Thursday, August 31, 2006
Wednesday, August 30, 2006
Wake Up AMERICA
Report from Invader-Infested Maywood, California
August 27, 2006
By Sandra
The Terry Anderson Show
Hi Terry,
I was at the Maywood, California protest yesterday joining Save Our State and Minutemen protesting the fact that Maywood allows it to be a "sanctuary city". This was my experience...
Photo: Illegal alien supporters take down the American flag at a US post office and in its place, raise a Mexican flag in Maywood, CA.
I was dropped off by my ride while he parked and I saw all of the American flags and started walking towards them and suddenly there was a rush of thugs running towards me calling out "death to the minutemen". They stopped me in my tracks. They pushed me around and told me if I was to take one step further, they would beat the shit out of me.
I looked to the back of me and there were about 4 police officers leaning on their vehicle just watching, doing nothing! So, as I stepped forward, they stole my sign and ripped it up as another was throwing water on me. Meanwhile, I am still getting pushed around and threatened, so I again look back to see if the police are going to help. Nope!
So, I stood there with my hands on my hips with one hand on my pepper spray and I was ready to use it. Again, I might mention that there are 4 or 5 police officers behind me doing NOTHING to the fact that I am being threatened, pushed around and stolen from.
I was ready for whatever they were going to give me at that point. I was going to pepper spray all of them and I looked back one more time as I am being pushed around by men, a police officer finally waves me over. So, I went over and then they escorted me across the street to another group of officers who escorted me to our SOS group.
After being at the rally for a while, we noticed that the opposition was getting louder and they we watched as they took the American flag off of the flag pole and stepped on it on the ground at the United State Post Office and mounted a Mexican flag and up it went. At this point the police did nothing. Finally, they went over to take it down and they had bottles and rocks thrown at them. They did not attempt to arrest anyone. They were unable to take it down because they cut the wrong line so the flag remained there for the rest of the day.
I believe that all Americans need to know about this and need to see that Mexican flag hanging at an American post office. We are being invaded and the American people need to wake up!
Another woman was beat up (while the police watched) and injured as well as an elderly man. They tend to pick on the weaker targets.
Thanks for reading my story.
Best regards,
Sandra
A Big Fan
Tuesday, August 29, 2006
Pulsa Dinura Against "OLMERT"
Extremists curse Olmert with Pulsa Denura
Right-wing extremists hold mythical Kabbalistic ‘death curse’ against prime minister, exactly one year after identical ritual against then-Prime Minister Ariel Sharon Efrat Weiss Published: 06.27.06, 22:08
Exactly one year after carrying out a “Pulsa Denura,” an ancient Kabbalistic death curse, against former Prime Minister Ariel Sharon, Right-wing extremists held a similar ritual targeting Prime Minister Ehud Olmert, Channel 10 reported Tuesday.
One of the participants related, “The ceremony took place exactly one year after the one for Ariel Sharon. If, God forbid, Olmert continues to hold his position, we will pay a heavy price.”
In the ritual curse against Sharon, some 20 extremists assembled at the old cemetery in Rosh Pina and chanted calls for the then-prime minister’s death. The organizers claimed to have received rabbinical approval to hold the ceremony.
On Sunday a group of Right-wing extremists arrived at the Har Herzl cemetery, and there by the grave of murdered Tourism Minister Rehavam Zeevi, carried out a Pulsa Denura ceremony against Olmert.
According to the organizers, two services were held, 24 hours apart. The first ritual service, held Saturday, was carried out at a different location.
One activist said that Olmert was “wicked." "We should have done the Pulsa Denura half a year ago, but it’s not something you can do every day,” he added.
The source of the Pulsa Denura (from the Aramaic for “bullets of fire”) is in religious Jewish legend, and the curse's powers are attributed to Kabbalists. It is believed to be capable of leading to the cursed figure’s death.
Washington Times
Gathering nuclear storm
By Arnaud de Borchgrave
August 29, 2006
Just days before the United Nations Security Council deadline for Iran to cease and desist enriching uranium, President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad gave the West the Iranian bird. By inaugurating a "heavy-water" reactor, Iran instantly doubled its chances of acquiring nuclear weapons. Adding insult to injury, the military mullahs test-fired a new long-range missile -- the Thaqeb, or Saturn, a submarine-to-surface weapon.
The new reactor runs on natural uranium mined by Iran and skips the difficult enrichment phase to produce plutonium, which gives nukes the power to obliterate entire cities. Of course, all these efforts, says Iran's president, is to treat and diagnose AIDS and cancer patients. And -- we almost forgot -- to generate more power to improve agriculture. The fact Iran has sufficient oil reserves to generate electric power for generations to come is conveniently overlooked.
Iran is now confident neither Russia nor China will go along with meaningful economic sanctions. Moscow says sanctions have never worked, ignoring those that collapsed South Africa's apartheid regime. The handwriting on the geopolitical landscape has convinced Israel and its core support in the U.S., from the neoconservatives to the Christian Right, that a military solution is inescapable.
Leading conservatives have said World War III -- the ultimate clash of civilizations -- has been under way since September 11, 2001. Some neocons say it started when the mullahs forced the shah into exile and seized power in Iran in early 1979 -- and that President Bush and Britain's Prime Minister Tony Blair are treading water among the appeasers. They remind Mr. Bush he vowed not to leave office without first ensuring that "the worst weapons will not fall into the worst hands" and thus Iran cannot become a nuclear power. Their ideological guide Richard Perle goes so far as to accuse Mr. Bush, who knows Iran has pursued a secret nuclear weapons program for the last 19 years, of opting for "ignominious retreat."
Overlooked in this calculus is Mr. Bush's burden of two wars, Afghanistan and Iraq, and a much-diminished U.S. military. A third front against Iran, an ancient civilization of 70 million with global retaliatory capabilities (e.g., Hezbollah), is a frightening prospect that conjures up the nightmare of a return to the draft.
