Archive for category UK

vultures in africa

vulture11b1. China warns Zimbabwe: we are not ‘friends’ — pay back the money you owe us

Deputy Prime Minister Arthur Mutambara says the Chinese want all loans to be repaid before loosening its purse. According to the Mutambara the Chinese President Hu Jintao revealed to him during a brief meeting at the World Economic Forum in Switzerland that he considers Beijing relationship with Harare as ’business partners’ and not ’friends’.

The Chinese are quoted telling the Mr. Mutambara that: “We’ll not condemn you publicly but we’ll not give you cash”. And according to the Deputy Prime Minister, “unless we do the right thing the Chinese will not work with us.”

The two countries have signed a series of agreements in infrastructure, tourism, energy and mining but the cooperation has largely not translated into an improved standard of living for ordinary Zimbabweans.

Zimbabwe has literally handed over control of most sectors of the economy to the Chinese during the past few years in return for short-term financial assistance to enable Mugabe’s government to ride one crisis after another.

more @ afrik.com

2. nice. about Mugabe…

Are the people of Zimbabwe really celebrating Robert Mugabe’s 86th Birthday? What is there to celebrate about this aberrant human form? Thirty years in power and nothing good to show for it. He is determined to cling on to power for the rest of his life despite embarrassingly losing an election to a more dignified and respectable opposition leader and refusing to hand over the reins of government. Mugabe is not only ruthless, he is incapable of showing remorse and lacks all human form of compassion. On close examination, it is possible that he has an inherent mental condition. Why? Because of all the abnormalities contained in his dispositions and behaviour. When the lust for power deprives anyone of a second thought faculty, you become your own victim. Because you lose control of your sanity as a result of your desperation to satisfy your ego-driven tendencies.

more @ newstime africa

3. Angola awards $340m deal to Daewoo Shipbuilding, S. Korea, to deliver 5 oil carriers to state-owned Sonangol (link)

mm hmm. Sonangol, Lev Leviev… see here: excitement always follows Lev Leviev, posted on January 28, 2010

1. Lev Leviev tied to Chinese intelligence, business interests in Angola — Sonagol

The suspicions were spelled out in a report recently compiled by the U.S.-China Economic and Security Review Commission, which was established by Congress in 2000 in order to “monitor, investigate and submit to Congress an annual report on the national security implications of the bilateral trade and economic relationship between the United States and the People’s Republic of China, and to provide recommendations, where appropriate, to Congress for legislative and administrative action.” The report noted, among other things, that the group of Chinese corporations has business ties with Israeli businessman and diamond magnate Lev Leviev.

2. India, Angola agree to cooperation for hydrocarbon sector — there’s Sonagol again

Luanda (Angola), Jan 27: India and Angola on Wednesday said that the two countries will enter into Memorandum of Understanding (MoU) to provide an overarching framework for cooperation in the hydrocarbon sector.

During the meeting a MoU was signed between ONGC Videsh Ltd. (OVL) and the National Oil Company of Angola namely, Sonangol, for cooperation in the exploration sector.

4. Nigeria: Obasanjo, corrupt ex-Nigerian president,  pays tribute to Tony Blair, war criminal and alleged pedophile, for helping Nigeria, Blair also meets Goodluck Jonathan kiss kiss hug hug

Abuja — Former President Olusegun Obasanjo and former British Prime Minister, Tony Blair, who is in Nigeria for the THISDAY’s Nigeria at 50, 2010 Awards, yesterday relived the diplomatic interactions that contributed to the success of their administrations.

Speaking at an Inter-faith Malaria Initiative organised by the Nigeria Inter-faith Action Association with funding support from Federal Government, World Bank, Centre for Inter-faith Action on Global Poverty and the Tony Blair Faith Foundation held at the Kuje Town Hall in Abuja, Obasanjo said the former British premier made a significant contribution to Nigeria’s exit from the Paris Club and other creditor nations.

Obasanjo, whose entry into the venue of the event elicited wild, nostalgic cheers from the audience, said while he travelled round the globe to get Nigeria off the Paris Club debt yoke, he received promises from world leaders which were not fruitful thus prompting his government to search for a facilitator and a member of the Group of Seven industrialised nations (G7) which they found in Mr. Blair.

He said the debt relief allowed the country to channel resources into the Millenium Development Goals (MDGs) projects notably funds needed to fight infant mortality and morbidity occasioned by such diseases as malaria.

…Also yesterday, Blair visited Acting President Goodluck Jonathan at his Akinola Aguda residence, Presidential Villa, Abuja and commended him for holding the country together in the face of the daunting political leadership facing the country.

