstly in having a top rate and hard working ship crew who, amongst other jobs, completely rebuilt the ship’s four engines, three generators and just about everything else mechanical required for the special survey.

Malta has a fine skill base centrally located in the Mediterranean so many local contractors were used. Malta Dry-docks proved to be the second fortunate choice. They were an invaluable partner during the refit, undertaking the majority of the structural work including large amounts of steel renewal.

The replacement of thirty-nine frames, six shell plates and a large section of keel have helped to produced a fine strong vessel fit to operate safely for many years to come. MDD carried out all work to Lloyd’s satisfaction in a timely and cost-effective manner.

In general, Ocean Alert is a versatile vessel and can undertake work in several fields of operation. Traditionally the new owners have been involved in supporting the cable industry primarily through route clearance and Pre Lay Grapnel Runs (PLGR) and will continue to do so operating a variety of vessels including their own ship Ocean Alert. Additional to this work and since acquiring the ship, the company now have been approached to charter the vessel in other areas such as Hydro graphic surveying, pipe and cable route survey, seabed research, ROV operation, wreck and debris investigation and filming.

Through a wide range of equipment such as gate valves, cranes and a moon-pool, A frame and winch the ship has the capability to respond to such requests. For instance, the retractable moon-pool makes the fitting and interchanging of transducers and other sensors cheap and quick, features not found on today’s mass produced ships. The 240 sq M covered aft deck / work area makes her adaptable and an ideal platform for a variety of tasks. Ocean Alert has air-conditioned accommodation for 30 supernumeraries, a dedicated survey room and a comfortable, spacious, well-appointed lounge.

She is certified to work worldwide except ice regions, and has capacities to stay at sea for a minimum of thirty days having spacious freezers and two desalinators. Her legacy from the coast guard as a search and rescue vessel gives her a top speed of 24 knots and a steaming speed at 10 knots on two of the four engines consuming only 8 tonnes of fuel per day including the generators. The two controllable pitch four blade propellers and twin rudders combine with the 200 Hp bow-thrust to give her a high degree of manoeuvrability enabling operation in waters ranging from 10m to Deep Ocean.

The teddy bears in each cabin and names for the main engine symbolises the level of care and attention to detail the owner lavishes on Ocean Alert compared to that received by vessel that form part of larger fleets. The owners have built themselves a reputation based on the philosophy of a fair price for a good job and this has extended into their new venture - Ocean Alert.

This proud ship has been looked after and it can now repay its owners in the same way as it has repaid the previous navigators of the seven seas and that is to convey its cargo and crew to new challenges in safety and comfort. Previously owned by the Canadian Coastguard. Chartered by the famous and respected Oracle of the sea Mr Jacques Cousteau and sent on voyages all over the world, chartering this vessel is indeed chartering a truly magnificent past coupled with a remarkable owner for the future.

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also: 10/1/03 When the auctioneer’s hammer crashed down in the Maltese Court, AKA Maritime Ltd became the owner of the 72m research and survey vessel Ocean Alert.

http://www.maritimejournal.com/features/vessel-build-and-maintenance/ship-and-boatbuilding/vessel-launch/a_major_step_forward_for_aka_maritime

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also: Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute website page on the Ocean Alert - St. John’s, Newfoundland, Canada

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The ship currently appears to be owned by Odyssey Marine Exploration. It is registered in Panama.

Basically, Odyssey Marine Exploration are in the business of treasure hunting.

WEBSITE: http://www.shipwreck.net/management.php

6. BBC: July 13, 2007: Spain seizes ship in treasure row

The Spanish Civil Guard has intercepted a boat operated by a US company amid a row over treasure from a shipwreck.

The guard had been ordered by a Spanish judge to seize the vessel as soon as it left the British colony of Gibraltar. Gibraltar officials and Odyssey Marine Exploration, which owns the ship, said Spain had boarded the ship illegally as it was in international waters. In May, Odyssey said it had found $500m (£253m) in coins from a 17th Century wreck somewhere in the Atlantic Ocean. Madrid suspects the sunken galleon may either have been Spanish or have gone down in Spanish waters. The salvaged booty, which included half a million silver coins and hundreds of gold objects, has already been flown back to the US.

‘Threat of force’

After leaving Gibraltar, the Ocean Alert was picked up at about 0700 GMT on Thursday off Europa Point and sent to the Spanish port of Algeciras to be searched, the Civil Guard said.

The guard was investigating a possible “offence against Spanish historic heritage”, it said in a statement.

Odyssey said the boarding was illegal and said the Civil Guard threatened to use force if Ocean Alert’s captain did not follow orders. It said Spain had earlier promised the ship would be searched at sea.

“At this point, Odyssey is assuming that the action on the part of the Guardia Civil is a miscommunication between Spanish authorities,” the Florida-based company said in a statement. A spokesman for the governor of Gibraltar said the ship was in international waters at the time it was seized.

A lawyer for Odyssey, Allen von Spiegelfeld, told Reuters news agency that Spain had not sought permission to board Ocean Alert from officials in Panama, where it is registered.

“The owners of the vessel have contacted the Panamanian maritime authorities protesting the seizure on international waters,” Mr von Spiegelfeld said.

Spain has launched legal action over the treasure and the wreck.Some experts believe the wreck to be the Merchant Royal, an English ship carrying stolen Spanish treasure which sank in 1641. US coin expert Dr Lane Brunner has said there is evidence the shipwreck was found off England’s Cornish coast. Odyssey has kept the location of its find secret, citing security and legal reasons.

source: BBC


more utter BS on plane crash

1. Ethiopian plane ‘exploded’

BEIRUT - AN ETHIOPIAN jet which crashed off Lebanon’s coast last month exploded after take-off, Lebanon’s health minister said on Tuesday in the first such official comment since the mysterious crash.

Remarks by Jawad Khalifeh could not be immediately confirmed by other officials in Beirut and came as Ethiopian Airlines said one of the plane’s black boxes has been sent to France for analysis.

‘The plane exploded during flight and the cabin, as well as the bodies of those on board were dispersed into the sea, in different locations,’ Mr Khalifeh said to explain why some corpses were found dismembered. ‘The first bodies which have been retrieved following the crash were intact but after that, we began to find body pieces or mutilated corpses,’ he told reporters.

Transport Minister Ghazi Aridi refused to comment on the reported explosion. ‘I have no information about this,’ he told AFP.

source: straits times


2. pilot error pilot error pilot error….based on info from the black box, which we just recovered and sent to France, and which will not reveal it’s secrets for months and months…. but trust us it was pilot error that caused the plane to explode.

A judicial committee at the ministerial level met Wednesday to discuss future strategy and progress made in the search for more victims of the Ethiopian plane crash as a source close to the investigation into the disaster said the jet crash was caused by a pilot error.

“The investigation team has reached an early conclusion that it was pilot error, based on information from the black box,” the source told Reuters.

The team made up of Lebanese, French and Ethiopian officials headed to France Monday with one of the two black boxes for analysis.

Lebanese army marine divers pulled the flight recorder from the plane crash site off the coastal town of Naameh on Sunday.

Information Minister Tareq Mitri said following Wednesday’s judicial meeting that Lebanon has not received any official information about contents of the black box.

Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409 crashed in a fireball minutes after takeoff from Beirut airport early in the morning of Jan. 25.

The Boeing 737-800 plane with 90 people on board plunged into the sea off Naameh south of the airport in stormy weather.

Lebanese officials had blamed the pilot for failing to follow instructions from the control tower.

Defense Minister Elias Murr had said that a command tower recording shows the tower told the pilot to turn to avoid the storm, but the plane went in the opposite direction.

“We do not know what happened or whether it was beyond the pilot’s control,” he added.

Transportation Minister Ghazi Aridi had in turn said the control tower sent the pilot a second warning when he failed to heed the first one.

“The pilot, however, continued to fly the same route, then he made a sudden, strange turn before disappearing from the radar,” Aridi said on the day of the plane crash.

It was not clear why the pilot ignored the control tower or perhaps it was beyond his control. Being 737, like most other airliners, also is equipped with its own onboard weather radar which the pilot may have used to avoid flying into cumulonimbus, which is a rounded mass of cumulus cloud often appearing before a thunderstorm.

naharnet

unauthorized terrorist incident and worldwide tentacles of money laundering (hawala)

1. “terrorist” on a Dubai-bound plane incident in India brushed under the rug as a “family dispute” — sociopath son wants his dad’s property so pulls this stunt… oh that’s a little inconvenient for our war on terror. nevermind!!

That’s why Arif Khan laid the ‘terrorist on board’ trap for his father, who was on the same flight, say police; the latter has been detained

A son’s desire to see his father behind bars may have been behind the drama surrounding the Emirates flight yesterday. The Dubai-bound flight, with 356 passengers and crew on board, was grounded for four hours in Mumbai, after an anonymous phone call before takeoff warned about the presence of a ‘terrorist’ on board.

A businessman Shahbaz Khan and his wife Munira were detained. The MRA Marg police believe that the caller was none other than their son Arif, who is embroiled in a property dispute with them.

Sanjeev Kokil, senior police inspector, MRA Marg police station, said, “I am cent sure that the son has done this. If the Sahar police ask for our help, we will prove this. Arif, at regular intervals, comes out with a plan to frame his father, so that he can lay his hands on his property.”

Kokil added that when Shahbaz was contesting the Assembly elections in 2009 from Colaba “Arif made a call to the Election Commissioner, saying his father had a criminal background and should not be allowed to contest”.