Mr. Bush believes deeply that Iran poses an existential threat to close ally Israel. Congress recently voted a resolution that said an attack on Israel is an attack on the United States. Mr. Bush also believes Iran is determined to sabotage American hopes of establishing a new democratic Middle East.
In Iraq, clandestine Iranian aid, from sophisticated "Improvised Explosive Devices" to funds and weapons to the two main Shi'ite militias, may be designed to maneuver the U.S. into a humiliating, Vietnamlike withdrawal from Iraq.
Given Mr. Bush's overarching dedication to "winning the Global War on Terrorism," said one former senior intelligence analyst, the neutralization of Iran has become a sine qua non, "equal if not higher on his list of priorities than 'victory' in Iraq, another impossibility that he is unwilling to recognize, even privately, much less acknowledge publicly."
Mr. Bush's national security advisers have also pointed out that an escalating danger of U.S.-Iran military confrontation automatically intensifies internal and regional opposition to U.S. objectives in Iraq. The president keeps reminding private interlocutors to think of how history will judge this critical period 15 to 20 years hence. He sees personal and national humiliation if he were to leave office having acquiesced to an embryonic Iranian nuclear arsenal.
So odds makers bet sometime before the end of his second term President Bush will order a massive air attack on a wide range of carefully selected targets in Iran, in partnership with Israel, and against the advice of many of his advisers. Mr. Bush is convinced a nuclear Iran would pose an intolerable threat to U.S. national security and, as one former intelligence topsider put it, "he is firm in his faith that God agrees with him on that point, and certain that history will eventually recognize and properly appreciate his courageous and visionary leadership."
This raises the question of congressional approval. As George Will said to CBS' George Stephanopoulos two Sundays ago, when was the last time this president ever worried about getting approval in advance from the Congress or the public?
In any event, Israel is not taking any chances. Deputy Prime Minister Shimon Peres said last week Israel would not be the first to attack Iran. Other Israeli voices say Israel will have to do just that. Israel recently added a new command to the IDF -- the "Iran Command." Its new commander is Maj. Gen. Elyezer Shkedy, Israel's Air Force chief. He is responsible for all conflicts with countries "not bordering Israel." The Jewish state's strategic thinkers and military planners take the diminutive Mr. Ahmadinejad at his word when he says Israel must be "wiped off the map."
Most worrisome for Israel is Hezbollah's recent military performance against the Israeli Defense Force in Lebanon. The perception is this Iranian surrogate resisted and repelled a mighty foe. The reality is Iran's new-mown conviction Israel can be defeated. So Israel will now have to prove, yet again, that it cannot.
Arnaud de Borchgrave is editor at large of The Washington Times and of United Press Internationa
U.S. Deteriorating
Experts Warn U.S. is Coming Apart at the Seams
August 27, 2006
By Chuck McCutcheon
Newhouse News Service
The Seattle Times
WASHINGTON — A pipeline shuts down in Alaska. Equipment failures disrupt air travel in Los Angeles. Electricity runs short at a spy agency in Maryland.
None of these recent events resulted from a natural disaster or terrorist attack, but they may as well have, some homeland security experts say. They worry that too little attention is paid to how fast the country's basic operating systems are deteriorating.
"When I see events like these, I become concerned that we've lost focus on the core operational functionality of the nation's infrastructure and are becoming a fragile nation, which is just as bad — if not worse — as being an insecure nation," said Christian Beckner, a Washington analyst who runs the respected Web site Homeland Security Watch (www.christianbeckner.com).
The American Society of Civil Engineers last year graded the nation "D" for its overall infrastructure conditions, estimating that it would take $1.6 trillion over five years to fix the problem.
"I thought [Hurricane] Katrina was a hell of a wake-up call, but people are missing the alarm," said Casey Dinges, the society's managing director of external affairs.
British oil company BP announced this month that severe corrosion would close its Alaska pipelines for extensive repairs. Analysts say this may sideline some 200,000 barrels a day of production for several months.
Then an instrument landing system that guides arriving planes onto a runway at Los Angeles International Airport failed for the second time in a week, delaying flights.
Those incidents followed reports that the National Security Agency (NSA), the intelligence world's electronic eavesdropping arm, is consuming so much electricity at its headquarters outside Washington that it is in danger of exceeding its power supply.
"If a terrorist group were able to knock the NSA offline, or disrupt one of the nation's busiest airports, or shut down the most important oil pipeline in the nation, the impact would be perceived as devastating," Beckner said. "And yet we've essentially let these things happen — or almost happen — to ourselves."
The Commission on Public Infrastructure at the Center for Strategic and International Studies, a Washington think tank, said in a recent report that facilities are deteriorating "at an alarming rate."
advertising
It noted that half the 257 locks operated by the Army Corps of Engineers on inland waterways are functionally obsolete, more than one-quarter of the nation's bridges are structurally deficient or obsolete, and $11 billion is needed annually to replace aging drinking-water facilities.
President Bush, asked about the problem during a public question-and-answer session in an April visit to Irvine, Calif., cited last year's enactment of a comprehensive law reauthorizing highway, transit and road-safety programs.
"Infrastructure is always a difficult issue," Bush acknowledged. "It's a federal responsibility and a state and local responsibility. And I, frankly, feel like we've upheld our responsibility at the federal level with the highway bill."
But experts say the law is riddled with some 5,000 "earmarks" for projects sought by members of Congress that do nothing to systematically address the problem.
"There's a growing understanding that these programs are at best inefficient and at worst corrupt," said Everett Ehrlich, executive director of the CSIS public infrastructure commission.
Ehrlich and others cite several reasons for the lack of action:
• The political system is geared to reacting to crises instead of averting them.
• Some politicians don't see infrastructure as a federal responsibility.
• And many problems are out of sight and — for the public — out of mind.
"You see bridges and roads and potholes, but so much else is hidden and taken for granted," said Dinges of the Society of Civil Engineers. "As a result, people just don't get stirred up and alarmed."
But a few politicians are starting to notice. In March, Sen. Hillary Rodham Clinton, D-N.Y., joined Sens. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, and Tom Carper, D-Del., in sponsoring a bill to set up a national commission to assess infrastructure needs.
