Riz Khan – Intervention in the Arab world

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Why are Western nations so keen to intervene in Libya and why are they not coming to the aid of other Arabs facing similar violence?

We Sail Again: The History of the Free Gaza movement

Written by Free Gaza Movement | 31 March 2011
Posted in News

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March 31, 2011

If Israeli authorities thought that their attack on Freedom Flotilla 1 last year would break our momentum and scare us away from sailing to Gaza again, they were wrong. The brutality of the assault on our flotilla has led to an increase of support for our kind of nonviolent, direct action. We are now organising Freedom Flotilla 2, scheduled to set sail in late May 2011, with twice as many vessels as we had last year. We are bigger and stronger now as dozens of new organisations and thousands more people have joined our efforts. We sail not just for Gaza, as what’s happening in Gaza is not separate from the human rights abuses, racist laws, and oppressive policies perpetrated by Israel in the West Bank, Jerusalem, and even inside the 1948 borders. We sail to confront and challenge an entire apartheid regime that must be dismantled through citizen action.

We have proven that civil society’s non-violent actions against Israel can be as powerful as the governments who refuse to hold the state accountable for its crimes against the Palestinians. This article traces the history of the Free Gaza movement and our efforts to open Israel’s illegal blockade on 1.5 million Palestinians in Gaza.

http://www.thisweekinpalestine.com/details.php?id=3382&ed=193&edid=193

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CIA already helping Libyan rebel forces before Resolution 1973 vote

http://www.voltairenet.org

 

Through an exclusive Reuters dispatch, Mark Hosenball reveals that President Barack Obama gave the CIA the green light to undertake covert actions in support of Libyan rebels.

According to the journalist, the order was signed before the vote on Resolution 1973. Washington thus endorsed a text which prohibits the very actions for which it had already given its approval.

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“Exclusive: Obama authorizes secret help for Libya rebels“, by Mark Hosenball, Reuters, 30 March 2011.

 

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Benjamin Fulford: TSUNAMI ATTACK ON JAPAN PLANNED

http://www.veteranstoday.comMarch 30, 2011 posted by Veterans Today  

US troops and occupation forces flee Japan, their lackeys flee Tokyo

By Benjamin Fulford

The United States occupation forces in Japan are staging a major strategic defeat because they know the Japanese defense establishment knows it was elements of the US military that set off the March 11, (311) tsunami attack against Japan. This attack used nuclear weapons drilled into the seabed by submarines and not HAARP according to senior Pentagon Sources. In addition, four months ago they overruled Japanese authorities and placed deadly plutonium into the number 3 reactor at Fukushima, according to the governor of Fukushima prefecture. This was to provide a nuclear cover story for the seabed atomic attack, pentagon sources say. Needless to say, the ring-leaders of this attack are now in hiding and know they will be found.The attack on Japan was orchestrated by the Bush/Clinton/Rockefeller cabal in an attempt to prevent the upcoming bankruptcy of their criminal corporate government in Washington D.C. That is why they staged the farcical show of “President” Obama of the bankrupt United States signing an “aid” bill for Japan, as if they could terrorize the rest of the world into giving them more money. That is also why they are now desperately trying to use their extortionist nation-wrecking IMF as the new vehicle for a “global currency.” 

In addition, Chinese and Russian intelligence now report that Germany’s Angela Merkel is the daughter of Adolf Hitler thanks to the use of frozen sperm and the expertise of a Nazi doctor captured by the Soviets. That means she is almost certainly one of the ringleaders of the Nazi faction still hoping for a fascist world totalitarian government.

The Pentagon, for its part, is running out of oil thanks to a spreading global oil boycott targeting the criminal US corporate government. Bombing Libya will not help their case, just as attacking Japan did not help.

They are whistling in the wind because the whole world despises them and will no longer do business with them, even if this means facing down their threats of additional violence.

Their only hope is to turn over their command and control to General Colin Powell and other decent human beings still to be found within that large, bureaucratic and potentially good organization.

Meanwhile, multiple sources report that cabalist bankers, US military forces, corporate propaganda experts and other occupation forces have left Japan or have withdrawn to Okinawa. Japanese workers at US bases say troops have been withdrawn from all bases on the Japanese mainland, although this is not yet fully confirmed. However, we can confirm that agents of the criminal part of the Federal Reserve board have now left Japan. We would like to bid an especially good riddance to the rapacious bankers who have been stealing Japanese savings and using them to buy up chunks of Japan’s industry.

We can also now say that arch-traitor Heizo Takenaka, the former Finance Minister of Japan, will be facing multiple criminal charges for his crimes against the Japanese people during his time in power with the murderer Junichiro Koizumi.

One example of his criminality that we can prove in great detail in a court of law is his theft of the company Mizawa home. Takenaka illegally and unethically forced financially sound Mizawa Home into a government “financial restructuring agency,” pumped at least $200 million of Japanese taxpayer money into it and then handed it over to his brother who is now chairman of Misawa home. Our sources for this include Chiyoji Misawa, the founder of Misawa Home.

There will also be insider trading investigations into the sudden rise of the stock price of Higashi Nihon House in the month prior to the earthquake. It would only make sense for the share price of that company to rise as it did in the month prior to the tsunami if someone had insider knowledge that a bunch of housing was about to be destroyed. Japan has 3 million empty homes and a shrinking population.

Investigations will also reveal if Takenaka’s take-over of Misawa home was a sign this attack was planned long in advance.

We have also been informed by an astute reader that a Canadian company sent large shipments of Potassium Iodide to South Korea (a treatment for radioactive poisoning) one month before the nuclear “accidents,” in the Fukushima earthquake zone.

A representative of the Satanists was also told by a White Dragon Society representative that their idea that prophecy of the future was written in the stars and could not be changed was balderdash. “We will write our own stars,” he was told.

Finally, this writer went to the volcanic Island of Oshima to watch the supermoon on March 19th. The moon appeared a bright gold in color and had the exact same trajectory over the sky as did the sun on the following day. There were plenty of presumably US military observation planes in the sky over Oshima on that night but they left disappointed. Anything unusual that took place, took place when they were not watching.

This writer would like to add that even if he was given a technology capable of destroying the planet, he would never use it. Using it to save the planet is a different question but, humans already know how to do that.

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A CIA commander for the Libyan rebels

http://www.wsws.org

28 March 2011

The Libyan National Council, the Benghazi-based group that speaks for the rebel forces fighting the Gaddafi regime, has appointed a long-time CIA collaborator to head its military operations. The selection of Khalifa Hifter, a former colonel in the Libyan army, was reported by McClatchy Newspapers Thursday and the new military chief was interviewed by a correspondent for ABC News on Sunday night.

Hifter’s arrival in Benghazi was first reported by Al Jazeera on March 14, followed by a flattering portrait in the virulently pro-war British tabloid the Daily Mail on March 19. The Daily Mail described Hifter as one of the “two military stars of the revolution” who “had recently returned from exile in America to lend the rebel ground forces some tactical coherence.” The newspaper did not refer to his CIA connections.

McClatchy Newspapers published a profile of Hifter on Sunday. Headlined “New Rebel Leader Spent Much of Past 20 years in Suburban Virginia,” the article notes that he was once a top commander for the Gaddafi regime, until “a disastrous military adventure in Chad in the late 1980s.”

Hifter then went over to the anti-Gaddafi opposition, eventually emigrating to the United States, where he lived until two weeks ago when he returned to Libya to take command in Benghazi.

The McClatchy profile concluded, “Since coming to the United States in the early 1990s, Hifter lived in suburban Virginia outside Washington, DC.” It cited a friend who “said he was unsure exactly what Hifter did to support himself, and that Hifter primarily focused on helping his large family.”

To those who can read between the lines, this profile is a thinly disguised indication of Hifter’s role as a CIA operative. How else does a high-ranking former Libyan military commander enter the United States in the early 1990s, only a few years after the Lockerbie bombing, and then settle near the US capital, except with the permission and active assistance of US intelligence agencies? Hifter actually lived in Vienna, Virginia, about five miles from CIA headquarters in Langley, for two decades.

The agency was very familiar with Hifter’s military and political work. A Washington Post report of March 26, 1996 describes an armed rebellion against Gaddafi in Libya and uses a variant spelling of his name. The article cites witnesses to the rebellion who report that “its leader is Col. Khalifa Haftar, of a contra-style group based in the United States called the Libyan National Army.”

The comparison is to the “contra” terrorist forces financed and armed by the US government in the 1980s against the Sandinista government in Nicaragua. The Iran-Contra scandal, which rocked the Reagan administration in 1986-87, involved the exposure of illegal US arms sales to Iran, with the proceeds used to finance the contras in defiance of a congressional ban. Congressional Democrats covered up the scandal and rejected calls to impeach Reagan for sponsoring the flagrantly illegal activities of a cabal of former intelligence operatives and White House aides.

A 2001 book, Manipulations africaines, published by Le Monde diplomatique, traces the CIA connection even further back, to 1987, reporting that Hifter, then a colonel in Gaddafi’s army, was captured fighting in Chad in a Libyan-backed rebellion against the US-backed government of Hissène Habré. He defected to the Libyan National Salvation Front (LNSF), the principal anti-Gaddafi group, which had the backing of the American CIA. He organized his own militia, which operated in Chad until Habré was overthrown by a French-supported rival, Idriss Déby, in 1990.

According to this book, “the Haftar force, created and financed by the CIA in Chad, vanished into thin air with the help of the CIA shortly after the government was overthrown by Idriss Déby.” The book also cites a Congressional Research Service report of December 19, 1996 that the US government was providing financial and military aid to the LNSF and that a number of LNSF members were relocated to the United States.

This information is available to anyone who conducts even a cursory Internet search, but it has not been reported by the corporate-controlled media in the United States, except in the dispatch from McClatchy, which avoids any reference to the CIA. None of the television networks, busily lauding the “freedom fighters” of eastern Libya, has bothered to report that these forces are now commanded by a longtime collaborator of US intelligence services.

Nor have the liberal and “left” enthusiasts of the US-European intervention in Libya taken note. They are too busy hailing the Obama administration for its multilateral and “consultative” approach to war, supposedly so different from the unilateral and “cowboy” approach of the Bush administration in Iraq. That the result is the same—death and destruction raining down on the population, the trampling of the sovereignty and independence of a former colonial country—means nothing to these apologists for imperialism.

The role of Hifter, aptly described 15 years ago as the leader of a “contra-style group,” demonstrates the real class forces at work in the Libyan tragedy. Whatever genuine popular opposition was expressed in the initial revolt against the corrupt Gaddafi dictatorship, the rebellion has been hijacked by imperialism.

The US and European intervention in Libya is aimed not at bringing “democracy” and “freedom,” but at installing in power stooges of the CIA who will rule just as brutally as Gaddafi, while allowing the imperialist powers to loot the country’s oil resources and use Libya as a base of operations against the popular revolts sweeping the Middle East and North Africa.

Patrick Martin

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NATO uses depleted uranium bombs against Libya

http://www.uruknet.info

The Voice of Russia

 

March 30, 2011 “An unacceptable threat to life and a violation of international law” – that’s how the United States’ former Justice Secretary Ramsey Clark slammed the use of depleted uranium weapons. The United States first used depleted uranium bombs during the military invasion of Iraq in 1991. Apparently pleased with the debut, the Americans pounded them on Yugoslavia nine years later. These days, world news media have been awash with reports that NATO is using depleted uranium bombs against Libya. Leaving aside the legal and moral aspect of the attacks, a question arises: can’t NATO crush Colonel Gaddafi’s Armed Forces without radioactive exposure? Political observer Sergei Guk discussed the issue with Voice of Russia guests – General Director of the Center for International and Strategic Research Vladimir Belous and Deputy Director of the Institute for the U.S. and Canadian Studies Pavel Zolotaryov, both retired major generals. Shells, bombs and cruise missiles stuffed with depleted uranium easily pierce through thick and heavy armor. That’s why the American military value them so much. According to political research centers in Germany, about 300 radioactive shells were fired at Saddam Hussein’s troops from the air and from the ground during the first campaign, launched in 1991. Twenty-one U.S. tanks were hit by mistake. The consequences were not slow to arrive. In 2003, the World Health Organization reported a rise in cancer diseases in five provinces in southern Iraq. Air, water and soil were contaminated with radiation. Leukemia south of Baghdad assumed epidemic proportions. By 2009, cancer rates grew to thousands of new cases per year. The uranium filling boomeranged on NATO troops. In the densely populated Yugoslavia, leukemia symptoms were particularly extensive with radiation levels 10 to 1,000 times above normal. More than 250 Italian soldiers died from cancer-related diseases. As for civilians, here’s just one example. Leukemia rates among new-born babies in former Yugoslavia have soared from one per 1,000 prior to NATO’s uranium attacks to between 10 and 15 per 1,000 now. Is there any point in using radioactive shells in Libya? Can’t NATO manage without them? Pavel Zolotaryov gives his view: “There is absolutely no point in that. It could be that the Americans have something to test, considering the tasks they need to fulfill. But how does all that fit in with the UN resolution on Libya?” Vladimir Belous agrees: “At present, there is absolutely no need in using such kind of shells. Although the quantity of uranium is small, radioactive shrapnel, when penetrating into a human body, creates big problems for the treatment of the wounded.” The aim of the UN resolution on a no-fly zone over Libya, which took shape before our very eyes, is formulated very precisely: not just shutting the air space but protecting civilians. Nothing beyond that. No one authorized NATO to fight on the side of one warring faction against the other, let alone use depleted uranium shells. Even if these shells explode in a desert far from residential areas, for many Libyans this is a postponed death sentence. The same happened in Iraq where depleted uranium bombs were also used in a desert. A brief look at cancer statistics in Iraq and former Yugoslavia is enough to imagine what awaits Libyans in the near future.

:: Article nr. 76375 sent on 30-mar-2011 19:14 ECT
www.uruknet.info?p=76375

Link: english.ruvr.ru/2011/03/30/48203222.html

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Dr. Michio Kaku: Reactor #3 Has Been Breached: “There Are Now Three Major Nuclear Meltdowns In Progress”

found on : http://dailybail.com

Video – ABC News – Mar. 29, 2011

Fukushima reactor number #3 has been breached.