Blair also expressed concern about recent political developments in the country and thanked Jonathan for the skilful way he has handled the country.

more @ allafrica

5. George W Bush and Dear Condi also wish Goodluck Jonathan Good Luck i think he’s gonna need it

Nigeria’s Acting President, Goodluck Jonathan, yesterday evening in Abuja secured the support of the former President of the United States, George Bush who assured him of the world’s support in making his job a success. Mr. Bush and his entourage were in Nigeria for the ThisDay Nigeria at 50 awards….

“Terrorism is alien to Nigeria,” Mr Jonathan said. “Nigeria and US are strategic partners for global peace and development.” He also thanked the US government for its concern over the health of President Umaru Yar’Adua who is currently undergoing treatment in a Saudi hospital.

Mr Bush was accompanied on the trip by former US Secretary of State, Condoleezza Rice and US Ambassador to Nigeria, Robin Sanders. On the Nigerian side were the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Ojo Maduekwe and his solid minerals counterpart, Diezeani Allison Maduekwe.

read more @ next

6. oil agenda and bush visit

United States of America’s insistence on establishing a military high command for Africa called AFRICOM in the Gulf of Guinea is not for the love of the continent, but principally for the lust for its oil resources.

Over the years, the U.S. has significantly increased its oil imports from Africa, mainly through most of its companies operating in Nigeria, Angola, and to a lesser extent from Equatorial Guinea, Sao Tome and Sudan.

The expectation of an average American is that by 2015 about 25 percent of its oil imports would come from Africa, essentially from the Gulf of Guinea. Therefore, any threat to sustained oil exploration and production activities in the region is, invariably, a direct threat to America’s interest.

Maintaining stability in the centres of oil production in Africa has remained a prime concern to the US.

The threat from China With China also venturing outside for other sources of oil to support its quest for solutions to its energy needs, the competition has heightened the pressure on the U.S. to safeguard its existing oil interests.

read more @ next

7. Tony Blair — also to Liberia to help “lift Liberia”

The founding principle behind Tony Blair’s Africa Governance Initiative, which is a registered charity in the UK and the US, is that Africa’s solutions are going to come from Africans and Africa’s leaders – leaders like President Johnson-Sirleaf. This is why Tony Blair is expanding his work into Liberia, building his support to African leaders that began in Rwanda and moved to Sierra Leone.

more @ next

8. Obasanjo: also not happy with this Goodluck Jonathan business — it’s not a permanent solution, especially since he is practically back in office himself with Yar’Adua out of the picture, and if some corruption charges start popping up about Jonathan….you never know.

Kaduna — Nigeria’s former President Olusegun Obasanjo has said that the nation’s resort to the Acting Presidency as a way of stabilising the polity in the absence of ailing President Umaru Yar’Adua should not be regarded as a permanent solution.

Instead, he said further steps ought to be taken to arrive at a more dependable and permanent solution to the existing political uncertainty in the country.

more @ all africa

9. Nigeria: investigator of financial crimes assassinated

A former senior investigator with the Economic and Financial Crimes Commission (EFCC) Danjuma Mohammed was yesterday shot dead in the Gwarimpa area of Abuja. He was ambushed by gunmen as he returned home from a trip from Minna, Niger State.

Mr Mohammed, a DeputySuperintendent of Police and top aide of the former EFCC boss, Nuhu Ribadu, was responsible for several high profile cases during Mr Ribadu’s leadership of the EFCC leading to landmark conviction of some corrupt government officials. He was until his assassination yesterday a deputy investigator at the Federal Inland Revenue Service. Mr. Mohammed was one of the first casualties of the power play in the EFCC when Farida Waziri took over the three years ago.

His assassination is the second against financial crimes investigators. In November 2009, Abubakar Umar, a lawyer and special assistant to Ahmeed Al-Mustapha, registrar of the Corporate Affairs Commission (CAC), was killed and burned in his car in Abuja.