That same month, the CSIS infrastructure commission issued a set of principles calling for increased spending, investments in new technologies and partnerships with business. Among those signing the report were Sens. Chuck Hagel, R-Neb., and Chris Dodd, D-Conn.
"Infrastructure deficiencies will further erode our global competitiveness, but with the federal budget so committed to mandatory spending, it's unclear how we are going to deal with this challenge as we fall further and further behind in addressing these problems," Hagel said in a speech last year. "We need to think creatively."
Copyright © 2006 The Seattle Times Company
Monday, August 28, 2006
SPANISH Firm to Build TEXAS SUPERHIWAY
25 August 2006
Grupo Ferrovial, Spain’s construction, infrastructure and services giant, had a busy summer acquiring airports in the UK and Peru. Now it has a concession to build and operate a Texas superhighway.
Construction of the new toll road project, designed to develop an alternative route to Interstate 35 as part of the planned Trans-Texas Corridor is due to start early next year.
This is has been agreed by the Texas Department of Transport under a comprehensive development deal with the Spanish company Cintra - Concesiones de Infrastructuras de Transporte, a member of the Ferrovial group.
Cintra’s partner for the five-year road building programme is the San Antonio-based contractor Zachry Construction Corp, but Ferrovial’s construction company Agroman is getting a share in the business.
Zachry joined with Cintra in a scheme to provide private investment worth $6 billion. The assignment is to design, build and operate a four-lane toll road covering the 500 km distance between Dallas and San Antonio, bypassing the State capital at Austin.
For this concession Cintra is paying the State of Texas $1.2 billion. It gives them the right to build and operate this initial segment of the intended Trans-Texas Corridor.
This would be part of the ‘super-highway’ spanning the United States from the Mexican border at Laredo, making its way through Texas, Kansas and Oklahoma and connecting with the Canadian highway system north of Duluth, Minnesota.
Because it would provide a connection all the way between Canada and Mexico, the project is also described as the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA) super highway.
The project as conceived by Cintra and its partners and endorsed by the Texas transport department is certainly ambitious. They have talked about developing a corridor providing two lanes for high speed trucks and three for passenger vehicles in each direction, plus high speed and freight railway lines, possibly also telecommunication cables and oil, gas and water pipelines in an adjacent utilities corridor.
But a corridor of this overall width – maybe as much as 360 m - has alarmed people who stand forced to surrender property in land and buildings to the project. This concern has been sharpened by the disclosure that, citing a recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling, the developers intend to exercise the principle of ‘eminent domain’ in land acquisition proceedings on the grounds that they are acting as agents of a public authority.
The developers apparently believe that such rights, once established in Texas, could then be applied across the entire 6,500 km length of the NAFTA highway. Whether that proves to be so depends on the outcome of any challenge that might be launched against such a claim.
The Cintra-Zachry partnership is however in a strong position because they have already secured an agreement granting them the right to develop the new highway in Texas. They have also put money down for the privilege.
The first concession within the Trans-Texas Corridor has already been awarded to Cintra. According to a statement by parent company Ferrovial, construction is expected to start early in 2007 once environmental and other permits have been obtained.
These initial contracts, to build two segments of the new toll road 64 km between Austin and Seguin will be performed 50 per cent each by Ferrovial’s construction subsidiary Agroman and Zachry, which has won around $180 million worth of road contracts already this year from the Texas Department of Transport.
Total construction investment in the new contracts is said to be $1.3 billion.
“The new highway”, the statement explained, “will offer an alternative to I-35 between San Antonio and north Austin, making it possible to avoid the highly congested area of central Austin on medium and long-distance journeys.
“The new high capacity road will absorb growth in long-distance truck traffic expected as a result of trade agreements between the United States, Mexico and Canada.”
Cintra has also recently taken over management of the Indiana Toll Road (ITR) after paying $3.8 billion to the State’s finance authority for the transfer of the asset. In a 50:50 consortium with the Australian bank Macquarie, Cintra now has charge of this 250 km highway which links Chicago with the eastern seaboard of the United States.
The concession will run over 75 years.
The company commented: “The project reinforces Cintra’s presence in the U.S., a strategic market for the company: it has a 99-year concession to operate the Chicago Skyway ($1.83 billion) which links with the Indiana Toll Road, and it is a strategic partner of the State of Texas for 50 years to develop the Trans-Texas Corridor, one of the most ambitious infrastructure projects ever undertaken in the United States.”
Sellout Of America
THE NEW WORLD DISORDER
NAFTA superhighway to mean Mexican drivers, say Teamsters
Union warns of drug-taking truckers, unsafe rigs on planned trade routes
Posted: August 28, 2006
1:00 a.m. Eastern
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
 |
WASHINGTON – The NAFTA superhighway, a north-south interstate trade corridor linking Mexico, Canada and the U.S., would mean U.S. truckers replaced by Mexicans, more unsafe rigs on American roads and more drivers relying on drugs for their long hauls, charges the International Brotherhood of Teamsters – the latest group to weigh in against the Bush administration plan.
The August issue of Teamster magazine features a cover story on the plan for an enlarged I-35 that will reach north from the drug capital border town of Nuevo Laredo, Mexico, 1,600 miles to Canada through San Antonio, Austin, Dallas, Kansas City, Minneapolis and Duluth, while I-69 originating at the same crossing will shoot north to Michigan and across the Canadian border.
Public proposals for the superhighway calls for each corridor to be 1,200 feet wide with six lanes devoted to cars, four to trucks, with a rail line and utilities in the middle. Most of the goods will come from new Mexican ports being built on the Pacific Coast – ports being run by Chinese state-controlled shipping companies.
"Tens of thousands of unregulated, unsafe Mexican trucks will flow unchecked through out border – a very real threat to the safety of our highways, homeland security and good-paying American jobs," writes Teamster President Jim Hoffa. "The Bush administration hasn't given up on its ridiculous quest to open our border to unsafe Mexican trucking companies. In fact, Bush is quietly moving forward with plans to build the massive network of highways from the Mexican border north through Detroit into Canada that would make cross-border trucking effortless."
