Believe nothing

Tuesday, 31 May 2011 06:11

‘NATO warplanes have dropped bombs on a key Libyan town, killing at least eleven civilians and wounding several others, Libyan sources say.

Libya’s state television said on Monday that the airstrike targeted Zlitan, west of the city of Misratah. NATO has conducted hundreds of sorties over Libya since it assumed control of a military campaign to impose a no-fly zone over the country and save civilian lives in late March.’

Read more: NATO Airstrike Kills 11 Civilians in Libya

Monday, 30 May 2011 10:31

‘The running of Britain’s nuclear bomb base at Coulport on the Clyde is to be handed over to a consortium of multinational private firms led by the controversial US arms dealer, Lockheed Martin, the Sunday Herald can reveal.

Defence ministers in Westminster have decided that the highly sensitive job of managing more than 200 Trident nuclear warheads, and arming the Royal Navy’s submarines with them, should be taken over by the group of companies within the next year.

The decision has been condemned by the SNP, trades unionists and disarmament campaigners, who are demanding an urgent rethink. They describe it as a cost-saving, job-cutting “kick in the teeth to the workforce” that will put nuclear safety at risk.’

‘Egyptian Minister of Justice Mohammad Abdul Aziz al-Jundi has said that Israel plans to pave the way for the former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak to escape from the African country.

In an interview with the Egyptian newspaper al-Wafd, Jundi also accused Israel of making efforts to spark a civil war in the North African state, noting that Tel Aviv is seeking to destroy the Egyptian revolution.’

http://www.presstv.ir/detail/182585.html

Focus U.S.A. / ‘The U.S. will have to confront Iran or give up the Middle East’

Amitai Etzioni, professor of International Relations at George Washington University in Washington, D.C., believes the only option available to contain Iran’s atomic ambitions is a series of assaults on its non-nuclear facilities. He maintains that President Obama’s attempts at dialogue have failed, and drastic steps must be taken to prevent the U.S. losing its Middle East dominance to Tehran.

Writing in the U.S. Army’s “Military Review” journal, Etzioni lists four possible responses to Iran’s nuclear program – engagement, sanctions, military strikes and deterrence. He concludes that engagement has failed, sanctions are not likely to work, military strikes on Iran’s suspected nuclear sites are unlikely to be effective either and might only delay the program (Defense Secretary Robert Gates believes this would probably be by one to three years), and deterrence works with rational actors, but it’s a gamble to rely on it with non-rational actors. This, he hypothesizes, leaves strikes on Iranian infrastructure that is not necessarily related to its nuclear program.

Speaking to Haaretz on Wednesday, Etzioni concedes that such a move could be interpreted by Iran as a declaration of full-scale war.

“That’s a fair point,” he says, “but what’s the alternative? The best way will be to sit at the table and solve all our problems peacefully. I was in war, I was in the Palmach [the pre-state Jewish fighting units that became the basis for the Israel Defense Forces], and I don’t like shooting anybody. It comes to the declaration that there are no other alternatives. Sanctions are not going to work, everybody knows that. Assuming that if they have nuclear weapons we are going to contain them – it’s a very risky assumption.”

This option is not mentioned in the mainstream discourse.

“But it was published in the official U.S. army publication as a cover story. It says something, no? It’s not simply what a professor says. I agree that the White House is far from it, but somebody considered it worth discussing. You must assume that the military option covers several options”.

One of the strategic assets of Israel today vis-à-vis Iran is the fact that the Arab countries are on its side. Wouldn’t that vanish in the event of such an attack?

“We do not want Iran to have a nuclear weapon and there is no way you can damage nuclear sites sufficiently by attacking them. There is only one alternative left. I should hasten to add – it’s not a policy Israel has to follow, it’s a policy the U.S. can follow because there are too many missions involved. Some people say Israel should do it and then the U.S. can enter under the excuse that it’s its ally, and some people think coalition is better. Coalition is always better, but in this case it’s very unlikely that many other nations would like to join the Administration.
Professor of International Relations Amitai Etzioni

Professor of International Relations Amitai Etzioni

What’s happening in the Middle East is that the countries are assuming that the U.S. is going to fold and retreat. It’s obviously going to get out of Iraq. The Pakistanis are very suspicious of the US commitments. Syria is moving toward Iran, Turkey is moving toward Iran. So the underlying text in the Middle East is that the next superpower in the Middle East is Iran. So even if you for a moment put aside the nuclear issue – to keep the U.S. credibility to protects its resources and oil, the issue will not be settled in Afghanistan and Iraq, it will finally come down to the confrontation between the U.S. and Iran. So maybe the U.S. should get out of Afghanistan, because it’s not the real war anymore. But if the U.S. is going to let Iran to become a nuclear power – all the other countries, including the Sunni ones, will run to it. The U.S. will have to confront Iran or give up the Middle East”.