CIA Analyst Reveals Zionists’ Role in Planning U.S. Invasion of Iraq

http://www.americanfreepress.net

By Dave Gahary

According to a retired CIA analyst, new evidence has emerged revealing the full extent to which Israel was involved in the direct planning of America’s aggressive war on Iraq that was initiated by President George W. Bush after the Sept. 11, 2001, attacks on New York and Washington.

During a March 10 interview, former 27-year CIA intelligence analyst Ray McGovern broke some news with AFP concerning former Deputy Defense Secretary Paul Wolfowitz. This information on the extent of Wolfowitz’s war making agenda was derived, McGovern said, from “an unimpeachable source.”

McGovern began, “Enough distance has been created between Wolfowitz and our government that I feel free to tell this story. Since Wolfowitz was largely responsible for the Iraqi invasion, his father wrote him a note that said: ‘Paul, I’m an ardent Zionist, but first and foremost, I’m an American. What you have done for the Zionist cause is beyond the pale, and you should be ashamed of yourself.’ ”

The war happened, explained McGovern, because “son Paul put Israel before the interests of the United States.”

McGovern continued, “That’s why I say, particularly in the leadup to the invasion of Iraq, the socalled neo-conservatives—Richard Perle, Wolfowitz, [Douglas] Feith, the whole coterie of folks who were running our policy at that time—they had great difficulty distinguishing between what they considered to be the strategic interests of Israel on the one hand, and the strategic interests of the United States on the other. They tend to see them as identical, and they’re not.”

He next addressed the ramifications of these decisions. “When you look at the hatred that our policies in the Middle East have caused among 1.3 billion Muslims in the world, and when you see that a lot of their behavior is conditioned by our being joined at the hip with Israeli policy, however violent, then you can see what damage this is doing to the interests of the United States.”

In separate interviews with The Washington Post and MSNBC, along with testimony to a congressional committee, McGovern used the term “O.I.L.” to explain why the U.S went to war with Iraq: oil, Israel and logistics. War was waged, he believes, so the U.S. and Israel could dominate that part of the world. Moreover, Israel was intimately involved with war planning.

“Was Israel part of the calculation? We have empirical evidence now. Before it was largely analysis,” McGovern explained.

The evidence he’s referring to is from former Prime Minister Tony Blair testifying before the Chilcot Inquiry earlier this year. Blair admitted that while he and Bush were scheming about Iraq in April 2002 at Bush’s ranch in Crawford, Texas near Waco, they were in constant communication with the Israelis.

As expected, McGovern’s appearance before Congress created controversy. “Within three hours of my testimony, prominent congresspersons from New York issued a collective statement calling me anti-Semitic because I said Israel and the United States wanted to dominate that part of the world.”

Unshaken by these attacks, McGovern struck a defiant tone. “If I say Israel is a major factor in our country’s decision to initiate a war of aggression, that is fact supported by evidence. People should not shy away from that.”

AFP next asked if he thought the American Israel Public Affairs Committee (AIPAC) has too much influence on Congress.

McGovern was no-nonsense in his reply: “They should be registered as an agent of a foreign power; it’s pure and simple. I don’t know how they escaped that, but those are the rules.”

He continued, “Even when their minions are caught spying on us, purloining classified information and giving it to the Israeli Embassy, they get off, and they’re not brought to trial, whereas Bradley Manning, the presumed WikiLeaks leaker, is in solitary confinement for 10 months now at the Marine brig in Quantico, Va.”

McGovern summed up Israel’s malignant influence with some tongue-in-cheek humor: “There’s a vicious joke that goes like this: Somebody wanted Israel to consider becoming America’s 51st state. The answer came back: No, the Israelis are not interested, because then they would only have two senators.”

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Pics of the Day ! Bahrain Protests

update : 250 arrested in Bahrain crackdown

click the pics to go to sources !

Pic 1 : no comment !

pic : http://www.welt.de

Pic 2 :

The Pearl Square monumentum before the >anti King/Government protests< took place .

pic : http://www.latimes.com

The same monumentum during the attacks of Government forces against the >anti King/Government protesters<

pic : http://www.businessinsider.com

The >Pearl Square< Monumentum lies in ruins after the military demolished it .

No >Tahrir Square< for the Bahrain Revolution !

pic : http://www.welt.de

Bahrain Map (clickpic for Wikipedia page on Bahrain )

pic : http://en.wikipedia.org

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Libya/Iraq : Washington’s precious catch: the oil and the bank accounts

28 March 2011 All the versions of this article: français

http://www.voltairenet.org International affairs Editorial: Washington’s precious catch: the oil and the bank accounts The Americans have reaped hundreds of billions of dollars after having frozen Mubarak’s, Ben Ali’s and Gaddafi’s bank accounts. This enticing sum which has become under the control of the American administration and some of its European partners met an urgent need in the ranks of the major industrial countries in these times of crisis, in which their governments are forced to issue treasury bonds to fund their growing expenses, to activate the economic wheel and resist the suffocating stalemate. In addition to this economic and financial dimension, the availability of hundreds of billions of dollars is alleviating the industrial states’ need for Chinese help, at a time when the Chinese government is demanding costly political prices that are making the American empire feel the retreat of its international influence even further. Real gains reside in these frozen billions as they are compensating for the loss resulting from the fall of rulers who had offered major services to the American and Western hegemony over the Arab countries. During the next few years, the new governments in these countries will find it difficult to liberate and restore these frozen assets, while the proof for that is what was seen in Iraq whose debt was multiplied by the Americans following the occupation, without them returning anything from the funds they froze throughout twenty years. In that same context, they have hijacked Iraq’s oil which is still underground for the next twenty years. The Arab affairs Editorial: Plan to sabotage Al-Assad’s reforms The timing of the transfer of the infection to Syria and the fueling of the turmoil in it through the payment of funds and the mobilization of a massive Lebanese, Arab and foreign machine to serve the current campaign targeting the country, point to a blunt attempt to block the way before president Bashar al-Assad’s reform project. The proof for that is the continuation of this campaign following the announcement of the decisions of the Baath Party command on Thursday. Indeed, what is required is turmoil and the mobilization of parts of the Syrian youth to serve the project of chaos which has turned into a chapter of terrorist violence exercised by outlaws and infiltrators, some of whose sources of financing and armament were exposed following their involvement in the Daraa events. This campaign did not undermine Al-Assad’s determination to fix the relations between Syria and Lebanon, as he adopted a series of measures including the ending of Abdul Halim Khaddam’s and Ghazi Kanaan’s control over the so-called Lebanese file, while completely turning his back on the deals offered to him by Jacques Chirac and Western envoys dispatched by Bush’s administration to trade Syrian military presence in Lebanon with the pledge to disarm the resistance. Throughout the past years, President Al-Assad and the Syrian command placed the deterrence of the American-Israeli project in the region at the top of their list of priorities and the Syrian efforts focused on redrafting the Middle Eastern map outside the circle of imperialistic hegemony. Syria thus engaged in partnerships across the border, enhanced the alliance with Iran and secured harmony with Turkey. Al-Assad’s strategy drew up the facets if the independent Middle Eastern bloc that is cooperating economically, politically and on the security level. This consecrated the embracing of the resistance in Lebanon, Palestine and Iraq on stable grounds and proved its efficiency following difficult tests in the Lebanon and Gaza wars. The plan to transfer the protests infection to Syria, aims at blocking the way before the reform project of President Al-Assad who announced his determination to implement it as a first response to the Arab popular revolutions. The denial of calm in Daraa and the attempts to give the impression that demonstrations are being staged through fabricated reports spread by Syrian dissidents abroad and adopted by Western and Arab media outlets participating in the plan to sabotage Syria, aim at saying that the situation in Syria is unstable and that the reforms are not perceived seriously, although popular protests were launched on Thursday night and Friday morning in more than one location in the Syrian capital and provinces in support of President Al-Assad and the decisions which he promised to implement. The Arab file Syria Syrian President Bashar Al-Assad launched a series of economic and political changes and issued on Thursday night decrees to help improve the living conditions of the citizens. Regarding the incidents witnessed in the Daraa province, media adviser Boutheina Chaaban assured that the Baath party command decided to form a committee to communicate with the citizens in Daraa, discuss the incidents and hold those who were responsible for them accountable. It is worth noting that some media outlets intentionally pointed to the expansion of the protests to Lattakia, which is known for being the former stronghold of Refaat al-Assad’s gangs. In the past, these groups used to terrorize the citizens and carry out acts of violence and theft, which forced President Assad to oust Refaat al-Assad and his sons from the country altogether. On Friday, the city witnessed the presence of unknown snipers who randomly started shooting at the citizens and left two people dead, in the context of the plans aiming at undermining Syria’s security. In regard to Banias, it is known to be the hometown of former Vice President Abdul Halim Khaddam who is obviously exploiting the funds stolen from the Syrian people to finance anti-regime operations. Syrian President Bashar al-Assad issued a legislative decree to increase the wages and release all those who were arrested in the Daraa incidents. Media adviser of President Al-Assad, Boutheina Chaaban, assured in a press conference that the Baath party command was planning on establishing a new and efficient mechanism to fight corruption and secure the issuance of the necessary legislations. It also planned on looking into the rapid ending of the state of emergency and issuing legislations guaranteeing the safety of the country and the citizens, in addition to the drafting of a parties law and making it the object of political and popular dialogue. Chaaban mentioned that ten people were killed since the eruptions of the incidents in Daraa, assuring there were ongoing investigations to reveal the implications of these developments. She said there was evidence proving the presence of foreign funding and hands standing behind what was happening in Daraa, indicating that the results of the investigations will be presented once they are complete. Yemen President Ali Abdullah Saleh ousted the government and assigned it to continue handling the daily affairs in the country, until a new one is formed. He then considered that those calling for chaos, violence and sabotage were a very small faction of the Yemeni people. The Yemeni president then warned against the eruption of a bloody civil war in case dissent is witnessed within the military institution, considering that the military commanders who had joined the young protesters were implementing a foreign agenda. Libya Colonel Muammar Gaddafi warned the NATO forces that are launching air raids against the security brigades against a long war in which he will eventually be the victor. He thus called on them to retreat, adding: “We will not let them enjoy our oil. We will not let the Fateh Revolution go to waste and will not allow America, France and Britain to take our oil.” He then invited those whom he referred to as the “defeated attackers” and tyrants to a land confrontation. Gaddafi also warned the states bordering the Mediterranean Sea that their interests will be at stake after NATO’s bombing of some areas which he is controlling. Egypt The chairman of the judicial committee supervising the referendum over the constitutional amendments, Councilor Mohammad Attiya, announced that the results of the referendum over these amendments showed their approval by 77,2% of the overall participants and their rejection by 22,8%. For its part, the January 25 Revolution Youth Alliance announced its acceptance of the results of the poll over the constitutional amendments, as long as the elements of safety and integrity are available. Palestine The Israeli occupation forces continued their escalation against the Gaza Strip, thus bombing it, infiltrating it and carrying out air raids against it, resulting in the martyrdom and injuring of a number of Palestinians. The Palestinian resistance factions responded by launching rockets on the settlements and by detonating a bus in the heart of occupied Jerusalem, causing the death of one and the injuring of over thirty Israelis. In that same context, Egyptian Foreign Minister Nabil el-Araby, warned Israel against implementing any military operations against the Gaza Strip. The Israeli file The bombing which targeted a bus in the occupied city of Jerusalem, the Israeli military escalation which followed it against the Gaza Strip and the threats of Israeli military leaders – at the head of whom is Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu- were the main headlines tackled by the Israeli press this past week. A few hours after Netanyahu made his threats, Israeli war planes launched a series of raids on several areas of the Gaza Strip and the Palestinian resistance launched a number of Grad missiles on the Israeli settlements. The papers also focused on the Iron Dome system which will obstruct the missiles launched from the Gaza Strip towards the Israeli settlements. On the other hand, the Israeli papers extensively tackled the decision to imprison former president of the Hebrew state, Katsav, against the backdrop of sexual crimes. In regard to Libyan affairs, the papers addressed the international dispute over the nature of the participation in the military attack on Libya, the goals behind the Western intervention and the United States’ role in the military campaign. The Lebanese file Hezbollah secretary General Sayyed Hassan Nasrallah said in a celebration organized to express solidarity with the Arab revolutions in Tunisia, Egypt, Yemen, Bahrain and Libya, that the new majority’s accountability started since the Bristol meeting when the March 14 forces announced they will not participate in the government. Nasrallah pointed to the presence of “massive pressures exercised on Mikati by ambassadors and states. They are saying to him: do not form a government which only includes the new majority. But how can he do that? It is a new majority which has the right to form the government. There are discussions over the color of the government, its formula, its ministerial statement and its future policies.” He added: “There are calls to summon foreign powers and I know as well as you that the Americans, the French, the West and the Arab world are being sought out to pressure the prime minister-designate. And if a day comes when we will need to reveal the details, we are ready to do that.” Prime Minister-designate Najib Mikati said to An-Nahar in response to a question about the outcome of his contacts and efforts: “There is slow progress.” Regarding the veracity of what was said about disputes between him and certain sides in March 8, he stated: “There are different viewpoints and I am seeking a government formation that will be comfortable to all the sides… Quite honestly, I have not yet lost hope. I never did.” In response to another question, he assured: “Syria has never interfered at this level,” adding he was not pessimistic. Prime Minister of the caretaker government Saad al-Hariri said: “The other team made a mistake when it thought that we were negotiating to resolve the crisis due to our insistence on maintaining power and thus tried to annul us politically.” He added: “We do not want to annul anyone. However, we will do our best to eliminate the tutelage of the arms over the Lebanese state and people, because it is affecting the state’s action, economic development and Lebanon’s progress on all levels. It has started to pose a threat on the interests of the Lebanese abroad after it turned into a tool to export the Iranian revolution to the Arab and Islamic states.” News analysis The United States and the Arab revolutions On the eve of the eruption of the revolution in Tunisia and Egypt, Obama’s administration was drowning in a major crisis due to the obstruction of the plan to contain the failure in Iraq and Afghanistan, and the dead end reached by the peace settlement due to the American president’s submission to the dictations of the Zionist lobby and the positions of Netanyahu’s government which rejected the minimum level of conditions allowing the Palestinian authority to save face. This happened despite this authority’s full submission to the dictations of the Americans and the Israelis to serve the occupation in the West Bank and maintain the thin negotiations line under the sponsorship of former Egyptian President Hosni Mubarak. The status of the Israeli deterrence power had collapsed before that date and the American strategic calculations reached the conclusion that it was necessary to relinquish the illusion of war on Iran because the cost would be quite high. In the meantime, the negotiations with the Islamic republic in Istanbul had reached the threshold of an American recognition of Iran as a nuclear power and a major player in the region. The danger which was perceived by the Americans as being a threat to their interests and to Israel’s, resided in the Egyptian case where the youth of Tahrir square toppled the attempt to appoint Omar Suleiman who was considered Americas’ and Israel’s strongman in Mubarak’s regime, but also when the calls on Tahrir square rose against the Camp David accord and in favor of restoring Egypt’s lost Arab role that draws its legitimacy from the support of the Palestinian cause and the resistance. The American wager thus looks obstructed but the attempts will not stop. This is why the March 14 forces acted inside Lebanon and toward the Syrian domestic arena ever since Saad al-Hariri’s government resigned, as the Americans are trying to ripen the conditions of an Israeli war against Syria and Lebanon through an ongoing depletion process targeting both countries. The American file A few days following NATO’s launching of the military campaign against Libya and the strongholds of Muammar Gaddafi, the American papers pointed to the clear divisions in the ranks of the alliance and tackled the existing dispute over who should be running the military operations and command. Moreover, the Washington Post indicated there was no proof for the fact that the attacks launched by NATO had prevented the regime’s forces from killing civilians or had turned the balance of power in favor of the revolutionaries. As for the Los Angeles Times, it assured that President Barack Obama was facing increasing criticisms inside and outside the US due to the military campaign in Libya. Also in the context of the Middle Eastern events, the papers talked about the retreat of the support of the Yemeni tribes toward President Ali Abdullah Saleh and about five army generals having joined the anti-regime protesters. This will further weaken the Yemeni president’s grip over the authority, the papers said, although he has been in power for over thirty years. The Washington Post thus wondered about the nature of the developments in the Arab world, but also about the nature of the revolution and whether it aimed at achieving democracy against a tyrannical rule or was a mere tribal confrontation. The British file The British papers issued last week tackled the repercussions of the events in Libya, NATO’s assignment to impose a no-fly zone over Libya and the dispute regarding NATO’s role in the military operation. They also addressed the renewal of the confrontations between the Palestinians and the Israelis against the backdrop of the Jerusalem explosion and the Israeli air raids on the Gaza Strip. Moreover, they talked about Saudi Arabia’s motives to interfere in Bahrain and play on the strings of sectarianism, the fears of seeing Al-Qaeda’s further infiltration in Yemen if its president were to insist on staying in power and the air campaign launched on Libya under the hegemony of American aircrafts. Saudi interference in Bahrain fuels sectarianism and hypocrisy behind Arab interference in Bahrain, especially that of Saudi Arabia The Guardian indicated that the “Saudi intervention in Bahrain will fuel sectarianism, not stifle it,” pointing out that the Arab “uprising began in a spirit of hopeful nationalism. But now religious divides are being exploited.” The paper added that what was new at the level of the Bahraini uprising was the “sectarian dimension” in this small island where “A majority of the Bahrain population is Shia and they are governed by a Sunni monarchy with a long history of discrimination.” The Guardian assured that the “The Saudis are using the threat of sectarianism as cover, insisting that urgent action was necessary to prevent what they are, in fact, fuelling.” As proof for that, the paper believed that “Provoking the fear of Shias meets domestic requirements; it inhibits the cautious Saudi version of the Arab spring – a nervous internet petition movement asking for reforms had been gathering strength.” It added: “Highlighting sectarianism serves Saudi well with another constituency – its American allies. There have been plenty of thinly veiled references to Iranian links with their co-religionists in Bahrain; presumably, allegations of “foreign interference” in Bahrain have been poured into American ears to keep them on side.” However, The Guardian revealed that the Saudi intervention in Bahrain will have negative repercussions, although it may appear to Riyadh and Manama that the situation is in their favor. It assured in this context: “In the last few days there have been demonstrations against Saudi intervention in Bahrain in Shia communities in Iraq, Lebanon, Iran and the crucial Saudi eastern province of Qatif, where most of its Shia live – and where Saudi oil is also concentrated.” Share this Source New Orient News (Lebanon) This author’s articles . Lebanon Obama’s Administration leading the counter-revolution Oil and Israel before human rights An inevitable arab cultural revolution The return of pan-Arabism The arab revolutions against US and Israel Cairo’s victory and Tehran’s celebrations Egypt: supporting Democracy or Israel, the West must (…) Peoples of the Middle East rise Washington returns to Iran Arabs, keep out! Israel lays claim to all the resources + + +