So incensed was the union over the plan for the NAFTA superhighway that it sent investigative reporter Charles Bowden to Mexico for its August magazine report on the problems affecting Mexican drivers – problems that could soon come home to Americans with the plans for the new intercontinental highways.
Drivers interviewed for the magazine report say they are exploited by companies that force them to drive 4,500 kilometers alone over the course of five or six nights without sleep. How do they stay awake on such long hauls?
One driver says, "professional secret." Another laughs, "magic dust." Others mention "special chemicals."
"And then they are off, a torrent of words and quips and smiles, and a knowing discussion of that jolt when a line of cocaine locks in," writes Bowden. "They are all family men who run the highways at least 25 days a month and they are adamant about two things – that nobody can run these long hauls without cocaine and crystal meth, and now and then some marijuana to level out the rush. And the biggest danger on their endless runs comes from addicted Mexican truck drivers, which means all truck drivers."
Mexican drivers, of course, earn considerably less than their U.S. counterparts – about $1,100 a month. Hoffa says the NAFTA superhighway plan would "allow global conglomerates to capitalize by exploiting cheap labor and non-existent work rules and avoiding potential security enhancements at U.S. ports."
The drivers interviewed for Teamster magazine say they are completely at the mercy of their employers, the Mexican government and police – who are the first to rob them. All of those interviewed said they have killed people with their trucks on the highways and fled the accident sites.
Hoffa calls NAFTA an "unqualified disaster" up to now – and wonders why the nation continues to pursue the "free trade" agenda. Instead of creating new jobs, he said, it has cost 3 million in manufacturing alone. Instead of creating trade surpluses, America's trade deficit is the worst ever, he says.
"If there's a positive side to the disastrous legacy of NAFTA, it's that it has made it a little harder for the free trade cabal to wrap their lies around subsequent job-killing deals," says Hoffa. "While the White House and Senate still have a majority who continue to support the free trade agenda, their ranks have shrunk over the years – sometimes due to members of Congress changing their minds and sometimes due to voters changing their member of Congress."
He adds: "If the Bush administration succeeds (with the NAFTA superhighway), American drivers and their families will be forced to share the roads with unsafe, uninsured trucks and millions of good-paying American jobs will be lost. And just one weapon of mass destruction in an unchecked container will be too many."
Sunday, August 27, 2006
www.jtf.org
Arab Muslim children celebrate the Islamic terrorist atrocity of September 11th
One demonstrator tore at it with his teeth
gather for a Hamas rally in Ramallah
Dr. Ahmad Dwaidar, an Islamic cleric, looks forward on Muslim terrorist television to the day when "the White House will become the Muslim House"
Muslim Pakistan's army is for jihad, notes one recently retired, high-ranking Pakistani military commander - Lt. General Mohammed Nasir Akhtar told the press that "our religion says fight for jihad"
In laying out the George Bush "road map" to a new Holocaust, Condoleezza Rice recommended "affirmative action" General William Ward as America's "peacekeeper" in Israel - Ward previously commanded NATO's "stabilization force" in Bosnia, helping the Muslim terrorist nation to enlarge Islam's foothold in Europe
A young female technician in the Israeli air force, and an Arab Muslim girl dressed as an Islamic suicide bomber - Commentators have spoken of the Israeli military's defeat in Lebanon as the "demystification of the IDF"
Deliberately wearing around his neck a kaffiah (Arab headdress) like the one which the Arab Hitler Yasser Arafat wore as a symbol of Islamic jihad (holy war), Mahmoud Abbas has promised to destroy the "Zionist enemy"
PLO terrorist attacks continue unabated in Israel - A January 15, 2005 double suicide bombing at a Gaza District checkpoint, which murdered six Israeli border guards, was praised by PLO terrorist leader Mahmoud Abbas as the work of "martyrs" and "heroes"
Friday, August 25, 2006
Economy Prediction
Recession Will Be Nasty and Deep, Economist Says
Housing is in free fall, pulling the economy down with it, Roubini argues
August 23, 2006
By Rex Nutting
MarketWatch
WASHINGTON (MarketWatch) -- The United States is headed for a recession that will be "much nastier, deeper and more protracted" than the 2001 recession, says Nouriel Roubini, president of Roubini Global Economics.
Writing on his blog Wednesday, Roubini repeated his call that the U.S. would be in recession in 2007, arguing that the collapse of housing would bring down the rest of the economy. Read more.
Roubini wrote after the National Association of Realtors reported Wednesday that sales of existing homes fell 4.1% in July, while inventories soared to a 13-year high and prices flattened out on a year-over-year basis. See full story.
'This is the biggest housing slump in the last four or five decades: every housing indicator is in free fall, including now housing prices.' — Nouriel Roubini, Roubini Global Economics
"This is the biggest housing slump in the last four or five decades: every housing indicator is in free fall, including now housing prices," Roubini said. The decline in investment in the housing sector will exceed the drop in investment when the Nasdaq collapsed in 2000 and 2001, he said.
And the impact of the bursting of the bubble will affect every household in America, not just the few people who owned significant shares in technology companies during the dot-com boom, he said. Prices are falling even in the Midwest, which never experienced a bubble, "a scary signal" of how much pain the drop in household wealth could cause.
Roubini is a professor of economics at New York University and was a senior economist in the White House and the Treasury Department in the late 1990s. His firm focuses largely on global macroeconomics.
While many economists share Roubini's concerns about imbalances in the global economy and in the U.S. housing sector, he stands nearly alone in predicting a recession next year.
Fed watcher Tim Duy called Roubini the "the current archetypical Eeyore," responding to a comment Dallas Fed President Richard Fisher made last week in referring to economic pessimists as "Eeyores," after Winnie the Pooh's grumpy friend.
"By itself this slump is enough to trigger a U.S. recession: its effects on real residential investment, wealth and consumption, and employment will be more severe than the tech bust that triggered the 2001 recession," Roubini said.