So the hope that the Iranian opposition might still bring an inner change is lost?

“I think by now the tyrannical regime succeeded in suppressing the opposition. And another point – I was their guest in Iran in 2002, of the Center for Dialogue Among Civilizations. And I met many leaders in this movement. They were the first to start the nuclear program. They are against religious domination, but there is not a slightest hint that they will stop the nuclear program if they come back to power. Democracy might be wonderful, but even though they are anti-clerical, they are very nationalistic.”

We have the cliché that the clock is ticking. What kind of timetable did you assume while writing this article?

“I don’t have any other information than everybody else has. But there is a rule in decision making – it’s extremely simplistic but very true – it’s better be safe than sorry. So if the option is to hit them one month too early or 10 days after they have a nuclear weapon – I’d rather take the first option. And obviously there is not much time left”.

President Obama offered to the world dialogue as a new paradigm, wouldn’t it shatter this premise?

“The time for engagement has run out. Obama tried it, offered to meet them any time, any place, with no conditions – and they spit in his face. So it’s not going anyplace, it’s not working. The Arab world is moving away from him, Turkey is moving away from him. The notion of engagement and turning another cheek is a wonderful idea, it’s just not working.”

But the damage of throwing it away after a year and a half might cause more damage and erase any credibility left. Then going back to torture sounds fine as well.

“It’s a good point. They should never torture and of course they shouldn’t go back to business as usual. But you cannot conduct international relations [on] goodwill only. And Iran is a very good test of that. Maybe 50 years from now this strategy will win, but in the short term it’s giving up on the Middle East. The U.S. army is exhausted and overstretched, that’s why I think they should get out of Afghanistan. And second, I think it’s an air force job and not an army job. There should be no boots on the ground”.

That’s what the Israeli high command thought at the beginning of the second war in Lebanon – that they could bomb some strategic sites and Hezbollah would fold. It didn’t happen.

“True, there are many studies showing that the air attacks are not as effective as people think they are. But we always come back to the question – if we might try and fail, should we not try? We are talking about the U.S. credibility as an international power. People might think: Iran is not going to attack the U.S., so let them create the bomb and if they get nasty we will drop a nuclear bomb on them. That is a logical position. But you cannot remain in the Middle East as a superpower unless you deal with Iran one way or another.”

http://www.haaretz.com/blogs/focus-u-s-a/focus-u-s-a-the-u-s-will-have-to-confront-iran-or-give-up-the-middle-east-1.297931

Sun, 29 May 2011 15:41:27 GMT

A Human rights investigation in Libya has found that it was the US and its Western allies who cluster bombed the troubled city of Misratah back in April.

The HRI said it has convincing evidence that the cluster bombing blamed on pro-Gaddafi forces was actually carried out by the US navy.

The report says at the time of the attack, Human Rights Watch and a reporter working for US media immediately blamed forces loyal to Libya’s embattled leader Muammar Gaddafi for the cluster bombing that threatened civilian lives.

According to the report, the UN High Commissioner for Human Rights, Navi Pillay and the US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton were quick to condemn the act.

Clinton called the cluster bombing of urban areas an act that posed a lot of challenges to both NATO and the opposition.

International aid agencies and human rights groups had warned of a growing humanitarian disaster in Misratah, Libya’s third largest city.

“We never saw these injuries before. We need experts to assess [the munitions],” said a doctor at a Misratah hospital back in mid-April.

The Libyan regime had flatly denied reports that they have used internationally banned cluster bombs in the ongoing clashes with revolutionaries.

NATO has been bombing Libya since March. Under a UN mandate, the alliance must protect civilians caught up in the battle between the opponents of Gaddafi and his loyalists.

However, many civilians and even anti-Gaddafi forces have been killed since the Western-led war on Libya began in March. Cluster bombs used by coalition forces in Afghanistan and Iraq have also resulted in civilian casualties.