Criminal record

Arif and his father are locked in a dispute over a flat belonging to Shahbaz, which is currently leased to a tenant. Arif was even sent to seven days’ police custody for stealing from the tenant’s home. Said Kokil, “In June 2009, he entered the tenant’s house and stole everything. He even put up his nameplate on the door, stating that he was the owner of the property.” When cops arrested Arif, he confessed.

The father and son have also registered a number of non cognizable complaints against each other.

“Shahbaz always helps the poor, helps them get treatment at local hospitals. His son has ruined him,” rued Kokil.

Neighbours say

When MiD DAY reached Arif’s house on Modi Street in Fort, a female family member said, “Shahbaz and Munira have gone to Dubai and Arif is not at home. When Arif returns, I’ll ask him to call you.”

A neighbour said, “Arif is stupid. All the people in the building are fed up of him. Wonder how the father is tolerating the son. He is always shouting at his father and disturbing the building.”

Another neighbour added, “Arif has not only given a bad name to his family, but also to the entire building.”

DCP Zone 8, Brijesh Singh said, “We cannot confirm any thing. Whether the arrested people are members of a  terrorist group or if the call was a hoax — everything is under investigation.”

A senior ATC official said, “We got a call from the airport manager around 9.55 am that a terrorist was on the flight and sent a message to the captain not to take off.”

An Emirates spokesperson said, “We handed over a passenger and his wife to the  police. We are cooperating with them.”

source: mid-day

2. India: IAS officer with 220 bank accounts, assets worth millions

An Indian Administrative Service Officer (IAS) in Chhattisgarh has been found to have a staggering 220 bank accounts and assets worth millions of rupees. This was revealed after the income tax department raided his residence here, official sources said on Saturday.

The IT department raided the houses of some IAS officers and businessmen in Chhattisgarh and Madhya Pradesh in the past two days. Chhattisgarh’s Bharatiya Janata Party government is waiting for a final report from the IT department about Agriculture Secretary BL Agrawal’s assets to initiate action against him. IT officials searched the residence of Agrawal as well as business establishments of his close relatives on Thursday. On Friday, the officials similarly raided his chartered account Sunil Agrawal’s house and came across documents suggesting that the IAS officer had amassed assets disproportionate to his known income.

The officer had at least 220 bank accounts, several of them opened on fake names and addresses, and a few in the names of his domestic helps.

Efforts to contact BL Agrawal failed. A man who answered his mobile telephone said Agrawal was busy in a meeting.

Income Tax department sources said they were analysing the documents and papers they seized. Some documents suggest he might be involved in hawala transactions, the sources said.

The Madhya Pradesh government had on Friday suspended a Bhopal-based IAS couple - women and child development department principal secretary Tinu Joshi and her husband Arvind Joshi, principal secretary of the jail and parliamentary affairs department. IT department found Rs three crore in unaccounted cash in a raid on their residence on Thursday. Brajesh Gupta, Director General of Investigations (I-T) for Madhya Pradesh and Chhattisgarh, said bank notes stuffed in a suitcase were recovered from the residence of the couple.

source: mid-day

3. hawala transactions: part of money laundering
Hawala (also known as hundi) is an informal value transfer system based on the performance and honor of a huge network of money brokers, which are primarily located in the Middle East, North Africa, the Horn of Africa, and South Asia….In the most basic variant of the hawala system, money is transferred via a network of hawala brokers, or hawaladars. A customer approaches a hawala broker in one city and gives a sum of money to be transferred to a recipient in another, usually foreign, city. The hawala broker calls another hawala broker in the recipient’s city, gives disposition instructions of the funds (usually minus a small commission), and promises to settle the debt at a later date.

The unique feature of the system is that no promissory instruments are exchanged between the hawala brokers; the transaction takes place entirely on the honor system. As the system does not depend on the legal enforceability of claims, it can operate even in the absence of a legal and juridical environment. No records are produced of individual transactions; only a running tally of the amount owed by one broker to another is kept. Settlements of debts between hawala brokers can take a variety of forms, and need not take the form of direct cash transactions.

more @ wikipedia

also see: Interpol http://www.interpol.int/Public/FinancialCrime/MoneyLaundering/Hawala/default.asp

also see: IMF http://www.gdrc.org/icm/hawala.html

See? they know all about it.

4. India: SIFO (serious fraud investigation department) not all the serious — unlikely to get power to track funds parked abroad. that might impinge on the money laundering!

NEW DELHI: The government has said it is not considering to give the Serious Fraud Investigation Office (SFIO) the powers to trail money stashed abroad by corporates.

A corporate fraud investigating body under the corporate affairs ministry (MCA), the SFIO has for long been seeking powers to carry out investigations abroad. The SFIO is one of the agencies probing the multi-crore Satyam scam on which it has submitted a 14,000-page report.
“Not just during Satyam, but even before that we have been asking the MCA to permit us to carry out investigations abroad. We cannot trail funds abroad, therefore, we could not completely probe the Satyam fraud,” an SFIO official said.

Set up in 2003, the government plans to give the SFIO more teeth in the new Companies Bill, which was tabled in Parliament last August. However, the government officials say allowing the SFIO to probe cases related to routing of money outside the country is not a part of the proposal.

When contacted, Corporate Affairs Minister Salman Khurshid said, “No, there is no proposal to allow the SFIO carry out investigations abroad. There is no point. We do not want duplication of work, as the CBI and the Enforcement Directorate are already equipped to do that job.”

Diversion of funds is a Companies Act violation, but when funds are hived off abroad it becomes a hawala transaction, and falls under the ambit of the ED, the minister explained.

The proposals to give the Serious Frauds Investigation Office more teeth for investigation, is mostly based on the recommendations of the V Vepa Kamesam Committee, Khurshid had earlier said. Giving the SFIO powers to trail money stashed away abroad is, however, not part of the committee’s suggestions.

The eight-member committee has suggested that the SFIO be given exclusive jurisdiction to probe and prosecute entities involved in financial frauds, besides also probing cases related erring entities/individuals like chartered accountants and company secretaries.

The committee is of the opinion that power of search and seizure, and attachment should be entrusted with the SFIO as available with the Income Tax authorities, Customs, Enforcement Directorate etc. It has also suggested that the SFIO be empowered to take up a case suo moto and even on a source-based information if a corporate fraud has been committed.

The committee has also called for the SFIO having flexibility to outsource the services of experts like chartered accountants, legal experts
etc and officers joining the investigating agency on deputation be ensured protection of their existing pay and allowances, sources said.

http://economictimes.indiatimes.com/news/economy/finance/SFIO-unlikely-to-get-power-to-track-funds-parked-abroad/articleshow/5546719.cms

5. 1/18/10: enough evidence to arrest hawala kingpin: Naresh Jain — linked to Dubai, Pakistan, Italy, Dawood Ibrahim

New Delhi: A Delhi court today said there was “sufficient material” with Narcotics Control Bureau to arrest alleged hawala kingpin Naresh Kumar Jain for his reported complicity in international drug trafficking trade.

“The accused has rightly been arrested. There is sufficient material to effect his arrest under the Narcotics Drugs and Psychotropic Substances (NDPS) Act,” additional sessions judge Sanjiv Jain said.

The court, which extended the judicial remand of Jain till February 1, trashed his plea that he has “wrongly” been arrested by NCB, that too at the instance of Enforcement Directorate (ED).

“The accused is involved in nefarious activities of drugs trade and money laundering… investigation has revealed that the proceeds of the drugs trade were being laundered through hawala banking,” Rajesh Manchanda, special public prosecutor for NCB, told the court.

Jain was being supported by Dubai-based Ahmed Parvez, a Pakistan national, who is now being prosecuted in Italy, in the hawala trade, the prosecutor claimed.

Besides NCB, ED has also filed a separate case against Jain under various provisions of Prevention of Money Laundering Act (PMLA) for his alleged hawala transactions relating to proceeds of drugs trade.

Naveen Kumar Matta, special prosecutor for ED, had earlier informed another court that the probe into the money trail of Jain was at a “crucial” stage. Jain was arrested by NCB on December 6 last year for allegedly financing and transporting narcotic drugs.

The accused, who used to run M/s Kumar Trading Company in Dubai, was arrested there as well after it came to light that sale proceeds of drugs, running into several crores of rupees, were credited in the firm’s account, the ED had said.

The money was transferred into the account of the company from Europe, China and Africa, it said.

The accused was also under the surveillance of the US authorities which had confiscated $4.3 million from Jain in June last year, they added. It also alleged the accused had financed persons involved in drug syndicate in India and abroad.

He allegedly laundered money for global terrorist Dawood Ibrahim and financed narcotic cells.

source: DNA india

6. 2/7/10: REMINISCENT OF HADJICOSTIS MURDER, gunmen kill Nepal media baron with alleged Dawood links in broad daylight near French, Indian and British embassies in Kathmandu

KATHMANDU: Twelve years after Mirza Dilshad Beg, a controversial – and powerful – Nepali MP with links with Dawood Ibrahim and the ISI, was gunned down on a public road in Kathmandu by a rival gang, a Nepali media baron, also rumoured to have the same connexions, shared the same fate.

Jamim Shah, a Nepali of Kashmiri origin who headed the Space Time Network, was gunned down in broad daylight near the French Embassy in Kathmandu’s crowded Lazimpat area on Sunday, close to the Indian and British Embassies. Police told TNN two masked men on a motorcycle fired at Shah’s car around 2.55 pm, hitting both him and his chauffeur, Mathura Man Malakar. Shah, in his 40s, was shot in the chest and died while being treated at the nearby Teaching Hospital. Malakar has been hit in his left thigh.