Police investigations are yet to yield any result.

more @ next

10. chaos in Ivory Coast (Zoellick was there recently) as protesters resort to looting and vandalism

In the Ivory Coast city of Bouake, hundreds of protesters marched through the city center, setting fire to cars, smashing up shops and looting a local government administrative office. This comes amidst the backdrop of President Laurent Gbagbo dissolving the government and the electoral commission one week after a row over voter registration. A group of protesters broke into the regional governor’s office and stole equipments as they chant that they don’t want the President anymore. “Gbagbo must quit now! He cannot stay in power,” they said. Ivorian security forces dispersed protesters in the south western town of Gagnoa, using tear gas.  Five protesters were killed a day before after police fired into the crowd of demonstrators.

more @ newstime africa

11. one dead three injured in Rwanda attacks

Eighteen people are reported injured after three simultaneous grenade attacks in Kigali, Rwanda’s capital. The attacks that looked choreographed left one person dead as they went off in the city’s busiest points last night. According to state radio, five of the injured were in serious condition following the attacks on a busy bus station, a restaurant and a building housing city centre businesses. Grenade attacks have increasingly become a popular way of venting anger or revenge, mostly on unsuspecting crowds in the last three years in Rwanda, where many of those cases remain largely unsolved.

more @ newstime africa

their arrogance knows no bounds

1. the UK knew in advance that Israel would use stolen UK passports for a hit. israel knew in advance that this little kabuki of the UK slapping israel’s wrist would have to take place and look believable.

The British MI6 intelligence agency was tipped off by Mossad that Israeli agents were going to carry out an ‘overseas operation’ using fake UK passports, the Daily Mail reported Friday morning.

According to the UK newspaper, a British security source quoted a Mossad agent as saying that “the British Government was told very, very briefly before the operation what was going to happen.” The source explained that the tip-off was not a request for permission to use British passports but more a ‘courtesy call’ to inform British security services that ‘a situation’ might blow up. “There was no British involvement and they didn’t know the name of the target. But they were told these people were traveling on UK passports,” he was quoted as telling the Daily Mail.

The Daily Mail report came several hours after a 20-minute meeting in London between Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor and a senior British diplomat on Thursday, over the fake British passports apparently used in the assassination of Hamas military commander Mahmoud al-Mabhouh in Dubai. The report hinted that Israeli intelligence chiefs understood British authorities would have to ’slap them on the wrist’ and reportedly added: “The British government has to be seen to be going through the motions.”


jpost: http://www.jpost.com/International/Article.aspx?id=169139

2. daily mail story:

The Israeli agent rejected suggestions that intelligence-sharing between the two nations might be damaged.

He said Mossad was handling several sources within the UK Muslim community and added: ‘There is no question of jeopardising that information flow.’

The revelation of a ‘tip-off’ came after Israeli ambassador Ron Prosor was ‘invited’ to the Foreign Office and asked to co-operate fully with the inquiry into the forged passports by the Serious Organised Crime Agency.

Some people think that Mossad, MI6 and the CIA are trying to destabilise Dubai.Dubai’s aim is to make money from helping Iran to beat sanctions.

“Now the Americans (or the Israelis – you can take your pick) want to turn Dubai into the Beirut of the Gulf. That was actually a headline last week – in The Jerusalem Post, of course – which painted Dubai as dangerous as it was economically calamitous.” (Robert Fisk: Passport to the truth in Dubai remains secret )

3. meanwhile, in the most brazen display of greed and hubris i think i’ve ever seen, 85 victims of Hizbullah sue Iran’s top banks

In the first such case, 85 American, Israeli and Canadian victims of Hizbullah rocket attacks have filed a lawsuit against Iran’s leading banks.
The suit, Kaplan v. Central Bank of Iran, was filed in federal court in Washington, D.C. and seeks $1 billion in compensatory damages and an unspecified sum of punitive damages.

The plaintiffs, whose family members were killed or who were themselves injured by rockets fired at Israel by Hizbullah between July 12 and August 14, 2006, allege that Iran’s Central Bank and Bank Saderat provided the Shiite group with “over $50 million in financial support in the years prior to the attacks with the specific intent of facilitating Hizbullah terrorist attacks against American and Israeli targets,” the Israel Law Center, which helped bring the suit, said.

The plaintiffs rest their claims in part on an explicit October 25, 2007 finding by the U.S. Treasury that between 2001 and 2006 Bank Saderat transferred funds from the CBI via Bank Saderat, PLC in London to Hizbullah “to support acts of terrorism.”

naharnet

THIS IS STRAIGHT OUT OF THE JAMES WOOLSEY INTERVIEW AT HERZLIYA, AND HILLARY CLINTON’S SUBSEQUENT BABBLING ABOUT THE REVOLUTIONARY GUARD IN IRAN. IT ALL QUICKLY BECAME US POLICY IN ABOUT A WEEK’S TIME.

4. meanwhile, in a brazen insult to the world’s intelligence, the Ethiopian plane crash is officially caused by HUMAN ERROR. they give us the pilot’s last words. no mention of anything else he might have said up to that point. oh and the pilot ‘made a move’ that made him gradually lose control of the plane, and it remained intact until it hit the water.