Housing has accounted, directly and indirectly, for about 30% of employment growth during this expansion, including employment in retail and in manufacturing producing consumer goods, he said.
In the past year, consumers spent about $200 billion of the money they pulled out of their home equity, he estimated. Already, sales of consumer durables such as cars and furniture have weakened.
"As the housing sector slumps, the job and income and wage losses in housing will percolate throughout the economy," Roubini said.
Consumers also face high energy prices, higher interest rates, stagnant wages, negative savings and high debt levels, he noted.
"This is the tipping point for the U.S. consumer and the effects will be ugly," he said. "Expect the great recession of 2007 to be much nastier, deeper and more protracted than the 2001 recession."
He also sees many of the same warning signs in other economies, including some in Europe. End of Story
Rex Nutting is Washington bureau chief of MarketWatch.
Thursday, August 24, 2006
Kurds vs. Turkey & Iran
PKK vs. Turkey and Iran |  Print |
Following the recent killing one of the top commanders of the Iranian security forces by the Kurdistan Free Life Party (PJAK), the PKK's name in Iran, Iran has escalated its attacks on Qandil (Kandil) mountains. The PKK has at least 10 camps in and around Qandil region. Turkey has also bombed the region.
The PKK has had armed training and military camps in Northern Iraq for the years. The US promised to remove all of these camps during the Iraq war, yet no concrete step has been taken. Turks blamed the US of not combating against the PKK terrorism. Turkish security expert Prof. Dr. Ihsan Bal argues that the PKK issue undermines Turkey-US relations.
Heavy shelling of Qandil took place last week, with bombs as well as heavy caliber gunfire raining down on the area. The PKK lost its many militants in the attacks.
Scores of PKK terrorists and supporters have fled their bases in the northern frontier region after four days of shelling by the Iranian and Turkish army. Kurdist PKK media reported that at least eight Iranian troops were killed, but the Iranian sources have not confirmed it.
"We would not hesitate to take every kind of measures when our security is at stake," Turkish Foreign Minister Abdullah Gul said last week. According to Mr. Gul, the PKK is a terrorist organisation and all sides should combat against the PKK terrorism. However it is known that the Barzani forces in Iraq have given logistic support to the PKK militants. The PKK has freely opened offices in the Northern Iraq cities under Barzani and Talabani control. Turkey accuses Barzani of supporting terrorism in the region. Turkish Iraq experts told the JTW that Turkey-Iraqi Kurdish relations cannot develop due to the PKK problem. Dr Sedat Laciner for instance blames the PKK terrorism for Turkish-Kurdish tension in Iraq:
"Turkey is the only country which can guarantee the Kurdish security and welfare. Even the Americans or any coalition cannot help the Kurds in Iraq. Turkey is a great market for the Iraqi Kurds and the Turkish border gates are more important than the oil wells. Turkey seeks to improve its relations with Barzani and Talabani. However as long as the Iraqi Kurds allow the PKK terrorists in Iraq, Turkish military operations will continue in Iraqi territories and both sides cannot be in real co-operation though Iraq needs Turkish-Kurdish co-operation desperately."
Kubilay ATASOYU, JTW
22 August 2006
Wednesday, August 23, 2006
"INSANITY"
FROM WND'S JERUSALEM BUREAU
'Desperate' Olmert resorting to radical moves
Cairo report blasts Israeli PM for calls to negotiate with Syria
Posted: August 23, 2006
12:20 a.m. Eastern
By Aaron Klein
© 2006 WorldNetDaily.com
 Israeli Prime Minister Ehud Olmert |
The report, an assessment sent this week to Cairo from the Egyptian embassy in Tel Aviv and obtained by WorldNetDaily, recommends a reassessment of Egyptian positions in light of Israeli overtures to Syria. It states the Egyptian embassy estimates as long as Olmert feels his government is in peril, he will take further radical moves aimed at galvanizing supporters.
Senior members of Olmert's cabinet the past few days have sent mixed messages to Syria.
Last week, Defense Minister Amir Peretz told reporters a resumption of talks with Damascus over vacating the Golan Heights was possible.
He took back his remarks yesterday.
"At present, conditions are not ripe for it, but I certainly see dialogue with Syria in the future," Peretz said during a meeting yesterday in Jerusalem with U.N. special envoy Terje Roed-Larsen.
Public Security Minister and senior Kadima member Avi Dichter said yesterday that in exchange for "real peace" with Syria, Israel could give up the Golan Heights.
Foreign Minister Tzipi Livni this week appointed a former Foreign Ministry official as "special project manager" for possible talks with Syria.
Olmert yesterday announced negotiations with Syria were "legitimate" but said Damascus must first stop supporting terrorism before talks can commence.
"When Syria stops supporting terrorism, when it stops giving missiles to terror organizations, then we will be happy to negotiate with them," Olmert said.
Israel captured the Golan Heights, strategic mountainous territory, after Syria used the terrain to attack the Jewish state in 1967 and again in 1973. The Heights borders Israel, Syria and Lebanon and is claimed by Damascus.
The Egyptian report, sent to the Foreign Ministry in Cairo, recommends the Egyptian government review several of its "unpopular" policies, such as its restraint the past few months of expressing support for Hezbollah while many in the Arab street sided with the Lebanese militia. It pointed to Israel's "coddling" of Syria – even though Damascus aided Hezbollah during its confrontation with the Jewish state – as an indication Egyptian policies can be changed.
The talk by Kadima leaders of negotiations with Damascus comes just days after Syrian President Bashar Assad spoke of destroying Israel.
"We tell them [Israelis] that after tasting humiliation in the latest battles, your weapons are not going to protect you – not your planes, or missiles or even your nuclear bombs. ... The future generations in the Arab world will find a way to defeat Israel," said Assad last week at a journalists' convention.
Assad declared Hezbollah's path of "resistance" achieved results during the last four weeks of fighting against Israel.
"The resistance is necessary as much as it is natural and legitimate," said the Syrian president, claiming the war in Lebanon revealed the limitations of Israel's military power.