Though police were informed about the number of the motorcycle, no arrests had been made till the time of writing this report. Shah ran the Channel Nepal television station that in 2000 instigated anti-India riots when it falsely reported Bollywood star Hrithik Roshan as saying that he hated Nepalis. Four people died in the violence that followed and scores of Indian shops and businesses came under attack. Though the channel was banned for some time, it was lifted once the furore receded.

Shah also ran a newspaper, Space Time, that carried anti-India propaganda. In 2004, he came under the ire of the Indian government who asked Nepal to freeze the assets of Space Time Network, alleging that it was funded by Dawood. Shah is also believed to have had ISI links. However, he had stoutly denied both allegations.

Shah’s killing comes after the arrest of Yunus Ansari, son of former Nepal minister Salim Miya Ansari. Ansari was caught recently after Nepal police busted a fake Indian currency network that ran from Karachi. Yunus Ansari is currently behind bars.

source: times of india

7. f**k India group on Facebook may be banned, complaint lodged with President’s office

Youtube videos belonging to India or Pakistan have been a favourite ground for warring groups from the two countries to vent their ire.Going by the war of words, one can easily imagine the fate of track two diplomacy. It shows that if such groups are let loose they will wage a bitter war than what the armies from both sides could achieve.
F**k India - a group on the social networking website, Facebook - has solicited a similar response.
The web page that shows “F**k India” written in the middle of the national tricolour says Pakistan Zindabad in its description.

But, as the anti-group is getting stronger with the membership going up by leaps and bounds, the web page may soon be banned.

Naresh Kadyan, an animal rights activist, has written to the President of India on February 7 demanding an immediate ban on the site, and has recommended corrective measures to the department concerned.

Forwarding the url link to the objectionable website, Kadyan, has written in his complaint : “I have seen many hate material on the web about India and our beloved leaders. Few years ago, I moved a public interest litigation in the Punjab and Haryana High court, seeking removal of vulgar content from Youtube. Following my plea, the controversial Gandhi pole dance was also removed from the Internet.”

“There are many communities on Facebook that spread hate against India, violating National Flag Code of India as well. Hence, you are requested to look into the matter for concerned authorities to take legal action against offenders and promoters. Both Orkut and Facebook may also be directed to filter such content,” the letter to the President read.

more @ source: mid-day

8. Africa: Atiku deals with the Mafia

Three months after his re-election as Nigeria’s Vice President, in August 2003, Atiku Abubakar was the guest of Domenico Gitto, who anonymous risk consultants and media sources say is a member of the Italian mafia clan Provenzano and owner of Gitto Construzioni Generali Nigeria Limited. The meeting was held at Mr. Gitto’s home in Sicily, Italy.

This revelation, based on NEXT’s ongoing investigations into the connections between foreign interests and Nigerian politicians, also shows that a major fallout of Mr. Atiku’s visit was a significant jump in the fortunes of Gitto Construzioni which subsequently earned contracts worth over N100 billion from different tiers of government in Nigeria.

Mr. Atiku was accompanied on that trip by his wife, Jennifer Douglas Abubakar; two of his political associates, Boni Haruna, then governor of Adamawa State, and Musa Adede, a former senator; as well as two Italian business associates, Gabrielle Volpi, and Angelo Perucci, believed to be members of a different mafia family.

Garba Shehu, the former Vice President’s media officer told NEXT when contacted on this matter that “Atiku has always wanted more world renowned companies to compete for construction business in Nigeria” and that “When Gitto made an entry into the country, Intels of which he (Atiku) is a shareholder bought 5% stake. Intels became unhappy with Gitto at certain stage and decided to divest. That ended the relationship.”

The Gitto revelation further puts Mr. Atiku in a negative spotlight at a time when he is under harsh scrutiny for money laundering by congressional investigators in the United States.

Last Wednesday, the United States Senate’s permanent sub-committee on investigations, which is affiliated to the committee on homeland securities and intergovernmental affairs, stated in its report that “from 2000 to 2008, Ms. Douglas (Jennifer Abubakar) helped her husband (Atiku Abubakar) bring over $40 million in suspect funds into the United States, including at least $1.7 million in bribe payments from Siemens AG, a German corporation, and over $38 million from little known offshore corporations, primarily LetsGo Ltd. Inc., Guernsey Trust Company Nigeria Ltd., and Sima Holding Ltd.”

more @ next

while you were out

Joint Statement on Nigeria by the US and the EU, January 30, 2010

We express our deep regret at the recent violence and tragic loss of lives in Jos, and extend our sympathies to the bereaved and injured.

We urge all parties to exercise restraint and seek peaceful means to resolve differences between religious and ethnic groups in Nigeria.

We call on the federal government to ensure that the perpetrators of acts of violence are brought to justice and to support interethnic and interfaith dialogue.
Nigeria is one of the most important countries in sub-Saharan Africa, a member of the UN Security Council, a global oil producer, a leader in ECOWAS, a major peacekeeping contributing country, and a stabilizing force in West Africa. Nigeria’s stability and democracy carry great significance beyond its immediate borders.We therefore extend our support to the people of Nigeria during the current period of uncertainty, caused by President Yar’Adua’s illness. We extend our best wishes to the president and his family, and join the Nigerian people in wishing him a full recovery.
Nigeria has expressed its resolve to adhere to constitutional processes during this difficult time. We commend that determination to address the current situation through appropriate democratic institutions. Nigeria’s continued commitment and adherence to its democratic norms and values are key to addressing the many challenges it faces, including electoral reform, post-amnesty programs in the Niger Delta, economic development, inter-faith discord and transparency. The gubernatorial elections in Anambra on 6 February will be a milestone in the journey towards electoral reform and a signal of Nigeria’s commitment to the principles of democracy.
We are committed to continue working with Nigeria on the internal issues it faces while working together as partners on the global stage.

Signed: US Secretary of State, Hillary Rodham Clinton; British Foreign Secretary, David Miliband; French Foreign Minister, Bernard Kouchner; EU High Representative Catherine Ashton, London, United Kingdom

Translation: You are going down. Make it look believable. Kiss kiss hug hug, your friends at the NWO. Our motto: One big happy family!

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First let’s review what our esteemed leaders cite as the CAUSE of Nigeria’s problems: Yar’Adua’s illness.

As reported in The Guardian on January 8, 2010, Nigeria’s president has literally been missing for 45 days (now 68 days). Allegedly he went to Saudi Arabia for treatment of a health problem, without telling anyone, and he hasn’t been heard from since. Just up and left, he did. His absence has paralyzed the Nigerian government at a time of severe crisis. A constitutional crisis at the worst possible time, dragging on interminably. Nobody seems to have any power to unstick the problem.

How convenient is that? I suggest that it is exceedingly convenient for some people — who you might guess would be the sorts of people who like chaos and instability — while being impossibly inconvenient for Nigerians.

After all, Nigeria is a critically important country in West Africa, and West Africa is a critically important component in various contrived narratives driving our world to the brink of destruction. One need only look at the joint US and UN statement to realize that if Nigeria falls apart politically, it becomes a blow-up doll for the NWO mind-fuckers. That is why Hillary and friends very properly encourage the Nigerians to cross every democratic t and dot every democratic i, and color within the lines at all times please (rule of law rule of law), while they hope and pray for Yar’Adua’s “full recovery.” Surely they have also heard that:

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.

That was two weeks ago. For all we know he may not even be alive.

But nobody wants to talk about that. They might loosen the log-jam. And the log-jam happens to be useful because it breeds chaos.

^^^^^^^

Yesterday in Nigeria, a militant group called MEND called off a truce with the paralyzed Nigerian government. I guess that was to be expected, given the log-jam.

The main militant group in the oil-rich Niger Delta called off its cease-fire with the government Saturday morning, dealing a potential death blow to a presidential amnesty program aimed at ending violence that has crippled production in the West African nation.

The Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta issued a statement saying it would no longer abide by the unconditional Oct. 25 cease-fire President Umaru Yar’Adua had negotiated with the group. The militants warned oil producers with pipelines and personnel working in the creeks and swamps of the Delta that it would wage an “an all-out onslaught” against them.

The MEND “warns all oil companies to halt operations as any operational installation attacked will be burnt to the ground,” the statement read. “Oil companies are responsible for the safety and welfare of their workers and will bear the guilt should any harm come upon their staff in the event of an attack.”

The group added: “Nothing will be spared.”

Militants in the Niger Delta have attacked pipelines, kidnapped petroleum company employees and fought government troops since January 2006. They demand that the federal government send more oil-industry funds to Nigeria’s southern region, which remains poor despite five decades of oil production.

In response, Shell has decided to sell off some assets in the Niger Delta. Chevron announced that 20,000 barrels of oil per day had been shut in due to sabotage threats.

According to Reuters:

The rebel group [MEND] was severely weakened after its senior leaders and thousands of others accepted clemency and disarmed under a presidential amnesty which ended last October. It is unclear who is now running the group.

Candidates include:

Ateke Tom: A former gang leader in Rivers State in the eastern Niger Delta for around a decade, Ateke Tom set up the Niger Delta Vigilante (NDV), one of several groups to enjoy strong backing from politicians who used them to help rig elections….Security sources say he was also heavily involved in oil bunkering, a lucrative trade in industrial quantities of stolen crude smuggled onto the international market.

Farah Dagogo: Also based in Rivers state, Dagogo started out as a top commander loyal to former militant leader Mujahid Dokubo-Asari, whose Niger Delta People’s Volunteer Force turned over thousands of weapons in return for amnesty in 2004.

Government Tompolo: He was responsible in particular for attacks on Chevron and thought to be a major oil bunkerer. Security forces used helicopters and gunboats to attack his camps around Warri, capital of Delta state, last May.