Critics, however, accuse the West of hypocrisy over the offensive on Libya, along with its silence towards the brutal crackdowns on similar anti-regime movements elsewhere in the Arab world, such as in Bahrain, Saudi Arabia and Yemen.

Experts say the main motive behind the Western attack on Libya is the vast oil reserves in the North African country.

http://edition.presstv.ir/TextOnly/detail.aspx?id=182310

The Intel Hub
By Alex Thomas
May 29th, 2011

The stage has been set for a nuclear false flag in America.

Many in the alternative media have wondered if a false flag nuke attack within America is a real possibility. Would they do it? Who would it be? What cities would be targeted?

Recently, The New York Times reported that the United States is running out of a rare gas that is used to detect smuggled nuclear materials.

The reason given is that one arm of the Energy Department is selling the gas much quicker than the other is able to accumulate it.

While this could possibly be a legitimate reason, it seems highly suspicious that a government that is installing a police state nationwide to supposedly save us from terrorists would be unable to obtain the gas needed to detect smuggled nuclear weapons.

Wouldn’t a nuclear attack on America be the MOST important threat to combat?

Unfortunately there is a long history of suspicious nuclear activity in the United States, with cover story after cover story being spread throughout the corporate controlled media.

At this junction in history it seems prudent to lay out some of the more ludicrous stories that have been planted into the minds of the American people.

http://theintelhub.com/2011/05/29/the-stage-is-set-for-a-nuclear-false-flag/

Mon, 30 May 2011 07:01:34 GMT

At least 70 individuals have been killed in southern Yemen as security forces clashed with protesters that were calling for the ouster of President Ali Abdullah Saleh.

Protest organizers reported on Monday that Yemeni forces have killed at least 70 demonstrators in Taizz, according to wire and broadcast reports.

The reports also indicate that government forces set protest camps at Freedom Square on fire as well, injuring scores of protesters in the process.

Witnesses said Yemeni Republican Guard forces, backed by tanks, moved in during the early hours of Monday to disperse demonstrators at the square.

Hundreds of thousands of people have turned out for near daily demonstrations in Yemen’s major cities since late January, calling for an end to corruption and unemployment as well as demanding the ouster of Saleh, who has been ruling the country since 1978.

Observers believe that Saleh is trying to spread fear that Yemen will plunge into chaos without him.

On May 23, clashes broke out between Yemeni security forces and members of the country’s powerful Hashid tribe in capital Sana’a.

Scores of tribesmen and regime forces have been killed in clashes that took place following Saleh’s refusal to sign a power transition deal brokered by the [Persian] Gulf Cooperation Council. Some reports have put casualty figures in recent clashes at well over a hundred.

http://edition.presstv.ir/TextOnly/detail.aspx?id=182372

Britain is training Saudi Arabia‘s national guard – the elite security force deployed during the recent protests in Bahrain – in public order enforcement measures and the use of sniper rifles. The revelation has outraged human rights groups, which point out that the Foreign Office recognises that the kingdom’s human rights record is “a major concern”.

In response to questions made under the Freedom of Information Act, the Ministry of Defence has confirmed that British personnel regularly run courses for the national guard in “weapons, fieldcraft and general militaryskills training, as well as incident handling, bomb disposal, search, public order and sniper training”. The courses are organised through the British Military Mission to the Saudi Arabian National Guard, an obscure unit that consists of 11 British army personnel under the command of a brigadier.

The MoD response, obtained yesterday by the Observer, reveals that Britain sends up to 20 training teams to the kingdom a year. Saudi Arabia pays for “all BMM personnel, as well as support costs such as accommodation and transport”.

Bahrain’s royal family used 1,200 Saudi troops to help put down demonstrations in March. At the time the British government said it was “deeply concerned” about reports of human rights abuses being perpetrated by the troops.

“Britain’s important role in training the Saudi Arabian national guard in internal security over many years has enabled them to develop tactics to help suppress the popular uprising in Bahrain,” said Nicholas Gilby of the Campaign Against Arms Trade.

Analysts believe the Saudi royal family is desperate to shore up its position in the region by preserving existing regimes in the Gulf that will help check the increasing power of Iran.

“Last year we raised concerns that the Saudis had been using UK-supplied and UK-maintained arms in secret attacks in Yemen that left scores of Yemeni civilians dead,” said Oliver Sprague, director of Amnesty International’s UK Arms Programme.