A preliminary report said “human error” was the cause of the deadly Ethiopian Airlines plane crash into the Mediterranean Sea last month and that the last words the pilot said to his co-pilot: “We’re finished … God have mercy on us.”
Flight 409 bound for Addis Ababa crashed into sea off the coast of Naameh minutes after takeoff from Beirut airport early in the morning of Jan. 25, killing all 90 people on board.

Pending the outcome of the official report, which is to be announced by the Lebanese government sometime next week, the daily As-Safir on Friday uncovered outlines of the preliminary report.

As-Safir said the investigation team probing the plane crash incident retuned to Beirut from Paris on Thursday and handed over the report to Prime Minister Saad Hariri.

The plane’s two black boxes — data flight recorder and cockpit voice recorder – were separately retrieved among the wreckage and flown to France for analysis by BEA, a French agency that specializes in assisting with technical investigations of air crashes.

As-Safir quoted a reliable source at France’s Aviation Accidents Investigation bureau as saying that the cockpit voice recorder has revealed that the last words the pilot said were: “We’re finished … God have mercy on us.”

The pilot was speaking in Amharic, a Semitic language spoken in North Central Ethiopia.

Audio recordings revealed that the pilot asked the co-pilot to follow instructions by Beirut airport control tower, only to find out that his assistance either did not heed to the orders or did the opposite.

This prompted the pilot to take a move which made him gradually lose control of the plane, the voice recorder showed.

The report said the jet remained intact until it hit water.

Cabinet, furthermore, did not take any decision to close the file on the plane crash incident pending an official report from the Lebanese Army about the search for remains of the remaining victims.

naharnet

UK colluding with Israel?

by Robert Fisk

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

independent

sickening

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

maybe israel can fuck off.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

MEANWHILE:

4. focus on Israel: harvesting Haitian organs

By Stephen Lendman


On January 15, Haaretz reported that:

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

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

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

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

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

She stated:

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

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

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

read more @ after downing street


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

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

How did the Israelis get to Haiti so quickly?

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

read more @ aangirfan

sociopaths at work

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

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

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

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

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

more here

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

why indeed. more @ independent

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

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

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

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

more @ the local

4. march in Cuidad Juarez against Mexican army

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

more @ latin american herald tribune

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

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

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

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

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

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

more @ independent

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

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

more @ guardian

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

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

more @ the local

8. man takes on corrupt UK police officer

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

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

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

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

read more @ news of the world

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

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

IVORYCOAST/

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

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

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

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

more @ afrik.com

the 11th commandment: thou shalt not make controversial comments about Israel

1. UK lawmaker sacked for suggesting that Israel conduct an investigation to clear the names of their medical teams in Haiti. so to clarify: calling for an investigation to CLEAR NAMES is outrageous. she loses her job and has to apologize profusely. there will be NO INVESTIGATIONS! the very act of calling for an investigation LEGITIMIZES THE CLAIMS, see? which are scandalous. and nevermind that the Israelis have been caught with their hands in the organ jar before. that makes no difference. it is always scandalous to suggest such things even when there’s a criminal track record.

Party leader Nick Clegg removed Lady Tonge as a Lib Dem health spokeswoman in the Lords on Friday, describing her remarks as ”wrong, distasteful and provocative”.

It is the second time she has been fired for making controversial comments about Israel.

The latest row followed accusations in the online Palestine Telegraph - of which Lady Tonge is a patron - that members of the Israeli Defence Force (IDF) had been harvesting body parts in the aftermath of the Haiti earthquake.

She subsequently told the Jewish Chronicle: ”To prevent allegations such as these - which have already been posted on You Tube - going any further, the IDF and the Israeli Medical Association should establish an independent inquiry immediately to clear the names of the team in Haiti.”

Fellow Lib Dems were said to have complained to Mr Clegg about her comments.

In a statement issued this evening, the leader said the peer ”apologises unreservedly”.

more @ telegraph

2. Ehud Barak to Mike Mullen: friends overcome differences kiss kiss hug hug

Defense Minister Ehud Barak met with the chairman of the US Army’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, at his office at the IDF Headquarters in Tel Aviv.

Mullen met earlier with IDF Chief of Staff Gabi Ashkenazi and Military Intelligence chief Major-General Amos Yadlin. Before meeting Barak he said the relations between the US and Israel had always been good, and that they would forever be so. The admiral also met members of the Israeli delegation to Haiti during a ceremony held at the Tel Aviv headquarters. He said they “symbolized hope” and the possibility of saving lives whenever possible.