Well, it was awfully good of those chaps to give such clear and menacing warnings so that the oil company people can get out of the way. Let’s give credit where credit is due. I mean, *some* terrorists would just go right in there and start firing away, bombing wedding parties and marketplaces, and killing a bunch of innocent people. You know what I’m saying?

All the same, Something Must Be Done.

^^^^^^^

Actually, there was a peculiar incident last week in the Niger Delta. (map from wikipedia, click to enlarge)

A helicopter flying from Bonny to Port Harcourt crashed on Tuesday afternoon at Isiokpo, near Port Harcourt, the Rivers State capital, killing all four persons aboard….The zonal coordinator of the Nigerian Emergency Management Agency (NEMA), Emenike Umesi, said the four occupants comprised two pilots and two engineers, said to be of Lieutenant Commander Rank.

The NEMA chief, in charge of the south-south zone, said the aircraft took off from Bonny, which is home to the Liquefied Natural Gas plant….Security agents at the accident scene however said naval personnel recovered “some vital documents” at the scene.

Vital documents?

Addressing journalists on the incident, Naval spokesperson, Commodore David Nabaida, said the names and identities of four dead naval officers were the Pilot of the Helicopter, Lt Commodore Ahmed Tijani Yusuf with official number NNL/2071; Co-Pilot, Lt Commodore Ahmadu Yahaya; Lt Commodore Mailafia Ibrahim, who is the Base Intelligence Officer, Delta and Seaman Illiya Uyuhili, the aircraft’s technician.

…He said the aircraft was on a routine patrol, to investigate a case of illegal bunkering around Akasa and had left from its Warri base and after carrying out its surveillance, was to go to Port Harcourt Airport to refuel before returning to its base but crashed a few kilometers to the airport.

Asked whether there was any connection of the crash with the remnant of militants still operating in the creeks, Nabaida said: “Absolutely not; as I told you, we were at the site of the aircraft accident, the President’s amnesty programme has been working, beside, there is nothing that shows that the crash is connected with anything militancy”.

Riiight. So even though two of the three possible suspected candidates who might be running MEND have been involved in oil bunkering in the past, there’s absolutely no reason to suspect that a naval helicopter investigating oil bunkering would be shot down by said militants, a couple of days before they called off their truce no less.

^^^^^^^

In February 2007, National Geographic published a piece about the Niger Delta.

Nigeria had all the makings of an uplifting tale: poor African nation blessed with enormous sudden wealth. Visions of prosperity rose with the same force as the oil that first gushed from the Niger Delta’s marshy ground in 1956….
Everything looked possible—but everything went wrong.

Dense, garbage-heaped slums stretch for miles. Choking black smoke from an open-air slaughterhouse rolls over housetops. Streets are cratered with potholes and ruts. Vicious gangs roam school grounds. Peddlers and beggars rush up to vehicles stalled in gas lines. This is Port Harcourt, Nigeria’s oil hub, capital of Rivers state, smack-dab in the middle of oil reserves bigger than the United States’ and Mexico’s combined. Port Harcourt should gleam; instead, it rots.

Beyond the city, within the labyrinth of creeks, rivers, and pipeline channels that vein the delta—one of the world’s largest wetlands—exists a netherworld. Villages and towns cling to the banks, little more than heaps of mud-walled huts and rusty shacks. Groups of hungry, half-naked children and sullen, idle adults wander dirt paths. There is no electricity, no clean water, no medicine, no schools. Fishing nets hang dry; dugout canoes sit unused on muddy banks. Decades of oil spills, acid rain from gas flares, and the stripping away of mangroves for pipelines have killed off fish.

Nigeria has been subverted by the very thing that gave it promise—oil, which accounts for 95 percent of the country’s export earnings and 80 percent of its revenue.

The sense of relentless crisis has deepened since last year, when a secretive group of armed, hooded rebels operating under the name of the Movement for the Emancipation of the Niger Delta, or MEND, intensified attacks on oil platforms and pumping stations, most operated by Shell Nigeria.

With each disruption, the daily price of oil on the world market climbed. According to the Brussels-based International Crisis Group, escalating violence in a region teeming with angry, frustrated people is creating a “militant time bomb.”
Isaac Asume Osuoka, director of Social Action, Nigeria, believes that callousness toward the people of the delta stems from their economic irrelevance. “With all the oil money coming in, the state doesn’t need taxes from people. Rather than being a resource for the state, the people are impediments. There is no incentive anymore for the government to build schools or hospitals.”I can say this,” Osuoka said firmly. “Nigeria was a much better place without oil.”

Well, that’s just it. The poor people happen to be in the way, from the perspective of the very important people who would like to go about extracting Nigeria’s natural resources in peace and quiet, thank you very much.

No one can deny the sheer technological achievement of building an infrastructure to extract oil from a waterlogged equatorial forest. Intense swampy heat, nearly impenetrable mangrove thickets, swarming insects, and torrential downpours bedevil operations to this day. But mastering the physical environment has proved almost simple compared with dealing with the social and cultural landscape. The oil firms entered a region splintered by ethnic rivalries.

Ahh, yes, the impossible to please poor people and their interminable “ethnic rivalries.” That’s always a good justification. That way when the oil companies go in there to take over the natural resources and make life next to impossible for people who lived off the land, without providing any consolation prizes like electricity or clean water or schools or medicine, those damn poor people are bound to get all uppity and start causing trouble. Happens every time.

Who could have predicted??

“After 50 years, the oil companies are still searching for a way to operate successfully with communities,” says Antony Goldman, a London-based risk consultant. The delta is littered with failed projects started by oil companies and government agencies—water tanks without operating pumps, clinics with no medicine, schools with no teachers or books, fishponds with no fish. “The companies didn’t consult with villagers,” says Michael Watts, director of the African Studies Program at the University of California, Berkeley. “They basically handed out cash to chiefs. It wasn’t effective at all.”

A fifty fucking years learning curve? How about they know exactly what they’re doing. How about they do this on purpose. It’s a critical part of the business model to make the land inhospitable so that the people die or leave. The People Are In The Way. OK? That’s what’s going on. And everybody involved knows it. That’s why Hillary Clinton had to complain about all the corruption in Nigeria just this last week. It’s UNBELIEVABLE she says, making sure to mention patsy underpants. Yes, those corrupt Africans. Where do they get off?

^^^^^^^

Well, it’s like this. Those corrupt African leaders hook up with corrupt leaders from The West. One big happy family. Even Lev Leviev.

1. Former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo came under fire for selecting Yar’Adua, knowing him to be sickly. He vehemently denied this. Perish the thought.

2. But, last May US investigators asserted that Obasanjo and others took millions of dollars in bribes from American and European contractors, including Halliburton, to allow the companies to build a liquid natural gas plant in Bonny. This scandal goes back years and ensnares various countries and Important People of The West.

3. Another of the accused in that very scandal, Sani Abacha, has been fighting Swiss authorities for ten years over an estimated three billion dollars misappropriated from Nigeria and stashed in Swiss bank accounts. The money laundering case has dragged on for so long with the help of people in London and elsewhere (see time line here). The Swiss authorities ordered $350 million to be returned to Nigeria last week. An unnamed person in Monaco has been charged.

4. France would like to invest in Imo state (look at the map), to help Nigeria branch out from their dependence on oil and gas. More like a twig than a branch…

5. Nigeria and Angola vie for top petroleum producer spot, and Angola has been able to pull ahead in 2009 due to the violence in Nigeria. Lucky break for the Angola investors.

6. Angola hydrocarbon sector investors: Lev Leviev, China, India…

7. To insure that all these deals will go along smoothly, Angola’s parliament prepares to expand the powers of the president, making him head of state, head of government, and head of the armed forces. The new constitution eliminates the position of prime minister and adds a vice president. VPs are always very useful. And the president may serve two five year terms. All of which contrasts markedly from the situation in Nigeria.

So it looks like Nigeria will be violently dismantled and reassembled somewhere down the road, after the “militants” take over the place and wreck havoc, and tie into some drug smuggling or terrorist operations against The People of The West, justifying some military intervention or something.

And Angola will go on to a brighter future, perhaps marred by the occasional terrorist incident but otherwise firmly in the grip of a sponsored dictatorship.

That’s how it goes in the big happy family.

clash of civilizations in hyperdrive

the plane crash in Lebanon was noted but ECLIPSED by some other stories…

1. Guardian: Baghdad suicide bombers kill dozens in hotel attacks, three separate attacks on targets used by WESTERNERS in center of Iraqi capital. BUT WHO DIED? DID THE PEOPLE OF THE WEST DIE OR DID THE IRAQIS DIE? one cannot help note the symbolism of the names of the hotels and the method of attack: suicide bomber at the Palestine hotel, explosion at Babylon hotel, and of course the gunman at the Al Hamra hotel, and then the decoy “white van” broke through the security barrier to explode. oh wow do you think they are using symbolism? i think so. just like the new al queda threat will be from women suicide bombers who look Western.

At least 30 people have died in an attack by suicide bombers and gunmen on three hotels used by westerners in central Baghdad. Iraqi police gave the number of dead and said more than 40 were wounded by the blasts, which occurred in the last hour.

The attack began when a suicide bomber detonated his charge in the Palestine hotel. Minutes later a second explosion caused severe damage to the Babylon hotel, which is used by Iraqi travellers and sometimes for government meetings.

Gunmen then opened fire outside the Al Hamra hotel, where many foreign journalists are based. Security guards and Kurdish peshmurga fighters returned fire and the street was cleared, but a white van with a flashing red light – looking like an emergency vehicle – broke through the hotel’s security barriers and exploded inside the perimeter.