 

Speaker Boehner Letter to President Obama on Military Action in Libya

http://www.speaker.gov

source

Washington (Mar 23) House Speaker John Boehner (R-OH) today sent the following letter to President Obama regarding U.S. military action taking place in Libya.  A PDF of the letter can be found here.

March 23, 2011

President Barack Obama
The White House
1600 Pennsylvania Avenue NW
Washington, DC 20500

Dear Mr. President:

Thank you for your letter dated March 21, 2011, outlining your Administration’s actions regarding Libya and Operation Odyssey Dawn.  The United States has long stood with those who seek freedom from oppression through self-government and an underlying structure of basic human rights.  The news yesterday that a U.S. fighter jet involved in this operation crashed is a reminder of the high stakes of any military action abroad and the high price our Nation has paid in blood and treasure to advance the cause of freedom through our history.

I respect your authority as Commander-in-Chief and support our troops as they carry out their mission.  But I and many other members of the House of Representatives are troubled that U.S. military resources were committed to war without clearly defining for the American people, the Congress, and our troops what the mission in Libya is and what America’s role is in achieving that mission.  In fact, the limited, sometimes contradictory, case made to the American people by members of your Administration has left some fundamental questions about our engagement unanswered.  At the same time, by contrast, it appears your Administration has consulted extensively on these same matters with foreign entities such as the United Nations and the Arab League.

It is my hope that you will provide the American people and Congress a clear and robust assessment of the scope, objective, and purpose of our mission in Libya and how it will be achieved.  Here are some of the questions I believe must be answered:

• A United Nations Security Council resolution does not substitute for a U.S. political and military strategy.  You have stated that Libyan leader Muammar Qadhafi must go, consistent with U.S. policy goals.  But the U.N. resolution the U.S. helped develop and signed onto makes clear that regime change is not part of this mission.  In light of this contradiction, is it an acceptable outcome for Qadhafi to remain in power after the military effort concludes in Libya? If not, how will he be removed from power?  Why would the U.S. commit American resources to enforcing a U.N. resolution that is inconsistent with our stated policy goals and national interests?

• In announcing that our Armed Forces would lead the preliminary strikes in Libya, you said it was necessary to “enable the enforcement of a no-fly zone that will be led by our international partners.”  Do we know which partners will be taking the lead?  Are there clear lines of authority and responsibility and a chain of command?  Operationally, does enforcement of a no-fly zone require U.S. forces to attack non-air or command and control operations for land-based battlefield activities, such as armored vehicles, tanks, and combatants?

• You have said that the support of the international community was critical to your decision to strike Libya. But, like many Americans, it appears many of our coalition partners are themselves unclear on the policy goals of this mission.  If the coalition dissolves or partners continue to disengage, will the American military take on an increased role?  Will we disengage?

• Since the stated U.S. policy goal is removing Qadhafi from power, do you have an engagement strategy for the opposition forces?  If the strife in Libya becomes a protracted conflict, what are your Administration’s objectives for engaging with opposition forces, and what standards must a new regime meet to be recognized by our government?

• Your Administration has repeatedly said our engagement in this military action will be a matter of “days, not weeks.”  After four days of U.S. military action, how soon do you expect to hand control to these other nations?  After the transition to coalition forces is completed, how long will American military forces remain engaged in this action?  If Qadhafi remains in power, how long will a no-fly zone will be enforced?

• We are currently in the process of setting priorities for the coming year in the budget.  Has the Department of Defense estimated the total cost, direct and indirect, associated with this mission?  While you said yesterday that the cost of this mission could be paid for out of already-appropriated funds, do you anticipate requesting any supplemental funds from Congress to pay for ongoing operations in Libya?

• Because of the conflicting messages from the Administration and our coalition partners, there is a lack of clarity over the objectives of this mission, what our national security interests are, and how it fits into our overarching policy for the Middle East.  The American people deserve answers to these questions.  And all of these concerns point to a fundamental question: what is your benchmark for success in Libya?

The American people take the use of military action seriously, as does the House of Representatives.  It is regrettable that no opportunity was afforded to consult with Congressional leaders, as was the custom of your predecessors, before your decision as Commander-in-Chief to deploy into combat the men and women of our Armed Forces.  Understanding some information required to respond may be classified, I look forward to a complete response.

Sincerely,

John A. Boehner

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ASSANGE TERRIFIED OF “THE JEWS”…TODAY’S LAUGH

http://www.veteranstoday.com

Julian Assange has admitted that he is afraid of “a combined Jewish American attack” if he chooses to publish information harmful to the State of Israel

Antisemitism 2010 – Trends and Assessments Summary

“We preferred not to publish anything about Israel in the first week of the “Wikileaks” publications because this would have caused considerable problems – stated Julian Assange, the owner of the popular leaks website, in an interview with the French newspaper “AgoraVox” which is published in the area of the City of Strasburg.

In an interview that took place several weeks ago but whose contents were only published yesterday (Wednesday) he refers relatively extensively to the Israeli subject. “We put out files from other countries at the beginning”, said Assange, “at the time we did not have in our possession many files about Israel and we were also scared of an attack on us from the East Coast of the United States”.

It would appear that Assange was referring to an attack that would be made on him by the American Jewish Organizations, most of whom are located in New York and Washington. “If we had specifically chosen to start “Wikileaks” publications with information about States that are considered to be sensitive, we would have already found ourselves under attack which would have diverted us from our course”, he stated.

Assange was asked in that interview whether he had anything to fear from the State of Israel and answered “definitely”, explaining that he was concerned about the strong links between Jerusalem and Washington. “The connection between the two countries is what frightens me” he admitted. “Moreover, they had identical interests during the period of the war in Iraq and Bush was surrounded by colleagues who managed oil companies”.

“Israel has deep rooted connections on the East Coast of the USA, and not just because of the presence of a high number of Jews there, but also because the Jews of the East Coast have obtained Israeli passports in order to strengthen the connection with their homeland”, claimed Assange.

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Globalists—Through UN—Force U.S. Into Libyan War

http://www.americanfreepress.net

By James P. Tucker Jr.

The United States, under Bilderberg-Trilateral Commission orders, is now engaged in not two, but three wars in the Middle East where America has no legitimate national interest. But the world’s entrenched international financiers do have a huge interest in war profits, purchased at the cost of soldiers’ blood. These powerful globalists also perceive maverick rulers like Libya’s Muammar Qadaffi as roadblocks in their push for establishing a world regime.

Before the U.S. joined the invasion, Qadaffi sent a personal letter to President Obama in which he reportedly told Obama that Islamic fundamentalists tied to al Qaeda were the primary source of the ongoing political troubles in North Africa—including Libya. Qadaffi challenged Obama: “If you had found them taking over American cities by the force of arms, tell me what you would do?”

This was no “crazy conspiracy theory” coming from the eccentric Libyan strongman alone. Even Secretary of Defense Robert Gates—among other highlevel figures in the American military diplomatic intelligence community—raised concerns (like Qadaffi) about the possibility al Qaeda might be responsible for some of the unrest in Libya and/or that al Qaeda could benefit from the consequences of American intervention.

Qadaffi also sent terse notes to heads of state in France, Britain and to the UN secretary-general, also saying: “You never have the right to intervene in our internal affairs. Who gave you that right? Our country is not your country.”

American non-interventionists—who honor the words of President George Washington who cautioned his countrymen not to become involved in the affairs of other nations—find wisdom in Qadaffi’s words, even if they do not like his style of governing. If the United States intervened in every nation where dictators hold sway, Americans would have been at war with the Soviet Union, the People’s Republic of China and virtually every nation in Africa, to name but a few.

And while warmongering elements within the pro Israel “neoconservative” network and their congressional allies such as Sens. John McCain (RAriz.) and Joe Lieberman (IConn.) were calling for U.S. military intervention in Libya, even the neoconservative Washington Times, which is fiercely anti-Qadaffi and eager for his ouster, admitted in a front page story that many top retired military leaders were quietly urging the Obama administration to avoid intervention in Libya.

While the globalists were manipulating the United States into war in Libya—which is looking increasingly like it is about to become a classic “quagmire” of the Vietnam-Afghanistan-Iraq mode—two-thirds of Americans among a broad cross section in several polls expressed opposition to the Afghanistan war. In addition, polls show that many Americans believe the U.S. cannot afford another war given the current state of the economic situation and joblessness in the United States.

Nevertheless, Bilderberg-Trilateral Commission power is so strong that these two pro world government groups were able to put America’s fighting men and women into harm’s way, and they did it by having the president seek guidance, not from Congress, but from the world’s governmental body—the UN. As we go to press, the United States is raining bombs down on Libyan cities in another undeclared war.

AFP editor James P. Tucker Jr. is a veteran journalist who spent many years as a member of the “elite” media in Washington. Since 1975 he has won widespread recognition, here and abroad, for his pursuit of on-the-scene stories reporting the intrigues of global power blocs such as the Bilderberg Group. Tucker is the author of Jim Tucker’s Bilderberg Diary: One Man’s 25-Year Battle to Shine the Light on the World Shadow Government. Bound in an attractive full-color softcover and containing 272 pages—loaded with photos, many never published before—the book recounts Tucker’s experiences over the last quarter century at Bilderberg meetings. $25 from AFP. No charge for S&H in U.S.