… He also stressed that the Israeli mission to Haiti was extraordinary, and that the quake-stricken country would not soon forget everything that had been done to for them. Ashkenazi said that the delegation showed Israel and the IDF’s true faces. “I am proud to be your commander,” he told the delegation members.

more hagiography @ ynet

http://www.ynetnews.com/articles/0,7340,L-3849390,00.html

3. bibi to visit moscow today-wed.

Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu will visit Moscow next week, the Kremlin said Thursday, after Russia toughened its stance on Iran’s nuclear program. Netanyahu will hold talks with President Dmitry Medvedev on Monday, the Kremlin said in a statement, providing no further detail on the Israeli leader’s program for the Monday-Wednesday visit.

Announcement of the visit came after Russia officially questioned the “sincerity” of Iran’s pledges not to develop nuclear weapons and, in a policy shift, said fresh UN sanctions on Tehran were a “realistic” option. It also followed an official visit to Moscow by Khaled Meshaal, leader of the radical Palestinian independence group Hamas that is classified by Israel, the European Union and the United States as a terrorist organization.(AFP)

naharnet

4. Clinton “fears” that Iran is moving toward a military dictatorship. where did this come from? Woolsey suggested it at Herzliya, and so basically after that they just start talking about it, and that makes it “true.” voila. the power of experts - no evidence required, just an echo chamber.

DOHA - US SECRETARY of State Hillary Clinton said on Monday that she feared Iran is moving ‘toward a military dictatorship,’ with enterprises controlled by the Revolutionary Guard ’supplanting’ the government.

The US chief diplomat told students in Qatar that the United States was not seeking to use military action against Iran to curb its nuclear ambitions but rather seeking to use international pressure through the UN Security Council. Such pressure ‘will be particularly aimed at the those enterprises controlled by the Iranian Revolutionary Guard, which we believe is in effect supplanting the government of Iran,’ Mrs Clinton said.

more @ straits times

5. the real reason for sanctions against Iran

The U.S.-sponsored drive to impose new economic sanctions on Iran has nothing to do with the noble cause of limiting proliferation of nuclear weapons on the planet. It is directly linked to the U.S. military doctrine of establishing ‘full spectrum dominance’ - i.e., military dominance on land, sea, air, and outer space over all other countries in the world. The logical extension of this doctrine is that only countries firmly allied to the U.S. government should be allowed to acquire nuclear weapons or to even develop the capacity to do so.

Israel , for example, is widely-believed to hold secret Nuclear weapons. Yet there is no call for sanctions or investigations of them. The reason is simple: They are a U.S. ally. India and Pakistan have declined to sign the nuclear non-proliferation treaty and have developed nuclear weapons. Yet there is no call for sanctions or investigations of them. The reason is simple: They are U.S. allies.

…As a signatory of the U.N. Nuclear non-proliferation treaty, Iran must not develop nuclear weapons.

However - and this is a crucial point - the non-proliferation treaty gives every signatory the sovereign right to voluntarily withdraw from the treaty on three months notice. After doing so, that country has the absolute right under international law to develop nuclear weapons on its own territory.

North Korea , which originally signed the treaty and later withdrew, has now the legal right to develop nuclear weapons. India, Pakistan, and Israel never signed the treaty and therefore also have had the legal right to develop nuclear weapons.

Instead of acknowledging these realities, western politicians and media have systematically concealed them from the public. In place of the truth they have repeated vague mantras like ‘defying the international community’ (i.e., not bending to the will of the U.S.).

In a typical example of this deceptive rhetoric, U.S. President Obama said a few days ago: “Despite the posturing that its nuclear power is only for civilian use … they in fact continue to pursue a course that would lead to weaponization, and that is not acceptable to the international community.”

The absence of any legal argument in this statement reflects the fact that there is no legal argument against Iran’s nuclear energy program, and that even development of weapons would be legal if Iraq withdraws from the Nuclear Non-Proliferation treaty. Of course, Obama invoking the ‘non-acceptance by the ‘international community’ does not mean the nations of the world; it’s code for ‘the U.S. and its allies’.

more @ pravda

6. attack on Iran ‘worries’ Mullen

JERUSALEM - THE chairman of the US military’s Joint Chiefs of Staff, Admiral Mike Mullen, said on Sunday he was concerned about the consequences of any attack on Iran’s nuclear facilities.

‘The outbreak of a conflict will be a big, big, big problem for all of us, and I worry a great deal about the unintended consequences of a strike,’ Admiral Mullen said.