One report said the explosions took place in the Abu Nawas street area and that smoke was seen in the parking lot outside the entrance to the Ishtar Sheraton hotel, next to the Palestine, with the shock wave blowing open doors and sending dust into nearby offices.

more @ guardian

2. meanwhile, the Independent reports that Iraq executes Saddam henchman “chemical Ali” — such timing, that he would be hanged now, when he has been sentenced to death four times already since 2007. miraculous that the brutal Arab criminal is finally brought to justice for his crimes against humanity.

Iraq today executed Ali Hassan al-Majeed, the Saddam Hussein henchman widely known as “Chemical Ali”, for crimes against humanity, government spokesman Ali al-Dabbagh said. “The death sentence against Ali Hassan al-Majeed has been carried out,” Dabbagh said. Majeed, a cousin of Saddam’s who earned his nickname because of his use of poison gas, was executed by hanging, the government said in a statement.

more @ independent

3. and the Indians — we can’t forget them. they are practically People of The West now that they have officially come over to Team US & Israel. so there was a plot to hijack an Indian plane and that sparked a UK alert

LONDON: Indian authorities are reported to have warned British intelligence agencies about a suspected plot by al-Qaeda-linked terrorists in Pakistan to hijack an Air India or Indian Airlines plane, originating from Delhi or Mumbai, and “crash” it into a British city….

In a front-page report, The Sunday Times claimed that India told MI5 about the alleged plot early last week after the interrogation of Amjad Khwaja, a suspected militant, arrested in India recently. Khwaja was described as a “leader” of Harkat-ul-Jihad-al-Islami, which is alleged to have been behind terror attacks in India.

The newspaper said the warning was contained in a “detailed threat assessment sent to MI5 by the Indian Intelligence Bureau.”

more @ the hindu

4. here is the information on Khwaja, who was plotting attacks on Western tourists in Goa, a place you may recall from reading aangirfan: David Headley and Jews. in addition, see this jpost article ‘israelis in Goa disastrous for tourism’

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?cid=1260447428661&pagename=JPArticle%2FShowFull

Khwaja is believed to have hired a suicide bomber to target 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.

more @ mid day

5. but wait. there’s so much more. the veil ban in public buildings courtesy of Sarkozy

PARIS - A FRENCH parliamentary panel will stop short of recommending a ban on face-covering veils in the street and instead will ask for the garb to be banned in public facilities such as hospitals, the panel’s president says. The 32-member panel’s report due Tuesday culminates a six-month inquiry into the wearing of all-encompassing veils that began after President Nicolas Sarkozy said in June that they are ‘not welcome’ on French territory.

more @ straits times

6. Germany: extremist Swede gives anti-Islam party millions, because nobody takes the danger of Islam seriously enough. right.

Swedish far-right businessman Patrik Brinkmann has announced he will pour €5 million into the coffers of Pro NRW, an anti-Islam populist party based in Cologne….In a report to air Sunday night on Germany’s public broadcaster WDR, Brinkmann says he fears Germany is becoming “too foreign” and that Sharia law will be introduced in the country.

“However, there are no, or very few, politicians who take this seriously,” Brinkmann said.

more @ the local

7. UK: Muslim leader says more 7/7 attacks to hit

BRITAIN faces more 7/7-style ­suicide bomb attacks for generations because Muslims have not fully integrated into British society, a senior Muslim adviser to the Government warned yesterday. Iqbal Wahhab, a leading businessman and member of the ­Ethnic Minority Advisory Group, fears that a ­terrorist attack on the UK could be imminent….He blamed the Government for the divisions between some ­Muslims and the wider British community. And he claimed that high unemployment among ­Muslims was also partly to blame.

more @ express

8. in Pakistan, the insidious Indian propaganda — opinion, excerpt:

Stereotyping Muslims justifies all actions to destabilize Pakistan and even to launch a war if necessary.

The hate against Muslims is a combined strategy of US, Israel and India. The so called ‘War on Terror’ has a covert design to suppress the Islamic resurgence and undermine its identity through a well orchestrated plan. Pakistan should not dismiss it as a ‘whimsical idea’. There is a method in madness. They have killed around 90,000 Muslims in Kashmir in alone notwithstanding regular communal riots like the one in Gujrat, where Muslims were cut into pieces like vegetables. Besides Muslims, Sikhs have been killed to the tune of 250,000 in the operation against Golden Temple. A significant number of Christians have been slaughtered only in Orissa. Dalits are being most brutally treated at the hands of Hindus and yet the propaganda is to whitewash the Hindu propensity for violence. Quaid-e-Azam Muhammad Ali Jinnah was indeed a man of great foresight. He saw through the game, the Hindus were playing that they were the true inheritors of the British Empire and every one else was to be left high and dry.

Unfortunately, the rest of the world is uncritically accepting the Indian propaganda that it is a vibrant democracy, quite oblivious of the reality that India is notoriously following its apartheid repressive policy against its religious minorities. They are covertly planning to destabilize through subversion in Balochistan, tribal areas and extending it to Punjab and Karachi. George Orwell said very rightly: “In time of universal deceit, telling to truth is a revolutionary act.” The truth must be heeded to and our countrymen must rise against Indian machinations.

read the whole thing

Ethiopian plane crash in Lebanon

1. Ethiopian plane crashes in Lebanon. Africa + Lebanon. the plane erupts into flames and crashes into the water. no survivors. no black box yet. UNIFIL and various resources are diverted to the area to help recover the dead bodies. the weather was bad, but the plane burst into a fireball. JUST LIKE THE helicopter crash that killed the Mexican-Israeli Moshe Saba. meanwhile, Clash of Civilization narrative goes on full tilt in The West. coverage of this accident definitely not top of the fold. in The West the discussion is on People of The West being endangered by Muslims. meanwhile the Muslims are dying in plane crashes, wars, etc.

“The weather undoubtedly was very bad,” Aridi told reporters at the airport.

Witnesses reported seeing flames as the plane plunged into the sea.

One employee of a gas station near the site of the crash said he heard an explosion and saw “a huge ball of fire” as the plane crashed.

Another witness said: “It was like the whole sea lit up.”

The accident took place amid heavy rains and storms in Lebanon in the past two days that have caused heavy flooding and damage in some parts of the country. The Lebanese army, navy as well as the United Nations Interim Force in Lebanon (UNIFIL) were assisting in the rescue, Aridi added. “We have contacted everyone, inside and outside the country, that can assist us and the Lebanese navy, the army and UNIFIL have joined in the rescue,” the minister added. He said the French organization responsible for technical investigation of civil aviation accidents was taking part in the probe. A government official said Cyprus was assisting in the search and rescue efforts. He said a U.N. helicopter from Cyprus was dispatched to the site. A German naval UNIFIL boat was also at the site.
more @ naharnet

2. UNIFIL and many other resources diverted to plane crash site. what might be the opportunity cost of diverting all these resources, at a time when Lebanon needs to watch many things very closely? UK, Cyprus, US, Germany, France, UNIFIL……. — all now paying attention to the crash site.
A massive international task force comprising planes, helicopters and ships was on Monday scouring the Lebanese coast for survivors after an Ethiopian jet plunged flaming into the sea, officials said. Lebanon, the United Nations, the United States, Britain, France and Cyprus hastily scrambled search and rescue teams after Ethiopian Airlines Flight 409, carrying 90 passengers and crew, crashed shortly after takeoff at around 2:30 am (0030 GMT) on Monday.

more @ naharnet


3. Hariri sends divers to find the black box


4. overview of crash — France sent BEA, an organization that handles technical investigations of civil aircraft accidents. that should help (wink).

Lebanese President Michel Suleiman said he did not think the plane had been brought down deliberately. As of now, a sabotage act is unlikely. The investigation will uncover the cause, Suleiman told a news conference.

According to one source, residents on the coast saw a ball of fire crashing off Na’ameh.

Wake said the plane, built in 2002, last underwent a maintenance check on Dec. 25 and no technical problems were found. It had been leased by Ethiopian Airlines in September 2009 from CIT Aerospace.

more @ express india

Nigeria corruption tentacles

1. Obasanjo breaks silence on Nigeria’s sick president — denies that he picked someone known to be an invalid

LAGOS, Jan. 22 (Xinhua) — Former Nigerian leader Olusegun Obasanjo has said ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua showed a medical report that certified him fit to contest the 2007 Presidential election. Responding to questions at a media forum in Abuja, Obasanji said Yar’Adua had all the qualities of a good leader, at the time he was chosen as his party’s candidate for the election….“So, for people to say that I, Olusegun Obasanjo deliberately brought somebody who is an invalid to rule this country is the height of insult,” he stressed. “That I have put so much into this country in peace and in war and given this country to somebody who will run it down,” he asked. “No body picked Yar’Adua so that he will not perform, If I did that, God will punish me because I love this country so much and there is no reason why I should do that,” Obasanjo told his audience.

more @ chinaview

2.14 days to decide Yar’Adua’s fate

A Judge in the country, Justice Dan Abutu, has ordered the cabinet to pass a resolution on Yar’Adua’s fitness within two weeks after a former lawmaker brought a legal case against the government, saying his failure to transfer power was in breach of the constitution.