In a WND report last week, a Baath Party official said on the heels of what Syria views as a Hezbollah victory against the Jewish state, his country is forming its own Hezbollah-like guerilla organization to fight Israel in hopes of "liberating" the Golan Heights.
The official, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Syria learned from Hezbollah's military campaign against Israel the past month that "fighting" is more effective than peace negotiations with regard to gaining territory.
Hezbollah claims its goal is to liberate the Shebaa Farms, a small, 200-square-kilometer bloc situated between Syria, Lebanon and Israel. The Farms is the last post held by Israel after its withdrawal in 2000 from positions it took along the Lebanese border.
Most Western analysts agree Hezbollah uses the pretext of the Shebaa Farms to maintain its weapons to start conflicts with the Jewish state. Hezbollah is sponsored by Syria and Iran.
The cease-fire resolution accepted by Israel last week calls for negotiations leading to Israel's relinquishing of the Shebaa Farms.
The Baath party official told WND the new Syrian "resistance" group is calling itself the Front for the Liberation of the Golan and is already in the process of being formed.
The official said the group currently consists of "hundreds" of Syrian volunteers, many from the Syrian border with Turkey. He said Syria held registration for volunteers to join the Front in June.
The official said most Front members will be Palestinian and not members of the Syrian army.
"We know from history guerilla resistance works against Israel," said the official.
He pointed not only to Israel's most recent confrontation with Hezbollah but also to what he said was a previous Syrian "victory" against the Israeli Defense Forces using guerilla tactics.
"After a cease-fire was imposed in 1973 (following the Yom Kippur War) for 100 days Syria led guerilla attacks against Israel in the Golan Heights and they were successful. The IDF withdrew nearly 100 kilometers from the original cease-fire lines."
Indeed, after Syria accepted a U.N. cease-fire in October 1973, it waged a sporadic guerilla campaign against Israeli troops in the Golan until a disengagement agreement was reached March 31, 1974, that saw Israel withdraw from some sections of the territory.
Globalization - must read
 | Globalism's toll mounting for U.S. citizens By Phyllis Schlafly Monday, August 21, 2006 | | |
It's not just U.S. ports that are fast slipping into foreign ownership; it's highways, too. A Spanish company, Cintra Concesiones de Infraestructuras de Transporte, S.A., has bought the right to operate a toll road through Texas and collect tolls for the next 50 years. Hearings held by the Texas Department of Transportation this summer attracted hundreds of angry Texans. Called the Trans-Texas Corridor, TTC, on which construction is planned to begin next year, this highway would bisect Texas from Oklahoma to its border with Mexico. Plans call for a 10-lane limited-access highway to parallel Interstate 35. It would have three lanes each way for passenger cars, two express lanes each way for trucks, rail lines both ways for people and freight, plus a utility corridor for oil and natural gas pipelines, electric towers, cables for communication, and telephone lines. Central to this plan is a massive taking of 584,000 acres of farm and ranch land at an estimated cost of $11 billion to $30 billion - property then lost from the tax rolls of counties and school districts. After the U.S. Supreme Court decision in Kelo v. City of New London, Conn., no one need wonder about the power of eminent domain to take private property. The Trans-Texas Corridor will be the first leg of what has been dubbed the NAFTA Super Highway to go through heartland America all the way to Canada. This would be a major lifeline of the plan to merge the United States into a North American Community. Plans are already locked in for Kansas City Southern de Mexico Railroad to bring Chinese goods in sealed cargo containers from the southern Mexican port of Lazaro Cardinas direct to Kansas City, Mo. Mexican trucks will be able to drive more sealed containers up the fast lanes of the NAFTA Super Highway, inspected only electronically if at all, and making their first customs stop in Kansas City. In response to recent articles in conservative publications about the sovereignty, freedom and economic dangers that will result from President George W. Bush's creating the Security and Prosperity Partnership of North America in Waco, Texas, in March 2005, the partnership has issued an unconvincing rebuttal. This Security and Prosperity Partnership document starts by declaring, "Our three great nations share a belief in freedom, economic opportunity, and strong democratic institutions." That's false; Mexico is a corrupt country where a few families control all the wealth while the rest of the people are kept in abject poverty with no hope of economic opportunity. The rebuttal states that partnership's mission is to make "our businesses more competitive in the global marketplace." That's globalist doubletalk that means producing U.S. goods with cheap foreign labor, thereby destroying the U.S. middle class. The rebuttal states that the project wasn't "signed" by Bush at Waco. But when Bush went to Cancun, Mexico, in March 2006, he proclaimed the first anniversary of whatever he had agreed to in Waco in 2005, and he sent Michael Chertoff to Ottawa to take "an important first step" toward whatever Bush did or didn't sign in Waco. The rebuttal denies that the partnership's working groups are secret, but the Security and Prosperity Partnership won't release the names of who is serving on them. The rebuttal denies that the partnership will "cost U.S. taxpayer money" because it is using "existing budget resources" (no doubt coming from the fairy godmother). Thanks to the Internet, we can often find out more about the doings of the Bush administration from the foreign press than from U.S. media. A Spanish-language article written from a Mexican perspective one year ago fully described the plan for the "deep integration" of the three North American countries. Economist and researcher Miguel Pickard explained that although the plan is sometimes called NAFTA Plus, there will be no single treaty text and nothing will be submitted to the legislatures of the three countries. The elites plan to implement their shared vision of "a merged future" through "the signing of 'regulations' free of citizen review." Pickard revealed a series of three meetings of a new entity called the Independent Task Force on the Future of North America. After secretly conniving in Toronto, New York and Monterrey, Mexico, the task force called for a unified North American Border Action Plan (i.e., open borders among the three countries), and the three countries then signed "close to 300 regulations." The United States was represented at the meeting by Robert Pastor, who has been working for years to promote North American integration. Pickard revealed that Pastor is in "constant dialogue" with Jorge G. Castaneda, Vicente Fox's foreign relations adviser. Pickard is convinced that George W. Bush is "vigorously pushing" the idea of a "North American community." Pickard concluded that the schedule calls for beginning with a customs union, then a common market, then a monetary and economic union, and finally the adoption of a single currency (already baptized as the "amero" by Pastor). |
Tuesday, August 22, 2006
What Really Happened
Some Lebanon War Riddles Solved and Their Relevance to Moves on Syria in Jerusalem Explained
DEBKAfile Exclusive Report
August 22, 2006, 7:11 PM (GMT+02:00)
 |  |
|
Apparently out of the blue, a clutch of Israeli ministers - Amir Peretz, defense, Tzipi Livni, foreign affairs and Avi Ditcher, internal security – have evinced a burning desire to talk peace with Syrian president Bashar Assad and even a willingness to discuss handing over the Golan captured in the 1967 war.