Apart from saying that ‘it’s pretty hard to be specific about’ the issue, the top-ranking US military official did not expand on his comments.

more @ straits times


above the law

1. border guards ‘key to trafficking in N. Koreans’

North Korean and Chinese border guards play a vital part in the trafficking of North Korean women to China, the Asahi Shimbun reported on Thursday.  In a feature report, the Japanese daily quoted a Chinese border guard as testifying he caught a few female North Korean defectors in their teens and 20s crossing the Duman (or Tumen) River and handed them over to a Korean-Chinese human trafficker.

The Chinese border guard said he gets requests from a trafficker in China and informs his North Korean counterparts, who then ask a trafficker in the North to find suitable women. The North Korean guards then let the women pass in the area on the Chinese guard’s watch. This particular Chinese border guard alone had sold some 40 to 50 women per year this way.

Traffickers reportedly pay about 6,000 to 7, 000 yuan (approximately W1.02 million to W1.19 million) a head. Of the money, 4,000 yuan go to the Chinese border guard, who hands 1,000 yuan over to a North Korean guard. The Chinese guard added, “If they are told they can eat to their hearts’ content [in China], many North Korean women are happy to be on their way.” An estimated 150 human traffickers work in the border area.

source: chosun ilbo

2. Sweden: rape suspicions mount against ex-police chief — possible tie in to sex ring involving “well-known men in high positions”

The allegations directed at a former Swedish police chief suspected of rape continued to grow on Friday with at least five women and girls now thought to be involved in the case. Göran Lindberg, a respected law enforcement official who recently retired after a career spanning more than 20 years, is now suspected of rape and plotting to rape at least five women and girls.

On Friday Södertorn District Court appointed Caroline Rainer as the plaintiff assistant for the seventh woman or girl involved in the police investigation against Lindberg.

…Göran Lindberg, who as an active police officer developed an international reputation for giving talks on the importance of gender equality and the perils of sexual harassment, was arrested on January 25th on suspicion of raping a woman and attempting to rape several children. He was arrested at a hotel in Falun in northern Sweden, where he is suspected of having been in the course of plotting to rape a girl.

The case against Lindberg has its origin in the investigation into a suspicious death in the suburb of Bredäng, in southern Stockholm, in July 2009 when a 60-year-old man mysteriously fell to his death from a balcony.  Lindberg’s name unexpectedly turned up after police launched a preliminary investigation into the suspected murder. During the investigation police confiscated a computer and a mobile phone which belonged to the deceased 60-year-old. When investigators examined the contents of the machines and found the names of several men, their suspicions were aroused and they handed the matter over to the Stockholm County police force.

After intense media speculation into Lindberg’s links to a purported sex ring, police leading the investigation issued a denial that there were further suspects under investigation. “There are no other suspects at the moment,” said Jonas Trolle, who is leading the 25-person police team investigating the case.  ”All the speculation about well-known men in high positions has nothing to do with our investigation,” said Trolle in a statement on January 31st, adding that it was important that the media exercises some restraint.

more @ the local

3. Germany: documents in Kunduz affair may have been destroyed

Military documents detailing the events surrounding a deadly bombardment in Afghanistan now under investigation by the German parliament have reportedly been destroyed.

The news came a day after Colonel Georg Klein, the German commander who ordered the controversial air strike that killed more than 140 Afghans last year, appeared before a parliamentary inquiry to defend his actions. Daily Bild reportedly has obtained documents that prove special forces were involved reading: “Clearance to destroy and liquidate under terms of ZDv 2/30 hereby issued.” This number 2/30 central service command, abbreviated as “ZDv,” indicates that files are to be “shredded or cut up with the shredder so that the contents are neither recognisable nor could be made recognisable,” the paper said.  An inside source on the parliamentary investigative committee told the paper that they believed the documents had been destroyed.

more @ the local

4. and MI5 didn’t do anything wrong either

The head of MI5 has issued a strong defence of the security service, denying that his staff had withheld documents relating to Binyam Mohamed from the parliamentary intelligence and security committee (ISC) or sought to cover up its involvement in the torture of detainees.

The director general, Jonathan Evans, said claims by the Master of the Rolls, Lord Neuberger, that there was a “culture of suppression” within the service were “the precise opposite of the truth”. He also contacted the ISC to deny that the service had withheld documents relating to Mohamed, a former Guantánamo Bay detainee, the ISC’s chairman, Kim Howells, said last night.

more @ guardian

also see aangirfan: MI5 and Shaker Aamer; deaths in Guantanamo

5. the modern day versions of Stella Capes, Mandy Rice Davies, Christine Keeler, etc. (see aangirfan: the classic sex scandal)

…When I move on to Boujis - Princes William and Harry’s favourite club - I find girls who are still pretty ordinary looking. Their particular targets are the wealthy men from landed families and the financial traders who flock to the club, and the only suggestion that these girls are classier than the Movida girls is that they wear tights with their six-inch skirts.