…The Former President, Olusegun Obasanjo, said “If you take up a job, elected, appointed or whatever, and then your health starts to fail you and you will not be able to deliver, to satisfy the people you are supposed to serve, then there is a path of honour and path of morality. If you don’t know that, you don’t know anything. I will stop on that note,” he told a briefing in Abuja on Thursday. The ex-President is still an influential figure within the ruling party and his closeness to the Vice President means his influence over government could grow should he (the VP) take over.

more @ newstime africa

3. $350 M seized from Abacha’s son by Swiss authorities. unnamed Monaco intermediary penalized for abetting money laundering

Authorities in Switzerland have ordered the seizure of assets worth around $350m from Abba Abacha, son of Sani Abacha, ex-President of Nigeria. The order came as a result of a suspended custodial sentence emanating from a conviction of being a member of a criminal organisation. Abba, one of the sons of the late military dictator, has also been convicted for graft.

The investigation which started in 1999 was as a result of a request by the Nigerian government to the swiss authorities to recover an estimated $3 billion misappropriated by Sani Abacha during his four-year rule as Nigeria’s Head of State. The government of Nigeria has since recovered $700m form the Swiss. In a statement, the Geneva Canton’s justice office said “The first order of the sentence issued yesterday by the examining magistrate found that Abba Abacha, born November 9, 1968, son of the late General Sani Abacha, was guilty of participation in a criminal organisation,”

The Swiss authorities also confirmed that they had convicted an intermediary who is currently living in Monaco, for having been part of the criminal organisation run by the Abacha family. In a statement the authorities said “The person has also been ordered to pay the Canton of Geneva 10million Swiss Francs — which corresponds to illegal gains obtained from these culpable activities,” It seems the Abacha family used members of their family, close aides and business associates to transfer the money into different Swiss bank accounts.

source: newstime africa

4. World Bank president and uber-zionist NWO creep Zoellick to visit Sierra Leone, Cote d’Ivoire, and Ethiopia for the African Union Summit, starting Tuesday.

5. it appears that some of the money in question, in the Swiss bank accounts, needed to be laundered because it came from Halliburton and KBR, to bribe Nigerian officials in the course of building a liquefied natural gas plant in Nigeria — NEXT Magazine, March 2009

At least three of our former presidents, Sani Abacha, Abdusalami Abubakar, and Olusegun Obasanjo, received millions of dollars in bribes from American and European contractors retained to build Africa’s first liquefied natural gas plant in Bonny, Rivers State, according to US law enforcement officials. Also enmeshed in the vast and formalized bribery scheme is a long line of ministers, bureaucrats, top politicians,state and local officials and former oil minister Dan Etete, according to American investigators.

This cast of characters, charged with running the affairs of 150 million people in the heart of Africa,received stacks of US dollar bills in briefcases and sometimes in bullion vans. In other cases they received their payoffs via electronic bank transfers involving such financial institutions as Citibank. In all, these eminent Nigerians accepted at least N27 billion in bribes from the oil services companies in exchange for billions of dollars in contracts to build our liquefied natural gas plant, US investigators say.

very comprehensive article at NEXT

6. timeline of Halliburton and Nigeria bribery scandal

1988: Dresser Industries acquires M.W. Kellogg, ten years before Dresser merges with Halliburton.

September 1994: M.W. Kellogg and three other companies form a partnership known as TSKJ, incorporated in Medeira, Portugal. Each partner owns a 25 percent equal share. Kellogg’s three other partners are Technip of France, Italy’s Snamprogetti, and Japan Gasoline Corp. The partnership submits a bid to Nigeria LNG to build a natural gas plant in Nigeria. Nigeria LNG is owned by the Nigerian government and Royal Dutch/Shell Group. TSKJ’s $2 billion bid is not immediately accepted even though it was 5 percent lower than a bid submitted by competitor, Bechtel Group, Inc.

November 1994: As TSKJ awaits Nigeria’s decision on the bid, Wojciech Chodan, an executive at Kellogg and later a consultant for Kellogg Brown & Root, meets with London lawyer Jefferey Tesler, who is known for his contacts and friendly relations with the Nigerian government, including its dictator Gen. Sani Abacha. During the meeting, they discussed channeling $40 million to Gen. Abacha through Mr. Tesler’s firm Tri-Star, based in Gibralter, Spain.

March 1995: TSKJ formally hires Mr. Tesler as agent; TSKJ’s bid has still not been accepted by Nigeria LNG. Mr. Tesler’s employment contract is signed by an M.W. Kellogg executive on behalf of the TSKJ partnership. Mr. Tesler had been working on behalf of TSKJ prior to March 1995 and the employment contract was given to Mr. Tesler as a reward for his prodding of Nigerian officials. The employment contract provided that Mr. Tesler would be paid $60 million if Nigeria awarded the construction contract to TSKJ. Mr. Tesler’s Tri-Star was contracted to receive at least $160 million in five agreements signed between 1995 and 2002, and the funds were directed to bank accounts in Switzerland and Monaco.

etc. more @ halliburton watch

7. December 2003: will the French indict Cheney? guess not….

One of France’s best-known investigating magistrates, Judge Renaud van Ruymbeke–who came to fame by unearthing major French campaign finance scandals in the 1990s that led to a raft of indictments–has been conducting a probe of the Nigeria deal since October. And, three days before Christmas, the Paris daily Le Figaro front-paged the news that Judge van Ruymbeke had notified the Justice Ministry that Cheney might be among those eventually indicted as a result of his investigation. …The suspected bribe money was mostly ladled out between 1995 and 2000, when Cheney was Halliburton’s CEO. The Journal du Dimanche reported on December 21 that “it is probable that some of the ‘retrocommissions’ found their way back to the United States” and asked, did this money go “to Halliburton’s officials? To officials of the Republican Party?” These questions have so far gone unasked by America’s media, which have completely ignored the explosive Le Figaro headline revealing the targeting of Cheney. It will be interesting to see if the US press looks seriously into this ticking time-bomb of a scandal before the November elections.

more @ dissident voice

8. June 2009: interview with Moshood Fayemiwo, Part 1 and Part 2

9. interview with Obasanjo — date unknown but probably March 2009

the flames burning all around

Current interlinked narratives — apologies for the length:

1. UK raises the terror alert to “severe.” AS A RESULT of underpants bomber, the security services have tightened their vigilance.

Thus we shall be grateful for the crisis narrowly averted, hmm? It has borne the fruits of hyper-vigilance, a symptom, by the way, of Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. But who’s counting…

“We still face a real and serious threat to the U.K. from international terrorism, so I would urge the public to remain vigilant and carry on reporting suspicious events to the appropriate authorities and to support the police and security services in their continuing efforts to discover, track and disrupt terrorist activity,” he said, adding that U.K. residents and travelers need to be “more aware.”Home Secretary Alan Johnson, as reported in USA Today

This brings UK policies in line with US DHS policies. We are all on the same page now, hallelujah. A terrorist attack is “highly likely,” but there’s no “intelligence to suggest that an attack is imminent.”

What is the “intelligence” “suggesting?”

1. The increased concern followed intelligence analysis. Communications and activities of terror suspects were being monitored. The new “severe” threat is the second highest possible.

2. ‘We have a very adept and very focused counter-terrorism facility, people should be reassured by that.’ He said that moving to the different threat level meant people had to be more alert.

3. The danger assessment was made by the Joint Terrorism Analysis Centre, which constantly reviews the situation. It looks at the intent and capabilities of terror groups. Although it means an attack is now believed to be almost certain, Mr Johnson stressed it was not expected in the very near future.

So the attack is “almost certain,” but not in the “very near future.” The “intelligence” “suggests” people need to be more “alert,” and more “concerned,” and to “carry on reporting suspicious events” to the “appropriate authorities” and “to support the police and security services” in their efforts to “discover, track and disrupt terrorist activity.” Roger that.

Note that all such vigilant efforts can be tied back to patsy underpants, who, by almost taking down that commercial airliner over Detroit, alerted us once again to the ever-present menace of international terrorism. SO he did us a favor in a way. See? He justified the increased vigilance, which now pays off. We Hope. Because, of course, we know the terrorists are so very wily, and they seem magically able to outwit even our best, most vigilant efforts. Let’s hope we don’t have any more of that unfortunate bugaboo: Human Error.

2. The tie to Africa and the Caribbean.

The UK terror alert measures followed a Tuesday meeting between Brown and President Obama. Brown said Britain and other countries face a “sharply growing threat” from al qaeda linked terrorists in Yemen, Somalia, Nigeria, Sudan and Ethiopia.

On Thursday Newtime Africa reported that the Jamaican cleric Abdullah al-Faisal had finally been deported, on the second attempt, from Kenya back to Jamaica. He was due in court. He left Kenya on a private chartered Gulfstream jet, last week.

Nairobi - Kenya has sent controversial Jamaican-born Muslim cleric Abdullah al-Faisal back to his homeland, a state prosecutor said Thursday, days after protests demanding his release turned deadly. Edward Okello told a Nairobi court where al-Faisal was due to appear that the cleric had been put on a private jet to Jamaica. Al-Faisal, who has served time in the UK for inciting racial hatred and is on international terrorist watch list, arrived in Kenya from Tanzania in late December, and was arrested around a week later. Kenya tried to deport him to The Gambia earlier this month, but he was sent back. Police on Friday broke up a demonstration in support of al-Faisal, firing bullets and tear gas into the crowd. Five protesters died from bullet wounds. The 45-year-old cleric was sentenced to four years imprisonment in Britain in 2003 after he called on his followers to kill Jews and Hindus. He was deported upon his release in 2007. Born Trevor William Forrest in St James, Jamaica, he went to Saudi Arabia aged 16 and converted to Islam.