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Out in Force: 300,000 to march in London anti-cuts protest

Calls to protect upcoming Gaza aid Flotilla as Israel hints to attack

http://www.freegaza.org

Written by Free Gaza Team | 26 March 2011

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Saturday, 26 March 2011

London – Despite the Israeli government’s escalating threats of violence and attempts at diplomatic strong-arming, the organizers of a new international “Freedom Flotilla” – more than 15 ships that will set sail in late May to force an end to the blockade of the Gaza Strip – says it is proceeding as planned. To assure that its passengers are unharmed, the European Campaign to End the Siege on Gaza (ECESG), one of the flotilla organizers, is calling on all governments representing participating citizens to take concrete steps to protect their safety

“There is nothing Israel – or our own governments — can do to frighten us into abandoning the 1.6 million ‘prisoners’ of Gaza,” said Rami Abdo, spokesperson for the ECESG. “Throughout the past – in the United States during its fight for equal rights for blacks, and in South Africa during the campaign against apartheid – it is only civil actions like this that eventually forced an end to government-imposed oppression. We stand on the right side of history. If they continue their campaign of tyranny, however, we will only become more determined.”

Abdo added that the flotilla is particularly urgently needed at this time due to Israel’s escalating military attacks on Gaza, leading some to fear that another invasion – similar to the deadly war on the Strip that left more than 1,400 Palestinians dead in early 2009 – is planned.

Israel has controlled the Palestinian people for 63 years, since more than 750,000 Palestinians were expelled from their homes or fled out of fear following the creation of Israel in 1948. That control intensified in 1967, when Israel occupied the West Bank, East Jerusalem and Gaza Strip. Although Israel withdrew its settlers from Gaza in 2005, it has continued to control the inhabitants’ lives; since 2007, it has prevented most human traffic in and out of the densely populated Strip, while restricting imports and banning virtually all exports. The impact: More than 75 percent of Palestinians in Gaza live under the poverty line.

The Freedom flotilla, of which Free Gaza and ECESG are founding members, is a human rights coalition that was organized after the 8th voyage by the Free Gaza movment. Free Gaza has sailed since August 2008 to break Israel’s illegal stranglehold, successfuly arriving in Gaza five times:  however, the past four voyages were violently intercepted, and on May 31, 2010, the Israeli military killed nine of the passengers during the first Freedom Flotilla.

A 10th flotilla – promising to be the largest, with 15 ships carrying passengers from 12 European states as well as Latin America, Africa, Asia, Canada and the United States  – is now being organized for a late May departure for Gaza. The passengers will include hundreds of peace advocates from around the world, including parliamentarians and human rights activists, and representatives of more than 40 media institutions.

Israel has responded by threatening to once again use deadly force to stop the new flotilla, including snipers and attack dogs. According to the Israeli newspaper Ha’aretz,  Israeli Defense Forces chief of staff Gabi Ashkenazi is on record as threatening that “if the IDF is faced with a similar situation in the future, there may be no alternative to deploying snipers to minimize troop casualties.” Likewise, the Jerusalem Post has reported that the IDF will deploy attack dogs from its Oketz canine units.

Meanwhile, Israel’s deputy foreign minister, Danny Ayalon, is summoning foreign diplomats to Jerusalem to urge them to work with Israel to stop the flotilla from taking place. According to the Irish Times, he justified his call for cooperation by claiming the flotilla would violate international law, and that “if anyone of goodwill would like to send anything to Gaza, he has ample ways to do it through our ports or Egyptian ports.”

Abdo, however, described the Israeli government’s claims as “total fabrication.”

“There is nothing in international law that supports Israel’s four-year-long blockade of Gaza, or its attacks on humanitarian shipments in international waters,” he said. “In fact, as stated last year by the normally neutral International Committee of the Red Cross, Israel’s collective punishment of the residents of Gaza is itself a clear violation of international humanitarian law, including the Fourth Geneva Convention.”

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Libyan War And Control Of The Mediterranean

http://www.voltairenet.org   by Rick Rozoff*   Had Muammar Gaddafi become too pesky for the likes of Nicolas Sarkozy and his Atlanticist partners, by standing in the way of their agenda for the domination of the Mediterranean sea region? France’s direct role in nurturing the rebellion against the Libyan leader is no longer a secret. In this article, Rick Rozoff offers some additional pointers, and analyzes the Libyan war in the context of the advancing transformation of the Mediterranean into NATO’s mare nostrum.

26 March 2011  From Chicago (USA) Tools Print Send Countries Libya Themes AfriCom: Control of Africa

French President Nicolas Sarkozy and fallen Egyptian President Hosni Mubarack are the merry co-chairs of the EU-Mediterranean summit held in Paris July 13, 2008. A year after assuming the post of president of the French Republic in 2007, and while his nation held the rotating European Union presidency, Nicolas Sarkozy invited the heads of state of the EU’s 27 members and those of 17 non-EU Mediterranean countries to attend a conference in Paris to launch a Mediterranean Union. In the words of Britain’s Daily Telegraph regarding the subsequent summit held for the purpose on July 13, 2008, “Sarkozy’s big idea is to use imperial Rome’s centre of the world as a unifying factor linking 44 countries that are home to 800 million people.” Libyan leader Muammar Gaddafi, however, announced that his nation would boycott the gathering, denouncing the initiative as one aimed at dividing both Africa and the Arab world, and stating: “We shall have another Roman empire and imperialist design. There are imperialist maps and designs that we have already rolled up. We should not have them again.” [1] The unprecedented summit was held with the intention of “shift[ing] Europe’s strategic focus towards the Middle East, North Africa and the Balkans.” [2] Blue: Members of the European Union Union for the Mediterranean / Green: Other members (primarily from the African Union & Arab League) / Striped green: Libya is currently only an observer member in the Union for the Mediterranean The Mediterranean Union was renamed the less controversial Union for the Mediterranean and its members include all 44 nations originally invited to join except for Libya. Less than three years later Sarkozy’s Mirage and Rafale warplanes were bombing Libyan government targets, initiating an ongoing war being waged by France, the United States, Britain and what the world news media refer to as an international coalition – 12 members of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and the emirate of Qatar – to overthrow the Gaddafi government and implant a more pliant replacement. The Mediterranean Sea is the main battle front in the world currently, superseding the Afghanistan-Pakistan war theater, and the empire of the new third millennium – that of the U.S., the world’s sole military superpower in the words of President Barack Obama in his Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech, and its NATO partners – is completing the transformation of the Mediterranean into its mare nostrum. The attack on Libya followed by slightly more than three weeks a move in the parliament of the Eastern Mediterranean island nation of Cyprus to drag that state into NATO’s Partnership for Peace program [3], which if ultimately successful would leave only three of twenty nations (excluding microstate Monaco) on or in the Mediterranean Sea not full members of NATO or beholden to it through partnership entanglements, including those of the Mediterranean Dialogue (Algeria, Egypt, Israel, Jordan, Mauritania, Morocco and Tunisia): Libya, Lebanon and Syria. NATO membership and partnerships obligate the affected governments to open their countries to the U.S. military. For example, less than a year after becoming independent Montenegro had already joined the Partnership for Peace and was visited by then-commander of U.S. Naval Forces Europe Admiral Harry Ulrich and the submarine tender Emory S. Land in an effort “to provide training and assistance for the Montenegrin Navy and to strengthen the relationship between the two navies.” [4] The next month four NATO warships, including the USS Roosevelt guided missile destroyer, docked in Montenegro’s Tivat harbor. If the current Libyan model is duplicated in Syria as increasingly seems to be the case, and with Lebanon already blockaded by warships from NATO nations since 2006 in what is the prototype for what NATO will soon replicate off the coast of Libya, the Mediterranean Sea will be entirely under the control of NATO and its leading member, the U.S. Cyprus in the only European Union member and indeed the only European nation (except for microstates) that is – for the time being – not a NATO member or partner, and Libya is the only African nation bordering the Mediterranean not a member of NATO’s Mediterranean Dialogue partnership program. Libya is also one of only five of Africa’s 54 countries that have not been integrated into, which is to say subordinated to, the new U.S. Africa Command (AFRICOM). The others are: Sudan, which is being balkanized as Libya may also soon be. Ivory Coast, now embroiled in what is for all intents a civil war with the West backing the armed groups of Alassane Ouattara against standing president Laurent Gbagbo and under the threat of foreign military intervention, likely by the AFRICOM- and NATO-supported West African Standby Force and possibly with direct Western involvement. [5] Eritrea, which borders Djibouti where some 5,000 U.S. and French troops are based and which was involved in an armed border conflict with its neighbor three years ago in which French military forces intervened on behalf of Djibouti. Zimbabwe, which is among likely candidates for the next U.S.-NATO Operation Odyssey Dawn-type military intervention. The Mediterranean has been history’s most strategically important sea and is the only one whose waves lap the shores of three continents. Control of the sea has been fought over by the Persian, Alexandrian, Carthaginian, Roman, Byzantine, Ottoman, Spanish, British and Napoleonic empires, in part or in whole, and by Mussolini’s Italy and Hitler’s Germany. Since the end of World War Two the major military power in the sea has been the U.S. In 1946 Washington established Naval Forces Mediterranean, which in 1950 became the U.S. Sixth Fleet and has its headquarters in the Mediterranean port city of Naples. The burning frigate USS Philadelphia in the harbor of Tripoli, February 16, 1804. Tripolitan War, was the first of two wars fought between the United States and the North African Muslim states known collectively as the Barbary States. Painted by Edward Moran in 1897. In fact the genesis of the U.S. Navy was the Naval Act of 1794, passed in response to the capture of American merchant vessels off the coast of North Africa. The Mediterranean Squadron (also Station) was created in reaction to the first Barbary War of 1801-1805, also known as the Tripolitan War after what is now northwestern Libya. The U.S. fought its first naval battle outside the Western Hemisphere against Tripolitania in 1801. U.S. Naval Forces Europe-Africa, also based in Naples, is assigned to the Sixth Fleet and provides forces for both U.S. European Command and U.S. Africa Command. Its commander is Admiral Samuel Locklear III, who is also commander of NATO’s Allied Joint Force Command Naples. He has been coordinating U.S. and NATO air and missile strikes against Libya from USS Mount Whitney, the flagship of the Sixth Fleet, as commander of Joint Task Force Odyssey Dawn, the U.S. Africa Command operation in charge of U.S. guided missile destroyers, submarines and stealth bombers conducting attacks inside Libya. Admiral Gary Roughead, Chief of Naval Operations (the highest-ranking officer in the U.S. Navy), recently stated that the permanent U.S. military presence in the Mediterranean allowed the Pentagon, which “already was positioned for operations over Libya,” to launch Odyssey Dawn on March 19. “The need, for example in the opening rounds, for the Tomahawk strikes, the shooters were already in place. They were already loaded, and that went off as we expected it would.” “That’s what you get when you have a global Navy that’s forward all the time….We’re there, and when the guns go off, we’re ready to conduct combat operations….” [6] On March 22 General Carter Ham, the new chief of U.S. Africa Command, visited the U.S. air base in Ramstein, Germany and met with British, French and Italian air force leaders to evaluate the bombing campaign in Libya. He praised cooperation with NATO partners before the war began, stating, “You can’t bring 14 different nations together without ever having prepared for this before.” [7] As the AFRICOM commander was in Germany, Defense Secretary Robert Gates was in Egypt to meet with Field Marshal Mohamed Hussein Tantawi, commander in chief of the Egyptian armed forces and chairman of the Supreme Council of the Armed Forces, to coordinate the campaign against Libya. Operation Odyssey Dawn: USS Barry (DDG 52) fires a Tomahawk cruise missile against Libyan targets. The Pentagon’s website reported on March 23 that forces attached to AFRICOM’s Task Force Odyssey Dawn had flown 336 air sorties, 108 of them launching strikes and 212 conducted by the U.S. The operations included 162 Tomahawk cruise missile attacks. Admiral Roughead stated that he envisioned “no problem in keeping operations going,” as the Tomahawks will be replaced from the existing inventory of 3,200. Enough to level Libya and still have plenty left over for the next war. [8] The defeat and conquest, directly or by proxy, of Libya would secure a key outpost for the Pentagon and NATO on the Mediterranean Sea. The consolidation of U.S. control over North Africa would have more than just regional repercussions, important as they are. Shortly after the inauguration of U.S. Africa Command, Lin Zhiyuan, deputy director of the Chinese People’s Liberation Army Academy of Military Sciences, wrote the following: “By building a dozen forward bases or establishments in Tunisia, Morocco, Algeria and other African nations, the U.S. will gradually establish a network of military bases to cover the entire continent and make essential preparations for docking an aircraft carrier fleet in the region.” “The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) with the U.S. at the head had [in 2006] carried out a large-scale military exercise in Cape Verde, a western African island nation, with the sole purpose of controlling the sea and air corridors of crude oil extracting zones and monitoring how the situation is with oil pipelines operating there.” “[A]frica Command represents a vital, crucial link for the US adjustment of its global military deployment. At present, it is moving the gravity of its forces in Europe eastward and opening new bases in Eastern Europe.” “The present US global military redeployment centers mainly on an ‘arc of instability’ from the Caucasus, Central and Southern Asia down to the Korean Peninsula, and so the African continent is taken as a strong point to prop up the US global strategy. “Therefore, AFRICOM facilitates the United States advancing on the African continent, taking control of the Eurasian continent and proceeding to take the helm of the entire globe.” [9] Far more is at stake in the war with Libya than control of Africa’s largest proven oil reserves and subjugating the last North African nation not yet under the thumb of the U.S. and NATO. Even more than domination of the Mediterranean Sea region. Share this Rick Rozoff Rick Rozoff has been involved in anti-war and anti-interventionist work in various capacities for forty years. He lives in Chicago, Illinois. Is the manager of Stop NATO international. This author’s articles   .

Japan’s government says nuke plant operator made series of mistakes; radioactivity rising

By ERIC TALMADGE and MARI YAMAGUCHI
Associated Press /source

AP Photo/Shuji Kajiyama

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SENDAI, Japan (AP) — Japan’s government revealed a series of missteps by the operator of a radiation-leaking nuclear plant on Saturday, including sending workers in without protective footwear in its faltering efforts to control a monumental crisis. The U.S. Navy, meanwhile, rushed to deliver fresh water to replace corrosive salt water now being used in a desperate bid to cool the plant’s overheated reactors.