But wherever I go, whatever the club - famous, aristocratic, fashionable or discrete - one thing is the same: it’s shocking how shameless the girls are….They know they’re trading sex for drinks, and the chance of a footballer or a celebrity or a rich boy - depending on the club - taking them back to a hotel for a liaison which, if they’re lucky, that man might actually remember.  Because for these girls, with so many of them literally flinging themselves at the men with money, it’s all about being memorable.

more @ daily  mail

6. Philippines: military exec accuses top cop of complicity in Maguindanao massacre

MANILA, Philippines—A senior police commander of Maguindanao tried to cover up the abduction and brutal slay of 57 people in the province last November 23, a top military official told the court Friday. Taking the witness stand at the hearing of the rebellion case against the Ampatuans, Lieutenant General Raymundo Ferrer said Chief Inspector Sukarno Dicay denied seeing the convoy of vehicles carrying the victims moments before they were held at gunpoint and executed by armed men allegedly led by Andal Ampatuan Jr.

Dicay, then the acting chief of the Maguindanao police office, had previously admitted in a sworn affidavit that he headed the setting up of a checkpoint near the massacre site in Sitio Masalay, Barangay Salman in Ampatuan town. Ferrer, the commander of the Eastern Mindanao Command, said Dicay’s attempt to hide the crime proved that there was a “breakdown of loyalty” of state forces in Maguindanao which later led to a “breakdown of law and order” in the province.

more @ inquirer

7. and just so you know, the only people who ever conduct child sacrifices are impoverished people from the deep back woods of third world countries. capice?

KATHMANDU - NEPALI police said on Thursday they had arrested four people in connection with the death of an eight-year-old girl believed to have been killed in a human sacrifice. Police said the child’s throat had been slit and her body pierced with a sharp weapon. Local media reported her blood was found inside a brick kiln along with religious offerings of money and food.

‘The circumstances of the killing in early December suggest the girl was sacrificed,’ local police official Narhari Adhikari told AFP from Rupandehi district in the south of Nepal. ‘We have arrested four people including the owner of the brick kiln on charges of murder. Two of those arrested confessed they killed the girl as an offering to the gods to bring good fortune to the business,’ he added.

Mainly Hindu Nepal is deeply traditional and religious rituals are a part of everyday life in the impoverished country. Around 80 percent of the 27 million-strong population are Hindu.

Nepal outlawed human sacrifices in 1780 but experts say it is still practised by some communities in poor rural areas. ‘Some people still believe sacrificing human beings will appease the gods, improve their fortunes and raise their social status,’ said Chunda Bajracharya, professor of cultural studies at Kathmandu’s Tribhuvan University. ‘Such beliefs are the outcome of extreme ignorance.’ – AFP

source: straits times

not for nothing

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

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

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

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

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

MOSCOW, February 10 (RIA Novosti)

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

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

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

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

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

more @ people’s daily online

3. Greeks protest as government slashes public spending

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

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

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

more @ guardian, many links

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

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

nice. the EU: one big happy family.

4. Danny Ayalon faces hostile crowd in UK

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

more @ ynet

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

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

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

more @ straits times

6. bases in Afghanistan indicate permanent presence

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

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

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

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

more @ asia times

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

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

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

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

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

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

more @ ria novosti

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

Khwaja speaks

As we learned last week, Mohammed Abdul Khwaja, the terrorist arrested recently in India, gave authorities intelligence that lead to the recent UK terrorism alerts. He was allegedly plotting terrorist attacks on Western tourists in Goa, India, and recruiting locals for training. I did a run-down on Khwaja here.

According to the Indian police, Kwaja has been involved in other terrorist plots.

According to the police, Khwaja, who is a close associate of Shahid Bilal, a Huji commander, masterminded the suicide attack on Hyderabad’s Special Task Force (STF) headquarters in October 2005. Khwaja told the police that he and his accomplices attacked the STF office to avenge the killing of Hyderabad youth Mujahid Saleem by a team of the Gujarat police in the Andhra capital in 2004.

Khwaja rose through the ranks to become a commander of the Harkat-ul-Jihadi, better known as Huji, following the death of his classmate Shahid Bilal, the mastermind of the Hyderabad twin blasts. Educated in a convent school in Hyderabad, he is one among the many youth who took to jihad following the Gujarat riots.