Monday, Aug. 21, prime minister Ehud Olmert stepped in with a reminder: Thousands of Hizballah missiles striking Israelis came from Syria, he said. Until that stops and the Palestinian terrorist commands are ejected from Damascus, we have nothing to discuss with Syria.
But the damage was done. Assad himself must have wondered what he had done to deserve this sudden attention from an American ally after three years of helping Baathist insurgents and al Qaeda fight US forces, hosting the most radical Palestinian groups including Hamas and Jihad Islami, and engineering the murder of the former Lebanese prime minister Rafiq Hariri.
The Israeli ministers’ timing was unfortunate; Syria continues to pump arms to Hizballah and Israeli soldiers are still deployed in Lebanon, holding the line against Hassan Nasrallah’s men and their Syrian and Iranian sponsors.
Furthermore, the Saudi king Abdullah and Egyptian president Hosni Mubarak, for whose regimes the Syria-Iran-Hizballah pact poses an existential threat, must be stewing in their palaces over the senior Israeli ministers’ decision to go a-wooing after the Syrian president.
DEBKAfile’s political, military and Washington sources offer some disclosures to account for this apparently illogical behavior:
1. After refusing to see Iran’s long arm behind the Hamas in Gaza in the aftermath of the Israeli withdrawal from Gaza a year ago – in which those ministers played a lead role – they were dismayed to find themselves again face to face with Iran on a second front, behind Hizballah in Lebanon. And should Assad make good on his threat last week and go to war on the Golan, Israel will be hedged in by Tehran and its strategic partner on a third front. They therefore chose what looked like a quick fix for cutting Syria out of the hostile Iran-Syria-Hizballah-Hamas-Jihad Islami equation: Offering the Golan to appease Assad.
The only trouble is that such a step would continue the land-for-peace policy which failed so strikingly in 2000 in Lebanon and in 2005 in Gaza - and which has been made irrelevant anyway by the outcome of the Lebanon war and the looming threat from Iran.
2. The second part of the ministers’ rationale is even more troubling.
The open letter of grievances signed by officers and men of the Israeli army’s crack Alexandroni Brigade shocked and still puzzles the entire nation. The lack of clear decisions was manifested, they said, in the failure to act, the non-implementation of operational plans and the cancellation amid combat of missions assigned the unit. The result was that the unit was deployed too long in hostile country without any operational purpose for reasons that were unprofessional and, moreover, held back from making contact with the enemy. In every stage of the war, cold feet were evident in decision-making.
The writers of the letter sensed the cold feet at the top but lacked the information to explain its cause or account for the cancellation and shifting about of mission directives in mid-battle.
That was one of the riddles of the Lebanon War.
Another was hinted at last week when Israel’s deputy chief of staff Maj-Gen Moshe Kaplinsky revealed that at 1200 noon, July 12, four hours before Hizballah kidnapped two Israeli soldiers and killed eight in a cross-border raid, no one on the general staff had any notion a war was in the offing.
A DEBKAfile investigation has uncovered some facts that would help explain some of the mishaps.
The knife-edge threat that caught the Israeli army unprepared was welcomed in Washington. Our sources close to the Bush administration have learned that secretary of state Condoleezza Rice embraced the opening for an Israeli offensive against Hizballah in Lebanon. Vice President Dick Cheney also favored an Israeli air strike but worried about the lack of an Israeli plan for a parallel ground offensive. One of his aides later expressed the view that Olmert and Halutz had been cautioned that air offensives unaccompanied by ground assaults never achieved strategic goals, as the Americans discovered after bombing Baghdad at the start of the Iraq war in 2003.
But the Israeli prime minister and chief of staff insisted that the air force was able to inflict a shock defeat on Hizballah and produce a fast and cheap victory.
US defense secretary Donald Rumsfeld was leery about any Israeli military offensive against Hizballah, fearing complications for the US army in Iraq at the peak of a surging sectarian civil war.
But Olmert talked Rice into asking President George W. Bush to back the air offensive. The US president acceded – only laying down two basic conditions: Israel must confine itself to an air campaign; before embarking on a ground offensive, a further American go-ahead would be required. The second was a promise to spare Lebanon’s civilian infrastructure and only go for Hizballah’s positions and installations.
The conditions when relayed by the secretary of state were accepted by the prime minister. The first explains why Israel’s ground forces were held ready in bases for three long weeks rather than being sent into battle - up until the last stage. By then, the air force offensive had proved a long way short of fast and cheap; worse, it had been ineffectual.
The second condition accounts for another of the war’s enigmas: Israeli forces were not allowed to destroy buildings known to be occupied by Hizballah teams firing anti-tank rockets because it would have meant destroying Lebanese infrastructure.
This brought Israeli forces into extreme danger; they were forced to come back again and again to repeat cleansing operations in villages and towns close to the Israeli border, such as Maroun a-Ras, Bint Jubeil and Atia a-Chaab. This exposed them to Hizballah’s attrition tactics at the cost of painful casualties.
Only in the third week of the war, when the Bush administration saw the Israeli air force had failed to bring Hizballah to collapse, and the campaign would have to be salvaged in a hurry, did Rice give the green light for ground troops to go in en masse to try and finish off the Shiite terrorist group. Then too, an American stipulation was imposed: Israel troops must not reach the Litani River.