Government spokesman Yukio Edano urged Tokyo Electric Power Co. to be more transparent, two days after two workers at the tsunami-damaged Fukushima Dai-ichi plant suffered skin burns when they stepped in water that was 10,000 times more radioactive than levels normally found near the reactors.

“We strongly urge TEPCO to provide information to the government more promptly,” Edano said.

The Nuclear and Industrial Safety Agency, or NISA, said TEPCO was aware there was high radiation in the air at one of the plant’s six units several days before the accident. And the two workers injured were wearing boots that only came up to their ankles – hardly high enough to protect their legs, agency spokesman Hidehiko Nishiyama said.

“Regardless of whether there was an awareness of high radioactivity in the stagnant water, there were problems in the way work was conducted,” Nishiyama said.

NISA warned TEPCO to improve and ensure workers’ safety, and TEPCO has taken measures to that effect, Nishiyama said, without elaborating.

TEPCO spokesman Hajime Motojuku declined to comment.

The government’s admonishments came as workers at the plant struggled to stop a troubling rise in radioactivity and remove dangerously contaminated water from the facility, which has been leaking radiation since a massive earthquake and tsunami on March 11 knocked out the plant’s key cooling systems. Officials have been using seawater to try to cool the plant, but fears are growing that the corrosive salt in the water could further damage the machinery inside the reactor units.

TEPCO is now rushing to inject the reactors with fresh water instead, and to begin extracting the radioactive water, Nishiyama said.

Defense Minister Yoshimi Kitazawa said late Friday that the U.S. government had made “an extremely urgent” request to switch to fresh water. He said the U.S. military was sending water to nearby Onahama Bay and that water injections could begin in the next few days.

The U.S. 7th Fleet confirmed that barges loaded with 500,000 gallons of fresh water supplies were on their way.

The situation at the crippled complex remains unpredictable, Edano said Saturday, adding that it would be “a long time” until the crisis ends.

“We seem to be keeping the situation from turning worse,” he said. “But we still cannot be optimistic.”

Efforts to get the nuclear plant under control took on fresh urgency this week when nuclear safety officials said they suspected a breach in one or more of the plant’s units – possibly a crack or hole in the stainless steel chamber around a reactor core containing fuel rods or the concrete wall surrounding a pool where spent fuel rods are stored.

Such a breach could mean a much larger release of radioactive contaminants.

Radioactivity was on the rise in some units, Nishiyama said Saturday.

“It is crucial to figure out how to remove contaminated water while allowing work to continue,” he said, acknowledging that the discovery would set back delicate efforts to get the plant’s cooling system operating again.

Workers have begun pumping radioactive water from one of the units, Masateru Araki, a TEPCO spokesman, said Saturday.

Plant officials and government regulators say they don’t know the source of the radioactive water. It could have come from a leaking reactor core, connecting pipes, or a spent fuel pool. Or it may be the result of overfilling the pools with emergency cooling water.

But a breach in the chamber surrounding the reactor core seemed “more likely,” Nishiyama said.

TEPCO said late Saturday that a trace of radioactive water had leaked from the Unit 2 reactor building into a sewage line. It was not clear if the source of the water was the same as the other leakage. TEPCO said officials were investigating.

Radiation has been seeping from the plant since the magnitude-9 earthquake and tsunami struck more than two weeks ago. Since then, it has made its way into milk, seawater and 11 kinds of vegetables, including broccoli, cauliflower and turnips.

Tap water in several areas of Japan, including Tokyo, has shown higher-than-normal levels of radiation. In the capital, readings were at one point two times higher than the government safety limit for infants, who are particularly vulnerable to radioactive iodine.

But levels have fallen steadily since peaking Wednesday, and Tokyo metropolitan officials said Saturday that tap water was safe for babies to drink.

Just outside a reactor at the coastal nuclear plant, radioactivity in seawater tested about 1,250 times higher than normal, Nishiyama said. He said the area is not a source of seafood and the contamination posed no immediate threat to human health.

However, tests conducted 18 miles (28 kilometers) offshore found radioactive iodine-131 at levels nearing the regulatory limit set by the Japanese government, the International Atomic Energy Agency said. The tests also detected another radioactive substance, cesium-137, at lower levels.

IAEA experts said the ocean will quickly dilute the worst contamination. Radioactive iodine breaks down within weeks but cesium could foul the marine environment for decades.

The nuclear crisis has added to the misery and uncertainty facing Japan in the wake of the disastrous earthquake and tsunami.

Japanese soldiers and U.S. Marines were clearing away debris so they could keep searching for bodies and bury the dead. The official death toll was 10,418 Saturday, with more than 17,000 listed as missing, police said. Those lists may overlap, but the final death toll was expected to surpass 18,000.

Overwhelmed by bodies along the coast, government officials conducted more mass burials Saturday. In Yamamoto, relatives wailed and yelled their farewells as the first 11 caskets were buried in one end of a long mass grave in a vegetable patch, with at least 400 more burials planned in the coming days.

In Higashimatsushima, soldiers lowered plywood coffins into a ditch dug at a recycling plant as freezing rain fell on mourners weeping quietly under umbrellas. Funerals in Japan are a highly formalized Buddhist ceremony, and the mass burials are yet another tragedy for the hard-hit coastal towns.

The misery has extended to the hundreds of thousands whose homes were destroyed, many of whom now sleep on crowded school gymnasium floors with few comforts. Those living within a 12-mile (20-kilometer) radius of the plant have been evacuated.

Life was also tough in the ghost towns inside a larger voluntary evacuation zone, with most residents choosing to flee and wary truckers refusing to deliver goods.

In Minamisoma, a city of 71,000 about 20 miles (30 kilometers) north of the plant, all but one or two shops shut their doors because of a lack of goods and customers, city official Sadayasu Abe said.

“Commercial trucks are simply not coming to the city at all due to radiation fears,” he said.

Military troops and some private companies took up the task of delivering rice, instant noodles, bottled water and canned foods to eight central spots in the city, Abe said.

He said the city was urging the 10,000 or so still remaining to leave since the situation at the plant remains precarious.

“Life is very difficult here,” he told The Associated Press by telephone. “We have electricity, gas and running water, but no food.”

Muneyuki Munakata, a 58-year-old firefighter who was evacuated from his home near the plant, has been living in a shelter about 25 miles (40 kilometers) west of the nuclear complex for 15 days. Evacuees have plenty of instant noodles, but not enough rice or fuel for the stove, he said.

“People here are all exhausted,” he said. “We all talk about when we can go home, but I don’t know when because of uncertainty over the nuclear disaster.”

—

Yamaguchi reported from Tokyo, as did Associated Press writers Shino Yuasa, Kristen Gelineau, Jeff Donn, Mayumi Saito and Joji Sakurai. Jay Alabaster contributed to this report from Yamamoto.

© 2011 The Associated Press. All rights reserved.

Russia Reports France Threat Against Obama Brought US Into Libya War

Posted by EU Times on Mar 25th, 2011

A shocking report written by the Russian Ministry of Foreign Affairs on the meetings held between President Medvedev and US Secretary of Defense Robert Gates this past week says that America’s war on Libya was “forced” onto it after French President Nicolas Sarkozy [photo top right with Libyan leader Gaddafi] threatened President Barack Obama with “total exposure” if the US didn’t attack.

Upon hearing Gates shocking admission of why the US began its war on Libya, this report says, Medvedev issued a warning that should too many civilians be killed America could expect Russian forces to move into the region to protect them, a warning that fell on deaf ears as Gates walked out of the meeting saying that he found Russia’s arguments “difficult to comprehend.”

Especially upsetting to Gates, this report continues, was Prime Minister Putin stating that United Nations resolution authorizing military action in Libya resembled the “medieval calls for crusades,”, a statement quickly rebutted by Medvedev as “unacceptable,” and who further warned that comments such as Putin’s could “lead to a clash of civilizations.”

The “total exposure” threatened by Sarkozy unless the US attacked Libya regards the American President’s most senior advisor, Valerie Jarrett, who, according to this report, is the Iranian born “handler” of Obama for the “Moon Cult” factions of the Islamic World seeking to bring about the return of the prophesied redeemer of Islam known as the Mehdi.

Important to note about Sarkozy’s threatening to expose Jarrett for her extensive ties to the Persian Nation was her stunning revelation a fortnight ago before the Jewish Council for Public Affairs in Washington that she is of Jewish heritage herself, and not a Muslim as those in the US elite power structure had believed.

Though Jarrett’s Jewish background may have taken Washington by surprise, this report says it was long known to Sarkozy, who, according to the French daily Le Figaro, has long been a spy for Israel’s MOSSAD intelligence agency, and as we can, in part, read:

“A report reveals that French President Nicolas Sarkozy worked for Israeli intelligence for a long time before he was elected president. French daily Le Figaro has revealed the French leader once worked for the Zionist regime as a sayan, Hebrew for ‘collaborator’.

Ex-Mossad agent Victor Ostrovsky says sayans, who perform many roles, are Jewish citizens of other nationalities assisting Mossad. Le Figaro claimed that French police officials managed to keep secret a letter, which exposed Sarkozy’s past participation in espionage activities for Mossad.

The letter fixed Sarkozy’s alleged spying activities as far back as 1983.”

The reason for Sarkozy wanting the complete and total destruction of Libya lies in the threats made against him last week by the Libyan leader’s son, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi, who threatened to reveal a “grave secret” that would bring down the embattled French President.

The “grave secret” feared by Sarkozy we can further read about as reported London’s Guardian News Service, and which, in part, says:

“Muammar Gaddafi’s son has claimed that Libya helped finance Nicolas Sarkozy’s successful election campaign in 2007, and demanded that the French president return the money to “the Libyan people”.

In an interview with the Euronews TV channel, Saif al-Islam Gaddafi said Libya had details of bank transfers and was ready to make them public in a move designed to punish Sarkozy for throwing his weight behind opposition forces.”

Important to note about France’s relationship with Libya is that should it win this war it will have secured its energy security for the rest of this century as this North African Nation holds the largest oil reserves on the continent estimated at over 41 Billion barrels. Even more critical to note about Libya’s oil is that is the lightest, sweetest and easiest-to-extract black gold left on Earth and costs just $1.00 to extract.

Equally critical to note about France’s relationship with Libya was its having signed over $27 Billion in agreements with this North African country this past January, all of which is endangering the collapse of the French economy should they be cancelled.

As we had, also, noted in our March 8th report Global Resource War Warned Has Begun Between East-West, the vast water reserves of Libya (the largest ever discovered on the African continent) make this country a “prize” the West must have, and its military might will seek to ensure it gets.

Most appalling of the West’s war upon Libya is that it is coming at the expense of the African Nation of Ivory Coast where the UN estimates today over 1 million have fled their homes as civil war fears grow.

Most unfortunate for the hundreds of thousands of innocents set to die in the Ivory Coast is that their Nation has no massive oil or water resources for the West to attack them for, and leaving one to wonder if these Westerners have, indeed, lost what little moral conscious they had left.

To the outcome of the battle between the United States and France over the fate of Libya it is not in our knowing, other than to note the obvious that with each passing day this World of ours grows more dangerous by the hour.

Source

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British Intelligence Worked with Al Qaeda to Kill Qaddafi

http://www.globalresearch.ca by Gerald A. Perreira
Global Research, March 25, 2011
Global Breaking News – 2011-03-22

Using what Libya claims is an invalid and illegal UN resolution as a pretext, a coalition of crusaders, including the U.S., Britain, France and Spain is bombing the North African country with a military might that has not been seen since the Gulf war.

The real and illegal goal of what is called Operation Odyssey Dawn, is regime change. Replaying the nightmarish Gulf war scenario, the plan is clear: to disable Libya’s defense ability, and to arm and strengthen the reactionary conglomerate of  rebel forces in Benghazi, in the hope that this rag tag bunch will roll back, once and for all, the Libyan revolution.

This is not the first attempt by the former slave-holding and colonial powers to lynch Qaddafi and bring Libya to its knees. In 1986, the US falsely accused Libya of bombing a discotheque in Berlin. President Ronald Reagan attempted to assassinate Qaddafi  by bombing his residence at Bab al-Azizia in Tripoli. Qaddafi’s daughter and over one hundred Libyans were killed. Next, Libya was falsely accused of the 1988 Pan Am Lockerbie bombing as an excuse for initiating sanctions, in order to economically cripple the country.

In 1996, British intelligence employed the services of an al Qaeda cell inside Libya, paying them a huge fee, reportedly over $100,000, to assassinate Muammar Qaddafi.  A bomb, intended for Qaddafi, was detonated under the wrong car in his hometown, Sirte. Several civilians were killed.

Former MI5 operative, David Shayler, revealed that while he was working on the Libya desk in the mid-1990s, British secret service personnel collaborated with the Libyan Islamic Fighting Group(LIFG), which is connected to one of Osama bin Laden’s trusted lieutenants. LIFG is now considered a terrorist group in the United Kingdom.

Muammar Qaddafi and the Libyan revolutionary forces were the first to issue an arrest warrant for Osama bin Laden. The Libyan government spent years warning the world about the very serious threat posed by these Islamic deviants. According to Shayler, western intelligence turned a deaf ear to Libya’s warnings because they were actually working with the al Qaeda group inside Libya to bring down Qaddafi and the Libyan revolution.

Anas al Liby is a member of the Libyan al-Qaeda cell. He remains on the U.S. government’s most wanted list, with a reward of $5 million for his capture, and is wanted for his involvement in the U.S. African embassy bombings. Al Liby was with bin Laden in Sudan before the al Qaeda leader returned to Afghanistan in 1996. Surprisingly, correction, not so surprisingly, despite being a high-level al Qaeda operative, al Liby was granted political asylum in Britain and lived in Manchester until May of 2000.

The claims by Qaddafi and the Libyan revolutionary forces that the rebels in Benghazi are inspired by al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb (AQIM) and the serious threat this poses, not only to Libya but to the entire region, are once again falling on deaf ears. Why?  Because British intelligence forces, among others, are clearly in collaboration with the rebels in Benghazi – those referred to all over Libya as the “bearded ones” – who have close ties to al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

The evidence for this is overwhelming. The British have a long-standing relationship with the al Qaeda affiliated Libyan Islamic Fighting Group, based inside Libya. The British also have an historical relationship with the Wahhabi/Salafi brand of Islam, espoused today by Ikhwan al Muslimeen (Muslim Brotherhood) and their offshoots, including al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb.