Defence minister Nick Harvey confirmed to parliament last week that the UK’s armed forces provided training to the Saudi national guard. “It is possible that some members of the Saudi Arabian national guard which were deployed in Bahrain may have undertaken some training provided by the British military mission,” he said.

The confirmation that this training is focused on maintaining public order in the kingdom is potentially embarrassing for the government. Coming at the end of a week in which the G8 summit in France approved funding for countries embracing democracy in the wake of the Arab spring, it has led to accusations that the government’s foreign policy is at conflict with itself.

Jonathan Edwards, a Plaid Cymru MP who has tabled parliamentary questions to the MoD about its links to Saudi Arabia, said he found it difficult to understand why Britain was training troops for “repressive undemocratic regimes”. “This is the shocking face of our democracy to many people in the world, as we prop up regimes of this sort,” Edwards said. “It is intensely hypocritical of our leadership in the UK – Labour or Conservative – to talk of supporting freedoms in the Middle East and elsewhere while at the same time training crack troops of dictatorships.”

The MoD’s response was made in 2006, but when questioned this week it confirmed Britain has been providing training for the Saudi national guard to improve their “internal security and counter-terrorism” capabilities since 1964 and continues to do so. Members of the guard, which was established by the kingdom’s royal family because it feared its regular army would not support it in the event of a popular uprising, are also provided places on flagship UK military courses at Sandhurst and Dartmouth. In Saudi Arabia, Britain continues to train the guard in “urban sharpshooter” programmes, the MoD confirmed.

Last year, Britain approved 163 export licences for military equipment to Saudi Arabia, worth £110m. Exports included armoured personnel carriers, sniper rifles, small arms ammunition and weapon sights. In 2009, the UK supplied Saudi Arabia with CS hand grenades, teargas and riot control agents.

Sprague said a shake-up of the system licensing the supply of military expertise and weapons to foreign governments was overdue. “We need a far more rigorous case-by-case examination of the human rights records of those who want to buy our equipment or receive training.”

An MoD spokesman described the Gulf states, including Saudi Arabia, as “key partners” in the fight against terrorism. “By providing training for countries to the same high standards used by UK armed forces we help to save lives and raise awareness of human rights,” said the spokesman.

Labour MP Mike Gapes, the former chairman of the Foreign Affairs Select Committee, said British military support for Saudi Arabia was about achieving a “difficult balance”.

“On the one hand Saudi Arabia faces the threat of al-Qaida but on the other its human rights record is dreadful. This is the constant dilemma you have when dealing with autocratic regimes: do you ignore them or try to improve them?”

http://www.guardian.co.uk/world/2011/may/28/uk-training-saudi-troops

CNN) — An Egyptian who was once a Special Forces officer has been chosen “caretaker” leader of al Qaeda in the wake of Osama bin Laden’s death, according to a source with detailed knowledge of the group’s inner workings.

Al Qaeda’s interim leader is Saif al-Adel, who has long played a prominent role in the group, according to Noman Benotman. Benotman has known the al Qaeda leadership for more than two decades. He was once a leader of the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group (LIFG), a militant organization that used to be aligned with al Qaeda, but in recent years renounced al Qaeda’s ideology.

Benotman told CNN that based on his personal communications with militants and discussions on jihadist forums, al-Adel, also known as Muhamad Ibrahim Makkawi, had been chosen interim chief of al Qaeda because the global jihadist community had grown restive in recent days about the lack of a formal announcement of a successor to bin Laden.

U.S.: Bin Laden communicated with Yemen group

According to Benotman, this was not a decision of the formal shura council of al Qaeda, because it is currently impossible to gather them in one place, but was rather the decision of six to eight leaders of al Qaeda in the Afghanistan-Pakistan border area. Al-Adel was already one of the top leaders of the group.

However, Benotman said, the choice of an Egyptian may not sit well with some Saudi and Yemeni members of al Qaeda, who believe bin Laden’s successor should come from the Arabian Peninsula, a region that is holy to all Muslims. Bin Laden was from a wealthy Saudi family.

The presumed successor to bin Laden is his long-time deputy, Ayman al-Zawahiri, who is also Egyptian. Benotman, who has long been a reliable source of information about al Qaeda, said the temporary appointment of al-Adel may be a way for the leadership to gauge reaction to the selection of someone from beyond the Arabian Peninsula as the group’s leader.