Yes, he seems to get around, that notorious terrorist hater. He must have connections. But now, and I tell you this with a straight face, his whereabouts are not exactly known. Because, evidently, of the many righteous people in positions of authority, who have declined to issue him a transit visa, lest he pollute their pristine airspace with his terrorist fumes…or something….I guess it’s not exactly Human Error, or maybe it is but it is Well Intentioned. In any event it seems EXCEEDINGLY OBTUSE AND LEGALISTIC CAN’T SEE THE FOREST FOR THE TREES for people who claim to be serious about fighting terrorism twenty four seven.

Their first effort stalled after several countries denied him an intransit visa and airlines that fly to friendly countries refused to transport him….Al Faisal’s exact location was not immediately clear. Officials say he had already left Kenya on a privately-chartered Gulfstream jet. But leader of the Kenya Muslim Rights Forum Al-Amin Kimathi, told the media the preacher was still at Nairobi airport. However sources at the airport later confirmed the plane had left, but not until several hours after he had been due in court.

Another source: First Tanzania refused him entry, and then on his way to the Gambia, an airline refused to take him beyond Nigeria because he is on several international terror watchlists.“We wanted to be furnished with documents to show which anti-terrorism police unit officers followed him, who is the pilot, which plane, and such other documents,’ Harun Ndubi said.

Another source: In Nairobi, Immigration minister Otieno Kajwang’ appealed to Britain and the United States governments to allow a-Faisal to transit through their countries. He said the government was stuck with the preacher because all routes to Jamaica must connect through either Britain or America.

The minister said if al-Faisal was to be flown out of the country by the national carrier, Kenya Airways, the connection would be at Gatwick in Britain then to Kingston, Jamaica. However Britain has been adamantly opposed to allow al-Faisal to transit through London. The preacher once served a four-year jail term in that country for hate speech.

The other option available to Kenya, according to Mr Kajwang’ said, was an offer by the Qatar government allowing al-Faisal to transit through its capital Doha. However, the flight must connect through Miami in Florida, USA.

South Africa had also accepted to allow the preacher to pass through its airport en route to Brazil who have no problem either. But the flight has to go through Havana, Cuba, where authorities have declined the arrangement.

As such, Mr Kajwang’ said, Kenya was left “with the last option of hiring a plane but it must connect through somewhere to fuel and again we do not have the money.” Al-Faisal was expected in Kingston on Wednesday, the Jamaican newspaper reported.

Another source: Radical Muslim cleric Sheikh Abdullah El-Faisal is expected to arrive in Jamaica today. A Senior Officer in the Jamaica Constabulary Force told the Gleaner that El Faisal is to arrive at the Norman Manley International Airport in Kingston sometime this morning. The source also said the controversial cleric is to be placed under extra scrutiny by the police. However, the source declined to elaborate on the matter.

Despite international reports of the deportation, the Police High Command and the Minister of Foreign Affairs have both claimed ignorance of the exact date of arrival of El Faisal. They have also said that no extra security measures are to be implemented against the cleric despite the fact that he is on an international watch list of terrorists.

What a pain in the ass. Finally, it appears that he did indeed arrive safely in Jamaica! Phew! Traveling in style like a Rock Star.

JAMAICAN-BORN Muslim cleric, Sheikh Abdullah al-Faisal, was quizzed by Special Branch investigators for nearly an hour [hoo boy that sounds like a brutal interrogation! - ed.] when he returned to the island last night.

One investigator made it clear that al-Faisal had not broken any laws here, but said the police wanted to make sure they knew where and how to find him “because of the international attention he has received”.

“He is a very smart man. He can tell us he is going to be here or there, but we want to make sure,” said one investigator, who recorded the licence plate of the minibus that whisked al-Faisal from the Norman Manley International Airport. [GOOD IDEA! - ed.]

Confronted by reporters as he exited the airport, the controversial Muslim cleric said he was too tired to answer any questions after two days of flying.

He would not disclose the route his plane took, but said the flight had been paid for by a South African company.

Informed sources told The Gleaner that after leaving Kenya, al-Faisal’s plane made fuel stops in the West African country of Burkina Faso, the Republic of Cape Verde and Antigua.

One source said al-Faisal told investigators the trip cost US$500,000.

The controversial cleric was ordered deported by Kenyan officials who labelled him a security threat. However, since the deportation order, several countries, including the United States, have refused to allow planes carrying al-Faisal to fly over their air space or provide him with an in-transit visa.

(I can’t believe they made him carry his own bags!)

This is as good a time as any to point out that some people in Nigeria and some people in Jamaica find it grossly unfair to be associated in the public mind with patsy underpants and notorious criminal al-Faisal, seeing as both men were raised and educated elsewhere.

“This is just one instance of a Nigerian who, it is clearly established, has no link with any fundamentalist group or any interest group within Nigeria, not even with his parents….America should look inward and search their souls, there is something wrong with their system and they should not punish Nigerians who are very law-abiding and good international citizens for the failure and irresponsibility of American operatives, Nigeria will not take that.” - Nigerian Senate President David Mark

“Indeed, he is a citizen of Jamaica by birth and no one can deny him access. However, he was taught and trained in a foreign territory and not in Jamaica. For example, he was converted to Islam and completed eight years of studies at a university in Saudi Arabia. He resided in the United Kingdom for 26 years and was deported from that country on May 25, 2007 after spending time in prison for criminal offences…His only connection to Jamaica is by birth, and he did not relinquish his citizenship or ties with Jamaica. Therefore, Jamaica has to accommodate such an individual in a country that already has a tarnished image. Abdullah al-Faisal has created a bad image for himself and has cast a bad shadow on everybody living in Jamaica, especially the Muslim group whose members are law-abiding citizens. Upon his arrival, authorities will have their work cut out for them in order to monitor his whereabouts.” — letter to the editor, Jamaica Observer

Except that the authorities appear to be treating al-Faisal like a ROCK STAR after his half mil private chartered Gulfstream flight paid for by some South African company after the US and UK were prevented — by a fit of moral compunction — to facilitate the criminal’s extradition to a court of law.

Weird, huh? After all that talk about vigilance.

3. Meanwhile, Gates had barely left India for Pakistan when the terrorist threats began in earnest there.

http://cbs2.com/national/Britian.terror.threat.2.1443420.html

This move by British officials comes as Indian authorities issued a terrorism alert over chatter that al Qaeda operatives planned to hijack a plane. India has largely been free of terror attacks since 10 heavily armed militants affiliated with a Pakistan-based militant group rampaged through the commercial capital Mumbai for three days in November 2008, killing 166 people.

India issued a terror alert at all its airports Thursday after the government received warnings about a possible attack, aviation spokeswoman Moushumi Chakravarty said.

A report in The Indian Express newspaper, which Chakravarty confirmed, said intelligence officials had uncovered a plot by militants linked to al Qaeda and the Pakistan-based Lashkar-e-Taiba group to hijack an Air India or Indian Airlines flight destined for an unspecified South Asian country. There were no indications that the United Kingdom was in any way related to the uncovered hijack plot.

I collected about twenty or so stories this week here and here to flesh this out. The overall arc is the US will give cover to India while Pakistan-linked terrorists attack India or another Southeast Asian country, involving India. The key point being, evidently, to justify a response from India.

Just like the patsy underpants attack justified a response from the US and the UK.

This post deals with the connections between India, Pakistan, Southeast Asia and terrorism.

4. Meanwhile, the Clash of Civilization fires burn brightly, and Nicholas Sarkozy has the gasoline ready just in case.

But the UK is in Europe. In order for terrorism to be an international menace, problems must be seeded all over the world. *YOU* may experience difficulty traveling, but unlike you, terrorists use their mysterious international connections to travel, so that they show up halfway around the world, dammit, to commit mayhem in The West, and nobody can understand anything except that they came from a Muslim country.

Nicholas Sarkozy seems to have a special skill for mind-fucking. Notice that he parrots, almost religiously, whatever position Tel Aviv favors. Notice at the same time, he plays kiss kiss hug hug with Lebanon. Israel wants to bomb Lebanon again, just as they did in 2006. Make no mistake about it. Whether it’s Ghajar, or the Palestinian refugee camps in Lebanon, or an attack on UNIFIL — something will take place to justify attacking Lebanon. And Lebanon is connected to Hizbollah, and Hizbollah is connected to Iran, and so whatever happens it will progress like a lit fuse with Wile E. Coyote until it reaches Iran.

To that end, Sarkozy makes various inflammatory statements. http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3838323,00.html

French President Nicolas Sarkozy said Saturday that he is “convinced that Iran is pursuing a nuclear program and the Israel will not abide that,” the London-based Arabic-language newspaper al-Hayat reported.

According to the report, Sarkozy, who met with Lebanese Prime Minister Saad Hariri in Paris, said France has proof that Tehran is developing a nuclear bomb and that Israel may choose to take action to neutralize the threat.

Oh, well, PLEASE DO SHARE THE “PROOF!”

The paper also quoted Sarkozy as saying that if given a choice between Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad and Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, he would choose the latter.

The French president also spoke of the recent international sanctioned proposed against the Islamic Republic by the UN Security Council, saying such sanctions may soon become a reality.

Meanwhile, Sarkozy also announced that Paris was willing to supply Beirut with whatever military equipment it needed.

Talk about running both sides of the conflict. Even though France worries, they just worry half to death, that the weapons will end up in Hizbullah’s hands.But, at the same time, they don’t want to leave the Lebanese unprotected.

Sources close to the French president told al-Hayat that Sarkozy said his country “cannot support and protect Lebanon’s independence without giving its military the necessary means of defense.” France, he reportedly added, needs neither the US nor Israel’s permission to support Lebanon’s independence. Should Israel views the issue as problematic, he added, “We will reach an understanding with it on the matter.”

In any case, there’s nothing to worry about because France and Israel are friends, and the only danger to Lebanon comes from Hizbullah and Iran. !!