In 1744, an alliance was formed between the founder of Wahhabism, Muhammad ibn Abdal-Wahhab and the ruthless tribal leader, Muhammad ibn Saud, whose descendants rule Saudi Arabia up to today. This reactionary brand of Islam was the perfect theological foundation for the colonial creation of the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia, and Wahhabism remains the official Islamic tendency in Saudi Arabia to this day.

In 1915, the British entered into a treaty with the House of Saud, protecting their lands and supplying them with weaponry, as part of the colonial project to establish the Kingdom of Saudi Arabia. At the same time, the British did everything they could to help the Wahhabist doctrine to flourish, recognizing it as the perfect ideological tool to further their imperialist objectives. Some scholars have argued that the British actually helped to create Wahhabism.

Today, the British are calling on the descendants of Muhammad ibn Saud, the current Saudi regime, and their present day army of Wahhabis in the form of al Qaeda, to join in a medieval crusade to crush a bastion of revolutionary Islam, which is present day Libya. And the contradictions verify this. We have to wonder why a Saudi government official can say on BBC that “to allow the people to choose their own government is a very bad thing”, and why, with all the Western outcry about women’s rights in the Muslim world, the Saudi regime, which does not even allow women to vote or drive, is never challenged. Instead, they are the ones that the Americans, British, and French are calling on to join them in the destruction of Libya which has liberated women and struggled to bring real democracy to its people.

As early as the mid-19th century, Wahhabi fundamentalism was imported into Benghazi by the reactionary and feudal Senussi fraternity. The influence of this tendency has been passed on from generation to generation, and Benghazi has been the center for those who have consistently opposed liberation Islam articulated by Qaddafi and implemented by the Libyan revolution.

The Muslims of Benghazi, who embrace the same ideology as al Qaeda in the Islamic Maghreb(AQIM),  have been reinvigorated in the last few years by AQIM’s presence on Libya’s borders. There is a renewed interest in the possibility of achieving the stated goal of AQIM, which is the establishment of a Wahhabi Islamic Emirate in the Maghreb, stretching over the entire North African region. When we understand the history of this region, we realize why the former slave-holding and colonial powers have not gone out of their way to find Osama bin Laden and Ayman al Zawahiri, and how and why these reactionary forces and doctrines are being encouraged.

Gerald A. Perreira lived in Libya for many years. He served in the Green March, an international battalion for the defense of the Libyan revolution and was an executive member of the World Mathaba, based in Tripoli.

Global Research Articles by Gerald A. Perreira

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The Pentagon and murder in Bahrain

related Update :

ALERT!!!!! BLOODBATH PREPARED IN BAHRAIN TOMORROW ,click here

Comment : AND WHERE IS THE UN AND NATO ?

…………………………………………………………org.  Post starts here :

from : http://www.voltairenet.org

How the tiny kingdom of Bahrain strong-armed the President of the United States

by Nick Turse*  U.S. Defense Departments documents, scrutinized by TomDispatch, reveal that as far back as the 1990s the United States has been supplying vast quantities of military equipment to Bahraini security forces, which have currently unleashed a bloody repression against peaceful mass demonstrations demanding an end to the corrupt Al-Khalifa dynasty.

24 March 2011   All the versions of this article: Español

Protesters hold a Bahraini flag in front of riot-police in Hamad Town, south of Manama, March 3, 2011. Photo: Reuters The men walking down the street looked ordinary enough. Ordinary, at least, for these days of tumult and protest in the Middle East. They wore sneakers and jeans and long-sleeved T-shirts. Some waved the national flag. Many held their hands up high. Some flashed peace signs. A number were chanting, “Peaceful, peaceful.” Up ahead, video footage shows, armored personnel carriers sat in the street waiting. In a deadly raid the previous day, security forces had cleared pro-democracy protesters from the Pearl Roundabout in Bahrain’s capital, Manama. This evening, the men were headed back to make their voices heard. The unmistakable crack-crack-crack of gunfire then erupted, and most of the men scattered. Most, but not all. Video footage shows three who never made it off the blacktop. One in an aqua shirt and dark track pants was unmistakably shot in the head. In the time it takes for the camera to pan from his body to the armored vehicles and back, he’s visibly lost a large amount of blood. Human Rights Watch would later report that Redha Bu Hameed died of a gunshot wound to the head. Bahrein’s king’s army massacre of unarmed peacefull protestors That incident, which occurred on February 18th, was one of a series of violent actions by Bahrain’s security forces that left seven dead and more than 200 injured last month. Reports noted that peaceful protesters had been hit not only by rubber bullets and shotgun pellets, but — as in the case of Bu Hameed — by live rounds. The bullet that took Bu Hameed’s life may have been paid for by U.S. taxpayers and given to the Bahrain Defense Force by the U.S. military. The relationship represented by that bullet (or so many others like it) between Bahrain, a tiny country of mostly Shia Muslim citizens ruled by a Sunni king, and the Pentagon has recently proven more powerful than American democratic ideals, more powerful even than the president of the United States. Just how American bullets make their way into Bahraini guns, into weapons used by troops suppressing pro-democracy protesters, opens a wider window into the shadowy relationships between the Pentagon and a number of autocratic states in the Arab world. Look closely and outlines emerge of the ways in which the Pentagon and those oil-rich nations have pressured the White House to help subvert the popular democratic will sweeping across the greater Middle East. Bullets and Blackhawks A TomDispatch analysis of Defense Department documents indicates that, since the 1990s, the United States has transferred large quantities of military materiel, ranging from trucks and aircraft to machine-gun parts and millions of rounds of live ammunition, to Bahrain’s security forces. According to data from the Defense Security Cooperation Agency, the branch of the government that coordinates sales and transfers of military equipment to allies, the U.S. has sent Bahrain dozens of “excess” American tanks, armored personnel carriers, and helicopter gunships. The U.S. has also given the Bahrain Defense Force thousands of .38 caliber pistols and millions of rounds of ammunition, from large-caliber cannon shells to bullets for handguns. To take one example, the U.S. supplied Bahrain with enough .50 caliber rounds — used in sniper rifles and machine guns — to kill every Bahraini in the kingdom four times over. The Defense Security Cooperation Agency did not respond to repeated requests for information and clarification. In addition to all these gifts of weaponry, ammunition, and fighting vehicles, the Pentagon in coordination with the State Department oversaw Bahrain’s purchase of more than $386 million in defense items and services from 2007 to 2009, the last three years on record. These deals included the purchase of a wide range of items from vehicles to weapons systems. Just this past summer, to cite one example, the Pentagon announced a multimillion-dollar contract with Sikorsky Aircraft to customize nine Black Hawk helicopters for Bahrain’s Defense Force. About Face On February 14th, reacting to a growing protest movement with violence, Bahrain’s security forces killed one demonstrator and wounded 25 others. In the days of continued unrest that followed, reports reached the White House that Bahraini troops had fired on pro-democracy protesters from helicopters. (Bahraini officials responded that witnesses had mistaken a telephoto lens on a camera for a weapon.) Bahrain’s army also reportedly opened fire on ambulances that came to tend to the wounded and mourners who had dropped to their knees to pray. “We call on restraint from the government,” Secretary of State Hillary Clinton said in the wake of Bahrain’s crackdown. “We urge a return to a process that will result in real, meaningful changes for the people there.” President Obama was even more forceful in remarks addressing state violence in Bahrain, Libya, and Yemen: “The United States condemns the use of violence by governments against peaceful protesters in those countries, and wherever else it may occur.” Word then emerged that, under the provisions of a law known as the Leahy Amendment, the administration was actively reviewing whether military aid to various units or branches of Bahrain’s security forces should be cut off due to human-rights violations. “There’s evidence now that abuses have occurred,” a senior congressional aide told the Wall Street Journal in response to video footage of police and military violence in Bahrain. “The question is specifically which units committed those abuses and whether or not any of our assistance was used by them.” In the weeks since, Washington has markedly softened its tone. According to a recent report by Julian Barnes and Adam Entous in the Wall Street Journal, this resulted from a lobbying campaign directed at top officials at the Pentagon and the less powerful State Department by emissaries of Bahraini King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and his allies in the Middle East. In the end, the Arab lobby ensured that, when it came to Bahrain, the White House wouldn’t support “regime change,” as in Egypt or Tunisia, but a strategy of theoretical future reform some diplomats are now calling “regime alteration.” The six member states of the Gulf Cooperation Council include (in addition to Bahrain) Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia, and the United Arab Emirates, all of which have extensive ties to the Pentagon. The organization reportedly strong-armed the White House by playing on fears that Iran might benefit if Bahrain embraced democracy and that, as a result, the entire region might become destabilized in ways inimical to U.S. power-projection policies. “Starting with Bahrain, the administration has moved a few notches toward emphasizing stability over majority rule,” according to a U.S. official quoted by the Journal. “Everybody realized that Bahrain was just too important to fail.” It’s an oddly familiar phrase, so close to “too big to fail,” last used before the government bailed out the giant insurance firm AIG and major financial firms like Citigroup after the global economic meltdown of 2008. Bahrain is, of course, a small island in the Persian Gulf, but it is also the home of the U.S. Navy’s Fifth Fleet, which the Pentagon counts as a crucial asset in the region. It is widely considered a stand-in for neighboring Saudi Arabia, America’s gas station in the Gulf, and for Washington, a nation much too important ever to fail. The Pentagon’s relationship with the Gulf Cooperation Council countries has been cemented in several key ways seldom emphasized in American reporting on the region. Military aid is one key factor. Bahrain alone took home $20 million in U.S. military assistance last year. In an allied area, there is the rarely discussed triangular marriage between defense contractors, the Gulf states, and the Pentagon. The six Gulf nations (along with regional partner Jordan) are set to spend $70 billion on weaponry and equipment this year, and as much as $80 billion per year by 2015. As the Pentagon looks for ways to shore up the financial viability of weapons makers in tough economic times, the deep pockets of the Gulf States have taken on special importance. Beginning last October, the Pentagon started secretly lobbying financial analysts and large institutional investors, talking up weapons makers and other military contractors it buys from to bolster their long-term financial viability in the face of a possible future drop in Defense Department spending. The Gulf States represent another avenue toward the same goal. It’s often said that the Pentagon is a “monopsony,” the only buyer in town for its many giant contractors, but that isn’t entirely true. The Pentagon is also the sole conduit through which its Arab partners in the Gulf can buy the most advanced weaponry on Earth. By acting as a go-between, the Pentagon can ensure that the weapons manufacturers it relies on will be financially sound well into the future. A $60 billion deal with Saudi Arabia this past fall, for example, ensured that Boeing, Lockheed-Martin, and other mega-defense contractors would remain healthy and profitable even if Pentagon spending goes slack or begins to shrink in the years to come. Pentagon reliance on Gulf money, however, has a price. It couldn’t have taken the Arab lobby long to explain how quickly their spending spree might come to an end if a cascade of revolutions suddenly turned the region democratic. An even more significant aspect of the relationship between the Gulf states and the Department of Defense is the Pentagon’s shadowy archipelago of bases across the Middle East. While the Pentagon hides or downplays the existence of many of them, and while Gulf countries often conceal their existence from their own populations as much as possible, the U.S. military maintains sites in Saudi Arabia, the United Arab Emirates, Oman, Qatar, Kuwait, and of course Bahrain — homeport for the Fifth Fleet, whose 30 ships, including two aircraft carriers, patrol the Persian Gulf, the Arabian Sea, and the Red Sea. Doughnuts Not Democracy Last week, peaceful protesters aligned against Bahrain’s monarchy gathered outside the U.S. embassy in Manama carrying signs reading “Stop Supporting Dictators,” “Give Me Liberty or Give Me Death,” and “The People Want Democracy.” Many of them were women. Ludovic Hood, a U.S. embassy official, reportedly brought a box of doughnuts out to the protesters. “These sweets are a good gesture, but we hope it is translated into practical actions,” said Mohammed Hassan, who wore the white turban of a cleric. Zeinab al-Khawaja, a protest leader, told Al Jazeera that she hoped the U.S. wouldn’t be drawn into Bahrain’s uprising. “We want America not to get involved, we can overthrow this regime,” she said. The United States is, however, already deeply involved. To one side it’s given a box of doughnuts; to the other, helicopter gunships, armored personnel carriers, and millions of bullets — equipment that played a significant role in the recent violent crackdowns. In the midst of the violence, Human Rights Watch called upon the United States and other international donors to immediately suspend military assistance to Bahrain. The British government announced that it had begun a review of its military exports, while France suspended exports of any military equipment to the kingdom. Though the Obama administration, too, has begun a review, money talks as loudly in foreign policy as it does in domestic politics. The lobbying campaign by the Pentagon and its Middle Eastern partners is likely to sideline any serious move toward an arms export cut-off, leaving the U.S. once again in familiar territory — supporting an anti-democratic ruler against his people. “Without revisiting all the events over the last three weeks, I think history will end up recording that at every juncture in the situation in Egypt that we were on the right side of history,” President Obama explained after the fall of Egyptian strongman Hosni Mubarak — an overstatement, to say the least, given the administration’s mixed messages until Mubarak’s departure was a fait accompli. But when it comes to Bahrain, even such half-hearted support for change seems increasingly out of bounds. The Bahraini people rallying in Pearl Square around the document which became the symbol of their uprising. The Royal ruling class ordered its demolition on 18 March 2011 (see photos below). Last year, the U.S. Navy and the government of Bahrain hosted a groundbreaking ceremony for a construction project slated to develop 70 acres of prime waterfront property in Manama. Scheduled for completion in 2015, the complex is slated to include new port facilities, barracks for troops, administrative buildings, a dining facility, and a recreation center, among other amenities, at a price tag of $580 million. “The investment in the waterfront construction project will provide a better quality of life for our Sailors and coalition partners, well into the future,” said Lieutenant Commander Keith Benson of the Navy’s Bahrain contingent at the time. “This project signifies a continuing relationship and the trust, friendship and camaraderie that exists between the U.S. and Bahraini naval forces.” As it happens, that type of “camaraderie” seems to be more powerful than the President of the United States’ commitment to support peaceful, democratic change in the oil-rich region. After Mubarak’s ouster, Obama noted that “it was the moral force of nonviolence, not terrorism, not mindless killing, but nonviolence, moral force, that bent the arc of history toward justice once more.” The Pentagon, according to the Wall Street Journal, has joined the effort to bend the arc of history in a different direction — against Bahrain’s pro-democracy protesters. Its cozy relationships with arms dealers and autocratic Arab states, cemented by big defense contracts and shadowy military bases, explain why. White House officials claim that their support for Bahrain’s monarchy isn’t unconditional and that they expect rapid progress on real reforms. What that means, however, is evidently up to the Pentagon. It’s notable that late last week one top U.S. official traveled to Bahrain. He wasn’t a diplomat. And he didn’t meet with the opposition. (Not even for a doughnut-drop photo op.) Secretary of Defense Robert Gates arrived for talks with King Hamad bin Isa al-Khalifa and Crown Prince Salman bin Hamad al-Khalifa to convey, said Pentagon Press Secretary Geoff Morrell, “reassurance of our support.” “I’m convinced that they both are serious about real reform and about moving forward,” Gates said afterward. At the same time, he raised the specter of Iran. While granting that the regime there had yet to foment protests across the region, Gates asserted, “there is clear evidence that as the process is protracted — particularly in Bahrain — that the Iranians are looking for ways to exploit it and create problems.” The Secretary of Defense expressed sympathy for Bahrain’s rulers being “between a rock and hard place” and other officials have asserted that the aspirations of the pro-democracy protesters in the street were inhibiting substantive talks with more moderate opposition groups. “I think what the government needs is for everybody to take a deep breath and provide a little space for this dialogue to go forward,” he said. In the end, he told reporters, U.S. prospects for continued military basing in Bahrain were solid. “I don’t see any evidence that our presence will be affected in the near- or middle-term,” Gates added. In the immediate wake of Gates’ visit, the Gulf Cooperation Council has conspicuously sent a contingent of Saudi troops into Bahrain to help put down the protests. Cowed by the Pentagon and its partners in the Arab lobby, the Obama administration has seemingly cast its lot with Bahrain’s anti-democratic forces and left little ambiguity as to which side of history it’s actually on. Share this Attached documents Bahraini Arab Shiites protesting against the corrupt monarchy of their country, in the capital city of Manama.  (JPEG – 36.9 kb) Nick Turse Nick Turse is an historian, essayist, investigative journalist, the associate editor of TomDispatch.com, and currently a fellow at Harvard University’s Radcliffe Institute. His latest book is The Case for Withdrawal from Afghanistan (Verso Books). He is also the author of The Complex: How the Military Invades Our Everyday Lives. His website is NickTurse.com  .