Al-Adel fought the Soviets in Afghanistan during the 1980s. After the fall of the Taliban in the winter of 2001 he fled to Iran. According to senior Saudi counterterrorism officials, from there al-Adel authorized al Qaeda’s branch in Saudi Arabia to begin a campaign of terrorist attacks in the Saudi kingdom that began in Riyadh in May 2003, a campaign that killed scores.

Some reports in the past year have suggested that al-Adel had left Iran for Pakistan.

Pakistan announces key al Qaeda arrest

One of the key issues that al-Adel has to reckon with now is the fallout from the large quantities of sensitive information that was recovered by U.S. forces at the compound in Abbottabad, Pakistan, where bin Laden was shot on May 2. That information is likely to prove damaging to al Qaeda operations.

The selection of an interim leader allows al Qaeda to begin the process of collecting allegiance, or baya, from al-Qaeda affiliates such as the Yemen-based al Qaeda in the Arabian Peninsula and the North Africa-based al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

Baya was a religious oath of allegiance to bin Laden rather than to the organization itself, in the same way that Nazi Party members swore an oath of fealty to Hitler rather than to Nazism. That baya must now be transferred to whomever the new leader of al Qaeda is going to be, which is likely to be al-Zawahiri, given his long role as bin Laden’s deputy.

Opinion: Why bin Laden was radicalized

However, there is scant evidence that al-Zawahiri has the charisma of bin Laden, nor that he commands the respect bordering on love that was accorded to bin Laden by members of al Qaeda.

Now that bin Laden is dead there is a real opportunity for the Taliban to disassociate itself from al Qaeda, as it was bin Laden who, sometime before the 9/11 attacks, swore an oath of allegiance to Taliban leader Mullah Omar as the Amir al-Muminin, “commander of the faithful,” a rarely invoked religious title that dates from around the time of the Prophet Mohammed.

Mullah Omar could now take the position that the new leader of al Qaeda does not need to swear an oath of allegiance to Omar as commander of the faithful.

Such a move would satisfy a key condition for peace talks with the U.S. and Afghan governments: that the Taliban reject al Qaeda, something that they have so far not done.

Al-Adel has been involved in militant activities since the late 1980s, according to an interview with him published in spring 2005 in the Arabic-language London-based daily Al-Quds al-Arabi.

In the article, written by Fuad Husayn, a Jordanian journalist and writer, al-Adel recalled that he was detained for militant activities in Egypt on May 6, 1987.

Al Qaeda’s most-wanted leaders

“The case pertained to the assassination attempt against ex-Egyptian Interior Minister Hasan Abu-Basha. … I was then a colonel in the Egyptian Special Forces,” he said.

Al-Adel also has been involved for years in anti-American activities, other sources indicate.

Mohamed Odeh, one of the bombers of the U.S. Embassy in Kenya in August 1998, told FBI interrogators that in 1993 he was ordered by al-Adel to go to Somalia to link up with local tribes and train them to fight and attack U.S. forces who were then serving there in a humanitarian mission to feed starving Somalis.

And a British-Ugandan, Feroz Ali Abbasi, who had trained in an al-Qaeda training camp in Afghanistan before 9/11, recalled in a memoir that Adel instructed him and other recruits to fight U.S. forces around Kabul or in the southern city of Kandahar during the American invasion of Afghanistan in the fall of 2001

In the interview published in Al-Quds al-Arabi, al-Adel also explained al Qaeda’s motivations for the 9/11 attack: “Our main objective, therefore, was to deal a strike to the head of the snake at home to smash its arrogance.”

After the fall of the Taliban, Adel recalled that he and other members of al-Qaeda found refuge in Iran: “We began to converge on Iran one after the other,” he said. “…We began to rent apartments for the fraternal brothers and some of their families. The fraternal brothers of the group of Gulbuddin Hekmatyar” — an Afghan militant then living in exile in Iran who is now a leader of the insurgency in Afghanistan — “offered us satisfactory help in this field. They provided us with apartments and some farms that they owned.”

But Al-Adel said that the Iranians subsequently arrested a large number of these “brothers.”

http://edition.cnn.com/2011/WORLD/meast/05/17/mideast.al.qaeda.appointee/index.html?section=cnn_latest