The Gujarat Riots took place in 2002. Apparently, the numbers involved have been the topic of considerable dispute.

“The Gujarat riots was a reaction to the Godhra train burning. An entire coach was burnt down by a mob of 2,000 local Muslims in which 58 Hindus were killed. The victims included 25 women, 14 children that were returning from Ayodhya. Hindu mobs rioted after this incident. Gujarat administration completely failed to control the riots effectively in time. More than 700 people from both the communities were killed in this and the following riots.”

What is the actual toll of Gujarat Riots?
NOT 2000, 5000 or 10000 as may be claimed by the Jihadis and anti-nationals.
The death toll is about 700+ (including 58 killed by the strong mob of 2000)
Hindus 250+ Muslims 400+ Policemen 100+ …….facts and figures

The Gujarat riots might be the topic for another day. But until then, one might consider them a triggering event, as described by this expose in Frontline (India’s National Magazine) from January 2004:

Memories of the demolition of the Babri Masjid had begun to fade, and even the war in Jammu and Kashmir attracted little attention among South Asian Muslims. Then, in 2002, came the communal massacres in Gujarat: and the voice of the Lashkar’s spiritual head began to resonate in many young minds. Along with hard currency, terror has now become a major remittance to India: a source of growing concern to the intelligence community. Lashkar cells based in Kuwait and Dubai have emerged as central to several major terrorist actions in India over the last two years.

Gujarat made Lashkar relevant. The strategy of tension.

Today The Hindu reports new connections made since the arrest of Khwaja:

Mumbai police investigators say they may have succeeded in putting a face to an until-now-unidentified Indian Lashkar-e-Taiba operative who played a key role in guiding the operations of the team that attacked Mumbai in November 2008.
Based on information provided by India’s intelligence services, as well as interviews with arrested jihadists, the police believe the Indian national in the Lashkar’s control room could be Syed Zabiuddin Syed Zakiuddin Ansari, a Lashkar-linked Maharashtra resident who has been a fugitive since 2005.
The unidentified Indian operative was one of several Lashkar personnel who used voice-over-internet links to provide orders to the assault team. Last month, The Hindu had broken the news that one of the operatives in the Lashkar control station spoke Mumbai-inflected Hindi, in stark contrast to the Punjabi used by the others.
Mohammad Ajmal Amir Kasab, the Lashkar terrorist arrested in the course of the assault, said his team had been trained by an Indian national identified as Abu Jindal — the alias also used by the unidentified controller, and a nom de guerre known to have been adopted by Ansari in the past.
The police say Ansari played a key role in a plot to assassinate Gujarat Chief Minister Narendra Modi, an operation meant to avenge the 2002 anti-Muslim pogrom in Gujarat. Ansari is alleged to have been the key leader of an Aurangabad-based Lashkar cell, which received assault rifles and military-grade explosives from Pakistan to stage an attack which would have closely resembled the Mumbai operation in tactics and execution.
Eleven men linked to the Lashkar-e-Taiba and Students Islamic Movement of India were held for their alleged role in the 2005 Aurangabad-based plot. However, Ansari eluded the police after a high-speed car chase and has been sought by Interpol since then. He was last sighted at a Lashkar safe house in Karachi by Hyderabad-based jihadist Mohammad Amjad Khwaja, who was arrested earlier this year.
Imran Babar, one of the two terrorists who took hostages at the Chabad House Jewish prayer centre, was told by the Hindi-speaking controller [Ansari] to call the media with a manifesto to condemn what he described as the Indian government’s “two-faced policy” towards Muslims.
The Lashkar manifesto demanded that Muslims held in jails be released; the Indian Army be pulled out of Jammu and Kashmir; the land on which the Babri Masjid stood be returned to Muslims and a new mosque constructed; India break off its alliance with Israel; and what the organisation called “Muslim states be handed back to the Muslims.”

To recap: Khwaja was planning and recruiting for attacks on Western tourists in Goa. But he was captured. (Phew!) After capture, he gave Indian investigators intelligence that led to the UK raising it’s terror alert. So very helpful. Now he has also given up the intelligence that Ansari, who last got away after a high-speed car chase (eyeroll), was the very same guy with the Mumbai Hindi accent, who directed one of the two terrorists who held the Chabad House, to contact the media with a Muslim “manifesto.”

So you can see what a good thing it was they they captured Khwaja, hmm? He’s providing some “new” information that will allow the investigations to take some twists and turns and swerves, to avoid all the giant holes in the Mumbai narrative.

As an afterthought, it’s interesting to note that Kasab flip flops — until he says something useful. Then he’s a good witness.