The Israel army did embark on a tardy wide-scale push to the LItani River and as far as Nabatia and Arnoun, but was soon cut short in its tracks. American spy satellites spotted the advance and Olmert was cautioned by Washington to hold his horses.
This last disastrous order released the welter of conflicting, incomprehensible orders which stirred up the entire chain of command - from the heads of the IDF’s Northern command down to the officers in the field. Operational orders designed to meet tactical combat situations were scrapped in mid-execution and new directives tumbled down the chute from above. Soldiers later complained that in one day, they were jerked into unreasoned actions by four to six contrary instructions.
None of the commanders at any level could explain what was going on because none were party to the backroom decision-making at the prime minister’s office. According to our sources, Olmert kept his exchanges with Condoleezza close to his chest and members of his cabinet and high army command firmly out of the process. The prime minister even kept the chief of staff out of the picture and did not explain why he was called on to chop and change tactics in the heat of war.
Olmert’s absolute compliance with Rice’s directives without fully comprehending their military import threw Israel’s entire war campaign into disorder.
Because of the muddle, supply trucks could not locate units and had to leave them without food and water, the subject of one of the bitterest complaints.
This botched sequence of decisions and their consequences also ties in with the fishing expedition in Damascus subsequently embarked on by senior Israeli ministers.
It appears that Condoleezza Rice was not exactly happy with the way the war turned out, nor with the failure of diplomacy to bring Lebanon’s hostilities to a satisfactory conclusion or even to deploy an effective multinational force to stabilize South Lebanon. She therefore decided to explore the chances of luring Bashar Assad away from the Iranian fold. This is a tentative idea which has not ripened into a policy - much less gained a White House go-ahead. But as soon as word was leaked to Jerusalem, several Israeli ministers jumped aboard – Peretz first, followed by Livni, who there and then created a Syrian Project Desk at the foreign ministry, the education minister, Yuli Tamir and finally, on Monday, Dichter.
These ministers know that the Olmert government stands on shaky legs against the spreading wave of popular disaffection over its management of the Lebanon war, its cost and its outcome. The clamor for a state inquiry is the least of the public’s demands. For government members who are caught between a fragile truce in Lebanon and a tenuous government, any distraction – even a reckless feeler towards a declared enemy – may look attractive.
I.D.Chips in Military
| By the NewsMax.com Staff |
| For the story behind the story... |
Implanted Chips in Our Troops?
A Florida company wants to get under the skin of 1.4 million U.S. servicemen and women.
VeriChip Corp, based in Delray Beach, Fla., and described by the D.C. Examiner as "one of the most aggressive marketers of radio frequency identification chips," is hoping to convince the Pentagon to allow them to insert the chips, known as RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) chips under the skin of the right arms of U.S. servicemen and servicewomen to enable them to scan an arm and obtain that person’s identity and medical history. The chips would replace the legendary metal dog tags that have been worn by U.S. military personnel since 1906.
The device is usually implanted above the triceps area of an individual’s right arm, but can also by implanted in the hand if scanned at the proper frequency. The VeriChip responds with a unique 16-digit number, which can correlate the user to information stored on a database for identity verification, medical records access, and other uses. The insertion procedure is performed under local anesthetic, and once inserted it is invisible to the naked eye.
The company, which the Examiner notes has powerful political connections, is "in discussions” with the Pentagon, VeriChip spokeswoman Nicole Philbin told the Examiner. "The potential for this technology doesn’t just stop at the civilian level,” Philbin said. Company officials have touted the chips as versatile, able to be used in a variety of situations such as helping track illegal immigrants or giving doctors immediate access to patient’s medical records.
On Monday the Department of State started to issue electronic passports (e-passports) equipped with RFID chips. According to reports the U.S. government has placed an order with a California company, Infineon Technologies North America, for smart chip-embedded passports.
Story Continues Below
The Associated Press said the new U.S. passports include an electronic chip that contains all the data contained in the paper version name, birth date, gender, for example and can be read by digital scanners at equipped airports. They cost 14 percent more than their predecessors but the State Department said they will speed up going through Customs and help enhance border security.
The company's hefty political clout is typified by having former secretary of the Department of Health and Human Services, Tommy Thompson, on its board of directors.
Thompson assured the Examiner that the chip is safe and that no one — not even military personnel, who are required by law to follow orders — will be forced to accept an implant against his or her will. He has also promised to have a chip implanted in himself but could not tell the Examiner when.
"I’m extremely busy and I’m waiting until my hospitals and doctors are able to run some screens," he told the newspaper.
Not everybody agrees with Thompson, the Examiner reported, noting that the idea of implanting the chips in live bodies has some veterans’ groups and privacy advocates worried.
 | ||||||||
|
"It needs further study,” Joe Davis, a retired Air Force major and a spokesman for the D.C. office of the Veterans of Foreign Wars, told the Examiner.
And Liz McIntyre, co-author with Katherine Albrecht of "Spychips: How Major Corporations and Government Plan to Track your Every Move with RFID," said that VeriChip is "a huge threat” to public privacy.
"They’re circling like vultures for any opportunity to get into our flesh,” McIntyre told the Examiner. "They’ll start with people who can’t say no, like the elderly, sex offenders, immigrants, and the military. Then they’ll come knocking on our doors.”
In an e-mail to the Examiner, Sen. Patrick Leahy, D-Vt., wrote: "If that is what the Defense Department has in mind for our troops in Iraq, there are many questions that need answers. "What checks and balances, safeguards, and congressional oversight would there be?” Leahy asked. "What less-invasive alternatives are there? What information would be entered on the chips, and could it endanger our soldiers or be intercepted by the enemy?”
The company, the Examiner wrote, is also unsure about the technology. According to company documents, radio frequencies in ambulances and helicopters could disrupt the chips’ transmissions. In a filing with the Securities and Exchange Commission, VeriChip also said it was unsure whether the chip would dislodge and move through a person’s body. It could also cause infections and "adverse tissue reactions,” the SEC filing states.
But Philbin downplayed the danger of the chips.
"It’s the size of a grain of rice,” she said. "It’s like getting a shot of penicillin.”