Israel’s Knesset Passes ‘Nakba bill’; MK Tibi Invokes Nazi ‘Final Solution’

http://redactednews.blogspot.com

MK Rotem: Proud to protect state Photo: Noam Moskowitz

Racism? Knesset passes ‘Nakba bill’

Arab, left-wing MKs fume as bill allowing small communities to reject residents also approved. MK Tibi invokes Nazi ‘final solutiion’ while ACRI files petition with High Court saying bill sanctions discrimination against Arabs, haredim

Roni Sofer | ynetnews

The Knesset passed two controversial bills late Tuesday night, infuriating many MKs from Arab and left-wing parties, who claim the bills are racist and run counter to democratic values.

The “Nakba bill”, proposed by Yisrael Beiteinu, requires the state to fine local authorities and other state-funded bodies for holding events marking the Palestinian Nakba Day by supporting armed resistance or racism against Israel, or desecrating the state flag or national symbols.

On Nakba Day Palestinians mark the “catastrophe” of Israel’s inception in 1948.

The bill, which was reworked before its final passing, states that the finance minister will be charged with deciding when to withdraw funds from various groups after considering the opinions of the attorney general and a professional team comprised of members of the ministries of finance and justice.Thirty-seven MKs supported the bill in its final form, while 25 opposed it.

‘Thought police in Israel’

MK David Rotem (Yisrael Beiteinu) was among the supporters. “I am not ashamed for wanting to protect this state as a Jewish and democratic state,” he said. “You are concerned about democracy, but if your way triumphs there won’t be a state.”

But critique against the bill was harsh. “On this day the thought police is being established in Israel,” said Isaac Herzog (Labor). Herzog added that the bill had been formulated in contrast with the attorney general’s recommendations. “It will exacerbate tension in Israel,” he said.MK Dov Khenin (Hadash) called it “another dark night”, adding that “this bill will greatly contribute to Israel’s de-legitimization in the world”.MK Hanin Zoabi (Balad) was also outraged. “You are creating a monstrous state that will enter the thoughts and emotions of citizens. Is accepting my history considered incitement?” she asked. “The Nakba is a historic truth, not a position or freedom of expression.”

ACRI: Bill sanctions discrimination

The second bill, which passed by a majority of 35 to 20, formalizes the establishment of admission committees to review potential residents of Negev and Galilee communities that have fewer than 400 families. It was passed after 2 am.

The Association for Civil Rights in Israel immediately filed a petition against the bill, claiming that it sanctions discrimination against Arabs, haredim, Mizrahi Jews, and even single mothers.

The petition gives a long list of court cases in which plaintiffs were rejected by admissions committees, including a handicapped IDF veteran, Arab and immigrant families, and Jews with Mizrahi roots. The committees turned them down with explanations about “suitability for community life”, according to the petition.

After the passing of the bill the Knesset erupted in riots as MK Ahmed Tibi (United Arab List-Ta’al), refusing to limit himself to the comparison of the bill to South Africa’s apartheid,mentioned the Wannsee Conference in which the Nazis decided on the Holocaust’s “final solution” – or the gassing of Jews.

Arab and left-wing MKs claim the bill, which was proposed by MKs from Yisrael Beiteinu and Kadima, is aimed at preventing Arabs from residing in the communities that choose to adopt admission committees.

But its initiators claim in their explanation of the bill that it is “a balanced bill and not racist, and does not intend to harm the Arabs or the weaker members of society”.

‘We will make sure world boycotts towns’

MK Taleb El-Sana (United Arab List-Ta’al) said the bill’s initiators should be ashamed. “How can a country determine for its citizens where to live and die?” he asked.

“The Knesset is broadcasting a message that was received by the rabbis in Safed, who prevent Arab students from residing there. Imagine if Britain or France had made a law preventing Jews from living in certain communities,” El-Sana added. “This is a racist law, a law against Arabs.”MK Hanna Swaid (Hadash) announced “the clinical death of the State of Israel.” He added that although the law prohibits denying anyone residence based on his race, it was still possible to do so on cultural grounds. “We will make sure the towns, local authorities, and communities that adopt the law are boycotted in the world,” he said.

MK Tibi: Read Jewish history

But the Knesset truly erupted in violence when MK Tibi took the stand. “You must read Jewish history well and learn which laws you suffered from. Do you remember anything about the prohibition of interracial marriage? Do you need an Arab on the stand to remind you of your history?” he asked.

“When 14 representatives gathered in Berlin, they discussed which policy to use against the Jews. It was then they discussed pushing them aside and limiting their living space…”

At this point MKs from other parties interrupted Tibi, yelling at him to leave the podium. MK Uri Ariel (National Union) refused to let him continue, yelling out, “Go back to Ramallah.”Tibi was eventually allowed to continue, and said Arabs felt as though they were being pushed aside. He said he was not comparing the law to the final solution, but that he had brought it up in order to stress the level of hatred.

Source: http://www.ynetnews.com/Ext/Comp/ArticleLayout/CdaArticlePrintPreview/1,2506,L-4046440,00.html

Posted by [Redacted] at 3/23/2011 07:08:00 PM

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Arab Deaths and US Hypocrisy

http://original.antiwar.com

by John V. Walsh, March 22, 2011

The stench of death hanging over protest centers in the Arab world is more than matched by the rank hypocrisy befouling Washington and the lesser capitals of Western Empire. There is, however, not the slightest allusion to “hypocrisy,” in the imperial media. The “H” word is not to be used with respect to Obama or the other lords of Empire, even though it is as obvious as the proverbial nose on one’s face; the censorship in the mass media is holding.

Consider it. The Western powers have now launched a full-scale military assault on Moammar Qaddafi’s Libya, never a reliable “partner” of the West. First there were denunciations and demonization of Qaddafi following the Libyan uprising in the East, then sanctions, then the attack. Ostensibly, the attack is to “protect” the Libyan people from the hand of Qaddafi. But is such a rationale even remotely credible?

Look at other events happening on the very same weekend the attacks began. In Bahrain Shia protesters by the score are being gunned down by the Sunni police of the Al Khalifa “royal family,” sometimes killing the protesters like animals with hunting rifles. They are joined by the tanks of the Saudi “royals,” the same Saudi Arabia whence came the majority of the perpetrators of 9/11. There are no American cruise missiles aimed at the Saudi tanks and no threats from the Western powers to stop the carnage of the thugs ruling Saudi Arabia and Bahrain. What comes from the U.S.? No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

In Saudi Arabia itself Al-Jazeera tells us: “The ban on public demonstrations (throughout the country) comes amid media reports of a huge mobilization of Saudi troops in Shia-dominated provinces in order to quell any possible uprising…. 10,000 security personnel are being sent to the region by road, clogging highways into Dammam and other cities.” And in Riyadh: “Several protesters were arrested in Saudi Arabia on Sunday at a demonstration demanding the release of thousands of prisoners, held captive for years without trial. They were among dozens of men and women who tried to push their way into Riyadh’s interior ministry building, which was fortified with up to 2,000 special forces and 200 police vehicles, according to the Associated Press news agency. ‘We have seen at least three or four police vehicles taking people away,” said an activist there who declined to be named. ‘Security forces have arrested around 15 people. They tried to go into the ministry to go and ask for the freedom of their loved ones.’” But the US sponsors no UN resolutions about the “Right to Protect” in Saudi Arabia. No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

Then there is Yemen, another U.S. ally, where today the Ali Abdullah Saleh, the country’s “president” for 32 years, is massacring his people by the score. In response there is nothing more than a muffled call for “maximal restraint” by Obama and company. No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

Or regard the spectacle of Gaza where Apartheid Israel is again launching a bombing campaign on a besieged and helpless population. Not a peep of protest from the U.S. No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

All that is just this weekend. But behold the events of recent weeks Let us not forget Egypt where hundreds or thousands of unarmed protesters were slaughtered while the U.S. in the person of Joe Biden and others cautioned that “president” for 41 years and U.S. ally Hosni Mubarak, was not a dictator. Hillary Clinton defended him as a personal friend of hers and her family. This is the same Mubarak, whose police tormented the entire Egyptian population to the point that virtually everyone knew someone beaten or tortured. This is the same Mubarak, whose prisons always had room to torture CIA victims transported there from around the world, an endless cargo of “extraordinary renditions. Mubarak killed and killed with guns, goons and helicopters before he fell. And from the U.S.? No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

The failure of the Egyptian army to join in the slaughter, apparently for fear of being on the losing side, was the sole reason the slaughter ended. And now the same army, consulting interminably with the US, is working a counter-revolution in that hapless country. Whether it will prevail against the people is anyone’s guess, but there is no doubt that the US is working overtime to turn back the clock and shackle Egypt to a new model of the old imperial harness.

This is a small sample. Jordan, Iraq, Tunisia and other U.S. allies could be added to the list of those perpetrating endless atrocities against their people for many decades. And from the U.S.? No denunciation, no demonization, no sanctions, no attack.

I conclude with the caveat that I am not holding up Gadhafi as a model. What goes on in Libya I cannot tell at a distance. But as Justin Raimondo at Antiwar.com, drawing on the testimony of Dartmouth professor Diederik Vandewalle, an expert on Libya, has noted, the rebellion in Libya seems to be one of the east versus west of the country, a return to old tribal boundaries. That is quite different from Egypt where the demand is for development and democracy. Is there anything unique about Libya other than its disloyalty to the West? I can think of only one other thing which distinguishes it from Egypt or various other African dictatorships. Libya has a Human Development Index which is the highest in all of Africa. In fact it puts Libya in the same league as the developed nations of Europe. Certainly man does not live by bread alone although a bit helps. But it would seem that Libyans need less protection than the many U.S. Arab allies, which not only brutally oppress their people but also impoverish them.

Read more by John V. Walsh

• The Book Has Been Written on the Right/Left Antiwar Alliance – February 22nd, 2011
• Jimmy Carter’s Gift of ‘Apartheid’ – February 13th, 2011
• Obama’s Chokehold on Left Antiwar Activists – January 27th, 2011
• An Anti-Interventionist Looks at China – January 17th, 2011
• Sarah Palin’s Cross Hairs – and Obama’s – January 11th, 2011
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First pictures emerge of the Fukushima Fifty as they battle radiation poisoning to save Japan’s stricken nuclear power plant

http://www.sott.net

Wed, 23 Mar 2011 19:00 CDT

Matt Blake
Mail Onlilne

The darkness is broken only by the flashing torchlight of the heroes who stayed behind.

These first images of inside the stricken Fukushima Dai-Ichi power plant reveal the terrifying conditions under which the brave men work to save their nation from full nuclear meltdown.

The Fukushima Fifty – an anonymous band of lower and mid-level managers – have battled around the clock to cool overheating reactors and spent fuel rods since the disaster on March 11.

Conundrum: Two of the Fukushima Fifty pour over plans as they try to work out how to fix the stricken plant

Despite sweltering heat from the damaged reactors, they must work in protective bodysuits to protect their skin from the poisonous radioactive particles that fill the air around them.

But as more radiation seeps into the atmosphere minute by minute, they know this job will be their last.

Five are believed to have already died and 15 are injured while others have said they know the radiation will kill them.