Kouchner said Lebanese’ mounting concerns amid Israeli threats of another war were “not justified.” “Israel is our friend, and if there was a threat to Lebanon, it will only come from a military adventure carried out by Hizbullah in the best interest of Iran,” Kouchner warned.

Un-flipping-believable. So while all that is going on, Sarkozy — big world leader — keeps Muslim women in his cross-hairs in France, making sure that the French people have an annoying distraction caused by Muslims, while spinning it all as a morality play, and being a big tease about the whole thing just to keep the tension simmering.

Mr Sarkozy last week reiterated his view that the full veil was not welcome in France “because it is contrary to our values and contrary to the ideals we have of a woman’s dignity”. But he stopped short of calling for a legal ban in all public places, as proposed by some members of his party.

Another source: In a country whose national emblem is Marianne, a bare-chested woman, there is deepening concern over the all-encompassing garb, often black or brown and worn with gloves, attire typical in Saudi Arabia and the Gulf states. Here, it is widely viewed as a gateway to radical Islam, an attack on gender equality and other French values, and a gnawing away at the nation’s secular foundation.

And of course he faithfully channels whatever Bibi would say regarding Iran.

French President Nicolas Sarkozy on Friday called for “strong measures” by the United Nations Security Council against Iran, to exert pressure on Tehran to return to negotiations on its nuclear program. Speaking in Paris, Sarkozy said that the European Union should also “assume its responsibilities” in putting pressure on Iran to enter into talks.
Sarkozy warned that hesitation by the international community on the issue would carry “a great weight of responsibility”, reports Reuters. “Despite all our efforts, and a new engagement by the United States, and despite our ambitious proposals for cooperation, the Iranian authorities are blocked in a one-way street of proliferation and radicalism,” he said in an address to diplomats based in France.
“Today, they have added to that the brutal repression of their own people,” he added.

On Thursday, US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton vowed that world powers would “not back down” in the face of Iran’s continued refusal to prove its nuclear intentions are peaceful. Iran has shunned a United Nations-brokered nuclear fuel deal, aimed at easing the standoff over its nuclear program. Tehran, which insists that its nuclear program is for civilian purposes, has vowed to press forward with its uranium enrichment program, despite UN demands to halt such work.

They demand Iran prove a negative, and they offer NO PROOF of Iran’s supposed nuclear program. They have none. If France has some proof, show it to the world. There’s probably nothing there but another forged document.

Why does this next war need to happen? The nuclear program narrative justifies what they want to do — which is bomb various targets in Iran. Iran’s alleged nuclear program, for which no evidence has ever been provided, makes a good excuse to bomb Iran’s oil fields — to control Iran’s resources. Which must happen because the failing fiat currency, the US dollar, needs to be replaced, and they don’t want any Islamic non-usurious banking system luring their wage slaves away. Who controls the currency? The Rothschilds and the Rockefellers and the other banking families.

All the rest is psyops and profiteering and human sacrifice.

Africa developments

1. bibi says “infiltrators” from Africa dangerous to israel — another barrier needed to save israel. you know it must be hard to be as wonderful as israel.

Prime Minister Binyamin Netanyahu on Thursday warned that ongoing illegal African immigration posed a threat to Israel, and announced that he will ask the government to endorse a plan to erect a barrier along Israel’s border with Egypt to prevent infiltration from Africa. The barrier is meant to prevent an expected “flood” of African immigrants seeking jobs in Israel, Netanyahu said.

According to Netanyahu’s plan, border guards and electronic systems will safeguard the proposed barrier, which will be partly above ground. In addition tothe barrier, the government will work to increase law enforcement against employers who hire illegal foreign workers.

Addressing the Manufacturers Association General Assembly, Netanyahu warned that African immigrants infiltrating Israel from Egypt were changing the “demographic landscape” in Israel. “I don’t know if you have been to Eilat and have seen what’s going on there. In Tel Aviv there are places you wouldn’t recognize, this is something that must be stopped,” Netanyahu said.

The problems are accumulating and could have disastrous implications if they are not solved, the prime minister warned. “One of the problems is the result of Israel’s successful economy- the economy is currently considered as developed, and in international comparisons we are weathering the financial crisis better than almost all the developed countries. The outcome is that we are rising up towards the First World. Unfortunately, this is not the situation in the Third World,” Netanyahu explained. “Some of the states and economies in our area are suffering immensely. That is the reason for the attraction- our economy is growing, and in the process attracts people from underdeveloped countries. In fact, Israel is the first and only country that people from the most economically deprived countries in the world can reach by foot,” Netanyahu said. “The illegal immigration of illegal workers to Israel may increase, changing our demographic landscape,” Netanyahu added, warning of “negative” social, cultural and national implications. “It must be stopped,” he concluded.

http://www.jpost.com/servlet/Satellite?pagename=JPost/JPArticle/ShowFull&cid=1263147945689

2. Kenyan government to continue with crackdown on illegal immigrants

The Minister said security forces were concerned with the dangers posed by illegal aliens in the country, particularly Somalia’s Al-Shabaab sympathisers whom he blamed for taking part in demonstrations last Friday….The Internal security minister maintained that the Jamaican cleric Sheikh Al-Faisal stay in the country pretense a great danger to the national security and the government was working on modalities to deport him in his country of origin and it was only a matter of time before he was deported. Newstime Africa has however learnt that Al-Faisal could be deported tonight since he is to appear in court tomorrow following court ruling last week that he do so.

more @ newstime africa

3. police and private security in Africa, and dangerous partnerships  — corruption as police protection becomes something you pay for

With crime on the rise and government police forces ill-equipped and distrusted by many of the people they are supposed to serve, Africa’s well-to-do are turning to private security companies for protection. But at what cost to the public? Investigation.

…the absence of police protection for the majority while private companies guard the wealthy few is common all over Africa.

Historically African police units were tools of colonial repression, Adedeji Ebo, who oversees the security sector reform team in the UN Department of Peacekeeping Operations, said. Only a few countries have successfully transformed their police into service institutions. “That is a fundamental deficit about policing in Africa,” Mr. Ebo observes. “Rather than being associated with safety, the uniform is often seen as a source of fear and oppression, abuse and extortion.”

…As the gap between the population’s need for security and government’s ability to provide it widened, wealthier citizens have turned to the private sector. The number of private security companies has mushroomed. In Nigeria, some 1,500 to 2,000 security firms employ about 100,000 people. Kenya has about 2,000 companies. But because private security officers are generally not allowed to carry guns, security firms often informally “hire” police officers to accompany their patrol vehicles. At first glance such cooperation may appear to help both the police and security firms be more effective. However, as researchers have discovered, these arrangements can actually reduce public security instead of improving it.

more @ afrik.com

4. money laundered through real estate market in Kenya

The hike in real estate prices in the Kenyan capital has prompted a public outcry and a government investigation this month into property owned by foreigners. The investigation follows allegations that millions of dollars in ransom money paid to Somali pirates are being invested in Kenya, Somalia’s southern neighbor and East Africa’s largest economy.

Even as housing prices have dropped sharply in the United States, prices in Nairobi have seen two- and three-fold increases the last half decade.

“There is suspicion that some of the money that is being collected in piracy is being laundered by purchase of property in several countries, this one being one of them,” said government spokesman Alfred Mutua. “Especially at this time when we are facing global challenges of security such as terrorism and others, it is very important for us to know who is where and who owns what.”

more @ newsmeat

5. France wants to invest in Nigeria’s Imo state — very specific — i wonder what kind of “agricultural” programs and “natural resources” are in Imo?

LAGOS, Jan. 21 (Xinhua) — The French government has the intention of investing in southeast Nigeria’s Imo state, the News Agency of Nigeria reported on Thursday, citing Consul General of the French Embassy in Nigeria Jean-Luc Bodin.

…He said he was impressed with the agricultural programs in the state. The state had a chance to benefit from the research breakthroughs of the Tropical Institute, based in France, Bodin told the governor.

According to him, Nigeria remained France’s biggest social and economic partner in the continent, stressing the need for Nigeria to diversify its economy and reduce its dependency on oil and gas. Bodin said he would scout for intermediate investors who would be interested in other sectors of the economy, apart from oil and gas. He advised Nigeria to intensify efforts at promoting its image abroad to encourage foreign investors to show interest in the country’s economic potential.

Earlier, Ohakim told the consul general that the state had other economic potential apart from oil and gas. He urged France to look at the state’s agriculture, health, transportation and education sectors. The governor said the state government had strived to provide the enabling environment for foreign investors to operate.

He added that now was time for France to be more committed to the affairs of Nigeria and Africa as a whole, lauding the policies of French President Nikolas Sarkozy. He urged the consul general to reach out to French investors because the state was blessed with abundant human and natural resources that would guarantee good returns on investments.

source: chinaview


coincidence?

1. ICTS — providing airport security to the following countries:

The company prides itself on employing 1,300 persons and providing security services to airports in 11 countries including France, Britain, Spain, Hungary, Romania and Russia.

http://www.haaretz.com/hasen/spages/1141434.html

2. SE European countries jointly combat human trafficking

Romania, both a source and a transit country for human trafficking, passed the Law on Combating Trafficking in Persons in2004. It has also set up the National Agency against people trafficking….In Romania’s southern neighbor Bulgaria, also a source and transit country, victims are trafficked from the Middle East, Ukraine, Moldova and Romania through Bulgaria to Germany, Belgium, France, Italy, Spain, Austria, Norway, the Czech Republic, Poland, Greece and Turkey. About 15 percent of the human trafficking victims in the country are children.

read more @ chinaview