Darkness: A worker looks at gauges in the control room for Unit 1 and Unit 2 at the plant

Grainy: Workers collect data in the control room for Unit 1 and Unit 2. They must wear rubber suits to prevent as much radiation from entering their bodies as possible

The original 50 brave souls were later joined by 150 colleagues and rotated in teams to limit their exposure to the radiation spewing from over-heating spent fuel rods after a series of explosions at the site. They were today joined by scores more workers.

Japan has rallied behind the workers with relatives telling of heart-breaking messages sent at the height of the crisis.

A woman said her husband continued to work while fully aware he was being bombarded with radiation. In a heartbreaking email, he told his wife: ‘Please continue to live well, I cannot be home for a while.’

Teamwork: Outside the men connect transmission lines to restore electric power supply to Unit 3 and Unit 4

Aiming high: Workers in protective suits work on a transmission tower to restore electricity to Units 5 and 6

Damage: A collapsed eave lies outside the security gate for Unit 1 and Unit 2. Much of the plant was destroyed by the tsunami

One girl tweeted in a message translated by ABC: ‘My dad went to the nuclear plant, I’ve never seen my mother cry so hard. People at the plant are struggling, sacrificing themselves to protect you. Please dad come back alive.’

But it is becoming even more pressing that the Fukushima succeed after it was revealed today that Tokyo’s tap water has been contaminated by unusual levels of radiation.

The government have issued a warning to all mothers urging them not to let babies drink the tap water.

The warning came after it emerged last night that radioactive particles have reached Europe and are heading towards Britain in the wake of the catastrophe that officials say could cost up to £190billion – making it the costliest natural disaster in history.

And fresh safety concerns arose today as black smoke was spotted emerging from Unit 3 of the plant, prompting a temporary evacuation of all workers from the complex, operators Tokyo Electric Power company said.

Tokyo Water Bureau officials said levels of radioactive iodine in some city tap water contained 210 becquerels per litre of iodine 131 – two times the recommended limit for infants.

They warned parents not to give babies tap water, although they said it is not an immediate health risk for adults.

Nearly two weeks after the twin March 11 disasters, nuclear officials were still struggling to stabilise the damaged and overheated Fukushima Dai-Ichi plant, which has been leaking radiation since the disasters knocked out the plant’s cooling systems.

Radiation has seeped into vegetables, raw milk, the water supply and even seawater in the areas surrounding the plant.

Meanwhile, officials in Iceland have detected ‘minuscule amounts’ of radioactive particles believed to have come from Fukushima, the site of the worst nuclear accident in 25 years.

Last night the British Government said radiation from Japan had not been detected by the UK’s network of monitoring stations set up after the 1986 Chernobyl explosion. A spokesman said any signs of radiation were not expected in the next few days.

However, France’s nuclear agency said tiny amounts were likely to arrive in the country by today.

Water spray: Workers at Fukushima yesterday try to cool the plant

Smoke: Fresh safety concerns arose today as black smoke was spotted emerging from Unit 3 of the plant, prompting a temporary evacuation of all workers from the complex

The traces of radioactive iodine are being measured by a network of 63 monitoring stations as they spread east across the Pacific, over North America and into the North Atlantic.

Radiation from nuclear accidents and explosions is monitored by the UN’s Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty Organisation, based in Vienna.

A source said several stations had detected particles believed to have been released from Fukushima in the days after it was hit by the earthquake and tsunami.

‘Reykjavik is the first in Europe,’ the source added. The levels are about one millionth of the natural background radiation, and pose no threat to the public, experts said.

‘We are not expecting it to be detected in Britain in the next few days,’ a spokesman for the Department of Energy and Climate Change said.

Japanese officials said the health risk was low outside the plant, but were yesterday chastised by the International Atomic Energy Agency watchdog over a lack of information about how much radiation had been emitted.

Levels in Tokyo rose ten-fold in the days after the 9.0-magnitude earthquake earlier this month, and tiny traces have been detected in California and Washington DC.

The IAEA lacks data on the temperatures of the spent fuel pools of reactors 1, 3 and 4 at Fukushima.

Destroyed: A road in Naka, Iwake prefecture on March 11 shortly after being devastated by the earthquake

Transformation: The carriageway has already been reconstructed and tarmaced ready for use

It has been claimed the plant was storing more uranium than it was designed to hold, and had repeatedly missed mandatory safety checks.

The official death toll in Japan has exceeded 9,400. At least 13,200 people are still missing and 350,000 are in shelters.

Yesterday firemen connected electric cables to the plant in the hope of restarting cooling systems. Although hundreds of tons of water have been blasted into two of the damaged reactors, smoke and steam continue to pour out.

U.S. halts food imports from affected areas of Japan

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration says it will halt imports of dairy products and produce from the area of Japan where a nuclear reactor is leaking radiation.

The FDA says that those foods will be detained at entry and will not be sold to the public. The agency previously said it would just step up screening of those foods.

Other foods imported from Japan, including seafood, will still be sold to the public but screened first for radiation.

Japanese foods make up less than 4 percent of all U.S. imports, and the FDA has said it expects no risk to the U.S. food supply from radiation.

Contamination concerns: Various types of fish are sold at a shop near Tokyo’s Tsukiji fish market. The U.S. have halted all dairy imports from Japan and will screen all other foods before allowing entry

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Germany Set to Abandon Nuclear Power for Good

http://www.commondreams.org/

by Juergen Baetz

BERLIN — Germany is determined to show the world how abandoning nuclear energy can be done.

In this March 18, 2011 photo, a traffic sign stands next to the nuclear power plant of Biblis, Germany. Germany stands alone among the world’s leading industrialized nations in its determination to abandon nuclear energy for good because of the technology’s inherent risk. Europe’s biggest economy is betting billions on expanding the use of renewable energies to meet its demand instead. The transition was supposed to happen slowly over the next 25 years, but now it is being accelerated in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima disaster. Chancellor Angela Merkel said the ‘catastrophe of apocalyptic dimensions’ irreversibly marks the start of a new era. (AP Photo/Michael Probst) The world’s fourth-largest economy stands alone among leading industrialized nations in its decision to stop using nuclear energy because of its inherent risks. It is betting billions on expanding the use of renewable energy to meet power demands instead.

The transition was supposed to happen slowly over the next 25 years, but is now being accelerated in the wake of Japan’s Fukushima Dai-ichi nuclear plant disaster, which Chancellor Angela Merkel has called a “catastrophe of apocalyptic dimensions.”

Berlin’s decision to take seven of its 17 reactors offline for three months for new safety checks has provided a glimpse into how Germany might wean itself from getting nearly a quarter of its power from atomic energy to none.

And experts say Germany’s phase-out provides a good map that countries such as the United States, which use a similar amount of nuclear power, could follow. The German model would not work, however, in countries like France, which relies on nuclear energy for more than 70 percent of its power and has no intention of shifting.

“If we had the winds of Texas or the sun of California, the task here would be even easier,” said Felix Matthes of Germany’s renowned Institute for Applied Ecology. “Given the great potential in the U.S., it would be feasible there in the long run too, even though it would necessitate huge infrastructure investments.”

Nuclear power has been very unpopular in Germany ever since radioactivity from the 1986 Chernobyl disaster drifted across the country. A center-left government a decade ago penned a plan to abandon the technology for good by 2021, but Merkel’s government last year amended it to extend the plants’ lifetime by an average of 12 years. That plan was put on hold after the March 11 earthquake and tsunami compromised nuclear power plants in Japan, and is being re-evaluated as the safety of all of Germany’s nuclear reactors is being rechecked.

Germany currently gets 23 percent of its energy from nuclear power – about as much as the U.S. Its ambitious plan to shut down its reactors will require at least euro150 billion ($210 billion) investment in alternative energy sources, which experts say will likely lead to higher electricity prices.

Germany now gets 17 percent of its electricity from renewable energies, 13 percent from natural gas and more than 40 percent from coal. The Environment Ministry says in 10 years renewable energy will contribute 40 percent of the country’s overall electricity production.

The government has been vague on a total price tag for the transition, but it said last year about euro20 billion ($28 billion) a year will be needed, acknowledging that euro75 billion ($107 billion) alone will be required through 2030 to install offshore wind farms.

The president of Germany’s Renewable Energy Association, Dietmar Schuetz, said the government should create a more favorable regulatory environment to help in bringing forward some euro150 billion investment in alternative energy sources this decade by businesses and homeowners.

Last year, German investment in renewable energy topped euro26 billion ($37 billion) and secured 370,000 jobs, the government said.

After taking seven reactors off the grid last week, officials hinted the oldest of them may remain switched off for good, but assured consumers there are no worries about electricity shortages as the country is a net exporter.

“We can guarantee that the lights won’t go off in Germany,” Environment Ministry spokeswoman Christiane Schwarte said.

Most of the country’s leaders now seem determined to swiftly abolish nuclear power, possibly by 2020, and several conservative politicians, including the chancellor, have made a complete U-turn on the issue.

Vice Chancellor Guido Westerwelle said Wednesday “we must learn from Japan” and check the safety of the country’s reactors but also make sure viable alternatives are in place.

“It would be the wrong consequence if we turn off the safest atomic reactors in the world, and then buy electricity from less-safe reactors in foreign countries,” he told the Passauer Neue Presse newspaper.

But Schuetz insists that “we can replace nuclear energy even before 2020 with renewable energies, producing affordable and ecologically sound electricity.”

But someone will have to foot the bill.

“Consumers must be prepared for significantly higher electricity prices in the future,” said Wolfgang Franz, head of the government’s independent economic advisory body. Merkel last week also warned that tougher safety rules for the remaining nuclear power plants “would certainly mean that electricity gets more expensive.”

The German utilities’ BDEW lobby group said long-term price effects could not be determined until the government spells out its nuclear reduction plans. Matthes’ institute says phasing out nuclear power by 2020 is feasible by better capacity management and investment that would only lead to a price increase of 0.5 cents per kilowatt-hour.

In Germany, the producers of renewable energy – be it solar panels on a homeowner’s rooftop or a farm of wind mills – are paid above-market prices to make sure their investment breaks even, financed by a 3.5 cents per kilowatt-hour tax paid by all electricity customers.

For a typical German family of four who pay about euro1,000 ($1,420) a year to use about 4,500 kilowatt-hours, the tax amounts to euro157 ($223).

The tax produced euro8.2 billion ($11.7 billion) in Germany in 2010 and it is expected to top euro13.5 billion ($19.2 billion) this year. The program – which has been copied by other countries and several U.S. states such as California – is the backbone of the country’s transition toward renewable energies.

“Our ideas work. Exiting the nuclear age would also be possible in a country like the U.S.,” Schuetz said.

Another factor likely to drive up electricity prices is that relying on renewable energies requires a huge investment in the electricity grid to cope with more decentralized and less reliable sources of power. Economy Minister Rainer Bruederle just announced legislation to speed up grid construction but gave no cost estimate.

And even if non-nuclear power is more expensive, Germans seeing images daily of Japan’s crippled Fukushima nuclear complex seem willing to pay the higher price.

Ralph Kampwirth, spokesman for Lichtblick AG, Germany’s biggest utility offering electricity exclusively from renewable sources, said since the Fukushima disaster it has been getting nearly three times more new clients than normal, up from 300 to more than 800 per day, despite prices slightly above average.

Sticking with nuclear power would also have its costs and require public funds.

The only two new nuclear reactors currently under construction in Europe, in France and in Finland, both have been plagued by long delays and seen costs virtually doubling, to around euro4 billion ($5.7 billion) and euro5.3 billion ($7.5 billion) respectively.

The disposal of spent nuclear fuel is also a costly problem, but it has no set price tag in Germany because the government has failed to find a sustainable solution.

Many decades-old reactors are highly profitable as their initial cost has been written off, but they now face higher costs as regulators push for safety upgrades in the wake of the Fukushima disaster. One of the most pressing – and costly – requirements is likely to be a mandatory upgrade to reinforce all nuclear power plants’ outer shell to withstand a crash of a commercial airliner.

Utility EnBW pulled the plug for good on one reactor temporarily shut down by the government because the new requirements made operating it “no longer economically viable.”

But even if Germany abandons nuclear energy, some of Europe’s 143 nuclear reactors will still sit right on its borders.

Since France and other nations are firmly committed to nuclear power, shutting down all reactors across Europe won’t happen, but Merkel is now pushing for common safety standards. The topic will be discussed at the European Union summit in Brussels on Thursday and Friday.

Merkel said the 27-nation bloc, which has standardized “the size of apples or the shape of bananas,” needs joint standards for nuclear power plants.

“Everybody in Europe would be equally affected by an accident at a nuclear power plant in Europe,” Merkel said.

© 2011 Associated Press

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Libya: mainstream media serving the war agenda?

http://www.voltairenet.org

 

According to Middle East expert, Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya [1], on 20 March 2011 Libyan sources reported:

Italian POWs Captured
Additional Coalition Jets Downed
Qatar Joins the War

Since the start of the civil war in Libya, the mainstream media has provided a biased and distorted picture of what is happening on the ground in Libya. In this regard, the mainstream media, rather than informing public opinion, is serving the war agenda.

The French government has denied that any of its military jets have been downed during their attacks. Internal Libyan sources, however, maintain that this is untrue and part of the psychological war. Paris is withholding this news to prevent a surge in public demands that France withdraw in this war on Libya.

Internal Libyan sources reported at 3:40 P.M. (15:40) North American Eastern Standard Time about the capture of Italian vessels and Italian military personnel, who are now prisoners of war (POWs). The Libyan government has also started supplying the Libyan population with food rations, medicine, and weapons to defend themselves.

At about 6:20 P.M. (18:20) North American Eastern Standard Time, Libyan sources reported that additional coalition jets were downed. Two of these military jets have been identified as Qatari military planes.

In a case of international double-standards, Qatar and the Gulf Cooperation Council, which are violently supressing their own people, are now partners in the war against Libya.

According to Libyan sources a total of five French jets have been shot down. Three of these attacking French jets were shot down in Tripoli. The other two French military jets were shot down while attacking Sirt (Surt/Sirte).

The Libyan people are ready for a protracted war to defend their country from the U.S., Britain, France, Italy, and their allies.

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[1] Mahdi Darius Nazemroaya specializes on the Middle East and Central Asia. He is a Research Associate of the Centre for Research on Globalization (CRG) and a Voltaire Network collaborating author.

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